Shalosh Shanim Tovot (three good years)
This High Holy Day season marks the end of my third full Jewish year of living Jewishly (even though I only formally completed my conversion about a year ago) and the start of what promises to be a lovely and exciting fourth year!
Instead, what it seems it is time for is a bit of a retrospective on the road that got me where I am today and a few quick thoughts about the road that lies ahead. So, without further ado, here are the “shalosh shanim tovot” (that's "three good years" in the Hebrew I am struggling to learn) that I’ve spent so far in the Jewish world…
the High Holy Days... began with my wife and I getting ill and utterly flubbing our first attempt at a Rosh Hashanah dinner; continued with me missing Rosh Hashanah morning and tashlich services entirely because I couldn't make the excuse to cancel classes on account of "trying out" a new religion; ended with the best break fast ever at the end of what felt (on an empty stomach!) like a marathon of Yom Kippur morning and afternoon prayers.
Our sukkah... was a pile of unassembled lumber for the first half of the seven-day holiday, slowly got kludged together after that, and was finally dedicated on the last night of Sukkot. *sigh* But we had fun shaking lulav v'etrog with Rabbi Schloss at TBT, and I learned to bake pumpkin challah, which is just about the most delightful edible substance possible.
The month of Cheshvan... involved learning how to live as an "ordinary" Jew after the excitement of "the fall holidays." We studied blessings for all of the various types of foods (and many more things besides). My oldest son and I discovered contemporary Jewish music (Rick Recht and friends became the soundtrack of my Jewish journey) when hunting for an album of Shabbat tunes to accompany a Friday-night drive to Georgetown.
Hanukkah... included two cheap Target menorot and two hand-made wooden ones (word to the wise: burning candles do not belong in wooden candle-holders without something metal in between); an absolutely lovely Hanukkah shabbat service at TBT with children from religious school spinning like dreidels and the rabbi's daughter doing a fantastic rendition of "Light One Candle"; our first experiences with the dreidel game and chocolate gelt; my first, rather lame, attempt to cook latkes; and eight beautiful nights of respite from a hectic school year. The kids pronounced Hanukkah their favorite Jewish holiday, and who were Elie and I to disagree?
Somewhere in there... we discovered Jewish A Capella tunes on YouTube. The Maccabeats and Six13 made our kids feel like Hanukkah was a "real" holiday with tunes (mostly based on pop songs they already knew) that they could keep singing all week long...
Christmas... was still celebrated at my mother's house, with all the trappings, but with a touch of discomfort now that it was on the way to becoming "not our holiday" anymore.
Late fall and winter... brought an "expansion" of our Jewish life to include a second (still Reform) synagogue at the same time: Congregation B'nai Israel of Galveston. A Jewish friend of ours invited us to try one of their "Family Shabbat" prayer-and-potluck nights (with a guitar-playing rabbi and pillows and toys and coloring pages in the back for wiggly kids), my oldest son and I were invited to join their youth group on a trip to Texas Renaissance Festival, Elie and I took turns driving down for their Saturday morning Torah studies, and we made fast friends with a number of their long-time members, so we decided to make this our second Jewish home.
Spring... brought a Purim celebration at CBI in last fall's Halloween costumes and seder lessons from Rabbi Marshal Klaven and also from our good friend Tammy Shinder.
Passover... was at CBI the first night (at a relatively affordable $20 an adult) and at home the second night, and then dragged on for six more days of trying to figure out exactly what you are supposed to eat when leavening of any sort is out-of-the-question...matzah pizzas were quite popular, as was matzah-farfel peach kugel.
Shavuot... brought my first (quite successful, I might add) attempt to make a cheesecake, which I have yet to replicate. No stay-up-all-night study session this year, though.
Summer... was looking like sort of a Jewish "dead zone," with no more holidays until Tisha B'Av and Tu B'Av in August. We wondered what synagogues do for kids in the summer. Apparently, it is so traditional for Jews to send their kids off to expensive 3-week-long sleep-away summer camps that most synagogues don't have any sort of programming for them during the summer. At least, that's what Reb Klaven told us. No "vacation Torah school" or "Jewish music/drama camp" or anything like that. Bummer.
But then Rabbi Klaven organized an Intro to Judaism class for his new Jews-to-be, which was my family plus a handful of others. This was a mixed success: while we certainly covered all the basics that Elie and I needed to learn, what I had expected to be primarily a conversion class ended up being opened wide to all takers, including older members of the congregation who surely knew all of this already and even a contingent from a local Pentacostal-ish church who seemed to constantly argue with the rabbi that his take on just about everything was dead wrong (because, it seemed, they wanted him to accept a Christian interpretation). Ultimately, I felt unable to ask all of the questions that a new convert needed to ask in this setting, and so I started having biweekly coffee chats with the rabbi to back all of this up. That worked well until...
We encountered a more insurmountable problem: our kids, and Klaven's relatively low tolerance for their antics. Klaven's talented right-hand-man for all things kid-related got volunteered to babysit our kids (which we were to pay him for at going rates) so that Elie and I could both attend each session of the Intro to Judaism class. This went well at first, but our kids are, well, our kids. Eventually they got accused (though they deny this thoroughly) of breaking an unidentified pair of reading glasses that had been left on a lost-and-found table in the hall. I argued with the rabbi to no end about this (which was my first mistake) but then Elie and I decided we would just have to finish up the class by taking turns, so that each of us could attend class every other week while the other would watch the kids.
Purim... included yours truly reading a chapter of the megillah from the bimah, and a lamer-than-usual array of costumes on our kids, and yet another failed (but yummy) attempt to bake my own hamentaschen.
spring... brought a tour of Camp Young Judea during a visit to my Mom in central Texas. Serious approval from three kids - Shay was not sold. Kids started planning our own Passover music parody video, which sadly never made it into production.
