Category Archives: Jewish identity

August 15, 2011 · 6:47 am

Beaming on the Bima

By Lesléa Newman (Holyoke, MA)

When I enrolled in my synagogue’s two-year adult B’nai Mitzvah class, I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that eventually I’d have to stand up on the bima in front of the entire congregation and lead them in prayer. But I didn’t believe that would ever really happen.

It came about sooner than I expected.

The class began in October with basic Hebrew lessons. Of the ten of us, all women ranging in age from mid-thirties to early sixties, only one of us had a solid Hebrew background. As a child, I was exempt from Hebrew school because I was a girl, and my brothers envied me. As an adult, I envied my brothers and their ability to sit in shul on a Saturday morning and actually comprehend the service.

Two years before the B’nai Mitzvah class began, embarrassed by my ignorance, I took a “Hebrew Marathon” which is something my temple offers every year before the High Holy Days. This eight hour course, given all in one day, starts with the assumption that many of us already know some Hebrew words. Most of us have read the word “kosher” written in Hebrew letters on the side of matzo boxes during Passover every year of our lives and seen the word “shalom” written in Hebrew on countless Rosh Hashanah cards. The Hebrew marathon gently builds on this knowledge and introduces participants to the entire Hebrew alphabet.

After the marathon ended, I took a ten week follow-up course, and now, in the B’nai Mitzvah class, I was learning the basic rules of Biblical Hebrew grammar. It was thrilling and mind-boggling at the same time. My classmates and I quickly learned that Hebrew resembles English as much as a matzo ball resembles a slice of watermelon, and eventually we stopped asking, “Why?” whenever a new grammatical concept was introduced along with the one or two or twenty exceptions that went along with it.

After studying Hebrew for several months with an excellent teacher who pronounced our vocabulary words in a charming British accent, we began a new course of study with a new teacher. We began to really look at the Saturday morning service and learn the different components of it. What does the Torah service consist of? What is Musaf? Now that we could read, or at least stumble along somewhat, Teacher Number Two helped us learn the “choreography of the service,” as she put it. She taught us when to sit, when to stand, when to bend at the knee and when to bow.  Each class ended with her thanking us. “It was a pleasure davening with you this morning,” she’d say, despite the fact that the majority of us could barely carry a tune.

And then it was May.

Teacher Number Three took over the class, and began by handing around a sign-up sheet. On this piece of paper, we were to put our names next to a date: a Saturday morning in July or August. We did what we were told and when the sheet made its way back to our teacher, she calmly announced that on the week each of us had just signed up for, we would be chanting a Haftorah portion during Shabbat services.

Pandemonium broke out.

“There’s no way…”

“We weren’t told…”

“I thought we had another year…”

Though we were a group of (supposedly) mature adults, we were acting like a class of junior high students whose teacher had just announced a surprise quiz. I half-expected someone to stamp her foot and yell “That’s not fair!” but no one did. We were all too busy panicking.

Now my class is hardly a group of slackers. There is a doctor, a social worker and a college professor among us. There is even a woman who makes her living as a public speaker (that would be me). But clearly the thought of singing Haftorah in public filled each of us with sheer terror.

Our fearless leader assured us that we would all “get it” and it was her job to make sure of that. She told us no one steps up to the bima unprepared. “There’s always a first time,” I mumbled. Then I tried to comfort myself with the knowledge that I was only chanting one-fourth of a Haftorah portion, so I’d be up on the bima with three of my classmates. Plus, my portion was only four-and-a-half minutes long. And furthermore, thousands of twelve and thirteen year-olds had learned to chant Haftorah before me. If those little pishers could do it, how hard could it be?

Don’t ask.

The second week of class, our teacher handed out our Haftorah portions. Each of us were also given a box of Highlighters: blue, pink, orange, yellow, purple and green. If we had acted like junior high school students the week before, now we regressed into elementary school children, as playful fights broke out over who got a purple box and who got a pink one.

