I don’t have a plan yet for the long-term viability of this project, but, in the spirit of the “one day at a time” attitude that I am desperately trying to cultivate in myself, I had a short thought that I would like to share in honor of Chanukah, the holiday of light and the redemptive power of hope. (See this post from last year for a longer thought about Chanukah.) I also wanted to thank you all for your comments, both public and private. They mean the world to me. And, rest assured that I won’t continue with this if I decide that it isn’t good for me. I need to balance that feeling, though, with the thought that it might just actually be my best chance at (psychological, if not spiritual) redemption. Scary. (Oh, let’s be realistic, what isn’t?)

Psalm 116 appears in the Hallel that we say every morning during Chanukah.

Psalms Chapter 116 תְּהִלִּים

The entire Psalm is beautiful.

Here, in the middle of the joyous Hallel, where mountains dance like rams, we admit that we are, right now, in a place of “trouble and sorrow.”

Now that I look, I see that other parts of Hallel also contain a strong element of calling out to God from the narrow place, or מיצר. For some reason, I always had the impression of Hallel being a wholly celebratory, happy sort of collection of Psalms (that I loved to hate on when depressed). I probably had that assumption because we say it at celebratory occasions, like Chanukah, Sukkot, Pesach, and Rosh Chodesh. Also, probably, because this Psalm as well as many of the others is expressing the point of view of a person who has already been saved or redeemed: “וְלִי יְהוֹשִׁיעַ.” “He saved me.” “כִּי חִלַּצְתָּ נַפְשִׁי, מִמָּוֶת:    אֶת-עֵינִי מִן-דִּמְעָה; אֶת-רַגְלִי מִדֶּחִי.” “For Thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from stumbling.” But before today, I never noticed that some of Hallel can be read as coming from a place of deep despair.

I think that my favorite line from this Psalm is the fervent hope expressed in these distressed words from the seventh verse:
“!שׁוּבִי נַפְשִׁי, לִמְנוּחָיְכִי”
“Let my soul return to your rest!”

My soul, which was once at rest and at peace, is no longer. I beseech you, God, to return my soul to your rest, to your peace, to your comfort. Please God, listen to me, and speak to me, and, most importantly, let me hear your words and feel your eternal presence in my life.

The word, “מְנוּחָיְכִי” which comes from the root נח, or rest, has many connotations to me. Rest and comfort, but also, somehow, a loving embrace of God. Perhaps because it sounds (a little bit) like the word חיבוק, or hug. I don’t know why.

I am certainly not feeling that מנוחה, or rest, at the moment, but it’s times like these that I am so glad that I have these resources at my disposal. These words, in my lips and on my heart, with which to say:

Please, God, let me have back what I once had.

Please, God, let me have the kind of peaceful, restful soul that I imagine that others have, that may have always eluded me.

Please, God, incline your ear towards me. Be gracious and compassionate even when I cannot be. Especially when I cannot be.

And if it’s not quite true that “הֶאֱמַנְתִּי, כִּי אֲדַבֵּר;    אֲנִי, עָנִיתִי מְאֹד,” “I trusted even when I spoke: ‘I am greatly afflicted,’” well, maybe saying the words makes it so. In this case, I sort of think it does. Whatever reason I say these words, my saying them, in the midst of my great affliction, means that I still have hope or trust in God, or something greater than myself and my own deep personal pain and sorrow. I must still believe, a teeny tiny bit, in redemption, or I wouldn’t say these words.

And, finally, the words that get me every time:

I shall. Because that’s where God wants me, and that’s where I will be able to “כּוֹס-יְשׁוּעוֹת אֶשָּׂא” or “lift up the cup of salvation.”

Happy Chanukah!

A few weeks ago, I shared material from this blog, in person, with a group of people. Their reaction was underwhelming, leading me to wonder why I embarked on this project in the first place and whether I should continue. However, one person, at least, from that group seems to have “gotten” it, and told me–nay, commanded me–that I had to keep writing even when I felt terrible.

Here’s the thing that I was not able to articulate to her at the time, but that I have spent a lot of time thinking about since. When I started this project, I was in a very different place. I was, quite frankly, not depressed and had not been for some time. This is important for two reasons:

(1) The stakes were different. I wasn’t “outing” myself, to the extent that writing this is “outing” myself as someone currently somewhat incapacitated by depression. (So many qualifications! “Outing” in the sense that people will not hire, befriend, or date me if they know that I suffer from the nasty scourge of depression. “Somewhat incapacitated” because if I said “totally incapacitated,” which is honestly how I feel a lot of the time, I would be digging my own personal/professional/educational grave.)

(2) The experience was different. Writing about depression having come through it is disconcerting, but also empowering: “Wow! Look at how terrible I felt and look at how much better I feel now!” It reconfirms my belief in hope, change, and the potential for a less-depressing future for myself. Writing about depression while depressed feels extremely unhelpful. I will even go as far as to say that it feels destructive. In some ways, it makes the feelings more real and more intractable to see them written out as harsh black letters on a blindingly white background. Although any number of people will tell you that the alternative–bottling it all up–is much less helpful, it seems to me that talking about the feelings in therapy or with a sympathetic, human, flesh and blood listener maybe the best way to prevent the bottling effect. Writing about it actually makes me feel worse right now.

