Getting There

In a week, I promised a person most dear to me that we would get together in NY.  She flies across America to enjoy a few days there.  I only have one specified day, a day trip not done for several years.  My transportation options are numerous.  Drive to and park in Manhattan.  Drive to a suburb that accesses either PATH or NJ Transit, park at the station, then enter Manhattan by regional rail.  Amtrak connects my city with Manhattan, though for a steep fare.  Bus options also exist from my city.  I could take regional rail to Philadelphia, then a bus with frequent departure and return times from there to Manhattan.  Or with senior discounts, I could take regional rail all the way from my town to Manhattan at a steep discount but parallel steep inconvenience.

My master teacher's imprint emerges.  John, of blessed memory, taught his fellows to list all possibilities that will solve a challenge, even the unrealistic ones.  From these, the best option emerges.  Since having surgeon remove a thyroid solves most thyroid conditions, that needed to be on John's sort through list, even if not accepted medical practice for the particular thyroid problem.  I approach transit in a similar manner.  The goal: visit the young lady I most want to see, getting there and back on the same day.

Considerations:

• Cost/Value
• Personal Effort
• Time Flexibility
• Logistics
• Foreseen Annoyances

It has been my good fortune to reach my Golden Years financially independent.  Even the most expensive of the options, round trip Amtrak for my wife and me, will not materially affect my personal financial position.  Their Senior Discount exists only nominally, though.  Getting to the train station and back is straightforward.  They have a parking garage across the street.  Downside other than cost, would be the schedules.  They don't run that often.  The commuter train to NYC has business travelers with expense accounts.  The extra $25 per ride is the cost of doing business at peak times, a pittance to what the traveler would be paid for doing his or her work.  Off-peak fare is less, but it delays my time with my guest.  Getting home would pose the same considerations.  On the up side, once en route I can basically relax next to my wife in a comfortable seat, occupying myself in any number of ways with what I can carry in my cross chest travel pouch.

Driving offers flexibility.  My wife would function as the passive passenger, amusing herself with crosswords or radio or chatting with me.  I have to pay attention to the road.  GPS has immensely simplified road trips.  I can deal with the highway, but the optimal exit that gets me to the NJ commuter train is not obvious.  I also have to deal with local roads once nearing my destination, find an unfamiliar parking lot, probably pay electronically, and walk to the commuter rail station.  By now I have some experience paying for parking at kiosks.  Costs include the hidden one, my gas tank filled the day before, usually about $30.  Turnpike tolls about $30 round-trip. Bridge toll home $6.  Parking estimates seem to be about $25.  Commuter rail across the Hudson River is nominal.  I could drive into Manhattan.  For my trouble, I would incur city driving, more expensive and less available parking, and a bridge toll.  Between hassle and expense, leaving the car in NJ seems the better option.

There are buses from my town.  A single bus line does not serve round trip at the times I would need to travel.  As a result, I would have to park in the garage near the Greyhound station in the morning then walk about ten minutes through some seedy blocks to get to the Rockleigh bus on time.  The bus lets passengers off in a difficult part of Manhattan.  However, I have taken this bus a few times.  It provides a pleasant ride.  For the return trip, which may approach dark on arrival home, I would have to take Greyhound which stops near where I park my car.  Fare, about $35 per ride.

Two other options that I would consider if traveling alone, though not with my wife and not with the need to meet a special person in NYC.  I have a Senior Rail pass that lets me ride to and within Philadelphia for free.  I could take that to Philadelphia, paying a nominal $2 parking fee at the rail terminal.  Then take the city bus or subway to the bus terminal, which would get me to NYC.  These buses leave frequently at mostly convenient times.  They seem to charge about $17 per ride.  There are downsides to safety and convenience.  I would have to time the commuter rail schedule to the bus departure schedule, leaving me enough time to get from train to intercity bus by SEPTA city transit.  The bus stops are now in different places skirting Center City, mostly places where crime poses a significant concern, particularly if returning after dark.  And I would need to make sure I get back to the commuter rail stop in time for the final train that brings me to my home station.  A suitable adventure for me, not suitable for an important day trip.

And for roughly the same price, I could use my free pass to Philadelphia, transfer to a line to NJ Transit in Trenton, which would no longer be free but not expensive, and then use a Senior Discount on NJ Transit to NYC.  I would have to get home.  Schedules are limited, but on the return trip I could take a bus to Philadelphia, taking advantage of their frequent departures, and complete my trip home by SEPTA.  That I do myself when I want to convince myself that I can do this.

At my son's college graduation, Mayor Bloomberg told the class to seek four elements in their personal initiatives, words that I put on my whiteboard the next day, where they have remained in my line of sight for 17 years.

1. Independence
2. Honesty
3. Accountability
4. Innovation

My travel options offer an expression of all of these.  My ability to sort out options.  A sense of what is suitable for one circumstance but not for all circumstances.  Responsibilities that I have for my wife's comfort and to spend time with my West Coast Visitor.  Setting priorities of safety, convenience, and value.  John z"l would be pleased with the ability to reason that he insisted I acquire.  For this trip, time with the people who count the most takes priority.  For another trip, traveling alone, my ability to explore something novel that I've not done before might become the overriding purpose.  I've not yet chosen my preferred travel option for this trip but I seem willing to spend a little extra for somebody else to operate the vehicles while my wife and I have a minimal hassle and optimal time with our special visitor.

