"Lord, who may sojourn in Your tent, who may dwell on Your holy mountain?"
Psalms 15.1 [JPS Tanakh 1985
So I had met with Rabbi and I had been accepted.
That night after I came home from work I wrote a song entitled, "Sleep, Little Flowers". It was the first song I had written in a very long while. More oddness is to be noted from this song as I will tell you below.
Cynthia and I decided that since I work in the evening, that Shabbat begins for us when I come home [At that time it was usually about 11 PM] When we lit the candles at home for the first time it was as if I had really come home to something very special. As Cynthia recited the prayer I was overcome with tears. Tears of Joy and the feeling of "rightness".
I began to read about the path I had chosen and discuss some of it with my father via e-mail. He sent me several questions about Charity and prayer. I wrote to Rabbi about these questions my father had asked. In one of those e-mails to Rabbi I noted:
There has been some progress since we last spoke. I have arranged to work "an early day" on Wednesday so I can attend classes.
One of the most important things my father had said to me in the e-mail when he asked about Jewish ideas concerning charity and prayer was:
"I want to remind you that becoming a Jew is a good thing for you because your family is Jewish. It means a lot to be one with your family. I thank the Lord for my family."
I noted his saying "Your family is Jewish. It means a lot to be one with your family." with a double-take. Did he mean I was not a part of his family?
As I said before I do not seem to have the same set of problems as others might. That does not mean I do not have any problems or challenges in my life or in this choice I have made.
I told Rabbi after a bit of reading and reflection that I had sent my father the following response about charity and prayer:
I have set up a meeting with the Administrator of the Synagogue about membership in the Synagogue.
Doing "good deeds" are mitzvot [the plural of mitzvah - "commandments"]. Among these are Tzedakah, Gemilut Hassidim, and Tikkun Olam.
Tzedakah is "righteous giving" which might be to the poor, the needy, or distressed. Gemilut Hassidum is "acts of loving kindness" which is mostly looked at as community volunteerism. These two are ancient ideas which are discussed in the Talmud. This would place the ideas as something that appeared in Judaism around 500 BCE
Tikkun Olam or "repair of the world" is "new idea" that became part of Judaism in the 20th century. It is based upon a 400 year old mystical writings that tells us that it is a mitzvah to work for "social justice": work for peace, freedom and justice for all people.
As for prayer...
Judaism is a community, a people. We gather together on the Sabbath day and we pray and study together. The prayers are "common" to us.
Much as the "Lord's Prayer" is a "common prayer" to [Protestant] Christians or the Catholic Mass is to Catholics.
Judaism does not say we cannot pray to G-d in our own way. Or that there is a specific right time for it. If the feeling moves you then you must talk to G-d. How can He hear you if you do not speak?
In the beginning the Hasidim were the teachers to the poor and simple. They criticized the educated and learned who tended to follow the letter of the law and not it's spirit. As time has gone along it appears to me [but I am ignorant of these things] that they have become as ridgid as those whom in the beginning they criticized.
As someone once said [in class I took some time] religions tend to calcify over time and usually they tend to become "set in stone" within a hundred years of the death of the "founder".
But Judaisim is somewhat different in this regards.
As Jacob wrestled with G-d [Genesis 32:26] so does a good Jew. This "wrestling" brought about the debates between the Rabbis and the result is the Talmud, the Midrashim, and the many books of Jewish Mysticism. It has sustained us. It is the basis, I think, for my Rabbi saying "You must learn to argue with the Rabbi."
For how else can one engage their Heart, Mind and Soul on G-d but by wrestling with Him?
By the time Cynthia and I began to attend Saturday services [since I could not attend on Friday night] we had become members of KKBE: Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim. KKBE has a special place in the history Reform Judaism in America. It still does. We'll probably talk about that later.
We came early and attended Torah study before the service with the congregation's rabbi, Rabbi Holz. One Shabbat morning during Torah study I pointed out to Rabbi Holz that in one place it says that G-d wrote the laws upon the tablets and in another that Moses carved the tablets, Rabbi said something like "I can see you're going to be a live one".
Maybe I read too much.
Something my Rabbi [Rabbi means 'Teacher'. You will find when I refer to "Rabbi " I am speaking of the teacher of the conversion classes] had written in an e-mail to me stuck in my head:
He said: "Perhaps underneath it all is a Jewish soul."
