SO EXCITED!!!

MAYA IS COMING!!! I can't wait for her to come and see this place! She's going to stay at the kibbutz with me, but we're going to bounce around the country a little too, just us two gals! Life on the kibbutz is wonderful, beautiful, and refreshing...but busy! Gotta go feed the chickens, gotta go clean the kitchen, gotta go gotta go gotta go gotta go gotta go

Applications in!

Wow today has been a great day! I spent all day in the Kibbutz's library, writing and sending applications to all of the rabbinical schools I could drums up in Israel. Also! I had a short email correspondence with Maya and she seemed interested in coming to see the Land of Canaan, but she assured me that "it will be for travel and adventure, not to seek a religious experience."

Oh well.

I am starting to learn, here, that there is always a religious experience in travel and adventure. Some people just have different names for it.

Well, I'm off to the post box. And by the way, you would not believe the beauty of the walk from the Kibbutz's library down the road to our post box!

Life in Israel

Holy cow, it's been a long time since my last update. Sorry about that, friends! Life in Israel has been great and I have a lot to tell. I started my journey in Jerusalem and spent a few days seeing the city. I went to the Western Wall on Sabbath and the whole day was a great inspiration. The bobbing heads of praying Jews, the notes in the wall, and the warmth of humanity spreading out from the Jewish Quarters all made me feel like I had found my home. This beautiful culture and people... every waking moment I have had in Israel has felt like a dream. When I was leaving the Western Wall, I heard that familiar Chicago accent coming from a small group of Americans. I stopped by the group and they invited me to spend some time on their Kibbutz! So that is where I have been all this time. The Kibbutz is a small one, for American ex-patriots and it is in the middle of nowhere. We do have a computer here, but I have just been so busy helping with the cooking, taking care of children, and I even sat in on a few Torah readings. Israel really is the place for a Jewish grandmother, though. I mean, everywhere I turn I see reminders of what I love about my faith and my people. If only Maya could see this place...

That's it! I'll bring Maya here! Maybe then she'll get a little understanding about her history, and this could become my first job as a rabbi (even though I haven't even started classes yet, but a young man named Avi who lives on the kibbutz told me that he has a cousin who is enrolled in a wonder, small rabbinical school just outside of Jerusalem).

Well, I am going to sign off now so that I can close this blog window and look at the American Airlines website for a little to see if I can manage to hold off on the return flight without crazy fees!

When I Make it to the Promised Land...

...I'll breathe the holy desert air! If I don't break my wallet first... A round trip ticket from New York to Israel is going to cost me 1400 dollars! Plus 350 for the flights from Chicago to New York! Oy... Who knew spiritual enlightenment would cost so much?

Maya thinks I'm crazy for going. She's got her whole spiel about a midlife crisis and blah blah blah. I don't want to hear it anymore! I am NOT going through a midlife crisis. I see it more as a midlife journey. Sure I might have had a little bit of a freak out back there with Micheal's Bris and the possibility of a Baptism... but that's all in the past. I love my grandson, and I always will, and Maya (and James) too. But, I have got to move on to bigger things!

The commandments have been calling me! But right now my neighbor, Joan, is calling me from the driveway! (She's my ride to the airport). Next time you hear from me will be from Jerusalem!

I Have Decided...

...that it is time for me to take a vacation and go far away from all this nonsense. A lot has happened in the past week my friends, and it seems that my daughter and her husband have made up their minds. They're not going to be bringing baby Micheal to church (I was relieved to hear that one on the phone). However, when I asked Maya if she could be staying with congregation B'nai Tikvah or if she would like me to help her find the right congregation for her new family, she said "no congregations, just me and the baby and James."

I had to make sure I heard things correctly, so when I asked her again and she gave me the same response I did what all good mothers do, I gave her a stern (but loving) reassurance that this "I-don't-need-God-in-my-life" nonsense is just a phase that she will outgrow. Maya seems to think that Micheal will grow up just fine without being "indoctrinated" with religion, be it his mothers or his fathers. She says, if he wants religion in his life when he's older, he can find the right one for himself then.

"Really, mom," she said, "who am I to tell this beautiful child what to do and what to believe?"

YOU ARE HIS MOTHER! That is your job! To guide him...

"I took you to Hebrew school and Sunday school, and look how great you turned out!"
"Mom, I was miserable in Sunday school, I was just too afraid to tell you that I never wanted to go. I mean, what kid wants to go sit and learn about God and Moses for four hours every Sunday? The only thing I ever got out of it was singing in the choir..."

So it all comes out... My daughter resents me for all the wonderful opportunities I provided for her. Oy, oy, oy! I'm telling you its a generational thing. The younger world has no regard for tradition, for the beliefs of their ancestors. They prefer the stories in movies because at least those stories you forget about a day or two after hearing them. I want her to see that there is nothing real in that. I love my family, I will not give up on them and I am doing this for them, so I can teach them in the way that God wanted the people of the covenant to be taught. I am going to go to Israel, to learn it all, so that I may teach it all. I am going to become a rabbi.

What Can I Do?

Now that Maya and James are back from Ann Arbor, I don't know what to do to make sure Micheal is going to be raised in a proper Jewish home. I called Maya and told her that James should convert and in the background I heard him exclaim that he was thinking about going to church! Can you believe that? And Maya laughed! They don't take anything seriously... She said the circumcision has healed and looks very nice and thanks for paying for the "procedure" but I didn't have to go through all the trouble. "All that stress for nothing," she said. At least they're not mad at me, I guess, but can you believe? My own daughter calling The Holy Covenant a "procedure"on the telephone! What happened to respect? People have no more respect anymore. These kids... At that point I had to hang up. I told Maya it was good to talk to her and I was glad she got home from Ann Arbor safe. We're going to go out for lunch next week, What if next week James brings Micheal to church?! Oy vay, God forbid it...

Hear me God!

Please! One of your children is faltering and losing the warmth of your light and I am ashamed to say that it is my own daughter. I have been praying for her all day and, even more so, praying for my einnikel! I did everything right, I brought my daughter to synagogue for the high holidays, I enrolled her in Hebrew school, Sunday school, she had her Bat Mitzvah! And she goes off to college and marries this Christian fellow who is now attacking the Jewish people and forcing a Jewish baby to be BAPTIZED!!! Please God! Guide my daughter Maya, there is only so much I can do...