Once we had settled down, our teacher explained the concept of trope marks. Every word was accompanied by one trope mark. Of course, this being Hebrew, in some cases a word had two trope marks. (Why? Don’t ask.) Each trope mark stands for a melody. Some trope marks appear over their Hebrew words. Others appear under, in and among the dots that stand for vowels. They have different shapes: one looks like a diamond, one looks like an apostrophe mark, and a third—my favorite—looks like a chicken bone. Trope marks also come in groups. Each group is assigned a color. Our assignment was to look at each word of our portion, find the trope mark, figure out what color group it belonged to and color it accordingly. And of course some trope marks share the same name but appear in different groups and carry different melodies. If this sounds confusing, it is.

It only gets worse.

After the Haftorah portion is appropriately marked by color, we each had to learn to sing our part. This involved reading the Hebrew words, which by the way were printed in some fancy-shmancy font none of us had ever seen before, memorizing the tune that each trope mark represented, and putting it all together. Our teacher sent us home with a sheet of paper that translated the trope marks into notes, which helped only those of us who could read music. She also gave each of us a tape. The tape did not contain our individual trope portions; that would come later. No, this first tape contained the names of the trope marks, grouped together and sung to the melody they represented. After each grouping was sung, there would be a pause on the tape so the line of melody could be repeated. (Remember “ecoutez et repetez” from high school French class?)

Have I mentioned that I’m tone deaf?

Obediently I took my tape home, popped it into my Walkman, and immediately burst into tears. When I caught my breath, I phoned my teacher.

“I can’t.” I gulped down the sobs that were threatening to erupt again. “I’m really sorry, but I’m just not capable of doing this, and I think it would be better for me to drop out now so you can find someone else to fill my slot on July 24th and…”

My teacher interrupted my babbling with exactly four words: “You’re not dropping out.”

When I arrived at the synagogue for the third meeting of our Haftorah class, I learned that I wasn’t the only one who’d had a meltdown during the week. The self-doubt in the room was so thick, you could have spread it on a piece of challah. One woman pinpointed the problem. “I don’t even know how to attack this,” she said. “Should I try to learn all the Hebrew first? Should I color in all the trope marks? Should I listen to the tape over and over? How should I learn?”

We all leaned forward eager to hear our teacher’s reply. Master of the four-word response, she smiled and said, “You’ll find your way.”

Back home, my spouse who is quite musical, volunteered to help me by playing the trope melodies on a portable keyboard and listening to my attempts to recreate them. Now despite my years of singing “Don’t Rain On My Parade” in the shower pretending I’m Barbra Streisand, whom I really sound like is The Nanny’s Fran Drescher. With a frog in her throat. And my spouse, poor thing, has perfect pitch. Night after night I serenaded my family, trying my hardest to stay in tune.

“How did that sound?” I asked my spouse one particular evening when I thought I did rather well.

“You changed keys three times on that line.”

I was impressed. “Only three times?” I said.  “I must be improving.”

The following week was June which meant that July was just around the corner. And something finally clicked. I remembered that a writing teacher of mine had once advised me to study another art form, any art form other than writing. I was crushed. Obviously my teacher thought I had no talent.

But that wasn’t the case. “It’s a good way to learn how you learn,” he said and he was right. I chose to study karate, having no attachment to how good a karate student I would become. In fact, I knew I’d be a slow learner as I’ve never been physically inclined. The first time I saw my sensei perform the kata, or series of choreographed punches, blocks and kicks that each white belt had to learn, I knew I’d never master it. (I probably cried then, too.) But I did master it. I practiced every single day. And I didn’t go on to move #2 until I had completely mastered move #1. Which took a very long time.

I arrived at our fourth class with one phrase under my belt. From here on in, class time would be devoted to hearing each of us sing by ourselves as much of our Haftorah portion as we had managed to learn. Before each “performance” our teacher allowed us two minutes of what we came to call therapy. To the untrained ear it would appear that each of us were eager to share our learning process with our classmates. In truth—at least in my case—this was merely a stalling tactic.

