The other day I twas googling around with that number and alighted upon an email address, "maqom613@gmail.com". It belonged to a Rabbi Judith Z Abrams who had been my Talmudic teacher for the second half of 2012. I had found her fairly randomly, as you do online, and had enjoyed a number of stimulating one on one classes via Skype video.
It's funny how after exchanging so many words with someone, you often retain just a handful of them. From Rabbi Judith I recall her preference for the Yerushalmi (Jerusalem) Talmud over (what became the more widely used) Bavli (Babylon / Iraq) Talmud. I also recall her passion for the Talmudic time-machine, meaning the way you talk and debate with sages from antiquity as if they were still here today, in the room with you. It's very true that Jews often preface a statement with, "As Hillel / Rambam etc says", rather than "said". Judith loved the feeling that as a Jew engaged in Talmud "you're never lonely!" such is the level of inter-generational conversation.
Then there was Judith's very Jewish pogrom paranoia. I may be exaggerating a bit but the subject of where is safest for a Jew did come up and I was struck by her preference for New Zealand over Israel. According to Rabbi Abrams, who would skype me from her home in Houston, Texas, we are safer when we're not all in the same place, a sitting duck.
Finally, I recall her assertion that all serious religions and spiritual paths eventually lead to the same mountain top. I wanted to quote her here but I can't seem to find my Google Docs page full of notes from our classes. Which is weird because for years, every time I typed "Docs" into the web browser of my old iMac it would take me directly to those notes, rather than to the general Docs landing page. It's as if Judith were still there, trying to talk to me Talmudic-style across time and space.
I googled her name and landed fairly quickly on a page announcing the"untimely death of our beloved Rabbi, wife and mother: Judith Zabarenko Abrams". That was in October 2014, so less than two years after we last corresponded. Judith was just 56.
I'm not naturally superstitious, but then I'm not naturally unsuperstitious either. Endlessly recurring 613s and attention-seeking Google Docs pages ... was that you Judith, trying to continue the conversation or to warn about pandemics? Or perhaps I have an inflated sense of my own importance, given my relatively brief spell as your pupil. Or perhaps these "signs and wonders" relate to some other spiritual force.
This is not the first time that the internet has brought someone back to life only to snuff them out a moment later. I once knew a Jewish woman in Tel-Aviv: Renée from Peru. I knew she had some form of cancer but then we lost touch. Years later I googled her name and up popped an obituary on the website of a Peruvian university. Within minutes I was emailing people I'd never met and soon after they were replying. Her best friend Raquel told me "I miss her all the time. I loved her dearly and I miss mostly her laughter and her 'joie de vivre'. But I also miss our book discussions, our long conversations, crossword puzzles and our friendship that lasted through so many hardships and distance." Within an hour or so I had emailed her mother in Peru, sending a few photos of her daughter. The reply came swiftly: "I will cherish these photos. Thank you so much for sending them to me, Feels like she came back to say hello." Jewish prayers make constant reference to the resurrection of the dead ("m'hayay maytim") in the Messianic era. The internet is certainly a powerful tool for reviving memories of the dead.
I once wrote some prose-poetry on this blog, talking about the way our online world allows us to be here, there and everywhere all at once. Of course, it doesn't really. Emotionally-speaking we remain as limited by time and space as we always have. For example, my brother in law has just died, also at the very unripe age of 57 and from cancer. He defied it for eight years and remained fighting fit until close to the end. His passing requires more from me emotionally than a few philosophical words and thoughts. My connection to him was more real than virtual.
Nevertheless, the global virtual village remains powerful and mysterious. As it ages, so too will this aspect of the internet as a Talmudic, never-ending conversation between intimate strangers: connecting across multiple dimensions of time, space and worlds.
Baruch Dayan Ha'Emet (Blessed is the True Judge).
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