Preparing for Passover

Ten Plagues Puppets! Courtesy of my uncle, photo courtesy of my brother. Disturbing, hilarious, and AWESOME.

Slightly less disturbing: Four questions puppets, and a wind-up walking matzo ball. Wait...I take it back. The matzo ball is still disturbing.

Tamei and Tahor

This quarter is a lot of Jewish history and literature. I'm sitting in (finally) on Rabbi S's weekly Torah study (Torah in an academic context), taking an independent readings in Jewish Social History and a seminar on Jewish Literature (Memory! Diaspora! Etc!). It's making my brain spin.

Yesterday I spent the morning reading the memoir of a Jewish woman who grew up in a Galician shtetl, and was killed by the Nazis. She sounded like my grandmother. Every Jewish woman's memoir sounds like my grandmother. I don't know if it's the Yiddish or the way Yiddish translates into English. I don't know if many Jewish women's memoirs have similar themes, or if I only notice what's familiar. Jewish American assimilation memoirs especially read the same way: "Ve escaped ze olt country, ve came to America, abandon olt useless traditions, raise American children. Now our grandchildren want to get back to their roots, vy? For vat purpose?"

Anyways. I spent the morning reading the memoirs and thinking about my grandmother. Then I went to Torah Study where we discussed the concept of Tamei and Tachor.This is a concept I have been discussing with Rabbi S. anyways, because my friend has cancer, and is struggling so painfully with chemotherapy and whatnot. But the tamei/tachor concept was even more powerful after reading this memoir, and after visiting my grandmother in the hospital over the break.

Tamei is often poorly translated into "unclean" or "impure" but it really refers to the time when someone has come into contact with life-and-death. This includes birth, sex, menstruation, touching or seeing a dead animal or person, wet dreams, etc. Tachor is the rest of the time. When someone is Tamei, they have to ritually separate themselves for varying amounts of time. Then there is immersion in natural waters (ocean, rain). Then they must bring an offering to the Holy Temple, which has been destroyed twice. Since the temple has been destroyed, we are all, technically speaking, Tamei. We are all not-quite-Tachor, no matter how many times we bathe in the ocean. The life-and-death transition is not one we can escape. Since the Holy Temple no longer exists, it was decided that women should maintain the memory of this tradition by ritually bathing after menstruation, a practice many Orthodox Jews follow. For me, though, the main thing is that coming in contact with life-and-death transitions deserves its own space, it's own "time out," because life-and-death transitions force us to think about our own mortality.

After that, I got the call from the local bookstore found out that I won a short story contest for my story about Judaism, food, body image, family, culture. My great-grandmother (of blessed memory) figures prominently in the story. When I called my mom to tell her the good news, she was at my grandmother's house.

Then I came back to the Bunker, where I found that a friend had posted a link to a really wonderful photographer's work. It's morbid, but I think it's beautiful...he photographs people right before they die: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/gallery/2008/mar/31/lifebeforedeath?picture=333325401

It's the only time, he says, when his subjects are honest, vulnerable. They don't force themselves to smile.

This, after discussing Tamei and Tachor. This, after I spent the morning with the memoir of another woman who died in the Holocaust, whose voice is inexplicably like my grandmother's and like the voices in every other Jewish memoir I've read - that of Gluckel of Hameln, and Kate Simon in Bronx Primitive. This, after I found out that my story about Judaism and family won an award. And I had only an hour to go before my Global Jewish Lit course, where we talked about Judaism, memory, exile vs. diaspora, and conceptualizations of "home."

"Vat? You vant ve should live in the past forever?"

Shabbat Zachor (Shabbat of Remembrance)

I didn't know it, but apparently, the Shabbat before Purim is called Shabbat Zachor, or "Remembrance Shabbat." Rabbi S. asked us to share Jewish memories from childhood, and talked about how Judaism is made of our own memories and memories we have inherited from others. These are the memories that are not ours, but have become our own over time. I talked about how my brother convinced me that the creamy white horseradish at Pesach dinner was actually really good applesauce - and how I have been unable to eat horseradish since. And I talked about the time when my family thought the Purim carnival came a week before the actual date, so we all showed up at temple school in costume...only to find out that Purim was next week.

