Telling a Story

 

This evening, I participated in an event called The Listening Room, held at the Mahone Bay Center.  There were 9 storytellers, and an audience that was limited to 50.  Our job, if you will, was simply to tell a story, some story that we had lived.  The single condition was that it was simply a story: there was no debate, no discussion.  It feels as if I’ve been telling this story for 2 ½ years (well, I have, actually), but not in a public space over which I had no control.  Not in a place in which I knew not one other person.  But I thought (and still think) that it’s a story that deserves to be heard by people who are not Jews.  On y va:

There’s not a human alive who hasn’t experienced all manner of loss – people die, we lose jobs, we fall out with friends, things that are often situational.  While our sense of loss is real, any one of these things generally doesn’t translate to an ongoing series of losses.  Recently, I’ve learned what happens if one loss spirals into something that doesn’t seem to have an end.

October 7, 2023, is a day often referred to by Jews as Black Sabbath, because that is the day when Israel’s border was breached, and more than 1,200 Israelis and visitors participating in a music festival were attacked, murdered, and taken hostage by a terrorist group.

When I first heard about this, as word trickled in from friends mid-morning, I received the news with a sense of complete bewilderment.  I didn’t understand what was happening, how such a thing could even be possible.  As a Jew living in the diaspora, at a time when Jew hatred in Canada was spiking, I knew that we weren’t necessarily looked upon favourably.  I’d been called names and insulted, right outside my own synagogue in Halifax, just because I’m a Jew.  But this seemed impossible.

Like most people faced with the unbelievable, I sought community and went to my synagogue. In fact, much of what I said then was said to fellow Jews – it felt unsafe even then to say much to people outside our community, because even then it felt as if there were people who believed that we somehow deserved whatever horror was inflicted upon us, no matter where we were in the world.

A huge change for me has been that bigotry really has come out of the closet – what people used to maybe think to themselves was now being said aloud.  In my workplace, my own union hosted events that were not only misleading but that offered no opportunity for anybody who had a contrary viewpoint to speak up.  Jews I worked with, across Canada, felt more marginalised than ever.  Some of my colleagues no longer wear a Star of David, anywhere, because they feel unsafe.  In the city where I lived, there were posters accusing Jews of genocide, and if we were in groups, we were harassed by even bigger groups, who were also much louder.  We weren't even left in peace at prayer vigils, to mourn our dead and pray for those still held hostage.  Police presence at Jewish events and increased security is now vital, even in Nova Scotia.

Since October 7, I have lost both friends and family members who are not Jewish, and I’ve been learning how it is I can grieve when the person for whom my heart has broken is (I hope) alive and well in their world.  I have a niece who’s just a few years younger than I am, and I was there the day she was born.  She has always felt special to me. We had become friends, and even though we lived in different provinces, we visited, and we were in frequent contact on social media or by phone. I was her go-to when her children had questions about Judaism or Jewish holidays.  Then October 7 happened.  And I disagreed with something she had shared on social media – it was an article with a claim that had been thoroughly disproven, and media sources who’d reported it on the first page eventually published a retraction somewhere in the middle of the paper, where, let’s face it, it doesn’t get as much attention.  She hasn’t spoken to me since then.  We’re still friends on social media, but I can no longer see anything that she shares. The most recent thing I see on her timeline is my birthday greeting to her in August 2023. I don’t know if she looks at anything that I post, but she no longer comments.

People I’ve considered friends for decades, who have spoken up about many hot topics, have said absolutely nothing about October 7 – I don’t know if they read about it, or if they’ve seen any of the documentary films about it – but I do know that they don’t address it.  And I think to myself, “Well, you think this doesn’t affect you, because you’re not a Jew.  But I am right here, and it affects me, so can’t you muster some care for that?”  Or perhaps they, too, think that we’ve done something to deserve this?  People’s silence says so much more than their words can do.

Even when I’m specific, there is not the care for me or my people that so many people demonstrate for what feels like the cause of the day.  Dear friends, who are kind of my surrogate parents in Israel, are both Holocaust survivors.  Mirjam is rather pragmatic, which I think is necessary if you live in Israel; her husband Avraham, however, will never celebrate his birthday again, because it falls on October 7.  He has nightmares, flashbacks to being a small boy who was being hunted.  Since 2023, they’ve spent more time in their safe room than in the world, as missiles fly over Haifa.  This is their life now, and I worry so much about them.

Alex Dancyg, a Polish-Israeli historian and long-time Yad Vashem Holocaust educator, was abducted from his home at Kibbutz Ner Oz and murdered by Hamas while in captivity, though his family hoped for 9 months that he would come home to them.  I had studied with him at the International School for Holocaust Studies in Jerusalem, and when I was there in early July 2024, there were posters of him everywhere, and a yellow chair symbolising that he was missing from us, in every classroom.  A couple of weeks after my return, we all learned of his murder. It's hard to imagine what threat was posed by a 75-year-old scholar.

