Rabbi's Corner

FROM THE DESK OF RABBI KOSTER

This year, in addition to emailing my Elul Thoughts to the congregation, I have invited you, our congregants, to e-mail me your Elul thoughts. On this page, we'll post some of these Elul messages. I look forward to seeing you soon as we gather in the Great Hall at Cooper Union to begin another new year together, as a community.

Rabbi Chava Koster

Thoughts for Elul 2010

One of my favorite cartoons entitled "The Four Basic Personality Types" pictures four people, each one standing in front of a table with a glass on it. At the first table, a woman delightedly exclaims, "The glass is half full!" At the second table, a man says, "The glass is half empty." At the third, a man stands stammers: "Half full. No! Wait! Half empty! No, half ... what was the question? Finally, the fourth loudly complains, "Hey! I ordered a cheeseburger!"

When I worked on a hospital unit with people recovering from illness and traumatic accidents, this was a joke I often found myself referring to in the course of supportive psychotherapy. It seemed to capture the fluctuating feelings of hope, bewilderment, despair, and outrage that my patients were flooded with, and we would laugh out loud in recognition.

Another joke long told in my family was also recruited into service as part of the healing power of humor: a man goes into a travel agency to plan his long awaited vacation. After explaining to the travel agent that he wants to go on a cruise, the agent leads him to the back of the office building where a terrace overlooks a river. The vacationer gets pushed over the terrace railing by the travel agent and finds himself swimming upstream. After a little while, he encounters another swimmer. He turns to his fellow swimmer and asks, "Do they serve food on this cruise?" and the other swimmer responds, "They didn't last year!" This second joke not only captured the existential absurdity of existence but even managed to allude to the poor hospital food!

Since the closing of St. Vincent's Hospital where I worked for 20 years, I¡¯ve been facing my own existential questions. Working with people "at the cusp" whether it was the cusp of living or dying lent my work an acuity of purpose and meaning. No matter what the work day entailed at the hospital, every day felt like a critical contribution, even noble. Working in a private practice setting is extremely fulfilling too but it doesn't have quite that sense of being "critical". Still I recall having once heard someone say, "Not every conversation can change your life, but any conversation can change your life." So, too, the conversations of therapy wherever they take place have the potential to change your life.

And what of the conversations we have with God? What of prayer? How many times have we in so many words said to God, "The glass is half empty." or "The glass is half full." and after a piercing loss or misfortune railed the equivalent of "Hey! I ordered a cheeseburger!"

In my thoughts for Elul, I am left like the "third personality type", wondering, musing, "Half full ­No, wait! Half empty! ­No half ... What was the question?" Having you there - my family, my dear friends, my fellow God wrestlers with me - gives me the energy to keep asking the question.

Alizah Z. Brozgold, Ph.D.