Turning point

היום שמנה ימים שהם שבוע אחד ויום אחד בעמר
Today is eight days--that is one week and one day--of the omer
חסד שבגבורה
A day of loving kindness in a week of strength

Reading previous omer writings, I get to connect to thoughts from another time in my life with a perspective of today. Below is a post from May 2011, just before I discovered the existence of The Kitchen. It captures a moment of realization on my path that lead me to where I am today.
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For the past few years, I've been pondering the statement I hear often from friends, "I don't believe in organized religion." It's often said as part of a discussion as to why I have taken on a Jewish spiritual practice. Sometimes I respond in a joking manner, "Have you read nothing about the different factions within Judaism? There's nothing very organized about the religion :)"

But as I get deeper into my practice in this time and space, I understand that statement more and more, as I affiliate with the "official" Jewish organizations less and less. While I belong to a synagogue that is fiercely egalitarian, where women and men have equal footing in ritual practice, the movement with which it is affiliated, the Conservative Movement, won't take an unequivocal stand on that issue. At the synagogue that I grew up in, located on Long Island in New York, women still can't chant Torah, and if I were to attend their weekday minyan, I would not count as one of the ten needed to say kaddish. Yet they are also affiliated with the Conservative Movement, so my synagogue dues help support them.

The Groucho Marx line keeps going through my head, "I don't want to belong to a club that would have me as a member." They want me as a member, but I don't fully belong. While some members would embrace me and my practice, others would block me from fulfilling roles important to that practice. And the big organization that is supposed to support me still won't make a full commitment to egalitarian ritual practice in the name of not upsetting some of their members. I guess I don't matter too much to them, since upsetting me and others like me is okay.

Not a very uplifting message for the day, but one that I must continue to bring up and ponder--not just for myself, but for future generations of Jewish women.

Knowing what, and how, to ask

היום חמשה ימים בעמר
Today is five days of the omer
הוד שבחסד
A day of humility in a week of loving kindness

An integral text in the seder is the mention of the how to deal with the four "sons" - the wise, the wicked, the simple, and the one who does not know what to ask. Discussing and interpreting what these children and the answers we give them mean to us today is incorporated into most seders. You can do a search and find much commentary from a plethora of sources--and should, if you're interested, because I'm not going to discuss that here :)

I bring them up because when I saw this post from a 2008 count, the child who does not know how to ask popped into my head. I've come to see this as the need to teach our children, but we shouldn't forget that it's also about communication. Being on the same page; speaking the same language. Overused phrases, perhaps, but in our cultural lexicon for a reason.
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During a discussion with the producer of the editing project that has taken so much of my energy this week, I was taken to task about parts of the work I did. It wasn't that the work was bad, it just didn't conform with some decisions that were made by the production crew--decisions that I knew nothing about. Peter, the producer, asked me why didn't I call him with questions on what to do. My answer was that I didn't realize the questions needed to be asked. It comes down to a breakdown in communication.

There are many times in both our work and personal lives when communication between two people or within a group becomes stalled. We seem to focus on our individual answers when a better path would be to look for the questions--those to be asked and those not asked. Peter couldn't understand why I didn't ask certain questions--it was clear to him the questions needed to be asked. My response was that without certain information, I had no reason to know what questions to ask.

Peter and I are good friends and have worked together for many years. At this point we know how to get through these difficult "discussions" and resolve any conflicts to the benefit of our project and our relationship. But this reminded me of the questions I ask each morning at the start of minyan:

"What are we? What is our life? What is our piety? What is our righteousness? What is our attainment, our power, our might? What can we say, Adonai, before You?"

These are questions that we don't always know to ask, and we may not have any answers. But I believe that by continuing to ask these questions we can open the communication lines within us, to our souls.