Max Roytenberg – Jewish Independent

Building of community

Originally, the only focus of Jewish camp was to offer Jewish children an opportunity to spend some time in a woodland environment. (photo from pxfuel.com)

Camping and camps may have been around forever. But Jewish camps, at least those in North America, have a contemporary history.

In 1893, a group called the Jewish Working Girls Vacation Society organized a camp for Jewish children in New York. These women sought to create a place to give their children a break from life in the industrialized city where they worked. The initial focus of Jewish camps was on the children of Eastern European immigrants, and there was a drive to use the camps to Americanize participants. Jews were not the only ones to take an interest in this vehicle for integration. By 1900, there were 100 camps of all kinds and, by 1915, there were more than 1,000.

Originally, the only focus was to offer Jewish children an opportunity to spend some time in a woodland environment, perhaps with access to water. Camps also offered children opportunities to interact with their peers from various backgrounds, without parental oversight, something they might not find in their home environment. Over time, Jewish camp programs expanded to include acculturation into things Jewish, along with athletics, social skills-building, the arts and related activities. Among the Jewish camps, there was the development of those that promoted a particular religious observance, or Zionism, Hebrew usage, socialism and the like. Zionist camps were given a special impetus with the worldwide effort to establish a Jewish state.

What Jewish organizers found over time was that camp experiences were crucial in binding young people to the Jewish community. The relationships forged among young people through camp have played an important role in this area. Anyone who has lived through the camping experience understands the powerful emotional connections this activity can carry with it, particularly when it occurs year after year. Many community leaders believe that sleep-away camps were (and are) an important element in the maintenance of a Jewish identity in the face of all the forces that encourage assimilation into the general population.

The summer camp has become a feature of Jewish life wherever the numbers are available to support this community service. In addition to private ventures, over time, Jewish communities have invested substantial resources into these programs and see them as an important part of Jewish communal activity. Some synagogues have camps as part of their program.

Interest in this aspect of Jewish camp has increased over time. For some parents, Jewish camps are an alternative to expensive primary schooling at Jewish educational institutions.

As a reflection of the growing appreciation of the importance of sleep-away camps in maintaining strong communities, philanthropic groups funded, in 2014, an organization in the United States to assist Jewish camps in carrying out their work. The Foundation for Jewish Camp now works with more than 180 Jewish summer camps, assisting in the training of personnel and providing other services and resources. Among other things, it assists Jewish camps in recruiting professionals, offers grants to first-time campers and helps fund upgrades for camps to accommodate participants with special needs.

An estimate published in January 2019 reported that there were 77,000 attendees at Jewish camps in the United States, and the foundation reports that there are 195 Jewish camps in North America. In Canada, there are Jewish camps in Ontario, British Columbia, Manitoba, Quebec and Nova Scotia.

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

A time to learn who we are

For many kids, camp is the only time they find themselves in a less structured environment. (photo from pixabay.com)

I remember the days when going to camp was the annual ritual, part of the summer holiday agenda. In our Winnipeg Jewish community, camps were standard practice. It seemed to me that all of my friends were going to be there, but there were always new faces. Some of them would prove to be the companions of my growing up.

Camp was there to free us from the constraints of everyday life, school and parental supervision. For some of us, being out there, in a natural setting, was the only time we ever found ourselves in a less structured environment, as most of us were city-dwellers. And there were always elements of Jewish culture to be shared.

But what I remember most of all was the consciousness that I was alone in a way different from the ordinary. I was in a cabin or a tent where most of my companions were strangers, at least at the start of the summer. Parents were far away. There was a counselor, but he or she was more like a referee than a parent. Whatever issues might arise between my companions and me, resolution would require direct negotiation without intervenors.

Here was an opportunity to test out our interpersonal skills and discover whether we would be leaders or followers, and in what areas did we have knowledge we could share. Here we could discover what issues might be important to us in person-to-person relationships. It had a different feel than our relations with siblings but with the intimacy of living together. We might even have to get into a physical fight if a conflict were grave enough. Would we allow someone to bully us? I certainly had to develop my capacities in these areas in my home environment.

In my case, I went the whole route: camper, counselor, program director. I can honestly say that the camping experience was my personal proving ground for skills I would hone and embellish throughout my life. In retrospect, I realize how important these occasions were for me.

