Author Archives: Hara Person

by | July 17, 2015 · 2:07 pm

Some Good (Audio) Books – Summer 2015 Edition

I’ve been doing a lot of long distance driving lately. It’s not my favorite activity, and I’ve been getting bored of the usual music and podcast combo that generally keeps me engaged enough to get where I’m going. So I decided to try a new method and listen to some books I wouldn’t actually take the time to read. Memoirs sounded like the perfect fit.

I would normally argue that there’s no difference between a book you read and a book you listen to, but five audiobooks later I’m changing my tune.  Just like ebooks allow for certain capabilities not possible in a printed book (i.e. embedded links or, yes, audio), the same is true for an audiobook.  Done well, and in particular when read by the writer, an audiobook can provide a unique experience.

I decided to go with memoirs because I love stories about people – what makes them tick, what made them who they are, what they care about, why they care about it, how they become who they are. There’s always something to learn from hearing someone reflect back on their life. And what a bunch I chose – two actor/comedians, one writer, another actor, and one singer-songwriter. All famous people with public personas.  Listening to their stories of self was like being intimately immersed in these five very different people, or at least, the parts of their stories that they chose to share publicly.

So here is a review of my recent reading, or, well, listening, experiences.

Bossypants by Tina Fey

51xednLHwiL._SL150_This book has interested me for a while, but truthfully, never enough to make me actually want to take the time to read it. But listening to it while driving to western Pennsylvania and back was definitely a worthwhile experience. We all know Tina Fey is wickedly funny and smart. Bossypants showed off both these part of Fey, and filled in a lot of her background along the way – how she got to be the Tina Fey we know and love. She shares some information about her formative years, and talks about the experiences that have mattered to her. There’s some delicious behind-the-scenes discussion about her time at SNL and 30 Rock. Her descriptions of the ways that sketches got created, and what she and her colleagues found to be funny and why offered great insights into comedy. The best was when she discussed the experience of creating her version of Sarah Palin. Other moments are poignant, like when she talks about being a mother, or passionate like when she talks about being a woman in comedy, or complex, like when she talks about body image issues. Her intelligence and drive to succeed shine strongly through her narrative. The best part though is that she narrates the audiobook herself, and, you know, she’s  Tina Fey. When you listen to this audiobook you get 5 hours and 35 solid minutes of Tina Fey talking to you. What could possibly be wrong with that?

Yes Please by Amy Poehler

512QYi8RoLL._SL150_Naturally, after listening to Tina Fey recount her adventures at Second City and then SNL, the next audiobook choice had to be her friend and colleague, Amy Poehler.  Yes Please, thankfully narrated by Poehler herself, was definitely the perfect companion book. Poehler lets loose a little more than Fey does, inviting guest speakers to read and talk as part of the audiobook experience, and being, at times, not entirely diplomatic about her opinions (and that is not criticism – bring it on!). Her parents have a few cameo appearances, as does Seth Meyers and a few others. She really had fun with the concept of doing an audiobook and it was appreciated by this listener. It was fun to hear another perspective on some of the same events that Fey narrated in her book. Again, as in Bossypants, I really enjoyed hear Poehler talk about being a woman in comedy – with lessons easily applicable to other fields – and what got her to where she is today. She talked about her childhood and family, about her marriage and her children, letting us listeners in just enough to make us relate to her and to care.  It’s hard to imagine that this loosely stitched together collection of often wonderfully irreverent anecdotes would have held up well as a regular book, but in audio format it was a great way to get across a bunch of highways in upstate NY and back home again.

The Seven Good Years by Etgar Keret

41z0LNwINUL._SL300_I was sure this one was going to be a home run. Keret is a great writer, and how exciting to get to learn more about Keret the person. And it is indeed a great book qua book – audio or not. Keret’s signature quirky humor is in evidence, and it’s even more powerful when he’s writing about his own life and not just a fictional one. In his typical terse style he shares glimpses of his childhood, his teenage years, his marriage, his son, his parents, and his career.  He is the child of Holocaust survivors, a fact which greatly shaped who he is, and a cynical, conflicted Jewish Israeli who both loves his country and struggles with its legacy. The slices of his life that he shares may be framed in short chapters, but they are dense in their complex mix of the mundane and the profound.  This memoir seems like a great collection of short stories until you remember that he’s actually talking about his own life. The only disappointment, and it is a significant one in an audiobook, is that Keret did not narrate the book himself.  That may be too much to expect given that it’s a translation, but the narrator was not properly prepped in Hebrew pronunciation. Each place name or expression that he mangled was a jarring disruption in an otherwise captivating story.  This is a powerful memoir, but given the narration should probably be best experienced as a good old regular read and not as an audiobook.

Not My Father’s Son: A Memoir by Alan Cumming

51jAVEiZFEL._SL300_This gets top marks in this batch of books.  It is, first of all, a seriously good memoir. Though it could have used a little editing (sorry, I can’t help it) it is a compelling story and wonderfully told. This isn’t just a “how I became the great and famous me” kind of narrative. Instead, using a construct of “then” and “now” episodes, he contrasts events in his childhood with an ongoing story in his adult life, both of which revolve around his sense of self and identity. The bonus is that Cumming narrates the book himself and oh – that voice!  That accent! He’s a fine actor and he knows how to use his voice to great affect to tell his story.  And what a story.  There are two mysteries at the heart of this book, one about himself in relationship to his abusive father, and one about his elusive and absent grandfather. The two parallel tracks work together beautifully, so that at times it was possible to forget that this was the story of a famous actor and to just experience a compelling tale of love and abuse, acceptance and anger, coming of age, and coming into one’s own.

A Natural Woman: A Memoir by Carole King

51s1b3hLFNL._SL300_I am a huge fan of Carole King. I was raised on her music by my parents who identified with her scrappy Brooklyn, Jewish background. She even went to the same high school as my father. I have all her albums, including “Really Rosie,” and loved the broadway show based on her life story. But the book is disappointing. Her story itself is interesting, as in “nice Jewish girl makes good” and her experience in the music industry, especially in the early years of rock and roll, is fascinating.  There are some great details along the way, like the fact that she was a freshman at Queens College with two other Jewish kids who also liked to sing named Artie Garfunkel and Paul Simon. She certainly had admirable amounts of pluck, chutzpah, and self-confidence that got her far.  And to be fair, the story she tells isn’t all one of happiness and success – she is open about some of the painful details of her life.  But Beautiful is in serious need of a strong editorial hand, or a better ghost writer. It is cliched and way too long, and even the interesting parts are so poorly written that they come out sounding trite. And as much as I love King’s singing voice – and there are some highlight moments throughout where she breaks into song by way of illustration – this is one case where the author does no favor to the listener by narrating her own story.

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by | July 3, 2015 · 5:58 pm

Another Kind of Normal: A Personal Reflection on the Marriage Equality Ruling

Larry and BrianOne of the first things I did after getting the New York Times text alert about the Supreme Court Marriage Equality decision was to call my cousin Larry. It was an instinctive reaction. No matter that I was navigating my way to Newark Airport to make a flight, and that I had to call work to launch our prepared response to the ruling – my first thought was to call Larry.

