My journey to Judaism
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 live the life we have been working so hard to support, and to help us pause long enough to ask if we are living that life well. Rites and ceremonies focus our attention on the passage of life -- both ours and our loved ones' -- while liturgies of word and rituals of action, crafted carefully over the course of centuries, work to focus our attention on what is truly important in a life that seems to demand constant sacrifices of the things we value. Religion helps me remember me who I am and who I would like to become, and it points me in the direction of a life that has both meaning and purpose. Perhaps most of all, religions create communities of like-souled people, who see it as a calling to care for and about one another in a world where we rarely even get to know our neighbors or our coworkers anymore.
In other words, I hold the rather un-trendy view that religion can add to my life rather than being a burden on it, and I hold out the hope that if I can find a religion that fits my soul and let that religion do its job properly, I will have a better chance of living a good life than I would without it. I don't think I am alone in that view or in that hope, because I encounter fellow seekers all the time. It is for those people -- those who seek a religion that both informs and enhances their whole lives, and who just might find that religion in liberal Judaism -- that I am writing this blog.
---
This story officially began about three months ago, I suppose, when I quit church for good. It pained me to do so -- and surprised the heck out of my kids -- but I felt I had no choice.
I had tried so many different faith communities and found that neither my spiritual journey nor my attempt to find "my people" were progressing in any of them. Unitarian Universalists -- wonderful people, all of them -- welcomed my liberal values, encouraged my questioning, fed me plenty of engaging discussions over a whole range of ideas, gave me plenty of recommended reading, and connected me with some new lifelong friends. However, their deliberately individualistic and D-I-Y approach to religion gave me no prescribed rituals and practices to real-ize their principles, no clear next-steps-to-take on my spiritual journey, nothing to hang my hat on or offer my children as a definition of "this we believe," little support in my attempt to grow in my relationship with God. Episcopalians, on the other hand, offered my wife and I a beautiful worship ritual and encouraged us to take up both centuries-old and recently-reinvented Christian spiritual practices in our home lives, and they offered our children a definite faith perspective to build on in religious education. But I never felt connected to any of their communities or made any new friends, perhaps because I often felt pressure to hide who I am: to at least pretend that I believed in things I actively dis-believed, to downplay any possibly-controversial religious or social-political opinions (gay rights, anyone?) for the sake of the Unity of the Church, and to stick to a tried and trusted, middle-of-the-road, rather exclusivist form of Christianity. I was not growing here, either.
All of the religions I tried, in other words, offered me pieces of what I was looking for. But if I was going to find the whole package in a way that both honors who I am and gives me some defined directions for growth, I needed something completely different.
So, I did what my generation does with our deepest questions -- I posted it to Facebook. Many people held out their own favorite branch of Christianity as an answer, but when one good friend suggested that I try a Reform Jewish service and see how that felt, I took the bait. What my friend didn't know is that I have been attracted to Judaism for a long time, beginning with several conversations with a practicing Jew during a summer program back in college and building with each of the many Jews I got to know during grad school in the northeast. Here was a religion that was at once ancient and up-to-date, that I had seen offer both joy and comfort to people dealing with all manner of life situations, and not to mention a religion that spoke the very Hebrew language I had fallen in love with back in my brief trip through seminary.
So, just under two months ago, I attended Erev Shabbat prayers at a Reform Temple in my neighborhood. That evening changed my life. Afraid of being shunned by a religious community that famously also calls itself an ethnic/cultural/national "tribe" or even a "civilization" unto itself, I found myself warmly welcomed - even more so once they found out that I wasn't Jewish. Nervous about what to expect, I found prayers I didn't have to pretend I believed in that beautiful, profound Hebrew language. Leery of a religion I had been brought up to believe was long on rules and guilt and short on grace or joy or pretty much anything else, I found myself overwhelmed by the experience of being in a room full of people who were just there to share with God their gratitude for the miracle of another week of life, their hope for peace in their lives and in the world, and their joy in kicking off a day unlike any we have in the Christian world: Shabbat! So many Christians talk about needing to count their blessings -- here was a religion that actually does just that. I left feeling a peace in my heart that I had not felt before, a peace that my wife and children actually seemed to notice as I clumsily tried to observe my first Sabbath the next day.
---
Two months down the road, my love affair with Judaism has not subsided. Have their been bumps in the road? Of course. But the more I learn about Judaism--about this way of life that reminds us to be fully present in and grateful for each day, each week, and each season (in more yearly holidays than you can shake a stick at); that reminds us that God does not expect perfection so long as we do not give up the quest; that teaches a lot of the things I've always believed, but really emphasizes the life we live and the people we live it with more than what we believe anyway; that asks of us mostly that we take time to live our life properly and to treat everything we do as if it really matters--the more deeply I fall in love with it.
And so, my wife and I (and the one of our kids who is old enough to make such a decision) have decided to spend a year "trying on" Judaism as fully as we can. We will be part of the life of a synagogue (or maybe two), we will celebrate Shabbat and Havdalah and the Days of Awe and the many other holidays, and (according to a Reform understanding of halachah, at least) we will try to add as many mitzvot to our lives as practically possible in our quest to live our lives fully and well.
This blog will be a chronicle of that first year, roughly measured from 1 Tishri (Rosh Hashanah) 5776 to the same time in Hebrew year 5777. After all, a Jewish year ought to be measured in Jewish time, and what better time to start than with the annual celebration of new beginnings?
Who is this blog for? Myself, because I want a journal to record the steps in this journey. My friends who are supporting me in this journey, because I hope it will interest them. And finally, it is for anyone who is, for whatever reason, interested in "trying on" Judaism themselves but nervous enough to want to do so vicariously first! And it is for you, whomever you are, who stumbled upon it and finds it interesting. Read on, and let the journey begin!
