Coming through Yom Kippur is an emotional experience

B'H

I always get to thinking of Rabbi Akiva and how they ripped the flesh off his bones and he died with the Shema on his lips thanking G-D for the opportunity to reach the point of where he had total understanding of the Shema. He gave thanks for having the opportunity to really reach up to G-D through this phrase that we say twice a day - morning and night. The Shema literally translated in English proclaims,'Hear O'Israel, the L-rd our G-D, the L-rd is ONE.' It is a complete denial of the false gods and those who do not understand G-dliness and the holiness of G-D.It reminds us that we are before the complete and perfect master of the universe. We cry out to the Creator of the cosmos and that is a frightening and awe inspiring thing when you think about it. We are but grains of sand, yet each of us is an individual creation that is unique in the scheme of things and important.
My journey to Judaism began many years ago as a child and my first full awareness of G-D was when I was only seven years of age. I was sitting on the verandah of the house where I grew up. I was quite depressed for a seven year old. I had two main things that worried me. I was struggling with the concept of my mother hating me - the child - maybe because I was female and a threat in her mind to her position in the home and in fact I think she despised me from early infanthood because I somehow challenged her importance as the only bride of  three brothers in a large country grazing concern. I was not the only person she despised in the family. She hated my father's older brother and was not fond of my grandmother. My grandfather who died when I was three weeks old, she depicted as an angel and that my father was the image of him. I think back on how she spoke about them and especially my Uncle and it so wrong. This feud has carried on until today from the fifties and she is nearly ninety(in December).
The second was the holocaust and the murder of millions of Jews by German Nazis. My uncles as did my father had lots of literature and books about this and I was a quite voracious reader and read quite a few of them until my grandmother realised I was getting nightmares from these books and locked them away. I was also reading about the Japanese treatment of POWs and the Burma rail. The cruelty of some human adults bothered me greatly. I did not know we had Jewish ancestory until much later on in life. When I tried to question my mother about what she did to try and save Jews in Austria, she brushed my questions aside and told me not to read nonsense. We never talked except that she was always criticising me or belittling. So different to my grandmother, my father and my Uncle Dick. They actually talked with you and treated you like a person whose views mattered. With my mother, I always felt I was some sort of absolute nuisance and a pest.
Anyway as I was sitting on the verandah quite close to tears after yet another belittling and session of criticism by my mother, I received a most remarkable insight into the condition of humans. I literally felt an amazing presence of light and power that instinctively I knew no one else was aware of it.  I felt enclosed in this light and power and protected by an invisible force. It was beyond comprehension of human mind to actually form a picture of what it was.  It was as if nothing else mattered in the world but to have complete trust in that power.  I have had that feeling several times since in my life and also it has warned me of things but not in words.
Once many years ago in 1979 I was at a point of deep despair and was working as a house matron in a Church of England Grammar School in Toowoomba in Queensland. One of my duties was to take the girls to  a Church down not far from the school. They were walked down by myself and a teacher. I felt incredibly depressed by my family situation. I had wanted to spend some time at home but was not allowed to as my mother hated having me at home in the house. That emotion I have felt since early childhood and only after my father died did that feeling change to some degree, but only because I was of some use to her or had potential for us by her.
Anyway I entered this church and was immediately overcome by a feeling of how wrong this place was and how wrong what it represented was. It was not the first time I had had this feeling. In fact the first time I entered a church or chapel, I was overcome by a wave of absolute revulsion. There behind what was an altar was a man nailed on a wooden cross with a head of thorns and bleeding from his hands and feet where he was nailed. It was gruesome. It was a perversion. Unfortunately the Christian church has as its object of worship a man who was an Orthodox Jew several thousand years ago and they have perverted what this man taught which was in essence Jewish Orthodox belief and they have persecuted and reviled his family and his co-religionists in a most insane manner throughout the centuries. Both Islam and Christianity take their basic doctrines from Judaism but they have perverted and added to them. Once I was out of this church I vowed then and there that I should never ever go back inside a church for any reason what so ever. I would prefer death to that.
My dislike of Christianity has been further enhanced by my experiences of being bullied by a fundamentalist Christian principal at a school in Country NSW and also the librarian who I believe was quite insane in her desire to try and get me to give up my son so she could 'save his soul' and 'have him baptised and brought up in a christian home with christian values.'  She and he both felt that as a single mother I was just another slut with a personality disorder and therefore unsuitable to bring up a child. Also I was older.

