Bitter Herbs

I haven't written a blog post in over six months for a very good reason: I couldn't. I couldn't find the right words and when I thought I might have a few of them, I couldn't stop grieving. Yet somehow, once again Pesach (Passover) has given me tools with which to describe my leaving the most recent narrow place.

It's interesting to note that when I write books, they're always in response to some Big Question. Destined to Choose was an answer I could live with to the question "Why is there evil in the world?" Strength to Stand was an answer to "How much intolerance must we tolerate? And if the answer is 'none,' aren't we also being intolerant?" But I've never been able to write my way through traumatic experiences. My third novel, No One to Fear, due out in 2017, is the first post-9/11 book in the Rabbi David Cohen series. It's the first time I've been able to write about 9/11. I haven't yet been able to write about my parents' deaths, and it's been twelve years and seven years, respectively. Last December brought another kind of trauma and I'm only now able to write about it without bursting into tears.

September 2015 was filled with joy and book events. To my utter amazement, I found myself on TV, radio, in several newspapers, and around the Internet. For an introverted author, this was both exciting and terrifying. I flew to North Carolina (back when anyone could still use the bathroom most appropriate for them) for Bouchercon, the world's largest mystery/suspense/thriller convention for authors and fans. I met wonderful booksellers and readers and fellow authors through November.

In early December I had another book event, one that I'd dreamed about for years: being the December spotlight author for the local JCC's Jewish Book Series. It was, in many ways, a dream come true. And it was sponsored by my home synagogue. The rabbi seemed excited, and at one point said, "We have an opportunity to celebrate one of our own." Except it didn't turn out that way. At all.

I'm not going to go into details, because that isn't the point of this post. I'm also not going to name names, because that also isn't the point. (I ask that any commenters please not name names in the comments either. If you know me in person and want more details than this post gives, please contact me by email or through Facebook.)

What that event did do, however, was open my eyes to a problem that I'd been avoiding and choosing not to see for years: the shul had let members of my family (and me) down repeatedly over 20+ years. I'm not talking about the occasional human oversight. I'm talking about an ongoing failure of communication, of actions not matching words. Of talking the talk but not walking the walk.

My kids (now both teens) had no ties to the shul. No friends, no future there. My husband, save for a couple of individual friends, felt no sense of community. I was convinced that the problem was with me: if I just tried harder, I would be valued.

But December's event made me realize that all this time that I thought I was eating a savory, substantial brisket, I was really eating bitter herbs, washed down with the salt water of my own tears.

In an email I sent to the rabbi the day after that December event, I wrote, "The fastest way to drive someone away from Judaism is to make them feel like they have no value." I stand by that comment. We as human beings are hard-wired to belong. We need community (even us introverts).

Since joining that congregation some 20+ years ago, I had often wondered—and worried—what if I really, really needed my Jewish community, and they weren't there for me? While they sometimes were there for me, there were far more times when they weren't, including (but not limited to) my father's unexpected death, an extremely difficult pregnancy, and a life-threatening crisis involving my youngest son. During all of these times, I reached out for support. I didn't hide or expect anyone to read my mind. I heard the words I needed to hear ("We care very much") but no action followed. No minyan after my father's death. No support while I was under doctor's orders to remain in bed during pregnancy. No support or even resources during my son's crisis. I couldn't rely on their support. I couldn't trust that I actually had a community.

Thank G-d I didn't feel the need to leave Judaism as a result of this. I can't even imagine doing that. But with my family's input, I did come to the conclusion that this was not a healthy environment for me or my family. We had to leave our spiritual home and find a new one.

Psychology teaches about behavior change through rewards. Nearly everyone has heard about Pavlov's dog. That's an example of classical conditioning. Anyone who uses clicker training with a dog or cat is also using classical conditioning. But another type of behavior modification is called variable ratio. Slot machines work on a variable ratio reward system. You keep inserting a nickel or quarter or dollar into the machine and while you lose most of the time, you win just often enough to keep inserting those coins, ever hopeful that the big win is just around the corner.

Synagogues (and churches and mosques and other faith communities) should not work on a variable ratio reward system. For many people, these communities are their primary support network. It is true that no single group can meet all the needs of their members, or even all the needs of one member. But if it's actually practicing what it preaches, so to speak, it can do much better than 50%.

