Supermoon

Last Saturday night, as we left our synagogue’s Purim celebrations, our good friend Alison Brunell pointed out the full moon. She advised us to take a good look because it would not be so close to the earth for another nineteen years or so. The moon in fact did look larger and brighter than the average full moon. A search on Google informed me that this was a “perigee moon” or “supermoon,” 31,000 kilometers closer to the earth than at its furthest point.

I gazed at the moon with mixed emotions. Of course I enjoyed its beauty and brilliance, but I also felt sad that the next time the moon’s elliptical orbit brought it this close to earth, I would most likely be under it. Even if I were perfectly healthy, it would be foolish to expect to live long enough to see a perigee moon again.

Earlier, after the conclusion of the Purim service, our rabbi, Andrew Bachman, pointed out the oldest active member of our congregation, Irwin E. Meyer, a 92-year-old veteran of the Normandy campaign. Rabbi Bachman compared the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews to the (probably apocryphal) attempt by the ancient Persians to kill all the Jews within their kingdom, a plot initiated by the wicked Haman and foiled by the Jewish Queen Esther and her uncle Mordecai. The story is read aloud – chanted, really - each year at Purim, when Jews celebrate this storied deliverance by merry-making, the exchange of gifts, donations to charity, and blotting out the name of Haman with noisemakers each time it is recited in the course of the ritual narrative. Rabbi Bachman, who spoke with horror of the 75,000 Persians killed by the Jews according to that story, thanked the nonagenarian in our midst for his part in the invasion of Normandy and concluded with the traditional Jewish blessing for an older person, “may you live to 120!” At this, the old man jumped up, raising his arms above his head and crossing them several times, in vigorous nonverbal dissent from that wish.

After the service, we saw him walking home with a firm step. He’s likely to reach an even more advanced age in reasonable possession of his faculties. But it’s understandable that he doesn’t aspire to Guinness Book of Records old age, at which no one is likely to be able to do much more than breathe. I too wouldn’t want to outlive my capacity to enjoy life. As long as pleasure continues to outweigh the pain of lost abilities, I want to continue living. In the unlikely event that I’d still be alive when the next perigree moon arrives, I’d probably be no more than a dessicated remnant, almost lifeless in a wheelchair, like so many extremely old people I’ve seen in institutions.

I’ve had many chances to view perigree moons before this one, but if I ever saw them, I didn’t know what I was looking at and therefore couldn't fully appreciate them. I had never heard of them until last Saturday night. But I’m happy to have seen and appreciated at least one. That I almost certainly won’t see another made that one sighting memorable. It’s not often that we know when we’re experiencing something for the last time.