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!

5783, The Morgantown High Walk Out and "Bros."

 The Jewish year 5783 started September 25 with Rosh Hashana, and continues tomorrow night with Yom Kippur, a fast day, when God supposedly decides "who shall live and who shall die." The day after Yom Kippur, I will be at WVU Heart and Vascular Institute having a stress test to see if my heart is still working. It's inconvenient because I'm in the middle of a campaign for United States Congress. I am happy to be doing this, but not sleeping or relaxing enough and, yes, I'm stressed out. I never expected to work this hard at this age.

One thing I did, partly for the campaign, and partly just to show support, was go to Morgantown High School when there was a student walk-out last week. The issue was that the superintendent of Monongalia County School District said that, based on an opinion from an unnamed attorney, teachers could not put up gay pride flags in their classroom. I think only a few teachers had them, but those teachers and the students were angry that the flags disappeared, and the students staged a walkout after lunch.

Public schools have been attacked in the Legislature, by the Governor and right-wing pundits for teaching kids anything about racism or sex or anything that would make parents uncomfortable. I'm guessing this was a fear reaction on the part of the superintendent.

When I was in high school, more than fifty-five years ago, no one was gay. Many of us turned out to be gay years later, but not in school. Gay Pride flags didn't exist.I went to the demonstration without intending to speak, but a young woman got up and said "I'm tired of old, privileged, white cisgender men telling us how to live." When I had the chance, I grabbed the megaphone (which didn't work) and I said "I'm an old, privileged, cisgender white male... and I'm queer." I expressed my support for the students, and said that I had lost jobs because I was gay and that many of my close friends had died from AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s. I then pointed out that I was the first openly gay City Councilor in Morgantown and that I'm now a candidate for United States Congress. I knew two of the high school students in the crowd, and a young woman working at a restaurant told me this week that she had seen me at the demonstration. 

But what I really want to say to the students is this: In my school, the daring people were couples where one was Jewish and one Christian. Our neighborhoods, and therefore our schools, were segregated and the most shocking person you could date was someone from another religion. Two couples like that in my class were told "it can't possibly work out." One of the couples was pregnant before we graduated. Both came to our 50th reunion in 2018 (a year late), and the pregnant one recently gloated on Facebook about a 56th anniversary, and how people told them they wouldn't stay together. So here's my message to the students at the demo: "Look around your school and see who you like and could live with. You are not too young to do this. I was attracted to a fellow student in high school and I think he was attracted to me also. We could never act on that and because he was Christian and I was Jewish and we lived in different neighborhoods, we couldn't really be close friends. I wish I could have gone to the 50th reunion with him, and said 'See, it did work out.' I didn't do that, but in more than 50 years, you could go to the reunion with your same-gender, trans or non-binary high school pal. I hope you would say 'That Barry Wendell told us we could do this, and he was right.' Don't be afraid to love."

My husband Joe is the rabbi at our local synagogue in Morgantown and he's stressed about the holidays, and a hundred other things he has to do. My stress is mostly about my Congressional campaign and my health. I've seen reviews of the movie "Bros," called a "gay rom-com," unusual because the gay characters are played by openly gay actors. Joe was washing dishes after dinner when I announced I was going to the 7 P.M. show at a local theater. I was surprised that it was playing in Morgantown, since edgy movies don't often get here. Joe dropped the sponge in the sink and ran to get a jacket and off we went. It was definitely entertaining and sexy. The lead actors weren't young, but certainly cute enough, and there were supporting actors who were different shades of gay and trans and different races. That was the P.C. part. 

Billy Eichner, who plays the lead and cowrote the script has a great speech about how he was always told to "tone it down" and appear "normal" and how it took him years to understand who he really was and be able to be that person. Joe started rabbinical school at 47. I started taking acting, singing and dance lessons at 36, started studying cantorial music at 43 and entered politics at 66. We both were held back in careers we didn't really like because we were gay and clearly not "normal" people. Now, late in life, we both understand who we really are, and while as clergy and politician we still have to hold back a bit, at least we are fully aware of our strengths and weaknesses. 

I've read that the box office for this movie was dismal, but we loved it. It's well acted, charming, sexy, good to look at and there were some laugh-out-loud bits, some of which might only be understood by gay audiences. Joe and I were the only ones in the theater at 7 P.M. on a Monday. If it's only a movie for certain gay people (I think it has universal appeal) it was still worthwhile, and I applaud everyone involved in it. I was moved and my thoughts were provoked.

It's well after 11 now, and I have to work on my campaign tomorrow and go to services in the evening tomorrow night and most of the day Wednesday. If I pass the stress test Thursday morning, I have three local events the rest of the day, and I'm to be in a parade out of town Saturday morning. Joe is teaching a class tomorrow afternoon at Life-Long Learning before services. I'm glad we took time out to go to a movie where we saw better-looking (and a generation younger) versions of ourselves. We needed to laugh and cry and be out of our regular life for a few hours. 

