MiriyaB Blogs

A Good Thing At My Shul

2011-12-04T00:49:00.002-05:00

Sunday, December 4
Not Jewish and Raising Jewish Children? Discussion
Come join our discussion of the joys and challenges of celebrating Hanukkah and other Jewish holidays. Learn holiday basics. Facilitated by someone married to a non-Jewish spouse. No charge.

A good thing -- I hope it goes well. And here's what I wrote in a note to the mom who initially posted about on the DCUM list about the idea of doing such an event/getting together such a parents' group:

... I'm one of those children raised Jewish by one non-Jewish parent (dad) and one Jewish parent (mom) [in a DC-area synagogue, in fact: I grew up here 'til I was 15 and was bat mitzvahed in '87 at Arlington Fairfax Jewish Congregation [now Etz Hayim], before my family moved to Louisville, KY, where they still live] and my husband's parents are Catholic -- so our 2-year-old daughter S. has one Jewish and 3 non-Jewish grandparents... I appreciate that fact that there's attention being paid to interfaith family issues that can affect all kinds of Jewishly involved families, of various compositions! If there's anything I can do to be helpful or supportive, please let me know -- on the one hand, I'm not in the demographic you're addressing directly here; on the other hand, sometimes it seems like it's useful to people to see someone X years on from the kind of upbringing their children may be having who thinks it's a fine & dandy thing (because even though much of the community is supportive of intermarried families, it can sometimes still feel like an uphill climb -- and there are definitely people who are surprised that my father's not Jewish, has never converted, etc., because of whatever preconceptions they have...)

Here we go again (Forward article "Conservative Synagogues Crack Open Door to Intermarried Families")

2011-08-31T10:08:00.002-04:00

A Shefanik posted the link to this Forward article, "Conservative Synagogues Crack Open Door to Intermarried Families: Movement Seeks Balance Between Tradition and Greater Openness."

As Sam says to Frodo in Mordor, "We've been here before!!!"

*sigh*

I'll see if I have more to say later on, but for now: noted, read, made one comment I couldn't keep myself from, and on we go. This is so old hat already...

Musings of a Minyan(marginal?) Mom: The View from My Side of the Stroller

2011-08-03T10:06:00.005-04:00

The comments below emerge from an email conversation in which I said I was "feeling a little distant from the Minyan these days" (the Minyan = the lay-led service that made us decide to join our current synagogue and live within walking distance of it rather than somewhere else) and I was asked to say why. Well, I did... and I ended up saying a lot more than I planned. So I thought I would share it here, as a snapshot from baby S.'s Minyan(marginal?) mom. I don't mean to imply that I have it so hard -- I know I'm lucky to be in the Jewish community that I have, and for there to be age-appropriate options for S. to enjoy at the synagogue's Tot Shabbat almost every week -- but even so, it's a big transition from what Life Before Baby, or even Before Toddlerdom, looked like:

It's a big change for someone who used to be in Minyan services pretty much every week, for up to two hours, to now spend something more like 20 or 30 minutes there every 2 or 3 or 4 weeks. There are many weeks that I don't even set foot in the Minyan: we walk 40 minutes to shul, we go to Tot Shabbat and/or S. runs around, and then we go to kiddush (usually for a long time, thankfully--S. can eat and run around, and we get to socialize a bit when she's tethered to a high chair or her path takes us near folks we'd like to talk to!). If one of us is davening or leyning -- which on the one hand we like to do, used to do with regularity, and kept us more connected to the community -- then the other one MAY try to bring S. in to the Minyan for part of it... but she may just run back out, or prefer to be in Tot Shabbat, and so instead of "let's all be at the Minyan" it's "divide and conquer -- you here, me there."

A lot of things changed when S. was born, but I may well have been in services more when she was an infant (and could be toted in if she was sleeping, or awake and not squalling, which could be a significant chunk of time) than now that she's a toddler. When she's older, there may again be a time that we're all able to spend more time in the Minyan together -- but with the current setup & her current age/stage, that time is not right now. And that makes me feel distant. I look at the emails (which is something), but I don't have a direct experience of what folks' davening or leyning was like on a given week, or who had an aliyah, or what the d'var was about...

I've had years of experience with the Minyan (and with other lay-led minyanim for the past 15 years), so I certainly still have thoughts about the kinds of matters we're discussing now. But was I there to see [a change in the davening space set-up that someone recently] tried out? No. Could I make a special effort to be present if we're trying something new? Sure. (I did make sure we got over to the Minyan when the cantor candidate was leading P'sukei D'Zimra -- though we still weren't able to get there at the very beginning -- and let me tell you, it was really nice to be in shul for PdZ and Shacharit for once! But it's not easy...) So I'm a lot less connected on a week-to-week basis than I used to be.

Tot Shabbat is where I spend the majority of my in-shul in-a-service time -- even if it's mainly Minyan folks plus Tot Shabbat families that we socialize with at kiddush. Outside of Havurah, when it's happening, is where I've usually parked myself when S.'s fallen asleep on the way to shul & I want her to stay asleep -- because I can sit on the bench outside the library or lurk in the library doorway and still hear/be some part of what's going on without the sound from inside running the risk of waking her up (which is not the case w/the Kogod, where noisy older children have woken her up pretty much every time that we've tried sitting on the benches there; if I bring her in to services in the Kogod or the Gewirz [= different places for holding services in the synagogue], which I do sometimes risk, then she may well wake up when there's a sudden change of volume [a constant buzz of davening/leyning isn't such a problem] -- from the silence before the d'var to someone beginning to speak, or the sound of her father beginning to leyn).

But at least I'm IN the shul building pretty much every Shabbat that we're in town (except last week, when S. had tested positive for strep and we had to keep her away from other little people until 24 hrs after the first dose of antibiotic!) -- because even with 80 minutes of walking to get to & from shul, in all kinds of weather, it's worth it to be there for about 2 or 3 hours of a little davening of some sort (mostly in Tot Shabbat), a lot of running around, and some socializing with shul friends from Minyan, Tot Shabbat families, Havurah, etc. -- rather than being trapped in the house with an active toddler! ;)

So that's my cri de coeur. It is what it is. Not saying there's too much the Minyan can do about the situation that obtains (though being in the Gewirz more would help), but just giving you the view from my side of the stroller...

2010-12-16T23:28:00.001-05:00

More thoughts sparked by a recent Velveteen Rabbi post here: http://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/2010/12/the-forest-beyond-the-trees.html

I'm glad to see more endorsement of the view To tree, or not to tree? That's not really the question! There's a lot here to consider, and I'm looking forward to exploring the many links and seeing the conversation that continues to develop!

That said -- my own experiences growing up with a Jewish mother & non-Jewish father don't lead me to agree with Susan that, because I as a child of intermarriage am "equally related to both parents, and both sides of the family, ...it is not so easy to define what is 'yours' and what is 'someone else's,' no matter how clearly you try to define their religious label." The latter part may be true for plenty of families, particularly if they don't feel comfortable joining in or affiliating with one or more of the existing religious/communal choices in their landscape (and I applaud "independent interfaith family communities" for creating ones that they find to work better) -- but it doesn't follow inevitably from the former proposition.

I'm Jewish. (And my father is not.) My spouse is Jewish. (And his family is not.) My daughter is Jewish. (And three of her grandparents, plus the majority of her aunts-and-uncles, are not.) The tree is not for me, or him, or her. The menorah is, the shabbat candles are, the sukkah in the backyard is. My in-laws will have a stocking hanging over the fireplace for each of us, as my father's mother did when we spent Christmas at her house in my childhood -- but that's part of their celebration, not ours. When we are on home turf, there are no stockings and evergreens and lights.

I understand that it's a different story when there's more than one religious tradition being actively celebrated under that roof -- after all, you can see my young self smiling with my brother in front of our name-emblazoned stockings in my parents' living room in photos from the year my father's mother was living with us, before she passed away. But that didn't make it any more my holiday than when we had previously visited her in her own home.

That this holiday is indeed "someone else's" doesn't make me less related to my non-Jewish relatives -- but it does mark that the ties that bind us are not those of religion...even if I open presents with them on December 25th; even if they spend Shabbat or a seder with me or other Jewish family members. We can celebrate occasions together whose basis may be religious for one party, but that doesn't make their religion mine or my holiday theirs.

I do agree that the language of the "guest" or "respectful tourist" (with regard to a religious tradition not one's own) assumes easy insides & outsides that don't obtain in a family of mixed religious background. For me, then "inside" and "outside" are different from "mine" and "someone else's": Christmas isn't mine, but it's part of my family memories and experiences; Judaism isn't my father's religion, but he's not an outsider at the seder.

And even though we don't tree, I think that "rabbis and religious teachers [who] tell these children and parents that they cannot have a tree" would do better to focus on what positive Jewish practices or customs they would like to encourage (you're cheered by greenery? put some up at Shavuot! you like assembling & decorating a holiday structure? here are some suggestions for Sukkot!) instead of finger-wagging about firs.

My comments =

Prayer + change

2010-12-12T08:19:00.004-05:00

I've got a post in progress -- current contemplations can be found in the comments on Velveteen Rabbi's latest blogpost: http://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/2010/12/prayer-life-changes.html#comments

What I said:

Wow -- a lot going on here, and thanks for saying it.

After becoming more traditionally observant & engaged in Jewish life in my mid-twenties, davening with the traditional liturgy on Shabbat + holidays has been the backbone of my prayer practice, with daily prayer more an aspiration more than a reality. When I took up a job downtown a few years ago, I made a choice to try to turn my weekday early-morning commuter walk into prayer time. Cue the joke about asking whether you can smoke while praying vs. whether you can pray while smoking: for me, it wasn't a choice between praying at home vs. on-the-go, but between praying en route & not praying this part of the liturgy at all. (There's a version of the joke at http://snipurl.com/1mrli6 if you haven't heard it before...)

I could usually manage a greatest-hits version of the Birkot Ha-Shachar/morning blessings through the Shema between my house and the nearest metro stop: if I timed it right, I'd emerge from a pedestrian path to glimpse other walkers streaming down Connecticut Ave. right as I reached the mention of bringing us in peace from the four corners of the earth, which seemed entirely appropriate -- from our individual homes, lives, backgrounds into the community of city life. Although I'd sometimes pray part of the liturgy on the subway (particularly if there were something special/longer to add, like Hallel), it seemed wrongly cut off from the rest of the natural world to do so -- I would usually wait until I was at least walking up the escalator to emerge into the light, and then pick up where I had left off, to cover the Amidah + at least Aleinu, maybe the psalm of the day or another bit here & there before I reached the office door. I might manage the full weekday Amidah text if I consulted my bitty black pocket siddur (picked up at a used bookstore in Prague or Budapest a dozen years ago); if not, my mental or mumbled version would settle for highlights (bookends of start & ending are easy, familiar from the Shabbat/holiday liturgy) and half-remembered sections or personal meditations/supplications on the weekday themes. The prayers for the sick always made it in: a different formulation from the communal mi-shebeirach on Shabbat but the same names I recited week after week -- until suddenly they weren't. You want for names to disappear from the list because the person has recovered. That's not always what happens -- the shock of the rhythm disrupted when a 39-year-old professor, friend, father of young boys succumbs to cancer and his name falls from my morning list, replaced by thoughts of those he's left behind.

Something about the morning commute worked well for me--starting the day right, fresh, focused on thanks and tasks, who I am (made in Your image) and what my role should be (loving peace and pursuing peace). Sure, every now & again I'd manage to daven mincha or ma'ariv, the afternoon or evening prayers, on my way home (depending on time of year, my return journey might be before or after sunset) -- mostly if I found myself without another distraction (reading or iPod) and realized I could launch into Ashrei rather than just stare at the subway walls. But mainly morning. And that was something new. And that was a start; that was enough.

And then -- things changed. One July morning, no commute -- my in-laws sleeping in the living room hear a stirring and ask if it's time for me to head to work: no, but it is time for labor. When I come home from the hospital with baby two days later, morning and evening have already given way to the blur of smaller cycles: feed baby, soothe baby, try to catch some sleep; lather, rinse, repeat. I am exhausted; our sleepy baby is not regaining her birth weight. Prayer is internal and instinctive, barely verbal, certainly not liturgical. Please let her be all right. Please let me get through this. (But perhaps not so far from the tradition, either: Moses's terseness in praying for his sister Miriam -- El na, r'fah na lah/Please, God, heal her.) When the pediatrician prescribes a nighttime break so that I can get more than 2 hours of continuous sleep, morning regains meaning: it's the time when I come downstairs and my husband, who has fed baby her bottle and settled her back to sleep in the Amby hammock in the living room, can sleep upstairs on a bed instead of the sofa where he's sacked out post-feeding. When the sun rises and I carry baby back and forth to soothe her, or wear her on a sling against my body. I sing: sometimes the words are from the liturgy or the psalms, sometimes children's rhymes, sometimes lyrics from music that won't make sense until she's much much older (Elvis Costello, anyone?). I cry, overwhelmed by emotion and sleep deprivation: she is so tiny and precious, so helpless yet demanding, such a source of joy and of fatigue. The singing and the crying are not: one happy, the other sad -- either one can be either, or both, or something in a space beyond either. In the stifling heat of a DC summer, I watch the day wax and wane through the windows of the air-conditioned living room: the thermometer hovers around one hundred as I realize I have not been outside in three days. I remember now stepping out onto the flagstone porch in my white silk tallit, outside for the first time that day even though it is no longer morning. I cannot tell you for certain whether it was Shabbat or a weekday, whether baby was one week old, or two, or four -- or whether she was not even born yet, this memory an afterimage mapped onto the right space from a different time, where davening outside on that porch by myself didn't mean keeping an ear open for a cry from just inside the French doors that would call me back to her.

We move to a new house. She is six weeks old. I go back to work. She is eight weeks old. I work from home two days a week, commute in two days... then two-and-a-half...then three. Davening on the morning commute doesn't so much happen -- but the pattern of snatching weekday prayer time from the midst of some other activity persists. In the early morning when baby wakes me, I bring her downstairs for changing, feeding, playing -- and sometimes, I drape my tallit over my pajamas and clip my kippah to my unwashed new-mommy hair and daven. I sing all the parts of the liturgy that have good tunes, to keep baby entertained; I carry her in my arms and bounce her around and dance. I balance a siddur on the top of the TV set so I can catch some of the text I've forgotten but keep it out of baby's reach. She fusses, and I sit down to curl her up in my lap, the silk of the tallit forming a curtain as she nurses. Mah tovu ohalecha -- how goodly are your tents...

(There's more I have in mind to say, particularly about Shabbat/holiday/communal prayer at this stage in my life, but as the better is the enemy of the good, I'm going to post this now. Shavua tov!)

A Come-As-You-Are Yom Kippur

2010-09-18T23:09:00.002-04:00

(I made a post on Fiftypercenters.com just before Yom Kippur: visit it there, or read it here!)

Just hours until sundown, and I feel even less prepared for Yom Kippur than usual. The High Holy Days always take me somewhat by surprise (what? already?) -- and, with the joys of celebrating Sukkot with our community to look forward to, I anticipate the more shul-heavy Days of Awe with less enthusiasm than when they were the main events on my fall religious calendar.

And this time I have even less sense of what to expect from my Day of Atonement -- yes, even less than last year. Then, as a new mom with an 8-week-old, I knew I'd just be going with the flow, and not fully fasting -- I spent maybe an hour or so midday in one of the main adult services, nursing the baby under a cover during the repetition of the Musaf amidah, and nursed her again in the back of the late-afternon children's services, where the prayer leaders took suggestions from the kids of things they were sorry about and had everyone sing them back together, in the melody used for the traditional Ashamnu (an alphabet-acrostic catalogue of communal sins), confessing to "Not listening" -- "Saying mean things " -- "Hitting my brother."

Now I can foresee that my Shabbat Shabbaton will not exactly be a day of complete rest and reflection, with a one-year-old in tow. (Babysitting services for the holiday at the synagogue we go to here begin with age 3, so no luck there!) I'm running between parts of my lives, trying to finish up work I need to do, make sure we all get some food before sundown (even if not all of us are going to be fully fasting for 25 hours), get some shul clothes on, and get to Kol Nidrei (maybe).

For some people, the High Holy Days are time to dress up -- one way of manifesting the importance of the holy day: even if we no longer think of God as a king (a recurring image in the High Holy Day liturgy), shouldn't we at least show in our sartorial choices that this date with the divine is a significant event?

Me? Over the years since I became more observant & involved, my Yom Kippur dress has often been less, not more, fancy: if you go for the custom of wearing white and eschewing leather shoes, you may well end up wearing a long white cotton skirt, a not-exactly-matching-but-close-enough long-sleeved cotton shirt, and anything from sneakers to flipflops on the feet. And that's fine: it works for me, and even if some other people are wearing suits & hats, no one ever gives the impression that I'm not suitably dressed. :)

But this year I feel that it's even more a "come-as-you-are" Yom Kippur, inside & out. I'll be there when I can, for what I can, wearing what I manage to pull out of the closet in the minutes before we have to wrestle the baby into her stroller and walk out the door. Maybe I'll have been able to grab a shower -- maybe not. Maybe I'll have had some epiphany that makes me feel prepared for the day -- more likely not.

But I can say hineini -- "Here I am" -- and see where the day takes me.

On the eve of Yom Kippur 5771, I wish you all a year of blessing and abundance: shalom!

Leprous garments

2010-05-30T10:38:00.004-04:00

(This is not the way I expected I would return to blogging post-baby, but... the best is the enemy of the good [or even the middling!], so better I should just start already when I've something, however trivial, to say!)

I'm doing baby-laundry. Life has been busy (when is it not?) and there are some baby clothes that have been hanging out in the sink in the downstairs bathroom, a location in which they land when they need some extra TLC -- to have stains rinsed out, to be set to soak, etc. I didn't set these ones aside, nor did I know how long they've been there, but I was vaguely aware of their existence & the general desire to get them washed when wash got done. So while the washer was filling with sudsy water, I went to investigate in preparation for throwing them in with the rest of the baby clothes that had been accumulating in the laundry sack. OK, here's her white onesie with her name on it... here's the onesie Grandma gave her from a Louisville museum exhibit, that's dark blue, maybe I'll save that for a later load that's not light-colored clothes...
oh
my
...
WHAT is that?!?!?!?!

Fuzzy. Brightly colored magenta and nasty steel-grey spots. Growing out of the fabric.
Ay-yai-yai!

First thought: Ewwwwwww!
Second thought: Hey, this is like in Leviticus when they talk about "leprosy" in cloth or a garment!

And when the plague of leprosy is in a garment, whether it be a woolen garment, or a linen garment; or in the warp, or in the woof, whether they be of linen, or of wool; or in a skin, or in any thing made of skin. If the plague be greenish or reddish in the garment, or in the skin, or in the warp, or in the woof, or in any thing of skin, it is the plague of leprosy, and shall be shown unto the priest. (Leviticus 13:47-49)

No priest here. I reported on it to the spouse, who said "Throw it out!" After a brief consideration of recovery efforts (possible on the one dark-colored denim item that seemed to have just a little; not very promising on the light pink item covered in splotches, even once the fuzziness had been destroyed), and on the veritable heaps of existing baby-clothing hand-me-downs that could substitute for the leprous garment, I did so.

WaKiWo: Ain't I A Women?

2009-01-24T22:12:00.003-05:00

At some point I may attempt a more wide-ranging post about the ongoing Amusing Adventures of Watermelon Kippah Woman (a.k.a. WaKiWo for short), and to seek to answer such burning questions as Why is the ladies' room the predominant location for inquiries about my headgear? ('cos it is, by far!)

But in the meantime I offer this story, told to me at kiddush today by our friend & neighbor about a recent family conversation with their 2 young daughters as to what they would choose to wear on their heads when they grow up (in a synagogue context, presumably, given the discussion):

Elementary-school-age daughter: I'm going to wear a hat, like Mommy does.

[Parental response suggests that wearing a kippah is also an option.]

Preschool-age daughter: That lady who lives on our block, she wears a kippah -- and she's a women.

:)

Yes indeedy, I do, and I am.
(Take that, Weird British BeardMan!)
Ain't I a women?

You are not a "problem" -- The Truth is not a problem!

2008-10-24T14:56:00.008-04:00

Now that the cavalcade of fall Jewish holidays is over (no more chag 'til Pesach!), I hope to have more opportunities to get back to this blog. In the meantime, though, I'll offer you a few fruits of the holiday season!

One of the pleasures of celebrating here this year has been having our new rabbi, Gil Steinlauf, and his family as part of our community. I particularly appreciated his Rosh Hashanah sermon/d'var torah on Truth. You can read it all here (PDF format), but I've excerpted some of the parts that struck me most (please forgive the clumsiness that comes from the cut-and-paste; I'm not reformatting it all here) :

Judaism teaches us a radical understanding of the Truth that we so badly need
to reconnect with in our time. The Hebrew word for ‘Truth’ is Emet. The Talmud
teaches us, Chotmo shel haKadosh Baruch hu Emet, the Seal of God is Truth.[ii] In other
words, every time we look at the Truth square-on, without fear or denial, then we’re
looking as close as we can get to the face of God. The rabbis from all over our tradition
present us with magnificent teachings on how we must relate to the Truth as Jews.
Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel teaches us that Truth is one of the three fundamental
pillars of the world, along with Din and Shalom--justice and peace.[iii]

One of the strongest champions of Emet, of Truth, was Menachem Mendl of
Kotzk, the Kotzker Rebbe of the early 19th century. He taught us that the second
paragraph of the Shema says ‘V’samtem et devarai elah al levavchem,’ ‘You shall place
my words ON your heart.’[iv] The Kotzker says, God’s words, the Truth itself, should
indeed be placed on your heart like a great stone. Only when a heart that is clenched
closed, and ossified—afraid of the Truth—will it be weighed down by that stone of Truth.
But if we have the courage to have a heart that is open, we can let the Truth enter into
our hearts. The stone that once weighed heavy on our hearts becomes the agent that
opens our hearts up in life! And then we are transformed, lighter than we ever were,
because we have allowed the Truth in!

If there’s one thing none of us can escape in this life, it’s the Truth. We can run
from it, deny it, but the Truth is always there, often weighing on us like a stone, forcing
us to face it. Many of us fear that the Truth holds terror for us. Most of us assume that
the Truth is a problem. The Truth contains the inevitability of failure, of illness, of
collapse and even death. And so we do anything and everything we can to avoid the
problem of the Truth. And this avoidance, say our rabbis, is our greatest mistake. The
Truth is not a problem—despite its apparent message of tragedy and loss. Quite the
opposite, the Truth has been trying to get us to face it all along because it is the
opposite of frightening. In fact, the Truth contains the solution to all problems! We say
‘Adonai Eloheichem Emet!’ The Truth is the essence of the Divine. No matter what we
think of God, we can believe in the Truth. We can believe in the all-powerful nature of
Reality. The Torah tells us that when God created the world, that world was Tov Me’od,
very good. This world is Good! The Truth of our lives, in all its fearsome reality, is
Good! More often than not, this simple Truth is hard to believe, and yet, this is the heart
of our faith in Judaism: the Truth is Good! And it’s not only Tov Me’od—very good—it is
also ‘Rav Chesed v’ Emet” abounding in the potential for Kindness in its Truth—even in
the midst of loss and hard times.[v] Truth and Chesed—kindness--are linked in Judaism.
They are two aspects of the same thing. *

I speak today about Jewish teachings on the Emet, on Truth, because the Truth
is what all the Jewish people need to face in our time. Particularly in our Conservative
Movement, the time has come to face the Truth, in all its challenging beauty. The
challenge of our Movement, the challenge of Adas Israel, the challenge of all humanity,
is to have the courage to see the Truth as beautiful, no matter what form that Truth
takes.

A recent national survey done by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has
shown us a disturbing Truth. The study determined that the religious group in America
that had the greatest net gain was the unaffiliated. Sixteen percent of American adults
say they are not part of any organized faith, which makes the unaffiliated the country’s
fourth-largest “religious group.” It would seem that the fastest growing group in this
country has given up on finding Truth in religion. It’s not just a Jewish issue, but it’s
certainly very much our problem anyway. What is going on here? Why is religion, our
religion, failing to reach a whole generation? The answer is that we, the religious
leaders and thinkers, have not grappled enough with the Truth. In the Jewish world,
every program and initiative for the last few generations have declared that there’s
something wrong, or missing or “not enough” about Jewish life in America. Our
religious leaders have confused the Truth with “a problem.” The unquestioned premise
of American Judaism has always been that so long as we can get Jews to become
more observant and knowledgeable, then Jewish life will improve: the “problem” will be
“fixed.”

But this take on the Truth is not quite right. If you walked in to this building
today, there is something deep within you—a pintele Yid, a spark of Jewishness—that
already burns in your soul. It’s what brought you here today. It’s all there, now, within
you, already! You don’t need to be ‘fixed.’ You are not a ‘problem.’ Quite the opposite,
you—each and every one of you—are the solution. You are my teachers of the Torah
of your lives, as much as I am your teacher of Torah and mitzvot. This is the Truth.
The Truth is Good! The Truth is not a problem!
...
Most of you know that I am a passionately observant Jew. I keep kosher. I
daven three times a day. I study Torah every day. I love Israel. I love Jewish holidays.
I love Shabbat and long Shabbat meals where we sing zmirot, traditional Jewish songs.
Nothing gives me greater pleasure than to share that passion with each and every one
of you; to create the conditions where you can discover these joys for yourself. If you
want to learn these things from me and share them with me, then let’s celebrate that. If
you, however, have no interest in any of these things, then I don’t see that as the
slightest problem. It’s just the Truth, and I love the Truth! I want to learn your Torah. I
want our community to celebrate how you do Jewish. My approach is the approach we
all can have among one another—in all our multiple minyanim, in all our programs. We
have so many ways into Truth here: our services, our Gan, our religious school, our
youth programs, our adult education experiences, our social action, bereavement,
membership, our sisterhood and men’s club, service in lay leadership. Each aspect
here is another variant on how to feel welcome, on how to do Jewish, on how to be a
Jew in the fullest sense without anyone to judge you or to tell you that what you’re doing
is not enough.

A midrash is told of how, before God created Adam, the ministering angels were
arguing with God. The angels of love and righteousness urged God to create
humankind, but the angel of Emet, of Truth, urged God not to create humankind
because, Truth argued, human beings so easily delude themselves into confusion and
falsehood. What did God do? He took the angel of Truth and cast him on the ground.
And then, from the dust of the earth, God created humankind.[vi] To this, Rabbi Yehudah
Leib Alter of Ger taught us that Truth lives as a nekudat Elohut, the spark of Divinity—a
pintele Yid—within each of us that we so often cannot find because our hearts are
closed to the Truth all around us here on the ground. And so, says Rabbi Yehudah
Leib, our work is to uncover the Truth and see it for its goodness, and not to run from it.
We must develop a vision to see the Truth, the Torah that is all around us and even
within us. This is called ‘Torat Emet,’ the Torah of Truth.[vii]

In the years ahead, we will join together as a community and explore Torat Emet,
the Torah of the Truth. Together, we will learn to fall in love with what is in all its
beautiful, astonishing, terrible, wonderful reality. We will muster the courage to face
change, and build a faith in the Truth that reality is always kinder than we fear. While
the Truth is not always easy to look at, and while it sometimes will demand rigorous
honesty and fearlessness, it is the only way to meaningful change, and a life of true
holiness and purpose. We will forge new bonds of community and connection that we
have not made before. We will find new expressions of our Judaism, and reach those
who have been alienated. We will join together and find new ways to inspire one
another to work for justice here, in Israel, and all over the globe.

