The funeral this morning is cancer, not COVID. The crowd is bigger than I’d like – probably around 35-40 people and they’re not spread out as much as they should be. The legal limit is 50. I wish it was 10. It’s uncomfortable to wish for additional hardships for the mourners but I feel especially vulnerable today and this is the 2nd funeral in three days, and funerals are the number-one spreader right now. It’s a ridiculous cycle. The man from “the chev” (Chevra Kadisha) makes a strongly worded announcement reminding people to spread out and social distance and not to hug. Some people take a few steps back and away from each other or bunch together in family pods, but I also watch a woman walk across the crowd and hug another woman immediately after the announcement. I want to scream at her. I don’t.
I am grateful that I can go to “my rabbi place” in these moments; That there is structure and familiarity in the liturgy, and that I’ve been a rabbi long enough that I can just go through it without thinking too hard and still come across as present and genuine. And I am. When I open the book with the prayers, everything else fades away. The anxiety and the heaviness and the heartbreak and the fear and the homesickness and I am just in that moment – there for the family. I am “Rabbi” and not “Emma” for those sacred moments and honestly, today, it’s a relief. “Emma” is struggling, but “Rabbi” is strong.
It’s Eve’s grandfather that we are burying. I studied with Eve last year for her Bat Mitzvah. It was a private Friday night ceremony at home that I didn’t attend because “we don’t do that” (long story for another day) but she wanted to write a D’var Torah and she wanted to study with a woman rabbi and so that’s what we did. She is one of those students that you really mean it when you say they are a joy to work with. Bright and inquisitive and thoughtful. She took-in everything I taught her and spun it back out in her own well-written words. She was polite and respectful and responsible and just a lovely girl. The family was previously devoted to the “other rabbi”, but they are fond of me too now too, and appreciative that I’m there. The grandmother, a long-time member, told me on the phone she was so pleased that it was going to be a woman rabbi at the service. Her Orthodox son was on the phone with her. I was outwardly gracious and inwardly a bit smug, I’ll admit.
At the grave they are shoveling and sanitizing. Shoveling and sanitizing. I notice Eve doesn’t step forward, though she is watching her family intently as they take their turns. I wonder if she is afraid or uncertain. What’s holding her back? I know that this ritual matters, and I worry that she will look back and regret not participating later. I step softly to her side and brush her shoulder as gently as I can (such a touch, surely, is permitted, and I don’t care in that moment if it isn’t). “Shall we go together?” I say to her. She nods without hesitation and we step forward.
I am not “The Rabbi” of our community, and only two years in, I am not yet everyone’s Rabbi. But I am Eve’s Rabbi, and we both know it.
We each take a shovel and I show her what to do, step-by-step. The back of the shovel, then the front. One. Two. Three. Slam the shovel back into the sand so it doesn’t fall over. Step back. Get sanitizer from the man with the spray bottle. Her mother thanks me. We stand quietly there, together, until the grave is filled.
These are the moments. This is why I’m here. There is nothing else in these moments except hearing the call to serve and knowing what is needed. Everything else is minor. Even heartbreak. Even homesickness. Even COVID. I am “Rabbi” and I am “Eve’s Rabbi” and I am comforted by the call and my ability to respond. It is all I can do and the least I can do and the only thing to be done all at once. It doesn’t keep the rest of it at bay forever, but it anchors me for the storms raging around and inside of me, and I know if I just hold on to this moment, I will be okay.
- EKG’21