So, it’s not that I don’t have anything to say. Of course I have things to say. I am a spewing volcano at the moment, spewing mostly tears, but also rage and disappointment and regret and trembling fear.

It’s that I don’t have things to say that I want to say.

I want to say that
…my belief in God gives me hope that things will improve.
…my belief in God makes me think that there is a reason that things go bad, when they do. That there is some grand plan.
…my membership in the Jewish people makes me feel less alone in the world.
…my observance of Shabbat gives me a break, in time, from the unending grind of depression and anxiety.
…my dedication to a tefillah practice makes me feel heard and listened to, even when depression does bring me down or otherwise make me feel alone.
…my engagement in the study of Jewish texts reaffirms my belief that Judaism deals with, and accepts, both the good and the bad. Life is hard. Judaism sees that.

All of those things are sometimes true or were once true. In that sense, Judaism has been extremely life-affirming for me. It’s been a salvation of sorts, and I don’t use that term lightly.

But, really, at the moment, I’m feeling that
…if and when I believe in God, I rail against him for producing someone who scorns life and generally makes a mess of it. Really, God? This is your idea of tselem elohim, a being created in the Divine image?
…my membership in the Jewish people makes me feel utterly alone. Everyone else is out there, being all communal, and nobody is noticing my immense pain and suffering. Nobody cares. (Of course nobody cares! I am far too wrapped up in my own misery to notice anyone else’s pain; why should they notice mine?)
…my membership in the Jewish people makes me wonder why nobody says anything when I cry in shul. All the time. I guess they don’t want to get involved. I can’t say that I really blame them.
…Shabbat is the world’s loneliest day when all you feel is pain and your normal modes of tempering that pain–through the numbing and relatively non-destructive distractions of the television and internet are forbidden. On Shabbat, there is nothing to do but contemplate the misery of your existence and of life itself.
…it is inherently lonely to observe Shabbat alone when the rest of the world mostly celebrates it in family units or groups of friends.
…I am so done with tefillah. Not because I don’t think God is answering. I don’t know if that was ever a primary reason for me to pray. And maybe it would be good for me, just like exercise is good for me. But I mostly can’t bring myself to do it, except sometimes when I make it to shul on Shabbat. That’s been true for a very, very long time and not the sort of thing that you generally want to admit on a blog dedicated to the intersection between prayer and depression.
…my engagement in the study of Jewish texts reaffirms my belief that Judaism expends a lot of time and energy worrying about small, inconsequential minutiae, at the expense of ignoring real human suffering.

Wow. See, that is all very depressing and I don’t feel at all better, having written it. I imagine that you don’t, either.

Although a blog that’s going to make me and you both feel worse does not have much point, in my eyes, I also feel that there is some inherent value in shining a spotlight on the parts of Judaism that make life harder to bear, not easier to bear.

You few who are reading–do you want to read this kind of thing? Does it add anything positive or worthwhile to the world? Maybe it’s time to take a hiatus from this project until my brain is functioning better, which is probably going to be after I’m feeling less depressed.

At one time, I had a vision of fostering the creation of a warm and embracing Jewish community that wouldn’t let people like me–and all of you–feel through the cracks and feel so utterly uncared for. I no longer really think that vision is realistic. I think it’s probably up to each one of us to save ourselves and ask as little from others as possible. What a terribly depressing thought…

I promised you, last time, that I would tell you what I am doing instead of “waiting around for Christmas to dry up all my tears,” but since nothing I am actually able to get myself to do is making a difference, so far, I don’t think I’ll go into details about that. I’ll just share the advice that I gave to an acquaintance who came to ask me how to deal with depression, knowing that I’ve dealt with it. It’s the same advice that any website will give you: Therapy. Drugs. Exercise. Sunlight. Rinse and repeat. Over and over again. And try not to do too much permanent damage to yourself in the meantime.

I also wanted to leave you with these two things to read:

• “Don’t Go,” a post on the Ask Moxie blog (read the comments, too). This blog is mostly a parenting blog, and I am not a parent, but I find Moxie and her readers’ attitudes refreshing.
• “Among Rocks and Stones,” by Peter Bebergal from Tablet Magazine. I no longer remember exactly why I wanted to share this second piece, only that I had a strong desire to after I read it several months ago. Maybe it will do something for you.

I’m sorry, also, for the somewhat scattershot nature of this post, and perhaps some other recent posts, as well. This is my brain on depression. It does not function nearly as well.

Often, in this blog, I try to share the hope and comfort that Judaism provides for me. Today, though, there will be none of that. I am writing about Sukkot, which is just behind us, because, for me, it is the harbinger of a season of despair.

I dread Sukkot during most years. In addition to whatever else might cause my depression, it has a strong seasonal component. Like clockwork, the darkness inevitably falls during Sukkot. I stand up to daven Maariv on that first night, declaring that Sukkot is “זמן שמחתינו,” the season of our joy, and it’s like a slap in the face, a direct taunt from God or our tradition: “It’s supposed to be the time of happiness, but you can feel none of it!” [Insert evil throaty laugh here.]

