As we approach this frenzied season of pre-dawn waking (and awakening), long hours of prayer, days of fasting, special foods, rituals, anxieties (will Neilah on Yom Kippur go late again this year? will my esrog impress my neighbor? how can I keep those damn aravos from drying out so quickly?), we all bring along baggage from years past, and reflect on how these events affect us, pleasantly or otherwise.
For those of us leading secretly non-frum lives, these events trigger conflicting emotions. Oh, how the heart is stirred when we hear that first Kaddish that marks the beginning of Selichos, the age-old chants, the reminders of what this event meant to us five or ten years ago. We might be stirred by some of the poetry in the first chapters. But as the prayers grind onwards, the monotony increases, the Chazan’s chant becomes more like an annoying whine, and we reflect on whom we’re actually beseeching for forgiveness, soon realizing, no one in particular. Which leads to the question, what exactly are we doing here? We look to our children and think, we do it for them, and we reflect on the cruelty of a society that would deny us the love and affection of our children should we decide to openly shed our attachment to a lifestyle we find suffocating.
And this awakens our rage—oh, the injustice of it all.
But here I make a rebel’s confession: I am no longer angry, no longer seething at the hypocrisy of those around me, no longer overflowing with ridicule at the attachment of my friends and neighbors to nonsensical rituals and primitive beliefs. No longer do I carry this lifestyle as a burden weighing me down, grinding me senseless into the mud and muck through which I am forced to tread.
I don’t know when it happened, but at some point it dawned on me. I cannot forever be held captive by the blinding desire for neighborly approval, the grand prize of prestigious shidduchim, or the fear of uncomfortable questions from the wife and kids. It was then I stopped playing by the rules. My shul participation, practice of ritual, and level of religious stricture is now entirely defined by my comfort level.
Many of us complain about the strictures of frumkeit, and even more so of the Chasidic lifestyle, and proclaim that our greatest wish is to leave it all behind, pursue our passions, and live with the freedom and happiness we deserve as citizens of good standing in the modern world.
The only thing holding us back, we say, is this society into which we’ve been thrust, a misalignment of the stars, the whims of some impish god playing a game—like my kids, perhaps, who, while playing Zoo Tycoon, will place the people in the lions’ cage just for thrills, and laugh at the panicked expressions on the pixelized figures and their frenzied search for escape.
But we do have choices. They may not be the ideal array of options, but that is the fate of mankind. Our decisions might be fateful, affecting our lives and those of our loved ones in profound ways, so we must make them carefully. But when we choose to stay within the confines of our communities, however unsatisfactory, those are choices
we make, in return for whatever it is that keeps us here.
My choice has been to stay rather than leave, as long as I can define my own boundaries. And the choice has been liberating. Once I realized I can leave it all behind if I want to, I realized I don’t want to that badly. And now that I define my own existence, I actually anticipate the familiar holiday rituals and customs, the songs, the food, and yes, even the prayers, all of which I partake in only as long as they feel pleasing.
Do I not understand the misery, the heartbreak, the insanity to which one can be driven when compelled to accept a despised lifestyle? Oh, do I ever. And, of course none of this actually excuses the culture of fear and intimidation our society fosters so self-righteously. But by being angry and reactionary we gain nothing.
Our society won’t change very quickly. Our primary task then is to define what we’re
for instead of what we’re
against. And, at least for me, it won’t do without a spiritual component. Whether it means participating in a communal expression of hope for a new year and the desire to cleanse our souls of sin (against our fellow man, not against God), an attachment to the idea of a Higher Power—however you might define it, or chanting Ohm for an hour, they all confirm the belief that humans are more than their physical skin, flesh, and bone—however unscientific the notion. It says that life is not purposeless; that our deepest intuitions regarding our souls and a great source of life and our connectedness to one another actually mean something, and those intuitions exist for reasons not merely Darwinian.
A sweet and blessed new year to all!
