Category Archives: Judaism

Commentary on Religion, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, US History

Religion and Its Cultured Despisers

Leave a comment

Samain and the Choice Moon

Sunday gratefuls: The Ancient Brothers. Tara. The Mikvah. Shema Yisrael. Adonai eloheynu. Adonai echad. Prayerful humility. Being a new Jew. The Sabbath. Jacob wrestling at the Jabbok Ford. Zornberg. Great Sol lighting up the Snow on the Lodgepole Branches. A crisp, clear and blue Sky. The Iliad. The Jacob cycle in Genesis. Israel. Me. Soon anyhow. In shallah. All the Dogs. And their human companions. Wild Neighbors.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Books

One brief shining: Read an article yesterday about increasing nones, yes nones not nuns, in particular among Millennials and younger, which prodded me to remember Friedrich Schleiermacher and his book, Religion and Its Cultured Despisers, then to wonder why I, a man almost as far away generationally as possible from the new nones, chose to embrace a religion while others flee them.

 

No. This is not a question of doubt about my choice. It’s firm and almost ritualized. Tuesday. It’s about those cycles of history when certain institutions get shunned, disbelieved, set aside as archaic, over with. It’s about me and my choices over a lifetime and why I’ve made them. Mostly though its about religion and those who would be nones. Not relevant to those who would be nuns.

Three times I have rejected institutional religion. The first. After studying philosophy and finding Christianity’s arguments dissolved in the acids of logic. The second. After finding Christianity’s claims dissolved through love of my son. The third. After finding liberal religion, Unitarian-Universalism, had no there there for me. At that point I turned to the Soil, to the Bees, to heirloom Tomatoes, to Rhizomes and Bulbs, to Kate, to Dogs, to Great Sol and the Great Wheel. Became a pagan.

On Tuesday I’ll make my fourth teshuva, return, to an organized old religious tradition. You could look at this and say why can’t he make up his mind? I mean, geez. Really? Fair enough. Although as I look at this pattern, I see something different. I see a man who could not let go of a search for the sacred, the holy. Who was not satisfied. But also one who kept his heart and mind and soul open, willing to learn, to see what he was looking at.

Could I have gone on to my death as a pagan, devoted to the Soil and my Wild Neighbors, to the Great Mother who birthed us all and to whom we return? Yes. I could have. That’s why my pagan heart will still guide much of my search for the sacred and the holy. I will not stop listening to the Mule Deer, the Elk Bull, the crashing Waters of a Spring Maxwell Creek. I will not stop seeing the holiness in Black Mountain or in the wide Pacific or in Great Sol.

Yet my heart, which guides me now more than my mind, could not escape this. I find the sacred, the holy, the divine, in other humans too. And so many of those humans: Alan, Tara, Susan, Joan, Jamie, Ellen, Dick, Ron, Rich, Cheri, Marilyn, Irv, Veronica, Mark, Lauren, Karen, Sally, Nancy, Ruth, Gabe, Kate of blessed memory, Leslie, Rebecca, Anne, Luke, Tal, Iris, Jamie Bernstein, Stephen, yes all of these and more I know but not well, are all Jewish. When I walk into the sanctuary for a service, it is my friends who make it holy. And my heart, this insistent and stubborn heart/mind-my lev said follow them further.

Not only that. But, thanks to Kate, eight years of holidays, learnings, immersion in the Jewish world. Of seeing how dogma simply does not exist in a Reconstructionist Jewish frame. That these folks are seekers, searchers too. And willing to investigate, rethink, reimagine. Everything. Yet to still celebrate that search in a three-thousand year old vessel which carries great wisdom about how to be human. In other words, how to be sacred.

I know. I admit I’m drawn to the prayers, to the rituals, to the careful and unusual hermeneutic of Torah study. That I find comfort and even solace in them. That’s the monk in me. Yet the pagan, the pilgrim still on the path finds food here, too. I am not alone in my insistence on finding the sacred and the holy in the Mountains, the Streams, the Black Bears and Mountains Lions. I am also not alone in finding the wisdom of the Rabbi’s, of the authors whoever they were of the Torah, of the whole Tanakh, a living stream, one way of seeing not only what I’m looking at but what I’m looking for.

