I wrote the following for a project at Temple Emanuel where is was published as one of 70 essays in a booklet titled Blades of Grass and Angels distributed to each family at Rosh HaShanah morning services.

Growing up, we “weren’t” kosher, although we knew other families who were. At some point, being an annoying teenager, I started to correct the other members of my household: food “is kosher,” people “keep kosher.” It’s a fine point, but Jewish learning is about questioning the fine points, and I think there’s a real difference. While knowing who “is religious” makes menu planning easier, observing mitzvot isn’t an ascribed characteristic or something to be treated as a shellfish allergy. Life is a journey, and mitzvot are the way God has given us to get somewhere. “Halakhah,” which means “Jewish law,” literally translates to something more like “The Way.” It’s ironic that we tend to focus on its limitations. I prefer to think of it as a highway: you are constrained to follow the road, but there is no limit to how far you go.

My own religious path has had many stops along the way. My mother’s family attended Reform synagogues in Connecticut since the Victorian era. My father converted to Judaism. I began to explore my own Jewish identity in high school and college. I participated in the March of the Living, traveling with several thousand young Jews to Poland and Israel. This experience opened my eyes in two ways: first, by seeing the range of Jewish practices among my fellow travelers; and second, by learning how traditional Jewish life was present in pre-Holocaust, twentieth-century Europe. Tradition hadn’t been incompatible with modernity; it was simply wiped away with the people who practiced it. In college, I started going to the Conservative minyan at Hillel, and, after a variety of twists and turns, majored in Jewish and Near Eastern Studies. I traveled throughout Israel for a semester, where I absorbed enough Hebrew and culture to feel comfortable anywhere in the Jewish world.

As an adult, my life is a little more stable, but I still find ways to grow. This year, our family is planning to build our own sukkah for the first time. It can feel like the Goldenfelds always build a sukkah (or some other observance) and the Rosensmiths don’t and when we’re in synagogue, we don’t ask about it. Well, I need to ask things. How do I make it so it won’t fall over? What do I use for skakh? Will you come and eat with us, even if our level of kashrut isn’t rabinically correct? What if we invite a family member who doesn’t keep kosher and they bring a dish? We Jews have always had questions, Halakhah is literally a book of questions (the Mishnah), and wrestling with our real questions can only be a good thing.

In fact, I think that’s what this project is all about. We say that the Conservative movement is a “halakhic” movement, but what does that mean? It doesn’t mean that other movements recognize our authority, and it certainly doesn’t mean that we all keep all the mitzvot. There’s a common myth that our grandfathers went to shul every day in Brooklyn, our mothers were scrupulously observant at home, and we all had a second-to-none Jewish education; we just lack willpower. But this underestimates the difficulty of doing mitzvot in the real world. Perhaps there’s a fear that if we talked about Halakhah, people would say it’s not for them. But this is a simple interpretation of mitzvot as something you feel guilty about. What binds us together as Conservative Jews is that we care about Halakhah; it is special and holy. Whether you are observant, want to be observant, or even if you just want to know the Rabbi and Cantor are observant, Halakhah and mitzvot are central. Discussing our relationship to mitzvot—including how we find them challenging—can only strengthen our commitment.

Marc Stober, along with his wife Cheryl, has been a member of Temple Emanuel since 2003 and you will most often find him with his daughter in Tot Shabbat. He lives in Newton Highlands and is employed as a software developer.

When I started this blog I thought I would have clearly delineated categories, with professional posts about software development and personal posts about other things. But I always end up writing about themes that crosscut the personal and professional.

For example, a post on another blog with the same complaint about certain technical communities that my Mom makes about her Reform Jewish synagogue; i.e., that by always keeping things simple for newcomers you make things less engaging for those who literally do know the lingo.

I made my first trip to the new Gordon and Alperin kosher grocery store.

The first thing I noticed is that their meat department is full service. That means no reaching in the case for meat on foam trays: you order at the counter. It’s no different, really, than a deli counter (in fact their deli is the other end of the same counter), and you can get more exactly what you need, and you have some options of how they pack it for you. It’s great, but I’ve never shopped this way. (Actually, they don’t use foam trays; they vacuum pack your order in plastic. I’ve seen meat packed like this for restaurants. Just don’t expect to see the plastic-wrapped trays of hamburger you get elsewhere.)

I do wish they would put up some signs at least. Maybe they have something, or have a good price on something, that I’d like but I don’t know about. (Seems to be a pattern among small shops in the area. I go to Lincoln Street Coffee a few times a week, and can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard them recite their muffins and bagel selections until they finally put up a small sign.)

I tried a couple new items. I bought both Country Apple and Smoked Andouille sausage from Neshama Gourmet (these were in a self-serve freezer case) because I’ve never seen kosher versions of these varieties before. I also bought some Osem bread crumbs from Israel that looked better than the leading brand of pareve bread crumbs.

