On Self-Forgiveness

Yom Kippur is supposed to be the most somber and difficult day on the Jewish calendar. For me though, the days that weigh heaviest with significance are the ones leading up to that apex of repentance and atonement: the Days of Awe. Yom Kippur itself is but one day. Anyone can live in physical discomfort for a little over 24 hours, unless you are too delicate a flower to have ever endured hunger, thirst, a day without being at your most hygienic, and depriving yourself of carnal relations—not that being parched, starved, smelly and unbathed exactly puts one in an amorous mood. Of course, the day is also supposed to be marked as a time when the heavens are said to open up, and us puny, imperfect, sinful little humans must tremble before the King of Kings, as though on trial, though not to plead our case, but to beg forgiveness for our self-acknowledged sins. It can be an intimidating and daunting task for the faithful, but that is, I would argue, the point of Yom Kippur. We take a day to get that out of our systems and start over for the year, cleansed after repentance, and ready to be the good people that we know we can be, and that we have just spent an entire day in shul begging God to let us prove we can be. In Judaism, we believe in a merciful God that we can trust enough to grant us our forgiveness after sincere teshuvah, and the whole exhausting day should be spiritually rewarding in the end. Seeking forgiveness from God is one thing, but seeking forgiveness from others in the days leading up to our collective trial date is generally uncomfortably humbling, and can even feel undoable at times. Each year, there is always one person I can never seem to forgive and never know how to apologize to: my own damn self.

The theme of asking for forgiveness from those we've wronged as well as being open to accepting forgiveness from others is absolutely one that I can get behind. I am really good at being apologetic. As a matter of fact, I'm downright British about it. It doesn't have to be my fault, and I'll still be sorry. And it's not that I'm insincere--I really am sorry for any hand I may have played, even peripherally, in any unfortunate turn of events that I might happen to witness. If I'm the recipient of an apology and true forgiveness is sought from someone who has wronged me, I cannot wait, literally, cannot wait to accept said apology, breathe a sigh of relief, move on and let the anxiety of encountering conflict with another human being keep me from having another panic attack (a trait which I do possess in spades and am, incidentally, quite sorry for). But if I've done something that I really am sorry about on a deeply personal level, something that I have to take full responsibility for and ownership of, I generally have enough humility to recognize that, and to apologize.

Self-forgiveness however, is, not too surprisingly, one of the most difficult things for many of us. Anyone with a conscience is well aware of that overly critical voice playing over and over in our heads each time we make a mistake, feel foolish, experience regret, or struggle with something that we feel we should have a better handle on. Anyone who stays up at night listening to the loud voices of anxiety and worry over what has already happened and passed, and what hasn't even happened yet, is really listening to the voices of self-criticism and the self-flagellation that follows. If we knew how to apologize to ourselves after we've beaten our psyches to a bloody pulp over what we have done, we would be able to put the forgiveness band-aid over our own wounds and allow true healing to take place. If we knew how to forgive our own transgressions, we wouldn't feel the need to beat ourselves up in the first place, and the never-ending cycle of self-inflicted abuse and neglect could actually end. We would even be more forgiving of others and sympathetic to the needs of those we have wronged. It’s kind of like not being able to love someone else until you learn to love yourself, as clichéd as that sounds.

Why do we have such a hard time forgiving ourselves? So many of us can forgive the worst actions of our loved ones, and even strangers who act out of line can get our sympathies. You can forgive the person you are in love with to an obscene degree, and you can forgive a neglectful family member, even after years of their transgressions. But when it comes to the self, we are often so much crueler than we would ever be to another person who makes the same mistake or commits the same crime. Perhaps because the only two beings who ever see every single thing that we do, who knows every single thought that makes a blip in our minds, and every fleeting feeling that passes through us, is God and the self. We know how we are at our worse, because we live with it. We can hide, mask, and disguise much of ourselves from everyone and everything else, but we can’t hide from ourselves any more than we can hide from God.

