I want to
thank everyone who is with us here today and who may be streaming this service
from elsewhere. We have with us multiple communities that were in some way
connected to Rami. We have his friends and neighbors from LA, the wonderfully
giving Temple Aliyah community of Woodland Hills guided by my colleague and
friend, Rabbi Stewart Vogel. We have Ellen and my own wonderful community of
Midway Jewish Center in Syosset, Long Island, streaming. A special thank you to
my colleague, our associate rabbi Joel Levenson, training now to be a chaplain
for the New York National Guard. Rabbi Joel has seen me at my worst and has
guided our synagogue during my absence for which I am deeply grateful. A
special thanks to our president, Michael Schlank, now the CEO of the NJ Jewish
Community Center camps, a prestigious position. He has been eminently understanding
during this difficult time and we are very grateful to him as we are so very
proud of him. And to our Executive Director, Genea Moore, who is handling many
of the shivah arrangements back home and keeping the synagogue running smoothly
as always. Genea is the best. We have family from all over—California, New
Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Maryland, Israel, Canada, and even Australia.
And we have many business associates who have been working with or in some
other way connected to Rami. In addition, we have Rami’s sister and
brother-in-law, Shuli Rank and Aaron Shansky, and we have Rami’s brother, Rabbi
Jonah Rank and I know his wife, our daughter-in-law, Rabbi Dr. Raysh Weiss is streaming
from Pennsylvania. We have also with us our mehutanim, Dori Lieberman of
Calabasas, CA, and Dan & Melodye Warshauer of Calabasas, CA. We have Rami’s
step siblings, Amanda and Andrew. Above all, we have our daughter-in-law,
Rami’s wife, Lauren, and her two beyond delicious kids, our grandchildren,
Nathan and Aiden. And, of course, there’s Ellen and myself, Rami’s parents, and
on behalf of all of us, we thank each and every one of you for being with us
today.
It really is
amazing to me just how many ways and how many times one can say, “I can’t
believe this,” or some variation on that theme. There is:
I can’t
believe this is happening.
This is
unreal.
This is
incredible.
I can’t
believe this has happened to Rami.
I can’t
believe this has happened to us.
After awhile,
you realize that you have uttered this statement or some variation thereof 200,
300 times or more.
And the fact
of the matter is that there is little else to say. I think there is good reason
why, in the Torah, after one of the more prominent tragic episodes, the death
of two young priests, Nadav and Avihu, their father, Aaron, the High Priest is
silent. Vayidom Aharon, Aaron, the man who served as Moses’s spokesperson, the
man who always found the right words to say, failed to find the right words to
say (Lev. 10:3), because there are no right words, let alone words, to say,
except some variation on, I can’t believe this has just happened.
Whenever we
are faced with the unspeakable, it’s best to begin with words that are always
good words to speak, and those are words of Torah. From Ecclesiastes, the
biblical author known as Kohelet, we learn:
Lo
lakalim hameirotz / The race is not won by the swift,
V’lo
lagiborim hamilhamah / Nor
the enemy defeated by the valliant;
Vegam lo lehakhamim
halehem / Nor is bread
obtained by the clever,
Vegam lo
lanevonim osher / Nor is wealth accumulated by the intelligent,
Vegam lo
layodim hein / Nor is favor secured by the learned,
Ki eit
vafega yikreh et kulam / For the time of mischance comes to all.
(Ecclesiastes
9:11)
The time of
mischance comes to all. And Kohelet states the occurrence of mischance not as a
punishment from God, even though it may feel like one, not as a test from God, even
though it may feel like one, but simply as a reality of life. And the
mischances in life are not born equal. Sometimes the mischance is an annoyance,
sometimes it’s disruptive, and sometimes it really changes your whole life. But
Kohelet reminds us that they will come. His words were meant perhaps to prepare
us, though we are never truly prepared.
