To and Fro

I created this blog as an 'ari miklat' where I could come, write and understand what swirls around me and often inside me. In biblical times an ari miklat-a city of refuge-was were people were sent who had committed crimes for which only separation from the rest of the Jewish community would be considered punishment. They were into exile and that is where they remained.
When you voluntarily walk away from Chabad, you no longer exist. If I doubted that concept it was made clear in the past 6 months as I contacted a number of people and returned to Crown Heights to visit anash who financially cared for my family. I was stunned at the rebuilding of her home, the number of children she had continued having and the multitudes of grandchildren. I was more stunned at how beautiful she was, 25 years later. Being at home and allowed to nurture her family, have her children and be supported by a loving and employed husband put the glow on her cheeks and the lightness in her voice. I was using a cane to walk and just retired on disability. And as I had hoped with my children, that they would remain young as when I left them, just waiting for me to return to hold them again, I had somehow held onto the dream that when I could support my family, keep myself and my children from being abused, that I too could return and pick up where I left off.
But I left a pauper erev Pesach. All the furniture was packed and I sat in a dark apartment waiting for the moving van for 3 days without electricity or gas. Not a sound except the mail coming through the mail slot and on that last day there was a check from the Rebbe's Household Fund...a check to buy food and clothes for yontif. But the Rebbe knew everyone had gone already, he knew I was there alone and would be leaving for college against is wishes...but somehow the check was sent and arrived right before the moving van did.
I'm putting this blog out now because as adults some of my children are coming to terms with their own rage and anger at me for having left them as toddlers. And in such moments make statements that I ran away...the word abandonment comes up.
I've made my peace with G-d and its an ongoing daily process, but my running was always to, not from. As in To Make better, To Solve problem, To Create a life for us.

I no longer make excuses for the pain I live with, I am a woman who took care of 2 alcoholic parents, who turned to Chabad for a life of sanity and encountered rationalized religious rejection for things that could only be voiced after the loss of the Rebbe and 2 decades later, by a new generation in pain, confusion, turning to substance abuse as they begin discussing...hypocrisy, double standards, denial of mental health and domestic abuse...and they now also begin running To, a way of understanding G-d and where they fit in this world, inside or outside Crown Heights.

The G-d I know is the same one I heard as a child between godless parents; the same One who watched over me after I left Crown Heights, the same One who listened to me beg for a 2nd chance at marriage and the same G-d who shepherded me out of a dangerous and frightening 2nd marriage. I recognized this G-d only through Chabad, in the joy of niggunim, hearing the voice of the Rebbe at fabrengens, hearing the Rebbe sing...so while I had to run to fix a mess, I also had to run 'home' finally because the journey for me began and ends for the same reason, to be on the path G-d assigns.

The hardest thing for me is the very thing the Rebbe asked of me every time we communicated, "be b'simcha." I left Crown Heights in 1986 and made a trip to the Rebbe's Ohel in 2010. One of the rabbonim of the bais din who converted me insisted I go, pray and basically touch base with the Rebbe. I argued that when a child is told by his Father not to do something (as in do not leave the community) and goes against his Father's wishes, it is awkward to return and ask for anything, to even speak. The rabbi said, "If G-d can forgive, the Rebbe can forgive and does..its the same corporation!"

I took care of my mother for 4 years before she died of cancer. The same mother who did not want children but had no means of supporting herself. She was of a generation where you married rich if you could and closed your eyes to everything as long as he took care of you. She died of breast and lung cancer. She rarely spoke to me as a child and then even less in her last days. I never felt I knew her. I often at by her hospice bed as she lay with closed eyes, hoping she might say something, anything before she died that she could see me, that I was somebody, who had done something...a mother myself. She choose to remain silent. Silence is what destroys both individuals and families. Silence is not the politeness that allows sins to remain covered, it is the disease that sanctions tumors in the heart when darkness grows until you can no longer love or trust.

So these are my notes on living...you can read them or leave them. They may help some and confuse others, but they are mine.