Intro to Judaism - Week 12

There are so many questions in this week's suggested topic that I will probably work better responding to each one individually, rather than writing an essay the way I typically do.

Disclaimer: I reserve the right to have my views on God change and evolve dramatically throughout my lifetime. My responses here reflect only what I believe as of the next fifteen minutes or so. Returning to this conversation at any future point could yield different results.

What do I believe about God?
I believe God is a divine and eternal singular entity, and I believe that this Divine Presence is in every soul and every living thing on Earth. I believe that God is a life-giving source. I do not believe that God makes it a habit to interfere on our behalf or our enemies' behalf at the request of individuals with their own motives and self-serving desires. I believe that God is hands-off for the most part, holding us responsible for how we handle what God has set in motion. I believe that I am responsible for my own fate, and that being passive or inactive in my own life does not make the consequence part of "God's plan." I do not believe in sitting back and waiting for God to make a decision for me.

How has my view of God changed over time?
My childhood view of God was that of a Protective Father, a king on a throne. I do still find God to be comforting, but more in a sense of helping me cope and find peace rather than expecting God to protect me from anything negative. This is much like the evolution of one's views of one's own parents. As a child, they seem invincible and - if you are blessed with the safe childhood that I had - you feel 100% comfortable and protected from harm. It seems there is nothing they can't handle. Then you grow up and realize there are outside influences and your parents can only protect you so much - but you appreciate the self-esteem and healthy coping skills that they instilled in you, as well as their ongoing support.

What is my relationship, if any, with God? How does this relationship affect my actions and decisions?
This is tough to articulate, but I'll try. I feel like God's partner in the mission of tikkun olam - repairing the world. (This also happens to be my agency's motto, so I'm familiar with it beyond my more recent and intensive exposure to Judaism.) I am God's hand, God's tool. When I see a homeless woman begging on the subway, I buy her a slice of pizza because God can't. God wants to help her, so I help God help her. And when she says, "Thank you, God bless you," I think she knows this. I feel like this in everything that I do, and it makes me more aware of the impact of my decisions. Preparing to take on the yoke of the Torah and enter into the covenant has increased this awareness a hundred-fold. It has made me feel God more active in my life through my actions.

What do I believe about the relationship between the existence of God and the existence of evil in the world?
Throughout my reading of Finding God, which I referenced a couple posts back, I noticed the question of evil come up in relation to every Jewish scholar/philosopher. Personally, I didn't get why the author felt like each school of thought needed to respond to this, because to me it isn't an issue. Evil and God have nothing to do with one another in my mind. It seems clear to me that evil is a creation of humans, and if we believe in free will, how can we blame God for this? It is our own responsibility to show kindness, compassion, and justice, and to confront evil in others. I also struggle with the word "evil" altogether, because it seems to have an unredeemable connotation, and I believe very little - if anything - is pure, unredeemable evil. I believe there is pain and trauma behind most acts of cruelty. People can be as broken as our world is, and broken people may break people. It is our responsibility, as individuals and as a society, to heal and to stop this cycle. This has nothing to do with God and everything to do with us and our own obligation to the world and one another.

Do I believe I can communicate with God, and if so, how?
I personally don't feel that I have a reciprocal dialogue with God, but I communicate with God through prayer, which is often in the form of letting myself feel a particular emotion as strongly as possible without having to try to give words to it. I also feel in communication with God when I'm in nature, particularly in the Blue Ridge mountains of my homeland, but really anywhere that brings me back to the rawness of God's creation. This has always, always been true for me, even during my ten-year hiatus from organized religion. I also believe that I am communicating with God when I am acting as God's partner as described earlier. Action can be its own form of prayer.