I never worry
about the people who shed tears at the loss of a loved one. I worry about the
people who don’t. They are the ones whom I feel have lost nothing and that is a
shame. But for those of us who grieve over Rami, the blessing in those tears is
that they mean that Rami’s life touched us in some deep way. And Jewish ritual—shivah
(the seven days of mourning), the lighting of a seven-day candle, daily recitation
of kaddish, getting to the synagogue for Yizkor, the special memorial service
four times each year, all these are designed to make sure that we gain a handle
on our loss, and that the loss never gain a handle over us. And we begin that process
by telling stories. And the good thing here is that Rami, unbeknownst to him,
has left us a huge amount of material. So let me share a few stories about Rami,
right from the beginning.
As a baby, the
kid never slept. El and I had to rock him for a long time before he would go to
sleep. That was undoubtedly a trait anticipating a life that was full of
activity, motion, fun, laughter, getting things done. As an adult, he needed a
good nap now and then but on balance, he didn’t need much sleep to operate on
all six cylinders—or maybe all eight, maybe ten. When he was little, as the
family traveled down the Garden State in New Jersey, when we went under and
overpass, and the overpass naturally diminished the daylight, Rami would
shout—“Hey who turned out the lights?” That became a kind of game we played
whenever we went through a tunnel or under the overpass, and the light would dim,
we’d shout, “Hey—Who turned out da lights?”
Rami was never
one to be fully engaged in school. That really saddened me because he was just
so bright. Growing up, he didn’t think of himself as intelligent or capable,
but I knew he was. And this based solely on his ability to listen to an episode
of “The Simpsons” and then repeat the script from beginning to end almost
verbatim. And then repeat that episode over and over, multiple times. It was
uncanny. He took great pleasure in knowing that his proper English first and
middle names are Abraham Simson, the character of Homer’s father in “The Simpsons,”
and to make matters even better, he was growing up in a town named Springfield
(Springfield, NJ). That made him a bona fide character in “The Simpsons.”
Our family
lived in Springfield, NJ, for 12 years but Rami for 13. When it was time to
leave Springfield for our new home in Syosset, Long Island, Rami stayed behind.
He was a senior at Jonathan Dayton High School the same high School that Ellen,
his mother, and Rami’s uncle, Gary, graduated from, and having been elected
president of HaGalil, which was the New Jersey region of USY, that is the
Conservative Jewish youth group, Rami wanted to remain in New Jersey and not
move with us to New York. USY loved Rami and Rami loved USY. He loved it ever
since one of the earliest programs he attended—a canoe trip on a sleepy river
during which the kids were caught in a sudden and ferocious thunder and
lightning storm, they were trapped beneath a bridge sheltered from the pouring
rain, the fire department was called out to rescue the kids and when he finally
got onto terra firma, Rami blurts out, “That was best USY event we’ve ever
had!” It made sense to me that he would
be chosen president because he was respected among his peers, was a person with
substantial organizational skills, and someone with a respectable understanding
of what it means to be a Jew. Rami was a real “let’s get things done” person.
And he got things done.
Of course, the
trick in staying in Springfield was needing a residence to stay at, and that
was easily accomplished through his grandparents, Marvin and Millie Simson, who
lived in town and who graciously, I would say courageously, took on the
responsibility of housing and looking after Rami in that senior year—1999-2000.
On the one hand, staying with Grandma and Pop was a no-brainer. All of our kids
felt perfectly at home at Grandma and Pop’s—it was truly their second home. Where
else could you get pizza or hamburgers for breakfast? Grandma was driven to
satisfy her most precious customers and she did. On the other hand, both Grandma
and Pop took on the responsibility of hosting a teenager, and one with ambitious
(one might say “wreckless) plans like driving at night or right after a major
snowstorm---or during a major snowstorm. Rami would say—“Grandma, trust me!”
which Grandma later confessed to us that of all the words that ever came out of
Rami’s mouth, those three were the most terrifying.
