High Holidays 5786

 I always dread the holidays. I  don't fast on Yom Kippur, and the whole month upsets my careful algorithm of schedules and meals. My  therapist suggests  I'm OCD. This year is different, however.

My husband, Joe Hample, known as Rabbi Joe, is retiring next summer, so this is his last High Holidays at Tree of Life in Morgantown. We've been batting around what we'll do next, stay here or leave? Where would we go? We are bicoastal people somewhere in the middle of the country (but still in the Eastern Time Zone). Joe wants somewhere warm, maybe Florida. We have friends all over California, especially in Los Angeles and Long Beach and San Francisco. My closest first cousin and his children and grandchildren live in the East Bay. And many of our friends have retired to Palm Springs, a gay Mecca for old folks.

What actually happened this year was different from the past. At the Rosh Hashana evening service, the most popular one, because it's relatively short and people don't have to miss work or school, I looked around the room. I knew just about everyone there and I liked and respected them. We have very few friends in Morgantown who are not also congregants. In our thirteen years here, we've been with these people while their children grew up, through illnesses, deaths, marriages and divorces. As much as I miss my California friends, this has become my community.

Of course, it will be different next year. The congregation has begun the process of finding a new rabbi, and even if we are here, our position will be different. It will be awkward for us if we are members, and awkward for the new rabbi if we hang around, like ghosts from the past. 

I was talking to a couple in the congregation who are almost the only Jews in the county they live in, about sixty miles south of Morgantown. Their son was twelve when Joe became the rabbi; he was one of Joe's early bar mitzvah students. He's twenty-five now, has his own construction company. I was telling them what I was feeling, and I had to stop or I would have cried.

We bought a house ten years ago. It's mostly paid for, but we have so much stuff, it could take us a year to go through it. Our house is overflowing with books, records, CDs and tapes. There are boxes I never unpacked from when we moved in.We are friendly with our neighbors and we are on a quiet street. As we age, I worry that our house has steps, with our bedroom, and the second bedroom (my office) upstairs. Joe's office is in the basement. 

I'll be seventy-six this month,  in a family where men don't live past eighty. They are checking for four kinds of cancer: pancreatic (I passed that test last week), and thyroid cancer, which I had two years ago when they took out my thyroid. They'll check that Monday, October 6. They will do an MRI on  my prostate in December and a colonoscopy in January, since I failed a Colguard test. I have complaints about WVU Medicine, but at least they have people to take care of these things, even if one haas to wait weeks or months, and they take my lousy insurance, which pays them about twenty per  cent of what they ask. I know some places won't take that. I guess I worry that we'll go to a lot of trouble to move, and then I'll die. 

I do studies of cities and counties. I've visited in (mostly) alphabetical order over 150 counties in nine states since we moved here, within about three hundred miles of Morgantown. I'm going through them, including the rest of the alphabet that I haven't gotten to yet, and looking for where we might live. My idea is that we could come back to Morgantown for a wedding, a bar mitzvah, a funeral, if someone  asked. The best choices are between Philadelphia and Richmond along I-95.

The rub to this is the lawlessness of the present national administration. Will we be safe in a Democratic city? I don't want to be anywhere else. The one gay couple we're close to who aren't Jewish are looking at France as a place to go. In other times, I would have thought of Israel, but not now. Most countries don't want old people to move there unless they have a ton of money. We don't. 

The services were lovely-all of them. We have a guest soloist and others (including me)  sang some parts of the services. His sermons were more political than usual ("Are they going to fire me now?" he asked), but were well received. One woman in the congregation, who has a husband, said she was jealous of me, and wished that she were married to Joe. The congregants pitched in on everything from security to a break-the-fast-dinner after Yom Kippur.

All of it was beautiful. But we will all be in a different place, even if Joe and I are still in Morgantown next year. I wish everyone who reads this a healthy, prosperous 5786 Shana Tova!

It's 5782!

