#BlogExodus: Examine

Examine sounds so clinical to me. What are we examining? Our health? The cleanliness of my room(sorry, I just spent 2 hours cleaning for Passover/Shabbat)? Or should we be examining our lives? Our relationships? Biblically, Nisan, the month that we are in right now, is a new start. For me, its also an end. Last programs, last Shabbatot spent with my community here at Brandeis, last days of classes. It's the end of my first year of college.

When I started this blog, I had no idea how much I would have changed by the time I ended my year. I had no idea that I would end up with this incredible support system and incredible mentors. I had no idea I would become the kind of person who was able to tell my friend what time Shabbat ends without looking it up. Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled at who I've become. I just hadn't gotten perspective until I started comparing my journey through #BlogExodus to the journey I took through #BlogElul.

But I don't want to examine my life too much. Because then I'll miss the beauty of the moment. Anyone who knows me can tell you that I am a compulsive planner. But I realized that especially this Shabbat, I need to temporarily forget about the two papers and piles of homework that I need to do and focus on the love that surrounds our community. May you have a restful and rejuvenating Shabbat if you celebrate.

#BlogExodus: Recount

Most Jewish holidays, ultimately are about recounting. On Hanukkah, we recount the story of the Maccabees, on Purim, the story of of Haman tried to kill the Jews, and on Passover, which is approaching much too quickly for my liking, we recount the story of the Exodus. Interestingly, the word "recount" not only means the telling of a story, but also the idea of "adding up again." Most often, this is used in a political context, but i would argue that it could also be used in a spiritual one. If we "retell" and add our experiences up again, we can sometimes get a new outcome. In perspective, we can learn from the hardship instead of cursing those who placed the hardship upon us. This is by no means easy. All of the grappling that we are doing as the lead in to Passover is not easy. But it is truly important to recount or enumerate the wonderful things that have come upon us especially as we begin to discuss the fact that we were strangers in the land of Egypt.

#BlogExodus:Hide

I spent a long time hiding

Cooped up in the confines of my ever-moving brain

Beginning to go insane

Until one fateful day

The mask that I had chosen to hide behind

Was ripped off

I was forced to confront

The fact that I was hurting myself

But not letting people in

To the prison of my anxious mind

And soon I would find

That living in a carefully armored

Shell of a human being

Is not only exhausting, but unpleasant as well

So I began to take the armor down

Sliver by sliver, piece by piece

And some days, it stays up

But my Exodus was not 

The parting of the sea 

But the ability to stop spending so much time wondering

"What is she/he/they find out?"

What if they find out I am human?

I am no longer a slave to my own mind

And perhaps I still have binds

But I have let people in among the wreckage

And because of their kindness

I am ready to stop hiding 

#BlogExodus: Purify

For all of first semester and most of this semester, during our Saturday Lunch and Learn, we talked about the concepts of tumah and taharah, impurity and purity, over and over and over again. At the beginning of the year, I was disturbed by the fact that we, in the modern world, are all "spiritually impure," but at some point between the mishnah (short teaching from the rabbis)  about apples and rivers and the mishnah about leaning out of the window over a funeral procession (keep in mind, this was advertised as "strange stories in the mishnah"), I realized that accepting our brokenness is a real blessing. We can either try to purify ourselves so much that we are walking on eggshells all the time or we can live in the holy in between space that is created in a world with no temple (the original purpose of the laws of purity were to dictate who could and couldn't go into the temple).

 And this thought reminded me of a song that I taught at Saturday Morning services this week. The English part of the song which also happens to be the relevant part goes like this: I thank you for my life, body and soul. Help me realize, I'm beautiful and whole. I'm perfect the way I am, and a little broken too. I will live each day as a gift I give to you. I thought, when I first heard this song, how can one be whole and broken at the same time? But we can be. The fact that we are still here and trying to purify our lives as much as possible while accepting our brokenness is truly one of the biggest blessings I can think of, so maybe its a blessing to be impure by the laws of the mishnah. It takes the pressure off.

