Broken Things

Since 1985 every child or adult who celebrates Bar or Bat Mitzvah at Congregation Bet Ha'am receives a Kiddush cup made by the pottery artist Toby Rosenberg.  Written on the cup in gold in both Hebrew and English is the name of the student, the date of the celebration and the Torah portion from which the student read.

When Congregation Bet Ha'am said goodbye to me they gave me a Kiddush cup made by Toby's hands. On it, in Hebrew and English, was my name and the most beloved of verses from Psalms, "I have placed God before me always."

The cup broke. It was an accident.

Broken things have a special place in Judaism. Rabbi Akiva Herzfeld taught me that. He stopped by the other day as he sometimes does. We sit on the porch. He never seems rushed. On this most recent visit he invoked the memory of the broken things.

I recounted my attempt to teach and how I could not remember what I said as soon as the words came out of my mouth. Akiva reminded me that God gave us two sets of commandments. The first set was shattered by Moses in a rage upon seeing the Israelites worship the golden calf. The second set remained whole.

The broken fragments of the tablets were carefully gathered up and placed in the Aron Kodesh, the Holy Ark. When Moses brought us the second set of tablets, the first set was not thrown away. Both the broken and the whole tablets were kept in the Holy Ark together.

Toby made me a new Kiddush cup like the first. Instinctively, I did not throw out the shards of the original cup. The still lovely but broken base sits on the desk where I now write. The residue of Shabbat wine remains in the crevasse where the base met the mouth of the cup, "A remembrance of the work of creation."

Accidents happen. Broken things can have meaning. I will try to teach again.

Is It Responsible?

Last Friday at noon. I am on a freeway going 75 mph in bumper-to-bumper traffic. The guy behind me is sitting on his horn, but I cannot see him. I cannot see the driver in front of me either. Nothing before and nothing after. I am wearing a blindfold.

If I take my foot off the gas there is sure to be a pile-up so I keep moving, under the darkness of a blindfold. And the noise of that horn... I somehow manage to navigate the car off the exit to a stop. I shut the engine at 1:00 PM and forget the blindfold.

That was teaching.

I don't think there were any injuries but I could not say for sure. Is it responsible to teach Torah with a blindfold on my consciousness? Without awareness of what I or anyone else was saying when I taught last Friday? I do not remember the content of my remarks or anyone else's. Is it a desecration of Jewish tradition and God's reputation to teach sacred text in the walking-sleep of the Brainstorm? Or is it a "good enough?" Is it safe to continue and try to improve with time and practice?

I don't know the answer. I am so very tired.

Seventy Plus Zero

"Every word (of Torah) that the Holy One spoke came out in seventy languages."
Talmud Bavli, Shabbat 88b

The art of simultaneous translation reached its highest expression when God spoke the Torah on Mount Sinai in seventy languages all at once, or so the story goes. Seventy is a figurative number symbolizing all the known languages of the ancient world.

But how is Torah to be given and received in the no-language of those who struggle to understand even our own words? I think a thought and attempt to articulate it but other words come out.  The listener seems not to understand. Or is it I who do not understand the listening of the listener?

So I repeat and re-phrase. I lift my tongue to form words as Jacob lifted the stone off the well for Rachel to water her flock. But unlike Jacob, whose heroics led to the sweet silence of a kiss, I forget the object of my exertions and talk in circles until I can no longer speak. This is not a sweet silence. Why was I talking and to whom? Did I make sense? I am left with anxious mystery.

Language was the main course served at the dinner party I called life. Yet it is precisely at dinner parties that I feel like the main course. There is a cruelty and mercy to sharing the evening meal with others. The cruelty is a weariness that sets in around four in the afternoon and increases as dinner approaches. The social grace of holding up one's end of a conversation is followed by the effort of connecting thought to speech. Afterwards, the shadow of "What did I say?" lingers.

There is mercy more powerful than the cruel reality that is sometimes my "plus one" in The Brainstorm. Mercy insists that despite it all I am still a welcome guest at someone's table. Mercy is the reason I persist in accepting invitations. Mercy is communication that transcends words awkwardly spoken, misspoken or unspoken. Mercy is the language of no-language.

God gave the Torah in every language and in the mute existence beyond language. Mercy is not the seventy first language. It is the language of zero. Seventy plus zero is still seventy.  That is to say, Torah, and the mercy it teaches, is accessible in every language that ever was or will come to be; understood by all who wish to understand.

Strawberry Progress, Strawberry Torah

This is what I know today.

I know that sweet peas are pretty but inedible; that tomatoes really should grow downward and not upward; that broccoli takes up too much room to be an economical choice for my small vegetable garden. I know that I cannot absorb new sacred learning and all learning, from Talmud to car maintenance, is sacred. I can make some sense of what I learned before the Brainstorm.

I know that a strawberry plant -- like my brain -- is hard to kill no matter how forceful the impact, how obscured by snow, leaves or human neglect. My progress is strawberry progress and my Torah is strawberry Torah.

On the third anniversary since the Brainstorm, I set an unrealistic goal. To prepare a scholar-in-residence weekend and take it on the road. I can't get on the road. Forget the scholarship. The ability to drive more than a short distance still eludes me and the stimulation of travel and crowds sets my mind to an inarticulate halt.

Instead of a weekend, I will attempt to teach for one hour in a familiar place, with familiar people. We will study what I know by heart, from the heart. This feat will be carried out without caveats, excuses, rambling, stuttering or a net. If I am unsuccessful I will try again in six months or a year or two years or six years. I will keep trying. I will keep trying until I have taken my last breathe. What is the alternative, really? To not try? To quit? To be finished for the rest of my life?

I am not finished.

The experience of raking leaves out of strawberry plants contains holy wisdom within. Somehow the leaves give way while the plants remain in place. I do not understand the science of raking leaves. The blossoms, which will burst into fruit, survive and are stronger than the rake. During our short strawberry season my daughter goes out to the yard each morning to bring in enough fruit for all of us. I have not needed to add new plants. Strawberries seem to adore their own company.

Torah learning and teaching is often compared to a tree with strong roots and branches that reach to the heavens. The Torah of the Brainstorm is more like a patch of strawberries. It does not soar heavenward like the branches of our Maine Pines. It is also harder to take down. The Torah of the Brainstorm is not majestic. It is low to the ground, impervious to the awkward rake and the trampling feet of children at play. The Torah of the Brainstorm is strawberry Torah. It has an abbreviated season and what it lacks in majesty it will have to make up for in sweetness.

Passover And My Son's Feet

I think it is the second day of Passover which could mean that I have remembered to feed my children and myself kosher-for-Passover food for two days. I made plans that were once again, unrealistic, but not tragically unrealistic. When I called our host to cancel second night Seder plans she reminded me that the last time I cancelled on her it was apparently Rosh Hashanah and I was in the hospital due to the demands of my soul over-reaching the capacity of the my brain. She sounded more relieved than insulted by my last minute cancellation. For my sake.

After the first Seder I could have slept for a week which means I should still be sleeping.

The next morning my daughter and I made an ambitious trip to synagogue. I lasted until Hallel -- two thirds of the way through the service. This was followed by rest, followed by lunch with friends followed by sleep. I don't think I made dinner.

My son was not with us. He was praying with his feet.

Yesterday, the first day of Passover, a day on which observant Jews are in synagogue celebrating, my son was at a meeting of Civil Rights Teams from middle schools across the state of Maine. 

It is a joy to see that Tolerance has become a team sport. I've never been one to push my kids athletically but I'm a fan. Civil Rights is one sport in which, I confess, I'm hoping both my children letter. 

