The Forgiveness Tour by Susan Shapiro

Author:Susan Shapiro
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781510766150
Publisher: Skyhorse
Published: 2020-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

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I wanted to know more about the Jewish Humanistic outlook on forgiveness, so Gary put me in touch with Tamara Kolton, the rabbi who’d presided over the funeral of his wife and his two sons.

“I was close with the whole family. I was at our summer camp with Alex and Sam,” said Kolton, a vivacious blonde from Michigan a little younger than Gary, who spoke with me over the phone. “Here’s what I remember most. Right after they died, Judith and Alex’s spirits came to me in the middle of the night.”

“In a dream?” I asked.

“It felt real,” she said. “Alex told me he still wanted to have his bar mitzvah in the fall. And Judith—who was always trying to push me to go to Landmark—told me I had to try it. The next day I called my mom to tell her, asking why Sam hadn’t come too.”

“What did your mother say?”

“She said that Sam didn’t have any unfinished business with me. I didn’t want to try Landmark but Mom told me I didn’t have to. ‘You mean you don’t have to obey spirits?’ I asked her, amazed. It was the first time I’d ever been visited by the dead, so I wasn’t sure of the rules.”

I was a shrinkaholic ex-poet whose mother often reminded me that the women in our family were witches. So who was I to question Tamara’s apparitions?

“Did you tell Gary?” I asked.

“Yes! And we had a posthumous bar mitzvah for Alex at the Temple. It was beautiful and joyous, not the least bit maudlin. Gary spoke stirringly about how much fun he’d had acting with Alex in The Wizard of Oz. He played the music Alex used to play when he’d started a little business selling ice cream. Gary was a great father.”

“Did you tell Rabbi Wine about your spiritual encounter?”

“No way,” she said. “My supernatural powers were too far out—even for him.” She laughed, adding that her clairvoyance and radical feminism led her to leave the temple and strike out on her own.

“From a religious view, were you pushing Gary towards forgiving the drunk driver?”

“No. It was all Gary. If I woke up one morning and my spouse and two kids were gone, I might want to check out, to go be with them. How could you live, or forgive the person who did this? Gary is a fucking miracle. I call him ‘a light worker on the planet earth.’ I follow his lead. He’s like my Rabbi.”

“Did you ever go to Landmark?”

“I tried one introductory session,” she said. “But it wasn’t for me.”

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