The Lonliness of Becoming Religious

I admire my new religious friends and acquaintances. Their dedication to living lives of Torah and Mitzvot inspire me. And nevertheless, although I feel a greater spiritual connection with them than I have ever felt with other people, I still feel as if there is a great divide between us. The divide is not one of knowledge of halacha or other elements of the foundations of our faith, although those exist of course. The chasm relates to their inability (understandably) to empathize with the profound sense of loneliness my becoming religious has created. It is ironic how lonely I feel at times because the irreligious, or perhaps more appropriately stated, the anti-religious, often scoff that people succumb to religiosity for a sense of connection. These enlightened secularists feel only the ignorant social misfit could possibly want to live a life dedicated to G-d. It could not be more opposite for me.

How can I explain what it feels like to have almost no one in my family respect my choice to become religious? How can I convey what it feels like to go to a family event and feel both anger and sorrow? Anger that these people cheated me out of a religious upbringing and sorrow that I know no matter what I say, no matter how positive of an example I set, they will never come to Torah. To make things worse for me, my wife’s family is just as bad if not worse. Although they have made some efforts to accommodate our new lives, sarcastic comments from my wife’s father about eating bacon, or arguments with my mother-in-law about why my kids cannot swim on Shabbos are a frequent occurrence.

To make things worse, my wife seems to just be along for the ride. She has no real connection to our faith and feels it is more important for our kids to be around their non-kippa wearing, treif food eating, tznius issue laden, cousins than it is for them to be exposed to positive Jewish values. After today’s family event, with music blasting (during Sefirah), non-kosher food all around us, intermarried relatives, not a kippah to be seen for 20 miles outside of my own, and of course no tzitzit, because I was not happy enough for my wife we are talking about divorce again. I am so torn.

On the one hand, I would like to just walk away and start over. Marry someone frum and live the life I want to live. On the other, I deeply love my children and know that I will lose them completely (to the secular world) if we divorce. I feel blessed that Hashem has brought me to Torah; yet, I want to know why he continues to beat me down. When does he start to build me back up?!!

Schizophrenia

I cannot begin to tell you how crazy the religious community makes me.  Don’t get me wrong, over all I am doing this to become closer to Hashem, so ultimately other Jews will neither deter nor motivate me to continue to try and improve myself spiritually.  However, it boggles the mind nevertheless to have on the one hand people who are so warm and engaging and on the other so completely off-putting.

On the positive side, the women in the community have blown my wife and I away.  When word got out that my wife was ill (nothing serious), the meals and phone calls and well wishes were unbelievable.  We didn’t cook a dinner for two weeks.  Amazing!  People who do not live in a community live this could not begin to imagine it.  Even my reform (and that is generous) mother-in-law was inspired by the outpouring of concern the community showed our family in time of (moderate) need.

On the other side of the equation, I had the misfortune to attend an Oneg Shabbos last week at which I couldn’t have been made to feel less welcome.  I arrived at the host’s home and nearly had to talk my way in. I am not sure if it was because I am not yet a black hatter, or because they did not know me, or because I didn’t use enough deodorant before Shabbos, but whatever it was it was practically a shut door, let alone an open one.  Then, when a couple other men arrived and began informally counting who was in attendance, they looked right at me and did not include me in their count.  After this happened a second time, and I gave the counter a look, he said, “Oh, you’ll count; any warm body will do.”

I was not being oversensitive.  Until the guest speaker arrived only one person, beyond the rabbi, said even one word to me that night other than “Pass the soda.”  Again, I can handle it.  However, I would be obfuscating if I did not cop to being at least a bit hurt; not like a shunned school girl, but rather, as a member of Kol Israel who aches that it is the attitude of these men, my fellow Jews, that is what makes so many secular and less observant Jews feel the religious are arrogant and insular.  Has Hashem not punished us enough times for shunning our brothers?

Are You Crazy?!!

Now, that which got me back to my blog (I’ll be better I promise; I know you live to read about my neuroses) . . .

I have been trying to make it to as many minyanim as possible.  I have enjoyed it and continue to try to make the next step to three daily prayers with a minyan if possible.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am blessed to be near several synagogues.  One minyan to which I have been going for Maariv is near my home.  However, tonight a man made me  nearly never want to go back.  He told  me I could not pray where I was standing because it was someone else’s spot.  Now mind you, this was a kollel, not some suburban synagogue where everyone pays for everything.  These are men who the community sponsor to have the joy of studying Torah all day, everyday.  Yet me, a member of that community, is made to feel like an outsider.

