Adventures in Judaism

Recently, during a break between class activities, I joined a conversation many of my students were having about the upcoming election. I revealed that this is the first election I can remember in which I am truly frightened of what our country might become if a particular leading candidate gets elected President. One student told me that the other candidate scares her . Why, I asked? "She's a crook!" There just wasn't anywhere for that conversation to go. While waiting in line to vote, it became quickly apparent that the people waiting in line in front of me were voting for the other team. As soon as I made that connection, I found myself instinctively reacting against everything that those people said to one another, even when the topic turned away from a direct discussion of the election to neighborhood matters and other such things. I ventured to offer an argument to one of their ideas once, and one man literally laughed in my face. In the past couple of wee

It struck me at first as a poorly-conceived construction project. I mean, from an engineer's standpoint, a kosher sukkah just seems like an exercise in bad design choices. It is to be deliberately temporary, built to go up once, last a week, and then come down -- to be built again anew next year.* We built our sukkah last year to be such a deliberately un-sturdy structure, and it was no picnic to get it set up and stable. And even so it lasted in place until early spring, and taking it down was much more of a chore than it should have been! The roof is to be made of recently-living material, and it is to provide "more shade than sun" -- but only just so, with room to see several stars in the sky between branches or leaves or whatever you choose to use. That is, if you can see any stars in the sky at all in your part of the world. And if it's raining, you are just out of luck. It is to have three walls, covered in however solid or porous a material you like (

New year holidays are interesting things. Somewhere on our calendar, we humans mark an arbitrary division between one year and the next, not representing any real change in the world around us. The natural world doesn't notice that we have changed the year number on our calendars, and yet we feel that something rather cosmic is happening, possibly something deeply personal as well. One way or another, we are aware at the marking of a new year that this is a time of endings and beginnings, both inside and out. And our reactions to this are somewhat bipolar. On the one hand, a new year is a time for celebration: we celebrate having survived yet another year, and we celebrate having another year to look forward to. In our secular New Year, at least here in America, we hold or attend lavish parties, staying up until midnight to experience the last few minutes of the old year and the first few minutes of the new. Oddly enough, by doing this we don't actually celebrate much of th

The reading assignment this week for the "Introduction to Judaism" class I am taking at our shul in Galveston is on the mystical tradition within Judaism. The book we are reading, Essential Judaism , is not written in a style that makes for quick reading to begin with*, but I am finding myself taking longer than usual this week. And this is not the first time I have stalled out trying to get a basic grasp of Jewish mysticism, commonly referred to as Kabbalah: about half a year ago, I picked up an audiobook on Kabbalah for beginners and found that I couldn't get past the introductory chapters (which, to be fair, took up about 2/3 of the book) to the part where you supposedly find out how Kabbalah is actually practiced or what impact it actually has in anybody's life. I had thought at the time that this was simply a bad introduction to the subject, that there must be some entry point into the Kabbalah that would make me a Jewish mystic myself one day, but this week

Yesterday, Facebook reminded me that it was exactly one birthday ago that my nearly two-decade-long journey of religious self-discovery completely jumped the tracks. Ran off the road. Stalled out and seemed unlikely to recover its lost altitude. I had spent a dozen and a half years exploring every liberal fringe or offshoot of Christianity I could find. Quaker theology often seemed the best description of the God I was looking for, but Quaker practice only gave me tantalizing glimpses of that divinity. In all its beautiful simplicity, Quakerism was too austere, too DIY, too empty of the day-to-day (and holy day) trappings of religion to fit me and my family. Unitarian Universalism was a delightful playground for my mind at first, willing to let me ask any question I wanted and answer it however I wanted to (as long as my answers didn't make anybody feel excluded or sound too much like the religions other people were running away from), referencing any spiritual or religious fra

In those times when terrorism and hate break into our world – clearly the case in the death of four innocents in Tel Aviv last week, and even more so in the death of fifty or more in Orlando days later – those of us who are religious are tempted to ask those classic questions: where is God in all of this? and Why does God allow such evil to happen in our world? Better minds than mine have attempted to answer these questions, but the questions remain unanswered. So, here goes a fool rushing in where angels fear to tread… Where is God in all this? I find this one to be the easier of the two questions to answer: to me it is clear that God is in the suffering and in the outpouring of care and love and hope that inevitably follow these events. God's arms are holding each of the victims, easing the way for each of their souls to make their peace with the life just ended and begin their journey to the life to come. God is standing in solidarity, weeping and angry, next to each

