Dear family and friends,
Yesterday we buried Abba. You’ll notice there are some additional letters next to his name now: z”l. This is shorthand for Zichrono li’vracha—זכרונו לברכה—which means he will be remembered for a blessing. Because the funeral was something we attempted to keep small, most of you were not there. In an effort to share the experience with you, I’ve attempted to capture the event for you below.
I had a feeling I would struggle to hold it together during the funeral and so I planned ahead. The day began with family staying in the Hyatt Place Canton (Abba’s hotel of choice when visiting Savta) meeting in the lobby for breakfast. Rather than fly directly from Boston to Canton I made a quick trip to Denver (for a handful of hours) to pick up provisions (like a suit) and arrange things a tiny bit before leaving town for another week for the funeral and shiva. One of those provisions was arranging for some comfort food for the morning of the funeral. My favorite Denver bagel and fish purveyor (Rosenberg’s) has hours that wouldn’t line up with such a short trip, but I felt like bringing breakfast. I enlisted my dear friend Dan to pick up and store my order until I arrived for my Denver-layover.
Two dozen bagels, a pound of gravlax (cured salmon speckled with fresh dill), a pound of smoked Scottish salmon (traditional lox sliced so thin you could read the Rosenberg logo through each slice), and a half pound of sable (smoked black cod that, as my Uncle Sheldon put it, was the best he had ever had) were carefully packed into a reinforced box complete with bubble packs and ice packs, and were labeled to be taken as a checked bag to Canton. Yesterday morning I enlisted the assistance of my cousin Leslie (Abba’s eldest nieces) to act as caterer and to lay out the spread. When I introduced Abba to Rosenberg’s a few years ago it instantly became a favorite.
With the family well fed, we retired to our rooms to don our funeral attire. As you may recall, Abba wasn’t fond of neckties. When he wore a suit or a tuxedo he generally wore a tee shirt beneath his jacket in place of a starched white button down. Most of us the men brought black tee shirts, but for the couple who didn’t, there happens to be a Duluth Trading Company store next to the hotel (one of Abba’s favorite clothing stores—he loved the wicking underwear).
Dressed in a black yarmulka, black suit, black suspenders, black socks, black shoes and a black tee shirt (the Jewish version of a full-blues-brothers) we made our way to Shaaray Torah, Abba’s childhood synagogue and where Savta remains a member to this day.
Parked out front of the synagogue was Abba’s ride from Arnolds Funeral Home. Now you may think the reason we used Arnolds was because it is the only funeral home in Canton that performs Jewish funerals. While that is true, in fact back when Jews first came to Canton and eventually needed a funeral home, when they approached the other homes in town, due to the pervasive antisemitism, the other homes would not work with the Jews. Great Grandpa Arnold didn’t even hesitate when he was approached; “of course I’ll work with you,” he said. But there is another reason—Arnolds is the funeral home used by every United States President buried in Canton. Below is a picture from the wall in the funeral home of the procession held for the late President William McKinley who is buried here.
We pulled in and left our car in the circle just behind the Arnolds vehicles. Just inside Shaaray Torah Synagogue, to save our suits from destruction, a black ribbon was pinned on each of our chests.
We entered the main sanctuary and there was Abba’s coffin along the back wall. I tried very hard to ignore it, but when in a room with Abba, no matter how little he says, he is impossible to ignore. I sat in the front row with my back to him and read through the hesped (Jewish eulogy) I wrote the day before. I made it through the first sentence and began to cry.
Get it together, I told myself and willed myself into stopping the tears. I made some last-minute edits only breaking down in tears three more times, before Savta entered the sanctuary followed by a train of other family members. After saying hello to some I couldn’t hold it together any longer. I ducked away into a hallway out of site just to the left of the bimah (pulpit) and tried to just let the tears flow thinking if I got it out I would be able to hold it together for my family during the rest of the service.
When the tears stopped I returned the sanctuary and immediately began to cry again. Savta, my Uncle Sheldon, Eama, Nadav and I were called into the Rabbi’s room just to the right of the bimah to meet with Rabbi Cherie Koller-Fox and Cantor Bruce Braun. There we began the initial funeral rites with prayer and formal kriyah (the Jewish tradition of expressing the overwhelming loss and broken hearts by tearing that black ribbon pinned to our chests). By this point I was crying uncontrollably, only takin short breaks to catch my breath before starting again. I turned to Cherie’s husband, Everett Fox, and asked if he could pinch hit for me on the delivery of my hesped. We agreed that I would sit next to him as he recited it.
