I'm a Winner

Our son, Sraya, recently participated in the Pen 2 Paper writing contest held by the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities. Sraya won honorable mention in the contest. Laura Perna, who ran the contest, wrote this to him last week, “Sraya, you were the youngest entrant to the contest, and I want to show people that a person's age doesn't keep them from writing maturely and candidly about their life and disability. I hope you'll continue to pursue writing as a craft!” Here is Sraya’s essay, which Laura wrote to me previously, had a “voice” that she felt was more mature than many other entrants.

I’m a Winner by Sraya Gruber

Hello, my name is Sraya and I am nine years old. I am also visually impaired. I am going to write about my other disability, which is the pain in my feet. I was born with flat feet. When I was little, my parents took me to the doctor. The doctor said that I would not have any problem with my feet. I guess he was wrong.

Last year, in 2009, during the school year, my feet started hurting. I had problems running in P.E. I also had problems walking home from school. I even started limping.

The pain made me feel angry and frustrated. I tried to fight it, but it hurt so much. I always came home from school sleepy and tired. When I would do homework I liked when my mom would massage my feet because they hurt. Sometimes I even liked taking long baths after school.

Before the school year ended my parents took me to the pediatrician. He sent me to do blood tests to check if there was something serious that was causing the pain. I was frightened during my first blood test, but I did not cry. My mom told me to imagine that the needle was an airplane, crashing into my arm. The results came back normal.

My dad took me to the orthopedist. The orthopedist said that I did not have flat feet. However, he said that I have an abnormal gait, which meant that I don’t walk properly, rather I walk on my tiptoes. He thought that I have a neurological problem, meaning I had a problem with my nervous system.

In the summer, I went to Sea World in San Antonio with my family. I had to walk a lot there from place to place. After a while my feet started to hurt. My mom had to give me a piggy back because I could not walk any more.

When we came back home, I could not walk. I had to hang on to walls and chairs. Sometimes I had to crawl in order to get to places, like my room. Baths with warm water did not really help my legs.

During the summer there were some programs in school, called “Book Club” and “Mighty Minds”. I liked going there, but my feet kept hurting, preventing me to walk there. When we went there, we had leave the house thirty minutes before, even though the school was only five minutes from where we lived. We had to walk slowly. We also had to stop for some time so I could rest. Sometimes mom had to carry me there.

I was afraid I would not be able to walk properly. Some days I cried because of the pain. My feet sometimes felt as if they were going to “fall off”. Sometimes I felt that I did not care if I could not walk anymore. I was very sad.

My parents took me to the neurologist. He asked me to do different exercises. He said many different words that I did not understand. He said that I might have a problem with my central nervous system, or the muscular system or something metabolic with the cellular level activities. It meant that something was wrong with me.

For me it meant more tests. I had lots of blood tests and an MRI of my brain and spine. Everything turned out to be normal. I hoped that I would not have to do more tests. I thought I would turn into a human pin cushion.

Then we went to see my pediatrician. He said that maybe I could get skates so I would not have to walk a lot. My mom got me shoes with skates, but it did not work out too well. I was always afraid that I might fall.

I was sent to do an MRI of my pelvis. The radiologist, who checked the image, thought that I had a problem with my bone marrow, so I was sent to the blood cancer center to see another doctor. This doctor sent me to do a bone scan and a bone marrow biopsy.

After my bone marrow biopsy, I was very sleepy, because they used general anesthesia. I had two bandages on my back to cover the places where they took out pieces of bone and bone marrow. I could not even take a bath for few days. Everything came back normal.

On the first day of school, instead of going to school, I had to do a muscle biopsy and EKG. When I woke up, I ate popsicles that the nurses gave me. My dad let me listen to music on his I-pod. My dad said that when I woke up I asked him, when they would do the biopsy. When the results came back, it showed that everything was normal.

The neurologists said that they don’t have any explanation, as to why I can’t walk properly. My pediatrician sent me to do physical therapy and to see a rehab doctor. The doctor said it was important that I walk straight, so I would not hurt my spine.

Doing physical therapy means that I am doing different exercises to help my feet get stronger. I ride a bike, do muscles stretches, lift my legs, and sometimes practice walking on the balance beam. There are some exercises that my mom does at home with me before I go to sleep or when my feet hurt.

