Guest Blogging at the URJ

Hello, readers. I did a guest blog entry, "Black Friday," for the Union for Reform Judaism on issues related to the "December dilemma." I hope you enjoy it.

Generation Ger

Somewhere in the back of my mind I always remember writing these papers for Mrs. Steinberg’s English class: a book review of Elie Wiesel’s Night, a reaction paper about the documentary Shoah, and a term paper on the Holocaust. I can recall the emotion more than the content: the shock, the disbelief, the sick emptiness in the pit of my stomach, the indignant anger, the tears welling up from a deep, deep place.

Until eighth grade world history class, I had remained utterly ignorant of the Shoah (the Hebrew term for the Nazi genocide of Jews during World War II). And then at age fourteen, I read obsessively—angry and weeping—about the cattle cars and the starvation, the selections and the gas chambers. The sheer information overwhelmed me. How could that have happened, then? But it was in Mrs. Steinberg’s class that I first saw the haunting images and started thinking about the Shoah in broader terms. Why? I asked, and the deeper question, How? How could human beings come to despise other human beings so, to ignore their humanity? There is no doubt that Mrs. Steinberg’s classes on the Holocaust left their mark on me, confirmed some things I knew about myself and my values and changed me, too, changed me down to my soul.

I’ve been thinking about those classes and those papers lately, reading an essay by Rabbi Harold M. Schulweiss called “The Stranger in our Mirror” and some other materials I read in preparation for a rabbinical school retreat on conversion and “outreach” (a term usually applied to Jewish efforts to include interfaith families in community and religious life). I read the materials alongside that week’s Torah portion, Toledot, a section that highlights the conflict between twin brothers Jacob and Esau. Rabbi Schulweiss notes that the Holocaust no longer unites the Jewish people as it had in the past; indeed, we spoke about this in our rabbinical school history class last year—the increasing personal distance from the Shoah, the aging and death of survivors, and the dilemma that seems to present for Hebrew School curricula. What happens to Jewish identity and Jewish memory when there is no longer a biological, generational connection to the formative events of the Jewish past?

So it was strange to have these ideas floating around in my head when I climbed up to my parents’ attic to clear out some of my childhood mementoes. Among the stuffed animals and the She-Ra action figures I found a box stuffed with writings—fraught, overworked, terrible poetry and essays on Steinbeck… and my paper on Night. So strange, to see my own concerns about the dehumanization of the Shoah laid out in prose upon paper, when I know the panic and the disgust I felt in even considering that slow and insidious process of transforming human beings into vermin. More surprising still were Mrs. Steinberg’s comments at the end of the paper, in red pen: “I’m reading [this essay] in the cafeteria of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, where my father was given new life by the opposite of the monsters who could supply only death. […] How joyful I feel to read an essay like this from someone who will be on the side of good, not evil, to accomplish rather than destroy. L’Chaim!”

I’m sure I had no idea what “L’chaim” meant—my Yentl and Fiddler on the Roof phase began later, sparked in part by this class, no doubt. L’chaim—to life! Reading it now, that “L’Chaim!” takes on a different significance. In a way, it becomes part of my ancestry.

In Toledot, finding one’s place in the ancestry of the Jewish people is a complicated struggle. Jacob and Esau bitterly battle over the birthright; Esau even vows to murder his usurping young brother; the two are not reunited until later in the tale, after Jacob has been reassured by God that the fate of the Jewish people lay with him and his sons. Before the twins are born, Rebekah learns, “Two peoples are in your belly, two nations shall branch off from each other, from your womb. One people shall prevail over the other; the elder shall serve the younger” (25: 23). These verses became proof texts in the generations of conflict, suspicion, and hatred between Jews and Christians. And in this week’s parasha we also read of Esau’s marriage to two Hittite women—women who “were marat ruach—a bitterness of spirit to Isaac and Rebekah” (26:35). Esau’s pain reaches us through both his actions and his words. In an effort to win his parents’ approval, he takes another wife, one of the daughters of Ishmael, son of Abraham (28:6-9). And when he learns that Isaac has already bestowed his blessing on Jacob, he pleads, barcheni gam ani, avi—“Bless me—me, too, father!” (27:34).

