Female (top) and male ducks spotted at Poway Lake on Saturday, Dec. 28
By Donald H. Harrison
POWAY, California — On the periphery of a bunch of old coots, I saw a couple keeping more or less to themselves, clearly outsiders. On that Shabbat afternoon, Dec. 28, he wore what looked like a kippah, and so did she. “Reform,” I thought. “You see women with kippot more often in the Reform movement than anywhere else.”
My son-in-law Shahar disagreed. “Not Reform,” he said. “Definitely Orthodox.”
“What makes you think so?”
“What you mistake for a kippah on her is definitely a sheitel,” he said. “The women in my family have ones like that.”
His family of Yemenite Jews indeed follow Orthodox ways, at least those do who live in Israel.
I asked a ranger at Lake Poway if he had ever seen the visitors before. “Yes,” he responded, “they come around this season every year. I’m really not sure what they are, some sort of cross-breed, maybe.”
“Reformodox maybe,” I thought. “Or perhaps, Reformo-ducks?”
Whatever else you may call them, they were indeed ducks. From what I could tell, they got along swimmingly with the coots (aka mud hens), mallards and a lone white goose that scooped up bread and other leavened products thrown upon the waters by an ethnic mixture of human beings that was as diverse as their own community of water fowl.
Along with my son David, Shahar and I spent the afternoon with my three grandsons–Shor, Sky and Brian–on a boat and playground of Lake Poway, a 35-acre reservoir which is open daily from sunrise to sunset.
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I’m not certain what got me thinking about what religious affiliation the ducks might claim if ducks cared about such things. I think perhaps it was a fascinating Shabbat service that same morning in San Diego at Temple Emanu-El, which was officiated by that congregation’s emeritus spiritual leader, Rabbi Martin S. Lawson.
The portion of the week dealt with Moses trying to persuade Pharaoh to let his people — us — leave Egypt, and one of the passages the rabbi discussed was the part when, in a challenge to Pharaoh, the staff of Aaron is turned into a snake.
Notwithstanding the memorable scene in the movie, The Ten Commandments, with Charleton Heston, Rabbi Lawson said Torah scholars disbelieve the idea that the staff turned into a snake. No, he said, scholars are pretty certain that it turned into a crocodile. You may remember that the Pharaoh’s magicians immediately followed suit by transforming their staffs as well. But Moses, serving as messenger for HaShem, couldn’t be bested. His crocodile at their crocodiles. And that’s no croc!
Even without magic and crocodiles, the Shabbat service was pretty memorable. Rabbi Lawson blessed a gay couple who received the first aliyah in honor of the fact that they were to be married that evening. At another point in the service, the rabbi alarmed the congregation by suddenly sitting down during a standing prayer, taking off his tallit, and coat, and explaining that he was feeling very hot and flush. It may be the flu, such as his wife Anita had recently suffered, he said.
Seeing how worried everyone in the congregation was, he assured us that he was not having a heart attack. Proving it, he continued chanting the prayers, and completed the entire service, although his normally strong voice did seem to waver from time to time.
Grandson Shor will become a bar mitzvah next year, and as part of his training, he gets to stand at the reader’s table with the rabbi, announce some pages, and read a few passages in Hebrew and in English.
As I watched them–Rabbi Lawson and Shor — an image came into my mind from nearly 30 years before when Shor’s mother, Sandi, had her bat mitzvah. Rabbi Lawson co-officiated that ceremony with the then emeritus spiritual leader, Rabbi Morton Cohn, z”l.
I found myself imagining that the soul of Rabbi Cohn had taken its place on the other side of Shor, and the two rabbis together were participating in Shor’s training, just as they had for Sandi. It was a remarkable sensation.
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POSTSCRIPT: Rebbetzin Nechama Eilfort of Chabad of La Costa identifies the pair of ducks above as Crested Ducks. However, she added, “My kids thought they should be called sheiteled ducks or even streimeled ducks.” Other offerings from Facebook friends included Bernie Rhinerson: “Mutant mallards”; Emily Jennewein: “A disappearing breed;” Cynthia Lebrun-Yaffe: “Ugly ducklings;” Jerri-Ann Jacobs: “It might be a mix of mallard and a china duck;”Carol Davidson-Baird: “Ducks with toupees;” and Mike Bowler: “A common breed called the Dynasty Duck. It is found in the Southern United States and has received too much press exposure.”
Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com