2014 in Review

This has been a whirlwind year, full of moves and career changes, new skills and old interests. Last year, Marc and I rang in the new year in Birmingham (yes, Birmingham, Alabama), having just moved there in December. By March, I was looking for ways out; by April, I had been accepted to graduate school at George Washington University; and by June, I had moved to Washington, DC, where I fell in love with museums all over again. It's been a strange, but wonderful year.

Birmingham

(December 2013-June 2014 with a brief return in August)

Birmingham Skyline from Railroad Park

I was so excited to move to Birmingham. Yes, you read that right. I - lover of all things Abraham Lincoln, who has ranted on multiple occasions about Confederate flag memorabilia, and loved living in Philadelphia - was optimistic about moving to the deep south. I said goodbye to my winter coat (though, luckily, I held onto it), bragged about the warm weather I enjoyed to my friends up north and laughed at the southerners around me who bundled up for 50 degree weather in January. I got involved in the Jewish community, which was tight-knit in a way that I have only seen in the south. I joined the Jewish young adult social group, became a board member of the Birmingham chapter of Hadassah, took a part-time job at the JCC, and became a substitute teacher at the Jewish Day School. Perhaps most impressively, I finally learned how to cook. I had plenty of time, since I was never able to find full-time employment, so I baked and cooked, and sent Marc to work with all my leftover concoctions. I even blogged all my recipes! I am most proud of my bagel recipe, which took me months to perfect.

If Birmingham was so great, why was I already looking to leave by March? It was a number of things, really, not all of them Birmingham's fault, though much of it was.  

• It is not a walkable city and I had to drive almost everywhere, despite living downtown. Marc was able to walk to work and we could walk to Railroad Park (pictured above), but for errands, for my job, or anything else, I had to drive and I hate driving.
• Birmingham inhabitants love their city, but questioned us constantly about why we would have chosen to move there. It is not a region to which people move without previous ties to the area, so we received a lot of strange looks when people learned that we did not have any relatives nearby or family history there. People were still very welcoming, don't get me wrong, but these kinds of questions made it seem like Birmingham had nothing of value to offer outsiders.
• The job market for me was terrible. My job at the JCC was a part-time front desk position, where I greeted members, answered the phone, and took payments for swimming lessons on the 5:00-9:00 AM shift. Talk about being underemployed!
• My unhappy job situation prompted me to really sit down and think about the career that I want. Over the past four years, I have continued to cycle back to two potential careers: museum exhibition development and Jewish education. For years, I have researched (with varying levels of seriousness) museum studies and Jewish studies programs. I came back to Jewish Studies this year, hoping to further my education far away from Birmingham. While looking for Jewish Studies degree programs on the east coast, I came across a brand new Masters degree: Experiential Education and Jewish Cultural Arts (EEJCA) at GW, which combines museum education and Jewish Studies into one two-year program. I found it in late March. I had missed the application deadline, but thankfully, they were taking late applications and by Passover in April, I was in and planning a move to Washington, DC!

Solo Summer in Washington, DC

(June-July 2014)

In the middle of June, I left Marc in Birmingham to start my first summer semester of graduate school at GW. It was the first time in my life that I have ever lived completely by myself, an experience I could have done without. Aside from the loneliness of missing Marc, I had a very active summer. I met 19 new people - 6 of them in the EEJCA program and 13 in the Museum Education Program (MEP) - and spent more hours at museums than I can count.

Top Row: U.S. Holocaust Museum, Building Museum, Air & Space, Frederick Douglass House
Bottom Row: Smithsonian Castle, National Zoo

I had classes about museums all day on weekdays, but managed to do non-class, non-museum related things as well. I enjoyed a Bruckner symphony at the Kennedy Center, trivia on Wednesday nights with friends from Philadelphia, and Friday night jazz concerts at the National Gallery Sculpture Garden.

Independence Day

(Fourth of July Weekend)

I did get to see Marc for the 4th of July weekend. We met for the weekend in Charlottesville, VA, where we spent even more time at museums. On the 4th of July, we saw 72 people become naturalized citizens of the United States at Monticello. We also visited the homes of James Madison and James Monroe, went hiking in Shenandoah National Park, and saw the Montpelier Train Depot, which is an amazing little self-guided museum restored to the time of segregation.

