Passing On

It was a small service attended only by my son and I. He was the last of three, surviving the longest well past normal life expectancy. The weather had just started to change to autumn with a brisk breeze but somehow still refreshing after a long hot humid summer. The grave was dug hastily in the morning and the body just as hastily covered with only a rock to mark its location. I made sure to bury some victuals for his journey into the world to come. I don't know what possessed me to connect with the ancient traditions of burying objects or food that the deceased may need in the afterlife, but I did. I spoke of how he was loved by us all, especially my son and how he would be missed. He was like family and the parting was painful and laden with tears. We hugged and cried together over Dubby, the last of three hamsters.

 

The night before I returned home to learn that he was bleeding out of one eye and lying on his side. I thought of bringing him to a vet but they would just euthanize him. I stroked his neck and back telling him all will be OK, just find rest and let the pain go. And thank God he died that night so that my kids wouldn't see him suffer excessively.

 

That night I had a dream with Dubby. First he appeared as ill as described and then suddenly he woke up with strength to climb out of his cage, filled with vigor and ready to go. I wonder if some forces exist out there that signify the passing of a soul and I do believe animals do have souls. Was he saying goodbye and letting me know he will be OK out there, no longer confined in body and time to our home? Unbeknownst to me, at 3:15AM my wife woke up to a bright flash. She looked around and there was no rain outside and she wondered if that was Dubby passing.

 

Goodbye dear Dubby thanks for  all the special moments with the kids. We will miss you :(

(for related posts on dreams of animals passing see here).

I Saw The Sign

I was driving upstate to pay a shiva call to relatives and I noticed this sign. I didn't have much time to get a clear shot with my camera phone but it says, "Life is worth living...24HR hotline phone ahead." Now, mind you that this is the approach to the Tappan Zee Bridge. Basically we are telling this obviously distraught individual, "Yeah, keep going there is phone somewhere ahead but just ignore that high, tempting, oh so tempting bridge, over the waters that will free you from all your pain. Nah, just keep going."

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Update: As I was rereading my post, it occured to me that the sign could be read with a different emphasis. Perhaps it could be understood as there is a 24hr hotline but you need to phone ahead of time. If you can't get your act together in advance, you might as well jump.

Dream Believer

"I had a dream," my pappy told me. That, of course, was long after MLK Jr. had his unrelated vision. It was a relatively mild summer the year my brother was to be married. I was just a kid then, but I felt the need to instruct him in all things sexual that I had only recently learned. He smiled and messed my hair a bit and said thanks. He gave me a coke and I smiled.

Just after his engagement, he came down with hepatitis so graciously shared from cup to cup at a rebbe's tish. Even though he was feverish and weak, thankfully he was able to drag himself to the Brooklyn HIP center. There the top notch physician wrote him a script, which he diligently went to the pharmacy to fill. The pharmacist told him this was an Rx for a placebo because the doctor thought he was a drunk. Instead of accepting this miracle cure, he chose to check into a local hospital where his condition deteriorated. That's when pappy had his dream.

As I recall it being told to me directly, pappy had seen his friend, Joe, appear to him at night in a dream. Joe was the first of his childhood friends to pass to the other side. Joe solemnly informed my dad that tonight Joe was to take his son (my bro). I don't know how my dad comes up with this stuff so fast, I guess he was FAST asleep but his response without hesitation was, "Take the cat as a Kaparah (atonement)." With that the dream ends and the laws of the universe are forever altered.

Come morning, the cat was found dead. Zoinks! I have a sneaking suspicion my dad sleepwalks but I have not seem this myself. When talking with my brother, he claims that, that night he gave up and prayed to be taken away but somehow things took a turn for the better the next day. For him, that is. I'm sure the cat would have an entirely different perspective and now after umpteen years of marriage I don't know if my brother would have taken that deal.

Many years passed. I was dorming at YU when I noticed my next cat crying outside by my seventh floor window. I was dreaming of course. I let her in and she seemed relieved to see me and climbed on my bed and went to sleep with an apparent grim as if she was comforted being my presence. There was a knock, so I opened the door only to find two cats, looking just like her, beckoning her to come with them. She did. They walked down Rubin hall together and just faded away.

