Category Archives: Jewish identity

July 18, 2011 · 7:52 am

Reclaiming My German Citizenship

by Donna Swarthout (Berlin, Germany)

It was last June that my husband Brian and I completed our applications for German citizenship before moving from Bozeman, Montana to Berlin, Germany.  By reclaiming our German citizenship we hoped to come “full circle” as the descendants of German Jews who fled Nazi Germany in the late 1930s.  We are still waiting for the magical moment when we learn that our citizenship has been restored, but we both believe it will be worth the wait.

It was not a magical moment when we told my mother that we were moving to Germany.  The opportunity to connect with my past, become fluent in a language I fell in love with as a child, and to once again be Jewish in Germany meant nothing to her.  How could we bring her grandchildren to the place of horror and persecution from which she and my father had fled?  No answer would suffice.  She did not speak to us for six weeks.

I don’t know what it felt like for my parents and grandparents to be stripped of their German citizenship, to be stateless from 1938 until 1944, and to finally become American citizens.  My maternal grandmother seemed to remain stateless, eventually leaving America for Israel, then Switzerland, and finally going back to her beloved  Germany.  My paternal grandparents were more typical immigrants, creating their own oasis of German culture in the middle of New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood (complete with apfel strudel, kartoffel salat, and lots of wurstchen).

No form of Holocaust reparation is enough, but reclaimed citizenship has more significance for me than any financial restitution our family may receive.  My children and their descendants will have opportunities that my grandparents could never have imagined.  We will have access to Germany’s universal health care system and free system of higher education.  We will automatically become citizens of the European Union which means we can live, work, and study at a university in any EU country under the same conditions as nationals.  We will not have to give up our American citizenship, nor do we want to.

I will take full ownership of my identity when I regain the citizenship that was stripped from both my parents’ families.  As a German American Jew I can embrace each of these three elements of my identity to whatever degree I wish.  Just as I have always struggled with what it means to be Jewish, I will always struggle with what it means to be German.  But I am entitled to my German citizenship, and I may soon have it.

After months of fruitless attempts to track down my citizenship application, I learned in March that the all-efficient German bureaucracy had lost it.  The application contained many documents that I had painstakingly put together to establish my German Jewish identity.  These were my personal historical building blocks that had suddenly vanished.  The official who delivered this disturbing news politely apologized and suggested I file a new application and begin the process all over again.  His cold words hit me like a stamp that says “no one cares.”

Now it is June again, our first school year in Germany is coming to an end, and my oldest son is preparing for his bar mitzvah in Berlin this fall.  Avery’s bar mitzvah will take place on the anniversary of my father’s bar mitzvah in New York City in 1942.  My son and my father will have both taken this step as immigrants, and as German American Jews who belong to a vibrant and thriving Jewish community.

I also have high hopes that the stress and frustration of trying to move my  citizenship application forward are finally behind me.  My application was eventually found and is being processed in Rathaus Schoeneberg, the place where John F. Kennedy gave his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech in 1963.  Kennedy not only said that he was a Berliner, but that “all free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin.” As we embark on our second year of living in Germany, I feel optimistic that Kennedy’s vision will become a reality for me.

Donna Swarthout came to Berlin with her family to explore her German Jewish heritage and identity and the nature of Jewish life in Germany today.  You can read more about her experiences on her blog Full Circle: www.dswartho.wordpress.com

And you can hear her reading a version of this story on NPR’s Berlin Stories: http://berlinstories.org/2012/06/27/donna-swarthout-on-coming-full-circle/

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June 6, 2011 · 7:15 am

The First Commandment

by Madeline Black (Sarasota, FL)

“I am the Eternal God.”

This sentence is the well known first of the Ten Commandments. However, according to basic rules of grammar, this sentence can not be a command. And yet, it is not only one of the Ten Commandments; it is the First Commandment.

While the following nine–such as, “You shall keep the Sabbath,” “Honor your father and mother,” and “Thou shall not kill”–are unarguably commands, this first commandment reads as more of an opening line. It sets the stage for the commandments that follow.

I believe that the purpose of the first commandment is for the Israelites to accept God as the Eternal One, who brought us out of the land of Egypt to be our God.

One Midrash interprets the first commandment to mean: “I am the Eternal, if I am your God.” In other words, God is able to bring about divine redemption only if Israel acknowledges God as being our God.

Upon learning this, I was reminded of a piece of information that I learned in a social studies class this year. I learned that a state can only be considered a state if it is universally acknowledged by other states. Well, does this same principle not apply to religion?

So, let us consider our religion to be a state of mind. By accepting the First Commandment to be true, we enter into that state of mind. Only in this state of mind are we able to fully adhere to the following nine commandments.

In a way, the First Commandment is God’s way of making sure that everybody clearly understands the responsibilities set by the commandments, as well as the consequences that come from not following them. The First Commandment is a reminder so that we do not forget that the commandments are something more than guidelines.

Let us not forget that the covenant between us and God has two sides to it. We are God’s chosen people as long as God is our only God. If we do not choose God, we are not his people. But what would happen if we had not accepted God as the Eternal?

The Quantum Theory explores the idea that matter and reality only exist when observed. For instance, does a spider in your bathroom exist if you do not see it? (Personally, I would prefer to think not.) But the bigger question is, if we did not believe in God, would God still exist? And without the belief in God, what are the Ten Commandments, if not only a set of meaningless, obsolete guidelines?

