Judaism On Purpose™ Sans Kevin Costner:
Fields of Disruptive Distribution
When you must; you can
And when you can; you must
Simcha’s Lesson
Now the first baseman was typically the tallest guy on the baseball team – as he could stretch farther for the ball to increase the probability of getting the out of the runner going down first base. I was the second shortest kid in my elementary school classes (Ronnie Bell was first). The first baseball mitt Dad got for me? A Marv Blaylock first baseman’s mitt as per dad, ‘it’s not the height of the dog – it’s the fight in the dog, Jimmy.’
When I was a kid of 9, I fell in love with a Bill Dickey catcher’s mitt. I would walk the long way to Lamberton Elementary school to go into Dubins Five & Dime to put the mitt on my hand every day.
Every day for at least a month.
For my birthday, my father bought me that Bill Dickey autograph catcher’s mitt (which I fell asleep with). Baseball mitts were Dad’s way of saying ‘I love you.’ I guess it was a generational thing.
Well, as is my annual habit on Dad’s yahrzeit, I recall, our cross alley catches. Even though he would be dog tired after dragging his tuchis home from work, we would our catches before dinner behind the row houses of Brentwood and Sherwood Rd.
Dad, crouching like catcher (the Philadelphia Phillies Stan Lopata at that time), would put down a hand signal (1 for fastball) set up his glove for me to target with my pitch. Alternatively, as if the pitch was stuck, he’d toss ground balls and pop ups for me to catch always, always, always imploring me, ‘(catch with) both hands, both hands! Two hands, two hands!! Jimmy, don’t be a one handed star.’
Don’t be a one-handed star!
So, per my yearly (now 15+ years) habit on Dad’s yahrzeit, I watched Field of Dreams with now a Lance Parrish catcher’s mitt on my left hand, alternatively pounding the pocket with the right and or a baseball ready to catch with ‘two hands.’
However, there was ‘a catch’ this time in viewing Field of Dreams. It was almost as if ‘The Voice’s imperatives were directed to me relative to Judaism On Purpose™ when The Voice implored:
If you build it, he will come
Feel his pain
Go the distance
“If You Build It, He Will Come”
Regardless political assertions of ‘you didn’t build it’, the synagogue buildings, other than high holidays, have less service attendance than the local high speed mass transit at 2:00 am even before COVID 19.
In a PEW Poll, 42% of Jews classify themselves as ‘nones’ (as in none). Synagogue affiliation – regardless of even Frank Lloyd Wright architecture – is 30%. When High Holiday attendance is subtracted – the active affiliation is less than 5% – if that – at Saturday services. And when the “JFK” attendees (‘Just For Kiddish)* that come just 30 minutes or so before the end of the services but before the Kiddish (the after service meal & goodies spread) the percentage of active Judaic affiliation drops even further.
Even before Covid 19, the Synagogues were built but they didn’t come.
Why? The cup (the synagogue) has become more important than the coffee (Judaism and Judaism’s relevance & meaning IN & to congregants individual lives).
The irony: – even if the Synagogue wanted to function in providing personalized meaning IN congregant’s individual lives – in form and function it cannot. And as a result – the pulpit Rabbi has to be a sage on the stage rather than a personal guide by an individual congregant’s side.
Feel his pain
Man has a will to meaning ….
The ant has purpose but not meaning
Paraphrasing Viktor Frankl
How can the synagogue, in form and function, with maybe 2 rabbis and 300- 600 families as congregants, provide individualized personalized meaning – especially for those over 50? He or she cannot – let alone be a beacon light for individual Jews to become ‘a light unto all nations…a nation of priests unto Me’
Yet, the pain- the discomfort – of lack of meaning – when not just palliated by engagement for engagement’s sake of ‘what next, the next chapter’ – meaning IN one life’s INside out- continues. And this inner confrontation particulary effects 50+ sometimes manifested as that 2 AM can’t sleep gazing up at the ceiling from one’s bed remembering Peggy Lee singing the lyrics ‘is that all there is, is that all there is, my friend.’
Purpose may be a road to meaning but should not be confused with meaning. Both meaning and purpose can engage – but purpose without meaning palliates by engagement – meaning is INgagement – INside out.
The pain is the lack of meaning – purpose is a stepping stone that can either palliate or springboard to ‘the will to meaning’ – to quench the thirst for meaning –
Go the distance
Just what makes that little old ant
Think he’ll move that rubber tree plant
Anyone knows an ant, can’t
Move a rubber tree plant
But he’s got HIGH hopes
He’s got HIGH hopes
He’s got HIGH apple pie
In the sky hopes
High Hopes lyrics sung by Sinatra
To paraphrase a story by Rabbi Gershon Winkler, the soul is told it is time to go. The soul protests, ‘I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go.’ No sooner than the soul’s verbal protested ended than ‘whoosh’ the soul finds himself in his mother’s womb. After a short period of accommodation, he finds ‘hey, this isn’t so bad. I get fed when I want and I can give her a kick every so often– without retribution.’ The 9th month arrives and the baby now feeling a push protests, ‘I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go’ but ‘whoosh’ birth. Now 80, 90 years of old, now a man protests, ‘I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go.’
Whoosh
Now the question is go to where?
A person was created to transform himself.
—Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk
Pre-existence (whoosh)– to this world’s existence (whoosh) – to (whoosh) the return – going the distance- meriting one’s homecoming.
Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato (1707-1746) in The Path of the Just relates that this life is merely an anteroom – a corridor for us – a passageway)- to the world to come.
Judaism On Purpose is designed as a springboard – albeit a purposeful & meaningful stepping stone – for its members, hand in glove – hand over fist, to go the distance….
‘People will come people, people most definitely will come
To the Field (Theme) of Judaism On Purpose(tm)
(apologies to James Earl Jones)