Clockwise from the Left: Shenandoah, Monticello, Montpelier Train Depot

Fall Term

(September-Present)

The best part of fall term was that Marc got a job in Virginia and we were able to move to Maryland together, instead of continuing our long-distance marriage. Goodbye forever, Alabama! In DC, we have thrown a few house parties, played some weeknight trivia, and witnessed the Nationals' no-hitter in the last game of the regular season (though sadly, they didn't go very far in the playoffs).

We briefly flirted with joining a Modern Orthodox shul down the street from us, which has a rabbi and a maharat (which is basically a female rabbi without all the religious authority they would have if they were men), a waist-high mechitza down the middle of the room, and a very welcoming community, but ultimately decided after spending Rosh Hashanah there that Modern Orthodoxy is not for us. We spent Yom Kippur at the Conservative synagogue across the street and are still trying out synagogues in the area for the right fit. Also, for Rosh Hashanah, I got to try out a new apple-stuffed challah recipe and it was delicious!

My class on contemporary Jewish life in America was by far the best. It was academically engaging and intellectually challenging and allowed for a mix of personal experience and professional detachment when analyzing the various topics. Outside of class, we got to see multiple Jewish plays and speakers, including a very interesting interpretation of Yentl at Theater J and a great performance of Fiddler on the Roof at Arena Stage.

Museum Audiences was also a great class with flexible assignments that gave me the opportunity to apply our readings to the audiences that I am specifically interested in engaging: Jewish adults and non-Jewish audiences in Jewish settings.

Teaching 5th Graders at the National Gallery of Art

Finally, there was the Museum Education Seminar course and corresponding internship at JPDS in DC. The seminar itself, which met once a week on Fridays so that we could learn education theory and discuss our internships with each other, was a thorn in my side, but the internship was wonderful! The teachers I worked with and shadowed were fantastic and I already miss my kids. For my final project, I took my fifth graders to the National Gallery of Art to learn about Exodus in art, Moses, and leadership.

That is basically my 2014 in a nutshell. In 2015, I hope for more of the same great experiences. I will try to be better about blogging them when they happen.

Happy New Year!

Response to Rabbi Cosgrove's Conservative Conversion Proposal

Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of Park Avenue Synagogue in New York has caused quite a stir in the Jewish blogging community over a recent d'var Torah, entitled "An Immodest Proposal."

There is so much I want to say about Rabbi Cosgrove's "back-of-the-napkin," "trial balloon" proposal, but right off the bat, I would like to make a general observation about the conversion conversation. I would appreciate seeing the topic of conversion discussed more often in its own right, detached from the intermarriage issue. Yes, sometimes the two topics are related and warrant a joint discussion. However, just because some of us may have "found" Judaism through a relationship with a born-Jew, doesn't mean we converted "for" them or that the discussion has to include anything more on the interfaith aspect than that. I have ranted about my frustration with converting "for" someone on multiple occasions.

Moving on! Rabbi Cosgrove's sermon is worth reading in full, but I am going to pull out my "favorite" parts to discuss here. Please feel free to share your thoughts on my critique or on another part of his sermon in the comments!

"And while some of my Reform colleagues do not perform intermarriages, the unintended consequence of this patrilineal resolution, as you can imagine, is dis-incentivizing the act of conversion altogether. After all, if a rabbi will marry you and the kids are Jewish anyway - why go through the whole rigmarole at all?"

This is just one of many comments that Rabbi Cosgrove made throughout this sermon lamenting the "dis-incentivizing" of conversion, but why exactly are we "incentivizing" it? What happened to turning a potential convert away three times? And if the potential convert considers conversion an annoying "rigmarole" as a means to a handful of specific ends (a Jewish wedding and Jewish kids), then maybe they shouldn't be converting to Judaism in the first place. When you convert, you are supposed to count yourself among the Jewish people, take on a Jewish identity, and accept the mitzvot, so "why go through the whole rigmarole" if that's not your intention?

"Probably the most famous narrative about conversion in the Talmud is the story of the would-be-convert who approaches first Shammai and then Hillel, asking to learn the entire Torah while standing on one foot. Shammai hits him with a stick – effectively telling him to get lost. Hillel, famously, converts him right away, telling him 'That which is hateful to you, do not do your fellow. That is the entire Torah. The rest is commentary. Go and learn.' The order of events is often missed, but it is instructive for us today. First Hillel converts, then Hillel teaches. First you join and then, once you are a vested member, you figure out what it's all about."

