MEMORIES

As I grow older, I notice that I am becoming more interested in memories than in my previous currently imperative visions. I imagine that this change in perspective is not unique to me but is part of the senior citizen stage of all of our lives. It is not that I still don’t have plans and projects that I hope to fulfill. It is just that the past has taken on more importance and poignancy in my current psyche. This slow but steady turn towards nostalgia was reinforced this past month by two events that occurred to me. What surprised me were not the events themselves – they were fairly ordinary for me as I shall soon detail – but the unexpected flood of emotions that they occasioned within me. Since memory is the key to meaningful existence I have thought about this emotional side of memory deeply over the past few weeks. And I am about to inflict those thoughts on you now.

                        I was invited to visit Detroit, Michigan, to speak at the annual Jewish Book Fair conducted there by the Jewish Community Centers of that city. This invitation was in line with the publication of my new book, Living Jewish, which I hope will have broad popular appeal. After speaking there to a large audience on Sunday night, I went to morning prayer services at the synagogue where my nephew serves as rabbi. That synagogue was the one where my father-in-law, Rabbi Leizer Levin, of blessed memory served as rabbi for many decades. I, and the rest of my family are touched and proud that Rabbi Levin’s grandson, Rabbi Yisrael Levin, now serves so ably as the rabbi of that congregation. I have been in Detroit many times since my father-in-law passed away a number of years ago. I have even been in his former house that now serves as the home of his grandson and his family. I naturally missed the presence of my father-in-law in the house but it was not an especially wrenching or emotional memory experience. But I had never before been back to the synagogue. And it there that I was amazed to have had the emotional experience of memories that I experienced that morning at the prayer services.

                        The chair on the front bimah platform where my father-in-law always sat remained empty. My nephew, in his piety and sensitivity, would not sit there. The empty chair jolted my memory. I remembered being in the synagogue on the day of Yom Kippur when in 1973, the Yom Kippur War broke out. That year, my father-in-law had asked me to please come and deliver the English sermons in his synagogue that year and since I was then serving as the head of the OU kashruth division without being a pulpit rabbi, I readily accepted his invitation. The news of the war came in the middle of the services and cast a pall over all in attendance. It especially impacted me because our oldest daughter together with a niece and other relatives of ours were then in Israel for a year of studies. I don’t believe that I said anything profound in my sermons on that day; at least, I don’t recall anything meaningful that was said. But I do remember the calmness and faith of my father-in-law on that fateful day. It was his demeanor and presence that carried all of us there in the synagogue through the prayers and the fast and inspired all of us that somehow Israel would survive this deadly onslaught that was meant to destroy it. Remembering that moment in history is for me eternally associated with the synagogue of my father-in-law. His spirit still permeates the building lending it calm, serenity, optimism and faith. Until I visited the synagogue building, I didn’t fully comprehend how much I now miss him.

                        There are other memories that I associate with the synagogue. There is a beautiful bronze rendition of the opening words of the prayer of Chana, the mother of the prophet Samuel, installed on the wall of the women’s section of the synagogue. This piece of art was fashioned by Dr. Hugo Mandelbaum. Dr. Mandelbaum was a professor of geology at Wayne University in Detroit, a learned and observant Jew and a talented craftsman of note. In his later years he moved to Jerusalem where he continued to practice his Torah and artistic genius. A completely unique and fascinating individual, Dr. Mandelbaum was representative of the type of Jew that is unfortunately not seen that often in the Jewish world any longer – the pious, talented, broad-horizoned “Renaissance” Jew. He was a dear friend of my father-in-law and of our family. Seeing his handiwork still inspiring the worshippers in the synagogue, my memories of him and my father-in-law of blessed memory, were focused once again. There was a flood of memories about other Jews that I remember from the synagogue. Some of them were plain and simple people and some were personages of prominence in the community. Many were European-born, a breed that is also now on the verge of disappearance. Memory many times dips into nostalgia and nostalgia blurs the harsh lines of reality and truth. I now remember only good things and fine people in that synagogue. I am satisfied that I took the opportunity of praying within its walls once more. Such memories are treasures.

                        Last month I also traveled to Chicago to deliver the keynote speech at the eightieth anniversary banquet of Beit Medrash LaTorah/Hebrew Theological College. This yeshiva that I attended for almost a dozen years is the oldest yeshiva in the Midwest of the United States. My grandfather, Rabbi Chaim Zvi Rubenstein, was one of the original founders of the yeshiva. In fact, I was told that the first three students to attend the yeshiva, in the then absence of any other dormitory arrangements, slept and ate in the home of my grandparents. I was ten years old when my father, using our family protektzia, enrolled me in the yeshiva, while I was still attending public school until 3 PM. I attended yeshiva from 4 to 8 PM Monday through Thursday and on Sundays all morning. Later, I was one of the students in the second entering class in the junior high school division of the Chicago Jewish Academy, then co-sponsored by the yeshiva and the Associated Talmud Torahs of Chicago. I remember vividly that many people came to my parents to strongly advise them not to enroll their only son in an unrecognized and unproven school. They were very well meaning people, personally Orthodox, but convinced that the fledgling Jewish Day Schools would produce, in their harsh words, “cripples.”