Although accepting God as our God was something we did as a people, I have come to learn that it is also something one must do on one’s own. In Hebrew school, as children, we are taught the Ten Commandments. We are taught the fundamentals of being Jewish. What is accepted, and what is not. However, it is not until later that one begins to question: Why must we celebrate Passover? Why must we keep the Sabbath?

I have learned this year from Rabbi Glickman that although we are given texts to read and passages to study, it is up to us to interpret them in a way that fits with our idea of being Jewish. This year, I have begun to understand that each person must also accept God as his or her God, and embrace the state of mind in order to be able to fully appreciate the mitzvah that is the Ten Commandments.

So, in reality, though the First Commandment is not a direct command, it is the most important commandment. The words “I am your God” are the words that direct these commandments to us, God’s chosen people. This commandment includes us all in a category of people who will follow the rest of the Ten Commandments.

God is our God, so we follow God’s commandments.

Madeline Black shared these thoughts about God and the Ten Commandments as part of her Confirmation this past Shabbat at Temple Emanu-el in Sarasota, FL. 

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May 23, 2011 · 7:33 am

Hawking Sees No Heaven

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

Hawking sees no heaven,
a fantasy, he calls it,
“for people afraid of the dark.”
What, no Shangri-La for the children,
no safe haven for the doubtful?
His pronouncement manifests the force
of a prison door closing on a life sentence.
Mr. Hawking, I surely respect your intelligence,
but how can you be so sure?
We are more than machine
with triple AAA batteries gone dead.
In the small, sheltered space
before you fall asleep
do you not think your soul migrates
to a higher, more peaceful place?
Sleep may be death’s counterfeit,
but we dream, do we not?
Why not then for eternity?

The author of twelve books for young adults, Mel Glenn has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years.  Lately, he’s been writing poetry, and you can find his most recent poems in a new YA anthology, This Family Is Driving Me Crazy,  edited by M. Jerry Weiss.

If you’d like to learn more about his work, visit: http://www.melglenn.com/

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May 16, 2011 · 7:28 am

Writing Wharton’s Wrong

by Lev Raphael (Okemos, MI)

Singing about marriage, two of Steven Sondheim’s characters in A Little Night Music condemn it for inflicting so much pain: “Every day a little death….every day a little sting.”

I felt a bit like like that in college, not because I was married, but because I was an English major.  Time after time, I’d find a book I was reading and enjoying stung me because of an anti-Semitic portrait.  There was Meyer Wolfsheim in The Great Gatsby, a Jewish antiques dealer in The Golden Bowl, and many more, too many to remember, but I met them at every turn in English and American books.

I understood that the authors were products of their society and a western culture that was ingrained with Jew-hatred, but it still pushed me out of the book the way a plot implausibility can make you lose faith in a movie.  I don’t remember ever not finishing a book that had a Jewish stereotype or slur, but I’d continue reading under a cloud.

Perhaps most disturbing of all for me was Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth.  I had first read her Pulitzer-prize winner The Age of Innocence and fallen in love, so I worked my way devotedly through her oeuvre in paperback.  The House of Mirth was my favorite then and still is now.  It’s a stunning book about the vanity of human wishes and the damage a superficial culture can inflict on those who won’t play by its rules. Reading it for the first time in my senior year at Fordham, I was in awe: Wharton displayed an uncanny understanding of the power of shame to control behavior and crush hope.  The novel was so beautifully written, so witty and sharp-edged, such an indictment of Gilded Age New York.

And very unpleasant to read–as a Jew.  Every time the Jewish financier Simon Rosedale appeared in the book, I winced.  He was showy, loud, vulgar, spoke bad English, and came off as a buffoon when he wasn’t insidious.  Gentiles loved his money but rightly despised him, and his eye was always on the main chance.

Wharton actually pays special attention to his eyes the first time he appears, telling us he had “small sidelong eyes which gave him the air of appraising people as if they were bric-a-brac.”  How ironic that Wharton’s contempt for Jews is projected onto him, turning him into someone for whom others are merely items to assess and purchase.

Simon Rosedale does show a less mercenary side, but it’s always connected to his fierce drive to get ahead by any means necessary.  In the same way that assertive women today are seen by some people as bitches, Rosedale wanting success the way any other American might is condemned as vulgar and almost disgusting.

I hadn’t written much fiction of my own at the time, but in the following years, Jewish themes would predominate.  I often found myself returning to writers who inspired me in college, writers like Henry James and Lawrence Durrell who were hardly philo-Semitic, and yes, Edith Wharton.  The sting became duller each time, but it never went away.

And then a few years ago, perhaps because I’d been reading Rosencrantz and Guildenstern again, an idea hit me.  What if I did a Stoppard?  What if I told Edith Wharton’s story in The House of Mirth from Rosedale’s perspective, entered his mind, his past, his dreams, his fears? What if I made him a person, in other words, and not a stereotype?

Rosedale in Love was born, and it bore me along with it on massive amounts of reading about The Gilded Age and turn-of-the-century New York, all of it deepening my appreciation of what Wharton had accomplished in the rest of her novel.  And helping me let go of my regrets for the ways in which Wharton had lost the chance to make Simon Rosedale a real human being.

Because she left me a whole book to write.

