calamity's child

it is new years and i’m sitting in my bff’s apartment on an aerobed across from the women’s building in the mission, in san francisco. i spent my nye making shabbes and eating thai and playing rockband 3; it was so low-key and even. it was my first time being one of few jews in a room: me, my housemate, and her partner (who lives here in the bay). two of us are converts, one is a rabbi. everyone else was a west coaster and indifferent at best to ritual. my bff is anti-ritual, but pro-angel cards, which is a tradition we have in my house where we pass around angel cards while singing shalom aleichem and then say who our angels are after we welcome the angels in. the angel cards say things like “creativity” or “patience” or “playfulness.” there were no angel cards tonight, but there was shalom aleichem which my housemate encouraged us to sing because she knows i love it so much. and i do. the tune is beautiful, the words are beautiful, the intention is beautiful. i like the pause in the blessing over lights, wine, and bread to welcome in angels and intention. it was weird to be the three of us doing this, because it’s shabbes and new years and we wanted to bring in the new years with shabbat. but it felt also, indelibly, right.

i love san francisco. i’ve resisted moving here for years, wanting to save something that felt so easy and comfortable for vacation. i am over the resistance now, though. i just want to be back on the west coast. back where there is enough humidity to always be able to breathe and for my skin to be comfortable, supple, and not itchy from the dry-as-hell winter. back where there are mountains and penninsulas and rocky coasts and fault lines and volcanoes. back to where there are hours long drives to get out of the state. back to where it is cheaper to see my family. i don’t know how, or when, i will get here, but i will. and then i will be one of few jews for a long time. hopefully by then i am comfortable in my jewishness, able to lead kiddush, able to know the prayers in my heart and muscles, able to hold this space on my own.

the new year: it is one of 5 for me now (rosh chodashim/nisan 1, selichot/elul 1, rosh hashana/tishri 1, tu b’shevat/shevat 15, secular new year/january 1) . it feels both meaningful and momentous, and mundane, and the mundanity of it all makes it more special to me. new years in the bay is remarkably chill. a few fireworks here and there. a few sirens here and there. a few cars here and there,. a few people here and there. festive, but not crazy, and everyone i was with wanted to be in bed by 1230. it is pleasant, and serene, and feels like a very honest way to bring in the new year: intention, fun, care.

i am looking forward to this new year, to seeing what lays ahead for me, and for us all. happy new year!

i lit the hanukkiah alone tonight for the first time. it took me a couple tries to totally remember the tune and be able to hold it myself. i was embarrassed until i remembered, there’s no one else here. i can mess up all i want, and do it over and do it over until i get it right, until i feel i have done it right. there are 4 nights left for me to repeat repeat repeat, to build it into my throat’s muscles. it’s my 3rd year of celebratin hanukkah, and every year, it feels more and more normal. context is everything, and i am building so much of it.

a and i have a tradition (it’s the second year it’s happened, that makes it tradition, of course) of going to the donut diner, aka donette, for hanukkah. you can get donuts AND fried potatoes (though no latkes) at the same time. and other fried delicacies. last night included mozarella sticks, fries, a reuben for a, a boston cream donut, the best jelly donut, and the twist that was our menorah.

hanukkah is not my favorite holiday. i love the lights. i really like hanukkiahs. i love donuts and latkes and pretty much all fried things. resisting imperialism is one of the most important tasks to the liberation of all people that i can think of, and i do believe that sometimes that will be through violent revolution. and the maccabbean revolt is complicated. and another example of revolution so that the jews could go on to conquer other lands and kill many other people so that all the land and all the people can be jewish. it’s complicated. is this what olam haba looks like? i do not think so.

but i can light lights and remember hanukkah miracles, and light them towards the olam haba i do believe in: racial, economic, and gender justice, true religious pluralism for people of all (including no) religious traditions, and plenty of space for light, joy, laughter.

it is thanksgiving day and again i am not in seattle with my biological family. and this year, am pretty without anything i would call a “chosen family.”
this is the time of year that i find most difficult. a collective weight of expectation that things are as they should be. i feel this time of year that i am always just where i am: working hard to get at family, at community, at my self, but not quite there. this year i’ve been unable to decide: should i go to a friend’s house, or just stay home and make macaroni and cheese? i’m going to a friend’s, because it seems to depressing the other way, and because my friend is a dear friend, who is family to me also. but i’m unsure what the point of even celebrating this holiday is.

there is the history of colonization, for which it stands. there is the force of expectation of being with (blood) family, even if that family is bad or complicated for you. there is the production of chosen family, which is sometimes reliant and sometimes not. and there is the attempt to figure out something to do in the midst of this holiday that is both nurturing and honest. shifting to gratitude only doesn’t even do that: it erases the legacy of colonization and destruction that created this country and this holiday.

deep down, i want to be with m. want to start drinking gin at noon while we’re cooking and listening to tina turner, want to have some friends over and be easy. there are a few people that i have made thanksgiving with every year since 2004, and this is the first year i am having thanksgiving with none of them. next year needs to be different, because this feels wrong and i feel unanchored and adrift in a holiday that barely even feels worth observing.

that said, i am grateful that i have a place to be, to not be alone here watching buffy and eating mac & cheese tonight. to be with a friend who is an old and dear friend, and maybe building towards a new future with this holiday. tonight will be good and full of food and friends and love, as well as recognition and mourning for the legacy of this day, and connecting and embracing of ancestors who pull us through.

