where are you from?

I really hate this question. Every time I meet a new person it's inevitable though that they will ask. I have several pat answers:

Usually I answer with the last place that I've lived. Hence, in my life I've said: "The Bay Area", "Boston", "Israel", "LA", "Wisconsin", "Kansas City" and "Cleveland". I feel no particular connection of being from any of those particular places. I feel defined by none of them and all of them. It's easiest when you are on vacation, say in Hawaii or something, staying at a hotel so it is obvious so no one is actually from that hotel. Then you are perfectly in your rights to answer the place that you live, in fact that is what you are supposed to answer. I however, tend to answer the question that way all of the time.

I have good friends, really dear friends, who I'm sure have no idea where I actually lived as a child. (Isn't that what the question really means?) When we first met and made it through the inevitable small talk, I answered the dreaded question and we were able to move on. We talk about our kids, our daily lives, even our longings and great disappointments, but the question of place does not necessarily come up again.

Of course I do occasionally get in trouble using the "vacation method" to answer The Question. One time in particular happened, ironically enough, while on vacation. This is when I was living in Israel on a six month study program in Arad. Some friends and I were staying at a Youth Hostel in Jerusalem for the weekend. "Where are you guys from?" asked our roommates. "Arad" I answered. My friends stared at me open-mouthed. Technically the answer was correct. This is where we had come from. Also, this is the only place that all four of us were indeed from. But my friends did not see it that way. "Upstate New York", "LA", "Berkley" they answered. Everyone looked at me. I couldn't do it. I just couldn't go through my life history with these people I would be spending exactly one night with. "Arad" I repeated and fled to the bathroom.

Later that night my friends called me on my "method". The Question is an attempt to get to know a person, to make a connection they told me. By dodging it you are denying people access to who you are. It is unfriendly and exists outside the rules of social norms. My friends loved me and knew me very well. They are right, but still, I have no good answer.

So, where am I from? I was born in New Haven Connecticut. At age 6 months my parents moved my brothers and sister and I to Kansas City for 7 more months where we lived with my grandparents. We were out of money and my parents marriage was hanging on by an absolute thread. My dad took a job as an associate rabbi at the synagogue where my mom grew up and they worked on trying to love each other and us while living with my grandparents. Not an easy task. Ma and Grandpa were not easy to live with. Ma cooked tuna and noodles in some variety most nights and they both had a really hard time hiding the fact that they really hated my dad. The feeling was mutual. Shortly after my first birthday we moved to Cleveland.

We lived in Cleveland Heights where my dad became the local Hillel rabbi, I attended the Agnon Jewish Day School, and Beth Phil and Jon attended Milliken Jr. High and Heights High School. My first memories are of living in Cleveland. We lived in a mixed neighborhood where many of our neighbors were black and most of them were mean. I took the bus to school and forgot to get off on the first day of Kindergarten. Eventually we moved to a nicer neighborhood with white catholic neighbors who had lemonade stands and walked with us down to Bialy's Bagels. Many of my school friends lived in our new neighborhood and we spent the summers riding our bikes down to the public pool and swirling unfrozen yogurt on the front stoop of Bialy's.

In Cleveland my parents got divorced, twice. The second time (kind of like the destruction of the Temple) was permanent. My dad moved to Washington DC and married the secretary of his last synagogue, Jean. Beth went to college and so did Phil, and eventually so did Jon. My mom went back to work full time. I came home every day after school and drank grape soda and watched the Brady Bunch. She and I settled into a kind of shy routine of being the only ones left in our house. I missed my dad and my brothers and sister but I loved having mom all to myself.

I found out about our move in a round about way. I was riding my bike through Cedar Center where I ran into the vice principal of Agnon. She told me that they would miss me next year but that she hoped we would enjoy Kansas City. What?! I sped home and mom confirmed that it was true. We were moving to Kansas City. She needed the support of her parents and large family. There was a job waiting for her at Sealy, my grandfather's business. All of her best friends still lived there. This seemed irrelevant to me as all of my best friends, particularly Leslie and Tania lived in Cleveland.

It turns out I was not alone in not wanting to move. Beth and Phil were against it. No one liked Kansas City. My grandparents were difficult and we really hated visiting them. Now we would be living there again. Jon was furious. A Sophomore at Penn, us moving meant he would have to spend all of his breaks and perhaps summers too in Kansas City. The thing is though, is that none of them were going to live there. Only me and mom. I didn't want to go.

