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Jewish World Review Dec. 8, 2000/ 12 Kislev 5761
An American Jewish organization is changing spiritual lives --- one person at a time. We present four stories of "works in progress"
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
I ALWAYS HAD a little bit of an ax to grind against destiny, for making me a
square peg in a round hole. But in the long run, that may have been my
salvation.
Some experiences mark you for life. This was true of my high school years,
when I felt like the comic book character from the land of Bizarro the weirdo
from a planet where everything's in reverse. I went to high school in
Canarsie, Brooklyn, but it was more like a war zone there, than a school. They managed
to turn every decent value right on its head. If you got good grades, it's
because you wanted to show off; if you were kind, you were a pushover; if
you were moral, you were a nerd. Being tough was admired. Getting laughs by
ridiculing other people was a sure route to popularity.
I fought with her but I was filled with doubt. Everyone was into drinking
parties and a crazy lifestyle-- that was the norm. I just couldn't do it.
"Lisa, chill out, don't be so inhibited, " someone would say. "You gotta be
normal. Life ain't a convent."
That was when they were being nice.
I always longed for a friend, but in high school, today's friend was often
tomorrow's enemy, so when you confided in someone, you were taking a real
risk. At the end of high school, I was in the middle of a full-blown identity
crisis. My mother's dictum, "The whole world can't be wrong," was beginning
to persuade me that I was nuts. I was a loner, a misfit. I stopped the
counseling because it didn't help; it only made me more confused.
I was never taught belief in G-d, so I had no higher moral authority than my
parents did. Despite my conflict with them, I lacked my own frame of
reference when it came to moral and religious issues. My father had grown up
Conservative. My mother's background was devoid of religion. The temple we
went to on the High Holidays was a beautiful empty shell. People talked and
the kids cracked off-color jokes. It was a purely social event. In Hebrew
school I had learned to read Hebrew a little bit but I never prayed from a
siddur. The only thing that stayed with me from those classes was the first
verse of Shema.
When my parents divorced after I graduated high school, I stopped going to
synagogue completely. While they were together there was at least a sense of
family togetherness in going to temple. Afterwards, it was utter emptiness.
My parents' divorce was a turning point in my own life. Shattered and
lonely, my mother turned to religion. Now she needed its comfort. I watched
in disbelief as she threw out our old dishes, made the house kosher &
started observing the Sabbath. She changed around her whole lifestyle. Now,
she was the square peg. But instead of welcoming the change because in many
ways it made my mother my ally after all those years of friction, I had a
very hard time with it.
It was bitter for me that after all the years of her pressuring me to adapt,
she finally acknowledged that the world she had so wanted me to be a part of
was a crazy, unhealthy place. I didn't know how to deal with that sudden
reversal. It made me furious. Our relationship was very stormy, and I soon
moved out, choosing to live with my father. It was years before we
reconciled. Only after my father died following a long, lingering illness
was I able to accept my mother's overtures and begin to heal.
I had always had a sense of allegiance to Judaism, but lacked the vaguest
sense of Jewish history or religious identity. Now, after my father's death,
a certain hunger came to the surface to know something about what Judaism
was all about. I wasn't interested in blindly remaking my life as my mother
had tried to do, but I was struggling with grief and despair and I needed to
hold onto something. Someone introduced me to Rebbetzin Jungreis's Hineni
class, and Tuesday nights soon became the highlight of my week. From that
class, a series of steppingstones took me out of darkness. The most
important one was my introduction to Gateways.
How to describe Gateways? They call themselves an outreach organization, but
that's like calling Bill Gates a computer buff. Gateways is a world in and
of itself. It's larger than life. It's on this planet but out of this world.
It's people bound together by an amazing secret and the eager desire to give
it away.
I went to my first Gateways seminar a half a year ago. It was....
cataclysmic. Who ever dreamed there were so many Jewish "seekers"? There was
a unity there, a bonding. Nothing in the world ever made me feel as
connected to my essence as sitting there with hundreds of Jews listening to
a lecture that gave the sweep and purpose of Jewish history with blinding
clarity. I had a sudden sense of myself as a link in the generations, one of
the bearers of the torch, like the title of the lecture... And at that
moment I understood what my soul had been trying to tell me all those years
of being on the outside, never fitting in.
Gateways will be simultaneously be co-hosting another seminar
with Shalom Torah Centers at a nearby hotel, catering to a large group of
families with their children. Here, in addition to compelling lectures
addressing some of the most crucial concerns confronting a Jew in today's
world, the seminar will offer a number of classes specifically geared to
parenting and marriage-related issues.
From being through a series of bad relationships I knew what it meant to
make or break a commitment. Before I could make a commitment to Torah, I had
to know why it had failed my ancestors or why my ancestors had failed it.
I began talking to relatives and discovered an amazing thing. My father's
father had been religious when he arrived in America from Poland shortly
after his bar-mitzvah, just a few months before the outbreak of WWII. I was
shown a picture of him, a young boy in a rabbinic-looking black hat too big
for him, clutching the hand of an older man, a great uncle of mine, who was
bareheaded in the picture. That photograph captured so much for me.
