Yesterday I attended the azkara marking the tenth yahrzeit of Dr. Harvey Oshman, husband of Trina Oshman. An azkara is a Jewish memorial gathering held in memory of someone who has passed away, often on the anniversary of their death. The Oshmans are longtime friends of Israel and of Israel365, and Harvey is buried here in Israel. I never had the privilege of meeting Harvey, and I have only known Trina for a short time. But through the stories that were shared during the memorial, as we celebrated Harvey’s life, I got a small sense of who he was and why he is still so deeply missed. Harvey was a clinical psychologist who cared tremendously about his patients. He was beloved by his community in Dallas, his family and his friends and ten years after his passing, he is still remembered there with great affection. He studied the Bible and Torah, took his faith seriously, and built a life with Trina rooted in family, Jewish life, and love for Israel.
One of the many things I learned from Trina was that Harvey loved the song “Kol Ha’Olam Kulo.”
כָּל הָעוֹלָם כֻּלּוֹ גֶּשֶׁר צַר מְאֹד, וְהָעִקָּר לֹא לְפַחֵד כְּלָל
Kol ha’olam kulo gesher tzar me’od, v’ha’ikar lo l’fached klal.
“The whole entire world is a very narrow bridge and the main thing is to recall is to have no fear, to have no fear at all”
The familiar words to Jews and Christians alike are based on a teaching of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov. Surprisingly, not direct words from the Bible – though the message is quite Biblical itself. The idea is that life can be unpredictable, difficult, and at times frightening, but we cannot allow fear to govern us. We keep moving forward with trust in God, even when the path ahead feels incredibly narrow.
Harvey died on Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and he was buried in Israel just before Sukkot.
For readers less familiar with the Jewish calendar, these are not simply holidays that happen to fall close together. Rosh Hashanah begins the Ten Days of Repentance, which culminate in Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Shabbat Shuvah falls during these ten days and takes its name from the opening words of the prophetic reading:
The first ten days of the Jewish year are therefore filled with action. We pray. We repent. We ask forgiveness. We make amends. We plead for a good year. We look honestly at what is in our control and try to repair what we can. We return. And then, only five days after Yom Kippur, comes Sukkot, and the posture changes. We leave our permanent homes and move into a sukkah, a deliberately temporary dwelling recalling Israel’s journey through the wilderness. After days spent asking, searching, and trying to set things right, we enter a structure whose very construction reminds us that our security is never entirely in our own hands.
We have done what we can.
And now? Now we trust God.
That movement from exponential effort to trust feels especially connected to the very teaching Harvey loved. No matter how narrow our personal bridge might be or become, we continue walking it with faith. We must have no fear.
Ten years after Harvey’s passing, Trina partnered with Israel365 to create a special bencher in his memory. A bencher is a prayer book containing Birkat HaMazon, the Grace After Meals recited after eating bread, particularly familiar from Shabbat and holiday tables, though said after every meal that includes bread. A closer look at this set of prayers brings us back to the same ideas of fear, trust, crossing, and the Land of Israel. The biblical source for Birkat HaMazon appears in Deuteronomy 8. Moses is speaking to the generation preparing to enter the Land after forty years in the wilderness. He begins by telling them to remember:
Moses reminds them of hunger, manna, and dependence on God. Then he describes what lies ahead: a good land of water, wheat, barley, vines, figs, pomegranates, olives, and dates.
And then comes the command that forms the biblical foundation for Birkat HaMazon:
In context, this is about much more than remembering to say thank you after dinner. The parents of this generation of Israelites had stood at the border of the Land of Israel decades earlier. The spies returned describing formidable obstacles, and fear overtook the people. They refused to enter. Now their children are standing at that crossing again – perhaps akin to their own personal narrow bridge. This time, they are being asked to trust God and move forward. And Moses tells them that once the wilderness is behind them, once they have crossed into the Land and are eating its food, they must remember Who brought them there.
Birkat HaMazon is therefore a kind of bridge itself. It begins with something as ordinary as eating a meal and connects that table to the wilderness, the covenant, the Land of Israel, and Jerusalem. The generation of the spies allowed fear to stop them from crossing. The next generation was asked to trust God, cross, and then remember.
Harvey loved a song about that kind of trust. He studied Torah, loved Israel, and is buried in the Land the Israelites were preparing to enter when Moses taught them the words of gratitude and love for the land of Israel. Ten years later, Trina’s bencher in Harvey’s memory brings those same words to Shabbat tables.
You can purchase The Harvey P. Oshman Shabbat Table from the Israel365 Store. Bringing these blessings to your own table is one small way to practice the faith at the heart of Harvey’s beloved song: to remember where our blessings come from, to trust God through uncertainty, and to keep walking forward, even when the bridge feels narrow.