I had the good fortune to attend a camp in my teen years that included subsisting for a few days in a wilderness environment. We hiked. We canoed. We even spent some time in a lake waiting for rescue when our canoe foundered in a sudden storm. I actually have started a fire by rubbing two sticks together. I have slept several nights in a forest with my companions listening to all the mysterious night sounds. We never saw a wolf or a bear, but we got to use copious amounts of mosquito repellent. I have lugged in the groceries and I have cooked food over an open fire. Potatoes are easy, but eggs are more difficult. The experiences were unforgettable.

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

Renewal requires courage

Did you notice what a great day it was today? Rain or shine, there are lots of people out there who are so happy you are alive. Besides yourself, I mean. I bet you did some things today that added to that number.

I’m feeling pretty good myself, remembering stuff from my youth. In December, we light the candles marking Chanukah, the Festival of Lights, as it is called. I always liked this holiday as a kid, along with Rosh Hashanah, because there were good things to eat at the party we always had. And older people in the family gave you money, Chanukah gelt. I hope they still do that, although I haven’t heard much about it since the kids got big and left home to form their own households.

Many people – unless they have Jewish neighbours or notice the lights around Christmas time – don’t know about Chanukah because it is not in the Bible, and because the events surrounding it happened later. After the empire forged by Alexander the Great broke up, the piece in which Israel was included was under the rule of kings named Antiochus.

These kings liked to fancy themselves gods. One of them put a statue of himself in the Jewish Temple. This was just too much for the Israelites and they rose up under the leadership of the Maccabees – Mattathias and his five sons – and drove out their Greek rulers.

Chanukah is about renewal, because that’s what the holiday celebrates, the renewal of the Temple in Jerusalem after the land was freed. Current Israel is part of that same story, as the ingathered exiles renewed national life on their land. Our national renewal is an assertion that our past is merely prologue, with the full story yet to be written.

Jewish history of the recent two millennia may not illustrate it, but Jews can be fighters when roused. The self-rule reestablished back then was ultimately surrendered to Roman rule, when they lost their unity. But Jews kept on fighting to achieve independence until, finally, the Romans used their power to exile Jews from their land. We must remember that the Romans executed Jesus because they feared that he would lead such a revolt, but the Jews continued their opposition after his death.

It took 12 legions to pacify the Jews – Rome conquered the Britons with only two legions. The Romans exiled the survivors to secure their rule, but the power of the religious ideas spawned in Israel conquered Rome itself a hundred years later. Those ideas were borne into exile by Jews who proved to be among the first martyrs.

More recent Jewish military history, in Israel – leaving aside the resistance without weapons in the Warsaw Ghetto, holding off the Nazi soldiers for weeks – proves that Jews can be fierce fighters.

The whole idea of renewal excites the blood. Renewal can make you feel like you can cancel out all the ills of the past, as if they never really happened. One can turn a corner and start out fresh. It is an idea around which one can rally believers, as has been done in so many places at so many different times.

Many people have fought and died in defence of renewal. It is at the heart of every movement that seeks to channel people’s efforts for change. It can be local, regional, national or global. It can have a religious or patriotic motivation. Its beauty is that it can have its origin in the lives of each and every one of us.

Change is not easy. We may be very unhappy with important elements of our lives, but taking drastic action to materially transform our lives takes courage and, often, an acceptance of the risk of substantial loss. Some of us may have done this at some time in our lives and not even appreciated that we were risking all for renewal.

It may not have been on a battlefield, but I consciously sought to renew my life when I reached out at the age of 70. I reached out to seek a relationship with a person I had known only superficially more than 50 years earlier as a teenager. The object of my continued memory and attention, my future bride, mustered up the courage to take me on as an unknown quantity, and her courage has enriched both our lives.

Truth be told, the times that haunt us most in our lives are those when we did not “seize the bull by the horns” and do the thing we really wanted to do. But, in the end, failing to act for lack of courage, or for some other reason, we settled for less than we ached to reach for. We can count every one of those times in our mind’s eye. Don’t we agonize sometimes about those steps not taken? We can never know for sure what the ultimate outcome would have been.

Looking out through the windows of my eyes, seeing the young and not so young, I am filled with enthusiasm for the future. I see the possibilities we all face in our lives to reengineer what the future holds for us.

There is so much happening out there of which I may have no understanding. What I do know is, if we really put our minds to it and concentrate on this renewal business, we can be sure to make our tomorrows fantastic.

Happy renewal in whatever calendar you follow, wherever in the world you are!

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

Our life accomplishments

We humans spend most of our lives searching for a path forward. Our priorities tend toward avoiding pain and seeking pleasure. We don’t even think about it, it is the instinctive reaction of any living thing. In this, we are essentially the same as any other life form on our globe. Humanity is no different than an amoeba, for example, in its instinctive struggle to survive, seeking the positive environment and avoiding the negative.

