A Spiritual Life: Exploring the Heart and Jewish Tradition, Revised Edition

5. Passion

5 h Passion 86 A SPIRITUAL LIFE 87 PASSION So many kinds of love. When we are courageous we enter each day, each relationship, seeing within it the possibilities for arousal, for devotion, for feelings powerful enough to overwhelm . What a dangerous way to live, to live as a lover. So we learn to be wise, with our feelings, with our fingers, we learn to be careful. Women especially are taught to be careful, are urged to be careful. What have I wanted to teach my daughter, my son, about love? And what have I already taught in a thousand ways when I was just living, living my ordinary day-to-day life, unaware how my every move was being recorded, catalogued, deconstructed. What did I learn growing up in my own childhood home? I knew my mother loved my father because she never challenged him, never confronted him. She treated him respectfully. It was her way. I knew my father loved my mother because on an ordinary Saturday morning, if a Cole Porter song came on the radio, he would put his newspaper down, take the dustcloth from her hand, and there in the living room with the morning sunlight streaming through the windows, he’d dance with her. It was his way. And what is my way? I have many ways—of showing love, of feeling love, of expressing love. Many ways of taking it in, many ways of shutting it out, many openings to arousal. 88 A SPIRITUAL LIFE The first time we made Shabbos together The first time we made Shabbos together in our own home— it wasn’t really “our home” it was your third floor walk-up and we weren’t even engaged yet— I had cooked chicken, my first chicken, with a whole bulb of garlic— my mother never used garlic— and we sat down at that second-hand chrome table in the kitchen. It was all so ugly that we turned out the lights. Only the Shabbos candles flickered. And then you made kiddush. I sat there and wept— Oh God, you have been so good to me! Finally, for the first time in my life, you gave me something I wanted. This man, whose soul is the soul of Ein Gedi. We will be silent together, we will open our flowers in each other’s presence. And indeed we have bloomed through the years. 89 PASSION When we say to children, to teenagers, you want to be sure you share important common commitments and values with a future mate, we are saying something much deeper than a young person can perhaps appreciate. (I remember thinking when my mother said that to me—“How boring that sounds!”) What we as parents are trying to express is the deep kinship of soul that is needed to nourish a couple through all the difficult and challenging twists and turns life can present. When Lisa was 3 or 4 years old, her best friend was Peter, a neighbor on the block whose parents were Christian. One day Lisa confided in me, “When I grow up, I want to marry Peter.” My first reaction was, she’s so little, there’s no point in making something of this; but then I thought, best to provide a reality check. I said, “Peter is a wonderful boy and a wonderful friend, but Peter is not Jewish—how will you have Friday night if you marry Peter?” Lisa, who cherished our Friday nights more than anything, seemed to respond to the simple logic of that analysis. When Uri was 12 or 13 and we were by that time living on the Upper West Side, he engaged me in conversation one day about intermarriage. He made an excellent case for the value of all peoples and the possibility that he as a Jew could come to love someone who was not Jewish. Oh, I thought, I have a great response, remembering back to 4-year-old Lisa. “But if you married someone who wasn’t Jewish, how would you have Friday night?” I asked. Uri, who had quickly grown accustomed to the many sophisticated delights of New York City, looked at me with that calm and patient look he gets when, say, he’s listening to me talk through a problem I’m having—I’m agitated, emotional, but he’s easy, calm. He’s got...