I, after 2 months of a life that did not feel like my own, am home. This transition feels like one of my G_d's not so subtle sometimes periods. My Last day in Spain was a long one and the first time I'd seen a Jew since Yom Kippur. Here's what that was like:
Hello Jews Goodbye Spain
Firstly, let me share my rabbinical blessing with my Mishkan T'Filah for travelers without which I would not have navigated that service at all.
Today I arrive to Madrid, tired and scared. I clawed my sorry ass to the synagogue, ironically placed near the “Iglesia” (“church”) stop on the Metro where the man was kind of mean and wouldn't let me enter because I had bags with me. So much for unwavering hospitality. Abraham had just cut his junk and he managed to be hospitable. I understand security though. So I sat outside the synagogue, it was a mildly deserted corner of the city so I sat there and prayed and read and wondered if the people passing me were Jews. The ones that went in, I assume were the Jews. They didn't have suitcases.
I saw a potentially Jewish looking fellow with some books and asked him if he knew of a hostel nearby that costs less than 20€. He looked at me sadly and said no, it's hard in Madrid. His books were not prayer books, there is a library nearby which when he passed by a few minutes later, I assumed had been closed. One man walked by and he looked frum. Black hat. I gave him a good old “Boker Tov”. He then tried to speak to me in Hebrew...then he switched to Spanish but Hebrew accent plus Spanish is bad. Then Mr. Library came back. He had looked up a hostel, nearby that was under 20€--he even had a print out for me. They guy from the desk had been warned about the potential Jew creepin' about still and came out to confront my Righteous Gentile.
I'm mildly offended that a stranger and a gentile had to help me navigate as a Jewish “stranger a foreign land” when a giant box of a building filled with my people was there. However, between his kindness, the frumle and some quality bonding with G-d via the words of the Reb Nachman, I conjured the strength of spirit and body to schlep to the hostel. I really like having a place to stay when I'm in big cities. It's way better than the streets. There's food and internet and books and I can set my bags in a locker. Best 19,08€ that I've spent while here.
So after recuperating, I went back. The e-mail I had said to come during either the morning or the evening services. I showed up 15 minutes early, in case they needed to show me anything special give me some sort of sephardi orientation. What ended up happening was probably the result of many miscommunications in the e-mail process but they mostly just ignored me. So I sat alone in the woman's section trying to follow along and stand when I should but not when I shouldn't. The buzzing of their rapid, ladino and their chatting all through services still felt like family was near though.
So my first orthodox service was alone (there weren't even women in the building) and in Spain. And I don't care what the nice little trying-to-convert-boy says, the Sephardi Kaddish DOES have two extra lines towards the end. And I have also never heard Kaddish that many times in my life. It's on pg. 23 in my book and 36 in his book.
The rabbi said some nice things in TERRIBLY accented Spanish about T'filah being a call without a phone and then we said Kaddish a few more times and then we went up to the roof to bless the evening and say Kaddish, with an extra two verses, again. The ger and I were sectioned off into a corner because we don't count.
Afterward the rabbi scolded me because women don't have to pray. And by scolded I mean he guilted, he didn't actually say I'd done anything wrong, he just implied it. He asked me a few things. I tried to talk to folks, because as I'd said in my e-mail, I'd wanted to chat and learn about Spanish-jewery. He just told me that he wasn't Spanish and then blessed me. It was very nice, pretty Chassidic and all in all, we'll call it a win.
And then I flew into JFK in New York City. So many Jews. Some frum with hats and their tzit tzit showing, some just bearded men in “ambiguously frum” hats. Home. Jews. And I didn't have to worry about getting stranded in NYC or Chicago because I have Jewish Family in both places...JEWS JEWS JEWS. The end.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Culture Shock
When I think of culture shock, I think of the pounding headache I get when I've been straining to speak in a second (or third language) for too long. I think of creepy, European cheek kisses and carbonated juice. I don't think of loneliness and neglect or lies. Nor do I think of my complete, existentially challenging lack of cognitive dissonance—that my brain cannot reconcile itself to the body’s location, nor does it wish to. I like to think of cartoons that don't make sense even if I understand the words, of new dances and foods and twisting streets. I still do not know where my homesick/life path/culture shock border defines me and this journey.
All I know is that in my two-month stay I've seen a lot of excellently dubbed American television, well translated American novels...even the Twilight series is here. And most of their music countdown is our music countdown and that while my students constantly thought I was from the UK, they carried around Batman and Dora bags.
