Although I went to a reform synagogue in Los Angeles till I was 16 and participated in many of the historical and ethical questions, a sense of God as a reality never entered my mind, my home life, or Sunday School as I perceived it. I was passionate about learning and became involved in left wing politics at 14. l met my first husband on a Woolworth's picket line when I was 15. Religion was the "opiate of the people" and fear based. Judaism was bourgeois, narrow and afraid of the outsider (although still superior to other religions). Human Salvation would come from education, equal opportunities and political change.
I did had a few experiences of awe during Shabbat Services at summer camp in an outside chapel surrounded by tall oaks, but it did not connect with anything else in my life. As a city child of city parents my world was fairly removed from nature. l think that as a teenager who defined herself as "rebellious" in a desire to free herself from her family, religion was rejected as part of the whole package. Poetry and Art would be my spiritual mentors. University, books and foreign films were my synagogue. This was all pre-midsixties counterculture.
In my twenties with the influences of psychedelics, friends, and a desire to experience the natural world, a new context of myself as part of that world began to emerge. I moved to Albion, a small rural community in 1969 with my second husband and 3 year old daughter. I was 26 and still very much a city girl but the country began to teach me. The rhythms and cycles of planting, the seasons, the moon became real in my life and laid the groundwork for me to later reconnect with the agrarian ideas of the Jewish holiday seasons. I must admit that though I meditated, read much Zen, Seth, Hindu Philosophy, Be Here Now, and participated in peyote rituals and Aikido, (some for 10 years not 6 months) God or what I might call deep spiritual connections happened only sporadically and I would fall back to the other aspects of my life feeling unintegrated in my spirituality. Sometimes I cared and sometimes it didn't matter.
I did develop much more of an appreciation of the sacredness of life and a profound love for my community. l did find great personal healing in Feminism and a connection and desire to share and help heal the pain that sexism and general unconsciousness welded on the psyches of both women and men. I did feel it was important for my daughter to understand she was Jewish and to interpret the rituals in a positive manner for her. I still did not know the deep well spring of Jewish liturgy, practice, history, learning and emotional peace possible. But I was aging and ripening for the meeting.
It is with great sadness that l write that it was the death of my daughter on the first day of channukah 1990 that my real appreciation of the depth, rightness, and incredible sound sense of Jewish ritual began to flower in my psyche. Not because of any answer about the ''hereafter'', but because of the here.
This began a new chapter, The more I studied the more my love and connection to Judaism grew, It reflected my sense of astonishment at the wonder of life, a cord to my parents and ancestral roots, an ethical desire for justice, a rational way to create community, and a practice for feeling the great mysteries. Such a deal.
But this brings me back to my first dreaded question. Do I believe in God and if not what is this all about? Is spirit "real" or is it a manifestation of human need? Am I fooling myself and how can you trust "feelings" when I know that we can convince ourselves to feel many different realities. Sometimes these questions matter to me a lot - like old friends they still come to the dinner table to be fed. Mostly though they are ghosts; I don't expect an answer and I don't care.
I see that to be Jewish spiritually is a practice, a process not a final conclusion. If l continue the practice I will learn. I know that Judaism is a tremendous treasure chest and that to taste just the littlest bit of Shabbat, to kvell at a Bar Mitzvah, to puzzle the High Holidays, or enjoy a Passover is an incredible privilege and blessing for which l am very grateful. I feel like l have a spiritual home and though my definition of God, spirit, source change; it is like the wind or breath or belief intangible, but present. I do know that life and death seem miraculous, that love opens my heart, and that l am a blind person feeling the dark for the shape of God.
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Last updated 04/25/98 (rge)
Copyright MCJC 1998