Rabbi Frankel’s Sermon for Yom Kippur, 5785/2024

Learning to Swim in the Waters of Life

B’chol Dor Vador, in every generation, there arises… a parenting guru who seems to have all the answers! I’m pretty sure my own mother was handed a book by Dr. Spock as she headed home from delivering me. Influenced by Freud, pediatrician Benjamin McLane Spock published his first how-to parenting guide in 1946 rejecting the rigid doctrines of his time and emphasizing flexibility.¹  “Just listen to your kids,” he’d advise; they know what they need.

Then the What to Expect When You’re Expecting series was all the rage for a while. Formatted as a series of question-and-answer advice columns, the first edition in 1984 was co-written by a new mom together with her journalist mother and sister who was a nurse. She then added What To Expect in the First Year and the second year and so on trying to help parents anticipate any possible scenario one might face. (Spoiler alert: You can’t possibly!)

And today, the go-to for most of our nursery school parents is Dr. Becky, and her “Good Inside” philosophy of children. Dr. Becky Kennedy, actually the sister of one of our LT members, posts pithy podcasts and YouTube videos to help navigate those tough parenting moments and better manage your own adult “big feelings” as you do. Known as Instagram’s parent whisperer, Dr. Becky even has an app you can download to access “a 24-7 parenting coach.”²

But 2,000 years before we had moment-to-moment coaching advice at our fingertips, the ancient rabbis offered their own simple formula for parents. In the Talmud, we read: “A father is obligated to do the following for his son: to circumcise him, to redeem him [if he is a firstborn], to teach him Torah, to find him a spouse, and to teach him a craft.” The Gemara continues, “some also say, to teach him to swim.”³

Most of the list is what you might expect from the Sages: offer your children spiritual roots and rituals, give them a good education, set them on the path to develop meaningful relationships and master skills that might lead to gainful employment. But what about that last part…teach our kids to swim?

Of course “teach your children to swim” reads on multiple levels. For all of human history, we have lived near bodies of water. We want to know that if God-forbid our kids should accidentally fall into a pool or slip off a sailboat, they won’t drown. But teaching our children to swim means more than just learning to do a doggy paddle.

On a deeper level, I think the rabbis were hinting that a parent’s job is to help cultivate in our kids the ability to navigate any of the difficult or dangerous conditions they might encounter in life. To guide them towards independence so that they can swim through the waters of life without us.

This was my touchstone text when I first became a mother twelve and a half years ago, but despite having so many of the books I mentioned, parenting was in fact not at all like what I was expecting.

As some of you know, my oldest daughter, Miriam, is developmentally disabled due to a rare and random genetic mutation. There are fewer than 100 people in the world documented with her particular syndrome. So while every mom thinks their kid is 1 in a million, my Miriam is, statistically speaking, literally 1 in half a billion.

Throughout my pregnancy and even right after birth, there were no signs of Miriam’s condition. We decorated the nursery, debated whether or not the daughter of a Barnard graduate could possibly be dressed all in pink. (I resisted for all of half a minute.) We struggled a little with nursing, but so do many. Several weeks in, Miriam started to smile and coo, and we were deliriously sleep-deprived like all new parents.

Since Miriam was our first child, Andrew and I initially had no point of comparison for Miriam’s physical and cognitive delays as they began to emerge. She was always emotionally connected and socially inclined, “pure love” as everyone describes her still today. Yet in those next few months as other babies her age mastered tummy time and rolled over in their cribs, Miriam increasingly struggled. Nothing came easily to her and nearly every aspect of her development demanded therapeutic intervention. From chewing to crawling, everything had to be broken down and taught repeatedly.

At age two, Miriam had made much progress but still didn’t walk or talk. And it began to sink in that this was more than just a temporary lag from which she’d one day grow out and catch up to her peers. We realized that we were going to be permanently parenting on another planet. Soon we began a multi-year journey with some of New York’s top geneticists, eventually mapping out her and our entire DNA until that tiny de novo change was found on just one gene.

Rabbi Harold Kushner, probably best known for his iconic book When Bad Things Happen to Good People, wrote a lot about the roller coaster ride of life with its crushing disappointments and also exquisite beauty.⁴ Many of his perspectives on both God and the human condition were rooted in the tragic death of his own firstborn child at age 14 from a progressive premature aging disease called progeria, another rare fluke genetic condition. Note that the title Kushner chose isn’t “Why Bad Things Happen to Good People” but rather “When.” Loss, grief, deep disappointment about something we’d been hoping for… these are inevitable experiences, not a matter of if, but simply a when.

