Thanksgiving Table

Two weeks should enable a notable holiday.  While American in origin and practice, a Jewish element also has its place.  Rabbis in America, maybe elsewhere, debated whether turkey qualified as a Kosher bird.  It did, though I do not understand the uncertainties.  Then could Jews adopt the day as special?  It was not of pagan or idolatrous origin.  We did.  Its placement on Thursday also has a convenience.  Torah is read Thursday mornings.  In the era of automobiles, driving is prohibited on shabbos.  Many families arrange Bar Mitzvah celebrations on Thanksgiving, and now the Monday legal holidays, so that guests who would not be able to drive to the synagogue on Shabbos can attend on a weekday.  Having those days free from work also facilitates travel.  Moreover, appreciation, called Hakaras HaTov, recognition of The Good, unites Thanksgiving with a core Jewish value.

It has long been a demarcation holiday for me.  As the one who took medical call every Christmas to enable my colleagues some special time with their families, I could guarantee having Thanksgiving with my family. Once established as a kitchen maven, I could create a meal, part traditional, part surprise, that the others could not duplicate.

Now, we are empty nesters with minimal surviving family or at least readily accessible family. I anticipate only three or four at my table—three or four special people with their own preferences and idiosyncrasies.  Something special for them elevates them and challenges me.

As with most elegant kitchen intentions, I made a grid, this with twelve boxes instead of my more typical nine.

1. Motzi
2. Appetizer
3. Soup
4. Salad
5. Dressing
6. Turkey
7. Stuffing
8. Sweet Potatoes
9. Cranberry
10. Vegetable
11. Dessert
12. Beverage

I bake a bread at home.  I have my favorites.  Last year I made bialys.  This year, something in a loaf.

Appetizers challenge me.  An elegant one last year with beets, herring, and potatoes.  Simpler in presentation this year, though not necessarily in execution.  Soup and appetizer at the same meal, I rarely do.  But Thanksgiving warrants a special effort.  There are many options.  Traditional like mushroom-barley.  Seasonal like butternut squash.  Ethnic like harira.  I serve it with some elegance in a white tureen with porcelain ladle.  Salad tends to be simple.  Sometimes green, sometimes Israeli.  I gravitate to marinated salads like cucumber with red onion.  The dressing is usually incorporated into the salad recipe except for the green salad where I make the right amount of herbed vinaigrette.  Turkey depends on attendance.  For just a few, a half-turkey breast works well.  Olive oil, seasonings, roast 90 minutes, slice with an electric knife after resting.  It yields enough for me to give some to a guest for Shabbos and have some left for me the following night.  Stuffing I vary each year, though always with a basic foundation.  I find commercial stuffing cubes overpriced.  Instead, I cube my own bread, dry it in an oven, and assemble it with other ingredients.  Often I make it in a crock pot, as my oven has competition from other courses.  I've not yet tried the Instapot.  Sweet potatoes, cranberries, and apples appear in some form, either stand-alone or incorporated into something else.  Cranberry sauce with a citrus additive is simple to make.  Since it is served cold, I can make it on Wednesday, then refrigerate it.  I don't focus a lot on vegetables.  I happen to like beets, but few others share the fondness.  Easy to roast, goes well with everything else, adds unique color.  I might consider squash.  And there's green stuff:  broccoli, asparagus, haricots vert.  Cauliflower looks too pale on the plate.  Orange like carrots, my most common side vegetable, gets overwhelmed by the sweet potatoes.  Visual appeal matters here.

Desserts usually appear as a cake.  Polish apple cake is pareve.  I have recipes for puff pastry apple strudel.  Baklava is always among my favorites, though phyllo expensive and the process too tedious for other meal tasks.  

I am the only one who likes beer, but for Thanksgiving there are better options.  Many families splurge a bit on wine.  My guests shy away from alcohol.  Sparkling cider seems a compromise with something my guests would probably not buy for themselves.

There is food, and there is experience, both for me and for my guests.  Choosing them is straightforward.  Getting non-drivers to my home takes some planning, effort, and patience.  Elegance gets incorporated in different ways.  I have fine china but don't use it.  Instead, I set the table with ordinary fleishig dishes and utensils.  Bread on a tray, sliced with a serrated knife.  Appetizer on small plates.  Soup served in tureen, ladled into bowls. Salad onto the main plate, in an elegant bowl, served with either silver or wooden sets.  Turkey on a platter.  Stuffing in a bowl.  Sides in appealing bowls, plate or dishes.  Cake on a platter, served on dessert plates with dessert forks.  Stemmed goblets for the beverage.  Tea cups with saucers.  And energy reserved for the following day to wash the dishes and create a Friday night meal suitable for shabbos. 

