More feelings

Well, I went to services again last Friday, and they were fairly similar to the week before.  The makeup of the crowd was similar, although there were a couple of younger people floating around.  I still liked it, maybe more so because instead of a choir, there was a cantor, and it was easier to understand what she was singing. Plus this time she sang Shalom Aleichem which is basically the only one I can sing along with properly, so I felt included.

I've bought so many books recently that I feel like I need to do an inventory, because seriously it's getting kind of ridiculous.  Maybe I should use Goodreads or something.  Currently I'm reading this one, and I'm enjoying it, I think because so far it's mostly a history book and I do love me some history.

I've got to get back to trying to read Hebrew, because I feel like I'll never be able to immerse myself properly until I can understand what's written in front of me.  But I am le tired.  So there's that.

That's all I've got.  Another book just arrived and I've got to investigate.

Homework

Sorry it's been pretty silent on the homefront - my life has been fairly dull.

Well, I finally met with Rabbi Misha about properly beginning the conversion process.  He was quite hesitant, which...I'm not sure I was expecting.  He was very serious and very blunt with me about not wanting to waste his time with someone who converts and then disappears, and seemed to be most concerned about the fact that all of my close friends are evangelical Christians and I'm not friends with any Jewish people.  I think worried that I'll be a Messianic Jew or something like that, which...no thanks.

He said he wouldn't see me again until I've gone to four services and read at least one of the two books he recommended to me.  I bought three books on Amazon (take THAT you doubting Rabbi you!), and on Friday night, I went to services for the first time.  He told me to write down how I felt about it so that I remember, and I'm just now getting to it.

To be honest, I'm not sure how I feel.  The services themselves were fine - lots of singing and standing and sitting. and I was interested in what was going on the whole way through.  There was no Torah reading since it was Erev Shabbat, and I'm finding myself interested in how Saturday services are different. (No one goes to those though.  If I do go, it won't be until I feel solidly on my feet at Erev Shabbat.)  I was concerned about the age of the congregation - with the exception of the nice girl who sat next to me and helped me through, they were all extremely aged.  Emiy (the nice girl) mentioned something about a children's something going on in another room, but I'm not sure if that means all of their parents were there too, or if all of these children were being raised by their grandparents.

The congregation was also smaller than I expected.  I suppose having been raised in a mega-church, my concept of "normal" is a bit off, but there were definitely less than a hundred people there, maybe less than fifty. To be honest, that made me a little angry about the Rabbi's hesitation with me - dude needs all the congregants he can get.  (But then I realize that time spent with me is time not spent with trying to get all his current Jews into seats and engaged.)

As far as any spiritual feelings...I honestly can't say I had any real stirrings.  I enjoyed the service, and I didn't feel embarrassed to try and sing along with the prayers even though I didn't know them at all (as opposed to the way I've always felt at church, which is embarrassed all the time even though I know all the songs), and I definitely want to go again, but I wasn't moved in any particular way during it.  I'm not bothered by that though.

I do think that I'm going to go again this Friday, and then perhaps after that I'll try the other two Reform shuls in town, just to get a sense of what else there is.  He said I had to attend four services - he didn't say where.

Books

A small cut from one of the sections in Unscrolled

I'm currently reading two very good books, one which is very serious and one which is much more loose and interesting but still just as thought-provoking.

The first one was assigned for our Intro to Judaism class, and I mentioned it before - Finding God.  It is very serious but is still pretty interesting.  Basically, it takes a look at some of the great Jewish writers and philosophers - Maimonides, Buber, Philo, Fromm (who I think I'm related to!), etc - and the way they looked at God.  There's rationalist, humanist, mystic, everything in there.  It's really helping me define how I feel about God, and I wanted to write down those feelings before I forget them.  Forgive me if it gets a little awkward and/or cheesy.

God is indescribable, on purpose. God is the word on the tip of your tongue that you just can't get out.  God is that color blue that you want to paint the bathroom, but you can't find the color chip that matches what you're seeing in your head and there's no way to describe it properly.  God is the idea for a short story that you dreamt last night but can't nail down enough to put onto paper in a nonsensical way.  God the name of the song that you know you've heard before and if you could just remember enough of the lyrics you could figure it out but...no, it's gone. As soon as you try to put a picture and personality to God in your head in a way that makes logical sense, it twists and turns and you lose hold of it again. 

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The second book is new and while still serious, is very creative and interesting too.  Unscrolled: 54 Writers and Artists Wrestle with the Torah.  There are a lot of famous names in this - Josh Radnor, Damon Lindhof, Joel Stein, etc.  The way each section is done (there's one essay/drawing/photograph/whatever for each weekly section of the Torah) is just fantastic.  There's a script where Abraham is questioned by police for trying to kill his son, there are photographs of an artist's grandmother, there are prayers written by authors...it's just so interesting.  I just can't decide if I want to read the whole thing now or read a section each week along with the Torah portion.  Decisions are the worst. 

That's mostly it.  I think I really just wrote this because I feel like Alex would find both of these books to be really interesting, but really really the second one.  So you should probably read them. 

Questioning

I don't really have anything interesting to say, but I came across this article through another article and it made me feel a lot more comfortable with this possible impending acceptance of religion:

"There is a risk in being guided by conscience, but no less a risk than following the voice of “commandedness.” Martin Buber once wrote, “Moloch [an idol to which children were sacrificed] imitates the voice of God.” How can we discern the voice of God knowing that Mephi­stopheles is a ventriloquist, skillfully projecting his voice onto others? A “slippery slope” is to be preferred to being cemented in the ground. On a slope I may be able to grasp a tree or rock. But in cement, I am immobilized and subject to the threats of the wilderness."

