Everybody's Got Something, Nelson Mandela Included

While discussing an otherwise perfectly pleasant and wonderful mutual friend, someone said: "If she would only..." (fill in the blank) and I replied: "It's her Something. Everybody's got Something."

Today's Something on display in the world of Social Media is a world view that elevates a complete, unquestioning and limitless loyalty to everything remotely and/or specifically Israeli above ALL other values.

Not just SOME other values, or MOST other values - but ALL other values.

It's some people's Something. Everyone's got Something. This one just hits too close to home.

Nelson Mandela died yesterday, and the general reaction on Facebook was divided into two camps - those who expressed grief, and those who judged the grief of others as wrongful and misinformed.

The latter group brought both images and quotations of Nelson Mandela's support for the PLO and a photo-opp with Yasser Arafat (y'mach s'hmo) as proof-texts for their stance. A summary of the worst of the charges against Nelson Mandela's relationship with terrorists can be found at this link (click on it if you want to read).

I examined the charges and I can't disagree with the documented fact that Nelson Mandela did in fact meet with a number of world leaders who I personally wouldn't invite to my Shabbos table - people like Fidel Castro, Desmond Tutu, Arafat (y"s), and that those same leaders and the propaganda artists whose job it was/is to create symbolic alliances to strengthen their cause didn't hesitate to use Mandela's near-martyr status (deserving as it was) to bolster their own prestige. His presence both enobled and legitimized those who deserved neither nobility nor legitimization. Amongst other harms done - the truly illegitimate co-opting of the word "Apartheid" into the vocabulary of the PLO was a direct result of these associations.

With that being said (and I do believe it needs to be said, and there, I said it!) - Nelson Mandela WAS BIGGER THAN THAT.

Bigger than his political allies, who burned for revenge and hoped he would call for violence upon his release from prison.
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Bigger than those who hated and feared him, knowing when he emerged from prison he might have seized the opportunity to call down the hellfire of genocide upon the White population of an entire Continent, if not beyond.

Bigger than the ideologues who revered him, bigger than the celebrities that fawned over him, bigger than the posturing pundits who editorialized him.

A single man. A single moment in time. 27 years in prison at the hand of a racist oppressor. Millions of followers who, with only a word, would with rocks and knives and guns and their bare hands have torn to bits those whose skin color had dominated and oppressed every aspect of their lives for generations.

Instead ...

Instead of hatred, he chose love.
Instead of violence, he chose peace.
Instead of intragience, he chose dialogue.
Instead of rejection, he chose recondiliation.
Instead of polarization, he chose cooperation.

So, yes, everybody's got SOMETHING. Nelson Mandela's "Something" was a political association with the PLO, the sworn enemy of Israel. But his OTHER "Something" was the fact that he saved MILLIONS OF LIVES WORLD-WIDE, many of them JEWISH, when he emerged from 27 years in prison preaching peace instead of war, looking for cooperation instead of feeding conflict.

IT COULD HAVE GONE THE OTHER WAY. AND IT DIDN'T.

That's why Nelson Mandela's "Something" is, in my humble opinion, distasteful to me both as a Jew and an Israeli, but overlookable because of EVERYTHING ELSE.

Just the way I overlook the "Something" in so many people whom I know and love, because EVERYTHING ELSE tips the scales.

Probably just the way others overlook the "Something" in me as well.

Perhaps even this truth about me that might be uncomfortable: Although I do value complete, unquestioning and limitless loyalty to everything remotely and/or specifically Israeli VERY VERY VERY highly, I don't value it EXCLUSIVELY ABOVE ALL things. There's one thing I value above that - it's MY SOMETHING.

My "Something" is I can't stand to be told what to think by other people, and unless I've come to a conclusion for myself and by myself, I refuse to think (and do) something I don't believe in. It's my whole personal integrity thing - very annoying, but so much a part of who I am it can't be disabled, even when it comes to other things I hold dear, as dear as I hold my own life.

Everybody's got SOMETHING. What's your Something?

My Gay Puerto Rico

It's a known and documented fact that I spent the majority of my time, energy and resources (material, emotional and spiritual) on the quest to convince any and all of my four adult children to move to Israel when I made Aliyah in 2007.

