Month: May 2020

There is a Painting

/ howardshapiro / 18 Comments

There’s a painting in our office in the new apartment we are still finishing in the high rise building near the mall in the city where we rented our first apartment when we came here what now feels like a long time ago and it was. It is a gaggle of men studying. I started to say a group of Rabbis but why do I assume only Rabbis study. I guess you could ask why only men but that’s a different discussion. They sit pretty close to each other, breathing disagreements and questions on each other’s faces. Things we notice now.

I replaced the glass and the matt after the glass cracked in our move. It’s been with us ever since I was a student Rabbi in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1965-66, a gift from the congregation after my one-year internship with them. They were incredibly warm, gracious and proud Jews of the South and put up with this naïve and inexperienced young Yankee from Boston. The congregation had been founded officially in 1865. But Jews have been living in Vicksburg for almost 200 years.

 It is a Zvi Raphaeli Litho. (Whatever that adds to this story. But in Jewish tradition it is imperative to quote your sources and name your teachers.) And they teach, these lines of color, strokes from a paint brush of the artist’s creativity. They teach about time and Torah; they teach about nostalgia and memory; they teach about an eternal quest to make sense of this life we have been gifted. One man is sleeping, maybe just a quick nap. Or maybe it is the Rabbi and they learn more from his silence than his words. I know about silence. Sometimes it is distant and cold, angry and bitter. Sometimes it is reflective and soft, harmonized compassion. Sometimes it is wise. I try to remember that simply refraining from speech opens up the moment to unforeseen potential. Speech is populated with words I already knew; silence celebrates that there is more to learn from each other.

My men are not silent. They are arguing about tomorrow. What will be its shape and how will we rise from this table piled with ancient tomes?  I would recommend to them The NYTimes article “No One Knows What’s Going To Happen” (Mark Lilla) as a worthwhile antidote to the hints they scour in the texts before them. In a way it is an echo of what happens when you are willing to live with the silence. Everything we say about tomorrow is a guess. Some guesses are more educated than others, but our predictions depend on so many variables including will my scholars in the portrait wear a mask when they leave the House of Study. Including will my scholars pray with their deeds and not just their words.

There is a very hard lesson to be internalized here. “Human beings want to feel they are on a power walk into the future, when in fact we are always just tapping our canes on the pavement in the fog. A dose of humility would do us good in the present moment. It might also help reconcile us to the radical uncertainty in which we are always living.” (NYT: Lilla. 5/24)

Scary this uncertainty. But if we are honest, we were never in control. We just lived as if we were. It was way more comfortable and settling. This stuff is tough but you all know that and didn’t have to read this far to hear me say it. But back to my scholars. I think what got them through is they had each other. If nothing else that was a constant worthy of emulating.

My Dark Side

/ howardshapiro / 23 Comments

This is my dark side speaking. I am not even sure that I want to give it voice. Better it should live in my imagination or nightmares; better it should live in my silent fear. I come to this naturally. We say in Hebrew: Al Tiftach Peh LiSatan – Do not open your mouth to Satan. Or put a little less esoterically. If you don’t verbalize it won’t become real. (Or something like that.)

But it has or it is becoming. We are ready to accept three thousand people dying a day from the virus in the US alone. We are ready to accept that this social distancing is the new norm. We are ready to accept that the more we open our society without enough testing, without a viable treatment, without a vaccine or immunity, we will push the death rate higher and higher. And our vulnerable will die; our seniors will die; our disenfranchised will be at higher risks; our care givers and first responders, our doctors and nurses will be put in more and more danger. It’s a mess.

If I were writing science fiction, I would give the virus “intention”. The earth would have a sense of consciousness, and this would be a warning/punishment/cleansing/teaching that we have gone too far and this beautiful blue globe will not keep spinning if we do not start to take care of it. In shutting us down; the virus has brought clear waters to the canals of Venice. A lesson.

Or if I were writing theology of a reward and punishment style, I would give the virus a Creator. And there would be prophets running around preaching and prophesying of an Apocalypse. Everyone is saying: It is the end of the world as we know it.  Where is Jonah when we need him?

If I were writing alternative history, I would tell my readers that the virus has purpose. It will make our society leaner and younger. The burden of a growing, aging, infirm population will be eradicated. And we will breathe again – we the immune; we with the antibodies; we with the new identity cards that have a CF embedded in gold. CF for Covid Free. We will go out again and the new ID with CF will get you into bars and arenas, theaters and malls, restaurants and house of worship and study.

Or we will just descend into sporadic and seasonal chaos. Ever read “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy? It is a post-apocalyptic novel of a father and son navigating the new reality some unknown disaster created. I actually gave a sermon based on it, seeing the father as Abraham and the son as Isaac and the road they navigated as a test of faith, love and ingenuity.

I told you my dark side was speaking. “WASHINGTON, D.C. – Toilet paper isn’t the only commodity in short supply during the COVID-19 pandemic. Personal safety concerns triggered by the pandemic have made nationwide gun sales explode. Many gun dealers in Northeast Ohio say business is so busy they’ve had trouble maintaining inventory.” (Cleveland.com) And today Palm Beach County opens in Phase One. Restaurants and Retail at 25%. No nails done – a big topic in my house and no haircuts yet.

Progress but so much unknown. Progress but so much yet to be determined. Progress but so many lessons yet to be learned. Certainly, we will be a masked society. Certainly at least for a while we will keep our distance from each other. Certainly, we will think twice about things that used to be routine. Like touching a door handle or shaking hands – although I sort of like the Namaste fold – it is respectful and humbling which in these times is a good thing. I am getting used to some of the restrictions but that’s a different post. This one is staying dark.