“I know I’m not the best person socially. I know I’m not. Asperger’s has this tendency to make people who have it not the best people socially.   I can only be one person – me.” Danny Klein wrote these words in one of the many journals he kept in high school and college. In April 2015, Danny committed suicide.

At our Na’aseh program last night, Danny’s courageous parents shared these and other words with fifty OJC teens. As part of a learning unit entitled “I am Enough,” we were learning about the inclusion of people with Asperger’s, what is today referred to as people on the spectrum.

Five years ago, Danny attended every Tuesday evening at Na’aseh. Often wearing a cool hat with earflaps that he himself had crocheted, Danny was an active participant. Kind, generous, and social, Danny wanted to be in the midst of whatever was happening. But unless his older brother Jared was at Na’aseh that night, Danny was never actually at the center of things. Danny was never excluded or teased or bullied. He was always tolerated. Last night, Rabbi Craig Scheff told the teens that tolerance is not good enough. We taught the teens of the OJC the value of inclusion.

Danny’s mom Judy explained all about Asperger’s, how it shaped Danny’s life and affected the entire family. Asperger’s is primarily a communication disorder that manifests as having difficulty with the back-and-forth flow of conversation, reading non-verbal cues, and understanding sarcasm.   Judy told the teens, “What I saw was a kid who desperately wanted a circle of friends, who had so much love inside to give, who was prepared to be the best friend you would ever want… I saw a kid who held it together all day at school and then came home and asked me to help him figure out what was going on in social situations that he didn’t understand because people didn’t always say what they really meant.”

Judy concluded her remarks, “When I started typing this on my iPad and autocorrect didn’t recognize “Asperger’s” yet, it corrected to ‘as perfect’. Actually, my iPad was right. Danny was just as perfect and as imperfect as every one of us, just another good kid, and every good kid deserves friendship.”

How do caring adults teach teens the necessity of going beyond their safety zones to include others when every teen himself or herself is struggling with finding a place? We offered them the opportunity to listen, ask questions and participate in a variety of learning experiences. The Klein family’s participation was at the core of their ability to feel safe asking and processing the evening.

After Rabbi Scheff and I framed the evening and Judy introduced Danny’s story, I had the privilege of interviewing my friend Zahava Finkel in front of the group. Zahava is a 29-year old woman with Asperger’s who told her story with honesty and humor.

She and I facilitated an activity that she brought to our program. Everyone wrote their name on a piece of masking tape and put it on their shirts. Zahava then read statements that began with “I have been made fun of for…” and finished with “the way I look” or “my athletic ability” or “asking lots of questions when I don’t understand.” If a sentence rang true, a piece of tape was torn off. One teen said, “Every put-down diminishes our sense of who we are.”

In small groups, we considered Danny’s own words, allowing each teen to process the difficulties and triumphs that were Danny’s too short life.

When showed an interview of Danny with his psychologist, Youth Director Sharon Rappaport fielded questions from the teens that were answered by Danny’s parents and brothers. I was reminded of what the evening was really about when one teen asked, “What did you love about Danny?”

For me, the most important take away of the powerful evening is the generous spirits of the Klein family. They are experiencing an unimaginable loss and their grief is palpable. But all of us who love them watch in awe as they channel that sorrow into activism. In Danny’s name, they are determined to make a change in our world so that people who struggle as Danny did will have champions among their peers.

At the close of the night, Judy told our teens, “I know that you are learning about what it means to say ‘I am enough’ but I want you all to know that you aren’t just enough. You are all way more than just enough.”

May Danny’s name always be for a blessing.

