Loree Fararr

Date

Discovering Myself

It was during the second Intefada that I knew for sure something had changed.  Israel was under attack.  Every week, another bomb – another bus blown up, another marketplace destroyed, another discothèque attacked. Everyone was upset about the situation.  But somehow, it felt even worse for me.  I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t concentrate.  I was worthless at work.  I’d shut the office door and scan the internet for news… Ha’aretz, The Jerusalem Post.  It didn’t feel like some remote, tragic event that was happening in some far off place.  It felt like my family was being attacked.  My family.

I looked at myself and thought, “what is this?  What’s going on here?”  It’s not that I chose at that moment to become a Jew.  It was more that at that moment, I realized that something had already happened. That’s when I realized my feelings about the Jewish community were more than those of an affectionate outsider.  This was who I was.  This was my family.

There had been signs along the way – that I was undergoing some strong, silent transition.  I’d be going about my business, and then I’d step back, and look at myself, and observe what I was doing or how I was feeling.  “Hmm – look at that,” I would say, and I would wonder at what it meant. 

I love Shabbat dinner.  I love the bread and the wine and the candles, and the simple sacredness of setting aside time together to slow down this hectic world, pausing as a family, sanctifying something so simple and so regular as dinnertime, yet so powerful.  Long before I thought I was a Jew, I loved Shabbat dinner.   “Hmm – look at that.”

I love services.  I love that when we pray, we sing. That is so right for me – that’s how I’ve been closest to God ever since I was a teenager.    I’d be in services at Beth Am, or Har Hashem in Boulder , or Congregation Moses in Kalamazoo , or B’nai Keshet in New Jersey , singing away.   Before I thought I was a Jew, I marveled that I had found a place where I could sing all my prayers.  “Hmmm – look at that.”

When my daughter, Chayva, and I toured the south to visit the sites of the Civil Rights movement, we went to the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery Alabama .  The names of forty civil rights martyrs are carved into a table of stone, with clear water flowing over them.  And it seemed totally natural to say kaddish when I came to the names of Mickey Shwerner and Andy Goodman and James Chaney.  “Hmmm – look at that.”

Or I’d be thinking about my future, when I’m 90 and retired and in some new exotic location.  How will it be?  And I can only picture that future in a Jewish context.  I can only envision living in a place with a strong Jewish community.  I can only see myself celebrating Jewish holidays.  Even if I were 95 and living alone in some tiny apartment, I’d figure out a way to join together for Pesach, to drag myself out for Yom Kippur, to eat at least one meal under the Succah in the fall.  “Hmm – look at that.”

For me, Judaism is the perfect balance between the head, the hand, and the heart.  I am engaged by the intellectual discussion over the ages – the debate and discussion and reading and study.  I find it astounding that rabbis from different generations can debate each other.  Reading the whole Torah in cycle each year forces deeper and deeper reflection, and forces looking beyond the favorite passages that are easy to relate to.  I don’t view Torah as each word divine, but there is a reason that these particular words were the ones that have been preserved, and it is my responsibility to find it.

The emphasis on repairing the world is critical – we are the hands of God. This seems to be more deeply engrained in Jewish tradition than most.  I’ve always been one to try to make this world better.  Sometimes, I do this concretely, like volunteering in a nursing home or driving political action in college.  Other times, my impact is less concrete – treating a homeless person with respect, or yielding to a harried pedestrian on a busy crosswalk.  It’s good to have a religious framework for acts of kindness – it inspires more acts, and links them to something bigger.

And praying together touches my heart.  I’ve always prayed often and randomly – little sacred moments carved out of the day, to speak from my heart, or listen with it.  All the prayers at services are especially valuable to me.  Because we repeat the same prayers every week, each week we go a little deeper and a little deeper.  Especially for someone who doesn’t know Hebrew, prayers go directly to my heart – they can’t stop in my head because my head doesn’t understand them.  And of course, we pray with song, which touches my heart most deeply of all.

Which brings us to my Hebrew name, Shira Devorah. 

Shira for song.  Anyone who has ever sat near me at services knows how much I love singing.  Singing brings me closer to God.  I sing when I’m thankful.  I sing when I’m sad.  I sing when I feel so much glory there isn’t enough room inside me for it to be contained.  I sing when I need strength.  When my mother was sick in the hospital for many months, and couldn’t speak that whole time, I would sit by her bedside and sing for hours and hours and hours.  Shira needs to be my name.

Devorah for the prophet.  Devorah is one of the few women in the Tanach who is remembered on her own terms.  She is known not as a mother or wife or daughter, not as someone who overcame abuse or infertility.  She is known for her own accomplishments.  She is wise – she sits beneath her palm tree sharing wisdom and advising those who come to her.  But Devorah isn’t just a sitter beneath trees.  She is also a woman of action.  When Israel was threatened, it was she who was asked to lead the army into battle.  I would like to combine wisdom with action.  I would like to be a person that people ask to lead them.   

Why now?  I’m about to end my five years on the Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School Board of Directors, and I want to share this step with those with whom I’ve served. Many of my fellow Board members are here tonight to share this special moment with me, along with Barbara and Ted Lehrman, my mother and father-in-law who came all the way from New York to be here.   I joined the Hausner Board to support my kids’ school, but from the beginning I knew it was more than that.    Building a Jewish Day School is about the greatest thing we can do to strengthen the Jewish community – not only directly through our own children, but also by the connections they make, especially to Israel .  Serving Hausner is serving much more than the 300 families it touches directly.

Converting now is not so much making a change, as publicly recognizing what is, and celebrating it.   It’s like getting married:  the devotion and commitment are already there, but taking this step is saying to God and to the community that this is for keeps.  I have been living my life as a Jew for some time.  My spiritual home is Beth Am – I have no other.  For seven years I have sent my kids to Hausner, and volunteered far more hours there than I really have available.  When I seek wisdom, I go to Jewish sources; when I seek beauty, I look for Jewish art; when I seek inspiration, I sing Jewish songs.  The Jewish community is where I turn when I need help, and this is the community that I will work for in its time of need.  Converting now is recognizing who I already am.  It’s time for me to stop saying to myself in reflective moments “Hmmm…. look at that.”  It’s time for me to say to everyone around me…. “hey – look at this!”