Omer 2025 Day 33

Day 32

Day 33: This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared by Rabbi Alan Lew
Hod in Hod, Glory/Humility in Glory/Humility

You'll find this book on most rabbis' bookshelves and most Jewish libraries. It has become a staple of preparing for the High Holidays. In the summer of 2018, my friend Abby gathered a group of moms with young children to form a book club. She decided that in the bustle of parenting and cooking Rosh Hashanah meals, we also needed to carve out time for spiritual preparedness. She's very wise.

I started reading this book when my oldest was three or four months old, mostly on my pumping break at work. It invites deep personal introspection and offers a roadmap for how to engage with the sacred time built into the High Holiday season - the month before Rosh Hashanah, the Shabbat before, the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the final service of Yom Kippur, and even extending into Sukkot. The High Holidays are a time of glory and humility, when we feel closest to God and the most humbled. The act of teshuvah (repentance/returning) forces us to face the ways we didn't live up to our best selves in the past year and commit to doing better. It's both humbling to apologize for our faults, and glorious to seize that opportunity to grow.

Days of Awe

My first Yamim Noraim - my first experience of the Days of Awe - were truly awe-inspiring. It was a new year and, for me, everything was new: the prayers, the community, the sacred time of reflection, the hunger. I was struck by the familiarity with which we address God, reverential, but still close. It was only years later that someone pointed out to me that all of our prayers for forgiveness are said in the plural. We have sinned. Remember us. It didn't draw my attention at first, because it felt natural. After all, we were all together praying. But not this year.

For most of us in the US, the pandemic has meant that we have spent the past six months keeping our distance from others, praying mostly alone. Most weeks, my husband and I watch our shul's new livestream of Shabbat services from our living room with our daughters, who alternate between watching and playing. We've done the same for the High Holidays, except for Yom Kippur morning. Our shul repeated the Yom Kippur day service to give as many people as possible the opportunity to attend a limited in-person service, and both were livestreamed for anyone to watch at home. I had planned to watch the later service in the afternoon while my children napped, but I found myself on Yom Kippur morning with an occupied toddler and a napping baby, and an hour to myself. I opened my borrowed machzor and davened alone - sometimes aloud, sometimes silently, sometimes in English, and sometimes in Hebrew. I paused to think; I read the commentaries in the margins; and as I recited prayers from "us" alone, I reflected on my lack of awe this year, the strangeness, and the distance from each other and from God.

Truthfully, I was not awed this year. I spent these Days of Awe alternatingly or simultaneously grieving, angry, and numb. There are too many reasons to enumerate. Just since Rosh Hashanah a long ten days ago:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. A feminist icon, a fierce defender of our rights and our Constitution, an outspoken and intelligent woman.

Our country is on fire. Literally (both naturally and man made) and figuratively. We are engulfed in rage and choked by partisanship.

We surpassed 200,000 deaths from COVID-19. Each of those people is missed by someone. Wear a mask.

Breonna Taylor was denied justice. Her trial and the lack of closure for her family and the country is just the latest proof of systemic racism and inherent inequality for our citizens.

Senate Republicans are moving ahead (hypocritically) to install a conservative justice who will set back women's rights and women's health for decades, impacting not only myself, but my daughters well into their own far-off adulthood.

This president continues to undermine our institutions and degrade our moral decency.

Even though I recognized the danger to our souls in his gleeful rejection of civility (or "political correctness"), I have not been immune to it. I have matched anger with anger; I have judged others harshly; I have been cynical and arrogant. Worse, I have succumbed to moments of despair, convinced that none of it matters, that nothing will get better. There is no justice and there can be no justice as long as those in power subvert justice and act outside the bounds of fair play.

But then I read Isaiah.

"For I will not always contend,

I will not be angry forever:

Nay, I who make spirits flag,

also create the breath of life." Isaiah 57:16 

God will not be angry forever. I will not be angry forever.