Like it or not, it’s not hyperbolic to say that Jews are not as safe here as we thought ourselves to be.  When my small synagogue in Halifax can be tagged with a swastika, and the people who care most about that are Jews, that tells me that either it just doesn’t matter to non-Jews, or that they believe if we were somehow better (or maybe just gone), this wouldn’t be a problem.  I have learned to expect hatred, and I am learning to not allow that to control my own feelings.  I don’t greet people with suspicion, and I don’t hide my Jewishness, because it’s not problematic for me.  It’s problematic for people who’ve chosen to hate me for reasons that simply don’t make sense to me.  When I told my daughter about this event, and my participation, she was concerned and felt that I could be putting myself in danger, or setting myself up for trouble.  “What if someone follows you home from this thing?” she asked.  “What if they see where you live and just… wait… and come back later to do something?”  One thing to know about my daughter is that she is not given to drama and hyperbole.  She’s really concerned about this.

And what if something does happen?  I have no answer.  Because things we thought couldn’t happen in Canada are happening in Canada.  What I know is this: the Jews who were ‘good Jews’ between 1939 and 1945 were not protected and kept safe from extermination.  I’m not going to be a Jew with trembling knees, hiding my Jewishness because I’m afraid of what someone else might do.

It seems that no matter how often we point to history – a history in which Jews participated but which we did not write – we’re told that we’re wrong.  My story isn’t just about the event and aftereffects of October 7, 2023.  Jew hatred existed long before this, and it seems that it will continue long after I’ve left the planet.  It matters because children are being taught to hate, and because they will grow into adults who continue to hate, assured that they’ve got it right.  Judaism teaches us that we probably can’t fix everything that’s wrong with the world – and these days, there’s a lot wrong – but we are reminded that even if we don’t complete this work of repair, we are not free to walk away from at least trying.  And so I try – I talk, I educate, I cite sources – and I will tell you that it is exhausting.  But that is at least marginally better than doing nothing or pretending that this isn’t happening.

And I’m so very grateful for two friends – two (who are not Jews) – who specifically came to me on the heels of that very black Sabbath to tell me, “If it comes to it, if you need to hide, you come to us.  We have a place for you, and we will keep you safe.”  In Canada.  In the 21^st century.  There are people who understand that it could come to this and who want me to know that they will help me.  I’ve learned that it’s possible to hold two painfully opposite thoughts together.  There’s not a Jew I know who wants everyone in Gaza to die.  It’s not what I want, either.  But I also believe in Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign nation, and in the right of Jews like me to be alive on the planet.

And all these thoughts are things I never imagined I’d have to say at all, much less in Canada, still less in Nova Scotia, with its Jewish population of fewer than 3,000.  But here I am, saying it to you.

 ***************

When all the storytellers had finished, and the event was wrapping up, one of the others said that it was difficult to stand up to tell his story after mine.  Two people came to me to thank me for telling my story – they didn’t have any idea.  One of the two asked if I’d be willing to have coffee with her next week.  She’d like to talk more about it.

I’m very glad I did this.  Funny, I am quite used to being the person on the stage, or at the lectern, and I’ve never been nervous about speaking in front of any group.  In this case, it felt different, because when you’re a Jew, there’s always a possibility that there are people in the room who already know they hate you, because you’re a Jew.  I didn’t sense that in this room.  While I was speaking, a number of people were looking intently at me, and seemed to be very engaged in what I was saying.  If you get a chance to participate in a Listening Room event, as a storyteller or an audience member, I recommend it.

Saying Goodbye

All the Bronte sisters were writers, I think, though I’m much less familiar with Anne’s work.  It seems that sometimes, things come to your view when you need to see them, and this came to my view today.

Farewell       Anne Bronte

Farewell to thee! but not farewell
To all my fondest thoughts of thee:
Within my heart they still shall dwell;
And they shall cheer and comfort me.

O, beautiful, and full of grace!
If thou hadst never met mine eye,
I had not dreamed a living face
Could fancied charms so far outvie.

If I may ne’er behold again
That form and face so dear to me,
Nor hear thy voice, still would I fain
Preserve, for aye, their memory.

That voice, the magic of whose tone
Can wake an echo in my breast,
Creating feelings that, alone,
Can make my tranced spirit blest.

That laughing eye, whose sunny beam
My memory would not cherish less; —
And oh, that smile! whose joyous gleam
Nor mortal language can express.

Adieu, but let me cherish, still,
The hope with which I cannot part.
Contempt may wound, and coldness chill,
But still it lingers in my heart.

And who can tell but Heaven, at last,
May answer all my thousand prayers,
And bid the future pay the past
With joy for anguish, smiles for tears?

 

And I did need to see it.  Yesterday, I learned that one of the dearest friends I’ve made since moving to Nova Scotia what seems like a century ago has died.  I met her and her husband in my first year of undergraduate studies, back when I was a wide-eyed Political Science major.  Her husband was the campaign manager for a candidate, and from the start, it was clear that they were a team.  They were each other’s biggest fans, greatest supporters, and after a marriage of more than 5 decades, they were still in love with each other.

She held much of my history – she knew when I planned to get married (and threw a wedding shower for me).  She celebrated the birth of my daughter by walking up 7 flights of stairs to meet her (she couldn’t wait for us to get home but also couldn’t get on an elevator, because she was terrified of them).  When my marriage ended, she stood firmly in my corner, as good friends do.  And now, the only thing left for me to do is to say goodbye to her.

I remember (we both remembered) so many Wednesday evenings sprawled on her bed drinking tea and watching night-time soaps, because that was the night of council meetings, and we hung out while her husband was doing his civic duty.  We had the biggest laughs about things that really are unremarkable, but in the moment sparked some pretty raucous snickers.

