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My thoughts on religion and God

The following is a constantly evolving work in progress. It's a compendium of thoughts I've been having for a long time; I first started writing it here after singing at Boston Pops Gospel Night in June 1999, and it also includes parts of a post I made to the FRUMGAYS mailing list in September 1999.

Why does a nice Jewish girl sing gospel? For a number of reasons. One, my mother converted to Judaism before her marriage, and her family is Baptist. My grandmother, Deborah Strickland, "Miz Debbie" to her neighbors, was a devoutly religious woman, whose reaction to my mother's conversion was, "Well, you finally got religion." She loved my batmitzvah, telling our dear family friend who officiated, Rabbi Norman Mirsky, "That was a real spiritual thing." And it was, too.

As I told the members of the BCC, a woman as devoutly spiritual and downright GOOD as my grandmother (not to mention some of the members of the choir) can't have been all wrong. God is God, whether you are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Wiccan, or even agnostic or atheist. If you believe in goodness to your fellow human being, then you believe enough for me. And the people in this choir really believe. They pray before and after rehearsals... it is a calming and harmonizing thing in my life. Even though I may not believe that Rabbi Joshua ben Miriam was the Son of God, I don't object to calling his name and thinking "Adonai." It's hard to explain, and I know not everyone agrees with me. It's my personal belief. For the same reasons, I don't object to singing Christmas carols or a hymn to Kore with the Rainbow Chorus. [2000/02/06: Having just read Parshat Mishpatim, which specifically states that a Jew may not utter the name of a pagan god (especially not a currently worshipped one), I won't be doing this any more. But I'm not going to judge Jews who do.]

I believe that God is infinite, and that no one religion can encompass or explain everything there is to know about God. Therefore, while Judaism is the best fit for me, I do not believe that this makes other religions invalid. And in some ways, looking at God from other points of view helps me bring new perspectives and perhaps helps me understand the teachings of my own religion.

My mother's conversion, and my parents' wedding, were both done under the auspices of Reform Judaism. As such, it is considered invalid by many Orthodox people, which also means that they don't feel that I am really Jewish. And this offends me more than anything I can think of, because I love Judaism. It is my spiritual place, to which I can always return. Being told by some parts of the Jewish community that if I want to be considered Jewish I have to go through the conversion process when I have grown up living my life as a Jew really hurts. Why is my mother's Reform conversion less valid than an Orthodox one? What makes her Beit Din different? Why am I considered to be not a real Jew, when people who abandon any pretense of being a part of the Jewish community are considered Jewish because their mothers were born Jewish?

A good friend of mine is in the process of converting to Orthodox Judaism, having grown up Episcopalian. I met her and became friends with her fairly early in this process. Her interest in Judaism came from a chance remark from someone she dated briefly (he was offended that she didn't know shellfish wasn't kosher). She decided to go and research Judaism. On the basis of her researches and her experiences with Jewish friends, she had decided that she wanted to become an Orthodox Jew. I was fascinated and slightly appalled. To me, Orthodox Jewry meant people like Rabbi Meir Kahane in Israel and Rabbi Avi Weiss in my parents' neighborhood-- people who said that being a Reform or Conservative Jew was invalid, and that Arabs shouldn't be allowed in the State of Israel. Granted, I knew Orthodox Jews from science fiction fandom who were somewhat more tolerant, but I thought them to be the exception rather than the rule. After all, one of the Orthodox women I knew from fandom was constantly arguing with me over what I ate and the fact that I traveled on Shabbes.

But after many arguments and discussions and occasionally walking away from each other passionately hating one another (well, no, I never hated her, but I know I gave her lots of justification for righteous anger toward me), she became a good friend of mine. In fact, our discussions are probably one of the reasons why my interest in Judaism was renewed. She even let me read her conversion application, which was honest, thoughtful, and thought-provoking.

And now I am suddenly much more interested in being frum (imagine that!). I don't want to lead her astray, or out of the paths of observance. But while I learned an awful lot about prayer and ethics and how to read Hebrew in school, I didn't learn what it's like to be an Orthodox Jew. I didn't learn how to keep a kosher home, or how to structure one's cooking schedule around candlelighting/Havdalah times. Even spending the occasional Shabbat with my friend over the past few years hasn't really taught me how it feels to be observant. I went to her local Orthodox shul with her for the 2nd day of Rosh Hashanah, and I was so fascinated by the differences in procedure that it was almost difficult for me to concentrate on praying!

But at least right now, I have no interest in becoming completely frum. I have no objection to living with someone who wishes to keep a kosher home, and as I say on my "About Rachel" page, I find myself becoming more interested in "adding holiness" to my life as I grow older. I like the idea of saying morning and evening prayers, and of saying blessings over the food I eat as a general rule. It's not that I think that God will love me better if I become more observant; it's that observing these little rituals helps me become more conscious of God's presence in all of Creation. Does this mean that I won't travel on a chag or on Shabbat, or that I will only eat in kosher restaurants? No. But it does mean that I will try to be aware of the world around me and God's presence in it. [2000/02/06: I've realized that the closeness I'm searching for will come more easily if I become more observant. I am going to try and at least have a "kosher section" in the kitchen I share with a non-Jewish roommate, and have a workable plan. Then I'll start getting used to "really" keeping Shabbes... and who knows what might happen!]

(written 12 Tishri 5760)

Tonight is the night after Ne'ilah, the night after the end of the Yom Kippur fast, the night after the most introspective and stressful day of the year. I went to a non-traditional service this year, and found that I missed the traditional Yom Kippur readings. The Am Tikva readings tried to be inclusive and were obviously designed to avoid making people feel bad about being gay, but there are other parts of the service which I find incredibly important which were missing. There was no feeling of closure, because all of the beautiful liturgy describing the close of Yom Kippur had been removed ("the gates are closing-- we must make sure that we have truly repented"). On the other hand, because I had so much time between Shacharit (the morning service) and Ne'ilah, I was able to have a long talk with someone I felt that I had truly failed to deal with fairly and honestly, and we were able to straighten out many misunderstandings.