My son came home inspired enough that he was still talking about the conference this morning over a quick breakfast of matzah, butter and jam. We discussed what it meant that a gathering on tolerance was being held on a day when observant Jews couldn't attend. 

In 1965, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched with The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King in Selma, Alabama for civil rights. When asked why he hadn't remained in New York Rabbi Heschel replied, "In Selma my legs were praying." The march in Selma was not held on the first day of Passover or Rosh Hashanah. Nor was it held on Easter or Christmas. If it had been, I would like to think that what was at stake in Selma would have over-ridden any other concerns of religious people of every faith.

I may believe that my children are Being Passover and literally escorting others out of slavery by attending this conference. I may believe that attending a civil rights conference instead of attending synagogue is another expression of casting off the soul-crushing oppression of whatever enslaves us. But for some Jewish kids that is an interpretive leap their families could not and should not have to make.

So yesterday my son prayed with his feet as he went from workshop to workshop and learned about other young people working to build a world more respectful of difference. I pray that in my children's lifetime such a conference will be held on a day when all young people can attend and matzah will be served. 

Directing My Heart

When the hour of prayer arrives, if one is unable to stand, one should direct the heart toward The Holy of Holies.
-- After Mishnah Berachot 4:5

Passover isn't what it once was but I suppose every Jewish adult can say that for worse or for better. Last year we narrowly escaped a Passover without Matzah. Pesach arrived without warning as did our local Lubavitcher rabbi with Shmurah Matzah. I had not cleaned or shopped and there was little left in the stores. Friends came to the rescue with an extra box here and there and I cobbled together a week's worth of meals for the kids.

The enslavement to my limitations was so disheartening I filled my hand-held brain, otherwise known as an iPhone, with multiple fail-safe measures. Every day since Purim the phone rings and a message pops up "Prepare Fourteen Lunches." I was not about to spend another whole year in bondage to my brain.

This holiday could be a guilt-fest during which I beat myself up for seven days in remembrance of the inability to remember. I have plenty about which to feel guilty but my inability to observe Passover according to my own custom does not fall under that heading. I want to break from from the confines of what this holiday meant to me in the past, what I had hoped it would be for my children. I wish to celebrate what is, rather than mourning what is not, or at least what is not any longer or not yet.

Mishnah Berachot describes a man on a journey. He is riding a donkey and the hour of prayer arrives. The Mishnah says:

"If he was riding on a donkey, he must dismount; if he is unable to, he must turn his face (toward Jerusalem); if he is unable to turn his face, he shall direct his heart toward the Holy of Holies."

This journey into The Brainstorm is not a ride from which I will dismount any time soon. Nor can I turn away from it. All I can do is attempt to direct my heart toward that which is holy -- friends with matzah and large seder tables, the voices of my children singing songs they learned without my having taught them. I am directing my heart toward the mercy of being freed from unproductive guilt and led to a land filled with promise. And I direct my heart toward Jerusalem, holiest of cities, to which I pray to return every day without fail or forgetfulness.

In Search of the Heart's Memory

Cousin Judy is the sister I never had and I am glad for that. If she and I had been sisters we most likely would not speak to each other. In a loud voice and at the same time. I would still be nursing teenaged resentment because all my male friends had crushes on her when I was eighteen and she was fourteen and that was utterly gross. She would still be mad at me for borrowing one of those sweaters her mother would fold and put on hangers. They looked as pretty on the hangers as they did on my cousin. Judy's middle name is "Style." It was her mother's first name. Actually, Judy's middle name is unpronounceably Yiddish. I would have worn the sweater under tie-dyed overalls and left it on the floor of the bathroom at the end of the day.

My children and I stay with cousin Judy, her husband Matt and their kids Malcolm and Ethan when we visit family. I owe them a thank you note. I owe them quite a few. Thank you notes were one of the first casualties of The Brainstorm. The amount of remembering that goes into making or buying, writing and mailing a thank you note exceeds what a fully-abled person might imagine. There are so many tiny steps involved in the proper expression of appreciation. Well-chosen words aren't the half of it. At times I have gotten through steps one and two, the purchase and writing of a card, only to find aforementioned card in my drawer, months past its shelf date. The note is unsealed, unaddressed, unstamped and un-mailed and I have long since forgotten whose kindness or the nature of the generosity that inspired me to write in the first place.

The perfect card appeared yesterday at the market and it was so apropos to Cousin Judy and her family I had to take a chance. It said that something -- I don't know what -- is the heart's memory. I don't know what the heart's memory is because I cannot find the card. I've tried working backwards, not to find the card, but to discern what the heart's memory could be. Like on Jeopardy.

The heart's memory. What is... matching tattoos?!!

"Matching tattoos is the heart's memory."

I don't think that is what the card said.

If I could find the card I bought yesterday I would know the exact nature of heart's memory. Along with the heart's memory, I might discover the memory's memory. Then I would know where I put the card.

Thank you Judele, Matt, Malcolm and Ethan. Your generosity and easy-going hospitality inspire gratitude....

Gratitude! It is the heart's memory.

I wonder if I left the card at the market?

Re-Entry

February vacation. New York City. I recall an orgy of food, the joy of being with people I love and skating in Central Park in the rain with the kids. We went to Cousin Judy's Museum. Some, less in the know, call it The Museum of Modern Art. There I discovered my daughter likes Rousseau, which matches her fantastical imagination. My son likes the Avant-Garde which pairs elegantly with his general sense of ennui and other aspects of his personality that can only be described in French. At MOMA both children, upon seeing a massive installation of bee-pollen, wondered why the museum was not handing out epi-pens with the tickets?

Speech has left me. Writing is the Dangerous Unknown until it becomes the Dangerous Forgotten.

Forgotten will happen the minute I hit "publish."

The train ride was better than the paintings (Sorry Cousin Judy. Unlike my children, I am a cretin). God's handiwork was especially lovely as we passed through Mystic, CT where I realized that there was no snow in New York and lots of it in New England. In Mystic I began craving pizza and the bottomless quiet of New England winter.

Tonight is Purim, the holiday when we are commanded to turn life upside-down on its head.

I'm already there and my head hurts so very much.

Re-entry into the gravitational pull of my life is as punishing on The Brainstorm as the lights in Times Square.

Pain or not, life would not be worth living without the grounded pull of Maine or the bright lights of the big city.

The Brainstorm In The Snowstorm

I thought I was prepared. We had candles, flashlights, batteries, soup ingredients and ice cream. What else do you need in epic weather?

The soup was good for a day. By day two I was running out of culinary ideas and we were low on toilet paper. Instead of remembering my next door neighbor is a caterer and probably has a little extra this and that lying around I decided to drive to the store. I called first, a shining example of the progress I have made over the last three years. No one answered. I went anyway. It didn't occur to me that no one answered because no one was there. Even when I got on the road, alone, just me and the snow plows, I kept going.

The third store I tried was the charm. It was just me, one employee and a lot of empty grocery shelves. The trick would be to shop fast enough so my car didn't get stuck in a snow drift. I hadn't brought a shovel, something seasoned Mainers keep in their cars in winter. I pieced together a few days worth of meals and made it home safely thanks to the men and women who keep our roads clear no matter what the conditions.

You don't realize how difficult the simple things are until you are unable to follow through on those simple things. But unlike other dangerous, stupid things I have done since hitting my head, this time even I could see progress. When I got home, my children saw the look in my eyes and made the case for a nap. But I knew if I didn't act fast I would forget what it feels like when your minivan fishtails.

