The Wedding of Jeremy and Amanda

There are those, and sometimes I am one, who think the world is going to hell in a handcart. For evidence, read a newspaper. But there are times, there are times…

Look up the word “kvell” in Leo Rosten’s classic The Joys of Yiddish and you’ll find: “To beam with immense pride and pleasure, most commonly over an achievement of a child or grandchild; to be so proudly happy ‘your buttons can burst.’” Then look up “naches” and you’ll see: “Proud pleasure, special joy—particularly from the achievements of a child.” Put them both together and you get “Only from your children can anyone shep (derive) such naches as makes you kvel.”

On June 13 (read that as 6/13 [613], the number of commandments according to traditional Jewish reckoning) my son Jeremy, the cantor at Congregation Beth Israel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, married Amanda née Ruppenthal.

I won’t bore you with all the details of the multi-day festivities, but will, if I may indulge myself mention one event that took during the post-ceremony celebration.

Among the guests were several cantorial classmates of Jeremy’s and some local cantors and cantor Brian Mayer of Temple Emanu-El, whose first bar mitzvah student Jeremy had been. As the evening wore down they sat in a circle, and each sang one of the traditional seven blessings over the bride and groom while the others hummed in the background. In between blessings they hummed a gentle niggun (a wordless Chassidic melody). It was an indescribably spiritual moment as the cantors serenaded one of their own.

This was my toast to the young couple:

“When I first heard Amanda’s voice it was on the telephone, the evening that Jeremy called to tell us that he had asked, and she that had said yes. The first thing I remember hearing was her laughter, her infectious giggle. I didn’t yet know what she looked like, but I could hear in her voice sweetness and joy and I knew then that like Jeremy, this was someone who could see the lighter side of things. Jeremy and Amanda, may your home always be filled with the joyous sounds of laughter.

“Amanda, we found out that night that you were a musician, a clarinetist. Jeremy the flautist had found a kindred spirit who could take black notes on lined paper and transform them into glorious sounds, giving pleasure to those who hear. Amanda and Jeremy, may your home always be filled with the sounds of music emanating from your talents.

“Jeremy, you were always the one in the family most connected to our religious traditions and practices, and so took your two loves, of music and Judaism, and combined them to become a cantor. Amanda, you found Judaism in college and now you, too, are a Jewish communal worker. Jeremy and Amanda, may your home always be a meeting place for like-minded people who strive to improve the world by maintaining a strong connection to Judaism’s core values.

“Jeremy, child of the Ocean State, and Amanda, daughter of the Mid-West, you begin your lives together with a trip to Costa Rica, hopefully the first of many sharing the sights and sounds of exotic places. May your home serve as a rendezvous point for people from around the world you have met and befriended.

“Jeremy and Amanda, as you celebrate the coming of the Sabbath bride each Friday evening, think of us, who live so far away, and in your minds, know that whether they are at our table or elsewhere I bless our children each Friday night. And in the fullness of time, when you are lucky enough to have a first child and then children, may you bless them each week, as I’ve blessed my three sons, and then Suzanne [my first daughter-in-law] and now you, Amanda who I welcome with love and joy into our family.

“To Jeremy and Amanda, long may their home be a source of joy for themselves and for those who love them.”

Well, maybe if there is such love in the world as is evident between Jeremy and Amanda the place ain’t going to hell in a handcart in such a great hurry. May you all know the naches we had, and kvell.

The Gaza Blockade disaster

For June 11, 2010
From the Old Olivetti
By Josh Stein

The world’s attention is on the catastrophic oil spill off the Gulf Coast and the president’s enfeebled response, a disappointment to his advocates (I include myself), confirmation to his foes. But while the oil continued to spew from the earth beneath the sea, on the high seas, Israel’s navy attempted to commandeer a flotilla bent on breaking its blockade of Gaza. The consummation, deaths aboard the lead ship, was devoutly to be wished by the organizers of the expedition. For them it was a no lose situation. If Israel allowed the boats to land it would be a small triumph. If the materials were seized without deaths, and, as the Israelis promised, checked then sent to Gaza, it would be a lesser victory, but not nearly as good theater as what actually happened. That was a bonanza—or was it a calculation? We’ll never know. Israel will transfer the food, medicine and building materials to Gaza and Hamas will have martyrs, the world will be able to blame Israel for the loss of life. The world will little note, nor long remember concurrent Muslim murders by Muslims. As Tom Friedman reminds in the Times, within the week, Muslim suicide bombers murdered nearly 100 Muslims in mosques in Pakistan and pro-Hamas gunmen destroyed a U.N.-sponsored summer camp in Gaza because it wouldn’t force Islamic fundamentalism down the throats of children. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/opinion/02friedman.html?hp)

On May 31, when I first heard the news of the deaths aboard ship I had a feeling akin to dispair. “Where,” I asked myself “are the people who planned and executed the raid on Entebbe airport to free hostages 2500 miles away?” Israel was the world’s hero back then on July 4, 1976, almost upstaging all the hoopla of the 200 year anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Lightning fast the Israelis freed 100 people. According to the mission’s overall commander, Brigadier General Dan Shomron, the plan succeeded because since “no one expected the Israelis to take such risks … they took them.” One Israeli was killed, the leader of the strike force, Yonatan Netanyahu, elder brother of the current Prime Minister. But that was then. Now we have been snookered by people whose public relations skills are exceeded only by Israel’s ability to fall into an obvious trap.

Ehud Toledano, University Chair for Ottoman Studies, Department of Middle East and African History at Tel Aviv University (and a cousin of mine) writes in an E-mail that the commandos were sent into a mission that was ill-planned and ill-conceived by the high command of the navy.” There was “no, or totally insufficient intelligence, both in terms of info gathering and analysis... And, hence, a bad plan for what was wrongly supposed to be a group of peaceniks, but in fact were terror-trained Islamic radicals, ready to use violence in order to kill our soldiers, not just stop the takeover, which they knew they could not do.” He points out that information is “coming out now …to the effect that they were well organized, armed, and had thousands of dollars in their pockets. Families in Istanbul told the press a few hours ago that their relatives had a strong desire to die as martyrs.” This confirms a statement in last Wednesday’s Times that “The Gaza Freedom March made its motives clear in a statement before Monday’s deadly confrontation: ‘A violent response from Israel will breathe new life into the Palestine solidarity movement, drawing attention to the blockade.’” Ehud continues: Those seeking martyrdom “were on the upper deck, about 40 of them, with the [foreign sympathizers] staying on the lower decks, [who] therefore had no knowledge of what was being planned and executed upstairs. It is due to their high skilled professionalism that the commandos avoided being killed and ended up killing so few of the terrorists.”

Amos Oz, published in the same issue of the Times the Friedman column appears bemoans two simultaneous sieges—Israel of Gaza; Israel by Arabs. He wants Israel to sign a peace with the Fatah government in the West Bank, returning to the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the Palestinians’ capital. Once this is done, Hamas in Gaza will either continue to be isolated or will join with Fatah. More pie in the sky? I think so. Even an isolated Hamas still has the capacity to do irreparable harm, much as that tiny hole in the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. Neither is going away; Israel can sign peace treaties with willing Arab partners, but the unwilling will still be there and president Obama will probably be as incapable of dealing with the one as he is with the other. I wish it weren’t so, but my wishes count for little.