And now for something completely different

A friend of mine posted a link to this article about why Jews don't write fantasy literature (as differentiated from science fiction). Narnia* and Middle Earth, Prydain and Oz played a large role in my childhood (some who know me would ask if anything's changed), and I had noticed a lack of Jewish representation in the genre. The article helps explain why.

*I didn't realize for years after I read the Chronicles of Narnia that they're a Christian allegory. That helped explain why I had such a hard time handling the last book, The Last Battle, since from what I understand, it's based on the Book of Revelation. I found it confusing and unsettling, in a way that the other books weren't. I read the other six over and over, but I think I only read The Last Battle once. I should probably read it again; I think it would make more sense to me now.

Also, I become cranky at the sets of the Chronicles of Narnia that reorder the books to be in chronological order. If Lewis had wanted them that way, he would have ordered them that way himself. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, while chronologically second, is intended to be the reader's introduction to Narnia. By the time you get to The Magician's Nephew, chronologically first, but sixth in the series, you should have five books worth of Narnian background, so you have the knowledge of what's going to happen to the country in its future.

And at this point, C would be teasing me with something like "There's no such thing as chronological order for things that didn't happen." C prefers to read books based in reality. I think reality is overrated.

Un-boring Exodus

So we're in the portion of Exodus which goes into long and painful...I mean painstaking...detail about the construction of the Tabernacle and the priestly garments and every little thing.

The cantor ran last Shabbat's Torah study, and he brought to us a text from Rabbi Arthur Waskow. I excerpt it here, but it really should be read in its entirety.

*****

"For twenty-five years, week in, week out, I have danced and wrestled with the Torah. I have always found new life in the weekly reading. Never, never, have I found a portion boring....

-- except for the string of readings near the end of Exodus. T'rumah (Exodus 25-27:19). On how to build the Mishkan, that portable golden sanctuary in the desert. And Tetzaveh (Exodus 27:20-30:10), on exactly how the high priest should dress.

Not to speak of their twins soon afterward, on the very same subjects all over again -- Vayak'heyl (Exodus 35-38:20) and Pekudeh (Exodus 38:21-40).

I confess. If it hadn't been for the Golden Calf in the middle, if there had been four weeks in a row of this drivel, I might have run wild-eyed out of shul, I might have forgotten to come back again.

All the details about how and when and where to design, and carve, and sculpt, and sew, and erect. Obsessive. Niggling. Petty. And then to repeat the whole thing, all over again in the later weekly portions!

Who cares where the grommets went? What were grommets anyway? Aha -- those connector loops and rings! But now that I know, I still don't know who cares. Who cares how long the hinges were? Who cares whether the skins were dolphin fur or badger fur, who cares whether the dyes were scarlet or purple or indigo?"

. . .

"Until the year that a friend of mine came back from the first great march on Washington for gay rights -- the largest march in fifteen years, she said.

She spoke on a Friday night in my congregation. She talked about the sense of joyful self-discovery, the liberation from years of secrecy, the tears of welcome that gay people gave their non-gay families and friends who marched alongside them in love and solidarity.

And then she talked about the enormous quilt, more than two blocks square, that the gay community had come to make together.

It was a Quilt of Names, a memorial for the thousands of people who had already died of AIDS. Each square was made by the friends and family of one person who had suffered and died -- most of them young, full of excitement and energy and hope until the disease laid hold of them.

A few of the squares were in dark and mournful colors. Many more were bright, crimson and purple and indigo, crocheted and knitted and embroidered with flowers and symbols and words and names. Each one a tombstone in cloth. There on the grass of the Mall in Washington, a whole graveyard in cloth. Thousands of squares.

And now the time had come, she said, to join these squares together in one gigantic quilt. Each one had been made with grommets so that it could be connected to the ones around it. Those who remembered each person who had died, those who had celebrated and remembered and memorialized each life, began to tie one grommet to another.

When the quilt was completed, she said, it was ready to be carried from city to city. A holy memorial to life much more than death, to hope much more than fear, to courage much more than pain.

The third time she mentioned "grommets," it came like a rush to me. The Mishkan, the golden Shrine. The great portable sanctuary in the wilderness, to be carried from place to place as the people journeyed. The people had come to build it with so much love, so many gifts, so much excitement, that Moses had needed to call a halt to the outpouring."

. . .

"The Quilt of Names was a Mishkan, I realized with a rush.

The newly free community of gay men and lesbians were celebrating their first taste of freedom with a first act of communal responsibility -- making sure that their dead were not forgotten. Making sure that the world turned its attention to ending this plague and curing its victims. Turning what the world called their "transgressions" into freedom and community.

Building. Creating. Sewing. Weaving. Carrying. Connecting.

A Mishkan not only in the sense of a portable shrine.

A Mishkan in the sense of a Place where the Shekhinah dwells, a Place where God's presence can be felt in our very midst.

God dwells where the newly free remember their pain with tears and create their future in joy."

*****

Amein.