Always worth the effort.  Planning, executing, concluding.  Many steps.  Me at my very best most of the time.

Did Nothing

Snow shoveling left me sore.  Two days this past week, spread over three sessions.  One effort to clear the small ridge deposited by the street plow.  Not a lot of snow, as much pushing as lifting.  But maybe not something a senior citizen should be doing, even if paced.  I gave myself credit for an exercise session in lieu of the scheduled treadmill.  

The following day, a Sunday, treadmill hiatus day, I took off.  Not catch-up.  Idle.  As every Sunday morning, I mapped out my week, a very long list of activities I aspire to tackling.  Then a much shorter list of activities for Sunday, most doable at my upstairs desk in My Space.  I did next to none of these.  Washed milchig dishes.  Retrieved the Sunday paper from the driveway to the front door for my wife. Descaled the Keurig Express-Mini as the guy on YouTube recited the instructions.  Made an Aunt Jemima or less offensive new brand pancake for breakfast.  More coffee.  Filled my weekly medication cases, AM and PM.

Over the course of the day, I had done no mental activities other than some easy crosswords and responding to some r/Judaism inquiries on Reddit, including as abrasive response on adverse day school assessments which pampered my id in some way.  No housework other than washing milchig dishes.  No Twitter.  No significant meal preparation.  No quest for my highest level of amusement.  No pursuit of my semi-Annual goals, though I did consider places I might like to travel for the OLLI intercession.  No exchanges with old friends.  Not a whole lot that anyone would judge trying to get ahead. 

By mid-afternoon, I felt a little bored so I got in the car, intending roughly the same circuit I would take during the height of the pandemic when all I could do to get away was drive somewhere.  This time I stopped at a department store.  Strolled the upper floor where they have the non-clothing items, with no serious interest in acquiring more stuff.  A half-lap of that floor got me to the escalator.  Despite my herb pots being indoors due to a freeze, newly placed lurid patterned men's swim trunks at premium prices had been placed at the base of the escalator on the first floor.  I guess people are preparing for their cruise or week in the Caribbean.  I'm not.  No tour of the rest of the clothing floor, just a straight path back to my car.

Home in time for NFL Divisional games.  I didn't really want to watch any whole games, just the final quarters.  First game late afternoon, second game after supper.  No particular interest in supper.

I keep two logs that I fill out each evening except Shabbos.  One is a record of Daily Annoyance.  Not doing anything of significance is a good way to not having any personal calamity, though I did slip on the ice sheet outside my front door.  No fall, no injury, but recorded in the log.  The second journal was titled Hakaras HaTov, or Gratitude for Good Things that day.  It really turned out more to a record of three things worthwhile that I achieve each day.  Being purposefully idle, I found it hard to come up with three, but on reflection:

1. I ate a proper breakfast and lunch
2. My remarks of r/Judaism satisfied my id and were helpful to others
3. I arose from bed when the clock said to even if I didn't really want to=

There's always at least three.  The sun always goes down at the time the astronomers predict.  I read my current e-book, three chapters of a classic borrowed from the Hoopla Service offered by the public library.  I do not know when it will have its auto-return.  And watched the score of the Division Playoff on my smartphone.  

After supper, I always outline the following day, which I proceeded to do.  Having done nothing of substance, largely by intent, all Sunday, Monday would have to be a lot different.  Activities to pursue filled three columns.  Some element of my twelve semi-annual projects appears somewhere on this very long to-do list.  It is the day I weigh myself and take a waist circumference.  I have fleishig dishes from shabbos to wash.  It's a scheduled treadmill and stretch day.  Time of the month for financial record keeping.  And some future projects that have deadlines.  The very opposite of my idle day.  And more forced than motivated activity.  I cannot really say my Sunday downtime left me restored for Monday. 

Yet I needed this respite, one day in which I created a Daily Task List as usual but did not get concerned about letting it sit mostly untapped to the right of my laptop while I escaped for one day.

