Day 31: #g!dnotGod

#g!dnotGod

Bear with me here for a few minutes. I'm going to explain that.

But if you have read any of my other blog posts, you know I have tended to start with a story.  This story is about a rabbi friend of mine who's name will not be mentioned here.  Because I don't really want to admit publicly that we aren't friends anymore. And because I don't want to give him the satisfaction of still mattering to me even though he continues to hurt me by throwing our friendship out with the chaff of the last decade.  I'm sure he hasn't thrown out many t-shirts, but he managed to get rid of me. But I digress (of course).

So, every once in a while something will happen and we will break the veil of silence between us.  The last two times he has thrown in, at some point, "Our friendship ended. #sorrynotsorry." The first time he said it was the first time I had actually heard the hashtag. I know, I have a teenage daughter. I should know better. But I'm getting old. Half of the time I have to go through and edit this blog because I still instinctively double space bar at the end of sentences. Blogger doesn't autocorrect me for that. So I have weird spacing. But I digress (again).

I haven't gone to the source and really researched, but here's my raw interpretation of #sorrynotsorry. It is basically the paradox of the thing, weighted a little heavier on the not sorry part (I think).  It's the empty sorry, but the truth comes in the second half--the not sorry isn't the kind of sorry of "I wish I hadn't done that.  It was a mistake." It's the sorry of empathy for the crappy feelings that you're having because I had to do this thing that made you hurt and cry.

A dear long term friend of mine (not a rabbi--shockingly!), Benjamin Blumenthal, sent me a Linkedin! request tonight. As a general rule, I tend to hold the "why does Linkedin! exist?!?" opinion.  But maybe that's because I'm not corporate.  I still get my news and my yichus (it's Yiddish for street cred mixed with whatever that word is for when you're in the mafia--protectzia is how it kind of got translated into Hebrew) from Facebook.  Like I said, I'm almost 40!

So of course I get that link to get my password and I start editing my profile because it's from 7 years ago.  It was time.  In my old little self-pitch blurb, I said something about an intersection of faith and G!d and bringing people peace.  The cliche was almost too painful to read.  So as I am thinking about what to write now, and what to do with the whole God thing, the idea of #g!dnotGod popped into my mind.  It's my new thing.  I'm ready for the bumper stickers folks.  Watch out.  I have a tendency to fall madly in love with the crap in the catalogs you start getting when you buy pens with your logo on them.  Merchandising is a little addiction for me ;)

Let me break it down.

g!d

That's already complicated.  In traditional Judaism, it's forbidden to write the name of God unless it's for a prayer book or in an actual Torah scroll.  It's also a Biblical commandment not to use the name of God in vain.  The way this manifests in American Judaism has been that we don't even write God.  Some Jews write G-d, distancing themselves from the possibility of using God's "real" name in vain.  Even the word used in Hebrew prayer and Torah reading is Adonai, which means Lord. Sounding out the Hebrew letters that are the "real name" of God would sound something like Yahveh or Yahovah--Jehovah? Sound familiar? 

Another dear rabbinical school friend (still in my life--I haven't lost all of my rabbi friends), Shulamit Izen, used to tell me that instead of the dash, she used an exclamation point--because her God image definitely had that kind of energy.  I have an ex-girlfriend who used to really overuse exclamation points.  Every text looked like this!  She seemed to not even know what a period was! And when she wanted to be exclamatory she used tons of them!!!!!

notGod

It is a popular liberal rabbi trick, when someone says "I don't believe in God," to respond--tell me about the God you don't believe in because I probably don't believe in that kind of a God either.  In my life, I've circled back to the solid agnosticism of my youth.  I waver between believing that there is definitely no kind of universal connectedness deity concept and we are guided by our internal moral compass and conscience to the kind of theology that calls the striving to be our higher purpose selves G!d.

It isn't the capital G God of the Old Testament who rains fire and brimstone on the gay sinners and the intermarried who are ruining the Jewish future.  It isn't an interpersonal relationship God who you can talk to, and who watches out for you when your life sucks and loves you through good times and bad.  It isn't the God that was destroyed by the Holocaust, the God who died in the gas chambers, the God who used to be all-knowing, all-powerful and all-good.  Because as theologian (I forget his name but I swear I read that book) said, after the Holocaust, we can no longer believe in a God who has all three of those attributes because that kind of a God would not have been able to allow the Holocaust to happen.

