With Heart

We had a fight last night, my husband and I. That doesn't happen very often. We fought because . . . because my husband had an awful week at he office . . . because potty-training is driving me insane . . . because we get so little time alone together . . . because we have been in this new town for seven months and I know nobody and I am lonely . . . because if my husband had wanted a Jewish wife he would have married one.

I am discouraged today. My biggest fear is, and has always been, that one day I will learn that everything I think I have is false, that I have been conned. I am afraid I will discover that the people around me are here not because they find me genuinely interesting and likeable, but because they feel some sense of guilt or obligation.

My husband says it's not enough for me that he do what I want him to do. He says I want him to do it "with heart." Maybe he's right. When he goes through the motions, I can see in his face that his actions aren't sincere, and then I begin to doubt everything. So maybe it's not that I want him to do my bidding with heart; maybe instead I want him to do only what he can do with heart.

Conversion Confusion

Am I an utter hypocrite? Am I fickle? Am I hard-hearted? Am I carting around repressed anger?

These are just a few of the questions I find myself asking as I consider conversion from the (Methodist) Christianity of my youth to Judaism. So few people convert from one world religion to another. What motivates them to make such a drastic change? Why would I do it? Why would I do something that might (further) alienate people I love? My marriage to a Jew didn't make me want to convert (although now, to be honest, I WISH I had wanted to), nor did our joint decision to raise our children Jewish. So why now? And why has this need come on so strongly? Is something wrong with me that I would want to "abandon" my roots?

It's not that I think my family's faith is wrong. I don't. In fact, I don't think about their religion much at all. It just doesn't work for me. So far, Judaism works better.

The first Friday evening after we moved to a new town a few months ago, I was preparing challah for our first Shabbat in our new home. My husband came home, saw the bread, and said, "Oh, honey, you don't have to do that for me! I know you have enough to do already without worrying about Shabbat."

His considerate comment momentarily offended me because -- and this was the first moment I had realized it -- the Shabbat dinner was for me, too. Since we had begun observing the Sabbath after our son was born two years earlier, Friday nights had taken on a quality of . . . of . . . holiness? That is such a hokey word. What I mean is that Friday nights felt special (even more hokey), were anticipated, kept me feeling content and thankful and acutely aware of our family's tiny place in the whole of creation. Lighting the candles, saying the blessings, drinking the wine, breaking the bread, singing together -- these rituals provided a weekly snapshot of the best of our lives, stopped time for just a moment of raised consciousness before the earth continued to spin.

Shabbat made me fall in love with Judaism. But is it possible that any ritual from any faith might have provided the same sacred moment under the right circumstances -- an evening shared with the husband I love and the children I adore? Perhaps it's not God or Judaism, but my family life I love so much. What if my husband and children were gone? Would I still love Judaism? I doubt it. I doubt I would be able to love anything.

Do I put off conversion until I am sure nothing could ever change my mind? Or do I join my family at the Shabbat table as a Jewish wife and mother? Just how sure do I need to be?

Spiritually Unfit

Last night while reading A Book of Life: Embracing Judaism as a Spiritual Practice by Michael Strassfeld, I came across something that really bothered me.

I had just read the part that said, "Unlike secular society, Judaism does not have an idealized model of beauty. We are all created in God's image. In all diversity, fat and thin, tall and short, we are all equally God's creations."

So I wasn't ready for this part: " . . . Judaism's focus on inner beauty [does not] release us from our obligation to care for our bodies. This is especially true with regard to matters of health, such as eating the right foods, losing excess weight, and regular exercise."

Ok. So it's fine to be tall or short, thin or . . . thin. Hm.

I'm all for caring for our bodies. I really am. I'm all for eating the right foods and getting exercise for the sake of health. But why is "losing excess weight" mentioned? If we care for our bodies by eating the right foods and getting enough exercise, won't our bodies naturally tend to weigh the weight God intended for them to weigh? Obviously the author knows that diet and exercise are not enough for everyone to maintain a slim body; otherwise, his mention of weight loss would have been redundant. So he's associating Judaism with the societal standards of beauty from which he had just distanced it.

So, what, God stopped production of fat people when He heard from the CDC that fat was bad?

I'm taking this book back to the library. Maybe the remaining 499 pages are great, but I cannot continue reading. I prefer to get my spiritual guidance from someone enlightened enough to understand that Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, and Fen Phen are not moral obligations.

I won't read a book that contributes to the growing epidemic of eating disorders among the young women of our nation. Consider this my first small contribution to Tikkun Olam.

Plagues

It's almost time for Passover, so I innocently began the project of reading my toddlers a Passover board book. It has bright pictures of objects and foods used at a Passover seder, as well as of scenes from the story of Exodus. It was while reading the page with the plagues that my three-year-old son shook my faith.

