I can’t resist this one this morning. Let me tell you about a teacher of mine. When I was in Hebrew School, our Junior Congregation leader was a man named Harry Kraft z”L. Mr. Kraft was a tall, imposing man (although I suppose everyone looks tall at that age). He stood above us pointing out the words on the page with a gentle firmness which I can still remember as if it was yesterday. He taught us melodies that I still know and still use.

I never knew my grandfathers and Mr. Kraft was as close as I came to that at that age. He was so patient with all of us but could get us all singing with spirit and with meaning. I have never forgotten his songs, his manner and his presence.

And when his son, Robert Kraft, accepted the AFC championship trophy yesterday and pointed up to the heavens to remember his dear wife, Myra, who died last year, I thought of her legacy of philanthropy and dedication and I thought, immediately of Mr. Kraft’s love of teaching and learning.

I’m glad my Patriots are back in the Super Bowl for a lot of reasons that you probably can figure out- but one additional reason is  that it gives me a chance to remember Harry Kraft Z’L and thank him again for all he taught me.

Go Patriots!

So, in the previous two postings, I told most of the story. Of course, we should have looked at the Yad Vashem Archives of Holocaust victims. We would have found Shael’s name there had we known he had moved to Preili. We would have found Haim’s name there (he apparently moved back to Daugavpils) but we didn’t know his name. So, we might not have located the information. But, now with more specific names and places, we found the family members listed on the Yad Vashem site.

One of those records belongs to my second cousin, Sora, with her married name. But her entry in the database was different from many others because it included the “testimony statement” submitted to document her death. It was filled out in Hebrew by a man who said he was a “ben-ir”, a person from the same town. It documented the date of her death and was signed and dated April 18, 2010 (that would have been my father’s 89th birthday). The form listed the name and address of the man in Israel.

I went to the Internet and found that Israel telephone information had a record of a man by that name living in his city but at a different address. Still, there was a phone number and after a few days of hesitation, I decided to call. I hoped for an answering machine. I didn’t trust my Hebrew in an emotional conversation but a man answered and I asked: “Was he the one who submitted the form for Sora?’ He said, yes, he lived in Preili and knew her. He asked me why I wanted to know. I said, using the Russian pronunciation, that my name was Dobrusin. He said; That was her name before she was married. I told him that her father was my grandfather’s brother. I asked him if knew him and he said words I will never forget.

He said; “Shael Dobrusin was the Gabbai (the assistant to the Rabbi) in the old synagogue in Preili”. I literally felt my knees shaking. It wasn’t so much that he said he was the Gabbai. It was that he said his name. Here was a man in Israel telling me he knew my great uncle and called him by his name. I was stunned, at the same time so happy that his name was known, so sad at all that we had learned.

And the mystery continues… my grandfather had listed his place of birth on his naturalization papers as Sumach, Russia. We can’t find any record of that place but the Latvian records said that my great grandfather was born in a place called Shumyachi quite a distance away from Latvia, near the Ukraine. One website I consulted says that one of the alternate spellings for Shumyachi is Sumcahi. Could this be what Julius was referring to? If so, it is not clear why he would have misrepresented his birthplace (the records say he was born in D’vinsk) but that made me wonder. So, I went back to the records of Yad Vashem and saw that there are many Dobrusins listed as having been killed in the holocaust, many from Shumyachi.

There are many Dobrusins in this country that I have met or been in contact with over email and none are related to us closely. Most of them claim they are from the Ukraine. And so, I wonder, and will continue to investigate, if they came from near Shumyachi, they might be family members Itzik left behind when he came to D’vinsk. More distant cousins. More of the family.

This has been a fascinating 2 weeks as we have been piecing together material about my father’s family (and my mother’s as well, see previous posting). It was fortuitous that I was given the name of the woman in Latvia to help. But, I have to clearly say that my cousins (both 1st and 2nd) and my uncle and my father had laid the foundation for all of this information. They worked tirelessly on this investigation for years. I’m glad we are able to come up with some answers.