She might well have been the most honest person I have known, but she was never a person who wielded honesty so as to cause pain.  She was filled with faith, both in humans and in God.  As she grew older, she became more frail, as will happen to many of us.  And if her world became smaller for that, her heart never did.  My life is richer for having known her, and I’m grateful to have called her friend.  My heart is bruised today, and I feel a bit dizzy sometimes as memories flit in and out of my mind unbidden.  But for all that, there’s not a single memory that doesn’t make me smile. 

Since March, we’ve seen each other a grand total of 3 times (thanks, Covid).  But every time we saw each other, and in a few phone conversations, our last words were “Love you…”  I’m gonna miss her so much.

This was my friend:  https://www.dartmouthfuneralhome.ca/guestbook/annunciata-nancy-withers

Rosh Chodesh Elul

 

In keeping with what I have decided must surely be worthy of being a tradition, I had a hike today to mark Rosh Chodesh – the beginning of the new Jewish month.  It was pretty warm out, but I must say, it was more the warm of Autumn than of summer.  I’ve decided not to be sad that Summer is racing so quickly to Autumn, though, because there are still several more months of hiking in good weather ahead of me.

Elul is the month of preparation and shofar blowing (at least, if you can blow a shofar.  I have a beautiful one from Israel, but I’ve never been able to make a sound out of it, not even a sad little bleat, much less the triumphant LISTEN TO ME of a properly sounded ram’s horn!).  Jews are meant to be more thoughtful, more mindful, in this month leading to Rosh Hashannah, the Jewish New Year, and to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.  Elul is about teshuvah, or return.  To where are we returning?  To ourselves – to our best, sweetest selves.  And to those with whom we have relationships – especially if they have become fractious, because now is the time to work at making them better, and return.  And repentance.  The name of the month has been understood to be an acronym for the Hebrew verse “I am my Beloved’s and my Beloved is mine;” or straight from the text:

 אלול: אני לדודי ודודי לי — ani l’dodi v’dodi li

“I am to my beloved as my beloved is to me.”

These lines are from the Song of Solomon, and they’re often used at weddings, but it’s at least as likely that its unknown author created a beautiful allegory about our relationship with God.  And that’s the other point of return for this month: we often don’t think too deeply about our relationship with God – it’s just something that is, unless, of course, something happens that causes us to look closely at it (honestly the ‘something’ is often a tragedy; we don’t always spend as much time acknowledging God in the good that still surrounds us).

Today, I went to Crystal Crescent Trail, a place I visit often – there are three beautiful white-sand beaches there, and a boardwalk past them that leads to a trail up into the woods.  The trail meanders in and out of the woods, and when it is out, you are walking on huge rocks, older than any of us, looking at the Atlantic Ocean in all her glory.  What a place this is to sanctify the new month.  I stopped at the first rocky outcrop, past all the beaches, past the sounds of people – just me and the sound of the ocean.  Even the seagulls were happy to just sit and enjoy the sun – it’s as if they, too, know that weekends of summer are dwindling, and so these days are to enjoy.

From my perch overlooking the ocean, I see the Sambro light.  And there was something big swimming out there, but I cannot tell what it was.  Enough to know that it was there.  Here, it still smells of the sweetness of summer – the trail is perfumed with flowers whose names I don’t know, but whose scent feels like a blessing.  It’s so good to be here, to be alive.

When I’m by the ocean, a refrain of “Mayyim Hayyim” is the accompaniment to my thoughts.  Water and life.  One cannot exist without the other.  Indigenous people the world over know this, and so do Jews.  Throughout the diaspora, we spend months praying for tal (dew, or rain) for Israel.  What Israelis have accomplished in a country built on a desert is remarkable.  They knew – as far back as Miriam the Prophetess and even before – that water is life.  And so they found water, deep underground, and freed it.  And they turned a sunbaked country green.

Here in Canada, we tend to take water for granted – we just turn on the tap, and there it is.  We’re surrounded by it, and we have more fresh water than anywhere else on earth.  This is the month of Elul, a month of teshuvah.  And I think that perhaps my first act of teshuvah should be to raise my voice again and question how it is that with this huge abundance of water, there can still be communities in Canada whose water is unfit, unsafe for drinking, and in some cases, unfit for bathing.  Water is life – and how do we value some lives if we don’t care whether they have access to fresh water?  I have no answers to this question, but I’m searching for them.  And if you want to search, too, just consult your favourite search engine and enter “Water Protectors Canada,” or “Water Protectors Nova Scotia,” or even (sigh) “Alton Gas.”  It’ll be worth your time.

Chodesh tov.

Life in a Time of Isolation

With apologies to Gabriel García Márquez, whose Love in the Time of Cholera turns 35 this year… García Márquez wrote, “He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”  Certainly, I’m unlikely to be either as prolific or as profound as he, but notice that last phrase: “life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”  It seems to me that this is just what many of us have learned to do in these past two months, since Covid 19 took over the news and so many people’s lives – I’m grateful that I’m able to work from home, and I worry about those who must still go to a workplace, including my daughter.  So if you’re practicing social distancing, and washing your hands 8,000 times a day, thank you for helping to keep my daughter safe.  (And if you’re not, frankly, what the heck is wrong with you?!  It’s never going to hurt you to wash your friggin’ hands!  And it won't kill you to wear a mask, but it could help someone else!) 