 My last post was about our trip to Los Angeles. I haven't posted about San Francisco and my next trip, to Fluvanna and Essex Counties in Virginia, with a stop on the way back to visit with my sister in Greenbelt, Maryland. Maybe I'll post those soon...ish.

Meantime, time flies, and it's a new Jewish year. COVID-19 has come roaring back, especially in West Virginia, where Jim Justice, our Republican governor, won't put up any mask restrictions because he's afraid he'll start another Civil War. Monongalia County, where we live, has fared relatively well, mostly because people here are not afraid of getting vaccinated. Still, our two hospitals are nearly full, because people in the surrounding areas come here for medical care, and the counties around us have more "vaccine hesitancy." Still, at West Virginia University, the heart of Morgantown, there are no real restrictions, despite the students and faculty both overwhelmingly voting for a vaccine mandate. As I'm writing this, there is a football game, and there are few restrictions on attending, only a suggestion that unvaccinated people wear a mask. 

But I digress. Rabbi Joe wrote sermons for Tree of Life this summer about how great it was to be together after having pre-recorded services last year. Then, as the number of new cases rose, the synagogue committee, which includes several doctors, voted to cancel in-person services. Instead we did it over Zoom, with only the rabbi, a few singers, a tech person, and someone to watch the door, which is now locked.  I was asked to read haftarah on Rosh Hashana, and chant Torah on Yom Kippur. The haftarah is about Hannah asking for a son and pledging him to the temple. Her son Samuel is raised by the temple priest. The Torah on Yom Kippur is from Deuteronomy 29 and 30: "This day I call heaven and earth to witness regarding you: life and death I have set before you, blessing and curse. Choose life-so that you and your children may live." (Deuteronomy 30:19, translation in Mishkan Hanefesh, copyright 2015, Central Conference of American Rabbis). Heavy stuff. I couldn't help but think that getting a vaccine is choosing life, and not getting it is choosing death.

Meanwhile, I haven't been entirely well since our return from California. I had a little bronchial thing going, and I was concerned because we had been in crowds. I went to an urgent care center here on August 6, and they referred me to a central location for a COVID test. It was negative, so I wasn't too worried. I went back September 9, after Rosh Hashana, because I could barely speak and I was feeling pain in my chest from the congestion, where before it had only been in my throat and upper respiratory tract. They gave me a strong antibiotic and another COVID test, also negative, and suggested I see an ear, nose and throat doctor. I went the next day, and he looked in my nose and throat, and while not going "Ewww!," I could tell he was thinking that. He extended the antibiotic, and gave me a nasal antihistamine.  I wasn't sure I would make it to Yom Kippur.

I did drag myself out, having food with my antibiotic in the morning, and coming home for a snack and a nap in the afternoon, before returning for the Memorial (Yizkor) service, where I sang a Hebrew version of the 23rd Psalm, and the ending service. We finished after 7 P.M.  I managed my singing and chanting without difficulty. 

After more than a week on a strong antibiotic, I'm feeling better. The blood tests, which were to check my immune system, were normal except for the one that shows if you have allergies. That one was off the chart. No surprise.

Yom Kippur always makes me think of life and death. Each year, as I get older, I wonder if this is my last year. I've lived longer than my father and both of his parents. I don't get sick often, but when I do, it's bad, with a long recovery. I try to "choose life" by exercising, keeping my weight down, and getting enough sleep, and I'm grateful for my negative COVID tests. Just in today's paper, they announced that ant-COVID vaccination boosters are a good idea for older people. I'll be first in line when they announce it. 

I wish everyone a healthy 5782.