Health, Judaism, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

A bit of this, a bit of that

Leave a comment

Samain and the Choice Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Israel. Hamas. Palestinians. Hezbollah. Saudi Arabia, especially Hafar. Malaysia, especially K.L. Korea, especially Songtan. The Rocky Mountains, especially Shadow Mountain. Minnesota, especially the Twin Cities. Maine, especially Robbinston. San Francisco, especially Lucky Street. The Mikvah of East Denver. The three immersions. Veronica. Becoming a Jew. Molly, the kind Dog at the windshield replacement place.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Lodgepoles Branches flocked with Snow

One brief shining: Snow drifted down as it often does in the Mountains, white, glowing like Diamonds as it covered the black driveway, the brown deck, the blue solar panels gently accumulating, so light and fluffy it could stuff pillows.

 

Yesterday and today are Snow days. Not a big storm, maybe 6-8 inches, but a cold one. 5 degrees when I got up this morning. White dominates the landscape. No Kep to run and investigate in the back. The Snow came at a good time, late Thursday and over Friday, after Thanksgiving dinners had been eaten and guests returned to their homes. I’m reevaluating my practice of putting my Snow tires on in early December. Maybe mid-November would be better.

 

A quiet day yesterday. I reshelved some books in the loft, moving towards getting them all back from my Hawai’i move sorting. Then I’ll have Furball Housecleaning clean it again. Right now it’s too messy to clean.

Had to sort out my internet/router connections because my Starlink subscription ended on November 23rd. Took a little doing. Not much. Wish Musk was not, well, Musk. I liked Starlink though at times it was not superior to dsl. It was a simpler connection for me. And usually faster. Time of day mattered. A lot of work from home types living in the Mountains.

 

Thanks to Mary and her exercises my back has receded as an issue. I have to do a set in the morning and evening, plus one I do throughout the day if the back starts to act up. Much, much better. Still don’t know how I would fare on a trip, but I now I have tools to take care of myself thanks to her.

 

Getting closer to the ritual moment for my choice to become Jewish. I’m excited and looking forward to having to having it done at the same time. I’m hoping a lot of folks show up for the service on Friday and our oneg afterwards. I’ll see these friends I’ve had for eight years as, as Alan put it, a new Jew.

Not sure yet if I’ll wear a kippah. Feel like I want to, but I don’t want to look silly either. I know, that’s silly. Still… Part of the issue is that I’ve not worn one all these years and it feels odd to contemplate doing it now. Not everyone does. Probably fewer than half at services. Almost no one other than Rabbi Jamie wears one during the week at Beth Evergreen. Not sure I know why they’re worn. That might help me.

OK. So I looked it up. No particular reason. Reform Jews have typically not worn them at all, though that seems to be changing. I liked the idea of wearing one for certain times, like for services or when studying, or, on the sabbath. More on this later.

 

 

Holidays, Judaism, Politics, US History

Thanksgiving

Leave a comment

Samain and the Choice Moon

Thanksgiving gratefuls: Ruth and her Thanksgiving meal. Gabe, as, well, Gabe. Mia, my granddaughter from another mother. Jen. The shema. The mezuzahs. Darkness. An early morning/nighttime conversation across the Pacific with my son and Seoah. My son in Hawai’i next week. Murdoch. Gratitude. Thanksgiving. Alan. Marilyn and Irv. Tara. Rich. Jamie. Ron. Holimonth. Thanksgiving itself. Native American Heritage day. Native/First Nation Americans. The West. Shadow Mountain. Snow on the way.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Thanksgiving

One brief shining: The kitchen island had sprouted small oasis’s of food the Mushroom Wild Rice stuffing, the Persimmon and Pomegranate salad, cut Vegetables, Turkey breast, Corn bread stuffing, a spiral cut ham, so we grabbed our plates from the table and moved like folks in a cake walk making sure our plates got the good stuff.

 

Columbus Day. Native American genocide. America’s embrace of slavery. The too casual churning of history to invest a wonderful holiday with faux roots. Yes. All true and all bad. Sins for which we will and must atone. Not yesterday, but right now. The United States did not invent coloring its history and holidays with imperial swagger and false memories. But we have done it, too. Here is a New Yorker article that details this effect for Thanksgiving.

Yet. I choose this morning to return to Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation of the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving for the entire nation. Its last paragraph is below.* Here is a link to the whole which is worth reading. This man knew how to write, but had his Secretary of Defense, William Seward, pen this one.

