I recently completed my program at Pardes and delivered the following address to my teachers, cohort and friends.
My sister called this morning and left a message telling me that Rabbi Marcus passed away. I hadn't seen the man in quite some time (It's been a while since I've been to Toronto, even longer since I've been to Bnai Torah and almost forever since I last spoke with the rabbi - probably at my aufruf a few years back). I did know that he was sick, but I never really process these things well (out of sight, out of mind?). And as inevitable as the news was for some, it really caught me off guard. The first time I met the rabbi I was a five year-old kindergarten student at Eitz Chaim. Over the course of the year we had been learning our Aleph Bet , earning stars for every letter that we covered along the way. I, of course, had procrastinated for most of the year so that, by the end of the year, I had only gotten as far as the fifth or sixth letter (not for lack of knowledge, mind you). With time running out, I tried to corner my teachers to have them listen to me run through a...
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