Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Good morning. I am here to offer a plea for my life.

Somehow I think it was very fortuitous that yesterday I did not have the opportunity to address you. The room was filled with emotion. I was filled with emotion. And I'm not sure I could have spoken - I'm not sure I could have even spoken period, physically. And I'm definitely sure that I could not have spoken cogently. Mr. Riley and Mr. Lynch yesterday spoke to you of requesting your cogency, your wisdom, your thought, your analytic gifts in making this very difficult decision. This is a matter of moment and moments that matter. And I'm going to ask and request the same thing of you.

However, unlike these two gentlemen, I am not competent and comfortable in the mechanisms of the law, the language of the law, the behavior pattern in a courtroom. And rather than assume something I should not and cannot, let me suggest that I would like to take something from my tradition and see if I can make things more understandable and certainly my request more understandable. The book of Genesis

At the end of the book of Genesis there's a wonderful, wonderful dialogue between Pharaoh and patriarch Jacob. This is not the pharaoh of Exodus, not the vile and brutal pharaoh that Moses has to confront. This is the pharaoh of Joseph - a gentle man and a wonderful thinker. I hope you will agree with me in a few seconds. They meet because - and you'll remember the story - that Joseph and Jacob are reconciled after many, many years. Joseph goes up, rescues his father and family from the famine in Canaan, brings them down to Egypt where there is food. And because Joseph is the grand vizier or whatever title he had, he was certainly the second in command in Egypt. He was the Dick Cheney of ancient Egypt. And because of that, most likely, Jacob has his interview, Jacob probably has an audience with, the pharaoh.

And the pharaoh asks a question at the outset, the outset of this discussion that seems - if you're not careful, and not careful to read the Hebrew - it seems rather shallow and nothing very important. He asks as an introductory remark, pharaoh asks Jacob, he says, "I'd like to know how old you are." But it's said in a very remarkable way. Normally when there is a locution, even when there is a statement, the normal pattern in Hebrew - let me do a translation. The normal pattern would be to say, "How many are the years of your life?" It's a question of how old are you, a quantity of your years.

Pharaoh doesn't ask that. Not that way. He asks, "How many are the days of the years of your life?" That's why you have to be careful. When he uses that word - the days of the years of your life - our great commentators, our great scholars, our great interpreters, tell us that there is a message - that what's critical is not quantity. But the question is, what did you do with the days of your life? How did you fill your days? How, how did you make a difference in the world? Were you selfish or were you generous with your time? Were you using the best parts of your brain or were you lazy and sloppy? Did you have a vision for the community or were you self-deceiving and looking only inward?

Quality of experience

That now is not an issue of quantity of the years, it's an issue of the quality of your experience. And I would like to use that as a benchmark for that which I speak to you of myself in the past, in the present and in the future. A benchmark of the past, my past, my present and my future - which is in your hands and you know that.

If I look at the days of the years of my life before the first of November of 1994, they were filled with great blessings. They were filled with people that made a difference in my life and I hope I made a difference in their lives. They were filled with moments of satisfaction and purpose, I believe. First and foremost, I had my wife, Carol. She was a remarkable woman. She was bright. She had a sense of balance. She had the ability to understand people and things so very quickly. It was a gift, and she used it with skill, she used it adroitly. Carol also had the rare gift - rare in this day and age - she had great common sense. She applied it to things that affected her, things that affected me and things that affected us. This was a gracious hostess. This was a gracious guest.

Alan Goodman sat in this chair and said something I think very important. "She made the bad times better and the good times better." And I think that's very, very accurate. And Carol had grit - by that I mean - and, and fortitude. Carol Neulander, my wife, started a business with no background in business and no training in business. She started a bakery with no background in baking and no training in baking. And what emerged from her efforts and her vision was unquestionably a bakery that was recognized as second to none in the entire Delaware Valley. Great, great grit. And Carol Neulander had class. Not classy, because that doesn't even come close. When you were in the company of Carol Neulander, you knew you were in the company of a lady, and you behaved like that. And yet she wasn't distant. You could approach her easily. She had the same kind of pleasure and fun with some of the men and women in the back of the bakery in the production department as she did when she sat with the governor of the state of New Jersey. That was her wonderful, warm ability.

`I loved her'

And I miss her and I loved her and I love her.

