No Hurry To Find Out

Rabbi Laurie Phillips z"l

Dear friends, 

This week we lost my dear friend and teacher Rabbi Burt Siegel. As I've been collecting my thoughts to share with you about Rabbi Burt, I’ve been reminded several times of another great teacher, the wonderful Rabbi Laurie Phillips z”l, who ran Beineinu with Daphna until she passed at age 55 in 2023. I had the honor and pleasure of meeting her not long before she passed, and I’ve been hearing stories about her from Daphna and other Beineinu friends since. When we met, she gave me one of her famous Be Kind pins, as she did with anyone she met, be it in her house, in a cafe or on the subway. 

In Jerusalem I visited teacher/guru Melilla Helner Eshed, my Kabbalah guide, and saw one of Laurie’s pins on her wall. When I attended her class at Hartman Institute, Melilla spoke about her friendship with Rabbi Laurie to the audience of a hundred or so American rabbis.

This week Daphna sent Yonatan and me a wonderful poem, which she had received from Mia, a young Laurie devotee, who has been praying with us at our New Shul-Beineinu shabbatot in the Upper West Side all year. Mia had read some poems that reminded her of things Rabbi Laurie used to speak about during High Holidays. Below is one of those lovely poems. Is there a greater privilege than continuing the work of the teachers on whose shoulders we stand?

No Hurry to Find Out
by Rosemary Wahtola Trommer

Joan asks me what happens after we die,
and I don’t know, but I do know
how to stand beside the river
and see a shrine in every rock I find,

which is how I spent the day yesterday.
And I know that walking today
in the snow, every step felt like
a prayer, which is to say 

I feel so very lucky to be alive,
even though I don’t know who
the prayer is to—nor what the point
of praying is—except that on days like today

I overspill with gratitude
and it feels so good to say thank you
for this life that happens before we know
what happens after we die.

Shabbat shalom, 
Rabbi Misha