A Year of Kaddish

Today would have marked my parents’ 59th wedding anniversary. They made it to 58-1/2 years. “Not bad,” as my mother, who had a knack for the understatement, might have said. Or “pretty good, don’t you think?”

I’ve heard the story of how they met and got married hundreds of times, and it got told a lot last August after the funeral and during shivah to the delight of everyone, not the least my father who relishes its telling.

My dad was a Holocaust survivor. He and his brother, Don, were the only survivors in his family. When the war ended, they made their way to America from Poland or what is now the former Soviet republic of Belarus. Their destination was San Francisco, where Auntie Katie and Uncle Reuben Ungar lived. Katie was my paternal grandmother’s sister. She had immigrated between World War I and World War II, and my father remembers hearing his mother saying she hoped to get more members of the family out of Poland during those interwar years. But U.S. immigration quotas of Polish citizens were low and the number who wanted out was high.

When my father arrived in San Francisco, he got a job selling Watkins products and later plastics, as in plastic table clothes, house to house. When other opportunities knocked on his proverbial door, he traveled north to Petaluma, Calif., where he peddled his wares from ranch to ranch and to a nickel-and-dime store. One thing led to another. Before long, he was selling in Portland, Oregon.

Portland was good to him. After first taking a room at the YMCA, he found a room to rent in a Jewish family’s home, when one day his life changed for good, though he didn’t know it at the time. Another Jewish family, the Sliffmans, across the street invited him to the wedding of their daughter, Shirley, on Christmas Eve 1950. And who knew?  Maybe he might meet a nice Jewish girl at the wedding.

The groom was a nice Jewish boy named Ben Benson from Toronto, Canada. Also at the wedding were Ben’s parents, Rose and Joe Benson, and his sister, Pearl, who had planned to spend the week in Portland before returning East to her job in Toronto.

That night at the wedding Stan met Pearl. “Would you like me to show you around town while you’re here?” Stan offered. “Sure,” she said. “That would be lovely.” They went out once. And then again and again and again.

A week later, New Year’s Eve, Stan proposed. In some ways, it was a perfect match. Stan was an immigrant to America. Pearl had grown up speaking Yiddish at home. And in a sense Pearl served as a bridge to this new land for Stan. As his Aunt Katie in San Francisco said, “Canadians are half European and half American.”

Six weeks later, on February 11, 1951, they got married in Vancouver, British Columbia at the home of one of Pearl’s aunt’s, Ann Cohen.

The newlyweds settled in Seattle, where I was born along with my two brothers. Seven years later, in 1958, we packed our station wagon and moved to California and the San Francisco Bay Area.

And as they say, the rest is history.

You know that song from the Broadway musical, “Rent,” that starts “Five Hundred Twenty-Five Thousand Six Hundred Minutes…”?

Well it came to me as I was driving away from shul this morning. By The Gregorian calendar, which is to say our everyday civil calendar, this Saturday will mark six months since my mom’s passing.

The line in that song — it’s called “Seasons of Love” — that speaks to me is the one at the end of the first section that goes “How do you measure a year in the life?”

So I divide that in half today and ask myself, how do you measure six months in a life? Or how do you measure six months after a death?

What I love about the song is that it measures that profound question in ordinary events. “In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee…”

And I believe there’s an assumption in those lyrics that each of those events contains more than just the passing of time. Rather, they suggest that it’s not the counting of our time that matters, but making our time count, as my rabbi often says when celebrating someone’s birthday. Which is to say that what matters is that we make ourselves aware that each moment has the potential to be so much more. That those cups of coffee, those daylights and sunsets can be infused with conscious living instead of just going through the motions. I try to live by that philosophy, I really do. But like all of us, I ain’t perfect.

If all this sounds like a buildup to new resolutions, maybe it is. Since returning from the West Coast, I’ve been re-reading two life-affirming books, one of which you might say is practical, the other of which you could say is spiritual. But in fact the two have much in common. The so-called practical one is “Getting Things Done,” by David Allen; the so-called spiritual one is “Everyday Holiness,” by Alan Morinis, a wonderful guide to building a Mussar practice.

