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Coming Feb. 17th …

image - MISCELLANEOUS Productions’ Jack Zipes Lecture screenshot

A FREE Facebook Watch Event: Resurrecting Dead Fairy Tales - Lecture and Q&A with Folklorist Jack Zipes

Worth watching …

image - A graphic novel co-created by artist Miriam Libicki and Holocaust survivor David Schaffer for the Narrative Art & Visual Storytelling in Holocaust & Human Rights Education project

A graphic novel co-created by artist Miriam Libicki and Holocaust survivor David Schaffer for the Narrative Art & Visual Storytelling in Holocaust & Human Rights Education project. Made possible by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

screenshot - The Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience is scheduled to open soon.

The Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience is scheduled to open soon.

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Tag: philosophy

Sabbath of life

I am one of the fortunates who has achieved the treasured time of contemplation, a time to appreciate in the profoundest way some inkling of what it has meant to be alive. I am not unique; I do not claim that. There are many around us who share, and have shared, this gift. Usually, it comes to those who have added years to their time on earth.

We have survived the birthing process in the wider sense. We have learned what it takes to live among our fellows. We have found a trade to gain the resources to provide for our creature comforts. We have succeeded in making connections with others to ensure our emotional needs are met. Hopefully, we have made a contribution to others. These things are in our past although we may carry them on for our own pleasure. They seem to be necessary elements in arriving at a time of peace within ourselves.

No matter what your religious persuasion is, or if you are agnostic or an atheist, there is room for this idea within your consciousness. We can survive “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” as Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, to arrive at this state and spend some of our time contemplating the mysteries of life. Behind us are so many things we would do differently if only we could. Behind us are the many times of terror, threatening unknowns regarding our plans and projects. Behind us are our brushes with an untimely death for which we were not ready.

If we have been incredibly lucky, we may be leaving behind some material evidence of our passage – a child, a service, some indelible scratch in the wall of time, whether remembered by others or not. Some of us may still have a file folder full of plans, a list of to-do items on our agenda. Godspeed to you! But, if you recognize that this is your Sabbath time, you are now more than willing to pass the baton to others. You are now more than willing to accept that there will always be more things to be done. And you are ready to contemplate that others will be found to carry out and complete those tasks. You are ready to sit back for awhile in the sun, enjoy the beauties of nature, the bounties of nature, the beauty of your children and your children’s children. Or the beauty of other people’s accomplishments, the beauty of other people’s children!

Much remains to be fixed in the world and some of it hurts dreadfully to contemplate. It is not surprising that we sometimes feel overwhelmed. But there are blessings we can count on our fingers. There are things you can point to that you have been responsible for, some positives that you can take credit for. You can take a deep breath and hug yourself. You did good! Real good! You deserve to celebrate the Sabbath, a rest day for your soul.

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.

Posted on December 18, 2020December 16, 2020Author Max RoytenbergCategories Op-EdTags aging, Judaism, lifestyle, philosophy
COVID’s impact on new year

COVID’s impact on new year

(photo by Shelley Civkin)

Not only did I never imagine that I wouldn’t be able to hug and kiss my family during Rosh Hashanah dinner; I didn’t even get to see them this year. Everyone is still hunkering down, keeping out of COVID’s way and staying close to home. At least most people are.

In case you’re one of those people waiting for things to “get back to normal,” I hate to be the one to deliver the bad news, but there is no going back. Normal is a setting on a dryer. Once the world claws its way out of this pandemic, we will be forever changed. Like grief and loss over time, we may not feel worse, but I guarantee we’ll feel different.

What will come out of this topsy-turvy pandemic is something much better. I’m hopeful that everything we’ve lost and sacrificed will be not only rectified, but made even more hopeful, soul-sustaining and life-affirming. I struggle to say these words, because it sounds downright arrogant, considering the losses people have suffered in the last many months, physically, financially and emotionally. But, if I choose to take the other fork in the road, it’s a dark and scary path, and I just don’t want to go there.

This Rosh Hashanah, like every Rosh Hashanah, we celebrated. Just differently. There was no fanfare. There was no cooking. There were no guests. Not even family. Being cautious by nature has stood me in good stead so far this year, and there was no way I was risking it all after such a long haul. So, we scaled down the physical celebration and revved up the spiritual one. We read more about the High Holiday rituals and their significance this year than ever before; we recited the blessings more powerfully than in the past; and, from our very core, my husband and I sincerely wished each other a healthy, sweet and good new year. And we meant it like never before.