The meat is glatt kosher, which is never cheap, but the prices on groceries seemed good. They have a produce case, but no produce. I asked about it and was told (by who I assume was the owner) that because of the cost of electricity, he can’t compete with larger stores. That’s too bad; I’ll end up elsewhere when I only have time to make one stop. Everything is shiny and new, and there’s lots of space for growth.

The Jewish Advocate Blog speculates about why people are afraid of unknowingly eating non-Kosher meat. Apparently, a butcher in Monsey, NY (home to many ultra-religious Jews) has been falsely selling blatantly trief (non-Kosher) meat as kosher.

But why, exactly, would you be “afraid it can happen to you”? Of course, I’d like to think that kosher meat–if for no other reason than that it’s more expensive–is higher quality. But I recognize the general meat supply in the US is pretty safe; it’s not like being falsely sold a food a was allergic to.

Keeping kosher is, after all, between you and God, and I would think that as long as you had no reason to suspect your meat was trief, your conscience should be clear.

(Disclaimer: I don’t really keep kosher right now; and while I wasn’t raised keeping kosher at all, I do buy only kosher meat to use in my own kitchen, and I have tried keeping kosher more fully at some points in my life.)

But I recognize that it does bother people, I think especially those who have always kept kosher (no pig has ever passed these lips…well except when those !@#$% lied and said it was a kosher beef hot dog), and I’m curious why? Are you somehow halachically liable, even if you did your due diligence about the hechsher? Or is there more of an emotional attachment to the law; which, after all, has to be there to bind people to religious law in a free society?

I think that Hezbollah is not only a threat to Israel; they are a threat to freedom and democracy everywhere. They are a threat to the religious freedoms, civil liberties, and national sovereignty valued by Americans and others throughout the world.

In 6 years I can only think of two policies of George Bush that I have really agreed with. One is his proposal for immigration reform that would make it easier for hard-working people (like my own great-grandparents) to immigrate to this country, and second is his support of Israel during the recent conflict.

Please do whatever you can to support Israel in this conflict.

I posted an anonymous comment on a blog the other day, and then today came across this official statment from the IDF about the incident in Qana, saying that 150 rockets had been fired from that area.

To be more direct than my last post on the war: why do the people in that area–or their local and national government officials–allow Hezbollah to fire rockets from their communities? Why do they let their children be killed while they refuse to make peace?
Do they think that a Shiite Islamist regime is worth putting their families at risk? Ok, I can respect that–but not really. Are they just helpless themselves against Hezbollah? That would be sad, but in this case the IDF is being realistic (in comparison to the US in Iraq) to remove the threat without trying to be welcomed as liberators.

I’ve been wanting to write something about the war in Lebanon, but it’s been difficult to know what to say. On the one hand, it’s sad to see what’s happening to Beirut. On the other hand, it’s sad to see what’s happening in Haifa, and Israel’s actions are completely understandable and certainly justified.

I wish that the government of Lebanon would ask for peace. Peace, meaning not a ceasefire, but a normal relationship and a peaceful border. It does not seem like they have the ability, or maybe not the desire, to do so.

It seems that there are a lot of voices saying that Israel is not winning “hearts and minds” in Lebanon; that Lebanon’s recent moves toward democracy should be encouraged and Israel’s strikes will set things back. Inevitably these voices talk about the forward-thinking young Lebanese in Beiruit and the great new developments, cafes and nightclubs there. I don’t really think it’s the IDF’s primary job to win hearts and minds or Israel’s responsibility to support Lebanese democracy at all costs. Israel was attacked by forces operating out of a sovereign country, and that country is allowing those attacks to continue. While it’s great in theory that democracy is taking hold, it’s obviously not working yet, in that it doesn’t have control over an effective military and foreign relations. And as for the constant reports of cosmopolitan Beiruit–I don’t see how that matters. I don’t think anyone says that the cafes of New York or Moscow or even Paris are the key to a stable government, as compared to, say, strong institutions with support from the heartland.

For that matter, the whole concept of Hezbollah has me perplexed. Isn’t the idea that in a modern country, only the state has legitimate use of force, certainly against foreign powers? How is this in Lebanon even a matter of serious debate? It seems like this war is not just about Israel vs. Hezbollah vs. Lebanon, but about the surival of the whole concept of the liberal, democratic state–and I don’t mean in the American “blue state” definition of those terms but rather the idea of a sovereign state whose government is based on freedom and democracy, where people are pretty much free to do as they choose but rely on an elected goverment to create law and have the power to enforce it. (For further reading on this see this by Fareed Zakaria, which also makes me wonder if the whole red state/blue state thing could action be the right amount of choice so as to be good for democracy.)

The bottom line, then, is that this may be a fight for freedom and democracy, which may be something we’d rather not have to fight for, but is something worth fighting for when needed.