Anyway where is this leading to? Despite the fact that they tried to destroy my career and me as a person because of my Jewishness, I feel blessed that G-D gave me such a test of faith. How much easier it would have been to let them have their way and to just give in and commit suicide like they were suggesting and driving me towards such an act by their treatment of me. But I believe in G-D and there is more ways to torture a person than through the physical mistreatment. To belt someone is not half as bad as emotional maltreatment.  Getting a belting, you recover from, but getting emotional batterings it is much harder to recover from unless you have faith in a Divine Power that drives the Universe.
Where is this all leading to? On Yom Kippur we are called on to access that Divine Power and ask for forgiveness for our failings and shortcomings and to reach up to G-D to cry out and to crave to the depths of our souls for a connection with the unknowable, the divine that goes beyond our limited comprehension. G-D asks of us to go beyond our limits and to have perfect and utter trust in all that He gives us in the year. The tests depend on us. He will take us beyond what we previously perceived our limits to be, if we allow it and if we strive. We pray and pray and reflect on how to be a better person and because 'SHEMA O'ISRAEL, HASHEM our G-D,  HASHEM is ONE' we should have no fear of anyone or anything, except for G-D!

lessons in Living and TRUST G-D and try to live well.

During the past ten years or so in my life, even the last twenty years, I have had some steep learning curves. The past year and this present New Year have been no exception.

My latest lesson in life concerns not putting one’s own life in danger and thus one’s family in order to pay an old debt and it is also about honour and respect for others and knowing that everything happens for reasons known only to the power that guides us all. We should not trust in our fellow humans, but be guided by what is right and what should be.

It starts with an old debt that I owed someone, because I had to borrow money to pay for a get. This person went guarantor and I was working at the time. It was around $2,500 I think in 1992. I borrowed from a Credit Union at a fairly good rate of interest and there was no problem with the repayments for several years until I was overseas in Israel and not working. I should have paid it off before I left. That was my first mistake. Anyway to cut a long story short, I defaulted and my friend had to pay out money and received a bad credit rating. I never intended to happen.  I felt horrified. Also around the late nineties a parent died who the friend was very close to this parent and friend blamed me for the parent’s death as the parent and friend had argued about the debt and later then the parent died of a heart attack.

I felt very bad about this and when I was back in Australia I attempted to pay back some of the money and it was close to $5,000 because there was interest and legal fees.  I was also dealing with some difficult situations with my now ex-husband at the time. I was also pregnant and dealing with a very anti Semitic principal in Narrandera and my own father had died, I was dealing with disputes in my family and petty jealousies and a very anti Semitic sister in law whom I was really glad lives in America, not Australia.

Later when I was bullied out of teaching after a transfer to a school run by a Principal who was an old colleague and a good mate of the Narrandera principal, I came down to Melbourne in an effort to try and heal, get work and get on with my life. I had very little to do with the friend except for a rather abusive phone call 15 minutes before the Jewish Shabbat came in and when the friend would not listen to me that we should continue this conversation at another time, I wished this person ‘Shabbat Shalom’ and said ‘We have to discuss this, but not now.’ and then hung up. I did not blame the person who had every right to feel hurt. I also heard back through mutual acquaintances and friends that it was being put about that I owed this person $10,000 and then it was $20,000. I spoke to the person recently about this and the comment I received was that when a Sandfly bites you, you often say it is worst than it is.

