Peace is a Radical Pursuit: A Poem for Shabbat Jazon

Peace is a radical pursuit

Not the desire of polite society

To avoid the drama and chaos

Of conflicting human instinct

The pundits cry out for the moderates

"Where are the reasonable voices?"

They ask for the confrontation-averse

They call for the champions

Of maintaining the status quo

The wise who would rather

Continue to live in a world

Of unchallenged hypocrisy

Where occupation is sustainable

And terrorism acceptable - for now -

As long as it doesn't flood

The news feed or clog

The air waves or clutter

The rabbi's disagreeable sermon

The pundits cry out for the peacemakers

"Where are the reasonable voices?"

They ask for the confrontation-averse

They call for the champions

Of maintaining the status quo

The wise who would rather

Continue to live in a world

Of unchallenged hypocrisy

Where occupation is sustainable

And terrorism acceptable - for now -

As long as it doesn't flood

The news feed or clog

The air waves or inflame

The imam who is a foreigner

Anyway - from the Bronx

How exotic - And always

Jews first and Muslims after

Peace is a radical pursuit

Not meant for civility

Peace is not easy or quiet

It does not make way

For celebrity gossip

Or whatever it is that

Normal people care about

Peace is abnormal, anomalous

A miracle, I say, all say

Peace means I must care 

About your happiness

As much as I care about mine

It means I must hurt about your pain

As much as I hurt about mine

Peace means that I know

That the word naqba

Emotionally translates to galut

That it is real and

That it will be felt

Statehood or not

For the rest of forever

Until mashiaj comes

To be a Jew means that I believe

With perfect faith that she is on her way

Already, though she delays

To be a Jew means to believe

In the radical notion

That peace is possible

Even now, especially now

Achieving peace as a Jew

Means I must be like the disciples

Of Aaron - loving peace and pursuing it

To be a Jew is to be a storyteller

Of exile - of survival

That inspires the Dalai Lama

To be a Jew is to respond

To the most heated argument

With the affirmation

That these and these are

The words of a living God

The merciful, the compassionate

In which I may not believe

To be a Jew means

To not oppress others

Because I know oppression

To be a Jew means I must beat

My swords into plowshares

And my spears into pruning hooks

And then I must beat my plowshares

Into trumpets and my pruning hooks

Into guitars - to be the folk song army

To be a Jew is to turn

To turn my song into prayer

To be a Jew is to end

All my prayers with prayers for peace

And to pray not only with my words

But also with my feet

Peace is a radical pursuit

Not for those who justify any

Violence against tunnelers

Who are obviously up

To no good at all

Not for those who try

To figure out who

Has the moral high ground

Peace does not blame or shame

Peace is not the absence of violence

It is the hurling of understanding

Against hatred, of love

Against fear, of kindness

Against all types of aggression

Peace is a radical pursuit

It is the humble admission

That I don't know
What it's like to be you

That I will never know

What it's like to be you

But that I wish for you

To have everything that I want

And everything that you want

Peace is a radical pursuit

It is the acknowledgement

of guilt and pain and sorrow

Peace is a radical pursuit

It is an offering

Of the broken self

To experience 

Further vulnerability

Peace is a radical pursuit

Peace is not the prophet's vision

Peace is not the musician's hope

Peace is not the artist's aspiration

Peace is not the poet's dream

It is her job

Peace is as close to us

As the air we breathe

And as perplexing

As that breath we spend

So many hours trying to find

Welcome to the world's

Most hazardous occupation

Peace is a radical pursuit

It is not standing with anyone

It is sitting with everyone

It is for the brave-hearted

It is for the strong-willed

It is for the faithful

Peace is the proclamation

That in the face of every

Unimaginable provocation

As well as the expected ones

We will not feed the trolls

Except at the dinner table

Where they should eat more

Moderation perpetuates

Hatred and violence

It exacerbates

The pain of the status quo

Moderation is unreasonable

Peace is the reasonable alternative

Peace is a radical pursuit

Impatient, chutzpadik, a loud

Call to prayer at sunrise

Peace is a pundit

Demanding that we abandon

Being perpetrators and being victims

Peace is an activist

Fighting for its presence

Peace is an organizer

Asking you: Are you radical enough?

