Intro to Judaism - Week 14

What does it mean to be "too" observant? To take religion "too far"? I would imagine it would have something to do with infringing on the rights and freedoms of others, but my journey to Judaism has allowed me to observe that it can take much less than that. It seems to be more about the comfort level of the other person.

None of these people I use as examples read my blog, but I will refrain from naming my specific relationship to them in order to protect how they are perceived. With the exception of one, the individuals I will refer to are Jewish themselves, with varying levels of observance. They are people I work with, family I married into, and friends. All of these individuals (with the exception of the one who is not Jewish) started out very supportive and even pleased. They eagerly asked questions, they smiled, they told me how wonderful it was that I was converting, they told me to go to them with any questions or, if they weren't too observant or informed themselves, said they looked forward to learning more through me.

One person was thrilled to learn that I was converting but raised her eyebrows when I spent most of Yom Kippur in services, because "even I don't do that...it's rare that I even go to one."

Another joked affectionately that, "You're becoming more Jewish than me!" A few months further into my journey, there was a discussion about Shabbat observance and my decision to work only on Sundays rather than Saturdays and to only take weekday on-call shifts. The reaction became less amused and more suspicious, concerned almost. Skeptical about why I would make that change in the workplace, how I would explain it to others, "you really will NEVER work on a Saturday?"

A secular Jew couldn't believe that I wasn't "giving Santa" to my kids and flat-out said, "You're really taking this too far."

A pretty observant Jew assured me that this is an intense time and that I'll "settle in" a while after I've converted. It felt like the implication was that my current level of observance, which I personally hope to increase over time, is really just a quaint phase that I'll grow out of. And she said it as if it would be comforting to me, as if the intensity was a stressor for me.

Another said, "Even I put up a Christmas tree! It's really not that big of a deal."

Another said, "If I wasn't already Jewish, I don't know that I feel strongly enough about anything to actually convert. I do want my child to get a sense of my culture as a Jew, but I don't know that we would actually belong to a synagogue." I've actually had that said to me by two different people who don't know each other. (And it's fine that they feel this way - they just seemed so surprised that I felt strongly about it.)

My non-Jewish peer engaged me in conversation around my conversion initially, teasing but intrigued by my decision, but now is beginning to say, "Really? You really plan to ____? Oooookay...." It's suddenly uncomfortable to have this discussion that used to be so spirited. Interest and curiosity has turned into something close to suspicion.

I'm not even doing that much at this point, at least in my opinion. I'm committing to the celebration of Jewish holidays at the exclusion of other religious holidays, but that seems logical in the context of conversion. I'm reading a lot. I'm observing Shabbat in a pretty darn liberal sense. I'm just beginning to truly participate in community activities with my synagogue - barely scratching the surface - and that too is not unusual for anyone affiliated with a faith-based organization.

What is "going too far"? What does that mean? God forbid I should go kosher or something!

I feel like many people are okay with me "going Jewish" as long as I don't "take it too far." At what point do my personal practices and beliefs make others uncomfortable? And why? And what is that supposed to mean for me? I already had a strong value system, and Judaism is only making it stronger. Why is this such a source of discomfort for others? Shouldn't it be more concerning if I started treating people with LESS kindness and patience? Or if I cared LESS about my impact on the world?

If I identified as Jewish but didn't practice, would that make others more comfortable? If I celebrated major holidays but didn't go to services every Friday? If I went to services every Friday but still worked on Saturdays? At what point does it cross the line with someone else's comfort zone? And why???

I'm still me. Yes, some of my traditions and practices are changing, but that happens for people for many reasons throughout their lives. It seems to unsettle people for me to be less like them. Jewish peers, colleagues, and relatives thought it was sweet in theory that I was joining their community - but the reality of it, if the result is my observing differently or more strictly, seems almost to be threatening.

I get it being an adjustment - all change is. I think it's the discomfort, and even disapproval, that is so unsettling to me, especially among those who were initially excited for me.