In discussing Judaism and religion in general, this question of doing something because you are commanded to and not because you want to seems to come up again and again. This article doesn't answer the central question of "Why does God care if I do [thing that doesn't hurt anyone and makes not logical sense NOT to do, aka eat a cheeseburger or use a light switch on Saturday]," but it does make me feel better about commandments that I don't particularly think are right.

Mainly the thing I'm thinking of here is forgiveness.  From what I'm reading, the Jews don't seem to be big on turning the other cheek, and frankly, I don't blame them.  When you've been persecuted for basically your entire existence, justice seems a lot more appropriate than "okay, just don't do it again..."  I've spent my entire life trying to be more forgiving of other people's flaws, and while the prospect of fully embracing a justice-oriented existence is great, I just don't think it's the right thing for me to do.  I have to try to keep being forgiving when people are jerks.

"I shall be what I shall be."

It's been pretty quiet on the homefront lately.  I just haven't had much to say.  But I feel like now maybe I do.

I started an Introduction to Judaism course on Sunday.  (Brian's taking it with me but really only because I begged him to.)  We're the only couple there that isn't half-Jewish.  I went into this wanting to find out more about Judaism with the option at the end to decide whether or not to convert, and it seems like this class is exactly that.  The Rabbi is funny and passionate and vegan, which I find particularly interesting because I wouldn't necessarily expect that from a Reform rabbi - going vegan seems to be more of an Orthodox approach.

Anyway, there are a lot of books to read for this course, and the one that is used the most is Jewish Literacy. I've read the assigned reading for this week and next week, and quite frankly, I find it so interesting that I've just started at the beginning and begun reading it straight through.  Last night I was reading about Moses, and this particular segment struck me:

"The three word name God gives Himself is not easy to translate.  The most precise rendering is 'I shall be what I shall be,' although it is sometimes translated as 'I am that I am.'  The 1962 JPS translation of the Torah despaired of coming up with an accurate rendition, and just left the words in their Hebrew original.  Although generations of Bible scholars have tried to decipher the name's precise meaning, it really did not seem to matter that much to Moses.  Rabbi Gunther Plaut has pointed out that though God gave Moses a new name to take to the Israelites, Moses never again refers to it.  Plaut deduces that 'the revelation was never meant for the people at all, nor did Moses really inquire for the sake of the people.  Moses had asked for himself, and the answer he receives is also meant for him.' In some way, God's answer is satisfactory to Moses, if not to us, implying perhaps that when one has a true experience of God, it is very private.  In other words, God shall be what God shall be to that person.  He cannot adequately be described to others."

 For some reason, this really struck me, and I think it's really at the heart of how I feel about God and religion in general.  I've never been able to justify the image of a man in a white robe looking down at all of us disapprovingly, and it reassures me that there are others who believe that each individual's perception of what God is is acceptable. In fact, the individual interpretation of what God is seems to be a running theme with Judaism and this class - the next book that's been assigned is about that very topic: Finding God.

Anyway, long story short, I really really like this class, and I really really like what I'm learning so far.  We'll see where this goes, but I suspect I already know the answer.

Style Cure Day 11

Day 11: Plan a get-together

Ha!  Hahahaha.  No.

As this Cure goes on, I'm definitely getting a lot more choosy about what days I do and what I'm ignoring, and that's okay.  I'm less discouraged than I was yesterday, which is good too. I think letting go of both the need to follow each day exactly and that feeling of "I'm behind I'm behind I'm behind" really helped.

Last night, I went to Home Depot and got a bunch of different colors that could possibly work together and started fiddling on the wall.  With a lot of discussion last night and this morning, I think we've decided to do grey on the bottom, blue on the trim, and white on top.  (This combination is the fourth from the left or third from the right.)  Brian is a bit hesitant because that's a LOT of blue all around the room - the trim is all along the ceiling and the floor, around all the windows, and around all the door frames.

BUT WAIT maybe I should be doing white on the trim, grey on the top, and blue on the bottom??? ARGH THIS IS THE WORST.


The task for this weekend is to shop, so we'll see.  I can't get past the painting part to even consider starting to style the room, so I think some stuff is going to have to be done out of order here.  Perhaps I'll paint this weekend and then shop and style next weekend.

ASSUMING I CAN PICK SOME PAINT COLORS THAT IS.

Days 7, 8, 9, and 10

I must own you, loveseat

Day 7: Clean your room and think about paint chips
Day 8: Choose your color and think about a "pairing"
Day 9: Research your pairing
Day 10: Make a shopping list

Ooomg I am failing so hard at this you guys.  It started this weekend, when our job was clean the room.  That didn't happen, at all.  Instead, Brian did a little bit of organizing, taking a lot of stuff off the green shelves and moving it to the shelves next to the fireplace...but that's all we did.  The rest of the weekend was spent looking for a chair for the living room, since we're switching the downstairs furniture with the upstairs furniture.  So instead of thinking about what color to paint the den, I've been obsessing over this loveseat for our upstairs.  We also bought a mount to put the TV (again, upstairs) on the wall.

So then we come to day 8, picking a color.  The farthest I've gotten on that is taping a bunch of paint chips on the wall.  Brian is worried that whatever we pick will darken the room too much, since it's a downstairs room with low ceilings, and I mean, he has a point, but the brown makes me so sad that I'm pushing forward with painting anyway.  I think we're going to end up with a blue, although grey is a strong contender, and I think it's going to be extremely light in color.

Because we haven't picked a color, it's basically impossible to do Days 8 and 9, because how do you pair something with a color that hasn't been selected yet?  And then a shopping list...I feel like this has gotten way more advanced than I'm capable of.  They're talking about lampshades and pillows and I don't even know how the room is going to be arranged or what color it's going to be. :(

I'm getting really discouraged.