Noah

This is the time to study Noah, when the waters are rising.
“Aseh l’cha tevah,” God said. Make yourself an ark.

On the front end of dawn, there are no distinctions between water and land and sky.
Only mist and darkness.
Distinctions emerge later, riding on a flood of sunlight.
Distinctions and information require choices.

The sea is calm this morning. The waves are gentle.

The data are in, said our local county supervisor this week.
The sea is rising. Erosion is threatening the coast.
We need to act to preserve our community.
If I listen hard,
I can hear echoes of other voices in communities around the planet,
saying the same thing.

“Make yourself a tevah,” God said. An ark.

Translate “tevah” as “word,” said our teacher the Holy Baal Shem Tov.

Build yourself an ark of prayer and knowledge and kindness and faith —
and the floods in your own day will not overwhelm you.
You will live to witness the fulfillment of God’s covenant:
the world will not be destroyed again.
It will not.
Hold on to this faith, even when all you can see is mist and darkness.
But build yourself a tevah.

Now it’s our turn.
We need a tevah big enough to include every person and all life.
We can only build it together.
We need action infused with love.

The lesson of Noah: get ready.
Emerging from mist and darkness: the rainbow.

Essay & photos by Aryae Coopersmith

Popcorn

I settled down on the couch to relax and read
with my late afternoon tea and popcorn.

Then you came clawing your way up.
Purring, butting your head against my arm,
you demanded what we both knew was rightfully yours.

I tried to ignore you but I couldn’t.

I tried to roll you over on your back and rub your belly,
but you swiped at me and backed off.
You would have none of it. First things first.
“Okay,” I said, “popcorn!”

You, with the ailing teeth of an old cat, had trained me well,
making it clear that you couldn’t handle big pieces
by spitting them out and
covering the cushion with drool-soaked half-eaten popcorn.

So I broke off a little piece, just the way you liked it,
and set it on the cushion.
It was gone in a flash,
and there you were purring, butting your head against my arm.

It was many little pieces until you were done.
Then you rolled over on your back,
inviting me to place my arm on your furry belly
while you placed your paws around my arm.

Wendy said it best, “It’s not the popcorn; it’s the love.”

That’s how our afternoons went.
Until now.

I bring my tea and popcorn to the living room
with that familiar, half-conscious feeling of excitement
that comes from knowing how excited you will be.

But the room is empty.
Then the dark recognition — you’re not here.
You died yesterday in Wendy’s arms.
We put your furry body, still warm,
in a little box and set it with flowers on the table.

I look at my bowl of popcorn.
Today I don’t want any.
So I put it up on the table, near the flowers
where your box was.
My tears are still hidden,
like a tiny spring high in the hills
that has yet to become a river.

As I drink my tea
while my book sits next to me unopened,
I can hear you purring
and feel your head bumping against me.
No really, I can.

“What do you want?” I say.
And I can feel the answer:
now it’s your turn to feed me my popcorn.
I reach my hand toward the bowl.

It’s not the popcorn; it’s the love.

The Moment Has Come

October 7, 2022

Eight years ago when our cat Kislev was sick, I wrote a poem for her. We were blessed that she lived eight more years. But she died this morning. She had spent the night sleeping by Wendy’s side, then got up and, feisty as ever, screeched and swiped at the other cat. Then she was gone.

We put her in a little box on our living room table, surrounded by flowers and a candle. Wendy will be taking her to the vet this afternoon for cremation.

The poem I wrote for her eight years ago still resonates today.

Moment

When the moment comes
you leap lightening-swift
and disappear into the bushes.
Then you trot into the house,
tail in the air, bearing your gift for all to admire:
a wounded hummingbird.

We bury the bird out back, under the lemon tree.
You follow with your tail wagging, watching intently.
As we’re digging the hole,
you turn and leap into the herb garden to chase a dragonfly.

We get a bell and hesitantly buckle it to your neck,
hoping to save humming birds without shackling your spirit.

Next morning at dawn
as I sit meditating on the deck overlooking the ocean,
I hear a tinkling bell, feel a soft thud on my lap,
hear purring in my ears, and feel drool on my hands.
Now I know:
your spirit is not to be shackled.

The bell becomes part of you.
All of us, Wendy and I and the other cats,
look up whenever we hear the tinkles
that announce your entry.

Then you arrive, tail wagging and eyes bright,
scanning us, the other cats’ food bowls,
and everything that flies, crawls or moves.
No matter where you look or leap,
you expect, and receive, only good.