Unpacking his own struggles with theodicy, Kushner warned us that while asking “Why?” may be the natural human impulse when something hard happens, the answer is often unknowable and wouldn’t necessarily change things anyway. Like Kushner described of his own experience, I too came to theologically reject some of the well-intended comments made by strangers and relatives alike in those early years of special needs parenting. “Everything happens for a reason,” I was periodically told, or “God only gives us what we can handle.” Intended to comfort, these words just fell flat. The God I believe in is not an omnipotent interventionist, a master puppeteer moving us around like marionettes, who can just swoop in and save us from life’s random cruelties. Sometimes a chromosome just replicates the wrong way.

So Kushner advises that while asking “Why” may prove frustrating or futile, there is a better question, at least a more helpful question we might ask when we are tossed into the choppy waters of life: “What now?” Now that this difficult thing has happened that I never expected, how do I stay afloat? Or, as Pixar put it, how do I follow the advice of that hilarious blue tang fish Dory in Finding Nemo and “just keep swimming, just keep swimming”?

In those early years of Miriam’s diagnosis, even our closest friends didn’t really know the depth of our daily challenges, what it took just to get Miriam dressed or fed. But how they related to her, included her or didn’t, became the litmus test for whether those relationships would endure. Most importantly, they were present, showing up to every birthday party to cheer extra loud, asking how we were and then really listening even when it was hard.

And like Mr. Rogers always taught us, when things got scary I would “look for the helpers” to help show me the way. We assembled an amazing “Team Miriam” of patient therapists and teachers who buoyed us and pushed our daughter to meet her fullest potential every day. I met other special needs parents who were farther down the road and could shed a little light. They helped guide us through the mountains of OPWDD paperwork and when the time came, research school districts that offer robust inclusion models for our young social butterfly. It’s why we moved here eight years ago.

Today, Miriam is still in many ways that sweet young child, now trapped in an adolescent body, and mostly unaware of the ways she is so different from most other middle schoolers. She has already come so much farther than we could have dreamed of in those initial years of heartache. She is reading and writing, thanks in part to her exceptional memory and musical ear. Those gifts are even helping her learn to chant Torah too now as she prepares to become a Bat Mitzvah in February. In anticipation of that day, Miriam has started to join me monthly at our Saturday morning minyan, belting out the prayers with gusto, sharing her signature hugs with those who didn’t even realize they needed one, and filling me with immense pride.

Still, Andrew and I also know that we will never really be Empty Nesters or “Free Birds” as we call it at LT. At twelve and half, Miriam cannot safely cross the street on her own, much less ride a bike home from Hommocks. So imagine my surprise when one afternoon this past August, I pulled up to the Camp Pinebrook pickup line and was flagged down by the director, Allie, who clearly had something to share with me. As I rolled down the car window, she was close to tears when she told me that Miriam had passed the deep water test that morning. Well, it didn’t take long for me to start crying too.

Moments later, Miriam herself jubilantly bounded up boasting her new pool wristband and her younger sister, Judith, was brimming with pride too. They both registered that this was a big deal, as it is for every kid who passes the deep water test. But our collective adult tears testified to what neither of them fully understood that afternoon; this was a moment both 2,000 years in the making and truly against all odds.

Of course, as with all her milestones, it did not just magically happen overnight. We had spent the past two years schlepping to private lessons at the JCC, practiced blowing and breathing and kicking and paddling in generous friends’ backyard pools and over at Manor Beach. And after these hundreds of hours, something finally clicked and Miriam had, amazingly, learned to swim.

As I celebrated this major breakthrough, checking that one Talmudic parenting box, I also realized that it is Miriam who has taught me how to swim through the unpredictable and sometimes harsh waters of life.

Rabbi Sharon Brous, in her book The Amen Effect,⁵ poignantly describes how our brokenness and blessings are so often intertwined, something I have keenly felt over these years. It is not lost on us that we moved to Larchmont, back while I was still a rabbi up in Rye, mostly for Miriam. Landing here eight years ago, where she immediately was thriving, is what initially led me here to Larchmont Temple, first for an occasional tot Shabbat when I was off the bima at my own pulpit. Then there was that second day Rosh Hashanah service where young Miriam, in her zest for touching the Torah as it came by, knocked down all the choir mics in a cascade. But the clergy team totally took it in stride, and I knew back then that this was a special place.

