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.
Monday, July 8, 2013
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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