Rabbanit Kapah: Like Nachshon Jumping Into the Sea

(photo credit: CC-BY-SA עוזי ו, Wikipedia)

She went in the same modest way she lived, her death overshadowed by that of Arik Einstein. There was half a day’s grace. He died later that night and then the country went into shock. An Israeli icon had died.

But earlier that day Dov had mentioned it to me, first thing in the morning. “Bracha Kapah died.”

“Baruch Dayan Emes,” I said. Blessed be the True Judge. “That was one special woman. Imagine! She fed the poor of Jerusalem.”

She deserved more than a passing mention in the morning, in between email correspondence and sips of instant coffee. So I stopped for a moment and allowed the loss to wash over me. I shut my eyes, imagining the reception that awaited Rabbanit Kapah in the heavens. 

“The righteous sit with crowns upon their heads and enjoy the splendor of the shechina.” (Talmud Brachot 17a)

Angel Escorts?

I imagined heavenly choirs, angel escorts, a diamond and ruby crown held aloft in midair to be placed upon her head, a golden chair where she might rest after a lifetime of good works. Would this be her welcome?

For years she’d existed as a one-woman army against poverty in the Holy City.

I thought about Rabbanit Kapah the rest of the week. There was very little media coverage. She had lived in modesty and died without fanfare in this world, despite my overworked imagination about her reception in the Next.

I thought about her as I read an article based on the same premise as one I’d written earlier in the week and which in fact, quoted the same experts I had quoted. The article was written by a well-known academic, a professor.

I'll Dither

I am no professor. But I had dared to voice the same ideas.

I’m not always so brave. Often an idea comes to me for a story to write, an important story, yet I will hesitate and think, “It can’t be that nobody wrote up this topic. It’s so important, so obvious. How can it be a new idea??” and I will dither. I will think, “I am no professor to write such thoughts.”

I will search a bit more on Google looking in vain for the story in my head and see that indeed, nobody has written on the subject.

The Words Come

Still finding it hard to believe that my original idea is in fact original, I will begin tapping out the story on the keyboard. At first my touch on the keys will be tentative, the letters and words not flowing. But I begin just anywhere and soon, the words come.

After the fact, I will wonder at my initial hesitation in tackling a task that had all but walked itself over to me and tapped me on the shoulder. What stops me at that juncture and tempts me to give the topic a miss—to leave the job to someone else?

I thought about a volunteer job I’d been asked to take on at work, a mentoring position. Most of my colleagues at Kars4Kids volunteer to take an active role in the work of our organization. But I had hesitated. I worried how I would fit another task into my overcrowded schedule. I worried whether I was capable, whether I’d be good at mentoring.

Dirty Breakfast Dishes

I doubt Rabbanit Kapah suffered from this sort of existential angst. Was that the secret to her success? For her, feeding the poor was a task that needed doing: that fell to her. Feeding the poor was a task to be approached like any other: a sink full of dirty breakfast dishes, for instance. You don’t stop to intellectualize the task or worry about whether you can carry it off. You don’t pat yourself on the back, preen at being chosen, or think, “Why me?”

You just do it.

Rabbanit Kapah reacted. She responded to the pain of the people who approached her, crying out in hunger, pain, and fear. She was Nachshon jumping into the Red Sea as Pharaoh’s men approached, with all the Jews in despair and indecision milling about in a panic all around him. Rabbanit Kapah did what came to her, what needed to be done. She did it the best she could, for as long as she had the strength. She did it because it was hers to do.

And she showed us the way.

16 Pages In Thirty Minutes At Stumbleupon

I like my job. I really do. Nonetheless, all jobs involve well, WORK. Even when you like what you do.

I’m a writer and I love to write and I love that I get to write about education for the car donation program known as Kars4Kids. I like it because I know I’m helping kids and their parents with this work. My work offers meaning beyond the satisfaction of a job well done, not to mention it pays the rent.

Still, I love it when the day is done and I get to goof off. One of my new fave things to waste time on after a hard day at work is stumbleupon. I um, stumbled upon stumbleupon while looking for ways to shamelessly self-promote my blogs.

Screenshot of Stumbleupon

I share my blogs on my Facebook timeline, on my Facebook author’s page, on Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and tumblr. I even created a board for my articles on Pinterest. But all those other share buttons on the various blog interfaces I use had me intrigued. I began exploring some of these other venues and stumbleupon was one of the happier experiments I enjoyed in checking out these various social media networks.

