The Scent of a Rose

I love the fact that Judaism has a prayer for everything. A prayer for waking up, a prayer for going to sleep. A prayer for meals and a prayer for drink. A prayer, even for a snack. There are prayers for things, and prayers for feelings, for intangible things like events. And it's wonderful, because those are the times when your soul seems to want to say something, and you just wish you could put the words to it. Judaism has those words. But the odd or paradoxical thing about it is that the moment you go to say them - or at least for me - when I say the prayers, or do some ritual thing like eating an item off a seder plate, I am whelmed, perhaps under-whelmed at not the sacredness of the moment or a mystical feeling (which I might get, say, walking silently in a grove of trees) but rather at an almost banal, profane aspect of the moment. Suddenly, instead of focusing on what's inside, I am focused outside, on word, speech action. Maybe I'm not "doing it right." But I don't know that there is a "right" in Judaism. There is certainly "the way things are done." But ultimately, the way you do it, if you do something consciously, is right. This is the way it is for me. This is my experience. And I don't think it means the moment isn't sacred. Maybe it means that it is.

I just got back from my first Rosh Chodesh women's seder. I was invited by a friend that I met in San Francisco, but it was held in the East Bay, not too far from where I live. So I went, and there were about ten of us. I was thinking about prayer, because I was thinking about sacred space, and the space was sacred. At a few points during the seder, I wondered, what would an outside person, maybe a neighbor standing just outside the window, think, if they heard our mumbling in unison, with candles in front of us. It all seemed like, maybe from the outside, it was some mystical, cultish thing. But from the inside, it was just normal. We were just people, sitting around, with candles, saying things and sharing thoughts, stories, experiences.

The theme of the meeting was Tu B'Shevat, the New Year of the Trees, since that holiday is coming up next weekend. On the table were mandarin oranges, dates, strawberries, cinnamon sticks and a bowl of red rose petals. There were four sections, and at each section we would take in the scent of one of the items. The dates we ate afterward.

The rose petals were beautiful, bright, and velvety, but they had very little scent. Not at all like the rose that seemed to bloom just for me on the day that I left my little house in France. I clipped that rose and took it with me, but then I wished that I had left it. It looked so beautiful on the tree where it was. And of course it didn't bloom "for me." But it seemed to. It seemed to salute me. And when I saw it there, I buried my nose in it's petals and smelled the sweetest scent of rose I've ever smelt.

In the last section of our seder, we read a guided mediation, where we were supposed to be walking somewhere (wherever we went in our imagination), and were distracted by a scent. Then we would turn to see what the thing was giving off the scent, and were told that this was the scent of our soul. We were supposed to interact with it in various ways, and then finally leave the place and continue on our way. We were to first just take it in. Then find out what kind of "nourishment" it needed, and then ask it for a gift.

I was doing the reading, so it was hard to concentrate until I put the paper down and closed my eyes. In a hurry, I jumped right in and found myself on a dirt path in a forest of low trees, maybe pines. they were fairly dark. I was on a larger, gravel path, but a smaller dirt path opened up to my right. And even though I was supposed to be drawn by the scent, I saw first before I smelled that there was a bright red rose on the periphery of my vision. Before I turned, I thought, maybe this is a mistake, it's supposed to be something else. Maybe I'm just thinking of this because we just smelled rose petals. But even so, I decided that if that was the case, this was still what was coming to mind, so I was going to go with it. And the rose was very bright and deep, the color, and its petals still fairly tight, just starting to bloom.

It wasn't very far off the path, and it was growing in a clearing. What did it need? It needed what all plants need. It needed water. So I gave it some water. And it seemed to thank me. Then I realized that behind it was a stone well. The rose was growing right at the edge of it, with two long stems. One had the larger, opening rose, and the other, a little bit below, was a bud, red, but not open yet.

The well was the one that we used to play on in the church yard. I will never forget it. It was low, with a wide lip of stone, and cherubs carved on the outside. It was no longer functioning, and there was only a metal grate covering a gravel bottom on the inside, where we would go in and sit. But once it must have been a working well, because there was a rusted iron pulley above it on a wrought iron arch. My friend T. painted it once in one of his paintings.

In my vision, it was a working well, though. Even though I didn't look in, I knew that it was filled with water. I gave the rose, which was there to represent my "soul" some water, and it gave me the well in return. I didn't even have to ask. It just gave. It knew that was what I needed.

And so, I spent a few moments with the rose, and decided that I didn't want to leave. But after I thought that, I turned and left and walked back out to the main path.

A burning bush in the Wilderness

This past Shabbat's parsha was Sh'mot, the first book of Exodus. In services this week, we had a guest preacher give the drash. And he really was a preacher, from the Church across the street. He had something very powerful to say about how African Americans can relate readily to the story of the Exodus, because the memory of slavery is still a fresh one in many of their minds.

He had a lot of other interesting things to say, too. One comment had to do with the burning bush. He drew attention to that, and to the wilderness as a place in which to meet God - where God meets us, in fact, and speaks to us. And He uses signs to grab our attention. In this case, it was a bush, consumed by fire, but not being burned.

Here is the text from my copy of the JPS Tanakh:

An Angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire out of a bush. He gazed, and there was a bush all aflame, yet the bush was not consumed. Moses said, "I must turn aside to look at this marvelous sight; why doesn't the bush burn up?" When HaShem saw that he had turned aside to look, God called to him out of the bush: "Moses! Moses!" He answered, "Here I am."

