First Memory

I was about three years old. At night, a man, with a face of many-colored melting wax, would chew on my left ear. My father didn’t believe me and insisted the man was just a nightmare.

Once, in the middle of the night, I stood up in my crib and stared at the face hanging in mid air above of the bars. Just then, my father walked through the dark hallway past my room on his way to the bathroom. I thought he’d see the face and finally understand that it was real, but as he walked to the bathroom, he stopped and yelled, “Go to sleep!”

All these years later, I still reach up and cover my left ear whenever I think of it, but surely it was just a nightmare and my father’s worldview was more correct than mine.
 

Lots of Orange

“The tale you long to tell. The story of a life which is revealed, 

after many years, to have been all along the story of a death.” 

– Sofia Samatar, A Stranger in Olondria

You see in one photograph, a little girl’s short dress, white lace under flowery orange organza, white stockings and black, patent leather shoes: a three-year old, dressed beautifully by a mother proud of her husband’s position at the American embassy in Bonn. In all those still photographs it’s glaringly obvious that the girl was not really a little girl, but a loud and excitable monster, brimming over with uncontrollable energy. She’s a flash of movement among other children standing neatly and obediently.

Seeing the photographs, I feel the shame again. I wanted to behave, but I could not control myself.

There were green hills between the tall, dull, post-WW2, German apartment buildings. I’d lie down at the top of each hill, roll down it, and then rush up to the next one. Occasionally, another child was there, a Chinese girl who would always ask me to sit by her and then begin to make a daisy chain. She wanted to make a crown of flowers and see me wear it. I’d watch her carefully pierce the stems of the tiny daisies with a delicate fingernail and slip the stem of the next daisy into it. I wanted to see the completed crown; I wanted to wear it. I’d try to sit and wait—but I couldn’t. Even as the energy forced me to run to the top of the next hill, I’d feel sad about the crown of flowers, about again disappointing the girl who wanted to see me wearing it, but I couldn’t stop myself.

That energy transferred itself to anything I touched. Once, I opened a bottle of soda sitting on the kitchen table. The contents flew out explosively, covering the table in brown liquid. “You stupid girl! You’ve spilled it!” my mother yelled. I was horrified and ashamed—how had I done that?

And I was too excited when my father came home each evening. It would make him mad and then I would have to run from him. He’d chase me through the apartment and I remember the shame I felt when he laughed, “Ha! You cornered yourself.” He’d carry me into the living room, sit on a straight backed chair by the front door with me face down over his knee, and I’d scream as he spanked me. One evening, my mother came out of the kitchen holding a dishtowel and said, “Don’t touch her ever again.” We were both struck dumb and just stared at her. He never did spank me again. We were both terrified of her.

But sometimes, I did keep still. I would lie on the cork floor in the living room, fascinated by the strange material it was made of, put my feet against the wall, and gaze at a painting of a dense, dark, orange forest. I’d try to leave my body and walk through that forest; I was never able to do it. So I’d look for the sewing needle that I dropped on the floor, hoping to find it before my mother realized I’d lost it.

47 years later, it looks like a different painting

And I sat still for a book once, too. When my parents were out, I sneaked into my mother’s room that glowed a dim orange from the light trying to pour in through the curtains. I sat there with a book that had a little ladybug printed on the cover. It was The Elves and the Shoemaker and I finished reading it just in time to rush out of her room and close the door as they were opening the front door. I boasted about reading the whole book and they were not angry.

When my mother’s back was hurting, my father would do the laundry in the basement. German women in the building stared at me as I ran back and forth screaming in the dim hallway. I was very slow to understand that he was indulgent only in public. 

A German boy would sometimes visit his grandmother downstairs. I never knew when he would come. Early one morning, he threw pebbles against my window. We spoke through the window. He told me to come downstairs. As I was standing at my closet, wearing an undershirt and underpants, trying to figure out what I could wear that wouldn’t make my mother mad, when my dad walked in. “Why are you standing there neck-ed?” he asked in a booming voice. I wanted to explain that I was going downstairs to play with the little boy, but I was too afraid to speak. I didn’t move as I tried to find my voice, but finally his voice made me reluctantly get back into bed.

Eventually I did “learn to mind.” The children at the kindergarten would take walks with Miss Helga. We were not allowed to let go of the rope. One time I tripped, but as the other children kept walking, I kept hold of the rope. My knee was scrapped and Miss Helga wanted to know why I hadn’t let go. Didn't she remember all the times she had told me to never let go?!

Rav School - Part 1

During class, someone asked a question of Rabbi Peril and she began yelling like a banshee. “All of you wrote in your applications that you knew all these things.”