At the time, they were 20, 22, 24 and 26 - and all of them thought my Aliyah would be a passing fancy, a mid-life crisis, a shiny toy that would soon lose my interest. None of them took me up on the offer to relocate them at my expense when I first moved there.

Over the years, one by one, they all eventually visited. Some for a short time - two weeks, in the case of my daughter, four years in the case of one of my sons, 2 months another, etc. - but none of them wanted to LIVE there.

I cried. I prayed. I lit candles, gave tzedakah, did tshuva, learned Torah, prayed more, did hibbodidut, offered cash and prizes, attempted trickery and bribes, prayed some more, cried some more.
And still they refused to fall in love with the Land of Israel and desire to live there.

This caused me much anguish and frustration, until finally, only a few short months ago after years of this conflict, my oldest son Jesse explained it to me this way:

"Mom, you know how Cameron is all out-there about being bisexual, right? Well, what if President Obama declared that Puerto Rico was America's new 51st State, and that all the GLBT people in the USA were encouraged to move there, in fact they were given financial aid and tax breaks to move there, and what if Cameron moved there and wanted us to move there with him? What would we do?"

"I guess we'd go to visit him there, but we wouldn't move there," I replied.

"Why not, Mom? Why wouldn't we move there?"

"Because we're not gay."

"Exactly, Mom. And that's why we're not moving to Israel. Because to us, your children, Israel is your Gay Puerto Rico."

It was at that moment that any hope I had ever had - hope that was strong, hope that was strengthened in prayer, hope that was held on by nothing more than sheer will, completely collapsed. In fact, imploded.

I saw in that moment that I could indeed spend the rest of my life living in Israel, and praying my heart out, crying my eyes out and beseeching the heavens, but that unless my children suddenly turn into committed Zionists, they're not going to all pick up and move to Israel. Not now. Not that they are 32, 30 (married with twins), 28 and 26. Because Israel IS Gay Puerto Rico to them - a place to visit their Zionist (read: totally committed to something we're not that interested in for ourselves although we acknowledge it's right for you and we don't have anything against it in principle, it's just not for us) mother.

I lost my hope. In a moment. And I saw my future in Israel - alone, working myself into exhaustion just to get enough money to come visit them once a year for a few weeks at a time. And I saw there was another choice - I could go to California, be on the ground to be a part of their real everyday lives, get economically stabilized and make Israel my vacation place, my go-to place instead.

The landslide towards realizing this relocation was coming began with my daughter giving birth to my first grandchildren, fraternal twin boys, a year ago, and it was solidified with the hiddush of Gay Puerto Rico.

So, here it is, and here I am - far away from Gay Puerto Rico, land that I love, living in Golus to be close to my family. After 3 1/2 weeks (including 4 Shabboses) here I can say the following with complete assurance:

The six days of the week in America are easy, and Shabbos is very, very hard here.  The six days of the week in Israel are hard, and Shabbos in Israel makes up for everything else that happened during the week.

Will it ever get easier? SHOULD it ever get easier? I don't know. It almost doesn't matter. Because I did it for love - and in the end (Zionist Dream or Gay Puerto Rico aside) that's all we take with us in the end - the love.

The Signature of All Things - Signed, Sealed and Delivered

I finished reading "The Signature of All Things" by Elizabeth Gilbert last night. I haven't been able to stop weeping. I wept until I fell asleep, I woke up at 1:40am to cry myself back to sleep, and all morning tears have watered my cheeks. I want to stop crying, but I can't.

I can't stop crying, because the relationship between Alma and Ambrose hit the Mother of All Nerves. 

Upon first meeting of the character of Ambrose, I immediately began to cry. I knew what was coming, because I lived it in the weirdest and most painful way with the man to whom I was recently married,  and then suddenly divorced 11 months later, after a humiliating scandal.

The half-mad man-child, the one whose spiritual longing took him outside the norms, the one whose own G*d-given human longings became subsumed to the habit of polarizing extremes, the one whose horror of impurity extended to his own natural physicality. 

