A Life That Transcended Limits

My grandfather, a”h, was niftar in Yerushalayim on Shushan Purim. He had just celebrated his 83^rd birthday a few days before, on zayin Adar, a birthday he shared with Moshe Rabbeinu.

Today and yesterday were not easy days—I cannot bring myself to comprehend that I will never again see his smiling face, that he will not be a part of my future. Yet, I cannot help but be grateful for the life he lived, the legacy he left. How can I reconcile my personal sadness with my thankfulness for having had the opportunity to know and love such a unique individual? Should my sense of loss be so great that I can feel nothing else? Somehow, I must be able to simultaneously experience both a profound, aching sadness for his absence--this tangible emptiness that fills me up--and a deep thankfulness for the ways in which he affected me, his entire family, and all those who were fortunate enough to meet him. Though his physical presence may be gone, he will live on in his children and grandchildren, in the things we learned from him and the things we will continue to learn from him as the years go by.

.…

Why is it that we only think to write about people once they are gone? There is no way to really capture a person on paper, but it feels more solid than anything else we’ve got. Memories fade—I think that’s the most frightening thing in the world. Stranger yet, memories shift. Without an actual presence, a true reminder, we remake people to fit the things we want to believe about them. We review certain moments and discard others; we turn real people into characters created in our minds. Writing does that, too. But if we write while the person is still real, is still present, we are less likely to fabricate, to tend toward inadvertent steamrollering, converting a three-dimensional person into merely a few facts or anecdotes on a sheet of paper. If the person is still around, he can critique your writing, he can laugh at the deficiencies and quirks of your portrayal; you can add and subtract from it, allow it to develop, as people do. But when someone is gone, it is too late to be completely truthful.

In the fall of 2007, I (briefly) took a class in writing creative non-fiction. On the second day of class, the teacher offhandedly assigned an exercise that he forgot about by the following week, and never asked us to turn in. The task was: write a paragraph beginning, “My grandfather is…”, and proceed to list, with specific detail, items, moments, and ideas that you associate with your relative. Yesterday I dug through the annals of Microsoft Word to find the paragraph I wrote then. It is far from a specimen of my finest writing; it does not come anywhere near close to doing justice to any part of who my Zayde was (“Was”? Using the past tense in conjunction with my grandfather, always so bursting with life, still seems completely incongruous). Yet I feel compelled to share it, as it was (sadly) the only piece of writing I composed about him during his lifetime.

"My Zayde is a lover of life. He is a brilliant nuclear physicist demonstrating bottle rockets to his grandkids in the park, eyes alight. He is mischievous, leading his four sons, the fifth and most excited boy of them all. He is a hike with my father on a mountain, as the sunlight filters, greenish, through the trees. He is a hard worker, sitting for hours poring over equations and sources, singlemindedly focused on his labors, then resurfacing for lunch with the glow of one who has truly earned a break. He is an author, corralling anyone and everyone to read a draft of one of his complex chapters, or to hear about the source for pi he has found in the Torah. When he was young, he was almost an astronaut; he retains the excitement of one who has seen beyond the limits of this world. He is an explorer’s broad-brimmed tan hat with a string hanging down below his chin. He is a ladies man, 80 years old, with an eye for a pretty woman and a flock of devoted female fans. He is a raunchy joke and a hearty laugh. He is a head full of gray hair that grew back after a battle with leukemia that left him just a little thinner, a little weaker. He is two thin, tanned, upraised hands, blessing his sons, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren Friday night on the Sabbath. My Zayde is a warm hug, as he murmurs into my hair, like a prayer of thanksgiving, “Oh, my darling, darling granddaughter.”'

Why I Cried

As I sat in the back seat of my parents' rented car, departing three hours early for a wedding that was 1.5 hours' drive away (my father is ridiculously paranoid about traffic), my emotions were mixed. I was grateful to be well enough to be out of bed, happy to see my parents, glad to be going to a simcha; but also weak and drained from my illness, nervous about the week and a half of school I'd missed, and stressed by the rush from class to meet my parents. My feelings sloshed around messily inside me. And then my phone buzzed, a text message from my friend.

"Terrorists infiltrated yeshivat merkaz harav and have killed at least 7 yeshiva boys. Please say tehillim and please pass the message around….."

My heart stopped. It didn't sink in. "Um, bad news," I stuttered aloud to my parents. "There's been a terrorist attack at a yeshiva in Yerushalayim."

For once my news-conscious father had not been listening to the radio. He turned it on.

"…at least seven killed and dozens wounded in a terrorist attack on a religious seminary in Jerusalem. Sources say the attacker infiltrated the school by dressing up as a student…"

When I heard the anonymous American news anchor say these words in his flat, emotionless American voice, the tears began to spill out of my eyes faster than I could catch them. Even I was surprised by the violence of my reaction. I didn't want to make a scene or alarm my parents, so I tried to cry noiselessly, unobtrusively, in the back seat. My father noticed, and tactfully said nothing.

I cried.

....

