Speech and Silence

June 19

There are two settings in which I feel especially comfortable. One revolves around conversation, the other involves silence. T he first occurs any time someone is up for a conversation about God. The second is when there is an open-ended silence.

I like participating in a conversation about God because, almost always, I learn something. At the start of such a conversation, I never know if I am bound for deep water or a peaceful twirl around the lake; but the chance of adventure improves when my partner in talk has a seriously different a view of God from mine. Often, as our talk pulls away from shore, I feel a frisson of excitement, aware that I may be offered an insight which never occurred to me, or be gifted with an anecdote that touches the place inside me where my faith dwells. In sharing perspectives, in exchanging views, I often find nourishment for my own–or a brand new way to turn the kaleidoscope. A good rolling conversation may make me stronger or softer or braver.

Sometimes, if I bring up the subject of God, I am asked to “define my terms.” End of conversation. God entered my life on February 2, 1962 and hasn’t left since. But I cannot define what or, more accurately (to me) Who I mean when I say “God.” I love God. I revere God. I am grateful to God. I am nosy about what God may think or feel about a great many particular situations. I listen for God’s laughter. But I don’t know how to define God.

This post is the leftover of a big mistake I made today in synagogue during the “summary”last session of a Melton class about “The Purposes of Judaism” I swallowed hard and said how much easier it is for me to find non-Jews who’re willing to talk about God than it is to engage my fellow Jews in such a conversation. Then I–stupidly–specifically included the Jews with whom I share membership in my synagogue. I should have better bitten my tongue–right through. Many years ago, Michael Kogan, a local professor and member of my synagogue, told me that it’s impossible to write about God, so it was foolishness to try. I am not, after all these years of trying–having perhaps eked out a paltry few sentences with accessible content–willing to give up trying to write about God. But this morning I should have kept my mouth shut.

But the fact remains: when I have an opportunity to speak with members of other religious persuasions, such discussions more often than not carry me a step or two or even three forward toward a clearer understanding of why I choose to be a synagogue-going Jew. A Jew by daily choice.

Now, to my second favored setting. For a person whose talkativeness is locally on the cusp of notorious, I am strangely drawn to sitting in silence. Anywhere, but preferably in any house of worship. Even a “room of worship” will do: I never pass the chapel at New York Hospital without going inside to sit in that nearly always empty room, and savor the silence. But my favorite place to meet up with silence is my synagogue. Sometimes, there, I sit up straight and reflect on the words over the ark: Know before Whom you stand. Sometimes I am smitten by the reflection of a stained glass window on its adjacent wall as the day’s light mutes to serenity. At other times, the clutter in my mind keeps interrupting the silence, but I persevere, and occasionally win. I love most the times when I can let go of words and images and tune in to the music of the silence itself.

Nobody's God and my Ongoing Exodus

All those commandments! In Judaism, no fewer than 613 line up to be responded to one way or another. For, as all of us know, "No" is an answer, too.

Even the famous first ten are a hefty challenge. When I most feel that, I remind myself of how God sets them--and us--up, right at the outset, with a not-especially-subtle reminder that He earned the right to issue them by leading us out of Egypt.

(When I picture that event, I sometimes imagine a whole lot of folks kicking and screaming internally. After all, what a slave knows is slavery, and it is a bleak fact of human nature that most of us–nearly all of us--prefer the known, however grim, to the unknown. Isn’t that why so many folks in unhappy marriages stay married?)

Yet the language we use, when we talk about the exodus from Egypt, is that, in bringing us out of Egypt, God made free men of slaves. I see that famous trek through a dry path in the Sea of Reeds as only the first steps to our freedom.

Bigger steps toward freedom, it seems to me, are the commandments. I realize that there are people who see any commandment, let alone half a dozen hundred of them, as diminishing our freedom. But in my opinion the end result of the commandments is to offer us 613 chances to be truly free people. Together, the commandments are like a mikvah, a ritual bath, cleansing us of our sand-clogged nature.