May their  memory be for a blessing.

The picture of my grandfather’s family was sent to me by another one of my 2nd cousins. We had never seen this picture as my grandfather didn’t keep any family photos. My cousin had, like my father and my uncles, undertaken some serious work to find more information about the family. She knew the names of the other children. That’s Rebecca, the youngest on the far left and Shael, the oldest sitting next to his wife and holding their children. Their names were not known to us and neither was their fate.

Julius, my grandfather, had traveled to Latvia in 1931 on a trip that he took to Europe and Palestine. My father remembered that Julius met his brother Shael and his family and we also had heard that Rebecca had died although the circumstances of her death were a matter of question. But, all other genealogical research seemed to reach a dead end. Specific details were known in some cases but there was so much that we didn’t know and couldn’t find out.

Just as the discovery of my second cousins started with a coincidence (if you believe in coincidences…) as my friend found her husband’s picture, this part of the story also starts with a chance discovery. Every few months, I would do an internet search on Daugavpils Jewish community sometimes throwing in the name Dobrusin to see if we could get more details of life in that town. This time, though, I saw a story about the rebuilding of a synagogue in Daugavpils and the story mentioned a name I knew well. One of the people involved in that project was a friend who used to live in Ann Arbor whose father was born in Daugavpils. I called him and we talked for a while about what he knew about the city and then I told him of our genealogical quest. He gave me the name and email of a researcher that he had been working with in the Latvian state archives. He told me she might be able to help.

Sure enough, she responded with a willingness to search the archives and for a small fee (try wiring money from Michigan to Latvia- it’s not so easy), the search began.

A few weeks later, I received an email from her asking me if I knew the name Schewel Dobrusin who was living in the area in the 30s. I assumed Shael and Schewel were the same person and she told me that she had some information for us which would be coming in the mail.

On a Shabbat morning, when I was on vacation and happened to be home, the mailman rang the bell and told me he had a registered letter for me from Latvia. I took the envelope and took several deep breaths, holding onto it, knowing that it was possible that it contained answers to questions which had plagued our family for decades. I thought about my father and my uncle and how they might have reacted to what was inside.

I opened it and our family history was all there. My great grandparents Itzik and Hilta, their five children, Schewel (Shael), Jewel (Julius), Laizer(Louie), Hannah (Annie) and Rivka (Rebecca). Birthdates, address in Daugavpils, occupation- all of it was there.

What was most important was that the records indicated that Shael and his family had moved to another town, Preili, with his wife, Luba and their three children Haim, Sora and Moisey.

The little boy in the picture on his father’s knee is Haim, my father’s first cousin. My father’s name was also Haim and presumably they were both named for Hilta’s father whose name is recorded in the archival material. The little baby is Sora. Moisey was not born yet and, sadly, there is no more information about him.

But, Haim grew up to marry Maria and they had a child Joseph, my second cousin.

Sora, grew to marry a man name Avram Ya’akov and they had a daughter Luba, named I assume for her grandmother, Shael’s wife who had died in the early 30s.

Then, the piece to the story which was inevitable. Schewel, his children and his grandchildren all were killed in mass exterminations by the Nazis in Preili in the summer of 1941.

That statement I had always made: “We don’t have any close family we know of who died in the Holocaust” is now obviously untrue. Truth is, we knew all along that it was likely that any family members who survived to the late 30s probably did not survive the Holocaust but without names, without proof, it was not real. Now it is. And now, while Yom Hashoa, Holocaust Memorial Day, was always a sad day, now it is sad in a personal sense. I do not know how  I will feel. But, I will light yahrzeit candles not for the Holocaust victims as a whole but for Shael, Haim, Maria, Joseph, Sora, Avram Ya’akov, Luba and for her two younger siblings whose names are not known as they were born after the census of 1935 but who are recorded as having been killed on that horrible day in 1941 in Preili.

