Touché

I spent the day out in the park yesterday, with a friend for her birthday. It was also mother's day, and a few other birthdays. Just about half the city was in the park it seemed. And it was odd. I realized, as I wandered around, searching for my friends amidst the huge patchwork of families and groups of friends on blankets, that everyone seemed to be sitting on the side of this gently sloping area, all facing the same way, as if there were some sort of performance going on below. But there was not. There was only the street. And most people were looking upward, toward the sun. That, I guess, was the day's big performance.

After a good while, I managed to find my friends. We shared a Meyer lemon torte, baked by the birthday girl herself, fresh strawberries, cherries, and all sorts of baked treats. At one point, a dog came over and decided to be my friend. I am really more of a cat person, and this was a big dog. He looked scary, with a thin black scar across his muzzle, and the choke chain his owner had on him. But he seemed friendly. He came over, I put my hand on him, and he sat down immediately, and put his paws on my leg. Everyone was amazed, including his owner, and myself. He didn't seem to want to leave my side. The woman who owned him said that he had been abused as a puppy. That's why he had the scar on his face. His owners at the time had put a wire muzzle on him. He looked like a dog that could do some damage, but for the most part, he didn't want to. He had a wise aspect to him. Wise and worldly. He knew what cruelty meant, and he wasn't interested in being a part of it.

I didn't mind sitting next to the dog. It felt nice that he wanted to be with me.

Earlier, however, a guy I know had joined the party and sat down next to me. This man is also converting, and has been for several. Perhaps he is having a hard time making a decision. And I haven't asked, it's possible he'd have to go through circumcision if he isn't already. At one point I thought to ask him, but at present, I think I would rather not know. That is not what bothers me about him. What bothers me is the way he touches me.

At first, it was exciting to meet him. It was at a Hanukkah party, night one. We bonded over conversion and the fact that we both lived in the East Bay. However, I for some reason did not feel comfortable giving him my number. I saw him at a subsequent event, where, when he greeted me, he touched my arm lightly, just above the elbow. I was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, and so his finger just brushed against my skin. It was a touch that almost could have been an accident, but wasn't. It was meant to get my attention, but in an ever so subtle way. I didn't like it.

The thing about it is that this man is gay, at least as far as I can tell. Perhaps he is bisexual. I don't care. Those are touches that I crave, but something that I want from a source that I designate, from someone that I love. No one is allowed to touch me like that without my permission. I let that first touch slide, only because I figured he might have a crush on me, but my intent was not to respond, and hopefully he would stop.

We saw each other again, though, at a Purim party, and again, he touched my arm in a way that I detested. And when he did, I couldn't get away fast enough. Perhaps he didn't get the idea. Perhaps he doesn't know what his touches mean.

Then, at my friend's birthday picnic, he sat down in a big open spot on the blue blanket next to me. I smiled and said hello. He then proceeded to brush his finger lightly on my thigh, to get my attention, quite unnecessarily, as he then told me he had met someone I know over the weekend. I let it go, but then, for emphasis, as he was talking to me, he touched his finger to my bare calf. This was unacceptable, and so I looked him directly in the eye, and I said, "Would you mind not touching my leg, please?" I didn't smile. I just held his gaze as he decided if I was serious or not, and then he said, "Uh, sure."

We sat in awkward silence then for several minutes. I hadn't wanted to shut him down completely, but what was I going to say? I'm sorry? I wasn't sorry. I wasn't sorry for feeling violated by all his little touches, which maybe he justified to himself as being "nothing," but let me tell you, they were something.

All touch is sacred.

I learned this from a Chasidic Rabbi who showed up at yet another of the Hanukkah parties that I went to last year. He came, driving a big white pickup truck with a massive menorah in the back of it. When he introduced himself, I offered my hand, which he declined to shake. He said that he couldn't, and someone else explained to me that did not shake hands with women. I might have thought this was misogynistic, except that it wasn't. And that's when he said, "All touch is sacred." The point was not that he didn't want to shake my hand because there was something wrong with me, but that if he touched me it would mean to much. He respected that power, and respected me enough not to touch me in the face of it. And it was because touch was so sacred, that he was reserving all his touch of women for his wife. Men he could touch, but women were off-limits to him. And to me, this was a great relief.

