A Mother’s Faith Was Her Solace

Come sundown today, Nina Frenkel will join three generations of her family at Congregation Shir Ha-Ma’alot for Rosh Hashana, the time that observant Jews set aside each year to reflect on their relationships with God and family and, by extension, to celebrate the nature of being.

In keeping with tradition, Frenkel will, in this very public place, pray in a very private manner. She will ask that the coming year be good. She will ask that, if confronted with difficult choices, she will make the right decisions. And she will ask to become a better person, both for herself and for her God.

Frenkel has no questions about her faith. She believes because she believes, because that is the nature of her being. And she believes despite the very personal trial of faith she and her husband, Don Frenkel, faced 20 years ago, when their 12-year-old daughter, Elana, died of a brain tumor.

“She was really a sweet girl,” Frenkel said. “It was a long time ago, but it seems like it was last week.”

The aftershocks continue today. But the death did not shake Frenkel’s faith. Her central pillar stood firm.

“We decided, my husband and I, that there must have been a reason,” Frenkel said. “We have no idea why, but there had to have been a reason. We just have to accept that. There are only two ways. You either accept it and continue, or you don’t. Then you just never are functional again.”

In Judaism, a faith followed by 75,000 Orange County residents, Rosh Hashana represents the start of the new year.

One of the High Holidays of the religious calendar, Rosh Hashana is, in essence, contract renewal time as the faithful evaluate their relations with God. In the process, plans are made for self-improvement, both personal and spiritual, in the coming year. The High Holidays end 10 days later with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement for past sins.

Even people who don’t believe in God, Frenkel said, need such periods of introspection.

“If you don’t take the time to think about the things you’re not doing right, you’re never going to change, never going to improve,” Frenkel said.

Measuring faith is relatively easy for those who have never been tested. But how do you renew that contract with God in the face of personal tragedy? Where does the faith come from when to believe that God has a grand plan means to accept the willful infliction of pain?

“According to Jewish thought, only good comes from God,” said Rabbi Bernard P. King, Frenkel’s spiritual guide at Shir Ha-Ma’alot. “Good is sometimes clothed in pain, in things that we would not call good. But ultimately from a good God comes good.”

To believe in God, he said, is to acknowledge incomprehension.

“There’s a recognition that we know nothing about God,” King said. “God is far too great for us know anything about. If you go to the Pacific Ocean and take a teaspoon of water, that teaspoon comprises all of human knowledge, from the creation of the world to the end of time. Everything we will ever learn is in that spoon. And the rest of the ocean is what God knows.”

“When we finally realize the enormity of that, then we can begin to focus on the work we have to do to make room in us for God to enter.”

Under the lingering shadow of Elana’s long-ago death, these High Holidays are both joyous and difficult for the Frenkel family. The joy comes from the faith; the difficulty hovers in the memories.

“We think about her a lot, but on the holidays it sort of brings it all up again,” Frenkel said. “We think about her on her birthday and [the date] when she died. Every day there’s something that pops up.”

Some of the memories are called up deliberately. Elana’s twin, Tamar, now 32, named her son Jacob Elan, the middle name paying homage to her sister.

“When we’re involved in [religious celebrations], it becomes even more vivid,” Frenkel said. “Our faith has certainly gotten us through all of this. If you don’t have faith, I don’t know how you could get through.”

“As far as believing and my faith and all of that, that part of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur gets stronger,” she said. “It’s very important to spend this time evaluating your life. Not to be corny, but I feel that we’re here to help and to be good people. I would like to think that somehow I can keep improving myself.

“With Yom Kippur, the sun is setting and the gates are closing, and as you get older you’re thinking about this. ‘My God, this is it. Did I make it?’ It goes through my mind.”

Rosh Hashana provides Frenkel with the frame for this annual self-renewal.

“It puts you in a very spiritual frame of mind,” she said. “So you think about all of these things.”

Including faith.

“If I lose my faith, then I feel I have nothing,” Frenkel said. . . . “I’m sure I questioned God--’Why in the world did this happen?’--but I felt if I just gave that part up, I’d have nothing left.

“You have to hold on to something.”