I had plans to go to Israel on a study program this summer. Those plans, I think, have been put on hold. I want to go to Daugavpils and Preili. There are no Dobrusins to meet and one would assume no evidence of their having lived there. But, I want to stand where they stood, mourn their loss and let them and everyone know they are not forgotten. There is one more piece to the story which I’ll save for part 3.

This is  a picture of my great grandparents, their children and grandchildren taken in D’vinsk, now Daugavpils, Latvia around the year 1900. My grandfather Julius is in the back row on the right. He stands next to his sister Annie and his brother Louis. These three siblings came to America. The others remained. Before I tell any more of this story, I must remember and say a prayer of thanks:  had they not come to this country, there would be no one to tell the tale.

My grandfather was a carpenter who became a building contractor. He was a hard working and extremely intelligent man. He was thoroughly steeped in the Jewish tradition but clearly was a “rebel” in the finest sense of the word. He rejected religious tradition, held onto his identity as a Jew, studied Yiddish, was active in the Arbiter Ring, the “Workmen’s Circle” and when we would ask my father what his father would have said if he knew that two of his grandsons were Rabbis, my father would say; “He would have argued with you like crazy and would have loved it”. My grandfather Julius died when my father was a teenager. He never knew his grandchildren.

The stories we hear of Julius are, quite frankly, not the most positive. Julius had a temper, did not have a very loving relationship to say the least with my grandmother and somewhere along the line was directly or indirectly responsible for a rift in the family. We never knew his sister Annie’s family. We only knew her name.

A few years ago, I heard from an old friend from college. We hadn’t been in contact in years and I was surprised to suddenly hear her name. She called with an interesting story. She was looking through her husband’s old family photos when she came upon one which had a name on the back. It was a picture of a young woman and written on the back: Annie Dobrusin. She asked her husband and he said that he understood that that was his grandmother’s maiden name. She knew that Annie was from Boston and so she called to ask if she was related to me. I told her what I knew to be her married name and she confirmed. This Annie, her husband’s grandmother, was in fact my grandfather Julius’ sister. Her husband and I were second cousins.

That began a long and wonderful story of a group of 1st and 2nd cousins meeting over email, telling family stories, trying to unravel family legend. And, on an unforgettable Jerusalem evening in June, 2007, I walked into the Little Italy Restaurant on Keren Hayesod Street in Jerusalem with my son Avi to meet one of my 2nd cousins in person for the first time. She recognized us the minute we walked in the room: “I would know a Dobrusin anywhere” and we sat and talked and laughed and theorized about the rift that had kept us all apart.

Two years later, I was back in Israel and this time my visit coincided with the visit of two other 2nd cousins including the one whose picture started it all. We have a beautiful picture of the four of us which hangs in my office.

In Jerusalem, two generations later, the descendants of Julius and Annie sat and smiled and hugged, something the grandparents could never have imagined. It’s a wonderful story but it is only the beginning.

Pirke Avot tells us to know from where we came and while the intended meaning of the text was likely more spiritual in nature, I find great meaning in this statement in a different direction. To whatever extent we can, we are obligated to know our own personal history through familiarity with our family lineage and the stories that go along with it.

This past week has been an extraordinary week for me and my family as we have discovered over the past week some very significant information concerning both sides of our family. The story of the discovery in our father’s family is long, detailed and dramatic and I will cover it in future postings as I am still trying to put all the pieces together.  But in this posting, let me tell the story a new discovery we have made in my mother’s family which is extraordinarily significant to me.

My mother used to tell my brother and me that we should be proud that we are 5th generation Americans on one side of the family (her father’s father’s family). But, we were never able to confirm that because she had no idea which of her great grandparents had, in fact, lived here. She only knew that he or she was buried somewhere near Worcester, MA. But, she would tell us the story with pride.

In 2002, my mother left Boston for what turned out to be the last time and came to live near us in Ann Arbor. On the last day we were in Boston, my brother and I went to all the cemeteries to visit the graves of her parents and grandparents in various cemeteries around Massachusetts and New Hampshire. While we were standing at the graves of my great grandparents, Morris and Annie, she told us again about the mystery ancestor buried near Worcester.

