My wife, a dear friend, and I took a field trip yesterday to a shul nestled in the woods. An ongoing browse of Portland’s Jewish marketplace. We — I wasn’t buying anything.
We entered the sanctuary mid-service. A congregant lifted the undressed torah scrolls and pivoted to her right, revealing God’s word to the hall. Behind her towered a holy arc of frosted glass. Behind that, floor-to-ceiling windows lent gradient views of snow, sleet and sun against a backdrop of Western larch and Douglas fir.
The cantor chanted in Hebrew. I understood virtually nothing. That’s par for me, a lifelong uncommitted bent on interpreting what he doesn’t understand as a secret kept from him. My eyes landed upon the bespectacled Rabbi. Young. Affable. Beard trimmed heretically in a Hassidic’s mind. He looked back at me and smiled. He saw me without judgement. His gaze seared me with tenderness.
I closed my eyes. The cantor’s Hebrew washed over me. Not as uninterpretable liturgy, but as waves of primal song. My head swayed like Stevie Wonder crooning from behind his keyboard. In that moment, I’d been freed from the need to see and know everything.
Then, the Rabbi did the unimaginable: he broke the plane between the bemah and the congregants: “Who first loved you unconditionally?” he asked. “When did you first love with no strings attached?”
Murmurs swelled into full-throated responses. The Rabbi asked, “Can you believe that God receives you — and that you honor God — just by being here? We assume that the person next to us is fluent in Hebrew and infallible in Torah. Nonsense! If you’re lost, go wander. If you’re bored, read a book!”
There I was, a pretender no longer pretending. No more false mouthing prayers I don’t know to present a false appearance of knowing. In my lifetime’s stroll of spiritual bazaars, I finally found something I could bring home.
After the service, I thanked the Rabbi. Then, I thanked myself for being the most present husband, friend, professional and doggie daddy I can be. For each time I lapse in treating our Lilly to distract her from an oncoming dog, I’ll remember the innumerable times I succeed in doing so. I’m not the only pet parent at once plagued by self-doubt, and quick to paste on a front of knowing more than they actually do.
What matters is that I show up, imperfect as I am. I am at peace with being a scholar-in-progress of the Pet Care Torah. That’s how I’ll weave the babble of judgement into music — and spin music into a love that needs no pretending.