(written 06 February 2000)

My friend Ailsa persuaded me to go to the Shlomo Shabbes in Sharon MA with her this weekend. She's been trying to get me to go to one for... goodness, for at least a year. I had no idea what to expect, other than music and reasonably welcoming people. My father owns one of Shlomo Carlebach's records, but never seemed to express much of an opinion of him as a person. I liked the record, and remember passing the Carlebach Shul many times as a high school student. I seem to remember asking my father what that shul was like, but I don't remember his answer. In any case, he never took me there, and for some reason I never went by myself.

Well, they were more than just reasonably welcoming, they were downright open and warmhearted. Friday night the stories that were being told emboldened me to talk a little about my own spiritual quest. I didn't mention being bisexual and having a girlfriend-- besides being inappropriate, it wasn't at the top of my mind. I wish I remember what exactly I said, because it was pretty close... I remember mentioning that I do want to observe a halachic life, which I do, but that I'm having problems getting started... "taking two steps forward and three back." One of the men there, Yehoshua, had a suggestion that, as he put it "might be so simple and obvious that you've already looked at it"; why not simply start by saying that the Torah and the Mishnah are, truly min ha-shamayim? Now, I had had this conversation from another point of view before, with my friend Sarah, who had talked about how she wanted to be a rabbi, but could not see herself becoming a Conservative rabbi because the Conservative movement does not teach that Torah is min ha-shamayim, literally, "from the sky," from God. But I was raised somewhere between Conservative and Reform, and taught to view the Torah and Mishnah as a human interpretation of God's wishes, rather than directly dictated to Moshe Rabbeinu. And so I tended, before now, to dismiss the concept of "Torah min ha-shamayim" as myth and superstition, inappropriate for modern times. Indeed, it was one of the problems I had with my Hebrew high school classes (at the Jewish Theological Seminary Prozdor program): how could they tell me that Mishnah had to be obeyed, if it was human interpretation of the Torah? And then as a freshman at Brandeis, the Torah was treated as just another religious text to be analyzed in Humanities 101 (along with the Book of Matthew, the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Tao Te Ching, the Bhagavad Gita, the saga of Gilgamesh...), I got thoroughly confused and perplexed.

Now, my parents are what I call "Jewish humanists." They encouraged me to read widely from a very early age... one of my sister's and my most cherished possessions is our extensive archive of Cricket Magazine (currently in her old room in our parents' apartment) to which I first started subscribing at the age of six or seven. Now, I wholeheartedly recommend Cricket to any child who is able to read at that level (and if they can't, there are magazines for younger readers by the same publisher). But even with a bright kid-- perhaps especially with a bright kid-- you can't just leave them to read stuff by themselves. And I read voraciously... if my parents didn't specifically say "leave that till you're older," I'd read it. Or at least try-- reading National Velvet at the age of four (it was before my sister was born, so I couldn't have been older than four or barely five) wasn't nearly as much fun as reading A Wrinkle in Time at the same age. And I was an adult before I could read the "real news" parts of the newspaper... even now, I tend to skim them.

(written 07 February 2000, continued from previous)

So when I got to college and read lots of other religious books, it wasn't really new. Heck, Cantor Piltch (the cantor of the Conservative synagogue my parents belonged to when I was batmitzvahed) and I had long conversations about Mark Twain's Letters from the Earth and other philosophical books dealing with religion from angles other than Jewish. Fortunately, this didn't detract too badly from my ability to read Torah and Haftorah (I hope!) and I learned a lot about how Judaism and other religions are similar and different. In fact, it was Cantor Piltch who recommended that I read C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters and pointed out the Christian symbolism inherent in the Narnia books (that was a bit disconcerting, and so terribly obvious when pointed out).

And several of my batmitzvah presents were books (of course), including several books of Jewish folktales, including some stories that were obviously cabalistic in nature. (I strongly recommend the children's stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer, the fairy tale series beginning with Elijah's Violin, and Nathan Ausubel's Jewish Folklore for parents and children to sit and read together and separately.) So I knew at a fairly early age that there was magic in Judaism; but, like the folktales of other cultures, it seemed to be something relegated to the past, to fantasy.

So, like many Jews, when I encountered Wicca in college, I thought it was really neat, and did indeed have some experiences that can't easily be rationalized away. I even married another Jewish pagan, and while we had a Jewish wedding ceremony, we didn't practice Judaism in our home. But Wicca, while interesting, and valid for those who follow its precepts, didn't feel right to me. In fact, some of the most interesting people I met during this period of explorations were people exploring the mystic side of Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Native American religions, and other longstanding religions. As another formerly pagan friend pointed out, Wicca is a conglomeration of what we know about the old matriarchal religions; not just Celtic, but also Greek and Norse.

One thought of course, is "could I bring my Jewish girlfriend, as my girlfriend, openly into this community?" Granted, we are both bisexual, and if we decided that we wanted to have husbands instead of being partnered with each other, I believe that we could do that and still remain friends. Our relationship is expressive and loving, but not nearly as sexual as any other relationship that I have had. Curling up together, hugging... for now, until we decide our next steps, it's enough (for me, anyway) to know that she cares as much as I do. If it turns out that she truly is my basheret (destined one), then, hopefully, a truly spiritual frum community will be able to recognize that. (For that matter, hopefully my parents will be able to recognize that!)

But the question still remains: what of those frum people who are definitely homosexual, not bisexual, and can't make a conscious decision to keep all same-sex relationships at the level of beloved friendship, and who must remain closeted in order to remain in the community that they love? What of them? I wonder, especially after having read the book Holy Brother by Yitta Halberstam Mandelbaum, what gentle, loving, welcoming Reb Shlomo would have had to say about it. Surely he saw same-sex relationships during his years in Haight-Ashbury; I wonder what he thought?