Once again for the first seven months we lived with Ma and Grandpa. I slept on the fold out couch in Grandpa's office while mom slept in what was known as "David's room", or her younger brother's room who of course now had his own house and life. Ma would drive carpool from the Hebrew Academy while mom went to work. None of the other moms worked, there was no bus, and all of the kids in my class had known each other since Kindergarten. They were mean.

When we finally found our own house (Townhouse) I was finally able to take the bus to Nallwood Junior High and breath a little. I found a few friends. The 80's began and life in the suburbs was okay. Really, just okay. I never felt like myself in Kansas City. Beth, Phil and Jon complained incessantly whenever they came to visit. I longed to live with Dad and Jean in Texas, or LA or San Francisco but I couldn't leave mom by herself. I did though when I graduated High School.

I loved College. Beloit Wisconsin! The best thing about it was that it wasn't Kansas City and you could walk everywhere, and people for the most part (at College at least) were not blond and knew that the world was big. Also, I didn't at all have to try to fit into the suburban Kansas City suburban girl I could never be. I could breath again. My ten year old self on a bicycle was reborn.

Except then I went to Israel and remembered that I was also Jewish. Connected to the land. Furiously connected in a way that I could never break. Also in love with a boy from LA.

I really loved LA. I fell out of love with the boy and in love with the city. It was warm and sunny and beautiful nearly every day. I spent hours on my bike. Also running and skating and dancing. I learned about pad thai, and sushi, and grande nonfat lattes. I learned to spot movie stars at the local trader joe's and bought a bright red car. I became a fairly good teacher. But the land, the connection. The furious connection. I moved back to Israel.

Arad was college again but with the Judaism, the land, the language. It was heaven. Tel Aviv was not. It was crowded and smelly and way too hot. I missed being a teacher. I missed LA. I missed Judaism. I missed Mom. The connection to the land was still furiously there. I knew I would have to live with it, but I'd have to live with it away from the land itself. I couldn't live without Jeff.

Jeff is definitively and absolutely from Boston. We moved there. It was cold. Really cold. The people there were mean. I went to graduate school and Jeff got a job and we got married. We lived in two different apartments and hosted wonderful potluck Shabbat dinners with my friends from graduate school. We almost bought a house. But really it was too cold. Also, Mom died. Terribly and tragically but she was gone. I couldn't stay in the place that I lived in when she died. I physically couldn't do it. We moved to the Bay Area.

We lived there for five years and went on long and magical bike rides. We visited Israel as tourists and took a bike trip through Tuscany. The weather was sunny and warm although sometimes it rained. We lived in a cocoon built for two. We bought a house and got really caught up in the "dot com" world. We had two children and enlarged our cocoon to fit three and then four. Then the world collapsed. The Twin Towers, my Dad, and the economy. There was no way for us to stay there.

Now we live in Portland. Life here is paradise. It really is. I wake up nearly every day happy. Where you live is hugely important. Mira and Eli are from Portland. I am hoping that they can answer The Question with as much ease as their father. After all, when people ask me where I'm from, I smile and say "Portland".

Are there really ten commandments?

I love the part of this week's parasha where Yitro, Mosses father in law, comes to visit. Yitro, a high priest of Midian, hears about the miraculous events that took place in Egypt led by his son in law Moses. Yitro gathers Moses' wife Ziporrah and their two sons and sets off to find the People. When they arrive Moses greets Yitro by bowing low, kissing him, and then bringing him into his tent so he can catch Yitro up on all of the miraculous events that have befallen him and his people.

Excuse me for a moment here, but this is how he greets his father in law? Not a word, a gesture, anything at all for his wife and children? Now I know that the Torah is steeped in patriarchy and mostly I have made peace with this fact, but come on, nothing for his wife? Not even a hello?

I have to think that there is more going on here then extreme chauvinism. When Moses met and married Ziporrah he was fresh out of Egypt that first time. He had grown up an Egyptian in the palace and had only just found out that he was in fact a Hebrew. He had not yet spoken to God. In many ways he married and started his family before he had truly found himself.

Meanwhile God speaks to Moses, he goes back to Egypt to lead his people to freedom, and becomes truly the undisputed leader of the People Israel. He also develops a strong and intimate relationship with God. This is all while Ziporrah and their sons remain behind with her family in Midian.

