Sukkot is Coming - Just in Time

It's cold out. Really cold. Okay, it's not below zero yet, baruch hashem . . . but it's below 50. We're supposed to have overnight frost. I work with teens; I live in a small apartment with nowhere to build a sukkah. So, what am I doing for Sukkot? That's right, I'm taking 15 teens camping. 

I never used to overpack. Raised in large part by a summer camp in Missouri at which overpacking was one of the gravest of all sins, I knew at a young age that I could well get by for a good three weeks without a lot of stuff. Lately when I travel, I try to plan ahead for contingencies. I feel like no matter what I do I won't really be prepared for whatever is coming, but instead of embracing that and knowing whatever I have and whatever I am it will be enough I pad myself with more baggage. Well, we all know how helpful that is.

I'm almost 35, I live in a 1 bedroom apartment and everything I own fits in it just fine. The only stuff part of my life that is overwhelming is my books. I have numerous shelves of them. In every room. Compared to the average American, I don't have much stuff. But really, should America be the scale for that? 

I recently read, on the blog of one of my teachers, that a 15 year old boy rarely wears his own clothing. Why? Well because when he sees someone else who his shirt or shorts or shoes would fit, he just gives them his clothing. This child comes from a family very privileged in love, but not one with  a lot of stuff. He lives in Honduras. Last night I fell asleep thinking about his actions and couldn't decide what to call it. It's not really generosity, I don't think - and he and I have never met, but I am tempted to think it's faith. There is nothing dangerous in giving away what you have when you are confident you will always have what you need. 

In personal experience, love for "my kids" works like that. I can give my heart to kids 27 hours a day without getting tired. (plenty of other things totally wear me out, but not that) 

This year, I'm going to welcome in the ushpizin and ask them to help me remember that other things in my life could work like that, too. It feels risky. Living in a tent when it might freeze overnight, dwelling in a sukkah with only 3 1/2 walls and schach for a roof. Or maybe, not taking the risk IS the risk. Maybe not giving my body an opportunity to live the trust and the hope I want in my heart, mind and soul IS the risk.   

And when I pack for camping, I'll make sure there is enough - enough rain gear, enough warm bedding, enough layers, enough food . . . a siddur, a Tanakch and then I'll trust God and the world to provide the rest. For three days with 15 teens and some trees, and some lake, and some field, and some fire . . . God's toys, God's playground, God's schedule.

Whatever it is, it'll be enough, and maybe we'll all come home a little lighter, a little more faith-full, and a little more trusting. 

 

Prairie Flowers During Elul

I learned this weekend that prairie flowers live 2/3rd under the soil. All of that gorgeous flower above ground, but below, there is a whole life going on we never even stop to think about. Wildflowers are always my favorite. I've never liked store-bought roses.

Spending three days camping by myself around prairie flowers got me thinking about the fact that in my life, even though I'm hardly living my whole life on the surface, there is nothing in my life that couldn't exist on the surface. No part of my life is private by necessity. I have no secret escapes. There is nothing I do, not one thing, that if my students or their parents found out about it would be truly problematic. The only problem would be that they'd laugh at me. Guaranteed my students (even the 7th graders) have had more action this year than I have. 

That's good, right? Not necessarily their choices, but mine. I mean, here I am, a not-halachically-observant-progressive-not-really-reform-or-conservative-but-definitely-not-orthodox-jewish-woman who has no skeletons in my closet. Oh, right, except for envy . . . the envy of other people's closets. That's right, not just their skeletons . . . I even envy the rooms they put them in.

Not that there is nothing for which I should ask forgiveness as I prepare for the High Holidays. On the contrary . . . for the sins I have committed, the list feels endless. But I think my worst is the sin of wishing I could allow myself to actually live 2/3rds of my life - or any of it - in secret. 