                        I remember that at a banquet of the yeshiva over fifty years ago, the guest speaker was Herman Wouk. The then young author had then already achieved national fame for his novels and was a hero in our small, beleaguered Orthodox American Jewish world. He was an Orthodox Jew who had made it big in the outside world while now being observant and proudly Jewish and Orthodox. He was the Joseph Lieberman of that time, at least to the students of the yeshiva, all of us whom were then struggling to find our own way, at least in our minds, as to career and life choices. Wouk made a great speech, impassioned, proud and challenging. To a mainly non-Orthodox audience that then still attended yeshiva banquets, a situation that unfortunately no longer pertains, Wouk asserted the primacy of Torah knowledge and observance of tradition and ritual in Jewish life. But he also put it to the assembled guests on a personal level and not merely on a national survival basis. He warned them of spiritually empty lives, of non-Jewish grandchildren, of loss of self-worth and self-identity. The audience sat in stunned silence. No Orthodox Jew of that generation had ever dared to speak to them in those terms or words. The speech was beautifully crafted, artfully constructed by a master wordsmith and delivered with humor, passion and brilliance. Wouk’s speech has remained with me all of my life. I was then a young adolescent, having snuck in with a number of my friends into the banquet room in the large hotel in downtown Chicago where the banquet was being held to hear Wouk. I remember saying to myself that I would like one day to be able to speak at the yeshiva banquet and deliver a speech of such worth. More than half a century has passed since that evening of Wouk’s speech. I have spoken at gatherings of the yeshiva a number of times during this span, but I never was invited to come to the annual banquet and deliver the main speech of the evening. But I always felt that somehow the invitation would eventually come and it was this year that it did finally arrive.

                        Wouk’s speech was better than mine but I make no apologies for that. After all one does not win Pulitzer Prizes and Tony Awards for no reason. Yet, the flood of memories that Chicago always awakens with me was my reward for traveling halfway around the world to deliver a speech (on reflection, I thought that it was a pretty good one) and fly right back to Israel again. While preparing my address, I thought of my grandfather and I hoped that he would be proud of me and of my family. I remembered all of the wonderful, holy, clever, compassionate teachers that I studied under in my yeshiva years. I recalled the camaraderie of my friends at the yeshiva, some of whom have remained life-long dear people to me and my wife. I remembered the long winter Friday nights when I went back to the yeshiva study hall after the Shabat meal at my parents’ table and studied Torah with my friends and teachers till late at night and of the sweetness of soul that was then instilled into me by that experience. The Saturday night learning session in the yeshiva, followed by the wild jeep ride thereafter, sometimes in the dead of a very cold Chicago winter night, to find some kosher ice cream has also left an indelible impression in my memory bank, not to mention my waistline. Ah, those were the days!  

                        Chicago is a far different Jewish community than when I left it almost forty years ago. There are a number of large yeshivot in the community and the Beit Midrash LaTorah/Hebrew Theological College is no longer the exclusive house of higher Torah learning in town. There are a number of high schools for boys and separate ones for girls with the Chicago Jewish academy still remaining coed for secular studies as it was in my day. All of my great mentors and teachers of my years in the yeshiva have passed on to their eternal reward and now there are new scholars and leaders that have arisen to take their place in educating the next generation of “sons of Torah.” But I only see my teachers before my eyes and they will always be the yeshiva that I attended and love.

                        On my short trips to Detroit and Chicago I was able to see my children and many of my grandchildren. I have many memories regarding them as well but mainly I love seeing them because they represent the future and not the past. A Jew can never live only in the past, though no Jew should live without the past being a vital part of the present. One feels a sense of immortality when one sees the generations of a family continuing and remaining connected to Torah and their Jewish roots. The feeling of a bright future erases the bittersweet nostalgia of pure memory. I am convinced that memory fuels the engine of the future as well. It is the task of the older generation to provide that connection of memory to their descendants and students. In the long run of Jewish history and human events, it may very well be that memory is the most valuable item that one can leave to the next generation. Without being too maudlin about the subject, I am very happy that I took those physically tiring and mentally wearing trips to Chicago and Detroit last month for they served to refresh my memory and my resolve to pass those memories on to the next generation of my family.