I'm Jewish. I'm married to someone who has been Jewish for 19 of the 20 some years I have known her. Maybe finally, after all this time, I am willing to say outright - we're in the wrong place at Christmas.
I did not grow up missing Christmas. I had a full life of Jewish holidays. On Christmas day my family, like I assumed many English type Jewish families, had a roast chicken and a Christmas pudding. The fun was in seeing my father try to light it.
When I was in high school, my rabbi told me we shouldn't be celebrating Christmas at home in any way, and over the years that followed I came to somewhat agree with him. The day didn't bother me or affect me one way or another. The commercialism of the season could be wearing, but it soon passed, and I continued the full life of holidays I knew.
When Alen and I got together, I don't remember Christmas being much. We visited with friends who celebrated, once with her relatives in England. Another time we were with her family in Trinidad. Mostly we were in our home and world. We called her family on the day, but that was about it.
Then Alen's mom died. The next Christmas in Israel was agonizing. Here no one knows and no one celebrates. Alen's mom was missing, Alen wasn't with her family, and no one even knew or thought to call because it was a hard day. It passed for most of our friends without thought. Just two months into her grief, Alen was miserable and I was miserable for her.
After the kids came, we spent a couple of Christmases with her family in Trinidad and they were fun. Then Lucas died. The following Christmas was (at least predictably) a day of many tears in our home. And the second Christmas after Lucas died, we were with her family, with our kids, strengthening bonds, making new memories, and also sharing grief for those who are no longer with us.
Today, the third Christmas since Lucas died, I feel we are in the wrong place.
I don't want Christmas for any religious reasons. I don't consider whether halachically I should or should not eat a festive meal or give or receive a gift. I just want our family to be with the people we care most about, enjoying a day that means something to them.
Alen and Gabi are watching the Queen's Christmas message on TV, there's a smell of Christmas cookies coming from the oven, but I'd rather be in a big living room with a big tree in the hills of Maracas Valley. Merry Christmas.
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Saturday, November 9, 2013
Parve Tuna Pie
I was looking for parve tuna casserole but came across this recipe instead. It's something easy and parve - I modified what I found online and it came out pretty good. This is not for the pretentious healthy food types, it's for people who serve stuff like hot dogs and mac & cheese. But then if your daughter stops eating milk and meat, well, here's something you can still serve.
Here it is:
2 cans tuna, drained
One onion
One carrot
About 2/3 cup frozen peas
3 eggs
salf
pepper
1 teaspoon soup mix if you want
1 tablespoon mayonnaise
frozen pastry (parve) - the kind that comes in a roll, defrosted some
Chop the onion and carrot and fry them with some oil and salt. Let them cool. Mix the tuna, eggs, frozen peas, salt and pepper, soup mix if desired, and mayonnaise. Add the cooled onion and carrot. Mix well.
Put one layer of crust on the bottom of a rectangular pan (or whatever pan you want to use). Spread the tuna mixture on top. Put another layer of pastry on top. Bake at 350/170 for about 40 minutes until it looks done.
The cooked tuna is less strong tasting than you would think, and the pie is sweet. If you want, you could add an apple to the recipe. Gabi, Alen and I all liked it - of course Sasha did not touch it!
Here it is:
2 cans tuna, drained
One onion
One carrot
About 2/3 cup frozen peas
3 eggs
salf
pepper
1 teaspoon soup mix if you want
1 tablespoon mayonnaise
frozen pastry (parve) - the kind that comes in a roll, defrosted some
Chop the onion and carrot and fry them with some oil and salt. Let them cool. Mix the tuna, eggs, frozen peas, salt and pepper, soup mix if desired, and mayonnaise. Add the cooled onion and carrot. Mix well.
Put one layer of crust on the bottom of a rectangular pan (or whatever pan you want to use). Spread the tuna mixture on top. Put another layer of pastry on top. Bake at 350/170 for about 40 minutes until it looks done.
The cooked tuna is less strong tasting than you would think, and the pie is sweet. If you want, you could add an apple to the recipe. Gabi, Alen and I all liked it - of course Sasha did not touch it!
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Trust and the flower pot
I have a flower pot on my dresser that I received as a gift
when I was a junior in high school. This
is a story about how I got it and about the things I have come to wonder in
recent years about what it means to me.
I took a class in high school called “Communications”. It was a popular class, taught by a popular
teacher. This was the late 70s and I
think it’s fair to say the teacher was an aging hippie and his class was
definitely influenced by the spirit of the times. Having been preyed up on as a child, I
actually kept my distance from him. I had
a radar for adults who violated boundaries.
I had already worked to get switched out of a class where the teacher
was known for smoking pot with students.
This teacher also had that reputation, as well as a group of much cooler
girls than I who surrounded him. Maybe
there were guys too, I just don’t remember them as well.
I liked the class. It
was all about the ways we communicate with each other – pop psychology type
stuff. There was a retreat too. We talked about issues like honesty, trust,
you know.
I think that on the last day of class we were supposed to
bring a gift for one person in the class.
I think I brought something for a girl named Jill, someone who was much
more popular than me in the complicated social order of the high school of 2000
kids where this took place but whom I had become somewhat close with over the
class.
I was very surprised when the teacher chose me, of all the
students, to give a gift to. He gave me
a spider plant, quite a healthy one, with babies on it, in a small flower
pot. He said that he had had the plant
and tended it for quite some time. He
said that he was giving it to me because of all the people in the class, he
trusted me. He trusted me, he said, not
just to tell me something personal, like we had practiced doing with people in
the class, but he trusted me in the way that if he ever wanted something done,
I was the person in the class he would trust that he could turn to and that I
would get it done.
