Flunking Sainthood Page 10

  I try to share the load among various girlfriends and my husband, so that no one gets stuck ferrying me to and from church every single week. One Sunday, I remember just before pickup time that I haven’t confirmed with my friend Alethea that she’s supposed to give me a ride. We hatched this plan on Wednesday, but haven’t discussed it since then, and I can’t exactly whip out my cell phone and give her a call. Will she remember? She does. What a mensch.

  SHABBOS GOYIM

  Alethea is just one of many people pressed into service to help me carry out my Sabbath plans. But at least I don’t have to ask her to shred my toilet paper for me. That’s my daughter’s job.

  During my first week of Sabbath observance, I actually didn’t realize that I was supposed to pre-shred my own toilet paper before the Sabbath began. In my relaxing afternoon reading time that first Sunday, I learned that TP breakage violates the Sabbath law against tearing, so you’re supposed to pre-shred all your TP the day before. Who knew? I gave myself a bye that first week, because surely God wouldn’t strike me down for not knowing the rules. But the second week, I pre-ripped that Charmin with a vengeance, grossly overestimating how much I’d use in a twenty-five-hour period. We had leftover pre-shredded TP for two more days.

  But on the third week I err on the side of being too conservative. Oops. (Note to you, dear reader: err on the other side. Shred half the roll; you can always use it later.) I have to call my daughter into the bathroom to shred some more TP for me, an oversight she does not let me live down for days.

  Jerusha is handy in a pinch. I call her my Sabbath goy—a non-Jewish person who can perform certain services for Jews on Shabbat, like turning on the lights at the shul or babysitting the kids. I think all Jews need to keep at least one non-Jewish child in the home for this very reason. When the Sabbath comes around, it’s helpful to have someone answer the phone for you, flip you a kosher burger, or tell you what’s on Headline News. The problem, unfortunately, is that this arrangement is expressly forbidden in the Ten Commandments. Here’s what Exodus 20:9–10 says about work:

  Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.

  See how clever God is? He thinks ahead, and he knows that people will always oppress other people when given half a chance. Apparently I don’t get to oppress Jerusha on the Sabbath, nor can I ask the goy-next-door if I can soak up her air conditioning for a while.

  There are too many things to remember, and the learning curve feels steep. Part of the problem with the Jew-it-yourself approach is that I have only books to guide me. By the third week I know that if I had the whole thing to do over again, I’d enlist a small group of people to do this experiment together, take turns with some of the prep, and maybe ply each other with kugel. I’d also get a real-life rabbi as an advisor. Rabbi Heschel’s book is beautiful, but there’s an unwanted austerity in trying to keep the Sabbath without a teacher. It’s not as isolating as the Ramadan fast I did in February, but it’s lonely. Real Jews, at least the ones I imagine to have clustered in Rabbi Heschel’s apartment in New York, linger at the dinner table singing Sabbath zemirot (songs) or engaging in animated debates about the Torah.

  ON CHOLENT

  As I live through the month of Sabbaths, I have a bone to pick with Rabbi Heschel. I find his book The Sabbath beautiful, but . . . nowhere does Rabbi Heschel write about practical things. Like, say, eating. Food is a huge part of a lovely Shabbos celebration, but the book takes it for granted that such feasts are effortlessly prepared by unseen kosher elves. Rabbi Heschel states, on the one hand, that it is forbidden to work on the Sabbath, but another book I’m reading claims that it’s a mitzvah (good deed) to have a hot meal on the Sabbath. What gives? So either:

  1) Cooking is not work (which it is, according to the aforementioned thirty-nine things), or

  2) Someone else is shopping, planning, chopping, stirring, baking, and cleaning up afterward. Now, I’m no rocket scientist, but I’d be willing to wager that this someone’s name is Mrs. Heschel.

