The “Narrow Place" Of My Yom Kippur Day

Wednesday, October 12 – Yom Kippur, The Jewish Day of Atonement

An almost non-observant Jewish woman such as myself must be a trifle creative if she wishes to honor this most holy of days on the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur, and find serenity in her alternative ways. With this thought in mind – and --  gorgeous as the weather was today, I set off this afternoon for a visit to the historical town of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, just steps away from my door, to celebrate the day.

With the two conjoining rivers, the Potomac and the Shenandoah, flowing through the mountains of Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia, the mountains of these states embracing the rivers on all sides, the panoramic vista alone makes a wondrous sight on any day, giving rise to the famous words of Thomas Jefferson –

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“The passage of the Patowmac through the Blue Ridge is perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in Nature. This scene is worth a voyage across the Atlantic.”

Spoken eons ago, these words and the view they describe is no less majestic today than it was in Jefferson’s time. Aware of this marvel not far from my door, I set myself off for a brief, but beautiful trek to celebrate the Jewish New Year, with a ritual few slices of bread in hand; Pepperridge Farm dark puppernickel, no less!

“Slices of bread, you ask. Whatever for?”

The answer of which I was well aware was that it was, after all, the Jewish Day of Atonement.  And though I had freed my conscience to not sit and pray in Shul, nor was I given to fasting this year in an annual show of contrition, I was not off the hook for attempting to save my soul by any means. Raised as I had been in a quasi-Orthodox family, I knew what I was expected to do, in even minimalist fashion. Most of us of the Jewish faith, world-wide, do know that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” In other words, be safe not sorry.

So a few slices of bread in hand was my duty, a humble attempt to perform the customary ceremony of “Tashlikh,” the casting into moving waters of pieces of bread, symbolizing the throwing off of one’s sins from the last year passing away. The Jewish New Year being almost entirely about atonement, this small ritual was the least I could do. 

The implications of that action, aptly and equally, surprisingly akin to a bumper sticker message a friend of mine told me of with the words – “Look busy, Jesus is watching.” Just goes to show you, doesn’t it, how closely aligned is one religion’s perspectives with another’s? 

A minimal ceremony, such as this on my part, might not quite be what the Big Guy, if there be such as he, has in mind for the Day of Atonement.  But, at least, I was in there with something to “honor” my heritage and protect my well-being for the coming year.

That same friend, a long-time Harpers Ferry resident I happened to meet up with on my adventure, urged me, most fortuitously, to consider the rightness of how I had chosen to spend this most sacred of days. By her sharing of reflections on our shared locale, she directed my attention, inadvertently, to the Celtic tradition of places such as this that offer an opening into the magnificence and wonder of the presence of the Divine Spirit.  She called them “narrow places.”  And, of course, we both knew that our Beloved Harpers Ferry was among such places.

Later I found the tradition on the internet called “Thin Places,” places where one can touch the edge of heaven.

I offer here the words of Sylvia Maddox from “Where Can I Touch The Edge of Heaven? that heightened my sense of this wonderment.

“There is a Celtic saying that heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in the thin places that distance is even smaller. A thin place is where the veil that separates heaven and earth is lifted and one is able to receive a glimpse of the glory of God.  

We return from thin places refreshed and renewed. We are graced with a new awareness of the thin places in all of life. Having seen the glimpses of glory in those sacred landscapes, we begin to see glimpses all around us. Soon the birds outside our window sing of the mystery we might have passed over in our busyness.”

And so it was for me! Such was my day with one more beautiful blessing received (I had already had several), traditional or not, that helped me know that I had without a doubt, on my own behalf, chosen the best place for me to be on the holiest of Jewish days, my special Yom Kippur.

Anastasia’s Back Story On -- (Part II of II)

The Middle East Crisis In My Backyard: 

How Communities Come Apart and How They Heal

Contact: Anastasia at cell: 240.409.5347, email: SuperSleuthDSW@aol.com

Translated into my more modern Jewish American ways these traditions of the shtetl were set, deeply rooted in me, in a value system that carried its way into what I considered to be a life well lived, personally, and as a part of the greater whole of humanity; a manner of living that makes “thinking globally and acting locally” simply a broadened perspective and an imperative born of shtetl life.

