Just a Simple, Moving Story About Compassionate Religion

[Ralph]

Nothing here about Church/State entanglements or fundamentalist attacks on civil liberties. Just people getting together to do something very decent.

*****

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com

Hosp helps grant mom's last wish
By JOANNA MOLLOY
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Sunday, July 17th, 2005

It was Judith Fertig's dying wish to attend her son Rafi's bar mitzvah, but doctors said it would be impossible.

Until by chance, Rabbi Areyeh Oberstein walked into the 52-year-old mother of four's room at Mount Sinai Medical Center and recognized her brother Aaron Braunstein, the New York radio host and boxing promoter.

"Didn't you bring boxing matches to the USS Roosevelt and USS Eisenhower when they were in Haifa?" asked Oberstein. "I was an officer on those ships."

Braunstein pulled Oberstein, now retired at lieutenant-commander rank, into the hall and whispered, "She doesn't have much time." Oberstein decided to help and had an idea: There was a small synagogue in the hospital - he could perform the bar mitzvah there.

Preparations began quickly: Kosher food from Borough Park. A klezmer band. The guests. A beautiful new black dress for Judith. On the Fourth of July, Judith, who suffered from ovarian cancer, was wheeled into the peaceful blondewood sanctuary.

Light poured through stained glass windows as she was surrounded by her husband, Joseph, and children Avi, Yochevet, Tsvi, and Rafi, who donned his tallis and wrapped teffilin around his arm.

Oberstein handed him the Torah.

Rafi chanted the ancient prayer in Hebrew he'd worked a year to learn, "Baruch Atah Adonai...."

Jews believe that during the bar mitzvah rite, a boy becomes a man and assumes the responsibility to uphold the Jewish law.

His mother smiled upon her youngest, her son born after her initial bout with breast cancer. She named him Raphael, Hebrew for "God's healer."

Oberstein blessed Rafi, and as the klezmer band struck up triumphant chords, guests hesitantly began to chat, eat, and even...dance. "Rafi, you know how much money you saved your parents by not having this at Leonard's?" said Braunstein to laughter. "And you're definitely going to become a doctor being bar mitzvahed here."

It was thought to be the first bar mitzvah in the hospital's 141-year history.

Judith smiled all the way back to her room, Braunstein said, and just 12 hours later, she died in her sleep at 1:30 a.m.

There's little doubt that as a last motherly act of protection, she waited until past midnight so it wouldn't be on the same day.

[Werner]

A lovely story, Ralph - so far fronm the contentious level of political or religious argument.

Thanks for posting it.

[Ralph]

A lovely story, Ralph - so far fronm the contentious level of political or religious argument.

Thanks for posting it.

*****

With all the threads on religion and divisiveness I thought, as a God-not fearing atheist, that this story was a gentle counter to so much negativity (to which I contribute with unbridled passion).

[Corlyss_D]

A heartwarming story, Ralph.

[pizza]

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com

Hosp helps grant mom's last wish
By JOANNA MOLLOY
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Sunday, July 17th, 2005

Judith smiled all the way back to her room, Braunstein said, and just 12 hours later, she died in her sleep at 1:30 a.m.

There's little doubt that as a last motherly act of protection, she waited until past midnight so it wouldn't be on the same day.

The author should have said "waited until after sundown" because according to Halacha or Jewish Law, every new day begins at sundown, not at midnight. A very moving story.

[DavidRoss]

"Heartwarming, compassionate stories about religion" could fill volumes, yet hundreds of stories about churches raising money for a poor person's cancer treatment, or Christian volunteers donating their time for medical treatment for third-world children, get ignored by bigots and the press in order to sensationalize one story about a deviant priest or wacko abortion clinic bomber.

[Ralph]

"Heartwarming, compassionate stories about religion" could fill volumes, yet hundreds of stories about churches raising money for a poor person's cancer treatment, or Christian volunteers donating their time for medical treatment for third-world children, get ignored by bigots and the press in order to sensationalize one story about a deviant priest or wacko abortion clinic bomber.

*****

Deviants who prey on children - clerical or not - are crime stories. Those who commit crimes against abortion providers may not be "wacko" but they're committed to violating Constitutional rights. Those acts merit news coverage.

I don't know how the media is where you are but there is ample coverage where I am on both TV and in print of individual acts of kindness and humanitarianism.

[BWV 1080]

Nice story here is another:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/07/13/lynching.apology.ap/

ABBEVILLE, S.C. Local churches in Abbeville will hold a reconciliation service tonight to apologize for -- not -- trying to stop racial strife decades ago.

White church leaders are expected to confess the sins of their ancestors and apologize to blacks for incidents like the lynching that killed Anthony Crawford in 1916.

Ministers representing the black community will accept the apology and extend forgiveness in return.

The service is being held at the Friendship Worship Center in Abbeville.

The idea for the service came when Crawford's lynching was prominently mentioned during the U-S Senate's formal apology to the descendants of victims of lynchings.

Crawford was a wealthy black farmer who was jailed, then killed, for an altercation with a white man.

[Ralph]

Nice story here is another:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/07/13/lynching.apology.ap/

ABBEVILLE, S.C. Local churches in Abbeville will hold a reconciliation service tonight to apologize for -- not -- trying to stop racial strife decades ago.

White church leaders are expected to confess the sins of their ancestors and apologize to blacks for incidents like the lynching that killed Anthony Crawford in 1916.

Ministers representing the black community will accept the apology and extend forgiveness in return.

The service is being held at the Friendship Worship Center in Abbeville.

The idea for the service came when Crawford's lynching was prominently mentioned during the U-S Senate's formal apology to the descendants of victims of lynchings.

Crawford was a wealthy black farmer who was jailed, then killed, for an altercation with a white man.

*****

There's a lot of debate about the so-called Apology Movement. At the least it's an act of mutual respect and recognition in the context of the above story. Much history about lynching is unknown to most people today, even when the atrocity was common wher ethey dwell. More than an apology is central to such ceremonies like the one in Abbeville. They are educational for all and cathartic for some.