Idolatry?

So, after I got completely soaked walking to the Metro in the rain trying to go to services on Friday night,

I spoke to John Boy, who asked me if I had ever heard of the superstition about bad luck being related to worn-out klafim in one’s mezzuzot. She asked if I had a mezzuzah. I told her I didn’t, aside from the one I found covered in dog hair, when I was cleaning out our mother’s apartment. She suggested that I go buy one…and bury the klaf from the dog hair covered one.

Yesterday I bought a mezzuzah.

I felt kind of weird about it.

Not because I am opposed to mezzuzot.

But… I am opposed to purchasing things to change one’s lot in life. That seems more like, well, idolatry, or at least “Judy-ism,” (based on my mother’s shift from zero-interest in Judaism, to purchaser of all Jewish items), than Judaism. I don’t really want to believe that a mezzuzah will change my luck. The last time I lived in a house with a mezzuzah, some pretty rotten things happened, after all. Then again, some really wonderful things happened there, too.

At any rate, I bought a mezzuzah and put it up and felt better–not luckier, but better.

Part of the Shema, inside every mezzuzah, says:

“And you shall love יהוה, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all of your might. These words, which I command you this day, will be upon your heart…”

Once, a long time ago, I heard a story about a child who asked her mother why the Shema commanded us to keep the words of the Torah on our hearts, rather than in our hearts. According to the story, the mother replied, “So that when our hearts break, the words fall inside, where we need them the most.”

Moving back to the woman from the radio program that made me cry so much yesterday,

At the end of the program, they quote from her book:

“[If you are] … in Unitarian Universalist terms, completely and wholly in love, then you are in heaven no matter where you are. If you are not in love, you are in hell, no matter where you are.”

I am broken hearted, and I know I shouldn’t be, but every time the door slams behind me when I drop Habibi off at his mom’s, it feels a little like I have died.

Maybe I put up the mezzuzah at just the right height for the words to fall down into my heart–or to remind me that, rather than think about how I have to give him back, I should remember that my time with Habibi is a gift.

And I am so wholly in love with him…

Everything about him is so wonderful to me…from his little nose, to his huge opinions, to everything that he learns every day, as a preschooler should. Not only that, but there is an unbroken chain of love that I have felt for him since I whispered to him as he curled inside his mother’s belly.

Maybe that’s why I felt better–I was reminded about love and, being reminded, I felt more confident.

I have, at times, felt that I failed him, but I think that is somehow immodest on my part. My own feelings of failure should never be superimposed on what he may or may not feel. Besides–he seems reasonably pleased with me as a Daddy. So long as I am good at that, everything’s cool.

So it wasn’t the thing, after all, but the fact that it reminded me to act.

Those words that sit on our heart waiting to be needed are also meant, after all, to be taught to our children–that’s the next line of the prayer. I can teach Habibi by loving him, and I can teach him by example.

I think this could be the first step. If I am to be whole, I should focus on something I do wholly, like loving him. If I accept that there is something for which I should be grateful, I am in a very good place to begin my journey.

I am grateful for Habibi’s presence in my life and my love for him allows me a measure of fearlessness. I teach him, protect him, and play with him with the confidence that our laughter is a kind of prayer, that his confidence, curiosity, and developing mind are all prayers.

I think this love might be symbolized by the mezzuzah.

I gave the other, dog-hairy, mezzuzah back to my mother and told her to have her rabbi bury its klaf.