Lev Raphael is a prize-winning pioneer in American-Jewish literature, and has been publishing fiction and nonfiction about the Second Generation since 1978. The author of twenty books which have been translated into almost a dozen languages, he has spoken about his work in hundreds of venues on three continents. His fiction and creative non-fiction are widely taught at American colleges and universities, and his work has been the subject of numerous academic articles, papers, and books. A former public radio book show host and newspaper columnist, he can be found on the web at http://www.levraphael.com.  He blogs on books for The Huffington Post and reviews for the on-line literary magazine Bibliobuffet.com.

You can check out his latest book, the Jewish historical novel Rosedale in Love, at http://www.levraphael.com/rosedale.html

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May 2, 2011 · 9:44 am

Floating Between the Denominations

by Pamela Jay Gottfried (Atlanta, GA)

I am no longer surprised when people– upon hearing that I don’t drive or answer the telephone on the Sabbath– ask me if I am Orthodox.  The labels of denominations, and the assumptions about their adherents’ religious practices, are so ingrained that people momentarily forget that Orthodox women cannot be ordained as rabbis.  Personally, I enjoy defying the labels, finding the places where it is possible to be “just Jewish” and observe the mitzvot, commandments.

The week that we relocated to Atlanta I needed to go to the mikvah, ritual bath. I found a listing in a local Jewish directory and called to inquire about summer hours.  From the recorded message I learned that a woman must make an appointment 72 hours in advance and is given 20 minutes in the schedule to prepare and immerse.  In my old neighborhood all you had to do was show up, and with half a dozen preparation rooms there was hardly ever a wait.  Despite my last-minute call, I was able to secure 20 minutes that evening.

In New York, the mikvah attendant provided her clientele relative anonymity and freedom from small talk.  It’s not that she didn’t care who was patronizing the mikvah, it’s just that in what is arguably the most Jewish city in the world the mikvah attendant couldn’t possibly know everyone.  She lived in the house attached to the mikvah and treated the women who visited there as guests in her home.  She was a noble and modest hostess– never judgmental, always unobtrusive.  It was customary to give her a little extra, a gratuity, for her devotion to avodat kodesh, holy work.

That evening I was greeted by the attendant warmly with the requisite question: “Are you new in town or just visiting?”

“New in town,” I replied.  “We just moved here from New York.”

“Welcome! That’s great. We love it here.” The mikvah attendant had immigrated from South Africa many years earlier.

She followed up then, asking about why we had moved, whether we had family in town and where we were living.  She seemed surprised to learn that we were living within walking distance to a Conservative synagogue. So I admitted that I was employed there, but omitted the detail that I was serving as a rabbi in the congregation.  I didn’t want to burden her with explanations about non-Orthodox women visiting the mikvah or walking to synagogue on the Sabbath. I assumed that such a combination of ritual practices would be alien to her.

Finally, the small talk was over and she showed me to the back room, where I prepared for immersion.  Later, when I paid her, she followed me out to my car. Giving me back a few dollars she said, “It’s only 12 bucks.”

I mumbled something about it being customary in New York to tip the attendant.

“We’re volunteers here, so that isn’t necessary.”

As I turned to go, she said quietly, “tizki b’mitzvos,” which translates “be strengthened by [your observance of the] commandments. Clearly, I had misjudged her as judging me.  She recognized that any Jewish woman could be devoted to the mikvah–nowhere else are the fluid boundaries of Judaism’s denominations so apparent.  Thanks to a dedicated cadre of volunteers, the mikvah remains functional, and the observance of its ritual viable.  I promised myself to be a noble and modest guest in her home.

In time I grew accustomed to visiting the mikvah in Atlanta. I still have to remember to call 72 hours in advance, but the woman who coordinates appointments is kind to me when I forget. I have met most of the volunteer attendants and I’ve stripped myself, so to speak, of any disguises; now many of these women know that I am a Conservative rabbi.  In this community of women, I am happiest floating between the denominations, resisting labels and observing the mitzvot to the best of my ability.

Pamela Jay Gottfried is a rabbi, parent, teacher, artist, and the author of Found in Translation: Common Words of Uncommon Wisdom.  A New York City native and graduate of The Jewish Theological Seminary, Rabbi Gottfried teaches students of all ages in churches, colleges, community centers, schools, and synagogues. She strives for balance in her life by spending as much time writing at the computer as she does working at the pottery wheel.

An excerpt of this essay originally appeared in Sacred Days: A Weekly Planner for the Jewish Year, 2004-2005, published by CLAL – The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. It is reprinted here with the kind permission of CLAL and the author.

You can read more of her work on her blog, Pamela’s Pekele (http://rabbipjg.blogspot.com/), or visit her website for more information: http://www.pamelagottfried.com/

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April 25, 2011 · 8:07 am

How I Knew and When

by Janet R. Kirchheimer (New York, NY)

Age 8 – My father hangs upside down on a pipe that was part of a fence
that separated our street from the next. All of his change
falls from his pockets. He looks so young.

Age 15 – “There were one hundred and four girls
in the Israelitisch Meisjes Weeshuis orphanage in Amsterdam.
Four survived,” my mother says.
“I remember Juffrouw Frank, the headmistress.  She made us
drink cod-liver oil each morning. She said it was healthy for us.”

Age 17 – My father tells me his father and sister, Ruth, got out
of Germany and went to Rotterdam. They were supposed to
leave on May 11, 1940, for America. The Nazis invaded on May 10.