Year in and year out, as the days shorten and my life seems to crumble around me in a heap, I force my lips to bitterly spit out “זמן שמחתינו.” I cringe whenever I hear a well-meaning person, citing Deuteronomy 16:14, declare the important mitzvah, or commandment, to be happy during the holiday of Sukkot:

Most years, the Sukkot liturgy is like salt in my wounds. It feels like Judaism is making my depression worse, not better. It’s kicking me when I’m already down, not lending an arm to help me back up.

The culmination of Sukkot with Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah, where we dance with the Torah, is possibly the worst part of it. It’s still the season of our joy, but we’re supposed to not only intone it during services, but dance about it, and about the Torah, which tells us to be happy. There are many divrei Torah floating about questioning how we can be commanded to feel something: to be happy, to love, etc. Perhaps I will write something about that, one day. Today, though, is about how the contrast between Jewish tradition and my real life is sometimes incredibly painful. There is something simply soul-rending about declaring happiness while being embraced by overshadowing darkness.

I didn’t actually feel depressed during Sukkot this year. I thought that I might have, somehow, escaped Seasonal Affective Disorder this year. Silly me! It hit a week later. And, oh boy, did it hit hard. It knocked the wind right out of me and I’m still very much on the floor, desperately gasping for breath.

It’s much easier, in so many ways, to use this blog as a vehicle to write about hope when I am actually feeling some or to write about the darkness when it’s past. (It’s a little hard to imagine it when it’s past, but luckily, I have written enough things from the well of sadness that I can refer to them when I’ve forgotten just how bad it can be.) The hardest thing, I think, is to write about the soul-deadening depression when it’s actually wrapped around my head, muffling the world around me, sapping me of energy, desire, motivation, and any smidgen of belief in myself.

When it’s not shut down completely, my mind races around in circles, trying to find a way out, trying to distinguish truth from lie, fact from fiction.

I can’t do this. I just can’t live my life. I wasn’t made for this world. Maybe if I die, I can get a do-ever. With a new personality or a different life or some of each. I screw up everything I attempt to do. Nobody likes me. I have no friends. I will never be able to just get up in the morning and go about my day. It will be a struggle forever, every morning anew. God, I can’t believe how I mess everything up. Why can’t I move? Why can’t I go to bed? Why am I watching television? Why don’t I just turn out the light? Why can’t I fall asleep? Why can’t I just cook meals for the week on Sunday, like everyone says I should? Why did I buy and eat a whole pint of Ben & Jerry’s? I don’t understand anything. I hate my life. I miss myself–the self that doesn’t have these thoughts. Everybody thinks I’m lazy. Lazy and a failure. Who’s going to want to date a psycho like me? I’ll be alone forever. I need to like myself first. I hate myself! How can I like myself when I can’t do anything? I just can’t do it. Not at all. Not even a tiny bit. If I could just get up on time tomorrow morning, everything would be alright. If I could just get some exercise, everything would be alright. If I could just make myself some dinner, everything would be alright. I can’t move. I want to die. I want to lie here until something, until anything, in my life changes. Now. Change now! If I was a better person, it wouldn’t be this way. I’ll be like this forever. Or maybe just every October-December. That’s not acceptable. I can’t be this way every fall. It will kill me. Or I will kill myself. It amounts to the same thing. Well, if I can just wait it out until December, it will get better. How much damage can I do between now and late December? Oh, God. I can do so much damage.

I don’t know if writing these things out will help me, or you, or some other person that you forward this to. I’ve been through this enough times, and I know myself well enough, to know that this is at least 95% depression and no more than 5% me. I know this because, thank God, there have been many times, especially over the past five years, when I have not been depressed at all, and the internal monologue has been different. There were days–heck, there were days in September–when I woke up, hit snooze once, got out of bed, took a shower, and set about my day, excited and happy and sure that I was doing what made me most fulfilled in the world. I wish I could have bottled that and sprinkled some onto my pillow this month. I never like the mornings. I probably never will. But there are times when I just do stuff and don’t have to have an internal battle to get things done. There are days–months, seasons–when I don’t think, “Fuck it, another day. מודה אני, my foot!”

Unfortunately, knowing that isn’t enough to stop feeling depressed, though. Would that it were! And I don’t really want to wait until late December for the fog to lift.

Aside: It’s a little odd that my depression always seems to lift in late December. That is when the days start lengthening, but they are awfully short then! It might be that the superficial commercial cheer of Christmas helps me, somehow. (I’ve missed it when I’ve been in Israel then, although when I’m in the US, I miss the cheer of all of the Jewish holidays that permeate the malls in Israel.)

When I was thinking of the confluence of “זמן שמחתינו” and soul-deadening SAD, I was wondering if this is what depressed Christians feel around Christmas time. JOY! abounds on the airwaves then. Even if I’m depressed, I don’t feel bad hearing that, the way I do intoning “זמן שמחתינו.” I sort of feel happier hearing all the Christmas cheer if I want to let it affect me and neutral towards it if I don’t want to. I would think that if I felt any connection to Christmas at all, that I would feel worse feeling sad, if I already felt sad. [Wow. That is not a great sentence. Depression brain, anyone?] Somehow, it’s my very deep connection to Sukkot, and my desire for it to be what God declares it to be, that makes me feel so terrible about feeling depressed over Sukkot. Does that make any sense at all?

