Rainey Blogs on Some Days

I went to get a haircut at Adolfo's Haircutters in Cliffside Park yesterday, the barbershop I have been going to for the past fifteen years. Adolfo's is a real barbershop. It has a swirling red, white, and blue barber pole outside, and you don't need an appointment. Just show up, wait your turn and read the paper or a magazine until it is your turn to get in the chair. I only have to tell him "short" or "really short." No complicated layering, styling, or anything like that. I just want a regular haircut. I use the 97-cent Suave shampoo from Shop Rite, and I don't use styling gel, mousse, or any of those fancy hair products, so there's no need to try anything crazy. Just a regular haircut. It's not as if I'm the Jonas Brothers or anything. Each time I go to Adolpho's, I get a good look at my face in the mirror. I see the lines deepening on my forehead. I see the weariness that grows around my eyes. Some of these visits to the barbe...

This was a written and read at a men’s meeting at our church in April 2008 on the topic of “Our Need for Friendships and How Governor Eliot Spitzer Fell.” If a Jew has not seen a friend in over 30 days, tradition calls on that person to greet that friend with this blessing: "Praised are you Adonai our God, Sovereign of the universe, who brings the dead back to life." The blessing is a response to the rabbis' belief that when we lose touch with a friend, we lose a little bit of ourselves too. The author went on to explain: "To renew contact is to reawaken the part of us that no one but our friend animates. For each friend enlivens a specific constellation of our spiritual lives, impulses, our desires, our strengths, our hopes, and our memories." As I thought about this, I felt the rabbis were on to something important. What they seem to suggest is that the richness of a person's life is determined by the friendships they have. The blessing affirms this b...