I'm going to hang this one up for awhile.

I'm going to let this blog go quiet for awhile.

I have nothing new to say that needs to be said here, and I am trying to focus more on the present.

Be kind to each other and turn the lights off when you leave the room.

Cheers.

Late stage capitalism is NOT. YOUR. FAULT. Don’t take it personally.

In the news today:

— Alice Munro’s daughter calls her out for staying with her husband, even after knowing that he abused her daughter.

— Trump orders his zombies to strategically backpedal parts of the Project 2025 doctrine so as not to scare voters (and to bring in the undecideds to his camp), and no one of any power or importance is paying attention.

— the Democratic Party is chasing its tail, again, and squandering whatever time or efficacy they might have still had.

— the GOP a candidate for Governor in North Carolina just gave a fiery sermon in which he clearly and blatantly endorsed political violence (“Some folks need killing.”) and far too many Americans even batted an eye.

There is no more room for maturity, nuance or even kindness in this country anymore.

It has been inculcated and insinuated and threatened out of the fiber of this country over the last ten years and there is no way to bring it back right now.

Apparently, the only way forward is to “fight.”

But fight whom? And how?

*********

What I need to be reminded of, every day and sometimes several times a day, is that depression does not operate in a vacuum.

Sure, there may be some chemical impulse involved; our bodies are holistic systems and chemical impulses can inform, and be informed by physical and emotional stimuli.

They can, however, also be informed by social and political stimuli.

And this is what reminds me that my depression is not my fault.

Let me say that again, a little louder for those in the cheap seats:

MY DEPRESSION IS NOT MY FAULT.

I did not create it, and I do not feed it. It is not an inherent character flaw, though some want desperately for me to think that it is. My depression does not exist in a vacuum, separate and apart from everything else that exists in the world.

That is why I need to be reminded that to be depressed in this world today is to be aware, is to be shackled to a system that benefits from keeping me depressed and benefits from making me think it is all my fault. The grand myth of capitalism is that my state of existence can be changed if I pull myself up by my bootstraps, save some money each payday, stay hydrated and stay healthy so I can work endless hours a week for someone else, and in so doing I can stay housed and secure.

That is a lie. 

And I know it’s a lie because of how much goddamed money is spent every day on advertising to try and convince me that coloring inside the lines will get me ahead, if not today then someday.

Not gonna happen. The game is rigged.

Depression and capitalism have a direct connection. Depression and capitalism are flip sides of the same coin. The difference between me and someone who is not depressed, who is always healthy and secure and comfortable, may be as simple as the fact that he and I are not working with the same coin. 

Because in capitalism, we can’t. For a wealthy capitalist to be healthy, safe and secure, many others must be unhealthy, unsafe, and insecure. The condition of the former relies on keeping the latter in a state of dependence on the system that keeps them down. There are two ways to escape this dependency: accruing  enough wealth to avoid it, or dying. The people who own and operate the system do not care if you die. But if you accrue too much wealthy quickly, they will get nervous, because with enough wealth and influence you can change things, and the powers that be do not want anyone to change anything.

To be depressed is to be aware that the game is rigged, and to understand how and why you are on the short end of the stick.

What’s the cure for such depression?

Well, meds may help, if only to keep you on killing yourself or someone else. And counseling as an adjunct to that may be useful as well, though if you want to see meaningful change then the counselor isn’t the right person to talk to. And if you can access these things without breaking your bank, do it. Because we need for the aware people to stay alive and be aware and say something. For real change to happen, the depressed person needs to call bullshit on the whole system in any way possible, and to take actions of any size to gnaw away at the machinery to help bring it down.

Write.

Draw. 

Sing and dance. 

Take incriminating videos of the systems at work, and share them widely.

Play with children and keep them as far away from the machinery as you can, while they’re young enough to form healthy memories that can inform their adult choices. 

Share your excess with others who are in need. 

Don’t be afraid to engage in a little petty theft if you’re up against the wall and your next meal depends on it. The capitalists will tell you that when you steal, you’re stealing from the store employees, but you’re not. You’re stealing from the capitalists, who steal from their employees anyway no matter how “honest” you are on a given day. So if you must steal to avoid starving, don’t feel guilty about it. You’re starving because someone far more powerful than you wants you to. They benefit from your having less of everything you need to survive, and to thrive.

Pool your resources with others so each of you can live on less. Find a job where you can earn just what you need to to keep body and soul together, and if you can get away with working less than full time, do it. Time isn’t money; you can always make more money but you cannot make more time. Every part-time worker who chooses to remain part-time is stealing their time back from capitalism and spending it in other, more human-scale and beneficial ways. 

Remember that we will all die someday, each of us. Embrace your mortality so it might inform how you will live each day. Capitalists thrive on our fear of death, and use all their powers to convince us that living forever is the more desirable option. It’s also a lie. We can take back our death and own it for ourselves. It won’t prevent my death but it will be real and it will be my death, and no one can take that from me.

Every now and then, things will get hard. The owners of the systems will win, and you will suffer.

But nothing lasts forever, not even suffering. The pendulum swings both ways. I try to remind myself of this whenever I can so that I don’t go off the deep end. I try to remind myself that my depression is not my fault, and it’s not of my making.

Suffering does not preclude or prevent art, joy or love. (In some ways, these things may be intensified by the experiences of suffering, but I am not the scholar who can facilitate an in-depth discussion of that point. As always, Your Mileage May Vary.)

The conditions that caused it happened long before I was born. Sadly, they will exist after I die. So my life will have to be a series of little rebellions every day. The best I can hope for is that someone else will see what I am doing, and choose to follow suit in their own distinctive ways.

It’s not ideal, but it’s the best I can hope for, and on my best days it’s a pretty good best.

