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When I was a child I would stare out into the ether and think about a world I was convinced must exist but was hidden from sight. It was a world where accountability trumped denial, where shame was eradicated by speaking truth and where compassion was for everyone.. My father told me I was naïve and I secretly ignored him and I continued searching, knowing that if I looked hard enough I would uncover it. A year ago after searching for over 25 years I stepped into a room and found my vision, a reality. Stepping into Hidden Water I found the world I new existed but was denied for so long.
Hidden Water has built community on just those ethos. Accountability, Truth, and Compassion for all in the service of helping families heal from the impacts of childhood sexual abuse. Its groundbreaking approach uses restorative justice circles, learned from indigenous communities in North America. And rather than traditional healing models that usually focus on the harmed individual, Hidden Water focuses on the whole system. From the non-offending parents to family and friends. The person who was harmed, as well the person who harmed and is ready to take responsibility, and make amends. The responsibility for healing no longer lies solely with the victim; it is shared within the complete system. This model allows for intergenerational healing that stops the cycles of abuse. For many, hearing the word compassion connected to someone who harmed a child can be painful. For me, as one who was harmed myself, I see no other way forward. When someone harms and takes accountability for that harm and is willing to make amends, I pray that I can hold compassion. So that they too can find compassion for themselves, because true healing comes when we can hold ourselves with compassion, rather than judgement. As it is compassion that keeps us from harming another, and ending the cycles of vengeance that currently run much of our world. I will hold compassion for them and compassion for myself. So that together we can create a new world ending the cycles of abuse that continue in society today. Today I have two offerings/requests I would like to make. Hidden Water is holding a special crowdfunding campaign for #GivingTuesdayNow where any donations made in the next two days will be matched up to $40,000 I ask that you give something, anything, to support this work and support a new vision where accountability trumps denial and compassion is for all. My personal page is www.charidy.com/hiddenwater/azar But more importantly, I want to send a message. The page that supports those who have harmed and are taking responsibility for their actions is www.charidy.com/hiddenwater/TeamPurple and this is really who I want to support. I want to support those who want to take accountability for the harm they caused. If making a donation at this time is not possible I ask that you keep this organization in mind. So many of us are impacted by childhood sexual abuse and so many of us desperately want to heal. Hidden Water’s 12 week circles are transformative and free to all.
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 I am a Rabbi and I drank Gin on the second day of Passover without checking whether it was chametz* and when finding out it was I didn't really care, while those around me were outraged. This year as COVID-19 has ravaged the world it was hard for me to focus in on the minutiae of Jewish law. While arguing with too many friends, colleagues and relatives about what it really means to social distance, virtually nursing others through illness, and worrying over my own health I was not in any mood to focus on beautifying my seder table or koshering my pots. But it was not the same for those around me. I watched as people continued to buy fancy dishes and check their rice, argued about whether after being in quarantine for two weeks they could visit their family and wonder whether they had to pay their housekeepers their full salaries if they were not cleaning their houses. The purpose of a seder is to remind us of what was. And although I am blessed with many privileges that my biblical ancestors were not; for me in this moment we are actually living through the narrowness that is alluded to in the Hebrew word for Egypt, Mitzrayim. This is not a HOLIDAY this is Mitzrayim, we are back where we began. And just like the Slonimer Rebbe teaches about