Be a better Jew

A couple weeks ago we had a Jewish baby naming ceremony for Little Miss. Even though a special ceremony for girls isn’t “traditional” (only for boys) I felt good about how this connects our family to Jewish tradition and the Jewish community. And I was happy to be able to share our new daughter with friends and family. The ceremony & reception afterward were a huge success!

Went to High Holy Day services again this year, as I do every year. I don’t belong to a synagogue so I went with Friend K to hers and was welcomed warmly by her friends there. The High Holy Days always serve as a motivation for introspection and continued growth for me. It always serves as a strong reminder of why exactly I included in my personal mission statement the goal to maintain ties with Judaism to ground me in morality and community.

This year, what struck me (by way of some of the prayers and sermons) was that I have become a little withdrawn from the outside world. I have been spending the past few years focusing a lot on personal growth (as evidenced by all my 43T activity.) There’s nothing wrong with that, but while I have been making all sorts of progress on avoiding certain sins like jealousy, arrogance, deceit, etc., I have continued to engage in the sin of indifference to injustice. (It’s kind of an eye-opener to think of indifference as a sin rather than just “laziness”, but Judaism considers it so.)

I generally avoid watching/reading news on worldwide current events, because they’re often so depressing. But one of the sermons on Yom Kippur discussed the fact that we often blind ourselves to these things, avoid thinking about them, because we think there’s nothing we can do about them. But as we’ve heard time and again, “one person can make a difference,” and the sermon almost has me convinced :-)

In addition, I haven’t really gotten involved in my local community. Part of it is that I feel like I’m not settled down yet, so why put in the effort to integrate myself into the community when I’ll just be moving soon anyway? For me, meeting new people and doing new things really is a big effort. But, now I know I’ll be moving really soon (like, in the next couple months, hopefully) so maybe this attitude can change soon.

Now I feel like I am approaching a state in my personal growth where I almost “have it all together” and can afford to focus attention outward. So, my hope / goal for the next year is to focus on the following aspect of my personal mission statement:to seek a positive impact on my world, my community, my friends, my family, and myself.

a few friends came, but my brother was the only other Jew there. I am glad that I managed to keep up with my Jewish traditions, but not doing so well in terms of connecting with others in the Jewish community.

I think it will help if I send out invitations more than a week ahead next time, so at least my Jewish friends won’t already have seder plans.

I’m putting a reminder in Google Calendar right now.

being a better Jew – a work in progress – a life time process.
I found the easiest way to get through the bible – go to shul every saturday morning. In one year you will have read it.
Even before the second year you start reading interpretations, commentaries in advance, it builds on itself. you don’t have to work at it, it just comes naturally.
Go easy, learning your religion logically, intellectualy, critically is essential – learning your relgion through experience – is equally important – but you need time to live it, synthasize it, to let it become part of you.
Remember two things, you can’t learn the Torah standing on one foot and you have the rest of your life* to learn (*this denotes a continuem not an excuse for procrastination)
for some Sabbath shul attendance is something to do – an action, for me—it is a break from my week, my home, my work, I go early (when I can, before many arrive,) to prepare myself for prayer, to meditate, to breath, to be before G-d to thank, plead, and relax – to talk to G-d is that simple. all you need say is “Here I am” and Hashem knows you. the difficult part is Hashem says “Here I am – Here is my Torah” understanding any aspect of Hashem – not so simple.
They (I forget where I read it, I am no scholar) say in mussar (the refining of one’s soul) that the most important thing we can achieve is to be a mench.
My mother told me it is a life time endevour.

Will have to remember to pick up some challah and say the blessings.

Also, Purim is next week so maybe I should make some hamentaschen this weekend.

Totally forgot about Shabbat dinner/blessings this week. I was thrown off by the fact that I had the day off from work…

last Friday, and managed to catch the second half of the Shabbat service while I was at it. It’s comforting to know that I can go to any given reform synagogue and recognize most of the elements of the service.

I talked to my friend K, and she said that if I were to start looking for a synagogue to join, she’d be willing and interested in coming along with me to check them out. I ought to take her up on that.

