Zimmerman Verdict: Reflections on Justice and Dialogue

Zimmerman Verdict: Reflections on Justice and Dialogue

...one of the more reasonable and measured editorials on the Zimmerman verdict I have found...

This Former-Pagan-Now-Jew Looks Back at Another Upcoming Halloween

7 Cheshvan, 5773

Today is October 23, 2012 - which means (according to the American secular calendar) a week from tomorrow is Halloween. For many (if not the majority of) Americans it is a social event that over the centuries has been hoisted (or foisted, depending on your p.o.v.) to the level of holiday. While not federally recognized (stupid government, I imagine many undoubtedly groan), it does affect people across class, race, age and gender. Costumes will be bought or made (people still make costumes, right?); candies will be purchased; bellies will still ache the morning after. As a nation we spend an estimated 6.9 billion dollars on the last day of October. You read that correctly - that's billions as opposed to millions and all during a tentative recovery from the worst economic crash in a generation. Cue Keanu Reeves.

While a significant marker (especially in an unabashed capitalist society) money does not solely define Halloween’s status in our nation’s collective consciousness. The day gleefully and insidiously reaches into other corners of our daily lives like an ever-growing sticky spider-web. It spills out of our TV’s to the screams of a thousand horror movie victims; it will be the theme of many a school parade or dinner party; it takes over the Hallmark card rack down at the local CVS. We even semi-consciously raise it among the other calendar milestones whenever we spot Christmas tree decorations out on the shelves before the 31^st. Each holiday in its due time, dammit!  

For those who practice Wicca, the day is called Samhain and is the start of a new pagan year. Needless to say, it figures prominently on the Wiccan calendar and in Wiccan consciousness. Throughout the autumnal season Nature has been shedding its skin, preparing for its death-like sleep of Winter. For the prior eight weeks the barriers between the living and the dead have been thinning, allowing the living to intuit the dead - and the dead the living - more than any other time of year. Respect is given to ancestors. As magic is wrought to look ahead, meditation turns inwards, an introspection led by the kind hand of the Crone. Death is contemplated not as a period at the end of a that run-on sentence which is Life but rather as an ellipsis, leading simply yet profoundly, to the turning of a page…

I know this because I used to be Wiccan, identifying as a child of the goddess, first as a son, then as a daughter. Celebrating Samhain at the time was as natural for me as breathing. Ever since I was a child the day had been somehow magical, filled with mysterious delight. It somehow existed beyond the costumes and the parties, connecting to something much more ethereal. When I finally stopped trick-or-treating (sad to learn one could actually grow out of the tradition) I began telling ghost stories. I watched as many scary movies during October as I could, growing an affinity for old Hammer films. (Tim Burton became a bit of a god/dess send.) My friends would intuit this about me. Trips to pumpkin patches were mandatory for me. One Latina partner unofficially dubbed me “Grand Calabaza” or her Great Pumpkin. So when I identified as Wicca and celebrated Samhain I was joining in on a spiritual dance I seemed to already know the steps to.

I do not know exactly when but at some point I started moving beyond Wicca. 

I didn't want to admit it at first. Wicca had had so much incredibly meaning for me it seemed somehow like an act of infidelity to look beyond its tenets, to think outside its mindset. I had fully expected to die – and be reincarnated – as Wiccan. And yet didn’t feeling guilty over the thought of leaving Wicca kinda already mean I had? I was surprised, saddened and confused (and on some unconscious level relieved). What had happened? When had Wicca - and by extension, Halloween - stopped being so special? Where had its meaning gone to? Where was the magic? (See what I did there?)

There was no exact moment I could pinpoint, no foundation-shaking moment for me. It had happened slowly, with the turning of the seasonal wheel. Although the music of the magical universe still played on I found I had stopped dancing, had in fact stepped quietly off the dance floor. I still respected those who spun widdershins – nothing but love, nothing but love – but the pan-pipe tunes no longer called to me. I could be thankful for the experiences which had brought me to where I was but to linger would somehow be an exercise in futility. For me the party no longer enthralled. That I sensed this with the same intuition being Wiccan had honed in me seemed proof that the Universe was not without a sense of irony – or without hope.