My Rabbinical Druthers

 Shtai Rabanim lashevet b-ambatiyah.  v Rav rishon omer l Rav Sheni, yo chaver, la-havir et ha-sabon.  VRav Sheni omer lo sabon, radio.

My Ranking for Me:

1. No Rabbi
2. Rabbi from Toronto
3. Rabbi from Long Island
4. Rabbi from Staten Island

Ranking as an agent of AKSE to enhance its future, were I a consultant for AKSE instead of for Me:

1. Rabbi From Long Island
2. No Rabbi 
3. Rabbi from Toronto
4. Rabbi from Staten Island

Some intro to the analysis.  It comes as a broadcast invitation to members, not as a targeted interest in my mind in any way.  And my comments, as thoughtful and detailed as I can make them, come at a disadvantage.  Having spent an estimated forty years interviewing about fifteen patients a day, conversing with colleagues, serving on committees, reading feedback of all types, I am well aware of the disadvantage of delegating to others not of my own choosing the abiltiy to question people, shift directions of conversations based on responses, and functioning as an end consumer in lieu of being a direct participant.  Still, sometimes medical encounters can be brief but revealing.  And those forty years of experience came with exploration of documentary evidence, which overflows for patients and exists in a more limited form for rabbinical applicants and my own congregation.  So with those limitations, on to the reasoning for my choices.

Choosing what I think would give me the best Jewish experience that an AKSE affiliation can generate, I would opt for having no rabbi going forward.  Not leave the position vacant to defer filling it, but really having no rabbi.  Acting as an agent on behalf of other congregants, I'd put this option second, but not a distant second.  Ah, but any macher would tell you that having a designated Rabbi is mandatory, a form of Sacred Cow that can never be schected!  Actually not so.  We've already conducted the experiment.  In many ways, the absence of a Rabbi brought about some of the best of what we have among ourselves.  We have a better understanding of the need to broaden participation, announced by the congregational President to his YK audience.  Perhaps the most visible task of a Rabbi is a weekly sermon.  We now have people doing this who do it very well.  People take their turn studying, if only for a few hours to prepare a talk worthy of a college educated audience.  For me, those Hebrew School flashbacks and InterAliyah Sound Bites effectively disappeared.  When our Rabbi would recite silent prayers for a congregant unable to do this himself, that slack was quickly remedied.  Our Partnership Minyanim have new rules, generated internally by ourselves.  All in a few months.

And guess what, this isn't new.  For myself, and undoubtedly many others, my Jewish high point might have come too early in life, as a university student immersed with other university students.  We had a Hillel or contracted Rabbi for the Holy Days, as we did at AKSE this year.  Everything else happened because the worshippers themselves insisted it would happen.  That's been my more recent AKSE experience.  University Si, Hebrew School No.

But we also have to address that Sacred Cow element, which in some way AKSE has, though indirectly.  At the congregational web site there is a page of congregational history. http://akse.org/history/ What is striking to anyone who reads it, after the retirement of our revered Rabbi Emeritus, the person whose imprint defined who we have remained, his successors do not seem to be important enough to even be named in our narrative chronology.  Were we really Rabbi focused, their legacies would have been promoted as well.  It wasn't.  And one of my childhood congregations also functioned grass roots with learned volunteers.  They had a Mara DAtra, a Rabbi of international stature who was on the Yeshiva University Biology faculty, but no person designated to show up, give sermons, teach classes.  AKSE at its best is really member focused, much like our Hillel experiences of decades past.  We have done admirably without a Rabbi and can continue indifinitely, contracting for High Holy Days or have a resource when halachic questions need both discernment and finality, for which we would be expected to compensate the selected individual.

While it's better to explore ideas than people, we are ultimately choosing from a list, even if expanded to None of the Above.  While my own assessment makes a distinction between what I prefer for myself and my medical imprint of recommending what is better for somebody other than me, both need to be justified.  Don't know if there are right decisions.  There are likely wrong ones.  As a group, all three men can capably deliver a sermon, conduct liturgy, keep track of what page we are on and share that info with people present who cannot, and read an aliyah or more from the scroll, none of which really require a salaried Rabbi.  Not a good source of product differentiation.  I don't know how well any of them would do at conducting a funeral, selling Chametz, or speaking candidly to congregational Officers who challenge or irk them.  We probably all want our Chametz sold hassle free.  But as we learned from the recent Georgia run-off, sometimes we vote for the candidate who will be obedient without resistance when the big boys tell him to do something, sometimes we value independence more.  I'm for independence, though I would guess there are Congregational Influencers who place a higher value on obedience, which is part of the Scout Law, while candor is not.  And the Scouts begin with Trustworthy.

