9 Av

This year I find that my fast has been easy so far, with three hours left to go.  Not that that's the point of Tisha b'Av, but it's noteworthy.  I feel appropriately in touch with brokenness and conscious that our world remains unredeemed. But Tisha b'Av as mourning doesn't feel meaningful, maybe because I'm already mourning.  In addition to the loss of Mr. Boy, this year Tisha b'Av is my grandpa's yahrzeit.  The metaphor of a bottom speaks much more to me this year.  It feels like the world, the people Israel (not to mention the land), and my life have all hit bottom.  I wish I could write more on this, but now is not the time.

Anyway, some 9 Av meditations if you are in need.  Not standard ones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRPwFAoQwxc

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/20/sayed-kashua-why-i-have-to-leave-israel

One Jew's Praise of Halloween Customs

in memory of Bob and with all the love in the world for Bud and both of their families

I've seen many treatments recently of whether Jews should celebrate Halloween.  On a simple halakhic level, the practice of participating in rituals for another religion is forbidden.  Halakhah was not a big concern to me growing up, and still isn't.  The following is not an argument for why Jews should participate in American Halloween customs, but rather an outline of the benefits and Jewish values I received in my own life through having a rich experience of Halloween as a child.

My partner lives in Boystown, and gay men take Halloween quite seriously.  But the parades and costumes and frivolity of Halloween in the gayborhood doesn't compare to Halloween the way I remember it.  The Halloween I remember had no religious overtones, even in South Bend, where most folks are Catholic.  It wasn't until I studied French culture that I learned Halloween started as a religious holiday.

I lived in a neighborhood in South Bend that was the envy of other neighborhoods when it came to Halloween.  Kids would come to my neighborhood for the king size candy bars those in the mansions would hand out, and, of course, there was the haunted house my "behind" neighbors put together.  The best friends, Bob and Bud, who lived next door to each other, used their front yards as a spooky playground, and, I found out when I was older, their homes for the adult party.

As a small child, there was nothing so exciting as the fear that grips you when a hand grabs you in a candy bowl with false bottom.  Usually, my parents let my brother and I go trick-or-treating in a modest fashion.  The highlight was always the haunted house, whether the candy haul was great or sub-standard.

The haunted house brought the community together, and remains one of my best experiences of maintaining a yearly ritual that has the right intention and right actions - the haunted house captured both keva and kavanah of Halloween.  As I became an older child and knew that the hand in the cauldron was attached to a person, and even when I knew who it was under the table, it was still a frightful experience.  As I entered my years of being too cool to go trick-or-treating, as a neighborhood kid, I was put to work under that table with my hand in the candy cauldron or spraying silly string at kids from inside a coffin.  Becoming the man behind the curtain didn't take away the mystery or specialness of the haunted house experience; it added to it.  I was able to pass on the Halloween experience to those younger than me, and be responsible for helping my community.  And helping make Halloween happen helped me stay engaged with the tradition when otherwise it would have been uncool to participate.

When I was in high school, tragedy struck, and Bob was killed in a workplace shooting.  Bud, a fire chief, was one of the first responders at the scene.  After Bob died, Bud didn't feel much like throwing a haunted house and party without his best friends.  Bud put up a plaque explaining the absence of the community event.  The first year without the haunted house seemed empty.   The next year, the neighborhood community organization organized a day-time Halloween gathering in the park in the North Shore Triangle.  Halloween, after all, was a time that our neighborhood coalesced around, and we mourned Bob's absence but came together as a community to have Halloween without Bob, but for Bob and Bud.  Bud couldn't bear to celebrate by himself, and he didn't have to.

In college, my dorm organized a haunted house and brought people in to trick-or-treat, and as I became involved in the queer scene, many people my age do the costume thing and have celebrations, but there's not a proper ruach Halloween outside of my neighborhood in South Bend.

For me, Halloween is not about who has the cleverest, coolest, or sexiest costume.  It is not about how drunk one gets or who has the best drag act.  It is not about how much candy you collect or how scary you are or how scared you get.  It's not about the decorations or even about great death and ghost puns.  Halloween is about community, it's about support, it's about building things together.  It's about letting other people enjoy themselves and doing the work to make it happen.  It's about hospitality - having way more Halloween candy ready than necessary because you never know who will come to your door.  It's about remembering the amazing antics from last year or five years ago, and telling and retelling those stories.  And most of all, it's about the power of emanating kindness from the fast friendship of two men.

From Halloween, I learned values of tradition, kindness, what it means to be a part of a community, how to be there for those grieving, how to pass on my love for something to the next generation.  And I learned it better and clearer from a haunted house than from my synagogue.

Zman simjateinu

Sukkot is upon us.  For eight days, we are commanded to be happy.  I've always rebelled against this notion.  How can you legislate a feeling?

