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.