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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March 21, 2011 · 7:57 am

And on the Other 364 Days

by Janet Ruth Falon (Elkins Park, PA)

It’s all fine
and well
to stand up against oppression
when you’re wearing a costume
and alcohol has made you more yourself,
or maybe less so,
but for the other 364 days
you are commanded
— by The Book of What’s Right,
which all religions subscribe to —
to stand up against oppression
in your everyday clothes
and your sobriety
when you’re clear-headed
— and -hearted —
and can recognize the difference
between who should be blessed
and who should be cursed,
and to skim off Purim’s skin of hysteria
— like fat globules on soup —
and see the persecution that simmers, still, underneath.

Janet Ruth Falon, the author of The Jewish Journaling Book (Jewish Lights, 2004), teaches a variety of writing classes — including journaling and creative expression — at many places, including the University of Pennsylvania.  She leads a non-fiction writing group and works with individual students, and is continuing to write Jewish-themed readings for what she hopes will become a book, In the Spirit of the Holidays.

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March 14, 2011 · 8:22 am

A Life

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

It’s possible to miniaturize my essence
by examining the contents of my
desk drawer filled with junk.
To wit: writing notebooks, bank statements,
Swiss Army knife, business cards,
glasses case, stamps, address book –
a life residing in a box before the
end of life in a bigger box.
Perhaps God is looking at His junk drawer
deciding how to arrange all the scattered
people and things collected over the eons.
Maybe he should just leave the box alone,
let the contents shift for themselves,
or maybe he should wash away
the whole drawer and start life anew.
In His cleaning and arranging,
and in mine, we both like
to make order out of cosmic chaos.

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 7, 2011 · 8:59 am

Barriers to Breaking Bread

by Pamela Jay Gottfried (Atlanta, GA)

There was a flurry of emails — back and forth, over several days– with the host insisting that nothing was too much trouble.  She wrote, “I make menu changes for everyone. I once had a dinner with 7 major religions and 2 extreme allergies.  No one died or had to go to confession afterward. What can’t you eat?” I thought that my response was clear, but I discovered later that it was not explicit enough.

You see, I keep kosher and I adhere to pretty strict rules within the system of Kashrut, the Jewish dietary laws that originate in the Hebrew Bible as part of a holiness code.  Their original context is important: this code created definitive boundaries for eating, along with other daily activities, to draw a distinction between the Israelites and their neighbors.  The earliest Jews were not permitted to break bread with “others,” the inhabitants of the land, whose practices and customs were different and deemed — in many cases– abhorrent.

Kashrut is not necessarily about eating a healthy diet, which I also strive to do. But like my healthy diet, it does restrict me from eating certain foods altogether, eating some foods together with others, and eating certain foods at certain times.  This system of eating gives my everyday life tremendous meaning, as it helps govern my food choices.  At the same time, it also affects where and with whom I can eat.

The night of the dinner meeting I arrived a few minutes early, the Imam walking in just after me and the Pastor, and the Pastor’s wife. The host led us all into the kitchen, letting me and the Imam know immediately that she had cooked the beef roast before the pork roast, using different utensils.  The Imam, a generally easy-going fellow, smiled and thanked her.  The rabbi, a more intense personality, felt a panic triggered in the brain begin to seep into her stomach.

Softly, but deeply, I exhaled a long and steady breath.  The nausea subsided.  I told my host that I couldn’t eat the meat, only salad and vegetables.  I explained that although she had gone to the trouble of using separate utensils, the meat itself was not kosher, not ritually slaughtered.  I thought to myself that I was already bending the rules by eating rice and vegetables cooked in her non-kosher kitchen, but I didn’t get into those particulars with her. I had made a conscious decision to enjoy a meal of fellowship with others, whom I no longer considered to be “others.” I had chosen to compromise my personal observance of ritual law in pursuit of fulfilling an ethical imperative to love my neighbors.

In the face of such warm hospitality and genuine friendship, Kashrut seemed to me exposed as a divisive barrier to establishing community, rather than an enlightening channel to practicing holiness. I exhaled gently a second time, smiled and complimented my host for preparing a bountiful array of side dishes in the manner of a true Jewish mother.  The Imam led us in a prayer, in the kitchen, inviting God’s grace to our gathering. My Lutheran sister poured me a glass of wine, and invited us all to the table, where we sat down to break bread.

