Yesterday afternoon the residents of our Jerusalem neighborhood were given a "last chance" to return the gas masks that were distributed, I think, when the US invaded Iraq. Fortunately the gas masks were never needed. They probably should never have been given out in the first place, but Israel always seems to find funds to address worst case scenarios, ignoring the ordinary needs of the country's citizens to a shocking degree.
Early in the morning I found four of them in our basement bomb shelter - another example of "worst case" thinking: our daughter's, our son's (the one who has been living in America for the past 10 years), my wife's, and mine. Each box was clearly labeled with our names and identity numbers. Wouldn't you know that Asher's was missing!
Three young men were hanging around the parking area of an apartment building down the street from our house, lazily collecting the cardboard cartons with the gas masks and issuing receipts. It was a hot day, and their job could hardly have been more boring.
When I put down the four boxes that I'd found, one of the guys entered my identity number on a hand held computer and noticed that one of the masks associated with my identify number was missing. I explained that Asher wasn't alive, and that I couldn't find his mask - an explanation I had been dreading all day long.
Without responding in any way to what I'd said to him, the boy said something like, "Well, he's still listed," and started making out a form for the missing mask. He told me I should call a certain number. I refused to take the form from him and said, "They can go to the cemetery and collect the kit."
I walked away.
Even if Asher were alive, I don't see how his gas mask would have been my responsibility. He was 28 years old, and if they wanted to run after him and levy a fine or whatever, that would be between him and the authorities. But it isn't as if I could call him up and ask him where he left the mask.
At first, when I got back home, shaken, and told Judith what I'd said to the guy collecting the masks, I added, "That wasn't very nice of me." It's true. It wasn't nice to hit him over the head with my tragedy. After all, he's just a young guy trying to make a little money doing tedious work with no future in it. On the other hand, it wasn't nice of him not even to say, "I'm sorry to hear it," when I told him that Asher wasn't alive, and it certainly wasn't nice of him to persist in the bureaucratic procedures after hearing it.
In a much more pleasant bureaucratic encounter yesterday, I gave my address to a secretary who was issuing receipts for contributions that were made in Asher's memory, and she noticed that I live near the school that her daughter had attended, a school for retarded children. I asked her how her daughter is doing now and talked a little about the school, saying that I see the kids playing outside sometimes when I pass by, and they seem to be happy. She agreed, the school had been good with her daughter. I asked whether her daughter would be able to support herself and live alone, and she shook her head sadly. On top of the retardation, her daughter suffers from severe epilepsy.
I don't think I'd pursue the matter if it turned out that her daughter's gas mask had been misplaced.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Theodicy - Why isn't the World Perfect?
The theme of Shavuot (Pentacost) is revelation, which is a hard issue for anyone who's read and been convinced by Hume.
One woman who spoke in our synagogue tried to make the point that the Holocaust makes it very difficult to believe in God. I don't think it was any easier before the Holocaust, if the issue blocking belief is the suffering of innocent people, or the persecution of people who regard themselves as God's chosen. This sort of thing has been going on since time immemorial.
Many of us manage to maintain a belief that the world is pretty well-ordered because we haven't suffered ourselves very much. I strongly recommend a recent article in the New Yorker by James Wood for a very cerebral but elegant treatment of the topic. Wood mentions some of the recent natural disasters in Asia - the cyclone in Burma and the earthquake in China - as examples of human suffering that it's pretty hard to justify theologically. As he points out, all you have to do is open your daily newspaper to find abundant demonstrations of the world's cruel imperfections.
You might say that our family's bereavement is deluxe. We didn't lose our homes and all our possessions, along with the son who died. We are surrounded by thoughtful friends. We were able to hold a funeral for Asher and work through the mourning process. But of course we weep. And if we weep, for a loss that did not destroy everything we had in the world, can we begin to imagine the grief of a woman whose house was destroyed, with all her loved ones, the grief of the people of Darfur and Zimbabwe, or Gaza and Sderot, or any of the other countries where violence strikes fiercely and blindly every day?
The sorrow we bear in our heart now is more the rule than the exception.
As for belief in God, I think it's more a matter of one's personal and social identity than anything else, more about who I am than about what the world is really like.
The main Jewish prayer begins with a passage that includes these words: "The great, powerful, awesome, supreme God, who provides good rewards, who owns everything, who remembers the good deeds of the fathers and brings a redeemer to their children's children, for the sake of His name, with love."
It's a wonderful set of ideas. Maybe prayer is an expression of the wish they were true.
