June 16, 2009 at 7:30 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: aches, attention
These aren’t so Jewish but they make me wonder.
For the past couple of years my joints have become stiffer. It takes about 5 mins every morning to get moving where I can step on my ankles and knees. I sit on the side of my bed and rotate them and crack them. Then I slowly get up and hobble a long.
My lower back aches in the middle of the night and I wake to crack it by leaning forward and stretching a bit. My fingers creak after half a days work on the computer. My neck gets kinks after long days.
All of these just seemed like growing old. Last week I went to visit the doctor. They took my blood for Lyme disease, Lupis, Rheumatoid arthritis and general inflamation. All the tests came back negative. There is nothing wrong with me from that perspective.
So why is it that after the doctor’s visit that everything just seems to ache a little more?
If I ache now, what am I going to be like in my 40s or 50s?
If it gets worse how will I keep working?
It really does seem like the doctor visit made it worse … now I am thinking about it.
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June 9, 2009 at 8:41 pm (Jewish, mitzvot)
Tags: Bar Mitzvah, drash, Torah, trope
Do you have to do a Bar Mitzvah when you convert? Why are you doing it now? That must have been a lot of work? Where did you find the time? Why did you decide to do it?
The rabbi asked my wife and she said that I would be interested. He asked me to join the class and how could I say no?
What does a Bar Mitzvah mean when you are 39? For me there were several things:
- I had never had a Bar Mitzvah
- I had never had the honor of reading from the Torah
- I had never learned how to chant Trope
- I had the opportunity to study with 7 other adults who came at this from all different directions
- I had the opportunity to learn more
13 years being Jewish, it seemed so right to start studying for a Bar Mitzvah. I would be able to relearn the Hebrew aleph-bet so that I could read. I would learn the trope so that I could chant.
Learning trope was a challenge. I never thought about this much until the class. I have never heard myself sing. I never sing out loud. I have never learned a tune. I cannot even reproduce a tune to a song that I have heard for 20 years. It isn’t that I am tone deaf it is more that I have no musical memory. So how do you learn how to chant if you cannot remember the tune 5 minutes later. It was work. I first transcribed the notes as dots over each letter in the word. That told me where to go up and down. But I lost all of the cadence and emphasis. So I made some dots darker and bigger for emphasis. Now I could go up and down with emphsis. Yay.
The only problem is how do you take a two syllable word and go up and down seven times. So I had to draw the word out in latin characters so that something like b’shayla became b’shay la hahaha ha haah. Now I can see the direction, the emphasis and the syllable stretch. That is what I memorized; Hebrew marked with vowels, trope, dots, and transliterations. A Russian friend who lived in Israel for 7 years could not read a thing.
While I was practicing and listening to my portion over and over I also started on my Drash. I wrote several things here and finally posted my ultimate version. My first draft I sent to the rabbi and he gave me some good advice. Some advice on looking for ways to bring all the ideas together. I worked hard. I sweated and got annoyed. It was all the type of writing that I have hated for years. But I finished and I think that it was better than my first draft. Naso: Reflections of a Nazarite
The day came and I was ready. I did not feel worried or anxious about anything. The women were all worried about crying or freezing because they did not like presenting infront of people. Me, I did not mind at all. I had sent out little Jewish quotes and Omer meditations for the group to work on before the “big” day. I was not worried.
There were 7 of us called to the Torah. I was number 6. The sun was beating down on me in my suit and tallit. I was hot but enjoying everyones’ drashot. My turn came and I was ready. I had my yad in pocket and most of my drash handwritten (the wrong one was in the siddur). One of my fellow Bat Mitzvah leaned over and asked if I wrote in Hebrew or English (such great handwriting).
I walked over to the center of the bimah and started reading my d’rash. About two lines in I lost it. I was about to cry and I had no idea how to recover so I paused. Not that pausing helped do anything but focus me on the fact that I was about to cry. I was thinking “how in the world was I going to regroup and finish this?” I leaned over and looked at my family and friends, smiled and said “this was not supposed to happen.” That got a laught and broke the tension. I finished my d’rash and then had adrenaline floating my eyeballs and deafening my ears. Such a fantastic way to start chanting.
I started. “Velakach ha’cohen et hazroah b’shelah …” I prayed and made it beautiful. When I finished I kissed my tallit that touched the Torah and turned to the cantor and said “I did it.”
I chanted Torah the first time – hopefully there will be many more.
cross posted on Blog Midrash
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May 27, 2009 at 9:00 pm (Jewish)
Tags: being Jewish, frum, Hillel, Shammai
Why be a Jew? Or better yet, why do Jewish things?
Saturday is my Bar Mitzvah. Today I am feeling a bit disturbed. This happens every once in a while but today it stinks because I should be happy about my weekend coming up.
