Dear Readers,

Below please find a revision to my previous post ...


“Untitled Other Than to Say A Sukkos Tale”

An epiphany can arise from the most unlikely of circumstances.

I had never before lived among observant Jews and, for the first time in

my life, almost all of my immediate neighbors were shomer Shabbos, an

experience that helped me to put a new face on Judaism, one which I

had never seen as a boy.

Hoping to gain their trust as both a neighbor and fellow Jew, I used

to read stories to the neighborhood children in front of my apartment

building. Imagine a garden of brightly smiling, hungrily eager children

sitting “Indian style” on the sidewalk religiously awaiting news of the

escapades of Winnee the Pooh or the fanciful prancings of Cassie and

Her Magic Flowers read to them on Shabbos afternoons and warm

summer evenings.

I initiated this modest undertaking, my own tiny gathering of story

lovers and good listeners-“Street School” as it came to be known-to

further the neighborhood’s friendly, familial nature. Emanating

primarily, I think, from the observant families onto whose path I felt

myself being drawn, they colored the neighborhood in shades of tangible

kindness and a purposeful joy of life.

The richness of Jewish life had somehow eluded me in my

childhood leaving me so unschooled that I could not even distinguish

between Shabbos and Shavuos or differentiate a siddur from a

chumash. Mind you, my youth had not been entirely barren of Jewish

experiences, such as they were. We gathered at my Aunt Iris’s house for

our one seder on the eve of Passover, knew enough to eat matzoh, read

the story of our exodus in the “Haggadah shel Maxwell House,” feasted

on the eve of Rosh Ha Shanah, broke the fast of Yom Kippur and my

my mother lit Hanukkah candles by plugging in an electric menorah.

My family did not lack the threads so much as it did the fabric of Jewish

life.

We’ve all experienced defining moments. Much like points on a map,

they serve as markers along the way, charting our progress, as we near

our destination. Although typically brief, such moments leave permanent

impressions on our memories.

When the Goldmeyers invited me to attend the bar mitzvah of their

first-born son, I felt excited but equally intimidated. The occasion would

mark my first time in an orthodox synagogue. Shabbos morning arrived.

I delighted in walking to shul like everybody else and remember distinctly

feeling as if I were part of something really important. That feeling

changed when I became lost in the seeming mayhem of orthodox shul

dynamics. Overhearing others comment that the crowd was larger than

usual due to the many guests, the shul was resultantly agog with

simcha, its atmosphere resounding with a delightful cacophony of

sounds. There was just so much to see, a treasure trove for a people

watcher like me.

Frankly, I did not have a clue what to do or what was going on. So I

took a seat in the back, opened the siddur I had found on my chair,

looked at it for an instant and realized it would do me no good (it was all

in Hebrew.) The seats on either side of me were occupied so I placed the

siddur on the floor under my chair. I think it was the gentleman to my

right who-before I even knew what he had done-reached under my chair

to retrieve the siddur. “This is yours?” he asked rhetorically, waving

it gently but a bit too closely in front of my nose.

“Well, I … uh,” I stumbled inarticulately, sensing I had done something

wrong but not quite sure what.

“This book contains God’s name. We don’t put it on the floor,”

reproaching me pleasantly but, I imagined, incredulously.

“Thank you,” I softly muttered, grateful he had been discreet enough that

nobody’s attention was diverted. It had been a slap on the wrist really,

but an important one nevertheless. I would learn the ropes eventually, I

told myself, in time.


A pattern began to emerge. Every Friday night, I heard Dr. Hirsch, my

next door neighbor who also lived on the second floor, singing the

same melodies. Unknown to me then, I much later realized he was

welcoming the Sabbath Queen with the melodiousness of his erev

Shabbos z’miros. Although not yet incandescent enough to show

me the way, I realized the poignancy of his song had sparked my barely

aglow pintele yid. At the very least, I felt justified in believing I had taken

a tiny step out from darkness.


Not too long thereafter, Dr. Hirsch knocked on my back door one

rainy Shabbos afternoon.

“Larry, you’re soaked,” I said, stating the ridiculously obvious while

puddles formed beneath his feet.

“Is Tal here? I thought she might be playing with your kids,” looking a

tiny bit concerned but well short of frantic.

“Tal? No, she’s not here. Is there a problem?”

“No, no. Boruch Ha Shem! It just occurred to me you might

have moved Street School inside, you know, given the weather,” he said,

turning aside just enough to remind me of the day’s inclemency.

“Larry, I wish I knew, but I …” sputtering my concern.

“Don’t worry. She can’t be too far,” reassuring the both of us.

‘Larry,” I probed, “Where for God’s sake is your umbrella?”

“Precisely!” he retorted, grinning broadly. “It’s Shabbos. I can’t carry.”

“Oh … yea,” sounding dumber than a rock and looking very sheepish,

I’m sure.

“Hey, we’re going to hear Rabbi Kahane speak tonight after Shabbes at

B’nai Rueven. Wanna go?” he announced invitingly.

“Sure. Sounds great!” I leapt back as if I hadn’t misspoken.

We went to hear Rabbi Kahane that night. The Hirschs made aliyah

soon thereafter, and not until many years later did I see him again at a

Jewish arts festival. I understand now that his invitation to hear Rabbi

Kahane speak was a real rachmones.


One afternoon after finishing a story, I chatted with five-year old

Sholem, Rabbi Twersky’s son:

“So, tell me, what does your father do?”

“He learns,” he returned the response as if there could be no other.

“He does what?” my curiosity piqued by the mystery of that deceptively

simple response.

“He learns,” he repeated, as matter of factly as the first time.

“Such an odd expression,” I reflected, muttering words to myself that I

kept from reaching Sholem’s ears. Never had I heard the verb “learns”

used in that fashion, but it intrigued me. Ever an avid student of

language, I entered it into my lexicon of life experiences.

“He learns”- a two-word sentence, barely existing, a subject and verb

having no stated direct object. What I didn’t know was the direct

object needn’t have been articulated. Everyone that is but me seemed to

know what it was, even five-year old Sholem. I would have loved to chat

more with him. Having so many more questions, I determined to find out

more about these Jews who “learned.” However, the constraints of my

family life prevented me from venturing out too far into those waters.

That would come in time, I reasoned to myself, but for the present, I

would have to be content with testing the temperature of the water with

my toes. As it happens, my neighbors: the Goldmeyers, the

Hirschs, the Twerskys and the Eichensteins were pretty much doing the

same thing. We were, in effect, taking the most cautious of steps in the

shallow waters of each others’ lives.


It’s an old and often frustrating truism that the tracks of progress

can be traced not so much in leaps and bounds but in the tiniest of

baby steps. The Shabbos of Chol HaMoed Succos while I sat reading on

my back porch, I happened to divert my eyes from the page momentarily

to espy Rabbi Twersky walking in the alley.

“Where is he headed? Wonder what’s up?” having never seen him before

in the alley. Something, I thought, was clearly amiss. Donning a black

kaftan and streimel, he appeared to me to be deeply troubled by the way

he was fiddling with his peyos. Inching along, his characteristic stride

replaced by a scraping shuffle, he seemed to take two steps back for

every one forward.

“He’s coming over here. He really is!” barely managing to calm myself.

Not one to engage in idle banter and certain Sholem had already brought

him up to speed on “Street School”, I watched as he entered through my

back gate. Frankly nonplussed, but eager to lend a hand, I went down to

greet him.

“Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi,” extending my hand in Shabbos courtesy,

anticipating his reciprocity.

“Good Shabbos. Mr. Busch, I have a problem,” he confided in me,

reaching out his fingers rather placidly in a manner not untypical of

many orthodox men.

“How can I help you, rabbi?” I offered enthusiastically, but unclear how I

could be of any assistance to a scion of a rabbinic dynasty!

“Some sechach has fallen from the roof of my sukkah onto the

floor, and I am forbidden to touch it on Shabbos,” he explained, tilting

his streimel back from his forehead, clearly frustrated.

“Some what?” I asked blankly.

“Sechach, an evergreen branch,” he clarified.

“Oh, no problem rabbi. I’ll pick it up,” thinking I understood his

dilemma.

“No! he exclaimed. “You are a Jew. You may not touch it either.”

“Oh wow! Okay,” I burst out. Backing off somewhat to compose

myself, I couldn’t help but feel enormously flattered he had

acknowledged my Jewish identity.

“But I do know someone who can. I’ll take care of the problem, rabbi,”

I assured him, my voice trailing off as I turned and ran up the stairs.

Pausing momentarily on the first landing, I looked back to see that his

countenance had brightened noticeably. Secure in my promise, he

turned and left for home.