Esau, a Jew born to a patriarch and a matriarch of our faith, feels left out of the story of our generations. I can identify with that, as I am sure many of us can. It is difficult to hear that even the Sages are suspicious of any taint of non-Jewish family creeping into the line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They argue, in Genesis Rabah, that Rebekah, daughter of idolatrous priests, might not have been bothered so much by Esau’s Canaanite wives because she herself had non-Jewish family.

I’m not sure I want Rebekah, or Isaac for that matter, to have been so very upset about their son’s marriages, but what also bothers me is the Sages’ assumption that anyone with non-Jewish family ties (like Rebekah) is inherently less invested in the future of Judaism. It’s the same argument about the constant “threat” of intermarriage and a dwindling Jewish population. I know there are piles of statistics about “the children of interfaith marriages” and the lack of Jewish observance in interfaith households, but those statistics have been changing, and in part any lack of observance might stem from the marginalization of interfaith families in our synagogues and communities. And, indeed, those statistics blur the fact that we’re talking about people—and I mean really, concretely, people we know. Me. So many of my classmates, colleagues, and friends who are ourselves converts or the children of converts or proud Jewish descendants of one Jewish and one non-Jewish parent. Moreover, I saw in the readings for the retreated I attended that so many researchers lump together the children of converts and the children of interfaith families, and both are a source for “alarm” because we lack a biological connection to the generations of the Jewish people. Schulweiss, for example, writes, “[H]e who chooses for Judaism one day may opt to choose out of Judaism another day or else his child may. In halakhic [that is, Jewish legal] terms the infant of a Jewish womb, whatever he/she may later choose, is irrevocably Jewish.”

What does it mean to be “irrevocably” Jewish? How does it feel to be the child of an interfaith family or a convert to Judaism and hear those words? Or to ask a related question, is biology destiny? Can we connect to the generations of the Jewish people—of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of Sarah, Rebekach, Rachel and Leah—no matter our blood or our heritage or our family name? What of the emotional connection I, and others like me, felt when learning about the Shoa?

I would not deny that biology is important. My parents, my Italian-American heritage, my sincere and at least for a time nourishing Catholic background—these affect me, shape me, and neither can I simply will them away, nor would I want to. And biology matters in the history and the future of the Jewish people—a Jew by birth who denies his Judaism can still fall victim to bigotry, as we know all too well. But, in terms of the future of the Judaism I love, the Judaism we teach, I think biology is emotion, at its root. The biology we care about, at least. That biology, those generations, are the stories and memories that we tell and inherit and claim. That biology is about relationships and values far more than it is about blood and pedigree.

Being a part of the generations of the Jewish people is about the smell of Bubbe’s challah baking in the oven, the tzedakah [literally “righteousness” but related also to the modern notion of charity] projects children and parents create together, the response to schoolyard bullying that stems from the knowledge that all people are created b’tzelem Elohim [in the image of God], the conversations we have as a community about Kosher laws and other ritual commandments. Judaism emerges in community, through lived values.

A Brandeis study we read on outreach and inclusion urges Jewish professionals to consider conversion “the first, rather than the last step in creating a Jewish identity.” I would argue that birth, too, is simply a first step. There is nothing inevitable about how a Jew-by-birth will live the values of Judaism in her life—just as there is nothing inevitable about how a new Jew, newly named and emerged from the mikveh, will live the values of Judaism in hers. Both need the support and the prodding of a community of Jews who struggle to figure out what these ancient texts and longstanding practices mean.

Our teacher Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman puts out a call to the leaders of the Jewish communities of the very near future, leaders whose approach to living Judaism will affect converts and prospective converts, interfaith families, and born Jews. In his book Re-Thinking Synagogues, he adamantly urges that Judaism must be a religion for us, and not “ethnic nostalgia.” By “religion” Dr. Hoffman means a combination of spirituality and ethics that speaks to the realities of our contemporary lives. He writes, “The only question that counts for us is ‘Why be Jewish?’”