"What's he have?" he asked, pointing to a boy with obviously fake red spots covering his face.

"It says 'nasty illness'. He has a sickness that makes his skin all spotty. It's one of the plagues," I answer.

"Is he sick?" he asks again.

"Yes," I reply, ready to move on.

"Did God gave him that?"

Silence.

"Did God make him sick?" he repeated.

"Well, God sent the plagues, yes," I answered, suddenly feeling ill myself.

"What did he did?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"What did the boy did that God made him sick?"

I was speechless. "Well," I finally said, "Pharoah was bad, and so God made Pharoah's people sick."

But that wasn't the answer, really. The answer was that the boy with the ridiculous spots was being punished for nothing he had done. He was simply born Egyptian.

Then my son said, "Is God bad?"

"No," I answered quickly, but suddenly I felt uneasy, and I just wasn't sure anymore.

I am a hypocrite for reading the story to my children. I could leave out the part about the plagues, because maybe I don't believe that part, but then do I also leave out the part about the Red Sea and Mount Sinai? And if so, what's left, other than an historical account? And if that's all it is, why do we pray to God?

I am always quick to roll my eyes at people's rantings that this hurricane or that flu outbreak or some earthquake or other is punishment from God, or part of "God's plan". This seems to be the only thing that the radical religious (Christian, Jewish, Muslim, etc.) can agree on -- that bad things are deserved. Unfortunately, they can't agree who is being punished and for what.

I guess things must have seemed clearer back in Moses's day. I wonder if being on the right side made it easier to watch as neighbors buried their dead.

No, I suppose not. That's why the Passover seder includes the ritual of removing a drop of wine for each plague to symbolize how the Israelites' joy was incomplete in the face of the Egyptians' suffering. Still, I wonder how one's knowing God sacrificed children for one's freedom is really supposed to make one love God more.

Fear Him more, yes. But love Him more?

The Business of Holocaust Denial

I'm not typically one to shout my politics from the rooftops, but there are times when silence is a crime. As Elie Wiesel said, "The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference."

Iran has hosted a conference to promote Holocaust denial. It was attended by young people, students. Holocaust denial is gaining popularity -- it's not just Hutton Gibson anymore. There are young people being taught this very minute that the murder of six million Jews, more than two million of them children, did not happen. There are young people being taught not that the Holocaust was one of the worst chapters in human history, but that it is instead a myth created by Jews. Young people are being taught right now not that babies were thrown in the air and shot, that some rabbis given the duty of putting bodies into the incinerators chose to leap into the flames themselves, but instead that the Jews made up such stories in an effort to dupe the world into giving them money.

Whatever you believe about Europe's penalty for Holocaust-denial, whatever your opinion on the policies of the Israeli government, you must stand for truth.

When I first read of Holocaust-denial, I felt sickened by it, but I didn't really think through the long-term implications of such widespread lies. Of course, of course, Holocaust-denial causes pain for Jews, especially for those who survived concentration camps and lost loved ones, and for the children of survivors. There are few things more damaging to say to someone than, "That which haunts and hurts you and has nearly killed you does not exist. Your pain is a lie. The pain of your loved ones is a lie." Beyond the hurt, the frustration, and the absolute isolation the Jewish community must surely feel at such accusations, there is a future at stake. One day the last Holocaust survivor will be buried, taking with him or her the last blue tatoo. One day the last American soldier who wept upon entering Auschwitz, too, will die, taking with him the last memory of walking skeletons, mass graves. One day the Shoah will be something no one remembers first-hand. At that point, each human being will have to weigh the evidence, the textbooks claiming the brutal murder of so many Jews, the textbooks claiming a grand plot to cry genocide and gain profit. Each person will make a choice. Each person, good or evil, will make a choice based on the evidence.

Writers are being paid right now to deny the Holocaust. People are being paid. This is a business. The "evidence" against the Jews is being created and distributed. I would like to believe truth always wins. But does it?

And what happens when the "evidence" against the Holocaust is enough to convince most people? What will those poeple think of Jews? What in the world is there to prevent history from repeating itself?

Academy Award Commentary

I agreed to watch the Academy Awards last night just so I could get my Jon Stewart fix. I miss him, just as my son misses the Wiggles. But we all have to make our sacrifices. I don’t get out to the movies much these days, and the only nominated movies I saw were Crash (which I loved) and Walk the Line (which was okay), so I can’t really say much of substance. That’s never stopped me before, though. And I really would like to comment on the Best Song category.

