New Embassy, Who Dis?

An American president finally kept a campaign promise and moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem, and it had to be Trump. Nixon opened up diplomacy with Red China when he was president. Some argue it was one of a few good things to come from his corrupt presidency. I wonder how history will view this decision by Trump.

Of course there was immediate reaction from the Arabs living in Gaza. There are protests at the border and many people have been wounded or killed. The loss of human life is always regrettable, especially when it could be avoided. There are multiple generations of young men sent to their graves by old men making poor choices based on hate that was passed down to them. When troubles like these happen I am always reminded of a quote attributed to Golda Meir, "Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us."

Apart from the bloodshed at the border, what this week will again show us, as Jews, is that we are not truly welcome by either side of the American political spectrum. It is an ugly truth I have seen time and time again just in my lifetime, not to mention historically.

The Liberal Left do not want a strong Israel, if any Israel at all. The current trend on the Left is to cast Israel as the oppressor and take the side of the poor, down trodden Palestinians. Regardless of the historical reality of the situation and the 22 Arab states that surround Israel and would happily wipe Israel off the map. The Left is quick to ignore the Palestinian rockets coming from Gaza and only focus on the Israeli response to those rockets.

The Religious Right fully supports a strong Israel but deep down doesn't want the Jews. For them a strong Israel is another step in the return of their messiah. While some on the Right see the advantage of having a friendly democracy in the Middle East, many others are guided by their faith and messianic dreams. Once their messiah comes back the Jews will either convert or be cast into Hell with the Muslims and other non-believers.

Where does that leave Israel? In order to secure its borders and survive as a nation Israel takes support where it can get it. At the moment that means taking it from the American Right. That means overlooking the American Right's big tent full of Religious fundamentalist, White Supremacists, and End Timers. If Israel was to turn down this support, how long could Israel last as an island of democracy? Where would there be any other help?

More and more anti-Israeli outbursts in Europe are shown to actually be anti-Jew. Their are Nazis marching in American streets. Jews are afraid to identify as Jewish around the world. And through it all we survive, but for how long?

On top of it all we have to worry about Jews hating Jews. "You're not the right kind of Jew" or "You're not actually Jewish." Religious Jews arguing amongst themselves, secular Jews allowing their leftist ideas get in the way of supporting Israel. Maybe we need the Arab threat to keep us from fighting each other. Maybe we need the anti-Semitic threats around the world to remind us that without a strong, sovereign Israel we have no safe place to live long-term.

This is a long, rambling post today. I should have taken more time to research, spell check, and outline a draft. This was just raw feelings put to a page. 

Momma Always Said Kosher is as Kosher Does

As I try more each day to be more mindful of my Jewish observance level I find eating in restaurants to be more and more difficult. While I do not keep strict kosher when eating out, or at home for that matter, I have tried to work my way to that point.

At present I don't buy any prepackaged food to bring home unless it is marked as kosher by a recognized certifying agency. When I'm out of the house I eat "kosher style" and avoid pork, shellfish, and mixing dairy with meat. That is becoming more problematic as time goes on to the point I have started ordering fish or chicken and avoiding beef now.

Today I had a hamburger with lettuce and tomato and as soon as I bit into it I felt sick. Knowing the grill where the burger was prepared was probably covered in pork grease still makes my stomach turn. It seems that beef is now going to be off the menu as well and I will be sticking to chicken, fish, and salads while I am out and about.

I don't see chicken lasting much longer, at least not regularly prepared chicken. I have held for a long time that chickens don't give milk so why the restriction, but it is becoming harder for me to maintain that stance.

As crazy as it might sound to a younger version of myself, I can see restricting myself to a vegan diet while out and about. I'm not sure I will get to that point anytime soon, but it is not as unimaginable as it once was. 

Wrap It Up

This year has been a year of renewal for me. I have taken on the challenge of becoming more observant in my Judaism this year, but that wasn't necessarily my going in option in January. In my last post I discussed how I decided to start wearing my kippah every day. I know years ago when I was first attempting to be more observant one of the things that kept coming up was that kippot were not Biblically mandated but tzitzit and tefillin were and that it was better to take up the obligation of tefillin than just a kippah. It had been a long time since I had laid tefillin regularly.

My tallit bag holding my tallit and tefillin had been on the bookshelf in the bedroom for a couple of years. It would get moved occasionally when we needed space for something. Each time I moved it I would feel the pang of guilt that I should be going to synagogue each week or, at the minimum, I should be using my tallit and tefillin every morning and praying.

As we approached Pesach the urge to lay tefillin was growing stronger with each morning. It was almost as if they were calling to me. Finally, the Sunday morning before Pesach, I took my tallit bag and siddur downstairs to daven shacharit. Unfortunately it had been almost 8 years since I had taken my tefillin out of the bag. As I unrolled them I could hear the black paint cracking and peeling off the retzuot and batim. I thought I had kept them safe over the years but apparently the humid summers here combined with being tightly wound and stored away was too much for them.

