Nursing Animosities

My personal friends are few, though invariably interesting.  A few highly accomplished, a few quirky, a few outspoken.  All stand for something.  Some have had big crashes, much bigger than my own professional or social fluctuations.  All provide me something stimulating to talk about when I am with them.  We'll leave the perfunctory Good Shabbos, Nice Tie for the Torah processional.  My friends discuss medicine, Judaism and its culture, the vagaries of our politics.  And there's our families, pretty much all turned out well.

In face meetings are few.  Synagogue has become a place where I am mostly cordial to everyone, candid with a few, social with almost none.  My closest friend, however, is of synagogue origin, almost parallel mindset as put off by mistreatment of people, more common in that setting than any presiding Rabbi would admit.  We like to move the furniture around, ask what if, and when offered a title of responsibility sometimes try to do what we imagined might be possible but may not.  As a consequence, we get some opposition, his more vociferous than mine as his ventures can generate some negative transference reactions and negative consequences.  There is an upside and a downside to boldness.  He found himself the one in isolation to the governance, basically evicted from it, soon departing.  He had a business that went on hard times as well due to some malfeasance from above.  The two events left him suspicious of authority.  We share a disappointment with our synagogues, but while he departed, I remain, sit quietly, express myself without much suppression from my higher CNS centers though politely, and on Saturday mornings more often occupy space or add to the male minyan count than benefit a lot from my personal presence.  His expression was absence from synagogue but all in on our local Kosher agency that provides Kosher products to our region.  As a result, when I see him in the last couple of years, it is almost always attending to some activities in the Kosher departments that our Shop-Rite has provided.  And as is our custom, our chats are pretty direct.

He found a friend in the now departing Rabbi, the director of the Kosher agency, and a devoted friend to have.  I liked the Rabbi personally as well, but saw his role as advancing our congregation, my Jewish commitments, and my Jewish mind, none of which really happened.  I keep a more stringent Kosher than ever, acknowledge and restrict activities for Sabbath and yontif, but find my Jewish presence more a personal one than as part of a kehillah.  Our Rabbi, his friend though more of a business deal for me, announced his departure, a nominal promotion to a larger more stable congregation in a community with a Jewish majority.  I asked my friend who the next supervisor of Kashrut would be.  He indicated that the Rabbi would continue as the supervisor, at least for the next few months.  Then the vitriol started

My friend has his bogeyman, the congregational President who eliminated him as a toxic VP who generated too many congregational complaints.  If this individual dispatched my friend, he must have worked behind the scenes to make the synagogue a toxic work environment for the Rabbi.  Since I really only associated the Rabbi as a hired professional, not as a friend, I did not really pick up on any directed toxic work environment.  He had reasons to do job hunting as the predicted longevity of our congregation would not take him to retirement age, but did not pick up on board relations as being less than professional and supportive.  As my friend related, there were clues, a closing contract with a lot more specific provisions than prior contracts that had him vigorously represented by somebody Archie Bunker would identify as a Sharp Jew Lawyer.  I did not know the sermons had to be submitted in advance for editing.  That may be why they have gotten more meaningful the past couple of years, but my friend saw it as an unwelcome assault on professional autonomy.  While I did not know about this, English comp would definitely benefit from having to go through an editor first.  

But the former congregational VP who done my friend wrong now has an enemy's imprint, one probably not deserved.  Yes, anybody looking at our synagogue with detachment would identify obvious elements of leadership failure, excessive comfort zones, and resetting the standard as mediocrity.  That is a lot different from the more nefarious Jewish canards of a few control freaks assembling together to consolidate and exert power to exploit the vulnerable.  Probably not the reality, or at least not my reality.  Stephen Covey in his 7 Habits identified people whose focus was either exacting revenge on enemies or shielding themselves with an impenetrable barrier.  Either way, the enemy always seems to control what happens, even when he really doesn't.

 

Minyan for Friendship

As much as my synagogue experience leaves me seeking more fulfilling experiences, there are a few valid reasons for restraint on absolute avoidance.  While the intersection of Hebrew School and Rabbinical Junior College is where the Rabbi and lay leadership seem most comfortable, a more stimulating, if not more interactive version of Judaism hovers in cyberspace for my taking.  And I take some of it.  Worship doesn't attract me.  Some of the cultural norms do.  Most importantly, though, is support of friendships.  Not exactly the people I share meals with, not frequently people I share ideas with, either.  But people who have made commitments to their family for which I can help create the minyan they need.  The Gabbaim probably have their invitations rejected more than I realize.  Decent people.  I'll default to helping them out unless I have a specific reason not to.  The synagogue has not been very inviting a place for me but it is for them.  A few hours allotted for their benefit should not be withheld.

New Friends Amid Covid-19

Making friends was among my semi-annual initiatives, something pursued half-heartedly.  Ordinarily friends evolve from direct personal contact.  You join an organization, select somebody from it, share a joint project, have coffee or come over for dinner.  Facebook creates the illusion of friends, people who are really contacts, people who express themselves but never really converse. Osher Institute's value for seniors like me has been to create personal immersion as will as challenging intellect.  There are chairs in the lounges, round cafeteria tables far too large to eat alone at peak times.  Yet, there is also a book on one of my college reading lists called The Lonely Crowd.  It reviewed the evolution of the other-directed person, one who buys what is advertised, votes with the majority, attends religious gatherings more for the comradery than the elevation of inner spirit.  This has dominated culture but at the price of inner development.  Personal friendships offer a bridge between conformity to achieve acceptance and the development of inner strength that justifies the friendship.

Covid-19 has forced social distance, with a screen via Facebook or Zoom as a rather poor surrogate.  Ideas in real time get exchanged. but not as immediate verbal offer and respond.  Interactions via classes or seminars are structured.  We can drink coffee while we are doing this, but we cannot share coffee.  Attending Holy Day services and one shabbat service in person affirmed that the formality could be preserved but it also exposed the importance of kiddush or brief agenda-free chats while walking to our cars.  We still encounter cashiers in the stores, maybe medical staff when we get seriously ill, but rarely peers.  We have become The Lonely Crowd.

Old friends

Attrition in Jewish life or in medicine rarely means ceasing to exist.  People move on to someplace else to worship or to practice or maybe retire from communal or professional activities, but they do not get vaporized, as happened to the deviants and malcontents in George Orwell's 1984.  Talent, energy, and dedication are all highly portable.

This morning I made arrangements to discuss my Jewish future with an old friend who looks at the Jewish world a little differently than me, has progressed within it and probably was treated a little kinder by it.  He is concerned about depletion of participation from the synagogues and Federations but legitimately challenges my view that the participants are now left to salvage the misdeeds of their predecessors.

While discussing this and sipping coffee, another old friend strolled into the Brew-Ha-Ha coffee shop.  This fellow, the man who I regard as the finest pulmonary physician to ever preside over the ICU and resident training at Christiana Hospital, departed a few years ago to join a practice in nearby Pennsylvania.  Everyone misses his knowledge, insight, dedication and good nature.  I do not know the circumstances of his exit  other than he needed to find professional fulfillment and contentment elsewhere.  We recognized each other immediately, each of us with an instant smile.  He asked me about Christiana, only to learn that I am also on the exit ramp.  I found it gratifying to learn professional life has been good to him since he left.

My neurology professor Dr. Simon Horenstein, used to describe strokes as bimodal.  There is usually something lost, but there is usually something that remains as well.  Jewish and medical organizations are indeed depleted by the people who depart.  But these individuals typically end up bringing to the next destination their presence in a way that went underappreciated by the last.