Pesach... brought a complete failure to record said music parody video, or the "stuffed animal seder" we had also been planning. Lots of planning, but Kids (and Dad) just couldn't get our butts in gear to do it. Home seder was more orthodox than before (we used the bloody Artscroll Family Haggadah for heaven's sake), a bit to the children's chagrin. But we had learned from last year and they all got trading card packs for finding their own hidden piece of the afikomen. New family tradition. Congregational seder was a lot like last year but with more Disney music this time.
Shavuot... I was invited to lead a session at our congregation's late-night Shavuot study. I got there late because of Ryan's last choir concert of the year, then everyone disbanded before we made it to my session. I guess that's how the cheesecake crumbles...
late spring... I finally got up the chutzpah to contact the ALEPH Ordination Program. I knew very little at the time about the Renewal movement, but much to my surprise I cleared all of the initial interviews and got invited to attend their big summer rabbinical student retreat as a sort of mix between taking my first courses and doing an extended entrance interview.
early summer... I got the reading and work list for my AOP courses. I think I spent every spare moment in the month of June either reading an assigned passage or researching a topic or writing a response. I seriously would take my kids to the pool and read an assigned article on my Kindle while they swam. But don't get me wrong - I was having a blast learning! I got to read religious history and theology articles for the first time that didn't require me to "translate" to my always-different religious perspective.
I also began work with a Hebrew tutor from Seattle via teleconference, and she took one of our weekly sessions to walk me through the siddur and the structure of a morning or evening service just before I went off to the praying-daily AOP retreat. I felt like I understood the Jewish prayer service for the first time! This should be required education for every Jew...
The last week of June, I jetted off to Amherst, MA for "Smicha Student Week" with the AOP. I knew from the first minutes there that I didn't quite fit in. There was some way in most every discussion or event or casual conversation or class session that I stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb. They didn't rub this in or anything - no, most of the people there were incredibly welcoming and I made quite a number of good friends during the week - but I felt it. I didn't know Renewal lingo. I didn't hold acceptable opinions on the Jewish issues of the day. I didn't have the right response to "what brought you to the ALEPH Ordination Program?" Toward the end of the week the leaders started dropping subtle hints that I might not be coming back next year. Even so, I was devastated when, a few weeks later, I got the emailed rejection letter. I asked for clarification as to why I had been rejected when all of my paperwork and initial interviews had gone so well, so that I would know what to do better next time – their only response was that I was a "bad fit" (and, much later, they told my Hebrew tutor to stop encouraging me to apply again). Seems that they couldn't put their fingers on exactly how I didn't fit, either. It was just obvious that I didn't. One thing I noticed was that they had a very low tolerance for diversity of opinion – making them the first Jewish group I had ever run across where people were reluctant to argue about a particular perspective or interpretation. Certainly the first Jewish group where I had ever been shouted down for stating the "wrong" opinion. In retrospect, try as I might, these were probably never going to be "my" people.
I did love the feeling of starting each morning with shacharit and ending each evening with ma'ariv. I tried to bring this practice home, but without a minyan to pray with it just wasn't the same, and I have only kept a skeleton morning prayer practice.
late summer...After a last-minute scramble to put together enough clothes and supplies, we put two of our kids on a bus to Camp Young Judea. The house felt empty. Nine days later, we picked up Micah and he was pumped. He wanted to do the full three weeks next year! The next weekend, we dropped off Daniel for the "Mini Mensch" weekend. He was even more pumped, if that was possible. We got home to a letter telling us that Ryan was having a tough time, feeling bullied, and wanted to go home early. I guess you can't always win.
While in Austin, we went to pray with Congregation Agudas Achim (the ALEPH people had told me that I needed to broaden my Jewish experience beyond my little home congregation) and their rabbi, Neil Blumofe, couldn't say enough good things about two rabbinical schools I had never heard of before: the Academy of Jewish Religion in New York, and the (completely unrelated) Academy of Jewish Religion in Los Angeles. Both, it turns out, are moving to a model of offering every single class as a hybrid between in-person and via-teleconference learning. Both were eager to try this new model out on me. Both cost almost a month and a half of rent per class, with pretty limited financial aid. I remain committed to this path, but it is going to be a rough and expensive ride. And it is probably going to take a decade or more to get through...
As it happens, this is about as long as I have managed to stay with one religion in my entire adult life – it seems that my pattern prior to this point has been to embrace a faith tradition with the “zeal of the newly converted” for a couple of years, wear out during the third year as I start to confront all of the places where the theology or practice or culture of that faith just don't fit me, then begin to dabble with alternatives or outright jump ship at the beginning of the fourth year – and so it is time to announce that I am about to become either Sufi Muslim or Zen Buddhist, or some sort of fusion of both.
Just kidding.
Seriously, that was just a joke. My rabbis can stop having a heart attack now.
For the first time I can remember in my adult life I actually feel settled in my religious identity, and I honestly don't expect that to change. The few required beliefs in Judaism are ideas that I more-or-less already held dear before I came here; the practices I have managed to adopt so far have all been things that have added to my sense of being a good person, living a good life, and raising a strong family; and the central value placed on community and "peoplehood" is one that I think all religions ought to have.
That isn't to say I've found every aspect of Judaism to fit me perfectly. I am still trying to wrap my mind around the Jewish attitude toward money, for example. Many things that my time in Christian-esque religious groups had taught me to expect for free come with hefty price tags in the Jewish world, while at the same time Judaism has a tradition of extreme generosity that makes other things available for free or at a hefty discount -- Pj Library, I'm looking at you! -- and more than one rabbinical school has encouraged me to just canvas my way around Houston's Jewish world until I find somebody who will underwrite the rather astronomical cost of becoming a rabbi. I am also perplexed by the Jewish attitude toward charitable and social justice work, an approach that seems to "outsource" most of the work to organizations rather than organizing outreach projects or service days or mission trips by the congregation. This approach may actually be more effective, since you are handing the work over to people who are better trained to do it, but it is certainly less hands-on than the ideal I was taught as a Christian.