(P. S. Dear Mom and Dad — please don’t be mad at me. You didn’t know. You couldn’t know at the time. I believe that if you did know you would have tried to do something. I hope that if there’s a glimmer of your knowing left anywhere in the universe you’ll be proud of me. I love you.)

Memento mori.

A friend posted on Facebook today, “ I can't believe this is happening. How is this happening? How is this happening? HOW IS THIS HAPPENING!?!”

And I was inspired to respond to him privately.

But upon later reflection, I decided to share what I wrote here. Because it actually makes a lot of sense for a lot of people, especially those of us who are approaching or in retirement age. Because what is happening is very likely unstoppable by average citizens. I’m not going to call the general election in July, but I am going to say that unless the Democrats pick someone else RIGHT NOW and do a hard sell, things are going to go south. 

And if they do go south, there is nothing I or you or any other ordinary person in this country can do to prevent that. 

*******

I stopped pondering escape long ago. I have neither the means to escape anywhere (not even out of state), nor the robust health to storm the barricades.

Instead, I have been pondering my mortality.

It’s not entirely bleak.

Of course, no one wants to die. But we all must die.

I leave no children behind, and more of my years are behind me than ahead.

(Don’t worry, I’m not considering suicide. I still love my life.)

I’m just having significant conversations with death and not shying away from them.

I recognized very long ago that I simply do not have the power, status or money to change what is happening in a significantly meaningful way.

So I am focusing on smaller pieces of meaning and moments much closer to the present. 

And that is probably the best I can do.

******

I shared this response with my friend, who until now had been exhorting everyone he knew to hang in and fight. But tonight, he admitted, after reading my response, that he was coming to a similar conclusion. I felt sad for him, and for all of us. Especially for those of us old enough to remember how life used to be.

Those of us who’ve lived long enough to remember when democracy meant something, when America was still a nation where most people tried to get along because behaving badly was still an embarrassment and behaving violently was still a crime. We kept our cruelest thoughts to ourselves when we got old enough to understand that this was how adults were supposed to behave, because getting along with our neighbors was still a worthy pursuit for most of us — we will remember what that was like.

Today, opinions and behaviors we once saw as marginal, fringe, have become the norm and have entered the mainstream. Elected officials have given their constituents permission to say and do horrible, awful, evil things to anyone they might disagree with, in the name of creating a more homogenous American society, and anyone who doesn’t fit the new norm — white, straight and conservative Christian — doesn’t matter. If you go after someone who doesn’t belong, you will not be punished, and you may even be called a hero by the people in charge. The  lives of those who aren’t part of the now-ruling majority no longer matter to the majority, whose protected status has been assured by powerful interests who stand to benefit by having their constituents as compliant, enthusiastic sheep — and heavily armed sheep at that.

The pendulum swings both ways.

When I was a kid, it swung one way. As I enter my later years, the pendulum is now swinging the other way. And it will likely not swing back in my lifetime. 

So what is left is memento mori. 

Remember that you must die.

What is the purpose of such a reminder in times like these?

I believe it helps to clarify not only what I can and cannot do, but what’s really important in the here and now. What’s in front of me. What I can touch and feel right now. Who matters and who I can be in this moment. 

If we’re lucky, we may impart something of that to someone younger than we are, someone who will be around after we are gone. We can impart what we can, and hope that some of it sticks. That it sticks long enough for those younger people to grow up, get stronger, acquaint whatever will pass for power and influence in their prime, and maybe slow down the pendulum and nudge it in the other direction. It won’t happen in my lifetime, and maybe not in their lifetime, but it could happen somewhere down the line. Maybe “could” will have to be enough. 

I won’t live to see it. This change took a long time to come about and it will take a long time to dismantle. But knowing that it is possible is enough. If I cannot die peacefully when the time comes, I hope this knowledge will allow me to die at peace. I’m grateful to be old enough to understand the difference.

“Death is no enemy, but the foundation of gratitude, sympathy, and art. Of all life's pleasures, only love owes no debt to death.” — Anita Diamant, The Red Tent.

Thank you for a truly remarkable ride. FREE THE MUSIC!

Dear friends:

Due to circumstances beyond my control, All my music will now be available for free streaming and download on Bandcamp.

To be fair, I wasn't getting all that much traffic to the site anyway, and the multiple hoops I'd have to jump through in order to continue to receive funds from the site are far too onerous for me to work with.

Since I have retired from full-on gigging and touring, it seems like the best step to take.

If you want to obtain sheet music for my songs, please contact me directly.

It has been a truly remarkable ride.

Thank you for supporting Jewish Music Made By Hand.

https://bethhamon.bandcamp.com/

 

 

Truly honored. Thank you, Cantors Assembly.

A song of mine was shared last night at the Cantors Assembly conference.

I was invited to submit a song some months ago, and it was chosen as one of the songs that was performed last night.

Owing to my ADHD and my brain being pummeled by other stuff lately, I had forgotten which song I'd submitted. ("The One Before Whom you Stand", from my album The Watchman's Chair.)

Jen Cohen, a Cantor from New Jersey, learned my song and sang it beautifully last night, wonderfully accompanied by a guitarist whose name I don't know.

I was thrilled, and truly humbled.

Here you go.

I am so messed up about identity these days.

I know that saying something like that out loud is risky in today’s climate.

But to be honest, I also don’t feel like I have as much at stake within the Jewish community as many of my friends and colleagues.

Living a life mostly on the Jewish margins has given me a different view of things. I understand, after getting to know other Jews, that many of my friends grew up in the comfortable center of Jewish life, with synagogue membership, religious school, Jewish summer camp and homes located on neighborhoods that were predominantly Jewish. Who wouldn’t feel clearer and more secure about their Jewish identity, and their place in the world, as a result of all that?

