I’m no big deal writer or anything, but listening to Norman Fischer and Charles Bernstein at last night’s “Radical Poetics and Judaism” event talking about how Judaism informs (or doesn’t) writing, I began to consider where religion touches my work. Is my writing Jewish just because I am? What if I never write about Judaism ever, is it still Jewish then? What’s the difference between being an American writer of Jewish origin and a Jewish-American writer? Norman and Charles were fascinating to listen to, but part of me recalled this feeling of being post-everything — that is to say, I don’t really like the idea of boxes, and I’d prefer not to be in any of them, thank you very much. Even though I liked the talk a lot, I wondered if the very idea is outmoded. If young people are actually creating a post-everything world, how does the question, “what makes culture Jewish?” apply? And how would I answer that question, as a person who is immersed in one type of Jewish culture almost by mistake (I live in Washington Heights, in a “religious building”) and as a person who practices almost exclusively through visiting the Jewish Meditation Center.

Neither of my parents have been in a temple in at least a decade, yet both certainly identify as Jewish. My dad worships at Katz’s Deli and my mom tells me that she prays — that when things are hard for her, she thinks about god. My dad doesn’t believe in god, but he does love the Marx brothers and world war two movies. Obviously, they’re divorced. Both of them were incredulous when I told them about my building, my street, my neighborhood. I pointed out the Shul, the Yeshiva, the Jewish Community Center. I pointed out the Jewish ambulance and the mezuzah on every door. I reminded them how hard it is to park on Shabbat and that if my dad was going to help me put the bed together, I’d have to buy screws on Friday — the hardware store around the corner is Jewish. This is insularity, of a sort, and it’s a sort of insularity to which I belong by accident. Across the airshaft, in my mirror image apartment, Yeshiva University boys share a couple of rooms and I watch them daven, tefillen and all. I watch them and wonder about what it must feel like to live Judaism like that every day. Is it stifling, reading scripture on the subway instead of novels? Is it inspiring? Is it like walking around with a secret wrapped up in leather binding?

Every day I am reminded that my post world does not actually exist yet, that there are actually boxes all around me, and that I put other people into boxes the same way everyone else does. Which brings me back to the question of how a cultural heritage I never knew much about touches my work. Somebody, and I can’t remember who it was, said last night that we are most Jewish when we are not around other Jews (and then immediately countered his own thought with the question of whether the opposite were true — perhaps we are actually most Jewish when we are only around other Jews?) and this has certainly been true for me. In New York, it can feel like everyone is Jewish, like you are just a drop of secular typicality in the bucket. But when you live in rural Vermont, you’re probably pretty much alone. And at the times when I’ve lived in the middle of nowhere, being Jewish suddenly became a real part of my identity, so much at times that I became active in congregations, something I’d never done as a child or when I’ve lived in a city.

Being present to recognize where I fit, or don’t, is so much at the heart of this exercise that I am reminded of something else that was discussed last night — that the process is the point, and that moving through each idea, each question, leaves us with more thoughts, different ones, and different ways of looking at the same thing. I love this idea, that I have the option to think about something without having to answer to it. And I think that the JMC is asking its members to do this. To be willing to sit with the person next to you, talk about your ideas, and form new ones, and question what seems immutable, and then change the world together, by finding similarity where we have been told it does not exist.

This year, as Sukkot rolls around, I’m thinking a lot about what it means to rejoice in our vulnerability.  After all, we are commanded to rejoice on Sukkot (Leviticus 23:40)—as we spend time in temporary shelters that may make us feel scared and insecure rather than joyful.

This question takes on particular significance for those of us who have experienced some kind of violation.  Physical abuse, sexual abuse, and the routine mini-violations of sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, etc., are all experiences that render our bodies and spirits unduly vulnerable to those who may not have our best interests at heart.  For those of us who are just beginning to establish and protect our boundaries after a history of violation, abandoning ourselves to the open air may be the worst possible idea. A blogger on About.com recently described why it might be halachically legitimate for someone recovering from anorexia to refrain from fasting on Yom Kippur.  Similarly, I can understand why someone recovering from boundary-related trauma might choose not to spend time in the sukkah.

However, I also think that Sukkot can be an opportunity to experience the act of opening in a safe, boundaried way.  For example, consider the commandment to rejoice.  As we recall from Tisha B’Av, it adds insult to injury when captors demand that their slaves sing (Psalm 137).  Similarly, many of us, especially women, are often pressured to suppress our negative emotions because they are “unbecoming”—i.e., they are inconvenient for those around us.  We are asked to distort our own reactions—which are often very central to who we are—in order to gratify others.

The commandment to rejoice can feel like this same type of violation—“Why should I rejoice when I am unhappy?”  Those of us who meditate, especially, are likely to chafe under the commandment to feel a certain way, because we’re used to practicing full acceptance of all our emotions—we know from experience that the harder we try to hold onto an emotion, the less likely we are to actually feel it.

In one of the very first posts on the JMC blog, Yael shared the Rumi poem, The Guest House (click here). This is much more consistent with the Sukkot I want to have: a Sukkot in which the temporary dwelling, the guest house, lets everything in and out, and reminds me to let everything in and out as well.  Perhaps this openness, this willingness to be with life as it is, in its glorious and painful fullness—perhaps this is the true experience of “rejoicing.”

I wrote more about this topic (and how it pertains to the custom of ushpizin, or inviting ancestral guests into the sukkah) in this week’s Torah Queery on the Jewish Mosaic website—you can check it out by clicking here.