the Israelites in Egypt, today, we are living in the belly of the beast and we are not aware of our own enslavement. Enslavement to the capitalist, patriarchal, racist overlords that are running the show and pitting oppressed groups against each other. We have been in the belly of the beast as we continue shopping from Amazon and ignoring #BlackLivesMatter and the #MeToo movement. We are in the belly of the beast when white skinned Jews stand shocked and cry over mass shootings in synagogues, not recognizing that our black and brown brothers and sisters have been in more danger than our passing white skin. We are in the belly of the beast when we think we can ignore the planets cries and continue as is. We are in the belly of the beast when COVID strikes and we continue going to synogague. We are in the belly of the beast when we think things will go back to how they were. We are in the belly of the beast when we care more that I ate chametz on Pesach than seeing the true pain and suffering that is built into the oppressive systems that we choose to uphold for our personal gain. If we believe we are celebrating a holiday called Passover and think God is looking down upon us with joy, we are wrong. We need to stop reenacting the oppression of the past and start dealing with oppression in the present. Stop speaking distorted versions of "torah" and start speaking truth. Reality does not care for fancy seder plates. God is crying, has been for a while now * chametz- a grain based food forbidden on passover  I have heard people criticize the miniseries Unorthodox for an unrealistic portrayel of the Satmar community while maintaining that Esty's return to Germany seems implausible.* And while that might be true I want to look at the story through a different perspective without arguing fact or fiction. I want to look at it through the lens of communal Holocaust trauma and healing. Throughout the series, we are reminded that the community holds a deeply ingrained reponse to the Holocaust. The message I hear repeated throughout is that they feel a deep responsibility to repopulate the world for the 6 million who were lost. I am struck by the communal trauma response, and the juxtaposition of Esty’s return to the original location of the harm. Since the Holocaust Jews have worked hard to remember the harm. Some have built lives based around it, in hopes that it would protect them from future harm. This is a normal trauma response- We try to control the world so we cannot be harmed again. But the series does a good job showing us that the protection we try to create for ourselves often comes with a high cost. But Esty's journey back to the source of communal harm, back to Germany to the place where it all started may seem implausible but may actually be the perfect place for her to return. Oftentimes the victims of harm become perpetrators of new harm in an attempt to protect themselves. As the Nazis are the perpetrators of the Satmar community, the Satmar community becomes the perpetrators of Esty's harm. Her return to Germany, her ability to return to the place where the Nazis decided on the extermination of the Jews becomes the place where she not only releases herself from the bondage of the community but also allows her to begin to release the PTSD from the original trauma. When Esty removes her wig she signifies the end of her communities attempt to control life in the vain attempt at protection. Her search for self and her reclaiming of a life beyond the walls of protection is when the true healing happens and it is in this moment that the Nazi's truly lose their power. And for me this symbolizes the end of the effects of intergenerational transmission of Holocaust trauma in the place where it all began.  this thing called shame
it has no words, a silence that lives just beneath the surface whether we are aware or not. Its ugliness rises up with the slightest insinuation and rather than admit it we block it out and move forward with a machete chopping down everything in our path. rather than asking for help when life gets tough we allow perfectionism to silence us into overwhelm and then we attack whatever we can find that is just a bit smaller than ourselves.  Just in case y'all were wondering, I have many different writing voices and as I am stepping into my wholeness I am going to be sharing them all. So this one might be just a tad different from the last- Enjoy!
