JOURNAL OF AN OCEAN LOVER Acknowledgments
(Draft Acknowledgments page to Memoir in progress titled “Journal of An Ocean Lover”.)
The “Acknowledgments” section in a book typically appears in the front or back. But in this memoir, acknowledging the most important teachers in my life and how they profoundly shaped me, serves as a prologue or preface to my life’s journey.
{ Before I lay out here this outline of the arc of my life, I’d like to thank Tamara Lopes with the Coalition of Black and Jewish Unity (CBJU) of Metro Detroit who inadvertently suggested this page by requesting a curriculum vita as a way of introducing myself to the CBJU Advisory Committee to which I have applied. I retired from journalism and public affairs more than a dozen years ago and have no use for resumes now. Anyway, I’ve come to believe them to be nothing more than limited tools in accessing a candidate’s qualifications, certainly in respect to character, which to me is far more important than credentials. }
As I’ve claimed on the dedication page, the individual most influential in my life is our Mom, Sylvia Forester Reich, I thank her for inspiration, direction and faith to be the person I was meant to be. I was blessed with the greatest Mom, who gave me love and devotion and unwavering belief in who I am. What more could a mother give? Her love for nature and the ocean, for the invisible and mysterious were her greatest gifts to me.
Next, I’d like to acknowledge our Dad, Barryl Reich, for three essential gifts I’ve received and used to shape my life. First, the gift to march to the beat of a different drummer, which I’ve used as inspiration and goal to march to the beat of my heart. Second, the gift of fighting for justice, which I’ve used as inspiration and goal to establish and embody a standard for fairness, where judgment, condemnation, punishment and sin are no longer accepted as justice, but replaced with love and mercifulness.
Next, I’d like to acknowledge the rabbi of my youth, Isaiah Zeldin of Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills, Cal. and founder of Stephen S. Wise Temple in Los Angeles, who offered me an answer to how to see and embody God in my life. Rabbi Zeldin tried to introduce this idea to me in his sermon at my Bar Mitzvah. His advice would have flown over my head at age 13 even if I had paid any attention. So it was not until many decades later when I finally was ready to understand its meaning: a personal relationship with God. It was only when I dug out the old recording of my Bar Mitzvah did it dawn on me it had taken more than a half century for me to receive his gift!
He said, “Why do we say you shall fear the Lord,” he asked. “Why can’t we be trusted to know (these commandments)? In the Jewish scheme of things, we believe the laws are made by God, and not by man. So that man cannot say, ‘I know what is right and wrong, and so I will decide for myself.’ In Judaism we add the phrase ‘You shall fear the Lord’. In modern parlance it says, ‘You shall be conscious of the presence of God before you are so apt to decide what is right and that is wrong for yourself alone.”
Next, I’d like to acknowledge Sadie, our nanny and live-in maid until I was 10 or 11 years old, whose compassion and love for me was profound. Her heart was enormous. She remains a silent active part of me. I believe our Jewish DNA provides us with an uncanny connection to African Americans, and other minorities, religions and races. Our Jewish legacy resonates with the history of all peoples who have suffered under enslavement, atrocity and genocide. Sadie embodied and brought out my love for all people of diversity and color, reminding my heart who we are and where we come from.
Jeff Jayson, Miles Corwin and David Morse are childhood friends from Beverly Hills whose friendships I cherish through the years. In spite of our different paths after leaving Beverly Hills High School, the connections and memories cemented in grammar school through high school live and still grow in our hearts, serving as a treasured access to our time of innocence together. To be clear, our childhoods were not idyllic despite growing up in the Golden Ghetto. But as the years of travel and exploration and settling down again add wisdom to our souls — yes, you can’t go home again — we understand home is where the heart is and where our common bond resides of growing up in a special time and place where we were protected and safe to be kids and ride our bikes across city boundaries.
Mrs. Weber, Mrs. Schwartzman, Mrs. Miller, Mr. Forbes and Coach Reich stand in my mind as the best our Beverly Hills elementary school, Hawthorne, offered during our time there in the 1950s and 60s. At Beverly Hills High I appreciated Mr. Corrigan, Ms. Kurtz, Mr. Klotz and Mr. Engle. For better or worse, my growth track did not line up with the typical belief that a boy and girl enter 9th Grade as children and graduate at 17 or 18 as young men and women. I was still a boy at 18 and much later. My home conditioning did not set me up well for the outside stress that pressed hard on us at that age. But looking back, I appreciate the high standard of education offered by the Beverly Hills school system despite its priority to inculcate minds with selected information over the higher aim to gift us with confidence in our thinking and creativity.
Originally published at https://amiasoldieryet.medium.com on June 20, 2023.