Should one follow the lineage of Hillel or Shammai? Should one follow the majority which the Talmud points out is more important than what’s “halachically correct” and G-d is OK with that (see Oven of Aknai = Bava Metzia 59b)?
I am disturbed by the frum Shammayans. Who are they you might ask? Shammayans believe that:
- Jews who do not practice the way they do aren’t Jewish
- The law is more important than the intent
- Hillel was wrong and Shammai should have won
- Tradition is always right
- Judaism never changed between the Mishnah and the 18th century
- It is impure to daven with Jews who do not identify with their rabbi
- It is ok to belittle their kin and mourn them while they live
- Idol worship is wrong unless it is their way you worship
- Their kashrut is more kosher than yours
- As long as it is kosher who cares how it is done
It upsets me that I have the Christians trying to convert me, the Muslims trying to one up the Christians and the Shammayans trying to do more damage than both of them by destroying my identity and way of life. I can deal with the Christians and Muslims they are on the outside. I am not sure what to do with the Shammayans.
Why bother being Jewish if a significant portion of the same population doesn’t want you to be? And if the assimilated world does not want you to be? Nevermind antisemitism, Shammayans are doing their best to minimize the Jews in the world.
cross posted on Blog Midrash
4 Comments
May 12, 2009 at 12:27 pm (Ethics)
Tags: Christianity, Ethics, Islam, Judaism, moral relativism, morals
How can you not be a moral relativist? You had to learn your morals from somewhere. After you learn what the moral behavior is you need to do it in relative terms to the situation.
The rabbis had figured this out a long time ago. If things were not relative to the situation why do we need a fence around the laws in the Torah. This fence or grey zone is ever widened so that you do not accidentally transgress.
Today we have the Pope giving yet another speech on the moral relativism of the world. Relative to what? Jews and Christians drink wine and Muslims don’t. Christians and Muslims eat chicken with milk but Jews do not. The law says do not boil the kid in the mother’s milk. And what does this have to do with chicken? To keep you from mistaking meat for chicken it is applied to all meats besides fish. It is all relative.
Christians pick and choose which laws they would like to follow from the Hebrew bible but remain moral relative to the teachings of Jesus. Jews do not follow any of the teachings of Jesus or Mohammad. Relative to which religion do we make the morals work?
Let me give another example where all three religions would agree. Stealing is wrong. It seems very clear. So let me ask you at what point do you believe it is stealing? Let’s say you work in an office all day long and:
- You remember you have a few things to do at home and you take a piece of paper and write down your list and you bring it home. Are you stealing?
- You have to buy your mom a present and you have some time before your next meeting, so you use the computer at work and buy a gift. You use both company time and their computer is that stealing?
- You are going to professional meeting not associated with work and you forgot a pencil. You go in the closet to get a pen and pencil and bring it with you.
- You need to print something out at home and you do not have time to go to the store so you bring a few sheets home.
- Your kid needs a notebook and you have an unused one on your desk. You bring it home for him to use.
Have any of these made you think that you were stealing?
Technically speaking these are all stealing. Now what if your company has a policy that allows you to do any one of these things every once in a while. Now when does it become stealing? How frequent do you need to do it to be stealing?
Moral relativism is a human trait. Those who believe that they are not moral relativists really need to provide me some good proof because I just don’t believe it.
Cross-posted on Blog Midrash
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May 10, 2009 at 9:49 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: poem
It was May of 2009
Spring was in full bloom
Joy of its arrival in the air
Justin-Jinich was just 21
She was shot several times by a man wearing a wig
It was planned
He would kill Johanna and any Jew
Justin-Jinich was just 21
She was beautiful and must have been smart
She was studying at Wesleyan
And was looking to graduate the next year
Justin-Jinich was just 21
Her mother a survivor
From the Shoa she did escape
But it all ends here for Justin-Jinich
———————————————-
I can’t even begin to describe why this has touched me so much. I read the story as I prepared to go home for Shabbat dinner. It ruined my evening and I kept coming back to it for most of the weekend.
It is not like these things do not happen a lot in the world. However, this and a comment by a woman who questioned whether antisemitism really exists, really made this stick in my mind. So much so that I had many fantasies of bravado and chest beating to show how proud I am to be a Jew. I won’t repeat what was going through my mind.
I am sorry for the parents of this young lady. I hope they are able to move on in their lives. I hope that the murderer is blotted out of our memories from now and forever.
I am sorry that the commentor got me so riled up. May she open and her mind and learn a story good for all people - not a story so biased with hate and seething.
2 Comments
April 27, 2009 at 9:34 pm (Ethics)
Tags: bad, feeling, good, guilty, rules
Why do we feel guilty? Is feeling guilty bad? What do we need guilt for? Is there such thing as too much guilt or perhaps too little guilt?