The next time Moses sees his wife he is no longer questioning his identity. He is Israelite through and through. Surely seeing her for this first time must be a shock to Moses. While he has been busy connecting with his people he must realize that his wife and sons are absolutely not his people.

I know a lot of people like Moses. They meet their future spouses when the Jewish side of them is perhaps confused. They don't yet know how they feel about or where they fit into this religion/culture/peoplehood of ours and meanwhile they fall in love. As they grow up a bit and perhaps begin a family of their own they begin to re explore or deepen their connection to Judaism. And then what?

I think Moses reaction, actually non reaction, to Ziporrah represents that "and then what" moment. The answer is complicated and different for everyone. Moses and Ziporra do in fact come to terms with their relationship and stay married to one another throughout all of her life. The "and then what" moment does not have to be a bad one. For plenty of people I know they have found beautiful and brilliant ways to make it work. But as it did for Moses, the moment will come.

And what is it with the ten commandments anyway? It is hard, really hard to count the list up directly from the Torah and get ten. Try this. Read Exodus 20: 1-14 as if you have never seen it and try to come up with ten commandments. It's nearly impossible! The rabbis did it and yes it works but you could easily have 12, 13, or even 9 commandments here. We humans like nice, neat, even numbers. Ten commandments sounds better then 12 or 9. The rabbis are good at making the Torah neat when it is messy. But sometimes I think the messiness is the point.

Other interesting things about this parasha:

The revelation. Very mysterious. What is going on here? This is almost too messy to read and understand. This is where the rabbis are very helpful. If you read about the revelation without any commentary it is almost impossible to understand. Yet the revelation is a central tenant in Judaism. It's also very interesting to try to get a visual of the people trembling, the mountain trembling, smoking. Lends itself well to artistic interpretation.

Jethro's advice to Moses was very good. We all need help. No one can do everything by themselves. Jethro is absolutely right. Moses cannot be an affective leader if he is spending all of his time settling petty disputes amongst the people. What responsibilities in our lives can we delegate to other people or just get rid of all together? How can we recognize what our truly important missions in life are versus what we should really not be spending our time on?

Shabbat Shalom.

churban and galut

Last night when I was leaving to teach to Melton Eli asked me where I was going. When I told him I was off to teach he looked at me very matter of factly (from the bathtub) and replied "okay, but really you are just mostly a mommy". Hooray! As I suspected I am queen. I have it all.

Meanwhile, what a subject matter, churban and galut, ugh! Destruction and exile. The students were distracted last night. Passing around new rings and sharing stories of trips to Chicago. They are young, the future Jewish leaders and they are lovely. Intelligent and warm and funny. The thing is though is that they are not really adults. Not yet.

Last nigh Shuli was bothered with the idea that even within our most joyous times Jews are bound to remember the destruction of the Temple and exile from Jerusalem. "Why can't we just have moments in our tradition of pure joy, why bring death and destruction into everything that we do?" Shuli is newly married, Israeli. What happens next is pure Melton and it is why this is such a brilliant program. Everyone went around and tried to convince Shuli of the necessity of bringing the churban and galut into our joyful occasions. "It is a part of our history, the fabric of our tradition", "It is ritual, and ritual is important". They brought in examples from their own lives and from (yes!) texts that we had studied that evening. Shuli remained unconvinced. Who can blame her really? All she wanted was one pure moment of joy to celebrate that she had found her life partner.

I have to say though, although I can understand Shuli's perspective, I fundamentally disagree with her. Bringing in destruction and exile into everything we do, especially our joyful moments, seems to me to exactly define the human experience. When something is broken it can never be fixed. When a soul is injured the injury is always there. The good times do not erase the bad. The good times are wonderful, and the key, really I think to joy is ,making a conscious effort to decide that the good times will outweigh the bad. Outweigh but not erase. I think our tradition of remembering the destroyed, the broken, the exiled, during times of joy is brilliant. Even in our happiest times we are acknowledging that while our hearts our very full, they will always be a little bit broken.

I suspect Shuli knows this. She does not strike me as someone who has not suffered in life. All the more so in her mind then that her joy should be unbridled. Just as her pain is. But this is where religion comes in. We are also not allowed to suffer unbridled pain. We must mourn in a minyan, a community. Although said like a dirge or a mantra the words to the Kaddish are uplifting, hopeful even. Religion gives structure to our emotions. We celebrate as we grieve. We mourn as we affirm our faith.

