Wheel of Fortune.... How does it turn?

The goal of this blog is to not leave the Friday night table talk to chance.... Please share.
In memory of Moshe Simcha Moskowitz and wishing a speedy recovery to Tamar Adina bas Kayna Shulamis.

A horrific accident this week.

A mother and her son drop older sister off at the airport, going to Israel to study. What a happy goodbye!

On the way back, in front of her is a disabled vehicle on the highway - she slows down, but the semi behind her does not slow down and rams her into the stalled vehicle.

How long it took first responders to arrive, who knows and who wants to know. Both mother and son were airlifted to separate hospitals in DC.

The mother is presently in ICU, fighting for her life.

The son - a 13-year-old in our son's school - did not make it.

The funeral was yesterday.

It looked like the entire Jewish community was there. Not only were all 600 seats filled in the huge sanctuary, so was every foot of the standing room, so was the overflow room, spilling out into the hallways and the foyer.

First question for your table: Was it because the parents are well known and loved?

But speaker after speaker told of how special this boy was. His name was Moshe Simcha - and he was always happy (simcha means happiness). He wasn't an extroverted, joking kid. He was mild-mannered, soft-spoken, but extremely friendly and even more than friendly, he was helpful.

His seventh-grade teacher said, "You know those days when you come in to school and you really need a coffee but you don't have time because you have to go copy your handout? Moshe would make sure you had a coffee on your desk and the copies made before you even had a chance to ask him for help."

His father said, "At home, he was always asking, 'What can I do to help?'"

It seems that he had perfected the mitzvah of honoring your parents.

 
Other kids loved him, because he was super nice to everyone, of all ages.

Our son called him "really nice". (That is a very rare compliment.)

He was a fighter - he didn't let diabetes stop him from training for and completing a 120-mile bike-a-thon to raise money to help disabled kids go to camp.

He was a learner - he recently asked his father if they could spend five minutes a day learning together the laws of lashon hara. Why? "Because it's really important and I don't think I know it well enough."

His father, a beloved first-grade teacher, said, "Moshe taught us all something. He was a teacher - a rebbe - to all of us."

Even those of us who never met him.

(Even those of us who merely read about him in an email?)

His family ask:

• In his memory, that we aspire to emulate him;
• As a collective "prayer" for his mother, that we light Shabbat candles five minutes early today.

Hence I share the story with you, and ask you to forward it to everyone you love.

Second question for your table: What's a greater tragedy - a meaningful life cut short at 13, or a long, healthy life without meaning or mission?


Shabbat Shalom


PS - After 2,500 years, there is finally a new way to play dreidel. Click on the image above.

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How D'ya Like That?

In memory of my bubbie – Yehudis bas Alexander – whose yahrzeit is tonight.

Bubbie's 90th Birthday

In honor of my grandmother’s seventh yahrzeit, one of her stories.

She loved stories, and she loved learning.

Until the end of her life, she read newspapers and listened to lectures and talk shows, always trying to learn something new.


And when she did learn something new, she used to exclaim, "How d'ya like that!"

Now to understand her story that I'm about to tell you, it would help to recall The Jazz Singer.

I'm talking about the great Al Jolson original.

It was the first talking picture and uses the transition from silent to talking as a metaphor for the immigrant's transition from Old Country to New World.

You may recall that the struggle is between the young Jolson who wants to sing popular music and assimilate into American culture, and his father, a umpteenth-generation orthodox cantor.

This dialectic is a snapshot of the two kinds of Jews during that period (1880-1920).

There were the religious Jews who had to struggle to hang on to their Judaism - such as keeping Shabbos in a culture that expected them to work seven days a week.

Then there were the less committed Jews who were less uncomfortable with the great melting pot.

Bubbie's world: the West Side of Chicago, 1911.

A community with all kinds of Jews.

Her parents were the latter kind of Jew. Chicago was their kind of town. They could do what they wanted, eat what they wanted, and still speak Yiddish to all their friends.

The music stopped, however, when grandma came.

I.e., Bubbie's bubbie.

Her father Alexander and her uncle Arle brought over their mother from Ukraine.

"Once my bubbie came," Bubbie reminisced, "There was no more driving on Shabbos.

"We had to walk all the way to my grandmother's apartment every Shabbos."

Try to imagine her telling that at age 90 in a listful way that made you think you were talking to the little girl who found this new rule restrictive and inconvenient.

As far as I know it was a few blocks. But in her memory, it was a trek across the Sahara.

So I asked her, "Bubbie, why did your father do that? Why did he stop driving on Shabbos?"

"I guess he was afraid to when his mother was around. I guess he respected her."

"Do you think he was doing a mitzvah?"

"I suppose he was. I never thought about it that way before. How d'ya like that."

For your table - When should a child (of any age) do something for their parent even though they don't want to?



Shabbat Shalom

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