The first stories

For those of us raised in a world of Hollywood three-act story structure, we’re used to stories with a beginning, middle, and end, where the hero is introduced at the beginning, sets out to accomplish something, faces obstacles that necessitate their growth or transformation, and succeeds or fails in their quest at the end, plus a denouement or coda that closes their emotional arc or ties up loose ends. We also absorb a lot of western European fairy tales and legends that either fit this format or have been tailored to it over centuries of retelling. In People Love Dead Jews, Dara Horn points out how much this structure and even the language we use to describe it comes from the New Testament: The story is centered on the hero’s destiny, which they fulfill by saving/being saved, or if not, by having an epiphany, or if not, by at least having a moment of grace.

So it can be strange for us when we read a work from a very different culture that has other ideas about what makes a story coherent, meaningful, satisfying, because some of these elements may be missing, and others that we would normally not include are seen as essential to that culture’s mode of storytelling. And I particularly wanted to see what storytelling looks like in Torah if I stopped trying to fit everything into the western/Christian format and instead looked at what was actually there.

The first two parshiot (weekly Torah portions) are the only ones to show any person’s life from beginning to end, which makes them easier to analyze for structure. In both, we begin with God stating a goal and implementing it: creating the world, destroying the earth in a flood. The things that go wrong are not obstacles to accomplishing the goal, they are either unrelated incidents or unforeseen consequences of the goal–life is what happens when we (or God) are making other plans: Eve and Adam eat the fruit, Cain kills Abel, Noah gets drunk, people build Babel to avoid being anonymously wiped out again. There is a response of some kind, and then the people and issues that are going to be important in the next set of stories are established towards the end of the current story: Noah is born with a special destiny, Terach sets out on a journey with his son Avram. We’ll see this structure again and again throughout Torah, with the children of Israel going down to Egypt at the end of Genesis, the building of the Tabernacle at the end of Exodus, and with Moses setting his affairs in order at the end of Numbers and Deuteronomy.

Why is this important? Because if we read Torah as we’re used to, through a Western/Christian lens, Moses’s death is massively unfair and unfulfilling: he doesn’t get to finish his life’s work. But even if he got to enter the Promised Land, Moses would not live forever, and the true test of his success is the long-term health and success of the people. If we listen to the signals that there is another form of storytelling at work here, we recognize that in the Torah, people’s stories are part of a continuing stream, that every life is beset by unforeseen problems and unfinished business, and that the best end a hero has is to play a key role in choosing and shaping the next person or people who will direct events, which Moses does by training and ordaining Joshua, and by giving the Israelites their marching orders.

I’m keeping my eyes out for signals of other storytelling techniques and tropes at work, but that’s what’s striking me so far.

Re-visioning this site

I was sporadic at best about updating this site during rabbinical school, in part because a long-form, one-sided monologue was not the best way to talk about what was interesting or important to me; I was either writing papers or chatting in quick exchanges on Facebook. Now I’m in my first year as an ordained rabbi, and I’m finding there are things I passionately want to talk about in a longer form that don’t have an obvious audience: too nuanced for a quick exchange, not the right fit for a sermon, but still important to share. So I’m putting them here for now, with no idea of how often I’ll update or whether these pieces will start to take a consistent shape and find an audience, just that they need to be written. I hope you enjoy, whoever you are, and thank you for going on this journey with me.

Being here now

Two pieces of wisdom I have repeatedly gotten from my parents that I want to share with my rabbinical and cantorial school friends right now:

1. When you go out into the field, it’s going to be really hard for you to find a local peer group that sustains you, because you need to maintain boundaries with congregants. Learning on a regular basis with local clergy, Jewish and non-Jewish, can be a fantastic way to build those peer groups.
2. There is a huge difference between the learning and growth you’re doing in school and the ongoing growth and learning you’ll do once you’re done with school. If your brain and heart are too full right now for Daf Yomi/929/other regular practices, that’s a great sign that you are fully engaged by what you’re already working on. If you’re excited and nourished by adding other learning practices or projects, fantastic, but if not, focus on the learning you can only do here and now, and trust the other stuff will be waiting when you graduate.

More than halfway

Submitted my last final! Year 3 done and dusted.

I’m also conscious that I’ve been keeping track in my head of my progress from year to year but haven’t been keeping any kind of written record of milestones, and I want to make sure I don’t take for granted how far I’ve come. So:

May 2018 – Accepted to Rabbinical Schools: I had been taking Hebrew classes at Brandeis and studying Talmud, but I couldn’t have told you what reference text to pull off the shelf to look up unknown words. I could lead Friday night services but not weekday services. Looking forward to the summer JTS intensive and a year in Israel at the Conservative Yeshiva in Israel!

