Adar and the Secret to the Reversal of our Demise

I try not to dwell to much on religious things here unless they seem to have a larger effect on my life. That is the case with something I learned this past week in Temple. You see the Jewish calendar is a lunar one, which means that 7 out of every 19 years we repeat the month of Adar )don't ask me to do the math). When I heard that I realized that we had been given a reprieve, from all the tough things and attitudes we've had this past month. Because according to the tradition it is the first month of Adar that is the extra on. With that out of the way we had a chance to undo and redo all the things that have happened.

Second I learned that the month of Adar is a joyous month, you are supposed to tell jokes on the first day of the month. This is exactly what we need, a little more light in our lives. Between the humor and the change of daylight savings things are beginning to look a lot brighter. What could be better after a month of bad attitude, sickness, arguments, and death.


I hope everyone has a happy AdarII!!!!

Bringing Light Out of Darkness

Hanukkah began tonight with little to do. I have a hard time trying to stuff the Christmas Frenzy into a holiday that's not actually a major holiday with in the Jewish religion. I have been reading lots of other blogs where people are all having a wonderful time with Advent. At first I thought we might try to use Hanukkah to do some of that but it felt insincere. Instead we're going to light the candles, go to the temple party on Friday night and Alder will get a few books on winter. Next year I'll bring out my dreidels that I have had since I was a child, and get some gelt (chocolate money) and I'll show Alder how to play that ancient betting game (the only time all year we ever bet). You can look here for other ideas about Hanukkah that talk about it in it's own right rather than a stand in for christmas.

The reality of living in a predominantly christain country our extend family shares gifts on Christmas day because it is a time when we are all guaranteed to have off. As children we used to have a Christmas tree because my mother and aunt always wanted one as children, as we have grown up we have scaled back, first to a Christmas log and now we just put the presents in the spot where there used to be a tree.

We may have a tree some year here. Kevin's family was big into Christmas and we probably aren't going to make it back there very often for the holiday (children and airplanes and holidays...no). Personally having grown up with one I have no qualms with them, they come from a pagan ritual and while it has little to do with a temple being rebuilt and the miracle of oil, they are enjoyable and smell good.

As a family we will do our celebrating on the Solstice. There we can be free of religious connotations and revel in the darkness on last time before the light returns. That night we will feast and share it with friends and read poems, there will be wine and the spirit of the each other and the earth. It's her rhythm that we are tied to before all others.

Tomorrow we're off after work for a night at the cabin by the fireplace and sledding on the hill Thursday morning.

hmm...all this has gotten me thinking. There will most likely be more on Hanukkah and the Festival of Lights.

The irony in my day and what it has to do with Israel (long)

This morning I felt awash in irony. As I set of to Synagogue I listened on NPR to a report about the conflict in Israel and Palestine(link to the story). Even though I am coming into my Jewishness I can't find a place in my heart for Zionism or the current attitudes that prevail in Israel. The report was discussing how the Israelis were creating more check points rather than lessening the number, as they had said they would.

I can imagine the fear that people living in that country must have being surrounded by hostile neighbors. But continuing to keep an apartheid state where Palestinians can not travel between their lands is part of the problem. God given right or not the Israelis should have taken into account the response the rest of the region would have had in 1948.

Jews have never been colonizers (although we have been colonized often). It took the help of the British Empire (albeit their tail end) to help create and "mandate" Israel. However the times of governmental colonization were coming to an end. Where ever our ancestors were from the fact is we were primarily Europeans and Americans commandeering land in the middle east. Land that the Muslims also felt was theirs.

I don't mean to give a basic history lesson but it seems that often when this discussion comes up not everyone knows that Israel in it's current form has only been there since 1948. I find a lot of Christians that I talk to think that the battle on this land has been going on for centuries. It has but those were the Crusades not the Arab Israeli conflict.

Anyway back to the irony. After fuming for a few blocks about the conflict I resigned myself to acknowledging that there was little I could do about it. Before going to temple I stopped for some coffee and was reading The Yiddish Policeman's Union Michael Chabon's new book. In Chabon's book he imagines that Israel fails and the post war Jews end up in a temporary district in the panhandle of Alaska. In his book the Jews are about to loose their home (once again).

His story, in light of the news that I had been listening to, seems almost hopeful. That their might have been another answer (although this one is not successful either). Sigh... what can I do.

So I go to the Synagogue (which happens to be in a Methodist church) for the dedication of the new ark for keeping the Torah in. We sing a lot of songs all that seem to have to do with peace. We say the weekly prayers, which highlight peace again. While I know that there are many members of the congregation who agree with me about Israel (to varying amounts) the irony of the service strikes me.