Sarah Hale

This came before the linkage with Plymouth Rock and the Wampanoag visitation to the Pilgrims, apparently as part of a mutual defense pact. See the New Yorker article.

It came after a long campaign by Sara Josepha Hale, a woman of many talents, including being among the first female American novelists and the forty year editor of the most widely circulated magazine prior to the Civil War, Godey’s Lady’s Book.

In her spirit. This holiday, a secular one celebrated throughout the country and in other places where the American diaspora resides, unites us in gratitude. It does this in spite of the mess made of our history and later added to its celebration. Gratitude, taken in acknowledgement of our need for “humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience”, has the effect of dissolving bad feelings, opening hearts, and reminding us of what is good in our life. No matter the life.

I see it as a holiday that has two great impulses. The first, echoed by the what are we thankful for question heard at many Thanksgiving tables, turns our attention to gratitude. My first spiritual director, a Jesuit nun, had me keep a gratitude journal, saying that all of spirituality can be found in gratitude. I believe that to this day. The second impulse, to bring friends and family around a common table, is a necessary counter to the atomized meal times of our current lives and reinforces the truth of family, together whether MAGA or not. As it did for me yesterday when I celebrated with Ruth, Gabe, Mia, and Jen.

One last note. If you have ever been puzzled by my gratefuls, let me explain. In the Jewish tradition a unitary metaphysic was once denominated through the notion of monotheism. God is God of all and all is of God. Though many Jews, like me, have passed into a secular reality, the notion of a unitary metaphysic remains. And it has troublesome implications.

That is. We must be grateful for the yetzer hara, the selfish inclination, as well as the yetzer hatov or the good inclination, for example. We must be grateful for Hamas as well as Israel, Palestinians as well as Israelis. For the spectrum of human hues in our nation and for the life they all lead. For the criminal as well as the law abiding citizen. This does not go down well or obviously from a usual perspective, yet a unitary metaphysic demands it. And I happen to think it makes sense. Jarring as it may be. More on this at a later point.

 

 

*”…And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, (my emphasis) commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.”

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism

The Monk Comes Alive

Leave a comment

Samain and the Choice Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Mezuzah’s hung. Rabbi Jamie. A nice evening. Dead battery brought back to life. These newfangled autos. Cold night. Sesame Tomato salad. Ham with Ruth and Gabe. Jen and Barb. New windshield! Finally. Reading more in the Tanakh. Jacob’s story. His ladder. His wrestling with the angel. His deceit and cunning. His name change. My Hebrew name: Israel. Shaddai. A feminine word for the sacred. New US plant hardiness zone map. Climate change.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Sacred Thresholds

One brief shining: Jamie took out his drill, widening the holes in the mezuzahs so they would fit the nails, we said the blessing for affixing them and I snapped the front door mezuzah in place, the back door mezuzah took a bit longer, but snap and crossing my own thresholds had an affordance for the sacred journeys of going out and coming in.

 

Odd. Finding that the more practices of Judaism I adopt, the more I find comfort and resonance in them. The Sabbath. Services on a more regular basis. Hanging the mezuzahs and having them there when I go in and out of the house. Studying mussar. Reading the parshas, studying them.

A part of me, a not insignificant part, yearned for a long time to be a monk. To have nothing else to do but study, pray, do some manual labor. I loved women so that was never a true option for me, but the secluded life of the monk, the hermit spoke to something important in my soul.

The Hermit. Herme. My neon major arcana. My introverted, scholarly, slow side now enforced by the loss of Kate. Alone. In the Mountains. Though I would have her back in a heartbeat, a strong part of me stood ready to blossom and has. She did not suppress it. No. We allowed each other the space to live our separate lives, coming together when we had matters in common, sewing and writing and working and logging when we did not.

Yet now. Alone. Perhaps becoming a secular monk, a Jewish monk. Almost an oxymoron. But not quite.

Judaism now encourages me to have the regular discipline offered in a monastery. Sabbath candles. Services. The sabbath itself. The shema on my doorposts. Reading the parshas, studying them. Holidays to lift up liberation, the harvest, the Torah, learning, memory of the Holocaust, to search deep into the soul and to mend relationships, for the trees, for Esther. Appointed times for nourishing, feeding the soul.