Since January, I've been going through a grieving process. While my kids and husband have been able to move on to the new synagogue without regrets, I feel like I've been through a divorce — or what I imagine a divorce would feel like. Thoughts like "I thought you cared," and "I thought we had something" and "Was it all a lie?" continually flit through my mind.

I emailed a handful of people from the congregation with whom I felt close, to let them know we were leaving, but outside of a few of those people, no one — including clergy — has reached out to us. There was no contact when we ended our membership. No contact when I gave an exit interview to a committee chair a few weeks later — and the committee chair only knew because she was one of the recipients of my email. It feels like the 20+ years we put into that community meant nothing, has no value. It's as if our family never mattered.

But I refuse to be defined by others' indifference. I've learned and grown enough to know that what we experienced in this congregation is not a reflection of us but rather a reflection of them. I didn't see the signs before December but I do now. I recognize now that leaving was an act of health, of taking care of myself and my family.

I'm still navigating the grief. It's too soon for me to go back to visit. Aside from a simcha next fall, I'm not sure it's appropriate to go back at all. My family sees no need to visit. In fact, my youngest, who was about to call it quits on Judaism all together, based on his experiences with our old congregation and the local Jewish school, has blossomed and begun to thrive at the new synagogue.

It is hard to let go. It's hard to give up on a relationship of more than 20 years, even when that relationship caused pain. It's hard to give up on what could have been, and that's what I'm really grieving. But it's also what I have to look forward to with the new synagogue: what can be.

Here's to life, and second chances, and the journey toward a new and fulfilling relationship.

Purim: Legislating Joy?

It's almost Purim.

I've been invited to costume parties, drinking parties, dancing parties, book parties, and one Lent observance. All I really want to do is burrow under the bedcovers with a pint of Ben & Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk ice cream and not think. Or feel.

I started to feel better on Monday, to the point of being able to go to an afternoon meeting at school, despite trembling and perspiring from the sheer effort of being in public. Tuesday I felt well enough to take my older son to the regional competition for History Day, where he competed for a spot at the state competition. (His website, Disney and the Responsibility to Oppose Racism/Sexism, did not move on, but several of his classmates are going to state.)

Today I'm back to dealing with fatigue, anxiety, physical pain, and a talkative negative inner critic. Two steps forward, one step back. Overall it's improvement.

And Purim is still coming.

Online and on the doors of Jewish organizations around town are the signs ubiquitous at this time of year: Be Happy — It's Adar! I blogged about this seven years ago, writing, in part, "some people have really good reasons for being unable to be happy and are not necessarily in control of whether they are happy or not. When I'm in the midst of a depression, I simply cannot just be happy."

Yet Jewish practice places a great emphasis on happiness. Rebbe Nachman said,

מצוה גדולה להיות בשמחה תמיד

"It's a great mitzvah to be happy always!"

If you accept that a mitzvah is a commandment from G-d, then G-d wants us to be happy, which I'm totally down with, but if G-d wants me to be happy always, then why do I have depression? If we were happy always, happiness would become the norm, and there would be nothing to which to compare it. It would cease to be happiness. So perhaps depression is a way of savoring happiness, when it favors me with its caress, far more than if I didn't experience depression.

Image: Flickr/Brian Snelson: exfordy

But before we get comfortable with that, a couple of years ago, fellow author Amy Ariel wrote about how Purim is not just about how we Jews survived, or the piety of Esther, or the eventual triumph over the evil Haman, but that it's also a very serious story about sex trafficking. Francesca Littmann on Orthodox Social Justice writes,

"A closer look at the texts shows that the search for the new queen is far from the innocuous beauty pageant that was told to us in Hebrew school. Women are captured from their homes, rounded up into a harem, and given one by one to be raped by the king. After that one night, they are imprisoned as concubines, their freedom and dignity stolen from them. This part of the Purim story mirrors the cruel reality of human trafficking today."

If it was hard to be jovial during the reading of the megillah before, it's really hard now. And with this year's neverending winter, cabin fever and SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder—a form of depression), it's unclear if Purim is coming at just the right time or at the worst time of year.

