On One Foot: Joshua Hammerman's Blog

Author of "Embracing Auschwitz" and "Mensch•Marks: Life Lessons of a Human Rabbi - Wisdom for Untethered Times." Winner of the Rockower Award, the highest honor in Jewish journalism and 2019 Religion News Association Award for Excellence in Commentary. Musings of a rabbi, journalist, father, husband, poodle-owner, Red Sox fan and self-proclaimed mensch, taken from essays, columns, sermons and thin air. Writes regularly in the New York Jewish Week and Times of Israel.

Thursday, June 8, 2023

In This Moment: World's on Fire Edition; "Woke," "P.C.," and God's Gender; My Year of Kaddish at TBE

Shabbat Shalom - and I hope to see you at the Cantor's Concert this Sunday. How are we feeling this week? Like we're looking out at the world from the inside of a wood chipper (turned off, of course). Our rose colored glasses have gone all yellow-rose on us. And we ask, as we cough and choke from these Canadian wildfires...Is this what God intended when saying....

I saiah 9:17

For wickedness burns like a fire;

It consumes briars and thorns;

It even sets the thickets of the forest aflame

And they roll upward in a column of smoke.

Or, as Smokey the Bear himself would say...

!רק אתה יכול למנוע שריפות יער

Rak Ata Yachol Limnoa Srayfot Ya'ar!

Except it's no longer true that only you can prevent forest fires. You can - if you can singlehandedly reverse decades of wasteful abuse and industrialization. Does Smokey understand the impact of fossil fuels and how a warmer, parched climate has caused the proliferation of wildfires, heralding our New Normal? Does Smokey know about how our destruction of the planet flies in the face of time-honored Jewish values (for more on that, see the article at the bottom of this email)? Smokey, who is actually called "Smokey Bear" (no "the") has a checkered history and has been accused of racism in his portrayal of Japanese in World War Two and his attitude toward indigenous populations. He's even been accused of helping to fuel the fires he's ostensibly trying to prevent. But I can excuse those youthful indiscretions, as long as he stays away from the pic-a-nic baskets in Jellystone Park. Right now we're in a state of emergency and we need all paws on deck. For as the prophet Joel warned:

Wildfire burns everything before this army and fire licks up everything in its wake. Before it arrives, the country is like the Garden of Eden. When it leaves, it is Death Valley. Nothing escapes unscathed. - Joel 2:3

"World's on Fire," by Woody Guthrie

I signed aboard some sea ships

Just to see the ocean roll;

I flew the clouds in airplanes

Just to satisfy my soul.

Up in that big blue heaven

My hopes can freely roam

I will build my sundried brickwall

Where my soul can feel at home.

My angel, my darling,

When that atom bomb does come;

Let me be your pillow

While this world’s on fire.

Wildfire will run crawling

While the walls will come falling;

Lay your weary head down

While the world’s on fire.

When the flames go creeping;

When the smoke plume is leaping;

We’ll play like we’re sleeping

While the world’s on fire.

While the skies they’re clearing

We’ll rise up dreaming;

Build our city from the ashes

When the world was on fire.

My angel, my darling,

When that atom bomb does come;

Let me be your pillow

While this world’s on fire.

In This Moment

As I begin my 37th year at TBE, so many relationships have stood the test of time, including our ties to Senator Blumenthal and family. Evidently the editors of the (old) Jewish Voice were not yet familiar with the spelling of his last name, way back in 1988 when this photo was published. Below is a more recent photo, from the interfaith vigil organized by the UJF in early 2020, responding to a spate of antisemitic attacks. Our representatives have never let us down - even as the attacks have not let up.

Listen to Rabbi Lauren Tuchman's superb Pride Shabbat talk here.

She spoke of the Torah's ethic of inclusivity, compassion and love.

"Woke," "P.C.," and God's Gender

While we've been preoccupied by the foul-smelling fiery air mass from Canada, a groundbreaking new translation of the Bible was announced this week.