  The Orthodox Jewish Sabbath puts a lot of pressure on women: when the Sabbath begins, the house is supposed to be as spotless as it would be if you were hosting a wedding, because the Sabbath is regarded as a bride. You don’t just use the everyday dishes when you’re having a wedding in your home. You trot out the nicest china, the folded napkins, the fresh flowers, the candles, and Bubbe’s kaddish cup. And you knock yourself out cooking beforehand, because the food is supposed to be magnificent.

  Producing a memorable Sabbath meal isn’t much of a problem on the first night, when a model Jewish mother can whip up a gorgeous spread before the sun goes down. But I’ll bet even she can’t summon a full hot meal with all the trimmings at lunch the next day. I determine that Sunday’s Sabbath lunch will be simplicity itself: fruit, sandwiches, juice boxes. But even here I run into problems. I’m not allowed to poke a hole through my juice box, cut Jerusha’s apple into wedges, or tear off a square of paper towel to clean up a spill.

  A culinary breakthrough occurs when I decide to supplement Rabbi Heschel’s pie-in-the-sky etherealism with a realistic helping of Jewish cookbooks. The half dozen I check out from the library prove to be a gold mine of how-to information about holidays and Sabbath meals. It is here that I first learn about cholent.

  Cholent was invented because I’m apparently not the first person to notice a discrepancy between the ideal that you should have a hot meal on the Sabbath and the reality that all the means of producing said meal are off-limits to you. It’s the main dish you would get if those authors of the Fix It and Forget It Crock-Pot cookbook bestsellers had been Jewish instead of Mennonite. Basically, you take a big slab of beef (no pork, please), throw it in a casserole dish with some onions, carrots, beans, potatoes, water, and barley, place it in a two-hundred-degree oven before you light the candles for the Sabbath, and let it roast all night long. Voila, you have a hot meal for lunch the following day. I started out highly suspicious of this recipe—what beef would be anything but shriveled after roasting for eighteen or so hours?—but it was delicious.

  FEELING THE LOVE

  With all of my spiritual experiments this year, I’ve discovered that it takes several weeks to get past the initial how-to aspects of surviving a new practice before I can delve into the spirit behind it. If there are glimpses of spiritual connection or growth (and I learned last month with Centering Prayer that there aren’t always), they arise once I’ve settled into the practice and allow it to speak.

  So it’s not until the final weekend that I find myself unexpectedly longing for the spiritual peace of the Sabbath. It’s been a busy, crazy week, filled with stressful deadlines at work and major decisions at home. Phil and I are feeling intense financial pressure as we write the largest nonmortgage check of our lives: a year’s tuition to a private school for Jerusha. By the time Saturday afternoon rolls around, I am desperate for a break from all of these worldly anxieties, for a “palace in time.”

  I find peace in unexpected places: in the aroma of cholent wafting through the house, in the comfort of a long nap. And for me, the shalom also comes from rich study. The greatest gift of the Sabbath is having time set aside specifically to read. I dig out books about the Sabbath itself, and other books about Jewish life. One of these is The Book of Lights by novelist Chaim Potok, which has been sitting on my shelf for years alongside more oft-perused favorites like My Name Is Asher Lev and The Chosen. I’m so glad to finally mine its beauty that I go on a Chaim Potok kick for the whole month of July, reading and rereading the stories he set in the world of the ultra-Orthodox.

  It’s lovely to have an excuse to read fiction. Since I’m an editor and a writer, I have to be careful that what I’m reading doesn’t subtly spill over into work. I don’t want the reading to become a “task,” and what’s special about it is that I get to
approach each Sunday afternoon without an agenda—something that never happens in my life. I simply pull down from the shelf whatever looks interesting at the moment.

  This is in keeping with something I read in Marva Dawn’s book about the Sabbath. I’d like to underline the passage but can’t since I’m reading it on Sunday. I place a sticky note in the book before wondering whether removing a sticky note from its pad of yellow friends constitutes the forbidden activities of ripping and tearing. Well, it’s done now. Whatever.