Last Sunday, after all the information about my father’s family became clear, my son went to a Jewish genealogical website to see if he could find any other details of the new information we had received. He didn’t find any other information on the Dobrusins but sure enough, he found someone who was trying to find out what several family names, including Dobrusin, was doing in the records of her family’s “association” of the 1950’s. I knew exactly what they were doing there because all of the names were names of my grandfather’s married sisters or daughters and since he had 10 siblings, there were quite a few. I also knew the name of her husband’s family because I had heard that name many times when I was young but I didn’t know how the families were related.

It took a bit of investigation and some back and forth emails but we finally figured it out when we realized that the one fact which we had known but others hadn’t was that my great grandfather Morris had changed his last name. At that point, we all realized that the connection of the families was that Morris’s sister had married into the other family.

So, now it was clear that the husband of the woman who had contacted the website was in fact, my 3rd cousin. That’s nice to know. But, what was more important to me was the fact that she told me that in fact, Morris and his sister Jenny’s mother, Rasha, was buried in a cemetery outside of Worcester, MA. Rasha was my great-great grandmother and that was the person my mother had always told us about without knowing the details.

On my next trip to Boston, I plan to visit my great great grandmother’s grave and for a 56 year old American Jew of East European descent, that is certainly unusual. And, for my brother, who is a grandfather, to bring his granddaughter to the grave of her great-great-great-great grandmother would be truly astounding.

So, that’s the story. A changed name, a distant cousin and a family gravesite. All of this has helped me to understand more about where I came from and the next part of the story, concerning my father’s family is still to come.

Many years ago, I was teaching a class about Shabbat when I asked them what would happen if, for whatever reason, the government decided to skip one of the days  or add an extra day in a given week. What would happen to Shabbat that week? Would we observe it in accordance with the calendar, on the day that was called Saturday regardless of how many days it had been since the last Shabbat? Or, would we still observe Shabbat 7 days after the previous Shabbat even if it came out on Friday or Sunday? We had an interesting discussion about the entire issue. Is Shabbat a calendar issue or is it a reflection of the divine commandment to rest every 7 days.

The issue was always theoretical- until today. This morning, as has been widely reported, residents of the island of Samoa are waking up to Saturday after going to sleep on Thursday as the government in principle moved the island to the other side of the international date line in order to have a similar calendar as Asia.

When I read this in the paper this morning, my mind immediately flashed back to that discussion in the classroom many years before. What on earth do we do?

Before I say anything else, I must point out that several authorities have been dealing with this issue not only as a result of Samoa’s decision but in regards to the International Date Line in general which some see as arbitrary. Some authorities have said that there needs to always be a 48 hour observance of Shabbat in  areas near the date line acknowledging the uncertainty of the calendar. You can do an internet search on this question and find many different halachic rulings on the issue.

But, assuming one doesn’t want to observe 48 hours of Shabbat every week, the choice between a humanly ordained calendar vs. the divine act of creation is a fascinating and complex choice to have to make. On the one hand, one could say that Shabbat is observed every 7 days and therefore Jewish residents of Samoa would observe Shabbat this week on Sunday (and of course every week thereafter). On the other hand, Jews have observed Shabbat on Saturday for however long it has been since the days of a week have been identified in this way and to do otherwise would cause confusion and the upsetting of long standing tradition.

There is a beautiful midrash in which the angels come to God and say: When is Yom HaDin (Rosh Hashana, the day of judgment)? God says: let’s ask the human beings, when they decide it is Yom HaDin, we’ll be there to judge. This is a reflection of the fact that God gave the calendar to human beings and the holidays are very much subject to human decisions relating to uncertainty about the timing of the New Moon or, in some case, relating to convenience (Yom Kippur can’t fall on Friday etc.) But, this did not reflect a teaching about Shabbat which was considered ordained as part of the cycle of creation from the beginning and, of course, the human beings who would set the calendar in the view of this midrash were prophets or Rabbis, leaders in the Jewish community, not in the secular world.