"Dad, I've finally figured out why I like Judaism better than Christianity" "Oh, why's that?" "Christianity teaches that people aren't good, have never been good, and aren't capable of getting any better, so why even bother trying? Judaism teaches that people aren't perfectly good, and nobody ever has been, but that we can  be better people and so it is  worth trying to fix our problems and do good in the world – in fact, we're commanded to do our best to be good people and do good in the world." Now, before I go one word further, I want to stress that my son came up with that last paragraph entirely on his own . You shouldn't applaud me for an excellent job of indoctrination, nor can you upbraid me for instilling a narrow view of Christianity, because these words come from his own experiences, not from anything I've taught the boy.  Yes, I know that not all Christians would agree with the ideas of original sin, total deprav

Well, it's that time of year again – which comes for me about three times a year, actually – when the frenetic pace and stress hormone support of finals week wear off and I'm left with a mood crash and plenty of time to indulge it. Naturally, my thoughts turn to a midlife-crisis-like search for the change that would give my life the boost it so obviously needs: would a change of career bring me lasting happiness? What about a new hobby/project? A new gadget (surely an Apple watch would at least keep me amused a while longer) or a new car (my credit union just announced a special deal with Tesla)? Oddly, this is the first end-of-spring in some years (decades, perhaps) that has NOT  brought with it the idea of changing or questioning my religious affiliation. Maybe that is because I am already engaged in an extended process of doing so (becoming Jewish involves a lot of study and questioning, which I've noticed tend to continue after one becomes Jewish, and with all of it

So I spent part of the last afternoon of Pesach surfing YouTube with my boys, listening to the rather impressive number of Passover-related song parodies that have been posted to that particular media hub. "Uptown Funk" parodies (think "Pesach Funk" and "Uptown Passover") seem particularly popular this year, as did riffs on Disney's "Let It Go". There was a Bieber-Adele mashup video (culminating in the feel-good moment of Moses shouting "Hello from the other side"  across the Red Sea to Pharoah) , and a hilarious "Bohemian Rhapsody" spoof that delighted my older boys (who at some point mysteriously became Queen fans). But the stage was stolen, as always, by the incredibly talented a capella group The Maccabeats, who led off our search for Pesach tunes with the traditional Jewish song "Dayeinu" ("it would be enough") re-sung in almost every musical genre of the 20th century, and ended our musical spree

There is a common saying in Unitarian Universalist circles that people who discover UUism often feel like they have been UU's their whole lives without knowing it. I once felt that way, but – alas – the feeling didn't last forever.  Facebook's memories feature reminded me yesterday about how, just about exactly two years ago, I was engaged in the frustrating exercise of trying to launch a progressive Christian group at our local UU church. I had a ton of support from my UU brethren and sisteren, in the sense that a lot of people felt very strongly that the existence of such a group at their church was a Good Thing, but no participation . Sitting in that room by myself for several weeks running was more than just a lonely experience: it shook my faith that the group of people I was looking for – people who wanted to join together in some sort of belief in God, who valued the Judeo-Christian legacy of stories and teachings, who wanted to be part of a religion that wasn't

Passover. In Hebrew, Pesach. A word meaning, roughly, to skip something. You know, to pass over it. And I have never been tempted to skip, to pass over, an entire Jewish holiday until Pesach began to loom on my event horizon. Neither the 24-hour fast and gloomy sobriety of Yom Kippur, nor the poorly conceived construction project of Sukkot, nor the eight crazy nights and gift-giving expectations of Hanukkah, nor the Halloween-meets-Mardi-Gras excesses of Purim daunted me in the least. But Passover had me wanting to run for the hills.  What was it about this holiday that intimidated me so? The prospect of cleaning my entire house, top to bottom, to remove every last speck of leavened anything? The coming week of dietary restrictions that would make being a vegetarian in Texas look convenient? The three-hour blend of prayer service, religious education class, and fancy dinner known as "the Seder"? The search for a Haggadah my kids could all parse, put up with, and perhaps ev

I have never been especially thankful for mornings. I would rather they came a little later and took a little longer to get started up. This was especially true that one semester back in college when I got up at 7am every morning for either an 8am calculus class or an 8am chem lab.  It was also especially true last Monday, when I faced the rare challenge of getting all four kids to school on time without any help from my wife, who was attending a memorial mass (wearing her mogen  david necklace, no less) half a continent away.  Now, I have faced a similar challenge every Wednesday this spring, since those days took Elie away to her student teaching internship, but at least on those days she would drive one kid to school on her way.  This day, I either needed to get two kids to schools 20 minutes apart within the same 15 minute span of time, or I needed to get a different pair of kids to their day care a full hour before they were accustomed to even being ready to leave the house. Optio

