Graduation Day

My twin boys Akiva and Hillel graduated in June. Graduation is a rite of passage, a moment for these 6th graders take stock of their educational achievements. But it’s also a rite of passage for parents. We marvel at how the toddlers we just dropped off at kindergarten are already at the cusp of maturity.

So please indulge me as I write out of naches!!

Rites of passage are important. In Judaism, a child who turns Bat and Bar Mitzvah is considered personally responsible for his or her actions. (The public celebration of Bar Mitzvahs is a medieval German innovation; the garish celebration of Bar and Bat Mitzvahs is a 20th century North American mutation.) By necessity a birthday is the dividing line, arbitrarily declaring that the child is now a responsible adult.

Like Bar-Bat Mitzvahs, graduations are arbitrary dividing lines. But far more important than ceremonial graduation days are the unexpected moments that test the character of a young adult. These true graduation days always arrive unexpectedly.

David, a young shepherd, visits his older brothers at their army camp. There, he sees Goliath, a Philistine warrior, mocking the army of Israel, challenging any soldier to fight him one on one. As the soldiers cower, David the shepherd offers to fight Goliath himself.

David is ridiculed by his brothers, and even King Saul refuses David at first, saying:

"You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a boy, and he has been a fighting man from his youth."

But David, (already anointed to be a future King), insists on fighting. David’s battle against Goliath marks his true graduation day.

A true graduation day is the day when a young person rises to the occasion. Being anointed with academic degrees means nothing until one has passed real life tests.

Tony Benetatos graduated in just a few hours. A “probie”, (a new firefighter), the 21-year-old Benetatos was assigned to Manhattan's Duane Street firehouse, located seven blocks from the World Trade Center. French Filmakers Jules and Gedeon Naudet were filming Benetatos for a documentary, hoping to see how the “boy turns into a man in nine months”. They follow Benetatos in his first days on the job, as senior firefighters haze him and break him in.

Then 9-11 occurs. Every man in the fire station is pressed into service. Firefighters fight on the front line, risking their lives to save the lives of others. Along with his fellow firefighters, Benetatos shows remarkable courage and compassion. On 9-11, Benetatos becomes a hero.

Benetatos passes his true graduation day with honors. As Jules Naudet puts it at the end of the documentary (aptly entitled 9-11) , “we wanted to watch a boy become a man over 9 months; turns out, the boy became a man in 9 hours.”

Every child, on the road to becoming an adult, has to pass a true graduation day. On that day there won’t be any caps and gowns, there won’t be celebratory parties, but on that day, like King David and Tony Benetatos, the boy will become a man.

I am proud to watch my children graduate, and I am proud of what they have achieved. And my blessing, to Akiva, Hillel, and all of the graduates, is that when their true graduation day arrives, they will pass with flying colors.

Mazel Tov!!

graduations

tony benetatos

"rite of passage"

Yes, I've Posted Something This Week!

I'm sorry I didn't get to post anything on this blog this week. It was a busy one.

But I did write two posts on my other blog.

One, a dvar Torah on next week's Torah reading. The other a piece on my trip to Ottawa.

Love Isn’t the Sizzle, It’s the Steak

“Love is….” Bookcases full of poetry have tried to complete this sentence. Love seems too fantastic to be experienced in daily life, too remarkable to be found in everyday gestures. To the romantic, if love is anything, it is spectacular. As the famous poem by Elizabeth Browning declares:

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight….”

What a beautiful description of love! In the poet’s hands, love is sublime and infinite, soaring as high as the lover’s soul. Indeed, this powerful image is so beautiful, it’s misleading.

Marketing 101 reminds us to “sell the sizzle, not the steak”. The sizzle is excitement itself, and people like excitement a lot more than they like steak.

Poets are the marketers of love. They are inspired by the “sizzle” of love, the drama of two hearts beating as one. They write intoxicating poems, and we are swept off our feet. And then we forget to eat the steak.

Love requires lots of small, unromantic, acts of kindness. The Mishna, when talking about true love, says:

.…any love that does not depend upon some ulterior interest will never cease….

This is setting the standard for love rather low! According to the Mishna, all one needs for true love is simple selflessness.

The Mishna is teaching a simple but profound lesson: Keep your eye on the steak, not the sizzle. Yes, love can (and must) be dramatic and sublime at times. But most of the time it’s the little things that nourish relationships. The smallest act of selflessness is a gesture of eternal love.

Love can at times be enchantment and adventure, but most of the time it’s saying thank you and taking out the garbage.

Love can be sublime and majestic, but most of the time it’s smiling and walking the dog.

Love can be passionate and dramatic, but most of the time it’s plain old admiration and sympathy.

Love can be the sizzle, but most of the time it’s the steak.

love

poetic

Article About This Blog!!!

There was an article about this blog in this week's edition of the Jewish Independent (Vancouver).

It was written by Dave Gordon, whose website is here.

(All of this promotional activity is part my "extra 1% of effort" in publicizing this blog.)

Hollow Happiness: When Plastic Smiles are Part of the Dress Code

I am not an ogre.

I love warm smiles, and moments of joy. I am a big fan of optimism. I consider authentic happiness to be the mission of mankind. But I just can’t stand stupidity.

Speaking of stupidity, why is it that people say the darndest things to mourners? You know, the silly remarks intended to “cheer up” the bereaved. Of course, these ridiculous attempts are miserable failures, causing more pain than comfort. Jess Decourcy Hinds recounts how she resented the attempts made to “cheer her up” after her father’s death:

"After a recent death in my family, I received a number of condolence cards that tried to talk me out of my grief. "You should be happy you have your memories," wrote one friend. "You should feel lucky you got to be with your father in the hospital." Lucky? Happy? You've got to be kidding!