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.

You can read more of her work on her blog, Pamela’s Pekele (http://rabbipjg.blogspot.com/), where this piece first appeared. It’s reprinted here with the author’s kind permission.

And for more information about Gottfried, visit her website: http://www.pamelagottfried.com/

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February 28, 2011 · 8:46 am

Sanctify (Veyakhel-Pekudei)

by Janet Ruth Falon (Elkins Park, PA)

God, that very exacting architect, tells us seven times
What we need to build a Mishkan –
The skins, the acacia wood, the stones
The gold, the oils, the lapis lazuli —
And post by post,
Socket by socket,
Loop by loop,
How exactly to put it together
Or risk unspoken but surely imagined repercussions
(not the least of which might be a volcano or tsunami
that would force us to start from the ground up
and go searching, again, for copper and silver, etcetera).

And each one of those seven times
that we’re told about building that Mishkan
God, that very exacting fashionista,
Tells us what to use to make the clothes for the priests –
The yarns, the chains, the linens,
the agate and crystal and sapphires —
And braid by braid,
Sash by sash,
Hem by hem,
How exactly to put it together

All of which makes me feel a whole lot better
About how much I like jewelry.
Really.

And I’m not talking diamonds, by the way.

(I also have a many-color jacket I call Joseph
As in, “I think I’ll wear Joseph today.”)

So.

I like the idea of adorning myself
Not so much because I’m such a beauty
(although my husband thinks I am – and,
no surprise here, I have my own body-image issues,
just like almost every other woman I know)

No, I like the idea of adorning myself
(And I just realized that if you get rid of the “n”
you’re left with adoring and,
no surprise here, I don’t always feel so great about myself
just like almost every other person I know)

I like adorning myself
Because, as they tell me, I’m made in God’s image
And when I imagine Her I no longer see
That severe old man who looks like Santa without his suit
Wrapped, instead, in a white sheet
That billows in the wind like a March in-like-a-lion afternoon

Instead, I see someone tall and elegant
Like the Statue of Liberty if she softened into flesh
with silver hair and lots of silver jewelry
that shimmers by sun and glows by moon,
decorated with stones that breed in earth’s belly.
She’d have what people call “bearing”
She’d be what people call a handsome woman

So to sum all this up,
if I look like God
And God is a looker,
Who cares, apparently, about appearances,
Lord knows I’d better look good.

Janet Ruth Falon, the author of The Jewish Journaling Book (Jewish Lights, 2004), teaches a variety of writing classes — including journaling and creative expression — at many places, including the University of Pennsylvania.  She leads a non-fiction writing group and works with individual students, and is continuing to write Jewish-themed readings for what she hopes will become a book, In the Spirit of the Holidays.

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February 21, 2011 · 9:58 am

Unlikely Pair

by Chaim Weinstein (Brooklyn, NY)

I don’t dare stare at this Yiddish-speaking pair;
I eavesdrop instead, not nice, but life’s tough,
Waiting here in the cold for the 44 bus.
One, white-stubbled, stooped, bushy-browed
The other, nine, scrawny, short-limbed, pale,
Under black velvet cap long sidecurls twist,
Tsitsis turned yellow beneath his vest,
Like an old book’s pages, brittle beliefs,
Each a symbol centuries in his time.
Rough sage stares at Sidecurls’ gash;
Young boy shrugs, evasive eyes.

Old man nods, tells his tale right there:
An old Riga field, survived a bomb blast,
Head ringing, a brief deaf-mute;
About, blurry lines of white lab coats,
Dying to know it, fight his fate, stand his ground.
Doctor’s voice icy now, pierces his ears:
“We’ll amp this gangrene leg in his sleep.”
Adrenalin-lava explodes to his gurgly, “Nein!”
Blue veins in taut neck thicken, loudest, “Nein!”
Docs stop dead in their muddy tracks to hear,
Mouths clamp shut as he cries out loud
Moaning heart, Shema-tongued, mouth unstilled,
So Jew-like, he survives himself alive again.

