Double-edged swords

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 journey hasn't been without some speed bumps. I missed Rosh HaShanah almost entirely (at least, I missed the serious, religious parts; I did bake a round challah and introduce my kids to the joy of apples-in-honey), I waited until the last possible moment to do taschlich before Yom Kippur, I got really incredibly stressed about my first few Sabbaths (until my wife and kids got the point that I really seriously was not going to do any school work or house work or shopping), and what there is of my family's Sukkah is lying in the living room as a collection of unassembled lumber – two days into the seven-day holiday of Sukkot.

So I keep getting these comments on Facebook that my efforts to try out the full Jewish experience in one year are amusing but overblown, that I need to just relax and enjoy the spirit of the holiday, and so on.**

Well, I am happy to entertain and amuse you all! Perhaps I will eventually get the rhythm of this religion and not have to try so hard. But for now, in the spirit of offering guidance to any other obsessive-compulsive would-be converts, I want to document a few of the "double-edged swords" of Judaism:

• Shabbat.  Plus side: the commandment to take a day off from any form of work or commerce in deference to time for rest, for family, and for Torah study is one of the greatest blessings I have so far received from Judaism. When (as a UU/Christian seminary student) I first read Heschel's excellent book The Sabbath, I thought "Why is this guy waxing rhapsodic over a day off? We get two of those every week!" Now that I have tried Shabbat for a couple of months I think Heschel actually undersold the idea.  Minus side: Taking Shabbat seriously means that your house should be ready to welcome a visiting queen every Friday evening (let the record show, I have not yet reached this particular goal) and that anything you want to use or eat from Friday night through Saturday evening needs to be purchased and prepped beforehand. In other words, rest on Saturday means an awful lot more work on Friday! Also, those few blue laws that remain and those few stores who are closed on Sunday are suddenly revealed to be taking the wrong day off!

• Lots and Lots of Holidays. Plus side: I am a big fan of holidays, especially holidays that mark the passage of the seasons and the year. They make sure that time doesn't pass you by, they keep you from getting into too much of a rut, they give you an endless series of reasons to celebrate and ways to celebrate them, they keep you from leaving one set of decorations up year-round. They remind you that life and time are sacred quantities. With Judaism plus a few of my fave secular holidays, I figure I will never have any reason to go a month without a holiday again!  Minus side: Jewish holidays often seem to stack up in inconvenient places. Inconvenient because they are not the mainstream-culture holidays that everyone builds their schedules around, so you either skip work or miss the holiday. Inconvenient because the four(!) holidays that stack up in the early fall seem to hit just in time to disrupt whatever rhythm my teaching might have possibly gotten into. Inconvenient because you can barely catch your breath from the Days of Awe before you are building a Sukkah. Which brings me to…

• Hardware Requirements. Plus side: having a hard time coming up with one. Better stuff to shop for than fall-apart costumes or tinsel and fake snowmen? Better quality stuff to shop for than fall-apart costumes or tinsel and fake snowmen? Down side: nobody warned me when I started down the Jewish path*** that there would be so many durable goods and supplies to buy! Want to celebrate Shabbat? Get some halfway-decent candlesticks, some non-tacky place settings (see that queen thing, above), and at least one kiddush cup. Add weekly wine and challah. Rosh HaShanah? Go buy a shofar (just kidding – only a nerd would do that, right?). Sukkot? Spend $100 in lumber and supplies to build a hut that looks like it was just thrown together. Chanukkah will require a menorah, dreidels, gelt. Tu Bishvat I'm supposed to plant a tree, Passover needs a seder plate, and the kids will want costumes for Purim. Am I missing anything? Oh, everyday living: you will need a mezuzah for every doorway, or every doorway to a room someone lives in, or at least your front door. And a Torah to read, if you are into that. And a siddur, if you want to get into the required daily prayers and blessings. Now, am I missing anything?

• A Lunar-Solar Calendar. Plus side:  the romance of having certain holidays guaranteed to fall on a full moon, like Tu B'Av, the "Jewish Valentine's Day". Minus side: you can't count on any of the Jewish holidays falling during the same time of the month as it did this year ever again. Makes semester planning, weather planning, birthday planning quite a trick!

• Not Being What Anybody Expects. Plus side: it is always fun to see the expression on somebody's face when you reveal that you are celebrating a religious custom they have never heard of, or even just the fact that you are capable of being a serious religious person without fitting their particular mold (or the popular media's) for what "religious" looks and acts like. Minus side: Christian and now even Muslim holidays get local and national media attention. As far as a quick scan of the headlines revealed, nobody noticed Yom Kippur this year but us Jews. More of a minus side, though, is the assumptions one constantly has to either ignore or confront: the clerk who says "if you want to make a donation, we need to know the name of your church" or the salesperson who assumes you will be interested in Christmas décor (in September, no less). It gets old. And the "holiday season" (which holiday would that be, now?) hasn't even gotten started yet!

Okay, I'll end my blessings-and-gripes list there and say that so far the blessings of Judaism have far outweighed the curses, and I look forward to many more holidays to come!

---

* Not entirely true. I want to get the holidays right, and Shabbat right, and I have largely stopped eating pork and cheeseburgers, but I am trying to heed advice and just add one or two mitzvot at a time. And I have no intention of ever wearing tefillin.

** I can't recall ever seeing similar comments to people kvetching about the big majority-culture holidays. Struggling to put together your kid's third must-have Halloween costume? To figure out how to cook Grandma's always-perfect Thanksgiving side dishes? To put up a neighborhood-stunning Christmas-light display? To avoid last-minute shopping for perfect gifts on Dec 24? Facebook comments about these holidays tend toward either the "we've all been there" or the "glad I'm not trying to do that this year!".

I can't help thinking it's not my actual attitude toward holidays but rather the fact that I'm trying out something as distinctive and decidedly out-of-the-mainstream as Judaism that makes me look either cute or like I'm trying too hard, since I see Christians and dedicated secularists alike making equal asses of themselves on social media every time one of their holidays comes around.

And so, perhaps uncharitably, I am harboring a desire to copy-and-paste the following comment on my various friends' Fb pages this "holiday season":  "It's so cute how you are working so hard to celebrate [Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas] this year -- you need to just relax and enjoy the spirit of the holiday without obsessing over [decorations and costumes/dinner plans/yard lights and presents]!"

*** Once the Jewish path you start down, forever will it dominate your destiny