L'Shana Tova Tikatevu

I'd like to wish a happy and sweet Rosh Hashanah to all my Jewish friends/readers (and everyone else as well). I hope that all are able to get to services if that is their thing, or celebrate in whichever form they choose. As we enter the Days of Awe and journey towards the closing of the Book of Life on Yom Kippur I hope that everyone is able to take this time to reflect on the past year, on their life and relationships, on their goals and hopes for the future. This year more than ever my own mind is filled with thoughts that are ever so timely in this season. May we all be sealed for blessing in the new year.

I'm Scared of Sarah Palin

Even though this isn't a political blog, I feel the need to post on a political issue at this point. And that is the Republican nominee for Vice President, Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska.

Simply put, this woman frightens me. Take a look at the interview she did with Katie Couric and marvel at her inability to put together a coherent thought or sentence. She seems to think that because she borders Canada and is close to Russia she has foreign policy experience, but if we used those kinds of qualifications Bush should have been better qualified to handle foreign policy since Texas borders Mexico. And we've all seen how well he's done with that.

And how can you go on a national news broadcast and not be more prepared for what the interviewer is going to ask? How can you not anticipate that you will be asked about how John McCain really is a maverick/reformer/agent for change and not be able to at least lie to back up your claims? She had nothing.

I know that most people don't vote for a candidate based on their VP pick, but how can anyone possibly vote for a candidate when they pick someone so grossly inexperienced to be their #2? How can you take seriously a candidate who rips into Barack Obama at every opportunity about his lack of experience and then picks someone to be VP who doesn't even have a fraction of experience, much less skill, to qualify her to national office?

I am liberal and a Democrat and proud of both. But, even if I weren't, I think that I am intelligent enough to see when I, as a citizen of this country, am being talked down to. The conservative pundits all harp on how the attacks against Palin are coming from the "intellectual elite." I want to know when it became a bad thing in this country to be intellectual and educated. Somewhere along the way the idea of education got wrapped up in elitism, but I'm pretty sure that there was a time that the country truly aspired to educate itself and its children. Now we are just saying to them that if they achieve an education beyond a certain level (and hold a certain set of political beliefs) they are "elite" and cannot be trusted.

Back in Ohio

I am back from my business trip and am still exhausted. I don't really like being awake for 40 hours straight. The one good thing about the trip is that I got to miss most of the chaos surrounding the big power outage here in Cincinnati after the massive windstorms we had on Sunday. My power came back on about 2 hours before I returned home yesterday, though I did have to throw out everything in my freezer and fridge. However, I believe there are still around 200,000 people in the area with no power.

Is it just me or is anyone else getting a little worried right now? I mean, there is all the crazy weather, the economy, and the election. It seems like things could get really really bad in the next couple of months.

And on that uplifting note, it's time for lunch.

At JBC.org: Why I Am a Reform Jew

Last night I posted over at JBC.org on why I am a Reform Jew. Per the rules of the blog, I'm not going to cross-post here, but I am going to link to it because I'm pretty proud of what I wrote.

So, if you are interested: Why I Am a Reform Jew.

Let's Gain Momentum

It's been awhile since I posted, and I have no real excuse other than not having a lot to say that is blog-appropriate. Life has been interesting. So, in lieu of anything terribly exciting, here is a rundown of what is going on in my life:

• My 10-year high school reunion is next Saturday. I'm looking forward to it if for no other reason than to see the reactions of my fellow all-girls-Catholic-school-mates to my very obvious Jewishness. Admittedly I'm also looking forward to seeing some people who I haven't spoken with in a very long time.

• The weather if finally cooling down here in Cincinnati and my allergies seem to also be calming down, at least until the leaves start falling. All of which means I can now open up my windows again and enjoy the fresh air and breezes through my apartment. I love Fall. I love the way the air smells when it starts getting a slight chill to it. I love the colors and the smell of the leaves on the ground. The first day that requires a sweatshirt is always a good day.

• With the new season comes a new year of Religious School at my temple. This is my fifth year teaching, though only my second consecutive in the same class/subject. I have Alef Hebrew students again and our first class was this past Tuesday. They are an energetic bunch in a completely different way than last year's kids who I adored. It looks like it will be a fun year.

• A friend of mine from high school (the only one I've kept up a good friendship with over the years) has moved into my neighborhood, just a couple streets away. Last weekend we had dinner, beer, and played Carcassonne, one of the most addictive board games ever. I'm very happy to have a good friend within walking distance to hang out with. It's been since college that I could just walk to someone's house to see them and not need to take the car.

• For the first time in a really long time I had feelings for someone (a crush!). While it isn't going to work out it has been a nice little refreshing diversion. I'd forgotten how fun those emotions can be. And also how easy it is to revert to feeling like a sixth-grader when thinking about if the object of your affection has feelings for you in return.

• Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are fast approaching. I wrote a post over at JBC.org last week about how much I love YK and my strong connection to it. I find myself really looking forward to this High Holy Day season more than usual. There is just something completely satisfying emotionally and spiritually with ending one year and beginning another by accounting for what has happened. It is a good time to reflect and to ponder what could be for the year to come.

• I deleted my LiveJournal account a couple of weeks ago. I haven't really posted in over two years, but for about 4 years after college it was a large part of my online life. After a falling out with a friend from college, however, I just didn't feel like posting anymore. After contemplating it for awhile I finally decided to just delete it all together after downloading all of the old entries. It was interesting to read some of the stuff I wrote 6 years ago and to think about how different I was. It was cool getting to read my entries from when I was beginning my formal studies with my rabbi and to remember how exciting and new it was for me back then (and to realize how exciting learning still is). So, in a sense, I felt like I am closing that chapter of my life. Not to sound cliché, but I'm older now and my priorities have shifted. I feel that I am a much different person today than I was when I first set up that account.

The Choices We Make

When I was out in Seattle last week visiting friends from college who I haven't seen in 5 years (and a couple I haven't been in touch with at all during that time period), I got the question. You know. THE Question. Every JBC or Jew-to-Be knows the question and gets asked it a million different ways by a million different people: Why did you convert?

I always find this to be a difficult question to answer, and not because I don't know the answer, but because I never am quite sure what kind of detail people want when they ask. Are they just being polite and they want the quick-no-details-I-did-this-and-thats-that answer? Or do they want it more fleshed out? Do they want to hear me talk about my philosophy of belief in God? Do they want to hear about belief at all? The choice of words, of language, is interesting. For instance, if I know that the person I am having the conversation with is religious themselves I feel more comfortable using God-language and language relating to belief and faith. If I don't know the person's own religious affiliation or views I'm usually a lot more general, talking about my dissatisfaction with the religion I had been brought up in and my interest in, and eventual connection to, Judaism.

This has been on my mind, because while on vacation I was surrounded by people I was friends with before I really got interested in Judaism and obviously before I converted. The ones I had stayed in touch with had been supportive as I converted and everything, but we had never existed in the same space together after I became Jewish. Throughout the stay part of me was very conscious of my Jewish identity and yet not completely connected to it, if that makes any sense. It was almost as if the Queer Jewish Woman that I am now was existing right alongside the Queer Woman I was in college, kind of poking her and saying "wow, I haven't seen you in a long time." Which makes it sound like I was acting differently, but I wasn't. It was more that I felt that the part of my current identity that had actually been around during college was the more acknowledged one because it was the most familiar one in this context.

For anyone who reads this blog regularly or knows me has probably guessed, attending Shabbat services on Friday and Saturday are incredibly important to me. This is my anchor to the week, my refuge when I need it, my celebration. I look forward to being in the presence of my community and God each week. As I headed to Seattle I wasn't quite sure how I was going to navigate Shabbat while I was there. On the one hand I wanted to spend as much time with my friends (none of whom are Jewish). On the other hand I still felt like I needed to have that opportunity to re-ground myself. Friday night before we headed out to Lake Washington I asked if we could look online to find a synagogue close by where I could possibly attend services Saturday morning. We had already made plans with E&M2 for brunch at 11:30, so I tried to find something that would be over in enough time and that was close enough to get to the cafe by the set time. The closest was Temple De Hirsch Sinai, but its service wouldn't begin until 10:30 and I knew it would be at least an hour long if not longer. So, I resigned myself to no temple for the week, which in reality bummed me out a lot more than I was expecting. I kept it to myself at first, because I wasn't quite sure how to express how important Shabbat was to me and I didn't want to upset the plans that had already been made. It wasn't until the next morning after we woke up and were trying to figure what we would do before brunch that I finally spoke up. "Would it be too much trouble for me to go to temple?" I realized that if I didn't make the effort it would bother me the rest of the trip, knowing that I allowed myself to make a choice that I wasn't comfortable with. They were more than happy to oblige; E dropped me off at the temple and everyone did some gardening while I was there. I did duck out before the end of services (though right after the Torah reading) because I needed to meet them all back outside on the corner by 11:30. While I would have loved to stay through the end, I was happy to have participated in Torah study and gotten the chance to sing and pray. The rest of the day I felt much more at peace, knowing that I had made the right decision for myself and my own spirituality.

As a Jew-by-Choice I know that I will continually choose Judaism as my path, as was apparent last weekend when faced with the choice to make my Shabbat observance happen or to go with the flow. I am glad that I did, proud of the fact that I did, and happy that I have the types of friends who didn't think any differently of me or the situation--it's just a part of who I am.

