Cross Country #30 Transitions

Goldie: If life is indeed like a sine wave, then much of my trip east was like sliding up and down the curves and then below the water line. My fifteen year old son, Adam, provided much joy in securing a board position in his United Synagogue Youth group region. We were able to spend a rare long weekend together before I escorted him to the bus which will take him on a six and a half week tour of America with the same organization (the same tour my parents sent me on as a teen.) It was a "with and without" experience. A tad embarrassing that he was the only kid WITH spiked hair and mirrored shades (sunglasses) and the only kid arriving WITHOUT tefillin or a kippah in his suitcase. (No, I wasn't in charge of packing....but still, he is a "rabbi's kid". Guess he might as well be a shoemaker's son.)

Presiding over the Board of Admissions meetings at The Academy for Jewish Religion is always intense. Hundreds of inquiries, piles of applications, days of interviews and we will ultimately select a tiny cadre of exceptional people for admission to training for rabbinical and cantorial ordination. This has to be the most evolved for the moment of all the seminaries, given the focus on scholarship, skills, pluralism and spirituality. It was good to be back, wonderful actually.

Hence, a major transition will be selling our home (Barry helped design it and has lived there almost since he immigrated to America from South Africa.) It is ringed with meditation gardens and fish ponds, has soaring ceilings, hot tub, sauna and sunset views of the lake.....in Reading, Pa. Anyone want to trade a two bedroom apartment in NYC for a gorgeous home? The market values are comparable. (eek!)

So, the hard parts of the trip east were my dear friend Rabbi Judy Kummer's sweet father dying, young, in his 60's. Also, facilitated a difficult "get" (Jewish divorce) for former congregants who have become dear friends. Then there was the life-shifting shock of having my own father come home from picking up my youngest son at the shore where he lives with my wasband, enter the house and his collapsing into my arms incoherent, shaking, very ill. I've witnessed many people going through the shift into parenting one's parent(s). Now the moccasins are my own.

How long to listen respectfully? When to insist on immediate action? How much of the information he's giving in his fevered state is accurate? The medical history, do I even know the correct answers so I can spot migrations in the story as he tells it? My mom had a stroke years ago and he cares for her himself.....where is her medicine? How much? When? Who insures the house, repairs the alarm, mows the lawn, is the plumber, where are the car keys? They have functioned independently forever, will again God willing, yet the moment reveals many unknowns.

My "on the threshold of bar mitzvah" son, Mark, who has not seen me for two months stays with the sweet, gentle child-like Grandma while I rush his beloved grandfather to the hospital. He brings her fluids, urges her not to become dehydrated, helps her prepare for bed, diverts her from even beginning to comprehend what is happening. He thinks up things to do to be helpful, I want to award him for valor in the face of terror - this is harder than any bar mitzvah project.

Who would have guessed the well-spring of love, compassion and sorrow and fear and sadness and shock that attends such a first viewing of the road ahead? Who? Many, many of you would know, too well, already.

Damn.....nuts, fooey - I can rail at the Source for the inevitable. Is there a blessing for one's parents' old age and progressive infirmity? When I got my first gray hairs (in my twenties) I blanched,then blessed: "m'shaneh itim"...."the One who changes the times", "u'mahaleaf et ha zmanim, "and changes over the seasons."

So here goes. Thank You for the blessing that I happened to be home for just this week, that day, that moment that my dad came through the door. If I hadn't been there, my mom couldn't have called for help, she's incapable...it would have been a disaster. Thank you for synchronicity. Thank You for the fact that the antibiotics worked, that he's doing better, was coherent when I called him from the port. Thank You for letting me speak with my sister, who is with them now and staying in touch while I take Mark off to Alaska for his Bar Mitzvah trip. Thank you for giving me a chance to say things that could have gone unspoken.

I have the kind of parents who are self-less. My father once canceled his dental office hours after my divorce, so he could watch my boys who were home sick with the flu and that way I wouldn't have to miss a day of classes in rabbinical school. I will never forget his quality of persistence against odds (come on Daddy...use it now!).

Once we were in the Florida Everglades, he had always wanted to go on an airboat and see the gaitors. In his seventies and bearing a shattered leg from WWII, he couldn't walk the steep slope down to the boat. Turn around and go home? Not him. He dropped to the ground and crawled the 25 feet to the boat and rolled over the edge, pulled himself into a seat and beamed with joy and amazement the whole ride. Onlookers were shocked into silence and then cheered for him!

JoJo Perilstein recently had us on her Philadelphia radio show (Barry and I) to talk about the use of ritual for personal healing. I had emailed a phrase that came up for us during that show to my friend who lost her dad. "Shiva is like a dark tunnel lined with velvet gloves. As the days and weeks go by, some light becomes visible and it becomes revealed that there are also faces, the loving faces of family and friends who have cared for us." Question: Is embedded in every funeral also a rehearsal in the hearts of those who attend for the future loss of those who are most precious to us?

The integration of the loss of a loved one into our lives is really holy work.

I've come to look upon a life as a very dramatic tapestry....many colors and patterns weave in and out along the way. The colors tend to change intensity and shade with time, as the loss evolves into a sacred memory. Loss becomes enshrined in our Memory Tapestry, under the best of psychological circumstances, as "a great challenge or difficulty which I survived or even overcame", instead of "woe, behold the great trauma(s) which befell me in life."