And once I read the text more closely, I got a lot more out of it. For one thing, at the beginning of the section, it doesn't say that God is there - it says "An Angel of the LORD appeared." But we know that "Angel" means messenger. So in this case, the "messenger" is the blazing fire. This is like God's handwriting on the world. Or God sending a text message by way of his wireless, languageless device - the Universe. Or maybe, this wasn't the text just yet, but rather the beep, buzz or ring tone that lets you know you have one.

The thing is, with cell phones, pagers, emails or anything, you have the option to answer or not. You can ignore it. Save it for later. Maybe you're just too busy right now. You don't want to be bothered. But Moses says, Hey, what's this?

I love Torah - you have this ancient text, supposedly about people who have little in common with us, in terms of their daily lives, and yet, they're just people. This is basically how any of us would respond. Like rubberneckers on a highway. Whoa, what happened here? Only here is Moses, out in the wilderness, with no one to corroborate what he is seeing. He is the only one who can describe this vision, and who knows what he was really looking at? Was it a bush? Was it really on fire? Was it something else? Or does it even matter? Because, whatever it was, it got the message across.

So first, you have the bush. And presumably, this bush was not right in front of Moses, because he said, "I must turn aside to look at this marvelous sight." So Moses shifted his gaze. He saw something out of the corner of his eye, and he went out of his way to look. He didn't know that God was calling to him. In that moment, he was simply aware of his surroundings, and willing to give something a second look that didn't seem to jive with his usual understanding of the world, i.e. that when bushes are filled with fire, they normally burn up.

And then it says, "When God saw that Moses had turned aside, he called to him out of the bush." And that may seem like a throwaway line. It's what you expect. Moses sees the burning bush, and the next thing you know, God is calling to him out of it. Simple right? But that line is loaded. It says God saw. So what that line is really giving us is a glimpse into the Mind of God. And it also gives us a little kernel of doubt. God sees everything, right? So if Moses had NOT turned to look at the bush, He would have seen that, too. So God was sitting on pins and needles for a while there.

Here is this guy, Moses, out in the wilderness with a flock of sheep, and God wants to call to him and make him the liberator of the Jewish people enslaved in Egypt. So God has to figure out a way of getting Moses' attention, and when he does this, by way of the burning bush (you could make an argument for a better way, but maybe that's all God had at the time) He can't even be sure if Moses is going to look at it, never mind respond. God sends the text, and the beep goes off, but what if Moses doesn't hear it? So there is God, watching to see what Moses does. When he sees that Moses has turned to look at the burning bush, then He speaks to him out of it. Not before he gets Moses' attention. He doesn't speak to get his attention. He only does it after the attention is given.

He says, "Moses! Moses!" And he answers, "Here I am!"

Not, What do you want? Not, Who are you? Just, Here I am.

And I'm thinking, what does this say to me? What does this mean in my life, right now? The pastor, who gave the drash, made a good point that when we get a call from God, or from our neighbors, we should pay attention, and think about what it means to answer, and what it means to Act. I really appreciated him saying that, because action is important to me. It's one of the things I love about Judaism - that it's not a religion of passively sitting by and imbibing philosophy, knowledge or belief, but one, ultimately, of action, and preferably action that benefits an entire community, and/or one's own life and of those close to us.

But I also wondered, and thought about later, what are the burning bushes in my life? What are those things, items, phenomena, dancing in the periphery of my vision that I should be turning my gaze toward and saying, Hey, what's this? I'm going to check this out. What are those things that aren't happening the way they are supposed to that are demanding a closer look? And if I don't look, maybe I am going to miss an important message. If Moses hadn't looked at that burning bush, the entire story of Exodus wouldn't have happened. Or at least Moses wouldn't have been a part of it. Maybe Moses wasn't the first one. Maybe God had tried to reach dozens of other men, or even women, and all of them had been too caught up in their own lives to pay attention to the message God was sending.

So if we don't pay attention to the messages in our own lives - to those burning bushes, those outliers of experience that make us say, Hey, hang on a minute, that's not quite right - we're missing a big piece of the action. We're missing the opportunity to not only have a conversation with God, but to liberate ourselves and possibly many others from the negative forces that are enslaving them.

Shavuah tov.

Drash on Joseph

There was a Bat Mitzvah at services this week, and this girl had one challenging parsha to write a drash on.

Va-Yehi - And He Lived.

Jacob lived. For better or for worse, 147 years. (I still want to know why they lived so long in those days, when we think so much of our medical advances now - but that's a discussion for another day.) Jacob, who, with the help of his mother, conned his way into getting his father's blessing while Esau was out doing just exactly what was expected of him. And for this, he was forced to flee his homeland and live in exile, even if he did become extremely wealthy because of it.

Now Jacob and his family live in Egypt, and he is dying. So he summons Joseph, his favorite son, to him, to instruct him not to bury him in Egypt, but in the tomb of his own ancestors. Then Joseph comes back to Jacob again, when he is very ill, bringing his two sons with him. Then he does a strange thing. Jacob blesses Joseph's sons. But not only does he place his right hand on the head of the younger, and his left on the head of the elder, he has to cross his arms to do it. So, despite his old age and weak sight, this is clearly a deliberate act. And it seems to recall his own life. Never mind Joseph's. Whereas it is expected that the elder sibling will always be favored, he instead favors the younger. It is like a tribute to his own experience, and the birthright he garnered, despite his less-favored position in his family.

