Friday Dispatch: The Essay That Didn't Write Itself

Spoiler alert: I wrote it!

Friday greetings,

Remember the essays that wouldn’t write themselves from a few weeks ago? Well, I wrote all four of them!

I decided to share the longer one here. It’s under the 1,800-word limit, and I am pleased to tell you I whittled it down from an original draft of closer to 6,000 words. Needless to say, there are some VERY big jumps; if I were ever to write a memoir, there would be a lot to fill in. Hopefully, this conveys enough of what each institution I’m applying to asks applicants to cover. Once I got past the really hard part of figuring out how to shape it, the editing was energizing and satisfying. M.J. was a huge help.

Meanwhile, I’m working hard in my Hebrew class and sitting with the many unknowns that lie ahead. How will my interviews go? Will I pass the Hebrew placement test and have enough Hebrew under my belt to begin? How are we going to pay for this? What will we live on while M.J. is building their businesses and applying to jobs if/when I pivot to being in school? Which of these programs will be the best fit? Will I even get in?

Live the questions, as Rilke wrote. If we waited for e all the answers before moving toward our dreams, we’d never move an inch. And, as Rabbi Alan Lew (z”l) wrote, This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared. He was referring specifically to the Days of Awe, but could well have been talking… everything else.

Now it’s Sukkot, a beautiful, joyful holiday that brings us to the fragility and fleetingness of the structures and lives we build so carefully and lovingly. This year, the joy is muted by the fact that there are still 101 hostages in Gaza tunnels, a power-hungry madman at the helm, a movement in the West that dismisses and erases whole swaths of Jewish history and experiences under a cloak of socially acceptable language, and unspeakable loss, trauma, grief, betrayal, and rage tearing our people apart from without and within.

Tomorrow is not a promise. Sukkot recognizes this and says, come. Sit beneath the stars with your beloveds. Give thanks to the land, celebrate the harvest. See the beauty and feel how quickly it can all disappear. Be joyful now, because now is what we have. Seeing a photo of a sukkah still standing from last year in Kibbutz Be’eri brought this home in the starkest way, not to mention the climate-change-induced destruction in our own country.

This week, I was looking up the text from Pirke Avot (Ethics of Our Fathers) that you may well be familiar with, as it is frequently quoted in these overwhelming times:

Lo alecha ham'lacha ligmor, V'lo ata ben chorim l'hibatil mimena.
.לֹא עָלֶיךָ הַמְּלָאכָה לִגְמֹר וְלֹא אַתָּה בֶן חוֹרִין לְהִבָּטֵל מִמֶּנָּה.
It is not your duty to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.

In looking closely at this text, Andrea Schwartz (no relation!) writes:

Three possible reasons emerge that teach us about what it means 'lehibatel mimeno':

1) Don't despair.

2) Don't disengage.

3) Don't underestimate your power.

Wow, these three things really spoke to me.

None of them come with quantifiers. The teaching doesn’t tell us how to engage or what counts as “enough” engagement. The teaching doesn’t qualify “power” in any way; in other words, we all have it, and often more than we think.

In reading further, I was struck by these words Schwartz quotes from Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz:

"In the aggregate what could one person do? Why donate hard-earned wages? Why sign a petition? Why start an advocacy group? Why show up to a rally? Why vote? I'm but one person; what could my role possibly be in an ocean of other interests? But the Rabbis teach that our act may be precisely the one that tips the scales....even the smallest action has the potential to send ripples across the great beyond to affect countless others…"

I believe this to be true. Everything happening in this world is too much to take in and take on. Despair can be tempting and believe me, I go there. The same can be said of disengagement, and I am not knocking the occasional need to hole up with a bag of Halloween candy and a vapid Netflix show.

But at the end of the day, we each have power, power that nobody else has, because there is only one of you, only one of me. Rather than this being a shortcoming, it’s a force. As a Jew today, having power may present us with a tangle of responses. In some ways, powerlessness is something we might more readily or even comfortably identify with.

We are a people whose ideals rest on lovingkindness and the fight for justice – for all. And what I really want to say today, my friends, is that this must include ourselves.

Shabbat Shalom and love,

Jena

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Becoming a Jew, Becoming a Rabbi

L’dor V’dor

I gave birth to my daughter on my third anniversary, October 10, 2002. My non-Jewish husband and I had agreed to have a Jewish home and family. As soon as we got home from the hospital, I called my grandmother, who had dementia. I told her we wanted to give Aviva a second Hebrew name she would use someday to be called to the Torah. Grammy insisted that she didn’t have one to pass down.