You know, I've begun to think that it's very difficult to be a Jew in this culture (I could probably just stop there) without getting a bit of a chip on your shoulder (there, too) about holidays (oh, so that's  what this is about). One the one hand, there's the fact that Jews have easily five times as many religious holidays as Christians do, in addition to being "allowed" to celebrate any American holidays that can be considered "secular" either in origin or in current observance. You can measure your passage through a year in a manner that comes pretty close to "what holiday are we preparing for or celebrating this  week?" It's a lot for a new Jew to learn, and I feel like I haven't gotten any holiday but Chanukkah "right" yet. Just this weekend, we have our kids each a small gift for Purim, partly in lieu of the "Easter bunny" gifts they would have gotten this time of year, but partly because we heard somewher

A conversation I had with some students this evening has been bugging me tonight, kind of in the way that you find yourself coming up with snappier comebacks or wittier comments than the ones you actually said, hours or even days after they no longer matter. But in this case, it wasn't an insult I wanted a comeback to or a conversation I wanted to sound a bit wittier in, but a terribly vital, deceptively simple question: why? I had overheard a conversation about problems of a religious sort between a couple of students who had dropped in for anatomy tutoring this evening, but when I offhandedly asked what was up they told me it was "church problems," in a tone of voice that seemed to say "you're Jewish, you wouldn't understand." Wanting to feel a little more relevant, I admitted to having tried to be a Christian minister once, prior to   choosing  Judaism. This decision seemed to puzzle them. They wanted to know why I would do such a thing.  Why become J

It's been a while since I've written a blog post. Partly, that's because it's been a while since I've felt I had anything to write about. Lately, being Jewish just hasn't been a central focus of my attention: no holidays being celebrated this month, no new religious practices being integrated into my life, in short: no news. Either that means I'm doing something wrong, or it means I'm doing something very right in letting Judaism become part of the background hum of my life: the new normal, as it were. You see, more so than any other religion I have been part of, Judaism isn't something you do once or twice a week and besides that maybe ponder once in a while. No, Judaism stakes a claim on every moment of your life in one way or another. In a way, Judaism is less something you do and more something you are . Something you become . The wonder of that is that over time you get so used to it that all of those religious practices that once required gr

This evening, in the parking lot of the Lutheran church that hosts my sons' day care center, the pastor was out offering to impose a cross of ashes on the forehead of any passers-by. It's a few-year-old tradition they call Ashes To Go, and my family did it once - back when we were Christian. Last year, in fact, we were so taken as to be drawn in to the sanctuary to attend their Ash Wednesday service proper. It was all about my mortality, my sinfulness, my puniness in the grand scheme of things, my inability to help myself, my need for holy water that nonetheless could never wash off the stain of the ashes. It was truly a beautiful service, and it genuinely moved me...just not in the direction the pastor had intended. I wondered what the pastor would think if I told him that last year's Ash Wednesday was another first step on my road to Judaism. What problem could I possibly have with Ash Wednesday, though, and with the bigger Lenten tradition it kicks off, when I am jum

Readers of this blog may have the impression that my interest in Judaism is only about half a year old, but I can actually trace my Jewish journey back to this very day 18 years ago, give or take a day or two.  The story begins with one of my best friends from college, or rather with his sister. As I recall, she had somewhat recently married a Jew and was going through the process of converting to Judaism. Her brother, my friend, was picking up odd bits and pieces of Jewish culture and seemed to enjoy sharing them with me about as much as I enjoyed being shared with. Prior to that point, my exposure to Judaism was limited to having learned the phrase "L'chaim" from watching  Fiddler on the Roof. That, and the fact that my family was awfully fond of Yiddish words like shnoz and toucus.  So at some point, my friend invited me to come along with him to the house of one of his sister's new Jewish friends for a Tu B'Shevat Seder. I loved it – so much so that I still re

I've been working with my eldest for several months now on a lesson I learned back on Yom Kippur: that taking responsibility for your behavior is about more than just saying "I'm sorry," and yet it stops short of having to admit that you're a bad person.  That is to say, if you do something that hurts or bothers another person, Judaism says that you have to go beyond a huffy "I'm sorry!" apology to doing something that repairs the relationship, if that is at all possible. I have been trying to do this with some people in my life, with different amounts of success, and I'm not sure that it's always possible. But I have  gotten my son to turn around and think about how to make it up to me or another family member after being rude or hurtful. He once brought me a glass of water after he had made it take longer for me to mow the yard! Slowly, slowly, he's getting it. But he's missing the second half: that you don't have to go so far a