Still, occasional places where I still don't grok the Jewish approach notwithstanding, my religious wanderlust has faded to black, and largely been replaced by geographical longings as I feel, not for the first time, a desire to move back to the Northeast where I could introduce my kids to the seasons of Fall and Winter (and winter sports!). And summer camping in the mountains. And...well, that's another story.
The point is, it is not time for me to switch religions again!
Seriously, that was just a joke. My rabbis can stop having a heart attack now.
For the first time I can remember in my adult life I actually feel settled in my religious identity, and I honestly don't expect that to change. The few required beliefs in Judaism are ideas that I more-or-less already held dear before I came here; the practices I have managed to adopt so far have all been things that have added to my sense of being a good person, living a good life, and raising a strong family; and the central value placed on community and "peoplehood" is one that I think all religions ought to have.
That isn't to say I've found every aspect of Judaism to fit me perfectly. I am still trying to wrap my mind around the Jewish attitude toward money, for example. Many things that my time in Christian-esque religious groups had taught me to expect for free come with hefty price tags in the Jewish world, while at the same time Judaism has a tradition of extreme generosity that makes other things available for free or at a hefty discount -- Pj Library, I'm looking at you! -- and more than one rabbinical school has encouraged me to just canvas my way around Houston's Jewish world until I find somebody who will underwrite the rather astronomical cost of becoming a rabbi. I am also perplexed by the Jewish attitude toward charitable and social justice work, an approach that seems to "outsource" most of the work to organizations rather than organizing outreach projects or service days or mission trips by the congregation. This approach may actually be more effective, since you are handing the work over to people who are better trained to do it, but it is certainly less hands-on than the ideal I was taught as a Christian.
Still, occasional places where I still don't grok the Jewish approach notwithstanding, my religious wanderlust has faded to black, and largely been replaced by geographical longings as I feel, not for the first time, a desire to move back to the Northeast where I could introduce my kids to the seasons of Fall and Winter (and winter sports!). And summer camping in the mountains. And...well, that's another story.
The point is, it is not time for me to switch religions again!
pre-history
the summer of 5775... began with growing disenchantment with our then-religious-home in the Episcopal Church, some of which was frankly a growing discomfort with Christianity as a whole, mixed with an equal convincement that we couldn't go back to our older religious home with the Unitarian Universalists, who at least in Southeast Texas couldn't seem to abide our belief in (and desire to use the word) God. I posted my religious angst on Facebook. Everyone I know suggested that I try their religion, even if I had already tried it a half dozen times. A friend, former professor and mentor, and "hereditary member of the Tribe" suggested that I try a Reform Temple somewhere. I did my due diligence of research on the internet and came to the conclusion that "becoming Jewish" was not only permitted by Jewish tradition but that it was, in fact, probably a good fit for me. I planned a visit to Temple Beth Tikvah, a Reform congregation pleasantly located in a neighborhood adjacent to ours, and braced for all of the push-back that would inevitably meet a goy trying to invade their Jewish space. I needn't have worried. I got along fine with the people. I fell in love with the liturgy. I rediscovered my long-buried love of Hebrew. I must have shaken every hand in the building during the oneg (potluck after-party). And I left with the most amazing sense of peace and the highest degree of spiritual "fed-ness" I had ever felt. I brought the wife and younger kids back next week. I brought the Teen to visit and he loved it, too (the rabbi's incredibly sweet and welcoming teenaged daughter may have had something to do with that).
The rest, as they say, is history. And that history follows...
My family had barely sunk into the routine of celebrating Shabbat on Friday nights (and trying to wean ourselves off of doing work on Saturday afternoons) when it was time to get ready for a new year, which would be...
My family had barely sunk into the routine of celebrating Shabbat on Friday nights (and trying to wean ourselves off of doing work on Saturday afternoons) when it was time to get ready for a new year, which would be...
5776
Started with... becoming members of Temple Beth Tikvah (which, even though I ultimately grew in a different direction, will always be my first Jewish home, and Rabbi Deborah Schloss will always hold a special place in my heart as my first rabbi); enrolling our kids for the first time ever in Jewish religious school / Hebrew school (to the delight of three kids and the decided chagrin of our autistic then-fifth-grader); learning (or trying) to take Shabbat "on the road" when we vacationed with my parents-in-law in NH or visited my mother and sister in Georgetown.
Somewhere in there... I learned to bake challah. It was okay to start with, but I've kept experimenting from time to time. Today, my kids think my challah beats the store-bought stuff hands down!
Our sukkah... was a pile of unassembled lumber for the first half of the seven-day holiday, slowly got kludged together after that, and was finally dedicated on the last night of Sukkot. *sigh* But we had fun shaking lulav v'etrog with Rabbi Schloss at TBT, and I learned to bake pumpkin challah, which is just about the most delightful edible substance possible.
The month of Cheshvan... involved learning how to live as an "ordinary" Jew after the excitement of "the fall holidays." We studied blessings for all of the various types of foods (and many more things besides). My oldest son and I discovered contemporary Jewish music (Rick Recht and friends became the soundtrack of my Jewish journey) when hunting for an album of Shabbat tunes to accompany a Friday-night drive to Georgetown.
