Joanne Seiff – Page 9

Opportunities for growth

Moving into an old house that needs fixing is a challenge many people aren’t prepared to consider. I’ve heard this repeatedly from people who are both impressed and stunned by our choice.

We’ve just moved into our fifth old house as a married couple. We can see the big yard, friendly quiet neighbourhood, the structure’s amazing character features from 1913, and feel this was a good choice, if an expensive one. We’ve been married almost 25 years, too. We’ve become smart enough, as partners, to hire contractors to help us cope with the things that are far beyond what we can manage to do ourselves. So far, we’ve had fewer arguments this time around.

However, there are moments when I doubt my choices. This house has a lot of broken window panes. In some cases, someone just enclosed the window in a wall, so it sat there for perhaps 50 years, broken or not. When our contractors opened up one of the walls, well, all became clear. It was no wonder that plumbing pipes froze there in a Winnipeg winter – in a dark space with a broken window. Never mind triple-paned argon-filled glass, just closing some of the windows with regular, unbroken glass would have made a world of difference.

My husband took the first few windows to be repaired at a local hardware shop. When these came back, fixed properly and affordably, he carefully fitted them back in where they belonged. Then he watched a This Old House YouTube video to figure out how to get out still more of these broken beauties. Then, he described how he’d need my help to slide out the next large storm window.

I got anxious. This involved broken glass, fragile window frames, standing on a mudroom ledge (while he stood on a ladder outside) and December weather. Also, it involved cooperating with one’s spouse, which can sometimes be stressful, too! Luckily, the Winnipeg December weather was mild, right around freezing. I eased myself onto the ledge, over some stairs, and held onto the window exactly as instructed. I had some serious nerves.

To my surprise, the broken storm window, which had been partially concealed behind drywall for many years, slid right out. There was barely time to admire the buttery paint of the inside window, although we took a second to notice the old-fashioned curtain rod. Someone took the time to drywall in this entire window but left the curtain rod hooks still completely intact. Go figure.

When I climbed down, I was oddly proud. I hadn’t fallen off the ledge, we’d removed the window, and I’d gotten up close and personal with a really old part of my house that was still in good working order. Then I remembered to go wash my hands right away. I’d just been grasping with sweaty hands onto peeling lead paint on the window frames … but I digress.

We all need growth opportunities. Lots of people take on new extreme sports or complicated hobbies. Others learn new languages, develop new relationships or take journeys to new places. Perhaps because of the pandemic, or having younger kids, I have had small expectations of myself. I’m not taking any solo international vacations or racing fancy cars. Even so, I’ve had growth opportunities. Life offers them free of charge, when you least expect it, whether it’s house renovations, new professional or Jewish learning experiences or just wintertime in Manitoba.

I’m also several years into some Jewish learning, doing Daf Yomi, a page of Talmud a day, which takes more than seven years to complete. I’ll be the first to admit that, some days, I breathe a sigh of relief when I find that it is a very short page. (Nedarim-Vows, the current tractate, has a few of these!)

And, I’m experiencing this house renovation, complete with having a major plumbing overhaul done last weekend. This included not having a stack at all for a long afternoon. (The stack lets waste water leave your home. Without a working one, well, nobody flushes the toilet or runs a faucet. It was quite a wait.)

We currently have a completely gutted kitchen and might not have a finished kitchen again for quite awhile. Slow cooker meals and the kitchenette in the first floor powder room require forethought and improvisation. Again, maybe, seen optimistically, these, too, are chances for growth and learning.

Most of my experiences aren’t extreme. I’m not climbing Kilimanjaro, yet it was quite the adrenaline rush just standing on the ledge above the stairs, dealing with the broken window. It’s these moments that help keep us stimulated, challenged, changing and growing as people.

As a kid, I remember how hard it felt leaving for a Jewish summer sleep-away camp. It was exciting and terrifying, all at once. Big milestones in life – major birthdays or, say, hitting 25 years of marriage – can also be seen as colossal events. However, my daily life seems to be full of those moments that some see as inconsequential, until they become teaching moments.

I’m reminded of one squishy deep-snow spring day. I got my car stuck in our back lane parking spot. It was a goopy mess. If my four-wheel-drive SUV got stuck, well, anyone’s could. Alone with my twins, I had to manage to fix it. With their help, I got us out, using all the tricks my dad had taught me long ago, including my floor mats for traction, rocking the car back and forth, and more. My kids and I cheered, sweaty and covered in disgusting slush and completely late for whatever we’d set out to do, but we’d gotten the car out together.

We didn’t climb the highest peak. Far from it. We got ourselves out of a rutted, snowy prairie back lane in springtime. Judaism offers us a whole list of blessings to memorize and recite, and many of them are for small moments. When we eat bread, bless our kids on Shabbat, pray for rain, see a rainbow or just get up in the morning, we have a chance for a blessing. Yet, the moment we pause to reflect on what happened, maybe we realize that those growth moments – going to summer camp, buying and renovating an old house, one window at a time, or teaching kids important winter driving skills – weren’t quite so small after all.

Here’s to growth moments.… May yours in 2023 be meaningful and not too painful!

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Counting our blessings

It’s that time of year again. Which I face with trepidation on occasion, because my family celebrates Hanukkah – and that’s it. Some years, I manage to float by in a haze of patience, busy with my family’s celebrations and entertaining, oblivious to everything around me. Other years, I’ve had to interact with the majority culture around me in ways, big and small, that feel difficult. I could go into all the examples of what makes me feel uncomfortable, but that’s not really necessary. Why? Too many readers know what I mean, and those who don’t will suggest that I’m just being overly sensitive, whatever example I raise.

