The Meaning Of Life

One of our brothers, who has way too much confidence in me, requested that I expound on the meaning of life. He must be truly lost, or perhaps did not have good role models in his formative years. I have decided to take up this challenge, although I am worried about any cynicism or hopelessness that may result from this effort. Perhaps you should all sign waivers resolving me of responsibility for messing with your heads.

And challenge this is!  I have kind of a right brain left brain conflict here. I certainly believe in the Almighty, Baruch Hashem.  We are here to help others, take care of our own – especially the women in our lives.  We must ponder the imponderable, find our place in the way of things, and leave the world better than we found it.

At least, that’s what the right side of my brain wants.  This left side thinks everything is just random and devoid of any actual purpose. As a master of cognitive dissonance, it all fits together nicely.

My right side likes this story, which I first heard from Rabbi George Nudell, formerly of CBI in Scotch Plains. It’s not original to him, but I’m sure he tells it better.

There was a young student – let’s call him Aharon.  One day, Aharon was obsessively busy with his studies, when suddenly, he explodes into hysterical crying.  His friends rush to him and ask why he’s so upset.

It takes Aharon several minutes to catch his breath, but he finally explains: “I can’t go on anymore! I don’t understand!  What is the meaning of life?”

Aharon’s friends were taken aback, but one at a time, they gamely tried to answer Aharon’s question.  They could not calm him down. In fact, he only became more inconsolable.

After failing so miserably, they took him back to his house, hoping a good night’s sleep would help.  And as they walked away, they heard him wailing: “What is the meaning of life?  What is the meaning of life?”

Early the next morning, Aharon’s wife came looking for his friends. When she found them, she screamed: “What is wrong with you people? You drop my husband off at my house in that condition?  He’s a crazy man.  He keeps whining about the meaning of life and won’t shut up.  I couldn’t sleep, the children couldn’t sleep, the cats couldn’t sleep, the neighbors called 911. What kind of friends are you?”

The friends apologized profusely to Mrs. Aharon and promised to help Aharon find his answer.  They took him to the town’s scholarly and respected rabbi.  The rabbi listened patiently to Aharon, and just as patiently, tried to answer him.  But to no avail!  Aharon kept screaming: “What is the meaning of life?  I can’t go on until I know the meaning of life!”

Aharon’s friends took him to a nearby town, where there was an equally scholarly and respected rabbi, but the result was the same.  They went to another town, and another town, and another town after that, but none of the rabbis could help. 

When they ran out of rabbis, they turned to a variety of other notables:  cantors, Men’s Club presidents, kosher butchers, and even a mohel.  No help at all.

Finally, just as they were about to give up, they chanced upon the greatest and most learned sage of the generation: Rav Avraham Chanan Ben Yitzhak Yaacov.  He listened to Aharon carefully, and then smacked him on the head.  “You fool!  You have such a great question!  Why would you trade it for an answer?”

The left side of my brain doesn’t care for that story at all.  Rather, it prefers something I read in Doonesbury.  There was some discussion between Mark Slackmeyer, who was something of a sixties radical, and his father Phil, a wealthy, conservative corporate executive who was at one point imprisoned for insider trading. Like many fathers and sons, they had different ideas about what Mark should do with his life.  After much back and forth, Mark says that he wants to enjoy his life.  To which Phil responds: “Life is not something to be enjoyed. Life is something to be gotten on with.”

Unfortunately, I seem to have grown cynical over time.  I like to think that I haven’t always been this way.  As a youth, I aspired to become a world changing intellectual.  I would be Maimonides, Albert Einstein, and Alan Sherman all rolled up into one.  Except way smarter!  I certainly had the brains for it.  What I didn’t have was the drive, ambition, or focus.  Those shortcomings kept me from being the first trillionaire on Mars.  Who knows?  Maybe I’ll get my act together sooner or later, and you’ll be able to say that you knew me when.

Let’s just agree that I don’t quite have a handle on the meaning of life.  Now, I don’t want to seem nihilistic, or cynical, or even jaded.  I take much comfort in the way Jewish tradition memorializes the dearly departed.  In the Gentile world around us, there is much focus on birthdays:  George Washington’s birthday, Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, Martin Luther King’s birthday.  There is certainly reason to celebrate the entrance of these notables into history, but we have only a limited amount of knowledge about anyone on the day they were born.  We may know their parents – thanks to 23andMe, we can learn a great deal about their ancestry.  Assuming we can find a birth certificate, we can be pretty sure about where they came into existence.  Most importantly, we have some idea about the world they were born into.  But what about the life they will go on to lead?  Well, not so much.

As was explained to me, this is why Jews light yahrzeit candles on the anniversary of the date of death.  It is only after someone is gone that there’s enough information to evaluate their life:  the decisions they made, the challenges they faced, and of course, their mistakes and how they handled them.

When I was in high school, I was a pretty pathetic student.  Sure, I was as brilliant as all get-out, but that whole lack-of-focus business was a real drag.  It’s amazing that I was able to ace Honors English without reading any of the book assignments.  It’s a mystery.  Especially considering that now, in my prosperous retirement, I spend nearly every waking moment reading.  Truth be told, I feel a little guilty watching my wife take care of the house, the paperwork, and pretty much everything involved in keeping me alive when I read, but she knew what she was getting when we married.

