Yesterday – Thursday, November 2

(1) So I’m driving home from deepest Fairfax County. I come east on Highway 50 (Arlington Road) and decide to go north on the George Washington Parkway and come over Route 120 to Chain Bridge. But I forget that I had read that part of the GW Parkway was under reconstruction. Innocently, I start to drive north-ish, toward 120. It’s rush hour, the traffic is fairly heavy, but moving. All of a sudden, I see some equipment, and then I see a sign that says “divided road ahead”, and I have to make a choice. It seems I can take the left lane or the right lane – the left lane being normally coming south, but I assume changed at rush hour to accommodate traffic heading for McLean. I take the left lane (I am already in that lane) and am separated from the other lane going north by a barrier – in fact the three open lanes on the Parkway are each separated from each other.

I continue, moving at a respectable Parkway speed of about 40 mph sufficiently behind the car in front of me. Slowly, I begin to realize something. I realize I am stuck in this lane – how will I get off. My plan, of course, is to get off the Parkway and cross Chain Bridge into the District. But how am I going to get there? I can’t cross into the other lane; I see no way out. I think of Sartre (as I often do): No Exit.

And then I see it. The exit to Route 120. But I can’t get there. I know what that means – I have to go all the way to the end of the Parkway, at the Beltway. The Beltway at rush hour.

Let me end it this way. I was driving home from the Virginia Jewish Community Center. When I had driven to the JCC from home about two or three hours earlier, the trip took 32 minutes. My return trip took one hour and 35 minutes. I drove an extra 14 miles.

Was I supposed to know not to get into the left lane? Did I miss a sign? I really don’t think so.

(2) Why was I at the Virginia JCC? In my role with the Jewish Funeral Practices Committee of Greater Washington, I was meeting with a funeral director from Texas who is thinking of opening (actually more than thinking – he seems intent on opening) a funeral parlor in Northern Virginia serving the Jewish community. I liked him, and it appears that he has two very nice funeral homes in Dallas and Houston. I think he would be a fine addition to the local community here.

Now, there are five funeral homes in the DC area serving the approximately 300,000 Jews in the area. Two of these funeral homes are in Virginia (both, it happens, in Alexandria), two in Maryland (one in Silver Spring and one in Rockville), and one in the District of Columbia.

So let’s say a sixth funeral home serving the Jewish community is opened. Who will be its customers? Its customers will be families who would otherwise use one of the five existing funeral homes. If it has any degree of. success, it will hurt the financial stability of one or more of the others (each of which provides very good service). There won’t be any other customers – in other words, more people aren’t going to die just because there’s another funeral home.

I know I don’t have a vote – but should I be for it? Or against it?

(3) The presenter this morning at my breakfast group was a retired physician – very well respected, very bright, very well spoken. His topic was the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v Wade, 18 months later. And he presented a dire picture, bemoaning the poor women living in the “pro-life” states, wondering why legislators are allowed to practice medicine without a license, and bemoaning the impossible positions that so many doctors now find themselves in, or potentially in.

He talked about the doctors leaving the conservative states, the students choosing their medical schools and internships elsewhere, and the hospitals which are finding it hard to hire. Then he added something that I hadn’t thought of. He said that he had been talking to someone at M.D. Anderson in Houston, who told him that oncologists in Texas were afraid to treat women of child bearing age who have cancer. The fear is that they might get pregnant during their treatment, and they might be in a condition where having a child would be dangerous to their health, or perhaps their condition would threaten the viability of the fetus.

This was a brand new thought for me. But, by coincidence, next week Edie and I are having supper with an oncologist from Anderson. He is coming to town for an NIH conference, and staying in Bethesda. The last time we saw him was at his wedding. Probably over 20 years ago. He is the son of people we know. Now, we will have something to talk to him about.

(4) Last night, we attended a benefit concert sponsored by the Jewish Federation, and several synagogues (including ours), to raise funds for Israel relief. The concert was promoted as having 15 local cantors, and one local Jewish choir. But – in fact – there were only 14 cantors. False advertising it was. And – what was interesting – is that 10 of the 14 cantors were women. Maybe that’s the way it is generally now in the non-Orthodox world? Beautiful voices – every one of them.