Hanukkah (however you spell it in English) is not a major Jewish holiday, though it has some themes that require adult maturity to unpack. It’s a story of guerilla warfare, a holiday of religious freedom, a tale about light and miracles, and of a small group of locals winning the fight against a big assimilationist majority. It’s not the easiest set of ideas to explain to kids, which is probably why we teach them the blessings and focus on dreidels, fried food, candles and presents.

Hanukkah shares a lot of ground with other winter solstice holidays, of course. It’s really dark at this time of year and all we want to do is bask in a little bit more light, eat lots of calories and find something to enjoy together indoors. Winnipeg, where I live, is a good place to remember this – with the change to standard time, the sun goes down very early, with just about eight hours of daylight.

After all this pondering, I kept coming back to what recipe I could find to make this year one of the “good ones,” where I don’t dwell too much on the frustrations of the season for minorities. It came to me, while driving back and forth to the elementary school. When my kids are on duty as safety patrols, they need to arrive early and leave later, so they can’t take the school bus. Even though they are learning to be responsible in Grade 6, the people who learn the most about responsibility in this scenario are parents. We drive them to school early and wait patiently in the car for 15 minutes after school is done so we can drive them home again.

A person (ahem, me) can get grouchy about this, especially because there’s a lot of traffic at this time of day. However, my special reminder happens when I cross a bridge, under which a river flows. We are lucky to be situated at the forks of two rivers in Winnipeg, so we cross bridges a lot. At a Jewish summer travel camp, long ago, my kids learned to recite a chant reminding us that the Ba’al Shem Tov says water is a siman brachah, a sign of blessing – a good sign.

The Ba’al Shem Tov was the founder of Chassidic Judaism, a teacher and a mystic and the stories of the Ba’al Shem Tov maintain resonance for us today. Remembering that water is a sign of blessing made me think about how very lucky my family and I are. We have clean water, unlike many Indigenous Canadians, and unlike many others in the world. In general, most of us in Canada have a place to live, heat and food. We are not suffering in winter as much of Ukraine is, without electricity or heat. While inflation is rising, we’re not faced with the staggering heat bills hitting the United Kingdom and Europe.

Once I remember to be grateful, I find myself pushing farther – to consciously force myself, when perhaps I am grouchy, hungry or cold, to be more patient and kind. For me, that crankiness is temporary. For people who are struggling, unhoused and don’t have enough to eat, it’s a much longer ordeal.

The Ba’al Shem Tov was a very good teacher and had patience and love for his students, who were small children. I’m also returning to the elementary school now, as I’ve started volunteering one afternoon a week. This, too, has been a gift. Helping kids in Grade 1 with the alef bet (Hebrew alphabet) is another wonderful opportunity to celebrate. If volunteering is giving, I receive the enthusiasm, affection and wonder that these eager learners share. It’s worth the traffic jam struggles of crossing the bridge repeatedly in traffic.

When Hanukkah arrives, we’ll have our night of tzedakah (charity) as well as our nights with sufganyiot (jelly doughnuts) and other small treats. We’ll light our candles and push away darkness as we can. However, the Ba’al Shem Tov’s reminder, that water is a blessing and a good sign, is a year-round gift, just as it is to work with kids. We can choose to use these teachings as a reminder to take that deep breath, find the bandwidth and be kind because we’re grateful and fortunate.

I can’t guarantee I’ll always be patient this time of year. I’m not always up for the parties that are for the “holidays,” but are called wassails, or the repeated Merry Christmas greetings. Luckily, I have lots of chances to look out at the water as I cross the bridge and to look at the joy of kids eager to learn, and to remember to be grateful for these blessings. Have a great Hanukkah!

No promises to reach goals

Imagine being in a meeting where everyone is asked to set “reach” goals for the next season. How about those self-help gurus who invite you to visualize your ultimate success? Perhaps there’s a social media post where you’re invited to dream, with reels of beautiful drivers in fancy cars, enormous luxury estates and vacations in exotic locales.

I was once part of an online writing group that emphasized setting goals. This included how many words you’d write a day, where you’d sell your work and how much you would earn. They repeated a refrain: “Writing is a positive addiction.” I retained a healthy cynicism about it all, but the thing I actually fell for was an exercise where you drew the cover of the book you were creating.

I drew the cover of the novel manuscript I was writing. Now, I’m happy to say that, since then, I’ve published books (all non-fiction) and articles with reputable publishers. I once won a fiction short story contest. I’m an actual writer and get paid for my work. I’m proud of this achievement! It’s also a real milestone for many who start out as grade school scribblers.

But, despite many attempts, I never sold that novel manuscript. Those who read it said it was good – but it remains unpublished. That book cover I posted above my desk for motivation makes me feel embarrassed. Who did I think I was? It’s hard for me to let go of my goals and cut myself a break. I held myself accountable.

This feeling of shame grew when I had a family because, as anyone with kids knows, it’s hard to make solid promises when dependents are in the picture. Even with family, spousal and childcare support, things can happen. The pandemic reminded us all that we have much less control over our lives than we thought. Sick kids happen. My children’s needs will always come before my work. There are no guarantees that you’ll always meet that deadline or reach the goals you set.

All this came to mind as I studied the Babylonian Talmud tractate Nedarim (Vows) and got to daf (page) 9. Nedarim is all about how to understand a vow, which, in Judaism, is taken very seriously. The rabbis explore definitions of how a vow works. Even though I’d never been taught these texts directly before, I have always hesitated to promise things that perhaps I can’t deliver. Just as we should not “swear” to things, we shouldn’t even promise anything if we think something might come up.

In Nedarim 9b, there’s a question about making a vow when it comes to bringing an offering. This itself could be strange, as the rabbis in the Gemara are reflecting on a time they never experienced. Very few of these rabbis were alive before the destruction of the Temple. They’re still concerned with the protocol of bringing an offering there, just in case the Temple is rebuilt. The real lesson is in how it’s theoretically done, even if no one’s ever making a physical offering again.

