My search for the answer as my eldest turns 21.
How can I connect to my roots while feeling so ungrounded?
A dream sparks confusion, wistfulness, and mystical possibility.
And so I go. Around the corner, the incline lighting up my thigh muscles, I adlib my usual muttered warrior pep-talk, declaring that I can do it. I can climb this; I can take this time. I can do nothing now. I can do Nothing now.
When I lost faith in the rabbi that convinced me to be orthodox, one would have expected me to give up on orthodoxy altogether. Here's why I stayed committed.
We pass hoards, and mobs, and oceans of strangers everyday. Diverse, worldly, magnificent strangers; yet they remain nameless, anonymous; secondary characters in our stories.
I need to make a mess. Life is messy. Bloody. Full of spit-up and pee and you’re helpless and you need me and I need to accept that I actually need to wash my sheets more than every other week now. Or maybe not.
I did not have a good run up to, or a good time during, the High Holidays. The rain and the mosquitoes made hanging out in a sukkah a lot less fun than it was supposed to be.
As if I never left, I find comfort in the familiar landscape of the sanctuary, reopening the siddur, which fits in my splayed palms like it was there all along.
