Omer 2024 Day 11

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Day 11: Netzach in Gevurah, Eternity/Endurance in Strength

Last night, my husband and I were listening to Spotify and the song "Playas Gon' Play" by 3LW came on. Halfway through the song, I was belting out the chorus like no time at all had passed since I'd last listened to it, when he asked me, "What year did this come out?" With only a few seconds of thought, I answered (correctly), "2001." Isn't it crazy how 2001 was only yesterday?

In all seriousness, people have a complicated relationship with time. It seems to bend or stretch or contract depending on our moods. Add to that the Jewish understanding that we all (past, present, and future Jews) went out of Egypt and we all were there at Sinai when God gave us the Torah, and eternity takes on new meaning. The malleability of time connects us to our foundational stories, to our history, to those who came before us, and to those who will come after us. While my time and your time on earth are finite, we collectively are infinite. Our ability to see ourselves in time and to place ourselves throughout time is one of the strengths of Jewish peoplehood.

Quote of the Week: I wish I was Jewish

This semester for my field placement at JPDS, I am finally being forced to learn Hebrew in a real way. The third, fourth, and fifth graders know more Hebrew than I do, which makes it hard for me to help them with their Hebrew translations for Judaic Studies, but there are two new students to the school this year who have no Hebrew background, so I have volunteered to tutor them in the aleph-bet.

As an aside, I should mention that, while this is a Jewish Day School, it is also a community day school and they have a number of non-Jewish students enrolled (whether because it is better than their public school options, within walking distance of their homes, or any other reason that a parent would enroll their child in a private school). These two students - a boy and a girl - are not Jewish, so the Hebrew is new and hard for them, but they are so focused on learning it. Time for me to channel their drive, dust off my Rosetta Stone, and give Hebrew another try myself!

During our first lesson today, we reviewed the difference between בּ (a "b" sound) and ב (a "v" sound) and between ד (a "d" sound) and ר (an "r" sound), coupled with different vowels to make different sounds, like "da-beh" or "reh-va." Aside from the Hebrew, I also wound up teaching them about what it means to be Jewish. They were both shocked that I am not from Israel, have no family in Israel, and am not fluent in Hebrew. "But I thought you were Jewish!" the boy said with obvious confusion. We had a quick discussion about what it means to be Jewish, but the duality of Judaism as a people and a religion was a question that took me over a year to understand and three years later, I am still not good at articulating an answer. If the history of the Jewish people has taught us anything, it is that there is no easy answer to that question.

Later on in Judaic Studies, while my female student struggled determinedly to translate Parsha Vayetse - eyes flicking back and forth between the text and her vocabulary sheet to find סֻלָּם and scribble "ladder" above the Hebrew, circling the prefix and suffix on the word וְרֹאשׁוֹ in order to find the root meaning "head" in the middle of the word - she said in frustration, "I wish I was Jewish! Then I would already know Hebrew." If only being Jewish came with Hebrew proficiency that could be downloaded into your brain! Lacking that, we will have to stumble through the language together.

Pew: A Portrait of Millennial Jewish Americans

For my Contemporary Jewish Life class this week, we are reading and discussing the Pew Survery: A Portrait of Jewish Americans, published in October 2013, as well as five responses to the data, which were all new to me, despite the vast amount of reading I did on the subject when it was first published last year. Those articles, if you care to read them, can be found here (I reference this one specifically in my response below), here, here, here, and here, though there are many other great analyses of the survey out there as well. This class has forced me, after a year of trying, to put some of my own thoughts about the study into words. Those thoughts are below.

Pew Survey: A Portrait of Jewish Americans

Much has been written - both Jewish and secular - about the disengagement of the Millennial generation in almost every context. For Jewish purposes, this dovetails nicely with the ever-present concern of Jewish survival into the next generation. Whether it is our growing rates of intermarriage and secularization, decreasing support for Israel, or plummeting synagogue membership, we are a cause for concern about the Jewish future. Solutions to the Millennial problem have been varied.

Every generation since Abraham and Sarah has worried that it would be the last. In a sense, the numbers in the Pew survey can only serve to reinforce a fear that has never needed help gaining ground. Alarmists look at the numbers and predict the end of Judaism within the next two decades (or some equally short span of time). On the other hand, optimists see increasing pride in Jewish identity as a sign of the end of anti-Semitism in America. Others claim that the survey was flawed and, therefore, can be of little use. While the data can be interpreted in many conflicting ways, there can still be value in quantifying the obstacles we face on the road ahead, so that we can use our resources as efficiently and effectively as possible.