Before the
days of NetFlix and Disney Plus, and before Block Buster, there was a small
video shop in Springfield, across the street from Bagel Supreme (great bagels
there) and a block from our home, and there the owner, John, knew what kind of
films we all loved. And that’s when we started watching these totally
ridiculous films that made us howl with laughter—Airplane, Naked Gun, Hot Shots,
Kindergarten Cop. Again, Rami would memorize dialogue from these movies and then
recite the scripts for us. Then later on he would watch more serious films and absorb
them as well. And he was a reader—this young man who did not really care for
school all that much would read novels and books that were challenging, like Moby
Dick—not exactly light reading. He loved it. And later on he’d read through
biographies and listen to podcasts, absorbing all sorts of random information.
He was fascinated by history, politics and economics.
When Rami was
somewhat established in LA and told us that he wanted to pursue an MBA, I
said—Rami: Graduate School? He said, well I find the material “intellectually
stimulating.” I said, Did you just use the word “intellectually” and
“stimulating” in the same sentence where one word was modifying the other? He
got his MBA studying remotely at Arizona State University. And if any of you
have followed him on Facebook, you know that every so often, mixed into photos
posted of his family, of Lauren and of Nathan and Aiden, he would write social commentaries
on political and economic matters, and these pieces were brilliantly crafted
and reasoned beautifully. It didn’t matter whether you agreed with his position
or not. He was a masterful essayist. He eventually began creating his own
podcasts, zeroing in on a host of colorful characters to interview in his
light-hearted yet serious way.
Rami majored
in Film and Television Studies at Boston University, did his senior internship
in film production in LA, and following graduation, wanted to stay in LA because
that’s where the action was. I was mildly concerned about allowing him to
pursue something for which the risk of failure was substantial, but then again,
failure is a mighty mentor, and I figured, let the kid follow his dreams. And
as our cousin Clyde put it (that’s Clyde and Toby of our LA family), people
were losing their jobs and getting fired all over the place, but Rami kept on
getting hired. El and I are deeply, deeply grateful to Clyde and Toby for
looking after Rami during those early years when he was out on his own. And the
attention they have given to Rami over the past few months has been extraordinary
and invaluable to Lauren, El and myself as they daily visited Rami, for
extensive periods of time, interfacing with the medical staff and making sure
that he was never alone.
Some of you
might appreciate this tale from his earlier days in production when one of his
supervisors told us how much she enjoyed working with Rami and how responsible
and conscientious he was. And then she added—And you know, the set can be crumbling,
the actors may be quitting, and Rome may be up in flames—but Rami is taken’ lunch.
The most
important part of Rami’s experience in LA was meeting and falling in love with
Lauren, our daughter-in-law. Together they created two of the most delicious
kids, and two of the biggest fans of Shin Godzilla in the world: Nathan 8, and Aiden 6. Lauren—you and Rami had
something special together the first time you met. Your love of family, of fun,
of sports, of the movies, of Jewish tradition, were all very real and held you
together. This past Shabbat, June 26, was your tenth wedding anniversary. Rami didn’t
make it by two days. But all told, it has been a 12-year association. And Nathan
and Aiden adored their Daddy so much. Rami was a great Daddy, introducing his
kids to his own loves—trains, golf, video games, and of course, film. Maybe
someday Nathan and Aiden will take up piano, and play like their father would,
usually a Billy Joel tune which he so loved—Piano Man or Angry Young Man.
Rami’s most
recent completed venture was the Amazon Prime series Goliath where he was co-
Producer with a talented and dedicated group of people for whom he had great
respect. And I know it was a thrill and honor for him to work with the show’s
central character, Billy Bob Thorton, whose performance in Bad Santa was yet
another one of those comedies, this one a tad edgier, that early on Rami and I watched
together and howled with laughter throughout.
During
the pandemic, Rami gained an expertise in Covid testing that few in his field
could lay claim to. He was integral to keeping the set clean and the actors safe
from exposure to Covid. I actually consulted with Rami on a few matters related
to what we were doing at Midway back on Long Island, maintaining reasonable
precautions as we conducted in-person services beginning in June of last year.
