Jerry Auerbach
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I wish that I could recite my normal words of welcome, as though nothing
had happened in the two weeks since I was last here.
The night before I left for the Southwest, motze Shabbat, I received an
email from Dick. Like so many other messages since i became Moderator, it
called attention to a Minyan issue that concerned Dick--and no Minyan issue
escaped his scrutiny. No matter how inconsequential it might appear to anyone
else--and often, early in my term as Moderator, to me--I came to realize how
passionate was Dick's concern with everything that happened here.
A couple of years ago, for example, Dick was mildly exercised about
bagels--bagels at Kiddush, to be precise. Bagels at kiddush, to be even more
precise, without the birkat hamazon. To Dick, the issue was clear: bagels are
bread at a meal; therefore, if bagels are eaten the birkat is necessary.
Otherwise, crackers were just fine. But it made a difference. And he wanted
it done right. So, after some discussion, Town Meeting finally decided that
bagels did indeed require the birkat.
Just two weeks later, at Kiddush, Dick took me by the elbow and steered
me to a table where mounds of bagels had been consumed--but of course birkat
had not been recited. "Look," he said with a wry smile, "Minyan crackers!"
Back to my most recent email. Just the week before, in response to
appeals from the Church, I had announced that we would now save our
recycleables in a blue bin graciously provided by Gail Elson. Each week, G-d
willing, Minyan members would take a bottle or two home with them, and the
problem would be solved.
But not for Dick. He thought, and even worried, about such matters, He
knew that how things were done, and whether they were done right, determined
who we are as a community. So he wrote:
Jerry,
For whenever you get back-
Many months ago I suggested that we ask the church maintenance people if they
would like to collect the bottles themselves and cash them in.... Now I know
perfectly well that I have an underdeveloped sense of pride. I routinely
gather up bottles from the street and cash them in. My annual results, which
are generally around $100, go to Danny Siegel's Zvi Tzedekah Fund, but if I
needed it, I would certainly keep the money for myself without the slightest
hesitation. So it is a judgment question I am presenting to you....If you
think there might be some merit in making the offer to the church staff (or
to the church itself for its own tzedakah needs-maybe a school kids project),
please consider making that suggestion to Gail.
Have a wonderful trip.
r
Dick's message, as always, was signed with a lower-case "r." It was a
small gesture of self-effacement, I had come to believe, from someone who
wanted his ideas and concerns, not himself, to be taken seriously, on their
merits.
When I received the shattering news about Dick, I was in northeastern
Arizona, on the Hopi reservation, home of the most traditional of all the
pueblo tribes. I was about to visit Walpi pueblo, a cluster of stone houses
at the edge of a promontory at the tip of a mesa, several hundred feet above
ground level. Walpi has been there, rooted to its sacred land, for 1000
years. A dozen elders still live there, in respect for their history and
traditions, without any modern conveniences.
Too stunned to deviate from my planned visit, I drove to Walpi. I did not
know how to make sense of what Susan had told me, just minutes before. I
found a rock at the edge of the mesa and sat there, staring into the vastness
of space, hearing only the sound of silence. This is a place of deep
spiritual meaning to the Hopi people. Their religion is not ours, but I felt
its strength and power. Surely Dick--the most committed eclectic Jew I have
ever known--would have found points of spiritual connection in this place.
After his funeral, i was told that some years ago a member of his Talmud
study group, puzzled by the ease of Dick's movement from Shaaray to the
Minyan and back--indeed, he often seemed to be in both places
simultaneously--asked: "What kind of Jew are you?" Dick, never lacking for a
rejoinder, instantly replied, "Right-wing confused."
But it was not "confusion"; rather, it was his remarkable openness to the
entire range of Jewish experience, and his commitment to all of it, that made
Dick so special.
In Walpi pueblo, even though I was very far away, I felt our loss--the
loss of our Minyan patriarch--and I knew that it was irreparable.
Jerry Auerbach