Thank you, those who have written emails.
The well is dry... so when I'm not writing or working, I'm usually studying.
Its a safer choice for me, right now.
Please consider visiting Rav Michael Laitman's website/Bnei Baruch listed in my Links/Blogs section.
There's alot of water there...
Chassidisha maydel leaves klal,does tschuvah returns after quarter century in goyische velt. Ous yid ken men vern-ous khusid ken men nisht vern
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Motzeh shabbos or another Sat nite w/meself
Turmoil at work, turmoil within, turmoil in the world. I come home for peace but 'home' is packed in boxes. I can't bring myself to unpack and resign myself to living here ad infinitum. Surrounded by tacos on the right and peking duck on the left. Landlord just rented property next door to a chop shop on a residential block. Sidewalk piled with tires, air pump, tools, cars lined up in differing states of repair. whine whine whine...Boro Park is a bus ride away but rents are too high. I'm too old for a roommate and no quiet, dividing refrigerator shelves, bathroom space...who sleeps with the room with a door and all that adolescent stuff we do in starting our lives. I've spent my life trying to start my life and too often considered ending my life. I started at 5 yr taking care of parents who needed a child to mediate their violent squabbles.
You ask yourself if there is supposed to be lesson for someone born into such circumstances, is the lesson for the child or a residual punishment on the parents...my parents weren't interested in religion at all. Father's family sat shiva when he married mother and we never knew them, they wouldnt speak to us. Mother's family taunted and shunned me and sister as 'jews'. I haven't seen my mother's family for 40 years. My mother refused to attend my Crown Heights wedding, not for religious reasons but because I learned later that I was never expected to marry. I was expected as the eldest to wait to take care of her...old Italian tradition. School friends couldnt come to our home because I never knew how much father had drank or if Mother had anything on under her sheer nightgown or where she had been all day...
That's why I became chassidic...why do something half assed? Commit and go all the way. I had lived thru the torture of 2 religions in one home that neither side was serious about. I wanted to be religious since 3 yrs of age, asked my father to take me to 'temple' and when we got home I went to bed with a fever and my mother screamed for hours and I never got to go again.
When my father died I wanted the rabbi at the conservative shul across the street to intervene with my mother having him cremated. He refused, saying her wishes took precedence halacha. His ashes sat around in my mother's posession for 7 years until I nagged her enough to let me bury him. Lubavitch buried in the special section of a cemetary upstate...I dont even know the name of the cemetary. The family that arranged it wouldnt tell me where it was. But at least he stopped 'visiting' me in dreams. My mother left NYC to live with her mother...my sister and I were told we could do as we liked...14 and 17 with no money, no family in back of us, no education or jobs...good luck.
You understand now why I feel the chaos?
You understand why I became frum in such a confining and structured manner?
And I thought that what I saw, the sea of black, the niggunim, the week defined by shabbos coming and going, meant I found a world of law and order in everything...then after settling into a CH basement, being sent to a shaddchun who matched baletschuvahs by what he felt would be sexual compatability (he told me later) I got put with a Polish immigrant who didnt want me because his parents had already rejected the previous convert because she didnt have 'family.'
After the 3rd child was born, his father came to tell me I should be looking for work to help support my husband (I was already pregnant with the 4th) because his son was unable to find enough work...but he didnt get up until 12pm and couldnt keep any job he was offered. He supported his son, my children until his death last year. He left his entire estate to all five children and nothing to either of his sons. When I asked rabonnim for a heter for birth control, the Rav told me lubavitcher women must continue having babies to bring moshiach. my children's clothes came from Rochel, either hand downs from her family or bought for yontif from a shop where she had an account. One year I went in to the shop to buy each girl a dress and when I picked out the least expensive ones, went to the owner to have it put on R.'s bill. He said he would hold them and I should call R. I did, asking what what wrong...she asked how many more years would I be charging clothes for the kids on her account? When was my husband going to go to work?