May 2019 – End of Shana Aleph: I knew which reference text to pull off the shelf, but had to look up almost every word. Way more comfortable with Talmud, especially after Rabbi Jim Michaels put me through my paces. Cautiously comfortable with Rashi script and able to slog through biblical Hebrew, thanks to the amazing Bex Stern Rosenblatt. Could easily roll a Torah scroll to the right place. Led weekday afternoon services every chance I got, but still scared of morning and evening services. Tentatively beginning to articulate how fiction writing and chaplaincy might inform each other. Looking forward to CPE at Hebrew Senior Life and my first year on campus at Hebrew College!

May 2020 – End of Shana Bet: Beginning of quarantine and zoom learning. Learned the difference between helping and accompanying in CPE, as well as how to be in relationship with God while being honest about my anger towards God. Co-led High Holiday services with my dad! Only looking up 2/3-1/2 the words in most texts. Managed to pass Aramaic and tentatively able to break down the logical flow of a passage of Talmud. Better able to write a sermon, bringing in sources besides the main biblical text. Have realized that I don’t know how to write a lesson plan or source sheet for anything other than creative writing, but looking forward to teaching at Temple Israel.

May 2021 – End of Shana Gimmel: A whole year of zoom learning! Have finally gotten a systematic understanding of Torah cantillation and how to teach it to others. Can not only lead the Pesukei and Hallel parts of morning prayers, but can do so on zero advance notice when needed. Regularly leading Kabbalat Shabbat. Led a Seder solo! Able to be in relationship with God without being angry. Making lesson plans and source sheets for Jewish learning for people of all ages has become second nature. Can look at a (more straightforward) rabbinic commentary and translate it for myself because I don’t like the liberties taken by another translator. Only looking up 1/4 of the words in most texts, and able to understand and appreciate wordplay in Talmudic texts. Have led a class on reading and writing midrash! Doing prewriting for a midrashic novel. Looking forward to a second unit of CPE at MGH, teaching at TI again, and a rabbinic internship at B’nai Tikvah in Canton!

Reading stats, 2020

This is a strange year on a number of levels in terms of my reading habits. Because I was stuck at home, I read a whopping 156 books (my average is usually closer to 100 in a year). However, I was much more in the mood for escapism and comfort food than educating myself on issues (I’d also already read a lot of books on systemic racism and was trying to read more black joy, black adventure, black success, rather than focusing on “oppression porn”). I also have two new categories this year, in my ongoing quest to better track diversity: Gender now has an option for nonbinary (as always, trans women are women, trans men are men), and diversity has an option for intersectional, because a lot of the authors of color I was reading were also queer or disabled or both and I only count them in one category so as to avoid distorting my level of reading diversity. Regardless, this was the year with the fewest straight/white/cis authors, 57%! I’m delighted by this step in the right direction.

Some of my favorites from this year
Mara Benjamin, The Obligated Self
Claire Kann, Let’s Talk About Love
Alyssa Cole, A Duke by Default, Can’t Escape Love, and When No One Is Watching
Priya Parker, The Art of Gathering
Huda Fahmy, That Can Be Arranged and Yes, I’m Hot in This
Mary Robinette Kowal, The Relentless Moon

Final tally for 2020
30 male writers: 37%
41 female writers: 51%
7 mixed/anthologies: 9%
2 nonbinary writers: 3%

46 white, straight, cis: 57%
13 writers of color: 16%
13 LGBTQIA writers: 16%
2 writers with disabilities: 2%
7 intersectional writers: 9%

Hugos: The Next Generation

Hugo nominations are open! I highly recommend everyone go vote; at the very least, you pay 50 bucks to boost your favorite creators and then get a tsunami of amazing novels and short stories in ebook format so you can read the short list and vote for the finalists. I’m going to put links at the bottom for signing up and for seeing what works are eligible.

In past years, voting was also a way to drown out bigots who tried to dominate the conversation. Happily, that really hasn’t been an issue for a while. But I will say this: It was once possible for people to read all the fantasy and science fiction released each year. And there were efforts to curate the “best” of the current offerings and classic works into a single canon. That canon was very straight, white, male, ableist, and neurotypical for a genre supposedly devoted to exploring the boundaries of human experience. Over the past few decades, the field has expanded massively and we’ve discovered that we’re engaged in multiple conversations with multiple canons. So what’s the point of the Hugos if those different groups can’t agree on what constitutes the best or the canon?

I think Hugos: The Next Generation isn’t about the winners. It’s about the short list. This is the one time of year when everyone gets in the same metaphorical room and gets to hear what everyone else finds exciting or groundbreaking or deeply moving, even if it’s not a story/creator you would normally try. Sometimes it’s not remotely to your taste, sometimes you discover new favorites, but either way, it’s a conversation worth having. Join me in the room. I want to hear what you love.