Shuli, like many of my students,struggles with issues of religion. They are looking for themselves in these texts and often find the texts lacking. They are looking for connections but necessarily finding them in these texts of ours. Can you teach a person to give the text the benefit of the doubt? To open it up and probe it and to even forgive it? I think so, but maybe only once you have grown up a bit.

Like all the students I've ever had I am very dedicated to this group. I have found something that I adore about each and every one of them. I am curious to see what this group will do. They are lovely.

the Kosher Omnivore's Dilemma

I'm not a big fan of Jewish values. As a Jewish educator I have noticed that the term "Jewish Values" is usually code for "Jewish Light". I am skeptical of any type of Jewish institution that prides themselves on the Jewish values it instills within its members. I am much more impressed with institutions that teach Hebrew, Mitzvot, ritual, real concrete subjects. A good teacher will naturally bring out the value embedded within the subject matter that they are teaching. It is virtually impossible to teach about Tu B'Shevat for instance without teaching about the positive value of caring for the environment. But it is Tu B'shevat that we are teaching about here! The value is dependant upon the concept and not the other way around.

Which is why it is particularly ironic that I am considering giving up Kashurt based on Jewish values. Truly, it seems to me that the Kashrut industry has completely lost touch with the value supporting the notion of Kashrut. The shoresh of the word kuf, shin, resh means connection. In the ideal sense of the word keeping kosher should provide a connection between the eater and what is being eaten. Nourishment is not to be taken for granted and keeping Kosher should ensure that we are eating with the highest sense of moral awareness that humans are capable of. For some of us that means becoming a vegetarian. For others it means following the laws of kashrut with the hope that the animals we are eating have been raised and slaughtered humanely. We separate our meat and milk to remind ourselves that life and death are two separate entities. A kid should not be boiled in its mothers milk, what we eat has history, has life, like us, has a mother.

These are the values of Kashrut. Unfortunately the reality is frighteningly different. Kosher meat in the country is raised no more humanely than the regular industrial meat slated for the local Safeway or McDonalds. The life, food, and death of the "kosher" animal are equally appalling as the conditions that we read about in books like "Diet for a New America" or "The Omnivore's Dilemma". Shame on the rabbis who job it is to ensure that our meat is Kosher to look past the concept of the value behind the law.

So, now what? For me it is easy to be a vegetarian. I don't crave meat, I love vegetables and it is absolutely no sacrifice whatsoever. My family though is a different story. All three of them love meat! I cannot ask them to become vegetarians. The meat I buy for them (and usually cook) is Kosher meat. I get it at the local Trader Joe's, cook it using the "meat pots" and serve it on the "meat dishes".

But, while I hate to say it, my Jewish values are causing me to rethink the meat consumption that goes on in my family. Wouldn't it be better to buy only meat from animals that I knew were raised under the best possible conditions? Grass fed, free range, organic cows and chickens from local farms? I would still cook them using the meat pots and pans and serve them using the meat dishes. I would not serve meat and milk together. I would not buy shell fish or pork. I would no longer keep Kosher. It would be because of Jewish values.

Shabbat Shira

This is a good Torah portion. The parting of the sea, the drowning of the Egyptian army, the song of the sea, water from a rock, manna, and the first war with Amelek! An easy week for rabbbis and dvar torah givers everywhere.

It is interesting that this whole process of leaving Egypt is characterized by so much violence. Each plague being respectively more violent than the next culminating with complete and utter devastation for each and every Egyptian household. Just when we think the violent parts are over the Egyptian army follows the Israelites right into their watery graves.

The Israelites triumphant song is nothing less then the celebration of this violence. "Horse and driver he has hurled into the sea" and even more disturbingly "at the blast of your nostrils the water piled up, the floods stood straight like a wall, the deep froze in the heart of the sea". The song goes on to praise God's might, but it is God's great ability to utterly destroy and annihilate that we are celebrating. Is this the God that we worship? When we say "mi chamocha ba'elim adonai?" are we proud that are God is so good at causing death and destruction?
Perhaps. But I have to hope that there is more going on here than just that.