I can’t begin to tell the value to me of this gift and of
what he said that day. I guess the fact
that this plant, and after it was long gone the pot it grew in, stayed with me
in every dorm room, home or apartment I ever had, made aliyah with me and still
sits on my dresser 36 years later tells that tale. In a high school of 2000 kids, in a life in
which I felt often invisible, unpopular or unimportant, that gift and statement
had a lot of traction and helped shape the positive ways I saw myself for many
years to come.
And yet…
Some not so long while ago, something happened and a friend
came to believe that I was not trustworthy at all. As I reflected on this for some weeks, I
thought about the flower pot, and I began to wonder about whether I had ever
been the person the teacher said I was. It
seemed clear that : the teacher wasn’t
trustworthy, he was smoking pot with students; I wasn’t trustworthy – my parents
couldn’t trust me and just the year before, for example, I had been stealing pills
from the medicine cabinet of people I babysat for; the gift wasn’t trustworthy –
what quality teacher singles out one student in front of the class to praise? And years later, I didn’t feel like the person
who could be counted on to get things done – I felt then, and often feel now,
that I make too many commitments to too many people and can’t possibly carry
them all out. Sometimes it seems like the only way I can be trustworthy - to myself and others, is to cut back radically on what I commit to, and on who I am to others. The more people expect of me, the more likely I am to disappoint. Or something like that.
I would like to digress here to a story about a person I
once met whom I think was named Lyn, but I fear if I go down that road I won’t
get back to the present. I'll save that story for later.
So….
Lately I have met two people who feel that the world is not
a trustworthy place and that people in general cannot be trusted. And I have found these people to be pretty
hard or impossible to rely on. Leading
me to believe that how trustworthy we are may be connected to how much we trust
others. But beyond that, I have also
noticed that my trustworthiness, my ability to follow through, help, stay
committed, has been less than optimal when I have dealt with these people. It is almost as though I have become less trustworthy when dealing with people who don't expect me to be trustworthy. Or something like that.
So the flip side of this is that because my teacher said he
trusted me, I worked all these years to be the person he saw me as. I am not sure I have succeeded, but I believe
I have tried harder because of what his words meant to me. Which is something for each of us teachers to
think about.
Many years ago, Reb Zalman gave me a blessing that I should
see myself as G-d sees me. This week, as
we were studying Psalm 33, I asked my students if they believe in hashgacha
pratit (that G-d oversees our individual actions). One of my students said the following and I
knew he had written the end of this story.
He said, “If people are created in the image of G-d, and if people see
my deeds, then I believe some part of G-d sees my deeds.” So I'm still grateful that my teacher in that moment saw, maybe not who I completely was, but who I could maybe become. And that, with his shortcomings, he helped me get closer and work harder on being the person he saw I could be.
Thursday, October 24, 2013
How I stopped wanting to hurt or kill myself
My motto for this month has been, “No negative
self-talk.” Almost every woman and many
men who come to my office or call me on the phone have some way of talking to
themself that is a put down or a negative comment toward themselves. It could be as simple as apologizing when
it’s not necessary or saying, “I was stupid to do that,” but almost everyone
has a way to put themselves down.
For those of us who are abuse survivors, the problem can be
much more acute. When I got sober I
found my thoughts often turned to wanting to hurt myself or wanting to die.
When I was a very short time sober, maybe one year, I heard
someone tell a similar story to mine and at the end of it she said that she had
not wanted to kill herself in five years.
I remembered this since then – it was about 20 years ago that I heard
her say this. For me, it was a complete
message of hope, that someone with a similar story to mine could go five years
without wanting to kill herself. I think
that was the day when I knew there was hope for me and the day that I decided
to reach for being like her. And today I
can honestly say I have not wanted to kill myself in quite a bit more than five years.
Our minds have grooves in them and as we play the same messages
over and over we deepen the groove. I
had a groove in my mind that was “I should drive my car into a tree.” I had another one that I wanted to cut
myself. I did not do these things, but I
did think these thoughts, over and over and over again.
One thing I like to say is, “if you can hear it, you can
change it.” More on point perhaps, “if
you can hear your thought, you can interrupt your thought.” It was second nature to me to think, “I want
to drive my car into a tree,” but as I started to listen to my thoughts I
became willing to question them. So when
I heard myself say that, I could ask myself, “Do I really and truly want to
drive my car into that tree?” I began to
think my thought through. “I want to
drive my car into a tree” was a shorthand way of saying, “I feel bad”.
So then I asked myself, “why am I feeling bad?” I took an approach Geneen Roth describes as
“curiosity and kindness” toward my own thoughts. And I found out there was usually a reason
why I felt bad – I was upset by something someone had said, or I was tired, or
I was hungry, or I was scared.
And once I found out why I felt bad – I could work to change
how I felt – by eating, by sleeping, by talking to a friend, by writing about
how I was feeling, by praying. A big
thing that helped me was the saying, “feelings aren’t facts.” But more than that, I learned that I could
change my thoughts and listen to my feelings.
Over time, my feelings changed.
But it began inside my head when I refused to indulge in thoughts about
hurting myself, and started to take that first sign, the first thought of
hurting myself, as a signal that I needed to do something to take loving care
of myself and to help myself feel better.
A friend tells a joke about the alcoholic with a flat tire
who calls the suicide hotline. I still
go down that road sometimes, finding whatever I can’t handle as a reason to
want to die. But much more often these
days, I can stop the thought before it starts, remember that there are ways,
like roadside service, to deal with the flat tires of life, and that I can
handle what comes my way without turning to negative thoughts and negative self
– talk. And I honestly believe that if I
could make such a huge change in my thoughts that anyone, anyone at all, can
make new choices and become a person who does not want to kill herself. I find it to be totally worth it!
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Ancient History - Part Two
I suddenly realized Coming Out Day will come and go and I won't have finished my story - yikes! I just re-read the last installment and it feels so raw. I'm impressed I was able to feel that close to that time last week and aware why it kept me awake.