What are your thoughts about the differences between Chanukah and Christmas and other religious celebrations? How might you handle the two holidays if there is one Jewish and one non-Jewish partner in your family?
I am fortunate that we are in agreement on identifying as a Jewish family. The difficulty comes in letting go of Christian traditions that have much nostalgia attached to them and which continue to be important to our families of origin. The primary difference for us is that my family celebrated them religiously and Nicole's celebrated them secularly. I worry about making Chanukah a bigger holiday than it is intended to be in order to "compete" with the commercialization of Christmas, but at the same time, I acknowledge that this is pretty normative among American Jews. I do think we don't need an excess of gifts - the disgusting level of consumerism that is associated with the December holidays is one thing I'm very happy and relieved to give up, and I'd like to keep Chanukah gift-giving a bit simpler. I think feeling secure in my Jewish identity will allow me to enjoy the festivity of someone else's celebrations (such as store decorations and lights on houses) without feeling afraid that I'll feel like I'm missing out. I have heard non-Jews talk about how they drive through Brooklyn looking at sukkahs during Sukkot because they're so beautiful and amazing to see. They don't say, "Man, I really wish I was part of that culture and could build a sukkah..." They just enjoy the beauty of someone else's culture. I don't see why that can't be my eventual view of Christmas.

Judaism does not recognize Jesus as the son of God or as the Messiah, nor does Judaism include the New Testament in its Holy Scriptures. How do I feel about this? What are the most apparent differences between Judaism and Christianity to me? 
The most apparent differences to me are:
1. Jews do not believe the Messiah has come and that Jesus is God. The Messianic Age will come about when the world is perfect, which it has not yet been, and we have a responsibility to bring that about. We are responsible for our own salvation.
2. Jews do not emphasize the afterlife and are more concerned about how one lives in the here-and-now, without a promise of eternal reward or threat of damnation.
3. Jews do not believe that you have to be an exclusive member of the club in order to have a place in the world-to-come. Any righteous person shares the same fate, and a righteous non-Jew is better off than a non-observant and non-righteous Jew.
4. Jews emphasize works and actions over declarations of faith.
5. Jews openly and warmly welcome sincere converts but do not actively seek them out. Jews would rather have a small, sincere community than to risk diluting Jewish values and integrity for the sake of increasing numbers.
6. Jews emphasize being part of a people with a history and a destiny, being part of a community and culture rich in traditions and rituals, rather than focusing so much on one's individual relationship with God. Converting to Judaism is about much more than feeling called to a particular faith and set of beliefs.

How do I feel about all this? All of the above points are exactly why I feel I belong in the Jewish community.

What are the similarities?
Believing in one God, observing a weekly day of rest through worship and praise as a community, studying Biblical texts in an effort to relate them to our modern lives, being led in prayer and song by a clergy member, blessing food before eating, valuing family, educating one's children through weekly classes and other congregational activities, the obligation of helping those in need.

What holiday memories of my youth are especially dear to me?
I come from a family full of traditions. I've always known that marriage would mean adapting those traditions to fit my new family, incorporating what we can from both of our traditions as well as making our own. Judaism just requires even more adaptation in order to keep what's important to me. For instance, some cherished holiday memories include watching Christmas movies with mugs of cocoa and warm socks - couldn't this be a winter tradition with a different type of movie? Another warm memory is of racing downstairs to a pile of presents and being ecstatic that Santa came. I have struggled for years with whether I wanted to continue the tradition of Santa with my own kids, for a multitude of reasons, and always felt like I wanted to downsize the excessive gift-giving to decrease the opportunity for greed and envy. Judaism gives me a good reason and a strong framework for making this adjustment by eliminating Christmas altogether and "replacing" it with a more minor holiday. I'm also just not struggling as much anymore with my own nostalgia and memories because I'm excited to create new ones for my own kids, which certainly don't need to replicate my own childhood.

Choosing a Hebrew Name

Disclaimer: I will not take on my Hebrew name until conversion, so I will not really be sharing it with anyone yet. However, I wanted to write about the process of finding my name, and since all of four people in my life read this blog (two of them rabbis and the other two immediate family), I'm okay with talking about it in this forum.

From Anita Diamant's book Choosing Judaism (with lots deleted throughout to pare it down):

Converts have always selected Hebrew names that speak to them personally...There are 2,800 personal names in the Hebrew Bible, and although fewer than five percent of those are in current use, all of them are yours to consider.  

Many of the names in the Bible are theophoric, meaning that they exalt God...Others describe the circumstances of birth or a person's historical role...The Bible also contains many names that refer to the natural universe: Deborah--bee; Jonah--dove; Tamar--palm tree. 

