Davar Torah by Ralph Maimon
I asked to do a d’var torah in memory of my father, Isaac Maimon. Because of my lack of formal Jewish education, my divrei torah and personal interpretations are assuredly suspect, so my disclaimer is that the views expressed herein are not necessarily those of our Jewish Scholars. I do this with abundant humility and deference and apologize in advance to those whose knowledge far exceeds mine but this is straight from the heart. Most of all, despite some of the faults and errors, I hope that it at least measures up in such a way that it honors my father, Isaac Maimon, A”H.
Dad and his 7 siblings were bright people. Some could not even attend high school because they had to support the family after my Papoo’s death. Except for my uncle, Rabbi Maimon, their lack of formal higher education proved not to be an impediment for them. That lack was more than compensated for in the wisdom and knowledge that they attained by following the examples of their parents and the leaders of their community, by the difficulties that they endured, through teaching themselves, and also through the hard work that they did. The hard work: A ‘day off’ in my Dad’s six day 12 hour per day work week was leaving the store at 2pm on a Sunday. But I believe that all of that hard work life was preparatory to his active retirement because I believe that his and Mom’s retirement years were actually the most productive years of their lives. I believe that it was planned or preordained that they would spend their retirement years totally immersed in doing mitzvahs and doing acts of Tzedek, righteousness and Kiddush Hashem, sanctifying G-d’s name.
Many look forward to travel in motor homes, golf, fishing, doing home repair or pursuing hobbies that had to be deferred in their retirement years but for Dad and Mom, there was no question where they were heading. The words ‘motor home’ and ‘snow bird” were not even in their vocabulary.
You heard much yesterday in the eulogies about my Dad’s activities in his retirement: His standing room only ladino classes, lecturing to the Sephardic
Religious School and the Hebrew Academy, teaching bar mitzvah lessons, writing articles and lecturing at the UW and before organizations and congregations about Sephardic culture and Seattle’s Sephardim, consulting with scholars, students and writers on those topics, filling in as SBH Hazan whenever requested, consulting on questions of our Sephardic liturgy, Compiling the Ladino Hagadah with my cousin Hazan Ike Azose, his monthly La Boz articles and ladino lessons, volunteering in the synagogue office, mentoring me as the 1987-1990 SBH president, planning Sephardic Community related CAJE events, writing books including the complete and comprehensive eighty year history of our SBH congregation and of the history of the Ahavath Ahim Congregation. Keeping tabs on and delivering groceries to the poor and needy of our Sephardic community, organizing and manning the SBH Mitzvah Corps, visiting the infirm and needy, tending to the needs of the families of recently departed including preparing the food for the Seder of the avelim, attending meldados (even if the person were not well known to him or the community, searching out the unaffiliated in our community, tending to the needs of many families here when one of them was receiving cancer care treatment at the Hutch, driving our seniors to and from tefilah to make sure that they attended and that we had a minyan…to name a few. Even Penny Lockwood, our synagogue secretary for many years, referred to Dad as “Mitzvah Man”.
But all of that is not to say that Dad was not “productive” in the same way during his working years. Much of that was what we might call, “putting something away for retirement. Dad worked hard for over 45 years and I now believe that Hashem blessed him and Rachel with good health and energy and, most importantly, an early retirement because there was so much of Hashem’s work for him to do here until his death this week.
What did he “put away for retirement”?
He and Uncle Bension operated a modest grocery business, 24th Avenue Market, but, only second to our synagogues, it was a hub of Seattle’s Sephardic communal life. People had to come because there was no other source for the foods they sold, the azeitunas, queso blanco, bamias, avas frescas, halvah, even abudaraho. They hired virtually every young Sephardic boy as a driver, which exposed them to all of our traditions and enriched their lives (though not necessarily monetarily). The stories they still tell about delivering for 24th Avenue Market are legendary. They sold all manner of religious articles as well, so life cycle events were centered or at least started at 24th Avenue Market or at Maimon’s Kosher Foods. But even more significant were the meetings that took place at the store, where people would stop, chat (often in Ladino) and renew acquaintances, a place where Uncle Bension or Dad were asked, “What is our Turkish custom to do this or that…?” or “How do you say this in Ladino..?” or “In Turkey, how did they do this.. ?” They were the link to our past, our customs and the community. In a way, despite Al Gore’s claims, perhaps on a more modest level, they were the ones that conceived the World Wide Web.
