thinking jewish

The Conversation Continues

More on the Jewish Week article.

Check out JewSchool, MaRabu and, of course, the Mentor (Part 1 and Part 2).

What do you think about all of this? Where do we go from here?

Brand Loyalty

Last Spring, on a cool Midwestern Erev Shabbat, I sat in a room with my peers, listening to an exceptional rabbi assess what it means to be both a Jew with specific and particular beliefs and a member of klal Yisrael at the same time.

Our problem, he declared, is that we're so stuck in our allegiance to particular organizations, movements, and institutions, that sometimes our ability to think critically about what it is that we believe and what actually connects or separates us from other Jews is clouded. He challenged us to question whether we label ourselves the way we do because it's what we actually believe or because we are so used to doing so that anything else would not seem right.

Am I actually what I say I am? Do I belong only because I'm so used to belonging? Do I really need this or that lable? Does it help, or does it hurt?

At the time, I sat and listened to the teacher's words, fascinated by the patchwork of contradictions that spoke before me: the liberal Orthodox rabbi who believed in halakha as a system of choice. He fit into no prior-experienced frameworks, I did not know how to classify him. He, in essence, lived the example of what he taught.

And so, in these times of questioning and embitterment and frustration and searching, I begin to ponder just what it means to be a card-carrying member of any movement. Need organizations define me? But, if not, how does one exist in the reality of the Jewish world today?

In a sense, the problem is that, in this world of denominations and movements and institutional memory, I am supposed to align my identity with a physical manifestation of politics, committees and paper clips; in our world, one is expected to fall-in-line with established norms, platforms and statements of principles. We are demanded to accept the views of a leader and follow, even if like sheep. And when our own theology clashes with the workplace that defines this tent-of-meeting, we are naively expected to walk a mile down the road and enter another assembly.

But our emotional attachment to this tent demands that we can go no other place. Our loyalty to this community results in a teeter-totter back and forth between the fringe and invisibility, between the nether world of nothingness and the center of a very uncomfortable fight.

And yet so few people are asking the ultimate question, the question implied by that bearded teacher of the Midwest: need we conflate organizations and theology at all? Is that healthy? And are membership cards really something we need to carry in the twenty-first century? In all other walks of life, we've moved beyond institutional attachments, but not in Jewish identity.

Maybe it's time.

Shabbos Reading [Updated]

In the wake of a week in which my name came up one too many times in conversation for comfort, fellow Brooklynite Debra Nussbaum-Cohen has written an article for the Jewish Week evaluating a perceived generational gap within the Reform Movement quoting among many other much-more-important people, me. Lovely.

Are those Reformers my age and younger looking for something different than what the Movement is providing? If so, what? And why?

It's a fascinating and thought provoking read. Check out the article here.

Then, move on over to Philosophical Rants for a strong and persuasive critique against some of what can be found in the Jewish Week article.

There's a battle under way out there for the future of liberal Judaism in America. I'm just glad I'm not the lone soldier.

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Some more reactions:

• From a (frum) Orthodox perspective.
• The Bloggers of the Daily Forward.

Within a Name (Updated)

Let the rumor mill commence.

I get a phone call from South Caroline - I'm so sorry to hear what's happened.

I receive a message on Facebook - R-U-OK?

People can be so caring, so sensitive, so helpful, so insightful.

And then I sit in a room, surrounded by three people I've known since days of yore. Yet before I can say anything, it's clear that news of the world has filtered through to them.

How did you know, I ask? The answer is most troubling of all.

There are those who understand the danger in a rumor. There are those who are sensitive to their friend's time of need. There are those who understand that hearing something once does not truth create.

And there are those who spread ideas willy-nilly. I heard such and such. I think that this happened. This week has been awful because one guy did this and another did that.

It brings the strength of a friendship of old into question when you hear that such ideas are being published without firsthand knowledge. Don't you owe it to your friend to find out what happened first-hand. Don't you owe it to your friendship to get a more nuanced understanding of events? Don't you owe it to common sense, and morality and ethics to stop giving into your yetser hara and lashon hara, and actually ask the right questions of the right people instead?

Does spreading the lies make you feel important? Does telling half-truths quickly make you seem more righteous?

I sit by the phone, and I check my email, and I wait. I wait for the questions, I wait for the honesty. I wait for the more-perfect world we are all supposed to be creating.

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(8/4/07): And then, in some of the darker and more frustrating moments, you're reminded that there is faith to be had...

This note, I suppose, is in reply to your last blog post... Although rumors fly around, I wouldn't worry about them. People who really care about you, and therefore are the ones who truly matter, won't listen to them. Although my friends and I wonder what happened we realize it is none of our places to pry. So, instead we read your blog and discuss. At first, hoping that you are okay. Worrying about what happened comes, for us, at a far second.

תלמידי מורי...

Fork in the Road

The obvious reality of life is that each individual, each person, each human, sees life through his own special lens. Do not judge your fellow until you have been in his place, say the rabbis of Masechet Avot. We cannot begin to imagine someone else's situation. Yet each unique person adds his or her unique angle. Each, his own perspective.

