Hesped for Rabbi Richard James Israel
Delivered by Rabbi Benjamin J. Samuels at Temple Emanuel, Newton Centre, MA
Friday, July 14, 2000 -- 11 Tamuz, 5760
We came here this morning to say good-bye to a man we all loved, devoted
husband to Sherry, loving Aba to Aliza and Harold, David and Pamela, Rachel
and Rob, and Joshua. Grandpa and Saba to Sam, Anna, and Jacob, Joseph and
Isaac. Beloved brother of Lorna and Herb. Endearing uncle to Roger, Gerald,
and Jane, cousin, in-law, rabbi, mentor, chevruta and teacher, a man who
educated and enriched, amused and enchanted, scholar and adventurer, Marathon
runner and inventor, gadgeteer extraordinaire, collector and beekeeper,
enduring friend, HaRav Rachum Yosef ben Yitzchak ve-Yehudit -- Rabbi Dick
Israel.
Dick was born on the south side of Chicago to Julia and Irving Israel in
1929; he was a gift to his parents the very same week they lost their fortune
in the Great depression. From his parents, particularly his mother to whom he
was her devoted little boy for 60 years, he learned about hard work,
perseverance and determination, the importance of family and a no-nonsense
attitude of waste-not want-not and getting the job done. From his doting
shtieble-going Grandpa David he learned how to daven. Grandpa David also
taught Dick his own trade: how to book-bind, to make sure Dick would always
have an "honest profession" to fall back upon. In his youth, his mother's
youngest brother, Uncle Abner, a draftsman, lived with them. After Dick's
father took ill, Abner was like a big-brother/father figure to Dick. Abner
like to whittle and fool with gadgets. Dick learned from him to have fun, to
be independent and self-reliant, to amuse himself and thereby others.
Dick had an incredibly loving relationship with his sister Lorna. As a
teenager, when Dick got his first job as a dishwasher, with his first
paycheck, he bought his sister a necklace and earrings. He had a tough
childhood, though replete with love and life's lessons. He liked to share
his fond memories, always the story teller.
For college, Dick went to University of Chicago, and it was there his
formative years began taking shape, like the mysterious Parah Adumah -- Red
Hefer of this week's parashah, which makes the clean unclean and the unclean
clean, at the U of C, Dick pursued a soul-shaping alchemy, blending
intellectual, spiritual and cultural curiosities, ever trying to find the
right mix that will yield the precious metal of life.
At the U of C, Dick met his mentor and teacher, Rabbi Maurice Pekarsky,
the doyen of Hillel, the Professor's rabbi and the student's guide. Rabbi
Maurice changed Dick's life in at least two all-important ways. Firstly,
Rabbi Maurice encouraged Dick to discover his spiritual path, to study for
the rabbinate, and how to teach, how to support others in their quest for
knowledge and meaning. Most notably, however, it was Rabbi Pekarsky who
introduced a fourth year rabbinical student to a graduating college coed. It
was over Pesach vacation that Dick met Sherry visiting the U of C Hillel. He
asked Sherry out every night that week, and by July they were engaged. Dick
liked to say, that summer Sherry stayed in Chicago to study German and me.
Dick's children remember the love, chemistry and romance, that energized
their parents relationship. Dick and Sherry shared all the essential values,
they were partners committed to each other and to creating a loving family.
For Dick, everything in life beheld wonder, and every opportunity was an
opportunity for adventure. When Dick was a student at HUC in the early 50's
he wanted to learn Hebrew and he knew he wanted more -- of what? -- perhaps
he did not know yet, but he was going to find it. So, he traveled to Israel
in the infancy of the State to study at Hebrew University. When he found
that he was learning the same thing at Hebrew U that he had learned at HUC,
just in Hebrew, he transferred to the teacher's seminary at Givat Washington
and ended the year at the Yeshiva in Yavne. On the way back, after his year,
he became the Chief Rabbi of India, working as the only rabbi in India for 6
months, serving the Bene Israel communities in Bombay and its environs.
After they were married, Sherry and Dick spent a summer driving though
Europe, crossing the Mediterranean aboard a Turkish Maritime liner, and
spending a month in Israel. Sherry told me Dick like to have a map, to know
he was moving from place to place, though in anyone place he was wont to say,
that if you don't mind where you are at, you're not lost. Dick loved to
wander and wonder, to look around, to take things in, to be in awe.
He taught his children -- who he loved so much and for whom he had so
much pride -- he taught them to appreciate that wonder and to seek it for
themselves. For his children, Dick saw the Image of God in every human
being: in every person who graced their Shabbat table and the countless who
say that Dick "changed their lives" to his incredible activism in civil
rights. Dick went to jail in Alabama, arrested by Policeman Bull Connor. He
would have been in a cell with Martin Luther King Jr., had the jails not been
segregated, and he was very proud of a personal letter he received from
Martin Luther King Jr. thanking him for his active support.
Dick taught his children and his niece Jane a sense of right and wrong,
that all of life is complex and that there is wisdom and wonder in that
complexity. He was a subtle man, who taught by example and inference. With
almost egoless mentoring, he keyed into the individual's need and supported
their self-reliant achievement and fulfillment. He was a great listener and
a spellbinding story teller.
