A Father's Day Phone Call To An Absent Dad

On Sunday, I called my dad on Father's Day. I waited until late in the afternoon, mulling my course of action while my Facebook feed filled up with messages of love and appreciation to their fathers. They added pics of fathers doing fatherly things dressed in clothing that was delightfully dated. 

I know that many people criticize holidays such as Father's Day that seem to be the invention of greeting card companies, but the outpouring I witnessed yesterday online seemed sincere, making it more difficult to completely shrug off the day as I once had. 

I haven't sent a card or made a call for Father's Day in about a decade, if not longer. My relationship with my father is cordial in the best of times and contentious or nonexistent during the worst. He spent most of my childhood 1,500 miles away in Miami. I saw him once a year, tops. As I got older, I might even go two years without seeing him in person. When I was very young, I missed him. But as I matured, I stopped longing for him. My life was taking shape quite nicely without him. When he tried to insert himself in it, it felt disruptive more than anything else. He had been cast in the movie role of dad during preproduction but his lines were subsequently cut and no one bothered telling him. Actually, it was more like he quit the movie when he moved out of state. But despite this decision, he tried to reserve his role as a recurring character. But fathers aren't wacky neighbors. They work best when they make regular appearances.

I used to be quite bitter about this but those feelings are mostly past. I've forgiven him, but not because I wished to do anything nice for him. In fact, I probably resisted forgiving him for years precisely because well-meaning folks used a lot of Oprah speak about how forgiving him was the first step to  establishing a relationship with him. They wished to transform my anger and hurt into something pat and inspirational enough to be written about sentimentally in Reader's Digest. 

But at some point along the way, I forgave my father. Or more accurately, I let go of whatever anger I was still holding onto if for no other reason than that it leaked out of me over time, like a balloon losing air. When I called him or he called me, I no longer felt the need to confront him over past misdeeds. We spoke like acquaintances, which is what we were if you subtracted our blood relatedness. 

Over the last six months, we have been speaking more frequently--once every few weeks--and the conversations have been altogether more pleasant than they used to be. My father used to try to force closeness on me, not realizing that the ship for that sort of relationship had long since sailed. I didn't know what sort of bond we could form but it would not resemble a typical father-daughter relationship. Too much time had passed, much of it spent apart. I didn't feel a sense of obligation towards him the way I do my mother. My father, like my mother, hasn't been in the best of health, but I don't trouble myself with his care. I hope he stays well or as he is, but I doubt I'll intervene to do much for a man who left when I was 6. For my mother, on the other hand, I'm doing everything I can to help her. She drives me crazy daily but she raised me. Simple as that. 

But I am able to see that my father has changed and genuinely feels bad about the past and I have no wish to punish him for it. So on Sunday I called him, but I couldn't bring myself to open with "Happy Father's Day." Instead, I prattled on about my recent trip to Nicaragua and the projects I was working on. Only after twenty minutes of conversation, when the hang-up seemed imminent, did I finally offer the "holiday" greeting. Typically, "Happy Father's Day" is a sign of gratitude from child to father, but I didn't feel this towards my dad. I was grateful he was alive and that I could still talk to him, unlike others who have lost parents. But I didn't feel gratitude for the role he played in my life. 

"Thank you," he replied simply. No added push for closeness, no "I love you," an expression that is freighted and complicated for me. Just a simple "thank you." And for that, I was grateful.

My Final Ballabuster Piece

On Friday, I published my final Ballabuster column for Jewcy. While I very much enjoyed writing it and exploring topics of Judaism and feminism, I'm looking to spread my wings a bit and start exploring some new sectors and ideas.

So here it is--a deeper exploration of "she lo asani isha" and the perils of feeling nostalgic for old, oppressive forms. Nostalgia, though natural, can be a negative force in the fight for social change.

Speaking of nostalgia--I just rescued several of my old stuffed animals from my mother's donation bags, pretending to take them as toys for my newly adopted dog. This type of nostalgia is fuzzy, cuddly, and harmless.