Mostly, I’ve been reading about historical trends – I’m trying to get a handle on how we got to where we are today.  But of course, history is made up of people, and I’ve come across so many stories that have left indelible impressions on my brain.  Perhaps focusing on these lives will help us find some meaning.

(Quick pause for an editorial comment: when I read an earlier version of this chat to my wife the toastmistress, she found it a bit disjointed. I believe her exact words were “try to sound more polished than a third grader.”  Okay.  So, I did a bit of reworking, trying to pull things together.  Having said that, any similarity to the Yizkor service in Siddur Lev Shalem is entirely coincidental.)

We remember Michael Kessler. I don’t know how many of you have read “Shards of War”, in which our late friend recorded how he survived the Holocaust.  If he were here today, he’d probably give all the credit to his sister.  Their story is different from most other testimonials I’ve read: no ghettos, no concentration camps, no death marches.  The two of them escaped Ukraine just before the German troops arrived and hid in the Russian countryside.  And we all know just how much the Russians loved Jews.

His book has a drawing of a fancy pocket watch on the cover. Their father, who chose to stay behind with elderly and sick relatives, had given them this expensive watch in the hopes that it would help finance an escape.  And it almost did.  They were going to trade it for passage on a ship out of Russia and to safety.  But before they could make the transaction, the watch was stolen.  Which was a very good thing indeed!  When the ship left a day or two later, it was sunk by Nazi torpedoes, and everyone on board died.

But that is not my favorite part of the book.  After the war, they went back home, and sadly, their entire family was dead.  Michael went to his old house, knocked on the door, and was told by the current residents something to the effect of “get out of here you dirty Jew before I kill you.” Undaunted, Michael went across the street, picked up a rock, and threw it through the living room window. In the days to follow, he went to the city hall and sold the house out from underneath the interlopers.  Which was way cool!

I attended Michael’s funeral right across the hall in our sanctuary.  When his widow walked in, she was followed by several fistfuls of Michael’s children and grandchildren.  Proving once and for all, living well is the best revenge.

We recall George Freshman.  At my last job before retirement, I had the extreme pleasure of working with a wonderful woman named Martha.  Her Uncle George spent much of the war in Auschwitz and documented his experiences in “From Misery to Happiness”.  While he was at the camp, he was forced to serve an SS officer as kind of an errand boy.  He had to clean up after the monster, carry his stuff around, and accept mounds and mounds of abuse.  At one point, the monster started screaming at him so ferociously that George just threw up his hands and said, “go ahead and shoot me”.  I don’t know about you, but I can’t imagine a concentration camp inmate talking like that to the SS.  As it turns out, rather than shooting George, the monster gave him a piece of bread which, in Auschwitz, was life itself.  Maybe he admired George’s spunk.

Martha told me that George left Auschwitz as an atheist.  He couldn’t believe in a G-d that would allow such evil.  I don’t share that view, but it is understandable.

We remember Aristedes de Sousa Mendes. At another job, much earlier in my career, I met a young woman named Sheila.  Her grandfather was the Portuguese Raoul Wallenberg.  Unfortunately, most of you have probably not heard of him.  He was, in fact, more courageous than Wallenberg.  G-d bless Sweden – Wallenberg had the full support of his government; Sheila’s grandfather certainly did not.

Sousa Mendes was Portugal’s ambassador to the Vichy government in Nazi occupied France.  While in Paris, he was approached by many desperate Jews for help leaving the country.  On his own authority, he started issuing visas to enter Portugal.  His government ordered him to stop.  He refused, telling his wife (another hero) that he’d rather “Stand with G-d against men, instead of with men against G-d”.  This was very dangerous, since at that time, Portugal was under the brutal dictatorship of Antonio Salazar.  Still, he kept issuing visas, even writing them out by hand when he ran out of blank forms.  He was recalled by his government.  When he arrived at the border between Spain and Portugal, he found a crowd of Jews who were not allowed to cross.  Unsure of his own fate, he ordered the guards to let them in. Ultimately, he was merely humiliated, not imprisoned or killed.  In 1966, he was recognized by Israel as one of the Righteous Among the Nations.

We recall the Jewish resistance to the Nazis.  I recently read Maria Syrkin‘s “Blessed Is the Match”, published in 1947.  It’s a compilation of eyewitness accounts of some of these heroes.

The title of the book comes from a poem by Hannah Senesch:

Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.

Blessed is the flame that burns in the secret fastness of the heart.

Blessed is the heart with the strength to stop its beating for honor’s sake.

Hannah was one of the young Jews from the Yishuv who parachuted into Hungary to create some sort of lifeline for the Jews trapped in that country.  As it turned out, she was captured almost as soon as she arrived, and was executed.