So, what to do? Should Jews in Samoa go along with the rest of the Samoans and observe Shabbat a day early or should they resign themselves to observing Shabbat on Sunday forever?And what would that do to distinctions between Jews and Christians- or if a day was added to the calendar and Shabbat fall on Friday, between Jews and Moslems- would we welcome that uniformity or would we reject it as a compromise of our well established differences?

My opinion? It would be far better to make a change in one week than to be out of step forever with the Jewish world and our teachings. Were I a Rabbi in Samoa, I would make the decision to observe two days of Shabbat this week: Saturday (which is really erev Shabbat) and Sunday (which is the 7th day) but for the sake of uniformity and tradition, I would argue that the following week, Shabbat should be observed on Saturday and continue to be observed that way from generation to generation. Somehow, I think God would understand. I hope so anyway.

 

Shabbat Shalom.

My paternal grandfather, Julius Dobrusin came from the city of D’vinsk, now Daugavpils, in Latvia. We don’t know his whole story.  We know that he was a member of the Workmen’s Circle, anti-religious, socialist and, according to a book our family has, he was an “Agitator”. He also, was, to say the least, not an ideal father or husband. In addition, at some point, something he did or didn’t do seemed to have caused a rift in the extended family. He died when my father was a teenager and now that all of his three sons have died, he remains to us a mystery.

My brother, some of my cousins and I are fascinated by his story and we have been trying desperately over the years to find some more about the family history. One day a couple of months ago, I did a google search on the Daugavpils Jewish Community looking for nothing in particular when I found, amazingly enough, that a good friend had been involved with that community since his ancestors also were from there. I contacted my friend and, through him, found the Latvian State Archives. A few emails and a wire transfer for a nominal fee and they have set out to find what they can about our family.

Today, I received an email back from the researcher in Latvia who told me that they were sending material by mail to me on the family, all the “available records”. I don’t know whether we will find anything new that we didn’t know before or that there will be any insight at all into the man or the family but I can’t wait to find out.

As I wait, I think back to one aspect of the story which needs to be told. As I mentioned, there was a rift in the family and the grandchildren of Julius Dobrusin and the grandchildren of his sister Annie, never knew each other. A few years back, I received an  call from a woman I knew at Brandeis when I was a student there in the 1970’s. I couldn’t imagine why she was calling although it was good to hear from her. It turns out that when looking through some of her husband’s old family photos, she had seen the name Annie Dobrusin on the back of a picture of his grandmother. She wanted to know if I was related to her.  The only thing I knew about my great was that her name was Annie and after a moment or two, we realized that this was her and that my friend’s husband was, in fact, my 2nd cousin.

In an email exchange a bit later, I found out that another 2nd cousin lived in Israel and when I was in Jerusalem in 2007, we arranged to meet for dinner. My son and I walked into the restaurant at the planned time and a woman came towards us saying she would have spotted me as a Dobrusin anywhere. We had a wonderful time and 2 years later, when I was back in Israel, my visit coincided with a visit from my friend’s husband and his brother and we met and talked over old times that we only knew a bit about. Perhaps, some news from Latvia will tell us more of our story. But, whether it does or doesn’t, at least the rift has been ended- we, the grandchildren of Julius and Annie have found each other- and, eaten a meal together in peace- in Jerusalem no less.

I’ll keep you posted.

This past Shabbat at Beth Israel, we had the second of two planned programs we called Brunch and Learn. Instead of gathering for a kiddush lunch after the service ended, we took a break in the middle for some Torah study and a kiddush brunch which was followed by a Musaf service. In many ways, Shabbat is all about routine but I think it does us good every once in a while to vary that routine and perhaps discover a new way to enjoy Shabbat.

Our Torah study this week was a continuation of our series on Jewish Perspectives on Health and focused on the subject of sleep in Jewish tradition. Traditional texts address just about every subject imaginable and sleep is no exception.

