I am, generally speaking, not much of a practicing Jew. An odd adjective, that: “practicing”. Does it make perfect? No, alas; we Jews are realists. We don’t have to make perfect. We just have to do what we can toward tikkun olam, the repair of the world. In that sense, I like to think that I *am* a practicing Jew. I’ve raised two good children (now young adults), both of whom are committed in their own ways to tikkun olam. I am married to a good man, and I think I do pretty well at making a welcoming home environment for him. Not perfect, I know, but hey, I’m practicing. I’ve done some good in the world, too: I’ve been active on the Board of Visitors and Governors of my college; Dan and I give them and other worthy causes money each year (okay, a weak way of doing good, but still a way); I do not participate in the unnecessary torture of animals that is part of our mega-industrial American culture. I try to be kind. I keep tikkun olam in front of our family as a goal.
But in the other sense of following the rituals, I’m not doing so well. This year, I lost Yom Kippur in favor of a trip to San Francisco to visit Margot. I told myself it was okay because my mom and I would still be going to Rosh Hashanah services together. But then that fell apart too. Through her senior housing, my mom got a ticket for the morning service. But as a prospective member with no ticket I could attend only the evening service. (A ticket would have cost $350–more than I was willing to contribute for one service.) Without a ticket, Mom wasn’t comfortable going to the evening service, and so she went to services with my brother and his family. So I had no one to go with. This was upsetting for a while. But I got over it. I thought, This is God’s way of telling me that this year I am not a practicing Jew.
It didn’t seem so bad not to be a practicing Jew. I got used to the idea quickly. Hey, I told myself, it’s just this one year. I’ll try it out. After all, Dan’s not a practicing Catholic, and he does okay. Lots of our Jewish friends–Steve, Archie, Howie, Diane–are not practicing Jews. Some of them probably don’t even know when Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur takes place. And they’re all good people and good friends. So this year, that’s me, too. Not a practicing Jew. Not this year.
But apparently some higher force in the world did not agree.
On a recent Thursday (the last in September), Diane and I walk out of Whole Foods in (I think) the Mt. Washington section of Baltimore; and there’s this guy. White shirt, perhaps with a tallit underneath, suit jacket, yarmulkah. He is with a little boy also in white shirt and yarmulkah. They looked like orthodox Jews, but not extreme. No payot, for example. The man was carrying a bundle of various leaves. “Are you Jewish?” he asked Diane, who came out ahead of me. We glanced at each other. The guy didn’t appear harmful. Quite the opposite. He seemed very kindly and mild. “Yes,” she answered. “Would you like to shake the lulav?” he asked. For a moment we were both nonplussed. “Do you know that this is the first day of Sukkos?” Sukkos, not Sukkot. He spoke Hebrew with an Ashkenasi accent. No, we weren’t aware of that. “Have you ever done this before?” “No,” Diane said, “no, I haven’t.” “Would you like to?” “Yes,” she decided,”I would.”
The man fished an etrog out of some pocket (“Esrog,” he called it). “I’m going to give you these,” he told her. “They’ll be yours. But you have to promise to give them back to me when you’re done.” “Okay.” Then he handed the etrog and lulav to her and instructed her in the ritual and the blessings. I said the Hebrew mostly along with him, except I didn’t know the part “al … lulav”; and because it was the first day we said a shechechayanu. After shaking the bundle north, south, west, up, down, and to the east, Diane gave the etrog and lulav back to him.
(For more on the ritual see: This page about the Sukkot lulav ritual).
There was a moment of awkwardness. Despite my having said the Hebrew along with him (displaying my shining Sephardit accent), he hesitated. He didn’t know whether it was all right to ask me. But I met his eyes, and he said, “Are you Jewish?” “Yes,” I told him. “Would you like to shake the lulav?” At that moment there was nothing I wanted more. “Yes,” I answered firmly, “I would.” And I said the blessings again and shook the etrog and lulav to the north, the south, to the east, up, down, and to the west as if the world depended on it. And I even gave them back to him. “It’s a mitzvah to shake the lulav,” he told me. And, with tears behind my eyes I answered that it was a mitzvah to give people the opportunity. We thanked him deeply and went on our way.
Five minutes later, we looked out of the neighboring store, and the man and the child were gone, as if they had never been there. Or, more likely, as if they had been there only for us. And we thought that perhaps today we had encountered an angel. In the form of a man and a child and an etrog and a lulav.
I guess I am a practicing Jew.