Over the years, we will begin to see how the change and vision that we crave in
our Jewish lives is lo bashamayim hi [viii], it is not in heaven, not in any notions of what
could be but is not. Rather, we will see how we are the vision that we have been
craving all along. When I look upon this congregation, I can see the Truth. And the
Truth is that Adas Israel right now has everything it takes to be the greatest, most
inspiring congregation in America, and maybe in the world. All the factors, the
resources, the talent, the passion, the possibility—it’s all here already, in this
community, in each of our hearts—if we can open our hearts to one another, to our
Truth. When I look out on this extraordinary congregation, I see a great flagship
synagogue in American Judaism. I see a beautiful Truth, that Adas Israel can be a light
to our people and to the world of what community means, of what chesed, kindness,
and compassion really mean. I see in us a congregation that can teach the world that it
need no longer fear the Truth. We can show the whole world that when we embrace
the Truth, then there is healing and purpose and vision—everything the whole world
needs to rediscover in itself. We can teach the whole world about the Power of Truth!

May we come to see with the eyes of Rabbi Akiva as we look upon our world.
May we come to see that the stone of Truth that once laid heavy on our hearts is the
“Even Ma’asu Habonim,” the stone that was rejected by the builders, “hayta leRosh
pinah,”[ix] but to us, it is the cornerstone, the cornerstone of Truth, of kindness and joy
itself that will show us the vision to evolve together with the generations of our people.
We have each been given Torat Emet, the Torah of Truth, v’chayei Olam nata
betocheinu, and the life of the world implanted within our hearts and souls. We already
have everything it takes to change the whole world. May we indeed open our hearts
and transform our Judaism, making it deeper and more meaningful for a new era, and in
doing so, may we transform the world for Truth, for justice, and for peace. Amen.

(References)
i B. Makkot 24a‐b; Sifrei Devarim 43
ii B. Shabbat 55a
iii Pirkei Avot 1:18
iv Deut. 11:18
v Exodus 34:6
vi Bereishit Rabbah 8:5
vii Sfat Emet, Bo
viii Deuteronomy 30:10‐14
ix From the service of Hallel

Talkin' 'bout Tallitot

2008-10-06T22:25:00.003-04:00

Over on Livejournal's WeirdJews community, folks have been talking about making your own tallit. I threw in my two cents, so I thought I'd include 'em here as well:

I have made my own tallit--twice. (I also have a storebought one, acquired several years ago to replace my very first tallit, which I bought in Israel in 1996: beautifully painted but made of unsuitably light silk, it inevitably frayed at the neck and got torn. But I don't wear the replacement tallit that much now: I prefer the one I made.) You can see #2 being completed here.

These are pretty low-key minimal-effort tallitot: I am not a particularly handy or crafts-oriented person, lack a sewing machine, and possess only rudimentary hand-sewing skills.

But with a little help from my friends, I've turned 1 white silk shawl & 1 piece of striped fabric into 2 friendly tallitot!

Working backwards:

I made tallit #2 while in England this spring because I somehow failed to pack a tallit for my 10-week stay over there. (In the meantime, I wore my husband's blue Gabrieli tallit* to services in Oxford, and he wore one of the shul tallitot, since he's a guy & it's easy for him to do that. Once I'd created my new Made In The UK tallit & given him back his own, our shul friends started asking "Why are you wearing your wife's tallit?", not knowing it was his in the first place! ;) ) A friend who lives in London is a big fan of the Shepherd's Bush market & the surrounding fabric stores, so solving my no-tallit problem by making one from scratch seemed a good solution.

*(He picked it out from the gift shop of our shul in Louisville when he converted in 1997)

I didn't have a definite idea of color or pattern when we went in, so I just let things suggest themselves as we looked. I ended up buying 2 types of fabric--one white/cream-colored with stripes that suggest traditional tallit design, the other a solid burgundy--and decided to use the former for the body of the tallit and the latter for reinforcing corners and an atarah at the neck. (I had thought I might make another one that was the reverse, but that didn't happen. I think my friend still has the burgundy fabric, though.) My friend hemmed the top and bottom edges with her sewing machine, and attached the reinforcing squares with it as well. We left the sides unhemmed, and she showed me how to pull out threads to fringe the sides. (I haven't gone as far as to tie them into those neat little knots you may see on commercial tallitot: at present it's more like tiny tallit dreadlocks...) I hand-sewed the atarah shape onto the neck area (I'd rescued some interesting metal jangly bits from the decorative edging to a giant table-shading umbrella on the theory that I could add them to the atarah, but so far that's just a theory) and added the tzizit, and voila: tallit!

Tallit #1 came about as something I'd been contemplating for a while: the Stealth Tallit... shawl-like enough not to attract attention when worn in Ladies-Don't-Wear-Tallit-Here Territory (not my native climate, but one that I find myself in when traveling--especially overseas--or visiting/celebrating simchas with the Orthodox contingent among my relatives), but able to satisfy my desire for my usual Jewish prayer garment (which I was increasingly tired of giving up in order not to rock the boat with frummy family's congregations).

So in the run-up to Passover a few years ago, when we'd be at Chabad for my cousin's bar mitzvah on the 2nd morning of Pesach, I kicked the plan into action. I knew I had several shawls that might be contenders, of a good size & shape for tallit transformation--I rarely wear them (but my mother loves scarves & shawls & keeps giving them to me), so whichever one I picked would surely see more use as a tallit than as a neglected shawl. An off-white silk shawl, light but with an interestingly varied texture and fringey bits on the ends, looked perfect for the task. I asked around at the Sisterhood Gift Shop in the synagogue where I was working, and got the name of a wonderful tallit-maker in the area; I asked her if she could give me advice about converting the shawl into a tallit, and we arranged a time for me to come over.

She couldn't have been more generous! She gave me squares of fabric for reinforcing the corners & told me to hand-sew them on before bringing the shawl back. When I did, she used her sewing machine to do a buttonhole stitch in the middle of each corner-square, then used a seam-ripper to create a nice reinforced hole for the tzitzit to go through. She gave me instructions on tying tzitzit and guided me through the first one, then watched as I did the next. The last two I did on my own--finishing the final one just minutes before Shabbat, 2 days before my cousin's bar mitzvah, in their neighbors' basement where my husband & I were staying. On the morning of the bar mitzvah, I folded over the corners to keep the tzitzit from flailing about, settled the shawl around my shoulders, and pinned it together as an ordinary-looking shawl. When I got up to the ladies' gallery at the Chabad shul, I unpinned it, unfurled the tzitzit, and donned it as my tallit. Chabad takes all kinds, so it's possible that no one would have given me grief even if I had been davening with something more conventionally recognizable as a tallit--but I certainly didn't want to make trouble for my cousins by standing out as some kind of freaky radical, and I felt much more comfortable this way.

Since then, I've generally used this tallit--I love the way it feels, and it's very light and portable.

Very Occasional Verse

2008-09-22T01:12:00.003-04:00

People sometimes ask whether I write poetry, since I study it and write about it. My usual answers? "No, not really" or "not in ages"... but then again, this week I wrote a sonnet. In about 15 minutes.

M. is having the students in his intro class write sonnets; on Wednesday he sent me an e-mail mentioning this assignment in passing...which, for some reason, prompted me to respond in sonnet form. And yeah, the result is about as good as that investment of time suggests...but it was fun to bash out and seems to have amused its recipient.

More worthwhile, in my book, are the sonnets that M wrote as "the first pair of poems in a notional sonnet sequence: 'Grammaretti.'" Having seen his students fall into various "errors in the use of antiquated diction ('thou knoweth,' 'he givest' and the like)," he offers some versified guidance.

He also notes:

Please excuse the fact that the sonnets are not, in fact, Spenserian sonnets, despite the title. And in the second sonnet, verb endings unattached to verbs should be spelled out (thus "ess tee" for -st, "tee aitch" for -th).

So I present them here for your edification and/or entertainment:

Grammaretti

I.
Consider now the pronouns thou and thee,
referring both to but a single "you."
Use thou for vocatives, apostrophe,
and subjects of your sentences, in few.
Use thee for objects of a preposition,
Direct objects and indirect as well.
To illustrate: "O thou! Thou hast thy mission.
To thee, 'tis thine to show thee whom to tell."
If plural "you" is meant, the word is ye
for subjects, while for objects you will do.
Together, case and number readily
distinguish "Have at thee!" from "Have at you!"
I've given thee the rules for thee and thou;
Thou knowest, then, how best to use them now.

II.
A rule of thumb. "Thou" verbs can thus be classed:
"Thou" takes an ending ending in a -t:
Thou shalt, thou wilt, thou canst, thou mayst, thou hast
—but note how -s- can keep -t company!
Indeed, thou wilt see -st oftenmost,
sometimes preceded by the letter -e-,
as in thou knowest; briefer said, thou know'st
(observe the meter's friend, apostrophe!)
The trick is not to use the -th endings,
for plurals and third-person verbs use those.
*Thou goeth and *he walk'st are faulty blendings,
as bad as, say, *I walketh or *you goes.
'Tis second-person -t for two (thou, thee),
third-person with -th for three (he, she).

And mine? OK:

Had I but time to carve from out my day,
I'd more than these short lines to you endite;
Yet back into the workweek's busy fray
Must I soon plunge, with other goals in sight.
Think me not cruel that I thee thus requite,
Quite miserly in present paltry pay;
Yet with more ample hand extend I might
Gifts of more worth when office hours give way.
Yet while I may, with words, though few and poor,
Some tender of the tender offer meant
Intend I here to send you from my store
Though meager more than hoped munificent--
More hoped for, more in hope to thee I'll give
Always and all ways, while we both shall live.

As a bonus blast-from-the-past, here's one that I wrote back in 7th grade...about the love triangle in my once-and-future beloved space-opera Japanimation TV show, Robotech. (Yes, my online moniker "Miriya" comes from this show--but my favorite green-haired alien warrior woman makes no appearance in the poem. Perhaps if I take up a Macross Saga sonnet sequence, though...)

Robotech Romance
(Sonnet written for 7th grade English in 1986. My poor teacher put up with my writing about Robotech for every 'free writing' journal assignment, so there's an 'Oh, no!!!' next to the title--but also an 'Excellent,' so she must have been indulgent.)

Poor Lisa stands, eyes glazed, oblivious
To all but that one man whom she adores
Who loves her not, but childish, obnoxious
Minmay, a star for whom the crowd clamors.
A golden-voiced, glitt'ring jewel is she,
"With her how can any other compare?",
Laments Lisa, in whom Rick cannot see
Inner beauty, intelligence, and care.
She follows him as flowers follow sun
Or Clytie, her Apollo caring not--
For shallow, immature Minmay's the one
Rick likes, and Lisa is quickly forgot.
But just rewards do come at last, my friend,
For Lisa wins Rick over, in the end.

P.S. October 13, 12:32 a.m.: I've been catching up on a friend's blogposts and happen to click on a link to one of his poems, published in 2003 (see here) -- a sonnet, as you'll see:

Self-creation

  The world creates itself again anew
  With words Bereyshis boro eloyhim.
  We know that last thing made is first thought through
  And so I think of us, and it, and Him.
  If world's God's supposition which depends
  On drafts innumerable of human deed
  Then every proofreader would cap his pen
  And curse the day he ever learned to read.
  As manna's flavor tastes of what-you-want,
  The world is colored with the paint we mix.
  As word politely bows before the count
  World's smallness is again divinely fixed
  In ark, where it creates itself anew
  As protean fecundity of twos.

Campaign 100,000 BC

2008-09-01T12:29:00.005-04:00

Last night we watched the first-ever Doctor Who episodes, from 1963: the story-arc composed of "An Unearthly Child," "The Cave of Skulls," "The Forest of Fear," and "The Firemaker" (Actually, we watched "An Unearthly Child" twice, not realizing that the first "episode" on the disc was the unscreened pilot, before they re-filmed it at the creator's insistence.)

Unfortunately, the rhetorical tactics Za and Kal use as they struggle for the position of chief in their prehistoric tribe sound all too familiar. Negative campaigning is nothing new:

KAL: It is cold.....the tiger comes to our caves again at night.....Za will give you to the tiger!!! Za will give you to the cold!

Za: Wrong on fire. Wrong for the tribe.

ZA: You all heard him say that there would be fire. There is no fire! Za does not lie! He does not say, "I will do this thing," and then not do it! He does not say, "I will make you warm," and then leave you to the dark! He does not say, "I will frighten away the tiger with fire," and then let him come to you in the dark! Do you want a liar for your chief?

Kal: No fire. No leadership.
Vote Za!

(Script excerpts from "The Cave of Skulls" found here.)

Watermelon Kippah Woman Rocks Out!

2008-07-16T00:43:00.002-04:00

Another photographic souvenir of a fabulous weekend: me rockin' out (well, okay, barely managing a riff from "In the End") on Ray's bass on my last morning in Manchester. Props to Texas team Julie & Brett for the pics!

Workin' Them Angels -- overtime! in Manchester

2008-07-15T14:39:00.002-04:00

Me.
Sticks.
From Neil Peart.
Oh yeah baby!!!

The short version:

I'm rockin' out at the Rush show in Manchester, NH: I'm in 17th row Ged's side, 3 people in from the side aisle. 2 songs into the second set, in the middle of "Workin' Them Angels" (my favorite!), I feel a tap on my shoulder--

from the row behind me, some guy in black with a blue-lit flashlight has crept in and wants my attention.
(Does he want to see my ticket? Does he think I have a camera? Whuddid I do?)

"These are from Neil--"

... and he hands me a pair o' sticks.

!!!

How's that for unexpected?

Link me!

2008-07-07T16:40:00.006-04:00

A friend's LiveJournal just introduced me to the madness that is Married To The Sea!

I also liked this one, but I am a very silly person:

marriedtothesea.com

Turning Twenty-One...

2008-06-26T23:12:00.003-04:00

Not me turning 21, obviously: I've been there and done that a good 13 years ago.

Nope -- but today is 21 years since the day that has done more to change my life more than any other since I first showed up on this planet...

June 26, 1987 -- Durham, North Carolina -- Duke University -- East Campus.
It's the end of the first week of summer camp at TIP (Talent Identification Program: 3-week academic summer camp, a.k.a. "nerd camp" in fond memory). After a week of immersion in Japanese--practicing my hiragana and katakana, learning my numbers and moving from wakarimasen to (at least skoshi) wakarimas'--I'm ready to relax and check out the afternoon/evening activity I've seen advertised on posters around the dorm: a James Bond Film Festival...

I head on over to the lounge of a neighboring dorm, Giles -- it's early, the films haven't started yet -- and nab a space on a couch. Two other TIPsters--two boys--sit on another couch across from me. We strike up a conversation, talk about comic books: we don't read the same ones (since I came to comics via Japanimation/anime [specifically Robotech--as the name Miriya may reveal to those who know!--and its adaptation by Comico] rather than on the superhero superhighway), but I invite them to come by and borrow my issues of Elementals if they like.

One of the boys turns out to be a TIPster I'd seen at Duke's Marine Lab the previous summer (though it takes me a little while to remember why he looked familiar!). And the other one?

Reader, I married him.

Not right away, of course--we were 13 and 14!--but from that day on we became an important part of each other's lives...and before long, the most important. (M. was a good deal ahead of me in this department: I may often have gotten credit for being precocious in other subjects, but it took me a while longer than it did for him to come to this particular realization.)

So today our relationship reaches the legal drinking age for the U.S. of A.
I'll gladly raise a toast to that milestone.
L'chaim!

That Thing On My Head, and On My Shoulders Too!

2008-04-01T10:43:00.003-04:00

Ok, so it's not my watermelon kippah (I'll try to get you a shot of that later--this one I actually borrowed from Mike, b/c it went so nicely with the green in my skirt & rest of outfit) -- but this is a shot of me tying the final knots of the tzitzit on my new British tallit (material from Shepherd's Bush Market, with thanks to Liza for fabric choice help & sewing machine assistance; tzitzit by mail from Jerusalem the Golden in Golders' Green; handsewing with needles & thread from Boswell's here in Oxford + some burgundy thread from Liza's London sewingbox; debuted at Oxford women's tefillah in March)...

thanks also to Rabbi Chuck Feinberg for confirming for me that I had no shaatnez issues to worry about with it :)

Why are you wearing that on your head?

2008-04-01T10:13:00.005-04:00

or,

Girl in a Watermelon Kippah
(if you can still call me a girl... do I even still count as a "young woman," here in my [early] mid-30s? I guess it's all relative: A. had just been calling herself "middle-aged," and then the Good Rabbi refers to us as "2 young Jewesses" ;) )

Standing in line for Oxford Literary Festival tickets at the marquee (that's Big Ol Tent for us Americans) yesterday, wondering how long it would take to get up to the front and get things done --

and suddenly a voice booms out from behind me:

Why are you wearing that on your head?
You're not Jewish!
And you're not male!

I turn to see a bushy-bearded (grey, and unkempt literati-beard rather than frummy-Ortho-beard) fellow, bald of pate and blue of eye, interrogating me.

ohhh kayyyy:

I am Jewish,
and no, I'm not male,
but it's my custom to wear it.

I've never heard of such a thing!
I've never seen a woman wearing a skullcap!
(quite loud, a little pushy/aggressive, but more astonished than aggrieved)

Women do, in the progressive movements -- you'll certainly see it in Reform, Liberal, Conservative & Masorti, Reconstructionist. It's true that there aren't so many women who aren't clergy who wear one all the time -- but I'm not clergy, and it's my custom to wear one, and I do know a few other laypeople who are women who do the same. But if you go into a non-Orthodox shul in the States you'll be very likely to see women wearing kippot, and also tallitot -- which I also wear in synagogue. I actually started wearing a kippah on Shabbat & holidays here in Oxford, when I became more involved & observant, because that was the custom of my friend Lisa, now Rabbi Doctor Lisa Grushcow...

You don't look Jewish!
Well, I am Jewish. Jews look all kinds of ways...

I'm Jewish! And people tell me I don't look Jewish!
Then they have a rather narrow view of what "looks Jewish" -- good thing that there are people like me and you to show them otherwise!

So you're not "taking the piss," then?
[Brit-speak for mocking/making fun of something]
No, I'm wearing this kippah because it's my custom, my minhag, to do so. Just like it is for some men.

I've never seen such a thing. These people, who are mostly goyim--
you're Gentiles, right?
--have you ever seen a woman wearing a skullcap before?

[The 20+ folks in line, who probably are mostly Gentiles & mostly Brits, decline to participate in BeardMan's straw poll. In fact, they mostly do not look at him and try to disengage from the situation, other than occasionally giving me sympathetic and somewhat amused looks, since I seem not to be minding his attempt to make me a subject of public debate and/or spectacle.]

Well, now they--and you-- have!
My name's Rebecca--what's yours?

Rebecca what?
Rebecca B----.

What?
B----. It's from my father's -- non-Jewish -- side of the family.

Ah-ha! So you're not purely Jewish!
Not all of my family background is, no -- but I'm Jewish.
Your name is?

David Diamond.
[takes my hand and kisses it]

A woman wearing a skullcap!
Yep. Nice to meet you!
[he kisses my hand again]

Two Young Jew(esse)s

2008-04-01T09:47:00.004-04:00

This blogpost title may ring parodic echoes in the ears of some of you who survived the 80s and 2 Live Crew, especially if you encountered 2 Live Jews and "Oy! It's So Humid!"

...but it's the translation of the phrase used to describe me & Avielah ( 2 yehudiyot ts'iyrot) in a note that the Nice Rabbi at the Great Synagogue near Marble Arch left for the Israeli security guard there, when he let us dump our bags there for an hour or so 'til Mr. Security Guard would be back and be able to let us in to see the synagogue....which we had wandered up & down the neighborhood seeking& not finding for about half an hour. (He also recommended that we spend the intervening time at the Wallace Collection, which was fantastic! Go Rabbi Rosenfeld!) But if we'd gotten there any earlier, we wouldn't have caught him just going out the door & thus been able to leave my Monster Suitcase (carrying stuff from/for 5 days in Paris + 4 days in London) there while we ran about & picnicked on kosher goodies from Golders Green and whatnot!

I also love that the note has 3 exclamation points after the all-purpose Hebrew expression "b'seder" (okay) -- rough translation =

Oded:
I had these suitcases brought in;
they belong to 2 young Jew(esse)s*.
Okay!!!
Lionel (signed in English, though the rest is Hebrew)

*Because all nouns have gender in Hebrew, our feminine gender is already indicated -- as it is not with the word "Jew" in contemporary English. We don't use the word "Jewess" any more (at least in a non-humorous/archaizing context), but somehow it feels appropriately British & old-school here...

Well, these 2 Young Jew(esse)s had a terrific time, catching up on all that's gone in in our Jewy Geek-Girl lives since last we met, talking about our Jewy/nerdly/adorable (all of the above)Significant Others and their work (or play)... can't wait to see her again soon!

If you're in London on Sunday 6 April, you can learn from her about cool scribal stuff :) when she gives the 4th annual Vivian Solomon Lecture at Southgate and District Reform Synagogue on "Mishpachat Avraham: Seeing Our Origins through the Lens of the Alefbet."

Whan That Aprille...

2008-04-01T07:10:00.002-04:00

or,

And I'm back again, said Nora
(with a monumental crash)

Never fear, fair readers, MiriyaB is here!

A very happy Whan That Aprille month to you all!

I suppose I am among the folk who longen to go on pilgrimages, since I am headed to the Holy Land in 10 days' time... and thence to Budapest, arriving on St. George's Day
(seems appropriate for our English sojourn, though of course he's not that English) !

See ya 'round!

Absent thee from felicity awhile...

2007-09-23T16:42:00.000-04:00

There have been Many Days of No Work (2 days of Rosh Hashanah; Shabbat; Yom Kippur) and More On the Way (2 days at the start of Sukkot; Shabbat; Shemini Atzeret & Simchat Torah) -- and I have Things I Must Do. (As with the invocation of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, I find it wiser to omit direct reference to The Overwhelming Object...)

Hence my blog silence.
I have even sworn off visiting one of my favorite online communities, letting them know that I must absent me from felicity a while...

So in the meantime I will leave you with the words of someone else: a d'var torah given by Cantor David Lipp at Adath Jeshurun in Louisville, KY, where we celebrated the 10th anniversary of our aufruf on the 13th of Av 5767 (28 July 2007) --

They Ask: Is God, Too, Lonely?

When God scooped up a handful of dust,

And spit on it, and molded the shape of man,

And blew a breath into it and told it to walk --

That was a great day.

And did God do this because He was lonely?

Did God say to Himself he must have company

And therefore He would make man to walk the earth

And set apart churches for speech and song with God?

These are questions.

They are scrawled in old caves.

They are painted in tall cathedrals.

There are men and women so lonely they believe

God, too, is lonely.

I don’t necessarily buy into Sandburg’s vision of God but I think he has a point -- we often project onto an ultimately mysterious God a super-human version of our own desires, needs, and illusions. Sandburg also knows that there are important questions, questions we’d like to ask God if we could.

One of the ways in which we project our needs onto God is through our liturgy. We take our holy text and expropriate verses, paragraphs, even phrases and mold them into an anthology of thoughts and prayers. This parasha is rife with such excerpt material -- taking out the Torah on Simchat Torah, responding to the gabbai’s opening call for an aliyah, the end of the first paragraph of the Aleinu, the Sh’ma, the question of the wise son and the answer to the one who knows not how to ask, the song we sing when we raise the Torah.

But if the prayer book is Rorshach test of our collective theology writ large, the way we deal with Theodicy is likely to be far more revealing in our projections of ourselves onto the notion of God’s justice or lack thereof. Theodicy is the difficulty that many religious traditions face in explaining the following paradox: If God is Good, Omniscient & Omnipotent, how come there’s evil in the world, or, more succinctly, Why do bad things happen to good people?

I know that Harold Kushner has written an entire book about it and, I hate to ruin the end if you haven’t already read it, but his bottom line solution is that God isn’t really omnipotent. If you believe that, then at least your intellectual problem is solved and there is no paradox. If you disagree with Kushner on this point, then we still have a problem.

I’d like us to look at just two verses near the end of the parasha which speak to the issue of Theodicy and also explore the way some of the rabbinic commentators deal with it.

Page 1031 verse 9 and especially 10. READ. It seems on first reading quite clear that God destroys those who reject the Divine and does so immediately. From a verse like this comes such expressions as ‘Will I get struck by lightning for doing this?’

I decided to watch the first installment of Saving Grace, the new TV show with Holly Hunter as a cop with all sorts of vices and an atheistic streak. When her angel is a guy named Earl who chews tobacco, she’s more than a little skeptical. Even when he’s proven beyond much doubt that she’s experiencing the divine, giving her a chance to ‘save’ herself, she confronts him with the whole Theodicy issue. She doesn’t use such fancy language but makes her point clear. Earl says, and I paraphrase, ‘If I answered all that there’d be no room for faith.’ Again, God’s mystery rules.

I hate to say it, but Holly Hunter isn’t the only one for whom that answer just doesn’t cut it -- it didn’t cut it for the rabbis either, let alone Carl Sandburg.

The Gaon Saadia, perhaps the most laconic of the commentators tells us quite simply that God means what it seems that God says -- the evil doer will DIE. The only problem with this explanation is it leaves us with the notion that anyone who dies young does so because God was angry with them, that they deserved it. I find it highly unlikely that any who have died young have been worse than some of the animals masquerading as human beings who have lasted into old or even middle age: Robert Mugabe, Idi Amin, Adolph Hitler, to name just a few. A more sophisticated explanation will have to be found.

According to Rashbam, Rashi’s grandson, who was known as a p’shat-man, a commentator who tried to discern the contextual meaning of the text without a great amount of exegesis, understands this verse to go hand in hand with a similar statement in Exodus and repeated earlier in our parasha as part of the restatement of the Ten Commandments -- reminding us that God remembers goodness to the 1000th generation but sins only to the 4th. So we still benefit from the good things our biblical progenitors did but only suffer from the sins our great grandparents committed.

In other words, if we are suffering needlessly, it could still be left over punishment from parents, grandparents or great-grandparents and not our own bad behavior. Alternately, someone who is irretrievably evil may have had reasonably good ancestors whose good deeds helped overcome his or her horrific actions and the reward for those deeds lasts longer so it could be any combination of their ancestors over the past 40,000 years.

This seems a little easier to digest but still leaves one with a somewhat bad taste in the mouth. The notion that I should suffer because of my parents’ flaws even though I may have overcome them seems particularly unfair. Similarly, the fact that my great- great- great-grandfather was a saint shouldn’t shield me from punishment for those acts which have truly hurt others.

Chizkuni
answers as follows: Children only suffer from the sins of the ancestors if they also continue sinning in like fashion. If they overcome those urges, they are not punished. Perhaps, if I could restate Chizkuni, someone who has had to overcome the nature and nurture of really horrific parents has already suffered in the process and will not suffer likewise being punished externally by God.

But this seems like an intellectual cop-out. If I’m only held liable for my parents’ sins if I sin too, then why bother saying it? Simply say that everyone is guilty for their own misdeeds.

That leads us to Ibn Ezra. Unlike Rashbam who equates these verses with the Exodus version, Ibn Ezra reads it as a Godly revision. Before God said: I’ll reward for 1000 generations and punish only 4; but now God says: only the guilty will suffer immediately, whereas the children will be spared any punishment -- Lo Y’acher -- no later punishment. In this, Ibn Ezra understands this Deuteronomic passage as a foreshadowing of what Ezekiel and Jeremiah will say later -- that God will no longer punish children for the sins of their fathers.