The New (Jewish) Year

 Last night before we fell asleep, Joe asked me what was good about 5780, the year on the  Jewish  calendar that ends tonight. I said "Our trip to New York in December." New York feels like home to me, even if I  never lived  there. We saw my relatives and Joe's, and friends Joe knows from high school and college. We got around  on busses and subways, and walked quite a bit. Although it was  December, the temperature never went below 40 F. We left December 30, just  before the madness of New Year's Eve, as our motel was filling up with  people from all over the world. In January, back home, I had many of the symptoms of COVID-19: sore throat, headaches, coughing, fever, and a sinus infection. It  was before anyone thought of COVID-19; no precautions were taken by the doctors who saw me. I had an antigen test in the spring. It said that's not what I had, but I hear the tests are not accurate, and that the antigens don't stay with you anyway. Just today, I got the results back from a new COVID-19 test, and I'm still negative. 

I'm less worried about what I'm missing than I might be. I used to go away every month for a few days to explore a new town, and I like going to the movies and the mall. I need new shoes for running, but I haven't been to the store. I'm not sick or broke, I have health insurance and a partner with whom I get along, even though  we're both  home all the time. That doesn't mean I don't dread going to the grocery store, or that I don't rage at fans of the current President who refuse to mask or even acknowledge  that we  have a big problem. 

I understand people who want to drop everything and run away, I've  been looking at other places to live  in one of my long, complicated studies. I'm teaching about pop music  in 1969 at OLLI this fall, and that may be my last class, at least for awhile. I can run again for Morgantown City Council in January, but maybe not. My mother's parents at seventy got rid of almost everything they owned, sold their townhouse in New  York City (like ours in Morgantown, but a little  larger) and moved into a one bedroom apartment in South Florida. It's tempting to do that somewhere. I already  lived in Miami, so maybe not Florida, but somewhere. It would be  a lot easier to stay here and let someone else figure out what to do with my stuff when I'm gone. 

It's 2 P.M. and I'm super tired and just rambling incoherently. A friend made us a round challah bread for the holiday and we have apples and honey, signifying a sweet new year. I guess we'll watch ourselves on YouTube tonight and tomorrow and then go down to the Monongahela River and toss  our sins into the water in the afternoon. It could be worse.

High Holy Days 5781

 The  holidays, Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, are  a month  away now. Like all religious denominations, Jewish congregations are trying to figure out how to safely do services. For most Jews, God sends people to tell you how to be saved from trouble. So we take good advice, like doing services online. There was  talk of doing services for the holidays outdoors, but that didn't seem workable. What the board at Tree of  Life Morgantown decided was to prerecord the services, then have them on YouTube at the appropriate time. My husband, Joe Hample, is the rabbi at Tree of Life. I have worked as a cantorial soloist (someone who sings at services but doesn't have a formal certification), so they decided to ask me to sing a few things, and chant in Hebrew from Deuteronomy and First Samuel. I've done the chanting before.

Last Sunday, Joe and I dressed for the holiday and went to the temple, where a congregant who works in tech recorded us doing the evening service for Rosh Hashana. I've been busy with my class at OLLI and Morgantown city council and haven't rehearsed much. I didn't have a lot to do at the service, and it went pretty well, although I was exhausted from getting up early after not sleeping well, and being there for four hours.

I was panicked about how all this would go. People tell me I sing well, but when I last worked, seventeen years ago, I did vocal exercises every day. I don't sing as well as I did. The last year I worked, 2003, was  the  worst year of my life, worse even than 2020. My sister was ill at the beginning of the year, and stuck home. Her son, then eleven, couldn't go out because two people were randomly shooting people in the Washington area, where they lived. My mother had pancreatic cancer. I visited Baltimore, where my mother lived, for her 75th birthday. While there, I suffered a heart attack. My mother died five weeks later.

My goal at the time was to retire from the school district in 2004, and work full-time somewhere as a cantor. I auditioned for a job that came up in August 2003 when a cantor suddenly left his post, and I was hired. My cardiologist had advised me not to do that, but I hadn't yet (maybe still haven't) killed off my closet Type-A personality. I did the job, sixty miles east of Los Angeles, after buying a new car with the first of my inherited money. I have never been so exhausted in my life. It was a hard job anyway, rehearsing with a choir and singing the music left by the former cantor (we sang in the same key, which may be why I was hired). I got  along well with the rabbi there, but not so much with the choir and director. They were talking about hiring a full-time soloist in July, maybe me, but I looked around and decided I didn't want to live in that community. They ended up not hiring a cantor anyway. The whole experience was debilitating and depressing.