I was tired of her teaching style and almost said, “No, Cheryl. My application detailed exactly what I know. I’m here to learn, not be yelled at by a spoiled five-year-old. If you don’t want to teach us, I will walk to the office right now and withdraw from the program.”

Usually, when I need to speak up for myself, an invisible hand wraps itself around my throat and my words are trapped. That time, there was no invisible hand. I looked at the faces of my fellow classmates, remembered them discussing how important it was not to make waves, and I held myself back.

At that moment, I guess still had some of the confidence I’d mysteriously gained over the last few years. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t last much longer in that environment.

Who Was That Girl?

I was terrified to watch the video. I cringed when I saw myself on the screen—but it wasn’t me. It was some confidant, young woman. Who was she?

I am not sure what she was talking about in her d’var Torah. It sounded vaguely Buddhist, but I don’t think she’d read much about Buddhism back them. And I remember she was so proud that what she said was all her, that she could identify and express what was inside herself.

What she said was smarter than she knew. If I'd watched that video three years later, would it have helped me get through that difficult time?

mizrachi.org

The day after my conversion, a friend called me and asked, “So what happened?”

I surprised myself by saying, “It was like a wedding.” My answer surprised me because I don’t know anything about weddings and I’ve often wondered why people get married.

After that, I began to notice how frequently the analogy of marriage occurs in Jewish thought. God is married to the Torah, the Sabbath is married to the people of Israel, Shechinah is the partner of God, and even we are partners with God in perfecting the world.

There’s one midrash that I particularly like, probably because it’s a little racy.

The rabbis compared Mt. Sinai to a chuppah, the canopy under which a bride and groom are married. When the Israelites worshipped the golden calf at the foot of the mountain where they were about to enter the covenant with God, it was tantamount to a bride committing the act of adultery under the very chuppah where she is to be married.

So when I learned that my Torah portion included the story of the golden calf, I immediately thought of this midrash. However, as I studied the portion, I became confused. Why do the Rabbis compare idolatry and adultery? And what is wrong with worshipping a molten calf? God is everywhere, but since we can’t truly comprehend that, why can’t we have a symbol to help us focus our attention?

Why is it that the idol we made lead us away from God, while the Torah’s stories about God can lead us toward God? How is an idol different from a story? Either one can only approximate what God truly is.

In most of the Torah, God is not immense or perfect or beyond human comprehension, and yet we know that God must be all those things and more. But, if these stories are all right, why was worshipping the golden calf wrong?

Perhaps it is because we made the calf after we had asked Moses to keep God far from us. We chose to worship a molten calf because we didn’t want to experience God.

But after Moses left, we became afraid, we felt abandoned and we wanted something to cling to. We were afraid because it felt as if God was not with us. It felt as if God’s heart had turned away. Despite everything God had done for us, we still did not trust God.

Recollections of the Sea of Reeds and the thunder at Mt. Sinai were not enough for us and in our fear, our hearts turned away from God. We sought something else to cling to but what we chose to cling to would not have helped us deal with the reality of our fear.

When we are experiencing a powerful emotion, such as fear or pain, we immediately look for something to erase the feeling: more television, more hours at the office, socializing, reading, anything to avoid facing the feeling and the cause of that feeling. But if we can’t face our own suffering, how can we face the suffering of other people and take action to alleviate it? The diversions we seek are merely idols, like the golden calf, they cannot wash away our pain or even bring us a little comfort. They cannot substitute for our souls’ marriage with God.

Unlike the golden calf, the stories in the Torah are like a good marriage because we tend to struggle with them. When God instructs us to commit an act we find reprehensible, we try to find out what God was really trying to tell us. When the story is of God, walking like a person, in Gan Eden, we assume it is an analogy for intimacy with God. God is described in anthropomorphic terms partly because that is the easiest way for humans to understand God. The stories use familiar images to describe mystical things. So I can distinguish a difference between stories of God in the Torah and this idol.

The idol was our own creation. It could not have guided us through the wilderness and it could not have taught us how to live well.

The familiar imagery of the Torah, which often describes God as a person, also teaches us how to behave ethically toward other human beings. Relationship is essential to Judaism. And there is one relationship that Judaism seems to especially emphasize. Perhaps it is the hardest one of all: marriage.

The first commandment God pronounces in the Torah is “Be fruitful and multiply.” Tradition has it that marriage is so important that God braided Eve’s hair before her wedding.

Tamar Frankiel wrote, in The Voice of Sarah, “more than in any other tradition, marriage is the essence of Jewish work in the world. Only in the union between man and woman can we touch with our own natures the process that the whole world is about: to come together, to overcome our separation, to be at one.”

Our relationship with God should mirror our relationships with other people. But what are we supposed to do when our souls’ marriage to God turns rocky, when we feel abandoned by God, when our hearts have turned away from God, and when we are certain that God’s heart has turned away from us?