I have followed the rules. No, I'm not shomer negillah, not really. But I'm a single woman living in a secular world who has not kissed anyone in over a year. My last serious relationship ended in 2005. I've kissed two people since that. One because it was the easiest way to end the date. I'm not proud of that, and that kiss was terrible. It confirmed for me that there is no good reason to kiss someone when one doesn't actually WANT to. The other was on a 6th or 7th date . . . and comparatively, it was a pretty chaste kiss. I mean, I enjoyed it, but it also ended as nothing more than a kiss, and therefore it's also likely why I never saw or heard from him again. Well, that and the fact that I wouldn't stay over that night, either. He wouldn't tell me about his sister over dinner because he didn't think we knew each other well enough for family stories. A few hours later, though, he was quite certain we knew each other well enough to spend the night together. I went home. I did not kiss him good-night. 

And the thing is, I didn't leave because I didn't want to have sex. I did. A lot. I left because I didn't want to have sex with him, this man I'd basically just met, who I had barely gotten to know, who  . . . there were so many questions I didn't want to have to ask him yet - questions about being tested, and values, and what sex meant to him . . . and I know, I have always known, that for me substituting one man for another would never work. Having sex with someone because I want to be touched will not make up for not having sex with the person I wish were touching me.

In part I started this blog so I'd have a place in my life that could be a secret - something I could keep from my students and even from some of my friends. Secrets I could keep from my mother.  I have a secret identity here - sort of. All of this anonymous freedom and most of my entries have been Torah discussions. Yes, honest frustration with religion, religious communities, God, and life, and men . . . but really, a secret?

It's not that I'm keeping anything back - it's that I have nothing more interesting to divulge. This blog is my 2/3rd with one exception. I'm trying to keep the anger out of it. I don't want to give voice to how angry I actually am. I don't think it'll help, and it'll just  . . . talk me down. It'll make it worse. That's why I kind of stopped blogging. I don't think anything I have to say is actually constructive - even though it's all true. 

Anyway, I'm not sure why I'm writing now. Maybe I want suggestions for how to develop the secret life I neglected when I had the chance in college and in grad school. Maybe I want affirmation that secret lives are overrated. Maybe I want someone to convince me to just give it up and go frum. Maybe I want to be rescued. From what? I don't even know.

What's my 2/3rds?

I don't even know.

 

  

What's Love Got to Do With It?

Tu B'Av - the Jewish day of love. It's not Valentine's Day; there isn't a saint to be found. However, two of my students crashed my office today so we could go out to lunch and learn more about this summer holiday. (Amazing what we learn about each other on Facebook! My status = Jewish outreach. Nice!) Of course, being the middle of a lunar month, it's also a full moon. I'm sitting in the car outside a coffee shop so I'm almost outside and have internet access. The sky is clear and dark and the moon is full. When I lived in Australia I found the night sky unsettling. No north star, no dipper . . . I wasn't sure how to find comfort in the southern cross or the sisters. Yet, there is the same moon, and the Jewish calendar still works. I'm not sure how I'd observe Jewish holidays on another planet - that seems problematic.

It's true, I'm rambling.

I have a friend in Honduras asking where the love is - but he is not referencing vineyards or moons, he's just wondering when his country will feel safe again.

The View

I woke up to rain this morning. It was 5am, and the gentle tapping on the walls of my tent was either spring drizzle or ants dancing. My dog curled in closer to me. In his world, there is only one reason for rain - an opportunity to sleep in.

So, there I was, inside the blue world of my tent, alone with my dog, one of I think four people camping at that state park last night. I was wishing I weren't alone, and glad I was all at the same time.

And I wondered . . . what would it take for me to make this my life.

The Silver Standard

I haven't been around on here in awhile, but I have spent a lot of time lately listening to NPR while eating hamantashen and thinking about matzah. I know it’s not the Torah, but it’s still a fairly classic Jewish experience and it has me wondering:

Are we more likely to strive to create ourselves in God’s image, or instead try to create a god in our image? And furthermore, do we want our leaders to be just like us when we are at our most ordinary, or do we desire something exceptional from them?

