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A good voice
Hands-down this is my favorite time of year, when the Jewish High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur come around. The long services are filled with moving melodies and highly repetitive prayers that penetrate my every being. It is a time for renewal, remembrance, and atonement.
Growing up in a small town in upstate New York, there were very few Jews. One of my fondest memories is of my dad serving as our temple’s cantor when he wasn’t working his day job. Each High Holy Day he would stand before the congregation and his lovely heart-felt voice would quietly emerge.
Even after all these years, even as I attend my own temple’s services here in Washington, D.C., I can still hear his deeply moving voice. I can still see his gentle leaning into each note, seeking to locate just the right intonation and feeling. He never seemed to try and suggest a sense of sacredness; rather, in those moments, he was sacred.
I remember him giving of himself in such a way that made me so incredibly proud. “That’s my dad,” I would sit there and think. Now, approaching 80 years old, he is still singing, as he did this past Rosh Hashanah weekend, still a member of the same upstate N.Y. temple.
In person, my dad is a quiet, reserved, sometimes shy man. But when I was a kid growing up, listening to him in temple was one of those rare moments when I could see the depths of his soul with absolute clarity right before my eyes.
To this day I know his is a good and mighty fine soul.
This year my 16-tear old daughter was asked by our temple to sing the 23rd psalm on Yom Kippur, which will occur in a matter of days. I already know that it will be difficult for me to keep my composure as I sit in the sanctuary and listen to her sing.
Indeed, I will sit in my temple as a proud dad, as my daughter’s angelic voice emerges; and I will be there as a proud son, too, as I hear in the distance once more the sound of my dad’s quiet voice. -
A deeply personal note
Frank, one of my best friends, worked for Canter, Fitzgerald and was lost in the World Trade Center Towers on 9/11. On this fifth anniversary of that dreadful day, I wonder where we are in our fight against terrorism and in our aspirations to be a better people. But most of all on this day, I keep wondering about him.
I met Frank during the first week of my freshman year at Skidmore College. We were eventual roommates, drinking buddies, tennis partners, and political opponents during heated arguments in Case Center over Leonard Silk’s columns in The New York Times business section. He introduced me to the music of the inimitable Billie Holiday and others, too.
Just under five years ago I was to speak at my 20th college reunion as my classmates and I were set to dedicate a room in Palamountain Hall to Frank. The day came and I just couldn’t bring myself to go. I stayed home.
Like all of us, I remember vividly where I was when I learned of 9/11. I was at home that day too, this time writing a chapter on “civic faith” for a new book. My own faith in our collective ability to respond to events like 9/11 has not waned, even though my amazement at our collective ability to deflect and defer and detach ourselves from real issues has also risen to new heights.
I eventually stopped work on that book so I could write Hope Unraveled, which has a chapter on Americans’ views on the nation’s response to 9/11. The chapter is entitled False Start – in some ways a sorrowful reflection of people’s belief that the nation did not live up to its claims and potential to come together to change public life and politics in the aftermath of 9/11.
But today my desire is not to write about the condition of public life and politics. Today, amid all the non-stop stories and speeches and spectacles about 9/11, I find myself alone in the feeling that I simply miss a friend.
I know it is trite to ask, “Did my good friend Frank die in vein?” Of course he died too soon, at too young an age, robbed of his time with his wife and kids. He was a bystander, caught one-hundred some-odd stories up in a New York City skyscraper, unable to get out, frantically calling loved ones on the phone, knowing that the end was closing in.
Just the other day my wife suggested that I call some college buddies to plan a weekend get-together. My mind immediately went to Frank. I sat there in silence for a time only to eventually shrug my shoulders and respond, “Yeah, maybe.”
But this much I do know. In May of next year will be my 25th college reunion. This time I will go. I will visit the room in Palamountain Hall named in Frank’s honor. And I will sit there alone and think about Frank. There won’t be any fanfare. But my heart will be filled with memories on that day, as it is today, and has been everyday since 9/11. -
What Andre Agassi found
I don’t usually write about sports here, but what the heck, I’m a crazy sports fan and I simply can’t pass up shining a bright light on Andre Agassi’s last moments at the U.S. Open this weekend. He lost his match, but in the end he won – big time. He found something we all need.
If you haven’t been following the U.S. Open, this was to be Agassi’s last. Throughout weekend TV coverage of the tournament, which by the way takes place in Queens, N.Y. just across from Shea Stadium (the home of my red hot N.Y. Mets!), it was “All Agassi All-the-Time.” Then, after he lost to Benjamin Becker, he took to center court to say these few words to those in Arthur Ashe Stadium and viewers at home:“The scorecard said I lost today, but what it doesn’t say is what it is I have found. And over the last 21 years, I have found loyalty. You have pulled for me on the court and also in life. I’ve found inspiration. You have willed me to succeed sometimes even in my lowest moments. And I’ve found generosity. You have given me your shoulders to stand on to reach for my dreams, dreams I could never have reached without you. Over the last 21 years, I have found you and I will take you with me for the rest of my life. Thank you.”
When Andre Agassi came onto the world tennis scene, sports’ observers characterized him as brash, obnoxious, jarring, self-absorbed, even a punk. Over the years his aggressive style of tennis remained consistent and true, an approach that dictates up-tempo, take the ball early, put pressure on your opponent, attack at all times, go for winners – and never play it safe.
But what’s changed about Agassi is… well, Agassi. He has changed – through adversity, in suffering injuries, when his world ranking plummeted, as new young players emerged, when cortisone shots were required for his ailing back so he could simply stand up and make his way back on court.
I found two things compelling about Agassi’s comments this weekend. First, was his choice of words. Anyone who has read this blog knows I love language. So, I urge you to take a moment and go back and read once more his post-match comments. Pull out for yourself key words.
What you’ll find are sentiments we too often fail to hear in public spaces these days, and perhaps that we ourselves too often fail to say and practice either in public or private.Loyalty. Inspiration. Generosity. Dreams.
Second, too often we believe the only way to know ourselves is to talk about ourselves. Sometimes that is necessary. But it is also true that there are times when we can only come to know ourselves in pure silence – as we listen to others speak, only then to see and recognize things about ourselves.
Agassi made his way in tennis not only by blazing his own trail but, as he put it, by what “I have found.” What he discovered – what he now treasures and shared with the rest of us – he found in others first, and only then in himself.
I found his comments so moving because just at the moment when he was to talk about himself… when we expected him to talk about himself, well, he turned to the crowd and talked about them – what he had learned from them, gained from them, indeed, what he found in them.