Personal Remarks by Rabbi Gary Creditor at his
Retirement Gala - March 1st, 2014
My dear family,
congregation, colleagues in ministry, and friends:
I stand here most
humbled and over-awed by this entire Shabbat. When I close my eyes I view every
pulpit on which I have stood and the people from my congregations whom I have
served since, as a very young, very eager and somewhat scared student in the
Rabbinical School of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, I
assumed the most honorable title of “Rabbi.” I did not dream about this moment
in my life and that of my family. With fullness of heart I say that I rejoice in
having chosen this path. At a very young age I decided to be a Rabbi. From this
vantage point I can see that I had no idea what this really meant. It has taken
me a lifetime to learn. I thank the
Ribono Shel Olam, the Master of the World, for the strength to serve Him and
through you, to serve the Jewish people. As I learned in Pirkei Avot, I did it
without expectation of such a reward as this Shabbat. Serving God and serving
you was reward unto itself. I am as captivated tonight as I was on the day I
was ordained by the honor and privilege to be a Rabbi. As this is the Jewish
month of Adar, the Rabbis say “Me-she-nichnas Adar marbim b’simcha” – “When
Adar enters, we increase our joys,” certainly this Shabbat is a most joyous
celebration of my, Ruby’s and my children’s journey through life and the
Rabbinate and our two decades here with you. More than I have blessed others, I
know that I am, among others, most richly blessed.
***********
Because I composed
these remarks before I could see the journal, I will refer to it in thanking
the people responsible for this entire Shabbat. To Bonnie, Judy and Benita and
all the committees I extend my deepest appreciation for all of the efforts,
time and energies invested in making this celebration. You have kept me in
total darkness so that I can only imagine the enormity of this undertaking. We
thank you for giving us the memory of a lifetime. My heart is brimming with
gratitude. I personally thank everyone
who has been here Erev Shabbat, Yom Shabbat, as well as this evening. All of
you have made this a most special moment.
Surrounding and
supporting me through my career have been the staffs of my synagogues. Here at
Temple Beth-El I have enjoyed a most wonderful camaraderie with Executive
Directors Carl Hayslett who is really such a great friend and assisted in our
transition here and the early years of our activities, Sheldon Herold with whom
I shared a wonderful friendship and now Jayne Sklon, with whom we have already
shared much. Need I say more about Josephine but to note her joyousness, her
love and devotion, and greatest hugs. My family and I love you dearly. There
have been a number of people upon whom I have totally relied for their
expertise, confidence and friendship. Joni Irvine, Lena Shapiro, Jane Gillian
and for years Norma Fiedler have been my right hand, taken initiatives,
protected me from you, and enabled me to fulfill my work. No one can really
know the inside of the daily pulpit Rabbinate. They do. I am in their debt. Edith
Levin and Debbie Lacks-Hanner and I shared much in these years and I have
worked closely with Carrie and Krista Fidlow. I have shared our synagogue
leadership with educators David Goldsmith, Judy Rubin, Rabbi Tirza Covel, Aviva
Gershman, Nathaniel Fink, Bari Cohen, and Hazzanim, Edward Cohen and Marian
Turk, she serving in the dual capacity. I thank them all. Besides the officers
and other committee chairs, I have been privileged to work with a most devoted
number of Ritual Committee Chairs: Mac Kalman, alav hashalom, David Ruby, Jim
Plotkin and Ed Mollen, my dear Shabbat and Yom Tov walking companion. Norman
Sporn headed the committee for the assistant Rabbi that we had for two years
with Eric Rosin. In these years, in addition to the regular life-cycle events
of the congregational life, we have had Shabbatonim, three Adult Bar/Bat
Mitzvah Shabbatot, restored our seventeen Torah scrolls, created an Adult
Learning Center with a vast library, adopted Siddur Sim Shalom for Shabbat
& Festivals and Siddur Sim Shalom for weekdays and most recently Mahzor Lev
Shalem for Yamim Noraim, and built a mikvah used by all of Central Virginia. I
am indebted to this entire group for their support, encouragement, boundless
efforts and energies, confidence and love. I could hardly imagine the hours
that I would spend on our cemeteries showing honor to our dead and love to the
living. Even after everyone else had gone, I had the devoted companionship of
Helen Dranoff, aleha l’shalom and Bette Rose Webne. In the most painful of
moments you gave me strength and courage. Most of those times were spent in the
company of family and members of Bliley’s who have been like family to me. Even
with Ruby’s infinite love, I needed your inestimable talents and support. Nick
is always besides me. My life has been deeply enriched by colleagues from our
neighboring churches with whom we celebrate Thanksgiving, and those with whom I
volunteer to help better our world, such as the Virginia Interfaith Center for
Public Policy who honored me this year. In this moment of recognition I take
this opportunity to publicly recognize, honor and thank all you. You have been
my truest companions in this journey. The Rabbis teach us: “Mikol m’lamday
hiskalty” – “From all my teachers I have learned.” The highlights of each week
have been the most devoted fellow learners in the Talmud and Torah classes. You
have been my inspiration. We have learned that “Talmud Torah k’neged kulam” –
“the study of Torah surmounts everything else.” I am grateful for the opportunity to learn
with you. May we continue on into the future.
