A Life Well Lived

Some people are born manic depressive, for me, going from the activity of Birthright Israel Next's conference in New Orleans to Cincinnati for the funerals of two relatives has provided a pretty good case study.

It wasn't even a question as to whether or not I'd go back to Cincinnati for the funeral. Everything else was put on hold.

What is interesting though, is that Jewish funeral rituals focus little on the 'afterlife', instead noting the impact of the individual's life, particularly on family and friends. It is as if we are saying that even in the death of this person, they continue to bring us together. Most of the prayers don't speak about death, but of life and of comfort.

When my cousin spoke to eulogize his father, his point was that it had been a life well lived. That he had impacted others positively, left an impact, and brought fullness to his time among us.

One quote used in the funeral really struck me as central to the underlying philosophy of the funeral ritual in Jewish culture, "let it not be said that life was good to us, but that we were good to life."

Our time is finite, but our potential is limitless.
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Raising a Jewish Family

Talk about life-cycle events... just after writing about the Jewish Wedding Network, I had the opportunity to spend a Shabbat with cousins in Denver. Their 2-year-old, Micah, is beyond adorable. He is also learning, from a very young age, what it means to be Jewish.

While walking to the park, my cousin and Micah’s mother, Kareen, was telling me about a book they read to him at night entitled, “Let’s Go to Israel.”

The book is short and sweet, and describes a few of the things you can do in each city. It is hard to describe, but when Kareen asked Micah where he could go sailing, and he said, “Eilat” (well it sounded more like, A-wot, but we knew what he meant), I was struck by what I was witnessing. Combine this with Micah getting excited for Challah time as we sat down for Shabbat, and him repeating the Sh’mah along with us as we tucked him in, and I realized that I was getting to witness the birth of a Jewish identity.

Its not just that it is unbelievably cute to hear him grapple with Hebrew, or jump in while a book is being read to him and say the word, “Matzah,” at the end of a sentence, it is that I was granted the opportunity to play voyeur into a piece of my cousin’s identity formation.

Jews seem to spend a lot of time discussing the woes of assimilation, unaffiliation, and inter-marriage, but rarely do we seem to focus on what is probably the strongest protection against all three; a strong and positive Jewish identity that is reinforced within the family environment from an early age.

For Micah, Judaism is filled with positive experiences, sweet grape-juice, tasty Challah, and most importantly, time spent with family.

It is often said that Jewish parents can measure their success by whether their grandchildren proudly consider themselves to be Jewish. This outcome seems very likely in Micah’s case.

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