Class 3 -- Pilgrimage Holidays

I am going to directly address the suggested questions for this week since my journal entry for it is about three weeks late now!

In terms of my Wilderness ... I think I am still in my Wilderness in more than one facet of my life, although I am enjoying some of the trek, which perhaps doesn't fit in with the Exodus theme after all! Perhaps it would be easiest to begin with my Egypt which, I suppose, quite literally is my childhood and the hometown it was spent in. I still go back there to visit my family, but it isn't my home anymore, and lord knows it never will be again. It was a good enough place in many ways for a kid to grow up in -- safe, lots of room to roam etc etc -- but I won't ever raise my kids in such a place. Because it is also a place of ignorance and smallness and stasis, and no amount of woods and rivers and natural beauty can make up for that. But it, like my family (who are good people) made me who I am and helped shape how I see the world and for that I am grateful for my Egypt.

I suppose along those lines New York City is my Israel -- it is my adopted hometown. I've lived in many places since leaving home at 18, but ever since visiting during college I've known this is the place I belonged. I moved to China for several years after college but always planned to end up in NYC; we moved to Thailand for my job but I made sure we kept our apartment in NYC because I knew we had to come back. So I will feel forever grateful (I hope) that I've landed in my Israel in that respect ... finding Nancy and being able to build our life together -- that too is my Israel, and while we were in the Wilderness for awhile in terms of figuring out our relationship, we have certainly arrived -- well we have and we haven't since our relationship -- like my relationship with NYC -- will always be a changing, moving thing (I couldn't bear it otherwise).

I just realized my Israel is supposed to be in relation to goals I strive for and I think NYC and what I have with Nancy are both goals I have striven for all my life. NYC for me is an unpredictable place that never lets you get too comfortable -- I want to live the rest of my life in this fashion. I want to be surrounded by people from all over the world and be forced to adapt to their ways sometimes (which speaks to my penchant for living abroad) even though it unsettles and upsets me. I find inspiration and energy for my life in people but at the same time I am a serious introvert -- NYC, for me, keeps things balanced. And as for building a family for Nancy, that speaks to my goals to keep a loving family and home similar to the one I was raised in. I hope I can hand it down to my children and they can hand it down to theirs ad infinitum (God willing) ...

Lastly, one area of my life where I am still squarely in the Wilderness is in terms of my relationship to God and spirituality. I'm not sure if I'll ever exit that Wilderness (not sure if I want to) but at moments in my adult life I've felt a calm connection to God that perhaps hints at spiritual equanimity to come! Who knows ... it does feel freeing, however, (to go back to the Exodus) to be able to speak about God openly, in a non-institutional (i.e. religious), non-judgmental (i.e. my atheist parents) setting ...

Class 2 -- The Jewish Calendar: Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur

Unfortunately, I had to leave after only one hour of class, so I am only going to comment on that one hour and some of the reading that I can remember. I am excited to be hitting the big holidays straight up in the beginning, since these are what we consider an integral part of making a "Jewish home" for our family. I have celebrated Rosh Hashana a few times, but once it was at a HUGE seder of 100 Israelis or so in Beijing with everything in Hebrew and the other two times was with Nancy's family, where the high holidays (is that the right term?) are sort of celebrated reflexively (if that makes sense) and there was little explanation of what was going on (and no one can remember the right prayers etc.). As I said in class, it was interesting to learn that there is an element of grimness to the holiday, and I liked learning about the round bread, the reasons behind the apples and honey, etc.

I am a little nervous, however, about learning about all these holidays at once and then moving on ... there are so many of them! I think I would like our family to regularly celebrate Rosh Hashanah, Passover and Sukkot. All three have nice stories attached to them and it seems like we could celebrate the historical aspect of Judaism and Jewish culture in a way that meshes with our lack of religiosity (which I separate rather starkly from spirituality). On a practical level (and back to my nervousness) -- how do we pull these off ourselves? I'm guessing we need to start attending as many seders as we can get invited to, and we are planning on going to a second-night Passover seder that is hosted by a friend who is a rabbinical student this year. The same goes for Shabbot and Rosh Hashanah -- I don't know how we can come up with our own traditions, our own seamless and meaningful recognition of these holidays working from scratch and with a few books with lists of ingredients. I almost feel like I need a "how-to video" to pull this off! And then there is a part of me that feels silly (I can't speak for Nancy) just bumbling into this ancient religion and trying to become a part of it without growing up in it and partnered to someone who didn't really grow up with it either (well she did and she didn't). And in addition to building our own traditions, there is the question of when we should draw the line, so to speak, when we should decide that delving any further into tradition and ritual would be hypocritical and meaningless. Because reading Leviticus, dry, lifeless, pompous Leviticus, I am reminded of all the silliness that is attached to religion. Or not attached, that makes UP religion. It helps to have other resources to read, and to have participated in living and breathing Jewish life and culture (as strange and random as it has been, from seders in Beijing, to secular Jewish life in Israel to Nancy's atheistic Germanic upbringing) and I have to keep reminding myself of those aspects when I read these Bible excerpts. Because really, they are too -- almost absurd -- when taken and read at face value ... I know that is a harsh word, but these lists of remedies for leperous people and leperous houses (still trying to figure that one out) and menstruating women and discharging men is killing me! It makes God out as a micro-manager when really the whole thing was obviously written by a bunch of priests who were micro-managers (for practical reasons in some instances, from what I understand) and obviously profited from all these cooked sacrifices ...

This class is also highlighting how little I know about religion in general, and makes me feel at a disadvantage even in terms of not being Jewish, because I wasn't raised in any religion so I don't have any background or means of comparing the religions and making sense of these systems of thought. So I would like to put that out there -- I am not coming from a Christian background either, so am woefully ignorant of the Old Testament as well, which partly accounts for my feeling a little at sea in class I believe (as I went into in my last entry).

However, to end on a positive note, I actually am happy to be taking this class, and am enjoying the wrestling with ideas, conflicting desires, etc.!

Class 1 -- Holiness, What is Judaism and Covenant

I felt kind of confused after the first class, and a little apprehensive. I can be pretty free-wheeling in my thinking and approach to life; however, I also need some kind of concrete understanding of basics. At this point, I still only have a nebulous understanding of what Judaism is (or really, of what it isn't) and how it is organized. The reading has helped a little (especially "Jewish Literacy") although in some instances I feel like excerpts are out of context and that I have walked into the middle of a conversation. Reading the Bible especially gave me this feeling and gave me flashbacks to crashing Christian Sunday School and Bible camp with my best friend as a kid ... Anyway, a general introduction to what Torah vs. the Bible vs. other Jewish writings, their order of importance/significance and historical background would be helpful.

Reading "Jewish Literacy" and the Bible (even though it's confusing) does make me feel excited about this opportunity Nancy and I have made for ourselves to truly learn about Judaism. The class, for me, is both an academic and very practical exercise, and pulling the two apart will be interesting -- I can already see the very different levels that the books in the class are operating on. Which brings me to my last point -- some introduction of the texts used in this class, their connection to the Reform movement (if any) and the reason behind choosing them would be really welcome and help orientate me as well!
--Megan