Blogging at Jewcy.com

Although doing so would certainly put me into a much-needed theta state, I haven't ditched blogging for chanting the Litany of the Saints. Quite the contrary. This week, my adrenal system is working out at Jewy.com.

Jewcy describes itself as: an online media outlet/blog, social network, and brand devoted to helping Jews and their peers expand the meaning of community by presenting a spectrum of voices, content, and discussion.

I was invited to come over for a week-long play date by editor, Lilit Marcus whose writing is delightfully thought-provoking in both content and style. Exhibit A: "New York Is My Israel." Exhibit B: "A History of My Jewish Identity Viewed Through Men I've Dated."

My posts to date reveal yet more about my interior experience as a [adjective]:

"Why Is There a Menorah on the Altar?" (Monday, 11/9)
"The Muzuzah and the Crucifix" (Tuesday, 11/10)

Hope you'll click over to read more and will spend time visiting the entire site while you're there.

Litany of the Saints

Please join me
in savoring eight minutes and nine seconds away from the ecumenical fray...

Life As a Personal Aide: Just Shoot Me (H1N1) XIII

Along with diagnosing and maybe treating her pneumonia in June, the pulmonologist delivered cheery news about the probable consequences of Ruth getting the H1N1 flu virus. While he didn't exactly say, "you'll be a dead quad," that was the information conveyed.

Since she's allergic to eggs, Ruth doesn't ever get flu shots which makes for interesting adventures during flu season. I, however, am not allergic to eggs; medical "issues" of my own compel me to get an annual flu shot.

As everyone knows, the supply of the regular might-not-kill-you-but-will-make-you-feel-like-crap flu vaccine is extremely limited this year. By the grace of someone/something (St. Luke? St. Jude?), I managed to receive the next-to-last injection at my church, paid for by a kind parishioner because I had no cash with me.

I was fretting about how I might score an H1N1 shot when I remembered that I am, among other things, a health care worker. Ruth, who excels at everything Internet, managed to find a post about H1N1 flu and the disability community on the AAPD (American Association of People with Disabilities) blog, Justice for All.

Back in August, reps from the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Health and Human Services discussed how "the direct care workforce needs to be vaccinated to ensure continuity of care or personal assistant or attendant services for people with disabilities." Good to know that the life sustaining and enhancing nature of PA-hood is recognized at the federal level.

On the off-chance this awareness hasn't filtered downstream to the local level, I plan to show up at Monday's H1N1 clinic with a printout of that blog post. I'll also bring a copy of my pay stub from the agency that pays me a whopping huge $9.25/hour to provide care for someone who has the unmitigated gall to continue working instead of going on the public dole.

The Lighter Side of the Catholic-Anglican Kerfluffle

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My High School Reunion: Identity and Faith on Saturday

By Saturday morning of my high school reunion, I was pretty darn full of...myself. The previous evening I'd heard, "you look exactly like you did in high school" a zillion times. (Really? Gray roots were showing back then?)

I was also feeling rather perky thanks to a powerful combination of achieving Internet connectivity and getting a good night's sleep. Thus fortified, I drove to the high school for nearly six hours of schmoozing. Identity and faith continued to be a central topic but not because I was so darn busy fulfilling Matthew 28:18-20. I had other stuff to do.

This other stuff included but was not limited to paying off a bet I'd made with one of the reunion organizers. (He won a jar of macadamia nuts.) I also wanted to find out for myself if a former football player who scared the snot out of me really does now study with a guru for months at a time in India. (He does.) And, I wanted some quality time with Peter Balakian.

I've always felt a special affection for and affinity with Peter. This, I believe, is because my mother made sure two things happened by the time I entered fifth grade. First, I was taught how to play the string bass. Second, I was shown documentary footage of Nazi death camps being liberated by Allied forces. As a result, I spent several formative years standing behind Peter while he played cello in the school orchestra and to this day I consider genocide a clear and present danger. By genocide, I'm thinking Rwanda and Darfur, not...oh never mind.

Don't know if he still plays cello, but Peter has become a poet known for his prize-winning memoir, Black Dog of Fate and work about the Armenian genocide.

In Black Dog of Fate, Peter captures perfectly what it was like to grow up where we did and at a time when no one thought twice about making comments like, "You're eating like a starving Armenian" and "Don't try to Jew down the price." Peter's memoir revealed how I wasn't the only one whose childhood was shaped by a collective unconscious memory of diaspora.

While tucking into lunch, I learned that Peter is currently teaching a course in "Genocide" at Colgate University. ("Mom! Dad! I got an A in genocide!!") We chatted about antisemitism; the first century and Constantine. This proved to be perfect prelude to conversations throughout the day during which I was asked, "Why Catholic?" in the most thoughtful and thought-provoking ways.

Exactly the question I've been pondering lately, but one I put on hold to enter the embrace of Vigil Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel that evening before reconvening for the gala dinner.

My High School Reunion: Faith and Identity on Friday

So, I didn't attend Temple Sinai on the Friday night of my high school reunion weekend. I did not come to this sanity-affirming decision all by myself. A dear friend reminded me what happened during an impromptu visit years earlier.

Silly me, I'd stopped by the synagogue office to ask for permission to tour the sanctuary and was treated to an inquisition. Because visiting from out-of-town wasn't a good enough reason, I got huffy in return, "My grandfather of blessed memory designed and built the bimah. My family donated most of the landscaping." (Because reforesting Israel wasn't enough.)

"Well, we don't want people wandering around," snarled the synagogue secretary. I muttered dayenu and promptly decided to expand my tour to the kitchen where I once scrounged around for B'nai B'rith breakfast leftovers. (One Youth Group activity I remember.) Take a WAG, did I open the refrigerators?

