Tag Archives: faith

Irrevocably Damaged

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My topic today is not something I really want to talk about. However I feel compelled to as it is very much on my mind. It is disturbing and upsetting. I wish I could go to sleep, wake up, and have it not exist.

I attended and received my undergraduate degree from Pennsylvania State University. It wasn’t a tough decision to go there.  My finances were limited and my grades were good not great so attending a state school was a certainty.  I knew I wanted to go away and PSU offered me the opportunity to live at home for two years and save money and then go away for two years.  Besides, I had family members go there, friends were going there, and they had a great football team.

I didn’t love college – not by a long shot.  Part of it was the school’s fault. Or to be more clear my inability to take advantage of what the school had to offer. In retrospect, a smaller school would have been more appropriate for me. I was a shy kid who needed guidance. The school is tremendous with over 40,000 students at the main campus, Happy Valley.  So, unless a student is aggressive or determined, it is very easy to get lost in the shuffle. Too often, I was lost and ultimately did not gain as much as I would have liked from my college experience.

However, there were a few days in particular that made the college experience rich.  Football weekends were a spectacle. The town and the bars would start filling up on Thursday nights with alumni and others returning to old glory.  The energy would continue through Friday and then Saturdays were even more energized. Getting to the stadium meant going through the parking lot and the fans — who are regularly voted number one in terms of tailgating.  The game was a constant barrage of cheers and chants. By the time, Saturday night rolled around, especially if the team won, the town could have been lit up by the energy the fans gave off.

While the team was good when I attended, they were not number one, but that didn’t matter. They were a source of pride. Joe Paterno, legendary coach, was like the wise old grandfather who everyone loved.  They were winners, and they did it the right way. Success with Honor was their motto.  I believed it. We believed it.

When I graduated from Penn State, Jerry Sandusky was regarded as a top notch defensive coach who might have someday succeeded Paterno and become the head coach. What was he doing then when not on the sidelines?  Was he unsuccessfully fighting his demons?  It was only a little while later that he begun harming kids.  These kids are not children anymore. What has become of them? What are their lives like now?  How many more joined them as victims because the abuse was not reported? Maybe those who knew did not know the details or the extent of the problem, but they knew something had happened.  They knew and did nothing.  The famous Edmund Burke quote comes to mind, “In order for evil to flourish, all that is required is for good men to do nothing.”

I hope that the school I attended can handle this terrible scandal in the most professional, humble way possible as they start to make amends. Yes, this news story too shall pass but for me and others who were “Penn State Proud” something has been irrevocably damaged.

Want to be There

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We all have people in our lives who we see only periodically but would like to see more often. However, life is busy with alot of stuff, and the time to socialize is limited. Everyone is going in different directions.

My mother has some friends in her life that she has known since she was a child.  These friends of hers became like family to my siblings and I. We spent time with them growing up, and they always came to our and now our children’s life cycle events.  My niece’s bat mitzvah is coming up and so that means my mom and her crew will have a chance to get together. Well, unfortunately not. During a recent conversation, my mom listed the ailments that her friends are experiencing. “It makes me feel old and sad. I know we all get older but to not be able to do the things you used to be able to do is hard. You know.”  I said, “Sort of.”   I had little to add to the conversation and hung up soon thereafter while feeling sad myself.

Last weekend, my mother called to tell me of the passing of ‘Uncle Jimmy.’ His wife and my mother had been friends for over 60 years. He was a good man who always seemed happy to see you. He made a person feel that what they had to say was interesting, and he wanted to hear it.  It was always a treat to see him and his wife. So, when I heard the news about his passing, I wanted to attend the funeral to pay my respects and moreso to let his family know how much I respected, enjoyed, and admired their husband/father. However, I could not go as I’ve missed quite a few days of work recently.

I’ll make the call, be sympathetic, express condolences, and try to convey my feelings. I am sure they will appreciate the call and say it is okay, but it doesn’t feel like enough to me. I want to share this loss and grieve with them. Actually, what I really want is to see my mom and her crew at my niece’s bat mitzvah.