QotD #1

"Religion is man's effort to elicit meaning and value from confrontation with the holy." -- Robert M. Seltzer, Jewish People, Jewish Thought, p. 47

This breaks down, of course, when dealing with those who don't believe in "the holy". I haven't read anything by Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens, not because I'm against atheism (I was, after all, raised atheist), but because I resent being told that because I'm not an atheist, I must necessarily be stupid or deluded or both.

There is a whole long rambling post in my opinion of the nature of the divine...actually, there are probably several, since said opinion tends to fluctuate. I really hope my Beit Din doesn't ask me about my relationship to God, since I'm afraid I'll end up stuttering and flailing and having no answer whatsoever.

Only the Jews...

From our synagogue's perpetual library sale, I acquired a book of Yiddish short stories (in translation, of course).

I've read a lot of short story collections. Never before have I read one which had a seventy-page introduction apologizing for its existence.

"One could not say of Yiddish literature, as the critic Chernyshevsky has said of the Russian, that it 'constitutes the sum total of our intellectual life', but one can say that the Yiddish writers came before their audience, as did the Russian writers of the nineteenh century, with an instinctive conviction that their purpose was something other than merely to entertain and amuse. The achievements of Russian literature are obviously greater than that of the Yiddish, but both share the assumption that the one subject truly worthy of serious writers is the problem of collective destiny, the fate of a people. " (30)

"Only if they took the myth of the Chosen People with the utmost seriousness, yet simultaneously mocked their pretensions to being anything but the most wretched people on earth, could the Jews survive. " (26)

(From A Treasury of Yiddish Stories, eds. Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg)

Yes of course, the introduction is more than an apologia. I know very little of Yiddish, and what I know of life in the shtetl comes mostly from Fiddler on the Roof, so it's very educational. Every time I read about an aspect of Judaism, I'm reminded how very much I don't know. Baby steps, baby steps.

Trusting one's senses

So back a bit, we had the story of Jacob stealing his brother Esau's blessing from their father Isaac, who at the time of the occurence was blind.

Gen. 27:18] Going then to his father, he [Jacob] said, "Father!" and he [Isaac] replied: "Here I am; which son of mine are you?"

19] Jacob said to his father, "I am Esau your first-born. . .

21] "Pray come near me," said Isaac to Jacob, "so that I can feel you, son. Are you really my son Easu, or are you not?" 22] Jacob approached his father Isaac, who felt him and said, "The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau!". . .

25] He [Isaac] said, "Bring [it] near me and I will eat of my son's game, so that I can give you my heartfelt blessing.". . .

27] As he came near and kissed him, [Isaac] smelled the scent of his clothes and blessed him, saying: "See, my son's scent is like the scent of a field blessed by the Eternal."

Humans rely mostly on our sight to get information, followed by our hearing. Smell, taste and touch come in a distant third through fifth. I find it very interesting that Isaac, deprived of his sight, then distrusts his hearing when he recognizes Jacob's voice, but trusts his other three, far less developed senses to convince himself that he is blessing Esau. Of course, there is a whole bunch of midrash around this concerning whether Isaac is really deceived, is he deceiving himself, or does he know all along that the blessing needs to go to Jacob?

And of course, much could be said about how we today so often manage to fool our own senses and blind ourselves what we don't want to see, but that's maybe for next year.

The time has come, the rabbi said...

I went for a meeting with my sponsoring rabbi yesterday (henceforth to be known as Rabbi T [not her real initial]). Her assistant met me at the top of the stairs and let me know that Rabbi T had tried to come in, but was so sick she had to turn around and go home, and would I be willing to talk to her on the phone?

Oh, sure, I was already there anyway.

So I went into the conference room and got on the phone with the rabbi, who did sound like she felt miserable. We talked a bit, and she said that it would be fine with her if I wanted to ask the other rabbi I'd talked to (henceforth to be known as Rabbi L) if she would work with me until I was ready.

"I am ready," I said, without thinking about it. "Most of the time, I forget I haven't converted yet. It's really only when I'm talking to someone about their Jewish childhood experiences that I remember I'm not Jewish. But now I'm ready."

"Yes. I think you are ready," she said.

Now, I've been claiming (to others) that I've been ready for years. I think in many ways, that was true. A couple of my other JBC (Jewish By Choice) friends have said that becoming Jewish was less of a choice than a discovery; it's a process of uncovering who we've been all along. In that sense, I think I've always been Jewish.

But this time, when I told the rabbi that I feel ready now, those words weren't coming from a place of defensiveness like they have been for so long. They came from somewhere deeper and truer, and I don't really have the words to explain beyond that.

After we hung up, I sat and and tried to pray* and cried a little. I had no idea what a weight I've been carrying around; living as a Jew without having undergone the conversion process was a burden. I thought that by now, the ceremony would seem anti-climactic; I've been identifying as a Jew for what seems like YEARS (it's really only been a couple years, and it has, of course, been a journey), but the relief and joy I felt at realizing that now is the time completely surprised me.