So if picking for myself, Aseh L'Cha Rav as Pirke Avot advises, the young man from Toronto is really the only one I connected to personally.  He has a nimble mind. I'm a sucker for a nimble mind.  Who else would take the name of our congregation and create a source sheet from it? When I listen to lectures by his mentor Rabbi Torczyner of Toronto, a prolific presenter on yutorah.org, he refers to source sheets which those in attendance can read.  My own presentations to AKSE Academy had source sheets.  Everything we try to convey needs a basis.  And finding that underpinning takes some exploration, even if it is our own congregational name.  His instinct to do this and the elegance in which he created this left me impressed, knowing how difficult and time consuming this can be.  He regarded us as important enough to give us something we would not think to do on our own.  So he's my first choice after make a go of it without a Rabbi.  And he himself has a long audio and visual presentation trail for anyone to access.

Now as an agent of the congregation I would have some reservations.  His background could be judged quirky.  His appearance too, with payos accentuated by crew cut largely covered up by his Frik Kippah.  I was perhaps taken aback by the reticence of those at mincha to interact with him as he presented, though his implicit invitation to do this is easily recognizable to all physicians whose learning is largely interactive.  He has no congregation that he has led before.  And his public trail offers no hint as to whether he will be willing to schect an AKSE Sacred Cow, or how he might either use the authority that the Rabbi has or abdicate it.  But I think he is the only one who really has the capacity to make AKSE sparkle, both internally and as a unique interface with the larger community.  But it's a roll of the dice.

The largest separation between what I would choose for myself and what I would select serving as a consultant or agent of the congregation involved the gentleman from Long Island.  He presented himself on shabbos morning professionally.  He read from the scroll capably, davened with proficiency that I would expect from his simultaneous cantorial education, gave a fine summary of Ki Tetze as a parsha that is dense in mitzvot, and chatted amiably at kiddush.  That's my read of the congregation, that safe scoop of vanilla.  A person who can complete the relentless pursuit of mediocrity, or at least get all the boxes in the formal contractual Job Description checked off,.  I doubt he will ever challenge what the baalebatim order him to do.  Not the real me, but most like my perception of the membership, thus the gradient in what I would choose for myself and what I would choose for the congregation if AKSE were my patient.

The documentary evidence, though, has a lot of red flags.   Comfort comes at a price, sometimes a very big price, if the congregational aspiration is to have a larger membership that is financially self-sustaining.

There is a web site for where the Rabbi currently serves.  The site is more notable for what is not there than what is.  The Rabbi's bio is a list of what degrees he has, not much more than a LinkedIn profile would offer.  What is not there is what he thinks about anything or aspires to for his community.  The site itself pretty much ends in 2016 in any description of what happens there.  Adult Ed, something to the core of what our Rabbi will need to do is "Under Construction".  My expectation of any congregation is that the rabbi be the focus of its mission.  There is a Mission Statement, one that looks outward to the community, participating in relatively perfunctory events like legal holidays and Hanukkah, but little in the way of internal Jewish development of its people.  My expectation is that a Rabbi who has that little presence in his own congregation would be super malleable with us, which I think is too malleable. And not having his presence on his congregation's central internal forum seems neglectful.  On the plus side, his congregational role for women exceeds what we offer.  If we seek to grow, he will not be an impediment to that, though probably not a great contributor either.

There is also an instagram link to a concert he attended as a representative of his congregation in 2021, but again makes no note of his comments to the gathering in his professional capacity.  He received an award for chaplaincy work on behalf of the Orthodox community.  No date, and interestingly, the link was on MapQuest.  And he sponsored a kiddush at a large O congregation in Manhattan for his son's Bar Mitzvah, bulletin dated 2015.

To perhaps put this in some perspective, if AKSE were to ask its VP Membership or Membership Committee to pick 20 members at random and perform Google and YouTube searches on all 20, they would likely learn quite a lot about those twenty people, what they do, what they like, where they affiliate Jewishly and communally.  Our candidate, while he made a favorable impression, never generated much in the way of achievement over an extended period of time.  Can he make AKSE grow?  Doubt it, but I don't think he will offend anyone already here either.  As a result I put him as the default choice if we really need to hire a Rabbi, though a reasonably predictable letdown for me personally.

The Rabbi from Staten Island takes 4th Place of 3, whether selecting for myself or selecting for AKSE's future.  His personal presence, which I experienced at Mincha, fell above threshold.  At his class he seemed less interactive than I would have expected, as the classic Jewish teaching is where one comments and somebody else, teacher or chevruta partner, challenges the comment.  That interaction did not occur in the mincha class or in some brief small talk.  To be fair, that is better assessed at an interview and I could see a candidate who may see himself as being on display wanting not to challenge anyone.  

Cyberspace documentation seems scanty, though not absent.  Much of it comes from his present congregation's web site.  Apparently they have 80 members, which may explain why their Rabbi has another source of income.

Now, with over 80 families in our congregation with new needs and new aspirations for the future, the leadership is once again dreaming and planning for new growth and new directions.

Their congregation also provides a history.  Been around since 1935, homeless for a while.  Their history description stops in the late 1960s.  Apparently their fashion of worship stagnated from there as well.  I do not know whether their membership ever peaked significantly, though the description of the multipurpose building constructed in that era suggests that it's fortunes once included more than 80 families.  But now they are dreaming and planning.