Do you know what it feels like to be holding a phone receiver and feel as if your skin all over your body is being burned off with acid from the shame?
I suppose its mostly my fault for wanting to be a 'real' lubavitcher, even if my kids only looked the part with clothes for yontif. I should have bought a machine and learned how to sew between nursings, diaper changes and everything else I was learning on the spot with no mother, sister or family for guidance. This isnt self pity, this is a question and answer for me on responsibility and where it falls. Because until a few months ago I was still looking, at age 53, for love and security.
I'm not looking anymore, its not out there. It may be out there for some, its not my fate. Rather than live shunned or as an accepted 'half breed' I'm at a point now where I choose to remain alone. I can't bear to be physically touched but need to be held. I write because I cannot speak of the pain inside me and if I speak I begin to weep. I don't understand cruelty after you have done what you've been told to do, by parents or anyone. It seems its a long life of contradictions, that I may never anticipate an appropriate response as in good for good. I think I understand the game plan, which rules are being used and the sand shifts, again. Basically there are no rules, its everyone for himself. I dont have the stomach to play this way and so am removing myself from participating.
This kind of thinking goes against what I think I understand of Rav Laitman's writings. All of Torah may be summed up as 'do onto others as you would want done to you.' One might add the warning, do and expect nothing. The altruistic or religious would say but of course because you DO for the love of Hashem, not for personal gain. I am asking those people who say that, is our world divided between those who take and those who give? is there no balance? is the balance those who receive and give tzdakah and those who receive tzadakah? while the partnership may have spiritual benefits here and beyond, the ego suffers painfully being on the receiving end.
Since my divorce in '86 I have worked 2 jobs and paid every bill myself. I have nothing but owe nothing. All I wanted was one partner, not boyfriends or relationships, but a husband to build a life with. I davened, begging for something I clearly had no right to ask for. Because the 2x I married I chose men who said one thing and did the opposite, both hiding behind each of their respective religions to marry and then sit back and do as they liked...which was nothing. Maybe's its life in America...maybe the diet or air...maybe women are just too tolerant. I write here what I never said for 45 years to husbands or parents. I write because it has to go somewhere...in a universe of mathematical balances, there must be a place where pain or grief is heard and responded too, where emptiness is filled. Or maybe not.
When my mother died last March, it was in a hospice. She had breast cancer that had metastasized to her lungs. She had moderate alzheimers. For a woman who had spent her life bargaining her way around with great beauty, it was good at the end she was n't fully aware of what was happening to her. But she seemed acutely convinced she had been abandoned. She had not smoked, didnt drink, had a fridge filled with vitamins and ate little meat.
AFter my father died, men only wanted fun, not marriage. No one wanted to support her, just for the thrill of having her in their home, like my father did. She spent the last 2 months without speaking...I tried speaking to her, I wanted her to talk about things, I wanted to know her, to know what was inside her, wanted her to pray, pray anything but to come to peace with herself. I wanted her once to say she loved me, maybe one word that she knew things had been hard, but she hadnt strong enough to do more or better.
She wasn't eating but one afternoon asked for pasta fagiola, a bean and pasta soup. I went home and made it early Sunday morning to take for her dinner. When I got to the hospital at 1:30 she was already dead. No one was there with her. My sister had already gone back to her home after coming for 2 weeks and asking me how I live in Brooklyn at all...she hadn't seen our mother for 30 years. 30 years 30 years. Some people take their pain far away. I didnt know how to cut myself and abandon her to save myself, I waited for her to abandon me first and so she did.
I know there is G-d since I'm about 3. I don't know how I knew, but I felt it and it's stayed with me all my life, no matter the paths or choices, the decisions were always based on what I perceived as the right path, what I thought He wanted. So its a full circle now of being alone. One may say, you are Not alone, there is G-d. Yes and we are human and need human contact unless we are totally insane which I am not. I am too shattered and tired, that is all.
