While I usually use this blog to write about Judaism and Jewish issues, I often digress from purely “Jewish” topics to comment on other interests. One of my interests is music and, if you have followed this blog over the years, you have read my tributes to musicians that I admire and thoughts on songs that are particularly meaningful to me.  

         Now it is time to honor the memory of another musician, but one whose name I never recall hearing until I read of his recent death. I never heard him sing and have no thoughts on anything about his career except for the fact that one of his songs has always fascinated me.

         His name was Don Schlitz. As it was for me, his name may be unfamiliar to many of you. But, I’m sure the words of one of his songs will immediately sound very familiar: 

                  On a warm summer evening.

                  On a train bound for nowhere…

         The song is, of course, The Gambler, made famous by Kenny Rogers. I love “story songs” which give us the opportunity to close our eyes and picture the scene. Very few “story songs” I have ever heard produce such vivid images in my mind as The Gambler. I can picture the scene perfectly and it is the same picture every time I hear the song.

         I love this song and find that so much of is fertile ground for midrash, for commentary concerning our lives. I’ll share two of the lines which strike me in this way and will speak about these and other lines as well in my podcast next week. (wrestlinganddreaming.podbean.com). 

         Here is the first selection: 

                  Every gambler knows that the secret to surviving

                  Is knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep. 

         These lines come to mind every High Holy Day season when we talk about teshuvah,repentance. 

         We likely think about repentance in terms of the actions in our lives which we want to distance ourselves from. But that is only part of the process of repentance. 

         We should also be thinking about the actions in our lives which are positive and which we should, to use the gambling expression, “double down” on. What we seek to throw away is critical and the first step towards being the people we want to be. But it is critical, as well, to think about those aspects of our lives which we want to preserve and to commit ourselves to increasing their importance in our lives. 

         And, here is the other line:

                  Every hand’s a winner and every hand’s a loser.

         I do not believe that every hand a person is dealt has a “winning” aspect to it. There are some situations that people face which have no redeeming quality to them and that is a reality. 

         But, for so many of the negative situations we face, we can seek to find the “winning” aspect of it, finding a way to say, as our tradition teaches: Gam zeh l’tovah, “this too can be for the good”. We can find the positive aspect of most every situation and continue to find, even in times of sadness, a reason to stay positive, to stay in the game, so to speak, and to hope for better “hands” to come. 

         I have more to say on this song and will do so in my podcast but, for now, thanks to Don Schlitz, and to Kenny Rogers as well, for providing not only a vivid image of a chance encounter on a train but some truths for us to ponder as we travel through life.