When my turn came, I told my Haftorah comrades how scary it was for me to sing in front of them. “I’d rather write a five-hundred page book,” I told them, which, though I am a seasoned writer is a terrifying undertaking. I also told the class the dream I’d had the night before: I opened a brand new copy of my latest novel and each word was accompanied by a trope mark which had to be color-coded! When the laughter died down, I took a deep breath and sang the two words I had managed to learn. When I was finished, I felt proud as if I’d performed an aria from Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera House. My teacher could not have been more pleased.

As the weeks passed, each student’s classroom solo grew longer in length. Each student also had to face her own demons. One woman felt confident about her singing but had fears about her ability to read Hebrew. Another woman read Hebrew easily but was self-conscious about her singing. I had serious doubts about my ability to read Hebrew and my singing, but nevertheless I forged ahead. (I also decided that I was not going to sing my Haftorah, I was going to chant it, which seemed much less intimidating.)

Since practice makes perfect, I practiced my portion every single day. The weekend before my big debut, I packed my tape and color-coded Haftorah portion and traveled to Colorado to teach a writing retreat being held at a convent. There, at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains among the deer, the writers and the Poor Sisters of Saint Frances Seraph of the Perpetual Adoration, I had another dream: my friend Victor who had died of AIDS  when he was 51 and who hadn’t set foot inside a synagogue since his Bar Mitzvah, sat beside me and, with infinite patience and love, helped me sound out the Hebrew words. I took enormous comfort from the fact that Victor had come all the way down from Heaven to give me his blessing.

And then the big day came.

As is my habit, I focused my anxiety on the all-important decision of what to wear. Pants or skirt? Glasses or contact lenses? Hair loose or swept back? I got myself together and did a last minute check in the mirror. Even though I looked okay, something was missing. What was it? In a flash, I knew: my Bubbe’s gold watch which I only wore once a year, on the High Holy Days. My grandfather, whom I had never met but was named for, gave the watch to my grandmother as a Mother’s Day gift from the children—my mother and two uncles—long before I was born, and I do not remember ever seeing her without it. I fastened the timepiece around my wrist, wound it up, and raised it to my ear to hear its tick. Now I was ready to make my way to the synagogue. Once there, I took my seat with the other three members of my Haftorah group and the service began. There up on the bima, leading the opening prayers, was one of my former karate teachers! I took this as a sign that everything would be okay.

And it was.

My group of four climbed the steps to the bima at the appropriate time. Our teacher, who coincidentally was wearing the same outfit as I was—a pink blouse and black slacks—stood beside us, ready to provide a prompt if necessary. I looked out at the congregation and caught sight of my spouse sitting with my best friend. In front of them was my Hebrew teacher, near a dear friend who has known me since the year I graduated from college. I am a regular at our shul’s Sisterhood meetings, and many of my “sisters” were sitting on the pews as well. Everyone’s face was awash with kindness.

I did not chant my Haftorah portion. I opened my mouth and sang those ancient Hebrew words with all the passion I could muster. When the last member of our group was done, our teacher sang the blessing after the Haftorah in her beautiful, melodious voice. When she was finished, my group started moving off the bima to take our seats but our teacher stopped us. She had us stand there while she told the congregation that it was our first time on the bima and how proud of us she was. A spontaneous chorus of “Simen Tov und Mazel Tov” broke out. I grasped hands with two members of my group and cried. And beamed.

After my Hebrew teacher gave the D’var Torah and one of my classmate’s daughters led the Musaf service, I retired to the social hall with my spouse and my friends for the kiddish. There I was hugged, kissed, and kvelled over. By the end of the morning, my face literally hurt from smiling so much.

Right before I left the synagogue, my Haftorah teacher gave me a hug. “See you in the fall,” she said. “We’ll be studying Torah trope in September. It’s a bit different from Hatftorah troupe, but I think you’ll manage it.”

Sure, I thought. Piece of (honey) cake.

Lesléa Newman is the author of the novel, The Reluctant Daughter; the short story collection, A Letter to Harvey Milk; the poetry collection, Still Life with Buddy, and the children’s book, Heather Has Two Mommies.  You can visit her website to learn more about her work: www.lesleanewman.com

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August 8, 2011 · 7:58 am

My Father Is Dying

by David Merkler (Barcelona, Spain)

My father is dying and I don’t know how to handle it. My father is dying and I don’t believe in G-d. My father is dying and I’m having difficulty seeing justice in the world.