I'm grateful for the conversion books I've begun reading because it is starting to normalize this experience, and the amazing one I'm reading now may even help explain it when I get to that chapter. I sure could use some insight in that area.

Building Community

Our rabbi has been working on doing some matchmaking between us and another queer couple at our synagogue. She once suggested that we check out a Tot Shabbat, but we felt awkward doing so without little ones of our own. Then a few weeks ago, she said she had been speaking about us to A&A, a couple with a 3-year-old and a 16-month old. She said they are house hunting so she had suggested they speak to us about it, and they were excited to connect since we are also planning a family. They gave her their contact information to pass on to us. I emailed them and we arranged to go out to dinner yesterday and it was just an amazing time. Their boys are adorable, and they are both awesome feminists who enjoy family and friends and adventure. Easygoing and very relaxed mothers, sharing equally in the smallest of tasks and trading off breastfeeding (they both have milk from having been pregnant) and not stressing over their children's energy and curiosity. We just had such a great time with them, and it's obvious that they are friends we would enjoy both on our own as well as with kids.

This followed closely on the tails of a recent date with my friend E and her wife. They came over a few weeks ago for "afternoon tea" and ended up staying til about 9:30 because we were having such great conversation. E and I were the closest of friends beginning my second year in New York, were roommates for a while, and eventually lost touch. I reached out to her recently and we reconnected over dinner before arranging to meet the wives. She is now married, closing on a house in New Jersey, and five months pregnant. I was - and am - so grateful for finding each other again, and at such a similar point in our lives.

All of this made me feel like I'm starting to settle into my life in Long Island. I miss my old friends who are at various points in their own lives, but it's so hard to stay in touch. My best friend N is now in Rockland County where she bought a house with her husband, my friend B just moved in with her boyfriend in Staten Island, and my friend Allyson has been less accessible since getting engaged last year. I'm struggling to stay close to them - with N remaining my #1 girl despite the distance - and while I will continue to fight for those friendships and try to keep them strong, it is a whole different kind of amazing to be building friendships as a couple with other couples. It's very new, feels very adult, and is truly what is making my new home feel like home. To have friends with similar values and in a similar place in life - and in the case of A&A, to actually live close to us - makes me feel happy and warm and at peace. These are the people we would gather together for a baby's first birthday or even a multi-family trip to Montauk or Provincetown. We now have someone we can join for activities at our synagogue - taking our kids to the Purim carnival, for example.

I'm not trying to put all the pressure on this one couple to be everything we need. They are just hope for me that part of growing up is developing this dynamic with various people, and I'm realizing how important that is to me. It's also kind of a freaky reality check that we are close to being at THAT point in our lives - that our peers are settling down and having families and wanting to have game nights instead of going out to the club. Nicole and I have always been the homebody, small-town types, but in our twenties, most of our peers were more of partiers. Every celebration revolved around the expectation of "going out," which generally involves dressing up and drinking and just not our type of fun. It's kind of amazing to feel us getting to a place that is more our speed, being surrounded by people who want to go camping and go out for frozen yogurt.

Maybe this strange island can become mine after all!

Home Sweet Home

We had our first big snowstorm since moving into our house in early December. It was gorgeous and magical - but we don't have a super to shovel it for us!

Jack watching Nicole brush off her car Friday, before the big storm

Saturday morning

Nicole said she wouldn't mind shoveling if I came outside to be with her. So we bundled up and headed out early Saturday morning.

 Nicole is thrilled

me offering moral support

While outside, we met all three neighbors that we border - but not one of them said hello first! I've been in NYC for 8.5 years and still sometimes struggle with the fact that neighbors don't wave and say hello when you walk or drive by. I saw the man next to us out shoveling and he kept sort of glancing over at us, so I smiled and said, "Good morning!" He returned the greeting and then asked us how we like the neighborhood, etc. Then we saw the neighbor to our left, an older man who was huffing and puffing red-cheeked over his snowblower and sort of stuttering out an apology as snow arced over us. 