When you perch on the deck railing
watching the flying birds with such intensity,
you seem like,
were it not for the laws of physics
tied like a bell around your neck,
you would take off and fly with them.

So little and so young,
you’ve became our teacher.

Then you get sick.
You breathe fast, look panicked, hide under the bed.
Wendy takes off your bell.

“We tried to drain her lungs but it’s not working,”
the vet tells us by phone three days later.
Tomorrow’s decision:
try to keep her alive with expensive, painful, uncertain surgery,
or let her go now?

Wendy and I sit in silence on the couch,
the one where you love to sit between us.
We pray, cry, hold each other.

The next morning, at dawn, I’m back on the deck, seeking guidance.
Who knows the moment of death? Who can decide?
Now I can see you on the railing,
tail wagging as you look out at the vast expanse before you,
no longer encumbered by the bell around your neck,
eyes intently ahead, quivering with excitement,
ready to leap when the moment comes.

I posted these reflections on December 25, 2021, during my involvement with the “8 Candles Sanctuary,” an interfaith group within the ServiceSpace community.

For those of us who grew up Jewish in the U.S., relating to Christmas can be complicated.

So I spent time this Christmas writing some reflections about the evolution of my “Jewish Christmas” and sharing them with friends in the “Eight Candles Cathedral.” It’s a community of eight people from diverse religious backgrounds, lead by Rev. Charles Gibbs, holding space as an experiment for an emerging interfaith practice.

I’d like to also share these reflections here with you.

My Great-Grandparents
For generations of Jews living in Eastern Europe, Christmas — sadly — was a time where they experienced hate and fear from Catholic priests and Christian neighbors who labeled them as “Christ killers.” And on Christmas the emotions and behaviors toward “Christ killers” could be especially strong. People could spit at Jews in public with no consequences. And the Jews would often return the favor, when no one was watching, by spitting at the local Church.

My Grandparents
When my dad was a kid in the 1920s growing up on New York’s Lower East Side, the most important task for his parents, my Grandpa Harry and Grandma Rose, other than putting bread on the table everyday, was learning how to raise their kids to be “real Americans,” so that they’d be able to get ahead and prosper here.

Christmas presented a challenge. On the one hand, they had learned from their parents that it was their sacred duty as Jews to not have anything to do with Christmas.

On the other hand, they also saw it as their sacred duty to become good Americans. And everyone knew that Christmas was one of the most high-profile American holidays. So how to distance themselves from the Christian Christmas, while participating in the “American” Christmas? Or to put it another way, how to celebrate Christmas as Jews here in America?

The answer for them — together with many other immigrant Jewish families on the Lower East Side — take the family out for a Chinese dinner and then go a movie! The Chinese immigrant families, who also were not Christian, would go to work and keep their restaurants open on Christmas. And like the Jewish families, they were not yet accepted as “real Americans,” and were struggling to offer better lives to their children. So they were natural allies.

The custom spread to Jewish communities throughout the U.S., and continues to this day — even as Wendy and I have often enjoyed a Chinese meal with Jewish friends on Christmas, followed by a good movie.  🙂

My Parents
My parents and many of their friends were the visible result of the success of their parents: affluent, living in the suburbs in homes of their own, preparing their children to enter college.

I grew up in an affluent suburban community of mostly white Protestants. There were very few Jews. My parents, Sam and Flo, held two important sets of values for themselves and their children.  First, to be proud of our Jewish heritage, and celebrate it. Second, to blend in with the larger community as loyal, successful Americans.

So when December came around, we would first celebrate Hanukkah, and my brothers and I would get a present each night for eight nights. Not bad for a kid! Then when Christmas came around we would get a Christmas tree, decorate it, and put it in the window, just like all the neighbors. Only we would call it a “Hanukkah bush!” Then we kids got to hang our stockings under the tree on Christmas Eve, and on Christmas morning, like all the other kids in the neighborhood, we’d get to run downstairs with great excitement and see what presents Santa had brought for us. Wow! Not only did we get as many presents as our Christian neighbors, we got even more!

Me
The problem with my parents’ Jewish Christmas was, that by the time I was in my teens, it all seemed pretty hollow and meaningless.

My best friend in high school was Tony. My father was a Republican Conservative Jew. His was a Communist atheist Jew.

When we started school every morning Tony and I had to participate, like everyone else, in saying the (Christian) Lord’s Prayer. And as Christmas season approached, we were expected to join all the other students in singing Christmas carols at assemblies.