The official Aramaic translation of the Torah, Onkelos, and Rashi indicate a move away from a this-world orientation. Until now, we’ve only looked at how accounts could be settled in the land of the living. All the examples above seem to fail in some way the following test: ‘Do the evil suffer & the good prosper in this world according to their actions?’

Rashi and Onkelos enlarge the playing field of the argument -- the evil get the reward of whatever good they do in this world whereas all the punishment they deserve is saved up for the world to come. The good, on the other hand, are punished for what little evil they do in this world & the reward for their good is saved up for the world to come.

According to this view, if you’re on easy street, perhaps you’re benefiting from the one time you did something nice for someone. But wait until you die -- in the afterlife you’ll have one hell of a cleansing in purgatory for all the bad you did. If you’re suffering terribly, on the other hand, it’s probably because once you raised your voice slightly to your mother when she asked you to clear the table. All of your goodness is being stored up for a big payoff in the Monte Carlo of Olam Haba; that’s when you cash in your mitzvah chips.

It sounds ingenius except for one thing. This too doesn’t seem to meet the truth of the world. Not all prosperous people are nasty and not all poor people are saints.

Ramban, Nachmanides, has an explanation. God has patience for the evil in this world for three reasons:

They might do teshuvah.

They might perform mitzvot which will offset their evil deeds.

They may have children who will be Tzaddikim: Good children are worth the bargain of putting up with an evil person for now.

Their punishment will be performed, according to Nachmanides, as a part of the reincarnation process, similar to the view of Rashi.

Although I don’t buy into this after-life theological inverse reckoning system completely, it has the benefit of acknowledging the observed reality of the here-and-now and aims to reconcile God’s Goodness, Omnipotence & Omniscience.

Which leads me to the two final explanations which I think are as close as any to begin to explain what is clearly a mystery. Whereas Kushner paraphrases God’s speech to Job from the whirlwind as: "You think running the universe is easy? You try it sometime. How can I possibly control the evil of the world? All I can do is weep with you." In a sense he interprets the statement as one of resignation, defeat, a proverbial throwing up of the hands.

On the other hand if you accept the whirlwind speech in what seems to be its contextual meaning, that God’s actions are mysterious and incomprehensible from a human perspective, similar to Earl’s statement from Saving Grace, then you are left still wondering about that mystery.

There are those who believe it is sacrilegious to even question the mystery, to delve into it. When we hear bad news we’re supposed to say Baruch attah hashem Dayan Ha-emet -- praised are You the True Judge. Whatever happened, You allowed it and only you get the final judgment.

But even the chassidim, who said this prayer, understood kabbalistically the notion of Tzimtzum, contraction.

Because if you think the paradox of Theodicy is hard, it’s nothing compared to the battle between Omniscience and human Free Will. If God knows all, including the future, how can we really have free will? The answer of Tzimtzum is that God, in order to allow the creation of the universe and free will, intentionally contracts the Divine power and knowledge so that it can be created and our free will to act will not be a farce.

And so I’d like to share the words of a Christian writer, quoted in Louis Jacobs’ Jewish Theology, John Hick, who comes closest to articulating a modern notion of tzimtzum:

"...A world in which rewards and punishments were justly apportioned to our deeds, our moral natures could never have occasion to develop; and a world in which the ultimate constructive use of adversity was an established scientific fact would not function as a vale of soul-making."

So how do we understand this verse from Deuteronomy? I suppose the destruction that God presents in the verse for those who hate the Blessed One can be interpreted in many ways -- an inner destruction, a destruction of the ability to hook into a community of assistance in time of need, a destruction of the good which comes from connecting oneself to a stream of a tradition of depth and temporal expanse leaving us thirsty for the well of 1000 generations of good.

I started with one American poet and I’d like to conclude with another and his more pithy statement on our topic. This one might have been articulated by Holly Hunter in her new role on Saving Grace to Earl the Angel.

Robert Frost in his Cluster of Faith writes:

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee

And I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me.

Shabbat Shalom.

Repeat after me: "I am not dying"

2007-08-14T00:20:00.000-04:00

[dispatches from the Late Unpleasantness last Thursday night/Friday morning, written while it was going on...]

That wasn't how I'd planned to start my next entry, but the chest pain that woke me at 5:30ish (when I'd gone to bed around 4a.m.) and wouldn't let me go back to sleep or do anything else had other ideas. Have never felt anything like heartburn this severe before, don't like it at all: chest pain is bad! And yes, I know that Occam's razor would suggest that we attribute it to heartburn rather than to heart problem, but when chest tightness & pain/burning can be a symptom also of something Very Bad, and you are awakened in the middle of the night by it and it won't stop, it doesn't make you happy or not alarmed. Hence the need to tell yourself: "I am not dying. I am not dying. I will be okay. I will be okay." And then try to work to make it okay...

Of course there were no Tums or anything else to be had in the house: ran out months ago, but I only ever feel any need for then once every few months, so they're not on my regular agenda or noticed so much by me.

Oh, and by the way, my glasses had been missing since sometime last night, which didn't exactly facilitate the search for possible home heartburn remedies:

online (not so useful: most sites = about preventing heartburn, or seeming totally flaky and untrustworthy, or contradicted by other sites)
baking soda (which I'd at least heard of before & made sense, but could not find in our kitchen -- at least not w/my glasses off...but I'm not even 100% sure we have some right now)
milk (some sites said yes helpful, some said no -- but in any case we didn't hae an normal milk, just soy, but I had a glass anyway, figuring it couldn't hurt)
seltzer water (nothing recommended it, but I thought that folks sometime drank seltzer to aid digestion, like a ready-mixed Alka-Seltzer?)
ancient tiny pepto-bismol-like pink chewable tablet in the tiny pocket in the depths of my backpack (has probably been there for at least 2 or 3 years, but it by itself = unlikely to be much help)

So since none of this was helping, and I couldn't lie back down and go back to sleep (most sites frown on the prone position for the former & discomfort wouldn't let me do the latter), I set about to find my glasses (without which I would be foolish to leave the house, let alone drive the car!) and set off for the 24-hr CVS pharmacy to get some over-the-counter stuff to deal with the situation.

They say that sleep deprivation makes you as bad a driver as drinking. I'm sure I believe it, but I didn't want to walk alone the 10-15 min each way to the CVS at 6a.m. -- figured I would just be very careful, cautious, and that the light traffic at this hour would help. Made it there and back without incident, though definitely feel woozy and somewhat coordination/response-time impaired. Talked to pharmacist: she asked a few questions (e.g. abt do I have high blood pressure, or do relatives, etc.) recommended going on the hypothesis that it's the less serious/more common thing first (heartburn, notheart problem) and taking some Pepcid and also Tums.

So I have returned safely and done both (took the Tums right then & there at the CVS counter, in fact).

[Friday, 6:51 a.m.]

...

Definitely not dying (hooray!) -- no more so than usual, anyway

Feeling considerably better -- not perfect, but better. Slept some from 7ish to 8:50ish -- Mike came down, found me on the couch, told me it was 10 to 9, and I thought I'd better call my doctor to see if I could see her. Finally managed to get through to someone useful (after the answering service--I guess the office doesn't open until 9:15?, the receptionist, the nurse's voicemail, etc.) around 9:30, when they said "She's going on vacation next week, so if you want to see her you'd better come in now" -- and I said "I'll be there in 10 minutes." And I was.

Now I get to learn all about acid reflux and why all the things I like to eat or drink may trigger it (grrrr, oh well! really put a crimp in our Shabbat menu, since every other ingredient was something that was a bad idea)...

[Friday, 1:53 p.m.]

Sunday Morning at the Cathedral: Nice Jewish Girl In Church

2007-08-13T01:52:00.001-04:00

I was at the Cathedral this morning -- first time I've been there for a service since I left National Cathedral School at the end of 9th grade (May/June 1988), when my family moved to Kentucky: before that, I was there for Cathedral services every Friday morning from 6th grade to 9th grade! My friend Sara, who's Native American by ethnic heritage (and was in town from PA for the National Powwow, which I came to some of yesterday--really neat!) and Episcopalian by religious upbringing, wanted to go to church this morning -- and I said that the Cathedral has services at 8, 9, 10, and 11 a.m. (we made the last one!) and that I'd love to go with her.

The sermon was wonderful -- given by a young female reverend (Rev. April Berends), whom we talked with briefly afterwards: she invited us both to come to their group for 20-and-30-somethings if interested, though since Sara lives far away & I'm Jewish, we said it was kind of her to extend the invitation but not likely that we'd come.

The service was beautiful, as always, with a very beautiful piece sung by the choir during the offeratory, by contemporary vocal-music composer Lee Hoiby (who was born in 1926, but still seems active now in his 80s!): it reminded me of the Thompson Alleluia (composed during WWII at the time of the Fall of France; I sang it with the choirs at Harvard commencement in '92, and I think it's an incredibly beautiful piece of music)...

Afterwards we got some coffee (yay, refreshments!), walked around, looked at the moon rock in the space window, etc etc. -- even went to the small side chapel to get a special blessing from one of the 2 clergy members who were offering personal blessings and prayers there, which was neat: both were women, probably in the 40-60 age range (one African-American and a little younger-looking; one white, with silver hair).

Sara, who works with ESL students K-12 in her small PA school district, said she usually asks for a blessing as she begins the new school year. I asked for a blessing as my husband begins the new school year, as the synagogue where I work gears up for the High Holy Days, and as I work to complete my dissertation for the Oct. 1 deadline -- as well as for healing and consolation for all our friends and family, of all faiths or none, who are ill or sorrowing or have lost loved ones.

I have now been anointed! ;)

It was pretty interesting:
she'd asked if I wanted to be anointed, and I said, "um, sure!" --
she had a little tub (kinda like one of those lip-gloss or hand-lotion small circular tin containers) of a lightly-scented semi-solid-spreadable substance, and smoothed her finger (thumb, I think) across its surface, then put it to my forehead --

and made the sign of the cross, perhaps by force of habit, although I'd asked for a blessing that was appropriate for us as Jews -- but since I'd just been at the National Powwow, I decided to interpret it in good ecumenical style as indicating the four cardinal directions, a sacred symbol in many cultures...

and began saying "in the name of the Father, and the Son--"

I shook my head.

"oh!" (realizing her mistake) "just the Father, then, just the Father..."

;)

...and she proceeded to hold my bowed head in her hands while creating a very beautiful spontaneous prayer on my behalf.

--MiriyaB,
who loves her synagogue but can appreciate any "house of prayer for all peoples"

Collected Comments...

2007-08-13T01:47:00.000-04:00

From hither, thither, and yon (online), stuff I'd said that's not deathless but that I might like to keep track of somewhere (here!):

In response to someone's friend telling him "You must pursue your life in a non-haphazard way":

Hmmm... that's good advice, but often hard to follow!

Non-haphazard pursuit of one's life, however, should be judiciously coupled with a certain amount of flexibility -- of openness to the chance & indeed haphazard occurrences, good and bad, opportunites & obstacles, that the universe throws at us unexpectedly -- in order that we may bend and not break.

we can only grow the way the wind blows
--but if we want to reach toward the sun and stars in our growing, we must keep pushing upward, however oblique the angle.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

2007-07-25T13:59:00.001-04:00

...as my father has been known to say. In this case, speaking out against ostracizing those who intermarry has, as one might have suspected, drawn the trolls who live under the bridge of I Must Defend Traditional Judaism Against Apikorsim and Apostates.
So here's what I had to say, continuing on from this earlier post:

Nothing you have written above, and nothing Noah Feldman wrote in his article, indicates to me that Feldman is "anti-Orthodox" -- and nothing in Rabbi Boteach's article suggests to me that he finds Feldman in any way anti-Orthodox either.

The question is not whether the Maimonides School or Orthodox Judaism "recognizes" Feldman's marriage -- it's what it does in reaction to the fact of that marriage. Not listing his simchas is one thing; taking him AND his then-fiancee out of a group photo, and pretending neither one of them exists, is quite another.

Not to mention that it's incredibly chutzapadik and lacking in derekh eretz (respect for other people) to presume that
1) because the woman with him is Korean-American, she's not Jewish
(I know Asian-American Jews of all sorts: raised Jewish by Jewish parents who are of mixed ethnic descent; raised Jewish after being adopted by Jews; Jews by Choice);
2) his children, when he announces their birth or milestones, are not Jewish -- even if it's known that their mother is not
(some families choose to convert their children at birth if they are not halakhically Jewish; whether or not the mother converts is not immediately germane, as long as she is supportive of the creation of a Jewish household and raising her children as Jews: see JOI's The Mothers Circle for more information and support for non-Jewish women who make this wonderful choice!).

Presumably the marriage depicted in his article, like the marriage of my Jewish mother to my non-Jewish father, does not constitute kiddushin and is not a marriage that takes place within the Jewish legal structure. But I am not convinced that therefore the relationship has NO standing in Jewish law, since there are means of acquiring a spouse other than via kiddushin ( e.g., through cohabitation, etc.): if he wanted to marry a Jewish wife, I think that halakha and not just the laws of the land would demand that he divorce his current one -- and if that's the case, then it's being "recognized" as a marriage for at least some purposes. A non-permitted relationship may be prohibited, but it still exists!

Marriage with someone who is not Jewish has always been a fact of Jewish community life and history --look at the marriages in Tanakh/the Hebrew Bible for countless examples, both positive (Tamar, Asenath, Zipporah) and negative (the "son of an Israelite woman" in Exodus, who abuses the name of God in a fight with another Israelite; he's understood to be the son of a non-Israelite, otherwise why say "son of an Israelite woman"?).

It doesn't sound to me as though Noah Feldman turned his back on Orthodox Judaism. The Orthodox Judaism of that particular community, and his school (or at least its administration), seems to have turned its back on him. I think that's a shame -- but I also want to invite him and his wife to come with us and find a home in a Judaism that opens its arms to them instead. (Hi guys--remember me and my husband Mike W. from Oxford?) My Jew-by-choice husband and I are part of traditional egalitarian Conservative communities -- in fact, I was raised in one here in the DC area by my Jewish mother and non-Jewish father, and never felt ostracized or strange -- where they would be very welcome. I have friends in the Reform and Reconstructionist and Renewal movements (several of whom are rabbis) as well, and know that there too they should find a warm welcome and the encouragement to be involved in any way they choose!

Asking the Right Question

2007-07-25T13:54:00.001-04:00

It's about time someone did!

I'm definitely in the camp that thinks "Why Be Jewish?" is a much more compelling and important question than "How Many Jews Will There Be In 30 Years?" or "Who is a Jew?" ...and so, apparently, is Rabbi Eliyahu Stern, given this New York Jewish Week article:

We Must Have Answers For ‘Why Be Jewish?’

Eliyahu Stern

Demographers are locked in a furious battle over whether American Jewry is at five million and dangerously dwindling or 6.7 million and growing strong. But either way one looks at the numbers, counting heads is a poor means of evaluating the strength of Jewish affiliation and identity. Both sides of the demographic debate are overlooking the biggest question facing Jewry today, which is not “How many Jews are there?” but rather, “Why would one want to be Jewish in the first place?”

The misplaced emphasis on demographics has led us down a path of making intermarriage the central issue in Jewish life. Though important, encouraging Jews to marry within the religion will only go so far. The Jewish community forgets that the people who brought us to the demographic quandary we are currently facing are the children of fully Jewish couples — fully Jewish ethnically, but barely Jewish spiritually or intellectually. An unengaged Jew married to an equally unengaged Jew does not translate into Jewish children; it translates into children who will probably not identify as Jewish.

If we want to answer this generation’s real questions, we must move beyond initiatives rooted in marriage questions alone. We must be ready to engage Judaism in its entirety, through its ideas, practices and texts.

Are we confident enough in our tradition to promote mitzvot such as prayer, Shabbat and kashrut in meaningful, unapologetic and original ways? Are we ready to invest in cultivating a religious leadership that could make Jewish ideas and wisdom touch peoples’ lives? Are we prepared to welcome those of different backgrounds and even different religions into our homes and institutions to experience the love, care and joy that a Jewish community provides?

Most importantly, we need to convey that Judaism adds a palpable higher value to our life experience. A strong and enduring Judaism must be able to provide answers, supply meaning and address issues that affect the way we live. A Judaism based merely on survival questions will produce at best short-term survival answers.

My own personal answer to “Why be Jewish?” is clear but complex: it involves the search for meaning, the love of study and the heightened sense of self-awareness, consciousness and choice that result from engaging the world of mitzvot. Such an emphasis does not exclude deep-felt feelings of peoplehood, nationality and community. In an era of choice, these latter feelings are still relevant, but they will most often emerge as the outcome of an engagement with Jewish convictions, practices and ideas, rather than vice versa. My answer to “Why be Jewish?” includes Israel as well, of course, but support for Israel will diminish if Israel cannot convince the Jewish people that it welcomes all types of Jews within its borders.

For centuries, questions such as “Why be Jewish?” trumped Jewish survival questions in communal conversation. We stand up at synagogue for the reading of the Ten Commandments, not for a head count of the 12 Tribes. From Maimonides to Mendelssohn, Judaism’s spiritual energy derived not from demographic polls but from the quality and depth of Jewish life and thought.

While modernity, the Holocaust, the American Jewish experience and threats to Israel’s existence have forced us to confront serious demographic concerns, oftentimes we use such issues as a veil to cover our ignorance of our own tradition. As the Hebraist Simon Rawidowicz described in his classic, “Israel: the Ever-Dying People,” it’s easier to kvetch about one’s grandchildren needing to be Jewish than to give them a reason why they should be.

It might be heretical to ask, “Why be Jewish?” The results are unpredictable: we run the risk of failing to provide a convincing answer, making matters worse. But it is a timely and genuinely Jewish question. If we do not pose it, we face the even greater difficulty of promoting a Judaism that we are not sure we believe in ourselves. n

Rabbi Eliyahu Stern is director of “Why Be Jewish?” a conference convened by Adam Bronfman in Park City, Utah, July 29 -31 under the auspices of The Samuel Bronfman Foundation.

Let's talk about God, baby...

2007-07-25T01:59:00.001-04:00

More discussion growing out of a religion thread on That Message Board -- I've said things like this before, but not sure if I've posted them here, so for what it's worth here it is!

My advice to you, Jewel, is to focus on how you would like to live your life more than on abstract questions of belief, doctrine, or theology.

The joke version of Reconstructionist Judaism is "There is no God, and Mordecai Kaplan is his prophet."
But there's an element of truth there, and it's pretty close to what I "believe" (i.e., the model that works best for me in terms of intellectual honesty and my understanding of the world) about God -- that God has no independent or transcendent existence, but is valuable to me as a conceptual and poetic embodiment of our highest and noblest ideals, a divine force that represents the best in us. Kaplan called it "the Power that makes for salvation," among other things -- but he didn't "believe in" God as an anthropomorphic SuperPerson.

You could call this "belief" of mine a species of atheism. I don't believe in the God that many theists believe in, and "God" doesn't mean to me what it means to them.

And yet you'd be hard pressed to look at me and see what people think of when they say "atheist," or even "secularist"/"humanist" (which are terms I would embrace in some contexts, though not so much in opposition to religious identifiers). I work at a synagogue, I'm a leader in several different member-led (not clergy-led) Jewish worship/study communities, I keep kosher, I keep Shabbat, I wear a kippah most of the time now...

I live a life in which "our God and of our ancestors"--words that open the Amidah, the central prayer that traditional Jews say 3 times daily as the core of the prayer service--has a meaningful presence. I've said those words twice today (afternoon & evening services--I skipped the morning, and the only day of the week I regularly make it through all 3 of the prayer services I'm "supposed" to do is Shabbat...), while fasting in observance of Tisha B'Av (the 9th of Av--commemorating the destruction of the Temples and other historical disasters).

I hope that the spiritual preparation of this practice of prayer, and my engagement with the ethical teachings of my religious tradition, contribute to making me a better person, one who will make her world a better place -- which is, in my book, an act of godliness.

So if the God-who-does-not-exist-independently-of-us-all speaks to me through my involvement in the tradition, through the love I feel for friends and family and the love they feel for me, through natural beauty and music and art... is it really accurate to say that God has no place in my life, because I don't "believe in" God?

I would say not. But I would also say it doesn't matter. I know what my God, who does not exist, wants of me, in the words of the prophets of my tradition (not because they saw God, not because they were especially holy -- but because these words are true and beautiful and right):

He has told you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justice, to love kindness,
And to walk humbly with your God?
(Micah 6:8)

Tisha B'Av

2007-07-24T12:37:00.001-04:00

On this Tisha B'Av , let us recall that the Second Temple was said to have been destroyed because of sinat chinam, causeless hatred, among the Jewish people -- and let us move in commitment and in joy toward the visions of comfort, reconciliation, and a redeemed global community of love and peace that dominate the afternoon of this fast day and the weeks that follow.

A friend has blogged most eloquently about this day. Read it here!

Here's what I said in response:

Indeed! As usual, I agree with you wholeheartedly, and it's a pleasure to read your extremely articulate unpacking of both the pains and the attendant positive realizations (pleasures would be pushing it!) that accompany the holiday itself and our contemporary struggles with it.

Last night, for the first time since we became observant, we didn't go to Tisha B'Av services. And I think I had a much more meaningful Tisha B'Av evening because of it!

Instead of going to ma'ariv (perfunctory) and to sit on the floor of the shul social hall for the reading of Eicha (not inspiringly done) by candlelight (inadequate for reading from the small-print books), what did we do?

We fasted and observed the rest of the prohibitions of the day, so we weren't listening to music or watching silly TV or movies... I sat and talked about Jewish topics with a friend who had come over to our place for the pre-fast meal. When she left, I caught up on reading some e-mails or websites on Jewish topics that I hadn't had time to attend to, including several that were specifically about Tisha B'Av (like the Shefa Tisha B'Av Archive ). And then I went to bed!

In about 15 minutes I'll go to mincha, and I'll put on my tallit and tefillin and join with other Jews at this turning point in the holiday, as we move from gloom to the glimmer of redemption.

That much Tisha B'Av I can handle!

Shmuley Gets It!

2007-07-24T11:24:00.001-04:00

Now I've also read the piece by Shmuely Boteach that was also linked to on the IFF blog.

Here it is, with my comments following:

Stop Ostracizing Those Who Marry Out

Posted July 22, 2007 | 09:04 PM (EST)

Read More: Breaking Living Now News, Harvard University, Shmuley Boteach

This column would not have been written had its subject not first described himself and his predicament in this week's in New York Times magazine.

Noah Feldman was a brilliant, orthodox Jewish Rhodes scholar who arrived in Oxford in my forth year at the University as Rabbi in 1992. He and I quickly hit it off. For one thing, there was scarcely a subject - Jewish or secular - upon which Noah did not have some profound knowledge. We studied Talmud together several times a week and I made Noah a kind of secondary Rabbi at our L'Chaim Society, such was the range of his Jewish erudition and his phenomenal capacity for teaching. His resume easily made him one of the most accomplished young students in the entire Western world. He was valedictorian of Harvard, a Rhodes and Truman scholar, and completed his Oxford doctorate in about eighteen months, which may or may not be a University record. It was a source of great pride for me that Noah was observant and wore a Yarmulke. A student that gifted was a natural leader to others and was looked up to by so many of the other students. We all marveled every Shabbat at Noah's incredible ability to lein (read with its proper notes) any section of the Torah for our student Synagogue.

After graduating from Oxford, Noah went to Yale where his observance began to wane. I heard from some of his class mates that he was now dating a non-Jewish girl. Hearing that he was quite serious about her, when his girlfriend came in turn to Oxford as a Marshall scholar, I made a point of reaching out to her and inviting her to our Shabbat dinner. My thinking was that Noah was far too precious to me and to the Jewish people to lose. If he was dating a woman whom he wished to marry, then it was our duty to try and expose her to the friendliness of the Jewish community with a view toward her exploring whether a serious commitment to our tradition was something that would suit her.

Sadly, however, others took a far different view. A mutual friend of ours who was a Rabbi in Noah's life essentially told him that if he married outside the faith he would have to sever his relationship with him. Apparently, many of Noah's orthodox friends made the same decision. The net result was that one of the brightest young Jews in the entire world was made to feel that the Jewish community was only his family if he made choices with which we agreed.

I took a different view. Of course I wanted Noah to marry Jewish, and I took pride in the fact that I had helped to sustain his observance in his two years at Oxford. But the choice of whom he would marry was not mine to make. Before he got married I wrote him a note that said, in essence, that we are friends and that my affection for him would never change. I told him that he was a prince of the Jewish nation, that his obligations to his people were eternal and unchanging, that whether or not his wife, or indeed his children were Jewish would never change his own personal status as a Jew and that, as a scholar of world standing, I knew he would do great things with his life and that he would should always put the needs of the Jewish people first.
Till today we remain good friends. I admire and respect Noah and my wish is that perhaps, some day, his brilliant wife might see, of her own volition, the beauties of our tradition and how family life is enhanced by husband and wife being of the same faith and practicing the same religious rituals.

True to my prediction, Noah went on, in his thirties, to become one of the youngest ever tenured law professors, first at NYU and then at Harvard, and was chosen by the American government to serve as the constitutional consultant for the Iraqi provisional government in drawing up their constitution. Today he ranks, arguably, as the youngest academic superstar in the United States.
How tragic, therefore, that his article in the New York Times magazine is a lengthy detailing of the alienation he has experienced from his former orthodox Jewish day school and friends, who even cut him out of a class reunion photograph in which he participated.

For more than two centuries now, since the emancipation, Jews have been debating how to deal with those who marry outside the community. The conventional response has been to treat them as traitors to the Jewish cause. We are all familiar with the old practice of sitting shiva on a child who marries out, as if he or she were dead, made famous in Fiddler on the Roof. The extreme practice of ostracization was justified by the belief that only by completely cutting off those who married out would we be making a sufficiently strong statement as to the extent of their betrayal, thereby dissuading those who might follow suit.

There is one problem with this practice. Aside from the ethical and humanitarian considerations, it does not work. We have been practicing this alienation for decades and yet intermarriage has grown to approximately fifty percent of the Jewish population! Worse, the practice is a lie insofar as it propagates the false notion that our Jewishness is measured only in terms of our being a link in a higher chain of existence, and that our Jewish identities have meaning only through our children. This absurd notion would deny they idea of Jewish individualism and how we are Jews in our own right.

I am well aware of the fact that intermarriage is a direct threat to the very continuity of the Jewish people. But that does not change the fact that those who have chosen to marry out are still Jewish, should still be encouraged to go to Synagogue, should still be encouraged to put on tefillin and keep Shabbat, should still have mezuzos on their doors, and should still be encouraged to devote their lives and resources to the welfare of the Jewish people and the security of the State of Israel.

And as far as their non-Jewish spouses are concerned, do we really believed that by showing the most unfriendly behavior we are living up to our Biblically-mandated role of serving as a light unto the nations? Is there any possibility that a non-Jew who is married to a Jew would look favorably at the possibility of becoming halakhically Jewish if they witness orthodox Jews treating their husband or wife as pariahs?

I am proud today to call Noah my friend. I do my best to reiterate to him the message that, amid marrying out, we are proud of his achievements and need his participation in Jewish organizational life, especially given the immense clout he carries in academic circles. And it is my fervent hope that, given the love and respect that we show him, he will choose to show his wife and two children the glories of the tradition he knows so well with a view toward impressing upon them a desire to have them join in our eternal faith.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who served as Rabbi at Oxford for 11 years, is a national TV host and the author, most recently, of 'Shalom in the Home' (Meredith). www.shmuley.com

And my comments:

Yasher koach (well done!), Shmuley!

