Erev Yom Kippur - Kol Nidrei 5781
Sunday, September 27, 2020
Temple Beth Zion, Buffalo, New York
by Rabbi Jonathan Freirich

“Be a mensch.”

Or, as they would say in the Old Country, “Zeyt a mensch.”

Three simple words in English, or Yiddish, and some of the most profound and serious advice my grandfather, Grandpa Iggie, may his memory always be for a blessing, offered me.

And Iggie lived those words as well as anyone.

Grandpa Iggie was a professionally compassionate person. He was trained to be a physical therapist at NYU by some of the people who created the field. He was a pioneer among his medical colleagues in Lynbrook, Long Island, in the realm of treating people, not conditions. He always mentioned that to me, saying that we have to regard the person, not whatever they were suffering from, because the person is the point.

Were it not for the sound business mind of Grandma Ida, who ran Iggie’s office for years, Grandpa Iggie would have spent hours with each patient, never getting through his schedule. I imagine that in his office, as he was with all of us, his five grandchildren, he must have been the consummate listener. Unearthing the person behind the pain, and helping each individual patient overcome their discomfort with massage and movement, advice and exercise, and a caring heart to back it all up.

He spoke in that thick and wonderful Brooklyn Ashkenaz accent, pronouncing the Motzi, “Boruch asaw Adonoy…”, and jovially responding to us saying, “Grandpa, say ‘girl’”, with “Goyl,” and then when we said it back to him he would respond, “What’s a matter with you, can’t you speak English?”

Iggie taught me how to play golf, taking joy in spending time on the golf course with the people he loved, applauding us when we did well, and reminding us, on the last hole if we would hit a good shot, “Now that’s a golf shot. That’s a shot to go home with.”

Iggie became a physical therapist in the 1930’s and worked through the Great Depression in the early days of their marriage. Iggie and Ida were shaped by that time and still never gave into to despair. They were hopeful and optimistic. They were generous and ethical.

Iggie was a constantly joyful and thankful presence. From big occasions, like blessing us at our wedding, to small ones eating with anyone in the family, anywhere, he would praise the simplest meals as if he had just supped like a king. He would push back from the table and give the highest praise to whomever was there, hearkening to back to meals with my grandmother, intoning, “Good supper Mommy,” long after Ida was gone. He always ordered the same cocktail, and upon his first sip would genuinely look at it and praise it like was next, “Now that’s a drink!” His inner integrity was always complemented by a sense of joy in the everyday.

When I think of a mensch, someone gently appreciating friends and family with compliments and smiles, honoring obligations to patients and colleagues, living a quiet life of integrity, Grandpa Iggie and his advice, “Be a mensch” forms a perfect intention, a lesson lived and a life lesson going forward long past his time on this earth. After all, Iggie’s gone now since 2003. And his words live on in the stories we tell about him to our kids who never got to meet him. On his birthday and yahrzeit, and many other days during the year, our extended family will chat about him. And he is with us whenever we are on the golf course together.

It isn’t easy to be a mensch. To find the right way to be kind, the right way to be fair, the middle ground between them. To get up every morning and treat everyone like the miraculous unique reflection of the divine that they are, to not be irritable or get irritated, to be giving and generous even when the world seems filled with selfishness and difficulty - all of this and so much more is what it means to be a mensch and it isn’t easy. So how did Iggie do it so consistently for so much of his life?

Another thing that Iggie was a pioneer in, only he wouldn’t have called it such, was something of a mindfulness practice. I don’t know how he managed it in his day-to-day life, I don’t know what sort of thought process he used to calm himself between patients so that he was as good a person as he could be for the next person he spoke to, but I do know the things he taught me when he gave me advice and instructed me in golf.

Iggie had a holistic approach to body-work advising us to not exercise while in pain - “no pain, no gain” was a recipe for injuries and difficulties from his perspective. As a former college sprinter I am sure he knew what it took to become a performance athlete and also knew that while I might be enthusiastic, any exercise regimen I pursued was going to be as an amateur at best. So he advised me to listen closely to my body, to take note of aches and pains and to not let them get worse - either by easing off or changing what I was doing in some way.

On the golf course Iggie was a devoted student of classic golf coaches like Harvey Penick, and stuck religiously to the idea that addressing a golf shot was a mental and spiritual practice, “to be at ease” and to find a gentle focus.

In other words, Iggie had a mind-body practice that I imagine helped him sustain himself as a caregiver and a mensch.

In Judaism, we focus a lot on the behaviors and habits that lead us to being a person of integrity, towards developing the aspects of being a mensch, or in Yiddish, menschlichkeit. On this particular day of the year we identify all of the ways in which we have missed the mark, all of the behaviors that we hoped to pursue and didn’t quite achieve. On what someone called to me this morning, “the Super Bowl of the Jewish Year,” through the act of public confessions we reassert together the behaviors that we hold to be most important. It helps us set a good course for the New Year.

In all of this though, we still need a personal practice, something that will help us make progress on these reasonable aims of excellent behavior. Internal methods to overcome our initial reactions, our biases, our anger, and lead with our best selves when we do offer a reaction to what’s going on around us.

Every day of the year we can do better and we can each find our own way there. Remembering to be grateful in the morning, offering blessings, taking five minutes every hour to check in on how we’re feeling and take a deep breath, making sure that we stand up and walk around once in a while, getting out into nature at least once a day to recharge our sense of well-being, remembering to smile at the people in our home when we see them and acknowledging them as sources of joy in our lives. The inner practice that helps us be the outer mensch will be just as individualized as anything else. What helps us today as Jews is seeing that we are all on that journey together. We confess together to move forward together. We establish a norm of being a mensch, follow in our own Grandpa Iggie model - and I know each of us has a mentor, a teacher, a friend, a family-member who can serve as that model - and breathe deeply and dig deep and find whatever it takes to go out and be a better person in that next encounter.

If this mind-body, mindfulness, hearts and minds and bodies connected to our behaviors, works to inform us, we also remember that it works both ways. The Jewish model asks us to be engaged in community. Iggie was a mensch and a mystic because he was constantly aiming higher, working with other people, and that good work fueled his inner self even as his inner work continued to fuel his menschlichkeit. In this way Judaism is both a social and a contemplative path - we are aiming for a profoundly rooted behavior of integrity and seeking justice sustained by a profoundly seeking inner life of balance and continued personal development. In our Jewish traditions we don’t have gurus sitting on mountain tops because the life of seclusion separates us from the life of working to make things better. Our role models are engaged in being friends and family-members as well as having jobs and careers and always aiming for soul-inspired good behavior and righteous actions that raise our spirits.

I still work to live up to Iggie’s model.

As in every year up until now, I am working on finding rhythm in my life so that I can bring the best of me to all that I do. I imagine we are all working to get ourselves up to one or more of our role model’s standards, for themselves and for us.

As we go forward into this New Year, I will try to live some of Iggie’s wise words as a mystic so that I can follow his down-to-earth model as a mensch.

If it hurts, ease off - and that goes for working as well as exercising.

When doing something important, I will try to be at ease and attend to that one thing with all my mind and self.

In all of this, I will try to bring my best self to every encounter and relationship.

May we all find a meaningful path of reflection that leads to better doing in the world in this year to come.

May we be written and sealed for a good year.