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Rosh Hashanah Talk

September 7, 2002
Noah Levinson

As some of you know, I just returned from spending the better part of last year in Calcutta. Several weeks ago I was invited to share on this holiest of days, a bit about what I was doing there, a few stories and experiences about this most magical city and the impact her people have had on me. But it was only a few days ago that I was informed that this would be the Rosh Hashanah sharing. It is quite intimidating--but of course--also quite an honor to stand before you and before God to share what I found important about this most profound experience, and to tell you a little bit about what I was doing in this rundown, dirty city which is home to some of the poorest people in the world.

From an early age I was exposed to the world outside of the United States. Through my dad’s work in international food and nutrition, and the family trips we took together to Asia and Africa I’ve grown to love the third world and it has become a part of me. I was privileged to be able to spend four of my high school summers doing community service projects in Thailand, Mexico and Ghana, three of them through World Learning based right here in Brattleboro. Then two years ago I was inspired to take part in the work Mother Teresa had begun with the poorest of the poor in Calcutta. Together with my friend Sohrab, a Muslim from Iran who also was graduating from Northfield Mount Hermon, I decided to spend the summer before college exploring the Calcutta of Mother Teresa and to volunteer with her order.

Mother Teresa’s work was based solely on love. Her greatest love was for God, and her greatest fear was that she would one day appear before God and be introduced to those whom she had neglected or had not loved enough. As a result, she gave of herself completely to those who no longer had people to love them. Sohrab and I went to work in what is known as Nirmal Hridoy which, in Bengali, means Pure Heart… Mother Teresa’s Home for the Dying Destitutes. The setting is a beautiful old building which radiates a kind of peace and tranquility and which sits directly next to the Kali Temple—one of India’s most sacred places.

As I walked into Nirmal Hridoy for the first time, I was exposed to a reality I had never before imagined. Before me were 100 men and women, most of them nothing more than skeletons with a thin layer of flesh covering their bones. They had nothing; and they were desperately in need of the love which Mother Teresa and her workers were there to give. We spent nearly 6 weeks at Nirmal Hridoy and I was blessed with the opportunity to be with people as they made their journeys from life into death. Never before had I felt so close to God. Never before had I felt I was experiencing the face of God. As I said goodbye to these dear souls, I sang to them the Sh’ma, and I wept. My tears came not so much out mourning, but rather from the joy of knowing that this holy woman’s vision had given these people a way to die with dignity; and from the privilege I felt in being able to share with these men and women their last moments on earth.

During that summer, I made many entries in my journal. Let me just share a few of them with you now.

Fear overwhelmed my strength as I walked through those screened doors from life into
Life before death.
On my left lay an old forgotten man who had but days to live.
On my right, voidum
I chose voidum.
It lasts not long, for before too long, forgetting the forgotten means forgetting yourself.
Voidum was the entrance to suffering—the lined up heads, the decrepit skulls clothed in green,
The Holocaust remembrance—a holocaust itself.
I’m asked to wash and I argue not.
Smelling of disinfectant I soak my hands in a bucket of water and begin to scrub.
Picking up a diaper stained with excrement, my bare hands touch and wash away the filth to dress the forgotten in what seems like satin pajamas.
“What happens to those if and when they die?” I ask.
Silence comprehends—it matters not.
“Kaemon Achen, Bundhu?” I say as I stroke the head—bare of hair resulting from lice—of an old man picked up just days before.
“He can’t hear” his neighbor whispers to me.
I pick him up as sweat drips from my forehead, down to my nose, landing on his arm—he flinches.
Carrying him through the walkway, made narrower by need of space is like walking on a tightrope with bricks on my back.
Dodging the head of one and the foot of another.
Tears fill my eyes, my arms grow weak, my existence seems irrelevant…
But Mother looks me in the eyes, says “They lived like animals. At least let them die like human beings”, and my feeling comes back: Why did I turn my back on that forgotten man?

As my professors at Marlboro can attest, when I returned to this country after 6 weeks in Calcutta, my body was here, but my heart and my soul were still in India. I had found the place in which I could be closest to God. And knowing that such a place existed but not being there was painful.

