The Jew in The Boonies

Archive for the ‘The Jew in The Boonies’ Category

The Problems of Converting They Don’t Tell You About [The Jew in The Boonies]

Sunday, December 4th, 2011

boonie FOR REAL FOR REAL With one day left of school now, I feel I must reflect. What they say about this school is true, you know — people really do sleep in the library, and it is hard to make friends. Really, two of my only friends here include the rabbi and the Catholic priest. It’s kind of interesting. They actually give me advice in life. For example, they agree with me when I want to graduate a semester early or do a Jewish Studies major instead of a Religious Studies major. And you know? Sometimes it’s good to have people occasionally reinforce your crazy ideas when no one else will.

I do have other friends; they just tell me I should wait to graduate and stick with a more marketable major. Nonsense! I know what I want in life. There are lots of things I could do next spring if I graduated early—why do I need to be here? Behold: there’s Pardes, WUJS, the Conservative Yeshiva, I could intern at a Jewish non-profit, I could move to New York. I could do a lot of things.

But you know what I hate? I’m chained. Why? Wherever I pick, I ought to be thinking about staying there for a couple of years. That’s what converting does. You have to pick a place and stay there. If I want to intern in Washington, DC next summer, the first thing I think is: “What if I finally find a good community there? Should I just stay and convert and just take the old Amtrak to school a couple days a week? Is that hasty? But I wanted to live in New York! (whine)” I’d feel like a bad candidate if I went to a rabbi going “I like this place, but I want to go to Israel in a year and maybe go backpacking and never come back, sorry.” (You get the feeling you can’t be Jewish and on the go.) It almost makes me not want to live in a city I know I probably don’t want to live in forever…even just to intern. And that’s a little morbid.

I don’t think those conversion books mention the horrid period of gestation wherein you’re in between “making the decision” and telling your rabbi about it. (For me, there is no rabbi.) I think I’m there. And it’s disorienting. It’s disorienting when everyone around me is telling me that it’s not so bad. It is bad. The only people who agree are an Orthodox rabbi and a Catholic priest.

But alas, there’s an even darker side of conversion. I’m glad I got so many comments on my last post, but I started to see something that I sort of latently suspected anyway. When you convert, as you may know, you have to pick a denomination. If you’re not sure which, a good way to decide is to pit them against each other and make bad jokes and tongue-in-cheek observations about the ones you think you may not like. It doesn’t matter if they’re exaggerations or caricatures; that’s good! Conservatism is a country club! Orthodoxy hates women! If you’re wishy-washy, how can you ever pick one? And remember—you have to pick one.

Do you see what’s happening here? I can’t just pick an Orthodox conversion. I must implicitly say in turn that non-Orthodox conversions are invalid—otherwise, why would I go through the trouble? I must say there’s something wrong with the others; that those with liberal practices are metaphysically doing it wrong. No matter how I feel about that, there must be absolutes in conversion.

I think it’s hardest for Orthodoxy because Reform can use theology to get out of the argument, and Conservatism can use certain platforms such as egalitarianism, but once I pick Orthodoxy I must also be giving up anything good there might be in Conservatism. I must implicitly be saying that I don’t believe in women’s rights, right? Or that I agree with all the theology that guides Orthodox practice.* Someone once told me I didn’t seem “at peace” with my decision. I agree. I can’t be, because no denomination is a pure, unalloyed Judaism. There are good and bad features about each. I don’t like the idea of settling into a denomination. I’m picking the best option. I mean, geez, there’s only three (or four, for you sticklers…and two already accept me).

Picking Orthodox over Conservative was one of the hardest (yet clearest) decisions I’ve had to make, but in a sense it doesn’t matter that I’ve made the decision. My theology is the same! I don’t suddenly hate liberal Judaism. A friend asked me how I could still stand to go to JTS after I’d just said Conservatism is so wrong. You know what’s wrong though? The fact that I had to come up with a list of things that are wrong with liberal Judaism in order to justify my decision to convert to Orthodoxy. I stand by my list, but look at the divisions it causes! Conversion can do that. Conversion makes you pick one. It makes you pledge allegiance to that denomination—forever.

*I don’t mean Sinai. Hasidic thought, frighteningly, guides some normative practices regarding women.