I knew you were a mensch when I met you at Oxford (my husband M. and I were Rhodes Scholars from '95-'98, and saw you again at Shmully Hecht's son bris in New Haven after our return to the U.S.--you'd know me as Becca B.), even if my Jewish involvement was primarily with the Oxford Jewish Community (including its then-nascent Masorti minyan, which has now been going strong for over 10 years) rather than with the L'Chaim Society (where I did sometimes show up for dinner and at least 2 of your debates, w/a Reform rabbi & a 'Messianic Jewish rabbi').

I was pleased to hear that you'd made sure that the Torah got 'round to the women's side during Simchat Torah festivities at the L'Chaim Society -- that when others tried to keep it away from or take it back from my fellow North American female Rhodes Scholar (she's now a rabbi in NYC, as is her wife--who is a Jew by Choice), you made sure she got to hold on to it.

I was impressed when I heard that you'd written a recommendation for another female friend in her (successful) application for rabbinical school at Leo Baeck -- the story (you can say if it's true or apocryphal) was that, when challenged by someone who couldn't see how you, an Orthodox rabbi, would support a woman's application to a liberal rabbinic seminary, you'd said "What, I should prefer that she be a cocktail waitress?!"

I found both your article here & Noah's essay via the Interfaith Family (IFF) blog. I have a vested interest, even though I'm not intermarried myself: I was raised as a Nice Jewish Girl by my Jewish mother and non-Jewish father, and dated and got engaged to a Nice Non-Jewish Boy who could handle being a supportive part of a Jewish family as my father had done.

Then he decided to become Jewish, surprising us both (we'd known each other for 10 years, we'd been a couple for 8; nice to still be able to have surprises!) and enriching our lives immensely.

In his year of studying for conversion we couldn't have been luckier in our companions: we learned from amazing friends who were exploring their own Judaism, intellectually, ritually and spiritually.

3 are now rabbis; one is a Jewish studies professor and co-founded the Hadar independent minyan in NYC; another is a professor of philosophy at a prominent university and has 2 adorable daughters with his non-Jewish wife, whose Jewish wedding (with chuppah and ketubah) we joyfully attended.

Virtually all of them have non-Jews in their Jewish family life -- as in-laws; as partners or spouses; as parents -- and only one grew up in a traditionally observant (Conservative, as it happens) Jewish home.

You're 100% correct that we're not going to enhance anyone's Jewish life or our Jewish community by ostracizing those who have non-Jews in their family (as partners, parents, what have you) or those who are non-Jews who have chosen to make their lives with someone Jewish.

Ruth said "Your people shall be my people" before she said "and your God, my God" (Ruth 1:16). Anyone who has committed his or her life to being with someone Jewish (a spouse, a child, a parent) is living Ruth's words: "Whither thou goest, I shall go; whither thou lodgest, I shall lodge." Our people ARE their people (but need not be their ONLY people!)--and we should acknowledge, indeed celebrate, that they have gone beyond their "mother's house" (Ruth 1:8) and the "land of your birth, and have come to a people you did not know before" (Ruth 2:11).

These wonderful people--whose Jewish family and partners treasure them, and who have cast their lot with those Jewish family members and partners--are living the commitment "your God, my God." They may mean it in its universalistic or metaphorical sense--"we share the same Divine Source and force, the same ideals"--but by the very lives they have chosen, whether they live as Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Wiccans, agnostics, humanists, you name it, they are sharing their highest values and ethical selfhood with the Jews in their families. Their God is my God.

If some of them choose to make that statement a particular Jewish one rather than a universalistic one--to worship not only the same deity but in the same words, with the same texts, at the same seasons that the Jewish people do and have done; to embrace Judaism for themselves after having embraced it as the faith or background of someone they love--that's up to them. But our love and respect and welcome should never be contingent upon this choice.

I love my father and am glad that he is who he is. I love my husband and am glad that he is who he is. This Shabbat, my mother and husband and I, as adult Jewish members of our community, will be called up to the Torah (which both M. and I will read from); my friend K. and her 13-year-old daughter will hopefully be called up as well. My father, K.'s husband, and my brother's fiancee will be there with us at Shabbat services: some of them will read prayers in English on behalf of this community of worshippers. They are not Jews -- but they are part of our Jewish families, offering their prayers in Jewish space [the synagogue] and Jewish time [Shabbat morning] on behalf of this Jewish community, of which they are an important part.

They are not second-bests who should have been pushed aside for a Jewish partner but can perhaps be tolerated, now that they're unavoidably and permanently here.

They are not threats to Jewish community or Jewish continuity--in fact, they all have raised or intend to raise children who are exclusively Jewish in faith.

My people is their people; my God, their God.

In and Out -- Intermarriage, Modern Orthodoxy, Claiming Our Pasts or Being Rejected By Them...

2007-07-24T10:35:00.001-04:00

So much to blog, so little time -- watch this space for thoughts on:

my new stealth tallit (which I love, and will use at mincha in 2 1/2 hours in a non-stealth Conservative egalitarian context: it was debuted on Shabbat morning at the Chabad synagogue in Cleveland for my cousin Noam's bar mitzvah),
Rabbi Strangeblood, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Mikvah (really! I'm going tomorrow morning for the third time this year -- prior to that, I'd only been as part of the pre-wedding preparation 10 years ago--and I've been looking forward to it!)
10 Years of This Jewish Life -- Saturday, Shabbat Nachamu, the 13th of Av, is the 10th anniversary of our aufruf; Sunday, the 14th of Av, we will have been married fro 10 years on the Jewish calendar. We have already marked this summer the 20th anniversary of the day M. and I met (June 26, 1987); 18th anniversary of the day we first saw each other again 2 years later/for the first time as a couple (June 24, 1989)... and of the day M. asked me to marry him (June 28, 1989); and the 10th anniversary of his becoming a Jew (the week of Parshat Pinchas in 1997--late July).

But for right now, I just want to make everyone aware of this amazing New York Times Magazine article by Noah Feldman, who deserves many props for it! We met him and his wife in Oxford; I would love to talk with him/them about their experiences -- because, as you'll see from the piece, they're very relevant to my family situation (both the one I was born into/raised in and the one M and I have created together). Thank you to the IFF Network Blog for making me aware of it!

I've re-bolded the section headers, etc., below -- but some of the formatting has no doubt been lost -- so you may want to follow the link above, or pull out your NYT Magazine (or borrow it from your neighbor or read it in the library) so you can put up your feet & read it...

Orthodox Paradox

R. Kikuo Johnson

A number of years ago, I went to my 10th high-school reunion, in the backyard of the one classmate whose parents had a pool. Lots of my classmates were there. Almost all were married, and many already had kids. This was not as unusual as it might seem, since I went to a yeshiva day school, and nearly everyone remained Orthodox. I brought my girlfriend. At the end, we all crowded into a big group photo, shot by the school photographer, who had taken our pictures from first grade through graduation. When the alumni newsletter came around a few months later, I happened to notice the photo. I looked, then looked again. My girlfriend and I were nowhere to be found.

I didn’t want to seem paranoid, especially in front of my girlfriend, to whom I was by that time engaged. So I called my oldest school friend, who appeared in the photo, and asked for her explanation. “You’re kidding, right?” she said. My fiancée was Korean-American. Her presence implied the prospect of something that from the standpoint of Orthodox Jewish law could not be recognized: marriage to someone who was not Jewish. That hint was reason enough to keep us out.

Not long after, I bumped into the photographer, in synagogue, on Yom Kippur. When I walked over to him, his pained expression told me what I already knew. “It wasn’t me,” he said. I believed him.

Since then I have occasionally been in contact with the school’s alumni director, who has known me since I was a child. I say “in contact,” but that implies mutuality where none exists. What I really mean is that in the nine years since the reunion I have sent him several updates about my life, for inclusion in the “Mazal Tov” section of the newsletter. I sent him news of my marriage. When our son was born, I asked him to report that happy event. The most recent news was the birth of our daughter this winter. Nothing doing. None of my reports made it into print.

It would be more dramatic if I had been excommunicated like Baruch Spinoza, in a ceremony complete with black candles and a ban on all social contact, a rite whose solemnity reflected the seriousness of its consequences. But in the modern world, the formal communal ban is an anachronism. Many of my closest relationships are still with people who remain in the Orthodox fold. As best I know, no one, not even the rabbis at my old school who disapprove of my most important life decisions, would go so far as to refuse to shake my hand. What remains of the old technique of excommunication is simply nonrecognition in the school’s formal publications, where my classmates’ growing families and considerable accomplishments are joyfully celebrated.

The yeshiva where I studied considers itself modern Orthodox, not ultra-Orthodox. We followed a rigorous secular curriculum alongside traditional Talmud and Bible study. Our advanced Talmud and Hebrew classes were interspersed with advanced-placement courses in French literature and European political history, all skillfully coordinated to prime us for the Ivy League. To try to be at once a Lithuanian yeshiva and a New England prep school: that was the unspoken motto of the Maimonides School of Brookline, Mass., where I studied for 12 years.

That aspiration is not without its difficulties. My own personal lesson in nonrecognition is just one small symptom of the challenge of reconciling the vastly disparate values of tradition and modernity — of Slobodka and St. Paul’s. In premodern Europe, where the state gave the Jewish community the power to enforce its own rules of membership through coercive force, excommunication literally divested its victim of his legal personality, of his rights and standing in the community. The modern liberal state, though, neither polices nor delegates the power to police religious membership; that is now a social matter, not a legal one. Today a religious community that seeks to preserve its traditional structure must maintain its boundaries using whatever independent means it can muster — right down to the selective editing of alumni newsletters.

Despite my intimate understanding of the mind-set that requires such careful attention to who is in and who is out, I am still somehow taken by surprise each time I am confronted with my old school’s inability to treat me like any other graduate. I have tried in my own imperfect way to live up to values that the school taught me, expressing my respect and love for the wisdom of the tradition while trying to reconcile Jewish faith with scholarship and engagement in the public sphere. As a result, I have not felt myself to have rejected my upbringing, even when some others imagine me to have done so by virtue of my marriage.

Some part of me still expects — against the judgment of experience — that the individual human beings who make up the institution and community where I spent so many years of my life will put our longstanding friendships ahead of the imperative to define boundaries. The school did educate me and influence me deeply. What I learned there informs every part of my inner life. In the sense of shared history and formation, I remain of the community even while no longer fully in the community.

If this is dissonance, it is at least dissonance that the modern Orthodox should be able to understand: the desire to inhabit multiple worlds simultaneously and to defy contradiction with coexistence. After all, the school’s attempt to bring the ideals of Orthodox Judaism into dialogue with a certain slice of late-20th-century American life was in many ways fantastically rich and productive. For those of us willing to accept a bit of both worlds, I would say, it almost worked.

Fitting In

Since the birth of modern Orthodox Judaism in 19th-century Germany, a central goal of the movement has been to normalize the observance of traditional Jewish law — to make it possible to follow all 613 biblical commandments assiduously while still participating in the reality of the modern world. You must strive to be, as a poet of the time put it, “a Jew in the home and a man in the street.” Even as we students of the Maimonides School spent half of every school day immersed in what was unabashedly a medieval curriculum, our aim was to seem to outsiders — and to ourselves — like reasonable, mainstream people, not fanatics or cult members.

This ambition is best exemplified today by Senator Joe Lieberman. His run for the vice presidency in 2000 put the “modern” in modern Orthodox, demonstrating that an Orthodox Jewish candidate could be accepted by America at large as essentially a regular guy. (Some of this, of course, was simply the result of ignorance. As John Breaux, then a senator from Louisiana, so memorably put it with regard to Lieberman during the 2000 campaign, “I don’t think American voters care where a man goes to church on Sunday.”) Whatever concerns Lieberman’s Jewish identity may have raised in the heartland seem to have been moderated, rather than stoked, by the fact that his chosen Jewish denomination was Orthodox — that he seemed to really and truly believe in something. His Orthodoxy elicited none of the half-whispered attacks that Mitt Romney’s Mormonism has already prompted in this electoral cycle, none of the dark hints that it was, in some basic sense, weird.

Lieberman’s overt normalcy really is remarkable. Though modern Orthodox Jews do not typically wear the long beards, side curls and black, nostalgic Old World garments favored by the ultra-Orthodox, the men do wear beneath their clothes a small fringed prayer shawl every bit as outré as the sacred undergarments worn by Mormons. Morning prayers are accompanied by the daily donning of phylacteries, which, though painless, resemble in their leather-strappy way the cinched cilice worn by the initiates of Opus Dei and so lasciviously depicted in “The Da Vinci Code.” Food restrictions are tight: a committed modern Orthodox observer would not drink wine with non-Jews and would have trouble finding anything to eat in a nonkosher restaurant other than undressed cold greens (assuming, of course, that the salad was prepared with a kosher knife).

The dietary laws of kashrut are designed to differentiate and distance the observant person from the rest of the world. When followed precisely, as I learned growing up, they accomplish exactly that. Every bite requires categorization into permitted and prohibited, milk or meat. To follow these laws, to analyze each ingredient in each food that comes into your purview, is to construct the world in terms of the rules borne by those who keep kosher. The category of the unkosher comes unconsciously to apply not only to foods that fall outside the rules but also to the people who eat that food — which is to say, almost everyone in the world, whether Jewish or not. You cannot easily break bread with them, but that is not all. You cannot, in a deeper sense, participate with them in the common human activity of restoring the body through food.

And yet the Maimonides School, by juxtaposing traditional and secular curricula, gave me a feeling of being connected to the broader world. Line by line we burrowed into the old texts in their original Hebrew and Aramaic. The poetry of the Prophets sang in our ears. After years of this, I found I could recite the better part of the Hebrew Bible from memory. Among other things, this meant that when I encountered the writings of the Puritans who founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony, I felt immediate kinship. They read those same exact texts again and again — often in Hebrew — searching for clues about their own errand into the American wilderness.

In our literature classes we would glimpse Homer’s wine-dark sea, then move to a different classroom and dive headlong into the sea of the Talmud. Here the pleasure of legal-intellectual argument had no stopping place, no end. A problem in Talmud study is never answered, it is only deepened. The Bible prohibits work on the Sabbath. But what is work? The rabbis began with 39 categories, each of which called for its own classification into as many as 39 further subcategories. Then came the problem of intention: What state of mind is required for “work” to have occurred? You might perform an act of work absent-mindedly, having forgotten that it was the Sabbath, or ignorantly, not knowing that action constituted work. You might perform an action with the goal of achieving some permissible outcome — but that result might inevitably entail some prohibited work’s taking place. Learning this sort of reasoning as a child prepared me well, as it has countless others, for the ways of American law.

Beyond the complementarities of Jewish learning and secular knowledge, our remarkable teachers also offered access to a wider world. Even among the rabbis there was a smattering of Ph.D.’s and near-doctorates to give us a taste of a critical-academic approach to knowledge, not just a religious one. And the teachers of the secular subjects were fantastic. One of the best taught me eighth-grade English when he was barely out of college himself, before he became a poet, a professor and an important queer theorist. Given Orthodoxy’s condemnation of homosexuality, he must have made it onto the faculty through the sheer cluelessness of the administration. Lord only knows what teachers like him, visitors from the real world, made of our quirky ways. (In the book of poems about his teaching years, we students are decorously transformed into Italian-Americans.)

In allowing us, intentionally or not, to see the world and the Torah as profoundly interconnected, the school was faithful to the doctrines of its eponym, the great medieval Jewish legalist and philosopher Moses Maimonides. Easily the most extraordinary figure in post-biblical Jewish history, Maimonides taught that accurate knowledge of the world — physical and metaphysical — was, alongside studying, obeying and understanding the commandments, the one route to the ultimate summum bonum of knowing God. A life lived by these precepts can be both noble and beautiful, and I believe the best and wisest of my classmates and teachers come very close indeed to achieving it.

The Dynamics of Prohibition

For many of us, the consilience of faith and modernity that sometimes appears within the reach of modern Orthodoxy is a tantalizing prospect. But it can be undermined by the fragile fault lines between the moral substructures of the two worldviews, which can widen into deep ruptures on important matters of life and love.

One time at Maimonides a local physician — a well-known figure in the community who later died tragically young — addressed a school assembly on the topic of the challenges that a modern Orthodox professional may face. The doctor addressed the Talmudic dictum that the saving of a life trumps the Sabbath. He explained that in its purest form, this principle applies only to the life of a Jew. The rabbis of the Talmud, however, were unprepared to allow the life of a non-Jew to be extinguished because of the no-work commandment, and so they ruled that the Sabbath could be violated to save the life of a non-Jew out of concern for maintaining peaceful relations between the Jewish and non-Jewish communities.

Depending on how you look at it, this ruling is either an example of outrageously particularist religious thinking, because in principle it values Jewish life more than non-Jewish life, or an instance of laudable universalism, because in practice it treats all lives equally. The physician quite reasonably opted for the latter explanation. And he added that he himself would never distinguish Jewish from non-Jewish patients: a human being was a human being.

This appealing sentiment did not go unchallenged. One of my teachers rose to suggest that the doctor’s attitude was putting him in danger of violating the Torah. The teacher reported that he had himself heard from his own rabbi, a leading modern-Orthodox Talmudist associated with Yeshiva University, that in violating the Sabbath to treat a non-Jew, intention was absolutely crucial. If you intended to save the patient’s life so as to facilitate good relations between Jews and non-Jews, your actions were permissible. But if, to the contrary, you intended to save the patient out of universal morality, then you were in fact guilty of violating the Sabbath, because the motive for acting was not the motive on the basis of which the rabbis allowed the Sabbath violation to occur.

Later, in class, the teacher apologized to us students for what he said to the doctor. His comments, he said, were inappropriate — not because they were wrongheaded, but because non-Jews were present in the audience when he made them. The double standard of Jews and non-Jews, in other words, was for him truly irreducible: it was not just about noting that only Jewish lives merited violation of the Sabbath, but also about keeping the secret of why non-Jewish lives might be saved. To accept this version of the tradition would be to accept that the modern Orthodox project of engagement with the world could not proceed in good faith.

Nothing in the subculture of modern Orthodoxy, however, brought out the tensions between tradition and modernity more vividly for a young man than the question of our relationship to sex. Modernity, and maybe the state-mandated curriculum (I have never checked), called for a day of sex ed in seventh grade. I have the feeling that the content of our sex-ed class was the same as those held in public schools in Massachusetts around the same time, with the notable exception that none of us would have occasion to deploy even the most minimal elements of the lesson plan in the foreseeable future. After the scientific bits of the lesson were over, the rabbi who was head of the school came in to the classroom to follow up with some indication of the Jewish-law perspective on these questions. It amounted to a blanket prohibition on the activities to which we had just been introduced. After marriage, some rather limited subset of them might become permissible — but only in the two weeks of the month that followed the two weeks of ritual abstinence occasioned by menstruation.

After that memorable disquisition, the question of relations between the sexes went essentially unmentioned again in our formal education. We were periodically admonished that boys and girls must not touch one another, even accidentally. Several of the most attractive girls were singled out for uncomfortable closed-door sessions in which they were instructed that their manner of dress, which already met the school’s standards for modesty, must be made more modest still so as not to distract the males around them.

Whatever their disjuncture with American culture of the 1980s, the erotics of prohibition were real to us. Once, I was called on the carpet after an anonymous informant told the administration that I had been seen holding a girl’s hand somewhere in Brookline one Sunday afternoon. The rabbi insinuated that if the girl and I were holding hands today, premarital sex must surely be right around the corner.

My Talmud teacher — the one who took the physician to task — handed me four tightly packed columns of closely reasoned rabbinic Hebrew, a responsum by the pre-eminent Orthodox decisor, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, “in the matter of a young man whose heart lures him to enter into bonds of affection with a young woman not for purposes of marriage.” Rabbi Feinstein’s legal judgment with respect to romantic love among persons too young to marry was definitive. He prohibited it absolutely, in part on the ground that it would inevitably lead to nonprocreative seminal emissions, whether intentional or unintentional.

What Feinstein lacked in romantic imagination was more than made up for by Moses Maimonides, who understood the soul pretty well. He once characterized the true love of God as all-consuming — “as though one had contracted the sickness of love.” Feinstein’s opinion directed my attention to a passage in Maimonides’s legal writings prohibiting various sorts of contact with women. The most evocative bit runs as follows: “Even to smell the perfume upon her is prohibited.” I have never been able to escape the feeling that this is a covert love poem enmeshed in the 14-volume web of dos and don’ts that is Maimonides’s Code of Law. Perfume has not smelled the same to me since.

Difference and Reconciliation

I have spent much of my own professional life focusing on the predicament of faith communities that strive to be modern while simultaneously cleaving to tradition. Consider the situation of those Christian evangelicals who want to participate actively in mainstream politics yet are committed to a biblical literalism that leads them to oppose stem-cell research and advocate intelligent design in the classroom. To some secularists, the evangelicals’ predicament seems absurd and their political movement dangerously anti-intellectual. As it happens, I favor financing stem-cell research and oppose the teaching of intelligent design or creationism as a “scientific” doctrine in public schools. Yet I nonetheless feel some sympathy for the evangelicals’ sure-to-fail attempts to stand in the way of the progress of science, and not just because I respect their concern that we consider the ethical implications of our technological prowess.

Perhaps I feel sympathy because I can recall the agonies suffered by my head of school when he stopped by our biology class to discuss the problem of creation. Following the best modern Orthodox doctrine, he pointed out that Genesis could be understood allegorically, and that the length of a day might be numbered in billions of years considering that the sun, by which our time is reckoned, was not created until the fourth such “day.” Not for him the embarrassing claim, heard sometimes among the ultra-Orthodox, that dinosaur fossils were embedded by God within the earth at the moment of creation in order to test our faith in biblical inerrancy. Natural selection was for him a scientific fact to be respected like the laws of physics — guided by God but effectuated though the workings of the natural order. Yet even he could not leave the classroom without a final caveat. “The truth is,” he said, “despite what I have just told you, I still have a hard time believing that man could be descended from monkeys.”

This same grappling with tension — and the same failure to resolve it perfectly — can be found among the many Muslims who embrace both basic liberal democratic values and orthodox Islamic faith. The literature of democratic Islam, like that of modern Orthodox Judaism, may be read as an embodiment of dialectical struggle, the unwillingness to ignore contemporary reality in constant interplay with the weight of tradition taken by them as authentic and divinely inspired. The imams I have met over the years seem, on the whole, no less sincere than the rabbis who taught me. Their commitment to their faith and to the legal tradition that comes with it seems just as heartfelt. Liberal Muslims may even have their own Joe Lieberman in the Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress.

The themes of difference and reconciliation that have preoccupied so much of my own thinking are nowhere more stark than in trying to make sense of the problem of marriage — which is also, for me, the most personal aspect of coming to terms with modern Orthodoxy. Although Jews of many denominations are uncomfortable with marriage between Jews and people of other religions, modern Orthodox condemnation is especially definitive.

The reason for the resistance to such marriages derives from Jewish law but also from the challenge of defining the borders of the modern Orthodox community in the liberal modern state. Ultra-Orthodox Judaism addresses the boundary problem with methods like exclusionary group living and deciding business disputes through privately constituted Jewish-law tribunals. For modern Orthodox Jews, who embrace citizenship and participate in the larger political community, the relationship to the liberal state is more ambivalent. The solution adopted has been to insist on the coherence of the religious community as a social community, not a political community. It is defined not so much by what people believe or say they believe (it is much safer not to ask) as by what they do.

Marriage is the most obvious public practice about which information is readily available. When combined with the traditional Jewish concern for continuity and self-preservation — itself only intensified by the memory of the Holocaust — marriage becomes the sine qua non of social membership in the modern Orthodox community. Marrying a Jewish but actively nonobservant spouse would in most cases make continued belonging difficult. Gay Orthodox Jews find themselves marginalized not only because of their forbidden sexual orientation but also because within the tradition they cannot marry the partners whom they might otherwise choose. For those who choose to marry spouses of another faith, maintaining membership would become all but impossible.

Us and Them

In a few cases, modern Orthodoxy’s line-drawing has been implicated in some truly horrifying events. Yigal Amir, the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin, was a modern Orthodox Jew who believed that Rabin’s peace efforts put him into the Talmudic category of one who may be freely executed because he is in the act of killing Jews. In 1994, Dr. Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 worshipers in the mosque atop the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. An American-born physician, Goldstein attended a prominent modern Orthodox Jewish day school in Brooklyn. (In a classic modern Orthodox twist, the same distinguished school has also produced two Nobel Prize winners.)

Because of the proximity of Goldstein’s background and mine, the details of his reasoning have haunted me. Goldstein committed his terrorist act on Purim, the holiday commemorating the victory of the Jews over Haman, traditionally said to be a descendant of the Amalekites. The previous Sabbath, he sat in synagogue and heard the special additional Torah portion for the day, which includes the famous injunction in the Book of Deuteronomy to remember what the Amalekites did to the Israelites on their way out of Egypt and to erase the memory of Amalek from beneath the heavens.

This commandment was followed by a further reading from the Book of Samuel. It details the first intentional and explicit genocide depicted in the Western canon: God’s directive to King Saul to kill every living Amalekite — man, woman and child, and even the sheep and cattle. Saul fell short. He left the Amalekite king alive and spared the sheep. As a punishment for the incompleteness of the slaughter, God took the kingdom from him and his heirs and gave it to David. I can remember this portion verbatim. That Saturday, like Goldstein, I was in synagogue, too.

Of course as a matter of Jewish law, the literal force of the biblical command of genocide does not apply today. The rabbis of the Talmud, in another of their universalizing legal rulings, held that because of the Assyrian King Sennacherib’s policy of population movement at the time of the First Temple, it was no longer possible to ascertain who was by descent an Amalekite. But as a schoolboy I was taught that the story of Amalek was about not just historical occurrence but cyclical recurrence: “In every generation, they rise up against us to destroy us, but the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hands.” The Jews’ enemies today are the Amalekites of old. The inquisitors, the Cossacks — Amalekites. Hitler was an Amalekite, too.

To Goldstein, the Palestinians were Amalekites. Like a Puritan seeking the contemporary type of the biblical archetype, he applied Deuteronomy and Samuel to the world before him. Commanded to settle the land, he settled it. Commanded to slaughter the Amalekites without mercy or compassion, he slew them. Goldstein could see difference as well as similarity. According to one newspaper account, when he was serving in the Israeli military, he refused to treat non-Jewish patients. And his actions were not met by universal condemnation: his gravestone describes him as a saint and a martyr of the Jewish people, “Clean of hands and pure of heart.”

It would be a mistake to blame messianic modern Orthodoxy for ultranationalist terror. But when the evil comes from within your own midst, the soul searching needs to be especially intense. After the Hebron massacre, my own teacher, the late Israeli scholar and poet Ezra Fleischer — himself a paragon of modern Orthodox commitment — said that the innocent blood of the Palestinian worshipers dripped through the stones and formed tears in the eyes of the Patriarchs buried below.

Lives of Contradiction

Recently I saw my oldest school friend again, and recalling the tale of the reunion photograph, we shared a laugh over my continuing status as persona non grata. She remarked that she had never even considered sending in her news to our alumni newsletter. “But why not?” I asked. Her answer was illuminating. As someone who never took steps that would have led to her public exclusion, she felt that the school and the community of which it was a part always sought to claim her — a situation that had its own costs for her sense of autonomy.

For me, having exercised my choices differently, there is no such risk. With no danger of feeling owned, I haven’t lost the wish to be treated like any other old member. From the standpoint of the religious community, of course, the preservation of collective mores requires sanctioning someone who chooses a different way of living. But I still have my own inward sense of unalienated connection to my past. In synagogue on Purim with my children reading the Book of Esther, the beloved ancient phrases give me a sense of joy that not even Baruch Goldstein can completely take away.

