Or is it?
A year ago - Rosh Hashanah 5771 - I started this blog as a way to connect further with two entities: my student pulpit down in El Centro, and my own personal Jewish practice. I dabbled in keeping Shabbat, observing Kashrut, going to the mikveh, and reading erudite things. It was all about going deeper into levels of Jewish practice that had absolutely no bearing on me prior to rabbinical school.
Last week, I ate bacon for the first time in one year.
It wasn't anything to blog home about.
A year has passed since I began this little experiment. A full year in which great things and crappy things happened; a year in which I celebrated and mourned with the people I love. At Rosh Hashanah services last week I looked back, as I do every year, on memories both fulfilling and disheartening. I sat in synagogue with my family and contemplated the meaning of life; how fortunate I am. And I thought about how nice and how pleasant it is that I don't only do this act on Rosh Hashanah, or Yom Kippur, but consistently throughout my year: in school, in shul, and even in my car on jam-packed freeways.
Living Jewish, to me, is about far more than the little things I blogged about sporadically throughout the year. Living Jewish is about far more than going to synagogue and thinking about my Jewish identity and connection to God. Living Jewish is about far more than experiencing the rituals of Judaism on a superficial level.
Living Jewish is who you are; it's how you live every day of your life. I knew going into this that I lived a Jewish life and never doubted it. The practices I experimented with this year were all interesting and engaging and worth trying, but they didn't make me more of a Jew by any stretch of the imaJEWnation. While to some these activities may be meaningless, and to others totally rote commonplace daily activities, to me they were a chance to push myself outside the box in which my Jewish identity came into formation.
What did I learn this past year? That this box - whose foundation was the work of those who came long before me, whose walls were created and structured by my parents, and whose insides were decorated, adorned, and attended to by me - is open enough and wide enough to accept all sorts of new influences. It is a box that knows its limits, certainly, but is willing to experiment with different patterns and fabrics.
In short, I really like my box. I have created a box that I myself am comfortable with, that is capable of being altered and changed to reflect the person I am evolving into. And that box was the focus of this blog for one full year.
That evolved state is a permanent state of being for me, and for that reason alone, this Year is not finished. Nor will it ever be. In fact, long after I'm gone, my grandchildren and great grandchildren will, God willing, still be asking themselves the questions that this blog poses. Only, at that point they'll likely be mental-blogging on chips implanted in their brains and sending those blogs through their minds to other people's mental blog chips, thereby eliminating the visual computer. Or something.
This blog will continue, but I'm not yet sure what shape it will take. Time will tell.
For now, I hope that you and everyone you know and love experienced a meaningful, pertinent, relevant, and challenging High Holiday season. I hope it got you not to think about whether or not you're a "good" Jew, but rather - who you are as a person, how you can best serve the community around you, and where Jewish values and ideals are implicated in your every day life.
That's what these Yamim Nora'im - these Days of Awe - are about. They may seem like they are time-bound reflection periods on Jewish identity and practice. But look beyond the surface, and they are a reminder, a check-in, and a push that compels each of us to live Jewish: to live each day better than the one before.
Shana Tova u'metuka -
A good, sweet new year to all.
Jaclyn
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