14 April 2008 - 13:29Rebbe on the Road Europe

Rebbe on the Road Europe 2008 Part One: Hard”ship”

Radical awe is my favorite companion in life. Via cruise, we’ve just spent a day each in Rome and

Did you ever notice the word ship in the term hardship before? I hadn’t until thinking about this mythical bit of herstory.

Two days before, at the Empire Palace Hotel [we recommend it] lobby I was sitting amongst businessmen whose conference badges identified them as from

 “You see the rich repast set on the table in this building? We know it to be a special-invitation spot in the

“How will this affect you?” I inquire.

 “We shall see,” he replies, “Power works both ways; without a convenient plague to exploit, they have no upper hand.” His companions snigger.

“But the down turn in the economy may suffice…” I point out the obvious. He bows slightly in acknowledgement of the other option. My French wasn’t good enough to capture the last bit of phrasing, so they broke his rejoinder down for me in very fragmented English. I believe he said: “Then we will manufacture crosses and build churches, and design and build germ resistant environments and new pharmaceuticals, our conglomerate is perched to prevail.” His comrades guffaw in a cartoonesque gluttonous glee.

Before leaving the States, we had set aside the newly available fax-it-in opportunity for a group audience with the pope, and similarly available private

Not so long ago it was more convenient to have learned conversational French, and so recently was English the standard that I can see the words in the air between us all. German is the more useful second international language now. Germans I’ve met traveling are learning Chinese, so it seems civilizations’ tipping points are flying this way and that.

I’m reading a Michael Crichton novel that opens with some science journal précis regarding quantum theory and multiverses, speculation that  there really is no time and according to the theory it seems, no such thing as time travel – no before, not after, only nows, each slightly and increasingly variant. I want to call Jeff Bub, Barry’s cousin in DC who is a philosopher of science to find out more……might the Noah’s ark verses in Torah be metaphoric residue of memory of some ancient black hole moment? Intentional? Accidental? The Jewish practice of yirah writ large, radical “awesome fearsomeness” of It All shivers through.

Speaking of awesome/fearsomeness, as happens in families, ours had two Jeff Bubs. Last week, one of my husband’s four brothers, one of the Jeff Bubs, died in his early sixties, all-too-young of a virulent lung cancer. I think we saw Jeff and his very quiet wife Sheila in person three or four times since our marriage a decade ago, their life together split part-time in

My personal life motto is “all things change. I know for Barry, it also felt a false thing to do, to make plans to attend the burial of someone where the relationship had not been a close one. Barry, as is his way, found another route to authenticity. Rather than surface too late, he sought his brother out on Skype, and through the sometimes miracle of trauma, found Jeff ready to meet him for perhaps a minyan of heart-felt and healing talks over the last months of his life. The remaining State-side brothers, we trusted, and did, do the traditional right thing, fly down to

Within the week in which Jeff, z”l died, a mandatory Medicaid sale of my father’s house so long on the market resulted in my having to finish dash between legal authorities to deal, a property on which we’d placed an offer was accepted, inspected and a mortgage had to be finessed and packing at least half finished to meet the timing of settlement upon our return from my obligation as a Passover cruise rabbi in Europe. Of course, right then,  the final publisher’s edits (several hundred) on the last volume of my Reclaiming Judaism trilogy arrived with a few days deadline to review and advise, and I was finishing a major remake of the ReclaimingJudaism.org website timed to June release of Living Jewish Life Cycle, and of course, our taxes returns were due. We had, as had long been scheduled my clergy students from the nearby Buddhist seminary and a faculty member coming for a traditional Lithuanian Shabbos dinner in this same interval. Barry cooked  5 courses himself while preparing to teach a three hour seminar that represented a major professional breakthrough he’d been working toward for close to a decade.

I, the usual rock in times of distress, found myself startling easily and severely exhausted. If no one will fall dreadfully ill or die on the ship, this gig feels like a potential G*d-send, a tether in time, my G*d sense told me to reach for it and not let go. I persisted when Barry, feeling quite anxious and acting deeply depressed, resisted. He wanted to stay in his nest at our apartment, to cancel the trip and cancel the condo purchase, his message to me “Just stop the stress, I have to get off.”

But we’re here and settling into a rhythm of three weeks aboard a ship full of round-the-world in 102 days passengers. For some this turns out to be a form of assisted living, one man is on his 60^th cruise, many are frail and all are the kind of quirky folks who are not about to miss a minute of the glory of creation.

Yesterday, in sunshine rather than the predicted spring rains, we walked the charming markets and quays of the medieval town