Age 21 – My mother tells me Tante Amalia told her
that on the Queen Elizabeth to America in 1947, after she
and Onkel David were released from an internment camp
on the Isle of Man, she was so hungry she ate twelve rolls
every day at breakfast. She said it was the best time she ever had.

Age 24 – My father tells me, “Otto Reis got out of Germany
in 1941. He took a train to Moscow, the Trans-Siberian railroad to
Vladivostok, a boat to Shanghai, a boat to Yokohama, a boat to
San Francisco, and a bus to Philadelphia, his wife and three sons
staying behind. Carola Stein signed affidavits for them, but
the government said she didn’t make enough money.”

Age 31 – My mother’s cousin refuses to accept money a rich
woman left him. He says the money has too much blood on it.
My mother tells me that in 1939 her cousin had asked this woman
to sign affidavits for his wife and two daughters. She said no.

Age 33 – My father asks me to dial the number. His hands shake.
He asks my cousin Judy if she wants to send her three children out
of Israel during the Gulf War. She says she can’t let them go.

Age 42 – A waiter in a Jerusalem hotel tells my father
he should come to live in Israel, because it’s home.
My father tells him, “Home is anywhere they let you in.”

Janet R. Kirchheimer is the author of How to Spot One of Us (2007), a collection of poems about her family and the Shoah. Her poems and essays have appeared in several journals such as the Connecticut Review and Limestone, as well as on Beliefnet. She is a teaching fellow at Clal.

This poem has been reprinted with the kind permission of the author and Clal-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership.

For more about Kirchheimer’s work, visit: http://productsearch.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.aspx?WRD=janet+r+kirchheimer&page=index&prod=univ&choice=allproducts&query=Janet+R+Kirchheimer&flag=False&ugrp=2

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April 18, 2011 · 8:04 am

Miracle Flowing Into Miracle

by Bruce Black (Sarasota, FL)

The vegetable stock for the soup is simmering on the stove. Onions, turnips, carrots, garlic, sweet potatoes, and leeks. Last night we searched for crumbs, but it’s only now that the house is beginning to smell like Passover.

It’s early, not yet 7 a.m., and I’m sitting on my yoga mat before beginning my practice, grateful for the start of the day, thinking about Passover and the way time unravels from year to year, each year flowing into the next like another asana pose… one pose, then another… each different, each the same.

Each year Passover arrives and reminds us that we are alive, still walking through miracles (like the parting of the Red Sea) every day, not just once a year–if only we open our eyes to see.

Each breath, another miracle. Each step, another miracle. Each life, another miracle. Our people’s story, another miracle.

Miracle flowing into miracle.

Pose flowing into pose: gathering crumbs, hiding the matzah, reciting the Four Questions, opening the door for Elijah, again and again, year after year.

Tonight we’ll savor the taste of freedom as we bite into the matzah.

Surrounded by those we love, we’ll raise our goblets of wine and recite the ancient words of the Hagaddah.

Now the soup is simmering on the stove, filling the house with the smell of Passover and so many memories, so many miracles.

Bruce Black, the founder of The Jewish Writing Project, is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in Jewish publications such as The Jewish Week, The Jewish Exponent, Reform Judaism Magazine, and The Reconstructionist, and in secular publications such as The Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Cricket and Cobblestone magazines. Online Education News ranked his blog on writing, Wordswimmer (http://wordswimmer.blogspot.com) , among the top 100 creative writing blogs of 2009. You can read more about Bruce and his new book, Writing Yoga, here: http://www.rodmellpress.com/writingyoga.html

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April 11, 2011 · 8:30 am

Why Write?

By Linda K. Wertheimer (Lexington, MA)

Why writers become writers is an age-old question. I was one of those boring all-around students in high school, acing the sciences and math almost as readily as English and history.  Go into computers, my mother suggested.  It was the hot field in the early 1980s. I chose writing. Why? My career path, in part, stems from spending part of childhood as one of few Jews in a rural Ohio town. Below is my attempt to explain why I write.

I sat there embarrassed, confused, and silent. A woman had just walked into my fourth-grade classroom in my new school and stuck a series of bearded figures on a felt board. She talked about Jesus and his disciples. Then she led the class in Christian hymns.

After school, my middle brother and I ran into our house and recounted the same story about this woman who taught us about Christianity in our public school classrooms. We were Jews, the only Jews in our rural Ohio school system in 1974. My parents protested the existence of the religious classes, but school officials refused to eliminate the practice. So, once a week, my teacher escorted me to the school library and told me to wait until the half-hour class ended.

Isolation. Ostracism. Experiencing both after my family’s move from western New York to rural Ohio set the stage for my becoming a writer. I ached to protest in some way, but did not know how. The religious classes ended when I reached seventh grade, but the sensation that I was different than my classmates continued. A youth minister roamed the cafeteria during lunch recruiting members for a Christian youth group. Pastors led prayer at school Christmas and Easter assemblies. Classmates questioned my religious beliefs, which were shaky at best. At age 12, I dropped out of Sunday school mostly out of boredom; I was tired, too, of the weekly hour-long drives to our temple. I identified myself as a Jew, but I knew little about what that meant.

“If you don’t believe in Jesus, you’re going to go to Hell,” a classmate said.

“I don’t believe in Heaven, either,” I responded.

“But what happens when you die?”

I sat embarrassed, confused, and silent.