In this paradigm forgiveness and reconciliation are viewed as fundamental to the well-lived life; trumping all other endeavors. But the matter transcends merely being at peace with oneself, ones family and friends or neighbor, the greater world around us and with the Divine. The very process of living by these values demands relentless self-analysis, determination and rigorous discipline. Contained within the endeavor lie the many gifts of alchemy; the transformation of our humanity; the evolutionary process of converting the lead within each of us into gold; individually and collectively.

The effort to live by these values, day-by-day, calling up introspection and an ongoing accountability, is an essential part of charity/social justice that begins at home, especially with oneself. The culmination, as I have learned, is the passing forward of these principles to the next generations by living them. In this way the very essence of tikkun olam, the Jewish notion of world repair, comes alive, as it once did in shtetl life on a much smaller scale.

One need only read the text of Jewish High Holiday rituals and prayers to see the principles of forgiveness, reconciliation and, above all, tsdokeh embodied throughout; not just in words uttered during these holy days, but as precepts to be lived during the course of the year as an essential way of being.  What is transformed on the personal level in the application of these ideologies affects, not only the individual, but also the family. What is transformed in the family ripples outward into the community and beyond. This is how it should naturally be, I believe.

The unexpected ways in which these traditional values of my Jewish heritage came to the fore for me and how I came to have them reinforced at a critical time in my life, by simply, and not simply at all, walking myself through a fire of personal challenge, I have come to call the “Jewish/Muslim Controversy” in my backyard that gave me the title for this book, The Middle East Crisis In My Backyard: How Communities Come Apart And How They Heal.

The experience changed my life, both personally and professionally. I hope it will inspire yours.

This book, beyond all else, is a gift to my children and my children’s children. I want them to  know of the yearnings of my heart in a detailed way that only memoir can offer -- and -- how these were formed through the interactional by-play of my personal relationships, those of my community and myself. In this special way I want them to also learn how practically significant, sacred and spiritually awakening my journey has been.

From my effort I want my children to know and live by values that shaped me that I most revere; many of them rooted in the culture of the shtetl. I trust these to be a pathway to the higher levels of human development, family and community well-being and world peace; again tikkun olam.

Not that I believe that the old ways of the shtetl should be embraced, wholesale, but that, as with other traditional cultures in the process of dying out or already having died out, there are things to learn from a heritage, such as this, that can help us live more whole-heartedly and beautifully in our contemporary lives than we could ever dream up on our own, even by plowing through all the knowledge presently archived on the internet.

To read about an ancient or traditional culture is not the same as knowing it in one’s heart and soul. This soulfulness must be preserved, if at all possible. And we, of the generations that can still convey remnants of the shtetl way of life through direct contact, albeit it  second hand, are carriers, perhaps the last, of a great cultural knowledge, wisdom and experience that must be honored, if humanity is to now grow beyond itself.

But how does a shtetl-influenced Wandering Jew such as I had become, by the time of the tale I’m about to tell, make the transition from anti-Semitic Jew, which I had also become, to being once more a “good Jew.”?  This is my tale of how I made the shift and how in effecting it I validated the profound words and thinking of my dear friend, Rabbi Edwin Friedman –

“There is an intrinsic relationship between our capacity to put families together (groups or other organizational systems) and our ability to put ourselves together.”

(Marcia) Anastasia Rosen-Jones

Passover Eve, April 22, 2016

Anastasia’s Back Story On -- (Part I of II)

The Middle East Crisis (In My Backyard: 

How Communities Come Apart and How They Heal

Contact: Anastasia at cell: 240.409.5347, email: SuperSleuthDSW@aol.com

The words tikkun olam, Hebrew for world repair and/or variations on this theme, have come to symbolize a certain philosophy of contemporary Jews. For many of us born around or after World War II these words have become a statement of our pledge that, not only shall we never forget what Hitler exacted of our people but our intention to build, out of this devastation, a world where things such as this would never occur again.