My father was born in Budapest on 6th January 1933. On the 30th January Hitler came to power. I was born on the outskirts of London, and raised in a very comfortable middle-class neighbourhood of London, but I am a Hungarian Jew. A Hungarian Jew who doesn’t speak Hungarian and has hardly visited the country, but my temperament and spirit are there in eastern Europe on the banks of the Danube. We grew up without knowing anything about the Holocaust. The only thing I knew was that my Uncle and Grandfather had died in the war. The details were sketchy, but I knew I was afraid of Germans. We had a beautiful house, a 3 storey detached house, but nothing in it. All my friends were surprised. When they came to visit us, our million pound house was furnished with sticks of furniture and second hand items. Even we children were clothed in second hand garments. Other memories stay with me. I marveled as my father would “weld” spent bars of soap onto new bars of freshly opened soap. How did he do it? What was the trick? The trick was not to waste anything. And food, of course. Nothing could be thrown away. I sat at the dinner table until my food was finished. I didn’t like the food. Hard luck. I sat at the table for half an hour or longer after dinner had finished until my plate was empty. Rules of the house.

And looking back on this regime, I finally began to understand what had been happening when I was well into my thirties. We were always in a ready state to move, to flee the country. What if the Hungarian Fascists (the Arrow Cross) took over the leafy Wimbledon suburbs of London? What if Eichmann marched in again on March 19 with a contingent of SS? You could never be too safe. If they came, we wouldn’t wait around this time. Sell the house and on to the next country, wherever that would take us.

My father is dying and I can’t understand why. If G-d exists, surely the survivors should be allowed to continue surviving. If virtually my entire father’s family was murdered, worked to death, died of starvation in the Budapest ghetto or committed suicide, then my father must have been a statistical mistake. (Correction: my father stated that, in fact, most of those who died in the ghetto died of thirst. Nuances of an agonizing death. What would you prefer? Starvation or dying of thirst?) Yes, by 1944 they knew where they were going. They weren’t going to be resettled in those exquisite cattle trucks or forcibly marched on a school excursion. So my great great uncle Sandor Feuermann and his wife Mitzi committed suicide. They chose to cheat the hangmen in their own way.

I have just read Suzanna Eibuszyc [http://tinyurl.com/3rl2ktf]. She states “that in every survivor’s family, one child is unconsciously chosen to be a ‘memorial candle,’ to carry on the mourning and to dedicate his or her life to the memory of the Shoah.” So now I understand why I was placed on this earth. My Argentinian born psychologist has told me to try to learn to “bear” the burden and not “suffer” the burden. Semantically it makes sense, but in practise? I walk down Barcelona’s sunny streets and I cry. I cry every week and sometimes every day for the 16 victims of my grandmother’s family (direct and in-laws) and for all the Merklers who were deported from Batya and Kalosca. All German speakers at some stage with German surnames. Feuermann, Haas, Merkler, Glück. My 8 year old son Alexander asks me: If we have a German surname, why did the Germans kill the Jews? Answers on postcard please addressed to Alexander Merkler, aged 8, Gelida, Barcelona, Spain.

My father is dying and probably the only person who cares is me. I am such an egoist. My link with the old country, the old language, with a witness to the atrocities of another age, is leaving me. My father’s memories are the memories of a child survivor. The shame of having to put on the star of David, the shame of being called a filthy Jew, the guilt of remembering stealing bread from a woman at night in the ghetto, the excitement of watching films though a crack in the wall at a cinema where Jews weren’t allowed to go. My father is dying. Hungary paid USD 50 to my father in compensation for the murder of his brother and USD 80 for the murder of his father. They recognized their collaboration with the Germans in the murder of the Jews. Post-communist Hungary didn’t have much money to pay out. Keep your money. It doesn’t help.

