Jane October 23 at 8:44 am

Lizzie’s First Question: Is the cultural connection and uncodified personal spirituality enough for me?

Short answer: yes.

What follows is the long, much more rambling answer:

One of my housemates in my one and only beach share on Fire Island (the year I met my husband, which put an end to that wonderful beach share experience, sadly) was a British man who laughed at all the different “sects” American Judaism split themselves into. In Great Britain, and in much of the world, you are either an Observant Jew (thus following laws of Kashrut, keeping Shabbat, all that) or you are a Secular Jew (and maybe go to your mom’s for Passover Seder, or don’t work on Yom Kippur). I tried to explain that, for me, the only way to delve back into Judaism as an adult was to take a feminist approach, so as not to deal with the patriarchical, misogynist pieces; or to take them back in such a way as to create or follow newer feminist or more inclusive interpretations of those pieces.

The Shabbat service in Conservative Judaism, especially in the “liturgically traditional/not just egalitarian but estrogenarian” congregation I found in Hoboken, suited me to a T.

My father’s grandfather was the congregation’s first president. He was on the building committee. Had his own pew with his name on a little brass plaque (which seemed a little “christian” at the time, now I know how very Jewish that is, ha ha).

The building is an old, beautiful copy of an eastern European synagogue. And I walked in and felt… SOMETHING. I’d pray there and felt it more. (okay, at first it was just going to services and letting it wash over me. Later, it became praying)

The rabbi there at the time (a wonderful woman, who was in the first class that ordained women as rabbis at the Jewish Theological Seminary) told me it was kavannah. Which can be defined as “mindfulness,or intentionality, being in the moment”.  My “be still and know that I AM” moments.  I’d go to services and at first all the Hebrew was intimidating, but somehow familiar. A lot slowly came back to me. Then I learned and absorbed more than I’d originally known.

It was familiar. It was spiritual. Both the physical space/place and praying there made me feel… something. Something more, something I’d been looking for. Kavannah is the closest I’ve come to defining it. Just being in the moment.

My British friend from the Fire Island house? He smugly told me I’d find the same thing if I practiced yoga.

That is what happened when I tried, in fledgling newness to something more than the “celebrating holidays” fairly secular Judaism I was raised with, to discuss my “born again Jewiness” with a formerly observant, gave it up for “reason” and non-belief, snarky British man…)

(another aside: later I realized how similar his Jewish Bottom Line was to my father’s, who just hadn’t been as immersed as this guy had been. They were raised very differently and in a different generation, but had fled the same thing for the same reason.)

Does it (the kavannah or whatever it is) happen to me at my current synagogue? Well, sadly, no. First of all, I’ve never been to services by myself there. Always with one or both kids. (another topic for another day: I’m there now to steward them, not as much for myself)

And I’m very much the social creature there. Oh, I was in Hoboken, too. But since the mindfulness is out the window with the kids being there, might as well enjoy myself and yack it up with my friends. Teach, become Nursery School President, it is social and I’m doing good in my community.

This is going to sound weird, but that building in Hoboken, that my great-grandfather helped to build, the old world shul, so beautiful (and at that time, falling apart), and that connection to (literally) my family’s forefathers, definitely added another very palpable ingredient to my personal mix of spiritual experience with that congregation.

At first it made me mad, not being able to still get to that place. But something important happened in between synagogues. My father got sick and died. And I gave up going to services and doing anything remotely resembling prayer or lighting candles or anything like that. I did holidays, said Kaddish when it suited me, and was angry. If there is a God, I was pissed at It/Him/Her/The Universe for taking my father as well as first dragging him through the indignities of cancer.

So how do I get to the “am I satisfied” part? I just realized after all this back story, it must not seem like I answered the question.

I wasn’t raised to look for it. I wasn’t taught to want it or to look for it at all. To me, and this is not “party line”, unless you are an observant Jew and work for that mindfulness, that constant awareness of God, throughout your day, in every action you take, I guess for me, it is more about the ritual, the prayer, and the community. I am tied to thousands of years of tradition and history. Oh crap I hate to write this because it’s not my reason, but thousands of years of surviving persecution. (I hate that! Why can’t the beauty and prayer and spirituality be enough? But that persecution element is always there…)

So much of what I understand about Judaism (and there is so much more I do not understand, please realize that) is that it is more about what you do today, in this life. It’s not about saving your soul for the next world. It’s about repairing the world, doing that, in this life. This is called Tikkun Olam.

(oh and the messiah thing? Never really gave it a thought, until I had conversations about religion and compared Judaism to Christianity. It just wasn’t an issue. Seriously. How could I feel bad about waiting for the messiah instead of having one, if I never realized I was supposed to be waiting?)

