I want to start today with a brief note about Indian restaurants (of interest only to those who live in Washington or who might be visiting us one day, soon or not so soon). We tend to patronize Indian restaurants because we eat a lot of vegetarian food out of the house, and you can be sure that an Indian restaurant will give you a lot of choices. Here are four that we (read that: I) recommend: (1) The Cafe of India on Wisconsin Avenue is only about a mile from our house and is our standby, especially for carry out. It is always good and always reliable, (2) Maya is an Indian/Nepali restaurant also on Wisconsin, but in Bethesda, maybe three miles from the house. We have eaten here several times over the past few years. Again, always good and always reliable, (3) Tikka, which is only about 3/4 of a mile form the house and which just opened a few months ago (replacing another Indian restaurant which had been there a while, but which we (i.e., I) would not have placed on this list). Tikka is better, but maybe the food is a bit too fancy for a simple Indian restaurant? Maybe, and (4) the one we discovered last night (because – who knew? – Maya is not open on Mondays), Delhi Spice, on Bethesda Avenue in (as you might suspect) Bethesda. This might be the best of them all. And if you go……try to fig curry (no, it is not a dessert), made with figs, cashews, paneer (cheese), and ginger. Now you have our favorites. (Perhaps I should have added Indique in Cleveland Park, but we have not been there for a long time.)

[A digression. I read today on his Wikipedia page that Johnny Mathis has had 9 holes-in-one. You believe it? That got me thinking. Has anyone had more than 9? It turns out that there are two golfers who each have more than 50! End of digression.]

I didn’t pay too much attention to the world at large yesterday, because I spent a day more like the days I spent before my retirement 12+ years ago. I left the house before 9 and didn’t get home until about 4, because I had back to back meetings that lasted about 5 hours. I will explain.

The first week of June is scheduled to bring a couple of changes to my daily activities. On Monday, June 6, I am ending my 9 years as president of the Jewish Funeral Practices Committee of Greater Washington, Inc., and on Thursday, June 9, I am slated to become president of the Haberman Institute for Jewish Studies, Inc., of which I have been serving as vice-president for the past 6 or so years. At age 82, I did not think I could/should do both – we will see how long I can keep doing one.

The Jewish Funeral Practices Committee has been around for more than four decades. Its primary activity has been contracting with local funeral homes to provide traditional, frill-free funeral services for members of the metropolitan area’s Jewish community at prices well below standard prices charged by other funeral homes. Its two funeral homes perform about 200 funerals a year, and the Committee helps by providing some ancillary services in accordance with Jewish tradition. At current rates, the Committee sponsored funeral would cost a family about $3500, which is half or less than what they would most likely pay elsewhere.

The Committee is a staff-less, volunteer run operation, with a few people being paid for specific services. Because there is no regular staff or office, fund raising is not normally part of the activities required, and even the role of president is not particularly time consuming unless there is a determination to change funeral homes, or unless a particular problem crops up. Other than that, it is basically monitoring services, a little trouble shooting, answering questions that families might have, and so forth. The website is http://www.jewishfuneralsdc.org if you want to learn more.

The problem is that there is no one to take my place as president. I gave notice that I was leaving the position about a year ago. We have a board of directors of about a dozen people, only two of whom (plus myself) really spend any time working on the organization’s affairs. One of those individuals, the vice-president, is a very active individual who has long expressed his desire never to become president, and the other is the treasurer, which is a function that does require a substantial about of time and attention to detail. The other board members are inactive and appear to want to stay that way.

Over the past two years, we lost two very active members who have passed away, one after a lingering illness, and one suddenly. We have added a few new members since then with high expectations, but so far the expectations have exceeded the reality. Although I am somewhat uncomfortable about stepping down and leaving our vice president with at least temporary authority, I have decided that if I don’t follow through, I never will be able to, and I will be in this job for the rest of my life. I had given a year’s notice, and I think it is time for it to be someone else’s problem. I have agreed to stay on the board.

On the 9th of June, also as a result of a long time commitment, but without any regret, I am scheduled to become the Haberman president. The Haberman Institute for Jewish Studies also has been around since the mid-1980s, most of the time under the name The Foundation for Jewish Studies. We renamed it after its founder, Rabbi Joshsua Haberman, passed away at the age of 98 in 2017. Haberman has a more active board and a three person staff. It is a bigger operation, although you could not consider it big. Fundraising is a part of the activities of the board because it has a mid six figure annual budget, and most of its activities themselves do not bring in significant amounts of revenue.

Haberman provides lectures and classes on Jewish subjects. It is not a purely religious organization, and its areas of concentration include culture and history, as well as religion and philosophy. It is not a denominational organization (neither is the Funeral Services Committee). The Haberman programs, once all in person and locally centered, now are primarily (but not exclusively) online, and our audiences (which average about 250 per program) are split between residents of the DC area, and people scattered around the United States and Canada, with usually a smattering of Europeans and Israelis thrown in (in spite of time zone differences). The website is http://www.habermaninstitute.org.

Our board is active, our activities are growing,  working with the organization is a welcome challenge, always interesting and rewarding, and I am looking forward to continuing working with it as long as I can.

I have no idea how it has happened that all the activities I spend my time on have something to do with the Jewish community. While I was practicing law, I was involved in the leadership of a number of professional organizations, but even then I had my hands in some Jewish communal organizations. I have been on two synagogue boards and served both as officers, I have been a board member of a local and thriving Jewish day school, and I spent 20 years as a board member (and 6 as an officer) of the American support group for Ben Gurion University of the Negev, in Israel. If you had told me while I was in my 20s that this is the way things were going to work out, I would not have taken you seriously.

But – for sure – no regrets. We will see what happens from here on out…..