I hope to write more soon about what I’m going to do instead of simply waiting for Christmas to come and dry up all my tears.

I saw this posted online, and received permission from the author, Rabbi Simcha Raphael, PhD, to repost here. I thought it was a strikingly beautiful tribute to the holiday of Sukkot. Well done!

Under a Fragile Thatched Roof

Full-breasted mother moon
And a subtle glitter band
Of twinkling stars
Transparently peek through
From the heavenly spheres
To this temporary
Transient human realm
Naked, undefended against the elements
I sit in silent contemplation
In this sukkah of peace
Unprotected and vulnerable
In the face of life’s ever-changing transitions
Knowing one turn of the cosmic clock
One subtle stopped heartbeat
An unanticipated wind of change
Death, divorce, destruction
Hurricane, shadow eruptions of hell
Fire, flood, fatality or fanaticism
Or any one of a million other maybes
Can wipe away this moment
This life
This most fragile sukkah
This life story I call my own
And bring in its wake
Who knows what
Where
Why
Or why not.
And all I can do
Is live with the unfolding
Of the blessing and the curse
And choose life
As well as I am able to.

So in this temporary
Sukkah of peace
I am reminded
To harvest in holy humility
A sacred sense
Of how good it is
To be alive
How good it is
For sisters and brothers
To sit, sing and pray
Together as one.

It is, indeed, wonderful to be alive! Chag sameyach!

I can write about teshuva through Hoshanah Rabbah, right? I sure hope so.

I used to struggle with the concept of teshuva, or repentance. All of the chest-beating, liturgical prostration, and communal wailing—what did it have to do with me? I believed that I was supposed to consider myself as an essentially good person. Convincing myself to feel guilty about things I might or might not have done since last Rosh Hashanah made me wonder if I had “self-esteem issues.” The fleeting moments of guilt, when I transgressed a minor law or even a few major ones throughout the year, never seemed to get me anywhere. Even trying to collect all of those little moral and ethical slips, as I religiously tried to do every Elul, didn’t seem to improve my moral fiber. The promises I made never stuck: to remember to enumerate daily the things for which I was grateful, to say all brachot in recognition of the good that God bestowed upon me, to avoid speaking lashon hara, to stop thinking I was smarter than everyone else, and to try to understand my other peoples’ perspectives on life. I felt like I was pretty much the same person, year in and year out, and I was mostly happy that way. A friend told me that if I wasn’t improving, I was deteriorating, but that never resonated with me. “I am who I am,” I concluded, “and while it’s important to strive for self-improvement, yearly chest-beating and sin-listing won’t get me there.”

Over the past ten years, as I have learned so much about myself through psychotherapy, my feelings about teshuva have shifted dramatically. The thoughts that I am about to share consitute the deepest and truest knowledge that I possess. Of all of the things that I know in this world, this is surely the most important. It is at the core of my being.

Teshuva is therapy; therapy is teshuva. Teshuva literally means “return.” In my experience, therapy is also a return, although to the self, rather than to God. But they are interdependent paths: one cannot return to God without having first returned to oneself, and a return to the self is often accompanied by a return to God.

The steps through teshuva and through psychotherapy are identical:

1. First comes a deep-seated inner desire to change.
2. Then, a recognition of specific things that are going wrong in one’s life.
3. Third, taking responsibility for whatever is wrong.
4. Fourth, an honest evaluation of how one can prevent what went wrong from happening again.
5. Fifth, actively preventing the wrong thing from happening again.
6. Finally, recognizing and appreciating–and celebrating!–the changes that one has made.

The deep-seated inner desire to change is no simple matter. It cannot come from guilt, from outside disapproval of one’s life or actions, from a book, a lecture, or a teshuva drasha [sermon]. It can only come from the deepest part of one’s soul, from a feeling at the pit of one’s stomach that one wants to be different than one currently is. Many things can cause these feelings to bubble to the surface: a particularly difficult emotional experience, months or years of depression, not being the person you want to be in a relationship with someone else, or something as simple as seeing someone older who reminds you of yourself and whom you don’t want to end up as. It builds up and suddenly hits: “My life isn’t working. I do not have the life I wish to have. I want to change. I want things to be better.”

The next step is to keep one’s eyes and ears open to the elements that make up this dissatisfaction, whether it is a general sense that “Bad things keep happening to me,” “My life is full of the mundane; I do not aspire to greater things,” or “I’m always so angry,” or things as concrete as “I do not relate well to others,” “I never daven anymore,” or “I am always late to work.” Even after accepting the fact that something is wrong, it sometimes takes some time to determine what that is—it’s not always what your first instinct tells you. I have spent a lot of time breaking down “generally wrong” feelings into specific reactions and emotions.

