I remember the first time I wrote "God" on a piece of paper. I was passing a note in 7th grade math class and forgot to put a dash between the G and the d. I felt horrible for the entire day, like I'd desecrated something.
I'm starting off with this for one reason only: I'm probably the only one in our class who was brought up as a Reform Jew. I did all the holiday stuff and I went to Temple on Friday nights, not Saturday mornings, and even then only 2x a month. I kept kosher, but not when my family went out to dinner. For that, I've always felt a strange and probably unnecessary need to "apologize" to God. Ironically enough, the rules I decided to follow to "apologize" aren't even closely adhered to by my Rabbi or my hebrew school teachers.
Most people who know me are aware that I apologize a lot. Too much, probably. To me, God is the one recipient of my apologies who doesn't reject them or accept them. However, because in my little 1st grade Hebrew School we learned about how God incurs his wrath on x, y, and z, I am always a little afraid that what I am doing is going to anger God. So, I follow certain rules that seem to smooth things over between me and the Guy Up There.
I think it's unfortunate that for me and many others, Judaism is all about rules. I've always considered God and Judaism synonomous, and therefore all the rules that God gave to Jews the very personification of God himself (herself? Another interesting question, but for now, I'm using he for the sake of convenience.). My image of God is not dissimilar to a textbook - facts and rules to learn and obey.
Leviticus (part iii of our assignment) obviously speaks of rules. Jeremiah (part i) speaks of the rule of God through a man on earth. In both of these sources, God is a rulemaker, with his subjects far below him. This image of fear is one that I know well.
Chapter 8 of Proverbs is the only one that does not invoke fear. Instead, I am forced, as an overanalytical person, to wonder if God is working through Wisdom, as he was through Jeremiah, to warn us.
"Nothing is so much to be feared as fear." -Henry David Thoreau
p.s. I have no idea if I did this right or not. But read and enjoy.
:: about ::
- Micaela Brody
- Senior graphic design major at Boston University. Enjoys long walks to grab coffee and good everything bagels with lox cream cheese from New Jersey. Gets invested in television characters and curates iTunes playlists carefully. Favorite cheese: St. Agur blue. Favorite glyph: pilcrow.
1 comment:
you did it very right. good job micaela. a very thought-provoking post.
i hope that you'll be happy to learn that a number of points you raised will be treated over the course of the semester. we will be covering jewish feminism later, probably in may.
also, i bet that you're not the only reform jew. there seems to be a trend of belittling reform with which i really disagree. in fact, we will be studying a brilliant reform mystic later this semester named lawrence kushner. beautiful stuff.
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