For 12 years, from 1959-71, Dick shaped the Hillel at Yale, and
influenced countless students to "do Jewish." When he became regional
director of New England, he took that experience, hired a promising young
leadership, and began to shape the Hillel movement. Yet, in a discussion
group once, when Dick was asked to tell three things about himself, one of
them being a lie, he said he as a runner, a beekeeper, and an administrator.
The lie, he believed, was that he was an administrator.
In his wonderful book, The Kosher Pig: And Other Curiosities of Modern
Jewish Life, which I encourage those who possess a copy to reread this week
in his memory, Dick wrote (p. 141): "The Questions I was asked in the
discussion group led to my reflections on the three essentially unrelated
forces that do seem to energize my life: Judaism, which gives me structure;
beekeeping, which gives me focus; and running, which brings [me] a sense of
joy, optimism and perspective..."
To me personally, Dick was a friend and a wise colleague and mentor. I
learned so much in our delightful e-mail banter and in our serious
discussions. How will we celebrate another Rosh Hashanah with out a jar of
Honey from Israel? or Sukkot without a Lulav and Etrog from Israel? Dick,
his family has told me, was a collector, he saved much and waited to give the
right clipping or the right gift to the right person at just the right time.
He was fiercely proud of his basketball-size rubber band ball and other such
doodads. Two months ago, on Parshat Behar, Dick delivered what will be his
last Devar Torah in our Shul, in which he pondered and set out to unearth the
secrets of Shemitah, the Sabbatical year.
Our teacher the grand collector of tzachkes and doohickies taught:
"God brings us out of Egypt and slavery to give us our very own land.
Once we get to that promised land, the first thing we learn is that it is not
REALLY ours (emphasis his). The crops we grow, also not ours. And what should
we do with that which we had thought we owned? We should fulfill the
commandment that Hillel tells us is as important as the entire Torah: You
shall love your neighbor as yourself. It is your neighbors, your servants,
strangers and even wandering animals who are to be the major beneficiaries of
the land you thought was yours.
Acquisitiveness is as basic to humankind as any passion we have, and what
we learn from the mitzvah of Shemitah is that we possess very little, if
anything. We are only tenants and renters of our land, our houses, and even
our bodies, and the sooner we learn that, the sooner we will understand our
basic situation in this world. That, which we most want to lay hold of, will
always slip out of our hands. Even the one who dies with the most toys, in
the end is dead nonetheless."
The Devar Torah continues and Dick speaks of his accident of six months
ago:
"... I was in the hospital that Shabbat and a number of others following,
having been hit by a car when out jogging on a Sunday morning in late
December.
It was a horrendous experience, but one, which I am please to observe,
no longer dominates my life as much as it had. But it is also important for
me to say that for a terrible event it was really quite wonderful, actually
one of the best things that ever happened to me. If you value basic quality
time spent with your family and friends, take my word for it, there are few
ways to improve on a nearly fatal automobile accident. The was at least once
when I simply burst into tears in gratitude for all the extravagant care and
concern I was given, and I am not generally a weeper.
You will never know how nourishing and even life giving were all of your
messages, calls, visits, mishehbayrachs, tehillim and soup. I have tried to
respond with thanks and I have gotten to hundred of them, but I was
overwhelmed. I literally still have bags of cards, letters, and
contributions to various causes that I despair of ever being able to
acknowledge. But among the many things I learned in a very deep way from
this incident is what is TRULY significant and how EPHEMERAL our relationship
is to most of the physical things we treasure.
I don't know how long I will be able to live in a state of heightened
awareness, in which these perfectly conventional sentiments seem so
brilliantly clear, how soon before I return to a kind of emotional
business-as-usual. But as long as it lasts, I will be deeply indebted to you
for bringing me closer to that particular truth taught [by the Shemitah]."
Sherry told me two formative events of Dick's childhood with which I will
conclude: First, Dick flunked fourth grade. He had to make it up in the
summer. His mother took him every day on a long streetcar ride to summer
school. Life, he learned, is that long streetcar ride during which if you
look at the other people on the bus, and at the passing scenery out the
window, even the same route every day, can be a glorious adventure.
When Dick learned to swim, his mother stood a couple feet in front of
him, and every time his swam toward her, she would move a couple of feet
further. The swim or run never ends. You got to keep going. One more mile,
one more opportunity to connect to God, to love your family, to help and
fight for and love another person -- another and another and another -- that
is, until today. This year had been the first year that Dick did not run
every single day, this past Wednesday was his last hike. We all feel the
world should have come to a stop, the planet should have stopped rotating,
the bees cease buzzing, everyone keep still, our long-distance runner has
reached his destination, his Shemitah, his Shabbat Olamit -- his eternal
Sabbath.
Dick once wrote (The Kosher Pig, p. 99): "Our bodies are ultimately
rental property. They really belong to the Landlord of all the earth. Our
relationships with our bodies ought to be that of responsible tenants who do
their best not to ruin things. Though no tenant has an easy relationship
with any landlord, if we are honorable, we won't do anything with the
property that we wouldn't do in the presence of its owner. And when we have
to vacate, it ought to be returned in the best possible condition ... I now
wish for myself ... and for all of us, that when the time comes to go, may we
go in the best of health."
HaRav Rachum Yosef ben Yitzchak ve-Yehudit, Rabbi Richard James Israel,
went in the best of health. Yehi Zichro Baruch -- May his memory be for a
blessing..