Jew Girl

This is my Roumanian cousin; her name and story, both lost, though I believe she died in the Holocaust.

A Jew Girl, like me.

Upstate New York, at puppy class, I stood next to the corpulent, ruddy man, each of us with our dogs--his an improbable yappy "morkie." He told me with an eye roll that his wife had picked it at the puppy shop, lest, I suppose, I should believe he'd emasculated himself deliberately. I had the manly hunting dog, handsome hound Remus. I know he wished we could swap dogs.

He asked me "where in Brooklyn you from?" and told me he had been a truck driver, often delivering to Flushing, Queens. He hated, he said, to make deliveries there. Because, you know, those people ran the warehouse there, "those people of the Jewish persuasion," his lip lifted in a wet sneer, his face too close to mine.

I looked at him.

"You know," I said mildly. "I'm Jewish."

He flushed a dark, ugly red.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean anything by it. You've gotta understand, I didn't mean you anyway. I meant those ones, you know, the ones with the weird beards. But not you."

I was tempted to stomp on his foot, tempted to pull my blonde hair back from my forehead and show him my horns, tempted to curse him with a very evil Yiddish curse and spit on the ground in front of him.

But I did none of those things, thinking of Ella, and myself, and then for a moment, in an unexpectedly clear memory-flash, of the beautiful nameless Roumanian cousin...

...horned, hook-nosed, sheydl-wearing, stingy money-horder, smelling of pickles and the Old Country, praying in a language that no one understands, that keeps me separate and strange...

Jew Girl.

Monsters

I met the little girl on a public beach in the Adirondacks--my parents had taken me there to break up the monotony. She was just my age, lived right there in town, and we got along famously, so my mother asked her mother whether she might not come with us for a couple of hours to play at my house.

I looked forward to that playdate, almost (do I remember it correctly?) counting down the hours. She didn't disappoint. We ran in the woods, swam off my dock, splashed and shouted in the sunshine, concocted water fairy games. In the afternoon, when we were hungry, my mother sent us for peanut butter sandwiches. Walking companionably up the country lane to my cabin, she turned to me, and in her sweet, soft voice, asked,

"Do you believe in God?"

I was not in the least taken aback--even at a young age, I had a formed idea of my belief system, and loved to discuss it.

"Yes," I said. "I do."

"Me too." I smiled at her, and she continued her questioning.

"Do you believe that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior?" she asked, kindly. Not wanting to offend her, but feeling the truth was the right thing to offer, I carefully delivered my default statement, taught me by my mother.

"I'm Jewish, and we don't believe that Jesus was God, but he was a good man who really did exist."

I thought that was a nice compromise, but immediately her face fell. She looked genuinely frightened.

"Then you're going to hell," she said, so sadly. "You're going to burn there. In the flames. It's going to be horribly painful, and it will last forever, the burning."

"That isn't true!" I said, already blinking back tears.

"It is. You're going to burn in hell, if you don't believe in Jesus."

We argued back and forth for a few more moments, and then gave up at the impasse. We both managed not to cry, but the playdate was over. We spent the rest of it in silence, trying to choke down the peanut butter sandwiches. Her parents picked her up, and we said goodbye. I never saw her again, after I confessed that night to my mother the conversation that had passed between us. I know now just how furious mom was, but she didn't let on, not entirely. She reassured me that God was good, and that hell was a made up story to frighten people into behaving. That made sense, and it helped, but the image of the burning hellfires, and me, a little girl screaming helplessly in the middle of the inferno, had stamped itself indelibly on my subconscious...

I think now about what mom said--hell is a story made up to scare people into behaving.

I believe that interpretation, with all my heart and soul, and I question the merit of such a threat. It might work--temporarily--but does a tale of terror, in the end, really nurture and sustain the moral development, the strong superego, that restrains bad behavior?

Hedgehog came home this week from her indigenous camp with two books, written by the camp director, full of Native American monsters. These were passed down through the generations, truly frightening stories of howling murderous hideous creatures of the natural world...told explicitly to frighten children into "being good."

