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Nov. 4, 2005
Starting your Jewish home
It's about much more than having a library and trinkets on show.
MICHAEL JACKMAN
My ketubah (marriage contract), decorated with a border
of blue and red flowers, sits prominently in the living room. Nearby,
a glass shelf displays a silver and gold Kiddush cup inscribed with
our names: Mikha'ayl ben Moshe v'Sarah and Devorah Sarah bat Avraham
Yakov v'Tovah. And even a casual glance around the apartment reveals
other Jewish objects: a shofar on a plastic stand, a wood and glass
tzedakah box, a ceramic challah tray and a collection of traditional
and art nouveau mezuzot, one for each lintel except the bathroom's.
It wasn't always this way. The apartment of my middle age is what
I consider my first Jewish home, in a manner of speaking. When my
wife and I married two years ago, we deliberately set out to create
a space dedicated to Jewish ritual and practice.
But what does it mean, to start one's first Jewish home? What combination
of furniture and philosophy sets it apart as Jewish? In this age
of informed choices, the range of possible answers is quite large.
I can only say what it means to me. Everyone dedicated to Jewish
observance will make different choices.
My own Jewish interior design has been progressing through stages.
For example, my first digs were as vacant of mezuzot, kippot, or
even something as rudimentary as a chanukiyot as my refrigerators
were furnished with treife (non-kosher items). But even these
pads, empty of ritual items, displayed Jewish literature. I considered
myself an intellectual and cultural Jew. Back then, that was my
definition of a Jewish home.
My collection included Bernard Malamud's short stories, Martin Buber's
I and Thou, the Harvard University Press's dry, academic The
History of the Jewish People and my ever-aging, flaking and
cracking Hertz Chumash (Bible), presented to me in 1970 by
the Queens Jewish Centre and Talmud Torah on the occasion of my
bar mitzvah. There were also many works on the Shoah by Primo Levi
and other authors. At that time the Shoah, and not Sinai, was what
I considered the ground zero of the Jewish spiritual experience.
A glance at our bookshelves today would reveal a so-called paradigm
shift: tikkunim (printed versions of the Torah with vocalized
and explanatory text), tanachim (holy books), siddurim
(prayer books), various dictionaries and other reference works on
Judaism. It's an eclectic collection, running from Rabbi Lawrence
A. Hoffman's My People's Prayer Book through Rabbi David
A. Cooper's God is a Verb to Susanna Heschel's On Being
a Jewish Feminist. Nearby is a stack of teaching tapes for learning
to lead prayer services, home rituals and chant Torah. And no collection
would be complete without a pile of Jewish cookbooks.
Nowadays, we've got our Passover dishes, several chanukiyot, about
half a dozen challah covers and a few birkonim (benchers)
to hand out. We've got crock pots for preparing and warming food
for Shabbat. And thanks to many weddings and b'nai mitzvot, I even
have a kippah drawer as well-stuffed as the stash of any longtime
Conservative Jews. I can pass these out as needed during Shabbat
dinners and other festivities.
Of course, making a Jewish home is not all about owning fancy ritual
stuff. A non-materialistic rabbi I admire once told me she used
to light Chanukah candles on a chanukiyah made of tinfoil. Perhaps
following her example, our Havdalah besomim (spice box) is
a recycled glass jar with holes pierced in the metal cap. I kind
of like it that way, because it's like Cinderella's pumpkin-turned-coach.
The spirit invested in this ordinary glass and steel cast-off gives
it an aura of diamonds and silver.
A crucial part of my decision to create a Jewish home is to make
sure these objects are used and not just viewed like pieces displayed
in a gallery. This means I have to wrestle with a recalcitrant spirit,
much as Jacob wrestled with his angel. Neither advance planning,
nor spiritual and physical discipline, nor subjugating my will to
a higher authority come easily to me. Nevertheless, each day I push
myself into the fray.
I may mope, but I will attempt to sit at the table and recite morning
prayers and study a little Torah and Hebrew vocabulary each weekday
before running to check e-mail, write or do some other work or procrastination.
Despite the possible rewards of peace and joy (or perhaps due to
a fear of boredom), I still find myself reluctant to plan ahead
for Shabbat and other holy days, to call a halt to what Rabbi Zalman
Shachter-Shalomi called "commercial time" and enter willingly
into the haven of Jewish sacred time.
Another difficult part of creating a Jewish home for me means trying
to be, well, nicer to people. It means observing mitzvot and even
the wise advice of ancient sages in order not to send nasty e-mails
to editors, be a smartass on the phone with my parents or even lose
it and yell at my wife.
Now you're probably thinking that you don't need to believe in God,
a set of holy mitzvot or even the wise advice of ancient sages in
order to act nicer to editors, parents, spouses and others. But
sometimes it helps.
As I continue to create my first Jewish home, I've learned that
displaying a ketubah and a Kiddush cup in the living room is like
putting on a tallit during prayers. A tallit can be just a fringed
garment, or it can be the sheltering wings of God's spirit. It all
depends upon how you wear it.
Michael Jackman is an award-winning, internationally published
writer, radio commentator and writing instructor in Louisville,
Ky. Contact the author and read more about his work at www.mjfreelancer.com.
This article was first published in the Jewish Federation of Louisville's
Community, Sept. 2, 2005.
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