Category: Healing

Categories
Healing lifelong learning Rabbis

Setting Free Sparks of Holiness

From a recent session with a colleague – shared with her permission: “I’m so busy planning and preparing to make sure they are able to do their cheshbon nefesh, I feel as though I’ll have no opportunity to do my own.” I wonder how many of us come out of the experience of the Yamim with similar feelings. As much as I was able usually to pray while leading from the pulpit, I remember only rarely feeling that I had been able to go into the deep, introspective and spiritual work for which the season calls during my pulpit years. No longer carrying that responsibility, I am able to bask in my appreciation for the work and effort put in by our colleagues facilitating the spiritual journeys of our people through these challenging days. (This year, I want to take a moment in particular to raise up the energy expended upon the unique creative opportunity offered by Mishkan Hanefesh  – I’m hearing amazing things about transformation through this machzor, but we all know it would not have been possible without tremendous engagement on the part of all of you!)

Taking all these things into account, this seems to me a most appropriate time to remind our members of the Care and Wellness for which I have been engaged by the Conference on your behalf. Having poured out so much energy in the spiritual care of our people, could there be a better time to avail yourselves of the fruits of your labors than by taking some time now for the self-care and growth support offered as a benefit of your membership?

So, just to remind our members, I am serving the CCAR at the behest of staff and board leadership, as part of my internship requirements in pursuit of a Masters in Social Work. I am also a trained Spiritual Director and Jewish Mindfulness teacher. From among these disciplines, through me the CCAR is offering you a variety of opportunities. Our next online Jewish Mindfulness class begins October 20; we will soon be inviting one of our communities of practice to consider joining a pilot program in Peer Supervision. We also look forward to offering an introduction to Spiritual Direction later this year, followed by a short-term pilot group opportunity in that practice.

I invite you, in the spirit of this season, to ask of yourself, “What am I doing or should I be doing to set my own spiritual and psychological house in order and to make sure that it is a Sukkot shalom?” Not only do we deserve to ask ourselves this question for our own sake – ultimately, we owe it as well to those we serve, in whatever capacity.  To that end, I remind you of my enthusiastic availability to offer short term (approximately 8 sessions) therapeutic or spiritual direction work to any member of the CCAR in good standing. For all you’ve done, do and will do to serve the Source of our Being and our people, I open the doors of my heart to invite you to avail yourself of this gift. Hoping to hear this year from many of you, I wish all of you a joyous, healthy and fulfilling 5776 in which you are able to set free sparks of holiness and healing for all and an early Mo’adim l’simchah.  

—

Rabbi Rex Perlmeter is currently pursuing a MSW at Columbia University and will be doing a year-long internship with the CCAR, providing short-term counseling to rabbis in need. In addition to his MSW work, Rex brings extensive experience working with rabbis through his years at the URJ and is a trained spiritual director. Learn more.

Categories
Death Healing Israel

Letter from Jerusalem: Love must win 

Thursday, July 30 was planned as a day of celebration of tolerance and acceptance, a day to embrace difference, a day to lift up diversity and cooperation in Israel’s capital as the municipality hosted Jerusalem’s gay pride parade. I arrived in Jerusalem and was delighted to see rainbow flags lining some of the main streets. Near the American Embassy a huge banner declared, in English letters, “LOVE WINS!” The message was repeated in languages from the region and from across the world.

When evening fell and the heat of the day dissipated, we learned of the twin acts of terror that crushed the hopes with which the day began. Eighteen month old Ali Dawabsheh was burned to death in his Duma home by ultra religious Jewish terrorists. One hour away, Shira Banki, walking with friends and classmates in Jerusalem’s gay pride parade, was stabbed by a man who had been released weeks earlier after serving ten years in prison for a similar attack on the 2005 Jerusalem parade. Shira died three days later. Ali’s father, Sa’ad died ten days later. Ali’s mother and 4 year old brother are being treated for major burns, and five other marchers are recovering from stab wounds.