One of my goals for today is to capture all the open loops in my life and then begin to process them, to decide what action I need to take to “get things done.” If that makes no sense, read “Getting Things Done.” I’ve got three magazine assignments to get to work on and more digging to do on a couple others. I’ve got a desk to clean and organize. As I look outside, I’m aware that the temperature here in New England this morning is below freezing, but what I see out my office window, is a blue sky and the sun shining on rooftops and bare trees.  Our two dog are quietly sleeping nearby, a beautiful sign of peacefulness. I can’t help but feel grateful right now. Cue the music :

“Five Hundred Twenty-Five Thousand
Six Hundred Minutes.
Five Hundred Twenty-Five Thousand
Moments So Dear
Five Hundred Twenty-Five Thousand
Six Hundred Minutes
How Do you Measure – Measure A Year ?

In Daylights – In Sunsets
In Midnights – In Cups Of Coffee
In Inches – In Miles
In Laughter – In Strife…”

I returned to California last Friday, nearly six months after the funeral and sitting shivah. It’s rained a lot over the past week, which, if you want to read biblical meaning into the weather, you can interpret that as a good sign. Water often equals life, and as I visit with my dad I see a man whose come to terms with his loss. He brings thick, whole-grain Artisan bread, which he calls “the fountain of youth,” to friends and his doctor’s nurses as gifts of appreciation. He laughs. He enjoys talking on the phone. He even went to a dinner party last Saturday night, leaving me home alone.  In short, he’s engaged in life again, including new projects.

One is renovating an old house in front of a rental housing development he built in 1962. He also purchased the office building his property management company offices are in, offices he rented for many years, and he’s excited about owning the building and senses that he’s invested in a good opportunity.

I know the blog has been quiet of late. Weekly posts instead of the earlier pace of three times a week. Part of the reason may stem from the ritual I’ve come to adopt. How much can one write about going to shul daily, morning and late afternoon or evening without repeating one’s self?

But another reason stems from how busy we’ve been over the past month. Around the same time that a new girl arrived into the Felson family, that being our niece, Ayala Pearl, the one born in Jerusalem Dec. 4, Julia and I were on our way back from an overnight trip to Rochester, N.Y., where we picked up a 14-month Wheaton Terrier named Darla. It turns out she and our six-year-old Wheaton, Sammy, have the same father, Abe, so they’re siblings. I had managed to scout out shuls before hand, and the timing worked out perfectly. Well, for me, not for Julia and our new pup, who sat in the car for too long while I said Kaddish at Congregation Beth Hakneses Hachodosh.

Then a couple weeks later, our middle-son, David, 23, arrived home, after spending the last year working in Washington, D.C. at various internships – unpaid and then paid – and at a Farmer’s Market, where he worked as market manager one day a week. Like many his age, it’s been a tough year to find full-time work. But he’s landed a job through a D.C.-based organization -– actually, a paid year-long fellowship in Bolivia of all places. He leaves this Friday.

A few days after David arrived home, our son, Ben, 20, returned home from a semester abroad, coincidentally, also in Bolivia. The story gets even more bizarre. Until Ben left for Bolivia late last summer, none of us had ever heard of the city he was studying in, Cochabamba, though it boasts a population of more than 500,000. Now it turns out David will be stationed in – yep, you guessed it – Cochabamba as well.

The same day, Ben flew into JFK from South America, our daughter, Rachel, 27, was flying East from Boulder, Colorado, where she had just completed an 18-month program to become a certified Rolfer. She came home to spend a few weeks with all of us before flying back to the Rocky Mountains. Yesterday she packed all her belongings into her Subaru wagon and embarked on the next chapter in her life: Moving to San Francisco to live and start her new Rolfing practice. [By the way, she’s still looking for a name for the practice and her soon-to-be announced website.]

Ben returned to college before New Year’s Day – he too flew back to the Rocky Mountains, as he’s a junior at Colorado College. So this past Friday night, among those sitting at our Shabbat table were Rachel and David. We sang Shalom Aleichem, chanted Kiddush over the wine, said the blessing over two loaves of home-baked challah and then dug into a lovely vegetarian meal: Moroccan Yellow Split Pea Soup, Israeli Couscous with Curried Vegetables, and Butternut Squash with Cranberries, Toasted Walnuts and Maple Syrup.

The next morning as I was walking to shul, it came to me what was missing. There’s a tradition on Shabbat Evening for the parents to bless their children. I have to admit, we usually don’t do it, not because we don’t wish them a life full of blessings, but because it’s just a tradition and ritual which with neither Julia or I grew up.

But as I was walking last Saturday in below-freezing temperatures, the sun shining on the frozen snow, I was regretting not having bestowed blessings on both of them on their latest journeys in life.

