Faithfulness to Our Moments of Clarity • Nina’s Names
This past Shabbat we studied the weekly Torah portion from the Book of Devarim (Deuteronomy) in which Moses is delivering his extended farewell address to the Israelites as they stand at the precipice of the Promised Land, where he will not be joining them.
As part of the farewell address, Moses reminds the people of the events that have brought them to this moment, including a recapitulation of the events at Mount Sinai, centered around the revelation of the Ten Commandments.
It sparked the question for us of how we tap into our own past revelatory moments—our own past moments of clarity, moments of inspiration. Many of us can relate to the notion of having a moment where we see things clearly—where we know the pathway forward for us… while also recognizing that over time, sometimes we have a tendency to drift away from those solid moorings.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel articulated this phenomenon beautifully when he wrote:
“The immediate certainty that we attain in moments of insight does not retain its intensity after the moments are gone. Moreover, such experiences or inspirations are rare events. To some people they are like shooting stars, passing and unremembered. In others they kindle a light that is never quenched. The remembrance of that experience and the loyalty to the response of that moment are the forces that sustain our faith. In this sense, faith is faithfulness, loyalty to an event, loyalty to our response.”
In writing that “faith is faithfulness” Heschel is suggesting the definition of faith, in the religious sense, includes faithfulness to the clarity we have in those inspirational moments—not letting go of the sense purpose we felt in those moments; cultivating a relationship, and, as he puts it, a loyalty to them.
For the Israelites, this was found in a relationship to the clarity of purpose at the moment of revelation at Sinai. The further they got away from the mountain, the greater the danger they would lose their faithfulness to it. And yet for some they were able to call upon the memory of their response to that moment and have it spur them forward.
May it be so for all of us.
Forgive me for indulging myself, but I also wanted to share the words I delivered to Nina at her naming this past Shabbat in recollection of her two namesakes on my side of the family.
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Nina Tziona, Hebrew name Ariel Tziona, it warms my heart to name you after two of the most loving, caring people I’ve known.
In giving you the middle name Tziona, we’ve named you after your great-grandmother, my mother’s mother, Sonia.
Sonia never had it easy. According to my mother, by Sonia’s own telling, my grandmother’s younger years were emotionally fraught and financially insecure, oftentimes surviving, as my mom put it, hand-to-mouth. Sonia never knew her father. Her mother, an alcoholic, was mercurial by all accounts. She had one brother she loved dearly who died of leukemia in his twenties.
Born in Syracuse, New York and raised in Ithaca, she attended Vassar College on a scholarship, where she met my grandfather, a newly returning WWII vet attending Harvard Law school. Theirs was a whirlwind romance that ended, after four children together, in heartbreak and divorce. Sonia soon remarried, this time to the love of her life, with whom she had two more children. He brought three children of his own to the marriage so my grandmother Sonia was often the primary caretaker for nine children, plus others who often found themselves around her dinner table.
Motherhood—caring for children—was Sonia’s raison d’etre, and I could feel this as her grandson. About seven years after my father died here in Philadelphia, we moved to Eugene, Oregon so that we could live closer to my mom’s family, which centered around Sonia as matriarch.
I would stop by her house by myself on afternoons after school just to chat or maybe eat a hamburger she would cook up on the grill.
You could always feel the unique blend of fierceness and love in her spirit. Grit and resilience are words that get thrown around a lot in the harrowing moments of today’s age, and while my grandmother embodied these traits from her youth, which may have taken a toll on her, still love would pour out when she was around her children and grandchildren. She took care of me while my mom was giving birth to each of my two sisters, and right up until the time alzheimer’s took over her ability to communicate, she took credit for having taught me, during one of those stays, how to throw a football. She never let me live it down.
She was a gifted gardener, committed to organic gardening in the 1950s, long before the rest of us knew what that meant. Her ability to nurture… to care for… to tend to… was a gift.
Nina Tziona, may you inherit this gift. May you inherit Sonia’s deep reservoir of spiritual resources that helped her navigate her life. May you not need them to the degree she did. And may you feel the blessing of her love that is surely with you today.
In giving you the Hebrew name Ariel, we’ve named you after your great-grandfather, my father’s father, Armon Kamesar.
Whereas Sonia had to rely heavily on the divine attribute of gevurah—strength and toughness—with Armon it was seemingly pure hesed. Loving kindness. Save perhaps my immediate family, I have never felt as loved by anyone as I did by Armon Kamesar.
A first generation American, whose parents fled from Russia during the revolution, he was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He attended college at Oklahoma A&M to study animal husbandry so that he could work as a cattle buyer in the Chicago stockyards for his father’s meatpacking business. From there, this restless soul returned to Milwaukee to head a stock brokerage, moved his family—wife, my dad, and my dad’s brother—to Jamaica to operate a resort hotel, then to La Jolla, California to serve as president of a bank, then start a technology leasing company there, before finally closing his career as a management consultant.
It was in Chicago, however, where he met my grandmother, and their courtship lasted all of nine days before he proposed. In most people I’d find this level of impulsiveness alarming; in him it was just the other side of the coin of his vibrant love of life. They remained married until his death in 2009 in perhaps the strongest relationship I’ve ever known. Every relationship I’ve encountered since is in some ways measured against theirs; it’s not a fair exercise.
This love of life oozed forth in everything he did, most especially in being with his grandchildren—whether it was movies, food, opera, or sports, he saw every corner, every molecule of life, as having the capacity for joy.
It’s ironic that he considered himself such an ardent atheist, both because his son and grandson became rabbis, and because his capacity to recognize the infinite blessings in his life was unparalleled. His level of excitement for the smallest things in life helped define his essence.
I don’t remember how he responded—emotionally, psychologically, spiritually—to the death of his eldest son, Daniel, my father, at the age of 35; I do know I could feel how deeply and how badly he wanted to serve as a father figure to me and protect me even while living 3000 miles away.
When we made plans to move from Philadelphia to La Jolla four years after my father’s death to be close to him and my grandmother, and then turned around part way through our cross-country move to give Philadelphia, another chance, he was devastated.
Still, he took advantage of every visit we had together. We would make special weekend trips to cities all across the United States, just to have some quality time together. There are few human beings with whom I have fonder memories.
Nina Tziona, Ariel Tziona, what a gift it is to me to be able to share their names, their memories with you. In your young life you already demonstrate some of their most beautiful qualities, blended with your own: you are joyful, good-tempered, charming, and warm. I can’t wait to continue to encounter you as you grow, and maybe a little bit of their spirits within. May you be truly blessed.