How can we be talking of peace as something we hold so close to our hearts when we still remain in such a contentious position in Israel. I know that there is a lot I do not understand, both politically and historically, still I can't help but feeling the discordance of the entire situation in Israel.

Happy Passover

I'm sitting here at my computer looking at a postcard that says Life is Just a Bowl of Pork Chops. The rest of my family is enjoying their epic Seder, eating good food and company. But hey I just spent the day out in the sunshine enjoying those freedoms that their remembering, tomorrow we'll go to the temple's Seder so we're no being totally bad.

Thoughts on Religion 1

Yesterday at temple the discussion topic (during our service we always have a discussion) was rituals and their purpose. The focus was on religion but not completely. The conversation got me thinking about what it means to be religious and what religion means to my life and to my families. In other words do I consider myself religious. To begin with it is hard for me to quantify what being religious actually means.

If it means observing the rituals of Judaism I got to temple once or twice a month and recognize the holidays. I don't think that makes me religious. Sure it is more than most Jews in the United States do but I do not follow many of the daily or weekly rituals.

If being religious means understanding your faith I know I am not religious. But then I am late in coming to my Judaism. I continually find myself not knowing basic facts about our story. The last time I read the Torah/bible was in ninth grade when we did bible as literature, that was almost twenty years ago so my memory is vague. As for the weekly sections of the Torah, listening to a paragraph every two weeks of a story that is read daily leads to a lot of holes in it.

But if being religious means searching for a connection with some sort of higher power, be it a anthropomorphic God or a less tangible one, I guess I am religious.

As a child I was taught to look at religion as a cultural construct created by the people to give them a connection beyond that of their government (primarily feudal). My parents saw religion, and Judaism specifically, as a way to connect ourselves to our past. But they did not go beyond that. To them the Orthodox families on the corner we archaic and controlling, people to be looked at with distrust, rather than people whose lives were closer to the spiritual side of religion. I still get quite when I see orthodox families around, they make me feel as though I am being a bad Jew, it is a remnant of my childhood, I am sure they could explain somethings to me that I never understood.

Now, while I can not claim any real understanding of my religion, I understand the need to be closer to the spirit, the 'god'. I am sure if I had been forced to attend temple every week as an obligation, as some families I knew growing up were, I would not be this accepting to looking for a connection with god. I might be better at the ritual elements of being a Jew but they might be hollow. I look at my husband and see someone who was brought up in the Lutheran church, he was even confirmed but it was all motions he was going through as a family obligation not a personal religious one (surprisingly he enjoys joining me at temple and says he likes the Reform Judaism ideas).

As many young people I searched out a connection with a spiritual center. I had gone to a Quaker school for many years and the silent meeting gave me "something" but it was an internal center. Even since graduating I have been to Quaker Meeting at various points to re-find this center. While this center is fulfilling it is not spiritual connection. So after high school I looked in the regular channels of the East and the natural world. But I always walked away unconvinced that I could really believe in the religious aspects. None of it fit.

After we had been married for a few years and there was talk of children I began to think more about religion. I knew that our child had to be brought up Jewish, because if they were not then by default they would be Christan, it's just what our country is like. I actually had a nightmare that my one of my sister-in-laws tried to surreptitiously baptise our child. I started looking at Jewish websites, the same way people look at pornography, I hid it from Kevin. I felt that I needed to have a stronger footing in Judaism before I announced to anyone that we would be a Jewish family.

A funny thing happened during my covert investigation into Jewishness, I got it. I mean it made sense on a level that had nothing to do with logic, it just fit. maybe it is hereditary or genetic but the ideas I was reading about made sense to me. It was like being told something that I had once known and forgotten. What I like best was that 'they' did not seem to expect me to change who I was as a person. In fact what I read more sounded like an extension of who I already was.

The next step was to find a Temple, or at least a Rabbi to talk to. Growing up rabbis we dour old me in dark suits who presided over funeral and high holidays. These men (and they were all men) were unapproachable serious people, they were no different than bankers to me. Then I happened upon Temple Micah, the Rabbi is young and engaging. Willing to talk outside of the service about anything. I came to try it on and pretty quickly knew it fit.

In all my searching for a spiritual connection I found one that fits with my philosophical beliefs (see the quote at the top of the blog) as well as my need for community. Of course I still don't really understand a lot about Judaism but I am learning. Some days it feels as if parts of it are genetic, it all just comes together.

Having a child brings in another facet to my religious belief and practice. While I want Alder to have the experience of being part of Judaism I do not want to force it on him. I want him to see that it is part of my life because it enriches it not because it is a social responsibility. Rarely do I want to force him to be involve in something that does not ring true to him so I have to make it part of our lives in a way that it integral to everything else not opposed to it. Ah more questions for me to answer as I unwind this mystery that is religion.