I’ve spent a lot of time over the last year or more focusing on negative things because of the intolerable situation I let myself be put in but there have actually been quite a few positive things that have come out of it that I really should pay more attention to and focus on.
The first thing is that I was able to complete my conversion process and Judaism has brought me such comfort, joy and pride in spite of everything I have endured. I doubt that I would have been able to complete the process with the amount of passion that I did and I certainly wouldn’t have learned as much as I did about things that really weren’t part of the conversion process had I not gone through what I did. In doing all that I also made my Rabbi a very happy and proud man that his last conversion before his retirement was such a passionate and dedicated student. So the blessing was actually two-fold.
I got my freedom, something I really hadn’t had for 13 years. It is a different kind of freedom than I had in the past because I was able to negotiate and keep the best part of the relationship I had with my husband and that was our friendship. Being married to each other didn’t bring out the best in either one of us and now we’ve finally been able to be honest with each other and remain friends. I don’t think I would have been able to do this if not for having to deal with the difficult situation I had. The freedom now is also different than the freedom I had before I was married. I have a home, a really good job, my physical health is much better and I am more educated and spiritual which makes me more confident in who I am. I have done the work over the years and know exactly who I am.
People are comfortable with people who feel comfortable about themselves. This transcends race, religion, culture, age and sexual orientation. Ralph Waldo Emerson said “Who you are speaks so loudly, I can’t hear what you’re saying”. How you feel about yourself shouts to me so loudly that what you say is almost irrelevant. This last year has taught me to have antenna now that I did not have before. Previously, when I met someone or talked to someone, even on the phone, I focused on how they made me feel. Now, I know I can learn so much more by actually seeing and focusing on how the person feels about themselves. If they are not comfortable with themselves, they are going to attempt, whether consciously or subconsciously to put me in an uncomfortable situation as well. If a person is comfortable with themselves, then I’m going to feel comfortable relating with them and being involved with them. I have learned now that this is a fairly safe and sure barometer as to whether you should let someone in your life.
Musically I gained quite a bit of knowledge about Latin music, something I always loved but had never been inspired to learn too much about. I found out that there is a colorful fluent history behind Latin music and it changed my perspective and increased the love I always had for it. I can hear now how the Latin Rhythms have influenced popular music and I can hear its influence in songs by some of my favorite bands and performers.
I learned about a new language and even began to learn it, along with my required Hebrew language. Ladino, which is a part of Jewish culture and heritage, but not part of my Jewish heritage, is almost as old as Hebrew. I’m proud that I am one of few who know about it and that I also know the history behind it. I have found that it always impresses other Jews that first of all a convert, and second that an Ashkenazim would have knowledge of such a thing. It makes my heart happy to be able to share with someone something new about a part of their culture that they weren’t aware of before. It makes me feel like a bridge between the two groups, Ashkenazim and Sephardim, and in my mind it is a bridge that should have been built long ago.
I started writing in earnest my book and have come quite far with it. I will finish it in the next year. Perhaps it will be published, perhaps it won’t but it will be a record of my life and experiences and I believe it is a story worth telling. I hope that if it published, it inspires, educates and comforts those who can connect with my story.
I have a new outlook on what it is like to be with people. I look at them differently now. I’ve had experiences with negative people, and I recognize the positive people. I now know the difference between a negative person, and someone who authentically cares about me. I know the difference between a negative person who looks down on me, and a person who really cares about me and considers me their equal. I can now recognize the difference between people who care that I’m happy and people who are jealous that I am. And I know which ones to avoid!
I know what I want in a relationship. I can not give up hope that I will find it. I want chemistry, someone I can have conversations with about anything, someone who makes me laugh and someone I can make laugh. I want attraction and romance and at this point in my life I know that if none of those things are there, it’s better to not have a “partner” and not having a “partner” is not a bad thing. I am never alone. I’m surrounded by friends who love and appreciate me. I would rather spend the time enjoying the life I have, which is a good one, than spend the time wishing, waiting and hoping for something that is never going to happen and was never going to happen.
I have also learned another very important lesson, when to give up! Give up the minute you feel someone is not being open and honest. If you feel in the beginning that someone is hiding something, more than likely, they are. The time to leave is then. Don’t make excuses for them; don’t spend time trying to find out what it is that that they are hiding; don’t convince yourself that they will change. They won’t, trust me and your time is better spent with people who are open and honest with you. Leave before you are attached. It is way less painful that way.