I hope everyone is sealed in the Book of Life for a healthy and fulfilling 5783.

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.

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

Yom Kippur

I'm generally a little scattered in my ways. No, really. This week, I've had to find a way to be organized- to study my Torah chanting for Wednesday, put together my class for Thursday, straighten up the house so the cleaning woman can come, post questions to the League of Women Voters to ask candidates at their event tonight. And I haven't been feeling that well. On and off fever, coughing, feeling tired. When I last lived in this part of the world, in January 1978, I had been sick on probably my last ten October 21 birthdays in Baltimore. A doctor finally suggested it was a seasonal allergy. After four years in the East, the allergies are coming back.

These are the things I was thinking about as we started Yom Kippur. The evening service, when Kol Nidre is sung, is easy, unless you're the cantor. Traditionally, Kol Nidre is sung three times. At Tree of Life we had a pianist and  celloist play Bruch's Kol Nidre, a concert piece based on a traditional melody, then the cantor sang it once. The prayer asks that we be excused from vows we were forced to make. It was written when Jews were forced to convert to other religions to save their lives. Modern Judaism has tried to take it out of the service, but regardless of its meaning, it is what people expect to open Yom Kippur.

I worked as a cantorial soloist for High Holy Days from 1997 to 2003, at four different synagogues in seven years. When the rabbi said "And now the cantor will chant Kol Nidre," I realized what an awe-inspiring task I had taken on. Not about the words in the prayer, but that Jews in many countries had heard this prayer for hundreds of years, and that I was part of a great tradition. I felt ancestral cantors looking over my shoulder. When someone dies in the Bible it is said they "are gathered to their ancestors." When I sang Kol Nidre, I felt that the ancestors had gathered with us, that they had come to listen to this prayer with their descendants.

I guess I was jealous of our cantor, Daniel Hazan ("Chazzan" is the Hebrew word for cantor). He is a French Jew from Morocco, who escaped back to France with his family, then emigrated to Israel, and now, with a Doctorate in Music, teaches at a college in Mexico. He sings both Sephardi (Spanish) and Ashkenazic (German) melodies. He's learned a few more modern pieces, mostly because Joe asked him to and got him sheet music. He improvises a lot. It works well and the congregation loves him. There is no accompanist and he gets through pages of material quickly by not stopping to do fancy melodies.

I loved those fancy melodies. Lots of new tunes were written in the post World War II era by composers following Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein. At the cantor conferences I used to attend, new pieces were introduced, some of them just gorgeous. Many of them called for a keyboard and choir.  The last four years I worked, I was a good enough singer to pull them off. I had a full choir and accompaniment two of my seven years, and a pianist most of the other years. While Cantor Hazan was singing, I often imagined the beautiful piece I would have sung at that point. Of course, I won't ever do that again.

We had a break in services at 12:30, and Joe and I came home. He left to go back for his teaching session at 2:30. I stayed home, slept about 45 minutes, had a peanut butter and banana sandwich, fed the cat, and left the house at 3:30 to be back for the 4:30 afternoon service, where Joe had asked me to sing "Zog Nit Keymil" a Yiddush song sung by Polish-Jewish partisans in World War II. I walked a half-mile to the PRT, our driverless mass-transit system here in Morgantown, then walked another half-mile to the temple from the end of the line in the center of town. It was 75 F. and sunny out, so there were no weather issues. I was so tired, I didn't think I would make it. Why? Well, in addition to my seasonal "cold," I had chanted nineteen lines of Hebrew in the morning, memorizing the tune, the vowels and the punctuation. That alone was exhausting. I know I could not stand through an entire Yom Kippur service, even if I didn't fast. Daniel Hazan, who is at least ten years younger than I am, and thin, was in strong voice until the end.

It's no good longing for what you can no longer do. People don't want a cantor like me, and in places where there are many alternatives, i.e. not Morgantown, people often like peppy tunes played on guitar, where the congregation can sing along easily. Daniel Hazan and I both do a few things that people can sing with us, but we don't play guitar, and peppy melodies are not our style. Jewish liturgical music has moved on.

I try to live in the times I live in, and act age appropriately. It's not cool for someone married and my age to tell a younger person they look "hot." I still work out at a gym, carefully, and ride a bicycle, also carefully. I don't wear clothing that reveals my numerous tattoos, like some of the young men and women at the gym, and I don't lift 100 pounds. I try to be asleep by eleven. I can't physically do what a High Holy Day cantor does anymore. I get that.

Rabbi Joe was brilliant. I don't know if people realize how hard it is to script every word you say that is not in the book, to write two lengthy sermons and then have to do more for the following weekend. He's not afraid to talk about God as a believer, and yet to admit that the whole concept can be hard to swallow.

