One of the few things I participated in in Freshman orientation was the community service opportunity. Our mentor was a rather flighty individual named keith. At one point, he wordlessly handed me his signup sheet and sprinted for the dormitory! It was with some releif that I handed him his sheet when he breathlessly reappeared with his guitar....
We were headed for LifeCare, a collegedale nursing home. We had 2 hours to sing and socialize with the residents. I met many fascinating characters, including an elderly lady who claimed to be a strict vegetarian, but was continuously smoking cigarretes (outside of course). Another elderly lady, "Wanita" by name, wore copious amounts of lipstick, and had long red fingernails. She occupied herself by continuously straightening her bed, and by telling me some graphic tales about her youth as a mortician's daughter.
With just 15 minutes to go, I wandered into the last room on the hall. There, gazing out his window, was Karl Lampart. He spoke with a marked German accent and had a long and angular nose. I asked him where his accent was from, and looking at me with a strange smile on his face, he began to tell his story.
Karl was born in Germany, on the Baltic Sea. His father was Sephartic, and his mother was Ashkenazi, in other words, he was Jewish. He told me that since he was out in the country, the persecution of the Nazis wasn't as intense, but still, he had had to go into hiding for days at a time at a neighbours house. I glanced at my watch in the midst of our dialogue and realized I was 2 minutes late for the appointed meeting time, so I made a reluctant withdrawel, promissing him that I would come back soon.
Life has been busy here, and so it wasn't until this sabbath that I was able to go back, this time Joel Kurtz went with me. This time, his daughter was there to. She had dyed purple hair and long fingernails, but I quickly realized she was of high mental caliber as well. We started off on a conversation of what was most important in life. For posterity, he said that 1) the pursuit of happiness, and 2) that happiness was best found through finding a loving spouse.
Karl was an electrical engineer here in the states for most of his life. He told us about his philosophy of tolerances, he told us what is general political worldview was, and then we finally settled on the topic of jewish customs and practices. He told us about various orthodox traditions, the regulations for how far to walk on the sabbath, and how to say "Happy Sabbath" in Yiddish-- "Gut Schabes".
He finally got out his Hebrew scriptures, and showed us how their "old testament" compares to ours. He explained that they do not study the scriptures in an exegetical manner, but take each text particularly.
Frequently, when you ask Karl a question, he responds by asking YOU a question. He really cares about helping you to learn something.
When someone dies, we all lose something, but when Karl dies, we will lose something beautiful, something great.