Anyway just recently, I had a phone call and this person asked me to do some editing. We agreed on a price and the bulk of the money $1,500 was to go towards the old debt. I was to receive $500 in cash and there was an offer of a bonus of $250 as it was quite pressured. I even put some of my work at school aside to do this. I saw it as a sign from Hashem that I could kill two birds with one stone. Pay back an old debt and to earn some money towards rent before the New Year. There is an hourly rate for editing and there is a page rate. We agreed on a page rate, rather than an hourly rate.  I now know over the last few days that this friend had no intention of paying me money.

I worked for around 25 to 30 hours on this text and did grammatical editing, as well as editing for meaning and clarity on sentences that were awkward or lacked specific meaning. Often the author knows what it means, but the meaning is obscure or hidden from other readers. Also the document was single spaced and I was told to leave the mark ups as “I have paid heaps for that mark-up” and to do mine in different colour. I did so and then was told it was too difficult as the person was dyslexic and to do it simply as a word document and so it went on. My big mistake was not to set out a formal contract which I am sure this person may not have agreed to because then the person would have been bound by the contract. Instructions changed from day to day and I re-edited and kept my cool when said person was obviously not cool and I focussed on getting the work done. I did work to the dead line which was originally my deadline as given. I had the whole text done on the Tuesday before Rosh Hashana as my original deadline was 30^th of September. That would have been impossible as Rosh Hashana started on the 28^th of September.  However the person wanted this much done on the weekend before school broke up and I was trying to juggle school, child and this editing commitment at the same time. So I did what I could.

The person was happy that I had finished the work with a few hitches before hand and finally we got it all in on the Tuesday, well before the original deadline. I was not worried about the money coming in because I thought this person is a friend and she must understand how difficult it is to be a single parent and that I have been in very severe financial straits since I was bullied out of teaching.  Anyway I trusted rather too quickly. When I asked for the money I was ignored and when I asked again I was wished a Gamar  Chatima Tova and at my latest request when I outlined the difficulties I will face without money like homelessness and possible eviction from my flat, but by the same token I do not have hard feelings against the person whether they pay or not, I was thanked for my wisdom and I could feel the smirk behind the email. When you are confronted with someone who is acting in an intensely evil way despite what they should be doing, you have to be calm and trust that G-D will help you. It is a lesson in patience and faith.  Even if I am to end up on the street with my son and nothing in my pocket it is a true lesson in faith ultimately. In order to really understand G-D one must have no attachment to material possessions except for the connivances that they present in order to fulfil the will of G-D. Torah is the ultimate guide and I remember one day at this Christian boarding School St Margarets in Brisbane when I was twelve and they constantly got me to write out whole tracts of bible, the King James Version and I refused to believe in JC thus refused to write out New Testament. Instead, I wrote out psalms and tracts of the Old Testament because that was far more interesting and had deeper wisdom than some repetitive ramblings by a bunch of confused and disorientated followers of a Jew who was crucified by Roman soldiers. I also identified strongly with the book of Job.  The Old Testament remained with me to the extent that at my new boarding School in Warwick I was the only senior student who did not read the Bible to the school in my Year. I think they knew I was not a Christian even though I went to a Christian School. I was considered to have strange ideas and to dabble in blasphemy. How that came about is another story not relevant to this one.

To end off – in my haste to pay off my debt to this person, I have jeopardised my home with my son and I know that I know have the tricky task of trying to placate a real estate agent knowing I will be nearly ten days late with all my rent.  I must make everything formal and invoices. Even then it will not protect me against such a person as this.  I think this person has some long standing jealousy or issues with me that go back years. I do not understand why. This person has always been financially stable and never had to worry about money. I, on the other hand, have had ups and downs financially and trouble managing finances for the past five years while being unemployed and even before, I have never been a good money manager. I hate dealing with money and prefer to earn it and let others manage it.

We live and we learn.