It may be human nature to run from difficult feelings and to seek distractions, but eventually, it sinks in that idols can’t help us. At that point, all we can do is sit with what we are feeling, experience it fully and get familiar, even comfortable, with it. Then suddenly our perception of reality becomes a little bit clearer. But it takes a very long time to reach that point of increased clarity. And during that time, there is nothing to hold on to.

Luckily, we are always being held. I imagine that the thing holding us is an ark, an ark that is made of the Jewish community, the rituals and the theology of Judaism. Judaism is not something we can cling to. It will not erase our pain, it will not make everything better, but it will hold us, as it has held our people for thousands of years. While we are being held we can get to know our pain or sadness or fear, become comfortable with our feelings and begin to see reality. In time, our hearts will turn back to God and God’s heart will turn back to us.

The Torah is saying that the Israelites should have waited quietly, they should have sat with their fear, they should have let themselves be held by their community and by their new religion. Better still, they could have done what Moses does later in this Torah portion, or as Elijah does in this Haftarah portion: wrestle with God, argue with God. The Israelites could have shouted to God to come back.

When our relationship to God seems to wane, we must make an effort to be reunited with God because we are partners in the covenant. The reality may be that God is always near, but that is not our experience. We can feel abandoned by God, just as we might feel abandoned by a person. Sometimes we draw strength from the depth of a relationship, at other times, we feel disconnected from that same relationship.

For three years, Judaism opened a new universe for me. One day I realized that I would not be alive in any meaningful sense unless I made a commitment to become a Jew. My conversion was the best thing that ever happened to me. I changed, the entire world changed. For more than a year, it seemed that God couldn’t shower enough blessings on me, but this past year was very difficult. And during this crisis my connection to Judaism seemed to be fading. It seemed so unfair that a faith that had meant so much to me, a faith I had sworn to uphold always might become meaningless.

I began to look everywhere for comfort, but nothing helped. Then one Sabbath, after Torah study, someone asked me, “Why did you become a Jew?” I said that I’d never been able to answer that question. I also told her that even though Judaism had brought me so much joy, I was losing my connection to it.

She said to me, “So, the honeymoon is over.” Her comment was like a bolt of lightning. It reminded me of the comparison I had made the day after my conversion. And I realized that if the honeymoon is over, there must still be a marriage. The relationship still existed and I could fight to renew it.

So I yelled at God. Later, I regretted the language I used, but the point is I did turn to God. I trusted that God would hear and care and respond.

Elijah’s words to God in this week’s Haftarah portion are “Anaini Adonai, anaini. Answer me, O Lord, answer me. That this people may know that thou, Lord, art God.”

And God responded, for God is also bound by the covenant between us. God has been gracious to us. Each of us stood at the foot of Mt. Sinai; each of us was invited to enter into that marriage with God. So even if the honeymoon is over, the marriage endures. Sometimes, it’s all joy and, other times, it’s all work, but it is our covenant. So today, I renew my commitment to rely on God for the strength to struggle against idols and to enter more fully into a relationship with God.

גִיוֹרֶת

Writing this essay was a required part of my aliyah application. At the time, I resisted writing about this experience, let alone revealing so much of myself to strangers. Now, however,  I'd like to share it.

A certificate of conversion

In the summer of 1994, I visited my parents in Arizona. The public library there had a book called The Way of Splendor by Edward Hoffman. It was about the Hasidic movement in Eastern Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries and was my introduction to the history and culture of the Jewish people—I’d barely been aware that history existed.

After reading it, I wanted to experience a Shabbat service and hear L’cha Dodi one Friday evening. It was several weeks before I entered a shul. On erev Yom Kippur, I visited Temple Beth El in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Moments after the service began, I knew that I had found my home. The prayers “resonated” with me, and Rabbi Berg’s sermon included Hasidic tales that were hopeful and life affirming.

The first Friday night following Yom Kippur, after erev Shabbat services, Rabbi Berg invited me to attend Saturday morning Torah study.

Each week, during services we read the weekly parasha, but during Saturday morning Torah study before services, we studied the Torah line-by-line at our own pace, savoring each word, each idea. My first Shabbat, we were reading about the crossing of the Reed Sea. (Thankfully, I did not say, “Hey, there’s a typo in your bible-- it’s supposed to be the Red Sea.”)

Everyone had thoughts they shared, literary to scientific, psychological and agricultural, spiritual and occasionally Talmudic. From “Wow! Isn’t that beautiful imagery” (“and the ground under his feet… was like the very sky for purity”) to an agricultural explanation as to why one generally does not eat first fruits. There were about twenty of us who attended every week. We found gems, even when we struggled through Leviticus.