When Joe and I moved to Morgantown in 2012, there was talk at Tree of Life of using me as a cantor, which I squelched. I felt like I had closed that chapter of my life. Now they want me to do a few things, not beyond possibility, but still a drain on my not abundant energy. Joe has taken on most of the singing, which was too much for him. He's been working like mad to get it together. The people in charge, like those at most congregations, don't realize how hard it is to do the holidays.

I don't typically have panic attacks, but when I started going over the music, I thought about my mother,  my own precarious health, and what had  happened to my family all those years ago. It wasn't pretty.

I've calmed down now and I've accepted my role, but like most things I'm doing, I keep thinking I won't do it again. I'm still here, well after my "use by" date, my sister is healthy, her son grown up and married. I try to just count my blessings instead of obsessing about the past. Joe and I plan to visit with my sister in Maryland at the end of August, and maybe, as is my custom before the holidays, we'll visit my parents in the cemetery in Baltimore County. 

High Holidays 5780: How Terribly Strange To be Seventy

"How terribly strange to be seventy" is a lyric from Paul Simon, who turned seventy-eight last week. I wonder what he thinks about that now. I can tell you, it's not strange at all. It's just what happens when you just get up every morning, as I did this morning, on your seventieth birthday. I didn't just sit on a park bench, with nothing left but my memories. I ran/walked (ran downhill, walked uphill) through my neighborhood in beautiful, slightly-warmer-than-average fall weather.

The past month of Jewish holidays has taken a toll on both me and Joe. I chanted haftarah (prophets) the first day of Rosh Hashana, and Torah the second day, and Torah the morning and afternoon of Yom Kippur. In the Reform movement, today is Atzeret-Simchat Torah, the last day of the holiday period. In between everything else, Joe and I are teaching classes at Osher Life-Long Learning through West Virginia University. He is teaching "Old Testament Rituals-Don't Try These At Home," and I'm teaching "The Great Hits and Albums of 1967," fun for me, but a lot of work. We attended a wedding on the Saturday between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur in Alpine Lake, 40 miles east of here, near the Maryland line, and a bat mitzvah in Pittsburgh two days ago. Yesterday, we combined Simchat Torah with the Sunday school, then Joe had an unveiling near Uniontown, Pennsylvania, and spoke on a  panel later in the afternoon, followed by a dinner, through Greater Morgantown Interfaith Association. I spoke on a panel at WVU for counseling students Thursday morning, with a priest, a Dakota elder and our local Imam, then grabbed lunch before my own class. We attended a mourning prayer service Thursday night, for the mother and grandmother of congregants. This is in addition to Joe's regular services and my City Council responsibilities. I didn't expect to be so busy in retirement, and I'm sure it's not what Paul Simon envisioned oldness would be.

The kids at WVU asked about my history, and how I came to be religious and believe in God. I told them my story of coincidences in my favor piling up over time, and how I thought Someone had a plan for me of which I was not aware. I got kind of emotional about it all. At the evening service for Rosh Hashana, my attention wandered, and I saw myself as a child with my parents and at Passover seders with my grandparents, aunts and uncles, in Hebrew School and at high school dances, with my first boyfriend in New Orleans, and that time there was snow on the palm trees. I thought about how my grandmother loved me and worried about me when I lived in Miami, and the times I was sick there, about how I came to Los Angeles, my job issues and many career changes. I remembered again all the friends I helped bury during the worst years of the AIDS crisis: Fred and Art, Hal and the others whose names I can't bring up now, all these years later. I remembered how I wanted to meet someone and leave Los Angeles after I suffered a heart attack and my mother died a few weeks later. And then I saw Joe on the bimah leading services and said a quiet "Thank you, God." No one could have predicted fifty years ago that my life would be what it is now.