When the school brought pastors and a Christian band in for the annual Easter assembly, I usually slipped out of the auditorium. I grabbed my flute from my locker and went into a practice room and tried to heed my flute teacher’s advice as I shut out the rest of the world. Breathe, breathe, relax. Then play each song as if it were an unfolding story. I discovered beautiful stories in Mozart’s Concerto for D Major, in Debussy’s haunting Syrinx, and in Gluck’s Menuet and Spirit Dance. Well into high school, I thought of becoming a classical flutist. Something held me back. I could invent stories to go with the music, but wondered whether I could ever meet the composer’s intent. I wanted to create music, but lacked the talent and natural ear to compose.

I wanted a way to push out the feelings that sometimes overwhelmed me from 4th to 12th grade in that rural Ohio school system. I played on the high school basketball team and ran track. I acted in school plays. But it was never enough. I felt like the odd one out. I was still the Jew.

Basketball gave me a physical outlet. Music gave some peace, but not enough. So I wrote. I wrote in my diary. I wrote editorials that praised the obvious – like the merits of being grateful at Thanksgiving – for my high school paper. I did not in those days turn inward with my writing. I was more interested in observing and exploring the lives of other people.

During my senior year of high school, I wrote for two daily newspapers in Findlay and Fostoria, Ohio. I wrote about foreign students visiting a zoo, about tax increases, and school board battles. I wrote obituaries. I drove a van to the local hospital to pick up birth reports and to the fire station to pick up the day’s fire calls, then typed them up. Sometimes I wrote meatier stories about others’ struggles with huge life issues like alcoholism and domestic abuse. My high school English teacher tacked one of my first major feature articles to the bulletin board. Peers congratulated me. I had another title: writer. Tossing aside my dream of becoming a solo flutist – a pipe dream, considering the competition — I chose journalism.

For 20-plus years after high school and college, I worked as a full-time newspaper reporter and editor. In Rochester, NY, where I wrote for The Democrat and Chronicle, stories about a high school teacher and his eighth-period chemistry class in an inner-city high school prompted readers to comment that they now understood why there was no simple fix for urban education’s woes. In Florida, where I reported for The Orlando Sentinel, I dug up $20 million worth of problems with modular classroom buildings that led to mold and collapsing floors. The school buildings got fixed.

At The Dallas Morning News, readers filled the editorial page with letters in response to my narrative series about a college freshman’s financial, social, and academic struggles; the young woman, whose mother was on welfare, had been near the top of her class in the city’s worst high school. Her story highlighted the lack of college readiness among students in the city school system, and yet also inspired a mother to write me that she made her teen-aged daughter read every word. The mother was moved by my subject’s determination not to quit and determined that her own child would try college.

By intention, my last full-time job was at The Boston Globe, where I worked primarily as education editor coaching other writers. Journalism was an enticing and exciting profession. The rewards were often tangible. Write something one day and get a flurry of response – and perhaps even action – the next. But I wanted something more as a writer. In the spring of 2009, I took a buyout from the Globe. Leaving journalism gave me the chance to try to become the writer of my long-ago imaginings, a writer who might someday create words as lyrical as music. It also gave me the chance to stay at home with my first – and only – child, Simon, who’s now two.

In the past, when I wrote, a paycheck and byline were guaranteed. Now, there is no guarantee of regular publication or money, and even finding time to write is a challenge. By choice, I juggle caring for my toddler with writing. With no daily deadline and no singular boss except myself, I take more risks.

I am finally finishing a book I began in 1995 when I was working 40-plus hours a week as a newspaper reporter — a memoir about journeying through grief and getting closer to my Jewish faith. Before I finished college, my middle brother Kevin died in a car accident. The brother who had shared so many of the hard times with me in Ohio was dead at age 23; I was then 21.  I wrote nothing publicly about my loss until nine years later. Shortly after I started writing the book,  the Orlando paper ran an excerpt in its Sunday magazine, “Eulogy for Kevin, A final tribute to a brother – and a best friend.”  I finished a draft of the book five years later – in 2000 – then set it aside. The first stab at the book was a catharsis – that chance to get the grief and the facts down about a deeply personal loss. Something – perhaps the element of universality that publishers crave – was missing. I decided just to let life continue.

In search of a way to fill the hole in my gut from my brother’s death, I became more drawn to Judaism. In 2006, at age 41, I celebrated my adult bat mitzvah – and chanted from the Torah for the first time. Faith and grief in my life became forever linked. The passage I chanted was about how Judaism establishes a circle of mourners obligated to mark the rituals for mourning, including observing a seven-day period of mourning called shiva. I observed none of the Jewish mourning rituals after my brother’s death, but this passage was an awakening. Someone who lost a sibling, according to my faith, deserved the same place in the circle of mourners as someone who lost a child, a spouse, or a parent. I realized that my book was not just about a young woman who lost her big brother. It was a story about loss, faith, and the community we need to foster in our lives so we do not have to weather tragedy – or experience life’s great joys – alone. Faith became a part of my memoir. So did music. So did those experiences in rural Ohio.

No longer working full-time in a newsroom, I became a bolder, more passionate writer. I found the voice that was often silent during my childhood. I became braver about sharing my work with other writers and seeking regular feedback from a growing group of writers whose opinion I value. Daily, I am more alone than I have ever been while writing – and yet when I need it, I have the richest company around.