The handwritten sign on the Banki’s door announced shiva from 10 a.m. until 10 p.m. On Thursday, August 6th, we were the first to enter the shiva house. At first, we did not realize that we had been welcomed by Mika, Shira’s mother, because she seemed so young herself. “We are private people,” she said. “We asked that there be no press at the funeral, and none at the shiva, and they have been very respectful.” We leaned in to hear her as others joined us in the garden, a gracious outdoor space shared by the residents of the apartment building. “We recently celebrated our son’s Bar Mitzvah here. As we sat here, we realized it is a lovely space for a wedding. Perhaps, one day, Shira’s wedding. Here we are, with guests and tables filled with food, but this is not a wedding…”

We came with a gift, a book of 1720 signatures and notes of condolence from across the world, collected by the Israel Religious Action Center. Anat Hoffman, the Center’s director, had written Shira’s name on a stone that Shira’s mom held in her hand as she spoke. “The shiva is allowing me an additional week of not comprehending what has happened. Shira is the eldest of our four children. Our house is always open, always filled with our children and their friends. We raised our children to be open, to find their own voice, to walk their own path.”

We sat with Mika, we, four women who have also raised children, three of us now grandmothers. We came as representatives of thousands of others like ourselves who are stunned by the violence that, in one day, shattered the life of many families.

I have visited many shiva houses In the last fifty plus years. I have sat with many who have lost beloveds, both those who have suffered a sudden loss, and those who have sat for days and months at the bedsides of dear ones and watched helplessly as their lives slipped away.

As we sat in the Banki’s garden, we felt Shira’s absence and her presence. The photos of Shira introduced us to a smiling, engaged young woman, who would have celebrated her sixteenth birthday in three months.

This will be the third Shabbat since these twin attacks. When Shabbat ends, Jews across the world will welcome the month of Elul. Our tradition teaches the power of this last month of the year in which we prepare for Rosh HaShanah. Aleph, Lamed, Vav, Lamed, the four letters of the Hebrew name of the month, echo the words of the Song of Solomon, the Song of Songs: Ani L’Dodi V’Dodi Li: I am My Beloved and my Beloved is mine.

How can we love in the shadow of hate? Each new year we are challenged to Choose Life. Our tradition invites us to acknowledge our own fears of death when we sit with the bereaved. This is how we choose life.

Our Judaism urges us, even in the presence of senseless hatred, to affirm love. Ani L’Dodi V’Dodi Li.We inscribe these words of love on wedding rings and sing them as we celebrate love and commitment. These words direct this month of reviewing our days, reconsidering our choices, reaffirming our commitments.

We choose life when we weave these words into the oft-quoted words attributed to the ancient sage, Hillel: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”

When love wins, we see that If I am not for myself, I cannot be present for another. When love wins, we understand that when we are only for ourselves, we cannot see even the beloved who is before me. When love wins, we grasp that the time is now. Now is the time to choose life, and love.

Our humanity is absolutely bound up with the humanity of others. There is no room for hate in our fragile, interdependent world. We can transform fear of the other into curiosity, and build respect in the place of ignorance.  There is only one people, one fate, one earth, one destiny. The perpetuation of a fiction of essential otherness is a recipe for annhilation.

Just as Eve and Adam left Eden, we took our leave of the Banki family in their garden. When shiva ended, they, too, left their garden. We must honor the memory of Shira Banki and the memories of Ali and Sa’ad Dawabsheh by choosing life, and love. Love must win.

—

Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell is scholar in residence at Washington Hebrew Congregation. She is also the editor of The Open Door, the CCAR Haggadah (2002).

This blog was originally posted in Washington Jewish Week.

Categories
Ethics Healing Rabbis Reform Judaism

The Red Tent: Oddly Compelling, Despite it All

I was slightly too young to swoon over the iconic mini-series “The Thorn Birds” in the early 1980’s (though my babysitters weren’t).  So imagine my excitement, tinged with an eye roll or five, when I saw that “The Red Tent,” based on Anita Diamant’s best-selling novel, would be broadcast over two nights (two nights!) in December.  In spite of more inaccuracies than the rabbi in me could count, Lifetime Television for Women (coincidence?  methinks not!) did manage to present the movie around the time the Torah portion containing Dinah’s story is read.  “The Bible Gave Her One Line” the trailer intoned dramatically.  Fine.  They had me at one line.  With a December 2nd article from the Forward titled “159 Thoughts We Had While Watching ‘The Red Tent’ (We Watched It So You Don’t Have To)” beside me, and my husband happily watching the Packers game in the other room, I settled on the couch and prepared for Part One, also known as “A Blissful Two Hours Of Mockery.”

And I found I couldn’t look away.

So embarrassing!