To his credit, the Rabbi makes a statement, reading in part:

What purpose does a traditional Conservative congregation like ours serve? It allows people who, for whatever reason, are not comfortable within the framework of an Orthodox synagogue to still observe in a traditional manner. It provides a setting for the teaching of Torah and traditional Jewish observance that a significant segment of the Jewish community is comfortable with and can accept. Our synagogue is not a compromise. It is an alternative that allows those who choose it to grow and live as Jews, in a way that other variations of congregational life do not.

I would challenge the size of that siginificant segment.  Their demographics and ours suggest that we may need to count more accurately.  Geez, at our own YK services right here, the Women's Section, labelled as such in block letters and set aside to maintain our own tradition was disrespected by our own choir who sat there during the breaks, but would not let the women sing with them. We seem to respect the gender separation as a default, and as the YK episode suggests, not always in the most consistent or respectful way.  https://richardplotzker.medium.com/you-shouldnt-sit-there-9ac90f98352e  This model of worship has been put to the test, and basically it failed demographically, something that reflects in his congregation and in ours, behaviorally if not ideologically.  That's pretty close to a disqualification in my mind, however capably he may personally perform from the bimah or classroom.  It's not where our future lies if the ability to expand beyond people not already here is authentically what the baalebatim aspire to.

There is some other documentation.  In his younger years 1987-1993 he served as Rav at a congregation in Upper Manhattan near the Cloisters, where a lot of people from Columbia P&S live.  That congregation has a few statements of their history, the decline they experienced and the turnaround that they achieved and that we aspire to;

Membership and finances both declined steeply during the 1980s and 1990s, as the generation following the one that founded and built FTJC moved away from the neighborhood. Then, in April 2007, the congregation voted to establish gender egalitarianism.

Our commitment to spirited Hebrew prayer and social inclusion has brought remarkable growth in the past few years. A large portion of the membership now consists of young, growing families whose important lifecycle events, from bris to bnai mitzvot, bring excitement to the whole congregation.

My read:  our candidate presided over the decline and impeded the reversal.  And did the same for the next thirty years.  Probably not a good direction for AKSE to accept.

On my whiteboard, placed within my line of sight to the left of my desk, I keep two lists on the right half.  The upper comes from a graduation speech given to my son's class by Mayor Bloomberg.  Hizzoner asked the graduates to seek Independence-Honesty-Accountability-Innovation.  My asseessment scored three out of four, having been excluded from any meaningful position of accountability by many a Nominating Committee, but the other three elements seem fulfilled.  Below that in Hebrew are the initiatives recommended by Rabbi Sid Schwarz of Clal, editor of Jewish Megatrends.  He advised seeking Wisdom, Righteousness, Community, Sanctity.  I score my comments 4/4

Essay Whiteboard

 

MY WHITEBOARD

Measuring 29 x 29 cm, my whiteboard has since its acquisition always held an honored place at my line of sight when I gaze left.  In my final office before retiring, it suspended by its upper enclosed metallic ring surrounding a red plastic push-pin on my corkboard.  I could see the whole square.  Now it attaches by parallel magnets to of the exterior of a four-drawer metal file cabinet to the left of my desk in My Space.  A goose-neck lamp clipped to my desk surface obscures the lower left corner.  This segment has no writing utility, being imprinted with Avandia in its logo green letters with an equilateral red triangle pointing down in the groove of the V of this once widely prescribed and heavily promoted thiazolidinedione, of blessed memory, a pill for insulin resistant diabetes.  If it lasts centuries, which it might due to its Avandia green plastic frame, archeologists can try to place its date in the late 20^th century but contemporary mavens of modern culture can assign it to an age when doctors like myself received a lot of medical kitsch, now about twenty years ago.  This promotional item retained its utility.  As a reminder to prescribe this drug by its brand name, it has long since lost its value.  As a reminder to register what I am about and what I need to pursue each day, it remains timeless.  The sage Kohelet of the Old Testament knew enough neuroscience to realize that “the wise man has eyes in his head.”  What we see, particularly when we take care to seek out the important, our visual focus creates our mental focus.

This treasured vertical flat surface with mostly unused clips and magnets for notes keeps me verbal.  I divided its surface into zones.  Its lower third has remained blank, a place for the empty clips and magnets, also made of pharmaceutical advertising.  There I deposited a single small paper with a security number that I will need to communicate with Social Security.  The upper two thirds contain meaningful writing.  On the right there are two four-word entries, the upper in English, the lower in Hebrew, each a different marker color for each word.  The summary of Mayor Bloomberg’s guidance to my son’s commencement class of 2008 won its place there the day after the ceremony.  It has not changed.  He advised the graduates to focus on their individual personal

·        Independence

·        Honesty

·        Accountability

·        Innovation

Some five years later while reading Rabbi Sidney Schwarz’ anthology Jewish Megatrends, I added the Rabbi’s four desired attributes, Hebrew on the board, translated here:

·        Wisdom

·        Righteousness

·        Community

·        Sanctity

There they have remained, thought about in some fashion most days.