In 1980, when I was a senior in high school and he was a sophomore in college, Larry and his family were visiting me and my family in St. Petersburg, Florida over Christmas break.  We went out to a bar one night (I was only 16 but the drinking age then was 18, not 21, so whatever…). It was a memorable night. We sat at the top of a hotel on the beach in a weird revolving bar. Car lights twinkled below us as the bar moved on its axis. And Larry came out to me.

I don’t remember his words, but I remember their power. I remember feeling honored that he had told me, like he had just entrusted me with a fragile piece of himself. I remember hearing the pain in his telling. And I remember thinking that whatever his actual words were, he had essentially asked me to be on his team for whatever lay ahead. Neither one of us yet had the language for this in 1980, but later I would come to understand that he had asked me to be an ally.

I was sixteen at the time but he was not the first person to have come out to me, and he would not be the last.  The first time had happened months before when a beautiful boy I met in a summer program confessed that he actually just wanted to be friends, because he really preferred boys to girls.  My heart was broken for a day or two but healed quickly, and a close friendship developed.

In the hyper-liberal part of Brooklyn where I had been raised, homosexuality was a visible part of the landscape. Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill, the neighborhoods of my childhood, were havens for writers and those seeking sexual freedom from the 1930’s on, and the intertwined literary and gay histories were still in evidence during the gentrifying 1970’s in which I grew up.  (Fun fact: Thomas Wolfe wrote “Only the Dead Know Brooklyn” while living on my childhood block in 1935).

Growing up in my house, in that neighborhood, gay was just another kind of normal. My pediatrician was gay. One of my friends had two moms (even though it did admittedly take me a while to figure that one out – at age 5 I didn’t understand why the mommy and her friend shared a bed). My parent’s next door neighbors, on their block of restored 19th century carriage houses, were a gay couple who regularly came over for dinner with my parents.  The couple whose backyard was opposite my parents were also a gay couple, one of whom came over sometimes in the evening to give us all haircuts.  A number of the teachers in my school were gay, including one of my favorite teachers who I once ran into and had a friendly chat with as he was leaving a gay bar in the West Village. For the sake of history I would like to think it was Stonewall – it was definitely on that block – but that particular detail might just be too good to be true.  In any case, all of this is to say that in my albeit unusual Brooklyn childhood, gay wasn’t “other” – gay was my neighbors, my doctor, my teachers, my friend’s parents, my cousin, my friends.

When I was asked, years later, to step in at the last minute as rabbi in Fire Island Pines for the high holy days, a primarily gay community, it felt like home. Creating a life filled with people of different sexual identities has just been the way it is, a comfortable way to live.  Being an advocate for gay rights has always felt natural and right, the honorable, ethical thing to do. As a Jew and as a rabbi, it has felt like a moral imperative and like the living out of my Jewish values of according dignity to all, and the deep belief that all are created in the image of God.

None of this is to say that I’ve always gotten it quite right. There’s been lots of learning along the way.   But I have always tried to show up in ways that matter in both my personal and professional lives.

As a rabbi this has meant marrying gay couples well before it was legal, or enabling the legal marriage of a couple who had already been together for 42 years, or changing language in liturgical and ritual publications to create inclusivity and healing, or making sure that illustrations in books for children depict a wide range of types of families, or being part of a group attending a death so that a beloved gay elder did not pass out of this world alone.

And when New York State legalized gay marriage and Larry asked me to officiate at his wedding to the most wonderful man several years ago, I could not have been more happy and overwhelmed with emotion.

Yes, I know that the fight for LGBTQ rights is not over just because the Supreme Court has legalized marriage equality. My young adult children have challenged me about my excitement over the ruling, arguing that we shouldn’t be so excited because there’s still so much work to do. They’re right that there is certainly much work left to do to bring about full equality, and much hate, fear, and discrimination still to overcome. The rainbowizing of Facebook profile pictures by tens of millions, both gay and straight, doesn’t mean the battle is over.  All of this is true.  But this is an amazing moment, a formerly incomprehensible achievement.  It may have seemed inevitable to those born into an era in which every tv show seems to have at least one gay character and tumblrs exist of cute same-sex prom photos, but this moment was unimaginable thirty-five years ago when Larry came out to me. It was unimaginable twenty-five years ago, and perhaps even ten years ago.  Massachusetts, the first state to do so, only legalized marriage in 2004.  It’s ok to pause, take a deep breath, and appreciate how far we’ve come before we get back to work.

IMG_1894In a text last Friday morning, a little while after learning about the Supreme Court decision, Larry and I remembered that night years ago in that weird bar on St. Pete Beach. I asked him: Imagine if someone had told our teenage selves that someday I would legally officiate at your legal wedding to your wonderful legal husband, under a chuppah, with your friends and family in attendance. We could not have comprehended that reality in 1980. But how much pain would that knowledge have wiped away? How much doubt, how much shame, how much self-destructive behavior, for so many? It is truly incredible how much change has happened just in the course of our adulthoods.

Because of my parents’ example of acceptance and openness, because of the school I went to and the neighborhood in which I grew up, because of the people I was lucky enough to meet in high school and college and on into adulthood, gayness has always been woven into the fabric of my life as another kind of normal. Because of the Jewish community I grew up in, and the rabbinate that I’m a part of, acceptance, tolerance, and equality have been framed as core sacred values, ideals of holiness. And now, with this victory, hopefully that will begin to be true everywhere, for everyone. We know that there are still rights to be fought for and minds to be changed.  But with this Supreme Court decision we have taken a huge leap forward into a new normal, not just for those of us who grew up in the rarified air of 1970’s liberal Brooklyn, and not just within the ethical framework of Reform Judaism, but all over this country, in states blue and red, in homes of every faith, stripe, and color of the rainbow.

 

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by | June 7, 2015 · 3:17 pm

Good Books: Summer 2015 Edition

Summer is here and it’s time to read.  Here’s a round up of some recent good books, mostly fiction and, as an added bonus, one memoir. None are exactly beach novels, but they’re all worth a read. Enjoy!

Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rivka Brunt
UnknownThis novel is at the top of this list for a reason. It is a coming-of-age story about a fourteen year old, June, who has a very special relationship with her gay uncle. The story takes place in the mid-80’s and her uncle Finn, a famous painter, is dying of AIDS.  When Finn dies and she begins to grieve her loss, family secrets begin to shake loose. In the process, she develops secrets of her own, including a growing friendship with Finn’s hidden boyfriend, Toby, who her family labels as a murderer for infecting Finn with AIDS.  The many strands to this tale are interwoven beautifully as June deals with the loss of Finn, her strained relationship with her older sister Greta, her feelings of both anger and love for Toby, and all the attendant struggles of growing up.  The depiction of how AIDS was viewed in the 80’s rings all too true.  There is also an interesting and wonderful Oscar Wilde-like strand of this novel which involves a portrait that Finn has painted of June and Greta.  The painting is the linchpin upon which the whole story hangs, as it too develops and changes along with June and Greta.  Brunt’s homage to Dorian Gray is an outstanding element in this smart, tender, and moving novel.