As I am of this generation of Jewish Americans, heavily marked by the persecution suffered by parents and grandparents who fled the oppression of the Czar in Eastern Europe and, in my case, a stepmother who was a German Holocaust survivor, the promise and the pledge of these words have been easily embraced. After all, in our homes we grew up with the stain of these tragedies affecting those closest to us. Thus we too were heavily impacted. As a result social justice and activism come naturally to us as an essential part of daily life. In fact social justice is an intrinsic facet of our heritage, especially that of Eastern Europe.

However, not having heard too much, directly, of the ordeals lived through by my grandparents or my stepmother who I called Mom, those in my family to immigrate to the United States, most of what I know of these trials came to me through the accounts of others more distant; most often from oral and written accounts of people outside my family. In retrospect I see now that the members of my family, rather than telling authentic stories of the difficulties of their lives in the “old country” generally masked their personal experiences of a negative vein with cover stories offered of a more palatable fare, before life in the United States. 

Seldom did they reveal their personal or even collective difficulties. An outward focus on present day life in the United States was the norm. Although on occasion my Mom would share a tale or two from her life in Shanghai, China after fleeing Hitler. Among these was that she and her first husband had fled there in 1939 where they remained until the Liberation in 1946.  By then she had divorced him, justifying her decision on his being unwilling to work in Shanghai where they lived in a refugee camp and knew even doctors to hire themselves out as bicycle messengers.

Even with limited knowledge of what our family members endured, many of us grew up with sensitivity to our elders and the personal wounds they harbored. As young adults, especially in the era of the sixties and seventies up against civil rights, women’s rights and Viet Nam, this understanding could easily find expression in social and political activism.

No doubt it is this inborn activism that prompts my writing of this book. An equal, if not stronger influence on me, also shaping the intent of this book, is that from my biological mother I inherited a natural affinity for shtetl life; its customs and philosophies. The traditional shtetl, long gone from modern life, was originally a small Jewish town or village which existed in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. Shtetl life was typically communal in spirit and carried its own culture in terms of having a language, Yiddish, and traditions, based primarily on the teachings of the Talmud, a central text of Rabbinic Judaism. 

Tsdokeh, a word often used to imply charity, but more accurately denoting social justice, was one of the most important tenets of the cultural values of the Jewish shtetl; the benevolence of good deeds being the “central mechanism by which (the) community” functioned. So supremely important was this value that “good deeds” were seen as basic to being a good Jew.

The Broadway musical, Fiddler On The Roof, depicts a slice of this way of life; a vivid picture of communal life, fraught with interpersonal complexities, yet filled, too, with loyalties, love and laughter, song and celebration.  Tsdokeh underlies all of this.

Yet these distinctive cultures were, not only distinct from other mainstream Eastern Europeans, but were sometimes also poles apart from one another.  One example of this is that there were both Chasidic and non-Chasidic shtetls that often disparaged one another based on their differences. The shtetl of my heritage was definitively Orthodox but non-Chasidic with the Chasids often arousing superstition, even seen as harbingers of evil.

Translated into my more modern Jewish American ways these traditions of the shtetl were set, deeply rooted in me, in a value system that carried its way into what I considered to be a life well lived, personally, and as a part of the greater whole of humanity; a manner of living that makes “thinking globally and acting locally” simply a broadened perspective and an imperative born of shtetl life. 

To be continued.

Today I Am Telling The One About ---

"How an exceptional community life became so essential to me."

You can find the tale on my Exploring Your Dark Side: The Adventure of A Lifetime blog site at this link --

How An Exceptional Community Life Became So Essential To Me

Let me know what you think of it. You can write me at:

SuperSleuthDSW@aol.com

The Long Road Home

A long forgotten image comes to mind.

I am five or six, maybe seven years old. And, I am riding my 4^th of July, or perhaps Memorial Day, decorated tricycle, streaming with red, white and blue crepe papers.

I am all excited to be going to the parade, especially on this particular day when I will ride my bike in it. My Mom and Dad are in on the fun too.

I like the event. I am happy and feeling very much a part of a celebratory day. Everyone around me seems equally pleased.

This is the America I will remember in a small Ohio town. I carry the memory with me always, stored along with the other memorabilia that make up the treasure chest of who I have been and who I believe I am now.

But today as this image comes to mind, it seems a bit off. Viewing it with the fresh eyes of an expanding perspective, the pleasure of the day remembered is disturbed. New Horizons’ Coffee House Conversations On Race Relations is prodding me to take a second glance at it. I am saddened by what I see.

