A Walk in the Park

A walk in the park the other day reminded me of a similar walk I took a few years ago.  Here's what I wrote about it.

I took a little walk today.  "So?" you might say.  Believe me, this was a
memorable walk.  When I get home in the afternoon, I sometimes  workout
on our treadmill.  But today I wasn't feeling so great; kind of tired, knocked out, maybe getting a cold.  So I decided to skip the routine and just go for a stroll around the neighborhood.

It's October and the trees are decked out in all of their splendor; the best
show nature has to offer.  And if my old neighborhood has anything, it's big,
old trees that can dazzle the eye during these couple of weeks of color.  So I
took a little walk.

So I'm strolling down the sidewalk trying to take in the orange and reds, the
dull browns, and fading greens.  I'm tired but feel that this is important
since I know that in a week or two all will be bare.  It's as if I need to
capture this technicolor spectacle so I can rewind to it when the cold winds
whip through the empty branches, when I need a reminder of the softness of
nature.  In other words, I'm trying to take in as much as I can with my eyes.
It was just that kind of moment when my stroll transported me to other times
and other places.  I had been so concentrated on my seeing it all, that I
wasn't ready to be kidnapped by the smells of autumn.

I walked under a canopy of yellow when the first smell hit me.  It was sort of
dusty and pine-driven.  In two or three short steps I was taken away, all the
way to Jerusalem.  I was walking down Jabotinsky, coming home from HUC to our
apartment on Rachov Harlap, sitting on the Mirpeset with Juca, carrying flowers
for Shabbat.  It must have been that pine smell that reached out to me with a
25 year-old arm  and pulled me back all that way.  I followed my nose into a
personal twilight zone, transported to a time when all was beginning.  I hardly
even noticed the smells of Jerusalem back then, and certainly didn't realize at
that time that someday I would be remembering them with a warmth and a smile
and a, "Yeah, I remember that time - it was good."  When I got home I told Juca
that I had smelled it and that it had made me remember.  She understood exactly
and even described that very smell to me.  She knew.  That was my first smell
of the evening.

A little farther along my stroll a second olfactory sensation materialized.
This second sniff-trip, wasn't nearly as esoteric as the first.  This was more
dry and dusty than piney.  It took me farther in years but not in miles.  I
must be strange, but in an instant I was back in high school struggling on a
dusty football field.  For me, football was more than sounds and movements.
For four years the taste and smell of it filled me.  I lived for it and used it
to prove myself to myself.  Today my nose reminded me of that young time.  It
was a time of accomplishment and camaraderie, of controlled trials and tests of
the spirit and body.  In a flash I was back there, my father watching from the
sidelines, my mom, worried in the stands.  Playing football was one of the
hardest things I've ever done.  I was proud to have done it pretty well and am
often reminded of the challenge of those days.  Again, I had no idea that the
smell of the season would stay with me all of these years to carry me back
there today.

If I had to put more than just a nostalgic spin on today's trips, I would have
to say that these diverse memories symbolize my own makeup.  To combine in
one's nostalgia both locker rooms and the streets of Jerusalem, blends an
American childhood with an expanding Jewish identity.  I can hear the Twilight
Zone theme song ringing softly in my ears.  

It's funny, I just started out to take a little walk around the neighborhood, but ended up journeying to the far corners of my life.  When I returned home, I unpacked a few smiles I'd picked up along the way.

I hope you are enjoying the colors in your neck of the woods,

Ron

Saying Goodbye to an Old Friend

I’m sorry to say that the world will be saying goodbye to Mike Babka tomorrow.  I’m also sorry that I can’t be there to pay my last respects to Mike, for respecting Mike, I surely did.  I met Mike on the first day of football practice our freshman year at Morton West High School in 1960.  He was our starting fullback and I blocked for him on the offensive line.  It would be that way for the next four years.  Mike was an imposing figure on the field who liked to run over defenders rather than around them.  He liked to kid me our last two years on varsity as I was a lineman but a few pounds lighter than our quarterback.  He’d say, “How much you weigh today, Ronnie?”  He would laugh when I told him I was still in the 170’s and the QB was still in the 180’s.

