Fragile Construction

Last week, I attended a devastating funeral for a friend, a member of my community, who died way too young (maybe it's always too young?) after an 8 year long battle with breast cancer.  The funeral was heart wrenching, and I'd give anything to get this woman back, to continue a friendship that had really just begun, to return her to her husband, children, parents and friends. But the theme of the funeral was really the power of community. Person after person told stories of when our friend took them in - when they were recent immigrants, when they needed a meal, when they needed a person to listen. She was warm, and witty, and there for people. The feeling of community in all its messiness and wonderfulness was throughout - an Orthodox rabbi led the service, our Reform rabbi sat in the pews. People spoke in English and in Russian. People called her husband by his full name, his American English nickname, and his Russian nickname. 

I left the funeral and went directly to the airport to visit with the Jewish community in Houston. Much has been written about the impact of the storms in Houston - especially in one neighborhood where many Jewish families live, a neighborhood so often flooded that FEMA is considering buying up the housing and making it a flood pond. 

The streets are still full of rubble. The kids are in preschool on a repurposed indoor tennis court. The seniors are spread across town as their program space remains inaccessible. 

The people in Houston are tired, worn out, traumatized. And resilient. Focused on rebuilding. Unusual partnerships have arisen. Schools are squished into other school spaces. Everywhere where it is possible to open for programming is open - at no cost regardless of loss of revenue. The largest synagogue moved into a mega church for the high holidays - rent free.  Volunteers from around the country and world are sleeping on mattresses in churches and people's floors and mucking and gutting houses all day long. 

"In the days after the storm," a colleague told me, "everyone was either a floodee or a volunteer."  

I came back to NYC for Yom Kippur and then got back on the road. To Miami. 

In the Miami Jewish community, people greet each other with "how'd you make out in the storm?" in much the same way they might ask about the horrific Miami traffic. They are focused on rebuilding in communities near and far who experienced far greater loss than they did. 

In a meeting while in Miami, I heard about children and families who are homeless and those who aren't technically homeless but are couch surfing, or living several families in tiny apartments. I heard from a woman who is quietly helping these families - one cash payment or hotel room at a time. Several times, she noted that she isn't a professional, or an educator, but that she is there to provide a band-aid when needed, to get these families through the day.  In a room with nonprofit colleagues, where people could have been looking to her for funds for their own, very worthy causes, the conversation was wholly focused on brainstorming ways to get her more financial resources, more volunteers, more help for the work she is doing.

Tonight, we begin the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, in which many of us build or visit temporary huts, created to dine and dwell in.  I love Sukkot.  I believe that it would be more popular were it not for its unfortunate timing on the back of the exhaustion that is Yom Kippur.  Most years, Sukkot is for me a lesson in fragility and temporariness. Life right now feels as fragile and temporary as ever.  

This year, though, I'm thinking not about impermanence, but about building.  Each year, we build these temporary huts.  They are similar to the year before, but not exact. They are created for a period of time. They don't fully protect us from the elements, but they create a space in which to experience the world around us. We decorate them, and try to make them beautiful. We invite in guests, and symbolically invite in the thoughts memories of others we are inspired by. 

On Sukkot, we learn what I learned at the funeral, in Miami, in Houston. We have the ability to create shelter in times of need - however imperfect, however temporary, however fragile.  We are in the elements, but we have the ability to try, within that context, to create something to protect us.  That something might be community, it might be family of birth or family of choice, it might be the actions of giving or volunteering.  It never fully protects us. It sometimes doesn't even partially protect us.  When we can't build our own shelter, people do it for us.  That's what shiva in the Jewish tradition is. People feeding us, caring for us, building a hut around us while we sit in our devastation unable to build anything for ourselves.

Sukkot is about creating the shelter we need.  It's about rebuilding. That's what makes the impossible time, possible. It's a small piece of technology in a very fragile existence.  

My Dad

My parents and our Rabbi at our son's Bar Mitzvah

My father was a foul-mouthed, lobster-eating man who didn’t really like to wear a yarmulke.  He wasn’t known for his patience with prayer.  In a kind of Passover apprenticeship, my dad spent several years side-by-side in an attempt to train Jeremy to lead a speedy seder, and then the past couple of years heckling and telling Jeremy to speed up as he led the seder on his own. My dad was just as impatient  when we said the Shabbat prayers at our house.  And I remember him spending a good portion of the High Holidays of my childhood not inside at services, but chatting outside of the building with his friends.

