Part II

Continued from previous post.

Admittedly, the "something" that happened wasn't that big. There are basically two German-Jewish customs that I was aware of. One is a penchant for over-dressing on Shabbat. In my grad school days I regularly treated Friday night prayer services as formal or semi-formal events, though I am mellowing a bit now. The other, somewhat famously cited German Jewish custom, is a change to the order of pre-meal rituals.

German Jewish custom: ceremonially wash hands --> Kiddush (sanctification of Shabbat over wine) --> blessing over the bread

Everyone else in the Jewish universe:  Kiddush --> ceremonially wash hands --> blessing over the bread

The one place where I know this to come up is the Jewish Theological Seminary, where on the Sukkot holiday they host these big, wonderful meals. After everyone has found their tables, someone gets on the mic to say that it's a German custom to wash before Kiddush, and tonight everyone's following that custom. (After some hours online, I have learned that the Conservative Movement is a big fan of this system, but only when a large group of people are eating together and it would be cumbersome to get up from the table.)

While I now have a pretty solid understanding of this custom vis-a-vis Jewish law, I was mostly going with the fact that it felt right when, about a month ago, I decided to start washing before Kiddush. My feeling was that, if the purpose of washing hands was to remove ritual impurities, then why would one intentionally keep those ritual impurities upon one's hands while praising God and drinking sanctified wine? After all, as the psalmist says, "Who may climb to God's holy place? One who has clean hands and a pure heart" (psalm 24).

As it happens, my reasoning has nothing to do with the actual reasons for the custom to wash before Kiddush.  Still, it was the reason I cited when I shared my decision with S---, along with  an aside about my past thoughts on a German minhag. A few days later, I went deep into internet research mode.

The two most noteworthy facts I learned about the custom of washing before Kiddush are as follows:
1) Jewish law cannot provide a very solid defense for this behavior. In fact, the survival of this custom is an example of family minhag trumping rabbis with big books of facts.
2) Chazal (i.e., the biggest, brightest rabbis from waaaaay back when) were in the habit of washing before Kiddush.

I also, it turned out, ignited S---'s interest and enthusiasm at the idea of picking up minhag Ashkenaz (German Jewish customs.) To that end, we have bought a book. After all, this is America. If I want to learn about something I can't easily pick up from Wikipedia, it's time to head to the bookstore.

At this time, we have a copy of one Shorshei Minhag Ashkenaz, bright-eyed enthusiasm and a readiness to put down some oddly logical roots.

Deep Roots, New Roots

In my latest bout of iconoclasm, I've decided to follow German Jewish customs.

It took me a while to grow into this decision.  My sense is that when one converts to Judaism, one should choose a particular minhag (custom, though in this case the word has culture-of-origin overtones) and practice Judaism through that minhag's prism. However, nobody told me that I needed a minhag when I joined the tribe, and for a while I maintained a snotty-nosed, "Well, nobody told me I had to pick one" attitude.

For years though  I was attracted to the idea of learning and adhering to German Jewish customs. I'm a Jew of German descent, and even though that German descendancy isn't Jewish, it still seemed like a nice way to go. However, I didn't consider this idea too deeply or too practically. After all, I reasoned, although I was attracted to the idea of going Yekke, I was sooner or later bound to marry someone. That someone most likely came from somewhere non-Germanic (German-descended Jews making up just a tiny portion of the Jewish immigration to America post-1880). That someone would likely feel a not-uncommon twinge of discomfort at things German. If it was my whimsy versus that someone's gut-negativity, then there was no question that that someone's family tradition would prevail.

And so it was that I never looked too deeply into German Jewish customs. Ironically, I lived in Washington Heights in upper Manhattan for a year, in the heart of the largest and most solid German Jewish community in the world, and I never looked too hard at the culture.

After I left Washington Heights I moved south to Washington DC (I'm fond of W's), where I was dating S---. It just so happens that S--- (name concealed, Victorian-novel-style) has strong German ancestry, his grandparents having moved from Germany to New York when S---'s father was young. No one in S--'s family is particularly observant, so what traditions we keep are pretty much mainstream traditional-halakhic-egalitarian-observant-minyan-lovin' Judaism. Through the courtship process I didn't think about S---'s ethnic background as relating to my desire to take on a German minhag.