Unbeknownst to him was that working in my apartment was a young

man, a non-Jew, crouched in the bathtub reglazing its surface. Feeling

somewhat foolish, but hoping to sound credible, I summoned what few

diplomatic skills I possessed and went in to talk to him.

“Uh, Tom, d’ya have a minute?” I queried, squatting down to see him eye

to eye.

“Sure. What’s up?” wiping away an errant bead of perspiration with the

back of his hand.

“Well …” scratching my head as if at a total loss of words, “you see I’ve

a neighbor with a problem and of all people you can fix it. Interested?”

“Sure, but …” he quickened to probe, but I preempted him before he

could change his mind.

“It’s this way,” feigning a reliable explanation of this Jewish conundrum

… “and the rules forbid a Jew to touch it on the Sabbath.”

“So you can’t …?” he wondered, just to be sure.

“Nope!”

“Then it’s not a problem,” he reassuringly intoned, raising my spirits

enormously. How fortunate was I to have found Tom so agreeable, but

what a ridiculous irony it was! Here I was, a secular Jew, unlearned in

Yiddishkeit and halacha, employing a gentile on the Sabbath day-an act

which itself violated Jewish law-asking him to perform a kindness, one

forbidden equally to its intended beneficiary and me.

We strode through the alley to Rabbi’s Twersky’s sukkah wherein he

eagerly awaited our arrival. Pushing aside the blue plastic entranceway, I

stepped aside inviting Tom to enter. I followed. The slightest hint of an

esrog’s scent tickled one’s nose. Gourds and dried fruit dangled

overhead. Aged portraits of rabbinic sages aside child-like depictions of

the Kotel graced the four sides of the sukkah while caricatures of the

ushpizin beckoned us to feel at home. Amidst all the festive decorations,

sat Rabbi Twersky, bent slightly forward, his fingers pouring over an

ancient Talmudic folio.

“Rabbi, this is my friend Tom.”

“Boruch Ha Shem,” he exclaimed with a broad smile, his glasses having

slipped down to the tip of his nose.

“Tom,” I said, indicating the mischievous sechach with my finger. “There it is.”

Stepping up cautiously on a folding card table chair lest it collapse, he

reached up and replaced the branch atop the latticework.

“Okay, got it,” Tom announced, a faint smile peeking through as though

this had been a welcome, albeit bizarre respite from the drudgery of

bathtub reglazing.

In one of those much-touted “Kodak moments,” I watched Tom,

trying not to teeter atop the chair, survey the curiosity of this fanciful

tabernacle. Below him two Jews, one bearded, the other not, each

dressed as differently from the other as one could possibly imagine but

ready both to catch him should his balance begin to waver. Although I

don’t know what Tom was thinking, I imagined it very unlikely he’d soon

forget the afternoon he helped me to help Sholem’s father.

And with that tiny tikkun, the world was set aright. Tom had

done a good deed, Rabbi Twersky could resume the joy of the Sabbath

and I … I had peeked into his world and it was good. I realized years later that within Rabbi

Twersky's sukkah had I found my own pri etz hadar.

From that day forward, Rabbi Twersky, when in need of a “tsenter,”

would call me to make a minyan. Though I did not know how to daven or

own a siddur and too embarrassed to tell him, I would take along

a volume of Jewish writings and, while nine davened “Ashrei,” I read

Chaim Nachman Bialik’s “The Fountain”-an incomparable poem.

The next morning, the neighborhood hastened to Hoshana Rabba,

arba minim in hand. Watching from my apartment’s front bay window, I

wondered how many more doors there would be left to open.


Alan D. Busch
5/29/07

Dear Readers,

This is a revised and expanded post from several weeks ago. I would appreciate a few minutes of your time.
Thank you in advance.

“These Are the Precepts … Escorting the Dead”[1]

We stood at the edge inches from the void’s cold depth, a
terrifying finality beyond which there is neither earthly appeal
nor redress. Our eyes dare not glimpse the depth of the void.
Nearby awaits a mound of dirt, a reminder of the temporal
nature of the void. Mourners wait patiently to grasp the
shovel. While some onlookers may think it a morbid custom,
tradition regards it as a mitzvah[2] to bury the dead, an expression
of love to be performed b’ chesed.[3]

We swayed at the edge with our arms linked together in the hope we might strengthen each other. I don’t remember if we provided any chairs for the mourners. Just beyond the innermost arc of mourners, a throng gathered as it had at the funeral home, a measure of the many lives Ben touched.

Turning away to leave is both an end and a beginning. His essence accompanies us in our hearts. Though we may feel his presence, we can neither touch him nor he us. The soulless body occupies the void of the grave into which loving kindness returns the mound of earth.[4]

When a Jew dies, our tradition regards it as a genuine kindness to

assist in his burial and the last act of decency any of us can do for the

deceased. He may have been the simplest of Jews, an ordinary man and

perhaps not the most outwardly pious, but who among us can peer into

the heart of man, of this man, of any man?

When a Jew dies, we have an opportunity to do for him the same

kindness we will want others to do for us when comes our last day.

Examine his deeds and weigh them on the scale of good deeds and

transgressions. If he lived his life like most of us have, there probably will

be an approximate equilibrium between his acts of goodness and

those found wanting. What if-once the scales are still-there is an

exact balance, neither the good deeds nor the bad exceeding the other?

He spoke kind words to comfort the bereaved or he served innumerable

hours as a volunteer at the hospital. How many patients might he have

enabled to feel better by a smile or a few words of encouragement? Or

perhaps he attended prayer services regularly, the much sought after

tenth man to make a minyan.[5] Yet, mortal being he was, for every

positive, a negative cancelled it out-not the effect of the good deed itself,

but its impact on the count. If we could perform but one more

meritorious deed to tip the balance of the scales in his favor, shouldn’t

we do that for him? We should and can, but how?

We escort him to his final resting place.[6] By so doing, we invoke His

abundant mercy. Friends and family gather in an act of remembrance,

putting aside any and all controversies while focusing on the positive. Is

there a Jew about whom there cannot be remembered any good?

We gather at the graveside to say the Mourner’s Kaddish[7] in his

memory just as he enabled others before him to do the same. We recite

psalms so that his soul ascends and from which we too are invariably

reminded that his life, our lives are as blades of grass, fragile and

fleeting. Yes, I suppose it would be better if we could gather for

joyous occasions only, a birth more preferable than a burial, but we

must tend to life at both ends.

The other day, a long-time friend of my synagogue passed away. He

had been very ill for quite a while and his dire physical condition was

exacerbated by a host of family problems. In the time between his

death and burial, there was some reasonable doubt there might not be

enough mourners at the graveside service to say the Mourner’s Kaddish

for which a minyan is required. Thankfully, there were, but he seemed to

be a marginalized individual about whom there was some reasonable

concern.

As a precaution against this unfortunate possibility, I joined with

several members of my synagogue to attend the funeral . I had the

time, I was available, but beyond these simple facts, I believe it

incumbent on the living to provide or assist in the provision of a

decent Jewish burial both as a debt and a true act of kindness we owe

the deceased. No Jew should suffer the tragedy of dying alone or, as

Rabbi Louis says, the indignity of one’s body being treated shabbily.

The funeral procession lined up. We took our place. A modest

gathering of thirty mourners assembled at the graveside service. Once

there, it became quickly apparent that well over half the original number

of mourners who had attended the chapel service left after its conclusion.

It was an inclement day, a slushy mixture of rain and snow. A tent

over the gravesite was erected. Together with Rabbi Louis, his sons, and

two other men-one of whom had been a good friend of the deceased-we

stood at the back of the tent while the family and close friends gathered

closer to the edge to witness the lowering of the casket. Something

though did not seem right.

“Rabbi, where is the dirt?” I wondered aloud but not loudly.

“I don’t know,” he responded, appearing somewhat perplexed.

Typically the mound of dirt sits atop a few sheets of plywood close to the

edge of the grave but opposite where the mourners are seated. Stepping

out from under the tent, Rabbi Louis looked about, but couldn’t spot it.

Though the several rows of mourners obscured our view, we were

certain the dirt, wherever it might be, was not inside the tent.

When the sarcophagus was secured, the funeral director invited the

mourners, should they wish to participate, to sprinkle a few particles of

earth from the Holy Land into the grave. With that it became readily

apparent there would not be a full closure of the grave by the mourners.

In its place, the funeral director had provided two buckets of sand with

garden trowels thrust inside. Before their final goodbyes, some mourners

took hold of a trowel, thrust it into the bucket and tossed the sand atop

the casket. When the last of the mourners finished, the funeral director-

having already earlier informed them about when and where they could

make condolence calls-concluded the service..

