Irv’s Overdue Aliyah

Never any uncertainty as to whether a minyan will materialize for my friend Irv’s yahrtzeit. It occurs the on Rosh Hashanah. My late friend, my enduring inspiration, left ample legacies. He invested in his children’s Jewishness, utilizing the afternoon Hebrew school of my congregation, but offering home schooling supplementation that made his son the man we count on when a long Torah reading approaches or when the baal tefillah must chant a difficult passage that only appears on our annual calendar once a year. His daughter keeps our congregation and beyond immersed in our ancestral and contemporary cultures with memorable song and with her presence at the front desk at our Jewish Community Center. His late wife assured us that we would always have fresh tuna salad at kiddush, literally handmade that morning as she blended the eyeballed amounts of each ingredient with her ungloved fingers in its large metallic bowl. While we do not culture people’s fingertips on Shabbos, and wouldn’t have the results by Kiddush if we did, no microbes transmitted, not in the decades that our Kiddush came under her accountability. And he accomplished generational transmission of his own expertise while living somewhat differently than most. He raised his children in a house outside the radius of the developments where our regional Jews normally purchased houses. No carpool sharing to get his children to our Hebrew school from the public school where they may have been the only Jewish students. Irv did not work for the megacorporations of our state, like the majority of those imported to live in our region following completion of our advanced degrees. Instead, he commuted a little farther to another international conglomerate, one with a major facility in the area, though not its corporate headquarters. His sons followed in his path, Jewishly for sure, and in a way professionally. Each signed on with the same corporation in the same engineering field after completing their bachelor’s degree at our flagship state university before veering to professional degrees in medicine and law. A patriarch. But not so fast. This man of immense commitment, towering Jewish insight, presence at virtually every Shabbos morning service that I attended, and visible independence, also found his official participation considerably restricted. He had been declared an aphikoros by majority though not unanimous vote of our Ritual Committee and our Mara D’Atra.

While relatively new to that congregation, being an unhappy defector from a different shul, the Chairman of the Ritual Committee, where I had served at the previous congregation, offered me a seat on his committee. Ordinarily, the purpose of this committee had been to restrain the Rabbi from antagonizing anyone in his zeal for correctness. The committee would discuss whether to lengthen Shabbos morning with Anim Zemiros at the end or just proceed from Ein Kelokeinu to Aleinu. Occasionally a Bar Mitzvah family would request a mechitzah. While we did not have one, individual accommodations would be discussed and granted. But hastily, the Chairman assembled a meeting. He pulled me aside in advance, during a Shabbos morning or perhaps at a monthly Board meeting, to quietly tell me the main agenda item, what restrictions should the congregation place on its ideological outlier, Irv.

My new friend intrigued me in some ways. He would speak from our Bimah at times. Toastmasters honed, perhaps. Always fluent, always captivating, often in competition with our Rabbi’s weekly sermon from which would generate more irate cards and letters. Our Bimah was perhaps not the best venue for expressing Irv’s content, which ranged considerably from the fringes of theological heresy to how our current practices jeopardize his generation’s Jewish legacy. Diatribes and rants more often than not, though always with a handful of citations from our Scriptures or Sages. Never unduly long. Unclear whether his five minutes at the podium was really approved by anyone in advance, or even if it was really impromptu. Certainly, the content was never pre-screened. A man of comprehensive knowledge and nimble mind. I’m a sucker for nimble minds. Yet I accepted my five minutes of imaginative mental jolts, never pursuing his comments with him, his son, or our Rabbi at Kiddush or later in the week. An intrusion? Sometimes. Yet a brief diversion from the suburban synagogue cliché of rote prayers and people strutting with undue self-importance as some pride themselves on shaking the hand of every man present that morning.

Our committee assembled on a Tuesday evening, the day of the week reserved by mutual consent of all Jewish organizations of our town to allow people to set aside a predictable night each week for Jewish community service. Minutes were taken, eventually distributed, and likely lost, as computerized archiving of committee minutes for posterity had not yet become de rigueur. Newcomer that I was, and only physician on the panel used to interviewing one or more outliers each work day, accepting their quirks, really taking delight in many, to provide them optimal benefit, I found myself discussing restraining an idiosyncratic but otherwise Jewishly accomplished man not quite a generation my senior. We don’t do that in my medical world short of the unconventional physician posing a hazard to somebody. We certainly have standards of care, and enforce them, though physicians have long since realized that punitive approaches usually fail to make the care of patients safer or the lives of health care providers as gratifying as we would like them to be. But the Rabbi and the committee chairman seemed steadfast in expressing some form of theological discipline. Irv was hardly a Messianic Jew, but some of his addresses from the Bimah recognized elements of the Christian world which served their adherents better than we served ours. My drift to live and let live, maybe limit the number of these seemingly unplanned, perhaps even usurped Bimah sessions to a couple a year, scheduled in advance and announced in the weekly Shabbat bulletin, ran contrary to the committee’s quest for their pound of flesh.