To assuage said embarrassment, and mostly thwarted mockery, I’m playing with a few theories as to why.

Good production values.  I want to say that the Torah is just as visually arresting, and sometimes it is.  But sometimes sweeping desert vistas, ominous drum beats, what sounds like the almost constant accompaniment of the sitar, and veils softly billowing in the wind help things along.

Even better hair.  Whether growing up under the watchful eyes and shaped by the hyper-articulate wisdom of her mothers, lighting up a darkened palace with her first sexual awakening, losing more than anyone has a right to, suffering terribly, then flourishing in ways she never predicted, Dinah’s curls were unfailingly gorgeous.

Genuinely moving theological soundbites.  I still can’t put my finger on what lifted reflections like “God’s will doesn’t come through words – it’s in what we become,” and “To mourn is respectful; to remember is holy” out of the realm of florid nonsense.  Could it be that when you peel away the mannered accents on the actors’ part, and the tendency towards sarcasm on mine, these insights are more or less true?  The lump in my throat said yes.

To round out all the possibilities, at a pre-Chanukah gathering last night, I asked a member of our congregation’s Sisterhood what had moved her about “The Red Tent.”  She told me it had to do with Dinah’s ability to take what the women in her life had taught her and to use it to survive what the rest of her life brought.  Well… right, I thought.  If we’re very lucky, that’s something we all do with the memories of those who matter to us most.

I read The Red Tent in 1999, just months after my mother died, during my first year at HUC in Jerusalem.  It was neither my favorite nor my least favorite piece of literature.  But this congregant’s words struck a chord.  I realized that this story – however hyperbolic — is bound up with a specific loss in my life and with the person, and the rabbi, I have since become.  That’s what our best stories do.  They give our worlds back to us.  We bind ourselves to them.  And they point us towards something new.

By the way, the Packers won.  And against all odds, “The Red Tent” as a mini-series did too.  I’m filing it under “oddly compelling.”  And then I’ll be putting the word out to see if anyone has a used, double VHS tape of “The Thorn Birds.”

Rebecca Gutterman is the rabbi of Congregation B’nai Tikvah in Walnut Creek, CA.

Categories
Healing

I Do: When Fantasy Clashes With Reality

As anyone who has been married can tell you, marriage is all about reality: it is the process of creating a joint future in close quarters and close partnership. When it is a good match, it is one of the best things in the world; and when it is not – well, then let’s just let it suffice to say that it is not.

Weddings, however, are all about fantasy. My first husband had requested that I wear a big white dress with (in his words) ‘a draggy thing.’ So I had the yards and yards of tulle and the draggy thing, and a veil and 200 or so guests. I looked like Cinderella in white shoes.

That was the wedding in which I fulfilled everyone else’s expectations.

But later, older, wiser, and less prone to fantasy, I remarried. When I went to purchase a dress for my wedding to my husband Tom, I went to one of those cute little bridal shops and picked out a nice dress from a catalog: a bridesmaid dress, actually, in shell pink satin.

The day that it arrived, I was ecstatic: I wanted to go in and try it on and feel like a bride.  But as a single mom with a tight schedule, the only way I could go over there was to bring my son with me in an appointment sandwiched in between lunch and teaching.

Now, let me tell you: if you want to understand the difference between reality and fantasy, go to a bridal shop as a nearly-40 single mom in a subdued pink bridal gown, which is really a bridesmaid gown repurposed, and stand next to the 20-something young women getting fitted with big white dresses with yards of lace, beads, sequins, and tulle.

Go there and stand next to women who have not yet lost the glossy sheen of youth, who do not know love’s disappointment or despair.

My pink gown was wrinkled and the zipper was broken and gaping open, and my six-year-old son kept picking up those plastic clips that they use for fittings and clipping them randomly all over my dress. ‘Here Mommy: I found another one,’ he would say as he clipped it on.

There is reality, and there is fantasy, and the sales ladies at this little bridal salon were none too thrilled to have the two standing side by side.

We all have an image in our head of What Things Should Look Like; some of our greatest disappointments, in fact, are when things don’t match up to that fantasy. We might spend long years in denial, in fact, hoping that the image in our head is at some point matched by the facts on the ground.

What gets us into trouble, however, is when we pretend that the reality and the fantasy are one and the same. When we think that the job or the marriage or the living situation will get better when we know in our bones that it will not. But it is very easy to hold on to that fantasy and to hope for the best.

