The Year Mom Got Religion: One Woman's Midlife Journey into Judaism

by Lee Meyerhoff Hendler

Overview

Offers sensitive and intelligent wisdom from a woman who learned how awakening to religion can transform—and disrupt—a life. A poignant personal testimony of the discoveries, achievements, and disappointments of a woman’s renewed commitment to her faith.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781683364597
Publisher:	TURNER PUB CO
Publication date:	10/01/1998
Pages:	194
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Lee Meyerhoff Hendler is a popular and inspiring lecturer on leadership, Jewish identity and family philanthropy. She has been invited to speak about her book to many groups and organizations around the country and is the primary writer of "Freedom's Feast: A Thanksgiving Celebration for the American People," available on the web at www.freedomsfeast.us.

Past president of her congregation, Hendler serves on a number of local, national and international Jewish and secular boards, and is involved in her family's philanthropic activities. Apart from Pilates, kayaking and walking very fast, her passions are teaching, travel and Torah study. Lee has four wonderful children, two exceptional daughters-in-law and lives in Baltimore.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

1
Bereshit or Beginnings: Every Story Has to Have One 1

2
Bereshit Again: Or, Sometimes a Story Has Two Beginnings 15

3
How to Enter the Sanctuary the First Time You Don't Have an Excuse 37

4
I Just Wanna Give My Kid a Jewish Identity (But You Gotta Get Your Own First) 55

5
Just Because Mom Goes to Synagogue, We have to Go to Sunday School? 71

6
What I Know Now I Could Put in a Thimble; What I Knew Then I Could Put on the Head of a Pin 87

7
It's Fine For You, but What About the Rest of Us? 105

8
You're Not Putting That
Thing on Our Lawn! 119

9
Spirituality, Schmerituality: Getting There through Deeds 145

Acknowledgments 161
Appendix: Where Do I Start?
A Guide to Beginning a Jewish Home Library 165
Glossary 175
About Jewish Lights Publishing 181

Interviews

From the Author

I feel a bit awkward putting in a plug for my own book, but I'm grateful to barnesandnoble.com for giving me the opportunity. I appreciate that as a first time author most sensible readers approach the prospect of reading-- much less buying-- my book with caution. Quite frankly, I don't blame you. If I were considering putting The Year Mom Got Religion into my virtual barnesandnoble.shopping cart, these are the questions I would want answered: Who are you? I am a 46 year old mother of four married for twenty-four years to my physician husband.We make our home in Baltimore where I am the immediate past president of The Park School board (my alma mater and the school all four of our children have attended), and president of Chizuk Amuno Congregation, one of the oldest Conservative Jewish congregations in the country. Who should read this book? This book is for any adult who is undergoing or contemplating the possibility of undergoing a serious religious transformation. Do you have to be Jewish to get something out of this book? No. This is a story about what happened to me when, at age 40, I began to ask and search for significant answers to what my religious heritage meant to me, and what I hoped it would mean to my kids. The answers I was able to provide to the question: 'Why be Jewish?' were wholly inadequate and unsatisfying. The story is about the substantive answers I was eventually able to find and the multiple ways and places I discovered them. The narrative is specifically connected to the experience of growing up as a Jewish boomer in America and the privilege of finding unexpected nourishment in religious practice, synagogue attendanceand serious and sustained study. But on a larger level, it is about the wonder, pain and joy of adult learning and the way that religious transformation affects every relationship the seeker has. So this is just another spiritual self-help book? Yes and no. I don't give advice and I don't provide a nifty step-by-step system for spiritual fulfillment. This isn't a story triggered by crisis or tragic loss. Although The Year Mom Got Religion is honest it's not confessional. Instead, I like to think of it as a story about healthy growth which happens for most of us in fits and starts throughout our entire lives. (Sorta like learning to drive a stick shift). It tells the story of a spiritual growth spurt that took place for me when I began to explore and incorporate Judaism into my life. To the extent that we can learn from another's well-examined life I guess you could call it a self-help book. Is this book for anyone else? Yes. It's for all the relatives and friends of a loved one struggling with religious identity, and behavior issues, in the midst of an indifferent or sometimes even hostile environment. It's also for the professionals who are teaching and counseling religious seekers and their families. You will understand much more about what's happening inside the seeker's soul and mind after you have read this book. You may also have some new insights into what this process means to the seeker's family-- the significant disruption and threat her new growth often presents. How did you come up with the title? It came from my son, Sam, who was complaining to a sympathetic friend. In his junior year in high school he suddenly had to babysit for our two younger daughters on Saturday mornings because I started going to synagogue. For him the phrase captured the 'calamity' that had occurred in our family. So you think religious transformation is funny? Absolutely. Sam has a great sense of humor and I appreciated that there was an important truth embedded in his description. I used it as the title because it conveys my conviction that just as faith can coexist with reason so humor must coexist with gravity. A great tension (and source of reward) in a religious life comes from mediating these compatibilities. What do you hope readers of the book will gain? I hope that religious seekers will discover a companion who understands their journey in a thoughtful, unsentimental but deeply felt way. I hope that professionals will have a heightened appreciation of the complexities of a transformation undertaken in adulthood and the ripple effect it triggers in family and communal relationships. I hope that boomers who are beginning to undergo religious awakenings will appreciate that the responsibility for their own learning and behavior rests with them and that leaving the learning and behavior to professionals is a terrible mistake if we want lives that have a compelling religious dimension. I hope that more Jews will take the risk of taking Judaism seriously, reject ignorance of our tradition as readily as we reject indifference to injustice and begin the hard but incredibly gratifying work of incorporating Jewish ritual, values and obligations into our lives. I hope that adult learners of all persuasions will find a story that chronicles the adventure of adult growth and affirms what they already know: that learning is life-giving and that the capacity to learn and grow is a precious and sacred gift we never outgrow. And...I hope they all enjoy a few laughs along the way.

—Lee M. Hendler ([e-mail]), the author of this book , 7/16/99