A time to be born and a time to die

I recently attended the funeral of a woman I barely knew, though her husband has been an acquaintance for many years. He had recruited me to be on the Board of the Voice & Herald and though we often clash on policy, there’s obviously mutual respect and affection which our disagreements never diminish. For the past few months he’d absented himself from board meetings because his wife’s cancer had metastasized and he felt he had to devote all of his time to caring for her. She, knowing the using her allotted time to say goodbye to friends and relatives, tying up loose ends, of which there were very few, meticulous in life as she was. In mid-June I saw them at the airport, I on the way to my son’s wedding, they wishing bon voyage to their grandchildren who had come for a visit, and frankly I was surprised how well she looked. But six weeks later she was gone, with heavy heart I drove to her funeral.

Temple Beth El was packed with those of us who felt my friend’s loss, who came to bid their friend a final good-bye. Cantor Seplowin sang plaintively, rabbi Mack led us in reciting the 23rd psalm. A daughter spoke lovingly of her mother and rabbi Gutterman’s eulogy was on the mark. Rather than quoting a biblical text, he chose a poem I vaguely remembered from school but hadn’t thought of in years—Edna St Vincent Millay’s “Dirge Without Music” which concludes with these lines:

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

With that lament still ringing in my ears, feeling perhaps a little of the loss my friend must be suffering, I drove to another ceremony, this time a bris, but in one regard at least, not an ordinary bris. Every baby is a unique individual; every baby is potential energy already becoming kinetic. But this baby, this new life, this hope of the future was being attended to his extraordinary great-grandfather. As usual all the men in the room were a bit nervous, making corny jokes, trying not to look, trying not to feel the momentary pain inflicted on the child. None of this was unusual, but in averting my eye from the ritual event I saw, not for the first time, of course, the numbers tattooed onto the great-grandfather’s left forearm, the numbers he’d been branded with as a young man barely out of boyhood on his first day in Auschwitz, that Hell. He’d lost both parents and a sister and, for a while, his faith—but had survived and regained that faith and had become a rabbi. (You can read of his experiences in his memoir For Decades I was Silent) And now, 65 years after he was at the edge of the pit, at death’s door, he was attending to the covenant ceremony of his child’s child’s child. Of course the baby cried, of course others did as well, but when the tears were wiped away, when the father gave his son to his wife to hold, the three men and then the grandmother danced a joyous hora to the rhythmic clapping of the assembled guests and the singing of “simintov and mazal tov”.

The joy at the bris didn’t wipe away the feelings of regret I felt for the loss of my friend’s wife, but it did remind of hope. From the grave my friend’s wife would never return, but rescued from the grave’s edge the great-grandfather was now dancing. Neither family was aware of the other; I was the only connecting link; but life was going on; it was progressing despite the losses, despite the despair. God was in his heavens was welcoming a wonderful woman, recently come to His kingdom while down here a little baby was the center of our attentions as his mother lovingly held him while his male progenitors were dancing a hora as we clapped and sang in joy.

For centuries philosophers and theologians have, to no avail, tried to figure out the purpose of life, to make sense of the brief period we’re all allotted within the billions of years of the earth’s existence. Attending a funeral and a bris within an hour of each other puts things into perspective though, don’t you think?