Making Change

Rabbi Michael Feshbach

Temple Anshe Hesed

Erie, PA

I remember as if it were yesterday the strangest string of statements I had ever heard. It was eight years ago, on a sunny July morning in South Florida. And it is a series of statements that I have heard many, many times since, without ever giving them a second thought. But that time it was something different.

I was in a meeting. A woman came in. She said the following words to me: "Rabbi Feshbach, your wife is on the phone on line two in your office. Your secretary is getting the number."

That's it. The strangest string of statements. Not much, really. But on that day eight years ago, I was simply stunned by these two sentences.

You see, I had only been ordained for slightly over a month. Married for two weeks. Moved to Florida for less than one week. And I remember my reaction to these words. It was this: Who is Rabbi Feshbach? Who is my wife? Where is my office? I have a secretary?

There had been so much change in our lives, so fast, that I guess I just hadn't really absorbed it all. I was stunned.

I have heard that there are books and magazine articles out there that give people advice on how to run there lives. The experts who write these articles seem to agree on something called "common wisdom." Common wisdom says, I have been told, that there are many sources of stress in life, and that we should all carefully plan to avoid having more than one of these stresses in the same decade or so. These life experiences that are to be savored all on their own, without the imposition of one too close to the other, are: getting married, moving, starting a new job. Oh, and one should also have one's children exactly the right distance apart.

Well, most of us have learned by now that if Life and the Franklin Planner were interchangeable terms, we would not need different words for them. Some changes we seek, others we are open to, and others come out of the blue. To paraphrase the motto of a well known support group -- Change Happens. (Or: Life is What Happens When You Are Trying to Make Plans.)

This past year Julie and I became parents, and are still learning what that means. This summer we are moving from Erie, (although not that far). I am going to become the Rabbi at Temple Beth Am of Williamsville, New York, a suburb of Buffalo. This late fall/early winter we are expecting another child -- and hoping and praying that everything goes well with that.

Each of these changes is something that could be contemplated on its own. Each one involves transition, which is always educational, and always an inducement to growth -- but rarely easy. Each one involves excitement, anticipation... and some sadness for the passing of what once was. Each one would leave us busier than I could have imagined being.

I know people who claim that they are "spiritual," but not religious. They like alternative states of awareness and consciousness. They do not like rituals.

I have two problems with this claim. The first is that it is often sometimes disingenuous. Because, frankly, almost all human beings have rituals. Rituals are the way we pattern our lives, the routines I wrote about last week, the habits we form from which, scientists tell us now, we really are Wired -- for the things we do with regularity leave trace marks on our minds, physical imprints in our brains. Everyone has rituals of some sort, which are seldom fully rational, and which leave us flummoxed at best if something happens to interfere with them.

But the second problem I have with the claim that one can be spiritual and not religious is that I know how very, very important "ritual" is in life. In changes. In transitions.

There is a reason why there are so many rituals associated with "life-cycle" events. Celebrations of birth and commemorations of death. B'nai Mitzvah, and Graduation. Weddings -- and, hopefully rarely -- divorces. Farewell dinners, and installations. There is a reason why people develop private rituals for other transitions -- and why I believe Jewish creativity is now responding for new rituals for new changes -- on getting a driver's license, on leaving for college, on being an Empty Nester, and for events in womens' lives that once went unmarked. All of these rituals surrounding change, the old ones and the new ones, they too, come from a level beneath the surface, beyond the rational. They come from a subconscious awareness that when we change, we are, in a sense, coming apart.

We do come apart. A part of us ends. A part of us is new. Only a part of us remains the same.

This part-ing is hard. It separates us from others, and segregates different parts of ourselves. Which is why transition is hard for everyone. And why it is dangerous for the self. When we change anything in our lives, we are unravelling our lives. The danger is: we might not re-ravel right.

This is what the rituals that mark the changes in our lives do: they provide a place, and a presence, to witness the change, and support us through it. The old family structure ends, and reravels into this: two individuals become a couple, a couple become parents; a family of three welcomes a fourth. A young person becomes an adult. A child is given a name, and joins a people.

These are private moments, but they are not private alone. They affect the community. And the community can be there, to help, to be the audience as the change is played out on the ritual stage... to reassure the changed individuals that there place in the community is secure. And to hold and comfort and support when someone is so overwhelmed... that they don't know, for a moment, who they are, or how to find their office.

There are changes coming in our life. There are changes that have already happened. How glad I have been to be part of a community that cared so much about my family as to help us through some of these changes. There is sadness in leaving that community, and pain. And hope that we can remain a part of each others lives. And there is excitement at learning about, and being part of a new place, of new faces and future friends and the things we will go through together.

We are making changes in our lives again. But all that means, really, is that we are alive. And for that, I am nervous, I am anxious, I am excited. I am grateful. And I am glad.