Freedom from Want

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UnknownIt is the day before Thanksgiving and I am gearing up for my food prep schedule. Went over the menu last night and it passed muster with one of our more discerning guests. The next issue is the timing of the feast between football games – although I think we got that covered with apps and all that stuff.

I love Thanksgiving. It is everyone’s holiday. You don’t have to go back to the saga of the Pilgrims and Native Americans. You don’t have to buy into the Norman Rockwell painting of an idealized gathering with an impeccable bird and “perfect” all American family.  We are more diversified than that and maybe always were. I love that no one seems to be complaining in his picture. Everyone is happy and in my mind no one is standing in a line or camping out in the parking lot of some mall in order to get the best Black Friday deals some of which now begin on Thanksgiving itself.

Some corporate team probably made the decision that jumping the gun to open Thursday night would bring in more money. I feel badly for the people, who have to stock the shelves, work the cash register and say, “Welcome to Walmart” (or whatever the store).   I liked it better when Thanksgiving was a commercial free zone and we could concentrate on giving thanks for what we have not what we want. In my language, we are losing the sense of the sacred. Or maybe the sacred can no longer last a whole day. And we can moan and bewail the state of our society or we can go with what is and celebrate without judgment.

This is what I mean by the sacred: when I feel connected to something outside of myself – my spouse, family, friend, a tree, a bush, a flowing stream, a child learning how to crawl, the smile of a stranger passing by, the night sky, the universe within, God. When my heart announces itself with a sense of warmth, affection, love. When I know it beats not just for my survival but so that I can do good and make that proverbial difference, no matter how little, how big.

So I am thankful today and try to be everyday. But the truth is it is easy to forget and just get up in the morning, brush your teeth, figure out what’s for breakfast, check your calendar and you are off and running. Thanksgiving focuses me and I try to appreciate the blessings of family, of food, of love. It focuses me and I give thanks for this wonderful and flawed country we call home. I think especially how many challenges we have before us in this dangerous world we are trying to share. I think of the Thanksgiving metaphor and how as Americans we need to pull together to face this newly darkened tomorrow.  We have done so in the past and I pray we can find a way to gather around the same table and bless each other again.

The Rockwell painting above is called: “Freedom from Want”. May we all be so blessed.

Paris- No Words

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I don’t know what to say. I have jettisoned the words I was preparing to post for this week. They pale to the events in Paris and the 128 plus people dead at this moment. Six different venues targeted. The same words scroll across the bottom of the screen as images of people running in the night and people placing flowers, lighting candles, at a make shift shrine in the morning. I could become news junky, glued to the TV and listen to experts and world leaders try to help us make sense of the senseless.

But there is no sense here. There is violence; there is death; there is evil, unspeakable evil. But we have to speak of it; we have to no choice. World leaders have to assure us that everything is being done to protect us; that we stand with Paris and understand that the attack is a clash between cultures and civilizations. As Pope Francis put it just this morning: It is part of a piecemeal Third World War.

I’m struggling to say something new or profound. Maybe that is too hard a task. There is nothing new to say. We can reiterate what we have said before: We will fight for the survival of our values; we will do everything we can to protect ourselves; we will not surrender to fear; we will not be paralyzed by our anxieties. We have faced evil like this before, not necessarily in this specific form, but there have always been enemies of our way of life that have attacked at the rear of the column, where the unarmed, the unprepared, the frail and the innocent congregate.

It is a terrible fact of contemporary life. I still have CNN on and I watch as my grandchildren float in and out of the room and I wonder how they see this through their eyes. What does it do to their view of the world? Are they able to compartmentalize it and still giggle and laugh at the silly, the absurd, the imaginary?

Less is more in this case. The Bible says it best. “I have set before you life and death, the blessings and the curse. Choose life that you and your children may live.” Fear is not an option. Isolation is not a choice. Hatred, stereotyping and collective blame do not help us deal effectively with how we go forward. Living does; loving does; affirming all that is good is our society will. Choosing to live.

