Tag Archives: Life cycle

Comedy Secrets to Sustain Long-Term Marriages – A Book Review

14 Tuesday Jul 2015

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“Take My Spouse — PLEASE”, Dani Klein Modisett’s second book (the first was “Afterbirth: Stories You Won’t Read in a Parenting Magazine”), is a unique view of two of civilization’s oldest institutions – comedy and marriage.

The author happens to be both a comedian and married, and so she speaks with a certain authority in each arena. Klein Modisett is also an actress of more than twenty years on stage and in television. She enjoys friendship with lots of comedians and is a former decade’s long teacher of stand-up comedy at UCLA.

Early on in her marriage Klein Modisett realized that the rules and skills she learned in becoming a successful stand-up comic are the same rules and skills that sustain happy, healthy and thriving marriages. That is what her book is about – following the rules of comedy to make better marriages.

I loved the book, but before I say anything more a disclaimer is appropriate.

The author is a congregant and friend. She interviewed me and included our conversation in the final chapter “Get Help to Get Better” (pages 233-237). However, even if I had nothing to do with the book or the author, I would recommend “Take My Spouse — PLEASE” because it is a wise and funny guide for both comics on stage and spouses who want stronger, happier and healthier marriages.

After officiating at more than 600 weddings in my 36 years as a congregational rabbi, celebrating hundreds of milestone wedding anniversaries, counseling many couples suffering marital distress, and being married myself for 33 years, I believe that Dani’s insights about what makes a good marriage are spot-on correct. I assume she is also right about what makes for good stand-up comedy, but I have no professional expertise to judge except to say that I enjoy good comedy writing and comedians who know what they are doing.

Dani writes as she is – smart, edgy, funny, honest, warmhearted, self-deprecating, and self-revelatory. The best part of the book is when she herself is reflecting about comedy and marriage, connecting dots and sharing insights. Though the many couples she interviewed support well the points she makes and their stories draw the reader in, Dani is the star of this volume. Her insights, crisp writing, willingness to self-disclose, to lay bare her vulnerabilities, and to discuss candidly her own marriage with her husband Tod make for an engaging and compelling read.

Tod, by the way, deserves a huge shout-out for his generosity and courage in giving his wife permission to write about him and their marriage.

Dani discusses the many rules and skills that comedians need to be successful on stage and spouses need to thrive in their marriages. Here are but a few of them:

• “Show up,” be present, listen, and respond

• Be daring and go for the element of surprise – Doing the unexpected keeps everyone interested

• Laugh it up – laughter diffuses tension, draws everyone close and can be an aphrodisiac

• Be tough, persevere and “don’t let one or two bad experiences take you out”

• Accept constructive criticism, be self-critical and strive to do it better next time

• “Sex is to marriage what jokes are to an audience; without it, the natives get restless”

• Having an extra-marital affair is a very-very-very bad idea! (I don’t know if there is an equivalent no-no-no in comedy [Note to self: Ask Dani about this when I see her next])

• “Pay attention to your physical appearance – how you look matters”

• Stay clear of incessant complainers, toxic and overly critical and negative individuals and couples – especially befriend and hang with those who share your positive and hopeful outlook

• “Timing is everything – Pick your moments and watch what you say and do”

• Relax – nothing works when you are tense

• Be honest, but don’t be unkind – Restraint is a virtue (in other words: keep your mouth shut before you say things you will forever regret!)

• Get help if you are in trouble – and don’t give up

• “Be patient – everything worthwhile takes time”

Dani Klein Modisett has written an important, entertaining and very serious book that can help comedians become better at their craft and couples sustain happier, healthier and thriving marriages – and I recommend it heartily.

The Reawakening to Love Again – A Memorial to Moshe Tabak

21 Sunday Jun 2015

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Moshe Tabak was 90 years old when he died last week. Originally from Sigid, Czechoslovakia, he was the descendent of a distinguished line of chassidic Dayanim (scholars and judges) and was one of eleven children.

Moshe’s father was a wealthy land-owner in Czechoslovakia before the war, and so when the Nazis took over the country in 1939, he felt resistant to leave despite his wife’s urgent pleas. He reasoned that the bad times would pass and they should wait it out.

Tragically, he and almost all the family were murdered in Auschwitz, except Moshe, one older brother and a younger sister who survived work camps.

After the war at a port in Rumania, Moshe was waiting to board a Haganah boat that would take him and hundreds of refugees to Palestine. He was standing in a bread line when he spotted Miriam, a girl two years younger than him. Charmed, he reached out and offered her chocolate. Miriam remembers that Moshe was wearing a hat, had beautiful blue eyes and curly hair.