I do not think I should be reading Annie Dillard in the bathroom. As a Rabbi who studies biblical text in the bathroom, I am surprised by this thought. Her prose holds a sanctity beyond the parchment of Torah. I started reading Torah in the bathroom at about the same time I stopped believing my parents were gods and the body was the devil. My parents taught us from the beginning that eating in the bathroom was forbidden as you could not make a blessing and say Gods name while pooping. I am not really clear why this was a rule in my house as we never seemed to make blessings on our food unless it was the sabbath or a holiday and yet, this rule stuck. But slowly, over days and weeks, months and years, I let go of this belief and when I did there was no going back. If the body was Gods, and not the Devils then the body deserved more respect than the book. Without the body, the book is meaningless. And so, I would study in the bathroom, I mean lets be honest the bathroom is the best place to read in the house, and I did not feel that my study should miss out on my deepest focus. I intuit that the body that was lovingly created by God is a holy vessel and not reading Torah while pooping is actually disrespectful. Who am I to judge shit as bad. My family knows that poop holds a sacred place in my heart as they will all tell you that I love talking about the shape of my poop, especially that one time when it curved around itself forming a double Helix, my very own DNA strand. Why would God who created me, my body, and my shit, feel disrespected if I shared Gods word in the very place where the body, God so desperately wanted to create was doing its most grounded work. Jews and their purification rituals, exhausting, and in my opinion quite possibly the opposite of what was intended. From dust you are born and dust you shall return. It is a mini death experience every time we poop. Or as my friend Basya likes to say, “A good poop is like a great orgasm. Both death and orgasm a return to The One. And yet Annie Dillard who can describe the natural order in sacrosanct terms, who elevates the existence of a spider living behind the toilet to ethereal heights and leaves me feeling the awe of God, makes me want to create the holiness of separation. Maybe the bathroom’s holiness, the ability of the body to relieve itself, eliminating the unnecessary and retaining the necessary coupled with the holiness of the word make the awesomeness, awful. Awe-some awe-full. Why is some awe an amazing feat, but full of awe leaves us in pain? Maybe the holiness of the body and the holiness of Annie Dillard makes me awe-full. And as I look down at the title of the book I recognize that Ms. Dillard understood it all along, for the title of the beloved book is “Holy the Firm” and what else is there to say about a good poop. I lay in my bed in a pile of self judgement when my cousin Laura texted me asking if I wanted to meet her for the 45 minutes between dropping her daughter at school and a 9:15 meeting. The idea of getting myself out of my shame spiral was enough to get me out of bed, get dressed and walk the 4 crosstown blocks to meet her for 30 min. I had a feeling that Laura, who has developed so many layers of compassion in herself, might help me to snap out of it. We sat on a wooden bench in front of Birch Coffee on Columbus Ave.As we sat there I complained that I am 40 years old and yet to develop a bit of the compassion I need. She kindly looked at me and said, “Esther when did u start working on this?” I laughed and said “ok, fine, just 6 months”.-And as I took a big mouthful of my cold brew she responded, I understand wanting to be valedictorian of self compassion but you can’t be, that’s not enough time.” I had to seal my mouth shut to keep from laughing and spitting the coffee all over the sidewalk and the oncoming pedestrians. When I finally gulped it down, I spit out a shut up, in that most loving way. A cross between fuck you, and why are you sooooo right? After the shock of my shut up wore off, we both laughed.
Self judgement has been my mantra for so long, I believed that if I judged myself I would make myself better. The thought that being kind to myself might actually be a better choice never occured to me. The truth is, I don’t think I realized how judgemental I was of myself. And even today when someone holds me with compassion, it hits up against my deepest vulnerabilities. I think it has something to do with a need to blame myself for everything that went wrong in my childhood so as to maintain some semblance of control. If it was my fault, then maybe I could fix it. If it was my fault that an adult exploded in a fit of rage, than maybe, if I was quieter, nicer, thinner, smarter... than I could fix it. Today that amazing tool that I created to keep me safe in a confusing, painful world is no longer serving me and yet I am grateful for all that it, meaning my self judgement, has given me. It gave me a sense of control in an uncontrollable world and as a child that is exactly what I needed. Today I want to give the responsibility back to those that are responsible. It is not my fault and I cannot control your behavior no matter how good I am. Today I want to say thank you to the part of me that holds the judgement that kept me safe. And bring compassion to the parts of myself that have felt harmed and the parts that have judged, so that all of my parts feel welcomed and loved. This past year has been interesting, looking back I am not really clear on the propulsion but what I do know is that it was definitely not boring. I learned a lot about myself and I had to make some decisions to give things up that were difficult to give up. I got lost in a story of drama that took me in many different directions with many plot lines, but what I noticed was that although exciting and interesting the drama got tiring after awhile. And I had a desire to be at peace. So I fortunately had the opportunity to remember again that the peace that I was searching for was here in this moment all the time. I didn’t need to figure it out, I didn’t need to fall in love, I didn’t even need to eat. I just needed to notice what was here in the moment. I recognized that all of the drama I was holding onto was because I thought it would give me the peace that ironically I already had. I thought if only I figure this part out then I will feel better. If I understood why this happened then I would see the truth and then and only then would I be healed. I would be more lovable, sexier, thinner and just plain old worthy. Little did I realize that all of those things I was searching for so that I could be happy were a distraction to the actual happiness that exists in this moment sitting here in my sweats, alone in my apartment with unruly hair and unshowered.
