Stalled Journeys

Another year, another Pesach. It has been well over a year that I have been trying to reconnect with my Judaism. As can be witnessed by the dates of the posts here, documenting the journey hasn't gone that well either.


I've been wearing my kippah every day since Hanukkah 5777 (December of 2016, in case you don't want to check hebcal.com). This year my self-challenge was to start wearing tallit katan every day. That has been more of a challenge, but oddly enough it has had more to do with laundry and body heat than presenting as Jewish. Granted I generally tuck-in and don't wear the tzitzit out yet, or at least not out when I'm out. That's still a point of trying to avoid מַרְאִית עַיִן (marit ayin) and me doing something un-Jewish with my tzitzit out. Unlike covering my head with a baseball cap and going incognito, having a bunch of white strings tangling at your waistline is a little more obvious that something is up.




As for reconnecting with my community, I tried to start going to morning minyan again. You may recall last Pesach Sheni I decided to try to make the jump back into regular attendance. I spoke with the rabbi about rejoining the congregation and things seemed to be going okay, up until the next festival. Shavuot is a major festival on the Hebrew calendar but, from what I've ever witnessed in the local Conservative synagogues, it's not one of the "popular" holidays. It should be up there with Pesach and Sukkot. It celebrates G-d revealing the Torah to the nation of Israel at Sinai. I made a point to attend services that day and I regretted it.




I felt so out of place the entire time. It started out well enough I got a good seat, I got to be the magbiah and lift the Torah. Then, like an idiot, I accidentally mansplained what page we are on to the lady sitting next to me. Which wouldn't be so bad except I recognized her from my conversion classes 18 years ago. She and her husband had been friendly with my ex-wife and I back then but I guess we all drifted apart after my family moved away for awhile. I wanted to eat my shoe. 




After the service, I stepped back into the minyan room to grab my jacket and accidentally overheard the rabbi speaking to the elderly couple who run the daily minyan about how to handle a situation with a schnorrer. Were they talking about me? Were they talking about one of the other families who had joined us from a nearby smaller congregation? I had attended about a month's worth of morning minyanim but I had not yet spoken to the synagogue office about renewing my membership. I had been sure to drop a ten dollar bill in the tzedakah box each morning I attended (when most folks were dropping a dollar or a five spot at most). I felt mortified. 


At the luncheon after services I was relegated to sit with the other oddball non-member families at the table farthest from the rabbi. I had an overwhelming sense of not belonging. All of this on top of recently being outed by the rabbi as being a convert. To him it appeared to be an off hand comment, a fond memory from my conversion. We had joked at the time this was Conversion 2.0 as I had previously converted through the Reform movement and this was the "upgrade". But that was almost twenty years ago and I still hated being reminded of my conversion. 




It is my understanding that you shouldn't bring up a convert's past in general conversation. I'm stuck with a very obvious Scots-Irish surname that already causes plenty of people to raise an eyebrow and say, "I didn't know that was a Jewish name." To which I generally reply, "It is now" or "it's always been my name" as a deflection. I hate how I am immediately treated differently by Jews and non-Jews when it gets out that I converted. "Oh, so you're not really Jewish" has been heard from both sides and I honestly can't say which one bothers me more. 


Instead of addressing all of this with the rabbi, I did what I usually do and retreated inward. I just stopped going to minyan. I never called the front office about membership. I retreated back to my home version of Judaism. I have spent the last year watching videos about Jewish observance and reading as much as possible. I have two bookcases overflowing with Jewish reference books that I used to dig into every week. I'm thinking more and more about starting Daf Yomi and kick myself for not having this rejuvenation of Judaism before the current cycle started (August 3, 2012). I know I want to study Talmud, but I'm not sure if doing Daf Yomi isn't just an excuse for me to buy the Talmud set. (Side note, the set sold by Artscroll would look beautiful on my bookshelf but for $1800 I will likely just keep using Sefaria.)


But all of that and I haven't been back. I feel like I am a huge disappointment to the rabbi but at the same time I'm scared about my status as a convert. When he retires or (G-d forbid) passes away, who will remember that I am a Jew? Who will count me at a minyan? Will I be counted as a Jew in any other congregation I visit? I'm already worried enough that I'm pretty sure I can't make Aliyah to Israel due to the requirement of being active in a synagogue or community for the past year. Not that I am thinking of making Aliyah anytime soon, but it has always been a little reassuring knowing we have a safety net. 