But I digress.  So, how are we giving birth to ourselves over and over again?  If I may wax Biblical for just a moment, it’s kind of like reading the Torah: the way we understand certain passages today may be very different from the way people understood those same passages 10, 20, 100 years ago.  That doesn’t mean, necessarily, that those older ways were entirely wrong.  It just means that we’ve found new ways to understand them, to render ancient texts meaningful to us.  It’s in this way, I think, that we have opportunities to remake ourselves, without ever running away from home and changing our names.  There’s a gift there, if we’re brave enough to open it.  (Don’t worry, I’m not going to go discover the theory of relativity, or calculus, as some previous geniuses have done.  That’s not where my mind goes at all!)

I am learning things about myself, some of which make utter sense – I’d just never really thought much about them.  For instance, I’ve always loved cooking and baking.  My mum taught me to bake bread when I was about 10 or 11, though I’d been watching her work kitchen magic all my life.  My mum was a stay-at-home mum all my life, with the same responsibilities even when she became the first woman elected to the local council in our town.  My dad cooked occasionally, so I knew that men could and sometimes did cook meals, but really, the kitchen was my mum’s domain.  I learned a lot from watching her.

During this period of isolation, I am reminded that one of the ways she expressed love was to feed us: she’d make a favourite meal not just for a birthday, but because she knew you loved it, for instance.  We’d come home from school to the smell of freshly-baked bread.  After I’d gone off to university, there were times that she still seemed to be cooking or baking a lot, even though by then it was just Mum and Daddy at home.  I didn’t quite understand the volume, though I have some ideas now – and this might not have been true of my mum, but I have realized that now (and indeed, in the past), it has also been true of me.  For sure, I express love for family and friends by cooking for them – and in this time of social distancing, I’m going to drop by my daughter’s place today and deliver some of the fruits of this weekend’s labour.  Because I love her, because it’s good, healthy food, made –as my mum would say – entirely from scratch.  But also because this weekend, I have found myself particularly restless, even a little anxious.  Absolutely nothing in my life has changed since Friday, but on Saturday, I woke up and just headed for the kitchen.

I started with tiny cute chocolate cakes.  I have this neat cake pan that makes 6 tiny cute bundt cakes.  It was too adorable not to buy, and the end result here was not only adorable but also delicious...

I mean... look at that tiny cute cake tin!

Out of the oven, waiting for decoration.

Frosted and sprinkled!

Just as some people are emotional eaters, I am an emotional cook.  I’ve joked about “rage baking,” which is actually something I learned early on, when my mum told me that the best time to bake bread was if you were in a bad mood, because you’d knead it better.  She was right!  When I’m busy in the kitchen, it takes my mind off other things – even if those other things are in my subconscious and are niggling thoughts, they are sufficient to disturb my enjoyment of the day, so if I take myself to the kitchen and get creative, it will either dispel the thoughts entirely, or it will allow them to crystallise so that I know what the heck it was that I was worrying about!

I wonder whether my mum also cooked and baked when she was stressed, sad, angry, or anxious.  Was some of that food prep when I was at university because it was difficult after so many years of a houseful of children to suddenly be alone with a husband and figuring out how to cook just for two?  Did she look at her life and wonder whether its meaning was now changed to something she didn’t recognise?  She’s not here anymore, so I can’t ask her.  Maybe for her, it really was all utilitarian, but based on my own experience, I suspect that this is a shared knowledge.

Next up was roasted orange pepper soup.  I am particularly fond of recipes that are easy but impressive, that rely primarily on fresh ingredients (but can be made with things that are commonly in your cupboard and freezer and still be as delicious), and that accept all kinds of modification.  The first version of this soup I made was a curried cream of broccoli, which was and is a family favourite.  Also, bonus points, 'cause it's even healthy!  Of course, the thing with soup is that you can't really make a single serving of the stuff.  So I made my usual size batch, and my daughter will reap some of the benefits!

I chopped up a bunch of orange peppers,
sprinkled 'em with tarragon, and roasted 'em in a slow oven.

I'd sauteed some garlic and onion and added a sweet potato. While the peppers roasted, these cooked.

The finished product involved some mushroom
broth, coconut milk, and my blender.

I was up super-late last night, despite all the cooking that happened yesterday (including the tea biscuits I made to go with the soup!), so even all that cooking - and the consequent cleaning up - didn't clear my mind.  This morning when I got up, I tried a new recipe.  It's called 

Skanus varškės apkepas, and it's a traditional Lithuanian recipe.  It's really quite simple and produces something that's just lovely to look at.  The recipe calls for farmer's cheese, which I couldn't find at the grocery store, so I just used ricotta.  And there are 3 eggs in it, which gives it a sort of custardy/quichey texture (Yes, I know those aren't real words - this is the poetic license of the kitchen!).  I'm better at some Lithuanian recipes than others, that is certain.  And this one is delicious.

The batter. I had no vanilla so used almond. 
And I added nutmeg, just because I like it!

The gorgeous (and tasty) end result.