Our relationship to God – and by extension, our relationship to Judaism – can also be a bit like that. We think that things should happen a certain way, and then they do not. Should we give up on our faith? Should we get angry at God?

As I said, my first marriage started in fantasy – in the great white wedding with a tulle-and-lace Cinderella gown with a draggy-thing and a tiara and white gloves. And then that most lovely wedding ended in the reality of a divorce; the unraveling of the relationship began almost immediately even though it took many years to complete.

But that second dress – the shell-pink bridesmaid’s dress, beautiful at last after it had been steam-pressed, altered and repaired – was the one in which I traded fantasy for the reality of a mature and lasting love, the fairy tale for happily-ever-after.

Rabbi Kari Tuling, PhD., serves Temple Beth Israel in Plattsburgh, New York and teaches at SUNY Plattsburgh.

Categories
General CCAR Healing Rabbis

Rabbinic Soul Maintenance

I recently met with a colleague who informed me that she really doesn’t like to ask God for help, especially during Tishrei, because there’s already so much on God’s plate. It reminded me just a little bit of the old story with the punchline, “look who thinks she’s nothing?” I am reminded as well of a poignant piece by Jacob Staub on the difficulty of asking for help, available at http://firstdaypress.org/asking-for-help/: “And it is, for many of us, so difficult to ask for help. We may feel things slipping away from us, or the color bleeding from life. But all too often we wait until everything has already hit the fan to pick up the phone and say, ‘I need you.’”

Seth Bernstein posted a beautiful contemplation regarding the gift that Ruth Alpers and he offer our members as the Hotline rabbis of our CCAR Rapid Response team. I am honored this year to be able to join them as CCAR Intern for Member Care and Wellness, as part of my training at the NYU School of Social Work, where I am pursuing an MSW. Seth offered up a list of the kinds of issues which might prompt you to pick up the phone and call one of the three of us. Additionally, I invite you to attend to the basic question of soul maintenance – how are you holding up on a day-to-day basis in the face of all you shoulder personally and professionally? We would never hesitate to encourage a congregant who tells us she is feeling listless or he is feeling joyless to consider speaking to a therapist? But how many of us wait until something has gone dreadfully wrong. Are we sufficiently attuned to the weight of compassion, fatigue and, even, vicarious trauma on our psyches?

Dear colleagues, you offer yourselves up so generously to help others bear the burdens of their lives. The CCAR offers you the same. Ruth and Seth are available for moments of crisis. And for those who would like a few sessions of listening, sharing and examining where you are right now in your life and in the center of your being, I am here for you as well. I am also available for a small number of sessions of spiritual direction and will be facilitating some group work over the course of the year as well.

For more information, go to:  http://ccarnet.org/rabbis-communities/personal-resources-chevruta/rapid-response/

Rabbi Rex D Perlmeter is the CCAR NYU Social Work Intern for Member Care and Wellness.

Categories
General CCAR Healing Rabbis

Don’t Let Me Struggle Alone: CCAR’s Rapid Response Line

We are blessed to have family and friends whom we rely upon, just as they rely upon us.  As rabbis, we also are blessed to serve others in the context of a community that widens and deepens our relationships.  Nevertheless, despite all the relationships that we have and nurture, unfortunately there are times in the course of our rabbinate when we and those we love find ourselves in a free fall.  That could be due to sudden illness or trauma, employment setbacks, familial problems, congregational or personal crises.  There are a host of ways and a variety of people within the CCAR which can help.  On the CCAR website under “Rabbis and Communities” there is a tab that reads “Personal Resources & Chevruta.”  Here CCAR members can find contact information for the Rapid Response Hotline for contacting me or our colleague, Rabbi Ruth Alpers.

Our colleague, Rabbi Richard Levy, paraphrased the “Ahavat Rabbah/Ahavat Olam” prayer found in Mishkan T’filah, “As You Taught Torah”. The prayer states a plea that we all feel at times in the course of our lives and rabbinate, “Don’t let me struggle alone.”  When the rug is pulled out from under us, we have the choice to struggle alone or to call upon assistance.  As one of the CCAR’s Rapid Response members, we are available whenever you or your family is in need.