It's also not God at all for me most of the time.  I've become one of those people who can't say Hebrew prayers anymore because I ACTUALLY understand what I'm saying and I can't just say: Blessed are you God, King of the Universe who created the fruit of the vine--because I believe in the evolution of life on this planet, I don't think there is a "you" to talk and even if I did, I would not get sucked into the patriarchal bullshit of King of the Universe.  I may be an ego maniac, but unless we are talking about Martin Luther King, Jr. I can't imagine aspiring to put a king at the top of my totem pole.

I've spent the last two years working as a secular humanistic rabbi.  I basically wasn't allowed to publicly say the word God or use traditional prayers, lest I delegitimate the position of my congregation as a secular and Humanist institution.  So now, after years of saying alternative liturgies and really getting to publicly be the person I've always been, an agnostic leaning toward atheist rabbi, I can't really imagine going back.

#g!dnotGod

But I don't have it all figured out.  I still want to pass the traditions of Judaism to my kids.  My husband and I had a pretty intense conversation about that just the other night.  On the one hand, we both kvell when our kids belt out the Hanukkah or Shabbat blessings together.  We also really don't want to give them a packaged up version of God that we don't believe it.  At the same time, we do the tooth fairy.  Unabashedly. We make up crazy stories about how the tooth fairy must have been so busy last night and her fairy helpers must have been sick and that's why your tooth was still there and not money but we'll send her a text and remind her just in case she is feeling a little overwhelmed right now.  Why am I ok with the tooth fairy but I cringed when Eliyashu took a picture of Jacob and Sima and asked Jacob to text it to his dad in Heaven?

Maybe it's because we live in a society that isn't letting go of the tooth fairy when they grow up.  I don't have to worry that one day Eliyashu and Ezra and Sima will still believe in the tooth fairy bringing money to children.  They will have to know that it was all a story.  Otherwise their kids will be super bummed out if they keep waiting for the tooth fairy to bring the money.

I believe in #g!dnotGod. I believe in a not capital G, exclamation point, inspirational tradition that reminds us to get out of our self-absorbed world and do something for someone else--because God is not going to reach down from Heaven and help the widow, the orphan and the stranger--that's why the Bible says YOU have to do it.  There's an Ani DiFranco lyric that I've always loved: "God's work, isn't done by God, it's done by people." It's notGod, but it's also g!d.  Maybe I need to go back to a world where God's name can't be pronounced.  I need to go back to a world where no one would wage war in the name of God because they wouldn't be able to say the name in the first place.  And hopefully they also would not be able to fathom that the God that inspires them would want so many hurtful, negative things to exist in "His" world. Maybe I need to go back to a world were I focus on the micro. Helping one person at a time. Using the energy and resources I have to work for the good. And when someone says, "God bless you sweetheart. Thank you so much!" when I give them $40 for blankets and food when they are living on the streets, I can just say, "You're welcome, but I'm inspired by #g!dnotGod and I'd love to share my thoughts about the world.  Perhaps we can go get a cup of coffee together."

Day 28: The humanity in all human beings

I have a friend named Antoinette. She was my inspiration for my purple, brown and silver box braids a few months ago. We were talking today and I told her about a girl from my doctor's office who had these amazing "coils" in her hair. Antoinette had no idea what I was talking about but said they sounded great and she'd love a pic if I went for it and got them.

I decided to try to figure out what the hair style is actually called. Thank you google and image searches. Apparently the look is called curly faux locs. They are so gorgeous...and controversial.

Shockingly, I chose something controversial!! A little more reading and I ended up finding out that some people, with real locs, hard earned through years of growth, care and sometimes as a spiritual practice, are mad at the faux locs people for getting in a few hours what they spent years developing. I have always loved the dreadlock look. I also always loved hair wraps. I wonder if it was some of the spiritual reasons, on an unconscious level.

One article cited a rejection of physicality and focus on beauty and grooming. The goal of leaving these vain pursuits behind was to bring the person closer to God.