Don’t get me wrong, I undestand there is merit in trying to pray in the same place and manner, but I have been at this kollel on a few other occasions and there was never anyone where I was standing.  Once more, it is pretty obvious I am a Bal Tsuva (or at least an aspiring one), but yet this older gentleman felt it more important to make me move for someone who might want to daven in a certain place than it was to be mekarev me.  I did feel like asking if he was crazy?

We are loosing thousands of Jews a year, and here you have someone who is trying his best to get on the right path and all this man was concerned with was that I was in someone else’s spot.  Not once has he welcomed me, or asked me my name, or showed me one bit of kindness.  Fine.  I don’t need a welcome wagon, but to make me feel like I was an intruder.  As someone who has dedicated thousands of dollars and hours to kiruv, it made me sick to me stomach.

We have been shown a great deal of warmth since moving to this community, and for that I feel truly blessed, but there has been an equal amount of coldness.  Consider this past Shabbos when my sincere “good Shabbos” to a couple of young turk type black hatters was met with dead silence.  And yes, they heard me.  My frum friends, I beseech you to think about the number of times in history Hashem has punished us for the manner in which we treated our fellow Jews.  And forget fear of Hashem’s wrath.  Do we think we will hasten Mashiach’s coming by moving the riff raff out of the way so the holly (or should I say “holier than tho”) have an ideal place to pray?

New Proof that Hashem Rules the World

If Hashem does not rule the world, something miraculous does. Why? My wife is starting to talk about sending our girls to Bais Yaakov. Huh? I had barely ever suggested it because I thought she would flip out. And yet the women who was concerned with whether their potential schools had college prep courses in second grade has said that she is so impressed with how sweet and bright the girls we have met from BY have been she thinks we should consider it. If I were Baptist, and not Jewish, I would think she had been taken over by spirits.

Dress Makes the (Jewish) Man

As I begin to write this entry I am a bit ashamed. I am ashamed that what motivated me to return to my public journal was something negative, not any of the wonderful things that have happened since my last entry.  So let me preface my whining with an update.  In fact, I am going to separate the entries altogether.

Garb

On one level, what one wears seems like such a material concern, so contrary to the more fundamental concerns of the neshama (soul).  Although tznius (modesty) clearly makes sense, and I comprehend and support it for men and women alike, the issues of  attire seem at first glance so superficial.   Knit or felt kippah (see my earlier post)?  Black suit or not?  Shtreimal, shtofener or fedora?  What’s the difference?

However, as one thinks about these things, it becomes clear that certainly on a general level your inside is impacted by your outside.  School districts are coming to realize this everywhere.  Dress codes do improve behavior.  Dressing more “Jewish” has improved my “behavior.”  Since putting on a kippah, I have come to realize that whether I should have to be or not, I am now an emissary for all Jews, especially more traditionally religious ones.

If I lose my temper, or drive too fast, it is not just some jerk doing it, it is a Jew doing it.  Maybe we should not have to concern ourselves with this.  Perhaps we should be allowed to be just like everyone else, but we are not just like everyone else.  We are indeed a light unto the nations; not just on the big issues, but also in our day-to-day lives.  So, the fact that people judge us as Jews, and not just as any other person, is a positive thing.  At times I think Jews, and even and perhaps especially religious Jews, forget this.

Beyond what our dress says to the rest of the world, it says a great deal to our fellow Jews as well.  It is a uniform.  It says, “I am on your team.”  Unfortunately, sometimes we forget that most Torah centered Jews are on the same team.  A different kippah, or hat, or robe, or gartel, or tallis should not be seen as a different team affiliation; rather, it is simply a cultural nuance.  Perhaps to most Torah centered Jews there is a basic line, but although a shtreimal may be a bit more odd at first glance than a fedora, the wearers of both are still closer to each other than they are to 99.9% of the rest of the world.

Finally, that which is most important to me, how we dress is of paramount importance to our children.  What motivated me to start wearing tzitzit (oh, did I not mention that yet?) was bringing my kids to school.  Like becoming Shomer Shabbos, I did not want my kids to see one thing at school (they are girls) and something else at home.  If the boys all around them had to wear tzitzit, how could I let them see me without them?  Hashem indeed works miracles through our children.  If someone had asked me five years ago if I would ever wear tzitzit, I would have said never.  Now I have four, and want to buy better ones.  I look forward to putting on my nicest ones for Shabbos.  And as I said at the beginning of this post, they make me evermore cognizant of my emissary status.

