Family reunion in Atlanta

Unless you have heard me go on about Stella, my spiritual mother of decades, you wouldn’t understand why John introduced me to his friend as “my big sister.” Looking at our faces (shown in the photo), you’d wonder, how? What’s up with that?

Simple. Since the late sixties, when I launched my first career as an early childhood educator, in Cambridge, MA, I met John, his parents and ten siblings. I immediately claimed them as mine. And neither time, nor distance, life, nor death has changed this relationship. So, of course, rearranging my schedule to catch up with this visitor from Hawaii was a no-brainer. (John is on an east coast tour seeking galleries, institutions, festivals, and marketplaces to show his art.)

John's youngest sibling, Karen, was among my first beautiful and brilliant Head Start students. When Karen, age six, arrived the first day of school with her sisters Esther and Linda, their expressions read: What kind of place is this? And who is this woman who calls herself teacher? Years ago, "baby" Karen earned a degree in education from Gallaudet College, married a fellow student (now, a professor at their alma mater), and has been mom to three great kids.

The photo shown here captures John's parents, Joe and Stella, in their garden, spring 2004.

Today, at age 87, Joe continues gardening, fishing, keeping bees, preparing meals (and sharing them with neighbors and guests) visiting shut-ins and nursing home residents, ministering to his flock, mentoring new church leadership, and welcoming family, friends, and seekers of his light. (The night before Yom Kippur we spoke, among other topics, about Unetaneh Tokef. I had been studying this prayer in the High Holy Day liturgy, and Joe asked me to read it aloud. We spoke our usual brief time — more than an hour, and only ending the call because of my bedtime!)

Stella, the woman whom I called "Inspiration" since our meeting that first Head Start year for Karen and for me, died 21 months ago, at age 83. She remains a tree of life — many roots, many branches: my beloved surrogate parent, adored sister, treasured friend — a total force for good.

Family. Bloodlines; yes, that is one way to be family. Marriage confers family status, too. And then, there is family of choice: the one we populate with people we claim and who claim us. It is so simple to accomplish. Reach across artificial divides. Remain open. And, only connect.

Au revoir, Marcel Marceau

My childhood heroes continue to exit the stage, as do heroes of my adulthood. One by one, they release their tools — pens and papers, uniforms and costumes, needles and threads, batters and mixes. Now, they live in memory. And, in some lucky situations, preserved on paper, canvas, vinyl, and digitized bits of reality in multiple formats.

How I dearly loved them, and how they fascinated, entertained, and enlightened me endlessly with their courageously creative signature expressions.

Marcel Marceau spoke loudly in an inaudible voice.

I was a child in New York City when my parents took me to see the French mime who died this week, at age 84. Watching his speechless performances thrilled me as did listening to stories of his courageous exploits in the face of the monster Hitler and his systematic war to exterminate the Jews. Marceau's father was deported and died in Auschwitz. In his twenties, the mime forged identity cards (much as my grandfather did), proving youths too young to be sent to labor camps, and hid Jewish children from the Gestapo and the French police.

The artist spoke to and about all humanity. From an interview, quoted in The New York Times obituary —

Mostly I think of human situations for my work, not local mannerisms. There is no French way of laughing and no American way of crying. My subjects try to reveal the fundamental essences of humanity.

What were the fundamental essences of humanity that my ten- or eleven-year-old girlhood memory stored? Fortunately the wonderful online magazine Salon.com captured some —

. . . going up and down an invisible escalator . . .; attempting suicide; personifying all seven sins; and acting out the creation of the world, from amoeba to man, in 10 minutes or so. . . . His [was] . . . a world fashioned out of thin air. You see a statue, a pickpocket, a matador, a lion tamer, a soldier, a man passionately embraced by his lover.

How does the child in me remember so much about the mime from so long ago? Salon explains —

It's no accident that children are his best audiences, because his art demands active participation, imagination.

In the photo, which I took at the Arab Jewish Community Center in Jaffa, Israel, a bevy of children express themselves joyfully, silently!

Probably, they never heard of the great mime whose art was for them, too, of course.

I pray that some day these children will see his work and listen to his clear unspoken messages on the fundamental essences of humanity. Equally, I pray that they and all children will develop their talents and perhaps bring to audiences the enchantment, comfort, inspiration, and hope, as Marcel Marceau brought to me when I was a child.

Yom Kippur thoughts: Our choices do matter

About the photo. The image of blowing the shofar is from a reproduction of a greeting card from Eastern Europe, early 20th century. Courtesy of the Fund of the New Synagogue Berlin, Centrum Judaicum.

(Hat tip to Uriel Adiv who forwarded the photo from Jerusalem, where he opened it in an e-mail his friend Myra sent from Berlin. Ah, the gifts of cyberspace.)

