(no subject)

I don't know what to say this morning. Yesterday there was a community Shabbaton. I was in a bubble of friendship and community and happiness and no contact with the outside world and then I emerged from it last night to the first post up on facebook being one of my friends in Pittsburgh assuring everyone that he and his wife were still alive. Popped the bubble. Popped a lot of bubbles for a lot of people.


I want to thank the people who, very sweetly, reached out to me last night or this morning to check in on me. I don't have words to say what it means to me to feel that I have people who care about me.


Mostly, I am just trying to keep going. I have watched "Might Lead To Mixed Dancing" several times this morning, and it has been a comfort. If it would be of comfort to you, I'll save you the effort of having to click for it:

"Warning: Might Lead to Mixed Dancing" (Watch on YouTube)

I am baking challah this morning. It feels like the only right response to this attack is to perform a mitzvah. To perform as many mitzvot as possible. To accept the gift.

To be a Jew in the twentieth century
Is to be offered a gift. If you refuse,
Wishing to be invisible, you choose
Death of the spirit, the stone insanity.
Accepting, take full life. Full agonies:
Your evening deep in labyrinthine blood
Of those who resist, fail, and resist; and God
Reduced to a hostage among hostages.

The gift is torment. Not alone the still
Torture, isolation; or torture of the flesh.
That may come also. But the accepting wish,
The whole and fertile spirit as guarantee
For every human freedom, suffering to be free,
Daring to live for the impossible.

~Muriel Rukeyser

The rest of my day

Challah came out really nicely. I talked to some friends. I gave tzedakah to some places that felt appropriate. I went to minchah/maariv, which was a full house and the gabbai said to everyone afterward, "We don't always get thirty people on a random weeknight! Please help us make the minyan more often." I admit I haven't been as regular as I should be in my shul attendance. In the evening I went to another shul in town to recite Psalms in memory of those who died, and for those who need a refuah shlemah. I'm feeling a little better about the world right now than I was this morning. And I'm feeling the love of my community.

There are things in the world we can't change, but it's up to us to be better people and make the world a better place however we can.


<3