I Can't Stop Loving You

By Myron Fenster

These pages were written as a result of many visits. The time afforded us an opportunity to look back but even more importantly to contemplate the future and record the present. We were happy with what we saw and are pleased to be able to share it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 31, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503588103

Myron Fenster

Myron Fenster, his wife, Ricky, and family, moved to Roslyn, New York, in August of 1966. He served as rabbi of the Shelter Rock Jewish Center until 2002, when he became rabbi emeritus. During that time, he served as the president of the New York Board of Rabbis, editor of the Journal, Conservative Judaism, and a member of the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary, the school from which he had been ordained. The Fensters are the proud grandparents of sixteen grandchildren and of thirty great-grandchildren (as of this writing) who live in New York City, Newton, MA, New Orleans, LA, and Israel. His earlier book, Up from the Straits: A Memoir, is still available.

Book preview

I Can’t Stop Loving You

A Report

Myron Fenster

Copyright © 2015 by Myron Fenster.

ISBN:      Softcover        978-1-5035-8811-0

                eBook             978-1-5035-8810-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 08/31/2015

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

708139

CONTENTS

I. Beginnings

Chapter 1 A Quick Look Back

Chapter 2 The Weakness of Woody Allen

Chapter 3 Is it still possible to believe?

Chapter 4 Long Nights Journey Into Daylight

II. In Jerusalem

Chapter 5 My father and my mother

Chapter 6 Akiva and Tehilla

Chapter 7 Probing the past

Chapter 8 Why not Jerusalem?

Chapter 9 Joyful integration

Chapter 10 Almost pure bliss

Chapter 11 Remembering Jonathan

Chapter 12 Carmiel

Chapter 13 Aharon Appelfeld

Chapter 14 Sixty-five years later

Chapter 15 Dining alone

Chapter 16 We are not alone

Chapter 17 Synagogue on Shabbat

Chapter 18 Twinkling stars

Chapter 19 Thursday with Binyamin

Chapter 20 Shlomo’s yahrzeit

Chapter 21 Soviet Jewry protests

Chapter 22 J.B. and Max K.

Chapter 23 Birthday time

Chapter 24 Meir and the story of the Exodus

Chapter 25 The first orange

Chapter 26 Mideast tensions

Chapter 27 Lord Jonathan Sacks

Chapter 28 Birthday celebration

Chapter 29 Menachem Begin

Chapter 30 Appelfeld

Chapter 31 Shalosh Seudot in The Rova

Chapter 32 Greeting an old friend

Chapter 33 A marathon

Chapter 34 The General Assembly

Chapter 35 Time for post-denominationalism?

Chapter 36 With Bialik in Tel Aviv

Chapter 37 Going to Geulah

Chapter 38 Remembrances

Chapter 39 Akiva’s Bachelor Party

Chapter 40 Sheva Brachot

III. In New York

Chapter 41 Holding back the snow

Chapter 42 Weekend in Manhattan

Chapter 43 Learning from Chagall

Chapter 44 Hectic days

Chapter 45 Looking back at retirement

Chapter 46 North Miami Beach

Chapter 47 The hat

Chapter 48 Shalom TV

Chapter 49 Necessary updates

Chapter 50 Further agitation

Chapter 51 Learning advocacy

Chapter 52 Purim in 2014

Chapter 53 Some good news

Chapter 54 The Passuk

Chapter 55 A visit from Gabe and Gadi

Chapter 56 Amos Oz’s A Tale of Love and Darkness

Chapter 57 Mandela

Chapter 58 Jer is 60

Chapter 59 Franz Rosenzweig, revisited

Chapter 60 A mystic who spoke to the masses

Chapter 61 Passover 2014

Chapter 62 Interview with Forsan Hussein

Chapter 63 A young rabbi is heard from

Chapter 64 Malamud at the 92nd Street Y

Chapter 65 At the Empire Hotel in New York City

Chapter 66 Memorial Day

Chapter 67 The Greenbergs of Newton

Chapter 68 A Doctor in Atlanta

Chapter 69 The North Fork and East Hampton

Chapter 70 Dr. Stanley Blatt, of blessed memory

Chapter 71 Gabe in New Orleans, Bracha in Israel

Chapter 72 A week later

Chapter 73 A summer Shabbat

Chapter 74 Music to my ears

Chapter 75 Summing up:

Chapter 76 Last bites:

Chapter 77 A Backward Glance

Chapter 78 Final Words

IV Shelter Rock

41 Wonderful Years at Shelter Rock

V The Halakah and Beyond

VI Loving Tradition

VII Innocents Abroad

VIII Shelter Rock Bulletin

IX Eulogy For B. Fenster z’l

I Can’t Stop Loving You: A Report

I. BEGINNINGS

I N 2012, AT age 86, we decided to retire from active service. The freedom from daily pressure, deadlines and obligations beckoned. We followed.