I still worry plenty about the climate, refugees, Israel, the United States, Morgantown, how long I'm going to live. I don't have any big, immediate worries. Physically, I'm as healthy as can be expected. I've started running, slowly and not far, after thirty-five years of not running. It's  a testament to the heart and asthma medication I'm on every day. Still, there are times when I am just exhausted, and no matter the time of day, I need to stop and go to bed. That happened Saturday, when we came back from the bat mitzvah in Pittsburgh, with a stop at Apple Butter Day at friends' farm in Mt. Morris, near here in Pennsylvania. 

When the kids asked me Thursday about my spiritual practice I told them the main thing is to say "Thank you, God." I do that when I wake up and when I start a meal, and at random times during the day. I extend that practice to being kind and compassionate to people around me (still working on that), charitable and generous in spirit. 

Joe bought me two t-shirts with funny things about cats for my birthday, and we'll have dinner out tonight. I'm speaking to another panel Thursday morning and my class continues in the afternoon.  At seventy, having lived longer than my father, grandfather and great-grandfather in my paternal line, I give thanks for my life today.

This is what 70 looks like

5777

If the Jewish calendar were more correct, Rosh Hashana would have been September 4 and 5, instead of October 3 and 4. That would have nixed our early August trip to California, but it would mean all the holidays would have been in September, and already over. Meanwhile, Osher Life-Long Learning, where both Joe and I are teaching six-week classes, started September 26. And I've been involved in some election campaigns, trying to attend an almost daily run of candidate events. I am on the Morgantown Library Commission, which meets October 19. I've been to one meeting, where they handed me a 96-page handbook, which I should have read by now.  I won't make my monthly trek to another county this month- no time. For Rosh Hashana, I agreed to chant haftarah, about three pages, in Hebrew. I'm chanting Torah at Yom Kippur, using a special holiday melody, 19 verses, mostly from memory, as the text has no notes, no vowels and no punctuation.

This year, I looked at Rosh Hashana as more of a burden, an inconvenience, getting in the way of my preparation for my class, called "The Great Hits of 1962," interfering with my social life and my desire to be something of a political player. I feel like this last year has been a separation from the temple and Rabbi Joe's shadow, making my own friends outside that circle, finding other things to do and places to go. Still, I agreed to read on the holidays, because no one else can do this, except Joe, and he is already overwhelmed.

Monday and Tuesday were Rosh Hashana day. I was prepared in my one good suit. I helped Joe with the early childrens' service before the regular one. The day was sunny and warm. Joe spoke beautifully, as he always does, I chanted well, the sanctuary was full of friendly faces. We threw our sins, in the form of bread, off the rail-trail bridge over Deckers Creek, then twenty of us went out for pizza.

Something happened during services. I saw the faces of my parents and grandparents greet me, and, as if I were dying, my whole life flashed by. I was comforted, not threatened in any way. I felt the ancestors were stopping by for a visit, and I saw good things from the past.

 I will be sixty-seven later this month. When I read the paper, I look at the obituaries. It's rare for me to know someone in Morgantown, but I count how many of the people listed are younger than I am. A lot. Sometimes I feel that I can look back at my life from a high mountain I've been climbing for the last sixty-seven years. I worry about falling off the mountain if I look back for too long. Better to look ahead to the fog-covered peak in front of me and keep going.

As we were leaving Los Angeles, in mid-August, I found out about the death two years ago of Danny Kolker, one of my first friends there in 1984. My high-school-and-after friend Darryl Ruder died from cancer earlier this year. I hadn't seen him in decades, but he friended me on Facebook, where he rarely posted. His children "tagged" him in a Facebook post after he died, which is how I found out. They told me he had spoken to  them about me.