In past years, I would fuss and bother and cook and bake. This year, I didn’t have the emotional or physical koach (strength) for it all. Preoccupied with health challenges, I decided to take the easy way out and have our meals catered from Chef Menajem. Not only was the food spectacular, but it made things (read: pandemic isolation) a bit easier to accept. I set an elegant (if empty) table, got out my silver candlesticks, draped the sweet challah with my homemade Yom Tov challah cover, and we proceeded to eat Rosh Hashanah dinner alone. Just the two of us. It was slightly eerie, but, at the same time, absolutely perfect. And, yes, that’s an acorn squash adorning the table. I didn’t even have the wherewithal to track down a pomegranate. And, while an acorn squash isn’t a first fruit, it was my first squash of the year. I’m sure G-d will understand.

A feeling of tremendous blessing came over me as I realized just how lucky we are to have each other, my husband Harvey and I. Thinking of our single, divorced and widowed friends, and the loneliness and isolation they’re feeling right now, my heart breaks. How I would have loved to invite those friends to our home to join our modest New Year’s celebration. A little wine, a lot of food, some brachot, some honey cake. But COVID-19 was having none of it.

Turns out, COVID-19 is a big, huge bully. It doesn’t care one iota about anyone’s feelings; it doesn’t want to know from suffering or depression or desperation. But, we know, and we’re fighting back. With joy. As many of you know, lots of local Jews took to the parks and beaches to hear the shofar on Rosh Hashanah this year and I, for one, infused much more meaning into the holiday than I can ever remember. Because I could. And it was a very conscious choice. Not only is Rosh Hashanah part of our heritage, it’s our right. And we sure as heck weren’t going to let COVID take that away from us, too. Everything just seemed to magnify this year – the holiness, the urgency, the depth of feeling. And, while it may have seemed a bit lonely from the long view, it was nothing short of superb close up.

Stepping in to fill the spiritual void so many of us are experiencing this year, there are dozens (if not hundreds) of rabbis and synagogues around the world offering online Jewish learning. I want to say a personal thank you to all of you. You are a lifeline, literally. Because of you, I am studying and learning more about my Judaism, and participating in its mitzvot to an extent that’s surprising even me. Never before has finding meaning and purpose taken on such enormous importance. Our mission isn’t just to stay alive; it’s to thrive, even in the face of this brutal pandemic. We, as a people, are stronger than that. Unfathomably stronger.

The pandemic has, for the most part, brought out the best in humanity, and certainly within our Jewish community. People are helping strangers, feeding strangers, doing errands for strangers and wanting to do more. And it’s not just Jews helping Jews. It’s Jews helping everybody. Truly, the world has become one people. When we climb out of our little hidey holes and show up for life in the most positive, compassionate ways we can, each of us makes the world a bit better. And the light grows.

Not a single one of us will come out of this pandemic the same person. We do have the choice to become a better version of ourselves though. Stretched beyond our comfort zone, tired from doing too little for too long, we do have the ability (and the desire) to puff ourselves up and accept the challenges facing us. Or even go beyond. If that’s all that’s within our control right now, that’s enough.

No one is asking us to perform miracles – that’s not in our job description anyway. All we’re being asked to do is help one another through this challenging time. Even just a kind word can get the job done. Do something. Do anything.

Shelley Civkin, aka the Accidental Balabusta, is a happily retired librarian and communications officer. For 17 years, she wrote a weekly book review column for the Richmond Review. She’s currently a freelance writer and volunteer.

Format ImagePosted on October 30, 2020October 29, 2020Author Shelley CivkinCategories Op-EdTags Accidental Balabusta, coronavirus, COVID-19, family, lifestyle, philosophy, Rosh Hashanah

Consider soul maintenance

In a recent article, I learned that Gal Gadot, the famous Israeli actor, says the prayer Modeh Ani (“I give thanks”) when she wakes up. Even famous people can be grateful for “getting their souls back” each morning.

In ancient times, sleep was considered analogous to death in some ways. As a study in contrast, the Christian response for children was: “If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” The Jewish response is “Hey! Thanks so much for keeping me alive each morning!”

I have always been a morning person (annoying, I know). Although my household is busy every day, we always manage an unconventional communal Modeh Ani as we go out the door. Maybe it was before catching the school bus in those pre-COVID days or, now, just before we take a walk with the dog. In any case, by the time my kids are lining up for their pandemic screening checks and hand sanitizer, we’ve sung this happy and grateful prayer.

Once something is a part of our routine, Jewish or not, we often don’t reflect on it again – but it’s worth remembering. Reading that Gadot, also a mom, embraced a similar routine was sort of heartening. Then, I happened to be studying Daf Yomi, a page a day of Talmud, and an interesting question arose in Eruvin 70a. What if one made an arrangement with someone so that there would be an eruv, a symbolic communal space, that allowed for carrying on Shabbat, and that person died? What happens then?

Almost immediately, the Talmud discusses the person’s heir. There’s no elaboration on the details, the heir was apparently known to everyone. There’s no mention of the executor or the lawyer the family must hire. There’s none of that. I imagined what it would be like if somebody near to me died suddenly on Friday afternoon, and what might happen next.