During our Junior year, we decided that we’d had enough. We no longer wanted to participate in these activities that didn’t reflect who we were. So we began sitting silently during the Lords Prayer, and during Christmas carols. For a while no one bothered us, and everything seemed okay.

But things came to a head at the French Club Christmas Party. Our French teacher, a crusty middle-aged woman who had grown up in Nazi Germany and came to the U.S. after the War, would often remind us how disciplined and obedient teenagers were in Germany when she was our age.  She required that all French students, if we wanted to pass her class and graduate high school, had to attend her Christmas party. Tony and I weren’t thrilled about this, but we didn’t see any alternative, so we reluctantly showed up.

Somehow we wound up sitting in the front row as the teacher sat down at the piano, sang French Christmas carols, and accompanied herself. And she had made it clear that she expected us to sing along with her, in a good French accent. For Tony and me this was too much. We burst out laughing.

The teacher banged on the piano, stopped the music, and turned around with flames coming out of her nostrils. “Human scum! Human scum!” she screamed. “Out! Out of my class!”

Tony and I grabbed our stuff and ran, laughing all the way. We wound up downstairs, in the men’s locker room, drawing graffiti on the walls that were not very flattering to the French teacher.

Soon the gym teacher came along. “What’s this, men?” he asked. When we finally explained, he insisted on marching us upstairs and watching as we apologized to the French teacher.

“We’re sorry for writing graffiti that disrespected you,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Tony, “and we’re sorry we called you a Nazi bitch.”

The good news — somehow we made it through high school.

Years later when I was living in San Francisco at the House of Love and Prayer, saying the traditional Hebrew prayers three times a day, I came to appreciate the human universality of the longing to connect with the Infinite. Catholics, Hindus, Buddhists, Sufis and Sikhs would come visit, and we’d all pray together.

My teacher Reb Shlomo said, “we’re all on the same path; we’re just wearing different shoes.” There was no problem of a Jewish Christmas, any more than of a Christian Hanukah. As Reb Zalman and Matthew Fox together taught, “deep ecumenism” is about each of us learning more about our own spiritual journeys, thru the depth of experiencing something of each others’.

Father John
Fast forward a few decades, and it’s Christmas Eve in Half Moon Bay. My friends Richard and Martha, devout Catholics, invited me to join them for Midnight Mass at their church. As a Jew, I had never been to a Catholic mass before and I didn’t know if it would be right for me to be there. But it was a sacred event that they were inviting me to, and they were good friends and I trusted them, so I said sure.

When we got to the Church, Richard and Martha introduced me to Father John, the priest who would be conducting the Mass. He welcomed me very courteously and made me feel at home. But that was nothing compared to what was to come.

The Mass began, and I was surprised to notice how closely it seemed to track with the traditional Hebrew prayers. I recognized some of the same Psalms, in the same order.

But then it came time for Holy Communion. I knew that as a non-Catholic I could not be included, and would have to sit this one out, while everyone else went up for Communion. Father John picked up the wine cup and said the prayer in Latin. Then, looking into the crowd of worshipers, straight at me, he repeated the blessing, this time in Hebrew.

No one else in the church may have understood what he was saying or doing, but I did. He was recognizing my presence, and honoring me me by including me. It was an act of courtesy that I’ll never forget, a special Jewish Christmas!

Father John and I became friends after that, and would sometimes go up to San Francisco together to go to the movies.

Jesus
Based on recent writings by both Christian and Jewish scholars, I have come to a deeper appreciation of Jesus. Of how Jesus can be seen historically as a radically creative first century rabbi who in his day was teaching Torah — in new ways — to Jews. And how the core values of Torah — love God, love your neighbor, love the stranger — can be brought to everyone.

So a Christmas question that this Jew is holding now: how do I want to relate to Rabbi Jesus?

A Jewish Christmas Now
So this year I’m grateful to my friends in the the Eight Candles Cathedral for holding a “place” where I can celebrate Christmas. And to friends in the greater ServiceSpace community, in the Torah Circle, OWL, and communities everywhere, who are committed to the reality that, in Reb Zalman’s words: “the only way we’re going to get it together, is together.” And I look forward to the new ways of celebrating Christmas, and all of our traditions, that are emerging.

A Christmas Eve in Half Moon Bay

Some 20 years ago, on Christmas Eve, my friends Richard and Martha, devout Catholics, invited me to join them for Midnight Mass at their church. As a Jew, I had never been to a Catholic mass before and I didn’t know if it would be right for me to be there. But it was a sacred event that they were inviting me to, and they were good friends and I trusted them, so I said sure.