Once on board the ship, Moshe became sea-sick, and Miriam nursed him. They fell in love quickly and two years later, in 1947, they married in Palestine.

Theirs was a love-match from the beginning. Jewish legend relates that at creation each soul was split in two into what is called a palga gufa, a half-soul, and then each half moves through time and multiple lives in a sea of souls seeking its other half to become whole again.

Moshe and Miriam believed they had originally been one soul and that each was the other’s beshert, intended one – soul-mate. Their love was so deep and sustaining, they couldn’t imagine it otherwise.

Together Moshe and Miriam parented four children who in turn brought them nine grandchildren and then six great-grandchildren – L’dor vador.

Last summer, Moshe and Miriam, now living in Los Angeles and together for 70 years, aging and frail, moved in with their youngest daughter and son-in law, Debi and Ofer, and their four children Orly, Danielle, Aleeza, and Bradley, members of our congregation for many years. Their youngest two, twins, had been preparing to become bar and bat mitzvah yesterday on Shabbat Parashat Korach (Numbers 16:1-18:32).

Sadly, we buried Moshe at 3 PM on Friday just before Shabbat. The family attended Kabbalat Shabbat services to say Kaddish. Tradition discourages public mourning on the Sabbath.

Yesterday morning, despite the family’s loss of its loving and gentle patriarch, convened to celebrate Aleeza’s and Bradley’s b’nai mitzvah.

My teacher and friend, Rabbi Larry Hoffman of HUC-JIR in NY, wrote a moving d’var Torah this week about the juxtaposition of death and life and how that theme played itself out in the rebellion of Korach and the subsequent sprouting of Aaron’s staff:

“Moses placed the staffs before God in the tent of the covenant law. The next day Moses entered the tent and saw that Aaron’s staff, which represented the tribe of Levi, had not only sprouted but had budded, blossomed and produced almonds.” (Numbers 17:7-8)

Rabbi Hoffman explained that the great shoot of promise exemplified in the buds, blossoms and almonds of Aaron’s priestly staff, is regenerative and always bends towards the sun. “Judaism elects that image,” Larry wrote as its preferred image, not the image of destruction, bitterness and negativity.

How true this has been in Moshe’s and Miriam’s family experience.

Moshe was a positive thinking man. He mourned the destruction of his family quietly, deeply, with reverence, and dignity, but he looked forward, started his life over (as did so many survivors of the Shoah), sought continually every day to rediscover the good in life and to celebrate it, showing love and being generous in spirit to all, taking sustenance from Jewish tradition and Jewish faith, and delighting in the joy of family.

An unknown poet has written:

“Four things are beautiful beyond belief:
The pleasant weakness that comes after pain,
The radiant greenness that comes after rain,
The deepened faith that follows after grief,
And the re-awakening to love again.”

Zecher tzadik livracha. May the memory of this righteous man, Moshe Tabak, be a blessing.

From Grandparent to Child – Recording Memories

07 Sunday Jun 2015

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Few of us know anything about our families beyond three or four generations going back. This is a sad deficit, and so in helping to prepare young people to become bar and bat mitzvah, my synagogue schools initiated a family legacy project to help our students and their parents record as much of the history of their families as is possible.

We asked them to search for historic family documents, photographs, family trees, recorded memories, memoirs, and ritual items. We also asked the students to choose an elderly individual to interview.

This is an important and fun task for children who gain a sense of and identity with these members of their families and a greater sense of their family history. There is also great satisfaction that the older members of our families take in relating their stories to future generations.

To aid our students in the interview, I developed a list of questions they could use. Since most grandparents love telling their grandchildren about their lives, all the students need to do is gently prod their elder’s memories and, if they are fortunate, the floodgates open.

Here is the list that I give to our prospective b’nai mitzvah:

1. To begin, please write down the names of everyone in your family: parents, siblings, children, grand-children, your grandparents, and great-grandparents – their names and approximate dates of birth and death, where they were born and where they died.

2. Can you tell me your own earliest memories growing up? How old were you and where were you when you had those memories?

3. Where were you born? Did you have brothers and sisters? How many of them had children and grandchildren? Do you know your Hebrew name?

4. Were you named after a relative? What kind of a person was your namesake?

5. How did you celebrate your birthday when you were growing up?

6. Were you a member of a synagogue when you were young? Where was your synagogue? Do you remember the name of your rabbi and/or cantor/chazzan, and what do you remember about them?