Then, from the depths of memory, she blurted, “Simma! My Papa used to call me Simma!” The calligrapher who was preparing Aviva’s naming certificate confirmed that this name was Aramaic for “treasure.” A few weeks later, the two Simmas met, mere hours before Grammy died in her sleep. I imagined revolving doors, incoming and outgoing. Three and a half years later, on April 9, 2006, we welcomed our second child, Pearl. His Hebrew name, Emet, means “truth.” The expression l’dor v’dor – “from generation to generation” – began to take on new meaning.

The Break

My mother’s parents, Celia and Benjamin, were both born in Brooklyn to Yiddish-speaking immigrants. As a child, Celia’s identical twin sister Annie died of polio and her mother Sarah died of the flu. One of her earliest memories was sitting outside while her father said kaddish with a minyan inside the synagogue. I believe this early trauma may have contributed to her eventual choice to convert to Christian Science in her 20s, around the time she and my grandfather met.

My mom was also born in Brooklyn, one of four daughters, and the family kept their abandonment of Judaism a secret from the extended family and community. They even owned and operated an observant Jewish summer camp and my mom would later recall how she loved Shabbat there.

My paternal grandparents, Lena and Max, were born on the Lower East Side to Sephardic immigrants. They spoke Ladino and Turkish at home, where they raised three sons. Becoming a bar mitzvah and receiving college scholarships were seen as pinnacles of success. My Dad remembers experiencing antisemitism as a child; as a young man, he was glad enough to trade Maimonides for Shakespeare. He and my mom met at the University of Rochester, married in 1963, and moved to Berkeley a year later, where my father began his Ph.D. and my mother was a teacher in the first Head Start in the country. Religion was not a priority.

From Secrecy to Stirrings

I was born on January 14, 1974, in Buffalo, New York, the last of three girls. We grew up replicating the traditions our mother cherished from childhood, namely Christmas. We went to a Passover seder or two at Nona and Grandpa Max’s home, but my only memory of these is my oldest sister and cousin getting the giggles from sneaking glasses of wine while our grandmothers argued about whether we were “really Jewish.” As a child, I was unaware of these seeds of secrecy, denial, and confusion.

In 1983, my father’s career took us to Western Massachusetts, where I started learning Spanish and, later, Russian. I didn’t realize these were the dominant languages in the places my ancestors had lived and fled. In high school, my awareness of our Jewish identity began to stir: Seeing swastika graffiti during a summer program in Spain. Working for a local caterer, passing hor d’œuvres while wondering, What’s a bat mitzvah? This was in the synagogue where 30 years later I would become an adult bat mitzvah. Visiting the USSR, where the birch forests felt familiar and haunting.

Senior year, the floodgates opened during Mr. Gerstein’s (z”l) Holocaust class. One of my poems, Becoming a Jew, won first prize in a student writing contest sponsored by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. I was 16.

In my blood of countless centuries
are the cries of Jews:
taunted, oppressed, murdered.
They call to me,
they reach up in my veins,
they grasp for my heart,
they strangle me and
force my eyes open.

When I was a child–
a baby Jewess–
the voices were silent.

I wasn’t ready.

Then these tiny fists
begin to pound over my left breast;
all small hands and voices
and hearts still beating,
they choke me until I am forced to weep.

I carried the desire to keep learning to Scripps College, where Rabbi Devorah Jacobson invited me to her home for Shabbat dinner, exposing me to two things I would come to long for and eventually create and claim for myself: A Jewish home and a queer marriage.

I transferred to Barnard and declared a Russian Studies major. My quest to understand my family’s history resulted in time on the weekends with Grammy. Our conversations resulted in us writing her memoir, My Cup Runneth Over. We made copies, which she proudly inscribed at Thanksgiving.

More firsts: Being exposed to Orthodox Jews. Seeking out High Holiday services at HUC and trying to follow along. Going to Kabbalat Shabbat services at Columbia. Wandering through the Jewish cemetery in Prague and weeping at Terezín. Attending a Religious Action Center student conference in Washington, D.C. but calling my mom in tears from a payphone, feeling defeated and deflated by all I didn’t know. Studying Hebrew. My first exposure to Torah in a JTS course, “The Bible as Literature.” Completing my thesis about Soviet-Jewish identity among immigrants, with whom I felt so kindred.

