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“Ani Ma’amin: This I Believe
Members’ Musings
THIS I BELIEVE
by
RAYNA AYLWARD:
For me, Judaism has been a conscious choice. My mother is Jewish, but indifferent , and my father was Catholic priest. So in my upbringing, religion was more of a question than answer.
As a young adult, after a variety of religious experimentation, I decided to be Jewish. Or rather, I realized I WAS Jewish. It was not a choice based on faith per se, but on a set of negotiated beliefs & values.
And here are the things I believe, that mean I can ONLY be a Jew:
- That we toast “Le Chaim” – to Life – rather than to Health or Happiness (as in other traditions), because LIFE is the irreducible gift.
- That we mourn the dead with a prayer that says nothing of death but everything of life.
- That we may follow that prayer – Kaddish – with a Kiddush, because we affirm life and community as a way of filling the spaces that loved ones have left.
- That leading a just & ethical life means giving back to the greater society – even if that society doesn’t love you in return.
- That tradition is honored, insofar – and only insofar – as it nourishes the present.
- That there is always a chance for TSHUVAH, for change, for turning, for starting new. As I learned during these holiday services, even Adonay may have tried 100 times to create the Earth until he/she saw it was good.
- That humor is both a value and a lifeline – it has kept our people in a sane relationship with a world that at times has gone insane. (And humor has certainly been essential in my relationship with my beloved Ed.)
- That beliefs can always be challenged and in fact need to be exercised, like muscles, and examined at regular intervals (as I’m doing now).
Like my choice of religion, the people I love are nearly all by choice (I have very few living relatives).
And the concentric circles of my loved ones – family, friends, Kol Ami community – reinforce my beliefs. You here and all you represent are indeed the foundation of what I believe.
This I believe – in all of you!
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We Are Created in G!d’s Image
By Don Kraus
I believe we are created in G!d’s image. Each one of us, and all of us, humanity, is a chip off the old god block. Literally.
How often in our services have you heard that you can look around the room and see the face of god? G!d is within each one of us. But if you add all of us together, does that equal G!d? I do not believe so. G!d is greater than the sum of G!d’s parts. And so is humanity. And so are you.
Think about it. Each one of us is made up of trillions of cells. But the essence of each one of us, our identity, our soul, is more than the total of each cell. We are the process of all of our cells working together.
We are the product of an evolutionary course that has over eons progressed from proteins, to single cell organisms, to colonies, to simple creatures, and in fits and starts to a self aware being, a Human.
Somehow a life force, a G!d force, has established a pattern of evolution that at each stage rewards greater cooperation between cells and between greater numbers of cells.
This pattern is stamped on humanity as well. We first organized ourselves around our biological families and clans. We grew into tribes, developed cities and kingdoms, empires, and federations. At each stage greater cooperation between larger numbers of people has been rewarded.
Of course there have been set backs. That’s what most of our history documents: the wars, floods, famines, and plagues that have decimated our societies. Our growth process is not linear. G!d is not linear. But the direction, the pattern of evolving greater cooperation and complexity is consistent.
I believe understanding this is vitally important -- a prerequisite for humanity to survive the very narrow place that we have created for ourselves. We’ve gone from reaching 1 billion souls for the first time in the 1850’s, to 2 billion in the 1940’s, to over 6 billion today. Our technology has given us the capacity to impact our climate, ignite a nuclear holocaust, but also extend our life spans, and instantaneously communicate around the globe.
My day job involves trying to get nations to work together to solve the problems that they cannot solve on their own. From climate change to AIDs, to nuclear proliferation we face challenges that transcend national borders. Cooperation is the key to our success and our survival. So we try to develop international laws and institutions and other means to work together.
It’s easy to believe that it will never work. That fear, greed, hate and fundamentalism will rip it all apart. But if you step back a moment and look at the progress we have made over the last 60 years you can see G!d’s pattern at work.
At the end of World War II we had little concept of human rights. The word genocide had not even been invented. Since then, we have literally created thousands of international treaties, laws, and institutions. And our communications and transportation networks are improving exponentially.
We have many pitfalls yet to overcome, but I believe that we will survive. We will make it, because we are created in G!d’s image. And G!d is about life and looks like life cooperating with life and becoming more than the sum of its parts.
So here’s to life. L’Chaim-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WHY I AM A JEW
by
ANN METLAY
This morning when Herb called for the Alliyah for all those who had chosen Judaism, I almost did not come up to the Torah. I do not believe that I chose Judaism; I believe that Judaism chose me.
I was raised in an actively Christian home. We went to church every Sunday, even in the summer. We always said grace, holding hands before a meal. My father was always a deacon, my mother always sang in the choir.
The church I was raised in was the First Congregational Church of Berkeley. Among its members were many faculty members from the UC campus. It was as liberal as you could get and still be Christian. I was taught in Sunday School that there was no bodily resurrection of Jesus---that his disciples loved him so much, they felt his presence. I was told that Mary was not a virgin. In fact, I was told that there were no miracles at all.
This was also the place where I developed my values for Social Justice. Each spring break while I was in high school I participated in a week-long service project, building a church in a poor community, holding social functions for children in a state hospital for the retarded, going on a joint retreat with Native American teens.
I continued my search for social justice in college, spending a summer in Watts and another marching with Martin Luther King in Chicago.
And during this time I was trying to find a place for myself where I could practice this social justice. As I searched within Protestantism, I realized that the social justice I wanted, mixed in with the theology I believed, was not to be found in Protestantism.
Then I attended a Seder. I was immediately drawn in by the story of escaping from slavery. What touched me even more deeply was the realization that the ceremony I was a part of was being played out in homes at that very time all across the country and the world, and that this was a ritual that had been done for thousands of years and would continue for centuries more.
Next I went to Kol Nidre. Again I was taken in by the history of the service. But in this service, I was also haunted by the music. Kol Nidre, Avinu Malkenu, these melodies resonated in my soul. It was as if I had heard these melodies, even sung them, in some past lifetime. I wept with the realization that this religion with all these set prayers said in a foreign language was my religion.
I married a Jewish man, converted to Judaism, and began to raise two Jewish boys. My husband called himself a “cultural Jew”, so he had no desire to become involved in a synagogue. It really wasn’t until we moved to Northern Virginia in 1992 and we became involved in Shoreshim that we did anything Jewish beyond lighting Hannukah candles and had Seders.
After I left my husband and had to leave Shoreshim, I became more involved in Judaism, first in Am Kolel in Maryland, then when I wanted something more local, I found Kol Ami. I learned more about Tikkun Olam and Tzedakkah. And I know that I am truly home, with the religion I was meant practice.
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last updated: 10/23/2007
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