Notes from A Jewish Exploration of LGBT Musicals Part 4

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Session 4, last one about *Fun Home*, November 29


During our third session on *Fun Home*, I had meant to bring a printout of the portrait that my artist friend Riva Lehrer painted of Alison Bechdel, but I forgot, so I'll post a couple of links here -- the first to the portrait and Riva's narrative on it and the second, to a link, thanking Riva for giving a recent gallery talk in front of the portrait at the National Gallery. I'm always envious of visual artists because who wants to slog through a blog-post? It's so much more instantly moving to look at a painting, drawing or sculpture, especially by a gifted artist like Riva.

Riva can also paint with words; when we were in our 20s and both living in Chicago, where we met and where Riva still lives, she told me, "You remind me of a Carson McCullers character -- a fierce outsider with her nose pressed up against the window." I think I'm a bit less fierce now ....



The Graphic Memoir and the Play - More Comparison

The coming-out letter aftermath

We looked at pp. 77-79 and listened to "A Flair for the Dramatic". Both covered Alison's exchange with her closeted, gay father -- of whose sexual orientation she was not yet fully conscious -- after her parents received her coming-out letter.

The song version had a great couple of lines, where her father said, "The good news is, you're human."

"What does that *mean*, she asks herself, "What else would I *be*?"

Raising my hand and then speaking as Jonathan nodded to me, "I keep mentioning things my mom [z"l] blurted out to me, but this is reminding me of the time when I was 17 and she found a love letter to another girl that I had left on the kitchen table by accident/on purpose," I said, "Her first words were, 'Don't you marry some man and ruin his life!'"

"You're crazy! It doesn't mean anything!" I yelled desperately.

One of my classmates said, "Your mother had a lot of insight. How did she think to say that?"

"My mother [z"l] was very smart."

Unlike Alison's father, my mom (z"l) was paying attention to my reality, even if I wasn't yet prepared to. Before she was clued in by the letter, though -- perhaps when I was in 8th grade -- we had an informal "birds and bees" talk, but it was really all about my mother (z"l) asserting that I could enjoy myself with boys without spoiling my virtue. I don't recall her also explaining the pregnancy-danger angle.

My mother told me, "There's plenty you can do without having intercourse." I understood that sexual intercourse with a boy would wreck everything in terms of marriageability, but that I was being given permission/encouragement to do whatever else I wanted (with boys) -- not that she explained what that included.

 The scene in the car

We also read pp. 220-21 aloud and listened to Telephone Wire . Alison's and my parents (z"l) gave us so much just by giving us life, but also how frustrating it was to witness Alison's exchange with her dad during college. He was completely self-absorbed and made Alison parent him instead of rising to her occasion and being the parent.

The song version of the scene in the car reminded me of watching the Miss America pageant once with my dad (z"l). I was prepubescent and among my mother (z"l), two older sisters, my dad (z"l) and I, only my dad (z"l) and I watched the pageant; that could have been a clue about my future.

My father (z"l) also died young, at 56, and we, too, never had an explicit discussion about what I wanted for my future in terms of a spouse. In Alison's case, at least she tried to discuss her identity with her father. In my case, I was too scared at 17, which is how old I was when he (z"l) died.

Like Alison, ultimately, I did send a coming-out letter to my mother (z"l) and two more to each of my sisters and I mailed all three on the same day. I was a senior in college and my mom (z"l) must have expected it, since she had found the love letter to my girlfriend four years prior. She called me long-distance from Stamford to Ann Arbor and was purely kind. And for the first time ever, she didn't hurry our conversation due to the long-distance charges.

In the book version of the song, Alison and her dad were heading out to see "Coal Miner's Daughter". Once, when I was five, my dad took just me to see "Gigi" and then out to dinner afterward. It was my first Broadway play. I wonder if we could have experienced "Fun Home" together, and so much else, if only he had lived long enough.

*Fun Home*'s Design

Our instructor Jonathan started the session: Watch these two montages and jot down some differences you see between the Public Theater version and the Broadway version; collectively -- though mostly helped by Jonathan, who was more familiar with the footage and both productions -- we came up with:

• Cartoon panels were suggested in both productions, but at the Public, there were white frames on the backdrop behind the actors, and on Broadway, they appeared as lit-up, giant squares on the stage-floor.
• On Broadway: Alison unearthed her memories via the furniture that would emerge/pop up through the stage floor; the actors were lit from four perspectives; and the audience could see the audience's reaction, since it was theater in the round; and the follow spot[light] on the Adult Alison, "... made it look like she was floating through the memories" -- Jonathan.
• What I caught was less subtle: In the Public Theater version, the male babysitter had his shirt unbuttoned and his chest and underpants band were visible while in the Broadway version, Alison's costume was a shirt and underpants for the college scene, where she had her first intimate experience with a woman.

Jonathan explained that good scenic set designers aim to elicit audience emotions with what they design. We also learned, as an aside, that the Lincoln Center Library has practically every Broadway play and you can sit there and watch any one if you make an appointment. Who knew?

Here are links to the first, second and third in my series of notes on this course. The next four sessions are going to be devoted to *Falsettos*, another LGBT Broadway play that's currently in revival. So far, I'm noticing that the most Jewish parts of our exploration of these LGBT musicals are:

1. We, who are in the class and our instructor are Jewish.
2. For the Broadway version of *Fun Home*, the playwright, Lisa Kron, is Jewish. 
3. For *Falsettos*, the lyricist and co-playwright, Bill Finn, is a congregant of our Synagogue and Jewish.
4. Some of us share how we're relating to the play we're studying by sharing stories of what happened in our Jewish families that bear any resemblance to the play's plot.

Notes from A Jewish Exploration of LGBT Musicals Part 3

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.


Session 3, November 15

Since we continue to meet in the chapel, where congregants' relatives' yahrzeit plates appear on the far wall, my parents (z"l) still are auditing this class, effectively as a pair of brass-plated (dead) flies on the wall (see photo below). My dad's annual yahrzeit lamp was lit this time; it was his 34th yahrzeit on the 11th, so the lamp was staying lit till the following Shabbat:

Exercise: Create a curated exhibit of a day in the past week, or your past week altogether, as represented by three objects that you describe on three index cards and leave somewhere in this room near one another.


My cards, all from one day last week:

1.  Viva la vida-inscribed, watermelon-slice-shaped-and-colored key-chain from a street artist in Mexico City 
2. Damascened vessel in silver and bronze, with Arabic inscriptions from Medieval Jerusalem
3. [A memory of] Size 14 sneakers for skateboarding.

Give everyone a tour of your objects. We walked around on a guided tour of each exhibit and did not necessarily explain the significance of our objects; in my case, I simply described them.

"How does this exercise connect with last week?" asked Jonathan.

"Objects give an entryway into the story," I offered.

"Ok, and objects help us remember. There's something about going around the room to "look" at the objects that helps us recall and remember. It helps us encapsulate emotion. And jump off to go deeper into ... a specific set of events that are embodied by a number of objects."

I loved this exercise and will re-use it somehow. I loved it because it made me feel so invested and engaged in expressing myself creatively, spurred on by what had amounted to the most vivid objects of a particular day.

Video of Alison Bechdel, explaining her artistic process

We watched this video next and I recalled being lucky to go to a live lecture by Alison Bechdel at the LGBT Center in NYC several years ago, where she gave a longer description of her technique. I was amazed by its meticulousness. And then I marveled again at another artist's precise, original method of glass-blowing. I blogged about his demo and lecture and compared it with Bechdel's process a bit. You can see for yourself; just scroll down to the section, "Two Artists, Equally Inspired and Inspirational".

Next, we compared pp. 96-98 of the graphic memoir to the scene/song, "Party Dress".

Both the panels and the scene/song reminded me of a painful memory. My face was so troubled, I imagine, that Jonathan asked if I had something I wanted to say.

This just reminded me of a very painful memory. It was Deena Gans' birthday party and I was 12. [Nearly all of the girls in my class already needed bras, but I didn't yet, at all. I was ashamed that I was still wearing undershirts. I couldn't stand wearing an undershirt any longer, not even under the striped Danskin shirt I put on for the party.]

My mother insisted that I wear an undershirt. "No, I won't," I insisted back.

"Put on an undershirt  n  o  w  !'"

Instead, I ran out of the house and down our long driveway as my mother yelled out the front door at me, "Butch!" I didn't know what it meant, but I knew it wasn't good.