It is more than a little strange, feeling fully engaged with a way of seeing the world but also, at the same time, feeling so far from it. I was discussing it just the other day with my best friend — who, naturally, went to Maimonides, too. The topic was whether we would be the same people, in essence, had we remained completely within the bosom of modern Orthodoxy. He didn’t think so. Our life choices are constitutive of who we are, and so different life choices would have made us into different people — not unrecognizably different, but palpably, measurably so.

I accepted his point as true — but for some reason I resisted the conclusion. Couldn’t the contradictory world from which we sprang be just as rich and productive as the contradictory life we actually live? Would it really, truly, have made all that much difference? Isn’t everyone’s life a mass of contradictions? My best friend just laughed.

Noah Feldman, a contributing writer for the magazine, is a law professor at Harvard University and adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Home... home again...

2007-07-16T05:09:00.001-04:00

Another friend's LJ entry entitled Home? (written several months ago but only read by me just now) continues the excellent trend of intelligent commentary on and wrestling with the concept of home -- I recommend it highly!

And here's part of what I had to say in response:

I've always enjoyed saying I'm a one-quarter-Cuban Jew with an Irish last name. (Though now, especially in the wake of the recent Folklife Festival showcasing Northern Ireland as one of its 3 areas, I know that the preferred term these days is Ulster Scots, for what might previously have been called Scots-Irish.) How very American!

One of the toasts at my parents' wedding (from one of my dad's college roommates) was "Here's to hybrid vigor" -- and I think you, my dear Safiri, and yours truly (as well as my friends K, L, and M [really! those are their initials!] who were all at the Folklife Festival with us 2 weeks ago and who all have mixed Ashkenazi Jewish + British Isles WASP heritage like m'self and yerself) are delightful testaments to the efficacy of same.

But given that fact, and because I am a practicing Jew who is also:

a feminist who regards gender-and-sexual-orientation-egalitarianism as Completely Non-Negotiable in my Jewish life & Jewish community;
devoted to separation of religion & state and does not wish to live anywhere with an established religion, be it mine or somebody else's;
in love with the idea of America as a land based in a shared dream rather than shared blood or land, however badly we may seem to betray that idea;

...I don't think I'll ever feel "at home" anywhere other than the U.S., on a permanent basis (and only certain parts of it at that).

But I probably am most at home in the imagined community of People Who Love The Things I Love -- books and talking, mostly, but also music and good food and companionship, intellectual discussion and debate and beauty, engaging with traditions (literary, religious, artistic, textual, musical, social) and our reshaping of them --

one of the things I like about Diaspora Judaism is the treatment of texts and rituals as a portable homeland. They're my Zion much more than the geographical Mount Zion ever was or will be. I'm not in exile in the diaspora: I'm home.

I'm not pining to return to any patch of ground that was never my home -- however green and pleasant (Dad's dad's side, British Isles), proud of its golden century/siglo de oro of exploration and world domination (Dad's mom's side, Cuban & originally from Spain) or flowing with milk and honey (Mom's side, Jewish) it may be. I may acknowledge my ties of heritage and affection to them, and I'm grateful that they might in some cases acknowledge my familial connections to them in return--but they're not my home.

Women's Studies 101

2007-07-16T04:24:00.001-04:00

Oops, I did it again...

It's a constant uphill climb, eh?

In response to a friend's feminist-dilemma narrative on Not Being Recognized as a Scholar In Her Own Right at a Conference In Her Field Because She Is Young and Female, I wrote:

Misreading of context is everything. You know that I'm often mistaken for being:
1) a student (used to be high school, now I'm at least up to college)
2) anywhere between 5 and 15 years younger than I actually am (and when I lived in England in my mid-20s, I was carded in London at a showing of Trainspotting...to make sure I was at least 16!)
3) Too Young To Be Married (let alone to be coming up on a 10-year anniversary)
4) Too Young to have known my husband for 20 years (we met on June 26, 1987)
5) attending an event as someone's daughter or other hanger-on rather than in a professional or independent capacity

Every now and again I get mistaken in the direction of More Experience or Authority rather than less:

1) once, and only once, when I was 14 and taking Japanese at the USDA night school (which is technically a graduate school, and made a fuss initially about my not being 18 or over, though I'm sure I don't know why that's really necessary to take a 2-to-3-hour-a-week language course as long as I pay them their $$$ and do my work!), have I been mistaken for being older (entirely due to my classmates' expectations in the context, not due to my amazing poise and air of maturity, which had never previously prevented anyone from thinking I was maybe 10 or 11):
"Where do you work?"
Oh, I'm a student.
"At which university?"
Um, I'm in 9th grade...

2)when I'm leading services or doing something else at synagogue (perhaps especially because I wear a kippah and tallit and not all the women there do):
"Are you the rabbi? Are you the cantor?" No.
"Are you a rabbinical student? Are you a cantorial student?" Nope!
"You do a wonderful job!"/"You have a lovely voice!" Thank you very much: I'm glad to be able to help out in our participatory lay-led minyan.

... the subtext of their comments being potentially not too different from the ones that caused you concern, i.e.:

Hey! You're a young woman who seems to be traditionally observant and know how to do things in synagogue--so you must be someone who does this for a living, because otherwise
1) females;
2) young people, especially if female;
3) congregants/non-clergy in the non-Orthodox Jewish world
have No Idea How To Do This Stuff and need rabbis and cantors to do it all for them!

Baby Got Back

2007-07-16T02:44:00.000-04:00

Stop me before I blog again...

but really, when reading a local rabbi's LJ leads you to a YouTube video for a Gilbert & Sullivan version of Baby Got Back, how can you resist?

I can't!

So I wrote as follows:

"It loses something in the original"

--was the comment of a classicist friend of ours (who refers to himself as The Last Hellenized Jew), after we'd sent him the link to the translation of same into Ancient Greek.* He was puzzled, since although he's a decade or so older than us and likes AC/DC as well as classical music, his tastes in contemporary music apparently never extended to Sir Mix-a-lot, so he was unfamiliar with the song. When we sent him a link to it, he responded as above.

Whereas our Yiddish-rapping friend Avigayl (a.k.a. Abby) had been part of the crew of Yiddish Book Center interns who had translated it into Yiddish; I've got her transcribed transliterated version somewhere still, which begins with the spoken intro:

Oy, Rivke! Gib a kuk af ir tukhes! 's iz azoy groys!
Ver farshteyt di rap-maydlekh, say-vi-say?

'Khob lib groyse tukhesn, 'kh ken nisht lign

un azoy vayter (and so on)!

*See http://www.languagehat.com/archives/000909.php if you're interested, for links to Latin and Greek* (and Geek) versions as well as for kvetching about the translations!

Thanks for this amazing addition to the list of renditions that are an improvement on the original!

*Link no longer works, but Internet Archive has it here.

I can't seem to find an actual Yiddish version online, but I did find this"little ditty that ... [the LJer] first wrote about eight years ago, when the Yid-Hop movement was going strong...in the guise of Sir Mitz-vah-lot, who proceeds to tell the world which culture invented the concept of zaftig":

And just for posterity, here are those immortal translation efforts
(reproduction of same does not constitute or imply endorsement by MiriyaB of the translation efforts, grammar, sentiments, or mad rap skillz of the creators of the works found below):

GREEK:

ἡ παρθένος [1] καλλίπυγον ἐστί -- ὑπὸ [2] τοῦ Πόλλύ Μιγνύοντος, ὁ ἱππεύς

The maiden has a well-formed butt, by the Much-Mixing One, the calvaryman

credits

μά τοῦς θεόυς	By the Gods
πρόσιδε τὴν πυγήν	Look at her butt
μέγιστη	Superlatively large[3]
ὡς παρθένος τοῦ ῥαψοδού βλέπει	She looks like the maiden of a singer
τίς τοιουτότροπους ἐννοεῖ;	Who understands such people?
μόνον ὡς τὸ τὴς πόρνης βλέπη ἐχούσα αὐτῄ λέγουσιν	Only because she has the appearance of a prostitute do they speak with her
περὶ τῄ πυγῄ λέγω	About her butt I am speaking
μέγιστη	Superlatively large
ὅτι μέγιστη εἴη οὐ πιστεύω	So large it is, I cannot believe
ὡς δῆλη ἐστί	For it is conspicuous
βδελυρά!	Disgusting!
ὅρα	Look
ὡς μέλαινα τό παρθενός	How black the maiden
� την μεγάλην πυγην ἐρῶ [4] καὶ ψευδής οὐκ εἰμί	I love big butts and I am not being untruthful
ὑμεῖς, οἱ κάσιοι, οὐκ ἀρνοῦ	Y�all, the brothers, do not deny
ἔπει ἡ τὸν μέσον μικρότατον ἔχουση ἔρχεται	When the small-waist-having one comes in
τὸ δε τοῦ ἀμφιτόρνου βλέπη ὁρᾷς, καὶ μετέωρος γίγνῃ	And the round image you see, you get excited
ὁ προσορῶν πρίνινος ἐπιθυμεῖς	You desire to appear tough
ὡς εἰδῶν	For seeing
την τῄ σκευῄ συνάπτουσαν πυγην	The butt stuck to the apparel
συνήθης εἰμί καί οὐ παύω εἰσβλέπειν	I am accustomed and I do not stop staring
ὦ παρθένος, σοῦ ὅμορος ἐπιθυμῶ εἶναι	Oh maiden, having the same borders with you I wish to be
και τό ζωγράφημα σοῦ ποιεῖν	And make a drawing of you
οἱ ἐμοῦ φίλοι ἐμοί ἐπεχειροῦν προλέγειν	My friends attempted to warn me
ὅμος ἡ σοῦ πύγη ἐμέ ἐγείρει	Excited your butt makes me
ὦ λεῖος χρώς	Oh smooth skin
λέγεις ὅτι τὸ γερμανικόν ἅρμα ἐπιθυμοῖς	You say that you want my German chariot
ἐμέ μεταχειρίζε, ἡ γὰρ σύντροφη αὐθάδης οὑκ εἶ	Use me, for the normal fanatic you are not
αὐτήν τήν χορεύμενην εἶδον	I see her the dancing one
τοῦ ἔρωτος ἐν τῷ Ἅιδῃ ἔσεσθαι ἐλπίζω	I hope love is about to be in hell
ἰδίει	She sweats
ὑγρή	Wet
αὐτή ὡς ἡ πετόμενη ἐστί	She is like the flying one
τά αἰσχρουγά γράμματα ἐμέ πιέζει	The obscene drawn-things tire me
τό τάς πλατείας πυγάς ἰδεῖν νόμιμον ἐστί	The seeing of flat butts is normal
ὡς ταῦτα ἐρεσόμενος ὁ σύντροφος Λίβυς	Because the average African is asked these things
ἡ μέγιστη νωτιαίπηρα ἔχει	She has much back-bag
ὧ ἄνδρες	Oh men
ναί	Verily
ἄνδρες	Men
ναί	Verily
ὡς τό ἡμῶν παρθένος τήν πυγήν ἔρχον ἐστί	Because your maidens are the butt-having ones
ΜΆΛΑ ΝΑΊ	VERY VERILY
σείου	Shake yourself
ναί	Verily
σείου	Shake yourself
ναί	Verily
τήν ὑγιᾶς πύγήν σείε	Shake the healthy butt
τό παρθένος τό νῶτον ἔχει	The maiden has a back

�

Translation by me.
Inspired by this guy.
Original lyrics here.

[1] It's hard to say "woman" (or "man" for that matter) in Greek without some serious cultural overtones. This word basically means a girl who's of age, but is not yet married (and, implied, virginal). This is the best choice, as there is no generic word for "girl/woman," and the others either imply she's married or a child.

[2] This construction is used to describe the agent of a passive verb, so I think it works

[3] The superlative is generally the way one says �extremely� in Greek

[4] Without getting into too much Greek philosophy, there are basically four different ways to say "love" in Greek; this one emphasizes the physical aspects, hence I thought it was fitting here

LATIN:

De clunibus magnis amandis oratio
Mixaloti equitis

mehercle!
(By Hercules!)
Rebecca, ecce! tantae clunes isti sunt!
(Rebecca, behold! Such large buttocks she has!)

amica esse videtur istorum hominum rhythmicorum.
(She appears to be a girlfriend of one of those rhythmic-oration people.)
sed, ut scis,
(But, as you know)
quis homines huiusmodi intellegere potest?
(Who can understand persons of this sort?)
colloquuntur equidem cum ista eo tantum, quod scortum perfectum esse videtur.
(Verily, they converse with her for this reason only, namely, that she appears to be a complete whore.)
clunes, aio, maiores esse!
(Her buttocks, I say, are rather large!)
nec possum credere quam rotondae sint.
(Nor am I able to believe how round they are.)
en! quam exstant! nonne piget te earum?
(Lo! How they stand forth! Do they not disgust you?)
ecce mulier Aethiops!
(Behold the black woman!)

magnae clunes mihi placent, nec possum de hac re mentiri.
(Large buttocks are pleasing to me, nor am I able to lie concerning this matter.)
quis enim, consortes mei, non fateatur,
(For who, colleagues, would not admit,)
cum puella incedit minore medio corpore
(Whenever a girl comes by with a rather small middle part of the body)
sub quo manifestus globus, inflammare animos
(Beneath which is an obvious spherical mass, that it inflames the spirits)
virtute praestare ut velitis, notantes bracas eius
(So that you want to be conspicuous for manly virtue, noticing her breeches)
clunibus profunde fartas(*1) esse
(Have been deeply stuffed with buttock?)
a! captus sum, nec desinere intueri possum.
(Alas! I am captured, nor am I able to desist from gazing.)
o dominola mea, volo tecum congredi
(My dear lady, I want to come together with you)
pingereque picturam tui.
(And make a picture of you.)
familiares mei me monebant
(My companions were trying to warn me)
sed clunes istae libidinem in me concitant.
(But those buttocks of yours arouse lust in me.)
o! cutis rugosa glabraque! (*2)
(O skin wrinkled and smooth!)
dixistine te in meum vehiculum intrare velle?
(Did you say you wish to enter my vehicle?)
in arbitrio tuo totus veni
(I am entirely at your disposal)
quia non es mediocris adsecula.
(Because you are not an average hanger-on.)
vidi illam saltantem.(*3)
(I have seen her dancing.)
obliviscere igitur blanditiarum! (*3a)
(Forget, therefore, about blandishments!)
tantus sudor! tantus umor!
(Such sweat! Such moisture!)
vehor quasi in curru quadrigarum! (*4)
(I am borne along as if by a four-horse chariot!)
taedet me in diurnis legendi
(I am tired of reading in the gazettes)
planas clunes gratiores iudicari.
(That flat buttocks are judged more pleasing.)
rogate quoslibet Aethiopes: responsum erit
(Ask any black men you wish: the answer will be)
se libentius expletiores (*5) anteponere.
(Rather that they prefer fuller ones.)
o consortes (quid est?) o consortes (quid est?)
(O colleagues [What is it?] O colleagues [What is it?])
habent amicae vestrae magnas clunes? (certe habent!)
(Do your girlfriends have large buttocks? [They certainly have!])
hortamini igitur ut eas quatiant (ut quatiant!)
(Encourage them therefore to shake them! [To shake them!])
ut quatiant! (ut quatiant!)
(To shake them! [To shake them!)
ut quatiant illas clunes sanas!
(To shake those healthy buttocks!)
domina mea exstat a tergo! (*6)
(My mistress stands out behind!)

[Etc.]

_______
(*1) Any apparent connection with flatulence, even in this context, is purely coincidental.
(*2) The original doesn't make much sense either. Is it a cellulite reference? -- ADDENDUM Nov. 14, 2003 : The reading of the text here is a problem which has much exercised the scholarly community, with attempts to explain "rumpled smooth skin," or to suggest that it is a pun (a lame one, if you ask me) on Rumplestiltskin. The likeliest reading is "rub her smooth skin" (cutem glabram eius tere [or terere volo]). Now, there are ten pages of comments below, and a great many of them are devoted to this matter. Please familiarize yourself with the status quaestionis before making your own contribution. -- UPDATE 12/9/03: a reader tells us that Sir Mixalot's official site confirms the lyrics "rub all of that smooth skin." I am therefore willing to declare the matter solved, and wish to hear no more of it. Thank you.
(*3) Or saltare?
(*3a) I can find no obvious Latin expression that implies "romantic courtship." -- ADDENDUM 10/14/03: Amores has been suggested, but that can also be used for purely sexual liaisons, which is clearly the goal here, and so not to be thus dismissed.
(*4)All right, how would you say "got it goin' like a Turbo 'Vette"? And what exactly is "goin'" here? I have chosen to understand that the unnamed woman's extraordinary callipygy has inspired a primal response in the narrator, rather than that she "has got it goin' on," i.e., that she "is all that" -- although the later lines (not included here) concerning Fonda's Honda and the speaker's anaconda can, ultimately, be invoked in support of either interpretation. -- ADDENDUM 10/24/03: I have heard from several readers that the music video suggests that this line should rather be interpreted along the lines of "she shakes her posterior most vigorously."
(*5) Or uberiores? Although that's perhaps better reserved for a different fetish.
(*6) This line is not as succinct as the original, to be sure. -- ADDENDUM 10/24/03: I wish I'd said puella here, as domina suggests a power relationship different from the English original.

UPDATE, later that same day:
Thanks to Nepenthe for pointing out that the lyrics link I had up here (to letssingit.com, which avoid) led to multiple pop-ups that install software without informing you. I've found one that seems to be pop-up free: but then my browser didn't respond to the other ones, either.

(This means, of course, that I translated a different transcription of the lyrics, and it might not match. Yeah, that's a good explanation.)

Thanks to everyone for the positive feedback, which has been overwhelming.

UPDATE 10/13/03:

For the rest of the song, see ukelele's version here.

UPDATE 10/15/03:

Thanks again to everyone who has expressed approval, admiration, and/or promised sexual gratification; you're all very kind. I note that my "friend of" list has nearly doubled, and this is wicked cool, although I can't promise I'll have a chance to add you back immediately, as I like to read over other journals before adding them, and this takes time, and if your journal consists mainly of quiz results or Powerpuff Girls slash, I will probably pass; sorry. The above translation probably makes it seem as though I have an endless supply of time, to be sure, but sadly, it is not so. This also means that if you've added my journal in hopes for more of this sort of thing, it may be something of a wait, and you're more likely to get "this weekend I studied for a bit and then I watched a movie and it was okay."

---
NEW! mishak, whose probably-not-serious request led to this whole thing, decided he wanted a t-shirt out of this. You can get one too on his Cafe Shop here.

[MiriyaB comment: clearly, the thing to get would be the boxer shorts or thong!]

"YID-HOP":

Here is a little ditty that I found while I was cleaning my room. It seems that I first wrote it about eight years ago, when the Yid-Hop movement was going strong. I wrote this in the guise of Sir Mitz-vah-lot, who proceeds to tell the world which culture invented the concept of zaftig!
Anyway, I decided to update some of the topical references in the song for the new millennium. Of course, if you learned Yiddish with a different dialect than I did, some of the vowel quantities might seem weird to you. However, I think you can still appreciate the Yid-flow to it even if it sounds like it shouldn't rhyme to you. If I can find a instrumental track, I might actually produce an MP3 of this song or something...Without further ado, I present "Baby got Tuchus (2003 Re-mix)" by Sir Mitz-vah-lot

[Intro]
Oh my god, Gwen, look at her butt
It is so big
She looks like one of those yeshiva guys' girlfriends
Who understands those yeshiva guys
They only talk to her because she looks like a total JAP, ok?
I mean her butt
It's just so big
I can't believe it's so round
It's just out there
I mean, it's gross
Look, she's just so....Jewish!

[Verse]
I like gezunta tuchus and I cannot lie
You other bucherim can't deny
That when a maydel walks in with an itty-bitty waist
And a round thing in your face
You get sprung
Wanna pull up front
Cuz you notice that tuchus was stuffed
Deep in the kleyd she's wearing
I'm hooked and I can't stop staring
Oh, baby I wanna get with ya
And have you meet my mishpokhe
My rabbi tried to warn me
But with that tuchus you got
(Oy, me so horny!)
Ooh, rump-of-smooth-stein
You say you wanna get in my Benz
Well use me, use me, cuz you ain't your average tchotchke

I've heard my parents talk
The hell with a shiddach
She shana, kleyna, got it goin' like a Tupperware container.

I'm tired of magazines
saying that zaftig ain't tha thing
Take the average Hebrew and ask him that
She gotta pack much back, so

Boychicks? (yeah), boychicks? (yeah)
Has your bashert got the tuchus? (hell yeah)
Well shake it, (shake it,) shake it, (shake it,) shake that healthy tush

Baby got tuchus

(Newton face with Brookline booty)

[Verse]
I like'em round and big
And when I'm throwin' a gig
I just can't help myself
I'm actin like an behayma
Right up in all my beyner
I wanna get you home
And ugh, shmooze it up ugh, ugh
But I ain't talkin' about Tolstoy
Cuz War and Peace is so hoi polloi

I wann'em real thick and geshmock
So geshmock I eat it with a gupple
Mitz-vah-lot's in trouble
Beggin' for a piece of that bubble

So I'm lookin' at rock videos
Watchin' these shiksas walkin' like kurvahs
You can have them nafkas
I'll keep my women like Rivkah

A word to the zaftig Semite sistas
I wanna get with ya
I won't cuss or hit ya
But I gotta be straight when I say I wanna shtup
Till the break of dawn
Baby, I got it goin on
A lot of shaygetses won't like this song
Cuz them punks like to zetz and quit it
But I'd rather stay and play
Cuz I'm long and I'm strong
And it's a mitzvah to get the friction on

So maydels (yeah), maydels (yeah)
If you wanna taste my knaydls (yeah)
Then turn around
Stick it out
Even goyim got to shout
Baby got tuchus

(Newton face with the Brookline booty)

Yeah baby
When it comes to females
The shadchen got nothin to do with my selection
36-24-36
Heh
Only if she's not meshugge.

So your girlfriend rolls a Honda
Playin' workout tapes by Fonda
But Fonda ain't nuthin' but a big ol' shanda
My anaconda don't want none unless you've got buns hon
You can do side bends or sit-ups, but please don't lose that butt

Some brothers wanna play that hard role
and tell you that a shana tuchus ain't gold
So they toss it and leave it
And I pull up quick to retrieve it

So Dr. Atkins says you're fat
Well I ain't down with that
Cuz your waist is small and your curves are kickin'
And I'm thinkin' bout schtupin'

To the beanpole dames in Hadassah magazine
You ain't it Miss Thang
Give me a sista I can't resist her
Schmaltz and gribbenes didn't miss her

Some bulvon tried to dis
Cuz his girls were on my list
He had game but he chose to quit 'em
And I pulled up quick to get with 'em

So ladies if the tuchus is round
And you wanna fully kosher throw down
Dial 1-900-Mitz-Vah-Lot and kick them nasty thoughts
Baby got tuchus

GEEK:

Baby Got Rack
My tribute to geeky women. With apologies to Sir Mix-a-Lot. :)

Baby Got Rack

~Talking~
Oh my god
Becky, look at her laptop
It is sooo big
She looks like one of those geek guys' girlfriends
But y'know, who understands those geek guys?
They only talk to her because she looks like a total nerd
I mean, her laptop, it's just sooo big
I can't believe it's so square, it's like out there
I mean -- it's gross
Look, she needs some... sun!

~Rapping~
I like big procs and I cannot lie;
You other coders can't deny
That when a girl logs in with a Gigafloppin' RISC
And solid state for its disk
You get sprung
Wanna pull up tough
'Cause you noticed that rack was stuffed!
Deep in the slots, it's RAID 5
And a T-3 just to stay live
Oh, baby I wanna log in ya
And scan your picture.

My yuppies tried to warn me
But that rack you got
Makes me so horny
Case paint of smooth tan
You say you wanna get in my van?
Well use me, use me,
So long as I get an I.D.

I've seen her typin'
On azithromycin.
She's a shrill pill,
Got it flowin' with the VapoChill.

I'm tired of magazines
Saying minitowers are the thing.
Take the average tech man and ask him that;
She gotta pack much rack.

So Fellas (yeah) Fellas (yeah)
Has your girlfriend got the proc? (Hell yeah)
Tell her work it (work it), work it (work it),
Work that beefy proc;
Baby got rack.

(Mini-Rap -- HP case with a liquid coolant)

I like 'em big, and square,
And when I'm throwin' an error
I just can't help myself
I'm actin' like my manager
(Now *he's* a scavenger!)

I wanna get you home
And mount, double-up, mount, mount!
I ain't talkin' Playstation
'Cause silicon chips are made to run!
I want 'em four to a module:
So find that MP backplane;
Stronae's had some eyestrain
Goin' for the shortest path endgame.

So I'm lookin' at users' woes:
Pointy-haired techs talkin' through their nose?
They can have Bill's Windows;
Unix better works our egos.

A word to the goth and geeky
I wanna get with thee
I won't demodulate thee
But I gotta be straight when I say I just need [video game explosion]
'Til a quarter past three
Baby gotta keep it real
Corporate Veeps won't like this peal
'Cause them suits just like to abuse it
But I'd still support your port
'Cause I ping, on token ring,
And I'm down to get you networking!

So Honeys (yeah), Honeys (yeah)
Wanna roll my Town and Country? (yeah)
Then hook it up --
Blow it out --
Even rednecks got to shout:
Baby got rack.

Baby got rack.

Yeah baby,
When it comes to females,
Cosmo ain't got nothin' to do with my selection.
36-24-36?
Only if she's got a P-4...!

So your girlfriend wears green lipstick
Playin' songs by some grunge beatnick.
That maverick ain't got the bandwidth to support her toy NIC;
My Wingman joystick don't want none unless you got hubs, hon!

You can do installs or backups, but please don't lose that proc.
Some gamers wanna play it solo
And reject your parallel flow,
So they clock it, and unlock it,
And I pull up quick to resocket.
So Cosmo says you're weird
Well that ain't to be feared
'Cause your specs are large and your box is hummin'
And I'm thinkin' about comin'
To your home with UPSes
(The power's yours, my Miss!)
With an admin I can't react when
She privileges my login.
Some businessman tried to spam
'Cause his girls were on my LAN.
He had 'net but he sniffed their session
And I show 'em how to V-PN.
So ladies if the case is square
And you wanna dirty chat room lair
Hash s-t-r-o-n-a-e
And type them nasty thoughts
Baby got rack.

Baby got rack.

Pale in the vale but she got much rack...
Pale in the vale but she got much rack...
Pale in the vale but she got much rack...
Pale in the vale but she got much rack...

Jewish Vampires, Why Not?

2007-07-16T02:01:00.001-04:00

(why, oh why, do I get wrapped up in these kinds of conversations??? about how one would play a Jewish vampire character in a role-playing game set in Antioch at the time of the first crusade ...and having noted that the first person to respond is a rabbi of our acquaintance, I clearly just had to chime in:)

Sure, she can be a vampire who's a Jew--just not one who's an entirely halachically observant & consistent one--a description that's rare enough even in the non-undead Jewish community. ;) Even at the time of the First Crusade I'm sure there were a good number of Jews in Antioch who were eating things the rabbis wouldn't approve of (and drinking wine they wouldn't approve of, and sleeping with people they wouldn't approve of...). So she's no worse off than many others who keep some or even most of their community's norms but fall short in some areas.