I love this story - so much so that it inspired my blog name - but I think that it is being misused here. The life of a convert, just like that of a born-Jew, is (or should be) a life of continuous learning. Knowing "what it's all about" is not a prerequisite for conversion, but there are a few things you should know before committing to be Jewish for the rest of your life. In this story, Hillel teaches his convert "the entire Torah" before converting him. Traditionally, we read the entire Torah in a one year cycle (three years in some synagogues), so I could just as easily cite this story as precedence for the common practice of requiring one year of study before conversion.

I am also a bit confused as to how Rabbi Cosgrove's "convert them first" plan would actually be implemented. He suggests regularly scheduled conversion times at the beginning of every month with follow up classes about Judaism in which the convert would be automatically enrolled, with no guarantee that they would actually attend, of course. That aside, would they go through the beit din and mikveh right away? Would the beit din still ask them if they were ready to take on Judaism, the good and the bad? Who could possibly answer that question at such an early stage? Not only that, but at what point would you circumcise a male convert? I can't imagine that a man would agree to circumcision without fully understanding the significance of it and deciding to commit fully to a Jewish life. Coming to understand, appreciate, and love Judaism takes time and learning. He cites "na'aseh v'nishmah" ("we will do and we will hear") as another reason to convert first, teach second. I have commented on this phrase from Exodus 24:7 before in relation to conversion, so I will only say here that I think Rabbi Cosgrove is ignoring a key element of "na'aseh v'nishmah," namely that when the Jews originally said it in Exodus, they were already Jews. The "we will do" part that came first was about taking on the mitzvot, not an entirely new identity as a Jew.

"Quite frankly, given the option of being misled by would-be Jews lacking integrity, or running the risk of losing potential Jewish households, I would choose the former over the latter any day of the week. I am in the business, we are in the business, of creating Jewish homes."

I have to wonder how often, if ever, Rabbi Cosgrove deals with converts or potential converts who are doing it for themselves out of a personal love of Judaism and desire to be part of the Jewish people. His outlook strikes me as incredibly hurtful to that group of us, as we are the ones who would be (and currently are) lumped in with those "would-be Jews lacking integrity" and forced to overcompensate to prove our integrity. I, for one, appreciate the slow learning approach to conversion. I not only appreciated the time and effort my rabbi took with me during my seven month conversion process as an important preparation for Jewish life, but I appreciate it now as a way to safeguard against Rabbi Cosgrove's "would-be Jews" who cast suspicion on the rest of us.* I think the Rabbinical Assembly (the Conservative Movement's association of rabbis) put it best in their position paper on non-halakhic conversions: "These objective halakhic criteria, which alone protect the purity of Jewish identity, should not be compromised in the interests of an ultimately meaningless Jewish unity."

*I know I'm coming across as incredibly harsh here, so let me just state for the record that I am not at all suggesting that rabbis close their doors to potential converts. I am (and this should be obvious) pro-conversion. My negativity here stems from consistently for multiple years now being on the defensive about my conversion from people who question my motives and the motives of all converts. That said, it's not all bad. In fact, I think it's safe to say that most people I tell are genuinely supportive.

I will end on a note of agreement, because I like to stay positive.

"...it strikes me as problematic verging on hypocritical to ask or expect converts to live according to a lifestyle that I do not demand of the rest of synagogue membership."

I don't think that this double standard is something I have discussed on my blog and, to be honest, it's not something I think about much anymore, but it used to really bother me during my conversion process and right after my conversion. Converts are often held to a higher standard than born-Jews when it comes to keeping the mitzvot. My legitimacy can be called into question, unofficially or officially, if I am less observant. However, if I had been born Jewish, then I would be Jewish without question, even if I ate a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich every morning and never observed Shabbat. It used to really bother me that there are Jews who wouldn't consider me Jewish, because I didn't convert in their movement, while born-Jews get a free pass in a sense. I'm not really sure when that stopped bothering me; it just slowly phased out of my thoughts. My observance of the mitzvot is between me and God and it doesn't make a difference to my level of observance what the Jew down the street does or doesn't do. Nonetheless, I appreciate Rabbi Cosgrove's acknowledgement of this issue.

Shabbat Shalom! Don't forget to "spring forward" this Sunday for Daylight Savings Time!