Dr. Emily FriedmanEaster Vigil starts in darkness, silence, warm presence of bodies in still-cool air. You hold a wax candle in hope, fidgeting the paper disc. Then an anticipated-but-still-sudden flame, a tiny light in the darkness, quickly spreads into dozens of points of light, as one person reaches to another.
It is still human, still slick with spilt wax the paper disc doesn’t corral.
But faces are beautiful in candlelight, warmed. For a moment, you can imagine Transfiguration, the glow of divine love, what persists when all else is dust.
Spread out across pews, for a moment the stars come to earth.
For a while all AL license plates read “when the stars fell on Alabama” — reminders of an 1833 meteor shower so bright folks thought it was the end of the world.
Tonight it is raining — only water.
Tonight I keep no Vigil.
But I find comfort thinking of even grey dawn, of Hell broken open to free those left there too goddamn long, of new laws, led first by a commandment to love one another.
I tell my students after they play to take with them what serves them, leave the rest behind.
Somehow this too is my theology.
Joshua J. FriedmanWait, Emily, are you a non-Jewish Friedman? This makes me miss my friend the non-Jewish Sarah Cohen
Literally what my classmates said at the end of my “Who is a Jew?” Class my freshman year of college!
(My Jewish great-great-grandfather converted to marry a very Catholic Louisiana woman of Acadian descent)
Ooooo, that is amazing family history
Ooo, gorgeous! I can see the resemblance! And now I have to ask why she was in the newspaper.
Also, were you taking this "Who Is a Jew?" class or teaching it? How did your classmates learn about your personal history?
Unfortunately it was on the occasion of her death & that of her husband (he did it)
I was a student — my first semester of college, no less! And it came up on the last day in a heated discussion on the idea of the Right of Return.
Oh, how upsetting! Whew.
You're a good egg, Emily!
And to be fair, one of the reasons I took the class was because *I* was very confused, being mostly spiritually feral as a child but growing up in Meyerland & one of the few kids who didn’t bat/bar mitzvah.
What/where is Meyerland?
And were your parents religious at all?