“Houston, We Have a Problem”

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IMG_0462I miss the leaves in Autumn. I miss how they change and seemingly have a mind of their own when they will go from green to gold or red and shades in between. Living in South Florida, we don’t get dramatic announcements that the seasons are changing. I could be cute though and tell you that we know the season is upon us as we watch the car carriers’ park in the middle of the road outside our gated communities and slowly shed their cargo onto the road below. They are of many colors and shapes but not quite up to comparison with a Sugar Maple or Black Tupelo.

There are other hints as well. There are fewer reservations available at your favorite restaurant; the white holiday lights strung around Banyan and Palm trees, outlining their trunks and branches are slowly turning on as the days grow shorter; all the multi-colored annuals are bedded and sprinklers are furiously making sure that they root and take. But they don’t equate with the drama of the sun-filtered reds, gold, yellow and oranges of a tree standing proud against a deep blue sky.

But I’m not complaining and I’m not dissing Florida. I love where I live and am blessed to be here. I believe that the pervasive and sometimes oppressive humidity is actually Ponce De Leon’s fountain of youth and no matter what the mirror tells me, it keeps my skin young. I believe that the understated modifications that mark the changing seasons teach us something about how most change occurs, subtly, delicately, one step at a time. I believe that each of us can affect that change – we just have to realize how crucial it is that we learn it doesn’t happen without us.

Unfortunately change/progress isn’t as predictable as the seasons. I’m thinking about the equal rights ordinance that was repealed in Houston this week. Voters rejected the measure that would have barred discrimination against the LGBT community. The campaign was down and dirty. They appealed to our baser instincts claiming sexual predators would have access to women’s bathrooms and locker rooms. The failure to protect people from racial, ethnic and gender discrimination puts Houston in the position of being the only major American city without a broad anti-discrimination policy. The line from Apollo 13 applies here: “Houston, we have a problem.”

The greatness of our country is that we have been a people of many colors, many backgrounds, different ethnicities and different sexual orientations. We didn’t always recognize that and we often ignored the rights of those whom we perceived as other, but slowly, surely, one foot in front of the other, we are coming to see that the tree has many branches and that some trees actually have leaves of variant hues and shades on the same trunk.

The political commentators tell us that the take away from Houston’s vote is that turnout counts. And the people who were afraid and misinformed turned out in great numbers to vote. The people who want rainbow leaves to be treated with respect and dignity did not get the message. Change happens – but it is up to us to make sure that the leaves reach the ground and nourish the growth of tomorrow.

Guardians of the Future

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DSCN1981“If you keep digging, we’ll hit China.” That’s what they used to say when we piled sand upon sand, digging holes, building castles and no one worried about how tan we got. Well, we’ve just returned from China and in the sites and cities we visited, China isn’t at the bottom of a hole. China is very much in this world and China looks like the future. And it isn’t all panda bears and pagodas, forbidden cities and clay warriors.

It is smog and pollution; it is unbelievable traffic; it is concrete apartment buildings to house millions of people in cities the size of counties; it is sensory overload with neon signs in red Chinese characters and sky scrapers illuminated in colors and designs, flashing against the dark, proclaiming we are here: notice us; pay attention.

It is a proud people with good reason to be proud. It is a heritage of great beauty and symmetry with a wall that was built to keep the invaders out and the “cultured” in. It is rice and noodles and soy sauce; it is tea and Chinese beer that is one of the few things that taste good without ice. It is the “chutzpah” of the Three Gorges Dam, creating the largest hydro power station in the world, dislocating in the process 1.2 million people and submerging well over 100 towns and villages.

Don’t get me wrong. It is beautiful; it is exciting; it was a privilege to feel its enormous energy and see the delicate harmony ancient Chinese artisans created in the way they designed their palaces and gardens, their tombs and their temples. I loved it and if it weren’t for the flight would go back in a minute (ok, not a minute) because I know there is so much more to see, experience and learn.