The scene revisited now alerts me to the fact that other than the red, white and blue of my holiday decorations there is an absence of color in the picture; the color of people who are not white like me.

Now I see signs signally that I was born to “white privilege.” Oh dear, I hadn’t noticed it before!

Sameness, not sameness got to concerning me when I realized that my Jewish mother determinedly kept me apart from non-Jews. As I got older I resented this. Resented it without paying attention to others around me, less noticeable than my self-centeredness allowed me to see, who were also excluded from belonging. But for reasons their elders might not have chosen for them.

Emancipated from this circumstance, by college and then into my adulthood I rectified my situation, after all the choice was mainly mine.

Bleaching my hair blonde camouflaged my physical aspects so I could readily hide my Eastern European, Jewish roots. The Six-Day War of 1967 and my troublesome views on it offered me license to even take an anti-Israel position. Again the choice was mine or so I thought.

Later I would look back on this as also being my ticket to declaring myself as having quit being Jewish.  Still later I gave myself permission to even be anti-Semitic. Of course, now I know that one cannot quit being Jewish. Jewish born, especially of a Jewish mother, is forever Jewish, no matter what!

Still the notion that belonging or not belonging was always still up to me stayed with me.

This was, of course, long before I understood I fully understood the lethal scope of anti-Semitism. In the meantime my evolving adulthood values turned to feminism and civil rights. The war in Viet Nam was of less immediate concern to me. But the rifle-toting, anti-war demonstrators I encountered around me in Washington on what I thought was an ordinary work day, heading for the Mall for May Day Protests, brought that circumstance more closely into my awareness.

Taking a stand for peace and social justice, thus, became a part of who I became, a long ways away from the days of my little parade decorated tricycle.

Nonetheless, outside of the days and the years immediately following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the personal influence it had on me, I am realizing today, this very day at hand here that, in spite of my dedications to equality and bridge building across any and all barriers that divide people, what I have contributed of late to the progress of racial equity has been quite sparse.

And, especially being Jewish I should have known better. So today I am accepting that I have a long way to go if I am to truly understand my brothers and sisters of racial and ethnic difference from me. I’ve only just begun what promises to now be the beginning of a whole new chapter for me on behalf of equal rights, altruism, honor and respect for others different from myself, peace and social justice.

I’ve got to go farther than formerly to do my utmost to honor those who were not welcome to ride in my parade; a parade open only to those privileged to be white.  

I see this now, with shame and humbleness. I have been marked by white privilege. 

At Ben Bradlee’s Funeral

My dream time had me at Ben Bradlee’s funeral this morning. With numerous others I was helping to set up for the reception that would follow the memorial service.

How odd, caterers and waiters would have been tending to this task. But somehow in my dream it looked more like a Shabbat service with an Oneg Shabbat at our local synagogue. (Oneg Shabbat is the gathering after Jewish Sabbath services, often with food and socializing.)

Most interestingly was that there was a table for beverages, alcoholic and otherwise, at which I was placing a Jewish brand of whisky with English lettering of a Jewish man’s name. Even more intriguing is that the name had the initials of my father!

No Hebrew writing, as I recall, but then there might have been in smaller letters that I just didn’t happen to notice. Nonetheless it was a distinctly Jewish brand. And that fact alone held importance for me.

The feeling accompanying the dream was one of warmth, richness, community conviviality.  Absent qualities at gatherings I attended in Washington with much too much on the superficial power game playing level.

However, in this scene the theme seemed to be one of interweaving parts of myself into wholeness and well being. Also there was a sense of something having to do with the inheritance of my two children, now grown, Elisa and Eric.

How very interesting it all was and somewhat unusual as I had only met Ben Bradlee one time, along with his wife Sally Quinn.

The occasion had been a rather intimate brunch, as I recall, at the home of my former sister-in-law when she was writing for the Washington Post. The Omelet Man, entertainer and cook extraordinaire combined, had been our chef, if I remember correctly.

Dreams are so revealing, if one can make use of them as messages from the unconscious to guide one’s personal emerging of clarity.

Being so inclined I have been taking time to do just that since.

