Blogroll | Congregation Darchei Noam

Shabbat Shalom.

When Liane Sharkey, our Shul President called to say I was receiving the honour of Kallat Bereshit I was taken by surprise.  I’ve not even come close to impacting our community like my predecessors have but my hope is that in time I will.  Thank you all for your support and for being here today and of course Mazel Tov to my Chattan Torah Elliot Brodkin.  

As I begin to write about my spiritual journey I’m realizing that the definition of spiritual is elusive.  I’m hoping that by the end of my explorations here I’ll have a better grasp on what spiritual means to me.

I grew up in a religious family surrounded by like minded friends and relatives.  My life was all tied up in a neat little package - I knew who I was, where I belonged and my place in my world - and I was remarkably unaware that not everyone subscribed to my frame of reference.  I attended religious school, observed holidays, rites of passage, the nuns and the priests. Yes, I was brought up a Roman Catholic.  But, by my early teens I couldn’t get past the fact that I was supposed to have complete faith that what I was taught was the ‘gospel truth’ even though so many of those ‘truths’ seemed inexplicable.  Couldn’t these teachings withstand some questioning, some exploration?  The answer I got was no, that if I had faith I wouldn’t be asking these questions.  I became disillusioned and drifted away from the church feeling like I wasn't a good catholic and wondering why I couldn’t muster up this ‘faith’ everyone else seemed to have.  

What came to fill my life at that time was the theatre, my 1st profession. During that time my thespian community became my family.   Many people in that world consider their art or craft to be the essence of who they are.  Sort of like a religion.  My faith was focused on myself - being in theatre, especially as a dancer you are so self absorbed. And you don’t even realize it.  The problems of the world didn’t seem to touch me. I was aware of the horror of AIDS but only because I has friends it effected. But that was the extent of my connectedness to the world.  My big concerns were aesthetic, artistic, making sure I was ready for the next audition.  And although I didn’t end up on Broadway dancing for Bob Fosse I had a good career.  I travelled all over the world, worked with remarkable people, eventually made Toronto my home, acquired the normal trappings of life and met my first husband.  But the questions that were never answered for me by the priests and nuns started to come back.

My then husband, who had also been raised Catholic, and I began a search for a meaningful spiritual life.  We explored various churches to see if we could find a place that we could call ours.   

We went to the Baptist church, thinking all the singing would work for us.  We tried the Pentecostal church and loved it’s theatrical appeal.  But the questions were still there.  Why did you need to have this blind faith and not question teachings - that just seemed wrong to me.  Why have this faith if its not bringing something to your life or if it’s not directing you to bring something to the world around you. 

Fast forward over the next 10 years - my spiritual life had no real focus.  My first husband and I are divorced.  Then, under very odd circumstances, I met Moish (when you’ve got a few minutes I can tell you that story!!)  Anyway, he turned out to be the next husband.  He identified culturally as a Jew but spiritually as a Buddhist.  He was a ‘Bu-Jew’.  It was very interesting to me that he had his personal Buddhist practice as well as a deep connection to the Jewish people.

Meeting his family was a turning point for me.  Seeing how this fragmented group of people, including holocaust survivors who wanted nothing to do with God, Sephardic Orthodox in-laws, Yiddish speaking Poles - meeting these people brought me to the idea of converting. Why? They valued first their family and their community, education, they doted on their children, observed the full calendar of holidays, argued, questioned, complained. They disagreed in a million ways but their being Jewish - culturally, religiously and historically, held them all together as a family. And I was ready to have a real family after my bohemian life.  Moish didn’t understand why I wanted to convert but for me there was no question. I felt I had arrived.

As I was beginning the conversion process I realized that even though I was 35 years old it was very important that my parents understood and supported what I was doing. They were the first and until then the most influential people in my religious and spiritual life.  Although their faith turned out not to be mine, my yearning for a religious community and a more developed spirituality came from them.  After I told them about my plans - and as any good catholic would do - my mother consulted with her priest and asked if her daughters soul was going to be damned for eternity.  Fortunately he said - think of it this way - your daughter has “Gone back to the mother ship”.  As flippant as that answer seemed to be it turned out to be the perfect response!

At the same time Moish’s ex-wife Ruth, (and the mother of his children) brought me to my very first shul experience which happened to be Kol Nidre at Darchei Noam. She knew I was looking for a Jewish community to be part of and she was comfortable here.  Little did she know how this would develop!  

I started going to shul regularly and sometime during those first months the woman who ran St. Peter’s Out of the Cold, came to Darchei Noam to talk about the program and especially how desperate they were for volunteers, so along with about 10 other people that day, I signed up to volunteer at Out of the Cold.  This simple commitment came to help form the values I try to live by today.

But back to my journey.  I finally started the actual conversion chapter of my life.  I met with 3 rabbis, as is the custom, and was all but dismissed by 2 of them.  To suggest that they were un-supportive of my wishes would be an understatement.  They sent me away to think about my motivations and to really take to heart the obligations that go with conversion.  They asked me to examine why I would choose a religion that has been so persecuted, has so many restrictions. 

The 3rd rabbi I met with was Rabbi Pinsker, who was the rabbi at Darchei Noam at that time.      I told him I wanted an Orthodox conversion, that it was important to me that my conversion was meaningful, respected in the broader Jewish community, and would also hold up if I made aliyah.  When his kippah stopped spinning he laid out what that would look like: shaved head, being shomer shabbos, all the laws and probably never really being accepted in that community anyway. He made a suggestion that he thought might work for me and my family. He sent me to Rabbi Allen at the conservadox shul, Beth Tikvah.