So I'm learning new things, for sure.  And as far as isolation goes, there certainly are worse ways to spend my time.  Today's lesson, though, causes me to think about my foremothers - my own mum, of course, but her mother, and hers before her.  And my dad's mum, who I hardly knew but remember as a remarkable baker.  There is so much about keeping house that is routine and tedious.  We do some things because we must: we have to eat, after all.  And sometimes we pull out all the stops, because we want to make something special for people we love.  Sometimes, we want to learn something new ourselves and try something entirely different.  And sometimes, perhaps, there's something else at work, and cooking is the magic that helps us sort it out.

The Cat of a Thousand Names

This wonderful thug of a cat joined our little family almost 16 years ago.  In retrospect, he was too young – about 6 weeks old – and that’s probably why he imprinted so well on my daughter.  He practically glued himself to her, and that never changed.  He was handsome and sweet and had the best blue eyes...

For about the first half of his rather long life, he really was a thug.  A pirate cat, if you will.  He went through an interesting phase during which he stole pizza crusts and stored them for later… in our sneakers.  We found out about this peculiar predilection when I found him hunched over on the landing, looking like a chubby, furry vulture… and growling.  It was really weird, and it seemed as if he was guarding something.  My first thought was that he’d cornered a mouse… ugh!  I didn’t want to deal with that, but of course, if there was a mouse, we needed to know.  So I nudged him out of the way and grabbed the sneaker he was guarding.  He was not impressed, and watched me through slitted blue eyes… With great trepidation, I shook the sneaker, and sure enough, something thudded softly onto the ground.  Oh no!  It was a … um… a pizza crust?!  What kind of cat hunts and traps pizza crusts?! Well, as it turned out, this cat…

It might be that Sacha didn't consider himself a cat, which is why we found it interesting that he would occasionally not only tolerate but actually snuggle with another feline resident.  In retrospect, he might just have appreciated the body heat, as he is wedged in above with Dinah.  He was also a bit of an escape artist… once he got a first taste of the outdoors, he decided it was worth investigating, with or without his people.  We discovered this when I woke up one morning and heard him meowing but couldn’t find him anywhere.  Loud though he was, he was nowhere to be seen.  Until I looked out the window.  And saw him on the roof outside the living room window. We lived in a great little flat then, in a funky little place, so the roof on which he was standing there screaming for attention was also the ceiling of our downstairs neighbor.  In order to get him back inside, we had to take off the window screen (thankfully, the windows had recently been replaced, so we could actually do that… and then coax him in (because we weren’t about to go out on that roof ourselves!)  What we couldn’t figure out is how he got out there.  Initially, we thought he must’ve gotten out somehow while the door was open, so we resolved to be extra-careful… but one day, it happened again.  And AGAIN!  Did we live with a Houdini cat??  Finally, we figured it out.  He was hopping on the heater in the kitchen, and wedging his furry little body between the screen and the window frame, much the way that a hamster will sometimes escape between the bars of its cage.  Having figured that out, it was easy enough to remedy, thankfully (but if I’m honest, we only figured it out because my daughter caught him in the act!)

It was in this same funky little flat that I blame him for trying to kill me – picture it.  There was a single step down from our living room to a tiny landing.  Then a single step up to the bathroom.  So there I am, one day, heading to the bathroom, just as Sacha was heading downstairs.  Obviously, I didn’t want to step on him, so I tried to step over him – just go into the bathroom without stepping on the landing at all.  That’s when he moved, and if I had kept doing what I had started to do, I definitely would’ve stomped on him.  So I flailed around, trying not to kill the cat, and wound up slamming into the door frame, which is how I broke my ribs!  (I took him out of the will at that point.)

He would steal food from you – while you were actu.ally eating it.  I was sitting at the table one day, and I had a forkful of food paused in midair, as I was saying something.  Then, to my right, this little grey paw reached up (he had been sitting on a chair at the end of the table, hitherto unnoticed), wrapped around my hand, and veeeeeeeery gently pulled my hand towards himself.  I just sat there I shock, and yet laughing.  The chutzpah of this cat!

And he had medical issues.  As many male cats do, he developed urinary tract crystals.  They very nearly killed him.  But in the end, thanks to good vet care, they didn’t.  He didn’t much approve of other cats and was often unkind to them.  He felt the same way about small dogs.  He managed quite well with big dogs, like Wylie & Ben, the Bernese Mountain Dogs….as long as they understood that he was boss.  For a time, there were red flags – literally! – on his file at the vet, because he did not care to go there.  In fact, it made him angry and very aggressive.  The vet techs would put on gloves, and put a cone on his head just to bring him in to be examined.  It was somewhat embarrassing, but thankfully, when he was around 8 or 9, he calmed down a bit.

It seemed to take a while for him to warm up to Lennox - he certainly missed Wylie and Ben when they were gone, but when Lennox came home, he wasn't too sure of her.  He did warm up to her, though, and they actually spent quite a lot of time snuggled together, frequently grooming one another.  

He was most unlike what you may have heard about Siamese – he really wasn’t aloof.  He was a furry ball of love to his people – and if he counted you among his people, you felt blessed.  He purred so loudly that you could hear him from across the room.  Or over a long-distance phone call, as I often did when I was in Quebec, and Sacha (a Bluenoser through and through) stayed put with his girl. He had a special song that everyone who knew him well could sing to him (and often did, though none so often as Bronwyn).  He never met a sunbeam that he didn’t love, and as he got older could be found sitting not just near, but on heating vents, radiators, wherever he felt most warmth (and he had the singed whiskers to prove it!).