That's something I remember - waking up at about 4 am every day. Not know how to know myself, not knowing who I was.
Secrets are bad for me from a young age when I started keeping some. So that month of not telling anyone went very much against my nature.
I decided to tell someone. An old boyfriend - maybe my most recent serious boyfriend - was coming to town and I thought maybe I could tell him. First we spent some time together. I think I told him I had something I wanted to talk to him about but I was afraid to tell him. I never write about sex particularly but that was the last time I had sex with a man. Then I got up to go to the bathroom and said, "I'll be right back, don't go away," and when I got back he said:
"You know, sometimes you say things and I don't know if you mean me to hear them."
And I said "what do you mean?"
And he said, "when you got up you said, 'by the way, I'm gay.'"
Which I never said, I said, "I'll be right back, don't go away." I have proof he misheard things because once before I had told him something like, "I love you very much" and he thought I said, "I want to make you lunch."
So that was the first person I came out to, and I know G-d was acting in my life because he heard me say what I was afraid to say.
Then I started telling other people and all their reactions totally annoyed me. Lesbian friends said, "oh, we always knew you were gay," and I was like, "how could you know when I didn't know, how can you say that?" And straight friends were either like, "so what?" or "really?" or "yeah, we knew that," and I'm like, "It's a really big deal" and "Yes, really" and "How could you know that if I didn't?"
I wasn't happy with anyone's response. Can't think of one person I felt like talking to about it except maybe the woman I was starting to have a crush on. And one other friend who was coming out at the time.
So then I told my parents. Why not, right? I guess it was Thanksgiving. I was applying to rabbinical school. My mom said being a lesbian rabbi was like shooting yourself in the foot. She said I would never have kids. Then when I said I still wanted kids she said they wouldn't have a father and it would screw them up. Yup. Lesbianism was fine for all her friends but not for her daughter. Makes sense. I don't remember what my dad said, but no doubt it had something in it about the importance of biological reproduction and reproductive relationships being better than other kinds.
I like my parents. I'm not writing this to dishonor them. This is really what they said. You can read elsewhere on my blog about how my grandmother responded when I told her about 7 years later, after I had met Alen. The good thing about my parents is they never stopped the dialogue and eventually, in time for our wedding about 9 years after this, they got it together, and after the wedding they really got it together.
I remember at the time I read some great books - Mary Borhek's classic Coming Out to Parents and another book called Parents Matter. The Parents Matter book was based on a survey that found that the greatest relationship damage/danger of coming out was actually between lesbians and their fathers. The most ruptures were there. But the average time from coming out in the people surveyed for the book was 7 years and my boss told me it wasn't long enough. She told me after 15 years there's real acceptance, and I have found that to be the case.
Coming out was like shedding a skin. Everything was raw. Nothing made sense and everything made sense. I don't know how many years it took for the shock to wear off. It was being comfortable with myself and no one else, it was making sense in a different way of everywhere I had been, it was hard and it was real.
A shout out at the end of this installment (I don't know if it is the end or not) to the ex-boyfriend and dear friend mentioned above and to others including Alan Kaufmann z"l. I don't remember when I told and who I told (except the story above) but I remember I was met with love and support. And to all my other friends who weathered the storm and stuck with me and to all my friends especially from work who showed me the way and to my family too who were always with me despite some memorable things they said.
That's something I remember - waking up at about 4 am every day. Not know how to know myself, not knowing who I was.
Secrets are bad for me from a young age when I started keeping some. So that month of not telling anyone went very much against my nature.
I decided to tell someone. An old boyfriend - maybe my most recent serious boyfriend - was coming to town and I thought maybe I could tell him. First we spent some time together. I think I told him I had something I wanted to talk to him about but I was afraid to tell him. I never write about sex particularly but that was the last time I had sex with a man. Then I got up to go to the bathroom and said, "I'll be right back, don't go away," and when I got back he said:
"You know, sometimes you say things and I don't know if you mean me to hear them."
And I said "what do you mean?"
And he said, "when you got up you said, 'by the way, I'm gay.'"
Which I never said, I said, "I'll be right back, don't go away." I have proof he misheard things because once before I had told him something like, "I love you very much" and he thought I said, "I want to make you lunch."
So that was the first person I came out to, and I know G-d was acting in my life because he heard me say what I was afraid to say.
Then I started telling other people and all their reactions totally annoyed me. Lesbian friends said, "oh, we always knew you were gay," and I was like, "how could you know when I didn't know, how can you say that?" And straight friends were either like, "so what?" or "really?" or "yeah, we knew that," and I'm like, "It's a really big deal" and "Yes, really" and "How could you know that if I didn't?"
I wasn't happy with anyone's response. Can't think of one person I felt like talking to about it except maybe the woman I was starting to have a crush on. And one other friend who was coming out at the time.
So then I told my parents. Why not, right? I guess it was Thanksgiving. I was applying to rabbinical school. My mom said being a lesbian rabbi was like shooting yourself in the foot. She said I would never have kids. Then when I said I still wanted kids she said they wouldn't have a father and it would screw them up. Yup. Lesbianism was fine for all her friends but not for her daughter. Makes sense. I don't remember what my dad said, but no doubt it had something in it about the importance of biological reproduction and reproductive relationships being better than other kinds.
I like my parents. I'm not writing this to dishonor them. This is really what they said. You can read elsewhere on my blog about how my grandmother responded when I told her about 7 years later, after I had met Alen. The good thing about my parents is they never stopped the dialogue and eventually, in time for our wedding about 9 years after this, they got it together, and after the wedding they really got it together.
