There are not so many nights like that in a life. A night where the joy you feel is pure. For me it spills over into the night and doesn't allow me to sleep. The night Jeff and I got together for the first time. When we were biking through Italy. The night my children were born, both of those nights. It hasn't happened in a long time. Until Saturday night.
I loved making those hoops, selling them, and running the "hooping room". The smiles in the room were bright and beautiful. People wanted to buy something that I made. Me, who doesn't make things. And then the physical side of it. Me giving advice on a physical activity that takes coordination? But no one in that room questioned me. They couldn't see that I was a fraud. They asked if I had a shop. Where they could buy "my hoops" once we were sold out. If I gave lessons. In their mind I was not me but a different person altogether, someone who could have a shop. A shop full of shiny things.
What none of them knew other than Jeff and Libby is that really I am a professional Jew. A professional Jew does not have a shop full of shiny things. (The only type of shops that we have sell books and they are not shops but stores). We are Hebrew School teachers and camp directors, and rabbis, and professors, and writers. We are professional Jews because somewhere along the line we lost the difference between our professional and our social and our spiritual lives. We are often burnt out. We spend way too much time at the synagogue and bent over books and trying to be nice. We don't spend nearly enough time around shiny things. As a general rule we don't hoop.
I sometimes wish I could be someone with a shop. In my life I've wanted to be a nutrionist or a personal trainer. I've thought about opening a cafe for kids or a shop for girls. I'd like to teach a hooping class. But, who I am and I expect who I remain is a professional Jew. I suspect that side of me is just too big. My first book will have a Jewish theme I know it will. I will continue to be interested in nutrition and working out and hooping and cool shops. But they will remain I think in the background. They are hobbies. Hobbies are a good thing.
For most Jews today their Judaism is their hobby. They take it out occasionally, dust it off, and just as easily put it away. They attend a service. They take a class or read a Jewish book. For us professionals it encompasses everything we do and who we are. It is simultenuesly a blessing and a burden.
Today was the first day I was back at the school since the sock hop. I was congratulated and thanked for all of the hooping joy that I brought to the evening. I smiled. I lingered at the school for a while to savor the feeling. Then I came home and prepared for Melton. The topic of tonight's class is the "Jewish response to suffering". I read excerpts from the Torah, Talmud and other rabbinic literature as I figured out how to address this material. I sent an email to Phil and Brad and Ariel (some of my favorite professional Jews) with a question about a particularly difficult piece of Talmud.
So, that's it. Another chapter I'm sure in growing up rabbi. We do many things. We run, we hoop, we make things, we travel, we have children. But mostly we are Jews.
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