I don’t even know if happiness is the right word. You see happiness like all other emotions comes and goes that is not what I am pointing to I am pointing to that thing that doesn’t come and go the thing that allows for all comings and goings, we may call it peace, presence, existence or a multitude of other words but the truth is words can’t describe it. It is present all the time it never leaves and it is constantly holding us. We are it and it is us there is no separation. The only thing is that we “think” there is and in that moment we get to question the thoughts and remember that the peace that we so seek is here and all we need to do is stop and notice. Whether it is taking a deep breath and feeling the air flow into our nostrils, our chest, down to our bellies and then back around again. Or watching the clouds move in the sky, just allow the senses to be more prominent then the thoughts. Allow yourself to feel, see, taste hear and smell what is actually here, take notice of that rather than the thoughts for a split second and experience the noticing. In that moment we can get a taste of the peace we crave. The peace that is always here, even when we are so involved in our thoughts that we cant see the hand in front of our face. When life appears devastating, when sadness seems to be coming from the depths of our soul. We can stop for a moment and notice the sky, the moon or that wonderful thing that keeps us living each day our breath and remember the sense of peace that is always here. And in my experience feeling this sense of peace reminds me that this is all I ever wanted in the first place. The right body, the romance, the money all of those things were just attempts at making myself feel that I was worthy of that sense of peace, that I had all the time without any of those things. People ask me all the time, “How are you?” and recently, I have been having a hard time answering. The reason for this, points to the fact that “I” am always fine. When I am fully engaged in the present moment, everything is exactly as it should be. So are there stories that I engage in? You bet, but when I am focused on this moment and someone asks me to reflect on how I am the answer is always, perfect.
Some say to me: “Esther are you hiding how you truly feel?” The truth is that I am not. I am totally and completely aware of the stories I am telling and how they engage me. Yet at the same time I am not really interested in adding all of that to the pot just so that I can be more socially acceptable. I understand that it makes people uncomfortable, because it makes me uncomfortable. I spent most of my 31 years commiserating with those around me and now sometimes, a lot of the time I have nothing to say. Although it appeared fun to commiserate in the end it keeps me stuck in a story of suffering. Yet the question, “how are you?” is wonderful, it makes me stop and check. In the stopping I can recognize that the stories I have been telling myself, are just stories. The truth of who I am has nothing to do with the stories or the emotions that arise in consciousness. When I stop to check all thought ceases and I am left in the space of beingness that is always perfect. Do you know, that I spend most of my waking hours reminding myself, that we are the same. I overheard this conversation the other day.