I remember at the time I read some great books - Mary Borhek's classic Coming Out to Parents and another book called Parents Matter. The Parents Matter book was based on a survey that found that the greatest relationship damage/danger of coming out was actually between lesbians and their fathers. The most ruptures were there. But the average time from coming out in the people surveyed for the book was 7 years and my boss told me it wasn't long enough. She told me after 15 years there's real acceptance, and I have found that to be the case.
Coming out was like shedding a skin. Everything was raw. Nothing made sense and everything made sense. I don't know how many years it took for the shock to wear off. It was being comfortable with myself and no one else, it was making sense in a different way of everywhere I had been, it was hard and it was real.
A shout out at the end of this installment (I don't know if it is the end or not) to the ex-boyfriend and dear friend mentioned above and to others including Alan Kaufmann z"l. I don't remember when I told and who I told (except the story above) but I remember I was met with love and support. And to all my other friends who weathered the storm and stuck with me and to all my friends especially from work who showed me the way and to my family too who were always with me despite some memorable things they said.
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Ancient History - My Coming Out Story
National
Coming Out Day is October 11, and I have been thinking about when I came out in
1987 and what it meant to me then and means to me now.
The events
aren’t fuzzy in my mind but the dates are.
I thought I was 26 turning 27 when I came out, but I am sure it was
1987, and that year I was actually 25 turning 26. It was the fall. I had received a call, I think in early
September, asking me to take a job with the Pennsylvania Coalition Against
Domestic Violence. I left where I had
been working, at Women Against Abuse in downtown Philly, and took the job in
Reading PA. The understanding was that
this was temporary, for less than a year, until they could do a real search,
for which I would also be able to apply.
Taking this
job allowed me to move from downtown, where I had been working, to a more
suburban part of Philly (Mt. Airy) which had more of a Jewish community. My brother was living there and we rented an
apartment together. I’m not sure the
sequence of events that fall – what happened first after the new job – the move
or the monumental conversation that changed my life.
It sounds
kind of funny, naïve and trite, but this is what happened:
I was
working with a brilliant lesbian attorney and we were travelling the state. The head office was in Harrisburg. We also had meetings all over the state – I
think we tried to meet each month in a different county with legal
advocates. Mostly this involved
driving. We also had trainings several
times a year in different parts of the state.
Early in the fall, Ellen Pence, may her memory be a blessing, came to do a
training. I don’t remember where it
was. I remember of course how brilliant she
was. I don’t think it was the first time
I heard her speak, but being in a room with her was always wonderful. I read
something online after she died that so captured the way she was in a room – at
the same time making you feel really good and also challenging you to be so
much better.
So my boss,
me and Ellen were in one of our hotel rooms after this training. And somehow the topic came around to me, and
how I “thought I was not a lesbian.” And
Ellen told me that I was making a mistake if I thought I was going to marry a
man, and that it was a bad idea, because one day, I would be working on a
committee with some woman, and I would look into her eyes and fall in love, and
if I was married to a man it would be a messy divorce, maybe a custody
battle. She presented it very
romantically and I laughed and said, “Will she wear glasses?”
I said, “Why
do you think I’m a lesbian, just because I am masculine?” and she said, “no you’re
not, you are a fembot.”
Ellen was
such a huge personality – when she tells you something about yourself, it’s not
something you can shrug off. Or maybe
had I been more straight I could have, but as it was, I started thinking.
And I asked
myself, “is it possible I am a lesbian”?
And the answer
that came to me was that I had no idea, because for me any kind of feeling I
might have for any woman was locked behind a door that said “don’t come in here”. I couldn’t know if I was attracted to women
or any woman because it was not something I allowed myself to feel. Opening that locked door to wonder was a step
toward finding out about myself. In the
words of Geneen Roth I read just recently, it was a beginning toward treating
myself with kindness and curiosity. It
was an opening to learning about myself rather than trying to force myself to
be what I thought the world wanted me to be.
It was about
accepting myself and being myself. What
a concept.
Now that I
have a 10 year old daughter, I see the process close up of how we (especially
girls but probably boys too) try to mold ourselves to be what we think the
world (in the form of our cruel peers, our teachers and others) wants from us.
What I felt
in the coming out process was that all of a sudden I could re-access my 8 and 9
year old self. I had energy, exuberance,
and joy. My 8 and 9 year old self had
wanted to be a rabbi. And lo and behold,
I suddenly felt free to apply to rabbinical school.
But I’m
getting ahead of myself.
First I
spent a month, a whole month, not telling anyone about this. I spend a month driving 75 minutes each way
to work and crying, wondering if I could be a lesbian and trying to figure out
what that would mean in my life.
One day on
my return trip from work I heard Joni Mitchell’s Song for Sharon. And cried over the first verse:
I went to Staten Island, Sharon
To buy myself a mandolin
And I saw the long white dress of love
On a storefront mannequin
Big boat chuggin' back with a belly full of cars
All for something lacy
Some girl's going to see that dress
And crave that day like crazy
To buy myself a mandolin
And I saw the long white dress of love
On a storefront mannequin
Big boat chuggin' back with a belly full of cars
All for something lacy
Some girl's going to see that dress
And crave that day like crazy
I cried because I was so sure I would never wear a wedding
dress, cried again that January when I saw a photo of Jan Pierce in her wedding
dress, after she died suddenly and I guess I was with her daughter looking at her old wedding album.
And I knew at the same time that if what I wanted from
heterosexuality was that day and that wedding dress, it probably wasn’t enough.
Stay tuned
for Part 2!
Thursday, August 29, 2013
What I learned standing in line for gas masks
Alen asked me like a week ago to get us gas masks. They had given them out over 2 days last spring in our town but being busy and not recognizing the flyer as official when it came in our snail mail box, I had not paid attention and not seen it.
So last week I called the post office, which is supposed to deliver them, but they were busy and took my number to call me back which of course they never did.