Written & illustrated by the author.

Laura Cooper is a Religious Studies major at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, VA. Her interests include graphic novels, punk rock, and making Judaism interesting. She blogs at Crystal Decadenz. Her column, The Jew in the Boonies, appears here on alternating Sundays.

Posted in Conservative, Orthodoxy, Reform, Religion, The Jew in The Boonies | 13 Comments »

Two reasons I’m converting to Orthodoxy [The Jew in The Boonies]

Sunday, November 20th, 2011

Crossposted at Crystal Decadenz

boonie FOR REAL FOR REAL I am disturbingly familiar with the arguments against Orthodoxy. I imagine someone will take issue with my characterizations of the liberal branches, but it’s good to disagree sometimes. I know that really accurate characterizations would take a book to write (I’m telling you now so I don’t have to break up every other sentence with “I know this isn’t always true, but…”) Sometimes I wish I’d never become so intimate with the intricacies of the branches, because it’d be much easier for me to say “Everyone who isn’t Orthodox is dead wrong, end of story.” Alas, instead I’ve come up with a few (rather unorthodox) reasons for why I’ve decided to convert to Orthodoxy. I’ve included two of the more interesting reasons here.

Judaism shouldn’t need a “platform.” You may have noticed that there’s no Orthodox “platform.” There’s also no Orthodox central authority akin to the USCJ or CCAR. Reform probably gets it the worst here, with their many different platforms (and how!), ranging from “we believe all ritual is archaic” (1885) to “we believe in studying the whole array of mitzvot” (1999). Their platforms are quite reactionary, and it seems that their goal is indeed to fine-tune their belief system with each passing generation—in as condensed a phrasing as possible, and to appeal to the most people as possible (indeed, their latest platform boldly proclaims that “we will encourage spiritual seekers to find their home in Judaism”!) Is this discomfiting to you?

Similarly, although Conservative Judaism only has one platform, they seem unsure on where they stand—possibly they aren’t entirely sure what their stand on halacha is. (The example I always bring up is the fact that women are included in minyan even though no one’s really sure whether women are actually obligated in fixed prayer.) They too could not resist summing themselves up in a pithy saying, as if they were a sports drink—”Tradition and Change.” Conservative Judaism has also taken the strange step in distinguishing itself not only as a way of practicing Judaism, but quite consciously as an entirely autonomous branch of Judaism. A Conservative Jew would have to look at the texts through the lens of the USCJ, and that makes me uncomfortable.

My Reform professor unwittingly said it best while we were discussing the different branches and their platforms—after reading the Reform platforms and the Conservative one, we skipped a discussion on the Orthodox platform because “They don’t need a platform; their platform is the Torah.”

Eventually, there is a divide between practice and ideology in liberal Judaism. Ideology can only get a person so far. It took me a while to realize this. Although Reform was never an option for me, I considered Conservatism for a long, long time (hence this post). It had occurred to me that many Conservative Jews aren’t practicing to their potential or even according to their beliefs, but I ignored this. When I was going to the Conservative synagogue back home, I quickly became one of the most observant people there…and I’d only been going for a year. After nineteen years of having had no Jewish education (I literally didn’t know mitzvah from mikveh), I’d envisioned better for those people. I simply couldn’t understand why they refused to learn rudimentary Hebrew or certain holiday basics or even the order of the service. It was all the more shocking because these were Conservative Jews, who ought to have subscribed to the position that to know those things was important. “Too busy,” they always said.

This is liberal Judaism. People are “too busy” to learn about Judaism—to practice Judaism—and that’s simply not me. Judaism has wholly and irreversibly taken ahold of every aspect of my life—how could I dare to say I was “too busy”? I am accustomed to asking myself first and foremost before ever embarking on anything how I would sustain my Jewish needs—when I buy foods, I always look at the ingredients or the kosher label. When I was considering studying abroad, the first thing I did was Google Map the nearest synagogues. I write “can’t work on Saturday” on my job applications. I deal with my caffeine withdrawal because I won’t use money to buy coffee on Shabbat.