In composing these
remarks, I really wrote this section last. I am thankful that my parents, my
mother Clara, Savta Kuneh here with us tonight and my father, Henry, Sabbah
Tzvi, zichrono l’vrahcha, may his memory be for a blessing, discovered the
little town of Belleville, New Jersey, with its Rabbi, Victor Cohen, where I
discovered God and Torah. My parents discovered opportunities for me to pursue
my dreams and drove the miles to different destinations that were the dots that
connected to this moment. I believe that my father sheps nachas in heaven. My
mother is his witness. As she will be blessed to turn 90 this month I take this
moment to wish her a happy birthday. Quite a party! My European born
grandparents gave me a treasure in their presence that connected me through
time and place. My maternal grandmother must be chuckling at what became of her
ainickle. Forty-four years ago this summer Ruby and I met at USY Encampment
held in the Berkshire Camp Ramah. We thank our friend Suri for that! As much as
this Shabbat honors me, it honors her. Once I was asked: “After all of us have
come to see you, who do you see?” And I answered: “Ruby.” In my student pulpit,
a young child expecting to hear the Rabbi’s wife introduced as Rebbetzin, heard
us introduced as “Rabbi and Ruby” the child asked: “What’s a ‘Ruby’?” I should
have answered “the perfect jewel.” You have been my strength, my proof-reader
and confidant, my love. I have saved every card in which you have poured out
your love for me. While yours vastly outnumber mine, I can take this public
place to thank you for every moment of our lives together and all that you have
done for me, for our family and for the communities that we have together served.
To quote: “I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears of all my life.” I ask
everyone to please rise to honor my wife.
Our blessings have
multiplied greater than the midrash in the Passover Haggadah about God’s
miracles at the sea. In my senior sermon, without the gift of prophecy, I
speculated on what would become of our children? I had chosen an observant
Jewish life. I had chosen the Rabbinate. What would they do? Each of you here
and Yonina in Okinawa has given us a glorious life. We celebrate Tzeira and
Arsen’s forthcoming marriage in Yafo - Jaffa, Medinat Yisrael this coming
December, bringing full circle through your lives the history of our people
that I have felt so acutely. How proud we are of you both. Tzeira, you have had
courage that far surpasses mine. Arsen, you are an inspiration in the work you
are doing. When, in other locales, someone says “Rabbi Creditor” I learned to
sit still and not turn around for they are usually not calling me, especially
when it is preceded by the words “Chaplain” and “Lieutenant.” Every time I
speak to her, Yonina relates new initiatives, classes and programs that she is
instituting for the Marines and Jewish community of Okinawa. I am awed by the
training that she endured, her utmost level of commitment to the United States
military, and her great courage, ometz lev, far from home. The Navy flag flies
from our home and the challenge coin that says “Proud Navy Dad” is always in my
pocket. As distant as are the miles is as great as my love and esteem. When
Menachem said at a Seder table that he was considering going to Rabbinical
School, it took some time for it to hit me that there could be two Rabbis
Creditor, never mind three in the Rabbinical Assembly directory. Emah and I are
supremely proud of all your accomplishments in your communities and around the
world, for leadership in causes near and dear, for your writings that are an
inspiration to many, for the courage you have had in difficult moments. We brim
with pride when we visit Berkeley and people at Netivot Shalom begin sentences
with “Your son…You must be so proud.” You know how much we are. You have given us the gifts of the next generation through Ariel
Shlomit, Moshe Tzvi, and Raya Meital. In their names they perpetuate the
family. Their voices, hugs, kisses and words are pure delight. We gaze at their
pictures every day. We look forward to Ariel’s Bat Mitzvah a year from now. You
have bestowed upon us the sweetness of the world-to-come here in this one. Emah
and I thank each and every one of you children for making our lives so richly
blessed beyond the poor power of my words to express. I recognize my late
in-laws, Ruby’s parents Adele and Walter Eisenberg, who saw much of my Rabbinate.