The Virgin Cure by Ami McKay 

Unknown-1A girl named Moth is at the center of this work of historical fiction. Called Moth by a now-absent father and raised by a Gypsy fortune-telling mother on New York’s Lower East Side during the post-Civil War era, she is born into a life of extreme poverty and want.  One day she is sold into servitude by her mother and taken to work uptown for a wealthy but cruel woman. Moth is the kind of plucky heroine that these types of books needs to stay interesting, and she is indeed wily and resourceful. She soon finds herself in training to become a prostitute, at a time when syphilis is ravaging New York City and men of means are on the prowl for young girls who can provide them with the “virgin cure”.  Moth grows up quickly as she figures out what she needs to do to survive, and without providing any spoilers, survive she does.  McKay has done a good bit of research about this era, and her insights into life on the Lower East Side, women’s lives, women’s healthcare, and some historical figures, especially a female physician committed to women’s health, make this a worthwhile read. The fact that this physician is based on McKay’s actual great-great-grandmother adds a little extra flavor to this dish that, while tasty, could use a little more depth.

After Birth by Elisa Albert 

Unknown-2Where to start with this one? For one, if you are a woman and aren’t sure if you want to have a child, don’t read this novel yet. But if you have had a child, or are the partner of someone who has birthed, absolutely read this book. It would be easy to say that this is book is about postpartum depression but it’s so much more than that.  The protagonist at the center of this searing depiction of birth and early motherhood is Ari, who is an isolated, lonely, and depressed new mother.  She lives in Vermont with her husband, an academic, where she has few acquaintances and essentially no friends. She loves her son, Walker, but feels horribly alone in the post-birthing experience. Albert is brutal in her condemnation of the medicalization of birth, the way in which modern medicine disempowers women and disconnects them from their own bodies, and how Western society has disabled the tradition of women mothering one another through the transitions of birthing, breast-feeding, and child raising. One of Ari’s contentions is that c-sections are a form of rape perpetrated upon women by the medical establishment.  As a two-time c-section birther, and even though I know that way more c-sections are performed than are medically necessary, some of this felt uncomfortable and even extreme. But that is part of the power of this difficult novel. Albert has masterfully written a character who is not “nice,” who does not conform to societal expectations, who is angry and grieving and far from the soft-focus stock image of new motherhood. Her body is unfamiliar, her scar throbs, and her breasts have taken on a life of their own. (Those particular depictions are oh so resonant!). Having had the experience of birthing taken out of her power, she feels out of control and can’t find a way back to ownership of her body or of her life.  No one understands her and what she’s going through, not even her husband. She is desperately alone and the idea of ending her life is never far from her mind. And then she makes a friend, another new mother, who is surprisingly in worse shape than she is.  Through that friendship, and that friend’s new baby, she regains some control and comes back from the edge.

The Gods of Heavenly Punishment by Jennifer Cody Epstein
Unknown-3Cody Epstein knows how to tell a good story. Her characters are always richly drawn and fully realized, and the situations into which she places them are always well researched and ring true.  This novel is no exception. Told from several different perspectives and spanning several generations, this an epic story of the war in the Pacific during World War II.  The main character is a young Japanese girl, Yoshi, who life is radically changed when American bombers rain napalm down on her city.  The other strands of this story all connect through Yoshi but stand on their own as part of the legacy of destruction and pain caused by war, including Cam, the pilot of one of the American bomber planes, Anton, an architect who is caught up in the war despite himself, and Billy, who is posted in Japan following the war.  It is Yoshi who connects all the other characters and perspectives in this compelling tale of war, loss, secrets, and identity. The details of each character’s outer and inner lives are wonderfully drawn and pull you right in – this could definitely one of those books you can’t put down until it’s way, way after lights out.

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman 

Unknown-5This book sat on my reading list for a long time before I finally dove in and read it. I’m so glad I did. This novel takes place in Rome, and involves the private lives of reporters and editors at an English language newspaper on the verge of extinction. Each of the characters, from the editor in chief to the obituary writer, to a stringer in Cairo is a tale unto themselves. They are struggling to keep the paper afloat as the world of publishing changes swiftly around them, and as control of the paper shifts to a new publisher. The details about each person’s life seems just right, with enough provided to bring each one fully to life. There are unexpected twists, a good dose of snark, and great insights into the relationships they have with each other. Humor is mixed in with sadness, cynicism fights with idealism, and despair and anxiety are laced with hope.  This novel is robust and vivid, artfully drawn against the romantic backdrop of Rome and full of all the attendant elements related to news paper publishing in the 21st century. This was a deeply satisfying read.

All Who Go Do Not Return by Shulem Deen

Unknown-4There has been a spate of memoirs over the last few years by people who have left the world of Hasidism. I admit to having a mild and inexplicable obsession with these memoirs, and yes, I’m sure there is something voyeuristic to my interest in them. But this memoir by Deen is different. Deen, who had been part of the world of the New Square Skverers, left as an adult in his mid-thirties, not his early twenties as others have done. This is not a vivid expose of sexual misdeeds or brutality (though there are some disturbing depictions of corporal punishment in educational settings).  There are depictions of faith-based violence and vigilante behavior, but while Deen comes to oppose this and see it as a very negative form of behavioral control, he also writes honestly of having been part of it at one point. This is all to say that he has not written a black and white, me versus them kind of memoir.  He also clearly want to protect certain relationships he has with people in the Hasidic world, and so he stays away, for the most part, from the kind of salacious details which might most interest outsiders already prone to be critical of the Hasidic world.  This is not to say that he shows fondness for the world he left – he is very critical of their brand of thought control, the substandard education provided within the community, and the ways in which they subvert the legal system. As an outsider who has read a lot on this topic, it is still shocking for me to learn (or have confirmed) that most adults in the community can barely read or write in English, and have no math skills – this is part of the way in which the community “protects” its members from the outside world, or isolates them and disables them from participating in that world.  He is critical too of the ways in which poverty is built into their way of life, again “protecting” them from the outside world. But there is a great deal of nuance and struggle here, along with deep pain. He is not, for the most part, writing about the world which he chose for himself for some period of time, but rather about his very deep struggle to make sense of meaning and faith within a world in which questions were discouraged and the rebbe had ultimate power over every aspect of life.  This is a tale of his own rebellion against that power, and his long journey to gain knowledge and free his mind.  He writes beautifully about his thirst for education, his dangerous questions about belief, his passion for ideas, and his need to find a supportive community. Though his choices caused him a great deal of pain, especially in regard to his children, this memoir is a testament to the need to fight for one’s own truth in the face of extreme pressure to conform to destructive communal norms.

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by | April 1, 2015 · 2:42 pm

The Meat Compromise, and a Recipe for Vegetarian “Chopped Liver”

Shishlik in tahini-pomegranate sauce

Shishlik in tahini-pomegranate sauce

We all make compromises for those we love.

I have been a non-meat-eater since 1981. Though I confess to eating my mother’s chicken broth once a year at her seder, aside from that I have not eaten meat or chicken since I was a senior in high school.

I once thought that I would have an idyllic vegetarian household, with sweet little vegetarian children who gladly ate tofu hot dogs, beans and rice, mac and cheese, and loads of spinach. Needless to say, it didn’t turn out quite like that. My children were both lactose intolerant, and as young kids they were averse to beans (other than humus) and green vegetables. And by the way, my spouse was allergic to soy, which further complicated dinner time.

At first I bought prepared or easy-to-prepare meat things from our food coop – organic chicken nuggets, all natural beef hot dogs, and so on.  And we ate fish, a lot of fish, because in truth I am actually a conflicted pescatarian.