Part of me is inspired by the fact that so far away from home, I'm drowning in Americana. They're watching the cartoon that we watch to learn Spanish for the sweet love of G-d. And while few experiences in my life will feel more absurd than hearing the full seven minutes of “Thriller” on the radio in the filthy, cold bus station of Vigo, where people get it on in the bathroom...to “Thriller”? I am kind of proud of my country. Yes, we were aided by history forcing English as a language upon most of the world and the moderately modern politics of the USA's world power status but I do not believe that this is at least entirely, the result of force-feeding our culture; I honestly think they just like it.
So I can sit there and listen to a very didactic and condescending lecture on French or Galician culture and how they think this way or act that way. I really was just trying to get the word for “riot” without leaving Spanish...oy ve. And as I listen, your kid is trying to sneak “Bob esponja” on the tele.
It does make me a little sad because I worry about the loss of various European cultures as my own infiltrates but as no one really asked me a single question about home, I know I am not the culprit and probably do not have the power to stop it.
And please don't speak to me as if I, as a poor, deprived American, am uncultured. I come from a place with almost too much culture. Not only do I have the culture that has resulted from my crazy-ass, stubborn, often-douchy country, I have all the cultures that inspired and shaped it. I can speak whatever breed of Spanish I want, with native speakers, without using my passport. I can walk through the forest and not run into a house after 20 minutes. I have 2/5 oceans at my disposal. And while, I am guessing due to the less than five hours of chaotic classroom instruction, your students can't name the capital of France, having visited it, even my hick friends who barely speak English can.
The only culture shock I think I've really experienced is how much I might like my own nation, despite my ironic and frequent lack of rights, the hypocrisy, and the fact that we're mostly stubborn assholes. You know what? Your healthcare wasn't that good anyway because in the end, we all know that while USA trumps Europe....everyone is Canada's bitch.
All I know is that in my two-month stay I've seen a lot of excellently dubbed American television, well translated American novels...even the Twilight series is here. And most of their music countdown is our music countdown and that while my students constantly thought I was from the UK, they carried around Batman and Dora bags.
Part of me is inspired by the fact that so far away from home, I'm drowning in Americana. They're watching the cartoon that we watch to learn Spanish for the sweet love of G-d. And while few experiences in my life will feel more absurd than hearing the full seven minutes of “Thriller” on the radio in the filthy, cold bus station of Vigo, where people get it on in the bathroom...to “Thriller”? I am kind of proud of my country. Yes, we were aided by history forcing English as a language upon most of the world and the moderately modern politics of the USA's world power status but I do not believe that this is at least entirely, the result of force-feeding our culture; I honestly think they just like it.
So I can sit there and listen to a very didactic and condescending lecture on French or Galician culture and how they think this way or act that way. I really was just trying to get the word for “riot” without leaving Spanish...oy ve. And as I listen, your kid is trying to sneak “Bob esponja” on the tele.
It does make me a little sad because I worry about the loss of various European cultures as my own infiltrates but as no one really asked me a single question about home, I know I am not the culprit and probably do not have the power to stop it.
And please don't speak to me as if I, as a poor, deprived American, am uncultured. I come from a place with almost too much culture. Not only do I have the culture that has resulted from my crazy-ass, stubborn, often-douchy country, I have all the cultures that inspired and shaped it. I can speak whatever breed of Spanish I want, with native speakers, without using my passport. I can walk through the forest and not run into a house after 20 minutes. I have 2/5 oceans at my disposal. And while, I am guessing due to the less than five hours of chaotic classroom instruction, your students can't name the capital of France, having visited it, even my hick friends who barely speak English can.
The only culture shock I think I've really experienced is how much I might like my own nation, despite my ironic and frequent lack of rights, the hypocrisy, and the fact that we're mostly stubborn assholes. You know what? Your healthcare wasn't that good anyway because in the end, we all know that while USA trumps Europe....everyone is Canada's bitch.
Best Wishes
“Parting is such sweet sorrow.” After weeks of cursing the ocean in every language I have access to, I now approach it warily. There is some sadness in my heart. I was finally hugged, by several people that almost reached my shoulders in height. The hug of a child, while warming and lovely, does not fill the lonely hole in my core. It certainly does not feed me nor teach me how to teach them. I will cherish their goodbye cards forever but I'm still peacin' out.
