Ira Riklis Blog

Ira Riklis notes that his favorite team, the New York Yankees, had two interesting developments in the last week of April 2010. First, they (being the 2009 World Series champions) visited the White House. Next, the Core Four (Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte and Derek Jeter, who have played together, more or less since 1995) appeared on Sports Illustrated’s cover. Ira is hoping against a jinx.

As an avid and expert skier, Ira Riklis has spent plenty of time at Vail, his favorite resort. And over the years he’s been going, he’s discovered ways to maximize both his skiing time and his time for relaxation. As a result, he doubles his pleasure and effectively get two trips in one.

The key is to get out on the slopes early. Ira Riklis’ group is often on the first chair of skiers at 8:15 a.m., and if they’re not first, they’re one of the first. That allows them to get in 15 to 20 runs by noon. That’s effectively a full day of skiing as measured by the number of runs. After that, they have time to enjoy a leisurely lunch at a wonderful restaurant. Then he spends the rest of the afternoon shopping, getting a massage and sharing time with his wife. In doing so, he essentially gets to revel in two day’s worth of activities in just one fun and relaxing day.

At the Emunah Bet Elazraki Children’s Home they take their motto “Always a Home” to heart. Ira Riklis saw that the first time he visited there and was immediately moved to become a supporter. The core of their work is the main Children’s House where boys and girls 6 to 13 from broken families find all the love, support and guidance they need to thrive and grow in a caring environment.

The Home also maintains separate houses for teenaged girls and boys where they remain part of the Bet Elazraki family, while learning the skills and knowledge they need to become adults able to care for themselves as well-integrated members of society. There’s also an emergency shelter that provides a safe haven for infants who need to be removed from their families due to immediate, life threatening situations. Particularly impressing to Ira Riklis is their Family Intervention Center, which provides solid support to at-risk children while at the same time working to rehabilitate their families.

There’s the old saying about how special it is to be 1 in million. But Ira Riklis would tell you that you might have what it takes to be one in 14 million! How? Just by donating blood. Less than 38 percent of people are eligible to do so, but when you consider the total population of the U.S., that still leaves more than 116 million people who can donate if they choose to.

But out of that total, fewer than 8 million people a year actually make donations. That may sound pretty good, but it’s not. Although fewer than 5 million people need donations, each person may need many units of blood. The result is that donations are falling further behind the need each year. If everyone who could donate came out in force, there’d be no problem. Since they don’t, it’s important to encourage more people to make regular donations throughout the year. Ira Riklis makes it a point to do that, and encourages you to do the same.

We all know the old caution about “fair weather friends,” those people who only act as friends when everything’s fine and you’re not really in need. But as Ira Riklis can tell you, the problem works in reverse when it comes to those who donate (or don’t donate) blood. Sure, when there’s a disaster that captures people’s attention, many folks rush out to donate blood. And they’re to be commended for that of course.

The problem is that once the crisis passes, donations drop off dramatically, while the critical need for donated blood continues. A single car accident victim may require as many as 100 units of blood, all of which much come from volunteer donors. One out of every ten people admitted to hospitals. And the demand for blood transfusions is growing faster than donations. It’s for these reasons that Ira Riklis makes it a point to donate blood several times a year, and urges others to do the same. When it comes to blood, we really do need “fair weather friends”!

Although it may not seem like much on the surface, in Hebrew, the phrase “wine entered, secret went out,” has a special meaning. It’s a well-known example of the ancient practice of gematria, a system of assigning numerical value to a word or phrase, in the belief that words or phrases with identical numerical values bear some relation to each other. The fact that “wine entered” has the same numerical value as “secret went out,” it’s considered evidence that the statement is true. While Ira Riklis leaves such calculations to others, he knows that Gematria is an important part of Jewish beliefs.

One of the best-known examples of these equivalences is Chai, the Hebrew word for life, which is composed of two letters which add up to 18. That has made 18 something of a symbolic number among Jews. And that’s why, when making donations, Ira Riklis usually gives in some multiple of 18.

Any true fan of the symphony knows that “first chair” is a term of honor that refers to the  premier of the musicians playing a particular instrument. That person is seated closest to the audience, takes the lead for that instrument’s movements and plays any solos. For fans of skiing, such as Ira Riklis, “first chair” has another meaning.  In that sport, it refers to the first skiers of the morning to catch the lift chairs.

At Vail, for example, the first skiers get on the lifts at 8:15. Officially, all the chairs from that time until those first skiers reach the top and have time to ski back down to the “feeder” lift are considered “first chairs.” But for Ira Riklis, there’s only one first chair—the first one that starts heading upslope at 8:15. And  just as the first chair in the symphony gets to play the most, the person on the first chair at the slopes has the chance to ski the most.

It seems like everywhere you look these days, there are people or environmental issues in need of help. And most of us can point to a particular cause (or perhaps many causes) where we’d like to lend our support, either in the form of money or in giving of our time. But the need is so great, and the ability of any one person to make a difference is so limited, that it’s easy to become discouraged. Ira Riklis certainly feels that way at times, even though he and his family have been blessed with wealth and resources.

But the worst thing we can do in times like those is to give into discouragement and do nothing. When Ira Riklis begins to feel those feelings, he turns his mind to the parable of the starfish that he learned years ago from his Rabbi. In the story, a man on a long, lonely stretch of beach sees a young boy who, as he walks along skirting the edges of the waves, is picking up starfish and throwing them back into the water. Thousands of these ocean dwellers have been cast ashore by a storm. Left ashore, they will die. But the man points out that there are so many that there’s little hope of making any real difference. At that, the boy picks up another and throws it to safety, then turns to the man and says, “I made a difference to that one.”

It’s only natural that when we do a good deed, by giving of our time or money to help others, we expect a “thank you,” bit of praise and that those we’re giving to at least help to make it as easy as possible for us to help them. But, like most of us, Ira Riklis knows things don’t always work out that way! All too often, we run into situations that seem illogical, inefficient or just plain frustrating.

Ira Riklis has experienced this at times while donating blood. In one experience, he went into a medical center where he had made donations many times before. But this time, he found that they had changed their paperwork to include legal jargon that he felt was inappropriate and a bit invasive. When he objected, the receptionist basically told him that he would fill out the forms or they wouldn’t take his blood. Realizing that any attempt on his part to appeal to logic would be doomed to failure, he bit his tongue and smiled to himself. “Well, that will teach me a lesson, won’t it,” he thought to himself as he signed the new forms.