Besides saying the traditional blessing, I would have said something like: May you live this new chapter in your lives fully. May you feel the courage to do what might feel frightening. May you be open to what unfolds. May you remain curious. May you take risks, but be careful. May you feel joy. And stay in touch..

Today would have been my mother’s birthday. She would have been 88. I’ve written a few checks today and besides having to remember to write 2010, the date rang with a certain familiarity every time I wrote it or looked at a calendar. Funny how the mind works. It knew that I no longer had to make a phone call to wish her a happy birthday.

It also knew that I didn’t need to be reminded weeks earlier to buy and then mail a card so it arrived on time. That’s something, I must say to be honest, I did not learn from my mom; she was terrible at getting cards to us on time. She might buy them in advance, but she just would rarely remember to mail them or to mail them days in advance to arrive on or just before the birthday date. That’s an especially critical skill when you have family that lives on either end of the coasts. When they did arrive on time, it was an event worth noting.

Beth El’s gabbi, or ritual director, Rabbi Howard Sowalsky, gave me a Christmas present this morning. Not intentionally. More accurately, he gave me an honor: He asked me if I would lead the second part of the Shacharit service, the heart of the service, and a section I have never done before. Not true, I did it once before on a snowy morning earlier this month when we couldn’t muster a minyan – I think we had seven or eight brave souls that morning.

So this marked the second time I’d led, but the first time surrounded by a minyan. I had been practicing in spare moments at home, but I was still nervous when I began because several of the prayers contain – for me, at least – enough tricky Hebrew phrases that it felt like traversing an obstacle course. But I made it through that section unscathed so by the time we arrived at the Shemoneh Esrei, I took a deep breath of relief and relaxed.

Asking to lead and being able to say yes connected me back to that time in Sharon, Pennsylvania when one of the old-timers at the traditional minyan asked me to lead. That day I had to defer, knowing I hadn’t yet mastered all the prayer language or the nusach, the special melody used to signify different parts of the service and whether it’s a weekday, Shabbat or Festival.

But it goes deeper than that. We all have our own set of wants, desires, expectations, hopes and visions about how we want to live our lives. How we want to parent, how we want to show up with our life-partners; what careers we choose and how and what kind of work we perform from 9 to 5 or whenever we go to work; how we bring joy into our lives and how we express honestly the whole range of other emotions we feel in the course of a lifetime.

Leading my community in prayer just happens to be one of those things I’ve always imagined doing. And today I accepted a new challenge. I knew it was a stretch because for a moment, after being asked to lead, I felt dred. But I also believe we only grow when we stretch ourselves, even if our default reaction is to resist and stay in our comfort zone.

It’s been a busy week on the Jewish calendar and at shul.

Everyone surely knows we’ve been observing Chanukah, which ends at sunset tomorrow. Besides lighting candles after sundown (except for tonight, when the candles are lit before Shabbat), we’ve also been reading or leyning (to use the Yiddish term for chanting) special portions of Torah each morning corresponding with the days of the festival. And because it’s a festival, there’s another special set of psalms known as Hallel that have been chanted as well. Which explained why I was always coming home later than normal every morning most of the week. [In the aftermath of the Tiger Woods affair, it’s hard to imagine a better explanation for your whereabouts than saying special Torah readings and Hallel delayed your return.]

If that weren’t enough, yesterday and today marked the beginning of a new month on the Hebrew calendar, Tevet, and that too called for special Torah readings as well as additional prayers known as Musaf.

I, however, missed out on all of that. As it happens, I may have heard the call from God, but I also got a call from one of my best corporate clients, and they wanted to know if I was available from 6 to 8 a.m. Thursday and Friday to edit and bring live their Intranet (or internal Internet) home page. I could get into a long explanation of the conflict I felt between making the minyan and saying Kaddish and the need to meet the requests of my clients, whether they be corporate communications departments or magazine editors.

But the sun is almost setting and I’m off to Kabbalat Shabbat, arriving shortly.
Shabbat Shalom & Chag Sameach Chanukah.

My dad talked the other day about going over to the Berkeley JCC for a Chanukah event last Sunday afternoon.

“Good for you,” I thought. “Get out of the house. Enjoy the festival.” He was even planning on taking BART, the Bay Area rapid transit system instead of driving. This by a man in his 80s.

By all accounts, he’s doing well. Keeping busy. Going to dinner at my brother’s and sister-in-laws on occasion or to one of his nephew and nieces who live nearby. Baking his salmon in the toaster oven. Having Nelly, the Peruvian cleaning lady, cook a few things for him on the day she comes to clean the house.

