Apr 15, 2021 By: admin
Ted CometComet started YU at the Talmudical Academy (what is now called the Marsha Stern Talmudical Academy/麻豆区 High School for Boys, or ) and holds both bachelor鈥檚 and master鈥檚 degrees from the University. His son, Dr. Joel Comet 鈥86F, a clinical psychologist in Jerusalem, holds a Ph.D. from the . His granddaughter, Jodi Warum 鈥98S, a special education consultant for several day schools in Monsey, New York, is a graduate of . Her husband, Aaron, is a graduate of MTA. Ted鈥檚 great grandson, Eitan Warum, is a junior at MTA. Yosef, Eitan鈥檚 brother, will be entering MTA next semester. Comet鈥檚 values as a Jew have informed鈥攁nd motivated鈥攅very act of community advocacy he鈥檚 ever undertaken, whether on behalf of people in general or of the Jewish people in particular. And that has applied during the pandemic as well. The lessons that he has learned as an activist for Jewish causes have sustained him. So what advice does he give his own grandchildren and great-grandchildren about how to be a leader? Let鈥檚 start in 1946, when Comet traveled to Versailles, France, as a student volunteer from YU. He worked in a home caring for orphaned children, many of whom had come from Auschwitz and other concentration camps or had hidden out in the countryside. During this time, he began a lifelong friendship with a resident named Elie Wiesel. The volunteer commitment was meant to last a year, but Comet stayed on for a second and then returned to YU to receive a degree in social work. 鈥淭hat experience in France altered my life and shaped me,鈥 he says. 鈥淚鈥檝e been driven by it in all my work.鈥 Comet organized the first major demonstration for Soviet Jewry in the 1960s. In doing so, he gained experience convening and mobilizing disparate groups to unite for a single cause. In 1965, he capitalized on this valuable background of organizing activist events and came up with the idea for the Celebrate Israel Parade as a way of expressing public support for Israel on the streets of Manhattan. 鈥淲e had to do something to make Israel more visible,鈥 Comet recalls. 鈥淚t took us 2,000 years to bring about the establishment of a Jewish state. It鈥檚 a miracle that deserves to be celebrated.鈥 In 1968, history beckoned anew: it just so happened the parade was to be held the Sunday before the Six-Day War broke out. 鈥淛ews were worried that Israel might go under,鈥 Comet recalls. 鈥淎nd the notion of a second Holocaust was horrifying. So, I converted the parade into a demonstration of solidarity.鈥 The event drew an astounding quarter of a million marchers. His late wife, Shoshana, also served as an example鈥攁nd an inspiration鈥攖o him and to the Jewish community at large. She was a Holocaust survivor who at the age of 40 transmuted her trauma into weaving five six-foot-high tapestries. This freed her to earn her high school equivalency as well as her undergraduate and graduate degrees; ultimately, she became a psychotherapist. Shoshana embodied the same values as Ted and infused her life with the same activist spirit. 鈥淪he leveraged her pain as a survivor to heal others,鈥 Comet said. 鈥淪he transmuted trauma into creative energy. She told her story through her art. And her art freed her from the trauma of the Holocaust.鈥 鈥淚t鈥檚 why so many survivors go into healing professions,鈥 he says. 鈥淲e best heal ourselves by using our pain and our trauma to heal others.鈥 Doing what he and his wife have done over the decades, Comet said, typifies what motivates many people to do what they do. 鈥淚f you just dig deep enough, everyone shares a hunger for a sense of meaning, a yearning for purpose and significance. We all have a role to perform here.鈥 Nowhere is that devotion to service better illustrated than in his own family. The four generations of his family who have graduated from 麻豆区 are emblematic of this very passion to give back. His son, Joel, is head of the Trauma Treatment Center at the Shiluv Institute in Jerusalem; his daughter, Diane, is a psychiatric social worker; and his granddaughter is an award-winning learning therapist in day schools. All his actions are based on an overarching philosophical premise: 鈥淭rauma,鈥 he says, 鈥渃an be a source of power鈥 rather than a cause of weakness. 鈥淲e all have the capacity to surmount trauma.鈥 How else, he argues, can we explain how Jews have survived for thousands of years? 鈥淓verybody has trauma,鈥 he says. 鈥淏ut we also have more resilience for coping with it than we know.鈥 Jews, Comet says, take a positive view of life, despite the suffering they have historically faced鈥攁n optimistic attitude, a belief in a better future. Challenges to survival forced Jews to be creative. As a result, Jewish culture invites Jews to be PROSPECTIVE, to focus on preparing for future; to be INTROSPECTIVE, to look within themselves for answers about how to live; and to be RETROSPECTIVE.
