Stepping out to see inside

One phrase that comes up early in the book The Search for God at Harvard by Ari Goldman is a religion professor’s credo, “If you know only one religion, you know none at all.” I don’t recall whether my understanding of this phrase is based on the book’s explanation or my own thinking about it, but here is my take.

There is a framework to what religion is, what areas of life it touches and what its goals are. There is also a framework that describes each individual religion. These frameworks all overlap, but to think I understand religion in general because I understand my own religion, that’s just wrong-headed.

The best example I can think of for this is a Jewish friend who enjoyed discussing religion with a Christian coworker. One day she asked him a question that had been bothering her for some time. “How do Jews get saved?” The dominant purpose of her Christianity was to achieve salvation, and so salvation was to her a central religious value. Judaism is a religion, so how do Jews get saved?

Okay, my understanding of the original religion-professor comment is shaky at best, but if you changed the word “religion” to “language,” I would be in complete agreement.

As a freshman in college, I was looking over majors and had the unusual experience of feeling deeply annoyed by the linguistics major. The reason for my annoyance was because the linguistics major required a certain level of Latin and of Greek, as well as two semesters of a Romance language of your choice. There were no other language requirements beyond that.

How shortsighted, I thought.

At that point I had been studying Japanese for a year, and a major attractor for me was the desire to study a language that was as dissimilar to English as possible. I had taken French throughout high school and thought, flippantly, that it was basically highfalutin English with a funny accent.

By learning Japanese, I felt that I had additional insight into what a language could be. The subject of a sentence can be implied! You can conjugate by person-number-gender, or you can conjugate by politeness levels! Does it even matter what order you use for the different parts of the sentence? Maybe not!

This little-vision linguistics major, I decided, had it all wrong. By the end of the major you might be able to say what Romance languages are, and you would know how Romance languages develop. But you wouldn’t understand the truth about language.  You have to travel way outside of what you know, before you can make sense of your world.

I checked my college website to see if the linguistics major still calls for the same courses. The major is gone, though one can still concentrate in “language and linguistics.” Looking at the concentration’scourse requirements, I am mollified. 

Latest news

For a while, I wasn't posting anything on this blog because I didn't have much to say. The Tea school in Northern Virginia closed down in August, and so for most of the past year I haven't been able to do much Tea.

Then the new Tea school, Washin-an, opened downtown in late March - a formal opening set to coincide with the 100-year anniversary of the cherry blossoms. Except... the school didn't exactly open at that time; they held some very formal ceremonies with important out of town visitors in attendance.

Last month Washin-an opened to general classes, and I have been trying to find a time that works for me to attend. All of my other Tea classes have been Friday mornings, which always works with my schedule. Washin-an does not currently offer Friday mornings, and of the times they do offer, some work with my Sep-May work schedule and some with my summer schedule (which are vastly different, the only commonality being Fridays off), but nothing works year-round.

Things may or may not be falling into a routine now, but that routine is about to stop because I am traveling to Japan for a month, starting next week. Very excitingly, half of my time in Japan will be spent studying with the Midorikai, which is a department at Urasenke headquarters in Kyoto that is specifically for foreigners to learn Tea. Students generally study for a year, but I get a 2-week visit.

I will certainly try very hard to keep updates going through my trip, since chances are there will be good things to write about.

Fabulous Picture from Flickr's Creative Commons

That is all. Have a nice day.

Ballet Class

Years ago, during my first introduction to Judaism (in a synagogue class called, you might imagine, "Intro to Judaism") (or something so similar to that as to be indistinguishable) somebody asked the rabbi, before or after the class, about one of her hobbies. The rabbi was a vocational ceramicist, an a classmate wanted to know what had drawn her to the medium.

"The reason I learned ceramics," the rabbi replied, "was that I wanted to know what it was like to start from zero and learn an entirely new skill as an adult."

This idea fascinated 22-yr-old me, because it had never yet occurred to me to do something with the end goal of stepping out of my comfort zone.

At that point, only a few months had passed since I had moved everything I owned 1,800 miles, to a region of the country I had never visited. I started looking, once I arrived, for a job that payed rent for an apartment I could not otherwise afford. And I had made the even more moxie-licious (to me) step of visiting synagogues (mysterious and loomingly terrifying places) and actually talking to people inside, despite a painfully acute sense of otherness.

Still, this rabbi had certainly taken her share of risks (among them, moving from Brazil to New York and becoming a rabbi at a time when many of her professors believed that women shouldn't). It took me some time to realize that there's a difference between taking big risks, and being willing to flub a basic skill because you lack the muscle memory. Learning ceramics as an adult likely isn't scary, but that doesn't mean it isn't really, really hard to get right.