On points that others have raised below or on the other thread:
I'm not up on all the vampire lore, but especially if vampires don't have to have died to be undead, I'm not convinced that halacha wouldn't apply to her character: can't you become a vampire by being bitten by one (without necessarily dying?)--and then you won't die, as long as you follow the, er, halachos of vampire survival re: drinking blood as needed, staying out of the sun, keeping wooden stakes out of your heart, and avoiding garlic and crosses [if you're a vampire in a Christian context]?

If vampires aren't the agents of the Devil/sitra achara (Other Side), and are just another category of being (maybe their cruciphobia is socially/culturally conditioned?), then I don't think she'd necessarily react badly to or be repelled by Jewish holy objects like a Sefer Torah -- though the mikvah-water ideas are interesting, either as atonement/purification option (I like it! very consistent with the general rabbinic/normative halachic approach to niddah as well as to its Biblical precendents re: body-fluid-boundary-disruption-rectification for women [re: vaginal/uterine blood] and men [re: seminal emissions] and both [re: "leprosy" problems]) or as thing-to-avoid (which picks up on the Christian-holy-water-avoidance aspect as well as on the Wicked Witch of the West "I'm melting!" aspect...though neither one is very Jewish!).

If she can subsist on blood from kosher animals, and/or can drink the blood of other humans when necessary for her survival without killing them and with their permission (is this possible, without turning them into vampires? is turning someone vampire, even if they say they don't mind, a violation of halacha because it's doing them harm--or could it be doing them a favor?), then I would think that doing so would be halachically permissable under the principle of pikuach nefesh, preserving life -- though the question again arises, then, of whether a vampire has "life" and whether the character's nefesh (soul, "breath of life") has been eliminated or endangered morally/ethically/spiritually by her becoming a vampire. My initial reaction is to think that she does have "life," albeit a different kind from that of most adult Jews who are bound by halachah. But if this is also the case for others in special conditions (e.g., someone in a permanent vegetative state or coma), for whom the ordinary strictures of halacha are abrogated when necessary to preserve their life, then I don't see why a Jewish vampire wouldn't be halachically empowered to drink the blood of kosher animals (as you say, preferably after shechting them herself, or making good friends with a local shochet who can get her what she needs) when necessary. And I'd think that if she's a person (even a vampiric one), she's still got a nefesh/soul. But I wouldn't pretend to know how the vampire lore that comes from Christian (or Christianized, even if from pagan folkloric sources) contexts fits or doesn't fit with concepts from Jewish tradition on the soul, life, etc. Besides the Golem (which was never living to begin with), ghosts (which presumably have no physical bodies and are definitely dead first rather than immortal "undead"), dybbuks (which inhabit the bodies of others but otherwise have no physical bodies of their own), and demons (which may take physical form but were never human to begin with), does Jewish tradition have any physically-concrete immortal/returned-from-the-dead/undead human beings? Vampires, zombies, unnaturally long-lived individuals (besides Methusaleh and other folks early in the book of Genesis, for whom it was presumably natural to have such a long lifespan--plus Serach bat Asher,) -- have we got any of those in our folklore or legends?

The wonderful French Jewish comics artist Joann Sfar has a series called Petit Vampire (Little Vampire)--and whether or not his little vampire is Jewish, one of his friends definitely is Jewish, and has the following conversation with the Flying Dutchman:

"I was kinda hoping you'd make me swear on a skull or something."
--"You want to swear a pirate's oath? All right."
"I swear to devote my life to protecting the dead and keeping their memory. And if I break my word, may a thousand curses befall me."
--"Now do the sign of the cross."
"No. I can't do that."
--"It would give more strength to your oath."
"But I'm Jewish, Captain. The cross doesn't mean much to me."
--"Do the sign of the star in that case."
"We don't do that either. And I don't believe much in God. 'Cause my parents are dead."
--"You're a bit young to believe in nothing."
"Well, maybe he exists, Captain, but after what he did to me, I don't feel like I owe him anything."
--"You should think about all that some more. Sad times often open miraculous doorways."

A Meditation on Home

2007-07-16T00:33:00.000-04:00

In response to an LJ post on the nature of home by someone who's been my friend since 1985 :

Wherever we're together, that's my home...

Sometime in the last few weeks I heard Billy Joel's "You're My Home" again.* And at the risk of being uber-corny, there's a certain amount of truth to its sentiments, for friends (and food too, sure!) as much as--if not more so than!--for Significant Others.

On recent visits to Places We Wouldn't Mind Living** where our various friends have remained (New Haven) or landed (Philadelphia) or both (Athens, GA), I've said within a day or so (if not hour or so!) of arrival, "hey, you could get a job at ______ [academic institution] and I could get a job in the Jewish community and we could live here!!!" ... at least, until something happens to sober me up to the reality that this town is Not So Perfect (getting mugged at gunpoint in New Haven; getting fed up with the crappy road conditions/signage in Philly; dealing with drunken college students on the nighttime streets of Athens) and I realize that it's just that I like being around our amazing friends!!!

If you moved back to DC, I would be a very happy camper. New York, Philly, and most of the East Coast remain within easy and relatively cheap reach by train, bus, car, and discount airline, so wall-climbing should be avoidable. :)

There have been several times this summer when I've thought, "I really love this town. I wouldn't mind staying here! If there are to be any sprats, I wouldn't mind them growing up here like their mama. Sure, it's expensive & all, but hey! It is my hometown, and it's got a lot going for it!" (Funny: I, too, don't think of it as "home"--at least not yet--but I do think of it as "my hometown," more so than Louisville though I do say sometimes I'm "from Kentucky" as well as "from DC" or "Northern Virginia/Arlington.") The more friends of ours move here from elsewhere (Ruth! Amy L!), or move back here after being away (speedlime!), or we meet people we like in town (some AU colleagues + some shul and Jewish community people!), the more like "home" it begins to feel.

Wherever we're together--with people who make it feel like a place we would like to stay, like a real community--that's our home.

*Actually, it was almost certainly on one of my-and-Mike's many June anniversaries, probably June 26 [on which we met 20 years ago] or possibly June 24 [on which we saw each other again, as boyfriend & girlfriend, for the 1st time in 2 years, 18 years ago], because he was playing the tape I made him in high school of, um, "our songs" [please do not gakk; apologies for smooshyness] and it's on there. (They're not all sappy: it's got R.E.M. and The Pixies and The Who and The Sex Pistols and Guns 'n' Roses and INXS and stuff on it, so it's mostly not Romantic Floofy Stuff...)

**The category of Places We Wouldn't Mind Living generally excludes:

-- NYC: it has too little green space, & we have too little of the Long Green, to make living there comfortable for us;

--Atlanta: we love our friends there, and it's near Mike's family, but it otherwise seems a set of soulless traffic-jam-laden concentric circles of suburban whitebreaditude surrounding a hot muggy concrete dubious corporate skyscrapered New South downtown concrete jungle ("sometimes you just wanna say it/ the New South/ is an old lie/ you can smell it in the reconstructed dirt/ and you can read it in that skinny girl's eyes--/ the one wearing the brand-new Jesus Christ T-shirt" -- one of my favorite verses from "Katie" [alas, not up on http://www.scottdownes.com/songs, since it was part of the Snake Oil Salesmen repertoire and has not been revisited/resurrected on singer-songwriter Scott Downes's solo projects website]);

--Houston: see above, only we know fewer people there and it's not near most of our friends or relatives;

--Boston: I had my 4 years of 6-foot-snowpiles on the streetcorners and a winter that lasts from October until April or early May. Plus it has some of the worst road signage and drivers in the U.S. of A. No thanks! (We could be convinced, and we know lots of great people there, but I'd be happy if we never lived further north than New Haven again...);

--Louisville: it's okay, and my brother & his fiancee (who are cool peeps & fun to hang out with) and my uncle/aunt/cousin (ditto) and my parents and grandmother (who are, well, family!) all live there -- but it ain't all THAT exciting, and the academic institutions & Jewish community that are there would be a step down, not up, from where Mike is currently teaching & where we are currently living...

Can't Complain? Won't Complain!

2007-07-05T18:04:00.000-04:00

(not going to be easy...but yeah, I'm planning to try out being on the AComplaintFreeWorld bandwagon. Here's what I've just written as my column for the August issue of our synagogue newsletter where I work:)

Can’t Complain? Won’t Complain!

“The more you complain, the longer God lets you live.” I’m not convinced! Studies say optimists live longer. Even if negativity doesn’t shorten my life, it robs it of depth and breadth—of richness, creativity, and joy.

You may see me sporting a purple wristband that says “Spirit.” I’m not on the Pep Squad: I’m taking up the challenge to refrain from complaining for 21 days in a row. When I catch myself complaining, gossiping, or criticizing, I’ll move the wristband from one arm to the other and re-start my count from the beginning. I know it’ll be difficult (who knows whether I’ll succeed before 5768 is over!), but it will be worth it. Every time I keep myself from negative or harmful speech—or catch myself in the act and move toward correcting it—I will be working to shape my life and my community with positive intentions.

A pastor in Kansas City started up this practice—so what’s Jewish about it? Plenty!

The month of Elul has long been a time for reflection and moral self-improvement. We should be devoting the 40 days from Rosh Chodesh Elul to Yom Kippur to teshuvah (repentance)—so trying for just 21 days is actually giving myself a break!

Judaism focuses on actions and consequences, not just on intentions. If you speak kindly, your act of chesed deserves praise. If you meant to help a friend by pointing out a problem, but you spoke tactlessly and made her feel bad, the negative power of your words is not erased by your good intentions. We can only grow as individuals and as a community if we recognize our faults—but all of us, being only human, find even constructive criticism more palatable when sweetened with the right words. How can I try to make my well-meaning comments not come off as complaints? Before offering suggestions for improvement, I should first praise what has been done well, acknowledge the shared hopes that lead us to seek better ways together, and show patience with the failings of myself and others.

The Torah recognizes that we all need help remembering our ideals. After Sinai, the Israelites are told to put tzitzit (fringes) on their garments, so that “you will see them and be reminded of all the Lord's commandments, and fulfill them, and not be seduced by your heart nor led astray by your eyes” (Numbers 15:39). Likewise, the purple wristband should help me call to mind my chosen commitments to my community.

When we fall short, how do we overcome our past mistakes? Maimonides gives the following steps for meaningful repentance: 1) identifying the transgression (my negative speech is lashon ha-ra, “evil tongue”); 2) regretting it (I’m sorry for the ways I’ve hurt others with complaints or criticism); 3) resolving not to do it again (I’m using this purple bracelet as a visible reminder not to speak negatively); and finally, 4) acting differently when the chance to fall into the same bad behavior presents itself (if I can use my tongue wisely for 21 days in a row, that’ll be a good start!).

When I’ve kept my purple band on one wrist for 21 days, my life may not be longer, but it will be better: “happier, more loving, more positive and more abundant” (AComplaintFreeWorld.org). Ken y’hi ratzon – so may it be God’s will!

Independence Day bits & bobs

2007-07-04T14:36:00.001-04:00

A smattering of my postings du jour from around the interwebnet :

We were actually herded off of the National Mall from 5pm until 7+pm because of thunderstorms. They chased us all into the surrounding museums (we chose the Sackler b/c it has an exhibit my mom had wanted to see), which should have been closing at 5:30 but stayed open (though the lights went out --on the automatic timers!--around 6pm on several floors of the Sackler, and it took them at least 20 min to get them back up) until the point when they got the all-clear and could close up the museum and chase us all back out again...

Over here:

It's easy to forget how uncertain the future of this new nation seemed, and how very much stood in our way. Even the optimists among the founders might have thought it would be too much to hope, to think that their creation, with its "new birth of liberty," would be here to celebrate its 231st birthday.

I've had a thing or two to say on SunDog's other 4th of July thread and no1's To All the Vets thread --

but I'll go ahead and say some of it again --

Happy 4th to all!

I am thinking right now of all that America meant to the poet and writer Stephen Vincent Benét -- he was no politician, but to me he understood what our country is, has been, and can be better than any other thinker I know (though yes, de Tocqueville, Crevecoeur, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, and more had some pretty darn good ideas & words for us too!).

My father loves Benét's work, and gave me a middle name (Melora) after a character in his epic poem John Brown's Body...but he also gave me this shared dream of our country, and a shared sense of pride in its successes and responsibility for its failings -- with the power and the obligation to work to sustain the former and redress the latter.

I've posted an excerpt from his Independence Day 1941 radio drama "Listen to the People" over in the thread To All the Vets, and I'll just share part of it here with you now (with emphasis on some of my favorite lines):

We made this thing, this dream,
This land unsatisfied by little ways,
This peaceless vision, groping for the stars,
Not as a huge devouring machine
Rolling and clanking with remorseless force
Over submitted bodies and the dead
But as live earth where anything could grow,
Your crankiness, my notions and his dream,
Grow and be looked at, grow and live or die.
But get their chance of growing and the sun.
We made it and we make it and it's ours.
We shall maintain it. It shall be sustained.

Happy Independence Day to everyone, all around the world --

today we Americans celebrate the creation of this nation,
but it is also the creation of a certain kind of dream that has inspired many across the globe:

a dream of free women and men, bound by a common hope rather than a common bloodline or territory,
free to dream their own dreams and to put their hands to making them a reality
for themselves and for their children, for those they know and those they have never met,
for those who share their language and culture and for those who seek refuge here as strangers in a strange land--
until they find their home here, create their home here, both joining and transforming our common dream.

We shall maintain it. It shall be sustained.

(edited from here)

I love the national ideals that our flag embodies--

but I fear and deplore what some have done in its name or under its cover, and I will fight to maintain that it belongs to me and to others as much as to them.
...
I love the flag because it is a symbol of our nation -- the "land of the free and the home of the brave," yes, but I actually prefer the words of "America the Beautiful," because to me they speak more powerfully and fully to what our nation is and is about (particularly the sections I italicize here):

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!

America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassion'd stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness.

America! America!
God mend thine ev'ry flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.

O beautiful for heroes prov'd
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life.

America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness,
And ev'ry gain divine.

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears.

America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.

(lyrics by Katherine Lee Bates;
music composed by Samuel A. Ward)

A Little Bit of History....
The lyrics to this beautiful song were written by Katharine Lee Bates (1859-1929) an instructor at Wellesley College, Massachusetts, after an inspiring trip to the top of Pikes Peak, Colorado, in 1893. Her poem, America the Beautiful first appeared in print in The Congregationalist, a weekly journal, on July 4, 1895. Ms. Bates revised the lyrics in 1904 and again in 1913. In addition to those changes in the words, it is notable that the poem was not always sung to the tune presented on this website ("Materna," composed by Samuel A. Ward in 1882, nearly a decade before the poem was written). In fact, for two years after it was written it was sung to just about any popular or folk tune that would fit with the lyrics, with "Auld Lang Syne" being the most notable of those. The words were not published together with "Materna" until 1910, and even after that time, the tune to be used was challenged to some degree. For example, in 1926 the National Federation of Music Clubs held a contest to put the poem to new, reportedly "less somber," music, but no other entry was determined to be more acceptable. Before her death in 1929, Ms. Bates never indicated publicly which music she liked best, but it now appears likely that America the Beautiful will forever be associated with "Materna."
(source)

Ikh hob lib yidish (un RUSH!)

2007-06-24T14:06:00.000-04:00

Sholem-aleykhem, yidish-redners!

Ikh bin geven afn konsert fun RUSH nekhtn in Nissan Pavilion -- un ikh hob getrogt mayn "REDT MIT MIR YIDISH" knepl [button: tsi nutst men dos vort af pin-button un nisht nor af kleyder-knepl?] af mayn "RUSHTOUR.COM" hemdl. (Vayls 's iz mer kheynevdik vi mayn "MAYDELE" hemdl, vos iz a bisl groys af mir.) Baym hofsoke hob ikh bashlisn az ikh darf es gebn tsu Geddy Lee (der zinger un basist), vos is a flisik yidish-redner (zayn eltern hobn geshtamt fun Poyln, un hobn ibergelebt di lagers un gevoynt in Toronto). Azoy hob ikh es gegebn -- mit eyn fun mayne arbet-kartlekh af dem -- tsu eyn shoymer [? security guard] vos hot gezogt az er vet ez gebn tsu emetsn vos ken es im gebn. Nohkn konsert hor er gezogt az er hot es gegebn dem tour manager, vos hot gezogt az er vet es gebn tsu Geddy. Az, ver veyst!

Afn kartl hob ikh geshribn mayn kontakt-informatsye (arayngerekht di dozike blog-adres, az: oyb du leynst dos, Geddy--a grus aykh un di gantse mishpokhe!), un oykhet di datn fun Yidish-Vokh 2007 un www.yugntruf.org far informatsye. Vayl ikh meyn az oyb Geddys mame hot lib tsu zayn mit andere yidish-redners in a sheynem ort, volt zi take hanoe hobn fun Y-V. Un oyb ir zun (oder zin: mistome zayn bruder redt yidish oykhet) vil kumen...dos volt geven gor sheyn un a shpas!

Mikhl-Avrom hot mir gekoyft a bas mit a vokh tsurik. Ikh ken vern a musikant un nisht nor a zinger/vokalist! (lol) Az, itst muzn mir zikh greytn tsu zayn a gute "cover band" far zakhn af yidish -- RUSH lider, dakht zikh, ober mir hobn oykhet an interes in farshidene andere (Pat Benatar: oftmol zingt Mikhl-Avrom af yidish nor di shure "mir loyfn mit di shotns fun der nakht"; ua"v). :)

Ikh kuk shtark aroys af di ha-yorike Yidish-Vokh. Mir hobn es farfeln di letste 2 yor, un dos is geven a shod. Az ha-yor viln mir kumen af di sof-vokh, un ikh meyn az 's darf zayn meglekh!

Midrash, metaphor, and Messiah

2007-06-07T12:40:00.002-04:00

A "Liberal Buddhist Agnostic Christian"(did I get that right, Scott?) of my online acquaintance has posted a discussion about midrash (and how it might affect understandings of the New Testament) on some messageboards I frequent. In the ensuing discussion, I added the following in response to a more traditional Christian's post:

A quick thought from a Jew, not a Christian:

Understanding some of the gospel accounts midrashically can add to our common Scriptural ground, where you & I "agree to disagree" about Jesus as the son of God/a divine member of the Trinity vs. as a gifted human teacher. I have no particular stake in persuading you that Jesus did not, say, turn water into wine, walk on water, raise Lazarus from the dead -- just as I have no particular stake in persuading some Orthodox Jews that the Torah we have is not the product of God's dictation to Moses on Mount Sinai, or that Abraham and Sarah observed the Jewish dietary laws and other elements of halakhah (Jewish law) long before they were revealed at Sinai [which is a story contained in Jewish midrash]. But if I don't believe those things, a midrashic understanding of them gives us some common basis on which we can discuss them as having spiritual significance, rather than my saying "well, I don't believe that's literally true, so it's false/nonsense/'a lie.'" My main academic background is in literary interpretation (and in Jewish Studies: so I do read Hebrew, some Greek, and a little Aramaic [at this point], as well as Yiddish, Spanish, French, some German, and can make my way with Italian and some medieval/simpler Latin) -- most of the texts I love and that say, to me, "true" things about the world, are fiction or poetry: their facts are not always literally true (even real experiences put into a poem or story may be altered in some way), but that doesn't mean that they're false. Plato thought this was the case (poets are liars, so they get banished from his Republic) -- but I disagree. :)

That said, since I'm NOT a scholar of the New Testament I can't speak definitively without more research, but I suspect that at least some of Jesus's followers and those who wrote down or transmitted the Gospel accounts did in fact believe in a more "literal" understanding of what we see there: that Jesus really did turn water into wine, or heal the sick. Some people believe in various kinds of miraculous occurrences today: faith healing, miraculous rescue, divine apparitions in everyday objects, etc. Schmoo and I may see such things more metaphorically, but that doesn't mean there aren't others that do take them literally. But our willingness to see them as important -- rather than saying, as a pure logical rationalist might, that such stories only show the folly of believers and how duped they are -- means that we can share in a common love and exploration of these religious texts and traditions with you.

The New Testament is not part of my religious tradition, except inasmuch as it grows out of it -- it is, however, part of my cultural and literary heritage as part of the Western world, and I treasure it for both of these aspects.

Shalom,

MiriyaB

...sheg’malani kol tov (...who has granted me all kindness)

2007-05-27T00:20:00.000-04:00

My husband and I got to "bentsh gomel" this morning at synagogue.

On Thursday night, returning after drinks with friends at a bar in theNew Haven neighborhood we used to live in (the "grad ghetto"), my husband and I were robbed at gunpoint. But we're fine--and that's the important part. His wallet, my purse and its contents, even my wedding ring (which is the loss that stings most to me right now: I'm just glad they didn't take my husband's, which is of the same design, commissioned from a jewelry-maker in Vicenza, Italy on a visit there a few months before our wedding, almost 10 years ago) -- these are just objects; these can be replaced or lived without. Human life? Irreplaceable.

Ritualwell posts the Birkat Ha-Gomel (traditional prayer of thanks recited by someone who has survived a dangerous situation) in both masculine and feminine God-language here.

May God bless and keep you...

2007-05-27T00:12:00.001-04:00

There's a discussion going on over at the Shefa Network about Birkat Kohanim. Here's the 2 cents' worth I had to contribute:

For what it's worth, until 1991 (my first year of college) I had never been in a shul where Birkat Kohanim occurred at any point--and these were all shuls that DID give Kohen & Levi aliyot, not rishon & sheni.

At the student-led egalitarian Conservative high holiday services my roommate and I went to, she was apparently the only person (male or female) whose father was a kohen and so could perform Birkat Kohanim. Her parents had not been observant Jews and had raised her without much of a religious upbringing, but she had become far more interested in traditional Judaism and had in fact been keeping kosher since 10th grade (telling her parents she was becoming vegetarian, since bad blood between them & an Orthodox relative made her reluctant to thrust her new observance in their faces). In this case, the tradition of having the person pronouncing the blessing be "fed" it word by word had exactly the desired effect: having never performed this ritual before -- indeed, probably never having seen it performed before either -- she was able to convey this blessing to all of us, without concern about whether she would remember all of the words. It was a wonderful moment.

Since then, I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen birkat kohanim done in any shul of any sort*, but in many of those places it had been added to the practices of the shul or minyan relatively recently, having either never been done or not done within memory of anyone there.

Me, I can take it or leave it -- as with kohen-levi aliyot vs. rishon-sheni -- as long as all those whose fathers are kohanim or levi'im (i.e., including b'not kohen/levi) have these ritual roles/honors extended to them regardless of gender.

But I concur in the understanding that several have voiced here that birkat kohanim, which is extended through but not on behalf of the kohanim, need not be anathema in a shul that dispenses with kohen/levi aliyot -- as well as in thinking that other ways of conveying this blessing may also be valuable in making the members of the congregation feel the impact of receiving this blessing in some way that is more striking or immediate than its recitation by the shaliach as part of ordinary Amidah repetition.

* Those occasions were:

Rosh Hashanah at an egalitarian Conservative syagogue in Albany, NY (done by both women and men whose fathers are kohanim);
a Sukkot service of traditional egalitarian Conservative minyan members in a friend's backyard in Washington DC (both men and women whose fathers are kohanim -- though I heard some grumbling/challenging from some traditionalist men re: having a bat kohen up there);
high holiday services at a Conservative synagogue in Maryland (egalitarian shul, though only men were up there; according to one authority I asked afterwards, b'not kohen are also allowed to do so -- but I heard from others that at some point in the past a bat kohen had done so & then been given some grief about it);
chag services at Young Israel in Manhattan (Orthodox, not egalitarian, so only men);
Pesach services at a Chabah shul in Cleveland (ditto).

"I Love Organized Religion"

2007-05-20T22:51:00.000-04:00

You might think that all I do is rant about religious matters on some band's messageboard.

Some nights, I think you'd be right.

In response to one defense of Organized Religion, I felt moved to add:

In my circles, there are 20-and-30something Jews who are Too Cool For Shul and want to express their Jewish identity in various non-synagogue forms (which I have no problem with, and am sometimes part of) AND only talk trash about the established/pre-existing religious & cultural institutions (& why they can't be bothered to be part of them or work to improve them instead of Taking Their Toys & Going Home -- which I do have a problem with).

That's all well and good, while you're young & healthy & life's going well.

And yeah, you might rather hang out with each other right now than with the bourgeois mommies (and their aging mothers & dads) at the Big Suburban Synagogue I work at...

But that Big Suburban Synagogue has, among other things:

-- clergy who always take care of community members, visiting the sick in the hospital and the ill at home;
-- an active Social Action Committee whose projects feed the hungry, clothe the needy, cheer the wounded and lonely, and try to make the world a better place;
-- a Caring Committee that brings meals to members who are sick or who are in mourning;
-- a Special Needs Committee that tries to make sure that no one in the community is kept from being part of Jewish life & activities at the shul because of physical, developmental, or other handicaps or challenges

... and these forms of organization help its members care for one another.

Trash-tralking hipsters have the luxury of ignoring this structure in part because they expect it to be there for them if/when they need it -- not considering the fact that if they keep themselves aloof from it, it may not be.

Yeah, I know -- sounds like the opposite of my complaint 2 posts ago about the Organized Jewish Community not getting what 20-and-30-somethings are up to & why it won't kill them. Eilu v'eilu ("these and these [are the words of the living God]"; Eruvin 13b) -- there's truth to both.

"Be A Proud Jew": MiriyaB Gets Mad

2007-05-20T22:10:00.000-04:00

She was a vixen when she went to school,
And though she be but little, she is fierce.

I put these lines from A Midsummer Night's Dream on my senior yearbook page. I have the feeling they continue to apply.

When I get mad, I get mad. And I just got mad.

Another Jewish member of one messageboard I'm part of posted this, under the heading ""Be a Proud Jew", So Says Ron Blomberg.......":

For those who never heard of Ron Blomberg, he played for the Yankees from 1969-1976. He was the first DH in MLB history, and happens to be Jewish.

He was doing a signing today in White Plains, NY and I took Sammy [his 6-yr-old son] to go see him. Sam has no idea who he is, but I do, and we got an autograph. We greeted him by saying Shalom, and I had told Sammy that he is Jewish. When we left Ron looked at Sam and said "be a proud Jew". It was great to hear this from a ballplayer of my youth, and even greater to know he has not forgotten his roots.

Among the replies from one of the other members of the board was the following:

"I thought most peeps had moved beyond ethno-cultural identification as a determinant of self.

I guess I was wrong."

I was Not Pleased. And let my Rather Extreme Displeasure be known in more or less the following words:

I thought most peeps might understand if another peep finds it meaningful that a childhood hero encourages them & their progeny in positively embracing an ethno-cultural identification that has, in the past century alone, been the basis for subjecting members of that group to legal discrimination, lynching, and genocide.

I guess I was wrong.

Besides that -- there's also nothing wrong with valuing a cultural, ethnic, and/or religious heritage for particular and specific positive elements within it. To say "Be a proud Jew" [Mexican, Pole, American...or heck, other identifiers of whatever distinguishing sort, particularly if ever stigmatized by others: queer, fat girl, weirdo] is, to me, a perfectly acceptable shorthand for not hating what others have used as a reason to hate, and finding the elements in that identity (which is never, and need never be, your sole identity or an impediment to your individuality--it is, rather, a part of your individuality) that you value and embrace.

I'm sure it means different things to different people -- me, my husband (a convert to Judaism), any kids we may have, etc. -- but to be free to embrace that aspect, along with others? Not to think of it as something negative to hide? Yeah, I do hope for that.

Sorry: I think you Just Don't Get It.