The threat of monsters, of supernatural punishment, is a tradition that crosses all boundaries of time and culture. I clearly remember being threatened with a visit from the Boogeyman--just once, by my paternal grandmother, who was roundly chastised by my parents. She never pulled that one on me, or my sister, again. But like the cruel hellfires that light one's psyche with flickering fear, the Boogeyman will be with me forever--scaring me, but also delivering a tiny frisson of delight. Mightn't we tempt him to visit, just once, to see what he's really like? Or will we be satisfied with the awful stories of others whose bad behavior invited him in?

Motives and morality aren't so clearly drawn as they would have us believe. Simplistic terror texts are met with all the complex range of human reaction--fear, yes, of course--but also fascination, desire, and a welling up of natural wicked curiousity...







note: I would be very interested to hear whether you were, in your childhood, threatened with any sort of fictional monster in order to get you to behave. I imagine the Monster takes many forms, depending on one's background.

Old Pennies

Tonight begins Chanukah, a minor holiday in the Jewish calendar, but festive and filled with light.

As I polish the menorah and wrap Hedgie's first little gift, I'm in my usual strange December state of mind. I'm Jewish, but surrounded on all sides by Christmas--because, of course, I don't live in an 18th century shtetl. But as I do every year, I begin to feel stirrings of rebellion somewhere deep inside.

It helps me to remember the old pennies. Every year at Chanukah, in preparation for our game of dreidl, my Grandma Eva pulled out the bag, sagging under its own weight. The pennies smelled funny, felt funny. But they held strong symbolism: of our family together, our precious faith and tradition that set us apart from others. A tradition that we had to be brave enough to hang onto in the face of the temptations of over-assimilation.

Our December holiday, though its story is grand and momentous, is truly humble in its celebration--potato pancakes, a game of tops, little presents, candles flickering in the early darkness, and, of course, the bag of old pennies.

No, Christmas is not my holiday. And these little Chanukah traditions are all I want--these, and nothing more, exactly as it should be. I don't mind being different.

Turning

Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, fast approaches, and with it comes the opportunity for t'shuvah (repentance and return to a higher standard of behavior). The concept of t'shuvah is, as with so many elements of Judaism, both simple and complex. One can make t'shuvah in the most straightforward way possible--thinking of one's wrongdoing over the past year, ruing those wrongs, and then righting them, or at least resolving to make them right. Or one can be radical in the approach to this exercise.

This year, I'm going to try for a more radical approach to repentance and return. I've been thinking a lot about my family's consumerist tendencies, from the moral, psychological, practical, and financial points of view. We have a great deal--more than we need. We buy a great deal--more than we need. We don't have a lot of money.

Into the thick of my musings comes Hedgie, who is currently obsessed with something she read about with her bubbe in the NY Times, about a family resolved to spend "a year without shopping," in which they didn't buy anything they didn't need for sustenance and survival. Hedgie was caught up in the adventure of it, mentioned it so often this summer that I finally took a hint that I think she was giving me.

So we've decided as a family to do this ourselves. We held a meeting to decide how long (we voted 6 months to begin with), whether there could be room for cheating (yes--Hedgie's birthday) and of course the most important question: what do we consider strictly necessary renewables, what just plain old unnecessary shopping?

It has been actually sort of fun to figure this out. Most things are obvious--no new clothes, new shoes, makeup, perfume, yarn, jewelry (me); toys or geegaws like comic books or gumball machine prizes (Hedgie); guitars (!) and magazines and cds (Sarge). No more roaming the aisles of Target and leaving with a package of Pokemon cards, new nailpolish, and fancy little notebooks. No more Sephora or Fresh, for new lip gloss or scented soap. No more little souvenirs of our trips to Chinatown or the museum. No new party dresses for Hedgie or myself. No manicures, no new tagine (how much do I want one of those things). We're going to put off the furniture upgrades for our living room, and the new kitchen flooring too. No new cell phones or electronic gadgets or accessories. When I lay out these purchases so baldly here, I think they seem completely wasteful. We really do have enough already. So, starting in a week and a half, whatever gets spent, gets spent on groceries and bills. No more recreational shopping, from the tiniest to the largest purchase.