Rabbi Allen taught a 2 year conversion class complete with term papers and exams and it was mandatory that the partner of the convert take the course as well.  I think Moish was a bit reluctant but he agreed to the process - and this turned out to be a meaningful experience for us.  We explored spirituality together, talked about everything from the minutia of kashrut to the meaning of being a spiritual person in the world.  It also helped us figure out with Ruth, the mother of my by then step children, how we would continue together to foster and support their Jewish identities now that they lived in 2 households.

My conversion ceremony was on a weekday 18 years ago. I met with the Bet Din who questioned me about all things Jewish, from the sublime to the mundane. A few days later I went to the mikvah to complete the process.  Although at that moment I didn’t truly appreciate the fullness of the event, it was inspiring to see how important it was to the other women there. Then I said the Shehekianu and the ‘shema’ and was officially welcomed as a Jew and understood and felt the full meaning of the moment and was more certain than ever that I had made the right decision for myself.  

That Shabbat I had my 1^st aliyah.  My dear friends had nick-named me ‘the New-Jew’ but this New-Jew needed a Hebrew name.  It came to me in an unexpected way. When Moish was about 10 he was rummaging for pennies in his dad’s suit pocket and found an old picture of his dad with a woman and 2 young girls he didn’t recognize.  He asked his older sister if she knew who the people were. She didn’t really know but told him she had once heard that their father had had a family before the war.  They showed the picture to their mother but she refused to talk about it - the picture was never mentioned again until Moish’s dad was well into his 80’s and his memory was starting to fail him.  Moish and I decided to ask him some questions.  As we expected he told us this was his first wife from before the war and their daughters.  As far as we could make out, the daughters names were Chaya and Yehudit and they perished in the camps with their mother.  Moish’s father Melach was the only survivor from either his or his first wife’s family so I have taken the girls names as a way of making sure they are remembered. I am Chaya Yehudit (after the girls) bat Avraham v’Sarah (a convert is thought to be reborn after their conversion and symbolically becomes the daughter or son of Abraham and Sarah). 

Darchei Noam was already my spiritual and religious home by then. But how did I fit in.  I knew I was not learned, not an intellectual, not a big thinker. But I was a doer and now that I was an official member I started TO DO. In true Darchei Noam fashion someone ‘volunteered me” right away and I was asked to coordinate family events for 4 holidays that year.  Of course I’d learned about the holidays in my classes but had to find out how our shul celebrated these events and then make them happen.  Many people helped me get started - and I was on my way.  

A year or 2 later I helped coordinate our High Holy Day services.  I truly enjoyed the ‘work’ of those jobs but more importantly, they gave me a real feeling of connectedness to our congregation.  To this day my heart fills with naches when I am able to help our congregation realize the collective expression of our spirituality.

The question for me was - how can I be a ‘doer’ in a way that will awaken and enhance my spiritual self. How do I bring these 2 things together - the doing and the search for a meaningful life.

The answer brings me to the idea of Tikkun Olam.  In translation this means “Repair the World.” What a beautiful, elegant phrase this is! It tells you what to do but doesn’t tell you how to do it - leaves you to find within yourself how you are going to do it.  The realization that I was performing acts of Tikkun Olam in my work at Out of the Cold was very gradual. ‘The doing’: planning, organizing, co-ordinating . . .  has been the easy stuff for me and the work is shared by so many.  The hard part but the most meaningful part, is to give each guest I encounter the respect and connectedness they deserve.  They are tired, hungry, thirsty, lonely and need to talk and I approach these guests with what I think of as kavanah, my intention is to improve even the short time I may have with them.  This is my way of honouring the value of Tikkun Olam, improving the world even if it’s just in a small way.  This has become one way I try to live my Jewishness in this world. 

So my friends, that is where I started from and where I’ve come to, and how. 

I often think of Rabbi Pinsker and the wisdom, guidance and kindness he showed me when I first came to see him.  And I am ever thankful to everyone here who has helped me in my search for spirituality.  I have learned from all of you, both in teachings and by example.

Over the time that I’ve putting this together I searched for a definition of spiritual that I might call my own and just like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, I found my answer at home, right under my nose.  I came across something Syd Nestel wrote ten years ago.

I quote:

What is meant by spiritual?  If by spiritual we mean connecting to the spirit world, or to the Great Spirit in the Sky, or to the First Creator - well then, frankly, I am not spiritual.  But if by being spiritual we mean connecting with human spirit: the human spirit within myself, within my community and within all human kind;  if by being spiritual we mean being sensitive to the life forces of this universe;  if we mean caring for others; if we mean trying to do the right thing; if by being spiritual we mean trying to find meaning and ethics in our lives and try to infuse the society around us with meaning and with ethics – well then I guess I do have a bit of a spiritual side.  But it is a spirituality of politics, of social action, and of ethics. It is a spirituality of feeling connected to family, community and Jewish peoplehood. And it is a spirituality that tries to find transcendence in the here and now.

Now what’s next?  I’d like to study and become a more learned Jew. I may even want to make aliyah some day. Who knows? What I do know is that this road I have taken, with its twists and turns, has brought me here in this moment in this community and has provided me with the tools to continue developing as a spiritual person, which was the plan right from the start!