Apple and honey chicken on Rosh HaShanah

Apple and honey chicken on Rosh HaShanah

But my children got bigger and they needed more than chicken nuggets and hot dogs. I started to cook meat. Several nights a week. Chicken breasts with apricot coconut sauce, or garlic-soy-ginger, chicken thighs shwarma-style, chicken and broccoli stir fries, grilled turkey breasts, sweet and sour meat balls, meatloaves (Asian-style or standard American). The less I had to touch it and deal with it, the better, so I still have never cooked a whole chicken.  But I hear that my meat meals are pretty good.  Over the years I developed some recipes that sounded good and were relatively easy for a working mom to manage.

I don’t like meat and I still do believe that the world would be a better place without the killing of animals and the eating of meat. But people I love eat meat. That’s just reality. So I compromise, and I’ve learned to cook meat. It’s not that we eat it all the time, but I do cook it sometimes, and they do eat it.

And then there’s Passover. Early on I decided to make it a meat meal. It didn’t seem right without meat. I know that sounds weird for a non-meat eater, but there it is. How could it be Passover without brisket or chopped liver, without chicken soup, without those emotional connections to Passovers past? And because I keep kosher, it couldn’t be both meat and dairy. So meat it was.

Passover brisket on its way into the oven

Passover brisket on its way into the oven

So these days my seder includes a brisket, which I now make myself after years of relying on my mother. And roasted turkey breasts, which required slightly more touching of meat than I’d like but is still better than a whole turkey or chicken. And my mother’s chopped liver.

That’s where I draw the line. Some of the people around the table love chopped liver. It’s the only time all year they eat it, and they look forward to it. So ok, they can have it as long as I don’t have to make it. There’s only so far I can go with compromising my personal comfort level to make the people I love happy.  So that’s my mother’s contribution to my seder – her homemade chopped liver. As for me, I make an amazing vegetarian “chopped liver” that many of the meat eaters love.  (One caveat – it’s made with kitniyot. So join the Kitniyot Liberation Front and enjoy it. If you don’t know what I’m talking about it, read up but feel free to eat legumes on Passover, it’s really ok.)

As for those sweet vegetarian kids I was going to raise – well, they’re both pretty serious carnivores. But they’re still very sweet and they do eat spinach, as well as kale and lots of other healthy vegetables.

Vegetarian Chopped Liver 

1 cup carmelized or sautéed onions

1 10 oz bag frozen string beans, defrosted

1 cup cashews nuts

Salt and lemon juice to taste

Toast the cashews so that they’re lightly brown.

Place onions, string beans, and cashews in the food processor.  Blend it all together.  Add salt and lemon juice to taste.  That’s it!  (I always triple the recipe and we eat it all week).

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by | March 29, 2015 · 5:24 pm

Tradition and Change, and a Recipe for Tri-Color Gefilte Fish Terrine

IMG_2916My mother emailed me yesterday, nostalgic about Passovers past. She had opened a cookbook to begin her prep, and in it found a recipe card written in my grandmother’s handwriting for Pesach mandelbrot.

I’ve always loved Passover but the truth is, with one exception, I don’t have memories of my grandmother’s cooking. That’s probably because she wasn’t a great cook. Far from the stereotypical Jewish grandmother, she was a professional woman who had little interest in homemaking. And though my mother is a great cook who makes terrific vegetarian tzimmes and a mean almond chocolate torte, what mostly stands out from childhood Passover memories is the pleasure of being together with my relatives, not really the food.

Very early into adulthood, I insisted on hosting one of the two seder nights at my house. As I created a family of my own, seder became a significant part of our identity, something we all look forward to every year. And yet, though I had the memory of family togetherness and fun to hold on, I had very few actual food memories.

My challenge was to create my family’s Passover food traditions from scratch, based on cookbooks, stories, and Jewish history.  Living in Israel for several years had introduced me to a much wider spectrum of Jewish cooking than what I’d experienced growing up, and on a holiday so focused on our history as a people and our years of wanderings, it seems appropriate to incorporate that history into our food. Today our menu includes the kind of Ashkenazi Passover foods I grew up with, like tzimmes and potato kugel. But in addition, I’ve added other dishes that speak to different periods and places in Jewish history. I created a leek artichoke kugel in homage to the Jewish foods of Italy. This year I’m introducing a savory carrot kugel using baharat, a spice mix used by Jews from Turkey and Iran.  We have a Persian-inspired charoset in addition to the apple-based Ashkenazi style. And the last few years I’ve made a salmon dish with garlic and preserved lemon inspired by Jewish Moroccan cuisine.  I’m still working on a brisket recipe that uses pomegranate molasses rather than the ketchup flavoring that I grew up with – I made it for the first time last year and I forgot to write it down, so I’ll see if I can recreate it this year.

But back to the one exception about my grandmother’s cooking. My grandmother made delicious gefilte fish. That was her annual project. She would come up to New York, and we would trek out to Boro Park to get the fish ground just the way she liked it.  The year she kept forgetting if she had salted it, and it came out inedible, was the year we realized something was wrong. That was the last time she made it, and the last year she was able to sit at the table and enjoy the proceedings.

I’d love to say that I picked it up from there, but I didn’t. It’s been many years since I tasted my grandmother’s gefilte fish. Now we have something else entirely new in its place, a tricolor gefilte fish terrine that  I learned about from my sister.  It’s delicious, lighter and sweeter than my grandmothers and on the sweet side – a real crowd pleaser.  My grandmother – who preferred things salty and peppery – would have hated it.

Traditions change. My menu is very different than that of the seders of my childhood. And most of the regulars at our seder are friends, not family, since so few relatives live anywhere near us today. But the excitement about Passover is the same. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Passover is a major Jewish touchstone in my kids’ lives, even as though go out into the world. We can never fit as many people as we would like around our crowded table so they have to make difficult decisions every year about which friends to invite – the question of who is “Seder-worthy” looms large for them.

Even as Passover is about our history and our legacy, about the passing down of traditions and stories, it is also about ongoing change and evolution.  One of our favorite family traditions continues on, the annual miraculous visit of Elijah the Prophet, even though the mantle has now passed on to the third generation. Once the highlight of the seder was the Passover play that my children used to put on for the guests every year. Now, at 20 and 22, they (understandably) refuse to do so, though hopefully our tradition of paper bag dramatics will continue for a while still. As the children have gotten older, the conversations around the table have gotten more involved and deeper. There was the year that one them, in full teenage mode, delivered an articulate and well-reasoned soliloquy about why the divisions of the Four Children was offensive and wrong. In recent years we have related the issue of immigration to Passover.  Two years ago we had a special marriage equality reading. This year we are going to read and discuss the Four Children of Climate Change, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s feminist Passover Commentary, among other topics. And there’s of course the orange – a staple on our seder table for many years already at my daughter’s insistence.

My grandmother’s gefilte fish will not be on the menu, but her memory will be on our minds.  The tradition keeps changing. Even as we teach about who we were and where we came from, we face the future and keep moving forward.

IMG_4463Tri-color Gefilte Fish Terrine (with thanks to my sister who shared this with me years back)

1 loaf gefilte fish, defrosted

5 carrots, peeled and chopped

1 8-10 oz bag frozen spinach

Boil carrots until soft. Mash in large bowl

Defrost and drain spinach, place in a second large bowl

Divide fish into 4. Place one quarter in bowl with carrots, one quarter in bowl with spinach, and the rest in a third large bowl.

Mix fix and carrots until blended. Mix fish and spinach until blended.