We returned to the sanctuary and sat in the front row. Eama was on the left aisle, I sat next to her, Nadav to my right, Uncle Sheldon to his right, and Savta on the right aisle. As the service began the five of us held hands. We were welcomed by Cherie with blessings and song. Cherie was one of Abba’s closest friends, confidant and rabbi. She shared an adaption of Psalm 112:
A light shines through the darkness for the upstanding—
For they are gracious, compassionate and beneficent.
Happy is the man who reveres God
Who relishes observing the commandments that speak to his heart.
His sons will be men of strong of character—
They are the wealth and the riches he leaves in this world.
It is good for a man to be compassionate, to lend his time and money to
Those in need and to conduct his business lawfully.
Such a man will never be shaken.
He will forever be remembered as a tzaddik—a righteous man.
Know that his good name is his crown
and that his good works will stand forever.
Then Cantor Braun sang Shviti (Psalm 16). Abba loved hearing Cantor Braun sing. And the connections in a small town run deep; Cantor Braun’s wife was one of Abba’s classmates in high school.
Cherie then delivered the first of the hespeds. Her’s was as follows:
Jerry Benjamin’s untimely death has left a deep void in the lives of his family and in the lives of the thousands of people whose lives he touched. He had an unabashed joy for living that made him a magnet—the kind of person that everyone loves and wants to be near. Some people talk about how he changed the trajectory of their lives. Others were moved to join the causes he was passionate about or were inspired to be their best selves because he believed in them.
Jerry was a man who lived large. So large, in fact, that it would be impossible for me to even attempt to distill his accomplishments, leadership roles and accolades into a few minutes. But through a lifetime of friendship, I had a front row seat to observe Jerry and learn from him and be inspired by him. The word that most comes to my mind when I think of Jerry is “passion” and that I can begin to speak of as we gather to honor his life and bid him farewell today.
The Bible has a phrase that captures the notion of passion—Kano Key-Nay-Ti–. It describes someone who gives everything he has for what he believes in. The root letters repeat in this expression for emphasis. A person is “Kano-Key-Nay-Ti” when they are really passionate, deeply passionate. To me, that describes Jerry perfectly.
A loving family, a supportive Jewish community and a small town upbringing—these are the building blocks that made Jerry the passionate man, the mensch that he was. He grew up immersed in Yiddishkeit yhanks to grandparents who spoke Yiddish and told him stories of what came before him—stories he loved to retell. His hard-working and dedicated doctor father Stanley modeled for him the value of helping people and being passionate about work. His brother Sheldon, Jerry often said, was his oldest and closest friend. Sheldon will speak about this. And his beloved mother Edie—Edie, you were his heart. Jerry learned his love of words and poetry from you. You taught him he had a responsibility in this world to do the right and moral thing and which meant being politically active. You taught him to ignore outward differences in people and to focus on what’s in their heart. All the great acts of kindness and generosity that marked his life, he learned at your feet. No wonder he loved you so very much.
And then there was Cindy. They met as children and were married for 46 years. Jerry was deeply in love with Cindy and said he was the luckiest man in the universe to have her as his partner, his muse and the one who kept him grounded. His sons Ariel and Nadav: if you received Ariel’s Abba updates, you got a glimpse of the great love and close bond Ariel shared with his Abba. Ariel carries so much of his Abba’s spirit in him. Nadav opened up new worlds for Jerry. He got great pleasure watching him develop into a talented artist and photographer. Nadav said he and Abba would have extended and ongoing conversations about deep philosophical issues. Jerry embraced Nadav’s wife Lindsay and her parents Chris and Pat into the family with enormous joy. His family was Jerry’s number one passion and he considered his life with them his greatest accomplishment.
Growing up in the Canton Jewish community, Jerry was surrounded by a community that carried about and supported each other. He never understood why that wasn’t true in larger cities and one of his passions was to make that so, everywhere he lived. In Canton, everyone knew each other, or at least it looked like that to a child. Most of us are curious about some people we meet, but Jerry was genuinely curious about everyone. He wanted to know what they did, where they came from and what their passions were. He wanted to hear their story.
The author Malcolm Gladwell developed “the phone book test for connectors.” The idea was to look over 250 names and count how many people you knew that had the same name as those 250. Your score indicated how social a person you are. Jerry’s number was way higher than predicted, so he actually called Gladwell to tell him. The author was astounded. Jerry’s contact list is ginormous, yes, but he didn’t just collect names, he collected stories and they remember him because of that. It’s a passion he learned growing up here. That is one reason why he was loved by so many and why he will be so deeply missed.