Thousands of years ago, people didn’t live as long. They lacked the kind of warnings we usually have now, through medical diagnoses and tests and surgeries. Mortality in general was higher, although everyone still dies. Rather, without modern medication and medical interventions, one expected a fair number of infants, children and adults to die before their time.

The recent rise in COVID cases in my home province of Manitoba and the rising mortality numbers have brought all this back into focus. In the last little while, two men in their 40s have died here. My husband and I are in our 40s. We have kids in grade school. We have a dog. And a house. And….

Based on recent experiences with the deaths of relatives and friends, we often had an idea ahead of time that the person was ill or that things weren’t looking good. Yet it isn’t unusual to hear of family members still tying up the deceased person’s affairs for many months (or years) later.

This pandemic is a sobering wake-up call. A hundred years ago, during the flu pandemic, young parents died very suddenly and left orphans. There were children, spouses, siblings and parents who remained. We’re facing something similar in 2020.

On the one hand, we’re lucky because Judaism offers us very sturdy mourning practices. We’ve continued to innovate, too, relying on technology to mourn together. The last few days, I have joined a rabbi online as she says Kaddish. She waits, patiently, until she sees 10 people pop up, viewing her Twitter or Instagram live feed, thanks everyone for helping her, announces her mother’s name, and begins Kaddish. Given the pandemic’s enormous effects, this has been an intimate and surprisingly moving way to support someone in need, virtually.

On the other hand, we’re out of practise with the notion that somebody can just “up and die.” Most of us don’t have immediate plans in place, but we should. Parents all over the world are scared by the notion that they might fall ill, die and leave their kids and spouse alone. This goes way beyond how one will have an eruv on Shabbat if someone dies on a Friday afternoon or on Shabbat.

Do we have up-to-date wills in place? Emergency plans for our immediate families and long-term ideas of how to get support for those left behind? There are a lot of questions and they are scary. What’s worse, though, is that the panic caused by thinking about this can cause us to turn irrational and erratic. Fear can make us hard to be around. We become the people who can’t manage basic, polite social encounters, such as social distancing at the grocery store.

What’s the antidote? Well, while careful estate planning helps, nothing really prepares us for sudden illness. No amount of religious rituals can make us immortal. However, many circle back to countering the fear. Some of us say Modeh Ani, to be grateful – for each morning, a ray of sunshine, a toddler learning to count or an older kid triumphant after a hard test at school. It’s a taste of really good sweet potato pie or an unexpected hug.

In other words, take the win when you can get it, wherever you find it. Sometimes, it’s whimsy, like knitting a pair of mittens with lots of colours, polka dots and a thumb ring. It’s remembering why we say a prayer, even if we rush it or say it at the wrong time.

We can wears masks and social distance and wash our hands, but, right now, our souls also need positive, meaningful time and spiritual support. The next time your car needs an oil change? Consider routine soul maintenance, too.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Posted on October 30, 2020October 29, 2020Author Joanne SeiffCategories Op-EdTags coronavirus, COVID-19, death, financial planning, Gal Gadot, gratitude, health, illness, Judiasm, lifestyle, Modeh Ani, philosophy, prayer

Continuing to give it a whirl

A whirligig is a top, or spinning device, something constantly changing. I don’t know about you, but I sometimes feel my head spinning. Whether we are talking about the internal – the radical changes many of us experience in our lives – or the external, the remarkable way the world around us has changed, I think I have got it right, in describing life as a whirligig.

Sometimes, I feel a churning in my insides, as I try to decide whether to laugh or cry. Isn’t it incredible that we start out as these wee things, helpless as puppies? We are even worse – we don’t, as newborns, have the survival instincts of other animals. Then, we grow up as creatures capable of organizing events that can shake the world, at least events that can shake the world around us, metamorphose the people and environment around us. I find that an astounding reality, don’t you?

Creating a new life, as some of us have been blessed with the chance to do, potentially alters all of human history every time it happens. Some humans have done that, and they were born of man and woman. Now, we are seven going on eight billion. What amazing potential lies in human hands! Who knows what intelligences currently lying outside our ken we are yet to master.

I grew up as one of the nonentities and, yet, I have affected the lives of millions who don’t even know my name. No guarantees. We could arrive here just to be another creature consuming resources. But, when I consider the trajectory of my all-too-common life, I shake and twirl, like a spinning top. What about those around us whose names we all know? They also started out on this planet as being more helpless than puppies, but became forces of nature that thrust themselves into our consciousness.

Maybe that is not the most important model. What about those unseen and unknown to us who led a life that yielded offspring, providing the continuity necessary to ensure the survival of humanity’s way of life? All of us started out as an idea that was born into flesh and blood, presenting the option of acting for good or evil. That it works out for the good so many times is astounding, when there are multiple things that can go wrong. We know about those, too. I am letting it all wash over me, making me happy and sad.

