If only it were Corvid 19

Despite praying most days, having a holiday once a week, interrupting that schedule with another
week long holiday overlapping with almost two months of literally counting the days, TIME MEANS
NOTHING while sheltering in place.

I started off with denial and have occasionally set it down and then picked it back up. I maybe dusted
it once. There are books on my shelf that I took home because I KNEW I wouldn’t be going back to
school. And yet there are books in my locker that I left because I thought could get them next week. 

Right at the beginning of our sheltering, I hurt my foot and my house became my everything. I
couldn’t really have left it if there wasn’t a plague outside (but I would have tried). It was probably
good for me that I could stay home. I certainly wasn't able to jump up from the couch let alone walk
to the train, down the stairs up the stairs stand on the train, etc.

They say that this virus jumped to us from the noble creature we call a bat. It’s not the first nor the
last zooo-fancylatinandgreekscienceword virus that has pole vaulted into our misery. Bird Flu but
not swine flu I believe was a zoo flu.

When I pray it’s either structured or spontaneous. As my foot trapped me I also developed a new to
me allergy symptom which felt like a dry cough...in the middle of an upper respiratory plague. I
prayed not to leave my fiance and my parents. I bargained that if only these things were better, I'd be ok. I won't be making it through all five stages of grief, at least not any time soon.

In the structured prayer, I would pause on ma rabu ma’asekha adonai how great are your works, G-d!
Do I include the plague Covid 19 among G-d's great works? It is great, the same way that "not all
“great” wizards are good. For he who must not be named did great, terrible but great things"
(that's a paraphrase NOT a quote from Harry Potter). Is it great as in much? It is definitely much.
There is too much of it. Is the greatness of G-d's Work about bio-diversity? It’s not covid #19, but it’s
definitely not #1 either. Is it about the fact that Creation has Corvids and Covids? Birds and bats and
viruses--oh my! Is it because we, as part of Creation, did not heed the V’ahavta? Do the mitzvot and the soil cycle continues to bless us, Don't do them and G-d sends plagues and famine. We did not follow the rules, we destroyed and destroyed and now the Holy One’s system is off
balance. Is covid 19 new? Or just new to humans because the fourteen other creatures it would
have passed to no longer exist because we took and took and took with no thought of closing the
cycle? 

I believe it was in the Nat Geo from March that I read humans are not evil just dumb. We created a
linear system of consumption instead of a cyclical one like in nature. Nature is super smart just ask
Darwin. Then I think about how there are so many ignorant, yet healthy people who will not take this

seriously but will remain healthy. They are intellectually dumb yet genetically and physically strong
and healthy. Then I worry about all the people I know and know of who are not at their physically best
to make it through this. It’s so not fair that they might die. 

I say “they” despite during my month of ambiguous coughing when I thought I’d be strapped to a
ventilator (#not a doctor), I am still in denial. I am just as selfish as those people walking around as
if there isn’t a plague. 

When I pray spontaneously, it’s for my health. It’s for my parents and my grandma. It’s for my fiance’s granparents. It’s for my wedding. It’s please not MY residents. Please
let me and mine be special. 

Back in fixed prayer, we pray for healing every day. But invoking G-d and Israel, we pray for collective
healing. 

When I joined the Jewish people. I was warned, you know the holocaust. Being a Jew might put me
in danger. I wasn’t just cocky because America felt safe, I’m a lesbian from rural Michigan, I knew
from bigotry. I knew I wasn’t special. But I also knew the miracle that Judaism is. It will keep going.
 I knew that I as an individual might not make it but that the collective would.

When people ask me about the climate apocalypse (of which covid is a symptom), I say it’s not the
world ending, but maybe our species is. The planet will rebound but we need to decide if humans get
to stay. TRY AS IF THERE IS STILL TIME.

We're all special in different ways. But non of us are truly special to the pandemic.

We’re coming up with triage wedding plans. We're hearing of the ambiguous loss of life that Covid
and precautions causes. That is why I pray for me and my loved ones spontaneously. I pray not just
to be spared but for the strength to make it through the things that don't spare us.

Unfortunately, this virus has not turned us into crows or ravens (that’s what Corvid means). But it has
very much shown that we as a species ARE A COLLECTIVE. That we as a planet ARE A
COLLECTIVE. So I will continue marking my timeless sheltering in place with collective prayers as
well. And I will continue to pray for the healing of all, and for the wisdom of all of us, and for the
health of the planet (all actual prayers in Judaism!). 

