What is my worth as a childless single Jew?

1 Elul 5772

So lately I have been wondering what my communal and individual worth is as a single childless Jew.

I know (thanks to some very long nights with the Internet’s glow as my only nightlight) and acknowledge and appreciate that I am neither the first nor the only Jew to have asked this question. What solace I derive from this, while being poignant, also feels somewhat scant. Some Friday nights all I can do is sit awkwardly among the families and couples during Shabbat services, or note how I was the only single childless person at my last Pesach, or even amid the High Holy Day crowds. (I was blessed when, having fainted during last year’s Yom Kippur – yes, I was that person whose new meds and adherence to fasting landed me in an ER – I had an impromptu escort from the congregation who knew I was without family and did not want me to be alone. Just one more reason why I heart my temple.)

This ache of mine comes with an exacting irony. For the longest time being childless was my narrative. Various aspects of my past informed this personal chronicle. While I won't share all the details I will say that seeing so many family members and friends end up divorced was influential. (Honestly, how many times can you sit with someone who has either cheated on, or been cheated on by, their spouse and not wonder if being single is the equivalent of dodging the proverbial bullet?) Also - and this is hard to admit – I was sure I would make the world’s worst parent. I had my fair share of personal excesses, which while never landing me in jail or causing anyone else harm certainly made my judgment questionable at the time. Additionally, I existed for the longest time in the back corner of what felt like the universe’s deepest, darkest closet, shackled by shame over who I was. How could I expect to raise a child to grow into their best potential Self if I could not do the very same thing? Hypocrisy and I make for some very poor sleeping mates. (If you're reading this, sorry hypocrisy.)

Some of my partners had children and we got along pretty well, although I was often told that as I was not their biological parent, what did I expect? All the same it was a particular gut-wrenching anguish to have the children I watched grow up during the course of a thirteen year relationship turn away when I came out. It felt doubly so to be told not to contact most of my nieces and nephews during this same time.

Finally, I was given the opportunity to correct a long-standing medical problem – but in exchange I would lose my reproductive abilities. If you have been reading so far you can probably guess what my decision was. I made my choice convinced I had no regrets (if by “convinced” I mean ignoring and ultimately justifying away all the doubtful twinges).

So here was my narrative - childless-by-choice, wiser than the average divorcee - a story written chapter by chapter, decade after decade. I refuse to label this a “fiction” as I think that diminishes its importance. Instead I will call it a necessary false-consciousness which I eventually convinced myself was my truth. (The sociological equivalent term for this is known as developing a “taste of necessity”.) Looking around at all the ruined marriages and relationships (including my own), seeing how the coming-out process had stripped me of so much family, I felt comfortable that I had safely distanced myself from so much costly damage and eventual wreckage.

Then I converted to Reform Judaism and so many things changed.

No doubt some of you are thinking, “Well, ye-ah”. (I know I would be.) But whoa nelly, not so fast. At the risk of sounding like Donald Rumsfeld, while I certainly expected some changes and I even expected some unexpected changes, I did not think these particular feelings were going to float to the surface and make themselves known.

   

IMPORTANT WAIVER HERE!!!! I have to tell you that my temple, from the clergy and board members to the congregants and staff, have never made me feel less-than in ANY way shape or form. I can tell you that I currently carry forward more self-esteem than ever before, in no small part because of my spiritual family. This diminishment does not stem from my environment but from me.

Yet I would be disingenuous if I said that this very same environment did not give significant importance to family-making and had no effect on me. I would be telling untruths if I said that being a happy witness to weekly Jewish life-cycle acknowledgements such as marriage blessings, baby-namings and bat/bar mitzvahs Kiddush chanting hasn't made me more aware that I am without a family. I would be less than honest if I told you that when the rabbi said I would raise my children as Jews during my blessing my heart didn't lurch in a profoundly sad way. I would be lying if I told you I never felt like a Jew with limited worth. Not all the time, mind you. Perhaps not even often. But yeah.