The Menace of HIV/AIDS

I'm sick of correcting people about Mr. Boy dying.  Oh, so he died of cancer?  Well, no, but cancer killed him.  He died of AIDS.  The kind of cancer he had is rarely fatal for those with "normal" immune systems, but the 2-year survival rate for HIV+ folks who get it (because of HIV) is 50%.  But we still don't like to say people died of AIDS.  A long illness, or the secondary cause of death does better, because then we can live in the illusion that AIDS isn't scary anymore.  We can live in the illusion that health care is good enough that as long as HIV+ people have access to it they will be healthy for an indefinite period, and it won't be AIDS that they die of, but something else, and we can protect ourselves from infection.  And we can live in the illusion that there's no longer a stigma about being HIV+.

Maybe it's that I've had a positive partner, or more than "my fair share" of people in my social circle who are positive, that makes me so sensitive to this.  In the US, 1.1 million people are HIV+.  There are more than 315 million people in the US.  1.1 million people represents about one third of one percent of the population.  About 20% of my social circle is positive, and this was also true before I knew Mr. Boy.  In 2010, more than 15,000 Americans died of AIDS.  In 2013, three people in my social circle (including Mr. Boy) died of AIDS.

But the stigma of AIDS is still prevalent in our society.  When I was read as a gay man walking down the street with Mr. Boy, the assumptions of AIDS on people's faces was easily readable.  And in news stories, the assumptions between the lines make me crazy.  There was recently an article in the New York Times shaming gay men for not taking Truvada as a preventative measure.  And the small piece about  Walter Reed blood samples getting mixed up and what Walter Reed is doing to try to find a positive patient is full of stigma.  In the article, the person is assumed to be infecting others through unprotected sex or sharing needles, because the author assumed the risk of having someone who has HIV and does not know it must be elucidated for the reader.  The biggest segment of new infections of the disease is actually the monogamous partners of males who are not monogamous, contracted through heterosexual sex.  Maybe the author knows more about the patient details than I do, but if so, the details should be put to help finding the patient, not toward creating a scare of one HIV+ person who does not know she is.  The CDC estimates almost 1 in 6 positive folks don't know.they are positive, totalling to almost two hundred thousand people.  If that's your story, make it your story, but otherwise, make the story about the inability of military hospitals and their private contractors to maintain accurate patient data.

How the URJ Biennial exacerbated my pet peeves with the Reform Movement

I did not attend the URJ Biennial in San Diego.  My parents did, and I watched videos, though not live broadcasts, as I was busy during the days it occurred.  I was impressed with several of the pieces that are now available on the URJ's YouTube channel including R' Rick Jacobs' keynote, the women clergy (many of whom I learned from at camp and in NFTY) talking about how important NFTY was to their own experience, and R' David Ellenson's d'var torah and blessing of R' Aaron Panken.  I enjoyed learning about the work of the Ruderman Foundation, and fun facts about the progressive nature of the Women of Reform Judaism.  Neshama Carlebach explained how she was made to feel at home in the Reform Movement and is now choosing it for herself.  The cast of musicians was tremendous.  I experienced both naches and horror as current NFTYites cheered (naches because it's NFTY and horror because the cheer has changed in minor ways in the ten and a half years since I was a NFTYite).  I felt proud of the Movement in which I was raised.

Watching the videos from the Biennial also made me aware of the ideological distance between myself and the Reform Movement, even as there are more and more Reform Jews whose personal observance is traditionally radical rather than rebellious.  I felt alienated from the spectacle of pride in a Movement in various ways.

Ideologically, the movement is democratic and capitalist.  The Reform Movement is the movement most focused on inclusion of interfaith families, most talkative on issues of social justice, and claims it is the queer-friendliest (although it does not use that term).  These attributes were trotted out over and over to justify the Reform Movement's market share in America, propped up with unsurprising data from the Pew Research study on American Jewry.  As a socialist raised in the context of multiculturalism who has had the privilege of being a part of genuinely pluralistic Jewish spaces as well as post-denominational Jewish spaces, the competitive nature and liberal democratic values espoused to back it up were a turn-off.  I'm not interested in beating other groups of Jews (or anyone).  And, as my high school English teacher would say, show, don't tell me, that I should want to be a part of your organization.