And then, something happened....


To be continued.

Having to Force a Meaningful Moment

Thursday and Friday were Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year and the start of the High Holidays. Of the various names for the High Holidays, my favorite is the Yamim Nora’im, most commonly translated at the Days of Awe. A cantor friend of mine once called them “The Terrible Days,” which may be a reasonable clergy-view but is also a fairly tongue-in-cheek translation.

At a synagogue I used to attend, the English translation of nora was indeed “terrible.” I knew what the prayerbook meant when it claimed “God’s name is terrible,” but the translation didn’t exactly flow.

Nora does indeed mean terrible, but terrible in terms of “the great and terrible day that heralds the coming of the Lord,” or perhaps a sense of God judging humanity with a terrible mercy. Nora is a perfectly appropriate word in Hebrew, I think. Awe-inspiring, awesome, awe-gaping-stonishing might be appropriate translations of most of the meaning into English, but it’s incomplete without adding a little of the terror of the terrible.

My best shot at translating nora, as it applies to God, is to say that it means thunder on the mountain – where there’s a strange cast to the light, the clouds are large as cities and you can’t decide whether you’d rather stare in rapture or run for cover. (Try finding a simple translation for that.)

The biggest dusty library in the world

There are a few old tomes available on Google Books that talk about Tea. Most of them seem to be missionary publications, which print stories somewhere between the realms of literary journal and dear diary. Happily, it's possible to download these books for free, search quickly for some relevant words and then, if they prove unhelpful, delete the books again with very little expended energy.

Here is a quote about Tea that did tickle my fancy. It comes from My Japanese Year by Thomas Henry Sanders, published by J. Pott &co., 1915.

It would be tedious to give any more details of this ceremony; its purpose being to produce a philosophic calm, it is natural that the description of it does not make very exciting reading; but it is a perfect wonder of quiet graces, of a kind that are not much known among us.  p205

This is a fact about Tea that I have been thinking about myself, particularly in the context of trying to keep a blog on the subject. How to write compellingly about something that one must do to understand? I wish I had an answer; for now I'll continue trying to explore and explain slowly, from the outside in.

Keeping not quite in season

This week, I was going to be ready. Though I have been living out of boxes for a long time and haven't seen my Tea seasonality book in months, I decided it was high time that I come to class with a predetermined poetic name for my chashaku.

The chashaku, or bamboo tea scoop that one used to place powdered tea into the cup, plays a pretty big role in chanoyu. It gets ritually purified before use, then ritually cleaned after, and once most everything else is packed up and put away, the guests get a chance to examine the chashaku and ask a couple questions about it. (They also examine the natsume or tea caddy, but I'm talking about the chashaku right now.)

The last question asked about the chashaku is, "Gomei wa?" or "What is its poetic name?" The name is generally a season word, though it can be a few other things as well, and the season word should match up with the current time of year.

Wagashi is good for you!

I found this article on the Japan Times website, detailing the nutritional information of wagashi (Japanese sweets) and yogashi (Western sweets).

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ek20110120wh.html

It confirms everything I knew to be true when I lived in Japan and made semi-weekly pilgrimages to a wagashi store about two miles away from my regular subway stop.

About once a week I would buy a container with five reasonably large wagashi balls ~ generally some sort of daifuku, ohagi or dango, while on one noteworthy week it was fruit-flavored paste covered with a translucent coat of kudzu jelly.

Each time, I would head home with the intention of eating two or three that night, and the rest the next day. The only times I ever ate fewer than all five on one day were those occasions when someone stopped over for tea and conversation. Basically, wagashi were dinner.

But I justified this by reminding myself of the ingredients list. For most basic wagashi, there are pretty much just three basic ingredients: glutenous rice, red beans and sugar. Sure, sugar isn't the best, but beans and rice are definite dinner material! It's not like I was eating cake and ice cream for dinner. (I make no effort to justify that one; I just own the unhealthiness.)

Pssst, don't tell my mom any of this! ^_^

Maintaining one's inner calm

One of the advantages of chanoyu is that it grants its practitioners a period of deep silence and inner calm, a very particular inner calm that allows the mind to direct itself to meaningful things, deep inside their consciousnesses.