In response to continuity concerns following the publication of the 1990 National Jewish Population Study, the Jewish Federation pushed for better Jewish education, creating programs like Birthright and pushing Jewish summer camps (see Tobin, Loving Us to Death). As a result, the vast majority of my friends who were raised Jewish have wonderful memories of their trips to Israel (I do too!) and a working knowledge of Birkat Hamazon. These experiences have clearly left an impression, but, except in very rare cases, those organized Jewish opportunities disappear once we reach adulthood and we are left with the difficult task of continuing our Jewish education and maintaining a Jewish life all on our own. It is my guess that if a study addressed the age at which Jews disengage with Judaism, it would show a significant drop in engagement around age 22, when we leave college and truly enter adulthood.

If it is becoming easier for Jewish Millennials to assimilate into American society, it should be equally easy, if not more so, to feel welcomed in our own communities. I think that a push for experiential education aimed at Millennials and no-pressure opportunities to learn about Jewish ritual observance (like Chabad offers, but without the Rebbe) would go a long way toward keeping us in the fold. Where they exist, efforts to engage young Jewish adults seem to be incredibly successful. Washington DC has Sixth & I, Philadelphia has The Collaborative (and others), and Birmingham, Alabama has You Belong in Birmingham. Each of these organizations brings together young adults for social and philanthropic events, sometimes in a specifically Jewish context, but usually not. The successes of these programs should attest to the desire of Jewish Millennials to engage Jewishly.

To a certain extent, I have to agree with Tobin's analysis that outreach to Jews who are on the edges of Judaism (and their non-Jewish spouses) is a waste of our time, in the sense that it does little to engage individuals before they reach the outskirts of our communities. Perhaps, similar to the 1990s push for Jewish education, experiential educational opportunities for Jewish adults who are post-college and pre-parenthood would create a comfort with and knowledge of Judaism to maintain that Jewish identity into the next generation or, at least, into the next stage of life for Jewish Millennials.

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!

My Conversion, Part 4: Conversion

This post is part of a series. Please start with Part 1.

My tentative interest in converting began sometime in late 2009 or early 2010. I bought a number of books on Judaism and converting to Judaism and thought really seriously about how converting would affect my life. I would go from the Protestant majority to an historically persecuted minority. I would have to tackle a new language, new culture, new foods. I would be giving up many of the childhood traditions I knew and loved. It would be a serious refurbishing of my identity on many levels. If I was going to put all that effort into a religion, I expected to get everything I wanted out of it - and I was quite demanding.

My new religion had to make sense to me theologically and if I had a question, I wanted a real, thought-out answer. Its values had to align with mine. Most importantly, I wanted a religion that could make me feel closer to God. For a long time, Judaism fulfilled everything for me except the God connection. I continued to go to services and learn more about Judaism because I enjoyed it, but I wouldn't seek to actively start the conversion process without that final piece.

I participated regularly in Jewish services, holidays, and study for over a year before it finally all clicked for me. Looking back on it, it makes sense that I would only feel a connection to God through Judaism after becoming comfortable with it in all the other aspects I was exploring, but at the time it seemed like I suddenly felt closer to God out of nowhere. So I went to my rabbi in Nashville to start the conversion process.

There are no set regulations for conversion (different movements have some loose guidelines), so each rabbi may do it differently. After talking to me about why I wanted to convert, my rabbi handed me a list of requirements for her conversion candidates. I had fulfilled most of them before I even talked to her about conversion, despite only moving to Nashville a couple months before. The requirements were:

A Conversion Class, which met monthly and included readings about theology, holidays and practice, Israel, and Jewish culture.

Living Jewishly through Shabbat observance and testing out other halachot (keeping kosher, holiday observance, picking up Hebrew, etc). I had been slowly incorporating these things into my daily life since my first encounter with Judaism the year before.

Tikkun Olam/Volunteering, at least part of which had to be within the Jewish community. I had already signed up to co-teach the synagogue's pre-k Sunday school class, which was a complete blast. The kids were great and I got to learn basic Hebrew phrases, like b'vakasha (please) and todah (thank you).

Keep a Personal Journal for reflection on my religious choices. I didn't have to share this with the rabbi or anyone else, but it helps to write that kind of thing out and I continue to use it.

