Hard Facts, Cat Ladies, & Devarim

Not to sound too excited about death, but I’ve discovered that I absolutely love doing funerals. 

I mean, let’s be real: people die all the time.


(Have I said this before?)

And I’m not causing death, so it’s not hard for me to state it.

It’s just a hard fact; people die.

But there are still things I can—and must—control.

It’s my job to help the surviving family find some sort of healing in the process—to help facilitate a Tikkun.

And people—in both life and death—are very complex.

When I first started with funerals, I was terrified.

So much is riding on how it goes.

With so little time involved.

Especially when you do it in the traditional way.

Jewish funerals are so multilayered.

Just like people.

As I get to know the family of the deceased, I have to ask a lot of questions, sometimes pressing them for more information.

More understanding.

And listen really hard.

Last week, I had to make a hard decision in my eulogy.

Since I was dealing with a brother and sister, I had two different stories.

I needed to discern between the two what was true and what, maybe, was not.

There was a man who had been very dear to the deceased.

But I gradually came to understand that he had probably taken advantage of this woman.

He was a well-known Broadway actor and singer.

She had met him when she was recently widowed.

And she was some thirty years his senior.

With lots of money.

Depressed and in search of company and joy, she’d started attending the theater soon after her husband died.

She soon became a “groupie,” showing up night after night to the same show.

Having been a difficult person (yet very generous and full of love to give), she’d had a hard time with friendship during her life.

Retired and lonely, she suddenly had lots of friends.

And she fell in love with this one actor, following him for years.

She believed the feelings were mutual, though probably not acted upon.

The relationship lasted thirty years until she died in her 80’s.

They had been “business partners,” according to her brother. 
 

According to her sister, this meant that she gave him lots of money, supported him, and rescued him from situations of his own making.

She’d transferred her attention and affection—and money—from her own family, especially her nephews, to this man’s children.

They became like family to her.

As you can imagine, her nephews, now grown with their own children, were very hurt.

The sister told me to expect to be charmed by him.

I told her, don’t worry, I’m not easily impressed.

He showed up at this tiny funeral in a grandiose way with his children and ex-wife.

He shook my hand vigorously, and thanked me for “doing this.”

As if he were the one who had orchestrated the funeral!

And he brought a playlist of his own voice—the deceased’s favorite songs—and had it electronically streamed into the family room on the speakers.

I made sure he did not remain with the family just prior to the funeral.

And I made the difficult decision not to mention him and his family by name.

I could tell by how his expression changed during the funeral, and especially during my eulogy, from beaming smiles to a fallen face, that he was not happy.

Afterwards, while waiting for the limo, we spoke.

I told him I knew how important he had been to the deceased.

I hoped he wasn’t upset that I hadn’t mentioned his name.

“Oh, no, it wasn’t about me, it was about her,” he reassured me.

Then, in a power play, he took hold of the back of my arm and pulled me in close.

From his tall height, he looked down at me, speaking in an intimate way, as if we were old friends.

“You did a beautiful job, rabbi, in every way. Your singing, your eulogy…you described her perfectly,” he went on, thanking me again.

I couldn’t wait for him to finish.

I felt helpless to get away from him.

How could I withdraw from his clutches without making a scene—as the rabbi?

I felt trapped and disgusted.

As a result of my omission of him and his family, he bowed out of going to the cemetery.

He made up some story of “finding his own way of honoring her with his children by going around the city to visit the stage doors where she’d waited for him to come out all those times.

Which meant I had a place in the limo with the family!

And her resentful, hurt, nephews didn’t have to ride with him!

We had wonderful conversation the whole time out to the cemetery and back.

Because I’d taken a risk myself, the family didn’t have to.

And I believe I brought healing to them.

I played this story over and over in my mind, and told it to different people again and again.

I felt traumatized by it.

(I’ve also since come up with how to get away from a situation like it if and when it happens again with another sleazy man.)
 

Maybe trauma is the same reason Moses repeats the entire story—in a nutshell—of forty years in the desert.

This is how the book of Deuteronomy begins.

But he chooses the details that are the hardest for him, it seems.

Of how argumentative the Israelites had been.

How angry God had been with them, and as a result, with Moses.

How the spies had come back from scouting the Promised Land with exaggerated fears that turned into incomplete truths and falsehoods.

Tall tales, like the story J.D. Vance told the American people of “Childless Cat Ladies” running our country—hardly a hard fact!

(For a really interesting and fun history of “Cat Ladies,” I recommend listening to this episode of “Revenge of…” on On The Media.”)

Moses tells, yet again, how he himself will not be crossing over into the Promised Land with the people he has led for forty years.

How he’d passed on the mantle of leadership for the future to another chosen by God.

Though the Israelites are entering a new phase in their history, a brighter future, Moses is reviewing a challenging past.

He weeds through what’s true and what’s not: what’s difficult to face.

He faces hard facts, continuing to process his life, what it’s meant.

Now that Kamala Harris has entered the presidential race, and Gov. Tim Walz has joined her as her running mate, it feels like there’s hope of saving our country from a second term with Donald Trump.

As we enter this hopeful moment in U.S. history after a long time of hopelessness, may we weed out the lies from the facts.

May we face bullies—misogynists among them—who try to corner us and make us feel helpless.

May we take control of that which we can towards a brighter future.

May we all act as facilitators of a Tikkun—a healing.