whose birthright is it?

If you've heard of the Taglit-Birthright Israel program (http://www.birthrightisrael.com/), skip the introductory paragraph.

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From the Birthright web site:

"Taglit-Birthright Israel provides the gift of first time, peer group, educational trips to Israel for Jewish young adults ages 18 to 26 in order to strengthen participants' personal Jewish identity and connection to the Jewish people."

Sounds awesome, right? If you're young (aged 18-26) and Jewish and you have yet to go on some Jewish community-sponsored trip to Eretz Yisrael, Birthright is for you. Several of my former religious school students have opted out of their synagogue's regular Israel program in order to save money for college; then they'll go on a FREE Birthright trip after graduation. Because Birthright is free. It's paid for. Someone else is sending you to Israel because, well, it's your birthright to go.

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Putting aside the arguments about the various purposes of such a trip -- that it's designed to "indoctrinate" Diaspora Jewish youth so they'll grow up to love Israel with their hearts (and support Israel with their money) -- and just consider that doing something like this for your community's young people is pretty darned cool. That a community loves its children enough to create experiences for them that will do more to formulate their Jewish identity than simple book-learning and discussion ever can, is evidence of a community that loves and cherishes its young people.

But for older Jewish adults whose desire to understand Israel experientially is curtailed by lack of resources, there is -- wait for it -- nothing.

That's right. If you're a forty-something North American Jew who has read about Israel, studied it, attended lectures and maybe even tried to hold your own in arguments about it (and failed or succeeded to varying degrees), and you finally feel ready to take the next step and actually travel to Israel -- which all Jews are told they really need to do at some point -- there is nothing out there that even remotely resembles Birthright.

Why? The only answer I can come up with is that, by the time you're forty-something, you're expected to be more than able to afford the cost All By Yourself.

And if you can't, it's your own fault. You played against type, somehow, by choosing work that pays peanuts; or worse, by choosing work in a field where all the jobs have been sent overseas. You can barely afford synagogue dues, and you want a trip to Israel? What on earth would you be able to do for us when you came back?

Look at the kids, the implicit message says -- at least they have the chance to develop their love for Israel and Jewish life early enough that they can still make sensible choices about their lives, choices that will put them in a better position to become the machers they're supposed to be when they grow up. This isn't prejudicial, say the millions of judgmental, little Jewish voices in my head, it's just a matter of probability and statistics, simple math. We need to grow Jews wiho will support Israel, and who will support Jewish causes at home with the money they're supposed to earn from the high-payng professions they're supposed to enter. We like our chances with younger folks better than we like our chances with someone entering mid-life. Sorry.

The only problem with this very traditional line of reasoning is that:

a. More and more Jews are coming into Jewish communal life at a later age, either through reawakening of a Jewish identity left over from childhood, or as adult converts to the faith. And they're not all bringing white-collar salaries or lives with them.

b. More and more "white collar" professionals, Jewish and otherwise, are finding that their careers are nearly as vulnerable as those who are in the lower-paying fields of retail and the service industries.

c. The Jewish community is undergoing a very noticeable evolution as more of us fall into financial circumstances that prevent us from accessing various aspects of traditional Jewish communal life -- synagogue and JCC membership; Jewish fraternal organizations and Federation involvement -- and participation in these aspects of Jewish communal life is shrinking because fewer North American Jews can afford the price of admission.

This isn't just about Birthright. It's about nearly every aspect of traditional Jewish communal life in North America.

Some organizations are making the effort to make the doorway in more accessible; wealthier members are being asked -- in some cases, rather pointedly -- to step up and donate more to help subsidize the costs for members who cannot afford to pay full pop. Most synagogues offer some kind of "sliding scale" membership, as do many workshops and other special events. (Asking for "sliding scale" or "scholarship" possibilities remains deeply embarrassing and difficult for those who need it, and I'm not sure we will ever erase the stigma of that shame in our capitalist, success-driven society.)

But the fact is that, unless you've lived The Expected Life, finding the doorway into Jewish communal life can be difficult and daunting.