You ask yourself if there is supposed to be lesson for someone born into such circumstances, is the lesson for the child or a residual punishment on the parents...my parents weren't interested in religion at all. Father's family sat shiva when he married mother and we never knew them, they wouldnt speak to us. Mother's family taunted and shunned me and sister as 'jews'. I haven't seen my mother's family for 40 years. My mother refused to attend my Crown Heights wedding, not for religious reasons but because I learned later that I was never expected to marry. I was expected as the eldest to wait to take care of her...old Italian tradition. School friends couldnt come to our home because I never knew how much father had drank or if Mother had anything on under her sheer nightgown or where she had been all day...
That's why I became chassidic...why do something half assed? Commit and go all the way. I had lived thru the torture of 2 religions in one home that neither side was serious about. I wanted to be religious since 3 yrs of age, asked my father to take me to 'temple' and when we got home I went to bed with a fever and my mother screamed for hours and I never got to go again.
When my father died I wanted the rabbi at the conservative shul across the street to intervene with my mother having him cremated. He refused, saying her wishes took precedence halacha. His ashes sat around in my mother's posession for 7 years until I nagged her enough to let me bury him. Lubavitch buried in the special section of a cemetary upstate...I dont even know the name of the cemetary. The family that arranged it wouldnt tell me where it was. But at least he stopped 'visiting' me in dreams. My mother left NYC to live with her mother...my sister and I were told we could do as we liked...14 and 17 with no money, no family in back of us, no education or jobs...good luck.
You understand now why I feel the chaos?
You understand why I became frum in such a confining and structured manner?
And I thought that what I saw, the sea of black, the niggunim, the week defined by shabbos coming and going, meant I found a world of law and order in everything...then after settling into a CH basement, being sent to a shaddchun who matched baletschuvahs by what he felt would be sexual compatability (he told me later) I got put with a Polish immigrant who didnt want me because his parents had already rejected the previous convert because she didnt have 'family.'
After the 3rd child was born, his father came to tell me I should be looking for work to help support my husband (I was already pregnant with the 4th) because his son was unable to find enough work...but he didnt get up until 12pm and couldnt keep any job he was offered. He supported his son, my children until his death last year. He left his entire estate to all five children and nothing to either of his sons. When I asked rabonnim for a heter for birth control, the Rav told me lubavitcher women must continue having babies to bring moshiach. my children's clothes came from Rochel, either hand downs from her family or bought for yontif from a shop where she had an account. One year I went in to the shop to buy each girl a dress and when I picked out the least expensive ones, went to the owner to have it put on R.'s bill. He said he would hold them and I should call R. I did, asking what what wrong...she asked how many more years would I be charging clothes for the kids on her account? When was my husband going to go to work?
Do you know what it feels like to be holding a phone receiver and feel as if your skin all over your body is being burned off with acid from the shame?
I suppose its mostly my fault for wanting to be a 'real' lubavitcher, even if my kids only looked the part with clothes for yontif. I should have bought a machine and learned how to sew between nursings, diaper changes and everything else I was learning on the spot with no mother, sister or family for guidance. This isnt self pity, this is a question and answer for me on responsibility and where it falls. Because until a few months ago I was still looking, at age 53, for love and security.
I'm not looking anymore, its not out there. It may be out there for some, its not my fate. Rather than live shunned or as an accepted 'half breed' I'm at a point now where I choose to remain alone. I can't bear to be physically touched but need to be held. I write because I cannot speak of the pain inside me and if I speak I begin to weep. I don't understand cruelty after you have done what you've been told to do, by parents or anyone. It seems its a long life of contradictions, that I may never anticipate an appropriate response as in good for good. I think I understand the game plan, which rules are being used and the sand shifts, again. Basically there are no rules, its everyone for himself. I dont have the stomach to play this way and so am removing myself from participating.
