Our Tragic Conditioning

I pass by one of the local high schools every day on my way to work. Usually, there's very little to remark upon. A few kids walking to the bike path who should obviously be in class. Parents zooming into the carpool lane and kids hopping out while the car's still rolling.

This morning, though, was different.

There was a fire truck with lights flashing parked by the front door. Kids were streaming out of the doors -- haphazardly but not panicked.

But my mind jumped straight to the conclusion:

Oh no
Not here
Not again

Please not here

I know the numbers. There are over 100,000 schools in the United States and a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction have had school shootings. There are thousands of movie theaters in the United States and two have been the sites of mass shootings.

The odds are with us.

But the mind is not always rational. It ignores numbers and statistics in the face of what it has seen.

And over the last 20 years, I've seen too much of this:

 So you'll forgive me if it took a minute for reality to set in.

Fire drill.
It's a fire drill.
It's fine.
They're OK.

This is not a post about guns. This is not a post about gun control. This is not a post about mental health care, or politics, or the NRA, or whether schools should hold lock-down drills.

This is a post about what we've become. What we've gotten used to. What has become routine, normal, unexceptional and indistinguishable from one event to the next. Our hearts break over and over again and so often that it's a wonder we can put the pieces back together between shootings.

Or can we?

Yes, I'm Crazy. Meet Ellie's Bat Mitzvah Tutor

"I can open doors and take from the shelves
All the books I’ve longed to hold
I can ask all the questions,
The whys and the wheres
As the mysteries of life unfold
Like a link in a chain
From the past to the future 
That joins me with the children yet to be,
I can now be a part
Of the ongoing stream,
That has always been a part of me" -- Yentl

I always wanted to be a yeshiva boy, in the style of Yentl of course. To study full-time, to argue, to immerse myself with like-minded folks. I still might, but first I have to pass this Torah, l'dor vador, from generation to generation, to my younger child.

If you want your child to study Torah, study Torah in front of them. Because if you only tell them to study, you will instead have children who will one day tell their own children to study Torah.
The Kotzker Rebbe

 I used to have this quote hanging on my office door when I led the religious school at our synagogue. When my life was focused around the Jewish world, the mandate was quite easy. I was always studying Judaism, rituals, holidays, books, web sites, and Torah itself. My kids spent hours waiting for their mom to roll the Torah scrolls to the right parsha, practice her chanting, and prepare to give a drash or lead a Torah study.

Now I go work in a cubicle at an IT company and my life runs on its quarterly calendar, not the Jewish calendar. I'm now one of those parents I was trying so hard to influence when I was principal. Study with your kids. Make the time, It's so important. And study for yourself. Let them see you just flipping through a book where half the text is Hebrew. Easy for me to have said.

It's not so easy, to take the time and make room for Torah when you're not a professional Jew. My own study (and by extension, theirs) has suffered.

So I'm getting radical.

I will be Ellie's bat mitzvah tutor. (She will also study her parsha with the rabbi, but I'll work with her on leading the service, learning how to chant Torah, and all the other ins and outs of the big day.)

Ellie and I have both committed to studying the weekly parsha every week, even if we only takethree minutes to watch the relevant G-dcast video.(If you don't know G-dcast, get to know G-dcast. They have videos and apps for everything Jewish, including at least one for every Torah portion. It's brilliant. www.g-dcast.com)

Wish us luck.

No Writing on Shabbat!

When I originally posted about this Mussar of Writing project, my idea was to"

read every day (done!)
write every day (done!)
post every day (done!).

I'm going to walk back on that last one. Once w eek, on Shabbat, I will skip the posting. Shabbat musings will be for an audience of one. Me.

Instead, I will share a quote about Shabbat by someone who inspires me and a photo of a place that inspires Shabbat-ish thoughts.

Shabbat Shalom. See you Sunday.

The Quote

"The Sabbath is no time for personal anxiety or care, for any activity that might dampen the spirit of joy. The Sabbath is no time to remember sins, to confess, to repent or even to pray for relief or anything we might need. It is a day for praise, not a day for petitions. Fasting, mourning, demonstrations of grief are forbidden.

It is a sin to be sad on the Sabbath day."

Abraham Joshua HeschelThe Sabbath

A Haiku or Two for Nana

William Siegal (July 3, 1923- November 10, 1988)
Shirley Siegal (October 1, 1925-November 2, 1999)
זכרונו לברכה
zichrono l'vracha (May their memories always be for a blessing.)

10-1-25
Ninety if you were still here
Death stopped by too soon

Your voice was boisterous
But it's been so very long
I cannot hear you

RRC Allows Rabbinical Students with non-Jewish Partners (Yay!)