***

The Tea school has been closed since August, with an new school downtown scheduled to open for regular classes any day now. The Tea Association held a refresher course last month, but it's very hard to keep up a regimen without regular lessons. It's important to touch base frequently with a teacher who can correct your mistakes before they become ingrained.

I have missed Tea, but during the odd Tea experiences of the past few months I've begun to consider something. It may be that I have moved, in the past year or so, from one of the better beginners to one of the more unskilled intermediate students in the area. The actions of Tea, which once felt awkward and unreasonable, make sense now. Certain things just, um, work the way they're supposed to.

(Tea has what feels like an infinite number of proscribed rules which, when followed completely, allow for an economy of motion and ease of expression that are rather impressive.)

During this Tea hiatus, I recently felt a strong urge to study ballet. After bouncing around my head for a couple of days, this idea burst forth with great strength a week ago Sunday. I went online in search of ballet, and I found a 6-week introductory class that was set to begin the very next evening at the Joy of Motion Dance Center in Bethesda MD.

My reasoning for taking ballet was twofold. First, I dislike exercise for its own sake and I am inexplicably hostile toward yoga, but ballet could be an entertaining end toward which I might work out. Second, ballet was all about carriage and comportment and thus would surely help my Tea.

So far, I feel not unlike an ungainly toad or goose or other ungainly animal. However, trying an entirely new thing as an adult? It's generally a good idea to try.

Building a room, speedily

As I mentioned in my last post, there has been very little Tea in my life since the local Urasenke chapter closed in August. There will be new classes soon through an administratively separate organization known as the Tankokai.

Last Sunday, the Tankokai held a refresher course for those who have been without Tea for these many months and who fear they have forgotten everything they know.

Not fifteen minutes ago, this room had nothing but chairs in it.

There are currently no available tea rooms in the DC area, but the Tankokai has a tea room that fits, piled high, in the back of an SUV. We had a room rented at the McLean Community Center, and at the appointed time this tea-room-in-an-SUV drove up to the entrance. The six students and two teachers rapidly brought everything, tatami by tatami and utensil by utensil, into the room.

And then, BOOM! Instant tea room.

I think the thing that impressed me the most was the sunken hearth of the ro season, which was only sunken a few inches but managed to pull off the recessed look despite sticking up out of the ground.

The horizontal black line near the bottom of the image is in fact an invisible wall. There is an invisible door at the spot where the black line ends on the left.

I performed the first Tea of the day, and was greatly relieved to find that I had not forgotten as much as I had expected. Everything felt quite natural and ordinary within this instant room, except for the act of sitting on the floor and making the three motions necessary to first open and then close a rice paper door. (As you can see, the door was invisible.) This felt especially odd when the teacher corrected me for holding the door from too high a position.

I'm looking forward to the new Tea school opening later this spring. Until then, I should try making do with my own partially imaginary rooms.

Seasonality and Music

Last fall, the Washington DC branch of the Urasenke school closed its doors. This spring, likely in March, a new complex of classrooms will open up downtown, in a Metro-accessible location. There is a lot of good to this change, some bittersweet, and the inconvenience of a solid half-year without tea classes.


Happily, tomorrow I will be in a tea class for the first time since early August. It will be a refresher course on the most basic tea preparation. As part of my preparation, I pulled out my books last night to research seasonal names for February.


Tea is deeply attuned to the seasons in an oddly stylized way. Last year on a very cold April day, I used a seasonal word that seemed to fit the weather perfectly. I was told that the word was inappropriate, since it was a word for February or March. The seasonal conceit of Tea looks forward, toward what is coming.


Looking for seasonal words, I decided that February might be the most ascetically appropriate month for Tea. There is a poem appropriate to this time of year that is basically Tea, crystallized and frozen:


To those who lust after only cherry blossoms, I want to point out the mountain hamlet spring grasses breaking through the snow. -Ietaka*


I spent the early evening reading about February and contemplating the rich tapestry of seasonality, where an icy wind can bring about a parting of snow, which implies that spring will come eventually, but which also tells us that it is February, that there will be a fire in the hearth. There will be specific bowls and certain sweets to keep the guests warm but to remind them that trees will be budding soon.


After a while, I exchanged the Tea books for prayer books so that my husband and I could greet the Sabbath. When we reached L'cha Dodi, a mystical celebration of the coming of Shabbat, S--- chose a tune normally associated with a bedtime song about four angels. It's a very common thing in Judaism to use the tune for one song/prayer when singing another. In this case, whether or not S--- meant it, I saw a connection between the mystical Jerusalem-of-the-mind Shabbat and the angels that visit the house at the beginning of the meal. 


It's good to live in a world of implications and deeper meanings, where an insight into one part of a tradition will open up another part, drawing new meaning along with perspective. It's also good to sing, and it's good to keep an eye on nature.




*Translation from Chado: The Way of Tea, A Japanese Tea Master's Almanac, by Sasaki Sanmi.

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.