Can I talk about some of the ways in which the nature of my external world has changed? I was challenged by the existence of the computer when I was in my 50s. Before that, I remember going into a computer centre in the business I worked in. It occupied a vast air-conditioned space, tended by individuals who were regarded as acolytes of a mysterious priesthood. Today, I have more computing power in the machine I am typing this tale on than was contained in the whole of that metaphoric temple. All that data stuff held for the world’s business has vanished from their physical premises; it’s now in the “cloud,” held electronically in an obscure corner of the United States.

Nowadays, in an instant, I can be present at an event occurring in real time in a place I have never heard of that is 6,000 miles away. If I have the number, I can talk face-to-face with a person halfway around the world!

I can remember shivering in fear as the radio announced what our losses were on land and sea during the Second World War. How immediate would those things be today? We have seen it depicted on TV. Star Trek, with its once-only-imaginable technology, is coming into our living rooms and lives, in living colour. Our appliances are becoming smarter than we are. Is it any wonder that my head begins to spin when I think about it? Our grandkids take this all for granted. They stare at us in disbelief and laugh.

We don’t understand the half of what is going on. But we try to cope with all of this. I have not yet thrown up my hands. I take courses and try to learn new things. I watch webinars. I blunder about expecting failure, and experience it. Bit by bit, I learn a minimum, and I gratefully accept any help offered. I am grateful for the patience of others and try to be patient myself. I revel in small victories of understanding. I resist computer updates that may change the things I know how to work, putting off improvements that leave me at a loss. I accept that I will not learn to know it all.

So, my head is spinning on the turntable of my life, which is also spinning. I make an effort to keep in contact with others of my ilk who are in the same place. We can compare notes and share news of gains and losses. So far, my younger near and dear speak to me in languages I still understand. They make allowances for my decrepitude and hide their amusement at my distresses. I hug my Bride and friends close and closer to ensure I retain human contact. We continue full speed into an evolving future that may be even more beyond my understanding.

I know that, at some time or another, I will have to get off the turntable and hand in my IDs and passwords. Until then, I continue to give it a whirl!

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.

Posted on October 30, 2020October 29, 2020Author Max RoytenbergCategories Op-EdTags aging, health, lifestyle, philosophy
A tribute to my father

A tribute to my father

Was it really 17 years ago that my sweet, beloved father, Sidney Civkin, passed away? The long row of empty Yahrzeit candles in my closet confirms it. The date was March 13, 2003. Dad was 86 years old. It was indisputably the saddest day of my life.

If you have a good one, you’ll know that there is something unique about a father-daughter relationship. There are secrets and bonds that no mother-daughter relationship can come close to. Don’t ask me why, I just know it’s true.

It’s no secret that my sister Linda and I spent more time with our father in the last three years of his life than we had up until that point – and he was always a very present, involved father. He’d been suffering with end-stage renal failure and was on dialysis for those last few years. And we were his primary caregivers, since our mother was not well by that point.

Our dad often said that, ironically, those were the best years of his life – precisely because he got to spend so much time with Linda and me. He loved to just hang out with us. Whether we were sharing a meal, having a coffee at Granville Island, or sitting in the den shmoozing, he was all in. Flattering to think that he loved our company above everything else.

There was no one who didn’t have an opinion about our father. Some knew him as argumentative, loud and assertive. Others remember him as compassionate, caring and erudite. I knew him as all of those things, and loved him more for it. He was my secret-keeper, my biggest fan, my adoring, supportive father. If anyone has ever loved me unconditionally, it was him.

Dad adored his work (he was an ear, nose and throat surgeon); devoured books; loved to golf; loved to cook; and took great enjoyment in playing bridge with his buddies. But, most of all, he loved his family. And he had a quirky, magnificent sense of humour. He was playful, outspoken and hardworking. And he adored off-colour jokes.

Dad was born in Winnipeg (“the Old Country”) in 1916, served in the Canadian Army as a medical officer, then moved to Vancouver in 1949, determined to escape the brutal prairie winters. He set up his medical practice in New Westminster and, even though we lived in Vancouver, he continued to make the commute for the next 37-odd years. He loved the small-town feel of New Westminster, his working-class patients and his colleagues. He’d found his place as a well-respected doctor who spent his life helping others.

I’ll never forget the night Dad passed on. My life shattered, not just momentarily, but for a few years. I was 47 years old, single, and I’d just lost my best friend. I know that sounds odd, but our relationship was everything to me. I grieved as though I’d invented the concept. I felt like no one’s heart could be broken quite like mine. It wasn’t just an emotional pain. It was intensely physical for me. In the blink of an eye (it wasn’t really, because he had been sick for three years, but death never seems inevitable, even in the very second before it happens), my world splintered into a billion pieces. I was inconsolable.