A ‘gender-sensitive’ translation of the Hebrew Bible has hit digital shelves. Not everyone is happy. (JTA) - A new Bible translation that eschews gendered pronouns for God is now available through Sefaria, the online library of Jewish texts, prompting backlash on social media from some who see the change as a sacrilege. The Revised Jewish Publication Society edition of the Bible, which the 135-year-old Jewish publishing house has released in partnership with Sefaria, is the first major update to the JPS translation of the Tanakh in nearly 40 years. So far, only the books comprising the Prophets, the Hebrew Bible’s second section, are available on Sefaria. The new English translation refers to individuals with pronouns that are consistent with traditional gender norms. But unlike nearly all translations of the Bible throughout history, the new edition, known as RJPS, does not refer to God with masculine pronouns. It doesn’t use feminine pronouns either: Instead, God is referred to simply as “God” throughout the text.For example, Isaiah 55:6 reads, “Seek GOD while you can, Call out while [God] is near.” JPS’ landmark 1985 translation, by contrast, reads, “Seek the LORD while He can be found, Call to Him while He is near.” See also: At an online Torah library, the people of the book confront book banning (Forward) - In the face a new gender-sensitive translation of Bible, some Orthodox rabbis call for a boycott of Sefaria

Funny thing. I got rid of the He's and Lords way back in the 90's when I was also abandoning the Thees and Thous. In 1991, I gave a sermon on political correctness, which you can read here, Long before any concept of "wokeness," there was P.C., though the roots are stunningly similar. Read the sermon and you will be shocked at how little has changed - except with regard to Bill Cosby.

I related a true story about how the Fresno Bee newspaper incorporated some P.C.-sensitive software into their editing process and subsequently ran a story about how Massachusetts could overcome a budget crisis and put itself "back in the African American," when it meant to say, "back in the black." Oops.

People fear change and the pendulum is constantly swinging back and forth between greater sensitivity in the use of language and an abusive overcorrection. I stand by most of what I wrote back then (which is amazing, because my views have evolved on a number of those controversial issues). Especially this quote, which has great resonance today:

The phrase "Politically Correct" has become a lethal weapon to silence anyone whose ideas you don't like. Many thoughtful citizens confront a dilemma. To protest demeaning language is to run the risk of being labeled P.C. But to not protest is to tolerate the intolerable.

The expression "political correctness" was invented at Brown, years after I graduated, but I tracked its development closely. This week, Pamela Paul wrote an op-ed in the Times about Brown and P.C., noting P.C.'s penchant for words like “womyn” and other idealistic but often ill-conceived efforts to reimagine the dictionary. I also made light of "womyn" in that 1991 sermon:

Here's how the sermon ended:

Of the 134 High Holiday sermons I've given at TBE, this one resides in my personal top tier, as one that has stood the test of time.

As for the gender-neutral Bible, God was never a "He" in the original, just as the language itself was never masculine, even though it is called HE-brew. The sages understood that. Many, like Maimonides, either ran away from anthropomorphism altogether, or, like the Kabbalists, they envisioned God with a mishmash of qualities commonly associated with one gender or another (or more to the point, a combination of both). You can see it in this diagram of the Sefirot. Congratulations to J.P.S. and Sefaria for catching up, it's about time!

A Joyous Awakening...A Field of Dreams

Services OUTDOORS on Friday Nights

Beginning NEXT Week

Back in the late '90s, we began a practice of having services outdoors every Friday night in the summer - weather permitting, and assuming the earth hasn't been consumed in a smoky haze. Even when the weather is just New Englandy quirky, once or twice each season we would have one of those pitch perfect evenings, when we would easily attain one of those "extra souls" reserved for Shabbat. This is the prayerbook Hazzan Rabinowitz and I put together (and happy 90th birthday, Hazzan!), with the gorgeous cover design by Harriet Lacker. Click on it to look inside. The Hebrew words on the cover, from Exodus 31:17 and the V'Shamru prayer, say "Shabbat Vayinafash," signifying how, for God and for human beings, Shabbat replenishes the soul. The prayer book was, for us, a huge leap forward in how it enabled us to delve more deeply into the prayers. I incorporated passages from the most innovative siddurim out there, especially the new (at that time) Reconstructionist book, Kol Haneshama, which used innovative, gender-neutral God language even back then. We loved being outside. The services were a hit. As planes flew overhead, I wondered what people looking down at us might think - even writing a column about it, called "Bialik's Bird."

So he looks down and sees a synagogue; he figures it’s a synagogue because there is no cross and, hey, it’s Friday night, and isn’t that when Jews pray or something? And outside on the lawn there, there’s a group of people, all ages, singing together.

He sees us swaying, in harmony with the rhythms of the week and the seasons, encircling one another while gazing both upward and eastward. He squints and sees children laughing, and thinks of his own kids, who are probably playing Nintendo at the moment, or screaming at the dog. He swallows hard, leans back in his chair, and wistfully recalls those pointless Bar Mitzvah lessons of his childhood, and a young adulthood sacrificed to the rat race, wondering how everything got so crazy.

