Daieynu

It's Passover and for those of you who know me, you know I'm no super Jew.  But there are certain times of year that Judaism offers rituals that help connect me to a spiritual feeling of gratitude.  I make it a practice to find something to be grateful for every single day.  But there's always ways I can dig a little deeper and I make it a habit to find where religious people are right to help me do that.

Part of the seder ritual is to sing a song called Daieynu - a Hebrew word that means essentially if this is all God gave us, it would be enough.  It's a long passage in the Haggadah where we read through all the things God gave the Jews wandering in the desert after they were freed from Pharaoh.  I can relate this to my own life, especially after getting back on the spin bike following Monday's accident, but in all areas of my life.

One key thing I've always resented was organized religion.  My family was so weird about it.  So extreme.  Either we were nothing, or I was force-fed competing points of view, or my Mom picked some extremely punishing, limiting, legalistic sect and restricted all our movements based on the principles some weird cultish leader imposed.  There were periods where my fashionable, hip, wealthy relatives on my Dad's side would sit me down as the oldest grandchild on both sides of the family and say, "listen, Bubbelah, have a piece of rugelach.  You're right, it is delicious!  So, we don't care what your mother says.  You're Jewish.  Do you understand what that means?"  Of course I understood what that meant.  Looking at them with their sweet treats, their bigger than life presents, their kind and gentle ways, their frosty fingernails - in comparison to my mom's crazy family?  Hell yes I understood what that meant.  I wanted to be Jewish.  I wanted it bad.

When I met other Jewish kids I felt so jealous of their family rituals around holidays and summer camp.  This was really where the rubber met the road proving how not Jewish I was.  Their holiday celebrations involved huge gatherings of extended family members and they all looked like they were having a really wonderful time.  Our family gatherings involved two day non stop grueling cross-country drives where for 48 hours straight we were trapped inside a VW Beetle at the mercy of my mom's extreme mood swings only to arrive at my mom's mom's smoke-filled museum of a home where things *really* got tense and one false move would result in unimaginable shame-filled punishment.  We'd stay there for at least a week and then go visit my Dad's side where everything was fun and relaxed and there was a pool.  Yes there were religious rituals baked in on both sides of this, but all I remember is mom's side of the family, tense and scary.  Dad's side of the family?  I can breathe again.  What religion would you pick?

Of course there are certain Jews who think I'm just Jewish enough to qualify and there are others who reject my Judaism.  I've read this in the past to mean if you accept me I'm good and if you reject me I'm bad.  I'm a little fucked in the head that way and only now am learning that I'm the only one who can accept or reject me.  I'm a slow learner.  So before I had the self-validation epiphany, though, I spent a tremendous amount of energy trying to prove my Jewishness.  I've attended Torah studies.  I've volunteered at The Ark.  I've packed Lox Boxes.  I've learned to read Hebrew at the level of a retarded kindergartner.  I've had Jewish boyfriends with the great families who celebrated the holidays with the fantastic rituals I envied so much as a kid.  But it's all been a hollow victory because at the end of the day, that was all external, trying to prove something.  This house of cards fell down piece by piece to the point where my life was in the toilet and I was on my knees surrendering to the idea that the only person to blame for my unhappiness was me based on the crappy choices I was making trying to prove something.

What was I trying to prove?

Well, today I think I was trying to recreate what I thought I lacked when I was growing up.  But taking the concept of daieynu, I was given exactly what I needed.  I can sit here today and have compassion for my overcompensating self, accept her, and love her.  I can see that my parents - even my crazy mom - loved me and did the best they could.  I can take a second and thank God I didn't break my back the other day falling down the stairs, and that even though I was only at about 60% strength on the bike this morning, two days after a major fall I am back and largely operational.  I can be grateful that as an adult I've got friends who appreciate the holiday rituals of Judaism just as much as I do and invited me to a really nice seder last night where I could be reminded of daieynu in the first place.  I can be grateful for the many, many people in my life who care about me deeply and have reached out to take me places, have walked slower so I could keep up, have hugged me, have posted loving messages on my Facebook account, have called and texted and emailed to make sure I'm OK.  I have such a wonderful life filled with passion and hope and gratitude.  I am literally the luckiest son of a bitch who ever lived - to think about how five years ago almost to the day I was trying to throw away every opportunity I ever had and destroy my life because I didn't think I was good enough and because I thought I'd been wronged on every level.  And today I can see the beauty and magic in even the smallest of gifts.  If that's all God had given me?  It would be more than enough.  Daieynu.