I love my land, my people; I feel connected; but I am not usually the type who cries so easily for tragedies that I haven't experienced firsthand. So why today?

Lately, I think, I have been far away. While my ideals of unity and connectedness were still intact, the emotions that accompany them had been gradually diminishing. My mind had been full of other ideas, other emotions. Important ideas, important emotions, yes, but my head and my heart can only focus on a certain amount at a time. It is part of the limit of being human; every choice requires a sacrifice, whether conscious or not.

And suddenly, I found myself confronted with a tragedy. A reminder.

In my head, I saw Yeshivat Merkaz Harav as I most vividly remember it: the night of Yom Ha'atzmaut after maariv, hundreds of young men, dancing with pure joy, full of gratitude to Hashem, celebrating our ability to live in our homeland. And then I imagined the same place, filled with emergency vehicles, stained with blood.

I cried.

I felt it, I felt the hurt. How could they do such a thing to us?

And then, to hear the bored anchor continue tonelessly on to other news, treated as equally, if not more, important—trivial news, most of it—ripped me apart. I yelled silently at the radio: "What do you mean!? That's all?! That's all you have to say? Do you understand what you just said? How can you just move on from that? How can you talk about the stupid tiny details of the primary vote tallies, or the four-year-old girl who showed up to school drunk? They just killed at least seven members of my family!"

But, of course, the news anchor really didn't care much. Why should he, in truth? Israel is a tiny country, far away; for him, the people there exist only in the same way that all theoretical people exist, the ones we've never met and never will meet.

Realizing this, I felt, anew, that connection, that pull, that reminds me why I care, why this feels so different to me than it does to Mr. News Anchor. Kol Yisrael areivim zeh lazeh: we are one family; we are connected.

It is not a question of politics. It is not about the right solution, the wrong solution, whether there is a solution. And for me, it doesn't feel like a time to ask God why, either. It feels like a time to feel. A time to experience the emotion of connectedness; to hurt because of my brothers' and sisters' hurt, to stand together as one people, united against those who wish to exterminate us.

Am Yisrael chai.

One Family

I recently returned from an all-too-brief trip to the Holy Land where, among other things, I celebrated the wedding of my 20-year-old cousin to a wonderful (and very quiet) girl. The trip was amazing, and I did and saw and felt so many things. Since there’s no way to record them all, I’ll start with one event that made me think.

Two shabboses ago was shabbos sheva brachot, and there was a meal for the families and close friends of both the chatan and kallah—nearly 100 people—at a hotel on Friday night. Then on shabbos day the families ate separately. Those of us on the chatan’s side had lunch at his family’s house, where they fit forty people into their living room/dining room. One table was designated for the “under 25” constituent, and midway into lunch a heated debate began at our table. The chatan and his family moved to Israel from LA about 17 years ago and they are modern and extremely tzioni. Their cousins on their mother’s side, however, are chareidi, and this led to an interesting, um, “discussion.” Along one side of the table sat five chareidi cousins (ranging in age from about 17 to 6) and on the other side sat the chatan’s brothers, sister, and a few other like-minded friends and family. A very heated debate broke out in rapid Hebrew between the chareidi cousins and the chatan’s 15-year-old brother about serving in the Israeli army and the role of learning in modern life. Shortly all five chareidi kids were yelling at my cousin, as he sat and attempted to calmly respond to their arguments. A bemused crowd gathered to listen to a debate we knew would never be settled. A food fight seemed imminent, as all appeared on the verge of suddenly snapping.

As I watched, however, it occurred to me that as heated as the debate seemed to be, it was a very healthy phenomenon. The arguers were members of the same family. They are very close, they love one another, and yet they disagree passionately. When my uncle began singing zmiros loudly their argument was interrupted, and within a minute everyone was singing together as if the debate had never occurred. This drove home the point to me.

The ability to hear a perspective disparate from one’s own, to argue, to debate, and yet to love one another is a beautiful thing and extremely important. This ability comes naturally when dealing with one’s close family, but if only we could extend it to all of klall Yisrael, the world would be a much better place. Really, all Jews are family, and as much as we may disagree, we should listen to one another, hear a new perspective, and unite in the end, conscious and secure in our mutual affection despite—and because of—our differences.

Disclaimer in Advance

I would like to apologize in advance for the blogging hiatus which I am obliged to take. Basically, my life right now is full to the brim with schoolwork and extracurriculars. Since I have barely a second to spare for breathing, eating, and sleeping, the blog is going to have to take a backseat until I have made it past this next two weeks or so.

In other news, I just got back to NY on Monday morning after a brief trip home for Thanksgiving, which was awesome. My family had a huge Thanksgiving dinner with 20 people and a TON of food. My family is quite patriotic, and very into Thanksgiving--as well as willfully ignorant of the potential halachic issues of taking it too far (and when I say too far, I mean too far...just trust me on this). Despite that minor issue, it was fun, and really really nice to be home again.