There is a tension in Rabbinic texts concerning sleep. On the one hand, sleep is considered to be a waste of precious time to study Torah or to observe mitzvot. It is considered to be a sign of the difference between ourselves and God- according to one midrash, the angels were able to differentiate Adam from God only when God put Adam into a deep sleep- and thus could be viewed as a sign of weakness.

And yet, the Rabbis also recognized the critical role adequate sleep plays in our lives. It is interesting to me that actions which are prohibited on Yom Kippur are actions which focus on our human needs. We try to be “angels” on that day, turning away from our drives to eat and drink, engage in sexual activity and our attention to our physical bodies. And yet, there is no prohibition on sleep. I believe this reflects our Rabbis’ understanding that while it is possible to think seriously while being hungry or thirsty, one couldn’t engage in serious teshuva, serious repentance and prayer without being sufficiently awake and alert.

So, there are texts which praise sleep as providing the rejuvenation necessary to do our best as human beings. The Talmud records that people were discouraged from taking a vow to stay awake and Maimonides indicates that sleeping 8 hours a night is sufficient. He doesn’t discourage people from getting that amount of sleep which many say is the appropriate amount for an adult.

Sleep is a precious commodity in our lives today. So many of us find ourselves struggling to get adequate sleep and keeping long hours is only one of the issues. I know that for many, this is a serious medical issue and one which should be referred to a physician. But, for others, it seems to be a matter of choice. With so much emphasis on being “connected” today, it seems increasingly difficult to allow ourselves the luxury of being out of touch for 8 hours a night. And yet, we need, all of us, to try harder. We know how dangerous lack of adequate sleep can be. Perhaps, to go back to the midrash I referred to earlier, we should  admit that we are not all powerful- that we are not God- and that the world will survive well enough without us as we get a good night’s sleep. In fact, the world will be better off as we will be more equipped not only to study Torah but also to engage in the acts of Tikkun Olam if we can keep our eyes open during the day.

Yesterday, we read the Parashat Vayetze which contains the story of Jacob’s dream of a ladder rising up to the heavens with angels ascending and descending. There are many Rabbinic interpretations of the dream but my favorite among them is the tradition that what Jacob was witnessing was “the changing of the guard” as the angels which accompanied him inside the land of Canaan were going back up to the heavens and those who were going to be responsible for him outside the land were coming down to take their positions.

This is an important interpretation as it reflects the intention of the Torah to teach that God is a universal God and not tied to one particular area. Jacob needs to be shown, as he is on the border of Canaan about to go to Haran, that he will be protected by (and responsible to) God wherever he goes.

It strikes me as a bit troubling however that the angels are referred to as “olim v’yordim”, ascending and descending the ladder. I would have preferred the opposite, “descending and ascending”.  Usually when we think about a “changing of the guard”, we envision the new guard coming to replace the old guard with an overlap between them. Whatever it is that they are guarding is never left unprotected, even for a moment. Thus, if the angels were  “olim”, ascending, before the others were “yordim” descending, Jacob would have been left alone in the interim.

I promise you I haven’t lost sleep over this linguistic issue (pardon the pun) but it occurs to me as important because we do speak of overlapping angels in another place in our tradition. When we sing Shalom Aleichem on erev Shabbat, we are welcoming in the “Shabbat angels”. The last verse of the song is “tzaytzchem l’shaom”, go in peace. This is sung, according to many interpretations, to the weekday angels who are taking leave of us as the Shabbat angels take their positions. We don’t ask them to leave until the Shabbat angels are already in place.

Whether we take the idea of angels literally or not, the idea is beautiful: that Shabbat overlaps the weekdays, beginning before sundown and ending after sundown. There is an easing into Shabbat and an easing out of Shabbat as well.

But, it is interesting that we never say: “tzaytzchem l’shalom” to the Shabbat angels when Shabbat ends.