The sort of sad thing is that I think it is going to take some adjustment, that I am so used to saying "yes" when Hedgie asks for something, even if money is stretched tight (which it usually is, these days). I'm so used to saying yes to myself, when I see a little trinket I like, or a new dress. But I'm already feeling a little lighter, knowing that we're going to have to say no. Living outside of our means, even a little, has just become too uncomfortable. Unnecessary spending is a habit I'm thrilled to break. And I'm tired of contributing to the credit house of cards that America has become. Not spending is, to me, a bit anarchic, a bit like sticking it to The Man.

I realize as I write this that there is a certain hypocrisy, a certain amount of posturing in taking a stand like this. I mean, I'm lucky to have the option to decide whether or not to give up frivolous spending. Still, when all is said and done, I just don't see how it could be a bad thing.

One little addendum here before I shut up: I totally support the right of anyone else to shop and enjoy it! I would never pass judgment--this is just something I think would be good for us personally.

and p.s. do you think daily take-away iced coffee is shopping? I hate to say that I do, but if anyone thinks otherwise, maybe I won't have to forgo it for the next 6 months...

Festival

Although the summer days are long and hot, my thoughts have turned to the Jewish holiday cycle that will soon be upon us.  Beginning with Rosh ha-Shanah, we spend a week and a half turning inward to sometimes difficult self-reflection,  chanting our ancient, quiet prayers, and finally, fasting in somber repentance on Yom Kippur.   The Days of Awe are radically unlike any other part of my year.  Jews during this time exist in a sacred space that is part of the world, but also apart from it; it is always a challenging time for me, a Reform Jew in the modern world, a communal and personal moment of reckoning.  

Immediately after Yom Kippur, though, we begin to reenter the regular world with an eye toward the practical, as we celebrate the Jewish harvest holiday in the festival of Sukkot.  Preparation for Sukkot (which means "booths" or tabernacles in Hebrew, representing the little huts set up alongside the fields during harvest in ancient times) involves the quite literally grounding act of building a sukkah, whether in our own backyard or with our synagogue.  During the Days of Awe we engaged in quiet reflection; at Sukkot, we are busy giving thanks to God with hammer and nails!

Once built, the sukkot are decorated with photos of the ancestors, and all manner of colorful paper chains, tissue paper flowers, and magic marker drawings hanging from yarn--the provenance of the children of the family, who are thrilled to be included in the creation of what is, after all, really just a wonderful playhouse.

Sometimes prayer is an intangible, words that roar or whisper symbolically; but during Sukkot, our prayer is a solid little structure, a very real shelter built with our own hands. 

ופרוש עלינו  סכת שלומך

spread over us the shelter of Your peace

The permanent structure for the temporary sukkah we build upstate; the upper beams will be covered with pine branches, creating a roof that will allow us to see the stars, to feel the rain.

Leah in the Mediterranean Sea

Megan posted here about her favorite picture of herself and, well, go visit her because it's a beautiful post and you should read it for yourself.

I'm taking up her challenge and posting my favorite picture of myself, taken years ago when I was a rabbinical student living in Jerusalem. Here I am standing in the Mediterranean. The sea was so lovely that day, and I felt lucky to be there in the midst of that loveliness. I remember everything about that moment, the smell of the water, the warmth of it, the sun on my arms. I was so happy and felt so connected to nature, to God, to the world.

It also reveals a funny thing about me, which is that although I am a water baby and must swim every chance I get, in ocean, lake, pond, or pool, I cannot stand bathing suits! I've never liked them, that clammy clinging feel is so claustrophobic. Hence the rather prudish-looking outfit pictured above. If I had my druthers I'd always be kitted out in those crazy Victorian striped things, or a calico dress like Laura wears to the swimming hole in "On the Banks of Plum Creek." Or to the other extreme and perhaps best, nothing at all...which is, I believe, how we are really meant to swim; if you've ever done it, you know...and if you never have, you must...(I know I digress)

So then, too, this photo shows me embracing my quirks without apology. When I look at this, time telescopes obligingly so that I am back there, my toes in the sand, the water rushing about my ankles...