In the center I added two insertions: a Hebrew DerechEretz which reminds me to remain courteous to all people whether they merit it or not, and a brief quotation from a TED Talk on writing: I remember the time when…  Ben Franklin advised remaining civil to all, enemies to none.  Since he did better than me, I need the reminder. We are the composite of our experiences, their contexts, how we responded to them at the time, how we allow those experiences to upgrade us.  Judaism in particular depends on memory. We remember Shabbat as Commandment #4.  We introduce Shabbat each Friday night with memory of Creation and of Exodus.  We all have those times when… We do not always allow those experiences to move us ahead, thus the daily reminder in my central vision. 

The left third of my whiteboard has a list of twelve initiatives that change at the end of every June and December.  What I want to accomplish, really intermediate goals that must remain coherent with the core values listed on the right third of the whiteboard, remains in my sight daily as I start nearly every day except the weekly Sabbath by deciding what activities would make for a good effort.  These are also color coded:

·        Red: Financial or Family Projects

·        Blue: My Living Space

·        Green: Projects filling my identity as a physician.  None for this half-year

·        Black: My personal development.  8 of 12 are listed with black marker this cycle

There is a theory that languages with vowels are read from left to right which puts their ideas into the analytical left hemisphere, while non-vowelized languages such as Hebrew are read from right to left, which forces us to form ideas from context as well as letters.  Our visual tracking puts this preferentially into our right cerebral hemispheres where we derive our emotional connections.  My whiteboard has a mixture, as does my formal and informal education.

Those are the mechanics that outline a blend of identity, principles, pursuits.  While I made a reasonably successful effort to stand aside from our American political fray, avoiding the temptation to demean anyone verbally, standing amidst our civil meltdown caught me as a victim along with everyone else.  I look at intersectionalities of political position more than I did just a few years ago.  Sometimes my opinion of people I don’t know defaults to disrespect, and not the amusing Rodney Dangerfield kind.  People have started to register in my mind by what they espouse, not the worthy efforts they might put forth.  With that framework, and not neglecting my own views which no doubt generate parallel poorly considered reactions, I went back to each item that puts my mind in perspective each day to assess how partisan each really is. 

My white board effectively divides left and right.  Unlike our political ideologies which are also labelled left and right figuratively, my left and right expressions are more literal.  On the left I have proposed actions, on the right and center, in two languages with different perspectives, I have abstract values that frame the daily tasks.  As much as people increasingly take a binary view of what they stand for, the daily pursuits, at least mine, have a consistent universality.  There is nothing partisan about nurturing a garden, visiting children, tracking expenses with the intent of better financial prudence, creating friendships, banding together with others in organizations where the target beneficiary is not self, maintaining health, or challenging my intellect.  However somebody else may imprint one of their labels or slogans to me, on most days we each do something because the effort generates joy, we take pride in our families with the expectation of forthcoming nachas, we know what our doctors think we ought to be doing and try to comply, and do our best to generate the funds we need for our responsibilities or aspirations.  Partisanship rarely arises from this task column, for me translated each evening into specific desired tasks to pursue the following day. For every troll who takes a written poke at me on our increasingly toxic social media, there is a more stoic person, sometimes marking with a red cap what is beneath that red cap, taking care of his home, acting in a courteous manner in the workplace to people he will slander with his computer later that evening, walking on a treadmill, or planning a vacation to a state whose citizens vote differently.

Those right and center placements on my white board, things that have resisted any modification from the time they were first written more than a decade previously, reflect more indelible and highly particular imprints.  Independence means no temptation will get me to blithely slogan somebody when I should be using my higher centers to assess circumstances.  That’s important to me, not at all essential to others who are more inclined to never challenge their nearest person of title.  Does it segregate by other elements of partisan ideology?  I think it does.  Mayor Bloomberg advised the graduates honesty.  I think the commitment to something like that really isn’t generated at University commencement, though.  Honor systems abound in schools and in the workplace.  Violations are few, but not so rare that they never occur.  And while people tend to maintain stage 1 of an Honor System by not cheating, we don’t do as well with stage 2 that requires reporting of cheaters.  Our political divide does not seem at all equal in willingness to come down on wrongdoers in their midst.  But with whatever tribe you select for yourself trust remains highly valued, and not particularly ideological.  We assume our credit cards will debit only what we authorize, our doctors will have our best interests in the advice we receive, other drivers will not abuse the orderly flow of traffic.  Yet, our tolerance for violators of honest does have its element of political intersectionality.  Accountability may differ as well.  Much of our public discourse has focused on blaming the opposition and scoring points with the faithful when that happens.  That negates accountability.  And I think the two partisan poles are highly unequal.  Willingness to exploit people’s vulnerabilities has its intersectionality.  Trustworthiness is one of the most fundamental of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People that captured more than a few paragraphs by Dr. Stephen Covey in his landmark best seller. In many, trustworthiness portends success far more reliably than a degree from charm school, which may be why one group of voters seems more professionally accomplished in their distribution than the other.  And Mayor Bloomberg cited Innovation.  The challenge of college was to share common sets of facts but move in different directions from them.  The great innovative enterprises and the people who devote their efforts to advancing them are simply not uniformly distributed across America. 