Catholic guilt. Jewish guilt. It seems that there is plenty of guilt around, enough that we blame our heritage for it. So is guilt really that bad?
I have a nine year old boy and a six year old girl. It is interesting to see when they are feeling guilty. My daughter sneaks around and tries to avoid eye contact and my son pretends it was an afront to his personal being. Guilt in this case is the recognition that they have done something wrong. How wrong? Enough wrong to feel bad about it. Enough wrong to try to avoid it. Is that bad or good that they feel guilty for what they have done?
I have worked with many people who just do not feel guilty when I would. “Just ask for forgiveness later. Do not worry about it.” They go ahead and do what they wanted to do and do not show any sense of guilt for it. It does not have to be something illegal it can be as simple as doing something after the boss has said they did not want it done. For me, I feel guilty on those occasions.
Then there is the extreme. I went to a show with Ira Glass for “This American Life” this past Thursday. He told a story of a Florida judge that made petty thieves walk outside the place they stole from with signs that say “I stole from this place.” They interviewed one 19 year who stole soda, candy bars and a thing of milk. She had no remorse and no feeling of guilt at all. Even after walking around for 2 hours with a sign. “All I stole was milk for my baby,” she would say. Would some sense of guilt be good in her case?
Isn’t the sense of guilt a barometer? Doesn’t it measure your sense of importance of the rules? Doesn’t a well learned set of rules provide that measure of guilt that keeps you in check? If the guilt goes away, how likely are you to follow rules? If you have to much guilt, have you an unhealthy relationship with those rules? Why feel guilty? Do we need it for a well functioning society?
Cross posted on Blog Midrash
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April 16, 2009 at 9:59 pm (Torah, conversion)
Tags: Bar Mitzvah, drash, Naso, Nazarite
Here is the law for the Nazarite:
[This is the law] when a man or woman expresses a nazirite vow to God. He must separate himself completely from wine and wine-brandy. He may not even drink vinegar made from wine and wine-brandy. He shall not drink any grape beverage, and he shall not eat any grapes or raisins. As long as he is a nazirite, he may not eat anything coming from the grape, from its seeds to its skin. As long as he is under nazirite oath, no cutting instrument shall touch [the hair on] his head. Until he completes his term as a nazirite to God, the uncut hair that grows on his head is sacred. As long as he is a nazirite to God, he may not have any contact with the dead. He may not ritually defile himself even when his father, mother, brother or sister dies, since his God’s nazirite crown is on his head. As long as he is a nazirite, he is holy to God. – Naso 6: 2-8 (bible.ort.org)
How am I like the Nazarite? How can I relate to those foreign and restrictive sounding rules? How can I relate to the story?
The Nazarite self-selects him or herself. He chooses to follow the restrictive laws of not eating or drinking any thing made from grapes. He chooses not to cut his hair, and chooses to separate himself from his family and friends during important death and mourning rituals.
I grew up in the midwest. I was a child of WASPs (white Anglo-Saxon Protestants). My childhood was very “American” and nominally Christian. We participated in all the “American” holidays and rarely a day existed where we stuck out. I don’t ever remember feeling like we were not part of the whole community.
In my 20’s, I decided to convert to Judaism. I never had an attraction or feeling that I was Jewish growing up. I do not even recall having known a Jewish person. However, becoming Jewish in the assimilated Jewish world reminds me of the Nazarite in the Biblical Jewish world. Firstly, my family and I do not do Christmas. This was the hardest thing for most of my family and friends to understand when talking about conversion. “How can you not do Christmas?” “Does that mean you won’t have a Christmas tree anymore?” Nope. Next I took on a whole new set of holidays that do not intersect with my previous holidays (except Thanksgiving). This, of course, makes scheduling family visits much easier because we do not have to pick which family we go over to break fast or have Passover dinner. Finally, I took on a whole set of rituals around Shabbat and Judaism.
Each of these separate me from the community I was in. I live within the same community but now have things that make me stand out.
These things that make me stand out are all good. I have replaced Christmas with a year full of wonderful holidays that I have incorporated into my family’s rituals. These Jewish holidays mark each season and provide a celebration in its place. We have eight days of lights for Channukah in Winter, the festival of Purim in the late winter and Passover in Spring. Summer is concluded and fall started with Rosh Hashanna, Yom Kippur, Succot and Simchat Torah.
When there are no holidays we have Shabbat each week. The weekend flies by if I do not have the chance to sit down with the lit candles and say the prayers over wine and challah. I look forward to this end of week marker as well as the full day with my family and without my work. These holidays and rituals bring me into a warm community, provide context and guidance to daily life and give me comfort and guideposts through lifecycle and holiday events.