Angry God, Rueful God: A Homily

My family's seder plate

After the Matzah is purchased in a case of crumbly blandness, the gefillte fish, the grated horseradish ruby and pearl in their beveled glass bottles (the Reform Pesach is largely store-bought, although I know the story of my Great Uncle Sidney, weeping over the horseradish root and the grater, the grey fumes intense), the Haggadot dusted off, the ceremonial silver polished, the shankbone procured, the egg roasted, after all this and the metaphorical sweeping of the leavened crumbs, comes the Seder. Perhaps the loveliest moment in the Jewish year.

The Passover Seder, and its story book, the Haggadah, is full of drama and thrill, very potent it is:

...and this very Haggadah whispers,
"Join us...you're welcome here...you belong,
Among my pages full of smoke and blood,
Among the great and ancient tales I tell."

But no moment more potent, more tangibly fraught, than the reading of the ten plagues on Egypt.

The Haggadah tells the story of the Hebrews' freedom from slavery, and of the Exodus from Egypt. To accomplish this, God stepped in and visited these plagues, each one more horrifying and vivid than the next, on the Egyptians:

Yet, when we recite them during the reading of the Haggadah, it is done with a measure of understanding and guilt.  For God, although he accomplishes these dark and violent miracles, at the same time chastizes the Hebrews for heedless, thoughtless celebration of the vanquishing of Egypt.  In what is for me the most interesting passage in the Passover story, we are reminded that deliverance came at great cost:

"Our rabbis taught: when the Egyptian armies were drowning in the sea, the Heavenly Hosts broke out in songs of jubilation.  God silenced them and said, 'My creatures are perishing, and you sing praises?'"

So as we recite the horrible plagues, we dip our fingers in our brimful ceremonial wine cups, and drop single drops of wine on our plates, ten drops, one for each plague, that as our cup is lessened, we might be mindful of the cost of our freedom.

It is an interesting lesson: God acted on our behalf, but it is almost as if he did so with a regretful humanity; he does not allow us to celebrate the method, only the result.  Brutality was met with brutality, as sometimes it must be, but there is a lesson: we ourselves are less for having been party to it.  And to take it shockingly far, God is less for having accomplished it.  It's a powerful conundrum, and one that I think I understood at least half-way, when as a child I dipped my tiny pinky in the grape juice, ten times, intoning the grim singsong litany of plague, the voices of those at the table also tense and grim, the wine gathering at the center of our Passover china--ten drops, ten plagues, a pool of wine, or was it blood?

Those moments informed my entire belief system as an adult. That our history, both real and liturgical, is full of suffering, redemption, battle, regret. That God, though all-powerful, shares our humanity. That the God of the Jews could be both righteous and remorseful, set an impossible task with consequence both horrible and great. That he could be angry at us, and forgive us, that we could be angry with Him and forgive him. Ten drops, two minutes each year, year after year, to examine the implications of a complex God and His complex actions. This freedom to know God as both perfect and imperfect is what has kept Him alive inside me.

Poem for the Sabbath

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

--Theodore Roethke

Little Flames

After the days of rumpus and hubbub, the cascade of money to its due, slipping over ice fields in silver slippers to parties, too much laughter and wine, guzzling of rich drinks and devouring of cake, tearing of wrappings, wiping away the overtired tears...after all this...it comes down to one tiny flicker of light...and once again we've found our center...

Happy Holidays to all of you special, wonderful people!

