The idea of driving and sitting in traffic at the start of the Fourth of July weekend can be not only daunting, but actually a deterrent to going anywhere. Your motivation would have to be a person or a destination so meaningful or worthwhile that you would be ready to deal with the hours and frustration of holiday traffic jams. On Friday, July 2, I drove from Teaneck to South Hadley, Massachusetts, to spend the weekend with my daughter, who was my reason for sitting in traffic for five hours. She was spending 11 days, without her family, at the Mount Holyoke College Campus as a member of the teaching staff for the Tikvah High School Scholars Program. Tikvah, according to their website, is “a program that seeks to advance Jewish excellence in the modern age by exposing some of the best Jewish students to the most important foundational questions in politics, economics, Zionist thought, and Judaism, guided by some of the top teachers, scholars, and policy makers.”
My expectations for the weekend, as far as the program and its participants were concerned, were relatively low, as I was just a visitor. I was prepared to spend some quality time with my daughter, keep her company, attend a class that she was giving, and have a low-stress Shabbat on a beautiful college campus.
What I did not expect was the reaction I felt regarding the high-school participants. In my experience, adults my age are usually invisible to young people. I was therefore rather surprised that so many of the students introduced themselves and asked me who I was and why I was there. I also had a chance to observe the participants during davening and Shabbat meals, and I listened both to yeshiva and to public-school attendees giving meaningful divrei Torah. I was inspired by how attentive and respectful they were and how they encouraged each other in a way that only high schoolers can!
In less than a week, this group of teen-aged strangers had been able to create a real community. I was inspired by the intelligence and thoughtfulness that I observed among these elite students. I left the weekend feeling both hopeful (full of “tikvah”) and inspired, knowing that some of the students will be the future leaders in our community and beyond.
On Sunday, I returned home and had a wonderful time with some of my children and grandchildren at the Jersey Shore watching the fireworks. It was turning out to be a lovely weekend indeed. But on Monday morning, July 4th, my phone rang at 6:45 a.m. and I received the devastating news that my dearest friend’s son Zev had died.
Zev was born over 30 years ago with a condition that had a significant impact on his physical, intellectual and overall development. He spent the first few years of his life in and out of the hospital. He had so many medical crises so frequently that he was a well-known patient to all members of the West Hempstead Hatzalah ambulance team. Zev had only a limited vocabulary and was unable to enunciate most words. He was able to take a few steps with a walker and spent most of his time in a wheelchair. He was also unable to eat anything other than a special diet of pureed food that needed to be fed to him.
If I ended my reflections about Zev here, you would not know him. Zev always had a smile on his face. Once he met you, he never forgot you. He remembered your name and would greet you with a smile and with sincere excitement every time he saw you. He made every person in his presence feel good because he was genuinely so happy to see them. Zev was a lover of davening in shul, of music, and of all the chagim, the songs of which he would sing even weeks before they arrived. In his own way, Zev was a very spiritual person. He had only recently moved into a group home, where he became the life of the party, loved by the staff and other residents alike. If Zev was in a room, the room was filled with life, laughter and light.
Since Zev’s untimely death I have been thinking about the amazing young Tikvah scholars I met. These gifted teenagers have the ability to make changes and become leaders for the betterment of our world. And then I thought about Zev, who was not given the intellectual capacity to have deep thoughts, and yet was able to have a profound influence on every person who had the privilege of having him hold your hand and put it on his cheek.
What I learned from Zev was that no matter how we look and how our bodies function, and no matter what our abilities and disabilities, we can all contribute and bring light into the world. Zev’s light has been extinguished, but the lessons that he taught those who knew him will live on.
May Zev’s family, his friends and the community be comforted among all the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.
Beth S. (Bassie) Taubes, RN, CHC, CYT, is the owner of Wellness Motivations LLC. She motivates clients of all backgrounds, ages, and health conditions to engage in improved self-care through nutritional counseling, personal fitness training, yoga practice, tai chi, and stress reduction techniques. She is currently seeing clients in her outdoor and indoor studio or on Zoom. She is also the rebbetzin of Congregation Zichron Mordechai in Teaneck. She can be reached at [email protected] and www.wellnessmotivationsbt.com