The Reform Movement has what Rick Jacobs described as respectful differences with Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu.  Support for Israel as a political entity as the democratic and Jewish state was talked of the entire time, ignoring the socialist history of political Zionism, and almost entirely ignoring the injustice of occupation in favor of struggles within "Israeli" society for women's equality and religious (read Jewish religious) freedom (on which R' Rick Jacobs said the Movement and Bibi have respectful differences).  Furthermore, both Bibi and Vice President Joe Biden talked about the importance of keeping Iran from getting nuclear weapons.  Cue Tom Lehrer's "Who's Next?".  My thoughts on Israel, and on the relationship between Israel and American Jewry are quite complex.  Suffice it to say for this that I think the focus of American Jewish engagement with Israel should not be parroting support for injustice by buying into excuses.  The Reform Movement has a vested interest in Israeli politics, having programs and institutions there, and not having its rabbis recognized by the theocratic machine.  Therefore it should be outspoken on every issue that it cares about relating to Israel, and it should not describe any differences regarding subjugation of human beings as "respectful".  It should not stand by when Israel blames the failure of the Peace Process entirely on Palestinians.  As a well-organized body of progressive American Jews, the URJ should exercise its critical perspective on the ways in which Israel does not live up to Reform Jewish values, just as the Religious Action Center does the US government.

Lastly for the major issues, the Campaign for Youth Engagement grates my nerves.  Don't get me wrong; I support the involvement of young Jews in Jewish life.  I benefited tremendously from URJ camping (9 summers at OSRUI and one at Kutz), and my involvement in NFTY led me to feel like a part of the Jewish community rather than a token or an outsider.  The messaging of the Campaign for Youth Engagement is patronizing at best and selfish at worst.  Selfishly, it reads: the reason we should engage youth is that we need somebody to take over for us in 25 years.  The patronizing read is the message: youth are the future of our movement.  As a teenager, being called "the future" was one of the worst things you could say to me.  What I learned from being engaged as a kid and as a teen was that I did not have to wait to express my Judaism.  I was a Jew then, and I could live Jewishly.  My thoughts, insights, learning, and actions as a Jew mattered, even my first summer at camp when I was nine.  As I grew up in the realm of informal Refom Jewish education, I found support for my deepening religious observance in the youth movement and in the professionals who served it.  I found a camp counselor who was extremely traditionally observant.  I found the first person I called my rabbi (who is not ordained as such) in my teacher and mentor Danny Maseng, who implanted within me not only a love for Jewish music but the seeds of the spirituality I am currently building for myself.  I found the first rabbi I would call my rabbi in NFTY in the form of R' Arnold Jacob Wolf, z"l, who knew how to criticize my point of view and point me in the right direction while taking my angry rebellious teenage self absolutely seriously.

A URJ cynic would look at my life and say I am not a success story of Reform Jewish youth engagement. My primary Jewish involvement is not through a Reform congregation, but rather an independent Jewish community called Mishkan run by Rabbi Lizzi Heydemann (ordained at the Ziegler School at American Jewish University, which is affiliated with the Conservative movement) who was also taught by Rabbi Wolf. Since June, for the first time in my life, I do not belong to a URJ congregation.  (Two of the congregations I'm looking at joining happen to be URJ congregations, and one is more traditionally observant than most URJ congregations.)  I married a non-Jew, who, if he survived, would have made the most fabulous rebbetzin [sic].  I am looking toward becoming a rabbi and HUC-JIR is not even on the list of schools I'm considering.  After my first year as a camp counselor, I did not stay involved with OSRUI.  I am far to the left of the Reform Movement politically.  While I consider social justice to be of paramount concern for any Jew, my personal Jewish focus has turned more and more to tikkun middot (which I first learned about at sija in the Bayit at camp).  My theological views include a God that still actively performs miracles.  I can read resurrection of the dead and praying for the coming of the Messiah in metaphorical ways, although I generally prefer to talk of geulah rather than goel whenever possible.  I don't pray for a return of the beit hamikdash, but I do mourn its loss. I believe that we do not have to discard halaja to come up with ethical Judaism.  My political Zionism and my religious Zionism are separate. I don't feel there are any areas of Judaism that are not deserving of questioning.  I feel that there need to be ritual boundaries between what Jews are able to do and what non-Jews are able to do.  This perspective is particularly informed by my growing up with one Jewish and one non-Jewish parent and that non-Jewish parent later converting.  I don't believe that saying we are welcoming makes us so.  And I believe that talking about gender equality as women being equal to men enforces a binary that we should not be enforcing.  So, I'm in no way, the married-to-someone-I-met-in-Tzofim-become-Rosh-Eidah-go-to-HUC-JIR-or-law-school-or-med-school-join-a-Reform-Temple-20s-and-30s-group-future-URJ-board-member success story that the Campaign for Youth Engagement means to create.