Jerry and I both taught in Hebrew Schools during our years at the Harvard Graduate School of education. Those schools perplexed us. If Judaism was so great, why was Jewish education so dismal? This could have been a one-off conversation over coffee but instead it was a problem that we became determined to actually solve. We developed our ideas to improve Jewish education nationwide and a practical strategy of how to fund our plan. We accused the powers that be of not providing enough money for the schools. We planned a conference and 750 colleagues came. No one thought this was doable. And No wonder! Jerry was 23 at the time and I was a couple years older. Now that was Chutzpah—the kind that Jerry majored in his whole life. That organization, CAJE, became the premier address for Jewish educators in the country and continues to this day. It never would have happened without Jerry’s vision and skills. And we had great fun, dreaming it and making it come true. Jerry went on to become an advocate for Jewish education in Milwaukee and on the national scene.
But despite Jerry’s passion for Jewish education, he was a businessman at heart. When he moved from Boston to Milwaukee to go into business in the early 80’s, I have to admit, I thought he was “selling out”—giving up passion for business. But that’s not at all what happened. He built a strong and successful business to be sure, but found a way to take a company that collected and sold addresses and used it to work for the good of the country and the Jewish people. Through his company, he reached into the highest places in American politics and became friends with many senators and congresspersons. He helped Barak Obama and so many others gain traction in their campaigns. Sure he regaled us with stories of his Washington adventures, but if you listened carefully, what you heard in those stories was the sincere friendship and respect that Jerry and the politicians had for each other.
Jerry undertook the practically impossible job of finding as many Holocaust survivors in Europe as possible to make sure that they received reparations and insurance payouts. He came to the interview for this job by himself, while others came with teams of fancy lawyers. But he got the job. I assume it was because the Claims Commission could hear his passion to succeed at this impossible task and because Jerry, the “infuriating optimist” never once thought it was an impossible task! Just another challenge! And so typical of the way he thought, Jerry decided as long as he was looking for the Jewish survivors, why not find the Roma and the gay victims too? And he did. And the victims got the money they were owed. Jerry was proudest of this accomplishment among the invaluable contributions he made to Jewish life.
Jerry used to say, “If the only thing you want is to make money, then all you do in your life is make money”. He also had a strong intellectual life. He was a proliofic writer and he loved good food, wine and cigars. But most of all, what he wanted was to be that person who spread kindness and generosity wherever he could. That he was kind to friends goes without saying. In so many notes and email posts people are recalling the kindnesses Jerry did for them—how he mentored them, how he talked them through a difficult time. How he showed up when friends needed him. I’m sure you have stories about his kindnesses to you.
He loved the fact that he had the means to be a philanthropist and he believed that we all do. He had a philosophy about fundraising that applied to his own giving. He loved asking people for money. He said giving money to a cause you are passionate about makes a person feel great. (He loved to make people feel great!) So he gave with joy.
He also operated his businesses with kindness and generosity. For example, during an economic downturn, he could have laid off employees to save money but he didn’t. He couldn’t. It would have hurt his heart too much. If you look up the word mensch in any dictionary, you will see Jerry’s picture there.
Family, Jewish community, Kindness and generosity, being a role model and an inspiration, and embodying a joy for living—those were the passions and the themes of Jerry’s life. A life so well lived! A life too short but a life in which each day mattered, each day counted. Like you, I loved him so and I thank God for him as I am sure you do. If you knew him, if he impacted your life, you own a piece of him, a piece of his passion. Hold tight to it and make Jerry proud of what you accomplish with it.
Cherie was followed by a recitation of Hannah Senesh’s poem, יש כחבים—There are Stars read in English by cousin Rafi (Abba’s youngest nephew):
יש כוכבים שאורם מגיע ארצה
רק כאשר הם עצמם אבדו ואינם.
יש אנשים שזיו זיכרם מאיר
כאשר הם עצמם אינם יותר בתוכנו.
אורות אלה – המבהיקים בחשכת הלילה –
הם הם שמראים לאדם את הדרך.
There are stars whose radiance is visible on Earth
though they have long been extinct.
There are people whose brilliance continues to light the world
even though they are no longer among the living.
These lights are particularly bright when the night is dark.
They light the way for humankind.
This was followed by Uncle Sheldon’s hesped:
This is a eulogy with a chorus. When I give you the cue, please say the line with me. It’s a little complicated but I think you will catch on quickly. Ready? Repeat after me: THINK BIG. LOUDER!