I thought of all the times I have been forced to shake a man's hand for purely social reasons, and then regretted it afterward, wanting to wash off the feeling, but being unable to. And it is especially bad when the man looks you in the eye and gives you that leering glance he may not even know he has. He may shift his finger in your palm, or linger for one second longer when you would rather let go. All these things are things that become a part of your body's memory, whether you want them there or no.

And in a way it is like stealing. You steal a touch from someone because you want it, but that person does not necessarily want your touch, when you take it without permission. Like this man, who is my friend, but whom I come to trust less and less as he touches me without my allowance. As if he has some right to my body that he did not request, and which I did not grant to him. If I knew him better and said okay, then okay. But I did not. Perhaps he misinterpreted me, but that is his misinterpretation. Perhaps I have left the door left open now.

I would be happy with a tradition that says not only should men only touch their wives and not other women, but that I, as a woman, am not obligated to touch any other man that I do not wish to touch. The moment that choice is taken away, all pleasure goes out of the exchange.

It is possible that I have a strange relationship to touch. Sometimes I think I am more sensitive than others. But there are good touches and there are bad ones. Not all touch is bad, and not all touch is good. When I am uncomfortable, I have to say something. And at least I was clear on my stance yesterday. I made sure to talk to him afterward, but he did seem slightly hurt. Oh well. Better than me feeling more uncomfortable by sitting there not saying anything.

In Relationship

All good things come to an end. And, I like to think, some of the bad things never began in the first place.

Let's take my last "relationship" - if you could even call it that, since that's being mighty generous, in my opinion. And even though I don't normally use this space as a place to put my musings on my personal life, I feel this is the best place for me to do it now, since all relationships are in a way a relationship with G-d. That, and the fact that my relationship with Judaism is for me the primary relationship in my life right now.

I was upfront with BG about this in the beginning. I told him on multiple occasions that I was converting to Judaism, starting on the first date. And I made sure he was okay with this, really trying to gauge his reaction to the idea in general. I also told him I didn't want to "date anybody" right then - partly because of the conversion, and also because I suspected I might one day be interested in dating a Jewish man. And even conversion cannot give him a Jewish childhood any more that it can for me. And that's something I am interested in, discriminatory as that may be. On the other hand, true love takes all tricks, and in the face of that, I'm sure I'd have to reconsider what I "want." These ideas are merely guidelines. Probably essential to this trope is that I did not love him, then or now.

I dated him - why? Because he was there. Because he seemed to care for me and wanted to support me. And he seemed to understand where I was coming from. I also seemed to understand him, and so we had a connection, but it was a superficial connection at best. It was a connection of external references, whereas deep in my core, I felt very much alone, and very unacknowledged, no matter how much he said that he cared about me.

I think I knew all along that it was not a good match, and yet, it seemed, the world at large was supporting our relationship. A good friend of mine, as well as other people, told me what a good guy he was. He had a decent job. He wanted a girlfriend. And that's not always the case. It was almost too easy.

But as things went along, I became more and more uncomfortable. It was fairly disconcerting, to say the least, that it was only after we solidified our relationship that he decided to tell me that he'd had an inclination to convert to Judaism all this time. This was two months and many conversations since our first date, when I let him know that my conversion was very important to me. My only assumption could be that when I had told him I suspected I might want to date a Jewish guy, so suddenly he wanted to be that Jewish guy. Maybe that is when I lost all respect for him. But I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, even though it was clear that he hadn't really given the matter much thought - at least not in the sense that would lead me to believe that he really knew what he was getting into.

Fast-forward a few months. He moves in. He moves out. We fight. I get the sense he is operating on some level other than mine. I get the feeling his ears are open, but he isn't really listening to me. I am unsatisfied, both physically and emotionally, and I just about can't take it any more.

I was willing to try and "make it work," but he insisted on moving out. So I let him, and I decided that the best thing would be for us to break up. But we still saw each other. Almost as much as when we were dating. For about a month, we dating without being an actual couple.

And then it dawned on me that this whole time, he had been seeing a friend of mine, without my knowledge, and that both this friend and him and kept information from me, either by outright lying, or simply by omission, and that whenever I found out, he would make some excuse or try to justify it in some way. I said, uh-uh. No way, that's not happening. There are a lot of things I can take, but dishonesty isn't one of them.