Following a Productive Day

Yesterday brought more than average focus with more than an average number of check marks on my daily list of what I actually did.  Most tasks recur before long, many even the following day.  Exercise or sleep hygiene never reach a conclusion but a few things do.  I completed my assigned audiobook and Jewish themed work, a not very imaginative biography of Menachem Begin read by a narrator who did not work on pronunciation of foreign words in advance.  My weekly New England Journal quota of two articles has been completed, though there is no reason for not reading another.  BP taken, treadmill done.  Weight and Waist Circumference recorded for the week.  Fleishig dishes done and not to return until after next shabbos.  Went to Trader Joe's so no more supermarket forays this week.  Antagonized a few FB friends and their friends whose political hashkafas are more rigid than mine.  Edited a chapter of a manuscript for a close friend and offered what I hope will be helpful revisions.  Commented on a KevinMD essay and got a response from the author.  Registered for a seminar later in the week.  Did some writing of my own, though not as polished or focused as I had hoped.  It was a productive day, which I'm disappointed to acknowledge today brought me less satisfaction than I had hoped.

I never achieved flow, except maybe when editing and commenting on the manuscript.  I didn't upgrade my house in any way.  Supper satisfied, though prepared by my wife so I had no effort other than to choose and buy the main course from Trader Joe's freezer.

A number of years ago, I began a project of writing at the end of each day five things that went well into a marble notebook, a form of hakaras hatov, or appreciation of the good.  In hopes of finding my effort more satisfying, I've reconstructed a smaller variant.  three things and written on the back of my task list from that morning.  It's easy to get three.

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.

Annual Donations

When I told the Federation solicitor to put me on their Do Not Call list for cause in 1995, it was not my intent to separate myself from the community, only to redefine what the community obligations entail.  In the ensuing years, until last year, each month I would write a check to a component of the Jewish communal labyrinth with a note of appreciation for the efforts of their staff and volunteers on the importance of the work that they do.  I would never fall seriously behind on the donations until last year when I procrastinated this task until the fall.  This year I find myself having given bupkis as we enter December, neglecting both my need to be supportive and my need to express hakaras ha-tov for the good work all these people do.  While it is mandatory that I share my good fortune to assist with beneficial projects and remain within the Jewish communal undertone, I'm also a little more separated as the Pew Research study suggests.  As my fondness for my synagogue experience becomes more marginal, it takes other components of Jewish connection with it.  I read books, I make a concerted effort to study Torah and write about Jewish subjects and the Jewish experience, but as I transition from participant to observer I seem less driven to make this communal network, more than 100 years in creation, live on in perpetuity.

That said, these twelve monthly contributions and notes of appreciation plus a little extra for WashU Hillel and Mesorah Heritage Foundation will be in the mail by shabbos.

Donations

Being more prosperous this year than in the past, I opted to increase the amount of my monthly Jewish donations by about a third each.  Prosperity comes at a price, meaning work, fatigue, and some lack of control over my schedule so as we approach the end of the calendar year, what used to be a monthly contribution to some worthy organization had atrophied to two checks written to unique institutions that are on my perennial list.  On returning from vacation, I took out my checkbook and some note cards sent to my by organizations that thought they might get a contribution in return and started began consolidating a very fulfilling project spread over the year into two days.

Of all my private accomplishments, restructuring my approach to Tzedakah gives me the most satisfaction.  My current mechanism now approaches nineteen years but its origins trace to my early days in Delaware, some thirty years, or half my life.  There is no question that Judaism requires generosity, sharing a portion of what is earned or even not earned, as the mandatory half-shekel per person was still required of the poorest among the population.  As an intern, I was subpoenaed to court as an expert witness by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for having taken care of a star witness in murder trial.  As a surprise, the court gave me a $25 check for my testimony, which I tried to give back since my hospital contract specified no outside income for my first year.  The chief recommended I have a nice dinner for my legal ordeal.  Instead I deposited the check and wrote another to the Hillel Foundation of St. Louis which now receives my single largest contribution each year.  Hakaras HaTov remains a core value as well.