I made a list of everything we use in the house including the brand, size and the store where I buy it. Then I compiled another list of the kids favorite meals, the ingredients with details so specific, even a total stranger would know the difference between the Doritos in the purple bag and those in the blue bag, that apples had to be Gala, kosher meat can be had at Trader Joe's and Whole Foods but nowhere else in the great state of Maine and that Parmesan cheese never comes in a green can. I printed out the list and posted it all over the house, saved a copy on my phone so I would never be without it and on my screen saver in case, God-forbid, I lose the phone which is essentially a prosthetic brain.

It is supposed to rain tomorrow. We have five foot snow drifts. That could mean floods and it will definitely mean ice. A year ago I would not have been able to write that sentence or think that thought.

Rain plus snow equals floods. Floods and ice plus trees could equal power outages. In this moment sun plus snow equals beauty and the joy of success. I learned from a mistake for the first time in a long time and we have enough toilet paper to last until spring.

My Soul in Silence Waits for You

At some point during my teenage years I discovered a large book at each place in the pews of our synagogue. It was called The Torah: A Modern Commentary by Gunther Plaut. It had the thin, delicate paper I would later come to associate with holy books, but until that moment I don't think I had ever read the Bible. Intrigued, I began attending a Torah Study class for adults on Saturday mornings before services.

By the time I graduated high school the rabbis of our synagogue would ask me to lead the class when they were on vacation. I never stopped going to a Saturday morning Torah Study class, moving from Gunther Plaut's masterpiece to Rashi's commentary in Hebrew. I was introduced to a collection called Itturei Torah in rabbinical school but the Hebrew was too hard. It is an anthology of Hasidic thoughts on the weekly Torah portion. When other students shared their translations I understood the anthology was a precious gem shining through the Torah text, revealing God and the human soul. I kept at the Hebrew and Aramaic long after ordination. Once these languages were my own and not foreign I could go back to the sources of Jewish wisdom. Not just anthologies of great ideas, but the writings of the Masters themselves. It took me twenty-three years to complete the rabbinic education I was supposed to have covered in five.

Slow and Steady. There is no race.

Teaching is no longer in my skill set nor can I learn new material.  I returned to Torah Study anyway, recently, I think. I have found a ride to synagogue with a fellow traveller. Since I do not feel the passing of time it is all I can do to get to the class. I do not know what Torah portion we will be talking about when I get there. Even if I look it up, the information flies out of my head moments after I check the calendar.

I listen to the passage the rabbi has selected for study that Shabbat morning. I do remember what I learned before the Brainstorm. I can see entire passages in my mind's eye. Mostly I have a visceral response to the narrative or to the responses of others in the class. We talk, argue, agree, disagree, all for the sake of Heaven.

The last time I went to Torah Study I made some notes. We were talking about Moses and Miriam's song at the sea and how singing and knowing God are one. I wrote to myself, "The man across the table would like God to sit beside him in study." I wrote this down because the man was not a singer, or so he said, and he wanted to meet God in sacred study.

I remember none of this -- not the conversation about singing nor the man and his wish to know God -- but something has been with me since the class. Not so much a memory, but a shadow, playing hide and seek in the space where short-term memory once lived.

In the hum of learning, there is a moment when I can hear God pull up a chair and sit down at the table. At that moment the melody of learning-out-loud is overcome by silent attention. "My soul in silence waits for You," sang the Psalmist.

The Holy One of Blessing is always at the table, waiting for us to wait for God. In silence.

This Chair is Just Right

When I was a rabbinical student each of us had a student pulpit, a congregation at which we learned a lot and taught a little. I was a student intern at Central Synagogue in New York City for three of my five years of seminary. It is a majestic building, defying description. You must go see it. At the time it was not a building easily accessible to the disabled. Now it is so accessible, I worshipped there tonight from my bedroom here in Maine. The service is still going on. I was able to participate and focus for close to half an hour. My head started pounding and I am turning to you before I close the computer and my eyes.

They stream the services at Central Synagogue live so people like me can participate by computer. It is too far for me to drive the fifteen or so miles to the synagogue I used to serve here in Maine, especially at night. And I still cannot sit through an entire worship service.

As I sang along with the rabbi and cantor whom I do not know, I noticed that the needlework on the chairs that grace the pulpit has changed since I was a student rabbi. The chairs figured heavily in my time at Central because they carried with them a strange irony. The needlepoint had been done by the ladies of the sisterhood but I did not fit in the chair. It was too big. When I sat in those chairs my feet did not touch the ground. The chairs, painstakingly crafted by women, were built for men.

The chairs I saw on the pulpit tonight were the same shape as the old ones but they did not seem as big and the needlepoint was definitely gone. Central Synagogue was devastated by fire some years ago and craftspeople of extraordinary skill were assembled to rebuild this landmark of religious life in America. I wonder if they replaced the chairs entirely or just the needlepoint? All I know is the chairs looked like anyone could fit in them. I don't know if it was the furniture itself or the spirit of inclusiveness that caused the chairs to fit the people instead of expecting the people to fit in the chairs.

Any person, fully abled, disabled, Jewishly committed, disaffected, religiously curious or in need of a ride could be carried away in songs of praise to God. Tonight I was not left, legs hanging, trying desperately to get comfortable. The floor rose up to support me. It was just right.

Oops I Did It Again

The voice on the answering machine had that tremulous worry sound. My friend Hillel had his grave concern voice on, like I broke curfew but before I got grounded he wanted to make sure I wasn't dead or hurt or both. I haven't blogged since December 24, 2012. That is long enough for me to have forgotten I have a blog which is exactly what happened. Again.

To Hillel and all my other friends who read this for the sole purpose of making sure I am alive and still living in Maine, fear not. My kids get hungry. If anything serious happened to me they would alert someone as soon as we ran out of groceries. But I do appreciate the reminder.

Every person and thing in my life, except for this blog, has an alarm on my iPhone. I eat, go to bed, cheer at baseball games and buy sneakers in the next size up because an alarm goes off telling me where to go and what to do when I get there. Then another alarm goes off to remind me that the alarm went off.

But not writing. I don't write on a schedule. I wait for the muse or at least a subject about which to write. Serious writers don't wait. They write every day. Writing is a day-job. I can't take a day-job or a night-job or any job that requires doing something specific at a particular time or place. Unless someone will pay me to stare into space for an indeterminate period of time until I lay down and close my eyes.

Then there is the reality that I do not write every day because I am not a writer.

I may have to become a writer. Can I become a bad writer? Worse, can I aspire to be a mediocre writer so I don't forget the blog? There are people who aren't really writers who become writers anyway. Some even sell books I had to read in high school though the writer was long dead and the books weren't important enough to be considered full-on dreadful. I'm talking about books that were excruciatingly middling to fair.

If a writer writes in the forest and nobody reads it, or someone reads it but doesn't enjoy it, is she still a writer?

So Hillel, thanks for calling and reminding me to write.

Am I grounded?

I Love You More

That is what my daughter says when I tell her I love her. I love her so much, I've stopped arguing and let her win. I sobbed when I saw that a little boy who was murdered in Newtown, Connecticut would say something similar to his mother when she told him she loved him. He was in Kindergarten, I think. My daughter is in 5th grade. To have formulated that idea at such a young age -- he must have been a deeply sensitive child and way ahead of schedule in his emotional development. I don't know how to do the math of multiplying his singular death by twenty-seven. There is no exponent large enough.

We moved into this house shortly after returning from a sabbatical in Jerusalem. It is an ordinary house with an unusual feature. In its unfinished basement, there is the beginning of a tiny room with a low ceiling, concrete floor and walls and a metal bulkhead door. When my son saw it for the first time he exclaimed in the Hingish he spoke upon our return from Israel, "Mommy, its a Mik-lat!"

