Lizzie October 23 at 6:02pm

I am stuffed full of vanilla, luscious fudge sauce, and Reddi-whip–just from your answer to Question Two. And it’s just nutty enough. Who needs a cherry? (Memories of working the counter at the Baskin Robbins on South Street.)

I feel I need to respond to Question One before I even read Queston Two. For a couple of reasons: first of all because what you wrote is so beautiful and luminous that I want to let it just shimmer and pop in my spirit it a little while (forget sundaes, I think we’re talking Dom Perignon in Waterford flutes); second, because I’m sure some of those sparkling diamonds will get buried in the ashes-to-ashes if I plunge right into the part that’s been my worry and quasi-obsession (death, that is). I have a feeling that in any discussion of death, I’ll have difficulty not inserting all–or some– of my own baggage.

So, first of all, thank you for giving me, for the first time in my life, an actual glimpse (more than a glimpse, really) of what it means to be raised Jewish (in our generation, at least) and to worship as a Jew. Most of the families I babysat for growing up were Jewish, and for some reason I always just sort of got the vibe that it was a secret society that Christians might only be told about on a need-to-know basis. In the past few years, my conversations with my brother-in-law Sam have led to some a-ha moments. But mostly in the form of little gleaned kernels when he told stories about his family. (And some hilarious impersonations of middle-aged Jewish women in their synagogue social life)

Now to address some of the things you raised in your faith story…

First, I am struck by the vast difference between us as seekers in our 20’s. You were looking for something that was honoring the individual you were becoming (e.g., the concerns about being part of a feminist-or at least misogyny-free–style of Judaism) You were discriminating and looking to make the spiritual experience fit YOU. I, on the other hand, was concerned about whether there was AN authority (i.e., a compendium of absolute truth) and, if so, in what way I ought properly to submit myself to it. To bow before it (Him/Her/I AM), if you will.

When I read your story, I asked myself, “Why did it seem to me during my search that my own personality/style/background/comfort did not much matter? I have some theories about that, but I don’t want to digress from your story into mine right now. (Hint: Catholic kids are taught to shut up, sit still, and let the priestly authority rule–even if the priest is a miscreant….)

I’m not drawing any conclusions from that comparison–just noting how differently we approached the question of what to believe and practice.

I smiled when I read about your grandfather as chairman of the building committee with his own permanent pew and all. Mighty Protestant of him, I agree!

Kavannah. Yes. I think I know Kavannah. I suppose my own personal tag for it is “private ecstasy.” I have had many moments in church when all that I was aware of was the moment, the goodness of life, the presence of God, the “enough-ness” of everything. So seldom that I’m out of my own fast and furious thoughts….That is what always drew me back for more, even when I felt that the milieu was not QUITE right.

Your snarky Brit friend might have thought you could have gotten the same boost from yoga, but I think that what you’re describing is the recognition of the sacred. Reverence and self-forgetting before the self-existent Divine. (I want so much to talk about Evangelical worship and why it slowly quenched that ecstasy for me, but again, this is about YOU and I’ll try to address my worship experiences later.)

Question: Why does it bother you to address the miraculous survival of thousands of years of Jewish tradition in the face of near-constant persecution and diaspora? Is it because it was part of the guilt thing that was thrust upon you (producing lots of little Jews to take the place of the Holocaust victims)? Because that is part of what awes me about Judaism (and the living Hebrew language, for that matter) The author I did my master’s thesis on, Walker Percy, came to faith (Catholic) in large part because he couldn’t explain the continued existence of the Jews as a distinct, unified people without acknowledging them as somehow different from every other ethnic/cultural/religious group on the face of the earth. Long story how that fit into a Catholic conversion, but Kierkegaard figures into it all too.

“Authoritative” vs. “true.” I hadn’t really thought about it, but I guess I do rely on that word because it’s easier for me to deconstruct than nebulous “truth.” Evangelicals venerate the Bible (in my opinion) to the point of idolatry. Whereas Catholics and Orthodox Christians value tradition and the inner mystical experience of God just as much as they do the Word. I am definitely all about “word’ and “text,” and I’m not a fan of loosey-goosey felt religiosity. But I never could quite swallow that every single part of the scriptures was equally inspired (“God-breathed”). Especially the parts where YHWH directs, applauds, and rewards wholesale slaughter of peoples who stood in the way of the children of Israel.

Your dad sounds so much like my dad. The product of a Catholic education (Jesuit-educated in high school and college, a Holy Cross alum when HC really WAS a Jesuit school). He took us to church each week–and would then regale us by ridiculing whatever Fr. Sal (with his Italian horn on the gold serpentine chain) preached in his vacuous homily that week. My dad was/is generally distrustful of religion and abhors enthusiastic worship styles or sermonating of any kind. That is characteristic, I think, of our parents’ generation: The Silent Generation who is suspicious of extremes and prefers to mediate/consult/arbitrate than to go head-to-head with extremists. I’m assuming a lot about your dad, but from what you’ve told me–along with his being a judge when he could have pursued other areas of law–I think he was quite a distinguished “Silent-Gen.”

