Fulfilling A Mitzvah in Real Time

My friend Debra has a mop of springy black curls, a grin that promises good trouble and the Kaddish prayer tattooed across her collarbone. She once entered a Leather Mommy contest, and her entire speech consisted of the sentence, “Because I’m the Mommy, that’s why.”

Over a decade ago, Debra suspended her freewheeling roguish lesbian life to buy a condo in the San Fernando Valley where she could live with her father who had become too old and unwell to live alone. I first got to know Debra and her dad Bo when a group of us from a local congregation went on a trip to Israel. It says a lot about our friendship that, after hours together on a small bus, we liked one another better than before.

Bo was a revelation. He hobbled a bit, but he kept up with us as we visited the Ramon Crater in the Negev desert and other rugged sites. He was wide-eyed and happy at the Western Wall and other important places and was a delight at dinner, swapping stories easily with people he was only just meeting. By the time the trip ended, Bo was part of the congregation family.

It was only after we returned home to Los Angeles that I learned that the heavily saline water of the Dead Sea had hurt Bo’s legs, making raw patches that bled in the night. Debra had spent the evening wetting towels and placing them on his skin to blot out the blood, then treating him with soothing aloe and antiseptic. Neither had complained on the next day as we all boarded the bus for our next destination or at all during our trip.

Bo lived with Debra for years, during which she encouraged him to remain with the synagogue, volunteering and making friends on his own. She found a senior center where he could take class and do crafts. Regularly, she marched him out of the condo, making him go on walks for as long as he was able. 

As Bo began to lose parts of himself, Debra sat still for repetitions of old anecdotes told as if for the first time. She helped Bo build his collection of bears, stuffed and ceramic, because he remembered that he’d attended Cal Berkeley and loved the Golden Bears football team.

When Bo passed on, at least three dozen people came to the service to support Debra in her loss. The lesbian couple from synagogue for whom Bo had been Uncle Dad. Lots of people from synagogue. The union organizer for whom Debra had been raising money, without fanfare. Caregivers from the facility where Bo had to spend his final days under medical care. 

As Debra wrote in her book Assisted Loving, “Whilst I joke frequently and darkly, when Dad makes the move from this corporeal existence, I know I will have made the last part of his life on this planet as comfortable and hopefully as fun as possible. And as reluctant as I am to admit it, it’s been fun for me too. Isn’t that the best we can ask for in life?”

This is what fulfilling a mitzvah looks like.

Rabbi Robin Podolsky serves on the Board of Governors for the Sandra Caplan Community Bet Din and writes for Shondaland and Jewish Journal. Her most recent academic article was published in Religions, Vol. 10, #4. She facilitates writing workshops and serves as dramaturg for Queerwise, a spoken word and writing group.