This week marked the halfway point of my time in Jerusalem. I thought it would be good to get a little more personal and devote this post to the question, “how did I get here?”
School Daze
I have never been a good student. I never stood out in the classroom. My teachers gave little notice to me because I didn’t cause any trouble - home was a different story though. Some thought of me as a shy little girl; but looking back I know that my apparent shyness wasn’t an attribute of my personality so much as it was my desire to fade into the background during our lessons so the teacher wouldn’t call on me.
I believe this is my Kindergarten school picture. Aren't I adorable!
I had trouble keeping up with the lessons, especially with the reading. I was terrified of reading aloud. I had trouble “following directions.” The other students seemed to always know what they were supposed to do. And those terrible timed math tests – the ones that come on a half sheet of paper, ten questions at a time to be completed within 60 seconds – I have decided were forms of torture that turned an otherwise happy-go-lucky little girl into a knotted ball of anxious flesh chained to a desk with no hope of escape.
I would later come to find out – not until my college years – that among other learning disabilities such as dyslexia, I have Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)…for whatever that’s worth. Perhaps it is true that I owe my creativity to the three-dimensionality of dyslexia...and my ability to effortlessly write in mirror image. And the path that led me to Jerusalem can perhaps be credited to my A.D.D.
A.D.D is really a misnomer. My neuroscientist husband scoffs at the term “disorder,” since the brain’s activity is different in every person, creating a spectrum of behavior. It is only called a “disorder” by those who wish to define themselves as “normal.” My husband would also argue against a diagnosis that suggests a lack of attention, or "deficit." In fact, by being married to me he has observed that although my attention might flit from one thing to the next, when it finally lands on something it becomes nearly impossible to break my attention away. He has learned in our relationship - or simply resigned to the fact - that he sometimes needs to physically draw me out of whatever is holding my attention. And I have had to learn that it’s okay to say, “Honey, could you please repeat everything you have said in the last five minutes?”
Me and Michael on our wedding day. July 31, 2010. Do you think he knew what he was getting into?
Mr. Farnan’s High School Honors English Class…
So why am I talking about my school-day woes on a blog about my biblical and interfaith studies in Jerusalem? The reason is, that this schoolgirl had a recent flashback to a moment that has held her attention, defining much of the past 25 years and leading her to this place. It all started in Mr. Phil Farnan’s classroom at St. Thomas Aquinas high school in Overland Park, Kansas. He was my English teacher, perhaps my favorite teacher…which (sorry, teacher friends out there) wasn't hard to be admittedly – see above explanation. I’m not sure how much I learned about English/Literature per se, or how many of the assigned books I actually completed. I mostly enjoyed the class because he made learning fun and also because I sat next to my best friend Jenni...passing notes written in mirror image between us. But one unit of that freshman year English class captivated my attention and would stay with me until today. This first stepping stone would define me as a person more than I could ever have imagined, and is still defining me and my place in the world. Mr. Farnan had taught me about the Holocaust (Shoah).
On Monday our group visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum here in Israel. Dr. Deborah Weissman, an American Jewish educator and interfaith activist based in Jerusalem, gently accompanied us through the horrible memories of the individuals and a people who suffered during the Shoah. Walking through Yad Vashem I was transported back to Mr. Farnan’s class; back to the Holocaust History and Literature classes I would take in college; back to the hours I would spend volunteering at the Holocaust Museum in Houston. With no intention of diminishing the uniqueness of the Shoah, I wandered through the museum halls and not only thought about the millions of refugees throughout the world today, but also about the suffering of the Black community in America. The history of marginalization, white flight and ghettoization, laws that target minorities, mass incarceration, families broken apart...and now their very lives not mattering as much as the fears that have paralyzed a nation. The lessons of the Shoah not only inform my perception of other injustices, but became the trailhead that started me down this path to Jerusalem. The lessons gleaned from the Shoah would lead me to a moment of conversion; just as it had done for the Sisters of Sion and for the universal Catholic Church.
“The history of the Jewish people makes us particularly sensitive to the rights of minorities, of the poor, and of all who are marginalized in our society. These situations provoke our reflection and our prayer; they demand concrete commitments.”
A life made up of question marks ??????
In his remarks at the dedication of Yad Vashem, Elie Wiesel said regarding the Shoah, “Oh, I don’t believe there are answers. There are no answers. And this museum is not an answer; it is a question mark. If there is a response, it is a response in responsibility.” How right he was. Many years ago, in my high school English class, my teenage-self had many questions. The one that I had to answer was…“how could this happen?” I entered my undergraduate studies with this question in the back of my mind. I’m not entirely sure that I was even conscious of it as I began college.
