A single mother, Karen Clar brought her son, Austin, to Rabbi Leynor's Richardson synagogue for his pre-bar mitzvah religious education. There she reconnected with her own Judaism and joined an adult class. The rabbi became friend, as well as teacher, to this little family. The friendship blossomed into love.

Rabbi Leynor described himself then as "the Terrible Two's: too old ... too fat ... two kids." He was 13 years Karen's senior – she had been born the day before his own bar mitzvah – but his children were several years younger than her son. And he carried 457 pounds on his 5-10 frame.

"I couldn't imagine why this competent adult woman, with intelligence and beauty, could have chosen me," he recalls. But she was a social worker, trained to look beyond externals. Or perhaps she chose social work because she had always had that clear sight. According to her sister Donna, "Karen had many gifts. One was to love people based on what was inside them."

The couple married in a quiet ceremony in July 2001. Their new family life was tragically short; a brain aneurysm took Karen away just three years later. But ... but ... but ...

For Rabbi Leynor, there was transformation.

"The journey has always been spiritual for me," he says. "Over time, I came to realize I needed to be Jewish out in the world, making connections to the larger community." Karen had encouraged him to broaden his longtime work as a Plano police chaplain with more specialized training – mediation, suicide prevention, grief counseling. And he had encouraged her to become a clinical hypnotherapist.

"This was the beginning of our dream, to work together someday," he says. He gave his congregation notice that in mid-2005 he would leave its pulpit permanently for a new career in community chaplaincy.

Karen also encouraged him to have gastric bypass surgery, which he did in June 2002, before their first anniversary.

Rabbi Leynor was born big – more than 10 pounds. He was already overweight when he assumed his pulpit in 1987 and just kept gaining.

"Everybody comes to rabbis with problems," he says, "but rabbis have problems, too. Eating for me was like smoking, or drinking, or taking drugs. You don't need these things to survive, but I'd got to a point where I couldn't fill up the abyss inside me. You must love yourself enough to eat to live, not live to eat. Karen helped me learn to love myself. She was my muse and my nurse."

The surgery, which permanently reduced his stomach to a pouch that holds only a half-cup of food, kept him in Dallas' Zale Lipshy Hospital for five days. Then, at home, "Karen took care of me when I couldn't do anything for myself. I was inspired and renewed."

At his checkup four months later, he had dropped 125 pounds. He's since lost about half of his pre-surgery weight, stabilizing at 225 pounds. Even without Karen, he maintains the rigorous, careful eating patterns his new lifestyle demands.

"The scar that runs from under my sternum to my navel is a sign that this was my chance to re-create myself," he says, "so I can go on and fulfill my mission, helping others to change their lives." But ... but ... but ...

That was also the irony: "Karen loved me the way I was," he says. "But she was so much younger and healthier. I wanted to be sure I'd be around for her."

Karen's undiagnosed congenital aneurysm burst early in the spring of 2004. At first there was hope for recovery, but then came the decline and the coma. She was unresponsive when Austin came to her bedside in cap and gown from his Richardson High School graduation in May; she was unaware that the joint bar and bat mitzvah of the Leynor children in June had gone on without her.

The end came in September. "She had a living will," the rabbi says, "this beautiful person in a body that didn't work anymore. So we decided to let her go." She was only 38 years old.

"People asked me then, was I going to change my mind and stay at the synagogue? But I decided to continue as planned, to pick up where our life left off. Karen's death is tied up with everything I'm doing now."

Rabbi Leynor has added certification in clinical hypnotherapy, his late wife's specialty, to his array of skills that also includes marriage and family therapy and counseling victims of terrorism.

"Everything that has happened has equipped me to help others find the spiritual path that works for them," he says. "And binding up someone else's wounds helps me bind up my own. Karen radiated light and life. She got me where I need to be. And I think she knew at the start she would get everything she needed from me, including the father that Austin never had."

Austin Clar is now 19, attending Richand College, a big brother to Perry and Keri Leynor, 15 and 13. The man he calls Pops has opened his own counseling offices and Spiritual Heritage Center in Dallas, his card now reading "Rabbi/Chaplain Jeffrey Leynor."

Last summer, Rabbi Adam Raskin assumed the pulpit of Richardson's Congregation Beth Torah, which on Sunday will observe its second annual Karen Leynor Mitzvah Day. Then all its members will perform acts of service for others throughout the larger community, in her memory.

"It's very strange," Rabbi Leynor muses. "I lost the weight of two people, my marriage, my Karen. But her death gives me direction.

"In her memory, I'm carrying on. Limping, like our poor father Jacob, but carrying on."

SOURCE:
Dallas Morning News - 03/21/06 (Healthy Living Section) 
Harriet Gross is a Dallas freelance writer.