The views expressed by guestbloggers do not necessarily reflect the Jewish Meditation Center of Brooklyn’s positions, interests, strategies or opinions. But that’s what keeps it interesting.

blessing the boats by Lucille Clifton

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

As I have mentioned in some of the sits, I’ve always struggled with some of the traditional ways T’shuva and repentance were taught to me – the guilt-inducing, chest-beating, “I’ve-been-so-bad-but-next-year-I-will-be-better” variety. As a kid during the High Holidays, I was racked with guilt about how “bad” I was, and how badly I wanted to be better. Once I told my little sister that every time I was mean to her, she should say the words, “Rosh Hashana!” and I would stop.  A few weeks later, I yelled at her about something and she cried,  “Rosh Hashana! Rosh Hashana!” I repressed an enormous urge to punch her in the face. I stopped yelling at her, but my anger did not go away – it simmered right beneath the surface until the next time she, or someone else, crossed my path, when I would lash out again.

The same thing happens when I tell myself  I’m going to be “better” these days. It never hurts to set a Kavannah (intention) to try and change habit patterns- like when I tell myself to get serious about flossing or removing my make-up before going to sleep. But telling myself to be nicer to people, to forgive hurts, to open my heart or to be more compassionate – for me, it doesn’t work.

For me, it works better to bring the gentle light of awareness to WHY I am not nice to people, to WHY I can’t forgive someone, to WHY my heart feels closed. Usually, the reasons are shrouded in hurts and shame that are really old, or deeply repressed. When I honor those feelings – even feelings that have led to lots of suffering – they come loose and fall away on their own. In a class I once took with Rabbi David Ingber, he called this the “T’shuva of love.”

I know that everybody’s path to T’shuva is different, and different things work better or worse for different people. If you are like me, however, I want to offer you this:

Those ways you were “bad” this year – those things you are ashamed of -those things are little voices from within you crying out for your attention and healing. They are a huge gift – points on a map calling for you to sit with them, and hear what they have to say. I know I’m mixing mad metaphors here, but you get the idea. Our bodies are beautiful, miraculous machines that are continually trying to move us closer to healing and wholeness, even when we act unskillfully.

Finally, here is a poem that speaks to this point for me, although I have no idea what the poet, Norman Fischer, was thinking when he wrote it:

RESPONSIBILITY

Tonight it’s quiet or in the quiet
Or, at least, the quiet
Is all around us. What is it
I’m worried about when I
Worry about anything? What is it
I tangle up in, wanting to go home?
From down here I look up at myself
In the little bright square of window
Staring down at me in bemusement
Querying what’s it worth. But that’s
A question snaps shut on itself
Thoughts with teeth or claws
To scrape away to the very core. What
Cares contains its value, a half life,
Mixed, no doubt, yet fair.
It’s always fair or anyway
It’s always what’s there…
And it’s not our fault.

(c) Norman Fischer, from Slowly but Dearly , 2004.

Summer Storm by Dana Gioia

We stood on the rented patio
While the party went on inside.
You knew the groom from college.
I was a friend of the bride.

We hugged the brownstone wall behind us
To keep our dress clothes dry
And watched the sudden summer storm
Floodlit against the sky.

The rain was like a waterfall
Of brilliant beaded light,
Cool and silent as the stars
The storm hid from the night.

To my surprise, you took my arm–
A gesture you didn’t explain–
And we spoke in whispers, as if we two
Might imitate the rain.

Then suddenly the storm receded
As swiftly as it came.
The doors behind us opened up.
The hostess called your name.

I watched you merge into the group,
Aloof and yet polite.
We didn’t speak another word
Except to say goodnight.

Why does that evening’s memory
Return with this night’s storm–
A party twenty years ago,
Its disappointments warm?

There are so many might have beens,
What ifs that won’t stay buried,
Other cities, other jobs,
Strangers we might have married.

And memory insists on pining
For places it never went,
As if life would be happier
Just by being different.

Love after Love by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Tao Te Ching: Chapter 11, translated by Stephen Mitchell

We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.

We work with being
but non-being is what we use.

First Lesson by Philip Booth

Lie back, daughter, let your head
be tipped back in the cup of my hand.
Gently, and I will hold you. Spread
your arms wide, lie out on the stream
and look high at the gulls. A dead-
man’s-float is face down. You will dive
and swim soon enough where this tidewater
ebbs to the sea. Daughter, believe
me, when you tire on the long thrash
to your island, lie up, and survive.
As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.

Prayer by Galway Kinnell

Whatever happens. Whatever

what is is is what

I want. Only

that. But that.

Looking at Them Asleep by Sharon Olds

When I come home late at night and go in to kiss them,
I see my girl with her arm curled around her head,
her mouth a little puffed, like one sated, but
slightly pouted like one who hasn’t had enough,
her eyes so closed you would think they have rolled the
iris around to face the back of her head,
the eyeball marble-naked under that
thick satisfied desiring lid,
she lies on her back in abandon and sealed completion,
and the son in his room, oh the son he is sideways in his bed,
one knee up as if he is climbing
sharp stairs, up into the night,
and under his thin quivering eyelids you
know his eyes are wide open and
staring and glazed, the blue in them so
anxious and crystally in all this darkness, and his
mouth is open, he is breathing hard from the climb
and panting a bit, his brow is crumpled
and pale, his fine fingers curved,
his hand open, and in the center of each hand
the dry dirty boyish palm
resting like a cookie. I look at him in his
quest, the thin muscles of his arms
passionate and tense, I look at her with her
face like the face of a snake who has swallowed a deer,
content, content—and I know if I wake her she’ll
smile and turn her face toward me though
half asleep and open her eyes and I
know if I wake him he’ll jerk and say Don’t and sit
up and stare about him in blue
unrecognition, oh my Lord how I
know these two. When love comes to me and says
What do you know, I say This girl, this boy.