One woman who spoke in our synagogue tried to make the point that the Holocaust makes it very difficult to believe in God. I don't think it was any easier before the Holocaust, if the issue blocking belief is the suffering of innocent people, or the persecution of people who regard themselves as God's chosen. This sort of thing has been going on since time immemorial.
Many of us manage to maintain a belief that the world is pretty well-ordered because we haven't suffered ourselves very much. I strongly recommend a recent article in the New Yorker by James Wood for a very cerebral but elegant treatment of the topic. Wood mentions some of the recent natural disasters in Asia - the cyclone in Burma and the earthquake in China - as examples of human suffering that it's pretty hard to justify theologically. As he points out, all you have to do is open your daily newspaper to find abundant demonstrations of the world's cruel imperfections.
You might say that our family's bereavement is deluxe. We didn't lose our homes and all our possessions, along with the son who died. We are surrounded by thoughtful friends. We were able to hold a funeral for Asher and work through the mourning process. But of course we weep. And if we weep, for a loss that did not destroy everything we had in the world, can we begin to imagine the grief of a woman whose house was destroyed, with all her loved ones, the grief of the people of Darfur and Zimbabwe, or Gaza and Sderot, or any of the other countries where violence strikes fiercely and blindly every day?
The sorrow we bear in our heart now is more the rule than the exception.
As for belief in God, I think it's more a matter of one's personal and social identity than anything else, more about who I am than about what the world is really like.
The main Jewish prayer begins with a passage that includes these words: "The great, powerful, awesome, supreme God, who provides good rewards, who owns everything, who remembers the good deeds of the fathers and brings a redeemer to their children's children, for the sake of His name, with love."
It's a wonderful set of ideas. Maybe prayer is an expression of the wish they were true.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Unhappy Birthday
This year the Hebrew calendar placed Asher's birthday on the holiday of Shavuot, so a day that should have been happy became one of deep sadness for us. This Saturday will be the anniversary of his Bar-Mitzvah celebration, a day we look back to with joy, joy now darkened by knowing the fate he was to meet. But of course the joy then was absolutely real. What is more joy-inspiring for parents than to see their children mature?
Asher never bought into the religious rituals around which we structured our family life, but he never regretted having attended a religious elementary school, and he did enjoy and cherish some of the Jewish things we did.
He did well on his Bar-Mitzvah. He learned the Torah portion with a wonderful young man, a fine educator named Even-David Lider, and he read it well in the synagogue. We hired a four piece Brazilian band and had the party in our back yard on a beautiful June night. No guest could resist the rhythm!
It's painful to remember these things, but vitally important.
The intensity of the emotions that I still feel, as if his funeral were only yesterday, is exhausting. They wring me out.
A few days ago I had the feeling that my personality had suddenly exploded. The pieces were scattered all over the place, and when I reassembled them, they wouldn't be in the same order.
I don't know why there was any suddenness in it. After all, we've been living with the tension of Asher's disappearance and then the certitude of his death for half a year or more.
I think it has to do with the release of controlling energy.
Just to keep going, holding myself together so that I could function, was a major effort. Maybe now I've gained enough confidence that I can go on, so that I'm not holding myself together so tightly, and things just burst. But they had to burst.
There's been a change in my self-image, my conception of who I ought to be (superego!) and my guilt for not being that person. Being bereaved, I could say to myself: I don't owe anything to anyone now!
My sudden plunge into ceramics is a reversal of my former feeling, that when I was doing something physical, I was wasting my time. I've found new delight in making things with my hands, a delight that Asher always had, one that I never allowed myself to have.
One day last week, when I was struggling to form something at the wheel, I said to myself: I have never been so much myself as I am when I am doing pottery.
Of course that's wrong. I meant, perhaps: Now, at this juncture in my life, working with clay is giving me the feeling that I am fully myself, a feeling that my other activities don't give me now.
I must try to take that feeling and carry it over to the rest of my life. When I'm happily involved in something, I have to go along with that, and when I'm unhappily involved in grief, I have to go along with that, too.
During the short time when I thought I should be seeing a psychologist, I wrote some notes to myself about what I expected, what I wanted from therapy.
The first issue that troubled me was lack of lasting interest or enthusiasm. I enjoy things, but only briefly, the way paper burns when you put it in a fire and then quickly the flame dies down, leaving just a thin sheet of ash. The therapist told me that was rather typical of people in mourning. Okay, at least I was aware and had described the state of mind correctly.
I also felt stalled, unable to plan, act, initiate, even imagine action. Again she told me this was typical of people in mourning.