Judaism’s long history of questioning everything. I read that and felt pure, bright-green, dripping envy. My own family religious tradition is, I believe, a long one of submitting to authority (even while slyly making fun of it). Except for a few oddballs who wouldn’t participate at all–like my great grandfather who sat in the car smoking his Pall Malls and reading the Times while my great-grandmother took their five kids to the Catholic church.

I am tired of submitting to (mostly male) spiritual authority, and I’m still enough in love with worship to not want to be the oddball smoking and scorning outside in the car.

I don’t know quite how to respond to your comments about Baptists and End Times. Diseased thinking…bad guys…Armageddon…I just want to run from apocalypse-obsessed theology. I don’t want to make room for that in my life–which is probably enough to say for now.

Thanks for reminding me of some of what’s precious to me. Some of what’s heritage, for better or for worse. And some of what’s hideous.

Time to make dinner. (As you may have guessed, I skipped soccer practice to reward myself with doing this–after I finished up long division practice with Diana and a report on the regions of Virginia with Joshua).

Question Two response next…when I can.

Lizzie

Lizzie October 23 at 8:27pm

This whole message thing is so funny–between the copies of the messages in my email inbox and the ones in the facebook inbox, I think I read snippets of your Question Two at work, thinking it was part of Question One. Anyway, I guess I did refer in my last response to a couple of things from your second message. I have lots to say, of course (so what else is new?!)

Jane October 23 at 8:52pm

Thanks for the e-card! Very amusing.

I see your message come into my email inbox, and refuse to read it in email. I “save” it for reading only on Facebook. Don’t ask me why. (OCD, hello?)

I am really glad you wrote back, I wasn’t expecting to hear from you until you came back. In the middle of googling Harold Bloom to find out about his gnostic take on things, I read a decent essay on him and was feeling regretful about not getting my masters in English Lit (back in the day) and going into teaching. Something about how Bloom knew at age 12 he loved to read poetry and talk about it, and knew that was what he wanted to do with himself. Then I had a total anxiety thing about how could I possibly blog, or write where anyone will read it and be critical, my writing is no good, LIzzie is going to hate what I wrote… it went on and on and then I made myself stop.

Jane October 23 at 9:08pm

Oh, and your first few paragraphs were the biggest ego boost I’ve had in ages. Shimmer and pop and beautiful and champagne… Thank you thank you thank you.  <blushes and curtsies>

I’m off to respond to your response. (how will we ever sift through this to put it into cohesive whole? Oh well we will figure it out…) Kids are in bed, all is quiet except for the sound of Landeaux’s bass…

Lizzie October 23 at 9:12pm

(Sharp slap on the cheek) Don’t do that to yourself.

Your writing shines, girl. Ya got “voice” and attitude. And keep this in mind: there is no “if you build it they will come” in blogging or any website. With blogs, you just go at it for awhile until you have a nice bunch of content and lots of shiny links that search engines will pick up, you submit to a plethora of blog directories, you tell friends (if you choose to do that–though I probably won’t tell anyone for a little while.)

I always wished I’d gotten M.A. and PhD right after the B.A. I wanted to be an English professor, and my teachers encouraged me to go for it. I second-guessed myself out of it and instead became a PhD (Please Help me with this Diaphragm) in Child-Bearing in my 20’s. I went back for the M.A. after Diana was born–just to prove to myself that I could still think and write. And to force myself to read great books. I went through a distance program offered by California State U.–and it was actually in Humanities, not Lit (though I got a lit concentration, which is all that really matters for an adjunct) I loved it–took classes in Philosophy and History as well as Lit. I’m so, so glad I did it. The degree was really nice, but the process itself kept me sane. Oh, and I got nominated for the university-wide M.A. thesis award for the year I graduated. I was feeling sooooo intellectual as I trotted off to preschool each day.

I love Harold Bloom. I think he’s incredible. And, for a lit crit brainiac, he’s so very readable! Tell me what you think if you read The American Religion.

I think we ought to do some book reviews on the blog, do you?

And, by the way, you might well hate some of what I write. I’m so wordy, and I overuse parentheses (much to my shame).

Jane October 23 at 10:01pm

My reply to your reply to my First Question:

I am wondering if my experience is a typical growing up in a Jewish home. Perhaps my husband’s is more “the ideal”: holidays at temple; summers at jewish camp; bar mitzvah in Israel; mom lit candles on fridays; so take from it what you will… with a grain of salt. It is by no means universal.