Mike was more than a teammate.  He was a good friend and kind of a bigger-than- life party animal who loved to smile, laugh and kid his buddies.  We did party a bit together in those days as well as on camping trips to Wisconsin and at the University of Illinois.  A bunch of us football buddies formed a group called “The Campers’ Alliance” while we were in high school.  We’d go camping up in Wisconsin for a week at the end of the summers, before the grind of football practice began, and a few times in the Spring while there was still snow on the ground. 

 In 1963 our beloved Chicago Bears found themselves in the NFL championship game (pre-Super Bowls) against the dreaded New York Giants.  My parents took a trip to Dallas for a wedding and I invited the “Alliance” boys over to my apartment to watch the game.  We cooked ourselves a turkey dinner feast, toasted our girlfriends and watched the Bears become NFL champs.  The next year most of us were away in college or other places and decided to gather again (almost all of our gatherings were at the Babka residence) cook the turkey and toast our high school days etc.  That Turkey-cook reunion kept on keeping on every year since.  Although I missed many of the yearly, January Turkey cooks after I left the Chicago area, last January I was able to once again join the group.  It seems to me that Mike was often out of the country at Turkey-cook time too.  I remember once talking to him on the phone with the other guys while the turkey was in the oven.  I think he was in Korea or Japan.  Well, last January both Mike and I made the cook.  He gave me a big Babka grin and handshake and said, “How you doin’, Ronnie?”  Good to be called “Ronnie” as you approach your 68^th birthday.  That night we talked a lot about Mike’s travels.  He especially wanted to tell me of his trips to Israel.

I benefited greatly by being the only Jewish kid in our group (or should I say groups).  There was never a negative word or derogatory comment from anyone on the team, in the Campers’ Alliance, or the Turkey-cook group.  As a matter of fact I remember twice when Mike came to my defense.  One occurrence happened in the parking lot behind the Olympic Theater in Cicero and the other on the Lake Michigan beach in Wisconsin.  Specifics escape me, but as I recall someone, not one of our buddies, said something anti-Semitic, or maybe told an offensive joke.  Before I could react, Mike was in their face.  Mike as not shy and retiring, neither was he small.  He was a big barrel of a fullback and when he got in your face, well, he was in your face.  Mike made it very clear that whatever statement was made was out of line and needed to be taken back. He never mentioned that there was a Jewish kid in the group, just that we wouldn't tolerate that prejudice. 

Even though Mike and I didn't see much of each other over the years, when we were together, like last winter at the Turkey-cook, it was clear to me that our friendship was still strong.  We’d always reminisce about the times we all gathered in the basement of his parents’ house in Berwyn, the ball games, the camping trips, all of those good times.

I know how difficult these last couple of years have been for Mike and his family.  I send them my deep condolences.  Please know that Mike was loved by his friends and will be missed.  We are all better people for having known him.  He’s in my thoughts and my prayers. 

Rabbi Ron (Ronnie) Klotz

The top picture shows Mike in action. 

The Dude Abides, Man

                                                                                                September, 2013

Dear Family and Friends:

I’m a lucky guy, in any number of ways.  One of those is that my kids give me gifts for no reason (and those are the best).  Two weeks ago Jer gave me a book that I’ll tell you about in a minute.  At about the same time Julian “Cannonball” Adderley CD’s started mysteriously arriving here.  Cannonball Adderley is a favorite sax player of mine.  My son Mike was the culprit (it didn't take long for me to figure that out). 

I’m also lucky to have close friends who are wonderful, dear, and incredibly talented.  Late last Thursday night, long after an outstanding Simchat Torah experience with Dan Nichols, followed by a magical 90 minutes where forty of so IU Hillel students crammed into a small program room, jammed, sang, and listened to Danny do, do that voodoo that he does so well (any of you remember Sinatra’s “Old Black Magic?”), we found ourselves sitting out on the porch, schmoozing (not unusual for us).  We talked about any number of things, recognizing that our lives have been G.U.C.I.-intertwined forever.  To the world it’s “Dan” Nichols, but to the Goldman Union Camp world he is, and I believe will always be, “Danny.” 

  

So there we sat out in the dark, trading some memories, discussing what we each thought might be the essential elements of song leading and much of the music we have shared over the years.  Danny reminded me that, long ago, I had given him a beloved Dukes of Dixieland CD and I commented that, as strange as it may sound, there is one note in that performance that always brings me to the brink of tears.  Silly, eh?  A Dixieland band, a great Dixieland band, led by the Assunto brothers, Frank on coronet and Fred on trombone that can elicit such a strong response on my part.  But it’s true. The album is “The Best of the Dukes of Dixieland,” and the number is “The Original Dixieland One-step.”  Late in that number Fred Assunto’s trombone soars above the band and always hits me right between the eyes.  A while ago I told you of a similar response I always have to a particular note on an Ella Fitzgerald CD.  It is a note that I anticipate and wait for…and hope for.  When it comes it is rapture. 