This kind of thinking goes against what I think I understand of Rav Laitman's writings. All of Torah may be summed up as 'do onto others as you would want done to you.' One might add the warning, do and expect nothing. The altruistic or religious would say but of course because you DO for the love of Hashem, not for personal gain. I am asking those people who say that, is our world divided between those who take and those who give? is there no balance? is the balance those who receive and give tzdakah and those who receive tzadakah? while the partnership may have spiritual benefits here and beyond, the ego suffers painfully being on the receiving end.
Since my divorce in '86 I have worked 2 jobs and paid every bill myself. I have nothing but owe nothing. All I wanted was one partner, not boyfriends or relationships, but a husband to build a life with. I davened, begging for something I clearly had no right to ask for. Because the 2x I married I chose men who said one thing and did the opposite, both hiding behind each of their respective religions to marry and then sit back and do as they liked...which was nothing. Maybe's its life in America...maybe the diet or air...maybe women are just too tolerant. I write here what I never said for 45 years to husbands or parents. I write because it has to go somewhere...in a universe of mathematical balances, there must be a place where pain or grief is heard and responded too, where emptiness is filled. Or maybe not.
When my mother died last March, it was in a hospice. She had breast cancer that had metastasized to her lungs. She had moderate alzheimers. For a woman who had spent her life bargaining her way around with great beauty, it was good at the end she was n't fully aware of what was happening to her. But she seemed acutely convinced she had been abandoned. She had not smoked, didnt drink, had a fridge filled with vitamins and ate little meat.
AFter my father died, men only wanted fun, not marriage. No one wanted to support her, just for the thrill of having her in their home, like my father did. She spent the last 2 months without speaking...I tried speaking to her, I wanted her to talk about things, I wanted to know her, to know what was inside her, wanted her to pray, pray anything but to come to peace with herself. I wanted her once to say she loved me, maybe one word that she knew things had been hard, but she hadnt strong enough to do more or better.
She wasn't eating but one afternoon asked for pasta fagiola, a bean and pasta soup. I went home and made it early Sunday morning to take for her dinner. When I got to the hospital at 1:30 she was already dead. No one was there with her. My sister had already gone back to her home after coming for 2 weeks and asking me how I live in Brooklyn at all...she hadn't seen our mother for 30 years. 30 years 30 years. Some people take their pain far away. I didnt know how to cut myself and abandon her to save myself, I waited for her to abandon me first and so she did.
I know there is G-d since I'm about 3. I don't know how I knew, but I felt it and it's stayed with me all my life, no matter the paths or choices, the decisions were always based on what I perceived as the right path, what I thought He wanted. So its a full circle now of being alone. One may say, you are Not alone, there is G-d. Yes and we are human and need human contact unless we are totally insane which I am not. I am too shattered and tired, that is all.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Long month
The aftermath of going thru divorce, the second marriage was with a goy, has been more than traumatic. Going into it, many flowery phrases and promises, tales about what a blessing his religion said to marry with 'people of the book'. Unfortunately being alone, I bought everything that was said, brought him here, supported him for 3.5 years and found him neither interested in work, fidelity, religion of any kind. His interests were accumulating as much money and women as possible, under the guise that since I cannot bear any more children, he had a right to do as he liked. Those readers knowledgable about what I'm speaking about, will understand. When it became clear the marriage was nothing but a sham, as I found ample evidence in letters, pics and receipts, I cut off all support and filed for divorce.
The courts in NYS are not interested in hearing the truth, there's a formula to follow and lawyers follow the formula and parties parrot what lawyers tell them, lawyers shake hands and everyone goes home to pay their legal fees. And 9 months later, I'm waiting for my papers.
When he was removed, as he had to be, violent and unwilling to leave, I threw everything out. I dont know if this is a 'woman' thing or my own quirk. I packed up my things and began looking for a new apt after 13 years living where I do. Rents are unaffordable, 2 months plus fee, moving expenses and for what...to live among different strangers and start all over again. SO I am in 3 rooms if you count the kitchen, living out of boxes, buying as little as possible.
