My Hebrew name, "YERACHMIEL", means "God will have mercy"; and I think it could be argued that only through the mercy of God have I found myself in this class, learning Torah, almost 30 years after my 13th birthday. I didn't have a Bar Mitzvah at the traditional age, since in the late 60's, it wasn't customary in Southern California for 13 year old male Presbyterians to be Bar Mitzvah'd.
I am afraid the story of how I came to be here is rather involved, so it may be a long one…
I suppose that as a very young child, I felt some connection to God. My parents attended church, but as I recall, this was a primarily social function and I found the theology to be baffling. As I grew into a rebellious teenager, I became more aware of the hypocrisy that was rampant at church. Money seemed to be of primary importance, and vicious gossip was a principal and cherished ritual.
As I read more history, I learned of the destructive role organized religion had played over the last two millennia. I learned about the crusades, about pogroms and genocide, about controlling male desert-sky gods versus nurturing female forest-earth gods. I embraced the scientific, reductionist paradigm. In the spirit of the times, I rejected the religion of my parents and smugly agreed with Marx (not Groucho, the other brother) that "religion was the opiate of the masses". When I thought about God, I envisioned a really big guy with a beard sitting on a throne looking down at the earth. For philosophical reasons, I thought of myself as an agnostic, but at heart I think that I was closer to being an atheist.
I went to college, experimented with the usual hallucinogens, left school, found a job, worked (a lot), traveled, had good friends, read a fair amount, had several longish term relationships, managed not to get married and thought of myself as leading a fairly typical and adequate life. I saw my parents a few times a year, and tried to keep the visits to three days or under. When we exceeded the three-day limit, we would lapse into the open trench warfare of my teenage years.
In 1991, my Father had surgery for prostate cancer. He reacted adversely to the anesthetic and was severely brain damaged. Mercifully, he died 3 months later.
About this time, I started making minor course corrections in my life, partly the result of beginning to come to terms with my own mortality. My Father's death started me thinking about the finiteness of our time on earth and how we really don't have forever to lead our lives. I bought a house, actually more of a condemned shack, in Mendocino County; so I could start spending more time in the open countryside, which had always been where I found the greatest beauty in life and felt the most at home.
My mother needed a lot of support, which was difficult for me to provide from 500 miles away. Her health started to fail, and she became very depressed. She didn't want to move to Mendocino and I was not willing to move back to Southern California. I began to realize that corporate careerism was not as important to me as caring for my Mother, and for the two years that she survived my Father, she was the focus of my life. While she was sometimes more than I could handle, we became much closer than we had been for a very long time.
Secular American Christmas, with its rabid celebration of consumerism, had become an anathema to me. December 25th was my Father's birthday, and after his death, I was relieved that my Mom didn't feel much like celebrating. I thought it was a bit peculiar that she gave me a menorah shaped like a Christmas tree, the year after my Dad died; but then her behavior was often hard for me to fathom.
I had always known that I was adopted at birth. Over the years I would occasionally tangentially broach the subject of my biological progenitors with my parents, but their reaction was always so hurt and so defensive that I never pursued the topic. Shortly before my Mom's death, she told me that she "thought" my biological mother was Jewish. (I had always suspected that my parent's knew more about my origins than they claimed.) At the time, I filed the information away as some interesting, and totally surprising, ethnic trivia.
After my Mom died, I found that I was cut loose in a sense. I no longer had the responsibility of caring for her, but I didn't really want to totally immerse myself in work again. I read a book, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche, and while some elements of Buddhist belief did not resonate for me, the idea of always being aware of ones mortality finally sunk in. I seemed to be getting subtle nudges, but I wasn't sure what I was moving toward.
Sometimes when I watched the ocean at sunset, or saw dew glistening on a blade of grass, or caught the fragrance of jasmine; I would be overwhelmed by the beauty of the moment. I would feel a profound sense of gratitude, and would want to give thanks for being given this time and place, but did not know whom to thank. I would catch myself, and feel a bit sheepish.
I started having dreams about attending religious services. In the dreams, there would not be any recognizable people, rituals or ritual objects; but I remember feeling as if I were part of a community and feeling very much at peace.