While Jewish agencies do valuable work and the people who dedicate themselves to it merit a measure of credit, organizationally they often do not comport themselves in the best way, and for many probably should not have Jewish as the first word in their banner.  It did not take long for the local Federation to get my telephone number and ask for money.  The first solicitation was from a friend, perfectly dignified and honest.  When we spoke about amount, it was far in excess of what I was prepared to give so I offered what seemed more within my means.  He thanked me, did not bargain over amount, and I sent a check for my pledge.  The following year, a new Executive Director arrived, setting up a Young Leadership division to which my wife and I were invited.  It did not take more than a couple of orientation meetings and presentations to realize that the people were much more interested in my professional title and the income it would be expected to bring over time than they were in the intellect that brought it about or any ideas and talents of Judaism that my wife and I or anyone else in the program might possess.  And the machers there were the machers of my synagogue who before long would swoop down and run a Rabbi who I admired out of town.  As part of the program the participants were expected to man the telephones on SuperSunday, the day volunteers go to the phone banks and ask members of the community who are not prima fascie megadonors for their annual pledge.  As novices we were given a card with what they gave last year, a script to read that asked for considerably more than they gave last year, and how to bargain for something in the middle if they balked at the suggested amount.  I put the script aside, following instead the format of the friend who had solicited me the year before.  I knew these people would give something, usually about what they usually give.  I said thank you immediately and made no suggestion of amounts.  When another member of the program called me, the solicitor read from the script.  I found it just as offensive to hear as I would have expected from reading it, told him so and asked him to send me my pledge card, something the trainers said to make every effort to resist.

First impressions count and these guys did not endear themselves to me.  They separated husband and wife, asking each independently for pledges rather than as a family, even though finances are often bundled, including in the script why each has to give as an individual rather than a family if anyone being solicited desired a single family pledge.  As a physician, I got invited to non-kosher brunches with no kosher option at McMansions where en route the police track my car as one not belonging in that neighborhood.  Certificates were distributed to physicians whose only serious connection to Judaism was their income, though I suppose in a religion where one's actions take priority over what one thinks, their generosity is to be properly acknowledged irrespective of background or motivation.  So this remained my own forum for tzedakah, along with they synagogue for fourteen years.  I received a call each year, declined to pledge a specific amount over the phone but promised to send a check after I receive my pledge card which I did promptly.  Some took exception at not knowing the amount but I stood firm.  They can record it as zero if they really needed to know for planning purposes, then when the check arrives they will have a little extra.  While I did not particularly like this organization, its Executive Director became a personal friend from synagogue.  He meant well and eventually insisted that the solicitation be less of a shakedown of small donors.  The real money comes from the machers.  The good will of the public should not be jeopardized over attempts to get another $50 a year from people who already thought they were being fair to the community.  While I long since divested myself of Young Leadership, where attrition was expectedly high, and I often held the movers & shakers in private contempt, I also knew that social agencies needed support, there has to be an Jewish educational system in the community, there are many overseas needs in Israel and the former Soviet Union.  All these are best addressed as pooled funds which are then distributed by grants to individual agencies that carry out the actual work.  The people doing this were annoying but not evil. Over those fourteen years, as my income increased my pledge rose as well.  When my income declined as I went from staff physician to Endocrine Fellow to new solo practitioner, I kept the higher contribution.   But the loyalty never jelled.  Once an identifiable malignant Federation type accruing public honors arrived on the scene and affected me personally, the perspective would change forever.

There is an entry in my personal journal from October 1994 that I would not give to Federation in the future. Apparently by the Jewish Federations of North America analysis, the figure of those solicited who rebuff the solicitation is about 15% nationally.  At the time I was irate over adverse experience.  I shared my thoughts with my wife and we maintained a united front on this.  The pledge call came to my wife and I separately as scheduled in January, requested by a personal friend who I greatly admire.  We politely dropped out for cause, asked to be put on their Do Not Call list which did not happen for another year, declining to elaborate on why when asked so as not to attack a community leader.  The Executive Director, who attended our synagogue as well, came over to me one shabbos shortly thereafter acknowledging our desire to drop out, not challenging it in any way, though I suspect that acceptance would be different if our contribution had another zero or two appended to what we actually give.