Hiring a painter means finding 800 to paint 3 rooms. So I bought paint and then became too sick to paint. I was hospitalized with gastroenteritis and in pain even childbirth didnt compare. And then a second attack, then a third one. Now I keep medications in the fridge in case it happens and have stomach tests coming in a week.
On the frum front I was channel surfing and stumbled (!) baruch H'shem on a cable program with kabbalist Michael Laitman. I listened and just cried, it was like drinking water after years of thirst. In fact I cannot recall a teacher in CH except maybe Manis Friedman with an ability to give over knowledge on this level. I've been plagued with a mental problem about toiveling myself. Not for relations but having left CH, married a non jew, I wanted to toivel a last time as part of tschuvah. I am not comfortable feeling I made myself unlcean and now am asking the abishter to hear my prayers, even if I'm not asking for something, but thanking or in gratitude, i feel like a kid who came to the table and didnt wash first.
One of my docs has a frum young woman I love so much. I told her I want to toivel, she knew my husband and understood and found a sephardishe mikveh. I called to make an appointment and to say it was my final toivel and I need help with the right brochas. The woman told me it was not right for me to toivel as I am not married (god forbid I tell her who I was married to) and to breach the laws for the sake of my own desire was not a good thing. I said I understood the law that a woman must toivel a final time after menses finished, she said, only if you're married, goodbye.
Any ravs reading? I dont know who to quiz on this.
Anyway I cried a good cry, told the abishter I'm moving forward and if He makes a path and toiveling is necessary, I'll see it and do it.
I bought (Amazon my bookstore!) 5 books by Rav Laitman. My years in CH and followed by fry 20 yrs has left extremely skeptical of anything smelling of 'cult' or my way or the highway kind of thinking. Part of the self protection comes from growing up in an abusive home, choosing abusive husbands (big surprise there). My need for tschuvah is a circle in which I never stepped away from H'shem or faith, its a life long struggle with dealing with humans. I cannot seem to broach the gap between the great compassion and wisdom of text and the callousness often cruelty of people I've grown up with, worked with, lived with.
I can count on one hand, literally the 4 people who with their kindness directed at me, changed my life, helped in in dire circumstances, none of these are my parents or husbands. They were strangers, the Rebbe being one, Rochel and her family in CH and 2 teachers. I suppose that's more than many people can count in their lives. But when you think overall that a woman of 53 is completely alone now without family, parents dead, freinds never acquired for so many reasons, its frighteningly isolated.
I think this is one reason I stayed in academia...school, learning, books has been a lifelong sanctuary for me. If my experience in CH had been different, less pressure to marry, study for women taken truly seriously rather than a brief baletschuvah 'cleansing' from the velt or the tummedikah parents we were born to, than maybe differnt choices would have been made. I know so many families that opened their homes, wallets and hearts, mostly for love of the Rebbe and what he wanted...but sometimes when you give a plate of food to a starving person and you let him feel its the beggar's portion owed to the beggar and a brownie point for the giver, all the taste and benefits of the food, rot in the begggars stomach, heart...it is as if he never ate at all. And in the end, this was my CH experience, I came away empty except for the connection in yechidus and the answers given by Rebbe.
I am reading Rav Laitman's Basic Concepts in Kabbalah as my first book, only because of its size. Already I am concerned and full of questions. But I will end here and begin g-d willing in the following posts to talk about what those are and maybe find some answers.
If you read this and daven, please say tehillim for me as I do for all yidden, especially in these times. I am rochel bas sarah eminu, the Rebbe corrected me finally after asking my name 3x until he had to tell me when I thought he had not heard my words (the audacity of the ignorant!)
3.15.07
The courts in NYS are not interested in hearing the truth, there's a formula to follow and lawyers follow the formula and parties parrot what lawyers tell them, lawyers shake hands and everyone goes home to pay their legal fees. And 9 months later, I'm waiting for my papers.