  Marva Dawn’s a Christian who draws on Jewish traditions. She looks to the Sabbath as a way off the treadmill of evaluating our worthiness based on how many items we’ve crossed off a list each day. I am usually guilty of measuring my worth by my productivity: did I meet my word quota today? The Sabbath, to paraphrase Dawn, is God’s way of letting us know that he’s not following us around with a clipboard, quantifying his love based on how much we’ve done for him lately. He’s our parent, and “parents raise children primarily by who they are, not by what they do.”

  This unconditional acceptance is in direct contrast to everything the Israelites had experienced in Egypt. According to Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann, another person I’m reading this month, the fourth commandment is primarily about stopping work. In the Egyptian system, no Israelite ever got to stop making bricks, and Pharaoh would tighten the screws if there wasn’t a constant uptick in 24/7 production. Brueggemann thinks that Pharaoh’s system is a great producer of anxiety; there will always be more bricks to make, and no one can ever stop. But the Sabbath teaches us that we’re not slaves, even to ourselves.

  The Sabbath is the most radical commandment because it’s a decision not to let your life be defined by Pharaoh’s production-consumption rat race.

  I don’t want to be part of Pharaoh’s system. So when Jerusha interrupts my reading one Sabbath afternoon and asks me to play a game with her, I say yes. My reading isn’t as important as simply playing with her, which I don’t do enough of on non-Sabbath days. As we get out the Dogopoly board and pieces, I have a momentary twinge about the kosherness of playing this particular game on the Sabbath when it’s all about capitalism and becoming the canine version of Donald Trump. It’s treyf (unkosher) to handle money on the Sabbath. But do the rules relax if the money is pastel pink, yellow, and blue?

  I realize I don’t actually care. The Gospel of Mark claims that the Sabbath was made for me, not the other way around, and I’m going to play Dogopoly today. Jerusha and I play for nearly four hours, which has to be a record for the longest single stretch of game play I’ve had since childhood without having to do something else, like fold laundry or cook a meal. She trounces me, building her empire on the Great Dane and the Saint Bernard, the Dogopoly equivalents of Boardwalk and Park Place, as we share an afternoon of laughter. It is a good Sabbath.

  8

  August

  thanksgiving every day

  Give thanks in all circumstances,

  for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

  —1 THESSALONIANS 5:18 (NIV)

  “What’s your spiritual practice this month?” an acquaintance asks me as we chat on the phone about other things.

  I have a cheerful reply at the ready. “Gratitude. You know, just being grateful for all the little things.”

  “Well! That should be easy compared to fasting and that weird Sabbath thing you did last time,” she observes. “Even a little kid can practice gratitude.”

  I hope she’s right that gratitude is going to be the bunny slope of my year of spiritual experiments. In fact I’m planning on it, because I need a break after the steep learning curve of Sabbath keeping. We’re on vacation for the first part of this month, and frankly, I want an easily transportable practice that won’t require much extra time, planning, or hand wringing.

  I’m not alone in attempting to be more grateful. These days, there’s an upsurge of research on gratitude, mostly about how cultivating thankfulness can improve our lives. In keeping with the lighter, less demanding theme of this month, I’ve decided to bypass a single spiritual classic in favor of a number of different shorter writings on gratitude. I want to know how to become more grateful—and whether doing so will make a difference in my life. Much of what I read promises that it will. In one nine-week study, research subjects were randomly assigned to different groups, including one asked to list annoying things in their daily lives—stupid drivers, messy houses, dwindling bank accounts. Another group was asked to catalog positive things that they felt set them apart or made their lives better than other people’s. The result? The folks who counted their blessings reported fewer physical complaints, better relationships, and more optimism about the future. In all, the researchers concluded, they were 25 percent happier than the people who were asked to focus on daily hassles.