7. What did you do for fun as a child and as a teenager?

8. Who most significantly influenced your life when you were young? Who were your mentors, and what did you learn from them?

9. Did you feel “different” in your school, and if so how? How did you cope with feeling different?

10. What factors influenced your choice of profession, employment or way of spending your time?

11. How old were the oldest of your relatives that you remember when you were young, and when and where were they born?

12. What can you remember about your parents and grandparents that I might be interested in knowing? What were they like? What did they do for a living? What were their hobbies? Were they athletes, readers, writers, artists, musicians, scientists, doctors, nurses, lawyers, judges, business people, laborers, tradesmen, or teachers? What was the most important accomplishment they would say they achieved in their lives?

13. What important hardships and challenges did your grandparents and great-grandparents face?

14. What were they most proud of at the end of their lives?

15. What languages do you speak and what languages did your grandparents and great-grandparents speak?

16. What countries have you and did they live in?

17. Did you or they experience anti-Semitism? Were you or they survivors of the Holocaust? What can you tell me about yours or their experiences?

18. Were your parents and grandparents observant Jews? Do you believe in God, or, are you a skeptic or an atheist? What about your parents, grandparents and great-grandparents?

19. Are there any Jewish ritual items in your family that are very old? Do they have stories attached to them?

20. If one side of your family is of another faith tradition, what is that tradition and how did your grandparents and great-grandparents practice their religion? Were they part of a church community? If so, where and what was the name of the church and their pastor/priest? Are there ritual items that they have and are there stories attached to them?

21. Did you ever visit Israel? What do you feel about Israel as the national home of the Jewish people?

22. Did you travel much in your life? Where have you been? When did you go there?

23. What world events most influenced your life, the lives of your parents and grandparents?

24. How would you want to be remembered by me?

Question for interviewee: What characteristics and virtues of the person you are interviewing do you most admire?

Why Mail-Order “Ordination” is a Troubling Solution to a Real Problem

25 Monday May 2015

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I come across compelling articles frequently that I wish I had written myself. This is one such article that I recommend to those who are contemplating marriages or who have children, grandchildren and friends who are doing so:

“Why a Real Clergy Person Should Perform Your Wedding” – By Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin
http://jeffreysalkin.religionnews.com/2015/05/21/why-a-real-clergy-person-should-perform-your-wedding/

My colleague, Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin, reflects about a growing trend in the United States generally and among Jews in particular in which large numbers of non-clergy are acquiring instant mail-order “ordination” in order to be able to legally perform wedding ceremonies for their family and friends.

Wedding ceremonies conducted by these individuals, Rabbi Salkin rightly observes, are very different in kind and in intent from ceremonies in which authentically ordained clergy officiate.

He notes that whereas authentically ordained religious leaders have spent, in most cases, their lives building and nurturing religious community, counseling individuals, couples and families, adults and children through life-cycle events from birth to death, and studying their respective religious traditions, histories, rituals, customs, symbols, liturgies, ethics, and values, weddings conducted by those who receive instant mail-order “ordination,” though usually motivated by the desire that the officiant have an intimate personal relationship with the wedding couple, likely will reflect almost none, if anything at all, of what traditional religion and authentic clergy provide.

Ordained rabbis and cantors bring substantial knowledge, wisdom, insight, and authentic religious and spiritual experiences to the chuppah and can help couples about to marry establish the appropriate groundwork for their lives enriched by religious tradition, understanding and community.

Many authentically ordained rabbis and cantors also are trained in pre-marital counseling and can help couples navigate through potential problems before those problems become irreconcilable conflicts and the marriage fails.

Yes, there are undoubtedly wise and experienced people who may be qualified in some respects to officiate at non-religious wedding ceremonies, such as some judges and some older members of families and friends, but such ceremonies will necessarily be qualitatively different from that which authentically ordained clergy conduct.

This trend is a disturbing reflection of the increasing fragmentation of our community, a diminution of Jewish peoplehood into familial units, an over-emphasis on individual needs, a lack of real engagement with religious community, and an alienation from Jewish tradition and Jewish values.

Rabbi Salkin’s blog is an important read, and I am grateful that he wrote it.

Who Are You in this Fourth Stage of Life? D’var Torah Bemidbar

22 Friday May 2015

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Mi at – “Who are you?” (Ruth 3:9) – So asked Boaz. It’s a question that every human being asks from time to time. Especially on this weekend of Shavuot, of the great meeting between Israel and God on the mountain, we ask ourselves individually and as a community – “Who am I/Who are we?” in this time and place, at this stage of our lives, as individuals, as a people, and as a nation.