Hanukkah... included two cheap Target menorot and two hand-made wooden ones (word to the wise: burning candles do not belong in wooden candle-holders without something metal in between); an absolutely lovely Hanukkah shabbat service at TBT with children from religious school spinning like dreidels and the rabbi's daughter doing a fantastic rendition of "Light One Candle"; our first experiences with the dreidel game and chocolate gelt; my first, rather lame, attempt to cook latkes; and eight beautiful nights of respite from a hectic school year. The kids pronounced Hanukkah their favorite Jewish holiday, and who were Elie and I to disagree?
Somewhere in there... we discovered Jewish A Capella tunes on YouTube. The Maccabeats and Six13 made our kids feel like Hanukkah was a "real" holiday with tunes (mostly based on pop songs they already knew) that they could keep singing all week long...
Christmas... was still celebrated at my mother's house, with all the trappings, but with a touch of discomfort now that it was on the way to becoming "not our holiday" anymore.
Late fall and winter... brought an "expansion" of our Jewish life to include a second (still Reform) synagogue at the same time: Congregation B'nai Israel of Galveston. A Jewish friend of ours invited us to try one of their "Family Shabbat" prayer-and-potluck nights (with a guitar-playing rabbi and pillows and toys and coloring pages in the back for wiggly kids), my oldest son and I were invited to join their youth group on a trip to Texas Renaissance Festival, Elie and I took turns driving down for their Saturday morning Torah studies, and we made fast friends with a number of their long-time members, so we decided to make this our second Jewish home.
Spring... brought a Purim celebration at CBI in last fall's Halloween costumes and seder lessons from Rabbi Marshal Klaven and also from our good friend Tammy Shinder.
Passover... was at CBI the first night (at a relatively affordable $20 an adult) and at home the second night, and then dragged on for six more days of trying to figure out exactly what you are supposed to eat when leavening of any sort is out-of-the-question...matzah pizzas were quite popular, as was matzah-farfel peach kugel.
Shavuot... brought my first (quite successful, I might add) attempt to make a cheesecake, which I have yet to replicate. No stay-up-all-night study session this year, though.
Summer... was looking like sort of a Jewish "dead zone," with no more holidays until Tisha B'Av and Tu B'Av in August. We wondered what synagogues do for kids in the summer. Apparently, it is so traditional for Jews to send their kids off to expensive 3-week-long sleep-away summer camps that most synagogues don't have any sort of programming for them during the summer. At least, that's what Reb Klaven told us. No "vacation Torah school" or "Jewish music/drama camp" or anything like that. Bummer.
But then Rabbi Klaven organized an Intro to Judaism class for his new Jews-to-be, which was my family plus a handful of others. This was a mixed success: while we certainly covered all the basics that Elie and I needed to learn, what I had expected to be primarily a conversion class ended up being opened wide to all takers, including older members of the congregation who surely knew all of this already and even a contingent from a local Pentacostal-ish church who seemed to constantly argue with the rabbi that his take on just about everything was dead wrong (because, it seemed, they wanted him to accept a Christian interpretation). Ultimately, I felt unable to ask all of the questions that a new convert needed to ask in this setting, and so I started having biweekly coffee chats with the rabbi to back all of this up. That worked well until...
We encountered a more insurmountable problem: our kids, and Klaven's relatively low tolerance for their antics. Klaven's talented right-hand-man for all things kid-related got volunteered to babysit our kids (which we were to pay him for at going rates) so that Elie and I could both attend each session of the Intro to Judaism class. This went well at first, but our kids are, well, our kids. Eventually they got accused (though they deny this thoroughly) of breaking an unidentified pair of reading glasses that had been left on a lost-and-found table in the hall. I argued with the rabbi to no end about this (which was my first mistake) but then Elie and I decided we would just have to finish up the class by taking turns, so that each of us could attend class every other week while the other would watch the kids.
5777
Started with... enrolling the kids in CBI's religious school, which promised to have programming for our kids all the way up through our 8th-grader, even though (like a lot of Jewish religious schools, apparently) they typically stop educating at 6th or 7th grade: bar/bat mitzvah age. They arranged for us by putting Ryan (entering 8th grad) in with the 6th/7th graders and Shay (entering 6th) in with the 4th/5th graders. Major fail. Shay got teased for being in the wrong age class, so he pushed back (literally), and we found ourselves called before the rabbi. He told us that our children always seemed to be a disruption, that we were clearly not parenting them well enough, that our tendency to get defensive on their behalf was distinctly unhelpful, that his religious school was just not up to handling Shay, and that we should take our family to a different congregation. All this just in time for...
the High Holy Days... which we celebrated at CBI, with a set of services that felt more High Episcopalian than Jewish. There was even a professional choir that sat above the service area and periodically interrupted the service to sing something, usually in Hebrew, always in high-falutin' choral style. The guitar-playing rabbi we had come to love seemed to have been temporarily replaced by a staid and stuffy version of the same guy. He welcomed all the new members that CBI had added over the past year, which didn't include us because - being non-Jews - we were dues-paying "friends of the congregation" not actual members. I felt snubbed. But there was one thing that other congregations could learn from: every time that there was a service for adults, there was a parallel set of activities for the children to participate in, so that our pre-K and first grader didn't have to sit still through long and, let's be honest, boring prayers – and parents didn't have to choose between their own Jewish practice and satisfying the demands of their children.
Taschlich was hosted at the rabbi's house, and it was phenomenal. The whole family seemed to connect with what has to be the most beautiful ritual in all of Judaism.
Yom Kippur came right on the heels of the rabbi telling us we were no longer welcome in his religious school, however, and as a result of the shock that this induced in Elie and I, it was decidedly the least meaningful YK I have ever had.
