February 2003 Life And Death In Our Town By Rabbi Alvin Kass Last month Broadway was treated to a revival of Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Our Town. This immortal classic is a portrait of American life at the beginning of the twentieth century. Set in the fictional town of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, the play tells the story of George Gibbs and Emily Webb, who have been neighborhood playmates as children and became romantically involved as they grew older. Upon graduation from high school, they get married in the town's Congregational Church with all their friends and family in attendance. The enduring happiness they hope to find, however, comes to an abrupt end when Emily dies bearing their second child. George is heartbroken, and Emily is buried in the town cemetery where she is reunited with family and friends who died before her. They do their best to help Emily adjust to this new existence beyond the grave, but Emily yearns to return to Earth for just one more day. Although they warn her that she won't find the world the way she remembered it, Emily insists on returning. When Emily goes back to the Webb home, playing the role of both participant and observer, she quickly perceives the blindness of everyday human existence and longs to go back to the realm of the dead. Emily declares: "I can't go on. It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another... Oh Earth, you're too wonderful for anyone to realize you! Do any humanÊ beings ever realize life while they live it - every, every minute." Simon Stimson, the town organist, responds: "That's what it was to be alive. To move around in a cloud of ignorance! To go up and down, trampling on the feelings of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million yearsÉ.Now you know - that's the happy existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and blindness." Thus, Our Town finds eternal truths in the daily lives of ordinary people doing ordinary things. It's hard to imagine a cultural creation that more faithfully reflects the values of our tradition, which affirms the sanctity of life's ordinary things. Holiness is not an abstruse concept, set apart from our daily lives. Rather, it is the principle which regulates our normal routine, insuring that we respect our parents, give to the poor, pay the wages of our workers promptly, conduct our business honestly, and love our neighbor. Wilder's play also highlights the bittersweet nature of life. The beautiful love of George and Emily comes to a tragic and premature end. In like manner, so many wonderful events in life such as a wedding, a bar mitzvah or a graduation are marred by the absence of a parent or grandparent. When dear ones are missing we have to recognize that this is the way life is. No one is exempt from these inexorable laws of human existence. Wilder's masterpiece also makes us cognizant of the fleeting nature of life. As the machzor makes clear: our days are "like the grass that withers, the flower that fades, the fleeting shadow, the passing cloud, the wind that blows, the floating dust and the dream that vanishes." Therefore, don't procrastinate. You can't be sure what tomorrow will bring. For some of us tomorrow will never come. When you take the time to keep your eyes open and notice what is happening all around you, as Our Town urges us to do, you discover that many of life's experiences are not what we thought they were. What we believed was going to be a disaster turns out to be a victory. A failure becomes a success, and a sunset proves to be a sunrise. Life is a priceless privilege. Take pleasure in every moment. Never forget how gloriously special getting through the day can be!