I did not miss even a dozen Torah studies during the seven years I attended Temple Beth El (three years before and four years after my conversion.) I loved that Rabbi Berg was the kind of leader who facilitated our experience of the text rather than telling us what to think. He was—and I'm sure he still is—a leader who encouraged us to experience Judaism, not one who laid down any rules about what the experience should be.

Nothing I’d heard about the so-called “Judeo-Christian” tradition seemed to apply to this joyful, life-affirming, intelligent, spiritual community. I enjoyed the words of the prayers and rejoiced seeing the Torah being carried around the shul. I appreciated seeing couples who seemed to be in love with each other. (One woman had made her husband a tallis from the chuppah she had woven for their wedding and, each week, during the closing song of the service, he would reach over and wrap her in it, too.) I adored the community and the welcoming attitudes of the people there.

During those first few months, attracted to the community and fascinated by its learning, I was repeatedly delighted to discover that Judaism was beautiful, kind, open, and so many other good things. There is always hope and it’s possible to do more than merely survive. Rabbi Berg said that we break a glass (to commemorate the Temple) at weddings because “If you remember your greatest sorrow at the time of your greatest joy, you will remember your greatest joy during the time of your greatest sorrow.”

Immediately after that first Shabbat, I read The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel. (Can you imagine encountering the concept of Shabbos for the first time? I was amazed!) And then I read voraciously: everything Rabbi Berg mentioned in Torah study, many of the books in the temple library, anything I could find in the local, used book stores. (I was disappointed that I never connected with his favorite author, Philip Roth. I still don’t… perhaps because I am completely lacking in the culture of Yiddishkeit?)

I went to shul every Friday night and Saturday morning. I was reading and learning every day of the week.

I also learned about volunteering. There were always plenty of volunteer opportunities available through Temple Beth El. One was at an AIDS hospice. At first, I would only work in the garden. Later I worked in the kitchen area. Although, I found the idea frightening, I eventually began spending a little time with the residents.

I began lighting Shabbat candles right away and gradually added other practices. Lighting Chanukah candles for the first time felt familiar, as if I’d done it hundreds of times before.

There were courses offered through the Jewish community. Each spring and fall, you could choose two out of about eight classes that would be held at one of the local synagogues. They covered Shabbat, history, Kabbalah, music, holidays, prophets, and other topics. Scholars like Danny Matt would share their knowledge with us.

Rabbi Berg brought scholars and musicians to the shul. He led retreats north of San Francisco. Temple Beth El was a community of people deeply engaged in Jewish life.

Community and listening to other people were major elements of my conversion: hearing how people had grown up Jewish in different areas, learning about the Holocaust from people who had escaped as children, but had lost family who had been sent to Poland or Spain (one man had been a child refugee in China during the war), learning about growing up in a Jewish neighborhood in the United States, how one woman’s mother had responded to a doctor’s orders to feed her daughter bacon.

I didn’t know enough to ask the questions I should have. Why did Reform Jews say “Gut Shabbos” and call the temple a shul? I didn’t have the awareness to ask more about the Shoah and I still don’t understand one friend’s feelings about seemingly innocent words he said, as a small child, to his parents shortly after Krystallnacht.

There were Pesach dinners with Marion Dolgoff’s family and with the families of Frank and Ingrid Jonas, the afternoon Yom Kippur walk I took with Bobbie Freedman each year, and Rosh HaShanah dinners with Bobbie Freedman and her friends, studying The Book of Jonah from a different perspective each Yom Kippur with Rabbi Berg and others between services, Chanukah with Laine and Joel Schipper, conversations with Evelyn Holzman, women’s gatherings, the sukkah at the shul. (My deep regret, years later, when I realized how I had failed to be supportive of Marion Dolgoff.)

Ingrid and Frank became like family to me. Many times, I cried with gratitude, driving home on Friday nights, because of the joy and love I felt with them. And I was able to express my love. Each year, at seder and Thanksgiving dinner, I saw Frank's children, and they began to feel like family, too.

I went to services and Torah study every week for a long time before I seriously considered conversion. Then, I began meeting with Rabbi Berg to ask questions and learn more about a number of topics.

I had taken basic, prayerbook Hebrew and other classes, attended Shabbat and holiday services, and been invited to people’s homes for holidays. Rabbi Berg had me memorize certain passages, for example: Shema/V’ahavta, Kaddish, Ma’ariv Aravim, and Kiddush.

He discussed holidays with me: the significance of Purim and how to approach Yom Kippur. I didn’t truly understand Purim until just a few years ago. Sometimes I think that I am still converting to Judaism. Obviously, there will always be more information to learn, but understanding deepens over time, too.