A person shouldn’t make a vow to bring an offering, the Gemara says, because “perhaps he will encounter a stumbling block” that would violate the prohibition against delaying. That delay would interfere with fulfilling the vow. Further, it’s a bad idea to designate a specific animal for the offering in advance because, again, something might happen to it. For instance, say it is a sheep, but it’s shorn by someone by accident. Perhaps someone works with a consecrated animal in some way when he shouldn’t. This is a misuse of a consecrated animal, and it’s prohibited. The animal can no longer be used as an offering.

Then, a story is told about Hillel the Elder. No one ever misused his offering. Why? He would bring it to the Temple courtyard unconsecrated. Only after he arrived, would he consecrate it. Then he’d place his hand on its head and slaughter it. There was no opportunity for misuse.

Upon reading this, I better understood my hesitancy in terms of big goals. The generations of parents who said to their children “We’ll see” rather than promising things? This made good sense. The rabbis understood the concern that sometimes even sure things fall through.

Some traditionally religious Jews say “bli neder,” or “without a vow,” when committing to something. It means – I’ll try to the best of my abilities, but I’m not making a serious vow. I’ve never used this, but it has such power. Yes, we all want to reach milestones and accomplish huge things. Absolutely! However, it can be heartbreaking when we don’t quite get there, even if we have valid reasons for why we didn’t.

It can be anti-climactic to be like Hillel the Elder. After all, there was no announcement, anticipation or build up for him around his vows. It was very low key.

I remembered something similar that happened long ago, when I was an undergraduate. Friends doing science degrees would plan big parties after their last exams, bar-hopping and celebrating when the semester ended. I often had only one or two exams. Mostly, I wrote many final papers in my dorm room. With stacks of books everywhere, I’d write alone at my computer each morning. Then, I’d print the paper, walk across campus and put it in a professor’s mailbox. That was it. When the last paper was finished, boom, end of my semester. No big announcement or party followed. I packed up by myself and traveled home.

Sometimes Jewish texts can be hard to connect to, because the issues seem old, irrelevant or don’t include me as a woman. This time, though, I was right there with the rabbis’ stumbling blocks and the low-key anti-climax of Hillel the Elder. I wish that everyone could hit those big reach goals and fulfil their aspirations – but perhaps we might not voice them as promises ahead of time. According to the rabbis, that quieter approach is entirely OK, too.

New learning, old discoveries

On Sundays, we work together as a family to clean the house. We’ve just moved to an historic home that is in the midst of renovations. We aren’t fixing the house to create new modern luxury, but rather so that all the plumbing works and nothing freezes in the wintertime. We’re excited about creating updated versions of what this house might have looked like when it was built in 1913 – with necessary improvements like removing knob and tube wiring and asbestos, as well as insulating and fixing pipes.

A friend was excited about the house’s historic details. She said her husband wouldn’t consider moving to an older home because of ghosts. While I won’t belittle anyone, I’m not particularly worried about ghosts in old houses. Instead, I love knowing that people lived, died, gave birth and had many important, regular and extraordinary life events, both happy and sad, inside these same walls. Imagining past inhabitants who washed their faces at the sink, ate meals in the dining room or celebrated birthdays with loved ones, just as we do, gives me great joy.

Like any house, ours has its creaks and groans. It’s perhaps worse than usual because we’re new here. We haven’t yet effectively bled the radiators. Maybe we don’t always properly close a storm window. This morning I heard sounds, but I suspect there’s a squirrel in the attic. Even this annoying intruder reminds me that our family’s not the first one here. Hopefully, not the last either, although I hope we can get the squirrel to leave first!

When I think about Jewish tradition, it’s a lot like this opportunity to inhabit an old house. Judaism is old, but as each of us “moves in” to our identity or tradition and makes a place for ourselves, both the tradition and the people grow and change. Jewish practice isn’t exactly the same as it was 2,000 years ago, no matter how much some people would like it to be. Similarly, when we’re done fixing up our old house, it will be different, functional for today, and perhaps even better than when we got here. The same, but different, and that’s OK.

I reflected on this when we hit this Jewish month of Heshvan, sometimes called by its older name, likely connected to Akkadian, Marheshvan. In English, this could be translated to “Bitter Heshvan.” As time passed, language changed. With the connections to other ancient languages forgotten, the rabbis called this month “bitter” because, in their understanding, it didn’t contain any big holidays. To some, this might be a relief after the fall High Holidays and, to others, it’s a weird thing to say. Shabbat still happens every week and that’s important, too. There’s even a little-observed Ashkenazi tradition, the Fast of Behav, which I just learned about while writing this column, and it happens during Heshvan.

This learning process is one of those chances where I realized Judaism can grow and change just as we do with our old house. A year ago, I wrote about Heshvan as the time when I would begin to learn to chant Torah – and, yes, while I still have a long way to go, I learned to do that well enough to read Torah twice.

This year, I realized that, actually, Heshvan isn’t mar or bitter due to a lack of holidays because Sigd is on the 29th of Heshvan. As of 2008, Sigd is an official holiday in Israel. It’s a Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jewish) holiday, 50 days after Yom Kippur, and it celebrates the acceptance of Torah. Today, it’s celebrated by fasting, reciting psalms and gathering in Jerusalem to hear the Kessim (priests, like the Kohanim) read the Orit (the Octateuch, or eight biblical books: the five books of the Torah, plus the books of Joshua, Judges and Ruth). Then, when the ritual ends, it’s time to break the fast, dance and celebrate.

I learned this from Wikipedia and other sources online. I haven’t experienced this in Israel or met Jews who celebrate the holiday. However, that doesn’t mean the holiday doesn’t exist! Our tradition has multiple ways to celebrate and observe. For instance, many Jewish organizations take two days off for some holidays, even though only part of the Jewish community observes for two days. Many Jews don’t observe minor fast days, such as the Fast of Behav, which I just heard of today.

