Shul and the Single Woman: Lamentations

For the time being I have stopped going to services. Even though Tisha B'Av ( more here) is coming up, I will not be attending. On Saturday evening, there is no complete bus service, and I don't want to beg for a ride. Funny, that word, "beg". If I felt part of the community, I would not feel as if this were an imposition, that I was coming from a position of scarcity. I would be like the beggar at the gates, saying "Gain merit, through me". Instead of alms, people could give rides.

The last time I attended services, three weeks ago, I just felt miserable, though I started out optimistically. It was one of those better Shabbats, when the rabbi is off on vacation and the numbers thin to a core group. It's far more like a morning minyan, then, without a lot of frills. It is pure. A simple minyan somehow seems rife with possibilities, unlike the usual set piece that is standard for this congregation, and which always interferes with my concentration.

It still bothers me, though, that they cut out everything after modeh ani until Nishmat. There is no settling into prayer, no slow and subtle change of consciousness, no mining deeper inside yourself where the quiet is, and where G-d resides. No time to divest yourself of the voices and fripperies and futilities of the world and really listen to the word of G-d. It's more like power davening without the warmup, more like a sprint. You just have to be skilled at instant focus, train the muscles of your mind to turn inwards to that other place and be exceptional about blocking out all distractions. I'd like to see some guy meditating on a mountain top try that amidst a bunch of schmoozing, often irreverent, Jews!

The services were fine, if rather brief for my taste. As I sat there, my eyes filled with tears of supreme envy. I envied the lay cantor for getting a job by happenstance, because we didn't have a professional cantor, and she has a lovely voice and knows Hebrew, and so, can take a load off the rabbi. She is also very "spiritual". It's hard for me to see her clearly and fairly, filtered as my eyes are by a jealous heart. I envy her her complete immersion in synagogue and community life. Because I remember that I was forced to leave a place where I, too, was engaged wholly and deeply. But she is not a cantor with years of profound and intricate study, and it shows. She doesn't inspire me to aspire. I guess, ultimately, she does not have my respect. I don't want to learn from her, but I think that is a flaw in me.

During services it is hard not to note the clusters of people who hang out together. I am greeted warmly by some, but it never goes further than that. It is a fact of life, too, that if you have enough learning, you have instant entrée into the synagogue world and community. Prayer leaders are always needed, gabbaim as well, and all things in between. Hence, an older couple, who have been members for far less time than I but who contribute a lot of their time and knowledge, sit in the inner circle, the one that warmly says hello to me, but then tells me there is no place at their table.

In LA, though I was on the board and chaired a committee, somehow I don't think I found an inner circle. I think it was partly due to my being a single woman, and partly due to my complete inability to schmooze or hang with a group at services. And, in all honesty, it was partly due to my ambivalence about being part of the inner sanctum- I liked to wander and schmooze and welcome and see who was alone and shouldn't be. I was also often almost terminally last in line at the groaning board and by then, seats had filled up. On a rare occasion, someone would wave to me and include me in. I never got the hang of strategising- grabbing a seat and placing your purse there, trying for the front of the line for food- or recognising that as a single woman, I was less likely to impinge on people's consciusness, except perhaps, in an unkind way. This is a truth that I don't want to know.

Even with all my strategising, here, in this other place, I haven't made any inroads. During the Torah portion I look around me and realise that these people are familiar and that is all. I realise that most of them don't know what they're doing and there are very few older people with knowledge in the congregation. I get no sense of continuity and not a whole lot of sense of history and tradition- not that there is no tradition, but just that there seems to be no gravitas to it. It's like a space ship without mooring.

Last time, a lovely older lady beckoned me over to her table, at the kiddush lunch. The food tasted a little less like ash.