This Shabbat we begin the fourth book of the five books of Moses, Bemidbar (Numbers; lit. “In the wilderness”). If the Book of Genesis is about human and tribal origins and beginnings (mirroring infancy and childhood), and Exodus is about human freedom (representing the driving force amongst adolescents), and Leviticus is about the need to adjust to the rules and regulations imposed on society in order to live productively (characteristic of young adulthood), then Bemidbar is about the mid-life journey.

In this fourth book we see that the bloom is off the marriage between God and Israel. Doubt, disillusionment and struggle define our people’s lives. We rebel. Our faith is broken. We want to be somewhere else, anywhere else if it brings relief and renewal. We confront our limitations and mortality. We wonder if this is all there is. We’re caught in the unfettered and cruel desert, a vast wilderness of silence. Our hearts pound. The quiet thunders in our ears. We’re alone and afraid. We yearn for safety and solace.

The wilderness of Sinai is far more than a physical location. Bemidbar is a human wasteland, where everything falls apart. We wander, without a shared vision, without shared values, or shared words. Leaders of every kind attempt to lead; but no one is listening and each is marching to the sound of his/her own drummer. Driven by fear and jealousy, ego and greed, the people are moved by basic things; hunger, thirst and lust. God’s transcendence is elusive. The book is noisy, frustrating and painful.

Rabbi Eddie Feinstein has written (“The Wilderness Speaks”, The Modern Men’s Torah Commentary, pages 202-203):

“Bemidbar may be the world’s strongest counterrevolutionary tract. It is a rebuke to all those who believe in the one cataclysmic event that will forever free humans from their chains. It is a response to those who foresee that out of the apocalypse of political or economic revolution will emerge the New Man, or the New American, or the New Jew. Here is the very people who stood in the very presence of God at Sinai…who heard Truth from the mouth of God…and still, they are unchanged, unrepentant, chained to their fears. The dream is beyond them. God offers them freedom, and they clamor for meat…”

L’havdil – I am not Moses, nor has my experience been his remotely, yet as a congregational rabbi I understand our greatest leader’s burden of leadership. In the course of Bemidbar “everyone in [Moses’] life will betray him. Miriam and Aaron –  his family members – betray him, murmuring against him. His tribe rebels against him… his people betray him in the incident of the ten spies… and finally, even God betrays him [when he hit the rock and lost his dream of ever entering the Promised Land].” (Ibid)

Numbers is a book about burdens, not blessings. Again, Rabbi Feinstein:

“Everyone has found himself in that excruciating moment when words don’t work – when we try and say the right thing, to heal and to help, but each word brings more hurt. Everyone has tasted the bitterness of betrayal – when no one stands with us, when those who should know better stand against us. Everyone has felt the deep disappointment of the dream turned sour. It could have been so good! I should have turned out so differently! Where did I go wrong? Everyone has tortured himself with the torment Moses feels in Bemidbar. And that’s the ultimate lesson. Listen to the Torah’s wisdom: the agony, the self-doubt, the frustration are part of the journey through the wilderness. Anyone who has ever worn Moses’ shoes or carried his staff – knows the anguish of Bemidbar. But know this, too: You’re not alone. You’re not the first. You’re not singled out. And most of all, you’re not finished. The torturous route through the wilderness does not come to an end. There was hope for Moses. There is hope for us.” (Ibid)

Where does hope come? In the turning of the heart, the turning of a page, the discovery of shared values and shared purpose, of shared life, shared listening, and shared doing.

In Deuteronomy, the fifth and last of the five books of Moses (representing our senior years when we begin to integrate who we are and rediscover our greater purpose), we’ll hear “Sh’ma Yisrael – Listen O Israel.”

In Devarim (Deuteronomy), “words” return and we’re able to share as a people in listening to God’s voice and to each other. In this, there is hope yet to come.

Shabbat shalom and Hag Sameach.

12 New Rabbis – A Bit of Counsel and a Prayer

20 Wednesday May 2015

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I was privileged to attend the ordination of 12 new Rabbis this past Sunday in Los Angeles from the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR). Because the ordination ceremony was held in the Sanctuary of my synagogue, Temple Israel of Hollywood, HUC invited me to offer the invocation.

I was ordained myself 36 years ago from HUC-JIR in New York and remember well the excitement, exhilaration, pride, optimism, hope, and, not a small amount of trepidation that must have filled the hearts of these young men and women (see names below).