For 36 years I had been the Rabbi of the Shelter Rock Jewish Center in Roslyn, N.Y., and had seen it grow from a backwater, pastoral synagogue to a bustling, populist, active institution.

My time at Shelter Rock was followed by short stints of a year each, as interim Rabbi, in four congregations, in Great Neck, N.Y.; Mill Basin, Brooklyn; Old Westbury and East Hampton, Long Island. I had not sought out any of these positions, but when offered, we heartily responded. They were good choices and nice moves. The fire was still burning in the belly.

Again, we were ready to retire, but strange things kept happening. An old friend called to tell of a small congregation in desperate need: Tifereth Israel of Greenport, on the eastern end of Long Island, the North Fork. They must be needy, I said to myself, because I was just past 80.

As it turned out, we spent four productive and fulfilling years at Tifereth Israel, until 2012. Then finally, Ricky and I decided that we needed some time for ourselves. So here we are, retired at last.

Then what happened? This is the story of that journey.

We were motivated by the realization that at that time we had more than 20 great-grandchildren, almost all living in Israel, but with whom we had spent very little time. We knew their parents well, our grandchildren, but not them. We determined to correct that. So we began by undertaking a long sojourn to Israel, and shorter ones to Florida and California to meet and get to know the tribe.

We were not disappointed. We rented an apartment in Kfar David alongside the Mamila Mall in Jerusalem, very convenient to the Old City, where our son Jeremy and his wife Ellen live. In 2013, we had done similarly. This time it was a two-bedroom, two-bathroom flat in the same complex of buildings. Originally we rented it for four months, but extended it so we could be present for the wedding of our grandson Akiva at the end of November. We had determined before that we had wanted to be in New York for Thanksgiving.

This afforded us an opportunity not only to get to know our great-grandchildren, but to spend quality time with them. For example, the aforementioned Akiva rang our doorbell one early morning in August to tell us that he was getting engaged that night to a young lady from B’nei Brak. It came as a total surprise, since he overlooked telling us that he was meeting with this young lady over the weeks before. So we discovered that they were quite a bunch. Diverse. Special. Fun, if you could roll with the punches.

These pages were written as a result of that visit. The time afforded us an opportunity to look back, but even more importantly to contemplate the future and record the present. We were happy with what we saw and are pleased to be able to share it.

As to the title, I Can’t Stop Loving You, it was suggested to me by my son, Rabbi Jeremy Fenster. Every time I retired (there were six of them) I sang to the congregation, a la Ray Charles. After I finished I Can’t Stop Loving You, I added, But you said back to me, ‘Hit the road Jack, and don’t come back, no more, no more, no more.’ It wasn’t literally true, but it enabled all of us to laugh.

CHAPTER 1

A QUICK LOOK BACK

I N THE OPENING chapters of the prophet Isaiah, he reports sensing God’s presence in the Holy Temple of Jerusalem. So then I said, ‘Woe unto me, for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell amongst a people of unclean lips: For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.’ (Isaiah 6:5) Religious awareness sometimes begins with this prophetic outburst of existential concern, and even pain. That at least is how my journey began; looking for the meaning of life, sensing the fear of death and searching for the awe, reverence and gratitude that surround our daily existence. The beginning of wisdom is not necessarily the fear of God: It is often amazement, awareness and appreciation.

For me, I am undone would be an appropriate place to begin. For at the start of my quest, unlike the Bible, I did not hear God say that it was very good. It began in darkness, groping for anything to hold on to and having trouble finding it.

This led ultimately to a search for spirituality, to the study of philosophy, but also other social sciences, and psychology, and literature, all with the goal of buttressing an embryonic faith.

I was trying to find out how the world worked, and what makes it and me tick. It has been a struggle and a long journey with many stops and starts, and many rewards.

Formal study did not prove fulfilling. It was Pythagoras, the pre-Socratic philosopher, who claimed that music emanated from the heavenly spheres. But our inability to hear was a deficiency on our part and not Heaven’s fault. It is a quaint idea, but if we cannot hear the music then it has no meaning to us—practically speaking it is a zero, nothing. I am still searching to hear the music.