On a cloudy day in April 1968, I was home alone after school when the doorbell rang. Jerry was out of town. My parents were at work. We knew that the Shaaray Torah USY Passover candy order would be delivered that week. The USY Passover candy sale was an annual ritual that raised a few hundred dollars for charity. That year, Jerry was fundraising vice president. “We can do better. THINK BIG,” he said as he marshalled his candy-selling army. When I answered the door and the semi driver asked where they should put the delivery, I was prepared. My parents had said to have them put it in the corner of the garage. I opened one of the 2 garage doors and showed the delivery men which corner to put it in. “Sign here,” they said. Without looking at the invoice, I went in the house. A half hour later the bell rang again. “Where should we put the rest?” the driver asked. I walked out back to find the garage completely filled, stacked floor to ceiling with boxes. The driver said they’d only unloaded half the truck. With great trepidation I opened the other side of the garage and watched them fill it. That year, USY made $10,000 for charity, 20 times the usual. READY? Together: THINK BIG.
Jerry always had a head for business. By the time I was 12, Jerry and I had had a half dozen businesses. We made pot holders and sold them door to door. Then Jerry got the idea that we could make a better margin if we took advance orders for custom colors. He and I used to work at our Uncle Leonard’s junk yard in Cleveland in the summers. One year, Leonard bought a truck load of metal trimmings. Seeing the boxes of shiny rolls of colored metal tape, I asked Uncle Leonard if we could have a box to take home. I saw shiny rolls of colored metal. Jerry saw Christmas decorations that we could sell door to door for 25¢ each. Neither of us noticed that the edges were dangerously sharp. But he did get me to (together): THINK BIG.
When I was working with Rabbi Jacobson to prepare for my bar mitzvah at Shaaray Torah, Jerry convinced me that I should learn all 7 parts instead of just the last one as was customary. I did it and because of Jerry’s influence, I went on to read Torah frequently in my adult life. Jerry, by the way, had not done this at his own bar mitzvah. But he inspired me to: (together) THINK BIG.
On May 4, 1970, 4 students were killed at Kent State protesting the US invasion of Cambodia and 1500 American students marched on the American Embassy in Tel Aviv. Jerry and a few peers who had led the demonstration declared a hunger strike on the steps of the embassy demanding the flag be lowered to half staff. They fasted for over a week until Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey, whom Jerry had met while working on his presidential campaign in 1968, visited the hunger strikers and negotiated a compromise. He held fast to his convictions and reminded us all to: (together) THINK BIG.
I believe it was Passover 1974, after our family seder, that Cherie Koller Fox dropped by for animated conversation with Jerry in the living room. Jewish educators need to take themselves seriously they said. We are professionals. We need a Jewish teachers union. And over the following year, the Coalition for Alternatives in Jewish Education (CAJE) was born. What’s the moral? Together: THINK BIG.
After completing his Masters in Education at Harvard, 28-year-old Jerry became Executive Director of Maimonides Day School. One of his tasks was to raise funds to build an addition for the school. “A celebrity auction might do it,” he told the board. Then he talked The Fonz, Henry Winkler, into donating a leather jacket, Anwar Sadat into donating one of his iconic pipes, Barney Frank into bringing 100 hotdogs and personally grilling them for a party at the winner’s home—Jerry called that 101 Franks, got countless other collectibles from the rich and famous–and then topped it off by getting Ed Asner to be the auctioneer. That year he raised a million dollars for the school and taught us to: (Together) THINK BIG.
The Eagleburger Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims had negotiated a settlement that called for German banks and then Swiss insurance companies to pay reparations to all survivors of the holocaust or their descendants. But to make the payments they would have to find all of the living Holocaust survivors in the world. At the NY offices of the Commission there were groups of bidders in tailored suits. In walks Jerry, alone, with his battered briefcase and tells the senator: “I can find them for you.” He got the contract, hired a phalanx of assistants around the world, and he actually did it. THINK BIG doesn’t quite capture it.
Being ill didn’t stopped Jerry from thinking big, either. Last year, he created a totally new paradigm—the Shul Card. Why not, said he, THINK BIG and support ALL of the synagogues in Milwaukee instead of just one? They all need funds. So he paid dues and joined them all.
All of us who knew Jerry knew his incredible generosity and knew that he THOUGHT BIG when it came to gifts as well. How many of you have ever received one of Jerry’s unique and thoughtful gifts? (show of hands) For our wedding, one of the most unusual Jewish ceremonial objects in the world, something called a hodas (ask me later). For a bar mitzvah, a coin from the Bar Kokhba revolt. For his son’s Denver apartment an antique American flag from the year Colorado became a state. For our son, Rafi’s wedding, a custom made tzedakah (charity) box containing one of the first ever Hebrew coins from 130 BCE. And for Cindy on their 45th, since the stem cell transplant meant no flowers in the house, and his long tradition was to give Cindy 2 roses for every year of marriage, he commissioned Nadav to arrange 90 green roses, photograph them and send him a huge bacteria-free print to frame.