Finally, Membership in the synagogue was required. We had already joined shortly after moving to the city, so this wasn't an issue.

How long the process takes depends almost entirely on the conversion candidate. It's up to you to tell your rabbi when you feel ready. If the rabbi disagrees, he or she will talk to you about it. Traditionally, the rabbi is supposed to turn away a conversion candidate three times, just to be sure they're really committed to converting. I set a date for my conversion ceremony about 6 months into my official conversion process, but most things I've read and heard say that it typically takes someone a year. Again, it varies depending on the person. I converted on a Friday afternoon. I took a half day at work and met my bet din (a court of three overseeing Jewish leaders, in my case the synagogue's two rabbis and the Sunday School director) at the Orthodox synagogue in town, because that is where the mikveh (ritual bath) is located. The bet din seems like it will be scary, but then it's not really. There's not really a good way to prepare for the bet din. There is a section about it in Choosing a Jewish Life by Anita Diamant that runs through the basics of how it works, but it's going to be different for everyone. Your rabbi really shouldn't let you get to that stage if he or she doesn't think you're ready. During my bet din, I basically reiterated why I was converting and explained how I chose my Hebrew name. They asked me some follow-up questions and reminded/warned me that Judaism can be hard. After that, I went to the mikveh.

The mikveh is hard to describe. In a literal sense, it is a ritual pool (for more on the mikveh, see Chabad's explanation). For a convert, immersion in the mikveh represents rebirth into the Jewish people. I walked into the water down seven steps, while my rabbi explained that they represented the seven days of creation. The water was warmer than I expected and it almost came up to my shoulders. I fully submerged three times, reciting a blessing each time. Something about this process is said to ignite the Jewish soul in a convert, so when I came out, I was Jewish. It almost felt anticlimactic to do regular things, like get dressed and brush my hair. Afterwards, in the hall, one of my rabbis declared "Congratulations, you look Jewish!" and I went home to prepare for Shabbat.

My parents and my then-fiance-now-husband's parents came down for the weekend and came to Friday night services with us that night. In the middle of the service, I gave a short speech about why I converted, chanted Hatzi Kaddish, and was presented with my conversion certificate, which is now proudly framed in my apartment. My life since then has been an attempt to figure out my new identity, learn Hebrew, and come up with new blog posts.

My Conversion, Part 3: Deciding to Convert

So, I have realized that in my haste to post the previous segment of my Jewish journey and to keep it brief, I neglected to actually tell the story of my connecting to Judaism. And what fun is this if it's not a story, but just a series of my thoughts on Judaism at disjointed moments in time, taken out of context? So I am giving myself a do over.

As always, I encourage you to start at the beginning and follow the links back to this point in the story.

To recap briefly, I left my Lutheran roots and became agnostic. After a lot of serious thought about my beliefs in college, I decided to look into Judaism.

I have always been really uncomfortable with the unknown and Judaism had a lot of unknowns: different theology, rituals, traditions, melodies, prayers, and language. I think Hebrew is the hardest part about Judaism for a newcomer. Hebrew puts up a barrier to engagement that cannot be quickly overcome. Luckily, I started out in the Reform Movement, where the entire prayer book is transliterated (written as it sounds with English letters), so I didn't actually have to learn Hebrew right away to participate. Still, I was frustrated that I couldn't make the "ch" sound that is so prevalent in Hebrew and non-existent in English and that I couldn't understand what was actually being said. My choices were to follow along silently with the English translation or try to participate with the transliteration - I couldn't do both. I might have given up on Judaism just because of Hebrew if it hadn't been for Lecha Dodi. The song welcomes Shabbat on Friday night and the melody got stuck in my head every week. Humming a song always makes me want to sing it, which involves knowing the words, so I learned the chorus to Lecha Dodi. From there, I managed to learn the Sh'ma (the central prayer in Judaism) and random phrases from other prayers and songs. The more Hebrew I picked up, the more I appreciated the language and its continued use as an integral part of the religion.

