Rabbi Janet Offel
Yom Kippur Yizkor 5767
The Other 100
Many of you are probably familiar with the annual media surveys of the most important people in the world. Each year, it seems like there are more and more of these “most important” reviews. Everyone from fashion designers to Egyptologists are honored in one survey or another, and where would we be without the Forbes list of the wealthiest people in the world? It seems like the old high school yearbook popularity contests ad naseum, except now we don’t even know who most of these people are, let alone have any opinion about them.
But last April, I read an essay in Time Magazine that caught my attention. Written by columnist Joel Stein, it was entitled, “Meet the Other 100.” Stein noted that after looking at this year’s Time 100, he came to the conclusion that the people feted by Time Magazine really didn’t matter much in his life. He then “asked a bunch of people if these were the 100 people who were most important in their lives this year—and not one of them said yes” (Time Magazine, April 30, 2006, “Meet the Other 100”).
So Stein went about creating his own list, which he dubbed “the Joel 100,” a list composed entirely of the people who were most important in his own life. The first thing he noticed when he began to compose the Joel 100, was that 100 is way too many. As he remarked,” I don’t know how I found 130 for my wedding.”
Yet even with all of the tongue in cheek remarks that Stein made along the way, I felt strongly drawn to the deeper meaning that he was really addressing.
Very few, if any of us in this room this afternoon will ever make a list in Time Magazine, Forbes Magazine or any other magazine for that matter. In a society that is becoming all the more obsessed with the trappings of celebrity and wealth, our own sense of who and what is important has been skewed.
Yes, there are a few famous people who I think deserve to be on anyone’s top 100 list this year, if for no other reason than they have set their own lives as meaningful examples for others.
A name that immediately comes to my mind is Stephon Marbury. Since I haven’t seen Stephon on any of the media lists, I think that he is worth mentioning this afternoon. Until I read an article in the Los Angeles Times a few weeks ago by J.A. Adande, I had never heard of Marbury. But those of you who are NBA fans know that he is the captain of the New York Knicks.
I have to tell you right here and now, I am not a fan of the NBA. Baseball, football, college basketball… I follow my teams with avid attention. But the NBA, forget it.
It seems that, like many NBA stars, Marbury has come out with his own line of athletic shoes, the Starbury One, but here’s the catch, unlike the others which often cost over $100, a pair of his shoes costs 14.98. Yes, that’s right, only fourteen dollars and ninety-eight cents for a sneaker model touted by an NBA star. A celebrity piece of apparel that is actually affordable for the vast majority of working-class parents to buy for their kids.
As Adande notes, “the standard procedure is for shoe companies to use a player’s street creed to sell expensive sneakers.” Of course, they have to sell them for a lot of money, because the player is receiving millions of dollars a year to promote the product. In Marbury’s case, he isn’t making any money to endorse the shoes. The only money he will make will be based on the sales of the shoe.
Why is Marbury doing this? Adande remembers from his own childhood, “wanting the Nike Air Force I’s when they first came out—priced at $70 and up—and my mom explaining they were too expensive. I got the canvas shoes, or the leather low-tops if I was lucky. Marbury said he never even bothered to ask his mom ‘because I already knew it wasn’t going to happen. We were on food stamps. I don’t have to say no more. We were in the welfare line.”
This
season, Marbury, a kid who grew up in the projects of
In my mind, Stephon Marbury belongs on a list of most important people. He is someone who is making a difference in our society, and who deserves to be honored for his decision to forego a few million dollars more, in order to bring a sense of respectability and decency to hard-working families.
But I don’t personally know Marbury, and probably never will. And this afternoon is our Yizkor service, when we remember those who have made a difference very personally in our own lives.
So let me ask you to ponder on this afternoon of yizkor, of remembrance, who are the people who have mattered most to you in your life?
We open the newspapers and the magazines and scan the lists of famous and infamous people. But how often do we open our own minds and do the same? Scanning through our memory bank, calling forth the people who have made an impact in our own lives?
To peruse
Joel Stein’s 100 is a good start. His
wife, mother and father are listed numbers 1, 2 and 3. Next comes the man who gave him his first
“break” as a
Stein’s list is at different moments funny, poignant, predictable and surprising. It includes friends, co-workers, bosses, seemingly almost all of his extended family, and the proprietor of his local taco stand. It also includes the people who sold him his house, his agent and lawyer, and his account executive at Citibank.
A few days ago, a friend of mine sent me an e-mail. It was one of those chain e-mails, which I generally don’t respond to, but perhaps I am responding to it this afternoon, by way of this sermon.
Entitled, “People Come Into Your Life For A Reason,” it notes that some people come into our lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. When someone comes into our life for a reason, they have come to assist us through a difficulty, to provide us with guidance and support, to aid us physically, emotionally or spiritually, but they don’t stay for a lifetime. When our need has been met, or our desire fulfilled, their work is done.
Those who come into our life for a season may teach us something we have never done, bring an experience of peace or make us laugh. They usually bring with them an unbelievable amount of joy, but only for a season, before their work is done.
Lifetime relationships teach us lifetime lessons, the things that we must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation. Our job is to accept the lesson, love the person and put what we have learned to use in all other relationships and areas of our life.
This afternoon, in this time of remembrance and renewal, is the time for each of us to begin assembling our own lists of the most important people in our life. The ones who have come into our lives for a reason, a season or a lifetime.
I’m putting Stephon Marbury on my list, because he serves to remind me of the goodness inherent even in some National Basketball Association players. But more important to my list ar