It is no use pretending.
I am a Jew
Not a Noahide
Honouring my soul identity
Is more important than being respectful
Of what I imagine others might want from me;
At no point has any Jewish person,
including rabbis,
said to me,
be inauthentic
On the contrary,
It has always been,
If you are a Jew
Join us
Convert
When you are ready
At the same time
It is important to own the complexity
Of how my perception of my Jewish identity
Impacts on the rest of our people
For anyone can say they are Jewish
Prefix ‘bat’ to any Jewish name they choose
Prefix ‘rabbi’ to their Christian identity
Or Christian-shamanic business
This was what I was wanting to avoid
Appropriating
And misappropriating
Jewish identity
Now that I have cleared that for myself
I can move along…
I have done what I need to do to show respect
For I have explained the halachic challenges of converting;
My name is Archaela bat Rachael;
Archaela is also not obviously a Jewish name
Rather an ‘invented one’
This is easily solved by adopting ‘Miryam’
Which I am free to do if I were to covert
‘Bat Rachel’ is the biggest sticking point
For a convert is always ‘bat Sarah’
If a Beth Din were to accept me as a ‘daughter of Rachel’
Would I then convert?
No.
For I am a ‘revert’
Am easing my way back to Judaism
Under the guidance of Gogo Rachel
When/if I am guided to convert
I shall do so
Yet not without that guidance;
I have known for a long time now
That keeping Shabbat
And keeping kosher
Are the mitzvot my soul wants me to do
If I keep these
And ignore the rest
All is well with my soul
Given that I don’t keep these in the same way
That the Orthodox do
Makes me a non-Orthodox Jew;
Potentially makes me a Reform Jew
Which the Orthodox rabbis don’t recognize as truly Jewish
What I don’t wish to get involved in
Are the debates between the different groups of religious Jews;
These are not my battles
For I am a Jew for all Jews
After all
When the Nazis’ came for the Jews
They weren’t interested in nuances
For them a Jew was a Jew
Regardless of religious identity…
This then is the hallmark of anti-Semitism
So why should I spend any energy
On differentiating between Jewish people?
What use for me to say,
I am a Jew
And you are not
If you know that you are?
Moving along…
I remembered recently
That when I did the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola
It was as a cell in the Christ-body that I signed up for
Which is interesting
Given my perception that Paul’s theology
Is the direct cause of Jewish apostacy
Traditionally, this is not what Jesuits do
Imitators of Jesus, the Resurrected Lord,
Is what they take on:
Jewish-Jesus mimicry?
No
Its more than that;
They are initiated into the Spirit of Jesus
To reach a point where they become one with Jesus?
Jewish-Jesus shamans?
And priests?
For the greater glory of God.
It is my impression that the Jesuits understand the Trinity
More mystically than literally;
They are very clear that God the Father is Adonai
Jesus, the son of the Father,
Is the first amongst many sons
(amongst the Gentiles?)
For all baptized Christians are sons of God
Regardless of gender?
Regardless of sexual identity?
When they wake up to God as lovingkindness
Leave justice to God
Sons of God,
Christians
Jewish souls become?
(For God is lovingkindness
Full of mercy
Transforms evil into good
For those who love Him?)
The Holy Spirit
Is…
I am no longer sure who the Holy Spirit is
In Catholic understanding
I thought at one stage that it is the divine spark within:
Nefesh,
Activated
Which is incorrect
For I now remember that the Hebrew word used
Is Ruach;
The level of soul
That knows that it is connected to Source
For at the time that Jesus of Nazareth lived
People thought that there was no life after death
No immortality of the soul
At least this is what I remember being taught
In my Dominican novitiate
Immortality
And the resurrection of the dead
was the battleground between the Sadducees
And the Pharisees
The former were practical atheists
(in the modern western fundamentalist sense)
While the Pharisees
were those who insisted
that the soul returns to Source after physical death;
it is they who taught the resurrection of the dead
Yet this too is a Christian view;
In Judaism
The battle was around the oral Torah;
The Sadducees were Written Torah fundamentalists
Similar to the Karaites of today?
I have no idea why I have come to this….
I shall have to research it some more
However, what it suggests is that I am to let go
Of the desire to focus on one thing only;
In my mind I had this idea that I can either pursue the study of Torah
Or do my environmental work
I now see that keeping Shabbat suggests that I study Torah
And keeping kosher suggests that I do my environmental work;
Both I am to use as means to enrich the world with spiritual integrity
In order to manifest,
In an inclusive environment
Love and hope
Authenticity
Justice and mercy
Based on this new understanding
It means that I keep archaela.com
As the place where I share my ongoing journey of reverting to Judaism
This I share completely free of charge
The resources for doing so
Then come from my environmental work:
Keeping kosher.
I am under enormous pressure to generate income
External pressure
As well as internal
For despite my own ideological leanings
It remains impossible to contribute to a better world
Without generating my own income
The world still runs on money
As means of transaction;
It is only if one owns land in remote places
Out of reach of government,
That one can live solely from what earth has to offer…
A reality check for me this is;
The suggestion that those who have chosen to advise me
Concur with those I have asked for input:
Get your nursery up and running
Use that as your springboard for your work
Take charge of your life
Own your environmental ideas and inputs;
Stop giving that away for free
Monetize that…
There is a part of me
that regrets not having taken charge of spekboom planting
planting it myself
For a space has opened up for spekboom
As carbon farming
Which threatens natural ecosystems;
The very opposite of what I intended.
For spekboom farming is a license to continue to pollute
In exchange for an environmentally friendly carbon offset.
(This isn’t as bad as I originally thought,
If it is tied to a Just Transition
For companies.
Those failing to do so
are closed down?
After five years
from being put on probation?)
Am I to blame for the spekboom planting madness in South Africa?
No.
I might, however, become responsible for where it is planted
For I am a biome, ecosystem, habitat protector.
And planting must be kosher…
And here ‘kosher’ is expanded in its meaning
To mean ‘kosher soil’
Or ‘eco-kosher’
Perhaps the latter term might have a better resonance
Even though eco-kosher
Presumes koshering the earth
Growing soil
Naturally
Restoring it where it is degraded
Preserving it where it exists
Through agriculture
That works for a blue blue earth.
Ah, no
It works for a green, green earth.
Blue, blue earth is metaphorical
And includes
Letting go of hatred
Of ‘othering’.
Resources
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/14/pope-francis-who-are-the-jesuits
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2832612/jewish/Pharisees-and-Sadducees-Jewish-Factions-During-the-Hasmonean-Period.htm
https://www.chabad.org/multimedia/video_cdo/aid/2116787/jewish/Pharisees-Sadducees-and-the-Rise-of-Rome.htm