The lexicon of Hebrew names was not handed down from Mount Sinai; it has grown and changed throughout history and in response to local customs and fashions. Take, for example, the quintessentially Jewish name Esther, which is Persian in origin and shares its root with the fertility goddess, Ishtar. When the state of Israel was founded, in 1948, scores of new Hebrew names were invented and many old ones reclaimed. Your rabbi should be able to provide you with guidance, lists, even suggestions. Once you find one or two names that you especially like, you might ask the rabbi to help you find some texts about the biblical character or name you've selected. 

But you may not have to look any further than your own given name for inspiration. Some names translate beautifully. Regina or Gina, which means "queen," can give rise to Malkah, which also means "queen." If your parents named you David, David (pronounced "Dah-veed") can be your Hebrew name as well... 

Many converts follow the contemporary American custom of selecting a Hebrew name based on the initial letter or sound of their English name. Thus, Robert chooses Reuben, and Mary selects Miriam. But don't feel obligated by an accident of the alphabet. Since Jewish babies are usually named after parents or grandparents, some converts choose a name to honor someone in their own lives... 

But there's no rule that you have to find an orthographic or historical connection between your name and your Hebrew name. This is an area of Jewish practice where there are few rules or customs, so find a name that feels right and has meaning for you.

My friend Allyson asked me a few days ago whether I had chosen a Hebrew name yet. I said that it has been on my mind off and on, as far as just knowing that I will do this and kind of wondering how, but that I hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about it yet because I'm not really sure how to start and was kind of hoping it would just come to me. She said that often people choose to honor the memory of a deceased loved one, such as by choosing a name that begins with the same letter of that relative's name. Nicole's middle name is that of her great-grandmother whom she has never met.

I immediately thought of my maternal grandmother who died when I was twelve years old. She was my favorite grandparent and I still cry for missing her if I let myself think about her too much. Everything in our extended family kind of fell apart after her death, so I also associate her with a more peaceful and connected time. Also, since my mother is the youngest in her family, we are the youngest cousins. This means my grandmother got to see our other cousins with their spouses, and some even with their children, while she didn't even get to see me go to high school. I struggled for a long time with feeling cheated out of her knowing me as an adult - and me knowing HER as an adult. Oh the questions I would ask her, the conversations we would have, that never would have occurred to me or seemed important at twelve!

My grandmother was adopted as an infant, born in Canada as Stella by a woman who feared my grandmother's father. My great-grandparents - who lived on a farm in Auburn, NY - took her in without ever legally formalizing the adoption, because that would have required reaching out to the father, and my grandmother's birth mother was afraid to have any further contact with him. My grandmother was renamed Bertha Mabel Miller (this maiden name coincidentally being the same as my father's surname). Her name is German, as we are of very mixed ancestry but with a strong German heritage. 

I started my search by looking at Hebrew names that started with B, as Allyson suggested. I didn't want the name to be completely arbitrary, though, sharing only the first letter, so I looked for a name that may sound similar. The closest I found was Betuel, and it just didn't feel right. I tumbled it around in my mind and in my mouth for quite some time and just couldn't connect with it. It then occurred to me to look up the meaning of Bertha and go from there. Bertha is a German name meaning "bright, radiant." This immediately resonated with me, as my grandmother was easygoing, content, and full of joy and life - definitely something that is also true for me. How perfect for me to have a name that also means "bright" and to feel connected to her in that way. I looked that up and found the name Ziva. It immediately felt right.

Not only does this name connect me to my beloved grandmother, but also to our shared sense of spirituality. My grandmother was Baptist, played Baptist hymns on her piano (charming to me as a Catholic child), and just exuded pure and solid faith. Tying in my Hebrew name to her feels more natural and appropriate than if I had a minimally observant Jewish relative whose name I could build on. We share a deep and trusting love of God, and if she were here, I feel confident that she would be supportive of my journey.

Intro to Judaism - Week 11

This week's suggested topic is about "casting one's lot" with the Jewish people and about personally receiving the Torah. I wrote about personally receiving the Torah Week 8 - not sure how I was that off base, maybe I was looking at the wrong page of the syllabus?? Well, I can still make a post about the first part of the topic!