It was a shame see them in such shape. I remember how hard it was to save up the money for such a basic set back in February 2001. They were the cheapest set available from the "Source for Everything Jewish" catalog but they were like gold to me when I got them. I remember struggling to get the shel rosh knot adjusted to fit my head, and having to adjust the shel yad knot to accommodate my being left-handed. I remember feeling so self-conscious the first few times I wore them to morning minyan at shul. I was terrified that someone would point out I was doing something wrong. And I remember the horror I felt the first morning someone told me I was wrapping the wrong arm (I wasn't, he just didn't know I was a leftie).

For eight years I was consistent with laying tefillin each morning. Some mornings were more difficult than others, especially when I was still in the Navy. I have laid tefillin around the world and in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. I remember having to get really good calculating zemanim to adjust for my location. Thankfully the U.S. Navy was very keen on keeping up with sunrise and sunset.

It felt like a punch to the gut to see them like this and to think that I had let them get to this state. I immediately went online and started researching a new set. I finally settled on a pair that were within my budget but also very nice. I ordered two new tefillin bags, one for the new set and one for the old set. They had always be stored in one of my tallit bags but now I felt everyone should have their own. I decided that I wouldn't get rid of the old pair but instead I would set them aside and someday have them repaired. Perhaps when the tefillin set is repaired and once again certified kosher, I will pass them down to a child or grandchild.

The new set of tefillin arrived on the second evening of Pesach and the first day I could use them would be the first day of Chol HaMoed. I spent the evening looking up the rules of tefillin and making sure I was okay to daven with them on Chol HaMoed. I also spent a good amount of time looking up how to wrap tefillin. It had been so long since my last wrap I had forgotten how. Thankfully Internet is much more fleshed out in 2017 than it was in 2001, and I was able to find instructional videos for many, many wrapping styles. Granted, finding the finger wrap for me was a bit difficult and I recall finding out how to do that was tough the first time as well.

So now I have a new set of tefillin. The retzuot are still stiff and dig into my arm each morning. Some mornings I forget to put them on, some mornings I rush out the door and feel guilty that I didn't wear them. Most mornings I feel like I'm doing "Jewish" wrong and I'm skipping a prayer I should be saying or saying a prayer I should be skipping. But I'm spending time online learning more about tefillin than I've ever known before. I may even dedicate a post or two and share some of what I've learned.

The next big step is returning to shul. Remember when I took out my tallit and tefillin that Sunday before Pesach? There was something else in the bag. It was a program from Shabbat services. The week's parsha was va'eira and the year was 2009. The following Sunday morning when I went back to daven and pick up my tallit bag is the last confirmed time I was in the shul. So I need to make some phone calls and re-establish some lines of communication. But I guess that will be another blog post.

I Got It Covered

One of the things I've tried to do this year is become more observant. Due to a lot of issues with basically my entire life falling apart and being rebuilt, a lot of my day-to-day Judaism fell through the cracks. You can go back and see the beginnings of it in some of the older blog posts here. It was the same old story of unemployment, dissolved marriage, foreclosure, move on, meet someone new, start getting better, new job, new life. Regardless of the details of how it happened, it happened. Over the course of the past two years or so, something kept gnawing at me. I was putting my life back together, I was getting to a good place again but I was leaving something out.

I had to sit and examine my new life. The answer was obvious. As I went through the process of rebuilding my life I was subconsciously leaving out Judaism. If asked I would readily identify as a Jew but I had not attended a service in well over 5 years. My youngest children hadn't been to synagogue more than a handful of times since their upsherin when they were three years old. I had transitioned from someone who loved going to synagogue and worrying about having Jewish grandchildren to someone who occasionally felt a pang of guilt on Saturday afternoons if he saw a Jewish reference on television. This was not who I wanted to be and more and more the guilt and the emptiness grew in me.

After recognizing the problem not much changed for me. I went through every day pretty much the same. Along the way I started paying more attention to what I ate. It slowly evolved from ordering the bacon double cheeseburger to no bacon, to no cheese, to ordering the tuna sandwich or getting a salad. Slowly I started trying to schedule less on Saturdays. But I still felt that something was missing.

One of the first things I had to address in my own life was to stop being the resident "Uncle Tom" Jew for my goyishe boss. I had allowed an environment to grow around me where I would offer mild protest or chidding over borderline racist or anti-semitic remarks but never rock the boat too much. I was fast becoming a self-hating Jew on the road to assimilation and I had to bring it to a stop as soon as possible. But once you let a situation like this get established it is very difficult to fix it or stop it. The attitude of "why is it a problem now but it was fine last week?" or the inference that you are the problem for being a hypocrite.