Like: If we do not figure out how we create energy and keep polluting the air, then I invite you to taste the smog in the back of your throat and walk around with itchy eyes and wonder what is happening to your lungs. We were lucky. We had just a few days of pollution. But it was enough to make me yearn for the clear blue skies of a beautiful sunny day.

Like: If we do not figure out how to move people around efficiently and keep building rings and rings of roads and elevated highways decked two and three times above the streets, then I invite you to sit in traffic jams that rob you of your day and precious hours with family and friends. It was enough to make me fear for the future because this isn’t about China; it is about all of our 21st century cities.

Like: The Terra Cotta Soldiers have guarded the Chinese Emperor’s tomb for centuries. They have stood in a dark still silence, buried from sight and blind to the present. They are only clay, and yet, you look at them and feel their steadfast power. It makes me wonder: Who will guard our future? Who will vision a cleaner, clearer, brighter tomorrow for us and for our children? Or do all our politicians care only about the emperor and the trappings of power? Some of them talk about building a wall. To protect who from whom?

That’s a “Hallelujah”

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IMG_4111I turned over in bed this morning, barely awake and did something to my knee. I heard it click, could feel it wrench and boom pain. That woke me up. I knew immediately that this wasn’t good. As I tried to put weight on it, I felt as though I needed to hold on to the furniture around the room as I tried to walk it off – hopeful I could do just that. What have I done or what has my body done to me? What about the vacation we are supposed to embark on in two days, the one with all that walking, the one I have been testing out new shoes and sneakers for?  This is not an exercise in self-pity and it is not a call for your sympathy, although if my Doctor is reading this, got room tomorrow in your schedule?  It is that fundamental truth underlying all our dreams, expectations and plans for the future that we are one second and one movement away from knowing in our bones how capricious and unstable life is.  I know, when you are young and your body is your temple you live in it with grace and confidence. And then again, our culture tells us that the more you exercise and take care of it, the more and the longer you can expect your physical being to cooperate and live up to your demands and hopes.

I am here to tell you yes, till no.

I am here to tell you don’t take any of it for granted. I know that’s hard. It’s not like you can walk down the street and sing praise for your health and abilities constantly. You have to make sure you are crossing in a cross walk; not bumping into people or things; are aware of your surroundings. But somewhere in your day, either when you wake up or go to sleep, there is a moment there. When you let your eyes see again; when you let your mind rest again. When you let go or when you hold on. There is this opportunity to say a blessing; to just say thank you for all that works in your life, even if imperfectly.

And I don’t promise that the blessing or the prayer will act as a personal insurance policy against the storm. I think it can be a change agent; I think it can make you (me) more sensitive and more aware. Sensitive to those whose health and mobility is different than yours; aware that what we have is good and needs to be affirmed and appreciated. It make us better people; it makes the lives we live in tune with love and hope and what some people call God. It can focus us on tomorrow and the day after and the good we can do and become.

I write this with ice on my knee and Ibuprofen within arms reach.  We’re going and this is what I know.  Just do it.   Find some time in your day to appreciate what you have and who you are.  I don’t care when; I don’t care how; I don’t care what language and what symbolism or ritual.  And neither does God.  Just breathe the blessing in and breathe it back.  That’s a “Hallelujah”.

Let The Light ShineThrough

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I spoke about Pope Francis on Yom Kippur morning at Temple Israel. His style of leadership was the unifying scaffolding upon which I built my sermon for this most holy of holy days in the Jewish calendar. I was able to tie in Jonah (the book not Hill) and the theme of reflection and self-assessment that is at the heart of this Day of Atonement. The Pope’s visit and his popularity became the refrain for me to ask one of the Day’s fundamental questions: when all is said and all is done how we would like to be remembered.

Now the Pope’s visit is history.   He is back in Rome and CNN can return to its regular programming.  I am not an expert in Catholic doctrine or ritual but this is what I learned from him as a Rabbi and as a plain old ordinary Jew and a plain old ordinary human being.