Vacation: All I Ever Wanted

I apologize for the radio silence. Work got the better of me and then I was on vacation in Seattle for a week visiting some good friends from college. I had an awesome time and it was really great to see these wonderful friends after so long (5 years!). There was a lot of good food, a lot of Buffy watching, a good amount of drinking, and tons of silliness. It was a much needed break and a much needed time to reconnect to people who were an important part of making my college years a memorable time.

A quick recap:

• Flew out of Dayton Wednesday morning, passing through Atlanta (and a 4 hour layover) before reaching Seattle at 5:30pm. Wednesday evening consisted of a light dinner and catching up/hanging out with E&M (who I was staying with).

• Thursday morning I explored downtown and Pike Place on my own. Met up with A at Pioneer Square for lunch and catching up, and then back to E&M's to sit on the porch and talk some more as we waited for them to return from work. Dinner at a really good pizza place with gellato for dessert (yum!) and a very earnest waiter. Some Buffy watching that evening (the musical, I believe).

• Friday morning was breakfast at Glo's and a browse through Twice Sold Tales (a great used book store in Capital Hill that I'd been to on previous visits--my trips always include lots of bookstore browsing) before taking the bus downtown to see the library and then out to see the Space Needle.

• Friday evening was dinner at a brew house and then some excitement that included a smoldering parking lot planter and the fire department. Later in the evening we enjoyed the cool waters and sand (ick) of Lake Washington and reveled in watching the moon rise.

• Saturday morning I headed to Torah study and services at Temple De Hirsch Sinai. I ducked out after the Torah service to meet my friends and head to Cafe Flora for lunch with 2 more friends from college (another E&M couple, if you can believe it, so they shall be E&M2). Lunch was quite delicious and enjoyable with the addition of beignets and mimosas of the non-orange juice variety. It took a good 20 minutes for 6 Oberlin College graduates to figure out the logistics for the afternoon, which eventually included me going to the mall with E&M2 while E&M1 and A headed back to the beach for an afternoon of swimming. I got scolded by an old Jewish lady for wearing my tzitzits out while at the mall on Shabbes, which was quite amusing, and I reminisced about fencing with E2 while M2 got her computer fixed at the Apple store. The late afternoon/evening was capped off with take-out from a Thai/Vietnamese place and more Buffy watching.

• Sunday was breakfast at the Coastal Cafe (I had crab cakes, the first time I've had shellfish since January 1st, but I was on vacation and on the coast and decided that I was okay with that; I did wear a ball cap instead of my kippah and shoved my tzitzit into my pockets, though). After that A had to drive back to Olympia and E1 had a massage, so M1 and I went to the farmers market in Capital Hill where we ran into E&M2. Much yumminess was aquired (blackberries, tiger tomatoes, corn, and cheese, plus a sampling for me of Earl Grey Chocolate hand-made ice cream. We also browsed (and bought) at Bailey Coy (I was looking for She's Such a Geek!, which has a really awesome essay by E2; I would recommend it to anyone, especially those out there who are also geeks). The rest of the afternoon was nice and lazy capped off with a call to one of E&M's friends who moved to Kentucky so we could "meet" over the phone, and then a delicious dinner with our items from the farmer's market.

So, a not-so-brief recap after all. It was a wonderful time and I'll maybe post some pictures later in the week.

Leading Services: The Post-Shabbat Wrap Up

This past Saturday I lead my temple’s Torah study and informal Shabbat service. While I have the opportunity throughout the year to lead Torah study or read Torah, it is rare that I get the chance to lead Saturday morning, so I was pretty happy to do it. I posted over at JBC.org last week what I think is a decent guide for lay people who are getting ready to lead services for the first time. It would have been great if I could have followed all of my own suggestions, but I think overall things went okay. It was a small group made up of people I know and am friends with, but my nerves eventually took over mid-Torah service as I stumbled through a couple of words. As I have taken a few days to process the experience, here is where I stand:

• No matter how much I prepare a Torah portion I still get so overwhelmed by the actual act of read from the Torah that I do tend to stumble through words that I know. It really doesn’t have anything to do with nerves, per se, but rather I feel so emotionally connected to what I am doing that it overwhelms me. I’m not sure if this is something I want to go away, I just need to be able to pull myself back together to finish the service. Case in point: I forgot how to begin the melody for the after Haftarah blessing, something I know very well.

• A prepared sheet of Torah commentaries surrounding a specific topic in the portion can work better than a sheet with a range of topics. There was a lot I could have focused on in last week’s portion (Matot), but I really wanted to talk about the idea of vows and how words and language have power. Partially because that was the most compelling section for me, and partly because I wanted to avoid bringing up sexual activity (which would have been inevitable with the discussion of really why the Midianites were punished) because one of those in attendance was a soon-to-be 5th grader. It also helped me focus the discussion a little more. If I know going in that there is a lot that we can touch on I’m going to want to actually cover everything; allowing myself the focus of a few different ideas I think let the group really discuss in depth.

