My wife gave birth this year to our first child. It was as glorious, miraculous and terrifying as everyone always tells you.It was also, as everyone tells you, beyond comprehension. In among the drama of birth, somewhere, at some point, my soul drifted away a little bit. There were so many things to do, things to hold, people to tell. I knew it was an extraordinary moment, but I was so addled by lack of sleep that my soul almost forgot.
As I sat in the recovery ward, one of the medical staff approached me. “Are you Dad?”
I had never really thought of myself as “dad” before. I had thought about it. I had even, at a certain level, realized that I was one, but I hadn’t understood it. I hadn’t owned who I had become.
The great Hasidic Master Reb Zusya would say, “When I die I am not worried that I will be asked, ‘Why were you not like Moses?’ but rather, ‘Why were you not like Zusya?’” This, surely, is the test of our lives. Are we true to ourselves, are we true sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, friends and colleagues?
It’s alarmingly easy to drift away.
Rabbi Jeremy Gordon is the Rabbi of St. Albans Masorti Synagogue.
www.e-sams.org