I also knew that all the other problems I had before Asher's death were still with me, but I am less capable of coping with them, because I'm more fragile, have less energy, feel more vulnerable. But the fact is, before he died, I didn't think I needed psychotherapy.
My major life problem was the inability to take advantage of the real freedom I have in my life, and, because of the bereavement, the inability even to imagine how I might exploit that freedom. Articulating this was useful to me.
Asher's death (as well as my friend Gerald's untimely departure) makes me feel even more strongly that I must live my own life as fully as possible, because I don't know whether I have a week to live or thirty years. In a sense I owe that to Asher's memory, and that isn't a selfish thing to say, because this calls for daring of the kind he had, and that I haven't always been able to access.
Asher never bought into the religious rituals around which we structured our family life, but he never regretted having attended a religious elementary school, and he did enjoy and cherish some of the Jewish things we did.
He did well on his Bar-Mitzvah. He learned the Torah portion with a wonderful young man, a fine educator named Even-David Lider, and he read it well in the synagogue. We hired a four piece Brazilian band and had the party in our back yard on a beautiful June night. No guest could resist the rhythm!
It's painful to remember these things, but vitally important.
The intensity of the emotions that I still feel, as if his funeral were only yesterday, is exhausting. They wring me out.
A few days ago I had the feeling that my personality had suddenly exploded. The pieces were scattered all over the place, and when I reassembled them, they wouldn't be in the same order.
I don't know why there was any suddenness in it. After all, we've been living with the tension of Asher's disappearance and then the certitude of his death for half a year or more.
I think it has to do with the release of controlling energy.
Just to keep going, holding myself together so that I could function, was a major effort. Maybe now I've gained enough confidence that I can go on, so that I'm not holding myself together so tightly, and things just burst. But they had to burst.
There's been a change in my self-image, my conception of who I ought to be (superego!) and my guilt for not being that person. Being bereaved, I could say to myself: I don't owe anything to anyone now!
My sudden plunge into ceramics is a reversal of my former feeling, that when I was doing something physical, I was wasting my time. I've found new delight in making things with my hands, a delight that Asher always had, one that I never allowed myself to have.
One day last week, when I was struggling to form something at the wheel, I said to myself: I have never been so much myself as I am when I am doing pottery.
Of course that's wrong. I meant, perhaps: Now, at this juncture in my life, working with clay is giving me the feeling that I am fully myself, a feeling that my other activities don't give me now.
I must try to take that feeling and carry it over to the rest of my life. When I'm happily involved in something, I have to go along with that, and when I'm unhappily involved in grief, I have to go along with that, too.
During the short time when I thought I should be seeing a psychologist, I wrote some notes to myself about what I expected, what I wanted from therapy.
The first issue that troubled me was lack of lasting interest or enthusiasm. I enjoy things, but only briefly, the way paper burns when you put it in a fire and then quickly the flame dies down, leaving just a thin sheet of ash. The therapist told me that was rather typical of people in mourning. Okay, at least I was aware and had described the state of mind correctly.
I also felt stalled, unable to plan, act, initiate, even imagine action. Again she told me this was typical of people in mourning.
I also knew that all the other problems I had before Asher's death were still with me, but I am less capable of coping with them, because I'm more fragile, have less energy, feel more vulnerable. But the fact is, before he died, I didn't think I needed psychotherapy.
My major life problem was the inability to take advantage of the real freedom I have in my life, and, because of the bereavement, the inability even to imagine how I might exploit that freedom. Articulating this was useful to me.
Asher's death (as well as my friend Gerald's untimely departure) makes me feel even more strongly that I must live my own life as fully as possible, because I don't know whether I have a week to live or thirty years. In a sense I owe that to Asher's memory, and that isn't a selfish thing to say, because this calls for daring of the kind he had, and that I haven't always been able to access.
Monday, June 2, 2008
Bright Eyes Again?
Last Saturday morning, in synagogue, Danny Kahan, a friend and, incidentally, a psychologist, said to me: "The light has gone back on in your eyes."
"You're a very perceptive person, so maybe you're right," I answered.
It's true, which doesn't mean that I'm not overwhelmed by sadness about Asher a few times every day.
Why?
I've found a new passion: pottery. It came on so suddenly, that I'm puzzled by it. What am I to make of this new infatuation?
About two months ago, without any conscious premeditation or planning, I did a search for "Ceramics Classes" on the internet, found a studio that sounded flexible and receptive, within walking distance from my home, called up, went over to see the place, signed up, and since then I've gone for around eight two-and-a-half hour sessions.