"Mik-lat," is the Hebrew word for "Bomb-shelter."

My son thought we had a bomb shelter in our new home.

Every school in Israel has a bomb shelter including the public school my son attended. When it wasn't being used to escape incoming, it doubled as a classroom. Baruch HaShem, Thank God, it was only used as a classroom in my child's memory. The school was guarded by a soldier with a machine gun. So is every restaurant, shopping mall and synagogue in Israel. They have good reason to secure soccer fields and elementary schools with armed guards. Israel is plagued by terrorists and neighboring enemy states who want to topple the country and kill its inhabitants. I understood this at a soul level long before I had children. At seventeen I learned about war. I was working on an archaeological dig in Northern Israel for a summer. Just a short hitch-hike away, Kiryat Shimona was bombed. That was the beginning of the first Lebanon war.

Years later I went to Jordan, shortly after the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan had been signed. I bought a map in Amman.  There was no country called "Israel" on the map. When one's neighbors believe you have no right to exist, that is the appropriate time to consider bomb-shelters and security guards.

So when I heard that the National Rifle Association was suggesting armed guards in our schools I wondered if we too are a country threatened with annihilation, not by other countries, but by American civilians with easy access to weapons of mass destruction. Isn't that what an automatic weapon is? Aren't they designed for mass casualties in war? In the great State of Maine, people hunt for food. They don't machine gun the deer.

There is a sign near my home that says "Hunting with Shotgun Only." The sign used to make me laugh picturing guys in camouflage and orange with handguns yelling at the deer to hand over their wallets. I'm not laughing anymore. The deer are not the only ones being hunted.

Civilians in this country are armed to the teeth and it is time for that to end. Assault rifles are for armies. Handguns are for police officers. Schools, in a country at peace, shouldn't need armed guards.

If we love our children more.

"To Leap Up and Away"

Every Friday night I attempt to put my hands on my non-compliant son's head and recite the blessing for a boy, "May God make you like Ephriam and Menashe." Menashe and Ephraim were Joseph's sons with his Egyptian wife Potiphera. Coincidentally on the third annivesary of the Brainstorm, 12/13/12, Jews around the world who can read, were reading the story in Genesis about the birth and naming of Joseph's sons.

I say coincidentally because if I remember correctly Joseph named his first son Menashe because starting a family in Egypt caused him to forget his home and the family in Israel. He had a special amnesia for his brothers who threw him in a pit and tore his life to pieces when they tore his coat to pieces, dipped it in the blood of a goat and showed it to their father. The name "Menashe" literally means, "To Leap up and away," but figuratively it means, "To cause to forget." Who wouldn't want to forget the cold darkness of the pit into which Joseph was thrown by his own family?

Three years ago I didn't exactly leap but I definitely went up and away and it sure did cause me to forget. I forgot two years. Truly, the first two years after I hit my head are gone forever. Menashe's name intimates the oblivion of forgetfulness. Like Joseph living in Egypt I don't always recognize my new life but I am not clear about what my old life looked like either.

But there is also mercy in forgetting. Without the nagging past or the memory that something always comes after the present, there is only now. Today's insensitivities or outright insults are not tomorrow's memories. They are simply and mercifully forgotten.

If one takes the Hebrew letters of MeNaSHe's name and switches the order it spells, "NeSHaMa." There are no vowels in the Bible, just consonants. NeShaMa means, "soul," or "breath." When I first forgot, doctors told me to breathe. Breathe and meditate, that was every doctor's prescription.

There are places in my soul, places of mercy I would never have explored without taking, not a leap, but a fall, that caused me to forget. Perhaps someday all that MeNaSHe, all that forgetting, will be pure NeSHaMa, pure, kind, merciful soul.

Anniversary Day 12.13.09

Anniversary week is still hard. My original plan was to engage in vigorous rehabilitation for two years and then get back into the rabbinate.

This is my third anniversary.

I'm late.

I don't like being late and I don't like when others are late. I think it is disrespectful. I used to tell couples getting married, "I'll be starting your wedding at 1:00 PM. I hope to see you there."

Mostly I have been mourning my tardiness but yesterday someone suggested a new plan. I hadn't thought of trying a new plan. It seemed so much more practical and authentically "me" to rigidly adhere to a plan that was not working.

So this is the new goal. Over the next year I am going to see if I can plan a scholar-in-residence weekend about Judaism and the disabled that I could bring to your shul. That way, if I do not succeed, I only have to be sad about the loss of a weekend, not a whole career.

And if I succeed, may it be God's will, I get to see you! With any luck, in Mauritius.

The Watchword of Our Faith

My daughter has a new friend. Her father is an Episcopal priest and her mother is an artist. They live with their three children in the church parsonage. He leads a congregation the way I once did, although we never lived on the property of the synagogue, even if my kids sometimes thought we did. Our children have much in common. We do not know each other well yet but there is the shared experience of living the religious life in public and out loud. Being with this family reminded me of why I became a rabbi and why I miss the work so terribly.

So picture this: My kids are helping to decorate the other family's Christmas tree and the priest is dusting off his seminary Hebrew with the words, "Shema Yisrael..." Of all the Hebrew phrases he could have picked... When I was a child the Shema Yisrael, the declaration of God's unity was called, "The watchword of our faith."

My own childhood rabbi did not recite, he declaimed. He had majesty. Who has majesty these days? "We now rise to proclaim the watchword of our faith," he would say, week in and week out in his sonorous baritone. We stood at attention and recited first, "Shema Yisrael...," then the English, "Hear O Israel the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. Blessed is God's glorious kingdom forever and ever." The the choir would sing it yet a third time in case we missed the point.

Back to the tree and my kids and the Hebrew-literate priest.

I have never been comfortable with Christmas. The thrust of this holiday upon those of us who are not Christian by well meaning people is an intrusion. The shopping frenzy seems so out of touch with the Jesus I have read about. The celebration of the birth of the Christian Savior seems obscured by rampant consumerism that leads to debt, of which Jesus, if I have the story right, was not a fan.

"They bless their food before they eat too!" my daughter exclaimed with an enthusiasm kids her age usually reserve for shiny things you might find under a Christmas tree, not for the people whose tree it was and their prayer before a meal. It was as if she had discovered hidden treasure.

I think we all did.

Eulogy for A Man I Never Met

Our little town got smaller on Thanksgiving day. A greater teacher, a teacher of the year in the State of Maine, a forty year old husband and father died while out for a run on Thanksgiving and our town is much, much smaller now.

I did not know him.

Last night a parent told me she didn't know how to explain to her child why she should eat healthy food, if healthy-eating, Thanksgiving-running young people die.

When my mother died of cancer at the age of forty-five the first question out of every grown-up's mouth was, "Did she smoke?" They took comfort in the fact that she did smoke, heavily, as if that fact led to inevitable consequences and that they were safe, as long as they didn't smoke.

Life is not safe. People die because they smoke and some people live to be a hundred despite a life-time of bad habits. Some people have a genetic death sentence but some people just die. A woman dies in an accident that was nobody's fault. A man dies on a bridge coming home from work when the earthquake hit. A young man is lying in bed next to his brand new wife, so new he is still getting used to the word, "wife." He asks her to pass the highlighter because they are studying for exams. She had a silent aneurysm. She is gone.

When my son was in pre-school he asked for something he couldn't have and protested that it wasn't fair. I said compassionately that life was not fair. The other parents looked betrayed. How could I tell such a small child that life wasn't fair? I was scaring him. He would have bad dreams, they protested. When should he find out? When he can't have some silly thing he wants or when a teacher, younger and healthier than me, dies on Thanksgiving?