There are a thousand things I could tell you about Sacha, but the most important thing is that he loved and was loved.  He comforted and was himself a comfort.  He was a funny, infuriating, absolutely wonderful cat, and today, we had to say goodbye to him.  There wasn’t much time – just over a week ago, we learned that he wasn’t just an old man with a questionable medical history that had actually left him rather fragile.  Sacha had cancer, and in that last week, he declined much more quickly than we ever anticipated he could.  So today was the last trip to the vet, and I’m so glad I could be there with Bronwyn – this isn’t something that a person should do alone, for one thing.  But also, Sacha had long since lodged himself into my heart, and I am so very grateful I got a chance to tell him one more time what a great cat he was, how handsome he was, how much he was loved. 

Just one more look at a cat and his girl... a girl and her cat... It would have been impossible for him to have loved her more.

Newness... of months, of years, and of me

It's been far too long since I've updated this blog - heaven knows it's not that I've had nothing to say!  But I have been feeling somewhat disconnected, and so very recently, I came up with an idea that I think might help me get back to the place I'd like to be.  It started with a birthday gift given to me by my friend Catherine....

I could get into some fun trouble with this!

As soon as I opened the present, I had to open the book, of course, and right away my imagination got to work.  It felt serendipitous - I had been thinking that I needed some way to reconnecting with my Judaism, to nurture my spirituality in a way that synagogue simply has not been doing.  I had considered that at least I might do something to honour Rosh Chodesh - that's the beginning of the Jewish month.  And it's traditionally held to be a women's holiday, for a number of reasons:

• from Torah, we learn that women were accorded this festival as our own, because it was women who didn't lose faith in God, and who refused to contribute to the building of the golden calf (which is first introduced in Ki Tisa, Exodus 32). You can read an interesting article about it here: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-women-did-not-contribute-to-the-golden-calf/   And there's also this one:  https://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/2879677/jewish/The-Golden-Calf.htm
• Tradition goes on to tell us that our reward (not that one was asked for or promised) for righteousness in the face of those who turned away from God was a festival of our own, on which we might refrain from much of our ordinary work.  Now, that's an interesting idea - on the one hand, I kind of like it; on the other hand, sometimes Rosh Chodesh falls on Shabbat, which is wen many (many, many) women are busy ensuring that the home is ready, and preparing meals that will keep from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset.  Shabbat and most other holidays tend to be pretty busy times for women.
• A bit more recently, it's been proposed that Rosh Chodesh should be considered a festival for women because our bodies, like the Jewish calendar, follow a lunar cycle.  I kind of like this one, because not only does it honour the new month, but it also honours creation, in which woman participate intimately.

So then, what I decided to do to mark Rosh Chodesh was to hike.  I like hiking, anyhow, and although I much prefer to do it with friends, sometimes I am on my own.  Catherine, who gave me the book, is not Jewish, but she loves the idea of doing a Rosh Chodesh hike with me.  Right now, though, she's away, so I decided that I would have this hike anyhow, to see how it feels.  My best friends in Quebec, Fabiana & Daniel, joined me - we hiked virtually this morning.  They tromped through snow in a park, and I marched around the barrens at Polly's Cove.  It doesn't look like winter here...

Looking towards Peggy's Cove

Look at that blue sky!  It's glorious.  And truly, although the weather told me that it was 2 C, with a wind chill meaning it felt more like -2 C, it wasn't cold.  I was perfectly comfortable in a sweater that my mum had knit, with a very light hoodie.   The ground isn't frozen yet at Polly's Cove, though there's some ice there - much of the ground is damp and marshy.  The lichen and ground cover there are spongy and soft, all of which encourages you to step off the trail from time to time.

Fraternal twins

A sentry

Path in the woods

 Mostly as I walked, I was alone, so I was paying closer attention to the sounds around me than I might have ordinarily - I heard my footsteps squelching over damp areas, crunching through undergrowth, padding along huge rocks as I sought a view from higher up, or whispering across tiny paths composed of tiny stones.  There were birds - the tits were flying much too fast for me to do more than smile at their presence.  They work harder than I do on Shabbat, for sure!  There were some birds that reminded me of Australia's kookaburras.  I didn't see them, so I cannot say what they were, but certainly, they were laughing - and on such a beautiful day, why not?  The kingfisher is the official bird of Halifax, and also cousin to the kookaburra, so maybe they were kingfishers.  They made for a nice soundtrack, though.

New growth resting for spring?

There was hardly any ice there, just in a couple of spots that were on or very close to the trail.  I wondered whether the tiny shoots poking up through the ice would stay the course during winter and grow into something beautiful in the spring.

The image below, in which there are trees reflected in what is nothing more than a puddle, struck me in two ways: the obvious reflection, of course, got me to thinking how we reflect each other, how we might reflect God, and how we can reflect upon things.  And realising that this puddle will be gone on the first dry spring day reminds me that we are just about as impermanent as a puddle - so it's important to be mindful about reflecting goodness, I think.

Reflections seem appropriate today.