Even with all the things I've managed to do since making my "re-entry" into Jewish life as an adult, I still have trouble finding the doorway myself at times. Just as it's been hard for me to feel at ease in rooms filled with people who are used to opening the checkbook at every opportunity, who arrive at these events in luxury cars and live in beautifully appointed homes in the West Hills, it has been difficult for me to figure out exactly where I belong in the Jewish community.

This used to be my father's baggage. When I was a kid and my sister and I wanted our family to join a temple, or to send us to Hebrew school, the money simply wasn't there. A few synagogues, including the temple we wanted to join, offered "sliding scale", but the process of applying for it was so shameful and onerous that my father decided he'd rather skip Jewish communal life altogether than go through the humiliation of explaining why he earned so much less than his Jewish peers.

To be fair, he did return to communal Jewish life in his final years, and was able, at the end, to enjoy a sense of belonging in a synagogue community. (But as long as we're being honest here, he was also a sixty-year-old guy when he could afford full synagogue dues, so perhaps he didn't have to carry the same baggage around anymore.)

Somewhere along the way, between the time I discovered Jewish communal life for myself and now, something happened so that this became my baggage too. Synagogue dues got more expensive just as my hours at work began to go down and my partner lost her full-time teaching job. More events at my synagogue charged admission of some kind and we could afford to go to fewer and fewer of them, so we stayed home and felt ourselves grow farther removed from a sense of Jewish community. Our inability to have children (first medically and then financially) only drove that point home harder and more painfully; in the Jewish community it remains All About The Children. And today, I feel an anger rising in me that I have tried very hard not to feel, an anger about wanting to belong and no longer knowing exactly how. Where is MY birthright? the mini-me howls inside my heart. What is my place here? Where is my doorway in? How will I know when I find it? And I'm not just talking about a free trip to Israel, I'm talking about the myriad of ways in which working-class and/or poor Jews are, through the fault of no one and everyone, made to feel excluded and invisible.

What really needs to happen is that the entire Jewish community -- including religious Jews of every stream of thought, and those who identify as secular or "cultural" Jews -- needs to come together and have a serious reality check about the state of the world we live in and how the new fiscal reality is changing the face of Jewish life in North America.

Fewer families will send their kids to Jewish day schools. There will be fewer full-time jobs for Jewish educators, cantors and rabbis. There may come a time when we see an UN-professionalization of Jewish communal work, when families and friends take their Jewish lives into their own hands and create them anew on a much smaller -- and more sustainable -- level. My partner and I already do this periodically by having friends over for Shabbat dinners on the lawn ("the largest room in our house," we tell people -- and we're not joking). Groups of young adults are meeting in homes and creating their own Shabbat services and potluck dinners, their own sense of community, independent of the synagogue or JCC. And while this shrinking and evolution may pose a problem for some Jews who live very far away from the geographic "centers" of Jewish life, it will also provide an opportunity for many more Jews to create new understandings of community (and perhaps even of chosen family). As more and more Jewish adults are unable to afford the cost of travel to Israel, some may shrug their shoulders, give up, and set about creating a Jewish identity that does not depend so much on a personal connection to Eretz Yisrael; they may decide that it's much more sensible, and important, to nurture Jewish life in the place where one is, and adapt their celebrations -- and even their prayers -- accordingly.

As the new fiscal and social realities set in -- and I believe we will see a new "normal" as a result of the recent global financial upheavals -- individuals who desire to create an authentic Jewish life for themselves and their loved ones will adapt, and adjust. Are Jewish institutions, who by their very nature have become huge and almost immovable, similarly capable of making the adjustment? If not, they may become increasingly irrelevant to the majority of North American Jewry.

i am a bad mechanic. i am a baaaaad mechanic.

Admission: I do not always take the best care of my bikes.

..::ducking now to avoid the wet shop rags that will surely be thrown at me by pals Justin and Chris over at Crank::..

Like many who work full-time in the bicycle industry, I have more than one bike (though with a grand total of four, I am far below the national average for shop rats, most of whom have nine or more): a cargo bike, a city bike, a road/touring bike and of course, Stompy.

