Eulogize the Living - Friday Kavvanah, 11/18/2011

When I was a senior rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary, I had a class in homiletics in which I learned, among other things, how to write a hesped / eulogy.  Our teacher, Rabbi Gerald Zelizer, whose father had also been a rabbi, told us about how when he was young they practiced giving eulogies for each other.  One of them would lie on the floor, and the other would stand over him and improvise a hesped.

In the opening lines of Parashat Hayyei Sarah, Abraham mourns for his departed wife Sarah, and depending on how you read the text, probably delivers the first eulogy noted in the Torah.  He channels his grief into words, and to this day we do the same thing at funerals and memorial services, where we recall our loved ones with fondness and remember their better qualities and the happy times that we spent with them.  A good hesped moves us like no other speech, yielding tears and respectful laughter, inspiring reflection, longing, and comfort in the face of loss.

What is perhaps most ironic about the eulogy, however, is that the deceased does not hear the moving, wonderful things that are recited in his/her honor.  Most of us will not hear the most stirring words ever said about us.  A pity, no?

Here is a suggestion: eulogize the ones you love now!  Tell your spouse, your children, your parents, your cousins, your friends how much you love and appreciate them, how much you miss them when they are not around, how fondly you recall all of the good times you have had together.  (Nobody needs to bother to lie on the floor.)

Why wait?  Eulogize the living!


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

The Most Welcoming Guy in Canaan - Thursday Kavvanah, 11/10/2011

The beginning of Parashat Vayyera, which we are reading this week, features a fascinating vignette on hospitality.  Abraham is hanging out by the entrance to his tent, when three strangers approach.  He and his wife Sarah hasten to get them food, water, a place to wash the desert off their feet and chill out, and then stand by them patiently as they eat.  Abraham welcomes these people, with whom he has no connection whatsoever, and brings them into his home, no questions asked.

Sometimes, the famously dysfunctional characters of the book of Bereishit / Genesis are undeniably virtuous; this is one of those instances.  The Talmud (Tractate Shabbat 127a) tells us that the mitzvah / commandment of hakhnasat orhim, welcoming visitors into your home, outweighs that of welcoming the Shekhinah, God's presence.

What do we learn from this?  In an age of increasing isolation, when some of us relate more easily to screens than to human faces, this is a time that we must all reach out to others, to make those connections that only people can make, and particularly in the synagogue.  Abraham welcomes the strangers into his tent, and so should we.