Our prayer book is the 1976 Reform  version. Lots of it is readings about social justice, in English. While it is non-partisan, it's clearly not in favor of the selfishness we hear today in conservative circles. The emphasis is on sharing what we have, helping those in need, especially refugees fleeing for their lives. It speaks of showing compassion for others, about treating "the strangers in our midst" as our equals, about understanding that all people are created in the image of God.

For me, it means not calling people "troglodytes"(what Joe makes me say instead of "assholes"), and sticking to issues when talking about politicians who have been bought off, or don't see things as I do.

There is a memorial service late in the day. We publish a book of names people want remembered. Joe and I both list our parents and grandparents on the page we buy, and I add my Uncle Steve and his boyfriend of many years, and my grandparents' brothers and sisters, who were kind to me, but had no children. They are my mother's Aunt Grace and Uncle Bernie, and my father's Aunt Yetta and Uncle Jake. I thought about them during the yizkor service. People were called on to read pieces about loss and about love after someone dies. The readers, softened up by fasting and a long service, often cried.

At Yom Kippur, we wish to be renewed for another year of life. With most of the congregation over sixty, that wish takes on a more literal meaning. I thought about myself, and about Joe, and the future of our congregation here in Morgantown.

It was, for me, and I think most of the congregation, a meaningful Yom Kippur. I will think about what I saw, heard and felt this year for a long time. Meanwhile, our next holiday starts Monday night. And I'm teaching the hits of 1962 in an hour and a half! Someone just asked me about adding Bob Dylan to the mix.

The Holidays and The Hospital

During the holidays this year, I had some medical issues. Just after Rosh Hashana, I went in for an echocardiogram. My cardiologist was afraid my heart wasn't functioning as it should. He called late the afternoon before Yom Kippur, and left a message that said. "Call me back. Don't worry, it's not urgent."

Our Yom Kippur services run all day, from a children's service at 9 A.M., through morning, afternoon, Yizkor (Memorial) and Ne'ilah (closing) service. Joe also runs a discussion group. There is a short break in the early afternoon. Joe and I came home and napped briefly. He was fasting from the night before- not even coffee. I don't try. He went back to temple, and I stayed for a light lunch and more sleep. Repentance and prayer are important, but if I can't concentrate for lack of food, it's not worth it. And I have medication to take with food in the morning.

While I was home, the cardiologist called again.

"Your heart muscle is weaker than three years ago. We need to go in and see if there is something we can fix. It doesn't have to be this week."

I said "Fine. Can we do it after November first? I'm teaching a class."

"I wouldn't wait that long."

"Oh. After October 6? I'm going to D.C. for that weekend."

"We shouldn't wait that long. I'll have the nurse call you."

I returned to services for Yizkor and Ne'ilah. I thought about my parents and the medical choices they made near the ends of their lives. They chose to live as fully as they could. When we came home, I told Joe what the doctor had said.

The nurse called Friday and we set it up for Tuesday, September 29. She said it would be outpatient. I should be fine for the weekend. I told her I was teaching a class starting Thursday and moderating a panel Thursday night.

I love Sukkot, although I understand that most Jews don't observe it. It comes only five days after Yom Kippur, after which people are depressed from all the repentance and fasting.  But Sukkot is the time to relax, visit friends, eat outside in a little hut if one chooses to build one (we don't). Sukkot lasts seven or eight days and is followed by Simchat Torah, when we celebrate the annual cycle of Torah reading. In Reform Judaism, the first day is a religious holiday, and the eighth, Simchat Torah. The rest is relaxing.

Our temple was invited join the temple in Wheeling for a barbecue Sunday night, the 27th, as the holiday started. Joe and I were the only ones from Morgantown to make the 75 mile trip to Wheeling. Beth Jacowitz-Chottiner, the rabbi there, and her husband, Lee Chottiner, who once lived in Morgantown, have become our friends.

Monday I attended "Safe Zone" training, to learn to be a trainer for a program to combat anti-gay violence at WVU. At the end of the training, I opted not to become a trainer, because I don't have a presence at the university. I told Ben, the trainer, that I would be at Ruby Memorial on Tuesday, and couldn't swear I would lead the panel discussion I had arranged for Thursday night, part of Diversity Week at WVU. I barely managed to keep from crying.

Monday night, Zalman and Hindy Gurewitz, the couple who run the local Chabad, invited us for dinner in their sukkah. I'm not a big fan of Chabad, but  Zalman and Hindy have been friendly to us and we've been guests at Chabad. In a town with so few Jews, I respect their outreach to the community. Joe had scheduled a meeting at temple, the second night of Sukkot being less important to Reform Jews. It was hard for me to relax knowing I was going to the hospital the next day. This was their night to have adults in the sukkah, as opposed to college students, their usual clientele.