Belonging to the Jewish people, even in New York City and Long Island, is belonging to a cultural and religious minority. "Casting my lot" with the Jewish people to me means fully identifying as Jewish and not trying to "pass." In the LGBTQ community, "passing" is the ability (whether you want it or not) of blending into the non-queer majority. For the brief period when I grew my hair out for my wedding, I passed a lot better than I do now that I went back to my short (and sometimes spiky) 'do. Sometimes this helped me feel safer and more comfortable - other times it made me feel excluded from my own community, unable to exchange the sort of knowing glances or supportive smiles with other visible queers that I had become accustomed to and appreciated. Now that my hair is short again but I wear more feminine clothing than I did last time it was short, I sometimes pass and sometimes don't. But I try never to hide or intentionally blend. For example, I don't use vague terms or pronouns when referring to my wife. Many bisexual individuals feel a similar struggle when they are in opposite-sex relationships - I experienced this myself when I first identified as bisexual while with my long-time boyfriend and felt like I was enjoying "straight privilege."

Casting my lot with the Jewish people means for me that I am not trying to "pass" as non-Jewish. This is something I've already begun to exercise by sort of "coming out" about my conversion when it comes up. For instance, I had to be open with my supervisor early on about having class on Thursday evenings, as it makes me unavailable for certain things. I also had to tell one of our secretaries that I can only take weekday on-call shifts instead of weekends since I feel commanded to observe Shabbat. When the director of my program asked how I spent my "day off" for Yom Kippur, I told him that I was in temple most of the day, which started a conversation I wasn't sure I was prepared to have.

Yes, I'm coming out as a Jew-to-be. It's not always comfortable, especially since religion in general is never something I have talked openly about with peers or colleagues. Growing up Catholic in the south, I was uncomfortable with how freely Southern Baptist and Born-Again Christians spoke about "being saved," for example, a concept my religion didn't endorse in the same way. Subsequently, I tended to just keep my thoughts on religion private. But Judaism is more than a religion. I've realized that I'm taking on an entire community, culture, and way of life that can't be reduced to a weekly service and holiday celebrations. It's a very essential part of who I am - already! - and my new family and the traditions we are establishing together. I have to take my people on as mine, and stand with them even when it's not easy.

There will be many opportunities for me still to "pass." Aside from temple, I don't have a strong central Jewish group to which I belong. Even Nicole's family is not observant, and I only have two Jewish friends, who are not an integral part of my everyday life. My family, my in-laws, and most of my friends and colleagues are not Jewish or are not observant Jews. The people close to me know that I am converting, but there will always be people in any arena of life who don't. It may never come up, and it doesn't always have to. But if there is an opportunity for it to and I make roads around it to intentionally avoid it, that is separating myself from the Jewish people.

Rabbi R said at a recent lunch-and-learn that, in this day and age, when the idea of a Jewish community (school, neighbors, shopowners, etc. being primarily Jewish) and living in a Jewish bubble has dissolved, everyone is a Jew-by-choice. Most Jews, whether by birth or conversion, have to make an active choice to live out the Jewish faith through their actions and lifestyle, a choice not to assimilate and just blend in with the mainstream.

"Casting my lot" with the Jewish people will not always be easy, but it will always be fulfilling.

Intro to Judaism - Week 10

Friday was our class “Shabbat Experience.” We went to a special service at the synagogue that hosts our class, and then we had a potluck Shabbat dinner afterward. Nicole had been so looking forward to this, and then got stuck staying home because of an oil leak. We had the burner serviced Thursday, and apparently that caused a leak since the oil line wasn’t installed well. She came home from work to the smell of oil in our house and had to wait all evening for workers to be available to come out and fix it. (Home ownership is fun!) She was really upset, as she had missed class Thursday to celebrate her sister’s birthday so she’d be free Friday, and had left work two hours early to make sure she could get to the city on time.

So I went by myself, and started out upset because I knew how upset Nicole was that she was missing it. However, that feeling quickly dissipated as I bumped shoulder-to-shoulder with congregants and knew Nicole would be so overwhelmed by the crowd and chaos that she probably would have left!