I have blogged elsewhere how I came to Judaism so I will not repeat it here. I will say that while I harbor no latent longings or angsty regrets, I do come to October 31^st every year with what feels like a unique perspective. First is this “Been-there/Trick-or-Treated that” feeling. Being Wiccan gave me a particular look behind Halloween’s metaphysical curtain. I feel somehow privileged for the view and the experience of the dance and feel no need to return. (Again, nothing but love.)

I also feel like a distinct outsider. This was driven home for me when, two years ago while I was still in the process of converting, I took a trip with a Temple friend up to Salem, Massachusetts. It should not surprise you to learn that the cultural site of The Salem Witch Trials has become a touristy ground-zero for those who celebrate Halloween, pagan or not. I was anxious going up, wondering how I would react and admittedly I felt a dissipating sadness while wandering through the crowds. Yes, I used to be a part of this revelry – and I had made the conscious choice not to be anymore. And while it felt strange to be on the outside of this party, this dance, it also felt right – just as becoming pagan in my Twenties had felt right. When we finally left I felt as though I had come to kiss Wicca goodbye and move into my future - a Jewish homecoming I cannot help but think the loving, nurturing wise goddess would have approved of.

So this is how I come to the perennial dialectic (or is it a debate?) regarding American Jews and Halloween. While I will not judge those who fall on either side of this divide, I know how I feel as a Jew about the day. While I can (and have) traced Halloween’s origins back to ancient Celtic culture, and can even argue that it has been shaped in some part by the Christian elements of the United States, I cannot say it is Jewish in any way, shape or form. Nor could I reasonably argue that Purim is the Judaic version of Halloween, as some gentiles figure. As such, I am at peace in not celebrating it on either a cultural or spiritual level. I also feel no peer pressure to do so. (I must note that, currently being without a child, I cannot imagine what Jewish parents in America must wrestle with at this time of the year and fully respect whatever decisions they end up making.) 

Of course, in taking this particular and particularly public stance I often receive a slew of responses from my gentile friends, ranging from the shocked How-can-you-NOT-celebrate-such-a-cool-night! stare to the far more annoying Oh-you-poor-Jew-I-feel-so-sad-for-you look of pity. But for me it only makes sense. Halloween has no context for me as a Jew. For me it’s impossible to untangle the night from its spiritual or historical roots - and none of those roots run back to Israel. As I no longer cavort with the spiritual world, read Tarot or divine dreams the thought of dressing up to confuse wandering evil spirits makes little sense. And echoing the sentiments of other Jewish commentators, I’d rather be in costume giving out food for Purim than collecting candy on October 31^st.

I understand that on both an inter-personal and macro level this can be a hard decision to take within a society so culturally invested in Halloween (remember, nearly $7 billion dollars last year). I also understand from a very personal vantage-point what Halloween means as a spiritual event. Yet oddly (or perhaps not) as a former-pagan-now-a-Jew I find it easy to walk among the revelers, appreciating their party even as I do not partake of it anymore, and am amused that they would have more of a problem with it than I do. That’s all right, though. I need only answer to myself, my Jewish community and HaShem and we’re all just fine with my decision.  

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.) 

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)

Upon 'Becoming' (My Conversion Song)

6 Tammuz, 5771

Shabbat Shalom.

In the Mishkan T’filah there is a poem that has stayed with me since the first time I randomly opened to its page. It is called “Becoming”:

“Once or twice in a lifetime

A man or woman may choose

A radical leaving, having heard

Lech lecha — Go forth.

God disturbs us toward our destiny

By hard events

And by freedom's now urgent voice

Which explode and confirm who we are.

We don't like leaving,

But God loves becoming.”

     As its footnote in the siddur points out, Rabbi Norman Hirsch’s poem is based on the Genesis passage in which HaShem tells Abram (soon to be Abraham, arguably Judaism’s first convert) that it is time to go forth and take the first of many small and probably frightening steps that would become the journey to all Jewish people.