Like the Nazarite I have chosen to be different than the general population. The Nazarite is a Jew who chooses to do things different for a greater sense of commitment to God. I chose to be different to participate with my family in a community and to provide a path to live my life .
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March 31, 2009 at 9:04 pm (Torah, conversion)
Tags: choice, different, Naso, Nazarite
Naso chapter 6. I am contiplating how I can relate to this portion? Is there anything about the Nazarite that I see reflected in myself?
- No wine
- No grapes
- No vinegar
- No alchohol
- No cutting of hair
- No going anywhere near dead people, even your family
I couldn’t be a Nazarite. There is no way I could give up that beautiful glass of wine with a plate of fresh tomatoes drizzled with balsamic vinegar. No really.
How am I like the Nazarite? I grew up in the United States as an American. A white anglo-saxon protestant (Catholic) male in the US. I was part of the majority and there was little about our family of 4 with 2 kids, dog, cat and 2 cars that was different. Then I made a choice. A choice like the Nazarite to make myself different. To eat and drink different, to dress different, and to have different life-cycle rituals. Choosing to be Jewish is much like the Nazarite is to that Jewish world s/he grew up in.
Maybe I am more like the Nazarite than I thought. Me the Nazarite.
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March 30, 2009 at 9:11 pm (Ethics, Torah, mitzvot)
Tags: Exodus, Moses, murder
As I drove home, I was thinking of the passover story. I was struggling with this.
The story begins in Egypt with Moses the prince of Egypt. Moses is living a pretty good life as far as we can tell then he murders some one. He murders a person who is beating on a slave.
Moses banishes himself and then is picked by G-d to save his Israelite kin. Why would G-d pick a murder? Why does Moses become our greatest prophet? Why do we not hear of this again even after Moses walks down Sinai with the words of G-d?
Thou shalt not murder. לֹא תִרְצָח -Exodus 20:12
So do this mean that it is sometimes ok to murder? You can murder and become the prophet of a people. Or is there something different because Moses had not learned about this law yet?
cross posted on Blog Midrash
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March 26, 2009 at 8:11 pm (Ethics, Jewish, Torah, mitzvot)
Tags: doing good, halacha, Jewish, Jewish journey, mitzvah, mitzvot
Ah now I am Jewish, all the hard stuff is behind me right? All I have to do is continue on living the way I have always been living? What changed? One day I was a goy the next a Jew. You cannot tell me that the day makes a huge difference.
So why not jump into doing all the halacha? Why not do all the mitzvot at once? Whoa nelly. I do not jump both feet into anything and with this I did not even have an idea where to begin. It is not even something I had ever encountered until a few years before.
So my wife and I (yeah we got married in there somewhere) decided that together we would start incorporating different mitzvot into our lives. (Since she is not orthodox we did not venture down the halachic path.) The first thing we did was to incorporate Shabbat into our lives. We made Saturday the day where our professional jobs were not allowed and we would not watch TV or use the computer. Slowly we added more and more things into our lives.
So now I want you to think of this situation. My family is all Christian or something like that and my wife’s family is a participating assimilated Jewish family who used to attend a conservative synagogue. My in-laws feel like they have put in their dues and now do as they please.
The more we do to incorporate Jewish traditions the more different we look to our families. Why don’t we just follow all of the halachic laws? Because that would and does skewer the relationship we have with our parents, family and community we participate in. We have been warned of becoming ”too” Jewish by the Jewish relatives.
I do not live in a Jewish world. I live in a world that contains a good number of assimilated Jews but it is an assimilated American world. Some would say “ah that is too easy if you really believed you would do it all and become orthodox.” I think that sentiment is not fair and very particularistic.
I am proud to be Jewish and I am proud of the participation and ways of my family and myself. It is perfect for where we are today. As I learn more I try to incorporate what I am learning. I am willing to stand out and be different but I am not willing to separate myself from my family and community as a strict halachic experience requires.
Outside of the orthodox world everything is done by my will power. I am learning everything new. The language, the customs, the rituals, the traditions – everything is new. It is not necessarily better than what I had before. My parents did a fabulous job of raising me. They are great parents and in their honour, do not deserve throwing everything out just because I picked a new way of doing things.
As I get all wrapped and emotional about the expectations of the relentless external eyes questioning “how Jewish are you?,” all I can think of is back off. We are all people. How we do our Judaism is way more important then grey line rules. Living as a good Jew in this world is more important then living as a rule abiding Jew secluded from the rest of the world.
If I can be so bold, don’t make excuses for what you do and don’t do. Just do what you do with intention. Make sure that everything you do is done with the full beauty of Judaism in your eyes. That may mean that you do not live up to expectations of your neighbors. However, the most important thing is your family and the community you surround yourself with. They all should see the beauty of the Judaism you practice.
Peace, Shalom
cross posted at Blog Midrash
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