When I got as far as I would go today (it started to sprinkle, and I wasn't dressed for rain!), the view that met me was one so familiar to people in this part of Canada - or really, any people who live near any ocean.  Here is where I stopped and said a blessing for the new month of Tevet, which starts today.  Here is where I said a blessing over wine to sanctify the new month.  It's perhaps not unusual that the act of doing these two simple things offers me hope of many good things: when we honour the month and all its potential, we remind ourselves that we have the power to realise potential.

Rosh Chodesh View

 It didn't translate so well to the photo, but there's a fishing boat out there, kind of between the bigger island on the left and the 2 rocky outcroppings that are on the right.  Going out on a boat like this for a day when the sun is shining, and the day is pleasant, is lovely - you might even imagine that you could make your living at this.  At least, that's how I've often thought.  It's hard, hard work, though, and even though today was a beautiful and not very cold day, it's colder out there on the sea - so it's unlikely I'd ever seriously consider doing this.  But today I also thought that further out on the ocean, where they cannot hear people or cars, perhaps they are closer to God than I am standing on the shore.  It's not that God isn't to be found on the shore, of course - but if you have the opportunity to be out there, there are fewer things to distract you.  And fishing, like much of life, involves waiting... so it might be a time on which one could focus with more intent on these deep thoughts.

Me and the sea

Here is where I greeted the new month of Tevet.  My prayer was

"Y'hi ratzon sheyitchadesh aleynu chodesh Tevet: l'tova, v'livrakhah, l'sason ul'simchah, le shalom v'achavah, rey'ut v'ahavah, la'avodah vitzirah, parnasah vekhalkalah, l'shalvat hanefesh uvri'ut haguf, l'chayim shel derech eretz v'ahavat Torah, l'chayim sheyimal'u bam, mish'a lot libeynu l'tovah, keyn y'hi ratzon."

And here's what it means

"May the month of Tevet be a month of blessings: blessings of goodness, blessing of joy, peace, and kindness, friendship and love, creativity, strength, serenity, fulfilling work and dignity, satisfaction, success, and sustenance, physical health and radiance.  May truth and justice guide our acts and compassion temper our lives that we may blossom as we age and become our sweetest selves."

Can you imagine?  Becoming your sweetest self.  Now that's something to which I think I should aspire.

Chodesh tov, reader - may all these blessings attend you.

My First Egalitarian Minyan **

(** Well, to clarify, not MY first, but certainly the first held in this community.)

I have been attending the only synagogue in Québec City for a year now – it is a tiny synagogue (there is a tiny Jewish community here), and on paper the community has been Orthodox, or perhaps even Modern Orthodox for decades.  I am not an Orthodox Jew – I am an egalitarian Conservative Jew, and if you who are reading this are not Jewish, here is a very brief description of the difference (this is important for what’s coming).

Orthodox Jews still observe the separation of men and women at prayer – they do not sit together, nor do they pray together.  In some communities, there is a mechitzah, a barrier, to separate the men’s section from the women’s.  Sometimes the mechitzah is as simple as sitting in the same sanctuary with pews that are open only at one end, by the aisle, so that there is a wooden barrier between men and women.  In some synagogues, the mechitzah is a barrier to vision – a dividing screen, or row of trees, or something that prevents men and women from seeing each other in the sanctuary.  And in some synagogues, there is a balcony, so that women don’t actually enter the main sanctuary – they can see and hear the rabbi, but neither they nor the men can see each other.  Women in a traditional Orthodox community do not read from Torah.  They are not invited to have an Aliyah (to make the blessing before and after a Torah portion is read).  Women are not invited to the bimah (the place from which the Torah is chanted and from which the D’Var Torah, the sermon, is given). 

In my Conservative community in Halifax, there is absolutely nothing that a man can do that a woman cannot also do.  Women have Aliyot (the plural of Aliyah, the blessing for the Torah reading).  Women chant from Torah, and they chant the Haftorah (a reading from one of the prophetic books that follows the Torah reading).  They deliver Divrei Torah (the plural of D’var Torah, the sermon).  They lead many communities as rabbis.  They are mohels, responsible for ritual circumcision.  Both women and men who are not rabbis can and do lead services.  And we don’t follow any physical separation at prayer.

Many of my friends were surprised to hear that I was attending an Orthodox synagogue – that’s not my practice in Halifax, so why, they wondered, would it be so here in Québec?  The answer is actually quite simple: this is the only show in town.  If I wanted to be a Jew in community with other Jews, this was the only place in which to do it.  Certainly, I can be a Jew all by myself – but the community is tremendously important.

It is no secret to say that the Jewish community here has struggled recently.  It moved from a Modern Orthodox sort of community to one that became increasingly more Orthodox, right down to the installation of a mechitzah (the divider between men and women).  Women certainly were not invited to the bimah, did not make Aliyot, did not deliver Divrei Torah. For some, it stopped feeling like a welcoming place, a place in which all Jews were seen as equal.

It seems that I arrived in Québec in time for something like a revolution.  It started with a simple question – “What does the community here do for Tashlich?” (Tashlich is a small ceremony held near water, at which we throw bread on the water, symbolising the sins we have committed, the harm we might have done, as we count the days between Rosh Hashanah – the Jewish New Year – and Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement.)  We’d always done Tashlich in Halifax, so I presumed that every community did it and was pretty surprised to discover that this wasn’t necessarily so.  I shrugged it off and said, “Well, OK, I will just go down by the St Lawrence River and make Tashlich myself.”  No biggie.  But it caught the attention of a few people who wanted to know if they could also participate.  So we made a Tashlich observance on a cool, grey day on the St Lawrence, and it was profoundly beautiful.  And it was a first.