I had read several books about the Jewish holidays before Rabbi Berg and I began formal study. The Jewish Way by Irving Greenberg (his perspective and Rabbi Berg’s are a little different) and Keeping Passover by Ira Steingroot are still references for me. Rabbi Berg recommended a number of books to help me increase my understanding of the High Holy Days, including Shmuel Yosef Agnon’s Days of Awe.

He wanted me to be familiar with the philosophy and origins of the Reform movement, but also wanted me to be aware of some traditional practices and he recommended the experience of keeping kosher. (Among many other books, I read How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household by Blu Greenberg, Kashrut by Samuel Dresner, Total Immersion by Rivkah Slonim, and The Rise of Reform Judaism by Gunther Plaut.)

In community and Torah study, I had felt the presence of god, but was unable to describe that experience in words. When I mentioned this, Rabbi Berg said words aren’t always necessary; we each have a private image of god, just as we each have a private image of revelation at Sinai.

Rabbi Berg emphasized the importance of people-hood and, having felt the support and love of the community, I began to understand that, too. We discussed, among many other books, Jews, God, and History by Max Dimant. Over the years, he had recommended historical fiction, like The Last of the Just by Andre Schwarz-Bart, as well as books such as Night by Eli Wiesel, Altneuland by Theodor Herzel, and The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt.

My love of Judaism, my appreciation of Torah and community, gave me a new perspective on life in general, and also on my own life. They gave me confidence and hope. Since god gave us Torah, each of us has value.

My childhood had not prepared me for adulthood or the outside world: we had moved about every six months, my mother was unwell, my father was angry. (Later I realized that what looked like rage, was in fact, constant fear.) They didn’t like me to leave the house or have friends, but they didn’t interact with me except when they were angry, at me or at each other. I had trouble speaking, and I was terrified of people. Social skills eluded me; I didn’t even understand them.

My time at Temple Beth El changed me. Like me, the people there enjoyed books and ideas—they weren't bad things!—but I had never met people who listened respectfully to each other (they listened even to me, even when I had nothing really worth saying) and they truly communicated: shared ideas and explored ideas together.

I was welcomed immediately. In many dreams that I had then, Rabbi Berg and his wife, Bonnie, appeared as my parents. On some level, I had found a new family and was experiencing childhood again. I had found a community and, against all probability, they loved me.

I became able to speak and eventually to articulate (sometimes) my thoughts. Several friends, who became b’not mitzvah as adults, insisted I must have the experience. So in 2000, three years after my conversion, I did. I gave a d’var Torah that had no objective value, but what mattered to me was that it really expressed my thoughts and feelings about Ki Tisa and about being Jewish. Being able to understand and express myself for the first time felt like a miraculous gift. It was possible because I was surrounded by the love and support of my community.

One of the most important things I learned from the community and especially from Rabbi Berg cannot be boiled down to something that fits on a syllabus: how to approach death and mourning.

Rabbi Berg's example of serious attention and compassion toward mourners, and the culture he facilitated of attending every funeral and shiva had an impact on me (and my expectations) that I didn't fully recognize then. Many people from the Torah study group and many from the general congregation went to every funeral and every shiva. We cooked. We spent time with the mourners. Rabbi Berg ensured there was a minyan at the home every day.

At first, I cooked to calm my own feelings about death and I spent shivas in the mourners’ kitchens, helping. Gradually, I began interacting with friends and distant relatives of the deceased; to those most affected, I said little beyond “Sorry for your loss.” But I watched how mourners behaved and how people I admired responded to them; I learned things that I remembered later.

Perhaps, of Rabbi Berg's many gifts as a rabbi, his greatest is caring for the bereaved and for their departed, of knowing its importance. I admired his wife because her brain and heart worked together and I guess that’s what Rabbi Berg was able to do, too.

Once, I went with everyone else to attend a funeral that Rabbi Berg led for a man who had not been a member of Temple Beth El. Earlier that day, I had happened to be in the front office briefly while he met the man’s family in his office. I heard him encourage the family's recollections and, even in the brief moment I was there, I recognized the seriousness he gave their words and unspoken feelings. Later, he gave a eulogy that the family clearly found meaningful. I am grateful that I “had” to go to that funeral. The memory reminds me of how I learned the importance of comforting the bereaved; it reminds me of being surrounded by people with love and caring in their hearts, in their minds, and on their lips.

Of all the wonderful things about Judaism, I think that particular mitzvah is one of the most important and I continue to try to learn how to do that with something of the enormous care and attention that I saw Rabbi Berg offer.

There is a book called Jewish Views of the Afterlife by Simcha Paull Raphael. It describes a great number of Jewish beliefs about the afterlife, but it was people who taught me what was important in our response to death: supporting the people who are facing it.