As I read the book, I was initially thrilled for Alma to have found a true friend, someone as extreme as she in both intellect and imagination, someone who demonstrated the highest excellence and originality in his own chosen (and extremely esoteric) work, someone who took delight in her presence and could soar with her and she with him.

I was hoping they'd be the best of friends forever, but alas, each their own frail humanity, unfulfilled passions and long-overdue urgent need for communion created a moment where both of them felt, indeed, SUPERNATURALLY ARTICULATED and understood that they were for each other.

In such a way, in such a time and culture (and how ironic that the society my ex-husband and I lived in, that of Orthodox Judaism in modern-day Israel, was and is in much ways identical to the 19th Century, wherein the story of Alma and Ambrose took place) they had no choice but to marry.
 
What happens next, dear readers, I shall not spoil for you, nor is this post meant as a book review, simply a jumping-off point to the fountain of grief that was triggered by reading how Alma and Ambrose alas, could not simply have left it at glorious friendship of two distinctly unique individuals.

Because of the impossibility of basic, honest communication between two people so completely caught up in their own internal worlds, a great misunderstanding occurred - one that would have life-altering repercussions.

Alma felt fundamentally rejected and socially humiliated, and banished her husband - who, like mine, was incapable of initiating his own destiny but instead reacted or adapted to what was put in front of him by those with stronger wills - to the other side of the world than herself.

As for me, feeling fundamentally betrayed, socially humiliated AND responsible for harm that came to others because I not only sanctioned but promoted him to the world, in the course of banishing my former husband to the outermost limits of the outermost limits, both socially and psychically, I've lost the friend I used to have - my weird, quirky and sweet friend who used to come over to my house every week for two years to record Torah programming for my Internet Radio Station that reflected how his original mind and my original mind could riff and soar together.

"Like Angels," Ambrose would have said with a dazzling smile. But my former husband alas, was no angel - although he desperately wanted to be. 

What happens to Ambrose, what happens to Alma subsequent to that, the role that sexual frustration, unexpressed desire, the subsuming of healthy human connectivity to the neo-pagan conceit that flesh and spirit are essentially incompatible, and the suffering that occurs when the natural progression of human relationships is thwarted by philosophies, fears and conventions - no, I shall not spoil for you, dear reader.

But, like the character of Alma, I MUST understand. I cannot rest until I KNOW, no matter the cost to my serenity, peace of mind, health or happiness. So my search to uncover and understand WHAT, WHY and HOW this bit of airy fluff caught me and swung me about and sent me flying in another direction altogether, when I find clues, I must follow them.

Because it's not the airy fluff, or the lost friend that I'm weeping for. It's the utter destruction of my dearest dream, the one I invested everything into, the one closest to my heart, that I waited a lifetime to realize - a marriage/partnership with a spiritual mate / mentor / partner / participant. Because the weight of mere airy fluff was enough to crush and destroy that for which I saved an entire lifetime.

Shall I continue to weep for what, at the end of all things, may simply have turned out to be a bit of airy fluff that passed through my life, nothing more? No, 'tis not that for which I weep, for I am in fact a woman of substance, and women of substance don't weep for fluff.

The tears come from the fundamental fear that after this last debacle, I may never rebuild enough trust in MYSELF, ever again, to be able to share an intimate relationship with another person, or to have a life-partner.  

Tears dry when dead dreams crumble into dust and blow away.

Light comes when that which casts a shadow is removed.

Dreams come when fear hibernates like a bear in his wintery cave.

Newness comes through the birth canal of hope, wet and squalling to be soothed.

Apparently, it is quite the biological and spiritual fact that one must die to the old to be born to the new. And since I'm not even halfway done with my life, I'm not ready to give up on the hope of newness.

Thanks Elizabeth Gilbert, for inadvertently writing the book that gave me the illumination I needed to take this battle for my life to a higher level.

Astrologer, Heal Thyself

There was no way to avoid Mercury Retrograde this time. It was as if the airlines, the circumstance, the gravitational pull all conspired to ensure I would be leaving Israel for Berkeley exactly as Mercury entered his Retrograde phase in Scorpio.