Let me start by saying that I’d like to attend a regular Shabbat service at this temple because there were two separate things my brain was trying to process – the difference between our temple and this one, and the difference between this special service and regular services. There was a “Jewish rock star” named Rick Recht who seemed like he’d be a great guest star on Sesame Street. His performances were very kid-friendly, with lots of participation and engagement. I think if he had come to my humble suburban temple, I would have enjoyed it more because it would be one thing different. But with everything being different, it was too much. I felt like I was at a preschool service, though it clearly wasn’t because the kids were offered a separate service downstairs.

I should start at the beginning, because I’m already becoming jumbled.

The entrance area outside the sanctuary was like half a horseshoe, whereas ours is a very large open space. They were having the oneg before, which we learned they do once a month during the special musical service. It made sense because the service was too early to be able to have dinner beforehand (6:00, whereas ours starts at 8:00) and the little ones would probably get a bit cranky without a snack. But it forced us into the schmoozing part of services, which even with people we know in our own congregation, we generally avoid. We are sooo tired on Friday nights that it’s all we can do to make it to the service, and staying after 9:00 to schmooze is just out of the question. It doesn’t help that neither of us is very social by nature, so when we DO go, we tend to awkwardly sit by ourselves, trying to figure out when is not too soon to leave.

After chatting a bit with classmates and our teacher, another woman and I decided to go ahead into the sanctuary. (It’s a shame how bad I am with names – halfway through the class, I know a lot about her story but don’t know her name.) Both of us were overwhelmed with all the shoulder-bumping and the volume of the conversations around us. It was PACKED. We started to head into the sanctuary to get away from it all and were stopped by a greeter (identified by his fancy nametag that said “greeter”). He told us that the service would be beginning outside and not to go in yet. Wait, huh? What do you mean outside? So we stood by the doors until the rabbi began singing to get everyone’s attention. She then lit the Shabbat candles and did Kiddush outside the sanctuary. I wonder if this is normal for them??

The floodgates finally opened and we went up to get seats together as a class. The sanctuary looked so different from ours. First of all, it’s massive. We come from a little humble synagogue in Long Island, and this is a big synagogue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with at least three rabbis. This was a large space, and even had a balcony section. (Though it’s worth noting that even on a popular service night such as this, the downstairs wasn’t close to filled. It must take Yom Kippur to occupy all those seats.) The seats were like old movie theater chairs, instead of the wooden pews at ours. The ark which holds the Torah looked like a giant mezuzzah (the scroll-holders Jews place in the doorways of their homes). And I mean GIANT. It was floor-to-cavernous-ceiling, and very ornate. You could see the Torah inside through the grate. I enjoyed seeing how different an ark could look!

Early on, the rabbi sang a prayer in such a different way than I’m used to that I couldn’t join her. The guy next to me said it was a Sephardic style – Sephardic Jews come from Spain (and maybe Italy?), whereas Ashkenazi Jews come from Eastern Europe (Russia, Poland, etc.) Our rabbi (and most of our congregation, I assume) is Ashkenazi and that’s what I’m used to. The guy said she doesn’t always sing it that way, though.

From then on, I was engaged on-and-off. I’d start to get really into the service and enjoy the comfort in being able to chant and pray and sing no matter what group of people I was with and no matter what the four walls around me looked like. Then something would change so dramatically that I was shut out again, just like that. I’m not sure how much of it was how another temple does things, and how much of it was because there was this groovy, shaggy-haired, youth-retreat-ish performer leading the service. He sang “L’Chah Dodi” in such a unique way that initially put me off but which I pretty quickly got into, once I was able to pick up on the tune he was using. Other pieces were so different I could never quite get into them, such as the call to worship. I know at my temple that I bow when the rabbi does, not the cantor, because he is the one calling us to worship and we are responding. Here, I couldn’t figure out what was happening when because of the people involved and the way it was sung. It all sort of blended together.

Overall I was able to take it in stride, feeling like I would get a kick out of the way he mixed things up if it were in the comfort and familiarity of my own temple, and also feeling like I would somewhat enjoy a service at a different temple if it were more standard and traditional where I got to really experience their rabbis and cantor. The only things I really objected to was how he led the Sh’ma. It’s something very serious and deeply significant to me, the closest thing to a declaration of faith that we have as Jews. Having to learn and remember cutesy hand motions to go with each word was very distracting and even felt irreverent. I suppose it makes sense for a family service, but since the little ones were called out to their own service, that didn’t even seem like it was necessarily the purpose.

