Four Walls Of My New Freedom

Rabbi's Notes - October 2001

by Rabbi Margaret Holub

When I was ten, before I took the intellectual nosedive that adolescent girls are famous for, I was bored with the books we were reading in my history class. And so one time my wonderful teacher lent me a book from his own library: The Seven Storey Mountain, by Thomas Merton. This is Merton's memoir which concludes with him entering a Trappist monastery in Kentucky, preparing to live the rest of his life in the repetitive rhythms of prayer and work and silence. I was enthralled by Merton's journey, especially by one line at the end of his tale: "So Brother Matthew locked the gate behind me and I was enclosed in the four walls of my new freedom."

I've learned since that many a bright young girl, and others as well, I'm sure, are entranced by the austerities of a monastic life that they have no intention of ever living. I remember a delicious furtive conversation years later with several of my female rabbinical classmates about our various "nun fantasies." Obviously none of us went on to become Trappist nuns, but the resonance of that way of life stays with me at some level. I can only read the accounts of Merton (who, by the way, later travelled the world as a spiritual teacher, wrote prolifically and engaged with many of the world's great spiritual traditions -- so much for being enclosed in four walls...) and use my own imagination to speculate on the allure of the cloister. What I imagine is that there is, in the relentless repetition, the constant engagement with a very small number of people and a tiny physical environment, a kind of refinement that comes from minute frictions experienced over and over without flinching or escape. It must be something like tumbling rocks in a tumbler full of sand. We who live lives of such material freedom, who can travel the world, live where we wish, change careers and religions, names and family configurations, miss out on this minute abrasiveness. We chafe easily, and we move away when we are rubbed, so that our edges stay sharp. Even though we would probably abhor it in reality, there is something inviting to the imagination about a commitment to staying still and submitting to the sculpting of time, repetition and closeness.

I remember when Mickey and I were planning our wedding I again thought about Thomas Merton and the "four walls of my new freedom." No nun jokes, please! But I realized that by choosing marriage, a permanent commitment to one person rather than a shifting array of partners, I was choosing to place myself into that refinement process, the two of us moving towards countless tiny interactions within the context of a commitment to stay in place even when they are abrasive. Yes, they sometimes rub! But I recognize this as the essence of committed relationship -- allowing one's character to be made smoother and more elegant by the myriad details of life with one human being, the endless working things out, the repetitive bliss and the many moments in between -- choosing, over and over a million times, to be kind, to be honest, to apologize, to compromise, to stick up for oneself, to let go. And, in so doing, to hopefully to see the rough edges of one's own spirit shaped more gently over time.

I am exploring this line of thought once again because of a project I am about to undertake. As all of you who read my screeds month after month know, I look at being in community as a spiritual practice of its own, equal in intensity to other kinds of spiritual practices like prayer, meditation and observance of ritual mitzvot. In fact, I think of community very much like I think about marriage -- as a committed relationship with much lovely abrasive potential! We could easily think of MCJC in Merton's joyful terms, as "the four walls of our freedom." Through the repetitive cycles being with the same people, of holiday and prayer, of good news and bad, birth, illness and death, the repetitive demands to care for each other, to work out difficulties, the efforts to learn and to incorporate what we learn, the stretching to accommodate difference, the delineation of boundaries, all the dishes we wash and all the vacuuming of the red carpet, the ways we try to listen to each other and to communicate, the chronic "issues" and the ways they shift over time -- through these endless details we not only see the community grow and change over the years, but we ourselves, through our involvement in all this rubbing together, are changed within as well. Obviously the degree of change has something to do with the amount of time we are around, the amount we participate, the degree to which it all matters to us. And all of us participate to some degree in multiple and overlapping communities. So just exactly which frictive potential is sculpting our souls may be harder to trace. And the commitment to personal refinement through community is somewhat more fluid than the commitment to a marriage or a monastery. But, to the degree that we place ourselves into the flow and tumble of our community, we are shaped by it as surely as it is shaped by us.

Oh, yes, my project. I want to find some ways to offer some of what I am learning from all of you to other Jewish communities. I am starting to imagine some sort of a "mentorship" for other Jewish groups -- not because we know more than others, but because there is such a hunger for community, and I see little out there to help people figure out how to create and sustain it. I am absolutely at the beginning of this idea, just beginning to even imagine how I might start imagining. But our Board has granted me a two-month sabbatical to put some more sustained thought into this project. I will be on sabbatical this coming November and December -- very soon! I am excited and grateful. During this time I will be spending some time reading, studying traditional Jewish sources about community, talking to others who seem to have rich experiences of community, maybe visiting some other communities and people who participate in them. I am going to be searching for words and concepts -- since so much of what I know now is in details.

I don't even know if commmunity is something that can be taught. Sometimes I think that each community has some kind of "DNA," which is fairly fixed -- probably from the time of the community's very conception. Sometimes I think that we have the community we do, with both its many strengths and its few and tiny difficulties, just because we were blessed with "avot" and "imahot" -- founding fathers and mothers -- with the beautiful character and vision that they had. Sometimes I think that the best offering I could make to another Jewish community would be to figure out how to infuse a little bit of Lou Miller (or any of several others...) into their collective genetic imprint. And of course spiritual genetic engineering is as confounding as the more material kind. I don't know if it's something you can conceptualize. This is what I want to try to find out.

So, practicalities: even though I won't necessarily be physically away, I am going to do my very best to disappear. I am in the process right now of arranging for rabbis to visit and to lead some of the services that I usually facilitate. Phone inquiries that I usually handle will be directed to Board members, and they will find referrals if necessary. The "Class Formerly Known As..." will begin in January instead of October. If you know in advance that you will need some sort of support that I would usually provide, it would help if you would let me know during October, so that we can figure out how best to meet your need while I am unavailable. If there is a death while I am gone, the hevra kadisha will be able to facilitate all ritual support including the funeral. We will send out a letter with more specific dates of visiting rabbis, referral options and such when they are finalized.

This sabbatical is actually the second half of one that was offered to me back in 1995, after I had been here as your rabbi for seven years. At that time the Board very generously offered me two months off that year and two months the next. I took the first two months and went to Israel. And I have had the other two in my pocket ever since. A sabbatical has a dual purpose; it allows a rabbi or scholar an opportunity to pursue a project in more depth than his or her regular schedule permits. And it is also a time for personal renewal. I love being your rabbi, but I do find my constant availability to be part of that refining grind at times. I ask your support and indulgence in treating me, during November and December, to a sabbatical from your inquiries, arrangements and spiritual needs. I anticipate that there may be a few awkward moments. Of course I will want to know how you are faring, but I am going to try to step back from acting like a rabbi in those moments. I am going to try -- temporarily! -- to learn how to be part of this Jewish community without being its rabbi. And I do want you to know that I am taking this sabbatical (I am happy to say!) not because I am overworked or exhausted, not because I am breaking, but because I want to stay here as your rabbi for centuries to come, God willing. And to do so, I need to stretch sometimes, to expand my horizons. I look forward to turning everything I learn and figure out back into the soil of my beloved garden here at home.

I am writing these notes between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, not even two weeks after the attacks on the East Coast. Right now, like all of us, I am consumed with sadness on account of these experiences and fear of whatever will come next. But I am anticipating that with our huge human spirits we will somehow assimilate all these changes and losses and continue forward, as individuals, as a local community, a local Jewish community, and as a country. I have already seen and felt our profound, instinctual turn towards our communities -- particularly our communities of faith -- in the midst of all this cataclysm. I hope that my small efforts in the direction of making the experience of community deeper will serve, whatever is to come.

Copyright 2001 Rabbi Margaret Holub

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