Michael Jackson's Judaism- Temple Israel, Purim 5771

Purim, Temple Israel Boston-style

We Jews Know How to Do Joy

13 Adar II

So I’m just getting back from my first Purim party and a couple of thoughts keep slow-rolling around my head like so many loose marbles. A quick sampling: cosmopolitans on a Saturday night will be an awesome match until the end of time; I never want to live in an era when dancing to Michael Jackson grows old; Temple Israel rabbis have this great sense of humor and rhythm; and finally, Jews know how to do joy.

I've been thinking a lot about that last item. Between Simchot Torah and Purim, there is some awesome delight going on in the Jewish calendar. And that’s not even considering Shabbat itself, that weekly release of the profane so we can embrace the spiritual. This so moved the mystics that it inspired them to pen odes to its arrival every Friday night at sunset and run into the fields to greet her.  

There is also elation underlining so many of the prayers and songs, IMO. For instance, Mi Chamochah, giving thanks to crossing a parted Red Sea, has always struck me as being jubilant. The same with “Am Yisrael Chai”, which sings about the tenacity (if not the audacity) of the people Israel. It’s hard not to dance a little in my space whenever this is played.

Here’s the thing I realized while walking home last night: I myself do not do joy very well. I tend to hold it awkwardly, in fingers too stiff from disuse, with no sense of its innate delicacy. That’s a hard thing to fess up to, can I tell you? Oh, I can publicly do some many other emotions well , have the whole righteous indignation/anger thing down pat for rallies and protests, can weep with empathy over the cruelties of the world, have enough pointed sarcasm to fence with the best of cynics. But I have trouble expressing this whole unfettered happiness thing.

There are many reasons for that. Some are trust issues that are rooted in past events that I will not detail here. Suffice it to say that exist and I acknowledge their presence and influence on me. I think however large my reservoir for joy was when I was a child has shrunk considerably. I picture that capacity as a glass that now has so many cracks in it. It may be a large but tends to leak out a lot. It cannot hold water for a very long time. Actually I’ve gotten much better over the years. There was a time when I would isolate because that glass was just so many shards on the floor. I’ve managed to glue most of the larger pieces and still work at the smaller slivers (thank G-d for therapy) but you know, it’s never quite the same. Realizing that, I am acutely aware when that glass is running dry. So if I end up leaving your party early it is not because I don’t know how to play Pictionary, the music’s bad or because of the guacamole dip. (Well, honestly, it might be because of the guacamole dip.)

As this is a spiritual blog I think about how different my experience has been celebrating joy inside a church or a Wiccan circle. Of the former I can remember these songs in Latin that voluminous enough to fill the pews with reverence and some serious awe yet never seemed to lift me up. Christmas was either a birthday I always felt self-conscious in celebrating (um, I’m singing happy birthday and blowing out candles for whom? Reaalllly???) or an overwhelming  and stringently enforced gift-laden month long commercial. Easter also capitalized on sensationalism while jettisoning its pagan roots. No one could explain how coloring eggs or bunnies related to resurrection or even how being raised from the dead wasn’t in fact an act of magick (or just flat-out zombie-ism). You were just supposed to be happy. Be happy, dammit. Don’t make me come over there to make you happy!!!

I always thought that given its liberal leanings and underground culture, Paganism made a lot more space for potential happiness but somehow never capitalized on it (at least in the literal and figurative circles I broomsticked through). There seemed to be this undue seriousness interwoven through all endeavors whether it was lighting the Winter Solstice candles, going into deep meditation or making sure to dance widdershins (and how annoyed people would get if you accidentally headed in the wrong direction). While some rituals led to ecstasy (which I think is true of any religion) very few ever seemed to result in joyous laughter. Perhaps that’s just what happens when you’re dealing with such heavy metaphysics, those large concepts of life and death and cosmic energies. Maybe it’s hard to hold a smile when The Crone looks you in the eye.

