Dear Friends,
Each of my grandchildren has helped me uncover elements of my childhood that I lost in the course of becoming what passes for an adult. I hadn’t skipped down a sidewalk for decades until my grandson Isaac (age six-and-a-half) challenged me to a skipping contest on the way to brunch a few months ago. Granddaughter Tallulah (soon to be three) summoned memories of my daily breakfast of Tastykake Butter Scotch Krimpets (I grew up in Philadelphia) washed down by a chocolate egg-cream sitting at the counter of our family candy store, when she “Face Timed” me eating her dinner of spaghetti and meatballs with a side of chicken Pad Thai. It is Lainie Gene (age ten years and a week), however, who catapulted me from childhood to Physics 101, and my study of Albert Einstein and his thinking about the relativity of time.
Context: Last year, at age eight, Lainie declared her need to leave the confines of the Upper West Side for a wilderness where she could hear bird songs instead of honking cars. Although she lives on Riverside Drive, which her Aunt Ruthie refers to as ‘the suburbs’, Lainie expressed her desire to be in the wild with neither electricity nor boys for the summer. And so, my dear granddaughter was bused to the forests of Poland – Poland, Maine that is – for a seven-week-long exile from her much-beloved Manhattan. I was convinced that she had been eaten by a bear after hearing nary a word from her or about her after a week. It wasn’t until Sara sent me a photo of Lainie on the subway platform waiting for the ‘One’ six weeks later that I breathed easy, relieved that she had survived the beasts of Poland for the safety of the New York City subway system.
“So, what made it so great?” I asked Lainie at brunch a week after her return to civilization. “It was great having a completely different backdrop for my life.” (I know, I know. I have to constantly remind myself that she’s just a kid. But she’s a New York kid whose favorite Broadway composer is Sondheim and who can’t understand why she can’t yet ride a public bus to school.) “It’s not just the trees and the kids and no one spending half-an-hour blow drying her hair,” she continued, “it’s that no one is looking at a watch. You just live at camp.” That’s what Einstein was talking about, I said to my sophomore year college self.
The point hit home even more clearly this year. Context: I write to Laine every day as I wrote to her mom and her aunt when they were in camp. I collect 40 postcards with a common theme before the summer and send one a day. In a nod to Einstein, I do not date the postcards, but I do number them to provide some ordering. After all, at camp, does it matter if it’s Tuesday or Wednesday or even Thursday, let alone the sixth, seventh, or eighth day of the month. Even the month doesn’t matter much. Where it gets tricky is that Lainie’s birthday is on the 26th of July. So, in anticipating her birthday, I have to take into consideration not only the U.S. Postal Service, but that I am mailing a postcard, which is considered the stepchild of the postal system even though I use a forever stamp. The only certainty with regard to delivery is if not when. This year I began my birthday wishes a week before Lainie’s actual birthday and continued with them until the 25th. I did share Einstein’s theory with Lainie on the first ‘birthday’ postcard, throwing in a couple of existentialist writers into the mix. I also asked her to consider that she would be age ten for 364 more days. Moreover, should we not consider each day of the year to be a recreation of our life, as is acknowledged in Jewish liturgy? So, my multiple cards bearing the legend “Happy Birthday,” could be considered the secular substitute for the morning awakening prayer of devout Landsmen.
‘Is there a point to this all, dear rabbi?’ I hear many, if not most of you asking. Context: With the help of careful proofers, and Shahrzad and Liza, this year’s High Holiday Supplement will be off to the printer early next. Readings will be displayed in the front office for volunteers to choose soon thereafter. For me, this concludes work that began during Pesah. But I still have an address to write for Yom Kippur, although I have the opening paragraph and the conclusion done. That’s just what I have to do for our community. There’s my internal examination of all the ways that I fell short of the mark this year, the internal work I must do so I won’t be crushed in the closing gates of Ne’ilah at the end of Yom Kippur. I look at the sky every night to catch sight of the moon, and with it I feel time quickening as the moon wanes and then wanes, and wanes again, which will bring me to the eve of 5787. Since my graduation from rabbinical college fifty-two years ago, accounting for the time needed to prep, the Holidays have been almost five months long.
I extended Lainie’s birthday by seven days to be sure that birthday greetings arrived by the actual date of her birth. The birth pangs of 5787 began at the conclusion of Pesach for me. And now I am close to the due date. Consider the time that you need to take in your seat in the synagogue or at home in front of your computer on Zoom to make the coming High Holidays edifying. Einstein was right. Time is relative, and the time for you to begin may be now. Please, let me know how I might be of help.
With best wishes for our waning summer,
Lee