When Rami was
diagnosed with thyroid cancer, we were given to understand that this was the
kind of cancer that is treatable with the proper therapies, and Rami was all
set for that. His attitude was, as usual, Let’s get it done. Rami and Lauren
called us on the way to the hospital, as they so often called us when they were
on the road, and Rami was joking and laughing the way Rami was always joking
and laughing. Lauren commented, “It sounds like he’s going snowboarding and not
about to have major surgery.” And she was right. That’s exactly the way he
sounded. Things didn’t go quite as planned. And here we are.
At one point,
while I was alone with a doctor, I asked what to expect of Rami after we weaned
him off all the drugs, what might he be like when he woke up. And he said,
“We’re concerned that he may never wake up. And I thought well that’s not
possible because he’s the kid who never slept. Surely, he would wake up.
During the
days leading up to the MRI that would confirm our worst suspicions, I slept
poorly. We all slept poorly. We all had many dreams, disturbing dreams, mostly
nightmares, but I had this one dream that really stood out. I was walking along
a beautiful path, not far from a calmly flowing stream, and beside a park of
manicured bushes and trees. It was a sort of resort, very California-ish, and
there were lovely colorful homes along the path. I came across one home with a
door wide-opened, and I thought, I will enter that house, even though I
certainly did not belong there. I entered the house. It was dark but light
enough to see that inside was not a small homey cottage but a huge space, big
enough to house a large yacht, and there it was—a sailing yacht, with three
masts and a massive hull. It was made of polished mahogany and fitted with gorgeous
riggings, cables and shiny copper accents. I wanted to board this sailing ship.
I did not belong there, but I wanted to see it up close. It was very dark. I
walked on the deck admiring the yacht, it was so beautiful, and the ship rested
in silence, I n its place, but I still needed the light in order to truly see.
So I started searching for the lights, you know, to find the switch.
It
was so dark and the sailing ship was so vast and intricate, and really I did
not belong there.
And
then a voice called out and I knew I was in trouble, walking around this ship,
trespassing, within some random house, again trespassing, and the voice inquired,
politely, what was I was doing there. So I said, “O—I’m just here looking for
the light switch. Are you the captain of the ship?” And the voice replied, “No,
I’m a neurologist,” and I thought, O—this is great. I need a neurologist. I’ve
got all sort of questions for the neurologist. I have hundreds of questions for
the neurologist, except I couldn’t remember exactly what the questions were. There
were so many, but I could not remember a single one. And so I asked the only
question that came to mind, which was, “Who turned out the lights?”
That’s when I
woke up. I woke up because I asked the question that had no answer.
No one knew
who turned out the lights.
And no one
knew how to turn them back on.
This boat
would never sail.
And this boy, our
boy, the kid who never slept, was not going to wake up, for the time of
mischance comes to all, not as a punishment, even though it feels like it, and
not as a test from God, even though it feels like it, but just as a reality of
life. And this one is one that truly changes our lives. We will never be able to
rid ourselves of the mischances in life. We will only be able to control how we
respond to them. And so we connect to a power greater than ourselves that says,
when it happens, as it will, choose life. Make sure that you get a handle on
the loss so that the loss does not get a handle on you.
Okay. I think
we can live with that. What to do? Well, I don ‘t think I can offer a recipe on
what to do. But I think it best to begin very simply. What do parents do for
sleeping children? They sing lullabyes. I’m not sure if Rami was into
lullabyes, but maybe a few bars of Billy Joel. As Rami might say—Abba, you got
this! Okay, Ram, I got it. Because Billy Joel actually composed a lullabye, a
very beautiful one, under circumstances much different from those we know face,
yet with lyrics eerily fitting for this time.
He sang:
Good night my angel now it's
time to sleep
And still so many things I want to say
Remember all the songs you sang for me
When we went sailing on an emerald bay
And like a boat out on the ocean
I'm rocking you to sleep
The water's dark
and deep inside this ancient
heart
You'll always be a part of me
Zihrono
L’evrakhah—Whenever we think of you, Ram, we’ll remember your smile, your
jokes, your laughter, your intelligence, your love of family, your love of life.
And all that will be a blessing.
Alav hashalom—Rest in peace.