It is not the bad dreams of our children that frighten adults so much as our own. We are not in charge. We can have an impact on the world, but we are not in control.

We are not in control.

My town is smaller. Much smaller because a great soul I never met, died. There is nothing I can say. I can hold the people I know who are suffering in my arms and hold those I do not know in my heart. I can be present and not look away. I can take my children to the Memorial service and cry for someone we never met but whose impact was felt by so many.

It says in the Talmud, "Do not comfort the mourners while their dead lies before them." There are no words. No platitudes that will give this family comfort in their tragic loss. All we can do is be there, unflinching, present and aware. All we can do is leave off from the question of "Why?" and move on to the question of "How?" How will our town help this family through their pain, which will not subside on any timetable? How will we help the survivors survive? How will we be sure to show up for them six weeks from now and two years from now and when the youngest child graduates from high school?  All we can do is remember that future Thanksgivings will be the hardest day of the year for this family.

Life is not fair. All we can do is be there anyway.

Please Go to Israel Because I Can't

I did not know my sabbatical in 2008 was going to be my last trip to Israel. At least it was 6 months long. I started going to israel twice a year during the second Intifada. I was in the middle of giving a high holiday sermon about supporting Israel and I was boring myself. At that moment I decided I would never give a sermon about Israel again. I would just go there and take people with me.

A like minded angel made the trip so affordable, the bargain outweighed any fear people might have had about terrorism. Thank you to that angel. It only took one trip. The Intifada ended. More trips to Israel came and went, I started studying in Jerusalem during the summer and finally the sabbatical with my family. I did need to go home to do my job, get divorced and fall on the pavement ending the job or any job and making travel extremely difficult physically and impossible financially.

If I had to be brain damaged it would have been nice if we could have mixed up the order, like say, get divorced, go on sabbatical with the kids in Israel, fall on the pavement and have to stay in Jerusalem for the rest of my life.

I can't go to Israel. When I say "can't" I don't mean it is inconvenient or a financial stretch. I don't mean I would rather save the money for a time when I could see all of the country, not just the parts that aren't under attack. I mean I really cannot go.

If you are able to go to Israel, would you please go for me?

The last time Israel had a big problem Americans who were liberal minded stayed away. Travel to Israel remained steady during the Second Intifada among Orthodox Jews and Fundamentalist Christians but dropped precipitously among religious liberals.  Let us pray this is not a conflict with a name and Israel can soon worry about more important things like the crumbling schools or fixing the political system. In the meantime it would mean a great deal to me ,and I am guessing to the Israelis, if a whole lot of people from abroad showed up just to say hi during this difficult time.

I can't be one of them. Can you go in my place?

Acceptance Looks Like New Plates

I wish I meant dishes but I mean license plates with the little guy in the wheel-chair symbol. I am not in a wheel-chair. Neither are many other disabled people. There is a certain quality of degradation in the idea that every disability can be summed up in one universal symbol.

Before the plates I had something I was supposed to hang on my rear-view mirror that indicated I was disabled. I was only going to use it in icy weather because, let's face it, I'm one more head injury away from a starring role on the TV show Veggie Tales. I can't afford to fall. But once I returned to driving short distances I found I needed the plates for two other reasons.

I cannot remember where I parked my car.

I cannot remember to hang the sign on my rear view mirror.

Acceptance sounds like voice-enabled websites. Recently I have been listening to E-Daf, a voice-enabled website that contains the whole Talmud. My Orthodox coreligionists are ahead of the curve when it comes to using technology to deliver Torah to those who cannot access it by traditional means. There is no universal sign for the barriers to Jewish learning. The voice on the E-Daf is nothing like Alex, my smooth-talking MAC. Instead of the mellifluous patois of Alex created by the disabled-friendly people at Apple, the voice-enabled Talmud on E-Daf and Rashi's commentary on the Chabad website sound like a couple of Yeshivah guys from Brooklyn.

Finally, acceptance looks like my ski-pole, modified by the good people at LL Bean to serve as a walking stick, which is a euphemism for a cane. Now that the temperature has dropped hidden patches of black ice threaten in the silence of winter cold. The fellows in the camping department at Bean's told me that they sell a fair number of ski poles and the thingy's that turn ski-poles into canes for the "I'm too fit to use a cane," set. Baby boomers who don't feel old and don't want to look old have been snapping them up.

I'm young. Or at least, youngish. I may be in the second half of life but not the last quarter.

Acceptance is unpleasant and a relief at the same time.

I wish it just meant I could get new plates. Some handmade pottery perhaps. That is what my neighbors have and it is gorgeous, cozy-looking stuff. Acceptance is not cozy. It can be a whole lot more comfortable. I mean on the days I accept the acceptance.

How It Feels

6:00 AM: Wake up with searing head pain. Hate pain.

6:02 AM Wake kids. Shower, dress, eat, have coffee.

7:00 AM Kids fed, dressed, lunches made, homework in backpacks and on the bus.

7:05 AM Hate pain more.

7:06 AM Return emails, answer phone calls and write blog post.

10:32 AM Extreme pain and nausea. Have to keep eyes closed.

TBI, aka, The Brainstorm. That is how it feels.

10:38 AM Hit "Publish."

Celebrating Gay, Happy Weddings!

When I was ordained as a rabbi in 1992, I was unmarried. Completely single. I had tremendous focus and did not want any man distracting me from completing my studies, choosing and being chosen for the right first job.

I was an idiot. For my unmarried readers who wish to be married, you can always change careers. Put twice as much effort into finding the right spouse as you put into your most precious pursuit, whether that is a job, skiing or accessorizing and you should be ok.

The first openly gay student was and remains, a superstar. More talent, compassion and maturity than my whole class put together. If they had kicked him out of school there could only have been one reason, that he was gay, because he was an exemplar. If he had applied to rabbinical school as an openly gay man he would not have been accepted at the time. He came out when he was almost finished with his education. It was a bold, strategic moved of self-sacrifice for the greater good.

The did not ask him to leave. He had a hard time getting jobs worthy of his talents. I don't know how many years later my seminary started accepting openly gay students but now they do. They also no longer limit the number of women in a class to make sure each class has a majority of men.

We've come a long way baby.

When I interviewed for that precious first job I was told, quietly and discreetly by a faculty member, to make it clear that I was single, not a lesbian. I played along and it made me sick. I remember during interviews telling a search committee that I didn't attend Bar and Bat Mitzvah receptions. I had been to one extravaganza too many before I was ordained. Everyone joked around that I would be more likely to find a husband if I went to the parties. They meant well. They only wanted good things for me. Inside I felt I was betraying every rabbi I did not know was gay or lesbian because he or she was afraid to come out of the closet.

Remember, the separation between Church and State that is the bedrock of this country? The down side that comes with its profound upsides is that religious institutions are free to openly discriminate on the basis of anything: gender, color, religious ideas, disability, sexual orientation, a bad hair day or height.

My second year on the job on Yom Kippur I came out as a straight rabbi who did both straight and gay weddings. The next morning someone had spray painted on the building, "THE RABBI IS A DYKE."

This was San Francisco in 1993. Not Kansas in 2012.

I was married in that building. It was a terrible marriage but a beautiful wedding.

And I have lived to see the day when marriage, in this great State of Maine is a right, or in cases like mine, a partial disaster, afforded all human beings. I say partial because without the marriage I would not have the children I have. I delight in the two most loved, adored, precious angels in the world.

Besides yours.

