One day closer!

[Karen (Hemmalin) McGrath]

Well, today is Thursday. We have been running all week long with meetings for homeschool and rehearsals and whatnot. One of my darling choristers has a concert tomorrow night. Shabbat services at Temple Israel.After years of wanting to go to Temple, I am going to Temple.Tomorrow.Thank you Father.When I was a child I had two best friends, Peter and Carl. We went everywhere together and wreaked havoc in our neighborhoods together. Carl's father was a Rabbi and I longed to go to Temple. I witnessed a miracle outside those doors for years. By junior high all of my friends were taking Hebrew classes after school and I had to go home to do homework. I cried. They assured me I was getting the better end of the deal since they also had Hebrew homework but it never felt that way to me.When my middle daughter was born, the doctor insisted we have blood tests, both Paul and I. Something we said had alerted her to something we did not know. We are Jewish. It's in our blood. It's not a problem if one parent is Jewish but for both to be, we could have run into some genetic diseases with our little newborn. Our baby was fine, God is so good!Nevertheless, we are Jewish.Blood runs deep, I have always had respect and observed in prayer the times of the year that corresponds to the various Old Testament feasts. I have performed from the heart those things I have never been taught.Days of repentance and days of awe! Repentance. It's a gift, the one that breaks the chains of the enemy to this world and his riot. Yeah!Paul has always been drawn to Hasidic Jews and whenever we have encountered any we have prayed over them. We are of the Hasidic lineage. In order for both of us to carry the genes, both of our sets of parents had to be Jewish as well. There is nothing so dramatic as Madeleine Albright's background in ours! I suspect my ancestors were ducking out of the local Temple long before WW2 as he is second and I am third generation Americans.Still, one wonders... how, who, why?What is it like for an Independent Charismatic to realize she is really Jewish?! The biblical explanation is that I am not Jewish because I got born again at the tender age of five. A Damascus road conversion, to be sure. Is it like that for every person of my descent?! I have heard similar stories! Yet, growing up I have always had a sense of sanctuary.When I was eight years old, God woke me up in the middle of the night. I raced to my window and opened it wider thrilled with His Presence! I waited expectantly to see what He wanted! Across the side lawn I saw people next door dancing in their basement.In the middle of the night?!They were singing and dancing and going around and around in circles and I could hear faint strains of the music from the closed casement windows.What was that?!I have recently been told it was Simchat Torah, when the Torah scrolls get rewound to Genesis for another year of study.I am having a Simchat Torah, my life is being rewound to the beginning of things I have never been taught but have fully known in my genetic code. Let your believing be from the heart - how could it be anything else?As I have rushed down the various paths of my life, strangers have grabbed my arms in passing. "You look Jewish. Are you Jewish?" I used to say no and think how strange they were, what did they see in my English and Norwegian features? Now I say yes, how astute they are. I am Jewish but I don't know what that means and now I have to reread the scriptures to see what is different. All of the Hebraic promises are mine, they always were. My inheritance has changed, like a princess long hidden away who has come to reign in her country again."Your children, they look Jewish. Are you Jewish?" "No, I am Swedish, English, Norweigian. But not Finnish."Until recently.A Finn stopped me and said "You must be Finnish, you have a Finnish name." I laughed. "I will be Finnish if you want, old woman, but I am Swedish, it was spoken by my grandparents."We should listen to our elders.I was Swedish until I called my uncle.He chided me. "Karen you have always been Finnish! How could you not know?! We spoke Swedish because we lived on the border!" I could not know just like I could not know I was Jewish. How could we live on the border of Sweden and not intermarry enough to be Swedish but intermarry enough to be Jews with Christian backgrounds? I told him we were Jewish and he made a slight noise on the other end of the phone, but no elaboration. A mystery.An Israeli stopped me just last week. "Are you Jewish?!" she asked me with eyes full of wonder, hopeful, expectant. She breathed the air around me as if taking in the familial scent of home; a friend, a familiar face in a sea of strangers in a strange land. If I had spoken Hebrew to her, I think she would have cried in my arms."I am Jewish yes, a friend, a familiar face, We are related. We are family." I searched her face as she searched mine. Blood to blood, SImchat Torah. "A Jewish mother," she said, "You are a Jewish mother." I said "Yes, dear one, you are safe. It's ok."Tomorrow I will go to Temple for Shabbat.My first in a Temple made by hands.KSM January 2009