By Rabbinical recommendation with divided vote, Irv would become a limited member. He forfeited eligibility for an Aliyah, eligibility to hold office or serve on a committee, could not lead the prayers, and could not address the congregation from our Bimah. While this seemed a bit vindictive, they were not dumb. Irv would not be deprived of his male phenotype. There being an incentive to have minyanim twice a day, and by the first Kaddish on Shabbat morning, since Irv came early each week, his presence would count towards our minyan. If a peep of protest arose from my friend’s family, it never reached my attention. I remained on the Ritual Committee a while longer, as it slouched back into the mode of never meeting over anything important, though on occasion perhaps creating small measures congregational or even public harm, mostly when generating animosity.

Still, I attended Shabbos morning most weeks, taking a seat that became my usual place, noting everyone else’s usual place. No change in those who led services, Cantor for Musaf and Torah reading, mostly men senior to me for shacharit, a more diverse roster of men for haftarah to which I had been added some years previously. Same people in attendance, mostly men, very pleasant men, many coming stag though a few as couples. And Irv sitting towards the front, his wife in the kitchen with her hands blending a jumbo-sized bowl of ingredients that would get presented in a white oval porcelain bowl for us to spoon onto crackers after services.

New Gabbaim replaced our aging men, adding another hat for our Ritual Chairman, both contemporaries of mine. And our Rabbi announced his retirement a year prior to the conclusion of his current contract.

And with this, a few key changes in culture. While Sabbath morning attendance had remained stable, less a few of the more elderly men passing away at a rate of about two per year for several years, dues paying membership had begun to erode in a serious way. We had defectors, not so much among the Shabbos crowd but in big numbers from two important arms of our membership. Chabad had established itself as a local presence, siphoning a few raised in orthodox congregations with a mechitza. Not a lot of families, though financial benefactors of significant high-income employment among them, but not the men or families who boost our minyanim each week. More importantly, we experienced transfers to our United Synagogue affiliate in numbers large enough to impact our budget. Good people who not only paid dues but served on committees and boards. They often practiced a more personal than communal Judaism but populated our High Holy Day services in substantial numbers, sent their children to day school, and attended our annual meetings. And hardly anyone joined us in the other direction. Our governance made a key decision that would impact operations going forward. Term limits for all Vice-Presidents would be withdrawn, which obviated the need for a nominating committee to energetically seek out, or even consider, new people. And they didn’t. Nor did they seem to seek exit interviews of people leaving, but judging from the destination, our Rabbi and the Cantor, now aboard just a few years, disconnected their fair share. Yet they did recruit a new Rabbi with a reasonably fair process that enabled input from those who remained. A most personable young man took over.

Once the Rabbi settled into his house, the chairman called a Ritual Committee meeting. I asked him to include on the agenda a revisit of Irv’s status, as I could not challenge a Rabbinical ruling of the Mara D’Atra, though in very clear terms he knew that I thought the activity detrimental. However, I could get a new Rabbi to revisit his view on religious discipline. I wanted it on the agenda, not to be discussed for a decision, as that would blindside the rather inexperienced incoming Rabbi, but to have the issue offered a heads up that some dissatisfaction resulted from what was done and how it was done. My desired topic lasted one minute. The Chairman had placed it on the agenda, but the incoming Rabbi abruptly denied discussion. We moved on.

New Rabbi’s deserve a honeymoon phase, though not one without time limits, and certainly not one that propagates an adverse decision without reconsideration of a different path. On the way out, I pulled our new Rabbi over, told him I wanted to actually discuss this, not at committee but in the privacy of his office, making it clear that I find getting summarily having authority slammed at me by somebody less accomplished than me but with a title objectionable in its own right.

We met shortly thereafter. I considered bringing the minutes of the two meetings but didn’t. Instead, we talked on new beginnings. We talked of defections by many people I admired, the issue being how they were treated, often summarily, and with little recourse other than departure. Judaism is not about what you think, not what I think, not what Irv thinks. It is about loyalty to our obligations. Using authority, bordering on naked power, to dispatch or diminish bothersome people only brings you into decline. I simply to not have the option of evicting troublesome patients or depriving them of their autonomy. He listened to my presentation which went beyond advocacy for a friend and valuable member who had been targeted.

No resolution for a while. Irv came with his wife and son, occupying their seats. Most shabbatot, I occupied mine. Then one service the Gabbai handed Irv a plastic Aliyah card. His name called, he ascended the bimah, recited the requisite blessings audibly, and stared at the scroll as the Cantor read the Torah portion. He was back. No further unannounced comments from the Bimah. And I do not recall if he ever led shacharit again. But Aliyot came at a reasonable frequency.

To this day, I do not know if anyone else either agreed with me or were disturbed enough by the original process to seek formal redress. The Ritual Committee would go on to target one more individual, again with me as the prime defender. This time I actually stalked the Rabbi, now with a couple years tenure, back to his office after the meeting, teaching him the neuroscience behind the difficult behavior that put him in the Chairman’s cross-hairs. And to the best of my knowledge and experience, the Rabbi never played favorites again.

And that Ritual Committee continued its own life cycle. The Chairman departed on relocating. I departed, just wanting to engage in other congregational things. And Irv’s son now presides as Ritual Chairman. I do not know what they discuss.