So yesterday Alen was really serious about wanting them and I drove down to Beit Shemesh where they were giving them out. They had said 11 am to 7 pm, but when I got there after work around 6 pm I found out you had to take numbers and there was no chance of getting one. People had been waiting for hours.
So today Alen went down around 10:15 and got number 408. And from 10:15 am to 6:15 pm they served about 250 families. Alen was there for a couple of hours, and I went back around 6:30 after coming home from work and driving down there.
I stood there from about 6:30 to 8:30 pm. They stayed open more than an hour after they had said they would. Our number was never called. They finished up on about number 350 or 360.
So what did I learn and gain? What did I think about and what was I reminded of?
I met a nice English speaking guy named Efraim, formerly from Elizabeth NJ. I talked to him about gay marriage, about aliyah, about parents making and not making aliyah.
I met a young woman from Tzur Hadassah who is studying political science and Latin American studies and whose family is all away out of the country right now with their identity cards so she can't get gas masks for them. She couldn't get one for herself either - her number was over 1000.
I met a teacher from Gedera who used to teach in Ein Karem and now teaches in Bet Shemesh. I told her this was a spiritual challenge and she said, "my spirit is doing fine; I don't need any challenges thank you." I told her I'd like to say that to my kids sometimes.
I met a religious woman from Kiryat Malachi who told me that Rabbi Kaminetsky told the students at the Mir Yeshiva that masks are for Purim. But she said that that was his answer for those students, that every person has their own answer. She and her husband had left the kids home and been there all day - they had number 340 and got their masks.
I saw Israel in all its diversity. I saw people of all backgrounds and almost all ages. I saw people shouting at one another, I saw people helping one another. I saw people telling jokes and making one another laugh.
I watched people get upset and shout and I thought about how I hoped no one from the media was filming us and I thought about how I believe G-d is watching us and that at this season we are all being judged.
I told the teacher from Gedera, what if this were a line for rice, like you see in Africa sometimes? This is whipped cream topping I said. What if we were in line for something we really needed? On the way home I thought about how Russians used to have to wait in line for everything, bread, eggs, etc. I wondered how I would behave in a famine, or if I was really in a war.
Of course any crowded line like this and I start thinking about cattle cars or selection lines. That's where my brain goes. And I was only there 2 hours - some people were there much longer. I wonder whether they also get those feelings.
I was able to thank the workers for their work and wish them Shanah tovah.
I was able to live with disappointment.
I was able to honor my family. I was able to be happy that I had gone because Alen wanted me to and because our family needs gas masks. I was able to joke with people that I was there for my father in law in Trinidad so when he calls we can tell him we have them. I was able to tell the teacher a story Vlad told me - about a Palestinian young man 19 years old who, during the intifada, went to live in Haiti, to escape the violence, and how he died there from a gunshot. About how we used to worry about Vlad in Haiti and he used to worry about us here.
I was able to review in my head my conversation with my friend Alex this afternoon where we assessed the probabilities of each of the "ifs" and concluded we are not likely to be in danger right here, right now.
When they told us they were closing up, packing the gas masks onto a truck and leaving without distributing any more, I was able to call the homefront command to ask why they were closing up and not giving out more. I was told the shift is over, that's it. I was able to find out that they are receiving 6000 calls an hour, that the whole south has no distribution points, that "in an emergency situation the homefront command will open emergency centers". I was able to find out that on Sunday they will open distribution centers in the Haifa and Tel Aviv areas but they have no information yet on our area. The young woman I spoke to was able to tell me that what I was seeing was not nearly as bad as some other situations, that she had gotten much worse calls today, and I was able to wish her Shanah tovah and many blessings, and to thank her, and to get in my car and come home.
And for all this, I'm grateful.
So last week I called the post office, which is supposed to deliver them, but they were busy and took my number to call me back which of course they never did.
So yesterday Alen was really serious about wanting them and I drove down to Beit Shemesh where they were giving them out. They had said 11 am to 7 pm, but when I got there after work around 6 pm I found out you had to take numbers and there was no chance of getting one. People had been waiting for hours.
So today Alen went down around 10:15 and got number 408. And from 10:15 am to 6:15 pm they served about 250 families. Alen was there for a couple of hours, and I went back around 6:30 after coming home from work and driving down there.
I stood there from about 6:30 to 8:30 pm. They stayed open more than an hour after they had said they would. Our number was never called. They finished up on about number 350 or 360.
So what did I learn and gain? What did I think about and what was I reminded of?
I met a nice English speaking guy named Efraim, formerly from Elizabeth NJ. I talked to him about gay marriage, about aliyah, about parents making and not making aliyah.
I met a young woman from Tzur Hadassah who is studying political science and Latin American studies and whose family is all away out of the country right now with their identity cards so she can't get gas masks for them. She couldn't get one for herself either - her number was over 1000.
I met a teacher from Gedera who used to teach in Ein Karem and now teaches in Bet Shemesh. I told her this was a spiritual challenge and she said, "my spirit is doing fine; I don't need any challenges thank you." I told her I'd like to say that to my kids sometimes.
I met a religious woman from Kiryat Malachi who told me that Rabbi Kaminetsky told the students at the Mir Yeshiva that masks are for Purim. But she said that that was his answer for those students, that every person has their own answer. She and her husband had left the kids home and been there all day - they had number 340 and got their masks.
I saw Israel in all its diversity. I saw people of all backgrounds and almost all ages. I saw people shouting at one another, I saw people helping one another. I saw people telling jokes and making one another laugh.
I watched people get upset and shout and I thought about how I hoped no one from the media was filming us and I thought about how I believe G-d is watching us and that at this season we are all being judged.
I told the teacher from Gedera, what if this were a line for rice, like you see in Africa sometimes? This is whipped cream topping I said. What if we were in line for something we really needed? On the way home I thought about how Russians used to have to wait in line for everything, bread, eggs, etc. I wondered how I would behave in a famine, or if I was really in a war.