Stumbleupon is FUN. On the other hand, it won’t be much use to me in my profession. I’ve shared about 10 pages on stumbleupon, but don’t really expect them to play well there. Stumbleupon is more about fun and delightful games and graphics than education, politics, and other serious stuff. But fun is good too, right? I mean, within reason.

So the interface is fairly simple. You’re shown a webpage. If you like it, you click the thumbs up symbol. Don’t like it, click the thumbs down symbol. Ready to move on? Click stumble and a new page comes up.

Or Be Brave

By voting thumbs up or thumbs down, you offer stumbleupon a way to refine your preferences and show you more of what you like. When you sign up (yes, it’s free), you check boxes next to all your interests. If stumbleupon sees you clicking thumbs up for many pages within one interest, a window will come up asking if you want to add a related interest. You can always say no. Or be brave and say yes.

I wanted to show you what it’s like to play on the stumbleupon playground (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it) so I went through 16 pages today to show you how I use it as well as my reactions to what stumbleupon chooses to show me.  

The one downside to stumbleupon is that not every webpage is accessible outside of stumbleupon which makes sharing kind of difficult. I linked to all the pages I came across today that CAN be accessed on their own. The others, well, you’ll have to sign up with stumbleupon to see them. Sorry about that.

1) Collected Quotes from Albert Einstein. Meh. email forward. Seen it 100 times. Thumbs down.

STUMBLE

2) Crafts I'd never do. Toilet paper roll finger puppets. Seriously? Thumbs down.

Screenshot from website

STUMBLE

3) Gorgeous 360 degree interactive August sunset in Moab, Utah. THUMBS UP.

STUMBLE

4) Takes a long time to load but NEATO. It’s an interactive scene the nature of which I don’t want to spoil for you by telling you about it here. It takes a while to figure out what you need to do to get the neato stuff to happen. Once it does, it’s so cool it’s almost overwhelming. Very, very creative.  Thumbs up.

STUMBLE

5) Gosh. I don't LIKE the art here, but it is so lifelike and realistic and drawn from CHALK, yet! I have to appreciate the artist’s amazing work in spite of my dislike. Thumbs up.

STUMBLE

6) Oh definitely. These are still pictures with embedded gifs so that the pictures move in only one or two small areas of the scene. It’s an extremely effective device. The dice. The cat's ear. I couldn’t figure out what was moving in the photo of the woman standing at the railing, though I looked for a long time and I’m a fairly observant person. That was disappointing. Still: Thumbs UP.

STUMBLE

I get a message from Stumbleupon: "You’ve liked the animation pages several times. Would you like to add graphic design to your interests?"

I choose yes.

7) A black and white photo of apartment building windows during a sideways blowing snowstorm at night. Okay.

Screenshot from Stumbleupon

Not wild about this particular photo, but in general, I like photographs and want to see more, especially black and white photos, so I'll click thumbs up.

STUMBLE

8) Hmm. Thumbs down, though I feel guilty, since it's Winslow Homer and all. Just don’t like this particular painting.

STUMBLE

9) Prank video. Australian guys rig up buddy's plumbing with BEER. Hot and cold running beer from every spigot in the house. Web cams set up so the friends can watch. They must really love their friend to go to all that trouble and expense. FUNNY! Thumbs up.

STUMBLE

10) Sesame street alien puppets discover computer. Weird. Pointless. Thumbs down.

STUMBLE

11) Dumb, dumb, dumb joke. Thumbs down.

STUMBLE

12) Stylish mommy blog. Boring. Thinking: people who stumble upon my blogs on stumbleupon will be thinking the same thing. Gulp. Thumbs down.

STUMBLE

13) Laser cure for Alzheimer's that can distinguish between healthy proteins and toxic amyloids "So simple,

Screenshot from website.

it's incredible." Medical breakthrough dated only yesterday. Cool, if not fun. Thumbs up.

STUMBLE

14) Neatoooooooooooooooo! Canvas Pinball, a game of pinball set up as if on the page of a spiral bound

Screenshot from Stumbleupon

notebook. You use the arrows on your keyboard. Several balls in play at once add a surprise element. I like it. Thumbs up.

