Listening to (the repeat of) Rachael Kohn interviewing Rabbi Brad Hirschfield (blog) on The Spirit of Things yesterday brought a tear to my eye a couple of times. However it wasn’t only emotionally affecting, it also provoked my thinking about what the journey of exploring יהדת (Judaism) is about for me.
There were two portions that I particularly affecting. Firstly…
But specifically, among the best of these kind of sacred surprises, I was just sitting talking to a friend of mine, another rabbi from the States, and these kids that turn out they’re in Junior High from a Sikh religious academy in India, six or seven of them come and surround me, and in these beautiful outfits, these bright marigold yellow tunics and white pants and their turbans were perfect, and ceremonial daggers a-shine, so you can see yourself in them. And as one kid says, ‘Do you mind if I ask what religion you are?’ and I told them, ‘I’m Jewish’. He says, ‘Jewish? Can I ask you what Jewish is?’ And I said, ‘Sure, if you’ll let me ask you what Sikh is.’ He goes, ‘OK’, and we had the most amazing conversation. Everything from why I walk around in a kippah and a skullcap to whether I believe in one God or many Gods, to whether I fast and if I do, how often, to whether he believes in one God or many Gods.
And the most powerful thing was talking about how for me a lot of these practices, skullcap practices, fasting practices, eating practices, do two things that may be paradoxical but I think all of us have to figure out, and that I hoped he would think about too. They always remind me that I’m in the presence of the Infinite, so hopefully create a lot of humility. And they also allow me to stand up in the world, marking who I am with great pride. And that what I hoped he would discover is how to be a really proud and really humble Sikh, because we have a lot of proud religious people in this world who ain’t so humble, and they’re actually really quite dangerous, and we’ve got a lot of humble people who don’t know what they’re proud of. And so frankly, they’re sweet, but they’re not so useful.
This warm embracing of others within their own traditions & ways of believing is something I’ve seen in many of the Jews I’ve encountered. I see it in מירם אוהבתאל עירן (Miriam OhevetEL Iron), who came to Australia for the Parliament of the World’s Religions where this story took place, I’ve heard it in many of Rachael’s other Jewish guests. In this discussion Rabbi Jeremy Lawrence says of food that isn’t (kashrut/kosher) “This is food and God has provided in the world, but it’s not for me to eat.” Not that it’s bad or in any way wrong, simply that “it’s not for me to eat.” This idea that the rules of one’s way of believing are not for imposing on others is something completely foreign to all of my past Christian experience.
Later Rabbi Hirschfield tells a story from his boyhood…
When I was 12 years old, I came to my parents’ bedroom, knocked on the door, my mother said, ‘Come in, what’s up?’ I said, ‘Well I want to ask you a question’. She said, ‘Sure, go ahead.’ ‘Can you get me a couple of dishes and a few pots and pans and some knives and forks?’ She said, ‘What for?’ And I went on to explain that I was going to start keeping the traditional rules of kosher eating, which meant that the pots and pans and the knives and forks and the plates and dishes that were used in our home weren’t going to be OK for me any more, because they had been used for non-kosher food. As I told her this, my mother said,’ You want me to get you a few pots and pans, a few knives and forks, and a couple of plates?’ I said, ‘Right’. She said,’ No’. ‘No?’ I said. She said, ‘No, I will not get you two forks, two plates and a cup, that’s ridiculous.’ And I was stunned. I said, ‘That’s so unfair. You send me to a Jewish school where they teach this stuff. I come home and want to do it, and you say No.’ She said, ‘Right, I say no.’ She said, ‘But here’s what I will do. If you wait until this summer camp, even though I have no idea what I’m saying now, I will call our rabbi and ask him how to make this entire home kosher.’ ‘You will?’ I said. ‘Yes’. ‘Why?’ I asked her. Without batting an eyelash Mum looked at me and said, ‘Because in your own home you don’t eat off of different dishes.’ And I was speechless. I couldn’t believe it. She said,’ But, there’s one more rule for you, my now kosher-eating son, that you’re going to have to keep for this to work.’ I said, ‘What’s that?’ She said, ‘You’re going to start to figure how to go out to dinner with the rest of your family at a regular restaurant.’
And so what emerged was my Mum teaching me two things, even though she didn’t know it was what she was teaching, but she had great intuition. And the first was that she would not allow her fears of my new-found faith to drive a wedge between me and my family. And the other is that I would not be allowed to use the ardour of my new-found faith as some kind of a club to beat up on them, like I was suddenly a better person or a better Jew and I think when we can live those two principles, we can find proud, passionate connection to whatever faith we follow without ever becoming fanatics.
This moving story is a beautiful example of the thoughtfulness, the considered approach, that I see again & again. Little, if anything, is to be taken just as a given, everything is though out & considered. In contrast, through much of my Christian experience I was expected to accept what I was told from the pulpit without question. More than once I was chastised for being “too open-minded.”
I now stand on the edge, feeling like I could be one small step away from choosing conversion. This isn’t how it was supposed to be. When I first started exploring יהדת it was supposed to be a philosophical & cultural inquiry. It wasn’t supposed to be a spiritual thing, it definitely wasn’t to be religious. By the time I started this blog things had changed in such a way that my tagline is “Exploring the spiritual & cultural landscape of Judaism.” A very dear friend in ישראל (Israel) has told me “You should be a Jew”, my Mum has joked about me getting ready to turn Jewish. Am I really just one step away or am I actually holding back? If I am hold back then why?
I don’t know the answers to those things & have no idea how long it will take me to work them out. In the meantime I will light candles for שבת (Shabbat/Sabbath) this Friday evening & get drunk for פורים (Purim) on Sunday (& פורים is the subject of a coming post).
Shalom, Pedro
שלים, פדרו
