Sensitivities

Twice this week, I’ve had conversations that went something like this:
Me: “I haven’t seen you lately, how’s it going?”
Them: “Well, you probably know that I lost my (son, mother).”
One of these conversations happened over a luncheon spread of tuna and egg salad and cut up fruit while the two of us were putting food on our plates for our respective working lunches.
The other happened while I was kvetching my way through another couple hundred calories on the treadmill at the JCC.
If it’s possible to get stopped in one’s tracks on the treadmill, than that was the situation.
We’re all kind of stuck in a broken conversational record connecting every discussion, debate or dialogue to the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
So with this economic cloud hanging over us, all other conversations sometimes seem to get lost…well, in those clouds.
I think that sometimes I get more involved with an article I’m working on or the state of affairs in the community, I have to shake my head and almost wake up.
Those wake up calls are provided for me by conversations like the ones I had last week.
But the wake up calls get even deeper. On March 15 at the Gordon Center, a one-woman play, “The Blessing of a Broken Heart,” based on Sherri Mandel’s book of the same title will remind this community of the death of Koby Mandell.
Koby and his friend Yosef Ish-Ran were brutally killed in a Tekoa, Israel cave in May of 2001. But the two young teens weren’t just killed their bodies were bludgeoned with rocks beyond recognition, such was the hatred of the murderers towards two boys who happened to be Jewish.
At the time, there were so many stories written, so many interviews done. The Koby Mandell Foundation continues to provide respite to children who have been touched by terrorism in Israel.
In preparation for the performance, I went ahead and read Sherri Mandell’s incredible book. It’s not just great writing, but it’s got a flavor to it, a difference to it. Kind of like when you taste a piece of fruit that is just so much different and incredible than anything else you’ve eaten in years. You’ve eaten an orange before, but this time the orange was just so different.
But I admit, I let life go on. Even though I have a daughter and son-in-law who live in the same town as the Mandells, I guess I moved on. And I know we’re supposed to move on.
Sometimes, though, I don’t want to. I want the reminder. I think already about how the victims of the Mumbai massacre have fallen off of the radar screen. That shouldn’t be.
So for now I’m just asking, especially as we head into the Purim and Pesach seasons, and I know money is impossibly tight. But perhaps the tzedakah we give can go in part to families who have set up utilities to help those of us in dire need who our dearly deceased have left behind.
If anything, I’m getting a new radar screen with a heightened sensitivity chip.
It’s just something I’ve got to do.