What are some of the reasons why colleagues place the call to the Rapid Response Line in the first place?  It could be trouble with an employer or congregation, a family crisis, the beginning of an alleged ethical violation, marital or family conflict, job placement, and health issues, just to name a few reasons.  For example, colleagues have shared:

“Everything has been going downhill since my divorce. I was just told I will never see my kids again.”

“I can’t find a job, even after all of these months and years of trying.”

“I’m a dead man.  When does this stop?”

“I know my marriage is tenuous and my spouse needs stability, but I am in a dying community, and I don’t see as if we have any choice, or there is any way out of here.”

“My spouse (the rabbi) was asked to give a large sum of money back to the congregation if he wants to keep his job.  We’re being blackmailed.”

“I live in Shmini Atzeret, seventy-five miles, from a city. Can you refer me to a good psychiatrist whose office is close by?”

“Do I inform my congregation about this psychiatric issue in my life? And if so, how do I go about it?”

“I should have called you a while ago.  Where do I begin?”

Ruth and I are just two colleagues here to assist CCAR members as you will see on the website under “Rabbis Caring for Rabbis.”  The prayer, As You Taught Torah continues, “Don’t let me struggle alone; help me to understand, to be wise, to listen, to know.  Lead me into the mystery, Baruch atah, Adonai, ohev amo Yisrael.”

Rabbi Seth Bernstein serves Congregation Bet Aviv in Columbia, MD

Categories
Death Healing Mishkan haNefesh

You Turn my Mourning Into Dancing

Yizkor on Yom Kippur is … not about human frailty or the futility of human endeavors. Yizkor on Yom Kippur is about the power of others to affect us, about our power to affect others, about the power of the dead and the living to continue to affect each other. Yizkor on Yom Kippur is … not simply about remembering the dead, by about attempting to effect change in our relationships with the dead and thus to effect change in ourselves and in our relationships with those who are still among the living.

(Rabbi Margaret Moers Wenig, in the CCAR Draft machzor, forthcoming 2015, Mishkan haNefesh, Yizkor service)

I’ve missed a number of days of Elul to blog because my father-in-law died last Wednesday. After his funeral in Florida on Friday morning, my wife and her sister returned to sit shiva at our home in Massachusetts. What happened over those days was a reflection of how love, healing, and change are truly what the rituals of remembrance are about and enable us to do. For those who joined us for multiple nights of shiva, the change that occurred over those days as memories and reflections were shared was quite evident and powerful for many.

Without sharing the specifics here, the journey we took was one that first confronted the past, and acknowledged the challenge of engaging with memory in the face of difficult relationships. Yet, with the honesty of needing to acknowledge the challenges, the blessings that emerged from those life experiences were also evident.  On the following night, more family members gathered and a broader range of perspectives and memories were shared. There were many moments of laughter. There was a release – the laughter not only lifted the weight of some of the challenging memories but also opened up the banks of memories that were positive and powerful. And so, by the third night, new stories had been laid bare and had risen to the surface. There were words of forgiveness, acceptance, and love.  By the fourth night, in a beautiful, spontaneous sharing and connecting of memories and reflections connected to the words of specific prayers as we davenned (prayed) the ma’ariv (evening) service, there was a sense of completeness. We were speaking of a life lived, and memories that we carry with us, but embedded into the heart of the tefilot that were so much a part of Mordecai’s being that, when advanced dementia had taken almost all else from him, davenning was the only activity that he could still do, in short bouts.

In the forthcoming CCAR machzor, Mishkan HaNefesh, we find a version of precisely how we did our remembrances on the last night of shiva.  We are offered 7 paths, where readings, psalms and reflective texts are woven around the 7 thematic blessings of the Tefilah, or Amidah prayer, the central prayer of our Shabbat and Festival liturgy.  There is an abundance of material – many, many years worth of exploration and contemplation. There is a clear recognition that everyone remembers differently. There are ways to remember children who died too young. There is a prayer in memory of a parent who was hurtful. There are words to remember one who died violently. There are words to remember dearly beloved ones. And so many more.

As we return to Yizkor, year after year, we do not necessarily have to engage in the memories in the same way. With the passage of time and the ways we remember, may we, as invited by Rabbi Wenig in the reflection above, find the possibility to change our relationships with the dead and thus effect change in ourselves and in our relationships with those who are still among the living.

Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz serves Congregation Congregation B’nai Shalom in Westborough, MA. She dedicates this blog post to the memory of Mordecai Lavow, her father-in-law.