Tributaries

In the spring of 1995, the calling to be a rabbi overcame me, but I didn’t have the courage or guidance to answer it. I poked around at post-grad Israel programs, secured a summer internship closer to home instead, and then ended up waiting tables. I felt thwarted by insecurity and loneliness. A few months later, I got my first “real job” as an assistant to Rabbi Rachel Cowan (z”l) at the Nathan Cummings Foundation. Rachel gave me my first mezuzah. The Israel trip I helped plan for the NCF board, which I had been slated to join, was canceled after a spate of suicide bombings, one of which killed a Barnard classmate, Sara Duker. I had a front-row seat to innovative Jewish philanthropy and initiatives, but still felt adrift.

My searching led me to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, where I met my future husband, then to volunteer at a midwifery clinic in Mexico with American Jewish World Service. I completed my MFA before turning again in a Jewish direction and becoming the first full-time executive director of UVM Hillel in my new husband’s hometown.

For the first time at age 26, I began to relate to my Jewish journey as an asset rather than a shortcoming. I embraced my leadership role and experienced moments of Jewish joy, connection, and belonging. At my first Hillel International Conference, I didn’t know what ki va mo’ed meant, but I knew how joyful it felt to circle dance with colleagues. I delighted in connecting with students and building relationships with leaders from other faith communities.

Yet I turned down professional opportunities to lead a Birthright trip and to study at Pardes. The second Intifada was raging, and a Hillel colleague was killed in the Hebrew University cafeteria bombing. Beyond fears of physical danger, part of me felt that if I went to Israel I might not leave, and this would derail the life we were building and the family we wanted to start.

Instead, we started a small havurah that would be the center of our Jewish life for several years. There were baby namings and brises, Shabbat dinners, and holiday gatherings. Our home practices were full of warmth, fresh challah, toddlers, and PJ Library books.

Our kids knew I’d grown up celebrating Christmas and not knowing I was Jewish. One day, when Aviva was five, she asked me about my Hebrew name, and I told her I didn’t have one. Without missing a beat, she told me matter-of-factly, “Yes you do, Mama. It’s Chava!”

I started a blog called Bullseye, Baby! Continuously drawn to Jewish wisdom, the bullseye was a reference to chet. Intertwining writing and Judaism became a vehicle for self-expression that ultimately led me to the seismic realization that I was gay. Coming out did not feel like a choice; I had the kind of religious experience you only read about or see in movies.

In the 15 years since, my life has changed many times over. My ex-husband and I both moved to Amherst in 2012, where we co-parented Aviva and Pearl to adulthood. I fell in love and married M.J., also a writer and parent to three adult children; they converted to Judaism early in our relationship. This year, we bought our first home and celebrated our 10th anniversary.

I prayed and wrote my way through a period of precarity when M.J. experienced a health crisis, deepening my relationships with creativity, tefillah, and kehillah. My recurring dream about going to Israel became a reality in 2019, when my parents invited me and Aviva on a trip. I bought my first tallit after visiting the Kotel, overcome with a sense of reunion. I peppered our guide with questions about the Occupation. I didn’t want to leave; I was home.

Upon returning, my Jewish life blossomed. I signed up for a B’nai Mitzvah class and began attending Shabbat morning services, became the Poet Laureate at our synagogue, and was accepted into the Jewish Studio Project’s Creative Facilitator Training program.

Confluence

A few days before Yom Kippur, I took a walk with a friend who is the hazzan at my synagogue. She lit up when I told her I was finally applying to rabbinical school. Then she asked me what had tipped the scales.

My answer was as clear as the October morning air: The confluence of October 7 and its aftermath, turning 50, and launching the youngest of our kids, together with spending two weeks in Israel at the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Rabbinic Torah Seminar. I have reached the point in my journey where my stories of not-enoughness feel more like excuses than genuine obstacles and can imagine no greater purpose than to become a rabbi.

After a recent Kabbalat Shabbat service, I found myself sitting with Devorah Jacobson, the very rabbi who had me over for that first Shabbat dinner in 1991. She told a story about a young man who came to her saying he was interested in becoming a rabbi. She asked him how he knew this was the path for him. I offered my answer, a little tongue-in-cheek but true nonetheless: "Wait 30 years, then if you cry every time you think of not doing it, you’ll know it's for you."

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