Rabbi Jonathan P. Kendall
I attended the funeral last month for a woman my age. This, alone, has a way of bringing one’s own mortality into sharp focus. Still, circumstances were decidedly different. This individual, the sister of a member, was developmentally challenged. Chronologically, she was sixty-five. Intellectually and emotionally, she was pegged at between 4 and 5.
Rabbi Jonathan P. Kendall, Rabbi Emeritus, Temple Beit HaYam
Several years ago I was asked to perform the wedding ceremony for an old friend’s daughter in Los Angeles. I flew in to San Diego a few days early so that I might visit a fellow I had known sometime in the past. We had worked together years before and shared some pretty remarkable experiences. His wife left him and he had moved to El Sauzal in Baja California – about ten miles north of Ensenada on the Carretera Transpeninsular. It was a pretty drive from Tijuana south along what seemed to alternate between Highway 1 and Highway 1D. The striking scenery along this coastal route kept me from focusing on the purpose of my visit.
