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)