I learned that there are no plain old ordinary human beings. Whether it was planned or orchestrated or not, it doesn’t matter. Every time he stopped his motorcade and picked up a baby or walked over to a young boy with disabilities or met with people incarcerated for terrible crimes, he underscored a fundamental religious value that at the core we are souls precious and unique, created in the image of God.   And don’t let God language get in your way of understanding that. It is a message that celebrates our humanity and our shared responsibility to one another. It is the sacred voice of collective wisdom speaking: we are kin and we share one small planet in a seemingly cold, vast, infinite universe. Let’s take care of it and each other.

This is what I learned as a Jew. This is not my grandparents’ Catholic Church. It is still a huge and wealthy institution that loves its ritual, its incense, its symbolic gestures and its mystery. But at least under Francis’ leadership, there are conscious cracks and openings for the message that a Jewish Jesus taught as an itinerant Rabbi/Sage/Prophet/Story teller and parable maker in and around Galilee and Jerusalem. And this is what I admired. The message of forgiveness, love and acceptance is real and it is to be acted upon and lived when you sit in your house, when you walk on the way, when you lie down and when your rise up.

This is the challenge to me as a Rabbi (and you can substitute minister or priest and lots of other professions, not just religious).  You cannot let the institution or other people’s expectations define you. The weight of all our traditions can force you into a mold that is at the same time comfortable and confining. Maybe I am reading into it, but I think you could see how heavy the past was in just the way Pope Francis walked: slowly, deliberately and balancing the miter on his head. And yet, he always walked forward, deliberately so. And he always seemed to let his inner light shine through. And he always seemed to be his own person – what a gift to us all.

Turning

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images (1)It is the weekend of turning. In Hebrew we call it Shabbat Shuvah; we are in the middle of the ten days of repentance. We are somewhere in between apples and honey and kreplach and chicken soup.

When you look up kreplach on a search engine, the first site that describes what they are and how you make them is Epicurious.com. They sit one site away from Chabad.org and although Epicurious describes them as Jewish wonton or ravioli and Chabad says that they are small squares of rolled dough folded into triangles, they both agree that they are to be filled with minced meat or chicken and usually served in chicken soup at the pre-fast meal on the evening before Yom Kippur.

Epicurious seems to think that the three points of the triangle represent the three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I think that is totally unfair to the matriarchs who rolled the dough, sautéed the meat and onions, and assembled it all together to perfection. What does Abraham and his boys have to do with this? It is Grandma Miller who used to cook them and then send them packed in dry ice to Eileen and me in Cincinnati so we could have a “proper” Yom Kippur as the British would say. (Although Grandma Miller was way more Yiddish than British, but still a matriarch in the best sense of the word.)

I don’t get kreplach anymore.   I used to love them floating in the soup. I was always told that we eat them because they represent that which is hidden. Some say as the dough covers the meat, so God should cover and hide our sins. I prefer a variation of that. As the filling is hidden inside the dough, so there is a treasure hidden inside of each and every one of us. Yom Kippur asks us to open ourselves and remove the callousness and layers of protection that keep us from our truest selves. Yom Kippur invites us to be in touch with the sacredness of our inner lives and interior reality. Although I must admit that the fasting piece tends to make this a real challenge.

I expect matzah balls in my soup this coming Tuesday night. It seems to be our custom. I’m not promising but I think I will save the matzah ball discussion for Passover. It’s enough with the food when I am supposed to be turning inward and concentrating on my spiritual life, not the physical. I’m supposed to be asking how I let the light of my soul shine through my actions. I’m supposed to be turning towards forgiveness and finding a way to enter the New Year whole and restored, renewed to live fully and love completely. I’m supposed to be asking in the words of Micah: What does God want from me? To act justly, love mercy and walk humbly. And I will – ask, search, turn, try.

