Nobody's God

May 29, 2011

It isn’t even Memorial Day until tomorrow. But I’m there now. I just finished watching the Memorial Day Concert on the Washington Mall which is an annual event. I never miss it. This year, the music and performers were several notches better than some other years, but whereas I usually care a great deal about how well music is played or sung, the truth is, when it comes to the Memorial Day concert, that's incidental to me. What matters is that the grand songs--the hymns reflecting love of this country--are included and that the audience on the mall knows the words, or at least the melody, and the music inhabits them as they sing along. Most important to me, there’s always “The Star-Spangled Banner” to start things off; and no matter how well or poorly that’s sung, my heart fills. I stand. Right in front of my TV, alone in this apartment.

I feel passionate about this country. In a part of me I seldom open and never leave ajar, a place where words do not abide.

Just in case you’re wondering, I am not always proud of what we do as a nation, and certainly not always proud of what I see or hear my fellow Americans do, but–always–I love this country.

I can tell you why in a sentence. My parents, both of whom were born in Russia and met here, thought of America as the Promised Land. That’s why.

That’s why, at the end of every Seder, I keep still when others cry out “Next year in Jerusalem!” I care a lot about Israel. I support Israel, prepared in any company to defend her place in her immediate world and the wider one. I do not sit silent when it is suggested that she shrink her borders beyond protecting, in hopes of persuading her "neighbors" that she has the right to exist. Recently, I got excited about TALI, an organization devoted to teaching Israeli schoolchildren that they are Jewish--that they have choices beyond Orthodoxy and secularism. When, many years ago, during my first visit to Israel, I saw a border of Israeli flags surrounding the prime minister's offices, I was thrilled. I took a snapshot I still look at occasionally, remembering when that flag was only the symbol of a dream. But--but!--next year, like last, like this one, I want to be here in America. Because I am my parents’ daughter, and among the things that means, is that I am already in my Promised Land.

I've been remiss about posting. Some good reasons, but using reasons as excuses can become a sloppy habit. So I will just say I'm sorry, and try to do better. The post below is the text of a "lesson" I will be giving this evening at a special Shabbat at my synagogue, in honor of Angie Atkins. Angie was a very involved member of our congregation who has recently decamped to Manhattan; and tonight, offically called TISH (Taking it to Shomrei's House), is the gift she chose to have rather than a material gift when she was honored at a dinner-dance here for her service. I missed that event, but wanted to participate in tonight by writing some remarks I hope will speak of and to her.

Here's what I have written for this evening.

A Mixed Blessing

Once upon a time, at our community Shavuot all-nighter, Rabbi Patz was conducting a session in one of our classrooms. I don’t remember what the topic was–I always chose his session regardless because he’s such a fine teacher. The room was crowded. Rabbi Patz taught with his usual straight up clarity; then he asked a question. No hands went up. I raised my hand. I said something. Another hand across the room went up and the speaker built on what I said. The rabbi asked a follow-up question. No hands. Then hers again. Again, I don’t remember what she said–only that it was wonderfully open –which elicited an open response from me. Whereupon Rabbi Patz looked from one of us to the other and said “Are you two related?” Angie and I both laughed. “No,” I said. “We’re just believers.”

It’s in honor of Angie and that shared moment years ago that I dare to speak this evening briefly about that most difficult of all subjects to say anything accessible about. Belief. That’s risky enough, without veering from the only belief I know, my own. So: what do I mean when I say I’m a believer? I mean I believe that God is present in my life. Even when I don't sense His presence–which is most of the time–I believe God is present. Here. For sure, HERE. To join in celebrating Shabbat with Angie, who celebrates Him with such fervor.

When someone asks, Do you really believe in a personal God?, I say “I do.” What’s more, I believe that, if we are made in God’s image, God has to be somewhat like us. I’m not talking about limbs–there’s some inner similarity between God and us. I believe God has wants and even needs; and feels lonely when He’s ignored. And as, to me, God in not an abstraction, I am convinced that my belief cannot be an abstraction, either. That means I have to act on my belief. By doing things I might otherwise avoid doing.

I have to say that I’ve found faith to be a distinctly mixed blessing. It is nearly always centering. It is very seldom comforting. It is continually challenging. This is important: I think what God challenges me to do is not different from what my secular parents brought me up to do. What’s different is the freedom faith gives me to do it. Belief enables me to take chances beyond my natural inclination. I can do something my intuition tells me is right or important to do, regardless of the possibility that, in return, I may get an eyeful of spit.

I’ll tell you about the first time this happened. During the second week of February 1962–not more than ten days after I first came to believe–I set out on my lunch hour for Altman’s. As my bus neared 34th Street, I noticed an elderly woman talking to the driver. Her appearance kindled memory. Her grey hair was wound in thin braids around her head. She wore a “topper,” a style of coat then fifteen years out of style. Beneath its hem showed what in my childhood was called a “house dress.” She gripped a change purse. She looked like a hundred women I had as a youngster seen around the Amalgamated. The driver glanced at a piece of paper she was holding out to him. He said something; she shook her head. He tried again. Again, she shook her head. We approached my stop. Hers, too, apparently. As I neared the door, the woman was focused on negotiating the steps down to the curb. The driver took the opportunity to ask me in a low tone if I’d show her the way to her destination. She seems confused, he said mildly. (Both passengers and bus drivers tended to be gentler with one another in 1962.)