Strange the fragments of me, yearning for unity, now coming into my conscious mind from this dream time adventure at this still early time of the day. By interpretation I have, thus far, included these clues from my unconscious was signaling --

• My prophecy-predicted return to Washington;
• The anti-Semitism in myself, finally reversed after decades, that was, no doubt, heightened by my fast track years in D.C.;
• Unfinished business with my former sister-in-law;
• Concern for the legacy I will leave my children.

As the day is still early now. What will this dream herald for me as my day goes on?

What guideposts will I recognize as this dream continues to work its way through my psyche, like the gift of wisdom from a place somewhere beyond that dreams always bring, if one allows?

On the level of earthly reality, a man of great stature and contribution to the betterment of our society (and politics, one would hope) has now passed beyond our mundane world. And, I am grateful to have shared a brief moment of time with this man who made a legend of the Washington Post in exposing the Watergate break-in.

This was an enormous gift for me, personally. I will never forget the model he represented for me of someone who relentlessly searched for truth and had no fear of revealing it, as big and bold as anyone could.

For this I am, apparently, so grateful that I even brought myself to attend his funeral in absentia on a day that I, in actuality, was traveling to Johns Hopkins battling, once again, to save my very precarious eyesight.

On that score, my eye infection crisis, “we are heading in the right direction,” my doctor says while I, concurrently, continue to navigate my return to Washington, as my prophecy predicts, at least in my dreams.

So I take from my having attended Ben Bradlee’s funeral that celebration is unfolding, even in times of loss, especially if a Jewish brand of whiskey, honoring my tribal heritage can show up for the event.

To Redeem One Person Is To Redeem The World

I received a rather unsettling call last week from the county jail. . The call came from one of my “honorary daughters;” young women I had counseled over the close to twenty-five year span I spent as a psychotherapist (1974 – 1997). She was one of a handful who kept tracking me down, begging for more of what she had once had from me in those years.

Each one of them had, indeed, been a hand full! I had not wanted to give them more.

Several days later I received a follow-up letter. The letter looked dark and ugly and crazy and felt correspondingly so. I didn’t welcome it at all. I literally screeched inside my mind when I saw it.

Thank goodness there have been only a handful who have challenged me thus!

I was taken aback by the insanity of that letter. It had the appearance of graffiti; words written all over the envelope, so dense I wondered the postwoman could read my address, with messages represented as ordained by Jesus himself. Inside, along with gibberish I could not fathom, were several cartoons, clipped from who knew where, matching the envelope in offensiveness,.

I do appreciate the love, respect and devotion with which these women have honored me. 

Yet the boundaries of professionalism have decreed, along with common sense, that enough is supposed to be enough!

Clients are not privileged to simply adopt therapists as if a therapist could be assumed to be an adoptive parent, pledged to orphan children.

I can appreciate the yearning of these “honorary, self-appointed daughters” of mine. With both my parents long gone, on occasion I have wanted a stand-in parent or two. But certainly I have not been in need of more children.

I already have two, a girl and a boy, a sufficient nuclear family and an enormous dysfunctional, extended family system which for all its complexities still holds the central importance of my life. 

But try as I might, I have not been able to permanently fend off this small band of groupies.

Cyclically they lose their periodic swarming on me like a plague of locusts, returning again and again.

Short of filing a protective order to keep them away, I believe I have tried every humane, possible option to dissuade their proclaimed affectionate attachments to me. Nonetheless, each of them is about as welcome in my life as the stink bugs that are, again, invading our local territory.

It is with this challenge imposing itself upon me that I embarked upon the final stages of Yom Kippur, the most sacred of Jewish holidays.

Sin upon sin, consciously known or unknown, I am called, in keeping with the holiday, to examine the limitations of my personhood on this last day of the Jewish Ten Days of Awe; awe being the promised outcome of a character and soul sufficiently white-washed to officially begin another good year.

So what am I supposed to do with this visitation from an unsolicited fan of mine?  

The quandary challenged me as I began the final assessment day of atonement.

Should I turn my back on her when she is in dire need, again, having relapsed into her drug addiction and prostitution?

Even if it is for the umpteenth time over the past twenty years I have known her?