The answer to that question cannot be only, “I am Jewish because I am the son of Jacob and of Isaac and of Abraham.” It cannot be solely, “I am Jewish because my blood is Jewish.” When the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the professional organization for Reform Rabbis in North America, asks converts to commit to establishing a Jewish home, it points to “the presence of items such as Jewish books, Jewish music, Jewish art, a tzedakah box, and mezuzah, as well as adopting Jewish practices” like saying certain prayers. But the presence of ritual objects and the recitation of prayers say little about the deep, emotional, and resonant concerns of people’s lives. Objects and prayers are empty without the values and the ethics that underlie them. I want to have a conversation about those values; I want that conversation to be what carries me and my classmates through our relationship together as colleages, as rabbis, as cantors, as educators, as Jews, and as descendants and heirs of the generations of the Jewish people, bound in a covenant that leads us to act in the world in loving-kindness and in justice.

V’eileh toldot Yitzhak ben Avraham, “And these are the generations of Isaac, son of Abraham” (Genesis 25:19). What are our generations? A list of names tracing blood and biology, egg and sperm? Or something more? Stories that take time to unfold and reveal. The light in our students’ eyes when they make a connection between the Torah and their daily lives. These are our generations. V’eileh toledotai, and these are my generations: Nicole Lyn, daughter of Janice and Bob, granddaughter of Emma Rose, Dvora Nechama bat Avraham v’Sarah, and a child, too, of Mrs. Steinberg.

Inside Out

July 15, 2008. My mother told me a few days ago that, while I was a bright child—reading at age three and loving school from the very first day—I have always been anxious about academic transitions. On the first day of first grade, my mother reports, I said worriedly, “But I don’t know that grade.”

Orientation begins tonight, and intensive Hebrew class (Ulpan) begins Sunday. I don’t know this grade, either, but my academic style has changed much since the age of six. I love school and I am confident in my academic ability. But this is a different kind of schooling, one that asks not only for intellectual mastery and growth but for spiritual exploration and personal development, for an expansion of head and heart.

In Hebrew, mind and heart are conveyed by one word, “lev.” A perpetual student like me needs to be reminded that the mind cannot guide the body alone; the heart must be deeply involved in any endeavor, and it is particularly necessary on the path to becoming a compassionate, effective,and knowledgeable rabbi. How do we locate the place of “lev,” of heart and mind together?

This past Erev Shabbat (Friday night, the Eve of the Sabbath), the incoming HUC students gathered in the Jerusalem residence of the College President, Rabbi David Ellenson. He shared with us some words of Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig. Rosenzweig called for “[a] learning that no longer starts from the Torah and leads into life, but the other way round: from life, from a world that knows nothing of the Law, or pretends to know nothing, back to the Torah” – a path “[f]rom the periphery back to the center; from the outside, in.”

Who is an outsider? For Rosenzweig, the outsider is the Jew in the modern world, and what is required of that Jew is “a new sort of learning. A learning for which—in these days—he is the most apt who brings with him the maximum of what is alien. That is to say, not the man specializing in Jewish matters; or, if he happens to be such a specialist, he will succeed, not in the capacity of a specialist, but only as one who, too, is alienated, as one who is groping his way home.”

Groping my way through the crowded alleyways and covered markets of the Old City of Jerusalem, I entered the Church of the Holy Sepulchure, arguably the holiest site in Christianity, the place of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus. In the back of my mind, I had always known about this place, and considered the possibility of coming here one day. I never imagined the manner of my visit, the reason for my presence in Jerusalem.

It was strange, I admit, to look at the oil lamps, the crucifixes, the altars, and the intricate mosaics, as an observer, decidedly not a pilgrim. I respected the sanctity of the Church for Christians, stepping as quietly as possible and taking photographs only where permitted. My inside and my outside turned around on themselves like a Mobius strip: the inside of childhood piety now the outsider status of the convert; the outside appearing like a casual tourist mixed with the “inside” knowledge gained from Catholic school; the feeling inside of wanting to share this experience with my faithfully Catholic family and the feeling inside of contentment at being a Jew in Jerusalem.