The values that I wrote on the whiteboard in Hebrew have similar divides.  Chochmah, or wisdom, cannot be obtained while screeching slogans.  Tzedek, or righteousness, poses more of a challenge.  I think when a natural disaster occurs someplace in the world, people of all backgrounds offer their assistance, whether by personal relief efforts or generous contribution.  What differs, though, seems to be the assessment of the recipient.  We all help.   We don’t all help because the recipient is our equal.  I think that’s where the intersectionality of righteousness plays out.  It plays out more starkly in the willingness to harm somebody.  Most of us won’t.  In the early days of Facebook, as my high school chums reassembled to give updates on the forty years since graduation, most of us had families and a measure of prosperity.  One highly accomplished classmate introduced us in cyberspace to his gay partner, subsequently formalized to his spouse when that became his legal option.  This fellow had a very distinguished creative career, appearing in the final credits of many TV shows that I watched.  We go back to Cub Scouts, where his mother, now in her 90s, volunteered as Den Mother.  I had no reason to consider one way or the other whether he was gay.  His partnership approximated my marriage in duration.  Would I ever do anything that would hurt my friend?  Not a chance.  Would I resist somebody with fewer Gifts from God demeaning him in any way?  For sure.  That’s Tzedek.  We strive for it in large part because it is not set as a universal priority. 

Kehillah or Community often has a mixed message.  Some loners such as Burt Shavitz, the Burt of Burt’s Bees, valued his solitude yet became an icon of non-materialistic purity.  More commonly, though, we encounter people who either lack community or latch onto one devoid of personal contact through cyberspace.  Mass shootings tend to come from lone wolves, at least in America.  Misplaced but very real community can go awry as well.  As Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks noted in an essay in response to a British election, “Anti-Semitism, or any hate, becomes dangerous in any society when three things happen: when it moves from the fringes of politics to a mainstream party and its leadership; when the party sees that its popularity with the general public is not harmed thereby; and when those who stand up and protest are vilified and abused for doing so.”  Community shares purpose, though not always benevolence.  Moreover, community is continually being repackaged, a fluid arrangement of associations in which people frequently change their geography, employers, political affiliations, preferred places of worship, and numerous other shifts in loyalty.  Absence of community, as Judaism teaches, is dangerous in its own right, but people banding together does not by itself generate either cohesion or stability.

Kadusha or Sanctity forms the basis for inner peace.  Unlike pornography which one of our Justices knew when he saw it, we appreciate holiness more viscerally when violated.  For most of the past three millennia, religious codes have carried this banner and still do, though in a very fractious way and with enormous inconsistency over extended times.  Certainly, evil has not been eradicated even when a universal consensus largely agrees on not murdering or stealing.  Dualism abounds with stated positions that seem irreconcilable from one sacred text to another.  Historically we have schisms within a religion, creation of new religions, definable sects within large faith umbrellas, and defined behavioral obligations within each group.  Things that I would regard as deplorable serve as behavioral mandates to others.  That leaves this value at best minimalist.  Don’t harm somebody when they are vulnerable, or in Torah terms, “You shall not curse a deaf man, nor place a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall revere your God; I am the Lord.”  [Lev 19:14] While the literal divine imprint to the commandment offers universality and permanence, I think most atheists would not take a different view.  There are, however, moral challenges that divide by tribe.  I can easily convince myself that my view of Wisdom is superior to an internet troll’s view of Wisdom. I cannot really say with equal certainty the divisive questions of when life begins, what damage have people done to Mother Earth, or even when doing something expedient is a better option than doing something because it is right.  There are no shortage of clergy or demagogues who have their own shows on Cable TV that have more certainty than me, though I clearly do not share either their espoused desire to act or their certainty.  Socrates lives on in spirit for exposing these uncertainties to sanctity without exploiting them as so many public figures generate their followers by doing.  Kadusha depends on living with the uncertainty but remaining consistent.  As I write my daily goals for the following day, none can undermine my concept of holiness.  Yet I have to accept that some pretty dastardly initiatives fall within other’s version of what their God or other deities, literal and figurative, expect of them.

So, there’s my visible daily guide hanging to my left on a white board with color coded prompts, the left column what I do, the right column what I believe that forms the foundation of what I strive to do.  The actions of promoting various levels of performance and responsibility have a very universal consensus that does not get mired in the ideologies which are more fractious.  Yet it is those very personal and particular foundational doctrines that generate each semi-annual goal. On the left, shared interests in family, learning, money, and recreation.  On the right, sometimes putting on armor to defend core tenets of myself and often my tribe, sometimes making a truce with others of different driving principles and affiliations who still generate their goals in ways that complement mine. 

 

 

taking charge of my tzedakah obligation

https://www.yutorah.org/sidebar/lecture.cfm/945434/rabbi-mordechai-torczyner/running-tzedakah-like-a-business/

yutorah.org has a plethora of stimulating lectures that keep my mind sharp past retirement.  There's a category called machshava, or thinking, that I like as well as history.  Over the years of listening to these podcasts, a few teachers stand out.  Talks that approximate one I might have attended in college attract me most, those that recall Hebrew School get turned off quickly.  Rarely do I feel personally involved.  Often I think of some type of question, which suggests I am really listening.