This isn’t to say that Conservative Jews can’t do this, but I can’t imagine choosing a community where these questions don’t normally occur to people. I don’t like to have to guess whether my congregation will consider halacha important; I don’t want to feel that I ought to celebrate the “achievement” of actually finding that rare liberal congregation where people are very (and not just incidentally) observant. Nor do I especially wish to subscribe to a life where I constantly have to “teach” my peers Judaism. There’s something beautiful about living in a community where people know what to do with a negel vasser cup; and no complex theology or ideology will ever make up for the moment when a liberal rabbi has to explain to his congregants how to use it.

Posted in Conservative, Orthodoxy, Reform, Religion, The Jew in The Boonies | 20 Comments »

One of these things is not like the others | The Jew in the Boonies

Sunday, November 6th, 2011

boonie FOR REAL FOR REAL

Did you know? Hillel elections are coming up, and as planned, I’m running. They’re a mess, as far as clubs are concerned. I even talked to our rabbi a few days ago (under the guise of interviewing him for our newspaper), and he confirmed that our Hillel is a “Jewish affinity club” and that I should run etc. It made me feel pretty validated. I called my friend and we came up with a game plan—her idea being to get enough friends to run to corner the market and overturn Hillel leadership and make it great. It’s all very cloak-and-dagger.

But then I started worrying about our current Hillel president and her possible dislike of me. Why? Oh, I know. She hates my tzitzis. I notice these things. Every time we go to a Hillel event, she tends to stare at them like they’re snakes and I’m not really sure if she’s aware of her utter distaste or what, but my friend suggested that possibly she—and other “Hillel Jews,” as I’ve taken to calling them—can’t handle someone who’s both religious and not a crazy Haredi, i.e. it’s outside her sphere of knowledge. To them, you must either be secular or, well, crazy. I did indeed overhear a Hillel member explaining to a non-Jew, “Reform and Orthodoxy are basically two separate religions.” Reform, of course, being the normal one…and Orthodox being the unexplainable one, possibly involving witchcraft.

This explanation makes some sense to me, since the culture here is chiefly secular and I might even venture plainly anti-religious—”We can’t do that; that’s too Jewish!”—the same Hillel president who said that “We’re not like the religious groups on campus. We’re a different sort of group.” It doesn’t get plainer than that. Anyone who is “too Jewish” is either Haredi or insane, and in any case just not someone to be reckoned with.

I remember at the beginning of this year I was worried that my appearance would bar me from making friends. I mean, if you enter a college in the middle of the summer when everyone’s wearing shorty shorts and you’re wearing tzitzis, you start to become aware of things. But I’m realizing this is probably a longer-lasting struggle than how Hillel feels about tzitzis. The same friend and I went to some fancy restaurant a couple of days ago. For this scenario just assume that I’m unaccustomed to fanciness in the first place, so I was wearing jeans etc. and gawked at all the people who actually put the napkins on their freaking laps, but anyhow, behold.

I usually say my brachas and stuff and don’t feel self-conscious, because I don’t really hang out in fancy joints anyway, and I’m not too worried about what tourists in the coffee shop think of me, because they all love W&M students and I feel like we’re part of the scenery anyway. But when you’re in a fancy place you kind of feel like you’re on display. You have to be decorous. You have to wear your napkin right and order right and so on and so forth. And it seems as if anything out of the ordinary should warrant a big spotlight, so yes when you whip out that bentcher the whole world is watching. Same for asher yatzar which I will never stop saying. It’s just not decorous. It’s like, save that stuff for home, you know? Oh, and tuck in your tzitzis because it might hit someone in the eye.

It’s odd, but I can see, even in 2011, how the striving for decorous reform in the 19th century easily led to a patterning of Protestant forms of worship and behavior. Where religion is inward and seemly and, well, no cause for fuss. It’s so easy to be like, “Oh no. Not here. It’s time to be dignified. Put that thing away.”

Crossposted at Crystal Decadenz.

Posted in Arts and Culture, Hillel, Orthodoxy, Reform, Religion, The Jew in The Boonies | 2 Comments »

The Haunted Minyan | The Jew in the Boonies

Sunday, October 23rd, 2011

boonie FOR REAL FOR REAL I was pretty surprised about the interest people showed when I finally let my Haunted Minyan idea out of the box. Haunted Minyan, for those of you who don’t know, is what happens when you have Kabbalat Shabbat services outside on the lawn of your haunted campus, preferably next to the campus graveyard. Sadly, the rain kept us inside, so on Friday night I found myself in my bedroom with four other people (three others decided that Safety Minyan didn’t have quite the same ring to it).

