I'm the first to admit that sometimes, especially as a Jew by Choice, I take my Jewish identity a little too seriously. Anyone who knows me through my temple could tell you that: I serve on seven different committees (down from eight last year); I'm a member of the board of trustees, a regular at Shabbat services and at the Torah study table on Saturday mornings. More than even my Jewish identity, however, I'm a huge advocate for Interfaith bridge building. Why? Because this is where I come from, as an interfaith kid. To that end, I teach a session on conversion and interfaith Outreach for every student taking Intro to Judaism through the Union for Reform Judaism in NYC. I even did a stint as a Jewish educator for the Interfaith Community of New York. I'm even a twice-trained Schindler Outreach Fellow for my congregation, which means that I work with people in the process of conversion, and with families where there is never going to be a conversion, to help integrate people into life at our temple. And life at our temple is pretty sweet. It's a home for a lot of wonderful people I know, both Jewish and not Jewish. That's why we were selected to host a weekend for 15 rabbinic students from the Reform seminary campuses in New York and Cincinnati. I think the students had a great time with us. I think some of them had their worlds turned upside down. And I think that we, as a congregation, were not exactly what they expected.
Imagine a sanctuary where people of many diverse faiths come together in a place we all call home for a great Shabbat celebration on Friday night. Where I read Torah in honor of dozens of families who not only raise intelligent and sensitive Jewish children, but families where the parents themselves are wonderfully connected and involved in their own right. Where temple leaders, both Jewish and Christian, stand on the bimah to share their journeys of faith and open-mindedness. A place where I taught not only is conversion not for everyone, but it's not even remotely a requirement. Because our central prayer, "You shall love the Lord your G-d" begins with the same Hebrew grammar construction as the commandment, "You shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." The one thing I hoped the students would take away from this weekend was that loving the stranger brings us closer to G-d - and that loving the stranger is not conditional on them joining the tribe.
It was a wonderful weekend. My highlight was having the opportunity to facilitate a panel with four of our temple community's teenagers, where they answered questions from the students in such an amazingly articulate way that I wanted to get up and cheer. They told truths to the students that I would be too intimidated to admit. That before my conversion, I always referred to myself as half Christian and half Jewish, because it made life easier, and I didn't want to be disconnected from either side of my heritage. And when two of those young women, raised as Jews, admitted to still really liking Christmas, because it is a family holiday and, as one said, "You HAVE to love Christmas!" it was as if I was getting to talk out loud, too.
The weekend, as one might imagine, took a huge amount of work to put together. Housing the students. Making sure they arrived safely. Providing transportation. Arranging all the meals. Getting people to host Shabbat dinners. Making sure various medical issues, dietary restrictions, and pet allergies were taken into account. I had a fabulous, energetic, awesome committee who gave me all the help I needed and more. But let me tell you, by the time it was over - and it was over early due to a huge storm that knocked power out at the temple - I was exhausted.
Maybe that's why I didn't answer as nicely as I could have when a Facebook friend - a former neighbor in my old building in Larchmont - sent me a message this morning, asking (not for the first time) why I keep my Facebook wall private. Now, I do this for a lot of reasons. Not the least of which is that some time ago, someone innocently posted something on my Wall that contained some bad language. This doesn't really bother me, really, but at the time I was working at a company where my Facebook was under scrutiny much of the time. It was a post you wouldn't want impacting your professional life. So I deleted it and made my Wall private from that point on.
This friend, who as I said was a former neighbor, is definitely a little - not really sure how to say it - OK. Crazy. When I lived across the hall from her, she would stalk me after work, when I got home, and spend hours upon hours talking about herself, herself, herself, her life, her love problems, her family problems - more information than you'd really want to know in a lifetime. She seemed to be in conflict with a lot of people - most of her stories were about fights she was having in the various relationships in her life. And honestly, it was 2002, working in downtown NYC, and I was having enough problems of my own.
It wasn't a real friendship. Rarely did she ask, or care, what was going on with me. She just thought, because we were near the same age, and single, and living on the same floor in the same building, that I was her best buddy. And this went on for months. I could never really get away from her because she'd listen for the elevator, or my key in the door, and she'd come into the hallway and start in. It was the nightmare neighbor scenario from every bad 70s sitcom. One night, after a really long day, I got home and true to form, she came yammering out into the hallway, yakking away, and I told her that I really needed some down time, and to be on my own. That I just. Couldn't. Listen. Right. Now.