Rabbi Paula Mack Drill

During eight years of social work in a Jewish geriatric center, I gravitated to Barnhard Pavilion for residents who lived with dementia. I sat with elderly men and women, talking quietly, feeding them breakfast or singing show tunes from the 1950s. Most often, they remained locked in their own diminished world. But if I sang “Shalom Aleichem” or brought a lulav and etrog to shake or lit Chanukah candles, the frail resident would come alive in that moment, often joining in the words of the song or the blessing. Those words would emerge from a deep, hidden place. I call that place the soul.
Zachor! We are commanded as Jews time and again to remember. Jewish ritual, study and celebration are anchored in national and personal memory.
Can Jews who live with Alzheimer’s or some other form of senility still participate in Jewish life? What happens to the souls of Jews whose memory has been robbed by dementia of some kind? And more importantly, how can the family and friends of a person who has lost some or all memory find their loved one within the person before them?
We are commanded “You shall rise before the aged and show deference [v’hadarta] to the old.” (Vayikra 19:32) Poet Danny Siegel plays on the Hebrew word v’hadarta and translates this verse: “You shall rise before the aged and allow the beauty, glory and majesty of their faces to emerge.”
The answer at a theological level seems to be that the soul of a person is still within. Soul is somehow separate from intellect, emotion or memory. The pure piece of God implanted within every person remains as long as breath remains in the body. In rare and gentle moments, the soul shows itself.
The answer to the question about coping at a personal level, however, is very different. Theology does not help when long, painful days of coping with a loved one’s losses are our reality. A fleeting moment in a heartbreaking flow of hours, days and weeks is not enough to sustain most of us. The mourning process is excruciating for those who have lost a person even as that person sits before them. And yet, I still encourage families to seek those moments when the beauty and majesty of the face emerges, the moment of soul.
My Nana could not remember which grandchild I was during the last three years of her life, but she would snap to attention when I asked her for the chicken soup recipe that delighted her family every Friday evening at her Shabbat table. The Cantor who lived on Barnhard Pavilion for four years could not tell me where he had lived before the nursing home, but he could lean back in his chair and sing Kol Nidre as if he were in his sanctuary once again. I felt privileged to recognize their souls in those moments.
My friend Charlotte Abramson’s daughter Adena wrote a a prayer-poem for Yizkor this year. Adena wrote about her father, Rabbi Robert Abramson, my friend and teacher. I share it here with Adena’s permission, in the hope that it will bring recognition and succor to those of us coping with dementia in a loved one and that it will encourage all of us to reach out today to someone who is living the long grieving process of a family member of someone with senile dementia.
You are still here, but I remember.
I remember when your mind was connected to your voice.
I remember when your mind and body acted as one.
When with two words you could cut through all the noise or cause the room to burst in laughter
When your eyes sparkled green and were clear with focus.
Is it too early for me to start remembering?
You are still here. Your heart still beats. You are kind.
Do you experience joy?sadness? fear?
Is it still there?
So, I remember because you cannot, and by doing so, I feel all.
Adena Abramson

With blessings, Rabbi Paula Mack Drill

Thank you to so many congregants, family members and friends who have responded in phone calls and writing to my Rosh Hashana sermon, anchored by Dr.Atul Gawande’s deeply affecting book, Being Mortal.

In the days since Rosh Hashana, many of you have shared your stories, struggles and experiences of deep understanding. And many more of you have asked for assistance with beginning the difficult conversations about what our lives mean to us. On Rosh Hashana I asked us to consider how we want to face the end of our lives if we are blessed with the opportunity to have choices. I asked us whether we know the true choices of those we love.

I share here a synopsis of my teaching and the links to the resources that I mentioned in the sermon.

In the experience of family members dealing with the inevitable dying of an elderly or seriously ill loved one, there comes a time when they recognize at some level that they are up against the unfixable. If they are blessed or wise or very well versed in matters of life and death, however, the unfixable does not have to be the unmanageable.

Gawande’s transformative book is filled with studies and anecdotal evidence about the astounding intersection of medicine and dying in modern society. He writes that scientific advances have turned the processes of aging and dying into medical experiences, matters to be managed by health care professionals. Gawande believes that the medical world has proved alarmingly unprepared for helping people understand death. His book is filled with stories of heartbreak and loss and dying. But each story is most of all about triumph – triumph due to the recognition that we are all mortal. Being mortal means that we are not immortal. It means that all of us will one day die.

As I prepared my sermon, believe me, I understood that mortality can be a treacherous subject. Listeners might be alarmed at my talking about the inevitability of decline and death. No matter how carefully I framed my words; for some, the topic would raise the specter of a society ready to sacrifice its sick and aged. But here are Gawande’s words that encouraged me to take up this topic despite the risks of discomfort or fear. He wrote: What if the sick and aged are already being sacrificed – victims of our refusal to accept the inexorability of our life cycle? And what if there are better approaches, right in front of our eyes, waiting to be recognized?

