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Juda!sm in Ugand@
Friday, August 31 2001
setting: New York City
Our plan for today was to depart on a vacation to visit our relatives down below the Mason-Dixon line. First on the agenda would be a train trip to Gretchen's parents in Silver Spring, Maryland. From there we'd be driving to Staunton, Virginia to visit my folks.
Despite last minute demands at work for me to put things live on the site (why are such demands always last minute?), I managed to get out of work at around 2:30pm local time and catch the Red Line subway northbound. I waited on the platform for the train and hopped into the one Gretchen happened to be in (she was coming from Park Slope). We'd originally planned to meet on the platform but in this case we actually managed to rendezvous in a subway car.
In Midtown's Pennsylvania Station we were distracted for a few crucial minutes by the overwhelming need to buy various items from a supposedly excellent kosher bakery in the station. And though this bakery's breads and cakes are famous for being extremely, the people working there are equally renown for their uniform incompetence. Gretchen ordered a babka (a sort of sweet bread) and one of the staff was going to just throw it into a bag without any sort of structural protection until Gretchen raised an objection. So he laboriously began stuffing the babka into an undersized box, resorting to string to stabilize the prolapsing, misshapen form that resulted. For some reason we lost all track of time during this experience, and by the time we made it down to our train, it was already rolling out of the station.
[REDACTED]
As we sipped our mind-altering beverages, Gretchen told me about how Jewish things were going to be tonight at her parents' place. Not only would there be a Shabb@t dinner with a number of hardcore Jews whom neither of us knew, but there'd also be a couple of gentlemen from Ugand@ who are part of a group of African Orthodox Jews who have been practicing Juda!sm for five generations. The story, which sounds somewhat apocryphal, is that back at the turn of the century a Christian missionary passing through Ugand@ managed to excite the interest of a number of Ugand@n tribesmen. But they quickly decided that the only part of the Bible that they could relate to
was the first half. "Oh, that's the part believed by the Jews," said the missionary scornfully. "Well then," said one of the Ugand@ns, "I guess we are Jews." And from that moment on they practiced Juda!sm as set forth in the Old Testament, occasionally receiving coaching from mosquito-ravaged rabbis who happened through. But since none of them were ever converted to Juda!sm, they aren't technically Jews. Still, they all get a big A for effort and if they convert (which they've agreed to do), then they will be totally legitimate.
For a secular Jew, Gretchen sure knows her Judaica. On the train she spent a considerable time teaching me the Hebrew prayer said while tearing up challah bread. It goes like so:
Baruch atah adonai
Elohainu melech ha-olam
Ha-motsi lechem mean ha-ahretz.
I had it mostly memorized by the time we made it to Washington, but it was mostly as a curiosity. The last thing I wanted to do was apply myself to an actual Shabb@t ritual, though Gretchen harbored a fantasy that I would.
When we'd finally made it to Gretchen's parent's place in Silver Spring, I got a chance to meet the various people who were there for Shabb@t dinner. Some, like the two Ugand@ns and a couple from rural Virginia (near Blacksburg) were actually staying in various rooms in the house, while others were just there for dinner.
Finally it came time for the Shabb@t meal. I'd been to Shabb@t before with an earlier Jewish girlfriend in Oberlin, but still I'd mostly forgotten about all the fussing around, incomprehensible Hebrew chanting, and wasted motion that precedes the actual eating of food during such meals. In this land where eating has been systematically deritualized (think McDonalds), it was a fairly exotic (and, dare I say, frustrating) spectacle. I may not share many sympathies with American culture, but when it comes to the ceremoniousness of my eating habits, I am the quintessential American. Eating for me is something to get out of the way as quickly as possible so I can move on to my next activity in a well-fed state.
One of the people at this particular Shabb@t dinner was a youngish pregnant woman who raised my suspicions from the start when she proclaimed that the main reason to have babies was "to have Jewish babies." She was, it turned out, a convert to Juda!sm, and as such was burdened by an utterly insufferable convert zeal. I decided right away that there was a great deal of difference between a born Jew and one who decided to be one late in life. Members of this latter class often bring unappealing and decidedly un-Jewish, even, dare I say, Christian attitudes to the religion. One of these can be called the 'we're better than everyone else' prejudice. Don't get me wrong; I've never met a Jew who wasn't at least a little proud to be Jewish. But there's also usually something of a self-effacing resignation that goes along with being Jewish. It hasn't been easy being Jewish and nobody was really invited to the party anyway.
After dinner Gretchen and I spent a considerable time washing all the dishes. I took breaks now and then to sip wine.
Later we joined the others in the living room and together banged out improvised tunes on various exotic instruments. There many to pick from in Gretchen's parents' extensive collection, which had been amassed over the course of many vacations and even employment gigs spent in various third world nations, particularly Africa.
At various points in the evening one of the guests, the woman from rural Virginia, regaled us (but not in the way intended) with her warbly flattened folksy singing and with displays of crude modern primitive illustrations she'd drawn for a children's book. The way she impulsively placed her artwork in my lap rather reminded me of my brother. "Wait a minute," I thought later as Gretchen and I walked the poodles, "Aren't men usually the ones who lack social grace?"
Gretchen's father was very pleased that the Ugand@ns were having such fun playing instruments tonight. "Music is a huge part of life in Ugand@, yet they'd been discouraged from playing music on Shabb@t by an Orthodox rabbi," he told us, adding, "So they stopped playing music altogether. But I think when someone tries to impose an unnecessarily restrictive practice on an indigenous culture, that's going too far. Music should be part of their practice of Shabb@t. So we've been encouraging them to play music on Shabb@t again. And this is what's going on here tonight."
Care to disagree with my generalizations about converts to Juda!sm?
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