Growing up as I did in working class neighborhoods, in schools were I was often the only Jewish kid and, for a year in middle school, was bullied specifically for being Jewish, even as I felt removed from Jewish communal life and had little knowledge of Jewish history and no sense of Jewish connection. My parents did nothing to instill Jewish “pride” in me and my sister — indeed, the emotion of pride was reserved for one’s accomplishments, not for identity. There was some vague vibe connected to Zionism where my mother was concerned, but the only time I ever got a glimpse of it was when terrorists invaded the 1972 Munich Olympics and murdered Israeli athletes. Mom sat in front of our TV set and cried. She could not explain her tears to me, nor did she expect me to feel as she did. I was horrified that anyone would sully the Olympics that way, regardless of whom was a harmed or killed. I saw it universally. I would have been horrified no matter who had died. She took it personally, Jewishly, in a way I could not understand or claim for myself.

At age nine, I did not stop to ponder that she might feel lonely in her Jewish grief. We were, after all, uninvolved in Jewish community at the time.

It’s strange to find myself in a similar space, but on the opposite end of things.

I do not feel specifically Jewish grief. Growing up as I did, left to my own devices emotionally and philosophically by hands-off parents, how could I? I see this as a universal tragedy, as horrible as when the  Tutsis and Hutus were at war in Rwanda. My parents didn’t drill the Holocaust into me as some “special” kind of suffering or hardship; while it was specifically Jewish and horrible, it would have been worse for many more people, Jewish or not, if Hitler had won. 

I know that this sounds crazy to anyone who was raised Jewish, or who chose Judaism and embraced a love of Israel with the fervor of a convert. I get that. But I continue to feel a detachment from the whole thing, an overwhelming desire NOT to embrace this too personally. I was bullied for all sorts of reasons growing up and very often my Judaism had nothing to do with it. (Kids can smell weird a mile off, and they’ve always been able to.)

I feel weird, more than anything else.

Right now, I am equally repelled by the pro-Palestine crowd and the pro-Israel crowd. I feel I have no place among either. I feel repelled by the vehemence of the emotions at play, the violence of feeling, evident in the crowds on both sides. And I am not a violent human being. Having been bullied, I shy away from aggression.

So when I read, and reread, Frederick Foer’s cover article in the April issue of The Atlantic a couple of days ago about the decline of Jewish safety in America, I felt myself at something of a remove again. I understand the importance of Israel’s existence intellectually, but I do not feel strong emotions of connection and love for Israel on a personal level. 

I have held too many uncomfortable questions in my head about the origins of Israel statehood, and the displacement that was sadly necessary for it to come about. Was it really necessary? Did the world’s Jews have any other options, in a world where other nations did not want to take them in? 

At the same time, I can only shake my head at the repeated refusals of the Arab states that controlled the Palestinians to discuss sharing the land. Neither side has wanted to talk for a very long time, and far too many who are really invested in this endless conflict seem to want it to go on. 

All I know is that, when Jews in the United States stand together to sing “Hatikvah,” I am uncomfortable in my heart of hearts and almost always have been. Israel is someone’s, but it is not mine and has never been. If America is also not mine (for another set of reasons), it may well resonate with my discomfort at nationalism in general. It is hard enough to stand tall for a country that treats women like second-class citizens — still! — and came up with “don’t ask, don’t tell” as a workaround for queer equality. I can barely handle being tribal, let alone nationalist. The total stuff of who I am — my history, my brain, my orientation and my sex — have long pointed me towards another way. And while it has been a lonely way, at least it’s honest. I’m not sure how willing I am to trade that honesty for a community in which to belong, especially if the stakes for belonging are so fraught with assumptions on what makes a good this or that.

After reading this article, I feel like I’m lousy at being all sorts of individual, specific identities these days. I feel the separation that comes with clinging to an identity at the expense of being able to live in the whole world. I have loved living a Jewishly oriented life, but I also chafe at the constraints that it places on my ability to be fully in the rest of the world. I can pick and choose, like people often do. The result has been that I still don’t fully belong in — or fully relate with — any of them. 

Perhaps that’s normal for all human beings and I just feel it much more deeply. Perhaps my peripatetic youth laid the groundwork for a life where I would always question so much about the way we conduct ourselves in the world. In the end, it may not matter. I simply don’t know right now.

I have no more responses about Israel right now. Because fuck.

Iran fired missiles on Israel last night, supposedly as retaliation for Israel firing on the Iranian embassy in Syria, which may have been in retaliation for support Iran has lent to Hamas and Hezbollah against Israel.
Nearly all the missiles were intercepted by Israel, the US or Jordan.

It's new because it's the first time Iran has ever fired on Israel directly.
It's old because Iran has funded other anti-Israel groups for years, and will continue to do so going forward.
It's really, really old because Israel was established in the midst of an otherwise hostile, Arab Middle East.
I know it probably had to be at the time. A third of the world's Jews had been murdered in WW2, and almost no other country wanted the remaining Jews to settle within their borders, so they had to go somewhere. Why not the land of Jewish biblical history? It made sense. A lot more sense than, say, Uganda. (Really, Herzl? Uganda?)

Unless you already lived there, and had to be moved aside to make room for so many refugees.

And this conundrum, this unbreakable Gordian knot, is why there will never be peace in the Middle East. Not in my lifetime, or in yours, or in your children's.

Sorry.

Forgive me while I struggle to find the purpose of praying for something that will never come about.

Forgive me for a lifetime of detachment that has effectively prevented me from buying into the whole story.

Forgive me for going small and inward just now. I am one of zillions who is fully aware of just how fucked we are, and how little any of us little people can realistically change the outcome.

All I can do is right here in my little corner of the world.