Of course any crowded line like this and I start thinking about cattle cars or selection lines. That's where my brain goes. And I was only there 2 hours - some people were there much longer. I wonder whether they also get those feelings.
I was able to thank the workers for their work and wish them Shanah tovah.
I was able to live with disappointment.
I was able to honor my family. I was able to be happy that I had gone because Alen wanted me to and because our family needs gas masks. I was able to joke with people that I was there for my father in law in Trinidad so when he calls we can tell him we have them. I was able to tell the teacher a story Vlad told me - about a Palestinian young man 19 years old who, during the intifada, went to live in Haiti, to escape the violence, and how he died there from a gunshot. About how we used to worry about Vlad in Haiti and he used to worry about us here.
I was able to review in my head my conversation with my friend Alex this afternoon where we assessed the probabilities of each of the "ifs" and concluded we are not likely to be in danger right here, right now.
When they told us they were closing up, packing the gas masks onto a truck and leaving without distributing any more, I was able to call the homefront command to ask why they were closing up and not giving out more. I was told the shift is over, that's it. I was able to find out that they are receiving 6000 calls an hour, that the whole south has no distribution points, that "in an emergency situation the homefront command will open emergency centers". I was able to find out that on Sunday they will open distribution centers in the Haifa and Tel Aviv areas but they have no information yet on our area. The young woman I spoke to was able to tell me that what I was seeing was not nearly as bad as some other situations, that she had gotten much worse calls today, and I was able to wish her Shanah tovah and many blessings, and to thank her, and to get in my car and come home.
And for all this, I'm grateful.
Monday, July 8, 2013
Where I won't stand
A colleague asked me yesterday if we should organize a group to go to Women at the Wall. This is my response.
Women of the Wall is my struggle, but it can't be my battleground.
From 1983-1990, I worked with battered women. I saw my co-workers and I at the front line of the war on women. We recorded information for petitions for protection from abuse. Three incidents of violence were necessary. We wrote down the details. I have no idea how I sat there, but I was young and committed. I'm grateful that more stories have not stayed with me. But I see faces, I remember names. Mostly I remember the strength and valiance of the women I met.
I walked away from that work but I have no illusions of having made significant change. The shelters are still full, the hotlines are still ringing.
Over time I have taken myself to a different place and a different stance in the struggle. I am a lesbian rabbi - an impossibility in the eyes of many in a country where many consider women rabbis not to be rabbis. I was trained to pastor and facilitate - in the eyes of many rabbis are decisors of law only.
I do radical things these days - like teaching a shiur in the modern Orthodox shul in my town, like leading services in the Reform congregation here, like going into the school and teaching sixth graders about Women at the Wall, complete with photos of Tefillin Barbie. While people were leaving Women at the Wall yesterday, I was sitting in a doctor's office with my son, explaining to an Orthodox woman, an M.D. in training who was sitting in on our doctor's visit, "my son has two moms."
If I go to a place where there is a crowd, where people are being encouraged to hate, I may lose my center. I may lose my ability to see the other, the one who is different from me, as essentially good. A favorite poem, the Desiderata, says, "Speak your truth quietly and clearly and listen to others; they too have their story." For my own spiritual well-being, I must preserve my ability to do this. And for my students, I want them to be able to make their own choices about where to stand in this struggle.
The men who run this country are happy to engineer a fight between women over the Kotel. It diverts women's attention (and that of much of the caring progressive overseas diaspora) from the rest of the issues that are so pressing. Yesterday I heard Naftali Bennett on the radio saying (not in so many words) that the world cares about business progress, not about peace or human rights. He and Yair Lapid and Binyamin Netanyahu have no problem dismissing demands for economic justice led by Shelly Yachimovich and calls to sit down to negotiations led by Tzipi Livni. Women battle each other at the Kotel and the patriarchy wins again.
I am 100% in agreement with the values and ideals of Women of the Wall. But I can't stand there today. I have realized that I will die and the gender justice issues I have spent so much of my life caring about will live on. But my life will have been a poem, a song, a testament to where women stood in this time.
Women of the Wall is my struggle, but it can't be my battleground.
From 1983-1990, I worked with battered women. I saw my co-workers and I at the front line of the war on women. We recorded information for petitions for protection from abuse. Three incidents of violence were necessary. We wrote down the details. I have no idea how I sat there, but I was young and committed. I'm grateful that more stories have not stayed with me. But I see faces, I remember names. Mostly I remember the strength and valiance of the women I met.
I walked away from that work but I have no illusions of having made significant change. The shelters are still full, the hotlines are still ringing.
Over time I have taken myself to a different place and a different stance in the struggle. I am a lesbian rabbi - an impossibility in the eyes of many in a country where many consider women rabbis not to be rabbis. I was trained to pastor and facilitate - in the eyes of many rabbis are decisors of law only.
I do radical things these days - like teaching a shiur in the modern Orthodox shul in my town, like leading services in the Reform congregation here, like going into the school and teaching sixth graders about Women at the Wall, complete with photos of Tefillin Barbie. While people were leaving Women at the Wall yesterday, I was sitting in a doctor's office with my son, explaining to an Orthodox woman, an M.D. in training who was sitting in on our doctor's visit, "my son has two moms."
If I go to a place where there is a crowd, where people are being encouraged to hate, I may lose my center. I may lose my ability to see the other, the one who is different from me, as essentially good. A favorite poem, the Desiderata, says, "Speak your truth quietly and clearly and listen to others; they too have their story." For my own spiritual well-being, I must preserve my ability to do this. And for my students, I want them to be able to make their own choices about where to stand in this struggle.