Of course, Jewish worth is not based upon one’s capacity to mother, father or raise a household but by I would imagine one’s being a good Jew. And apparently there have been quite a few remarkable good childless Jews before me (including my Biblical namesakes). There are also quite a few commentaries, for example here, here, and here. (Trigger warning: some promote the idea and attitude that not having children or being single is a singular “disadvantage”, which tells you something of the author’s sense of normative.)

I wish I had some clever denouement to leave you with but honestly, being this transparent saps away any potential wit. Here’s what I know as today’s end credits roll: I remain grateful for my spiritual family; I am grateful and proud to be a Jew, and I cannot believe the worth of these two truths can and/or will be solely defined for me by the capacity to have or raise a family. So I leave you with this: Rabbi Harold Kushner writes in his book To Life! that being a good Jew isn’t defined by the amount of prayers you pray or how many times you end up at your synagogue (or, I imagine, how many children live under your roof) but rather, by always striving to be a better Jew. 

I may not know where any of my answers await but just for today, that goal seems like a good place to start from.

Shavua tov!    

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     

My Shabbat State of Mind

Wait, I remember thinking when I first started to read up on Shabbat early on in my Jewish odyssey. Hold up, hang on. You expect me to give up Friday nights? That traditional kick-off to the weekend, the frothy just reward every Monday-through-Friday nine-to-fiver suffers through a workweek to chug down with both hands? That happiest of happy hours, the evening of long dinners out, of movie dates and dancing late, bowling teams in smoky lanes and football games under the fabled bright lights?

Not that I ever rallied for the home team from the stands and I can’t remember the last time I had drunk my way to a Saturday morning hangover. All the same I still felt very possessive of my Friday evenings. The thought of surrendering all those long held oft-praised adolescent-based glories - or at least the potential of them - seemed unthinkable, unreasonable, impossible.

Worse, as a Jew who would practice Shabbat I was also expected to ‘keep’ Shabbat from Friday sundown to Saturday evening. Granted, Reform Judaism did not insist on the same prohibitions as Conservative and Orthodoxy streams but it did strongly suggest that there be some restraint of those distractions that define the rest of the week - for a whole twenty four hours, no less.

Really? I thought. Look, I was already going to Shabbat studies on Saturday morning. I tried to spend some
time in a natural setting afterwards, whether it be a stroll through the greenery of the Riverway (a.k.a. that ‘dirty water’) or a meditative stroll along the Harborwalk contemplating the ‘world of creation’. Wasn’t that something? Wasn’t that enough?

At this time I had just started going to temple for Shabbat regularly - but only with the escape clause in my purse that said I could stop any time I wanted. Because I have to confess it felt weird to be going into a house of worship on a Friday - every Friday - especially as the rest of Boston headed off to the movies at Lowe’s, another round at Ned Devine’s or packed the ‘D’ or Riverside cars (not coincidentally, the same Green Line train I took to get to Temple Israel) for the game over at Fenway.

Of course, I was still thinking in a post-Catholic mindset, counting time on the Christian clock, turning the page of the Gregorian calendar. In the United States and other Catholic theocracies the world always revolves around Sundays. The week starts on Monday, slogs through Wednesday, quickens on Thursday. Once the whistle blows on the assembly line Friday at 5:00 p.m. you’re allowed two nights and a day of debauch (whether that debauch is defined as drinking, dancing, drugging, sex or shopping, or some combination thereof) squeezed into about 32 hours...40 if you’re really adventurous.

Then comes Sunday, worship day. Dress in your fineries, cue the organ music and incense, sunlight through stained glass, priestly intonations and confessing of all your hard-earned sins. Stop by the bakery on the way home, pick up The Globe or The Times, cook the day-long meal, kick back on the couch to watch the game.

Not so much on the Jewish clock. If you are going to Shabbat then it’s a Friday night that brings you through the synagogue’s doors. And guess what? The world outside is not going to stop for you. Restaurants, bakeries, baseball teams do not care. The Red Sox are still going to play that double-header, your non-Jewish or non-observant Jewish friends are still going to par-tay. Shabbat is pretty non-negotiable. You can catch one of a half-dozen possible Catholic masses to fit into your Sunday schedule but there is only one sunset on a Friday.

