Shana Tovah

Wishing my worldwide family a safe, healthy, happy new year.

It’s a strange feeling to be writing “happy new year” while we are still at war and there are still hostages in captivity. Yet I think my Israeli friends more than anyone I know have an ability to celebrate things even in dark times. Must have in order to have survived these thousands of years.

I didn’t go to services. I had the ability to get tickets but the services didn’t start until 7:30 pm which is late for me on a weeknight, and getting home from the synagogue at night is sketchy on transit. At first I was taking transit there and Lyfts home, but I can’t really afford that at the moment. Loviefluffy had a prescheduled vet appointment that was much needed (she has a thyroid condition that needs regular monitoring) so that’s what we did.

I also continue to feel more of a Zen Zionist than Jewish, and I know I’m an outsider, though a warmly welcomed one. I wish I could find a religious community where I really felt I belonged. My church has gone so far to the edges of woke politics that I don’t feel comfortable there, and the Christian stories don’t resonate with me the way the Hebrew Bible does. Though oddly enough, even though I have never cared if the actual rising from the dead happened, I have always resonated with the Easter story. It’s just like Daenerys Targaryen really, except without the dragons and not nearly as pretty. If Jesus had dragons…

I feel comfortable sitting zazen at my Zendo. I stepped back from that community for a bit while exploring Jewish life and starting a new job, but I think I will plug back in. It is very meaningful for me, if in a different way. I don’t consider myself Buddhist - I see Zen as a practice and a way of life, not a religion.

I am a follower of the Cat Goddess Bastet. I’m sure that if pharaoh had a cat, she meowed at him, “Dude, it’s time to let those people go!”

I was reading something the other day about a young Jewish woman who tried to connect and learn from a very anti-Israel young man. She thought they had developed a friendship, then she got a long letter from him explaining why he could not be friends with her because she “considered herself Jewish.” Not because she considered herself a Zionist or pro-Israel. Because she considered herself Jewish. He asked why she didn’t say, “My parents were Jewish” instead of saying that she herself was Jewish. Can you think of any other group who would be told that?

One advantage to not being Jewish is that no one can tell my I’m not being Jewish correctly. When you’re just an ally, everyone likes you and no one expects you to know anything!

I consider myself a Zionist and a kitty mommy. The rest will sort itself out.

I hope that you are able to do the holidays as you want to, whether with family and friends or without, attending services or not, observing them or ignoring them all together. I just hope you’re safe and at least a little bit happy.

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