Recognition

For many months now I have spent most Wednesday mornings attending a wonderful class given by one of the professional staff members of our synagogue. She has all of the knowledge of a Rabbi, but because traditional Jewish law limits the roles of men and women in some ways, she and her colleagues cannot be called “Rabbis.” Rather, Rabbi Avi Weiss, long-time rabbi of the synagogue (who is now in partial retirement and has taken the title “Rabbi in Residence”) who initiated the program to train women for such positions, has come up with the term “Rabba.”

Learning with Rabba Anat on Wednesday mornings has become a highlight of my week. She adds so much to the texts we learn. The class meets at Moss Café, a funky little restaurant a couple of blocks away from our house (close enough that I can zip over there on my scooter) that opened last summer. They serve healthy alternatives to the typical American diet, lots of whole grains and fruits and vegetables that our daughters and their friends call “crunchy granola” fare. The group and the setting are a perfect match.

It is fascinating to see what sort of customers come in to Moss Café on a typical weekday morning between 9 and 10:30 am. Almost every week I will see at least one person having breakfast there (not having anything to do with the class) that I know or recognize from the neighborhood. I think that these sorts of places are what make New Yorkers feel so attached to their neighborhoods, and you can see why. At this point, the wait staff at Moss Café all recognize me (again, that oxygen does help in this process) and they all know that I always like my hot chocolate very hot with low fat milk. I really do look forward to this outing each week.

Last week, I arrived a bit on the early side, ordered my food, and sat down where we usually gather. Another participant came in, someone I have known here for many years since our daughters were students together in junior high school here. Then a third woman walked in, someone who lived here, had moved away, and has now been back for a couple of years. It has been a bit odd that although I have chatted with her husband I have not interacted with her since they have been back. There were one or two times when I felt she was walking up to me or looking at me but she never said a word. I know that some people have a very tough time seeing that oxygen, but I was disappointed to think that she might be one of those people. She came up to my friend and had a big hello, and I felt that I just needed to see what her story was; maybe she just did not remember me. So when they were finished chatting, I greeted her with “I’m not sure if you remember me…”, and told her my name and that we have two daughters and had lived here for a long time. She lit up and smiled and said “Oh, my, of course Rebecca I remember you!” She went on to explain that she suffers from an inability to recognize faces, and that unless she knows someone very well or sees them quite frequently she will often not recall who they are without identifying information. She told me that her sister has an even more extreme case than hers.

So I typed “inability to recognize faces” into my browser, and found that there is a condition called prosopagnosia, also known as “face blindness.

Prosopognasia is a cognitive disorder of face perception where the ability to recognize familiar faces, including one's own face (self-recognition), is impaired, while other aspects of visual processing (e.g., object discrimination) and intellectual functioning (e.g., decision making) remain intact. The term originally referred to a condition following acute brain damage (acquired prosopagnosia), but a congenital or developmental form of the disorder also exists, which may affect up to 2.5% of the population. [Wikipedia]

We saw a new film called “Eye in the Sky” which stars Helen Mirren. This is one of those films I usually do not like to see: very intense and frightening. I did have to close my eyes a couple of times, but for the most part it was really very good. It really brought to light some of the difficult decisions about how to fight terrorism and terrorists, particularly when their home bases are interspersed in the midst of family homes. This movie, by focusing on one such family who are truly innocent bystanders to this incident, brings this point to light. How do you weigh the life of one innocent person versus the lives of tens or hundreds of others that may be lost if the raid is not carried out?

And last, to put life back into balance, our little Maya is still painting.

Love,

Rebecca