So how can we best remember Jerry? Be generous to one another. Give to tzedakah. And above all: (together) THINK BIG.
Next, cousin Malka (you remember—the pilgrim introduced in previous updates and Savta’s only granddaughter), delivered another poem. She introduced it as follows:
I always knew my Uncle Jerry had a deep and abiding love for language, but it was only recently that I found out where he got it from.
It was from his parents, Stan and Edie.
Apparently, when Jerry was little, instead of reading him the usual childhood bedtime stories, Edie, would read him poetry. Grown-up poetry.
When I visited Uncle Jerry after he moved to Boston this past fall, I remember the awe and wonder in his voice as he lovingly showed me his original signed copy of Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Not Taken, which he had chosen to bring with him from Milwaukee. Cindy, Ariel, and Nadav asked me to share it today.
The Road Not Taken
BY ROBERT FROST
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on the [to] way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Malka was followed by Abba’s childhood best friend, Dr. Jimmy Rudick, who produced a cat-in-the-hat style red and white striped hat which he placed on his head as he delivered his hesped:
To Jerry…
You’re finally finished
With doctors and such
But I hope that this doctor
Won’t bother you much…
On the day that we met
It was cold, it was wet
Or perhaps it was hot
Or perhaps it was not
You were 7, I was 8
At the old center lake
That’s it, I am sure
Though my memory is poor
And even back then
You were way over-sized
The stories you told
Were they truth, were they lies?
Your uncle, you said
Kept a whale in his bed
Or in his junk yard
I believed every word
Big Fish, Jew fish
Orator, Thinker,
I swallowed your stories
Hook, line and sinker
Oh the tsouros you brought
Oh the mish, mishigas
You got me in trouble
In trouble a lot
We both had a crush
On a girl named Amy
We lifted her dress
In Hebrew school maybe
When we were 15
But not legal to drive
We borrowed dad’s car
And took a joy ride
It was easy to see
It was plain as can be
Crazy things happened
When you were with me
Remember the sermon you gave at the shul
They made you a guest speaker
Wasn’t that cool?
Except for the date… it was ‘68
With racism, war, and Nixon and hate
You ranted and raged, Oh Kenahora
That didn’t sit well with our Shaaray Torah
Herm Davis our president was not a bit curious
You might even say that he was quite furious
And the night in Ann Arbor
I’ll never forget
A fire broke out
In the Phi Epsilon House
You stayed in the room with the pot-head in residence
Who started it all with his candles and incense
It happened so fast, there was no alarm
You climbed out a window and cut open your arm
But then we grew up, or so I am told
We were so young then
And then we were old…
Somewhere in between
Cindy entered your life
I can’t say she tamed you
But she was your wife
Who loved you and fed you
And kept you afloat
And gave you two sons
Over whom you would gloat
Ben (our son) asked about college
Go to Williams, you said
You were the one
Who put that in his head
And there he met Sarah
It appears that he liked her
And one year ago
There came little Micah
So fate has a way
To keep us in line
No Jerry, no Micah
It boggles my mind
Oh the places you went
Oh, the great things you did
Who would have guessed it
When you were a kid
You never slowed down
Your mind never rested
Your crazy ideas
Had yet to be tested
Like power from garbage
And you had a notion
To build a machine
With perpetual motion
Oh by the way
Good God, Glory Be
I discovered some stuff
That you wrote in ’03!
Jewish Boy meets Ashram
You went there with Marvin
To hear the wisdom
Of Guru Ma Jaya
You entered the temple
And soon you were met
With Four legged Gods
And Elephant Heads
What’s a Jew boy to do
When there’s idols about
You put on a kippah
To keep them all out
To use your own words
And to quote you directly
“I had slipped it on as a religious condom to practice safe spirituality”
You wrote about shopping with Golda Meir
You wrote about God and Camus and Fear
You discovered George Bush in a mens room somewhere
But I can’t repeat here what had happened in there
Your words were inspiring, concise, never wasteful
At times pornographic, but always so tasteful.
Let’s hope you get published
Let’s hope folks will read
The words of a dreamer , a seer indeed
Brother of mine
I don’t know where you are
You’re Nearer than Near
And Farther than Far
SO wherever I go
And whatever I do
I’LL TAKE YOU ALONG
THAT’S JUST WHAT I’LL DO
Everett was next and read Psalm 15:
Who is the one who loves life and does what is right?