It was fresh, the pain of our exchange of more than 40 years ago. It was another five years before my mom (z"l) was even more consciously vocal about my lesbianism, when by mistake/on purpose, I left a love letter to another girl on the kitchen table. I was a high school senior and just weeks prior, my father (z"l) had died of bile-duct cancer and only my mother (z"l) and I were left in the house, since my sisters were older and had moved out. "Don't you marry some man and ruin his life!" my mother yelled as her initial reaction to the discovery of the letter. She came around to being compassionate and was greatly supportive for most of my life, but those early years were crushing for both of us.

Then we looked at pp. 189-190 and listened to "Clueless in New York". 

I had a couple of memories pop up during the panels and during this scene, too. The panels referred to a trip with Alison's father and her siblings to New York City for the Bicentennial. Along with my mother (z"l), my father (z"l) took my siblings and me to New York during the Bicentennial to see the Tall Ships. Compared to Alison's experience, it was one of the nicest family days we ever had -- we parked with many others in a parking garage near the river and watched from there with tons of humanity pouring out of other parked cars. My mom (z"l) had packed a picnic for us, and we munched our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while leaning against the station wagon and watching the ships glide by.

The scene in the play didn't refer to the Bicentennial, but rather to her father's cagey wish to find some excitement in what was the gay hotspot back then, Greenwich Village. It reminded me of me, 10 years after the Tall Ships trip, when I turned 21. My middle sister and brother-in-law invited me to stay with them in their apartment at the time, in Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village. To celebrate my coming of age for legal drinking, they gave me a bottle of champagne as a birthday gift. We drank some and then they went to bed. I told them I was going to go for a walk. The difference was that all of us were adults officially, rather than that I was a parent, leaving my kids alone in a huge, strange city, as Alison's father did to her siblings and her.

I left Kayla & Elliot's apartment, hoping for the adventure of seeing real lesbian and gay people, walking around the Village. I scouted for a bit and no one was apparent, not any women in any case, so I decided to do something wild and entered a neighborhood magazine shop to find something racy to read.

The only LGBT-oriented publication for sale was "Gay Community News", a weekly newspaper out of Boston. I didn't peek through it at all. I had the cashier stuff it into a paper bag and walked back to my sister's, where I planned to read it if they were already asleep. They were, and I was excited, till I scanned the headlines. Yawn. It was all straight news ... so to speak. There was nothing pulse-provoking about it. I'm fairly confident that Alison's father found what he was looking for on his Village jaunt compared to my thwarted exploration.

Exercise for Homework: Consider three iconic moments in my whole life that reflect an arc of experience and write/illustrate them; the illustration option is my inference, as the form that Jonathan handed us had three caption fields with space next to each for a drawing. I'll think about it. So far, here are some candidates without doing any refinement, prioritization or arc consideration:

• Learning to swim / ride a bike / recite the Ma Nishtanah (Four Questions) at the seder / to love rocks and minerals at Dr. Henderson's encouragement
• Helping complete a minyan by lying by omission at my mother's (z"l) encouragement; they thought I was a bar-mitzvah-aged boy when we were in Mayah Sh'arim, but I was a tall eight-year-old girl
• My mom (z"l), yelling Butch at me
• Noticing my physical interest in one of my best friends, rather than in her older brother, at 11
• My first lesbian experience, in Israel at 15
• My father dying when I was 17
• Going to college and exploring my sexuality, including while living in Jerusalem during junior year
• Getting fired from a job I thought I was too good for in 1990
• Beginning my relationship with Pat in 1992
• Starting up the LGBT B2B business development team at my company 
• Having my Master's sponsored by my company
• Going with my future wife Pat to India on assignment for my work for six months in 2007
• Marrying Pat legally in 2011
• Graduating with a Master's in 2012
• My mother, dying in 2014 ....

We have just one session more on "Fun Home" and then we switch to "Falsettos" in two Tuesdays, after Thanksgiving.

Here are links to the first and second in my series of notes on this course.

Notes from A Jewish Exploration of LGBT Musicals Part 2

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Session 2, November 8, 2016, Election Night

Exercise: First, we'll think about the election and then we'll get away from it. Think of the first election you can remember and write about it in present tense:

Sealing envelopes for McGovern mailings in a dark room in his Stamford headquarters. It might have been the first volunteer work I ever did.

How do you begin to fictionalize a true story, asked Jonathan, and how do you create an entryway for the audience?

Exercise: Look at young Alison from "Fun Home". Describe her.

We called out: playful, precocious, inquisitive, tomboy, verbal, aware, observant, older sister, wants her dad's attention.

Now, describe images you remember from the play that are associated with her.

We called out: ring of keys, lace-up boots/short hair, coffin, airplane, barrette, dress, piano with Mom, sketch book, objects of living room, Tall Ships.

These images are more compelling than attributes of the character.

Exercise: Now, choose an age and do the same with yourself; write it down:

Age 11 - flat-chested, tomboy, enthusiastic, vulnerable, observant, aroused, active, loyal, tall, anxious, secretive, suntanned from playing outside.

Images associated with that age: white bikini, sunrise from Jennifer's bedroom, Coppertone lotion, Yes concert T-shirt filled out by Jennifer, beach chairs, terracotta roofed home on the water, the Sound, city bus, white-toweled brother with teeth effervescing from 7-UP.

What was hard about doing that exercise, asked Jonathan? The yearning and the pain from the pleasure that, practically immediately, became a feeling of shame in my case; I recognized, viscerally, that I was attracted to my early-developing, curvy friend and not to her gorgeous older brother.

In groups of three, share what you wrote with one another. And then in plenary, everyone, just share one image from your group of images: bicycle ... seeded jam in a sandwich ... locker room ... white bikini ....

The archival work of your own life maybe requires memoir-ing an image, suggested Jonathan to all of us.

Video clip #1: We watched an interview of the "Fun Home" composer and playwright on how they arrived at an opening number for the play. When the lights went down in the downstairs chapel, where the class was held, the ner tamid (eternal light) and current yahrzeit (death anniversary) memorial lights remained on. Last week, I didn't notice the yahrzeit lights. This year, my dad's (z"l) Hebrew yahrzeit is on November 11th. I hope the light comes on and stays on through our next session next Tuesday.

Video clip #2: We watched the lyrics for the opening number, "It All Comes Back"and I thought about how my older sisters, not my dad (z"l), used to give me our version of "Airplane", which we called g'yupapah. When I was little, I loved for my dad (z"l) to carry me from the back of the station wagon in the garage up to my room; I'd pretend to be asleep, so that he'd carry me.

Written in front of the TV while watching election results:

From the opening song's lyrics:

"My dad [z"l] and I were exactly alike." [Our appetites, our stature ....]
"My dad [z"l] and I were nothing alike." [I eat healthy food. I've been employed by the same company for more than two decades so far.]

The play, "Fun Home", reminded me of my own life, since the main character lost her dad too early and since she was also a tomboy as a kid and an active lesbian by college. At least three of my classmates, one man and two women, are parents themselves, so perhaps they can relate both to the parents and the kid. We have two more sessions on "Fun Home" before we switch to studying "Falsettos".

Notes from A Jewish Exploration of LGBT Musicals

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Session 1, November 1st 

Here's the course abstract from the Lehrhaus course catalog:

A Jewish Exploration of LGBT Musicals: FUN HOME & FALSETTOS
Taught by Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum and CBST Member Jonathan Shmidt Chapman

Explore two iconic musicals currently on Broadway that feature LBGT stories front and center. Through text study, hands-on activities and discussion, participants will actively engage with these two dynamic works of art while making connections to Jewish teaching.
(Note: CBST will organize member trips, featuring talk backs with the creative teams. These trips are not included in the class registration).