How do Heshvan and Sigd relate to living in an old house? Living in old houses has offered me so many ways to learn the social histories of our ancestors. Discovering the plumbing of a bedroom sink, long removed, or a window that was blocked off during a renovation helps me see not only how the original owners of the house used it, but also how subsequent families and businesses chose to reinvent their living spaces. While we can’t understand everything about their lives, we find reminders of the past that can inform us now.

In my house, the contractors recently removed the quarter-sawn oak flooring of a room to deal with the water damage from a long-ago flood. We found a 1925 penny on the subfloor. Perhaps it fell out of the pocket of the house’s first owner, a doctor, as he undressed, or a worker lost it during a renovation. That penny was produced nearly 100 years ago, but 12 years after the house was built. Sometime later, it fell between the boards.

We’re often so immersed in our rituals, as family members, congregants or people in a particular ethnic or national group, that we miss out on other ways to enrich our knowledge and traditions. If we look beyond the easy, and later, interpretation of the word Marheshvan and consider its Akkadian roots, or the diverse holidays that in fact do happen this time of year, we can turn around this bitter message.

Wishing you a happy Heshvan, full of both new learning and old discoveries.

How much is your work worth?

Imagine an interview where the interviewer wanders around the office, conducting work while asking intrusive personal questions. The interviewee trails behind. An hour-long appointment stretches into two. Things get further off track. The potential employee, apologizing profusely, gets herself out of the building and into the safety of her car. Cheeks burning, she drives herself home, wondering, “What the heck was that?” Days later, she fields phone calls from the interviewer, asking why she won’t accept an offer that is a dollar or two more than minimum wage. The amount would not likely cover the gas, taxes, work clothes and household/childcare coverage it would take to do the job. Advanced degrees and experience don’t matter, she hears. This is the going rate.

Meanwhile, at home, the same potential employee “works” at the numerous tasks that pop up every day. She self-drafts a clothing pattern, because a kid needs pyjamas of the right size and the pattern she has doesn’t fit. She mends a favourite pair of school pants. She prepares multiple meals in advance, baking bread ahead, too. These tasks are lined up for quick moments to spare amid managing homework and extracurricular activities. She contacts tradespeople to see if they can provide affordable repair quotes, responds to school emails and fits in applying for other jobs or doing her current work as she can. She is sadly behind in keeping up with her friends and family, but doesn’t know when to fit that in.

In between, she walks the dog, meets the kids at the school bus, takes them to medical appointments, or pays bills. She politely tries to get out of volunteer commitments that moms “should” do for the school and community organizations.

This might sound familiar to parents, mostly mothers. It’s all the work that goes unnoticed and is uncompensated in our society. Daring to seek compensation for some of these skills is seen as selfish. After all, these parents (usually mothers) are told, “If you expect to earn anything for your experience or education, you’re mistaken. You ‘chose’ not to stay consistently in the full-time workforce. You chose to have children/get married/study a less-lucrative topic in university….” The list goes on.

Our society functions in many ways because of the unpaid labour. It’s most often women’s physical, emotional, social labour done behind the scenes. It feels new and unfair in every generation, I suspect, even as some things change for women slowly over time.

As I study Ketubot, which is a Babylonian talmudic tractate dedicated, at least in theory, to marriage contracts, I’ve had competing demands on my time. It’s forced me to read aspects of the text differently. When the rabbis debated these issues (1,600 to 2,100 years ago, give or take), women’s roles were more circumscribed. However, some of the basic arguments seem to arise in ways that don’t surprise me.

Some of the takeaway nuggets from this tractate…. When a woman marries, her husband is owed her labour and the fruit from her properties. Even if she brings servants into the marriage, there are certain tasks she must do herself. Her virtue and loyalty are worth a monetary value in the marriage.

There are surprises though. If the husband dies, the woman is owed the price of her marriage contract, or the husband’s heirs must take care of her upkeep. She (or her representatives) may write obligations into the marriage contract that the husband will be required to honour. For instance, if she brings a daughter from a previous marriage with her, she can obligate the new husband to pay for the daughter’s physical support in the contract. (Ketubot 102)

Long story short, smart women can sometimes find ways to protect themselves. This is true even in a rabbinic system that isn’t designed necessarily for them. In these texts, women – and their families – both look out for one another and treat each other unfairly.

What can we draw from all this? I feel less alone when considering that expectations may have changed a bit in 2,000 years, but that many of our sometimes truly overwhelming expectations and commitments remain. Further, clever people have protected themselves whenever they can, throughout the centuries. It’s not new to look out for one’s own interests and avoid being taken advantage of by creating some safe boundaries.

Studying these texts at this point in my life offers me a level of maturity that I didn’t have the first time I went through a bad interview. More than once, I was offered a job that took a lot of skill but offered only a low wage. I remember feeling torn up about these experiences, wondering if I was worth so little. It was also a feeling of desperation. I needed a certain amount to live, and this offer wouldn’t provide it.

One privilege of being older is that women who value themselves aren’t embarrassed to ask for what they’re worth. Earning less than what we need doesn’t do us or our families any favours but, of course, in financial desperation, many women must take those jobs anyway. This is what fuels the cycle of low wage work in the first place.

We aren’t all experts in everything. Drafting a sewing pattern doesn’t make one a professional fashion designer. Finding the right document in a bunch of storage boxes is like finding a needle in a haystack, but it doesn’t make me an archivist or a research librarian. We all have our areas of true expertise. Also, just as the rabbis debated the value of one’s roles and responsibilities in marriage, we do the same. Is our work worth something? Heck, yes.