However, without Reform Jewish informal education, I would have maxed out the Jewish knowledge of my congregation at an early age.  Without Danny's presence, Judaism would seem entirely intellectual to me.  Without Rabbi Wolf, Judaism would have become a boring set of rules that I didn't even follow.  I would not have developed a daily prayer practice and a reverence for Shabbat.  My parents would not attend synagogue on a weekly basis, and my dad has told me it was my passion for Judaism developed at camp that brought him into the Jewish community as a Jew and not just as related to us.  My partner would not have been enthralled by the rhythms and ethos of Jewish life. We would not have lived in the rhythm of the Jewish week.  And the thought of becoming a rabbi most certainly would not have occurred to me if I had not decided it was the best way to keep coming back to camp every summer for the rest of my life at age nine.  My Judaism might look like my brother's.  My brother had sporadic engagement with Judaism as a youth including a trip to Israel for the Eisendrath International Exchange, had a minor in Jewish studies at San Francisco State mostly because of the rampant anti-Semitism on that campus, and now his Jewish observance is mostly driven by his devout Catholic wife saying "don't you guys do this" and "shouldn't we...".  Judaism for him is at worst something he's stuck with and at best a peripheral connection to the rest of his family.  But then again, he and his wife belong to a Reform synagogue.  There's another possibility for what my Judaism might look like.  I might have gone what R' Benay Lappe calls "Option 2" and thrown out the baby with the bathwater, becoming an atheist who was raised as a Jew or identifying as "spiritual, but not religious".  I might have considered myself too good, too evolved, and too enlightened to practice ancient tribal customs.  My only engagement with Judaism might be seder at my parents' house.  Surely, if somebody had dismissed a teenage me as merely "the future" of Judaism instead of recognized me as a part of its present, I would have been dismissive in return.  Instead, camp and NFTY created places where I could be taken seriously where I was, where I developed the passion which led Judaism to be a central aspect of my life, and where my critiques of current Jewish practice started.  I don't need to feel a part of the Reform Movement, but I do need to feel a part of the Jewish people.  And I didn't feel an emphasis on that from the Biennial.

On Grieving

Mr. Boy died shortly after I posted a short list of his advice for me on November 20th.  Other losses have also touched me since Mr. Boy's death.  A mentor lost a father-in-law, a friend lost a father, Superman Sam whose story helped give me and Mr. Boy strength died, Peter O'Toole's death made news, and, of course, the world lost one of the most incredible humans ever when Nelson Mandela died.  With each loss, I thought I was in a place where my heart could not break more, but it seems as though compassion is unending.

I'd like to write something profound about Mr. Boy, but I think it's too soon for that.  I've been staring at a blank page for days trying to put something together for the service which will be Saturday.  But, as a trusted rabbi shared with me, there are no words.  Human language is not meant to describe grief.  We mourners are not meant to fit people, relationships, and pain into grammatical structures.  We are meant to learn how to hold the joy of love and caring and the pain of loss and absence together.  We are meant to refuse comfort, to be comforted, and to seek comfort from others (not necessarily in that order).  I am meant to reconcile the loss of my partner with the fact that I yet live.  That feeling my grief will be a part of my life in many different ways as I continue to live despite that I feel like my world has stopped.  To live with grief is to expand notions of family and community to include those who are not present.  To live with grief is to live radically - to participate in an ongoing revolution of reimagining life not based on what we planned but based on where we are.

Words of Wisdom from the Man I Married

Mr. Boy, dying, has made a number of recommendations to me for life after him.