And this, in some ways, is the tradition we inherit. I know it from another source. Because I grew up with the teachings of Jesus, one of perhaps, the most famous Jews of all time, who said, "and the last shall be first, and the first shall be last." In a similar vein, he also said, "And the stone that was rejected shall become the chief cornerstone." This is another way of saying, Don't trust what you've been given. Don't trust what looks obvious. What seems to be the stronger, more obvious choice, will not necessarily be so. What you at first reject may become the most important element of your life. And sometimes, being rejected, that is often the first step in the process of becoming something or someone truly instrumental.

But that isn't what I had planned to write about today. I wanted to write about forgiveness. Radical forgiveness. Which, to my mind, at least in this case, is not forgiveness at all, but rather, an extremely whole and sensible point of view.

Because, while the story starts with Jacob, it becomes a story about Joseph. Joseph was certainly the favored of Jacob's twelve sons. So favored, in fact, that they hated him, tore up his clothes and threw him in a pit to die. Joseph was saved, was taken to Egypt, where he became wealthy and saved the land from famine by way of his dreams. And after this, he saves his own family from the famine as well - the same family that tried to kill him.

Now, I may think I have it bad sometimes, but at least my siblings didn't try to kill me, in a literal sense. Or even figuratively. My parents didn't try to kill me. They did other things that upset me, but not that. It gives you a little perspective when you realize someone else's life is worse than yours.

After Jacob dies and Joseph buries him in the cave in the field of Machpelah, where Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah and Leah are buried, the brother's get together and say, "What if Joseph still bears a grudge against us and pays us back for the wrong we did him?" Fair enough. They should be concerned. After all, it seems they have a guilty collective conscience. They admit themselves that they wronged their own brother, and now, of course, they have been brought to shame because in end he saved all their hides.

I was told, during the service, that the bat mitzvah girl is the daughter of a child psychologist. And this was somewhat evident in the fact that she spoke about the way we inherit our parents' bad behavior sometimes, and this is all over the Torah - especially in Genesis. But I read a lot of psychology, too, and part of me is saying that, while I don't know why Jacob favored Joseph, and probably none of us will know why, there's a good chance that his doing so actually became a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you tell one child they are a good child, and one child they are a bad one, eventually they will both figure out a way to live out the designations you have made on them. (I knew a woman once who had two sons, and every time she would talk to one of them, she would tell him, "you're the good son." She did this with both sons.) In a way, we can even do this kind of self-fulfilling prophecy on ourselves. Or, as Henry Ford (and doubtless others have) said, "Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you are right."

So Jacob planted in Joseph the seeds of greatness, and in his other sons, the seeds of resentment. The next plan of the other 11 sons was motivated by guilt and fear. Rather than confront Joseph and say, Hey, you know, look, we were crap back there when we threw you in the pit. It really sucked and we're sorry. So we hope you can forgive us. Instead they make up some phony message from their dead father, which obviously can't be corroborated, saying that he (Jacob) had instructed Joseph to forgive his brothers.

Joseph is in tears, so we can only assume that he believes them. Or perhaps he takes this as their own confession of guilt, and sees through their hastily-constructed lie, even though he doesn't say it. Then they fling themselves down and offer to be his slaves. But Joseph refuses. And I love what he says:

Have no fear! Am I a substitute for God?
Besides, though you intended me harm,
God intended it for good,
So as to bring about the present result -
the survival of many people.

From there it is a short paragraph to his death at the age of 110 years. But in this statement alone is an enormously valuable legacy.

I mentioned that I read a lot of psychology. I read a lot about cycles of abuse and bad behavior and bad thinking, and about how these things become perpetuated, both within ourselves, and with other people, by constantly responding to the abuse, the fear, and the pain. The message is always the same: the only way to break the cycle is not to respond to the abuse. Don't acknowledge the fear. Don't let the pain drive your actions. As soon as you've done that, you've lost the battle. But it's one of the hardest things to do when you think those are your only options. When everyone you have ever known has abused you or treated you badly, it is really easy to want to do the same thing. And yet Joseph refuses. He refuses to be caught up in that cycle.

But it is not through his own power, or his own perspective that he is able to achieve this enormous sense of - probably unjustified - forgiveness. Because he not only forgives his brothers. He, in essence, thanks them. He says, If you hadn't done that to me then, I wouldn't be where I am now. Talk about heaping coals. But heaping coals was when he saved their lives. Now he is on a whole new level.

Now he is on the level of God - seeing the Big Picture. He doesn't respond to his own feelings of pain, of hurt, of betrayal and abandonment. He has accepted his past, and he is grateful for it. Because even though he knows he can never really "know" the Mind of God, he can see how circumstances have led him to where he is, and get past what would be simply a knee-jerk reaction and instead see how a negative experience became a positive one for him. He doesn't say to his brother's a lame, "It's okay, guys, let's move on," either. He acknowledges a higher power, a greater plan. He humbles them again, indirectly pointing out that even their most vicious intents were no match for the Mind of God. And maybe he believed in himself, maybe he didn't. Maybe he just lived his life with his eyes open, and wasn't willing to "take an eye for an eye." Because he, like Ghandhi, realized that that would make the whole world blind. But in the end, by being able to step back, to step out of his own experience and look at it with the cool eye of reason, he was able to stop the cycle, giving his brothers nothing to feel guilty for, nothing to be angry about, and putting responsibility exactly where it belonged - in God's hands.