May we all find comfort in this time. May we all learn from this time. The same prayer with "mah rabu" also has "in Your goodness you every day renew Creation". We Can both recover from this and from the habits that led us into this situation. Every day right now seems the same but hopefully everyday we are growing healthier and smarter and better.

Before G-d

It is not G-d who is lost, it is I.

Last Summer I had a wee little break down. I took a bit of time off, though my institution made me feel like shit about it. They told me I was unreliable and irresponsible and not self aware. Once again my dream, my identity was chipped away by the people I thought were here to build me up.

I thought I was unreasonable when anxiety completely disabled me last Fall. I had just ended a year of long distance, I was doing better in school, I had just gotten engaged, all good things. But all change. I love my other half and never doubt our relationship for a second, but our relationship and my commitment to her does change how I relate to the world. Suddenly, I cannot console myself with dreams of running away when I the voice in my head tells me I will inevitably fail. I can't tell myself I can live on the streets which is the natural end to the series of perceived failures I have whenever anxiety takes over the thinking and verbalizing parts of my brain. By moving yet again, I have to re acclimate to a million little things. The building, the commute, the non-romantic network I have: small things that add up. And while I fought through this with the help of my friends, therapy, my rabbi, my family, one relationship really took back seat. My relationship with G-d.

How can I relate to the Almighty, when I have no time? When it seems like the place to where the Deity had steered me was a trap? When getting out of bed and eating take so much out of me, how can I pray? I've prayed pretty consistently for my whole life, but that is what I had to set down to make it through this year. When work violated Shabbat for me. When holidays were plastic bags suffocating me. When my soul returning to me sometimes felt like waking up in a prison. I could not thank G-d for such miracles. I could not be grateful to arrive at each new season.

I'm doing better. School and work are over soon and I am taking a Summer off. And this time, the institution cannot make me feel guilty. My life is more in my control.

Occasionally, throughout this troublesome year, I went to prayer at school or on a night off. I heard the whisper of G-d. I saw a flash of what I once felt. But never while alone. I've been edging closer for weeks. But I've fallen out of the habit. Prayer is a commitment. Relationships take time and effort.

First Rebbe Nachman helped me through the days, if he had to take one day at a time, so could I—while building myself back up:

Then he reminded me “Use every means to build your faith. This includes finding ways to build solid faith in a righteous teacher...and in yourself” RNW 141). My rabbi helped keep my dream alive but at some point, it was up to me to dust off that part of myself.

Like any relationship, G-d is not there to fix me. I needed to meet G-d with a better version of myself, much like I hope G-d meets me. But I'm studying to be a Rabbi. What does it mean that I haven't prayed in so long?

It means I want to pray well. Heschel quoting Maimonides:

“[They] whose thoughts are wandering or occupied with other things need not pray until [they have] recovered [their] mental composure.”

The example he gives is of someone who has returned from a journey and needs to recover for three days. I was on a journey but maybe it took more than three days.

So today, I prayed by myself for the first time in months.

Blessed are you, our G-d, sovereign of the Universe, who fashioned human beings with wisdom, and created in them many pathways and openings, it is well known before your seat of glory that if one of them were wrongly opened or closed, it would be impossible to endure and stand before you.......

Something in me was wrongly opened and wrongly closed. We are not required to perform commandments which we cannot perform.

So many prayer spaces have ''Know Before Whom You Stand” written on them. I know G-d pretty well, we've been close for years, but this year I've discovered that it's just as important to 'know who is standing before'. So despite what members of my institution accused me of, I feel pretty self aware. Aware enough to work on myself so that I may have a better relationship with my spouse, my family and the One who made us all.

Dressing Up

Here is a sermon I wrote for homiletics that I will not have a chance to give.

This week we interrupt our previously scheduled Torah portion with a cameo by Deuteronomy. In Shabbat Zachor we remember that villian Amalek comes to us in each generation in a new disguise.

I don't believe that I'm being coy when I say disguise because most of us prefer the side of purim in which we wear costumes than when the story calls for genocide. The Megillah gets pretty dicey in the end there. Not that it starts out terrific.

