Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Market Positioning

Two homemade whole-wheat challahs covered by t...Image via Wikipedia
I know that perhaps a title like this isn't the very best thing to use, but hear me out.

My wife and I formally changed our tags on Facebook from the ambiguous labels from before to Jewish. Are we Orthodox? Conservative? Reform?

And there are other "variants". We have Chabad, Reconstructionist, Renewal, Traditional... It's a soda shop of deliciously Jewish flavors. We aren't sure where we are, and we know we hit multiple points of the spectrum.

For example. I am primarily Chabad. I wear my kippah, usually hidden under a ballcap to keep those less Semitically favorable at bay (read that "my employer"), we observe Shabbat in a very stringent fashion, we have the timers and such, but no synagogue close by.

For the first time in my life, I managed to "score" a pair of tefillin via crafty personal budget manipulation, and my wife keeps her hair covered in public. On that note, I finally get it. I am now used to seeing her in the scarf, and naturally, I think her very beautiful (after all, I married her, didn't I?). At night, when the scarf comes off, I always say, "Wow!" It has a very positive impact.

With all of the cultural differences, I share the progressive forward thinking. A Jew is a Jew is a Jew. Sexual preference doesn't matter to me, and I have no problem with a homosexual or a woman becoming a Rabbi, and I believe that if one has done the study, then the title on the hat should fit.

However, I draw the line at women donning tefillin, just as I strongly object to males giving birth to live young.

My wife has converted of her own accord, and it is highly possible that she might not have even needed to. But that means our little growing jellybean will be Jewish by birth.

We have two sons that will end up having to formally convert (should they desire to) and in toto, three young potential husbands that are driving us batty at the moment. I spend a good deal of time trying to get myself in check so that they have a proper role model to emulate. I'm not always as patient and tolerating as I should be of pre-adolescent nonsense.

But seeing them eager for kiddush, and running around with their kippot on just screams that we as a people aren't going down. Completely, anyway.

In the end, we're simply Jewish. The tags just don't work so well.

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Monday, May 4, 2009

Raising The Bar

I finally got the kids on board with the whole Shabbat thing. They are addicted to the raisin challah. That's what did it. Hamin has been good for the past few weeks. My youngest is the only one who will eat it, though. But he loves anything that Daddy cooks, so that isn't exactly fair.

And now Kiddush is implanted in their brains, and on Erev Shabbat my oldest asks, "When is it we do that thing with the bread?" I have to toe a fine line there, as my younger son gets the general idea, but my oldest is still programmed to believe that anything that involves wine is bad. We've been in the habit of getting the wine and what not for Shabbat on Friday, on the way home. But that also cut into Shabbat. This past weekend, it cut into it by a full hour.

I had explained to my wife (who is getting very knowledgeable on these things) about how once you get something into your head, and you begin to perform at least a decent amount of mitzvot, that Hashem raises the bar on you. Things you would get away with as a newbie are simply unable to let slide later on.

My hamin was in the crockpot. It was good. Very good. Then, with my wife on the other side of the kitchen, and everyone else in the living room, a heavy vase shifted six inches off of the fridge, and fell at a perfect angle onto the edge, splitting the ceramic dish into three pieces. All of the liquid drained out onto the floor.

The message was very clear.

Needless to say, we now have a new crockpot. And now we are doing the shopping for Shabbat on Thursday.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Law of Averages

I have made it no great secret that I am a strong proponent of Chabad. At the very same time, I also realize that many Jews have no intention of switching their lives into a great upheaval and instantly purchasing all of their meal items from Eretz Yisrael, or living a strict life in accordance to halachah.

In my mind, every individual is different. I'll grant that there is a single yardstick with which to measure, and we know this as Torah Law. I try my best to fulfill what I can. But, at the same time, you can't compare a 50 yard dash in the Special Olympics to a decathlon in Athens.

People are different, with different upbringings and histories. The Rebbe was quite correct and inspiring when we went with the more realistic approach of "planting the seed", or in essence, one mitzvah should surely beget another.

In our house, for instance, we began with nothing. Then it led to ceasing work, without ceremony, from Friday evening at candle-lighting time until the proper Havdalah period. That included, for me, no email, no turning on the TV, nothing but reading and enjoying the time with my wife.