Could I have done these on my own? Maybe. But. I haven’t in the decades this monk has lived inside of me. Today he feels nurtured and honored. A definite and realized part of my life. I needed the structure of tradition, of community, of friendships.

In one sense you could say that becoming a Jew offers me the same rhythm I had with Kate. I live my separate life, but come together with CBE when we have common matters like worship, holiday observances, breakfast, or lunch.

Health, Judaism

Cancer Dancer

Leave a comment

Samain and the Choice Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Dr. Eigner. Retiring. Testosterone. Rising. Thanksgiving. Urban Farmer. Ruth and Gabe. Tomorrow. Tom. Diane. Alan and Joan. Today. Rabbi Jamie. Tonight. Mezuzahs. Learning the shema in Hebrew. Snow. Driving Mountain roads in Snow. 76. Mountain life. Wild Neighbors. Adapted to the Snow and cold. Humans, in our artifice. Vince and his girls. Fixing the strip in the lower level.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Good medical care

One brief shining: Not often, no, but yesterday hunger rumbled my stomach as I drove to my appointment with Dr. Eigner, the last one, and I pulled into Wendy’s, got a Dave’s single and a chocolate frosty, finished the hamburger in the car before I went inside, the frosty when I came back to the car. Not my preference, but. Fast. Food.

 

Dr. Eigner walked in looking fit. You’ve seen your numbers? Yes. They’re good! He’s always cheerful at any apparent good news.

PSA .04. Undetectable. Testosterone. 31. You see your testosterone is increasing? Yes. The good news is you’ll have more energy, gain some muscle, maybe some weight. (I don’t want to gain any weight.)

And, the bad news is that the cancer has food. How long will it take for my PSA to go back up? When do you treat me again?

Great question! The question. And I won’t answer it.

Oh.

Because there are three variables. How high is your testosterone? How much did the PSA increase and how long did it take to get there. So. If we said we’d treat you at 2 and your PSA stayed at 1.9 for three years, then went up to 2? We wouldn’t treat you because it took a long while to there. If, on the other hand, you come in next time and your PSA has increased to .4? We’ll probably treat you.

With what?

Orgovyx and Erleada. The same ones you were on.

Well, I guess this is good-bye.

Yes. I wish we hadn’t met, better for you. But since we did, I’ve appreciated the time I’ve known you. You’re a good man, Charlie.

You, too, Dr. Eigner.

I now understand this dance. With advanced prostate cancer the idea is off the drugs until the cancer recovers, then back on them or something new that’s come on line. Thus, cancer as a chronic disease. A new world for cancer patients. Living with the disease rather than dying from it. As long as possible. Kathy. Diane. Judy for five years. Mike. Dave. People I know.

 

Breakfast with Alan and Joan this morning. Rabbi Jamie comes tonight to hang the mezuzahs. I’m going to get a cheese pizza. He eats eco-kashrut.* Doubt I’ll get there though I get it and it would be better for me.

Looking forward to having these markers of my added identity put up. I like the way they honor the concept of thresholds and liminal places, reminding me to make going out and coming in a sacred moment.

Gradually adding practices to reinforce and deepen my choice.

 

 

 

 

*Eco-Kashrut, also called the Eco-Kosher movement, is a movement to extend the Kashrut system, or Jewish dietary laws, to address modern environmental, social, and ethical issues, and promote sustainability.[1]

This movement began in the 1970s among American Reconstructionist Jews, and eco-kashrut or eco-kosher approaches enjoyed a resurgence in the 1990s with the work of Reconstructionist rabbi, author, and activist Arthur Waskow. A third wave of the eco-kashrut or eco-kosher movement began in the mid-2000s, spurred on in part by a series of kosher production facility scandals.[2]

…More recently the movement has been championed by other Kosher-keeping Jews who strive to eat only food that has been ethically and sustainably produced, and ideally, locally sourced.[6] Eco-Kashrut also finds expression in the sharing of sustainable shabbat meals.  wiki

 

GeekWorld, Judaism, Wild Neighbors

The Animal Shall not be Measured by Man (sic)

Leave a comment

Samain and the Choice Moon

Monday gratefuls: Snow. Cool night. Gray-white Sky as Snowflakes glide past the Lodgepoles. The three Mule Deer Bucks in the yard yesterday. One with a magnificent rack. Thanksgiving week. Urban Farmer. Ruth and her new (to her) Subaru. Gabe. Mia who calls me grandpa. Mezuzah hanging tomorrow. The Iliad. Hector and Paris and Menelaus. Helen. Agamemnon. Ajax. Odysseus. Achilles. Troy. Reading. Sangfroid. Veronica. The mikveh. Canceling Starlink.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Snow

One brief shining: On Snowy days I’ll load a fire in the fireplace, get a cup of coffee, and pick up the current book, right now the Iliad, and take off into the world of Troy, of men who lived for war, of women so beautiful they were worth fighting and dying for, of the wine-dark sea and the rage of Achilles.