Krampus, My Favorite Holiday Anti-Hero

I find the holidays malicious. Too much noise, too many gifts, too much pressure, too dark (literally). All the people I know are becoming ever more depressed: If they're not Christian, they feel weird. If they don't have a spouse, they feel lonely and alienated. If they have a spouse but no children, the supposed childlike delight feels like a living reproach. If they have children and a spouse, then still they can never do enough, have the holiday they're "supposed" to have. There's more: if you're not around your family you miss them, if half of them are dead, the holidays remind you of the loss, if you are around your extended family, it's sure to end with the police called to a domestic. If one tends toward depression, well, this is ground zero. The holidays remind you that you're poor, lonely, alienated, Jewish, and your loved ones are dead or annoying. And all the food makes you portly.

Enter my new favorite holiday hero, Krampus. My sardonic sister introduced us. He's the evil anti-Santa, an invention of the oddly sepulchral German imagination, intended to scare children. Apparently Krampus is a sort of Christmas devil who comes around to punish bad little boys and girls. In some versions he steals them. In other versions, he's sort of sexy and goes for the ladies with a light-hearted sadism and a birch switch. And at home, we wonder whether he was possibly a Jewish stereotype; the Germans have a bit of a track record with these. Anyway, I love Krampus. I relate to him. I have a crush on him even. He's the perfect antidote to all of the nonsense. Call me a cynic, call me a Jew, but Krampus really delivers.

Feast your eyes on some of the many incarnations of this Christmas ghoul:

Somber

It's hard to go about one's business (the dish-doing, the laundry and shopping, the dropping off and picking up at school and lessons) during the High Holy Days and not feel the weight of them--which is, I suppose, appropriate. It's the holiest time of year in the Jewish calendar, and the time when God is closest to us. If these days are a time for t'shuvah (repentance, or literally, turning), and self-awareness, and self-examination, they're also a time for remembering those who have gone before us, those who are no longer with us, the ancestors who are present only in odd and sometimes only half-remembered anecdotes and photos from the earliest days of photography, and the more recent losses which still hurt very much--this unbroken line that connects me to my family and my family's family and back as far as memory can go--

The Holy Days culminate in the Yiskor service on Yom Kippur, when we gather in synagogue to say prayers together especially for the lost ones, to formally and collectively remember--and it's a hard service to sit through--the children are sent outside to play, where they are almost but not quite oblivious to the tears and pain inside--I remember being shepherded back inside when Yiskor was done, seeing the tears on my grandparents' cheeks, and knowing in an inchoate way what those tears meant. And knowing that I would join them on the benches inside one day, and in the far future that I would sit there without them too.

So I think today is my day to remember names: Paisach, Manya, Moses, Benjamin, Katie, Libby, Tillie, Honey, Harold, Eva and Mac, Sidney, Oscar and Marion, Sam, Abby, Alexander, Michel, Ray...














The Lock Gate by Paul Celan

Above all this mourning
of yours: no
second heaven.

To a mouth
for which it was one of a thousand
I lost--
I lost a word
that had remained with me:
sister.

To the worship of many gods
I lost a word that was looking for me:
Kaddish.

Through
the lock gate I had to go
to save the word back
to the salt waters and
out and across:
Yiskor.

Blessing for a New Year

The Woman's Prayer

With these candles
We pray to God
The God of our fathers
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
To grant us good life and health
To all my dear ones
And the whole world

With these candles
We pray to God
The God of our mothers
Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel
To grant us good life and health
To all my dear ones and the whole world

May we all have a sweet year, full of peace and blessings!!

A Scent of the Darkest Kind

For those of your who love most unusual perfume, check out Mandragore by Annick Goutal. I have always loved her ephemeral scents, since my friend introduced me to Eau d'Hadrien. Now said friend recently gifted me with a little silver phial of this potions-inspired decidedly non-floral, and having used it up, I've ordered more in its haunting purple and gold bottle. Check it out--you won't smell yourself coming and going on the streets of wherever you live! Unless you live among very sophisticated and well-subsidized goths, that is...

Now, I'm back to the more humdrum world of police policy and procedure. I'm taking notes on a book called "Community Policing: Rhetoric or Reality?" if that gives you any indication. Well, a girl's gotta do her dissertation, doesn't she?