Whose Life Is It, Anyway?

"Your life becomes not your own"

Those were the last words I said today, in parting from a woman who has decided to convert to Judaism. More specifically, as we hugged good-bye, I heard myself saying, "There is something important you need to know when you choose. Your life becomes not your own."

I am not thinking about restrictions, prohibitions, proscriptions, stringencies, fences, or anything to do with culture, minhag (custom), or community. Not even hashkafa (outlook). I am thinking about binding.

Several things come to mind- tefillin, Isaac, brit (covenant). But it is a long way to getting there.

Today was a day imbued with moments of deep pain. I met with the aforementioned woman, because she wanted input on converting (let's call her Rivka)- what to study, what to know. She is rather hell-bent on getting through the study part so she can convert. I told her it would take at least a year and told her what she needed to do and read. I studied and lived as a Jew for 2 years before I knew I was ready. She is taking a course in the fall. I did not take any courses. I studied 24/7 from books and the internet; central places were Aish HaTorah, and Chabad online, which are founts of knowledge in their outreach, as well as many many many books. I also had the blissfully ignorant chutzpah to go onto message boards and debate other Jews, and Christians; I learned a lot- scrambling to research my proofs, and from wonderfully learned Jewish minds. If I had essential questions I asked the Aish rabbi. Later on, my own rabbi guided me.

And, hey, aren't I the perfect person to do the convert thing? At my old shul, the rabbi used to steer every new possibility and inquiring potential my way, during oneg or kiddush. Can't say I made much of a difference. I welcomed them and their questions, offered help, and then rarely saw them until they had converted. And then I rarely saw them afterwards. I think that my feeling of disappointment was personal- it would have been nice to have more kindred spirits. And there was one....but that's a story for another day.

Suffice it to say that "Rivka" was hungry for some knowledge. And I think that it is more than a truism, that "more than the calf wants to suck, the cow wants to suckle". I find this saying peculiarly Jewish. Especially fitting, I think, amongst learned Jews. And to me, "learned" encompasses anyone who has a sustained interest in living Jewishly. It is true, I have found, that we can learn from everyone. But even more so, there are Jews out there dying to share. I love it.

Well, "Rivka" was divorced at 26 and raised 2 children. Awesome. Through work, online, she met someone in Southern California, who happens to be an Orthodox pulpit rabbi, and a year later they met and are in love. "Rivka" asserts that her desire for conversion has less to do with him and more to do with discovering that she has a Jewish soul. I believe her. But she would like to push the conversion through, because she wants to be with him. This is a woman who has waited a couple of decades for her bashert and both are convinced that it is, indeed, bashert. And they are no spring chickens!

When she was down in the area around LA, she went to her honey's shul, met the congregants, even met his friends. They think quite highly of her, and already have "Rivka" and her rabbi honey married. My feeling is that they are gonna push for this match. He knows that she is converting Conservative, because it's a Jew wasteland here, relatively speaking (and one reason I went to LA to convert). But I forgot to tell her that Conservative conversions are not recognised by O. I forgot because I don't think of it. I think about her earnestness and sincerity. Her Jewish soul. Yet I do think she should convert O simply because it would make her life (and his) a whole lot easier; but even more so, I think that given the option, that that would be her choice. I will have to tell her soon. How could I forget??? I was so busy telling her about halacha and aggadah and Shabbat and Pesach and kashrut, etc., etc. Ya think I would have remembered something so essential!

She spoke about her delight in this relationship and how it warms her heart, for the first time in her life. She has waited a long time....I was married a long time and when the roof fell in, it was easy for him to move on, he who didn't even care whether G-d existed or not, while I had found G-d and Judaism, so that among other concerns, I could no longer stay in the marriage. And who does she end up with? A devout, learned Jew who asked her where she would like to live, in the future, and she says "Jerusalem" and he agrees to it. Well, now it is the hills of Galilee.

And I find it a kind of weird, perhaps, poetic justice, or irony, or cosmic joke, or challenge, or whatever...that the things that would be a dream for me if I dreamed, are the things that she is this close to possessing, some of which she doesn't even care about (like being in LA).