You asked why it bothers me to include the ages long persecution history. Of course I am proud of my heritage, the history and the survival of all that persecution. But there are those (my FIL) who think that a very big reason to be Jewish, to have tons of Jewish kids, to carry on Jewishly, is to honor/remember/replace those who perished in the Holocaust.

I get that, and it’s a valid reason. But it’s only one, and to me it is far from my biggest reason to be Jewish. I say, be Jewish because it brings you joy or comfort or spirituality. Be Jewish because you are proud of your heritage and culture. Not out of guilt but out of positive things. That’s why.

What you wrote about Walker Percy fascinates me. “he couldn’t explain the continued existence of the Jews as a distinct, unified people without acknowledging them as somehow different from every other ethnic/cultural/religious group on the face of the earth”… I say, why try? We are different. Some say it’s because we are “the Chosen People” .

As an aside to this point – I am bit weird about that, Jews are people, Jews are people like other people, it’s strange to me when Jews assume all Jews are smart, Jewish doctors are the best doctors, Jewish lawyers are the best lawyers, etc… I am uncomfortable when Jews assert that Jews are somehow superior to others. That’s bigoted as much as any group assuming superiority. It’s still generalizing about a large group that contains quite a bit of diversity. Can’t we be The Chosen People but not be quite so snotty about it?

Having said that, I still say to Walker Percy, why try? We are different in our history of persecution; in our history of remaining a fairly cohesive diaspora (although there are exceptions to that, big challenges to that idea – many American Jews think that the Eastern European diaspora is the whole of the Jewish people, it is not); as a people the things that were important to Jews throughout ages were not as important to many other groups.

And I think Jewish assimilation into American society has wrought a huge change upon Judaism. I guess to be historically accurate, and not so American-centric, I should say that modernity changed Judaism more than anything previously had. But even with such profound dropping of ritual and strict observance, some form of Jewish people-hood or culture survived. Splintered, evolved or devolved, but survived. So why try, indeed…

The questioning of everything is such second nature to me, and believe me when I tell you, it describes my young children to a T. I sometimes feel I am raising little attorneys, they question and challenge EVERYTHING. Hey, wonder where they get that from?

I’d like you to talk to me more about the need to submit to a (spiritual) authority. I want to know how that developed/where it came from. For you.

Love of worship. Tell me more about that as well, please.

And I think there is more back and forth to be had about “authoritative” versus “absolute truth”.

One thing I really need to say something about is what you wrote (and now I can’t find where you wrote it) about (I think) Evangelicals almost worshipping the Bible. The words, since they were the “breathe of God”.

My gut reaction to that is “I am the Lord Your God; You shall have no other god(s?) before Me; You shall not make or bow down to false idols”. Now I am certainly not calling the Bible/Torah a false idol. But the words of God are not God. Even if you really believe they are absolutely, with no intermediary interpretation, the direct word of God, breath of God. Therefore you are not allowed to worship the Bible/Torah. Revere it, yes. But worship is reserved for God and God only. (and I guess His Son, if you happen to play for that team, LOL)

Just saw your message that you must have written while I was putting this together.

Obviously, I over use parentheses as well. Some deep seated need to over explain?

Book reviews are fine. Great. Do chick lit books count? LOL You review Harold Bloom, I shall put in my bit for Jane Green and Marian Keyes. (at least it’s British Chick Lit, that makes it more literate, right?)

And I love your definition of PhD. Too bad I’m more of a Russian Roulette sort of girl. <blush>

Lizzie October 24 at 7:46am

Reply to reply to reply

First, Percy was often criticized for viewing a whole people more as an argument for the existence of God and a redemptive plan than as, well, PEOPLE. He was an odd duck, and many Christians really don’t want to claim him as their own (which is probably why I chose to write about him–ha!)

While he was guilty of some human blindness in his whole “Jews-as-sign” theme, for him the existence of the Jews was something impossible that was, however, a fact. He was an atheist doctor who, after he converted, retained a heavily intellectual approach to Christianity. Hence, with the Jews, his inner dialogue went something like this: If there is a God and he has indeed elected to adopt a Chosen People, wouldn’t they be able to survive impossible odds in remaining a people with their own language? (I will always wonder why God didn’t do better by His chosen ones and offer them more protection from the worst evil this world has to unleash…but anyway, like many philosophical writers, WP was sometimes more captivated by abstractions than with real-live individuals.)

