Tikkun olam or OCD?
Alison Bert on March 20th, 2011 | Filed under Humor, Judaism, Philosophy
I’ve always liked the concept of tikkun olam, which is Hebrew for “repairing the world.” For many Jews, it means making the world a better place one mitzvah at a time. Like visiting a friend in the hospital, or helping a community clean up after a natural disaster.
I’d like to think I do tikkun olam in my own way, though I’m not sure my rabbi would agree. Like a few weeks ago, I noticed that my sister’s new Facebook profile picture made her face look red. She’s very attractive normally, so I set out to right this situation. Not that she’d asked me to, but must one wait to be asked before performing a good deed? Didn’t the great medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides rank the goodness of a deed even higher it’s done without being asked?
So I downloaded my sister’s photo, opened it in Photoshop and spent 20 minutes restoring her natural beauty. Never mind that I was going to be late to meet my friend Leonora for lunch. As I frantically searched for ways to reduce the red without turning her face green, I couldn’t help thinking that being late for a friend is probably the opposite of tikkun olam. But seeing my sister’s falsely ruddy complexion pushed that thought right out of my head as I toiled away.
If stuff like this does count as tikkun olam, I am indeed leading a blessed life. After all, I spend hours a day editing people’s writing, making their messages more compelling while taking out the extra space they insist on putting after periods and semicolons. In department stores, I hang up clothing that has been carelessly strewn on the floor. And my menagerie of houseplants includes the rescue cases I took from my sister, their crooked stems and bare branches now burgeoning with foliage (see photo above).
Of course, there are far more pressing causes that people are devoting their time to, like disaster relief and helping the poor. But my small contributions must count for something. The question is, are they tikkun olam or OCD? Recently, I mentioned my OCD tendencies to a friend who happens to be a psychiatrist. I told him that when I was 4 years old I would stand in front of the mirror in our foyer taking my barrette in and out of my hair in an effort to place it perfectly parallel to my part until my parents would drag me out the door to nursery school. Read the rest of this entry »
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A Jewish girl prays to Saint Anthony
Alison Bert on December 26th, 2008 | Filed under Catholicism, Holidays, Judaism, Life Maintenance, Philosophy, Prayer, Spirituality
At Christmas dinner, the conversation turned to St. Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of lost things. My boyfriend’s mother had lost her favorite Rosary beads — a strand that was just long enough for her drive to Fratelli’s Italian deli in Yonkers. A friend had brought them back from Ireland years ago.
She told us she had searched her whole car, pushing back the seats and running her hand over the floors. She even said a prayer to Saint Anthony.
I was fascinated that there was a specific prayer for this frustrating phenomenon, so she gladly recited it:
“Saint Anthony, Saint Anthony, please come around,
Something’s been lost that cannot be found.”
I repeated it to make sure I had the words right. She corrected my ending, “needs to be found” to “cannot be found.” She said she was surprised a few days had gone by without the beads turning up; St. Anthony had not let her down in the past.
“Maybe he was looking out for you,” I offered. “Maybe you weren’t supposed to find those beads.”
I went on to explain my theory of misplaced time: “If you hadn’t lost them, the timing your whole life would be slightly different from then on. You could have found yourself on a different place on the road, in a car accident perhaps.”
The guests listened politely, then offered a more pragmatic explanation.
“It’s got to still be in the car,” my boyfriend said. Read the rest of this entry »
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On finally getting to meet Pete Seeger
Alison Bert on November 16th, 2008 | Filed under Music, Pete Seeger, Writing
My eyes welled as I joined the folks around me in a rousing chorus of “This Land is Your Land,” led by Pete Seeger and his grandson, Tao Rodriguez-Seeger. I remembered the words to every verse, having sung the song again and again as a child with my too-big guitar (when no one else was around because I was embarrassed of my voice). I would watch Pete Seeger’s weekly television show with my father and listen to his record of children’s songs, which found a permanent home on the turntable of our hi-fi. I was fascinated by how his fingers danced on the banjo, how he played his instruments by ear and made it look easy, how he told stories in words and songs.
At the concert, I sang quietly in case my voice were to crack or hit a note out of tune. I marveled at Pete Seeger’s gift to draw in his audience, to make you feel like you were the one he was singing to. At 89, he was still a virtuoso who could make us laugh at the ironies of our world and our words. (“Quicksand works slowly; boxing rings are square. A writer writes, but do fingers fing?”)
Woody Guthrie’s classic “This Land” was the next-to-the-last song on the concert, a benefit to restore the historic Ritz Theater in Newburgh, NY. Sponsored by La Bella Strings and the Bardavon, it’s part of the Tom Humphrey Guitar Series to honor the memory of the renowned Hudson Valley guitar maker who passed away earlier this year and who made the beautiful instrument I play.
As for the last song, I remember little about it because I was too busy thinking of what I would say to Pete (or should I call him Mr. Seeger?) when I finally got to meet him at the reception.
“How un-Pete-Seegerlike,” I thought, seeing my childhood icon as a man who lives in the moment and sings from the heart, a man who concerns himself with cleaning rivers and bettering the world and certainly not rehearsing conversations in his head with people he hopes to impress. Read the rest of this entry »