So now I have a rather large sum of money to distribute as a religious obligation and no agent to do it for me.  I also have a somewhat hateful, contemptuous view of the Jewish leadership to dispel.  Like most things, it is less the bad apples themselves but the tolerance of the bad apples by the good oranges.  Much the reverse of Sodom which was destroyed not because of evil but because of the paucity of good.  But it was time to move on.  I took my annual pledge, added a little to it, and decided I would distribute one sixth of it every other month.  Included in each contribution would be a note of Jewish values explaining why I found that agency's projects an essential component of Jewish life.  My first contribution went to an organization called the Round Lake Camp.  They had taken out a small ad in the NY Times Magazine inviting Jewish campers who were felt unsuitable for the Ramahs and Galils of the Jewish world.  In a Jewish world that often regarded you as convenient or inconvenient instead of intrinsically important in one's own right, here was an agency that reached out to parents like us who found themselves rejected and isolated.  I sent them a check and a brief note.  They sent me a personal thanks penned to the IRS acknowledgement and later a video tape of their campers having a blast.  Two months later my secretary asked me to take a call from the president of the Jewish aging home.  He had received my note and appreciated the thanks that was conveyed to their staff and volunteers who get a lot more complaints than praise.  And so it went for most of the contributions and accompanying thank you notes.  Agencies big and small.  Camping, Family Service, disaster relief, education.  Since I have a local obligation before world obligations I left the Kutz Home and Family Services as annual constants, including some Biblical, Talmudic or liturgical reference as to why these projects are vital.  Later I added another constant, an organization called Footsteps that serve Haredi young people who wish to partake of other aspects of Hashem's social offerings.  These people through no fault of their own never got the education or earning skills that were made readily available to me.  They are often shunned by their own community when one of the core Judaic principles may be to accept people as you find them and help them develop in their own way.  I have been a permanent beneficiary of two Hillel Foundations that functioned by this principle.  Over the years, influenced by positive feedback from the agencies, my bimonthly donations became monthly donations scheduled on the 20th of each month just as I would pay any other periodic financial obligation.  Sometimes I was late but until this year, never had to bundle contributions to meet an IRS calendar benefit.

Since only three annual donations recur, this project over eighteen years has taken me to every imaginable activity that Jews do for each other and for the world.  Money is gathered to alleviate disasters.  There is an agency called American Jewish World Service that sends emissaries, my daughter among them, to volunteer for basic living development in poverty areas of Africa, Asia and Latin America.  Israeli professors get Nobel Prizes for lifetime efforts.  The Universities that sponsor their work depend on Friends of Technion, Weizmann Institute et. al.  For the Israel Defense Forces to have a form of  USO, they also depend on American Friends.  We have Hillel Foundations and Chabad that allow people not yet absorbed into our culture to enter.  We have a history, a collective memory, that endures through its museums.  And we have members of our community, too bothersome for those who are destined to "make it" and therefore left extrinsic to it, who are served by people of special sensitivity who advocate on their behalf.   There is an extraordinary organization known now as JACS which serves the chemically dependent.  It was intended to be a synagogue branch of Alcoholics Anonymous but rejected by several congregations whose officers and clergy did not want shikkers in their building.  It's prime motivator, Rabbi Twerski, a chasid with a medical degree who is one of the world's pioneers of addiction therapy, has a series of books on self-help and non-medical Jewish thought published primarily by an organization called Artscroll, whose parent organization, the Mesorah Heritage Foundation, frequently gets one of my contributions for translating primary sacred sources so that English speakers can read them.  And there is even a place for some benevolent Tochacha.  From time to time I send a check directly to the Jewish Federations of North America with a brief note of why it goes there rather than to the local agency and a recommendation that they use the resentment that the machers often produce to provide other suitable outlets that keep the victims engaged after they vote with their checkbooks and feet.  There is no end to the good that can be found if you seek it out nor any way that the brief notes of thanks that each receives from me adequately compensates their efforts.  It does compensate me in a very large fashion.  My approach to what Judaism stands for has never been the same.

This year's list:  The Kutz Home, Jewish Family Service of Delaware, Footsteps, American Jewish University in Los Angeles,  Friends of the IDF, American Jewish Committee if I can find their street address which they have conspicuously omitted form their web site to mail the check, Chabad of Delaware, American Physicians Fellowship for Medicine in Israel which sponsors Israeli physicians to receive training at American and Canadian Universities, American Friends of The Israel Museum, Masorti Foundation which promotes a Conservative Jewish presence and Jewish pluralism in Israel, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society,  and the American Jewish World Service.  And outside the list comes two other substantial contributions:  The Mesorah Heritage Foundation based on its importance and the Hillel Foundation of St. Louis whose Rabbi  left a permanent imprint on what I should be aspiring towards.