Yom Kippur came right on the heels of the rabbi telling us we were no longer welcome in his religious school, however, and as a result of the shock that this induced in Elie and I, it was decidedly the least meaningful YK I have ever had.
so right away... we decided it was time to find a new congregational home. Both of the Reform mega-shuls in Houston start their Shabbat services right at 6pm, and my family doesn't all reliably get home (which is about an hour away in the nicest traffic) until just before 5pm. So that Friday-night commute would have been difficult, to say the least.
So we did something I never thought I would do (I'd spent the last 20 years as a religious liberal, for God's sake) and started looking at shuls from the Conservative movement. The Universe was kind. That very Friday night our neighborhood Conservative shul, Congregation Sha'ar HaShalom, was having its family Shabbat service. We walked in nervously. We told the kids to be on their best behavior. We were told, as soon as we got there, to relax and let our kids be kids. Halleluyah and Baruch HaShem!
Sukkot... included a brand new (thanks to our landlord stealing the lumber from last year's) and totally redesigned Camp Family sukkah, the basic frame of which could be put up once and left in place from one year to the next, with "walls" and roof and decorations added just in time for each coming holiday. I understand that this is not strictly-speaking kosher, but sometimes we have to make compromises between what is halakhic and what is practical. The sukkah went up more-or-less on schedule and we were able to celebrate a week of meals outdoors this time!
Also awesome was a "campfire style" Sukkot Shabbat service at CSH, followed by an oneg in their (properly kosher) sukkah.
the month of Cheshvan... involved getting our kids settled into CSH's religious school, with an astounding amount of help and positive energy from their Principal Katy Izygon, whom I just can't say enough positive things about. Also, this month got Elie and I settled into the routine of taking turns spending Wednesday nights in Rabbi Stuart Federow's Intro to Judaism class, which was a proper conversion class, complete with a generous amount of question-and-answer time in which we new Jews could ask about everything that was confusing us about the vast world of Judaism. I'd already read Federow's book on differences between Christian and Jewish interpretations of the Bible and other religious ideas, so I found a lot of the "teaching" parts of this class to be ideas I already knew. And while I wish he had given more time to how-to's of Jewish observances and rituals, the structure of the different prayer services, all of the various ritual tchotchkes that a Jew is supposed to own, and maybe even a "lab session" on how to do various things in the sanctuary, it was an awesome experience and Wednesday nights became my favorite time of the week.
Along the way... we made a really intriguing discovery: we liked the emphasis in Conservative Judaism on preserving a sense of halakhah (Jewish "law" for lack of a better word). Were we full keepers of every point of Jewish law? Are we today? Not yet, no, but we feel we have gained a lot more from the Conservative culture of not-yet-there-but-always-working-on-it, try-to-do-Judaism-in-keeping-with-Tradition, than we did from the Reform culture of just-take-what-is-meaningful-to-you-and-leave-the-rest and do-Judaism-your-own-way. Yes, I suppose there are probably people in my Conservative shul who keep no more of the mitzvot than people in my Reform congregations did (one of them offered me a recommendation on where to get great pork ribs), but by and large (and especially when together in groups) there is a greater attitude of trying to do justice to the historical traditions of Judaism in Conservative circles. That is in my experience, of course, and my experience is still pretty limited.
Hanukkah... happened to coincide with Christmas Eve that year. It was a doozy. The week before, the religious school held an awesome Hanukkah party. Elie and I made appearances in our kids' pre-K and 1st grade classrooms to tell a Hanukkah story and demonstrate the dreidel game. Elie got us a "Mensch on a Bench." We visited the Children's Museum of Houston for a dramatic portrayal of Herschel and the Hanukkah Goblins, and while we were there we toured their "holidays of light" presentation and my kids taught a few dozen other kids how to play dreidel at the "house" that was celebrating Hanukkah.
And then we headed off to my mother's house in Georgetown, our traditional holiday retreat, for the most uncomfortable Christmas Eve on record. While she cooked traditional Christmas Eve Dinner foods and readied herself for Christmas Eve services at her church, Elie and the kids and I set up our hanukkiot (including, new-for-this-year, a Space Shuttle menorah and yet another chintzy menorah from Target - one tradition in Judaism is for each child to get to light their own menorah, and given the number of sibling fights we endure each day anyway, we thought this would be best) and lit candles and said blessings and played dreidel. Later that week, we tried to cook latkes and read books together and do other things to include my mom and sister in our celebration. But we ended up ending the week early and finishing out Hanukkah at home. *sigh*
And then we headed off to my mother's house in Georgetown, our traditional holiday retreat, for the most uncomfortable Christmas Eve on record. While she cooked traditional Christmas Eve Dinner foods and readied herself for Christmas Eve services at her church, Elie and the kids and I set up our hanukkiot (including, new-for-this-year, a Space Shuttle menorah and yet another chintzy menorah from Target - one tradition in Judaism is for each child to get to light their own menorah, and given the number of sibling fights we endure each day anyway, we thought this would be best) and lit candles and said blessings and played dreidel. Later that week, we tried to cook latkes and read books together and do other things to include my mom and sister in our celebration. But we ended up ending the week early and finishing out Hanukkah at home. *sigh*
At the Hanukkah party... we discovered that Joe Buchanan, who I knew as a voice on Jewish Rock Radio, was a member of our congregation! He is now a good Jewish friend, a big draw to come to synagogue anytime he plays, a co-conspirator in trying to re-invent Friday night services at CSH, and my family is eagerly awaiting his second studio album...
Winter... brought a chilly Tu B'Shevat, the "new year for trees," which we celebrated with a nature walk in Houston's Memorial Park, complete with a lot of tree hugging.
Purim... included a Purim carnival held jointly by CSH and TBT, and another recycling of Halloween costumes for the night of the Megillah reading. Unlike at CBI, the reading of the Book of Esther was interactive and let multiple readers participate. Also unlike at CBI, there was not the traditional supply of alcohol afterward (officially, Purim is a drinking holiday). Apparently, our new synagogue is dry. Even so, great fun was had by all. I tried baking hamentaschen without much success, but the failures were still fun to eat!