Rabbi Ellenson in part offered us Rosenzweig’s words to warn us against measuring ourselves only against an academic set of standards, against worrying that those students with “Jewish degrees” somehow have an advantage over the rest of us, against assuming that an ivy-league degree and strong academic ability will be all HUC requires of us. The learning I am about to engage in is the learning of the “lev,” the heart-mind—the kind of learning that requires us each, whether raised Catholic or Jewish, whether perpetually constant in our faith or spiritual seekers, to approach the study of Judaism, Jewish history, Jewish religious law, and Jewish practice from the outside.

Learning from the outside cannot be the disinterested, dispassionate, cold observation of the scientist, but must be, as Rosenzweig urges, a “groping [our] way home.” Home: Jerusalem, Israel, the Diaspora, North America, Judaism, the synagogue, the Jewish people, Jewish text, tradition-based Jewish knowledge, compassion, open-mindedness (and open ears), and the family, too.

Shehecheyanu

I’m not a mystical person, but I definitely expected my entrance into Jerusalem to be moving. If I cry watching commercials, shouldn’t I cry as I enter one of the world’s most ancient—and yet still vibrant—cities, the holiest place of several major world religions, including the religion of my childhood and the religion not only of my present and future but of my future life’s work and calling?

We got off the plane in Tel Aviv at 5:30 in the morning. No one sang when the plane landed. Waiting in line to pass through customs, pushing our way into a shared-ride taxi to Jerusalem, and chatting with the young Orthodox woman next to me (37 years old, 11 children, and a very narrow idea of how one can, must, be Jewish) didn’t exactly stir my soul.

And then it was several days of climate problems: dehydration, loss of appetite, resulting hunger. I felt uncomfortable and out of place. My physical sensations led me to think I shouldn’t be here, I don’t belong, I am not ready for this.

I drank more bottles of water than I can count. I started to feel better. I put up some familiar objects in my new bedroom. I ate. I explored the shuk (outdoor market) in the safety of a group of students and our very able interns. Things started to look up. Shabbat services at Hebrew Union College and an engaging lecture by Dean Rabbi Michael Marmer and President Rabbi David Ellenson reminded me why I am here, and the amazing privilege I have to be studying here, with these people and at this instution.

But today was the first day I felt moved to really pray in thanksgiving and awe—and I mean that in the literal sense of the word—at being here, at this time, in this place: Jerusalem, 2008, nearly a year from my (adult) bat mitzvah and just four years after taking the Torah scroll in my arms and receiving my Hebrew name.

I stood at the Western Wall, surrounded by women, divided from the men by a barrier (mechitza) I thought would dominate my thoughts and interrupt my experience. The plaza is broad and expansive, with smooth light stones. The sun beat down on us, still hot at 4:30 in the afternoon. A few bookshelves lined with prayerbooks stood at the edges; some women sat in chairs, praying quietly near the wall or waiting for friends and family.

Many women approached the wall with fervor, davening (praying) with the traditional swaying motion or pressing their foreheads to the warm stones. Others backed away from the wall when they were finished, refusing to turn their faces on the Presence, the manifestation of God that some believe exists here.

As I approached the pocked stones, I was not overcome by a wave of mystical emotion. I didn’t have any visions. I’m not sure I even felt what these other women sensed as the Presence.

But I was stirred.

Here, between stones rubbed by countless hands for thousands of years, the sincerest prayers were deposited, written on scraps of paper, folded or rolled and tucked carefully into the cracks between the stones. This place marks an interface between the human and the Divine. Some of the prayers may be mundane, but whatever their content, I saw them today as the hopefullness of humans, the potential for religion to act not as a mechitza but as a way to relate: to one another and to the divine. The wall motivates a literal and a spiritual reaching out, as pilgrims hold out their arms to the stones, contemplate their own lives and histories, or pray in the words of their traditions.