Less than a month after I left the Globe, in late spring 2009, I spent two weeks alone at novelist Jacquelyn Mitchard’s Cape Cod retreat for writers. I finished a major draft of my memoir. The solitude and the time by the sea helped me make the leap from journalist to freelance writer and budding author. During those weeks, I added something to my book, four essays I call a “Concerto of Words.” Those pieces were the music I knew I could never compose for my flute.

I want someday to see my name on the cover of a book, but fame is not my motivator. Hope is. There is hope that someday something I write will touch countless readers’ hearts.

For the first time in my life, I experience regular rejection as a writer. My byline – by choice – is no longer a regular presence in one publication as I aim for literary journals and magazines. Some magazines have said yes to queries and essays, but many have said no. Rejection hurts, and yet it does not matter as much as I thought. I am writing what I want to write. This is the happiest I have ever been as a writer.

Linda K. Wertheimer is a veteran journalist writing a memoir about journeying through grief and getting closer to her Jewish faith. She served as education editor at The Boston Globe before leaving in the spring of 2009 to pursue two passions – spending more time with her toddler and writing her memoir and freelancing.

“Why Write?”is reprinted here with permission of the author. It first appeared on her blog, JewishMuse, where you can find more of her work. You can check out her website for more info: http://lindakwertheimer.com

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April 4, 2011 · 7:40 am

Cousins

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

Ashamed of my father’s family,
heavy accents and old European ways,
I had ignored my ancestral roots and
clinging branches that urged me to reconnect
to the shetl stories I had heard so long ago.
But when two long-lost cousins,
one a psychologist and one a rabbi –
two professions not dissimilar from each other –
invited me to their play on the Lower East Side,
where one performs and one witnesses,
I felt a gentle pull from the stage lights
back to my cultural and religious heritage with
a sudden flashback to my bubbe’s chicken soup.
Why am I attending this very Jewish play,
with dialogue in Hebrew, Yiddish and English?
The answer came with one commanding
sweep of the talis thrown over the shoulder
of one of the actors, my cousin
who now draws me back to my four year old self
when I sat with him in the summer sun
on a fire escape in Brighton Beach
and swapped childhood secrets long since forgotten.

The author of twelve books for young adults, Mel Glenn has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years.  Lately, he’s been writing poetry, and you can find his most recent poems in a new YA anthology, This Family Is Driving Me Crazy,  edited by M. Jerry Weiss.

If you’d like to learn more about his work, visit: http://www.melglenn.com/

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March 28, 2011 · 8:41 am

Logic and Imagination

by Olivia Wiznitzer (Washington Heights., NY)

Logic and imagination- oftentimes cast as two enemies, fighting one another in an attempt to secure the soul of a person. How can they possibly get along? Poets are often seen as dreamers, unable to remain rooted in the present reality, whereas lawyers are extremely real- their biting remarks and retorts sting the ears of their listeners. I seem to live in a middle plane, a place that, by rights, should not exist. I love to write, to create, and to imagine, but I also love justice. Critical analysis, which requires the incisiveness of a lawyer, and creative writing, which opens the door to alternate worlds, rest side by side in my mind. I live within the contradiction, create order from chaos. It is an existence that is wholly mine.

It was my parents who raised me to believe equally in these two seemingly dissimilar patterns of thought. From my earliest days, as a child who loved fairy-tales, the elements of both the imaginary fantasy realms and those of very rational justice were stressed. In fact, justice was demonstrated through fantasy. Hansel and Gretel needed to use their wits to survive, resourcefully resorting to dropped stones or breadcrumbs. In the end, the witch is killed, and good reigns triumphant. But the witch does not just die- no! It is Gretel who must push her into the oven.

But this intertwining of logic and imagination is not limited to the secular realms. No! It is precisely the way I live my life as a Jew.

This is best evidenced by my two greatest influences, the Ba’al Shem Tov and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik.

“What?” people often cry. “How can you do that? How can you mix the two? The Ba’al Shem Tov is the founder of Chassidism, the epitome of joy, a wild and fantastical communion with nature and God, transcendence and reaching, while the Rav is an absolute Litvak, a man who talks about bringing heaven down to earth and utilizing it here in our world, a man bound by the rules of Halakha, strict and structured, a man who emphasized the idea of commitment to and the absolute preeminence of the law!”

It is astonishing and a little sad that these same people who question me fail to take into account that their goals are the same. The Ba’al Shem Tov’s wild, joyous dancing and the Rav’s passionate, consistent dedication to the mitzvot are both ways of serving God and bringing others to serve Him, both expressions of their Divinely bestowed creativity and love for His people. Those who see Chassidism as wholly without structure are incorrect and anyone who claims the Rav had no passion or creativity is a fool. Their movements emphasized different aspects of the relationship to God; the Ba’al Shem Tov emphasized the pure and holy intention of the person while the Rav emphasized the fulfillment of a mitzvah per its Halakhic requirements. But they were nevertheless grounded in the same strong base; all things return to their great desire to serve God with love and joy.