My dad took me to see Mr. Spencer, who works at the hospital, to make me leg braces and knee splints. Mr. Spencer put plaster that you make a cast with on my feet, so he could measure how big my feet were. He also traced my body from my hips down to my feet. I have braces for walking during the day and knee splints for the night.

During spring break I got my knee splints and braces. Mr. Spencer taught me how to put them on. I also have special socks for the braces. After you put your feet and legs inside the braces, you have to wrap velcro around the feet, and then wear your shoe on the braces. I did not like wearing my braces at first, because I was afraid the kids at my school would make fun of me.

My mom tried to cheer me up. She said that Alice Roosevelt also had to wear braces on her feet. She also said that I could look like Darth Vader, because the braces are black.

Today it does not bother me to wear them, because they help my feet by making me step on my soles and not just my tiptoes. Some kids have braces on their teeth and some kids have braces on their feet.

I wear the knee splints, when I go to sleep. I must wear shorts when I put them on. It makes me hold my legs straight when I am asleep. There is also a motor inside to stretch my muscles. If I don’t wear them at night, I wake up crying with pain.

I think that PT and the braces have helped me get better. On days I go to do PT, I feel my feet hurt less and they are stronger. I still can’t run, walk faster, bend my feet or back, or pick up things from the floor. But, I can still walk to school and back home on foot. I don’t need a wheelchair, like one of the doctors thought I might.

This summer there is “Book Club” too. This week, we learned the word perseverance and its meaning. The teacher said that I was an example for perseverance, which means that I did not give up. I felt proud of myself, because even if it hurts, I keep doing and giving what I can. It means that I did not pout and say “I can’t do it” and feel sorry for myself. I’m a winner and not a quitter.

The Meaning of Life (With Apologies to Monty Python)

I was recently asked to write a short piece about a short question: What is the most important thing to you in life and why? What a meaningful question to address during the High Holiday season, during which the ancients imagined the deity opening large ledgers of the good deeds and bad deeds of each individual, and pronouncing judgment upon them accordingly! (I assume it is all on large humming servers now…) The most important thing to me in life, at the risk of running head on into a cliché, is to make a difference.

From the scientific point of view, we know that we live on a small planet orbiting a rather minor star in a rather insignificant location on the lower arm of our galaxy, which is in the backwaters of a vast universe. Furthermore, as the great evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, reminds us, the number of potential people that could have been here in our place due to the various possible DNA combinations, outnumbers the sand grains of Sahara (which the British, annoyingly, do not like preceding with a definitive). This could lead us to discounting the potential significance of our lives.

I believe that that would be a mistake. Why? All you need to do is open the newspaper (note to the kids – that is a non-electronic blog written on large flimsy papers), and look for a reference to the last person who won the lottery. Is that person at that moment happy or sad, feeling significant or not so much? Well, we have all won the biological lottery, just by being here, each and every one of us! The question is, what do we do with this fact? The rabbis of old tell us, “Against your will, you are born; against your will you die, and against your will you are to account (for what you did in between).” You don’t have to be a religious person or even a theist to accept that statement. The great hero of the Antebbe (July 4, 1976) rescue (and brother of the current Israeli prime minister), Lt. Col. Jonathan “Yoni” Netanyahu, was by no means a traditionalist. In his letters he talks about his personal desire to be different from others, and live a life of true meaning, not just potential significance, where he is ready to account to himself for his actions at any moment. The only one not to return from that heroic rescue operation, Israel’s current President, then Minister of Defense, Shimon Peres, eulogized him saying that indeed some live long lives with no real significance, but not Yoni; he lived a short life, but what a significant and meaningful life it was!

There is a very powerful scene in Brian De Palma’s second and much underappreciated movie, Casualties of War. The protagonist, played by Michael J. Fox, has just reported the gang rape and murder of a Vietnamese peasant girl by his platoon sergeant and fellow soldiers, only to be ignored, and almost assassinated. His company marches down a dirt road, and he heatedly discusses what he is going through with a friend, and they shoo away the company “nudge”, who promptly falls into a Viet-Cong trap and dies. His friend, seeing this, suggests that since they could die at any moment, then maybe nothing really matters. Fox’s character, sees it very differently, and (this may not be verbatim, but this stuck in my memory ever since) he says, “No. Maybe we got it all wrong! Maybe because we could die any minute it matters more than anything, maybe it matters more than we will ever know!”