If you’d asked me a year ago whether I’d ever expect to have such a diverse array of people over for Kabbalat Shabbat, I’d never believe it. Yet here we were:

Your humble host, single-mindedly devoted to letting other people lead whenever possible. I figured this was a good tactic.
A possible atheist—I know because in the middle of a song she announced “I don’t know if I believe in God!” She further explained that she only enjoys “cultural Judaism.” She was also the loudest singer, and told me she led services at her old synagogue, but it eventually came to light that she can’t read Hebrew.
A Conservative freshman, who, having been a song leader for some summer camp, knew some pretty upbeat songs. If you know anything about me, you know that I welcomed this, since there’s nothing I dread more than slow songs. Her Lecha Dodi was faster than I’d thought possible, which I found enchanting.
Two people who were raised Catholic and converting to Judaism — one is actually technically Jewish but is converting to Reconstructionism because she “doesn’t believe in Jewish ethnicity that way” and the other has yet to realize that Judaism entails commandments.

The campus graveyard (exclusively for people who die on campus, maybe?) | Photo by Laura Cooper

The campus graveyard | Photo by Laura Cooper

So there you have it. I learned a couple of things. First and foremost, I learned that if you want to keep this ragtag group’s attention, you’ve got to know what you’re doing. I quickly realized that (probably since it was my house and my idea) I was the leader here, so I had to agilely recognize that one girl accidentally had a weekday siddur, that no one actually reads all of the “kab shab” psalms but me, and — most importantly — if we didn’t sing enough, they’d quickly lose interest and start talking about Glee.

And you know the girl who’d told me she could lead a service but ended up not knowing Hebrew? She insisted on some strange things. I learned she doesn’t believe in halacha as she announced that she was going to do “Yitgadal,” even though I countered that we have no minyan.

“Lightning’s not going to strike you,” someone else said. This is what I was dealing with. So she said Kaddish aloud by herself, and the only other person who knew it—the Conservative girl—kept silent.

She then leaped up to say Barchu, and I reminded everyone that this also requires a minyan. She didn’t care; she just wanted to say it. To her credit, though, I couldn’t find in my law-filled Koren siddur anything on how Barchu needs a minyan. That was quite odd, but I could only do what I could do under that sort of pressure.

So we said Barchu.

I told her I wanted be the one to say Shema, before she had a chance to sing it in some strange and complicated way. I also took over Aleinu, because I know that what often happens is that people tend to skip the entire middle (which I don’t understand, because you’d think the type who does that would want to keep the part about the universalism).

It was quite an educational experience. I knew that my main goal for the night would be getting them to want to return, and luckily I don’t think I took over too much with my legalistic approach — my “Litvak” approach, as my friend calls it.

The important part, I think, was the fact that we were here when we otherwise wouldn’t be in the synagogue. More and more lately (sometimes to my abject horror and sometimes to my amusement), I’m finding it difficult to connect to the synagogue service and its setup and model; the liturgy; the pomp; the songs; the crowd. I know that I’ll have to sing songs in our bedroom minyan when I know I could just as easily speed-read them. And I know that the freewheeling “I must say Kaddish” girl and I might eventually have a scuffle.

But the point is autonomy. I really value autonomy.

Posted in Campus, community, Culture, Religion, The Jew in The Boonies | No Comments »

Looking for Yom Kippur in Williamsburg, VA | The Jew in the Boonies

Sunday, October 9th, 2011

boonie FOR REAL FOR REAL I’m trying to start a haunted (i.e. outside) minyan for next Shabbat. Conveniently, a friend wrote me an email making an offhand comment about my patrilineal descent (something I’m already highly self-conscious about), and its effect on my minyan: “Either accept fate as a reform [Jew] whose lineage will die out with her and organize a reform minyan, or convert first and organize a traditional minyan.” Suddenly my minyan—my pet project!—was undermined. Worse, so was my already tenuous lineage. How could I start Yom Kippur this way? About two hours before I was supposed to begin fasting, I decided that I wasn’t going to. Why should I? I was living a lie. And I have to admit I’d been fearing Yom Kippur for an entire year before. No, really—it’s basically become a phobia. I’ve never tried to actually do the fast before, so at that point I would have taken any sign that I “wasn’t meant to do it after all.”