If I was my own astrological client, I'd tell myself (me, that is, I mean me as the client) not to hold too tightly on to expectations, and don't be surprised if frequent stops, starts and re-calibrations are made during this period, which really doesn't end until around Chanukah.

So between now and Chanukkah, I'd tell myself as a client, you're going to want to be focusing and adapting, delving deep and gaining understanding of the new world around you (me, that is).

Well, that's all very fine and well. But the bottom line - TACHLIS, as we say in my village, is that everything I start during this time is going to go through so much change there's no use setting anything in stone - especially my expectations.

Because I didn't come to America for the scenery (which is lovely here in Northern California), or the shopping (which is legion), the entertainment options or the abundance of public restrooms. I came to do a big tikkun on my most important personal relationships - my children and family. So what does one do while doing one's tikkun?

Aye, there's the rub, Captain! Expectations should be put aside in favor of the experiential. Scorpio demands the deepest delving, the most brutally honest self-examination, the most profound passions. Mercury - "Mr. Communication" - reviewing the swath of my personal Natal Chart in my 1st House reminds me that I still have the power to define and redefine myself.

So if I was my own client I'd say go outside and take a walk and enjoy the beautiful day. Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, His mercy endures forever. Because there's nothing you're going to do about the Stars today, aside from letting them twinkle in your eyes when you smile.

"But There's No Mechitza!"

Chayei Sarah, my first Shabbat in Berkeley, California -  I had what in retrospect was a poignantly amusing case of shock when realizing that I was davening in a "Modern Orthodox" shul for the first time in my life.

My shul experiences have been limited to Reform Californian shuls while growing up, then starting in 20004 Chabad in America, and in Israel from 2007: Chabad, Chabad-Carelebach, Carlebach, Carlebach-Breslov, Sephardi (Moroccan), Timani (Yeminite), "Stam" Ashkenazi (Chassidic), "Stam" Ashkenazi (Litvish), Yekke, Chik-Chak Sephardi, Syrian Sephardi, and the Great Synagogue (whatever nusach that is).

So there was, in my jet lagged, childishly bewildered and fish-eye lens opinion, "no mechitza" in this Shul, which otherwise conducted itself just like any other Orthodox shul I've ever davened at in terms of the liturgy and service.

I said (in a kind of almost stammering, disconnected way) to several people afterwards how disconcerting that was for me that there was "no metchitza," and I kept being told by perfectly nice, kosher, normal and not crazy people that there was indeed "a mechitza."

Finally came to the understanding that a "mechitza" is not necessarily understood the way I understand it or have experienced it, and that might be one of the manifestations of the word "modern" in "Modern Orthodox."

I felt extremely tense which wasn't because I was in a new place, alone, and didn't know anybody. Usually that's a fun and exciting activity for someone who is hyper-social, curious and friendly such as myself. The tension was because everything about the service was "normal" except that I felt naked. I was too disoriented to figure out a fix and just kept trying to talk myself down (which didn't really work).

Discussing it afterwards with various people reminded me that there are a variety of options and fixes to be applied to make me more comfortable, and I can deal with it next time.

I wouldn't have experienced this tension at all if I had gone to a Reform or Conservative or Renewal shul, because I would have expected and have calibrated my Neshama, so to speak, for the reality of davening in a community without either a mechitza or separate seating for men and women. It was the word "Orthodox" that threw me off, my assumption about what that meant in the phrase "Modern Orthodox" was not accurate (probably because I have never experienced it before).

I realized more than ever how important the feeling of private, sacred feminine space is to me while davening. I've never experienced the mechitza as a way to keep my feminine energy from "infecting" (as someone I know has said) the masculine energy on their side of the mechitza. 100% and from the first time I ever davened behind a mechitza I experienced it as a safe, sacred space of feminine spiritual energy and was grateful such a thing existed. I do love to join my relatives and friends at their shuls, often without a mechitza, but as I said before I calibrate my expectations and Neshama to that environment and it's always for a special occasion, not for my "regular" davening experience.

I can be inclusive and welcoming and non-judgemental better than anyone in the world - but I still know what I like!  I like privacy!!!