Should I ignore her pleadings when she has somehow gotten me, again, confused with her salvation? 

Although I am quite certain I am not the Messiah!

Answers for our salvation do not come easy, I reflect.

Then prayerfully I beseech that Power Greater Than Me, speaking the words of my heart, I plead --

“Please G-d, redeem me from “women who love too much.”

Then, behold, a light illumines me, as if from on high, beaming forth to liberate my consciousness.

Maybe the one person I am most responsible for redeeming is -- ME, first!

Jewish New Year of not – there comes a time when enough is simply enough, even when being charitable!

May all good people be inscribed in whatever good book they love for a good year ahead.

Jewish New Year, 5774.

L’ Shanah Tova.

 

The Times They Are A Changing

Jack and I did a most profound radio show last week, titled “The Times They Are A-Changing?

To me, at least, it was a high mark episode. In fact, I was a bit unnerved by it; the reasons still under “private investigation” by me. The most obvious explanation might be that in our on-air dialogue we were, publicly, discussing things I am “not allowed” by maternal parental order not to acknowledge, particularly non-Jewish ideas.  As it so happened on this show, all kinds of blasphemy, according to this stricture, were touched upon as Jack and I considered the “changing times” within which we are now living.

Somehow this on-air dialogue, heightened by the conference call forum that followed, led to an article I wrote for the New Horizons’ Small “Zones of Peace” Project blog site. I titled it, “Life Is With People: A Memorial Day Reflection.”

While I am still unable to explain the connection between that radio show broadcast and the article I just posted, I offer it to you, thinking you will appreciate it, even if the author, me, is still unable to justify its viable presence here.

“Life Is With People: A Memorial Day Reflection

“Life Is With People” is the title of a book on the dying culture of the shtetl; its way of life, its practices and characteristic philosophies. The book was introduced in 1952, with a commentary by Margaret Mead, the renowned anthropologist. A shtetl is, or at least was, traditionally, an Eastern European, Jewish village.

My mother was an assimilating, Americanized shtetl Jew. She grew up in the midst of folks who shared a common heritage; shtetl life was central to their ways.  Of course, it was not completely like the “old country.” Still life among the Jews of Toledo, Ohio did revolve, as in Eastern Europe, around the shul, an Orthodox house of worship.  

Life in this community of like-minded, shared culture, individuals and families, had a long-cherished resonance to times past. Most notable, however, was that these people were safe from the pogroms of the Czar and what was to come of Germany and the Third Reich.

I have long treasured the rather beaten up copy I have of the book. It brings me to wonder if I have kept the words of the title close to my heart, only after finding it on a used book shelf, or had they always been as though cellular to me. I doubt I will ever know.

Well, no matter, now. The title means the world to me. It strikes the deepest cords within me, reminding me who I am and what matters most; a life shared with the people around me in love and laughter, joy and sorrow.

From the earliest days of my life, the experience of a closely-connected life with people was as familiar as my skin; the people of my family and those of my community.

My people are shtetl people. This is my history and my heritage. When I was not paying attention and honoring this, I was cutting myself off from myself, as we all do when we do not tend to our roots. This is simply a fact of human nature.

We are of something. We become something more. But whatever it is that we are at our roots cannot and will not ever be separate from who we are, now, and who and what we will become.

Part of the heritage of being Jewish is that you are, for better or for worse, a member of a tribe.

I remember, attending a high school that must have been eighty-five percent Jewish, if not more. At the time, an “in thing” was to refer to one another as “members of the tribe.” I didn’t think much about the expression then. It was just simply what one said, thought and, somehow, did. In short we were “MOTs” and proud of it. Later, though, and up until the recent past half-dozen years, I didn’t like being a member of that tribe. I wanted out.

So I proclaimed that I’d quit being Jewish. People laughed at me for my idiocy. “You can’t quit being Jewish,” they said. But I was certain I’d bought my freedom. From what I was not quite certain.

Nonetheless, tribal life and its implications came home to me the other day while I was picking something up at a neighbor’s. Walking onto a nearby friend’s yard, I chanced upon another neighbor, a Native American, as it happens. Seeing him standing there in the sunshine I was struck by the beauty of the rich color of his skin.  Then, jokingly I asked, “Do you think I look as Jewish as you do Native American?”