As I grow up, my father shares more and more information about what actually happened. When his mother dies, he delves back into the past, divorces my mother, marries a Hungarian woman with a large family and starts research work on his family. The work is gleaned into a book. A tribute to that lost lifestyle and those who lost their lives. I am educated in details of the Holocaust that most people will never know about. Hungary was the last country whose Jewish population was exterminated and Budapest the last city to be “cleansed,” but they didn’t have time to finish the job, not quite. They murdered my grandfather in March 1945, they murdered my uncle in April/May 1945, but they couldn’t destroy all the evidence this time, the personal possessions, the photos, the intervention of the neutral powers, the liberating forces. My father was liberated by the Soviets. My uncle? Did he pass away before or after Gunskirchen camp was liberated by US forces? Did he breathe a moment of freedom before passing away at 16? Peter murdered at the age of 16 far from home, far from his parents. G-d doesn’t exist. I am telling you G-d doesn’t exist. Stop praying. To put it in my grandmother’s words. “When you are dead, you are rotting meat.” And she knew what she was talking about.

My grandmother died in 1984 at the age of 80. We visited her house every Saturday until I went to University. I don’t know how she bore the burden. She lost her husband, her elder son, her sister, her nephew and her best friend, but she was unrelentingly tough. Her pain was everywhere, but she was so strong. When she finally decided the time had come to end it all, she decided to take an overdose of sleeping pills. We found her on the floor of her kitchen on several occasions still conscious. She was simply too physically tough. Her body wouldn’t obey her and give in. My father wants to be buried with his mother. She is his hero. She had escaped to Britain. She enlisted in the US Army, worked as a translator translating correspondence going into and out of Germany for the Americans in their efforts to catch Nazis at the end of the war. My grandmother went into communist occupied Hungary, found my father in an orphanage, bribed the Soviet border guards and took him out. Only 3000 DPs (the initials of that pleasant British euphemism stand for Displaced Persons) or Jewish survivors were allowed into Britain because the British were quite sick of the “Yids” at this stage blowing up their troops and the like in British Mandated Palestine.

So I discover I am a minority three times. I am a Jew. My father is an immigrant, whereas almost all the Yids I know in Britain are second generation, and, finally, I discover that my father Andrew (in fact András) had had the gall to cheat death and was placed in a Swiss safe house towards the end of the war. So what does that make me? My mother’s family were from the Russian empire and my father’s family from the Austro-Hungarian empire. Simple, but according to the new map of Europe I am a Hungarian, Slovakian, Polish, Bielorussian Jew with a German surname born in England living in Spain. My father told me more recently that we are ethnic Germans because the first Merklers came down the Danube from Germany to Hungary in the 17th century. Tracing back through my paternal grandmother’s line, we have changed mother tongue four times in five generations from German to Hungarian to English to Spanish/Catalan. Motke always said, “More Askenazi than David isn’t possible.”

My father is dying and doesn’t know where he wants to be buried. A very untypical dilemma. Should he be buried in Budapest’s Jewish cemetery where we have plots purchased for life or death (or until the next Holocaust when it is decided to dig up the remains of the Jews and burn their bones as there aren’t enough Jews alive to murder in Europe any more), or should he be buried with his mother on the outskirts of London? The only problem is that the London burial plot has to be renewed after 40 years, and will I take care of his grave if I am living in Spain? Or maybe he should be buried in Spain? So my father discusses the options over the phone coming to the conclusion that he should have his mother dug up and buried with him in Budapest or Barcelona. Sounds like a sight-seeing tour of Europe. Where shall we go–London, Budapest or Barcelona? But in this case it’s deadly serious.

My scars will never go away and I wasn’t even there, but I feel I was there. My family were murdered and I know all the details of their last moments because of testimonies, because of my father’s work, historical records, because I have their photos, even passports, even personal possessions. My father went to Kalosca. The main employer of Kalosca was Merkler Lajos, and his paprika mill was the biggest in Hungary. When they came to take him away, nobody cared that he had created more employment and wealth for everybody in that town or that he was married to a non-Jew. They took him away with the other Jews and they pillaged and stole everything. My father visited the town several years ago. When they discovered he was a Merkler, one of the old men returned to him an ivory letter opener without saying  a word. A symbol of opulence in the 1940s when not everybody could afford such an item. The guilt had got to him and he wanted to return the stolen goods 60 years later. I have the letter opener in my study. Another scar, but this time visible.