These days, you’ll see her unadulterated joy erupt as she flutters around services on Friday nights, greeting many by name and holding hands with anyone who will let her cuddle close. Andrew and I feel so grateful that all of our kids, but especially Miriam, have this extended Temple family–a literal and figurative village–rooting for her and helping her flourish and most importantly, letting her know that she is loved whenever she shows up, the way each of us should feel when we walk through the doors. That is the essence of what it means to be a covenant community where every person’s presence is affirmed, everyone’s Divine spark recognized..

And if you’ve spent any time with her, you know that Miriam has a lot to teach all the rest of us. She is funny and generous and a role model really. How much better a place would our world be if everyone had the impulse to hug total strangers, to express their affection so freely? Would that we all exclaimed, “This is the best day ever!” each time something good happens, and really mean it again and again and again.

I wanted to share a little more of my Miriam story with you today, because at its core, Yom Kippur is a day that encourages us to reflect on what has shaped us and who we still wish to become, to face our human vulnerability as we reckon with both morality and mortality. Even as we wade through pages of lofty prayers and majestic metaphors, we’re also supposed to be “keeping it real” here, as we all confess how very hard and messy life can be, even if it is mostly pretty darn good.

The truth is that in adulthood, we all learn how to swim anew. Each of us has aspects of our lives that are not at all what we expected. Inexplicably, often through no fault of our own, things just don’t turn out the way we thought they would. For some it is a temporary chapter, an illness from which we or another thankfully recovers, unemployment for longer than we’d anticipated before finding work again. For many others, it is a more permanent shift from the steady path we thought our life had been on, either suddenly or by slow degrees of understanding. A family member or friend receives a life-altering diagnosis, our marriage unravels, we bury someone we love far too soon. The tides rise, the waves threaten to pull us under. We are not sure we’ll be able to stay afloat.

And that is precisely why we need each other, why participating in spiritual communities literally saves lives. Just as the sign at Manor Beach says quite clearly: “No entering the water without a lifeguard,” so too should none of us swim through the waters of life without attentive caring eyes watching our movements, noticing when we struggle, ready to jump in and throw us a spiritual life vest if the tides really start to pull us under.

But as Rabbi Sirkman so beautifully articulated last night at Kol Nidrei, we will only even notice, if we more closely tune our eyes and hearts towards one another, and if we share our stories. So if we haven’t yet sat over a cup of coffee over these 5+ years or taken a walk through Manor Park, please, reach out and let’s make a date for 5785; I want to hear your stories, the happy ones and the hard ones. While the unique burdens each of us carries may never be fully knowable, in sharing our stories and listening to one another’s, we are all strengthened.

What’s more, when we show up for each other, even and especially when we ourselves are suffering in some way, living that “Amen Effect,” we may just find that a measure of our own pain gets diminished. For every such IKAR anecdote, Rabbi Brous shares in her book, our Temple read this year, I see it all the time here too: the mourner who completes her own days of sitting shiva and the very next night shows up to a neighbor’s shiva minyan; the parents who come to volunteer at a family mitzvah morning even one of their own children is in the hospital. “How are you here?” I ask them, marveling at their generosity of spirit when their own souls were obviously so sore. The answer is almost always the same: some version of, “It heals me to help another.”

In traditional machzors, a poignant prophecy of Ezekiel is embedded in our Yom Kippur liturgy after the confessionals. God promises to sprinkle upon us the waters of purification, to remove our hearts of stone and implant within us instead hearts of flesh so that we may feel God’s presence and follow God’s ways.⁶

Life gives us all plenty of reasons to harden our hearts, to become embittered. But Judaism pushes us not to retreat when we are hurting. Instead, it invites us to have the courage to show up for each other, to fully feel and share our hopes and fears, our joys and oy’s. And when we do–not just today but week to week, month by month as we learn and laugh and grow and give back together–our hearts and our world heal just a little.

A heart of stone will quickly sink to the bottom of the sea. But embracing our hearts of flesh, with all their wounds and wellsprings of love, like my Miriam, we can hopefully learn to float.

May we all be sealed in the Book of Life this year for health and strength, for presence and please God, for peace. Gmar Chatimah Tovah.

1 – https://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/03/magazine/the-lives-they-lived-benjamin-spock-md-a-spock-marked- generation.html
2 – https://www.goodinside.com/
3 – Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 29a.
4 – Rabbi Harold Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, 1981.
5 – Rabbi Sharon Brous, The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Mend our Broken Hearts and World, 2024.
6 – Ezekiel 36:25-26.