Some cards made little mention of my father's death at all. Instead, they focused on the question of how I was going to distract myself from my grief. "Are you applying to grad school?" one person wrote. "How's your teaching going? Are you still renovating your apartment? Are you keeping busy?"

I was 25 when I lost my father last fall. He was only 58, and his death from bone cancer was slow and excruciating. When I cry for my father, I cry for his suffering; I cry because he worked long, grueling hours to save for a retirement he never got to enjoy. I cry because my mother is alone. I cry because I have so much of my life ahead of me, and my father will miss everything. If I marry, if I have children, he won't be there. My grief is profound: I am mourning the past, present and future. I resent the condolence cards that hurry me through my grief, as if it were a dangerous street at night…...

On the day of my father's funeral, we were greeted by a grinning deacon who shook our hands and chirped, "Isn't it a beautiful day? I'm so glad you have sun for your memorial!" I wanted to shake this woman. Couldn't she invoke a solemn tone for at least five seconds on the darkest morning of my life?"

People say stupid things to mourners because mourning is an annoyance. No one wants the mourners to bring their mood down with all their crying and grief. So of course, friends push the mourners to snap out of it, so they don’t have to feel the mourner’s pain. And, as I have noted over and over again, people love denial. Hearing the mourner talk about loss reminds us of the inconvenient fact that death is a part of every life.

Mourning is also out of fashion. The happiness pursued today is speedy and superficial. There are a multitude of quick fixes for finding happiness; just check the magazines at supermarket checkouts and the self help aisle in the bookstore. In a quick fix culture, a mourner is expected to snap out of bereavement overnight.

Hollow happiness is now the new fashion. 21st century happiness doesn’t depend on living a meaningful life; all you need to do is slap on a plastic smile (from a good plastic surgeon, of course), and think happy thoughts, and voila!…you’re happy. Happy in a superficial way, that is; an empty joy that ends up dulling a person’s soul.

We must abandon this dress code of hollow happiness, and search for authentic expression.

The Jewish tradition takes mourning seriously. As the famous verses in Ecclesiastes says:

…There is a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance…

Sadness is a painful feeling. But it is also the only proper response to loss and injustice. If you truly love someone, can you simply just move on and smile after they die? Mourning is an ethical requirement, and a life without sadness is a fraud.

Real lives have pain and sadness and loss.

The superficial way of handling loss seeks to make pain bearable by burying it under a smile.

The proper way of handling loss seeks to make the pain meaningful by cherishing memories and mourning properly.

And all the quick fixes and plastic smiles in the world cannot compare to the proud soul of an authentic mourner.

mourning

pain

happiness

Jess Decourcy Hinds

Darfur

As you know from previous posts, Darfur matters a lot to me. (see previous posts like 1, 2, 3,
4)

Here's something from the latest Canadian Jewish News. I guess at least I can say I protested while this terrible crime was taking place. What can the U.N. say for itself?

We need to do something now.

Harper needs to do something at the G-8.

Darfur

No One is Going to Hand You a Crown

We’re raised like princes, but we don’t know how to become kings.

Kids get what they want. In a comfortable society like ours, we are indulged as children and treated like little princes and princesses.

We are raised as princes, with life expected to bring a steady stream of entitlements. Go to school, get your degree, yada yada yada, and there’s a white picket fence and suburban bliss waiting for you. And princes like us expect to automatically become the king.

But that’s wrong. No one is going to hand you a crown. Birthright doesn’t determine who is a true king.

Even people who are lucky enough to be handed the keys to the kingdom fail. Plenty of people inherit wealth, fame and beauty, and still fail miserably. The old proverb “from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations” is all too often true. Plenty of princes are handed crowns, but fail because they have no idea what it takes to be a king.

So, what does it take to be a king?

Chutzpah.

Chutzpah gets a bad rap; it’s now simply another word for “impolite” or “obnoxious”. In actuality, chutzpah is the secret to becoming a king.

The Talmud says “chutzpah is a king without the crown” (Sanhedrin 105a). There are multitudes of people who never discover their inner king. They wait in vain for others to recognize their abilities. They sit quietly hoping that someone will just hand them a crown.

The Talmud is telling wallflowers to stand up and take charge. Chutzpah means never accepting limitations. Don’t politely accept mediocrity as your lot in life. If you want to be a king, grab hold of your destiny.

Rebecca and Stuart Klein have a great deal of chutzpah, and they have refused to follow conventional wisdom on how to live their lives. Both are disabled (he's quadriplegic, she's paraplegic), and yet they are married and the parents of bouncing baby twin boys.

Of course, conventional wisdom finds this act of chutzpah intolerable. As noted in an article in the LA Times, some people who meet the Kleins can’t resist saying:

"you're going to have your hands full," or "it's going to get really hard when they're older" - comments that perplex Stuart.

"Why say how hard it's going to be?" Stuart says. "What's the point? If they say it in a certain way, and then say, 'OK, we'll come over and help you out,' that's one thing, but otherwise, what are they suggesting?" Then he adds a characteristic joke, "Should we put them up on EBay now or wait till they're older?"

But the Kleins are kings. They have the gift of chutzpah. It doesn’t matter how hard things are, or what other people think. The Kleins have grabbed hold of their own destiny.

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”, Thoreau famously wrote. Perhaps the mass of men, but not kings. True kings have chutzpah, and don’t wait for others to hand them a crown.

chutzpah

rebecca and stuart klein