Joe rescheduled an appointment with the dentist to take me to the hospital Tuesday. I'm going to skip the gory details. It was an ordeal. I had to make it explicit that I would sign no forms without Joe present, and that he was privy to any information. The whole procedure was delayed, and when it was done about 5:30, I had three new stents in my arteries. They kept me overnight, and I left Wednesday morning. I was well enough to go shopping in the evening, as long as Joe carried the packages. I was told not to lift more than five pounds.

I slept late and skipped my writing group Thursday, but I got out to teach my Beach Boys class at OLLI from 1 to 3. I covered 1964 and 1965, the Beach Boys' most successful years, and to my mind, the best years ever for Top 40 pop music. I crashed at home for a bit, then Joe and I went to WVU, for my panel for Diversity Week, "Love For All- Religion and the LGBT Community." I had five panelists, Joe and other clergy, including three Christians and a Buddhist. I was afraid no one would show, or that I would pass out from heart failure or exhaustion, but we had sixty people and I was fine. Many asked questions, on file cards which I had purchased earlier in the day, so that the askers could be anonymous, and I could filter out the nastiest questions. I asked all the questions I was given, and the panelists were brilliant in their answers. The take-away is that God loves everyone, that we have to be tolerant of other opinions, and that young LGBT people, confronted with hatred from their own family, need to, at some point, break away and assert their independence.

I rested up Friday so I could go to our Sukkot dinner at temple. I tried to limit what I ate there based on the guidelines I got in the hospital, so only one slice of pizza and one cookie.

The sun came out Saturday for the first time all week, so I walked for about forty-five minutes. That was the most I could do, and I felt a tightness in my chest even walking he small hills near here. We were invited to a dinner celebrating the fifth anniversary of a lovely couple from temple who found each other after their spouses died. The crowd was mostly department heads from WVU, current and retired, the food from a  great Middle-Eastern restaurant at Morgantown Airport. A young woman from Indonesia played piano. She wore a white pleated skirt with black piano keys for stripes. Early on she played classical music, but later switched to Gershwin songs. I told her I could sing along, and I did, and got Joe and others to sing, too, especially when she played 'Embraceable You," the first dance at our wedding. The party was called for six to nine. I dragged Joe out at 9. I had been sitting quietly, exhausted, since about 8:15.

Reform Simchat Torah was Sunday night, but we celebrated it Sunday morning with the kids in Sunday School. We rolled out the Torah around the sanctuary, marched around with the scrolls while singing repurposed nursery rhymes ("Old MacDonald had a Torah", etc.). Monday, the last day of the festival season, I stayed home and finally got the rest I was supposed to have all week.

What I learned this holiday season is to be grateful. I'm grateful for my husband, who stayed with me when I needed him most, for the cardiologist who spotted a problem and, hopefully, fixed it. I'm grateful for life, for whatever health and time I have left. Yes, I believe in a God of mercy, who has saved my life several times. I am always conscious of God's watchfulness, even though I understand that life is finite. I'm sorry I missed my 48th high school class reunion in Baltimore and time with my sister and her family. I pushed myself a lot, but that would have been too much.

Things are still busy. This afternoon (October 8) I'm introducing my elderly students to "Pet Sounds" and "Smiley Smile. " That should be interesting.

Sunday night September 27 in Wheeling with Rabbi Joe Hample, Rabbi Beth Jacowitz-Chottiner and Lee Chottiner

Friday evening October 2 in the sukkah at Tree of Life

Sunday, October 4 at Simchat Torah services

The Cardiologist-Yom Kippur

I'm supposed to see the cardiologist every six months. They sent me a notice the first of June to make an appointment, but I was seeing my regular doctor, a dermatologist and the dentist in June, so I didn't respond. Then they called in early September and asked me to make an appointment. The pharmacy was cutting off my meds because I hadn't been to the doctor, so I went yesterday.

My cardiologist is in his mid-thirties, handsome and charming, with dark Italian skin, a pretty smile, and a southern drawl. The problem is that he wants to run tests. When I saw him in January, I agreed to some kind of stress test with radioactive stuff, now that I have Medicare to pay. At the time he said "Your heart is not as bad as you think."

This time he was concerned, as was the dermatologist in June, that my legs are swollen. After  an ultrasound in June, they decided that wasn't so bad either. This time, the cardiologist said the magic words "heart failure." Which is what killed my father. Maybe it's not that. They checked my thyroid (always iffy) and maybe that is the problem. Still he wants to do an echocardiogram next week. He asked about chest pain and shortness of breath. I don't think they are any worse than ever. But yes, sometimes

We are in the Jewish Days of Repentance, when we ask God to write us in the Book of Life for another year. I've always looked at this as superstition, and maybe I still do. But next week, at Yom Kippur, I will pray for a long life with added fervor. I have friends who are in much more perilous health than I, people who can't walk a flight of steps or ride a bicycle. I will pray for them too.