Passover... happened at home the first night, at CSH the second night. Our at-home seder went a lot more smoothly now that we had done it all once before. And the second night seder at CSH, while a good deal more expensive than the one at CBI (justified by the fact that all of the catered food was kosher), was laid-back and informal and everyone had a good time and oh, my, four cups of wine is a lot. This year, formerly forbidden "grain-like" substances such as rice and beans, known as kitniyot, were now allowed during Passover due to a recent rabbinical ruling, which made meal planning a good deal easier. We still ate a lot of matzah pizzas.
Shavuot… passed almost without notice. Oh, well. There was a lovely end-of-religious-school congregational picnic complete with good (kosher) food, a raffle, several rounds of bingo, and raucous play at the playground on the part of the kids.
Summer... was a big Jewish lull this year. Once again, no Vacation Torah School or anything else. Lots of time for Jewish self-study, I suppose!
5778
Started with... a beit din, a hatafat dam brit, and three quick dips in the Gulf of Mexico (a natural mikveh). My beit din asked for the story of how I came to Judaism. Three hours later (no, it only felt like that) they cut me off and started asking how serious I was about my conversion. Wouldn't I miss Jesus? No, I never had a "personal relationship" with him or saw him as my "Lord and Savior" in my Christian life - my desire was always to be in relationship with God him/herself - so why would I miss that in my Jewish life? Would I regret taking on the "yoke of the commandments"? Hardly, except that I will miss pepperoni pizza. And that's what Yom Kippur is for, right? (again, a joke!) Most importantly, with my history of religious wandering, what made me think I would stay Jewish? The best (and only) answer I had to give was that after 20 years of wandering in the religious wilderness, I finally had the sense that I had made it home. And that sense has not left me in the year hence. My rabbi said that he thought I had what it takes to become a rabbi myself some day, though he said that was not necessarily a compliment. Go figure.
My wife's and eldest son's betei denim (I think that's the plural, either that or it translates as daughters of blue jeans) reportedly focused more on whether they were coming to Judaism of their own free will or whether I was dragging them along with me. Apparently, they gave the right answers to that question, because we were all given the "all clear" to head down to East Beach in Galveston and do the mikveh thing at the next opportunity (which turned out to be a lot later than we expected due to a certain late-summer hurricane which will remain nameless).
the High Holy Days... were at Sha'ar HaShalom this year. There was no child care except for a couple of one-hour kid services, so we had to limit our participation to what the kids could sit for, but we absolutely loved the cantor they brought in and found the services to be pretty close to exactly what we were looking for from the High Holy Days. I think my ideal would be a blend of what I'd seen at CSH and TBT with a little bit of up-tempo modernization (which this cantor gave the impression she might be up for). I understand that there are some prescribed nusach for the HHD's, but why do so many Jews seem to think that proper holiness needs to be somber and slow and dry and flourishy and old-fashioned? We would get many more of my generation in the door if we lightened up the HHD services just a touch and made them groove just a bit more, a bit more lyrical and emotive in the parts that need to be somber, a bit faster in the places that tend to drag -- and this cantor did a lot of that. Which is, of course, why we didn't invite her back for 5779. #grrrr
Once again, I missed my favorite HHD ritual, taschlich, and had to do it on my own. *sigh*
Sukkot... was probably our best ever. With the pre-built sukkah frame already in our backyard, we just had to put the walls and non-roof back on and decorate a little bit and ended up with absolutely no stress about starting the holiday on time. Had several beautiful nights in our sukkah, along with a quick visit to the CSH sukkah the next Shabbat.
Simchat Torah... at CSH included a Kindergarten Consecration ceremony, in which Daniel (and Micah, who had of course missed his Kindergarten year) received kid-sized Torah scrolls (with the first paragraphs of each Torah portion printed in both Hebrew and English). Real classy. Then we processed around the sanctuary the required seven times, with everybody getting at least one chance to dance with the Torah. Then we read the last few lines from the primary liturgical scroll and proceeded to roll it back to it's start, getting a good look at how the scroll is organized and sight-reading some of the more famous passages before having a formal chant of the "Bereshit bara Elohim..." at the very beginning. Ended, as all Jewish events seem to, with food: Hebrew letter cookies to dip in honey to wish the kids sweet learning. That was a good night!
the month of Cheshvan... honestly felt a little bit empty, now that we were not in conversion classes. Our first full introduction of the kids into soccer season kept us from coming to Saturday morning services, so we tried to stay connected to our community through Family Shabbats and Sunday morning religious school. The real let-down of converting to Judaism comes in this first bit of "ordinary time" after your conversion, when there is no intense study to be keeping up with, no class to attend or appointments to keep with the rabbi, and the intensity of the last holiday has gone - I honestly felt a little like the Jewish world had forgotten about me for a little while.
So what did I do? I set out to write a memoir of my journey into Judaism while the memories were still fresh. I think I wrote the first chapter five times, five different ways. The careful reader will notice that the final product has yet to be published...
I also began to seriously inquire into how I could become a rabbi. That calling I felt long, long ago to become a UU minister hadn't gone away. If anything, it had intensified. My rabbi suggested that I talk to Dan Gordon, a local rabbi who had gotten a distance-learning ordination. He didn't recommend the correspondence program he used, he wanted me to have more of an experience of community, so he recommended what we both thought to be the only distance-learning full-five-year rabbinical school in the country: the ALEPH Ordination Program of the Alliance for Jewish Renewal. I promised to look into it.