I'm really kinda p.o.'d (maybe you can tell?) -- I don't hold it against you personally -- and I'm far from saying that as a Jew growing up in DC & KY in the '80s & '90s & living in 21st-century America, I have it sooooo tough as compared to Lots Of People (especially members of more "obviously Othered" groups, particularly if based on highly visible identifiers like skin color) -- but I'm guessing that you're not part of a minority/historically discriminated-against ethno-cultural group.

How would you like to wonder if your new school-friend, who's African-American, is going to hate you when she learns you're Jewish, because of fraught public interactions between the Black & Jewish communities that have nothing to do with these 2 like-minded 7th-grade girls -- but could still give her a reason to see you as an enemy? (Thankfully, that wasn't how she saw it.)

How would you like to grow up having nightmares--not often, but now & again--about being dragged first off of the hijacked plane, along with all the others of Your Kind, because you're singled out as being hated?

How would you like spend your childhood knowing that with a move of countries or decades, you could have your opportunities and freedoms curtailed (Soviet refuseniks, anyone? not to mention that even here, many fields [including academia], jobs, neighborhoods, social clubs, etc., remained closed or limited in their acceptance of Jews until at least the 1960s) -- presuming that you weren't just killed outright?

How would you like to be told you're going to hell because Your People believe the wrong thing?

Or how would you like being told -- in 1996, in Oxford, by a female grad student from Northern Ireland for crying out loud! who you would think would know better -- to watch out when you go to Israel because "you know, those people are supposed to be so clever with money." (Hello? Are you totally unaware that I and one of your best buddies in the college are Jewish? Apparently so!)

How about having to wonder whether it's safe, in a particular time & place & context (Berlin, Budapest, Paris, Istanbul; bright daylight, nighttime; lots of people around or just a few), to be an Identifiable Jew -- to be wearing a kippah, or be seen with my kippah-wearing husband, or whether we'd better wear hats over them?

Funny? Or just sad? Hard to say...

The Continuity of Discontinuity

2007-05-20T10:45:00.001-04:00

That's the title of Steve M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kaplan's study on "How Young Jews Are Connecting, Creating, and Organizing Their Own Jewish Lives," which I just read about in Kaplan's JTA op-ed. Maybe now the institutional Jewish Community machers will Get It:

Rather than concluding that these new endeavors are weak or competing versions of existing institutions, we will do better to understand them as expressing an alternative vision of what Jewish communities can look like and how they can serve the needs of their members.

One hundred years ago, young immigrants and allrightniks built the American Jewish infrastructure that we have today -- from both AJCs to the landsmanshaften to nightclubs and shuls with pools. Now we are seeing smaller, more localized but no less provocative efforts to rejuvenate, engage, practice and live Jewish lives organized on their own terms by people younger than 40.

In cities across the country they are creating their own minyanim instead of joining synagogues; they are writing and publishing their own journals instead of just subscribing to existing ones; they are playing their own music, putting out records and producing their own concerts. They are hosting salons and movie screenings. They are involved in the creation of Jewish life that is thoughtful, popular and exists largely on the margins of mainstream Jewish organizational life.

These new endeavors do not look like their predecessors because they are responding to the perception that the offerings of synagogues, federations and JCCs are simply too narrow and do not adequately address the diverse needs of American Jews.

This translates also into practice, as the organizations typically resist anything hierarchical, denominational, exclusionary or judgmental. This resistance is partially a critique of mainstream Jewish organizations and partially an expression of deeply held beliefs in pluralism, as well as an understanding of the fluidity of identity in general.

These are some of the lessons that Steven M. Cohen and I address in "The Continuity of Discontinuity," our newly published study on this phenomenon. In the study we explore the ways in which these new organizations represent a response to institutional Jewish life by offering a variety of responses to it.

The organizations we highlight -- and there are many more across the country -- are the result of creative, thoughtful, dissatisfied people who had no desire to join committees, take over sisterhoods or participate in the young leadership branch of local or national communal organizations. But they understood that the landscape of Jewish life could sustain a greater diversity of organizations and experiences.

Today there is much communal anxiety over the behaviors, attitudes and activities of American Jews between 18 and 35. Members of that age cohort are not following their elders into the halls of existing institutions, which could threaten these institutions.

But what we are seeing is not the loss of Jewish practice in North America. We are seeing young people who want to build something new that follows a different vision of what an institution can be and that will cater in a different way to the needs of American Jews for meaningful Jewish engagement.

You can download the study here -- I've done so but haven't read it yet.
Also downloaded but just glanced at the Institute for Jewish Policy Research's new report "Jews in Britain: A Snapshot from the 2001 Census", for those of you who like yer stats... it's been briefly blogged over here at JOI (and no doubt elsewhere, but, y'know, these are the only ones of which the news has come to Hahvahd/There may be many others but they haven't been discaaahvahd).

On My Soapbox Again...

2007-05-18T01:42:00.001-04:00

Question asked on WeirdJews (a LiveJournal group) hit on my Pet Peeve #143:
otherwise egalitarian Jews not using both parents' names in their Hebrew names for No Particular Reason. So here's what I wrote:

Why not both parents' names?

If I were calling you up as gabbai, I'd love to call you up as Chaya bat Yehudit v'Nachum -- or, for those times when you're in need of a mi-shebeirach, to wish you a speedy recovery as same.

In an egalitarian context, there is -- to my mind -- no compelling reason to be only your father's daughter in ritual contexts & only your mother's daughter when in need of healing/divine mercy. I understand that there are those who find it meaningful to perpetuate this distinction between using ben/bat father's name in pretty much all "official" Hebrew name contexts and ben/bat mother's name in prayers for healing... but to me, the latter is just a small sop offered in a context that otherwise was seldom giving women their due.

But, as said above, there's not necessarily any reason for anyone to be "weirded out" by your having previously given your name as Chaya bat Judit, because you could be giving it that way because:

1) your mother is Jewish, your father is not, and it's in a context where you find it appropriate to include the former and not the latter, as would be the traditional practice (unlike sirleebutler choosing to use both*)
--this is what I do in my usual Conservative shuls/minyanim, and the way my name appears on the ketubah, because my father is not Jewish -- Rivkah Leah bat Yehudit Sarah

2) you are a farbrente feminist and hoping to add a few specks of sand on one side of the balance, weighed against hundreds of years of men coming up for aliyot with dad's-names-only + plenty of men and women even in egal contexts continuing to only give dad pride of place in these Official Name non-mishebeirach contexts (not my reason for doing it, as said above -- but I wouldn't mind anyway if people thought it was my reason, b/c I'd be sympathetic to it on some level!)

3) it's not their business, but because of whatever set of circumstances you do not wish to use your father's name (absent; abusive; birth father not in your life ... I know of someone who uses his father & stepmother's names, rather than father + late mother's name: she died when he was tiny and his stepmother is, in his life & community, his mom).

*English names are fine. In some contexts where it seems not inappropriate to include the name of my father, who raised me as a Jew, I add "v'Danny" (that's his given name--not Daniel--so I have no intention of improving on what his parents gave him or trying to disguise the non-standard aspects by Judaising/Hebraicizing it for him). Another Rivkah Leah I know is "bat Charles v'Edith."

Jews for centuries--indeed, millenia!--have used names that come from the cultures & languages that surround them: female Jews particularly had these kinds of names. Think of all the women from the Old Country whose names are Yiddish and not Hebrew-derived: Shayna, Golda, Toybe, Glikl, Perl, Rayzl, Feyge, Yente/Yentl [actually cognate with "gentle"--in the sense of noble/highborn: one from the Romance-language rather than Germanic component of Yiddish])... and, among the Sefardim, names like Reyna/Reina...as well as men's names like Sender (from Alexander) and Hirsh/Hershl, Berl, etc....

Now, I'm not saying that there's no reason to have or create Jewish/Hebrew name for yourself if you don't have one and want one other than YourName ben/bat Dad'sName v'/[or] Mom'sName. But it infuriates me that some Hebrew-chauvinist rabbis & educators have told Jews with Perfectly Good Non-Hebrew Jewish (usually Yiddish) names that they should have a "real," i.e. Hebrew, name & give them one. Fer cry-yay, if yer great-grandma was named Golde, most of the time it wasn't the case that her "real"/Hebrew name was Zahava (which is really a Modern Hebrew creation rather than a traditional name, as far as I can tell--just from translating the Yiddish name). If you want to be Zahava, fine--but don't let anyone tell you these other names aren't Jewish.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: any name a Jew has is a Jewish name.

Think about some of the Hellenistic rabbinic/commentator names: Kalonymos ben Kalonymos? That's not Hebrew or Aramaic, that's Greek!

[/rant]

Shavua tov!

2007-05-12T23:47:00.000-04:00

As a coda to the previous post, here's the comment I just posted on that article:

Lovely piece!

I'm glad that observing Shabbat made you feel, "for the first time, like the Perfect Jew." If the traditional view is that Shabbat is a taste of the World to Come, then perhaps it's not surprising that observing Shabbat in a way we can find meaningful can give us a glimpse of our best Jewish selves -- the Perfect Jews we might wish and strive to be... though one of the things I like best about our Jewish tradition is that it understands imperfection so deeply! (Sin, kheyt, is literally "missing the mark" -- and we try to get closer to getting things right, while acknowledging our limitations. Every Yom Kippur we confess and repent our sins, knowing that we will still be confessing and repenting next year, and the year after -- but we also have the prospect that each turn of the cycle gives us the chance to begin again, to try again -- even if this means that we will, à la Beckett, "Fail again. Fail better.")

So, in this Saturday night/motzei Shabbes state, I'm hoping you'll give us an update, Jon: how was your Shabbat this week? Which of Rabbi Green's 10 commandments of Shabbat did you take on this time, and how'd it go? (And Erin and/or Steve: how's by you?)

My Shabbat observance doesn't make me feel like the perfect Jew, but it does give me a chance to be a more perfcct Jew--and human being--than I think I would otherwise be. It can be hard to feel like putting in the extra effort -- to make a nice Shabbes dinner at home, or to make plans with friends or family -- but it's worth it. This week my husband's out of town, and I wasn't sure what if anything I'd do for Friday night--but I picked up the phone, called a friend, and ended up contributing challah & ice cream as the bookends of dinner with her & with another friend, who made salad & a main dish. Sure, I'd be just as shomer(et) shabbat if I made kiddush & hamotzi & had dinner here by myself (okay, also with the 2 cats, who do get tuna on Shabbat as a special treat -- but that's not the same as human Shabbat community, nice as they are...) -- but it wouldn't have been nearly as Shabbesdik.

So whether you're as "shomer-f***ing-shabbos" as The Big Lebowski's Walter, or just starting to figure out how to "remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy" in a way that speaks to you, I hope you'll find ways to make Shabbat Shabbesdik -- to make it feel like Shabbat inside and out... and then to carry a little bit of that peace and sweetness back into your week, into our regular lives, into our experiences as imperfect Jews in an imperfect world.

Shavua tov -- a good week -- to all!

Shabbat Shalom!

2007-05-11T15:54:00.000-04:00

...and I'd also like to recommend this li'l piece from Jewcy about Shabbat observance:
"Hardly Working: And on the seventh day, our Jewish guinea pig rested" -- part of Jon Papernick's quest to be the Perfect Jew, and so far the only one that's made him feel like it!

Shabbat shalom, everyone!!!
(in, er, about another 4 hours...ah, summertime!)

To Begin Again?

2007-05-11T15:49:00.000-04:00

[just thought I'd share here what I posted as a comment over at Jewcy.com]

1) I love Shavuot! It's true that I never did anything for it in my Conservative shul growing up -- until I was in 10th grade and we had Confirmation (a term I dislike intensely: if we insist on having it, can't we give it a good Hebrew name instead of sounding like Catholics?) on Shavuot, which is probably the most press it usually gets in the Reform & Conservative synagogue life-cycle -- but all of my celebrations of it in the past 10 years have been in non-Orthodox environments. And they've been pretty great!

The Shefa Shavuot Reflections put together last year might be of interest -- my contribution also has a nice recipe for galaktopita zarka, baked cream custard (from the Cookbook of the Jews of Greece).

I've also counted the omer each of those past 10 years, but only done anything cool for Lag B'Omer twice:

1) A Masorti (Conservative) Lag B'Omer retreat in the Lake District of England with folks from our Oxford Masorti group & those from Leeds Masorti. That's the only time I've learned any Lag B'Omer songs, though they were pretty weak ("Esh, esh" and "Hayom Lag B'Omer"): teaching me the round "Black socks" has given a more lasting addition to my repertoire...*

2) when we dropped by to visit my frummy Cleveland cousins & their 5 kids on our way home from Michigan -- we had the good fortune to be joining them on the 33rd day of the omer, so we got to enjoy a fabulous cookout in a local park with folks from one of the kids' schools. (Mmmmm, delicious kosher hamburgers!).

Maybe I'll be more motivated to do Lag B'Omer stuff when I have kids who want to toast marshmallows, etc...

2) Hey, Anonymous: I just finished reading Rabbi Naomi Levy's book To Begin Again -- I wonder if you would find it, and what it has to say about God and Judaism, to be helpful or interesting in your current state of confusion.

But being confused--or at least not satified with easy institutional answers--isn't such a bad thing...

*P.S. Also inspiring a parody about phylacteries:

Black box, with straps are tefillin,

Lubavitchers ask you to put on a set,

Someday, I'm going to get me some--

So far, like Rosenzweig, I say not yet,

not yet, not yet...

(This is no longer exactly true...though I'd still be interested in getting a pair written by the soferet who's the maker of Tefillin Barbie...)

2007-04-16T13:53:00.001-04:00

My 15 minutes of fame last Shabbat/final days of Pesach: "Hey, I saw you in the Washington Jewish Week!" The print version even had my smiling face on the final jump page (a photo Mike had taken!), but the online article about adult children of intermarriage can be found there, without the photos. Also, alas, without the list of resources that were in the print edition that I thought were interesting & valuable. Ah well!

For those of you who don't want to hunt it up, here it is! (With some MiriyaB editorial comments...)

4/4/2007 8:59:00 PM

Making 'halves' whole
Adult children of intermarrieds carve out their own niche

by Sue Fishkoff and Richard Greenberg

Aaron Hirsch considers himself "half-Jewish." He grew up in a secular household in Chevy Chase, the son of a Catholic mother and a German Jewish father. Hirsch, 39, is engaged to marry a woman he describes as "part Muslim" in a nonreligious ceremony.

Rebecca Boggs' mother is Jewish. Her father was raised as a Protestant by his Cuban Catholic mother and his Protestant Scotch Irish father. [Neatly eliding the question of what religious tag to put on my father today: not Jewish, but not a practicing Christian; someone who believes there is one God...doubtless it's easier to stick to relating family religious streams than to affix theological labels [deist? universalist?]) Boggs, 33, grew up in Arlington, was raised as a Jew [and bat mitzvahed at Arlington-Fairfax Jewish Congregation, now called Etz Chayim], married a convert to Judaism, and they now live as committed Conservative Jews in Washington, D.C., members of Adas Israel Congregation. [I was always a Conservative Jew, and intellectually "committed" to it--much more observant & involved now, but my basic community and ideology have changed very little -- which is why I don't see myself as any kind of ba'alat tshuvah abandoning my old bad ways...]

Robin Margolis had a devout Christian upbringing. Her father was an Episcopalian naval officer from an aristocratic Midwestern banking family. Her mother? She, too, was proudly Christian and had the lineage to prove it. Or so it seemed.

Margolis was in her 30s when she found out her late mother was Jewish. It was 1984 and she was cleaning out her mother's closet when she found a bag of old documents. The woman she knew as Phyllis Miles was born Phyllis Margolis, and had spent decades running away from her religious and ethnic background.

"It was pretty staggering," says Margolis, now 56, who wholeheartedly embraced her Jewishness once she made that startling discovery about her mother. In fact, the Takoma Park resident is now studying for admission to a rabbinic program.

The tales told by Margolis, Hirsch and Boggs exemplify the complexity and diversity of a growing, but sometimes overlooked, subgroup the adult children of intermarried parents whom Margolis calls a collective "mystery wrapped in an enigma." [Nice nod to Churchill on Russia as "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma"--a quote I'd known, but not its conclusion: "--but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest." So I would ask: what is the key for us as adult children of intermarriage? Jewish interest? A sense that we are free and welcome to engage in Jewish communal life without disowning other parts of our families or ourselves?]

In many instances, their lives are emotionally complex, the result of growing up with parents from vastly different backgrounds. Even those raised unequivocally as Jews have an entire side of their family that is not Jewish. Although communal outreach to intermarried couples is burgeoning, some of their adult offspring have struggled to find their place in the Jewish community.

Hence, in September 2005, Margolis founded The Half-Jewish Network (www.half-jewish.net), an online support group for anyone with a Jewish parent, whether they identify as Jewish, Christian or something else. "I don't push anything," she says. "All I can do is offer them warmth and welcome."

According to the 2000-2001 National Jewish Population Survey, 360,000 Americans aged 18 to 29 have intermarried parents. Drawing from that rapidly expanding pool, Margolis' organization now has about 150 members, and that number is growing at a rate of about three per week. She figures she'll have 1,000 to 2,000 members in two years.

Although communal outreach tends to focus on intermarried couples rather than their adult children, "there is a light at the end of the tunnel" for the second generation, Margolis says. "Many Jewish organizations are showing an extreme interest in unwrapping the mystery, which makes me very happy." Unfortunately, few of them are in the Washington area, according to Margolis.

Margolis says she was often greeted with, at best, "chilly politeness" when she went synagogue shopping in the 1980s and early 1990s. "I felt like I was banging my head against the wall," she adds, explaining that she carved out her own institutional path by founding a Jewish Renewal women's chavurah in 1992 that served the entire Washington area. She disbanded it in 2006 in order to devote more time to helping children of the intermarried.

Jewish outreach to intermarried families, no matter the denomination, is predicated on the hope that the children will be raised as Jews. Experts stress the importance of giving such children a good Jewish education, as research shows that this makes them much likelier to become committed Jewish adults.

But it's no guarantee. Children ultimately choose their own path, despite their parents' carefully laid plans. Siblings from one family, raised the same way by intermarried parents, sometimes make different religious choices. [Or sometimes pretty same-y ones. I'd be astounded if my brothers and I ever diverged in paths as much as the other siblings described below.]

Margolis' three younger brothers are all "sincere, committed Christians" following the Protestant faith in which they were raised. One is even a minister. None chose their sister's Jewish path.

As for Boggs, her two brothers both had bar mitzvah ceremonies [Dad e-mailed me: "I note that it refers to your brothers' bar mitzvahs but not to your bat"], and one of them is engaged to marry a non-Jew. [Mom e-mailed me: "[your brother] told me that he and [his fiancee] plan to raise their kids Jewish"] Hirsch has a younger brother who identifies more as a Christian than a Jew.

As for Hirsch himself, Judaism has virtually no religious impact on him. But his Jewish cultural background bubbles up and insinuates itself into his life from time to time for example, when he encounters anti-Semitism. "Maybe there's a lot more going on inside me than I thought," he says after recounting two such incidents.

For many children of intermarried parents, choosing a religion can smack of favoring one parent over the other, with attendant feelings of guilt, anger and abandonment. That's particularly true, and hurtful, when parents divorce.

Marty Wasserman converted to Judaism after her divorce two decades ago in Santa Fe, N.M., and began raising her two children, Max and Meredith Murray, as Jews.

Max, now a 26-year-old officer in the Coast Guard stationed in Baltimore, dropped out of Hebrew school after a year, saying he didn't bond with the other kids. He ended up spending most of his teenage years with his Catholic father. He attended a Catholic high school, chose Catholic University and today considers himself Catholic.

Meredith Murray, now 24, stayed with her mother, had a bat mitzvah ceremony in Israel and flourished in Hebrew school, where she made her closest friends.

Like her brother, she went to Catholic high school, but unlike him, she always felt Jewish. She stood back when the other students took communion or intoned Christian prayers, even when it embarrassed her to be singled out.

A District resident, she, like her mother, identifies today as Jewish and goes to synagogue sporadically.

Her boyfriend, Dan, is not Jewish. She took him to a Passover seder last year at the home of a Conservative friend, who went on and on about the Jews as the chosen people. Murray was embarrassed.

"I remember apologizing to Dan when we left, saying not all Jews are that closed," she says. "I was so disgusted. I'm not sure they knew Dan isn't Jewish. It was this whole attitude of arrogance, that we are the chosen people. It was the first time I felt ashamed. It's not what I associate with Judaism. I don't believe a certain people are chosen, or superior."

She expects to marry her boyfriend, and they discuss how they'll raise their children. "Dan feels strongly about not forcing kids to go to one church or another," she says, "but he wants to expose them to all different religions. I think he's thinking academically."

He's very open, she adds, saying that "I'm sure if I said I want them to go to Hebrew school and temple, he wouldn't object. I really like the social aspect of religion, letting kids be part of something, giving them a structure. I also believe you can become a spiritual person outside the walls of a church or temple."

In contrast to some adult children of intermarrieds, Boggs says she has rarely felt stigmatized although she has received double-takes when her name and "Jewish" are mentioned in the same sentence.

"I tell them," she says, "that any name a Jew has is a Jewish name." [Dad wrote that he especially enjoyed this line.]

Intermarriage, she adds, "doesn't necessarily lead to assimilation. There is a place for the children of the intermarried. There is a place for you, even if not all of your relatives are Jewish."

Sue Fishkoff writes for JTA News and Features; Richard Greenberg is WJW associate editor.

Jewish/Latina: Hola & Shalom, hermana, sistah!

2007-04-16T13:44:00.001-04:00

Something I put on the Message Board Forum of the Half-Jewish Network, in a thread titled "Half Jewish-Half Latin":

[if you're interested in the full discussion/post by D. that I was responding to, go to the thread]

D. said: "The problem with being a halfie is other peoples insistance on telling you what you should be instead of allowing you to decide for yourself."

Agreed! So (hard as it is), I think that we should be proud of who we are and of our necessarily complicated explorations of our rich mixed heritages -- which then will allow us to decide for ourselves. And even to make different decisions along the way, at different times.

D. says: "I'm not sure how to embrace being Jewish or if I even have the right."

You absolutely have the right to explore and determine what your Jewish heritage means to you: others can give information and models for what they think "being Jewish" is or should be, but they have no right to impose them upon you as the only correct way.

My mother & her side of the family are Jewish (she grew up as a Brooklyn Jew like Diana's dad), my father & his are not: he was born in Cuba to a Cuban Catholic mom & American Protestant dad, but raised in Kentucky and didn't learn Spanish until high school or college. My brothers & I are Jews, raised Jewish, and also aware of our Hispanic heritage--but without much "content" to that last part (my dad's parents died when we were all quite young, we're not in touch with that much of the Cuban part of our family, etc.--though we all did learn Spanish and I used to write/phone my great-grandmother in Miami in it when she was still alive, through my college years). So in a way it sounds like mine is something of the flip side of your experience: I feel thoroughly Jewish, and I have interest in my Latina side but wasn't immersed in that culture growing up.

I just checked the website for Makor (92nd St Y) in NYC and see that the main event featured there right now is the upcoming Feria Artistica weeklong celebration of Latino Jewish culture, with a big kickoff event April 29: http://www.92y.org/shop/category.asp?category=888Feria%5FArtistica888&adsource=mb_fera
Even though we are both Jewish and Latina but not from the same sides, it could be interesting to see how those 2 cultures go together...

It sounded from one of your posts like you live in NYC? And that you're more interested in cultural than in religious Jewish stuff? I would think that there should be lots of interesting Jewish cultural stuff at places like MAKOR/the 92nd St Y: I don't live in NYC but I have friends who do, so if you'd be interested in my finding out more for what you're specifically interested in/where you live or hang out, I'd be happy to. One of my best friends in NYC is a woman who converted to Judaism (on her own, not in a relationship with someone) about 10 years ago, so she knows what it's like to "join" a community and a culture as an adult, having been brought up outside it though with some interest in it.

I've only had good experiences, generally, with my Jewishness and mixed background. My husband converted to Judaism and similarly has had mostly good experiences (more of a rocky road in Europe). It may be that the more traditional someone is, the more they do see Jewishness as a closed club where only certain people who pass muster are welcome--but there are plenty of more progressive and cultural contexts where I would certainly hope that's not the case.

I hope that some of the information at places like interfaithfamily.com (which I think had an issue of their web magazine about Jews & Latinos recently?) and JOI.org would also help you feel more welcomed and to know that we are not alone, and there is institutional support for opening, not closing, the door to people like you & me. Anyway -- though I may not be someone who's "on your Jewish side" geneologically, I'm definitely "on your (Jewish) side" as someone else of mixed descent who wants to welcome you. Maybe your mom & my dad aren't the people that Brooklyn Jews expected your dad & my mom to marry -- but they did, and now you & I are here & laying claim to all parts of our heritage.

Shalom y un abrazo,

Rebecca

2007-03-07T11:35:00.001-05:00

Sensible op-ed in the Forward by Shaul Kelner, which begins:

"If you happen to have missed the latest round in the debate over interfaith marriage, outreach and in-reach, fret not. This dog has been chasing its tail for nearly two decades, and shows no sign of tiring or jumping out of the deep groove it has cut as it runs in circles."

Ain't that the truth!

"Intermarriage has since become a normal part of most American Jews’ friendship and family networks, but the conceptual frameworks that policymakers and expert observers offer seem strangely frozen in time, as if the experience of the past 17 years has meant nothing."

Unh-hunh. And to judge by many of the comments posted on the op-ed, it continues to mean nothing to those who have already made up their minds.

Are you a FrankenJew?

2007-03-01T10:52:00.001-05:00

Not the term I'd choose, but it does have a certain attention-getting value...

I've got some comments on this Jewcy blogpost. (Warning: the discourse goes downhill pretty fast!)

Happy Hanukkah to all!

2006-12-19T10:28:00.000-05:00

Some thoughts of the season, shared with others elsewhere:

Friends of ours have a darling baby girl just over a year old who's undergoing surgery in Philadelphia while her 3 older siblings stay here in the DC area with loving family. They are devout Catholics; friends and family have been sending messages of love, support, and prayer on their CarePage. Part of mine from Friday afternoon:

Love, Faith, and Light

You are surrounded by the loving thoughts and prayers of so many of us who cannot be with you in person. I draw inspiration from what others have written, and say with them: "May God's love surround you and you see miracles in the upcoming days."

Tonight will be the first night of Hanukkah. The candles shine as a light of hope against the darkness, little by little, increasing each night until the menorah is ablaze with light. When we light the candles, we say: "Praised are You, Lord our God, Ruler of time and space, who accomplished miracles for our ancestors in ancient days, and in our time." There are miracles small and great every day--your love for each other; your lovely children. May we continue to know the miracles done in our time for us, and may your daughter have a good surgery and a speedy recovery.

Hanukkah is a holiday of prevailing against the odds, of seeking and finding strength in faith. Tomorrow in synagogue one of the readings comes from the prophet Zechariah, which couples his vision of the menorah with these words: "Not by might and not by power, but by My spirit, says the Lord of Hosts." May you be sustained by God's spirit, and by the love that we all have for you and for Gabbi. The Psalmist says, "In Your light we see light" (Psalm 36:9); in the light of the love of family and friends for you, we see God's light.

"Hope in the Lord and be strong; Take courage, and hope in the Lord." (Psalm 27)

On the commonalities in observance of the "holiday season," various as those holidays are:

Everyone could use a little more light in a dark time--all of these mid-winter holidays are about trying to increase the light against the darkness: from the menorah to Advent candles and Santa Lucia's blazing crown of candles (her day is my birthday!) to the Kwanzaa kinara, lighting candles often serves as the symbolic expression of this wish. The more the merrier, say I!