     Now I did not know the meaning of Lech Lecha when I first started out on the path that would lead me here today. I hadn’t read that Genesis passage - let alone any passage from the Bible - for a good number of years. Decades even. Yet I did hear something - a wind outside my door that knew my name, a song from a dream I had never heard before but somehow knew every word to – tempting me to look beyond the walls of my work cubicle and my NY apartment. And while I didn’t think my decision to move was all that ‘radical’ a good number of friends did, sharing with me their well-intended concerns. I will always love them for that. I have no doubt Abram would have considered himself lucky to have known such good people.

     Just how drastic was my path did not become apparent (at least to me) until I found myself out in the concrete wilderness of the urban desert. I wish I could tell you it was a burning bush, unconsumed, that sent me on my way but no, the reasons appeared much more profane – a bad economy, a fruitless job search, an unsteady paycheck – hard circumstances to be sure. But – and I did not understand nor appreciate this at the time – we cannot escape what enslaves us (or perhaps even know we’re enslaved to begin with) without first walking the walk of our own personal exodus.

     Luckily, I came to realize you cannot have an exodus without a few miracles along the way. No, the dirty waters of the Riverway did not part for me nor did I have manna rain down but that did not mean the wonders I encountered were any less profound. A kind stranger’s offered couch, a co-worker’s shared lunch, my employer’s support, a best friend’s surprise visit, the smile from a passing stranger…and a community that was there every week with open doors, open hearts, a safe space for a weary body and ragged spirit. These then became the waters from the well that followed me and kept my thirst slaked, enabling me to keep on keeping on.  

     I realize now this journey of mine was less about needing to arrive at a destination than finally finding a place of heart and hearth. For whether it is the musical prayers of praise during a Friday night Shabbat service or the lively discussions on a Saturday morning Torah study, the activism embedded within Tikkun Olam, or simply the Simcha that makes one want to dance in the streets, so much of Judaism has felt intimately familiar to me, like a remembered love ballad. Look, I have never been a blindly obedient acolyte but rather someone who has always questioned the answer, even if that meant wrestling with angels; I have not been one to wait on the redemption of lottery-ticket miracles but rather someone who needs to learn what it takes to help herself, her community and others; I have never been one to foster anesthetic and unrealistic expectations about human nature but rather has striven to plumb the depths of its untidy sensuous mystery. And finally I have never been one to shy away from shaking timbrels on the far shores of parted waters, singing unto wells, or climbing mountains to meet my ever-patient, ever-loving Higher Power.

     This is for me what ‘becoming’ a Jew feels like, then - a homecoming.

     Like coming home.

     Shabbat Shalom     

Israel as Redemption

Between last night's lesson on the Eretz/Am/Medinah aspects of Israel at my Introduction to Judaism class at Temple Israel, Boston and Leon Uris' Exodus, which I am currently in the middle of, one word keeps surfacing: redemption, as in to redeem.

Merriam/Webster Online has some interesting definitions for redeem , including but not limited to: "to buy back", "to get or win back", "to free from what distresses or harms", and "to change for the better". All of which makes for an intense focal point, especially from a religious point-of-view and a historical context. (For as many have pointed out, and rightly so IMO, you cannot contemplate the current nation-state of Israel or its founding in 1948 without taking into account the millennium old persecution of the Jews, right through the Balfour Declaration and the Holocaust. And, I would add, the legal purchasing of the land in Palestine during the early days of Zionism.)

How much does this concept in all its meanings actually define and ultimately justify in the end? An ongoing discussion that needs to continue.

Am I being *that* kind of convert?

Yesterday an acquaintance posted how she had found a bit of Jewish ancestry in her family history and changed her FB name to reflect that. I hadn’t even known she was looking and sent her a quick Mazel Tov reply and a small note to acknowledge her joy and mention my own conversion process. Her response was a measured (if not awkward) Er, um, thanks. I imagine her thinking, okay, we haven’t spoken in months, trade a couple of Facebook posts every now and then, and you felt the need to share this with me?