Another really valuable lesson I have learned is that people don’t really change who they are at their core. I will never ever go back and connect with anyone from my past again. There is a reason why they are in the past and that is exactly where they should stay. I don’t regret it, I had to go through it to learn the lesson but I won’t do it again. Just because you can reconnect with people from your past doesn’t mean you should. I’ve had three experiences so far with people from my past. Two of them turned out to be people who hurt me in this life worse than they ever hurt me in the past. The other one I’ve been friends with for more than twenty years, so it hasn’t all been bad. I just wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. Leave the past where it belongs, in the past. There is nothing you can do about what happened there and more than likely, if you try to change the past, you will find it more painful than the first time around. People just don’t change that much. You can only change yourself and what happens now.
I am learning a lesson now from my life over the last year or more that you’d think at my age I would have learned long ago considering what my childhood was like and other parts of my life as well. This is probably the most important concept because it ties everything together. And that concept is forgiveness. Forgive the person who has injured you, not for them, for yourself because as long as you can’t forgive them, try to understand what they did, why they did it, as long as you are focused on the wrong that was done to you, carry it around inside you, you can’t focus on the joy in your life. Forgiveness comes at the realization and acceptance that things could not have turned out any other way. Forgiveness comes when you stop making excuses for the person, stop trying to figure out why, stop rationalizing their behavior and just accept that they have a defect in their personality, you can’t change them, you feel sorry for them, but them injuring you is not your fault. The fact that the person has this defect made it impossible for the situation to turn out any other way. Forgive and then you can move on and live in joy. Of course this doesn’t mean that in forgiving the person you have to have them in your life or trust them again. In fact, they don’t even need to know that you forgive them because you’re not doing it for them; you are doing it for yourself and all the people involved in your life. The first to apologize is the bravest. The first to forgive is the strongest. The first to move forward is the happiest. Be brave. Be strong. Be happy. Be free. Your responsibility in life is to find a way, for the next generations, for your family, and friends, to live in joy. You are useless to anybody including yourself if you are living in despondency and blame.
I recently saw an interview with Jake Ehrenreich, the author and star of the Broadway one man show, A Jew Grows in Brooklyn. When asked why a people who had endured so much hatred and horror, so much persecution, the Jewish people, could be so involved in the world of comedy, his response hit very close to home. He said that in order to live, you need to live in joy and he is right. We all have challenges in our lives and things that are better in our lives. You can focus on one or the other. They’re all real. It is true that they are both real. People who are depressed; they have a tendency to focus on those negative things in their lives. My mother was like that. Still is actually. People who live in joy, it doesn’t mean that they don’t have challenges in their lives, they do, but they focus mostly on the joy. Somehow as a people we have figured out a way to laugh through the imperfections of life. It is very unusual, but when you talk about the idea of a people, it is something that we as Jews can be very proud of because laughing through the misery and through the hard times and finding something funny, is a real gift. I am a part of these people. I may not have been raised in the culture but I have been around it most of my life and I have the genetics, no question. When I look at myself now, I see an Irish Jew. It all makes sense; the gift of gab, my sense of humor. I know who I am and I am proud of who I am. I will never again let someone make me feel less than because I am more than most people ever deserve. I am more than most people are ever worthy of simply because I have overcome so much and have come out not just ahead but actually enlightened. And my greatest gift from the creator is the ability to know when it is time to make a change and my capacity to make that change. I would have never thought in my twenties that I would have become a successful professional, a spiritually enlightened, funny woman, who like a cat has had many lives and life experiences. I will still struggle, because after all I am human and my most difficult challenge is to miss someone once I am “involved”. I always find it difficult to accept that at times in my life I have wanted to be with people who not only never really wanted to be with me, but never had the intention to do so. I always find it hard to accept and to understand why some people would purposely set out to deceive and hurt others but I am not alone in that. Every person comes into your life to teach you a lesson. I can take some comfort in that, comfort in my friends and parts of my family who do love me and want to spend time with me. I need to learn my lessons well, take my medicine when I make mistakes and live for the joy. That’s really all any of us can do.
Remember, we may have different faces, we may have different faiths, but above all, we must see each other as members of one human family. A great Jewish sage said, “If you believe that it can be broken, then you must know it can also be fixed”.