What do I love about the Ba’al Shem Tov? I love his absolute acceptance of all Jews, no matter how learned or unlearned. I love the way he interacts with the simple people, the way he listens to them and understands them and gives them of his time. I love the way he tells his talmidim to learn from them, understands that these people have reached heights that even his students, with all their Torah study, cannot reach. I love the way in which he is shrouded in mysticism, magic, a cloak of mystery and grandeur. I love his passionate dedication to God, the way in which he began his career by teaching the little children, the way in which he went out to the forest to pray. I love his absolute understanding and certainty that there are worlds beyond this one, his ability to commune with souls and raise them to higher levels in the next world. I love the way in which he raises up souls by performing a tikkun here on earth for them or joins together two people who have come back to earth but who no longer remember one another. I love his insight, his knowledge, the humble nature in which he hid himself from the world and masked his greatness until the time came for him to be revealed, the majesty and magic in everything that he does. I love the beauty of his life, one that is so fulfilled and laden with meaning.

And what do I love about the Rav? I love his devotion, his dedication to his ideals and to his God. I love the fact that religion is a passionate experience for him even though it is rooted in a Law which can perhaps seem dry, a Law that is equally applicable to donkeys and oxen and matters of life and death. I love that for him this Law is not dry but the ultimate way in which to experience God and to come close to Him. I love the way in which he is positive and looks forward to everything that we can do better, how he focuses on “recreating the destroyed worlds” instead of lamenting over all those who have fallen. I love that he is willing to sacrifice his own name and reputation if only he is able to help others. I love that he realizes his own strengths, that he admits his own flaws, that he is human through and through. I love the way that he describes God, the way that he struggles with Him, the way that he understands the disconnect that I feel, how God is at once God of the cosmos and my own personal God, how I am at once the ruler of the earth and a tiny, insignificant dust speck. I love the way in which he defends his people, the way that he ascribes the limits and flaws of the Jews to “the circumstances which corrupted them.”

It is this above all things that I love: his love for his people.

And that is precisely where the Ba’al Shem Tov and Rabbi Soloveitchik connect; they both love their people and want to advance them, to show them a method of living that will help them, that will bring them close to God. Their methods are different but their goals are the same; one of them epitomizes homo religiosus and all that is transcendent, mystical and not easily understood by the rational mind while the other one throws himself into the text and the law, the code that was God’s gift to his people. One focuses on that which is based on the heart and the soul, the spirit, while the other works with what is real and tangible, the body. But they aim for the same goal and even help others to reach that goal.

And I? Where do I fit in?

I take from both.

I am a very peculiar person. My default setting is to dance toward everything that is imaginative. I love the midrash, aggadata, Hassidic tales, the supernatural episodes in the Torah, fairy tales and magic. I view all of this in a very calm manner because as far as I am concerned, it is all true. I have no problem envisioning the magic of Ov and Yidoni. It is very real for me. Everything grand, inexplicable, vibrant and colorful comes from the realms of the imagination, everything which cannot be easily explained. I do not “believe” in these things; I take them as a reality. This is in part based on my family; I come from Sephardim who are masters of kabbalah. My mother was taught Chumash and Kabbalah in equal measure; she will often express the most mystical ideas in a very clear, rational voice and cite her father as teaching this to her as a child. I do not take these ideas on faith; I do not find them difficult. I personally know, you see, people who are able to foretell the future, people who have dreams such as those described in the Gemara, where they are told of the hidden location of a sum of money or see a deceased relative who bears a message for them. I do not need to believe. I know.

At the same time, I understand the problems that people have with these ideas and midrashim. I understand how this can be a source of great concern for them. Our modern world has replaced magic with technology. Everything needs to be understood, taken apart and put back together with our gadget-oriented minds. If it does not make sense, there is a flaw in the argument, certainly not in me. I understand people’s hesitation when it comes to accepting the supernatural or the miraculous, their desire for everything to make logical and rational sense. I understand the need for books like Rabbi Natan Slifkin’s, which stress the scientific understanding of the world, which explain away the miraculous by citing those who read it as being allegorical. I know so many people who have been helped by these books, who are able to breathe a sigh of relief now that they understand better. And I think that is an absolutely wonderful thing. And an extremely legitimate way of life. And these books are necessary and beautiful and help reveal our world in an even more wonderful sense and they must be published and mustn’t be banned or forbidden, for if they are, then these wonderful minds that we have, these questioning and curious minds will think that there is no one like them, no one who sees things they way they do! And that could not be more of a lie.

But what I’d like to explain is that I believe both. I absolutely believe in the creation of our world in six days by a fascinating God whose spirit appears, hovering over the surface of the waters. I believe that his very words are able to separate light from darkness, that his words are powerful enough to create a world. And I also believe in and understand evolution and the fact that it took thousands to millions of years and that creatures slowly became those creatures that we see today.

And I don’t try to reconcile the two. I don’t try to squeeze the one interpretation to fit the other, to try to force evolution into the midrashic, mystical version or vice versa. Because I see no need to do so. Because for me, both ideas are legitimate and they are both true. There’s the logical explanation and the imaginative explanation and they must both exist, else the human could not exist.

For tell me, what is a human without his imagination? A dry, passionless being, devoid of color or vibrancy, unable to act in a spontaneous fashion, unable to create or to truly love anything, love without reason or limit. And what is a human without his rational mind, his logic? A foolish, ridiculous being, someone who will accept any nonsense and take it as truth, an animal perhaps, wholly instinctual in action but without any form of reason, anything that makes him question and want to know why.