Apparently, this sort of thing is going to be a yearly event on Yom Kippur — I stubbornly refuse to join in, I question my entire existence, and then I end up joining in anyway. It happened last year too, only with more existence-questioning and less fasting. This year, I did end up fasting, partially because I hate eating anyway.

I didn’t go to the synagogue though. I know, I’m out of control. I went on Rosh Hashana, and that’s where I found out that, to my horror, I don’t connect very much with responsive readings and the vague theological statements that characterize the machzor. (I’m not complaining—it’s not like I’m hoping for complex theological statements.) So I decided to stay home and read books. I wondered whether I was missing the point, but then again I’m still not entirely sure what the point of the High Holy Days is. So you get what you can, I think. I read Who Needs God by Harold Kushner, whom I secretly think writes good inspirational books. Anyway, I conveniently opened to a page on the issue of overwhelming guilt, and how you can’t expect to forgive yourself for your own guilt, which was pretty relevant considering I was becoming ever more certain that I wasn’t going to be forgiven for my ambiguous sins if I wasn’t in shul on the Most Important Day.

I think I was revived though, not in the least because a friend came over Saturday night and we played her favorite song, Na Nach. We also played the trailer to the Punk Jews documentary (knowing they’ll never show the actual documentary here) and wondered about life outside of this Williamsburg (Virginia, that is) bubble (Occupy Wall Street? What’s that?). And what a life I bet it is out there!

But alas, we have to settle for our current world; characterized by Jewish students who, sources tell me, “just want a social club.” Maybe it’s not Hillel’s fault. Whether it is or not, my friend and I have decided the world is ready for us to start a new club — still under wraps — which will consist of such things as making useful crafts, my minyan project, and eventually the Na Nach song. And people who know what fun is will join, and people who don’t know what’s good for them won’t join. But seriously, our Hillel is currently planning to have a comedian come to campus. A comedian. That’s the best they can do.

I live in a town with 13,000 people in it; I’m allowed to get worked up about these things. Maybe other people can’t get into the machzor or the High Holy Days either. Instead of huddling on my bed wondering whether I’m living a lie and should just be Catholic instead, I think it would be a good idea to get these hypothetical people together to say, “It’s OK! You have us! It’s not all or nothing, and you don’t have do things the way you think you ‘should.’ You don’t have to renounce your religion!”

Posted in Campus, Religion, The Jew in The Boonies | 6 Comments »

Hillel Recon | The Jew in the Boonies

Sunday, September 25th, 2011

boonie FOR REAL FOR REAL On Saturday night, I went to our Hillel’s welcoming ceremony for the new rabbi. I guess they decided it would be a good idea to start out with a Havdala ceremony, but no amount of gentle singing could compensate for the lighting of yet another candle – under the luminous rays of the bright 7:00 PM pre-shkiah sun. Two kids held the candle, and a random lady stood there singing gently and passing around the spice box. Then we watched as they sang Eliyahu Hanavi in a circle. I sulked.

I wasn’t sulking because they didn’t care about doing all this nonsense in the middle of the day. I was sulking for everyone sitting with me in the pews—those people had no idea what they were saying or doing. It’s one thing to think about it and decide you don’t care, it’s another to never know. We could be saying “Blessed are you who commands us to break the commandments” or whatever that Shabbetai Tzvi used to say, and no one would be the wiser. If someone (like me, for example) pointed out that they’d just lit a giant candle in the middle of Shabbat, they’d probably say “Huh…I thought Shabbat ended this morning.”

I’m starting to see that I will have to confront the fact that there is a large demographic interested in non-halachic Judaism – and everyone here seems fine with that. I presume they also find meaning in it. So maybe there is something in Judaism besides halacha. I could get into that. Maybe.

But what is that thing? “Cultural Judaism”? Our Hillel has apparently picked this option. A few days ago, I went to a rather odd Hillel meeting—it was literally held in secretly. We were specially invited by this one guy who walked across campus with us afterwards, saying things like “Honestly, this campus is anti-Israel” and “The Hillel board is upset with us because we’re not doing what we’re supposed to be doing.”

