"Glad and Grateful"

Rabbi's Notes - December 2006

by Rabbi Margaret Holub

Well, my dear community, I am still kvelling kvelling kvelling from the celebration this past Sunday! I loved every part of that fabulous party -- the feast, the decorations, the memory book and t-shirt, Go Varriors! Prairie Chelm Companion, Chava Chava "Whatever" from the Wild Women of Chelm (I adore the Chelm theme, of course…) the souped-up songs, Max the piano player, our chazzan Sam standing in for a number, the stories of MCJC's early days, how we all stumbled into a rabbi and then into our shul building, the gorgeous book of my columns and such, the little film from the old days, and of course Rachel's song -- which knocked me right into the World to Come.

It was an incredible feeling to be the center of attention in such a loving way. (I know, I know, I am sort of the center of attention over the holidays and such. But not in the same way. God is the center of attention there. I'm just telling you what page to turn to. But Sunday…) It was embarrassing and all, but I have to say, the loving acknowledgement and gentle roasting felt wonderful. I've been thinking since about a long-term conversation I have going with Sandy Glickfeld about the power of being acknowledged for what really matters to you. I wish that each one of you could have the whole community mirror back to you who you are to us, as you all did for me. So thank you, thank you, to all of you -- more than I can say… The most impactful part of Sunday for me was seeing each one of you walk in the door -- which is a corny thing to say, except that I mean something very specific by it. As I watched people arrive and ran up to greet as many of you as I could, I kept having the same realization wash over me: sometime, maybe lots of times, I have shared some important experience with each of you. I started remembering waves of births and deaths, romances and relationships beginning and ending, houses being built and blessed, children coming and going, spiritual peaks and crises, people choosing to become Jewish and people wandering away from Judaism, moral quandaries, big conversations, mystical experiences, shared questions, illnesses, travels, projects, campaigns, arguments, efforts, at your homes, friendships… Of course I felt the great, huge naches of all of us being together (and the little hollows where someone I love was absent, because of other plans for the day or because of moving onwards, estrangement or death.) The aggregate of our energy was monumental. But for me personally the piece I never quite expected was that sensation of the thickness of all those individual relationships and experiences that I have been privileged to share with so many of you over such a long time now -- eighteen years, chai, a lifetime!

My sense of the statistics is weak, but I think I came here for the first time in early 1984, which would have made me 25 years old. I am about to turn 49, so that tells me that I have been in relationship with this community for very close to half my life. I remember my first visit here pretty clearly. I was living in Boyle Heights in Los Angeles, where the LA Catholic Worker has its house (making me, quite by accident, probably the youngest and last Jew to live in that neighborhood which was once California's Lower East Side.) I remember the directions that Ellen Saxe had given me to her house. "You turn left and drive for an hour. You'll pass a town called Boonville… Go another…. Look for a sign that says… Turn left again and continue for…. Look for a pink mailbox on a post. Look for a stick in the ground with our names on it…" I had never heard directions like that before, nor had I ever seen a home like Ellen and Ronnie's.

I met a lot of people that weekend. I remember sitting in the Roadhouse Cafe in Elk, meeting Charlie Steinbuck, who was already quite ill, and hearing about how neighbors and friends from the Jewish community had helped him and his family finish building their house (Jews building a house? Whoever heard of such a thing???) I met a lot of small children, a lot of parents in their thirties. I met someone who lived in a school bus, a couple of folks who lived on a commune. I met a Methodist minister who taught bible to some of the Jewish women. I heard people talk about their chainsaws, about firewood, about their gardens and the County Fair. (Jews with chainsaws? Jews entering the County Fair???) Lots of shehechiyanus for me!