  There are even links between gratitude and sleep. Researchers at the University of Manchester in England have found that people who filled out “gratitude questionnaires” just before falling asleep slept longer and deeper than study participants who didn’t count their blessings just before bed. Apparently, worrywarts and ingrates can look forward to sleepless nights and infomercials for the Bowflex at three in the morning.

  Who wouldn’t want to sleep better, feel happier, and enjoy optimal health? Count me in.

  THE GRATITUDE DIARIES

  I start the month with three simple daily practices:

  1) I will write down five things I’m grateful for in a little journal. (In fact, given current research on gratitude and sleep, I’m going to do this just before I go to bed in hopes of warding off my frequent insomnia.)

  If the only prayer you said in your whole life was “thank you,” that would suffice.

  —MEISTER ECKHART

  2) I will write or talk to at least one friend or family member each day, detailing why I’m grateful for that person.

  3) If negative thoughts plague me, I will drive them away by reviewing the gratitude journal and stepping up my efforts to focus on the positive.

  My first forays into gratitude are superficial. On vacation the first week of August, we get upgraded to a fantastic two-room suite at a Chicago hotel I found for a song online. The upgrade makes that day’s happy list. Also on the list is a fun mother-daughter trip to the American Girl store, where Jerusha and I meet up with an old friend and eat fancy nursery food in the tea room. The waiter even brings a special high chair so Jerusha’s doll can take part in the festivities. It’s a magical day, with a boat ride along the Chicago River and time to visit with other friends in the evening. The gratitude journal is a piece of cake.

  The second task is more of a hurdle. I feel shy about gushing to people about how grateful I am for them. My mom, who has been laid low with pneumonia for weeks, is finally up and around. Her voice sounds more hopeful, less ravaged, on the phone. I tell her how glad I am of her recovery, and it rushes over me how lost I would be if she were to die, which of course she someday will. How can any of us ever be grateful enough for our mothers? Even the lousy ones deserve respect for bringing us into the world, and I happen to have a great one, who more than made up for the fact that my dad was such a turd. Mom sounds touched by my concern for her illness, and also by one of the birthday gifts I send her: an adorable stuffed animal version of streptococcus pneumonia.

  The third practice, banishing negative thoughts, is where I stumble. I’m dismayed by how often negative, critical thoughts afflict me. “You’re very hard on yourself,” people have told me through the years. “You’re your own worst critic.” That may be true—but it’s also true, and unfortunate, that I’m often other people’s worst critic as well. I’ve just gotten much better about holding my tongue, either when complaints can do nothing to help a situation or when sarcasm might hurt someone’s feelings. But not to think negative thoughts in the first place? Forget about it. I cherish those nastygrams all the more because they are unexpressed, my dirty little secrets.

  Does my grat
itude practice reduce the frequency of negative thoughts? Not so far. Instead, it brings to the forefront my latent judgmentalism in a profoundly discomfiting way. My critical nature is one of the aspects of myself I’d most like to change. Practicing gratitude results, paradoxically, in an increase of negative thoughts, because some of my gratitude stems from assessing my situation as better than other people’s. I’m like that Pharisee in the Gospel of Luke who opens with what seems like a statement of gratitude but devolves into a self-congratulatory declaration of superiority: “The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income’ ” (18:11–12). I’d like to distance myself from this story, to tell myself that I’m not a smarmy Pharisee. But how many times this month in my gratitude practice has my thankfulness been in comparison with other people’s misery? Earlier this month, when a friend’s wife suddenly left him and their kids for days on end and didn’t answer her cell phone, I thanked God that I have a spouse who would never pull a disappearing act. Now I make a mental note to slap myself whenever I start slipping into any prayer that opens with some version of “God, I thank you that I am not like other people.”

  This gratitude practice has turned out to be far from simple. It does result in greater awareness of my blessings (and it’s even helped to improve my sleep), but it also functions as an artistic pentimento, bringing to the surface of my spiritual canvas many of the mistakes I’ve tried so diligently to paint over.