People here just don't hug. Not adults; it must be something they cast off like a caterpillar casts off it's chrysalis to become the butterfly. Part of me is wondering if folks are just starting to warm up to me, if I waited too long. Part of me thinks that I have undergone metamorphosis. What butterfly am I? I am a leaving person. I have changed in status. I have become someone you can tell things, things you need to share but want an ocean between them and you after they are spake. A leaving person is someone you can forget consequences with (though sadly not sexual orientation...or at least not for me).
With a full belly from my going away party I wonder if I am mistaken. I've maintained that they are nice people this whole time, maybe it is just not in their nature to be really helpful unless they absolutely have to. Our governments are our parents, they teach us how to behave. My stomach wouldn't have been full if I had stayed. My tutor, these teachers wouldn't have cared more as the days passed and loneliness killed me at night when even the exhaustion of my illegal and solitary leadership in the classroom couldn't make me sleep.
So as I hug the little ones and even contemplate feeling feelings at our separation, I keep looking at them and wishing they were Jews, or that these people I'm drinking with were people from back home. Where is the line between culture shock, homesickness, and a mistake? Life is gray, very gray.
Am I mistaken again? I don't think so. Even as the manic fear faded to routine this path grated on me and the pull home remained strong. The fact that without training, or food, or sleep and wading through lies (my own and others), I have made such a strong impression-and a good one, I hope means that I represented my country well. My doubts now are built on fear as much as those that turned my path around were. There's a light at the end of the tunnel this way though. A dark, winter, snowy, unemployed light.
I'll never know if I left too early (I suspect sometimes that coming here at all was too early), if I didn't give it enough time. If their kindness was born of actual affection or of my change in status; I suspect a combination of both. So I will try not to let these smiles and frowns and well wishes and finally eating taint my return but maybe part of Spain is trying to apologize. Maybe Spain as a whole would like to part on better terms. Fine then España and your Galicia, I agree to accept your half-assed apology and will do my best to try and portray you as ambiguously as possible: to cite a kindness every time I curse a fault. Let us never meet this way again. I wish you the best and hopefully we can both improve and in the horrible circumstance that we cross paths again, our civility will be more amicable. Adiós.
People here just don't hug. Not adults; it must be something they cast off like a caterpillar casts off it's chrysalis to become the butterfly. Part of me is wondering if folks are just starting to warm up to me, if I waited too long. Part of me thinks that I have undergone metamorphosis. What butterfly am I? I am a leaving person. I have changed in status. I have become someone you can tell things, things you need to share but want an ocean between them and you after they are spake. A leaving person is someone you can forget consequences with (though sadly not sexual orientation...or at least not for me).
With a full belly from my going away party I wonder if I am mistaken. I've maintained that they are nice people this whole time, maybe it is just not in their nature to be really helpful unless they absolutely have to. Our governments are our parents, they teach us how to behave. My stomach wouldn't have been full if I had stayed. My tutor, these teachers wouldn't have cared more as the days passed and loneliness killed me at night when even the exhaustion of my illegal and solitary leadership in the classroom couldn't make me sleep.
So as I hug the little ones and even contemplate feeling feelings at our separation, I keep looking at them and wishing they were Jews, or that these people I'm drinking with were people from back home. Where is the line between culture shock, homesickness, and a mistake? Life is gray, very gray.
Am I mistaken again? I don't think so. Even as the manic fear faded to routine this path grated on me and the pull home remained strong. The fact that without training, or food, or sleep and wading through lies (my own and others), I have made such a strong impression-and a good one, I hope means that I represented my country well. My doubts now are built on fear as much as those that turned my path around were. There's a light at the end of the tunnel this way though. A dark, winter, snowy, unemployed light.
I'll never know if I left too early (I suspect sometimes that coming here at all was too early), if I didn't give it enough time. If their kindness was born of actual affection or of my change in status; I suspect a combination of both. So I will try not to let these smiles and frowns and well wishes and finally eating taint my return but maybe part of Spain is trying to apologize. Maybe Spain as a whole would like to part on better terms. Fine then España and your Galicia, I agree to accept your half-assed apology and will do my best to try and portray you as ambiguously as possible: to cite a kindness every time I curse a fault. Let us never meet this way again. I wish you the best and hopefully we can both improve and in the horrible circumstance that we cross paths again, our civility will be more amicable. Adiós.
Mitzvah Challenge
One of many reasons I like, nay, love being Reform is my game I play called Mitzvah Challenge. In my head it's like Yugioh or Pokemon or Magic the Gathering but with Mitzvot. It goes like this: you have two conflicting Mitzvot and because you're Reform, you get to choose which one is more important or halakhlikly correct....to you.