Required Reading In Advance: FUN HOME by Alison Bechdel

Here are my notes from the first session: 

• Four sessions each -- Fun Home & Falsettos
• Favorite theater experience ever, we were asked, by way of self-intro. Don't over-think it, we were told. Thought first of "The Children's Hour", but Jonathan asked for favorite theater experience, not favorite play. Ok. The original version of "Pippin". First Broadway play was Gigi with my dad, but fave was Pippin at age eight or 10. Best drama experience was "The Beauty Queen of Leenane". Pippin because of the music and lyrics and the drama because it was just crazy -- what an intense mother-daughter relationship. [Now, I'm also thinking of "'night, Mother", another mother-daughter drama.]
• Asked why we were drawn to the class: "I just need more fun in my life. This sounded like pure fun."
• We were asked to interview each other in pairs, asking about each other's week so far.
• Dramatized each other's interview by drawing it. Paralleled what Alison Bechdel did with the graphic memoir of Fun Home. Liked how well I listened. 
• Rabbi Kleinbaum: "Lisa Kron [the playwright of "Fun Home"] is Jewish and was deeply drawn to Alison's story." She did a one-woman show on her relationship with her father. 
• My parents (z"l) are taking the class with me; they're up there on the Yahrzeit wall, since we're having this class in the downstairs chapel, davke with Session 1 on the English calendar death anniversary of my dad (z"l), who died 34 years ago today.
• I also like that even when we turn off the lights to see a clip of the play, the Ner Tamid (eternal light) stays on.
• Who mesmerized me first? Unlike Alison's version, where she identified with the butch woman, wearing a ring of keys, and felt like she had found her people, but wasn't attracted to her per se, mine was an object of desire -- a dark-tan, bright-blond woman, who was acting in a local, community play, the star of it. I think I was five or six at most.
• So far during this class, I drew, I wrote, I read dramatically, I interviewed. Loved the experience.

Further jots during my train-ride back from Penn Station to Montclair: 

• Why do I like graphic novels and memoirs? They are more immersive for me? They give me permission to linger? They forgive my relatively slow reading pace?
• Election Day, we'll have class. Hope we won't during Thanksgiving Week, since I'll be in Green Bay with Pat & Jim [my brother-in-law].
• My experience of "Fun Home" also included seeing new friend Lauren & her partner, and her mothers in the audience. Was jealous of Lauren & her partner. [Pat's & my mom were already dead by then.]
• My mom (z"l) and I went to "The Lion King", but not to "Fun Home". Not sure she'd have loved it, so best we didn't get to go.
• My mom (z"l) and dad (z"l) and me.
• My mom (z"l) always had my hair cut short and let me wear all sorts of clothes. My dad (z"l) let us dress up as Uncle Sam. 
• When I asked my mom (z"l) for clues about me, all she could say was that it seemed strange to her during our first trip to Israel, when I was eight, that when she let me pick out a commemorative Israeli doll as a memento and I chose a male Chassid, rather than a female doll.
• I said simply that I liked his shoes and shtreimel [faux-fur-rimmed hat], but that didn't explain it for her.
• There was a girl who seemed like the me I didn't want to be when I was 13, David's friend. I forget her name -- blocked it out.
• There was a baby girl at the Charbroil Grill Diner in Montclair, who wouldn't stop staring at me and smiling at me. I was like her ring-of-keys moment, or she thought I was a "boy", perhaps, since I was wearing a baseball cap and had short hair then.
• The Ring of Keys song, Rabbi Kleinbaum emphasized, was the star's/Alison Bechdel's identitification song, not her love song. Even the joy she felt in finding someone like her was tempered by her father's unhappiness at observing her recognition.
• All of us have secrets. Mine just burst forth because they were harder to hide, since they were physically visible.
• Ever since I've known her, Joyce [one of the people in the class], has been an activist around aging, and older people's rights.
• Am I still an activist around being a lesbian? Does my identity -- that part -- still dominate my days/existence? Or have I settled into being a corporate suburbanite, who just wants a peaceful life?
• [Like the star of "Fun Home"/Alison Bechdel], what are the three pivotal stages of my life?

At 11, staring at my beautiful best friend and her gorgeous brother in bathing suits and realizing I preferred looking at my best friend, rather than her brother, and being devastated by what I realized.

In college, hunting for men & women till owning my lesbianism senior year.

As an adult, after 19 years together, marrying Pat legally in my hometown, Stamford, surrounded by my family, at 45, including a short video on nytimes.com and a wedding listing in "The New York Times".

 

Davke on Yom Kippur

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Why Are You Leaving So Soon? Because We Want To

We are motherless, and fatherless, children -- both of us -- now, as of March, 2015. From Kol Nidre last night through Yizkor today, I've been moved, and now, am moved to write about what moved me, rather than remaining in synagogue, where I'd be feeling perhaps further moved, but also antsy.

Last year, we left right after Yizkor and I thought it was because it was my first one without my mom (z"l) and this year, we did the same; it's Pat's first without her mom (z"l) ... or is it a trend? Pat says she can't stand for such long stretches anymore. How will I feel when I'm 65, like she is now? Please God, let me live long enough to find out. Meanwhile, I had enough poignant experiences to last me through this High Holiday even though we left by noon on Yom Kippur.

Here's what moved me:

Pat and I ushered. We were among the very first people anyone saw as he or she entered the building. Probably a dozen people walked in alone saying that they didn't have a ticket. And many others walked in alone who did have tickets. A number of them walked in apparently riveted by their phone-screen, making no eye-contact even after we greeted them. What was each one's story? Why were they alone on Yom Kippur?

And then a pretty, ginger-haired woman hobbled in with a cane and was looking everywhere but at other people when I said, "Shanah tovah. Welcome. Would you like to use the elevator?"

Her eyes zoomed in on me and she nodded. As we walked together, she said she was meeting her two sons here and that they had been coming to our synagogue for years, though this was her first visit.

"Oh, you'll like it, I think. My mom [z"l] used to say that she thought our services, at any time of the year, were the nicest she'd ever been to."

"Really?"

"Yeah. She loved them."

"That's nice."

As we got to the sanctuary, I pointed to a box of kippot and tallitot and asked, "Would you like a kippah and a tallit?"

"Oh, no, I'm Orthodox and I'm very nervous."

"Don't be nervous ... I didn't mean to say that. Be nervous if you need to be, but you don't have to be."

"That's a big Machzor," she said.

"I think you'll recognize at least half of the tunes and you'll enjoy the service. I wish I could find you afterwards to see what you thought."

She thanked me for carrying her Machzor and showing her to her seat and we parted. At the end of services, she was gone by the time I reached where she had been sitting. As I passed her empty seat, I hoped she had stayed and hadn't left early due to there being, for example, musical instruments; Orthodox Judaism forbids making music with anything but our voices during Shabbat and holidays, as it's considered labor, and we're not supposed to work at those times.

Trying, unsuccessfully, to distract myself from missing my mom (z"l)

My mom (z"l) got too old to sit or stand for so long and stopped coming to our services several years ago, but on the Yom Kippur prior to her death, she decided she wanted to come for Yizkor, so we made it happen. I blogged about it here, how she met Edie Windsor and thanked her for her leadership and what a great experience it was.

Pat and I saw Edie today and Pat said later, "We won't have Edie around forever."

My mom's (z"l) name also was Edie. And that's for sure.

Including Edie Windsor, I was moved by a number of other gorgeous women. There's a young woman in the choir with eyes that make me miss my cats and long, black, wavy hair, and I am always interested in the stories of women who can pass as heterosexual and how they end up being true to themselves. Whenever I see someone in her 20s at our shul, I time-travel back to that age and how I was finding my way back to Judaism then, and living in Chicago, and so was going to the Chicago LGBT congregation, Or Chadash. It's where I met Pat.

Something else that moved me: Dr. Nathan Goldstein, our president, mentioned that this year, the shul was celebrating four b'nai mitzvah and that all of the parents of the b'nai mitzvah had met at our synagogue.

Rabbi Kleinbaum's and a Cooperberg-Rittmaster Rabbinical Intern's drashot (sermons) touched me, too because Rabbi Kleinbaum read the whole Emma Goldman poem from the Statue of Liberty in the context of the refugee crisis -- Pat had posted the poem on her Facebook wall days ago, asking whether we can be, once again, a country that stands behind that poem. And I was moved by the intern's drash because she asked, Do we avoid coming to shul because we feel we cannot be authentically whoever we are, however we feel?

She spoke of her sister's mental illness episode in 2007 and how we don't typically speak of such things because we cannot dare to be vulnerable. It made me want to come to shul more often, even when I'm not in a great mood. And it made me feel some relief, hearing a future rabbi speak of the need to talk about things we don't typically talk about, to remove the stigma and historical shame of them. I have relatives with mental health problems and I practically never talk about that.