Then we went to the back to shovel that piece of sidewalk. (Our driveway goes out into the side street, behind the corner house next to us.) To our delight, we noticed our small section of the sidewalk and our driveway up to Nicole's car had been snowblown! So we just had to shovel the small amount that gets left behind. I noticed the neighbor wife behind us out on her lawn sort of looking at us, so after a continued silence, I again initiated contact by saying, "Good morning!" She struck up conversation with us, introducing herself and welcoming us to the neighborhood. It turns out she was outside as a moral-supporter too, while her husband was down the block helping the elderly neighbor. Nicole asked if he was the one who had done our driveway, and she said yes. How considerate!! We thanked her profusely and chatted while we brushed snow off the car.

It's amazing how friendly, warm, and welcoming people can be when you push past their initial suspicious nature. They're curious but don't want to be the first ones to reach out. Are they afraid of rejection, that they'll be ignored or that someone will be rude to them? I'm not sure. It's a headscratcher to me. But this southern girl will get to these hardened New Yorkers, just you wait. I'm planning to bake cookies for the neighbor behind us to show our appreciation for the snow help. Resist me. Go ahead, I dare you.

I still remember the shock and slight suspicion on my neighbors' faces in our last apartment when I brought each family on our hall a bag of from-scratch Christmas cookies. And I brought my rabbi half of the sticky toffee pudding I'd made the afternoon of one of our meetings so that she could take it home to her husband and daughter. It warmed her through to her lap because it had just come out of the oven. And my second year here, as my internship was coming to an end, I bought a cake for the nice guys at Subway who made my day with their kindness when I went there for lunch every day. I only didn't bake them cookies because my cubicle-neighbor said, "awww, sweet girl - they're not going to trust that. They'll think they're poisoned and throw them away. You don't just give store employees baked treats. It's not normal, and you'll waste your energy because they won't eat them." Whaaaa? Devastated.

My mama taught me manners, my culture taught me civility, and I firmly believe that baking from scratch with real butter is an expression of love. No amount of time here will turn me into a snubber, much to Nicole's embarrassed chagrin. I need community around me. This neighborhood will be MY neighborhood - I will conquer it yet!

Intro to Judaism - Week 13

My conversion is on the horizon!!!!!!!!!

I have been feeling so ready and eager but have resisted initiating the conversation with my rabbi because I wanted it to come from her. I just needed to know that she had made her own assessment of my readiness, without my own excitement inadvertently pushing my agenda or rushing the process. Her un-coerced and voluntary assessment was really important to me. But I am THERE. I have soooo much still to learn, and will for my entire life, but I'm ready to formalize my commitment to this ongoing journey. I'm ready to participate in this adventure alongside my people, my community. My heart, my mind, my willingness to commit is ready and there.

The conversation came about because Rabbi asked how often my parents come up and if I would want to invite them to be part of it. I said yes, I'd love to include them if they feel comfortable, and they are coming up at the end of April. I said I'm not sure if that's realistic. Rabbi asked if I feel ready, and I said absolutely. Then she said she feels I'm ready too, and that people often take the class first to get more familiar and then need some time afterward. However, it took so long for me to get into the class that it puts me in a different place because I had already been going to services and studying with the rabbi for some time. She said April seems completely feasible.

Rabbi said we will talk next time more about exact details. I'm SO EXCITED and so happy! I may have cried a bit when Rabbi said she feels I am ready after the class ends. (Me? Emotional? Shocker, I know.) I really didn't anticipate how much it would move me just to have her say that. It's sort of like being blissfully in love with someone and talking about marriage with them and knowing it's heading there, and yet it's still so emotionally powerful when you actually get engaged. It's like it's really out there, it's really happening, here it comes!!!

I'm so humbled to feel welcomed into the Jewish community by my rabbi. I don't feel worthy (and don't think I ever could), and am just so honored.