I grew up thinking all Jews were Democrats and liberals. I was taught about the old Jewish Left, they were heroes to me. Like much of my “world view”, it was (and I try for it not to remain, but can it ever go away?) a very New York – centric view of the world. I was, from an early age, Bill O’Reilly’s worst nightmare

Judaism as political really formed much of the core of this, whether I was aware of it or not. All my parents’ friends, were of course, Democrats/socially liberal. Believed in liberal causes and laws. It was the seventies! It was before Yuppies and Masters of the Universe! Free To Be You And Me! Gloria Steinem and Marlo Thomas! There were still some hippies left! To me, it’s all connected. (and is why I really, really don’t get Joe Lieberman… sigh…)

And it was before the rise of the Conservative, Religious Right. Before Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan and Newt Gingrich started stealthily and with great purpose, planting budding Sarah Palins on school boards and town councils. When there was a much more clear separation of Church and State, and there were still moderate Republicans. (that last paragraph is such an example of why I believe in the power and magic of Myth. )

(which forms the crux of my curiosity about your southern, Baptist immersion into a world so foreign from your New Jersey upbringing. Forgive me for saying this but once they got an agenda, the whole End Times thing gone “nucular” and seriously viral, they became the bad guys…)

Even in Hebrew School, I was more interested in history. The Golden Age of Jews in Spain. Mass immigration of Eastern European Jews to America in the late 1800’s. Trips to the Lower East Side, and Statue of Liberty. (this of course left out a whole world of Jews, the Sephardic Middle Eastern and Spanish Jews… a typical oversight that still needs badly to be corrected)  I had to memorize my Torah portion for my Bat Miztvah, which I did lying on the beach, with the rabbi’s voice on a tape recorder,  the August before that event…)

Bagels and Lox. Smoked fish. Political do-good liberal belief. A few holidays each year and my grandmother.  This is the Judaism of my childhood.

Prayers were memorized and forgotten. They came back, so much later, when I was an adult. But the childhood immersion into the secular side of Judaism was total. And still pervasive, despite my later in life (mid-twenties, ha ha later in life) return to synagogue.

Marrying a secular Jew clinched it. I was poised there, on the precipice, for a while in my mid to late twenties. Could have gone either way. More prayer, more observance. A previous, bad-news fiance almost tipped it the other way for me. But my husband came along, and I was pushed back. But I still, obviously, straddle.

Now to tackle the next part of your query, about fear of Death…

Jane October 23 at 1:29pm

Lizzie’s Second Question: Fear Of Death

(okay before I begin, I am cracking up thinking of Monty Python Meaning of Life: deep serious voice announcing “Part One… The Miracle of Birth” etc and so on… Don’t mind me, just a huge Monty Python fan and that movie is one of my faves…)

Okay, seriously now. (cracks knuckles and begins to type with a studious wrinkled furrow between her brows)

This is not AT ALL intended to be a smug or sarcastic response to your question and subsequent writing of your fear of death. I understand the fear of death, at least I think I do.

But honestly, no matter how many times I’ve dived right into it, I don’t think I am. Afraid of death. Seriously. As in, I am the philosophical and psychological opposite of Woody Allen. (early, pre-Soon Yee and all that mess Woody, please)

Having lost my mother to a car accident, and having watched my father die from cancer, I think I can speak pretty authoritatively for myself about this.

In my 20’s, I had a boyfriend (my “what-if” guy…) and he was so like that stereotypical Woody Allen, neurotic, afraid of death, narcissistic Manhattan guy. I didn’t get it then. I thought, the end is the end and it all just stops. Or, maybe it doesn’t.

We can’t prevent it, we can’t hold it off or at bay for long, death is just a part of life. He thought I was nuts, but I think (hope) he admired it a bit.

Having said that, I am totally and completely frozen in fear of the loss and grief that surrounds the death of others. Losing my parents, as well as my adventures in trying to have children have fed that fear, and it is certainly well lodged. I’m fearful of sickness, to be sure. Fearful of not living an examined, actualized and full life, of wasting my days.

In your own personal experience, is your fear of death related to that thing instilled in from a Catholic upbringing, where you know that from birth you have sin inherent in you? (please correct me if I’m getting this jumbled up!) Is it the fear that there will not be forgiveness or atonement? Maybe if I believed I was facing possible damnation, I’d be more afraid. Conversely, the promise of resurrection and eternity in heaven would also sound like something to strive for.

I think your dilemma of not being able to pick and choose which part of the Bible, which parts of Christianity to choose as authoritative, is very similar to the way some Jews choose which mitzvot (commandments) to observe and which to leave out. Which have a personal resonance and which don’t.

I appreciate your use of the word authoritative, and I like the way you use it here, it’s much more careful and respectful than if you’d said “which parts are true or not true”, it allows for skeptical belief or at least acting in faith.

Or is that giving it too much leeway, for your personally?

For myself, Judaism has a long and illustrious history of questioning EVERYTHING. So personally, following and believing “lock stock and barrel” was not an option. For starters, the parent I mostly modeled after, thought so much of Judaism was what he called “Jew-doo”.

(It is not very nice to derisively compare someone else’s beliefs and observances to voodoo, the connotation is not a positive one, it implied a lack of sophistication and perhaps intelligence to him. Oh and by the way, this didn’t just apply to observant Jews. I think he wasn’t too crazy about anyone who was “overly” religious, regardless of the religion. Think Yiddish, act British… an old saying that fit my dad pretty well…)

(topic for another day: why Jews like my dad – more likely his dad and grandfather – had to abandon their religion and faith to be assimilated)

I was encouraged to question everything and how to make good decisions, well thought out and well reasoned decisions.

Again part of the times (left over from the sixties, question authority, down with The Man, blah blah blah) as well as my culture (generations of scholars learning so they could question and argue and oh, yes teach…) Then of course there is my own rebellious nature.

Now would you like a cherry on top of your sundae? Or just more nuts, ha ha ha…