As the 500 family, friends and members of the HUC community (faculty, staff and rabbis) gathered in our Sanctuary, the 12 “almost Rabbis” processed and took their seats. I approached the podium and offered these words just moments before Rabbi Aaron Penken, the President of HUC-JIR, placed his hands upon each of their heads in the traditional gesture of s’michah (“the laying on of hands”) and pronounced them “Rabbi in Israel.”

I said:

“Zeh hayom asah Adonai, nagilah v’nism’cha bo!
This is the day that God has made, let us sing and be joyful!” (Psalm 118:24)

B’ru-chim ha-ba-im – Welcome esteemed teachers and faculty, colleagues, parents, grandparents, friends, and kim’at (almost) “Rabbis in Israel”…

As rabbis, in whatever ways you will serve our people and faith, I can assure you this after my own 36 years tilling the soil in this unique vineyard of matter and spirit, that you will be challenged and tested as you’ve never been before, to think broadly, to learn from our traditional sources every day, to respond with uncommon passion and compassion to the needs of others, to be endlessly patient with people and ferociously impatient for truth and justice, to dig into your soul’s wellsprings seeking God’s life-affirming power, and then, working and reworking what it means for you and us to be progressive Jewish religious leaders amongst our people.

The only thing I can say with any certainty at all is that if you wish to rise to your best selves, and you allow yourselves to be pushed to your limits, you will feel exhilarated in ways few others will understand, for being a rabbi in Israel is unlike anything else I know.

In these brief moments, I wish to leave you with a few truths I’ve learned over the years serving our people:

First – Always follow your heart, but be smart about it.

Second – Never compromise your values and principles, but choose your moments carefully and go “to the wall” rarely, for there’s much truth possessed by others that will expand and enrich your own sense of the truth.

Third – Find the very best and brightest, the most creative, kind and special among our colleagues, your congregants and friends to join you as partners in your sacred work, for only then will you soar as if on “the wings of eagles.” (Isaiah 40:31)

Fourth – Never stop even for a moment studying our sacred literature. Learn as much Hebrew as you can. Memorize as much text as you are able. And push yourself to break through convention while at the same time respecting your community’s rhythms and needs.

Fifth – Put your emphasis always on the half-full glass, and regard the half-empty, but don’t dwell there nor allow yourself overexposure to toxic people who will steal your heart, soul, mind, and strength if you let them.

And finally, place your family’s and friends’ needs over work even as you give your all to your congregants and community.

I know I speak for all HUC alumni scattered around the world in wishing you well, joy, happiness, and fulfillment in this sacred work.

On this Yom Y’ru-sha-la-yim, despite its history of violence and strife, may the Holy City that lives at the center of our people’s heart and soul inspire you in your sacred work as ohavei am Yisrael u-m’di-nat Yis’rael, lovers of the people and the State of Israel.

The Jewish world needs you, and remember that you are never alone.

Ma-zal tov, chol ha-ka-vod, ti-hi-yu ba-ri, ta-a-ko-vu a-cha-rei lib’chem, teil’chu b’dar’chei sha-lom!

Congratulations and much respect; may you be healthy; follow your hearts; go the ways of peace, and “May the works of your hands and the meditations of your hearts” (Psalm 19:14) make you worthy to stand before God and before the people of Israel.  Amen!

The Los Angeles HUC-JIR Ordination Class of 2015 (5775):
Rabbis Courtney Leigh Miller Berman, Allison Dorie Fischman, Amanda Beth Greene, Rachel Kaplan Marks, Molly Beth Plotnik, Lara Leigh Pullan Regev, Jason Samuel Rosner, Gavi S. Ruit, Todd Harris Silverman, Samuel Louis Spector, Beni Wajnberg, and Bess Bridget Wohlner.

As My Mother Disappears Before My Eyes

27 Monday Apr 2015

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As my mother nears her 98th birthday in June, the dementia that has consumed her brain is taking more and more of her away. It’s as if there’s been an invasion of a body snatcher.

My mother is, on the one hand, still there. She sounds, smells and feels the same. But increasingly, she has entered into oblivion.

In my last three visits, she didn’t know who I was – I, her son of 65 years.

In my visits these days, I try and discover where she is and what she thinks about and remembers. I’m no longer asking her if she knows who I am. She may indeed know, but I don’t think she easily remembers my name.