My dad wasn’t patient with the ritual aspects of Judaism, but he was a fiercely proud Jew - adamantly supportive of the State of  Israel, and at the same time (as anyone who followed him on social media knew) openly critical of Bibi.  He was a lifelong Temple member and leader, and a parent for whom Jewish education was mandatory.

But my father wasn’t only a proud Jew, he was a tzadik - a deeply holy man. For those not as familiar with the Jewish tradition -  tzadik isn’t really the same as a saint but it’s similar.  It’s a word we use for biblical figures and  spiritual masters.  I know it is hard to think of my swearing, dirty joke telling dad as a spiritual master, and it’s true - he wasn’t your typical holy man.   But the Hebrew word for tzadik comes from the root tzedek, righteousness or justice, and there was nothing more important to my father than justice.  

Every fight my dad fought, every client he defended, every politician he supported, every social media rant he made, was, for him, about right and wrong, about justice.  For my dad, justice was first and foremost about giving people a chance and protecting the “little guy”.  In any given situation, what it meant to get a chance and who the little guy was weren’t always clear cut.  What was fair for one person might not be fair for another.  My father deeply believed that every person deserved his or her day in court, that the system was pretty much always out to get people, and that it was his duty to help people who asked for it.  There were not simple lines; he defended people I would call good guys and people I might call something else.  Much to my great frustration and the source of more than one argument, he was even known to vote across party lines on occasion.

Jewish tradition teaches us to first give to our families, then our tribe or community, then our town, then the world.  This was my dad’s way as well.  There was nothing more important to him than his family, his community, and his town.  He went out of his way to help his kids, his parents and in-laws, his nieces and nephews.  He volunteered in his synagogue and his community; he took barter as payment, or sometimes he took no payment not at all.

I’m not sure if my father believed in God.  I’m not sure if it was even relevant to him.  What mattered to him was actions.  Not being a snob. Talking to everyone.  Helping when you can. Taking care of your family.  Showing up in your community. Standing up for the individual.

My father and I were different kind of Jews.  He didn’t always have patience for the kind of kosher keeping, prayer saying, Jew I am.  I didn’t always have patience for the kind of "using his cell phone in Temple" kind of Jew he was.  But everything I know and believe about values I learned from him and my mom, and I can only hope and pray to become half the tzadik - and person - he was.  Every moment I spent with him was a blessing; every lesson I learned from him greater than those from any Torah scholar.  I already miss him dearly, and can’t imagine life without him.  

The Balcony and the Dance Floor

Two weeks ago, at the Women's March in Washington, my sister and I worked our way to what seemed like the front of the crowd. We had already been out for 4 hours, standing in crowds and tired of waiting. So, when our (wiser and local) friends decided to walk back to the outskirts of the crowd, we walked in. 

From our new position, we were packed so tightly we couldn't extend our arms without touching anyone. We are both small, and couldn't really see anything. Ahead of us was a monitor showing the speeches. If we stood on our toes, we could see a corner. We couldn't hear anything. Those around us were in similar positions, although our small stature made it harder for us. We assumed, as did everyone around us, that we were waiting for the speeches to end so we could march forward - on the official planned route. 

The speeches were scheduled to end at 1. As the hours ticked by, people kept giving speeches. Occasionally we saw people walking away from the front of the crowd. One couple even told us that they were saying at the front to go back. We stood our ground, firm in our thought that once people stopped talking, we could march. We had no cell service, no twitter.  There was no microphone - human or mechanical. We had ourselves and the crowd right around us. We all waited. As each speaker stopped talking, a cheer rose. Then we would see another speaker and would groan. 

Eventually, as the hours passed, we started chanting, "let us march; let us march". We were so confident in our knowledge that the reason we were not moving was that the speakers wouldn't stop speaking. 

It was only later, seeing the aerial photos, that I realized what you likely already understand.  We weren't moving because there was no place to go. We weren't waiting; we were trapped. We weren't at a march as much as we were in a very mellow mob. We should have gone back, or sideways, or in some direction other than forward.

In my sector, we talk about the difference in view between the balcony and the dance floor. What my sister and I experienced was a classic dance floor problem. On the dance floor, knowledge is limited to immediate vision and we have no choice but to act based on that which we can immediately see. 