"If you banish the yoke from your midst, the menacing hand, the evil speech, and you offer your compassion to the hungry and satisfy the famished creature - then shall your light shine in darkness." Isaiah 58:9-10

And not from the High Holiday liturgy, but always and increasingly relevant: 

"You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it." Pirkei Avot 2:21

Kol Nidre begins Yom Kippur not with apologies for the past year, but a request to forgive the sins and annul the vows we will commit in the coming year. Even as we ask forgiveness for past transgressions, we acknowledge that we will sin again. But maybe we will do a little bit better in the coming year. May we learn from our past mistakes, so that even as we sin anew in 5781, we grow a little better. And therein lies the hope.

I alone and we together must do better this year. We cannot desist from the hard work of rebuilding justice and civility. We must set aside our anger and get to work banishing evil and increasing compassion. Although the world is dark, we must be sources of light. Although the situation seems hopeless, we can provide hope. Although we know we will need forgiveness again next year, we begin the new year with our best intentions. We commit to be better, to do more, to draw closer to God, and to always remember that we are in this together.

Omer 2017 Day 7: Stubborn Love

Omer Introduction | Day 6 | Day 8

Day 7: Malchut in Chesed, Leadership in Loving-Kindness

Stubborn Love by The Lumineers

The opposite of love's a need for it.

You might think that the opposite of "love" is "hate," but The Lumineers make a compelling argument that the opposite of love is actually just needing to be loved. Elie Wiesel put it another way: "The opposite of love is not hate; the opposite of love is indifference."

On the second day of Rosh Hashanah this year, my rabbi, Rabbi David Kalender, invoked Wiesel's words in a plea to combat loneliness. His d'var was a moving call for everyone to become leaders, to step up to help those most in need of community and love by helping to make a shiva minyan, visiting the sick, or acting as shomerim (the people who sit with a dead body before burial). Today, I am reminded of that important call to action. How can I do more? How can I provide loving-kindness for those who need it most?

Back to Day 6 | Jump to Day 8

Graduate School: Week 1 Recap

As I mentioned previously, over the summer I started a graduate program in Washington DC! The summer was jam-packed with new friends, new projects, and new museum jargon. After a whirlwind 6-week summer semester, I returned to Birmingham for the month of August to digest all this new information and to pack up my life for a permanent move to DC.

I've been back for a week and I've hit the ground running! It seems easiest at this point to split my life into three categories: Personal, Religious, and Academic.

Personal
My new apartment in Silver Spring is wonderful and still has that new-apartment smell! I quickly learned how to get from my building to important places like the Metro, grocery store, and Starbucks, but I'm still working on remembering how to get to the downtown shopping center. There is a Ben and Jerry's and a New York & Co. downtown, so I'm sure I will find my way back there soon enough. Yesterday, I learned how to take the bus to the day school I will be working at for the semester. The apartment itself is beautiful.

My living and dining room

We have a great view of the Metro tracks and what will eventually be a landscaped park area. For now, Marc is still in Birmingham, so the apartment is pretty sparse and quiet. I can't wait until he moves here with me permanently to start his new job (three weeks and counting). This summer and the next three weeks are the first (and hopefully last) time I have ever lived alone. It's incredibly boring and lonely to live alone, so it has forced me to become more of an extrovert.

Religious
Learning my way around a new town also means finding the kosher food and the synagogues. Silver Spring (and Southern Maryland in general) has a large Jewish population, so I have many options to choose from. The local Giant carries plenty of kosher products, but I also have two kosher grocery stores within driving distance for even more variety. I had heard very good things about Moti's (formerly Kosher Mart) in Rockville. The accompanying restaurant of the same name has excellent falafel, pita, and hummus, but I was more impressed by the grocery selection at Shalom Kosher right here in Silver Spring.

On the synagogue side of things, I have at least four options within about a mile of my house (and that's not including the Reform synagogue), all somewhere between Conservative and Modern Orthodox. The High Holidays are coming and, for the fourth year in a row, I am in a new place shul shopping in a rush to find a community in time for Rosh Hashanah. So far, I have visited one - Ohev Shalom. It was my first experience in a Modern Orthodox shul with a mechitza. The mechitza is a half-wall that runs down the middle of the room, so men and women can see each other and have equal space and sight lines to the action. The community was welcoming and we had a very nice lunch after the service with a few members (thanks to one of my classmates, Rena, who coordinated it at the last minute). We have since been invited to the Rabbi's home for dinner. I plan to continue my Jewish firsts this weekend with a trip to my first independent minyan, Segulah. After that, I will head back to my comfort zone in the Conservative movement at Tifereth Israel.

