Transcript of “The Tree of Life”
You know if you come to HaShem’s House, if you come to the synagogue, you see on the Aron Kodesh on the cabinet, where the Torah, the five books of Moses in scroll form, are kept, you see a piece of wood burning artwork that a colleague of mine, during my time at the Essex County VoTech (Vocational Technical School), made for me.
Cynthia Portera was the vice principal of our North street school. And she happened to come into the carpentry shop one day and she asked a group of students, who were busy working on something, “What are you working on?” And one of them looked at her and said “You know how Doc is always buying us books and getting things for us and showing us movies and teaching us things and getting on our backs about doing homework and all that stuff? We decided to make her a gift. This is a Torah cabinet for her Torah.”
They were so proud of themselves. That these kids were from Newark, from the ghetto, and they knew what a Torah cabinet was and they knew what the Torah was. “So this is a gift for Doc.” And Cynthia, who was so impressed with the love that she saw coming from these kids, that she said, “I am going to take the cabinet door. I am going to take it home and I am going to wood burn a tree of life on the front of it.”
Years later, I moved HaShem’s House here to the Texas Hill Country and have on this property a magnificent two hundred year old tree. Actually, I have several – they are called Live Oaks. They are in reality just like the tree that Cynthia wood burned on the cabinet door, the Aron Kodesh door, so many years ago back in Newark.
They are actually the incarnation of her thought, the incarnation of her inspiration and her artistic rendering of a wood burned tree. They sit on my Torah cabinet and they are a reminder to me and anyone else who hears the story, that there really are no accidents. HaShem, my word for God, has a plan. And that plan is often motivated, propelled or inspired by great love.