Zachor, whose hebrew root Zayin, Kaf and Resh, we might recognizer from the commandment z'chor et ha shabbat. Or alternatively in the Yizker service where we remember our loved ones. Though this root combination also appears in the unrelated to memory, zachar, which means male. As in Genesis when we read “male and female [G-d] made them” And just like Genesis we meet quite the cast of characters in our purim story all very much being magnified by their gender. And the costume of their gender.

We start with Queen Vashti, who counter to our costume culture of the holiday, is told to bare all. Her husband, the king, commands her to degrade herself for the amusement of a crowd of debauched men. She wears no costume, just her clothes and her dignity, to her death. But what about this husband who behaved so reprehensibly? Is that just a costume that the King wears among his peers? Is that all the king is? Can the king change or is he bound by the costume of his position in society and the kingdom?

Esther could not have gotten into the palace without a certain amount of costuming up. Both hiding her Jewish identity and a lengthy period of annointing and primping. And for some that primping was a festive party of friends. But perhaps for some their families forced them to try to enter the king's herem no matter the cost to them. Perhaps they were living out Vashti's nightmare, which she refused on penalty of her death. It is through Ester's first costume that she enters safely into the place, the palace, she needs to be, and by removing her costume that she saves us all.

I remember growing up and pretty much worshiping my older brothers. And fighting with my parents about wearing a dress on the holidays. I remember my father occasionally slapping a hat off of my brother at the dinner table when they didn't remember to take it off in the house. I do not remember noticing that my brothers had to fight about wearing dresses. I've mostly grown comfortable with the pantsless ness of a dress. I was honored to be my friend's best man this summer and since the wedding was outside in Missouri, opted to wear a dress to stay cool when I could have worn whatever I wanted. I have gone from feeling like Vashti to feeling more like Ester in this particular guise.

I often think of a description of Purim that I had heard years ago. How in the revelry of the holiday even an orthodox rabbi will wear women's clothing. And that's a halachic deal since in Deuteronomy women are prohibited from mens' clothing and vise versa. It was a fact related to me to hype up the karnival-esque of the holiday but why should changing our clothing, our costumes be so outlandish?

“cross dressing” which is not always the best term but I hope will work here, was not just illegal in Jewish law but also in American law. We're not so far away from Stonewall Bar where the mere act of a woman wearing pants or a man wearing a skirt was grounds for police brutality. And like Mordechai, many refused to bow down for who they were. Like Ester they placed themselves in great danger by removing the costume and revealing themselves. Like the Jews, they lived in a space where they were othere'd and developed their own culture.

Some of them wore the costume of a different gender in order to hide on a night out, being mistaken as a boy-girl couple. Some of them were truly just living their best selves. If the streets New York would teach me, I'd believe that one could now wear whatever they want wherever they go. Unfortunately, that dream is outlandish.

While some of our human siblings do not feel safe because society presents us with a ''right way'' to look, they smother their souls with the costumes of their assigned sex. Those who would walk free find themselves confronted with too many modern-day Hamans. He, an ancestor of Amalek, dressed up his hatred in fear and convinced the king to attempt slaughtering an entire people. Today these hamans hide in a similar costume of fear mongering and bathroom laws. And like Purim their lies are topsy-turvey. It is so much more dangerous for beautiful humans to stand tall, and use whatever form of lavatory they feel comfortable in.

so in this time when we are regressing to ridiculous, hurtful, violent norms, we must stand proud and undegraded like Mordechai and Vashti and we must be brave like Esther. The entire story pivots on her revealing her true self, and now we must do whatever we can to let others do the same.

Hallways and Backrooms

Halways Backdoors 

I get up as quietly as possible and leave the room. I go to the farther door because walking behind an extra person is better than the loud door that clicks a lot as it shuts. I have been taught to not take up space.

A male classmate comes in late, and loudly. He wedges into the table next to me. He physically moves my things so he can put his down. He has been taught to take up space.

The hallway I walk down to the bathroom is filled with pictures and portraits. Upstairs, there's ordination classes, which eventually include women. Here there is just wall after wall of giant, white-dude faces, looking smugly down on me. On one hand, this is our history. They can't help it if for hundreds of years women were excluded. Some of them, maybe most of them were amazing, upstanding people who fought for equality. Still, I see generations of not me. I see an institution that still preferences a certain demographic. Part of me feels defeated. Part of me fights with all of my soul, flipping the patriarchy the middle finger and saying, I am here anyway.