Gawande’s book, to me, is a very Jewish conversation. Rebbe Nachman of Bratzlav wrote: Kol haolam kulo gesher tzar m’od, v’ha-ikar lo l’fached klal. “All of this world is just a very narrow bridge and the main thing, the essence, is not to be afraid at all.” Perhaps that narrow bridge is meant to teach that between birth and death, there is just a narrow passage, like grass that springs up in the morning but is gone by night and no one can tell where it grew. That bridge is the human condition. We move from birth toward death every moment. So – do not be afraid. Rather, walk confidently and solidly and powerfully on that bridge. Without fear, we can enjoy the view.

Do not be afraid at all.

What is required is courage. We require courage to acknowledge what we all know to be true, and then, most daunting of all, the courage to act on the truth we find.   The wisest course is so frequently unclear. In conversations about mortality, it is important to decide whether our fears or our hopes are what should matter most.

There is no right or wrong way for everyone. The only correct way of facing aging, illness and dying is the way required by each individual in his or her unique situation.

The difference between a good death and a hard death hinges on whether someone’s wishes were expressed and respected, whether they’d had a conversation about how they wanted to live toward the end. While 90% of Americans think it’s important to have such conversations, only 30% of us have actually had these conversations. We can change that by bringing the people we love to the kitchen table to have the conversation. And we can do this before there is a crisis rather than in the I.C.U. So what stops us? We don’t talk with our loved ones, we don’t talk about our own desires because “it’s too soon.” But it’s always too soon … until it’s too late.

Throughout the liturgy of this High Holy Day season, we Jews practice thinking about our mortality. Who shall live and who shall die? On Yom Kippur, we will abstain from food and drink, playacting a mini-death in order to understand the necessity of teshuva, repentance. Our rabbis knew what they were doing, insisting that the theology of each new year must address the meaning of our lives which can only be done with an acknowledgment of the finitude of these lives of ours.

The question remains: How do we have these conversations?

If you choose to begin the conversation with your doctor, consider the Dear Doctor letter devised by a team led by Dr. VJ Periyakoil, Director of Palliative Care Education at Stanford University School of Medicine. Here is Dr. Periyakoil’s letter that can help in this conversation.

I advocate that the conversation also take place in your families and in your circles of intimate friendships. Conversation Starter Kit created by The Conversation Project avoids being a technical medical checklist for the dying in favor of a careful discussion guide for the living. The kit asks what matters to you, NOT what’s the matter with you. http://theconversationproject.org/starter-kit/get-ready/.

Rabbi Scheff and I are available to you to help begin the conversations. Contact us at Rabbi.Drill@theojc.org or Rabbi.Scheff@theojc.org. Be in touch if you would like to see the full text of my Rosh Hashana sermon.

If Rabbi Nachman was correct, and all the world is just a narrow bridge, I pray that all of us are able to make meaning of our short walk across it. It begins with acknowledging the bridge, not to diminish life, but rather to value it.

Shana tova tikatevu v’techateimu, May you be written and sealed for a good new year,

Rabbi Paula Mack Drill

In our monthly Family Service shtick back at the beginning of August, I packed a suitcase with tanning lotion and a tennis racket while Rabbi Scheff packed his siddur and a traveling Shabbat kit. The takeaway of our skit was that while we might go on vacation from work or school, we do not ever go on vacation from being Jewish. Jewish is what we are, not what we do.

I find myself thinking of the playful skit now when Jon and I are on vacation in Budapest, Hungary, visiting Sarah and her fiancé Sagi.

We are enjoying typical tourist experiences like visiting Buda Castle, cycling in the countryside, and taking a boat cruise on the Danube River. But identifying as a Jewish person is part of my vacation at every turn, and sometimes in surprising ways.

There has been, of course, the very Jewish experience of being bageled. If you are Jewish and think that you’ve never been bageled, let me assure you that you have indeed been bageled. It goes like this: Nice research scientist from California on our Budapest bike tour asks, “What do you and your husband do?” I answer, “He’s a lawyer and I’m a rabbi.” “Oh,” he lights up. “My bar mitzvah was back in Englewood where I grew up!” When someone uses a funny non sequitur to let you know that he too is Jewish, that’s called getting bageled.

In a more serious vein, being Jewish on vacation informs choices I make about places to see. A walking tour of the Jewish Quarter, a lecture in the famous Dohany Synagogue, seeing the Wallenberg Memorial Weeping Willow sculpture and a solemn visit to the Shoe Sculpture on the Danube are obvious choices.

