By Emily K. Alhadeff, Assistant Editor, JTNews
“Do not say ‘When I free myself of my concerns, I will study,’ for perhaps you will never free yourself.”
So go the Pirke Avot, or the Sayings of the Fathers, the Mishnaic collection of Jewish, ethical maxims from the turn of the Common Era.
For a group of men at The Summit at First Hill retirement community, Jewish study wasn’t always easy to come by. But under the guidance of Rabbi Elana Zaiman, 11 men decided to learn this tractate of timeless wisdom. The culmination of their study of Pirke Avot was celebrated on Dec. 4 at the Summit.
To a room packed with friends, family, fellow residents and supporters, five of the 11 men shared their life stories before heading to the dining room for a feast of bagels, fruit, spinach quejado and cheesecake.
According to Zaiman, the chaplain at the Summit and the Kline Galland Home, “The men didn’t get to study as much as they wanted” when they were young, “or they wanted to have a celebration” that they were never able to have due to war, the Depression or otherwise.
Zaiman made clear that this was not a Bar Mitzvah celebration, like the one she organized for five Summit women in June 2010. It was more like a siyum — a celebration to mark the completion of a cycle of study — “to honor the men and celebrate the men who wanted to take time to study.”
Pirke Avot was an obvious choice of text. “Here are fathers,” Zaiman said. “Basically what they’re doing is they’re commenting on their lives. So it fits with the mission of what they’re doing.” It is a relatively short, simple text “that they could sink their teeth into and relate their life experiences to.”
The study group consisted of Phil Flash, David Franklin, Max Kotzen, Gary Levy, Ernie Mednick, Lou Cohen, Ike Eskenazi, Sherwin Kremen, Jack H. Richlen, Bill Schmidt, and Ben Spector.
The honorees spoke to a standing-room–only audience in the activity center. Their stories, while straightforward and reminiscent of a Bar Mitzvah boy’s sermon, exposed layers of life experience and hardship unknown to younger generations.
Kotzen, 83, recounted his childhood in Lichtenburg, South Africa, where he went into business with his mother after high school. He recalled the anti-Semitism of his town and the years he spent worrying whether he’d be able to pay his bills. But, he said, “as I look over my life, I feel I succeeded.” The study group not only connected him to the enjoyment he remembers as part of men’s groups in South Africa, but it also provided a celebration for his Judaism he never had.
Like Kotzen and other men, Franklin, 95, never made it to college due to economic challenges. After leaving school at 16 to work, then marrying, having four children and suffering several ailments, Franklin obtained his GED at the age of 77. At 82 he earned his BA, and at 84 he graduated with a Master’s of Social Work.
“Because of my love to learn,” said Franklin, “I joined the men’s group here at the Summit. I also joined because it might be helpful in my grappling with my belief in God.”
Franklin, who has had trouble believing in God since the Holocaust, added, “While I am not completely sure what I believe, I have begun to feel more comfortable in my search for understanding.”
Between presentations, Zaiman led the audience in Jewish songs, including a version of the Shema. She explained that the Shema should be on one’s lips three times a day, and also as a Jew dies. Ernie Mednick, she said, might have had this prayer on his lips at one time.
He was born in 1918 to a fur and hide buyer in tiny Richfield, Utah, and ended up in infantry during World War II. One morning, after the Battle of the Bulge, he awoke in his foxhole and “there was a man straddling the foxhole, a Nazi, pointing a gun in my face. From that time on, I was a prisoner of war,” he said.
“In my breast pocket I had a khaki-colored pocket siddur. I had my dog tags. They knew I was Jewish. I was afraid.”
With a gun pointed at his chest, Mednick was ordered to march. Instead of killing him, though, they sent him to a prisoner camp, where he remained until the Americans liberated them.
After the liberation, Mednick describes walking, at a meager 115 pounds, through a German town where an old woman “handed me an old withered apple that she must have had in storage for a while. I remember she had tears in her eyes. I imagine she didn’t have much to eat.
“There were moments of kindness in this horror. Kindness like we talked about in our study of Pirke Avot. Among the things on which the world stands is gemilut hasidim, deeds of loving kindness.”
“Give us the courage to search for truth,” said participant Phil Flash at the end of his speech, invoking the Gates of Prayer siddur. “Teach us the path to a better life. So shall we, by our lives and our labors, bring nearer the realization the great hope inherited from ages past, for a world transformed by liberty, justice and peace.”
This group proved it’s never too late to start that search.