Hanukkah Miracles

I am not supposed to write today, because it is the Sabbath, nor should I be using the computer. But it's the last day of Hanukkah, and before I get too busy doing other things, I want to share my experience of my own, personal Hanukkah miracle, or miracles, really.

This season was full of them. In fact, I could feel the miraculous energy swirling around me sometimes.

Miracle 1: My mother sent me a Hanukkah card. This is my mother, who had nothing to say when I told her and my father I was Jewish, except, "But...what about Christmas?" I told her she could have all the Christmas she wanted. I had every Sabbath, and I had Pesach and Shavuot, and Rosh Hashanah, and all the rest. So we said nothing else about my religion, and I thought she would avoid the topic altogether. Then, a few days before Hanukkah, a card arrived in the mail, which I was almost certain would be a "Holiday" card, or even a Christmas-themed card of some kind, with a cheesy saying she'd made up. It wasn't overly Hanukkah-y. It sported a watercolor of a dove on the front, with "Shalom" in Hebrew letters (a word I recognized, thanks to my Beginning Hebrew class). Inside was a message about hoping my season was filled with Miracles, and she wrote that she wished me a Happy Hanukkah underneath. So that was miracle one, that she sent it.

Miracle 2 was that the card was on time. My mom has never sent a card to me on time, I don't think, in her life. And she was never on time to pick me up from school or to drop me off at band/choir/theater practice my entire childhood. The message to me was: my life wasn't important to her. But she responded to something different this time. This time I chose what was important to me, and I didn't need her approval. I didn't even need her support. But for the first time, she was able to show for me, on time, for something that was important to me, even though it, literally, goes against her religion. Halleluia to that.

Then there was the miracle of the Latke party. Weeks ago, I volunteered to host a Monday - fourth night - Hanukkah party at my house, in which I would make my first-ever latkes for all the guests. This was through a new Minyan in the area, and many would be invited, though I knew it wouldn't be a huge crowd, it being Monday night, and my house being far from most people, in the remote town where I live.

My friend Jen had volunteered to make sufganiyot that night, and I was afraid (though I didn't say it) that if she decided to do that at a different place, then most people would go there, since she is more well-known in the community than I am. But that worked out when she decided to just cook them at my house, so that we could do a joint party.

Then, as the date approached, I had more worries. For one thing, it rained the week before Hanukkah, and where I live, rain means the ants all move indoors. That's exactly what happened, and my house was becoming steadily overrun by tiny ants marching through the bathroom, living room, and kitchen. I put out ant traps that did nothing to make them go away, and the more I tried to clean them up and destroy their ant trails, the more they seemed to invade. I nearly called the party off just because of that, because even the day before, they were everywhere, including in my kitchen drawers, where I kept tin foil and bags and tupperware containers. But I held off. I didn't pick up the phone. Instead, I went to the hardware store, and I got a liquid ant killer that I'd been eying before, and decided to try. The ants started to eat it, and I hoped that would do the trick. Then another friend came by with a different kind of ant trap, and so I put those down, too, for extra protection. Thankfully, when I woke up Monday morning, all but a few ants were gone. It was a miracle! I was ready to rejoice.

But I had another problem. Lack of work meant that cash was tight. I had bought a few supplies for the party ahead of time, but that morning I found myself without enough cash to buy potatoes. It was a sad state of affairs. But I still had to believe that the party needed to go on. I had committed to it. People were counting on me. But not only that, I was counting on me. I had a need to make this happen - to make potato latkes, and open my home to people of the Jewish community, as had been done for me the previous year. Thankfully, my friend stepped in to help again. He saw my need, and even though he'd been having some trouble of his own, he helped me out. We went to the grocery store and bought a few supplies on a very tight budget. But it all worked out well. I was even able to make a small deposit to my bank account, which prevented (just barely) an overdraft on my account that I was worried about.

So that was Miracle number 3, and 4.

But wait, there's more. When I went to make the latkes, I discovered that, of all the things I had remembered to buy, frying oil wasn't one of them. Plain oil isn't something I normally keep in my kitchen. I generally only use olive oil. So I looked, and all I had was about a half a cup of Extra Virgin Olive Oil. My friend Jen offered for me to use the leftover oil from the sufganiyot, which had only a small amount of sediment in it, but still smelled a bit like doughnuts. I decided I would try olive oil. Two nights before, I had enjoyed latkes that someone had cooked in olive oil, and I thought it could work, or perhaps a mixture of the two. It looked like I had enough, and when I checked the label, I saw that it was certified kosher.

So I cooked the latkes in olive oil, and they came out delicious. They were crispy on the edges, and not too brown, with just a hint of garlic, and few other spices for flavoring. Everyone loved them, including Roger, who had invited me to be on the planning committee for the Minyan in the first place. He waxed poetic about them, holding his hand up in the air with his fingers touching his thumb, and shook it in just that way that means what he ate was just so perfect, he couldn't even put his finger on it. He said, "See? You even made me talk like this!" And he did it again. It was all worth it.

