Currently Jewish reads...
Rashi's Daughters
The Case for Israel
Current Jew Spins...
Moshav - Misplaced
Josh Nelson - Lift
Debbie Jacobson - Shabbat Unplugged
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Black, Gay and Jewish
Temple Israel of Boston
Haaretz
Jewish Journal
Friday, January 13, 2012
What Judaism & A Friend’s Passing Teaches about Death
18 Tevet 5772
Between evening minyan services and an activist meeting last night I learned an old high school friend had died. Although we had not seen each other or spoken for years now the news hit me at heart level. Viv had carried inside of her a joyful light no shadow could stand up to. Everywhere she went seemed a little brighter just by her presence. (No doubt she’d have rolled her eyes at my words here, and then given me the fiercest of hugs.)
The universe seemed momentarily dimmer with her passing. Suddenly all the talk about oppression and struggle - not to mention my stomach grumbling over a missed dinner, worries over upcoming classes and trips, and won-and-lost cyber Mayorships - seemed incredibly unimportant in the moment. (Well, in all honesty and with no intended offense to the creators of Foursquare, being the Mayor of the Chinese take-out down the street is not exactly all that significant to begin with.)
With the loss of my friend I am also sitting with the fact that this is the first time I am dealing with death since converting to Judaism. It will not be my last. I will mourn others in the future; others, I imagine, will one day mourn me. This makes me nothing special. Before entering the mikveh I had only trite pop-culture and/or religious trappings to help process this ubiquitous lifecycle event - a scythe carrying skeleton; a gated community built on a foundation of clouds for the imagined righteous, and guarded by a heavenly TSA agent; dying cut flowers dropped upon a grave, an incense burner swaying over a closed casket, the wearing of black for 1? 3? 5? 50? years, a lonely sheeted soul haunting the living. (Here’s one modern reference that I actually found functional).
As a Reform Jew, I feel I now possess the most efficient if not elegant resource to help process death with – the question mark. (A symbol as quintessentially Jewish as the Star of David, according to one of my rabbis.) As far as I know (and I am sure to be corrected on this) Judaism offers no promises, guarantees or even hints of what happens – or doesn’t – after death. There is no formal Hell, no Purgatory, no fear-mongering brimstone-laden sermons or stained-glass pictures of paradise. There is the Sheol of course but as far as I can tell that concept of an ancient underworld does not filters into daily prayer or Shabbat services.
Since conversion I have been left with no answers about an afterlife, or even if there is one. And for the first time in my life I am at peace with that, I think for two reasons. First, it puts the emphasis back on the tangible present, those engaged, lived moments that make up a Life as opposed to an eternity in a mystical promised land. This is an idea and an ideal that I as a socially conscious human being can work with and live by.
Secondly, having no image of an afterworld actually opens up all post-life potentialities. Death therefore does not become a narrow (and narrowly defined) passageway of popular imagining but in fact, everything else, ironically an open horizon. Again, a notion I can fall asleep to at night.
Just where Viv is right now I do not know. More accurately I cannot know; I do not get to define it. All I know is that she left behind is a legacy of laughter and love and light. Zichronam liv'rachah. For Viv, I have no doubt hers will be...
********************************************************************************
"It is a fearful thing to love what death can touch.
A fearful thing to love,
hope, dream: to be -
to be, and oh! to lose.
A thing for fools this, and
a holy thing,
a holy thing to love.
For your life has lived in me,
your laugh once lifted me,
your word was gift to me.
To remember this brings a painful joy.
'Tis a human thing, love,
a holy thing,
to love
what death has touched."
(Anonymous? From my Reform Siddur)
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Thursday, January 5, 2012
My Story.
PLEASE support any organization that unconditionally advocates and celebrates for
queer youth!
Sunday, January 1, 2012
The Human Spirit: What do religious... JPost - Magazine - Opinion
"Discrimination and violence against women is an easy subject for diverse sectors of Israeli society to agree on. This isn’t just a women’s issue. We have to make sure that spotlight now turned on the most extreme practices of misogyny cloaked as religion will throw light on the sexist malignancies with which we’ve become accustomed to live. Zero-tolerance starts with us."
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