There are a few more things that have moved me during this Yom Kippur so far:

During Yizkor, too, the Executive Director of Jerusalem Open House Sarah Kala made remarks in Hebrew about Shira Banki, the 15 year-old Jerusalem LGBT Pride Parade marcher who was stabbed by an Ultra-Orthodox Israeli and who died of her wounds. One of our Israeli congregants simultaneously translated into English and then our cantorial intern Steve Zeidenberg and the chorus sang "Shir L'Shira", a pop song that was re-dedicated to this particular Shira after her death, and which has been sung at demonstrations around Israel ever since.

Last year, when Broadway singer Sally Wilfert sang Broadway composer and congregant William Finn's "Anytime", I wept. This year, I couldn't let go, or maybe the wound is less fresh, but still, I became choked up because the words and her voice do remind me of my mom (z"l), especially when she sings that anytime I wash my hands, she'll be there. Until she died, my mom (z"l) never failed to ask me when I returned from the bathroom, "Did you wash your hands?"

Now that I'm back home and our kitties are slumbering near me as I blog, I'm moved by the little one, Toonces', capacity for snoring. She's so little, but so audible when she sleeps. And it's cute, and I'm hopeful about caring for such beautiful feline daughters.  

Yom Kippur is all about repenting and praying to be sealed into the Book of Life for the coming year. Please, God, if it be Your will, let Pat & Phoebe, the cat, and Toonces, the cat, and my sisters and their families and all of my relatives and friends and me stay alive and healthy for another year. Amen.

Buoyant Blues

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Escaping, Through Music, But Not Really 

Starting at 1:40, which is probably where it always began when DJs played it on WBLS-FM, the song almost makes me forget my grief. Almost:



It's a great time when songs like this are playing on the radio -- my dad's employed again and I'm learning Disco and Ballroom dancing from David Jones in my hometown, Stamford, Connecticut, so that I feel like I belong at the 11 Bar Mitzvahs and six Bat Mitzvahs I attend between 1977 and '78.

This song comes a year later, but it's the sort we Hustled to at all of the Bar and Bat Mitzvah receptions, and I miss it today. Who knew then that five years later, my dad (z"l) would be dead of common bile-duct cancer?

This next song...



...also gets good about 30 seconds in and almost makes me pound away the blues of my pastoral session from earlier today. A Rabbinical Intern at our shul, wants to know what God would say to me after I ask, "When can I just fall apart?"

"Never," God says, I tell her. He says, "Keep going. It won't serve you to fall apart."

At ~1:20 in, God might as well say:



Or He could be as Kind as a number of the Psalms and pledge:



The Rabbinical Intern tells me, "Let's look at Psalm Chaf Zayin. Keep reading."

I read aloud, "For my father and my mother [in that order] have left me; but the Lord will take me up."

"Do you believe that you can let God into your life to help you?" The Rabbinical Intern asks me and I'm almost embarrassed at her revival-style inquiry.

"I *can*, yes, but will I?" I say, barely aloud.

Last night on Twitter, a former Modern Orthodox Jewish day schoolmate and I had an exchange of tweets around an article that compared and contrasted coming out as Atheist to coming out as lesbian, gay, bi or trans. He's an Atheist and one of only three friends of mine who identifies as Atheist...that I know of. He's definitely not:



Didn't God give me this great music for dancing, escaping, wanting to live, for hope and joy, even in the midst of my sadness and fury?



Can't I shut my eyes right now, even as I'm typing and be transported through the furniture from *The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe*? Dancing the whole way! God, for a moment, I've become even younger than Bat Mitzvah age.

Now, back to the present, where I feel very alone. Indeed, Pat is not home right now, but even with Phoebe, the kitty, here in her plush bucket-bed next to me on the floor, I'm just by myself, except for my Disco and Funk friends:



What if I could time-travel and heed the eventual call of this video to go to Barbados for a weekend in 2010, for three days and nights of "Pure Rare Grooves"? There's no such thing as a geographic cure, they say, but it doesn't stop me from wanting to escape my mourning. I am parentless. I am childless. Who will mourn for me? Ok, that was melodramatic.

Ever since I went to a '70's dance party at my friends' Stephanie and Laura, I'm craving dancing in public, and there seem to be fewer opportunities for public dancing than when I was younger. "Don't stop me and I won't stop you," as this song commands:



"Are you angry at God?" asks the Rabbinical Intern.

Later, I think of an answer: Not when I'm dancing, or rollerblading:



Or "Funkin' for Jamaica" and getting to see the beautiful, female singer for the first time by watching the video, which I usually don't like to do; what they produce is always less appealing to me than what I see in my head. Not this time, though. And the mens' spirit is uplifting. They love making the music maybe more than any musicians I've ever seen.



The Psalm book I was reading from today had been a gift to my mom (z"l) from me. I inscribed it 15 years ago, in 5760 of the Hebrew calendar:

5760

Dear Mom,

May these Psalms comfort you whenever and wherever you need comforting.

Love,

Sarah

When the Rabbinical Intern and I were talking earlier, why didn't I notice that my mom (z"l) had underlined part of the last sentence of the very Psalm that the Intern asked me to read aloud, "...be strong, and let thy heart be of good courage...."

A Picture-poem Prayer for the World's Birthday

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Happy 5773rd Birthday to the World!

By the sixth day, all of the creatures and living things pictured here
were launched:

By bein ha'shmashot (the time between the sixth and seventh days)
our rabbi says that Queerness and the talking donkey from the
story of Balaam emerged.

Bein ha'shmashot, then, is when the extra-special features were
ready.

Toonces and Phoebe, mums and elephant ears, cool shrubs,
Hibiscuses, little tomatoes, smoke bushes and magenta dahlias
were part of the standard plan, by contrast, and all were captured (see
above) in post-shul pix I took today, in our home and garden.

Our rabbi delivered an interactive drash earlier. She recited three
poems by Palmachniks, all about Isaac and the ram. Then invited
our interpretations.

From Yehuda Amichai: "I want to sing a song in his memory—
about his curly wool and his human eyes,
about the horns that were silent on his living head," and from
Amir Gilboa, where Isaac says, "Father, hurry and save Isaac
And no one will be missing at lunchtime." The middle poet, I
cannot remember, other than that a congregant felt that he was
trying to guilt-trip her.

The guilt comment reminded me of our rabbi's reference to the
talking donkey and how in two out of three of the poems, none
of the underdogs had a voice...but in the third poem, Isaac, the
child, had a voice and used it. Was he as effective as the donkey?

Some years ago, when it was parshat ha'shavuah, the Torah
portion of the week, I delivered a layperson's drash that focused
on the donkey as a symbol for anyone I have a tendency to
disrespect reflexively, when I'm less than thoughtful.

Throughout this 5773rd year, may I always listen for the
historically-underrepresented, extra-special voices and heed them.
And may everyone. Amen.

Torrent of Consciousness

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions. 


Observations During Rabbi Kleinbaum's 20th Anniversary Shabbat Service



Erika, the wife of my college classmate Sari, and her pre-teen daughter Ruby walk toward us as we're all heading to the entrance. And instead of being with Pat, I'm accompanied by a friend Davina -- a heterosexual ally I met through our diversity and inclusion work -- but Erika doesn't know that and wonders where Pat is. I explain.


I can see that Erika's relieved and we go in...but not before passing through the gauntlet of Rick as he hands us each a siddur, "I'm watching you!" after I introduce Davina. "Rick, Davina is a great *ally* of our community." And she's also a good sport. A very attractive good sport, who more congregants are going to notice, I'm certain, especially the female ones. He's semi-satisfied with my explanation that Pat's in Green Bay with her brother, helping their mother move.


And I do feel guilty as we enter the sanctuary. Pat should be by my side. Which is worse? Not coming with Pat for this historic occasion in the life of our congregation, or not coming at all?



Pat's and my usual seats in the center, second row are taken, which seems right -- at least, another woman shouldn't sit in Pat's seat next to me. Our view is obstructed by a pillar. Pat might have left, rather than have such a crummy view. I'm Ok with our seats and again, Davina's a sport. And she has been to CBST a couple of times before -- once with Pat and me and one time on Purim with other friends.


A pretty, single (I think) congregant comes over and I feel bad that Davina is not eligible, but also further guilty somehow, like the woman is sort of winking at me without winking, at my sheer good fortune to have such an attractive friend, but is also perhaps a bit disoriented, since Pat and I ourselves are such an established pillar of our congregation, and who is this woman anyway...? Or it could all be major projection on my part. And then I explain Davina's ally status, and then the congregant might be personally disappointed as she moves on to her seat.