What were you thinking? What are they thinking? I'm furious! It's not the end of the world. That's not fair. This is stupid. It's done. That's such good advice. No way! Don't trust him, he's wrong. They'll do it. Do it! Do that. No! I support you. We care about you.

The cacophony of voices that filter through the phone line and computer monitor leave me confused, leave me determined, and, mostly, leave me thinking. How can so many people react so very differently to one very simple thing? How do we each view ideas and events and the same reality as if it happened differently to each of us? How does the sum total of our life's experiences add up to influence our own unique perspective? How do our relationships, successes, failures and status all combine to affect our ability to see a single, rational reality?

I talk with one person and feel like scum of the earth. I talk with another and know everything will work itself out. I talk with yet another and forget that anything has even happened.

What's hard to remember is that, in the end, perspectives and opinions are, to anyone other than the person giving them, irrelevant. They come from people who love and care, or sometimes don't. They represent, often, goodwill, and hope for something better. They are given because people want to help, people want to see things get better.

But at the end of the day, I need to make decisions for myself. Time will heal peoples' hurt. Time will allow for better perspective.

Just Like the Big G

I sat on the curb and stared at it. It's just chicken. A little bit of lettuce, some tomato, two buns, and chicken. Grilled chicken, at that. Not fried. Not even that tasty. But I was starving. And it was trief. And I knew I had to eat it.

With each bite I would fight the system that had brought me down. With each new chew of that beautiful, delicious sandwich I would shove it to the man - take that Judaism! Screw you!

But I couldn't. I sat on the curb, in 90+ degree heat and stared. Like a good Western movie, me and my chicken sandwhich had a showdown on the streets of a small back-water town.

And the sandwich won. There was no drawing of holsters. No shots were even fired. I could not take a bite. No matter how mad I was, how frustrated, down on myself and the world, nothing would bring me to eat even a morsel of that wholesome goyisher goodness.

Because, in the end, this wasn't about Judaism. And it certainly wasn't about God. It was about decisions I make as an adult in my own free life. It was about the way I understand what it means to be a Jew, and a human and leader. It was about a system detached from the realities of the real world and ready to strike back at me as a means of cleaning ship.

So that five dollar grilled chicken sandwich actually meant nothing. I had no beef with it. It could not serve as my scapegoat. I packaged it up, and put it in the wastebasket. Perhaps, were there some homeless man nearby, I would have given it to him. But he was not to be found.

So there I left it, to rot with the other trash of the day, and I walked out of that Burger King alone. Feeling very very alone. No food in hand, just the greasy remains of french fries that once were.

But so soon I would come to realize that I was not alone at all. All the calls of support, all the advice and well wishes and frustrated rants. All the tears and hugs and pats on the back reminded me what it's all about.

I don't eat treif so that I can remember that even the way I eat can be holy. Holy like the wonderful people who fill my life. Holy like our relationships. Holy like God.

Is it Time Yet?

I sit at the edge of a pool watching as a few dozen people make circles around the water's edge. Round and round and round they go. Each time they pass me, they smile. They laugh, they cheer, they clap, they splash. They push their way through the water, each lap trying harder and harder to add to the rotating current. They are in sync. They work together for a larger purpose.

I sit at the edge of the pool studying Maimonides' Mishna Torah. I sit there, in the shade of a nearby tree, learning his laws of teshuva, his laws of repentance. I escape the madness of another day by retreating to the pool on a hill. I retreat the insanity of ideas and goals and overlapping ambitions for the serenity of a millennium-old text. I retreat, as I study what it means to return - how one goes back, how one makes amends, how one improves oneself within his community and the eyes of God.

I sit at the edge of a pool, the people in front of me make circles upon circles upon circles. But every time they come back to their original spot, something has changed, something is new, somehow they act differently.

And so it is with teshuva. The ultimate test of repentance is when one is confronted with the original offending opportunity for a second time. Will you follow the same path, or will you forge a new one? Will you come back to where you once were the same person, or one changed inside and out?

I sit at the edge of the pool, and then an unexpected presence comes and approaches me. And we sit in dialogue for over an hour - what was it that worked this summer? Why weren't you happy? Where did we miss the mark?

Next year, when we're at this spot again, how should we act differently. And will you join us in this journey?

We bounce off ideas and I open up my heart for the first time in weeks, and I leave my pool-side for the first time at ease with my labor of the last two months. I understand why we had to fail when we did. It will only allow us to find a better place.

And as I leave the side of the pool, all the people are still moving in circles. They still pass old points and come to new ones. And sometimes they look different, and sometimes not a thing about them has changed.

And so I look to them as my inspiration - how can I find teshuva, how can I right past wrongs. How can I apologize to those I have hurt? How can I remain a part of the process, how can I? How can I?

Yom Kippur still seems two long months away. And the calendar doesn't seem to be working on my side.