In my synagogue growing up, we had a vibrant tradition of journaling and reflection during services.  On the high holidays, they would assemble four tents in the four corners of the sanctuary and during services, it was common for community members to duck into a tent for a moment of quiet meditation or to jot down some ideas in a journal.  I always thought that writing was an integral part of Jewish practice.

When I got to college, I was so lonely.  I missed home and missed the Judaism I had grown up with.  When I spoke to my rabbi, she recommended that I try some of the synagogues off-campus.  She thought multi-generational community might be a balm to my soul.  So I got up my courage, found the nearest conservative synagogue, and headed there for shabbat morning services.

I was nervous. Uncomfortable. So worried about traffic that I left ridiculously early and got there with nearly a half an hour to spare before services.  Those were the days before we had to have security, so I wandered into the sanctuary and found a seat near the back.  I pulled out my journal and started writing a letter to God about how lonely I was, asking God to help me make this a good community, to help me feel at home.

Just then, a group of women walked up to me.  “What do you think you’re doing?!  We don’t write on shabbos!  And in the sanctuary of all places?!  How dare you!”

I was mortified. Alienated. Heart-broken.  I managed to blurt out some hasty apology.  The ladies started asking me questions about who I was and how I got there.  I answered, trying to hold it together, and waited for services to start.  As soon as they did, I fled to my car and cried all the way home.

September 18, 2021.

When I turned 60 this past summer, I developed an intense fascination with my grandfather, my mother’s father, Will Bloom.

It is not just that I am named for him. He was Will, I am Wes.  We are both Yechiel Shneyer. The connection is deeper.  My grandfather was, in the last season of his life, a traveling salesman.  He would drive hundreds of miles a week making sales calls.  He was Willy Loman. My mother could never watch Death of a Salesman because the pathos hit too close to home. One day, he died on the road, in a single car accident, suddenly, tragically, and in circumstances that were never explained.  Did he fall asleep at the wheel?  Did he intend to take his own life? We never knew.  One day, out of the blue, my mother gets the call saying that her 60 year old father had died on the road.  Her loss was shattering and unimaginable.  And she decided to respond by bringing a child into the world to name after her father, that would turn out to be me.

It was an implausible choice, to bring another child into the world.  My parents already had five children, one bathroom, and no money.  The last thing they needed was another mouth to feed. But my mother was determined to name a child after her father.

Will Bloom’s death, and my life, are intertwined.  If he had not died the way he had died, I would never have been born.

How are we to think about this day, the 20-year anniversary of 9/11?  This is a day of double memory, double mourning, double pathos.

We remember the lives that were lost on that terrible day, and what that meant to the families who lost them, the spouses who lost spouses, the parents who lost children, the children who lost parents, the brothers and sisters who lost brothers and sisters.  In his elegy You’re Missing, Bruce Springsteen gives voice to this pathos.

Pictures on the nightstand, TV's on in the den

That trauma, that loss, never goes away.

From 9/11/21

The story is told of a man named Max Gelberg who was 70 years old when his beloved wife of more than 40 years, Goldie, passed away.  After mourning her for a year, he decides he has to live in the present.  He is only 70.  Life must go on.

Does God act in history?  If you look at the world, does it testify to the existence of a loving and powerful God who acts to make sure that God’s highest ideals are implemented?

Of course, even asking the question in this hot mess of a summer suggests the implausibility of the premise that God acts in history.

How could God act in history when floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, massive fires cause death and destruction on a massive scale to innocents too numerous to count?

How could God act in history when the Delta variant continues to rage?

How could God act in history when two suicide bombers exploded themselves at the Kabul airport killing 13 American service members and more than 100 Afghan citizens and seriously wounding so many innocent civilians?

In short, any honest assessment of the question would have to come down on the side that God does not act in history.

That assessment seems accurate.  But there are two problems with it.  It’s a problem for the world to be a hot mess and God-less.  And it is a problem for our Jewish sources.  The Bible’s signature voice is that God acts in history.

This week I found myself watching, and rewatching obsessively, 1 minute and 11 seconds of sheer human desperation, a video link on my iPad, of chaos and confusion  at the Kabul Hamid Karzai International Airport.  Throngs of Afghan citizens were so desperate to flee from the Taliban that they ran onto the tarmac and literally clung to the outside of an American military plane as it was moving.   They continued to cling to the wings and to the fuselage as the plane began to take off, causing some of those desperate citizens to fall to their deaths.  By all accounts, Afghan citizens who helped the American war effort, who translated for us, who believed in us, who trusted us, who served with us, who walked the minefields and took fire with us, were stranded, unable to board a plane to free them from slaughter at the hands of the Taliban.  

How are we to understand this heartbreak?

“You’re gonna drown like that.”

I was standing on my tip toes, trying to hold a tarp above our tent while Solomon adjusted the rope tying it to the tree above.  We were racing to get our camp set up before the rain.

Join our wonderful Rabbi Michelle Robinson on August 7, 2021.