And God? What, even?
God didn't save the six million.
I am not convinced that God can save us now.
Is that because God isn't real, or because we didn't live up to the image of Godliness we've sold ourselves for millennia?
I don't know.
But right now, all I can really trust is other people close to me.
And whether or not that will be enough may not matter in the end.
It just has to be enough to keep me sane, that's all.
So I will love my people, my beloveds.
Not all of them are Jewish, and in the end that doesn't matter.

Love your people. Do it.

It won't save any of us from death, and it won't make the world more peaceful in the long run; but it will make our lives more tolerable in the times of despair and more beautiful in the moments of grace.

And at this point, that will have to be enough.

What IS Judaism to me in this moment? What is IDENTITY?

Why am I Jewish? 

What IS Judaism to me in this moment?

What am I here for right now?

I wish I knew.

Hamas attacked Israel and I got my ADHD diagnosis the same day, last October 7.

And everything — I mean absolutely EVERYTHING — has been called into question ever since.

Is Israel “my” place, any more than New York supposedly once was? Do I have a soul, or is that something humans made up because dying scares us shitless? Is there actually a God, or is that made up too? Do Jewish people have a special “task” or “mission” in this life, or is that part and parcel of the exceptionalist myth that’s been used to prop up Jewish life, perhaps beyond the point of common sense? Is everything Jewish that I’ve done in my life colored by a layer of fear and marginalization that renders it all less than fully authentic now? 

Should the State of Israel have been established when, where and how it was? Could it have come about any other way, or were we backed into a corner, forced to choose between survival and destruction? What about the people who were already living there? Why couldn’t they have stayed, either in a state of their own or in a new shared state of coexistence? Was it ever going to be possible to crawl out from under the thumbs of control on both sides? Should Israel exist where and how it does today? Is there any alternative?

We’re all going to die someday. Does being Jewish just mean I risk dying sooner and more violently? If we’re all going to die anyway, does it even matter? And if we’re all going to die anyway, why should any of us see ourselves as exceptional? Does that make us somehow more worthy of consideration, of favor, of saving? Saving from what? And who gets to be saved? Only the ones with the means to travel and the passports to go where they want to go? And should it matter when the whole world feels like it’s on fire anyway?

I honestly don’t know anymore. 

Learning that I have not just a different brain chemistry, but a different brain construction, a different brain design, has forced me to reexamine almost everything I’ve held dear. It has compelled me to wonder how legitimate everything I’ve done up to now has really been. And it forces me to ask, what am I here for?

One thing that I have learned is that our exceptionalism won’t save us. And I fear that we cling to that exceptionalism at the expense of our humanity. 

And if all of that doesn’t mess a human being up, nothing else will.

I have largely avoided getting too deep into the fray, the pointed argument of who deserves to exist more. I made some missteps early on, then realized my error and basically extricated myself from the argument. Because on the one hand, I’m a pacifist, committed to doing as little harm to others and to the earth as I possibly can. And on the other hand, I have no control over how the argument will be resolved. And on the other hand after that, humans are still animals, with a compulsion toward strife and an impulse toward survival that will never be fully bred out of us. 

Along with the rest of the natural world, we human possess tooth and claw; and what sets us apart from other animals is our willingness to get carried away with using those weapons. 

The best anyone can do is to reduce one’s own compulsion to a more neutral level, and in so doing harm fewer people and other animals along the way.

Fighting for the survival of a specific identity seems to miss the point. Evolution takes care of a lot of that survival without my help. 

So in the end. I am left wondering what my life is for. And before anyone offers words of comfort or a persuasion that I’m already doing what I’m here to do, a great deal of what I’ve been done has been halted by my current medical conditions. I cannot do most of what I’ve been doing up til now. So, while I watch so many quarters of humanity scream and claw and kill each other to prolong their own survival, I’m left wondering what my task is now. And if I can figure it out, how do I implement it with the tools available to me?

I honestly don’t know. And while I am still deep in my time of grief, grief over all that has transpired in my life without sufficient self-knowledge to cushion the blows, it will be quite some time before I can arrive at an answer.

For now, all I can do is feel my feelings whenever they arise, and give myself time and space while I do it.

Today's Bonus Content: A medical report card, 2020-2024

I live in Oregon.
I have been on Medicaid since before the Affordable Care Act, back when the Oregon health Plan first started.
And in the past I seldom felt angry at my doctors or at the healthcare system.
I figured I should be glad to have healthcare I could afford on next to nothing.
But since unmasking my ADHD, since lining up all the medical stuff I have personally experienced since 2020, and dealing with the changes in my doctor's office over this time, well, I have begun to feel angry.

Some of this is simply the bad luck of my last four years; a foiled album release followed by Covid lockdown, getting Covid and then Long Covid, followed by relatively little meaningful Long Covid coordination due to massive understaffing; ; and now living with the results of all of that foced inactivity and watching my body age and slow down so badly; and finally the ADHD diagnosis and all of that. The last four years have checked off a host of boxes for me with increasingly negative results all around.

I know I need to walk in gratitude, and I make a heroic effort at that every day for so many reasons. But I find that with every medical disappointment or setback, I am now feeling angry, too.
Angry, older and forgotten -- by my government, by healthcare agencies who tell me to stay where I am because it wont be better at any other practice taking Medicaid patients (and it may well be worse), by all the people and organizations that have the power to do better, and which haven't been.

So tonight I am not feeling especially grateful for the dregs which have constituted a great deal of my healthcare since 1985.

(Note: I have to say that the only doctor who has been there for me consistently this whole time has been my gastrointerologist, who has fought for me to get the meds and procedures I need because he knows how challenging a life with Crohn's can be.
He's a freaking rockstar and I am truly grateful for him.)