I miss our rabbi, and I miss our temple. I feel like I went away to summer camp, and while it was an interesting getaway, I can’t wait to come home to my family this Friday.

Let me end this by noting that I just freaked out with excitement when I realized I instinctually wrote “we as Jews” without thinking twice.

Intro to Judaism - Week 9

I'm going completely off-topic today, because I finished the open-ended reading assignment (as opposed to the weekly assignments) and have some reflections on it. The book is called Finding God: Selected Responses, by Rifat Sonsino and Daniel B. Syme.

I went on a bit of a roller coaster with this book. Initially, I could not have been more excited, because the introduction was a bit misleading about what it would contain - or certainly my expectations about how these subjects would be approached was completely off. The questions posed ("Do you ever wonder...") were all things that I was excited to learn about. Yes, what IS the Jewish view on prayer, Satan, evil, God's relationship with individuals, etc? Tell me all about it, this is exactly what I've been wanting to know!!!

Then I dove into a book that turned out to be full of summaries of the very differing views of various Jewish scholars, philosophers, and rabbis. This person believed/taught such and such, while this next person believed/taught this. I felt like I was in my "Ideas and Culture" class, a year-long course my college required to be completed by the end of sophomore year. I just wasn't that interested in what a lot of these people believed. I'm sure they were revolutionary in their time, but many of their ideas seemed either somewhat outdated, common and unenlightening, or very odd. I briefly entertained not finishing the book, but the avid reader and student in me just couldn't bear that, so I stuck it out.

By the end of the book, I was much more engaged. I suspect this is because the views expressed were beginning to be more modern (the sections were in chronological order) and more something I could relate to, consider, wrestle with. One idea I particularly liked, put forth by Roland B. Gittelsohn, holds that the workings of the universe and nature can be explained scientifically, and that God is the energy and sustaining life force for it all. Nature is a part of God, and God does not perform miracles (defined as something that goes against the laws of nature) because God created nature and the limits inherent in it. Mordecai Kaplan also does not make room for miracles in his understanding of God: "Our belief in God must be consistent with our knowledge of the universe." (p.115)

How do we make this make sense with the tradition of miracles within Judaism? An excerpt from Kaplan's book Judaism without Supernaturalism is quoted on the same page as the above: "If we study the tradition carefully, we are bound to discover nuances and anticipations of attitudes toward life that were not only tenable but well worth cultivating. Those are the permanent values in our tradition, which we cannot afford to ignore." So the idea behind the legends, how they were created and how they sustained the Jewish people, are what's important. But wait - how could I be skeptical about, for example, the miracle of the oil in relation to Hanukkah? Well, for one, that is not mentioned in the story of the Maccabbean battle - it was a legend later associated with the historical record and isn't the most significant takeaway from the story. Sure I can be a little skeptical! Now other miracles actually recorded in the Torah I'm going to have a bit more trouble with - but the very struggle is a holy endeavour that I look forward to encountering throughout my lifelong journey.

While seeing a lot of my own thoughts and beliefs reflected in this Jewish naturalism, I still personify God more than these writers. I don't see God as a "process" as Kaplan suggested, or just an inner sense of striving to be good, like the humanists believe. I believe that God is a singular entity, and for me that doesn't conflict with the other beliefs I've expressed above. Wait - I just created my own amalgamation of different beliefs that make sense for me, and that's okay. I am still amazed by this.

One of the things that drew me to Judaism is that there isn't a creed. There isn't a set of explicit beliefs that one must hold in order to identify as Jewish. So much of it is understood to be unknowable. Groups of people or individual scholars wrestle with the various subjects and questions and come up with what is most believable and makes the most sense for them - and it could be a neverending evolution. Interesting that this is the very thing that appealed to me and helped me feel I could come back to organized religion, and yet I went into this book expecting hard answers. There can be some comfort in having confirmed answers, but only if you can embrace them fully. If I couldn't agree with those set answers I expected to see, where would that have left me? Likely in the same place Christianity left me when I couldn't embrace much of what I was supposed to believe - distant, unsettled, and lost.

Intro to Judaism - Week 8

How does the Torah play a role in my life, and how can I "receive the Torah" in my own way as I convert, the way the Jewish people did at Mt. Sinai?