One of the tragedies of advancing dementia is the utter isolation that sufferers progressively experience as they move through the fog left by lost memory. It’s also difficult and painful for us who love them because we can’t help but grieve as we watch them disappear.

My mother’s world has become so very small. She had always lived an active and fully engaged life invigorated by family, friends, people, Jewish community, causes, and ideas. Then, she began to forget things. She couldn’t find the words that had once flowed so easily past her lips. She couldn’t recall the memories that made her who she was and defined her world. She didn’t know the names of the people she loved. And she couldn’t recognize anyone in the room.

My mother has always been exceptionally verbal, and though she still talks up a storm, her words are nearly impossible for me to understand, and I know her better than most people.

I’ve asked myself what is actually left, what remains of all that she was, learned and knew. Thankfully, certain things haven’t yet left her. She retains her essential sweetness, gentleness, kindness, generosity, and joy when she looks into my face and has some recognition that I’m an important and familiar person to her, but I wonder what the content of the familiarity is.

For those who suffer with dementia, it’s as if the life cycle has been reversed. They undergo a great unlearning, an unmaking of themselves, a reversion to a uncluttered brain – but this time, the mind is shutting down and not opening up.

Sometimes, nevertheless, my mother offers a pearl of wisdom. Last week she said, “We all have to love each other – for what else is there!?”

Because my mother can’t hear, can’t see and can’t walk, I sit very close to her when we interact, touch her constantly, look into her face from five or six inches away, and speak very loudly into her left ear, the better ear of the two. If I’m able to break through the fog of her confusion, she may know me, but most of the time I’m not sure that she does.

In being with people with dementia, it’s important for us to remember that when the mind goes our bodies carry powerful memories too that may remain. A mother never forgets the vibrations, smell and energy of her child, and I, her son, certainly have never forgotten my mother’s vibrations, smell and emotional presence.

After all the years, what’s left between her and me has come down to this – the purity of a love between a mother and a son. I cherish this and pray that she still does too.

Each time I leave her I kiss her and say directly into her ear: “Mom – I love you!”

“I love you too,” she always says.

I hope she knows that it’s ME who has spoken those words, and not just some stranger showing her love and kindness.

Until Death Do Us Part – How Couples Successfully Sustain Their Marriages Over Time

23 Wednesday Apr 2014

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For the past twenty-five years on the Shabbat evening in Pesach my congregation has celebrated the Biblical Song of Songs as well as “milestone” wedding anniversaries of members of our community.

I have offered hundreds of blessings – once to a couple married for 70 years, twice to couples married for 65 years each and three times for 60 years. Many have celebrated 55 and 50 years continuing in descending integrals of 5 years each that we arbitrarily designate as “milestone anniversaries.” It is a joyous Shabbat including children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

Given the 50% divorce rate among American Jews (now equal to the general American population) I ask each couple as they come forward for a blessing:

“How have you done it? What has sustained you for so long?”

Responses vary; some are hysterically funny and others wise from experience:

“She talks; I listen.”

“I agree with everything he says… especially when I don’t!”

“I let him think that every major decision went her way!”

“We laugh a lot!”

“We’ve learned to be patient and we forgive.”

“We don’t sweat the small stuff!”

“We communicate constantly.”

“We adore our kids, but they know that our marriage has always come first.”

“We love family time!”

“We fight fair – we are never nasty.”

“We value each other’s privacy and know when to leave the other alone!”

“We have our separate interests but we spend a lot of time together.”

“We’ve never let anyone come between us.”

“We share many good friends.”

“We’ve resisted temptation and stayed faithful to each other.”

“We trust each other as we trust no one else.”

One bold forty-something wife announced this past Shabbat before 200 people, “We have great sex!”

Over the years I’ve also learned that long-term happily married couples don’t take each other for granted. They tell each other frequently that they love one another. They hold hands. They bring each other unexpected gifts at unexpected times. They accept each other’s differences and have long since stopped trying to change the other. They don’t harbor resentments and they avoid blame. They respect each other’s talents, viewpoint, opinions, and feelings. They cherish each other in ways large and small. They compromise. They share their economic resources as equal partners (money being just one dimension of their partnership) regardless of who earns the most or who brought the most into the marriage. They give generously to each other and there’s never a quid pro quo.

No marriage, of course, is perfect. No marriage has all the above going for it. Every marriage has challenges, difficulties and moments of tension. However, successful and happy marriages are those in which both partners work hard to understand and accept the other as well as accommodate the other’s needs.