Academic
It's been a long time since I was in school with readings, assignments, and projects to do. I have to say that I was starting to like the nine-to-five professional life, but education has sucked me back in. I'm hoping that I have outgrown some of my worse undergrad habits - like procrastinating and drinking too much caffeine - over the past four years, but I guess we'll see about that. I couldn't be more excited about this program. It combines everything I have ever wanted to do. For those who don't know, I will be receiving a Master of Arts in Education and Human Development (M.A. in Ed. & H.D.) in Experiential Education and Jewish Cultural Arts (EEJCA). Yes, it's a mouthful. Basically, it is a combination of Museum Education and Jewish Cultural Studies. There are seven of us in this "pioneering" cohort trying to find our ways into the wide-ranging field of experiential Jewish education. In addition to learning about Jewish life in DC with my EEJCA cohort, we are also part of GW's Museum Education Program (MEP), which is a class of thirteen. Together, the twenty of us spent the summer learning the history and best practices of museum education. My vocabulary now includes phrases like "entrance and exit narrative," "lofty outcome," and "MEPiphany" (credit to my MEP friend Alli for that last one). I missed them all on our month off and was so glad to see everyone again this week.

Coming from Knox's trimester system, where each term was only ten weeks long, I am having trouble envisioning a regular sixteen-week semester, but I'm sure I will appreciate the extra time later. This semester I have three classes:

1. Contemporary Jewish Life will cover Jewish life in America after WWII, including topics like Jewish cultural and religious identity, food, and music. There is not a single thing on the syllabus that I am not excited to read about and discuss. The Pew survey on American Jewish life? Can't wait to re-read it! Judaism in the Diaspora? Awesome! Interfaith marriage? Bring it on. Join me in my love for this class by watching Stephen Colbert's 1-800-OOPS-JEW Atone Phone segments. The class will require weekly blog-style papers in response to our readings, so hopefully that will make me better at keeping up with my own blog. 
2. Museum Audiences also promises to be fascinating. I look forward to building a skill set that will allow me to engage museum visitors of all ages and backgrounds. It is important in any public presentation to know your audience and museum audiences are no different. My classmates have wide-ranging educational and professional experiences that I hope to learn from in this class. 
3. Field Placement and Seminar is designed to give us experience with an audience we are not particularly familiar with. I have been assigned to the Jewish Primary Day School of the Nation's Capital, where I will be teaching two special needs fifth grade Judaic Studies classes about art in relation to the Book of Exodus. I don't know anything about special needs education or art, so this will be fun. If you know of any art exhibitions in the Washington DC area that contain Biblical art (specifically about Exodus, if possible) and would be suitable for a fifth grade field trip, please give me suggestions! Thank you! 

This has been my first week of fall term. I will keep you posted as the weeks go on.

Quote of the Week: Whatever you are...

"Whatever you are, be a good one." -Abraham Lincoln

Here's to new beginnings. L'Shanah Tovah!

How should I mourn?

As a Jew by Choice, how should I mourn my lapsed Catholic grandmother (z"l)? If I were going home for the funeral, I would have to sit through a Catholic mass that she would have hated and file past her open casket and explain why I want to throw some dirt on her coffin after they've lowered her into the ground. I would also have to explain why, after traveling close to 800 miles to be there, I would be skipping her wake to go to synagogue for Rosh Hashanah. But I am not going home for the funeral, so I won't have to explain these things to anyone. Instead, I am left to wonder how I should mourn (from 800 miles away) my non-Jewish grandma in a Jewish way and how I will mourn others in the (God willing far distant) future.