But what do I do with my anger when I am too exhausted to take to the streets, and when I feel pretty certain that my efforts to reach out to my elected officials will be meaningless because the world is too big and the means to make it better are too small?

Finding wholeness while we're broken

I had lunch today with Gary, my Portland Rebbe.
He's a lovely human being and I really like working with him.
He's also become a friend.

Our conversation began with me holding back tears while I tried to let him know where I was at and all that I was struggling with. I worried that if I couldn't play guitar I would not be as useful in our monthly Friday evening gatherings at his shul.

He assured me that nothing could be further from the truth.
"So you'll sing what you can, and maybe play a little drum when you can, and you may feel broken right now but you'll still bring your whole self every month and N (the other fellow with whom we've been working this year, more grounded in tradition than I am) will be quite thrileld to see the guitar go for awhile. Nothing else has to change."

I admitted to him that when I led the tefilah service with the religious school kids, I felt so lost in my own faith right now that teaching them made me feel like a fraud.

"You're not a fraud," he said. "You're one of the most authentic Jews I've met. You're so honest about where your head and heart are and what that's like. You admit when you're struggling in a world where we are constantly told not to show our weaknesses. But our vulnerability is what makes us authentic. You have nothing to worry about."

I could have cried again. But I didn't.

And then, the Rabbi told me he'd been diagnosed with ADHD in his early forties, and his youngest child had been diagnosed at age seven. I was surprised. He said, "I don't know what it must be like to find this out in your sixties, but know that you're still you and you are loved by your people and that is really all you need to remind yourself of. The rest will become clear whenever it becomes clear. Do the counseling and the meds and the naps and everything else and keep being you."

Then we talked about a friend of his who had lived in Japan for years and had learned the craft of Kintsugi, the art of repairing broken pottery with precious metals.
Gary showed me photos of his friend's work on his iPhone and we talked about brokenness and wholeness. Then we talked about eyeglasses for people with color-blindness. Gary is color-blind, Using an app on his iPhone, he showed me what he sees when he looks at a bowl of Guacamole: it was a little bowl that looked like it was filled with baby shit. Then he flipped on the app and the guac became a respectable green.

"Reds are amazing," he gushed. "They're mind-blowing."

He told me he's going to get a pair of glasses that will allow him to see color. They've come down in price and he has sixty days to decide if he likes them or send them back for a refund.
I was shocked. I hadn't known there were special glasses to help you see color. I imagined it was rather like a deaf person turning on their new cochlear implant for the first time. Wild.

I gave Gary some Jewish text study books I knew I would no longer need. He'll find someone who wants them. (I kept my book-bound Torah and my copy of Pirke Avot, because they've always been my favorites and who knows? Maybe I'll want to dip into them again at some point. I'm taking my Mussar books to Powell's to sell, because someone in my current emotional state probably doesn't need to keep a notebook of their character flaws just now. If I want to stydu Mussar it will wait for me.)

And when I got home, my head was stil "fwip"-ing like mad and I felt SO drained and exhausted, but also better. I still don't know where I am or where God is, but I knw where my people are and that is a good thing to remind myself of whenever I need to.

About the "fwip":

I've experienced this for over ten years, since before I began perimenopause. The "fwip" is a tiny sound inside my head that happens when I'm depleted, emotionally ragged, and it sounds and feels like a little "fwip" sensation that shows up inside my head, in my ears and behind my eyes. I sometimes feel dizzy along with the sound/sensation. I've asked multiple doctors about it and one of them guessed it was a kind of pain-free migraine.The others had no clue. I still get the "fwip" now and then, especially when I'm really depleted. So I'll try to get decent sleep tonoght and hope it clears up. It can be annoying if it keeps going all day, whenever I turn my head or just my eyes in another direction. And it can be accompanied by dizziness. But at least there's no physical pain.

Tomorrow, counseling and hopefully no more "fwip" so I can take a walk or a little bike ride.

Losing My Religion, Part Two: who the hell AM I right now?

I lit Shabbat candles tonight with Sweetie.

I’m always glad to do this with her. We exhale the week just behind us, we light the candles, draw in the light, say the blessing and then we embrace and kiss, and that’s how we begin Shabbat. And I love it every time.

But the calendar is also heading into the big Spring festivals of Purim and Pesach (Passover), and I dont know how I feel about those right now.

I don’t know how I feel about doing much that’s Jewish at all, to be honest.

I have known that there were things about my life that were off since before I was diagnosed with ADHD. Getting the diagnosis only confirmed a lot of what I had been experiencing — a sense of disjointedness in the world, of being out of sync with things, while I struggled to know where I belonged and what I was meant to do and be in the world, especially after my career began winding down.

What surprised me, after the initial sadness at having to put my music career to bed, was how relieved I felt at not having to hustle for gigs that were getting harder and harder to find. I thought at the time that I could content myself with a once-monthly thing at the synagogue here in town. How difficult would it be to focus my energy and passion on that schedule?  

But as my hands became less able to play guitar, I found that my enthusiasm for playing Jewish music at all was flagging as well. I needed the money, but I felt like a fraud trying to lead kids in prayer and music earlier this month, when I struggled with my own sense of identity and belief.

Over then winter, so exhausted of carrying the weight of my sadness related to my membership at Havurah Shalom, and with Sweetie’s blessing, I resigned my membership and decided that I needed to be unaffiliated for awhile while I sorted things out. I felt better almost immediately after I did that. I’m still friends with people at Havurah and believe I will be no matter what as long as we stay in touch.

Purim is a holiday that, to be honest, has never held a ton of excitement for me. I’m terrible at getting properly drunk — I get sick before I’ve had enough alcohol to feel joyously wild — and I don’t enjoy dressing up in costume, mostly because I spent the first 25 years of my life with a core piece of myself in hiding and don’t want to hide any part of myself now. So scratch Purim. I honestly won’t miss it.