It is reported that Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. In his day, he was reportedly a gadfly, challenging everyone and everything with his relentless questioning. Difficult and sometimes uncomfortable though it may be, we ourselves often feel the need to honestly examine the what, the who and the why of our lives. And we have to look at both its micro and macro elements.

As for myself, on the macro side, I find I have a huge loyalty to my tribe, the Jewish tribe that I was born into. I am so proud of the contribution we have made, as a people and as individuals, and are continuing to make, in the advancement of the human condition in so many fields. I believe that much of this flows from the unique cultural package that adherents absorb with their mother’s milk.

But I am also aware that, along with the benefits of the moral code that our religiosity has contributed to improving the life on our planet, comes the distressing tendency for religion’s most orthodox adherents, whatever their stripe, to insist on a closing of minds to ideas that do not fit into an inflexible and unalterable worldview. I have needed to come to terms with the role my tribe (e.g. Baruch Spinoza) has played in that.

We have seen that, when religious and political dogma become state policy for believers and non-believers, and these are forced on the unwilling (e.g. the Inquisition, Communism), humanity stumbles on its way forward. We have seen the expression of the effort to avoid this in the adoption of the principle of separation of church and state, but this is imperfect and does not solve the problem of secular fanaticism. For me, humanity must always move to avoid extremism and the inevitable pain and destruction it causes to so many people.

Historically, we have seen how the advances that humanity made during the Greek flowering in the arts, philosophy and science were lost for a millennium. Some of this was salvaged under early Rome. They were then smothered for centuries by religious orthodoxy. We have seen how we have benefitted as humans from their liberation. These forces have shaped the world we live in, and the lives we are living, as we seek our pleasures and strive to avoid life’s pains.

On the micro side, I, like many of you must have, and must have been, studying the trajectory of our lives. Thinking back over my times, I wonder at the career decisions that I have made. I wonder at my actions during what proved to be watersheds in my life. Some of it was not much fun. I wonder at the impact on those whose lives, willy-nilly, were carried alongside of me in the tide of my life.

Then there is the question of nature or nurture. To what degree are our futures driven by the DNA package we inherited? Surely, to some extent, we are programmed in our reactions to fate by our inheritance. I wonder at the impact if our blood is programmed to run a certain way or another, or if our hormones, liver and kidneys function efficiently, the quickness of our minds, the quickness of our step, the state of our health. Doesn’t that make a huge difference in what we can accomplish? How much do we owe to our forbears for our results?

And then, what if we are raised on the “right side of the tracks,” our parents are educated, they pay attention to the development of their offspring, or none of these things? If we were born into abject poverty or in a country in turmoil, how greatly would our opportunities be constrained? Does not colour, economic circumstance and location make a huge difference in our range of opportunities? Doesn’t the political system, religion, sex and sexual orientation, the very epoch in which we were raised, make a difference even in these so-enlightened times?

Some of us can believe we deserve all the credit for our accomplishments, but how much do we owe to all the positive circumstances that affected our lives? Or, we may weep over our misfortunes, and surely we can truly finger the circumstances and the evidence that show that all of us do not start out on a level playing field.

We have little room for arrogance about our outcomes in the lottery. We can count on our lucky stars if we are winners, if we overcame our disadvantages enough and, summoning the best of the resources we salvaged, we can find some satisfaction in the outcomes. For those still on the trail, you may wish to proceed with caution with your assertions of personal mastery. As well, the knowledge that we face disadvantages will not absolve us from desperately trying our best in our lives. We have that obligation to ourselves.

We will know in our hearts at the end of the trail where we failed and where we succeeded. Special pleading will not help when we face our internal judge and jury, as we are the harshest of the judges we face when we examine our lives. My advice is to be kind to yourself and to one another.

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

Looking forward, back

Kierkegaard Kierkegaard Kierkegaard Kierkegaard Søren Kierkegaard once observed that we begin life by only looking forward, and end by looking back to understand it. The existentialists leave me cold with their nihilism and I find their approaches hard to digest, but I consider Kierkegaard’s comment very much an accurate description of life’s dynamic.

I can remember how my early thoughts were very much about what my future was going to look like. In my mind, all my presents were events that I would have to get through to get to the really important stuff. I knew we had to put up with living with the people we found ourselves tied to by the happenstance of birth. We had to follow the rules we learned from those around us to traverse this period, but our secret focus was on the future, on that time when we would be able to organize our world in a way it would better serve us.