My first Yom Kippur was easy enough--I was in Jerusalem, a new Jew, dressed all in white and wearing some hideous plastic flip-flops that I had bought at the corner store for a few scant shekels because I wanted something to wear on my feet in my dorm shower stall that I shared with four other girls. They were too big for me and slid off my feet when I walked if I wasn't careful, and they had huge, gaudy wads of cloth hot-glued to them in order to resemble, I guess, flowers. I knew that I was only supposed to shun leather shoes for the day, since the point is to not be too comfortable, but I really went all out with those awful flip-flops. I didn't eat or drink anything, of course, and though my lips were chapped and killing me, I denied myself the use of Chap Stick, just in case the use of it was halakhically off the table for the day too. I didn't brush my teeth or use mouthwash (which my not quite as religiously observant friends found rather disgusting), and I let my hair do whatever it felt inclined to do without the aid of a brush. I looked a mess and felt a mess, and since it was my first Yom Kippur, I thought that I must be doing it right. I spent the day in shul and napped at a friend's place between the marathon services, and walked through the carless streets of Jerusalem, marveling at all of us Jews dressed in white, strolling casually down the middle of Emek Raphaim. When I broke the fast with a large group of friends at a party (where some of us thought it a good idea to drink vodka on our 25-hour empty stomachs, because that's what you do when you are in your early 20s), I really did feel a sense of renewal and joy. Maybe that was the bourekas and vodka kicking in, but I like to think that Hashem had a hand in it too. All in all, I felt really good after the long and tiring day of seeking atonement from God, like it really was an opportunity to start over, tabula rasa.

Fast forward a few Yom Kippurs later and I have not been able to find that same sense of serenity in the spirit of the season. It’s not that I have done anything that I find deeply unforgiving since my first Jerusalem High Holidays, but perhaps it’s the mistakes, regrets and missed opportunities that have stacked up since I've become a self-aware Jew, along with my own propensity to be too hard on myself that has made the season particularly burdensome. Other people come and go in our lives, and they may choose to apologize to us when they've hurt us, they may not. They may be receptive to our apologies when we cross the line, they may not. God is merciful enough to see every single blemish on our souls and still seal us for the year in the Sefer Chaim after we seek atonement. We have to live with ourselves though, and true teshuvah means really cleaning the slate each year, and leaving the mistakes and regrets in the past. That’s why this year, I am making the effort to look in the mirror and say “I’m sorry” to the one person who will always be with me, and to forgive the one person I cannot walk away from, cannot shut out, cannot lie to myself about. It’s about time, and there’s no time like the present, especially when the present is now, in this Jewish season. After all, if I can’t even do that, then what is the point of seeking atonement from anyone else? If I deserve forgiveness from others, than surely I just deserve forgiveness, plain and simple. I'd be willing to bet that that goes for all of us. In fact, I know it does. 

So gmar chatima tovah, and my apologies for this long and ponderous post. Please do forgive me.

Pieces of Home

It has been almost a year to the date since I left Israel. I have neglected this blog almost shamefully in the months since, feeling that I don't have the head space or energy to push it forward with updated posts and the desperately needed new look that I keep meaning to give it. I had the thought some months back that perhaps what I needed to do to light a fire under me to keep the blog posts coming is to change the title. After all, when I started this blog, I was in Israel and Lost in Jerusalem had a nice, if a bit overly romantic ring to it. The whole blog was supposed to be about me chronicling my adventures and misadventures in the holiest city on the planet, while perhaps saying something insightful by happy accident, or at least something witty enough to keep a few people interested in reading. I mean, my time in Jerusalem was a quirky situation for a small town ex-Christian-longtime-devoted-Atheist-turned-Jew to find herself in, right? Certainly, I would have plenty of writing material!

Now the blog is about me longing for Israel and bemoaning the fact that I'm not there anymore, and losing my religion, identity and sense of self in the mean time. Turns out that I wasn't really lost in Jerusalem after all. Now I'm lost on the other side of the planet, in my home town. Being lost at home can only really happen if you grow so far away from who you once were that you can't really say it feels like home anymore. Perhaps if I were visiting, I would have warmer feelings about it. But I'm not visiting. I live here. Again. What could I possibly have to write about here? Months and months of silence speaks volumes all on its own.

I keep thinking that while I live here, while this is home for the time being, nothing here is really mine. The house isn't mine and I'm not paying rent for the room. The room isn't even my old room--my parents took that space as their own as soon as I moved out, because truthfully, it is the better of the two rooms in this quaint, cramped little house. The bed that I'm sitting on while I write this isn't mine, either. The chest sitting at the opposite wall is full of my mother's linens, and is not mine. The dresser over in the corner belonged to my grandfather when he was still alive. The desk, the nightstand, the out of place gun safe and the fisherman's hats piled on top of it--needless to say, none of these things are mine. It seems that I am either borrowing or co-existing among other's people's stuff.