Pesach is another question. I used to greatly enjoy preparing the house and setting the table, welcoming guests and leading the Seder. Then Covid came, followed by Long Covid, and even though we were able to reunite with close relatives as early as 2022, I lost my enthusiasm and energy for cleaning and preparing the house. I lost my enthusiasm for leading a full Seder. So for the last two years we’ve mostly just made our favorite Pesach dishes and shared a meal with family, but nothing past that. And to be brutally honest, I haven’t yet found my former enthusiasm for doing a full-on Seder, so we’ll once again have Just A Nice Dinner with family and a few friends. We’ll recount the story in highly truncated form, or we may not. 

I’ve been going through an incredible time of pervasive grief, punctuated by shorter periods of apathy as regards the larger world. I just don’t have the energy to care about much beyond myself and my closest beloveds right now, and I don’t know when my field of concern will expand again.

I informed my Bremerton Rabbi that she probably needs to start looking for another cantorial soloist for High Holy Days next fall, because I couldn’t promise to be able to play guitar again by then, if at all. (As it happens, that synagogue community doesn’t yet know if they could pay me as much as last year, which I honestly am not so worried about.) I have to admit that I was relieved to be able to back away from the commitment. 

I’ll meet with the local Rabbi on Monday to discuss my future at his synagogue. If there’s a way I can continue to help him out once a month through May or June, that’s fine (and like I said, I can use the money because it’s the only work I’m still doing at this point). But I cannot guarantee anything beyond that. Sweetie assures me that I cannot work at all we can still pay our bills (just), and that if I have to stop working it will only bolster my disability claim. 

The awful truth is that my sense of identity is all jumbled right now. Who am I now that I’m no longer trying to mask the more annoying parts of myself? Who am I if I feel SO disconnected from my Jewish identity, if my sense of Jewishness feels slightly suspect to me? Who am I if I don’t know who I am?

At the doctors office yesterday, they did a depression assessment. Am I depressed? Well, yeah, probably at least a little. Since 2020, my life has fallen down farther and farther and right now it feels like it has gone almost completely to hell, with NO a sense of when or if any recovery is in store.

I feel quite alone these days. Forcing myself to go to bicycle events when I can is good, but I don't always have the energy to do so. (I’m still debating whether I’ll go to Coffee Outside tomorrow morning or not, and may not decide until just before I go to bed.) Jewish communal events don’t seem to grab my interest these days. And of course, I find myself hiding in a corner while my Zionist and anti-Zionist friends continue to fight over whether Israel should exist as a Jewish state. I feel like it doesn’t matter if I have skin in that fight, since someone will find a reason to hate me for being Jewish No Matter What, honestly. What’s a little strip of desert the size of Delaware in the big picture when people will hate or love me anyway?

I start the Wellbutrin tomorrow. 

Losing My Religion? Part one in a possible series

I am Jewish. I was born of Jewish parents, and though they weren't religious and did not raise me fully steeped in Jewish life at home or out in the world, I am still Jewish. Because the most murderous of the antisemites say so, and that is good enough for them to kill me if they ever get the chance.

I did not really find my way into Jewish communal life until my early thirties, when I walked through the door of a synagogue, liked what I found, and stayed. It was not until I had found my way into Jewish community that I began to feel Jewish.

Along the way, I learned early and often to not ask uncomfortable questions about Israel. I learned this because I had not grown up in a Zionist home; because I could never afford a trip to Israel or even to an American-Zionist summer camp experience; and because very early in my adult exploration of Jewish communal life I learned that Zionism was for people with enough money to express and explore it.

To my strange -- and estranged -- way of thinking, Israel seemed like a Jewish theme park to which American Jewish parents sent their kids each summer, in hopes that the kids would fall in love with Israel, come back changed, and spend the rest of their lives working in white collar professions and donating tons of money to Israel and other Jewish causes. In short, you sent your kid to Israel to teach them how to grow up to be a good macher.
Since I had not come from such a family, and since I was working for peanuts both in and out of the Jewish world, I would never become a macher myself. And yet, when I began teaching in Jewish religious school, it became clear that my job was to help raise up good Jews, Jews who would be faithful to Judaism, to Jewish community and to Israel.

I think this is where I began to struggle.

While I loved teaching music, Jewish life cycle and later on, Hebrew, to my young students, and I loved their energy and silliness, I struggled inside with my own sense of authenticity. How could I teach what I did not know for myself, what I did not feel for myself? With only a couple of exceptions, there was no one to help me in this struggle. Eventually, I learned to say NO whenever I was asked to teach about Israel. I was not equipped, and in certain ways I never would be. It mostly worked, and I mostly never had to teach about Israel, which got me off a very large hook.

Over time, as I grew in my Jewish knowledge and in my love of "doing Jewish," I became part of one, and then another, synagogue community. I went to services. I tried to pray, though I almost never knew if it was making a big difference. It was often very hard to sit still. When I learned that I could get up and go out into the foyer for short breaks, it was a revelation and a gift.
I grew in my understanding of phonetic Hebrew, and learned the meanings of the most important words. If I didn't always have what I'd call a relationship with God, well, who did? We all wrestled with that; as Jews we were supposed to.

As my gifts and skills became more apparent, and lots of voices suggested I put them to work professionally, I did so. Teaching in religious school, learning to lead services, and eventually even trying cantorial school (where I crashed and burned after one semester that showed me how far outside the bubble I still was). It was all highly informative and I am grateful for the experiences that came my way. I was able to fashion a sort of career for over twenty-five years, writing songs and touring as a Jewish artist- and educator-in-residence at synagogues across the country. And it was an amazing, wonderful time.