First of all, where were Dolly’s Parton’s interpretive dancers? Everyone else got them. You know, I was startled to see Dolly. She looks . . . unnatural. She looks like a walking Barbie Doll, and I’ve heard a woman can’t really live with Barbie Doll proportions, so I was afraid she was going to die on stage. Thank goodness she didn’t. I’m reminded of the time when I was six or seven and I asked my dad what he wanted for his birthday. He said he wanted a Dolly Parton doll. I took him seriously and set to work making one out of paper, wadded up tissues, thread, and modeling clay. My father laughed until he cried when he saw it. Now that I look back on it, I realize I didn’t give her enough of a “wasp waist.” But thanks to the modeling clay, at least I got the boobs right.

But I digress. The second song, the one from Crash . . . um . . . I didn’t even hear a song because I was too busy picking my jaw up from the floor and trying to stop the spasms of nausea when the interpretive dancers reenacted the BIG GROPE in slow motion. The only thing worse than seeing it reenacted was that it was done in slow-mo and it looked as if the gropee were giving birth to a huge hairy arm. There’s art, and then there’s just enough already.

What do I say about “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp”? I have never felt older than when I was watching that performance. I really have to get out of the house more. I just couldn’t figure out if I was supposed to think it was kind of funny or if I was supposed to feel deep empathy for pimps. The interpretive dancers confused me all the more. Maybe if I’d seen the movie I wouldn’t have been so clueless. I didn’t want to appear too out of touch with reality, so I said to my husband, “Hey, you know, I bet in the real version of the song, she doesn’t say witches.”

Because, you know, I’m down with it.

Memory

I was twelve, washing my mother's car in anticipation of my first trip to the beach, when I noticed the young man walking up our driveway. When he began to speak, I froze. Instantly I identified him as a stutterer, a severe stutterer, his speech characterized as much by its strained silences as by the repeated and forced sounds. I had never met anyone else like him -- like me -- in my life. The few "stutterers" I had met were folks who sometimes repeated syllables or words, folks who had no idea how it felt to block, to open one's mouth and be rendered mute for interminable seconds, even minutes.

I was terrified, excited, so anxious I was dizzy. The only clear thought I had at the moment was that I was afraid to answer him -- what if I stuttered and he imagined I was mocking him? He was asking to speak with my mother or father. I smiled, managed a few fluent words about going to get my mom, and raced to the house to find her.

Once I had found her and told her there was a man outside wanting to see her, I hid in the living room beneath the picture window, trying to hear their conversation over the pounding of my heart.

This, I knew, was big. Something was going to happen. Something had to happen. My mother would surely have to say something about the man, about his stutter . . . about my stutter. She would have to acknowledge my pain.

My speech at home was rarely as severe as it was at school. At home, I jabbered with my parents and my brother, not quite fluently, but with little inhibition. At school, however, every time I was called on during class, it was a struggle to answer. After I had answered a question or read aloud, my stomach muscles would often be as sore as if I had done a hundred sit-ups. I was often unable to speak my own name, to respond to my name during roll call, to tell the cafeteria workers whether I wanted white or chocolate milk. Nearly every time I opened my mouth to speak, I struggled. And each struggle wounded my psyche. I survived by stepping outside myself, turning off my mind, my feelings, watching from a distance until the encounter was over. The wounds didn't come so much from the struggles themselves as from the understanding that I was struggling alone. In fact, my battle wasn't even acknolwedged. Everyone was doing such a great job of not drawing attention to my stutter, as a well-meaning speech therapist had suggested, that they were behaving as if it didn't exist. So here I was choking on my own breath daily, and all these people stood around pretending I didn't need air.

My mother was one of those people. I understand she didn't know what to do, didn't know how to save me. But would it have killed her to call out to me, to speak tenderly to me once in a while, to tell me she knew I was strong enough to survive -- or, if she didn't believe that, at least to tell me she was sorry I was suffocating? She never did. When I stuttered, she didn't see me; when I was in the most pain, I became invisible.

But, surely, this man who was stuttering a more severe stutter than my mother had ever heard, would elicit a response from my mother. I saw him. He was real. He wasn't invisible at all. She couldn't pretend he was.

I waited and waited under the picture window, unable to hear much except muffled sounds set to the unsteady rhythm of that male voice and, occasionally, to the smooth cadence of my mother's. Finally, the conversation ended and my mother came into the house.

At first she said nothing.

"What did he want?" I asked, trying to hide my real question: Did you hear him? Did you see him? Do you see me?

"He was selling magazines," she began.

Here it comes, I thought. We'll get this out in the open, we'll talk about how I hate to talk, how I'm drowning and how I feel like nothing and how I think it's my fault and how, since no one seems to see what's happening to me, I've begun to believe that all of this must be in my head and that there must be something, something terribly wrong with me.

My mother continued, a look of disgust growing across her face, "I finally bought one because I just couldn't stand to listen to that anymore."



Somewhere, I saw, a girl who had been treading water stopped kicking. She let herself go, felt her body sink. The muscles of her stomach, which had been tense for some time, relaxed. Relief was instant. She opened her mouth to the depths and was consumed.