Shabbat is a day of ideals and dreams and a sense of holiness. We dream of a day when the world will be “kulo Shabbat” when all that we wish and all that we feel on Shabbat will be permanently a part of our redeemed world. The only way that that can happen is if we take the spirit of Shabbat and allow it to permeate the days of the week. Shabbat is when we dream. The weekdays are when we can put those dreams into action, making them a reality in the world.

We should seek to keep those angels around throughout the week, never allowing them to leave.

The call came last Wednesday afternoon. I was walking into the barber shop for a pre-Thanksgiving haircut when my cell phone rang. I looked at the phone and asked myself who would be calling from Washington DC. I went back on to the street and answered it to hear the caller identify himself as calling from National Public Radio: “I imagine you know why I’m calling”.

Yes, I imagine I did. After years of entering the “Sunday puzzle” contest on NPR, never expecting to be chosen to play the puzzle on the air,  I was the “randomly chosen entry” from the more than 900 puzzlers who had correctly answered this week’s challenge. More than 900 of us who were able to figure out that the food item “Mayo” could, when subjected to the proper rearranging of syllables lead to the expression: “Yo Mama” and the celebrity: “Yo Yo Ma”. I had come up with that answer within a minute or two after hearing the puzzle and had forgotten to submit my answer, remembering to do so only an hour before the deadline. And now, two hours  later, I was faced with the reality that I would have the opportunity to be heard by millions, many of whom I’m sure would be ready to pounce on any hesitation  screaming out: “Oh come on,what’s the matter with this guy? ” while another person in the house would say: “Give him a break, it’s harder when you’re on the air”. (I know that conversation very well, we go through it almost every Sunday in our house.) But, there was no escaping fate.

Imagine having two days to prepare for an exam but not having the slightest idea what the subject would be? Each puzzle is different so there was no preparation except getting lots of sleep (yeah sure), deciding  where to talk on the phone away from the animals and other distractions and calming myself by thinking that no one really cares about the puzzle anyway.

On Friday, at 2:45 p.m. the call came in and I found myself surprisingly calm having rehearsed my answers to what I imagined would be the first questions asked by the host. I mentioned my daughter as I had promised her I would and we dove into the puzzle which, thank God, turned out to be easier than I expected it would be. When they stopped taping, they thanked me, told me I did fine and I hung up and only then did I announce on my facebook page that I was going to be on the air on Sunday.

Right away, I realized that my assumption that no one cares was dead wrong. The reactions to the Facebook announcement started coming in immediately  and after the show aired, the fun really started. Two phone calls came in within 30 seconds of the end of the broadcast, one from an Ann Arbor friend, one from a friend in New Jersey who sounded like he had almost driven his car off the road when he heard my name mentioned. Then the emails started: a former camper from Camp Ramah who is now a Rabbi, a person whom I hadn’t been in contact with for almost 40 years since we lived in the same dorm at school, friends of my parents from Boston who sent me a note telling me how they bet my parents would have been proud of me (he would have been but he would also probably have corrected my grammar and my mother would have told me I should have spoken up louder), two other Rabbis who had previously been on the air welcoming to the small club of Rabbis that had achieved this distinction, a few dozen friends from Ann Arbor and, most surprisingly, people I had never met who found the synagogue website and wrote congratulating me and asking me what the secret was to getting picked. It really was a great day and even today, the emails are continuing to come.

All in all, it was a bit more than the 5 minutes of fame I expected and it truly was a lot of fun. I’ve been doing puzzles of all kinds since I was a kid and I do believe that as we get older, this idea of “mental calisthenics” becomes even more critical to keeping our minds sharp. I’ll keep playing the NPR puzzle but knowing that I won’t get picked again, I imagine I’ll be a little less motivated. But, the thrill of being on the air and the fact that it connected me with so many people really made this a special weekend.

I have to close with a puzzle: What is the next letter in this series: O T T F F S S E N _ ? Feel free to respond with your answers to my email address at rdobrusin@bethisrael-aa.org  I can’t offer you a lapel pin but it will keep you in good form if NPR calls.