Standing on earth

I have been thinking for some time about coming clean and writing what I am really thinking about on this blog.  It’s a hard thing to do because I think that some people, including people I love very much, think I am crazy.  On the other hand, I also think that my experience might help some people. 

When Lucas died two years ago in a car accident I went into a profound spiritual crisis.  After six months, my best friend told me that I had to do something.  Not wanting to go speak to a therapist, I chose to go to a cranial-sacral healer.

During the healing, I understood many things.  I understood that the car accident that killed Lucas also shocked me out of balance on earth.  The healer worked on grounding me and I understood that I had somehow, since the accident, been not grounded.

I understood that some part of me was jealous that Lucas got to leave the earth.  I understood that I knew Lucas and Sasha from a previous life, a life I had seen before.  I understood that Lucas was a very high soul, who had been a monk in that life. 

I understood what I have known for many years, that I was ambivalent (that’s too soft a word) about being alive.  Many years ago I came to understand my traumatic birth (I had the cord around me), as not wanting to be born.  I connected this with the fact that I died in the Holocaust in my last life.  I have seen these things since 1988.

After this healing, I became motivated to want to be here.  I understood that Lucas had left the earth and that I was still here.  I wanted to work on wanting to be here.

I went to another healer I see who understands these things.  We spent some sessions on this issue of “wanting to be here”.  While I was working on this, on January 9, 2012, I said, “I have to stop taking responsibility for other souls.”  I have to claim my journey.  Other people, even my own children, have their own journeys.  That was on Monday.

I was sick at the time.  I went home and came down with pneumonia.  On Thursday night I was lying in bed and I had a feeling.  I was about to go on a trip to California.  I had a feeling that an important message about my trip was about to arrive by email.  I kept getting up to check.  Around 10:30 pm a message came from the mother of a friend of mine.  I had been meant to see him, for the first time after 30 years, during my upcoming trip.  The message was that he had killed himself.  On January 9.

In the following days, I was sick in bed and thought only of him.  I began to see him in our last life, in the Holocaust.  He was my cousin.  I began to understand his story – how hard that life was for him and how that was behind much of what happened to him in this life.  How he was also someone like me who lived somehow not fully here.  How he had to leave.

What I see now, in these days when his image and life are coming back to me again, is how in this life we re-create scenes from past lives to re-do them.  Do-over. 

When Lucas died in March 2011, I was teaching Hallel in an online course.  In Psalm 115 it says, “Lo hametim yehallelu Y-h – The dead will not praise G-d”.    We had studied and discussed that phrase in class just before Lucas died.    A student of mine pointed us to a paper, which analyzed Yakov Gladstein’s 1946 poem, Dead Men’s Praise.  Since Lucas died, I have held that poem, taught that poem, and the words of Hallel together. 

In the poem, Gladstein describes the deaths at Maidenek as a reverse Sinai image – “we received the Torah at Sinai and at Lublin we gave it back.”  The central image in the poem is a Jewish child. 

This year another layer that has been added for me has to do with how we stand on the earth.  What does it mean to be “strangers and sojourners with G-d” on a land that belongs to G-d.  David said, “I am a stranger here on earth like my fathers before me, our lives are like a shadow and there is no hope.”   No hope, that is, of holding on to the things that we hold precious.  The word “shmor” – guard or take care of – keeps coming back in our songs and ceremonies.  I know that this is not promised in any literal way.  I believe that G-d is keeping Lucas’s soul – and my soul, and Sasha’s soul, and Gabi’s soul, and Alen’s soul.  But life on this earth is not guaranteed to us and nor is being able to protect our children.

Today, standing at Sasha’s kabbalat sefer Torah ceremony all this was with me – Sasha, Lucas, my friend Alan.  What it means to receive it all and to be standing here, on earth, in this moment, with my feet on the ground. 

Who Made Me the Teacher I am?

This is my undergraduate advisor, Ron Thiemann, z"l, as I knew him 30 years ago.  He passed away on November 29, 2012, at the age of 66.  His passing reminds me of that quote that goes around - people will forget what you say and forget what you do, but they won't forget how you made them feel.

It's hard for me to believe that Ron has died without my having a chance to say goodbye to him.  I would like to think that I told him enough times how much he meant to me, but of course we never tell anyone that enough. 

Ron was a very charismatic teacher.  He was energetic, so smart, and pushed us all the time to think.  My friend Bill from college wrote that Ron taught him to think, to analyze, to really understand someone else's argument before disagreeing.  His classroom was charged, full of excitement and of the joy of learning.  He was tough on us - quick to tell me on my papers when he thought I'd missed the mark or failed to understand the material.  A 3.7 from him meant something.  A 4.0 was an extremely happy day - one I did not see frequently!

I took my first class with him in the spring of 1979.  It was not an easy semester for me - a lot fell apart for me then - but in his class I felt whole and happy.  He cared about us and he cared about what he was teaching.  I fell in love - with a TA, with the material we were learning, with learning itself.  And somehow that love stayed with me beyond that semester and into my religion major.