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 live the life we have been working so hard to support, and to help us pause long enough to ask if we are living that life well. Rites and ceremonies focus our attention on the passage of life -- both ours and our loved ones' -- while liturgies of word and rituals of action, crafted carefully over the course of centuries, work to focus our attention on what is truly important in a life that seems to demand constant sacrifices of the things we value. Religion helps me remember me who I am and who I would like to become, and it points me in the direction of a life that has both meaning and purpose. Perhaps most of all, religions create communities of like-souled people, who see it as a calling to care for and about one another in a world where we rarely even get to know our neighbors or our coworkers anymore.
In other words, I hold the rather un-trendy view that religion can add to my life rather than being a burden on it, and I hold out the hope that if I can find a religion that fits my soul and let that religion do its job properly, I will have a better chance of living a good life than I would without it. I don't think I am alone in that view or in that hope, because I encounter fellow seekers all the time. It is for those people -- those who seek a religion that both informs and enhances their whole lives, and who just might find that religion in liberal Judaism -- that I am writing this blog.
---
This story officially began about three months ago, I suppose, when I quit church for good. It pained me to do so -- and surprised the heck out of my kids -- but I felt I had no choice.
I had tried so many different faith communities and found that neither my spiritual journey nor my attempt to find "my people" were progressing in any of them. Unitarian Universalists -- wonderful people, all of them -- welcomed my liberal values, encouraged my questioning, fed me plenty of engaging discussions over a whole range of ideas, gave me plenty of recommended reading, and connected me with some new lifelong friends. However, their deliberately individualistic and D-I-Y approach to religion gave me no prescribed rituals and practices to real-ize their principles, no clear next-steps-to-take on my spiritual journey, nothing to hang my hat on or offer my children as a definition of "this we believe," little support in my attempt to grow in my relationship with God. Episcopalians, on the other hand, offered my wife and I a beautiful worship ritual and encouraged us to take up both centuries-old and recently-reinvented Christian spiritual practices in our home lives, and they offered our children a definite faith perspective to build on in religious education. But I never felt connected to any of their communities or made any new friends, perhaps because I often felt pressure to hide who I am: to at least pretend that I believed in things I actively dis-believed, to downplay any possibly-controversial religious or social-political opinions (gay rights, anyone?) for the sake of the Unity of the Church, and to stick to a tried and trusted, middle-of-the-road, rather exclusivist form of Christianity. I was not growing here, either.
All of the religions I tried, in other words, offered me pieces of what I was looking for. But if I was going to find the whole package in a way that both honors who I am and gives me some defined directions for growth, I needed something completely different.
So, I did what my generation does with our deepest questions -- I posted it to Facebook. Many people held out their own favorite branch of Christianity as an answer, but when one good friend suggested that I try a Reform Jewish service and see how that felt, I took the bait. What my friend didn't know is that I have been attracted to Judaism for a long time, beginning with several conversations with a practicing Jew during a summer program back in college and building with each of the many Jews I got to know during grad school in the northeast. Here was a religion that was at once ancient and up-to-date, that I had seen offer both joy and comfort to people dealing with all manner of life situations, and not to mention a religion that spoke the very Hebrew language I had fallen in love with back in my brief trip through seminary.
So, just under two months ago, I attended Erev Shabbat prayers at a Reform Temple in my neighborhood. That evening changed my life. Afraid of being shunned by a religious community that famously also calls itself an ethnic/cultural/national "tribe" or even a "civilization" unto itself, I found myself warmly welcomed - even more so once they found out that I wasn't Jewish. Nervous about what to expect, I found prayers I didn't have to pretend I believed in that beautiful, profound Hebrew language. Leery of a religion I had been brought up to believe was long on rules and guilt and short on grace or joy or pretty much anything else, I found myself overwhelmed by the experience of being in a room full of people who were just there to share with God their gratitude for the miracle of another week of life, their hope for peace in their lives and in the world, and their joy in kicking off a day unlike any we have in the Christian world: Shabbat! So many Christians talk about needing to count their blessings -- here was a religion that actually does just that. I left feeling a peace in my heart that I had not felt before, a peace that my wife and children actually seemed to notice as I clumsily tried to observe my first Sabbath the next day.
---
Two months down the road, my love affair with Judaism has not subsided. Have their been bumps in the road? Of course. But the more I learn about Judaism--about this way of life that reminds us to be fully present in and grateful for each day, each week, and each season (in more yearly holidays than you can shake a stick at); that reminds us that God does not expect perfection so long as we do not give up the quest; that teaches a lot of the things I've always believed, but really emphasizes the life we live and the people we live it with more than what we believe anyway; that asks of us mostly that we take time to live our life properly and to treat everything we do as if it really matters--the more deeply I fall in love with it.
And so, my wife and I (and the one of our kids who is old enough to make such a decision) have decided to spend a year "trying on" Judaism as fully as we can. We will be part of the life of a synagogue (or maybe two), we will celebrate Shabbat and Havdalah and the Days of Awe and the many other holidays, and (according to a Reform understanding of halachah, at least) we will try to add as many mitzvot to our lives as practically possible in our quest to live our lives fully and well.
This blog will be a chronicle of that first year, roughly measured from 1 Tishri (Rosh Hashanah) 5776 to the same time in Hebrew year 5777. After all, a Jewish year ought to be measured in Jewish time, and what better time to start than with the annual celebration of new beginnings?
Who is this blog for? Myself, because I want a journal to record the steps in this journey. My friends who are supporting me in this journey, because I hope it will interest them. And finally, it is for anyone who is, for whatever reason, interested in "trying on" Judaism themselves but nervous enough to want to do so vicariously first! And it is for you, whomever you are, who stumbled upon it and finds it interesting. Read on, and let the journey begin!
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