I started to pick up some clues that our Hillel was entirely focused on “the cultural aspect;” not the greatest goal for a Hillel to have, considering that their mission statement is a bit loftier than that. I’m not sure when exactly I figured this out, although it did become clearer the moment they collectively decided to “cancel Shabbat” next weekend because that’s “Busch Gardens weekend.”

At the secret meeting, we talked about “events,” catering, and having some comedian come to the school. Annoyed, I finally suggested a nice educational discussion group. Perhaps we could even invite the rabbi that we’d just ceremonially welcomed. But as the Hillel president quickly retorted, past experience told her that Jews on this campus want social events only. It started to become obvious that nothing substantial was happening here. Now I’m confronted with this new roadblock I should have expected but didn’t: Jewish life on our campus is looking entirely superficial (I’ve yet to determine whether or not this is Hillel’s fault).

It seems that our Hillel has resigned itself to the disturbingly ambivalent position that we should only give people what they want. “We tried to have a rabbi come lead a discussion group (two years ago), and people just don’t want it.” I’d mentioned that all the other religious groups on campus somehow manage many such events, and they are well-attended—but the president went on to tell me that we’re not like other religious groups. Yes, there are 200 Jews on this campus, and only about ten come to any given “event,” but that’s good enough for us. We’re just different.

Wow, my first experience trying to engage Jews who vehemently don’t want my engagement – probably the first of many. Still, walking home from the meeting and chattering frantically with my friend on how we can fix this “engagement” problem made me realize how important to me this goal really is. I mean, look at me, I’m ready to alienate our only Hillel, to invite pro-Israel speakers onto our anti-Israel campus, to waste any favor I might have had with Hillel by running around with my radical ideas, or even doing my own events entirely outside of Hillel (and on a small campus like this, they’d notice).

It’s because we have 200 Jews and only ten of them are doing anything about it. I can’t stand it. I would do anything. I know what happens when uninterested, uninvolved Jews grow up—they become adults who lose the chance to even decide whether they do care anymore. Hillel is bored, jaded and doesn’t care that they don’t care.

I may need to overthrow it.

Laura Cooper is a Religious Studies major at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, VA. Her other interests include graphic novels, punk rock, and fancy teas. Her column, The Jew in the Boonies, appears here on alternating Sundays.

Posted in Hillel, The Jew in The Boonies | 1 Comment »

World = Crashing Down | The Jew in the Boonies

Sunday, September 11th, 2011

boonie FOR REAL FOR REAL

College is supposed to challenge your assumptions, but right now I’m experiencing the most annoying challenge possible.

As planned, I went down a couple of days ago to talk to the rabbi—ordained Reconstructionist, though he insists that the congregation is “unaffiliated”—about my options for converting. He told me, of course, that I and my patrilineal status would be accepted in the Williamsburg, VA community because no one there is halachic anyway. In fact, he kept repeating, as if trying to warn me, all the ways the congregation wasn’t halachic. ”We only do three aliyot on Shabbat,” he told me, “and I read from the tikkun while someone else follows along in the scroll. Only about three people walk to the synagogue, and that’s just because they live on this street. And I drive.” I started to prepare for the impending Debbie Friedman “Mi Shebeirach,” the inclusion of which can tell you a lot about a synagogue.

For someone who applied to and was rejected from both JTS and Stern College before coming here, it’s all a bit much. William & Mary is unusually accepting religion-wise (I saw flyers promoting at least one interfaith September 11 service, as well as a Christian community service event held in the middle of campus, and the Wren chapel is apparently open during the day for anyone to waltz right in,) but I’m realizing that students, too, are supposed to take on this pluralistic acceptance. I wanted to avoid that, maybe stand on the sidelines, but I’ve been here about three weeks and I’ve already been dragged into this mess. One reason I applied to JTS and Stern was to voluntarily cloister myself and actually focus on Judaism for once in my life. Alas, I’m now in an entirely different situation. Judaism, or at least observant Judaism, is hanging on for dear life right now. What else is new?