Sometimes, I experience being Jewish on vacation in unexpected ways. In the basement of the Art Nouveau Museum, featuring a collection of furniture, artwork and ornaments from the first half of the 20^th Century, I stumbled across a strange wall of round stained glass windows and realized with a start that the symbols are all Jewish: Shabbat candles, the Ten Commandments, the High Priest’s hands.

The curator tells me that these were windows found in a Budapest church. “In a synagogue, yes?” I encourage her, knowing that English is very difficult for most Hungarians. “No, a church.” She gestures with her hands to show me that they were high up on a wall, placed side by side. “Yes, in a Jewish church,” I try to explain. Her eyes light up with understanding, “Yes, Israel. Church for Israel.” After our visit, Jon gave voice to what I had been thinking. “How much of all that furniture and artwork was stolen from Jewish homes during WWII?” It was a chilling thought. It was probably a correct thought. And it is a thought that occurs when Jewish is what you are, not just what you do. Such are the thoughts you think when you travel Jewish.

Traveling Jewish means that the tempo of vacation shifts a bit on Friday. Turning down several streets in the Jewish Quarter, we at last find the kosher market where we buy two challot (and Israeli Bamba for Sagi) to take with us to Siofok on Lake Balaton. As we exit, two old men playing chess by the door look up and smile, “Shabbat shalom.” I smile with warmth, “Shabbat shalom to you.” Later we make Shabbat on the terrace of our hotel room. Sarah and I light Shabbat candles together and Jon and I bless her and Sagi. Such are the special moments of traveling Jewish.

After dinner, Sagi showed us a map of the town of Siofok with a Jewish star and the word zsinagoga. We walked into town, past pubs and cafes, down a dark side street to a small, carefully maintained synagogue. In the front of the building, we found a Holocaust memorial in the shape of an angelic harp with train tracks below. A plaque stated that it was donated by Tom Lantos, the Hungarian Holocaust survivor who went on to become a California Senator and a champion of human rights. Walking back to our hotel, we wondered how the Nazis managed a sweep of tiny, out of the way towns all over Europe. On this past Shabbat evening, without intending to do so, we paid tribute to the tragic history of the Jewish people in the 1940s. We were hushed by the power of the place and the power of the moment — such are the powerful moments of traveling Jewish.

I look forward to greeting my OJC community before Rosh HaShana when I return from traveling Jewish!

Rabbi Paula Mack Drill

In Jewish tradition, the words of prayers, psalms and blessings often make confident statements that leave us wondering how we can be so bold in the face of God’s will.

“Deep is Your love for us, Adonai our God, boundless Your tender compassion.” (Blessing before the Sh’ma)   “God will cover you with protective wings so that you find refuge in God’s shelter.” (Psalm 90)   “You grant perfect healing because You are the faithful and merciful God of healing.” (Amidah)

At short-lived but profound moments of prayer, I feel strong and sure of my relationship to God. For just that fraction of time, I state my prayer-thoughts with absolute surety.  How often does this happen?

Not very often.

Most of the time in prayer, I feel vulnerable and not at all sure of God’s intentions.  My teacher, Rabbi Neil Gillman, however, teaches a different way to understand such verses in liturgy. When we pray for something with a bold statement, with an abundance of confidence, we are actually asking with humility, and maybe even with desperation. Rabbi Gillman reframes Psalms and blessings as hopes and wishes, not facts.  Now we understand the prayers above differently:

I hope that Your compassion is boundless.  Please, God, cover me with protective wings.  If You are the faithful and merciful God of healing, won’t You please grant perfect healing?

No where is this reframing more helpful than with regard to the statement we make to families of mourners as they exit the cemetery and when minyan is concluded in their shiva home:  “Hamakom y’nachem etchem b’toch shaar avaley tzion v’yarushalayim.”  God, (the Place) will comfort you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

Perhaps, as my friend Rabbi Richard Hammerman writes, we console the mourners by indicating that they are not alone. Throughout all time, there have been tragedies and losses. Their loss is now part of the continuum of the eternal people of Israel who have experienced great loss. Alternatively, perhaps we help the mourners by acknowledging that their loss is as great as any loss has been throughout history.  There is no hierarchy when it comes to the grief of losing a loved one.

The difficulty with the traditional statement of consolation does not lie in our ability as a community to provide comfort. We console, we listen, we remain present.