When I stepped off the bus, the woman was standing on the sidewalk, looking lost. On the corner of 34th and Lex? I asked if I could help.

She handed me the same piece of paper she’d shown the driver. It was a page from a prescription pad; on it were jotted another doctor’s name and an address. The address was one block north and a block and a half west of where we stood. Do YOU know where it is? she asked in a tone signifying doubt that ANYONE would.

I said I did, and assured her that I was headed the same way. I was careful to let her set the pace. She started talking–from nervousness, I think. The doctor whose office she was coming from had not merely referred her to this doctor, but set up an immediate appointment. Whom would that not worry? When we reached Park Avenue, I turned right with her, remaining quiet to leave an opening for her to vent more if she wanted to. But she turned silent.

In the silence, a thought occurred to me. If she didn’t know the way from the bus to an address two and a half blocks away in mid-Manhattan, she might not know her way home. Carefully, but with confidence, I asked where she lived. East Broadway, she said, her tone dismissive, as though I were chattering. East Broadway? I knew my way from the top of Manhattan to, well, not THERE.

But my brain bonged that it had to require a change of bus or subway. And, whether from age, infirmity or anxiety, my companion looked worn down with fatigue. God only knew how she might feel after the visit to the second doctor. Besides, I had asked her. My own guess was, there was no smooth way from Madison and 35th to East Broadway. What to do?

The solution was simple–which is to say, not easy. Though our pace was slow, we were now almost to the island that bisects Park Avenue. There was only half a block to put my solution into effect. As we stepped up onto the curb, the light turned red. She wasn’t looking my way. Quickly, I transferred four singles from my purse to my pocket, folding them tightly. Then I said it. "You’ll be tired after seeing two doctors in a row. May I treat you to a taxi home?" She turned fully toward me and looked up at me–INTO me. I had it coming; she hadn’t asked me for a thing–not to walk with her, not to provide her with directions home, certainly not to pay her way there.

That red light belonged in Ripley, outlasting any other in history, while that old lady’s eyes frisked my soul. I was beginning to think we’d be standing there until I was as old as she, when the light went to green–and she nodded, once, and said, "Yes." Just, "Yes." But I was as content as watered grass.

We walked on in silence. I passed her the folded bills–enough for a cab from Spuyten Duyvil to anywhere in Manhattan, but not so much that it could possibly appear that I was offering her money. Only a ride home. Because she’d be tired. Without counting them, she put the bills into her change purse, and clicked it shut.

We reached the apartment house address on the prescription slip. At the curb end of the awning, I wished her good luck and said goodbye. "Goodbye," she said. Gummed to the sidewalk by relief, I watched her walk toward the building entrance, where a doorman was already opening the door for her. She stopped, turned around and, seeing me still there, she paused, then came back. “I only had a dime,” she said, turned, and walked back toward the building entrance, where the doorman still held the door.

I walked on to Altman’s according to plan, my vision only the slightest bit blurred

How did I feel? Grateful. Blessed. REAL. The way belief feels to me. And how, this Shabbat, it feels to be related to Angie.

nobodysgod

May 1

Yesterday was the anniversary of my father’s death, by the “regular” calendar. I do observe the yahrzeit by the Hebrew calendar, but the American date is the one my heart observes. Some years, only a few memories waft by. But this year, I missed him. It’s odd, really: what happened was that I felt his presence more and that made me miss him a lot.

I think I somehow commingled memories I have of my father and ones I have of my mother. Because he died when I was nine and she lived till I was eighteen, he is mostly a made-up figure to me, while I knew her intimately and as “really” as one can know a mother whom one loves and loses too young.

In the last ten days or so, working on my “moth” presentation for Barnard reunion, has brought her repeatedly to mind. My presentation is “about” Miss Colie, but there’s no remembering her without remembering my mother, too. How self-conscious I was about her coming to school on parents’ day–because she was older than the other mothers. I never did get used to that, from the earliest school days, that she was always the oldest mother. I have a number of friends who have given birth in their forties–it’s become commonplace–but when my mother had me at forty-three, it was not in the least commonplace. (More than likely, I was a “mistake.” But I am certain that, if I was a mistake, my mother never regretted having me. In the years after my father died, I was the very reason she lived another day.) Last week, as I remembered with appropriate shame my reservations about her visit to my Barnard classes, I also remembered vividly how Miss Colie, my freshman English teacher, was taken with her, how they ended up talking so long that other mothers stopped waiting their turn and left.

What I remember myself most vividly, besides my mother’s excellent carriage, was her willingness to answer my questions, my endless questions. To this day, when I hear a friend say to a child or grandchild “Because” as the sole answer to any question, I cringe. “Because” wasn’t in my mother’s lexicon.

Of course that means she’s to blame for my unquenchable questioning even now. It’s not a lust for the “right answer”–I’m pretty sure it’s never that–but, rather, a hunger to know what someone else thinks, especially someone who knows more than I do about the subject at hand. So I can take that answer and look at it. Think about it. See how it fits in with other pieces of the puzzle I’m continually working on in my head.

Every answer is a potential blessing.