That seemed huge to me and perhaps rightly so. As author Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg points out in her book "Surprised By God," religion is supposed to be larger than the practitioner of it. What’s the use of any belief system that allows us to be equal with our Higher Power, and therefore can barter with, mold and shape to our own needs and fears?

Religion washes over us like a wave from the sea, not a stream from a showerhead we can turn on and off. Spirituality contains this hidden non-negotiable element of surrender in this respect. It says if you want to have a relationship with your Higher Power then you are going to have to pay attention. It kindly, lovingly demands a laying down of our arms (if not our pride and iPods, too). It just won’t work if we’re constantly checking our cell phones, thinking about tomorrow’s staff meeting or downloading the latest Lady Gaga or Justin Timberlake.
                                                                       * * *
So I thought, okay, I can do this. Judaism wants just twenty-four hours, a single day out of the week. Is it really that so much to ask? Beside, I was starting to really connect with my spirituality again through Shabbat services and Torah studies in a way I hadn’t in decades. This was beginning to have real meaning for me, an emotional and intellectual investment. Did I really want to do anything that would intrude on this ongoing meditation, this love affair I was fostering with the universe and its Creator?

Then September came around - a new season, a new semester. I had a course problem. The only way I could get the minimum credits for financial aid was to take a Saturday afternoon class. Okay, I thought, I can do this. It didn’t impede on my Friday night services or my Torah studies. This was workable.
Only it wasn’t. The class was a three-hour lecture from noon into the middle of the afternoon. I had just enough time to wrap up Torah Study and bail on oneg to go catch the Green Line T to make the Red Line south to JFK/UMass and then race to grab the shuttle to the campus. On the good days I managed to land at my desk with literally minutes to spare. Most times it was five or ten minutes late. The class - Ancient and Medieval Art History - was engrossing and challenging, demanding my full attention and fostering critical thought. Which of course is what any good course should do.

But it also picked me up of my Shabbat and unceremoniously dropped me in the middle of a classroom. My weekly love affair now ended hours earlier than I wanted it too. Soon I began to resent it. Then I remembered I had made this choice and therefore needed to deal with its consequences. It was only for a few months, right? Dammit I could do this.

And I did, too, although not without some serious pangs. I’m pretty sure no one was happier than me the following Saturday morning at oneg. I was back, I had returned with some new lessons learned, not only in how to tell the difference between Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Etruscan columns but in gauging the true depth of my Shabbat experience and my need to stay connected to the universe, give thanks and continue to have that beautiful wave wash over me.
                                                                             * * *

Here’s what I found out - the more I went to Shabbat, the more I wanted to go. The more time I spent on a Saturday wandering the Harborwalk or along The Riverway, the more I wanted to look at nature through Shabbat-steeped eyes. The more I entered that Shabbat space the less I wanted to leave it. I began politely turning down friends’ invites to coffee chats or the movies and especially any Saturday protests. Hey, this is Boston - weekend protests in the Common is almost a given. Yet I knew to participate in one would totally shatter whatever Shabbat meditation I found myself in. Hard to keep an appreciation of God and The Torah and the gift of this world while screaming some clever political slogans.

Nowadays I schedule my Fridays so that I have the afternoon-leading-into-evening off. I try to do all my cleaning, food shopping and cooking done beforehand. I like the idea of being presentable in house, dress, body and mind to greet and invite the Shabbat bride via "L’Cha Dodi"into my Life for the day.

Does this mean I won’t buy food if I need to, or clean a plate I have dirtied (or shovel snow, as this *is* Boston in winter right now)? No...but I am trying very hard to keep from doing any extraneous activity which would tear me out of my Shabbat state of mind, rip me away from that special guest. No, twenty-four hours doesn’t seem enough now, not nearly enough.

I’ll end with this thought. Recently someone else new to this process admitted she wasn’t going to be able to make it to Shabbat. "I just can’t get out of work to make it there on time."

I totally respect where she is at. There was a time I thought I could live without Shabbat services. And with no disrespect to her, but these days I feel I would have a very hard time living without it.