But perhaps I'm just taking Purim too seriously. Or perhaps this is the real reason alcohol goes hand in hand with Purim. Drink until you do "not know the difference between 'cursed be Haman' and 'blessed be Mordechai.'" (BT Megillah 7b) Drink until you do not know the difference between a beauty pageant and sex trafficking. Drink until you do not know the difference between depression and ecstacy.

And don't give up drinking just yet; the four cups of wine at Pesach are just around the corner. It's really too bad that Jewish Disability Month was back in February, because I would imagine that Purim and Pesach are landmines every year for anyone who must avoid alcohol due to an addiction.

Maybe I can fulfill the mitzvah of not knowing the difference between "cursed be Haman" and "blessed be Mordechai" by curling up under the bedcovers with a pint of Ben & Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk ice cream. And not thinking.

Be Mine . . . Or Not

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day here in the States. I don't celebrate it. Don't get me wrong—I like flowers and chocolate as much as anyone—but it is a holiday that, for kids, might as well be called Self-Esteem-Busting Day.

I'd like to say that I don't celebrate it because of its dark origins. I even tried to give it a different spin by calling it יום אהבה (Yom Ahavah), or Day of Love. No luck. Those little candy hearts rose up from my subconscious and left a sickly sweet taste in my memory.

The truth is that it was a big thing in my elementary school. Everyone in class was supposed to bring little Valentine's Day cards for every classmate. Candy was optional, but extremely valuable.

Valentines Day Cards by Mark Gstohl, on Flickr 

This meant a trip to the store to buy a box of cards, plus some candy, because giving out candy was a sure way to earn a few points on the social acceptability index. And then each card had to be handwritten with "To" and "From" names. Thirty-one kids. And a big one for the teacher. For much of my early elementary school career, this was an expense my family couldn't afford. 

Then came the moment of truth: we had a time during class for handing out valentines. Everyone got up and moved around the classroom, distributing valentines as covertly as possible. Because even though the idea was that everyone would exchange valentines, that never actually happened. Many kids only brought valentines for their friends and the popular kids in class. (Hint: I wasn't one.) So, after distributing 31 cards, it was common for some of us to come back to our desks to find that we had maybe four cards from other classmates.

Valentine's Day had become a popularity contest. The kids who received all 31 were not shy about sharing this fact. Those of us who had fewer than ten were shamed into silence. And it didn't matter that we'd brought candy.

Fast forward some . . . well, a lot . . . of years. I'm an adult now. I don't have to give cheap cards to all my friends in the hopes that it will be reciprocated and I won't be branded a social pariah for the next week or so until the next popularity contest comes along. I don't have to try to buy my way into peer acceptance. But I still don't like Valentine's Day. 

It's big business now. Tens of billions of dollars are spent on cards and gifts. For adults, it's no longer a popularity contest; it's now a love test. "If you give me chocolate/flowers/card/jewelry, then that means you love me. If you don't . . ." 

How much heart-shaped jewelry does a woman need? And why, oh why, does it have to be on one arbitrary day a year?

Valentine's Day is too contrived. It seems like a setup to fail. "Only one rose, dear? But last year you gave me a dozen, and a diamond heart necklace." "What do you mean, you forgot Valentine's Day? Don't you love me?" "I have to figure out what to get my [significant other] for Valentine's Day, and my credit card is maxed out."

How about this? This is my answer to Valentine's Day. I don't celebrate it. I try not to even acknowledge it, except for the occasional blog rant. But what I do is make it a point to tell those I love that I love them. Every day. I tell them that appreciate them. I value their presence in my life. I try to do nice things for my husband just because.

That's what we need: not a Valentine's Day. Not a Yom Ahavah. We need a Just Because Day—every day.

Shame as a sin

We have all felt shame. It's a universal emotion. It's also something of a taboo. No one wants to talk about it because we all know what it feels like, and it's just . . . icky. It can make us feel worthless, stupid, ugly, judged.

The thing about shame is that it makes us feel bad about who we are, not what we've done (or not done). During this month of Elul, in preparation for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we're encouraged to look over the past year and take a kind of inventory. What would we do differently? To whom do we owe amends? How can we change our behavior and choices in the next year?