We cannot choose our fates. We cannot choose to whom or where or when come into this world. We have little say over many of the challenges we will face in life. We owe it to ourselves, though, to choose our destinies, to live lives of meaning, to make a difference. And, this cannot be in some abstract way. We must make an ongoing positive difference in the lives of our spouses and lovers, in the lives of our children, in lives of our friends, and in the lives of our larger communities. A tall order, sure, but I aim to have a whack at it!

© Copyright 2010 – Rabbi David S. Gruber – All Rights Reserved

Finding Your Soul Mate

Here are words I shared with Deborah and David, a wonderful couple, this last Saturday night in Frisco (my 68th wedding, so far, but only the 2nd one in our beautiful city). It was such a special wedding with their four great kids, all in their 20s, on hand:

Ask Deborah and David to describe their relationship. They will tell you they share so much in common. They are both gentle spiritual people who are close to their families, and friends and community play a very important part in their lives. They share a true sense of adventure, love to travel and love nature.

When they described this to me, a very specific Yiddish word came to mind, beschert, which is one of those uniquely meaty Yiddish words, that one cannot fully translate into English. Beschert can best be defined as “meant to be”, “made in heaven”, or even “soul mate”.

That said, that is not the whole story. When Deborah and David describe their relationship, they also say that they recognize their differences, and rather than let these differences stand between them, they seek to harness them to enhance their relationship. This is the true secret of a successful relationship. Deborah and David realize that even if we were to accept the description of the rabbis, even if you truly feel like you have found your soul-mate, you have to invest in your relationship, you have to nurture it. You have to be true to yourself and your mate about your respective strengths and weaknesses. You have to strive to truly learn from one another, and compliment each other.

Deborah and David, thank you for reminding us of how one can and should live in that hallowed of all relationships, marriage. Hold on to that. Wake up every morning, look into each other’s eyes with the resolve to continue to cherish that happiness and love you have found with each other, and I have no doubt, your bond will remain unbreakable.

A Painting and a Pencil Sketch

Here are the words I shared with everyone at the wedding of Adriana and Andrew in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, just two weeks ago:

The idea that I can and should learn from my couples is just one of the reasons that I meet with every couple three or four times before their wedding, and ask each partner to write a short essay about him or herself. That said, this is the first wedding in more than 65 in the last two years or so, where the bride wrote something so beautiful that I just had to include it verbatim in my remarks.

One thing that struck me from my very first discussion with Adriana and Andrew is that really the phrase “interfaith couple” did not fit the bill with regards to this couple, just as it does not fit many of the couples I work with. “Intercultural couple” may be a more apt term. Certainly Adriana and Andrew each started out at different points, but through their own personal journeys, and their journey together, it is well evident that they have reached a place, where they have more in common in terms of faith and belief, than many other couples out there. This is not due to coincidence, rather this is due to the fact that they have each chosen to really think and grow in this area. This also does not mean they reject their respective heritages, rather they have chosen to build on those heritages, and to examine their lives spiritually, figure out who they are, and what they want as individuals and as a couple.

In the words of the bride, “I like to think of my religious and spiritual life as a beautiful painting. In the best art and true life paintings or drawings, there is rarely ever a solid line that separates the colors or shapes; everything needs to blend together. Colors use a change of tone or texture, sometimes bumping right up together - they're never separated. And yet, when the artist began their work of art, it started as a pencil sketch; nothing but lines. In my life those lines were drawn for me by religion, as it was taught to my mom and how she tried to teach it to me, but I've since fleshed it out, and while it was an excellent guide, and anyone who knows me can see the evidence of those lines, they've transformed to my own sense of spirituality.”

Adriana and Andrew, there is to me a very important lesson in this for all of us. We have very limited control over our circumstances in life. We cannot choose to whom we are born, what our physical features will be, or where we will grow up. We do, however, have control over how we choose to relate to our circumstances in life. In other words, we cannot choose our fate, but we can choose our destiny. We can and should choose to think and contemplate and develop, and never stop growing for even one instant. Adriana and Andrew, thank you for teaching us this important lesson. Hold on to that. Wake up every morning, and look into each other’s eyes with the resolve to continue to grow and build your lives build together, and I have no doubt, your bond will remain unbreakable.

