In our community we were asked to choose a subject and write about our thoughts to celebrate the upcoming High Holidays. I am not particularly effective talking about religious feelings despite my choice to undergo preparations for my second Bar Mitzvah in 70 years. I do this because it seemed right and not necessarily a religious obligation to undergo rites of passage that are ancient and in some way or other are expected to announce the arrival of a new adult to our community. This not simply a Jewish thing but something that has attained a cultural value that most people, Jews and non-Jews, understand.
But, the rules of this challenge to our community in Temple Sinai of North Dade issued by Rabbi Alan Litwak has given me the opportunity to express some thoughts about the progress of our great-grand-daughter, Madison Rose, whose grandmother, Nancy (our daughter) recorded in a series of pictures taken on the 4th of July as this girl baby was introduced to the ocean.
Nancy took the pictures and appears in none of them. Father Jeremy and grandfather, Joe, each took a hand of the little girl and walked her to the water where she was shepherded deeper and deeper until she was waist deep and could see an oncoming wave towering above her. She trusted her men to protect her and ((I guess I THINK) was unafraid for the pictures did not show her struggling but trusting while Jeremy scooped her up and walked her and talked with her as she was led into another world.
I got to thinking about family and the love they bring with them. We grow up with them and that love and are introduced into the world that is real only a few feet around us until we grow taller and can see further. This is dependency on everyone's part. The family, through love, brings forth new life and each new life lets us see what we have forgotten about in our own lives what growing up is all about.
This was a holiday, not a HOLY day. The only picture of Maddie crying was when she was put on a horse in a Merry Go Round. Yet, this reaches deeply into the human occupation of caring for each other as we are introduced into the world and the world gets to see us and try us out. Our community is there and there is an interchange of acceptability. We accept the world as it is and the world tries us out.
Our community is the larger family and through love we all help our young grow up and make their own ways in the world.