Tractate Ketubot’s messages about the value of a woman or a wife sometimes seem mercenary, but this, too, is Torah. Sometimes, being mercenary is the way to have our work be seen, valued or compensated appropriately.

Free expression in workplace

I heard once about an executive who explained in an interview: we debate a lot behind the scenes, but when we present our opinion or policy, it is a united front. We expect all employees to avoid saying or writing anything that would contradict this in public, they continued. Further, it’s spelled out in the work contract what you can and cannot say, and employees must stand behind the policy decisions of the organization.

If you find this kind of approach unsettling, you wouldn’t be alone. Yet, it’s not an uncommon requirement of employees. I wondered, after hearing this, how much money employees have to earn to make it worthwhile to give up their opinions or their right to free speech. Also, what happens if, during the debate behind the scenes, a younger or less powerful employee has a viewpoint that is starkly different than the party line? How does that go? Must an employee then give up her income or change jobs in order to have freedom of expression on those topics? If mainstream, moderate opinions and moderate disagreements are swept under the rug, what else isn’t allowed?

After hearing of this model, which shuts down dissent or situations that might conflict with the policy, I felt nervous. I ended up joking around. This felt like the Mafia. Disagree with the boss? What happens if nobody likes what you have to say? You too could end up in the river wearing some concrete overshoes!

These issues around employment and freedom of expression loom large in democracies and rightly so. If we look back to Judaism’s most foundational texts, written and oral Torah, we see that, consistently, Judaism values hearing all the opinions. Minority voices or rejected outcasts also have their views included and written down. We’re still reading and hearing about rabbis and even outsiders to the community who expressed minority opinions 2,000 years ago that didn’t go forward. In other words, their views did not become “policy.”

For instance, in the Talmud, we learn about Hillel versus Shammai, but mostly Hillel, who is more lenient. The rabbis and, therefore, Jewish law, tend to follow Hillel’s lead. That said, nobody got rid of Shammai’s point of view. He didn’t get fired from the rabbis’ club for having an unpopular opinion.

I recently had a couple of informational interviews. Well, they were really just Zoom chats, which came about because a friend reposted something from a small advocacy group on Instagram. Beware of social media if you are a novice like me. I prodded my friend with an off-the-cuff comment, saying, “So, don’t you think this is just a PR scam?!” Oops … I wasn’t just writing my online friend.

To my surprise, both the chief executive officer and the education and programming lead of the group got in touch with me. They wanted to tell me all about their efforts to make positive change – it wasn’t a publicity stunt. They explained what they hoped to achieve. I was pretty embarrassed by my post. By the end of the first chat, I was impressed with the information they had offered me and how they had engaged. They welcomed all opinions. They asked me if I wanted to contribute in an open and friendly way.

Our second meeting resulted in them recruiting me to serve on a volunteer advisory panel because of what they saw as my expertise. I agreed willingly because our exchange had been such a positive experience.

There’s a meme offered this time of year, that, while how we behave between Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah matters, it’s how we behave the rest of the year that counts.

Choosing to be open to differing opinions and innovation keeps us learning and growing. It also aligns us with the model of the rabbis, who discussed and debated and recorded it all in plain view, with minority views counting, too. Also, admitting one’s mistakes – wow, how embarrassing was I on social media? – helps us grow and become better people.

The least Jewish model, I think, is the example with which I led off this article, where everyone is allowed to debate, in theory, but all opinions aside from the official party line are discarded or silenced. We’re speaking here of relatively mainstream opinions, not radical ones. Want the kicker? From what I understood, this is a model used by some nonprofit Jewish organizations.

The smaller advocacy group isn’t a Jewish organization, but one of their employees is. Part of our chat involved a bit of Canadian Jewish geography regarding their Winnipeg relatives. Also, they suggested that I perhaps write up a Jewish topic for their group one day. They were open and excited about diverse voices.

Work life and individual identity can sometimes be entirely separate things. Yet, in others’ lives, Jewish identity, values and models and careers go hand in hand. I want to address my Jewish identity through making the world a better place, including at work. Watching these two different models emerge on my radar recently reminded me that, in fact, non-Jewish organizations can model Jewish ways of questioning and validating ideas, while some Jewish groups choose not to do so.

In a perfect world, we’d all do meaningful, life-changing work. In real life, we know that compromises and the bottom line matter. Sometimes, work isn’t that place of deep meaning or free expression, and we can’t always say everything we think in the workplace, either. However, perhaps there’s a way to avoid stifling creativity – having multiple voices valued in the workplace, while still communicating the basic mission of the organization. Perhaps we can all learn and grow better this way, making educated debate matter, just as the rabbis did 2,000 years ago.

New year, new attitude

One of my twins urges us, after every meal, to offer him dessert. What started as a “desserts on Shabbat, weekends and holidays” and “dessert is a sometimes food” became ”let’s have dessert after nearly every lunch and dinner,” all summer long. He has a sweet tooth. He can often sway us with temptations. It’s hard to resist.

My other twin is often self-limiting when it comes to food. He eats lots of fruits and vegetables, gets full quickly, and often tells his brother, “no, it isn’t a dessert night.” He’s sometimes a little too much into self-denial. It’s a weird sort of sibling pressure and a complicated dichotomy to manage as a parent.

Recently, I studied page 53 of the talmudic tractate Ketubot (marriage contracts). Dr. Sara Ronis offered an introduction from My Jewish Learning. She highlighted an episode in this page of Talmud that describes just how tricky peer pressure can be. It’s a complicated story, so I’m going to summarize Dr. Ronis’s account. Rav Pappa’s son is marrying Abba of Sura’s daughter. They’re writing up the ketubah. Rav Pappa invites his colleague, Yehuda bar Mareimar, along. Abba is a person of limited financial means and Rav Pappa talks through all the potential financial constraints without letting his colleague get a word in edgewise. Then Rav Pappa insists Yehuda should come inside for the ketubah writing.