Next year's list will undoubtedly differ but the principles will not.  With some effort I will be able to remedy the lapse in timeliness.

Hakaras HaTov

While I work rather hard, I still enjoy the vigor to pursue what the hospital expects of me, and probably a little beyond that.  People younger age than me come to the exam rooms incapacitated in some way.  Yet despite feeling tired at times I am able to get up each day and find the energy to do what I am expected to do.

My lifestyle is simple and reasonably sedate.  There is a house, not at all ostentatious but paid for and in need of some upkeep but not beyond my capacity to complete.  My transportation is comfortable and stable.  I've been married going on 35 years and see a challenging effort of raising kids paying off.  My parents have passed on but I inherited and passed along enough character to allow the generations to turn over one to another.

Tal Ben-Shahar in his PBS special advocated keeping a log of five items worthy of thanks that occurred each day.  there are usually more than five, though sometimes it is a struggle to come up with five.  The Seder has a similar section of Dayenu with a somewhat longer than daily perspective.  The value of Hakaras HaTov, gratitude for the good, can and should be both daily and long-term.

On to a new personal year for me with its optimism and challenges begins today.

Purchasing Judaism

Went to the AKSE Board Meeting, the one where they discuss budget.  It is actually a rather thoughtfully constructed, particularly on the income side where predictability is usually not a whole lot better than my trying to predict glucose outcomes from the insulin decisions that I make.  They looked at what they actually took in and for the most part avoided the annual grandiose projections of what they might like to take in but probably won't.  The expense side is much more predictable and the opportunity of a part-time salary has mitigated the reality of spending more than we receive.  

Along with the budget came a dues increase of about 5%.  That would bring my obligation to a whopping $2625 annually, which is enough to make me wonder not only what I get for what is by far my largest tax-deduction not counting my upcoming professional liability tail.  I would also analyze the purpose of this expenditure and alternatives that give a similar or better return for a comparable sum.

One of the people at the Board Meeting asked rhetorically why the congregation exists and what its future might be.  I incurred the irritation of the President, something starting to get a little beyond the energizing mini-conflict from my perspective, by pursing that thought not in a rhetorical way but in its implementation to decisions, whether to make the unpopular choices that eliminate debt or to charge young members a nominal fee to give them a measure of ownership in the synagogue and avoid a major deterrent of a $2625 bill just as they reach age 30 and have to start spending on their kids.  Sometimes you give money away entirely for somebody else's benefit with no expectation of receiving any return, sometimes in gratitude for what you have already received, but most often to make a purchase for something you will get in return.  Usually when I write a check the category is clear.  My support of WashU Hillel is mostly one of gratitude, my monthly Jewish contributions are designed to be for somebody else's benefit with no strings attached and my credit card statement goes mostly to purchases for which I am the beneficiary.  Things like taxes merge all three categories, supporting schools that benefited me greatly at one time, snow removal that benefits me now, and research grants on esoterica that probably benefit nobody but the person receiving the grant.  But taxes define membership in America, Delaware, or municipalities and state sales or hotel taxes paid where I am not really a member perhaps gouge me unnecessarily or enable me to derive benefit in the places I visit which are reciprocated when others visit my places of citizenship.  The synagogue dues fall into a similar realm, providing a forum of Jewish advancement for me, a payback for all the friendliness that has come my way, and a daily minyan for those who hold that experience in higher value than I do.  The women of AKSE, who I think get much less from their membership than would be their just entitlement, get the same bill as me.  The young members do not, yet they also have a mixture of personal benefit, gratitude, obligations to others whose needs differ from theirs, and expectation of citizenship that should accompany membership.  I think the leadership is wrong to bypass some monetary contribution, however nominal, in exchange for what they receive, much as Medicaid and insurance companies have come to realize that co-pays of a minor nature reflect on ownership and responsibility for medical care that does not happen when people receive something without any requirement to contribute to outcome.

