Writings from Rabbi Glickman

Sometimes I find myself wishing that certain moments wouldn’t have to be so momentary; that time would no longer have to be like a river – ever-flowing, ever-changing, always more powerful than I. Sometimes I wish I could take certain moments and hold onto them forever, keeping them by my side so that I could immerse myself in them whenever I wanted.

I experienced one of those moments just the other day at PLU. It involved Pat Huynh, a quiet, 30-ish man who belongs to Temple Beth El. Portions of his story have been told in this newspaper previously – born in Vietnam, Pat fled that country with his twin brother (and without his parents) in a rickety, overcrowded ship in the late 1970s. He was eleven-years-old. Soon after it departed, the Thai navy spotted the ship and, to keep from getting sent back to Vietnam, the Captain crashed the boat onto some rocks along the coast. Pat and his brother spent six months in a Thai internment camp before making their way to the United States.

A family here in Washington took them in. Pat learned English, finished high school, and enrolled at Gonzaga University. As he began his studies, he found himself searching for meaning, holiness, and direction – for religion.

One day, while he was in the library, Pat pulled an interesting-looking book off the shelf – A Passion for Truth, by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. The book fascinated him, and soon he found himself reading everything he could about Judaism and the Jewish people. Nine years later, in 1998, I had the honor of officiating at his conversion to Judaism.

The author of the book that so fascinated Pat, Abraham Joshua Heschel, was a scion of two great Eastern-European rabbinic dynasties. He was born in Poland, and received his rabbinic and doctoral educations in Germany. During World War II, Heschel fled Germany for the United States, where he lived until his death in 1972. Widely regarded as one of the leading Jewish theologians of his day, Heschel’s teachings revealed anew the richness and relevance of Judaism. He touched the lives of countless Jews and non-Jews, alike. Rabbi Heschel spoke out against the war in Vietnam; he marched in Selma with Dr. King; he allowed the prophetic voices of Jewish scripture to speak to 20^th century Americans with power and wisdom.

Dr. Susannah Heschel, it just so happens, was at PLU last week delivering the keynote address at a Holocaust Studies conference. Not only is she Rabbi Heschel’s daughter but, more importantly, she is a fine Judaic scholar in her own right. She serves on the faculty at Dartmouth College, but is currently on leave, and a visiting faculty member at Princeton University.

Following her fascinating and inspiring talk, I managed to introduce Dr. Heschel and Pat to one another. As soon as she saw him, her face lit up – she had heard about him while preparing for her visit. She told Pat how moved she was by his story, and that she was sure her father would have been moved by it, too. “He would have loved to have met you,” she said. Pat’s eyes opened wide, his breathing seemed to quicken a bit, and in response he could manage little more than a quiet thank you.

So there I was – on my one side was Pat, a young Jewish man who had immigrated here from Southeast Asia. On my other side was Dr. Susannah Heschel, descended from Polish rabbis, and the daughter of a prominent teacher who, seventeen years after his death, had become Pat’s rabbi, and first drawn him toward Judaism. We were standing in the Scandinavian Center at Pacific Lutheran University – a university named after an ocean utterly foreign to any of their ancestors, and after a 16th Century Christian cleric whose teachings, some have argued, were indirectly responsible for the murder of European Jewry that we had gathered to study.

Then, Dr. Heschel gave Pat a warm hug, and Pat – looking even more speechless and wide-eyed – hugged her back.

I was speechless too, and I found my own eyes going blurry with tears. I’m not sure whether anyone else saw what was going on, but I certainly wish they had. The experience touched me so deeply that I wished I could share it with the world.

Sadly, I was unable to hold onto that moment, for life’s every moment is fleeting, and time always seems to run like water through my grasping fingers. But I will always have my memories of it; of how that embrace so easily bridged great barriers of time and space; of the feeling that I was witnessing one of history’s most majestic events; of how these two people’s contact somehow allowed me, an enchanted bystander, to touch eternity.

Abraham Joshua Heschel once wrote that, “[o]ne must be overawed by the marvel of time to be ready to perceive eternity in a single moment.” After what I saw the other night, I think I’m beginning to understand what he meant.

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