Yehuda sits silently. Abba feels worried that Yehuda is angry with him. Abba feels pressured and writes an enormous amount of dowry into the marriage contract. It’s all the money he has. Then Abba says (paraphrasing here): “What, you still won’t talk? I have nothing left!”

Yehuda sees the damage and finally speaks up. “Well, don’t act for my sake, this isn’t OK with me.” Then Abba says to Yehuda, “OK, I’m going to retract this.” Then the kicker comes. Yehuda responds (again paraphrasing): “I didn’t speak up so you would be ‘that kind’ of person who retracts a legal document.”

Essentially, this story is a tragedy about social pressure. Even silence can wreck things when a person is very sensitive to peer pressure and power dynamics.

In the great dessert debate at my house, I’ve observed how variable brothers who love each other can be when it comes to this kind of pressure. I’ve got one twin like Rav Pappa (talks a blue streak, seems occasionally clueless and sometimes applies pressure when it comes to dessert) and another kid, maybe like Abba, who is overly self-conscious and senses his parents’ hesitancy. He feels the social pressures so strongly that he overdoes it and self-limits sometimes even when the dessert is offered.

Over the High Holy Days every year, we’re listing a whole slew of sins and failures. Even though the landscape has changed and some of us may be streaming services rather than attending in person, the liturgy doesn’t change. Some of us feel heavily concerned and pressured to repent for the community for every sin on the list, even the ones that well, frankly, we couldn’t possibly have committed. Others of us are not engaged or aware of the pressure, possibly still out in the metaphorical synagogue hallway during services, still trying to cut deals or make potential business connections with others.

It used to be, in a pre-pandemic world, in many congregations, that women would wear new clothing and new hats, in a “see and be seen” Jewish New Year version of the Easter Parade. The pressure to dress up in a certain way is another kind of social pressure.

Perhaps the first step towards understanding the complexity of our social pressures and how to manage these interactions is to recognize that they exist. Once you “see” some of these issues, it’s hard to un-see them. We can then begin to reflect on how to manage the pressures and do better.

I’ll be honest. Although I love dessert, I also have the self-limiting guilty dessert tendencies. Finding that “middle ground” between the all-dessert-all-the-time routine and the “we don’t deserve dessert’” is a path we all may struggle to find. Acknowledging this dynamic and saying out loud that Twin A should stop pressuring us to eat sweets and Twin B should allow himself a scoop of chocolate ice cream sometimes – this is part of speaking and observing this aloud.

When my kids attended Chabad preschool, their birthday parties included cupcakes with lots of icing and a special moment. Each year, the teacher would ask my twins what new mitzvah (commandment) they would take on to celebrate their new age. Like Rosh Hashanah, it was a new year and a chance for self-reflection. The answers of 2-, 3- or 4-year-olds were typically funny ones, but the social pressure was realistic and pushed them towards doing good things. It was often something like, “I’m going to be nicer to my brother” or “I’m going to try to hit people less when I’m angry.”

Sometimes I wonder if we, as adults, could use the pandemic changes to step back, recognize the social complexities around us, and treat Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur differently. It’s a whole new year, like those preschool party mitzvah choices. We might experience vastly different things from social situations. We may be heavily influenced by powerful people like Yehuda bar Mareimar. Perhaps we’ve been overexcited and clueless like Rav Pappa. Or, like Abba of Sura, we lose everything because we feel pressured to do things against our own best interests.

Here’s to a meaningful, restful and contemplative holiday, full of love and, yes, good food, including – moderate amounts of – dessert. Wishing you a sweet, honey-filled and happy 5783!

Introspection’s the hard stuff

Before the pandemic, we were once at synagogue on Shabbat when the clergy person leading the family service reminded us that, hey, Elul was here, and we could hear the shofar blown if we came to morning minyan. The next day, Sunday, one of my kids decided we needed to go hear the shofar. It was just a normal Sunday. The minyan was small, largely comprised of senior citizens. My elementary school-aged kid rocked and wiggled in his seat. Most of the adults there smiled and gave him high fives and handshakes and made him feel welcome.

When I explained our shofar mission, they nodded. They all understood why we were there. My kid was given honours and made to feel special. When it was time to hear the shofar, he sat up and listened intently. It was one of those times when I thought, “Oh, we should try to come to minyan to hear this every day.”

This was one of those moments when my aspirations were much higher than my capabilities. Years later, I can’t pretend we’ve ever made it to morning minyan regularly again, even virtually, even during Elul. Maybe, someday, I’ll be one of those senior citizens in the frequent minyan attendee club. For now, I’m rushing to get everyone up, fed and out the door to school and work.

Still, I think that morning minyan experience may stick in a kid’s mind. The Elul shofar is a quintessential wake-up sound for many Jews. It’s the time to think about how the year has gone. We can focus on what’s ahead on the Jewish calendar, how we can make amends and do better in the future. What will change next year? What, most likely, will stay the same?

Is this wake-up ritual true of everyone? No, of course not. I recently saw a TikTok reel of a man, probably in his 20s or early 30s, with a beard. The guy was joking that he observed Jewish holidays through food, and then jokingly said, “Rosh Hashanah? That’s the one with the matzo balls, right?” Maybe I haven’t remembered the skit’s details quite right, but I wasn’t its intended audience. I inadvertently cringed. It was grating to me, jarring, like driving the wrong way down a one-way street.

Here was this guy, probably an influencer, showing everyone that he not only wasn’t religiously literate, but also thought Ashkenazi food was the only essential part of the ritual or the holiday. I mean, food is part of Jewish ritual, don’t get me wrong, but, it rubbed me the wrong way.