In my class today (October 6) I will show a clip from "West Side Story," which won Best Picture and lots of other awards at The Academy Awards in 1962. I remember, maybe not accurately, how that movie affected me my overly sensitive twelve year old self.  I had never seen such sexuality, beautiful dancing, handsome men, some as dark as I was. This week, I cried watching George Chakiris and Rita Moreno dancing to "America," overwhelmed by the beauty of it, and by the passage of more than fifty years.I think about my spiritual ancestors, Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins and Stephen Sondheim, all furiously creative gay Jews. Chakiris, Moreno and Sondheim are still with us, now in their eighties. I wonder how they feel looking back down the mountain they have climbed.

I've cried a lot lately, not just for my friends who have died, or for my advancing age and rapidly decaying body. Not to worry: my tests are good, and I'm in better shape than many men my age. I can see how things are going generally, and I understand the rules about end of life. I'm more likely to cry for art than real life: watching a scene from "West Side Story," reading from Vikram Seth's now thirty-year old novel in verse "The Golden Gate," hearing a perfect sermon from my husband,The Rabbi, or even listening to the new Radiohead album, "A Moon-Shaped Pool," as I am while writing this.

I guess I did what I was supposed to on Rosh Hashana, after all, examining my life, expressing gratitude to God for what I have and what I've accomplished, and vowing to keep going and do better in the future.

I wish my few readers a happy and healthy 5777

Pre-Rosh Hashana

I have been joking here, and friends in California and Israel have been saying as well, about how hot it has been, and how it is a tradition that the hottest weather is at Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

During the seven years I worked as a High Holiday Cantor, I went through six weeks of anguish preparing for the holidays. The first three years, I worried about singing in key; the last four, I tried to make my art a holy experience for the congregation. I no longer work, but I am married to a rabbi. He spends his days now in his basement office (which is quite comfortable) churning out sermons. He also will lead services for the children, including  skits and parody songs, and host a discussion on Yom Kippur afternoon. He not only fasts, but doesn't drink coffee for twenty-five hours.

It's just after three in the morning now, and I'm not sleeping, mostly from indigestion I think, rather than the worries that keep most people up. This happens sometimes, but not every night. Still, when I'm up at night, when even the cat is asleep under our bed, I think of things.

It occurred to me tonight that a Season of Repentance is good to have every year. You forgive everyone, and even yourself, for all the knuckle-brained, thoughtless things you've done, and then you move on and vow to do better. It beats carrying around a lifetime of guilt.

I realize now, and I think Joe feels the same way, that we were raised to be selfish jerks. We were first-born sons of mid-twentieth century Jewish-American families. It was up to our mothers to cook and clean, even though they both worked. Our families expected us to find wives to take the place of our mothers. It didn't occur to them that we would live alone, or with another man.

 Sometimes I'll mention to Joe how something in our lives reminds me of some long-ago event, often  where I could have helped and didn't. He asks how many years ago the event was, and he usually says "Isn't it time you forgave yourself for that?"

That goes for other people, too. Often, I'm still resentful of people and groups of people."Isn't it time you forgave them?" Joe says. I was thinking tonight about a reunion from my high school next month, all the classes from 1963 (the first class at that school) to 1969. I graduated in 1967. The people I was most friendly with, the Jewish kids, and those who went away to college, mostly don't go to these things. And in a new group on Facebook from my junior high, a man and woman I remember confessed that they had a crush on each other. I don't imagine anyone would say that to me, and my crushes were often other boys ( although thinking about it, I can't remember anyone specifically). Suddenly I was back in the world of seventh and eighth grade hurt over not being invited to a bar mitzvah.

I'll be sixty-six in October, just after the holidays. It's time to let go of resentments from the past. They are exhausting and worthless. I've created a whole long life for myself. I can go back and visit that old world online or at a reunion, and be upbeat and charming, knowing that I'll return to my real life, my good life. I'll forgive the slights and hurts, and forgive myself for the slights and hurts I inflicted, knowingly and unknowingly, all of them. And, at this holiday season, I can vow to not be the selfish jerk I was raised to be, and be the loving, compassionate person I want to be.