This one on Tzedakah connected personally, more than most, since I made a transition in fulfilling this mitzvah about 25 years ago.  I had wondered for a long time if I was right, particularly when prompted by a personally adverse Jewish communal experience, yet had never run my decision by any Rabbinic authority just assuming they are more attached to their agenda than to researching the principles of tzedakah to match how my approach conformed with traditional interpretations of our Sages or ran afoul of them.  Rabbi Torczyner, a prolific yutorah.org lecturer with attention to source detail, gave cyberspace with me in it the overview that I lacked the skill to seek on my own and the trust to appoint an agent to research what I had done.

Some background.  I remain observant despite taking a few lumps from leadership, a member of the synagogue, a refugee from a previous synagogue and for the most part a defector from Jewish communal activities.  As Mayor Bloomberg advised the graduates at my son's commencement, I have made my best attempt to promote my own INDEPENDENCE/HONESTY/ACCOUNTABILITY/INNOVATION.  In fact most of these require little special attention on my part, though at the price of kehillah sometimes.  I have lived in my community for about 40 years, not exactly wandering in a Jewish desert or seeking some other setting.  Like most mammals, I seek food, protection from predators, and a commitment to reproducing.  Ordinarily that herd provides protection but for some it is the source of one member imposing dominance on another.  I was not alpha.  I also eventually found myself in the anti-herd situation of having to protect offspring.  Not having too many herds around, I divested myself of the ones with the most predatory machers.  I could be useful at times, an irritant at times, but never unconditionally valuable.  There are other people to whom I could be unconditionally valuable.

Uneasy relations go back a long way.  As a bar mitzvah era camper at an esteemed Jewish summer camp, the head counselor assembled our group the day before departure.  He noted in his remarks that about 10 kids had gotten too homesick to stay.  Among his remarks were that those people were not the caliber of person this camp and the Jewish institution it represents really seek.  There was something inferior about them, some impediment to their being groomed as future leaders of his Movement.  I didn't want to return the next year, not experiencing anything close to an Ace summer,  and told our Rabbi who had a lot of his professional training invested in that camp.  I became inferior too, convenient when Torah needed to be chanted at shabbos mincha but somebody whose loyalty to his Movement was not absolute.  University participation in Jewish life was voluntary.  Since nobody had expectations or an enduring agenda, whatever I opted to do met with Hakras haTov, something not captured since.  It may be the only ongoing stretch that nobody of title berated me for resisting what they thought was their due, my fulfilling my part of their mission.

My medical degree opened many doors.  It also generated some perceptions, not always true.  Being in a new community, Jewish, a skilled bimah participant at my new shul from the outset, and a young person whose income could only rise and whose ability to pay day school tuition for future offspring at their day school would reinforce their agencies brought more invitations than I was used to.  Camp revisited:  we want you here because of what you can bring us.  We just have to show you the Federation Way.  So I started going to meetings which sounded a lot like what the head counselor, who by then had become a Seminary Dean, imparted.  They were the umbrella organization.  No challenge on my part to how that benefits a community.  Every Jewish community of any size since the Middle Ages has had elders dispersing alms or stabilizing institutions.  Help us raise funds at the next phone bank session.  OK.  They gave the two dozen of us best and brightest a script which sounded too much like a shakedown of people I didn't know to actually read, and felt the same way.  I substituted my more dignified approach, that which the person who called me the previous winter had used.  If somebody offers me $100, my inclination is to thank them.  The script said not to, ask for $150 instead.  They called husbands and wives separately.  I got to call the husbands.  I had a joint account, not a very full one, and my wife and I share the big expenses.  I am not about to give a large amount knowing that she might be shamed into giving more than we should.  As I called with no interest other than being a dutiful agent for a worthy project, I got quite an earful for resentment.  And they told us younguns, never offer to send anyone their pledge card.  When they called me the next year, I asked for my pledge card and got a lot of resistance from a very experienced participant.  My lack of specific amount would impair their planning, he told me.  I responded, then put me down for zero.  The Federation will get more than that from me if they send the card so they can do even more than was planned.  He really did not want to write zero on the card, so he sent it and I mailed off a check.  Of our two dozen high prospects, attrition was high.  By the time I waved soyonara fifteen years later, my original cohort depleted to a couple of pushy attorneys who fit in a lot better than the docs and engineers.  I guess they are imprinted to see challenges as opportunities for negotiation.  I saw the experience as one more manipulation in the name of Jewish leadership.