Rabbi Louis approached him.

“Would you mind if we filled the grave?

He was a friend of ours,” petitioned Rabbi who, when a situation requires

delicacy, is the consummate diplomat.

“Not at all! Fine. Please,” blurted out the young funeral director who

seemed not to have anticipated any such request.

The mound of dirt? We hadn’t noticed earlier, but there it sat in

the back of a cemetery flatbed about thirty feet from the tent. The funeral

director called the driver who then proceeded to inch the flatbed clumsily

in reverse toward the grave. With the bed elevated, the dirt slid out onto

the plywood into a heap. Grabbing five shovels, one for each of us, we

began the act of kindness we felt we owed the departed.

All in all, it took us about twenty minutes. It just feels so right, an

easy choice to make when you consider the alternative of having the

heap dumped ignominiously onto the casket. The damp, dark finality of

burial is a difficult reality, isn’t it? No longer an issue of the pain and

suffering of the departed, it becomes a reflection of our anguish.

Is it less painful for mourners if they leave after the casket has been

lowered? Is it better to leave the closure of the grave to the cemetery

workers? Like the old saying: “Out of sight. Out of mind!” On the other

hand, it seems so evasive, impersonal and undignified.

What more can we do? What one last gesture can we make that says:

“Thank you” or “We love you”? How does one extend a hand to another

who cannot reciprocate? How do we hug him who cannot hug us back?

The answer is we take it upon ourselves to blanket the casket with earth

until the grave has been entirely refilled. And who better to do this than

those who knew and loved the departed? The effect of that act benefits us

too. We experience genuine closure when we refill the grave.

May all Jewish mourners recognize it as an act of loving-kindness.

After all, do we not owe the departed at least that much?


Alan D. Busch
Copyright @2007

[1] Excerpted from Talmud
[2] Commandment; a good deed
[3] “with kindness.” Jewish tradition regards the burying of the dead as an obligation. It is my view that it be done as gently as if one were carrying a baby.
[4] Excerpted from In Memory of Ben
[5] A minimum of ten Jewish men required for a prayer quorem.
[6] The Talmud, the “Oral Torah” provides for this as an act for which benefit will accrue in the World to Come.
[7] A declaration of faith recited by mourners after burial to offset succumbing to apostasy.

Dear Readers,

You will find it helpful for the reading of this essay that you first read the one directly preceding it. If you do not, you may be mystified by the reference here to "Rabbi Skoff."

I was once a teacher.

Like all people who enter that profession-no matter the subject matter or the age of his students-each of us is afforded the enviable opportunity to achieve a species of immortality if we can but change one life for the better. A wise man, I think it was Henry Brooks Adams, historian, who put it rather well though, by its very nature, his aphorism is appealingly, even enticingly open ended: " A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. "

He was the most generous civics teacher in the 9th period though not the first of several teachers whose person made and left an indelible impression on my personal and working life nor would he be the last, but for reasons almost inexplicable the picture I retain of him occupies one of the finest frames in the panoply of people whose lives have touched mine. At the end of the day, Mr. Salvatore Gallo, my eighth grade civics teacher, was a mechaya. I can only speak for myself naturally when I say that if a student did not look forward to his class, even though tired and worn thin by the day's business, that that alone would constitute serious prima facie evidence of something seriously amiss with that particular individual. Or maybe it was just me, but as far back as I can recall, I have always been attentive to our oft-hidden human faces. In other words, I have an eye for special people. As for the why, it occurs to me that from a very young age I was given more to quiet observation of others than ever having been much of a chatterbox. There was good reason for that, I can assure you! As a boy, when only about five years old, I became a stutterer, for whom speaking could at times be as arduous as clearing the height of the bar newly raised by one's coach.

A man who looked like Rabbi Skoff, whose middle section was shaped uncannily like a boulder, he also exemplied the same simple wisdom and kindness. He was a man driven to punctiliousness and whose severe regimen of assignment protocol was such that, should one not follow it, he would be penalized anywhere from one to five points. For example, each student had to draw with the precision of a budding engineer a one inch square box in the upper left hand corner of his notebook paper into which Mr. Gallo would pen that person’s grade. Mind you it had to be a neat square, with no overlapping lines at the four corners. To counterbalance what an outsider might regard as a mishegoss, Mr. Gallo practiced a unique and rather unorthodox generosity. He once brought a piece of cake to class probably in size no more than six regular servings, and so scientifically cut it up that each child in the classroom received an exact equal portion. Its precision was as if it had been cut by a bakery template, clearly a case of having made much from very little.

As with Rabbi Skoff, get Mr. Gallo mad and look out. Unlike my other classrooms, Mr. Gallo's had an adjacent coat closet that was as deep as the classroom itself. We had a student in our 9th period class, one David, on whom misfortune fell one afternoon after pushing Mr. Gallo's buttons once too many times. A mere twit of a lad whose mouth was bigger than his person, he suffered that day the fright of a one on one, a nose to nose with Mr. Gallo in the coat room. When that door opened after what seemed to the rest of us like an insufferably interminable length of time-but in fact was no more than three minutes - though no one had heard a word between them nor would Mr. Gallo have lain a fingertip on him, David emerged looking more than a wee bit rattled. I doubt he ever forgot that.

Mr. Gallo's face was one of those only a mother could love, a big bald head, with rather unhappy teeth but a smile like none other. His nose, broad and flattened as if it had known the impact of too many fists in his youth, lent a certain rough veneer to his otherwise gentle manner. If you have had a "Mr. Gallo" in your life, step back and count your blessings for not everyone has enjoyed such great fortune.

Dear Readers,

In Pirkei Avos, we are each bidden to acquire for ourselves a teacher. Please follow this link to read of mine. Though a bit lengthy, you will benefit from having learned about Reb Isser ben Avrum, my teacher ... http://hometown.aol.com/fitterthanudad/page22.html

Thank you,

Alan D. Busch

5/4/07

In Memory of the Kedoshim

Wearily trod up heaven's slope,
fatigued, in pain, forlorn
awaiting freedom desperately
that soon it might be born.

Prayerful hopes shoes be found
for souls bereft and torn,
a moment to rest, a breath to breathe
for spirits dulled and worn.

A moment's time in dark travail
mockingly Goliathan was the fight,
that even David who had stood so well
soon stumbled in the night.

Why was there no known way
to bring them back home?
O'er hills and fields whence they came
while dreaming did thus roam.

Marched back and forth thin and wane
their figures stooped and grey,
next day ere long gathered clouds again
for fewer who remain.

Should there not have been
the one for whom faith
steadfast but rare,
that his would be enobled by Thee
to seek his just and fair?

Who glimpsed the light but touched it not
whose spark had become so dim,
for them we say such a day,
Never Again! Never Again!

Bowed under lash by day,
by night a storm did rage
Ha Shem might have shown
a war He would have waged.

Still in death's kingdom reigned
a way, a light, a day,
when dawn rising would eyes see
of whom did faith sustain.

Aside bodies on planks they lie
whose heat what little remain,
dreaded welcome soon might bring
next to whom they had just lain.

The world we choose can point the way
down paths long sought by peace,
in whose gardens we plant the seeds
lest memories tragically cease.

Alan D. Busch

copyright 2007

Dear Readers and for Ashleen in particular,

Thank you in advance for your time. In these times, given the atrocity at Virginia Tech, much piffle has again been circulating about what its proponents regard as this nation's panacea. If only it could be legislated past the opposition of the Second Amendment's most intrepid adherents. Yes, I am talking about "gun control"-a much tauted solution, great and promissory, that only the criminals will be able to effectively negate it. It would in all likelihood disarm law-abiding citizens as they are not likely to break the law even if they disagree with one of its mandates. Criminals, however, have no such civic compunction. I guess the most reassuring thing about "gun control" is that it would be about as effective as this nation's "War on Poverty" and its cousin the "War on Drugs".

During the Shoah, if only the nazi murderers would have lain their guns down! Wouldn't that have been grand?! Oh, by the way, hitler was a "gun control" proponent too who effectively disarmed the whole of German civil society. But arm the politicized criminals, his most ardent followers, now that he did all too well.

A reminder or revelation (whichever better applies) to those cretins who wonder why it was that the Jews did not "fight back", I'll point out three relevant facts: 1) when asked politely the nazis simply would not give up their machine guns, Luger pistols and Mauser rifles. They just wouldn't! Go figure. 2) It is very difficult for unarmed civilians who have been systematically terrorized to fight organized bands of trained killers. 3) When they managed to arm themselves with a few pistols and molotov cocktails, the Jews-as those in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising-ably demonstrated-and like their forebearers- the Jews of the Hanukkah "al ha nissim" (see any orthodox siddur) they were more than able to redeem their much maligned and misrepresented honor.

