This past week I was looking through a drawer at home and came upon a piece of paper that was folded up. I opened the paper and discovered the last birthday letter my dad wrote to me. He had typed it out as his penmanship was not so good and had handed it to me on our birthday (we shared the same one) not knowing it was the last time we would celebrate together. I sat on the floor dumfounded and amazed. I thought of how he must have felt while he wrote the words. I wondered if he was thinking that it may be the last time he would write me a card on our birthday. I wondered if he was crying when he wrote it or if he was smiling. I wondered all of this, and I treasured that moment sitting there and reading these words from my dad to me.
As Jews, we have a tradition called ethical wills. The idea is that we sit down and write our story, our ethics and our values and bequeath those items to our loved ones. This is not some new age idea but something that’s preserved from generations back. While we might see the origin of this practice in יעקב’s/YaAkov’s/Jacob’s assembling his sons and speaking to them on his deathbed, the better origin is the entirety of the book of דברים/Devarim/Deuteronomy, which we begin this week. For some time, the Jewish People have held the belief that the entire book of דברים is משה’s/Moshe’s/Moses’ ethical will to our people. It’s filled with his parting words and his memories. He retells our story to our people and recaps many of the מצות/Mitzvot in this final book of the תורה/Torah. It is, in fact, the origin of the ethical will. I never had the chance to sit with my dad and ask him to write his ethical will. I regret that lost opportunity. This letter I rediscovered allowed me the beautiful opportunity to connect and reconnect and learn from my dad in a way I didn’t know I could.
The great Sephardic scholar Judah ben Saul ibn Tibbon, who was famous for being a translator of Jewish texts from Arabic into Hebrew, and for being a physician, wrote of the most famous ethical wills. In his will he wrote: "Avoid bad society, make thy books thy companions, let thy book-cases and shelves be thy gardens and pleasure-grounds. Pluck the fruit that grows therein, gather the roses, the spices, and the myrrh. If thy soul be satiate and weary, change from garden to garden, from furrow to furrow, from sight to sight. Then will thy desire renew itself, and thy soul be satisfied with delight." He wrote a great deal about the importance of books and of learning. This excerpt from his will recalls to me the days of going through my dad’s belongings. His library was the most daunting task. His books were sacred to him and I’ve kept many of them. In fact, we now have a bookcase in our home library filled just with his books. Having been raised in that mentality, books are immensely sacred to me.
We are the “people of the book”, and as such, our books are not only holy, they’re also our lifeline and our birthright. At the root of our people is our relationship with our central book, the תנ''ך/TaNaKh or the Jewish Bible. We focus on the תורה or the Five Books of Moses most of the time, but the תנ''ך is composed of 24 books. This Saturday night and Sunday morning, we’ll read the words of the saddest and darkest, איכה/Eicha/Lamentations. This book, which was written about the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE by the Babylonians, begins with the profound question of איך/Eich/How. How did this happen? How tragic is this? How profound is this loss? How do we move forward? How??? How??? How??? In our grief, we’re often stuck with questions like “who,” “what,” “where” and “when.” We are often stuck with the hurt of the “why.”
It’s when we begin to unravel the “how” that we begin to grieve and we begin to live. The “how” is not the mechanics of how someone died, or how a tragic event occurred, but it’s the “how” of how are we going to move forward? It is the “how” of how did someone live their life and how can it still impact us. It’s the “how” of how do we continue to find meaning in a world that’s so painful for us to live in. Our answers to these, and other questions, are found in the words and testaments of those who came before us. The answers are found when we look for our loved ones in all we do. Our grief is not overcome by this but rather managed. Our grief is still immense and still unresolved, but when we find our loved ones lives as a guiding light, we find ourselves able to see HOW we can continue to go on. Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Hearshen
Weekly Services
Click here to visit our Weekly Services page for service and candlelighting times in the Spiritual Life section on our website.
New Position
We are excited to announce that Chana Mayer is our new Director of Education. Chana served as our Director of Building Blocks last year and we're pleased her role at OVS has been expanded. As our new Director of Education, Chana will be overseeing all youth and childrens programming and education. She'll also be playing a large role in education for members of all ages.
Yizkor Book
The deadline to include the names of your loved ones in the Yizkor Book is tomorrow, Friday, August 1.