And I found out later from a rabbi that, despite the doubt some people had expressed about the viability of cooking latkes in olive oil, it was probably the most authentic way to cook them, since olive oil is precisely the kind of oil the Maccabees had needed and had found and used in the Temple after they defeated the Assyrian Greeks.

And in a way, the way I found it was very similar. I found that I did not have what I thought I needed. The oil that my friend had brought was already "defiled" by having been used for the doughnuts, and so what I had left was a small amount of pure, unadulterated, kosher olive oil, which didn't look like enough to cook the huge batch of potato pancakes I had prepared. And yet, once I started cooking, I realized that I in fact did have enough, that it lasted as long as I needed it to, with even a little left over. And my pancakes were delicious, as perfect as I could have wanted them, and kosher.

It was all an amazing success, and even more so because I had not thought it possible that it could happen.

But Hashem does make the impossible possible. Where we see blockages and hurdles, G-d lifts us over and carries us through, if only we keep walking. Because that's what I did. I could have turned aside. I could have called the party off. But I had a vision for it that it was going to happen, and I didn't want to let that vision go. In the end, it became exactly as I had imagined it. But only because Hashem blessed me, over and over again, and made possibilities appear where I had only seen challenges.

And so I realized later that, just as it had said on the card my mother sent me, my Hanukkah was indeed filled with miracles.

Parshat Vayishlach

We had a difficult reading this week. I was somewhat gratified that the woman who gave the drash chose to speak about the Rape of Dinah - sometimes called the "Ravishing" of Dinah - but I have to confess that I differ with her on some points.

She started by linking what happened in the story with the tragic incident of a recent gang rape in Richmond, which took place in front of onlookers who did nothing at all to stop it.

But I believe it is too easy to look at the story of Dinah and say, "Look, she was raped. That is bad." And conclude that the Bible, the writers of the Bible, and Judaism itself condones rape. It's too easy to say that this is a story the glorifies the desecration of women, and just "goes to show" that we live in a patriarchal society that sees women as objects to be traded, or meat to be sold. To me, that is all too simplistic, because that is not at all what I heard when the Torah was read this week.

The text says that Dinah, "Went out to visit the daughters of the land" (Gen. 34:1) So maybe she had some friends. She wanted to go shopping. We don't know. But the text makes it clear that she wasn't leaving the house to consort with men. However, we are told that Shechem, who was the son of the country's chief ruler, Hamor, saw Dinah, and suddenly he "had to have her." He had to so much that he "took her and lay with her by force" (Gen. 34:2). We don't know how she responded. We don't know if she screamed, bit, kicked, or acquiesced. If he held her by the throat, does that mean she submitted willingly? But in the end it doesn't matter. The text is clear, she was taken by force. Therefore, she was not taken of her own will, it was not consensual, and moreover, Shechem is not a Jew. If she had wanted to go with him, her brothers still might have been upset, since they were not permitted to marry outside the clan.

I searched through my "Concise Book of Mitzvoth" for the particular mitzvah that prohibits the taking of a woman by force. I didn't find it. But I remember reading that there are specific guidelines regarding what does and does not constitute rape in the Jewish tradition. For example, if a woman is taken by force in a city street, and she screams, but no one hears her, she is raped, and the man is punished. If she is taken in a field, where no one can hear her, if she says she was raped, she was raped, since there is no one else who could have heard her, even if she screamed. If, however, she is raped in a city street, and she says nothing or makes no noise, and she could have screamed, then she is held at least partly accountable, because she could have called for help but didn't. So there are very clear prohibitions against taking a woman by force.

But there are other prohibitions that suggest that rape is something that is looked down upon. Among the prohibitions I am thinking of, there is "Not to take anything in robbery from one's fellow-man by main force," "Not to wrongfully retain anything belonging to one's fellow-man," and "Not to covet (desire) anything belonging to one's fellow-man." In this case, "to covet" means not only "to desire" but also to take some action toward obtaining the desired thing.

I do not mean to imply that women are or should be legally regarded as "objects" to be "obtained" by men, although you could say that might have been the going mentality of the time. But I think I mean more that, through making these prohibitions on objects or things that one might desire, which are not rightfully yours, the same would apply to a woman, if a man happened to desire her. And actually, if he did desire her and "take" her - by force or through action - it is wrong precisely because by doing this he DOES make an object of her.

Some other mitzvoth that I believe apply here are the the prohibition "To do nothing whatever from which there can result hillul Hashem, a desecration of the Divine name," and "To destroy no holy thing and to erase no name whatever among the holy names [of God]," mitzvot 155 and 157, respectively. These have to do specifically with the names of God. But a mystical reading of this idea could say that in a way, we are all letters of Torah, and all letters are part of Torah, which contains the Name of God. Each person contains a spark of the Divine Light, and so the Name of God in some ways, is written by our very being. The description of this second mitzvah, 157, quotes the scripture from which it comes, "You shall not do so to Hashem your God," (D'varim 12:4). Therefore if you are not going to do it to Hashem, by extension you are not - or should not - do "it", that is, destroy, your fellow human being. "It is forbidden to break and to destroy any object of holiness."

And that is exactly what rape does. It destroys a person. It breaks holiness. It erases part of a person's name, their sanctity, their identity. It dims their light. It robs them of joy, of life, of themselves. The Jewish people of old knew this as well as we know it today.