Chanukkah… was about as overboard as I could imagine it being. My sweet mother-in-law, finally accepting that this Judaism thing was where her grandchildren were going to stay, sent Hanukkah presents instead of Christmas presents. Actually, she sent enough for two nights. Feeling a need to keep up with the 'rents, Elie and I stepped up our Hanukkah presents as well. My mother-in-law also gave us a beautiful new hanukkiah and I gave the kids a new hanukkiah and I also gave Elie one of the "tree of life" ones she had been eyeing for years. I think we beat that holiday dead that year.
We also dropped in on the Moody Gardens trail of lights, which was as spectacular as the weather was cold. By the time our fingers and touches'es were about frozen off, we turned a corner and saw (next to the City of Bethlehem) a giant hanukkiah with a giant Jewish star and all of the Happy Hanukkah trimmings. Always glad to see a nod in my religion's direction, even if we did have to hear a narration of "the story of Christmas" playing in the background.
winter... saw yet more of us learning to be "ordinary Jews." The kids had a Tu B'Shevat seder in religious school - I wish they would hold one for the adults as well!
Our family attended a "Shabbatify" program at the JCC that introduced us to a pair of local (Texas definition of local, neither one was closer than 3 hours away) Jewish summer camps. Every kid wanted to do it. This was going to break our bank.
Simchat Torah... at CSH included a Kindergarten Consecration ceremony, in which Daniel (and Micah, who had of course missed his Kindergarten year) received kid-sized Torah scrolls (with the first paragraphs of each Torah portion printed in both Hebrew and English). Real classy. Then we processed around the sanctuary the required seven times, with everybody getting at least one chance to dance with the Torah. Then we read the last few lines from the primary liturgical scroll and proceeded to roll it back to it's start, getting a good look at how the scroll is organized and sight-reading some of the more famous passages before having a formal chant of the "Bereshit bara Elohim..." at the very beginning. Ended, as all Jewish events seem to, with food: Hebrew letter cookies to dip in honey to wish the kids sweet learning. That was a good night!
the month of Cheshvan... honestly felt a little bit empty, now that we were not in conversion classes. Our first full introduction of the kids into soccer season kept us from coming to Saturday morning services, so we tried to stay connected to our community through Family Shabbats and Sunday morning religious school. The real let-down of converting to Judaism comes in this first bit of "ordinary time" after your conversion, when there is no intense study to be keeping up with, no class to attend or appointments to keep with the rabbi, and the intensity of the last holiday has gone - I honestly felt a little like the Jewish world had forgotten about me for a little while.
So what did I do? I set out to write a memoir of my journey into Judaism while the memories were still fresh. I think I wrote the first chapter five times, five different ways. The careful reader will notice that the final product has yet to be published...
I also began to seriously inquire into how I could become a rabbi. That calling I felt long, long ago to become a UU minister hadn't gone away. If anything, it had intensified. My rabbi suggested that I talk to Dan Gordon, a local rabbi who had gotten a distance-learning ordination. He didn't recommend the correspondence program he used, he wanted me to have more of an experience of community, so he recommended what we both thought to be the only distance-learning full-five-year rabbinical school in the country: the ALEPH Ordination Program of the Alliance for Jewish Renewal. I promised to look into it.
Chanukkah… was about as overboard as I could imagine it being. My sweet mother-in-law, finally accepting that this Judaism thing was where her grandchildren were going to stay, sent Hanukkah presents instead of Christmas presents. Actually, she sent enough for two nights. Feeling a need to keep up with the 'rents, Elie and I stepped up our Hanukkah presents as well. My mother-in-law also gave us a beautiful new hanukkiah and I gave the kids a new hanukkiah and I also gave Elie one of the "tree of life" ones she had been eyeing for years. I think we beat that holiday dead that year.
We also dropped in on the Moody Gardens trail of lights, which was as spectacular as the weather was cold. By the time our fingers and touches'es were about frozen off, we turned a corner and saw (next to the City of Bethlehem) a giant hanukkiah with a giant Jewish star and all of the Happy Hanukkah trimmings. Always glad to see a nod in my religion's direction, even if we did have to hear a narration of "the story of Christmas" playing in the background.
winter... saw yet more of us learning to be "ordinary Jews." The kids had a Tu B'Shevat seder in religious school - I wish they would hold one for the adults as well!
Our family attended a "Shabbatify" program at the JCC that introduced us to a pair of local (Texas definition of local, neither one was closer than 3 hours away) Jewish summer camps. Every kid wanted to do it. This was going to break our bank.
Purim... included yours truly reading a chapter of the megillah from the bimah, and a lamer-than-usual array of costumes on our kids, and yet another failed (but yummy) attempt to bake my own hamentaschen.
spring... brought a tour of Camp Young Judea during a visit to my Mom in central Texas. Serious approval from three kids - Shay was not sold. Kids started planning our own Passover music parody video, which sadly never made it into production.
Pesach... brought a complete failure to record said music parody video, or the "stuffed animal seder" we had also been planning. Lots of planning, but Kids (and Dad) just couldn't get our butts in gear to do it. Home seder was more orthodox than before (we used the bloody Artscroll Family Haggadah for heaven's sake), a bit to the children's chagrin. But we had learned from last year and they all got trading card packs for finding their own hidden piece of the afikomen. New family tradition. Congregational seder was a lot like last year but with more Disney music this time.
Shavuot... I was invited to lead a session at our congregation's late-night Shavuot study. I got there late because of Ryan's last choir concert of the year, then everyone disbanded before we made it to my session. I guess that's how the cheesecake crumbles...
late spring... I finally got up the chutzpah to contact the ALEPH Ordination Program. I knew very little at the time about the Renewal movement, but much to my surprise I cleared all of the initial interviews and got invited to attend their big summer rabbinical student retreat as a sort of mix between taking my first courses and doing an extended entrance interview.
early summer... I got the reading and work list for my AOP courses. I think I spent every spare moment in the month of June either reading an assigned passage or researching a topic or writing a response. I seriously would take my kids to the pool and read an assigned article on my Kindle while they swam. But don't get me wrong - I was having a blast learning! I got to read religious history and theology articles for the first time that didn't require me to "translate" to my always-different religious perspective.