Things I Learned from Teresa and Ben

Here is an excerpt of what I said at the wedding of Teresa and Ben in Houston this last Saturday:

Now, as we are talking about two teachers here, there seems to be an abundance of lessons that this couple teaches us. The first lesson is one about how we need to be more exact with language, and how common terms do not always fit, especially when they aim to put people in a certain “box”. You see, since the first time I first spoke with Teresa and Ben, I was struck by a very interesting fact. The phrase “interfaith couple” did not fit the bill with regards to this couple, just as it does not fit many of the couples I work with. “Intercultural couple” may be a more apt term. Certainly Teresa and Ben come from different backgrounds, and have had different life stories. That said they have more in common in terms of faith and belief, than many other couples out there. This is not due to coincidence, rather this is due to the fact that they have chosen to really think about these issues of faith and belief. They have chosen together to carefully examine their lives spiritually, figure out who they are, and what they want as individuals and as a couple. They also recognize that they need to continue to grow together in this sense and to focus on the joy, happiness and meaning that such growth can bring to a couple’s life.

There is, however, a deeper, more significant reason that the phrase “interfaith couple” does not fit Teresa and Ben, and that is that they understand Mark Twain’s old adage, “Faith is believing what you know ain't so”. This couple, as Humanists, choose to live their lives, as individuals and as a couple, guided by the clear light of reason. And keep in mind, that they do this not in San Francisco or Soho; they live their lives this way in Houston, Texas. They, in turn, respectfully, by their very example, challenge us to live our lives in such a way.

A third and last thing they teach us is to live in harmony with the rest of this world. There are many people who recognize that there is a better way to treat nature, and particularly our closest relatives on the evolutionary tree, the members of the animal kingdom. It makes sense, after all. That said, most of us, aspire to this as an ideal, but fall short in their day to day lives, myself included. Teresa and Ben, you show us that living a purer life, when it comes to our consumption, namely veganism, is not just an ideal, but is an attainable way of life.

Hail to the Chiefs - How I Officiated at a Wedding in the Presence of Two Presidents

I recently officiated at a ceremony, where both Presidents Bush and their First Ladies were in attendance. They hardly ever attend private events, so this was very special for everyone who was in attendance. My wife, Liat, and I wondered if we would get to meet them or not. We ended up not only meeting them, but having some very pleasant one-on-one time with the forty-third president.

During the ceremony I recited the customary Seven Wedding Blessings in English, after which I chanted the sixty-seventh Psalm in Hebrew (in the tune specially reserved for Saturday nights), and recited it in English. I talked about how on Saturday evenings many Jews chant this Psalm, and how it contains many of the same themes and actual words found in the most ancient copy of scripture that archeologists have found in the Holy Land, the priestly blessing.

After the ceremony, President George W. Bush congratulated me for a job well done from about 12 feet away, and I thanked him. He then smiled and motioned with his finger that he wanted me to come over to him. I then had the privilege of shaking hands with the two presidents and their first ladies, who all congratulated me on doing a great job. That would have been an experience in and of itself.

Then the elder Bushes went to take pictures and talk to other guests, and I introduced Liat to President George W. and Mrs. Laura Bush. The former first lady then went to join the others, and the former president spent the next ten minutes talking to us! He asked how long we had lived in Dallas, where we were from, and about our children. He was specifically curious about Liat’s ancestry. (Due to the fact that she is of both North African and Eastern European extraction, many people find her hard to “place”.) He was tickled by the fact that our youngest son shared a birthday with him, and playfully referred to him later in the conversation as “George”. (His siblings are already giving him a hard time over that one…)

Since we mentioned that Liat was born in Israel, and I grew up there, we talked about the Jewish State. He confirmed a story I had once read about Sharon in 1998 taking him on a helicopter tour of the 1967 borders, and specifically pointing out the area where Israel within these borders was the narrowest, only about 8 kilometers wide. To this the then Texas Governor had remarked that, “we have driveways in Texas that are longer than that.” He was explicit about how there was a real mutual affection between himself, and the man he now referred to as “the old tank driver”.

Our discussion ended with Mrs. Laura Bush calling him over to join her for some photos. (That just goes to show you that even in that family there is a well defined hierarchy...) With that, he shook our hands, and thanked me once again for a job well done. We thanked him for his kindness, and went to join the wedding party.

The popular notion has always been that, politics aside, the forty-third president is a mentsch, and a very genuine and down to earth fellow. Liat and I found that to be very true indeed. Yet, without going too grandiose here, I could not help reflecting on a deeper aspect of this brief personal experience.