I started off working on the wheel right away, and, despite the frustrating difficulty of centering lumps of clay on the spinning wheel, I loved it. I knew this was the beginning of a new phase in my life.
I was talking about it with Marcel Chetrit, the man who has been giving me massages for several years, first shiatsu, now tui-na, a Chinese technique. He said that clay is one of the 5 elements in Chinese medicine: air, fire, water, metal, and earth. By working in clay, I am reconnecting with my earth roots, from which Asher's death detached me. My uncharacteristically impulsive decision to begin doing pottery came from my unconscious understanding of what I need.
By the way, this kind of impulsive decision may be uncharacteristic of me, but it would have been highly characteristic of Asher. The moment he knew what he should do, he did it. Which is not to say that he didn't mull over hard decisions, such as quitting one job and taking another, or that he didn't prepare himself for a new course of action.
So I see my new involvement in pottery as being connected to Asher in several important ways:
The curative way, as a form of occupational therapy, or as a way of connecting with my earth roots (if you want to buy into the Chinese medicine shtick). I see it as restorative in a different way. I have never been a very athletic person, though there were times in my life when I swam regularly and jogged pretty seriously, but I am nevertheless a very physical person. My work is all about words, farther and farther away from anything more physical than the tapping of a keyboard. Now pottery is giving me a physical outlet for expression, more physical than making music on a wind instrument, which is in fact quite a physical activity, involving your whole body.
Losing Asher was a blow to the wholeness of my sense of self. Turning to the intensely physical experience of molding clay with my hands, including the task of centering the clay on the wheel, is a way back toward some kind of wholeness, around the hollow his death has left.
The creative way. Asher was a very creative person, always involved with materials of various kinds (but not clay, as far as I remember), so he would have approved of my taking up ceramics and identified with it. Also, Asher played the creative role in our family dynamic. Now that he isn't around to do that, we all have to pick up the torch and do some of the things we'd delegated to Asher.
The dynamic and innovative way. Asher was always onto something new, with enthusiasm. That's his legacy, which we must honor by doing it, too.
"You're a very perceptive person, so maybe you're right," I answered.
It's true, which doesn't mean that I'm not overwhelmed by sadness about Asher a few times every day.
Why?
I've found a new passion: pottery. It came on so suddenly, that I'm puzzled by it. What am I to make of this new infatuation?
About two months ago, without any conscious premeditation or planning, I did a search for "Ceramics Classes" on the internet, found a studio that sounded flexible and receptive, within walking distance from my home, called up, went over to see the place, signed up, and since then I've gone for around eight two-and-a-half hour sessions.
I started off working on the wheel right away, and, despite the frustrating difficulty of centering lumps of clay on the spinning wheel, I loved it. I knew this was the beginning of a new phase in my life.
I was talking about it with Marcel Chetrit, the man who has been giving me massages for several years, first shiatsu, now tui-na, a Chinese technique. He said that clay is one of the 5 elements in Chinese medicine: air, fire, water, metal, and earth. By working in clay, I am reconnecting with my earth roots, from which Asher's death detached me. My uncharacteristically impulsive decision to begin doing pottery came from my unconscious understanding of what I need.
By the way, this kind of impulsive decision may be uncharacteristic of me, but it would have been highly characteristic of Asher. The moment he knew what he should do, he did it. Which is not to say that he didn't mull over hard decisions, such as quitting one job and taking another, or that he didn't prepare himself for a new course of action.
So I see my new involvement in pottery as being connected to Asher in several important ways:
The curative way, as a form of occupational therapy, or as a way of connecting with my earth roots (if you want to buy into the Chinese medicine shtick). I see it as restorative in a different way. I have never been a very athletic person, though there were times in my life when I swam regularly and jogged pretty seriously, but I am nevertheless a very physical person. My work is all about words, farther and farther away from anything more physical than the tapping of a keyboard. Now pottery is giving me a physical outlet for expression, more physical than making music on a wind instrument, which is in fact quite a physical activity, involving your whole body.
Losing Asher was a blow to the wholeness of my sense of self. Turning to the intensely physical experience of molding clay with my hands, including the task of centering the clay on the wheel, is a way back toward some kind of wholeness, around the hollow his death has left.
The creative way. Asher was a very creative person, always involved with materials of various kinds (but not clay, as far as I remember), so he would have approved of my taking up ceramics and identified with it. Also, Asher played the creative role in our family dynamic. Now that he isn't around to do that, we all have to pick up the torch and do some of the things we'd delegated to Asher.
The dynamic and innovative way. Asher was always onto something new, with enthusiasm. That's his legacy, which we must honor by doing it, too.
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