this woman’s work

So the internet, it fuels my need to stalk people from the past and I’ve become expert at it. I can usually find out where people got married, how much they paid for their house, and what kind of music they like listening to provided their names aren’t so common. It gets tricky when I go hunting for the guy I dated briefly my senior year in high school (Mike Thomas) or the second guy I ever kissed (Jim Smith).

I found one of the kids I grew up babysitting after figuring out she changed her last name when she got married. (Although I struggle to deny it, the baby I used to babysit is indeed old enough to be married AND old enough that nobody would say, “What?! Why’s that child getting married so young???”) She looks hale and hearty and oh so happy and I’ll admit to wiping away a tear when I fumbled my way through her Facebook.

I babysat these kids from the time I was about 12 until I was at least 21 because I know I brought Brett along to see Kohli in Annie as produced by Grove City’s Little Theater Off Broadway. Her dad was Daddy Warbucks and she had the lead. For those of you who know my Annie obsession, which ran deep in my youth, you will appreciate that this was a heady moment for me.

People are far-flung these days. Thank god for the interwebz miracle that lets me find folks I used know and who still matter to me. It’s a gift to discover them again.

(By the way, being the inadequate Jew that I am, the kids are doing their homeschool activities today even though it’s pretty much the holiest day of the year. I know. I know. I can’t get it together Jewishness-wise. It’s harder than you think to be a Jew-by-choice and culturally by birth so she thought she was Jewish all her life and yet never observed any of the holidays so had to convert an who is living in an interfaith family. I keep thinking that when the kids are grown and I have more time…)

The PJ Library

These good folks send Madison a free book about Judaism every month. Your kid must be less than seven to get in on the fun and you need to check that they operate in your neck of the woods. Some of them are good, some of them are not. I was happy to get What Makes Someone a Jew? even though it’s painful to read. (We stick to the pictures.) It’s aggressively multicultural but the rhymes are plain old bad so it ends up being unintentionally hilarious.

My favorite so far is Five Little Gefiltes because it’s intentionally hilarious.

They list all the books they send and you can see there are some great ones on there so hey! If you’re Jewish (or if your kids are Jewish) go ahead and sign up!

Jackie said: “Part of my trouble is that much of the iconography, the Virgin Mary, the rosary, the Virgen de Guadelupe, still resonates with me, helps me make that connection, but I don’t know how to extrapolate a religion or community from that, you know?”

As a Reform Jew, I always wish there was such a thing as Reform Catholicism. There’s a wonderful book Sisters: Lives of Devotion and Defiance by Julia Lieblich. This book helped me decide to be Jewish in earnest although I struggle with some aspects of Judaism. One of the nuns is ex-communicated but she continues living/working as a nun. It made me realize that religion is between the individual and God and that the structures around our religions are there for us. It may be difficult to find a totally like-minded community but I do think it’s possible to be a seeker from within any religious tradition that feels like home and to bend that tradition to suit our personal relationship with God. I know that this is a bigger challenge in Catholicism but I don’t think it’s impossible. And I think it’s important that we not give up the things that are meaningful to us because our very human leaders try to tell us that we cannot have them unless we follow their rules.

I do struggle with this though. Judaism is all about following halacha — Jewish law. Is Judaism meaningless if we reject any of those laws? For someone like me — not keeping kosher, not honoring the sabbath, unable to pronounce any of the blessings (!) — can I really live a Jewish life? Well, it depends on who you ask. One day I’d like to live more Jewishly but I feel that this time will come when my children are older because after all, I’m in an interfaith marriage. It’s one thing for the two of us to decide that Judaism will be the dominant spirituality in our family; it’s quite another for me to demand that we all follow laws that are really important only to me. As the kids get older, if either of them want to embrace aspects of Jewish practice, I’d be pretty darn happy and ready to join them. But to follow these things now would be a hardship and ultimately, I’m afraid that they would actually turn my children away from Judaism and possibly then from God. It would be different if we lived in a Jewish community and had families that were living Jewish lives but we don’t. I trust God in this though. I trust that as my way has been made clear, so will my children’s and meanwhile within the context of Judaism, we are able to communicate with each other about that journey.

In the same way, I recognize that Catholicism for many people would have no power without the specific teachings of its leaders. In much the same way that Judaism is halacha so Catholicism is following rules set forth by the Pope — at least as I understand it. But then I remind myself that religion is the way that men (historically) have tried to understand God and so it belongs to us.

In the book my rabbi gave me before my conversion, Liberal Judaism at Home, the author Morrison David Bial writes:

The major difficulty with the criterion we have mentioned, his own sense of spiritual values, arrived at by diligent study of tradition — is that it obviously sets each Liberal [Reform] Jew as his own judge of what he will or will not do.

To the traditional Jew, this is nothing less than a severe transgression of halacha, the law. It is God who established the Torah and its mitzvot, commandments. Anyone who would dare set any mitzvah, commandment, aside is one who would cut at the roots of the God-given religion.

Then what can the Liberal Jew use as his final criterion, to help his knowledge of tradition and his understanding of Liberal Judaism in the task of deciding just where he fits in the infinite spectrum of Jewish observance? The answer must be a sense of kedushah, of holiness, of that which will help him sanctify his life, to make it truly meaningful. By this must he live, and it will help him give his life that inner meaning by which we seek fulfillment.

I believe that God speaks to each of us who are ready to listen. I believe that prayerful contemplation of the religious traditions that speak to us is our right and — for our children’s sakes — our duty. I want to model an active relationship with God for Madison and Noah. I want to show them that every religious tradition has wisdom that belongs to those that seek it. No one has a monopoly on the right way to do things; not even the guys who put themselves in charge.

I was morose all day today but but saved at our temple’s megillah reading. Purim is a rousing holiday and it’s hard to stay unhappy while singing a song about yet another thwarted attempt to exterminate the Jews set to the Beach Boys tune, “Help me, Rhonda.”

In front of us were two dads with their two Asian sons, presumably adopted although one never knows. It cheered me up immensely. There are a number of transracially adopted families in our temple; most seem to be international adoptions.
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