Yes, we had to do what we were told. Yes, we sometimes formed attachments because it was expected, and even convenient. Yes, there were programmed behaviours that had to be followed faithfully. But we knew, didn’t we, that the real stuff would begin when we were in a position to be fully in charge. It sounds bloody-minded now, but those were really my thoughts. All I was living through at the time was just the price of admission, wasn’t it?

And the school years. Were we really going to need all this knowledge we were cramming? Everybody knew that this material was ancient history and that the real world was going to make it all irrelevant. Were any of the teachers people we could respect? I was cleaning out the shelves of the library with the books I was reading. That’s where my education came from, from the stories of real lives that people were leading, that people had led. I was finding my heroes there, and imagining the wonders I would realize when I finally broke free. Until then, I knew to play the game, do the work, pass the exams, collect the admission cards I was going to need. There was the brightly shining future ahead of me. I would accomplish wonders!

Then, there I was. Off on my own. Now I would remake the world. But I was a father, supporting a family. And the “membership cards” I had earned were the only things I had that were going to help pay the bills. I could see then that the stories I told myself and that I read in the library were just fairy tales – the parent who slogged away at work for many years to support us was the model I was going to have to follow. And the parent who took care of my creature comforts was the one who taught me I was valuable and that I could accomplish whatever I set my mind to. And the family members I took for granted were the only ones in the world who took me at face value, no questions asked.

Could I measure up to the hero I believed I was? Could I leave a mark, or marks, that would have the kind of impact I had always assumed I would realize in my life’s work? I am now looking back and trying to understand. I am looking back to appreciate what I have come to believe are the things that have value, and which may have escaped me when I was so focused on looking forward into the glare of a bright future.

I am evaluating what I offered, what I left for the generation I helped usher into the world. When they were able to free themselves from the burden of my stewardship, did they come away with anything that proved useful to them for their lives? I hope so. It was something I didn’t appreciate enough in my growing up.

I am evaluating what I offered, what I left to others, as I was serving to glorify my own image to myself. Am I satisfied that, while I was seeking to realize the potential I believed I had, some of the things I accomplished also helped others? I hope so. That was at the heart of the fairy tales I dreamed for myself when I fantasized about the future all those years ago.

What I now appreciate is how radically the looking-forward person I was has been altered by the living experience. The inexplicable arrogance and self-indulgence of the creature who was cast forward into the world is revealed and, looking back, he has learned to eat and relish humble pie.

Hopefully, we learn how much of what we earn for ourselves in life flows from the generosity of others, in the form of love, attention, time and materials. Hopefully, we learn that, if we are to be happy, we in turn have to be willing to share what we have to offer. Hopefully, we become eager to share, if only to taste the psychic rewards such actions yield.

Nowadays, I spend my time looking back, trying to understand my life more fully. Am I that much different from you?

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

Reflections on parenting

So, I’m thinking about the times of our growing up, and who did what in the story of our lives. We never think much about it while it’s happening, during the years when we are coming to our senses. During those times, we are too busy trying to figure out what’s going on.

This process has always fascinated me, wondering what I was thinking. I can’t remember any details about how it was for me. Do you ever wonder how we ended up in the particular places we were, with the people with whom we were packaged? Do you ever wonder how it was that these particular people came to inhabit your life?

Didn’t we just take for granted what was happening all around us as we were growing up, and just went on from there? But, let’s face it, the operation of our lives didn’t just happen. Somebody was out there doing the heavy lifting for us while we just floated along with the tide. It may take us a lifetime to figure that out and to begin to appreciate how generous other people have been, with what may have been meagre resources, in the making of our lives. I remember I resented, for the longest time, never having had any choice about the particular place in which I found myself. I couldn’t wait to get out of that place into one of my own making. Are all of us that arrogant as to our imagined rights at that young age? Did you ever have similar disloyal thoughts?

I think about the roles I had in bringing up my own children. I get the feeling that I sleepwalked through that job, concentrated as I was on making the best of my career opportunities. How much of that was ego and how much of that was an inbred drive, an absorbed imperative to provide for my dependents? I always told myself that they were the ultimate beneficiaries of my misguided priorities. My dependents may have a different view.

How much time did I spend preparing them to cope with the demands of a sometimes hostile world? Did I spend enough time counseling them as to how they might overcome the challenges they were sure to face? Did I do enough beyond providing food, clothing and housing? Was it enough? Did I do a better job than my parents did, as I was convinced I could? Didn’t I have a greater capacity to do that, so that so much more was expected?