The shofar calls —

Awake, you sleepers from your sleep, rouse yourself you slumberers . . . Examine your deeds, return in repentance and remember your Creator. Those of you who forget the truth in the follies of the times and go astray the whole year in vanity and emptiness, which neither profit nor save, look to your souls, improve your ways and works, abandon your evil ways every one of you! [Maimonides, in Hilchot Teshuvah, The Laws of Repentance 3.4]

And, another riff on the shofar, from Unetaneh Tokef, a Hebrew liturgical poem —

. . . And when the great shofar is sounded, a small quiet voice is heard, and the heavely beings are thrown into fright, and, seized by a terrible dread, they declare: Behold, the day of judgment has arrived, when even those in heaven's court are judged for none can be exempt from justice's eyes! . . . you do not desire a person to die, but only to change and to live. . . . [Translation from Mahzor Leyamim Nora’im, Prayerbook for the Days of Awe, The Reconstructionist Press]

* * *

Now, just hours before Yom Kippur begins, the shofar is calling me, its sounds ringing in my ears since Rosh Hashanah. And I am eager to continue the difficult spiritual work of this awe-some mandated pause in Jewish time. Guiding the congregation will be the High Holy Day machzor, a rich anthology of prayers, hymns, and passages from the Bible, Mishnah, Talmud, and Zohar that tell the history and mirror the spirit of the Jewish people.

The hard part of the spiritual work is essential — reflecting on my specific deeds and thoughts (including their absence), intentional and not, and critically assessing my mis-takes (split word intended) the preceding year. Without this work, how can I recognize my choices and discern the possible consequences and results each choice entails? How else can I identify my responsibilities and make good choices attempting to shoulder them wisely?

It is this ability to choose that makes us human. And I want to know: How will I make choices that matter?

* * *

Last month, the popular author of the children's classic ''A Wrinkle in Time" died, at age 88. From The New York Times' obituary of this deeply faithful Christian:

Why does anybody tell a story? [Madeleine L'Engle] . . . once asked, even though she knew the answer. . . . It does indeed have something to do with faith, she said, faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically [emphasis mine].

May the New Year and its blessings start (Tachel shana u-birkote-ah)

Dear Tamar,

May the New Year and its blessings start (Tachel shana u-birkote-ah).

The word Shana in Hebrew comes from the word li-shnot (to repeat) but it also sounds like le-shanot (to change). I think that's the main thing every Rosh Hashanah: it's our chance either to repeat our mistakes or to make a change; to keep the good things or to let them go. I hope your new year will be filled with good choices.

Shana Tova,
Shimon

About the photo. Taken by Uriel Adiv in Machane Yehuda, Israel's largest open-air shuk (market), it showcases honey — a symbol of the hope for a sweet year ahead.

One hour, three conversations (excerpts)

• 2:15 PM — Today, after seeing my periodontist and before leaving her office, I conversed casually with her assistant, who suddenly blurted out: I am 44 and my father abused me until I was seven. I have forgiven him and my mother for allowing it because today I know he was a sick person.

• 3:00 PM — On my way home, waiting in the subway station for a train to the bus depot, I chatted with a fellow passenger. When our friendly conversation turned to religion, she announced: Oh, you are Jewish? All Jews are rich.
  
  
• 3:15 PM — Waiting for my connection at the bus depot, I resumed a longstanding intermittent conversation with the station master. Describing the ages and activities of his six children, he began: My eldest is a sniper in Baghdad. When he left for Iraq, 24 months ago, I told him, 'I wish I could go in your place. Just obey orders and concentrate on protecting your buddy to your right and your buddy to your left.'

During each conversation, I wondered, What is this person really telling me? And later, I pondered, How is each person connected to me and to the others?

L'Shanah Tovah, Have a Happy New Year 5768

Hayom harat olam,

On this day, the world was conceived.

With these words, ends the first and most central addition to the Rosh Hashanah Jewish festival prayer service that begins this Wednesday evening.

. . . Most central [an addition] it is, for throughout this day, and the ten days of return and renewal that it introduces, we remind ourselves. . . that the universe is at all is already a cause for wonder, for acknowledgment, for worshipful thanks, and for responsibility . . .

. . . Birth always inspires us with awe and wonder. . . But today we are to reflect not on the birth of a single child, not on the mystery of our own existences, not even just on the existence of whole species of life, but rather on the conception and the birth of the entire universe.

— From a sermon by COEJL, the leading
Jewish environmental organization in the United States

A call to profound awareness.
What responses are possible?

This question and related ruminations, thoughts, and introspection are driving the cheshbon hanefesh, accounting of the soul work I have already begun, as have done generations of my ancestors during this High Holy Day period.

About the photo. Taken by Uriel Adiv in Jerusalem, it celebrates the pomegranate, one of the Seven Species, seven types of fruits and grains that the Hebrew Bible (Deuteronomy 8:8) lists as special products of the Land of Israel. On the second night of Rosh Hashanah, we eat a new fruit which we have not yet eaten this season. Why a pomegranate? One reason is that it is pregnant with seeds, supposedly 613, the number of mitzvot, commandments in the Bible. And we want our mitzvot — good deeds in the coming year to be as plentiful as the seeds of the pomegranate.