Back in Persia, King Ahashverosh and Haman didn’t do anything that hadn’t been done before. They benefited from and continued creating a society where the measure of human worth and the whole purpose of living was money and power and pleasure for its own sake.

As has been said about other leaders, it may be obvious that King Ahashverosh would have been more fun to hang out with at a bar than Moredechai and yet in the Talmud, Megilla 12a we learn: when the students of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai asked him, “why did the Jews of that generation deserve to be placed under an edict of destruction?” he told them, “You know the answer.” They responded, “Because they went to the party of Ahashverosh.”

Surely I am not the only one who has weeks when Science Friday and This American Life and Speaking of Faith the news and our holidays all blend together into something of a personal spiritual distraction.

Nothing much new seems to be happening right now in the Torah anyway.

We are in the desert . . . still. We are building a tabernacle, a mishkan, in the wilderness . . . still . . . just like we’ve been doing for the past several weeks.

T’rumah, T’tzaveh, Ki Tisa all arguably tell the same story over and over.

At first in Vayakheil it seems like things might be a little different, after all, we barely get started and God commands us NOT to construct the Mishkan on the 7th day because on the 7th we have Shabbat . . . but then in verses 5-29 they do pretty much what we’ve been told to do the past 3 weeks.

Our second parsha for the week P’Kudei is where it really gets . . .well, we could say . . . it really gets riveting.

Chapter 38 Verse 27 is where it gets really good.

Verse 27 is very specific.

In fact, I’m beginning to think verse 27 may be the clue to what this long, detailed telling of the building of the mishkan was . . . building up to.

Basically: 100 talents of silver. 100 Sockets. 100 talents. 1 talent per socket.

See what I mean?

I didn’t expect it either.

I think that clue actually leads us back to the first verses of this parsha, 21 and 22.

It opens with Moses demanding an accounting of all of the materials that went into the building of the mishkan. Bezalel (of the tribe of Judah) is there, too. And it ends with “all that the Lord had commanded Moses”.

Exactly.

Juicier than I thought.

Politics, intrigue, how much does it cost to put in a new sink at the White House? You caught that, right?

We have just spent weeks reading about the building of the Mishkan in great detail. We’ve read about weights and measures, about materials, about this kind of wood and that kind of animal skin. We’ve read about the ½ shekel and about how each person will apply his or her skill skillfully. I mean – details. BUT NOW – now we have Moses – the leader of our people, the man we’d think was above reproach, who is humble, and wise, who is brave, who has seen the FACE of God – HIM – OUR GUY MOSHE – he asks for an accounting of each and every item that has gone into building this thing.

Why?

I mean, this is the stuff a good “This Mesopotamian Life” NPR story is made of!

But wait . . . oh yes . . . there’s more:

That last bit, “As the Lord had commanded Moses” . . . that part is repeated over, and over, and over in this parsha.

For the Torah, which never wastes a single letter, much less a single word, to have that much repetition in one parsha . . . well, even in a distracted week that can get my attention - that’s got to mean something.

So, why might Moses make sure there is an accounting, why is it okay with God that Moses is going out on his own here – ordering that things be done that God never said needed to be done, and why is it that we are told repeatedly that all was done – specifically that MOSES did everything - JUST as God had commanded Moses to do?


When I started looking into Moses’ actions more, I found some things that might help.
First, a legal story:

At the height of a political corruption trial, the prosecuting attorney verbally attacked a witness. "Isn't it true," he bellowed, "that you accepted five thousand dollars to compromise this case?" The witness stared out the window as though he hadn't heard the question. "Isn't it true that you accepted five thousand dollars to compromise this case?" the lawyer repeated loudly. The witness still did not respond. Finally, the judge leaned over and said, "Sir, please answer the question." "Oh," the startled witness said, "I thought he was talking to you."

According to our tradition (Song R. 3:7) Moses needed to show he was above reproach, so he carefully recorded all of the expenditures for building the mishkan and the furnishings and at each step we are reminded that all of the gold and the silver and the acacia wood was part of the project not by Moses’ choice but was done, “just as God had commanded him.”