I'm missing Pat, especially at the start of the service, as we're singing "Shalom Aleichem" and swaying with interlocked arms, as is the congregation's custom. Why do the women on either side of me have to be so little? I can feel the imprint of my friend's tiny hand on my back and miss the solidity of standing with Pat, who is essentially my height, and miss that I have no one to kiss on the mouth when the tune ends and we pause to wish "Shabbat shalom" to those around us. I'm *so* spoiled. Later, before delivering her drash, the rabbi will allude to having been through a hard breakup with her "ex-partner" of many, many years, and will announce that she has a new partner. And during the kiddush, another friend will tell me that her partner broke up with her recently, and they were together for at least the 16 years we've been congregants. How were either of these breakups possible?



I can't imagine losing Pat, except to death, which I imagine morbidly all too frequently, since she's 15 years older than I. My dad was a year younger than my mom and he died at 56, so the younger ones can go first, of course, but -- and my mom never re-married. When Pat turned 56, she had a colon cancer scare and had a piece of her colon removed. We got off scot-free, so I relaxed...and then I remembered that I needed to get past 56, too, without Pat dying, since 56 was the terrible age that broke apart my parents. Nine more years of pins and needles and then I can relax, until I figure out another reason to worry, assuming I'm still healthy myself then!



The place is packed. I'm smiling at people I've known since we joined upon our move to metro-New York 16 years ago: Sari, Judy, Saul, Saul, Ruth, Jack, Marni, Ilene, Abbe, Diane, Joyce, Karen...how is it that 16 years later, I'm edging toward becoming among the elder congregants? Not quite yet, I guess, but when I look around me at the younger faces -- and bodies -- I feel wistful.



What a lovely trio of Orthodox women two rows ahead of us! They look like the just barely grown-up version of the prettiest girls in the Modern Orthodox Jewish day school I attended from Grades 1-8. They can't be older than their late-20s. Chestnut hair streams down one's back, another's fine, blondish-brown hair is swept up in a pony-tail that ends with a couple of sweet curls and the length of the third, dark-brunette one matches the chestnut hair's length almost exactly. Such simcha-inspiring symmetry!




When they stand for the Amidah, they supplicate themselves in all the right places. During the rabbi's drash, two of them emerge as a couple, leaning into each other's shoulders with one, tugging on the other's pony-tail at one point, twirling the curls -- ultimately, I recognize one as a far-flung Facebook friend who I'm seeing in 3D for the first time. What a chasm they've crossed to be here, as a couple, touching each other, even just a little, in *public*. How at home they must feel, to be able to do so. Again, perhaps another giant projection on my part...if only Pat were with me, so I could have my left arm around her as usual, draping my hand now visibly on her shoulder/back/neck, so that my wedding ring would flash in the sanctuary light as a literal symbol of our rock-solidness (k'ayn eyeen harah).



God, why can't Pat be here with Davina and me? It makes me so lonely to be without Pat, and it sets my imagination to catastrophizing. How sweet can this service be if we're not together to share it? How easily my mind moves like a magnet to noticing the especially lovely women in the crowd. If I do lose Pat in the future, will this one I see a few rows back from me still be single? Probably not. Nor that one. And she won't be Pat in any case. What if I'm alone by 56 and by then, no longer look at all attractive and can't find anyone to approximate Pat? Why *didn't* we adopt when it turned out that I couldn't bear a child organically? Who will pay attention to me when I'm old?



As I look over then at a baby who's cooing in her mother's lap, I see Judy, one of the long-time congregants, in the row behind them and recall my sobbing silently nearly a decade ago as Sari and Erika went to the bimah for their second daughter's baby-naming. Judy, herself a mother of grown kids at the time, knew enough to recognize why I was crying and simply paused to rub/pat my back gently as she walked by. It was the simplest kindness, and it convinced me that I was a bonafide member of this congregational community. We never spoke about it and I hadn't thought about her kindness in years, till I saw Erika, Sari, their three daughters, and Judy at the service.



It's our fate, instead, to have feline daughters, I guess, and suddenly, I want to be playing with them back at home, in our nice, suburban, split-level house, petting them and hearing them purr. Toonces, especially, has been missing her other mommy all week. If only I could train them to bentch licht....



I'm distracted from my day-dreaming by Rabbi Weiss, who is ready to recite two blessings for two families now up at the bimah -- one for the two women who just had twin boys and another for two men who've been together for 40 years and who are marrying on Sunday. Later, during remarks in honor of Rabbi Kleinbaum's tenure, Rabbi Weiss mentions that during Rabbi Kleinbaum's first month, she officiated at five AIDS-related funerals and this month, there have been five babies born to congregants.



During the kiddush, Davina says, "Every time I come here memorable things happen." And a bit later: "These things should be happening, of course, but they're in the realm of, 'Who ever thought we'd see -- What moved you about the service?'"




"Well, I'm kvelling a bit because we've come so far -- as a congregation and community, and personally. As a congregation, we now have our own building and our own prayerbook and personally, Rabbi Weiss married Pat and me two Julys ago [after 19 years together]."



As I said to Rabbi Kleinbaum after the service, "[Baruch atah adonai eloheinu melech ha'olam]... shecheyanu v'kiy'manu v'higyanu lazman hazeh!"/"[Blessed are you our God, creator of the universe] ...who has supported us, protected us and brought us to this moment."

 

Have You Been Here Before?

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Yes, Five Years Ago

I push this new friend's shoulder playfully and say, "Don't wait another five years to come back!"

"Well, I'm from Berlin," she says and I feel silly.

"Ah, well...."

Pat & I are headed out of Shabbat services last night when I see a woman, standing by herself near the exit. Is she an older version of a young woman I knew when I lived in Jerusalem? I look at her like she looks familiar, but then realize she's not. She's not at all old enough to be that friend.

She has thick, nearly black hair to just above her shoulders; dark, twinkling eyes; is almost slight in physique at a quick glance; and is a few inches shorter, and many years younger, than I.

"Lots of young Israeli lesbians are coming to Berlin..." she says when I ask her how big the community is where she's from. I'm trying to act casual about her homeland, but it's still wild to me to meet a young, Jewish person, let alone a young, Jewish lesbian, from Germany -- it's just the generation I'm from, I guess, but I'm still stuck in a Holocaust time-warp when I least expect it.

"I was in Hamburg once, but just overnight for a focus group, for business," I say, and she becomes excited that I've been to Germany. "I've been told that when I go back, I really need to see Berlin."

"Yes, definitely, you should," she says, looking at both of us.

Pat recalls that a congregant's family is from Germany and that he gave a Torah from the family to the local, re-built synagogue in the town they were from.

I bring him over to meet her. Pat & I want to leave in any case, as that's how we spotted the woman at the exit in the first place, but we don't like to ignore strangers.

Once the woman and he begin speaking in German, I excuse us. The woman looks anxious and I say, "Are you on Facebook?"

"No, I've not wanted to be, but I can see that I'm going to need to be before long....Let's exchange e-mail addresses, in case you come to Berlin."

"Sure." I write down Pat's and mine and she writes hers -- her name spelled backwards.

Wow, a young, Jewish lesbian, living in Berlin today....Humanity hosts so many stories.

What a Difference a Week Makes!

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Allowing Contentment, and Even Excitement

"You haven't changed. You're a worrier," said a mentor emeritus; he retired in 2006. We were at a party to celebrate two other colleagues who retired this year and we were talking about my self-questioning nature -- to put it tactfully.

The declaration, "You're a worrier," was both upsetting and a relief. On the one hand, who wants to be recognized as anxious, rather than resolutely confident, and on the other hand, it was a healthy dismissal of the things I was saying as nothing more than free-floating anxiety, rather than as reality.

...which reminded me of how I had been thinking of Pat's and my upcoming marriage a week ago: tons of questions with a big helping of internalized homophobia. How different I feel just a week later. Here's why:

1. Pat & I met with our rabbi to discuss how she'll officiate and it sounded beautiful, and she acknowledged, and did not dwell on my internalized homophobia, but rather spoke in practically, purely positive terms
   
2. I told more people our news, all of whom were happy for us and encouraging
   
3. Pat & I bought rings yesterday, which are beautiful and which we'll give each other during the rabbi's service; we also liked how the seller spoke of his company's early granting of domestic partner benefits
   
4. I told another couple -- women who've been together for 23 years -- of our plan and they were persuaded to consider marrying in a country or state, where it's legal, too; like us, they did not realize how relatively simple it now was to transform themselves into a legally-married couple.
   