1. Don't shave with a straight razor. You might be tempted, dandy as you are, but you're too clumsy.
2. You're a MacNeil now.  That means your motto is "To Conquer or To Die."  Conquering is always preferable, and is no longer meant only in a sense of conquering land or people. Spiritual conquering is the ultimate expression, these days.
3. Don't hang out with people who aren't stubborn; you have no capacity to interact with them well.  Stick with Jews and the Irish.
4. Laugh often.
5. You're better at being a good boy than a bad one; it's one of your best qualities.
6. Take time to mourn. Then move on.
7. Read the psalms.
8. No emotion exists that has not been properly captured by the Bard.
9. Being part of an Irish family means you can't ever get rid of them.  Don't try.
10. Add Irish to the list of languages you should learn.
11. Don't spend all your time remembering me, and when you do remember me, remember happy times and Hershey's kisses, not hospitals and vomiting.
12. There is an Indigo Girls song perfect for every occassion.
13. If people ask if you're Scottish, you say "Scots-Irish, by marriage."  Then they won't ask you any questions about your clan heritage.  But learn everything you can anyway.  Theoretically, you could owe fielty to Chief Rory.
14. Love.  Every person, every moment, every thing.
15. Don't try two days at a time. That's a recipe for disaster.
16. I will always love you. I don't know what happens after death (I'd like to think nothing), but if something does - I will still love you.
17. It will still be hard to be sexy while thinking of a red-nosed reindeer. Take comfort in the fact that some things will never change.
18. So I borrowed this one from my priest, but: Most of the time, what you think is a dementor is just a boggart.  And if it's really a dementor, eat chocolate.
19. Dream big; live bigger.  Life is always more amazing than your wildest dreams.
20. Though know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.

Welcome to the last days - #FuckCancer

Yesterday Mr. Boy had unexplained pain.  When you have cancer, the doctors tell you what should hurt, and how much, and to tell them if your pain is not typical.  So he did.  And after tests, they saw that despite the aggressive chemotherapy, his cancer spread to his lungs.  In a "normal patient," they would advise continuing the chemo for the full cycle, as the full cycle is perhaps necessary for any effectiveness, but with an HIV+ patient with a very low CD4 count, it's too stressful on the body to continue the treatment.

What happens now is that the cancer will replicate, filling Mr. Boy's lungs until he can no longer breathe.  Without intervention, he may also suffer renal failure.  Mr. Boy does not want drastic measures, so the care he is receiving now is purely palliative.  The doctors say he has less than a week

I am in Toronto to be with Mr. Boy.  He's currently quoting Shakespeare, clearly using the time he has breath for its most exalted purpose.  He has to stop every few minutes to catch his breath.  I'm trying to be present, to enjoy the Shakespeare, to enjoy him before he's gone.

Drawing Strength from the Hardest Moments - #FuckCancer

Mr. Boy had methotrexate injected into his spinal column today, one element of his chemotherapy.  That process is painful and he'll be sore for a few days.  We're getting used to the routine of him being in cancer treatment.  We Skype before the doctors round on the patients, because after that, his day in the hospital is full of constant interruptions.  Sometimes we talk later, but we don't have deep conversations after 8AM.

It's hard to find the kind of support we're looking for.  Most support for cancer patients and their families focuses on hope.  What's important is that you have a positive attitude, there's a chance you could beat it, you could be one of the lucky ones if you just try hard enough.  What's important is that you think you have a chance you could survive.

Mr. Boy's cancer is such that the best hope is that he may survive for a little while longer and retain some quality of life, two years is a coin toss, five would be incredible - not good news for a thirty-one year old.  Our spiritual focus has been coming to terms with his death while trying to stay in the moment and enjoy whatever time we have.  The support focused on grief and loss seems altogether inadequate.  Not to say that it doesn't help, but grief is hard, and it takes time.  It takes time to let go of happily ever after, to let go of the possibility of children, to let go of dreams.  And incessant talk of death distracts from today.  Without knowing what Mr. Boy's quality of life after chemo will be, it's hard to make bucket list plans or even regular plans.  Taking joy in the now is

But we are finding strength from people who are share about their hardest moment facing terminal cancer.  People who have been told similar things that we have been told, or further along when the doctors tell them there is nothing more they can do.  One of the strongest stories that we grab on to is that of Superman Sam and his family.  A part of my extended camp community, Sam is an eight-year-old with AML now out of treatment options.  His parents blog at http://supermansamuel.blogspot.com about the experience of dealing with his cancer.  I've followed their story for a while, and Mr. Boy furiously caught up with it after his diagnosis.  We're members of Team Superman Sam, and we thank the Sommer family for sharing what's real about their experiences on a daily basis.  Sam is in our prayers, and we think he's incredible.  We hope he fills his remaining time with joy and love.  Mr. Boy hopes to do the same with his.

