Mom/Dad Receive Jewish Social Action “Thalberg”
VamooseBus on I-95 just past Maryland House — This morning my father woke up with two black eyes and a massive gash on his forehead. Long month. I could hear Mom’s voice at once admonishing and sympathetic.
On Sunday evening, my parents received their first joint award. Jews United for Justice honored them for what the evening’s host, NPR’s Linda Wertheimer, called “a lifetime of Jewish social action commitment.”
If I could pick one award that Dad would like to win, it’s a Heschel. Before there were Heschel awards he wanted to win a Heschel. Only a Nobel Peace Prize or Major League Baseball’s Manager of the Year could have surpassed last night.
Two months ago, I thought Mom would live to accept her Heschel. A new volley of “I’m sorry for your losses” reminded me how keenly I felt her absence. After 30 years, I dipped into the synagogue’s kitchen and remembered the week before my bar mitzvah when Mom and her friends made Tuna Nicoise for the luncheon. A combination of economic factors and my mother’s firm belief that she was a sensational cook sent shockwaves through the catering industry that week. Food was just another issue. Mom advocated for justice and quality for all.
It wasn’t that I missed Mom. Maybe it’s too soon. But the evening, just didn’t feel right without her. All of my writing teachers taught me to avoid cliches. But I don’t care:
MOM WAS LOOKING DOWN ON US. I FELT HER PRESENCE. SERIOUSLY.
As a young man, my father dreamed of entering the Adlai Stevenson/Hubert Humphrey/Lyndon Johnson we-really-can-eliminate-poverty-and-injustice-if-we-just-try Liberal Hall of Fame. Later, he synthesized his political aspirations with what I used to call his “born-again Judaism.” This mish mash of traditional rituals and movement politics emphasized equality for all living creatures. “King of the Universe” became the gender-neutral “sovereign”, Dayenu got bumped for Go Down Moses, and on Shabbat Friday evenings Dad turned our dinner table into his personal Hyde Park soapbox teaching us about every oppressed people on the planet from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. We never ate before midnight.
A few hundred people turned out to support the Heschel Honorees. Mostly they were in their 20s or 70s. My generation was conspicuously absent from the Social Action celebration which will be the subject of a future post, book, autobiography or hip hop record.
Pulitzer Prize Winning Ron Suskind remembered Mom as the evening’s first speaker. Mom loved Ron and championed his work. She pushed, prodded and showered him with attention. Dozens of writers experienced this treatment, but most did not use the bookstore cafe as their office. Naturally Mom and Ron developed a special bond. He called her “the reader’s reader” and spoke extemporaneously and eloquently about how much Mom had meant to him as a writer and as a neighbor:
What is community? It’s a sustained affection for purpose. Carla was a tribal leader. She was our Abraham.
Leader? Absolutely. Jewish? The only holiday Mom knew as a child was Christmas. But people change, especially when they are married to my father.
All of the speakers spoke generously about honoring Mom’s memory and/or my father’s influence on their careers. Fundamentally, this was my parents’ evening. Except that it wasn’t. Mom was gone, and Dad was black and blue.
During his first tennis since my mother had died in set 1 game 1, Dad chased after a winner and somersaulted hard to the cement sustaining multiple contusions. He spent the duration of the morning at the same hospital where Mom spent three weeks earlier this summer. He survived with no major injuries, although he looks like Nardo after a Jets/Sharks rumble.
Every day people call or email. People worry. How is your father they ask?
He’s as good as he can be.
For this he should be most proud. I know that I am. He has invested most of his life thinking and caring for others. Sometimes the hardest thing is taking care of yourself.
4 hours on the highway feels a million miles away.
Notes
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