But there has been a hurdle I can't get over. And while you'd think it might be Israel, it's mostly not. I will leave it to others to argue whether Israel is a Jewish homeland or just another white colonial state.
I can't really answer that for myself, because the answer I keep coming up with is that it's probably a little of both, and that there is no solution, this war will never end until the world does.
That's not a popular stance to hold in the world, and I seldom discuss it with my friends, Jewish or not.

But I digress.

The real stumbling blocks for me have always been class and belonging.

It costs money, a lot of money, to Jewishly belong in an active way. There's an expected path and one simply sets their feet on it and starts walking. More accurately, one has their feet set on it in childhood and is supported along that path until they can walk it on their own.
For the less-monied, there's Torah study and a host of online possibilities, of course; but these more passive things simply don't stand in for the live, in-person experience of belonging in a group -- of knowing the lingo and having the right passwords and the shared comfort in common experiences of synagogue life and summer camp and all that goes with that.
And while it is possible to do some of those things in adulthood, as I did, it is not the same.
It cannot be the same because along with the commonality of those experiences comes a level of belonging that is simply not open to me. It never was. It never will be.

I am the daughter of The People Who Left. And who left again and again, never putting down roots in the places we lived, or even in their own marriage.
My parents were nomads of a sort and they never could really stop wandering.
My restless father spent more than half his life running away from who he really was; and my mother spent her life trying unsuccessfully to escape a truly horrible childhood, reinventing herself with each telling of her story to someone new.
How was I to learn about community, about putting down roots, from parents like these?
It was impossible, though I tried as hard as I could.

When I tried to "do community" in the Jewish world, I was successful to varying degrees.
What held me back every time was my lack of a Jewish youth and my lack of funds.
I'd watch as other Jewish artists enjoyed success after hard-won success, cranking out albums and making enough money on tour to keep going to conferences and getting their name and their songs out there every single year, three or four times a year, until finally they became the "it" folks, the people who were invited to do the super-cool things like become paid faculty at the very same conferences, or travel to Limmud UK (all expenses paid) to teach and perform. On top of this, many were also able to have children and pay synagogue dues and give their kids the Jewish education they'd had, or even better. How did they do it? Where did they come up with the money? How did they gain access? How did such a progression work?

I never got a single answer from an authoritative source. Instead, I cobbled bits and pieces of information together, and those pieces included:

-- growing up Jewish and Jewishly connected. This gets your foot in the door better and faster than anything else, including actual talent or skill. In fact, talent and skill rank farther down the ladder than you might think.

-- having a spouse who earns good, steady money doing something non-musical, and which usually comes with good health insurance and access to quality medical providers. In short, financial security that a musician can't usually earn on their own.

-- they or their spouse is full-time Jewish clergy with a pulpit. This is often a better paying gig than you might think, especially in the more liberal movements (though that is slowly changing, and I may address this in a later post). A starting full-time Rabbi in the Reform movement can generally earn at least $75,000 a year, and by the time they've been at it five years or more it's up over 100K. Plus they get an incredible benefits package.

For someone whose annual gross income topped out at under $30,000 -- and that was almost 20 years ago -- this is mindblowing. Equal parts "How have I lived on so little?" and "What on earth are these people spending so much money on?"

-- They know the right people because they all grew up doing Jewish together, or they know friends of friends who did. It's Jewish geography. I can play it to a small extent because of my years as a Jewish artist-in-residence, but my mileage is teeny-tiny compared to anyone who grew up in the bubble. Connections matter.

*****

Congregation Beth Israel, 2008

How on earth did I even get a foothold in this scene? In retrospect, I'd have to say it was a combination of:

-- having talent and skills. I came into this scene in my thirties, already a trained musician with performing, teaching and arranging experience. Composing followed soon after and was a logical next step.

-- Being just quirky enough to get noticed. Coming from Oregon (not a Jewishly dense place) and talking about things like sustainability and using once's resources definitely caught peoples' attention.

-- not taking anything for granted. Lacking the entitlements that a Jewish upbringing and sense of belonging came with, I had to create a lot of myself and my music from scratch, and find more affordable ways to make and distribute my music. I'm fortunate in that I began my career before the internet had become ubiquitous and a hands-on approach could still be rewarded.

-- Being grateful for every scrap I could find. Because I knew I didn't have anything just coming to me. I was so tickled that anyone wanted to actually pay me to make music, how could I not be thrilled whenever a chance was offered? Even if it was for free, or for peanuts, it beat pulling lattes for a living.

*****

But I had stumbling blocks, too:

-- No Jewish connection while growing up, and a highly mobile childhood. They can't find you if you keep moving around.

-- Inconsistent and/or poor healthcare in my youth. My parents didn't always have insurance, and I couldn't always be seen by doctor when needed. As a young adult living in the time before the ACA/Obamacare, I had to live with chronic autoimmune conditions without insurance or medication, and this did make a big difference on my overall well-being and energy.

-- Coming out as a dyke in the 1980s. While I don't regret my choice to come out when I did, it was rough. I lost jobs and housing and got physically beaten up because of it. Coming into Jewish communal life in the late 90's as an openly queer woman was rough, too; synagogues weren't yet ready to accept me as I was, lending another layer to my sense of non-belonging. Hanging in there and waiting for the times to catch up with my reality wasn't easy. In hindsight, I know it had an averse effect on my mental and physical health, both in the short-term and the long-term.

-- marrying a woman. No matter what people say, women still earn less than men on the whole, and it costs a hell of a lot more to try and have a baby. During our infertility struggle we did not receive nearly as much support or empathy as a straight couple would. While we are in a much better place with our childlessness now, it was difficult and lonely to get to where we are now.