Spray a loaf pan with vegetable spray. Line the bottom of the pan with wax paper and spray the paper. Line the side with wax paper and spray that as well.

Place carrot mixture on the bottom and spread evenly. Place plain fish mixture on top of that and spread evenly. Then spread spinach mix on top and spread evenly.

Spray the top with vegetable oil and place wax paper on top of that. Cover the whole loaf pan tightly with tin foil.  Bake at 350 for 1 hour.  Cool and then place in refrigerator until ready to serve.

Remove tin foil. Place serving plate over the pan, turn over and let it gently come out of the pan.  Peel off the wax paper and slice. Enjoy!

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by | February 15, 2015 · 7:32 pm

More Good Books – Winter 2015 Edition

The readers among us know that any excuse to stay in bed and read will do.  So snowpocalypse or just a regular old winter day, here are some thoughts and recommendations from my recent reading encounters. Get (or download) a stack of good books, and go hibernate with them until the snow melts and the crocuses start to poke up.

Nora Webster by Colm Toibin

Unknown-1This gorgeous novel is quietly deceptive. At first it feels small and timid, like Nora Webster herself, but little by little its power becomes apparent.  At the beginning, Nora Webster is a new widow in Ireland with two young sons still at home, and two older daughters off at school.  She is devastated by the loss of her husband, lost in her grief but determined to figure out a way to get through.  Each step she takes in the mourning process moves her farther along toward finding a new sense of self.  She finds her voice, literally as well as figuratively, speaking up in ways she never had before, taking up singing once again, and gaining the courage to make decisions on her own. But none of this description captures the pleasure of reading this thoughtful novel, which delights in the everyday mundanity that makes up a life and understands how the little pieces of a life are actually quite significant. This is not a fast-paced book; it is slow, deliberate, and finely crafted.

The Magician’s Land by Lev Grossman

UnknownAs a kid I devoured the Narnia books, along with the books of John Christopher (The White Mountains; City of Gold and Lead etc), and the Lloyd Alexander series The Chronicles of Prydain, to mention only a few of the series that fed my love of fantasy stories.  As a parent, I loved reading the Harry Potter books with my kids,  anything written by Diana Wynn Jones as well as countless other great fantasy series.  So when I discovered that Lev Grossman was writing a series of grown up fantasy books I was intrigued. And yes, I totally fell for the first one, The Magicians, and then again for the second, The Magician Kings.  How could I not love a fantasy series that begins in Brooklyn, featuring hyper-articulate nerdy high school kids, and goes to some very dark places while slyly making snarky, smart cultural references?  These books are the perfect grownup antidote to the longing for those childhood favorites.  They are about magic, yes, and like the Harry Potters books, they are about how magic exists in the real, familiar world and is experienced by real, everyday people. But they also have a secret, magical world, a not-Narnia that had been discovered earlier by a group of British brothers and sisters living without their parents and without much adult supervision in a big house in the English countryside (sound familiar?). And Grossman’s high school students wind up in a magic boarding school (sound familiar?) but they are cynical, not endearingly earnest like some of the other familiar characters; they grow up and deal with drugs, sex, alienation, disillusionment, and failure.  With a wink and a nod, Grossman has repurposed different elements from favorite fantasy books into this series. He’s clever and manages to pay homage without being simply derivative.  But there is one motif that runs through the trilogy which reveals that there is indeed some earnestness behind the snark, and that is about the importance of books and storytelling.  This ongoing theme is charming and sweet, and Grossman smartly finds ways to thread it throughout the narrative. Magician’s Land, the third in the series, is as great as the first two.  Though called a trilogy, I hope there will be many more of these. Actually, I need there to be more of these. That’s the way it is with a good fantasy series.

All the Light We Cannot See by Athony Doer

Unknown-2This book has gotten a lot of well-dererved attention, including being named a National Book Award Finalist.  Told from different perspectives, this beautifully poetic and yet ever-so slightly precious novel unfolds during and after World War II in Germany and in France.  The two main characters seem destined to exist in parallel story lines that will never converge, and yet fate brings them briefly together.  One is a blind girl in France whose devoted father, the keeper of keys at the Museum of Natural History in Paris, creates a detailed, miniature city for her so that she can learn her way around and become independent.  The other is a German orphan, a mechanical prodigy who gets swept up into the Nazi war machine.  Reminiscent of The Book Thief in a number of ways, this story reveals the ways in which the war impacted on and damaged the decent, everyday people, and particularly children, who could not get out of its way.

Some Luck by Jane Smiley

Unknown-3The first of an anticipated trilogy, this wonderful new novel by Smiley focuses on a farm family in Iowa. It is an epic, ambitious narrative that begins in 1920 and moves through three decades of transformation of American life one year at a time.  While remaining attached to their land and the farming life, change happens around the Langdon family.  The world continually shifts around them as droughts and wars, new economic realities and new technologies test the family’s resilience.  Meanwhile the life cycle continues to unfold with new marriages to celebrate, new babies to care for, and new deaths to mourn.  Children grow up and face new choices unimagined by their parents. Smiley’s ability to draw each character in this big, sprawling family as a fully developed personality with his or her own hopes, dreams, and challenges is remarkable.  She is a master story-teller who takes us through the lives and deaths, successes and failures of the Langdon family as they continue to adapt.  I look forward to the next two books with great anticipation.

Neverhome by Laird Hunt
UnknownInspired by real events but entirely fictionalized, this is a compelling tale of Ash Thompson, a bold young woman who goes off to fight in the Civil War in place in of her husband.  She goes because, as she puts it, one of them has to go, and she is better suited for the task than he is.  This story of a country at war with itself is both achingly beautiful and tragic. In part an odyssey of wandering, Ash leaves herself and all that is familiar behind to become a man and a soldier.  She journeys through a bloody country torn up by mistrust and hatred, trying to do her part despite the ever-deepending senselessness of war, so that she can return home.  Though the Civil War has birthed a great body of literature, the experiences of the women who fought, disguised as men, have been under-imagined. In this novel, Hunt gives voice to a complex character who must work to keep her identity a secret even as she fights, literally and emotionally, to survive the horrors of the war.  And she is truly a survivor, managing to get herself out of tricky situations and when possible, align herself with people who will help her, so that she eventually makes it back home to her husband and her farm, where yet more challenges await her.

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

Unknown-2I have been a fan of Sarah Waters’ for quite a while.  Her novel Fingersmith is beautiful and clever, with devious twists and turns that make it impossible to put down.  So too with Night Watch, and of course Tipping the Velvet,  with its erotic depiction of  lesbian identity and brilliant take on gender roles in Victorian England, was the book we all had to read when it first came out. So I have to admit to being very disappointed by her last two books.  The Paying Guest had promise, but it never developed into anything interesting.  Waters was on familiar ground, telling the story of an unfulfilled woman in post-World War I England who had given up her one great love out of shame and a sense of familial duty. When she and her mother decide to rent out part of their home to a young couple in the wake of her father’s death and their altered economic status, she is drawn to the wife and they quickly develop a rich, complicated relationship.  The plot had potential to be rich in surprises and manipulations, but instead what unfolded was a fairly predictable story of love gone wrong. I kept waiting for the surprises, but they never came.