My father is dying and the doctors don’t know what he’s got. He’s been sweating at night for a year and has lost 10kg (22lbs). The symptoms are the same he had after the war when he contracted tuberculosis. Tuberculosis, the disease of the ghettos, thriving on overcrowded, unsanitary living conditions, attacking the undernourished whose defenses are weak. The virus stays dormant in your body and as your defenses get weaker it gets stronger. My grandmother died at 80. My father will be 79 next January 2012.

So you see Hitler will finally get what he wants. Another Jewish corpse will be added to the Jewish graveyard called Europe.

David Merkler wrote this piece in between managing two small businesses, one a language school, the other a remodeling business. He was born and grew up in London, England  and now lives in Gelida, outside Barcelona, Spain, with his partner, Valeria. He has two sons, Joel and Alexander, from his first marriage. You can reach him at davidmerkler@languagesbarcelona.com

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August 1, 2011 · 7:00 am

Ellis Island

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

i

Hi, Dad.
Today I discovered the manifest
of the ship you sailed on
when you crossed the Atlantic alone
and arrived in New York, November 7, 1923.
The basic facts jump off the computer screen:
Age 18, single, male, brown hair,
$40 in your pocket and a
second class ticket in your hand.
Name of vessel – the “Polonia”
Ethnicity – Hebrew, Lithuanian
Port of Departure – Libau
But the pages before my eyes
say little how you felt
passing the Statue of Liberty,
said nothing of your dreams and fears.
Were you excited? Scared? Or both?
What words did you reserve
for your running thoughts then?
What words do you have for me now?

ii

You never told me tales of your youth,
except to say how hard life was,
and how you had to go without.
You never told me lessons you learned,
or what private words your parents presented,
and if they gave you blessing to cross the sea.
You never told me at the end of your life
what conclusions you had drawn
or whether you’d be leaving the world at peace.
I suspect you didn’t.
I suspect you withheld large portions of your years
that were to remain completely unopened.
Perhaps if I had known you better,
and did not gather information
off a ship’s manifest, it might have
made a difference, then again, perhaps not.
I do wish your life hadn’t been
such a Cracker Jack’s surprise box,
as I hope the airing of this and other poems
won’t be such a revelation to my own children.

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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July 25, 2011 · 7:56 am

Meditation and Organic Torah: The Missing Link

by Natan Margalit (Newton, MA)

“Narcissistic navel gazing” was an accusation thrown around a lot when meditation and other forms of spiritual practice started making inroads into Jewish communities a couple of decades ago. Now, a lot of us meditate, and far from taking Jews away from the traditional Jewish emphasis on community, tzedakkah, and social justice, Jewish meditation has greatly enriched our lives.

And yet, anyone who meditates knows that it often is a struggle to connect our spiritual practice with the rest of our lives. I try to meditate in the morning. Actually, I do my own combination of davenning (Jewish prayer) and meditation. It usually isn’t a transcendent experience, but it can get me to slow down, feel my body, breathe, accept myself for a few moments before I start rushing around trying to solve my problems — or the world’s. On a good day, I get a feeling of something that, on reflection, I might call presence, or even Presence. But all that quickly gets swept away once I come downstairs and face the music: The kids need to get to school on time but Nadav won’t put on his clothes and Eiden wants to play baby dinosaur. I’d love to play with them but instead I’m aggravated because I need to rush them off to school and myself off to work. Maybe it’s just the dynamic rhythm of life: a time to meditate, a time to dress the kids, a time to make a living — to everything there is a season.

But I think that’s not the whole story.