Our texts explain that because some Israelites knew themselves well enough to know they would have taken advantage of all of the silver and gold for their own enrichment, they suspected Moses was no better.

They knew themselves, and Moses knew the Israelites.

Therefore, Moses made sure not only that he was above reproach, but also that he demonstrated that he was above reproach.

The Midrash goes on to detail that the people who prepared incense for the Temple service similarly would – and should - never wear perfume nor would they have their family members wear perfume.

The Midrash also describes the official who observed the shekel offering as wearing a special garment with no pockets and no long sleeves so no one could suspect him of pocketing the public funds.

Ultimately, as we remember from T’rumah, the purpose of the mishkan had nothing to do with Moses in his status as a leader. The whole reason God commanded Moses and the Israelites to build the mishkan was so that God could dwell among them. It wasn’t even so God could dwell in it, or so God could chat with Moses, but among them. Each of them – perfectly ordinary people created in the image of God. What might it mean to try to live up to God’s expectations when we are aware that our ordinariness is balanced by being created in God’s image?

God’s expectations for Moses as a leader were different from God’s expectations of Bezalel as a craftsman, and God’s expectations for Bezalel were different from God’s expectations of the guy who made the incense or observed the shekel collection or the women who wove the curtain for the Ark. We could therefore surmise that God also has unique expectations for each of us.

Thinking back on NPR calls to mind the politician who legislated the strict prosecution of prostitution and then was caught with a prostitute, or the comedian who no one cared got his taxes wrong becoming a candidate for the senate a position wherein he’d have power over the distribution of taxes. We've also been hearing a lot about President Obama. He made an inappropriate joke comparing his notoriously bad bowling skills to the Special Olympics on Leno. Ordinarily, that would be the sort of behavior I would suggest goes completely against what is required of us from this parsha. However, his actions did not end there. The joke had not even aired yet when he got on the phone from Air Force One, called Tim Shriver of the Special Olympics Board, apologized, and then made his apology public.

None of us is perfect, but we are each created in God’s image. There are times when each of us are in roles of authority and responsibility. When we are, what are God’s expectations of each of us?

Maybe Mordechai never fantasized about skipping out on making Havdallah so he could relax and hang out at one of King Ahashverosh’s parties. Maybe Moses never considered keeping his vacation destination a secret for a change and going to Vegas instead of hiking in the desert. Maybe Bezalel never wished Moses would tell the story about when he lost his temper and hit the rock so he, Bezalel, could feel better about his own weaknesses . . . but I hope they did. I hope they fantasized about it, considered it, and wished it, and then didn’t do it.

I’m often uncomfortably comforted when great leaders have a vice – smoking, for example - because like me there is something they aren’t good at, some bad habit they cannot kick or make a mistake. The idea of God or a leader being a “slob like one of us” is comfort we can even sing to.

And yet, I don’t want to be created in the image of a slob. I don’t my leaders to encourage me to excuse my vices. I want them to show me how they work to overcome their vices, and how they strive to remedy their mistakes. I want them to hold themselves, in their roles, to a high standard and to challenge me to do the same.

In my job I teach about Jewish values of relationships and sex and sexuality, and I’m single – which ostensibly means I may (occasionally) date.

My friends outside my Jewish work circle often tease me about the debate I have with myself about where I go on dates – do I go somewhere where I’m fairly likely to run into a student (and have)? Who I date - do I date men who aren’t Jewish? If I choose not to see someone anymore, for any reason, I have an obligation to make that decision and to carry it out in recognition of the other person as created in the image of God, and of myself as being “holy” because God is holy. Why? Because every opportunity I get I remind our teens that is our job in relationships. Because I really do believe I am commanded to remember that I am holy because God is holy and created me to be holy.

What about other people, I wonder.

What does it mean for you, in your life, in the places where you are a leader, to wear clothes without pockets, avoid perfume, and to keep a careful enough accounting?

Whatever it means for you, I suspect we all need reminders now and then.

