Hi.
Sorry it's been so long - and a special apology to you sufferers from insomnia who rely on my blog for relief.
I've learned a lot about blogging in this month-long hiatus. The posting about Cantor Merkel has received a surprising amount of attention, with friends, colleagues, congregants, and total strangers emerging from the woodwork to comment on Cantor Merkel. Seems that a simple Google search for "Cantor Stephen Merkel" now leads off with a link to my little tribute. Today offered a case in point: a childhood classmate of Stephen from Winnipeg commented on her memory of the "larger than life flamboyant kid with the amazing voice."
Sounds like our Stephen!
So - thank you, readers, for the eye-opening lesson in the power of posting an online journal. A recent cover article in
New York magazine explored today's youth/young adult culture in which the line between public and private has become so blurred as to render distinction impossible. I have observed as much in my 2-year "Facebook Experiment" in which I opted to become one of the first "adults" to open an account on Facebook.com - essentially an interactive, online bulletin board for students. I joined in order to stay in touch with former students who had gone off to college. Within months high schoolers had linked up to the network and a flood of students "friended" me.
Facebook's interface struck me as an excellent communication tool; most students today use Facebook first and foremost to communicate with their friends - more so than straight e-mail. Facebook is simpler, more elegant, and more powerful than e-mail. For instance, a student goes away for a long weekend. Her photos are posted on Facebook almost immediately upon her return and within hours all of her friends have commented on her photo album. Within one click, friends can send a private message or post a comment on the student's "wall" for everyone else to see. Most students opt to disclose their relationship status, so that a hookup or a breakup receives immediate attention. There's a dark side to Facebook, too, but I'm saving a lot of my thoughts on the subject for an intended future sermon called, "What I Learned on Facebook.com" - so, just be patient. In the meantime, I've linked to my profile in the right-hand sidebar; and you might enjoy getting a free Facebook account yourself. More non-students are doing it these days. I'm part of the Official Facebook Rabbi network, which boasts a startling number of real-life rabbis (mostly Orthodox, it would appear)!
Anyway, I write this to underscore how the Web 2.0, with its radical shift to user-supplied content, has transformed communication, perhaps more quickly and thoroughly than most of us understand. Teenagers, I think, get it - and embrace it. My little blog, then, is just a totally typical emblem of the new Internet, in which a few personal words about Cantor Merkel, intended originally for my invited readership (i.e., the friends and family who either subscribe to this blog or whom I have alerted to its existence) have become a sort of unofficial, official obituary. At the very least, it gives a writer pause before clicking "PUBLISH" at the end of a posting. I guess that while I knew, intellectually, that writing a blog would make my thoughts public domain, there's still a feeling of genuine surprise when I learn that complete strangers have been reading my "private" thoughts. Well, duh, that's because they're not private anymore. At any rate, I've developed some empathy for students who are caught off guard when they learn that "outsiders" have read all about them online. Did you know that many employers will now look up a work applicant's Facebook and MySpace profiles to learn about their candidates? Watch out.
After Stephen's funeral, Kelly and I took a few days in California to catch our breaths, then back here for a whirlwind March. A surreal challenge was preparing for the supremely silly holiday of Purim within 24 hours of landing in New York - and still just days after laying Stephen to rest. Though all thanks to my rabbi Rick Jacobs who invited the congregation to turn, quite literally, from death to life by proposing a spiel (i.e., our annual Staff Purim Skit) based on this premise: Westchester Reform Temple is actually a Fertility Clinic.
Indeed, it has been a time pregnant, ahem, with activity at the Temple, and the clergy shortage prompted by Cantor Merkel's death has been amplified by the recent birth of our Cantorial Intern's baby daughter (
Mazal Tov, Mia!) and the beginning of the Congregational Placement Process for our Rabbinic Intern (Good Luck, Greg!). That means we're down to two rabbis for 1,200 families. Of course we have help from many talented, eager associates. (Thank you, Rachel, Dan, Ellen, and so many other congregants and colleagues!)
Spring always sees a resurgence of Jewish activity - we come out of a winter with few formal Jewish celebrations (the holiday Tu Bishevat is really the only one - and most of us Diaspora Jews don't really "get" the observance of Arbor Day in the middle of February) and plunge straight into Purim, Passover, Yom Ha-Shoah, Yom Ha-Zikaron, Yom Ha-Atzma'ut, Lag Ba'Omer, Shavuot and so forth... all in the space of about three months.
Three months--one season--with so much happening. I hope to write a bit more often in these next three months. It's not that I'll have more time; if anything, I'm going to spend longer hours in the office. But these three exciting months on the Jewish calendar are also an exciting three months on the McBlake calendar. (McBlake = McCormick + Blake.) Kelly just left for Salt Lake City where she will perform as Fantine in the regional premiere of "Les Miserables" at
Pioneer Theatre Company. I am sure that she will have some exciting exploits in Mormondom and with her permission I may relate some of them to you. As for me, I'm tending to a busy congregation and a condo in deliberate disarray - the cabinets are in and the Great Kitchen Renovation may now commence. Stay tuned.
JEB
P.S. That gravestone in the parking lot of Costco? Turns out not to have been such a puzzle. My friend Michael, and one of my college students, Jess, notified me (yes, on Facebook) that a story was published about a year ago concerning a controversy that arose when a parking garage was erected on an old Orthodox Jewish cemetery in Yonkers. Apparently long before the construction started, the bodies of the adults interred there had been moved to Israel for burial there, but the problem was with some 147 children, the whereabouts of whose remains were indeterminate. So a collective headstone has been plopped into the middle of a Costco parking lot. Kelly tells me they've unveiled it, so I'll try to get a photo next time I'm over there and I'll post it here.
P.P.S. Another music posting is forthcoming. If you're reading this, I'm curious to know: what 2007 albums have you enjoyed so far?
P.P.P.S. I'm wondering if you might be interested in using the "comment" space here as an opportunity to play "ask the rabbi." So, if there's something on your mind, go ahead. The worst I would do is totally ignore it or make fun of you for asking. But I'll resist, promise.
Case in point: My wife, Kelly, a musical theatre singer and actor, who works tirelessly, auditioning and performing, and whose calling is fulfilled before an audience, has found her largest audience ever - an audience of hundreds of thousands - totally inadvertently.
f Seder-related miscellany set to a badly performed parody of Jimmy Buffett's "Margaritaville." The photo in question is a picture of our family Seder from 2005 - held at the University Club in Providence, Rhode Island. I deduced that the picture was nabbed from the public domain archives on Flickr.com where I had uploaded a bunch of photos a long time ago - before switching over to Google's online photo utility, Picasa Web Albums.
