The Actual Dance describes a love relationship that is so deep that the spiritual essence of two people merge so that they make the other complete. “I am the other half of that which makes Susan and me complete.” I have written a poem that describes it as being “an equal half of the other.”
Today, February 9th, 2018, as I am prepare to host a dinner celebration of the 90th Birthday of Rabbi Laszlo Berkowits I am brought to consider once again the myriad shapes and forms of love between people. I have known Rabbi Berkowits for 45 years. In that time, and especially the last twenty years, we have spent enormous amounts of time with each other in highly intimate situations. His first trip back to Auschwitz where as a 16-year-old boy he spent not quite a year. His first trip back to Camp Woebbelin in Germany where he was liberated May 2, 1945 by the 82nd Airborne. Then four more times back to Woebbelin. Visits together to the Berlin Memorial to the Holocaust and the Jewish museum in Berlin.
There were other times with other intimate, incredible moments of awe and desperation and celebration and joy. He has taught me to seek the joy of each moment of each day of life.
And now, as I get ready for this fabulous evening of celebration in deep introspection, I think I understand something new about love and life. My perfect love with my wife, Susan, of 51 years that has taught me so much is unique and not exclusive. What I realize today on the 90th Birthday of Laszlo Berkowits is that we as human beings connect with others similarly; interactions and shared experiences so deep that the space between us disappears and we become connected as deeply and as completely as if we were physical one. We are spiritually one. This is possible because love is infinite and to be found and discovered between two people through different and complex interactions.
So here are a few links that will introduce you to Rabbi Laszlo Berkowits, my friend who I have come to love and with whom I am in some ways one. Let's start with his book: The Boy Who Lost his Birthday, here And some wonderful interviews with him here and here and here.
Are there people in your lives that you love in this deep, intimate way? Tell us about them.