Connecting with Judaism wasn't just about incorporating new customs and ideas into my life, but letting go of some childhood customs as well. Christmas was particularly hard to let go of. What kid wouldn't find Christmas fun? Gifts, lights, Santa, magic, and family. Even as I got older, Christmas was still the family holiday in my family. We basically celebrated it as a secular holiday (using a Santa hat as a tree topper instead of a star or angel and such) and when I started to become seriously interested in Judaism, I still hoped to hold onto Christmas in that secular way. Unfortunately, my goal was to find a theologically satisfying religion, which kind of conflicted with this desire to ignore the theological underpinnings of a holiday just because I liked it. I couldn't make a theological exception - although I tried anyway - and reconcile that with my overall goal. Christmas 2010 was my last Christmas before I converted (I was in the conversion process at that point). I went home to celebrate with my family and the family time was nice, but it didn't feel like my holiday anymore. This past winter was my first Jewish Christmas and I went through a weird wave of emotions. Between moving 750 miles from home and starting a new job in the Fall, I chose not to travel home for Christmas. When I made the decision in late October, I really thought it wouldn't be a big deal. I would be home around Thanksgiving; I could see everyone I wanted to see then. I was fine until about two weeks before Christmas, when I suddenly felt this huge loss, like I was going to be missing out on something important. I didn't miss the tangible stuff, like the lights or gifts, but the intangible family moments. Christmas itself turned out to be a non-event, just like I originally thought it would be. My fiance and I rented a movie and ordered Chinese food for my first authentic Christmas as a Jew. Here's hoping that next year I remember that everything was fine and just skip the sad part in the middle.

Another problem I had connecting to Judaism was fitting myself into the idea of l'dor v'dor, "from generation to generation." Judaism is a religion and a people (more on this in a bit), which means that it has been passed down from generation to generation, at least theoretically, beginning with Abraham and Sarah. When I first started thinking about conversion, this was one of the major things that held me back - for two reasons. I didn't think I would ever feel fully Jewish without that family connection. Family history plays a big role in Jewish life. Your Hebrew name is "YOUR NAME daughter/son of DAD and MOM". Converts take a Hebrew name ending with "bat/bar Avraham v'Sarah" (daughter/son of Abraham and Sarah), which is designed to fit them into the family tree. The flip side of that is taking on your Hebrew name without feeling a little like you're dropping your own family. The whole generational thing does not seem to be explained very well to potential converts and after having finally gotten it, I can see why - it's a confusing concept. Abraham and Sarah are not meant to replace your parents; they are your spiritual progenitors. Your relationship to Abraham and Sarah and your relationship to your parents only makes sense if you don't think about it too much. The second you try to really focus on what those relationships mean to your potential Jewish identity (if you're thinking of converting), it gets confusing again. Being comfortable with dual-natured relationships like this is important, because Judaism is full of them.

Another one of those dual-natured relationships is that Judaism is a religion and a people and culture. No one was ever able to satisfactorily explain how Judaism can be both a religion and a people. It's something that just is. But I grew up thinking of religion and culture as two completely separate things. My Lutheran religion had (seemingly) nothing to do with my Midwestern American culture; there is nothing specifically Lutheran about apple pie and baseball. The idea that Judaism could be both was something that just suddenly made sense to me. Overnight, I went from not getting it to being one of those people who gets it and can't explain it to anyone else.

Figuring out all of these things was really important to my decision to convert. Read about that decision and the official conversion process in Part 4, the final part of my conversion story!

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!

Letting Go

This is mostly going to be a post about my sorority, but it fits in so nicely with the end of Genesis that it seems appropriate for my blog.

*Note: In comparing my experiences with my sorority to those of Jacob, his sons, and the House of Israel for generations after that, I am attempting to relate the Torah to my life. I don't mean to put the story of the Israelites entering and leaving Egypt on the same plane as collegiate sorority drama. This should be obvious, but just in case.

Summary of Vayechi, this week's Torah portion and the end of the book of Genesis:Jacob has spent the majority of Genesis building a large family clan, thus kick-starting God's repeated promise of uncountable descendants. Through Jacob's efforts - and the efforts of Isaac and Abraham before him - his family clan will come to be known as the House of Israel. In the preceding portions of Genesis, Joseph saved Egypt and the world from starvation, making the Israelites pretty awesome and important. Skipping ahead a bit: generations later, when these people are all gone, the Israelites will still exist, but in a radically different position. After a long period of slavery, after the Exodus, and after witnessing the power of God countless times (in the ten plagues, the pillars of fire and smoke that led them through the desert, and the revelation of the Torah at Sinai to name a few), these Israelites will not say with the degree of certainty that Jacob and Joseph did, "God exists and is watching over me" (not a direct Biblical quote). They will be a different people and yet, the same.