“I invited you to the party the other day and you didn’t answer.” “Oh, you really wanted to me to come, I thought you were just being nice.” “Being nice, what do you mean I asked if you would come, and you didn’t respond. “I didn’t think you really wanted me to come.” “That’s crazy, why would I invite you if I didn’t want you to come? I thought you didn’t want to hang out with me. I felt bad.” I sat there dumbfounded, as I usually do when I am reminded that we are all the same. Here I am, with 2 very cool people, that I would love to have lunch with any day and they both made up stories about how the other person really didn’t want to spend time with them. Again I am reminded of my own stories of rejection. I have 2 friends, one that I love to hang out with and the other who loves to hang out with me. I notice that I reject them both equally. The one I love to hang out with, is constantly rejected because I don’t believe that she would ever want to hang out with me, so I reject her first. While spending time together, I will quickly mention that I am not sure if I can drive her home later. The truth is, I would love to drive her home but the fear that she doesn’t want to spend time with me comes up and so I fix it for her. I set it up so that she doesn’t have to go with me if she doesn’t want to. I send out mixed messages. I don’t want to spend time with her when in reality the truth is I love being with her. The other, the one who loves to hang out with me gets rejected because I feel like they are coming on to strong and I need to “protect” myself from their love. You see, in the past I was rejected by this person and so now I build a wall to protect myself from being hurt again. If I accept the love he is showing me in the moment then I might get wrapped back up into a relationship where I will ultimately feel rejected again . So I put up a wall so that I don’t “get hurt”. A wall that I believe will protect me, but at the same time keeps me from experiencing the love in the moment. Imagine for a moment, that I let all of that go. If the fear dissipated, I could just love people and they could love me back. And when and if I am feeling rejected I can remind myself of the truth, that we are all the same. They are not rejecting me rather they are rejecting a part of themselves. There seems to come a point in our lives when we are posed with a question as to whether we should pass along information to people that we love. Is it our responsibility to “protect” someone from the truth? I remember when I was a teenager and my good friend was madly in love with a girl. The girl happened to be dating his best friend (unbeknownst to him). I had the information and I was unsure what the right thing to do was; tell him or let him continue on his delusional path. In the end, the decision was taken out of my hands. I shared the information with one of his other friends, who quickly called him up and told him the ugly truth. When he found out, he was devastated and he called me sobbing. At the time I wasn’t sure if I had done the right thing. I wondered if it was better that he found out sooner rather than later.
With children we are often protective as to what to tell them and what not to tell them. But I struggle with this as well, because I know full well that my children, and yours, know much more than we believe they do. So, when we are withholding information usually they know it anyway. When my husband and I decided we were separating, we didn’t tell anyone for a while. We decided in March, but didn’t share the decision with people for a while, especially the children. Yet, we could both tell that Eddie our 2 year old sensed something was wrong-so much so that I said to him, “I know you are feeling sad and you are not sure why, but you are right something is wrong and we are going to make it better”. Once I acknowledged his feelings, his crying stopped and he sat on my lap and we hugged each other. I was at a course in Manhattan over a weekend, and there was a man there, who was observant of the Sabbath which meant that he was prohibited from using electricity. During lunch on Saturday, rather than going out to the restaurant with the rest of the members, he sat alone in the training room in the dark. I turned to the non-Jewish woman, who rents out the space, and said to her, “he won’t ask you, but maybe you could turn on the light for him.” My friend overheard our conversation and asked us if our desire to help, was coming from a place of helping or controlling. If we are imposing our beliefs about what someone might want without asking them, we are in essence taking their control away. Who are we to do that? On Saturday, my wonderful Great Aunt passed away and again we were faced with the question to tell or not to tell. My Grandmother is a vibrant, loving, fun-spirited woman who loved her sister very much. My Grandmother, my parents, my sister and I attended a family wedding in upstate New York over the weekend. The party went on till late into Saturday night and on Sunday morning we all trudged wearily into the hotel dining room for breakfast. Thank you’s and congratulations were being thrown around the room as we all prepared to pack up and leave for home. In all of the excitement none of us checked our cell phones. So, when we finally got the message, it was 24 hours since she had passed and my mother and I had the following conversation; “When are you going to tell her? now or after the 5 hour drive home?” “ I am going to tell her now. she passed away yesterday. If I don’t tell her, she will call home and find out.” “ Mom , maybe you should wait till you get home so that she doesn’t have to sit in the car with that sadness.” And then I stopped to think about it. Who am I to control someone else’s grieving process? Why do we believe that once a person turns a certain age, it is our responsibility to protect them? What gives me the right to “protect” anyone? When I say that I am trying to protect you, what am I really saying? Am I saying that you can’t handle it? That I am stronger than you? When I am protecting you, am I taking away your power? What gives me the right to decide how you deal with something? |
Rabbi Esther AzarArchives
May 2020
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