La Shana Tovah
Happy New Year
Happy Rosh Hashanah
may your apples have lots of honey
and your year be sweet and tender and delicious
As most of my longer term readers know
I'm what you call a high holiday Jew
meaning I only drag my lazy ass into the shul (synagogue)
on Rosh Hashanah and on Yom Kippur
but hey at least i get there
i think i had the whole jewish thing
crammed a little too much down my throat as kid
and then living amongst the chasidim
really put me over the edge
of jewish over-load
amongst the frum.. ultra-orthodox, (we say frum for super religious)
i saw the most gorgeous of love, kindness and human compassion
but i also saw the most horrifying of hypocrits
my landlord, the rabbi who turned my heat off in the dead of winter
because his rabbi told him that a non religious young woman living life happily, out in the open, befriending christians, rastafarians alike, was a bad influence on the impressionable young women in the hood..
i had rocks thrown in my window
a friend told me that one rabbi was plotting to have me mugged to scare me out of the hood..
i did finally leave
and felt nothing but fury for those fake scholars for years
then i slowly returned to my own judaism
and i came to understand
that in every group are bad people
amongst priests are rapists
amongst moslems are murderers
amongst chasids are muggers and abusers
there are probably no more or no less bad people amongst the very religious then the non religious
we just mind it more
my mother had always taught me to trust a man in a police uniform
and to trust a man wearing a yamalka
i quickly learned neither was true
today
religion seems to be behind what feels like a world war
in my lifetime i have not seen so much death in the name of religion
id only heard of it and read about it
now i see it on the news every day
and for one horrible fall 5 years ago
i saw it and smelt it
and felt it myself
i have not died
neither have you
neither have the rabbis
neither have the islamic leaders
neither has the pope
or any priest
i have not died and gone to the next place
and found out what is true and what is not true of the afterlife
or if i have it was in previous life and that memory was not given back to me at my birth
i can only trust what feels the closest to the truth in my heart
judaism feels like home to me
and so i go there on the high holidays
but i will not smite you
or torture you
or torment you
into coming into the house of judaism
i have no right to tell you which is
and which is not
the truth
and you have no right to tell me either
in the end
my heart tells me this
it doesnt matter what your religion is
or is not
it matters how much you cherished the gift of life
and cherished the gift of the lives around you
it matters that you spread kindness
not pain
it matters that you spread love
not hate
it matters that you share what you have
not hoard it
if you wish to start a world war over religion
then start this one
only the good shall be rewarded
the evil shall come back
as Dick Cheneys butt plug