I wouldn't mind officiating at one last wedding. I would love to see one of the couples I married in the eyes of God and more importantly, their parents and grandparents, become a married couple in the eyes of the state.

That is not going to happen. I cannot sit through a wedding let alone perform one.

I no longer perform weddings because I might zone out in the middle of the ceremony, forget the names of the bride and groom or lay down under the Chuppah to close my eyes for just a few minutes. The last wedding I did was after the brainstorm. It was a perfect last wedding for me to do because the bride and groom had no interest in perfection. They just wanted to be married to each other. I was afraid I would forget the names of these beautiful individuals under the Chuppah.

I do not remember the ceremony.  All I remember is the couple and their families accepting me as I am now. They knew how I felt about their union even if my memory didn't work. They were not embarrassed that the connection between my thoughts and my words was broken. They didn't even mind that i couldn't really read the ceremony. I signed the license. All the rest was commentary.

There are, God willing, a few weddings in my future to attend. Those of my kids, my nephews and wierder things have happened -- maybe my own? That is if Mr. Right is passing through Southern Maine and doesn't mind if we skip a reception and just take a nap.

Whomever the next generation in my family loves, they are free to marry legally in my backyard.

Thank you to everyone who voted "yes" for marriage equality in Maine. That makes nine states. Nine down. Forty one states to go.

The Talent Pool

My daughter plays boy's baseball because there is no girls baseball and really, when kids are ten, it doesn't matter if they are boys or girls. All that matters is that they have reasonably good eye-hand coordination and most of all, a love of the game.

This winter she is playing in an indoor league with boys (and her) from all over southern Maine. In our town she is old news. At today's game Hannah got to pitch. She struck out a boy and a mother exclaimed, "That poor girl!" Did I miss something? She struck the kid out. I'm not much into sports but I thought that was what the pitcher was supposed to do.

The moms became like a Greek chorus expressing grief when my little girl played the game like any other kid her age.

Except one mom who hooted and hollered and cheered whenever Hannah touched the ball. Her son was on the other team. She explained she was the youngest of nine children. They were a baseball team. And a football team and every other team imaginable. But when she left the confines of the family playing field there was no place for her as a child.

What a waste of 50% of the world population. Both my children heard the Greek chorus and the lone mom who wished she had been allowed to play with the boys. They made the leap from ten year olds playing baseball straight to the White House. They could feel the potential ripple effect if two or three or a hundred dutiful daughters sitting in the stands picked up a ball instead of watching from the sidelines. If these girls could see themselves playing baseball, maybe they could see themselves as the leader of the free world?

With rare exceptions, no ten year old is all that talented. Some practice more or less. Some grow faster than others. But with the exception of the random prodigy, real talent will only emerge when they are much, much older. They love what they are doing or they are bored and would rather be playing chess or the clarinet or reading a good book or hanging by their knees from a tree branch or the parallel bars.

The push to specialize little kids, to wish them into millions of Midori's, when, in fact, a Midori or a Joshua Bell, is so very rare that Michael Jordan himself didn't make his high school varsity basketball team in his sophomore year because he was too short at 5'11". A year later he was four inches taller.

We are shrinking the talent pool in America when we leave out half the population as well as every kid who doesn't have a growth spurt before the age of twelve or a private coach from the moment  s/he can walk.  And what is worse, in our insane push for children to be prodigies instead of being children, we take the "play" out of "playing" music and sports or playing on the math team, the debate team or in the art room.

The only way to grow the talent pool in this country is to let everyone dive in, splash around, learn how to swim and have under-water tea parties. Every boy is, of course, invited to the tea party even if he does not yet show great promise for the baking of scones. He is just a kid. Give him time.

If I Were To...

I've been listening in on my daughter's Torah lessons again. Her teacher explained, in an age-appropriate manner, to the extent that is possible, the story of the attempted sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham.  My brain flashed on a page of Talmud as I listened. Tractate Sanhedrin, page 89b. The Talmud contains a back-story to the sacrifice of Isaac; a prequel to the biblical narrative.

This Prosecuting Angel says to God, "Look at the feast Abraham prepared to celebrate the birth of his son! Food, food, food. Abraham throws party after party. But what does Abraham offer You after giving him a child at the age of 100? Nothing. Not a bullock. Not a ram. Not cookies and milk. Nada."

That is a loose translation.

The Rabbis of the Talmud were basically a bunch of lawyers creating the Halacha -- the Jewish legal system so to them every existential drama looked like a holy courtroom. The inner life of a person was played out with judge, jury, prosecution and defense.

Then God utters the fateful words.

"If I were to ask Abraham to offer me his son..." The rest of the sentence doesn't matter.

If I were to...

Do we really want the answers to the "ifs?"

I drove myself crazy trying to read the actual page of Talmud, not just the copy imprinted on my brain in that lovely spot where long-term memory resides. I can see the words in my head. But I took out the book and couldn't read the words on the page.

If?

If I can't read the words and it turns out that I remember them incorrectly, am I now uneducated? If there are actions, tasks, behaviors that my brain no longer has under control am I still me?

If I fall and become inconvenient, embarrassing, burdensome or just plain weird will you treat me with humanity?

What if you fall, or have a big, time consuming heart attack, or cancer, God-forbid, that you survive after fighting it for two years. A heart attack that makes everyone else's work load more onerous -- will your co-workers pull for you? Will the person with whom you share your life still love you? Will you lose more than you knew you had?

If?

It is a question that asks itself when life gets messy. In the imagination of the Talmudic rabbis, the prosecution prosecutes and God goes on the defensive and defensive words, actions, narrative lead us places neither God nor we ever wanted to go.

So I avoid if's. I refrain from hypotheticals. I do not test those I love or those I like or even those to whom I smile and say hello at the market. It is hard enough to hear or witness the answer to "if" when tragedy strikes. Why create tragedy?

But when "If?" does show up, tragedy is not always the result. Sometimes chemo becomes a two year game of scrabble punctuated by illness, medical bills and unwavering love. Sometimes the diffident neighbors surprise us with a haven in the hurricane and strangers look each other in the eyes and lending a hand as the basement floods. Stories of unexpected goodness pile up like the gifts at Abraham's banquets in celebration of the child of his old age.

Whether we like it or not, sooner or later we will learn the answer to the question "If?"

There is no rush to inquire. It is a question that gets asked and answered every day without a single utterance.

The Presence of Absence

Jews read the five books of Moses, what we call The Torah, on an annual cycle and having been doing so for millennia. Those same five books, year after year, from start to finish to start. I can no longer feel the cycle of Torah reading but as my children get older, the time that ceased to flow when the Brainstorm struck, now flows through them. My daughter reminded me what Jews around the world are reading this week. I remembered that we are introduced to the characters who would catapult us through history. We meet the ancestors who transformed us from wandering Mesopotamians to wandering Jews.

Most of them -- Abram, His father Terach, his brothers Haran and his son Lot and Abram's other brother, Nahor -- they are defined by their relationship to their father. Abram, Haran and Nahor are the son of Terach. Lot is the son of Haran. Even Nahor's wife is defined by the names of her father and mother. Her father was her uncle, Haran.

Ewww.

We even know the name of her mother, Isca.

There is no mention of the parents of Sarai, Abram's wife. She is defined by what she does not have. "Sarai was barren. She had no children." Sarai's identity is wrapped up in what she is not; in what she cannot produce. Her very nature from the beginning of the story is absence.

I know the story well enough to tell you Sarai is what she lacks. But how long will I remember the details? If I cannot progress in my learning how much will I forget? How much have I already forgotten? i can't check my sources and don't even know if I am making mistakes right now.

And yet, I am fortunate. I read my Torah early and often, staving off the time when I too come to be defined by what I lack.