I have heard it said that one can recognize experienced Tea people because they bring that calm with them everywhere they go.

I've having an issue with this idea right now, for the obvious reason that the world is a very messy place. I know of no space that is more separate from the universe around it than is the tea room. To take a concept developed in a frictionless plane and apply it to a potholed asphalt landscape is, in a word, challenging.

Though I recognize that this is a typical novice complaint, I am making it just the same. At this stage I need the precise lines and clean silences, though I do hope to get past that need eventually.


I have felt especially drawn to Zen lately, as it encourages a similar, complementary state of mind. The internet helped me find a local Zen meditation group, and I've decided to try sitting zazen with them this April. Last year I spent about nine months trying to get to a similar Thursday night sitting in New York City. (My failure to make this work more than once in a full nine months was near epic. However, that one time was very nice.)

My one experience in a Zen temple was, again, clean white walls and a positively audible silence. Still, I'm hoping that by beefing up my inner quietude I can make it into something louder than the city streets.

An unexpected birthday gift

Today is the beginning of a very busy weekend, but it was also the first tea class of the month, after a three week hiatus.

Spring feels very slow in coming here in DC, but there are some buds blooming here and there, and we are very close to the time of the sakura blooms.

In fact, I have been contemplating inviting a few people out sometime during the greater Cherry Blossom Festival (or rather, during the peak blooming period) for a nice little tea ritual under the blossoms. I have just about all the materials I need, except for the tea.

White Day

Today is the Japanese holiday of ホワイートデイー (Howaito Dei), or White Day.  This holiday, despite its foreign derivation, is based upon Japanese social norms and that stickiest of social glues, obligation.

In Japan, Valentine’s Day (February 14) is traditionally celebrated by women who buy chocolate for the men in their lives—family members, coworkers, friends, and also romantic interests. A month passes and then, on March 14, those men reciprocate with white “obligation” chocolate.

This always struck me as a bad deal, particularly because I’m no great friend to white chocolate.  Also, there’s no mystery to White Day.  No chance for surprises.  The man might wonder which woman in his life will bring chocolate, but the woman knows ahead of time.  She’s only getting returns from the people who owe her.

There’s a special name for White Day chocolate.  It’s called 義理チョコ, giri-choko or obligation chocolate.  Romantic, it’s not.

The Tea Derek? Why a blog about Judaism and Tea?

During my year studying in Japan, I joined the Sado-bu (Tea club).  In those months of learning bits of the tea ritual, I thought and wondered a great deal. 

There was something inside the tea bowl.  Something more than the dark moss-green of the tea, though that was part of it.  Something beyond the vivid white-green foam whisked atop the liquid, though the foam was part of it.  There was a universe inside the bowl—though I couldn’t explain what that meant. I drank secrets every day with the tea, but I could never determine their taste or texture.

Tea is for doing, not for explaining, but I spent hours trying unsuccessfully to put Tea into words. 

When I took up a more methodical study of Tea back home in the West, my Jewish studies brain embraced the ritual.  I started drashing.  As time passed, my understanding of Tea began to emerge in Jewish terms. And Judaism took on characteristics of Tea.

Spring is coming!

This week in tea class, one of my classmates brought in a seasonal sweet that she had made.  She called it shitamo'e, or budding grasses, because it looks like the beginning of spring underneath the snow.

Isn't it lovely?

Counterintuitively, because it is late February we performed a particular temae that is meant to keep things feeling warm during a very cold part of winter.  However, while walking around the neighborhood where I work the other day, I saw my own shitamo'e, in the form of the first daffodil shoots of the season.

The koan by Cohen

Koans are an element of Zen Buddhism. They are little ideas, often no more than a line, that don't particularly make sense.

Some examples of common koans are, "What did your face look like before your ancestors were born?" and "If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him."

Moon viewing

Right now we’re in the middle of the lunar Hebrew month. Months start with new moons, so being in the middle means a full moon. Tonight when I stepped outside of around 8:00, the moon was luminescing huge in the sky, framed by veil-thin clouds.

Chanoyu is deeply entrenched in seasonality. Chanoyu draws its practitioners into the present through careful attention to what is in bloom, what is starting to change, and which flavors are in season.