We live in a society and economy that kills Presence more than it needs to. Let me go on with more tales of my mornings: some mornings after I come downstairs I can escape the chaos in the house for a moment by doing one of my favorite chores: taking out the compost. Putting the compost on the pile and covering it up with dry grass clippings, I take note of how it’s doing. It’s like cooking — is there too much liquid, or is it too dry? How does it smell? Like rich, plant-nourishing compost or still yucky? I’m checking its progress from last week’s rotting food scraps to fertilizer for our garden, and in a couple months, more veggies for our table. It’s a mundane but also magical cycle that always amazes me. And it reminds me of what most people say when they are asked where they feel spiritually connected: “in nature.” And it’s true. There is something about the patterns of nature that inexplicably affects our consciousness. Perhaps it’s that everything is connected and nothing is wasted. Nature is a set of cycles and patterns that bring us back to Presence and the Oneness beneath all existence. So composting can feel like a continuation of my meditation.

But, most people don’t compost. The default in our society is tossing it. Out of sight and out of mind. And it does something to our spirit as well as the world when we cut off our minds from the natural cycles. Go to YouTube (or the sidebar of the Organic Torah blog) and check out the short video The Story of Stuff. It powerfully illustrates how our economy is all about a linear fantasy that we can take all the resources we want from somewhere, use them up and dump the waste into an infinite somewhere else. This is the Industrial Age worldview that gets us to rush around in work schedules more suited to machines than to people. Family and community take a back seat to production and GDP.

When I compost valuable organic matter (last night’s dinner scraps) instead of tossing “waste” I’m also keeping a bit of Presence in my life. It not only helps reduce the size of the landfill, but it also expands the breath of my soul. OK, but beyond composting, how can we connect more to Presence in our work and daily lives? Where can we start shifting the structure of our lives to include more natural patterns?

I get at least part of the answer when I do my combination davenning/meditation in the morning. When I think of patterns in daily community life, I think of a little quote from the Babylonian Talmud (Shabbat 127a) that comes right near the beginning of the daily morning blessings. “These are the things of which a person eats their fruit (the yield, or reward) in this world, and the principle (Hebrew: keren, horn) remains for him/her into eternity: honoring father and mother, acts of loving kindness, arriving early to the study house in the morning and evening, welcoming guests, visiting the sick, supporting (a poor) bride, attending to the dead, concentration in prayer, making peace between people. And the study of torah is equal to them all.”

The daily rhythm of saying these words (and the Hebrew does have a beautiful, poetic rhythm to it) reinforces actions that we as individuals can do to strengthen the natural rhythms and patterns of community. The seemingly mundane actions mentioned in the Talmud — honoring parents, visiting the sick, helping out at a wedding, or welcoming guests — recognize the patterns of communal life. These actions, and actions like composting, strengthen those patterns at their most vulnerable and fragile points: the relationship between generations, the cycles of birth and death, and the easily frayed fabric of community. Underlying and emerging from all these actions is the torah. It is “equal to them all” because it enables us to reflect on them together as one interlocking whole. The Sages said about the torah: “turn it and turn it, for all is in it,” because the torah is but another level of the weave of life in which nothing is wasted.

We can do a better job of connecting our meditation and spiritual practice to our daily lives, but we have to realize that the cards are stacked against us. The dominant culture and economy are still operating on a mechanical model that keeps us running away from Presence, away from the patterns that lead us to the One. In order to spread that sense of Presence beyond the sitting cushion and throughout our lives we need a more organic model of daily life. For that, the (organic) torah is a good place to start.

Natan Margalit was raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, studied Anthropology at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, made aliya, and studied for many years in Israeli yeshivot. He received rabbinic ordination at The Jerusalem Seminary in 1990 and earned a Ph.D.  in Talmud from U.C. Berkeley in 2001.  He has held teaching positions at Bard College , the Reconstuctionist Rabbinical College and the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College in Boston.
Natan is Director of Oraita, a program of continuing education for rabbis of Hebrew College , as well as spiritual leader of The Greater Washington Coalition for Jewish Life, in Western Connecticut .  He is President of Organic Torah, inc. a non-profit organization which fosters holistic thinking about Judaism, environment and society. He has written and taught for many years on Judaism and the environment, innovative approaches to Jewish texts, Jewish mysticism and spirituality, and gender and Judaism. He lives in Newton, MA with his wife Ilana and sons, Nadav and Eiden.
This piece first appeared on Organic Torah’s website (http://organictorah.org/) and is reprinted here with the kind permission of the author.
 

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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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