A few days later, I got a call that my kitty had disappeared (coincidentally) the night I had the dream. Can you figure it out yet? Not only had the cat died but my uncle was mysteriously cured from an ailment that no doctor could successfully identify or cure! He had suddenly developed an uncontrollable diaphram spasm causing him to hiccup incessantly. They actually had to start his heart a few times as a result. Apparently my dad had a dream that night as well. In his dream, he was saying to himself, "As much as I love the cat, I choose my brother."

The only thing my family could figure was that my grandfather, the butcher, used to feed all the neighborhood cats to rid the area of mice. As a zechus (merit),these cats have come back to sacrifice their lives for our holy lineage.

I'm not a big believer in stuff like this when people tell me but there truly is something about cats and my family. The main thing really is that if you're a cat, stray far far away. I do have sleepless nights wondering if someday, if we are not careful, they may issue a cat-wah against us.

We are finally coming to the real point of all this. I told my son that I was feeling very ill because of the cat-asstrophy. I apparently made a bit of the show of it to discourage him from playing with the cat. He took it to mean that I was seriously hurting. And out of the mouth of babes..."Dad, if you want to feel better, someone should dream about the cat and you'll be OK!"

That'sa my boy (Italian inflection)
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Triumph of Life

Rabbi Irving Greenberg, president of the Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation, gave an interesting lecture last night at Queens College. The topic was The Triumph of Life: Towards a Unified Theory of Judaism. His approach leaned towards the humanistic version of Judaism by showing how the stories and themes in the Bible point towards respect for human dignity with the ultimate goal of creating a better world (Tikun Olam).

I shall try to do justice to his well-presented lecture.

He began by stating that there are three main stories or themes that are central to Judaism which ultimately have one unifying idea. The themes are Creation, the Covenant, and Redemption.

The creation story teaches us that life isn’t purposeless, meaningless, or random. There is a Creator who has interest in our lives. Within the story of creation there is a threefold rhythm. The world moves from:
A. Chaos to order (big bang/universe formation)
B. Non-life to life (evolution)
C. Complexity that is manifest as increasing consciousness/will and thereby approaching god-likeness (Tzelem Elohim/image of God).

Tzelem Elohim (which is discussed in Sanhedrin 37a) is further broken down in a threefold manner. Being made in God’s image affords humans:
1. Infinite value to human life (Save a life, save the world).
2. Equality (racial, sexual, religious). No human is better than any other human just as if we were to imagine one theoretical image of God not being any better than any other likeness of ‘Him’ {Masculine. pronoun for simplicity sake and to be true to the sources, ancient Israel envisioned God as masculine. But, of course, our consciousness is raised to the point of not assigning gender to God – so says smoo}
3. Uniqueness. Just as God is unique, so too every human is unique.

The world we live is filled with social injustice and affronts to the dignity of beings created in God’s image. Sexism and racism are a quantitative denial of the dignity due to a Tzelem Elohim. Poverty is a rejection of the infinite value of human life (and all life for that matter). For pennies a day a child’s life can be saved with mosquito netting to protect them against malaria. Skimping on the cost for what should’ve been a double hull, allowed the Exxon Valdez ecological disaster to occur. Hunger is the rejection of human equality by forcing the hungry to resort to begging and dependence on others. Sickness, like a stroke, robs a man of his uniqueness. War kills infinitely valuable human beings.

This brings us to the third story, that of redemption (bypassing the second, for now). The goal of redemption is to overcome all the previously mentioned maladies (and more). The focus on redemption is for THIS world not the next. Tradition teaches that the world was intended to be perfect but it is our own task to work towards that end.

The way we get to that end is via the second story, that of the covenant. Redemption will not come about through miracles like rapture or by escaping this world (through ideas like Hinduism or Buddhism). It won’t happen through martyrdom and escape to the next world and it won’t happen if humans walk alone independent of God. It will happen through a partnership between God and humans. And in that covenant the underlying, unifying ideal is the commandment to choose life. Deuteronomy 30:15 says, “Behold, I have placed before you today life & good and death & evil.” There are no neutral acts in this world. There will be acts for good that will sustain life and evil acts that will drain life. We can choose healthy food, which will prolong our capacity for life or junk food, which can be detrimental. In our speech, we can respond in a positive affirming manner or in a degrading tone. Of the 613 commandments, 610 can be abrogated to save a life.