Ok, before you get carried away, no--hair wraps don't make me feel closer to God. I don't even believe in God 97% of the time. (The other 3% I'm faking it til I make it and I rarely make it).

But there is a defiance and rejection of beauty standards in favor of my own definition of beautiful.

My mom raised me to care about social conventions of beauty. I was always a reluctant student. I never really got interested in make up, high heels, fancy clothes and I've always wondered when that day was when I was neither too fat or too thin and why the people who care about that shit never bothered to stop me on that day and say--this. This is it. This is the size and shape you should be.

I thought about an experiment today, as I noticed an African American man checking me out at Union Station. I thought about wearing a shirt that said, press the button on my sleeve if you think I'm beautiful. I wonder how many people would press the button. I wonder if I could tolerate people walking by and choosing not to press it.

It's a crazy paradox, you see, caring and not caring what people think. Putting yourself out there, being confident and vulnerable. Believing that you're totally fuckable, and more importantly, being totally lovable.

I'm on my way home from an inspiring day at the Humanist Clergy Collaboratory. At one workshop, we were looking at the definition of Humanism. It referred to seeing the humanity in all human beings. That's really what I strive for. It's at the core of almost everything I care about.

Today, I want to see myself as completely lovable. Exactly as I am.  With all of my faults and with all of my humanity.  I believe that part of what makes connecting with other human beings so amazing is that we recognize pieces of ourselves in each other (namaste) and because every person in this life teaches us something new. Each of us is beautiful and unique.  Even identical twins are different.

Today I had moments of feeling so beautiful and so unique and so human.  I also had moments of worry, filled with middle schooler insecurities that people didn't like me or that I was being "too..." you fill in the blank there.

But I'm going to end the night believing that everyone--given enough time and able to step out and really see me--everyone would push the button.

Beautiful me.

Day Twelve: I'm not 40 yet

 So far the best part of starting this blog is that a bunch of people I am friends with on Facebook and only acquaintances with in real life, have been wishing me a happy birthday.  No, I'm not 40 yet.  And it's a good thing I'm not, because I'd be feeling pretty crappy about my progress. But I promised myself this was a journey toward healthier and not a gimmick.

This week I:
-went on a 5 mile run
-drank 4 healthy smoothies
-hit my Apple watch move goal 5 out of 7 days
-completed my exercise goal 4 out of 7 days
-watched my weight go up 5 lbs and then down 3 lbs
-officiated at a beautiful wedding in Central Park for my cousin from Israel
-had lunch with an old friend
-worked on another wedding for the fall
And this morning I'm on a train headed to a b'nei mitzvah ceremony in DC that I would have been officiating if I hadn't had some health problems back in January.

This is what the journey toward healthier looks like.  Mundane and lacking the excitement that the beginning of the journey had.  It's the one step forward and two steps back, and then two steps forward again. It's knowing that I have a long road ahead and it's finding the willingness to keep walking on the path.

Half Full

Day Three: Sometimes I write and sometimes I don't and other tales of shameful inconsistency

This time it is 12:35 AM.  Terry woke me up cuddling against me while we were sleeping and I had fierce heartburn.  I made him grab me some Tums (they live on his bed stand) and I got up to go to the bathroom. I heard him start snoring again as I was sitting on the toilet and reading my favorite bathroom book, How to be Interesting by Jessica Hagy.  I bought it at Kinkos (or whatever that's called these days-FedEx Office maybe?).  I remember being there, waiting for some last minute stuff to print off for a program at Machar (my job at the time was at a secular humanistic synagogue in Washington DC--yes, I lived in Philadelphia and worked as a rabbi in DC for three years...that's a topic for another post).  I remember the sunrise was the most amazing reds and oranges.  The book has little pages of encouragement and advice for how to be interesting.  This is one of my favorite pages:

This is the page that our children completely reject from ages 7-15.  I have two children who do NOT believe that this is a REMOTELY good piece of advice right now.  They are pretty sure that magic only happens in your comfort zone, with your friends, and in the familiar vistas.  They are into wild ideas, though.  My daughter thinks we should join a club that would give us access to a private jet. Oh Elie, honey, I wish you could have been in our family during the private jet days...but sadly, they are over sweetheart.