For example it's Shabbat and after Torah Studies with the congregation, folks want to go out for lunch. Do you spend money on Shabbat? Make a transaction/contract and SIGN your name? Well if the prohibition against handling money means less to you than sharing a meal and spending time with other Jews, then go right on ahead and break that one to fulfill the other two (you're supposed to have three festive meals, yo.)
My latest Mitvah match-off was terrible. I'd been thinking in recent weeks how hard it is to be a nice person. No one will let you. I ask random people if they need help unloading things from their car and they think I'm a creep or a robber, or they're just too embarrassed or whatever to accept. I'm the same way, stubbornly independent. Then I read what I think was a 10 Minutes of Torah post about how it's harder and more important to accept, in this case hospitality.
Now Galicia, Spain has not been very hospitable to the lonely Lesbijew. The only real kindness I've experienced is from my landlady, Isabel who knows that I don't have money for food and keeps feeding me and has agreed to house me even if her stupid government never pays me (i.e. I can never pay her). So the other day, she more-or-less kidnaps me and makes me eat food. I accept, mostly because of the futility of not accepting, but also because sometimes accepting help is the menschlike thing to do. The plate [not bowl] of soup was based on chicken broth but chickens don't lactate as Carey Gottlieb likes to say and also as a vegetarian, I can still digest them (red meat makes drinking sulfuric acid sound like grape juice to my poor digestive system). Then she pulls out some fancy ham leg from Salamanca. Patas Negras, black footed pig is very popular and very expensive. It's also cured which is why people just have pig legs sitting out (“what do you mean you don't put it in the fridge?”). Now, I know I explained repeatedly, in different ways that I DON'T eat meat, not carne, not jamon, no cow, no pig, no pollo, nada. Soy vegetariana.
She knows that I don't eat ham. She knows I'm a Jewish vegetarian, why is she offering me ham? And logically, why offer me nice ham? I don't know the difference. Isabel is very insistent and I know it's nice of her to offer me her fancy ham. I'm not sure if she's trying to offend me or not. Sometimes....often Catholics are offended that I'm Jewish (one time I made the mistake of telling a nun that I technically converted, left, Catholicism to be a Jew—nuns are scary). Isabel either doesn't think Jewish law means anything to me, WAS trying to be offensive, or thinks she can convert me via good ham. I think it was the first and the last. She really is a nice lady.
So I tried a bite of the ham. I thanked her and explained that aside from my religion (Which she doesn't give a shit about) eating this could make me very sick. I don't eat meat and I CANNOT physically eat meat. I know that being a vegetarian here is strange but it's not unheard of: there are at least two vegetarian restaurants in Vigo.
So I ate ham. This is the second time I have consciously eaten ham since beginning my exploration of Judaism at 14 years of age. This is only the third time total and it's the first time since officially converting. Did it make me not a Jew? Did it make me less of a Jew? Nah. But this has been one of the hardest rounds of Mitvah Challenge I've ever played. Not because of the hospitality vs. ham issue as much as: should I have stood my religious ground? As a Jew in Spain, I really want to make a good impression as I am the only Jew for hundreds of miles. I will probably be the only Jew many of these people ever meet. That's some hefty responsibility.
Do I push my dietary restrictions and possibly offend someone...the one person who has demonstrated hospitality and kindness to me? Do I let it slide to be nice? Did I eat past the mark where my stomach is going to rip itself to pieces trying to rip the meat to pieces? I do not know.
What I do know is that it scares me a little to be a Jew here. Even more than being a Jew in Mayville. They do not hate Jews, this is not antisemitism. It's worse. It's complete, blissful ignorance that they do not wish to cure. Even my French/Spanish friend, pretentiously obsessed with “culture” does not really engage...vegetarian is fine because it's almost chic, but Jewish? That's just another archaic religion, not a vibrant thriving culture.
Basically, I ate ham because it helped her fulfill a mitvah even if she didn't know it, I let her be a mamash mensch. I also hope that she realizes on some level that I cut a corner, to try to repay her kindness. And I think that by the time I leave she'll understand that when I told her “soy judía” that my Spanish wasn't wrong...I'm really not catholic: I don't want to go see the Pope, I'm a Jew. Just because I talk to you about Santiago, and el Papa (la papa is a potato) means I'm not ignorant, but still a Jew.