After hearing everyone's humorous childhood memories, I asked Rabbi S. why this Shabbat, the Shabbat before Purim, was Remembrance Shabbat. What is it that we are supposed to remember this week that we are not commanded to remember every week? Do we remember the story of Purim or is it more than that?

He said that when the Jews were brought out of Egypt, a man named Amelek led a group who attacked the Jews from behind, even though the weakest - the elderly and the children - walked in the back of the group. It is said that Haman from the Purim story is a descendant of Amelek, who was the first to engage in this kind of ruthless attack. This passage from Deuteronomy as well as a passage from Exodus are read:

Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way, when ye were come forth out of Egypt; How he met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, even all that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary; and he feared not God. Therefore it shall be, when the LORD thy God hath given thee rest from all thine enemies round about, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it, that thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt not forget it. D'varim (Deuteronomy) 25:17-19

Thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek...thou shalt not forget it: Contradictions.

Rabbi S. said that of course there is more to it than remembering Amalek's attack, and Haman's plans to kill the Jews of Shushan. We also remember that every one of us has the capacity for ruthless violence, like Amalek. We remember that part of ourselves when we "boo" and hiss and try to drown out Haman's name. With the noise, we acknowledge that it exists. With the noise, we remember. We drown out the worst parts of us, and hope we can give voice to the rest.

The costumes and the drinking and the madness may be nothing more than an attempt to cope with this knowledge: We have space for evil. We have space for good.

Rabbi S. also pointed out that nowhere in the Megillah is G-d's name written. It is a human story about this human capacity for hatred, courage, love, fear, violence, and strength.

It reminded me of this passage from East of Eden: http://timshel.org/timshel.php

Timshel. Thou mayst.

Purim Sameach.

Treyfland

I was going to wait until the end of the school year, but decided not to. We're not keeping the house kosher (or anything close to kosher) anymore.

It's not a matter of inconvenience. We tried it for the sake of experimentation, and because I thought it might make me "feel more Jewish" during the week. I was seeking a connection to Judaism outside of Shabbat services, especially a connection I could take with me when I move away from the Santa Cruz Jewish community. But this wasn't it.

And because I don't believe in following the laws just because they are laws - because in my heart I am truly of the Reform movement - it is silly to continue separating and labeling dishes and Tupperware. I follow laws that are meaningful to me. I decided I wanted a kosher house when I was living in the Jewish Co-Op over the summer, when it was not Jewish or a co-op or anything I loved. The Co-Op was meaningful to me, and the Co-Op was kosher. I wanted to recreate that space somehow, but this wasn't it. That's ok. I'm glad I gave it a shot.

I'm going to keep this blog, in which I seldom write, because Jewish living still merits a space for discussion, and because I still need a space where I can discuss it. As the time draws nearer when I will be forced - by adulthood and by moving away - to leave one Jewish community behind and seek a new one, I will probably need this space even more than I do now.

Next quarter - my last quarter as a graduate student here - I am TA'ing a course called "History of Sin," I am taking a course in Global Jewish Literature, and possibly taking an independent readings on Jewish immigration history, 1850-1950. I'm sure there will be plenty to say, as always.

From the grandparent files

Apparently, ever since they've had candles to light for yahrzeit memorial, my grandparents have been saving the little glasses after the candles burn out. They rinse the glasses and use them for drinking.

I can just see them, in all of their wisdom as children of immigrants during the Great Depression, saying "Nu, vy should ve vaste perfec'ly gud glass? Is still useful, no?"

The funny thing is, yahrzeit candles are small, only slightly bigger than tea candles. The only way they could really use those glasses would be for taking shots.

I'm sure it goes something like this: "May my mother, of blessed memory, rest in peace and may her soul rise up to heaven, if we believed in that sort of thing, L'CHAIM!" *takes a shot of vodka*

There's more to it than humor though, drinking from the empty shells of memorial candles. It just goes to show, once again, that memorial rituals are for the living, not for the dead.* And why should the living waste the glasses once the ritual is over?