Like Bialik, he longs for a Promised Land he never knew. He wishes, more than anything else, that he could be on the ground, with us.

So we'll be returning to that old TBE tradition on Friday, June 16, weather permitting. Each week the go / no-go decision will be made on Friday morning. Hopefully this summer, we'll be able to be outdoors more often than not, weather and wildfire permitting. Each service will also be live streamed.

My year of saying Kaddish with Temple Beth El

On the completion of her her year of Kaddish recently, I asked Gaby Rattner, a loyal online minyannaire, to share some thoughts about her journey. Here is her moving account.

Eleven months ago, my father became suddenly and tempestuously ill; he died nearly six weeks later, leaving our family devastated and shell shocked. So far, my experience, however painful, was not unique.

Growing up in an observant Conservative home, many of the mourning rituals were familiar; certainly the traditions associated with shiva and the always surprising (to me) insulation and comfort it provides. But I didn’t really know much about what would be required of me for the next year as someone mourning a parent. One thing I did know was that my father had said Kaddish for all four of my grandparents, the first time once a week, and by the last time daily, even while he and my mother were still working.

I am not as observant as some members of my family, but I wanted to make this same commitment. I was unsure I could see it through but was determined to try. One thing that would be necessary for this endeavor to be successful would be an online minyan. There were several reasons. I lead a small nonprofit organization in Greenwich and I had already missed weeks of work; I would not be able to leave my office every day, even if I could find a local daily minyan. Further, my father had not been inside a synagogue since COVID began so it felt right to pray virtually.

Where would I find a regular online minyan? Was there such a thing? My default position is to turn to Google, so I did, finding relatively quickly a listing for Temple Beth El’s mid-day service. Divine intervention! Begun during COVID as a way to keep people connected and enable them to pray together, this daily minyan is one of the more remarkable legacies of the pandemic. In fact, there are no other daily minyanim, live or virtual in our area.

This was exactly what I was looking for at exactly the perfect time of day. I reached out to Temple Beth El and received an immediate answer. It was July; I was expecting it would take a few days and I was under a bit of a deadline because there were only two days before shiva began and I would go internet dark for a week. But I was warmly invited to join and received the link to do so.

Shiva ended and the next day I logged on. I expected to feel like an outsider. I didn’t know anyone in the congregation, didn’t know the prayers, could barely stumble through Kaddish and couldn’t stop crying whenever I said the words. And there was this screen between us.

How completely wrong I was about all of it. I was so warmly welcomed; members of the Minyanaires or the Mincha Bunch as they variously called themselves, reached out to offer solace to a person they had never met. The service includes the onscreen presentation of each of the prayers and their translation. This was enormously helpful, especially in the beginning, when I didn’t know the order of the service or most of the words I prayed at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and the occasional bar mitzvah. As time went on, not only did I discover that I could locate the prayers in a book, but they began to take on real meaning as the daily ins and outs of a difficult year presented challenges for which the Amidah seemed to offer both words of supplication and words of comfort.

When my mother fell and broke her hip two months later, the beautiful melody of the Misheberach, sung sometimes by Cantor Kaplan and other times by Hope Stanger or Pamela Tinkham, helped me feel I was doing something to help her. The stories people were invited to share any time the Eil Malei was chanted were not only interesting history lessons, but helped me to see what life with memories of my father could be like on the other side of this year – focusing on the positive and happy times and not on the painful, ugly days of his dying. The tales they told helped me understand how a person remains with you for the rest of your life even if theirs has ended.

The year went by. I joined the minyan from parking lots when I was on the road at 1 p.m.; from airports; from foreign countries and from my son’s dorm room (sort of a foreign country). Somehow, when I felt I was least meeting my obligation, that day’s particular service would be especially spiritual or melodic (thank you Cantor Katie!) Or Rabbi Gerry would tell me that people had joined from way more far-fetched far flung places than I. When I had COVID, the minyan said a Misheberach for me! This group was just always there, always supportive, always interested and interesting! And always accepting.

We marked all the holidays together and I learned about ritual, history and culture. As the shock subsided, minyan became more than a comfort; it became an intriguing part of the day. Most days my mother joined me, which added more depth to the experience. Once again, the fact that the minyan was online made that possible. She could not have gone daily to a synagogue and we could not have gone together.