End Round of Mitzvah Challenge. Mitzvot 1.
For example it's Shabbat and after Torah Studies with the congregation, folks want to go out for lunch. Do you spend money on Shabbat? Make a transaction/contract and SIGN your name? Well if the prohibition against handling money means less to you than sharing a meal and spending time with other Jews, then go right on ahead and break that one to fulfill the other two (you're supposed to have three festive meals, yo.)
My latest Mitvah match-off was terrible. I'd been thinking in recent weeks how hard it is to be a nice person. No one will let you. I ask random people if they need help unloading things from their car and they think I'm a creep or a robber, or they're just too embarrassed or whatever to accept. I'm the same way, stubbornly independent. Then I read what I think was a 10 Minutes of Torah post about how it's harder and more important to accept, in this case hospitality.
Now Galicia, Spain has not been very hospitable to the lonely Lesbijew. The only real kindness I've experienced is from my landlady, Isabel who knows that I don't have money for food and keeps feeding me and has agreed to house me even if her stupid government never pays me (i.e. I can never pay her). So the other day, she more-or-less kidnaps me and makes me eat food. I accept, mostly because of the futility of not accepting, but also because sometimes accepting help is the menschlike thing to do. The plate [not bowl] of soup was based on chicken broth but chickens don't lactate as Carey Gottlieb likes to say and also as a vegetarian, I can still digest them (red meat makes drinking sulfuric acid sound like grape juice to my poor digestive system). Then she pulls out some fancy ham leg from Salamanca. Patas Negras, black footed pig is very popular and very expensive. It's also cured which is why people just have pig legs sitting out (“what do you mean you don't put it in the fridge?”). Now, I know I explained repeatedly, in different ways that I DON'T eat meat, not carne, not jamon, no cow, no pig, no pollo, nada. Soy vegetariana.
She knows that I don't eat ham. She knows I'm a Jewish vegetarian, why is she offering me ham? And logically, why offer me nice ham? I don't know the difference. Isabel is very insistent and I know it's nice of her to offer me her fancy ham. I'm not sure if she's trying to offend me or not. Sometimes....often Catholics are offended that I'm Jewish (one time I made the mistake of telling a nun that I technically converted, left, Catholicism to be a Jew—nuns are scary). Isabel either doesn't think Jewish law means anything to me, WAS trying to be offensive, or thinks she can convert me via good ham. I think it was the first and the last. She really is a nice lady.
So I tried a bite of the ham. I thanked her and explained that aside from my religion (Which she doesn't give a shit about) eating this could make me very sick. I don't eat meat and I CANNOT physically eat meat. I know that being a vegetarian here is strange but it's not unheard of: there are at least two vegetarian restaurants in Vigo.
So I ate ham. This is the second time I have consciously eaten ham since beginning my exploration of Judaism at 14 years of age. This is only the third time total and it's the first time since officially converting. Did it make me not a Jew? Did it make me less of a Jew? Nah. But this has been one of the hardest rounds of Mitvah Challenge I've ever played. Not because of the hospitality vs. ham issue as much as: should I have stood my religious ground? As a Jew in Spain, I really want to make a good impression as I am the only Jew for hundreds of miles. I will probably be the only Jew many of these people ever meet. That's some hefty responsibility.
Do I push my dietary restrictions and possibly offend someone...the one person who has demonstrated hospitality and kindness to me? Do I let it slide to be nice? Did I eat past the mark where my stomach is going to rip itself to pieces trying to rip the meat to pieces? I do not know.
What I do know is that it scares me a little to be a Jew here. Even more than being a Jew in Mayville. They do not hate Jews, this is not antisemitism. It's worse. It's complete, blissful ignorance that they do not wish to cure. Even my French/Spanish friend, pretentiously obsessed with “culture” does not really engage...vegetarian is fine because it's almost chic, but Jewish? That's just another archaic religion, not a vibrant thriving culture.
Basically, I ate ham because it helped her fulfill a mitvah even if she didn't know it, I let her be a mamash mensch. I also hope that she realizes on some level that I cut a corner, to try to repay her kindness. And I think that by the time I leave she'll understand that when I told her “soy judía” that my Spanish wasn't wrong...I'm really not catholic: I don't want to go see the Pope, I'm a Jew. Just because I talk to you about Santiago, and el Papa (la papa is a potato) means I'm not ignorant, but still a Jew.
End Round of Mitzvah Challenge. Mitzvot 1.
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