He chuckled and soon, as friends and neighbors do, we went on to the next lighthearted chatter. Tribal differences had not divided us.

Then, I heard, in the distance, another friend of his, unknown to me, calling out. This was a slightly accented voice of a male who turned out to be African American, from Ghana.

Growing up as the daughter of a die-hard shtetl Jew, as was my mother, I was not allowed to interact with anyone who was not Jewish. Anyone not of my “tribe” could not even be acknowledged as existing as a human, truth be told. Native Americans were, seen only, as performing exhibitions at the annual Sportsman’s  Show. An African American would be our cleaning lady.

How very much this breaks my heart when I reflect upon it.

But the times they area-changing. I am changing too. For one thing I have now answered my query, “Am I an American Jew or a Jewish American?” Having resolved that “Yes, I am of Jewish heritage, I accept that in me. And, that I am equally an American. I hope I am never asked to choose between the two.

I have come to full voice of where lies my heart and soul; all the peoples of the world are members of my tribe. As it turns out, it was the separating from the rest of humanity that had made being Jewish feel so wrong for me.

But that was long ago. Today is the now. Still, if I allow my mind to travel, I am rather certain my “othering” mother would have difficulty accepting this way of mine.

What she might say about the joy and wholeness I find now in the varied array of people in my life I will not even entertain. In attendance, presently, at our Possible Society In Motion conversations forums and our bi-weekly Sohbet/study groups, I think we have, at least, one or more, people of Irish descent, a South American, several folks of German heritage and one person of mixed Bulgarian/Macedonian heritage; none are Jewish, other than me.

So what?

On a day like today, Memorial Day, I am so aware of the freedom I have to simply be me and an MOT of any tribe I choose. I choose the global village as my tribe and the land of this free nation.

Hope your Memorial Day is as joyful and celebratory for you as an American, as it is for me.

Anastasia,

Up in the mountains where Civil War soldiers died for our freedoms 

Return of the "Recovering Anti-Semitic Jewish American Princess"

Yesterday’s radio show was delicious and next week’s promises to be –

Spiritually special

We hope you will join us for this next one.

Anastasia The Storyteller Radio Show announcement below --

Recovering Anti-Semitic Jewish American Princess

September 5, 2013

(Rescheduled for Friday, September 13, the end of the Ten Days of Awe.)

In celebration of the Ten Days of Awe (also known as the "Ten Days of Repentance) of the Jewish New Year, Anastasia invites honorary daughter, Terry, long-time friend, Gloria Livingston, and other guests into a discussion of the significance Anastasia has found in following this ancient tradition of her heritage.

Describing her personal ecclectic path as bringing her to know the human jamboree of "awe," Anastasia introduces the "mixed" marriage she made during her term of blindness and recovery (1998 -- 2006) of her Judaism, psychological principles and the teachings of Abkhazian Elder, Murat Yagan, as described in Murat's new book, "Ahmsta Kebzeh: The Science of Universal Awe."

For stories Anastasia has written on her personal spiritual journey as drawn from these traditions, read Anastasia's collection of anecdotes labeled, "Recovering Anti-Semitic Jewish American Princess.

Life is with people

“Like a dance for which the music and the choreography have never been written down, a great part of any human culture is lost to humanity when the group which has carried it, devotedly, in every word and gesture, is dispersed, or destroyed…..” Thus wrote Margaret Mead of the culture of my heritage in Life is with people: The Culture of the Shtetl.

The shtetl, commonly understood to be a small Jewish town or village formerly found in Eastern Europe was carried by the elders of my grandparents’ generation in every cell of their being, in everything I ever knew of them.  Barely able to speak a word of English, my grandparents, in the memories of my childhood, represent these Eastern European roots though only in America did I ever know them.

Their’s was a way of life I recall as having texture, richness, tradition and people; lots and lots of people. This was a way of life they passed on to us, the generation of my parents and myself, simply by being present with us as we grew and developed.

This is a way of life that is, of course, hard to replicate in this day and age of constant long distance travel, the mobile phone and the internet. Who can imagine people pausing long enough to simply be present with one another in this fast- paced world of today?

Honoring the cultural heritages
of the past.