So is $2625 a justifiable purchase?  I certainly get less for myself than I once did.  My attendance on Shabbat morning has not only waned but there are times when my avoidance of being there is purposeful rather than a random consequence of the on-call schedule.  While the messages from the Rabbi have clearly reflected his professional growth since his arrival, moving from recycling of Hebrew school dalet class to looking up something in book about Ramban that I do not have and imparting Ramban's insight to me, it is still not quite the same as having facility with 3000 years of our mesorah to explore a topic of Torah from its seventy faces.  At least I am no longer bored but have learned not to engage him in conversation about his sermons.  However, in medicine and in Judaism it has been the ability to engage my teachers and extract knowledge and insight that they have but I don't that has allowed me to advance professionally and Jewishly in a fairly consistent way most of my lifetime.  If I purchase something for me with my dues, that is invariably the item of highest personal value but it has not been forthcoming.  My personal creativity is tolerated but not valued.  I see my inquisitiveness and my intellect as my most enduring Divine gift, the thing that drives me at work, in the exam rooms, teaching people and advancing myself Jewishly whether through Artscroll, yutorah.org, conversation with peers.  It is that give and take, that floating of ideas into the marketplace of possibilities that drives medical progress and advances Jewish mesorah.  I increasingly see that being consciously cut off at AKSE, to the point of no longer being a place where Judaism is advanced by exploring the wisdom and misadventures of what came before.  To the extent that I am purchasing citizenship, the last couple of years have been a sufficient disappointment to make me think that a competing purchase of another type might be better.  And then there are the other two elements, gratitude and need to support the benefit that others accrue though are of no particular value to me personally.  These are hard to get away from, though perhaps easy to replace.  My attachment to Wash U Hillel is permanent even though I was only there two years.  Penn's is permanent.  I owe the current group of students at least what the alumni afforded me.  I don't have that devotion to AKSE.  My sense is more that I paid dues for years, contributed skill for much of that time and received less than I put in, unlike Hillel where I put in bupkis and created an experience that carried forward forever.  Hakaras HaTov is a core value, and AKSE is entitled to some of that irrespective of the irritations that have come my way.  Same with services to others.  The people there need Kiddush, benefit from the Rabbi's mind more than I do, need minyanim, need education.  Even if I do not personally advance from these things others do.  Then again, people need these things everywhere and the advantage of a monetary economy is its portability so I can take part of that $2625 and enable a different cadre of individuals to have these things that benefit them without benefiting me personally.

As I approach Shabbos, Memorial Day, the increasing Days of the Omer that I did not count this year for the first time in a while largely out of a sense of hypocrisy for towards the people who do yet fail to advance their character for their effort, and the end of AKSE's fiscal year, it is hard to dispel my impression that $2625 to AKSE is not a good investment in Judaism for me for sure and probably not for the Jewish public.  The more I analyze this the more convinced I am both intellectually and emotionally that it would be better to simply disaffiliate from any synagogue as my father did at my age, also spurred by an assessment of financial value.  He needed the money for other things.  I am fortunate enough to still be earning a significant salary with the vigor at age 60 to do the things that justify it.  Redirecting that sum in a more purposeful way needs to be considered and probably implemented.  I would like to take 40% of this, about $1K and dedicate it to Jewish advancement for Irene and me, then take the other 60% as three $500 donations for the advancement of others.  There are no shortage of destinations for this money to places that fulfill this mission far better that what I have seen come out of AKSE in recent years.  It is a disappointment in some ways, as there are still friendships and gratitude there but it is not a prudent investment in optimal Judaism.

Thanksgiving

While my tendency is to be a kvetch, as tochacha is always the first step to improving most things or most people as the Sages suggest, there are times to break from this pattern.  My American and Jewish cultures set some time on the calendar to enable this.  The American one, Thanksgiving, arrives tomorrow and one of the Jewish ones, Chanukah, comes next week.  Tal Ben-Shahar, in his PBS Special, suggested keeping a daily log of Hakaras HaTov, five good things that took place each day.  I keep my log in a grade school composition book obtained in the back to school sale.  It is very sporadic in entry dates, though I am fortunate that I am never at a loss to come up with all five.  These entries are always a look back, though, never anticipation of the good that might come my way tomorrow.  As the wise character Alfred Doolittle noted, "the Lord is throwing goodness at you but with a little bit of luck a man can duck."

Since I cover Xmas each year, I can always expect Thanksgiving as a day off, though this year only the one day.  The menu has been planned, the kids arriving from NY at some point, and a marathon of enjoyable meal prep and eating awaits.