Stompy is my racing bike, a singlespeed Redline Monocog (26" wheel version) with several parts upgrade to make it lighter and more fun to ride. I raced it all last short-track season, cleaned it, gave it a two-week break in August; then turned around and threw a full season of cyclocross practices and races at it. I raced in December at USGP-Portland. I rode home from the race, rinsed off the worst of the mud, then hung the bike vertically in the Bicycle Brain Trust and went inside to wash the mud and embrocation off my legs.

There it sat for four months.

In April, feeling guilty, I pulled Stompy down off the hook, put it in the stand and gave it a better cleaning. I did NOT pull it all apart, because I simply didn't have time. A frozen pedal was treated with a healthy dose of lube suirted into the tiny space between the pedal body and the spindle; an hour later the pedal turned freely again. I did a cursory truing of the front wheel, which helped. And the bike rides pretty well, all things considered. But I have not yet pulled it all apart to clean the bottom bracket threads, or see if any water has collected in the bottom of the frame, nor have I replaced the sealed bearings in the front wheel (and it's clear that I ought to).

In short, I have been a baaaaaad mechanic.

This next week I have a little more free time so I will doing the inevitable.
Full tear-down, bearing replacement and all.
I sort of HAVE to now.
Short-track begins June 6 and Stompy is rightly pissed at me for months of benign neglect.

tyler, george, lance and doping

Last night, Tyler Hamilton came clean on "60 minutes".

Great. Truly, if it helps to ease his conscience -- it won't undo the damage to his legacy -- I'm glad for him.
But seriously, all this truth-telling after the fact does nothing to clean up doping in cycling or any other sport.
The fact remains that, in order to be "competitive", athletes must resort to cheating by using performance-enhancing substances. It has been this way for years -- in some sports, for decades.

Sweetie, who is relatively new to following bicycle racing, has been watching the Giro (indeed, she's seen more of it than I have) with interest and asked me what I thought about all this "coming clean". Do you think all these guys are doping? She asked me.

We were watching Alberto Contador roll almost effortlessly to another time bonus on another ridiculously mountainous stage of the Giro, his third climbing stage in as many days. And just he'd done in the previous two mountain stages, he looked fresh as a daisy at the end of a 5-climb, 200km stage -- while other riders cracked and bonked and were clearly cooked. I invited Sweetie to consider how fresh Contador has looked at the end of every stage he's done well in, day after day. How does anyone, I asked, look that good day after day while other guys are practically dying up there? The man who won the stage, after smiling wanly for the cameras, looked like he wanted to roll right into the bushes and hurl for 20 minutes. Contador looked like he'd just been out on a 35-mile charity ride. If he's not doping, I told Sweetie, then no one else is, either. And I'm sorry, but I just don't believe that anymore.

Tyler Hamilton's admissions of guilt, the handwringing and everything else, while it may provide him some measure of release, does next to nothing to clean up cycling. George Hincapie's testimony about how he and Lance Armstrong helped each other use EPO during their time as teammates at US Postal or Discovery doesn't make a difference. Not when Armstrong donates $125,000 to the [non-profit] UCI (the international governing body of bicycle racing) to fund "anti-doping" work, and manages to avoid testing positive for drugs every single time. Even if Lance is caught, he will have enough money to live on for a long time. He'll be fine.

Whatever.

So I admit that my interest in the Giro is waning a bit. It's tough to watch these guys and get hung up on whether or not they're doping. At the elite, professional level of the sport, nearly all of them are. They have to, in order to hang with the peloton and to keep their careers intact. And I just don't really care much anymore. I am turning my attention to my own racing, which begins soon and which I know won't see drug scandals and big money and other things that turn young mens' heads. It'll just be about racing hard, doing one's best, and enjoying that ice-cold beer with friends afterwards. That's racing. Come watch, and be amazed for real.

a last peek at bike judaica: the yad

The yad (Hebrew for hand) is a sort of stick with a point on one end, used to mark one's place while reading or chanting Torah aloud in the synagogue. Many of these will include an end shaped like a tiny hand.

I started making these over a decade ago, when I was playing around with bike parts as a way of connecting more deeply to my Judaism. They were an immediate hit with my friends at the synagogue where I was a member; my rabbi at the time asked me to make her a left-handed version, unusual for a yad. I gave them as B'nei Mitzvah gifts and made one for the woman who used to be my boss at the temple religious school.