I dedicate the following verses to Professor Liviu Librescu, Z'L who chose to die that his students might live.


Remember this tale about which you'll hear
of those fighting Jews who fell without fear,
who chose to die as men rather than cattle,
but fate had determined they first do battle
with the Hun at whom they did courageously fling
all of the might of young David's sling.

Their foe, a Goliath, of a thousand times size
from whom they refused to submit to the lies:
that they were weak and unworthy, unable to rise,
though blinded by hate, they aimed straight for his eyes.
Never before had there been seen such daring
from young women and men all of whom caring
for the dignity of those for whom they fought,
such were the lessons that history had taught
that the Jew stood alone, friendless against foe,
counting his days, tormented by woe.
His task to prove that though troubled by pain,
the odds at Masada had not been in vain.
For three months, the struggle did not cease,
neither side desiring peace.
For that meant 'surrender', an unthinkable word,
from the sewers of Warsaw could there still be heard:
the cries, the anguish, the torture within
ferreting out captives the Nazis whose grin
was evidence they had acted with glee
when stifling the attempt of people to be free.

Cords of log bodies, stacked just the same,
secular and religious none to blame.
For there was NO difference before the Hun,
the Jews for him were decidedly ONE!
whether armed or with prayer,
they met their end,
futile struggle, Kiddush HaShem.

Our duty to those whose fate we survived
is working to keep their memory alive.
I ask ...
Why a people whose destiny has been
to enlighten a world through darkness and din,
whose lives are as many as they have been few,
why so despised has been the Jew?
For what 'good' reason is he chosen to die?
Why gone unnoticed the tear in his eye?
Has he not suffered so while the world stands by,
Why have we not ever heeded his cry?
Is there really a difference that makes him seem strange,
as if the same blood did not course through his veins?
Does he not laugh, cry, and feel just as you?
How such a threat when he numbers so few?
Threatened with death should he adhere to his ways,
terrorized by chimneys above which rose haze,
searchingly hopeful ... in whose starry gaze
reflected faggots whose fires roar ablaze.

Why did none act to stop it once known?
Enough indifference haven't we sown?
Praying to the heavens as they did every day,
that soon they'd see planes flying their way,
so bombardment, please god, might take them
ere the chambers would
but, the Allies, one and all, denied they could
destroy the rails leading straight into Hell,
from which precious few reemerged to tell
of the horrors awaiting them, so hard to believe,
that neither kindness nor life did the arrivals receive.

The children, too, thrust into the pit,
enraged blood lust, its infernal fit
that even the babes whose potential so great
should have felt the steel of this magnificent hate.
Whose cries were heard, but listened to none,
whose heads fell limp with the snap of a gun.
Whose parents, God forbid! They saw as naked as they,
for it was like this they suffered that day.

There are those who challenge what we have to say,
"Does such a retelling remains relevent today?"
"That, somehow, It's past, gone. Let it be!"
"Why do you make us suffer to see:
the killings, the children, the mountains of bone,
the chambers transformed so many to stone!
Who dropped like logs when the doors thrown wide,
there simply had been no place to hide.
Mothers whose skirts offered refuge at least
little ones uncovered thrown to the beast.
"Of what use" it was queried, "could they possibly be
in a stench wherein no one was happy or free?"
Ne'er a glimmer of hope would the murderers give
to those whose sole wish was only to live.
Mothers from children, families asunder,
might others have withstood this fury and thunder?
Slave labor was needed to further the cause,
to build V-2 rockets, to sharpen the claws.
For such, 'noble' men, doctors by fame
were employed to brutalize, murder and maim.
So that science could learn when life was so cheap,
discarded mankind onto the heap.
Great governments had met in order to be
as pious as possible, but deaf to the plea
of the wandering Jew whose torment to see
how unwelcome he was in the Land of the Free.
The ship onto which so many had stormed
could not find refuge for opinion had formed
that the Jew was expendable, a nuisance, a thorn
upon whom fate abandoned its contemptuous scorn.

They made it to America these tired and poor
to discover Liberty's spark shone little more
that, for them, there was not room enough to remain,
what hopes they had cherished were all now in vain!
Dejectedly they limped back to the place
which had expelled them at first for the same lack of space.
Stripped naked and paraded for the world to see,
what sickness had afflicted modern Germany?
Once active and vigorous this citizenry
now wandering about quite aimlessly.
It didn't take the nazis long to see
the world could care less for these Jews to be free.
A 'final solution' would quicken the pace
guarenteed mastery to the Aryan race.
No longer at issue either sufferance or claim,
onto Jewry was placed the burden and blame.

To repair the world, there first must needs be
a point at which we accept responsibility
for right against wrong, fiction from fact,
a basis upon which we can responsibly act.
But why even bother, so distant from then,
what more do we gain, what message we send?
For the sake of' the children, if not then our own
and
for
them
whose
lives
we
might
otherwise
have
known.

Alan D. Busch
copyright 2007

Elu devarim … ulvayas ha mes[1]

When a Jew dies, it is a genuine kindness to assist in his burial-the last act of decency anyone of us can do. He can be the simplest of Jews, an ordinary man and maybe not the most outwardly pious, but who among us can peer into the heart of man, of this man, of any man?

When a Jew dies, we have an opportunity to do for him that which we would want others to do for us when our last day comes. When we examine his deeds, we are sure to find that he did many kindnesses in his day: perhaps he was known for his kind words, his volunteer work at the hospital … how many patients might he have helped to feel better by a smile or a few kind words of encouragement? Or perhaps he was a habitual minyon man, the much sought after tsenter?[2]

We gather at the graveside to say Kaddish[3] for this Jew just as he enabled others before him to do the same. We say tehilim[4] so that his soul ascends and from which we too are invariably reminded that his life, our lives are as blades of grass, fragile and fleeting.

We escort him to his final resting place. His passing brings forth His abundant mercy. Friends and family gather in an act of remembrance, putting any and all controversy aside while focusing on the positive. Is there a Jew about whom there cannot be remembered any good?

Yes, I suppose it would be better if we gathered only for smachot[5], that a bris[6] is much preferable to a burial, but we must tend to life at both ends.

The other day, a long-time friend of my shul passed away. He had been very sickly for quite a while, and his physical condition was worsened by a variety of family problems. There was some reasonable concern that, given the horendous weather of the morning, there might not be a minyan at the graveside service. Thankfully, as it happened, there was, but he seemed to be a marginalized individual about whom there could be some reasonable doubt.

I joined with several members of our shul to attend the funeral and make the minyon should that have become necessary. I had the time, I was available, but well beyond these simple facts, I very much believe in the obligatory nature of Jewish burial as a chesed shel emes[7]-that no Jew should suffer the tragedy of dying alone, as Rabbi Louis says, or the indignity of one's body being treated shabbily in death.

We arrived at the graveside. A moderate gathering of thirty mourners assembled though it was very apparent that well over half had left after the chapel service ended.

It was an inclement day. A tent over the grave site had been erected as the weather was a slushy mixture of rain and snow. Together with Rabbi Louis, his sons, and two other men-one of whom was a good friend of the deceased-we stood at the back of the tent while the family and close friends gathered closer to the edge to witness the lowering of the casket.

Something though did not seem right. Turning to Rabbi Louis, I wondered:

“Rabbi, where is the dirt?”

Typically the mound of dirt sits atop a few sheets of plywood close to the edge of the grave but on the opposite side from where the mourners are seated.

“I don’t know,” he responded looking somewhat perplexed.

He looked about in and out of the tent but couldn’t spot it. Though the several rows of mourners obscured our view we were reasonably certain the dirt, wherever it might be, was not inside the tent.

When the sarcophagus was secured, the funeral director invited the mourners, should they wish to participate, to sprinkle a few particles of earth from the Holy Land into the grave.

As I suspected, there was not to be a full closure of the grave by the mourners as is customary. In its place, there were two buckets of sand with hand garden shovels thrust inside. Before their final goodbyes, some mourners took hold of the hand shovel, thrust it into the bucket and tossed the sand atop the aron. At the very most, this act though well-intended, seemed a pitiably weak gesture of kindness. When the last mourner finished, the funeral director, having already informed the mourners about the time and place of shiva[8], directed folks back to their cars.

Rabbi Louis approached him.

“Would you mind if we filled the grave? He was a friend of ours,” intoned Rabbi Louis who, when a situation required diplomacy, was quite the diplomat.

“No. Fine. Please,” blurted out the young funeral director who, it seemed, hid rather well the tiniest bit of embarrassment that he should have taken care of this matter with the family of the deceased.