Visiting Mr. Boy

So Mr. Boy has been quite sick for quite sometime, and we found out not too long ago that he has Stage IV cancer.  He went to Toronto, where he grew up, for treatment.  And so I find myself here visiting him.  The chemotherapy is making his body weak and his mind tired.  He has no energy, can't eat right now, and the pain he's in is visible on his face.  This is depsite the medications they give along with the chemo to make him comfortable.

When I crack a joke, he tries to smile, but I can tell he's not amused.  Today, they're running some tests to see how effective his treatment is so far, one week in.  And I'm leaving to go back to Chicago, which breaks my heart because I want him to be here and I can see the sadness in his face that I can't stay longer right now.  He'll be here for three months.

Marrying Mr. Boy

Mr. Boy dislikes science fiction.  He insists that Québecois is real French.  When he is involved in a project, he focuses on that to the exclusion of everything around him and his own self care.  He goes to Northwestern.  He's shy to the extent that it limits his social interactions.  He claims there are parts of his life I will never understand because I'm not a twin, and then doesn't explain them.

That's a short list of what I see as his shortcomings, to underscore that I know he has them.  That said, we're getting married, which still seems unreal after two days of being "true".  I feel blessed to have him in my life, and I'm looking forward to being married, and we're taking wedding planning one step at a time.

Unanswered questions

I've been trying to write a post about remembering my love and I don't know what to write.  Do I write that I am still devastated by her loss on a daily basis?  Do I write that I'm terrified that Mr. Boy will meet the same demise she did?  Do I write that thirteen years is long enough for someone to become responsible, and I can see it in her fourteen-year-old brother?  Do I write that I wanted to escape, because I still don't want to deal with her loss?  Do I write that I'm conflicted as I start to let go and move forward?  Do I write about how weird I feel in the moments when I notice how similar Mr. Boy is to her?  Do I write that this is the hardest year yet?  Do I write that I feel lost without her even as I find direction in my life?

Memory

Memory is a funny thing, and I feel like I've been stuck in it all day.  Memories of my love have been swirling around me and popping up, and her brother asked me when I was going to stop being weird.  I was hanging out with some friends today to avoid spending all day alone in my apartment, and one was talking about James Taylor, so I mentioned that our song was "You Can Close Your Eyes."  I remembered her singing it to me for so long before I picked up on why she was doing it.  When I realized it, I felt stupid.

When today has been too much for me, I've tried visualizing the Beit Teva at Tzofim at OSRUI in my head.  It is the place I sought refuge at camp whenever I needed to.  I'm trying to see myself sitting on a stump surrounded by woods, with fewer mosquitos, of course.  And trying to get to that refuge in my head has helped when I feel like I need to escape.

What else?

Writing about my love is hard. I promised to love her and I don't know how to move beyond that. I had to write to her brother that he wasn't responsible this year. He's getting to the age of maturity in his Catholic guilt.

Summer's always hard

Summer is always hard, and I'm not talking about the extreme heat index numbers. For me, summer is the time when I lost those most important to me. Summer is the time when I read about the camp I used to attend and mourn that it is so heteronormative as to verge on homophobic, and is certainly institutionally transphobic. Summer has also become a time where I feel rather lonely.

Last week, the anniversary of my love's death hit pretty much as hard as it ever does. And all I wanted was to be back at OSRUI, taking refuge in the Tzofim Beit Teva or Tiferet's Ski Chalet. (Those who call it the Beit Am are being brainwashed by an attitude of Hebrew language supremacy at camp that I find detrimental, but that is perhaps for another post). I remembered one night in 1996. It was the first year of Tiferet workshop and the Ski Chalet did not yet exist. Tiferet used Metros and showered at Chalutzim. On this particular night, we had programming in the Art Center, not yet widely called by its Hebrew equivalent. The skies turned black all of a sudden and it started pouring. The lightning was very close, and we could not return to our cabins. We were preteens (that was the word before tweens for all you youngin's) not all scared but not too comfortable either. However, the songleader Josh Rabinowitz and the unit head Danny Maseng had their guitars and played us music until we fell asleep on the dance studio floor. And I found myself listening to my recording of Danny playing B'shem Hashem on loop not because his music is so amazing as to eliminate the pain of loss, but rather because at least I wouldn't be scared. His voice and that Carlebach tune combine in a way that still puts me at ease fifteen years later. And I missed camp, even its heteronormative aspects.