For answers, I turned to the internet with search terms like: "Jewish convert mourning non-Jewish relatives" and "Jews by Choice in mourning." It was generally unhelpful, with answers ranging from: "Converts shouldn't mourn non-Jews" to "Do what you want" to "You're required to practice the Jewish mourning rituals in full."

If my internet search has taught me anything, it's that how you will mourn is something you should think about before you are thrown into mourning. This is especially true for Jews by Choice. Since there is no consensus among Jewish authorities (even within the same movement) about how a convert should mourn non-Jewish relatives, it seems that we are left to piece together our own Jewish mourning rituals from a mish-mash of conflicting suggestions across the internet. I have posted some of the more helpful links I found below. If you have tips for me and other mourning converts, please leave a comment. Thank you.

Resources for converts in mourning

• The Rabbinical Assembly's (RA) position on converts mourning non-Jewish relatives is an interesting read, ultimately concluding that we should be required to follow all traditional Jewish mourning practices.
• Rabbi Gershom Bernard of Northern Hills Synagogue in Cincinnati offers a brief overview of the different schools of thought on this topic, ultimately agreeing with the RA's ruling.
• Tablet Magazine published this personal reflection from a Reform Jewish convert working out for herself the appropriate ways to mourn and remember her non-Jewish mother.
• Rabbi Ruth Adar, a Reform rabbi, has addressed this problem multiple times on her blog. With so few resources on this topic, her posts are a welcomed, insightful source of information and guidance.
• Chabad offers suggestions for converts to mourn non-Jewish family in a "markedly Jewish" way while distinguishing this mourning from mourning the death of a Jew.
• Anita Diamant, author of Choosing a Jewish Life and other great resources for converts and others hoping to build a Jewish life, has a book about mourning, with an excerpt available here. The excerpt doesn't really provide any answers on how to mourn, but offers a number of thought-provoking questions about the mourning process for converts. If you have the foresight to think about how you will mourn before you are actually mourning, these questions seem like good things to think about. I assume the book actually does answer some of them, since Diamant is usually good about that. 

Shul Shopping

I have become a perennial shul shopper; blame it on being young and mobile. This will be the fourth year in a row that I am spending the High Holidays at a new synagogue. Looking for a shul right before the High Holidays is probably the worst time to look for one - attendance is higher than it will be for the rest of the year, the rabbi is usually busy preparing for the holidays and won't have much time to discuss the synagogue with you, and you feel rushed to join a place in time to get tickets for Rosh Hashanah. My husband and I have moved every July for the past four years, meaning we have had just 2-3 months to figure out our temple options, visit, and narrow down the list, before committing to a place for the year. Based on our previous synagogue experiences, this is what I was looking for in our most recent venture:

1. A Traditional Egalitarian service. For me, this means mixed seating, the majority of women wearing kippot and tallit, and women on the bimah either as clergy or for an aliyah. 
2. Potential to make friends. Am I the youngest one there by 20-30 years? Are there other young couples without kids? Who are the regulars? Are the members inviting or clique-y? 
3. Torah study. I want a group that meets once a week, though I'll take what I can get. The format should be discussion-based and thought-provoking and cover a wide range of issues and biblical theories. I don't want to study with a group of people who will only treat the Torah as a 100% recounting of actual people and events any more than I want to study with people who are only interested in the proven historical (archaeological) record. Historical analysis can have its benefits, but the Torah is a religious text and should be treated as such. 
4. An intellectual rabbi who leads by example. I want a rabbi who makes it easy to follow the service without treating the congregation like we're completely clueless. I want a rabbi who gives interesting d'varim on the portion and covers a diversity of topics over the course of the year. Listening to a d'var about the State of Israel week after week, for example, gets boring pretty fast. 
5. A cantor or song leader I can sing along with. A cantor can have a wonderful voice, but if they are all over the place with the melodies so that no one can sing along, then it's not for me. 
6. Location, location, location. Preferably, I'd like something within 20 minute walking distance or 15 minute driving distance of my home. I belonged to a synagogue a 30 minute drive away for a year and an hour commute both ways at least once a week for services is just too much. 
7. Spiritual surroundings. I am not looking for a beautiful sanctuary. Architecturally and stylistically, I don't care what it looks like. Whatever it looks like, it should maximize the sense of God's presence and minimize distractions. Anything about the surroundings that will detract from my spiritual connection with God (creaky seats, really low lighting, etc) is a negative in my book. This is not necessarily a deal-breaker in my synagogue search, but certainly something to consider. 