But shame is different. Shame doesn't say, "You made some mistakes and you can make teshuvah (literally "return," but also repentance) and apologize and make changes so you don't make those mistakes again." No. Shame says, "You suck, and there's nothing you can do about it."

Our machzorim--High Holy Day prayerbooks--talk about mistakes and sins and a myriad of things we do that we know we shouldn't do but we do them anyway. 

I'd like to propose that allowing shame to dictate our self-worth is also a sin.

I'm reading this book called I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn't) by Brene Brown, Ph.D. It's about shame and perfectionism and personal power. It defines shame (p. 5) as "the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging."

We are all created b'tselem Elokim--in the image of G-d. If we believe ourselves, images of G-d, to be unworthy of love and acceptance and belonging, then we diminish G-d. Remember that old quip, "G-d don't make no junk"?

This goes back to what I wrote about yesterday, struggling with how much to say, how open to be. Because underneath it all is the fear, "If people knew the truth about me, they wouldn't like me anymore. They wouldn't respect me or read anything I write. I would be a failure." And if I say too much here on the blog, well then, maybe people would figure out that what my shame is telling me is true.

Says Dr. Brown, "Shame forces us to put so much value on what other people think that we lose ourselves in the process of trying to meet everyone else's expectations."

If we lose ourselves, do we also lose G-d?

In the Torah, we're told, "You shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the L-rd." (Vayikra [Leviticus] 19:18) Would not believing oneself worthless and undeserving be equivalent to bearing a grudge--against yourself?

Further, if we do not love ourselves, then how can we possibly love anyone else? Because obviously it makes no sense to treat others with the same disdain and disgust with which we treat ourselves when we feel shame. We are not told to hate others as we hate ourselves. We are told to love. That makes (appropriate) love of oneself a mitzvah, a commandment. (Remember, we're not talking about self-aggrandizement here--we're talking about shame. If anything, shame can lead to self-harm.)

Encouraging people to take stock of their lives at this time of year is a given. Guilt is practically expected. But how do you guard against shame?

Perhaps I'll have more answers when I finish this book.

Just before Rosh Hashanah I wrote about my aversion to blanket "if I've hurt you, please forgive me" statements as a method of teshuvah (which technically means "return" but is often used to mean repentance, as in a return to G-d). I am not alone.

Maimonides first outlined the steps of teshuvah, steps that one must go through to fully return, whether the thing you're asking forgiveness for is between you and G-d or between you and another person. But I'm not going to talk about that. I'm going to let Bev and Sara talk, in this excerpt from Strength to Stand:

    Sara watched from her peripheral vision as Eli approached David and then led him out of the house, the look on her husband’s face like that of a boy about to be taken out to the woodshed. The door closed behind them and she let out a deep breath. Maybe Eli could pound some sense into him.

    She stood and stretched, then set the book down on the sofa and went to the kitchen. “Okay, put me to work,” she said to Bev.

    “Uh uh,” Bev said, shaking her head and chopping a head of broccoli into smaller florets and collecting them in a bowl. “I cook tonight. You relax. Don’t think I don’t know who’s been keeping us in clean towels all week.” She stopped and looked at Sara. “Or you can stay here and keep me company.”

    “I can do that.”

    “Good.” Bev returned to her chopping. “You want to tell me what happened Shabbat morning?”

    “Not really.”

    Bev reached for a scrubbed carrot and began slicing it on the diagonal, creating long, thin strips. “Okay. You want to tell me why David’s been in the doghouse for three days?”

    Sara picked up a broccoli floret that had fallen on the counter and put it in the bowl with the others. “There are five steps to forgiveness in Judaism, right?”

    Still slicing carrots, Bev looked thoughtful. “Hmm. I thought there were three.”

    “David gave a sermon this past fall about forgiveness—teshuvah. I remember he was nervous that it sounded too preachy, which I thought was kind of funny. It all tied into a bigger picture about how we need to make teshuvah for ourselves, not only for the person we’ve wronged, how forgiving isn’t the same as forgetting, and how not forgiving can keep us from moving forward in our lives. He really put a lot of himself into that sermon.”

    “It sounds like it.”