Bill Fein was a Torah study regular who had studied for his conversion with Rabbi Berg. His father had been Jewish, but his mother had raised him in a fundamentalist church in the South; he had wanted to leave and become Jewish since he was very young. His enthusiasm for Judaism had always filled me with joy. (He expressed his enthusiasm in many ways, down to a rodeo-style belt buckle engraved with a Magen David.) Bill Fein was proud to call himself a convert.

Bill was hit by a car while walking to shul during a visit to Scotland. We were all thinking of him and waiting for news of him while his wife flew to Scotland. He died there, far away from his community, but I think if he could have chosen a manner of death, dying on the way to shul would have been okay with him.

Although he and I had not been close, his passing affected me profoundly. We all missed his presence in our community. Conversations people had about his life made me realize how deep my feelings about Judaism were. Evelyn Holzman said that he died happy with his life, his marriage, his child, his work, and happy with being Jewish; a moment later, I realized that I wouldn’t really be alive in any meaningful way unless I made the commitment to become Jewish.

After I told Rabbi Berg that I was ready to begin formal study, he said that he had been a proponent of my conversion for a long time. My formal conversion took place in September 1997. The beit din included people who had become my friends. There was an indescribable moment in the mikvah, and when I emerged from the water, I was a Jew.

At Rosh Hashanah services, a few days after my conversion, someone thanked me for converting. I was dumbfounded. I had converted for me. I have done nothing for the Jewish people except want to belong.

Once I believed that being Jewish meant preserving Torah, but now I think that being Jewish is seeing the world differently than other people do. It’s about actions you take because you share Jewish values. It means caring about the continued existence of the Jewish people. It’s about contributing to and being revitalized by community. And, for me, it’s about going home, to Israel.

Meyerbeer's Hallelujah

The Shaman

Susan Seddon Boulet

Shortly after I moved back to the States, I looked for a shaman to do soul retrieval for me. Linda lives just 15 miles from my house. When I scheduled an appointment, she asked for my permission to seek a vision of me before we met.

After sunset, I reached her home, which is on the side of a forested mountain. There is only moderate light pollution here, and even less high up in her neighborhood. Between a gap in the trees, the stars were numerous and devastating.

She told me what she had seen when she had sought information about me:

She saw me rise from the pool and look around for threats. I notice a standing stone in the distance and begin to swim toward it. I circle back to the starting point several times before I finally reach the edge of the water and climb to the standing stone. Not long after, I walk away from it, with a knife in my back.

The meaning of that was obvious. I was impressed because she didn’t know me, or anything about me. She had also done a “diagnostic journey” to see what I needed: soul retrieval and a power animal.

She tied a red bandana on my wrist, started a CD of drumming, and lay down next to me to travel in search of them. She had explained that she would recognize the fragment of my soul because it would also be wearing a red bandana.

Susan Seddon Boulet

She found three fragments, one was a composite of many different fragments broken off over the years and the others were a three-year-old child and a six-year-old child. They told her that they would help me figure things out, gain self-confidence, and give me bravery.

She found two power animals and told me to give them names and to talk with them even if I felt as if I were pretending. She suggested I ask them for help so that I'd recognize that they are real.

The second time I saw the shaman, she had seen me rising from the pool’s surface, trying to get rid of something. My feet were shackled together and I couldn’t make progress. I seemed afraid and isolated.

That time, Linda did some extractions before seeking a power animal. My power animals brought some of their offspring. I could feel the young ones playing and jumping all over me before she told me what she had seen. They intended to teach me about having fun.

(Afterward, I looked for a course in shamanism. One was starting that week, but I felt that I wasn’t quite ready to be the shaman instead of the patient.)

It seemed appropriate to see Linda again before I leave and return to Israel. Our appointment was last night. I arrived after sunset while the sky was still light. A sliver of the waxing moon shone brightly, but the whole moon was visible. It rose slowly as I waited outside until the time of our appointment.

She had travelled to a reflecting pool to get a vision of me. Here are her notes:

“Seen leaping out of pool then plunging back in. Repeat, each time not rising so high or plunging so deep as the time before, reaching equilibrium. Hot and cold about something? Elation tempered by caution? Is this about some life condition? Appears agitated. Unsure how to proceed? Then throws something, seems annoyed/angry. At end, turns back to me.”

It took a little effort, but I think I may understand that vision. I've been undecided about making aliyah for some time. Now I feel cautious, but I am going, which means turning my back to life here.

Susan Seddon Boulet

Linda put out a turtle shell, a rattle, and a few stones on a rabbit fur. She had me lie down on a Guatemalan rug and gave me a blanket. She started a CD of drumming and lay down on the floor next to me and repeated her diagnostic journey. She confirmed that I needed an extraction and a power animal retrieval.

