D'var Torah and Eulogy for My Father -- Vayeira and Chayei Sara
This is an inauspicious first post of a newsletter, but life does not wait for auspices.
I delivered this eulogy on Tuesday at my father's funeral in front of what must have been a thousand people but felt like an audience of one.
My father David Genecov was a doer. Everything he was, he did. He lived out his identity, roles, ideas and conception of himself. He didn't just think of himself a certain way. This was true in everything from his being a world-renowned craniofacial surgeon to being a clothes horse.
One of the many things that he did, was write d’var torah, or commentary on the torah. And send it out to us and his friends unbidden on Friday nights. He wasn't always the deepest or original theologian, but he meant every word he wrote.
He skipped it this week and instead sent a clip of Yoda saying – do or do not, there is no try.
So, I've decided to deliver a D'var Torah he might have appreciated.
The day he passed, the Torah portion was Vayeira. It chronicles some of the great and maybe not-so-great deeds of Abraham. He was kind to the strangers who entered his tent, feeding and cleaning them. Those guests turned out to be angels. They with the Almighty helped Sarah conceive a child. Abraham tried to save the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah but was only able to save his relative Lot and his children. He saved them from a city whose sin was ultimately that it was cruel to its poor. The last deed in Vayeira that I think fits is about the binding of Isaac, his son. There are also some other stories in there that I don’t have the time to parse through but…oh boy, they’re hairy.
The lesson to take from the first two stories is the extraordinary kindness of Abraham. Kindness was his business. And so, it was the business of my father. My dad gave people what they needed even they hadn’t done anything to deserve it yet. He would give so much at the drop of my hat to me, my siblings, my mother and strangers to help us do what he thought was right. He wasn’t always right about what was right. But he was right often enough. My dad would always do this even when the task at hand seemed impossible. Like Abraham saving Lot from Sodom and Gomorrah after fruitlessly searching for a handful of righteous people to spare the doomed cities.
Abraham bound Isaac because he acted on his belief in God and did what he thought was necessary. Obviously, Abraham was swayed from sacrificing his son; such an act was not necessary. My dad certainly never did anything of that sort, but he often did things that were very hard. Those hard things even hurt us sometimes, but he always acted on his belief that he was doing what was absolutely needed at the time. It would pay off in the long run.
When my dad was working so hard as a young surgeon, we didn’t see him that much. I remember many nights around bedtime asking my mom whether Dad was coming home, hoping that he might also tuck me in, and hearing that he would be sleeping at the hospital tonight. But just like Abraham did after setting Isaac free, he made up for it in the long run. Telling us he loved us. Spending time with us. Learning to be gentle with us so that we could grow and make our own paths in life.
This week’s Torah portion is Chayei Sara, which is about the death of Sarah.
This was the work we did this week. This week, we were Abraham. We did the same things that Abraham did. We hailed, rended our clothes, put on a public face of sadness to mask our private ones. We did the hard work of arranging for our father’s return to the earth.
Even when Sarah died at 127 or whatever, Abraham still wept and wailed. Even then, it was not the right time for her to pass.
Now, it is certainly not the right time. It is not the right time for us and it was not the right time for our father.
It feels desperately, infuriatingly unfair and arbitrary. It would be so easy to fall into cynicism. But no matter how much his passing hurts, we cannot let that happen because that would not be in my father's spirit. Because, in addition to being a doer, he was eternally optimistic. Frustratingly so. But, as a doer, he made that optimism real. He turned pipe dreams into realities and turned concrete terrors into wispy nightmares soon forgotten. Cynicism is not something he could abide because it was driven by the bad faith that one is powerless against the brokenness of the world. We have to honor the bit of power we do have.
My dad was able to keep so optimistic and to do everything by waking up early in the morning. He would wake up at 4 AM, walk the dog for several miles, make coffee, read the paper and have break-of-dawn meetings. He would have a whole day before my coffee would kick in. But the only way he could do all that was by going to bed extremely early as well.
He would go to bed at parties. He’d go to bed at his own parties. At other people’s houses he would find a bed and go to sleep. He’d even go to sleep during conversations.
He acquired this skill somewhere in his residency. To sleep when he could. Time was precious to him.
He went to bed far too early. Far earlier than any of us should, far earlier than all of us will hopefully go to sleep. But nevertheless we will all go to sleep one day. And when we wake up, we will see all the great things he has done. I’m sure he can’t wait to show it all off to us.
Here is a link to my dad's obituary so that you can learn more about his life: https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/dallas-tx/david-genecov-11012806.
My friend Rabbi Yaakov Wolbe has also dedicated an episode of his podcast to a eulogy of him, and it is beautiful: http://rabbiwolbe.com/chayei-sarah-eulogizing-a-giant/.
If you knew him, please send me your remembrances of him.
If you like, send me remembrances of your own parents, even if they haven't passed. Better yet, tell them yourselves.
I don't know what I will use this for in the future, but if you have ideas, let me know.