    “He worked on writing it for over a month. As good a speaker as he is, he gets anxious about the High Holy Days and actually starts practicing, like he’s in speech class all over again. I must have heard that sermon a dozen times.” She stared at the growing mound of sliced carrots. “I wish he’d done a little less practice delivering it and a little more practice doing it.”

    “Hasn’t he apologized?”

    Sara ticked the steps off on her fingers. “According to his sermon, first you have to recognize that you did something wrong. Then you have to decide you’re not going to do it again. Third, you confess what you did and fourth, go to the person you wronged and apologize. And last, you take steps to keep it from happening again.”

    Bev stopped slicing and wiped her hands on the white dishtowel hanging from the oven handle. She looked at Sara. “Okay. I think when I learned it, one and two were combined and three and four were combined. So why is David still in trouble?”

    “He did apologize. He admitted he wasn’t listening to me with an open mind and that he rejected anything I said that wasn’t already in his perception of how things should be regarding the shul and my role in it. But we never resolved it. I’m waiting in limbo, and since he seems to think that my forgiveness will solve everything and we can go back to being a happy family without ever addressing my needs, I’m not ready to forgive him yet. How can I if the problem that started it all is still there and still unsettled?”

    Bev sliced a jicama in half and set one half-sphere aside. “You need to give him a chance to redeem himself, Sara. Maybe he needs your forgiveness before he can consider your needs without a guilty conscience.”

    “Maybe. But it would be much easier for me to forgive him if I knew we’d work toward a solution. Right now I’m afraid if I forgive him, he’ll think things are all better and we’ll never address my role. Or worse, we’ll wind up repeating Saturday night.”

    “You might have to tell him exactly that,” Bev said, stripping the fibrous brown peel off the turnip-like vegetable. “He may be able to recite the steps of teshuvah backwards and forwards and upside down, but Sara, he’s a man. The male brain sometimes needs to hear these things explicitly stated. And occasionally repeated. Slowly.”

    Sara laughed. “I guess I was hoping it was as clear to him as it is to me.” She watched Bev slice the jicama into half-inch wide shavings. “What do you think Eli’s saying to him?”

Bev pursed her lips. “Oh, I don’t know. They have a really deep friendship. Well, you know that better than I do. Eli doesn’t have any really close friends in Spokane. He has lots of distant friends, and I mean lots. But his nickname for David—when he calls him ‘bro’—he doesn’t take that lightly. He’ll do right by him.”

    “Eema?”

    Sara turned toward the voice. Jonathan was standing in the dining room, looking forlorn, a clump of orange Play-Doh in his hair and smaller bits clinging to his clothes. She managed to stifle a laugh. “You need some help cleaning up, Jonathan?”

    “Judy did it. She didn’t like that I poked a hole in her turtle so she smooshed it on my head. She got a little off the plastic you put down, too.”

    “And why did you poke a hole in her turtle?” Sara asked calmly.

    Jonathan shifted his feet. “’Cause she took all the orange and I got green. She says orange is a girl color and green is a boy color, but I like orange better.”

    “Does that make it okay to destroy something of hers?”

    “No.” Jonathan hung his head. “But if she gave me the orange like I asked, then I wouldn’t have gotten mad. It’s her fault her turtle got a hole.”

    Sara glanced at Bev. “Time to put that first step of teshuvah to work.”

Teshuvah and Controversy: is the relationship causal or casual?

So here it is just before Rosh Hashanah and I'm about to create some controversy. Maybe. For the two people who still read my blog (Hi there!). But maybe this is good and well-timed, like so few other things in my life, so maybe it will work out.

Okay, here goes. You know how lots of people post generic "If I have hurt you in the past year, I'm sorry" statements on blogs and Facebook statuses (stati?) and email and all manner of mass-directed communication?

I hate those. I really do. It is at or near the top of my Rosh Hashanah Pet Peeve List. And I'll even tell you why.

Yes, you could go back into my childhood where, by the ripe old age of seven, I developed an intense interest in religion and was shocked by the idea that some Christians -- nice Christians who lived in my neighborhood, even -- did all kinds of things the church considered sinful, then went to church on Sunday and said a forgiveness prayer with everyone else, while the pastor said they were forgiven because 2,000 years ago the Romans executed one of many, many thousands of Jewish "troublemakers" and he forgave them so now everything's peachy and they can go do whatever they want now and just go get forgiven again on Sunday.