The Henna House by Nomi Eve

Unknown-1In this new novel, Eve offers a fascinating look into the lives of  Yemenite Jews of the early to mid-twentieth century. The story centers around Adela Demari, a young girl at the beginning of the book.  Though Jewish life was becoming ever-more precarious at that time, Eve does a fine job depicting the longstanding rituals and customs of the Yemenite Jewish community, and particularly the lives of its women.  The women’s tradition of henna, which is described in beautiful, lyrical terms, is one of the threads that is woven throughout the book. At times the story feels timeless, almost like a folk tale.  On the one hand the community lives as it has for centuries, specializing in the crafts and professions that were allowed to the Jews. It is shocking then to realize that this story is unfolding not in some long-ago historical haze but in the twentieth century, in which the community lives under a cloud of war, modernization, and increasing anti-semitism.  With this rich setting, I had high hopes for this book, especially because I loved Eve’s first book, The Family Orchard.  But while Henna House tells a good story about interesting characters and offers a view of an intriguing slice of Jewish history, it lacks the complexity and fine writing of The Family Orchard.  The florid prose detracts from a powerful story that does not need the level of embellishment that it receives.

 

 

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by | November 23, 2014 · 2:13 pm

Leaning In, Leaning Out, and Just Managing to Stand Up: Notes from a Working Mother

Yoni birth photoIn less than a week I will no longer be the mother of teenagers. A major life phase will be over. Don’t worry – I know full well that I’ll still be doing plenty of parenting for many years to come. I’m sure my own mother would report that she still actively parents. But at least symbolically, it feels like the end of something and the start of a something new.

These kinds of transitional moments are always opportunities for looking back, and as it happens, a recent encounter provided a further push down reflection road.  I recently had the privilege of speaking to a group of rabbinic students. In the course of my presentation, ostensibly about my career path and wisdom gleaned along the way (what a funny thought!), a student asked a question that admittedly caught me off guard, and I’ve been thinking about it since then. It was a totally fair question – no criticism is implied other than self-criticism about how I fumbled an answer.

The question was (in my words, not the student’s): It seems that at first you leaned out, and then you leaned in. And then I was asked to address that.

So here goes.

When I was first making choices about my career, Lean In had not yet been written. There was no such expression then. But we did talk back then about the “mommy track” and I spent a lot of time in my last year of rabbinic school stressing about the idea that in making a choice based on my children’s needs, I was somehow making a choice that was “less than.” I remember actually (and to my great embarrassment) crying to my rabbinic mentor, and also to my work supervisor, because I couldnt figure out how I was going to make it all work.  Choosing to not go into congregational work felt like being all dressed up and nowhere to go – like I was somehow wasting my education and letting down the system.

The thing is, I had children before I had a career. I entered rabbinic school (placing out of the first year in Jerusalem and starting as a second year state-side)  with a one year old, and became pregnant with my second child in my second semester. So all of my career decisions have centered around the basic fact of being a parent.

When my classmates in rabbinic school were heading out at the end of the school day to internships, I was heading to the babysitter to pick up my kids. My summers in school weren’t spent doing valuable residency internships or CPE training – I was taking care of toddlers who were too young for day camp.

I have always been a working mother; I was a temple educator when my first baby was born.  My first separation from her happened when I went in to work during maternity leave to run teacher orientation – she was ten days old.  It was a tough balancing act from the start.

I chose non-congregational work when I was ordained because my children were, at that time, very young. I didn’t want a job that would keep me away from them on weekends and evenings, and where every phone call could be a possible funeral or congregational crisis. But I never chose to not work.

I never chose to not work partly because I always wanted to work – I wanted to contribute to the world and I wanted to use my skills and education in interesting and stimulating ways. Yes, I know that a lot of stay-at-home moms feel that they do that by raising their children. But I knew that that would not be true for me. Moreover, I wanted to share the responsibility of supporting my family financially. I did not want to be financially dependent on a man. And honestly, I couldn’t afford not to work. When I was ordained, my husband was just starting graduate school himself. There was actually no way I couldn’t work.

image1-4Yes, I was often jealous of the stay-at-home moms who could socialize with each other during afternoon playdates. I worried that I didn’t go to enough mommy-and-me classes with my children, and that I wasn’t around to go to the park. But I found the best balance I could – working two days a week at home for the first few years, being willing to work often crazy hours and take on an increasingly taxing travel schedule at times so that I could be present for school plays and teacher meetings and basketball games at other times.

Early on, I formulated a personal give-and-take policy about work, not one for which I sought approval, but one that helped me make it all work. As the job that I initially took because I thought it would provide a good work-life balance began to expand and become huge and insatiably demanding, I made a decision that I would give it my all, but that I would also take what I needed. That is, if I was required to be away for travel and when home, to get back on the computer at night once my kids were in bed, that was ok, but when I had a sick child at home or needed to be present for a visit to the orthodontist or a class presentation, I would not apologize for taking the time I needed for my children. Once they were old enough, I also occasionally took them with me to conferences – if I was required to be away from my family over a weekend, or over a school break, which was often the case, then they could come. They got to ride a mechanical bull at a CCAR conference in Houston during a spring break, they got to throw themselves against a velcro wall at a NATE conference in Kansas City during a winter break, and they helped set up book displays at countless CAJE conferences during summer breaks.

Which is all to say that I don’t think I ever “leaned out.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that choice, but I don’t think that’s a helpful or accurate way to describe the reality of balancing parenting and career. What I did do, in those early years, was find a way to just simply stand up and not collapse. That is, my need and desire to work were in conflict with my need and desire to be a good parent. I found the best imperfect solution possible, one that allowed the insanity of being a working parent to whirl forward.

There was no one magical moment where I suddenly switched from “leaning out” to “leaning in.” My job grew and grew, and then I eventually took a different job that continues to grow, and I continue to love what I do and feel challenged and fulfilled by it. And at the same time, my children grew and grew and their needs and schedules continued to change. Of course there were challenges along the way. Of course there were moments of guilt, and worry. Of course there were moments of realizing the balance was way off, and then recalibrating. Of course there were compromises, some satisfying and some utterly not so, and attendant feelings of frustration or inadequacy. It was never a perfect balance, but it worked. All the various pieces in the constellation of my life somehow held up.

IMG_4847Along the way, the landscape shifted. A year ago my youngest left for college, and this past May my oldest graduated from college and is now herself a member of the work force. So this feels like a moment to both look back and look ahead. From the start of my career, I jumped in with both feet. I was fully committed to my job and its overall mission, even as I was committed to my children. It was never a matter of leaning in or leaning out. Making a career choice based on being a parent is not about leaning out, it’s about finding a workable solution. It doesn’t mean not being fully committed to one’s job, or not being ambitious or driven, it just means that you’re trying to find a healthy balance.

So as someone who is transitioning out of the “working mother” phase, I suggest that we talk about the real underlying issues about women and work, like childcare, equal opportunities, and equal pay. The false polarity between “leaning out” and “leaning in” is one more way that our society expresses its ambivalence about working mothers. It’s one more way that we judge each other. It’s one more way that we hold women to a different standard than men. I just did what I had to do to make it all keep spinning.

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by | October 26, 2014 · 2:58 pm

Good Books, Fall 2014 Edition Part 1

In the last few years I’ve tried to read through the Man Booker Shortlist before the winner is announced. This year I managed to read four out of the six of the shortlisted titles – not bad given the timing – and one longlisted title as well.  Turns out that one of the four I read was the winner so that worked out well. The titles below are from the Man Booker lists.