He who walks blamelessly,
and speaks truth from his heart;
He who does not slander with his tongue,
does no evil to his friend,
does no wrong to his companions;
and can’t be faulted for his dealings with those near to him.
Those who act unkindly frustrate him,
but those who fear the Lord, he honors.
He is a man who keeps his promises and his values, even at his own detriment.
Who lends money to those in need.
The man who lives in such an ethical manner, shall never be shaken.
Everett remained on the bimah and I joined him. He and Cherie confirmed one last time that I didn’t want to try to deliver my hesped myself. I took a deep breath and again began to cry. I squeaked out that I could not and took my seat on the stool next to Everett. With my eyes closed tightly, Everett delivered my hesped for Abba:
In Abba’s words from his diary following the death of Saba:
Love is the most powerful force in the universe. It is the atom bomb of human emotion. It is the loud clanging bell of life. It rings with such strength. And the love for a father? It is overpowering, how much he gave me, how much I took, how often I took him for granted, and how he was there for me with unconditional love.
This is surreal. For the last several months I wrote to you about Abba and all he was experiencing. I focused your attention, your well wishes, your prayers, and your thoughts by telling you his story as it unfolded. But no one wanted this to be how that story ended.
It may come as no surprise that during my lifetime, when I would write something important, I would send it off to Abba for comment. Those updates were only the second time in my life that I was unable to ask for his input. The first was the memorial I wrote for the dedication of Saba’s grave stone; I didn’t want to burden him with my emotional outpouring at a time when he had his own. Similarly, when he came to me to request that I write updates on his journey he explicitly told me it was because he needed that burden lifted; that he would not be in a position to do it himself.
So here we are. For the third time I am unable to consult him on this memorial.
I have received more than 1,000 messages during this period of updates and now since his passage. They ranged in length and content from simple thank you notes for the updates, to condolences, to extensive shared memories. One thing that is clear from your notes is that I don’t need to tell you stories about his accomplishments and his impact on the world. You already know.
Instead I thought I could tell you a little bit about what it was like to be his eldest son.
Before I get into that though, I want to give you one bit of disclaimer. You might think, from what I am about to tell you, that Abba played favorites. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. With each of you, there were probably times when he caused you to feel as though you were his favorite. He was good at that. Think about it for a moment. You each felt some level of love for him. Now think about how he felt an immense level of love for each of you. That adds up. It was a bit of a bottomless well when it came to how much love he had. But regarding favorites, in our house he did the opposite when it came to me and Nadav. Whenever he was alone with me all he could talk about was Nadav and whenever he was alone with Nadav all he could talk about was me. Unintentionally he left us each believing the other was his favorite when in fact he loved us both fully and equally.
But back to his relationship with me. First, the early years (pre-Nadav). Eama jokes that Abba didn’t like babies. It’s not that he didn’t like me when I was a newborn; he didn’t really know how to relate to me when I was new. It should come as no surprise that if he couldn’t have a conversation with you he didn’t know what to do with you. He recently revealed to me that one of his professors in grad school had done some experiments with early childhood acquisition of grammar and syntax and he immediately came home and tried it out. Must have worked because I was talking before I was walking and I was walking at 10 months. From then on we were able to converse so the relationship leveled out a bit.
You should know, though, that these early conversations were not the normal conversations a father might be expected to have with a toddler. He wasn’t interested in whether I had a booboo or if I needed to go to the potty. No, pretty much from the beginning he wanted to know how I related to the world. Consequently the conversations were about ethics and morality. Here’s an example—one Shabbat dinner I recall him first posing the Kantian Lifeboat Scenario in the frame of his late professor Lawrence Kohlberg. By this point Nadav had joined us but barely—certainly not joining the conversation yet—so I was still receiving the bulk of his attention. (And besides, Nadav didn’t really talk in his earliest years—he waited until he could poetically philosophize like when Eama once discovered him one night in his crib calling out to the moon, arms wide, as he said, “moon, come to Duvvy” or another time when she found him in the early morning standing quietly in the dark and upon turning on the light in his room, he asked, “where did the darkness go?”). This early conversation about Kant was when I was barely five years old. He wanted to know how I would choose who lives and who dies when abandoning ship for an insufficient numbers of spots on a lifeboat.
At age 10, when he noticed I had to shave to keep my beard at bey, he decided to sit me down for our first sex talk. There was no discussion about the birds and bees; nothing mechanical. Instead he told me that at some point I would love a woman so much and she would love me so much that we would want to express our love for one another in an intimate way. When that occurred I should be gentle and tender and loving.