16 Adar 5760 (23 March 2000)

Well, my girlfriend has broken up with me, so a lot of the musings above have been put on hold until I have to deal with them. I will eventually, but right now anything having to do with starting another relationship is somewhat painful. I guess she wasn't my basheret after all.

On a happier note, my dear friend Ailsa, who has been in the process of converting to Orthodox Judaism (she had asked me to proofread her application to the Va'ad; I found it to be very well-written, truthful, and thought-provoking), is getting married this summer. Her betrothed is not Jewish, but willing to be observant, and to add Jewish elements to the wedding. And I was right about the friendliness of the Shlomo chevra; we were all at the Purim Seudah in Sharon on Tuesday night, and (Rabbi) Nossen Schafer and Chana Schafer both assured her that they would be welcome. Nossen may even be willing to perform the ceremony, which would mean a lot to Ailsa. Ailsa and her betrothed are planning to buy a house in Sharon; they and Ailsa's teenage daughter are very excited about it. And I get to organize a choir for them!

At Purim, Nossen told stories about the Ribnitzer Rebbe, who was evidently renowned as a miracle worker. He saved the town of Ribnitz from the Nazis by praying, and Eliyahu came in the guise of a Nazi general and told the soldiers to go away. Nossen told us that the wife of the Ribnitzer Rebbe would only retell stories that she had heard from someone who could say they had experienced them, so the story must be true. Nossen believes that in the last years of his life, the Ribnitzer Rebbe lived almost entirely in the Olam Ha-Ba -- the World to Come. Which may be the case. He passed on a blessing from the Ribnitzer Rebbe to all of the people who came, individually. Do I believe this? Well, no, but I want to believe that there are still people that holy in this world. And I know that Nossen believes it, and he is one of the most truly holy people I know... not totally outside this world, no, he teaches and writes computer programs as well as leading the chevra, and is very aware of how to deal with the world. But he has a gentleness and openness about him, not prejudging anyone, letting people tell him what they need to, teaching in stories, answering children's questions, being kind to interruptions. Does this mean that he believes everyone about everything? No, of course not. But he met the Ribnitzer Rebbe and found him to be truly a transcendent personality, and so I cannot but wonder. In any case, I will take my blessing with the true lovingkindness with which it was meant, and enjoy what goes right rather than wallowing in what goes wrong.

I have managed to keep the last two Shabbatot entirely on my own; I started a little late because of not quite managing to get out of work on time, but otherwise I've managed to keep from doing any major slipups. This weekend is Lunacon and I will do my best to keep an observant Shabbat there as well. It helps that there is a reasonably large group if observant SF fans (the "Kosher Konspiracy") who have already helped me by showing me that it is possible to be observant in the real world, without being pushy or holier-than-thou.

I still haven't yet kashered a corner of my kitchen, partially because it seems like such a large (and expensive) project. Once of the Kosher Konspiracy folks, Mordechai, reminded me that I need to take all new dishes to the mikvah before using them, so my new crock pot (a birthday present from my parents) is still factory-sealed. And this also reminded me that I want to go to the mikvah at the appropriate time next month (I missed the appropriate time this month), so I'd better start looking into it. Though, as an unmarried woman, am I really supposed to?

(written 4-7 June 2000)

This has been a weekend of interesting contradictions. Or perhaps it's just a picture of the vast spectrum that is American Judaism-- I'm not sure.

This weekend is my cousin Beth's wedding, and so this week was spent mostly in preparation for that. Of course, despite having a three-day weekend, which means, for me, having two whole days to do chores instead of just one. Of course, I left the laundry and making lunches for work to late Monday, but I was well-rested and relaxed when I got to them. Then I spent the rest of the week rushing around during my evenings in order to get everything done.

There are certain weekends where I've consciously decided beforehand that I won't be observing Shabbat. This is one, because I'm spending it with my non-observant extended family, all of whom I love dearly, and whom I don't get to see very often. So in order to be able to spend time with my immediate family, the "ought-to-be-family" friends that we're staying with, and my extended family, it's necessary to drive on Shabbat. And I really hate making life difficult for the people I love, and coming over holier-than-thou. Maybe someday, my Shabbat observance will just be instinctual, or it will become more important than family, and I won't be able to put it "on hold" for them, but somehow, I hope not. So I consciously decided that this would be a Shabbat celebrated the way that my immediate family has always celebrated Shabbat-- together on Friday night, lighting candles, saying Kiddush, laughing and singing songs and being together as a family, but not being otherwise Shabbat-observant. This still has the spirit of Shabbat, the joy of being together with family and friends to take a step into the sacred.

So as a way of bridging the gap between my family and my new observance, at least for myself, I decided to bake and bring challah. Some months ago, I finally found a recipe for the perfect bread machine challah-- sweet, not too dense, and an easy-to-braid dough. So I've been baking it (almost) every Thursday night since.

This past Thursday night started typically for me. I ran errands on my way home from work, came home and started the challah, did dishes, dragged my roommate off for Indian food (it was far too hot to cook dinner, and the restaurant around the corner from us has a fabulous vegetarian thali), came back and braided the challah and set it to rise, and busied myself with other chores (in this case, wrapping my cousin's wedding present and reconciling bills with my roommate). Of course I had to call my parents (and sister) and ask, "Sesame, poppy, or plain?" and double-check how we were meeting at the airport, since I was flying in from Boston, and they from New York City, to Detroit Metro.

Not thirty seconds after I put the phone down, it rang again. It was a dear friend, having a crisis.

She proceeded to tell me a story of star-crossed lovers, religious Jews, whose lives have been ruined by gossip. At this writing, 21 May 2001, much of the story has been deliberately cut because it sparked off more gossip. Aargh.