See, the ritual, not the memories are made of candles and jars. Saving the glass and drinking out of does not blaspheme the memory; it's another way to move on. We remember not only on the yahrzeit and on Yom Kippur. So, how does it sanctify the memory by throwing the glass in the garbage?

There's more than this, but it's not coming just yet. Maybe later...

*I went into more detail on that in this column: http://www.gtweekly.com/columns/real-estate

Baruch Halpern discussion

Tonight the Jewish Studies lecture was entitled "Method and Disenchantment: The Birth of Science and Religion," delivered by Baruch Halpern.

I didn't have time to go, but I'm glad I went anyway.

He argued that an intellectual revolution occurred in the 8th/7thc BC in the Near East and in Greece, in which elites defended local identity by rejecting markers of foreign culture.

Halpern pointed out a historical pattern we're already familiar with: Renaissance --> Reformation --> Enlightenment and then applied it to the writing of the Pentateuch.

We tried to figure out the astronomy of Genesis 1. It was basically crazy, but in the end, he showed us that despite how crazy it sounds to us, there is a logic to it. It's logical, and it becomes more and more complicated with each "there was evening, there was morning." He drew diagrams on the board and explained the logic with Greek philosophers and steam and fire and light and evaporation and domes. I can't replicate it, but oh it was nuts...

In the end, he'd made quite a case...the rational, logical, methodical creation story involving a highly rational God was created to support the beliefs of an intellectual elite, who were trying to prove that their creation story was correct. "Science" and "religion" and the birth of "western thought" against pre-existing, traditional polytheistic religions.

The Bible, in other words, played the same role we now grant to science in debunking other myths.

I wish I could explain it better, but all I can say is that when he finishes his book, I've got to read it.

History of Languages

(my reinterpretation of the Tower of Babel story):

History of Languages

Before the Age of Misunderstanding,

The early people built a tower

They started with nouns:

Person--place--thing, held together with

Thick layers of verbs, question marks,

Colored bricks effusive

With figures of speech

“YOU” stuck to “HERE” with “ARE”

“ORANGE” described “MUSIC” and “SUNRISE”

Words begat sentences begat paragraphs, higher and higher

In the evening, lovers

Climbed to the top, dangled

Their feet in the clouds, breathless

Before the dizzying view

“I hope we never stop building,” he said,

“Who knows what we’ll create?”

The woman smeared his body with verbs

They sanctified each other

Worshipped the tower

And in the morning, everyone wondered

Who had laid more foundation

Overnight

But God had witnessed the lovers

As they witnessed Creation

Praying to the paragraphs

On which they stood

Before God’s eyes, it became

Epidemic, people blessing the tower,

Its adjectives and songs,

Hallowing skyward metaphors

Until at last, God regretted,

It was time to teach people

To misinterpret

So when the man said “Please pass the adjective; will you marry me?”

His lover laughed at the string of useless sounds

“What do you mean?” she babbled

It was a brick no one could answer

People clamped their hands over their mouths

As brave new words grew inside, struggling to escape

Foundations shook

Mortar cracked

Language collapsed

The man and woman touched each other’s faces

Searching for words that were no longer there

At last, they decided it was better

Not to speak

And learned to communicate

Without sound

The early people went on to misinterpret

God’s words, they told each other

“We climbed too high, God

Has punished our pride

With confusion”

Some finally stopped talking to God

Certain that God, too,

Would misunderstand

But people have always struggled

With foundations, mortar, and God

Didn’t mind the human desire

To build higher towers

It was their belief in language

That God punished

Some words felt

Like marbles on her tongue

But they stuck to her lover’s teeth

Refusing to tumble to the floor

And some verbs tasted nostalgic

While certain questions set his mouth on fire

Still they were convinced that sounds

Meant the same thing in different mouths

That one language meant

One way of hearing

So the Tower of Babel collapsed

On its faulty foundations

And some people learned

To search for meaning in the din of sounds

While others still shout brick after brick

Trying, in vain, to be understood

(adva ahava, copyright 2008)