Last night at another Simchat Torah celebration, this time at the installation of a newly hired rabbi and cantor at a fledgling synagogue in Indianapolis, I spoke about the book I am reading, the one from Jeremy.  It’s about one of my favorite movies, “The Big Lebowski.”  In the book the star of that movie, Jeff Bridges, has conversations with a Jewish-Zen master friend about the philosophies presented in the movie.  Jeff talks about the central character, “The Dude,” and remarks that no matter what trials or tribulations confront the Dude, “The Dude abides.”  His Zen master friend  responds by telling him that Chassidic rabbis believed that there are always 36 righteous souls in the world, and because of them God allows the world, with all of its imperfections and injustices and evil, to abide, to continue.  Perhaps, he suggests, the Dude is one of the 36.  I used this idea to suggest that we treat each other as if he or she might be one of the 36, understanding that the world abides because of that person’s righteousness.

 

Then, this morning I put the Dukes of D. on and listened once again to that soaring trombone.  The thought came to me that perhaps my world abides because of that note and Ella’s, at least in the instance of hearing them.  You may have such a note or two as well.  Maybe it is in a Springsteen song, or Van Halen, or Mozart, or maybe in the “Amen” at the very end of the Shehechianu at the end of a Shabbat song session in a steamy, summer Chadar Ochel at camp.  Mine’s in the midst of a Dixieland number and a jazz ballad; strange as that may seem.

 

To celebrate the joy of our Jewish cycle, to dance with the Torah, to install two new clergy as leaders in a newly born synagogue, and to sit late at night on the porch talking to a dear friend about nothing and everything, music; well, it just doesn't get much better that that.  I’m kind of understanding how the Dude abides, how the world abides and how lucky I am to be a part of it all.  

And gifts from my sons…that goes at the top of the list.

Ron

Happy Birthday Linda Brenner

Dear Family and Friends:

Our dear friend Linda Ross Brenner just had a significant birthday.  Here's the tribute I videoed for her.  It's a bit crudely filmed, but I'm no Max Klaben in that department.  

Happy birthday Linda.

Ron 



https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6UVZwq28xILZlhnWVAweVpMc00/edit?usp=drive_web>

A Family in Our Community Needs Your Help

AUGUST 21, 2013 1 COMMENT

Rabbi Rick Jacobs

Ethan Kadish is a 13-year-old boy in great need of the Reform Jewish community’s help.

On June 29, 2013, the afternoon peace of Shabbat at URJ Goldman Union Camp Institute(GUCI) in Zionsville, IN, was shattered by a lightning strike that left three campers unresponsive on the athletic field. Thanks to the skill, courage, and quick thinking of the GUCI staff, all three campers made it to the hospital and survived this unimaginable tragedy.

This heartrending incident tested the GUCI family, the URJ camp community, and the entire Reform Movement, but none more than the families of the injured campers. Their strength has been nothing short of inspirational. Two of those families’ children, thankfully, recovered and returned home; one even returned to camp. The third camper, Ethan Kadish, remains hospitalized in Cincinnati, OH.

To date, Ethan’s recovery has included a series of successes that began with his survival and includes milestones like opening his eyes, breathing independently, and responding to stimuli. Ethan is in the care of a fantastic medical team and undergoes several hours of intense physical therapy every day. His family looks forward to the day he will return home, but they recognize, too, that even once he’s home, his challenges will continue. Ethan will require regular therapy and constant medical care, which, once he leaves the hospital, likely will not be covered by insurance. Ethan and his family face a long, hard, and, yes, expensive road ahead.

The Kadish family’s remarkable strength comes largely from their faith – faith in the healing power of God, faith in the skill and wisdom of Ethan’s physicians, and faith in the support of the URJ and GUCI communities. We are pledged to maintain that support, ensuring that throughout the challenges ahead, their faith in our communities will not waver.

