February 2016

Rabbi’s Letter

by Margie Klein

Dear Friends,

 

It was wonderful to return to work in January and to see so many people I care about. I am so grateful to have such a dynamic congregation to return to after maternity leave.

For this month’s newsletter, I want to share some reflections I spoke about in synagogue, about new motherhood, about what I’m learning from returning to work, and about my vision of the world and life I want to create for myself, for Uriel, and perhaps for this community.

But first, a caveat – most of the adults in our community are parents, and know more about parenting than I do. Clearly, I am less of an expert than you are. So, I share my reflections not because I believe I have acquired more wisdom in the past three months than others have in your combined decades of parenting. Rather, just like how I keep seeing the world with new eyes as I watch Uriel exploring everything for the first time, I hope that my discoveries in the infancy of my motherhood can help you think about these issues in new ways.

And, I’d love to be in conversation and hear your stories.

My life is normally about planning ahead, organizing, planning, writing sermons, creating lesson plans, scheduling meetings where we plan bigger meetings and events. Whether for the synagogue or for my social justice organizing work, I derive tremendous joy from connecting with people to think together about how we can shape the future, both short and long-term.

When Uriel arrived, all that doing and planning slowed down. After 29 hours of labor – more doing, when Uriel emerged, all I could do was stare at her. All I could do was look in awe at how beautiful this baby was, how fully-formed, how miraculous that a little person could just appear into the world like this.

As we came home from the hospital and settled in, my days and nights of Uriel’s first month blurred together into a jumble of feedings, diaper changes, baby bouncing, and stolen naps — all on Uriel’s mysterious sense of time, or lack thereof. There could be no planning and very little thinking. Just being present, responding with love and attention to the minute-by-minute needs of this tiny person that stared up at me with love and trust and vulnerability.

At first I assumed that it was my job to shape Uriel, to teach her how to be, or who to be. As time has passed, though, it became clear to me that Uriel is more like a gift to be unwrapped. We have lots to teach her, but she already has her own personality – bubbly, intelligent, curious, and silly. The more I get to know her, the more I feel like I’m falling in love, and the more I am amazed at how much my heart feels like bursting for this little person.

As January approached, I contemplated my return to work with increasing anxiety.

I know that I am very lucky to work in jobs that I am passionate about, which both pay me a living wage and support my decision to become a mom. I remember a couple of years ago when I was deciding whether to renew my contract, Jane pointed out to me that working in this congregation is about the most family-friendly job I could ever have. I often work from home, I can bring the baby to services, and I have a nearly unlimited supply of enthusiastic babysitters!

I am also unusually lucky to have amazing childcare – my parents, who have been taking the bus up from NYC Monday night to Friday mornings.

Yet, I kept feeling like going back to work meant making a choice between Uriel and work. Especially with my day job at the Essex County Community Organization — where historically I have worked long hours, I feared that I would miss out on all sorts of moments and milestones. I feared I would stop feeling as connected to Uriel or she to me, that I would no longer be the person who knows her best. And, since my entire work life predated the birth of Uriel, I felt irrationally as if I would cease to be a mom, that Uriel would disappear from my life, at least for the 8-10 hours a day that I was at work.

I think part of the reason for these feelings was just a fear of change. And yet, after attending moms groups where mothers regularly cry about how hard it is to balance work and motherhood, I believe part of the challenge is that we live in a society that expects work and life to be separate.  The very phrase “work/life balance” implies that work and life are separate and at odds. One woman who works in banking was actually told, “While you are here, you are not a mother.”

There is a real sense that each part of our identity is a liability to the other.  “You would be a better professional if you didn’t spend so much time with your kids.”  “You would be a better mom if you didn’t have to work.”

In this week’s Torah portion, God tells Moshe that God has heard the Israelites’ cry and is going to free them from slavery and bring them to the promised land.

The Torah reports:

Vayidaber moshe chen el bnai yisrael, v’lo sham’u el Moshe m’ketzer ruach u’mi’avodah kashah.

Moses spoke thus to the children of Israel, but they did not hearken to Moses because of [their] shortness of breath and because of [their] hard labor.

The Israelites are so burdened with slavery that they cannot hear MosheUs words. All they can imagine is being slaves.  All they can imagine is being workers, with no greater sense of humanity beyond their physical toil. They are literally and symbolically short of breath. The intensity and brutality of their work is robbing of them of their very breath, of that which keeps them alive.

Now, of course, the people in our congregation have jobs and careers that are 1000 times better than slavery. Most of us get to choose where we work and what we do, and many of us get to express key parts of ourselves through our work. As we would say in rabbinical school, l’havdil, from the same root as havdalah, these two things are almost too different to compare. Slavery and most modern work are really not the same.

And yet, beyond reading this passage as inspiration to fight against modern day slavery and injustice, I think one way to learn from this portion is to explore the personal ways that work today might make us like the enslaved Israelites – short of breath, limited our humanity, unable to hear the voice of God or experience holiness and meaning.

As I studied this Torah portion and contemplated returning to work, I came to think that part of what might make us short of breath in modern times is not just the work itself, but the ways in which we are supposed to suppress different parts of who we are at different times of the day.

For the Harry Potter fans among you, this reminds me of Voldemort’s dangerous practice of creating horcruxes, attempting to defy his mortality by repeatedly splitting his soul, at great moral cost.

The essential prayer of Judaism can be read as a warning against this kind of fracturing.  Shma yisrael Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad – Listen, you God-wrestlers, God is our God, and God is ONE. The prayer says – the world will try to tell you everything is separate. But if you listen deeply, you will discover the secret that all is connected, all is ONE.

This doesn’t just mean that some God in the sky is one.  I believe it means that everything is interconnected. We are each part of a greater whole, and within each of us, our different parts all make up one whole and holy person. When we split ourselves up into discrete pieces – the work self, the parent self, it is harder to experience the holiness of living fully, of living holistically.

So, contemplating all of this, I’ve been asking myself as I’ve returned to work, and I ask you – what would it mean to live in a more integrated way.

Instead of trying to leave Uriel behind when I enter the office, I’ve been thinking about what I’m learning from my experiences with her. I’m realizing that Uriel is teaching me how to slow down and be more present with people, how to be in the moment, and — when needed — to multitask. Whether or not I talk about it at work explicitly, I’m bringing that awareness into work.

And, instead of thinking of my work as a distraction from mothering, I’m thinking about how my work might enrich my capacity to be a good mom. Uriel is too young to understand what it means to be a rabbi or an organizer. But, I hope that when she gets older, she can learn from me that it is possible to spend your days doing something you love, or that it is possible through your work to make a difference in people’s lives.

I’m starting to believe that the best thing I can give Uriel is the belief that she can be who she wants to be in the world, and the best way to teach that is to model it by living fully myself.

So, I invite you to consider – what do you learn from parenthood or family that might enrich your experience in work – or other aspects of your life?  And, what valuable lessons or learnings from work might enrich your experience in your family and community?

Finally, this is work that we do not only as individuals, but as a community. How can you find support through friends and community to live a more integrated life?

My blessing for us is this: May we be blessed with courage to live fully in all the walks of our lives. May we be blessed with vision to build a world that welcomes our whole selves. And may we be blessed with the wisdom to know that that wherever we are, whatever we are doing, we are invited to be mensches, to live out our Jewish values of courage and kindness.

Blessings,

Rabbi Margie