“Now, Yingeleh,” hoary one says,
“Take care of your boychik self,
And don’t take no klops from hate-filled goys,
Gedenk: we Yidden give smacks, don’t take ‘em.”
With that he hobbles into coldest night,
Leaves sadness on the sweet young face.

The little boy, guideless, sighs, confused:
Torah-seeking, no-wave-making Jew,
Or Stubbled, injustice-smashing proud one?
Ovens and gas and beatings
Now a throbbing memory in each
Like an elusive melody
Dares us to remember
Dares us to forget.

Chaim Weinstein taught English for more than thirty years at two inner-city junior high schools in Brooklyn, NY. Two of his poems, “The Shul is Dark” and “Mr Blumen,” appeared last year on The Jewish Writing Project, and an early short story, “Ball Games and Things,” was published in Brooklyn College’s literary magazine, Nocturne. He is currently working in several genres and is hoping to  share a larger selection of his work in the future.

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February 14, 2011 · 9:04 am

Believing in God

by Jennifer Singer (Sarasota, FL)

Had an interesting conversation today with my friend Geoff Huntting, aka Rabbi Huntting.  We were commenting on the conundrum of not believing in God and yet being comforted by God-talk.  I’m always happy to talk to a like-minded person who isn’t uncomfortable with the seeming contradiction this poses.

It reminds me of a comment by my teacher at JTS (Jewish Theological Seminary), Rabbi Neil Gillman, who said that he is capable of being a rational Columbia University professor on Tuesday morning, and then feeling like he’s standing at Sinai with the Children of Israel on Saturday morning.

Note that I’ve now cited not one but two rabbis.  Thus, I hope, strengthening my case that it’s okay to have a complicated relationship with God and with God-talk.  If you ask me whether I believe in God, the answer will always be “no.”  But if you ask me if I’m comfortable with prayer that talks directly to God, or anthropomorphizes God, the answer is “yes.”

My friend Randi Brodsky (not a rabbi, but she is a physician so that should count for something) commented on my recent post called My Lucky Day (http://srqjew.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/my-lucky-day/), and said something very profound:

“Seems silly that I will ascribe good things that happen to me to God, but dumb things I will ascribe to bad luck, not that God is punishing me.  If I think about this too much, my head spins!”

I’m with her all the way on this, especially the part about it making my head spin.

It’s true — we call it bad luck when things go wrong and thank God when things go right.  And despite its confounding nature, I think this is both perfectly natural and absolutely correct.

I, for one, do not want to walk around blaming the Deity for the bad things that happen, whether they’re big (such as explosions at airports or 9-year-old girls getting shot and killed in Arizona) or little (such as why does my left elbow hurt and why won’t it stop).  I’m perfectly happy with seeing those as people-driven rather than God-driven.  (I think the elbow thing has a lot to do with texting and typing, meaning that it’s my own damn fault.)

But I also think it’s great to thank God for the good things, like my dog Xander being such a cutie (he’s snuggling the aforementioned elbow – I wonder if he can tell that it hurts), or the fact that the 12th anniversary of my cancer diagnosis is just a couple of days away.

Who cares if there’s a God Who’s listening?  Certainly not I.  Doesn’t matter if my gratitude is directed to a specific Someone or just the cosmos in general.  As long as I remember to be grateful.

Thus I will blithely continue to insist that I don’t believe in God while I continue to be perfectly happy with prayer.

Jennifer Singer has served as Foundation Director at the Sarasota-Manatee Jewish Federation, worked as an educator at the Flanzer Jewish Community Center, and taught in programs across the community for adults and children.

In 2006, she earned a Master of Arts degree in Jewish Education from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and currently works as a fundraiser for Technion University, as well as part-time at Kol HaNeshama, a Reconstructionist congregation, where she leads services and a Family Education program called Doorways to Judaism.

She shares her home with her husband, two daughters, four dogs, three parrots, two cats, and a turtle, and hopes one day to attend rabbinical school.

You can read more of her work at her blog SRQ Jew (http://srqjew.wordpress.com/) where this piece first appeared. It’s reprinted here with the kind permission of the author.

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February 7, 2011 · 9:20 am

Giving Thanks

by Jacob Winkler (Passaic, NJ)

I remember running through the streets
it was still dark and I was racing
to my favorite rooftop.

