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February 11, 2024
Hi Steve,
Today is two years since my youngest daughter, Orli Sheffey z''l, died on February 11, 2022. Her yahrzeit this year starts the evening of February 18. She should have been saying kaddish for me one day, but I’ll be saying kaddish for her for the rest of my life. I would give anything for one more hand of gin rummy, one more game of backgammon, one more chocolate ice cream cup with her at Dairy Queen. She made me whole and she made our family whole. She left too soon. I still cannot believe that she is gone.
She was a sophomore at Washington University in St. Louis. She would have graduated this May and then–we will never know. I hope you never have to bury a child, but some of you have and some of you will.
It seems like yesterday and forever ago. Even now, when I read about the death of someone else’s child, I think to myself, “how can that person go on? This is unimaginable” and then I remember that I’m that person, that I not only can imagine it but I am living it, and that somehow I’m going on. But not a day goes by when I don’t think of Orli and wish she was here. I wonder what she’d be doing now but I picture her as she was.
Orli had just been accepted into a summer program in Israel and was planning to spend a semester in Ireland. She cared passionately about making the world a better place, but she cared more passionately about helping people around her and making their individual lives better. She was bright, funny, and playful, with a seemingly indomitable spirit. We had so much fun together.
She had an I-Thou relationship with everyone she encountered. She could have done anything. Orli gave me, my family, her friends, and the world 19 and a half years of light and joy. Maybe she thought too much about others and not enough about herself. Her death shocked everyone. No one saw it coming. Over 1,000 students, staff, and faculty held a candlelight vigil in her memory on February 14, 2022. Busloads came from WashU for her funeral in the northern Chicago suburbs.
A part of my heart will always wonder if, as her father, I should have seen it coming even though no one else did and whether I could have done something. I have an index card where I remind myself why I could not have seen it coming and should not blame myself. Sometimes it helps, but sometimes I still need to ruminate for 45 minutes to reaffirm the conclusions that fit on an index card. She left too soon but I am grateful for the time we had. I would not trade those 19 and a half years for anything.
Our last in-person conversation was in our car on our way to the airport after winter break of Orli’s sophomore year. I don’t remember the details because I did not know it would be the last time we spoke in person. But I do know that the last words I said to her in person were “I love you” because that’s how I end every conversation with all of my daughters.
For a long time after Orli's death, I struggled with the meaning of it all. Staring into the abyss is not a healthy way to live. In the middle of Dashiell Hammett’s novel “The Maltese Falcon,” Sam Spade tells the story of a Mr. Flitcraft, who just missed getting killed by a falling beam and realizes that “men died haphazard like that, and lived only while blind chance spared them … He adjusted himself to beams falling, and then no more of them fell, and he adjusted himself to them not falling.”
That story takes up three pages in a book where every word tells. It does not advance the plot. Mr. Flitcraft is never mentioned again. Humphrey Bogart’s Sam Spade tells the story in the movie version, bringing the film's pace to a halt. Every time I watched “The Maltese Falcon” I wondered why director John Huston included this monologue. I now realize that these three pages are everything; it’s the rest of the novel that’s commentary. But I have not yet adjusted myself to beams not falling.
Rabbi Nachman of Breslov put it more succinctly: “The world is a very narrow bridge; what is essential is not to be afraid.” We have a choice. Falling beams–and worse–happen in this world, and they are beyond our control. We can look down from the bridge into the abyss or we can look ahead and adjust ourselves to a world that contains sorrow but also joy. Where there isn’t joy, we have to do what Orli did throughout her life and create joy.
We must live in honor and in memory of those who are gone, for our sake and the sake of those yet to come. It’s okay to feel happy when you’re happy—and to give yourself space when you’re not. And especially to have a sense of humor. Orli did. The measure of one’s life is not measured in gray hairs but in lives touched for the better, and by that measure, Orli’s life, though too short, was very good.