To be clear, the accumulation of stuff is not really the measuring stick that I use to determine how much of my life is really my own, or how successful I have been. I've never been terribly materialistic, and material things tend to come and go with such ease throughout life, that when I first moved to Israel, there was something liberating about just taking the essentials with me. I stuffed my one checked bag full to the allotted 50 lbs. limit and my carry-on until the zipper on the backpack nearly burst, and lived in unfamiliar furnished rooms for the next year. I didn't even come back with all of it. I repeated the process when I returned to Jerusalem seven months later, and I was happy to do it. I was doing what I wanted to do, seeing and experiencing things I grew up believing I would never see or experience firsthand, because I had convinced myself, that that's what other people got to do. Other people, with their plenty of money, their important people connections, and the guts that gave them the confidence to go out into the world and do things they hadn't done before, nerves be damned. Who needs stuff when you're living an interesting and fulfilling life?

But something funny happens when your life changes again, and morphs into the familiar and "normal." You start to feel like your independence is slipping away, that you're backsliding, losing something that you only just started to grasp, failing. When you feel like you've failed at something, you start to cling to things and resent what you do have while longing for what you don't have. I don't have my own house or apartment, or furniture, or bed, or things that somehow will ground me into believing that I have something to show for living that life I never thought I'd get to live, especially now that I'm back here where I started. Sure, I do have a sizable amount of debt to show for it! If only success could be measured is debt dollars, I'd be a fucking rock star.

Of course, I'm not totally without possessions. I do have a few things that I can call my own. For instance, there's a beta fish swimming around under a blue light in an octagon shaped tank with fake, brightly colored plants and glass pebbles decorating it. This fish is named Bowie after my beloved David Bowie, so obviously, he must be my fish. I got him after my grandmother died last autumn, suddenly hit with the urge to take care of some living thing and give it a good life. I wanted something vibrant and beautiful, and somehow, that meant getting a bright red fish named after one of my favorites musicians. Funny how grief works.

I have way too many clothes, including a fetishist sized collection of underthings--I never have to worry about needing clean underwear, because I can't leave a store with a lingerie section and not get something. It's a stupid quirk, but it is my quirk.

I have a lot of books, some of which I still haven't read, and yet, I like to complain that I don't have anything to read.

I have a few collages that I made in a fit of boredom last summer before I found a job, and I actually like how one turned out and would like to frame it. Sure, it's all sex and death imagery cobbled together in an obvious state of frustration and misery, but it's mine; I created it, a crazy visual representation of something within me, some voice that needed to say something.

And there's this laptop that I'm typing on, decorated with my "Na Nach Nachma Nachman M'Uman" and "Thank an Israeli Soldier" stickers, and leftover Hebrew decals that haven't yet peeled off of the keys (Which reminds me, I've got to get those replaced. Which reminds me, I've got to get back to studying Hebrew). And I have an iPod that seems to survive no matter what manner of abuse I put it through, filled with Depeche Mode, 80s pop, 90s grunge, The New Yorker fiction podcast, and Kabbalat Shabbat tunes that I am slowly starting to forget as Shabbat after Shabbat seems to pass me by.

I have a mezuzah nailed at the entrance to my room which I, hilariously enough, got from my mother for Christmas. There's a kiddush cup sitting in front of a chanukiah over on the shelf where Bowie's tank sits, the stems of the chanukiah wrapped in the Magan David necklace that I bought in Jerusalem with the last of the money I had to my name the day before I flew back to the States. It's joined by another necklace that was gifted to me on the day I completed my conversion by someone who will no longer speak with me (A good memory, intertwined with a bad one--certainly, these must be mine). The Judaica is flanked by two ugly cat figurines with gaudy fake gemstone eyes that I've had for years, ever since I asked my mother to please pull them from her booth at the antique mall where she was selling them, because I just had to have them. A couple of colorful and cheaply made chopsticks that I bought at a chachkie store for tourists in Beijing sit awkwardly in front of where I light my Shabbat candles, alone, with nobody but Bowie the fish to wish a Shabbat Shalom to once I uncover my eyes and gaze thoughtfully at the flames (but Bowie is generally unimpressed, and just wants me to feed him more blood worms as his Shabbat meal).