My grief consumed me, at home and at work. The mere thought of my father set me to tears. It was like a floodgate had not merely opened, but exploded. Seventeen years later, I still think of my father regularly, but the tears are no longer a daily occurrence. Yet, I still can’t believe he’s no longer here with us, physically. He certainly is in spirit. They say that, when the soul leaves the body, it can still connect with loved ones, except it’s in a spiritual way. And we have lots of that. Naturally, I miss the physicality of giving my dad a hug and kiss. I miss looking at his smiling face. But we still connect mightily and often. I can feel his presence in my dreams and, when I see or hear particular things, I just know it’s my dad sending me a message. I know he’s always checking in on me, looking out for how I’m doing.

Grief is a funny thing. It ebbs and flows. It intrudes at the most inopportune times, and announces its presence with a deafening blast. It creeps into your consciousness when you least expect it, and always takes its sweet time getting comfortable. Grief never gets an invitation – it always just crashes the party. Grief never gets easier; it just gets different. The edges blur, the points soften, but the tangible sense of loss never goes away. Seventeen years later, at age 64, I still feel like an orphan.

There is much truth to the adage by Maya Angelou: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” My father always made me feel loved and supported. His pride in me was a source of great comfort. Naturally, there were times when he said or did things that angered or upset me, but they never eclipsed his unconditional love for me. I have always been sure of that.

If I had to distil my dad’s legacy into a nutshell, it would be this: be kind to people and help them when you can. Give graciously of your heart, and always try to do the right thing. It’s a tall order. But I’m up for the challenge. Thank you, Dad, for everything.

Shelley Civkin is a happily retired librarian and communications officer. For 17 years, she wrote a weekly book review column for the Richmond Review. She’s currently a freelance writer and volunteer, including with Chabad Richmond.

 

Format ImagePosted on March 20, 2020March 17, 2020Author Shelley CivkinCategories Op-EdTags health, Judaism, memoir, mourning, philosophy, Sidney Civkin

Adding colour to our lives

Life is such an adventure, but its appeal for us depends so much on our attitude. One of the amazing things about this fact – that our attitude makes all the difference – is that this appears to be a law of nature. How we “reflect off” the events in our lives is crucial to our fate.

Most of us know a little bit about the nature of sight, the mechanics of seeing. We know less about the role played by light in our world. Light travels in units called photons. We know that these photons travel really fast, even when they have to bounce around in a world full of atoms to get where they are headed, which is everywhere. Photons travel so fast, we don’t notice that random atoms are impeding their progress a bit. In spite of that, they reflect off all the objects in our world and succeed in entering our eyes.

The lenses in our eyes focus this reflected light onto the light-sensitive rods and cones on the retina at the back of our eyeballs. (The rods work in dim or dark situations and the cones in bright light.) These create variable electrical charges sent along the optic nerve to the brain. Our brains interpret these stimuli as the visions that we see before our eyes. Did you know that the curvature of our eyes results in the images we receive being upside down? Our brains turn them right-side up for us.

What we are seeing is the reflected light. Any light absorbed by the objects we are looking at, we will not see. The same is true about colour. We only see the colours that the objects we are looking at reflect. All other colours are the ones that have been absorbed by these objects and we will not see them. Colour is all about light reflecting off the things in the world around us.

In the same way, it is our reactions to the realities we face in life that determine the kinds of lives we will lead. Different reactions, different lives. What does it mean to say that our reactions can be of overwhelming importance in determining our fates? It means that, to an important extent, our fates are in our own hands. (What does that do to the blame-games we have been nursing all our lives?)

I am getting to be what some people might term “an old guy.” Others, less kind, might say, “an old fool.” One would have to be foolish to live a whole life without understanding the principle I have enunciated above. And yet, it is only at this late date that this has become so clear to me.

Of course, I always knew I had to hustle my butt if I wanted to achieve the things I desired for my family and me. Yet, I never achieved the clarity of insight that I now have. I would venture to say that there are others of my fellow travelers who might have been, who might still be, wanting in this matter.

When all is said and done, there is no substitute for having a positive attitude. There are so many good things in our lives that we have to appreciate, that we have to be grateful for. There are so many people we pass every day who are less fortunate than we are. But that does not absolve us from the need to actively present our own best case to the world, to be up and at ’em every day, meeting the challenges we all face and will face. Without that, we are beat before we start.

Being open to the positive is a necessity if we hope to take advantage of any opportunities that might come our way if we reach out. Like the photons of light in our world, we move forward in our lives toward our goals in spite of impediments we might face; or we find paths to goals we hadn’t considered before.

I am not talking merely about amassing material possessions. I am talking about spending time working out how to ensure we are adding the colour we want to see in our lives. If all of this is dependent wholly on ourselves to determine what the elements of our lives are going to be – not our parents or our partners or our bosses or the economy – then what are we going to do about it? If, in spite of our positive attitude, we are not happy, if we are not satisfied, what are we going to do about it? I must confess, I never had this moment of clarity until I was 70 years of age. That’s a whole lot of living to have gone through without thinking about such things.

