The Magic Challah Bread Within

I went to the rabbi.

My sweet friend Shelly says, “I just love it when anyone says, I went to the rabbi.”

It is nice to be able to say that. There is something very special about going to the rabbi. Especially when you happen to be a flaming shiksa, like me.

But this rabbi, he is a blessing. His heart has room for all.

He knows our whole family. And although I’ve got a therapist and a psychiatrist and a mama and babies and friends, I haven’t had that God link. You know. The direct line. And my grief has been so violent, so awful, well, this shiksa needed some help getting in touch with the Big Somebody.

(I should write G-d here. We shiksas struggle to remember the ways of the Jews, because we spent 12 years at Catholic school learning about Jesus and the moneychangers at the temple, before we knew what moneychangers were. Or, if you were in Sister Maria Madonna’s fifth-grade class, you were in Math cringing as she made all the boys raise their hands and promise to never ever let any woman they know have an abortion. Catholic algebra, I suppose.)

The rabbi and I, on the threshold of the New Year, we talked. I sat beneath a painting of a dour-looking rabbi. “He doesn’t look too happy,” I said.

Our rabbi smiled. “He’s my great-great-great grandfather,” he said. (J, forgive me if I missed a ‘great’.)

Immediately, tears came to my eyes.

“Oh,” I said. “Oh!” It does not take much to make me cry these days, but for some reason, this connection did. Sitting below a painting of a long-gone rabbi from Hungary, it turns out.

Oddly, the night before, I had dreamed of Hungary. I taught English there for a year, and in my dream, I was back there again, reintroducing myself to all of my kollegak and my students, speaking in Hungarian, a language I love. To me, Hungarian sounds like teddy bears speaking backwards Japanese. Jo napot kivanok. Sziastok. Tessek, parancsolni.

They are family to me now, the people I met there. And as I sat below the painting of this somber Hungarian-Jewish rabbi, family of our rabbi, I thought, Ah, family. I am looking again for family. New family.

Our rabbi and I talked at length. I cried; it is impossible for me not to cry. The divorce is a death in process, a lingering, painful death. When it is complete, it will still be incomplete, and I will see the ghost of D everywhere.

We talked about the whys and wheres and my illness and the vicious cocktail of manic-depression and divorce. We talked about the devastation of losing a love that was good, and having a disease that makes it impossible to unsnarl what is authentically you, and what is the illness.

The tears would not stop.

“What do I do?” I asked the rabbi. “When the pain is so great, I feel like I can’t keep going?”

“Ah,” he said. “This is one of those times when you might just have to give it back to G-d, say, ‘G-d, I don’t know what you want me to do with this. I give up. Let Your will be done.’”

“I feel like I need pebbles,” I blurted out. “I need to install a shelf by my bed and when it gets too painful, I could put a pebble there. A symbol.”

He smiled broadly and stood up. “What kind of rabbi would I be if I didn’t have pebbles?”

Sure enough, he walked over to a magic stash of holy pebbles and placed a handful into my cupped hands. He put his hands around mine and held them gently.

“Is there a blessing? Some BARUCH ETAH ADONAI DIVORCE blessing?”

“No, no blessing for a divorce,” he said.

“What does the Talmud say? Does the Talmud hate divorce?”

“No, no, if there’s a reason, it’s understandable.”

I sniffled. “Is this the part where the Magic Challah Bread comes down from heaven and makes it all better?”

He laughed. “Would it be too ridiculous if I told you the Magic Challah Bread comes from within?”

“No more ridiculous than anything else. I like it. I have to find my inner Magic Challah Bread of Moxie, is what you’re saying.”

“Yup. Because you have moxie. That’s a part of you. You might never begin to separate the illness from your natural exuberance. So you accept it and keep going.”

“My Moxieful Magic Challah Bread.”

He laughed. “Yup.”

“I’m going to work on that,” I said. “It would be hard for me to become a rabbi, right?”

He is very good at keeping a straight face when necessary. “Well, it would be, considering you’re not Jewish.”

“How about a hospital chaplain? I want to do something that helps people.”

“Chaplain, that might be worth looking into.”

I hugged him goodbye. I like very much that he knows our whole family, that he will be watching my girls grow up, that he will be close to D and me during this time, though separately.

Last night, it was all too much again. I held one of the holy pebbles. I got to know it, its size, its shape, its color. I thought the thoughts that make my heart split in two, in four, in eight. I warmed it to my body temperature, and then, I placed it on the shelf above my headboard.

Your will be done, G-d. I have no idea. I’ll leave this up to you. It hurts too much.

I won’t wish you all a Happy New Year, because the fact is, it won’t all be happy. But may you have places to go when your strength is waning in 2009. May there be more contentment than discontentment. And may we all get better at counting our blessings.

I wish you Magic Moxieful Challah Bread, all.