-- a highly evolved understanding of classism in the world, and in the Jewish world. When you grow up dreaming of things you can't have, and you end up earning even less than your parents did, it informs the way you see society. I don't apologize for that. It's just a thing.

In short, even with my ability and resourcefulness, I simply had too many strikes against me to end up where I saw so many of my colleagues ending up professionally. And personally.
Now that I am at the end of that career, it does take on a different glow. I am staring down an old age in which I will be physically limited, and low-income. I struggle to know my place in Jewish communal life, and twenty-five years of doing the dance and wearing the right clothes and facial expressions leave me wondering if that's all it ever was. Today, I don't feel drawn to synagogue attendance, or most Jewish rituals (though I still love lighting candles on Friday nights), and right now I honestly don't know how to be in or move through the world.

Joshua Tree National Park, 2013

 



















I believe that this is a direct result of my recent ADHD diagnosis, and all the unmasking that has come with it. I am still reeling, and wondering who in the hell I even am. I am afraid that one day my partner will wake up and tell me she doesn't know who I am anymore, either. This makes me feel terribly alone and sad. And emotionally exhausted.

I wonder if or when I might feel differently. And where I will find myself.

I’m done with synagogue affiliation. For awhile, anyway.

I married into the synagogue where I’ve been a member for over twenty years.

We celebrated our aufruf (wedding blessing) there shortly after I joined, and for a number of years I provided music for services, sometimes with my wife and sometimes alone. It was a sweet, welcoming community, small enough that members could come up with new ideas and try them out on the fly. (Larger decisions about the well-being and solvency of the entire community still had to be run past the Steering Committee.)

Fast forward some ten years, and things changed as the community grew. More and more decisions, even smaller ones, were referred to committees. Ad hoc decisions became discouraged. Musicians had been paid a small amount of money for doing the planning and bringing in musicians to help lead services. In the early 2010s, all that was ended in an abrupt move by the Steering Committee, which stated that going forward, all members would be expected to “participate” as volunteers, performing all the work of the services and teaching and sitting on an increasing number of committees. The rabbi at the time, unhappy at the withdrawal of funding from music leaders, continued to pay lead musicians from his discretionary until orders to stop by the Steering Committee.

At this time, the leadership attempted several times to hire musical leadership, but with a tiny budget and little empowerment or trust; most major musical changes still had to be approved in committee. We went through two different Music Coordinators and now find ourselves with almost no musical leadership other than the rabbi. I tried multiple times to engage with individual members of Steering to discuss this and other issues around music at the shul, but was shut down every time. Sometimes I encountered blatant classism, other times I was told there were other, more important issues taking priority. Finally, I was told to “stop fighting the culture and get with the program.” After that, my participation fell off sharply and quickly, though I remained a member on paper.

The last time attended services there was to say Kaddish for my mom. I was stopped at the door by a couple members of steering and asked if I’d lead a large chunk of the service, as the guy who’d signed up flaked out. I said I wasn’t in a good head space and politely declined. They pressed me a few times, and I shook my head and took a seat near the back.

When we got to Shochein Ad, four Steering members turned around in their chairs and looked expectantly at me.

I got up, gathered my things, and walked out. I said Kaddish alone in a park a few blocks away, and went home. 

I suppose I was waiting for change, in myself or in the shul, or both. It never came.

What came instead was a new discussion on whether to create a Palestinian Justice Committee under the auspices of the synagogue. This action has been pushed for by a number of shul members who are also members of the local chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, an organization that is admittedly anti-Zionist and which supports BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) against Israel.

I’m fine with the existence of JVP. We live in a country where freedom of thought and speech is enshrined in the Constitution. But I draw the line at a synagogue supporting a JVP-styled organization under its own roof. Synagogues ought to be places of absolute support and nurturing of Jewish communal life and activity, and because the State of Israel exists, they ought to be supportive of Israel’s existence to at least some extent. (Most synagogues have a much higher bar than I’ve set here, but I’m being generous.)

For a synagogue to consider hosting a Palestinian Justice Committee whose philosophy and practice runs along the lines of JVP or any other anti-Zionist group lies, in my humble opinion, outside the boundary of a Jewish religious organization, even in the Diaspora.

(UPDATE: The Steering Committee has unanimously vetoed the hosting of a Palestinian Justice Committee within the structure and auspices of the synagogue community. My guess is that this issue would drive members away in either case, and Steering chose the course that would presumably result in fewer people leaving.)

Do I think Israel should or shouldn’t exist?

Based on the history of its coming into being, and the fact that the world had just come out of a Second World War in which a third of world Jewry had been systematically murdered — and in which no other countries wanted to admit a high number of Jewish refugees — the establishment of Israel couldn’t NOT happen when and how it did. That it came at the expense of Arabs who lived and worked there is tragic, and must be addressed, but not at the price of the complete destruction of Israel. It may be unfashionable, but I think it’s a little late to dismantle the whole thing now.

I also think that a chunk of responsibility falls upon the surrounding Arab states which have used the Palestinians as pawns in their geopolitical games without offering them any meaningful Justice. 

But I am a woman and a lesbian and a Jew, living in America. And I know that those on both the hard right and the hard left harbor no love for me. I’m stuck somewhere in the middle, and that means I don’t have the luxury of jumping to either extreme without sacrificing or denying some major part of myself.

“War is the most impure, incorrect, unavoidable failure of civilization. How can people try to ascribe such purity to it that they imagine that all evil is permitted?”

— Rabbi Emily Katcher

And that is why I’ve chosen to resign my membership in the synagogue community that I’ve affiliated with for over twenty years. Cheerleading war is a symptom of that failure of civilization. And guilt-tripping people into action is a symptom of a community that doesn’t really believe what it espouses, beyond saving a buck or two.

I need to be true to myself, and I may need to be independent and unaffiliated for awhile.