 

Categories
Death Healing Rabbis

Mussar for Rabbis – Bitachon (Trust), Life, and Death

“Rabbi, I wouldn’t want your job,” congregants have often said to me, most often in connection with the rabbi’s proximity to death.  My response often surprises people:  “Being with those who are dying, and with families coping with the death of a loved one, is actually the most meaningful part of being a rabbi for me.”

Make no mistake:  The rabbi is not immune from feelings of sadness in the midst of mourners.  Having served more than two decades in one community, and now forging meaningful bonds in a new one, I frequently experience real personal loss at the death of a person who has become dear to me.

Still, the well-boundaried rabbi does not become consumed by grief at the death of a congregant.  With true caring for the person who is dying, or who has died, and for the family, the rabbi can play a unique role to bring healing.  The rabbi can leverage the liminal moment to draw people closer to the congregation, to the Covenant, and to God.  Most importantly, the rabbi can convey authentic faith, which I have come to understand most importantly as the middah of bitachon (the soul-trait of trust), thanks to my learning with Alan Morinis.

In significant measure, I take my cue from the Christian funeral, a comment I make in the context of a witticism I often share about Jews attending a Christian funeral:

A group of Jews gets in the car after a Christian funeral, after offering condolences to the family and kind, if not entirely sincere, words to the minister or priest.  The car windows are rolled up.  I have been in this car.  “Geez,” one person exclaims, “I thought we were going to Ploni’s funeral.  But I didn’t hear hardly anything about Ploni! Did we just attend Jesus’s funeral?”

Naturally, the Christian service doesn’t resonate to Jews.  We don’t share the theology proclaimed there.  We are not imbued with faith that Ploni has found the blessings of life eternal because of his/her relationship with Jesus.  That Christian funeral does not inspire bitachon (trust) in us.

IMG_2309The question remains, though:  Do our own funerals offer faith and hope to us and to our own people?

In our own day, people often ask why rabbis bother to give eulogies at all.  After all, family members are often eager to speak, and they knew the deceased better even than a rabbi who has shared a long relationship with the departed.  While I agree that the loving words of familial mourners are meaningful, and certainly called for (as in Proverbs 31), the rabbi can fill a role that most family members cannot.

I minister to dying individuals and their families, and I craft each eulogy, with a clear, rabbinical goal in mind:  I am there to offer bitachon, trust, despite the unhappy circumstance before us, that:

1) Life is an inestimable gift from God, exemplified by the life now ending or ended.  The dying or recently deceased person has made an important impact on this world which will not soon be forgotten and is indisputably not erased by death.

2) We who yet live can keep this person very much alive here on Earth by finding our own ways to live our dear one’s values.  I suggest that this responsibility to a person’s immortality on Earth is what we mean when we say that we are reciting Kaddish “for” somebody.  Literally, the Kaddish is an opportunity to praise God on behalf of one who no longer can do so.  We may interpret our Kaddish obligation more broadly as a duty to perform mitzvot, to offer cheesed (loving-kindness,) and tzedakah (righteous charitable giving), and/or to continue shalshelet hakabalah (the chain of Jewish tradition) on behalf of the one who no longer can do so, thereby granting immortality in this world.

3) Life after death for the departed in the World to Come is also a meaningful part of our Jewish faith.  This is the hard part, for countless reasons, not the least being that any honest discussion of Jewish theology in this regard doesn’t fit into a eulogy.   Still, I affirm that even poetic, oblique reference to eternal life in God’s embrace offers faith and hope that our funerals might otherwise fail to convey.

Serving my congregants at their times of greatest spiritual need, I have come to realize, has bolstered my own bitachon, my own ultimate trust in the Eternal.  Death is a difficult aspect of the human condition, from which rabbis are not exempt.  Striving to help others face death with faith serves as a constant reminder to me:  I must pursue tikkun middot, the repair of my own flaws, to deepen the meaning of my own earthly existence; I am charged to recall the goodness of my grandparents, of blessed memory, by striving to “say Kaddish” for them through my own actions; and I would do well to remember that I, too, am “but dust and ashes,” my body destined for the cemetery, my soul in the hands of God, a prospect I increasingly accept with bitachon, with faithful trust.

Rabbi Barry Block serves Congregation B’nai Israel in Little Rock, AR.