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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March 25, 2009 at 7:46 pm (Jewish, conversion)
Tags: conversion, Jewish, Jewish journey
Why should I convert to Judaism? I do not like religion? Religion causes all these problems and creates unreasonable people. Why do I need it? Ihave faith in one thing: when I put my feet on the ground it will be solid and I can stand on it. The rest of it forget it. – My 23 year old self
So why did I convert? What compelled me to do it? Was it because I wanted to marry a Jewish person? Was it because I reconciled the idea of a G-d who could let my mother die? Was it because I found a Jewish soul? Was it because I found my spiritual home?
No. I don’t commit like that. I do not jump both feet into the water nevermind a change like this. I eased in. Judaism resonated with what I believed. Here is a list of what I remembered agreeing with:
- I could argue with the rabbi
- I could argue with G-d
- I could image G-d however I wanted or didn’t want
- I did not need faith as a starting point
- Ethics and deeds were more important than dogma
- Heaven and hell were minimized, what was important was the here and now
- Death was taken seriously and had many rituals to help the survivors (not just statements like “she is in a better place now” – oo that makes me feel so warm and fuzzy inside)
- There was a strong history and peoplehood that I could learn about and become part of (I did not have much of a connection with American white guy)
- Sin did not occur from birth, people were not sinners, and sin was defined differently in Judaism – missing the mark
There wasn’t anything that I had a real aversion too. There did not seem to be a strong dogma and requirement to be a certain way.
Why should I convert? Momentum? Wanting to be a part of the life of the person I was going to marry? It, for sure, was not the romantic notion of G-d coming down and touching my soul. I am not that sort of romantic. Not even in my wedding proposal.
I agreed to convert. The rest seems like a blur. I do not remember struggling with it. I barely remember the beit din, even after an hour or more of answering questions. I do remember the mikvah, naked in a room with the rabbi asking questions from beyond the door. I do remember one question (paraphrased): ” Do you know that in every generation the Jewish people are persecuted and it may happen in this generation, are you willing to stand up for the Jewish people?” …
…
…
…
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Yes.
cross posted on BlogMidrash
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March 21, 2009 at 9:09 pm (conversion)
Tags: conversion, Jewish, Jewish journey, rabbi
What is the process to convert to Judaism? What is Judaism about? When would I feel Jewish?
I was in college studying to get my masters in engineering. It was a perfect storm. I was pissed off at G-d, did not want to talk kindly to anyone about religion and I was getting a masters in engineering (applying science to solving the worlds problems). What did religion have to do with any of this?
At this point I had been dating the same women for 5 years. The only reason we did not get married earlier was that we were waiting for me to graduate from college. She was the first person I met in college that was not working on the campus. She happened to live on my floor.
For the first 3 1/2 years her family ignored the fact that I existed. Her grandmother would hand her phone numbers of ”good” Jewish boys who were grandchildren of people she knew – right in front of me. The first time the family accepted me was when I assembled the golf cart that someone else bumbled – then I was in. Huh?
So … the aunt’s rabbi agreed to meet with us. She agreed to start studying with us. She would meet with us every Sunday. It was a 2 1/2 hour drive. I was in the middle of my thesis for my masters and she dumped loads of reading on me. 2, 3, 4 books a week to read. I loved it. It was so different from engineering. It was way harder – engineering was easy.
I would read and then argue with the rabbi. How fabulous is that? I could argue religion and still be ok. That would not work with the Catholic priests I knew … ever.
The difficult thing for me to read was Dennis Prager the talk show host from LA. I think he identifies himself as conservative but he was just infuriating. I used to read his stuff and just fume. There was something so arrogant in his writings. (I do wonder what I would think now.) I used to hold onto quotes of his to just show what was wrong with religion – he exemplified it for me.
I was so difficult to talk to about G-d that the rabbi avoided talking to me about it for 3 months. She had me study the lifecycle and basic Jewish thought. You know Jewish 010. It was the remedial course so that you could take Jewish 101.
The first time we talked about G-d we took the Ramban’s approach. She had me describe all the things that G-d was not. It was a great list. I am not sure that my list would be much different today. But in the end what I was left with was everything G-d was. I guess I could not call myself an atheist.
An intersting thing about my rabbi was that she had a long career as the head of a prestigious private school in Massachusetts. She left it all to become a rabbi. She had a calling late in life and left everything she had. She wrestled with many of the things I was wrestling from the perspective of a woman and she was able to incorporate it into her teachings. This meant that she had many nuanced approaches to the standard theology and it meant that she understood many of the issues I was having with religion.
Eight months of studying and arguing brought me to the point where I had developed a relationship with the rabbi. My wife and I asked her to marry us. She looked at me and told me that she could not marry us because I was not Jewish. I would have to convert first.
How could I do that? What would it mean? What difference would it make? Is there anything in this religion that would make me want to convert? Do I really want to become a Jew?
Cross posted on Blog Midrash
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March 19, 2009 at 8:10 pm (Jewish, conversion)
Tags: conversion, Jewish, Jewish journey, spiritual journey
I grew up in an a-religious household. We were nominally Christian. My mother was Catholic and my father is not into the whole religious thing.
At 16 my mother died. She was a good woman. She took care of us all, my sister, father and I. She made my clothes until I was 12. She made dinner and kept the house. She was always home when I came home, always.
The priest next door came by to visit shortly after she died. My sister and I were stacking wood. The priest said that she died for a reason and that we should just trust G-d.
Ha!
Trust G-d? How was I possibly going to trust a G-d that would let my mother die? How was I possibly going to be able to handle such an off handed comment from a man that did not know me from any other kid on the block?