When he was removed, as he had to be, violent and unwilling to leave, I threw everything out. I dont know if this is a 'woman' thing or my own quirk. I packed up my things and began looking for a new apt after 13 years living where I do. Rents are unaffordable, 2 months plus fee, moving expenses and for what...to live among different strangers and start all over again. SO I am in 3 rooms if you count the kitchen, living out of boxes, buying as little as possible.
Hiring a painter means finding 800 to paint 3 rooms. So I bought paint and then became too sick to paint. I was hospitalized with gastroenteritis and in pain even childbirth didnt compare. And then a second attack, then a third one. Now I keep medications in the fridge in case it happens and have stomach tests coming in a week.
On the frum front I was channel surfing and stumbled (!) baruch H'shem on a cable program with kabbalist Michael Laitman. I listened and just cried, it was like drinking water after years of thirst. In fact I cannot recall a teacher in CH except maybe Manis Friedman with an ability to give over knowledge on this level. I've been plagued with a mental problem about toiveling myself. Not for relations but having left CH, married a non jew, I wanted to toivel a last time as part of tschuvah. I am not comfortable feeling I made myself unlcean and now am asking the abishter to hear my prayers, even if I'm not asking for something, but thanking or in gratitude, i feel like a kid who came to the table and didnt wash first.
One of my docs has a frum young woman I love so much. I told her I want to toivel, she knew my husband and understood and found a sephardishe mikveh. I called to make an appointment and to say it was my final toivel and I need help with the right brochas. The woman told me it was not right for me to toivel as I am not married (god forbid I tell her who I was married to) and to breach the laws for the sake of my own desire was not a good thing. I said I understood the law that a woman must toivel a final time after menses finished, she said, only if you're married, goodbye.
Any ravs reading? I dont know who to quiz on this.
Anyway I cried a good cry, told the abishter I'm moving forward and if He makes a path and toiveling is necessary, I'll see it and do it.
I bought (Amazon my bookstore!) 5 books by Rav Laitman. My years in CH and followed by fry 20 yrs has left extremely skeptical of anything smelling of 'cult' or my way or the highway kind of thinking. Part of the self protection comes from growing up in an abusive home, choosing abusive husbands (big surprise there). My need for tschuvah is a circle in which I never stepped away from H'shem or faith, its a life long struggle with dealing with humans. I cannot seem to broach the gap between the great compassion and wisdom of text and the callousness often cruelty of people I've grown up with, worked with, lived with.
I can count on one hand, literally the 4 people who with their kindness directed at me, changed my life, helped in in dire circumstances, none of these are my parents or husbands. They were strangers, the Rebbe being one, Rochel and her family in CH and 2 teachers. I suppose that's more than many people can count in their lives. But when you think overall that a woman of 53 is completely alone now without family, parents dead, freinds never acquired for so many reasons, its frighteningly isolated.
I think this is one reason I stayed in academia...school, learning, books has been a lifelong sanctuary for me. If my experience in CH had been different, less pressure to marry, study for women taken truly seriously rather than a brief baletschuvah 'cleansing' from the velt or the tummedikah parents we were born to, than maybe differnt choices would have been made. I know so many families that opened their homes, wallets and hearts, mostly for love of the Rebbe and what he wanted...but sometimes when you give a plate of food to a starving person and you let him feel its the beggar's portion owed to the beggar and a brownie point for the giver, all the taste and benefits of the food, rot in the begggars stomach, heart...it is as if he never ate at all. And in the end, this was my CH experience, I came away empty except for the connection in yechidus and the answers given by Rebbe.
I am reading Rav Laitman's Basic Concepts in Kabbalah as my first book, only because of its size. Already I am concerned and full of questions. But I will end here and begin g-d willing in the following posts to talk about what those are and maybe find some answers.
If you read this and daven, please say tehillim for me as I do for all yidden, especially in these times. I am rochel bas sarah eminu, the Rebbe corrected me finally after asking my name 3x until he had to tell me when I thought he had not heard my words (the audacity of the ignorant!)
3.15.07
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)