So I spent another summer in Calcutta at Nirmal Hridoy, and again the magic returned; the closeness to God was palpable, and yet now I felt something was missing. I found myself reflecting that while love is capable of so much good, love alone sometimes is not enough. I found myself in the presence of people dying of curable diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis. I began wrestling with myself – and with God - over whether or not helping these persons die in peace was all that I should be doing. It became clear to me that Mother Teresa’s mission was not to run a hospital; it was not to further the development of poor and needy children. Rather her sole mission was to give love to those who would otherwise die alone on the streets. Was this going to be enough for me?

I believe that God’s answer came to me in the form of a young man about my own age who had been brought to The Home for the Dying Destitutes because he was dying of an infection on his head which had entered below the skull. The boy’s name was Sudip. After just a moment in his presence I recognized him – and the memory of those circumstances took my breath away.

Sudip had been a beggar on the other side of the Ganges River. Every Sunday, street children from that side of the river are invited to the headquarters of a local organization to receive a meal, have a clean place to bathe, and get bandages for their sores and cuts - all of this plus an afternoon of games and songs. I had gone one day the previous summer to volunteer with this program and was put in charge of distributing the bandages and dressing the wounds. On that day there were over 150 children, many of whom needed medical attention.. For over 3 hours I was dressing small wounds and distributing medicines. But after seeing less than half of the children, we’d run out of supplies, and the remaining children were told to come back the following week.

Sudip was one of the kids still in line when the medicine and bandages ran out. I remember watching him and feeling particularly bad about his unattended injury. He had bumped his forehead against the head of a rusty nail just days before and badly needed treatment. And now, a year later, here was Sudip, dying of that head injury and lying on a cot at the Home for Dying Destitutes. I was with Sudip constantly thereafter, until, the following day, he died in my arms..

The pain and anguish this caused me were excruciating. On some level I felt responsible for Sudip’s death. And it did not seem mere happenstance, in a city with a population of 13 to 15 million people, that we had met again. I took this death as a sign from God that our wrestling was over; that indeed more could be done and needed to be done.

My idea was simple in theory, but in practice it was the most challenging thing I’ve ever done. The idea was to establish a mobile health clinic which would drive around the poorest slums in and around Calcutta, providing medical treatment to street children in need. I came back to this country and sent out fundraising letters to nearly every person I knew. Understandably my idea was met with a considerable amount of skepticism—even some cynicism. While admitting that such concerns might very well be legitimate, the spiritual pull was strong enough to allow me to move ahead in spite of them. In fact, enough people either subscribed to, or humored me about my outlandish idea that, within 2 months, I had raised over $30,000.00 and was financially equipped to initiate the project.

In January 2002 I returned to Calcutta with a single suitcase, a little spending money, and $30,000 to start a mobile health clinic.

I had the good fortune early on to come in contact with an organization which, like Mother Teresa’s, has been working selflessly to help the poor of Calcutta, but has been focusing its attention on street children. Ashalayam — an organization recognized by both UNESCO and UNICEF for its excellence and its commitment – eagerly embraced my suggestion of a collaboration. I was accordingly given the opportunity to use their organization as my home-base along with tax-identification, computers, and connections with the state government of West Bengal.

So, together with a competent and dedicated Calcutta staff which I recruited and hired, we have been able put together a most beautiful project - one which is providing monthly checkups, medicines, surgery, substance abuse rehabilitation, braces for the handicapped, and, through the efforts of Ashalayam, educational opportunities to over 650 targeted children living in slums in the poorest outskirts of Calcutta. The mobile clinic is now operating in 13 areas of peri-urban Calcutta and providing services not only to registered targeted children (those whom we arrange to see at least once a month), but to any sick child who comes to the clinic for care. A policy of the clinic is that no sick child will ever be turned away—this I owe to Sudip.

Our wonderful doctor, nurse, coordinator, driver, and numerous helpers are doing quite a job of making this mobile clinic work. For the next 5 years, I’ll be making two extended visits a year to India to make sure the project is doing what it should be, and to keep tabs on all financial matters there. Taking charge of the fundraising for the project here in this country will also be my responsibility.

Last night I was very touched when a recent Bat Mitzvah came up to me after the service and handed me an envelope with a check made out to the mobile health clinic and totaling 18 percent of her Bat-Mitzvah gifts. We are always in need of financial support, and if you are moved to do so, we would be so happy for your support.

However I’m committed to the idea that a project set up to help Indian children should be run by Indians and be part of an Indian-based program. The imposition of many otherwise capable foreign organizations is often an embarrassment to the very capable people living in developing countries. So while continuing to be actively involved in the project, I plan to continue with my studies at Marlboro and hopefully head for medical school after that.