I miss LA. I was home. It was so full of possibility. Hell, if I was going to remarry I would want someone who loved kindness and who was learned and devout. Passionately so. Preferably someone in LA. And who would be willing to move to Israel even if we didn't. It speaks to my desire and a whole lot of cherishing. Lately, I have encountered people who have recently travelled to LA or are living the life I miss and still long for. A life that is just a blip on their radar, but which means everything to me. I am reminded so much of what I have lost and what I miss so much by the dreams that others seem to be living in my stead. Lately everyone seems to embody my dream. It is painful. I don't get it. It seems a cruel joke.

Envy sucks. Bigtime.

"Rivka's" dreams, her earnestness, the vision and reality of bashert, his delight in her, and gratitude, beyond my own pain, possess a tenderness and a poignancy that cannot be ignored. Oh, I would wish that for everyone! There is such bittersweetness in waiting so long for the one that feels like 'home'. I think that some are favoured, but not all. Some of us, I think, perhaps are looking elsewhere and miss our chance. Or there are other reasons, which I can't even guess at.

I don't know why G-d would place this big honking portrait of true love, and desire and dream before me. What? What? What? Is it a test, a challenge, some spiritual obstacle?! I am clueless.

But I have learned a couple of things: 1) Everyone has their "time". A time for joy, a time for sorrow, a time for life and a time for death- a time for suffering- their time- a time which belongs solely to them. And I have my "time". Everything comes to you sooner or later. Just don't confuse it with anyone else's time. They are mutually exclusive.

2) Humility means to know your place. And that fits with one's own time.
Her life is hers, not mine. My place in the scheme of things cannot be inhabited by anyone else and vice-versa. This, I do believe. Of course, I still feel like the fates are sticking it to me- rubbing my nose in lost and forbidden dreams and mucho grieving. Go figure.

As "Rivka" spoke I received a sense of someone who danced along the edge of shadows and light. Where I can be prosaic about challenges, and what that means in terms of 'releasing the sparks', she spoke in terms of praying to G-d to send dreams to those she felt bound to, to show them harmony and unity- to influence them. I learned something. And my feeling is that she is not going to care about the whys of halacha very much, or any intellectual permutations, yet she will create a Jewish home with a load of love. She will make it sacred, and bring to it delight.

Envy sucks.

"Once you choose, your life becomes not your own." This is my life. Other people live my dreams and my desires. But it is not my life. My life is whatever G-d chooses it to be. When I first laid tefillin, though I loved the shel rosh (the piece for the head)- I felt I was wearing a coronet- to wrap my arm so tightly- well, I struggled for about a year. I felt bound to G-d, as was all my power, and I wasn't consenting to it! For a long while there was not much difference between me and a wild animal, because that leather binding agitated me like crazy- it made me skittish. There was something about such a huge level of commitment, such an enormous sense of naked intimacy in that binding, and even more so, for me, of acknowledgement, that placed the literal fear of G-d in me, and I mean fundamental yirah, not awe, but unadulterated fear.

Before that, I also had the misfortune to feel like Isaac bound upon the altar, suffering enormous psychological trauma, leaving a chasm of silence within me that can never be breached. It was a loss of innocence that is unspeakable. I understand what that parsha means, why there is a gorgeous midrash about the angels in heaven weeping at Isaac's ordeal and their tears washing his eyes and blinding him, and how he could see, it was intimated, beyond human sight. I understand it completely. The Torah is remarkable for its deepest and gravest understanding of human suffering and attempted annihilation. And afterwards, the Torah shows so starkly, how Isaac's silence speaks volumes. With Isaac, there are no words that could ever matter. Torah understands and honours those who have been violated, as does the midrash.

I feel bound to a life that is not my own, but belongs to G-d. I feel bound to the covenant I made with G-d when I became a Jewess. I feel bound to tradition and halacha and the path that G-d has chosen for me, yet also bound by my own free will and reason and sense of integrity, which all round, makes for an uncomfortable life. To top it off, I honestly don't feel it is within my purview, that which happens to me. I am carried along, transported by a life that somehow, for the time being, in some way needs me even if I don't know how. It may not even be a life of my choosing, but this much I do know- that with all my envy and grief and horror and desire, it is true Life. And that is worth everything to me.

Born Jew or Jew-by-choice. Once we choose, our life no longer belongs to us.

But did I mention that envy sucks?