I’ve never talked to my kids much about these concerns. Now I am a little hesitant about broaching the subject. I fear the memories they might have would have them judging my behaviour as bordering on neglect. Horrors! Did I do enough of the heavy lifting that was required? Do you people out there ever think about this stuff? Don’t we all console ourselves with the thought that we always did our best under the circumstances? Do we dare ask our kids about that?

If we look at nature, at the way creatures go about raising their young, it is clear that, in most cases, mammals and birds will, like humans, protect and nourish their young during their vulnerable periods, even to the point of surrendering their lives if need be. For wild creatures, the pains they go to, making nests and burrows, hunting and gathering food, seem without limit, commandeered by instinct. And the young learn by following their parents’ example. For humans, that period of vulnerability is so much longer. And what our young have to learn is so much more complex.

I always thought I would do better when my turn came, only to realize on maturity how the many gifts I had been given by my parents would challenge my own capacities to match them with my own brood. We know what a difference parental attendance can make in an offspring’s future.

How many parents stick with a job they hate to put bread on the table? How many parents stay in a relationship they loath to keep a roof over the heads of their young? Most just keep on doing what they have to do, day after day, year after year. That’s heavy lifting!

How many parents abandon places where they know all the rules for the unknown, in the hope of ensuring their children will have a better chance at life? How many jump off into danger in the hope of finding a better life? We are hearing a lot about that these days at the Unites States’ southern border. And at many European borders for the last several years. Didn’t most of us have it a lot easier?

How do we define what we owe ourselves and what we owe to those we are responsible for bringing into this world? How many of those rules come from outside ourselves, absorbed from our parents, from our communities? (What a hierarchy of social imperatives I inherited just by being born Jewish! What was in your birth box?) Or, like other creatures, do we mostly act out of instinct? We see all kinds of behaviours. And we can’t help judging what we see, whatever our own performance has been, with whatever tatters of standards remain to us.

Now, no longer under the gun, and seeing things with a broader perspective, what do we do now? Do we think we have the right to butt in on our offspring with our own views about how things should go? How do you think we would feel if we were in their place? Isn’t it obvious? Do we have the wisdom to wait to be invited to comment? Will that invitation ever come?

For many of us, the heavy lifting is now in other hands.

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

How we can live after death

It is the instinct of all living things to try to stay alive, humans among them. Most religious doctrines pay a great deal of attention to this issue. And many people, whether part of an organized religion or not, believe that a spirit leaves the body after death. Where viewpoints vary mainly is what happens then.

In many belief systems, we stay alive in some form or another even after death. Hindus, like Buddhists, believe that a departing spirit is reincarnated into some other life form. Buddhists believe there is no guarantee that the life form will be human; they believe that liberation from the cycle of life is the only desirable objective, a state they call nirvana.

The monotheistic religions all have some concept of an afterlife, with outcomes based on our behaviour during our life on earth. Indeed, both Christianity and Islam see the afterlife as the most desirable state, at least for the righteous, compared with our life on earth, the current one being a “a vale of tears.” Judaism also sees a reward for the righteous, with a resurrection when the Messiah arrives to usher in the “End of Days” and heaven on earth. But Jews, in contrast, are urged to live the fullest possible life while alive, every life being precious.

Without entering into discussions on this issue as to the merits of one position or another, I have drawn some conclusions as to their relevance on the question of staying alive. Empirical evidence from religious enthusiasts is meagre, relying on faith rather than hard facts, or reports of a life, or lives, after death from thousands of years ago. These form the basis for the promise underlying the religious thesis.

The realization of a positive outcome in the religious sphere depends on an unblemished life experience. I cannot count on being among those judged as sufficiently righteous and deserving. That leaves me with the task of doing the best I can to extend the life I know about, the one I am living now. Having past the four-score mark is evidence that I have done some things right, having already survived many of “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” I must have good DNA.

Chance has favoured me in my encounters with accident, disease and body-systems breakdowns. I have survived my encounter with “the big C” up to this time. I have diabetes under apparent control, but one never knows, as it works its damage asymptomatically.

I take pills in abundance to ward off the evils of sugar, high blood pressure and stroke. I quit smoking in my early forties and drink alcohol sparingly. My food habits are not outrageous, without denying myself the favourites that make life worth living. I exercise religiously when not on holiday. I have given up driving on the promise it will increase my life expectancy. Best of all, I pass my life with the woman of my dreams. Life is grand.

