Okay, I'm now signed up to chant Torah again in May! It's from one of the less pleasant portions of Leviticus; maybe I'll learn the Hebrew for "scurvy" and "crushed testicle," which I'm sure will come in handy. It's a much harder portion than the one I had last weekend -- less repetition, more words I won't know already -- but I've got three months to study it.
As I told my rabbi over email, I don’t want to develop a phobia and decide that I just CAN’T do this. My fear of Hebrew was a big obstacle for me to overcome in deciding to explore conversion, and I don’t want to give in to that fear now!
And in my email exchange with him, I quoted servetus's lovely comment on my last post, about the mitzvah of chanting Torah even if I sucked at it, and he completely agreed and said that he "really, really" didn't want me to feel bad about Saturday.
The lemonade-out-of-lemons piece of all of this is that I shared the story of my debacle with my students, telling them that, because of our roles at school, I get to see them stumble and fall regularly, but that they rarely get to see their teachers in that position. So I wanted them to know that all of the things I preach to them — grit, resilience, etc. — were things I took seriously for myself as well. And I told them that they should hold me accountable for asking for another portion to chant this spring, for studying for it sufficiently, for getting a tutor if I needed to, and for not giving up. So now I can tell them that I've done the first step.
What a great reaction, all the way around.
I, too, like Servetus's point, though I don't know anything about the theology of it. It seems like a reasonable approach.
I especially like that you told your students!
Posted by: Bardiac | February 07, 2017 at 05:55 PM
Happy for you! That's the way to go, not to give up, demonstrating how to be a great learner and a great teacher!
Posted by: L-Mama(e) in Translation | February 07, 2017 at 08:25 PM
Wow, I'm glad the comment was helpful (and that your rabbi agreed, lol). And I'm glad you'll be fulfilling the mitzvah again in the future -- it's a hard one, and just think of all of the people who never do it. You really are improving the world, even if it seems like a struggle, and sharing it with your students makes it even better. Yasher koach!
To expand a little on my statement: the point in Judaism is always that you fulfill the commandment; fulfilling the commandment repairs the universe (tikkun olam). [To oversimplify drastically, this debate -- what is more important? intent to fulfill or fulfillment? how you feel about the law or simply that you follow it? -- is a lot of what Jesus is commenting on in the Gospels when he and the disciples demonstratively break the commandments and he talks about it -- his position as represented in the Gospels as opposing the rabbinic Judaism of his time is that simply following the letter of the law is insufficient or even counterproductive / silly if you don't perceive and execute the spirit behind the commandment as well. In the Gospels this debate is presented as a dichotomy, although it wasn't that way within Judaism, even at that time. The commentaries on Talmud all make clear that intent to fulfill / feeling / "kavannah" are important, too. And this debate continued: if you look at what Maimonides' hierarchy of charity: http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/45907/jewish/Eight-Levels-of-Charity.htm you see two things -- that certain kinds of intended charity are more praiseworthy, but also that even the kinds of charity that are lowest on his ladder, like giving unwillingly, still count as charity.)
There's also that wonderful statement in Pirkei Avot about how you don't have to finish the work, you just have to keep doing it.
Posted by: servetus | February 07, 2017 at 09:57 PM