Sarai eventually becomes Sarah, just as Abram becomes Abraham. They each have the sacred letter "Hey" added to their name. This letter is the Hebrew abbreviation of the name of God which sounds like a breathe of air, with which, the Psalmist tells us, the whole earth sings.

As my daughter's learning continues to grow and flow I hear the breath of the universe and refuse to define Sarai or myself by the mere presence of absence.

Buddhist Movie Night

Somewhere in a file downstairs is an article I cut out of "Yoga Journal" during my Los Angeles period. I lived in LA between 1996-2000 so it shouldn't be too hard to find it in the YJ archives. Or you could just go down to my basement and look through twenty years of rabbinic news clippings and sermon ideas.

The article was about "Spiritual Promiscuity." The author wrote about how she went from one religious high to another at a multiplicity of houses of worship where that particular religious tradition was being lived and learned with such vigor and intensity even a non-believer would be carried away by the sacred rites and rituals of someone else's faith.

Sort of like sleeping with the neighbor's beautiful wife.

That was the point of the article, or at least, that is what I took away from it.

I'm going to Buddhist Movie Night tonight. My twelve year old wants to come with me but I got a sitter.

I dare say it would be a safe bet that I have studied more of the foundational sacred texts of the various forms of Buddhism, than the average Jew in America with a Master's level education or higher, has studied of the Hebrew Bible alone. In fact I think I would be on firm ground to guess I could narrow that field to sacred Jewish texts written between the eighth and sixth centuries,  BCE. I choose that time because it was the height of good writing about Israelite fidelity and infidelity to YHVH, the one God who is passionately in love with us.

This statement is not a tribute to my knowledge of Buddhist sources. That knowledge is minimal. It is rather an acknowledgement of the unfortunate illiteracy among Jews of our own classics.

The God described in the Hebrew Bible between the eighth and sixth centuries BCE has only two requests: "Don't cheat other people or hurt them. If possible, don't cheat Me." That God is flexible about spiritual promiscuity. Totally inflexible about hurting humans, animals and the planet. YHVH gets especially upset when we humans use God's material, whether it is the land on which we live, or that amazing Bible of ours, in the service of cruelty or worse, indifference. I say worse because humans usually do notice cruelty and eventually do something to stop it, but indifference -- passively letting others languish and suffer -- that goes on under the radar.

The movie tonight, at Buddhist Movie Night, is called "Crazy Wisdom," a documentary about the controversial Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa. He first introduced me to the notion of collecting religious experience, the way some people collect baseball cards or Italian Renaissance art, in his book Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism. I was a working rabbi when I read it.

I was so innocent. It never occurred to me before reading Trungpa's book, that for some folks going to synagogue, even classes on difficult, esoteric texts, that required high levels of commitment, was their third glass of red wine before dinner or their marijuana after it.

It would be honest to say I have had a long, but not deep, on and off affair with the traditions of the Far East. It started the summer we moved to New York City. I didn't know anyone, high school hadn't started yet, my father was busy caring for my dying mother and my brother had left for college. I wandered into what was then called a health food store on 68th between Columbus and Central Park West. Remember the smell of those places? I met the owner who was teaching Yoga in what we would come to call a Yoga studio in the back of the store. He learned Yoga in prison. If I cleaned up the place, he would give me all the free Yoga instruction I wanted. This was Yoga in its fullest form, not merely exercise or even what would become a way to stimulate a traumatically injured brain. This was a religion.

The man and his teaching helped ease so much movement: of my mother's soul from this world to the next; of me from suburban boredom to the never-ending stimulus of city living; from one synagogue community in which my mother had been the glue that tied so many people together to another in which I had to find my own place without her. When I settled into Jewish life in New York, I quit working at the health food store. I had school, synagogue youth group and Broadway musicals to audition for.

I played with Eastern sacred fire again in college freshman year and learned the true power of Buddhist chant. I literally ran away from that chant circle knowing what I experienced was real and that I felt terrible. As I got older I would recognize that terrible feeling as the guilt that comes from betraying a beloved or in my case a Beloved.

My religious life has become a global embrace. Rabbis and other scholars of Jewish wisdom call and write to feed me a few words of Torah on which I can live for months at a time. But on a local, day-to day level for me and my children bandaids have replaced what I thought were unshakable bonds. Some of that is my inability to get out, be in crowds or focus. A remarkable, few, extraordinary, local people from a myriad of religious traditions, including my own or none at all have remained in my life.

The traditions of the East that I know to be sacred ones and not my own, have become complimentary medicine. The emergency room doctors and then later, a whole host of coincidentally Jewish specialists who hoped for the revitalization of my brain matter wrote on their prescription pads,  "Buddhist mindfulness meditation."

I find myself -- no I lose myself -- in religious confusion.

So I'm going to Buddhist Movie Night.

Do you think there will be popcorn and soda?

Post Script: There was beer, Japanese snacks and tea. It is 12:34 AM and I am still up, rattled by the late Chogyam Trungpa.  Crazy Wisdom is a little too crazy for me. No religious confusion about that.

For the Students of Our Students

Today a former student came by to have a catch with my kids. He was home for a short break from his senior year in college and came back to Maine to hug his parents, study for mid-terms, throw a football around with my kids, whom he has not seen since they were small and compliant, and mull over the meaning of life.

Happens all the time.

I gave him a reading list. He gave me hope. My reading list was full of poetry. So was his hope.

After three years of believing he was headed for Wall Street he is going to become a teacher. He always was a teacher, even when he was a little kid in religious school himself. Even when he became Bar Mitzvah. I was sure he would become a rabbi. It looks like he has the bug for middle school. Seventh grade. My favorite year.

Poetry is when an author says the most with the least. I wish I could write the stuff. Beauty, meaning and nothing extraneous. The delicate economy of letters and words.

My former student threw the ball to my kids and they understood this young man was going to make a difference. They caught the ball or dropped it and figured out that they should too.

The delicate economy of words and letters soaring through the air in a perfect spiral. My children have become the students of my students.

Door Removal

I look to Judaism to create doors where there are none. I turn to my brain injury to remove doors I can no longer bear to see because they are locked from the inside. Relations between human beings, friendships, family, acquaintanceship, love of every kind, even neighborliness are just awkward when you are like me.

Being a friend or neighbor is not something I do well anymore. But I have a fool-proof door removal system. My iPhone is my compass. It's bells and whistles remind me where to be, reminds me that the uncomfortable feeling is hunger and that I should eat or that I need to nap if I want to be of any use to my children.

It also tells me who is in my life. I review my "Contacts" every day to remember friends, family, doctors, teachers and the almighty plumber and electrician, may God bless them and keep them. When I remove someone from my contacts I cannot contact them. That is why they are called "Contacts." If they do not contact me, after time passes I forget the person ever existed.

My son and I went to the market on a Sunday, something I studiously avoid. But we needed an extra-special a birthday cake for someone who will never be removed from my contacts. While we we there we ran into all kinds of people who acted as though they once knew me. We exchanged greetings if I felt something. It was a like vapor or a ghost; a remnant of feeling, either positive or not. If the feeling wasn't unpleasant I assume this person had once been an acquaintance I liked or respected. Shards of memories revealed themselves. but that was all.

When life offered two doors, neither of which was acceptable, Judaism and its communal learning and living, revealed a third door where there was none before.  But the door to Jewish living or at least living with Jews, seems to be locked from the inside. If I were to remove them from my contacts, as time passed, there would be no door to lock.

Locked doors or no doors?

I need a third door.

