Beggared Lunacy and Shabbat

I am a wallower. Indeed, I am. I freely admit it.

I am not sure what a recent response to my poverty post, "don't marry trouble", means. That's right up there with "Think good, and it will be good". I am sure this helped the millions who waited with hope in the Shoah. Why do I bring up the Shoah with seeming irreverence, with seeming bitterness? Because I think of it every time I think of my situation. Poverty and its attendant marginalisation challenges all the Jewish truisms, clichés, sayings, and lore we've absorbed- thoughts and attitudes by which we lifted ourselves up in life through difficult non-material times.

I thought of the Shoah when I asked myself "why me?". I found the answer in the Shoah, "why not me?". I no longer ask that question. Perhaps the Shoah is G-d's answer to Job, writ large and real- final and unambiguous; maybe we had to be hit over the head with a sledgehammer to finally understand. There is no explanation that we can fathom.

'Specialness' to G-d somehow loses its meaning. 'Chosen'. I don't think so, when 'special' and 'chosen' signify good things. Still, if not special, at least, 'chosen'. Yes. Absolutely. The covenant stands. It's indissoluble. Through poverty, through degradation, through loss and death. I don't think I have 'married trouble'; I 'married' G-d. The covenant stands.

Will this, too, pass? I don't know. Will my fortunes rise? I don't know. This is not an existential crisis. This is reality- of statistics, facts, life predictors. Do miracles happen? Yes. But often, they don't. I am not that special, even though I pray for release every single day. G-d did not release the Hebrew slaves from Egypt for 400 years; how long is 400 years in my time?

In the 9 weeks that I lived and worked like a beast, from Tuesday through Saturday, I observed that I became more mean-spirited. I became more impatient with everyone and everything. It was a kind of delirium, where I wondered whether the world was demented, or was it just me? I was caught up in a whirlwind, but did not know it was a whirlwind.

I did not have Shabbat.

I had turned down a well-paying part-time job a couple of years ago, when I was still solvent, because it necessitated working through Shabbat- I would miss Shabbat. And the thought of that? It was as if someone had ripped my insides out. The thought staggered me, left me terrified.

Circumstances changed, and if I did not take this job, which sounded like Paradise, I would be applying for welfare, a fate worse than death (largely because of how they treat you). I would have to sacrifice Shabbat and I knew I would be the loser. I just didn't know how much.

My Shabbats usually involve davenning (praying), contemplation, reading Torah and commentaries and just generally kicking back and absorbing the day. I rarely go to shul because it is too far and takes too much time for very little return, community-wise. But I anticipate my Shabbat like a lover anticipating the return of their beloved. It is everything to me. I like to wallow in its glow.

When I keep Shabbat, I know what to do, what decisions to make- I remember my past and look to the future. And often, words of the Torah leap out at me, or the commentary speaks to me and sheds light on my troubles. The Torah reaches out to me and embraces me, seeps into my very bones and marrow, and the world rights itself once again and I am restored to sanity.

I kept this past Shabbat. I davenned, I contemplated, I read the Torah and commentaries. Order emerged from chaos- the hours and minutes and seconds fell into pleasant lines. Shalem, wholeness. I wallowed in it. While the demented world out there, somewhere, circled upon its axes. The shredded mantle of poverty fell away- I was rich.

How bitter poverty makes one! How harsh. And yet, we often expect the religious poor to live a life of transcendence, to count their "blessings' in an attempt at uplift, to be generous in the midst of gnawing deprivation. We would rather see their piety than their poverty. As if religion could cure all that ails us. As if blood can be squeezed from a stone. We forget that there is a time and a place for beauty and truth and preaching, and a time to listen to need and want; that bitterness is also very much a part of the human condition and not readily transcended when your poverty runs deep. Just ask Job, or G-d, and then, ask them about Job's friends.

In studying JTS commentary on last week's parsha, Korach, I happened upon the following:

By the third century of the Common Era, with rabbinic leadership in ascendancy in Roman Palestine, Rabbi Yohanan, who led the academies in Sepphoris and Tiberias for decades, sharpened the qualifications necessary for religious leadership. He claimed to derive from the fragmented profile of Moses in the Torah that God would single out individuals for prophecy only if they possessed strength, wisdom, wealth, and humility (BT Nedarim 38a).

For the prerequisite of personal wealth, which I find most interesting, Rabbi Yohanan cites the verse in our parashah that states Moses never had the need to avail himself of anything that belonged to an Israelite, even for reimbursement. That is, Moses was rich and self-sufficient. In other words: To guard against greed and venality in public office, religious or otherwise, requires that the candidate be without want. Poverty is a condition that can subvert piety. Schorsch Commentary

Poverty is a condition that can subvert piety. I suppose there are all sorts of poverty, that are not material in nature. Still, one must feed the body in order to feed the soul. You would think that is self-evident, but clearly we forget. Sometimes, I think that Christian charities understand this more viscerally, places like the Salvation Army, for example. Perhaps it feels more 'religious' because Christian charity is not as ethnocentric as Jewish charity can be. Even though tzedakah means 'justice' to the Jew, how is it anything but religious in nature, and yet we don't really think about how poverty interferes with piety, with a Jew's soul. But I digress.

That same day I happened upon an unfinished draft upon the subject of my Rav z"l, LARabbi™, whom I miss terribly:

Do the Right Thing

At LARabbi's ™ funeral, Wednesday, Rabbi Ed Feinstein mentioned 2 characteristics of my rav, that aimed so true. One was this: yes, the world was corrupt, but even so, it is important for a Jew to play by the (Jewish) rules. No matter what. I remember many a time, when I, as a needy congregant, poured out my disappointment, and in return, he kept me on the straight and narrow. He turned me towards what mattered, without ever literally invoking Torah of any sort. He showed me where I could find strength - besides minyan, it was always in doing the right (Jewish) thing.

I don't really ever remember my rabbi preaching in a personal session. Yet in the moment, he would steer me where I could find refuge- in doing mitzvot, in being a mensch in the midst of those who were not, in davenning at minyan, and he never, ever indicted or fashioned apologetics for the others, or the otherness- he always suggested to me what I might do and there was never a focus on the other. Truly. This is what I remember.

The second characteristic: ....

Well, I left myself hanging because I don't remember the second thing. Perhaps it is not that important. What is important is that in working to survive, I had lost time, and in losing time, I had lost Shabbat, and in losing Shabbat, I had lost myself, the real me in G-d's eyes. In losing my rav, I've been impoverished beyond words.

Lack of poverty, wealth, lets you wallow. Buys you time. Buys you space. Buys you sanity. Buys you dignity. Buys you Shabbat.

Please G-d, let me and every poor Jew wallow once again. Very soon. In our time. Amen.