Oh boy - if I'm this much of a mess over just this part of it, I need to steel myself for the actual conversion!

The Work Decision

Nicole and I have been talking more and more about babies. As much as she teases about not being ready or wanting to wait ten years, she is being playful and also feeling the responsibility of keeping us in check since I'm so emotional about it. But she has been very open lately about being mentally and emotionally ready, and has said that if money weren't an issue, she would be thrilled to start trying like yesterday. But the finances are killing us.

We are enjoying being in our new house together, but we don't feel that it's a phase we need to drag out. We wanted the house because we were ready for kids and didn't want to deal with outgrowing our two-bedroom apartment (yes, we had a 2BR so that we wouldn't feel pressured to move out) and having to house-hunt while raising a toddler. It was also a great time with record-low interest rates. Now we're here and settled and ready to fill those bedrooms! Yes, there are things we will enjoy doing and working on, but nothing that pregnancy and parenthood will preclude us from.

We know that we will never feel 100% financially comfortable when making the decision to conceive, unless we wait until we're 45. But we need to be able to afford childcare, and other expenses are currently using up the income that would be going toward that - and there isn't much wiggle room outside of that childcare budget as it is. Right now most of it is going to pay Nicole's parents back, because they loaned us money toward closing costs. If we pay at our current rate, it will take us a total of two years to finish paying them. We can try to pare that down by paying a little more and by giving them tax return money, but it will only affect it by a matter of a few months, when we had originally planned to start trying for a baby this spring. It's a harsh and sad reality.

Then there are the larger costs that we somehow have to save toward - primarily repaving the horribly broken up driveway and converting to gas when our old oil tank dies in about five years. Nicole's car is paid off and it's a 2009 - since we are a single-car family, there will unfortunately come a day when we have to get a new car. We either need to be saving toward that now, or be prepared to take on a car payment which isn't an expense we currently have to budget for.

I know it'll never be perfect - but it seems damn un-doable right now, and it sucks that money is our only real obstacle.

One thing I have been thinking a lot about recently is whether it'd be worth doing part-time work in the evening to save on childcare. Nicole works 8:00-4:00 and is home by 4:15 or 4:20. If I worked from, say, 5:00-8:00, this would be perfectly doable. (And there are a TON of part-time evening and/or weekend jobs in social work.) Nicole and I wouldn't see each other much on weeknights for a while, but you do what you have to do to raise your family. Certainly other families make harder sacrifices than that to make it work. Once the kids are in school, I could go back to full-time work, and Nicole's schedule would allow for our kids not having to be in after-school until all hours.

Right now I'm getting home around 6:30, if I leave work right at 5:00. The thought of only seeing my baby for MAYBE two hours before she goes to sleep is heartbreaking. I know the working parent has to do this, and most families cannot afford for either parent to be home during the day. But if we can find a way to swing it, it would mean so much to me. It's not just about ME getting to see the baby, either - it's about her spending more time with strangers than with her parents. If I was leaving her at home with Nicole all day, it wouldn't be affecting me like this. Of course I would miss her and would hate missing out on so much time with her, but at least I'd know she was with one of her parents. Arranging this would make the sacrifice worth it until we get out of the baby years.

However, I'm not sure if part-time income would be enough to help with the other expenses. Getting rid of childcare would be immensely helpful, but there are still other places my income goes. Nicole's income can't take on the whole mortgage and my student loans, so I have to make enough to be able to continue contributing significantly toward those expenses. If childcare costs between $1000 and $1200 a month, then we can at least live on that much less than my current income. However, I'm a supervisor now, and part-time work would not be administrative. It would likely be counseling or other direct practice work, which pays less. So not only would I be paid on part-time hours, but in a position that already pays less on a per-hour basis. I can't expect that working half the hours will lead to half the income - I'm pretty sure it will be less than that.

I need to figure out what we could live on, and then somehow figure out what positions like that pay so that I know whether this plan is even feasible. It's my #1 choice, but I'm not sure whether it's really even an option.