They're my favorite thing to make.

And here's my little midrash (interpretation) about them:

I use a bench vise and needle-nose pliers to make these. Each spoke is bent by hand into the shape of a tiny hand. (The spokes are stainless steel and they require a fair bit of hand strength to bend them into the shapes I want.) The tools leave tiny gouges on the surface on the metal. I could take a lot of time and try to buff these gouges all the way out and completely smooth the surfaces. Instead I sand them just enough to remove the risk that a sharp edge could damage the Torah scroll as it glides across the parchment. If you look at the close-up, you'll see a few tiny scuff marks on the "knuckles" of the "hand". I decided to leave them there for two reasons:

a. Before the rabbinate was professionalized -- before rabbis made enough money to only be rabbis -- nearly all of them also worked at a trade. Akiva was a stonecutter; Maimonides was a doctor. Many lesser-known rabbis served smaller communities and also worked as cobblers, housepainters, and bricklayers. (Baruch Spinoza, the philosopher who ended up as a heretic but began as a rabbinical student, worked as a grinder of lenses for telescopes and eyeglasses.) So I could imagine a rabbi from these older times approaching the Torah with hands scrubbed clean for the Sabbath but still showing the scrapes and callouses of the week's work.

b. I work with my hands; I've been a bike mechanic for many years. And yet, I enjoy Torah study and read a bit of Torah faithfully each week (usually on Shabbat afternoon). The cerebral gymnastics and the focus required to dig beyond the surface meaning of Jewish texts stimulates me in a way unlike any other. And while the rabbinate has become professionalized, our tradition teaches that regular study is required for every Jew, and that Torah is -- and must be -- accessible to everyone in the community. The aforementioned rabbi from my old synagogue used to tell a story of a group of woodchoppers somewhere in Eastern Europe who saved up their money and bought a set of book-bound Torahs -- and had the leather bindings embossed with lettering indicating that these Torahs were the property of this group of woodchoppers. Apparently, they met every Shabbat afternoon to study Torah together.

So the tiny gouges on the knuckles of these yaddayim are symbolic for me, of the connection between the work of one's hands and the work of one's mind and heart. Each informs the other. And that's why all my yaddayim come with callouses. I won't make them any other way.

when you can't hit the gym, mow the lawn

I promised Sweetie that I would get to the lawn this week.
I also wanted to squeeze in another workout. I couldn't do both on the same night.
So last night on my commute home I pushed myself hard on all the streets with even a slight incline, sometimes in the saddle, sometimes out of the saddle. On a bright, sunny evening I breathed hard and definitely elevated my heart rate -- but at no time did I need to reach for the inhaler. When I got home, I parked the bike, grabbed the push-mower, and tackled the long grass.
Having a push-mower is like having another piece of resistance equipment on hand, especially when the grass gets almost too long to mow. You just push harder, and go back over a spot again and again until it's trimmed down.
By the time I was finished, I had worked up a lovely, healthy sweat in the fading evening sunlight.
I'm hoping that the weather will hit a nice long dry spell soon so I can get to work with the hand-edger -- my other piece of resistance equipment.

update: judaica

Regarding the response to my last post from someone from the Yeshiva University Museum:
I didn't know that Yeshiva University had a museum, but they do and they would like to have a couple of my pieces for their Contemporary Collecton.
I could've been a jerk about it and asked them for money, but I decided to just not worry about it and honor their request for a donation. I don't make my living from making art; and hey, my stuff's going to be seen in a museum. How cool is that?
I'm sending them a mezuzah and a pair of candlesticks. The woman I spoke with has a friend who might want to commission a Kiddush cup from me (I generally only make the cups by request anymore since they're such a bear to make).
Anyway, I think this is pretty damned cool.

judaica

I've been messing around with dead bike parts again and turning them into ritual Judaica items.



(mezuzah, made from Japanese quill pedal and various tiny bits)

I can make mezuzot (singular: mezuzah; like above, the things Jews nail to the doorposts of their homes); kiddush cups and candlesticks (for use on the Sabbath and Holy days); and Yaddayyim (singular: Yad; the pointer we use to mark our place when reading aloud from a Torah scroll iin synagogue).