Shul Shopping

As I have stated previously, one of the most daunting things for me about becoming more religious is learning how to daven correctly.  So in order to find an environment that is sufficiently comfortable to learn, I have been shopping shuls.  It is wonderful now that my family is in a Jewish community; I actually have choices.  Also, it is nice to be wanted.  We have had Shabbos lunch at a different rabbi’s house for several weeks in a row.  I am sure I won’t have the pleasure of having the same access to the heads of these shuls over time, but we are enjoying it while it lasts.

I sincerely hope that the interest rabbis in the community have shown in me is about my neshama and not my pocketbook.  One of the most distasteful elements of dealing with certain Jewish leaders in the past was the sense that they did not really care about my and my family’s well-being, but rather, what they were really looking for was another donor.  I understand that all things take financial resources, but in the past it was more than annoying that every little shiur came around to how important tzedaka is, and that one should give more than one believes he can afford.  Hashem will repay more than you give.  Generally I believe this, but was it necessary to say it each time we sat down to study, especially when I stated on more than one occasion that we were giving what we could afford?  Anyway that has not been my experience thus far.

So, as I have shopped around, I am once again blown away by the wide spectrum of personalities and traditions in the Orthodox world.  There are so many issues.  Which shuls are strict about not talking during davening?  Which are more Zionist?  Which daven faster and which slower?  Which have the Ark on the correct wall.  Some are more “urban,” while others have a more suburban feel.  And these are just the basic issues; I am sure I don’t even understand the real issues yet.  Anyway, this is why I am not going to rush to “pick a rabbi” and shul.  I have waiting this many decades, a couple more months won’t kill me. 

A “Jewish” Funeral

This week I had the uncomfortable experience of attending a funeral for a Jewish woman who had not attended synagogue in years.  In the audience sat not one person with their own kippah.  The cantor who spoke had never met the deceased.  During our shiva call to the woman’s non-Kosher home, mirrors were not covered and the family was not observing even one of the customs of Jewish mourners.  The home was full of Asian and African folk art, but not one piece of Judaica.  I am struck by the fact that such a large percentage of our community is so similarly situated.  Why do these folks make arrangements with Jewish chapels, scamper about to find some member of the Jewish clergy to say a few nice things about them (or have family members who do so as an afterthought), and want to be buried in a Jewish cemetery?

I really am at a loss. . .  As we have just left Hanukkah, I wonder if the Hellenistic Jews arranged to put forward the same Jewish pretense at burial.  I know that all Jews should be buried as Jews, but did this woman realize given the way she lived her life, the chances of her son’s marrying Jews and, therefore, of her grandchildren being buried as Jews is infinitesimal?  Don’t we all realize this? 

Have the Hellenists of today stopped for a moment to contemplate that when the cantors who do not know them bury them, they will also be burying their family’s long struggle to preserve their faith?  I would say they don’t care, but if they really don’t, why go through all the fuss of being buried as a Jew?

Taking the Next Big Step

Thus far, I have not thrown myself into davening as I know I should.  I try to say Modeh Ani each morning.  I wrap tefillin every day.  I usually say Shema at least twice a day as well.  However, I rarely go to shul, or stop my day to daven  Mincha or Ma’ariv.

Quite honestly, I am not sure that I will be able to take this  next step.  Keeping kosher added a bit of complexity to my life, especially when I travel.  Observing Shabbos requires a bit of self-control; surprisingly, I find not being able even to jot down a note the most difficult part of the day of rest.  However, committing to prayer three times a day, especially when I don’t even read Hebrew (and even if I could learn, seeing it taking years to ever understand Hebrew well enough to follow along), make this the most daunting of the mitzvot.  I know people say to take it one step at a time, but it is not like you can just pop into shul on Shabbos morning and do part of the service and leave.  Everything about it is a bit overwhelming.  

I suppose I need to ask myself if I really want this life for myself.  Have I made all of these changes in my life because of the Jewish spark in my heart, or is there simply a need to set myself apart from a secular world I find perverse?  Do I really want my children on this path, or is it simply a way to control them?  I know one thing, although prayer is my next great hurdle, I do pray Hashem gives me clarity on these issues.