That realization and commitment to change and recognizing what is wrong are hard enough, but they are only the beginning, and the next step is infinitely more difficult. Contrary to my earlier feelings about teshuva, teshuva isn’t about guilt at all. It is about responsibility. Guilt is stultifying, mucky, and backward-looking. Responsibility is more difficult, yet somehow liberating and forward-looking. The realization that I needed to take responsibility for situations that were not my fault–and maybe no one’s fault–was among the most powerful in my life. I accept that while I may not have created the circumstances that led to something being wrong, only I can create better circumstances for myself. I, and only I, am responsible for getting myself to a better place. That’s what being an adult is about, and while it sounds both trite and obvious, but at the time of the realization, it felt like a bitter pill to swallow. The difference between hearing it, accepting it, and living it is infinite.

An important corollary to taking responsibility for my own life is understanding that only other people can take responsibility for their own lives; only they can change themselves. I cannot shoulder that responsibility for anyone else, just as they cannot shoulder it for me. This is sometimes difficult and hurtful, but it is really the way things seem to work in this world.

Once I realized what was wrong, and that only I could change it, I began to undergo the arduous process of change. I wanted to try to illustrate this arduous process of change, but I’m not sure there’s an example that I feel comfortable sharing that still feels true to who I am. I will try, anyway.

Say I realize that things that I come to recognize that comments that I mean to be helpful and well-meaning (“I think there should be a comma there” or “I think you’re thinking of the word ‘circumnavigate’”) are regarded by their recipients as nitpicky and terribly condescending. I am actually hurting people. I don’t want to hurt people anymore. So I come to recognize this as a problem in my life. Through introspection and therapy, I realize that I make more of these corrective, detail-oriented comments about others speech and writing when I am feeling threatened in some way. So even though I don’t consciously want to put others down, my subconscious (or whatever, I am no psychoanalyst) is spouting this condescending tone to put others in “their place” before they can attack me. These are all steps 1-3 above. Now, the change. How?

The consciousness that I become this annoying verbal copy-editor when I am feeling threatened, and that this harms my relationships with others and outweighs the benefit I derive from these comments, leads me to greater awareness of things I might say, that might hurt others, when I am feeling threatened. Now, to change, I pay more attention to how I am feeling, and when I feel threatened–which I sometimes know or I sometimes only discern by my immense desire to make sure others know that they are wrong–I pay careful attention to what comes out of my mouth. And this is hard. I want to show people how smart I am. I don’t know why. But I can want to do that, and I can feel threatened, and through this hard work of teshuva and psychotherapy and change, I can feel things without acting on them.

I can think about why I feel threatened and either say, “Why are you threatening me?” (or some more polite modification thereof) when a boss is questioning my ability to do my job, or handle the actual feelings of being under threat in some other way. Perhaps, I may realize that I am overreacting because something someone else is doing is triggering an old memory or experience for me. Perhaps, I may see that I am reacting to something this person (or someone else!) said to me when were eight years old together, and not what she or he is actually saying now. I can handle the feeling, now that I’ve identified it, in some other way, rather than being supercilious and/or condescending towards others, which I have decided is undesirable. I can’t change how others act towards me in any real way, nor can I change how I feel about them when they act that way. What I can do it change how I respond both towards their actions and my resulting feelings. Learning to sometimes bear feelings—not to repress them, not to express them, just to feel them—constitutes a major part of my life’s work.

And suddenly, I’ve changed. Not completely. There is no instant link between taking responsibility for things and being able to do them differently. But it happens, or at least it has for me, if I keep these things in both my mind (that analytical part of my inner being) and my heart (the part that starts these arguments). I never would have believed it, but it turns out that you can cultivate patience, wonder, gratefulness, and sensitivity towards others. It takes time and effort and some disappointment, but I fully believe in the human capacity to change. This is the greatest gift of both the Jewish tradition of teshuva and the modern practice of psychotherapy.

As I suspected as an adolescent, it makes no sense to limit the teshuva (or therapy) process to one month of the year or to a physical ritual undertaken at morning services. Therapy, like teshuva, happens all year long. But Elul is a time for meta-teshuva, or meta-therapy. It is a time for stepping outside the therapist’s cozy office, out of the place of constant inner analysis, to ask the big questions: Is this process working for me? What am I putting into this process? What am I getting out of it? Am I in a better place, spiritually or psychologically, than I was a year ago? How is my relationship with my therapist? How is my relationship with God? And most importantly, how is my relationship with myself?

If we did this constantly, change would not be possible. If Elul happened all year, we would spend all our time in the meta-space, leaving no room for mucking about with jealousy, disappointment, joy, anger, gratitude, or resentment, leaving no room for making the mistakes that enable reflection and change. Luckily for us, the Jewish calendar is set up to give us eleven months for teshuva and one month to think about how we can do it better.

I think it is significant that in anticipation of our New Year, we are required to effect change, while anticipation of the secular New Year brings a flurry of promises, or resolutions, to change. My original, adolescent understanding of teshuva, which was guilt over past sins and promises never to repeat them, was more akin to New Years resolutions than to the dynamic, participatory process that I now understand to be the essence of teshuva.

