Editor’s Note: Reb Simcha Paull Raphael has been a frequent contributor to JewishSacredAging.com and has appeared on the Seekers of Meaning TV Show and Podcast several times. This is a review of one of his books, which he discussed on this podcast.
Reviewed by Jack Riemer
I confess that I was hooked on this book by the very first line, and I suspect that many other readers will be too, for what Simcha Paull Raphael has done in this collection of poems is look at his life from the perspective of his mortality and I think that many people will respond to the honesty with which he writes.
The first passage in the first poem of this book reads:
“Off in the distance
At the edge of the horizon of my life
I sense the Angel of Death
Patiently, dispassionately
Waiting for me
With unambiguous certainty
That we will rendezvous
Someday.”
The rest of this poem talks about how he has tried to negotiate with the angel, and how he has tried to persuade him he is not yet ready to deal with the limits of his life, but to no avail. Nothing he says can persuade the angel to go away, and so Simcha Paull Raphael lives all the rest of his life with the knowledge that life is precious but precarious, and that it can end at any time.
We read these words, and they strike a chord within us, because, like him, we have all learned at some point in our lives that we are mortal, and that we cannot bargain with the fact that how long we will live is not in our hands. The poem ends with the declaration that even though we cannot determine how long we will live, we can at least determine how well we will live, and this is a consolation and a guide that enables the writer — and the reader — to go forward and live on.
There are several other poems in this book in which the author looks at his life at certain turning points and reflects on what they teach him. There are some very moving poems in this collection about the experience of falling in love, and about the wonder of growing old together with one’s partner, and about what he experiences at the Bar Mitzvah of his child, and realizes he is sending this child out into the world and that, if he has succeeded, his son will no longer be a child and eventually will no longer need him.
There another poem in which he looks around the synagogue during the Yizkor service and realizes that everyone who is there is mourning, not only for those who are gone, but for who they once were, back when they had a Mommy or a Daddy to hold on to and to care for them.
In another poem in this collection Raphael reflects upon his father’s life and realizes that he never saw him cry. Although he saw his father do difficult and thankless work; he saw him beholden to his rich brother-in-law; he saw him cheated by an unscrupulous business partner; he saw him bring home a meager salary with which to support a family of five; he saw him live through all the ups and downs of married life — but he never saw him cry. He saw his father just diligently do whatever he had to do. And now, the poet sits at the shiva and cries. He cries at the realization that he will never see his father again, and that the lesson that he must learn from him is to do what one must and accept life challenges without complaint or resentment.
There is also a lovely tribute to his mother, who, after a lifetime of living properly with respect for what people would think of her, decided in her old age to dye her hair purple.
He looks back over his mother’s long life and thinks about the fact that there was never a sign in her early life that she would end up wearing purple hair when she grew old.
When she was the child of newly arrived immigrants, she had striking jet-black hair that she wore sometimes long, and sometimes over her ears. In those days, she was beautiful, radiant, charming and talented, dancing and singing and precocious. And no one would have imagined that she would have ever imagined that she would end up wearing purple hair.
But she did.
The poet then goes through all the other stages of his mother’s life. He remembers when she lost her father as a young girl, and her teen years were turned to tragedy. He remembers how she was raised by her mother and divorced aunt in a home filled with love, discipline and little money, a home in which she learned frugality, loyalty, respect for Yiddishkeit and the value of family.
He remembers how she went to a public school in Montreal, where she felt like a fish out of water, but where she still excelled in her grades, and where no would have ever imagined that she would end up with her hair colored purple.
He goes on remembering all the different stages of her life: the many years of her marriage, the years when she was a mother, the years when she ran a hotel, the years when she was a travel agent, and he thinks about how she did all these tasks responsibly, and how no one who knew her in these roles would have ever imagined that she would end up with her hair colored purple.
And then, when she became old, she wore purple. She had purple hair, a purple cane, purple earrings, purple necklaces, purple hats — and even a purple talis — what she wore and how she carried herself in old age indicated she no longer needed others’ approval to be herself.
In her old age, ravaged by Parkinson’s, hobbling with a walker, she became a model for aging with grace. She had dignity despite her disability, and everyone knew her as Purple Rose. She wrote poetry with a purple pen and with purple ink, and she still made jams every spring, and offered her wisdom to all, whether it was solicited or not.
She lived life fully in the face of loss. She loved as well as she could. She lived laughing and learning, curious to discover the world around her, always reading a new book, still singing in the choir, going out on outings when she could.
She even sent her grandchildren Hanukah presents just days before she died, and to the very end she wore purple.
When she died, there was a memorial service in the assisted living community where she lived, and old women gathered with their canes, walkers and wheelchairs, many of them wearing purple in her honor.
The poet then reflects that he will never see her again, and will miss her dearly, but he will always be proud of his mother’s creative courage, and of her unique and holy hutzpah, and he will always be able to say that when she was old his mother wore purple.
One might call what she did in the last years of her life a sign of her eccentricity, but the poet sees it as her courageous declaration of independence. After a lifetime of living so others might approve of her, and dressing accordingly , in her last years, his mother had decided that she could wear purple if she wanted to, and the poet says that he will always remember this act with pride.
I recommend that you read this book for yourselves, and I promise if you do, there will be many moments when you will put down the book and look in the mirror.
And this is what good poetry is meant to do for us, is it not?
Rabbi Jack Riemer is a retired rabbi (whose hair is white, not purple) who has written a number of books including: The Day I Met Father Isaac in the Parking Lot, Finding God in Strange Places, Ethical Wills, Jewish Reflections on Death, and (with Rabbi Elie Spitz) Duets on the Psalms.
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