I made a special trip to visit my grandfather. When I opened up the subject
with him, tears came to his eyes. He began reminiscing about his youth in
Poland, the way his family lived. My grandfather spoke with pride about how
he had once known how to learn Torah. He said that for his bar-mitzvah he
had given a speech on a difficult subject that he made up himself. He had
hopes then of one day becoming a rabbi and a scholar.
My grandfather had difficulty explaining why he had turned away from
tradition in America. He was alone in a foreign country, where the last
thing he wanted was to stick out as a religious Jew. He had entered the
country illegally and even today, incredibly, ---sixty five years later-- he
still had a fear of his deception being discovered and of being sent back.
From the way he spoke it was obvious that even though his present way of
life was light-years away from the way he was raised, his feelings for his
childhood and his parents ran very deep.
My grandfather was curious about my own belated interest in his earlier
life. When I told him a little about my exploration of traditional Judaism,
and my attraction to it, he was supportive in a way that touched me deeply.
"Lisa, stay with it... I should have been the one to inspire you to go back
to your roots. Instead, you're inspiring me. Who knows? If I could turn back
the clock, I might have done things differently..."
A lot has happened in the past half a year. I have my own apartment and the
first few times I kept the Sabbath it was very lonely and depressing.
Gradually, I learned that the joy of the Sabbath is released when Jews
experience the Sabbath together, where there is song and friendship and
togetherness. After discovering that, it's entirely different for me. When I
hear Kiddush I often think of my grandfather's childhood home back in
Europe, the little village where the Sabbath was sacred for every single
villager. I also went to Israel where I studied for a number of months. I
couldn't have done it alone. Rabbi Suchard of Gateways was always there for
me, smoothing obstacles, giving advice and encouragement. When I came back
to America, one of the first things I did was stop off at a Jewish book
store to buy books in Hebrew. I still mispronounce a lot of words and you
can tell I'm newly observant from a mile away. I don't mind though, because
I'm used to feeling different.
The wonderful part about all of this is that, with all the feeling of being
a newcomer to Judaism, I'm certain part of me has been here before. It's
must be in my genesor maybe from a previous lifetime-- because when I look
in the mirror, I no longer see that angry misfit from Bizarro staring back
at me. That person is gone forever. In her place is the real me, just
Lisa... a knowledgeable Jewish girl, with peace and hope in her heart.
Some intriguing glimpses into lives in spiritual transition that were
energized by the recent November Gateways seminar:
"Peter" is Democratic Congressman Peter Deutsch from Florida, an active and
influential lawmaker in that state. He and his wife, Lori, with their two
young children, made the 4-hour drive from Washington to attend the most
recent Gateways event, together with the elder Mr. and Mrs. Deutsch.
Besieged on all sides by reporters, colleagues, and prominent members of his
constituency, Congressman Deutsch dropped his professional duties to carve
out an island of tranquility and chizuk (spiritual strength) for himself and his family over the
Sabbath. This was not the congressman's first seminar. He and his family's
acquaintance with Gateways was launched at the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur
seminars, and judging from the congressman's parting words at the seminar's
end, the relationship will likely continue. "It was an inspiration. Keep me
posted, Rabbi Suchard, about your next event. Please G-d, I hope to come to
every single one," he said.
"The only reason I know what tefillin are is that once in Paris, many years
ago, I ate in a kosher restaurant with some acquaintances," he said.
"Somehow, the subject of bar-mitzvah came up and the restaurant owner
explained the Jewish practice of wearing tefillin after the age of
bar-mitzvah. When I said I had never had a bar-mitzvah and had never seen
tefillin, he went and got his own, and asked if I would like an opportunity
to put them on and say the blessing. I did so."
Despite staying up for a late-hour party after the Sabbath, Mr. Cohen showed
up for Sunday morning services. For the second time in his life, at
someone's invitation, he donned tefillin. A few hours later, he was on his
way back to Korea, but not before he had practically bought out the Gateways
collection of books and tapes. "A little food for thought on the way home,"
he explained. Gateways has arranged a phone Torah partner for Mr. Cohen who
expressed a keen interest in catching up on a lifetime of missed
opportunity.
Saying goodbye to my Bizarro world
By Debbie Maimon
As an adolescent I could never explain to my worried parents why I had no
friends, why the phone never rang for me. My mother pressured me constantly
to work my way into the right circle. When I refused, she'd say, there can't
be something wrong with everyone it must be you. She convinced me to go for
counseling to discover why I was socially inept.
LISA KNEW THERE WAS MORE TO LIFE: "They managed to turn every decent value right on its
head. If you got good grades, it's because you wanted to show off; if you were kind, you were a pushover; if you were moral, you were a nerd."
When I walked out of the Marriott Hotel at the end of the weekend, I felt as
though I had shed an outer skin and was struggling with the new one that
still didn't fit. The Torah as G-d's blueprint for Jewish existence had
finally started to make sense to me, but I had so many questions. I was
driven to find out if any of my relatives had ever lived a Torah life, and
why a tradition with so much authenticity and history behind it had failed
to bridge the generations in my own family chain.
"It was a true joyous family occasion," said Rabbi Suchard, Director of
Gateways. "There was a special joy in knowing we had the privilege to help
lead this couple to the canopy. We sincerely hope we should be able to
experience the tremendous joy of this beautiful closure and beautiful
beginning-- for many, many more Gateways
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