Last week, we included a movie Friday night. The family was off running around, but after a bad challah fiasco (I forgot to let the dough rise an additional hour and had a nice yeasty brick), I still performed the blessing for the wine and proceeded as best I could. I also treated the kids to a breakfast of various fruits, while canned, required no cooking on my part, thus fulfilling another adherence to the prohibition on work. Except for the fact that I had to use the can opener.

This week, hopefully a good challah, grape juice (my wife has baby inside, thus we're holding on the wine for her, and the kids...) and a nice cholent of my own design for Shabbat lunch. It sits in the crockpot there, and I don't have to do anything to it. I have this neat can opener that cuts the top cleanly, creating a lid. So I'll cut the cans prior to Shabbat and put them in the fridge this time. No work whatsoever.

Normally, we would do our grocery shopping on Saturday, but I am trying to slowly shift that over to Sunday (prohibition on handling money on Shabbat).

The point is, once we perform one mitzvah, it is like smoking or Lay's potato chips, just in a more positive direction. You can't have just one. You also no longer want to have just one.

And to have 24 hours where there is nothing but family interaction, where you can go into the cocoon for a while, is wonderful. It has us truly looking forward to Shabbat each week, like finding an oasis in the desert.

Now we can fill in the gaps, like the candles, a challah tray and cover, the kiddush cup. We only have three valid doorjambs on which to affix mezuzot, but it's the little things.

Today I'm emailing for an account with Aleph, the program I mentioned yesterday. Everything that I've seen on their site has been on par with my thought process.

Much of my thinking has been about the Orthodoxy "letter of the law" versus the "spirit of the law". Fundamental Christians love to confuse and bend this for their own purposes, but what it really means is not performing a mitzvah or following a law strictly for the sake of being obedient. There is a thought process inherent in the very design, one that sometimes requires into delving through Talmud and Gemara just to ascertain the meaning.

Judaism is the faith of "Why?" We always, like a child, have to know why we are doing something.

Perhaps it's better to know why you are doing something, even if the answer is "it's the right thing to do" than to just do it blindly, never having the pleasure of truly understanding it. In my opinion, I'd rather have someone perform a few good acts of mitzvah with a full understanding of why they are doing them, than someone who does it blindly because they were told to, and never had a clue to the meaning.

That's just me. I could be wrong. But then again, where is the line between fact and perception?

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Old Books

They used to sit on a shelf when I was a kid. Primarily in Hebrew, with English on the sidebar, still in the old dust jackets.

I found them again, stacked on a shelf in a trailer that my father was unloading before we sold his property. I was helping him sort through and burn some items, donate others, and I found these.

What else could I do? I bargained for them. I had always wanted them for my own, anyway, and he knew it. We settled on $25 for the lot. When it came time to pay up, he gave me a smile and a sideways glance and simply said, "You can have them. If you can get some use out of them..."

And that's how I got the full edition of the Mishnah that is currently perched on my bookshelf.

Handing things down. That's how we do things here on Earth. We hand down introspection, values, tradition, and a boatload of bad habits.

But then again, this is the entire purpose of the thing, to learn what it takes to break the bad habits that we learn from our forefathers.

On the way to work this morning, I saw a hospital bed perched next to an open window facing the road, with a person lying on it. I felt sadness and compassion for the person, unknown, situation also unknown. It's been a lovely day today, but they will only experience it from behind the window.

I could take this in two directions. I could suggest that by not actively reading and studying the literature I currently possess, they are merely "looking out the window" at me, never getting the chance to express the knowledge and wisdom that they contain, all the while sitting there at my very fingertips.

I could also venture that learning the little nuggets of wisdom without applying them in a real world setting, is still watching the world go by with my fingers permanently jammed into the very grain of the windowsill.

Neither are useful. Neither are where I want to be.

Recently, I found a program that could prove very useful to me, and in turn, to others that have felt isolated from who and what they are, folks that are lying off to the side, or stuck behind the window as the world of their own heritage parades by. Those of us that have said the following, "I am Jewish, but..." or the even more horrid, " I used to be Jewish, but..."

To say that I have been nervous about publicly stating my intentions to my beautiful wife would be putting it mildly. But right when I think everything will go to hell like it always does, she throws a curve into it that instantly makes me feel much better.