The men who run this country are happy to engineer a fight between women over the Kotel. It diverts women's attention (and that of much of the caring progressive overseas diaspora) from the rest of the issues that are so pressing. Yesterday I heard Naftali Bennett on the radio saying (not in so many words) that the world cares about business progress, not about peace or human rights. He and Yair Lapid and Binyamin Netanyahu have no problem dismissing demands for economic justice led by Shelly Yachimovich and calls to sit down to negotiations led by Tzipi Livni. Women battle each other at the Kotel and the patriarchy wins again.
I am 100% in agreement with the values and ideals of Women of the Wall. But I can't stand there today. I have realized that I will die and the gender justice issues I have spent so much of my life caring about will live on. But my life will have been a poem, a song, a testament to where women stood in this time.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
The End of Exile
The End of Exile
There’s a woman or man like me
Waking up this morning
In Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver
In London, Berlin, Amsterdam
In Stockholm, in Sydney, maybe even in
Tokyo
Waking up next to a lover, a partner, a
soulmate
She’s thinking of California, New York,
Massachusetts, Florida
He’s thinking of how they met in
Provincetown, Manhattan, San Francisco, Miami
In Rio, or Jamaica or Amsterdam
It’s been 5 years, 10 years, 15 or like
us 20
Of falling in love, of worry, of lawyers bills, of fears and new horizons
Of losses greater than could be borne –
of learning greater than ever dreamed
They have friends, family, new roots of
all sorts
They have bills, mortgages, contracts,
commitments
Is this home? They wonder
For years home has been where you are,
choices limited, decisions made by othersFor years I have held injustice, reached for acceptance, tried to understand G-d’s plan
For years we have missed loved ones,
family events, a sense of all that’s familiar
It has been a kind of wall at each side,
defining a narrow path
I am left standing, wondering, laughing, crying
Reaching for meaning in all we have
walked through
Knowing that wherever you are is home
Saturday, June 1, 2013
25 years out
I got a chance to have some free coaching. They gave me a man from England as my
coach. I did not think much about
that. I was abused in England, by a man. But that was 47 years
ago. After 25 years of recovery most
days men from England aren’t a problem.
He asked me lots of questions about myself. When he asked about my childhood I mentioned
the abuse – I don’t mind talking about it.
It was 47 years ago and I’ve been in recovery for 25 years.
Then I was supposed to write a personal inventory, and part
of it was to write “challenges I have overcome.” I wrote down “recovery from child abuse” and
did not think a lot about it. Challenges
I have overcome was one of the longest sections on my list, and I felt
good.
I did not realize at the next meeting we would plow through
the list and for every item he would ask, “Say more about that, what does that
mean for you, what has it given you, write that down.” About 30 minutes into it I saw “recovery from
child abuse” was coming up. I started to
feel weird. I started to become
inarticulate. I started wanting to be
dishonest and to look better. I didn’t
say anything about it. After all, I
think, I’ve been in recovery for 25 years.
I can handle this. I am intent on
showing him the person he thinks I am or should be.
He said, “so you solve your own problems?” I wrote that down. None of it seemed the least bit true. Child abuse isn’t a problem – it changed
every part of who I am. It isn’t
solved. Whatever part of it is solved
wasn’t solved by me, for sure not by me alone.
I said, “I’m not dead.”
That wasn’t me, that was a small child speaking. I tried to explain what I meant. I talked about not being dead. Like
it might make sense to someone who wasn’t knocked unconscious and crushed by a
terrible weight of an adult person at the age of four.
He said, “the next meeting will be very important, we should
do it in a more homelike setting.” I
started to feel unsafe. I didn’t realize
it and I didn’t say anything. He said, “do
you have 5 more minutes to keep going?”
I was feeling tired and woozy.
But I like the coaching I think to myself. I didn’t say anything.
I said, “I don’t visualize things, I just don’t use that
part of my brain, I don’t see things in my head.”
At some point I looked at all the lists of everything in my
life and said, “I have everything.
Nothing is missing in my life.” I
thought about my partner, my kids, my job I love, my home. I wondered how I could have so much in my
life at 51 years old.
I drove home and went to sleep. At 4 am my miracle daughter woke me up
because she had had a bad dream.
Something clicks. I realize I’m
triggered and have been dissociating. How did it take me 7 hours to
figure that out? I’ve been in recovery
25 years.
I remember that I know that I don’t visualize things because
I cut off access to that part of my brain.
I can remember visualizing things as a child. If I really relax, I do see things. But I am afraid of what I will see.
My head hurts with sharp pains. I feel I am being crushed. I remember that the woozy feeling is a memory
of losing consciousness.
In the morning I call a friend who is also an abuse survivor. “Don’t go back to the coach,” she says. “I’m not there, “ I say. I’m 25 years in recovery. I like this coaching.
I tell her I think I could access the visual part of my
brain more, but I’m afraid of what I will see.
In the days following, I see houses – the house we lived in in
Pittsburgh, a house I lived in in college, a glimpse maybe of our house on
Rotherwick Road in London where we lived when I was abused. I think of the word “newel post.”
“How can you not remember?” she says. “I do remember. In my head, in my stomach. Sometimes I see something but it’s a slide,
not a movie.” She understands what I
mean. We talk about how only people who
have been through this understand. We
talk about how not everyone who has been through it is healing.
I think of someone who said, “I had memories in my 20s, in
my 30s and in my 40s.” I was 28 then,
she was 42. I have thought about her almost every year since she said that. Now I’m 51. I’ve had memories in my 20s, in my 30s and in
my 40s. Now I have them in my 50s. I talk to my friend about some of my
milestones in remembering.
I am supposed to do my coaching homework now. I have no idea what to tell the coach. It was 47 years ago. I’ve been in recovery for 25 years. Nothing is missing in my life.