Long story short (too late) I want to be more engaged in my Judaism. I am progressing in my daily observance at home. I took offense at a statement that probably wasn't about me and let it wreck my year. 


Now what?

Pesach All Over Again

Wednesday marked Pesach Sheni or Second Passover. It was established by G-d for those who were not able to bring the Passover offering at the proper time due to ritual impurity. One month after Pesach there was a second chance for those who missed it the first time. From this origin story the day has become known by some as a day of second chances. That's what I decided to use it for this year.

I tried on Tuesday evening to get to shul in time for the evening minyan but the joy of rush hour Hampton Roads traffic made a 20 minute trip take 45 minutes and I missed it. I decided I would be there for the next morning's minyan.

It had been a long time since I had sat in morning minyan. You may remember from my previous post that I had not been to shul since the Sunday after parsha va'eira 2009. If my calculations are correct, that would have been January 25, 2009. The twins would have been almost five and my college freshman daughter would have been ten. Losing all of that time hit me hard when I made the realization of how long it had been. So many lost chances to share my faith with them as they grew up. So many lost chances to get them involved in synagogue life. To make the idea of not going to shul every week as alien to them as going at all is to them now. I wept. Every realization like this leaves me feeling horrible about myself. It piles on top of the growing mound of feeling that I've done yet one more thing to screw up my kids' lives.

Oddly enough, I was like a kid trying to go to bed on Christmas Eve. I tossed and turned all night, my anxiety levels were through the roof and it didn't help that I had missed my stomach medication for the past two days so the acid reflux was in full effect. Finally I got up at 4:30 AM and started reading. I reviewed a few videos on wrapping tefillin, because even though I've been wrapping every morning since my new pair arrived, and I have already spent several evenings and Sundays reading blogs and books and watching videos on the right way to wrap, I was still anxious about doing it in public and possibly getting it wrong.

I showered early and left with more than ample time to spare. When I walked in I recognized a few of the regulars from the old days. Still sitting in their same seats. I went to my regular seat in the back row to put on my tallit and tefillin and felt sad to see the empty row. The back row is where I'd sit with the old Russians and assorted אַלטער קאַקער and we would grump and grouch about politics, the weather, and the young wasting their youth. Now the row was empty. I had read about each of them passing away over the years. I had gone to several of their funerals and stood unnoticed in the background. I had visited their graves and left pebbles on their gravestones.

I finished and took a new seat on the second row. One of the regulars recognized me and we caught up a little. I had to bring him up to speed on the marriage ending, the kids growing up and all that had happened in the last decade or so. There were a few re-introductions to the new gang of אַלטער קאַקער on the side seats. I knew a few but I always try to be polite when someone meets me again for the first time. Plus I can respect an introduction that begins, "Listen, kid, you gotta tells us your name or it will bug us all morning and then we'll bug you all morning." Once my name was out, due to its Scots-Irish origin, many of them remembered me.

Minyan began and we davened. It felt good. I was anxious about making a mistake, but for the most part it was muscle memory. We finally got new siddurim in the minyan room. It's nice that we have the Siddur Sim Shalom for Weekdays now to replace the aging Birnbaums. Aging? I guess I should say ancient. In either case, it was a nice upgrade and made davening a little easier due to my rusty Hebrew.

After the service I said my goodbyes and went to work. After lunch I sent the rabbi a text message asking for some time to speak with him at his convenience. He called back a few minutes later and we caught up on times passed and discussed how I was to go about restoring my membership at the shul and attending services regularly. The rabbi, my Rabbi, is one of the few people on Earth whose opinion of me I worry about with any seriousness. I have always regarded him to be a wise man, an intelligent man, and a man of honor. I have caught myself on numerous occasions feeling completely overwhelmed by his mind, and this is a rare feeling for someone as arrogant as myself. I am rarely jealous of other's intelligence but it was almost routine when I was around him. I remember once seeing one of those funny door signs that said, "If you're the smartest person in the room, maybe you're in the wrong room." I wanted to get back to the right room. The rabbi and I had a pleasant telephone conversation and I said I would see him at a future service and we could talk more at that time.

When I walked into the minyan room Wednesday morning I had a feeling I haven't felt in years. I had the feeling I was home.