This week – the week before Ethan was to have celebrated his bar mitzvah – a fundraising campaign in his honor has been launched with HelpHOPELive, a nonprofit organization that assists the transplant community and those who have sustained catastrophic injury. The funds will help Ethan’s family meet immense financial challenges associated with uninsured therapies, home modifications, and other injury-related expenses. All contributions made in Ethan’s honor will be administered by HelpHOPELive, specifically and solely for his injury-related expenses.

Our tradition teaches that Kol Yisrael arevim zeh b’zeh (all Jews are responsible one for the other). Indeed, together with HelpHOPELive, the Reform Jewish family can honor Ethan and his family, sending a strong message that we stand together with all of them during this time of need.

To make a charitable contribution by credit card, please call 800.642.8399 or visit Ethan’s page at helphopelive.org.

To make a donation by check, make checks payable to: HelpHOPELive and include this notation in the memo section: In honor of Ethan Kadish. Mail to:

HelpHOPELive
2 Radnor Corporate Center
100 Matsonford Road, Suite 100
Radnor, PA 19087

Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by the law. This campaign is being administered by HelpHOPELive – a 501(c)(3) nonprofit providing fundraising assistance to transplant and catastrophic injury patients – which will hold all funds raised in honor of Ethan in its Great Lakes Catastrophic Injury Fund.

John, Woodie and Henry

Dear Family and Friends:

A while ago I wrote a piece about John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath."  I've recently been seeing retros about Henry Fonda which certainly bring to mind that great movie.  Here is a recap of that post.

Ron

                                                                                 

Sometimes being a late-night person pays off, at least in the “Watching Old Movies On TV,” department.  The other night I revisited the saga of Tom Joad and his family as they made their trek westward out of the 1930’s Oklahoma dust bowl to the California line.  Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath,” never hit home with me like it did that night.  Granted, It was late and I was tired, but I sat mesmerized watching Henry Fonda come home from prison only to find that his family had lost the farm to the dust and the bank.  It broke my heart to see those old farmers kneel down and scoop up handfuls of dirt and remember that their fathers and mothers were born and died on that land.  Tom Joad’s grandfather refuses to leave, holding on to a handful of dirt saying, “this dirt is mine…. It ain’t worth nothin’…but it’s mine.”

This is a tragic story of folks being forced off of their family’s land, and making their way to a new place, living on a hope and a prayer.  It’s the story that prompted so many of Woodie Guthrie’s songs.  He was an “Oakie,” and “Dust Bowl Refugee (one of his song titles),” when he wrote, “Do Re Mi,” and told us that “California is the Garden of Eden, a paradise to live in and see.  But, believe it or not, you won’t find it so hot, if you ain't got that Do Re Mi.”  And out of his dust bowl came, “Pastures of Plenty,” and “I’m Goin’ Down That Road Feeling Bad (and I ain’t gonna to be treated this-a way).” In, “I Ain’t Got No Home,” Guthrie wrote the saddest of verses saying, “My brothers and my sisters are stranded on this road. It’s a hot and dusty road that a million feet have trod.  The landlords threw us out and drove us from our door.  Now we ain't got no home in this world any more.”  Along with the better known, “So Long, It’s Been Good To Know You,” Guthrie put Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” to music with “The Ballad of Tom Joad.”  These are sad songs of poverty and suffering, but all with a glimmer of hope and great determination. 

One of our Torah portions came to mind as I sat in my family room glued to director John Ford’s incredibly powerful visual masterpiece.   How much like the Joads must Abraham have felt when he heard the words “Lech Lecha…” as he was ordered to leave the land of his birth?   How heroic to grit you teeth and pack your belongings and hit the road. I also couldn't help but think of the tragedy happening for all those modern-day, dusty refugees leaving their homes, like those in Afghanistan who made their trek to the Pakistani line. This is not a comment about our war in Afghanistan (that's a thought for a future blog post), but it certainly is heartbreaking to see anyone who, “Ain’t got no home in this world anymore.”

I encourage you to go out and rent “The Grapes of Wrath.”  See if it doesn’t help you understand the plight of the refugee and the heroism of the pioneer.  God knows our ancestors filled both of those roles throughout our history; refugees from Egypt, Spain, Russia, Poland, Yemen, Ethiopia, etc.  And heroic pioneers called Chalutzim, who left the lands of their birth with nothing but a dream, and came to Eretz Yisrael to build that dream in the form of kibbutzim.    They too scooped up handfuls of earth and said, “This land is mine!”  They understood the power of a personal relationship with land, the strength and satisfaction that comes from working the land, and because of that, the magnitude of the tragedy of being uprooted from your land. John Steinbeck and Woodie Guthrie understood and taught all of these lessons well. They just didn’t know how Jewish their message was.      