Gals and Geshem gets the greenlight!

2006-12-19T10:26:00.000-05:00

The latest dispatch, from our recent minyan meeting's minutes:

The proposal to adopt the egalitarian version of the Geshem prayer found in the Masorti Siddur Va'ani Tefilati (distributed with the agenda) during Musaf of Shemini Atzeret was passed in a unanimous vote. Copies of the prayer in Hebrew with an English translation will be distributed during the service. It was suggested that the leyning coordinator should provide a copy of the prayer to the person leading Musaf.

When in Rome...

2006-11-29T22:46:00.000-05:00

This JOI blogpost about Rome's Jewish community and intermarriage brought up old memories. Some very good ones of our brief contact with Jewish Rome--the world's best gefilte fish (in sweet-and-sour-tomato sauce), as part of a Shabbat dinner cooked by a wonderful older woman who lived within walking distance of the pensione where we stayed; wonderful melodies at the synagogue we went to that Friday night (founded by Jews who came mostly from Tripoli); the beautiful main synagogue and its museum...and some not-so-good ones, which I was moved to comment on there & repeat here:

On a previous visit to Italy, however, we were turned away from synagogue in Milan: we were asked whether we were Jewish, and being the honest person that he is, he replied that his conversion would take place in 3 weeks but he was not yet a Jew. "Sorry," said the 2 men doing security detail. "since we don't know you two--we could let her in, but not you." (One might wonder: how does having my word that I'm a Jew, versus his that he's not yet but is becoming one, make me inherently more trustworthy: there's something of the "All Cretans are liars" paradox here...)

"Didn't we just read in last week's Torah reading, 'There shall be one law for you, both for the stranger and for the native citizen'?" They were unmoved, but I was beginning to cry. So we left, and rejoined the rest of my family sightseeing in Milan's cathedral on a Shabbat morning, instead of in synagogue.

Luckily, that was the only time in our visits to synagogues abroad (Israel, Greece, England) and in the U.S. as a mixed couple that we were not made welcome as a couple because one of us was not Jewish. But that one casual rejection cut deeply: I'm glad we didn't have to endure it in a place where we're looking for community, and I feel for those who do. And I thank all those in my Jewish community in Arlington, VA (at what is Congregation Etz Chayim) for looking at my non-Jewish father, Jewish mother, and us 3 kids and seeing a family who's part of their community--not an outsider, a transgressor, and 3 future "victims" of assimilation whose Judaism will never stick.

I'm not going anywhere. :)

But I'm also not going to reject or abandon the non-Jewish members of my family and my husband's family, or parts of our past experiences that have to do with non-Jewish religion, in order to be where I am or go where I'm headed.

More on tallit, tefillin, etc...

2006-11-01T02:30:00.000-05:00

[from a note to an interesting Yahoo Group just a few days ago:]

With an anecdote, and a promise to say more soon (I first wore a tallit & kippah at my youngest brother's bar mitzvah, Parshat Vayera in 1991, and am going to give a dvar torah for that parshah in 2 weeks that deals with women & time-bound mitzvot[TBM]/ritual garb).

I just came back from the USCJ Seaboard Region Biennial Convention--which was happenening at the same time as Youth Director/USY and Kadima (youth group) staff training, so all of us enjoyed spirited davening & Shabbat meals together. I was the youngest among the non-Youth Director types (I'm 32, the next-youngest was a 42-yr-old woman who's president of her congregation; one or 2 of the Youth Directors looked to be older than me), who generally ranged from mid-50s/60s up to near 90.

I noticed on Friday night that the convention women were ALMOST ALL wearing kippot (sometimes girly ones, wire with beads, etc--but definitely kippot, not doilies, and only a hat or 2 to be seen--one on the 90-year-old--sometimes for fashion & with some other kippah etc underneath), and none of the younger women (20s & 30s) except me were doing so. On Saturday morning a glorious array of beautiful tallitot were to be seen, not just on the women (though we have the best ones!) but also on the men--and not only were ALMOST ALL of the convention women (and our honored speaker/scholar-in-residence, Rabbi Naomi Levy) wearing tallitot, but I'd say the #s of non-tallit-wearers were almost equal among the men and the women: there were a few guys not wearing tallit (not their custom before marriage? left theirs at home & there weren't extras brought? don't always wear one & didn't feel strongly about it? I don't know!) and a few women not wearing tallit.

Among the youth director/advisor contingent, only 2 women were wearing tallit + kippah: one who looked to be in her mid-40s, and one younger woman (who had not been wearing a kippah Friday night); there were also a few guys in that contingent not wearing tallit, but the ratio was nowhere near the same. I was pretty fascinated by this difference between the age groups/contingents, and had some guesses about some reasons that might account for it...but I was interested in talking with the older women about why they wore tallit/kippah (and when/why they started) and to the younger women about why they didn't.

So, after having some nice conversations with the older women on the former point, I took the opportunity at a meal on Sunday to ask the regional youth director (who headed up that part of the program & had moderated a panel I was on that morning, and had led some of the davening on Shabbat) about what I'd noticed --

and she burst out: "You're the THIRD person who's asked me about it!!!! I don't wear a tallit & kippah & tefillin & I'm proud of it!!!!"

(later said it's not that she's proud of it or making a statement, it's just not the way she grew up & so she's not comfortable doing it, but she also thinks that for younger women who have always known it's an option it's not as big a deal as for these older women who are reclaiming something in Judaism that had always been denied them as forbidden to women)

But I just wanted to highlight the switcheroo there: she felt pressure because she was being asked by others "why aren't you doing these things?" (i.e., this is the norm for our crowd: involved egalitarian Conservative Jews who are women) rather than, as many of us have been asked in other contexts, "why are you doing these things?" (i.e., this is not the norm for involved/observant Jews who are women).

One person was asking her with a critical agenda, but I think others of us were just curious (though I would hope to persuade her to try wearing tallit--I'll certainly send her my dvar torah when it's done). But she got the message that the rest of us don't take it for granted that not being TBM-obligated is the norm (or that you can recognize yourself as TBM-obligated but particularly neglect the ones that have been or seemed traditionally male).

Similarly, when daveners (men or women, and it IS women as often as men!) choose to daven the amidah option without the matriarchs (since our siddur, the revised Sim Shalom ["Slim Shalom"], gives both options), I ask them why they don't. Their assumption often is that the default is without matriarchs--often, it has been for them, and so they're "not comfortable" or "haven't practiced" adding them (they don't usually have an ideological/halakhic reason, though they certainly could)--whereas in our community, it really is becoming (if it hasn't already become) the norm to include them, so that the dominant question becomes "why are you omitting the imahot?" (or, more neutrally "not using the names of the imahot":"not adding them" tips the rhetorical balance the other way) rather than "why am I including/adding them?"

Tefillin trials and triumphs

2006-11-01T02:20:00.000-05:00

[written 10/15/06; another placeholder/catch-up entry]

I laid tefillin for the very first time today. M. and I got to services sometime in Birkhot HaShachar [the morning blessings--pretty early on but not the very first thing], and he took out his tefillin, and I took out "mine" (my brother's: he lives in Singapore, and the last time we were home in Louisville, where his tefillin have been languishing unused, I asked if I could take them to DC and borrow them for now--he said sure). I watched what he did, followed his lead on the shel yad [the one for the hand], listened for his whispered instructions when I wasn't sure; I discovered that my brother's tefillin shel rosh [the one that goes on your head] was way way way too big in circumference, and I didn't know how to make it tighter on the spot (didn't seem like a slip knot--needs un-and re-tying?), so I just settled for trying to tuck the back of it under my hair and keep the whole thing from slipping down onto the top of my glasses. I had just finished up the shel yad, got my nice letter-shin shape on the back of the hand, was figuring out how to tuck the last end bit under the wrapped sections on the palm side and feeling pretty pleased, looking forward to saying a shecheyanu for this new experience....

When A Man In A Position of Clerical Authority came up to burst my bubble. "You've got it on wrong. It's a slip knot--you need to go against the slip knot" (re: the shel yad, which I'd done as M. did it.) "And this is too loose" (re: the shel rosh; "I know," I said, "It's not mine and I haven't done this before, which you can probably tell.") So I took it off, reversed it (and so did M., even thought I think he'd probably been doing his wrapping however he's done it for the past X years, even if he hadn't done it recently?), and rewrapped down to the hand, only to be told, "You don't have it wrapped 7 times" (I didn't realize that doing one above the elbow didn't count) and "It's going to slip, because you didn't wrap it straight, and it's not tight" (actually, it didn't slip, and it was tight enough to be uncomfortable-ish and make me feel like my left arm was quasi-immobilized all through services: I figured if it wasn't turning red or purlple, though, I was probably okay). He took the straps and did the wrapping of the hand for me--"see, you want it to be loose over the finger"--doing a serviceable but much less aesthetically pleasing job leaving me a rather middle-heavy raggedy letter-shin shape on the back of the hand. I finished it up, and then went over to ask him in a whisper whether there was anything I could do to tighten the shel rosh: could he help me? "I can't deal with that right now," was the reply.

I was glad to be laying tefillin, but it wasn't much of a fun experience. It's a good thing I have a thick skin (only figuratively: my literal skin is quite thin & subject to bruising, probably more so than my ego etc.), but this was not a first-tefillin-laying that's likely to encourage anyone, especially women (why are you doing this? you've never even handled these before: what makes you think you have any clue?), lay tefillin. I don't recall whether any other women there besides the ones who are ordained clergy of one sort or another were wearing tefillin there this morning: I think not.
-------------------------

Since the time that I wrote the above, I have layed tefillin 2 more times. Each time has gotten better. I'll keep going!

And for anyone who missed Tefillin Barbie, you really do need to check her out. (There's still time to make a bid in her eBay auction!)

Joy and Its Opposite(s)

2006-11-01T01:53:00.001-05:00

So busy, such ups and downs: moments of transcendence, moments of utter banality, moments of near-despair.

As a consequence, I haven't blogged things I'd like to. So I guess for now what I can do is offer bits & bobs of things I've been saying, but meant or wanted to say more eloquently. And may someday.

But the best is the enemy of the good. And done is better than not done. So here's something I wrote on a friend's blog, in response to his post on Joy
[I begin by quoting a piece of his post]:

this goddamn soul-crushing American fear of wasted time—the relentless drive to be productive at every moment of the day. Not to oversleep. Not to take a vacation that is longer than ten days, lest your life fall apart completely in your absence.

Two thoughts, one negative, one postitive:

1) When I read this section of your post, I thought immediately of what Auden diagnosed in us moderns--what I recognized all too well in myself on first reading it--in "In Praise of Limestone":

Not to lose time, not to get caught,
Not to be left behind, not, please! to resemble
The beasts who repeat themselves, or a thing like water
Or stone whose conduct can be predicted, these
Are our common prayer, whose greatest comfort is music
Which can be made anywhere, is invisible,
And does not smell.

But I also take comfort in his solution/offer of another perspective:

In so far as we have to look forward
To death as a fact, no doubt we are right: But if
Sins can be forgiven, if bodies rise from the dead,
These modifications of matter into
Innocent athletes and gesticulating fountains,
Made solely for pleasure, make a further point:
The blessed will not care what angle they are regarded from,
Having nothing to hide. Dear, I know nothing of
Either, but when I try to imagine a faultless love
Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur
Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.

2) And yet, there is a positive version of the desire to make each moment productive--not unreflectively productive of more Gross National Product, but of whatever it is that one most truly values. Love. Joy. Freedom. Choice. Beauty. It can come at too high a cost--and many devotees of Pater's gem-like flame could use some of Auden's relaxed approach--but I have always been drawn to his appeal to make each moment a significant one:

Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive to us, -- for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy?

To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world.... Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the very brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing of forces on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening. (Conclusion to The Renaissance: online at http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/pater/renaissance/conclusion.html)

On another note, I find this simple language of the natural world almost unbearably poignant:

on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening

or, from the Biblical prophetic writings (Jeremiah 2:2; loose translation):

you followed after me in the wilderness, in a land unsown

I've often felt that I don't know what to do, scarcely know who to be, or how I am to make my way in this world.

But as long as there are such words, such feelings, in it...I'll be all right, we'll be all right.

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves -- goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

(I love Hopkins so much...poor God-wracked GMH, crying so often not What I do is me but rather, out of those depths the psalmist knew as well, the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall / Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed...)

And yet another way of seeing it, from the chassidic tradition:

Reb Zusya said: In the world to come, I shall not be asked, "Why were you not Moses?" I shall be asked, "Why were you not Zusya?"

I know I'm not Moses, or Elizabeth Bishop, or Helen Vendler, or Abraham Joshua Heschel...

I may not be sure of what it means to be Rebecca B. (and I've had different conceptions of the matter over time) -- but I do have some sense...and I owe it to myself and to others to try to find out...

rather than to try to remake myself in some ready-made, readily-approved form -- a doll, or series of dolls, plastic but not pliable: Successful Lawyer Barbie, Star Professor Barbie, Mother of Precocious Darlings Barbie, Big-Shot Mover and Shaker Barbie...

Hold fast to that joy. And to the search for it. And to what it makes you. Hold on.

Hazak hazak v'nithazek: let us be strong and let us strengthen each other.

Gals and Geshem take two

2006-10-09T00:28:00.000-04:00

I've rediscovered the link to Zack's posting on this topic and don't want to lose track of it. I now have a copy of the Masorti siddur Va'ani Tefilati and its Geshem prayer including both female and male Biblical figures (written by Rabbi Gil Nativ) as well those from several other siddurim that do the same. (Please see images below for these versions!)

Be sure to check out the versions available online, linked to in Zack's original post:

"Geshem: Verses for our mothers" by Mark Frydenberg;
an egalitarian version of Geshem by Rabbi Yoram Mazor of the Movement for Progressive Judaism in Israel (which ZShB praised as "closer in poetic spirit to the original")

Happy Sukkot (and/or Ramadan, full harvest moon, belated Feast of Saint Francis, etc.) to all!

Edit:

okay, this is a very not-clever way of doing things, but here's a JPEG of the text by Rabbi Dr. Gil Nativ, from the aforementioned Israeli Masorti siddur Va'ani Tefilati. Apologies for the bad orientation: I'm still not sure how to do much with things I scan, etc. -- but at least this way you can save it on your computer, manipulate it to face the correct way, etc. [RB note: I now have an English translation for this Hebrew--which has now been officially accepted for use in my minyan; please see the end of this post!*]

...and here's a JPEG of the version from Siddur Eit Ratzon (it cuts off the transliteration column, but it's got the complete Hebrew text & English translation; you can contact me if you want a PDF or JPEG of the cut-off page area; it says that it is based on the text by Mark Frydenberg):

and finally, the version from the attractively-laid out interlinear Siddur Hadesh Yameinu (from Congregation Dorshei Emet, the Reconstructionist Synagogue of Montreal; I do not know the attribution for its newly-composed elements & would welcome more information to give cresit where it is due!)):

And here's an English composition I've just been made aware of:

A congregant of mine created her own English egalitarian additions to the tefilat Geshem. I forward them for those who might be interested, with her permission.
-- Josh Hammerman

TEFILLAT GESHEM – THE MISSING VERSES

By: Karen Hayworth Hainbach

REMEMBER SARAH

Lively, lovely eyes, clear as aqua water
Amid two harems, she stayed pure as water
She greeted passers-by with food and water
Her laughter bubbled as a spring of water

Congregation: For Sarah’s sake, send water!

REMEMBER RIVKA

She kindly sated man and beast with water
Guided by faith elemental as water,
She transposed twins, at odds as oil and water,
Switching Isaac’s blessing, precious as water

Congregation: For Rivka’s sake, bless us with water!

REMEMBER LEAH

Spurned, soft eyes burned by tears like salty water,
Sustained by faith deep as a well of water,
Fertile as a field, surfeited with water,
She praised God, thanks overflowing like water

Congregation: For Leah’s sake, favor us with water!

REMEMBER RACHEL

She met her husband by a well of water
He yearned for her as sabras thirst for water
Her children exiled to Babylon’s water,
Her tears cascaded as a fall of water

Congregation: For Rachel’s sake, comfort us with water!

REMEMBER MIRYAM

Miryam the Prophet, named for bitter water,
Protected Moses’ basket in the water
Timbrel in hand, she danced beside the water
In her merit, you sent the well of water

Congregation: For Miryam’s sake, provide us with water!

REMEMBER THE DAUGHTERS OF ISRAEL
They shunned the Calf - their virtue shone like water;
Gave copper mirrors, reflective as water,
To fashion the Mishkan’s laver of water;
And monthly dunked in mikvas’ cleansing water

Congregation: For their sake, shower us with water!

November 2004

* Thanks for Rabbi Leonard Berkowitz for providing me with this translation:

Geshem Prayer

for Rain

From Masorti Siddur Va'ani Tefillati, 1998

additional verses by Rabbi Gil Nativ

Translation: Rabbi Robert Scheinberg

Our God and God of our ancestors:

a Remember our father (AV), whose heart poured out to You like water;

b You blessed (BERACHTO) him, as a tree planted near water;

g He and his beloved drew near (GIYER) all who were thirsty for water;

d At age ninety, from her breasts (DADIM) milk flowed like water;

For the sake of Abraham and Sarah, do not withhold water!

h Remember the one (HANOLAD) whose birth was foretold as the angels drank water;

v You instructed (VESACHTA)

his father to spill his blood like water;

z The meritorious one (ZAKAH) gave the father's servant to drink from a pitcher of water;

h She hurried (CHASHAH) to draw also for his camels from the well of water;

For the sake of Isaac and Rebekah, grant the gift of water!

t Remember the one who took (TA'AN) his staff and crossed the Jordan's water;

y He gathered his heart (YICHED) and rolled the stone from the well of water;

k A bride (KALAH) switched with her elder, whose eyes were like water;

l She was not (LO) comforted over her sons; her tears were like water;

For the sake of Jacob, Rachel, and Leah, do not withhold water!

n Remember the one drawn forth (MASUI) in a bulrush basket from the water;

n They said (NAMU), "He drew water and provided the sheep with water."

s On the Sea of Reeds (SUF), he heard his sister lead a song at the water;

a In the desert there arose (ALTAH) on her behalf a well of water.

For the sake of Moses and Miriam, grant the gift of water!

p Remember the one appointed (PAKID) over the Temple, who would immerse himself five

times in water;

t He went (TZO'EH) to cleanse his hands with the sanctification of water;

q The poor one called (KAR'AH) out Your name; her love for You could not be

extinguished by water;

r You accepted (RATZITA) her returnees from the land of rivers of water.

For the sake of Zion and her Temple, do not withhold water!

sh Remember the twelve (SHNEMASAR)

tribes of Israel, whom You brought through the

water;

sh You sweetened (SHEHIMTAKTA)

the brackish marsh for their sake into sweet water.

t For You their descendants' (TOLDOTAM) blood was spilled like water.

t Turn to us (TEFEN) for

our souls are engulfed like water!

For all of Israel's sake, grant the gift of water!

For you are Adonai our God

who causes the wind to blow and the rain to fall

For blessing and not for curse (Amen)

For life and not for death (Amen)

For abundance and not for scarcity (Amen)

A Silly Photo Toy

2006-10-06T01:46:00.000-04:00

See which celebrity you look like...

Machzor Madness: In with the New!

2006-10-05T23:35:00.000-04:00

I davened out for the first time out of Machzor Hadash/The New Machzor these Yamim Nora'im, at both the shul where I belong & the shul where I work--and I much prefer it to either the Harlow (which my previous Conservative kehillot have used, and which I led Rosh Hashanah/YK davening out of at Yale for several years) or the old Silverman (which the Traditional Minyan at Adas still uses, and which my childhood shul used lo those many moons ago).

It's got all of the advantages of the Harlow:

Conservative, not Orthodox, in its texts
not outrageouly voluminous and stuffed with piyyutim no one knows, but
keeps enough of the traditional texts and piyyutim people do know!
provides an alternative Yom Kippur mincha reading from Lev. 19 as well as the traditional reading of Lev. 18

and none of the disadvantages:

no evil purple text for Shabbat insertions (and is more attractively & legibly laid out in general)

actually translates on the left what's there in the Hebrew on the right, instead of abridging or fudging it (drove me crazy the way Harlow splits up the passages in Rosh Hashanah musaf amidah translation so you can't actually use it to see what you're davening when you know most but not all of the unfamiliar vocabulary), which allows you to actually use the 2 simultaneously or back-and-forth, unlike Harlow's set-up which presumes either complete Hebrew literacy or total ignorance of the Hebrew side of the page

has in the back an "alternative Amidah opening" which includes the matriarchs, and includes them all in its English translations of the Amidah (with a note saying that the translation is based on the alternative opening found on page 800-whatever)

has gender-sensitive language (I forget whether they claim to be gender-neutral, gender-balanced, or gender-sensitive...but I do know there's not a bunch of referring to God as He all over the place; I believe they pull the same trick as Slim Shalom re: phrases like "Adonai" or "Avinu Malkeinu," of transliterating them in italics in the English rather than either translating them with the gendered terms "Lord" and "Our father, our king" or with somewhat less accurate and less specific gender-neutral terms such as "Sovereign" and "Our parent, our ruler")

has good interpretive selections, separate from the translations (which, as I've said above, actually are translations of the Hebrew, instead of giving us a new English version of the Ashamnu that concludes "we are xenophobic, we yield to evil, we are zealots for bad causes"), and more of them as little short thought-provoking observations at the bottom of a page, thematically linked to the main traditional text appearing above it

has a martyrology that doesn't make me wince, but does make me cry--one that acknowledges that the history of Jewish suffering didn't just skip from Roman oppression to 19th/20th-c. Eastern Europe and Nazi Germany with nothing in between and nothing after (even if the rabbi leading Musaf in my service didn't use any of the 3 passages that had to do with medieval massacres and forced conversions, they were in there: one had to do with the Jews burned in the marketplace of Blois in the 12th century--a Jew from Sens drove me there at 11 at night, back in 1994, because I had wanted to visit the site) -- plus it acknowledges and includes Yiddish, the language spoken by most of the Jews who died in the Holocaust (prints the Yiddish text as well as the English translation of the Partisans' Song), instead of continuing to ignore the vernacular of the vast majority of Ashkenazi Jews from medieval times until the early-to-mid-20th century in favor of liturgical & modern Israeli Hebrew on the one hand and late-20th-c. English on the other

and that doesn't commit the transgression that I regard as politically charged and theologically near-blasphemous, of asking me to recite an Al Khet for "the sins which we have sinned before you and before them"--the six million--by evils such as appeasement or failure to act. We don't have intermediaries, saints, or intercessors in Judaism (by and large), and I'm not about to set up the victims of Nazi genocide, no matter how great their suffering or how important in our Jewish history, as some kind of semi-divine body before whom I should be genuflecting and confessing my sins, particularly ones of a semi-political nature.

has fewer hokey moments in the English translations or interpretive selections that would make me roll my eyes rather than raise them in reflection or gratitiude (I don't miss not having "who shall be torn by the wild beast of resentment, and who shall be drowned by the waters of jealousy"--I don't mind the idea, but never liked the execution, and I really do want to keep actual translation & interpretation separate)

Just about the only things lacking that one might complain of, so far as I can see, are:

The Avodah service does not include all of the descriptive text in the Hebrew (which we always skipped at Yale anyway: the rabbi read the narrative framing in English regardless): it provides the English for this narrative framing and then both Hebrew & English for everything the Kohen and the people said & the description of the recitation of the Name (which was what the hazzan would read/enact in Hebrew at Yale anyway). Fine by me! And if people really wanted more, it would be easy to make booklets/photocopies.

I don't remember seeing some of my old favorites from the English selections in the Harlow (poems by Anthony Hecht and maybe also A.M. Klein?)...but so much is gained in the other English readings they add that I can deal with this potential loss.

Until that new RA/USCJ machzor comes out, and unless it proves itself superior to what the Conservative rabbis & laypeople of Media Judaica have produced in Machzor Hadash/The New Machzor, I know what I'll be davening out of from now on on the High Holy Days. I thank Adas Israel and B'nai Israel for making it their machzor of choice, and I hope more kehillot (especially ones who haven't gotten around to replacing their Silvermans and are just now in the market for new machzorim) will follow their lead.

B'shalom,

Becca

[shamelessly repeated from my post to the Shefa Network
group ]

Oh, and P.S.:

Its prayer for the country & prayer for the state of Israel are both better IMHO than the ones in SimShalom & Harlow machzor. No more "administer all afFAIRs of state FAIRly" (my friend Shari's great point of amusement with the version of the Prayer for Our Country in Sim Shalom)!

More of my Jewish blogging

2006-09-27T01:15:00.000-04:00

I've commented at:

http://annabel__lee.blogspot.com/2006/09/always-and-never.html

and hope to update links here for the many orphaned posts I have wandering around the blogosphere...but not tonight...oh, ok just a few...

Guilty Pleasures:

my religion-related posts on a non-specifically-religion-related board include:

Intermarriage 101

2006-09-27T01:12:00.000-04:00

I'm just nabbing much of this text + links from an e-mail to someone Jewish engaged to someone who's not Jewish. Since a lot of my time in the blogosphere has been spent on Jewish matters, and often on intermarriage/interfaith family issues, I extend to the Rest of the World what I've said in some specific face-to-face encounters:

I'm happy to talk about the whole Jews-and-non-Jews part of my/our experience, since:
--I grew up in a household where Judaism was the only religion practiced, but my father is not Jewish & has never converted;
--my now-husband & I were a couple for 7 years before he ever thought about conversion
--we have lots of friends (including many members of our Jewish community back in New Haven) in couples where one partner was not born Jewish [some have become Jewish--not necessarily before marriage; others have not converted]
--we had lots of non-Jewish and not-traditionally-observant Jewish friends & family at our wedding for whom the structure, language, & rituals of the wedding would be unfamiliar (so we put together an explanatory sheet & had explanations in the wedding program...everyone had a great time & thoroughly enjoyed it, especially the music & dancing!)

--I've been spending a lot of time thinking about these issues, reading websites/blogs/listservs, and writing/commenting on them.

Some URLs of interest may be:

http://www.joi.org/ -- Jewish Outreach Institute
http://www.interfaithfamily.com --
which also has a link to a new blog "about a young Jewish woman's relationship with her non-Jewish atheist boyfriend in InterfaithFamily.com's new blog, Peace Within These Walls" (the person writing it grew up in the Maryland burbs here!)

Both have all kinds of good resource pages, links, bulletin/discussion boards, as well as blogs etc.

I've commented pretty often on the JOI blog and on the 2 blogposts at the site above (you can click on the comments at http://blog01.kintera.com/peace/ to read 'em).

I approve of my friend Zack's piece at http://zackarysholemberger.blogspot.com/2003/07/this-essay-was-submitted-to-forward.html
and there are some other comments of mine on it/these issues at
http://zackarysholemberger.blogspot.com/2005/06/son-of-intermarriage-or-what-do-we.html

(Funny sidenote: I guess I've commented enough about it at places that people read that when I Google "intermarriage + Becca"
all of the 1st 4 hits are by or referring to me--2 JOI comments, 2 mentions on Zack's blog...)

I also got involved in a long discussion on the Shefa Network listserv (something you might be interested in) about intermarried family issues--they're handily linked to on their webpage here:

http://www.shefanetwork.org/IntermarriedFamilies.html

You're welcome to borrow any books I have--not just on weddings/marriage/interfaith issues, of course! Feel free to come browse my shelves sometime, or ask if I have a particular book you're looking for. :)