I have spent my Shabbats, since then, going to the water, communing with the ducks and the dogs, soaking up the warm breezes and the light, wandering from green to grey-blue, from sand to lawn, from pier to rock, from log to bench. I text L in LA, telling her that the ducks say "howdy". I photograph what strikes my fancy. I eat french fries and quiche and sip terrible iced tea. I try to read a book on Shabbat, but it is all about rules. I wish Heschel's meditation on Shabbat was not packed away in someone's garage. I cling to the knowledge that it is Shabbat, even though I am transgressing like crazy; I "remember" even though I barely "keep". And when the sun begins its slow descent, I have spent a day without tears, in peace.

In the past months, since my return from Israel, I see my observance going down the tubes. Sometimes I daven, often I don't, though I always talk to G-d. Some Shabbats I study Torah on my own, and often I don't. I'm more lax in the food I eat (though I am not anywhere close to keeping kosher, yet). I still light candles to keep myself anchored, but I ask myself what is the point of making kiddush, when it's just me and some bread and grape juice. Every Shabbat is a struggle, about which to choose, the beach or services- this Shabbat no less than the rest. I don't remember G-d as well as I did. I feel guilty about what I am doing or not doing, and it's as if I am having this crisis of identity.

A Jew cannot be a Jew without a community. A Jew cannot grow in Jewish learning/observance, or even spiritually, without cleaving to a community. I don't know how to mourn the destruction of the Temples, when I have so much to mourn about the destruction of a Jewish way of life. When I observed Tisha B'Av in the past, I recognised that there is nothing more terrifying than the loss of G-d, to live in a world without G-d, to live so alone. That's what I felt, in Lamentations. That the mourning was about the complete loss of G-d. This Tisha B'Av I will be mourning the single woman and the loss of Jews.

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat, sat and wept,
as we thought of Zion. (Ps.137)

At the Shore

Today I Am Wading Through a Sea


© Barefoot Jewess

Halachic Cool

A huge shout out to Z and her fine post, with a fine title, Halachically Illegitimate (wish I'd thought of it! heh.). A great companion piece to the one below.

The social scientist in me can't help but wonder things, like, why is it that converts need to be caught in the crossfire in the ideological warfare between Jews? In my experience, people are not necessarily sensitive to converts, either, no matter what Torah and halacha say. In fact, some people think that converts have no right to criticise what occurs among Jews, or even think. I find converts are an easy target. From a psychoanalytic standpoint, it's comforting to place a red string around our respective or collective necks and send us off into the wilderness.

But I also think that converts stand at the fulcrum of our internecine wars, and Jewish identity. Whither go the converts, so goes the Jewish people. Because how you treat a convert affiliated with whichever stream, shows what defines you as a Jew (and that goes for converts, too); more importantly, it shows what you feel and think about other Jews who are not like you. And so, it predicts for you the future of the Jewish people- united or wretched or confused or stuck or dead, or disappeared from the face of the earth.

Perusing the J-blogs yesterday, I came across a comment from someone who said he would never marry anyone who is a convert other than one who is Orthodox. He felt that Orthodoxy was the only way to churn out legitimate Jewry. And, by the way, he stressed that he was secular. So, I wonder, what does Orthodoxy represent to him? I'm thinking, legitimacy. Ethnic legitimacy.

Moreover, in discussing The Law of Return, it became clear that for some, Orthodox conversion is viewed as a way to confer citizenship, never mind, the only way. There is no mention of religion, merely of conversion as a mechanism. And only one mechanism is the legitimate mechanism. The fact that people convert to any religion because they believe and experience certain things does not seem to enter into the equation.

It would be hypocritical to convert in a manner not consistent with one's beliefs, conscience, and sense of integrity. Or to attach oneself to something for the sake of acceptance and validation. I wouldn't want a new Jew like that. Yet this is something that is completely dismissed by the front for tribal triumphalism- bigotry, by any other name. Belief doesn't enter into it. Even if you don't believe in Torah miSinai (that Torah and Oral Torah are directly from G-d), implicitly, that is not the issue. Acceptance of and submission to a lifestyle is paramount. If you do not accept/submit, then you cannot become a Jew. Which means that similarly, the only thing left for born Jews, many of whom do not believe in Torah miSinai, nor accept/submit to the Orthodox lifestyle, is their legitimacy through ethnicity- that they were born to a Jewish mother.