Plato had many interesting insights in his dialogues—my favorite is the Theaetetus—but as far as a path, a way of life, not much there. Socrates doesn’t quite do it either though; An un-reflective life is not worth living is certainly an incisive beginning to an ongoing search.

I wasn’t hearing the music in formal philosophical study. It is not conventional wisdom nowadays to say so, but I was gaining much more moral strength and insight from the Bible. The books of Koheleth and Job really touched my soul. Jonah, the prophet who tries to run away—that was me. The yearly cycle of the Five Books of Moses was a weekly prod to inspiration. When I discovered it, I took to it like a dusty traveler to water. I could stop running away at last.

CHAPTER 2

THE WEAKNESS OF WOODY ALLEN

I T WAS THE wag Woody Allen who once confessed that he was born Jewish, but immediately converted to narcissism. It is true of many in all faiths. Most people who are looking for some overarching meaning or purpose in their lives begin with themselves. But ultimately, you have to get beyond that. Unless you widen the arc of your concern you will wind up totally narcissistic, seeing the entire world from your own innards.

How does the community become part of your life? Is it necessary? There is a monastic ideal that is bewitching to many people—cultivate your own inner being, meditate, reflect, be self-sufficient. It seems to me that every person seeking spiritual enrichment is intrigued by that ideal at one time or another. Personally, I am not sure that I ever gave it up. But thankfully, it did not gain a real foothold.

One of the steps up on the ladder for me was when I discovered the strength of daily meditation and prayer. In the traditional prayer book, the morning service concludes with some very magnificent lines which speak about fixing the world under the kingship of God. It is a call to action for the day ahead. In many of the old-time prayer books, however, it is preceded by a statement that others bow before gods of no account—that avail them not at all. These are words which I simply cannot say. I wouldn’t want the God of my Biblical fathers and mothers referred to in that way and I would accord the same feelings of slight to my brothers and sisters of other faiths as well. Stay positive, I say, it is the best way. Getting a foothold on the day means looking forward to doing good and positive things.

This lesson I learned immediately prior to my retirement, when I was the Rabbi on the North Fork of Long Island in Greenport, N.Y. There I met a group of clergy friends that went under the title GEM—standing for Greenport Ecumenical Ministries. Though they came late into my life, they exerted a profound influence on me. There was among others Father Tom, Reverend Garrett, Pastor Ann and the Gabbai of our synagogue, Stanley Rubin. Together we met and participated in various services in synagogues and churches in the community. We each held the other in complete and total respect.

Once during my tenure in Greenport, Father Tom had to be away for a number of months. We missed him. But then I heard that he was returning for Easter services at his church. I was determined to greet him that Sunday, so I managed to arrive at the end of the 11 o’clock mass. There was Father Tom, as bright and as brilliant as ever. At the end of the service, he walked down the center aisle, greeting his parishioners. I was standing in the last row. Spotting me, he came over so that we could exchange greetings. I was so overcome at seeing him after the long absence that I hugged him warmly, and tears glistened in my eyes. My colleague and buddy had returned.

I know very little about Catholic teaching, so I would never comment on or criticize an aspect of Church doctrine. But I know Father Tom, and I know that he is a friend and a soul brother.

So after many experiences of this kind, I learned to be respectful of other religious traditions, and that they all contain spiritual people who believe in their faith as strongly as I do in mine. And as for me, it detracts not one iota from my fervency.

It was said most powerfully for me by one of my teachers. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. He was a historic witness of black-Jewish relations and of interfaith activity in the late 20th Century. Famously, he marched with the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ralph Bunche on their trek from Selma to Birmingham. He summarized eloquently and concisely what I believe is the truth: Judaism has many allies, but no substitutes. For a Jew like Heschel, with close ties to Father Berrigan and to the Yale chaplain William Sloan Coffin Jr, as well as to Martin Luther King Jr, to affirm their faith as authentic and to speak of his own as irreplaceable, required conviction and courage. Heschel had both.

As I write this, I sense that warm feeling of what the old prayer said. That it is possible to improve the world under the kingship of God. Hatred and enmity are always lurking. But wisdom and faith can overcome them. That is why I pray daily. We shall overcome, if we don’t give up the dream.

CHAPTER 3

IS IT STILL POSSIBLE TO BELIEVE?