Opting out of this aspect of communal Judaism does not negate my obligation to help the poor and sustain institutions.  I replaced this with a more business-like approach to tzedakah, one with more purpose than being amid the herd.  I took the sum that I had donated to the umbrella, added 50% and divided six ways.  On the 20th of every even numbered month, I would send a check along with a card or note expressing thanks to the special mission of each agency, sometimes with a Hebrew citation of why their work sustains Judaism.  My first check went to a Camp for special needs Jewish children who, like my own son, found themselves outliers.  That first year, I got four phone calls from agency heads thanking me for my good wishes and usually a hand written note added to the acknowledgement letter.   As the years went on, my prosperity advanced so the frequency of checks rose to every month and the amount increased, so that the annual donation became several times what I would have considered giving to a communal umbrella that made me uneasy.  Donating became a form of kevah, setting a time.  It also became a time of exploration.  No agency's fortunes depend on whether I give that year so from the outset I began exploring what is out there to support.  Some agencies are large and impact on how we all live as Jews.  The local Family Service gets the January donation each year, since rescuing the needing of our county has tzedakah priority over everything else.  Children of Entitlement at our day school, a place that gave me more tzuris than any other affiliate agency when my outlier son came knocking, have other means of support.  I like universities and museums, some relatively obscure.  Friends of the IDF shows appreciation to young people on a difficult and dangerous mission, not always voluntarily.  It is my obligation to offer them some assistance.

As time went on, checks and notes became less efficient ways of collecting, perhaps adding to overhead that detracts from what can go to beneficiaries.  The notes from the directors to my note all but stopped as money collection became more mechanized.  This year for the first time I yielded and went electronic.  The agency heads will no longer have their Hakaras HaTov  from me, only their funds.  They will just have to assume my personal esteem for the good they do continues tacitly.

So how did I do?  Not bad according to the principles sourced in Rabbi Torczyner's presentation.  Better to give a lot of small disbursements rather than one big one.  There are coins for the pushkas at minyan, emptying loose change from my pocket into my home tzedakah box, various fundraisers that crop up.  It's better than a big pledge on Super Sunday and the Yom Kippur Appeal at shul.  Every month has a 20th day.  I have to think about what must be the best destination for that month's donation and what about that recipient adds to the mosaic of Judaism that we need to sustain.  Bypassing the umbrella has its own merit, though in retrospect it might have been preferable to depart for opportunity rather than resentment.  On the other hand, we have contemporary Judaism because participation has to be repackaged periodically, whether replacing a central Temple with scattered synagogues, allowing the Hasidic tzadikim to supply a spirit that was previously inadequate, and rethinking the roles of women.  These days we have our Jewish None's, including a fair amount of leadership generated attrition.  Our head counselor could not have been more in error.  Those who were disappointed by his camp were not inferior, nor are the millenials defecting now.

Finally, the sources presented hinted that tzedakah needs to be businesslike in its efficiency and predictability but not at the expense of personal attachment.  That matters a lot more than the size of the checks.  Not at all the message I got from my high potential Young Leadership invitation nearly forty years back.  The decades seem to have confirmed the error of that message and what might have generated more committed enthusiasm among some really talented people.

Tidying Adventure

Fads never attracted me much.  I never owned a betamax or an 8-track player.  My clothing, other than a few skinny ties along the way, never goes out of style.  My hashkafa of independence, honesty, accountability, and innovation, imported from Mayor Bloomberg's address at my son's college commencement, has a measure of eternity, one that is being challenged in current public discourse but I remain steadfast, as apparently does Hizzoner the Mayor.  It remains to be seen whether social media is also a fad, one that I latched onto, but I gave up Sermo with limited rationing and am in the process of ditto with Facebook.

Keeping neat and tidy is not a fad, one that has posed a chronic struggle.  It is unclear if my mind is organized but even if not, I can retrieve what I need from it easily.  Not quite so with the rooms of my house.  I designated one as my retreat, a six month project to create, one well under way.  Doing this requires the assistance of our bi-weekly recycling pickup and monthly state shredding service.  I am still committed to doing this, with real progress.  I can now sit at my desk, turn on lights, walk to the window and see space in the two closets.  Missing brackets to hold the variable position bookshelves have been replaced, allowing more books on the shelves and fewer in boxes on the floor.



I brought in an organizer who took one look, told me I am not ready for an organizer but could be a contestant on one of those Clean House TV reality shows.  The latest craze in organizing has been Marie Kondo, popularized by a Netflix TV series to which I do not have access and by books that I assume she wrote herself.  She takes a different hashkafa.  Instead of doing one room at a time, which invites relocation of clutter, she organizes by type of unneeded possessions.  It is her strong recommendation to do clothing first, all rooms that have clothing, which for me would be bedroom, daughter's room, study, kitchen, the two halls, living room, and if there is stuff in the washer/dryer then laundry room too.  Agree with her that I am not attached to most of my clothing.  However the barrier to my goal of having a retreat is paper and space in that room.  Relocating the paper fulfills the goal even if it adds clutter someplace else.

What to keep makes this a fad.  She advises keep stuff that speaks favorably to you.  Stuff does not have emotional content.  I have emotional content.  Stuff is utility and convenience.  Occasionally it is value, but unless you are important enough to warrant a museum in your honor, your high school term papers still in their cover with red marks from an equally obscure teacher just won't bring a lot at auction or estate sale.  The value if any is emotional, the work that went into creating that object, writing that paper, the memory of a special time which a tangible acquisition would be intended to preserve.  I find it much harder to let go of that.  A lot of memories and work accrue by the time you reach your 60's.  However, if I really want My Space, the number of surfaces and cubic feet of the room is finite.  It needs to be a place that I will seek out. 

Marie Kondo method, no.  Biweekly recycling bin, big time.