Life in Israel: VaYikra: The Greatness Of The Sin Offering

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Life in Israel: VaYikra: The Greatness Of The Sin Offering: I don't normally post divrei torah  here on Life in Israel. That is usually, or used to be, reserved for a different blog (that has been dor...

"I Am Jewish"

Why my Reform Judaism and Al-anon no longer mix...

18 Adar, 5772

Shalom. My (Hebrew) name is Ziva Devorah and I am a grateful member of Al-anon.

Well, actually, ‘was’.

Back in 2004 my life was in need of a new course adjustment. For years I had been driving pedal-to-the-floor straight for any emotional cliff I could find, stinkily thinking that the only way to redemption was to pull a Thelma-and-Louise. My therapists-at-the-time kept subtly referencing Al-anon until I finally broke down. There were dozens of different Al-anons meetings throughout my county, most to be found inside of churches, the more ubiquitous meeting spot for 12 Step Groups. As the Program says, there are no coincidences…

My first visits to ‘the rooms’ were rocky. I would sit uneasily in the circle, ever aware of the crucifixes on the wall, The New Testaments never far out of reach. Although it was clearly stated every week that we were to surrender our stubborn will to “the God of our understanding”, it felt more like a convenient clause to dance around the unspoken truth that the God we were talking about (especially inside a church) was a Christian one. This was made manifest whenever the group leader for the week decided to close the meeting with The Lord’s Prayer. Um, secular much? As a practicing pagan at the time, I silently twitched as I dutifully held onto hands in the closing circle and tried to mentally recite the Charge of The Goddess. The other voices kept drowning me out with their earnest choir.

I finally found secular space at a local LGBT community center.  At first this seemed ideal – not only were there no overt religious iconography adorning the walls but there was a free-flowing queer aesthetic underlining the atmosphere. Shares included same-sex relationships, problems with intolerant families, negotiating public and private identities in the real world. Honestly, even the coffee tasted gay.

For five years I sat in circles and shared my shares. I would end up leading some meetings, took on the position of treasurer for a while, got myself a sponsor, even went to a regional round-up. I worked the principles of The Program into my thoughts and therefore my daily life. Certain aspects of Life slowly became more stable and in response I became more reliant on The Program. Yet some aspects nagged at me – like calling it The Program, which sounded vaguely cultish. Like the demand to surrender one’s will. Like how, although I was surrendering to “the God of my understanding”, it never felt like this was something that fit into my pagan understanding of The Goddess. In fact, it always felt like I was forcing a round peg into a square hole.

Then I moved three states away to a new city, a new population, a new home. I worked with my now long-distance sponsor to find a suitable queer Al-anon. We finally located one – in a church. The room was narrow and not very well lit, smelled vaguely of the church incense of my altar-boy days.  A crucified Jesus hung on the wall bleeding piety and guilt. Across from me loomed an imposing stained glass church window.  Maybe I should have focused more on its myriad of beautiful colors but instead all I could feel was twitch in its shadow.

     After two awkward meetings I stopped going. There were other sites but I never made it to any of them. I was having problems finding meaningful long-term employment and my living space was no longer safe. Life circumstances had become dire. (True believers, insert your cause-and-effect argument here.) As I ran about putting out all these existential fires, I checked in with my sponsor (who kept pushing me to meetings) and dutifully read my daily readings, all of which was Program-approved but never put food on a plate, a paycheck in my bank account, or opened the door to a safe space. All I was told to hang on, keep hanging on, get to meetings, meetings would solve the problems (especially if I used them as networking opportunities) something would give, something would break, a miracle was just around the corner, just keep reading, keep praying, keep going. All of which sounded well-meaning but not very practical. Somehow it seemed to imply my impending homelessness was tied to my Program-identified character flaws. If I could only figure them out and pray on them harder (???) all would end okay. 

I know this about myself - I am at my best when I am proactive, not waiting on a lottery-ticket miracle to save me.  I began investigating new beliefs, an examination which would lead me through the doors of what would become my Temple. There I found a welcoming nonjudgmental community; a new spiritual system that spoke of an interactive God; that allowed personal explorations of its tenets and promoted collective questioning. It was here I found safe space.