"On September 21, 2015, RRC’s faculty voted that having a non-Jewish partner would no longer bar qualified applicants from admission to RRC, or from graduating as rabbis. The policy change is the result of many years of discussion within the Reconstructionist movement." For more, read this Article on the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College's Website

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I used to be such a stickler about who was a Jew and who wasn't.

• I'd flinch if a non-Jew even tried to dance with the Torah on Simchat Torah. 
• I'd sigh judgmentally when a non-Jewish parent of a bar or bat mitzvah wanted to participate in the more sacrosanct rituals of the ceremony. 
• I argued in front of our synagogue Board that non-Jews shouldn't be allowed to serve. I am so ashamed of that now. Seriously -- who sets up rules to prevent people from joining a synagogue board? 
• I'd count up how many of my aunts and uncles and cousins married non-Jews and didn't participate in synagogue life. And I was self-righteous about my own choices.

But I never really thought about how I was contributing to the problem. Why did Judaism "lose out" to the arms of other faiths and religions?

Would you want to join a religion that was so prickly about your identity? Where people consistently thought of you as an outsider, and at some services, for some prayers, you didn't even count? Oh sure, you're the 10th person in shul this morning, but we don't have 10 Jews so we can't do a Torah service and we have to skip these important prayers. You. Don't. Count.

And now, if you're a passionate lover of Judaism who wants to go to rabbinical school but fell in love with and chose a non-Jewish mate, you can now say I. Still. Count. And so does my partner.

Think of all the times you've felt left out -- just go to Facebook and look at all the cool vacations and parties your friends went to without you. Think back to middle school and high school. It's a terrible feeling, and we as a Jews do this all the time. Worse, we do it to the very people who are brave enough to show up at our door and say

"I'm interested."
"I want to learn."
"I want to participate."
"I want to help."
"I think I might fit in here."
"Can I come in?"

We should respond with enthusiasm. Yes! Of course you can come in.You are welcome here. We're glad you came. Tell us about yourself. Want a bagel?

So Who's a Jew?

Don't panic. We don't have to get rid of the old to embrace the new. I'm confident that Judaism will keep lineage Judaism, for now. In the future, I'd like to see a real acknowledgement that we are all Jews by Choice these days, and we honor people who choose to be Jewish.

I "passed" my Judaism on to my kids just by giving birth to them, but that one connection of DNA doesn't really matter. I've really passed my Judaism on to them over the past 14 years.
We have:

celebrated major and minor holidays,
lit candles on Shabbat,
sent them to religious school,
taught them Jewish values,
kept a kosheresque diet,
said mourner's kaddish together for people they'd never met,
and studied and talked about Torah together.

All to help them move toward meaningful b'nai mitzvah celebrations and, I hope, meaningful and connected Jewish lives. They are Jews, but they also do Judaism.

My husband was raised Unitarian Universalist, and he converted to Judaism before we got married. But even if he hadn't, all those activities above would still have happened. I'm guessing that a Jew serious enough to consider rabinnical school would do the same.

Are people worried that a rabbi with a non-Jewish partner wouldn't do all of those things? Would not raise Jewish children? I predict the exact opposite. What a wonderful example they could set for the interfaith families in their community. You can do this! Follow us. We will lead you and help you, and we know what you're going through.

If I hadn't followed a Jewish path, my children would still be "technically" Jewish. Jewish mother = Jewish kids. What good is that? It gets you into Israel. You don't have to convert if you choose to join a more religious congregation -- but that accident of birth does not always make Jews who feel like Jews. Neither does a perfunctory bar or bat mitzvah about which they will always say, "That was he last time I walked into (and out of) a synagogue."

Naysaying the Naysayers

You only have to read the comments on an article like this to see that people are afraid. The Forward

What if we water down Judaism so much that it isn't Judaism any more?
We no longer have temple sacrifices. We survive and thrive.
Judaism has always (always!) been a changing, constantly evolving religion, absorbing and shedding traditions and rules since the very first days. Why stop adapting now?

If the rabbi is married to a non-Jew, everyone will think it's OK!
Exactly. Say it again without the sneer. "Hey! If the rabbi is married to a non-Jew and is still super-Jewish, I can be too! And my spouse will be accepted here."

How can the rabbi's spouse participate if he/she isn't Jewish?
You might be surprised at how many of the regular faces you see at synagogue, volunteering at events, shlepping chairs and siddurim, are not Jewish.

Also, maybe this can be the first step in including more non-Jews in meaningful ways, ways that make them feel like they belong, because they do.

No one will convert if we allow this!
Oh, you might be surprised. There might be more people converting to Judaism once they find out that it's not a place that pushes them away. Not only that, how many more Jews will stay involved if their entire family is welcome? A good book that addresses this: Opening the Gates


Mazal Tov, RRC! Well done. I can't wait to see where this goes.


(Thanks also to Julie Silver for writing her blog piece a few years ago that really got me thinking about this topic. Julie Silver's Blog)