I've mostly given these away as gifts, and have sold only a few over the years -- Judaica made from bike parts has kind of a limited market, at least here in decidedly not-so-Jewish Oregon. Lately, as part of my re-examination of my connection to Jewish life, I've been making this stuff again. Now that I've figured out the various processes, the items themselves take less time to make -- but sourcing dead bike parts has become more difficult as more vintage bike parts end up in a million little secret "hoard-piles" of collectors, and for sale online. Still, it's cool to make them and hopefully I'll find homes for all of them before too long.

i hope i don't suck this bad this year

A look back at last year's racing at PIR:

This was my second or third week of racing in the series, when Tad ran the course through a sick little off-camber climb up to a tabletop (which, sadly, is not there anymore; I checked when I rode recon a few weeks back). This is the start lap for Cat 2 Masters and Singlespeed classes. The women are the last bunch to get to the tabletop and nearly all of us run up. Because I am not in this race to beat anyone but myself, I decide to hang back and wait for the bunch to clear the tabletop so I have enough room to build up speed to ride the thing. If you make it to nearly the end of the video you will see that I failed on my first attempt.



I would fail the second time too, because there was no room to hang back without getting lapped by the Singlespeed men (who were about to eat me alive and spit me out the back). I finally cleaned it on my third and final lap, only to collide hard with another rider at the top. I still have a tiny scar from where his handlebar went into my ribs; my pedal gouged his shin but he was fine about it -- that's racing -- and after helping each other get up we both went on.

I do not feel terribly "ready" for this season, even though I've done some weight work and a few intervals here and there. I'm lighter, and maybe I'm stronger; but I don't feel faster. if the weight work helps me to finish stronger in some imperceptible way then I guess it'll be worth it. But frankly I've had to deal with so many other things in my lfie this spring that there's hasn't been as much time or energy for "training" per se as I would've liked. Still, I've joined a local team and hopefully I'll notice a difference having more local support at the races. I'm hoping to get out a couple of times this week and next to do some off-road practice, even if it's only an hour on some unimproved side streets in my neighborhood.

OMG - PIR starts june 6

Just as I'd been almost lulled into a ryhthm with the weight work and the occasional interval on the cargo bike (why is it that when I think to do interval work I am always riding the Surly?), An email appeared in my box yesterday that shook me out of my near-complacency.

PIR short-track begins June 6.

..::gasp::..

This start is two weeks earlier than last year. The promoter decided to extend the series to eight weeks and had to skip a Monday in the middle for July 4, so in a little more than three weeks (!!!) I'll be toeing the starting line in the Womens' Singlespeed category and hoping to god I don't lock handlebars with someone else, or die on the starting incline, or otherwise screw up.

I feel stronger. Am I faster? Probably not much, but if I can hang in there and finish my race every single week I will be happy. I am racing every week of the series and hope to place reasonably well in the overall standings (I got fifth in my category last year so good things are possible). In my case, consistency will win out over sheer speed.

Singlespeed women and men and Cat 2 masters race at 6:30pm. Details here:

http://www.portlandracing.com/info.html

I will -- if the jerseys arrive in time -- be wearing the orange and black of Team Slow.
Local friends are invited to come and watch the mayhem.

menucha

On Saturday we went to services at a synagogue other than our home shul.

I do this periodically from time to time by myself, just for a change of pace. Portland is blessed with a dozen or more synagogue communities large and small, which makes "shul-hopping" easier. On this particular Shabbat morning, our synagogue actually did not have services at all and we really needed to daven (pray) within a minyan (a gathering of at least ten Jewish adults). So we went to another synagogue, partaking of the Torah study and the service that followed.

Ideally, prayer is a way to help gain clarity, calm down from the hurried pace of the work week, and alleviate stress.
Very occasionally -- even in the midst of the regular and expected sense of meditation that comes with softly mumbling or chanting the seemingly unintelligble but oddly comforting sound of Hebrew -- it can put a finger sharply on the pulse of a particular stressor in life, and although that can be a powerful thing it can also be a difficult thing. It happened today at the shul we visited. We left quickly upon the conclusion of the service. We felt tense and wired, instead of restful.