As we all struggled through the ordeal of the 2016 Presidential Election here in the United States, I was becoming more aware of the news. Racial incidents seemed to be on the rise, anti-muslim opinions were openly voiced on social media, and the foul smell of anti-semitism started to waft in from the political fringes. I know all of this has been here for a while and, for the most part, has always been a part of our lives, but lately it felt as if people were being more bold with their statements.

Post-election Thanksgiving dinner with the extended family went about as well as could be expected when you're a liberal Jew who supported Bernie and then Hillary, and the extended family are nominally Christian Trump supporting conservatives. The hours of conversation about how Trump was already fixing America a full two months before being sworn into office was more than enough to make the trip a bucket of fun for all involved.

I felt something inside of me pushing back and demanding to be heard. I was not the person I wanted to be, or needed to be. I had allowed one person and one set of bad choices lead me down a road that took away something in my life that gave me peace. I had to get it back.

Sometime in mid-December, as the holiday season approached, I wore my kippah to work. I didn't do it the next day and a fellow manager asked me why not. I explained that I used to wear it all of the time years ago but due to work and trying to get back on track with my career I hadn't felt comfortable wearing one. That was only part of the truth. The other part was that I had let my life falling apart let me become a bad Jew and I didn't have the strength of character to represent the tribe anymore. We all know the old trope that if someone is rude in public, he's just rude; but if someone wearing a kippah is rude in public, then it is proof that all Jews are rude.

Part of why I chose to take off my kippah the first time was my own shame at not being a good Jew. Part of the reason I couldn't put it back on was my own cowardice and the fear of being pushed down again. But now I was a manager. Now I could make sure that no one was pushed down.

So I started wearing my kippah, on and off in mid-December but over the holiday vacation season and starting everyday during Hanukkah, I wore my kippah and I haven't taken it off since. Early on there were a few glances, hushed comments, and awkward questions but that wore off as we all moved into January and the new year.

What changed because of my kippah? Internally I felt way more guilt or shame when I walked into a non-kosher restaurant. Early on I made a point to keep a baseball cap handy to hide my shame. Luckily Chicago won the World Series, so I had an excuse to always have my Cubs cap handy. Externally, at work at least, I started noticing that certain people were talking to me more. I was a new manager, but I was also openly Jewish. Now I seemed to be father confessor to some, therapist to others, and champion to the downtrodden. If you work at my office and are a minority, live an alternative lifestyle, or belong to any other "non-Old White Man" group then we have most likely met and had a conversation or two.

I know there are more important things I should be doing to increase and improve my observance level but this was just the first step. Or perhaps, better put, this was the first rung on my ladder of increased observance. There's more to the story and more rungs on the ladder have been climbed, but we'll talk about those in upcoming posts.

New Decade, Who Dis?

So it's been 7 years, 11 months, and 18 days since my last post here. Glad I got in before the 8 year mark, that would have been embarrassing. While I'm at it, I just also noticed that it has been 10 years, 2 months, 26 days since I started this blog. In either event, so much about my life has changed in that decade but we'll get to that in time.

For the time being the thing that is bringing me back to this blog is my Judaism. If the majority of my early posts here are any indication, I generally used this as a place to discuss my ongoing journey into Judaism. I've recently started back on the path of observance and needed a place to journal about it. As usual, I'd rather keep names and specific locations out of the mix to protect the innocent but the topics here don't quite fit the other blogs I maintain.

That all said, I don't know how much I'll be writing here but it will be a work in process.

Worlds Away

I'm sitting on the balcony of my room at a very nice hotel/resort/spa that my company has seen fit to locate me in while I await an important meeting. Granted I'm not too keen on traveling this late in the summer. I should be at home working on the house and getting ready for the onslaught of fall holidays.

Reflecting on this past summer is a bit tough. I can't help but feel that I have let things slip a little too much on the Jewish front. I live in the constant fear that I'm not doing enough to ensure our kids get the Jewish education that they need in order to survive in this goyeshe world. What kind of example do we set when we are too tired from work to go to minyan. It's not that tough and for the most part it's only thirty or forty minutes out of the day.

Lots happened this summer. In May we bought a house. It's not a new house, but it's new to us. Everyone finally has a room and things are starting to settle down as we all look around and realize we are home. I keep waiting for that feeling to come to fruition. I come home, but it's not "home" yet. We still have to build memories and traditions at this new house. Almost immediately after closing on the house I was off on travel for the day job and spent most of the summer working away from home. And now as High Holy Days approach I am once again on travel. I'm really growing tired of the travel, but the money I get from doing this jobs is what's making it possible to buy the house that we all love.

As a family we spent exactly zero time at shul from the time we moved until now. It got so bad that the Rabbi actually sent me an e-mail last week to make sure that we were okay and planning to come back. I'm sure things will improve once the school year starts and we get back into the routine of Wednesday Hebrew School, Saturday Junior Congregations and Sunday Religious School. I remember some years that I would feel more at home in my shul than at home. We have close friends at shul but now after taking about three months off and being vacant I wonder how much of a friend they think we are.