So what do some Jews do in order to determine which potential converts will accept/submit? They turn the conversion process into an elitist boot camp. Make it tough. Survival is paramount. Ya gotta be nail-hard to be a Jew. If you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen. Weed out the religious wimps because halacha is tough even though we don't necessarily follow it ourselves, because after all Jews are flawed human beings like anyone else. But of course, converts have to be superhuman. Even if they are only looking for a home and not barracks.

I found this swaggering stance surprisingly prevalent among some young, hip Orthodox adults on the net who hope to bring tender, disaffected or uninformed, impressionable young Jews into the fold. You know, show them a good time, bring them home, feed them, turn them on to new music, party with them, show them that being a Jew can be a happenin' contemporaneous experience, that it's cool to be a Jew. This explains to me why some males have taken to wearing baseball caps instead of kippot. How that shows reverence for G-d I don't know, but I guess you could call it Jewish cool.

When challenged about tzniut (modesty) in posting decidedly untzniut-like pictures (and you don't have to be Jewish to find them offensive), the response was surprising. I naïvely was under the impression that if you publicly assert and support Orthodoxy (or are any kind of religiously devout Jew), then the obvious answer to posting soft porn on a website is a no-brainer- you comport yourself with modesty. This was halacha that the posters chose to transgress, for reasons I don't get, unless coolness supersedes halacha.

Orthodoxy for some of the young and passionate, it seems, has become a way to affiliate with a weighty tradition, that to them, confers cultural and ethnic identity and, especially, status. (Kinda like O is 'Boston old money' v non-O, the 'nouveau riche', and the 'carpetbaggers'.) All this, without addressing the religious work or the roots of Jewishness which are religious. Just like our secular Jew. Or addressing it on their own terms, in choosing which mitzvot to work on, just like non-Orthodox Jews, yet without giving up the perceived status. Where religion and peoplehood have become mutually exclusive, and where, when push comes to shove, ethnicity supersedes religion. You don't have to go to a good school to be elitist any longer. Nor really be devoted. Just religiously civilised. The Diaspora cuts deep.

They will shoot from the hip: "I think you're a nice person and all and I would invite you for Shabbat, no sweat, but I won't marry you because your rabbis don't agree with mine". As if that were logical, and not subject to challenge. And as if that is kind or thoughtfully presented. If they get really pissed they will say, who cares about how religious you are, you haven't passed the tribal test, to which my rabbis, who happen to be Orthodox, hold the key. In other words, you don't possess the pedigree. Can you produce papers?

What is our future? It seems that in terms of some young Orthodox, not much has changed except perhaps the stance- very macho (and really amazingly foulmouthed). Yet, for all their fine words, and desire to unite all Jews, they continue to be enamoured of an era 200 years ago, when Judaism became changed and institutionalised in a new way, but not for their forebearers. It also resembles the unconscious stance of survivors of war.

What I see is transgenerational fear and transgenerational fantasy, none of it original. It happens all the time, in the young and in the more mature. And when in doubt, show the converts how tough you are. It's more punk than cool. And more bigoted than authentic. Rather disappointing; I was hoping for...well, hope. Meanwhile, is that a red string I see before me?

I certainly don't see all of Orthodoxy in that light. After all, some of my best friends are Orthodox. Still, those described above have some influence and they may be some of our future leaders. I'm only hoping that there will be substance behind the seduction. A novel substance, removed from transgenerational obsession with survival. A substance that desires to be something fresh and new. That truly has a shot at unity, because oneness is what matters more than all the differences and hierarchies. I think that takes imaginative genius, released from the past, like an arrow, released from its bow. A genius of the humble sort. Now that would be really cool.