At the age of 71, unheralded, I flew across half a continent to try and reconnect with a woman I had known when we were teenagers more than 50 years before. I can report that we can look back now at almost 15 years of happily married life. We are keeping each other alive.

So, what I am writing about here is seeing the reflections off the objects (subjects?) that make up the elements of our lives. We have to be aware of the reflections streaming into our eyes, and consciously translate the images making their way into our brain. What colours are being reflected? Are we absorbing what those images are telling us? Or are we seeing them without really seeing them, same old, same old? And, if we do see them, and we don’t like what we see, what are we going to do about it? It is never too late to make an effort, I can tell you that!

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.

Posted on February 28, 2020February 26, 2020Author Max RoytenbergCategories Op-EdTags aging, lifestyle, philosophy, science

O My God at Emanu-El

Bema Productions presents the Canadian première of the comedy O My God at Congregation Emanu-El Synagogue in Victoria, Jan. 16-26. In O My God by Israeli playwright Anat Gov, God walks into a therapist’s office suffering from depression. The therapist asks, “How long have you felt this way?” God says, “Two thousand, five hundred years. Give or take.” “You’ve been depressed for 2,000 years and only now you’ve come to therapy? What were you waiting for?” asks the therapist. And God says, “I thought time would heal.”

Gov, who died of cancer at 58, was born in 1953, and was a graduate of Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts. She was briefly a student in Tel Aviv University’s theatre department – she dropped out to become a successful playwright and television writer. She also married and was a mother of three and grandmother of two.

The Bema Productions staging of O My God is directed by Zelda Dean and performed by Christine Upright (the therapist), Rosemary Jeffery (God) and Jesse Wilson, who is on the autism spectrum himself, plays the autistic son of the therapist.

Tickets ($23) can be purchased online at ticketrocket.co or at the door.

Posted on December 20, 2019December 18, 2019Author Bema ProductionsCategories Performing ArtsTags Anat Gov, Bema Productions, Emanu-El, philosophy, theatre, Victoria

The knowledge that we die

Shabbat, Oct. 26
B’reishit, Genesis 1:1-6:8
Haftarah, Isaiah 42:5-43:10

One Yom Kippur, a rabbi was warning his congregation about the fragility of life.

“One day, everyone in this congregation is going to die,” he thundered from the bimah.

Seated in the front row was an elderly woman who laughed out loud when she heard this.

Irritated, the rabbi said, “What’s so funny?”

“Well!” she said, “I’m not a member of this congregation.”

Membership and affiliation aside, the most important lesson we learn in life is that one day it will end: one day we are going to die.

This is the great lesson and gift of the parashah B’reishit, with its iconic tale of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Amid all the lush greenery, flowing rivers and natural beauty of the garden, at its centre stood two trees. All of the trees and their fruits were permitted to human beings as food, except for the Tree of All Knowledge and the Tree of Life. We read: “God Eternal then commanded the man, saying, ‘You may eat all you like of every tree in the garden – but of the Tree of All Knowledge you may not eat, for the moment you eat of it you shall be doomed to die.’” (Genesis 2:16-17)

When they eat from the Tree of All Knowledge, the knowledge they get is that, one day, they are going to die. Before the forbidden fruit, they didn’t even know death was part of the equation. Now they know and it scares them – to death. They like the garden: life there is beautiful, they don’t want it to end and, standing right next to the Tree of All Knowledge, is the answer to their anxiety – the Tree of Life. One bite from that fruit and they will live forever. This terrifies God. We read: “God Eternal then said, ‘Look, the humans are like us, knowing all things. Now they may even reach out to take fruit from the Tree of Life and eat, and live forever!’ So the Eternal God drove them out of the Garden of Eden to work the soil from which they had been taken.” (Genesis 3:22-23)

God kicks them out of the garden – not as punishment, but as a blessing. If they think they will never die, then how will they truly live? If you have eternity, then there is no urgency for anything; with unlimited tomorrows, everything can wait.

The German existentialist Martin Heidegger, in his masterwork Being and Time, taught this: he said that, in order to truly live authentically, we have to confront death head-on. In other words, knowing that I am going to die is what allows me to truly live. Heidegger wrote: “If I take death into my life, acknowledge it and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life – and only then will I be free to become myself.”

But, as Ernest Becker wrote in his Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork The Denial of Death, even though we objectively know that we are all going to die, we don’t actually believe what we know to be true.

Becker’s work is important because of his astute observation that our obsession with not dying actually gets in the way of our fully living.