Now came the hard part. How to fill the grave when there was no mound of dirt! We hadn’t noticed, but there it sat heaped into the back of a cemetery flat truck about thirty feet from the tent. The flatbed, attached to a tractor shovel, inched the mound toward the grave and dropped its load. Grabbing five shovels, one for each of us, we began the chesed[9] we felt we owed the departed.

All in all, it took us about twenty minutes. It just feels so right, an easy choice to make when you consider the alternative of having the heap dumped ignominiously onto the aron from the flatbed.

It happens all too often.

Why do we walk away from the grave? A loved one lies therein. The damp, dark finality of burial … it is a difficult reality, isn’t it? For the mes[10], no longer an issue of his pain, his suffering, it becomes rather one of our anguish.

Would it be better if we left the closure of the grave to the cemetery workers? Like the old saying: “Out of sight. Out of mind!” Is it somehow better, perhaps less painful if mourners leave after the casket has been lowered and allow the balance of the open grave to be filled in from the back of the cemetery truck as if pouring a concrete foundation. It’s no wonder so many mourners leave before the grave is filled? Who could bare to witness such an indignity?

What more can we do? What one last gesture can we make that says: “Thank you” or “We love you”? How does one extend a hand to another who cannot reciprocate? How do we hug him who cannot hug us back?

The answer is we blanket him with earth until the void is filled to the top. And who better to do this than those who knew and loved him? The effect of that act benefits us too. We experience genuine closure , I think, when we assist in closing the grave. It isn’t enough to sprinkle a few specks of soil from the Holy Land or toss in a few handfuls of sand from a bucket.

Let all Jewish mourners stay and witness the process whereby the work of refilling the grave becomes a mitzvah[11] infused with loving-kindness.

After all, is not the mes[12] owed at least that much?


Alan D. Busch
Copyright @2007

[1] Taken from the Siddur, the Jewish prayer book: “These are the precepts … escorting the dead.”
[2] Yiddish: the tenth man to make a minyan, a prayer quorem.
[3] Prayer reaffirming life
[4] Psalms of King David
[5] Hebrew: joyous occasions
[6] Hebrew: covenant. Ritual circumcision performed on the eighth day.
[7] An act of true kindness
[8] the first seven days of mourning
[9] An act of kindness
[10] The deceased.
[11] Yiddish: a good deed. Hebrew: commandment
[12] the deceased

(Revised 4/11/07)

“Musings From Down the Road by a Bereaved Father”

“Why the Death of a Child?”

How should we respond when all we have is the language of poetry and prose?

Our memory’s perspective narrows as the years pass.

Awaiting us is a grave danger …

Forsakenness.

We each grieve differently when a child dies. Citing this truism to a recently bereaved mother, she responded to me angrily as if to ask:

“Is that the very best you can do?” Now I wish to disclaim any professional expertise in matters of death, dying or grief management. On the contrary, together with other bereaved parents, the only common relevant credential is membership in the club to which nobody wishes to belong. I became bereaved on Wednesday, November 22, 2000 when my son Ben died.

It is a wonder how well most parents hold up in the aftermath of their tragedies and successfully recast their lives into stronger, more productive and creative shapes. By infusing universal pathos into love and loss, we glean meaning from our children’s shortened lives, allowing us to discover insights like never before while healing ourselves.Yet, despite all we did, our unconditional love, our willing sacrifices, we could not save their lives.

Though we must return their bodies to the dust, we vow to sustain the lives of their spirits, of their souls if you like. It’s somehow right and fair, isn’t it? And it is for this reason and none other that we build shrines to their memories.

I wonder if I will glimpse Ben’s countenance after the passage of 2,190 days?

Why do we affix a memorial leaf to a “Tree of Life?" Though the leaf serves as a poignant reminder of the end of Ben’s life, its purpose is to remind us to celebrate the time of his life-no matter that it ended prematurely, abruptly and painfully.

Eternally optimistic, even at the darkest moments, we say … “L’Chaim!” each time we lift a glass together whether in remembrance or celebration.

Jewish custom holds that a mourner recite the Mourner’s Kaddish” when, at and following the burial of his loved one, he is most vulnerable at a time when the immediacy of death may lead him to choose apostasy as an understandable but ultimately misguided approach to grief.

Neither a lamentation nor a dirge, the Mourner’s Kaddish is a reaffirmation of life and makes no mention of death whatsoever. Still the very worst part remains the attending paramedic’s deposition that Ben was both conscious and able to speak for a brief while before finally and permanently losing consciousness, and that he understood what had happened, while he suffered horrendous pain and bespoke his fear that he was dying.

As Ben’s dad, the certain knowledge that my son’s last waking moments were consumed by such trauma and fear leaves me cold and quiet, my thoughts inchoate. As a Jew, I am thankful my faith is one of eternal optimism and which teaches us that life is inherently miraculous and therefore holy. We serve as guardians of its sanctity. This belief sustains me when all that tangibly remains are a white shirt, suit, some old boots, a bicycle in need of repair and the unexpected discovery of his boyish signature while turning the page of a scrapbook.

The absolute enormity of a child’s death leaves one feeling so insignificant, so powerlessly tiny. To have to navigate these treacherous waters daily is no simple task as we are invariably reminded of how vast is God’s ocean while we remain adrift in such a small boat! The only antidote to the pain of our loss is the tenacity with which we remember our children. It is incumbent upon us that we simply refuse to allow their memories to die. Though their bodies are gone, their physicality ended, our linkage to them becomes one of remembrance, of dedication and rededication-all of which remind us of how fortunate we were to have enjoyed our time with them for as long as we did.

These Are the Lives that Have Touched Mine...

Isser ben Avrum, Z’L, was a gibor, a lion of a man though small of stature and slight of frame.

I met Mr. Parker in his second lifetime.

He became my first formative teacher in the ways of Yiddishkeit. At the time, I was around forty years old and, Mr. Parker, my teacher in his late seventies or early eighties. For reasons I really do not know, he took me under his wing and taught me the basics of siddur, tallis and t’philin.

"ukshartam l'os al yadecha v'hayu letotafos bane einecha.” (wear the phylacteries as a sign on your hand and for frontlets between your eyes)

Thus reads the leaf I dedicated to his memory on the Etz Chaim in my synagogue.

Isser ben Avrum, who had been trained as a pharmacist in Poland in the years pre-dating WW2, was not, I suppose, an untypical Jew of his day-not a yeshiva bocher by education, no great chochem of Gemara-but as a boy had gone to cheder and graduated a mensch.

A prototype of chesed and menshlichkeit, there were few in number who did not like him, many who loved him, but most indisputably of all, there was no one who did not respect him.

He carried moral weight and was the living proof of the ageless truism that a new pharaoh arises in each generation to destroy us.

How does one dispute such a man or turn away from his invitation to impart something from the old world, of which he had been part in a previous lifetime?

Like others of his generation, his life as a Polish Jew changed irreverseably when-in the weeks following the first day of September 1939-the Polish cavalry, as gallant as I am sure it was, proved no match for the German blitzkrieg!

Mr. Parker immigrated to America after the Second World War in the early 1950s. Although he survived Mauthausen, his wife and children did not, but a handful of souls among the incalculable kedoshim.

Beginning his life anew once resettled in America, Mr. Parker remarried and raised a second family.

***

It was just before Shabbes mincha.

Mr. Parker and I were downstairs in the shul kitchen preparing shalosh seudos. I had begun to feel close to him by then.

He would have the answer. I felt reassured about that.

We chatted while preparing the several plates of tuna fish, left over cake and other assorted left-overs and fishballs. The occasional use of that blasted industrial-sized hand crank can opener, bolted to the counter, and the barely tolerable untidiness made working in that kitchen challenging at times.

It was as good a time as any, I reasoned, to seek out his sympathetic ear.

I told him a summary version of the whole story. I figured he could fill in the rest. Lending a polite ear for several minutes, he sho back without any equivocation: "Go home to your wife!" in thickly-accented "yinglish" which reminded me of Myron Cohen. Hecould not have said it more plainly. I should have deferred to the advice of an older man. Guess I had been hoping for a different opinion.

I did not acknowledge her growing exasperation. I balked at the patently obvious truth. They were no empty threats to file for divorce. Her feelings had was only a matter of time before she became desensitized, her feelings hardened into an irreversable resentment.

She wondered aloud pleadingly: “Why … tell me why are you doing this?" I recall that clearly.

“So I’ll have something to do when I’m an old man,” I responded, having Mr. Parker in mind.

Later, when I reminded her, she could not recall my having said that.