I took my questions and my challenges to Ron.  He was never diminished by a student's challenges.  He supported me through my learning and through the years that followed.  We stayed in touch.  I don't know if he recommended me for rabbinical school but I know he knew I was there, and later in my congregation, and later here in Israel. 

He had a turbulent career at Harvard and some challenges.  He and my mother became Deans in the same year - 1986.  I remember going out to lunch with him somewhere and talking about it - he was in orbit, as my mother says, very busy, very challenged.  I'm not sure if I saw him after that, but we talked in 1990 I'm sure, and later when I was here in Israel. 

I got from him that wonderful teachers love what they are learning, love their students and love seeing students grow.  I got from him that religion matters, greatly, in our world. 

One of the courses I never took from him was one he always taught - Religion and the Third Reich.  He was a big fan of Dietrich Bonhoffer, and he deeply believed that what we think and how we live matters. 

I'm so grateful that at age 17-20 I had such a caring, committed teacher.  If you are reading this, thank one of your teachers! 

It'll be a New Year

I had one of those innocuous conversations today. With someone I really like, someone I was happy to be talking to, someone I had not seen in awhile.

She asked how I am, how the family is, in a way that indicated she cared and wanted to hear. So I said it's been a hard time, the past 6 months since Lucas died, that we saw his family, that it was hard.

And she said, "it'll be a New Year". Meaning well, it's a nice thing to say.

I didn't say a lot of what's on my mind - how I don't want to go to Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur services, how in the New Year Lucas will still be dead, how the world will still be a place where a 4 year old boy can suddenly leave, where a family can be left with grief.

Yesterday, September 11, I did not think much about Lucas. I thought about all the people who died that day 10 years ago.

But today, September 12, I'm back to where I was. Not looking forward to a New Year, not knowing what it means to make a fresh start when a piece is, and will always be, missing.

And knowing that this is what people my age, which is not that old, and some younger, do all the time. That figuring out how to live with loss is basically figuring out how to live. I don't have it figured out yet.

Many years ago someone told me a year is important because after a year, you've gone through all the seasons. I have no doubt next high holidays will be easier. For now I'm dreading the thought of trying to be present as we read, "who shall live and who shall die". Alen's been listening to a Leonard Cohen version of it in the car - I don't know how. I changed the disc when it came on.

Still in the game with prayer

For those of you who think I've given up, I'm still in the game with prayer.

I found this quote sent by my colleague Elliot Skiddell:

"Prayer cannot rebuild a broken bridge or make a desert bloom, but prayer can rebuild a broken will or water an arid soul.”

According to the source he found, it's from Bahya ibn Pakuda though he did find it also attributed, variously, to Gates of Prayer and also to Heschel.

In memory of Lucas and before getting permission

I told my friend I'd get her permission to write this but it's too late to call her. I hope she'll tell me if she wants me to take it down.

Tomorrow is 11 weeks since Lucas died. I think I'm going over the edge. Please pray for his parents, his sister, his grandparents, aunts, uncles and his caregiver.

I was looking for a 10th person for a minyan for mincha and when I asked my friend and colleague who happened to be passing through the building she was reluctant and said she'd do it if I raised some money for a project near and dear to our hearts.

I told her to come do it so we could resurrect Lucas and she said I was giving her a guilt trip.

I told my students that she was accusing me of a guilt trip I had not meant in any way. I told them I was just commenting on the total worthlessness of our prayers to do what I want done in the world right now.

After we got a minyan without her, she left and I sobbed my way through the first part of mincha. When I got back to my office I wrote her an email entitled "What I meant"

And I told her that what I meant is that I feel like I get up every day and stand at the edge of an abyss and that nowhere do I feel that more than when I am trying to pray. And in addition to just trying to make things work at my job, I was asking her to stand with me there for five minutes.

So she called and asked me for coffee and she said, in that beautiful understated way the British have, "I read your email and it sounds like you could use some chocolate cake."

I don't want chocolate cake. I want the world to go back to the way it was on March 7. And according to Jewish tradition (Mishnah Brachot, last chapter, hatzoek lesheavar), that's not even something I can pray for.

Last Shabbat and this one

I went away with my work last Shabbat, which was hard. I found two more prayers that were very difficult. The first was Tefillat HaDerech - the prayer for a journey. The rabbis on the bus were talking about exactly where the right place to say it was - you can't say it until you have traveled a certain distance. I was totally alienated from this - like if we say it here, not there, if we say every word exactly correctly, it will prevent our bus from having an accident??? And all those people in accidents, maybe they just didn't say it right??? Give me a break.