Part of my motivation for continuing this newsletter after Orli died, in addition to the therapy it provides me, is that Orli enjoyed it. She used to edit it. We'd argue about her changes, I'd reject them, and then we'd joke about how, inevitably, several hours later I'd tell her she was right and I'd accept her suggestions.
At Orli’s shiva, one of her friends told me that he once said to her, "your Dad's newsletter was really good last Sunday," and without missing a beat, Orli replied, "you should have seen it on Friday before I edited it."
I will always miss her and yet she is always with me.
Corrections. I'm entitled to my own opinions but not to my own facts, so I appreciate it when readers bring errors to my attention. In last week's newsletter, I misspelled "San Francisco."
In Case You Missed It:
- President Biden's new National Security Memorandum is a win for Israel and U.S.-Israel relations. The memorandum requires additional safeguards and assurances to ensure that recipients of U.S. military aid comply with existing requirements, including applicable international law and not "arbitrarily" blocking the delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance. Under this memorandum, the U.S., not any international agencies, determines whether recipients are complying with international law. The memorandum allows for waivers, extra time, and even recognizing when determinations cannot be made at the moment; nothing happens automatically. The memorandum applies to all countries and unlike a proposed Senate amendment, imposes no new requirements. By issuing this memorandum now, the White House effectively forced the withdrawal of the amendment, thus avoiding a potentially messy floor fight about new requirements in the amendment that some supporters of the amendment thought Israel could not meet. Unless you think that Israel is currently out of compliance with existing U.S. requirements for all foreign aid recipients, this memorandum can only help by formalizing reporting for already existing standards.
- Wondering why all but 46 House Democrats opposed last week's Republican stand-alone funding bill for Israel? Read this letter from House Democratic leadership and this statement from the White House. The bottom line, as JDCA CEO Halie Soifer said in her recounting of last week's events, is that the Republican Party is beholden to Donald Trump, not the American people. Axios goes inside this "very tough vote". Jay Michaelson writes that "bipartisanship has become so anathema to the MAGA back-benchers in Congress that they would rather hang Israel out to dry in the middle of its most contentious and costly war in two generations — risking their own political backlash— than achieve something together with Democrats."
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Steve Beller and Joshua Shanes write that Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) "is more interested in waging a cultural battle against academia than fighting antisemitism." She is proving it again in her vendetta against Harvard's Derek Penslar, whose academic record is beyond reproach.
- Yair Rosenberg writes that context matters: '"From the river to the sea' is not necessarily antisemitic or a call for genocide, and lawyers for South Africa were wrong to take words from Israeli officials out of context when they accused Israel of genocide before the International Court of Justice." I would add that while the IHRA definition of antisemitism gets a lot wrong, what it gets right is that determining whether something is antisemitic requires "taking into account the overall context."
Tweets of the Week. Nimrod Novik and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) again roasting Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).
Twitter Thread of the Week. Daniel Bral on why AIPAC PAC's intervention in a California House race "is a perfect case study of how AIPAC’s definition of what it means to be ‘pro-Israel’ is not only absurd, but, more importantly, completely antithetical to Israel’s long-term best interests."
Facebook Post of the Week. Drew Westen on Robert Hur and Merrick Garland (neither comes off too well).
Video Clips of the Week. It's On Us and Michael Che.
Upcoming Event. Please Join Dana Gordon, Steve Sheffey, Jill Zipin, and
Democratic Jewish Outreach PA PAC for a Zoom fundraiser for Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) on Tuesday, March 19, 2024, at 4:30 PM ET. RSVP here to get the Zoom link. This will be a close race and holding this seat is key to holding the Democratic Senate majority.
For those new to this newsletter. This is the newsletter even Republicans have to read and the original home of the viral and beloved 2022 and 2023 Top Ten Signs You're At a Republican Seder. If someone forwarded this to you, why not subscribe and get it in your inbox every Sunday? Just click here--it's free.
I periodically update my posts on why Democrats are better than Republicans on Israel and antisemitism and on the IHRA definition of antisemitism. My definition of "pro-Israel" is here (it's a work in progress, as am I).
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