I have a grey Pound Purry Kitten (remember those?) that I've had since I was five years old sitting on top of a bag that says "Megan's Toys" from around the same era, along with a good luck Care Bear that my mother tearfully gave me when I left home for the first time when I was 18 to live with my then-boyfriend up in Portland. She handed it to me and said, "He had better always treat you right." Well, I survived along with the Care Bear, so it must have been doing something good for me.

On my nightstand there is a framed black and white picture of my sister and I on her wedding day, my sister looking happy and lovely, me looking ridiculous with my gothy short black hair from high school and an oddly juxtaposed cheerful ring of flowers perched on my head. I also have what looks like a genie lamp holding some of my jewelry, a glass pot with birds painted on it that my mother gave me, simply because it was made in Israel, and that's the kind of thoughtful person she is. It sits next to an antique mirror that flips over and reveals a magnified mirror on the other side, just in case I want to see every pore of my skin in upsetting detail while I put on make-up in the morning. It's also a gift from mom.

I have a Lawrence Olivier's Hamlet DVD that my sister got me for my birthday because I couldn't find that version of my favorite Shakespeare play anywhere in town. It's sitting next to an absolutely beautiful Pesach Haggadah by Jonathan Safran Foer, which was thoughtfully given to me by a friend who was gracious enough to invite me to her family's seder last Pesach, where I sat as the somewhat uncomfortable and lone non-Messianic Jew at the table. My well-used yoga mat that my sister gave me because she had an extra one leans against the wall, opposite my exercise ball, and the out of tune guitar that I haven't played since I was probably about 15 years old and lost the nerve to play because I thought I'd never be any good at it. The guitar is from dad.

I suppose, these things are really mine. Most of them have been given to me over time. If they've made it through the ten different moves that I've made in as many years, then, is it a stretch to say, that they must mean something? Even the large collection of knickers and strange collages? My things have been lost, stolen, and destroyed, either by me or someone else in a fit of anger, so these are the real troopers, the real pieces of home that I'll take with me when I get up and run off again.

In the mean time, I suppose I really do have some wonderful things. They aren't just things, after all; they're pieces of my home, and they always come with me, or are waiting for me when I get back.

Maybe I have more to write about than I thought.

Falling off the Kosher Wagon

Even before the completion of my conversion three years ago, keeping kosher seemed relatively simple and came surprisingly easy. Sure, the BLT was my favorite sandwich once upon a time, and the spectrum of the many delicious treyf Italian meats were a goyish treat that I wouldn't have dreamed of saying no to if offered the chance to partake in their consumption. But other than that, ham has never been the most appealing of meats to me (it looks a little too...human), and I found out rather quickly that, apart from the occasional but incredibly strong craving for the forbidden seafood of my gentile youth, there were still plenty of fish in the sea, so to speak. I used to think of the burger as being woefully incomplete without a slice of melted cheese, a concept that has now become so foreign to me, that I find myself wondering just what it was that I saw in the cheeseburger in the first place. Even keeping separate dishes came to me with ease; crossing a meat utensil with a dairy one by accident was a rare occurrence, and when it did happen, I would notice my mistake immediately (think of your first childhood reaction to that horrible buzz that comes with failing to successfully remove the wishbone in a game of Operation...man, I hated that game). Even with so many new restrictions to my eating habits though, I took to keeping a not too lax degree of kashrut the way a Polish bubbe takes to whipping up a bowl of matzo ball soup during Pesach. It just felt natural.

Since the beginning of my Jewish journey though, keeping kosher represented so much more than just doing what my rabbi told me I should do. I liked the idea of putting religiously mandated parameters around my eating habits; it seemed to infuse even the most mundane and ordinary day to day practices, such as eating, with significance and meaning. It also became a marker of identity for me. The more Jewish practices that I began to adopt as my own, the more I felt like I was becoming my true self. For many of us who have chosen this life, conversion certainly does feel like stepping into a role that we were born to play. For me, adopting Jewish practices into my lifestyle helped flesh out that role more completely. I’m not saying that this is true for all Jews, by birth or by conversion, but I certainly didn't cross the BLT off of my diet just because I’m into self-denial and masochism--there’s something rewarding in it for me, even more rewarding than the pleasure of eating tasty food.