The other night, I spent some time with family. We found ourselves talking about our experiences with forbearers who had gone before us. For a short while, it appeared to me almost as if those ancestors were there with us, alive and sharing our good times. Like a lightning bolt, it struck me that that was truly another way of staying alive. The people in our lives who are important to us, those who have marked us in our life experience, they continue to be alive for us as long as they remain in our memories. They never disappear for us as long as we live; they go on being a part of our lives.

So, that’s the secret. We must continue to be important in the lives of the people who surround us. As long as we do that, we will stay alive even after we are physically gone. We have to cherish those we care for while we have them, in part so they will continue to cherish us.

But this does not apply to family only. It is true for all the people in our lives to whom we reach out, to all those we touch and those who touch us. If we want to stay alive, we have to do the reaching out.

Moses and Jeremiah and Isaiah and Jesus can thus be alive for us as well, if they have touched us and touched our lives. Shakespeare and da Vinci are alive for me. Spinoza is alive for me. Danny Kaye and Sid Caesar are alive for me, as is Beethoven.

They are all alive for me because they are a part of who I am. All the people who have made me what I am are alive for me every day of my life. I am surrounded by a crowd. Sometimes, they speak through me. You can’t spend much time with me without getting to meet some of them.

If I write something and it touches another soul, then I may still be alive for them whether I am physically there or not. Even for the people who no longer remember my name, I may still be alive for them in some cranny of their consciousness. That’s not so bad. If we can believe in that, in our own minds we have a future beyond our temporal experience of life.

So, now you know the secret. Go out there and talk to the people around you. Phone them. Write an email. Hug or kiss them if you can get away with it. You may get to live forever if they tell their children about you. If you know what you have done, if you have faith in it, as I do, regardless of your other beliefs, this can be your “promised land.”

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

We do more than lift our feet

The phrase “we lift our feet” comes from a letter, written in Portuguese and Hebrew, sent by Rabbi Moseh HaCoen Mendes, who was living in London, England, in the year 1657. He was writing to Rabbi Manasseh ben Israel, living in Amsterdam. A translation of it appears in Rachel Kadish’s book The Weight of Ink (Mariner Books, 2017).

At the time the letter was written, the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal was still raging but Holland had opened its doors to refugees. Ben Israel traveled to England to try and persuade Oliver Cromwell to allow Jews back into the country, from which they had been expelled in 1290. His argument was that Jews had to be present in every country if the Messiah was to arrive in 1666. While he didn’t manage to open up England to Jewish immigration, Cromwell did permit the 20 Jewish families then living in London in hiding, pretending to be Christians, to live openly as Jews. It proved in the end to be the thin edge of the wedge.

In his letter of consolation to ben Israel, Mendes wrote the following passage: “Our life is a walk in the night, we know not how great the distance to the dawn that awaits us. And the path is strewn with stumbling blocks and our bodies are grown tyrannous with weeping, yet we lift our feet. We lift our feet.” (Both rabbis died shortly afterward, as did Cromwell.)

I was struck by the fatalism of the rabbi. He was expressing a common outlook of religious people in the era – that our lives on earth are lived in a vale of tears, and that our hopes must centre on the beyond. And yet, the Jewish philosophy of life has always been that we must live the life we have here on earth to the fullest. Different from some other views, we deny that our lives should be lived solely in the hope of some future reward.

It is true that, come what may, our role is to “lift our feet” and keep on going. This is a staple of Jewish thinking. We keep on going. We keep on trying. We are the nation of try. If we surrender to the obstacles we face, we are beaten before we start. There is so much around all of us, whatever our background, that can be discouraging, but we can’t allow it to get us down.

Persistence in the pursuit of the goals we seek is a hallmark of Jewish life, and of successful people of every persuasion. We are not easily deterred. Our parents, like many others of immigrant origins, worked their whole lives to try and ensure that their children would get an education and a better start in their lives than was the case for them. Many Jews have gravitated to the research fields, where years of effort are required to achieve results.

Many large enterprises that mark the commercial landscape were once small businesses initiated by Jewish entrepreneurs. From banking, to groceries, from the shmatte (rag) business, to high fashion, it is difficult to find an area of economic activity where Jews have not shown their hand. Remember Bugsy Siegel and Murder Inc.?