I had to "chew" on that a while. The word "perhaps" is a "mult-edged" word.
Perhaps I have been living with Yiddish speakers too long and the twelve different shades of meaning that a simple phrase can mean.
This brought to mind what may be unanswerable questions:
What makes a soul Jewish ? Why is it different than any other Spark?
Does it matter if I have a goyish soul called to become a Jew or a lost Jewish soul returned? Why do I feel calm and confident about the choice I have made when others around me appear to doubt it?
An example of the doubts when Cynthia and I met with the Temple Administrator about membership, he seemed to be saying "Well, pay for one membership. You have not converted. We can't really charge a non-jew."
I replied to the Administrator. "It is not about what I am or not it is about returning to God a portion of what He has given me. I am learning to be a Jew here."
We set something up I'm not quite sure what.
I've never been under a contractual obligation to God before. Who knew that G-d had a building fund tax or cemetary insurance?
I did not flinch at the obligation. I feel that by choosing to be a Jew, that "it is already done". I have returned [that word "returned" popped into my head... which makes for more questions...] or found the "home" I have been seeking. Yes I have an awful lot to learn. Yes, I am ignorant of the traditions... yet something within me is totally at peace and at the same time rejoicing.
On the other hand... I spent several evenings reading the Tanakh [Almost all of Genesis] and said to myself: "This is a silly book."
Where is the rest of the meaning? Where is the explanation of the why of everything? Yes here are the Mitzvot but why these and not others?
So the real learning had begun. I told Rabbi about these encounters.
Rabbi later wrote me and said:
Your response to your father was on target. No corrections.
I was delighted to hear about your work schedule and your encounters with Ken Davidson & Rabbi Holz - - as well as your Shabbat at home.
You will learn that we contemporary Jews normally do not refer to the "tithe" for very practical reasons. Only part of our giving goes to the Temple. We also give to Jewish Federation (social service arm of the Jewish community), to the United Appeal and to other charitable institutions beyond ourselves.
There is a Hasidic story you will probably appreciate:
A student asks his teacher, "Rebbe, why is the stork called "hasidav" (the loving one)?" The teacher responds, "The stork is called "hasidav" because it gives so much love to its mate and to its young." "Then, Rebbe, why is the stork treife (non-kosher)?" The teacher answers, "the stork is treife because it gives love only to its own!"
That's the perspective of our charitable giving.
Regarding my unanswerable questions he wrote:
You're right; they're really unanswerable. Over the years I have seen both (1) those who obviously had Jewish souls from birth and (2) those who "grew" a Jewish soul during their process of becoming Jewish.
The final question is really answered by what is inside you, not what others at the moment may think.
A couple of weeks later I had another thing to add to the list of "odd" things which had happened since I made the decision to be a Jew: I read part of my song in a Siddur [prayer book] I had never read.
It was on Friday night, I had come home to light the Shabbat candles alone. Cynthia had accepted an invitation to go to Georgia for a temple Sisterhood leadership training retreat.
As always, I felt the tears and the constriction of my throat as I recited the transliterated prayers with my illiterate Hebrew tongue.
Since Cynthia and I have begun to celebrate Shabbat, we have made the time after lighting the candles a time to discuss and reflect aloud upon our renewed religious life-- and observe how it is changing us.
This Shabbat, as I had no one to talk to, I decided to read through the prayer book. It is the gray covered 1994 edition of the Reform Siddur [prayer book] entitled "Gates of Prayer". Rabbi had mentioned a fondness for this edition so I had asked Cynthia to purchase a copy. She brought it home two days after that my interview with Rabbi. Two days after I had written the song.
On page 134, toward the bottom in a translation of a prayer from the Afternoon Shabbat service I read:
"Your strength is Always with us,
O God Your compassion does not Fail.
Winter winds are Your messengers,
summer dew a sign of your grace."
My mouth dropped open at reading those words: "Winter winds are Your messengers."
Why? Because I had "unknowingly" written something very similar in the lyrics to "Sleep Little Flowers". The words to the song I wrote are:
Sleep, Little Flowers
Sleep, until Spring
The Winter Winds are coming
Who knows what they will bring?
Tomorrow is Tomorrow
Today is Today
Yesterday is a mem'ry
Just fading away
Sleep, Little Flowers
Sleep, until Spring
The Winter Wind is with us now
Hear the cold winds sing?