Here is a full-blown Jewish adult. And yet, he doesn’t think knowing anything about his ethno-religious identity or choosing to observe anything in regards to its religious context is his responsibility. As a Jewish woman who cares about this stuff, this irked me, because with his masculinity comes a lot of privilege in some parts of the Jewish world. He might be so privileged that he doesn’t even have to know any of this but he still would count in an Orthodox minyan and I don’t.

Our household philosophy is that, if people may potentially harass us or kill us for our Jewish identities, we should know more about who we are and why – and try to find joy or meaning in it. Focusing on Jewish knowledge and joy is kind of a “thing” for us.

This is when I have to remind myself, hey, it doesn’t matter how knowledgeable or observant or ignorant this guy on TikTok is. He’s still Jewish. I am no more or less Jewish than he is. It’s not a competition.

Elul is for introspection. It’s also the time to admit that we are all works in progress. I sure need to keep working. As we grow, learn and age, we can recognize and understand new and different things. Hardest, of course, is to recognize what we don’t know: our biases, intolerances and prejudices. We all have these blind spots. This emphasis, each year, on working on ourselves is valuable in many ways, not least of which is trying to be more inclusive and kind.

Elul is also about wonder – through our senses, when we hear, see, touch, smell and, yes, taste the holiday. It’s the primal feeling we get when hearing the shofar, or the release one gets after a heartfelt apology to a loved one. That wonder continues into Tishri, throwing our bread (like sins) in the water at Tashlich. The wonder is in sweet honey on apples and other holiday symbols. It’s in this season, in the northern hemisphere, when the days shorten and get cooler, the trees lose their leaves and we start again.

As I write this, it’s still summer. I’m the first to say that I’m not ready to embrace Elul. It’s coming though, no matter what. In preparation, we’ve already been apple picking at a neighbour’s tree. We got honey from a local farm. The food part is easy. It’s the introspection that’s the work – and I’m looking forward to hearing the shofar remind me to get busy doing it.

L’shanah tovah (Happy New Year) in advance. May the year ahead be sweet.

Working to embrace change

We’re hoping the school bus will know to pick up our twins at the right address when school starts. They’re starting Grade 6 this fall. We’ve finally gotten good at figuring out the back-to-school letter, so we send them with most of the right supplies.

Yesterday, I took them shoe shopping, because, apparently – even though kids’ feet grow all year round – you can only buy sneakers for them before school starts. I even know where their lunch kit is located. Last year, the kids got good at packing their lunches – with mom supervision, of course.

I dread the start of school. It’s full of pitfalls. Inevitably, the bus doesn’t come, maybe one twin has a conflict and gets in trouble, or the teacher isn’t connecting with the other one. Things don’t always go smoothly. I have to line everything up as well as I can and hope for the best.

We’d be way ahead of schedule if it weren’t for one thing. We moved this summer. We only moved a short distance. It’s a little less than two kilometres if you walk from our old house, built in 1913, to our new one, also built in 1913. The differences lay in the neighbourhoods, zoning and a few other details.

Our “old” house was entirely habitable, aside from some walls cracked by nearby construction. It’s currently for sale as I write this. We staged it with our furniture and now we’re sleeping on the floor at the “new” house.

Our current home is almost twice as big as the previous one. It has a bigger yard in a quieter neighbourhood, amazing woodwork, a library, leaded glass, two enclosed sun porches, a second floor open-air porch, and more. It’s got all the fine details one might expect of a house built for a doctor who was the head of the Manitoba College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1913. It’s also got only one working bathroom – several remain broken – and only about half of a kitchen. The other half of the kitchen was demolished due to some, umm, small issues like freezing pipes, and structural concerns that need to be fixed.

We moved for a variety of reasons, but we loved how close the new home would be to the synagogue we attend most of the time. To be more clear, the synagogue we used to attend in person and now mostly livestream, due to the pandemic! We imagined that the easy walking distance would be great if Shabbat observant relatives came to stay, for instance. We like walking in nice weather. Then? Things changed.

It turned out the synagogue needs to do big renovations. It has just “moved out” of the building for two years to have asbestos removed, the HVAC system fixed and a few other updates done. Services will now be held in two other places in the Jewish community – both of which require driving. Oh well.

Change is challenging. Our dog isn’t ready to be by herself in the new house. She let us know this yesterday. She broke out of the third floor bedroom, where we had left her for an hour, complete with her dog bed, the radio on, a dollop of frozen peanut butter, and several other treats. She greeted us, in high anxiety, at the first floor front door with all the same toys surrounding her. While we appreciate her intelligent, Houdini-like abilities, we still do sometimes need to leave home. This morning, we signed up to a new dog daycare at the last minute so we could attend a weekend bat mitzvah for a family with whom we’re close.

I could go on with examples because, with the pandemic fluctuations, the house move and other work changes, our life is really keeping us on our toes just now. Like many people, we’re continuing to roll with it. What else can we do?

Around us, we see people nostalgic for some mythical normal they want to get back to experiencing. I’m stymied by this because, at least in Manitoba, even as pandemic restrictions go away, more people continue to die due to COVID. It ain’t over yet, folks.

When I bump into friends or neighbours while walking the dog, everybody asks how we’re managing. We’re probably more deadpan or low-key than people expect. I mean, what are our other options?

At the dinner table, I mentioned these exchanges with my husband and he said, “You know, I’m out of bandwidth right now. I hope that I act appropriately and keep moving.” That is when it hit me that, during these times of big stress, it isn’t uncommon to act this way. We function automatically. When I taught high school, my students called it “home training.” Jewish tradition might call it “derech eretz” or “how to behave.” We’re all doing the best we can, relying on basic skills and manners learned in childhood about how to do the right thing.