And that's where the woman who gave the drash was right when she said that nothing has changed. But not only has it not changed that rape still can and does occur, which is tragic and lamentable. It has also not changed that people hate it now as much as we did then. This is evidenced by the reaction of Dinah's brothers, Simeon and Levi.

Simeon and Levi were "out in the field" when all this took place. Because Shechem didn't merely "take" Dinah and let her go. He brought her back to his house, and went with Hamor to Jacob to negotiate over how he could get Dinah to be his wife, because he claimed to "love" her.

This is clearly a case where we have a mixed message. Shechem "loves Dinah" and so he "spoke to the maiden tenderly" (Gen. 34:3). But he also took her by force, which means, it is not possible that he loved her in the true sense. This would be an example of love in the distorted, arrogant sense that means you believe you have the right to anything you desire. It means you think if you love a person, that person "belongs" to you. It means you don't bother to seek the other person's permission. You railroad them with your feelings, leaving them numb and invalidated. It is abusive love, at it's worst. And the Torah makes no excuse for it.

No one supports Shechem's action, except his own father, so we can assume the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. And they are punished in a way a lot of us would probably like to see someone punished who degrades so severely a member of our family. Dinah's brothers take action to save her honor that most of us would not only be afraid to do, for fear of legal consequences, but we just plain wouldn't have the guts to carry out.

So Jacob waits for Simeon and Levi to come back from the field, while Hamor is there, trying to negotiate a way to get his son access to Dinah as a wife, even though he has already pretty much "had" her. The brothers come in, and we're sure they are pretty angry, but they exercise a huge amount of restraint. Rather than tackling the men right there, risking their own lives, they pretend to collude with them. And by doing that, they get more than just petty revenge. They "speak with guile" "because he (Shechem) had defiled their sister Dinah" (Gen. 34:13). They put up a challenge. If Hamor gets Shechem and all the men of the city to circumcise themselves, then Jacob will let the men marry his daughters. Meanwhile, if they don't do it, the Israelites will pack up their beautiful maidens and leave. So Shechem and Hamor, thinking they are about to get a really good deal, go off and self-mutilate their genitals.

When they have done this, Simeon and Levi wait three days, and "on the third day, when they (the men of the town) were in pain" (Gen. 34:25) (because they had just circumcised themselves), Simeon and Levi stroll in, armed to the teeth, but under no suspicion because it was believed that they were on Hamor and Shechem's side. They then surprised the men of the town and slaughtered as many of them as they could, plundered everything, and took back Dinah.

Of course, they couldn't stay there anymore, after that.

But they did defend their sister's honor.

Compare their action to supposed "honor killings" in some Muslim communities. Not all Muslims do this, of course, but for those who do, the belief is that when a woman is raped it is somehow "her fault." You know, like she looked too beautiful, or she walked just so - she was "asking for it." And this doesn't happen only in Muslim communities. Many men is Western, developed nations try to blame women for their own sexual assault. But in some extreme Muslim communities, it is acceptable, indeed, sometimes expected, that to save a woman's "honor," a husband, brother or father will hunt down the rape victim and kill her.

That happens now. Today. And it's abhorrent. To my mind, this practice is orders of magnitude worse than what occurs in Parshat Vayishlach with Dinah, and we should be much more worried about that than about whether or not this story is "difficult" to read. Of course it's difficult. Because life is difficult. And the Torah doesn't sugar-coat it for us.

Dinah was raped. There is no question about that. But nobody blames Dinah. Nobody persecutes her, and nobody punishes her. Quite the opposite. Her brothers are inflamed with anger because her body was desecrated, but not at her. At the men who took her. And not only do they seek out to harm the men who hurt her, they first use their bargaining power to cause the men of Shechem to essentially violate themselves to be in pain for three days before the brothers arrive to liberate their sister.

Every woman should be so lucky to have brothers ready to defend her honor with such passion.

An Odd Dream

It is two nights after my conversion. I had an odd dream. Here is the gist of it:

I was on my way to try to get to a boat dock to meet someone or to get somewhere. It was late at night, and the boats were not running, so I had to take a train, and then make my way through the woods on my bike. I believe I was with my family at the time, but I was going to take the train alone. When I got there, the station agent knew me. I asked to use the bathroom, and not only did he show me where it was, he checked the stall before I went in to make sure it was empty. It was a bathroom in a train station, though, so it wasn't very clean. In fact, there was a hat sitting behind the toilet, which made me think that someone was watching me. But it only fell over onto the floor when I went over there.

There were many other people waiting in the train station, and everyone was tired and bored from having to wait so long. I checked the schedule, and there were some trains and some buses, all leaving at different times during the night. I was going to take the 12:24. Like many people in the station, I had a large suitcase. But I also had a small bag. I talked to the station agent, and then decided not to take my suitcase, because it was too large and stuffed with extra clothes I didn't need. There was an old, homeless-looking man sitting on a bench behind me with a dirty suitcase behind me. "I'll watch your stuff," he said. And I gladly offered it to him. Well, not gladly, but readily, because I wouldn't be taking it with me.

I watched as he unzipped the big, black suitcase, and began rummaging through my socks and other clean things. But as I walked away to go lie down in a different room, I had the sense that I knew that he intended to take something, and that's partly why I had given it to him, but I also knew that he wouldn't. Because he was looking for dirty things, and my suitcase was only full of clean socks and clothes with bright pretty colors. In short, it was way too clean for him, not to mention girly. Not really his style. So I was safe. But I was still uncomfortable that my personal laundry was in the hands of a strange old man I'd never met before.