Why did members of their community -- probably well-meaning people -- feel compelled to gossip about this couple, and thereby ruin their happiness? Simply not thinking, I suspect. There are specific laws against gossip precisely because it is so easy to do. My friend said to me, in great anger and sorrow, "I want to write an article entitled, 'The Laws of Careful Speech: are they only for women, not for heads of the community?'" I could only sigh.

Later this weekend I discussed this with my dad, who said, "Well, people gossip in every community, why is she particularly upset that Jewish people did it?" I tried to explain, but it wasn't until this morning that I remembered that only three years ago, I would most likely have had the same reaction. After all, we forget so easily that the laws against lashon hara -- evil speech -- are weighted every bit as much as the laws of kashrut, tzedakah, Shabbat observance, and modesty. For a pillar of the Orthodox community to leave out any one of these is shocking. And frankly, while people might be more shocked to see an Orthodox woman or man wearing short sleeves than to hear them gossiping, shouldn't it be the other way around? After all, which does more lasting damage: momentary immodesty, or momentary slander?

This was only one of the topics that my friend and I discussed, though it was the excuse for her call. We also discussed our own lives and how we are adapting them to fit our choices of how to observe Judaism. For example, she has always dressed fairly modestly, but not drably. Now she is dressing in shorter skirts and short-sleeved blouses, and it sounds like she's having fun with it. I told her about my beginnings of kosher observance, that I only eat meat when it's kosher, but will eat cooked vegetarian food (including fish, eggs, and vegetable-rennet cheese) at restaurants. I'll also eat meat when it's cooked by my parents or other close family, as I am not yet at the stage where I have to impose my rules on my family.

I told her about my decision to observe Shabbat, except for very special occasions, and about the fact that I've been baking challah. She found this to be comforting, that I could choose things to observe and slowly work my way up -- and indeed, she's been watching me slowly work my way up through the levels of observance for the past five years.

We also discussed sexuality. We are both bisexual women who find it easier to date men, as straight and bisexual men are somehow more approachable, or perhaps more aggressive, than lesbian and bisexual women. She seems to have found a good partner for herself as far as personality and sexual preference go. They both have Jewish identity issues, and are coming from different sides -- she from the very observant side, he from the secular side -- and they may find themselves meeting somewhere in the middle. I do hope so -- there's a lot of good stuff in Judaism, and as I discovered some years back, there's no need to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

We finally concluded our conversation, I was entirely packed, the challah was ready, and I curled up far far too little sleep before leaving for the airport to go to Beth's wedding. I got to Detroit, found my family, and we went off to the lake house owned by people who have been friends of my family since well before I was born. In fact, Steve and my father have been friends since fourth grade, and went to Camp Ramah together as teenagers.

We sat by the little lake for a while, then had Shabbat dinner. We didn't wait for the sunset; at the western edge of the time zone in June, sunset isn't until 10PM. We had my challah with dinner, which was a little squashed from its travels. Steve and Caroline insisted that we sing before dinner, since Dad and Shira and I can sing well, so we sang "Hevenu Shalom Aleichem" and some other Shabbat songs before Kiddush. It was good to do all of these Shabbat things with my family and with my "pseudo-family."

Of course, after dinner I sat down with Steve and showed him the games I had on my palmtop, and beamed them to him. But that was fun too, and then we all watched a 20/20 segment that a friend of Shira's had produced, which was about disabled veterans and their problems getting benefits from the VA (the shot of the room filled with haphazardly piled file folders was particularly effective). It was a Friday evening that could have come from any time in my life, though as a teen I'd likely have spent the evening playing Scrabble with my dad while we all watched a movie on TV, instead of palmtop-geeking. It was quite satisfying as an evening with family, though it felt odd after spending so many Shabbat evenings reading or otherwise occupying myself in a way which didn't break Shabbat observance. Most of the time, if I know I have to break Shabbat on Saturday, I still try to be observant on Friday night, but as Shabbat observance is still fairly new for me, this felt like I was slipping back into a familiar, comfortable, even homey pattern.

The feeling of a homey pattern persisted Saturday morning when Steve made challah French toast, which my father did every Saturday morning when I was a kid. In fact, I have very fond memories of happily eating challah French toast and then trotting off to enjoy youth services at the Conservative synagogue near our house in Riverdale.

I realized that eating French toast on Shabbat morning might be a little odd shortly after I moved to Boston, in 1997, when my friend Ailsa came to spend Shabbat with me. At the time, Ailsa was just beginning to become involved with Judaism, and had not yet submitted her application for conversion, yet it seemed that she already knew far more about Shabbat observance than I did. (In fact, most of what I've learned about how easy it actually is to observe Shabbat has come from the many times that Ailsa, Kathy and I have spent Shabbat together.) Ailsa and Kathy and I were investigating Kadima Toras Moshe, an Orthodox synagogue very close to where I lived in Brighton. It was the first time I'd ever been to an Orthodox service, it was a hot summer day, and I was so worried about appearing immodest that I wore heavier clothing than I actually needed to. (I've since learned how to dress modestly, yet appropriately for the weather, and, in the process, discovered that skirts can be more comfortable than shorts for hot weather, especially for someone who sunburns as badly as I do.)

Anyway, to go back a few tangents, on Saturday morning, I made French toast for Ailsa and me before we went off to Kadima. Ailsa thought this was hysterically funny, that her born-Jewish friend was "so Reform" that she made French toast on Shabbat morning.

We had another good laugh the following summer, when we lived about three blocks from one another in Brighton. I was doing tech support for Sedgwick of New England at the time, which was located in downtown Boston, very close to the infamous Central Artery Project, better known as the Big Dig. Between the fact that the phone lines leading into our office building were ancient and all of the construction, we had phone problems at least once a week. That particular Friday, I'd spent the entire day trying to get Bell Atlantic repair to come and switch us to a new copper pair (we had six pairs at the time, and finally got a T1 at the end of the summer). The company pretty much stopped dead when there were phone problems, and I think it was one week short of the end of the month, which made it even worse. They promised to come and fix it that day, and said it would be fixed by 7PM.