On the balcony, we can see the bigger picture. But on the balcony, there is little ability to act. With no vision above the crowd, and no cell service, there was no balcony at the march.  The only to have seen the bigger picture from the middle of the march would have been to go back to the hotel, and watch it on tv.  It wasn't a day for the balcony; so we did what we could, as calmly as possible, and stayed on the dance floor.

Being able to move from the dance floor to the balcony and sometimes to be both places at once is a crucial and hard skill.  Most of us are more comfortable one place or another. I'm a balcony person myself, and find it hard to maneuver on a dance floor when I don't have perspective of the bigger picture. 

Getting the big picture seems harder everyday. This is a moment in time where life on the dance floor feels increasingly frightening, outrage inducing, and morally devastating.  The dance floor feels awful. And the balcony is almost impossible to find.  The news is increasingly complicated; the view is overwhelming. As I look down towards one section of the dance floor that's on fire, another flare emerges. My gaze is continuously diverted.

At the march, finally, my sister climbed a tower.  Briefly, she was able to see the big picture, to find a way out. For a moment, she saw, determined direction, and jumped down.  She grabbed me by the hand and led me forward.  Paralyzed by the dance floor and dizzied by the balcony view,that's where I am today.  Emulating my sister, on that tower, climbing, getting a glimpse of the big picture, coming down, and determining the next step.  

What Do We Tell Our Kids?

It's not over, and who knows what the next several hours - or days - will bring.

But it is clear that millions of people have voted for a candidate who has insulted women, immigrants, Muslims, and people of color.  A candidate who has threatened to deport my children's classmates and families.  A person whose supporters are anti-Semites and terrifying to me on a deeply personal level.

And the question, the one in my head, and the one all over my FaceBook feed is this: what do we tell our kids?

Tomorrow, here's what I will say:

Yes, I am scared for the country. And yes, I am angry.  (And while I am personally scared, that I will keep to myself for now).

I will tell them the history of successful civil rights movements.  I will share photos and stories of protests; I will bring them if that feels safe to us.

I will tell them we aren't leaving America.  (At least for now.)  That most people don't have the privilege to even talk about leaving. We stay.  We create change while we can and because we can.

We will lean into local. Into our own community.  Into deepening relationships with our neighbors. Into meeting people who aren't like us.

We will bring our kids to volunteer. To serve food to the hungry. To weed a community garden.  We will give them the agency to do small acts to make them understand that they can have a role - however small - in change.

Most of all?  When they wake up, and ask about the voters on the other "side", I will not tell them - because I don't believe- that voters on the "other" side are ignorant,  uneducated,  horrific, some unknown "they".  I will let tomorrow be a step towards rebuilding the "two America's" not towards deepening the divide.  

I will speak up against hatred, racism, and misogyny.  But I will not incite personal hatred of the millions of Americans who were - and are - themselves scared of a world that is rapidly changing. And I will not demean "middle America", rural America, those who aren't "like us".  Because they are, also, us.

Over the next days and months and years, I will remember and reinforce, as our Rabbi and teacher Heidi Hoover wrote earlier this week, that we are all created in the image of God.

Most of all, I'll share the words of the mother of our nation: When they go low, we go high.

Stay Woke

The marquis on the church near our house is flashing, “Stay Woke. Follow Jesus”.  Stay Woke.  In the anti-racism and social justice world, being woke means being aware, being self aware.  It’s perhaps the modern equivalent to being “hip” to something.   

Stay Woke.  It's a phrase that's begun to creep into my existence. The flashing marquis that has wormed its way into my thoughts. 

We’ve recently begun a new Jewish year.  This past year has been a year of often horrific awakening. The news, and my social media field has been filled with images - black men being killed by police, LGBT folks slaughtered in a nightclub, terrorism around the world, refugees on boats and on shores, the list goes on and on.  They are images that move me, and that move all of us - images that shock me awake. For a moment. And then I scroll down.  The next image - a silly cat, a political rant, a new meme. Sure, I do things.  I volunteer; I make donations; I vote.  But do I truly stay aware; stay woke?

The period between the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is about reflection, apology, and change.  Each year, I try to take this seriously.  Each year, I apologize to others, to myself, to the force in the world I call God.  Most years, there is a moment, sometime, the afternoon of Yom Kippur, during the powerful Neilah service, when I am, finally, awake.  And then, the next year, it’s the same stuff.  I make the same mistakes.  I have the same regrets. Am I truly able to stay woke?