The rabbi wants to meet with us again and wants us to bring written answers to the following questions that we'll share with each other and her at the same time, at that meeting:

1. Why marry?
   
2. Why marry now?
   
3. Why marry each other?
   

The request is so appealing to me, but so unappealing to Pat. In her typical irreverence, she said to me as we drove home from meeting with the rabbi, "Would you do my answers, too?"

5770, Here We Come!

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

What Whitney Houston and Cantor Max Fuchs Have in Common

Last night, Rabbi Kleinbaum struck me as the "Ellen" of the Jewish Queer world and also as my conduit to God, a striking combo. The bigger and less traditional the crowd, the funnier she is. She is so funny from the bimah that when she introduced the "Achot K'tanah" as a traditional melody from Casablanca, a number of the congregation laughed, thinking, I guess, that she was referring to the classic film.

At the outset, Rabbi Kleinbaum set the life-is-hard-but-redemption-is-possible tone for the service, discussing how, right where she was standing, earlier in the week, Oprah had interviewed Whitney Houston. Our High Holiday services require no tickets -- unlike nearly all other synagogues -- and so they are too big to hold in our regular setting; Rosh Hashanah services are held at the Town Hall and Yom Kippur services, at the Javits Center.

Whitney's misfortune, said Rabbi Kleinbaum, was that -- like a number of us -- she yielded to her self-destructive impulses, but in her case, she had to do it in the glare of the spotlight, since she was a celebrity. During her riff about Whitney Houston, she got a little edgier than I've ever heard her be and, though I'm sure unintentionally, her narrative almost seemed a bit dismissive of human frailty to me; by the end of her statements, she brought it back home to how any of us could relate to the struggle of being self-loving vs. self-destructive and, I thought, redeemed herself.

The "conduit to God" feeling happened at that point, and then again when right before we sang "Yigdal" as a congregation, she mentioned "The New York Times" article from that day's front page, about Cantor Max Fuchs. I knew that if I heard his voice, singing "Yidgdal" on Nazi soil, with bombs going off in the background, I'd be even more moved than I was in listening to her speak about it. And so I was when I went online today to find the clip (see link above to "Cantor Max Fuchs").

As we sang "Yigdal" ourselves, I thought, what a contrast: a platoon of young, Jewish men, who had survived the Omaha Beach landing, if I remembered correctly, singing during battle compared with more than 1,000 queer Jews and our non-queer, non-Jewish friends and family, singing the same piece of liturgy in post-9/11 New York City, relatively so much safer, if not yet having achieved first-class citizenship.

The Other Useful Message of the Evening Came from Rabbi Cohen

Rabbi Cohen related the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's exploration of the river that the Lenape Native Americans called Muhheakantuck to our need to appreciate our surroundings and be far more observant than we are. She spoke of Spencer Finch's installation on the High Line, which represented how the water of the Hudson River (formerly known as Muhheakantuck) looked to the artist at 720 different times of day.

Rabbi Cohen also spoke of ben ha'shmashot, the time between sunset and nightfall, as a time of uncertainty and also possibility and asked all of us to be more alert to possibilities, or at least that was my interpretation. I loved the reminder. Finally, she spoke of the wonder renewed in her life as she and her husband saw the world through their baby daughter's eyes during this, the baby's first, year. Rabbi Cohen explained that among the baby's first words was, "Wow!"

Shul as Spa Treatment

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

Enjoying a Spiritual Soak

Shul hit the spot last night. Pat's on her annual trip to Tennessee for several days of golf with buddies from her Northern Illinois University colleagues' golf team, since a couple of them retired there. I'm famous for not liking to stay in the house alone, i.e., without other people, not including cats, and so my mom's here.

"Like most women, I decided who my mother was long ago, sometime during childhood," Ruth Reichl said in an interview on NPR the other day.

My mom went with me to services last night and I was reminded of that quote as we sang "Oseh Shalom" together; growing up, no matter how chaotic the week/morning/moments prior to sitting in the pew had been, we got into such a cheerful, peaceful mood whenever we sang that piece of the liturgy. Same effect last night. I was eight again, and still shorter than my then-totally-able-bodied, Girardo-frosted-hair mom.

Driving home, I thought about Ruth Reichl's statement and how through writing a memoir about her mother, her decision about who her mother was broadened. This weekend, with just the two of us, I want to be open to a further expansion of the definition I have of my mother.

Last night was just the start, and a welcome way to begin: For particular parts of the liturgy, I stood with the congregation and my mother sat -- unable to stand anymore for any sustained length of time; we held hands, though, and she began swinging them. I didn't even need to close my eyes; we were six and 46 again, skipping together down any of my hometown's streets.

Oh, How I Miss You!

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

My Fair Blog

I just wish I could sit here and play/write, but I need to read 20 more pages before class tomorrow night. This morning, our cat Toonces woke me at 3 am. I lay in bed till 4:30 and then got up and drew a bath.

Lying in a tub with a book in my hand is the next best thing to moving through a pool of water. Read 20+ pages of the school article and the rest of *French Milk.* The artist was a talented cartoonist.

Friday night will be fun, after all this work-pumping; our friend from Chicago, who now lives in New York, will join us for Shabbat services at our synagogue. There's a Halloween Party for artists that we've been invited to afterwards, but I don't know if I'll still be awake then...plus what an intimidating crowd for which to try to fashion my costume...plus, typically, I've only ever worn a costume to synagogue during Purim, as a little girl.

Right now, as I go to read this scholarly article on designing e-learning, I can't get Me'shell NdegeOcello music out of my head.

This I Believe

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

Submitted This Morning

Last night at shul (synagogue), Rabbi Kleinbaum talked about NPR's "This I Believe" series, and how she wants to start a program to get the congregation's members each to write our own essay.

She said that she was doing some writing on holiness, and that she was anxious at saying so because, now, she'll never write it, having discussed it mid-stream. Rabbi Kleinbaum said that she believed holiness was whatever increased God's presence in the world, and that we, as humans, had tremendous power to increase, and decrease, God's presence.

I appreciated her expression of self-consciousness about the writing part because that's how I felt, writing my essay this morning. I did write it and did submit it, but it hardly moved me, so I doubt it'll move many others.

I was telling, not showing. After submitting my essay, I went to the archive of essays. Among the top 25 viewed this week, I found one that impressed me in its total honesty.

Oy! That's what it's like to write about the value of being genuine, as I did in my "This I Believe" essay; it's like writing about humor -- not funny at all, typically. Likewise, writing about being genuine, as opposed to just being genuine -- like I am with this blog on a good day -- makes for pretty emotionless reading.

On the submission page, NPR asked:

Reflections:

Please tell us what it was like to write your essay.
Was it an easy or a challenging experience?
Please limit your response to no more than 500 words.

It was pretty difficult to write this essay and I felt that if I wrote too carefully, I'd be paralyzed. And it felt like extra pressure to be writing about my belief in the importance of being genuine, as the writing of the essay was an experience of feeling self-conscious. I'm pretty sure that this ought to have percolated further, and am equally sure that if I had let it, I wouldn't have submitted it; I wouldn't have gotten that far.

Here is the essay itself, which NPR limits to under 500 words:

Being Genuine Connects Me to Humanity

I believe in being genuine. My belief was hard-won. During freshman year in Ann Arbor, I rushed sororities all over campus. My mother had belonged to a sorority and I thought I ought to do the same. I went to the various houses and talked to beautiful women about myself...or about the self I thought would get me invited to pledge.

Just one house, the least prestigious on campus, invited me back for a second round. Hey, I'm from Connecticut and pretty, I groused silently. Why didn't they seek me as a sister?

It's easy, since then, to see how fake I was being with them. Mostly, I concentrated on not seeming flirtatious to my interviewers and on appearing to be an impressive candidate. Being categorically rejected was a blow, and liberating at once: If I could not fit the mold of my mother, I would need to define further who I was.

Since age 11, I was self-aware of my attraction to girls and women, but ran from it till 21, since I had gone to a Modern Orthodox Jewish day school for eight years, where I had been taught systematically that I would need to marry a man.

