From time to time, I find myself suffused with a deep longing to feel closer to my Judaism.
Tonight, I dug out an old, pocket-sized sefer tehillim, put it into a blue, velvet pouch, and placed it in the army green satchel that's recently, for reasons of practicality, supplanted my handbag.
I searched through my dusty, disordered bookshelf for an old friend in A B Yehoshua, couldn't find it, and settled on a beaten up second (or third? ) hand copy of Amos Oz's "My Michael", purchased at Dani Books on Ibn Yisrael on a bored, rainy, winter afternoon in Jerusalem. It now sits beside me on the bed. I may or may not re-read it, but that's not the point; it's a friend.
I resolved to say the Shema before sleep, and sought out Shoah documentaries on YouTube, to put on after the Shlomo Artzi concert to which I'm currently listening.
I know the images and stories will only intensify the painful feelings of trauma I'm currently experiencing, along with the rest of klal am yisrael, which, right now, is exactly the point. This, too, is a deep part of my Judaism.
My Judaism, molded on both sides of the sea (to paraphrase Achinoam Nini), is Friday night candles and dinner with my family (when they were alive,) before going out with friends; it's Shlomo Artzi, Amos Oz, Kavveret and Chumos, Kasha varnishkes, Bamba, and mezuzot on every door whose klafei have never once been checked. It's the occasional bracha when I think of it, and my collection of magnei David that always make me feel powerful when I wear them.
It's the stories my parents and grandparents told me that live in me in softened, pink hues, with rough edges so sharp they still cut deep.
It's so much of the trauma I, and my parents, and their parents, and so on, "midor ledor" have had woven into every cell of our being. The trauma is important, you see. It is the ner tamid that burns forever and keeps us warm in this cold world.
It's the scab that never heals, that at times, like now, I pick, just to see the blood.
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