The death of a dear friend

Last night, a dear friend called. She didn't sound very good. I wondered if there was something new with her children (she certainly had heard about some of my family's ups and downs), with her or her husband's employment status (she had been privy to part of our saga), with her house hunt, or with some other important item.

Her voice quaking, she told me to sit down. Then she pronounced "Baruch Dayan Emet," and informed me that a mutual friend had passed away.

This friend was in our age group. Our children are his children's peers. His wife is one of my loved others. Our homes have been open to each other on Shabbatot, holidays and ordinary afternoons.

We had just collectively celebrated Yom Ha'atzmaut (see "Friends - Gold and Silver"). He had grilled, as the host of the "silver" gathering. He had made sure there were comfortable chairs and enough food and drink for all comers. He had made necessary introductions. He had led us in an evening of dvarei Torah.

This man was neither a stranger nor a casual acquaintance. He used to sit next to Boy-Getting-Taller during services. He and my husband, Computer Cowboy, used to walk home together regularly after shul on Shabbatot.

He used to help my husband, for smachot, secure and haul tables and chairs from the local gemach. Only a good friend bothers getting sweaty, after a full day of work, for something as unglamorous as moving folded furniture.

This dear man was a learned fellow, a rabbi, in fact, though he didn't advertise his knowledge. Fortunate were the folk who shared a meal with him and heard his dvarei Torah. "By day," though, he worked in a humble vocation. He worked so that his family's klita process could be successful. He loved his family. He loved Eretz Yisrael.

The levayah will take place shortly. The pain will linger. I cannot imagine the feelings in his wife's heart or in the neshemot of his daughters. My family, and the other families who love his, will do our best to support these friends.

B'yadei Shamayim

Its 2:30 a.m. right now, six and a half hours before I have to be at the Central Bus Station to board a bus for a sherut leumi (national service) seminar. I wasn't planning on writing a blog when sleep was of the essence, but life rarely goes how I plan it. That's why I stopped - planning, that is.

I was never one for huge plans. I never sat down and wrote about what I wanted to do in the future, and where I saw myself in ten years. I did have rough idea of how life was going to unfold. I was going to finish elementary school and get rainbow braces and platform shoes. I was going to get my driver's license at sixteen, and then a car for my birthday. I was going to have two sons who shared a room and slept on a bunk bed. I would kiss them goodnight, first the son on the higher bunk, and then I would bend down and kiss the boy on the lower bunk.

Needless to say, asides from the braces, life hasn't gone according to plan. And I'm perfectly fine with that. The twists and turns of life have offered me the chance to learn that everything is for the good, even if it's hard to see at first.

A Little Perspective

At various times of my life, I have been blameworthy for stereotyping according to material artifacts. Said more plainly, I've been guilty of assuming that folks, who are more stringent about certain things, than me, are necessarily morally superior and that folks who are less careful, than me, are necessarily morally inferior. I've come to discover that such beliefs are based on fluff and nonsense!

Simple, whereas there might be a correlation between the length of one's skirt, the nature of one's head covering, and the number of buttons fastened on one's shirt to one's relationship to G-d and to man, there also might not be. Integral goodness is the potential province of all persons. What's more, most of us have lived through experiences in which the behavior of folks, whose lives seem radically different from our own, and whose actions we had assumed we understood, surprised us.

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Pesach Cleaning

I think that somewhere along the translation of Hebrew to Aramaic, to Farsi, to French, to English and back to Hebrew, the words "spring" and "Pesach" got exchanged.  It seems the moment Purim is over, Jews all over the world, or at least the female half of the population, go into a frenzy usually associated not with liberation, but with the enslavement of spring cleaning.

The rule for Pesach cleaning, which I've learned from halachic authorities, is that anything a dog would eat has to go. This definition, however, leaves me with a few problems.  1) Shoes.  Dogs have a tendency to chew on shoes. While I highly doubt sneakers are bread-based, they are still something a dog would eat. 2) Dust. Dogs don't eat dust, as far as I know. Yet somehow, every Jewish mother insists on expelling every particle from her house. 3) The freezer.  If, during the week before Pesach, we let a starving dog into our homes to see what, if anything, it might eat, it would undoubtedly head to our kitchens, especially to our freezers. A freezer well stocked with Pesach meat and fish would make a dog very happy.

Visiting the Kotel

In the center of the Old City, in the center of this sphere of the universe, a fundamental tradition of our forefathers continues. There, at the Western Wall, at the Kotel , at the last portion of our former Temple, at the site of our future Beit HaMikdash, we Jews gather.

At this holy site, we assemble to pray for health, for prosperity, for happiness and for the Moshiach. Our words of longing fly in every language. At this singular place, our hands, young and otherwise, stretch to clasp at holiness, to beg mercy, to exclaim Providence. Under this wall's shy boughs of caper flowers, we extend ourselves to strengthen the triple cords of generations, past, future and present.

Becoming a Bat Sherut

For me, sherut leumi, or even finishing high school, used to seem like a far away moment.  They were events I knew were coming, but they seemed so distant that I never thought a lot about them. Then, suddenly, I'm in the midst of sherut leumi interviews; I'm signing up for interviews, searching for button-down shirts five minutes before my bus comes and missing tests because I'm trying to convince people I'm the best person for their jobs.