Finally, contrary to my friend’s earnest assumption, it’s not true that if you aren’t improving, you’re deteriorating. That is an attitude designed to stimulate guilt without understanding. The truth is, if you aren’t improving, you’re staying the same. And staying the same, in response to a vibrant, confusing, joyful, tragic, colorful, discordant, laughing, and crying world is worse than deteriorating. Deteriorating is at least a response, an acknowledgement that we are affected by the world around us. If we aren’t motivated by the world around us, if we don’t change in response to events, people, and emotions, then we aren’t really living, we are stagnant and stubborn. The teshuva season, heralded by the shofar’s daily siren throughout the month of Elul and drawing to a close over the coming holiday of Sukkot, shocks us out of that stagnant and stubborn place and shows us a better way.

Note: This was originally written in 2003, greatly revised in 2006, and revised again in 2009.

An anonymous essay of mine, titled “The Medicine Cabinet,” appears on page five of the June 2009 issue of Sh’ma: A Journal of Jewish Responsibility.

If you’re coming here from there, welcome! I have not had time to write new, content-heavy posts for this blog for far too long, but I hope to get back to it at some point later this summer.

Neat little widget for online Sh’ma reader below:

Look Inside >> June 2009

First of all, an apology for not having written since April. I have not given up on this project. The truth is, my financial situation changed somewhat back in March, so I’ve been spending the time that I used to spend on this applying for jobs and to programs for next year. I have more substantial posts lurking in the recesses of my brain, though, and hope to find time to write them up before too much time passes. Thank you for staying with me.

In the meantime, another note about an upcoming event related to this blog. See below!

There is what looks like a fascinating evening on “Jewish psychology” at the Begin Center, cosponsored by Beit Morasha of Jerusalem and The Rotenberg Center for Jewish Psychology. I am especially interested in the film portion of the evening, and in the panelists speaking about loss and bereavement from an educational perspective and from a midrashic perspective.

I am not 100% sure about this whole “Jewish psychology” thing. I know that it is a field created by Professor Mordechai Rotenberg. A little bit is written about it here. I recently bought two books about Jewish psychology, both published in Israel and written in Hebrew, and have been working my way through one of them (very slowly). “Jewish psychology,” as a field, might be ridiculous or, even worse, dangerous. I am deeply curious, though. I know that it is based on ideas from midrash, kabbalah, and hassidut, and I am generally of the belief that classic Jewish texts have psychological and emotional truths to teach us (and we, them). I am wary, though, of attempts to reject Western psychological ideas, since I think that those ideas have done me, and many others, a lot of good. (I am less wary of attempts to correct, or modify, those ideas.) So, in sum: curious and suspicious.

In any case, this evening event takes place next Wednesday, June 24, from 7-10 pm. The general topic of the evening is “Bereavement and Loss: Between Separation and Continuity.” It costs 30 shekels and will be entirely in Hebrew.

Please pass this information along to anyone else you know who might be interested. Thanks!

The translation of the e-mail announcement (above) is:

Okay, I’ll admit it, although it is difficult, at first, to admit to such a perverse idea: Sometimes I miss Egypt.

There, I said it. At times I find myself wistfully wishing for slavery. I am apparently not the first to feel this way (Numbers 11:4-6):

For years, I did not understand the complaining of the Israelites in the desert after Moses and God miraculously took them out of the iron furnace of Egypt. (This was not a solitary occurrence: see Exodus 16:1-3 and Numbers 14:1-4 in addition to the verses cited above.) These verses (Deuteronomy 4:32-34) pretty well sum up the uniquely miraculous feat of the Exodus from Egypt (you may think you recognize verse 34 from the haggadah but you are probably thinking of Deuteronomy 26:8):

It was a miraculous, amazing, earth-shatteringly impossible feat! Why weren’t they grateful? How could anyone want to be a slave? It’s almost criminal to wish for such a thing, when all the enslaved peoples of the world must hungrily yearn for freedom. What is going on here? Why do I miss Egypt and what do I mean by “Egypt”?

We are each supposed to remember and feel the suffering we experienced in Egypt. As this one line states very succinctly (from the Haggadah and Mishna Pesachim 10:5):

בְּכָל דּוֹר וָדוֹר חַיָּב אָדָם לִרְאוֹת אֶת עַצְמוֹ כְּאִלוּ הוּא יָצָא מִמִּצְרַיִם

In each generation, a person must look upon himself as if he had personally left Egypt.

Egypt means many things to many people. Some think of the actual experience of being an ancient Israelite in the land of Egypt. Others think of more modern versions of slavery or suffering, or of the Holocaust. For me, the first time I connected to the seder on a visceral level was after I had experienced both depression and redemption from depression.

One year, sitting at the seder, the salt water suddenly tasted just like the tears that I remembered shedding continuously for months, while in the deepest pit of despair. The dense, sticky charoset reminded me of the laborious process of emerging from bed every dusky morning and getting through the day. The tasteless cardboard-like matzah, caught in my throat, reminded me of countless meals eaten without tasting a thing, of numerous lectures plodded through uncomprehendingly. And then, finally, the sweet taste of freedom, redemption, and rebirth, first in the egg in salt water, which tastes scrumptious after the rounds of matzah and marror, and then–the chicken soup! Nothing says freedom quite like a rich bowl of my mother’s chicken soup. (The matzah kugel tastes a little bit less like freedom.) The freedom that I experienced that year, the first year that I connected the ancient Israelites’ Egypt with my Egpyt, was remarkable. I emerged transformed and with a new understanding of both slavery and freedom.