The book is filled with all kinds of things that I believe in but tend to forget.  When I was in rabbinical school, I studied a spiritual practice called, Mussar.  Mussar is a word from Proverbs 1:2 meaning moral conduct, instruction or discipline (Wikipedia).  It is essentially Jewish ethics.  The Mussar movement was developed by Rabbi Israel Salanter in the 19th century.  Basically, he asked the question: Why are all these pious learned Yeshiva boys such jackasses?  How can people who sit around learning Torah all day still manage to be crappy people? So he had the boys begin learning a text on moral development, including one called Mesilat Yesharim (The Path of the Upright, 1740), written by Ramchal (Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato). 

Momentary tangent--I love that famous rabbis became known by these acronyms of their names: Rambam, Ramban, Ramchal etc.  One of my friends from rabbi school said that if she made an acronym of her Hebrew name Rav Aliza Shira, her acronym would be Ra'ash--which means noise in Hebrew.  I cracked up. Maybe one day people will call me Ranabmo--Rabba (rabbi for women used in Hebrew) Nehama Benmosche, the Rabbi Rambo Combo. I feel a Purim costume idea and a design for new business cards percolating ;)

Back to Mussar.  I'll never forget the introduction to the text that I learned from my rabbi, Ira Stone, the founder of the Mussar Leadership Institute. https://mussarleadership.org/ (BTW, Mussar as a contemporary spiritual practice in the non-Orthodox world has gathered followings around two rabbis--Rabbi Ira Stone and Rabbi Alan Morinis.  There was even an article in Hadassah magazine about Mussar that caught my eye a month or so ago!)

http://www.hadassahmagazine.org/2017/01/12/mussar-jewish-spirituality-modern-world/

(I'm pretty sure that person with their back toward the camera is Molly, my teacher/friend/crush from high school, but I haven't written her to ask. Though dopplegangers from behind, even with purple kippot, are a definite possibility)

Ramchal basically says: There is nothing in this book that you don't already know.  This book is not meant to be read and put back on the shelf.  It is meant to be studied.  You must read it over and over again. Because despite everything we know, this book is about the things that you want to forget. Studying reminds you.

Mussar is about character education. It is about learning how to be a consistently decent human being. It is about fighting your selfish ego-maniac self (your yetzer ha-ra) and spending more time being your altruistic self (your yetzer ha-tov).  Those Hebrew words are technically translated as the inclination for evil and the inclination for good, respectively, but Stone teaches that they are better translated as the instinct for self-preservation and the instinct to help the next closest Other.  

Wait a minute. Where is this going? Weren't you going to be writing about shameful inconsistencies? Do you NOT realize that I am siting here filled with shame because I'm up writing a blog at 12:55 AM when I'm "supposed" to be sleeping? 

I have been listening to Brene Brown's book Daring Greatly on Audible.  I hate NPR and I hate books on tape, but ever since I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2010 and went on a series of psych meds, I have lost my ability to read nonfiction books.  (INSERT SHAME IN BIG LETTERS HERE) 

I'm just getting into the book and haven't read the whole thing. I learned about Brene Brown from one of the first adult ed talks I attended when I was hired at Machar.  My congregant Danielle told me I HAD to watch the video that I missed and she was right.  I watched it.  I made Terry watch it.  (You can watch it too if you click below)

https://youtu.be/psN1DORYYV0

So that's the thing that I'm struggling with today.  My bipolar disorder (that word sure helps the Gremlins, as Brown calls the demons that tell us awful things about ourselves) makes me feel shame about my inconsistencies. Instead of feeling guilty about missing meetings, or not being able to wake up with the kids, or about giving twenty dollars bills out to homeless people because I wanted to see them smile--I feel shame.  As Brown explains, guilt is feeling badly that you did something wrong. Shame is feeling that YOU ARE something wrong.

I started seeing a new shrink a few months ago. She has been pretty amazing so far. Yesterday I was crying in her office about how I can't live like this anymore. About how I was hoping that she would be able to help me find some stability. About how I just wished I could be a normal person who got up when the alarm went off. Who felt tired if they didn't get all 8 hours of sleep, but who could drink a cup of coffee and go to work. I want to be consistent and predictable and reliable. It's not fair.