The second prayer is the one we say when the ark is opened: "Yehe raba kadamach, detiftach libi beoraita, ve tashlim meshalim delibi, ve liba dechol amach yisrael..." It means loosely - "may it be Your will to open my heart to Your Torah and fulfill my hearts desires and those of all your people Israel for good, for life and for peace." This prayer has been very important to me because before I had kids I prayed very hard during this prayer that I should have them, and since I've had kids, I've always been very grateful when I heard this prayer. Last week I found I just walked out in tears. One of the students very kindly came over to me outside.

I have found something I think is appropriate to say to people who ask "Are you feeling better," which is, "I really appreciate that you would like me to feel better."

Please pray for my mom, Bracha bat Nechama. She fell and bruised her ribs and broke a bone in her foot.

Thanks and much love to all who are reading this.

Top 10 prayers I'm having a hard time with

So let's see if I can get to 10 here:

1. Shehehiyanu - I can't thank G-d for allowing me to reach this occasion. I so want to turn back the clock. When my best friend from high school whom I had not seen in 10 years showed up last weekend I had to say it, but I choked on it too.

2. Birkat Gomel - I don't need to say this but I can't stand listening to others saying it right now. How come G-d didn't save Lucas?

3. Mevarech HaShanim - this year has so gone down the tubes, how can I ask Hashem to bless it.

4. Mehayeh Metim - I noticed this is kind of a biggie in our tradition, and it's so familiar it rolls off my tongue, and Sasha seems to have total faith in Techiyat Hametim. I'm not sure what I think. I hope I won't be kicked out of the RRA for mentioning that I actually say the traditional version.

5. Ahavat Olam - G-d's love isn't so present for me right now.

6. Anything that uses the word Hesed - not feeling it from G-d so so much. We've seen a lot of it from people.

7. Thy will not mine be done - if you know me well, you know I say that quite a bit. I'm choking on it these days.

8. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change - also well known by rote but not easy to swallow right now.

9. Alenu leShabeach - not so into praising Hashem right now.

10. Tov Hashem la col ve rachamav al col ma'asav - G-d is good to all and his mercy extends to all he does - Ditto on all of the above.

One line I've been looking at favorably - Psalm 90 verse 15 - Give us joy for as long as You have afflicted us, for the years we've seen bad.

English translations of the above available on request.

Please keep our family in your prayers!

Prayer for adults with parents

On the 7th day of Pesach, I went to shul and found that for those who don't say Yizkor, the congregation provided this wonderful prayer. They had it on laminated cards so people could take it with them as they went out. The prayer was especially appropriate since my parents celebrated Seder with us and we are so privileged to have them staying with us. I remember well Alen's mom telling me after her father died how blessed she had been to have both her parents until she was 55 years old, and the sentiments of this prayer express my feelings.

תפילה לשלום המשפחה (במקום יזכור)

אבי שבשמים בשעת הזכרת נשמות אלה שהלכו לעולמם
נושא אני את עיני אליך, אלוהי, בהודיה מלב שלם,
על שחסדך הגדול הורי היקרים חיים פה עימי.
ברכם בבריאות טובה ותן להם כח רב לחיות אתנו עוד שנים רבות וטובות,
חזקם ואמצם לחיים של רווחה,
ברכם ברפואת הנפש ורפואת הגוף.
ברכם שיזכו להנות ולהתברך מצאציהם,
שתהא פרנסתם מצויה ושתהיה הברכה בביתם.
חזק אותי, שאוכל לעזרם בכל כוחי ובכל מאודי,
ולואי ואזכה לקיים מצוות כיבוד הורים בכל דקדוקיה והידוריה.
יהי רצון שאבין את האחריות הגדולה כלפיהם המוטלת עלי.
ברכני שאראה חובתי כלפיהם כזכות ולא כנטל,
מאהבה ולא מכורח, בשמחה ובנחת ולא מקוצר רוח.
ויהי רצון שאזכה להיות מקור שמחה להורי ומשפחתי,
שמחם וברכם בבריאות טובה ובחיים של אורה ואהבה.
ותהיה בי יראתך ואהבתך לעבדך בלבב שלם ונזכה כולנו,
יחד, לחיים טובים וארוכים.

My Father in Heaven, at this hour of remembering those who have passed away, I raise my eyes to You my G-d, in complete thanks from my heart, that in Your great kindness my parents are still alive here with me.

Please bless them with good health and give them full strength to live with us many more good years. Strengthen them and give them courage for a life of fullness, bless them with health and healing of spirit and body.

Please bless them that they may enjoy and be blessed by their offspring. May they have financial well-being and may their home be filled with blessing.

Strengthen me that I may help them with all my strength and all my might. May I merit to fulfill the mitzvah of honoring parents in all its details and beauty. May it be Your will that I understand the great responsibility toward them that is upon me. Bless me that I will see my obligation toward them as a privilege and not as a burden, done out of love and not out of coercion, with joy and nachas and not with a short temper.

May it be Your will that I may merit to be a source of joy to my parents and my family, please grant them joy and blessings of good health and a life of light and love. And may there be in me fear and love of You to serve you with a full heart, and may we all merit together long and happy life.