Interruption

I won't be posting to the blog in the next month or so.
I'm leaving for Peru tomorrow, and I won't be back at my desk until the end of October.
I intend to take notes, for myself but also with an eye to adding to the blog when we return.
It's been important to me to express my feelings in writing and share them with friends and, possibly, strangers. Writing for me is a means of clarification and self-control.
It's forced me to tread a thin line between what's too personal and private to expose to the world and what's too general to be of interest.
The writer's task is to bring news. If you don't learn anything new from what you're reading, you needn't bother reading at all. Unless you are reading to be comforted and to have your sentiments and ideas reinforced.
All writing is a kind of journalism. That's why "journal" is a near synonym for "diary."
The journalist runs out in pursuit of stories.
The diarist records the stories that have become part of his or her life.
The author of fiction makes the stories up, or twists life stories into barely recognizable forms, in a quest for a different kind of news.
The story I've been exploring here is not one that anyone would ever choose to pursue. You might say that I've been writing about it to keep it from pursuing me.
The journalist's task is to invade other people's privacy and expose what they'd rather hide.
I'm trying to invade only my own privacy here, only to expose what might be meaningful or helpful to readers, and to avoid the need for saying the same thing over and over again in individual letters to friends. I'm hiding quite a bit, don't worry.
But here's something personal:
Yesterday, Shabbat, I was at the lowest ebb that I remember since Asher's disappearance. Every bit of energy had seeped out of me. I had the feeling that every decision I had ever made in my life - from the time I was thirteen and chose to remain at my small private high school instead of applying for Music and Art or Bronx Science, to my choice of college, to my choice of a major in college, on and on through my life - was part of a series of stupid errors based on inauthentic values and insufficient self-knowledge.
I am experienced enough to realize that this was only a mood, probably a reflection of physical fatigue as much as anything else. I also realize that my emotions are still unsteady and an unreliable basis for any serious decision - not that I have any serious decision on the horizon to make. But would such a decision be based on authentic values and sufficient self-knowledge now, as I approach my sixty-fourth birthday?
I'm not fully aware of everything that's seething inside me as I prepare for this trip, plan to pack, buy the last minute things, take care of arrangments that have to be made. It's all lurking just out of sight. But I know it's there - otherwise why would I have stayed up till after one last night, watching comedy shorts on Youtube?

The Old Year and its Curses

On our way from synagogue on Wednesday afternoon, the second day of Rosh Hashana, we happened to meet an old friend of ours, a woman whose son died in an even more pointless way than Asher did.  

She and her husband have reached out and offered us support, but we haven't accepted that offer yet - not because we don't like them, but because we've been overextended.  There's too much to deal with, and our emotions are exhausting.

Our friend gave Judith a hug and said, "What a shitty holiday this is," which was both deeply honest and a bit surprising from an orthodox Jewish woman, speaking about one of the three most sacred days of the year in the Jewish calendar.

The main theme of the Jewish calendar between the beginning of the month of Elul, the last month of the the year, and the last day of the eight day holiday of Sukkot is repentance, judgment, punishment, and reward.  The assumption is that if you've been good, or if you sincerely resolve to be good ("good" here means "keeping God's commandments), you won't die next year.  Otherwise, you will die.  The logical corollary is that if someone did die last year, God was punishing him for something.  This is hardly a comforting thought for people in our position.

Another underlying theme of the High Holiday Liturgy is that, in fact, it is impossible for a human being to be good enough to merit life.  If we are alive, it's because God is doing us a big favor, not because we deserve to live.

So along with the hope for renewal, which is a joyous emotion, there is a dark sense of foreboding and fear.  There's a promise: you can have a new beginning.  But there's also a threat, and the threat is more powerful (and believable) than the promise.

A hymn recited on the eve of Rosh Hashana says: Now there is an end to the year and its curses, now there is a start to a year and its blessings.  But we said the same thing last year, and we didn't get blessings!  What could possibly make us think that a year from now, we'll look back and say, "Too bad we're saying goodbye to this year and its blessings"?  We know from bitter experience that a year from now, we'll be relieved to be rid of the year's curses, yet, somehow, we'll be optimistically looking forward to blessings this time around.

