“But if you’ve got a warrant, I guess you’re gonna come in…” My all-time favorite line in a song.
It has been a long, strange trip. I’m 72. I never thought about being this old. Now that I am this old, it feels like turning 40. That was the year I was convinced I could do anything I put my mind to. That conviction returned when I turned 70. When I turned 50, I went a little crazy and got my belly button pierced. When I turned 60, I realized I wasn’t going to live forever and the depressed funk lasted about three years. Now, I’m back to being convinced I can do anything I put my mind to. I like that attitude.
“How terribly strange to be 70…” No, actually it isn’t strange at all. I started the decade by falling into a pile of cactus needles. The vertigo that had started five months earlier started to shrink my life. Nine months later, the vertigo had been banished and I banished the walker. Now, I want to put my body back together. Sounds easy, but when one is battling depression, it’s about as easy as climbing a rock wall without technical climbing gear.
Lately, I’ve been dissatisfied with my art. I cannot paint realistically. It won’t come out of my hand. And so my painting doesn’t look like anything I’ve seen in a museum. I tell myself that’s because I’m painting what’s inside of me and it’s coming out in my own style. It’s my style. It doesn’t belong to anyone else. So why does this bother me?
I’m dissatisfied with my writing. I’ve finished a short story about being suicidal, suicide, and the misery that’s left behind. Suicide is when you take all the crap in your life and give it to those who mourn your passing. Maybe that’s the point of suicide. It reminds us to be compassionate. For a couple weeks anyway.
I write weird. The words come from deep inside and come out of my hand in weird ways. I play with capitalization. I play with ideas. I give up. My work is seen through Jewish eyes and I am incapable of seeing the world any other way. I think about Chaim Potok, Naomi Reagan, Marc Chigall. They see (and saw) the world through Jewish eyes.
My art is tempered by my history. This semester, all of my painting is about child abuse. I didn’t plan it that way. What’s coming out of my hand is what’s inside of me. One painting is not exactly a family tree. It’s a family pasture. All sheep. The female sheep are bleeding from their abortions. My father is leaving the frame just as he left my life. I’m the black sheep in the middle. I bought some yarn spun from the fleece of a black sheep when we were in the Falkland Islands. The yarn is the most gorgeous shade of chocolate with highlights and life. I may be the black sheep, but I’m the one able to give the most beautiful yarn. The painting I’m about to start is about my entire childhood. All 3 years 11 months of it. That’s how long my childhood lasted so I don’t need a very big canvas. One part of the painting is about a Yiddish word. I know what the word means, but I don’t know the English translation. I have a collection of words I only know in Yiddish or bastardized German but I don’t know the English words.
There’s one more painting this semester. I don’t know what it will look like. Maybe it will depict feeling adrift. I miss being Jewish, but I can’t bring myself to go back to the reform temple in town. I’m appalled by the rabbi’s response to antisemitism on the local university campus and by the mismanagement of money by the board of trustees. The reform temple has sunk to charging for darned near everything. We were supposed to make hamantaschen and bring them to the temple for a Purim party. And we were expected to pay $7 each to attend the party. My temple dues were arbitrarily raised. When I complained and said I wouldn’t pay the increased dues, I got no response. They got no money from me.
We have two choices where I live: reform and Chabad. Chabad is orthodox. They are different. Only 64 women rabbis around the world are orthodox. The rest of the women rabbis are reform. Women hold no position of leadership in Chabad. We all sit where we want in a reform temple. Women on the left, men on the right and a wall between them in Chabad. We might distract the men. That smacks of blame the victim. My view? If he can’t keep it in his pants, that’s not my problem – it’s his problem. Women have sexuality and are attracted to and distracted by men. Except in an orthodox temple where we are supposed to pop out kid after kid after kid and be happy with that. We don’t speak. We don’t teach. We don’t lead. We are relegated to being behind the curtain or sitting on the other side of the wall. I did not stop shaving my legs for four years just so I could have fewer choices in life. Yet I like and respect the Chabad rabbi. I took a class last spring and will be taking another next month. I like the rabbi’s approach to teaching. But I don’t fit in orthodox Judaism. There’s no third choice.
I remember a conversation I had with a guidance counselor when I was about 14 – many years before I knew I was Jewish. I told the guidance counselor I wanted to be a rabbi. He said it wasn’t allowed.
It was only natural that a Jewish woman wrote, The Feminine Mystique.
Deb's Art 