The requisite post about Shabbat Nachamu

So I'm a little behind on this blog, and Shabbat Nachamu was a few days ago.  The observance of it is poignant for me this year, as Shabbat Nachamu is a reminder that there's hope.  Even in the darkest times, when it seems like the end of the world as we know it, we are reminded that hope is real and also external to us.  When we have lost hope it still exists somewhere outside of us, and we need only locate it.

If Tisha b'Av falls on Rosh Jodesh, do you fast?

The title of the above refers to a trivia question I once answered.  It's a trick question, because Tisha b'Av means the ninth day of the month of av, so it can never fall on Rosh Jodesh, which is the first day of the month.  That said, if Tisha b'Av falls on Shabbat, you commemorate it the next day instead.

Last night, I attended Mishkan's Tisha b'Av observance, which included Ma'ariv, Reading of Eicha (the Book of Lamentations), and a conversation about our sadness and love when it comes to Israel.  As a Tisha b'Av observance, it was the closest I have come to my Tisha b'Av experiences at OSRUI - meaningful, hot, and at some points frustrating.  The pain in the room was real and the mood somber, but somehow, in leaving with the brokenness of the day, I came out more whole.

I did not grow up with a Tisha b'Av observance in my family.  As someone with staunch Reform upbringing, Tisha b'Av was (for those who knew about it) considered an inappropriate holiday to commemorate because the Reform Movement does not believe the destruction of the Temple to be a bad thing, and therefore does not mourn the event.  However, Tisha b'Av was commemorated at my summer camp, in a beautiful fashion that bestowed the day with contemporary meaning for this mourning.  We talked about sinat jinam, the senseless hatred that Jews see as our part in the destruction of the Temple.  But more than that, the ritual was well-crafted to imbue the day with sorrow and with connection to the history of the Jewish people: tragedies and persecution included.  Living in a time of relative peace and privilege for Jews, this connection was new for me.  I am here because my ancestors responded to persecution by making themselves stronger, because the response to the question eicha has been that part is under our control.  We find things we could have done better even when we recognize that others are responsible for inflicting violence, persecution, and genocide on us.  We could sit in our hatred of them or of God, but instead we reflect on what it is about us and the way we live that exacerbates the damage done to us by others.

I remember that unit heads carried the Torah from our units to Port Hall as the rest of us joined hands and walked singing Don McLean's "By the Waters of Babylon."  We entered Port Hall where we snaked around and joined hands with other units as well until everyone had entered and we sat on the ground.  Passages of Eicha were chanted in Hebrew and read in English, and the list of tragedies that ostensibly occurred on Tisha b'Av was read: destruction of the first Temple, destruction of the second Temple, the start of the first crusade, expulsion of the Jews from England, expulsion of the Jews from France, expulsion of the Jews from Spain, declaration of the Final solution, and the beginning of the deportations from the Warsaw ghetto (not to mention the Toraitic events that the rabbis associated with the day).  The history of how each Torah came to be at camp was recounted, with background information of situations of persecution and how Torahs were rescued if that was the case.  Esa einai was often sung, and we walked back after in silence, which was not a common sensory experience at camp.  The next day (Jewish days start at sundown and go to sundown) we would bury religious texts that were no longer usable in the camp genizah.  I don't know how the custom of adding to a genizah became associated with Tisha b'Av, but my conjecture is that Jews find the loss of text to be of similar importance to the crash of an entire way of life.  I carry nostalgia for that Tisha b'Av experience: the sense of connection to my people when all seems lost, and of being able to take concrete action to mourn the past but also of being able to take concrete action to build a better future.

The observance last night included "By the Waters of Babylon" and traditional kinot.  It included chanting of Eicha and reading it in English.  We sat on a hard floor in the summer heat, and although candles burned, we started before sundown and the effect was not one of darkness.  And we had a "conversation" about Israel, which is a topic that many in the Jewish world see as so divisive that we only talk with like-minded folks.  I put conversation in quotes because it wasn't a conversation in the usual sense. We were first asked to consider where our love comes from when it comes to Israel and where our sadness comes from when it comes from Israel.  We were given paper and pens to write our thoughts and some time (although not enough) to consider.  Then we were asked to listen to those who volunteered to share.  This was an exercise in "vulnerable listening," we were told, which apparently means being attentive and nonjudgmental toward the speaker, but also not to display any emotional reaction you may be having.  Sharers were to take no more than three minutes each and were instructed to give their names at the beginning of what they said, speak in "I language," and say "Thank you for listening" at the end, to which the response from the community was "Thank you." These stipulations led one person to comment that it felt like a "Jews Anonymous" meeting.  I think these regulations were necessary for people to feel safe sharing about a sensitive subject, but by no means did they engender conversation.  Sharers could only focus their comments on their own experiences and feelings, which prevented anything I would call conversation (questions asked an answered, deeper thoughts provoked, progression of ideas possible) from taking place.  It was uncomfortable to listen to people vent their frustrations about Israel.  It was hard to maintain a non-emotional face listening as things I disagreed with or agreed with whole-heartedly were said, and especially as others bared their souls, it was hard to resist impulses to comfort.  The discomfort and pain were fitting for the day.  After the discussion and the reading, we had more space for singing and meditating on loss.  Then we had Ma'ariv (no, not traditional, but again, we started before sundown).  We spoke Ma'ariv, which gives an eerie quality to prayer, and is traditional, as music might increase the enjoyment of the experience, and the idea is that one is praying out of spite because one is in too much pain to do otherwise, and we left, only speaking what was necessary to clean up the space after use.  I walked to the Red Line in silence and rode home, also in silence.  To allow ourselves time to process pain and grow from it is extremely powerful.