During my junior year in Jerusalem at Hebrew University, at a far enough distance from home, I explored my sexual orientation and twentieth-century Israeli literature – in that order. In early-September of my last year at Michigan, I saw a flyer on campus for a lesbian rap group.

I wore a skirt with a tropical print to the first meeting, telling myself as I walked to the site that if I felt out of place or uncomfortable, I'd just leave. Instead, I felt at home for one of the first times in my life. It took four years, but ultimately, I found the right sorority to pledge.

Ever since my homecoming experience at the lesbian rap group in Ann Arbor more than 20 years ago, I have believed that being genuine connects me to the rest of humanity, including to my family, colleagues and friends, who love, respect and value the real me.

Craving Judaism in India...

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

We Found It Back Home

[Note: I wrote this for our synagogue's newsletter and it was just published, and came in today's mail:]

It may be easy to find a Jewish person just about anywhere in the world these days, but finding a sense of yiddishkeit in a place like Bangalore is another matter entirely. During a recent six-month stretch in India, I’d often spend Friday night sitting with my partner Pat at the Rajgarh restaurant, where we feasted on dishes like tandoori gobi and dal makahni, but found ourselves thirsting for Jewish life.

Prior to moving into a house, we lived at a hotel for 35 days. During a party, we met a lone Jewish expat wearing a white woven kippah and engaged him in conversation. But when we asked the hotel’s concierge if she could locate a synagogue for us in the metro area, she responded, “We didn’t find a synagogue, but there’s a Methodist church….”

Pat joked with me later, “Well, you know, those monotheists all look alike.”

The experience would have been more haimish (homey) had we felt comfortable, being ourselves as a visible couple. But we almost never felt did, aside from when we were with my colleagues from work.

It was retro, being so cagey. Prior to moving into my current role in management and leadership development at IBM, I was a featured face of my employer to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender clients, having helped start a sales team dedicated to the LGBT market. Why was I willing to take so many steps backward in my openness with this Indian assignment? After all, I didn’t even request the position, but rather was asked by a superior to help our company leaders at all levels in India advance their leadership skills.

Speaking only for myself—and not my employer—through these reflections, I’d wondered: When else would my colleagues in India have had the opportunity to get to know lesbians as people? Openly gay or lesbian colleagues are rare in India, I confirmed during my first, brief trip there in 2005, and re-confirmed this time. Yet I have a sacred sense that once people are exposed to one another, they can never again be purely ignorant of one another…and that includes Pat’s and my exposure to Indian culture and people.

The most beautiful woman I met during our trip was named Sapna, who became a visible friend to our community as a result of our meeting. She introduced herself, saying, “Sapna – it means “Dream.”

Yes, it does! I told myself silently, smiling.

Since my local boss was out of the country at the time, Sapna invited me in his place to address a group of IBMers, who were volunteering to help “freshers,” (not fressers [Yiddish for gourmands]) feel at home. “Freshers” is the expression used in India to refer to people who have just joined a company. In my remarks, I made a plug for employee networking groups, ensuring that people knew of their availability, and that any L, G, B, or T employees were welcome to contact me about starting an Indian chapter of our LGBT employee group.

Sapna approached me afterwards and said she wanted to help. She agreed to start up the chapter; she was heterosexual and deeply, traditionally Hindu with a lesbian friend, who she said confided only in her. “I like being part of anything that advances humanity,” Sapna said as her lovely rationale.

Since India is just in the early stages of further LGBT inclusion, Pat and I chose to respect the local norms to a degree, so that we could live without a measure of anxiety and worry. People can be jailed for homosexual acts, though I’m told it hasn’t happened for years. Still, it meant that during the week we lived in separate rooms, giving our maid the weekends off. Essentially, being in stealth-mode also made Jewish community life impossible for us. We didn’t want to seek out Jews and then not be able to share our full story with them, and so we thirsted....

On the morning of Erev Rosh Hashanah, Pat and I flew to Kochi to visit the Pardesi synagogue and experience the only shul within a several hours journey of our home. The modest stone building bore a welcome sign, but sadly it was locked in preparation for the holiday. With a little ingenuity (and a handful of rupees), we convinced a Hindu worker to let us inside to quickly glimpse the interior. The Orthodox-style sanctuary had seating for men downstairs and women behind a latticed partition above; there were several Belgian chandeliers and a floor with 1,100 hand-painted Chinese tiles. The five Torah scrolls had Sephardic-style coverings and one was decorated with jewel-encrusted gold crowns—a gift from the Maharajah. (For more on the visit, see our blog and pictures at http://sarahsiegelstories.blogspot.com/2007/09/chag-samayach.html and at http://hewittsphotoblog.blogspot.com/2007/09/cochin-synagogue.html.

As we were ready to leave, the Hindu man said, "Chag samayach" ("Happy holiday,") and Pat and I nearly cried with gratitude. I was struck by how meaningful our two minutes at the Pardesi felt compared to the 20 minutes spent in an Indian temple the previous week. Somehow, despite the lack of ritual during those six months, I still managed to feel incredibly Jewish. A paradox, perhaps. But I’ve come to believe that seeing others' religions only strengthened my affection for my own.

More than ever, CBST has been an oasis since our return from India. Our first weekend back, we came to services and Rabbi Cohen generously asked us to light the Shabbat candles. When Pat and I stood on the bimah, singing “Shalom aleichem” with our arms around each other and the rabbi and cantor, I looked out shyly with delighted awe at the huge roomful of LGBT Jews and our friends and family. No one needs half a thirsty year in India to appreciate what we have in the CBST community, but it can’t hurt.

Sarah Siegel and her partner Pat Hewitt of nearly 16 years have been members at CBST since they moved here from Illinois in 1996. They live in Montclair, NJ.

Treadmillers No More

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

The End of an Era

When I glance at the tagline of this blog, I wonder if I ought to write this entry....Since it made me re-live other experiences that do qualify as worth re-living through writing about them, I'll go ahead....

First thing this morning, Pat and I did what we have been planning to do for a couple of years:

We, ourselves, lifted our sickly heavy treadmill out of our music-room, through the patio door across a bit of the backyard and up the side-yard, out to the edge of the curb for bulky-waste pickup on Monday. I kept looking at it out of the upstairs window, where I was working, and now, am blogging.

"Pat, if we tried lifting it any later than this year, probably, we'd not have had the physical strength to do it," I said upon our return from our walk up to Valley Road. Ironically, Valley Road is up two huge hills from where we live; Montclair is in the foothills of the Watchung Mountains.

Pat agreed. A couple of years ago, when we stopped using it, I wasn't allowed to lift anything heavy for a long time; I had wrecked my neck during a business trip in China and needed physical therapy for months as a result. At physical therapy, Amelia told me that the pounding I did by running, and even walking, on the treadmill was no good for my neck. I switched to swimming.

We felt liberated by having opened up the space of that room. We actually hosted family Passover seders in that room twice, placing the table in front of the immovable treadmill; ha! it wasn't immovable once we were ready to move it out of the house.

One Great Deal and One Bad One at the Chanukah Auction

Probably eight years ago (it was the 925 model -- no longer even featured on the web site), Pat and I went to our synagogue's Chanukah auction. We were the highest bidders on the treadmill. Another couple of women had had it in their Manhattan apartment and had decided it was too big for where they lived, and so they donated it to the shul.

Living in the suburbs, it fit less dominantly into one of the rooms of our house. Still, in the past year and a half, it became no more than the rack, where we dried our towels after swimming, before throwing them in the laundry. That was our dilemma now -- where to dry the towels.

At the same auction, Pat bid on an item that proved her love for me definitively. One of the congregants at the time was a well-known literary agent. The agent donated an offer to read a manuscript of any kind, of up to 300 pages, and to provide feedback on it. Pat out-bid everyone and won it for me.

The agent did not keep the commitment. Even our rabbi contacted the agent ultimately, to no avail. The agent agreed when the rabbi called and then ignored it further. I had just finished a coming-of-age memoir and was excited to have it read by the agent, but God had other plans.

Savoring Two Senses: Part II

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

**ALL ARE WELCOME**

Especially prior to entering the sanctuary last night, I noticed that message on the marquis of our synagogue, which shares space with Holy Apostles Church. During most of the service last night, I kept marveling at the gorgeous, spirited people, the moving violin, piano and timbrel, along with the chorus, and particularly our soprano friend who contributed to it with her clear, perfect voice.

