This is probably a good preview of the Jewish year as well as a comment about how leaving college is disorienting.
To clarify, I mean Jewish Year. The High Holy Days, albeit tempered with the fear and chaos of leaving, were where and how they should be. I went to my favorite shul with two of my bestest Jewish buds who had come back to visit. We played such '70's-licious games as “Aliyah” and “Going Up.” And by played outdated board games, I'm sure I meant studied and reflected on our sins [no].
Downstate I was much too frazzled for Sukkot. I spent the whole week in-of-doors crying and hardly eating. The particular shame of this was that my home-town Jews had built their first sukkah out on their property. All of this is but a pale and sad comparison to the Cardboard-city (homelessness fundraiser) Sukkah I shared with Hillel in 2009/5770.
Halloween of 2010 was the first time I did not go trick-or-treating. I should probably grow out of that habit in my 20's anyway but not for starvation and sleep deprivation. Instead I wandered the mountains for miles on about 500 calories, avoided the saintly landlady in my shame of non-payment, checked my Spanish bank account approximately four increasingly disappointing times and tried (successfully) to not end myself.
In a weird turnabout, I spent T-day sharing a pleasant meal with my family. This is abnormal. I haven't partaken of Thanksgiving Dinner with my biological family since I was a Freshmen in High School. To me, Thanksgiving is the perfect holiday of neglect and exploration. It's a minor holiday, with practically no important significance. I can make it magical by spending it with my friends either emulating the traditional or by completely disregarding it.
Chanukah may or may not be a joke. I watched my favorite PBS tape but didn't light candles. I went to the synagogue's party but at this point, I was still a little shell-shocked by being back, explaining but never conveying what my exile had been like, and growing increasingly uncomfortable and uneasy by being unemployed.
Despite having converted to Judaism officially, two years prior, this is the first year I was away from home for December 25th. I really wanted to avoid it the year before—what with the fighting and the getting sick. I'm sure it was hard on my family to lack me. At this point in my yearly re-cap, I wish to make clear that these holidays (with the notable exception of Halloween in which I possibly came close to celebrating the festival in a dread-and-ironic manner) were not necessarily BAD days. It just seems that this is the year where nothing was as it had been.
By now I am employed and unfortunately, being the noob and the probie, means I work on the weekends. I work on Shabbat. One of the many blessings of Israel's covenental relationship with G-d is that our most important holiday comes once a week (Yom Kippur is called the “Sabbath of Sabbaths” and is therefore still delegated to the category of my Saturday lack-of-business). In Spain, this meant overwhelming loneliness only partially consoled by reading my entire prayer book and as much Tanakh as I could focus on. The distractions of my state-side life sometimes enrich and often distract from Shabbos. Also, now that I am no longer a student, I must meet the challenge of finding other ways to set this day aside. It had been my custom to do no homework. Now I have no homework all week; I don't begrudge this fact as it is wonderful but my week cannot be Shabbat, my week should be six days of not Shabbat and then one day of Shabbat. This one is still in progress but I'm on weekdays now, so hopefully it will progress...
My extra-academic existence puts me in a weird limbo trapped without a Hillel but not quite willing to commit to adulthood. Without my Hillel, at least this year, nothing could have made Tu B'shevat tolerable. It was a holiday that we developed together and I wasn't ready to do that seder without them. I have been unaware how much of my soul and celebration has been defined by my friends from Hillel and our blundering through Judaism.
Finally cognizant of this fact, I am trying to meet it head on. Purim is the first holiday I felt in control of celebrating this year. I used the dictates of sending festive gifts, by sending things to some of my like-aged and -minded friends who have spread around the country. Distance is no excuse for not sharing a holiday. Then in my affronting lack of Jewry between the ages of legal drinking and responsible drinking (which refers to getting trashed and being a buffoon; NO ONE SHOULD DRINK AND DRIVE EVER), I did the next best thing and substituted a bunch of gentile thespians. Who better to celebrate the drunkest night of Judaism with than the folks who sing me Fiddler on shabbos and are responsible for 96% of every drunken mistake and victory of my life? It was a win—kind of like stopping an evil vizier from genociding all of your people.
With two-thirds of the year behind me now, including an extra Adar, I'm beginning to grasp and revive my sense of holiday. I feel almost prepared to prepare for Passover. In the past, I hated Passover. I still have a theological qualm with any holiday that denies Jews bagels. Eventually, I realized the holiday is not about what we don't have but about having enough. Dayeinu. We thank G-d for constantly providing us with what we need. That's been the theme of my return. “At least I'm not in Spain.” I've been pretty ridiculously happy since my return. G-d could have delivered us from slavery...and left us in the desert alone. Instead, G-d gave us food and water and freedom.
G-d could have left me in Spain. Instead he gave me a landlady who fed and housed me. G-d made a bus attendant notice that I seemed out of place and directed me to my bus—just before it left without me. G-d inspired a gentile to run around and find me a safe place to sleep. G-d got me to ask just one more time about where the airport was so I wouldn't metro to the wrong stop and miss my flight. I have been delivered from slavery in exile through miracles.
All holidays are based on miracles. The High Holy days celebrate the miracle that we can always better ourselves. Thanksgiving is the miracle of holidays and how they can celebrate, and ignore, and change...just like people. Regardless of Jesus' status as messiah or god or zombie, Christmas is many miracles. Contextually it's the miracle of how high a family can rise from it's lowest lows (pregnant and homeless—a low my family has experienced). Chanukah is the constant miracle of how there are way fewer Chanukah-related fires than is probable...oh yeah and something about the Temple's re-dedication and some Maccabees. Tu B'shevat reflects the simple and pure miracle of nature and life. Trees are fuckin' awesome. Purim's miracle is joy and Shabbat's is rest. Passover has so many miracles to choose from but the most obvious are the passing over of the first born and our deliverance from slavery...and carbs.
Still to go? Shavuot. When G-d gave us Torah and we slept through it....we suck. The real miracle is that I can catch up on my lapsed Tanakh reading in a single night and still have time for cheesecake. The minor miracle is the uniting of scripture and people and logic.
There are other holidays and birthdays and weddings all with their own inherent miracles and nuances. This has been for me both the year of the blundering holiday blundering, but also the year where I think I learned the most about what or why holidays we have these days. They highlight their own miracles so that maybe we can be reminded of the miracles that happen everyday.
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