Zoomerang: a small world, a New Year, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg

 

It is still 2020, this long year of the apocalypse, but it is no longer 5780. In September, Rosh HaShana, the Jewish new year, ushered in 5781. 

Which means that the crushing blow of losing Ruth Bader Ginsburg happened last year.

Normally during the High Holidays, a thousand or more people converge on the Jewish Community Center in Toronto for the prayer services offered by my synagogue. This year of course no such sizeable gathering is legal or prudent, so while a very few congregants attended in-person the rest of us watched a live-stream of the services.  

Live-streaming is a big deal. According to Jewish law you’re not supposed to fiddle around with electronics on high holidays, no connecting or disconnecting circuitry, etc.  (it says so in the four-thousand-year-old Torah, in a manner of speaking; it’s considered “work”). However, as the synagogue's president said during her speech, "We are adapting tradition to current practicalities." Connecting community takes precedence over obedience to ancient law. That’s the kind of religious sensibility I can get behind.

So I logged on Friday evening from the comfort of my home, wearing cozy sweats and bedroom slippers. I watched as the rabbi spoke and the cantor sang. (True confession: I folded some laundry at the same time. Also forbidden on a holiday—it is work--but, I thought, in for a penny, in for a pound.) A few minutes later, my screen went blank. I tried re-connecting. "Waiting for host to start this meeting," Zoom informed me. Again, again. Uh-oh. No luck.

I remembered the email I had received with a list of publicly-accessible Zoomed New Year services. At the top, starting with "A", I found Adas Shalom in Washington DC, which reminded me of "Adat Shalom"-- “Community of Peace”-- the first synagogue my family joined back when I was very young. Leonard Nimoy was a member of the shul, too--pretty much my one Hollywood name-check from growing up in LA. I clicked on their link and Adas Shalom's services flooded from Washington into my home. That synagogue had managed an elaborate electronic set-up, with four rabbis plus a cantor in separate boxes on the screen, along with a choir of remote singers. One rabbi was a very young woman who I thought must be a student; she delivered a beautiful meditation on prayer as an avenue of imagination, drawing on her own life experiences and as well on cognitive science research. So impressive! I thought that I must look up her name later. 

The thing about attending services on one's laptop is that the world comes through the screen. Anguished text messages began appearing: "RBG has died! What will become of us?" Moments after that, one of the more senior rabbis leading prayers said, "I'm so sorry. We've just heard that Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died." (Even the rabbis were tuned in to the outside world.)  "I knew her,"continued this woman.  I could hear tears catching in her throat. "And I'd like to talk about her a little."

I found myself making notes and forwarding them to the people who had texted me, including my sisters and parents: "The service I’m attending is in DC and the rabbi has just announced Ginsburg’s death. Apparently the rabbi’s husband clerked for RBG so she is now sharing her personal memories of meeting and conversing with the justice—one time while visiting her with their small children. Oh my goodness--- so lovely, this story, about her patience and engagement with a tantrumming child. ‘She was kind, she was loving.’ Also, this same rabbi co-authored a commentary with RBG, about women and oppression. Now she is telling a story of how when Ginsburg received an award, she credited her two office assistants and her housekeeper--all women--with helping her serve our country. Now they are displaying a photo of Ginsburg on the live-stream. We are reciting the Mourner’s Kaddish..."  

When the tears cleared, I mentioned my admiration for the other rabbi, the young one who gave the impressive, insightful sermon about imagination. The next day, my sister Rachel wrote to me: "Leslie, I shared your text with some friends. One of them was Suzie." Suzie and Rachel had been best friends since third grade at Platt Ranch Elementary School in Woodland Hills, California and continue to be close today, across years and miles. “Suzie says that your amazing young rabbi is in fact Miriam's older daughter, Sarah!" 

Miriam and I were good friends in sixth grade at that same school, Platt Ranch Elementary. 

So how did Suzie, who now lives in Ohio, know about my childhood friend’s daughter’s career? Because her own daughter, Alison, had developed a close friendship with Sarah at university.  Alison and my niece, Dana, had also serendipitously become dear friends at a university far from both of their homes. (And less coincidentally Dana and Sarah had attended the same same elementary school.)

Thanks to a broken internet connection, I had cast my Zoom net far from home, only to find myself back in the midst of ‘home’. A Zoomerang.

A small world. A wonderful world. Also a calamitous one. 

The following day, the link to my own synagogue was restored, so I joined services here (there?). I emptied the dishwasher (penny, pound) and listened to my rabbi speak about the times we're in, about how difficult they are, about how they expose the raging inequities in our world. These times, he said, are bad. But they also offer both an opportunity and an obligation to make our world a better place. "Let's not let a good calamity go to waste," he urged. 

I finished putting away the cutlery and thought, "Amen." 

For Ruth, and for our small world:

VOTE VOTE VOTE #USA