by Hazzan Jessi Roemer
I’d like to tell you about three of my elders: My dad, Dr. Peter Roemer, who died at age 86 this past May; Rabbi Dr. Arthur Waskow, who died at age 92 this week; and my mom, Cantor Susan Roemer, who died in May 2010, almost fifteen and a half years ago. The three of them were, for a time, were involved in building the first Jewish community I knew, outside of my family.
We joined the Fabrangen Cheder when I was nine. The Cheder, as we called it, was a D.C.-area havurah (D.I.Y. Jewish community) started by two families — one of them Arthur’s — who wanted to create spirited Jewish education for themselves and their kids. We gathered in members’ houses for Hebrew school, discussions, and Shabbat dinners, and in recreation centers for B’nei Mitzvah celebrations and holiday services. We hiked together along the Potomac River and held community retreats at a ramshackle property my great uncle owned on the Chesapeake Bay. We functioned like a loose, extended family; the kids in my cohort were (and still are) like siblings to me, and the adults — including Arthur — like additional parents.
This community helped my parents heal from the loneliness that had enveloped them since my first little sister’s death at age three. Dad once told me that after Becky died, he kept a wooden bat under his bed, almost as if his grief could suddenly materialize at night in the form of an intruder. It wasn’t until four years later, just after the Cheder had met in our house for the first time — after everyone had gone home, but the warmth of their bodies, the sound of their voices, and the smell of coffee from the big urn lingered throughout the house — that my dad finally felt safe, protected, and held. He put away his bat.
This community which Arthur helped start, and my parents helped build, met my dad’s grief with human presence and banished his fear. It gave me and my sister, Debi, a home that extended beyond the walls of our house.
Arthur and my mom, Sue, shared a few traits: They were big personalities — they each had large, public roles in the many circles they served, including the Cheder. They were do-ers; they acted directly from their own moral compasses. They made things happen.
My mom, Sue, held feminist consciousness-raising groups in our home and brought tiny me to marches to end the Vietnam War. She modeled how to sing, bring people together, teach, and hold sacred space. In a world — especially a Jewish world — that still largely belonged to men, she was among the first small wave of women to become ordained cantors in the United States. She showered love with her big heart and her music; she believed that everyone had generosity and joy inside of them, waiting to be drawn out. And draw them out she did! She taught me to connect with my heart.
Arthur believed people could be convinced, taught, inspired to change their behavior for the good. A tireless activist for peace, human rights, and the planet, he modeled vision, fearlessness, and public moral integrity. So many people were inspired by his example and emboldened to act more like him in the face of overtly oppressive forces. Arthur put his body on the line time and time again for justice, and in doing so, made others less afraid to speak up.
Growing up, I seriously thought it was normal for adults to spend a Friday chained to the gate of a government building.
My dad, Peter, was a psychiatrist. He listened to people, made space for them. Despite his firm belief that no one can really change anyone else, many of the people he encountered did, in fact, change — or maybe just became their better selves. By making it okay to say what was on our minds, Dad made us feel comfortable in our own skins.
Dad said something to me last year that completely encapsulated where the deductive-reasoning-scientist met the spiritualist in him. He said: “Only a very small number of people I’ve met hear God talking to them directly. Most people — including me — don’t hear God talking. I figure, if God isn’t talking, God must be listening. Most of the time, people just need someone to listen. So if I can listen, too, maybe I can help a little.”
Dad, Mom, and Arthur all modeled, in different ways, how to live righteously. I’m thinking about this as we read the story of Noah this week.
The Torah calls Noah an “Ish tzadik, a righteous man.” But a second, qualifying phrase follows: “Tamim hayah b’dorotav — he was blameless/innocent in his generation.” This could mean that he was righteous despite his generation, or it could mean that he was only righteous compared to his generation. It’s unclear. But the description of Noah doesn’t end there; it continues: “Et haElohim hit’halekh Noah — Noah walked with God.”
What are we to make of Noah’s moral character? Is he righteous? Is he just the best of a bad lot? Did he walk with God? Noah did everything God told him to do: build an ark. Gather the animals and your immediate family – leave all your makhatonim (relatives by marriage) behind. Don’t try to change humanity; save yourselves. If being good means following God’s instructions, then Noah was good, right?
And yet, the question has been repeatedly asked over the centuries: Why did Noah react with such obedience when God threatened to destroy the world? Why didn’t he argue, make the case for all of creation? Why let God punish all the other species for human wickedness?
In a thoughtful drash disseminated by the Shalom Center (another entity Reb Arthur founded), Rabbi Shoshana Meira Friedman quotes the Zohar Hadash, a mystical text from the thirteenth century, which imagines Noah exiting the ark after the flood and being confronted with the devastation he had made no attempt to stop. In this version of the story, Noah cries out to God, “How could you have done this?” And God retorts, “Now you ask me? And when I said, ‘All flesh will end,’ you went into the house of study and didn’t do anything to fix that generation of yours?!'”
I find myself imagining how each of the elders on my mind tonight would react if God approached them before the flood.
Arthur, I’m pretty sure, would channel the early version of his Hebrew namesake Avraham, arguing: “How can you, YAH, be so cruel and unforgiving as to destroy your creatures?!” And if God wouldn’t relent, Arthur would march to the town square, chain himself to a fence, and protest the unethical behavior of both humanity and God, to try and get them to change their treatment of Earth and each other before it was too late.
My dad, conversely, would not presume to have any power to change God’s mind. He would, instead, invite God to go kayaking with him on the river. There, surrounded by sky and gently flowing current, Dad would look the Source of Life in the eyes, and ask, “is something bothering you, God? Do you want to talk about it?”
Maybe sometimes all God needs is someone to listen.
As a college student in the early 1960s, my mom participated in a version of the Milgram experiments, which were ostensibly about memory but really explored the degree to which participants would obey authoritative instructions to commit torture. The trauma of that experiment was palpable every time my mom recounted it; she described her horror, her refusal to obey, and her vociferous resistance, from the very first “electric shock” administered by her co-participants to an unseen victim in the next room. “Stop!” She screamed at them, “This is madness! That’s a person!” She continued to scream at them until the researchers took her out of the room and told her that it was a ruse; no one was actually being hurt. She told them this was insanity.
I have a pretty good idea what Mom would have said to God, had God shared with her in that pre-flood moment the plan to obliterate life on Earth.
God does not speak directly to most of us. But people do. There are times when people tell us very clearly the destruction they plan to wreak. And we must ask ourselves: How hard will we try to challenge them? When Earth speaks to us, showing us what will come if we continue to burn fossil fuels, destroy ecosystems and scorch the planet, how do we respond? Some of us quietly prepare for the worst, like Noah. Others, like Jonah and my elders, learn to harness their courage and attempt to lead humanity down a different path.
Righteousness is not guaranteed; in each generation, it must be insisted upon anew. Perhaps that is what Torah is getting at with the concept of being righteous in one’s generation. As I search for my place in the legacies of Sue, Peter, and Arthur, I am reminded that our predecessors’ accomplishment is not a castle, but a torch.
Let us all be blessed with the courage to advocate for life, community, joy, and justice — not only when it’s easy — so that one day our successors, those whom we have eldered, will lovingly take the torch from us.