The most ironic element of missing camp wasn't its heteronormativity. It was that when I received the letter from my love's parents telling me of her death, the last place I wanted to be was OSRUI, where I had no access to modern conviences like the internet and the telephone. When I was in Chalutzim I spent half my camp summer cursing that I went to camp in the first place. Now when I have to deal with what happened, camp is the first place I think about, and I remembered writing my love a lengthy letter from Tiferet in 1996 describing what an amazing storm had rumbled through camp and how Danny and Josh had distracted us with wonderful music ranging from the chasidishe to James Taylor.

My Machon year at camp, I had a terrible time. I couldn't be out to staff or to campers, and I found myself much more aware of the institutional aspects of camp's homophobia and transphobia. I am told by those who have been there more recently that the situation is getting better, but I don't really believe them. The evidence is in the programming offered to campers, but that doesn't really help if counselors are still discouraged from coming out or discussing their own personal experiences of queerness as an identity. Obviously discussing personal sexual experiences with campers is bad, regardless of the genders of those involved. I resolved then not to go back until camp started moving rapidly in better directions of inclusiveness. My year on staff was my worst year at camp ever, mostly because the place I called home more than home for 10 years became a place that deliberately marginalized people like me.

But somehow, despite all this current animosity, OSRUI is still home for me. It's still the place where I first thought about becoming a rabbi. It's still the place where Judaism started making sense as a practice in addition to whatever religion was. It's the place I learned the power of music and art, not just from Ohad and Danny, but from the devastation my counselors experienced when Jerry Garcia died. (You may think I'm joking, but I'm not.) OSRUI is the place I learned about supporting my friends, and it's the place I learned how to give back massages. OSRUI is the place I learned that it's ok for a Jew to be an atheist, and it's also the place I learned to relate to God. OSRUI is the place I learned conflict resolution, but also the place I learned about solidarity. 70 Chalutzimniks chanting around the Migdal because there was no Israeli dancing our first Shabbat that summer may have been my first act of civil disobedience. OSRUI is the place I felt most alienated growing up with one Jewish parent (although there were lots of campers like me in that regard), but it is also the place where I first divulged my queerness to another person, a counselor whom I knew to be gay even though he never came out to me. My friends and even some former counselors and faculty from OSRUI populate half the contacts in my cell-phone, and I know that the bonds I have with old camp friends will last for longer than I can manage to keep in contact with those friends, although facebook has been a great help. But it pains me that I call a place that marginalizes me by omission home.

Of course, it's easier to talk about camp than loss. But what can I say about losing my love that I haven't said about a million times before?

Indepence Day

I narrowly avoided an argument with my roommate yesterday. The ginkgo girl moved out in the middle of June and one of my other friends moved in with me. There are very few arguments I do not wish to have. There are very few arguments I do not wish to have, but there are three or four that I cannot have and be civil at the same time. One of those is about the founding moments of the United States of America. When my roommate suggested that celebrating Independence Day was irrelevant to modern American life, it took all my strength not to go ballistic. I wanted to throw it back in her face and say that her being able to say that without fear of repercussions is reason enough to appreciate our freedom and form of government. I wanted to say some choice words too, but I simply suggested that I didn't want to have the argument and moved on.

We take our freedom and the struggle for our independence for granted now, perhaps because we feel historically removed from the situation. None of us were there for the continental congress when the Declaration of Independence was signed. We are so far removed from these struggles that when a survey was conducted in the 1960s asking people to identify the source of the first line of the Declaration of Independence, most thought it was from the charter for the radical organization Students for a Democratic Society. The line reads: "When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a descent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." Usually, this confusion is used to point to the failures of American e ducation, which it certainly points to. However, the sentiments of revolution so eloquently captured in Thomas Jefferson's words are relevant not only to the American revolution, but to many subsequent ones.