So what to do when the particular stressor is amplified instead of soothed?

Well, we went to the gym.

Before I continue, let's start by saying that traditional Jewish thought, viewing the Sabbath as a day of complete rest, of menucha, does not allow for formal exercise on Shabbat, though some progressive interpretations of this dictum insist that exercise among young persons is allowed if it is a source of pleasure and joy. Further, I'll say that, for the particular stressor that was tweaked this morning, our tradition offers precious little in the way of specific comfort and healing. No further details, it's personal, but sometimes one's religious tradition -- being codified and transmitted by, well, other human beings -- can leave one lacking for solace from time to time. Let me also say that, although we are mindful of the tradition and choose to wrestle with it regularly, we -- meaning Sweetie and I -- tend to fall into a more progressive way of looking at things.

So, feeling a little raw on the [spititual] nerve that got tweaked a little too hard, we went to the gym and worked out. We stretched, tossed a medicine ball back and forth in a rather weighty game of catch that left us breathing hard and even giggling a little, and pumped a little iron. And if it wasn't a source of outright pleasure and joy, what had originally been intended as just a little workout became a source of release and relief. We both felt immensely better afterwards, and found ourselves in a much better place to enjoy the rest of Shabbat.

Traditional Jews reading this will probably have a cow. Fair enough, and I respect that.
But I'd rather do what we did than sit around all afternoon feeling sad and stressed.
And if I ever find myself in a similar place on a Saturday morning, I just might do it again.

the gym thing, slightly interrupted but ongoing

Passover takes a toll on a fitness plan.

During preparations for the holiday, which included deep cleaning and removal of anything remotely resembling leavening, time for other endeavors outside of work was, well, truncated. I managed to make it to the gym once during the entire week before the holiday, and once again during the eight days of the actual holiday itself. Of course, my carb intake always goes up during Passover; combined with working out less, well, I was concerned.

The week after the holiday, I managed one more visit. Down from my usual two trips a week plus a yoga class now and then. I felt tired, lower-energy and slightly distressed at the possibility that all my progress might turn around overnight and when I did resume my routine I'd be starting at something very close to zero.

I went to the gym again tonight, determined not to lose any more ground -- short track season begins in just six weeks -- and feeling vaguely discombobulated by way too many things percolating in my mind of late. Arrived at the gym, stretched gently and went straight to work. 25 minutes later, I was in my abs routine and feeling the burn. I left the gym slightly sweaty, and rode home in shirtsleeves along streets lit up all golden by a sun sunk low in the sky. My mind was still going slightly crazy, but working out had taken the edge off my overtaxed brain and heart so I could actually breathe the evening air and enjoy the sights along the way.

Have I lost fitness? Not too terribly much. Last night Sweetie put her arms around me in a loving embrace and commented that my back and waist both felt a little smaller. I had lost some weight, true; but to be told that there's a noticable difference by someone else is always surprising. In a nice way. Tonight's workout included a trip to my favorite apparatus, the thing I call the "chair lift". Stand, grab the arm rests and handles, and carefully swing the legs up at a right angle to the torso; then carefully lower them to hanging again. Repeat nine more times to complete one set. If your abs plan calls for a repeat, do it. Carefully. I love this thing. I don't know why. It makes me feel stronger just to do it.

Must get back to work, two nights a week, without fail. Short-track begins in six weeks and I want to be as ready as I can be.

is lateral drift always lateral?

Sometimes I wonder if I'm on the right path. I seem to be deep into one of those times.

Ten years ago this spring, I graduated from college. In July 2001, I took my newly-minted B. A. to Philadelphia and Gratz College, where I enrolled in a graduate program in Education and Jewish Music. The goal had been to become a Jewish educator and Cantorial soloist (though I wasn't as interested in actual ordination, the title of Cantor, as I was in the training).

While I struggled to immerse myself in Jewish learning (an area for which my undergrad degree had not prepared me at all -- PSU wouldn't establish a Judaic Studies program until several years later) and find a foothold in Philadelphia's Jewish community, I struggled with class issues, the lack of a car (and my refusal to own one), an inability to "femme out" enough to please the East Coast Jewish establishment, and a huge case of lonely homesickness.

