From The Bimah: Jewish Lessons For Life

From May 8th, 2021

Madeline always loved to sing.  As a teenager, she had a gorgeous voice, a two-and-a-half octave range, and the kind of creative artistry that made people swoon.  She and her friends would sing along to Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and Judy Garland, and she took the stage at every wedding and bar mitzvah she could.  In high school, won an adult talent contest at the Adams Theater in Newark. On her way out, comedian Joey Adams told her that she “had a very good voice and…should pursue it.” That dream was tempting....but Madeline’s family was struggling. 

From May 1, 2021

We’ve known this for a while, but suddenly the realization that you only live once has taken on a fierce urgency.  The acronym YOLO, you only live once, was popularized by the rapper Drake in 2013, but as we are emerging from the pandemic YOLO has a new energy as a call to action.  Last week New York Times writer Kevin Roose authored a piece entitled “Welcome to the YOLO economy” about how many millennial workers, as they emerge from the pandemic, want to make real changes to their lives because you only live once.

From April 24th, 2021.

I want to tell you a story about a magic spoon.  The story comes from a different time and place, the 1870s in a town in Romania called Stefanesti, where there was an illustrious Hasidic dynasty.  The most famous of these Hasidic masters was Rabbi Avrohom Mattisyou Friedman, who became the Second Shtefaneshter Rebbe in 1869 and continued for 64 years.  He was considered a hidden tzaddik who could effect miracles.  The most famous of these miracle stories concerns a Hasid who comes to see the Rebbe because his daughter had typhus.  She was desperately ill.  She had very little time left.  Rebbe, only a miracle can save her.  What happens next is told in a history of this Hasidic dynasty:

From April 17th, 2021.

From April 10, 2021

I heard a story on NPR this week that kind of blew my mind. They were talking about how, since the start of the pandemic, requests for plastic surgery procedures have gone up something like 85%. Plastic surgeons shared that they are getting so many more requests that they have had to hire additional people just to field those phone calls. They are working overtime, late into the night, trying to accommodate everyone. And what is so interesting is they are getting requests for procedures that did not used to be so popular. People are looking to tighten their jawlines, adjust their nostrils, tighten their necks, and bodywork as well. And when people reach out, nine out of ten people share that they’re reaching out because of ZOOM. Because now that they’re on ZOOM all day long, they’re looking at their faces and they’re noticing the way they look when they talk, when they interact, when they work.  They’re noticing places they never knew they wanted to improve.

You do not have to be Jewish to love Shtisel, the fabulous Netflix series about a Haredi family in Jerusalem.  While this family is Haredi, their problems are human and universal.  Anyone can relate to them.  Season 3 was just released, and one vignette is so poignant it captures the complexity of saying Yizkor. Shtisel, the family patriarch, has been a widower for seven years.  One day he  experiences heart pain.  He calls the number of his kupat cholim, his medical network in Israel. Again, while it’s about Israel, and the dialogue is in Hebrew, the story connects with any human anywhere who has ever been caught up in electronic phone hell and cold bureaucracy.

From April 3, 2021.

If you know teens who play hockey, you know how all important it is for them to get their time on the ice.  That time is limited and hard to come by.  Hockey parents are wont to drive their young hockey stars to the ice rink at 6 in the morning. In a place like Seaforth, Ontario, the ice rink manager, Graham Nesbitt, had a quality problem.  There was only one ice rink.  But hockey in Canada is super popular.  Far more kids want to play hockey than can comfortably skate in the city’s one rink.  But Graham Nesbitt was committed to the idea that any teen who wants to skate can skate, and he would go out of his way to open up the rink early in the morning, to stay there and keep it open late at night, seven days a week.  He would keep the rink open in the face of major snowstorms.  When other businesses were closed, his ice rink was open for any young skater whose parents were willing to drive them through the storm to get extra ice time.  Graham Nesbitt did not see hi

How are you? We’re conditioned to answer, “Good,” “Fine,” “Okay,” or, perhaps if you are like me, “Thank God.” When we are in person and someone asks you this question, the response comes automatically – a habit, a construct of polite conversation. But from the comfort of your own home or wherever you are, behind the privacy of a screen, let me ask you again. And let me invite you to pause before you answer. How are you?

From March 27, 2021

Tom Ammiano struggled in high school. A teenager in the late 50s, he was gangly and effeminate, with a high-pitched voice. Even though he wasn’t out of the closet, everyone knew that he was different, and they bullied him mercilessly for it. Back then, homophobia legally enforced. Same-sex partnerships were criminalized. Being gay was seen as a mental health issue, and one deserving of ridicule and scorn. Tom knew there was no universe in which he could be his full self. Nevertheless, he tried to fit in.

This week a member of our community told me something that was so interesting, so unexpected, so profound, and so previously unknown to me, that I have been thinking about it pretty much non-stop ever since.

From March 20, 2021

From our earliest childhood days, we read a story – told through multiple characters in multiple ways – which always follows the same orderly and optimistic script: a young girl falls in love with a doting prince, who whisks her off to a gleaming castle where she lives in luxury and attendant joy all the days of her life. The princess lives “happily ever after.”.....Except when she doesn’t.

One fine afternoon I was listening to Fresh Air on NPR, and the interview totally drew me in. Terri Gross was interviewing a woman who did something out of her ideals and idealism. It was self-sacrificing. It took her time, a lot of it. It exposed her to danger, a lot of it. What was so compelling to me about the interview was that she had to explain that her mother, herself a person of high ideals and idealism, objected to what her daughter did, for reasons of her own principle. In fact, the mother loathed what her daughter did, and told her so.

From March 6th, 2021.