My daily observance has waned more than I would like it to be. It seems almost strange to get back into my routine now that I've taken so much time off. And again I wonder what kind of example I'm setting for the kids. Are they thinking, "Being Jewish is cool, as long as it doesn't interfere with whatever else I want to do."? Because that seems to be what's going on now. I have to learn to make a stand in my house. I have to be Gandalf and say "This far and no further! You SHALL NOT PASS!"

As a bright spot this will be the first year that we build a sukkah in the backyard as this is the first year we've ever had a yard. I've been researching sukkah designs and think I've come up with a very workable plan using galvanized brackets from Home Depot, about 20 2x4s and a lot of tree cuttings. It should work out and if it does I'll post pictures.

Another routine I need to reestablish is using my blog. It seems I get fired up about something, post it, and then disappear for a year or so. Maybe I should use Rosh Hashana and rededicate myself to being more active in my shul, blogging regularly and growing as a person. Nah, that sounds a lot like work, and right now I have all the work I can stand.

Everybody Sit Down and Take a Breath

I know I can't be the only person that is exhausted after the past few weeks. Tishrei is non-stop action every year. I know it's coming, I remember it from last year, but it always seems to surprise me how active it gets around here.

First just the number of times we're going to shul. I love going to shul, but I never realized how much time it takes when you have to go. This year with Rosh HaShanah starting on a Wednesday evening provided us with a very busy schedule. Between the Holidays and our regular weekly activities of Sunday Religious school I think we almost moved into the shul.

In a period of twenty-six days I was at shul about thirty times (more or less). During this same amount of time any other month I'd be there about twelve to fifteen times. But it wasn't so much how many times we were in the seats but how busy we were this year. This was the first year that I have been really involved in our Men's Club and also the first year I seem to been involved so much in the "goings-on" at shul.

When it was over I was sitting at home relaxing, wondering if there was some forgotten service I should be attending on Columbus Day and I realized that all the times we were there, the Rabbi was there. Not only was he there, he was working his tail off. I am truly amazed at how much he has to do and put up with every week in general, but the High Holy Days have to be insane for him. We can't be paying him near enough. So this year I applaud you Rabbi, thanks for all the hard work you and the staff do every day to keep this place going. Sit a spell, take a load off and if at all possible take a vacation, you deserve it.

Hey, Whadya Read?

I was looking at my daily blog roll this morning and started thinking about why I read who I read. Hirhurim is actually the reason I found the Jewish Blogosphere to begin with. I "met" Gil Student online years ago when my wife (who wasn't my wife at the time) had started her conversion process (after about a year of me trying to talk her out of it). She found an online community on the Delphi Forums and introduced me to online Judaism. After my time in the military I lost contact with the folks on those forums as my life was in a state of upheaval, but one day I logged in and started posting with folks, trying to see what had been happening to everyone in the three or four years since I had written to them last. That's when another friend of mine sent me a link to Gil's new "blog".

Hirhurim is definitely the deep end of the pool for me. I'm always interested in what he has to say, but I don't always understand it. From there I started looking around for more Jewish blogs. That's when I discovered that JewFAQ had an associated blog called "Jewish in a Gentile World". We had used JewFAQ many times in the past for research as we added new rituals and observance into our home and it was a nice resource. As I scanned around blogger I found a couple links to "Dry Bones" by Yaakov Kirschen. I had read Dry Bones for years in other online sources, but now I had a steady source.

As I continued to search around I ran into the others from various links in blogs I would read or searches I would make. I found "On the Fringe - Al Tzitzit" by Shira Salamone while searching for a Conservative viewpoint. From there I found links referenced in various posts that took me to such exciting places as Orthomom, Psychotoddler, and Seraphic Secret. Seraphic Secret brought back old memories when I finally realized that the blog was posted by Robert J. Avrech who wrote one of my favorite movies from a very tough time in my life.

I was living in the Deep South and feeling very alien and alone when "A Stranger Among Us" came out. It was something Jewish to grasp onto and connect with (even if it wasn't my flavor of Judaism at the time). When I went to boot camp three years later, it was one of the movies we watched on Sunday mornings during our chapel time. Just to explain that one, we had our primary services on base on Friday evenings, but then on Sunday mornings since everyone else would be in their religious services we would meet again and daven Shacharit and then spend the rest of the time watching a movie with a Jewish theme and discuss it. The movies ranged from the "Fievel" movies to "Gentleman's Agreement" and it was a great time.

So several of my links have a long personal history to them and some of them I've only recently found and enjoy reading every morning. But I always keep an eye open for new blogs to add to the list and either get a new viewpoint or find someone I agree with.