In total I missed one day of saying kaddish for my father, the day I spent with Mom in the emergency room after she fell. I am filled with gratitude for this wonderful minyan, which welcomed me, taught me, supported me, gathered ten people every day and Sundays too and through a computer screen made me feel so much less lost and alone. In the end, I believe this is the real purpose of the ritual of saying daily Kaddish – not just to honor your parent but to find connection after such a painful disconnection and to be drawn closer to observance even when you least desire it. Thank you so much Temple Beth El, its clergy and its members. This year was a surprising and unexpected gift.

Thursday, June 1, 2023

In This Moment: Ted Lasso, Mrs. Maisel and Uganda; Standing on their Shoulders

In This Moment

Last week, in discussing the alignment of Jewish and secular holidays (like Memorial Day and Shavuot), I asked when Yom Kippur would fall on Halloween for the first time - given that the Jewish calendar is shifting in that direction very slowly, by about 13 days every 1,650 years. Well, I found the answer on Hebcal.com. In the Gregorian year 6242, 4,219 years from now, you'll be able to hop straight from Neilah to your nearest haunted house. I don't know about you, but just looking at this calendar makes me feel very, very small.

Trending Toward Cruelty? Or Kindness?

Ted Lasso, Mrs. Maisel, Uganda, and a strange, ancient ritual

Shabbat Shalom!

I'm not a Succession fan, so my comments here are reserved for the finales of Ted Lasso and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. In one show, the title character reached for the brass ring and in the other, the title character deliberately let go of it, and for each it was the right decision. Both series are morality tales that bring reassurance that goodness can win, kindness can be rewarded, growth is possible and perfection achievable - but only when we accept the imperfections of ourselves and our loved ones. During the dark days of the pandemic, we needed to welcome nice people into our fortress / homes, and these are nice people. The two shows are television at its best, and it's a good thing they are TV, because were they books, at least one of them likely would have been banned in Florida for a gay subplot. I'll say no more so as not to bring spoilers. But it's so nice to be able to have found such warm, fuzzy and funny comfort food at a time when persecution and hate is increasing markedly,

At a time of such inhumanity, these shows satisfied our deep hunger for something kind and gentle. Our sources agree.

Hillel and Shammai received (Torah) from them. Hillel used to say: be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving humankind and drawing them close to the Torah. (Pirke Avot 1:12)

Pride Month reminds us of our mission as Jews to promote kindness and combat hate everywhere, but especially when directed toward the LGBTQ community. Uganda's new anti-gay law is so brutal that it recalls the madness of Idi Amin, who once claimed to have eaten human flesh, but it was "too salty for my taste." The new law has been universally condemned. Uganda's evil is matched in venom, if not in pure brutality, by various new anti gay laws and book bannings here in America. A new law in Texas denies healthcare to transgender youth.

Our sacred sources are not immune to brutality. This week's Torah portion of Naso features an archaic and, on the face of it, ruthless ritual known as the ordeal of the sotah, which subjected a suspected adulteress to what amounts to torture.

Here's how the Jewish Women's Archive explains it,

Here's another women's commentary on this ritual.

The sotah ritual was cruel but it probably was never actually practiced. Given that, along with the fact that other ancient cultures treated a suspected adulteress with far greater cruelty, it might be that the Torah's purpose was to take things out of the hands of a vengeful husband and put them into the hands of a supposedly peace-loving priest.

Here's how feminist Talmudic scholar Judith Hauptman explains it:

Hauptman is no knee-jerk apologist for the Torah. The point here is not that the Torah doesn't present us with misogyny, cruelty and hate. There's plenty of that to go around. The point is that, on balance, the Torah presents us with a society that is evolving away from the cruelty of neighboring and prior civilizations - and Talmudic literature all the more. We are instructed to love the stranger 36 times in the Torah. The preponderance of evidence points toward kindness.

In Uganda, Russia and some very conspicuous US states, that trend is toward cruelty.

Soon enough, we'll be missing Lasso Land and Maisel's Manhattan. Both are fictitious facsimiles of real places. Real, but illusory at the same time. The Horn and Hardart in Maiselville was just a little too clean, the Wonder Wheel ride just a little too smooth. Even the mobsters were nice (at times). Maisel's Manhattan allowed our memories to marinate in nostalgia, and Lasso's London was inexplicably (and thankfully) Windsor-free - not a royal in sight. These places were a little too perfect, the colors so vivid that even the black and white TVs seemed to be transmitting in reddish hues. Hey, the place was so perfect that the pews in the Maisel's synagogue were packed with well dressed, attentive, non-shvitzing Jews (on what seemed like Yom Kippur, no less) - including TBE's own Rebekah Raz (looking very stylish, four rows behind Midge, Joel, Ethan and the meshugenah daughter-in-law from Israel). Has any rabbi ever looked down at such an alert, well-groomed bunch? For that matter, has any series in history ever begun with the exclamation, "We got the rabbi!" - and it was a good thing?