In the other room, I looked in my small bag to see what I had. I was relieved to see that I'd brought my bike headlight with me, so that I'd be able to see in the dark, because there was no real path from the train to the dock. So I probably wouldn't be riding my bike but walking, and I would use the bike's headlight as a flashlight. Soon the train was boarding and everyone was lining up. The station agent was also the person who was going to drive the train. They were very short-staffed. But I was ready to go. I was ready to leave my things behind, and hope that I could make it in the wilderness, where I knew this train was going to leave me.

~

You may be wondering: what does this have to do with Judaism? So here's my interpretation: The old man was like the rabbi/rabbis whom I spoke with in my beit din. They sought to air my dirty laundry, but what they found in fact, was perfectly clean. Too, clean, perhaps, and they kept looking, hoping to find what they were looking for, and not finding it. The fact was, though, that that clean laundry was all that I was intending to leave behind. Judaism is the train, and it leaves during the night, driven by a familiar conductor - the same guy I bought my ticket from. I'm traveling alone, leaving my family behind, and about to enter a wilderness. It's also dark outside. But I'm prepared. And after my journey, I am going to be at a place where a boat, and someone I know will take me away to where I want to be. I have no way of knowing if this will happen, but I am trusting that it will, if only I take the time and do the work to get there. What I have in my bag is a light, and it's a bright light that will show me the way. I am not afraid. Because I've brought what I need, almost without thinking. I put the light in my bag as an afterthought. And I'm leaving my old laundry behind, because it is heavy and cumbersome, even if it's perfectly clean and wearable.

Mikveh Lady

I'M JEWISH!!!!!!!

It's done. I did it. the whole thing.

My Beit Din went on for an HOUR. Only afterward did the mikveh lady tell me that that was about twice as long as the longer ones usually take. I think they told me the whole thing would take and hour. Oh well! I don't know why I kept talking. I guess they found me interesting!

And they said very good things. And there was singing and dancing. And more later. Right now I am tired and I have a headache.

I left my nice new water bottle in the bathroom at the museum...ooh, la. Time for more sleep!

Last Day

My beit din and mikveh are scheduled for tomorrow. After all this time, now there is only one night left until I come before the rabbis, and then before G-d, immersed in the waters of the mikveh.

The Mikveh Lady called me today. We talked about what would happen tomorrow at the mikveh. She explained it's a very small place, with a lobby, an office, and the mikveh itself, which also refers to the room where the mikveh is. There is a bathroom where I can prepare myself.

She explained to me how I need to remove everything, and make sure not to wear makeup or hair products, or if I do, to wash them off before going into the mikveh. And before I enter the water, she will check my shoulders and chest to make sure no hairs from my head are there, because not even a hair can come between myself and G-d.

She recommended that I take a bath. I did not tell her, but I took a bath Sunday night. I had a stressful day and needed to relax. So I put some bubbles in, put on some nice choral music, and set myself in for a good soak. As I did, I began to think of the mikveh, and what it would mean to be immersed in those waters. How would I be cleansed? How would I be made new? Would I be or feel the same or different after I emerged? These are questions I won't know the answers to until tomorrow.

Tonight, I took a long shower. I cleaned, I shaved. I realized that I was more concerned with how my body would look than I normally would be if I thought I were going to be intimate with someone. Because when you are intimate, people often don't concentrate on the details, even if we think they might. And also the light is often low. Here, tomorrow, I will be standing before a woman in a completely sane and wakeful state, under some kind of light that would most likely reveal everything my body had to offer. She would see every hair. She would be looking for them. Though body hair, she said, was okay. Still, I wanted as little as possible. I wanted to feel fresh and new. Not naked as a baby. Just as unencumbered as possible.

And I found that I became more aware of what was on my body. After the shower, I put on lotion and realized that I could not do that tomorrow. Most days when I am getting ready, I am thinking about what I can put on. Tomorrow, I will be thinking about what I can't put on. I took off the nail polish that was chipping off my toenails. I thought about perfume and decided that not even a scent that was not my own would be coming with me. Though I've decided I will wear deodorant and wash it off beforehand. There's vanity, and then there's public presence.

In all, I feel ready. I feel relaxed. It's a little bit late. I feel all of my big thinking and philosophizing and studying funneling down into one moment. But when it happens tomorrow, I'll be ready.

The Period of Nidah

I just had the most interesting conversation with my Rabbi this morning. So now a small group of men is aware of the exact status of my menstrual cycle. I feel both exposed and empowered.

On the one hand, I have to share with a group of mature men (my beit din), most of whom I barely know - and actually, knowing them makes it slightly worse - the most personal of details. On the other hand, it means that, rather than me being on their schedule, they have to be on mine.

This is something I love about Halacha (Jewish Law). It may seem biased, at first, in favor of the men, but in actual fact, this is not the case.

To say that a woman cannot go to a mikveh during her period is probably, mainly, a matter of public health. It would not do to have bleeding women in public water. Nobody would like that. But, truth be told, I think it's more respectful to the women. If that were to happen to a woman, it would be embarrassing for her - or at least it would be for me. And it makes sense to cleanse and purify after the period of Nidah.