• I did decide to not chant the V’ahavta because I wanted to give the 5th-grader mentioned above a chance to follow along in the Hebrew. I tried to slow down the spoken prayers enough for her; as my former Hebrew student I know she has good reading skills so I wanted to give her a chance to test those out.

• A couple of technical things related to my particular temple building: I need to ask how to turn down (or off) the air conditioning in the library where we hold Torah study. It got so cold in there that halfway through we took our chairs out in front of the temple and finished our discussion there. I also need to leave plenty of time for copying the study sheet as the copier will inevitably give me fits. Luckily I did that this past week and had time to unclog the jam that didn’t want to unclog.

• In general I think everything flowed well. Having the post-its throughout my siddur helped me to keep moving without needing to pause and think about what is going on next. I had decided (in my head) on a few melodies before hand, but apparently in the heat of the moment I had something else in mind when it came to the actual singing. Oh, well. It all worked out. For the most part people sang along with me, which is good since I don’t have a particularly good voice and can’t always stay on key when I’m the loudest one. I’m really good at following someone else’s lead, though. Maybe next time I’ll make sure I have someone a little more musical along for the ride.

All in all it was a good experience. I enjoyed getting the chance to lead my community (or at least a small part of it) in prayer and I like the preparation that I had to put into it. It has, however, brought up the idea I've kicked around before about how the person who is leading prayers is able to truly pray themselves while at the same time pay attention to what is going on around them and to the needs of others. That is something for a future post, however.

Shabbat Post, Recent JBC.org activity, etc.

I've got a post in the works about this past Shabbat and leading Torah Study/Services at my temple, but as I am running on about 50% capacity, it will have to wait until another day. As my post will be related to my most recent post at JewsByChoice.Org, I thought I'd post links to all of my June and July posts there. If you are not a JBC.org reader I would encourage you to check out the blog. There are a lot of great posts and ensuing discussion in the comments that are relevant not only to converts, but to all Jews.


The Art of Leading Services

My First Camp Shabbat

Shlach L'cha: Punishment and Reminders

Truth and Respect

The Barechu Is Not the "Call to Gossip"

I have a bit of a pet peeve when it comes to praying in temple: I usually like to pray uninterrupted. I understand that this can’t always be achieved and that sometimes services can be a bit rowdy depending on the people in attendance (ie. a family service with lots of children)*. However, I would like to issue a friendly note to those who enjoy chatting to me during prayer:

1. While I understand that you may be interested in the new person sitting down the row from us/the latest ongoings at the temple/the rabbi’s new haircut/the height of the grass that has just been cut outside, the middle of the Barechu/the Sh’ma/the Amidah/the Aleinu/the sermon/etc. is NOT the time to ask about this/bring them up for discussion.

2. If you are not here for a family service and you bring your children I think that is wonderful. However, they should be able to sit through the service without running in and out of the sanctuary multiple times. If you know they have attention issues or are going to be very antsy, please tell them that once they find themselves to be bored to quietly head to the babysitting room. I’m a firm believer in exposing our children to praying as an adult, but the fact of the matter is they are still children and shouldn’t be expected to sit quietly for an hour—there are plenty of adults who cannot.

3. If I choose a seat that is far from you or anyone else, please respect this. Do not constantly try and get me to move over to sit by you. I have chosen to sit by myself for reasons that I shouldn’t have to explain, but they can range from wanting quiet space, to wanting actual physical space, to the fact that I’ve grown sensitive to a number or perfumes and colognes as my allergies worsen.

4. If you do try and engage me in conversation and I give short answers and quickly turn my attention back to what is going on up on the bimah or in the siddur take this as an indication that you should not continue to talk to me.

5. If I have my eyes closed assume that I am trying to focus my attention inward or on God and that I wish to not be disturbed. I am not sleeping, but even if I was that doesn’t mean you should nudge me and wake me up.

Believe it or not, I usually come to temple to pray. There is a great time to catch up and socialize afterward at the Oneg, or even before** services begin. I don’t think any of this is too much to ask.

*I love family services, especially when my friends with small children are there, and don’t expect to be able to have the quiet time that I would on a non-family service night. I come to temple prepared for that and with the knowledge that I am gaining something different out of the experience. I do welcome all sorts of temple/prayer experiences, but even with the most rowdy and raucous services I expect a certain level of appropriate behavior from the adults.

**If you notice me sitting quietly before services with my eyes closed it can safely be assumed that I am preparing myself for prayer. Sometimes after a long and stressful week I need those moments of peace. It is nothing personal, and in fact, it isn’t about you at all.