I was on board with this “pluralism” thing at first—in fact, last week I attended an interfaith meeting whose mission statement was simply that we “learn about each other”—but that led to my getting invited to an Eid al-Fitr dinner held on Shabbat, which somehow also led to my being hassled to attend that September 11 interfaith prayer service I told you about. All this is compounded by the fact that as a Religion major, I ought to be the first to jump on these opportunities. You know, learn about new religions! We’re all one!

Laura Cooper doesnt want to pray here. (photo by flickr user jnshaumeyer (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0))

"I don’t want to ruin a moment of peace and goodwill by having to explain why I’m not going to pray in a room with a cross in it." (photo by flickr user jnshaumeyer (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0))

I couldn’t tell you exactly why, but none of this is sitting well with me. I don’t want to celebrate some other religion’s holiday on Shabbat, even if technically I wouldn’t be breaking it by going. I don’t want to go to some vague squishy prayer service, which probably is going to include lighting candles and a “moment of silence.” It also might be held in the Wren chapel, and I don’t want to ruin a moment of peace and goodwill by having to explain why I’m not going to pray in a room with a cross in it.

I’m sure part of this distaste has to do with the fact that I can’t even observe my own religion properly. I just came back from both the Friday and Saturday services at my new synagogue, and the rabbi was right—no one’s worried about halacha (and for the record, we did sing the Debbie Friedman song. Twice.) Lots of things were amiss, from the fact that we skipped the middle of Aleinu to the fact that the rabbi literally led us in the “blessing over the tallit,” a serious case of shepherding if ever I saw one. There was clapping. There was lai-lai-lai’ing. There was fun, perhaps even joy. But there was no real substance. We only sang the first two lines of any given psalm; and to accommodate everyone, we did so as slowly as a dead turtle. Every section of the service was interrupted by a long explanation of what we were about to do. (“Now, we’re going to turn to page 45 and chant the first two lines in Hebrew. Then, we will repeat the lines in English. The transliteration is on page 46. Please follow along.”)

Worse, the Jewish friend I brought with me loved every second. When the kids got up to sing some pointless misplaced niggun, she whispered “How cute!” to me, as I sat sulking, completely disgusted that they actually interrupted the blessings of the Shema for this. And now I’m going to have to figure out how to tell the rabbi that I absolutely hate everything he ever loved. I don’t dislike religious pluralism (although I’d prefer to avoid those interfaith services), but having to accept this odd form of “do whatever feels right” Judaism is giving me cramps. It’s the only place in town, and I know perfectly well that for better or worse, this is my new community for the next two years and I’ve got to make the best of it.

I’m glad that these people are finding a connection to Judaism, but I’d feel better if they’d stop laughing at how dumb the laws of parashat Ki Teitze are or if they cared as much about kashrut as they did about making gluten-free challah (which they did, and it tasted like Play-Doh). I get the spiritual search; we all know I’ve been to the Catholic church more than once, but for what it’s worth, I happen to think that if you believe Judaism ends with slow Hebrew/English hybrid singing, lai-lai-lai’s, and bagels, you’ve quit too early. Before and during the service, the rabbi and others kept mentioning how important it was to “wrestle” with the text. That doesn’t mean ignoring what you don’t like and figuring you’ve at least got a hold on the “spirit” of the law.

I hope I came to this school for a reason. I don’t yet know what that might be. I’d like to think that I’ll bring the Joy of Observance to these people, but somehow I doubt that anyone will be receptive to my archaic and outdated ways. I guess I’ll have to take on the rhetoric of Modern Orthodox kiruv experts; that doing mitzvot is a good and pragmatically useful “choice.” Fine; I’m up for that. I think I have to be.

Posted in Campus, The Jew in The Boonies | 4 Comments »

The Beginning of School in The Boonies — The Jew in The Boonies

Sunday, August 28th, 2011

boonie FOR REAL FOR REAL My first week of school has been… chaotic. Before I even came, there was a fire. After I came, there was an earthquake. Now this hurricane, not to mention the most grueling orientation ever invented and having to be social 24/7, which can get pretty tiring when you’re not used to it. Welcome to my apocalypse.