Sorrow is Sorrowed
Lover is Belov'd
Let us light the candles
Remember we are loved
Sleep, Little Flowers
Sleep, until Spring
When the cold ice melts
The young song birds, they will sing
Four thousand years
Just like yesterday
Stop for a moment
Hear this wand'r pray
Wake, Little Flowers
The winter time is passed
Here are the joyous days
Come to us at last
The Melody is memories
The Singer is the Song
The Road to Jeruselem
Has been here all along
Yes, Wake, Little Flowers
The Spring is fin'ly here
A Rainbow is shining now o'r'
A sky brimmed with joyful tears
The image in the likeness
The doer in the Deed
The Truth of life is simple
Love is all you need.
Wake, little flowers
Hear this simple song
I, who, am unworthy
Have found where I belong
Yes let us light the candles
Break Bread and share the wine
I lift my heart rejoicing:
"Baruch Ata Adonai:
All I am is thine!"
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I was [and am still] amazed to find reference to a prayer I had never read before in words I wrote as lyrics.
Obviously yet another coincidence... but it begins to seem like there is a strong "hint" of an Unseen Hand in these various bits of coincidence. I am not certain if I should call them "messengers" yet.
Later that night I read in the Tanakh about how God proved to Gideon via "dew" the provenance of what Gideon had been commanded to do. I imagine then that at some time I will stumble over the original passage which explains how "winter winds" are God's messengers.
The human mind tends to like to "organize" and "catagorize" phenomena regardless whether the phenomena are tangible or intangible. We organize our lives around our interpretations which become "our truth". Those interpretations, those "truths", change over time, something which I was reminded of in one Saturday morning Torah study with Rabbi Holz.
He told a story of how when he became a Rabbi in Pretoria, they had staged a burnt offering of donated meat as part of the Religious School curriculum to show how the Levites had offered sacrifices in ancient times. He emphasized what a stench it had made.
I need to clarify to you what I really meant when I said above that some of the Torah was silly. I did not mean that in a derogatory way. It was a way of stating aloud a question to myself: Where is the meaning here? What context can I set these things, these stories, and mizvot? Because what I am reading here does not appear to fit the context of a "modern life".
I have begun to wrestling in my untrained manner with how does one "be" a Jew-- That is to say "think - feel- do" what I have chosen to be. [I do not have a college degree-- except from the Autodidactic School of Hard Knocks]
Modern physics tends to say there is no "objective reality"-- that everything we know is based upon an interpretation of what we have observed. I would add a qualifier that we do not know what "objective reality" is, because we are not equipt to measure and interpret it and probably never will be. [Which sounds a lot like what I read somewhere as the Kabbalah's definition of Ayn Sof-- the infinite, unknowable G-d].
So since there is no "objective reality", all we have is our "subjective interpretation" of what has happened. In this light, I can organize and interpret my life experience these last weeks and see this string "sychronocities" as actual "messengers". Are they really? Should I? Does it matter? I do not say any of these things are of "special provence" but I have begun to believe they are "signs" that the path I have chosen is the right one for me.
That week I was reading some excerpts from the Talmud and the Mishna [with a grain of salt] which I inherited from my late mother's library. The translations that I have were printed in 1917 as part of a "library" of various "sacred books". Some of the translations are from non-jewish sources and I am doubtful of their veracity.
I also completed reading Eugene B. Borowitz's "The Masks Jews Wear: The Self Deceptions of American Jewry" and Arthur Hertzberg's "Jews: The Essence and Character of a People". This one was an "all night read". I found myself moved to tears by these words from the closing paragraph of this book:
"To be a Jew is to be commanded; to take actions because they are right, not because they bring personal comfort or material gain. Had Abraham wanted tranquility and prosperity, he would have carried on his father's idol business. To be a Jew is to open one's tent on all four sides so that any stranger in need of food and shelter can enter from every direction. To be a Jew is to believe in tikkun olam, that the world can be redeemed. To be a Jew is to be carried by the current of the ancient Jewish river that keeps on flowing. The journey will continue."
I began reading two of Gershom Scholem's books: "On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism" and "Kabbalah". Both of which are intellectual / historical analysis of Jewish mysticism. I was looking for the context of the idea.
As R. Hertzberg said: "The journey will continue."
but I'll have to tell you about that next time.
HaGedi
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