I remember more clearly coming back that September to lead High Holy Day services for the first time. One of those cute Elk guys schlepped all the way down to Santa Rosa to pick me up. Driving back up to the Coast my brain was in a knot. I knew I had spent a lot of time with this person when I had been up here that first time. But which one was he? Ronnie or George? How could I get him to say his name? (It was George.) I was again hosted by Ellen and Ronnie and Max and Beatrice in that magical "Cabin Eleven." Sometime during the ten days Ellen got a call and learned that her mother, Adele, was suddenly quite ill. Ellen left right away. And I remember the next morning one of the neighbors on Greenwood Ridge coming over to the house and laying out school clothes for Bea and Max and taking away laundry to do. Nowadays such a thing doesn't surprise me. But at the time I was blown away. I thought I knew a lot about community, coming from the Catholic Worker and all. But I had never seen anything like this.

And I remember meeting so many of you and hearing about how you had come here -- from New York, Chicago, Los Angeles. Feminists, political activists, artists, so smart, so well-informed -- and people who could build a house with their own hands and keep themselves warm inside it. At that time many of you had been here for something like fifteen years. I couldn't begin to imagine! Staying so still, in such a small place, where living was so physical and consuming, being so engaged in each other's lives that you knew what your neighbors wanted their children to wear to school… How could people possibly know each other so well?

I had to chew on it all awhile… Were those Mendocino people I had just met living up to their potential? Using their gifts? Dying of boredom? What were their lives like? How did they manage? What did they do all day? Did they miss life in the city? What was it like to be Jewish up there?

Well, we all heard the rest of the story (or some of it) on Sunday. Now those young parents are having sixtieth birthdays, one after another. Now those beautiful little kids are up and out in the world, and plenty of them have kids of their own. The woman who lived in the school bus has a real house now, and is one of my best friends (and just this morning I had breakfast with her at the Roadhouse!) At some point a good handful of the parents of those young parents I met moved here, leaving their city lives. And we have been honored to have some of these elders live out their last days with us. We've had a lot of cancer here, and some other illnesses and accidents too. We had to learn how to visit our sick and bury our dead. Some of those children who grew up here on the Coast, and others of their generation, have moved back and made their own households here. Other people moved here from the big city when they retired. (Retire? I now say… Jews retire?) When Donna asked on Sunday how many of you were here in (I don't remember the exact benchmark that she mentioned -- those days…) only about a third of you raised your hands.

And now I watch each of you walk in the door, and I not only know George from Ronnie, but I know many of your parents and most of your children. I don't know if you'd want me to dress your kids for school, but I know that someone needs to do those things if you have to leave town suddenly. Tomorrow a couple of friends are coming over to my house to plan various kinds of support for our next friend coming out of the hospital. We know how to do these things, and we know that we can depend on each other pretty well.

I didn't have to mull it over for too long before I decided that the generation of rural Jews and their neighbors and friends I was meeting up here knew some important things about life. I wanted to learn these things: how to know each other well (while still allowing each other our eccentricities and a bit of privacy,) how to be in life together, how to stay still and grow deep.

I must confess that at that time I really had little idea how much Judaism has to say about these same matters, and how the tradition could come alive in a place where people were willing to try being a community together. That has been a total discovery for me. I didn't know that we would have to learn not only how to bury our dead but how to adjudicate conflicts, how to speak to each other about hard topics, how to pray, how to repair a sefer Torah split in half, how to bake matzah in a wood-fired adobe oven, how to build a virtual teen group with people who don't have telephones, how to celebrate Tu B'shevat in such a way as to save an old-growth forest (or to travel upwards through the four mystical worlds!) I had no idea how much more Jewish I would feel eighteen years down the road past Boonville. I had no idea how much Jewish tradition and values mesh with country tradition and values, with love of the earth and one's own place on it.

So hearts full of thanks, my beloved community, for the most wonderful party imaginable -- and ever so much more so for the past eighteen -- or twenty-three -- years of teaching me Torah. I am so glad and grateful to be in life with all of you, figuring out this world and this tradition as we go. Now on to the next eighteen…

© 2006 Rabbi Margaret Holub

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