The final three are exceptions that prove the rule {at least to Rabbi Greenberg}.
1. If someone says you should kill John or you would be killed, the law is you should accept death. Whether you kill John or not, there will be one life lost but if you do the killing you have taken upon yourself the devaluation of life. A witness to your crime will learn from that. Should you refuse, you will affirm life and any person who hears the story should be inspired to affirm life as well.
2. Idolatry is taking something made by humans and making it absolute. The person knew the statue was made yet this person invokes that statue/god in order to control the world around him. This kind of control ends up leading to oppression. (I know, kind of weak. Can’t I just pretend by going through the motion? God knows where my heart is).

{LATER NOTE thanks to discussions with NJG: Perhaps the problem with idolatry at least from a modern viewpoint is that any social force especially one as influential as religion is, should not gain credence by accepting the use of violent coercion (threat of death) to gain adherents and control. By acquiescing, a person validates devaluing human life for the dissemination of ideology.}

3. Sexual perversion is destructive to the human psyche (like becoming obsessively focused on an act) and possible damaging to other peoples as well (some things are demeaning others devaluing). {I know, if no one is getting hurt, why get killed over this. I guess 611 out of 613 is unifying enough to prove the point that choosing life is most important.}

Tikun Olam (perfecting the world) is contagious. Start at a human pace, at home, then your community, then pan out. You start with your own poor first, and then expand to others and ultimately to all. Recognize that you are human and have flaws and failings but that should stop you from striving to do the best you can. The characters in the Bible were fallible as we are. They are truly human models trying their best, flaws and all.

We should recognize that we won’t accomplish this in our lifetime so we use the Mesorah (and the Mitzvah of Be fruitful) to pass on our increasingly evolving higher consciousness.

So choose life, mutual respect, dignity for all of God’s creation, and strive to make the world a better place. That is what Judaism is all about. That will be our redemption.

A Grave Situation

The first of my multitude of cousin’s has died suddenly of a heart attack. He was in his mid thirties, leaving behind a loving wife and two adopted Down Syndrome infants.

Baruch Da’ayan Emet

Pondering the inevitability of death and its often, sudden manifestation reminded me of something a young lady mentioned to me once. Tina and I were driving through her neighborhood for the first time and she pointed out to me many of its historic sites. One site in particular elicited more of a discussion than I would’ve imagined. That site was a very old graveyard. Apparently, there was a tour which she had availed herself of some time ago. She took notice of how many graves were of young women in their late teens and early twenties as well as many babies, infants and young children. Clearly, childbearing was a dangerous business back then. Even today it is fraught with risks but in the past without our technology, death and childbirth were joined at the hip.

I remarked how devastating the loss of a child would be for the mother. To my surprise, Tina proceeded to ‘enlighten’ me that death due to disease and complications of pregnancy was a common occurrence and thus it was accepted. She put it in terms that seemed to express that women of old had come to accept this as a natural consequence of life and as such had shielded themselves in preparation. Mentally, they resisted forming strong bonds with their infants in anticipation of disaster.

I was flabbergasted at Tina’s remarks. She has quite a few children of her own and I asked her how she felt the first instant she saw her first child. I recalled my own experience where I felt so incredibly linked and bonded with my daughter the moment I saw her. Did she not experience the same? She claimed she did but then maintained that in the past women had to shore themselves up to protect themselves against the pain of a very plausible loss. I prodded further stating emphatically that I believed that sentiment was contrary to human nature especially from a mother. I could entertain the thought that people prepared themselves for the harshness of reality and even accepted the inevitable but I could not and still cannot fathom such a level of detachment. From what I recall, all the pregnant (and post-partum) women I ever met were much more emotional about things rather than less. Tina refused to acquiesce and I obstinately maintained my disbelief.

And there the conversation ended dead in its tracks.