Jewish moments: back-to-school edition
Now that I've passed my beit din and am a quick dip in the ocean away from being legally Jewish, it's time to turn this blog from thoughts about what it's like to become Jewish toward thoughts of what it is like to be Jewish, day-to-day, holiday-to-holiday, life-event to life-event.
One way to do that is to post a cataloging of "Jewish moments" in my otherwise-secular life that (hopefully) finds the right balance between light-hearted humor and deep spiritual insight. Easy, right?
In that hope, I bring you my first list of "Jewish moments" - the back-to-school edition.
1. That moment when you attend a faculty professional-development event and breathe a deep sigh of relief that there is one turkey sandwich left among the sea of ham- or bacon-laden alternatives.
Rabbi Harold Kushner writes, in his excellent introduction to Judaic thought To Life, that it strikes him as wonderful (wonder-full?) that the creator of the universe cares what he has for lunch. That doesn't make keeping kosher any easier for those of us living in gentile-dominated middle America. And in this case, the turkey in question being almost certainly from a non-kosher source, all I could really do is approximate kosher. I hope the creator will give me an A for effort.
2. That moment when you are filling out forms and writing checks for your son's choir dues and other assorted fees and they want you to pay $20 for friggin pepperoni rolls to be served at every choir concert.
I promise these won't all be about keeping kosher. But really, folks, pepperoni-and-cheese rolls without even a cheese pizza option for the vegetarians out there?
3. That moment when your standard, matter-of-fact, first-day-of-class announcement that, because you keep a Sabbath, you will not reply to messages or answer phone calls or in any other way touch anything having to do with class from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday is met with stunned (I mean, jaws seemed to drop a little) silence from your students.
I've never had this reaction before, and yet it happened in at least two of my four classes. Is it that the idea of not answering text messages or phone calls for a full 24 hours has become that unthinkable to today's college students? Or that someone would actually put away work (something as important as their class, no less) for 24 hours? Or is it that they, personally, would have to wait that long for an answer to an urgent, pressing, life-or-death (or at least pass-or-fail) kind of question? I don't know, but something about the idea of 24 hours un-plugged from my job seemed to bowl thesekids young adults over.
4. That moment when your student, remembering seeing Rosh Hashanah on the calendar for the class, asks "so when is your personal, um, religious, um special day off again?"
I don't mean to make fun of this student -- she honestly just didn't know what to say or how to approach this topic, and I'm happy that she asked her question at all. I'm beginning to get the impression that we in America do our young people a dis-service by teaching them that religion is a topic to be shied away from lest we offend anyone, rather than giving them language for asking their questions appropriately. "Why do you wear that (scarf, hat, beanie-type-thing) on your head?" is a perfectly legit question if asked the right way, and can lead to some cultural sharing that would never happen otherwise. Likewise "why do you take that day off and what do you do with it?" is a question I'd love to hear, rather than be offended by.
As it happened, I told her she could enjoy having class off on the 21st, and think of me throwing my sins away on the local river (or bayou, more likely). She thought that was cool.
Incidentally, I'm not sure what it says about us Jews that while secular New Year's are largely about throwing high-culture parties and drinking champaign when some ball drops somewhere and eating special foods for luck, the Jewish New Year has this focus on shedding the sins and disappointments of the year past and really, earnestly trying to set ourselves on a course for a better year to come. Maybe it says we take ourselves too seriously, but then again maybe it says we have our priorities in the right place.
5. That moment when the woman behind you in the checkout line at Walmart asks if you are Jewish (because she sees you and your oldest son wearing kippot) and if so whether you are Messianic or Orthodox.
Those being the only two options? You have no idea how tempted I was to give some sort of snide answer. "No, I wear this thing on my head as a fashion statement." "No, I'm an ordinary Jew."
But I was nice, as I should be. I told her I was a Conservative Jew, which prompted a second conversation about the varying levels of Jewish observance (an idea that is pretty hard to encapsulate in a one-minute explanation, especially when one's teenage son is trying to give his own version of the answer at the same time). She filed Orthodox observance away as "legalistic" (a word she has no doubt heard used in evangelical-Christian circles to describe the Jewish view of Torah), seemed to have difficulty understanding Reform observance, but seemed to appreciate the Conservative compromise between the two.
Interestingly, when my son asked her what kind of Christian she was, she answered "non-denominational" in a tone of voice that seemed to me to say that one shouldn't be asking about what kind of Christian a person is.