 

No more Starlink. In my reason for cancellation I quoted Musk’s comment on X.* Back to DSL and Centurylink.

 

Those three Mule Deer Bucks in the back yard yesterday reminded me of the three who greeted me on Samain 2014. I had come to Colorado for the closing. They were in the back, like these three, grazing calmly. I walked out of the lower level, not sure what to expect. I was brand new to the Mountains. We stayed a respectful distance from each other while staring intently into each others eyes. After a few minutes, we broke off. They returned to grazing and I went back inside. Altered.

As I reflected on it later, and as I’ve said, I came to believe they were three Mountain spirits come to greet me, say it was all right for me to live here. That began my ongoing experience of my Wild Neighbors, of their world in which I’m just passing through. They come and go on their own schedules, according to their own needs and desires. Sometimes I am fortunate enough to see them, usually not.

I’ll finish today with a quote that if I ever had a tombstone big enough I’d want to include on mine.

“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”
― Henry Beston, The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod

 

*”An X post Wednesday afternoon said: “Jewish communties (sic) have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.” The post also referenced “hordes of minorities” flooding Western countries, a popular antisemitic conspiracy theory.

In response, Musk said: “You have said the actual truth.”” CNN.com

Judaism

A Jewish Home

Leave a comment

Samain and the Choice Moon

Sunday gratefuls: The Ancient Brothers. Sangfroid or not. All those happy for my choice of Judaism. Rabbi Jamie. CBE. The power of community and friendship. Beit din. A drop of blood. Mikveh. A deep sense of belonging. Darkness. Orion. Pleiades. Hercules. The Great Square. The Great Bear. Polaris. Sirius. Rigel. Vega. Kep. Gertie. Kate, my beloved. A cold night.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Studying the parsha for the week

One brief shining: Part way to celebrating the sabbath yesterday after attending services Friday night; I stayed home, read Genesis: 25:19 to 28:9 about Isaac, Esau, Jacob, Rebekah-the birthright gained by manipulation and a patriarchal blessing by deceit-then a fascinating commentary on it by Avivah Zornberg, made it till three in the afternoon with eating, reading, working out, reflecting, then I turned on the TV. Too much seriousness.

 

Don’t have the right mix yet for the sabbath. A day of rest, of focusing on family, spirituality, learning, pleasure. I find the traditional restrictions too narrow, my own too broad. I’ve wanted to observe the sabbath since seminary. Yes, the Jewish sabbath. Even then. Just never found the traction for it in my weeks and months. With the prod of becoming Jewish I now have a considerable impetus.

Rabbi Jamie asked me during our session on the Jewish life cycle how I planned to create a Jewish household. I’m no longer married, raising no children, not working. Not the usual context for starting a Jewish home, he said. He’s right, of course. I do have ideas though.

On Tuesday evening Jamie’s coming over to hang two mezuzahs, my front door and the door I use most going to the garage. That’s a start. My Jewish identity will be visible to me and to others who come to my house. I have ordered a set of candle holders since I also plan to light the sabbath candles which mark the beginning of the sabbath on Friday night. If I can figure out how to get a loaf of challah or an equivalent, I will have it, too.

I’m already saying the Shema when I go to bed and when I wake up. Though. The wording is still not quite what I want. Since I’m not a theist. Working on this.

The grandkids and I celebrate Hanukah together. There is that electric Menorah that Kate and I have put in our front window since our marriage. I’ve continued that. I doubt I’ll ever do a Seder though. Other ideas will occur to me.

I plan to observe the sabbath, the full day, but before I do I have to reconstruct it so it makes sense to me and fits into my life. I have some resources on the way and of course there’s always Rabbi Jamie. Part of the sabbath is attending Friday night services which I have long avoided. Not anymore. As often as possible, I’ll start the sabbath at the synagogue.