We are so focused on outwitting, outlasting and outplaying death, staying in our own Garden of Eden, that we make amazingly selfish choices in life. We set up what Becker calls “immortality systems” – non-rational belief structures that give way to the belief that we are immortal.

For example, we try to buy immortality by accumulating possessions and wealth, as if our things will somehow protect us when death comes knocking. We take on heroic roles in our business or our household: we think that, if we make ourselves indispensable, death can’t touch us. “I can’t die this week; I have a sales meeting on Thursday.”

Judaism suggests a different approach to death and to life. Rather than deny death, Jewish tradition instructs us to embrace it. Judaism teaches that we should live each day as if it is our last because we don’t know, it very well may be (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 153a).

Imagine, as God does in this parashah, if human beings directed all the energy they focus on not dying toward the more sacred goal of truly living. How would you fill each moment of every day if you truly knew and understood that you will never get that moment back once it has passed; that it is gone forever?

The psalmist declares: “The span of our life is 70 years or, given the strength, 80 years … and they pass by speedily and we are in darkness; teach us to count our days rightly, that we may attain a wise heart.” (Psalm 90:10, 12)

The wise person, our rabbis teach, counts each day and makes each day count. Knowing that our days are numbered helps us clarify our priorities and our purpose. Our most precious possession is not money or things: you can always get more of those. No, our most precious and finite possession is time.

Henry David Thoreau wrote: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately…. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to put to rout all that was not life, and not, when I had come to die, discover that I had not lived.” (Walden, reissue edition, Princeton University Press, 2016)

When Adam and Eve are kicked out of the garden, the Torah records the very first thing they do. “And Adam knew his wife Eve and she bore him a son.” (Genesis 4:1) They have a child: the very realization of “I’m not going to live forever” is answered with our best attempt at immortality – progeny.

And so, a final question remains. Where is the true paradise? Is it in the Garden of Eden where no one ever dies and time is limitless? Or is it East of Eden, outside the garden, where every moment is precious, every decision is life-changing and the fruit, sometimes bitter, compels us to appreciate the sweet?

Rabbi Dan Moskovitz is senior rabbi at Temple Sholom and author of The Men’s Seder (MRJ Publishing). He is also chair of the Reform Rabbis of Canada. His writing and perspective on Judaism appear in major print and digital media internationally. This article originally appeared on reformjudaism.org.

Posted on November 1, 2019October 30, 2019Author Rabbi Dan MoskovitzCategories Op-EdTags dying, Ernest Becker, Henry David Thoreau, lifestyle, Martin Heidegger, philosophy, psalms, Reform Judaism, Talmud, Torah
Laying out Israel’s case

Laying out Israel’s case

Yossi Klein Halevi’s Letters to My Palestinian Neighbour is recently out in paperback. (photo by Ilir Bajraktari / The Tower)

Yossi Klein Halevi grew up in the right-wing Zionist youth movement Betar, the ideological stream of Ze’ev Jabotinsky and Menachem Begin. As a youth, he wore a silver outline of the land of Israel “as we understood it” that included not only the West Bank but also the area that became the kingdom of Jordan, which the British had severed from historic Palestine. As he’s aged, he’s emphatically mellowed.

His book Letters to My Palestinian Neighbour, recently out in paperback, is, he writes, “an attempt to explain the Jewish story and the significance of Israel in Jewish identity to Palestinians who are my next-door neighbours.”

He lives in the French Hill neighbourhood of Jerusalem and repeatedly throughout the book reflects on how he is face-to-face with the division between their places.

Each chapter – essay, really – begins with “Dear neighbour.”

image - Letters to My Palestinian Neighbour book cover“From my apartment, I can just barely see the checkpoint you must cross – if you have a permit at all – to enter Jerusalem.” He talks about when, “before the wall was built, before so much else that went wrong, I tried to get to know you.”

In 1998, he set out on a pilgrimage into Islam and Christianity, a religious Jew “seeking not so much to understand your theology as to experience something of your devotional life. I wanted to learn how you pray, how you encounter God in your most intimate moments.”

During those comparatively placid times, he recalls, Israelis made little effort to accommodate their neighbours.

“For many years we in Israel ignored you, treated you as invisible, transparent. Just as the Arab world denied the right of the Jews to define themselves as a people deserving national sovereignty, so we denied the Palestinians the right to define themselves as a distinct people within the Arab nation, and likewise deserving national sovereignty. To solve our conflict, we must recognize not only each other’s right to self-determination but also each side’s right to self-definition.”

Klein Halevi made aliyah from the United States in 1982. Now a senior fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute – “Israel’s preeminent centre for pluralistic Jewish research and education” – he co-directs the institute’s Muslim Leadership Initiative, is the author of numerous books and is a prolific commentator and former contributing editor of the New Republic. He has made the book’s Arabic translation available to download for free.

He argues that each side must be allowed to define themselves.