Now that the days are getting shorter and the nights are colder, it’s time to get in bed with a good book  or better, a bunch of good books.  Here are some very worthwhile recommendations.

17905709-1The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

This is probably not a book I would have chosen to read, had it not been on the Man Booker shortlist. It would have been a loss to miss this one. The easy way to describe this book is to say that it’s about the experience of an Australian doctor as a POW during World War II, held captive by the Japanese in what was then Siam, forced to work on building a railroad. But the book is much more than that. It is really about a full life of a man, a life shaped in large part by the POW experience but also shaped by the love of a woman he meets as a young man, by a love of books and words, and by a lifelong sense of yearning. It is about how history is both experienced and retold, and about death and loss and the striving for connection, and about what gets remembered and what forgotten after the horror of war is in the past. Though the main focus is on one man, the sweep of this novel is enormous. Flanagan masterfully blends the arc a single man’s life with that of world history. When I heard that this was the title that won this year’s Man Booker Prize, I was not surprised.

The Lives of Others, Neel Mukherjee

23216120The Lives of Others, Neel MukherjeeIt was hard to read this without comparing it to one of last year’s Man Booker shortlist titles, The Lowland by Jumpa Lahiri. Both novels deal with political and social unrest in India and the resultant unraveling of families.   The novels are very different otherwise, and yet the ghost of Lowland loomed over my reading of The Lives of Others, which suffered by comparison. That said, this is a rich feast of a novel. One of the wonderful aspects of this novel is the role of the house in which the Ghosh family lives. The house is a full character in this already full (and sometimes confusingly so) tale of a family in a downward spiral of wealth and its accompanying status. Several generations live within the house, though their physical proximity does not mean that they share experiences and outlooks. As the story progresses, the house, once solid, protective, and admired, becomes shabby and perilous. As the world changes around it, the fissures in the Ghosh family are exposed to the light, and the consequences are shattering.

To Rise Again as a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris

18453074Where to begin with this strange book? It was funny, odd, annoying, and in the end, surprisingly satisfying. The protaginist of this Philip Roth-like novel is a somewhat anti-social dentist named Paul O’Rourke who is at odds with the world most of the time. Though devoted to the art of dentistry and seemingly good at what he does professionally, he doesn’t quite get the art of social interaction, especially with women. He has an obsession with Judaism yet always manages to say exactly the wrong thing. The interactions with his office staff are at times amusing, but also annoyingly, even if intentionally so, misogynistic. The story centers around some skillful identity theft in which Paul is stalked by a cleverly weird and oppressed group that tries to convince him that he is one of them – a group based on the idea of being doubters. The texts that are used in developing the history of this group are very well done and sound almost just right as Biblical text, and yet clearly aren’t – that aspect alone made it a worthwhile read, as does the unfolding of the history of this group and Paul’s connection to it.

The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt

18143974Though this was a longlist title and therefore not part of my self-propelled assignment, it sounded too compelling to pass up. Though at times somewhat convoluted, this is an astounding feat of concept and imagination. Hustvedt’s character is an artist whose more famous husband, a gallery owner and art collector with an interesting private life, has died. Feeling that her identity as an artist had not been taken seriously by a world that recognized her as a “wife of” and “mother of,” she buys a building in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and sets out to devote herself to art. Her nurturing instincts cause her to take in some strays even as she tries to intentionally be more selfish and focus on her own art. She comes up with the concept of choosing a series of three male artists who will be her “masks” in the art world, presenting her work as theirs in a grand experiment to see how her work is received if thought of as created by a man. One of the remarkable things about this novel is the creation by Hustvedt of a whole imaginary body of work by the main character – work that feels wholly real and visible, and extremely female. The telling of this tale unfolds in a series of narratives from different perspectives, as well as newspaper articles, journal essays, and interviews. Hustvedt herself plays a cameo role, being mentioned in one of the essays. The gentle lampooning of over-inflated art world egos, theory, and language is employed to wonderful effect. The Blazing World raises many important questions about women, art-making, fame, disappointment, anger, and love that stayed with me long after I finished this powerful novel.

PS: Over the summer, I reviewed a few novels, and among them was another of the Man Booker shortlist titles, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler.

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by | September 21, 2014 · 5:02 pm

A Story for Rosh HaShanah

IMG_2312

Once upon a time, in a little town very far away from here, there were two neighbors. Let’s call one Shmulik, and the other Yossel. It’s hard to know who started it or why, but for years the two had been locked into battle. It wasn’t just that they didn’t like each other – they hated each other. They really had it in for each other.

If Shmulik had a good barley harvest, Yossel told the rest of the village that the barley was infested with rot and that they shouldn’t buy it from him. If Yossel had a good grape harvest, Shmulik told the villagers that the grapes were so acidic they were not worth tasting. When Shmulik tried to sell some of his acres of land so that he could provide a dowry for his oldest daughter, Yossel told people that the land was haunted by demons and that no one should live there. When Yossel’s ox fell on the side of the road and broke his leg, Shmulik told everyone in the market that it was because Yossel mistreated his animals.

Things got worse and worse between the two of them. The accusations flew back and forth, back and forth. The villagers didn’t know what to think. They didn’t know who was right and who was wrong and what was what with these two, and so more and more, not wanting trouble or bad luck, they just stayed away from them both.

Finally, one morning, just as Rosh HaShanah was approaching, Shmulik sat up in bed and said to his husband Chaim Yankel, “This craziness has to stop. I can’t go on. When I go to market, no one wants to talk to me any more. No one wants to buy from me, or sell to me. I don’t even remember why I’m so mad at Yossel, but when I see him, I just start to burn up.”

Chaim Yankel nodded. “It is time to stop,” he agreed. “But how will you do it?”

Shmulik shook his head. “I don’t know. But this can’t keep going. Every day I have a headache, I have a terrible rash, and my ulcer is acting up. I’m a nervous wreck. If this goes on any longer I won’t have any friends left, and we won’t have any more shekels to our name. Plus, the high holy days are coming. It’s time to put an end to this nonsense.”

“You know what you need to do,” said Chaim Yankel. And Shmulik nodded his head, for indeed he did. He got up out of bed, and headed to the rabbi’s house.

Shmulik explained the situation to the rabbi and poured out his heart. The rabbi nodded and paced back and forth, thinking. Finally, the rabbi got a ladder, climbed up and pulled down a big book from one of the highest shelves.

“Hmmm,” the rabbi murmured. “Ah, yes, here it is.” She looked up at Shmulik and smiled. “Our tradition teaches: If others speak ill of you, let the worst they say seem to you small. If you speak ill of others, let a small thing seem to you big (BT Derek Eretz Zutta 1:6). Do you understand, Shmulik?”

Shmulik thought about it. “Yes, I think so. Make little of the terrible things Yossel says about me, even though they hurt me. And take responsibility not to be someone who speaks badly of him in return.”

“Right.” The rabbi nodded. “Exactly. And then the text continues: Go apologize to the person of whom you have spoken ill. That is how the cycle will truly be broken.”

Shmulik shrugged. “But what if he doesn’t apologize to me?”

“You have no control over his behavior, only over your own. That is the point. He will do what he will do and so be it. But you do have control over your actions – make sure you do the right thing and do your part to put an end to this.”

“Ok,” Shmulik said. “I don’t think this will work, but I’m willing to give it a try.” And he started on his way home.