Perhaps a male classmate walks down the hallway and sees a long, beautiful, lineage. Does he notice that there aren't any women (or POC)? He feels a part of something bigger than himself.

I feel constant waves of obstacle. I fight harder to take up less space, so I'm not pushy. I fight harder to take up more space, so my voice can be heard. I fight so hard because I still do not have a space. I do not have a seat at the table or the conversation, literally.

I spent most of January fighting for a space. And I won the space, but my voice was never heard. I literally, had one straight, cis, white-dude telling me that two other, straight, cis white-dudes DECIDED I would do something regardless of the outcome of my battle. Without ever consulting me. Upon giving me my requested-and-fought-for space, one of the white-dudes, informed me that he hoped I would adhere to MY COMMITMENT. I had actually been very careful to not commit. If two of the three white-dudes had listened to me, they might know that.

The truth is a group of men told me what I was doing with a part of my life and told themselves that I had agreed. That is the most dangerous part of this exploration: They used their power over me and wrote in my consent. Somewhere in their private conversations about MY LIFE, they convinced themselves that my voice was present.

The portraits giggle at me while I walk to and from the bathroom: Women have smaller urethra's.

I am degraded. I am angry. I am forced to pick my battles so that I may live my life when really I want to run through that hallway with a hammer, literally smashing the patriarchy.

Aaron was silent because his sons were taken from him. Women are silent because they were never really written into the story. For a moment, I am Sarah's imagined crying as Isaac is taken away. I am Rebecca's scheming because she has no direct power. I wait for the Shechina to come down and smother us with feminine power. Because she needs no space and yet is with us all the time.

Hooked

This post is personal. It's a thinly veiled look at something big that I'm dealing with in my life. But obviously through a pirate metaphor. Also, I am an able-bodied person and sincerely hope that no one takes this as a comment on differently-abled bodies. We are all both broken and whole.

HOOKED

In my struggles to describe how I am both a complete, functioning, adult-ish human, but that I find it excruciatingly hard (almost to the point of being impossible) to continue on without my significant other I have come up with an analogy.

It's like I lost my hand a long time ago. I got a pirate hook and adjusted. I was living my full, now-pirate life, successfully and happily. BUT THEN, we were on shore or something and I got a hold of a space-age prosthetic. It's so prehensile, all five fingers, stronger than my arm would have been anyway. In short: it really upped my pirate game. Then the pirate guild took it away. I love the guild. They do great things for me and other pirates. They're not perfect, but nothing is. The hook is fine but how can I go back to it? Doesn't the pirate guild want me to be a better pirate?

Upon first encounter, my analogy is off the wall. But as I turn it over, and over, and over, I find it more apt. Like all of Creation we exist incomplete. We're all missing a hand. The best we can do is learn to live with who we are to our fullest. And we certainly shouldn't enter into relationships until we learn to do that, with or without a hook.

I found the person who doesn't complete me. I am whole without her. She completes something more than me that reaches so far down into my soul it can probably high-five Creation. Going on without her I guess is technically possible but I will never be as good without her as I am with her. And I sincerely hope that I am not forced to choose between that connection and a life on the seas.  

The Binding of Us All

In Genesis 15, G-d makes the first covenant with Abraham. Takes him outside, tells him look skyward, stars will equal progeny, you're gonna get this sweet land, and you're gonna be a successful whatever. Nations will form themselves of your seed, and the other nations will bless themselves in you. Great.

What makes this contract so weird is that legally, it's not a contract. In modern law, a contract has to involve a sacrifice on both sides: for example, you work for me, I lose money paying you. Ostensibly, in Gen 15, Abraham is being gifted....possibly for cutting his junk. Whatever, it's not like in Deuteronomy when G-unit is like, if you don't do what I say, I'm gonna let you starve and all your enemies violate you.

Read This Article (it's long, but it's good for you): The First White President

So this is the subversive D'var/Drash/Sermon that I cannot give at my small, midwestern pulpit. It's about how Abraham is America. And his altar to his god is built on a human. His son, which it is said that he loved, though in the Hebrew he could not always distinguish bein [between] ben [son] and na'ar [lad] (Dad, Where's The Goat?). He (remember he's also America) would lie, degrade, slit the throat of his son, in order to get what he wanted.

