Shabbat Sermon: Beautiful Dreamer with Rav Hazzan Aliza Berger

From the Bimah: Jewish Lessons for Life

Last week I had two meetings that I just can't get out of my head. The first meeting was with an elder who has recently experienced some significant health challenges. He’s at an assisted living facility now where he spends his days being wheeled around by an aide, going where they take him and eating what they serve him. His wife passed away years ago. His memory is slipping. He’s dealing with significant health challenges. And yet, when I asked him how he’s doing, he said, “I am just so lucky.”

“So lucky,” I said, “what makes you so lucky? Tell me about your life.”The story he told was just so interesting. He told me about generational pain and trauma. About how his family escaped Poland just in time but lost their entire extended family. He shared about losing his father when he was eleven, and about how his brother became convinced his mother needed to remarry, pushing her to marry a man who turned out to be abusive. He spoke about escaping home and trying to build a life for himself. He talked about losing his wife, about the challenges his children are facing, about his declining health. And yet, it was so amazing—he shared his whole life story with a smile, and punctuated every story with “I am just so lucky.”

As I was leaving the assisted living facility, I got a call from a Yisodnik who is struggling. He's 28, just broke up with a partner, working a j.o.b. but not a job that feels meaningful or relevant to who he is, and he just feels like he hasn’t had any luck building the kind of life he wants. His takeaway was, “I just haven’t found any luck.”

For me, the juxtaposition of these conversations was so fascinating.