I also began work with a Hebrew tutor from Seattle via teleconference, and she took one of our weekly sessions to walk me through the siddur and the structure of a morning or evening service just before I went off to the praying-daily AOP retreat. I felt like I understood the Jewish prayer service for the first time! This should be required education for every Jew...
The last week of June, I jetted off to Amherst, MA for "Smicha Student Week" with the AOP. I knew from the first minutes there that I didn't quite fit in. There was some way in most every discussion or event or casual conversation or class session that I stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb. They didn't rub this in or anything - no, most of the people there were incredibly welcoming and I made quite a number of good friends during the week - but I felt it. I didn't know Renewal lingo. I didn't hold acceptable opinions on the Jewish issues of the day. I didn't have the right response to "what brought you to the ALEPH Ordination Program?" Toward the end of the week the leaders started dropping subtle hints that I might not be coming back next year. Even so, I was devastated when, a few weeks later, I got the emailed rejection letter. I asked for clarification as to why I had been rejected when all of my paperwork and initial interviews had gone so well, so that I would know what to do better next time – their only response was that I was a "bad fit" (and, much later, they told my Hebrew tutor to stop encouraging me to apply again). Seems that they couldn't put their fingers on exactly how I didn't fit, either. It was just obvious that I didn't. One thing I noticed was that they had a very low tolerance for diversity of opinion – making them the first Jewish group I had ever run across where people were reluctant to argue about a particular perspective or interpretation. Certainly the first Jewish group where I had ever been shouted down for stating the "wrong" opinion. In retrospect, try as I might, these were probably never going to be "my" people.
I did love the feeling of starting each morning with shacharit and ending each evening with ma'ariv. I tried to bring this practice home, but without a minyan to pray with it just wasn't the same, and I have only kept a skeleton morning prayer practice.
late summer...After a last-minute scramble to put together enough clothes and supplies, we put two of our kids on a bus to Camp Young Judea. The house felt empty. Nine days later, we picked up Micah and he was pumped. He wanted to do the full three weeks next year! The next weekend, we dropped off Daniel for the "Mini Mensch" weekend. He was even more pumped, if that was possible. We got home to a letter telling us that Ryan was having a tough time, feeling bullied, and wanted to go home early. I guess you can't always win.
While in Austin, we went to pray with Congregation Agudas Achim (the ALEPH people had told me that I needed to broaden my Jewish experience beyond my little home congregation) and their rabbi, Neil Blumofe, couldn't say enough good things about two rabbinical schools I had never heard of before: the Academy of Jewish Religion in New York, and the (completely unrelated) Academy of Jewish Religion in Los Angeles. Both, it turns out, are moving to a model of offering every single class as a hybrid between in-person and via-teleconference learning. Both were eager to try this new model out on me. Both cost almost a month and a half of rent per class, with pretty limited financial aid. I remain committed to this path, but it is going to be a rough and expensive ride. And it is probably going to take a decade or more to get through...
5779
Promises to be another watershed year.
We have just finished the fall holidays, once again celebrating the Yamim Noraim at CSH, though with what I take to be a much more old-fashioned cantor this time. I understand the service much better this year, and yet the change in style left me feeling disengaged. I just couldn't relate to that cantor's style in some way, and it left me feeling left-out of the prayers altogether. I want to do something different next year – maybe a full RH morning service aimed at kids and their parents. Maybe with a little 90's alternative grunge rock mixed in to set that penitent mood. Or something.
Sukkot was almost a total fail this year. Our sukkah was up and decorated on-time, with real fresh-cut branches for the roof and everything, and we had a fantastic first-night dinner with pumpkin challah and all that goes with it. But then we never ate another dinner in the sukkah, never had breakfast there, our lives just didn't accommodate it. Next year...
And I missed Simchat Torah for the first time. My darned teaching schedule. I am getting tired of teaching night classes – they get in the way of so much family and congregation time.
Sukkot was almost a total fail this year. Our sukkah was up and decorated on-time, with real fresh-cut branches for the roof and everything, and we had a fantastic first-night dinner with pumpkin challah and all that goes with it. But then we never ate another dinner in the sukkah, never had breakfast there, our lives just didn't accommodate it. Next year...
And I missed Simchat Torah for the first time. My darned teaching schedule. I am getting tired of teaching night classes – they get in the way of so much family and congregation time.
Now that the fall holidays are gone, I am in the midst of planning, with my wife and the Buchanan's, to start an "Alternative Shabbat" service at our synagogue (insert Cobain singing "Come as you are" here), to be held early (6:00) on Shabbat evenings, that would engage people of our generation - adults and any kids they might bring - as well as people of the younger spiritual-seeking generation. It's a tall order. If we pull it off, it might be a way to save our synagogue from slow decline.
I have switched my memoir project to writing a book on the "blessings" of Judaism - how this new, old religion has in many ways saved my family from disintegration - and it is progressing slowly.
And I am taking (well, auditing, actually, since I couldn't afford full tuition) my first real rabbinical school class - Jewish Storytelling as a homiletic art - from AJR New York via Zoom teleconference. It remains to be seen if I can scrounge enough money to take a full for-credit class in the Spring, or what will happen to the rest of my Jewish journey.
How will any of this turn out?
Stay tuned, dear reader, stay tuned...
And my you and yours have a shanah tovah u'metukah!
Comments
Post a Comment