Today, it was a question about whether we were going to strictly celebrate Jewish holidays or not. I hadn't even mentioned the idea, and she brought up that Passover was this week. I had decided that I didn't want to go through forcing the family into a lot of immediate changes, and could pretty much introduce them throughout the year.

Frankly, it's been amazing how much better life has been just by introducing Shabbat into the household. I never realized before that how little we actually rested. Before, it was work, work, work until I was sick. But you need that rest to gather your thoughts, who you are, and what you're all about. Plus, we spend that time truly focused on each other, and that is great.

I know how much she loves the Christmas holidays. For me, I could take it or leave it. But I am Jewish, she is not (technically). Why strip the very things that bring joy?

The fact was that she brought it up to begin with, as in something we were in together and committed to. That blew me away.

Somehow, we went from being inside, behind the window, to finally being out there, on a new experience where the rules are there, but are designed for understanding instead of fighting over or restricting us.

Sometimes, it's more than just old books.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

"Where Are You?"

It's utterly amazing what one finds in their dustbin.



I had many more blogs than I knew what to do with, on several subjects that I either had to abandon due to situations, or just got un-enamored with, and in a case or two, simply had no use for anymore.



So I erased the posts that used to be here, and sat to try and figure out what it is I need to be writing about at this particular stage in life.



I'm approaching 39, and if you do the math, as well as the family history, my life, as it stands, is about half over. I'd like to say that I wasted it, but that is simply not the case. I'd also like to say that I know what it was all about, but that is not the case, either.



On the bright side, I am blessed with a wonderful wife, a stepson, my firstborn, and a third child on the way. I have went through 3 major religions, only to find myself right back where I was in 1993. Just wiser, more capable of understanding my world and what I can actually do in it. And I have three sons to teach it all to before they get out there and muck it all up, dilly-dallying around until it makes sense.



I started in Christianity, and it was too stifling. No one wanted to discuss anything, and there were no gray areas. Judaism gave me leniency to think for myself. I was simply too young to realize that at the time.



My Rabbi once said something to me that set me off. I didn't understand it at the time. I won't say what it was, other than I get it. At least, I get my perception of it now. At the time, I wanted to be a rabbi, for a myriad of reasons that have modified over the years. My girlfriend at the time told me that she would leave me if I pursued it.



She ended up leaving me anyway.



My first wife shared the sentiment. I ended up leaving her for other reasons. Let the fact that I have full custody of our son speak to that one.



It has been an itch that is difficult to scratch. So I chose to shift to Buddhism, and everyone pretty much left me alone. Americans use Buddhist when they don't want to say "atheist" or "agnostic".



I like Tantra because it is primarily like Chabad in a very altruistic way. And to say that my thought processes are anything less than chabad-like would be a misnomer.



The fact remains that I do what I do for a living. I am currently studying for my CCNA, something I should have done eons ago. But what we do for a living and our actual living are two different things. And no matter how you bust the little cookie, the fact is that I am a Jew.



Just when I think everything is good, and I can be some sensationalized pop culture icon of some sort, the humbling occurs, and that little voice comes up that says, "Where are you?"



And there we were, the raggedly lot of us, mostly broke, or poor, but still observant Jews, and we would show up on Saturday morning with Harry, and still to this day, that remains some of the better ways I've ever spent a Shabbat morning.



My wife is patient. She knows something is up with me as of late, with the beard growing, and interest in Hebrew again, as well as constant reading and study of Rashi. She also loves me deeply for the way that I am, and how I treat her. Well, you can thank Harry and Judaism for that. Harry, for taking the time to help me convert when I was about the only Jew (or wannabe, at the time) on Fort Richardson, and the Talmud took care of the rest.



Now, I have three sons. It's a given that they will learn a lot from watching me, just as I learned a lot from my own father. My question is simply what they will learn, and is it what I want them to know. Being a father is certainly more than passing a genetic code down the line. There are traditions, and quite a bit of hard work involved, and to pretend that it's simple or that I can leave them to their own devices would be utterly foolhardy.



As far as my wife, if there was any other woman I could find on Earth that deserved the goodness possible of anything I could hope to become, I can't think of one. There is also no other person I could trust more, flaws and all. I have a better Proverbs 31 wife than any shadchan could ever throw at me.



So I guess this thing is all about where I'm at, and where I'm going, and as usual, a bunch of nice breadcrumbs to mark my way.









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