TIWRA - Truth Is, We Are Accountable

Over 25 years ago I got invited to tea in England.  The invitation came from a professor that I got to know through my involvement in the Jewish community during my junior year abroad.

I was 20 years old and what did I know?  I’m not proud of this, but I’m telling the story to make a point.  I was ambivalent about attending.  By way of rationalizing, I suppose, I assumed he’d invited tons of people, that it would be crowded and no one would miss me.  I didn’t go. 

Turned out, he didn’t invite tons of people and if you understand English teatime you know where this is going.  I found out subsequently that he’d set four places at the table in addition to those for his own family, and one of the four was for me, the American who, according to most of the people I met, was spending the year learning English as a foreign language.  That place was quite noticeably empty. 

When I found that out I felt terrible and called to apologize and he "kept a stiff upper lip" and was most gracious and life went on.  But I never forgot the incident and I’ve tried to be more respectful and careful.

You may have read a recent article in the Style Section of the Times about how people are cancelling appointments last minute by text messaging.  SCUSS.  Something came up, so sorry. . .

High Resolution - Good to Look Closely

This past Wednesday evening, I attended the annual dinner for the Iranian American Jewish Federation, an organization that provides support for numerous worthy causes in Israel and locally.  The dinner took place, as it did last year, at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center.
 

Last year, I was there simply to enjoy the event, which showcased the outstanding work of an organization that so many Temple Israel members are deeply involved with, an organization which supports medical research, outreach to the elderly, Israeli athletes training for the para-olympics and so much more.

This year, I had a role to play.  Not the standard rabbinic role, either.  Following the speech by Alan Dershowitz, a mentalist performed, someone who, I was told, could make successful predictions about the future.

I agreed to have him send me a prediction to my house, not to open it, and to bring it to Alice Tully Hall.

The Fed-Ex envelope arrived at my house while it was raining and so it got wet.  I put it on the counter and, the next day, took it with me into the city.

Anyway, to cut to the chase, toward the end of the mentalist’s show I was called onto the bimah of Alice Tully.  I participated in a card trick and read the letter inside, which accurately predicted things that would happen that day.

Finally, it predicted the color of my tie and, moreover, it predicted details about my tie that I myself hadn’t noticed before.