Marriages fail for all kinds of reasons. Some die natural deaths when one or both partners grow apart; when one or the other stops caring; when there is disloyalty and unfaithfulness; when injury is left unaddressed and unresolved; when one or both cannot own and apologize for bad behavior; when spouses are rigid, uncompromising, and insistent that things be their way; when one person must always have the last word.

Marriages fail as well when one or both partners have an untreated personality disorder, suffer from mental illness, are abusive, or are plagued with addiction problems.

When I meet and talk with couples before officiating at their weddings, I try and identify areas where I sense that there may be conflict that could develop into serious trouble if left unaddressed, such as how the couple communicates, what are their shared values, and how each partner approaches sex, power, money, in-laws, and leisure. I remind them that marriage is dynamic and ever-changing, and that honest and open communication is critically important to their marital well-being.

I remind them as well that no matter how much they love each other now and how good their relationship is, they will certainly experience peaks and valleys going forward. However, if they place the well-being of their marriage and each other above all other concerns (e.g. work, in-laws, children, extended family, and finances), then it is likely that they will deepen their bond as the years pass.

Doing so is always worth it. In this spirit Mark Twain captures the wonder and ineffability of the marital bond:

“A marriage…makes of two fractional lives a whole; / it gives to two…lives a work, / and doubles the strength of each to perform it; / it gives to two questioning natures / a reason for living, / and something to live for; / it will give a new gladness to the sunshine, / a new fragrance to the flowers, / a new beauty to the earth, / and a new mystery to life.”

 

 

When The Extreme Elderly Slip Away

23 Sunday Feb 2014

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When I woke my nearly 97 year-old mother at noon one day last week, she was delighted with my presence. Leaning in closely so she could see me, despite her macular degeneration, and hear me, despite her near deafness, we talked about sweet nothings.

Her new normal is confusion. She didn’t know the time or where she was, but she knew me and that was enough. I just let her talk, about anything.

She was once keenly intelligent and aware, well read and engaged, social and interactive. She has lost much of those capacities to dementia and her disabilities, and what’s left is her generous spirit, sense of gratitude and deep love for family.

Her nine brothers and sisters have all died except one. Yet, in her imagination they are still very much alive. She “speaks” with them regularly, and I don’t disavow her fantasies.

She looked at me intently and said, “John – you look older!”

“Mom! I’m 64!”

Stunned, she asked, “Where did all the years go?”

“You’ve been here all along and haven’t missed a thing. You’ve just forgotten.”

She loves to reminisce about her early life, so I’m now hearing stories (true but confused) that might have taken place 80 and 90 years ago.

In the middle of a sentence she grimaced, “I feel pain.”

“Where?”

“Here, in my heart – pressure. It hurts.”

I called the nurse. Her blood pressure was elevated. The nurse asked if she should call 911.

“Call my brother first [he’s a doctor], and ask him what he thinks we ought to do.”

Michael and I had decided a year ago that due to our mother’s advanced age, disabilities and dementia that we would not send her to the ER unless she had broken a bone, was in intense pain or couldn’t breathe. Otherwise, on-site nurses would treat her.

While the nurse called him, Mom announced to me, “I’m not ready to die, but I don’t want to leave all of you; though I could die now and I look forward to seeing everyone and finding out about them and what they’re thinking.”

Stroking her hair, I was half-certain that this was it. I felt not yet ready to lose her, though so much of who she was has already dissipated into ether and she is but a shadow of her former self.

As it turned out, her pain was caused by acid-reflux (or heart-burn) which Michael diagnosed over the phone, and it passed quickly.

It’s very very tough to be her age. Roger Angell, a ninety-plus essayist and sports commentator, writes movingly in this month’s New Yorker of the experience of people in their nineties. For all very old people, he says

“Decline and disaster impend… Living long means enough already. …We geezers carry about a bulging directory of dead husbands or wives, children, parents, lovers, brothers and sisters … all once entirely familiar to us… (“This Old Man – Life in the Nineties,” February 17, 2014) http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/02/17/140217fa_fact_angell?currentPage=all

Years ago I read a piece written by a very old woman who complained that no one ever touched her any longer and that she missed dearly that most concrete of human interactions. Ever since, I made it a point to touch, hug or kiss the very old, for their need for human contact never abates. This is certainly true for my mother. She drinks in physical connection and emotional attention like water on the desert floor.

Mr. Angell said it well:

“Getting old…is our unceasing need for deep attachment and intimate love. We oldies yearn daily and hourly for conversation and a renewed domesticity, for company at the movies or while visiting a museum, for someone close by in the car when coming home at night….those of us who have lost…the sweet warmth of a hip or a foot or a bare expanse of shoulder within reach…whatever our age, never lose the longing.”