A memory from years ago used a diffrent image that, to me, says much the same thing. It appeared in an interview in Time magazine with Jean Kerr, then at the height of her playwrighting fame. I remember the exact words of neither the question nor of Kerr's answer, but the exchange has stayed with me. Kerr was asked something like: How can as brilliant a woman as you possibly be a serious Roman Catholic? The gist of her response: Within that box, I am totally free. To her, the rigorous teachings of the Church
formed the requisite box within which freedom lay.

I believe that. Without the strictures of Catholicism or the commandments central to Judaism, there is no freedom. Only an illusion of freedom, closer to chaos than to the real thing.

That’s why I am very thankful for God’s commandments. For the currently feasible ones I obey with a whole heart and mind, which have given me more than a taste of freedom. And, also, for the ones I continue to wrestle with, in hopes of surrendering yet another inch of my will and thereby finding still more abundant freedom.

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.

Nobody's God

April 17

I broke my once-a-week posting promise. I hate breaking a promise, including one to myself. The promise to write a post every week was made both to myself and to anyone who reads these. So: to you and to me, I’m sorry.

I didn’t write a post last week because I was busy writing something else–and then beginning to turn it into a performance piece. Here’s what happened.

A couple of months ago, on impulse I submitted a synopsis about a Barnard teacher of mine for a “Moth” presentation scheduled during my upcoming reunion. "The Moth,” as some of you likely know, is a non-profit whose mission is to create storytelling productions in varioud settings. The subject for ours is: someone who was a “Mentor, Muse, or Monster” during our college years. Rosalie Colie was all three to me at Barnard In the long run, she probably had more to do with my becoming a writer than anyone.

On a new impulse, I would like to share her with anyone who reads this post. I’m still working with the producer on what I will present during reunion, but in the final version Miss Colie won’t be different–and neither will I. Here’s where we are now:



I went to a terrific high school. The only hitch was, academic subjects were just stuff you had to get through so you could get on with whatever you came to Performing Arts to perform.

Somehow, there I was at Barnard and in Miss Rosalie Colie’s freshman English class–surrounded –and surrounded is definitely how I felt--by girls who’d attended notoriously good high schools in Brooklyn. Those girls really scared me, towering academic redwoods. The day we got our first test back from Miss Colie, I knew everyone but me would get a good mark. I got a C-minus. No surprise. A girl behind me spoke out. You can’t give me a C-minus—I had a 98.6 average. Wild with relief, I blurted out, I thought 98.6 was temperature.

Mind you, I wasn’t giddy over having company for my own C-minus. Keeping my scholarship was critical. I had to get good grades–or goodbye Barnard.

Next day, I moved up to the front row, put on blinders, paid attention only to what was being said in the front of the room, and for the first time in my life put my mind to work.

Parents’ day arrived. I adored my mother. She was loving, giving, permissive, elegant, and well-educated–she’d earned a doctorate in Russian literature at the University of Kiev. But she was old–sixty that year. And despite her excellent English, she still had a Russian accent. After Miss Colie’s class, she joined the line to speak with Miss Colie. The line moved quickly. Her turn came. The line stopped moving. I watched mesmerized as she and Miss Colie became engrossed in conversation. I had to leave–or miss my next class. That evening, my mother told me Miss Colie was very smart for such a young woman. The next day Miss Colie took me aside to say that my mother was a fascinating woman. Gotcha, Toby.

We had to go to Miss Colie’s office to reclaim our graded papers. About two months into the semester, when I turned up to get a paper on Pere Goriot–yes, I remember which paper it was–I saw at once the upper-right hand corner was empty. There was no grade. Not a good sign. Miss Colie told me to sit. Another not-good sign. I sat. Slowly, she set down a “B,” then added a period. I don’t know how many straight-up B’s Miss Colie was doling out by then, but my guess is, not many. I do know that I saved bus fare home–I floated all the way to Washington Heights.

Miss Colie decided I might be worth mentoring. She gave me a list of books, handwritten on legal-size yellow paper. You need to know these, she said. By then I had a major crush–not on her, on her mind. I vowed silently to read them all–that weekend. A month later, Miss Colie said that if I worked very very hard I might one day write a “real book.” It wasn’t a compliment, it was a challenge. .

