One of our favorite sayings for many years was, “There are no mistakes…”. The meaning of this phrase was that somehow the universe works itself out; what may seem like a puzzling or problematic situation ends up being for the better.
We just had one of those situations.
Yesterday, after my daughter’s Bat Mitzvah lesson, we received a call from our congregational rabbi. They schedule B’nei Mitzvot over a year out, figuring one or the other of the two rabbis will be available. It turned out there was going to be a problem for our date (12/22). Originally, Rabbi Jim was going to be unavailable, and Rabbi Sarah would do the service with Cantor Alan. However, they’ve been trying for two years to get a congregational trip to Israel together, and the only time they could do it (with Rabbi Sarah leading it) was over the weekend scheduled for our Bat Mitzvah. Could we reschedule our date?
Now, note that we’ve already told out of town relatives the date; we’ve already signed the contract with the caterer and DJ. The rabbi indicated they would take care of any cancellation fees or date change fees. Could we change the date?
We told him we couldn’t, and asked him if it would be OK if we found a Rabbi to substitute for him, as neither of the congregational rabbis could be there. He said that was acceptable.
So, we called our good friend Rabbi John Sherwood. John was the rabbi at Temple Emet of Woodland Hills; he retired in 1993 after a coup d’état merger created Kol Tikvah. He’s been a long-time family friend: he performed my wife’s first marriage; he performed our marriage; he performed the naming ceremony for my daughter; he did my father’s funeral. He is (in short) our family rabbi. John indicated he would be delighted to officiate for us (and that he won’t be able to stay for the reception… so as we were going to invite him to the reception anyway, we get to see him). He also indicated that he worked with Cantor Alan many years ago. Both Rabbi John and Cantor Alan have email (we introduced John to the Internet), so they can coordinate that way. In short, win-win.
Additionally, we know from Rabbi Jim that the other family schedule for our day (evening service) was rescheduling their ceremony. This means the problem we had about having to vacate the social hall early may be going away, and we don’t have to worry about that.
There really are no mistakes.