She did many extractions, one, from the core of my body, was enormous. (Several times recently, I’ve gotten very cold, from my core out, shivering as if I were suffering from exposure and feeling mentally disoriented. Only immersing in a hot bath warms me back up. Perhaps she removed whatever has been causing that.)

Her journey to find my power animal took a long time. Later she explained that my power animal had run up to her immediately and told her its purpose, but she couldn’t believe this was the one. She had also expected many power animals to appear since I’m going on a journey. But there’s just this one wonderful animal who wants to teach me endurance.

The sky was black and the stars were vivid as I drove away. I pulled to the side of the rode, opened the moon roof, and turned off the engine. I gazed up at the stars for a long time and then my vision shifted and the tall pines around me became palm trees in an oasis.

Then I got lost on my way home. It seemed appropriate somehow.

If you are interested, The Foundation for Shamanic Studies keeps a list of shamans who have trained in their program as well as a schedule of classes.

Connection to the Land

I find myself saying that I belong *to* the Land, but I don't know what I mean. The preposition ‘to’ implies that the Land owns me...

In one of her posts on Sense of Place, Sterling also says that she belongs ‘to’ the Land. She suggests that she was brainwashed by Jewish day schools. I didn’t attend Jewish day schools. So what is the source of the connection I feel?

The absolute least likely reason is reincarnation, but I do have a strange story to tell.

Years ago, a friend and I decided to see a hypnotherapist for past life regressions. She was a believer; I was agnostic about reincarnation, but wondered what story I might tell.

The therapist struggled to get me to remember something. She kept taking me further down in her metaphoric elevator. Finally we found something.

Scene One: I was a man, a math teacher, in a small town in 1930s Germany. The boys I was teaching wore lederhosen. I was afraid of them-- one in particular-- because they all knew I was Jewish.

Scene Two: I lived in a single room in a brick building. My landlady cooked one meal a day for me. Sometimes, when sitting by my window, I’d see her hanging clothes out to dry.

Scene Three: I was wearing a grey coat and walking down an empty gray street in a city. (My body, the one in the therapist’s chair, felt huge, as if it had been inflated.)

Scene Four: I was lying on the deck of a large ship, very sick. It was daytime and a man was leaning over me. Someone shouted that he could see Palestine and men rushed to the side of the boat. I tried to sit up, but couldn't. I died a moment later, without even catching a glimpse of the Land.

After the hypnotherapist woke me, I thought, “It didn’t feel true.” And certainly, looking at the details, it couldn’t have been.

Did boys still wear lederhosen in the twentieth century? Would a Jew have walked down a German street during the World War II? Could a ship of refugees have approached the Land during daylight when the British had set up a blockade to prevent Holocaust survivors from reaching Palestine?

I couldn’t find any connection between my subconscious and the story I had told. (Of course, the nature of the subconscious is that you can’t really know it.)

Whatever the source of that story, it evokes strong feelings in me now.

Why Am I Dreaming of Kerrville, Texas?

Stonehenge II, Kerrville, Texas, USA

Last night, I kept dreaming the same two dreams in succession. In one, I was in Kerrville, Texas. In the other, I asked everyone, “Why I am I dreaming of Kerrville, Texas?”

I’m not certain, but I may have been in fifth grade when we arrived in Kerrville (pronounced cur-vl). I don’t remember where we lived before that, but my parents had heard that Kerrville was a nice town and they wanted to settle down there. (It was my first trip to Texas and we’d been driving around for quite a while... or was that some other trip, some other time?)

The morning after we arrived in Kerrville, my parents enrolled me in school. The old, WPA building was the most beautiful structure I’d ever seen. Four girls immediately befriended me. It was a tough place, they said, and I'd need friends to look after me.

The classes were neither strange nor too easy; they were fun. I’d never seen a gymnasium before; the floor was shiny and I wondered what playing basketball would be like.

Each class was held in a different room and I liked walking down the tall, dimly lit hallway. I remember the English teacher smiling at me as I sat in the back of the class next to the ceiling-high windows late in the day.

After school, my parents were waiting in their car in front of the green lawn. I climbed into the car with all my textbooks and talked non-stop about my new friends and the classes. Back in the hotel room, they told me that we weren’t going to stay.

Of all the places we lived during my childhood, I only let myself cry when we left two of them. This time, I was very dramatic; I wanted to convince them to stay.

My father said he would take my books back to the school the next morning. I insisted he take money for the girl who had loaned me some when I hadn’t had enough to pay for my lunch. (I still worry about whether he did.)