STUMBLE

Worried about the artist's diet. (screenshot from Stumbleupon)

15) Drawings of liquid by a Chinese artist. Amazing but um, yuh. The eyeball thing. weird. You wonder if the artist needs a change of diet and you wouldn't want to um, meet him. Oh all right. Thumbs up.

Screenshot from Stumbleupon

STUMBLE

16) Last but not least: a wikihow on how to escape from Handcuffs. That should be a right handy thing to know if I should ever decide to commit a crime. Thumbs UP.

The end.

Seeing Green

Once upon a time, Microsoft Spell Check told me I spelled my name wrong.

Except it wasn’t once, but many times.

No matter how often I ignored that wavy red line, it came right back, whenever I typed my name in WORD.

Spell Check was firm but insistent. My name was not “Varda” but “Verda.”

I, on the other hand, thought this silent mechanical voice to be brazen in the extreme. How dare a mere computer program tell me how to spell my name? And what the heck is “Verda” anyhow?

After many bouts of bruxism, I at last cajoled my software into recognizing my ultimate authority. This is a good thing and a step in the right direction.

However, Spell Check is still going around telling lies behind my back, announcing to all and sundry that my name is, yes, Verda.

I know this to be true because I regularly receive emails addressed to this Verda person who continues to be me, Varda. In fact, it was after receiving just such a note, another in a long line of them, that I became motivated to blow off some steam at you, Dear Reader. The sender of this note, this miscreant misspeller of names was (get this) writing to ask me a favor.

Random Request

She was just this random woman who sent me a LinkedIn request a day earlier. I checked out her profile and saw that her professional focus dovetailed nicely with my own—she’s the founder of a company that brings together experts on child education and parenting to offer content on a variety of subjects. I, on the other hand, write about child education on behalf of Kars for Kids, a nonprofit car donation program. I noted that we also had a mutual professional acquaintance, one with whom I’ve done some good work. It made sense for me then to accept her contact request and I did so.

The very next day, however, she spammed me by requesting I give her a rating on her professional performance. I could but only respond:

 Hello. I don’t KNOW you. How can I RATE you??

She wrote back,

Hello Verda,

It was sent to all my connection, please just ignore it

Have a good day.

Um, yuh. You spam me. Ask me for a favor. Apologize by MISSPELLING MY NAME and then tell me to have a good day?

You’re lucky I don’t bite your head off your neck, chew it up, and spit it out. (Virtually speaking, of course).

You liked that one? I’ll tell you another.

HR over at Kars for Kids asked me if I could post on some email lists advertising for web designers to join our team. I did so and received an avalanche of responses. Instead of just sending them on, I decided to weed through them to save HR some time. One that didn’t make the cut wrote (yup, you guessed it):

Hello Verda,

My name is xxxx xxx.

I have been designing website and doing internet marketing for over 7 years.

I have extensive experience as a Project Manager - including a Web Project Manager, which basically means that I am very organized.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Basically very organized, eh? Uh huh. That’s how you managed to make sure to refer to my original note to

GET THE SPELLING OF MY NAME RIGHT YOU NINCOMPOOP.

I subdued my homicidal tendencies long enough to respond as follows:

Word of advice? I'm not HR, just helping out, but you spelled my name wrong. If you're applying for a job, you may want to take care on that score in future

Like, DU-UH.

But what’s in a name, anyway? Well, for one thing, there are the actual meanings of names. They’re important. They speak to the soul of a person. When someone calls you by your name, you feel good, perhaps without being fully conscious of that fact.

Verda means “green” in Esperanto.

Varda means “rose” in Hebrew (see: My First Blog).

Varda is the imprint of the memory of my Great Grandmother Raizel on my soul and heritage: the woman who put the red in my hair. It’s my mother’s friend who on seeing me through a hospital nursery window said, “She’s all pink and white!”

My name translates to my love of flowers, especially creamy white roses with a hint of pink.

For a long time I didn’t like my name. The sound of it is odd as it falls on Western ears. But you know it’s kind of grown on me. It’s different. Distinctive.

Meantime, I’m trying to get a grip on this gripe about people spelling my name wrong. I’ve said to myself, “Self: maybe it’s just jealousy. When they think of you, they are seeing green.”

This little self-administered pep talk is supposed to help me lose my anger. But in reality, it feels like a kick in the kidneys every. time. I. see. that. misspelled. name. The person who types that, the one who taps out Verda on her keyboard, doesn’t care enough about the person behind the name to bother to get it right. 

