Starting From Brokenness

(I guess this is the beauty of a free blog—I can go for months without posting and not feel toooo bad. But I still do. Jewish guilt? No. Not giving myself a break? Yeah, I need to work on that...)

I recently conducted my family's seder here in Sepharad. One of the themes I like to highlight is the passage, textual and spiritual, from brokenness to redemption—Quitting Mitzrayim, for those who need the extra prompt—that we take throughout the course of the meal. Of course, in real life, redemption doesn't come in four or five hours. I feel like I'm always at the beginning of the road, broken in some new way. I suppose that's what the journey is about, though, assessing where you are at any given moment and proceeding from there.

I feel like the soul searching vis-a-vis rabbihood has been a bit like this. Granted, I have had a few other things to be preoccupied about, but I'm really no further now than I was when I started. Or rather I've swung to both extremes and ended up in the same place as I started. On the one hand, when I think about the time away from my family, the expense, and the endless hours of study that are involved in rabbinical school, I think this is not the right time in my life to do this. On the other hand, every time I hear of folks' rejection of the old Judaism which I know an alternative to, or for that matter, every time I pray, I think, "this is what I should be doing!"

On that note, and speaking of brokenness, I recently started wrapping tefillin in the mornings. It's a longer story than I want to tell here, but the very short version is that I found Maqom's tefillin gift shop and, after having them ship a set to my mom, who dutifully carried them here for me, I got my very own set of unkosher tefillin. There's something beautiful about wrapping broken tefillin. These were clearly worn with a lot of love for many years, and their scrolls are dust, for all I know. But in their brokenness, they are helping me on my journey to redemption. It's as if between the tefillin and I, there just may be enough parts to put something good back together. I think R. Abrams puts it beautifully on the site: We don't throw out people when they get old, scratched or worn down. Let these tefillin remind you that no matter what brokenness you have experienced in your life, you have great worth. It's a good reminder, especially on the days when I feel I don't know anybody anymore, I don't remember what I'm good at, and I'm not sure what I'm doing here in this land that so forcefully ejected my mishpocha long ago...but that's a topic for another post.