Jacob, in this portion, is about to die and leave his hard-earned, angel-given name (Israel) to his sons, who don't always do the right thing and may not always represent his name in a way that would make him proud. But you can't live forever and creating something that will exist beyond you has to come with the understanding that you will one day pass the torch and it will be out of your hands.
It's similar in a sorority. I am an Alpha Sig, specifically a founding member of the Theta Nu chapter. The talented group of women I called "sisters" in my time there are vastly different from those women who make up the chapter today, but we are all Alpha Sigs.

Some background information:In 2008, I joined a new organization of bright, quirky women dedicated to strength, scholarship, and service. The goal was to build this organization, ATP, into a force on campus, a home for women with shared interests in things like superheroes, tea parties, and Harry Potter. Ultimately, we strove to join a national sorority and give the women of Knox College a fourth option for Greek life.

After getting caught in the middle of a war on Greek life for two years, we succeeded in reaching official sorority status and became the Theta Nu chapter of Alpha Sigma Alpha (ASA). ASA values strength, scholarship, and service with the added bonus of encouraging spiritual, physical, and purely enjoyable pursuits. Of course, when transitioning from one organizational structure to another, some things will be lost and some added, but overall, the ideals seemed to fit and I really felt this was an organization that could carry on in place of ATP. One month after our installation as an official chapter of ASA, I graduated from Knox with the sense of accomplishment that comes from graduating and leaving something tangible behind. That organization and fantastic group of ladies enriched my experience at Knox, gave me lifelong friends, and pushed my personal growth in ways I couldn't have imagined. All I wanted was for that feeling of happiness, pride and accomplishment to touch the lives of future Alpha Sigs.

My Alpha Sigma Alpha badges

As it turns out, however, letting go is easier said than done. I want to want nothing more than happiness for my future sorority sisters, but I have this nagging feeling of ownership over something that is now rightfully theirs. After all, you can't pour two years of your life into something in the face of constant adversity and then just let it go at the drop of your graduation cap. Rationalizing to myself that organizations grow and change all the time doesn't make the news of certain changes sting any less. For example, in ATP we placed a great deal of importance on academic achievements and professional conduct. We wanted to come across as the brainy (nerdy was ok too) and organized girls. One of the great things we gained by joining ASA was the official motto of "Poise and Purpose" which we reflected in ATP, but never officially adopted. So it hurts to hear that the new body of women who make up ASA have lowered their academic standards (only one member made the dean's list last term) and that they tend to come across as loud and a bit obnoxious (not all the time, but enough that it's noticeable to me over the internet).

To by fair, this happens with sorority sisters; we get on each others' nerves. My time in ATP and ASA, while highly valuable to me overall, was also filled with times when we didn't all like each other and when being part of it stressed me out more than anything else. We had our share of obnoxious moments and times when we didn't live up to the high standards we set for ourselves. We had our share of fights, both at chapter meetings and in the privacy of our own dorm rooms. But as an active collegiate member, I had a say in the organization. If I didn't like something, I could confront it and combat it. As an alum, I can't do that. It's not my organization to run anymore. I spent the majority of my college career creating this organization, just as Jacob spent the majority of his life creating a people/family/religion.
Here's what I've learned from all this:
I helped to create an awesome organization. I did my job and reaped some of the benefits of it before graduating. Now I need to let go. In order to grow and thrive, they will have to adapt the organization to a constantly-changing campus community (after all there's a complete turn over of the student body every four years) and who am I to judge how best to adapt when I live 900 miles away and can only keep up with campus activities through the student paper?

On the other hand, in joining ASA and becoming my new Alpha Sig sisters, these women took on the responsibility of representing not only themselves and the organization in their time, but of representing the organization overall and the memory of their alumnae. In the three-year span while ATP was struggling to become a national organization, a lot of women graduated, so when it came to choosing a national sorority to join, it was our job to consider what our alumnae would want. We didn't necessarily consult them about our choices, because we understood the situation on the ground better than they would, but we did take a good hard look at the goals they set out to achieve and tried to find an organization that would reflect what ATP was when they founded it and what ATP had become under our leadership.

To any Knox Alpha Sigs who may have found this, please don't get too personally offended. I don't mean this rant as an attack on any of you. I just needed to talk it out for myself in a public setting so I wouldn't stew about it to myself.

Alpha love and mine,

Erin