standing under the brooklyn bridge today, i threw pieces of bread into the east river, letting it wash these tokens of my sins over the past year away. it was the first time i’d participated in this ritual. one of the more difficult things about coming to judaism as an adult is this sequence of holidays; rosh hashana to yom kippur. there are motions and moments, cycles of being-in-ritual to pay attention to that are hard to be in, or get right, if you spend your time worrying about whether or not you know exactly what is happening, what you are saying, how you should say it, etc. there is a blessing for tashlich, but we forgot to bring a machzor with us, so i didn’t need to worry anyway. i just stood there, fist full of bread, tearing hunks off and flinging them. i did this, i did this, i did this. this is how i am separated from myself, from you, from my friends, family community. these are the things that need to change for the next year. these are the things that i want to bring in. it is hard to be this present and this intentional. i feel flayed open. when a seagull came and ate one of my bread hunks, the one about trust, i wanted to scream at it. i watched a bit of it fall from the seagull’s mouth as i kept myself quiet, thinking, at least that bit will make it to the ocean. sometimes it is those small moments that are what get you through. a tiny bit will make it to the ocean, it will be okay; the intention is what matters, even if you fail to get it right the first time. this is a lesson i am bad at learning. but i am committed to learning it this year. this is the year for patience, trust, and love.

today is the birthday of the world. it’s been quite a year that has brought me to this place today, and i must say that i’m more than a little trepidatious about starting a new go around right now. the last few weeks have left me feeling sad, isolated, and scared, and given the past year which has starkly alternated between being totally alone and being surrounded by love, i’m unsure how to feel about anything. i don’t know what to think about what this year may bring, who it may bring in or take out, and how things will shake out in the end. i do know that more than any other time in my life, i’m starting a new year feeling ungrounded and unprepared, scared, even, and unclear about how to gain my footing.

Some time afterward, God put Abraham to the test. He said to him, “Abraham,” and he answered, “Here I am.” And He said, “Take your son, your favored one, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the heights that I will point out to you.” So early next morning, Abraham saddled his ass and took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. He split the wood for the burnt offering, and he set out for the place of which God had told him. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place from afar. Then Abraham said to his servants, “You stay here with the ass. The boy and I will go up there; we will worship and we will return to you.” . . .
They arrived at the place of which God had told him. Abraham built an altar there; he laid out the wood; he bound his son Isaac; he laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. And Abraham picked up the knife to slay his son. Then an angel of the Lord called to him from heaven: “Abraham! Abraham!” And he answered, “Here I am.” And he said, “Do not raise your hand against the boy, or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your favored one, from Me.”¹

There are two images that stick out at me from these readings. The first is Isaac and what he must have been doing and thinking while all this was happening. In the drash at shul today, the reader had Isaac willingly complicit in his own coming death, the model sacrifice all the way. This, I cannot stomach. It mirrors too much narratives about survivors being complicit in their own abuse, lauding them for their strength at enduring these episodes, not once suggesting that strength is also found in objecting, leaving, resisting. In families, this is just how things go, after all.

I can only imagine Isaac screaming as Abraham wrestles him down enough to tie him up. Did Abraham hurt Isaac to be able to bind him? Did he gag him? Did he hit him? It is impossible to think of this moment on this mountain in any kind of ritually pure way if you must also recognize that in addition to the murder to take place, Abraham had to hurt Isaac to even get him onto that stone. The violence to Isaac is much more complete than the aborted sacrifice/murder. Isaac was lying there, bound, when he saw the glint of Abraham’s knife above him. The father who, as far as we know, was eager to have Isaac in his life, has turned against him to be able to fulfill the desire of a God he wanted to be in good with. But this very request from God goes against everything Abraham knows about him. What did Abraham’s eyes look like to Isaac next to the glint of that knife? That’s the image I can’t get out of my head.

The other image is of Abraham in this conversation with God. What must he be thinking? I can only see him sheepishly standing there, wanting to make sure God liked him, like we stand before teachers we admire or peers we want to befriend us. Some part of us, deep in there, is thinking “I will do whatever you ask if only you . . . ” Most of us, though, we know that there are limits. We will not violate our selves, family, friends, commitments, morals, for the chance at affections from an admired one. There are prices that are too high. I am constantly wondering what happened to Abraham in this moment. Where did his scruples go? What values and parts of himself did he abandon in order to grant God this request? I can’t imagine that this was what God was after. It says in the text, yes, that Abraham’s “faithfulness” was what proved to God that Abraham fears God. The story itself is situated awkwardly: Sarah inexplicably becomes pregnant and gives birth to Isaac, then in a fit of jealous rage expells her slave, Hagar, and her son, Isaacs half-brother, Ishmael; Abraham and Abimelech have a business deal, and next thing we know, Abraham is moving up the mountain with Isaac towards sacrifice. Why has not Abraham fought with God about this? Why has he not protested? Why has he not tried to alter the course of this particular moment in his life? The very existence of this son is improbable already. I cannot think that it is God’s plan that Abraham actually follows through on this plan, for many reasons, not the least of which it is not unfathomable that God’s chosen leaders fight back against God all the time. I can’t imagine that the outcome of the event would have been that different if Abraham had stood up to God in this moment to say, “I cannot do that, God, I cannot do what you ask me, my son is precious and I love you and I love him, and to both of you I say, I choose life. My own life, and that of my son’s.”

That he didn’t makes me wonder about Abraham. We know clearly that he fears God, but we do not know too much about what he reveres about God, or what he is prepared to do about it. What is Abraham prepared to do to say yes to life in the sight of his God? That is what I wonder about today.

As we stand in the beginning days of this new year, I suppose that is the question to ponder. What am I prepared to do to say yes to life in the sight of my own self and God? What am I doing to celebrate the world I live in on its birthday, and how am I aiding in the production of the world to come? Another yearly cycle begun. L’shana tova.

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¹From Day 2 Rosh HaShana Readings: Genesis 22:1-23. Tanakh. Jewish Publication Society.