I put my hands to the stones, thinking about all the others who had been here before me, praying in thanksgiving or in anguish, making supplications or simply standing in a crucial site in history. I forgot about the mechitza and instead found myself in tears: not fearful tears or sad tears or homesick tears, but tears of real gratitude, in the words of the traditional blessing, for having been enlivened, sustained, and enabled to reach this very moment.

I stood in front of the holiest earthly site for the Jewish people as one individual among many, not standing out, yet I brought with me my entire history. In this place, all prayers are accepted into the cracks between the stones, including the prayers of a grateful convert/future rabbi.

Go Forth

Before we even know anything about Avram, the man who will become Avraham the Patriarch, we learn about God’s command: “Go forth [or, get yourself going] from your land and from your birthplace and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you” (Bereshit 12: 1). In this land, Avram will become “a great nation,” blessed, and a blessing to all peoples (12:2-3). Avram did not hesitate but “went forth as God had commanded him” (12:4).

By no means am I Avram. But I’ve been thinking about him often as I pack up my belongings and fly to Israel. What does it mean to go forth, to leave your land, your birthplace, your father’s house?

While I’m hesitant and apprehensive and anxious, I am perfectly willing to go forth to a new land, to live by a Jewish rhythm under a Jewish calendar, to immerse myself in the Hebrew language, to learn new customs and explore the beauty of Jerusalem, an ancient city with a vibrant, modern life. I’m perfectly willing to leave Brooklyn (my land)—for a time—and travel around Israel, walking on the land of the Tanakh (Jewish Bible), climbing the high points, floating in Yam HaMelach (the Dead Sea).

But leaving my birthplace, leaving my father’s house… ?

My Dad jokes that I’ve converted in more ways than one: lesbian, Jew, New Yorker. As long as I don’t become a Yankees fan, though, I haven’t traveled too far.

I left my birthplace a few times, depending on how you count it. The night before I started college, just twenty minutes from my childhood home, I felt like I was leaving my birthplace forever. And when I moved from the Boston area to Washington, DC, I learned to live outside New England, away from the familiar accent, the good pizza dough in the supermarket, the cobblestone streets and Colonial history. Then I moved to New York, to Brooklyn, and found a new land that began, quickly, to feel like home, hopefully the birthplace of some future Kramer-DeBlosi children.

Maybe leaving my father’s house simply means making a house of my own, creating an adult life. I did this years ago, Rachel and I confirmed it in 2004 when we met under the chupah and committed ourselves to establishing our own Jewish home.

But, when you’re a convert to Judaism, the notion of leaving “your birthplace and your father’s house” is more complicated than striking out on your own to live in a different building, in a different city.

For Avram, leaving his father’s house meant moving, sure, but it also meant leaving the religion of his family—a religion he was skeptical of all along, say the Sages. For Avram, that leaving was seemingly simple, as easy as smashing the powerless idols sold in his father’s store, gods of wood and stone who cannot see, cannot hear, cannot smell, cannot eat.

When I left the religion of my family, I did not do it with the simplistic surety that my parents are wrong and I am right, that their Christianity is tantamount to bowing to false idols while my Judaism is Truth. For me, Judaism is true and right; it enriches my life and provides me with a way to connect to others, to challenge myself to live ethically, to experience joy and wonder and gratitude. But I never want to imply that, in becoming Jewish, I have smashed the religion of my parents into so many splinters, so much dust. I left, yes—completely, sincerely. But I left as an individual, and my family continues to practice Christianity, completely, sincerely.

As I leave my land, my birthplace, and my father’s house—places one never leaves completely and leaves over and over again—I want to think about this going forth as a continuing challenge to learn the meaning of and eventually to enact the call God made to Avram: to be a source of blessing for all peoples. It’s not an abandonment but a crossing. Avram is, after all, “Avram Ha-Ivri,” Avram the Hebrew, the one who crosses over to a new land, a new way of life. I hope to do so without cutting off the past, to do so as an act of connection.