I think this may be a story of control submitting to grace. But first some background. For six years now, my synagogue, Beacon Hebrew Alliance in Beacon, NY, has built a sukkah in a public park on Main Street. Each year there’s a different theme, with programming reflecting that theme. This year, for a variety of reasons, the sukkah almost didn’t get built. But as Sukkot approached, the loss seemed too great, and we rallied to get it done, this …
Month: October 2019
It’s the bodies that haunt me. Each tells a story, shares a history. Scars from cuts or C-section births, bruises from blood draws or recent falls, surgical incision lines. The first Meitah (deceased woman) I saw with her mouth agape and her body wrinkled, was in her 90s. As a new member of the Chevrah Kadisha (CK), I was given the job of holding the meitah’s head while others performed the rituals of Taharah (ritual purification). I felt awkward …
My Uncle Harry died in March of 2002. I had gone to Kansas City to visit my parents and, hopefully, to help them move from an apartment into an assisted-living facility. Between the time I had made my travel plans and the time I arrived, my uncle had been hospitalized for what the emergency room doctor thought was a heart attack. In doing their morning check-in, the nurses at the assisted-living facility to which my uncle had moved in October …