10/03/2024
Tonight marks the Jewish New Year, Erev Rosh Hashanah, and I’ll probably head to the Progressive Reform Synagogue here in Palm Springs, where I’m living from Wednesday to Sunday to get writing done. I wasn’t raised Reform in the slightest—I like my Hebrew raw, less cooked—but it’s where the g**s are.
Why synagogue during the "Days of Awe," if I’m supposed to be ambivalent about “faith” after the “age of reason” (I guess ambivalence—thank you, Freud—is a kind of Jewish religion of its own, haha). I can’t lie. Some strain of Judaism runs deep in my—collective unconscious, you could say.
As a kid, my mother, you know her, Penny, she really marveled at me as a teenager, laying Tefillin (I was into leather, even back then), and that she couldn’t talk behind my back in Yiddish because I understood at least 50 percent of what she was saying? (Meyn zun, der eltster, er farbrakht tsu fil tseyt mit gevise bkhurim, ikh bin nisht azoy zikher farvas). Penny, without fail, lit candles every Friday night and made chicken matzah soup. We kinda sorta fasted on Yom Kippur, and I went to a Jewish camp, and even attended a few Hasidic Seminary things (all the cute boys dancing together: way fun).
Being Jewish, American, gay, and q***r is, hell, complicated–what it means to be all about “tikkun olam” in light of the wars happening in the Middle East. As you’d imagine, I have a lot of Jewish patients—many are gay, but not all, and many are Israelis, some Ashkenazic, others from Arab countries. Some people are very pro-Israel, to the point where even the critique against the rightwing government seen in the Israeli press would strike some as blasphemous; others disillusioned with what they had learned was “Zionism.” Everyone’s hurting and to varying degrees of vulnerability and defensiveness. I’m so proud that I’ve learned, the hard way, how to avoid agreeing or not agreeing without sounding like a hypocrite. I honestly do believe that the issue of how one feels—about oneself, about relationships—that’s where the real damage has been done by the invalidating repressive societal, generational and familial abuse. And recovering from numbness and spliting off the feelings about oneself–that’s where the greatest peace may come, if it’s to come.
I went to Israel last year to write about the protests against the right-wing takeover of the judiciary with a sense of hope for change—hope that’s since been shattered by the wars that followed.
I also happened to have been there for Yom Kippur, and my heart soared hearing Kol Nidre in an outdoor synagogue, an orthodox one, no less, where a le***an blew the shofar. I thought about how numinous it is to have a community to support that feeling of devotion. This Hebraic community connection around one’s sense of “godness” is very old. And yet, Gay Eros may be older, a lot older, a lot older! But, there have been too many inhibitions on that “intelligence” for a shared community vision to take off. I have the battle scars to show for my efforts haha (not so funny).
At the same time, I was having great difficulty with a staff person back in the States and had to call my clinical supervisor, Dr. George Bermudez, for emergency help when I came home from the shul. Neither he nor I could figure out a solution about “what to do!”. So he said, “Doug, ask your unconscious for a dream. I bet you’ll get some direction.”
Remember the story about Dorothy being taken by a twister and the house crashing into Oz, and even killing a witch? I won’t go into details, but the dream was like that. I woke up in a fright. OMG! Literally! It told me, whoever “it” was, how to proceed. And I proceeded accordingly.
That’s a new idea, even though they had dreams in the Bible. But the technology of how to work with our dreams as if they carried the greatest possible meaning independent of “reason” or “faith” in today’s world—that’s new.
Shanah Tovah. May we all find the courage to keep evolving wherever this next year (or the collective dream) takes us.