That’s how Miss Colie mentored-- through challenging. Meet one challenge, there’d be another. I didn’t have time or energy to resent it.

After Christmas break, Miss Colie was gone. GONE. We were told only that she was ill and we could not contact her. With her physical absence she turned from mentor to muse. Now I pushed me. The level of effort she demanded, I now commanded myself to make. I so wanted her to know how hard I was working anyway. Finally, it came to me how to let her know. If I could somehow win the Gildersleeve Prize, her best friend who also taught at Barnard, would tell her. What a good get-well card winning would make. But could I? There were all those girls-the redwoods. Don’t think about them. Work. I did, and how. And I won the Gildersleeve Prize. A week later, I received a thank you note from Miss Colie.

Sophomore year she was back. Illness had not softened her. Towards me, she was tougher than ever. That spring, she assigned a sonnet to analyze. I don’t like analyzing poetry, gave the task short shrift. When I went to pick up my paper, she literally tossed it across her desk at me. If this was anyone else’s, I’d give it an F, she said. I wish I did not remember this part but I do. I said, So give me an F. She shook her head. Spring break is coming up. You will analyze five sonnets. Have the papers on my desk the day we get back. I did it. For 10 days, I breathed sonnets. I did figure out how to get something out of analyzing a sonnet. But I felt she’d pushed me too hard this time. She probably felt she shouldn’t have had to. For the rest of the semester we spoke in extremely short sentences.

That summer, my mother died. And Barnard, believing in in loco parentis, found a dorm room for me. I was still unpacking my books when I heard scurrying in the hallway and a single sharp knock on my door. Without waiting for a Come in., she did. Wordlessly she looked me over. Then she said, You’re not wearing black. Good! Then: There’s a faculty tea across the street and you’re coming with me. Not a word about our mutual silence of the spring, or what a terrible summer I must have had. She was there, would be there. Pushing hard, she’d have my back. I left the pile of books unshelved and went off with her to tea.

nobodysgod

April 4

Nobodys God

Faith is still much on my mind. Partly because over the past few days I’ve had the privilege to hear a few people who are not believers speak up about their non-belief. I say "privilege" because to my mind it’s a gift when anyone shares anything that personal. I happen to feel a connection to the non-believers I know, because I remember myself as a non-believer. Many memories get gauzy over time, but for me that one hasn’t. After I came to believe, I vowed not to forget what I thought and felt before that. What I was like.

I’m reminded that when I was a faculty wife, a truly charming young man named Bobby was very surprised to discover I’d never smoked pot. Indeed, my not having tried marijuana baffled him. It didn’t fit his image of me. He never said, but I think he liked my general openness. In any case, every couple of weeks he’d turn up at my kitchen door to offer me increasingly fancy pot. By then of course I had to say no, even if I’d wanted to try it. One day about three months into this dance of ours, he showed up to tell me he would no longer be trying to turn me on. How could I not ask why? Because, he said, I figured out, you’d be exactly the same. He had this triumphant grin on his face, having solved the mystery. I count "you’d be exactly the same" the best compliment I got during my year and seven months in Hamilton, New York.

I still never have tried pot. Would I be the same? I’ll never know. I do know that when faith came to me, when God entered my life–and stayed–I did stay pretty much the same. I found God challenging rather than comforting. And having faith freed me to do good things that had beforehand seemed potentially embarrassing or otherwise risky. But otherwise, I was the same Toby.

Now, four decades later, I still find faith to be a challenge. And to bolster my courage. It’s still not a comfort, or only very very rarely. And it is definitely not easy: not easy to explain; not easy to surrender to; not easy to live with, day by day.

Even four decades ago, when my faith was brand shining new, I sensed that. And wrote:

On the Nature of Faith

Have faith.
Have half of this peach.
Have fun at the beach.
Have faith.

Poor as those four lines are as verse, I stand by them.