Turning...

This the season of turning. Leaves lose their green in favor of bright hues of red, yellow, and brown. Days turn from long to short. And we are taught that this is the time of the turning of our hearts back toward God, toward derekh eretz, and most profoundly toward ourselves.

I came here to Massachusetts for this holiday season brimming with hope. I hoped that seeing my friends would be a welcome escape from the pressures of everyday life. I hoped that I would pull everything necessary together to lead meaningful services for my High Holiday pulpit. I hoped to renew relationships with people and places, and also to renew myself, and my own soul. I hoped for time to reflect, repent and resolve...I've found little of what I'd hoped for.

I arrived in Boston, and it was easy to see that time and tension are wearing thin on my best friends, and our relationships with each other are beginning to reveal their battle wounds. A temporary status to be sure, but we all feel it, and so rather than removing the stress from my life, it removes one kind of stress only to replace it with another (though one I admit I'd much rather deal with).

The holidays themselves, thus far, have been a very mixed experience. On Erev Rosh Hashanah, when all I had to do was sing and stand at the bimah next to the congregation's regular rabbi things were going quite well. But then, I took the bimah alone the next day, and it was clear that despite my best efforts, I couldn't bring the gap between myself and the group. Living lives of different experiences, and particularly different Jewish experiences, our expectations for the day just never quite seemed to align. I yearn for relationship with the davvening community when I lead services, but on Rosh Hashanah, I felt like I was performing, and worst of all performing without any ability to read my audience. I don't think the experience is really my fault, I was prepared and executed my goals well enough - but I had constructed goals from my very comfortably Reconstructionist perspective, and I just don't think that's what they were looking for - but I have so little experience outside of Reconstructionist frameworks, that I wouldn't even begin to no how to do things differently - and I'm not sure that I would even want to.

The second day of Rosh Hashanah, this ambivilance, whether or not I need to venture further outside of the Reconstructionist canopy than the traditionalist minyanim of my college days, is bulstered by my experience at Dorshei Tzedek. Though I was never a regular while in school, I occasionaly visited for a Shabbat or holiday, and it felt, as many Reconstructionist congregations do, much like home. Not exactly home to be sure, but a close proximity. It was exactly the meditative, passionate, engaging religous experience I needed. I felt squarely that I need not learn to do anything other than what makes me feel like this.

Just as the week looked like it might be on the upswing, my computer has stopped working, and I broke my car key in the car door (which is taking an enormous amount of time to fix). Amy Sales, a mentor and friend, suggests that I'm living out a sort of pattern. When I was at Brandeis last for a visit my purse was stolen, at Brandeis again and I break my key. She extended the metaphor that I had stubbornly tried to push out of my mind:

We spend our time during the holidays trying to unlock the gates of teshuvah, the gates of understanding, the gates of repentance, and the gates of forgiveness. We approach the gates of memory, hope, and of life itself, all in attempts to gain access to the ultimate gates - sha'arei tzedek the gates of righteousness, and justice. - But what happens when the keys -teshuvah, heshbon hanefesh, tefilla, tzedakah- you have used for so long no longer grant you access to even the most familiar gates?

Searching for answers, and wanting to hide from the frustrations of the past few days. I ventured out into the rain and walked the mile or so from my friends' apartment to the Brandeis Library.

I walked in and my heart was immediately at ease. I came to put together readings for the Yizkor service (hoping to salvage some of the experience as service leader for my High Holiday pulpit). I headed up the stairs, home, to the mezzanine. As I walked up the stairs, I imagined that at the top of those stairs I'd see Hillel, Raphi, and Sharon, studying in the same place they had each day of our time here. But on Shabbat, nearly two years later, they are not there.

As I walk through the stacks of books and I drink in the familiar smell, air, light - I think of my father. He is here in this library, more profoundly than he is anywhere else. Not merely because 30 years ago he worked among these stacks, but because he lives in the overflow of learning and possibility held within the cover of each book. I pick up an old mahzor - hoping that within its pages I will find the comforting guidance of my father who feels so long past. I turn immediately, as I always do, to the cover page, to see who owned this book before it was gathered to this place. "From the Library of Jacob R. Marcus," the Mahzor reads. I pick up another "Rabbi Milton Steinberg" it says simply. They call to me, "feed on our strength" they say, "learn from our wisdom," "read our marginal notes and be fulfilled." I read, and I sit, I close my eyes and ideas and emotions fill my heart. Though I feel drained, I feel finally restful, no longer choking back tears at the week's frustrations and disappointments. I have heard my father's message left buried in the pages of these books. He is here to guide me, and I will learn, and I will feel whole again.

I belong in this library, more than I belong anywhere else.