But I’ll still miss my kreplach (though they did tend to make me thirsty).

An easy and meaningful fast.

Which Brings Us To This Season

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Not Just For the Golfers Among Us

I was in the deep grass, pretty far from the hole. It was a par 5 and it was a good drive for me. I knew I could get to the green in 3 if I just made this second shot count. I took out a long club and took a practice swing. The grass was thick and sticky but I knew I could power through it. If you are a golfer, you know the end of this story. If not, let me tell you it wasn’t pretty. The grass caught my club; the ball veered off to the right and practically went nowhere.

Greedy is what I said out loud – I can’t write what I said inside. But the more I thought about it, “greed” was the wrong word.   I think it was hubris, loosely defined as the belief that I am invincible and can do almost anything I want or set my mind to. I should have picked a different club, one that was more forgiving but didn’t get the distance I was reaching for. I should have listened to my inner self and played it smart rather than macho. I should have learned from the last time I was in the same place.

I have a tendency to keep repeating the same mistakes, not just in golf, but also in life, in relationships, in love. The grass was calling out to me and trying to teach me: learn from your past; choose a different club and stay down, stay focused. The hybrid in your bag is called “forgiving” for a reason. Which brings us to this season and the New Year that begins with the shrill and broken sounds of the Shofar.

Traditionally the ram’s horn plays four notes: one is fierce; one broken; one triumphant, one long. Each note touches a different part of my soul. The fierce tekiah opens me up for the potential being birthed by the New Year. The broken shevarim wails and speaks to me about missed opportunities for wholeness. The triumphant staccato notes of teruah declare you can do it – you can take all the fragmented pieces of your past and glue them together. The very act of trying is itself holy.

It’s all about the effort and the club you choose from your bag. Pick one that is forgiving. Swing smooth and steady and let the club do the work. Listen to the sound of tekiah gedolah (the great and long note of promise). It reaches deep inside of me; reverberating, resonating, and repeating. Trust yourself; have faith. No matter how deep the grass, how dark the day, how heavy the task, the Shofar promises: This is a new start; this is a new chance; this is a new year. Enjoy it and use it well. Happy 5776

Standing Tall

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My mother and father were just about the same height, but somehow she always seemed taller. Maybe it was the shoes or maybe the way she carried herself in a proud but not superior Boston kind of manner. Or maybe the cigar, which was a horizontal point of reference, either in his hand or mouth, moderated his stature so it appeared that he was shorter.

I don’t think it ever bothered him. Generally, he was easy going, giving, happy and hard working, always trying to do more for his family. Charlie, with a broad “A”, almost no “R”, was a good person who struggled with his own successes and disappointments. He was a pharmacist and a sales rep for a pharmaceutical company, with a drugstore in the trunk of his car always full of samples. There was no Medicare Part D or Drug plans then, but there was Charlie with an open hand and heart. But when he perceived that people took advantage of him, or something went wrong in the house that neither my sisters nor I understood, you could feel the stillness and almost see the anger. It wasn’t like a match that flares and goes out; it was this steady kind of burn, the water in the pot just at the point of boiling over.

I feel guilty even writing this but I think he had a hard time letting go of the hurt, but then again, what do I really know of what transpired right before the flame was lit. This I do know: I have my own issues with forgiveness. I have my own challenges to work through and overcome. I somehow find it easy to shut down and retreat into silence when I am hurting. I own it and there is no blame or finger pointing here. We all have different modalities in our arsenal of coping and we are constantly learning and relearning them in every situation.

Enter Selichot, the prayers of forgiveness that whisper hope and renewal to me. Enter Selichot announcing a New Year is coming; a new time for me to begin again; a moment of growth and promise. Enter Selichot initiating a process of review and assessment for those who stop, look and listen. The liturgy, the music, the colors, the sounds gently surround me with compassion and concern. I need Selichot; I need a mechanism that invites me to face how I deal with the injuries I have felt and the hurts I have inflicted. I need Selichot; I want to enter the New Year fresh and rejuvenated. I want to enter it forgiving and forgiven. I love that our tradition gives me a chance to get it right and make it better by facing my own personal failings. I love the time worn words of our liturgy that are consistently pumping out ways to reflect and view a different image in the water.

