Yesterday I was invited to a book talk at the Hebrew Center in Vineyard Haven. My cousin, the author (whom I only found out is my cousin about six months ago, when she did ancestry.com), told me it started at 10.
I arrived wearing summer casual, maybe too casual, but it was a book talk, after all, and it’s the Vineyard, after all. When I walked through the door, I asked someone, Is this where the book thing is? A woman said, Yes, that’s at noon at the luncheon. First there’s the morning service. And she led me into the sanctuary.
I was in shock. Come on, I thought. I’m not going to sit through a whole service on a Saturday morning. I have things to do. And two hours? Are you kidding me? And then a luncheon? OMG! I had planned for an hour — get in, support my new cousin, and get out. Plus, look at what I’m wearing. Not appropriate for services, not appropriate for a synagogue, not appropriate, period. I let go of my shock, which turned into “Wait until I get my hands on Z [my cousin],” to ultimately surrendering, and then just thinking I’m trapped.
I remember my friend Margo telling me about how her wealthy sister-in-law called her one year and announced, “You’re doing Thanksgiving.” And how she called her mother whining. “Mom,” she complained, “you know I don’t have the space or the money or the time to make Thanksgiving for all of us.” And how her mother had said, “Well, honey, can you get out of it?” And Margo had said no, and her mother said, Well, if you can’t get out of it — get into it.
I have been using that to help with my resistance to things that I don’t want to do but have to do. And it works most of the time. So here I am, knowing this is what I have to do, and trying to will myself to just get into it.
And then the rabbi started singing. She has been on sabbatical, and I swear while she was gone she must have had private tutorials with Pavarotti, Barbra Streisand, and Taylor Swift, because her voice was clearer and stronger and more beautiful than ever (or maybe it was my ears). But the minute I heard the Hebrew “Ma Tovu,” I felt my childhood synagogue with the burgundy velvet seats, the organ, and the hidden choir, my father’s teasing and loving voice calling me the “rebbetzin,” since no one but me in the family cared much about attending services (except of course the High Holidays), my grandfather davening at the Orthodox shul, my grandmother’s Friday night immaculate kitchen, with the starch-ironed white damask tablecloth, the Sabbath candles burning, and the smell of the challah baking, and surprise, surprise, right there in the Hebrew Center, I started crying. They weren’t just nostalgic tears. They were tears of longing.
I have been going to some of the events at the new Chabad, because I love the rabbi and his wife, and that has been pretty fulfilling, reminding me of my strong Jewish roots.
But sitting and reading the Hebrew (yes, I can read Hebrew, but since I learned by rote, I don’t know what I’m reading unless I check out the translation — a beef I always had with my Jewish education) filled my heart, and reminded my soul of what has been missing.
And then came the explanation of the parsha (the teaching) of the week. And here’s why I’m even writing this column. The whole thing was about second chances. I know when I read horoscopes, I can always force the message into some magical meaning, and when I get the fortune cookie after dinner at Mikado, I always find some kind of mystical connection. So of course when the parsha was read, talking about second chances, the words were blinking in neon above my head. You have a second chance with your Judaism.
This wasn’t revelatory. It’s about the thousandth chance. I don’t know what my resistance is. Maybe it’s because my husband is so anti–organized religion, maybe because I completely get what he means, or maybe it’s because over the years, I’ve substituted the woods, the trees, and all of nature as my temple.
But this is a thank-you to my precious cousin Z, because without it I wouldn’t have had this moving spiritual experience; the knowing that there is ALWAYS someone or something in one’s life that needs a second, or a third or even a thousandth chance. Usually me.
