Keepin' it Kosher

This past week my brother turned twenty-one. In my family we do birthdays. They're a big deal. Sometimes the celebrations last for days. On this particular milestone, I celebrated twice in three days the birth of my little brother. Once in Santa Barbara at a delicious Thai restaurant, and once at the sacred temple of Japanese show-cuisine, Benihana.

We have celebrated my brother's birthday at Benihana forever. It's one of our few family traditions - like Thanksgiving at the Brown's or endless rounds of Scene It on Xbox. Benihana on Andrew's birthday is one of the few constants in my family's yearly plans.

Every year, we gather 'round the communal table, usually with a few of Andrew's friends and two random unlucky people who have to put up with our noise. We order the same thing and watch it cooked before our eyes. It's fun, and exciting, and man, that place is a gold mine.

Prior to the main course, everyone gets served a hot shrimp appetizer. It's a perfect little moment of deliciousness - the right amount, the right flavor, the right taste to get you going before the big show of Hibachi chicken or teriyaki steak.

This year, for the first time ever, I did not even let that succulent shrimp touch my plate. I simply motioned for Baldo, our chef, to pass it along one to the left. He did it without question, and my brother was happy to receive two extra helpings of bottom-rung sea creatures. (Mom doesn't eat fish) But there I sat, watching him eat that shrimp, with more than a few questions remaining on my own figurative plate.

Since Rosh Hashanah I have "kept kosher." Aside from one slip at a tapas restaurant last weekend (in my defense, I was starving and thought I was going to eat my friend Emily's left arm) I have managed to maintain it well. My definition of Kosher is: no mixing milk and meat, no pork or shellfish, and certainly no bacon. That's where I'm starting, and so far it's been easier than I expected.

Why am I doing it? For me, it goes beyond this blog. It's more than the allegiance I pledged to my Year of Living Jewish. It's above acting as a symbolic exemplar in whatever community in which I happen to find myself.

I'm doing this because, after one month, I do feel some small elevated sense of self with relation to my diet. I feel a little bit different on a spiritual and emotional level. There's something powerful in saying to those I break bread with, "no, I'm not going to eat that, because my religion stands for something." There's also something a little elitist in setting oneself apart in that way, even when the vast majority of my close friends are Jewish.

Many - my brother in particular - have laughed at me when they've heard about this new foray into kashrut. People who have known me for years know that I find certain Jewish traditions and rituals absurd, and that I'm quite vocal about it. I think others also got a kick out of hearing a future rabbi talk about her love for bacon. Which, quite frankly, I'm kind of regretting now. Not because I'm embarrassed, but because I do think a rabbi should be more guarded with her words. But that's a whole other blog entry...

The truth of it all is, I do feel different. I do feel just a little bit more connected to the laws I'm studying every day at school. I do feel a little bit more like I'm talking the talk and walking the walk. And it feels much more positive than negative. I feel that I'm gaining something much more often than I feel like I'm missing out. I'm going further into the deep end, instead of staying in the shallows where it's comfortable, easy, and safe.

By the way, you want the real truth? The shrimp at Benihana really isn't that great.

And bacon, while delicious, is just one of many, many incredible, succulent, artery-clogging culinary possibilities.

Keeping myself distanced from certain foods, maintaining a level of sanctity within my own body, and continuing to think about its spiritual/emotional/religious/physical impact on me will, I hope, encourage you to think about where you maintain kosher and non-kosher boundaries in your own life. Maybe not with food, but with other indulgences, joys, pleasures, and needs.

Where do we set the boundaries? What's "in" and what's "out?" And how does it make us feel, as people - religious and secular - and as functioning members of groups and cultures? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Check back next week when I blog about my first-ever trip to the mikveh.

Be well, stay well, eat well.

Jaclyn

Let's get spiritual...

This past weekend I attended the second annual HUC-JIR Spirituality Retreat, attended by rabbinical, education, and communal service students. Held on the beautiful grounds of Camp Hess Kramer in Malibu, the retreat was an opportunity for each participant to explore who they are as a spiritual human being. We got to talking about faith, ritual, prayer, and the Big One - God. There were seminars on spirituality and social justice, yoga and meditation workshops, hiking, and beach time. The culmination was a discussion on merging our academic and spiritual lives - a much more challenging feat for us than one might think.

We ate deliciously, prayed frequently, and ... well, I loved it.

It was really a wonderful weekend. Wonderful because it was rejuvenating, inspiring, and boundary-pushing. We discussed many topics that often go unexplored on campus. The most significant of which was the conversation on God.

Perhaps it's because we're always rushing from class to class, or maybe it's because we're involved in so many things we don't have "time" to talk the God talk. In a rabbinical program, that might shock some. But the truth is, when your head is stuck so firmly in between Talmud and Theology, you often forget that God is right there staring you in the face.