Chassidism is aimed at looking at everything and seeing what is holy within it, what can be uplifted. This is the idea of raising up sparks, the idea of the kelipot. Everything in this world has a purpose and we are part of it. When I eat this chicken and make a blessing over it, I have lifted up the spirit of the chicken and helped it perform its holy and divine purpose. When I take this secular song and learn something wonderful and helpful from its lyrics, I have uplifted this song and helped it perform its purpose. We aim for transcendence. It is our souls that matter, not our bodies. People return to this world held captive by bodies that refuse to aid them, bodies that are slow or crippled or handicapped. And why? Because the soul requested a container that would not allow them to sin. They have come back to earth to rectify a particular error and do not desire to commit more sins while here.

The Rav’s approach, in contrast, is aimed at looking at everything and utilizing it for the here and now. One must focus on the material, the mundane, the very body. It is the body that must serve God, that must subscribe to halakha. Halakha rules over every part of the body. It rules over one’s appetites; we have the dietary laws, laws restricting our sexual appetites (the idea of forbidden and permitted relationships and niddah), our possessions, our money, our income. Halakha is about this world, this body, this existence. We do not bring in the ideas of former existences; we do not worry about gilguls. This world is immanent, material and necessary. All of our actions here have meaning. As he wrote, “If you desire an exoteric, democratic religiosity, get thee unto the empirical, earthly life, and the life of the body with all its two hundred forty-eight organs and three hundred sixty-five sinews. Do not turn your attention to an exalted spiritual life rooted in abstract worlds…it is not the spirit that is charged with carrying out the religious process but the physical-biological individual…” (Halakhic Man, 44).

This is the difference between aggadata and halakha. Aggada is based on the soul. It is the spiritual approach to God, based on the idea of transcendence and the desire to reach and draw close to Him. Halakha is based on the body. Halakha governs our physical needs, our bodies. It is the physical approach to God, based on the idea of immanence and the desire to create heaven on earth. One need not transcend in order to reach God; one must recreate his abode here in our beloved world. And we need both. We cannot have a religion that is wholly based on aggada; we cannot have a religion that is wholly based on halakha. It is their union, the complete and perfect whole, that represents true Judaism.

Nowadays, we have more difficulty with the idea of the imagination. People are more educated and less in tune with their emotions. We appreciate science and technology, wish to understand how things work; our gadget-oriented mind wants to dissect ideas and put them back together again. If we do not understand something, the flaw could hardly be in me; it must be in the argument presented. People do not like to be conned or tricked. Our world is not one that boasts extraordinary, wondrous and supernatural events. Magic and the miraculous seem like trickery.

And so people look down on those who still believe in the power of imagination. This is reserved for children. Only children are allowed to be imaginative, idealistic and love magic and creativity. When you grow up, you are supposed to look forward to a cold and harsh reality, a long hard slog. People think you are peculiar if you are an adult with a dream. So people don’t talk about dreams. They don’t talk about their ideas because they are afraid that you will laugh at them. The truth is that many people laugh because they are uncomfortable with the subject, and they are only uncomfortable with it because we have taught them to be this way.

People let me get away with what I think because I can still pass for a child. But I have received my share of pitying looks and hidden smiles. And it makes me sad, because it means that the adult is detached from one part of himself, alienated from the creative, original and interesting part. I just wish that people could allow themselves to be themselves, even the parts that aren’t popular at the moment.

Do you know what I see? I see a beautiful world filled with beautiful people. And some people dance more towards one side of the spectrum than the other. Some of them are invested in this physical world, in creating heaven on earth. They fulfill the law through their body; the Halakha guides them in all of their actions. And some of them are invested in the spiritual world; they follow Halakha but are more interested in the soul, in all that is transcendent and they struggle to raise us up to heaven. Each person has their particular calling and their particular way of fulfilling it and that is fine. There is no need for someone whose prime way of interacting with the world is through his intellect and his reason to suddenly attempt to live a transcendent, aggadic life. But he must acknowledge that part of his personality and realize that it exists. You cannot deny yourself.

I define myself as Modern Orthodox but I don’t know what you would actually call me. It seems to me that the Modern Orthodox movement is very concerned with things that can be quantified and explained. Evolution, mathematics, science and the like are all very important. We allow for biblical criticism and academic scholarship. Everything is very much based on reason and intellect. And I wonder where the passion went and the joy and the realization that there is magic to this as well. And I wonder what the children are being taught and whether it is all based on the logical, understandable and rational. Please don’t get me wrong. I love logic and reason. I have great respect for people who are logically able to defend a point or way of being; there is a reason that I try to figure things out. I find science to be amazing and inspiring; I am fascinated by our bodies and genetics and the progress that we have made. But I hope that the same children who are taught this very factual and scientific view of the Torah are able to experience the joy and amazement that comes through exposure to the midrash. And are not made to feel that one way of understanding is superior to the other. Because that’s not true.
They’re both necessary.

I love the Ba’al Shem Tov. And I love Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. And I see no contradiction in my two loves. Because I believe that we were always meant to live a life that couples logic and imagination, the beautiful Judaism that is an amalgam of halakha and aggadata.

Olivia Wiznitzer is a 21-year-old author and creative soul who currently resides in Washington Heights, New  York, alongside her husband, Heshy. She is in the process of obtaining her Masters in Bible from Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies and works for the Orthodox Union in the capacity of Associate Program Director at OU Alumni Connections.

“Logic & Imagination” is kindly reprinted with permission of the author. It first appeared on her blog, The Curious Jew (http://curiousjew.blogspot.com/).

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