Yesterday was our big going away brunch at HNT. Over 220 people showed up to send us off. Special thanks goes to our close friend Jennifer Weinstein for organizing the event. And to all of the people who helped contribute to it. We also wanted to thank Purple Beat Catering for the yummy food.
Here is the speech that I gave at the event:
Goodbye Speech
I would like to begin by thanking Jennifer Weinstein and everybody who helped work on this and contributed to it.
Well here we are. The time has come, and to be perfectly honest, it has come a little too soon. When we come to a community we do not see ourselves departing that community. We join a community to have a home, to have support and to have a life. We join a community because as humans that is what we do. In July of 2007 we drove up here from Los Angeles, caravan style, and we were so excited. I remember just outside of Tukwilla there was some accident, and we were all too anxious to get on with it, as it was the morning and we wanted to begin our new lives. I remember as traffic picked up again we sped along and got to the transfer from the 5 to the 405 and soon enough on our left we saw the most splendid of images, we saw lake Washington, and then we saw Mercer Island. I remember radioing over to Carrie and her friend who was driving with her: “We’re going home.” We didn’t even know what our house looked like, or where it was located. And so when we arrived and found the key under the doormat at HNT and I looked up and I pointed to Carrie, that the yellow house just around the hedges was ours.
We were blank slates at that time, our lives were much different than they are today. Not everybody gets their first pick in this world, but I was happy then and I am happy now to say that we got ours. HNT stood out above all of the other synagogues that we looked at. We were so excited to begin our time here, I remember Nadine kicking me out of my office as I had not started yet and so she was trying to explain to me that I should probably enjoy myself and not be stuck in some office. She told me to go and see the area, get to know our new home… I wish I had listened more, because we are leaving in a week and we never once went to visit Mt. Ranier.
We made many incredible friends here and I will not attempt to list them, because you all know what trouble that could be. We met wonderful people and were embraced with open arms by many. This community provided Ayelet with her first home. People in this room held her before even her grandparents had the opportunity… You have all been a big part of her life and although she will not likely remember much as she is still so young, she will always know that her birthplace was Seattle, Washington and that she started her life in Mercer Island.
At the end of the תורה we read about God having משה ascend a mountain in what is modern day Jordan, and he showed him the Promised Land. But He showed him something that he would never have the opportunity to set foot in… He showed משה where his people whom he had led would move onto without him. I am no משה but I am a leader. And so the pain of moving away from my community is one that I relate to משה through. The sadness and heartbreak of leaving behind so many familiar faces, so many friendships, so many wonderful people. The sadness of not having finished that which I started is what I am filled with right now. I do feel like a leader who has unfinished business. I do feel like a person who is leaving his people while they will continue on without his presence. In the words of the Beatles: Obla Di Bla Da… Life will continue here without us, and that is too hard to put my head around right now. It is hard to believe that when we visit here in October this will be a building where I no longer work, this will be a building that at one point in time I was like one of the couches in that I was a fixture here. And when we visit that will no longer be the case.
I am proud of the time that I spent here. I believe that we accomplished a great deal together. I believe that I am leaving a better community than the one I found. I believe that I made a mark and that is all I can ask for is to have made an impression, to have changed a single life. That is proof enough that I was once here. That mark was made with all of your help and with all of your guidance: thank you. I would be remised if I did not thank the three presidents who I worked with: Susan Matt, Bruce Gladner and Glenn Rothenberg. Along with all of the board members I have worked with I thank each and every one of you. I want to thank all of the staff for their hard work and for all that they do for HNT daily. Thank you Rabbi Rosenbaum and Cantor Kurland for working with me and guiding me along this path. I have already thanked each of the staff members individually in my last HaKol article, and so I will not go into that again today. I do want to specifically thank Carrie and Ayelet. I never wanted to be the husband who had to choose between his wife and work. I never wanted to be the husband that didn’t need second chance after second chance… I always wanted to be an ever present spouse and partner. The same goes for the father I always dreamed of being. I never wanted to miss a single bedtime. I never wanted to have to ask somebody else what my own child needed. I wanted to be the father who was always there for every single thing. But what I have discovered through these past three years is that such a husband and father does not jive well with the rabbinic role I play. I have had to miss classes for Ayelet, I have canceled date nights, I have been away three nights in a row, I have had to balance and try my hardest. And through all of this both of you have stood by my side, and have not made feel like a failure for not living up to what I wanted to be. I would not have been able to be a rabbi without Carrie, I would not have made it through Rabbinical School without her support, and I would have given up my career had it not been for her strength and courage. This past year was not an easy one, working full time and searching for a job in such a terrible economy. While I was near the breaking point, Carrie was strong and carried us through the darkness. Being the spouse of a rabbi must not be fun, but Carrie, you have done an incredible job at it and I am so thankful for your love. Ayelet, you have enabled me to keep things in perspective and you have brightened up my hardest of days. I am pretty sure that a good number of people are going to miss you more than me or your אמא.
Moving is tough work. Boxing up a life and transporting it to a new location. But we can’t take everything in a box with us. We cannot transport our world here… We cannot take all of you with us to New York. You cannot put relationships and experiences into boxes. But maybe the reality is that we are not forced to box those up because they can still be part and one with us no matter where we are. Our experiences go with us our whole life, and our friends and communities are there so long as we make an effort to keep them there.
On John Lennon’s collection album Wonsaponatime, published in 1998, there is a home recording of a song called “You don’t know what you got.” The words are something like: You don’t know what you got ‘til you lose it. You don’t know what you have ‘til its gone.” I have found myself singing this song over and over these past weeks while I was packing. Because I believe it is something that we need to learn to overcome. When we were preparing to leave LA we were walking around our neighborhood and we realized what we were giving up to have a career. We had always bad talked LA, and suddenly we were sad to leave. I never realized how much we cared about Seattle until this past month. There is so much that we will miss, there is so much that will be lost for us when we leave next week. And the thing that we will miss the most is the people. It is all of you. Forget the job, forget the synagogue… It is our community that we will be missing and longing to be part of. That is what we will be losing, and that is what we will need to find a way to remain tied to. It is for this reason that we pray that just as you will all always be a part of our circle of friends and community, we hope that we will always be in your circle of friends and community at the same time. Distance cannot take that from us.
Thank you again for three great years.
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