This list will continue to grow as our experiences and needs grow, but it has served as a good starting point in our search this year. What do you look for in a synagogue or other house of worship?

L'shana tova! Happy New Year!

My Conversion, Part 3: Introduction to Judaism

***Note May 14, 2012: I was unhappy with the way I rushed through this segment, so I rewrote it.***

Shalom and welcome to Part 3 of my conversion story! Please read about my childhood and college years first.

We pick up the story in the summer before my senior year of college. After giving Christianity another chance and then taking a serious look at my actual beliefs, I found I had a lot in common with Judaism and decided to check it out.

Marc (my boyfriend, now fiance) and I were spending the summer at school in Galesburg, IL doing research and working. Galesburg is a town of 35,000 located a three hour drive west of Chicago and about 45 minutes from the Quad Cities on the Iowa border. Luckily, Galesburg has a synagogue, because western Illinois is not filled with them and the closest one outside of Galesburg was a 45 minute drive. We started going to Temple Sholom in Galesburg, where they got just over ten people (a group of ten Jews is a minyan, required for certain prayers in Judaism) every Friday night and had a rabbi who drove in from out of town once a month to lead Saturday morning services.

There were four major barriers I had to get over before I was ready to pursue conversion:

1. Hebrew was (and continues to be) a problem. Language barriers are tough and not quickly solved. I have been actively engaged with Judaism for close to four years now and I'm still working on learning Hebrew. Fortunately, I started out in the Reform Movement and their prayer books are completely transliterated (the Hebrew is written out like it sounds in English), so I was able to follow along and participate without knowing Hebrew. I've discussed the pros and cons of transliteration before.
2. Christmas was hard to give up, but I wasn't going to let one holiday get in the way of a religion that had everything else I wanted. Giving it up wasn't easy though. Christmas was always my favorite holiday, not to mention it's the family holiday for my family. My family celebrates Christmas basically as a secular holiday and I'm still trying to figure out how I'm supposed to interact with it now that I've converted. This year was the first year in my life that I wasn't home for Christmas. I really thought it wouldn't affect me, but then out of nowhere a couple of days before Christmas, I got really choked up about missing it. I'm struggling to build a Jewish identity for myself out of my past. Sometimes I look at my experiences before Judaism and think they fit really well with who I am now or, in some cases, seem to have foreshadowed my conversion. But then there's things like Christmas and I'm not really sure what to do with them. When Christmas actually rolled around this year, I thought I would really miss it, but I was completely fine. I called my family to say hi and then Marc and I got some Chinese food and watched It's a Wonderful Life.
3. Judaism puts a great emphasis on the fact that it is a generational religion. It's passed down from generation to generation from Abraham and Sarah to today (theoretically). Before I converted, it was hard to think I would ever feel fully Jewish without that family connection. Taking a Hebrew name ending with "bat Avraham v'Sarah" (daughter of Abraham and Sarah) is designed to give a convert that familial connection. The flip side of that is taking the name without feeling a little like you're dropping your own family. Abraham and Sarah are not replacements for your family; they are your spiritual progenitors. Being comfortable with dual-natured relationships like this is important, because Judaism is full of it.
4. Along those lines, religion and culture was the final hurdle I had trouble with before I decided to convert. Judaism is inexplicably both a religion and a culture simultaneously. I was raised to understand religion and culture as two separate things. Growing up, I didn't think of Lutheranism (my religion) as having anything to do with my Midwestern American culture. I didn't really jump this hurdle so much as it just disappeared. I woke up one day and the religion-culture thing just made sense. It's like light being both a wave and a particle (this lesson is the one part of high school physics that I remember).

