Thursday, April 30, 2009

Continued from the post below, One People

Anyway, this being about One People, Shema is a declaration of G-d’s Oneness.

My mother also said that we, the Jewish People are one people.

My cousins, who are Orthodox, never gave me any reason to suspect that this wasn’t true. Even though we weren’t as observant as they were, we were all Jews, all One People. There wasn't any judging. They kept more of the rules, but we all still watched the Wizard of Oz together, and we still had Thanksgiving together and the same Zaidie, our grandfather, gave us all real silver dollars for finding the afikomen (the matzah dessert) on Passover.

I had no no idea at that time, that there were people who would disagree so vehemently over the “truth” of Jewish denominations, that they wouldn’t share the same pulpit, the same stage, the same forum with one another. They disagreed and feared one another so much that they wouldn’t even bother talking about differences with one another.

Everyone agrees that everyone who is Jewish has the pintela yid . It’s there, behind the costumes. What’s the pintela yid? A very modest, but dominant force field that emanates from a Jewish person’s soul. I think it’s probably located in the heart. It says, I’m a Jew.

What my cousins understood, and communicated to me, is that it isn't how observant a person is that matters, it is how that person really behaves. Derech eretz, doing the right thing, being a mentch, is what makes the Jew.

Flying Serious

Monday, April 27, 2009

One People

I once had a blog called One People, and I wrote under the name Zachdus, because Achdus, or achdut, is the Hebrew word for unity, and my Hebrew name starts with a Z, so it made sense for that blog to be authored by someone named Zachdus.

But it was too hard, keeping up two blogs. And yet I hate to lose some of the things I wrote over there, so I'm going to rewrite them here, maybe improve them a lot, or maybe not at all.

As The Flying Bubbie, thinking about how my Bubbie behaved and how my mother, who is also a bubbie interacts, and I’m trying to be true to their truths. My mother's teachings are clearly her mother's teachings, and for sure, Torat Emecha (emaich) is the Torah of Your Mother. Your Auntie Sarah, or however she's related to you, taught me to say Shema before I went to sleep and I'd be less afraid because He protected me. Anything, if you're me, to lower the anxiety that a bad person really will climb through the window.

Flying United