Our seeming job in this life is to keep on keeping on. But many of us continue to search for a rationale for human existence. We know that the struggle for survival is in the nature of all living things. That is nature’s imperative. As thinking humans, though, many of us seek other reasons for our being, explanations beyond mere survival. We do not know how long our trip will be before we see the “dawn,” but, in the meantime, many of us are not satisfied that just reproducing ourselves is enough to justify the existence of the universe we are experiencing.

For Jews, the business of survival over the years has been an interminable task accompanied by incalculable losses. But, though few in number, we have survived and, where we have had the tools of defence, we have prevailed. Our religious say we are here to celebrate the glory of G-d, in whose image we have been created. Oh yes, and we are also supposed to provide a model so that all peoples will come to recognize His Oneness and supremacy. It has been a painful task, and not many of us are ready to own up to that particular role.

In these days, when religious speculation about life’s purposes is far from the central issue of our time, it is still important in the lives of millions of people. Even for those of us who are not among them, many of us would like to believe there is some purpose in our lives beyond mere existence.

Many people devote a good part of their thinking and their actions to improving the lives of others beyond their immediate circle, and they draw some sustenance and psychic reward from those efforts. Some people believe that certain issues are more important than even their own lives and, indeed, they stand ready to lay down their lives, if need be, in defence of these ideas.

Helping others and a willingness to die for our beliefs both point to things that we value beyond mere existence. Yes, we go on “lifting our feet,” but with principles that guide us until we reach the “dawn.”

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

Can only live in the now

It’s sunny today as I write this, and there is a lovely breeze fluttering the leaves on a tree outside my window. I am reacquainting myself with myself, pleasuring in the solitude. Writing this story for you (and myself) is a minor distraction.

Knowing ourselves can be scary, but we can get over that. We are not so bad after all. Look at all those good things we have done (rah! rah!) despite the weaknesses we know we have, and how they compare to the aspirations we have had for ourselves. It doesn’t mean we don’t have to try to be better, to achieve more, but facing our failings can make us be kinder to others.

My bride feels that I am amazing in my capacity to forgive myself for my errors and weaknesses. But I know, and I have told her, that she, and most people, are too hard on themselves. I believe it has something to do with the constructs we build up in our minds as to what we believe is success, the goals we set. Then, given the unpredictability of life, we are disappointed when we don’t realize all of them.

But these things we dream of are not real. They are something way out in a potential future. Only the now is real, only the now is what we can change. Often, when we get to the anticipated future, we no longer want what we aspired to. We have changed our mind as a consequence of our life experiences. Our pleasures may really arise from the incidentals we realize on our path, what we encounter in our nows. They may turn out to be what we treasure above all.

So, I forgive my errors as lessons learned, and aim for my goals as a spectrum rather than a single point. And I forgive my blunders as an excess of enthusiasm. I know my enthusiasms can be fierce, as I believe that we really have to want what we want to have some chance of getting there.

We all know that people are watching what we do. A lot of what we think about ourselves is motivated by what we believe other people think about us. And we worry about that at times. It can seriously affect our behaviour. As I have gotten older, however, I find that I am not so much worried about that. The person I am more concerned about is me – that’s the guy I have to come to terms with.

We cannot fail to develop in ourselves, unless we are sociopaths, some ideas about what are the right things to do in life. We absorb it from our parents, what we read or see, what our friends have said or done, and the “inner us” watches and measures everything we do, and passes judgment.

We know when we have violated what our inner judge has said is the right action. Nonetheless, we sometimes, thinking or unthinking, follow our own selfish self-interest. But, often, we are motivated to act in opposition to our short-term interests and according to the larger values we have absorbed.

When we do the wrong thing it stays with us. Our judge is difficult to escape. He or she is there every time we encounter ourselves in our thoughts. We have many ways to distract ourselves from what it is telling us, and that escape may tempt us powerfully, but we cannot know ourselves if we are not in touch, fully acquainted, with that inner self. We cannot be at peace if we are not in harmony with that inner self or judge.

We all know people who publicly espouse the public good and privately pursue the private good. We see examples of that every day on our television and internet screens, our newspapers and magazines, our trips to the grocery store or the community centre. Could we live with ourselves if we were that kind of person? Does it take self-delusion?

Most of us aspire to being the kind of people our children could respect, and we have taught them the lessons we believed would help them on their way. We all have had our aspirations to achieve positions and places, situations in life that we feel are appropriate for the kind of people we truly are. Hopefully, we are happy with the portion that we have earned and been given (as no one makes it on their own, or without some luck).

It is only in our solitudes that we truly confront the people we are, without pretension. Some people are able to be more like their real selves in public, but most of us present to others the person they believe others want or expect to see in us. How fortunate we are if we have those in our circle with whom we feel free to be the person we really are.