OK, so the FBI was about to crash the service, but otherwise, this was the ideal Manhattan and idealized London that may have almost existed - at least if you happened to be well-to-do and not too ethnic. Kindness could prevail there.

But can it prevail here, in our all-too real world, a world where we can salute Congress for its bipartisanship in a vote not to commit economic hari-kari? Mazal tov! We're not suicidal after all.

Which way is the trend heading? Toward cruelty? Or kindness?

------------

Rabbi Lauren Tuchman, our guest on Friday evening will speak about SVARA, where she is a teaching fellow, a cutting edge yeshiva known for its inclusivity. She'll speak to LGPBQ issues, as well as explaining how the Torah defends all those who are marginalized, including those with disabilities. Because she is Shabbat observant and calling in remotely, she'll be speaking in between the Kabbalat Shabbat and Ma'ariv sections of the service, about half way through. Join us for that, and for our Men's Club Shabbat on Shabbat morning.

Birkat Hodesh Ga’avah: A Blessing for Pride Month

by Rabbi Lily Solochek

Source: Ritualwell

May it be Your will,

our God and God of our ancestors,

God of Ruth

An important female biblical character with her own book. The Book of Ruth, read on Shavuot, tells the story of Ruth’s devotion to her mother-in-law, Naomi, and their return to Israel. Ruth’s story is often read as the first story of conversion. Ruth is the grandmother of King David.

and Naomi,

God of David and Jonathan,

God of Joseph

Jacob's eldest son by his beloved wife, Rachel. Joseph, the dreamer, was his father's favorite and nearly murdered by his brothers. Sold into slavery, he became viceroy of Egypt where he ultimately saves the Egyptians and also his own family from starvation. His Hebrew name is Yosef/

God of all our queer ancestors whose names have been erased,

grant that this Pride month bring us joy and celebration,

and bestow upon us a long life:

a life of safety,

a life of healing,

a life of employment and housing,

a life of love and support,

a life of blessing and sharing of gifts,

a life free of shame and reproach,

a life of friendship, partnership, and love in the ways we wish to give and receive it,

a life with dreams of the future.

May the One who delivered our ancestors from oppression to freedom, redeem us and all marginalized peoples.

May the Holy One instill in us the wisdom to know our liberations are entwined together.

May the One who creates liberation on high,

bring liberation to us,

to all oppressed communities,

and to the entire world,

V’nomar, and we say,

Amein.

Click below for our TBE Pride Shabbat readings for Friday night's service, including poetic selections written by my late cousin, Jeffrey Avick z'l. it's become a TBE tradition to include Jeff's poetry at this service. He died of AIDS in the late '90s.

Standing on their Shoulders

Arthur White

Over the course of this, my final year as rabbi of TBE, I'm going to be looking back at some of the key moments we've shared and a few of the people who inspired me along this journey. In a prior newsletter, I featured one of our key innovations, Synaplex. Today, I feature one of the key innovators, and a supreme mensch - one of the most amazing people I ever had the privilege of meeting: Arthur White, who died in 2014 (Read his NY Times obituary here).

Arthur was humble, approachable, and real. For me, as for so many others, he was a mentor and a tremendous source of support. Whenever I was ready to give up on something, Arthur simply wouldn’t hear of it. Giving up was not in his vocabulary. Negativity was not in his vocabulary – and this from a die-hard Red Sox fan. Arthur inherited that love of the Sox from his father – and Arthur was 80 before he saw them win a championship. When they finally won, he almost didn’t know how to celebrate. He now needed another impossible dream to pursue. But the fact is that when he passed, the Sox were the reigning champions.

He never lost his passion for the Sox, and for Jewish learning. He had a great love for the philosophy of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Heschel echoed Arthur’s philosophy when he wrote:

The greatest problem is not how to continue but how to exalt our existence. The call for a life beyond the grave is presumptuous, if there is no cry for eternal life prior to our descending to the grave. Eternity is not perpetual future but perpetual presence. God has planted in us the seed of eternal life. The world to come is not only a hereafter but also a here-now.