This was before I learned to pray.

I would watch the sun
and in the quiet world around me
raise my arms to the sky
and twirl.

Thank You!
Thank You for the waking birds
the sun-streaks and the mountain wind.

Thank You for this life
this body and soul
and the companions You’ve given me
on this journey
my family, my friends.

Now I glance up
between verses of Psalms.

Today I have so much more
to be thankful for
it takes a long time
to say Thank You
in the morning.

Jacob Winkler lives in Passaic, NJ with his wife and one year old son. While he and his family are members of the observant community, he says he doesn’t fit easily into categories. Before spending three years learning at Yeshiva Ohr Somayach in Jerusalem, he studied at the Kripalu Yoga Center in Massachusetts and spent a semester at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.

You can find more of his work on his website, Glory To The Highest, http://www.glorytothehighest.com, where this piece first appeared. It’s reprinted here with the kind permission of the author.

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January 31, 2011 · 9:01 am

Ernestine’s Fudge Ministry

by Sharlya Gold (Sarasota, FL)

Sometimes a kid, not necessarily the best looking or the smartest, stays in your mind long after you leave school. For me, that kid was nose-in-the-book, Bible-reading Ernestine Rogers. She didn’t call attention to herself, but if there was a riff in all the horsing around before our 8th grade math class started, you could hear the soft turn of a page. Or even while the teacher was explaining a problem.

The first time that happened, Mrs. Adams didn’t appear to notice. She was at the chalkboard, her back to the class, until somebody tattled. “Mrs. Adams, Ernestine’s not paying attention!”

The teacher turned around, holding the chalk like a baton, and I felt sorry for Ernestine. She’d only been in class for a week; still, she should have known better.

But instead of scolding her, the teacher fixed the rest of us with an angry glare. “People, my job is teaching, and yours is learning. Do you have to write it 100 times to make it stick in your brains?”

“No, ma’am,” we mumbled, and after that we just pretty much ignored Ernestine. When she read her Bible, we just kept quiet, and most of us pretended not to notice.

I noticed, though, because Ernestine was a wonder to me. Imagine! A mousy little thing like that, standing up to the teacher. It began to bug me, wondering how she did it, so one noontime I passed up having lunch with my friends and went to the table near the back wall where Ernestine always sat

I slid onto the bench across from her. “Hi, Ernestine.”

She’d been reading, and now she looked up, keeping her place with a finger. She smiled, a surprised, happy smile. “Do you want to eat with me?”

“Uh…I guess so.”

I didn’t expect to feel so uncomfortable.

“It’s… nice back here,” I managed to say.

“It’s lonely, though.”  She smiled again. “But not today.”

She wasn’t making it any easier, acting like we were good friends.

Finally, I just said it. “Ernestine, I’ve been wondering why you always read the Bible, plus how you get away with it.”

“It’s just something I do,” she said. “When you trust in the Lord, you try to follow what He says which means learning the Holy Scriptures.” She paused. “Let me ask you a question. How well do you know the Lord?”

“About as well as I know math. Why?”

Instead of answering, she reached inside her lunch bag and brought out two neatly wrapped squares. “Homemade fudge,” she said, pushing one toward me. “It’s pretty good.”

Pretty good? It was great! Full of walnuts and not too sweet. I’d never tasted fudge like that–and I’d never met anyone like Ernestine.

While I ate the fudge, she read the Bible to me, all about the eternal damnation lying in wait for people who don’t seek salvation through Jesus Christ. “I’m going to help you get saved,” she said, and later, much later, I realized that Ernestine’s ministry had begun with me.

We had lunch together the next day, too, along with a little conversation, more fudge, and Bible reading. My two best friends got mad. They said I could eat with that girl my whole life and wouldn’t let me walk with them to our next class which Ernestine wasn’t even in!

I hadn’t told them about the fudge, but it really was the high point of having lunch with Ernestine. It certainly made listening to the Bible easier. Although I’d gone to Sunday School, those Biblical stories were totally new to me, and before long they started interfering with my sleep. Whenever I closed my eyes, I’d see those poor tormented people. I had to stay awake to keep them out of my dreams.