***
A tougher yet gentler soul I had never met at whose strength and sheer grit I marveled. Assisted by the One Above whose ways-though mostly unfathomable-are sometimes clearly manifest in certain individuals such as Mr. Parker.

Otherwise, the amazing stories of seemingly ordinary people like Isser ben Avrum-whose perilous survival and reincarnation should leave us dumbstruck-would be utterly inexplicable unless reliance on "blind luck" appeals to your sense of inquiry.

How often do we think about where the other person was just yesterday? What may have happened, what amalgam of forces, circumstances combined to bring that person into our lives today and tomorrow?

***

My family and I were in St. Louis for the bar mitzvah of my cousin’s son Jeffrey, the grandson of my Aunt Iris and Uncle Marvin. Taking place at the same shul I had attended as a boy when my brother and I expressed great unhappiness after our mother had enrolled us in an orthodox school, the Epstein Hebrew Academy, my mother, at Uncle Marvin’s urging, transferred us to his shul, Anshes Sholem Knesses Israel, where I attended its religious school for several years.

I recall with fondness Rabbi Benzion Skoff, the first rabbi I ever met-a short, stocky man whose physical shape always reminded me of a boulder and whose voice was as startlingly powerful as a thunder clap that awakens you on those stormy, sultry summer nights.

We arrived at the shul that morning about thirty minutes before the start of Shabbat morning services. It was nice returning to this place of which I had such fond memories of religious school and Rabbi Benzion ‘the boulder’ Skoff who, as it happened, was there that morning. Amazingly he had not changed at all, the same tzur gadol of a man whose thundering voice was tempered by his pleasant and sweet tone when you had his attention one on one, but get him angry and look out!

One morning, many years before, he became angry with us kids and I tell you, the roof beams quaked. Whatever I may have learned that day in class, I frankly do not recall but indelibly engraved in my memory was the wisdom of not angering Rabbi Skoff!

My cousin Jeffrey did incredibly well. I was even honored with hagbah but the highlight of the morning was his ending brachot over the haftorah when his voice reached a high melodic pitch " ... mekadesh ha Shabbat."

It seemed so perfectly executed that everyone was b’simcha upon hearing his final boyishly sweet note. It was the last taste of the morning that endured throughout the day-not unlike the matzah of the afikomen which, when eaten, should endure as the last taste of the meal.

Looking back, it was as if the combination of heavenly forces, Jeffrey’s bar mitzvah and the melodic and
sweet chazzanus of the cantor’s tenor were converging to steer me along a particular path.

If yiddishkeit were a train, it was speeding right past me lest I fail to leap aboard, grabbing hold of the caboose. I resolved to find a like shul back home where the sounds would be the same as those I had heard that Shabbat morning.

***

I walked into B’nai Emunah, Mr. Parker’s shul, for the first time after we returned home from St. Louis.

As a newcomer, I attracted the attention of several members of the minyan, as did every new face-but especially starved for youth as the minyan was. I bought a membership and stayed two pleasant and invaluble years.

The first contact was with Harold Stern. We chatted for a few minutes before I mentioned I had attended Rabbi Skoff’s school in St Louis. I had a feeling he’d know Rabbi Skoff, a prominent member of the conservative rabbinate.

As it happened, he did.

What a relief! To have made a connection with no one less than the Rabbi Emeritus of the synagogue!

I sat in the back row inconspicuously for as long as I could, but I soon realized anonymity was not only impossible but ill-advised for someone who had come to learn.

Other than the few shelves containing finger-worn siddurim and chumashim, there were no other books in the chapel. It was not a beis medrash, but a simple cozy room adjacent to the rabbi’s office.

We sat on benches rather than individual seats. Near the stained glass but facing the benches was a reading table for the Torah services and which served as an omed for the ba’al t’filos. The aron kodesh was plainly-fashioned and set into the northeast corner of the chapel housing one Sefer Torah.

We had no mechitzah though moot ordinarily because few women came to services. It was a warm, cozy place wherein I made many new friends-most of whom were old enough to be my grandfather.

That was its selling point. I had always related easily to older folks from whom I recognized there was so much to learn.

Without sounding boastful, I had derech eretz toward elderly folk well before I even knew what it meant. It just seemed to come naturally to me.

A tiny group, the minyan was comprised mostly of elderly “minyonaires” several of whom were Holocaust survivors. The three services were held daily in this small chapel separate from the main sanctuary. As closely-knit as were its friendships, the minyan offered me the haimish learning environment I sought that helped me along the path to a higher level of observance. I knew I could not have gotten that from the culture of the main sanctuary.

Were you fortunate enough to spend some great times in your childhood with your grandpa? Well, this is what this minyan meant to me, an opportunity to learn the basics from ten “grandpas” at once! The minhag of the chapel minyan tended away from conservative practice but was still quite distant from orthodox rite although many of its regulars had grown up in orthodox homes.

Though we did have to make calls sometimes when short a man or two, helping out on the phones afforded me the opportunity to earn my stripes from Mr. Parker. “Making a minyan” was a necessity every day. It was that simple.

I gravitated toward Mr. Parker.

He took a liking to me. Perhaps he saw in me a fledgling having fallen from the nest or I may have reminded him of someone he had lost in his first life. Frankly, I do not know, but I remain grateful to this man and his memory.

He bore an uncanny resemblance to my maternal grandfather, Harry Austin, a man I dearly loved but who had left my grandmother to raise my mom and Aunt Iris by herself. Aunt Iris never forgave him whereas my mom did to a certain extent.

I loved him in part because I felt bad for him. He had made it very hard on my grandma, aunt and mom in their earlier years, but he was always good to me as well as to his other grandsons. I know he sensed that I loved him. Of his five grandsons, he bequeathed his diamond ring to me.

***

My friendship with Mr. Parker may have seemed odd to some, I suppose. I brought him home one afternoon to meet my family with such great excitement it was as if I were bringing home a new school chum.

While sipping tea in the kitchen, I showed him a photo of my grandpa Austin whose uncanny resemblance to himself stunned him.

Like my grandfather, Mr. Parker placed a sugar cube or two, which I happened to have in the pantry that afternoon, in his mouth between his lower lip and gum where it functioned as a filter through which the tea passed on its way down. I was more than amused by this custom because I knew it represented nothing less than a sweet fragment of an old world, that of our grandfathers and grandmothers.

As the gabbai of the traditional minyon, it was he who chose the baal t’filos for which ever service it was at the time. If he gave you the nod, off you went to the omed. There was no second guessing or arguing with Mr. Parker.

He spoke with authority.

We speak of the school of hard knocks. Mr. Parker not only attended and graduated but survived to tell about it. An elderly man when we became friends, his posture was bent over more than what seemed typical even for a man his age due to the beatings he suffered at the hands of the thugs at Mauthausen during the war. His broken nose, apparently never reset properly, became permanently misshapen by the same perpetrators. The tip of his nose was out of alignment with its bridge somewhat. His left eye appeared as if he were looking at someone else when, in fact, he was looking at you-a condition which made it necessary to focus on his straight eye.

A broken man?

By no means.

The gentlest lion you would ever enjoy the privilege of knowing.

Isser ben Avrum, Z'L passed away on the eve of Rosh Ha Shanah, 2000.

Dear Readers,

Please click on Double Take › Look again, you might have missed something., a wonderful blog by an even more wonderful bas Yisroel.

To all, I wish a Chag Pesach Sameach v' Kasher.

Sincerely,

Alan, Heather, Benjamin Z"L, Kimmy and Zac

Dear Readers,

Please click on this link.

New Jersey Faith Forum has been kind enough to post one of my articles.

Many thanks.

Chag Pesach Sameach v' Kasher/Happy Passover

“It Happened Again”

Reflections on Purim Past

I am torn.

We are to be joyful during the month of Adar.

After all, isn’t it the month when we celebrate Purim as an observance of national salvation, when good overcame evil and Haman and his sons died on the gallows he had built for Mordecai?

They hanged Haman and his sons al ha etz, on the gallows. Conversely, the Hebrew etz also means a tree, a symbol of the Jewish people itself, as is Etz Chaim, the Tree of Life.

And if you are wondering about God whose name does not appear in the Megilat Ester, the Scroll of Esther, He was there, just hidden but indisputably present, steering the helm of history through His masterfully skillful use of nissim, His vast, miraculous wonders.

The demise of Haman parallels that of Pharoah. The evildoers met their ends, each in a different manner of death, but which, in both cases, had been intended for the descendants of Jacob whom they despised.

It worked out nicely for us. We survived and the would-be slayers were themselves slain.

However, there remains behind a problem for people who grieve insofar as the injunction to be joyful poses an emotional conundrum for them. While each joyous holiday in Judaism forges a link in the mesorah, the heritage, of our collective past, we need to remain mindful of our obligation to share the simchas ha yom with our children.

