What Kind of Year Has it Been?

Most days of the year do not force me to confront the somewhat strange lifestyle that I have chosen. Most days of the year being a Post-Denominational Traditional Secular Humanist Jew (add a few more somewhat meaningless adjectives if you will) means living a fairly normal life and studying and teaching the Talmud. I have even managed to make my peace with Shabbat, it rolls around often enough; so I know my weekend will probably include a mix of Friday night services, drinks with friends, a night at a gay club, a Shabbat meal, or some mix of the above. But there are times that the calendar poses a challenge to me and forces me into some kind of crazy juggling act between my secular values and my Jewish culture. Part of me wants badly to connect to and be inspired by the traditions that I grew up with, while the other wants to rework them in a way that jives with a new set of axioms and ideas.

When Rosh Chodesh Elul rolled around this year my juggling act shifted into a high stakes warp speed carnival act. I believe there is objective value in this season of taking stock and reviewing the year. However most of the traditions surrounding these days focus on a God that I am ambivalent at best about and a set of laws that I have no trouble not following. Despite not having any ideas myself, I stubbornly insisted that there must be a way to experience this season in a way that is both uniquely Jewish and totally secular.

Facebook came to the rescue, or so I thought. I went to a non-traditional Orthodox slichot service in Modi’in, and dragged my sister – ever supportive and ever patient – along with me. While enjoyable and somewhat different than any slichot I had experienced as an Orthodox Jew, the liturgy was the same tired and inaccessible liturgy it had always been. I drove away feeling the same chasm within me.

So tonight I sat in a circle on the beach with a handful of friends and we held an alternative slichot service. Forgoing the recitation of the full slichot service, we decided instead to focus on a few that were especially meaningful to us. Instead of reciting them to ourselves, we discussed them and compared them to other texts, isolated their overarching themes, and applied them to our own lives. Tonight slichot transcended its meditative qualities and viduy became about more than repentance. Tonight we formed a community and engaged in the cathartic act of teshuva in a very personal and meaningful way. We interfaced with the Jewish liturgy in a completely new way, but we did the same to Freud, Levinas, the Babylonian Talmud, and the New Testament; thereby creating – together – something wholly different.

In many ways this was an incredibly symbolic way for me to end the past. This year has been one of the most challenging and edifying years of my life. Jewish thinkers speak of teshuva as being more than just a return to God (whatever that may mean), but also being about a return to one’s truest self and soul. Thanks to unbelievably supportive friends, extremely talented and intelligent fellow students, a warm and inviting community, and the most amazing parents and sister for making this possible. Here’s to many more years of juggling together, challenging each other, and finding new ways within the old traditions to learn and grow.