But how can we say with such certainty that God will comfort?  What do we know of God’s providing comfort to our grief-stricken friend?  How can we make such a bold statement? As one congregant wept to me, “I don’t think even God can comfort my broken heart.”

And still we say these words. We say the formula with confidence but we mean it as a humble prayer. When we recite these words, we are in effect saying: I’d like to snap my fingers and make your pain disappear. But I can’t. I wish my visit could make everything better, but of course it won’t.  So I am left with nothing but a prayer: Please God, be the Place where my friends find consolation.

I say “HaMakom y’nachem” with surety to provide a beam of hope into the darkness experienced by mourners.  I do not know for certain that God will give comfort, but I believe that it will be so. There is healing that happens only within the soul of the mourner.  As much as I try to bring comfort, it is only God, with the assistance of the passage of time, Who can enter the soul and bring that kind of comfort.

At the limit of my ability to help, God’s infinite compassion takes over. I don’t actually know, but I pray that it will be so.

Please God, please bring comfort to these friends who are grieving as You do for all the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

In these weeks between Tisha B’Av and Rosh Hashana, a time of consolation in the rhythm of the Jewish year, may we all provide the best comfort that we can to those in our midst who grieve. When we reach our limit, may we pray to God to do the heavy lifting.

And let us state our request as a statement. With confidence and courage, let us say that God will comfort them.

With berakhot, blessings, Rabbi Paula Mack Drill

What a lachrymose people we can be. In three weeks we will sit on the floor as mourners, crying about the destruction of a Temple two millennia ago. “How lonely sits the city that once was filled with people. She has become a widow. She cries alone at night, and tears scar her cheeks. None of her beloved are left to comfort her.”  [Eicha, the Book of Lamentations] Isn’t it sad enough to fast and mourn through Tisha B’Av, the Ninth Day of Av?

But, no. Instead we position ourselves for ongoing sorrow. We establish a mood of mourning with no weddings or community celebrations for three complete weeks leading up to a crescendo of grief on Tisha B’Av. This period of time began yesterday with the fast of Shiva Asar b’Tamuz, the 17th of Tamuz, commemorating the day that the Romans breached the walls of Jerusalem in 70 CE, the beginning of the end of Jewish sovereignty for the next 2000 years.

Why do we do this? Why do we, as a religious people, enforce sadness?

One answer to this question can be found in the Talmud where we read, “All who mourn over Jerusalem merit to see her in her joy.” [B.T. Ta’anit 30b]. Commentators on this statement note that we do not read that we will see Jerusalem’s joy in the future; we read that we merit today seeing her in her joy. At a wedding, at the height of joy, we smash a glass to recall the destruction of Jerusalem. We are meant to truly appreciate the enormity of loss, the fragility of life, the precariousness of our plans and yet still embrace life. When we recognize how difficult life is and still insist on making meaning and contributions to the world, we thereby experience life in its fullness and joy.

In the Jewish Artist’s Way class this morning, one student asked about a heartbreaking realization. She explained, “Thanks to this class, I write my morning journal pages and plan an enjoyable artist’s date. I feel peaceful and creative. Then I listen to the news and hear about a world gone crazy. What meaning can my contentment hold in a world filled with violence and hatred?  How can I harmonize these two opposing forces?

The wise answers that came from fellow classmates all derived from one central idea: we cannot fix things out of our control. But we can make the world a better place by staying present and appreciative. We choose to do what we can in our own corners of the world. We decide to be kind and compassionate and loving. To live in this world is to live in vulnerability and yet still be tender and courageous, thoughtful and creative.

The act of grieving teaches us how to be joyful. The act of remembering tells us that we can choose to reaffirm our faith despite the reality of life around us. Perhaps Judaism teaches us to mourn so that we can learn how to truly live.

May we all find profound meaning and also joy in the weeks ahead,

Rabbi Paula Mack Drill

We are in the midst of months of honoring. My calendar is filled with dinners and galas throughout May and June. Every Jewish organization in Rockland and New York State chooses worthy honorees and invites the community to attend and support.   Our own Rabbi Craig Scheff was honored by the Jewish Community Center with the highly esteemed J-Award. Jewish Family Service, Rockland Jewish Academy, Holocaust Museum and Study Center, Torah Fund of Conservative Judaism, Israel Bonds and Federation of Men’s Clubs have all celebrated community members for their contributions. This past week I attended the Annual Meeting of the Jewish Federation of Rockland County to honor Melton graduates and Leadership Development Institute graduates.   Many OJCers were among the honorees.

