I miss my mom today. Something about the song I was just listening to, Sarah Maclachlan’s World on Fire reminded me of times gone by, and there I was. It wasn’t the same sort of missing that I’ve felt in the past, though; it wasn’t that desperate ache that I’d gotten use to, and it certainly wasn’t that uncontrollable sense of panic I felt at the beginning of avelut. Instead, this felt just like, well, sadness. It’s passing already, but it came to visit nonetheless.

Something I read a few weeks back opened up a new awareness for me when it came to memories of things past. I’ve long been a sucker for nostalgia, even though I know it’s a false feeling: it’s a way to reconnect with a past that isn’t exactly what you remember in the nostalgic moment. As I said, I’ve been a sucker for nostalgia, basking in those pseudo-memories, although basking isn’t the right term, really. Instead, those sweet almost-memories have caused me heartache, a sense of longing for a time that’s gone, for a moment that was fleeting.

The sense of loss, however, completely inverts the way things are. When I experience that heartache during nostalgia, I’m ignoring the context within which the memory takes place—contexts that are not as pleasant sometimes as the memory I’m remembering. For instance, the song “All These Things That I’ve Done” by the Killers, often reminds me of these beautiful carefree days I spent staying home with my kids; what I forget, though, is that the time period coincided with the hardest times in my marriage (problems resolved and over, B”H). The biggest problem, though, with these flights of nostalgia is that I invert what is really lost and what really remains.

A.J. Heschel writes in The Sabbath, “What is retained in the soul is the moment of insight rather than the place where the act came to pass,” and this is the heart of the inversion. My nostalgia prefers place over insight, so the “when” of what took place blurs the emotional and spiritual moment that took place. For me during so much of avelut, nostalgia corrupts my memories of my mother, corrupts in the sense that it places my her in a setting that is irretrievable, and that makes the memory mournful.

The truth of the matter is that the emotional connection I had with my mom remains always retrievable. While her space, her position in the world is gone, it’s folly, indulgent to think that her physical presence, her location, was somehow more important than what she communicated to me emotionally and spiritually.

Anything I recall via nostalgia should not come with a sense of lost. I have not lost anything; I am who I am, what I am because those moments remain an integral part of me. I can miss my mom since she’s not here any longer, certainly, but her touch lives in me, and that should be a cause of joy, not tears.

An earworm af Yiddish

I've been listening to this all day:



You can see a side-by-side translation and transliteration here.

As a Jew, I'm proudly Reform. I might lean more or less traditional here and there, depending on the issue, and depending on what makes sense to me. So why have I had this song about Moshiach in my head all day?

I'm not going to go too far into that today, but it does draw me to a conversation I've had recently with a fellow Blogger on the nature of belief; she attends minyamim religiou--er, regularly, but at the same time counts herself an agnostic. Her explanation is certainly interesting and worth reading, and I think Shnirele Perele ended up in my head because of my thoughts on the matter.

Every year at Pesach, we close the service by saying, "Next year in Jerusalem!" I don't think that most people, at the end of the Seder, really mean it; it has become the traditional closing for the meal, and certainly it hearkens to the hope that next year, HaShem willing, all Jews who want to celebrate Pesach in Jerusalem can do so; even more, it reflects the belief that Moshiach vet komen hayntiks yar--Moshiach will come this very year, so next year the exiles will be gathered in. I like the image of abiding hope that we maintain from year to year: this year, HaShem willing, will be a better year. This year will be the one where all works out. Hope, of course, doesn't require a religious perspective; the Seder can be just as enjoyable as a time when people get together.

While I understand the position taken by many cultural or ethnic Jews, to me I cannot be a Jew without being religious. Being a Jew without HaShem makes no sense to me; our traditions are so steeped in religious observance that the two should not be, really, cannot be separated. That's not to say that religious observance cannot change; in fact, changes in religious observance are part of what has allowed us as Jews to continue over the generations. But it doesn't make sense to me to teach my children to be Jews only to perpetuate the cultural aspects of our identity. It's critical to me that the religious aspect of that identity be integral to the definition.

As the saying goes, though, two Jews, three opinions. I'm glad the conversation can go on.