Like with so many other aspects of this Judaic path I still feel a little unprepared, finding so little in my experiential backpack applies. Is that typical of converts? I would think so (and hope so) to some extent. Who gets it all correctly or feels completely at peace their first time around any non-secular calendar? More power to those folk but personally I can’t relate to that dynamic. I need to acknowledge holding the leaky glass to ever learn just how to keep the water in it.   

   

The Song of My Elders

13 Adar II

Yes, it’s true. As a forty something woman I am one of the youngest people in the room for Torah Study every Saturday morning at my temple. Not always - but usually. And surprisingly (at least for me) I am at peace with that. Actually it is more than that, actually. Most Saturday mornings I am actually left a little awed.
Now I may not know how they act outside of temple but I do know Life has teeth and some days can bite down hard, especially for the elderly. But in that room these women and men are fearless in their discussion/debate of Torah. From my back corner seat I watch in no small admiration as they get right in the face of the conundrums found within the mysteries. There is rarely any hesitation as they answer the rabbi’s questions, sometimes with deep insightful and sometimes to humorous effect.

This being my first official go-around with the Torah on the dance floor, I feel like I am still trying to learn the rhythm of the music and all the intricate steps. As I have written before, I come from two spiritual backgrounds that never encouraged this kind of spiritual questioning. Speaking only from my own experience, I found Roman Catholicism never encouraged this sort of spiritual searching. You were taught the ‘New Testament’ early on with the expectation that you will memorize the psalms, could recite them for tests and live them without question. Space was never made for examination. Raising your hand in class was a sure way to court trouble. We were led to believe that someone else (I always imagined some lonely priest locked in the highest room of a tower of a far removed kingdom) was doing the hard thinking for you. All you had to do as a good Christian was follow his God-inspired tenets. Or, in other words, obey.

Modern Paganism is different in that its books are highly individualized journals of micro and macro examinations of one’s relationship with the more mystical realms of the cosmos. These Books of Shadows are highly personalized diaries so there was very little group discussion going on. There was very little reliance on any foundational texts for obvious reasons - lack of centralized resources, lack of authenticity, lack of any historical models. Many of the texts used were either written in the last one hundred years or so years or are being written now even as you read this. If not destroyed by the dominant culture might they one day be synthesized and used and debated and discussed? I’d like to think so. Like the Jews, many Pagans don’t shy from entering the misty veils of spirituality. Being the underground spiritual rebels they, they rarely have a problem questioning the answers.

When I started coming to Torah Study I felt duly unprepared. Not only had it been decades since I last cracked open a Bible (let alone the first five books of it) but I felt inexperienced in challenging what I had been taught to leave unchallenged. So it is refreshing, if not a little inspiring, to listen and watch these Saturday morning folks take on the Torah. (It is a loving battle they wage. Hmm - comparisons to fighting don’t quite work here. I don’t think any of us come to Torah too win or lose but rather to listen, to learn, to laugh and yes, even love.) And while I am educated to the Pentateuch I am also learning about the spaces Judaism makes for our queries and ideas, and how secure a religious belief it must be to allow that.
And in this process I am also gifted with something else just as, if not more so, precious: their stories. Some of these women and men have grown up under Temple Israel’s roof, moved to this address a long time ago or converted and stayed here. So deep are their wells of memory that they are rich repositories of experience. Listen carefully and you’ll catch some of this in their shares before study begins, talking of generations passed, the progress the synagogue had made over the years, and hey, remember this rabbi or that lay-person or remember when?

I watch as they chat, seeing smiles slowly overcome the wrinkles and eyes that had perhaps seen too much in their days glow anew with an inner light. For a few blessed minutes the walls softly reverberate with their wise voices singing this animated song of my elders. As a spiritual seeker, I couldn’t have requested a better tune.

How to Deal With Negative Jewish Attitudes About Converts - My Jewish Learning

While waiting to retrieve journal notes from a virus-laden laptop I thought I'd post this from www.myjewishlearning.com.

How to Deal With Negative Jewish Attitudes About Converts - My Jewish Learning