I would love on my next trip to Israel someday, after visiting other great places in the north like Haifa and Tsfat (Safed), to go spend a couple days on a side trip to thriving, cosmopolitan Beiruit. But until I, as a Jew visting Israel, can make such a trip as safely as going from the US to Canada, England to France, or even Israel to Jordan, it’s not peace.

Now that Shalom Beijing is closing its (kosher) doors I feel really bad that I never went there when we lived in Brookline. We were big fans of Chef Chow’s House which was a little closer, a lot more inviting from the outside, but of course not kosher. We kept say we should try Shalom Beijing but with a two year old (who might be mildly allergic to peanuts) trying new places is never really appealing.
On the other hand, a new Kosher chinese restaurant just opened in Newton near our new neighborhood! So maybe it’s just evidence of some demographic trend. Of course I’d rather a kosher butcher follows this trend–not only because I personally do buy kosher for cooking at home but because for everyone, carrying grocery is bags from the Butcherie without a parking lot is a lot more of a schlep than carrying Chinese leftovers!
I do like jabbett’s comment that when they changed from Shalom Hunan to Shalom Beijing they changed the meaning of Shalom from “Hello” to “Goodbye.”

The Jewish Advocate reports that some families are leaving Temple Emanuel to form a new congregation with Cantor Osborne: Cantor forms breakaway shul after bimah walk-off

I think this will make parking easier.

Seriously, I don’t think we’ll be leaving, but — cool! This is one of the reasons I moved to Newton. The town I grew up in could barely keep its two synagogues going. Here there are enough people who take their religion seriously that we already have more Jewish congregations than I can count on one hand, and there are people willing start another. That’s the sort of community I want to live in.

It’s great that David Plotz wants to read the bible, but I have some issues with his assumptions about synagogue and those of us who go there more often. He writes:

I made a rare visit to synagogue for a cousin’s bat mitzvah and, as usual, found myself confused (and bored) by a Hebrew service I couldn’t understand. During the second hour of what would be a ceremony of NFL-game-plus-overtime-length…

Services really aren’t beyond the grasp of anyone who can understand a football game, and this is certainly the case for an educated journalist. I’m not a big sports fan and have felt “confused (and bored)” at a game. But you know what? I’ve found it’s better to show a little interest than to try and engage everyone in my own boredom.

It’s true that you do need to learn a little a bit to appreciate services (or football). It’s also true that what many of use learned (or didn’t) in Hebrew school wasn’t sufficient. However, I don’t think what I’d learned in English class and Social Studies by the time I’d reached bar mitzvah age was enough to appreciate Slate, either, and it frustrates me when otherwise well-educated people expect that they’re going to be satisfied (and fail to be) by what they learned about religion as a kid. Anyhow, here’s my standing-on-one-foot explanation of services:

1. In the beginning things seem disorganized because, while there are specific prayers, this is a chance for everyone to warm up;
2. The Barchu serves to get everyone on the same page, so to speak, in preparation for the Shema;
3. Then the Amidah, which religious Jews say three times a day, is the ordinary climax of the service. If it doesn’t feel that climatic, remember that it was originally pretty dramatic but then we gave up animal sacrifices a couple millennia ago;
4. The Torah reading isn’t really part of the service, at least in the sense that it’s not praying. It, along with the sermon, is like a little bible class we’ve ritualized to make sure it happens every week;
5. On Shabbat, the Musaf (translation: additional) Amidah is, in my opinion, the real climax of the service, particularly the Kedushah during the reader’s repetition, when, as a community, you come closest to being an angel in heaven near God or something like that. In the Sephardic version of the service there’s the Keter Kedushah with even more mystical implications that I don’t understand but still think is pretty cool. (Note that Shabbat is the only time there religious Jews say the Amidah four times a day, including afternoon and evening services, and Yom Kippur afternoon there is a fifth Amidah, which I would contend is the most special/holy time of the year—as opposed to the more popular Kol Nidrei the night before.)
6. Then there are some concluding prayers, like Aleinu, and by Ein Keloheinu everyone’s just singing and transitioning back into the slightly more mundane matters such as the inevitable announcements and what’s for lunch.

That, and a bit of the Hebrew, is most of what I know; it doesn’t make me an expert, and in a few months David Plotz will probably know the Bible better than I do. While he’s certainly free to read the Bible on his own terms, hopefully he’ll have moderated doing-so-as-rebellion-against-organized-religion, because those of us who think we can learn something from going to synagogue and reading the established commentaries can probably learn something from him, and he from us, too.

Oh, and since it’s that on a Friday: Shabbat shalom.

p.s. Etz Hayim was prepared by Conservative Jewish scholars, with a capital “C”; it’s the name of a movement that may or may not be conservative, depending on your perspective.