I don't think the USA is the best country in the world, or that we always live up to the ideals that we have as a nation. But I do know that we are always expanding those ideals: voting is no longer restricted to rich white men, and we abolished slavery. And after the civil war which split our nation in two, President Lincoln assured "malice toward none" who had been in the confederacy. We are in struggles to expand equality further in this country. So, today, I will try not to take the freedom I enjoy for granted, and renew my commitment to helping expand the rights of those who live around me.

Naivete

The first time I said "I love you" I was fourteen and I was late in saying it. My love had been saying it creatively for a few months, and I knew I loved her, but I was a little dense and didn't realize that she was saying "I love you." When I did finally realize it, I felt even more loved by her than I had before, mostly because of her enduring patience.

My fourteen-year-old self had no idea how my life would turn out, and assumed that we would last for ever. Death cannot stop true love. I was naive then, but I am disillusioned now. Honestly, I'm not sure which is better.

Blizzard

Now perhaps my friends will understand that blizzards are dangerous. Cars and possibly still some people are stranded on Lake Shore Dr. But I look at the white out windy conditions and I want to run outside with my love and make snow forts and snow angels. Of course, that too would be dangerous, but it's also impossible.

Necktie

The first time she tied a tie around my neck we were twelve. Well, maybe I was still eleven but she was twelve. She popped the collar on her dress shirt I was wearing, which was much too large for me, as she was already quite tall. She held the tie in both hands and swung it over my head as if it were a lasso, pulling me closer to her in the process. She tied a Windsor knot with a dimple, and slid it up to the collar. She pulled the collar down over the tie, which was red. Then she declared the knot perfect.

There are so many little vignettes like this one swirling around in my head right now. I am grateful that I still remember so many of these little scenes. However, sometimes I wish they would haunt me less.

Missing my love

Today I missed my love especially. It has been twelve years since we made our relationship official (in writing - facebook didn't exist yet).

I reveled in thinking about how stupid I was then, and how I haven't changed all that much since then in certain ways. I replayed my awkwardness over and over in my head. And I replayed our first kiss that ended the awkwardness, at least temporarily, over as well, trying to remember all the details about it that I could, and I surprised myself by how vivid my memory of that scene is. Maybe Ginkgo Girl can profit from making a teeny-bopper movie of my life after all.

I fast-forwarded to many of my favorite times with my love, trying today to focus only on our good times. I remembered countless nights of falling asleep listening to her voice and the feeling of waking up comfortable and secure in her arms. I remembered many instances of my own ineptness and her extraordinary ability to tease without malice. I remembered reading her poems by Rilke and noting which ones she liked to hear. I remembered the conscious effort I made to touch her shoulders rather than her face once she became uncomfortable with her stubble. I remembered sneaking into town in order to be ourselves.

I felt guilty that I was angry with her for so long. I was mad at myself for destroying so much both deliberately and inadvertently. I read the notes I had collected to send to her but never got the chance, and found a curious line: "May sounds nice, but it would have to be late May, after [my brother's] birthday. Don't worry, I won't make you wear that fake green dress I would buy you if I had a million dollars." I racked my brain to remember what the line referred to, but could only come up with one conjecture - we were planning a fantasy wedding.

First Instinct

It still surprises me that after all this time, my first instinct when something extremely exciting or traumatic happens is to call my love. I found a job posting this morning and dialed the number to the ranch and hung up after one ring when I realized that not only is she not at the ranch, but no one is, as her parents are at the hospital - her dad has been admitted and her brother went to live with her aunt for a while.

I've had very limited contact with her mom and her brother lately and her father is in very poor condition after falling off the tractor due to heart problems. I hadn't realized how much I still cared for her parents until her little brother sent me a scared email about their dad. I mean, when people blame you for the death of their child, even if that blame is entirely misplaced, it's hard not to be angry, but they are still family, and I guess always will be.

Update

Strange times have been had. I have inflammation of my ribcage, which Ginkgo Girl, as H will heretoforth be known in this blog, (yes, I did write this sentence that way to get to use the word heretoforth), thinks she caused by sleeping on my chest. I highly doubt this.

Getting through the middle of July was particularly hard this year.

My love's father is recovering from serious injury.

A friend from NUJLS came to visit. We had lots of fun and took advantage of his chemistry knowledge.