For Kimuschkele from BBDO
The chances are unlikely we'll be facing a shortage of bad news stories anytime soon. 'Hard-core consumers of bad news stories: take heart. The end is nowhere in sight.
Still, many folks must wonder why there is so little coverage of good news stories. Haven't you heard? Sex sells! Well? Forgive me if that sounds cynical, but the broadcast and print media-like other business enterprises-are driven by profit.
I've no bone to pick with that. However, it does make me wonder what it is about our human nature that prefers the contemptible to the compassionate, the horrid to the hopeful.
"All the news that's fit to print" has to be reported. I get that though I suspect we've become jaded by what mainstream journalists deem newsworthy.
And as I am not a journalist, I feel no obligation to do as they do.
Rather I tell stories not only about good news but good people, of caring folks, friends and neighbors practicing what they preach or that preached to them, who then step back into the world to actualize the ideals which underlay the Jewish concept of community.
'No, this is not another "catastrophe breeds kindness" story.'
It only just recently burst into bloom, much like a garden of flowers but whose faces, I dare say, are not as pretty as the ones you’ll see here: www.facebook.com/AlanDBusch.
By the end of the first trimester, the news of these good tidings began to spread after ultrasound imaging revealed the presence of 'Nope, not one, not two but three babies, that's right, three, you know the number between two and four.'
But with six months left of a triplet pregnancy, there was every good reason for discrete yet joyous expectation.
Our rabbis of blessed memory measure the authenticity of our prayers by likening them to precious metals: bronze, silver and gold.
He whose prayer is uttered only in circumstances of extremity, when everything that could have gone wrong, did; his prayer the rabbis liken to bronze. He whose prayer reflects neither grievance nor praise the Rabbis liken to silver, but the man who, having done well in life, prays with genuine intensity and unconditional faith, acknowledging that all which seems to be his, isn't; his prayer our sages liken to gold.
It has remained moral man's most perplexing conundrum since the time of Job.
It isn't so much the apparent contradiction between Elokeinu-our God about Whom we say "Hodu Hashem ki tov, ki leolam chasdo" (Praise G-d for His eternal kindness) and the God Who visits misfortune, pain and tragedy upon so many, much to the bewilderment of those who want to believe but can no longer than it is our human response to a power-not of our human mind's making, as the cynic contends, but which by itself created all, every being and thing-that ultimately determines how meaningfully we live and love life for ourselves and others.
So it is with humility I thank my wife Heather, the community of Congregation Kesser Maariv Beis Medrash HaGadol Anshe Luknik and rabbinic leadership with special thanks to its many cooking, knitting, visiting, organizing, contributing and baby-holding moms, grandmoms, dads and grandads for their bountiful kindnesses and encouragement to this now 59 year-old father who reportedly was spotted recently after dark shopping for a crib at Target.
If you see this father of six children: Benjamin, z’l, Kimberly, Zac and newly-arrived triplets: Zmira Shoshana, Hallel Jocheved and Guriel Shemtov, approach with caution. He may appear dazed.
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