Deep in our heart of hearts, we know of all the compromises we have made with the principles we truly believe in. They weigh on us. We have corrected where we could along the way. For what remains undone, which cannot be fixed, we have to find in ourselves the generosity to forgive ourselves, and others.

This moment is the “there” we have arrived at, even if it is the life we did not necessarily aim for. This incidental is the real thing. We are really alive only in the now in which we find ourselves.

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

Make the effort to celebrate

Some people hate birthdays. They don’t want to hear about them. They refuse to tell you their age, or even discuss such matters. What’s that about? Other people are different about such things. I am one of those.

When we were kids, birthdays were all about celebrations. There was the cake, the gaudier the better. And the presents! Didn’t we look forward to all that? There was all the fuss about getting friends to attend. And even hard feelings if someone you thought was a friend didn’t attend. Parents got into it and it could get all political. The “keeping up with the Joneses” adage raised its ugly head and your party had to be as spectacular as those of your friends. I remember once we had a small pony to ride at a birthday. Some kids had a clown come to entertain the kids at their party. When we were teens, they were just an excuse for a dance, with all the to-ing and fro-ing between girls and boys. And getting money from the relatives so we could add to the bank account for college was a very serious business.

In our parenting years, it was more about the kids. Birthdays, if they were marked at all, were something quiet between parental partners. At least, that’s the way it was for me. There had to be a special something between the partners for fuss to be made on birthday occasions. Many years of our lives went by with no conscious notice taken to the passage of time. All of a sudden we were at 20-year anniversaries. Pity! There is a lot to be said for marking occasions with some ceremony. There were a lot of occasions we missed that should have been celebrated. Too bad about that as I look back. Maybe things were better for you.

I find things are so much different for me these days. I try to linger consciously on the special events, the birthdays and other milestones as well. Like when we do yoga, we really concentrate on feeling the now, our presence in the instant. Birthdays are great moments for that. I track the dates and give advance notice to those who may have the faintest of interest, sending out blindcopied email messages to all and sundry alerting them to the occasion, so they can jump on the computer, the telephone, or any other communication vehicle. They can pretend that they have known about the matter all along, so the object of the interest will feel really appreciated. It helps draw all of us closer together, reinvigorating our ties.

If we can be present for a birthday, that takes the cake. Thinking of my own experience as the one being fêted, don’t we all feel good when somebody makes a fuss over us, doing something that we wouldn’t think of doing for ourselves? After all, we usually think of others. We would feel too self-absorbed, even conceited, to make a fuss about ourselves. It’s so much nicer when somebody else goes to the trouble of doing it. Doesn’t that make us feel great! It does me.

And, know a secret? I’m no longer shy about that stuff. I am totally obnoxious. I had a birthday when I was 75 and invited everybody I could think of, especially those I really wanted to see. And I made them travel, hundreds, even thousands, of miles to attend. Of course, I insisted I wanted no other present than their presence. (And I graciously accepted gifts from those who ignored my request.) All the cards and letters I received were great. And one of my daughters assembled a book of my poems, with pictures and comments, that is among my treasures today.

I held my 75th in my old hometown, thousands of miles from where I lived. I went to a place where they had a chocolate fountain for the kids. It was wonderful to see all those chocolatey faces. And my son-in-law stepped in and picked up the tab. Wow! What a gift! Yes, I remember, and am grateful. I would have been very happy to pick up the bill just the same, but it makes one feel so appreciated. It was an orgy of self-satisfaction. Aren’t I a brat! I know that. My Bride reminds me I am all the time.

I did the same thing for my 80th in Dublin, where my Bride and I were living at the time. I knew then that we would be leaving to come back to Canada, so it was a great occasion to invite a few thousand of my favourite people to say goodbye. A couple of my kids even came across the big water to be there. It was another indulgence to my ego and I enjoyed it thoroughly. We only live once, right? We have to celebrate survival. We may not be around too much longer to do it.

So, I believe in indulging in all the things now that I never gave a thought to during the years I was slugging it out, making my way through life. Many of us are too busy during those years putting one foot in front of the other. When younger, we did things the quickest way, the most economical way. We shrugged off the sentimentality we might have felt, that might weaken our resolve to forge ahead. In doing so, we surrendered a lot of what might have been very good times, but we remember the few times we weakened, now some of the best of our memories.

These days, I make a great fuss about every birthday – even when it’s not mine!

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.