Keeping kosher came even easier while living in kosher households during and after my conversion, especially after living in Jerusalem for a year and a half, where I would actually have to go out of my way to fall off the kosher wagon (or go to Tel Aviv for a day). Now that I am back in the States and currently residing in a place with a very small Jewish community and living in a non-Jewish home for the first time since my conversion, I have begun to compromise my kosher eating habits along with the rest of my Jewish observances, little by little. Having a kosher kitchen is not viable at the moment. Keeping separate dishes is also not only impractical (not that there is anything "practical" about it in the first place), but would create a hassle that would involve unwilling participants in my household. As a result, I have modified my kosher diet a bit here and a bit there. I still won't eat treyf animals, I still will only eat certified kosher meat, and I don’t mix my meat with my dairy. It may seem like the kosher-lite diet, but when you lack a community, Jewish practices start to fall to the wayside. The system-shock that comes from the change between a vibrant Jewish life in Jerusalem, to the lackluster reality of living as the rare Jew in Anywhere, U.S.A. also has the unfortunate effect of feeling like such practices start to ring hollow. It also has the side effect of stubbornly holding onto what you've got until the situation can feasibly change; I have to eat to survive, so keeping kosher is what I've got. But then there was The Hamburger Incident.

The Hamburger Incident, as I have come to think of it, involved me, my persuasive hunger for something not mashed together into a patty to create the illusion of real meat, and my now fluorescent exasperation with my living situation, which has disrupted what was a satisfying Jewish existence in the Holy Land. I had conceded that eating at non-kosher restaurants would not weigh too heavily on my conscience but that eating non-kosher items would, so I would just eat vegetarian or permitted fish when eating at such a place. This was something that had been my practice before I moved to a place where kosher restaurants are more than just a nice idea. So as I stared resentfully at the veggie burger option on the menu at a local burger joint one particularly frustrating day, I suddenly heard myself say, without even really thinking it through, “I’ll have a hamburger and fries, please,” to the lady behind the counter who had no idea of the inner-turmoil those seven words had suddenly sparked within me. I stopped short of ordering a cheeseburger, although the thrill of considering doing so made my heart thump as though I was getting ready to rip my clothes off and streak through the place with my hair on fire: “I’m not supposed to be doing this! This is wrong! This is bad! I’m breaking the rules! Wee!”

As the kind woman at the counter passed me the fittingly plain, conspicuously trying to look inconspicuous brown paper bag, I felt like we were conducting a public drug deal. Not looking her in the eyes as she cheerfully thanked me for my business, I snatched the bag from her outstretched hand, and got out of there as though I couldn't flee from the scene of the crime quickly enough. I got into my car and drove back home with every muscle in my body rigid and tense as the heavenly aroma of the burger filled my car with the clear evidence of my transgression.

I ate my meal in my bedroom with the door closed, like a criminal hiding with stolen goods. It was delicious, and hit the spot like no other meal had in a long time. I savored each bite, and the whole event was over much too soon. How could something wrong feel so right?

After the meal though, guilt and remorse started to set in. Not because I had fallen off the kosher wagon for the first time in years—it happens, and it isn't the end of the world when it does. Indulging in a treyf treat on a rare occasion wasn't really the issue for me. It was the fact that I had crossed a line that I insisted that I not cross for my own sense of well-being. It’s like having a cigarette after going for months smoke-free. Maybe it’s one slip-up, one moment of human weakness, just one step back. Or maybe it’s the one thing that leads to another, and before you know it, you’re buying another pack, knowing full well that it won’t be your last. Remember when you said that last time? And sure enough, a couple of weeks later, I had a treyf steak. And so that important sense of self, true identity, and deeper meaning begins to fade a bit more. The line begins to blur. The feeling of liberation is replaced with a sense of unease. Is this going to be my life now?

I am not writing this piece to look for sympathy from Jews who are satisfied with their degree of observance, strict or lenient, or from Jews living in situations where they can comfortably live their Judaism with the support of a community and not having to constantly explain and excuse themselves for their practices. The Jewish world has experienced significant anxiety for generations over how easy it is to lose one's identity in the assimilation of living in the non-Jewish world. I am not saying anything profound. Perhaps I am just confessing my own anxiety regarding a loss of Jewish identity and the fear of the encroaching reality of re-assimilation. I've been on both sides of that fence, and really, while I don’t mind visiting, I don’t feel at home on this side. Home is where you can be yourself without feeling like it’s a battle.

I miss being myself. I want to come home.