To be born into and raised into this Observant Jewish family was to know life in a tribal sense. Consequently I grew up not knowing how to view life in any other way; life is with people. And people are tribal.

Wikipedia defines a tribe, historically, as a social group or society, organized largely on the basis of kinship. Today, belonging to, let alone readily finding nearby kin or like-minded “others,” who are similar, culturally or socially, and organized like a tribe – or a well-functioning community -- is almost impossible. Yet to the very core of my being it is this way of life that is most resonant for me.

So how I can be anything but hopeful and joyous as our New Horizons’ Possible Society In Motion Show now begins to smooth out its wrinkles, intentionally growing in the direction of the tiniest hint of community; albeit with few dimensions, very little texture and only a sniff of regularity, let alone tradition.

Still, Margaret Mead, also said,

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, that is the only thing that ever has.”

I rest my case.

in this time of massive cultural upheaval I am, personally, a tribal being yearning for a known something better, intent on consciously traveling with others on this journey through life.

I hope you will want to join me/us on this adventure. It is so much richer as a share experience  than traveling solo.  Life is with people and I/we want to travel with you.

How big and beautiful can we be with unity?

Join Jack Slattery and myself on-air Thursday evenings at 6:30 p.m., intent on encouraging an on-air community forum on our Possible Society In Motion Show.

Former Anti-Semitic Recovering Jewish American Princess

Turning

Today summer, officially, turns to autumn, this day of the Autumn Equinox. Already summer heat is giving way to the crisp, cool of Fall. The nights and the mornings after are chill, but not so cold yet that we rearrange our morning habits; the eagerness to check the bird feeder's supply and a cup of tea outside on the deck.

Only a pair of sweats and a sweater are added to ensure our comfort now. Thus the seasons of the year turn, as the Jews of the world, too, put their hearts and minds to turning.

It is decreed by the ancient texts of Judaism that our tribe be called at this time to turn ourselves to review and repentance. Our designated ten days of repentance; also known as the “ten days of awe,” began last week. We have until next Wednesday to get with the program.   

One of my most important reviews continues to be the whys and the wherefores of my former anti-Semitism. Reading the prayer book of these High Holy days I am relieved to see that G-d wishes only for sinners to return to the path of righteousness; my sin here, apparently, being my renouncing my Jewish heritage.

It is stated – “YOU wait for him/her. Whenever he/she returns, YOU welcome him/her at once.”

This year I am so “returned” I actually made it to the synagogue to hear these oft-repeated words, reminding me that, now, having turned myself toward my Jewish heritage, I am apparently off the hook from being a sinner. The hardest part, I think now, wasbeginning the  “re-turn.” Then the surprise; while I had turned my back on my heritage, somehow Judaism still held a rightful place for me.

In retrospect, I think my turning away had much to do with Jewish injustices in Israel, as I perceived them.  My leave-taking exacerbated by the fact that I had not until recently found other like-minded Jews with whom to commiserate. The internet, thank goodness, changed that for me.

No longer alone with my views, I am, at last, resolved on my stance and public about it,  diplomatically and with discrimation, learning, too, to speak out about my views on Israel, as well as, on other Jewish matters. In the process I am removing several die-hard masks I was wearing instead of speaking my piece.

Off comes the mask that said nothing about the subject of Israel and what it means to me to be a JewishAmerican (or is that an American Jew?) as well as the mask with the bleached blonde hair, a persona of trying to “pass” as not Jewish that I took up in college and continued until my hair started to fall out from the bleach in my late twenties.

And, off comes the mask that shows you only the seat of my pants as I take off and flee to avoid the tensions and conflicts that can arise when expressing controversial views of my own.

"Walk tall,” one of my spirit sisters reminds me. And, I discover that I rather like that position, being vocal about the values I hold dear to my heart, resolving to do more and more of this taking a stand for what I believe, as the Jewish New Year, 5773, unfurls.

Can this way be any more troublesome for my loved ones and myself than had been my former going away?

I am beginning to suspect not. Already I am gaining a few rewards for the staying; the leaning into rather than away. Still, I will need, now, to “just keep swimming” as Dore, the fish, says in “Finding Nemo” and see what happens for me – “Next year in Jerusalem.”