Many years ago, the first President of our republic, George Washington, proclaimed a notion that was entirely new and unpracticed in the world of that time: equality and freedom regardless of one’s religious faith. He wrote to the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island, that “happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens.” He added still, at a time when my ancestors in Eastern Europe could only dream of freedom, “May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

No one knew how long this new idea of freedom and equality would survive. Many scholars contend that the Founding Fathers probably would be surprised that we still live under the same Constitution, much less one amended to provide freedom to more and more people. Over these same years the Jewish people have seen their share of friendly regimes turn against them, with succession and the turning over of governments frequently not boding well for them. I dare say very few of those Newport Jews would have imagined the ideas of President Washington not only surviving, but two successors of that famous letter writer attending a wedding, where Jewish blessings were chanted, after which one of those successors would leisurely chat with the chanting rabbi and his wife. Yet here we were all the same.

© Copyright 2010 – Rabbi David S. Gruber – All Rights Reserved - This article originally appeared on www.InterfaithFamily.com.

A Little Stream of Consciousness

In this blog post, I wanted to write some random thoughts related to a unique experience I had at a wedding I officiated just about a year ago in Charleston, South Carolina. This is probably going to be stream of consciousness more than an essay. Here is how I opened the ceremony:

I travel all over the country to officiate at weddings, and I am many times called upon to officiate at weddings where the only ones who really know me are the bride and the groom. Therefore, I almost always open the wedding ceremony with these words, “Welcome family and friends, my name is Rabbi David S. Gruber, and I know I speak for all of you when I say how honored I feel to be here today.”

Those words have added meaning here for me today, as this wedding is personally special to me. About 40 years ago in this Great State of South Carolina, Rabbi David S. Gruber married Jeremy’s parents. Now, as I am only about 36 years old, that Rabbi Gruber was, of course, my grandfather, a great man, who I unfortunately never knew, and who at that point was at the sunset of his life. How extraordinary and deeply meaningful that we should all be here today 40 years later. I stand here therefore with a profound sense of humility, and I feel truly honored and blessed to be here.

Every wedding is special, but this ceremony had extra personal meaning for me. Prior to this wedding, the only things I knew about my grandfather, who was one of the most prominent public figures of his time in Columbia, South Carolina, were stories my father told me, and what I read about him in a book written about his congregation. Even my late mother and her parents, who died in the 1990s never got to know him that well, as he died about twelve hours after their wedding. I had certainly never met a congregant of his. At this wedding, I met not only Jeremy’s parents, who were married by him, with Jeremy’s dad having also been bar mitzvahed by him; I also met a number of their relatives, who still live in Columbia. To them Rabbi Gruber had not been someone in a book. To him he was their longest serving leader, whom they remembered many years later. Many of them told me stories about him, and it was very clear that they remembered him quite fondly so many years after his death in 1970.

My grandfather, who arrived in the U.S. at the age of two, grew up in an Orthodox home. I never remember as a child or even as an adult really understanding what had caused him to become a Reform rabbi, specifically. Maybe, growing up Orthodox, I just did not ask? Anyway, around the time I was contacted by Jeremy’s parents to officiate this wedding, I did ask my uncle, why it was that his father left Orthodoxy. He said that it was due to the fact, that he could not reconcile his understanding of science and history, with the traditional Orthodox interpretation of Judaism. I was greatly heartened by this, since, as I have explained elsewhere, it is this issue with its multiple facets, that caused me to rethink my lifestyle and beliefs, albeit later in life than my grandfather did. Also, my grandfather was known for his, you guessed it, tireless work on interfaith relations. I now feel somewhat closer to this figure whose name I bear, and who looks at me from old photographs.

Of course, I am always conscious of what I was told during a very strange phone call in 1990. I had just finished high school in Israel, and decided to visit the United States, and do a little touring and visiting with relatives before beginning my military service in the Israel Defense Force. One relative I was going to visit was one of my dad’s cousins. My grandfather was the youngest child in his family, and so all of my dad’s cousins are 10-20 years older than he is. I called my dad’s cousin from my maternal grandparents’ apartment in Queens, and once she picked up the phone, I said, “Hi, this is David Gruber speaking.” There was this silence on the other end of the line, and I had to repeat myself once or twice before she answered. Later during the discussion I asked her about this, and she explained that her uncle, my grandfather, used to stay at her parents house sometimes, and when I introduced myself on the phone she was puzzled, because she knew he was already dead for 20 years, and “after all” she added wistfully, “there was only one David Gruber…”