Adventures in Judaism

It should be no secret by now that I'm something of a religious nerd mixed with an obsessive perfectionist. Which makes it perhaps surprising that I would choose Reform Judaism as my religion-to-explore: while the Reform pendulum does seem to be swinging back toward a fuller observance of Rabbinical-period traditions, many (if not most) Reform Jews approach halacha with a "do what works for you and don't sweat the rest" attitude. I, on the other hand, do sweat the small stuff.* My wife and I have a running joke that I might be happier being a Conservative Jew -- if it weren't for the pesky fact that I'm starting this Jewish journey as a goy . It's also no secret that I'm having a blast immersing myself in the new/old world of Judaism, absorbing and learning and experiencing everything that I possibly can, and on the whole it has been the best thing for my mental and spiritual health that has come down the pike in a decade or more. But the jo...

So, in the spirit of admitting my imperfections (see Yom Kippur 1 post), I feel the need to admit that I cheated on my Yom Kippur fast. A little bit. I ate my entire dinner after the fast had officially begun (at sunset) because, well, that's the way it worked out. So I didn't really fast for the whole 25 hours. And I had a few crackers with my morning medicines to keep them from upsetting my stomach. And I had a cup of coffee in the morning because, well, I had to go teach. Why this long list of fast-related mea culpa' s? I'm not really feeling guilty about it at all. I fasted. It was bloody uncomfortable. The point was made. Or was it? I have been told that there are a lot of "benefits" or "reasons" for fasting on Yom Kippur. For instance, fasting is supposed to make us more aware of the plight of the poor, who miss meals all the time for reasons beyond their choosing -- the hunger we feel for a day, some feel every day. Students at my mothe...

"God does not expect perfection." This is a message the universe has been sending me for about two months now, from a variety of Jewish sources: books, web articles, and, last night, from my own Rabbi. It is a message I have needed to hear for decades now, a message that is having a hard time sinking into my poor stubborn head. I cling stubbornly to the perfectionist God that I grew up with, the God of the Protestant Work Ethic and of the famous Gospel verse "be perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect," the God who has so little tolerance for my imperfections that "His only begotten son" had to die as a human sacrifice in order to make me acceptable in God's sight. The thing is, I grew up being told that this harsh, perfectionist Diety was the Jewish God. I grew up in a Christian tradition that had long ago cleansed itself of any remnant of Christian anti-Semitism, or at least told itself that it had, and yet I got this message loud and clear...

My second Day of Awe seems to have been cursed - by my failure to even set a virtual foot in a synagogue on Rosh HaShanah, perhaps?  On a morning when I was supposed to be at work preparing to give my students an exam, my wife being laid-up-in-bed sick, I had to take three of my four kids (one of whom really should have made it to his bus) to school – and the fourth, who did catch his bus, forgot his ADD meds so I am now sitting in the school nurse's office waiting to deliver those. In between, I set up the coffee machine wrong and the filter actually exploded...all over my only clean pair of slacks. After cleaning up the kitchen and starting an emergency wash load, I am heading to school to slam together an exam in record time, wearing jeans dotted with food spots that hopefully won't "read from the audience."  Cursed, I tell you... --- Okay, so any curse here might actually just be in my head, but I am left with a couple of mildly serious questions. How do I say tha...

Well, I've had my first, er, Jew-fail.  Spent a large amount of my day planning and shopping for Rosh HaShanah dinner and related celebratory items. At 5:45, finally got enough space cleared on table and groceries put away and all that to start making challah. At 6:30, put up the dough to rise. At 7:00, took the family to the dog park as promised (and as intended for much earlier in the afternoon). At 7:30, watched in utter helplessness as the sun set and took my hopes for any Rosh HaShanah celebration at all with it. At 8:00, took my family home and at 8:30 I am still trying to clear the table and fix enough leftovers for rest of the family to eat. The challah is still on its first rise.  Well, it's not an auspicious start to my Jewish Year, but a Shanah Tovah to the rest of you, anyway. 

My oldest son recently said to me "one of the things I like most about Judaism is that Jews know how to party!" – by which, of course, he was referring to the Judaic practice of liberally sprinkling the year with holidays, or as we sometimes call them in our household, challah-days.  The most obvious way in which Jews party early and often is that the "holiest day of the year" for Judaism is Shabbat, which comes 52 times a year on average. But even if you don't consider the weekly Shabbat or the monthly Rosh Chodesh to count as true holidays, you might still agree that Judaism beats most other North American religio-cultural systems hands-down in the number of special days with which it marks the passage of each year. Judaism, for those who (like me until about a month ago) haven't been paying much attention to the Jewish holidays printed on your wall calendar, celebrates at least* 5 "holy days" and 4 "festivals" each year** (counting ...

Many of the new things on my journey into Judaism have taken some work, while others have come naturally. Oddly, for me, learning to make challah (the twisted egg bread served on Erev Shabbat and other holidays) has been in the latter category. Still, challah has taught me some life lessons (with tongue glued to my cheek by dough)... 1. No matter how twisted your week has been, it can still have a golden lining.  2. Sometimes, it can do you good to just punch the living daylight a out of some eggy flour. (Did I say that?) 3. Even the relatively poor can manage to have a fistful of dough once a week.  4. A little bit of leavening can lift a whole lot of heaviness, so lighten up a little!  5. Our work weeks may twist us up in knots, but every new year brings us full circle.  6. We may rest on Shabbat, but on Friday's it's nice to be kneaded.  7. After six bad "rye" jokes, Sabbath never tasted so sweet! Shabbat Shalom, y'all! Hebrew blessing of the day: baruk ...

I may well become the first ever Evangelical Jew. Actually I doubt that, but I am honestly coming to believe that many (if not most) of my Liberal Christian friends ought to stop trying to convince the world that Christianity means something different from what the vast supermajority of Christians say it is* and instead come join me on the Judaic side of the Force. There seems to be plenty of room for y'all over here, and besides, Judaism was good enough for Jesus...  (I'm not sure from which direction, but I'm sure I'll get hit with a lightning bolt for that one) But before I could ever take up the project of persuading all of my friends to convert to Judaism, I would need to have a pretty clear idea of what I was selling. And therein lies the rub: how am I to tell my friends why they should become Jewish – or even what it is that they are becoming – when the old saw about "two Jews, three opinions" applies here more than almost anywhere else? What do...

It seems to be trendy these days for people to call themselves "spiritual but not religious." I'm never entirely sure what such people mean by the "spiritual" half of this statement, but the ones I've talked to have given me at least some impression of what they mean by the "not religious" half: that whatever "spiritual" might mean to them, they can get it / do it / be it without empty rituals and monotonous ceremonies; arbitrary rules or required practices or obligatory daily/weekly/yearly observances; holy books that supposedly have all the answers or clergy who have studied them and claim to know the code; or overbearing laypeople who would rather mind your business than their own. And yet, weekly and yearly observances have value when we live in such a distracted era where hours, days, or even entire seasons can slip by us: they have the ability to draw our attention to the passage of time, to remind us to actually  ...