I’d like to reiterate what my dad said last night in his sermon, namely that a spiritual dimension to our lives can make sense of, and indeed provide beauty and meaning to the most incomprehensible of situations. This idea was instilled in me by my parents when I was very young, and I believe it was because of this spiritual dimension of my life that I was able to transform a painful and traumatic experience into something deeply meaningful.

Let me tell you one more story about a child who provided me with untold inspiration for this project --a young Muslim boy of 10, by the name of Irshad. Irshad, along with his 11 brothers and sisters live with their parents in a slum known as Pilkhana. Irshad was a child-laborer who worked 9 hours a day making locks for metal trunks. His daily wage was 10 rupees (roughly 20 cents). Each week he would collect his money, give 55 rupees to his father, and keep 5 rupees for himself.

One week he decided to use those 5 rupees to rent a bicycle for a few hours. He had never ridden a bicycle before, but having spent so many hours watching other children, he was sure he would get the hang of it quickly. For a while he rode around the slum with enormous joy and pride and sense of accomplishment. But the joy was not to last. While riding past a woman frying Indian sweets, he lost control of the bicycle and fell on the frying pan of burning oil.

Irshad was rushed to the government hospital where he was diagnosed with 60 percent burns which began at the base of his neck and ended half way down his right thigh. He was injected with numerous painkillers, but after 3 days in the hospital little had been done to heal the burns. His cries of anguish were incessant, while, day by day, Irshad grew weaker. His older sister then came from the village and decided that her brother should die at home in peace surrounded by his family, rather than in this hospital with people in every bed, every inch of floor space used, blood stained sheets, doctors who had become numb to the pain which surrounded them, and dead bodies which lay covered until staff from the morgue made their evening rounds.

I was having lunch with my dear friend and teacher, Lucy-didi (whom my dad introduced to you last night) when a message came to her house with the news that Irshad was dying in his home. Lucy-didi invited me to join her as she rushed to the house. There we found Irshad lying naked on the cold dirt floor of his family’s dwelling with his head resting on his father’s lap. The burns were inflamed and infected, the pain in his face too much for me to bear. Yet when I held his hand there was warmth and his eyes welcomed me. Within minutes we had put together a makeshift stretcher and together with his father, I carried this dying child through the slum to a private hospital where I knew the doctor. What a powerful experience it was to carry this boy through the streets of his neighborhood, swerving around the goats and cows and the vendors, hurrying past the children playing ball, past the huge pieces of meat hanging from hooks outside the butcher shops, past the old men sipping tea on the doorsteps.

It took hours for the nurses to clean and dress his burns and terrible infections. While this was taking place, Lucy-didi and I each held onto one of Irshad’s hands and Lucy-didi sang songs to him throughout the day and evening. Each day Lucy-didi and I went to visit Irshad, and day by day our young friend became stronger and stronger. After three months of hospitalization, Irshad was strong enough to leave the hospital. His scars are deep, both physically and emotionally, but his youthful strength has returned, an inspiration to all of us.

Just days before I left Calcutta, I was called to Irshad’s house and told that Irshad had a gift for me. I arrived at his house and found Irshad naked as usual (some of his burns were still open enough that any cloth would stick to them). He had borrowed a tape player and put on his favorite Hindi film-song and began dancing. Irshad danced passionately for 10 minutes without stopping - - this naked child on the cold floor of his slum dwelling, his body covered with scars, was dancing again for the first time. He made me feel that the dance was just for me. Sweat dripped from his forehead and from his chest, the pressure of his weight re-opened some of his burns and some blood dripped on to the floor. But it was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

When Lucy-didi goes back to Calcutta at the beginning of next month, she will supervise a minor surgery which will allow Irshad to walk with more ease. Then in January, Irshad will be sent to boarding school where he can pursue the first steps of his dream—to be a doctor like the doctors who saved his life.

I would like conclude by telling you how genuinely pleased I am to be a part of your community. The joy this congregation has brought to my mom and dad is enough for me to know that this will be a nurturing environment for my personal and spiritual development. Thank you again for the opportunity to share these thoughts with you. Good Yontiv, L’Shana Tova, and as Lucy-didi would say, Shobo Nabo Bosho.