One Year Anniversary of My Book

So it's been a year since I published my essay collection, Heresy on the High Beam: Confessions of an Unbalanced Jewess. (Guess what? It's still available.)

Though it didn't sell Twilight numbers, I've been super pleased at the reception and the reactions and notes I've gotten. So thanks to everyone who bought and read it this year.

Does she look 14-years-old to you?

I've been busy watching all of the throwback videos USA Gymnastics has been posting. This morning I was watching the 1985 American Cup and as Daniela Silivas is being introduced, Bart Conner asks, "Does she look 14-years-old to you?" (It's at around 35 minutes in.)

Falsifying ages--the Romanians were doing it before the Chinese and without repercussion because they didn't have to contend with the interwebs.

But I'm Saying This Misogynistic Blessing Ironically!

Rabbi Ari Hart, one of the co-founders of Uri L'Tzedek, published an op-ed over at HuffPo explaining why, despite his misgivings about gender inequality within Orthodox Judaism, he continues to recite daily the blessing which thanks God "for not making me a woman." Women, of course, say no such thing. Instead we're supposed to thank God for making us "according to His desire."

Hart recognizes that his blessing is problematic and that the attitudes it conveys part and parcel of the oppression Jewish women have experienced for generations. Yet he won't change it as many Jews committed to both halacha and egalitarian principles have done. The reason--he's an Orthodox rabbi and must accept the entirety of halacha, even the parts that don't really jive with his values.

A lot of people do things they are not entirely comfortable with. Change is difficult especially if it means changing a system and a lifestyle that mostly works for you, one that you're comfortable inhabiting. I don't fault the Orthodox men who continue to say the blessing despite their misgivings. If Hart had written a post about how problematic he finds the phrase, "she lo asani isha" and then explained why he can't bring himself to change the liturgy,  I wouldn't have been offended. A liberal Orthodox rabbi admitting that he can't seem to bring himself to make a change because of his affinity for a certain practice, label, and community--that would've been a human and honest reaction. After all, few of us can live perfectly according to our values.

But he didn't do that. Instead he tries to have it both ways. He continues to say the blessing as it has been said for generations but tries to glibly re-contextualize the blessing into something "progressive" because he thinks about his privilege while saying it instead:

Sadly, there are some excellent reasons to be grateful for not being a woman in this world. For example:

• As a man, I will most likely make more money working at a job than if I were a woman. And as an Orthodox rabbi, I couldn't have my job if I were woman.

• So long as I stay out of jail, the odds that I will be raped are very low.

• If I were raped, I probably wouldn't be blamed for it.

• I can be ambitious professionally and no one will question my gender.

• Most political, religious and cultural leaders are guys, just like me!

• In most prayerbooks and Bibles, God and I share a gender.

• There aren't billions of dollars spent every year trying to make me feel bad about how I look and selling me things to change my appearance.

• I get to be a hero if I change a diaper or spend time with my kids, and most people won't look down on me if I don't.

Oh--so now the meaning of the phrase is entirely transformed by the privileged group!

The problem is this--if you're a member of the privileged group you don't get to transform words and phrases that have been used to oppress and marginalize the less powerful group. Straight people couldn't decide to re-define "queer" and then tell LGBTQ folk that saying it made them aware of their privilege. It was up to the LGBTQ to decide what they wanted to do with a term that had (and still is) been used an insult. A male Orthodox rabbi may continue saying the blessing if he so chooses but he cannot decide to divorce it from its history and context and declare that his utterance of the offensive phrase is actually not negative but actually progressive. Also, he doesn't take responsibility for what people who aren't privy to his private thoughts are hearing when he says the prayer.

What he's actually suggesting is the equivalent of printing an offensive term on your t-shirt and then sticking up for your right to say it because you don't mean it that way. It's ironic misogyny brought to prayer.