I worried that mind was turning to mush and that I was losing my hard earned veneer of cynicism as I entered middle age.
I met a woman at work, who had just moved out to San Francisco from Ohio. We worked together a great deal. She was the first adult practicing Jew I had ever met. I had many Jewish friends, but they were either raised in completely secular households or would occasionally attend services to please their grandparents, without feeling any particular spiritual connection themselves. My friend was actually more observant than her parents. This interested me. I had always thought of religious people as somewhat suspect, as being perhaps a bit soft headed or even fanatical. I realized that while I had been an ardent admirer of Jewish culture, I didn't know very much about Judaism. I guess I thought of it as being Christianity without Jesus.
I read a couple of books: "What is a Jew" and "What Do Jews Believe" (fortunately the books were better than their titles). I was startled to find that many of the beliefs I had come to embrace were congruent with tenets of Judaism. These included the primacy of ethics, the importance of behavior over belief, humanities' duty to repair the world, the permissibility of doubt and a non-dogmatic approach to the nature of God.
I started to wonder if in turning my back on religion, I hadn't thrown the proverbial baby out with the bath water. I remember talking to another friend from work, who had hated Hebrew school on Long Island and whose mother had survived Auschwitz; during a smoking break and in the course of our conversation wishing that I was Jewish and realizing that I could actually be, if this was my choice. The thought had never occurred to me before, and it came to me as an epiphany.
For a couple of months after that, people kept telling me that I should really talk to Margaret Holub, the local rabbi. I had a mental image of what Margaret would be like: short, dowdy and perhaps a little bookish. I suspected that she would hit me up for a donation for the building I had read that the community was trying to buy. After staring at her phone number for about 6 weeks, I finally summoned up the courage to call her. When I met her for the first time at her house in Elk, I found that my metal image of her was an exact match! (Just kidding).
Margaret made some reading recommendations and with that my study of Torah began in earnest. Because of the uncertainty of my ethnic background, and my lack of previous exposure to Judaism, about a year later we decided that a formal conversion was in order. The recipe for conversion involved being poked, grilled and marinated. I needed the services of a mohel. Fortunately, because of the routine neo-natal medical practices of the mid 50's, this was a relatively minor undertaking. I appeared before a Bet Din, consisting of Margaret, and two other members of the community, who were the gentlest interrogators that can be imagined. There was a mikvah in Big River, with two witnesses, and after that experience, I am quite certain I will long remember that the temperature of the Big River Estuary is somewhere around 45 degrees F. in April.
I have been continuing my cyber-Torah studies with Margaret via the Internet and have become more involved with this community. I find myself paying more attention to the subtleties of ethics and I am more aware of the importance of tzedakah. I was fortunate enough to be able to visit Israel. I find that Judaism is becoming the center post that supports the rest of my life. Occasionally, I have doubts, and wonder if I haven't lost my marbles. At times I suspect that I have fooled myself into falling for a simple minded palliative, because I can't face existential despair. These doubts seem to occur less frequently though, as the path I am on becomes more familiar and solid.
There are elements of Judaism that are hard for me to deal with, such as the extreme intolerance I have seen among the ultra-orthodox toward other Jews and non-Jews. While it is not an issue in our community, Judaism has not traditionally been willing to acknowledge women as full partners in religious practice and study, and I find that I can't accept this.
Why am I taking this class? Because it seems a natural part of the path I am already on and because I think it will be fun. The Talmud instructs us to "Appoint a teacher for yourself; acquire a friend for yourself" (Pirkei Avot 1/6). I am excited about studying with such a bright and mindful group and perhaps a little bit intimidated, since my knowledge and experience is comparatively so shallow. I often doubt whether God actively influences our lives, but when I think of the road that led me to this time and place, I marvel at the improbability of it all. What are the chances that the young cynic who few up in an LA suburb would find his way to Mendocino, would find a teacher like Margaret, and a community as brilliant, unpretentious and spiritual as this one. When I think of all the steps and people and tiny nudges that have led to this point, I can only be amazed and profoundly thankful, and wonder if God's mercy did not have something to do with sustaining me and allowing me to reach this moment.
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Last updated 03/15/98 (rge)
Copyright MCJC 1998