My journey begins here. Mad. Angry. Antogonistic. I wanted nothing to do with religion. Nothing to do with such stupid comments. There is no god that would torture a person for 2 years and then let them die. There is no reason.
For years I encountered people, Christians who would try to tell me that I had a whole in my heart and if I only accepted Jesus then everything would be better. Ha! That was worth a good arguement. How could I possibly have faith when the only faith I had was that I would wake up each morning and the ground would be beneath my feet.
I went to the Dominican Republic my senior year of high school and dated a young woman who’s mother was a fanatical evangelical. She infuriated me all the time. And the rocking, speaking in tongues and blaming everybody as sinners did nothing to help my interest in religion.
I went off to college and met my first Jewish person (at least that I was aware of). Oh by the way I married her. We dated for 5 years before we decided to get married. I knew that if I was going to marry her that my children would be Jewish. I could not see myself standing on the outside arguing against Judaism if did not know anything about it. That just be stupid. So I started studying with a rabbi.
To make this long story short. I converted, got married, had kids. I am 14 1/2 years a Jew. I study, practice, participate and wrestle. I have been writing about it for a couple of years and now have joined Blog Midrash. My journey continues and I hope to ask questions and make you think. Thinking and wrestling and do things with intention are my tools for my Jewish journey.
For my next step in my journey I will be called to the Torah on May 30th to participate in a group adult b’nei mitzah with 6 other adults. My portion is Naso chapter 6. If anyone has some good advice (I can’t chant or remember a tune) I could use it.
mTp
Cross posted on Blog Midrash
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March 10, 2009 at 10:18 pm (Jewish)
Tags: being chosen, being Jewish, called, Jewish, Nazarite
How am I going to write my parsha about the Nazarite? About Naso? Numbers is so difficult and so distant. It is difficult even when read as a historical text. Here is my thoughts about the Nazarite.
The Nazarite seems like the Jew of Jews. The Nazarite is asked to live within the Jewish world but to separate himself by not being able to do what other Jews do. Sampson was Nazarite. As Nazarite you may not cut your hair, you may not drink wine, and you may not touch the dead. These are some examples.
So what? This means that as a Nazarite you remove yourself from almost every festival or occasion. Even from Shabbat. You cannot drink wine or grapes, this is the basis of every festive occasion. If you cannot cut your hair, you look different. You do not look like everyone else. If your family member dies you may not participate in any of the mourning rituals. All of this makes you stand out in the community.
This all seems very similar to the Jewish experience. As a Jew you remove yourself from the other population by having different rules of eating, dress and lifecycle events.
Do you ever feel like you have been picked to be a Jew? Have you been called? Do you know anyone who is the “Nazarite” among the Jews? Someone who has been picked for a holy and stricter path?
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January 14, 2009 at 10:56 pm (Jewish)
Tags: being Jewish, Conservative, Hasidic, Jewish, Orthodox, Reform
What makes you Jewish?
Are you Jewish if you think you are? If others think you are? If your enemies think you are? Your friends? If I think I am Jewish and I Jew well, does that make me Jewish?
I converted to Judaism 14 years ago. It may have taken a good 6 years before I felt Jewish. Was I Jewish before that?
I know several women who have a Jewish household, raise their children Jewish, attend synagogue and except for the fact that they were not born Jewish and did not convert are more Jewish behaving then their husbands in every way. Are they Jewish?
If you were born Jewish and you live in the assimiliated world and do not practice or recognize your Judaism are you Jewish? The Nazis determined that if you were 1/16th Jewish you were Jewish. So if your great grandfather was Jewish you are.
If you grew up in another faith and converted into Judaism in the Reform or Conservative movement are you Jewish? The Orthodox and Hasidic movements have decided that you are not Jewish if you did not convert by one of their own.
Does it matter what other people think? Are you Jewish if you think you are?
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October 28, 2008 at 9:43 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: biblical, book, chasidic, Jewish, mitzvot, secular
What does it mean to be Jewish? Does doing the mitzvot make you more observant?
What does it mean to be secular? Does doing chasidic halacha make you want to be more secular?
I am reading a book by AJ Jacobs called “The Year of Living Biblically.” I am loving this book. He is making me laugh out loud constantly. He is a secular Jew who has done nothing with Judaism accept put the Star of David on top of the Christmas tree. His family did not encourage any exploration of Judaism. Even his grandmother would walk by Chasidic people and stick her tongue out at them. Now he is try to do all the rules in the Bible over 1 year.
From the opposite direction on Sunday I went to a speaking engagement where the women talked about being raised Chasidic and leaving to the secular world. She left a world where everything was planned for her, even who she woud marry, to the secular world where everything is up to you. In the secular world she has dropped all of the ritual. She did not even fast on Yom Kippur.
Emotionally these two stories juxtaposed leave me very confused. I loved both stories. Neither help answer my questions and my wrestle very well but they do point me to a path of balance and moderation and that will be where I will take my story.
Where is that place that you are observant in a secular world? Can you be Jewish and engage in the secular world? This is my world.
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June 19, 2008 at 6:35 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: assimilate, Jewish
Why be Jewish? Isn’t easier not to be?
99.9% of the world is not Jewish. Unless you are in Israel you live under a different set of societal norms and rules. You live by someone else’s calendar. You have different holidays. You are different.
Many American Jews live an assimilated life. You live and work in the American culture and have assimilated the values as your own. Every day you go to work and on weekends you go to the kids sporting events. You eat what and where you want. You do what you want.
Why be Jewish? What value does it bring? It does not seem to fit in with anything else?
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