The Slacker's Prayer
The rabbi at my bat mitzvah surprised me with a beautiful gift.
He wrote a prayer for an artist.
Still, one of the most extraordinary gifts I’ve ever received.
I was 12 years old.
I can’t remember his name.
I want to say Rabbi Green, but that is a guess based on the names you might hear at a Jewish summer camp.
Rabbi Green wrote me a blessing I could say before going onstage to dance or to sing: to give thanks to God for making me an artist on the precipice of sharing art.
It broke my heart before I knew hearts could be broken.
He wrote it in English and translated it into Hebrew underneath, a real prayer that God would understand, and he put it on a certificate-style piece of paper, like a diploma, so I could keep it forever.
The prayer had never been spoken. Until he spoke it for me.
He was a fat little man, Rabbi “Green” (maybe) who gave funny sermons about being in Overeater’s Anonymous with a room full of skinny bulimics.
Gosh, I liked him.
I just remembered all this today, as I make travel arrangements for my cousin’s bat mitzvah and use my brave and soldierly credit card for her gift. Texting my stylish, Westchester-born friend a photo of the Mejuri pendant: “Is it perfect? She’ll have it forever. So. Text me back that it’s perfect when u can? Thanks.”
Today I read the news and marvel at the mortifying fragility of adulthood. It is a crumbling structure of popsicle sticks and Elmer’s Glue. Standing only because you believe it can. And must not acknowledge that it cannot.
It isn’t the pre-teen who is fragile, in this particular way, so secure in knowing the future is coming to save her, bolstered by dreams and a shield of impenetrable creative wisdom. It’s the grownups around her, giving the very best of themselves, wobbling on popsicle sticks and quaking in fear, every day a prayer for the artist.
And this is why my heart broke when my rabbi handed me the prayer. It didn’t break as a 12 year old, it was a forecast, knowing my heart would break someday, today in fact, at this sweet memory from a fat man searching for his God.
Cory Weiss? Wrote you a prayer -- I didn’t know.
Beautiful, Emma