Learning Judaism for me was mainly about learning to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. I was going to stumble over the Hebrew (even with transliteration), run into conflicts between beloved childhood traditions and Judaism, and have trouble with theological concepts and I wouldn't have gotten anywhere if I wasn't ok with stumbling sometimes. Throughout my life, I tended to avoid uncomfortable situations or situations where I might embarrass myself, so sticking with Judaism long enough to become comfortable with it was a big accomplishment for me in and of itself. Over time, I came to see these four things as positive attributes of Judaism instead of issues standing in my way.

Continue the story here!

Rosh Hashanah Reflections

I have been really bad at blogging recently, so here is a quick update on my life:

I moved from Nashville to Philadelphia, a big change to which I will probably devote a separate blog post. Marc (my wonderful fiance) and I joined a Conservative synagogue here that is the friendliest place I have ever been.

I visited NYC for the first time in my life. My only impressions of it before this came mainly from Law & Order. First impression in real life: It's very big. The subway needs some fans or something to blow the air around, because it's very stuffy down there. It's an excellent way to get around though. I didn't get to see anything touristy, so I guess I will have to go back and do that at some point. I did get a tour of the Bloomberg building, visited JTS, and had lunch at a kosher deli in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (where I'm pretty sure my tank top made the Hasidic waiter uncomfortable, but it's summer).

And I started work at Maccabi USA, a Jewish non-for-profit dedicated to building Jewish pride and culture through sports.

One of the many wonderful things about working for a Jewish institution is the fact that we get Jewish holidays off. So between Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Simchat Torah, my work weeks in October are incredibly short. As the New Year (Rosh Hashanah) begins, the rabbi at my new synagogue asked us to reflect on the following questions:

1. What blessings have occurred in the past year? What difficulties have I endured, or do I continue to endure? 
2. Are there any lessons that I may draw from these past experiences? 
3. What are my prayers and hopes for the coming year? How will my past experiences help me to chart a path to achieving these goals? 

Since this is my first official year as a Jew, I figure I should try to answer them. So here goes:

This year has been incredibly eventful and I have a lot to be thankful for. I got engaged to the love of my life, converted to Judaism (which was a two-year long process for me), learned the Hebrew alef-bet, and moved out of the South to the east coast, where I am much less likely to find confederate flag memorabilia.

Tangent: That flag drives me nuts. They put it on license plates, beach towels, clothing, and, I'm sure, pretty much anything else they can manage. You can call it a "symbol of Southern pride," but history has made it a symbol of racism, oppression, and violence, and you can't wash that history out of it or pretend it didn't happen.

Anyway, back to my new year's reflections. A difficulty:

Judaism is a religion of lifelong learning. That's what originally drew me to it. I like the feeling that it will never get old, that there will always be a new meaning to discover or something in the Torah that I missed last year. But being a new Jew (Jew by Choice, convert, etc) presents its own learning process that I am finding particularly difficult. I'm not talking about the technical aspects, like learning Hebrew and getting Jewish cultural references. Those can be overcome with Rosetta Stone and a Woody Allen and Mel Brooks movie marathon.

And I'm not talking about feeling singled out as a convert. Once you convert to Judaism, you are supposed to be seen as just as Jewish as every other Jew. True to this rule, no one has questioned my Jewish background. In fact, I frequently encounter the opposite - when a story comes up about "one year at Christmas" or "my cousin's Catholic wedding" people are confused by the idea that my family isn't Jewish.

No, my struggle stems from those things you can't learn, those experiences that make up the Jewish childhood I didn't have. Learning new songs at summer camp, suffering through Hebrew school, searching for the afikoman at Passover. Basically, this is a completely unnecessary struggle that I have fabricated. No one expects a Jew by Choice to have those experiences, but they seem so integral to everyone else's Jewish identity that I don't know what a Jewish identity should look like without them. I have no guideposts for building a Jewish identity without a Jewish past, starting from scratch. I don't want to wipe away my non-Jewish past, because that has made me who I am and I happen to like who I am. My task this year will be to figure out how to construct a Jewish identity that incorporates my past.

Shana Tova
Happy New Year