Well, at 6PM Ailsa came over to help me make dinner, and at 7PM I called the office and heard the horrible buzzing that only a wet copper pair can make. I groaned, and called Bell Atlantic again. They put me on hold. I waited, and waited, and finally, phone in hand, lit candles and said Kiddush. Ailsa was extremely amused by this. I was amused by it eventually, but I was really annoyed at the time. But I digress. Again.

Going back to my weekend with my family, on Saturday, after we all finished breakfast and so forth, we went to the Detroit Historical Museum. Which is a really neat place, just the right size to spend about three hours in. We played with the model trains and looked at the model airplane exhibit (on loan from the Smithsonian), wandered through the historical re-creations, and looked at the Motor City exhibit. Not exactly Shabbosdic, but it was fun and I was with my family.

Saturday evening, we went out and had dinner with the various out-of-towners who had been invited to the wedding. It was mostly Silvermans; in fact, when Beth's fiancé David got up to welcome everyone, he opened with "Welcome to the Silverman Reunion." Everyone chuckled. It was really neat to see so many of my relatives, as it's been a really long time since so many of us were all in one place. All of my first cousins (the 20 first cousins range in age from my cousin Stuart, who's 51, to my sister Shira, who's 25) have taken different paths.

All of us are far less religious than our Orthodox grandmother, yet we don't really take after our Zionist/Socialist grandfather either. Shira and I, the children of the youngest son, are the only ones who refer to our late grandmother as Bubbe, and everyone calls our late grandfather Grandpa. Which I always thought was rather odd, especially since for me and Shira, "Grandma" was our Baptist grandmother, not our Jewish one. I still have no idea why we didn't call Grandpa "Zayde" instead.

At this point, I'm the most observant of the twenty of us, and if you've read this far, you know that's not saying much. One of my cousins became a born-again Christian about thirty years ago, but it seems to suit her and bring her peace, which is good. She doesn't proselytize, she just is, and that's good too. Several of my cousins have non-Jewish spouses. Several of those who have Jewish families raise their children much as I was raised: they belong to a Conservative or Reform synagogue, send their children to Hebrew school, but are not particularly observant at home. Which is pretty much the status quo in mainstream American Judaism, I think. My cousin Lauren is very active in her synagogue, as is her husband, and they attend with their children almost every week. I went with them last fall when I was in Atlanta; it's a nice, if somewhat showy, shul, and the members are encouraged to read Torah. Lauren lets her oldest daughter stay home, which I think is wise given that Aline is old enough to start making her own decisions on religion.

So the dinner was fun, though there were no vegetarian options. In fact, they served barbecued ribs (my father said I didn't miss anything). Later, we all went over to my Uncle Morry & Aunt Shayna's house for dessert and to hang out and admire their redecorating (my cousin Julie, their daughter, is a decorating genius). Aunt Shayna carefully made sure to put out the milchig forks and spoons and plates with dessert, and it amused me to see the choices that she had made. Everyone makes different ones -- some people will eat traif out, and keep kosher at home, and that's evidently what they do. I wonder, though, if this observance is simply because they started out keeping kosher, started eating traif later, but didn't want to de-kasher the house. Certainly when I finally get to kashering my kitchen, I'll still eat vegetarian cooked food when I go out, and might occasionally eat meat when I'm out.

The next morning, Mom and Shira and I went kayaking with Steve around their little lake, which was fun and surprisingly easy, then we went off to the wedding.

The wedding was really lovely. It was at a local country club with lake frontage, and the ceremony was outdoors. We got sunshine just in time for the bride to walk down the aisle, too.

The wedding program had an excellent explanation of the Jewish ceremony for the non-Jewish friends, which had a couple of things in it that I didn't know. I noticed that my teenaged first-cousins-once-removed, who were raised in a secular household, also found it useful.

The one thing that the program left out was that everyone should sing "Siman Tov" when the glass got smashed. The flutists (the bride's sister Hannah and two of the bride's friends) were playing it, but I was the only one singing along. Ah well. I think everyone was certainly thinking it.

And so the evening went on... we danced one hora with the bride and groom, and then went on to more modern dances. People were surprised that I went to help lift Beth's chair, but, aren't the women supposed to be the ones carrying the bride? (The dance floor was really much too small... if I ever get married again, it'll be in a place with a huge dance floor so that everyone can go up and dance. We were pretty squished.) Dinner was nice, but after a while almost everyone went outside. It was chilly, but lovely.

And so ended my weekend. In a way it was a journey back to the observance of my childhood. It was good to touch base and remind myself that any observance of Judaism is good, that any continuance of the rituals and practices of our ancient people is important. After all, it's how we've managed to stay around for 5000 years.

(written 6 August 2000)

I just had a lovely Shabbat -- a Shlomo Shabbat, in fact. I was already in a good mood due to getting a lovely job offer from Kenan Systems, but having Shabbat with this group lifted my mood even more.

There were three themes to this Shabbat: it was the first parsha of Devarim (Deuteronomy), it was the Shabbat before Tisha B'Av, and it was the announcement of a wedding between Chaya (a long-time member of the Carlebach Shul in New York City, and an old friend of the Schafers) and Moshe David (a person who is new to the Carlebach group but looks like he'll fit in just fine). There were many people there whom I'd never met, but who had evidently known each other (and known the Schafers) for a long time.