I understand why you’re uncomfortable with “positive stereotypes.” They’re still individuality-killing stereotypes after all. I hate nothing more than to have a label slapped on my head–even if it’s “positive” and assigned by other people who claim to share the label with me. The Jewish snobbiness factor is one of the things my brother-in-law J. has talked to me about. He deals with it by just satirizing the heck out of it. (I really wish you could see one of these little performances sometime–I laugh and laugh ’til my sides are hurting. We’re so much cleaner and smarter than those neanderthal gentiles….we got CUL-cha, that kind of thing. All in a heavy NJ accent in a smoker’s voice, always sprinkled with Yiddish and with moments of verklemptness–a little bit Mike Myers but with a much sharper edge )

The need to submit to spiritual authority (and the flip side: the need, I think, to stay and REBEL against spiritual authority instead of just getting the hell away from it.) Why? Big, big question. Some of it is just plain ol’ Catholicism, that monolith of priestly, keys-to-the kingdom authority. Heck, you can’t even ask God for forgiveness without the priest there to put his stamp of approval on the transaction and assign the correct rosary mantras. And that is all part of being a good, obedient child who might just die in a state of grace. (More on death later, of course. ) Some of it, I know, has to do with a father who hated to admit to being wrong–and who’d been taught Logic by the Jesuits.

I am quick to think I must be wrong and that the person in authority over me must be right. Or that I don’t really have much to add to the discussion as better minds than mine have settled matters. As my therapist T. put it, “You have excellent judgment…and you almost always ignore it.” It’s less true now–I’m as proud of the changes I’ve made in that area of my life as I am of anything I’ve ever done. I feel like one of those 300-pound women on The Biggest Loser who at the beginning can’t even get on treadmill for five minutes without groaning in pain and crying. It was excruciating learning how to rely on my better judgment even in small matters when it meant alienating someone close to me.

Funny how long it takes to get to the “Deal with it–I don’t give a crap whether you like it” stage. I have more and more of those moments all the time–it’s exhilarating! Some people don’t know how to identify their feelings–I didn’t know how to identify that voice inside that could have been authoritative and that could have steered me away from spiritual “guides” who wanted sheep to manipulate. People who increased their own power or self-satisfaction at others’ expense. And I allowed it. And I would even stay and “fight” them, all the while allowing them to remain in their positions of authority in my life! Duh.

Until one day a panic attack made it so that I felt I could not physically walk into that miasma of usurped authority. I truly felt like I would suffocate if I walked into that building–my heart was racing, and I was unable to catch my breath. I think it was that ignored voice inside rising up and saying, “You won’t listen? Fine! Try to ignore this!”

You asked about worship. I hate to do what I am told to do when it comes to inner, personal things. (Again, that strange contradiction in me between seeking authority and resisting it)  Evangelical worship is full of manipulative maneuvers. If we play this hypnotic worship chorus (that sounds like a pop love anthem) enough times, we’re sure to get people crying and lifting their hands to the Lord. It’s so much about display. Who’s having the deepest experience of the Holy Spirit right now? Whose heart is God really speaking to?

At the very beginning of my “born-again” experience, we went to a pretty traditional Methodist church; we were there for 8 years. They sang the old hymns (from hymnals, not an overhead projector with PowerPoint slides!). They even had Saturday-evening hymn sings a few times a year, when we would just gather together and sing our favorite hymns loudly and off-key to the organ. I loved that–just joyful and spontaneous. I would think about the words to hymns like “How Great Thou Art” and “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” and “It is Well with My Soul.” I don’t know how to explain some of those moments except to say that the air crackled with happiness and fellowship–and I felt the unconditional love of God like little raindrops on my soul. Just so, so certain that He was there, that He is perfect love, and that I am a part of that perfect love. (There’s no way to say it without sounding a little corny, I guess.) It was just…right. It was enough. The filling of the God-shaped vacuum in my heart.

The other side of worship for me is the contemplative part–almost completely ignored by Evangelical, entertainment-based worship. “Be still and know that I am God” is something that I’ve known about on an intuitive level since I was a child. I’ve always been “inner.” I’ve always had those noumenous moments at unexpected times when I was by myself. I’ve never had any difficulty thinking of praying as a communion of stillness rather than words.

These days it happens most during my drives down the country roads on the mornings that I teach. It’s all so beautiful, and I look around and feel grateful for life and for a Creator who didn’t have to make it all quite so beautiful–but who chose to. Didn’t have to make me so that I would be thrilled by beauty–but who did. It’s at those moments that I throw out all the doubt and baggage and grumbling and “Am I really descended from apes or what?!”, and I just praise God for being God. And allow the I AM (who is neither male nor female) to be mysterious and Other.

That’s what keeps drawing me back. That’s why I still go to church, even though (like you) my family presents too many distractions to experience it very often there. That’s why I loved the Episcopal church. It was about timelessness and stillness and music that accompanied the stirrings of the soul. Not music that tried to “make” my soul respond a certain way. And my family wouldn’t go with me, so I was alone there before the altar and God.

I may not have gotten to everything (how could I?!) but it is definitely time for me to shower and pack. I wish you a beautiful weekend, Jane.

Lizzie