I like that this article points out that when a woman is "tameh" from the blood of menstruation it does not mean that she is physically dirty or somehow stained in some way, personally. It means that she reaches a certain status with regard to ritual distinction, and both the separation that she takes from her husband, as well as the purification and return to her husband are both sacred. Well, the article didn't say that, but I interpreted that from what I know.

We often think we know and believe that the Jews of ancient time and possibly today, somehow believe(d) a woman to be less than human during the state of nidah, as evidenced by their ritual "impurity." But really it is all part of a sacred cycle. A sacred breathing ritual, where you let one breath out in order to take the next one in. This is the rhythm of life, the heartbeat of our human race. It is special and sacred and divine. In my opinion, a woman cannot enter a mikveh when she is menstruating, because she is simply too holy during that period. Likewise, they also point out, and I have found in my own life, that this is a wonderful time in which to deepen your relationship with someone. In that time, you find out if the person really cares for you and wants to spend their time for you, or if they are just interested in "getting in your pants."

I also know that each period changes me slightly. The emotions that I experience as my period approaches bring new notions and insights about my life. They make me do and say things I might not do the other three weeks of the month, but I'm always grateful for the new perspective. And afterward, I relax. I go back to who I am and what I know, with the relief of seeing that one first spot of blood.

For me, if it happens that the rabbis are available when my period ends and I can enter the mikveh, then this will be a very special and sacred ceremony. Not only will it be the first time that I enter a mikveh, but I will do it in concert with my body and the cycles that it makes. In a way, I think, how wonderful and strange that it chose this time. But in that way, it also seems pre-built. It was already built into the architecture of my life, before the date even arrived. This date, in fact, has been circling around me, and now it proposes to land just exactly where it should be.

When I first read the date my Rabbi proposed, I thought, or rather felt it my gut, that it would not work. I thought, "I need another week to prepare." That was my body talking, even though I thought it was me (i.e. my consciousness. Maybe no difference?). At the time, even though I knew where I was in my cycle, the connection never occurred to me until this morning, when my Rabbi asked. And I knew what he was going to say before he even said it.

So this is where the power comes in. Because my body holds the power of Halacha. Halacha does not determine my body. My body determines the Halacha. It decides the schedule of events, and the Rabbis have no choice but to comply. Just as I have no choice but to follow the cycles it creates. It is entirely even. Both sides are fair. This is justice, because no one is excluded from the power of the body, no matter how much we think we might be able to break it and control it. In the end, all we can do is relax, and take things as they come.

Another very good article about nidah or niddah, can be found here.

Destruction and rebuilding

As we come up onto Tisha B'Av, I wanted to reflect on what I did last year for this holiday, and how it means something similar and different to me this year.

Last year, I spent the holiday evening at the home of Rabbi Michael Lerner of TIKKUN fame in Berkeley, CA, where he holds meetings for his Jewish Renewal synagogue, Beyt Tikkun. We read Lamentations by candlelight, after the evening had started. Earlier, we davened and then joined together for a meal before the fast. It was a solemn night, but a joyful one as well. I felt a great sense of community and spirituality, which was no doubt helped by being so high up in the hills of Berkeley.

This year, I am sitting at home. I am not going to services, because I would be home too late if I did. If that's lame, I don't care right now. My number one priority right now is taking care of myself. I am no less observing the meaning of the holiday, and this year, at least for the time I am spending alone, I am going to fast. I have plans to be with a friend, and I will eat either very little or not at all. A full-on fast might not be healthy for me, either, but I am going to meet it as much as I can.

I want to feel the hunger. An occasional fast is good sometimes. There was a good article that a friend shared on the practical nature of fasting, and it's true, fasting does something to you. It changes you, even when you aren't looking for it. It changes you in ways you don't expect. But shaking up your usual rhythm, you are forced out of your usual ways of thinking. Maybe this is perfectly what I need right now.

Lately, I have been feeling "stuck." I have been feeling like my life is in one particular place, and I'm not getting anywhere by trying to push it or shove it, heaving this way and that, but it's not going anywhere. It's like a big rock stuck in the sand, and it doesn't want to budge. So maybe for this holiday I will stop pushing. I will stop forcing my angles on all the things I want to "change," and instead let change happen of it's own accord.

I will open my mind and let the change come in. When you stop, sometimes, and stop thinking, that's when the good ideas come in.

Like cats.

Last year, Tisha B'Av was about remembering a part of my life that was broken, a part of my life that was destroyed; a relationship that failed to flourish. This year, in some ways, is the same. I have that relationship, still mourned, still broken, still lost. Even if having it in my life would be obsolete, inappropriate or just plain useless, I still mourn it's passing. Its remembrance still brings me pain that I just want to alleviate, and don't quite feel I can. And now, I have other relationships, built and lost. Each one a temple, where I sacrificed to G-d a little piece of myself, and now those sacrifices, too, are gone, never to be returned.

But even with those losses, what this Holiday really is about, to me, is hope. Hope for the future. Hope for rebuilding those corrupted relationships, or if not those ones, then to build new, stronger, better ones. With people I might not even know yet. Or friends who are just around the corner, who perhaps I've met, but are just ready and waiting in the wings to take my life to a new level of bliss and personal satisfaction that I've never known before, and which would belie my grief, but would make it, oh, so worth it.