Rabbi Charles P. Sherman
Pesach Yizkor Service
April 23, 2003
Reach Out and Touch Someone
Other than for sporting events, I am not a big television watcher, so let me not assume that everyone knows who Ben Stein is. My daughter, Ruth our media maven, tells me he is now a judge on Star Search. He used to host the cable TV quiz show "Win Ben Stein's Money." He is very bright and lives in the rough tough world of Hollywood producers, so I am sure that Ben Stein is no softy.
If you don't know who Ben Stein is, perhaps you may remember his father, Herbert Stein - Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors in the Nixon Administration. Economists are practical people, they are not like poets. Economists pay attention to the bottom line, they care about profit and loss statements, they are not usually overly sentimental.
With that brief introduction, I want to share with you Ben Stein's column in the Washington Post, which moved me and I believe will speak to you on this Yizkor Day.
"My father, Herbert Stein, a brainy economist, once said that the goal of people who work should always be to do something that returns more value than its cost of effort.
"I never could figure out how to apply that rule in the swamp of Hollywood business. But I did figure out a way, about ten years ago, to do something that always provided psychic and emotional income far beyond its cost. CALL MY PARENTS.
"They lived in Washington, D.C. and I in Los Angeles, but I could pick up the phone and call them many times a day, and I did.
"I called my mother when she was at home alone to ask her what she had for lunch. I called my father at his office to ask what he had for lunch. I called them in the evening to ask them how the fifth run of "Murder, She Wrote" went. I called them in August to ask if it was too hot to go outside and in January to ask if they could see snow flying over the Potomac.
"In 1997, my mother died. I stayed with my father for a couple of weeks and then, when I got back to California, I began a regimen of calling him like a blizzard. I called him to see what he was doing for lunch. I called to find out what he was doing in the afternoon. I called him to see if he had plans for dinner, and then I called while I was watching my show or "Jeopardy" to see if he knew the answers. (He usually did, but he would pretend he did not if I missed them.)
"We didn't talk about deep subjects. No discussions of budgetary policy or the nature of a great president. We did talk a lot about his grandson, Tommy.
"We also talked for hours about the woman he was seeing and with whom he was in love, starting about a year after my mother's death.
I brought him my problems and he brought me the word that I was doing fine and that my fears were unfounded and that everything would be all right.
"He brought me his fears that B, the love of his latter days, had not called him for a day or a half-day. I told him that a social science principle, "revealed preference," proved that what people did rather than what they said was how they felt.
"So we connected and calmed each other and kept each other company as he rushed through old age and loneliness, and I rushed through middle age and the jungle which is Hollywood.
"My father entered immortality on September 8. I cannot call him anymore and it tears me to pieces. But if I could call him, this is what I would say. 'Pop, it's lonely without you. I thought that I was calling you all those times to cheer you up and to do you a favor. But now I realize that you were doing me the favor because you were always there for me, always available, never ever putting me on hold, never saying you had to call back because you had another call waiting, always willing to make conversation even if you were tired or making your pitiful little solitary dinners.'
'Pop', I would say, if I could talk to him now, 'Pop, it's scary being the Pop of the family now, without anyone between me and eternity. Pop, it's lonely and scary, realizing that I don't have you to tell me it will be all right and not to worry because it will all turn out okay in the end.'
"But mostly I'd say, 'Pop, I used to watch you watching your football and your baseball and I would think, sometime you will be gone and I will feel terrible. And someday, I will call you and all I will get will be your answering machine, with your voice still on it, and you will be gone, and it will be agony. But I never dreamed just how agonizing it would be when I am sitting here at my desk in Los Angeles all alone and have no Pop to call. If you knew how sad I am without you, you would never ever have died.'
"Then sometimes, I will snap to my senses and realize how silly that is and that after all, I am a grown man with a family and a TV show and a mortgage and I have to be more sensible.
"So now, I will do something sensible and tell you, dear reader, that you should RIGHT NOW pick up your phone and call your parents and your wife or husband and your kids and tell them you love them and how much they mean to you and how miserable you would be without them.
"Call every day! You can't afford it? You cannot afford how bad you will feel afterwards if you do not call. And you cannot know how glad you will be that you did call when you still could." End of column.
Let me allow Bear Bryant to add one small footnote to this column. Bear Bryant was the coach of the University of Alabama football team, one of the most successful football coaches of all time. A few years ago, the Southern Bell Telephone Company came up with a great idea for an ad. Since everyone in the South knows Bear Bryant and reveres him, what if they could get him to do a commercial endorsing their phone company?
So they negotiated a contract with his agent and arranged for Bear Bryant to come to the television studio on such-and-such a date, such-and-such a time and stand in front of the camera and. with that angry look for which he is so famous, growl three words into the camera. The three words were: call your momma!
The day came, Coach Bryant showed up, they practiced the shot, then the lights went on and a camera rolled. Bear Bryant looked into the camera and suddenly his eyes were wet and instead of growling as he was supposed to, he said in a soft and tender voice: "Call your Mother. I wish I could."
That ad with its four unrehearsed extra words turned out to be the most successful ad in the history of the telephone company. I think we can understand why. It reminds all us who have lost loved ones how much we miss them, and it reminds all of us who still have our loved ones never to take them for granted, but instead to keep in touch with them as often as we possibly can.
I share Ben Stein's column and Coach Bryant's commentary with you on this Pesach Yizkor because I think that Passover is the holiday when - more than any other time of the year - we feel the presence of those who are no longer here. I certainly do. Pesach, more than any other holiday in the Jewish calendar, is the family festival. It is the holiday when we sit around the seder table and feel the presence of those who are no longer alive.
So today I remind you to do what Ben Stein tells us to do, to reach out and touch someone you love - even if this crazy culture of ours forces so many of us to be separated geographically. The telephone slogan that we hear is wiser advice than we realize. While we still can, let us reach out and touch someone whom we love as often as we can.
Then at Yizkor time, while we may miss them terribly, at least we will know that we did what we could for them and with them while we still could. Let that be our advice to those who still have loved ones alive and let that be the consolation to those of us who no longer do. Our Yizkor service begins on page 546.
I learned this lesson from the writings of Rabbi Jack Riemer.
