Elul again

Hard to believe my last post was a year ago.

I guess I have had a more private struggle this year.

Haven't we all? Social distancing, isolation--I joked when it all started that my life with Blayne wasn't going to change that much...we were already pretty socially distant from most of the world.

But this year has felt different. Joys and sadnesses. Lost friends this year instead of children. But I saw a great line during a rewatching of Benjamin Buttons--We have to lose the people we love, Benjamin. Otherwise, how would we know how important they were to us.

Loss forces us into change, like Elul. and makes us take stock of where we are and who we want to be. 

So I embark on 5781

With 2020 in hindsight

Looking toward my Eliyashu's bar mitzvah...which will be one of the strangest experiences and nothing like what I pictured at all. I have been pushing that his bar mitzvah was supposed to be the story of Noah, just like my bat mitzvah was, and just like I had imagined it would be when I found out that he was born on October 21st...one day after my bat mitzvah date. But I don't get to pick these sorts of things and, because of scheduling issues at Jacob's synagogue, his parsha is Breisheet--the beginning. His reading, though, is the maftir, the last paragraph of the section. The reading is about how #g!dnotG-d is fed up with humanity and regrets creating them and decides to erase all of life from the face of the earth. The translation that I read with Eliyashu over the weekend said--God was uncomfortable that the humans were just evil all of the time. But Noah (meaning comfort) was pleasing in God's eyes. It isn't much of a coincidence that my name, Nehama, also means comfort. Or perhaps it is a coincidence. I'm not sure anymore...

And even though I wanted my son's parsha to be mine, he got this one. His name isn't mine either. He has two names--the one his birth mother gave him, Ashenafi, which means he is a winner, and the one I gave him, Eliya, which means my God is YAH. She named him for his spirit to win out and come into the world, despite her shame as a single mother and because he won out of their lowest caste because his birth father was a higher caste than she was. Little did she know, he would be adopted by a family who was of the highest caste in American society. She wanted better opportunities for him than she was able to offer him. And his persevering spirit has continued to be one of his defining characteristics. Eliyashu's life has seen more than most almost 13 year olds. And yet, he continues to move forward with an eye to the horizon yet to come, with a hope of better days to come. He is named Eliya, which is part of the name Eliyahu, my grandfather's Hebrew name. I like the connection that his name has to the Rastafarian religion, originally from Ethiopia. I also love the messages of Bob Marley's music, which was some of my favorite as a younger person. Eliyahu is also the prophet who announces the dawning of the Messianic age. I remember little 2 year old Eliyashu in his pre-school class one morning as they were singing the famous tune "Eliyahu ha'Navi." He looked up at me pointing at himself and nodding with a big grin.

In this crazy world, I hope you are right. I hope you are the way forward, my little one. I hope you represent the new beginning. Your soul found its way to mine and our destinies intertwined. This is going to be a year of some more new beginnings in our family. May they bring us all some comfort after the destruction. Because you, my son, most definitely have been my Noach--and I couldn't imagine a better person in this world of mine to be tasked with filling an ark with animals than you. Your connection to animals is so beautiful. Your ability to bring sweet comfort in a world that seems to be filled with so much crap is going to be one of your best qualities as you grow into adulthood. I am so lucky to have been part of the beginning of a world that got better because you were born into it. What are you waiting for, the Messiah? That was always one of our favorite jokes. Let's stop waiting for anything. The world needs rebuilding. Let's get to it.

Started out as a blog post. Ended up as a dry run for my speech on the big day.

That's the beauty of writing. You never know where you'll end up.

And the joy of offering it to the world...you never know who needed to read it.

Shanah tovah--May it be a good year--a better year than the 2020 we all want to leave behind. Pheh--the letter symbolizing this last year--like that sounds some old Jewish woman makes when she is spitting at the evil eye on the sidewalk behind her.