We hope that, in every autopilot email, conversation with a neighbour or phone call, we’re behaving in an upright and kind way. Right after we mention this lack of bandwidth, we remember how lucky and grateful we are. We have a home, food and clothing. During this summer of “the great move,” we’re doing fine. We’re not facing any of the many awful things that Jews have had to face. It’s not the Inquisition, a pogrom, the Holocaust or, in 2022, time spent in bomb shelters in Israel or Ukraine.

In Pirkei Avot 2:5, Hillel offers a long list of instructions for how to behave, including: “In a place where there are no people, strive to be a person.” Every day, if Jews recite any prayers at all, we’re reminded to be grateful, caring, appreciative people. The emphasis is to be a mensch, an upright, good person, even in a moment when no one else might be acting as such, or when no one else is around.

It’s really easy to get worked up and dread transitions and the start of new challenges. It’s harder for me to step up, not just face these changes, but to embrace them with good humour and enthusiasm. I wake up each day, heave myself up from the mattress on the floor, recite a very informal Modeh Ani (a prayer of gratitude for waking up) and hope I will meet the day with the right intention. Someday soon, when our furniture makes the move, too, I hope it will feel like less of an effort to get up and meet the challenge.

I hope you have a great start to the school year, and that you are also celebrating some big milestone events! Here’s hoping it all goes smoothly.

Reuse, recycle, make anew

I was driving down the back lane, kids in the car, when I saw a neighbour. I stopped and rolled down the window for a chat. The neighbour’s children lived nearby and they were looking for flooring to refinish the landing on their stairs. Our family, through an ordering snafu, ended up with more flooring than needed. In fact, we’d avoided using any new flooring at all. We had asked our clever contractors to help us reuse 110-year-old quarter-sawn oak flooring from elsewhere in the house and the floor refinishers hadn’t needed any of the new “special order, not returnable” flooring. I asked the neighbour if her kids were still interested in it, because we had a lot. She said she’d ask.

The neighbour then asked me if we were doing serious “purging.” I smiled and said it was more like “redistribution.” She laughed, saying she’d have to remember that. She liked this way of seeing things.

We like to think of ourselves as a family that reuses, recycles and repairs things. While we’re not purists, we try to limit what ends up in the trash as compared to the compost. We try to give away or repurpose the things we no longer can use for their original purpose.

If one imagines three kinds of models for one’s household economies, there are sometimes three terms bandied about. A linear economy involves “take, make, use and waste.” A recycling economy involves something like “take, make, use, recycle, make, use … on repeat and eventually … waste.” A circular economy has a much more complicated chart or trajectory, involving words like “take, make, use, repair, make, reuse, return, make, recycle” but very little becomes waste. Everything is used.

The talmudic-era rabbis were part of a circular and recycling economy. We know it wasn’t entirely circular (most ancient civilizations weren’t) because archeologists keep finding the detritus of all those communities. Ask anyone interested in history about this. They wax rhapsodic about pottery shards, bone fragments, mosaics and more – these are essentially the great finds that finally broke completely. These trash bits were thrown down a privy a hundred to couple thousand years ago. Even that ancient trash has its use now: it tells us a lot about societies long gone.

I thought about all this as I began to study the talmudic tractate of Ketubot as part of Daf Yomi. In the practice of studying a page a day, it takes 7.5 years to finish reading the whole Babylonian Talmud. Nevertheless, this page-a-day approach is superficial. It’s just too much text for me to study in detail, so I try to explore one thing every day that I find interesting.

In Ketubot 4, there is a discussion about what to do if a death happens right when a wedding is supposed to take place. The short version is, well, it depends, according to the introduction offered by Rabbi Heather Miller for My Jewish Learning. However, in many circumstances, the wedding is supposed to happen even if someone has to leave a dead body nearby in another room. Why? There are several reasons.

One important reason is that there was no refrigeration. If a wedding feast was prepared and it couldn’t be sold to someone else, the food shouldn’t be wasted. It can’t be assumed that there was enough food to just waste a whole wedding feast. The rabbis really valued “bal taschit,” or “do not waste,” which comes from the Torah, from Deuteronomy 20:19.

Also, if the bride’s mother or the groom’s father died, it was essential to continue with the wedding. These parents had important roles in the planning of the wedding. Canceling the event would take away from their children’s opportunity to benefit from that work. A bride depends on her mother to help her get ready and setting up a wedding later, after a mourning period, would mean a do-over. The bride’s mother wouldn’t be alive to help then, either.

In a discussion with my online Talmud study group, it was pointed out that, in many cases, rabbis throughout history will find every way possible to help people not waste. If a poor family makes a potential kashrut mistake, asks the rabbi what to do and the rabbi knows they will be hungry without the food, the rabbi finds a way to enable the family to eat the food.

This tradition gives me hope for Jewish sustainability in the future. Here are legitimate Torah and Talmud references that encourage us to avoid waste and to reuse and value others’ work. It gives me extra motivation to recycle when it’s difficult to do so, or to patch and reuse a pair of pants yet again.

In some Jewish situations, these notions of avoiding waste are not always followed. Think of a big holiday meal or Kiddush, where everyone used disposable paper products and plastic utensils and, afterwards, it all went in the trash. Consider some well-to-do congregations where holiday services are a fashion show, and where being seen in new clothing is more valued than just being appropriately dressed. These are instances where perhaps we’ve fallen prey to a consumerist, linear economy.

It’s still possible to dress up or wear something new or different on a special occasion. It’s OK to occasionally make more trash than usual, too. However, doing it on a regular basis is not just bad for the earth now. It also affects us in terms of climate change. It’s probably also a violation of the rabbinic obligation to avoid waste.

It’s true that cleaning, decluttering and renovation trends these days are all about how much can be discarded. Maybe it’s time to save the old growth lumber. Reuse something really good. It’s also good to pass along that new flooring so it, too, can be used sustainably rather than discarded. Don’t just throw everything out and produce more waste. Reuse, recycle, make anew … the rabbis said so.