So why my newfound sympathy for the Israelites who complained in the desert, who took their freedom for granted and wished to revert to slavery?

Freedom is trickier than we usually admit at Passover time, when everyone is busy extoling its virtues. Freedom is not without its complications. That first spoonful of chicken soup is incomparably wonderful, but freedom wears thin after awhile. Freedom is scary. Depression is horrible, but it’s safe. I am only now beginning to understand that.  Depression, like slavery, limits one’s horizons. All you need to do is get through the day. Expectations of onself, and from others, are minimized. If you want to kill yourself, and you don’t, that’s enough to make the day a smashing success. If you don’t want to get out of bed in the morning, and you do, that’s enough to make that day worthwhile, almost regardless of what you do once you get out of bed. A slave has to meet his quota of bricks, and while he may suffer tremendously under his taskmasters, he knows what they expect of him and it is in their best interest to keep him fed and sheltered from the harsh noonday sun. There is safety and security in that. Depression is not fun. It’s miserable to want to die, or to have your singular goal for the day to get out of bed (shower and tooth-brushing optional). It was incredibly frightening to put myself into a hospital when I was afraid that I would hurt myself, but also incredibly wonderful to have my basic needs met by someone else while I was there (“the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic”!). To be looked after, to feel cared for, even in misery, had something over this freedom that wearies my soul.

Freedom demands choices. Choices every day. All the time. One after another. Big choices and small, significant and entirely insignificant.

Freedom means expectations. Freedom means that getting up and making bricks every day isn’t enough–not nearly enough. And that is very scary.

I thought that once I left Egypt, which pretty much happened several years ago, things would be easy. The Promised Land glimmered hopefully in the not-too-distant distance. The Promised Land of being able to go to sleep at night, get up in the morning, and do something useful, fulfilling, and interesting with my day in between. The Promised Land of a husband, children, and a full professional and communal life. But it turns out that there is a vast desert between slavery and the Promised Land. I am traversing that desert right now.

Sometimes, I get a burst of energy and run a mile, quickly, towards the Promised Land. I see things–wonderful, exciting, gratifying things–that I could not have imagined while enslaved in Egypt. I picture a book-lined room and myself, sitting in a comfortable chair, writing eloquently and movingly about things that matter. I picture conversations with close friends and utter strangers about this crazy world we live in, and how we can make it more bearable for all of us. But then I get closer, and I see a lifetime of choices, including many difficult ones, before me. I see all of the responsibility of freedom, and I get scared. I run–literally run!–back towards Egypt. I crawl into bed for a few days. I yearn for confinement, for a world small enough to take in with a single sweeping glance. I yearn for reduced expectations, for a kindly nurse to take my temperature and bring me three square meals and give me something in the form of a small pill to help me sleep at night. I’ll make bricks, I think. I’ll curl up and sleep at odd hours of the day and night. I’ll contemplate death and feel worthless and small and insignificant. Just don’t make go out there and live my life as a free woman! Please! Anything but that!

These thoughts make me sad, and they don’t last forever. At first, I misunderstood the situation, and thought that those thoughts meant that I was back in Egypt. But I am not. I am out. I have been liberated. I walked out of Egypt years ago under the power of my own two feet and with the help of God’s mighty, outstretched hand and his perceptive psychotherapists, and I have not gone back since. That doesn’t mean that I don’t occasionally look back, from my vantage point atop a hill in the desert, halfway between Egypt and the Promised Land, and wish to be back there.

One of the many things that I love about Judaism is that it allows me to say, “I don’t want to be free!” and even to throw a small temper-tantrum against the very freedom that I know saved me and makes my life worth living. Rather than being mortified at this thought, as I was when I began writing this post, I can open up the Tanakh and see that the Israelites had these ostensibly terrible thoughts as well. They weren’t saved by skilled psychotherapists and 20 mg/day of pharmaceuticals. They were saved by the almighty hand of God, by signs, wonders, and miracles galore. And if they could complain to cover up their fear, then I can be scared, too.

It is also no small comfort to know that it took the Israelites forty years to traverse the desert between Egypt and the Promised Land. One popular interpretation of this lengthy punishment for the sin of the spies (see Numbers 13 and 14) is that the Israelites needed the time to transition from slavery to freedom. They could not have entered the Promised Land immediately after redemption from Egypt. I feel that I, too, would be ill-suited to transition immediately from slavery to freedom. It’s just too hard. So I am trying to let myself take this time–not that I have much of a choice, apparently–and let myself look forward with anticipation and then balance that with a wistful look back at the misery that I leave behind me, without being too harsh with myself for this journey.

Leaving Egypt was merely the first step. Becoming free is a process and a journey, not a week-long holiday.

Passover and the exodus from Egypt is the story of the Jewish people for a very important reason: Because this is how we learn to live our lives. I’m not going to go so far as to suggest that this one story is the answer to all that ails humanity, but I think that it at least starts us off in a very good direction.