This goal is currently titled “be a better Jew.” It’s not really what I mean by this goal, but it will have to do right now. If I sit around all day trying to think of the right title I’ll just end up never adding anything to my list, and that would be no good.

What I really mean by this goal is something along the lines of encouraging myself to connect with my Jewish community and practicing some of the meaningful traditions, like Shabbat, and creating new personal rituals where the traditional ones don’t really seem to fit. I am not so much concerned with the religious aspects of Judaism (i.e. God), but more with the spirituality, cultural richness, and the Jewish value system of community, learning, healing the world, and so forth.

My addition of this goal to my list was triggered by a number of things. First of all, I was invited last week by a friend to last night’s Shabbat service. When I was sick on Tuesday and I didn’t have any new novels sitting around the house to read, I was inspired to read some of my Jewish-themed books. I feel like my life has been lacking a little direction lately, lacking many of the Jewish values. The last item is also why I added the goal to write a personal mission statement.

Later I’ll come back and expand a little on what I intend to do with this goal.

Well, today is Rosh Hashanah and a perfect time to think about what this goal means. I’ve had this sitting on my list for one or maybe even two years now, not sure.

I think I am only now beginning to understand what it is I want to achieve out of this goal, and have an idea of the person I want to become.

This last year has been a good one, but also a hard one. We’ve had moments of great joy, such as our wedding, the birth of our nephew, completing the Pan Mass Challenge… but we have also had moments of difficulty. When our friend passed away, I know I was left with a lot of unanswered questions. For a while I didn’t know how or what to do. While I didn’t turn to prayer or specific rituals in Judaism to find the answers, I think I’ve come to realize I began to do things to answer them that make me a better person and better Jew.

The sense of sadness I have when I think of him is very deep, and it will never change from this feeling – but I understand it now, it is a familiar feeling. And it is a feeling I can use to propel me to balance in my own life. From the simple, like making sure I take the time to exercise and relax and not feel harried, to the more socially and community oriented, such as my husband and I working together to raise thousands of dollars for cancer research. It’s also smaller acts such as smiling at people, being slow to become frustrated and quick to forgive, helping them achieve something in their own lives. I have tried to do this in times past when it seemed a good thing, when I was in the right mood and so on, but how to explain this? It’s never been a need of mine to do this, and over this year I think I’ve realized a bit more deeply that we only get one chance, one life, with these people and these circumstances, and we need to do something positive with it.

But I have also found more balance after going through work changes as well. I think if there is unhappiness in our work lives, it comes out in our personal lives. How can it not, in this society where we value by work almost instantly – evident in the frequent just-met-you line of “What do you do [for a living]?” at social gatherings? For the longest time, this question bothered me, maybe in part because I didn’t want to just amount to a corporate cog in another person’s mind.

While I still am a corporate worker, I find this question bothers me less now. For one, I have long term plans to have a different answer, and I am working toward those plans. I’ve also moved to a work situation which I think I’ll be in more balance – closer to home, smaller company. I also am happier realizing that what I am doing today work wise is giving me the opportunity to have a dimensional life outside of work. I am involved in things that I am equally if not more excited about, and if someone’s talking to me for more than a brief minute, they come up pretty quickly.

I think I’m rambling at this point… so I’ll close by sharing a story I read in a book recently, paraphrased. I think it’s this I am after – how to be connected to the moment, to those around me, and appreciate the time we get together.

A great rabbi was to visit a town in Russia once. The townspeople spent much time discussing how to host the rabbi and what questions to ask the wise man. When the rabbi came to the town, the townspeople had crowded together in a room. As he looked around, he could sense the excitement and tension as the anxious people looked at him. After a while he began to hum. The townspeople began to join him in humming. Then he started to sing a familiar song, and they joined him in singing. Finally, he stood up and began to dance, and the townspeople joined him in dancing. Soon, the whole community was participating, enjoying themselves, and the tension was gone. After a while, he slowed the dancing and singing, looked at the group and said ‘I trust I have answered all your questions…”