Now there are those who I'm sure behind their hands would snicker. I have acknowledged for the longest time my behavior that was reprehensible and my behavior that was disgraceful - and note that, that's a theological word, disgraceful - and yet you must believe I loved her. And love her. And I wanted to spend the days of the years of my life - long days of long years of my life - with her. We had a little dialogue that I'm sure each and every one of you has, or that you might have, with your close friend, with your beloved, with your husband, with your wife, with your partner. One of us would say to the other, "I want to grow old with you." And the other would lean . . . One of us would say, "I want to grow old with you" and the other would lean over and whisper, "I want to grow old with you, too, but let's do it slowly."

I had in these days of the years of my life the privilege of watching three children emerge from the rigors and the difficulties of adolescence to become very special, very special young men and a woman. And they have grown beyond that into very successful persons. Not because of, not because of what they might earn and not because of what positions they might hold, but because they are successful persons first and foremost. And I watched that unfold.

I also watched the days of the years of my life unfold in what I have to consider the best congregation in the world. And that's not just hyperbole. These are people who want to study. These are people who want to develop their spiritual selves. They want to understand Judaism, hold onto Judaism and not let it slip through like sand slips through their hand. These are people who were visionaries, they were leaders in the community in general. They were wonderful to work with. They had also great courage. They printed a prayer book - and I think Mr. Cohen referenced that yesterday. If you put your name on something, you had better believe it is an exceptionally quality item. And they did. The problem with the prayer book is that it developed feet. We would start with a thousand prayer books with an order in the fall and by May or June we were down to 500. Somehow people would always forget - it was that impressive a document - some people would forget to return. Everybody I talked to in the congregation (said), "Oh yeah, I have one of your prayer books at home I forgot to return." And that was wonderful. The compliment was terrific. It was a little expensive, but the compliment was wonderful.

And I had in those days of the years of my life the great, good fortune to work in a community, working with a council from the mayor, working with interreligious conferences, working with Cooper Hospital in Camden. And probably next to the synagogue, the most worthwhile communal program I have ever gotten involved with - and I was on the founding board of Ronald McDonald of Southern New Jersey - a magnificent concept doing magnificent work with people who have serious needs, emotional and physical. And those were the days of the years of my life before the first of November of 1994. Dark years

From that moment on, until Wednesday when you made your decision, the days of the years of my life were dark, unproductive, diminished. And I was not able to produce the kinds of things in my world where I would like to. And Wednesday brought that eight-year period to an end. Starting today, there is another sense of the days of the years of my life that will unfold. I do not know where I will be, quite obviously, don't know now. But wherever I will be there will be men who cannot read. The legacy of illiteracy is striking and very sad and very limiting. I would hope that wherever I am I would be able to teach a young man to read and then to be able to check in the newspaper what jobs are available and then be able to fill out an application and enrich the days of the years of his life. Wherever I go, there will be a library. And I hope I will be able to take whatever skills I bring and open the world of reading to people who would love it. And I have found in the past when all of the sudden you take someone by the hand, help them open a book - and so beautifully their world is enriched. And it can be anything. Prose or poetry. It can be fiction or nonfiction. It could be history of world history, it could be American history, Civil War history. It could be science fiction. It could be science. The portals of a library are really gateways to all kinds of things and I would like very much the privilege, if you will give it to me, to help people find those worlds that enthuse, that excite, that lift the spirit and lift the mind.

`I'm a good teacher'

Wherever I go, I will encounter young men who somehow have gotten lost in their high school career. And I have done this before - about two years ago - I have helped tutor a young man to get his high school equivalency certificate; it's called a GED. I'm a good teacher, I was a good teacher, I can be a good teacher and I want to help through that young man. That will enhance the days of the years of my life, by helping the days of the years of that young man's life.

I would like to be in a position to use whatever experiences I have, whatever travel I may have enjoyed and enthuse and suggest to other people they can do the same thing. Learn from where they go, learn from the people they meet. I have heard and seen in the county jail men who have extraordinary talents - graphic artists, calligraphers, people who can make wonderful things on paper. Should they not be able to develop that talent? I have heard men sing with great power, with great beauty, with a gusto, and I would hope somehow - not so dreamily - but somehow I would be able to help that individual make something of the God-given talent he has. That's all I want, is that opportunity to teach. And that's why I'm here.

I beseech you. I importune you. I beg of you for that privilege. And I promise, I promise that I will do whatever a teacher should do to enrich the lives of people who come in contact with that teacher. Ladies and gentlemen, um, if you give me this privilege to redeem, to atone, what will happen is the days of the years of your life will indirectly be made more rich because you've given me the privilege in the days of the years of my life to reach out and change for the better. The days of the years of the life of so many men I have yet to meet. Thank you ladies. Thank you gentlemen.