When the Rabbi’s assistant is too busy, or out of town, or lazy, or whatever, I have to send out the Yahrzeit notices. A Yahrzeit is the anniversary date of someone’s death. Traditionally, you light a candle on someone’s yahrzeit, but the most important thing is to say the Mourner’s Kaddish, which is a special prayer (one of my favorite episodes of Northern Exposure focuses on Fleischman getting a Minyan together to say the Kaddish) for the deceased. The Yahrzeit notice is a courtesy that the Temple does for members, or former members who bought a plaque, that reminds mourners of upcoming Yahrzeits…

I explain this because in November, I was doing Yahrzeit notices every week because the Rabbi’s assistant went to Israel for a month and left me holding the bag. Of all the things that we do here for members, I would say that these notices are in the top 3.

During that same period, I finally saw the film adaptation of the book Everything Is Illuminated. It is a very good movie. Here is the trailer:

From Wikipedia:

The writing and structure received critical acclaim for the manner in which it switches between two story arcs: (1) fragments of Foer-the-character’s novel-in-progress, where he tells in highly literary English a quasi-magical story about the citizens of Trachimbrod; and (2) a straightforward narrative of searching for Trachimbrod (which is an invented name for the real village Trochenbrod), as told by Alex in broken English. They are tied together by letters sent from Alex to Foer and attached to Alex’s version. Alex’s narrative is most notable for its broken English, which sounds as if he learned English via thesaurus without ever hearing it spoken. Throughout his narrative, he makes frequent use of improper synonyms, such as using the word rigid to mean “difficult”.

At the time I had a notion of writing an article about How Something Is Written vs. Its Topic and how this book and this film clearly succeed in that way. But really, it just got me to thinking about my Jews and how, even though they have White Privilege in the US, they are still Jews. Their inner lives and outer rituals are formed so differently and are based on such different ideas than those that white, non-Jews (the Holocaust, Israel, Antisemitism, the threat of Islam, and the Jewish diaspora are pretty much all anyone at the synagogue talks about, for example), that even though I have so much in common with them, I am never mistaken for Jewish.

This does parallel the story in Everything is Illuminated in some ways, but I don’t want to spoil it for anyone – needless to say, I will always be an outsider.

I am currently reading Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policmen’s Union, and it is so amazing that I can hardly stand it. Don’t read the reviews, just know this: It’s a “what-if” – Israel fails in its early days, a bunch of Jews settle in Sitka, there’s tension with the native people, and it’s a hard-boiled detective story peppered with Yiddish and Hebrew.

The summer I turned 19, I had the opportunity to work at a gas station on the Colville Indian Reservation near my hometown. I was plunged into “Life on the Rez” and lucky for me, I quickly made some friendly acquaintances (it also helped that my mom worked with some very well-respected Native ladies). I can’t really explain it very well but that outsider experience really formed my perspective and understanding of other cultures (and I have strong opinions about melding cultures and “belonging” that I think fall outside the norm because if it). But I do think it has caused me to seek out groups of people with whom I will never really be a part of, but I can be a “friendly” with, but not in some Romanticized way. I’m far too pragmatic – it just makes my world bigger.

And so, I think that’s really why I’m still working here. And I think it says something about Native and Jewish cultures that they are open to me becoming a “friendly.” And maybe I should have gone into anthropology.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 11:29 AM and is filed under Heavy Thinking/Heavy Drinking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.