I stayed with a youngish couple, Josh and Marilee Maier. They have two marvelous children: Toovye (sp?) is three years old, and Aryeh is three months old. Toovye is a bundle of energy and reminds me strongly of my new kitten: curious, precocious, and testing all the adults around him. Aryeh is a quiet baby, but watches everything around him intently. It turned out that Josh knows several of my friends (both Jewish and not) from the TinyTIM MUSH. The world shrinks again.

The dinner on Friday night was lovely, though the davening ran longish, and we didn't sit down to diner until after 9PM. I sat near Chaya and Moshe David, and some other people I didn't yet know, and enjoyed the conversations. Some people (including another Rachel) told very moving stories about spiritual experiences they had had when traveling in Israel. I had already been thinking about the issue of Jerusalem being the sticking point in the peace talks, so hearing from people who had been to the Old City was interesting and emotional on a lot of levels.

After going to services and hearing the Torah portion, which gave a lot of food for thought, and listening to the rabbi's talk at Young Israel, I was still fairly confused over the whole issue of Jerusalem. Why, after all, did God tell Abram, "Get up, go, from your father's house, from the land of your ancestors, to a land which I will give you," and then take him to a place where people were already living? At this time, the relatively small band of nomads was not a huge intrusion, so while the people who lived in Canaan were not particularly welcoming, they didn't have to make war on them, either.

It was quite a different story when the Israelites returned to the Promised Land from Goshen; the twelve tribes had grown quite large, and they were an invasion. Now, God only helped them to conquer the "right" cities, but even so, they fought as many battles in the forty years of wandering as the modern Israelis have fought in their forty years of statehood.

So, that evening at the Shalosh Seudos (or Seudat Sh'lishit), the third meal, I asked Nossen, "Why did God give us a land where people already live, where we aren't wanted, and always have to fight or scrounge our way?" His answer was, "That's a very good question."

For a while, when the peace talks fell through, I was considering not fasting on Tisha B'Av (it would be my first time of doing so, also). After all, the issue which divided everything was the fact that we will not give up the Temple Mount, and the Palestinians will not grant it to us. CNN, probably in some misguided spirit of political correctness, had put Jerusalem as a separate entity from Israel on its website weather map for the Middle East.. Many people I know (including my dad's friend Steve Cooper, mentioned above) were extremely incensed by this, and started a letter-writing campaign. Now it's back under Israel.

I didn't think that this was completely unreasonable (and, in fact, found it somewhat amusing), because from the time when I first realized how many issues there are about the State of Israel, I wished that Jerusalem could be a truly international, multi-religious city. After all, universities often have shared chapels (Brandeis, which has a Jewish chapel, a Protestant chapel, and a Catholic chapel, is a notable exception). Couldn't Jerusalem be a shared city?

Well, I'm no longer eight years old, and I know that this would be difficult. But I do wish it could happen. And this is what I think will happen when the Messiah comes: that instead of being divided among ourselves, whether between Jewish and Muslim or between Orthodox and Reform, we will all understand each other, and realize that we've all been on the same journey.

Chaya said something beautiful this weekend, which I will try to reproduce here (obviously, I couldn't take notes on Shabbat). "When Moshiach comes, we will stop wondering about our mistakes, and wondering why we've been punished for so long. We will realize that it was part of Hashem's plan, and that we've been on the right journey all along."

(Here's my new member description, sent on 19 September 2000, for the Temple Beth Shalom newsletter.)

Rachel Silverman's life might never have happened if her mother had gotten into Radcliffe. But since her mother went to Brandeis, she decided to convert to Judaism and to marry a Jewish man.

Rachel grew up all over the United States; in Hanover NH, Miami FL, Oak Park MI, Los Angeles CA, and New York NY. Between moving and family trips, Rachel had been to over half of the lower 48 states by the time she was ten years old.

Rachel attended Jewish day schools through third grade, and then attended public school and synagogue day school. For high school, she attended the High School for Music and the Arts and the Prozdor program at the Jewish Theological Seminary, in New York.

After high school, Rachel attended Brandeis University. She graduated in 1991 with a bachelor's degree in comparative literature. Since then, she hasn't had much chance to use it, having been working primarily with computers.

Rachel dropped out of the Jewish community for a while after college, due to some disillusionments that she has been working through ever since. She explored alternative spiritual paths, but eventually decided to return to Judaism. Since college, she had come out as bisexual, so she went first to the Reform community, believing them to be more accepting. But this wasn't quite what she wanted. She became a member of Am Tikva, the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered congregation, but found it difficult to attend their services when she moved from Brighton to Somerville, even before she became shomeret Shabbat. She had heard about Chavurat Shalom, but wanted to find a community with more traditional liturgy. A friend from Brandeis told her about TBS, and so she began attending, first cautiously, unsure of acceptance, then began interacting more with the membership and coming to services more frequently. She is now on the list of egalitarian leyners and might actually have time to prepare for leyning soon!

Rachel is currently working at Lucent, in Kendall Square, as a technical trainer. She also volunteers for science fiction conventions, pledge walks (including the AIDS Walk and the Walk for Hunger), and volunteering for gay/bisexual pride events. She plans to start taking voice lessons later this fall. Rachel's personal web page (at http://www.gingicat.org) includes her Bubbe's recipes, some thoughts on her spiritual journeying, and music and other links.

22 March 2001 / 27 Adar 5761

Wow, have I really not written anything here since September? A lot has happened since then.

For one thing, I've met my bashert (my predestined beloved). Wow. His name is Jacob, which makes him seem even more destined, somehow... we're getting married on August 5, which is also the 16th of Av, the day after Tu B'Av, which is a day set aside for celebrations of love.

When I was married before, it was to a very non-observant man, at a very non-observant time of my life, and it was difficult to get a Get (Jewish divorce) from him after the civil divorce was final. Now doing things according to halacha, or at least trying to, is very important to me... and I realize how much I have to learn. I do think that we will be following the Jewish marriage traditions as closely as we are comfortable with. Exactly what we will do still remains to be seen.