But Ernestine didn’t always read the Bible.  Sometimes, she’d just talk. She’d tell me about regular people who’d played into Satan’s hands. Like the doctor who was too busy saving lives to get himself saved. And the pilot who intended to get saved, but died in a plane crash before he got around to it. And the kind, generous couple who believed that good deeds alone would get them into Heaven. “They’re all in agony this very minute,” Ernestine would assure me. “I just pray that their lives are a warning to others.” I didn’t have to ask what others. She meant me.

After one especially tragic story, I raced home, threw myself into my mother’s arms, and burst into tears. The story of what I’d been going through for almost two weeks tumbled out as did my overwhelming fear: our family was going to Hell. “We have to get saved!” I cried, half-choking in my hurry to spur my mother into action, “We have to do it right away before we die. You and Daddy are already old!”

My mother stroked my hair and held me close until I stopped crying. “Now, listen to me. There are many different beliefs about God and many different ways to interpret the Bible. We Jews believe in God,  but not in the existence of Hell or Satan.”

“Are you sure we’re not going to burn forever and ever?” I asked.

“I’m sure, but if you talk to the rabbi, you’ll understand more. He’s better at explaining than I am. Want me to call him?”

I already felt better. I trusted my mother. She didn’t lie to me. She never said that medicine wasn’t bitter when it was or that a shot wasn’t going to hurt when she knew it would.

“That’s okay, Mama,” I said. “I was just so scared.”

She tilted my wet face so she could look into my eyes.  “Is there anything else?”

“Yes. One thing.” I took a deep breath. “Ernestine says we have to pray to Jesus.”

My mother thought about this awhile before she said, “Jews pray to God. Not to Jesus. Jews believe that Jesus was a wise teacher and a good, kind man. But a man. Like Abraham.”

I started to cry all over again. “But what’ll I do about Ernestine?”

“I don’t know that you have to do anything but be respectful of her beliefs. You can do that without accepting them for yourself, can’t you?”

I said yes, kissed my mother, and went to wash my face. But I couldn’t wash away what was really bothering me.  It was the fudge.

My conscience pointed out that I couldn’t go on accepting Ernestine’s fudge since I had no intention of accepting her salvation.

But I’d be earning the fudge by listening, I argued.

My conscience wouldn’t give up. Is it a fair trade, knowing what you know? it asked

I preferred not to answer, and in the end my conscience was no match for the fudge. Ernestine and I had went on having lunch together. I never told her what my mother said and made sure I was respectful as always. Still, something had changed, a subtle shift in our positions. I think she sensed that I was no longer frightened by her stories or in awe of her. The day she stopped bringing fudge, I knew it was over. I made up with my friends, and Ernestine went back to reading the Bible to herself.

She moved away after that year, and I lost track of her, but, recently, a friend from junior high told me he’d heard that Ernestine had become a preacher. She even had a church of her own.

I hadn’t thought of Ernestine for years, but I didn’t have to dig deep for the memory of how I’d dropped her like a lead weight when the fudge ran out. Guilt has never lain much below the surface in my psyche.

But hearing about her success sent a burst of relief through me, much like the time my mother allayed my fears of Hell. All those years, I’d carried the secret fear that I’d ruined Ernestine’s life. How silly it seemed now. How egotistical to imagine that she’d given up because her fudge ministry with me had failed. Good for you, Ernestine! I felt like shouting. Good for you!

And good for my mother, too, I thought. She could have discouraged our friendship, viewing it as a threat to my spiritual development. Instead, she took the occasion to teach me respect for others and their beliefs. That lesson stuck, even though my passion for chocolate fudge faded. My heart and mind—and waistline—have never been sorry.

Sharlya Gold, the author of The Potter’s Four Sons: A Fable and The Answered Prayer and Other Yemenite Folktales, writes books for children, and articles and memoirs for adults.  She teaches ”Writing your Life, Without Starting at the Beginning” at Temple Emanu El in Sarasota, Florida, where she lives with her husband, Len (“who deserves a medal,” she says, “for Support, Endurance, and Patience”).

“I had always considered this personal experience distinctly Jewish,” Gold says about the experience that she shares  in Ernestine’s Ministry of Fudge. “Two children, one with an early calling to proselytize, the other frightened into rejecting her own belief system. But as I learned after sharing this story,  many non-Jews, too, had their own childhood conversion stories.”