At the University of Kansas I studied the development of ideas and the nature of change as revealed in history, philosophy, religion, literature and art. The electives I chose for my Western Civilization degree included Holocaust Studies. I would eventually write my senior thesis on “Post-Holocaust Jewish Theodicy.” Juxtaposed with my classwork were my first experiences with non-Catholics. I had attended twelve years of Catholic school after all. Sure, I had the occasional Episcopalian or Lutheran classmate…but our friendships were cultivated within the walls of a Catholic institution. For the first time in my life I faced criticism from others because of my Catholic religion. Oddly, my response wasn't a defensive one – my parents didn’t raise me to be a “warrior for Christ” – but my feelings were hurt by the stereotypes my friends attached to “my kind.” Naively, I didn’t understand how they could hold such views when I, a Catholic Christian, didn’t fit their stereotypes. They might say things like, "well, you're not like this but...." Perhaps it was naivete, or perhaps because I was born into a decade that straddles the cynical Gen-Xer’s and optimistic Millennials; but instead of holding a grudge and writing off my friends as simply “anti-Christian,” I turned the experience inward. Their “ignorance” about Catholicism led me to ask the question…”what do I misunderstand about other people’s religions?”
Me in college circa 1996; complete with pleather jacket, thriftstore-find shirt, ripped jeans and dyed hair.
It was at this moment when I decided to continue my education in theology and religious studies. I decided to begin with Judaism. I wanted to learn more about the religion and the people whose suffering had affected me so much. At this point I had yet to connect my own Church's history of anti-Judaism to the horrors of the Shoah in any concrete way. I was only 22 years old after all…and perhaps a slow learner still.
From School to Shul
My education in Judaism was in many ways similar to how most Jews learn about their own tradition…through living out the liturgical seasons. With college graduation approaching, an otherwise unnoticeable article in the Kansas City Star’s business section would provide my next stepping stone to Jerusalem. It announced the hiring of a new Executive Director for Congregation Beth Shalom - a large, Conservative synagogue in Kansas City. The new Executive Director was a Baptist, the article reported. I thought to myself, “if a synagogue will hire a Baptist, surely they will hire a Catholic.” I wrote a letter to him and the Rabbi and I was hired. I would spend the next two years living out the Jewish liturgical calendar in my unique way as a synagogue staff member. I would spend the next two years learning at the feet of rabbis and participating in the lives of the Jewish community. There was something special about being a gentile fly on a synagogue wall. I could learn about Judaism in a non-polemical way.
After years of participating in and moderating interfaith dialogues I have come to learn that sometimes, when speaking to a mixed crowd, we tend to explain our identity in comparison to another’s. There are a few problems with this method of teaching/learning, especially when it involves communities/ideologies that have a turbulent relationship. Firstly, if a practitioner is explaining their own perspective by referring to another’s perspective, then the “other” is not being allowed to speak for themselves…which breaks the first rule of dialogue in my opinion. Another pitfall of dialogue is the temptation to "water down" one's own tradition/perspective in order to make it accessible to the "other." I was lucky to learn about Judaism in a context meant for Jewish learners.
Former Congregation Beth Shalom synagogue at its 95th & Wornall location in Kansas City, Missouri. The synagogue has since moved south to Overland Park, Kansas.
The Beth Shalom community could have chosen to be suspicious of my motives, but I was welcomed with open arms anyway. They could have closed the doors to their classrooms, but instead they invited me in to learn with them. Although I was a non-Jewish staff member, a few months each year stood apart as I became entrenched in the preparation and celebration of the Jewish High Holy Days. When I could not be found at my desk a fellow staff member might suggest, “check Rabbi Margolis’ office.” They could often find me there. I loved sneaking away and sitting at the feet of this beloved rabbi emeritus; a fixture in Kansas City’s Jewish community - may he rest in peace. The congregants of Beth Shalom became like family to me. And when the shootings at the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park, Kansas occurred on the eve of Passover 2014, I wept.
One day, I learned that a Catholic religious sister was coming to speak with the Jewish Community’s young adult group about Catholic-Jewish relations. I am a little ashamed to admit it today, but I had never heard of such a thing..."Catholic-Jewish Relations." I phoned the JCC and asked if I could attend her talk even though I was not Jewish. I was told “no.” I missed that meeting with the young adults, but the next day my rabbi (Alan Cohen) intervened on my behalf and I was given an invitation to attend a luncheon in honor of the sister’s visit. Had I known that the people I would lunch with would be the JCC’s board members I would have been too intimidated to attend.