He writes of the extreme elderly’s invisibility and how insignificant they feel even at the hands of those who love them most: “Honored, respected, even loved, but not quite worth listening to anymore,” he mourns.

On birthdays we Jews say “To 120!” (The length of Moses’s years and therefore a blessing). However, the disabilities and losses suffered by the extremely old don’t seem to amount to much of a blessing.

 

Talking About Sex with Our Teen-Age Children – Another Difficult Conversation

28 Tuesday Jan 2014

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Life Cycle, Women's Rights

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One of the most uncomfortable conversations that parents of teen-agers have with their children, if indeed they have this conversation at all, is about sex. Far too many parents avoid the subject altogether out of embarrassment, ignorance or confusion, and assume that their kids will figure it out the way they did or get information from school psychologists and counselors.

Leaving this sensitive and vital area of a young person’s life to others, however, is a missed opportunity for parents to help their teen-age children navigate through rough waters while at the same time keeping open the lines of communication as their children enter young adulthood.

What does Judaism have to teach us about sex that we can discuss with our children, and what thoughts about sex might parents share with their teen-age children that can be helpful to them in our liberal age?

It is one thing for traditionally religious Jewish parents to discuss these issues with their children and quite another for secular liberal Jewish parents to discuss them. I encourage parents to speak with their rabbis, educators and development specialists if they are at a loss about what they should say and how they should say it.

Many traditional Jewish values are affirmed by all the religious streams including Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Reform Judaism, though the concrete behaviors relative to those values differ between the traditional and liberal approaches to Jewish tradition.

All the religious streams affirm the principle that the human being is created “B’tzelem Elohim – In God’s image” (Genesis 1:26-27) thereby endowing each person with infinite value and worth. As such, our bodies are to be appreciated as far more than millions of atoms and chemicals, flesh, bones, and blood. We are, each of us, a k’li kodesh (holy vessel) infused by the n’shamah (divine soul).

Other classic Jewish values embraced by the whole of Judaism, though understood differently by each religious stream, are tz’niyut (modesty) and anavah (humility). Ostentatious display of and exploitation of our bodies, and public sexual behavior are contrary to both liberal and traditionally religious virtues of modesty and humility.

Classic Judaism affirms essentially three purposes for sex – procreation, the establishment of loving and enduring relationships, and pleasure. Though traditional Judaism does not accept the legitimacy of homosexuality, liberal Judaism does, and it regards committed heterosexual and homosexual unions (for orthodox families heterosexual sex within marriage and for liberal families heterosexual and homosexual sex before and after marriage) as opportunities to fulfill Judaism’s three purposes of sex.

What about teen sexuality?

The most common question teens ask is: ‘How will I know when I am ready for sex?’ Planned Parenthood articulates clear and appropriate criteria in assessing a young person’s sexual readiness. It defines a healthy sexual relationship as having seven basic qualities: respect, honesty, equality, good communication, trust, fairness, and responsibility. Further, Planned Parenthood recommends that teens ask themselves these questions before they become sexually active:

  • Do each of you have the other’s consent?
  • Have you been pressured to give consent?
  • Are you honest with each other?
  • Do you treat each other as equals?
  • Are you attentive to each other’s pleasure?
  • Have you protected each other against physical and emotional harm?
  • Have you guarded against unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection?
  • Are you clear with each other about what you want to do and don’t want to do?
  • Do you respect each other’s limits?
  • Have you accepted full responsibility for your actions?

I do not believe that most young teens (i.e. 13 to 18 years of age) are ready for sexual intercourse even if they are able to answer in the affirmative all these questions. Most are too emotionally immature to cope with the power of their sexual feelings and the meaning and consequences of sexual intimacy.

Parents ought to be the first to advise their children to exercise caution by discussing Jewish and family values and by encouraging their teen-age children to ask the above questions about their sexual readiness. Our children need to feel, as well, self-confident that they are able to refuse sexual activity if they feel in any way unready, uncomfortable, embarrassed, demeaned, exploited, or pressured.

Finally, our teen-age children need to understand that they are still very young and that their time will come when becoming sexually active feels and is right.

Note: This is one in a series of blogs I am writing about difficult conversations that come up in families, among friends and in the workplace that we sometimes avoid or do badly. For a complete list, see my blog entitled “Difficult Conversations – January 17, 2014.”