Note to a Rabbi, After my Dad's Funeral

Paul,

My apologies for not responding to your kind message sooner.Though I know he wanted to live on, I am happy that things have come to what appears to be a reasonable end.

One way I may be able to express my thanks is by telling a story:

Some years ago I had a colleague who was a former Trappist monk. Tom had left his priesthood when he married and had kids. Of course, much of the priesthood stuck. making
for good discussions about the morality of medical eduction.

Barb and I wanted to get to know Tom better but before that could happen, disaster struck. His teen age daughter committed suicide.

We were honored to be invited to the funeral. The service was wonderful, honoring the girl for her good life and accepting the death as an illness rather than as a sin,

As we filed out I had a few moments with Tom's wife. She knew I was a Jew, but little more than that we did not believe in Jesus. The Mother pushed me to say, as a Jew, that the girl was now with God in heaven.
I could not do that, Instead I tried to tell her that her daughter lived on in each of us and how, I had been moved by the stories told at the funeral. I tried very hard to tell her how those stories would live on in my heart too.
She broke down and cried.

Later Tom came to see me and we agreed never to mix again because of the harm I had done to his wife.

I will bear the guilt for what I could not say for all my life.


Why could I not agree with the bereaved mother? Many years ago I developed my own rigorous set of ethics.

One of those rules is that I never knowingly lie. If I had had the skills to evade her question, I would have done so. But, I lacked those skills too.
So, in the pursuit of one of my own ethical rules I had broken an even more important rule, I knowingly hurt another human.

So,I suspect that Dad's funeral presented something of the same dilemma for you. The words that might serve to comfort me and my family would not serve the same function for .. say Steph or others who have different ties to the Deity.
Moreover, just as I mourned the young girl, you morned dad and had your own need to serve as well. Not an easy task, not a problem with any perfect answer.

For what it is worth, I would like to finish by telling you a bit about what I know my Dad did believe. First, his atheism, was not a result of repugnance over the Shoah. Nor was it a heated rejection relating with some struggle with the idea of Deity, in the fashion of Israel. Rather, Dad's beliefs arose from a conflict with his father, a conflict that occurred not long before my grandfather's death. As my Dad tells it, however, his father was pious and insisted that his sons obey Jewish law. My Dad, however, saw this rigor as cruelty. Forced to attend Cheder, my Dad questioned orthodoxy and refused to accept given truths. A request t quit cheder led to my zadi throwing Dad through a closed window. That broken window was follo0wed by Zadi's death, the Depression, and crushing poverty. My Father had more than enough reason to hate the Deity but, being rational, he instead made the decision that no such evil being could exist.

To my knowledge, he never again questioned this point of view. The decision to have a non kosher home was his, while my Mom won the decision to have us attend Hebrew School and make the decisions about Hashem on our own. He never taught atheism to us nor did she teach beleif.

What they did teach was Jewish pride and commitment to the Jewish tradition of struggle for justice. They both despised Rabbis who misused their learning and authority, blaming these rabbis especially for out not fighting back against antisemitism.

As for Buchenwald, while I am sure he would have seen this as more reason not to believe in a Deity, Dad's conclusion from this was to blame the ability of man to be inhumane. He believed that ethnic hatred was a property of men and was proud of Judaism for its resistance to that, may I say "God-given" human attribute?

The lesson? The common lesson of both my parents was that Jews should be moral because THAT is Jewish tradition and Law. We should be a model to others, not because God says so but because we have learned form our unique history.

This lesson has been passed on and has grown in my family. Some of our traditions may interest you:

1. we annually celebrate the Jewish Nobels.
2. we donate to Medecin sans Frontiers as a Jewish organization.
3. on Shabbat, every week we try tot wish Shabbat shalom to thiose in the world who have done the most good.
4. we participate as Jews in civil rights and other political efforts. My blog www.SeattleJew.blogspot.com is an example.
5. most of this is summed uo at Pesach. . In the Haggadah we add the Jewish history and history of other struggles for freedom that have taken place over the ~3000 years since Egypt. We try to celebrate our contributions ot human freedom.

Our Haggadah can be seen at http://www.vasculata.com/Haggadah.htm.

Quoting from the Schwartz haggadah, let me try to giver you a feel for how we deal with God as an intrinsic aspet of Judaisn.

From Buber: "Man, while created by God, was established by Him in an independence which has remained undiminished. In this independence he stands out over against God. So man takes part with full freedom and spontaneity in the dialogue between the two which forms the essence of existence."
another: "Blessed are thou, O God! who not only redeemeth Israel but through Israel addresses mankind and invites mankind to address thee unafraid. Blessed art thou, O Lord our God! whom we have been creating through mankind's history as thou created us through thy eternity. Blessed art thou, O Lord our God! who breathed into us the Law that we have written for thee. Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe — the only King that we acknowledge. Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe — the King to whom we do not kneel."

So, let me finish with a hope that all goes well with you. Perhaps some time we will see you in Seattle.


















--
Stephen M. Schwartz
Pathology