I prefer to remember Hannah not for how she died, but for how she lived.  When I was a teenager, I was watching television, going to parties, and being avoided by cheerleaders. When Hannah was a teenager, she was inspired by Zionism, made Aliyah, and engaged in backbreaking work transforming desolate wasteland into fertile farms.  As part of the kibbutz program, the young people were given training in botany.  She wrote in her diary about her fascination with the cleopadra microbes, also known as the “pioneers of the plant”.  These are emitted by the roots to prepare the soil but are then destroyed in the process.  She admired and identified with the cleopadra. 

There are many other stories from “Blessed Is the Match” - several from the famous Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – but one rather obscure account really moved me.  Some Jews escaped to the woods and lived off whatever they could find.  They were known as “woodmen”.  One of these later came to Israel and told his story to the author.  The punchline, if you can call it that, is just precious.  Unfortunately, there is no name attached to it, but here’s the money quote: “Had I known that I would remain alive, I probably would never have taken so many risks. I never expected to remain alive.”

We remember Melita Mashmann. This one needs a little explanation.  Melita Mashmann was a Nazi.  Not one of the concentration camp matrons, but a Nazi nonetheless.  When she joined the Hitler Youth, she could not understand why her Jewish best friend wouldn’t join with her.  Later she worked as a reporter for a variety of Nazi periodicals, and then as kind of a social worker and nursemaid for the ethnic Germans who were moved into occupied territory.  So, she didn’t kill Jews; she just threw Poles out of their houses.

She was taken into custody after the war.  She was released swiftly because she had entered the movement so young.  I was reminded of something William Shirer wrote in “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”.  Shirer was an American journalist stationed in Germany during Hitler’s ascendance to power.  He was certainly not an admirer of the Nazis, but he described the Hitler Youth, with their marching and their singing, as the most dynamic youth group of its time, especially when compared to the West’s neglect of its own children.

What I found so compelling about Mashmann’s biography “Account Rendered” was the clear-eyed way tried to come to terms with her life.  She witnessed Kristallnacht, but it didn’t really register with her.  She’d seen the concentration camps and didn’t think that much about it.  She had been so indoctrinated, it just couldn’t sink in.

She wasn’t trying to justify her actions.  In fact, she comes across as sincerely ashamed and mortified. She would be uncomfortable with me describing her so positively.  But she left a rare, critical account of her actions, and compared with all the denial and forgetting, it is an important contribution to history.

We recall Sister Rose Thering.  Every Jew should know about and revere this Dominican religious sister.  In the 1950’s, she wrote her doctoral dissertation on the treatment of Jews in Catholic textbooks.  In the film “Sister Rose’s Passion”, she remembered being chided by some bishop for airing the church’s dirty laundry.  Ultimately, her study was used to draft the Vatican II document “Nostra aetate” which exonerated Jews for the Crucifixion.  Better late than never.  Unfortunately, there are some Catholics who still haven’t gotten the message.  I’m looking at you, Mel,

We remember Celia Ostritsky.

Before I talk about Celia, I need to throw in one of those literary references that make me look oh so smart.  I used to read Kurt Vonnegut excessively.  One of his lesser-known works was “Sirens of Titan”, which had a main character who had somehow become unstuck in space and time.  Some religious group – not Jews – had received a prophesy that he would show up somewhere and somewhen, and a huge crowd assembled to greet him.  The prophesy specified that the traveler would show up buck naked, and for modesty’s sake, a clergyman would go in first with some clothes.

And buck naked he was!  As the traveler was getting dressed, the clergyman asked him what he would say to the crowd.  He thought about it a second and said, “I’m going to thank the heavens for getting me here safely.”

The clergyman responded: “You can’t say that!  They’ll tear you to pieces!”

The traveler reconsidered, and then told the crowd: “I’m here through a series of accidents, as are we all.”

And they loved it.  Now, back to Celia.

We recall Celia Ostritsky, my mother’s mother. By the time I knew Celia, she was a very sick woman.  She had been scarred by her experiences with Russian antisemitism.  When she was a little girl, she watched as her father’s beard was cut off with a knife.   I’m sure she witnessed many other atrocities, but I was too young to ask, and it would probably have been too painful for her to remember.

There’s one thing you need to know about Celia:  she hated the Russians.  I mean, she really hated the Russians.  I inherited a lot of that.  But there were some righteous among the nations, even in Belarus.  There was a wonderful gentile woman who lived next door to my grandmother’s family.  This woman showed such sensitivity that when she finished churning butter, she invited Celia’s mother to cut some with her own knife, out of respect for the family’s kashreit observance.  This was a simple gesture, but one that really stood out in the sea of hatred.

One night, the Russians came to the house, blocked the doors and windows, and lit a fire.  This magnificent woman jumped out of bed, and rescued Celia’s family.  It’s a hundred years later, I owe her so much, and I don’t even know her name.

I am certainly here through a series of accidents.  To borrow once more from Vonnegut, I have no idea what my wampeter is. I can only hope that something I do will be worth remembering,

So, what is the meaning of life? I haven’t a clue.  As with so much else, I have enough insight to ask the questions, but not nearly enough wisdom to answer them.

Now, go and study.