There have been other moments of awakening this year.  That flash of wonder on a gorgeous day. The moments where time freezes in joy - laughing hysterically with my parents and sisters, seeing the look on my daughter’s face after nailing a successful dive into the pool, watching my son read from the Torah in front of our community.  Moments of pure awakening, when the world is only goodness and truth.  These moments, also, are gone, almost as soon as I recognize them.

Stay woke.  It’s beautiful in its new use of the past tense. Stay woke is about taking a moment, of awareness, of being, of change, and remember it, act on it, remain aware of it.  I awaken over and over. But stay woke? Not yet.

Village People

I'm about 48 hours out from having an official teen, and an official bar mitzvah boy, looking through old photos and wondering how we got here.

Here's one thing we did: built a village.  It's true it takes one.  (And I know it'll be even more true in the next phase of parenting).  It's also true that most of us don't just fall into a village, we build one.  Parenting without community is brutal, maybe impossible.  But parenting with community involves putting that community together.

I've started to think of these folks as our Village People:

Family, of birth and marriage -  the perennial of the village.  They always have been and always will be there. They benefit from water and attention, but they are there with us regardless.

Friends who parent in ways we admire.  Who are a little older and further ahead and are on the other side, still breathing.

Irreverent friends who make us gasp in mock horror and reverent friends who sit with us and pray.

Those folks who have known us since we ourselves were young and remind us that we weren't always who we are now.

Colleagues who never ask about our kids and only focus on us. And colleagues who always ask about our kids.

People who flirt with us like we have no wrinkles and people who chime in when we whine about aging.

Friends who bring us food and drink, who can create parties in the middle of hurricanes, and who have never needed an excuse to just sit together and laugh.

Village People, you know who you are.  We love our village and are grateful to have you in our lives.  Now tell us a joke, this bar mitzvah thing is making us weepy.

Choking on Cake

Recently I was chatting with a friend and colleague about my job. I explained how everything is terrific, but that there are so many things - things we are doing, things we want to be doing, opportunities to seize, that it is often overwhelming.  "Ahh," he noted, "You're choking on cake."

He went on to explain that a colleague had taught him that phrase - choking on cake - for when life is great but there is just too much going on.

I quickly fell in love with the phrase, and took to sharing it with others often.  It seemed terrific.  Sure there's a lot going on, but it is sweet and delicious.  It's cake. (For the record, I don't actually like cake.  Another colleague who was with us at the time said that for me, the phrase should be choking on artisanal Brooklyn home brew.)

And so I mentioned the phrase "choking on cake" breezily to my stellar Executive Coach, who paused, and said, "Well, I guess that's better than choking on charcoal."

But is it?  A pound of feathers or a pound of gold - still weighs a pound, right?  Choking on charcoal or choking on cake - still choking, right?

That same stellar coach and I have been talking about cognitive reframing.  I have to admit, I've secretly been a little resistant to focusing on it too much. I tend already to be a glass is half full person.  Reframing seemed a little pop-psychology - kind of "every cloud has a silver lining."

Until I actually thought about the cake.  And released that reframing is genuinely thinking from another perspective.

It's like this image:

Do you see the angels or the demons?  They are both there.  Refocusing to look at one doesn't negate the other, it just brings a different image into focus.

Which is what happened to me. 

I was focused on the cake. Until I became focused on the choking. 

And that very specific reframe changed my perspective. 

Choking? Not really.  I'm not choking.  I am often harried, not finishing everything, but I can breathe, and swallow.  Personally, I'm moving through the tasks.  Organizationally, we are flourishing.

It's more like binging.  I'm shoving a lot - probably too much - in.  But I'm the person shoving it in. I'm not a goose getting prepped to become foie gras.  After a period of looking for a job, I'm more like a kid who hasn't been allowed sweets. I just want more and more and more to the point where I keep eating after I should stop.

Also - cake? Cake is sweet but nutritionally empty.  Some of what I'm binging on probably is cake. Projects that I love but aren't strategic. Some tasks are more like vitamins; no taste but all nutrition. The sweet spot is those things I am doing that I love and are useful. Sort of how I feel about roasted veggies.  I could eat them forever. And they are good for me.

Reframing is often temporary until we practice it over and over. Our minds want to go back to familiar thinking patterns.  But for today?  I'm not choking on cake.  I'm binging on roasted veggies. And while it might hurt my belly sometimes, in the long run, I'm gonna be healthier.

[p.s. I know it has been almost a year since I've blogged. I'm going to try to do something about that. Hold me to it, ok?]