Meanwhile, my priorities have shifted. Back at home, where it’s considered a great achievement to graduate community college and not get pregnant before the age of 18, I had a great room and impetus to formulate all these fabulous lofty plans for life, and my theoretical theology grew and grew, and I had tons of time to decide that I had things figured out. No obstacles! No fear! But now that I’ve moved to Williamsburg, all the religious obligations I made while I was in my bubble are starting to have their effects now that I’m outside of my bubble.

Um. So, welcome to William & Mary Hillel.

For example, keeping kosher is hard on an Orientation schedule, where everyone is supposed to eat at the same time in the same dining hall. So is keeping Shabbat when you move into your new apartment on a Friday and the very next Friday you’re under evacuation orders!

I’ve had to pray on a bus, at a table, on the stairs, and at the bus stop (all in front of tons of people, of course), and those were the days I remembered to do it. And I’ve had to wonder how many people avoided talking to me because they thought my tzitzit was too weird or my clothes make me look poor–that last one’s probably true. When it’s the first week of classes and you’re trying to make friends, it’s a little exasperating to be confronted with this sudden clash of values. I’d prepared for this in theory, but now it’s starting to dawn on me that I’ve actually chosen to start this new life as that really, really religious kid that you ought to keep away from, and it’s a little frightening. Because I’m doing it to myself. For reasons I still don’t quite understand.

It all came to fruition at the first College of William & Mary Hillel event of the semester. During the Club Fair, the girl at the Hillel table seemed really excited to see me. “You should come to our barbecue!” she urged. So I had to go. I want to change the Jewish world as we know it, remember? I had to make friends with them. Needless to say, whether it was the impending hurricane or the fact that everyone looked like they were from Long Island, it didn’t go very well.

We had to walk through a bit on construction to get to it, and “it” turned out to be two picnic tables with hot dogs and chips on them. And a small group of people who could be barely bothered to look at the newcomers cautiously approaching them.

I don’t know if you can see what’s going on in the picture above, but I quickly noticed a certain something about the demographics of this event. It started out rather evenly distributed, but as time went on, more dudes started showing up. Weirdly, a couple of them seemed like they came straight from Long Island. That alone was enough to make me fearful, but I would have been perfectly OK had they been friendly Long Island dudes. But no, they went straight for their friends and my two guests and I went pretty much ignored.

Eventually, we were approached by one girl who recognized my friend from one of her classes, and they started talking, as I stood near them awkwardly. Some guy came up to my friend’s boyfriend and asked where he was from and so on. “Are you Jewish?” he asked.

“No, I’m just here with her,” he replied, pointing to my friend.

“Neither am I!” he whispered gleefully. I sighed.

They talked for a while and then the stranger walked off. And I took that moment to babble incoherently to someone near me (“Man, look at all the dudes,” I recall saying).

Maybe I’ll give them a break because it was their first event of the semester, and I guess they were more excited about seeing their friends than about greeting new people. Suddenly I thought back to all the discussions on how independent minyanim tend to be perceived as unfriendly to outsiders, but that’s just because they have a higher initial social curve… or something. After all, this Hillel proudly describes itself as “tightly knit,” and here I am seeing that description in the flesh. But look at these people! They seemed so incredibly… normal. It could have been any club on campus. What differentiated it? What made it special? What made it Jewish? These are the questions only a detective can answer.

But maybe it was partially my fault. These probably weren’t the type to wonder how to keep Shabbat during a hurricane evacuation, or to say seemingly constant berachot for things, or to go through painstaking soul-searching to figure out how they feel about halacha. (I mean maybe they do.) And that seems to be the baseline here. A cultural baseline. Fine.

But what does that make me? Ultra-Orthodox? Am I going to be the religious token again, just like I was in community college? Look, I know tzitzit looks weird. It’s weird to wear a denim skirt while everyone else is wearing shorty shorts. Of course they didn’t want to talk to me. When you suspect that you’re “too much” even for your Hillel, you really start to wonder what your priorities are. I knew all my newfound obligations weren’t going to make me any friends, but good heavens being ignored feels terrible when you know you’re probably bringing it on yourself. Am I doing a stupid thing? Should I just put an end to this before it’s too late?

Posted in Campus, community, Hillel, humor, Orthodoxy, Religion, The Jew in The Boonies | 5 Comments »