Again, my ignorance would become a blessing. The sister I met that day was a Sister of Notre Dame de Sion and her name is Audrey Doetzel. After her talk I approached Sr. Audrey and asked her where I should do my graduate studies. One of the schools she suggested was Boston College, a Catholic Jesuit university. A year into graduate school, Audrey arrived at Boston College as a scholar-in-residence. Neither of us could have known that our fateful meeting in Overland Park, Kansas was the beginning of a fifteen-year friendship that continues to grow.
Boston, You’re My Home…
And so I was off to Boston. This strange journey began with a high school unit on the Holocaust. In college it took an important detour that gave me a different perspective on what I thought I knew and what I didn’t know about the world around me. At the synagogue I participated in the lives of the “other” and was changed equally by our commonalities and our differences. I had turned inward and instinctively gave critical thought to my admittedly limited worldview. In graduate school I learned HOW to think critically about my religious tradition. It might seem strange then, that my time in Boston actually strengthened my Catholicism - of which much credit is due to the holy men and women I met there. Through graduate classes and my work at the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning I came to understand the history of the Jewish-Christian relationship. I learned about the role that Christian anti-Judaism played in the Shoah. And I learned about the hope that has risen from the ashes of those terrible centuries engulfed in the smoke of misunderstanding and consumed by the fires of hatred. It was in Boston where I began participating in and leading my first, formal interfaith dialogues.
I found out that my former Boston College professor, Rabbi Ruth Langer, is in Jerusalem for the year on sabbatical. We had a nice visit on the campus of Hebrew University, Israel.
I continued learning about other religions from the people who live them out. I brought my dialogue experience and skills to Houston where, for the last eight years, I’ve been a religious leader engaged in interfaith collaboration and understanding. I have been blessed with opportunities to act both as an individual and as a representative of the Catholic Archdiocese in the most ethnically and religiously diverse city in the United States. It was while I was living in Houston that Sr. Audrey settled in Kansas City. We reconnected one year while I was home for Christmas. She introduced me to the Congregation of Our Lady of Sion as a community and I realized that I had already been living out their charism.
Days of Awe...
I began writing this post on Wednesday, Yom Kippur, as I sat on the Ecce Homo terraces in Jerusalem’s Old City. Here I continue to be a student of change, and try to keep my mind open to change…to metanoia. On this Day of Atonement, this “Sabbath of Sabbaths,” I recall the stepping stones that led me to this place. The memory of Monday's visit to Yad Vashem is still fresh in my mind as a group of us headed over to the Western Wall to watch the stream of people coming up to Jerusalem as the sun went down. As the sun began to set on Yom Kippur, after 25 hours of fasting and prayer, a sense of joy and celebration filled the air.
Jews gathering and praying at the Western Wall toward the close of Yom Kippur.
Yom Kippur is a day for self-reflection on one’s actions over the past year. It is an opportunity to turn inward and be self-critical, both as an individual and as a community. In preparation for this day, Jews also turn outward and seek forgiveness from those they have offended. Yom Kippur is a day devoted to humility and the recognition that we are flawed, that we are not always righteous in our ways, that sometimes we fail God and others. But one’s humble contrition and confession are accompanied by confidence. The prayers throughout the day increasingly express confidence in God’s mercy. They reveal a hope in the fact that our iniquities do not have the last word, that they are not final condemnations. We can be forgiven and we can start over.
On March 26, 2000 Pope St. John Paull II also prayed at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. His prayer was written on a piece of paper and placed in the cracks of what remains of the Second Temple.
“God of our fathers, you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring Your name to the nations: we are deeply saddened by the behavior of those who in the course of history have caused these children of Yours to suffer, and asking Your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant."
From the steps entering into the Western Wall plaza, we watched as it swelled with hungry and tired Jews. The sky grew darker and more people gathered at the site. The sounding of the shofar marked the end of Yom Kippur and prayers were transformed into joyful dancing and singing. The jubilee celebrated their reconciliation with God and with others.
The first stepping stones on my journey toward Jerusalem were covered with the ashes of the Shoah. But those ashes became the ground for new growth that would uncover the stepping stones toward reconciliation. As for myself, as well as my Church, I am confident that we can make atonement for our sins of the past and be reconciled with those we have offended. It will perhaps require a little bit of naivete, and certainly a lot of humility; but I am confident that hope and peace are not lost. I would also like to add one other truth - which is perhaps even more central to my own personal creed – that it is equally important not to despair of those questions that remain unanswered, for these unanswered questions drive us forward. How did I get to Jerusalem?...I had Elie Wiesel’s “question mark” as my map.
The view as you exit Yad Vashem.