"Why?" she said. "I would rather be able to start a new blog, be a rabbi, write music and be you than be a Mainline soccer mom who always wakes up and gets the damn kids to school. You're a creative. You produce something amazing and then you crash. And then you build it back up and do it again. Most people who can wake up at 6 am and go to bed at 10 pm--that's all they can do. Why would you trade that in? Don't wish for normal. Accept your schedule and let's try to make it a little better, but don't wish you could soccer mom. Really.!."  The attitude of her really could only be conveyed by a little more description. Taliba is a strong, brilliant, African American woman who got her assistant to pull up the Cash me ousside, How bah dah video when she made a reference to it and I didn't know what she was talking about (I'm not putting that link in here. You can google that one yourself). She is the first psychiatrist I have ever called when I am in a crisis who actually stayed on the phone and picked up again at 3 am and helped me work out everything that I was going through. Not the first therapist to do that for me (I love you Karen) but she's the first shrink I haven't hated in the 7 years since my original diagnosis. If any of my former shrinks are reading this, I am sorry but IIWII--It is what it is. At least I didn't put your names in here. She's the first shrink who invited me to show up with my kids to session and who met two of them so far and actually talked to them about me and with me. And now when I complain about how I'm a shitty mom she can say, "What the fuck? Did you not listen to Eliyashu? The worst thing he could think of about you was that you signed him up for snowboarding lessons when he wanted ski lessons--and you even ended up changing it and getting him ski lessons!! Your kids love you and they don't feel bad about who you are as a mom--why are you doing this to yourself?"

Because I am not a fucking soccer mom.  I never will be.  I have the minivan and the fancy house and the parties and the play dates and I can still bury myself in a hole of shame about how much I suck at being the consistent parent who shows up and keeps her promises. I feel ashamed that I wasn't sick when I adopted Eliyashu and sometimes I think if I knew then what I know now, maybe I wouldn't have done it...and that makes me even sadder than not being a soccer mom. I can't bear thinking I could have lost the chance to do the only thing in life I REALLY wanted to do.

When I was 18, I was on a business trip of my dad's. I look back on this trip as one of the more fucked up trips of my life because both of my parents' future lovers were on that trip. In less than a year their marriage would completely implode. I was sitting with some people--possibly my dad's girlfriend Lisa was there because she knows this story like she was there--and I said that I felt this deep and intense compulsion to get pregnant. I told them that I felt certain that if I didn't get pregnant right away, that would never be able to. Lisa retells that story sometimes and says that she remembers talking to my dad and saying--Holy shit. We have a problem, Bob.  

But I was right. A year later I was diagnosed with PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome) and ten years later when I talked to a doctor about getting pregnant he told me that I should brace myself for the fact that I was likely to have a very difficult road trying to get pregnant because of my PCOS. It's even harder to get pregnant when you don't usually sleep with men. I asked few of my guy friends to have unprotected sex with me for a year or so.  A few said no. Some said yes.  And even though I had my first pregnancy scare when I was 15 (that was a fun week in the Benmosche household, right Joel?), I never got pregnant and stopped trying and started learning about adoption--since my dream as a baby dyke was to make an adoption plan, just like my father did and my mother's father and mother did, and the biblical Moses' biological mother did...and last year I sealed that fate with an emergency hysterectomy. The Gremlins just told me that the world is a better place because I never procreated.

It's 1:33 AM.  My tears have dried. I have poured my heart into a blog post so I can publish it on the Internet and have my friends and acquaintances validate me by viewing the page and reading my story and texting and commenting on my Facebook feed. When I woke Terry up a few nights ago, after my first post, and read him what I had written he said, "Oh baby.  You miss talking to your dad so much and he knew you and understood you so well that you need the whole world to listen to your story to try to make up for the fact that you can't call him anymore." I started crying and said, "Yeah. I do. Because he really listened. Even when he said--calm down, what are you getting so upset about?" I will always have a hole in my heart where his love for me used to live. Whoops, guess the tears aren't all dry just yet.

And you called it Carly Simon. I will follow the likes on Facebook and look at the views on the blogger analytics.  Because I'm vain. 

But honestly, the catharsis is in the writing. And the vulnerability is in the publishing. And the hope is for more connection, the salve for my aching heart.