Dad’s store was also the place from which so many mitzvahs sprung. He and Uncle Bension gave credit, interest free credit, to all comers, even the people who today who would have, in the latest vernacular, “poor credit scores”… to those in our own community and those who lived in the neighborhood. Not only did they give them credit but they did it with free delivery!
They catered not only to Sephardim but to the Seventh Day Adventists, and, may I say, to the “locals”. Talk about diversity: The kosher corned beef and pastrami was in the same case as the salt pork and the Pesach goods sat next to the canned George Washington meatless hot dogs that were a favorite of the seventh day Adventists: The vegetable bins on the roller carts outside the store had avas frescas right next to the black eye peas and the collard and mustard greens.
They sent food for Pesach and Hagadahs to Walla Walla State Prison, and to remote locales where you would not expect there to be any judios.
The store was Dad’s vehicle for keeping in touch with so many of the forgotten families of our community and then looking out for their welfare, especially at holiday time. Unmotivated by the tax benefits of charitable contributions, Dad discretely collected money or food items from some of our community members who could afford to give, in order to stock these poor families’ shelves on the holidays as well as throughout the year, often adding items directly from the shelves of the store to supplement whatever else they needed. The donors often did not know who it went to, and Dad took no credit for what was going to them. Come to think of it, these recipients must have thought the delivery drivers who brought them the 50# boxes of groceries were their benefactors! This, I understand is the absolute best form of Tzedakah, anonymous Tzedakah. He not only gave it anonymously but helped the other donors to do the same.
One of the things that I have the utmost respect for Dad and Uncle Bension was hiring of the Angel boys, Natan and Louie, in the store. This is long before it was fashionable or PC to hire the disabled. Their rather severe disabilities hardly made them employable at all. Dad worked with them, painstakingly and with the utmost patience, taught them things like how to count money, stocking the shelves and pricing stock. These translated into allowing them to handle daily activities of life without fear of being taken advantage of. His teaching was so good that I remember coming into the store one day after Garfield to start the deliveries and seeing Louie and Dad arguing about what price to mark the 5 gallon cans of olive oil. The work that he gave them to do gave them a level of self worth and dignity that they never would have had otherwise. It also gave them a generous bag of groceries to take home every night.
At the same time, Dad was asked frequently and found time to conduct services or assist our Hazan in Kahal. In my mind’s ears, I can still hear Dad’s sweet velvety voice, effortlessly and with total conviction and emotion, negotiating the highs and the lows of the chanting of the Cohanim Service on Kippur and the Ketubah de la ley on Shavuot. He also made time to be on the board and later as the President of our synagogue.
The word Kadosh means Holy. I learned in preparing with my son, Mark, for his Bar Mitzvah Perasha, called “Kedoshim”, what, in Judaism, it means to be holy. The portion starts with G-d commanding the Israelites “Kedoshim Tihyu” to be holy. You would think that the formula for being holy would include the likes of solitude, meditation, avoiding mundane thoughts and practices, maybe to wear white robes, chanting prayers as we stroll down the street, perhaps not cutting our hair or refraining from drinking wine. But those are not in the Jewish formula. The formula for being holy, or G-d-like or nearer to G-d-like, is in how we conduct ourselves in relation to our fellow man. It includes our respectful relationship with parents and our fellow man (and woman), the prohibition of not harvesting your entire crop but to leave it for the needy, not to steal, not to lie (not just in court or while under oath), not to oppress others, not to withhold wages earned, even overnight, not to charge interest, not to curse the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind, to mete out equal and fair justice without reference to status or wealth, not to be idle in the face of an injustice, not to be vengeful, and to “love thy neighbor as thyself”. The word tzedakah or charity has the same shoresh, root, as the work Tzaddik.
In short, all the things that we attribute to a person who is a true Tzaddik. Isaac Maimon, A”H, was a true Tzaddik, who was a holy man, a man of Kedusha, whose life was full of doing things that were Kiddush Hashem, enhancing the holiness in the name of Hashem. And so is my mother Rachel who was a big part in all of this.
When we say in Bereshit, that G-d made man in his image, B’zelem Elohim, I don’t feel it means in his physical image as Michaelangelo or Da
Vinci or Raphael envisioned Hashem, but that it was the way that it is described in Kedoshim, in the traits of sympathy, of giving dignity to our fellow man, in charity, and in justice. I believe that my Dad was truly made b’zelem elohim.