Jacob and I are both exploring how we want to observe Judaism. We both avoid what I just heard called "high traif" -- those items specifically forbidden in the Torah. In addition, I will not eat meat in a nonkosher restaurant at all, though I will eat nonkosher beef or chicken cooked by family -- for example, by my parents, by Jacob, by a couple of other close friends. We don't have separate sets of dishes for milk and meat, and we haven't even considered what we're doing for Pesach yet, other than going to New York to visit my parents for the Seder.

Before I met Jacob, I was considering becoming more observant than I am now. I attended shul at least once a month and tried to participate in the egalitarian service (discovering just how rusty my Torah-reading skills are). I tried very hard to observe Shabbat and avoid traveling or using electricity then. I slipped to "I'll keep Shabbat between the time I light candles (which might not be actual candlelighting time) and the end of Shabbat lunch" fairly quickly, but was able to stay at that level for a while.

But at around the time I met Jacob, I was becoming frustrated with how difficult it was to live a halachic life. I grew up in a family where Shabbat revolved mainly around lighting the candles and saying brachot over wine and challah as a family. It was special because we didn't say brachot in our daily practices, though I learned later that truly observant people said brachot over all meals. Sometimes I would go to youth services at the local Conservative synagogue, and sometimes I went on shabbatons -- weekend retreats -- sponsored by the Hebrew school or by a youth group. I learned how to be observant around other observant people, and when I spent weekends with my friend Ailsa or with the Shlomo chevra (see above), that's what I would remember.

I am still undecided as to the level of observance that is right for me. Jacob and I started spending weekends together almost immediately (one of our first "dates" was the bat-mitzvah of his first-cousin-once-removed), and we've now been living together for several months. We do have a real Shabbat dinner together on Friday nights-- most Friday nights, anyway. But then we get up Saturday morning late and watch cartoons together. Now, this is lovely and relaxing and brings back memories of childhood, but I still feel somewhat guilty about not going to shul. At the same time, I know that observing halacha is not supposed to be a hardship... but is it really a hardship for me? Or am I just not willing to take the effort to make this into a habit?

21 May 2001 / 28 Iyar 5761

I just noticed when looking up the Hebrew date that it's Yom Yerushalayim. I'll freely admit that this isn't a holiday I knew anything about as a kid. It celebrates the reunification of the Old City and the New City in Israeli hands. Considering what I've been hearing on the news, who knows how long that will still be true... the Old City is in the West Bank, after all.

Like many American Jews, I'm very torn over Israeli politics. On the one hand, it's our homeland. The land of Zion, the Promised Land. On the other hand, there are already people living there. People who really don't want us there, and who don't want to live with us peacefully.

I know from history that the original founders of the State of Israel got pretty short shrift from all involved. The British (Palestine was a British mandate), the United Nations, and the Arab neighbors. I know that many defensive wars were fought. But since I was old enough to pay attention, much of the fighting has been offensive. Prime Minister Menachem Begin may have signed a peace treaty with Egypt, but he also ordered the invasion of Lebanon. And just a couple of days ago, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered missile strikes against the Palestinians.

Think about this. You are a child born in 1970. For your toddlerhood, your parents keep you away from newscasts so you don't see the shots of the Vietnam War. Around the time that you're old enough to be given enough historical background to understand the news broadcasts, a peace treaty is signed between Israel and Egypt, and you think, "Neat!" Then Israel invades Lebanon for reasons you can't quite understand ("Dad, why is Begin invading a whole country just to find some terrorists?"), and you see horrific footage of Beirut on the news.

You read Golda Meir's autobiography and begin to understand some of the background a bit better. You go to a shabbaton (weekend retreat) and discuss the different philosophies held by the founders of Israel. And all the while, you keep wondering. Why couldn't the Jews and the Arabs run the country together? Why did the Palestinians separate and demand their own country? They could be Israeli citizens, or Jordanian citizens-- couldn't they? After all, the British mandate known as Palestine was divided into two parts-- Israel and Jordan. There are Arab members of the Knesset (parliament). Why can't it happen?

But I do know that escalating the violence won't help. There are programs such as Seeds of Peace which bring together Jewish and Arab teenagers so that they can look at each other as people, not objects of hate. I had great hopes for this project. But if these children don't get to grow up and work together, because they've been bombed by one side or the other...

And the worst is, I know many Jews whose opinions I respect who are convinced that much of the violence on the Israeli side is justified because the Arabs are bad people. Terrorists. All of them.

And as I said in a previous entry, the first time the Children of Israel returned to the Promised Land, they were commanded to slay the previous inhabitants. Not coexist with them, because evidently idolaters aren't permitted to live. (So I should slay all of my Wiccan and Buddhist friends, now?)

I don't want to give up. But I'm not very hopeful.

9 December 2001 / 25 Kislev 5762
written for my webjournal and reposted here

Tonight is the first night of Hanukkah.

I have mixed feelings about the holiday of Hanukkah. For one thing, Maccabees I & II weren't even included in the Tanach (a Hebrew acronym for the Jewish Bible, which has three sections: Torah / Pentateuch, Nevi'im / Prophets, and Ketuvim / Writings) when the Sanhedrin sat down and decided what books were "canon" (there's an impassioned argument in the Talmud by Rabbi Akiba on behalf of Shir Ha'Shirim, or Song of Songs) . They're in the Apocrypha, which has a fairly different definition in Judaism than it does in Christianity. (In fact, while searching for the above link, I discovered that Christian scholars use quotes from Maccabees to define their Bible canon. Interesting.)

