Charles S. Sher­man is the Senior Rab­bi of Tem­ple Adath Yeshu­run, the largest syn­a­gogue in Cen­tral New York. His book, The Bro­ken and the Whole: Dis­cov­er­ing Joy after Heart­break, will be pub­lished in March by Scrib­n­er. He will be blog­ging here all week for Jew­ish Book Coun­cil and MyJew­ish­Learn­ing.

No thun­der, bolts of light­ning, heav­en­ly voic­es, not even a friend­ly angel. Nonethe­less, a trans­form­ing life expe­ri­ence, frozen in time and space.

In 1986, I was 41 years old, and life was pret­ty good. I had it all: pro­fes­sion­al­ly sat­is­fied, rab­bi of a very large con­gre­ga­tion, a ter­rif­ic wife, four young chil­dren, two girls, two boys, expect­ing our fifth in three months. In my busi­ness, ​“the rab­bi busi­ness” some 13 years post-ordi­na­tion, I was con­vinced I had seen it all: the con­tin­u­um, life, death and every­thing in between. And as a ​“Good Rab­bi” I was instruct­ed in what to say and even how to say it, dis­pens­ing tra­di­tion­al wis­dom, com­fort, and per­spec­tive. For what­ev­er rea­son, I was insu­lat­ed and pro­tect­ed from life’s bad stuff, again life was bet­ter than good. 

But then – and I guess in the sto­ry of life there is always a ​“but then.” Our old­er son, four-year-old Eyal, is in seri­ous res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­tress. The med­ical opin­ion is a deep-seat­ed lesion on his brain­stem, a death sen­tence, at most sev­er­al weeks. The specifics of the nar­ra­tive are not nec­es­sary, suf­fice to say, after surgery Eyal suf­fers an inca­pac­i­tat­ing brain stem stroke leav­ing him a total quad­ri­pleg­ic. All his nec­es­sary human func­tions are arti­fi­cial­ly main­tained. But Eyal per­sists and per­se­veres, defy­ing his doc­tors and their harsh prog­no­sis and every­one else who has remind­ed him of what he can­not do. Now 32, Eyal lives with my wife and me. He had a Bar Mitz­vah, he grad­u­at­ed high school and college. 

Being a par­ent of a child so phys­i­cal­ly bro­ken, so depen­dent on oth­ers, changed me. It was as if a new life start­ed for me the day of Eyal’s stroke. I wish I could have learned these impor­tant life lessons tak­ing a class, study­ing a book, hear­ing oth­ers’ sto­ries. But I learned the painful and at times inspir­ing lessons firsthand. 

It has tak­en me years to get it right. To dis­tin­guish between the essen­tial and the irrel­e­vant. I may not always act on my belief sys­tem. Like a lot of folks, there remains a divide between creed and deed. But I find myself much more accept­ing, tol­er­ant, and inclu­sive, pre­fer­ring to err on the side of for­give­ness than right­eous indig­na­tion. I’ve learned about con­text and per­spec­tive. I’ve learned a new def­i­n­i­tion of com­mu­ni­ty. There are cer­tain things like pover­ty, ill­ness, and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty that do not dis­tin­guish between class, gen­der, race, nation­al ori­gin, or faith. And I’ve learned about ran­dom acts of gen­eros­i­ty and kind­ness in the most unex­pect­ed places from the most unex­pect­ed people. 

Look­ing at Eyal, so phys­i­cal­ly bro­ken, I some­times won­der if I knew then, March 1986, what I know now, that I would have to rede­fine my goals and ambi­tions, both per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al, the qual­i­ty of my rela­tion­ships, the def­i­n­i­tion of friend­ship and authen­tic­i­ty. I am not so sure I would have had the wis­dom, faith, con­fi­dence, tem­pera­ment, and per­sis­tence to han­dle what some sug­gest as impos­si­ble chal­lenges. But I did do it, dis­cov­er­ing strength and even a faith reaf­firmed that I nev­er thought pos­si­ble. I used to think the punc­tu­a­tion of life begins and ends with an excla­ma­tion point. But what I’ve learned is that the punc­tu­a­tion of life is more like the ellip­sis … you see the sto­ry nev­er ends. 

Active in numer­ous faith-based and sec­u­lar orga­ni­za­tions, Charles S. Sher­man has received many awards for his ser­vice and has been a respect­ed mem­ber of his com­mu­ni­ty for over forty years. He and his wife, Leah, par­ents of five chil­dren, live with their son Eyal in Syra­cuse, New York.