So now it remains to get my best friend here from halfway across the country (exciting!), schedule the Bet Din (scary!) , go to the mikveh (wet!) and have the conversion ceremony itself at the synagogue (unknown quantity!). Also a party (drinks!).

I managed to just be happy about this for almost two whole hours before I started fretting about logistics. I'm quite pleased with myself.

*My prayer style tends towards that of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. Seems to be a very Eastern European shtetl way of relating to the Divine.

While looking for something else...

I found this here (jewfaq.org has been a wonderful resource for me):

Shabbat Shirah

Unlike the other special Shabbatot, Shabbat Shirah does not have an additional reading, but rather is dictated by the presence of a standard reading. Shabbat Shirah is the Shabbat when we read Parshat Beshalach (Exodus 13:17-17:16), which is the Torah portion that includes the Song at the Sea.

Tradition teaches that there are only ten true Songs (Shirot, the plural of Shirah) in the history of the world. These true Songs are not mere melodies; they are expressions of the harmony of creation and mark monumental transitions in history. Another of these Songs appears on the haftarah portion for the week (Judges 4:4-5:31): the Song of Deborah. The Song of Songs is, of course, one of the Ten Songs. Interestingly, the Tenth Song has not yet been sung: it is the Song of the coming of the Mashiach, which will be sung at the End of Days (see Isaiah 26:1).

*****

That would have been this past Shabbat, in which I skipped Torah study because I was tired and cranky and saving my energy for the Tu B'Shevat seder. (I shouldn't skip Torah study for those reasons, since it's usually quite renewing; even when I go in cranky, I usually come out calmer.)

I'll try to remember for next year.

*****

Further research brought me to this (footnote indicators removed for readability):

We don’t sing when we are frightened, despairing, sleepy, or after a heavy meal. We sing when we are pining after one we love, when we are yearning for better times, when we are celebrating an achievement or anticipating a revelation.

We don’t sing when we are complacent. We sing when we are striving for something, or when we have tasted joy and are climbing it to the heavens.

Song is prayer, the endeavor to rise above the petty cares of life and cleave to one’s source. Song is our quest for redemption.

The Midrash enumerates ten preeminent songs in the history of Israel—ten occasions on which our experience of redemption found expression in melody and verse. The first nine are: the song sung on the night of the Exodus in Egypt, the “Song at the Sea,” the “Song at the Well,” Moses’ song upon his completion of writing the Torah, the song with which Joshua stopped the sun, Deborah’s song, King David’s song, the song at the dedication of the Holy Temple, and King Solomon’s “Song of Songs” extolling the love between the Divine Groom and His bride Israel.

The tenth song, says the Midrash, will be the shir chadash, the “new song” of the ultimate redemption: a redemption that is global and absolute; a redemption that will annihilate all suffering, ignorance, jealousy and hate from the face of the earth; a redemption of such proportions that the yearning it evokes, and the joy it brings, require a new song—a completely new musical vocabulary—to capture the voice of Creation’s ultimate striving.

*****

I do sing when I'm frightened and despairing, sad and anxious, depressed and lonely. To sing, you have to breathe, and remembering to breathe lets me release at least a little bit of whatever pressure's weighing on me. I think I've mentioned before, one aspect of our congregation that really drew me in was all the singing. I agree completely with the above that "song is prayer"; it's long been easier for me to pray in music instead of (or in addition to) words.

Various Baggage

At kiddush the other week, two other JBC friends and I were talking to a PBJ (Person Born Jewish) about our conversion journeys. The woman to whom we were talking is, I'd guess, in her 60s; my two friends are both between 45 and 55. I'm a bit younger than they are.

The PBJ* said that she thinks we're fortunate to have been able to choose Judaism. She grew up in a nearby community (which is, incidentally, fairly heavily Jewish, at least now), and she and her brother were often the only two Jews in the public school they attended, and she absolutely hated the feeling of being singled out like that. She grew up before bat mitzvahs were common, and she has had trouble accepting the sense of being an outsider in the world-at-large and an outsider, as a woman in Judaism, of the community that should have been a safe retreat from said world.

She said she's envious of us, in a way, that we don't have that baggage; that we can come into Judaism without mixed feelings.

I wouldn't say I don't have mixed feelings, but they come from a completely different place from hers.

Yesterday, I was talking to another friend, whom I'll call Marnie, because I'll start running out of single letters one of these days. She and her Jewish husband are taking the Introduction to Judaism class at the synagogue where C and I are members. She finds herself in a similar situation to mine, in that she's approaching Judaism from a standpoint of having been raised as nothing, whereas most of the other converts we know were raised in some aspect of the Christian faith. Again, this creates a whole different mindset; we're not having to let go of other beliefs, nor do our immediate families think our eternal souls will be condemned if we reject the idea of Jesus Christ's divinity and messianism.

I'm looking forward to talking with Marnie more. She and her husband are neighbors of ours, so I think we'll be seeing them fairly often.

*Please forgive both the acronym and my use of it to refer to this person, but I cannot remember her name, and she's not likely to appear often enough in this blog to warrant an alias.