Now, the Hanukkah story is pretty simple. Nasty idol-worshippers come to the Holy Land, stop people from praying to God and insist they pray to idols, and make the Temple unusable for holy rites by putting idols in it. A group of freedom fighters called the Maccabees form together in the mountains and then swoop down on Jerusalem, liberating it. They begin to resanctify the Temple and discover that there is no oil for the special menorah, the many-branched candelabra which must be kept burning at all times. They ransack the Temple and find one tiny bottle of oil, just enough to refill the menorah once. But miraculously, that one refill lasts for eight days -- long enough to press more oil. Hence the reasons why we light candles and eat fried foods for eight nights.

But what I learned in my ancient history class in Hebrew high school was rather different. Yes, there were conquering idol-worshippers. Matter of fact, Judea was one of the countries conquered by Alexander the Great. But while Alexander (or rather, his governor) declared the worship of the Olympian gods to be the state religion, they didn't actually insist that the Jews convert. But as the Hellenes were prone to do, they built bathhouses and gymnasia and so forth. Young Jewish men befriended young Hellene men, and vice versa, and the Hellenes invited their new friends to come to the bathhouses and gymnasia. This horrified the Jewish elders, because Hellenes tended to exercise naked, and the bathhouses were communal... and Judaism is a religion which, even then, stressed modesty pretty highly, even in same-sex bathhouses. And when you add the fact that the Hellenes were pretty well-known for encouraging intimate relations between members of the same sex as well as the opposite sex, when such relations are fairly clearly forbidden in the Talmud (based on a line in the Torah wich says "you shall not lie with a man as with a woman")... well, then, you have a pretty good picture of how the Jewish elders felt about the turn of events. And of course, once assimilated into Hellenic culture, it may have seemed a minor thing to the young Jewish men to pay lip service to the Hellenic gods.

Alexander's reign was fairly short, and his empire was divided into three parts when he died: Macedonia, Egypt (under the rule of Ptolemy), and Syria-Mesopotamia (under the rule of the Seleucids). There was almost constant friction between the Seleucids and the Ptolemys after Alexander's death, and Judea, between the two powers, suffered for it. But in the meantime, much of the Hellene way of doing things became a part of Jewish life. Alexander and Jason became common Jewish names (and still are). And life went on.

In 165 BCE, about 150 years after Alexander, the Seleucids were in control of Judea, and their king was a man named Antiochus IV. He decided to ban various Jewish practices as capital crimes. Some assimilated Jews supported him. Several opposing groups, united by a priest named Matthias (note that he, unlike other priests of the time, had a Hebrew name), became the Maccabees, led by Matthias' son, Judah the Hammer. They defeated the Seleucids well enough to reclaim Jerusalem and the temple, but civil war between Matthias' family and the Seleucids continued for twenty years. Disagreement between Matthias' family and the Sanhedrin continued rather longer.

By all *historical* accounts, the Maccabees were terrorists and fanatics, reactionaries who could only see the bad things about Hellenic culture and not the good. Antiochus IV was a terrible person to have in charge, too, but I'd have hated to choose between a government who wouldn't permit me to be Jewish and one which insisted on defining my Judaism. Matter of fact, on rereading the historical account, as well as reflecting on what I learned in the past, I see a lot of similarities between the Maccabees and the Taliban. No wonder the Sanhedrin thought it best to make up a miracle, rather than glorify these people. And no wonder they chose not to include the Maccabees in the Tanach. (There's a lot more to the story, and the links I give will lead you to it. I also did a fair bit of searching using Shamash.org and Google.)

But what is amazing about Hanukkah is how it has evolved. I used to have a wonderful book by Isaac Bashevis Singer containing eight short stories about miracles that happened on Hanukkah, throughout the ages and the world.

Judaism must have had a winter solstice holiday before Hanukkah, but I can't find any record of it. Perhaps in the Fertile Crescent, it didn't seem as important as the cycle of planting, first fruits, harvest, and winter rains, which is the cycle of Jewish festivals. But in the Diaspora, when Jews went to areas north of the Mediterranean, and especially to Poland, the dark and cold of winter was all too apparent. Hanukkah became necessary.

And for being able to have light in darkness, it almost seems worthwhile that a group of religious fanatics was in power for a hundred years in Judea. Almost, but not quite.

21 May 2002 / 10 Sivan 5762
written for my webjournal and reposted here

Based on the prayer contained in most siddurim. Brought on by Ariel Sharon firing his cabinet ministers.

Note:What follows is my deepest personal belief; do not read it if you don't want to know.

Dear God in Heaven, Rock and Redeemer of Israel, Creator of Heaven and Earth, bless the State of Israel, the place which has been in the hearts of the Jewish people for two thousand years, the place which has provided sanctuary for oppressed Jews from all the earth. Shield it with Your lovingkindness, envelop it in Your peace, and bestow Your light and truth upon its leaders, ministers, and advisors, and open their hearts to Your good counsel. Strengthen the hands of those who defend the land of our heart, grant them deliverance, and help them to gain victory and understanding without war. Ordain peace in the land and grant its inhabitants, whatever their faith, eternal happiness. Make it possible for all peoples to live in peace in Your city Zion and in Jerusalem, the abode of Your Name, as is written in the Torah of Your servant Moses: “Even if your outcasts are at the ends of the world, from there the Lord your God will gather you, from there He will fetch you. And the Lord your God will bring you to the land that your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it; and He will make you more prosperous and more numerous than your fathers.” Draw our hearts together to revere and venerate Your name and to truly understand all the precepts of Your Torah, and help us to learn to live in peace with those of other faiths who may see You differently. Send us not the Messiah without, but the Messiah within, that each of us may learn to redeem ourselves and to understand that every faith sees a part of You, and only together can we see the whole.

Help us to make ourselves ready to see the splendor of Your truth and goodness before the eyes of all inhabitants of Your world, and may everyone endowed with a soul affirm that all gods are part of You, and yet be allowed to view You in the way which calls them best. Amen forevermore.

Places where I've been learning about Judaism include the Being Jewish site and Judaism 101. There's also a history of Judaism in Boston on the Harvard site.

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