#BlogExodus: Grow

Growing up. As a kid, I always wanted to be older than I was. I always had friends who were older than I was. But once I got to college I didn't think about how much I had grown really until yesterday. I realized that things that I once thought were incredibly difficult, like taking care of myself and having social interactions are now somewhat effortless. By no means am I saying that I don't struggle with things still, I definitely do. But what has changed is the fact that I can now ask for help when i need it instead of spending day after day holding pain inside of me. When things happen, I tell people about them whether the events are good or bad.

As I watched the NFTY CAR Election results come in on Sunday, I realized that I don't miss NFTY. I'm not saying that I don't miss my friends in NFTY. I do, so much, every day. I'm saying that I don't miss the feeling that I got in that community because I have that here. I have it in Hillel and I have it among my friend group at large (although, to be fair, most of my friend group has come from Hillel). And as I talked about them today, I realized that I am starting to trust people here, something that used to be so hard for me. I'm not saying that it isn't hard and that I don't still worry. Of course, I worry, have you met me? But I'm saying that it is worth it. So if you are reading it and thinking that getting older and moving through your life is not going to help and not going to give you any more hope, I urge you to keep holding on because letting people in, while it may be the hardest thing to do, is also one of the most rewarding experiences I've had.

#BlogExodus: Honor

I'll be honest, I am struggling with how I want to talk about this word. You'd think that I could come up with something about the Julio Claudian dynasty or about honoring Shabbat and keeping it holy, but I struggle with the idea of honor. The word honor implies an obligation to the person or thing to which the honor is directed and I don't know how I feel about that. I understand the idea of respect both in the sense that you respect those with authority and respect that we have for one another, but I think that honor has a slightly different connotation than that.

You Are Not Alone: Parshat Tazria

This portion is quite off-putting to the modern reader. It first lays out the rules for purifying one’s body after childbirth and after a woman’s period which are a little odd, and to honest with you, quite sexist. And then this parsha addresses the idea of sickness, often translated as leprosy in the text. The Israelites are instructed to isolate those with the ailment from the rest of the camp. This whole parsha uses the words tumah and taharah, impure and pure over and over again. It puts people into boxes. In the parsha, the idea of “sickness” can be used to describe any “not normal” physical condition, any box that is out of the ordinary. Any box that we put people in.

Two thoughts on this: Firstly, this reminds me of the isolation that people who suffer from mental illness often end up in. Because people see us as sick, or more likely a burden, they leave us alone. But that’s not the way out. That’s not the way of healing in any scenario. One cannot save themselves from their own mind by themselves. Believe me, I speak from experience. We would hope that our views on the inflicted have changed since the time of the Torah. Unfortunately, we are not much better than the Israelites. There may not be a certain period of time prescribed in which we don’t text our friend with anxiety back like there is for the isolation of a person with leprosy, but at the end of the day, those who suffer end up alone all too often. I’ll admit, I’m guilty of this too even though I’m often on the other side of it.

We also have a really hard time understanding disease when it has no cure. To start with, we as humans, are terrible at talking about pain. We don’t have the language needed to express it.  The only way to understand one’s pain is to be inside of their consciousness which is simply not possible. Think of it this way, when your friend gets sick, you go to the “get well soon” section at Walgreens to buy them a card. There is no get well soon for so many chronic illnesses, so there is no card. There is no prescribed way to treat them, so instead, they are isolated. There is nothing you can except help them mitigate the symptoms and support us during the good days and the bad days. And this is not easy.

So what can we learn from this parsha? There needs to be a change in the way that we look at those with chronic illness, both mental and physical. We need to accept that it isn’t easy to help in a world with no cure, but that doesn’t make it any less necessary. As we sang the Mi Shebeirach and as we sing it tomorrow, we need to seriously think of what actions of healing we will take along with our prayer. How will you reach out? A card, a call, even a facebook message. Isolation is one of the most painful things that humans can experience. Noone should have to go it alone. And if you are suffering, you are not alone. I am not alone. We are a community committed to one another and to learning from the text that guides our tradition and holding one another up because of it. Shabbat Shalom.