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January 24, 2011 · 8:46 am

The Warmth of a Familiar Blanket

By Linda K. Wertheimer (Lexington, MA)

Ambivalent Jew. That was me through childhood. I knew very few Jews. For the latter half of my childhood, we were among just a handful of Jews in our small Ohio town. Sunday school was a drag. It was decidedly not hip to be anything but Christian where I lived. I had no desire to switch religions, but I was very unsure about my faith and what it meant to be Jewish. I hunted for answers by burying myself in books about Jews. Through reading, I often found what I lacked – a community of Jews.

Now, I am confident with my Jewish self. I celebrated my adult bat mitzvah in 2006 at age 41 and still can feel the shivers that traveled down my spine as I chanted from the Torah. I have found my rhythm and place as a Jew. I still can immerse myself in a Jewish-themed book and experience an invaluable treasure.

In my teen years, Herman Wouk’s Marjorie Morningstar, and Golda Meir’s My Life provided very different pictures of Jews. Marjorie Morningstar, a teenager in the 1930s, is a part of an American family of Eastern European immigrants living free of persecution in an area where it is normal — and largely accepted — to be Jewish. They do what I never experienced in childhood: have Sabbath dinners every Friday with chicken soup, and pot roast, with the blessings over the wine and the Challah. They are steeped in tradition, even as Marjorie seems intent on assimilation and only attends temple (her father bemoans) for dances. Marjorie, who uses Marjorie Morningstar rather than Morganstern as her stage name, is a glamorous substitute for the Jewish girls I rarely encountered during my teens. She is beautiful and mostly graceful, though at times she seems shallow as she flits about New York City with friends and beaus. She matures as the world becomes darker, and the Nazis come to power in Germany. She volunteers with a Jewish refugee-aid committee. She marries and returns to the traditions of her faith. I was mesmerized by her, a person unlike any I had ever known.

Golda Meir, Israeli’s prime minister from 1969 to 1974, was born in Russia, and the pogroms drove her family away to America when Golda was very young. She could have been one of my great-grandparents, fleeing as a young child to America. The first page of her autobiography shook me to the core as she recalled how she felt as she watched her father and a neighbor barricade their home with wooden boards to thwart an expected pogrom.

Wrote Meir, “And, above all, I remember being aware that this was happening to me because I was Jewish, which made me different from most of the other children in the yard. It was a feeling that I was to know again many times during my life – the fear, the frustration, the consciousness of being different and the profound instinctive belief that if one wanted to survive, one had to take effective action personally.” She described exactly how I felt at times when I was tired of being one of the only Jews in my public school and neighborhood. Reading her story also gave me a Jewish female hero to admire.

Recently, once again hungry for Jewish literature, I read The Tenth Song, the newest novel by Israeli author Naomi Ragen. The story is a more modern tale than most of her other novels. It chronicles a present-day American Jewish family whose leader, an accountant, is accused of a horrible crime – helping to funnel money to terrorists. The novel at times resembles a high-class soap opera as Ragen shows us the ripple effect of the father’s supposed misdeed on his wife, daughter, and even his shul. For three evenings, I stayed up late turning page after page, drawn to this community of eclectic characters, some likable and some despicable for their apparent love of material wealth. The story has several twists as the man’s wife and daughter evolve into more soulful human beings.

Like the books I found in my youth, The Tenth Song put me in the middle of a Jewish community. It showed me once again just how diverse Jews are. Unlike during childhood, I did not struggle to understand some of the Jewish religious and cultural references. I realized I was no longer looking for answers about Judaism. Now, I was enjoying the warmth of a familiar blanket.

Linda K. Wertheimer, a veteran journalist, is writing a memoir about how her journey through grief after the loss of her brother led her deeper into Judaism. She left her most recent full-time post – education editor and staff writer at The Boston Globe – to pursue writing her book and spend more time with her toddler.

“The Warmth of a Familiar Blanket” first appeared with a different title, “Books Create My First Jewish Community,” on the author’s blog, Jewish Muse, A Writer’s Blog on Faith and Family, and is reprinted with permission of the author. Her blog and website are at http://lindakwertheimer.com.

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