You could go back there, and I'm sure my odd view of comparative religions as a seven-year-old might play a factor. But you might get an even better view of why this is such a pet peeve if you were to have been a fly on the wall during a particularly powerful conversation with my mother (aleha hashalom). Confronted, rather politely in fact, with an overwhelming amount of evidence that her acts of "discipline" were far more likely to succeed in casting calls for "Mommy Dearest" and not in teaching children anything like what she'd intended, she admitted to all such acts, offered a few of her own that I didn't know about, and then proceeded to say, "I know I did these things. I know I could have made better choices. If I've hurt you, I'm sorry."

How do you fess up to years of what most states in the country define as abuse and then say, "If I've hurt you, I'm sorry"? If I've hurt you? If?

Whatever the source, these "blanket apologies" are not apologies. Any apology that is a form of an if-then statement is not an apology. (If I've hurt you, here's a generic sorry. If not, please ignore this message. You decide which camp you fall in.) No, that doesn't work for me. That's a cop-out. That's an end run. That's just wrong.

Actually, what that is is a way to avoid facing those you've hurt, and looking for all the world like you're still apologizing to them. But in my view, you're not. Not yet.

A true apology means that you have to talk to the person (not in a text message, not on Facebook, not through Twitter, not in an email, even worse in a newsletter or some other formal communication) and tell them that you're sorry and for what. That's the key. If you don't know why you hurt me, how can you avoid hurting me again? If I don't tell you what I'm apologizing for, how do you know which action I regret and am trying to mend?

A blanket statement (If I've hurt you in the past year, I'm sorry. We good? Case closed. Let's grab a beer.) may look good on the outside, but it does nothing to actually mend a relationship harmed. Not until you go to that specific person and offer a specific apology for a specific event, will that harm truly be repaired. The rest is all window dressing.

And if I have harmed you in the past year? Well, if I've given you a specific apology about a specific harm and you've accepted it, let's go get a drink. If I haven't yet, I might have forgotten, or I might not even know that you were hurt, in which case I wouldn't want you to have to make due with a blanket apology. Let me know what I did to hurt you and I will do my best to apologize and make sure it doesn't happen again. And then we can put it behind us and grab a beer. (Why beer? I don't even drink beer!)

To everyone else, may you have a joyous and peaceful New Year, filled with fun, food, and memories, and surrounded by people you love. Shana tova, k'tivah v'chatimah tovah.

How Much Affliction?

Matzo is the "bread of affliction" (Devarim 16:3), also referred to as the "poor bread," and bread of poverty or oppression. But just how much affliction is enough?

The observance of Pesach (Passover) provides for us a different sort of bondage. Those of you who observe Pesach know what I'm talking about. Shouldn't every box of matzo come with a free jar of Metamucil? Or a Fleet enema?

For some of us, it's annoying and potentially embarrassing. For others, such as those coping with IBS, it can cross the line into a health issue. One physician claims it's life-threatening.

So how much affliction is too much? At what point does it cross that line?

There are things one can do to try to offset the symptoms:

• eat high-fiber Pesach-friendly fruits and vegetables such as raspberries (8g fiber/cup), pears (5.1g fiber/med pear), artichokes (10.3g fiber/med artichoke), and broccoli (5.1g fiber/cup) - although brocoli has its own digestive issues. According to the Mayo Clinic, from which these numbers come, "Recommended fiber amounts for women is 21 to 25 grams a day and for men is 30 to 38 grams a day."
  
• drink lots of water
• exercise
• try prune or mulberry juice
• when the symptoms are too severe to treat with food, water, or exercise, try a warm bath or heating pad

Additional fiber content information is available on this fiber chart.

We were meant to understand what it's like to go without luxury foods (like bread) for eight days. We were meant to see ourselves as if we're also leaving Egypt. We were not meant to understand through matzo what it feels like to be disemboweled (IMHO).

Only three more days to go. Meanwhile, those raspberries are looking really good.