Rabbi Scheff and I attended the METNY USY Scholarship Dinner where our colleague and friend Rabbi Paul and Gerri Kurland of Nanuet Hebrew Center were honored. Organizations that are not Jewishly-based, of course, also honor people in fundraisers. This week I attended an   NYCLU dinner honoring Oscar Cohen and Willie Trotman for their trailblazing work on behalf of the children of East Ramapo Central School District. NAMI Rockland, Jawonio, United Hospice of Rockland and the Center for Safety and Change celebrate their accomplishments with honorees.

It is such a hectic time of the year. As I plug yet another destination into my GPS, I often wish that I were hitting that top line “Go Home” instead. But I think of your rabbis’ attendance at these many communal events as our modeling a core value of the OJC. In Pirke Avot, Ethics of the Fathers, we read: Do not separate yourself from community.

The Orangetown Jewish Center is our home, but that home is buoyed and supported by a greater community where values are taught, new ideas are spun, important work is begun.

When we make our best effort to attend and support, we are saying that the success of the greater community is our success. Our hard work here at the OJC is just a piece of ensuring the vitality and vibrancy of our community.

And beyond the value of community, there is the value of simcha. Many days and weeks pass by with repeating schedules and commitments. Moments of joy are like punctuation marks at the end of run-on sentences! We look forward, we participate and then our spirits lift to a different plateau. We are present in many sad and difficult moments of people’s lives. How wonderful to balance the times of sorrow with times of celebration! Let these spring months of galas remind us to embrace opportunities to honor those we respect and love and celebrate with our community.

L’simcha, to joy, Rabbi Paula Mack Drill

“I looked forward to seeing her in Spanish class eighth period every day,” began one girl. She’d always make me smile. When we talked, she’d brighten my day,” one eighth grader read. Another girl said, “She could always make me laugh even when I was in a bad mood.” Reading solemnly from their heartfelt letters, the children moved me with their innocence. The descriptions went on and on: She loved talking about movies and books. She was selfless, strong and kind-hearted. She always had a smile on her face. She would stick by you and support you one hundred percent.

These middle school children should have been writing these words on the autograph page of their eighth grade yearbook. Instead, they were memorializing Emily Levine who died suddenly last summer from an unperceived congenital heart defect, three months after she became a bat mitzvah at the Orangetown Jewish Center. (This past Shabbat was the anniversary of Emily’s becoming a bat mitzvah. Her sister Cara read from her Torah portion, Bamidbar.)

We stood in a circle around a flowering dogwood planted in Emily’s memory. Her friends placed purple circles with their thoughts of Emily around the base of the tree, like Jewish people visiting a grave and placing stones to show that loved ones remembered.

It was a beautiful ceremony, simple and sweet.

I wondered how these children will ultimately weave this experience into their lives. The sudden death of a thirteen-year old peer is shocking, unusual, inexplicable. Is the experience truly theirs to hold?   Doesn’t Emily’s death and its inscrutable meaning belong to her parents Cindy and Marc and her sisters Cara and Jordyn? This ritual moment was one of thousands of moments of grief that Emily’s immediate family has experienced over this year. Doesn’t the loss belong to them?

I ached for these children, young and innocent. So many parents work very hard to protect their children from the harsh realities of the world. What need had the children of recalling the sorrow of loss?

Jewishly, the answer to my questions is clear. Emily’s classmates need to learn that loss is a part of life. There is no turning away.

Rabbi Scheff’s yizkor sermon this past Monday on Shavuot brought comfort and more answers. Community, he said, provides us with a narrative to remind us that we are part of something bigger than ourselves.   Yes, we must experience others’ sorrow when we are part of a community but we also experience their joy. And in so doing, our lives are broader and deeper than they would otherwise be. Rabbi Scheff was speaking about the Orangetown Jewish Center community but his words teach about all communities. At South Orangetown Middle School today, a class of eighth graders circled around a baby dogwood tree and learned that being part of a community is the only way we can live fully and completely, doing our part to make this world a better place, one corner at a time.

With blessings of the comfort that sweet memories offer, Rabbi Paula Mack Drill