“So who are the Jews? A religion? A people? An ethnicity? A race?… That question impacts directly on our conflict. It goes to the heart of the Arab world’s rejection of Israel’s legitimacy as the nation-state of the Jewish people,” Klein Halevi writes. “Even Palestinian moderates I’ve known who want to end the bloodshed tend to deny that the Jews are an authentic nation. So long as Palestinian leaders insist on defining the Jews as a religion rather than allowing us to define ourselves as we have since ancient times – as a people with a particular faith – then Israel will continue to be seen as illegitimate, its existence an open question.”

He acknowledges that the problem occurs on both sides.

“Some Jews continue to try to ‘prove’ that Palestinian national identity is a fiction, that you are a contrived people. Of course you are – and so are we. All national identities are, by definition, contrived: at a certain point, groups of people determine that they share more in common than apart and invent themselves as a nation, with a common language, memory and evolving story. The emergence of a nation is an inherently subjective process.”

But he attempts to disabuse Palestinians and Arabic readers of the idea that Israel can be overcome.

“I’ve often heard from Palestinians that, just as the Ottoman Turks came here and left, and the British came here and left, so, too, will the Zionists one day leave. That analogy ignores Zionism’s singular achievement. None of those invaders founded a thriving society, let alone a sovereign state. They eventually went back to their own homelands. More than anything else, I need you to understand this: the Jews succeeded where the Crusaders and the Ottomans and the British failed because we didn’t merely come here. We returned.”

This sense of destiny is evocatively expressed when Klein Halevi writes about the War of Independence.

“Our side began the war with three tanks and four combat planes. And we were alone. That, as it turned out, was a crucial advantage, because desperation forced us to mobilize our entire society for a war of survival. If your side had prevailed, few if any Jews would have been left here. As a result, the Jews fought with such determination that only a handful of our communities fell. There was nowhere left to run; we’d reached the final shore of Jewish history.”

But the author makes an effort to acknowledge some of the harsh realities of that victory and the subsequent Israeli control of Palestinian areas and its effect on people. He recalls a moment during a call-up during his reserve service.

“A chubby teenage Palestinian boy, accused of stone throwing, was brought, blindfolded, into our tent camp. A group of soldiers from the border police unit gathered around. One said to him in Arabic: ‘Repeat after me: one order of hummus, one order of fava beans, I love the border police.’ The young man dutifully repeated the rhymed Arabic ditty. There was laughter.… That last story haunts me most of all. It is, seemingly, insignificant. The prisoner wasn’t physically abused; his captors, young soldiers under enormous strain, shared a joke. But that incident embodies for me the corruption of occupation. When my son was about to be drafted into the army I told him: there are times when as a soldier you may have to kill. But you are never permitted, under any circumstances, to humiliate another human being. That is a core Jewish principle.”

He acknowledges his pain over an eventual partition that would, for example, see the Jewish holy city of Hebron as part of an independent Palestine. But, he says: “The only solution worse than dividing this land into two states is creating one state that would devour itself. No two peoples who fought a 100-year existential war can share the intimate workings of government. The current conflict between us would pale beside the rage that would erupt when competing for the same means of power. The most likely model is the disintegration of Yugoslavia into warring ethnic and religious factions – perhaps even worse. A one-state solution would condemn us to a nightmare entwinement – and deprive us both of that which justice requires: self-determination, to be free peoples in our own sovereign homelands.… If Jaffa belongs to you and Hebron belongs to me, then we have two options. We can continue fighting for another 100 years, in the hope that one side or the other will prevail. Or we can accept the solution that has been on the table almost since the conflict began, and divide the land between us. In accepting partition we are not betraying our histories, neighbour; we are conceding that history has given us no real choice.”

Near the end, Klein Halevi reflects that some simple human goodness could have made a massive historic difference.

“Israel is a restless society of uprooted and re-rooted refugees and children of refugees, and the dark side of our vitality is a frankness that can easily become rudeness, the antithesis of Arab decorousness. Israelis often don’t know how to treat each other with respect, let alone those we are occupying. We are a people in a hurry to compensate for our lost centuries of nationhood, a people that doesn’t pay attention to niceties. Sometimes I think that, if only we’d known how to show your people simple respect, so much could have been different here.”

The new paperback edition includes an epilogue of “letters” in response to his neighbourly missives. Some, the author admits, are predictably harsh, dismissive and threatening. But many are long, thoughtful and inspiring. Klein Halevi has started a conversation. It is invigorating and heartily recommended to be a part of it as a reader.

Format ImagePosted on September 20, 2019September 17, 2019Author Pat JohnsonCategories BooksTags civil society, history, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, lifestyle, philosophy, Yossi Klein Halevi

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.

 

Posted on August 23, 2019August 22, 2019Author Max RoytenbergCategories Op-EdTags Kierkegaard, lifestyle, memory, philosophy

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