How interesting to look back on the black threads of divorce, the hot red strands of shattered weeping only to see that they are now mingled with the ultramarine blue of dangerous, high, navigable rivers which one rafted and survived! To see those rivers watering strong new green leafy live-liness which emerged from the black lagoon of depression...to look back through the days of demonization (when you decide it's not safe to stay and the other's behavior appears rabid, terrifying......were they really totally like that? Some of us wonder in retrospect.) We demonize them as part of the necessary world view to break out of the cocoon that is suffocating us....to grow, although we can't judge if the spiritual opportunity cost will exceed the benefit....we will never really know.)

Then the day comes, when the good times can be remembered. Bury those photos from during your marriage at the bottom of a big chest, I tell people, don't destroy all of them....they too are part of the Torah of your life. No less significant than a memorable sweet sixteen or starring role in a college play, photo of the baby's ultrasound, video of your c-section, are the moments of our lives, including marriage(s).....as the scroll turns, these are the days of our lives.

Facilitating a "get", Jewish divorce ritual is always a source of anticipatory anxiety for me. Often I am doing this for people I know, respect and love - each of them. As their rabbi, I am the appointed midwife for their souls' dis-entwining, removing the "kiddushin", the holiness which sanctified them as for each other alone, and am restoring them to "hol", the everyday and in its own way equally challenging "hol"iness of being single.

It says in the Talmud that when there is a divorce, the heavens are crying...yet divorce is sanctioned and supported where fire in the home life makes peace impossible. Even the Torah in Deuteronomy legislates divorce as a holy option. That said, I wouldn't wish it on anyone...the pain is beyond what one can imagine at the point of initiation even if the growth can be proportional to the pain. It is hard work being reformatted in the wilderness, which is where leaving puts us. The promised land of our dreams requires us to spend years consciously evolving out of the patterns of our Egypt times.

One of the readers of these posts wrote for information about how to organize a meaningful, contemporary ritual for a Jewish divorce. Long civilly divorced, her last child has gone off to college and she notes that some final thread of connection with the child's father, her wasband, is now ready to be discontinued. She feels that in all the worlds, civil, emotional, intellectual and spiritual, it is time to cut the cords....but how?

My thought was for a proper "get", it bemuses me that some rabbis require Jewish weddings but honor civil divorces. If anything, the civil divorce rituals entangle and exacerbate warring souls. A "get" done consciously with depth, kindness and passion, accelerates and helps make possible a healthy transition. This is the great value of ritual, it adds warp drive to one's future. (Yes, it is true that the "traditional" get is often devoid of spirituality in form and delivery....we are not talking about that...these are changing times.)

Some people can divorce mutually. Both parties in a room, perhaps doing what Rabbi Shefa Gold once described to me.....a long thick rope is seen, with small ropes knotted along it. Each partner takes turns unknotting a segment....recalling alternately the good things that are being ended as well as the bad.

More often, I ask for each person to bring members of the "minyan" of their life...a few of their truest friends (1-3), who will support them during and receive and bless them after the disengaging of souls. The legal documents are drawn by myself or a scribe, (in two weeks after this cruise, I'll post an example to my website for those seeking alterative languaging), the witnesses practice signing in Hebrew.

Location is established in the ancient ways from days when borders changed nationalities by war of the week....."in the town of "x", located between the following rivers or mountain ranges." Each is invited to reflect on the section of tapestry they created together. To state that they are sure, there is no change of heart...again, and again...as tradition wisely dictates. It is not cruelty, it is like the tearing of a black mourning ribbon, the ketubah is voided, is about getting one's soul to grasp the finality so one can move on. Even for those who are sure it has been long over, almost always I am told they could feel a changing in distant and internal realms. I ask them to reflect on what they might forgive the other person for, what they need to forgive themselves for...to be shared aloud or not...either way.

I will have them turn hand each other the document....."your doorway is no longer my doorway, I no longer have the right to comment on your actions, your well-being is now in your own hands"....they stand back to back (not touching) on either side of me. I pray to be able to bring through a blessing for the moment, my hands hovering and Shechinah's tears falling, "hamavdil beyn kodesh l'hol"...let us bless the One who differentiates between that which has been made reserved in holiness and that which is now unrestricted." They walk apart, towards their friends...each holding their copy of the "get." I arrange it so first one group leaves and then the other....no final hug, or mingling.

When one spouse prefers not to attend, tradition allows for a messenger to bring them their "get" and obtain their signature of receipt for a non-traditional get. In such cases I sometimes serve as the messenger and on occasion have the person giving the get at my side, s/he will read it to the former spouse, hand it over and depart with me. When longer distances are involved, an alternative messenger acceptable to both parties is involved.

Empty-nesting benefits from its own ritual - this is often a bitter-sweet time. Perhaps a small, particularly portable album can be created, one photo from each of the major tapestry moments of the child's life. Tell the stories to a minyan of friends (for some of us our "Rosh Hodesh group"), then take a wide, wide ribbon and fabric paint or indelible marker and cover the ribbon with blessings, hopes and well wishes for the child now become young adult. Holding it, receive blessings yourself from this minyan, your family of preference (as distinct from family of reference). Perhaps each will bring a beautiful bead or marble or shell to place on a necklace or in a jar to carry your blessings home with you. The album, of course, goes to your "baby's" new home with them. After the ritual, comes the rest of life, one will have lots more time, hopefully, to spend with one's minyan of friends.

Alaska? We are about to dock for the first time at Wrangel...hopefully we can return to our rhythms of time in nature, culture and sharing them with you. For me it was a very hard ten days...but, look outside: fishing boats abound, islands everywhere covered with dark forest green trees, a curious blue mist is everywhere. Petroglyphs and totems await us...and my son Mark, he's actually trying new foods on the ship.

Spoke to my dad yesterday, the antibiotics are working their magic and he's due home tomorrow.

Blessed is The One Who Changes the Seasons.