So he got the boot for real this time, and so did my friend. I saw her briefly for coffee one day, and then said, "See you later." I wasn't mean. I merely suggested they should date each other. I think that I probably have done them a wonderful service. After this, they will realize, on their own separate steam, that they were made for each other all along, and I was the catalyst that helped make it happen.

At the same time, I feel deceived, used, and abused by people who supposedly called themselves my friends. But they weren't friends. They weren't looking out for me. They were barely looking out for themselves. I did myself a favor by getting out of there. And not a moment too soon. Maybe too late. But not too late to learn something.

Aleph and Nothing

I began a class on the Hebrew Aleph-bet this past week. I need to learn Biblical Hebrew, to help me understand what I am reading during services, and I found this class that focuses entirely on the Aleph-bet, going through each letter individually, and allowing the class to connect with each one on a deeper level. This seems to make sense to me, given that, in Hebrew, the letters seem to have a kind of life. They are alive, like people. They have characteristics, traits, and habits, and in reading or writing Hebrew, it seems you get to know them, like friends that form a constant conversation that surrounds you and becomes the fabric of your life.

It is not insignificant that "In the beginning, was the Word..."

And I was not the only one taking the class who had little or no background in Hebrew. Many born Jews were there, either preparing to take Hebrew for the first time, or else wanting to revisit it, since the last time they had studied it was when they were nine.

Naturally, for the first class, we looked at the Aleph. It seems fitting that the Aleph-bet begins with this character. It is the letter that represents G-d, and it also has the numerical value of one. This being the case, it follows that when Jews pray the Shema - "Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad" - they are literally saying that G-d is One. And while Echad may have more of a unifying sense rather than just the number, there is no denying that one is one, Echad is tranlated as "one," and if Aleph is one, then G-d must also Aleph. If A = B and B = C then A = C.

So G-d is represented by Aleph. But not only in the numerical sense. It is represented in the inexplicable nature of the letter itself. Here is what I wrote during the class:

How can a letter with so much presence, so much shape, that it dances across the page, arms reaching, with that bold, diagonal stroke across the center - how can such a letter have no sound? Surely it deserves a sound. And really, what's the point of creating a letter that has no sound? Why waste the ink? But it's not wasted. Just look at it. It does make a sound. It makes the sound of your soul. It makes the sound of existence.

And what is amazing to me is that they did not just create a letter with no sound, which could be like, for example, in Greek, a small mark to represent an aspiration or lack thereof preceding an initial vowel. The Yud is small, but it makes a sound. And while Aleph's nearest equivalent is our "A," Aleph literally stands for no sound at all, and it only gains sound by means of other marks and letters around it. In practice, it is a big, complicated symbol, meant to depict exactly no qualities, no vibrations, nothing. It represents nothing, and yet it is something, it is a letter.

I think it says a lot about the Jewish people that they, or whoever was creating the Aleph-bet, took the time to create a letter that represented nothing. It is exactly, as our instructor said, the "paradox of existence." And that is what we find in G-d - a paradox of existence.

G-d exists. G-d doesn't exist. Both statements are true. G-d exists, but G-d is no thing. G-d is only something when you put your mind on It and focus on It. In Quantum physics, when you look at the tiniest particles of life, they become so tiny that we cannot really look at them. We have to look at behaviors. And there are some particles and particle behaviors that exist only when we are looking at them. By the mere act of bringing our attention to them, we see something that did not exist otherwise. Like the letter Aleph. Silence is there. But until we acknowledge it it is not there, because there is nothing, in fact, to signal it. But this nothing is all around us. It is pure presence.

That is why I say the letter is like a dance. Because in a dance, you manifest your physical presence, you become manifest, you become something that attracts more attention, and yet you say nothing. Words detract from the dance. Only the dance itself is important.

And we know how important dancing is to Chasidic Judaism. Countless tales of Rebbes involve people - the Rebbe or someone else - dancing, or singing a niggun, and through the wordless expression of joy, find something more great and transforming than all the words in the world.

And this idea is embedded in all Jewish writing in Biblical Hebrew. In the beginning was the word, and in the beginning of the Aleph-bet is nothing. The word begins with nothing. All creation begins with nothing. And yet, somehow, we are here.