A Time to Consider

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The Jewish holiday of Rosh Ha Shana is just about upon us. The New Year or head of the year as it is literally translated is an exciting and challenging time of the year. 

R.H. has the bells and whistles that each Jewish holiday has – food!  The customary foods people eat at this time of year are rounded challah with raisins and apples dipped with honey.  Neither one of them leaves me swooning for more, but I make sure to have them.  After all, I do like traditions. Sweet foods in general will permeate holiday tables to remind us to pray for a sweet new year.  Unfortunately, we might not get the idea until too much of the food has been eaten, so it is not a good holiday for diets!

I find R.H. to be one of the more difficult and challenging holidays of the year.  This holiday begins a process which is focused on repentance (actually pretty much any re word would have worked there) and hope.  We are instructed to pray and ask G-d to forgive us for our misdeeds of the year.  We pray that the coming year should be one where we are blessed, recognize those blessings, and fulfill the promise of those blessings.  

As I have gotten older, I find I have more to pray for.  It’s not just my sports teams winning (by the way, terrible loss for the Eagles last Sunday), doing well in school, and for it to be summer again.  I think of my family, friends, work, and the world in general which seems to have gotten both bigger and smaller as I have aged. However, I believe one of the major themes is internal introspection (I wonder what trend therapists have noted about this time of the year).  I strive to consider what I have accomplished during the past year and what I would like to accomplish during the coming year.  I review my personal growth – both my successes and failings.  I am one of those people who is his own harshest critic. Maybe, it is a form of conceit, but I believe that I can and should strive to accomplish great things and do it while being a great person.  In the end though, I see that as hope and that is the overriding theme of the holiday and the 10 day period that leads us into Yom Kippur. When I hear that shofar blast on Yom Kippur, I feel invigorated and hopeful that I can make the coming year better than the last. Of course, it will all start with the bagel and lox waiting at home for me. Shana tova.

Family Tonic

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Someone forwarded me an article the other day which I happened to read. In my drive for organization, I often delete this type of item with barely a glance. I take great joy and feel a sense of accomplishment when my inbox is empty (unlike my gas tank).  Everything has been handled – ahh, relax. Anyway, the article is about a Jewish man who is 101 years old.  He and his wife lived in Poland around World War II. They left their one and a half year old daughter on a doorstep of a lawyer and his wife who did not have a child. They hoped that the lawyer and his wife wanted a child. They put a crucifix on her and a note begging that she be taken care of. What must that have been like – leaving your baby on the steps of a stranger ignoring her cries as you walk away?  I can’t imagine. Ultimately, the man survived the Holocaust, but his wife did not.  He also fought as part of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.  The article goes on to tell of the difficulties the man had in finding his daughter after the war and the life they made for themselves.

Yesterday was August 10th, the day of my maternal grandmother’s birthday. Actually, that is when she celebrated it.  Her birthday and the exact year she was born remain a mystery. Records were not kept in Russia when she was born, at least not for Jews.  It’s as if she and all the Jews did not matter all that much.  They could live on their shtetls and try to avoid pogroms and eke out a living, but as individuals they did not matter. Ultimately, my grandmother, along with three of her siblings and her mother, escaped Russia and after an extended stop-over in Romania made it to America where her father had been working for 10 years in order to bring them over.  A few years after arriving in America, my grandmother met my grandfather and the rest is history – well family history – as they say.  My grandmother chose to have her birthday on August 10th because that was also her wedding anniversary (Yesterday would have been their 81st anniversary. My paternal grandparents got married August 9th 80 years ago.)  I think that says a great deal about the kind of person she was. Birthdays are a time when an individual is celebrated – cake, presents, etc. However, she chose to forego all that and instead celebrate her birth on the same day as her marriage. My grandmother faced the difficulties an immigrant faces in addition to medical and financials struggles, but she and my grandfather got by.  Ultimately, for my grandmother it was about family, the kinder, – that was the most important thing to her.

My grandmother and the gentleman noted above come from a different world than the one we live in today. It was a world where Jews were irrelevant and much worse. It is easy to imagine that the drive to survive in a hard world could leave one bitter and angry. However, the tonic they found in family is one we can all look to today as well.