Then I asked another question – “Why don’t we do Kabbalat Shabbat services?”  Kabbalat Shabbat is the Friday night service at which Jews welcome the Sabbath.  It is a very clear separation of the mundane from the holy, and again, it has always been part of my practice.  That’s how I came to lead the first Kabbalat Shabbat service of this community in at least 20 years – we combined it with a community dinner, and because we were concerned about the kashrut (the kosher status) of the kitchen in the synagogue, we held it at the Kirk Hall of St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Old Québec.  A little unorthodox, you think?  Yeah... and it was great.

The community has gathered for communal Passover celebrations in the past and did so again this year – at the Masonic Lodge in the Old City.  There were many more people present there than we see on any given Saturday morning, which is no big surprise.  It seems true in every tradition that the holidays cause people to become more observant than other days!

Since the first Friday night service, we have held several other Kabbalat Shabbat services, combined with community dinners.  We have held those at the synagogue, being very careful to do nothing that could be seen as interfering with the kitchen’s kosher status.  We even eat from disposable plates, using disposable dinnerware. 

And we have marked Rosh Chodesh (the beginning of the Jewish month, done 13 times a year) together in community. Interestingly, Rosh Chodesh is considered a women's holiday - tradition has it that it was given to women as an honour from God for not having given their gold to the making of idols, as the men of the community had done.  Our first observation of Rosh Chodesh as a community was to mark the beginning of the month of Av, generally accepted to be our saddest month, as it is the month in which we commemorate the loss of two temples, amongst a host of other tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people in this month, on or near its 9^th day, which is known as Tisha B'Av.  This month, Av, also marks a more joyous event – Tu B’Av, which is a celebration of love.  And we will have a Kabbalat Shabbat service and community dinner at which we talk about what this means as well.

We will mark Rosh Chodesh Elul at the beginning of September, in much the same way.  We will talk about Rosh Chodesh and what it means, and we will talk especially about why this month is meaningful for us.

We have celebrated Havdalah together – a small, beautiful ceremony to mark the end of the Sabbath.  And we will do it again.

This weekend, during which falls the 9^th day of Av, that saddest of all days, marked another first for this community – for the first time in anybody’s recent memory (for the first time in more than a decade) – we held a Shabbaton.  Think “scholar in residence.”  Rabbi Alan Bright, from Shaare Tzedek in Montréal, accepted our invitation to come and spend a couple of days with us.  So we had a Kabbalat Shabbat service on Friday evening led by a rabbi – it was beautiful.  There was no men’s or women’s side to the synagogue, because people simply sat where they wished.  We had dinner together and had some great discussion about Judaism – what is authentic Judaism?  Is there even such a thing?  (Hint: there is no single right way to be a Jew.)

On Saturday morning, we gathered for Shabbat services, and it just kept getting better.  This small synagogue hasn’t had a Saturday morning minyan for at least 7 months.  What that means is that we could not take the Torah out of the Ark.  We could not read from it.  Any prayers that required a minyan (a gathering of 10 Jews – in an Orthodox synagogue, 10 Jewish men) could not be said, or could not be said aloud.

The Shabbaton weekend was designed to have an egalitarian minyan.  The women counted.  And so on Saturday morning, we had a minyan – for the first time in months, I was part of a congregation chanting the Amidah together, and it’s one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard.

Even more importantly, the President of the synagogue’s Board was present with her family.  She had never had a Bat Mitzvah celebration, but on a recent trip to Israel, she bought a tallit (a prayer shawl).  And on Saturday morning, her husband placed the tallit around her shoulders, and she said the blessing for the first time.  Then he and their teenage daughter opened the Ark to remove a Torah scroll, and my friend made the Aliyah over a Torah portion for the first time ever.

Women are not obligated to do many things to which Judaism obligates men.  But some women choose those things.  Some women choose to wear a tallit, or have a practice that includes the wearing of tefillin (ritual prayer objects).  Some women choose to chant a Haftorah or to deliver a D’Var Torah.  And while tradition has meant that women did not generally do these things, there are not laws prohibiting the assumption of these obligations.

The question of “authentic Judiasm” was part of this weekend’s Shabbaton.  And here’s the thing: my Judaism is every bit as authentic as any Ultra-Orthodox rabbi’s.  My practice may not look like the practice of women in that community, but it is no less authentic for that.  I am no less a Jew for that. 

It may well be that the Jewish community here will change dramatically over the next couple of years – and I hope that it does.  Not simply because then it might have a practice with which I am personally more comfortable.  But rather, because if it does not change, I am afraid it will die.  And there have been Jews in this city for hundreds of years – HUNDREDS of years.  Jews helped build this city, and it’s astonishing how many people don’t realise that.

We are approaching Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which falls a little later than normal (in early October), and I hope with all my heart that it marks the beginning of a great renewal not only of individuals in their relationship with God and with each other, but also of this community. I think it still has great things to do here, and it’s time for everyone who is even peripherally part of the community to stand up and be counted.