Meanwhile, in a different house in the village, Yossel too had woken up with the headache. He too had declared, this has to stop. This has gone too far! And he too set out to see the rabbi. But he took a different path, so that just as Shmulik had left the rabbi’s house, Yossel was approaching it from the other direction, and they did not see each other.

“Rabbi,” Yossel implored. “I need your help.” And he explained the situation at length.

The rabbi thought about it, and paced back and forth, and climbed onto the ladder to pull a big book off of a high shelf. She searched through the book and finally found what she was seeking. “Here it is,” she said. “The midrash teaches: If someone has received an injury, then, even if the wrongdoer has not asked forgiveness from the one who was wronged, the receiver of the injury must nevertheless ask God to show the wrongdoer compassion, even as Abraham prayed to God for Abimelech (Genesis 20:17) and Job prayed for his friends (Job 40:10).” The rabbi paused. “And then Rabbi Gamaliel said about this: Let this be a sign to you, that whenever you are compassionate, the Compassionate One will have compassion upon you (BT Baba Kamma, 9:29-30). Do you understand, Yossel?”

Yossel thought for a moment. “So I’m supposed to ask God to be compassionate toward Shmulik, regardless of how he’s treated me, and even if he hasn’t come to ask me for forgiveness?”

“Yes, exactly,” said the rabbi, smiling. “Though you should try to ask for forgiveness as well. That is how the cycle will truly be broken.”

So Yossel nodded and went on his way home.

Much to their great surprise, later that afternoon the two men found each other on the road between their two houses. Shmulik was carrying a chicken, and Yossel was carrying a basket of apples.

Yossel took one look at Shmulik and let out a shriek. “What have you done?!” he yelled. “You’ve brought me one of your sick chickens, to poison me and my family, is that it? Do you want to infect my whole flock? Are you crazy or just evil? Leave right now, and take your sick chicken with you!”

“And you!” Shmulik screamed. “What disease-ridden waste do you have hidden in that basket, what leftover that you couldn’t sell in the market and won’t even feed to your own livestock – better that you should throw it at me?”

Suddenly both men looked at each, and looked at the items in their hands, and become very quiet. Both started to speak at the same time.

“I’m sorry—” said Shmulik.

“I’m sorry too,” said Yossel.

“I’ve come to make peace,” Shmulik said, holding out the chicken.

“As have I,” said Yossel, holding out the basket of apples.

After a few moments of looking at each other, Shmulik said, “Well, what do we do now?”

Yossel shrugged. “I guess I have a tasty chicken dinner, and you have some delicious apples.”

“I guess so. And maybe we can stop all this fighting?”

“Maybe, but it will be hard.”

“Yes, it will be. Very hard.”

And now Yossel shrugged. “We can try.”

“Yes, we can.”

“I forgive you and wish you well.”

“Thank you, and I, you.”

So they shook with their free hands, and each man went back to his home with a gift in his hands, and a gift in his heart.

 

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by | September 16, 2014 · 9:47 pm

Cognitive Dissonance: An Elul Reflection

IMG_0682I was just asked via my High Holy Day pulpit’s Facebook page if I can guarantee that we’ll have a minyan of ten men for someone who wants to say Kaddish on Rosh HaShanah.  My first thought was, you know it’s a gay congregation, right? That is to say, we will certainly have ten men.  We will have way more than ten men.  Praying with ten men will not be a problem.  But my second thought was, you know that the rabbi is a woman, right?

It’s always interesting to learn what people hold on to.

The pulpit that I have been honored to serve for the last sixteen years is in Fire Island Pines. The Pines is a summer beach community, both famous and infamous for its gay culture and party life. Religious services are not the primary reason people go there, and yet, there we are, a lively, wonderful congregation offering services for Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur.

We are, perhaps, an eclectic congregation. The congregation is not affiliated with any particular movement, though we use a Reform machzor and I am a Reform rabbi. But I respect the fact that our congregation comes to services with many different backgrounds and comfort levels.  Some congregants did indeed grow up Reform, but many were raised in Orthodox or Conservative homes. Some were even raised ultra-Orthdox. Some were red diaper babies, raised in Jewish socialist families. Some are non-Jewish partners or friends of Jews. Some are seekers who find a meaningful experience with us regardless of their personal religious background. Some belong to year-round synagogues off the Island and some don’t.  And that is all great – we are a diverse community open to all.

We are a synagogue in a mostly male gay community led by a straight woman rabbi but there are also plenty of gay women and straight people and queer people and gender non-conforming people who come to services.  It works.

All of us have traveled a distance from our backgrounds, though certainly some farther than others.  We stretch for each other and are flexible and do our best to accommodate different practices and customs. Some people stand for the Kaddish despite not being in mourning, and some don’t. Some recite the Amidah out loud and some pray silently.  Some add in the names of the emahot, and some don’t.

Every year during Elul, as I focus on my preparations for the holy days, I’m reminded that there are things we hold on to no matter how far we’ve traveled.

IMG_0700One year I was heckled from the kahal when I called up the first aliyah for a Torah reading because he wasn’t a Kohein – it wasn’t a mistake but rather my deliberate practice. Whenever Rosh HaShana falls on Shabbat I have to remind the congregation of the textual support for blowing Shofar, which is partly because we only do one day of Rosh HaShanah anyway – if I don’t explain I get questioned. Some people are offended if we don’t end Neilah at exactly the right time.  Some people miss musaf, though plenty have never heard of it. And then there’s the question I just got, about whether we’ll have ten men for a minyan.

All of this raises fascinating questions. Where do we bend, and where do we insist on sticking to what we understand to be the right way to do it? In a gay synagogue with a woman rabbi where everyone is welcomed, what is acceptable innovation? We are clearly not a “traditional” synagogue, but how do we define what “tradition” means? What practices do we keep and what do we discard? What do we do because we find it meaningful, and what do we do out of habit?  What do we question and push back against, and what do we accept because that’s the way it’s always been? What elements of halachah do we purposely and thoughtfully hold on to because we believe it, or believe in wrestling with it, and what do we hold on out of nostalgia, or inertia?

The reality is, all of us Jews on the liberal side of the spectrum make choices, whether consciously or not, about what we hold on to and what we don’t, where we accept change and where we don’t.  In the home in which I grew up, we weren’t allowed to drink milk with our ham and cheese sandwiches because my mother had been raised in a kosher home and couldn’t fathom serving a glass of milk with a meat sandwich (I later chose to keep kosher, but that’s another blog altogether).

I wasn’t offended by the question about ten men for a minyan because I understand where it comes from.  As I rabbi I teach that if we are to build lives of Jewish meaning, we must be intentional and not arbitrary in the choices we make.  But everyone has their own sense of “tradition” based on their background, and the pull of those connections is strong, meaningful, and real.  A request of ten men for a minyan might be about nostalgia, or a result of a certain kind of childhood education, or loyalty to a more traditional parent – I understand that it is not necessarily a deliberate attempt to exclude women or deny us a presence.  It is a practice at odds with the reality of our eclectic congregation.  But so be it.  We bend for each other even as we try to determine our own personal practices and comfort levels, even as we struggle to understand what makes sense to us and why.  So we will have a minyan for kaddish this Rosh HaShanah, and it will include ten men as well as many other people, and it will be led by a woman rabbi.

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