As I spent more time with the temple’s community I spent less time in contact with my sponsor, until we mutually decided to end that particular relationship. I have recently found it has been months since I cracked open my dog-eared copy of “Hope for Today”.  Question marks buzzed about my head - when had this happened? What had changed in the last two years that Al-Anon had increasingly less pull in my life?

Of course, there is no discussion about Al-Anon or similar programs without an examination of its tenets. Below are the common twelve ‘steps’ such groups use, an incremental progression which moves the user from self-awareness of one’s own limited power to asking for divine help through a surrendering of one’s will to a Higher Power, a listing one’s ‘character flaws’ to the God of one's understanding and another, making amends through asking forgiveness, and finally a sharing of the Program’s benefits with others:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Despite the 12 Step Program’s insistence that it is user-friendly in its egalitarian embrace of religious plurality, I can’t help but feel its platforms rest upon a very Christian-centric foundation. For instance, the first steps seem to describe a lost sinner who can never truly find real direction and achieve a blameless state, so is therefore in eternal recovery from an original sin. Then there is Step # 5 - Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs – which imply a dynamic similiar to being inside a confessional.  Steps 6 & 7 - were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character and Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings imagine a sort of baptism which erases all previous wrongdoings. Additionally, seeing the Al-anon user as intrinsically flawed through character (which actually predates Erving Goffman's notion of stigma being an "abomination of character") speaks to sin as being an inescapable state of being from the moment of conception. This ascension ends on Step 12 - Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs - a thinly-veiled call to proselytizing on behalf of The Program (which is odd since the Program also advocates “attraction over promotion” through its own Tradition 11).

Finally, there is the Program’s idea of a “God of my understanding”, which in my opinion imagines the relationship with one’s Higher Power in Christian-like dimensions. First, this rapport strikes me as incredibly one-sided - there is no interaction as the conversational flow goes from the forever recovering addict to a God who is delegated to a distantly-removed, invisible role. He also sits in judgmental via the ability to erase all sin. Redemption is granted only through a full and continuous confession which concedes a continuous need to sin, therefore setting up a constant cycle of need. Oh, and there are no discussions allowed – no spiritual probing here, no room for doubt in ‘the rooms’…all of which strike me as a very non-Jewish way to have a relationship with one’s Higher Power.

Now one could argue (as many have) that AA and Al-anon hold as many Jewish values as it does Christian/Catholic (or any other spiritual brand). Some say AA stands in perfect counterpoint to the myth that Jews don't drink. To which I say, if that’s what you believe, who am I to say differently? None of what I have written should be construed as a blanket condemnation of AA or any other program based on its model. If someone, if anyone, can draw true meaning and healing from practicing a 12-Step Program, awesome.

 I can only speak for me, and in speaking for me, Ziva Devorah Bat Avraham Avinu v’Sarah Imanu, a converted Reform Jew, all I can say is that my relationship with the God of my understanding no longer fits inside the rooms. I am surviving and thriving as a grateful member of the tribe outside those closed doors just fine.

Thank you.        

(12 Kislev, 5773

Addendum: While reading some research for an ongoing paper on shame, I came across a study by Hayes regarding 12-Step Groups and their reliance on shame and labeling theory. It struck me cold that here was another aspect of 12-Step Recovery that is no longer compatible with my being a Reform Jew. Shame and shaming strike me as distinctly Roman Catholic, the belief system I was born into. And that only makes sense - original sin and eternal damnation lose much of their attractiveness (especially as social control mechanisms) without shame. Additionally, as any missionary worth his holy book knows, you cannot proselytize (Catholicism, at least) if you cannot shame.
My experience of Reform Judaism has been the opposite. There is no overt shame or shaming; there are no ceremonial institutions built upon shame. Guilt, maybe - definitely - but not shame. As such, group dynamics which rely on shaming no longer strike me as spiritually enlightening or socially functional.)