When those “Al Chets -For the Sins we have committed” jump out of the prayer book, I’m there. Sometimes they are listed in alphabetic order; always in the plural. The sages understood that we are all in this together and no matter how individual our failings may be; it is human to fall and get up, to stumble and stand tall. “Arrogance, bigotry, cynicism, deceit,” I often don’t make it past “A”. The samples in my father’s trunk healed and restored. The samples in mine are the regrets, the hurts, the disappointments, the missed opportunities, the challenges I haven’t met, the words spoken without thinking, the self absorption that comes so easily, giving with not so invisible strings attached or giving grudgingly; taking eagerly. I could go on; in the quiet of the night, I’m good at listing all the ways I have disappointed others and myself.

But this is what Selichot says to me. Consider your deeds; reflect on who you are and who you wish to be; ask for forgiveness and whatever you mean by the word God will pick you up, clean you, brush you off and set you on a new course. It is work like all prayer, but it is worth it. Refreshed, renewed, ready for the broken call of the shofar to proclaim a New Year and another opportunity for wholeness.

(This post was originally published on Ten Minutes of Torah http://reformJudaism.org)

We’re All in This Together

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IMG_4026I went to church this past Sunday; I went because it is the Hebrew month of Elul, a spiritual time of preparation for the New Year. I went because the chapel is at the one mile marker of my walking route; it is open air with just a ceiling and pews; no walls to close it in and almost every Sunday when I walk by there is beautiful congregational singing and the voice of a pastor preaching, or bells or communal readings and recitations of faith, and I thought I haven’t been all summer and this is a good time to see if it can help me on my journey to a new moment in my life. And besides, I had a walking friend willing to join me and it is good not to be alone in church (or synagogue).

I didn’t know any of the hymns except the final one, which was set to the “Ode to Joy” melody of Beethoven’s 9th. An aside: Do all those notes above the words in the hymnal really help you know the melody if you can’t read music or can all church goers read music? None of the creeds or confessions of sin worked for me – too Jesus centered but the Lord’s Prayer felt pretty Jewish. I was surprised that there was no reading from the Hebrew Scriptures; I thought there was always one that was then counter levered with a reading from the Christian Scriptures. I was disappointed because I like to see how the two play off each other.

The sermon was text based. The priest (Episcopal) retold the story of a pivotal moment in Jesus’ life – when he says to his disciples: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” (John 6:56…) The disciples tell him that the teaching is difficult and they are not sure they can accept it and some of them actually turn back from following him. Jesus confronts the rest of them and asks: “Do you also want to go away?”

This is what the sermon said to me. And since I am in church let me stay with the metaphor. We all have “come to Jesus” moments; we all have times when we must make decisions and face the hard and the difficult straight on and either work with it or walk away from it. All our faith traditions teach this. You can’t walk through life unscathed. We struggle to be born and like a seed pushing its way through the crusty dirt, we grow by facing those things that are tough for us. Some challenges are so hard, we want to run away from them and some we confront and work with and turn into learning opportunities. Some cause pain; some bring insight; some we just never understand.

There is a beautiful image in the Hasidic tradition that during the month of Elul, God is out there walking in the fields, searching, seeking, waiting, and watching. Elul is the time for me to leave my comfort zone, confronting with compassion and with love the hard, the tough, the challenging, the unsettling. I’m glad I went to church last Sunday.  It helped me in my Elul preparation.  It reminded me that God has many houses and one thing came through loud and clear.

We are all in this together.

What’s Next?

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I have aIMG_3904 friend who is an artist and I was with him yesterday.  He was showing me his newest piece that he is working on and we got to talking about the creative process.  I compared my limited writing experience with his painting and reflected that after I finish one post, I am constantly on the look out for what’s next.  “Ah”, he said: “the artist’s favorite question: What’s next?”