He nearly cried at my bar mitzvah when I didn’t want to shave off my beard. He told me he wasn’t ready yet for me to look that grown up and he needed me to do this for him. It seemed overbearing and irrational and flew in the face of the deep commitment he taught me from a young age to defy authority and find moments for antiestablishmentarianism. Nonetheless I eventually capitulated.
As high school came to a close, I began researching colleges. I decided I wanted to go to school in the northeast, but insisted on visiting schools alone. I was initially surprised that my parents readily agreed to allow me to take a car and set out with my best friend from high school (a gorgeous, non-jewish, blond named Susan) for a week+ of campuses. We visited ten schools in seven days. That surprise was alleviated however, when I got the second sex talk. You’ll need a little context for this one though. When I started high school there was an outbreak of sexually transmitted diseases that ran through the school. The local health department even had a chart mapping the spread from patient zero. The village decided they preferred the head-in-the-sand approach and claimed there was nothing wrong. In response, my friends and I created the organization, Students for Sexual Responsibility, handed out mass quantities of condoms and literature about transmission, and committed to not be sexually active ourselves. This second sex talk went something like this:
Abba sat me and Susan down on the couch in the den. You know the room. Even with all the lights on it remains pretty dark. It was especially dark that evening. He and Eama stood in front of us. Abba then looked at us and said, “you two will be away and on your own for more than a week; no parents or other adults to tell you what to do. It will all be up to you. This may be a good time for you (now just looking at me) to be less rigid with the celibacy. Could be a good time for the two of you to experiment.” Very different than the talk we received from Susan’s parents who were both in prison administration.
During and after college Abba and I grew closer than ever. I’m not sure when precisely it began. Perhaps when he visited me at Hampshire and commented that the price tag was justified by the cannabis smoke pumped into the rooms through the vents. Or perhaps it was the work I did on alternative fuel systems. We started to fall into a pattern where he would often confuse me with him; he would forget that we are actually two separate people. He would make plans for me without talking to me first because he was free. He would volunteer me for tasks without consultation because they needed to be done. He would sacrifice my needs for the needs of others. That may sound harsh, but if you think about it, Abba regularly sacrificed himself for others so given the confusion it makes sense. It also explains his later fascination with alternative fuel systems. Initially I was frustrated by the identity-blurring, but eventually recognized what it really was—that he and I had become that close.
And eventually the confusion became bidirectional. Abba was more than my father; he was my best friend. One of the harder parts of his recovery was that he didn’t have the energy to meaningfully carry on our daily conversations. And in his final minutes, when he was unable to speak, as we approached death, I said the shema.
But there is an upside to that confusion as well. Isn’t that the meaning of legacy? There won’t be a day when I don’t think about Abba—how to be more like him, how he relates to the world, his ethics and morality.
I wasn’t able to run this by him before I shared it with you, but I’m not concerned. Even before he died he took permanent residence on my shoulder whispering in my ear.
The service continued with the congregation singing together and then we were asked to rise. Cherie read the English translation of El Malei Rachamim (Psalm 23):
Compassionate God, source of life:
Grant perfect peace in Your sheltering presence among the holy and pure, to the soul of Jerry Benjamin who has entered eternity. We, his family and friends, are beneficiaries and witnesses to the many worthy and righteous deeds that he performed during his lifetime. May his soul be bound up in the never-ending bond of life that stretches from one generation to the other. May his memory be a blessing and a source of strength to all those who knew him. Adonai is his inheritance now. May he rest in peace. Let us all say, Amen.
And then Cantor Braun came forward again and sang El Malei Rachamim in Hebrew in a way only he could.
My cousin Mike Maistelman, Malka, Rafi, Rafi’s wife Leah, Leslie, Nadav’s wife Lindsey, Nadav’s father-in-law Pat, and Jimmy surrounded the coffin which was on a rolling cart. They acted as pallbearers. We followed them out as they loaded his coffin into the Arnold-vehicle and we filled a sea of cars. In a snake-like train we all drove across town with a police escort (on a three-wheel motorcycle) to the cemetery. At the final turn into the Canton Hebrew Cemetery our escort stopped, dismounted, and stood at attention and saluted Abba as we entered.
The grave was perfectly prepared; each corner appeared as though made by scalpel not shovel. The pallbearers gathered at the back of the vehicle and unloaded the coffin. This time the coffin was actually carried. Per Jewish tradition, because we are so reticent to let Abba go, as the pallbearers took a step toward the grave they stopped and after each stop Cherie recited the following:
- The Rock, perfect in every deed, who can say unto Him, ”What are you doing? You who speak and do, deal kindly with us, Hearken and do.