A part of me is hesitant to blog philosophical about something so personal, yet the goal of this endeavor encourages me to do otherwise. I also feel that the more open we are about our relationship with God - or to the Divine; something greater than ourselves - the more we can embrace spiritual and personal growth in our lives.

In Judaism, God is the cornerstone. God is the central presence, the Divine being, the Creator of all. God makes God's first appearance on the very first page of Torah. In the beginning, Elohim (one of God's many names) created the heavens and the Earth. From the start, some form of divinity exists, present to create the universe and its first inhabitants. There is no debate, no challenge, no question as to God's existence.

God is as central of a character in the book of Genesis as the patriarchs - Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. As a character, God is portrayed in a mixture of human/divine light. God is gracious, compassionate, and rather giving; yet God also gets angry, frustrated, and rather unreasonable in certain situations. (The flood and the near-sacrifice of Isaac come to mind)

Yet, God continues to give, sustain, and form the Jewish people as a whole entity. Throughout Torah, God is the sustaining, powerful force which guides the Israelites to their Promised Land. God works through Moses, the second most central character in the entire Torah. And when Deuteronomy closes with the mortal's death, God continues to exist, moving beyond the pages of Torah and into the Prophets, Writings, and way beyond - Mishnah, Midrash, Gemara, and more. God is the constant, whether we realize it or not.

Why give you all this background? Because it makes for a compelling case as to why Judaism is so closely linked with God. If Torah is the acknowledged sacred text, guiding document, and touchstone of our people, then God, being the center of these stories, is the center of that universe. I respect that there are many who "don't believe in God." But I also recognize that if you are a Jew, and if you believe in Torah, then in some way, God is very much present in your religious understanding. Call yourself whatever you want. If you're Jewish, God is a large part of your Jewishness.

I am a firm believer in God. I have been a fan for many, many years. And my understanding of God has been enhanced - not necessarily altered - by my experiences in rabbinical school. I have always seen God as the glue that binds us together. I believe that God is present in our daily lives, interactions, activities, and holy spaces and places. God is present in our conception and our birth. But once we are born, we are imbued with free will.

I do not believe God has any control over us or our actions. I have a hard time hearing people say they don't believe in God because, if there was a God, how did God allow the Holocaust to happen? Who says God was responsible for that, or had any hand in it whatsoever? How do we not know that there is also just as strong a force of evil that exists in this world? Perhaps this is my answer to the "Why do Bad Things Happen to Good People" question, and maybe it's naive - but it's helped me create and balance the connection I feel to something greater than myself.

Much of our liturgy contains imagery and descriptions for God which challenge me greatly, if I really let myself think about them. But that same liturgy also makes me feel connected, part of a community, and spiritually alive. So, with that, I merely defer to the need for balance as I continue to learn and understand.

My relationship with God began when my mother got sick. I was six years old, a first grader in Jewish day school, just becoming familiar with life and death. To hear that my mother had something wrong with her brain and that doctors needed to fix her - it felt like the world was coming to an end. I was certain that she was going to die. So, I reached out to some sort of divine presence.

I vividly remember coming out of her hospital room alone, standing in the hallway of that sterile, scary place, and being totally emotionally overwhelmed. So, I started to pray. Looking back, it was more of a conversation with God. I think I just needed to express myself, say my peace. There might have been a bargain involved, for I really wanted my mother to stay alive. In that moment, it was just me talking my six-year-old talk with God. I had a need, and I reached out.

Who's to say that the fact she survived had any impact on my faith? I wonder if I'd be in rabbinical school had that initial encounter with God resulted differently. It doesn't quite matter, for this is what is. This is what's been created. There's been plenty of illness and death in my life throughout the past two decades and I'm still here. My faith is still strong. And it has remained largely unchanged throughout everything.

Sometimes it's quite difficult to articulate our academic study of the Divine, or more appropriately, theology. Sadya Ga'on and Judah ha Levi are just two of the medieval period thinkers I've been introduced to this semester, and both of them are so incredibly heady that I have a hard time wrapping my brain around their theology. This weekend I started to learn Martin Buber's I-It and I-Thou relationship concepts, (to be explored in a later blog entry) and those made a little bit more sense.

But at this particular moment in time, I'm merging my emotional connection to God with the necessary study I must do as a future rabbi. It's not easy to do - and maybe that's also why our conversations can only take place within the safe space of a spiritual retreat.

The truth is, all of us struggle with our understanding of how the world works; the powers that be which keep life moving forward. It's hard to articulate an emotional feeling, or lack thereof, to something as "untouchable" as God. Yet whether we consider ourselves big believers or articulate atheists, each of us must admit that there is something out there - something which enables life and death, which creates sunsets, which enables us to experience relationships with one another. Asking ourselves what it's all about is what helps us find meaning in our lives. As this weekend proved, continuing to ask ourselves these questions and continuing to have these conversations can bring us all to a more inspired, more rejuvenated, more spiritual place.

Shavua tov, may it be a good week.

Jaclyn