It was the special, GLBT Pride Shabbat service and as I wrote in Part I, it was packed. Randi Weingarten was a guest drash (sermon) deliverer and accordingly, Rabbi Kleinbaum invited all current and retired New York City teachers, among others, to come to the bimah (altar) to help kindle the Shabbat candles.

The biggest crowd of qualified kindlers I'd ever seen approached the bimah.

One of my favorite high school teachers, I'm confident, was gay, though not openly. How many of these candle kindlers were their students' favorite teachers?

Randi Weingarten's mission in her role, she said, was to help ensure dignity for New York City's students and the people who educate them. She talked about Moses' leadership and how in this week's Torah parsha (Bible portion), his hitting the rock revealed an authoritarian leadership style that had outlived its usefulness.

"Four C's"

And then she spoke of leadership in general, saying that it requires "four C's: Conviction; Compassion; Commitment; and Courage."

She gave an example of courage, saying, if I remember correctly, that when a bill was introduced to include domestic partnership benefits for teachers, one of her close colleagues said, "Please punt on this one. Don't turn it into a floor-fight."

"A floor-fight is what there will be," she said, as she was unwilling to be a "second-class citizen" in the fight for the rights of her teacher-constituency. The bill passed healthily.

Randi Weingarten made me reflect on how to apply the four C's to my own leadership, especially as I prepare to fulfill my upcoming, six-month, short-term foreign service assignment in India:

Conviction: IBM leaders in India will be well-served by further leadership development initiatives and I, in all of my humanity, can be of service to that end. There are new, mutual discoveries to be made by all of us, along with some classic best practices to promote.

Compassion: During my commute to work on Friday, I thought about how I am going to India to be of service to an already-highly-privileged group of people: managers at all levels of our company. I am not going as an NGO delegate, or with the Peace Corps. And yet, every human being needs some form of assistance. Everyone deserves compassion, no matter how privileged. Compassion is a universal, human need.

Commitment: For me, education's main purpose, ultimately, is to produce positive social change, and I suppose that in a corporate environment, I feel that it is to produce positive climate, and then cultural, change. What does that mean to me in a corporate context? Helping realize the most positive-results-producing environment through encouraging inclusive, innovative people worldwide.

Courage: While in India, and anywhere, I need to remember that no one's cultures and norms -- including my own -- are the best. I need the courage to be welcoming of learning others' frames of reference, and to share my own in a way that helps others feel comfortable whenever possible. I need the courage to do my part to ensure that all of us feel like first-class citizens.

I was inspired by Randi Weingarten's example last night. I'm interested in how adults learn to lead in a corporate environment and I loved how she urged the teachers in the congregation to, "...not just educate, but lead."

That Lump in My Throat

In Part I, I wrote about a continuous lump in my throat throughout the service. It was there because I was sad about the warm community from which I was choosing to be physically absent for half a year. What could possibly take its place? What could fill the gap? Why venture away from such a safe, lovely haven?

And in parallel, I remained perpetually on the verge of crying, wondering how anyone who would witness this loving, spiritual, kind, imbued congregation would ever wish to discriminate against, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people and our loved ones. It was a miraculous scene, really, as well as a festival of sound; I wish I could let you hear the tune of the most moving piece of liturgy from last night: "Pitchu li sha'arei tzedek ("Open up Your righteous gates")...."

The song includes an amazing statement, which our synagogue uses as a sort of tagline, "Even ma'asu ha'bonim hayitah l'rosh pinah" ("The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.") -- Psalm 118:22.

This morning, I woke up early, again. I cannot seem to sleep a full night's sleep, the closer the departure for India becomes. One of the first things I did was check the online exhibition of our synagogue's history.

It was founded in 1973 and it was so important for me to imagine the early congregants, a number of whom still belong to the shul, just as I tried to imagine my mother's 1950 Hebrew University classmate, Esther from Karachi, no matter her sexual orientation. All of them were pioneers.

What could I do to be pioneering and effective in parallel in the assignment? What *will* I do?

When have you been a pioneer and based on that experience, what are your tips for success?

Savoring Two Senses: Part I

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Sight and Sound

Shabbat services last night put a lump in my throat that made it hard to sing, but in a welcome way. Pat got there at 5:30 pm to ensure good seats for us. The sanctuary became packed, the way our new friends told us India would feel; it was practically impossible not to bump against the people next to us during prayer.

I'm reminded of one of my Indian friend's reactions when she came to services with us during a U.S. business trip more than a year ago: "It seemed like the Shakers, the way I saw people swaying during prayer," and, "There was nothing in the liturgy that I didn't agree with." She's among the two percent of India's Christians -- she's Catholic.

It's so automatic to shuckel (sway slightly forward and back) while davening (praying) that I don't even notice I'm doing it until it's pointed out. It is how I was taught to pray, by example, during my eight-year, Modern Orthodox, Jewish day-school education.

And explicitly, whether boys or girls, we were taught always to stand with our feet together, to show modesty and ultimate respect to God while in prayer...and always to look at the Hebrew text while praying, rather than singing from memory; our rabbis/teachers did not want us to give the appearance of showing off our knowledge of the lengthy liturgy, or to become detached from it by singing with the prayerbook shut and cavalierly held in one hand.

These practices are tacit knowledge for me at this point. It takes a visitor to the congregation to remind me that they are not native to everyone.

Circa 1950

Driving home from shul (synagogue) last night -- obviously, I have come to pick and choose what matters to me ritually, since driving on Shabbat is strictly forbidden by Orthodox Judaism, and my family and I, growing up, never were Orthodox, but that's another story -- I phoned my mother (also asur/forbidden).

During the conversation, my mom told me that when she studied in Israel in 1950, there was a Jewish Theological Seminary student from Karachi; "Esther was 10 or 15 years older than the rest of us."

"And she wasn't married?"

"No."

"Straight?"

"I don't know."

"No, I was just asking Pat if I needed to go straight, to pick up her car on Park Street [since she took the bus into NYC to meet me at services, where I had come to from Armonk with another car]...but from what I've read, that *is* pretty unusual, for an Indian woman in her 30s or early 40s not to be married."

"Maybe she was a lesbian. I'm not sure. After classes were done, she took us all over Israel, and we stayed with her students. It was wonderful."

The idea of Esther captured my imagination as we drove up Alexander to Park Street in Montclair.

What would it mean, in 1950, to be a fervently Jewish, Pakistani lesbian, studying in the United States and Israel under the auspices of the world's preeminent Jewish seminary?

If her family were wealthy enough to sponsor her studies abroad, they must have been wealthy enough to provide a dowry for her....Or was she randomly ascetic?

Or was she a lesbian, sublimating her desires and channeling her passion into her other key identity? Or am I projecting, and she used her education simply to avoid an arranged marriage? After all, "Pru u'rivu" ("Be fruitful and multiply") is commanded only of Jewish men, since historically, only men had the power to marry women, and since women could not choose their spouses similarly, there could not be such an obligation required of us.

How did the rest of Esther's life go? Did she return to Karachi?

Pat and I determined that in terms of our lesbian identity, by going to India, we could feel sometimes as though we are living in the United States in 1950, since lesbianism here was mostly underground and deeply taboo then. Several friends have told me that while of course homsexuality is part of the human condition universally, India at large doesn't yet have the words for it.

Self-respect, Not Disrespect for Others

Even as I write all of this, I am so conscious of not wanting to offend any member of Indian society, who might chance on this blog. I am also conscious of the personal sacrifice that Pat and I are making, willingly, to learn about another culture. In order to be respectful of our host culture's norms, we have chosen to identify ourselves as just friends beyond the walls of IBM, where we are welcome by IBM's global policies of inclusion.

At services last night, a friend mentioned that she had been at a political fundraiser earlier in the week, where Ann Bannon was among the guests. Our friend enjoyed imagining an Ann Bannon novel set in India!

Fortunately, I met some extraordinary lesbian women and transmen during my prior business trip to India in 2005. A greater IBM colleague introduced us electronically, and we met twice for dinner. Meeting them made me feel even more at home among people with whom I already felt an affinity.

After Pat and I return from visiting my mother and getting our hair cut -- also asur on Shabbat -- I will write Part II, and writing is also asurtoday....Whether getting our hair cut, or writing or being a couple, we mean no disrespect to others, but rather, feel privileged to be able to respect and act on our own choices. It is a precious freedom that we do not take for granted....

For which freedoms are you grateful today?