To nominate for the Hugos, get a $50 supporting membership to this year’s Worldcon. If, like me, you are TERRIBLE at remembering what was released this year, or whether your favorite short story had the wordcount for a novella or a novelette, I recommend this open source database to jog your memory (and write in any works you love from this past year that haven’t been mentioned yet, to jog other people’s memories!) https://bit.ly/hugoaward2021

Soundtrack of my life

Virtual rabbinical school has its challenges, but one of its unexpected joys is the gorgeous music our dean plays for us in the break between morning prayers and the day’s work. It’s been giving me life all year.

Winter Seminar 2021

Every winter, Hebrew College does a week-long seminar on a topic where students and faculty come together to learn and challenge ourselves: are we living our values in our community? And how do we want to bring those values forward into the communities we will lead as clergy? As my classmate Abi Oshins put it, “Torah without action is just a fancy book club.” This year’s topic was racial justice, and I’m so proud to be part of an institution where not only do they have such a seminar, and not only is it brilliantly organized, but the president asks presenters what more the institution can be doing and TAKES NOTES as they say where our institution misses the mark.

A few things I took with me that I want to remember:

Be willing to be a royal jackass. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good and prevent you from making an effort. Know that you will make mistakes, and be prepared to apologize, learn to do better, and keep going.

Looking at when my family hit certain benchmarks, my grandparents were deeply influenced by antisemitism/conditional whiteness. My parents’ coming of age coincided with a cultural transition into white privilege. Their stories shape me, but I can’t ignore how much I have benefitted from white privilege. And just as my grandparents and parents experienced profound shifts in their lifetimes and had to adapt, I have a responsibility to grow and adapt.

I need to stop saying “Jews” when I mean “white Jews.”

The ways white Jews welcome people into Jewish spaces often serve a gatekeeping function (such as asking newcomers to take an aliyah and asking for their Hebrew names, or asking them to explain their background/life story on the Kiddush buffet line). This is particularly off-putting to Jews of color, and we need to give our welcoming committees, gabbis, and greeters other ways to truly welcome people.

We need to avoid tokenism and bring the full richness of different Jewish traditions into our prayer services and our learning. Sometimes this means inviting people and compensating them for what they share. Other times it means uplifting the author or origins of a piece we’re sharing.

I need to educate myself on community safety resources as alternatives to having police or security at the door for High Holidays. We can’t protect our communities by putting some of our community members in danger.

There are all kinds of ways Jewish organizations can support POC organizations, from which vendors they use for events to who they invite to use their space during the week. The goal posts are going to keep moving, just as they have on most social justice issues throughout my entire life, which means at some point most of these things are going to be wildly insufficient or just plain wrong. Go back to a willingness to be a royal jackass. Rinse. Repeat.

A new chapter

So many thoughts and feelings. I keep sobbing, seeing Kamala Harris. I grew up on Free to Be You and Me and children’s books telling me girls could grow up to be anything, and then saw that proven wrong over and over in my adult life. This feels like an affirmation of the world my childhood self was promised. Having a president who begins his inaugural by saying “This moment isn’t about me, it’s about the work that needs doing,” after four years of narcissism, is also incredible. And a powerful inaugural poem I’m going to have to listen to and read over a few times to fully appreciate and unpack. So much work to be done, but now we can do it without a madman in the Oval Office making things worse.

Deserving of Merit

It doesn’t surprise me that the man whining that doctorates only count if they are in medicine has only an honorary degree himself. The people who rush to act as gatekeepers are often the ones who are most insecure about whether they themselves belong: the act of kicking someone else out of the clubhouse is meant to cement their own right to be there. The same man whines that honorary degrees don’t mean what they used to back in his day—again, feeling his own standing threatened, his impulse is to see who he can kick out to prove not only that he belongs, but that he is empowered to decide who is in and who is out.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about academia, the literary scene, the Jewish community, or politics—gatekeeping is a symptom of a poisoned system where people do not feel valued. A healthy system needs people with a variety of specialties in order to thrive. Therefore, there can’t be one single measure of success or belonging for everyone. In a toxic system, members feel their position, power, or identity is threatened, and that the only way to gain or regain security is to throw someone else out. The problem is that once you’ve thrown someone out, you’ve proven people CAN be thrown out, so ironically, you’re now even less secure.

Absolutely, Dr Biden should be addressed by her title. Absolutely, we need to have more conversations about how often we question the credentials of women and other people from marginalized groups. But I’d love it if we could also have conversations about how toxic systems encourage us to attack others when we feel squeezed out, because we need to fix those systems and stop letting the conversation be defined by the insecurities of people who see their privilege and status evaporating.