Here is a story to illustrate the theme of Rabbi Lawrence Kushner’s new book: [there are] Invisible Lines Of Connection: Sacred Stories of the Ordinary.
I was reading the November 1997 Temple Beth Israel Bulletin, the page about the Installation Weekend for our new Rabbi Stephen Fuchs. I saw the name Rabbi Richard Sternberger, described as Rabbi Fuchs’ “friend and mentor,” who was to give the Installation sermon. I knew that name from the distant past.
My grandmother, Annie Meyer, had a boarder by that name when she lived at 3210 Kensington Ave. in Richmond, Va. Her daughter and son-in-law, Mildred and Robert Eskeles, my aunt and uncle, lived there too. I called Aunt Mildred (now age 87) for confirmation. “What was the name of that young rabbi who boarded with Grandma a long time ago?” “Richard Sternberger,” she said after a few moments of recall. She continued her recollection: He was a student or assistant rabbi for the summer at Temple Beth Ahabah.
My own memory of the rabbi was dim, probably because I met him only a few times during a summer (late 40s) while home from college. But the name stayed with me because my grandmother talked about him so much. She was really crazy about him. Grandma Annie died in Dec. 1952.
Aunt Mil further recalled that Rabbi Sternberger officiated at the wedding of one of my cousins. The wedding was held in Baltimore and Rabbi Sternberger was asked to officiate by a relative who belonged to his synagogue, but who had no knowledge of his previous connection to the Richmond branch of the family. The wedding took place Feb. 22, 1957.
Aunt Mil described a picture taken at that wedding, which still stood on a table near her phone, in which Rabbi Sternberger was grouped with several members of the Meyer family. I told Aunt Mil that he was coming to West Hartford on Nov. 21 to install our new rabbi. “Well, tell him we still love him!” she instructed me.
On November 21, during Shabbat dinner at the synagogue before the Installation Service, I introduced myself to Rabbi Sternberger. “I’m the granddaughter of Annie Meyer,” I said, and was delighted by his amazement and immediate recall: “She lived on Kensington Ave. in Richmond, Virginia. I stayed in her house the summer of 1948 or 1949.” He also well remembered Aunt Mildred and Uncle Bob and was so glad to learn they were alive and well.
As Rabbi Larry Kushner might comment: the reason Rabbi Sternberger lived with my grandmother in Richmond, Va. in 1948 was so that Rabbi Sternberger and I could reminisce about it 50 years later in West Hartford, Connecticut at the Installation of Rabbi Stephen Fuchs.