Hashem Knows I Have a Temper

As I come to accept that I am not omnipotent, that in fact Hashem runs the world, I am amazed how often I see him intervening in my daily life.  I know the skeptics say that the human mind will look for connections whenever and wherever it is told to.  However, I often find myself doing things I almost never do, that at the time seem to have no logical basis, or are contrary to my normal patterns.   Only later does it dawn on me that it was Hashem who made it happen.  An example of this occurred today.

On my way to drop my daugher off at school, I parked where I and many others at her school park.  It was my understanding that it was permissible to do so.  I came out of her school and found someone putting a warning sticker on the car in front of me.  He then told me that I was not permitted to park where I had.  My temper flared.  I informed him that he was wrong; that the administration had informed us that we could park there to drop our children off.  He reiterated his point.  He began to write my license plate number down.  Although I had already begun to pull out, I stopped, backed up and requested his name.  Why?  What did it matter?  I would realize the true reason later.

Once I parked again, I checked the letter we received with the parking pass from the school.  I was wrong.  Although the area at which we are allowed to park was close to where I was parked, it was in fact a prohibited area.  I felt quite foolish, even ashamed, for even if I had been right, clearly I had not conducted myself the way a person trying to lead a more religious life should. 

Obviously, the only correct thing to do was to apologize.  And because I had the individual’s name (and title incidentally), I was able to find him right away and apologize.  Hashem knew that I would regret my actions and need to apologize, so he made sure I asked for the man’s name.  He let me fail, but made sure that it would be easy for me to perform tsuva.  If there is a next time, I am sure He will make me work harder for it.

(Side note:  In the process of this ordeal, Hashem may have actually turned the man in question’s day around.  He told me it was so unusual for someone to apologize to him in cases like this, that it made his day.    I know, it still would have been better if I had not been a jerk.)      

To Kippah or Not to Kippah

I have always had a deep independent streak; my 11th grade English teacher went so far as to call me a deviant (hmm).  It seems in earlier years I did enjoy flowing against the mainstream.  However, in spite of the fact that nothing seems to separate oneself from secular society as much as wearing a kippah (few non-Jews even know what tsitsit are after all), I am still not entirely comfortable doing so.  Even the smallest knit “Modern Orthodox” yarmulke says, “My values are different than yours.” 

I delayed thinking about this issue for some time because until I became Shomer Shabbos I only wore a kippah at events at which religious people were present.  I felt, or rationalized–I am not sure which it was really–that it was not appropriate for me to present myself to the world when I was violating such a central tenet of our faith.  I thought it would make me, and Judaism, look bad.  As readers of this blog now know, this is no longer an issue as I now keep Shabbos.  I can no longer rationalize not wearing a yarmulke.  Now the issue is reversed, now I cannot really think of myself as being observant because we keep kosher and observe Shabbos, but I walk around with my head uncovered.  (I think this may explain how people LEVERAGE THEMSELVES UP into living more religious lives.)

So what to do?  Although I always detested wearing baseball caps, and quite honestly looked askance at people who wore them out all the time, I have been wearing one a fair amount these days.  I feel slightly better about this because I wear Jewish themed caps; it’s my way of saying, “I am not afraid to tell you that I am Jewish, but don’t think of me as one of those REALLY religious people.”  And even when I do wear one, I am never really sure which one is right for me. 

Generally in the past when I have worn one at “Jewish events” it has been a medium-sized black fabric one–I suppose polyester or something.  It leans (philosophically) to the right (read: traditional) I suppose.  I wear it because a rabbi I respect gave it to me years ago when he did not like the little knit one I was wearing and told me to keep it.  I do sometimes still wear a knit one, when the black one seems “too religious.”

Most people, I think, tend to stick to one sort, whereas I seem to be wearing one based upon where I think I will be during the day, and with whom.  A more Modern Orthodox crowd, the knit.  A more traditional crowd, the straight black one.  When I am with mildly conservative, less observant and even secular Jews I am really at a loss.  I want to do what I think is right, i.e., wear something on my head, but I don’t want to have these people discount what I am saying because the kippah says to them:  “hello, my views are dogmatic and parochial.” 

I suppose this will work itself out as I become more comfortable in my new observant skin, but in the meantime, it is yet one more little thing over which I can obsess in my new life as a Jew trying to make his way.