"Reality Takes Care of Itself"

"...Go eat your bread in simplicity, appreciation and joy.
Drink your wine with a heart unburdened by yesterday and
tomorrow.
Reality takes care of itself.
You are simply its means; leave the end to God."
Ecclesiastes 9:7-9
Translation, Rabbi Rami Shapiro

My family's worst fear has been threatened. Not their only fear, but the one that matters most. So I might as well blog. I can't drink wine. I was never really a drinker to begin with. I prefer my calories in dessert form and brain injury and alcohol don't mix well anyway.

I was surprised at the number of emails from total strangers who rely on this blog. Not all 21,776 readers, but enough that I couldn't make it through all of your mail. My reading skills are limited and one can only listen to so much email. I expected the Mom's taking care of adult children with brain trauma. I expected my fellow members of the disability community. I expected veterans who have had a headache since Iraq I. I expected my dad. I didn't expect lawyers who do not represent me, insurance company executives who do not carry my policies and those people in Mauritius and the Ukraine -- big fan base in the Ukraine -- who read the blog with the same anticipation I once saved for the Sunday New York Times.

To all of you who wrote, I am honored, touched and happy our virtual paths crossed.

Two fears motivated my retreat: First was the fear that some will think me too intelligent to be brain damaged. The second was the fear that drawing attention to my injury might call into question my ability to fulfill my responsibilities. How does one walk a path with the fear of being perceived as both too skilled and too unskilled? Either with neurosis or fearlessness.

I'm going with fearlessness. I even have a necklace I wear everyday that says just that in Sanskrit: Fearlessness.

Rebbe Nachman sang, "The whole world is a very narrow bridge. The main thing is not to be afraid."

Reality will take care of itself.


*For further reading or listening:
Ecclesiastes: Annotated & Explained, Skylight Illuminations, by Rami Shapiro, November 2010, text to speech enabled.

Talking Without Understanding

This blog is a sweet respite from the lonely world of brain injury but my blog is a risky proposition. The sad fact is that if one displays some remnant of intellect and has all of one's limbs most people cannot grasp what it means to be brain injured. When someone who is supposed to know me well begins a sentence with the words, "Did you read..." I want to cry.

No, I do not want to cry. I want to read. Desperately. Voraciously.

One friend, a giant of a rabbi who is another member of the Brain Injured Rabbinic Caucus, uses a cane to give other disabled folks the "secret handshake" and to help fully-abled people understand that all is not right with this rabbi.

I tried it. The "secret handshake" part worked. But mostly it made me feel old.

On the other extreme, when I am detailed about my limitations, my rights as a disabled person and the small pleasures those rights afford me I risk the possible loss of those rights.

My hope is to raise awareness. My own awareness. I am now aware of the paradoxical nature of invisible injuries. The only way to live with a TBI is to live without words and a life without words is no life.

It means something when the institutions that radiate the most compassion and understanding regarding the subtle nature of this condition are the Department of Motor Vehicles, the United States Constitution and the Social Security Administration.

Job put it best, as the Hebrew Bible always does:

Indeed I talked without understanding

Of things beyond me, which I will never know.

Hear now and I will speak;

I will ask and You will inform me.

I listened to You with my ears,

But now I see You with my eyes;

Therefore I recant and I relent,

Being but dust and ashes.

My Favorite Year

It has always been seventh grade, 1977-ish for me, but seventh grade did not end until the Brainstorm. Once I started teaching religious school kids when I was an undergraduate I was consigned to eternal Junior High until morphed into Middle School until it ended with my head on the pavement.

Seventh grade was the year I discovered my own music, not just the music selected for me by my parents and music teachers. The Grateful Dead's "Terrapin Station," Billy Joel's "The Stranger" and Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours," were the soundtrack of seventh grade but it all excited me -- from Patti Smith to James Taylor, the Clash to Van Morrison. I discovered  Pete Townshend was so much more than The Who. And I found the music of Jewish prayer, the chant of the Torah, ancient melodies, joyous or haunting and contemporary takes on the same themes that came out of Jewish summer camp.

I'm excited because my own children are reaching that time of life. I am a little early but I want a front row seat. I walked the path of seventh grade for at least twenty years beside children moving through the most misunderstood of Jewish traditions, becoming a Bar or Bat Mitzvah.

You don't have one unless you are a cannibal and cannibalism is not kosher. You are one. A Bar or Bat Mitzvah is a person, not a ceremony. The day a Jewish child turns thirteen and one day the ancient rite de passage was for the father to recite the traditional Hebrew formula over his son in front of a quorum of ten men, the Hebrew phrase being, "Blessed be The One who has absolved me of my obligations to this one here." The word for "obligation" in Hebrew is a homonym also meaning "punishment."

A touching Kodak moment, right?

Formula said, boy becomes responsible for his own soul. He is a Bar Mitzvah, a son of the commandments, like every other Jewish man. The Mitzvot, the commandments he does or doesn't are no longer his father's responsibility nor does the parent need to endure the punishment of leading a child around by the nose, hoping s/he does not make any mistakes, because before the age of thirteen and one day, the obligations of the child are the responsibility of the parent.

So why did we take an ancient release from obligation and turn it into an extravaganza that harnesses adults to expectations that have nothing to do with letting a child figure things out for themselves? Why instead of celebrating freedom, responsibility and maturity do so many families attach to lavish, debt-fomenting parties and a return to old roles as children attempting to discern and fulfill their own aging parent's expectations?

Families would roil and seventh grade is my favorite year. Students are old enough to think critical, interesting thoughts but not too old to change direction. They just want someone to take them seriously. It is a time of life when the adults around the children with whom I studied, often became increasingly shrill, while their Wo/Men/Children shook their heads and retreated into eye rolls and silence.

Don't you just love that? At least one of my own little angels is entering that phase of life and I cherish every eye-roll.

The first meeting with Bar/Bat Mitzvah families was the best. Child and parents would come to my study. Child would read, in English, out loud, the first line of the Torah portion that would be their's to chant for the congregation. Thirteen year olds hate reading out loud. By word one, two or three the term "God" would inevitably come up. The Bible is quite dependable in that way. God never fails to arrive in the first sentence. Then came the question I have asked hundreds of students and their parents:

"God? Who is God?"

They didn't know there was going to be a quiz.

First they searched for the "right" answer if they were the pleasing type. More often they rolled up into that ball of silence and retreat. Not just the adults, I mean the kids too. And eventually the realization came that I was in no rush to get home and we were going to spend the next year or six months on the second or third word in the Torah portion and maybe we would get to the second sentence or maybe we wouldn't but no one was going to evade the question, least of all me. We were there to seek. I was in the seeking department -- VP of Seeking -- that was my title. We are all meant to handle our own finding. Self-appointed VP's of Other-People's-Finding are annoying at best, scary at worst.

There would be some tears, awkward silence, a few husbands and wives finding out for the first time how their spouse really felt about God. Some marveled and drew closer to each other. More than a few kids confronted how ill-prepared highly educated, thoughtful American parents of all religions or none, can be for questions of Eternity. Some found out for the first time a parent had not just thought deeply on matters of meaning but acted on them in their youth, trying out seminary or other religious traditions.

And somewhere in that emotional jumble it all came together, parents and children understood why we were together, what brought us together and peace blossomed, respect was born and love was shared freely. They would leave and I wished I could be a fly on the wall of the car ride home.

Eventually the earphones would go back in, child lost in his or her own soundtrack of seventh grade. A quiet escape was made into the music on the walkman at the beginning of my career, an iPod at the end.

I got in my own car, turned on NPR, drove home knowing their would be more questions tomorrow.

I really loved seventh grade.