So today I was on a plane and the guy next to me (in the middle seat) was big. He was shoulder, arms and chest big, not fat big. But he overflowed his seat and he and I played a constant dance with the armrest until we figured out that we would just have to live with touching unless one of us retreated and gave up ground. (Thank God he was wearing long sleeves.)

It all was fine till he spilled his Bloody Mary all over himself and over one side of me. His blue plaid shorts turned purple and my khaki pants were a kind of magenta. “Club soda”, I said, “let me ask the flight attendant for paper towels and club soda”. He apologized profusely of course and I told him, it was ok – not to worry, and even though I really thought he didn’t need the coffee, the book, the glass of ice and the can of Bloody Mary mix on his tray, it was ok and I didn’t want him to feel any worse than he did.

This is what’s next I thought. We tend to think that the creative experience comes out of extremes – deep pain/depression/sadness or profound joy/ecstasy/beauty. And it is in one or both of these polar opposites where insight and meaning are often found. But we learn from every experience, even those in the middle.   What’s next? How you react to the unexpected spill.  How you make another person feel when they accidentally hurt you. The measure of the people we are is probably impossible to calibrate.  But I would bet that a large segment of the metrics is in the ordinary ways we react when the unexpected happens.

Life is filled with lots of surprises especially when you are surrounded by people. Find a way to be gracious and kind; it could have been the other way around. Accept how flawed we all are; how blemished the universe we live in is; how we are not in control, not even remotely.

I like observing how I behave in the ordinary moments (not that I am satisfied with all my behavior)  – they may not make great paintings that will hang in the Met, but they just might make good people who can change the world.

Good Things To Remember

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IMG_3903I love living in a small town. (Even if it’s only part time.) Everyone is friendly; everyone has something to say. This morning, I walked into a jewelry store to pick up a repair. I gave my name for identification, and a man having a new band attached to his watch, asked: “Oh do you live in Sherwood Forest?” “No, but near,” I answered trying not to make a Robin Hood reference. “New people by the name of Shapiro just moved in – must be a relative,” he continued. “I guess, if you go far enough back.” Thanking the salesperson, exiting the store, I added: “but when you meet these new Shapiros tell them there’s another one around.”

End of conversation, but not in my head. Inside, my grandmother and grandfather, Bessie and Louis, were alive. They came to the United States in the early 1900’s along with two million other immigrants from Eastern Europe. Like many of them, my grandparents’ last names were more a function of the whim of an immigration officer rather than a long family history. Not to confuse the issue too deeply, but my grandmother’s maiden name is Shapiro and my grandfather’s brothers are all named Ashepa. I sometimes wonder if my life would be different if my last name began with “A” instead of an “S” and I stood at the head of the line, was the first to be called on during attendance, sat in the first row?

We’ve lost the name of the little Eastern European town (shtetl) where Bessie and Louis met and married. And whatever relatives who stayed behind are gone – murdered gone – not just gone. But I want to think that their small town was like this one – where people smile and greet you as you walk down the street, where in the supermarket parking lot, shopping carts are returned to the “cart alley”, where the postal person knows your name and helps you tape your package.

I may be idealizing it all, but I like this niceness. There is a wonderful strand of Jewish behavioral teaching, called Mussar that says: You have been given this gift of life in order to repair the world: to leave it better than you found it. We call this Tikun Olam. The uniqueness of Mussar is that it teaches. We do this work of fixing by beginning with ourselves. And we change from the outside in. Do good deeds; act more kindly; speak with compassion; see the image of God in the person walking toward you, and you become a better person and each loving act repairs your self and the world.

It is a good thing for me to remember as we begin this month of Elul, beginning the month long preparation to welcome a New Year and a new opportunity to start again to build goodness into this cosmos. It is a good thing to remember as I return to “civilization”.