Tzom Qasheh

The Seventeenth of Tammuz is a minor fast day in Jewish tradition which commemorates the breaching of the walls of Jerusalem in 70 CE.  Being a post-biblical minor fast, I did not observe it from the age of thirteen.  The day starts a three-week mourning period between it and Tisha B'av, the day the Second Temple was destroyed.  Tisha B'av is the saddest day of the Jewish year, and many other national tragedies are also commemorated on that day.  I started observing it at Olin-Sang-Ruby Union Institute, which was one of the first observances that made me more frum than my parents.  However, previous to this year, I had never observed Tzom Tammuz or the three-week period called bein hameitzarim (between the narrow places).

Last year, one of the women I am blessed to call "my rabbi" framed bein hameitzarim as the beginning of the trajectory to the High Holy Days.  We hit a communal rock bottom which allows us to do the spiritual work of t'shuvah and reconcile with God during yamim noraim.  So this year, I decided to try fasting for Tzom Tammuz.  Minor fasts are observed from sunup to sundown, and the timing of Tzom Tammuz made it a fast between about 5:15 AM and 9:15 PM.  But due to poor planning, I ended up accidentally fasting for about 28 hours.  Jewish law permits self-care exemptions to fasting, so I did take my medicine.

I wasn't feeling well the day of Tzom Tammuz and stayed home from work.  I spent a large part of the day, lying down, wishing the pain I was feeling would go away, and not really being able to eat even if I had wanted to.  It felt like the world was breaking, which, I suppose is the point.  When the day was over, a neighbor who is a good friend offered to feed me, which was good, because I wasn't sure if I could stand up for long enough to cook something.

As far as how the three weeks are going, I haven't felt too much in a mournful mood.  Although certain things in my life are not desirable (my significant other is very ill), I feel like the events of the week are those of celebration for the most part.  I don't mean to slight to the damage that repealing part of the Voting Rights Act or the limiting of what constitutes a supervisor for harassment cases does to society.  These are unfortunate losses in the fight for equal dignity.  But the Supreme Court asserted that people in same-sex relationships are human.  I didn't need a court to tell me this, but it sure helps that they did.  I feel grateful and victorious, not mournful and sad.  And the coincidence with Pride celebrations just added to my internalization of the collective effervescence.  Additionally, this year, Canada Day, American Independence Day, and Bastille Day all fall during the Three Weeks.  My love's yahrzeit will fall in the Three Weeks this year, but even that does not make me feel spiritually low.  I feel b'midbar, in the wilderness on the slow and steady march to Freedom Land.  We may not be there yet, but we can see it from the mountain top.  That makes me feel spiritually elevated.  I know that I am on the right path, and my community is too.  But then again, perhaps that was my rabbi's point anyway.

Tisha B'av

Perhaps it is problematic that I associate Tisha B'av with haunting music and books - two of my favorite things.  But Eichah trope and other reflective music moves me.  At camp, we used the occasion of Tisha B'av to bury old unusable books with the tetragrammaton in a genizah.  The reverence for books in the Jewish tradition is one that my nerdy self also loves.  The pain of needing to dispose of a book as national pain was a wonderful lesson to learn as a child. Books are powerful and words have the capability to kill or to save lives.

On Tisha B'av, both Temples were destroyed.  Jews were expelled from England, France, Spain, and Portugal on the date.  World War I started on the date.  The rounding up of Jews into ghettos in Poland started on the date, and the deportation from the Warsaw ghetto also happened.  Whether some of these dates were actually on Tisha B'av is unknown, but the commemoration becomes a container for our anguish.

This Tisha B'av, I'm trying to recognize national and personal pain and also the hope of leaving that pain behind.  Tisha B'av starts a season of reflection, self-improvement, and t'shuvah, and we read at the end of Eicha a prayer for God to facilitate our process of t'shuvah.  I'm grateful that in the depths of our sadness, we have hope of a better world.