There’s no malice or intent, but all the same, it’s a kind of disrespect.

Because a person’s name is her essence, her honor.

I can make light of it and imagine that when she types out my name, she’s seeing green.

But more probably, she’s not seeing much at all.

As for me? I’ll just have to keep seeing the world through—um—rose-colored glasses.  

  

The Ring Theory of Kvetching

I dread condolence calls. I dread them because I’m just not good at that sort of thing, which begs the question: Who is?

But I think some people just have the knack.

I don’t.

And the thing about not having the knack for that sort of thing is that it makes no sense, since I suffered my first bereavement at the age of 13. I, of all people, should know how to act and what to say in the presence of grief.

 

A Cretin

But no. Invariably, I stick my foot in my mouth and then give an inward cringe when I realize what a cretin I’ve been. Which tends to reinforce in my mind the idea that I should never. Ever. Visit anyone bereaved. I’m just bad at it.

Today, all that changed forever. Not because I suddenly got really good at paying condolence calls but because I read an article that outlined a logical way to stay on track and avoid offending people. The premise of the article was concise and once the concept of dealing with grief was outlined, it was clear that it would also be an easy method to remember.

Now this is good, because we not only need this method for ourselves, but for our children and for instance, the kids that are mentored in the programs run by Kars for Kids, the nonprofit organization in which I serve as communications writer. We don’t learn this stuff in school. We need a quick and dirty method for getting down the niceties of this and more important, for transmitting it to others.

 

Ring Theory

Judy Levy of Ricochet writes up an article from the LA Times, How Not to Say the Wrong Thing, by clinical psychologist Susan Silk and arbitrator/mediator Barry Goldman. The article speaks about addressing emotions related to grief or distress according to the “Ring Theory of kvetching.” Basically, it all boils down to this: “Comfort in, dump out.”

Silk and Goldman illustrate the klutziness of some people in dealing with difficulties to show how the theory works. They offer the example of Susan who is in the hospital after having surgery for breast cancer. Susan lets it be known she doesn’t want visitors, but her colleague insists on visiting her, telling Susan, “This isn’t just about you.”

Oh SMH!* That’s the kind of stupid thing I’m afraid I’ll say to a friend in distress. I mean, not just about you?? Really? 

From the article:
              

 "It's not?" Susan wondered. "My breast cancer is not about me? It's about you?"

The article then goes on to describe Katie, who is recovering from a brain aneurysm. Her friend comes to visit and then quickly leaves the room, telling Katie’s husband Pat, who is waiting in the hall:
      

 "I wasn't prepared for this. I don't know if I can handle it."

Really??? SHE can’t handle this? What about Pat, Katie’s HUSBAND? He has an easier time dealing with the sight of his wife in such a frighteningly dangerous state of ill health?

So back to the theory, comfort in, dump out: Picture a ring. In the center is the person in the most pain, for instance, Susan or Katie. Then draw a slightly larger circle around the center and in there put the name of the person closest to the one suffering the trauma, for instance, Pat, Katie’s husband. In each subsequently larger circle, you can put the names of people in descending importance or relationship to the sufferer.

Here’s how it goes, you can extend comfort from your circle inward, for instance from you to Susan. But you have to dump out, meaning you can’t vent inward to Susan. You have to vent to someone in the circle that’s larger than your own.

 

Can I Help?

So you could say to Susan or Katie, “I’m so sorry you’re suffering. How can I help? Can I bring you a pot of soup?”

That is comfort in, extending comfort toward the center of the circle.

But let’s say what really comes to mind is how awful Susan looks and you’re her close friend, you’re SHOCKED. You would never say that to Susan or to her husband, because they are in rings that are relatively smaller than yours, they are IN and you are OUT.

Instead you can tell someone in a larger ring, such as a colleague, for instance, “Wow, Susan looks really awful. It freaks me out to see her like that.”

 

Dumping Out

That is dumping out, toward the outer ring.

The beauty of this is you can say whatever you need or want to say, as long as you say it to someone in a larger ring than yours!

Now isn’t that simple? You can even map it out before you go. Print out this handy-dandy diagram I made for you, based on the one that appeared in Ricochet and in the LA Times, and stick it to your fridge with a magnet.

(photo credit: Varda Epstein)

The main thing, as Judy Levin of Ricochet says, is not to worry. “You'll get your turn in the center ring. You can count on that.”

*Smacking my head.