Veshinantam levanecha v’dibarta bam… but,

What if a child dies? What if tragedy of that magnitude befalls us? What then? How can the presence of grief be reconciled with the joy we are supposed to feel at holiday time? Can happiness be mandated? Are we capable of switching grief on and off and setting it aside until the holiday is over or does it even matter any more after a child dies?

The Fortune of Friendship

I am rich.

We all have, I hope, a quintessentially invaluable friend without whom we would have to redefine our lives. And no, I’m not talking about a spouse or, for that matter, anyone in your family. Though I suppose it possible such a friend can be a family member, I have found the bond to be paradoxically stronger when, in the absence of blood ties, there is no familial obligation.

I have such a friend.

He and his family have been my lifeline and connection to my community.

Connectedness.

It is an absolute prerequisite to be able to grieve healthily. To think we can grieve by ourselves is a mistaken and costly approach to grief management. Life and the pain of death are qualitatively better and more manageably experienced when we share them with caring people in a community. My shul is my community and its rabbi, my dearest friend.

Rabbi Boruch, whose remarkable family, caring attitude and irrepressible good humor have lifted me up on countless occasions, has been there for me through times thick and thin when, during these past ten years, I have faced a crumbling marriage and divorce, my son Benjamin’s struggle with diabetes and epilepsy, his death and the onset of my Parkinson’s Disease.

Certain moments become fixed in our memories, brief interactions yet leaving long trails behind.

It happened one morning after minyan years ago. We were chatting in the fleishig kitchen, just Rabbi Boruch and I, about our children, naturally. We did this sort of thing almost daily but especially on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays when we typically had a few extra minutes before each of us had to run of to work. On Mondays and Thursdays we did not have the extra time due to the morning's Torah reading.

I listened intently while he spoke beamingly of his older son, Moshe, who was studying in Israel when suddenly he stopped talking. It was not a mere pause.

“Rabbi, what? You were saying about Moshe?” hoping to encourage him on.
“No, I can’t,” he responded, determined to remain silent.
“Your son is not here anymore. I don’t want you to feel bad!”

This is the sort of person Rabbi Boruch is.

The Beginning

Two years before I met Rabbi Boruch, I used to daven in a small chapel where gathered the daily traditional minyan of the conservative shul to which I belonged.

Steamily hot one summer Shabbat morning, the heat of the morning’s sunshine pierced the brightly illumined stained glass. The chazzan droned on and on by Musaf. I was sitting in the front row. The stifling heat weighed heavily upon the silence of the room. I looked behind me. Comprised as it was almost entirely of elderly gentlemen, including several Holocaust survivors, every one of them had fallen asleep. The whole minyan except the chazzan and me though I think I was more awake than he. I looked around. There would be enough for a minyan if I left.

And so I did.

Happening by Rabbi Boruch’s Shul

I needed fifteen minutes to arrive at my destination even at a feverish pace, but I knew happily where I was going as much as where I wanted to be.

Having passed through a wooden archway just off to the right of his garage, there was nowhere else to go but down the steps leading to the basement where I hoped to find the shul.

“This has ‘gotta’ be it,” I muttered to myself.

As I soon discovered, I opened a door to a place oozing with haimishness. Peeking inside, I espied a bearded man with an infectious smile, his cape-like tallis afloat in the breeze of his eager gait, tzitsis flying, heading toward me invitingly.

“Come in. Come in. Bruchim Habaim!”

That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Before he undertook to build a synagogue, Rabbi Boruch had opened up his home to the congregation where it met in his converted basement.

Grieving in Shul

It seems invariable.

Melancholia overtakes me whenever I am there.

I don’t think it debilitating, short-lived as each instance is, but it remains a constant in the equation of my grief. Yet, I know this is where a grieving Jew should be because it is a makom kodesh, a holy place, wherein I feel the presence of my son Ben in its most intense manifestation. I’ll even venture a remark that may seem odd to some. As strong a pull as it is to stand before Ben’s grave, I struggle to sense his presence. Oh yes. I know his body is beneath my feet, but that’s just it. Ben’s body remains, but his neshuma is elsewhere.
I believe that it hovers in shul when I am there. Ben spends time with me that way, I suppose. It is his way of making up for the time when I sit alone.

I felt it recently on Purim. It is different than any feeling I experience anywhere else including Ben’s room from which I write these words. You see, no sooner than I take my seat in the row behind my dear friend, Rabbi Boruch. I look over the mechitza to the yahrzeit panels on the south wall and see Ben’s name, the eleventh one in the first column on the first panel. Though I fully expect this grief, I am thankful to take my seat each time We have a tradition in shul life that one's seat becomes his set place, a makom kavua. I should tell you Ben was not a regular shul-goer. His seat is next to mine.

Nobody else sits there.

Whether it be the mystery of Purim, the revelry of Simchas Torah or the trepidation of Yom Kippur, my son remains by my side. Other fathers have their sons sitting next to them. I miss that but I possess something they do not-the certainty my son lived a life abundant in loving-kindness.

Time moves forward inexorably. It pauses for no one. That Purim morning I lamented how much time has passed without Ben.

I am reminded daily his absence is forever. No matter though how many years have already gone by or however many are yet to come, Ben's death will always be for me in the present tense.

I will never say:

“Once upon a time I had a son named Ben.”

I won't tell you I'm not glad to be alive because I know I am a better person for having known and loved Ben.

He taught me so much.

Still ... know there are moments when I am filled with guilt that it was he and not I.

Alan D. Busch
3/25/07

Glossary of Italicized Terms

Adar: Hebrew month during which Purim is observed.

Al ha etz: on the gallows

Etz: tree

Etz Chaim: Tree of Life

Megilat Ester: Scroll of Esther

Nissim: miracles

Mesorah: heritage

Simchas ha yom: joy of the day

Veshinantam levanecha v’dibarta bam: Thou shalt teach them to thy children and speak of them

Shul: synagogue

Fleishig: having to do with meat

Daven: pray

Minyan: a prayer quorem of at least ten men

Chazzen: cantor

Musaf: additional service

Haimishness: social atmosphere characterized by warmth, togetherness and hospitality

Tallis: prayer shawl

Tzistis: wound and knotted ritual fringes looped through the four corners of the tallis

Bruchim Habaim: Welcome

Makom kodesh: holy place

Neshuma: soul

Mechitza: partition dividing men’s from women’s section in an orthodox synagogue.

Yahrzeit: anniversary of a death

Makom kavua: a set place

Dear Readers,

This coming May 31, 2007 will mark the 20th anniversary of the unveiling and subsequent desecration of the Skokie (IL) Holocaust Memorial. The memorial stands between the Skokie Public Library and the Village Hall of Skokie, Ilinois.

I was there that day almost twenty years ago when the veil was lifted, and I saw the despicable desecration of this monument the next day when, just hours before in the anonymity of the night, misanthropes spray painted it with anti-Jewish graffiti and swaztikas.

I returned home seething with anger and wrote the following poem that has been revised many times over the years, but I think I am happy with this revision.

What do you think?




"Dignity Restored"
by Alan D. Busch

Holy martyrs … kedoshim
For whom monument tall
Shouts defiantly: “NEVER AGAIN!”
at last and for all.
Thus hatred's reminder,
its insatiable, implacable aim,
weighing heavily as it should
upon humanity’s unforgivable shame.

Atop the bronze mount
does stand there remain
Remnants of countless savagely slain:
a mother whose babe has cried its last,
an eklerly Jew to whom a boy clings fast.
A partisan fighter whose gestures ignite …
one spark of the hope that flickered by night.

Amidst the rubble of days …
That which had been
through the ages a beacon for men ...
the Torah commanding “Thou Shalt Not Kill ...”
albeit in ruins though applicable still!
to our lives which came after,
relatively free,
of terror's ability to blind us who see.

Now tearful, silently stoic first gaze
while vigilance slept, its fires not ablaze ...
why desecrate this monument
a tribute to those
in whose memory we recall
so few of their woes?

Nary a night did pass ere an evil befell,
and reminded, were we all, of heaven and hell.
Now gone were the tears that had welcomed its sight,
but ready were the many to stand and fight
an ugly reminder whose obscenities told …
of times long since and graves since cold.
Aroused and awakened this community alert,
whose monument remained defiled as such,
to remember one and all
, incredulous and carefree,
that history was not over …
as they had hoped it might be.

A garden became this memorial soon,
And erased were the lies
that had blackened the truth.
Dignity restored its shiny gloss
to words read anew …
of six million lost.