- You are just in all your ways, O perfect Rock, slow to anger and full of compassion. Spare and have pity upon parents and children, for Thine, Lord, is forgiveness and compassion.
- The soul of every living thing is in Your hand; Your might is full of righteousness. Have mercy upon the remnant of the flock of Israel.
- You are great in counsel and mighty in deed; Your eyes are open to all the ways of your children, to give unto every one according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.
- He is my God, my living Redeemer, A Rock when I am in pain In troubled times.
- In God’s hands, I place my spirit When I am sleeping and when I am awake. When my soul is in my body and when it is not. (Be-yado Afkid Ruchi, be-et e-shan ve-lo-era)
- The Lord is with me, I have no reason to be afraid. (Ve-em ruchi, geviati, Adonai Li Ve-Lo Era.)
The coffin was then lowered into the ground and per Ohio law, a heavy metal cover was lowered over the coffin. Cherie continued:
God will guard your soul,
your coming and going, now and forever.
Baruch Ha-Ba
Al Mekomo Ta-vo B’shalom.
Blessed is the one who comes to his final resting place in peace
The dust returns to the earth as it was; the spirit returns to God who gave it.
God, help us to understand that grief and love go hand in hand, that the pain
which loss inflicts is the measure of a love stronger than death.
My mother, brother, uncle and I then stepped forward and with the back of the shovel dropped the first bits of displaced dirt atop the coffin. All those in attendance came forward and each took their turn. When they finished the hole was filled in completely.
Cantor Braun came forward again and as we stood looking at the grave sang el malei rachamim again.
Then for the first time in my entire life I prepare to say Kaddish. I began and could not finish. Tears again and uncontrolled sobbing.
Everett came forward and recited a translation he wrote. It is as follows:
May it be magnified
and may it be sanctified
God’s great name,
in the world whose creation God willed.
May God’s kingdom be fulfilled
in your life
and in your days
and in the life of the whole House of Israel
soon, and near in time,
and say, Amen!
May God’s great name be praised
forever, and ever and ever!
May it be praised
and may it be blessed
and may it be glorified
and may it be upraised
and may it be elevated,
may it be honored
and may it be exalted
and may it be extolled,
the name of the Holy One – praised be God!
beyond all words-of-praise, words-of-song,
words-of-blessing, and words-of-comfort
that are uttered in this world,
and say, Amen!
May there he abundant peace from Heaven
and life
for us and for all Israel,
and say, Amen!
Maker of peace in the abode-on-high,
may God make peace
for us and for all Israel,
and say, Amen!
All those gathered there then formed a line and Savta, uncle Sheldon, my mother, brother and I walked through the line and those gathered offered us traditional wishes of greetings:
HaMakom Yenachern Etchem B-Toch Sha-ar Avieai Tzion Vy-erushalayim
MAY God who is always with us, comfort all who knew and love Jerry, together with all who mourn today in Zion and Jerusalem and may he rest in peace.
Nadav and I stood at the grave one last time to say goodbye. We both began to cry and stood hugging each other as we wept. Before leaving the cemetery, we visited my Sabba and my Grandpa Leo who are now Abba’s neighbors and then we left the ceremony and will not return for a year (when we place a headstone.
We returned to Shaaray Torah for a meal, then did afternoon and evening services (Mincha and Maariv) where I was able to say kaddish without disruption and then had our first night of shiva visitation at the synagogue.
This evening we reconvened at Savta’s assisted living facility and local friends and family joined us. There were bags of Heggy’s, various other snacks, and then the group of residents who gather each week for Shabbat services joined us and we had a small service at which we were able to say kaddish.
For the remainder of shiva we will be back in Boston at Uncle Sheldon and Aunt Miriam’s house. Shiva in Boston will be from 8pm until 10pm motzei shabbat (Saturday evening), and then Sunday through Tuesday from 7pm until 9pm with services each evening.
In case you are wondering, all meals have already been provided for the entire period of shiva. That said, as I mentioned before, it would be wonderful if you wanted to give tzedakah (charity). Anywhere you’d like to give would have made Abba happy, but if you were looking for some place he recently had some devotion you could either give to MIAD’s scholarship fund (https://payments.miad.edu/donate) or the Milwaukee Jewish Federation Coalition for Jewish Learning (http://www.milwaukeejewish.org/departments/jewisheducation/cjl/ways-to-give/). Also, feel free to share this and to share the link to the website (https://abbaupdates.newphaseinnovations.com/).
Wherever you are, I wish you a Shabbat Shalom. From Canton, Ohio.
Love,
Ariel