On top of this, I found myself enrolled in a graduate music program whose requirements on paper were apparently not taken seriously. I had arrived with a B. A. with a concentration in Music and an almost-minor in Middle East Studies, a degree which included courses in vocal and instrumental conducting, orchestration, instrumental teaching methods, music theory and sight-singing, plus studio time and area recitals in my major and minor instruments. It turned out, to my shock, that I was overqualified for the music side of my program; nearly a third of my classmates had difficulty finding Middle C on a grand staff, and over half couldn't sight-read their way through a choral score. The instructors didn't see this as a problem.

On the Judaic stidies side of things, my lack of Jewish literacy was a huge problem, one that made it almost impossible for me to succeed academically in my Jewish studies coursework. Add to this the reality that the college was unable to help me forecast coursework for more than a semester at a time because they didn't know what courses would be offered from year to year. This last issue made it clear to me that what should have been a five-year program would easily become a seven- or eight-year program, or maybe even longer -- and with me paying graduate-level tuition, to boot.

At the end of my first semester, I turned in my coursework, went home for the December break, and after talking things over with my girlfriend and a few other people, I returned to school in January trying to keep an open mind. The school told me there was a slight delay in procuring my spring term tuition scholarship, meaning that I had to take student loan money to pay tuition up front, and risk losing my Center City apartment if the money didn't come back to me soon enough. Synagogue jobs were opening up for me, but without a car -- or enough money to live in the suburbs where the Jewish community was centered -- taking those gigs would be almost impossible. My adviser had already told me that she wanted to see me get a car, move to the Jewish suburbs and "professionalize" (read: feminize) my appearance by the end of my first year so that I could better gain a foothold in the Jewish world; I struggled and chafed against that reality but didn't know how to work around it without betraying myself.

In short, remaining in grad school would be pretty much impossible for me unless I was in a position to make some radical changes in myself, and in my life. I couldn't, or wouldn't, make those changes, and so in February 2002 I shipped my stuff home, withdrew from classes, and took the train cross-country back to Portland. It had been a learning experience, for sure; just not the one I'd hoped for. I came home with my tail between my legs, feeling utterly defeated by the experience and by the impossibility of scaling the wall of the East Coast Jewish establishment.

In retrospect, returning home when I did turned out to be its own Right Thing To Do; I was able to deepen my relationship with my girlfriend, I was home to help care for my father at the end of his life, and put some roots down in the mellower, less-judgmental Jewish community of Portland. I even wrote some songs and made a CD (see sidebar at right), a process all its own which helped to ease some of the sting of having left grad school the way I did. In the end, I chalked up my journey to Philadelphia as a learning process that helped me to know myself better; and I put my dreams of serving the Jewish community professionally into a little box, shoved it to the back of the closet, and moved on, returning to Citybikes as a mechanic and later as the lead Buyer. I got married in 2003. My partner and I moved into a little house together. There have been ups and downs and although some of them have been heartbreaking, our relationship remains strong and we remain deeply devoted to each other. I serve my Jewish community on a very part-time, local, volunteer basis that allows me to live fully as myself -- blue jeans, piercings, bike commuting and all -- and to live simply in a way that being a Jewish professional back East would never have allowed.

Ten years later, I am older. But am I wiser? Maybe. Some days I'm not sure. Lately I have found myself wondering the reverse side of the "what if?" question: what if I had stayed in Philadelphia? What if I had toughed it out against seemingly impossible odds and somehow managed to finish a graduate degree? Would I now be serving a Jewish community somewhere? Would I have evolved into someone more "professional", more "feminine", more "mature" in some way that my present life doesn't require or even make room for? And would my girlfriend still be with me (as my spouse) under those other circumstances?

Who would I be today if I had stayed?

I find myself longing to make some kind of difference that is different from the difference I'm currently making. But how? And, more importantly, what kind of difference?

I feel caught in a strong tide of lateral drift, one that doesn't always feel exactly lateral, like I'm actually losing ground in order to make it up. I hate being in such a state of unknowing, on the verge of some kind of change -- or a recognition that change is not appropriate at this time -- without knowing where I might end up.