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January 27, 2023 (5 Shevat 5783) Two Peas in a Pod? Dear Holy Friends, I hope this correspondence finds you well and in good health. We look forward to you joining us in our beautiful sanctuary this Saturday morning at 10:30am for Shabbat services. Our service will also be available on our regular Zoom prayer link. Beginning next Shabbat, on February 4, our morning services will commence a little earlier, at 10:15am. We will thereby provide ourselves with some additional time for Torah reading, Haftarah chanting, discussion, and joyous song. We are thrilled to invite you to join us for the second installment our new Adult Education Zoom Program entitled, Tipping Points: Extending the Torah’s Reach in New Ways. We are delighted to be attracting a nationwide audience for the program and this Monday, Jan. 30th at 8:00pm, we will welcome Rabbi Patrick Beaulier of Richmond, Va. Rabbi Patrick has served as the director of strategy and innovation of the Punk Torah Network, the parent network of the Darshan Yeshiva. He is also the associate director of the Pluralistic Rabbinical Seminary, the world’s fastest growing online rabbinical seminary. In fact, this fall, PRS boasts a larger incoming cohort of rabbinical students than either JTS or HUC. He presently serves as the co-spiritual leader of Kehillah, a pop-up Jewish community in Richmond, Va. His presentation promises to be fascinating. Over the past week and a half, I have had the honor of participating in the last rites of passage for two exceptional people. Alfred Wertheim, a beloved member of our congregation, passed last week, having surpassed the age of 100. My bother-in-law’s father, Martin Rosenfeld, was laid to rest on Tuesday, at the age of 95. Together, those two services attempted to remember and celebrate 195 years of life! Based on chronology alone, a colleague quipped, “They must have been like two peas in a pod.” Having known them both, my first response was that nothing could be farther from the truth, however, I did pause to reflect……… While Martin was a native New Yorker, born in the United States, and Alfred (a.k.a. Mike) was born in Kerschin, Germany, the two shared interesting similarities in their lives’ journeys. For both, one element or theme was well-known, self-evident, and spanned their entire lives; while contrarily, the other parallel involved their earlier days and was unbeknownst to most. At age of 21, Alfred served in the United State Army as an interpreter in the Intelligence Unit known as The Ritchie Boys. The Ritchie Boys were a special collection of military intelligence soldiers trained at Camp Ritchie, in Washington County, Maryland, with sizable numbers of German-Austrian recruits. Many of them were Jewish German-speaking immigrants, who fled Nazi persecution. They were used primarily for interrogation of prisoners on the front lines and counterintelligence in Europe because of their knowledge of the German language and culture. Mike faithfully served the country in this capacity. Similarly, my brother-in-law’s father, Martin, was a gifted polyglot who had a fluency with multiple languages. Martin spoke Hebrew, Yiddish, English and Japanese. He too, was enlisted as an interpreter during the War and served his country proudly and faithfully. The other similarity in their lives can best be described as a profound passion for Jewish tradition. Martin loved Judaism and taught his children the importance of being part of community. While avoiding the spotlight of formal lay-leadership titles, Martin inspired youth by teaching dozens of B’nei Mitzvah students (especially those with learning challenges), initiating & supervising synagogue sports leagues, supervising various hardware projects, and even learning to read the Torah in his seventies. He taught his children the value of joining a shul to support the Jewish community and pontificated that one could never say no to a request for making a minyan (even on Super Bowl Sunday)! Similarly, Mike was devoted beyond belief to our shul community. In many ways, from week to week, shul was his life. In community, he enjoyed deep and significant friendships, prayer, culture, and social activities. He insisted on keeping a kosher kitchen with two sets of dishes and towels and he never missed a Yartzheit for those who had departed before him. So, after reconsidering my initial reaction to my colleague’s statement, I can see that these two men could certainly have been of one pod. Although they may never have met, their mutual love of the faith of Judaism and their service to democracy, could certainly have put them in the same pod at various points in their lives. And what a pod it would have been! A pod filled with self-identity through spiritual grounding and national pride is one to which we could all aspire. As we enter the Shabbat and reflect on Moshe’s biblical legacy of leadership, let us pause to honor and remember, not only Mike and Martin, but all individuals who provide models of service throughout their lives. Their commitments to our traditions and the greater good can only inspire us to embrace Mitzvoth and share our visions of blessings and peace. Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Eric L. Wasser, EdD, Hon.DM
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