12/22/2023 0 Comments Jamie raskin wife“Despite very fine doctors and a loving family and friendship network of hundreds who adored him beyond words and whom he adored too,” they write, “The pain became overwhelming and unyielding and unbearable at last for our dear boy, this young man of surpassing promise to our broken world.” Raskin and his wife do not go into the details of the circumstances of his death, probably because they wish their son to be remembered for the many things he did in his short life of kindness and service.īut what they do say is incredibly important - Tommy, they write, lost a “blindingly painful and merciless” battle with what his sister Tabitha dubbed “a disease called depression,” one that has plagued him since his 20s. It’s hard to believe the volume of his accomplishments fit into just 25 years.Īs is appropriate, and recommended by most mental health professionals, Rep. “Tommy Raskin,” his parents write, “had a perfect heart, a perfect soul, a riotously outrageous and relentless sense of humor, and a dazzling radiant mind.” The detailed obituary gives a full sense of just what bright and driven presence he was. Tommy’s parents also write about his passion for non-fiction literature, including books about “World War II and resistance to Nazism, Jewish history, libertarianism, moral philosophy, the history of the Middle East conflict, peace movements,” and his love for the writings of Jewish authors Gar Alperovitz (about dropping the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and Peter Singer (on animal rights). He went from being a 12-year-old who wrote “a detailed brief to his mother explaining why he should not have to do a Bar Mitzvah and citing Due Process liberty interests (appeal rejected),” to becoming a Sunday school teacher, “often substituting his social-struggle analysis of the Exodus story for teachings on the Hebrew alphabet,” to interning at J Street during his years as an undergrad. The eulogy also movingly recounts Tommy’s Jewish evolution. Tommy was a second-year law student at Harvard - one who gave away more than half the money he made as a teaching assistant to charity - before he lost his battle with depression. He graduated from Amherst College and found a passion for the law. He grew to be a man with a passion for writing, languages, and animals, as well as an anti-war activist. The piece speaks of a boy widely loved - by his family his two sisters, Tabitha and Hannah many cousins and by his peers. In every picture, he exudes joy the expression in his piercing blue eyes is unbearably kind and thoughtful. The taboo-breaking tribute is filled with pictures of Tommy, from cherubic toddlerhood to strapping adulthood. It’s a tribute to a luminescent child lost too soon - and to a life of compassionate service as a “radiant light in a broken world,” a reference to the Jewish tenet of tikkun olam. The emotional statement, which the couple published on Medium, is full of humor and love. Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and his wife, Sarah Bloom Raskin, who was deputy Treasury secretary in the Obama years, published a deeply moving and important eulogy for their son, Thomas (Tommy) Raskin.
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