Toward heaven it points
in neither doubt nor shame,
history reminding our memories lame.
That even those departed …
must struggle to hone
the spade that will dig out
this spot as their
own.

Alan D. Busch copyright@2000

Dear Readers ...

I am pleased to announce that the News Magazine of the Jewish Federation/Jewish United Fund of Chicago will publish the first chapter of In Memory of Ben in its May 2007 edition. Please read below the current revision of Chapter 1.

The Last Time

by

Alan D. Busch

An act of divine kindness made it possible for me to spend several minutes with my son Benjamin in what became our last time together.

Forgetting the night before to set his alarm, Ben woke up late for work, hurriedly got dressed and ran to catch the bus. As fortune would have it, he spotted my car parked at the dry cleaners and caught me just in time. Had I not dropped my laundry off that morning, I might not have seen him again.

As I turned to leave, there he was waiting behind me with a broad smile of anticipation.

“Dad, can you give me a lift to the train?”

Always regretful whenever I had not seen Ben for several days, any opportunity to be with him delighted me. After I moved out of my home in July of 1999, there were times when I did not see him as often as I would have liked.

Together we drove to the train. As I recall, our last conversation went something like this:

“How are you, Ben?”

“Fine, Dad. You?”

“Okay. How are you?”

“Good.”

“You feeling good?”

“Yup.”

I turned into a parking lot across the street from the station. Checking to see that the latch on his messenger bag was securely fastened, he opened the passenger door. As always, I asked him:

“Do you have money on you?”

“Yes, Dad.

"‘Seeya’ later!”

“Be safe!”

The day at work would be, I thought, like any other. If only it had been!

The phones rang all morning. Business was brisk!

It was just before noon when I answered the next call.I heard the voice of a stranger. Identifying himself as a trauma surgeon in the emergency department of Cook County Hospital, he told me Ben had survived a nearly fatal traffic accident but with critical injuries which required immediate surgical intervention. He “suggested” I come to the hospital as soon as possible.

“Suggested? I knew what he meant! Suffice to say I knew how this day would end.”

A myriad of frightful thoughts filled my head in a state of controlled desperation as I sped away to the hospital. The grave tone of the doctor’s voice convinced me the dreaded day which I had anticipated for years arrived this day.

After being fortunate enough to find parking two blocks away, I ran to the emergency department whereupon I identified myself to the first nurse I encountered. She escorted me hurriedly to the surgeon to whom I gave parental authorization, when asked, to employ all measures to save Ben. I expressed my wish to witness the efforts of the trauma team while it did everything in its power to save him.

Standing alongside my father who arrived within minutes after I called, we stood witness to a desperate, ultimately futile effort almost within our grasp. During these agonizing moments, I discovered a previously unknown facet of my father.

Next to me stood a desperate man who was praying for the life of my son. Holding his hands overhead with palms flattened against the glass partition while holding back a torrent of tears, he pled with The Almighty for immediate intervention. In Ben’s declining seconds while yet flickered a spark of life, my father, sensitive, but doggedly determined man that he is, called out a desperate plea to his grandson once … twice … thrice …

“Hang on Ben! Fight back! Please fight back!”

Open heart massage … failed! Oxygen mask … failed! Electric shock … failed!

A dark cloud smothered the din.

The frenzied pace quieted.

The equipment was turned off.

The surgeon turned around to face me.

His wearied face bespoke what I already knew.

He shook his head.

The embers of life died within Ben.

It seemed as if Ben had come into this world only a short while before. I was there then as I was now.

A nurse asked me if I wished to be with my son. I told her I did. Only I could be with Ben.
Taking hold of him by his arm, she motioned my father away and drew the curtain that Ben and I not be disturbed.

Standing by Ben’s side, I placed a kippah upon his head and kissed his handsome nose.

“Thank you for being such a good son Ben.”

With but precious few minutes left to be together before the attendants arrived, Ben “slept” while I … I hovered over him and whisperingly sang the 23rd Psalm.

“ … lo ira ra ki Ata imudi …” (I have no fear for Thou art with me.)

Rabbi Louis arrived by taxi.

Frankly relieved he took charge, his timely arrival assured me Ben would be interred in accordance with Jewish tradition.

A noteworthy interlude took place before I had to tell his mom whom, unknown to me at the time, hadn’t yet arrived. A nurse came to inform me that a group of Ben’s friends had arrived moments before and was waiting at the front desk. What I did not know then was that Ben’s friends had picked Zac up, Ben’s younger brother, and brought him along. Rabbi Louis and I went to receive them.

Cook County Hospital is frenetic. All manner of people: ambulatory patients attached to mobile drips, trauma patients being rushed to surgery strapped atop gurnies, doctors, nurses, visitors, paramedics, police officers and sheriff’s deputies jam its hallways.

Hospital policy forbad non-family members from visitation. We had to leave Ben’s buddies behind.

Trudging through the corridors with Rabbi Louis and Zac while returning back to the emergency department, it felt as if we were passing between classes in high school. Almost predictably, we were stopped-not by the assistant principal, but by a burly hospital security guard who asked us for our passes. Having none, he pointed us to the reception area where we had met Zachary minutes before. Rabbi Louis, frustrated at the hapless absurdity of the moment, appealed beseechingly in hope of touching the guard’s better angels.

“My friend’s son has just died!”

The guard refused to budge. Despite Rabbi Louis’s vociferous objections, it became apparent that his protestations had fallen on deaf ears. So back we trod to fetch the passes.

Meanwhile, Ben’s mom had arrived from a much longer distance than I.

Passes in hand, we did make it back minutes later when came time to confront her with the awful news. Rabbi Louis, in his goodness, generously offered to stand in for me, but I felt this was my duty. Accompanying me together with my dad, our arms linked, we reluctantly crossed the hall to a small lounge wherein sat Ben’s mom awaiting news.

I approached her haltingly:

“Ben is gone!” … I cried out, placing my forehead atop her head.

Within the shadow of a moment came forth an utterance of primal pain from Ben’s mom so horrifically terrifying that I suspect only a bereaved mother is capable of making it.

I shall never forget its sound!

What more can one do in a moment like this? Though Zac, my dad and Rabbi Louis were present in the room with me, I recall nothing of their reactions to my grave announcement to Ben’s mom. It was, as if, she and I were alone in this sanitized lounge the small sofa, chairs and lighting of which were unremarkably sterile.

I left the room.

Tending to an important matter for which I had to speak to the surgeon, I found him standing in the hallway close by. Appearing as though something was on his mind, I thanked him for all his efforts to save Ben’s life. While we spoke, I discerned a genuinely heartfelt sympathy for my family; furthermore, he seemed to intuitively understand me when I forbad an autopsy.

Weeks later, in a sworn deposition, part of a wrongful death suit brought by my family against the owner of the truck whose driver struck Ben, he testified to having been worried about my dad’s well-being when, during those several minutes, he bore witness to futility.

There remained nothing more we could do. Ben’s mom had left with Zac and my dad.

Accompanied by Rabbi Louis, I walked to my truck. His companionship warmed me against the icy winds. How thankful I was that I would not have to go home alone!

While the engine warmed, Rabbi Louis contacted a mutual friend, a Chicago police chaplain, to see if he could expedite Ben’s remains from the hospital morgue to the funeral home. After several minutes had passed, I drove Rabbi Louis home.

That Wednesday, the eve of Thanksgiving 2000, ended together with my “world” as I had known it.

I think I fell asleep that night in my apartment.

It Happened Again ...

I am torn. I want to be there more often, but it happens whenever I am that I am overtaken by melancholy. Both this morning and afternoon, I felt it ... as always, unlike how I feel anywhere else-even his room from which I write these words tonight.

I am grateful each time I take my seat in shul-no matter the occasion: be it the somber yet joyous lessons of Purim, the simcha of Simchas Torah or the trepidation of Yom Kippur, my son is with me.

Now other fathers have their sons sitting next to them, and I do miss that! Woulds't that I had him back, but I've something they do not. My son is ... well, I was going to say "within me" but that somehow just does not ring true.

Seems more like a caricature than a true representation of how I feel. I look over to his yahrzeit plaque on the wall and what I realize every time is, as if it were for the first time, that here am I still-time inexorably moving forward pausing for no one. I remember thinking this afternoon so much time has already passed, and there is nothing I can do about it, but there is one thing of which I am certain. I'll never say that I once had a son named Ben.

I sit down in the same chair in which I've sat many years ... lamenting that another day has passed.

Yet I won't tell you I'm not glad to be alive.

Still ... know that there are moments when I am filled with guilt that it was he and not I.

Note to readers: Pictured is one of Ben's leaves on the Etz Chaim in my shul-not his yahrzeit plaque to which I made reference above.