With that memory reignited, I decided to ditch services and join the cloud of witnesses gathering at a local restaurant. Thanks to the humorous grace of God, the first clutch of classmates happened to be those who'd attended Our Lady of Mt. Carmel (Roman Catholic) parochial school before transferring to public high school. Bemused curiosity all around about what the h-e-double hockey sticks had happened to me.

Not for the last time during the weekend did I trot out my "Jewish in identity, Christian in faith and Catholic by religious practice" trope.

As it turned out, I really didn't have to brace myself. The big negative reaction never came, not from them nor from classmates with whom I'd once raided the refrigerators at Temple Sinai. Instead, on Shabbat I was treated to a delightful riff about what the nuns would have done with me had I attended OLMC. Think: The Trouble with Angels meets Doubt and The Sound of Music.

Thus began a weekend tuned to the Self-Discovery Channel. Saturday would be even more illuminating in the domain of faith and identity, although I do plead guilty to indulging in unrepentant schadenfreude at times.

Three months into Year of the Priest and I'm thinking "late vocations."

Earlier suggestions about how we might productively pray during the Vatican-proclaimed Year of the Priest generated an unprecedented number of comments on this blog.

As ever, I don't know whether to be thrilled or frightened by some of the ire I managed to generate, some of which oozed over onto Deacon Greg Kandra when he had the generous guts to reference my post on The Deacon's Bench. C'est la church vie, I guess.

And although I really am not looking for more trouble, recent news about "A Mother, a Sick Son and His Father, the Priest" has stimulated some new and improved thoughts about how we might pray for the Roman Catholic priesthood this year.

Hey! Let's focus on praying for what are known as "late" or "delayed" vocations! These are commonly defined as candidates who pursue the priesthood between ages 40 and 45. In rare instances, religious orders will consider older candidates.*

In case it's not obvious, my suggestion is anchored in wanting priests to be grounded in realities shared by the people they serve. Call me crazy -- and you wouldn't be the first -- but I believe this would help ensure a more respectable and respected priesthood. I'd like candidates for the priesthood to be adults who have experienced some or all of the following:

• Falling in love and sustaining a relationship beyond limerance.
• Having at least 5 and preferably 10 years of psychotherapy that's both analytic as well as cognitive-behavioral; individual and group.
• Changing jobs and having more than one complete career.
• Being treated as a valued member of a work (not sports) team.
• Reporting to an arbitrary and abusive boss.
• Getting deservedly fired.
• Having transcendently wonderful sex more than once and with another human being.
• Serving as a caregiver for someone who is either physically challenged or terminally ill.
• Applying to receive government financial assistance for self or others.
• Seeing a baby being born in real life (preferably vaginally).
• Financing and making payments on a home.
• Losing everything and starting over.

* Note: "consider" does not mean "accept." Separation of church and state means churches cannot be sued for age discrimination under federal law.

Rescuing the Catholic-Jewish Dialogue...from (some) Catholics

So glad I waited a month before following up my Recognito post. That post was about how in June, the U.S. Catholic Bishops (USCCB) managed to set Catholic-Jewish relations back a few years/decades/centuries.

First, they messed around with the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults. Then, after being busted for insensitivity, the putzim issued a clarification.

How does issuing a Statement of Principles for Catholic-Jewish Dialogue (October 2, 2009) make it all better? It doesn't. . . not even with this reassurance:

"Jewish-Catholic dialogue, one of the blessed fruits of the Second Vatican Council, has never been and will never be used by the Catholic Church as a means of proselytism -- nor is it intended as a disguised invitation to baptism."

Can the USCCB possibly be more out of touch with what's going on within certain (growing) sectors of the U.S. Catholic population?

Before convicting me for being too tough on the Roman Catholic Church, please compare and contrast this piece posted on Spero News (dateline: October 6) with this one on the Catholic News Agency website (dateline: October 8).

If deep text analysis is your thing, notice how each Catholic news service organizes information, uses quotes from the Statement, and provides links to resources. If that's too darn exegetical for you, then take a deep breath and scroll down to comments posted on the CNA site. Here are a few excerpts:

"Frankly, I'm getting tired of Jewish people telling the Catholic Church what it can pray, believe, and teach."

"Incidents like this always leave me wondering whether Christian-Jewish dialogue is even worth the effort. It gives the impression, in fact, that what passes for dialogue is really just a Jewish monologue with a Christian audience."

"More Apostasy, cowardice,and caving in to the Jews from the USCCB. The Old covenant is dead!!! Our Lord is the fulfilment [sic] of the old covenant."

Despite artfully worded proclamations, anti-Judaism (i.e., hatred of the Jewish religion) and anti-Semitism (i.e., hatred of Jews as an ethnic group) are alive and sick. At least one disturbingly hefty segment of the Catholic population is clue-free about the debt of gratitude all Christians owe to Judaism and the Jewish people.

I suppose I should, in some bizarre way, be grateful for validating proof of persistent ignorance about Jews and Judaism. Instead, I'm mostly annoyed and discouraged by bungled communications from those entrusted with church leadership.

If the USCCB can't adhere to the standard set forth in Matthew 7:12 when they attempt to clarify Catholic-Jewish dialogue, they should at least consider adopting this one from the Hippocratic Corpus: "First, do no harm."

Note: You can find links to all USCCB documents about Jewish relations at the USCCB website. Find copies of declarations and proclamations from the Vatican, as well as ones from the Episcopal and Lutheran churches in my new book, Why Is There a Menorah on the Altar?