Halloween

So, I've told a few people that I'm not very into Halloween.  I don't do much to celebrate the holiday and I try to let it pass by with as little involvement as possible.  I don't live in an area where kids go trick-or-treating, and  a lot of the traditions seem silly to this old-man-in-training.

But it wasn't always that way.   When I was a kid, Halloween was the coolest.  I trick-or-treated and two of my neighbors established an outdoor haunted house every year.  And when I was old enough I worked at the haunted house.  I got braces on Halloween and I could eat without difficulty until trick-or-treating time, and I was devastated.  But that didn't shake my appreciation for Halloween.

When I was in high school, there was a workplace shooting near my town, at the office of one of my neighbors who ran the haunted house, and he was killed.  After that, it was too hard for the neighborhood to host the haunted house.  And Halloween became a sad day for me.  And it's still sad.  The joy I used to associate with community on Halloween was transformed to mourning.  So, forgive me if I'm not full of holiday spirit.

Sukkot

Sukkot and Simchat Torah are now over, at least for me.  The holidays are not widely observed, at least not in more than a token fashion, by Reform Jews in America.  Somehow the time of Sukkot, the Season of Our Joy, makes me feel at home in ways I haven't yet been able to describe.

It's odd: Sukkot is a time where Jews set up a transitory space in which to live.  And it is in this temporary shelter that I find not only the Jewish community but myself alive with purpose.  I don't know whether it is the commandment to be happy or the sense of community that the holiday cultivates, but something makes me appreciate life in a new way during Sukkot, and it's not because of an increased appreciation of inside space.

Home for the Holidays

I'm living in Chicago which is a short train ride away from where my parents live.  It's too close to try to stay in my adopted home for the holidays when my parents extend an invitation to their home.  While my broader synagogue family in South Bend is warm and loving and it's good to see people, going home, especially for a major holiday has its disadvantages.  It's not an appropriate time to come out to people, in large part, though a member of the synagogue once came out publicly on Yom Kippur afternoon.  I have an established rule that if I don't ask people to change which name or pronouns they use for me, then I don't take offense if they use the "wrong" ones.  Of course, it's still stressful and somewhat foreign by now to spend a lot of time being addressed by a name I haven't used in years over and over.

The Ethics and Practice of Radical Hospitality

On Passover we say let all who are hungry come an eat, but in general, we don't open our doors until after dinner. In Genesis, Abraham runs out to meet his guests. How did Jews get from running to greet guests to symbolically opening a door and closing it without really inviting anyone in?

I've been thinking a lot lately about hospitality. What does it mean to welcome the stranger? What are boundaries to welcoming in modern society? How do we create open and welcoming spaces? And how do we invite people to them?

Emphasis has been placed lately on offical documentation of welcoming policies. If a congregation has on it's website that it is welcoming to queer folk or interreligious couples, that translates into the congregration being welcoming to queer folk or interreligious couples, right? I wish, but it's not always the case. Welcoming statements need to be backed up by welcoming actions. I feel welcomed by the people at my synagogue most of the time, but there are no gender-neutral bathrooms there, which makes using the bathroom at the synagogue a harrowing experience.

I wonder at how welcome Jewish spaces are for non-Jews and for Jews. My parent's synagogue keeps its doors locked even during services because of a combination of fear of violence and the prevalence of unsavory characters in the small but urban downtown area in which their synagogue is located. I find it extremely distracting when the doorbell rings in the middle of Shabbat services.

I don't know how we walk the line between practicing radical hospitality and ensuring safety, but I know we don't do it well most of the time. Our ethics are there, but where is the practice?

Weighing in on St. Patrick's Day

So there's been some buzz on the Jewish blogosphere about St. Patrick's Day and other holidays of Christian origin pervasive in American culture. The other holidays that have been mentioned most are Valentine's Day and Halloween. The sense of the comments is that Jews should not celebrate these holidays because even if they are part of secular culture, they have Christian origin, so wearing green on St. Patrick's Day, for example, or drinking on St. Patrick's Day (when it's not ta'anit ester) is worship of saints and therefore idols.

But, for example, Christmas is a US federal holiday. Does that mean Jews who get Christmas off should break into work anyway because Christmas is of Christian origin? Many people get Sundays off for a similar reason.

However, consistency is not the only aspect these arguments lack. I'm not saying people should celebrate St. Patrick's Day if they feel uncomfortable doing so. But insinuating or calling for a collective ban on celebration of such days assumes a cultural similarity of all Jews. There are Irish Jews, and though St. Patrick's Day is for some a holy day of obligation, that does not negate the influence that Patrick had on Irish history. If Christians are not paying proper respect to their holy days, that is their own issue to resolve. It doesn't mean that I can no longer walk across the St. Joseph River or support the work of St. Jude's Children's Hospital. It also doesn't mean that I cannot find inspiration in the lives of those that Christians (or others) call saints.