At this point, G-d has made only promises for increasing Abraham's status. There have been no threats for non-compliance. It seems Abraham's gain is more important than blood. The call for profit rings out and Abraham says hineini.

It doesn't matter that his profit literally lies on the alter and will be built on the back of suffering and the joy of that young 'lad'.

In Rashi's commentary he cites Akiva saying that Abraham for all of his obedience DOES call G-d out at the end of his trial.

Abraham says to the Almighty:

“You gave me this son. Then you said to take him up AND NOW, now you say to halt.”

The Master of All Creation is not so easily dismayed though. G-d's response in this unfeatured episode is to say, “I said to take him up, l'olah,”

-- which can mean as an olah a burnt offering, or to to go up like make Aliyah or I went up on the bus--

G-d continues “and you, Abraham have taken him up, so take him back down. “

The midrash insinuates that Abraham erred here in assuming G-d meant to sacrifice instead of just a nice father and son hike. Meaning he was so ready to kill him anyway. Anything to appease that which he benefited from.

It does not matter that an angel/messenger stops him. The matter is never spoken of (because denying our privilege is more comfortable: it's easier to fight against elitism while ignoring that the elite is based on racism and sexism.

We'll talk instead of rebuilding nations and wells and naming cities. Welcome to Beer Sheva, ignore the systemic inequality. Isaac can confront his horrors alone in the fields and hope that a cop or a well-intentioned and armed citizen doesn't 'mistake' him for a criminal.

We will not talk of the silence of women, who die to see their children taken. Women's pain does not matter. The mother and son cast out: we did not kill them, if we don't have to see their deaths. And we wonder, why, when they do not die, they resent those in power? They are the landless, the homeless, the migrant, the displaced.

We will just continue to celebrate the elevation of the patriarchs. But for how long? 

Aweful Days

Well, if anyone was in doubt, I'm a mess. But the best way to keep a b-log active when gradschool makes you feel like you're drowning in the ocean on a floaty with a steady leak in it, it's to post something you thought you'd posted like a third of a year ago. So here's some untimely reflections on the Israeli High Holidays as we approach the biblical ones.

Aweful Days

Memorial Day for Soldiers and Terror Victims is less a day of memory and seems to be a day of foreshadowing. I was fortunate to be able to attend a memorial ceremony for a scouts troop. As they read the names of all the fallen and their ages, I couldn't help but to focus on the ages. There was a time 20 seemed old to me now I realize that it's just kids dying and I'm in a country where parents frequently outlive their offspring in a reversal of the natural order. The students who put the ceremony together would be in the military in the next year or two. Twenty still seems old to them. And that's why there was so much push back to include Terror Victims a few years back. This is not just a commemoration of what was but also what will be.

So my clever plan to acknowledge the Palestinian victims of Independence Day will definitely not fly. My hope was that especially in the context of the War of Independence, we could acknowledge that lots of people died in the process of this amazing, and I think wonderful, country. That does not excuse the blind eye though. I believe that giving a national outlet to Palestinian grief would go a long way toward more peaceful coexistence. And more positive incorporation. The token Arab-Israeli lighting a torch does not mean anything if a bunch of nationalistic d-bags parade through the Arab Quarter of the Old City every year. One of the things that makes Israel a great place is the accomplishments of all of her citizens, her efforts toward peace. It's not a perfect plan.

I understand why people want to just focus on the good for a day. The reality here wears on everyone, but also how can we ignore the fact that the way they made it 'safe' for celebrations was to shut down part of the population. To fence them in, cage them in. And I agree that was was probably the best security decision. Nothing ruins a barbeque like a stabbing but currently, both people and their sentiments are trapped, and some of them cry out their destruction, their Nakba. This year for me has been about shared narratives. That's what peoplehood is to me. My Irish stories about tinkers and potato famines; the Jewish narrative of Exodus and Land and Redemption, the Israeli narrative of finding and building a home, the Palestinian narrative of imperialism, refugees and isolation. It's my task to integrate the first two or three for myself but I really believe the modern State of Israel AND the Palestinian people (I've given up on their 'leadership' for the moment), need to work toward the last two. Today I will celebrate, though I'd rather stay home. Today I will continue to hope that this narrative reconciliation is possible; that people can acknowledge the pain of the other, even if it means absorbing guilt. And that Independence does not have to mean isolation.