Though not part of creating a Jewish home, I do have other observances. Except. Not sure I’ll go to the High Holy Days. They seem, I don’t know, too stiff. Too long. The month of Ellul, which precedes them though, a month of self-reflection, yes. Sukkot, Simcah Torah, Passover, Tu B’shvat, Purim, Shavout. For sure. Yam Hashoah, important for historical memory. There are others.

Of course, my mussar classes, seeing my friends, staying in touch with the lives of those I’ve come to love at CBE.

Denver, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism

A bit more on choosing Judaism

Leave a comment

Samain and the Choice Moon

Friday gratefuls: Alan. Tara. Joann. Rabbi Jamie. Mezuzah hanging. Spiritual autobiography. Beit din. A drop of blood. Three immersions in the mikveh. Luke 4:18-19. The Devil. The crossroads. Robert Johnson. John Lee Hooker. BB King. Muddy Waters. Howlin’ Wolf. Etta James. Billie Holiday. Strange Fruit. Racial justice. The South. The West. The Midwest. The East. The United States of America. Democracy. Its enemies in our midst. Its champions. The old pale males.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Immersion in the mikveh

One brief shining: Check your doorframes, are they wood or metal, I’ll need a hammer, nails or screws, we’ll talk about thresholds and liminal spaces, going out and coming in, there’s a prayer, we’ll get the mezuzah’s hung.

 

 

                              On Tuesday morning the 28th of November. At Temple Emanuel in Denver. Its mikveh.

 

 

A bit more on the ritual of becoming a Jew. The beit din, court of judgment, takes about 40 minutes. The three people involved Rabbi Jamie, Joan Greenberg, and a second rabbi read a spiritual autobiography I’m in the process of writing. At the court they ask questions of me based on it and on my awareness of matters Jewish. They confer, make a decision about admitting me to the tribe. After that a drop of blood from my private parts. Then, the mikveh.

Three immersions. The first one, with all body parts in the water. Floating, feet off the bottom, fingers spread. Water needs to touch all exposed flesh. After the first immersion, I’m a Jew. The second immersion is one I have to do as a Jew because it is a commandment that I didn’t have to follow until the first immersion. A prayer is said. Then, the third immersion. I repeat the Shema. Dry off. Get dressed.

A naming ceremony. I have chosen Israel for my Hebrew name. It means struggles with God which names my inner life. It is also the name Jacob gets after wrestling the angel at the Jabbok Ford, the parsha I chose. I will be given my Hebrew name which will be Israel ben Abraham and Sarah. All Jews by choice have Abraham and Sarah as their direct Jewish ancestors.

Walk out with a new name and an old community now different for me. I will be a part of it forever and a day.

A big morning.

Appropriate to the Shema which starts with Listen, Israel, I have a 1 pm appointment with my audiologist that day, too.

I’m excited and happy. Can’t say why but I feel I’m stepping into a civilization, a culture into which I fit and which fits me. Never intended to do anything like this again. Ever. Yet here I am.

Veronica Grunig will go through the ritual the same morning. We’re sponsoring an oneg, an after service celebration on December 1st. We will also get called up during the service to hold the Torah for the first time and lead the congregation in prayer. This is an aliyah, an honor available only to Jews.

 

 

 

 

Humanities, Judaism, Literature, Politics

Dissonance and the Classics

Leave a comment

Samain and the Choice Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Echocardiograms. Dilation and dysfunction. PSA not there. Testosterone still low. Medicine. A nuisance until it’s not. Early trauma. Myth of Normal. Tom. Diane. Mark and Mary. Computers. This old desktop. The laptop. The phone. Starlink. Brother laserjet. This digital life. Zoom. The internet. Chatbotgpt. AI. Altitude and Tea. Weak Tea. Mary for p.t. today. Mussar. Pamela. BJ. Sarah. Anne. Jewish life cycle with Rabbi Jamie today.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Pamela

One brief shining: Put filtered water in my red Tea kettle, pushed the button for P-power on the induction stove, waited until the whistle, poured boiling water over a tea bag given to me by Diane and Dan in Korea, took it upstairs in my World’s Best Grandpa cup, and drank a weak and almost unidentifiable beverage because altitude boiling sucks.