Of course, I’m reading a tone that I can’t possibly know via the Internet and am totally projecting my own insecurities as a convert onto her eight word reply - just as I was totally projecting my feelings onto her original announcement. This has given me reason to pause and wonder, uh-oh. Shit. Am I being ‘that’ kind of convert? You know, the one who just can’t stop talking about her process, who finds joy in the more commonly shared aspects of her new experience, who wakes up with ‘Miriam’s Song’ in her head, who wants to absorb so much she might as well write Sponge under "Occupation" on her tax return, go from Zero to Psalm 150 in 3.5 seconds. Not fanatical or even obsessive, but rather a state-of-being just shy of ‘Ecstatic’.

I think about the amount of attention I give my Judaism. A few minutes devoted to prayer in the morning, blessings for the new day, maybe some more to my self-driven Hebrew lessons (that is, if I’m not feeling particularly intimidated by Bet, Pei versus Fei and all the sofit forms).During the day I try to incorporate A Jewish way of thinking informed by my evolving awareness of Jewish values. The latest ishes of Tablet Magazine, Jewish Journal and New Voices get dropped off in my email. If I have the time I’ll give them scan and post the more relevant pieces. In the afternoon I say the Amidah (again, if I remember). I try to always give blessings at meals but yeah, often I don’t realize until halfway through the salad.

On Sundays I realize the majority of my neighbors are going to their house of worship; for them the week won’t begin until tomorrow. Shavua Tov! Sometime around Wednesday I’m thinking about Shabbat on Friday, Torah Study on Saturday morning.

Admittedly it’s more than this. I feel like my Jewish awareness is slowly rising like the new dawn over the horizon, its light shining upon things I would never have contemplated so deeply before. Like Israel and the Middle East or looking at the world through the lens of tzedakah and tikkun olam. Like contemplating the word ‘chosen’ from a dozen different perspectives. Like feeling my heart weep when I visited the New England Holocaust Memorial and anger over how the country of my birth spurned European Jewish refugees, sending them back to their likely deaths, during World War 2. Like how uneasy and annoyed I feel when someone will describe a blizzard as a ‘snow-ocaust’.

All of which leads me to wonder if my simchat is too much simchat, and if so, by whose standards am I making that judgment? By my FB acquaintances? By my real-life friends, some who seem to look a tad uncomfortable when I remind them I can’t go to their Friday night protest or party? By my Catholic family’s? Or am I simply measuring this by the yardstick of my own insecurities?

A friend back in New York once gave me these words of advice: something becomes a problem when it adversely affects your life. I sometimes worry if said "something" has become so huge as to have taken over my life, would I even know it? Or would I be oblivious until I see (or imagine I see) the cringing wince in someone else’s face?

I like that I’m excited about my spirituality. It’s been years (if not decades) since I found such joy in relating to the universe. I am attracted to Judaism in its many forms for many reasons. It’s new. It’s bold. It’s encouraging and challenging. It’s adventurous. It’s Life-affirming, spirit-enhancing and soul-supportive. It’s joyful and dance-able. What better an evolution/ revolution in my life?

Will I always feel this way about it? I don’t know - that concern I will let go and Let G-d. Let me cross that bridge when I come to it, and when I do may I face it with grace, serenity, emotional knowledge and love.

And, of course, as a Jew.
　
　

God as G-d a.k.a. HaShem who used to be known by El Shaddai = ?

So my last "Introduction to Judaism" class took on one of the big Judaic topics (or at least big for me). Namely, God. To say the subject was a tad intimidating would have been a gross understatement. All my previous spiritual backgrounds have framed their deities in very visible and (pun intended) concrete forms. Judaism will have none of that, thank you for very much.

For instance, Paganism has long been rift with anthropomorphic renderings of the (at the time) unknown. Ancient cultures dealt with the natural/supernatural worlds by dressing up their mysteries in flesh and bones. Stroke of lightning? Cue the angry bolt-tossing cloud god. Wild seas? Must be that annoyed Poseidon dude. The love in someone’s eyes? Blame a mischievous arrow-wielding cherub. Need to explain the fates? Bring in the trio of thread-weaving crones. What could a wife/mother call upon to aid her during the daily grind? Enter Hera, the paradigm of all long-suffering Wives and Mothers.