My mother’s sister, our Aunt Helen will be turning 100 this month, poo, poo
poo, and thus this trip was too much, but her presence and influence is felt
with us. Her husband, my uncle Ralph Dubin, alav hashalom, was such a deep
influence and presence in our family. He and my father must be having some
conversation in heaven about all these goings on. I have been blessed with the deep love of my
brother Bruce and sister-in-law Susan and their children Avi and Yael and her
husband Stephen. We have shared so much of life together, despite the
distances. We add this Shabbat to our precious memories. These are blessings
beyond description.
**********
I never included in
any sermon reference to the following two pieces that have inspired me throughout
my Rabbinate. I could not have articulated this when I began forty years ago
which I remember like yesterday. Somewhere, sometime, both of the following
became my essence and explain why I have done everything I have done with my
life.
The Hebrew author Sholom
Asch wrote a novel entitled “Kiddush HaShem,” “The Sanctification of God’s
Name.” It takes place in 17th century Poland, my maternal
grandmother’s birthplace, and describes an event at the famous fair held in
Lublin that occurred after frightful pogroms. The protagonist Shlomo – meaning
‘peace,’ – roams the fair looking for survivors. He comes to a narrow street
with merchants’ stalls. There is one that with an old man at its entrance, that
is empty. “What do you sell here? Your booth is void and empty, and there is no
merchandise in it.” And the old man answered: “I sell faith.”
That was and is the
essence of my soul. In every setting, I have presented and affirmed our faith,
even in a world that seemed to deny it, even in times of doubt. I came of age
as Holocaust literature and movies were first appearing. It all clashed within
me. When I said to my parents that I wanted to be a Rabbi, perhaps, without
knowing then, but in my subconscious, this was stirring within my neshama. Then
I found this piece from Sholom Asch and I said, “This is me.” I sell our faith. Forever.
There is another
piece that has motivated me, that encouraged me to listen to the voices of
children and never consider them as noise. I have shared this only once before. In the
years before the Holocaust a photographer named Roman Vishniac traveled through
Eastern Europe capturing the world from which my grandparents had come thirty
or forty years earlier. On the cover of his book is a picture of a young boy in
cheder. His face is infused with holiness, radiant with purity and lustrous
with devekut, devotion. Such a love of Yiddishkeit, such a love of God glowed in
his face. The picture captured this child with a simple yet pure faith. I
wanted to capture and perpetuate that look forever. I have wanted to implant that feeling and
faith, that aura in every child I taught, every bar and bat mitzvah with whom I
spoke, with every bride and groom with whom I stood under chuppah. I wanted to give everlasting life to that
destroyed world through the lives of our own children from the moment of their
births, in their faces, hearts, minds and voices, and now in our grandchildren.
I don’t just see us. I see the millennia of the Jewish people. I see eternity.
This is why I became
a Rabbi and dedicated my life to God and our people. I have been blessed by
God, my family and by you to have fulfilled my dreams. To all I give thanks. To
quote the Hasidic Reb Simcha Bunim: “I can’t imagine this world without you.”
**********
There are many
things that will be left unsaid and names of people unmentioned. Let everyone
know that they are most inscribed and cherished in my mind and my heart
forever. I close these remarks with the following:
In Keriyat HaTorah,
the cycle of Torah reading, this Shabbat was one of transference. We concluded
the Book of Exodus in Shacharit and began the Book of Leviticus at Mincha. It
is the perfect paradigm as the Shabbat recognizes the conclusion of my pulpit
Rabbinical career and transference to new endeavors and the transference of
Rabbinical leadership of Temple Beth-El from me to Rabbi Knopf. It was a
wonderful article and picture in the Reflector. I welcome him with open arms,
have expressed to him my support and assistance, and bequeath to him the
congregation and people whom I have loved. He has sent me a very beautiful
letter this erev Shabbat. At the end of reading each Book of Torah we proclaim:
“Chazak, Chazak, v’nit-chazayk” – “Be strong! Be strong! And we will be strengthened.” The first I
recite for my distinguished predecessors. The second I humbly recite for
myself. And the third I recite for Rabbi
Knopf. “Chazak, Chazak, v’nit-chazayk.”
The editor of Moment
magazine, Nadine Epstein, tells a story about a man who served as a
groundskeeper and when he retired he wrote a few lines to the people whose
yards he tended. While not exactly identical, its parallel is striking and it
expresses my sentiments. “I have seen my time is at a close, and I have tried
to find a replacement. I have failed. I am very sorry. If you see me anytime
around, I’ll be looking for my footsteps in the sand. Just say my footsteps are
still there and I’ll thank you.”
Baruch Atah Adonay Elohaynu Melech HaOlam Shehecheyanu
v’kiymany v’hegeyanu lazman hazeh. Amen.
