Reclaiming my religion
I have a membership at the local aquarium
and I often walk over there on Shabbos. I have my card and don’t have to use
money. I don’t like handling money on Shabbos. There is a religious injunction
against using money on Shabbos, the Sabbath. And the truth is, I’m not so good
at this “off the derech” thing – literally, “off the path”, a euphemism
for being formerly-religious. My soul is too connected to Torah to just let it
all go. No matter how far I try to run, it is a part of me, my identity, my
soul. I know in my heart that this is just a stage in my journey toward
healing.
I hear the squeak of the dumbwaiter
as they pull up our dinner from the basement kitchen. My nose tells me that tonight
I will be eating cornbread and lasagna. Tonight, I will eat dinner because it
is not meat or chicken. Although I am officially off the derech, I still
can’t bring myself to eat traif, non-kosher meat. I don’t know if I ever will. The
cornbread is soft and moist, and the cheese in the lasagna melts, creamy on my
tongue. When I leave the bathroom, I start to automatically recite asher
yatzar, the blessing you make after using the bathroom. I quickly catch
myself and remind myself that I am off the derech and not saying
blessings.
Going off the derech is not simple for someone with my intensely religious
background. But it is necessary. I think that religion should be a physical manifestation
of our spirituality. Religion should be about our connection with a Higher
Power. Unfortunately, I think that many times, the religion becomes more
important than the connection with self and with God. That is when it begins to
seem fanatical, oppressive, and stupid.
In my parents’ home, I always felt like religion was above
protecting people’s feelings, or caring about them for that matter. God came
first, before people or feelings. Damn it, I get so confused. How do I know
what God really cares about? I don’t want to measure anything against what my
family believes. I always felt separate from them. Like the real me didn’t
exist among them spiritually or emotionally.
To sort this out I need to separate
Torah from my family, and that means I am taking a break from it.
This is easier said than done. On
Shabbos, I hear the lamed tes milachos
song, a song about the 39 types of work that are forbidden on Shabbos. I taught
my pre-one-A boys this song when I worked in the preschool. The song plays over
and over in my head. I know every melacha, forbidden work, that I am violating
intimately. After all, I taught them. I can’t get away from it.
And there is something else that, if
I am honest with myself, I have to admit causes me crushing sadness. I miss
Shabbos. I miss the family time, the sense of connection and belonging. As
excruciating as sitting at the Shabbos table was, because of my misophonia, my
phobia of eating and mouth noises that I struggle with since I was seven. I
miss belonging to something.
I wonder if God is angry with me for needing
to leave religion for a while. And then I have an epiphany: I realize that
God likely doesn’t mind. A loving God wants me to heal. A loving God wants
a genuine relationship with me. God created man on Friday and only afterwards
He created Shabbos. First man, then Shabbos. This proves to me that first you
must be a person before you can bring religion into your life and serve God. You
have to exist first in order to recognize God. Right now, I am learning to
exist. I am just becoming a real person.
I share with a friend that I miss
Shabbos, and she suggests that I contact an assistant rabbi in a nearby suburb
who she knows to be open minded. We speak on the phone a few times and I
explain my ambivalence about religion. Rabbi Fried listens and validates my
conflict. He is warm and supportive. He assures me that there are many ways to
be a religious Jew and that my family does not own the Torah or religion. He
promises that his community and its culture, although Orthodox, is as different
as night and day from my family.
After a few months of speaking on
the phone, Rabbi Fried gently encourages me to join his congregation for the
upcoming holiday of Rosh Hashana. It is an appropriate time to begin something
new, he tells me. I go anxiously, and I am amazed to discover a brand-new kind
of Jewish community that is diverse, and open minded, as well as committed to
Torah and halakha. One main difference
between this community and my family is that culturally they are completely
American. No one here is obsessed with how people dress, how much Torah they
learn, and what “yichus” – a well-connected family name – they
have. No one judges anyone else religiously. We are all on a journey to come
closer to God, we are all growing and learning. We are all different. Everyone
is treated with equal respect regardless of their job title, how much money
they have, or their gender.
I encounter many warm and wonderful
families of religious Jews who are not afraid of the real world, and are in
fact an active and empowered part of it. My jeans and shorts don’t bother them.
The people who wouldn’t dress this way assume I have my legitimate reasons. In
fact, one of my new friends takes off his black hat when he sees me because he
knows the sight of it makes me queasy. The Torah is not his hat. He is not his
hat.
This community is diverse. All the
way from black hat and wig, to shorts and no hair covering. Some of the members
don’t look so Jewish on the outside, but the prayers they say, the Torah they
read, the Shabbos they keep is the same one I am familiar with. It is a perfect
bridge for me between two worlds and I am so grateful to have found somewhere I
can belong spiritually.