Still, I was more than a little surprised when I got an email from my brother with this link that features my dad lighting the menorah at the JCC festival. Apparently the event was also honoring Holocaust survivors, of which my dad is one. But now he’s also a veritable local TV celebrity. Well, for 19 seconds. There’s a short promo in advance of the very short news clip. That’s my dad wearing the cap lighting the menorah: http://cbs5.com/video/?id=59238@kpix.dayport.com

A year ago last September, just before Rosh Hashanah 5769, we all traveled to Jerusalem for my brother’s wedding. We all have friends, siblings or other relatives who for one reason or another just never got married or waited years beyond what stands as normal for getting married. In his early 50s, my brother Howard was the one in our family who was still single.

Until he met Efrat, an Israeli native from Jerusalem, who in her 30s was the one in her family still unmarried. The wedding occurred against the stunning backdrop of the Old City, the ancient Jerusalem stone and slowly setting sun silhouetting the kallah and chatan, the bride and groom.

My mother, of blessed memory, and father were there. It was not an easy trip for them, and as is their custom, they went back and forth several times over whether to go or not go. In retrospect, they were glad they went. A week ago, we got the good news, that Efrat gave birth to a baby girl shortly after sunrise Dec. 4, the 17th of Kislev on the Hebrew calendar, a week before Chanukah, which celebrates ancient miracles.

About a week before she died last summer, my mother had called Howard, who had just returned to Israel from California. Efrat, who was five months pregnant, had gone with him to visit our then-ailing mother. (Of course, at the time, we had no idea she only had a week left.)

“Can you come back?” my mother had asked him. “I’m not long for this world,” she said. Then she added in what was her most candid admission of her condition, “I’m dying,” the first time I’d ever heard her use those words.

She rambled on about going on a journey and about traveling north to Seattle, where my brothers and I were born. Then she asked in what I took to be an effect of her morphine-induced state: “How’s the little one?” I could imagine the perplexed look in my brother’s face on the other end of the call. But perhaps she was just asking the question she would have asked this week had she still been with us. Maybe she was time-traveling into the future.

The baby looks beautiful. We know that from talking to the new mother and father on Skype earlier this week and seeing the three of them via video.

The birth came almost four months after my mom’s passing.  Tonight, Jews around the world begin the eight-day observance of Chanukah. Given the years it took for Howard and Efrat to find each other, you could say this baby girl marks one of the modern miracles of this Chanukah. They’ll announce her name tomorrow amidst their community in Jerusalem over Shabbat.

What also echoes for me so poignantly is the famous passage from another ancient time in Ecclesiastes 3, the Greek translation of Kohelet, the book in the Hebrew Bible: “A time to be born, and a time to die.” Or in our case, a time to die and a time to be born.

After my mother’s funeral, after sitting shivah that week in August, I returned home to Connecticut. I remember the first morning back; Still on Pacific Time, I woke up, observing Eastern Daylight Savings Time, to make morning services by 7 o’clock. By mid-afternoon, I was exhausted and I decided to take a nap. But first I called my dad to check in and see how he was doing.

He wasn’t home when I called. Instead the voice mail kicked in.

“Hello. We can’t answer the phone. Please leave a message and we’ll call you back as soon as possible.” Nothing unusual about that.

Except the voice on the message was still my mom’s. It was at once unsettling and welcoming. I left a message and then fell asleep. In the middle of my nap, I heard the phone ring. I answered it. I started talking. It was my mom. Midway through the conversation, it dawned on me. Something’s not right here. Her voice grew faint. Then I realized I was dreaming. I woke up, shook my head and smiled.

But over the last four months, when I’ve called out to California and got the answering machine, I’ve gone from hanging up because it just felt too weird to looking forward to her message before saying, “Hi Dad. Just thought I’d call to see what’s up. Call me when you get a chance.”

Tonight, after returning from minyan, I called. My dad’s been doing all right, all things considered. He’s learning how to use the computer, send emails, and talk on Skype, all modern tasks he’d left to my mom before her passing. The phone rang tonight. It was 5 o’clock in the West. It rang enough that I knew I’d get the voice mail recording. When it came, I was surprised. The voice was my dad’s.

“Please leave a message.” He had figured out how to re-record the voice-mail greeting. I wondered: had someone told him he ought to change it? Had he decided on his own that four months was long enough to have his wife, of blessed memory, still answering the phone?

I’ll ask him when he calls back. I must admit, a part of me was disappointed that she’s no longer screening calls. But then, all things must pass, right?