Man Is Not Alone : A Philosophy Of Religion (1951)

There is no use pining for eternal life and being preoccupied with death if we are not going to roll up our sleeves and focus on perfecting THIS world. Arthur almost never attended funerals. Part of that had to do with his being a cohen, from the ancient priestly class, a group that, like Judaism itself, focused not on death but on the purification of life.

Heschel also said:

The sense of meaning is not born in ease and sloth. It comes after bitter trials, disappointments in the glitters, foundering, strandings. It is the marrow from the bone. There is no manna in our wilderness.

There was no sloth in Arthur. Arthur never stopped working – he literally died at his desk. His life gained meaning from the struggle to climb mountains, to fulfill one quixotic quest after another, but in his case, he was not flailing at windmills, but at our inertia, Washington’s gridlock and the fact that so many people do not care. And he overcame them all.

One more Heschel quote. If there is one thing that captures popular understanding of the Jewish community’s relationship to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., it’s an image from Selma, 1965. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel links arms with a line of activists that include Rev. King, a shoulder’s breadth away, on their historic march to Montgomery. Heschel’s comments afterward have taken on a similarly iconic status: “I felt my feet were praying.”

Arthur prayed with his feet as well as his brilliant mind. He never stepped moving forward. He never got stuck in place. When he finished planting the seeds of one project, he started another. He challenged me and all of us to be better – to do more – to not accept the injustices of the world as they are. That was the Judaism he espoused, a Judaism that embraced all peoples.

He was asked by the Bronfman foundation to help create housing for refugees on the West Bank – and went to Israel to pursue such worthy goals – he even went during the darkest days of the Gulf War, when he was given a gas mask at the airport and was, in his words, the only one staying at his hotel. Nothing got between him and the task at hand.

Arthur was a rock of support for me, even though I took his job. Yes, when I arrived as assistant rabbi they looked for something for me to do on the High Holidays. The job of checking tickets in the lobby was taken, so the only thing they could offer was to announce pages during the early part of the service, something Arthur had been doing for years. He graciously gave it up for me with no hard feelings. And Arthur was a rock of support for me support when it counted most. Arthur once served on the committee to negotiate my contract. Those negotiations didn't always go so smoothly, but I recall one meeting where, in front of the rest of the committee, Arthur passionately stated that among my rabbinic responsibilities, I should be given ample time to pursue my writing - and that it should be stated explicitly in the contract that my writing, from which the congregation takes great pride, is an integral part of the job.

He would challenge me as well. While Arthur loved it when we created a social action committee here - Beth El Cares - he would not be satisfied until there was a soup kitchen in our social hall and subsidized senior housing in our parking lot. We never got there, and "good enough" was never good enough for Arthur.

He had a tremendous love for Judaism and for the potential of the rabbinate to effect change. A great respect for tradition too, something that came from the old country - by that I mean Boston. The Roxbury of his childhood was like a shtetl and he brought a deep connection to tradition from Boston's Roxbury to Roxbury Rd. I was honored to escort his casket back up there, to a small cemetery near the VFW Parkway, a couple of miles from where my parents are buried.

Aside from social justice, his ties to Judaism were through the study of our sacred texts. While he came to services, which he did nearly every Shabbat morning, he spent less time praying than studying. For years he brought a book with him called, “Back to the Sources,” which explores each of the key sources of our tradition. He was always studying. I was so happy to hear from the family that among the papers on his desk when he died were some study packets I had prepared. He constantly requested that I spend time at services explaining the background of the prayers. He was truly a lifelong learner.

Arthur died on Rosh Hodesh Elul. Every year, we recall his yahrzeit on the day when we begin our month long process of soul searching, in preparation for the High Holidays. He would have liked that. So every year as we light a candle for Arthur White, we are going to take stock of our lives - run a personal survey, as it were. And we'll resolve to do better. To help more people. To care for those incarcerated, illiterate or unemployed. To care for the seniors among us. To fight for the rights of minorities and the underprivileged. And to give our hearts to the one baseball team that matters.

Elul is an acronym for "Ani L’dodi v’dodi li." I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine. This is the month when, it is said, God and Israel reconcile and seek a new path together, one where love and mercy triumph over all. Arthur swung the earthly pendulum definitively in the direction of love and mercy during his 90 years of life. He never gave in to death. His legacy and love will transcend it. And we will will be reminded of that whenever we enter the month of Elul. And we will be instilled with his conviction and continually embraced by his love.