This was apparently a bad thing to do. From that moment, the tantrums started. Yelling. Screaming, Slammed doors. Hostile notes shoved under my door. Emails telling me that I was a bad, horrible, selfish person who deserved to be alone and a workaholic. That I was a bad friend and never listened to her problems. That someone with her problems deserved sympathy and I was an even worse person for victimizing someone with all the life-stress she had. I have to say that as hurtful as her words were, I didn't really care. I was just relieved to finally have some quiet. It wasn't like the loss of a real friend that hurts you in your heart. It was a relief.
Turn the clock forward to 2009, about seven years later, when she finds me on Facebook.
At first all was fine. What is Facebook, anyway, but a way to keep certain people in your life, and others at a distance. I approved her as a friend, figuring what the hell. We didn't live in the same place anymore.
It immediately started. The crazy comments on my posts, the constant stream of narcissistic and silly posts from her in my news feed. One night, she decided to pick a fight with one of my friends in a comment thread. Before my REAL friend got into it with her, I hastily scrawled an email: Back off - not worth it - this one's a nut job.
Which brings me to today's message: why do I keep my Wall private? She wants to post some pictures of the new Don Draper Mattel Doll. Ha! Ha! LOL! LMAO! and whatever other stupid hysterical internet abbreviations you can imagine. Anyway, after this weekend of pure hard work and intense spiritual seeking, I was tired. Really f-ing tired. So I wrote back: I just like to keep my Wall private. It's that simple. Hope you are staying warm and dry.
This was apparently another bad thing to do.
I will now quote from her response:
You can keep your rude comments to myself, my mother is in the fucking hospital and has major surgery scheduled - How fucking DARE you respond to me in that manner - "It's that simple" - How's THIS - You are blatantly and offensively anti-Christian and anti-Catholic in your pro-Jew rhetoric that NOBODY cares about or wants to HEAR on Facebook!! .... Consider yourself blocked.
And one minute later:
Typo: Keep your comments to YOURSELF, not myself.
I was so infuriated, I cannot even TYPE straight. It's THAT simple. Resentful witch.
And so, a supreme irony. I spent this whole weekend teaching Outreach - a culmination of years of hard work, of trying to help people feel more at home at my temple regardless of their faith. A weekend advocating for the non-Jewish journeys of faith in my own home congregation. And being told that I am offensively pro-Jewish and anti-Christian. If it weren't so stupid, I'd laugh. And if I weren't so tired, I probably wouldn't have let it make me cry. But I did.
I think - hell, I know - that I'm exhausted. But the words, "pro-Jew rhetoric" gave me pause. I looked back on my Facebook page, and sure, there are links to stories in the Jewish press, Shabbat greetings, things going on in my temple. But it certainly isn't there to convert anyone, or make any of my Christian, Catholic, or Pagan friends feel weird or excluded. I mean, damn - half the time the people responding to my typical Friday night Shabbat shalom are my friends of other faiths. And much of the time, the stories I post are ones that are critical of stuff going on in the Jewish community.
So what does a person do when she finds out she was connected by Facebook to someone who clearly has a lot of anti-Jewish hostility brewing beneath her surface? I don't know. But I think back to this past Friday night, when I lifted my voice in a duet on the bimah with my first Temple friend, not Jewish like I was when I first arrived at my congregational home. Or of my friend Jill, who spoke about her connection to our community not in spite of - but because of her deep Christian faith. Or of all my Jewish friends from Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, cultural and secular backgrounds. How different we all are. And how, in the end, it doesn't matter. What this person distinctly does not share with my friends is a sense of humanity. No one whom I trust, no one with whom I actually want to hang out or spend time, online or in person, is as full of conflict and hostility and hate as she is.
So what I'm trying to focus on is how I am really bound to all of my friends by something even better than sharing a faith in common: by the fact that we're all human and decent and trying to make a good life for ourselves and the people we care about. And that we all try to be good people. And maybe that's the lesson of Outreach for me this weekend.
I did respond to the horrible emails I received, and I was honest. I said that I was deeply hurt and sad by what she said about my faith, and that her emails brought me to tears. I also said that I hoped her mother would recover and that she herself would find the strength and grace and wisdom to care for her.
And my final hope for her is, in the illustrious words of my people: a meshugenem zol men oysshraybn un dikh araynshraybn.
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