Not that there haven't been blessings for us, even in a year of tragic loss.  Perhaps even the people in Burma whose homes were destroyed and families were decimated can think of a blessing or two.  In life, as in a gambling casino, you ultimately lose to the house, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you won't have enjoyed a good stretch of the game.

None of this is a particularly new discovery.  Before Asher died in an accident, and two of our friends, Angela and Gerald, died of cancer, and our friend's daughter Timora died of cancer as a teenager, and Asher's friend Eric hanged himself, we knew that many people die cruel and untimely deaths, deaths that make the Rosh Hashana liturgy difficult to take.  The men who composed the prayers also did not live in an ideal world where good people lived to healthy old age and bad people died of diseases and accidents before reaching their prime.  They knew as well as we did that life is often cruelly unfair.

So what did they mean by these prayers, and what can we mean by reciting them?

I have three answers.

One is social: we need the solidarity of participation in communal worship to keep ourselves together.

The second is, perhaps, magical or mystical: we hope that, by the force of our prayers, the world will become a good one, ruled by a merciful God.

Finally, we have deep need to give liturgical form to our fears about the uncertainty of life, in order to deal with them.

Zelig Lider, a wonderful man our age, whom we knew slightly over the years, one of the founders of a Jerusalem congregation, known for the intensity and beauty of its prayers, which meets just once a month and on the holidays, went into a coma just before the holiday and died on the second day, a great loss.  The curses of the year have begun already.

The Next Mission

In a couple of days we will be flying to Peru, the place where Asher fell to his death.

We will be observing Yom Kippur in the Conservative Synagogue in Lima, whose rabbi has been very kind to us in an extended email correspondence, and then we will proceed to Arequipa, to Chivay, to Cabanconde, and to the Colca Canyon.

We are bringing contributions to the High Mountain Rescue Unit, whose men risked their lives while searching for Asher and in recovering his body, and for the school attended by the children of the man who found Asher.

Four of us are going from Israel: my wife and I, our younger daughter, and Ofer, our older daughter's husband.  Our other son, Boaz, is going to meet us in Arequipa to be with us there.  After we have seen the place where Asher fell and met the men who searched for him, we will go north to Cusco and do some of the sightseeing that Asher planned to do.

A friend asked in an email: why exactly are you going there?

Each of the five of us has his or her own answers to that question, and I can only speak for myself.

Since I've been asked the question more than once, I have ready-made answers - which might be too ready, too pat.

First, I want to go in order to make sure that the money we raised from friends and relatives is spent responsibly, without finding its way into undeserving pockets.

Second, I want to express personal gratitude to the people who helped us.  I think it's important to let them know that we aren't simply wealthy gringos who expect poor Indians to risk their lives to help us.  We are human beings who underwent a terrible loss, and we are deeply grateful to the people who helped us in our time of trouble.  Because of Ofer's personality and devotion, the men of the rescue unit became personally involved in the search.  It wasn't just a job for them.  And they deserve personal recognition for their effort.

We plan to hold a couple of modest ceremonies to express our gratitude in an official manner.

Third, as an Israeli and a Jew, I think that this gesture of both expressing thanks in person and also bringing real assistance to them will be good for relations between Peruvians, the Jewish community of Peru, and Israel.

Fourth, I think these men, who are already highly motivated, will be even more motivated to help tourists who get lost or are injured in their jurisdiction.

Fifth, it is important to me, in dealing with Asher's death, to see the place, or at least the area where he fell.  Maybe it will help me understand what happened a little better.

I realize that I don't know how I'll react when I get there, I don't know what it will be like to meet the men who searched for Asher with Ofer, or the man who found his body.  I don't know what to expect.  I'm both hoping for surprises and dreading them.  But if I knew exactly what I wanted to accomplish and how I would feel after I'd done it, there would be no point in going.