Anyway, I have now spent more time than I can currently afford on blogging, so I must get back to the pressing obligations of my ever-hectic life (which, btw, I love, no matter how much I complain or how stressed it may sometimes make me...and I am incredibly thankful for everything in it...shoutout to G-d!). I will rejoin the world of active bloggers in due time, iy"H. Till then, hope you all have a lovely couple of weeks!

Kol Sasson V'Kol Simcha

This weekend I went home for a wedding. Leaving school smack in the middle of midterms: not a good idea. I missed three tests. Count ‘em—THREE. Yeeeah. However, despite the mess that I am in now that I have returned, the weekend was super duper incredible. The wedding was that of a very close family friend—a 36 year old baal teshuva whose new kallah is a 33 year old baalas teshuva. Both of them are amazing people, and have been searching for their beshert for a long time. There were a lot of things about the weekend and the whole experience of the wedding that I found truly inspiring:

1) The wedding was simple by today’s standards. The couple didn’t have a big budget, so a group of close friends pitched in and really took over many of the important details. My mom was in charge of the flowers and decorating (since there was no florist), among other things. Though I wasn’t around for most of the planning, once I was home, I was included in the mad rush to make the wedding a success. It was amazing to see how everyone in the community rallied around the chassan and kallah. The wedding was such a community effort, with everyone contributing and participating to make the wedding beautiful. This was expressed this most clearly to me when, after the shabbos kallah, the overwhelmed kallah asked if the women who were still there (her closest friends and family) could chip in and help her say sefer tehillim. It is a minhag for the kallah to say it on her wedding day, but our kallah simply needed help. So we all volunteered and split up sefer tehillim between us, each woman taking as many as she could handle, depending on her time constraints and level of skill in Hebrew. It really made it so clear that we were all pieces of one whole, as we all shared in the kallah’s experience and her joy.

2) The wedding was in the chosson’s hometown (which is also my hometown), so the kallah’s friends and family all had to be put up at different people’s houses in the community. On Friday night a family in the community hosted dinner for the 35 out-of-town visitors and their hosts. We were there, and I had the opportunity to meet the kallah’s side. It was so lovely to meet so many new people, every one of whom was so incredibly nice and friendly. Both the chassan and kallah have hashkafically diverse families and backgrounds, so at the wedding, there were all different types of people—from Aish, Chabad, Modern Orthodox, non-religious, even Breslav—and everyone got along so well, and joined in together to be mesameach the chassan and kallah. Though unfortunately the Jewish community often has problems of sectionalism and a lack of unity, an experience like this weekend reminds me how beautiful it is when Jews are united.

3) Since the chassan and kallah are both baalei teshuva, many of their friends are as well. I met and spoke to so many amazing baalei teshuva this weekend, and meeting them just gives me hope for the future of klall Yisrael. I am so awed and inspired by people who have come to yahadus later in their lives and embraced it with hearts so full that the enthusiasm and joy that Torah brings to their lives simply overflows. I have so much respect for them, and just being around them and hearing their stories makes me so incredibly happy.

4) The chassan and kallah themselves. I’ve known the chassan for years, so his uniqueness is already old news to me (though he’s also great)—but the kallah, who just came into our lives a few months ago, is one of my new favorite people in the world. She is amazing. About a month and a half before the wedding, she was getting ready to move from her old city to her new city (the chassan’s hometown). She had all her possessions packed in a U-Haul truck, ready to be moved. She left the truck, locked, in front of her apartment while she went to spend shabbos away, and when she came back, the truck had been stolen. The kallah lost all her physical possessions in the world. I cannot even imagine handling a catastrophe like that, but the kallah did, with grace and a positive attitude. I can’t even fathom it. Plus, she is just so warm and knows exactly what to say to each person to make him/her feel appreciated and special. Anyone who knows me will know that I am not the type to say something like this, but…that girl just has the most beautiful neshama. She’s truly incredible, and I am so so happy for her and her chassan and wish them the happiest, most wonderful life together. (Sniff, sniff, ok, wipe away my tears)

Anyway, the wedding came off beautifully, the chassan and kallah were glowing, and we were all going out of our heads with joy. The weekend was a wonderful experience, and it made me appreciate my home and my community all the more. Hoorah! But now I’m back, and it’s time to return to the drudge of school and midterms. So off I go…drudge, drudge, drudge…

A Halachic Dilemma

The time: a.m., the very morning after Yom Kippur

The Players: me: the college girl home for the chagim; my mom: about to leave for the gym

The Facts: My mom asks me before she leaves to answer the phone while she is gone, because she is expecting a call from the pool guy about an appointment to fix our leaking pool. I readily agree, eager for the easy opportunity to do a mitzvah.

The Dilemma: Having just woken up a few minutes before she left, I start davening once she is gone. I am in the midst of pesukei d'zimra, and then...the phone rings--dum dum dum! I am hit by a wave of confusion: I know that I am not allowed to speak in the middle of pesukei d'zimra, but then again, I have a mitzvah of kibud eim to take into consideration!

What would you do?