Ron

Secret Times and the American Pastime

                                                                                                July, 2013

Dear Family and Friends:

A couple of nights ago I watched the Major League baseball All-Star Game.  What’s so interesting about watching a ball game anyway?  Well for 36 summers I worked at Goldman Union Camp Institute and for 10 or so summers before that I worked at Olin- Sang-Ruby Union Institute.  Both are summer camps and when you work in a summer camp, days blend into one another, the time between one Shabbat and the next is just an instant, and who (at camp) even knows when the All-Star game is even happening?

 

This game brings together the best players in the American and National leagues.  They are the best baseball players in the world, (I dare say) and most American baseball fans are excited about it.  When I was a kid, I was too.  That was before all of those summers at camp with no TV or time to even think about the sport I loved so as a boy.

So, here I am, retired, at home in the summer and able to once again tune into the game.  You know, I really am not very interested in All-Star games.  Nowadays the game is important because the winning league gets home field advantage for the game of games, The World Series.  I’m a National League person.  But I know that even if the NL pulls off a victory, the World Series will not be played in a “Field”  (as in Wrigley) but most likely in a “Stadium” (as in Busch), or a “Park.”  This troubles me.   Nevertheless I watch, and the American League wins anyway.

So I’m up in my lair, watching the game and I flashback to a time long ago when All-Star games were so important to me.  The year is 1958.  Believe it or not, in those days I’m a Chicago White Sox fan (that would last until the mid 60’s…it probably was a rebellion.  My dad was avid Cubs fan).  So, it’s 1958 and some unbelievable players are in the game.  To start with the Sox’s second baseman, Nellie Fox; and shortstop Louis Aparicio (later to become Nellie’s son-in-law, but I digress) one of the greatest double –play combinations in all of baseball history (or at least the history of baseball in my lifetime).  Joining these heroes of mine was another all-time great, Mickey Mantle.  Mantle played center field for the much hated (because they were such a powerful and winning team) New York Yankees.  I hated the Yankees…but I had a picture of Mickey Mantle in my bedroom.  Some of the best ever played for the National League, Willie Mays, Stan Musial, Henry Aaron, Ernie Banks, and Warren Spahn to name a few.

So I’m watching the game here in 2013 flashing back to ’58 but not thinking about these historic names, or even thinking of the game itself at all.  Rather, I’m thinking of the setting in which I heard the game.  That’s right, heard the game on the radio, as did millions in those days.  But when one listened to such games announced by outstanding sports announcers who painted pictures with their words, you really did see the game, in your head, that is.    In 1958 I was twelve years old.  It was my first summer as a camper at Union Institute in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin.  I’d been a camper for four years already at other camps because our Reform Movement camps in those days did not take campers younger than twelve.  Funny, I didn't know that it would be the first of fifty-two summers I would be spending in our Reform Jewish summer camp programs.

 

I remember the night of that All-Star game.  We must have been listening to a rebroadcast of the game as baseball was pretty much an afternoon sport back then.  I was a camper in one of the small white cabins on the Big House lawn near the lake (we didn't know enough Hebrew then to call it the Bayit, as it is called today).  I can see it in my mind.  It’s late at night, dark in the cabin while ten or twelve of us twelve-year olds huddle around a bottom bunk at the back of the cabin, ears “glued” to a small transistor radio.  We had to listen quietly so we wouldn't attract the attention of the counselors on late night “OD.” I remember nothing of the game.  I remember everything of the excitement of sneaking around, like thieves in the night, outrageously listening to baseball when we were supposed to be fast asleep in our bunks.  How dastardly.  What rebels we were.  How delicious to have such an innocent adventure in the dark with cabin mates.

 

Such “secret” times still happen in cabins in camps around the world.  Times that kids will think back on when they are retired and something triggers a memory.  In 1958 it was my time, my cabin, my All-Star game.  I loved remembering it the other night.  I watched baseball but thought about kids at camp making memories.  Our granddaughter, Zoe is a camper at this moment.  I know she’s having those secret times.  Good for her.

Ron