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Top 10 things I've learned from my mom - for Mother's Day
For Mother's Day, I thought I would post a top ten list of things I've learned from my mom.
1. It's ok to want a fulfilling career and to be a mom. You can do both.
2. If something has to go, let it be the housework.
3. Scrambled eggs and/or fried tomatoes on toast makes a great meal.
4. Honor your in-laws - they are your spouses' parents and your children's grandparents.
5. Let your kids learn to cook as early as possible.
6. Your students aren't as important as your kids, but they are pretty far up there, and you can get new ones every year!
7. There's a lot to be gained from moving to a new culture.
8. Go to shul - even if you don't arrive until Alenu, it's worth going.
9. Ask people about themselves and listen to what they tell you.
10. Be relaxed if your kids wet their beds - they will grow out of it.
That's just today's top 10 list. Every day there's about a hundred things I do pretty well because my mom is such a great role model. Thanks Mom, or as you probably more think of yourself, Mummy.
1. It's ok to want a fulfilling career and to be a mom. You can do both.
2. If something has to go, let it be the housework.
3. Scrambled eggs and/or fried tomatoes on toast makes a great meal.
4. Honor your in-laws - they are your spouses' parents and your children's grandparents.
5. Let your kids learn to cook as early as possible.
6. Your students aren't as important as your kids, but they are pretty far up there, and you can get new ones every year!
7. There's a lot to be gained from moving to a new culture.
8. Go to shul - even if you don't arrive until Alenu, it's worth going.
9. Ask people about themselves and listen to what they tell you.
10. Be relaxed if your kids wet their beds - they will grow out of it.
That's just today's top 10 list. Every day there's about a hundred things I do pretty well because my mom is such a great role model. Thanks Mom, or as you probably more think of yourself, Mummy.
Friday, May 10, 2013
Standing on earth
I have been thinking for some time about coming clean and
writing what I am really thinking about on this blog. It’s a hard thing to do because I think that
some people, including people I love very much, think I am crazy. On the other hand, I also think that my
experience might help some people.
When Lucas died two years ago in a car accident I went into
a profound spiritual crisis. After six
months, my best friend told me that I had to do something. Not wanting to go speak to a therapist, I chose
to go to a cranial-sacral healer.
During the healing, I understood many things. I understood that the car accident that
killed Lucas also shocked me out of balance on earth. The healer worked on grounding me and I
understood that I had somehow, since the accident, been not grounded.
I understood that some part of me was jealous that Lucas got
to leave the earth. I understood that I
knew Lucas and Sasha from a previous life, a life I had seen before. I understood that Lucas was a very high soul,
who had been a monk in that life.
I understood what I have known for many years, that I was
ambivalent (that’s too soft a word) about being alive. Many years ago I came to understand my
traumatic birth (I had the cord around me), as not wanting to be born. I connected this with the fact that I died in
the Holocaust in my last life. I have
seen these things since 1988.
After this healing, I became motivated to want to be
here. I understood that Lucas had left
the earth and that I was still here. I
wanted to work on wanting to be here.
I went to another healer I see who understands these
things. We spent some sessions on this
issue of “wanting to be here”. While I
was working on this, on January 9, 2012, I said, “I have to stop taking
responsibility for other souls.” I have
to claim my journey. Other people, even
my own children, have their own journeys.
That was on Monday.
I was sick at the time.
I went home and came down with pneumonia. On Thursday night I was lying in bed and I
had a feeling. I was about to go on a
trip to California. I had a feeling that
an important message about my trip was about to arrive by email. I kept getting up to check. Around 10:30 pm a message came from the
mother of a friend of mine. I had been
meant to see him, for the first time after 30 years, during my upcoming
trip. The message was that he had killed
himself. On January 9.
In the following days, I was sick in bed and thought only of
him. I began to see him in our last
life, in the Holocaust. He was my
cousin. I began to understand his story –
how hard that life was for him and how that was behind much of what happened to
him in this life. How he was also
someone like me who lived somehow not fully here. How he had to leave.
What I see now, in these days when his image and life are
coming back to me again, is how in this life we re-create scenes from past
lives to re-do them. Do-over.
When Lucas died in March 2011, I was teaching Hallel in an
online course. In Psalm 115 it says, “Lo
hametim yehallelu Y-h – The dead will not praise G-d”. We had studied and discussed that phrase in
class just before Lucas died. A student of mine pointed us to a paper,
which analyzed Yakov Gladstein’s 1946 poem, Dead Men’s Praise. Since Lucas died, I have held that poem,
taught that poem, and the words of Hallel together.
In the poem, Gladstein describes the deaths at Maidenek as a
reverse Sinai image – “we received the Torah at Sinai and at Lublin we gave it
back.” The central image in the poem is
a Jewish child.
This year another layer that has been added for me has to do
with how we stand on the earth. What
does it mean to be “strangers and sojourners with G-d” on a land that belongs to
G-d. David said, “I am a stranger here on
earth like my fathers before me, our lives are like a shadow and there is no
hope.” No hope, that is, of holding on
to the things that we hold precious. The
word “shmor” – guard or take care of – keeps coming back in our songs and
ceremonies. I know that this is not
promised in any literal way. I believe
that G-d is keeping Lucas’s soul – and my soul, and Sasha’s soul, and Gabi’s
soul, and Alen’s soul. But life on this
earth is not guaranteed to us and nor is being able to protect our children.
Today, standing at Sasha’s kabbalat sefer Torah ceremony all
this was with me – Sasha, Lucas, my friend Alan. What it means to receive it all and to be
standing here, on earth, in this moment, with my feet on the ground.
Friday, May 3, 2013
What to do with Cauliflower
We have too much cauliflower. Can anyone point me to a good recipe, preferably for a salad type thing? If not, I might have to make another cauliflower cheese pie which is way too much work! Help!
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