Parshah Hukkat, Independence Day, The Bitter End

Perhaps the quintessential weekend convergence  is Shabbat Hukkat, Fourth of July weekend  and a birthday.  Between the fireworks (in the sky, and otherwise) and the family time (quality and quantity) it is…a lot. My weekend brightened and reverberated with fireworks the lessons of Moshe Rabbenu, family, strangers, and a venerable downtown bar in the East Village called, “the Bitter End.”

Growing up with the Fifth of July as a birthday, one learns to share and try not to expect too much on birthdays. Mine always meant school was out, and no one was around. Adjacent to Independence Day, my birthday was tacked-on to the pageantry of our nation.  I especially remember a messy pie-eating contest I watched at the age of six in Tenafly, N.J. during the Bi-Centennial,  and an absolutely amazing video my family made for me when I turned 50 during the height of the COVID -19 pandemic.

This year, we were fortunate to enjoy the  pageantry of the full-on fireworks display with generations of family and machetonim. We never take family or country for granted, especially this year, with two Americans still held hostage by Hamas terrorists.  Our families fled from Iran to the United States and Israel to escape religious persecution in order to live better, safer, freer lives. Mom, Pop, and Apple Pie for us means more than apple pie. It means, halva, diaspora, and loads of trauma and hardwon joys and struggles, too.

Shabbat began with a pre-sundown multigenerational saffron-infused BBQ cookout, complete with hookah, before sundown and backgammon after. Very Middle Eastern and delicious and blessed. Shabbat morning was improvised in Manhattan with extremely well-received assistance from random strangers: Manhattan is not-exactly Israel. It is so-not the Promised Land these days, especially.  Yet, I was gratified to find kindness there, all while wearing my Jewish and hostage dogtag symbols proudly. As we moved from services on the Upper East side, to Central Park, to the Reservoir,  to the Met, to  an adorable new family who had  just adopted a baby, to a group of potheads wearing Palestine tee shirts, to a man in line at Cavo with a a shirt that read “Holy Time: Pure Blessed Time,”  to a guy wearing a shirt with the words of the US Constitution printed on it, to a lesbian couple, to a fellow Cancerian man sitting on a bench near  the chalk “good luck spot”  at Washington Square Park, to the the bridal manager at the  Indian bridal salon, to the his and her chair masseuses, to the the bouncer at the Bitter End, I found I could *still* breathe where I had feared I could not. 

I kept thinking of the lyrics of the  Joan Osborne hit, “What if God was One of Us?” in which she asked, “What if God was just a stranger on the bus trying to make his way home.” This time, it was I who was the stranger.   I moved around the city purposefully asking random people random things.   No one beeped. No one cursed. No one was in a hurry. No sarcasm. No one was rude. No one was hostile.

By midnite, onstage, in a seemingly cosmic experience, a younger birthday woman birthday celebrant named Paula Cruz, coincidentally resplendent in a royal blue gown and white satin gloves, performed onstage at a venerable downtown club called the Bitter End. She seemed to be experiencing a joyful beginning, as she stated it was her birthday.

Accompanied by a seven piece band of live musicians,  Cruz and her youthful band of accomplished musicians reassured this writer and very human birthday celebrant that Artificial Intelligence will never ever  replace human craft, practice, work,  ingenuity or ingenues!  As the band’s confidence built it crescendoed with each piece.  The band and Paula belted out original compositions and cover pieces including  “Sweet Love” by Anita Baker.   Sweet Love, is a song about love, shame,  trust, and…. faith.  

Back then, to Hukkat. Why was Moses punished? Why could this good humble man  who had led the people through the desert not make it to the Promised Land?  He  knew better.  Moses revealed his anger, lost his face, and also showed  hubris instead of gratitude to God. 

In parshah Shelach Lecha the spies return and are too fearful. They spread their fears like wildfire, losing their stations.  By contrast, in  parshah Hukkat,  their leader Moses loses face and station by losing his humility, showing hubris.  Moses had previously been stoic and humble. Perhaps Moses needed a day off, or a pause. Perhaps Moses needed some perspective.

The opportunity of Hukkat and Independence Day coinciding is perspective.  Just for a few days, in a sea of humanity, celebrants of America, middle agers, youth, and  weekender and vacationers had the opportunity to feel anonymous and ready to return to stations of responsibility, IYH,  with all the generations until the “Bitter End.”