We left Kerrville behind and, a short time later, I started school in Abilene. The first day of school, I wore the same clothes I’d worn the first day in Kerrville. “Why do you dress like that? You’re weird!” There were three groups of kids there and I didn’t belong to any of them.

My parents bought a house right away, but in no time, they hated Abilene. My father ended his retirement yet again and found work elsewhere. My mother and I stayed in Abilene a few more months, in the snow and ice, while she tried to sell the very large, very odd house, and directed all her fury at me.

It's a few decades later and I have a choice: Prescott (pronounced press-kit) or Jerusalem (pronounced yuh-roo-sha-ly-yeem). I don't know whether to trust myself to make this decision or what criteria I should rely on to make my choice.

A Sense of Place

An online acquaintance once asked for guest posts for her new blog, A Sense of Place. When she got no responses, I wrote this. It didn’t quite fit—maybe too personal, maybe not smart enough—so I’m sharing it here instead. And since the title is perfect, I’m stealing it, because the subject is important to me.

* * *

By the time I was sixteen years old, I had lived in thirty-one different places and would soon spend the summer in a thirty-second place. There is one surprising result of a peripatetic childhood: it makes first dates difficult.

The stock question for first dates is “Where are you from?” An inability to answer that question to your date's satisfaction pretty much derails the date.

Most people have trouble comprehending the words, “We moved a lot.” (That sentence is in English, right?) They repeat the question relentlessly as if I haven’t answered.

On first dates, there seemed to be no way to change the subject. He’d persist, asking where I was born, and would look puzzled that I didn't know anything about that town. Then he’d ask where I went to high school and look painfully confused when I named three places. I would tell him where I went to college, and then he’d say… you guessed it… "But where are you from?"

An outright lie invariably backfired. Twice I said, “I’m from here,” and each time the response was, “Me, too! Which high school did you go to?” The clumsy back-pedaling might have been funny if I hadn’t been the woman on the bike. (Once, I named my dad's hometown—a place I've never visited— but that Jewish-geography-thing caused me trouble.)

Sometimes, I’d try to beat my date to the punch by asking where he was from and trying to grill him about the place and his childhood memories. Apparently my interrogation technique was poor, because it never worked. He would dodge answering my questions by asking me The Dreaded Question.

I seriously considered making up a town. Since I'm a poor liar, I figured it wouldn't help me—and besides, why should I need to make something up? My answer seemed perfectly valid to me: we moved a lot. Simple.

People’s obsession with the question is still bewildering. If you tell me that you are from a particular place, what have I learned about you? When I meet people, I want to know what they like to do, what books they've read, how close they are to friends and family, and what they are passionate about. I seldom ask anyone, "Where are you from?" Honestly, if you don’t have an exotic accent, I won't even think to ask.

One time, though, I did get a hint at the importance of being from somewhere. After college, I lived in one place for seven years. I left briefly, and when I returned, I was stunned at my reaction to streets and buildings and parks. Each held a different memory. Everywhere I looked, my physical eyes could almost see ghostly images of past events.

Maybe that’s what it feels like to be from somewhere—not just a location, but a living map of memories. And yet, I still don’t know why it matters to anyone else.

Katzrin immediately felt like home

Poem for a funeral

A few hours after my father died, I called a rabbi and told him that I wanted to sit shiva. He responded, in a South African accent that had no trace of German in it, "Oh, no, no, no. But I'll send you a lovely poem, about the non-Jewish parent, that you can read at the funeral."

Stunned by my loss, I could only nod. He hung up and I tried to help my brother pack up my father's things, but I didn't know what to do and wandered around uselessly, unable to focus.

A few days later, I e-mailed the rabbi reminding him that my brother and I would be scattering my father's ashes that evening and that he'd promised to send me a poem to read.

It was several more days before the rabbi e-mailed the poem to me-- just the poem, not one word more. He didn't acknowledge that the funeral was past and he didn't offer condolences.

Here is the "lovely" poem:

This tradition, the way we remember our dead,
Is not yours.
But no one has a monopoly on grief-
Death comes to us all.
And I am deeply saddened to have lost you.
You made a mark upon my life which can never be washed away.
Which will never be forgotten.
And for which I will forever be grateful.
Your memory will be for me - a blessing -
That I have known you, and walked with you.
However briefly in this world.
Dayenu - And that will be enough.

I can't describe the emotions I felt when I read it, but I hoped it hadn't been composed for the writer's own father. The emotions expressed were tepid and shallow.

My father wasn't a "non-Jew." He was my father.

Much later, I realized it had probably been written by a prayer book committee and I wondered what kind of people would have written a prayer specifically for a "non-Jewish parent?"

On the first anniversary of my father's yahrtzeit, a non-religious, Jewish woman gave me two gifts. One of the gifts were these words, "It's written in stone that he loved you."