Well, that's it for a first post. More to come, if y'all like this one.
Until then, shalom and l'hitraot!
One way to do that is to post a cataloging of "Jewish moments" in my otherwise-secular life that (hopefully) finds the right balance between light-hearted humor and deep spiritual insight. Easy, right?
In that hope, I bring you my first list of "Jewish moments" - the back-to-school edition.
1. That moment when you attend a faculty professional-development event and breathe a deep sigh of relief that there is one turkey sandwich left among the sea of ham- or bacon-laden alternatives.
Rabbi Harold Kushner writes, in his excellent introduction to Judaic thought To Life, that it strikes him as wonderful (wonder-full?) that the creator of the universe cares what he has for lunch. That doesn't make keeping kosher any easier for those of us living in gentile-dominated middle America. And in this case, the turkey in question being almost certainly from a non-kosher source, all I could really do is approximate kosher. I hope the creator will give me an A for effort.
2. That moment when you are filling out forms and writing checks for your son's choir dues and other assorted fees and they want you to pay $20 for friggin pepperoni rolls to be served at every choir concert.
I promise these won't all be about keeping kosher. But really, folks, pepperoni-and-cheese rolls without even a cheese pizza option for the vegetarians out there?
3. That moment when your standard, matter-of-fact, first-day-of-class announcement that, because you keep a Sabbath, you will not reply to messages or answer phone calls or in any other way touch anything having to do with class from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday is met with stunned (I mean, jaws seemed to drop a little) silence from your students.
I've never had this reaction before, and yet it happened in at least two of my four classes. Is it that the idea of not answering text messages or phone calls for a full 24 hours has become that unthinkable to today's college students? Or that someone would actually put away work (something as important as their class, no less) for 24 hours? Or is it that they, personally, would have to wait that long for an answer to an urgent, pressing, life-or-death (or at least pass-or-fail) kind of question? I don't know, but something about the idea of 24 hours un-plugged from my job seemed to bowl these
4. That moment when your student, remembering seeing Rosh Hashanah on the calendar for the class, asks "so when is your personal, um, religious, um special day off again?"
I don't mean to make fun of this student -- she honestly just didn't know what to say or how to approach this topic, and I'm happy that she asked her question at all. I'm beginning to get the impression that we in America do our young people a dis-service by teaching them that religion is a topic to be shied away from lest we offend anyone, rather than giving them language for asking their questions appropriately. "Why do you wear that (scarf, hat, beanie-type-thing) on your head?" is a perfectly legit question if asked the right way, and can lead to some cultural sharing that would never happen otherwise. Likewise "why do you take that day off and what do you do with it?" is a question I'd love to hear, rather than be offended by.
As it happened, I told her she could enjoy having class off on the 21st, and think of me throwing my sins away on the local river (or bayou, more likely). She thought that was cool.
Incidentally, I'm not sure what it says about us Jews that while secular New Year's are largely about throwing high-culture parties and drinking champaign when some ball drops somewhere and eating special foods for luck, the Jewish New Year has this focus on shedding the sins and disappointments of the year past and really, earnestly trying to set ourselves on a course for a better year to come. Maybe it says we take ourselves too seriously, but then again maybe it says we have our priorities in the right place.
5. That moment when the woman behind you in the checkout line at Walmart asks if you are Jewish (because she sees you and your oldest son wearing kippot) and if so whether you are Messianic or Orthodox.
Those being the only two options? You have no idea how tempted I was to give some sort of snide answer. "No, I wear this thing on my head as a fashion statement." "No, I'm an ordinary Jew."
But I was nice, as I should be. I told her I was a Conservative Jew, which prompted a second conversation about the varying levels of Jewish observance (an idea that is pretty hard to encapsulate in a one-minute explanation, especially when one's teenage son is trying to give his own version of the answer at the same time). She filed Orthodox observance away as "legalistic" (a word she has no doubt heard used in evangelical-Christian circles to describe the Jewish view of Torah), seemed to have difficulty understanding Reform observance, but seemed to appreciate the Conservative compromise between the two.
Interestingly, when my son asked her what kind of Christian she was, she answered "non-denominational" in a tone of voice that seemed to me to say that one shouldn't be asking about what kind of Christian a person is.
Well, that's it for a first post. More to come, if y'all like this one.
Until then, shalom and l'hitraot!
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