For a reminder, we have Shabbat every week - when we are specifically commanded not to make use of our sockets and our silver to build the mishkan – or whatever its equivalent in our lives – and to instead step back and take an accounting and recommit ourselves to a higher standard.

On the other hand, after spending my life following all the 'rules' (by which I DO NOT mean that book) I am now in a place where I'm wondering whether they actually make sense. For now I'm continuing to choose against the king's party and against the trop to Vegas, but I am basing those choices on habit more than conviction.

Yes, there are consequences that trouble me for the people who built the golden calf. However, there are also consequences that trouble me for the people who didn't.

From: http://www.aish.com/purimthemes/purimthemesdefault/Darkness_Before_the_Dawn.asp

""All prophetic books and the sacred writings will cease (to be recited) during the Messianic era, except the Book of Esther. It will continue to exist, just as the Five Books of the Torah and the Oral Torah that will never cease." (Rambam, Megillah 2:18)

What is the lesson of this book that will never lose its relevance, even as all other troubles of the Jewish nation will fade from memory?

Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner, in his book Pachad Yitzchak, explains with a beautiful metaphor: There are two ways one can recognize his friend in the dark. One way is to use a flashlight. The other way is to get to know the friend by using other senses other than sight to recognize his presence. When the sun comes up, the one who used his flashlight will find it no longer necessary and will cast it aside. But the one who had to train himself in lieu of a flashlight, to sense his friend in other ways, has acquired a deeper knowledge and understanding of his friend and the relationship, even in daylight, will inevitably be enhanced as a result.

So, too, we - the Jewish People - have spent millennia in an effort to recognize God. Leaving Egypt was a flashlight - the Ten Plagues and the miraculous events that followed taught the Jewish People invaluable lessons about their King. And yet, when the sun comes up and the Messiah arrives, the revelation and clarity will be so bright that all holidays and writings commemorating those events will dim in comparison.

Purim, on the other hand, was a story in which no light was switched on. The heroes of the hour and the nation as a whole had to grope and stumble in the interminable darkness and slowly and hesitatingly train themselves in a new approach to relating to God in such a time."


I haven't written for awhile, been working hard getting ready for Purim, in fact! Not a lot of extra time on my hands.

However, I love this teaching about Purim. I have often said that if I had to choose between showing up at shul for the High Holidays and showing up for Purim, I'd pick Purim. If my someday-children ever start refusing to come to synagogue, I'll let them out of Yom Kippur before I'll let them out of Purim. (or Sukkot or Shavuot . . . with some special Tu B'Av muffins, and a HUGE Lag B'Omer bonfire . . . .who doesn't like muffins and fire???)

This I love: Getting to know God in the dark . . . and the idea that this is the chag we'll be celebrating with the Messiah . . .

Can't come soon enough!

I Want the Direct Flight

It happened when Pharaoh sent out the people that God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, because it was near, for God said, “Perhaps the people will reconsider when they see a war, and they will return to Egypt.” (Beshalach, Ex. 13:17)

Having just decided last night to start looking for work opportunities in other places, actually consider and be open to moving instead of just vaguely thinking about it, and spent a significant period of time today updating my resume, I actually laughed when I opened my chumash about thirty minutes ago and discovered that it opens with our ancestors getting out of Dodge. (so to speak)

Then I started checking out the commentaries, and according to Rashi and Ramban, though the quickest and easiest route from Egypt to Israel was northeast, along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, because it was inhabited by the Philistines who were “war-like” our people would lose heart and head back to slavery. Since the journey back to Egypt would seem so easy at that point, returning would be the path of least resistance and that was hardly the point. However, in the very next verse we are told the children of Israel were armed R’ Bachya raises the question of why a people under the protection of God would need to arm themselves, and that does seem a fair question, however, Rashi interprets the word vachamooshim as coming from the same root as chomesh (fifth), implying that only one fifth of the Jews actually left Egypt, the rest being unprepared to adopt a new life as God’s people. Rashi tells us they died during the plague of darkness so the Egyptians would not see that Jews, as well as they, were losing their lives.

