The dog ate my underwear…and it was a very spiritual experience…

I live with Libby. Libby is a little black dog with silky long locks and pretty eyes. She likes to cuddle and play and would do just about anything to get a little lovin.

Libby eats my underwear if I forget to lock her out of my room when I go out for the day. Somehow the little (*&&^% manages to pick out my prettier and more expensive ones and chew a hole or two right in the crotch. It has been about 5 or 6 pairs now…I let it go for the first several pairs…but when I came home last Wednesday night after a long day to find one of my favorite pairs of tachtonim (yes, that is Hebrew for underwear) sitting on my desk, having been returned with considerably less fabric attatched – it was just one too many. I had had it. I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHERE TO BUY GOOD UNDERWEAR IN JERUSALEM!!! I was reminded of all the times in Montreal when I needed or wanted to buy something specific and had no clue where to do it. I went into a little bit of a….er….fit. Yes, I got angry over undies.

I didn’t go out of my room for the rest of the night because I was afraid I would say some rather uncouth things to my roommate. She tried to talk to me but I asked to be left alone through tight lips and a clouded head.

I went to school the next day and asked to speak to one of my rabbis. After explaining the ridiculousness of my situation and my relatively ridiculous reaction as well as my desire for reimbursement for damages he had a few suggestions. Put the dog in part of the house, have her figure out a way to keep Libby under wraps in some other way(s), etc. All were suggestions not including reimbursement…he didn’t think that was the most important thing…he kept telling me. The most important thing was to have a resolution that was respectful and re-created a sense of good feelings in our home. Resolve tension, not necessarily right all wrongs in minute-details-justice. He was right, I knew.

The next day we had a special 30 minute lecture type thing called a siyyum, a conclusion. This particular rabbi (who had tried to help me towards a resolution earlier in the day) lost his mother of 94 years a month before and the first period of his mourning – sh’loshim – 30 days following the death of the parent was coming to an end. In her memory different people in our community had volunteered to learn parts of mishna (oral law) dedicated to her memory. I learned a chapter from the masechet (division) on Shabbat. During the siyum he said a bit about the seder (order) we had all been learning from – mo’ed – special times. But more relevant for this post is what he said about his mother. I had already been lucky enough to hear about her at his home over sukkot (when I actually got to meet her), a holiday in the fall, at her funeral a month ago and when I went with about 60 other students to go visit him at his home while he was sitting shiva (the first seven days of mourning). There are themes that stand out: survival during WWII, dedication and resolve to see her family healthy and happy, devotion, endless caring for her family, love of Judaism and the Jewish people, her intelligence, and many others. But what stood out to me at the siyum was something that I knew my rabbis had mentioned before but had not stood out to me until this time hearing it – she always tried to ¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬resolve conflict and not create it to begin with.

It dawned on me that maybe that was why he was so persistent in his message to me – resolve conflict. He, maybe, was trying to act in a way that mirrored the way his wonderful mother would have acted – both in himself and in his advice to me. What is more powerful than that – the intermixing of Torah and our lives until they blur and become one holy striving towards mercy and justice, learning and teaching, abstract and the tangible.

May her memory be for a blessing – for her children, her grandchildren (9), her great grandchildren(7), and all who were lucky enough to know her. Baruch dayan emet.