Two thoughts:
What we are witnessing here is no less than the birth of a people. As we moms know birth is messy. It is accompanied by huge amounts of pain that feels like the most violent thing that has ever happened to us. If we read the story metaphorically than it makes sense that our birth story is a violent one. A celebration of violence even. Isn't this what we do? When the baby is born we celebrate, we rejoice, the violence and pain now part of the fabric of the story that we tell. No longer directly affecting us.

I do think the stories from the Torah can be looked at metaphorically and that the whole book can in fact be a giant tapestry for our life on earth as human beings. But reading the Torah metaphorically can be dangerous. If we don't look at the story for what it says, the phsat of the story, we are in danger of letting too much slide. So perhaps the violence in the story is just that. This is a violent story of war and death and destruction and this something that we have to live with. War and death and destruction exist in the universe and we can't live our lives pretending that they don't exist or protecting our children from finding out about this side of life.

The other thing that we learn in this story is that truly good and evil exist in the world. The Israelites are the absolute winners in this case and the Egyptians are utterly destroyed. The Torah doesn't want us to feel sorry for the Egyptians. We are meant to read the story and rejoice in the destruction of evil. Evil does exist. The job on Gods part and on our part is to wipe it out. Utterly and completely. Even violently.

The other part of the parasha that is endlessly fascinating to me is the part about the manna. The Israelites are told to gather us much manna as they need each day but no more. They should not gather more than they need with the thought of saving it for the next day. They should also not gather on Shabbat but take twice as much as they think they will need on the sixth day. Of course the Israelites have trouble with this. Some gather more than they need only to find their "leftovers" crawling with maggots with the next day. Some indeed go looking for manna on Shabbat. It takes some practice on the part of the Israelites but eventually everone gets to the point where they are able to gather "each as much as he needed to eat" and double that before Shabbat. We are told that the Manna looks like coriander seed and tastes like "wafers in honey". One of my favorite midrashim is the one that tells us that the manna actually tasted like whatever each individual wanted it to taste like. More precisely it tasted like whatever each individual needed it to taste like. Therefore babies tasted milk, women tasted fish or other protein, and the elderly tasted what they needed.

The nugget though that I love about this is that everyone was able to gather exactly what they needed to eat. What a great message for all of us struggling on a daily basis with what and how much to eat. The Israelites learned to gather exactly what they need. Presumably everyone needed a different amount, and what a person needed on any given day could vary. This was okay, as long as you were gathering only the what your body needed. It's when you started to hoard food or take more than you needed that trouble started. When we eat exactly what our bodies need to feel full we can exist in a state of harmony with God and with the universe. I just finished reading Michael Pollen's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and I think this parasha precisely and beautifully answers this question. We must gather what we need. It must be exactly what our bodies need in the right amount for us on that day on that given time period. When we eat this way we eat in a holy way, a Jewish way.

Shabbat Shalom.

my first day

Typical, I guess. My first entry, my first foray into entering this brand new world and every word was lost.

It was good too, good raw writing and since I think it contained absolute critical information I will quickly summarize so I can move on with my life.

Mira said that she wanted to be a mother when she grew up just a mother.
I congratulated myself using somewhat convaluted logic that this must mean that I am an exceptionally good mother, especially because I bake cookies, even though I also yell and hide from my kids and work.
I remembered that I too wanted to be a mother when I grew up and that I too had a fantastic mother whose chocolate chip cookies were out of this world.
My mother also worked which was okay with me, she was still mostly a mom.
She was divorced and this was absolutely not okay with me. When I grew up I wanted to be a mom who made great cookies and danced and read stories but who was married.
I also wanted to be a writer.
I wanted to be a writer mainly because I really love to read.
I mean I really, really love to read probably more than anything else in the world.
My whole life I have used books as a kind of protection from the world.
The worst thing that ever happened to me, the defining moment of my life, was the fact that my parents were divorced. I used books to cope with this.
Then they died. Both of them. This has been much worse, but I am very grateful that I had them both and that they did not die when I was a kid.
I am blogging now because I have always wanted to be a writer but somehow I became a teacher, and a mother and a director of congregational learning.
Now I'm ready to be a writer (although I am of course still a mother and still a teacher) but I am having trouble narrowing down exactly what I want to write about.
So I am going to use this space to "test out" the various ideas competing in my head and hope some theme emerges that I can run with.
So that's it. A much less artful version on my first day. I hope this one doesn't get lost.
Marilyn's daughter, well this is who I am. She is a part of everything I do.