Of course, what seemed perfectly acceptably back in the day (e.g., Ancient Rome, Greece, Egypt) is a little harder to simply take at face value today. (Broad generalization warning here:) Modern Paganism teaches that its gods and goddesses are really manifestations of universal gender-polarized energies that can all be traced back to a single cosmic source. Those same energies are in us at all times, also. It is all connected. As such it would only make sense that as much as we are made in the Gods’ images we have in turn made Them in ours as well. As above, so below..

Catholicism is different - well, kinda. Historically, if not spiritually, Christianity seems to have borrowed liberally from both the Pagans and the Jews when sculpting its Higher Power for the masses (another pun intended). It rolled out a Zeus-like father figure who gladly accepts sacrifices, grants favors (miracles) and dispenses final judgments from a throne at the center of a cloud kingdom. Always in the male form (traditionally, if not annoyingly, the dominant culture always gets the privilege of making paradigms) he is considered the One - except of course when he’s the Three, as in Father, Son and Holy Spirit. (And you have to know there are no coincidences when examining this particular dynamic and the use of trinities in earlier Pagan cultures.)

While God has not always been the spokes-icon for The Catholic Church, where he has shown up has left little to the imagination (or to the gender of those who have been doing the imagining). Again, he is often portrayed as an elderly (and therefore supposedly wise) male, bearded, dressed, presumably muscular, seated in a position of ultimate authority and judgment. (Or not: Family Guy)

So spread the Tarot deck and take your pick: did you need The Disappointed-Daddy God or the Merciful Throw-You-A-Bone God? The Ruler of Olympus or The Heavenly Sovereign-as-counter-point-to-that-thoroughly-evil-Lobster-God-of-below?

Judaism offers something entirely different: nothing. Of course, I don’t mean an atheistic void but rather a monolithic (ha ha! yes I'm here all week) Question Mark, an Unknown, perhaps the greatest of Unknowns. There are no stained glass portraits or altar statues of the Sovereign of the Universe in any temple or even a preschooler’s sketch of HaShem in your local synagogue. And good luck trying to find some archeological evidence of Judaism's El Shaddai. Sorry, doesn’t exist. Never did. In fact, a great many Jewish thinkers from across the ages believe that to apply any human characteristics to God - even in terms of gender and emotions - is to be guilty of idolatry.

And, you know what? I get that, I really really do. Because I truly believe the moment we humans believe we can imagine something we try to categorize it/tame it/control it/render it impotent against us. You might reason that after thousands of years of matrimony we would kinda think otherwise. Evolution, apparently, is slow.

Still, what makes perfect theological sense can be quite the conundrum in reality. I don't know about you but in there have been plenty of times in my life when I have needed to imagine my Higher Power in the flesh per se, have some sort of mental picture to either hug or throw darts at, wanted some cosmic coat-hook to hang my fears or joys or praise upon. Sometimes I have needed the universe’s largest shoulder to lay my weary head upon, or have the Eternal Protector watch my back, or just have the Cosmos's oldest entity as a traveling companion along Life’s more lonely paths.

So what does Judaism’s faceless and genderless G-d leave for me to hold onto instead? If I can't pull a ready card out of Judaism's Tarot, what am I left with?

Coming from someone who is converting, my answers may sound limited. Or, if you will, evolving.

Here’s what I know. Instead of imagining a deity whom I can physically recognize and therefore think of as one day being equal to I am forced to reexamine my humble place in a larger cosmos. Instead of figuring out how to please/supplicate/satiate (and therefore second guess) some cloud-based supernatural being/pantheon I must now learn how to relate to my human community, of which I am inescapably a part of, here on earth. Instead of focusing attention (and money) on statues/tapestries/stained glass I am left to direct my thoughts and emotions on Torah and my Jewish family.

Hmmm. Is that what HaShem intended all along?

But then as a Jew I know better than to think I would have that answer.

Shalom

Me: Dragged up Roman Catholic, did her Pagan thing, now coming out of the wilderness (or so it feels) to Reform Judaism.

This blog: Frequently spewing shiny Judaism. Question marks? Exclamation points! Simcha between the lines.

Expect: See above. Only more.