As those of you who have read my first few blogs know, although my life is frustrating me to no end right now, I am hardly “in the narrow straights of my own mitzrayim”.

Still, I am struck by what my life and these verses do have in common.

I think it is in the very least ironic that Pharaoh claimed concern at the outset that these folks would rise up against him (military-style) and then here God is concerned that they are so entirely brow-beaten that even though they are armed and even though God is with them they will lack the confidence necessary to travel through the land of the Philistines.

I think I come across to most people as fairly strong-willed, opinionated, and self-confident. I used to be. I think I also seem like someone who would just pick up and move if that’s what I wanted. I used to do that, too.

From the time I was 10 – 18 I moved at least every other year. From 18-25 I lived in 7 states and 2 other countries. Then I moved to where I live now for law school, and although I have lived in 4 different places here they have all been in the same city. I have been here since August 1999.


Even though I want to move on, I want to live somewhere warmer, I want to find a job that doesn’t just keep me really busy doing stuff that I know matters to other people and is meaningful big-picture but a job that feels like a worthwhile application of my time and the abilities that are specific to me . . . I know if I encounter a “war” along the way, it’ll be only too easy this time to turn back. I know because I have been turning back before even starting out for months.

I have not left a place that was familiar to me since I was 10. I loved that place.
It was a farm in southern Missouri. We had two ponds, 17 horses (Arabians), chickens (from whom I collected eggs), a sunflower garden (really, a big area in the field behind our house in which we grew gorgeous sunflowers and then had to beat the birds to the seeds), a smaller vegetable garden that had a lot of chili peppers and other vegetables my mom and I would can in the fall, a dry creek where I’d hang out with turtles, two gay male geese who would nest together every spring and never left our property – and then a flock that would come and go, a barn with a birthing stall that was rarely used (because the horses lived out in the fields and usually gave birth out there as well), dogs and cats, and I had almost talked my mom into letting me get a goat when my parents decided to get divorced and my mom and I moved.

Rashi’s interpretation troubles me. Just because four-fifths of the people decided they could not leave Egypt when one-fifth + Moses, Miriam and Aaron had decided they were ready, why does it follow that they had to die there?

My mind goes in many directions regarding that line of thinking, but here is one of them:

We have to be able to articulate that there are just as many ways to be Jewish as there are Jews. Some people fast on Yom Kippur, some go to shul, and some work and go to school. That means some employers and teachers are going to say (every year), “Why do you need a variance/day off? So-and-so is Jewish and he/she will be here, why can’t you be?” I don’t think our way of observance is the measure of our value in the community, and I certainly don’t think any of us should die for those choices.

Or . . .

It just occurred to me . . . or is it that those four-fifths who wanted to leave but were stopped by fear, or inertia, or lack of faith were like dead in another way – stuck in the darkness of the plague, a darkness in which they could not see each other or themselves. When we are not open to the moment when something unknown but promising presents itself in our lives, have we become entrapped by our own lack of vision?

I’m clearly not being oppressed (although I find the weather here oppressive) and I believe the people I work for and with are people of good intention. However, I also feel myself becoming less and less of myself every month.

Some readers have suggested I seek out Orthodox learning opportunities, and others are correct that working in the Jewish community (Reform) means that the times for learning and celebrating are most of the time the same times as I am teaching and running programs. Additionally, while I hunger for more observance, I also want a world-view I have not found in more observant Jewish communities. I want female and male rabbis. I want gay weddings. Whatever the conclusion, I want to be able to question and discuss circumcision (I don’t have a son – but I know if, God willing, I ever do it’ll be a question I want to discuss). I want to be frustrated personally with patrilineal descent (for reasons I raised in an earlier post) and at the same time count my students who are children of a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother among the Jewish community.

I want these things, but even more than I want them, I want a life I have not been able to find where I am.

In truth, I am well-armed. I don’t want to take the long way around.