S O NOW WE are approaching the heart of the matter, when we ask how it is possible in a world so beset by enmity, tension, nuclear peril and partisan strife to still dream of a world at peace. At any moment some nuclear accident or intention could do away with a few million people. God’s promise to Noah that He would not destroy the world is of little consolation in a time where we could destroy everything ourselves. At a time such as this, the individual seems so insignificant and helpless. Yet we continue to say, We therefore trust in Thee, and pray that the leaders of the world will once again be able to sense and convey the sacredness of each human life.

Meanwhile, each of us needs to focus on what we can do in our immediate world. First of all I seek to be connected in whatever ways I can. To myself, not foggy or remote, but deeply aware of who I am and what I am doing. That takes concentration. It also takes a degree of isolation. The Chassidic masters call it Hitbodidut, focusing in on yourself and reaching out to others. It is described as an everyday necessity and requires a strong sense of self. It may sound strange, but being introspective helps to gain perspective, talking to God, telling everything, asking, confessing, declaring, arguing. It is all possible. Are there requests, petitions? That’s okay too. Demands are also in order. But as you say all this, you find yourself refining, adding, eliminating and sorting out what is really important in your life. It is not all one way. In my religious tradition, I am also resorting to traditional texts and materials, kind of set pieces which I embellish and garnish with new ideas and aspirations. The old and the new are joined together seamlessly.

The crucial thing is not whether there are immediate, or even down the road answers. That would be great, but the world is more complicated than that. The exhilaration comes from the sense that somehow or another it all makes sense. A feeling of the Divine presence, of at least being heard, that I am not alone and adrift in a non-caring world. On occasion, everyone feels that way. But when grace is present, you feel affirmed, confirmed, acknowledged. And when you do you are ready to go forward, no matter what. Each day I hope to sense that presence and that potential. Most days I do.

I also want to be connected to my family, to my community and to the world. I want to speak to them, hear from them and be in regular contact. That’s where I derive my strength of who I am and what I hope to be. By myself I am adrift and at sea.

I’m not sure how to explain this clearly and rationally. But when I close my eyes, I feel at times a strong sense of Divine Presence here and now. I know it sounds spooky. But at the moment it is real and present. One of the lines I say daily is, Those who seek the Lord will be happy of heart. I have felt that in the prayer of the moment, whether it be of thanksgiving or praise, petition or visionary. It may or may not be fulfilled, but at that point you are joyful with the sense of being heard, of being in the presence of a Higher Power, who has given design and meaning to all we say and do. I may not be able to convince you that this is not just some fantasy and I’m not sure that I ought to try. I am reporting what I experience. It is the idea of worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. That’s what I am experiencing in the hour of grace, that evanescent idea of holiness of seeking, sensing and finding.

It’s not permanent or automatic. Sometimes it’s stronger than others. But it is real. Of that I am certain. It lifts you out of the common place, if only temporarily, to a higher sphere. From there you can see further. There is a reality to the dimension of the holy. Of that I am convinced.

CHAPTER 4

LONG NIGHTS JOURNEY INTO DAYLIGHT

I DID NOT BEGIN in clarity. When I was a teenager, my life was plunged into a deep, dark hole. I saw no way of climbing out. Days and weeks went by when I was in a total fog. I contemplated dropping out of school at age 16. I couldn’t hear a thing in class. I never opened a book. I lay on my bed awaiting extinction.

I know all of this sounds exaggerated, but it wasn’t. These feelings were based on events in my life which have been described in the early pages of my memoir, Up from the Straits.

Fortunately by temperament and by background, I had always been what Aristotle called a social animal. Before too long I realized that I really wanted to reach out and touch the world of people, places and interesting things in life. Where exactly that feeling came from I cannot say. It was intuitive. Circumstances helped. I went to a summer camp. I met a young lady who showed some interest in me. It revived my spirit. I began to look at myself as others saw me. I became interested in how I looked, having been fairly oblivious of it before.

I started reading books. John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath in many ways was the most motivational book I ever read in my life. I began studying the Bible. I was beginning to hear the call of Sinai in my life. Ritual patterns that I had totally ignored for years suddenly took on interest. I began to observe the Sabbath as a special, sacred day. It was a revelation. Sacred time began to take on a depth of meaning. I felt my spiritual side awakening after a long sleep. Daily prayer suddenly made sense. Not so much from the authorized prayer book—but from my own inner prayer yearnings. Hitbodidut. A quiet center of purpose and meaning.

The goals of my life began to unfurl, which led me to 65 years as a rabbi and of clergy service. All of that led me to where I am writing this today, retired in Jerusalem with 25