 

Went to Jackie’s for a cut and a beard trim. It was dark! 5:30 pm. First time I’ve ever had a haircut after dark in 76 years. That Jackie. A sweetheart. She always gives me a hug and says she loves me. Ronda, too. Extended community that makes life rich, buoyant. The Mountains. A special place. Kate introduced me to Jackie.

 

Online discussion of Israel-Hamas war last night at CBE. By turns tedious, sad, boring, infuriating. No new light. The grind of a nation acting out, a nation we feel identified with and in some inchoate way responsible for. The awful news of casualties in the thousands. Pictures of Palestinians picking through yet another building reduced to rubble by Israeli airstrikes. Still smoldering anger at the murderous invasion which killed Israeli’s in their beds. Now watching Israel do the same. Over and over. The history. The Nakba, the catastrophe. First with the Jews fleeing pogroms in Russia at the turn of 19th century. Then in 1948 with the foundation of Israel. Palestinians feeling or actually displaced by Jews moving onto land they occupied. Jews feeling safe for once. A place a Jew can go and feel secure. At last. At long last. The might of Israel ensuring that safety and security. Then its discordant use for slaying thousands in the name of defeating Hamas. All bad news.

At the same time contemplating my choosing Judaism, my ritual on the 28th. Becoming an intimate part of this whole reality. What I want. I already feel the anguished split between love of Israel and justice for the Palestinians. Both, yes. Both. Without compromise. With liberty and justice for all. Now.

 

Enjoying a re-immersion in the classics. Started Fagles’ Iliad yesterday. Achilles. Agamemnon. Ajax. Patroclus. Odysseus. Troy. Priam. Hector. Helen. Menelaus. Hollow-ships and the wine-dark Sea. Ordered a hardback copy of Moby Dick. After the Iliad. May reread the Divine Comedy after that. I love these stories, their ability to challenge expectations, hold up and put down characters, run fast and hard, then calm down.

My reading chairs have different roles. Upstairs by the fireplace I read what I consider serious books. The classics, yes, but works on Judaism, philosophy, non-fiction. Downstairs by the wonderful map of the Island of Hawai’i that Kate got me I read non-literary fiction like Jack Reacher, Joe Pickett, and my current jag, a series about a land of fairies and high fae.

 

 

Judaism, Poetry, World History

Taking Sides

Leave a comment

Samain and the Summer’s End Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Ruth. Dazzle. Alan and a new car. The signs of aging. Come to us all. If we’re lucky. Mountain living. Shadow Mountain. Kep, no longer out in the Snow, still my sweet boy. Kate, my sweet gal. My son. His 77 on screen golf! Seoah. Murdoch. Okwga. Seoah’s mom and dad. Our wild neighbors. Aging in place. Fire insurance. Wildfire. Move or stay, my choice. Mountain Water. Mountain Clouds. Emunah.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Wizard of Oz

One brief shining: Oh the things we’ll see if we turn on the news, bombs bursting in air and on the ground, tanks and soldiers pushing, pushing, pushing, Gazans streaming toward the south, peace in shatters oh hallelujah says Hamas, Hezbollah and their Iranian allies, push, push, push until all Arabs push back, please please please stop all this.

 

For today’s post, I’m offering this poem sent to me by my friend Rebecca Martin:

 

Taking Sides

 

Today I am taking sides.

I am taking the side of Peace.

Peace, which I will not abandon

even when its voice is drowned out

by hurt and hatred,

bitterness of loss,

cries of right and wrong.

I am taking the side of Peace

whose name has barely been spoken

in this winterless war.

I will hold peace in my soma

and share my body’s breath,

lest Peace be added

to the body count.

I will call for de-escalation

even when I want nothing more

than to get even.

I will do it

in the service of Peace.

I will make a clearing

in the overgrown

thicket of cause and effect

so Peace can breathe

for a minute

and reach the sky.

I will do what I must

to save the life of Peace.

I will breathe through tears.

I will swallow pride.

I will bite my tongue.

I will offer love

without testing for deservingness.

 

So don’t ask me to wave a flag today

unless it is the flag of Peace.

Don’t ask me to sing an anthem

unless it is a song of Peace.

Don’t ask me to take sides

unless it is the side of Peace.

 

Rabbi Irwin Keller

October 17, 2023