Receiving the Torah for me signifies my responsibility to live up to certain values and morals. It is the acceptance of my obligation to actively live my life less selfishly. Yes, there are areas where I fall short as far as my own behaviors and choices, even in seemingly minor ways, and that is great for me to continue to work on. However, just not doing harm isn't enough to me - that would make me neutral. I have a responsibility to do good, and the Torah calls me to that responsibility. It is a reminder for me of how I should be living, that thinking about and communing with God isn't enough, that spirituality isn't something that just happens in my own head. Helping others brings me closer to God and is a very necessary part of being the Jew I want to be.

I leave my job every day emotionally and physically exhausted, and using my little free time for self-care is a very important part of not burning out. I used to be okay with turning down volunteer opportunities because I felt like I volunteer for a living. Every hour of my workday is spent helping marginalized people, and without opportunity for raises or other comfy perks, and without even much recognition or appreciation. Isn't dedicating my life to this work, in this most challenging field of this work (foster care), enough? Oh poor me, aren't I saint. NO, this is not enough. Because I have no choice but to clock in and clock out in order to receive my salary and live my life. How is that really putting myself out there? I'm not diminishing the value of what I do - certainly I put my heart and mind and excruciating emotions into what I do every day in an effort to help others. But choosing that as my profession doesn't exempt me from other good works.

Nicole and I spend every New Year's pretty much the same way - we have New Year's Eve snacks and a movie in the tradition of my family, we start to drift off in front of the TV, and then I come to in a panic as the ball drops and wake my grumpy wife for a kiss before going to bed. (Being total non-partiers and early-to-bedders, I have come to appreciate the Jewish New Year all the more for fitting our lifestyle so much better! Celebrate at sundown and have a big feast without any crazy anticlimax that has all these expectations around it - confetti, kisses, cheering, toasting, let me go to sleeeeeep.)

This year, a couple days ago, Nicole mentioned that she would like to invite her aunt over. Her aunt recently lost her dog, and as a childless couple, their dogs are more their children than even I can relate to. Nicole's uncle has been very depressed the last month, refusing to sleep in their bed because it's too difficult without the dog there, and boycotting joyous occasions while he mourns. Nicole knew her aunt needed out and wanted to be able to distract her, so she invited her over for New Year's Eve. Then Nicole's aunt suggested bringing Nicole's cousin too, because his mom (Nicole's other aunt) died years ago and his girlfriend would be working and he would have no one. Then it was natural to include Nicole's mother and sister, as Nicole's father has been in the hospital and the holidays have been hard for them.

I agreed but grumbled for a minute about how now we'd have the pressure of playing hostess, which we hate, and would have to stay up late because of course they wouldn't be leaving right at midnight. Then I couldn't believe how selfish I sounded. As the words tumbled out of my mouth, I thought, "What a perfect opportunity to live my values. There is of course no other suitable course of action but to bring our family together, all of whom are struggling right now, and lift their spirits. And I will MAKE it be fun." So we cooked up some appetizers (Nicole's aunt was bringing half of them) and tidied up the house and put on "New Year's Rockin' Eve" and welcomed them into our home. They were all so happy to see us in our new house, grateful for the spread, and genuinely joyful as they rang in the New Year together.

I don't know how to say this without sounding cheesy, but it was so rewarding. I almost feel guilty for how much I enjoyed the evening because it doesn't feel like such a "good deed" anymore. (Although going to bed at 2:30 did leave me fuzzy-headed today so that I won't enjoy the day the way I otherwise may have!) But on the other hand, it showed me how good deeds can enhance my life. Doing a good deed doesn't have to require blood, sweat, and tears to be of value. 

Making an active choice to do something against my own desires that helped other people - and not because I have to like at work, but where I could have easily gotten away with NOT doing it and never thought about it again - was incredible. I felt closer to God, closer to the person I want to be, and dammit if I didn't have an awesome time. Good deeds don't have to be miserable and a major expenditure of effort - it just requires thinking outside of yourself for a minute and stretching your boundaries just that little bit extra.

Personally receiving the Torah for me means actively doing good, not just avoiding bad. It means living the values I speak.

I guess I just found my New Year's resolution.