NEW BUSINESS

Dear Reader,

I have had the new experience of spending a goodly amount of the past two days in religious observances. I was not there as a performer or part of the staff, although I did help out as needed. I went there to experience the work that my client, Storahtelling, does, and to experience, in their way, the High Holy Day observances. It was a telling and interesting experience.

I am not traditionally religious. I gave up on any involvement in organized religion when I was a teenager, after I was made too clearly aware of the hypocrisy of it, and that of many of the people involved. I also have never believed in the standard issue “God.” I have always had problems with authority figures, and certainly, a big man on a cloud would qualify as one of those; not for me, thanks. A woman running things from above is no better.

Over the years I have developed my own mystical views. These primarily involve karmic ideas: you get what you give; if you make a good cause, you’ll get a good effect, bad cause, bad effect; treat others the way you want to be treated; all living things are connected and animals and plants have life forces that impact all of us; everyone and everything is part of a greater whole, that reaches out beyond this planet.

I have been interested in Judaism from the time I came to New York City for college, however. I had never been exposed to it before. We had a “token” Jewish family in my neighborhood in northern Virginia, where I lived for a few years prior to college, but we had no connections with them and no idea how or if they observed any “Jewish” holidays. Although I doubt I would ever become a practicing, if converted, Jewish woman, there are aspects of Judaism that I find helpful and accessible.

Primary of these is that much of the regular observance of the religion is done in the home, by the family and/or people nearby. The important aspects of observances many times are the ones done by the individuals involved, and not by the “big man” at the front of the “big building,” kneeling to a “big god,” but rather by the people in the house, to a more personal-seeming god. I may be blaspheming at this point, but that’s how it feels to me.

It had also seemed to me that many things in the observances were subject to individual or local interpretation; this was confirmed to me as I went through the Storahtelling sessions. The artistic director of the organization is also a rabbi, and he led the observances. He clearly led the group, but he was open to suggestion and new input.

In some ways, the sessions themselves reminded me of the “folk masses” that the Catholic and other Christian denominations tried to use to attract young people back to the fold in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s. The difference was that the people coming to these observances were there of their own accord; this was not their local congregation that was trying something new. I was quite surprised by the diversity (yeah, I hate that word, too), age differences, and general variety of the folks who came in.

I was also quite amazed at and enthralled with the rabbi’s work. I have seen this man in his business offices at Storahtelling, as just himself: Amichai Lau-Lavie, dealing with budget, programming or contributor issues. In this observant milieu, he was a true rabbi; a leader and teacher, who gave us different ways of looking at things; different ways of reading the verses that are the bases of Yom Kippur and the High Holy Days. I felt that I learned something even as I was waiting, and waiting and waiting and waiting for the chants to finish and the band to finish, so I could get something to eat!

I had fasted, although I took the exemption of drinking water. The medications I take make my mouth so dry that it’s hard for me to not drink water, but I only drank seltzer. Maybe next year I’ll be able to get through it without water; this year I did manage to go without coffee, which is a miracle in and of itself!

Lots of thought going on. I had been feeling terrible for the last several weeks. I wish I could say that this experience was the only reason I was feeling better, but it’s not. I need to work to separate the various things going on, and try to determine which have made me feel better, and how.

More soon, to be sure,
Catbird