When we got to the Church, Richard and Martha introduced me to Father John, the priest who would be conducting the Mass. He welcomed me very courteously and made me feel at home. But that was nothing compared to what was to come.

The Mass began, and I was surprised to notice how closely it seemed to track with the traditional Hebrew prayers. I recognized some of the same Psalms, in the same order. 

But then it came time for Holy Communion. I knew that as a non-Catholic I could not be included, and would have to sit this one out, while everyone else went up for Communion. Father John picked up the wine cup and said the prayer in Latin. Then, looking into the crowd of worshipers, straight at me, he repeated the blessing, this time in Hebrew.

No one else in the church may have understood what he was saying or doing, but I did. He was recognizing my presence, and honoring me me by including me. It was an act of courtesy that I’ll never forget.

Father John and I became friends after that, and would sometimes go up to San Francisco together to go to the movies. 

Lesson in a Dress Factory

I’ve been blessed with many role models for guiding my values. My father, Sam Coopersmith, was the earliest.

He was the youngest child of Jewish immigrant parents who came to the U.S. from Europe when they were in their teens. Growing up in a neighborhood of crowded tenements on New York’s Lower East Side, young Sam’s dream was to attend college, become an accountant, and be able to live comfortably with a family of his own in a nice house in a nice neighborhood away from the city.

But the hard times of the Great Depression put an end to that dream. Like everyone else during the the depression, he had to work wherever he could find it. After he married my mother Florence, her father, my Grandpa Max, gave Sam a job as a shipping clerk in his dress factory in Jersey City. Sam was hard working, smart, and ambitious, learned the business quickly and soon was able to open up a dress factory of his own.

His business thrived, and my two younger brothers and I grew up in a nice house in that quiet, affluent suburban town that my father had dreamed about.

For a few weeks each summer when I was a teenager, I’d ride to work with my father at 5:30 AM, travelling on the Jersey Turnpike as the sun was rising, from our quiet, tree-lined little town, to the grimy, grey, industrial section of Jersey City. I got to earn some money, and he got to educate me about the family business. I started as he had, as a shipping clerk.

And I got to see his values on full display, in his kindness to his workers. He seemed to be on close personal terms with every one of his hundred or so employees. The union would repeatedly try to organize his workforce, but they never made much headway. Because on his own he always paid them higher wages, and offered better benefits, than  the union contract offered. It was clear to me what he was about: work hard, show an interest in people, and treat them well, always be honest, and always keep your word.

One day a guy in a very fancy suit came into the factory, and asked me where Sam was. I pointed to the loft above us, above the factory floor, reachable by a creaky wooden stairway. The man thanked me and walked up. 

I had never seen anyone dressed like that in the factory, so I was curious. I went up to a dark place in back of my father’s office where there was a crack between the boards and I could see in and hear what was being said.

“Sam,” the man was saying, “the Boss sent me here because he really doesn’t understand why you’re not using our trucking services. And between you and me, I don’t think he’s going to be patient much longer. You understand?”

It didn’t take me long to figure out what was going on. Most of us growing up in Northern Jersey in the 1950s knew about the Mafia. But I had never seen them. Now I could see it — the Mafia was right here, putting the squeeze on my dad!

“Look Mario,” Sam said, “I understand your point, I really do. But like I told you before, my hands are tied. My contract with my customer (a department store chain) says I have to use their trucking. I can show it to you if you want.”

Mario shook his head, waved him away, and they went back and forth for a while. Then Sam went and opened up a cabinet, and pulled out an elaborately wrapped present. “Mario, I think your wedding anniversary is coming up later this month, am I right?” He was right. “I think your wife will really like this,” he said. Mario took the present.

“And by the way, I know the boss’ son has a birthday coming up. He’s a Yankee’s fan, right? I think he’ll like these. Great seats, right behind first base.” And he have him an envelope with the tickets. They talked some more and Mario left.

I didn’t mention anything to my father as we drove back home at sunset. I knew he wouldn’t me to know about such things. But I saw what I saw, and knew what I knew. My father had managed to avoid the clutches of the Mafia, not only because of his street-smarts, which clearly were considerable, but mainly because of the way he cared about, and understood, people.

The more you grow, the less space you occupy.
The less you say, the bigger your message.
The more you know you don’t know, the clearer the guidance.
The less you possess, the more you have to give.