I. Suffering and Obligation

Deuteronomy 10:19:

Who among us has not been a “stranger in the land of Egypt”? Who among us has not felt enslaved, trapped, abused, despondent, neglected, stuck, addicted, bereft, or depressed?

Our intimate, personal knowledge of suffering from Egypt requires us to care not only for the stranger, but also for the fatherless and the widow (Deuteronomy 24:18-19):

II. Obligation Depends on Ability; Ability Depends on Knowledge

We are not obligated by God to do the impossible; we are only required to do the possible. We are not programmed for failure. What makes caring for the stranger, the widow, and the orphan possible?

Egypt makes it possible. Egypt means that you can and therefore must love the stranger, the widow, and the orphan.

An essential aspect of Pesach is that each of us must feel as if we were slaves in Egypt and then experience, through the seder, the moment of liberation. After liberation, in the Sinai desert, the Jewish people received the command to “love the stranger because you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” If we had not been “strangers in the land of Egypt,” we could not truly know the plight of the strangers who move among us and we could not be obligated to love them.

We who have suffered ourselves, and who have, whether through the strength given to us by God or by the power inherent in our beings, been freed from slavery or suffering, truly know how the ubiquitous “other” suffers and only we can truly help them.

I really do not want to say that we suffer in order to help others. Who would volunteer for that thankless task? I would be justifiably outraged if someone said that to me. However, once we see and know that suffering is for some unfathomable reason necessary in this world, we have no choice but to use our own personal suffering, and our own redemption, to help others.

III. My Religion

Religion, if it does anything at all, should make our lives better in some way. It makes our lives better not because it requires us to “love the stranger.” (That’s just a nice platitude–along the lines of “Have a nice day” or some other meaningless thing the grocery store clerk might mutter in your direction after you sign your receipt.)

No, Judaism makes our lives better because it insists that we–the ever-suffering, enslaved for 350 years, powerless Israelites, who were so deep in the mucky pit of despair that the Midrash tells us that they no longer wished for redemption–are particularly and specifically commanded to love the stranger, that utterly unknowable wayfarer, and the widow and orphan, who may not be strangers to a community but belong to no one and are therefore as alone as people can be.

There are other places in the Torah (writ large) where we are commanded to love our brothers, our friends, and our family. I do not think that such injunctions are unique to religion or to Judaism. Those are just common sense.

I am going to go out on a limb here and declare that reason given for the commandment to love the stranger is, alone, a good enough reason for me to engage deeply and honestly with Jewish texts. It was those, those who would otherwise be strangers, who came out in support of me during my times of deepest darkest alienation and unknowability, who made my life livable. When I felt most like an unloved and perhaps unlovable stranger, these people, my saviors, came out of nowhere to love me and make my life livable. If my life had not gradually become more and more livable since the Fall of 1998, I would, in a very real and tangible way, not be here today. I would still be enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt, or, much worse, I would be dead.

We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the L-rd, our G-d, took us out from there with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm. If the Holy One, blessed be He, had not taken our ancestors out of Egypt, then we, our children, and our children’s children would have remained enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt. Even if all of us were wise, all of us understanding, all of us knowing the Torah, we would still be obligated to discuss the exodus from Egypt; and everyone who discusses the exodus from Egypt at length is praiseworthy.

Given my understanding of the reason why the story of the Exodus plays such a central role in Judaism and in my life, it makes perfect sense that being wise, understanding, or knowing the Torah would not exempt us from telling this story. If anything, one who is considered wise, understanding, or knowing in Torah–one who sits in the ivory tower, as it were, far from the stranger, widow, and orphan–may need to tell it more. The goal of Pesach (and of Judaism) is to tell the story, to taste the salty tears of interminable bondage, and then, with a newfound knowledge of the stranger, the widow, and the orphan, to set out to ease their suffering. All who tell this story, all who consider themselves as part of this people, all who declare “עבדים היינו”–”We were slaves” every Pesach, are the inheritors of the Exodus and therefore of the injunction to love the stranger. All who taste the bitter marror join the fleeing Israelites as they cross the Sea of Reeds.

This–the centrality of Passover– is reason alone, for me, to belong to a chain of history and peoplehood stretching back to Egypt and stretching forward to redemption.

I hope that we can all journey, together, from the unmitigated suffering of Egypt to the bright, clear light of the Promised Land. I, and you, too, came out of Egypt.

Note: This piece is based on something that I wrote in 2006 and rewrote in 2008.

Just a short note about a conference that’s coming up that looks wonderful. It’s called “This Is My Prayer—Va’ani Tefillati: Jewish Women In Prayer” and is co-sponsored by The Jewish Theological Seminary, Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, Women of Reform Judaism, Women’s League for Conservative Judaism, the Abraham Joshua Heschel School, the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan, Kolot of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, and Lilith magazine.

Sunday, March 1, 2009, 9:45 am
Abraham Joshua Heschel High School  -  200 West End Ave.  -  New York City

The schedule is here.

Important note:

Advance registration is required; space is limited and registration will be on a first-come/first-served basis. We regret that we can accommodate NO WALK-IN registration for the conference.
Registrations must be received by February 24, 2009.

If you go, let me know how it is!