The Big Bee-in at Schul

Jul 8, 2021 | 2015 Winter - Religion/Spirituality

By Laurie Wolfe

There is an old Jewish saying that I just made up: if you deny someone who they are, and they follow suit (yes! from Jews playing Canasta, Gin Rummy and other card games; they are big on cards.) (May make things up). Where was I? Oh yes, the saying. If you aren’t who you say you are, G’d won’t come and visit cause G’d won’t recognize you and will pass you by. So just be yourself. Which sounds great in Yiddish, if I can write it in Yiddish over here in my looseleaf notebook (I took my first class in Yiddish today so this may take some time)(!).

Now why did I start with the moral? Anyhoo, once upon a time not very long ago, a very young person who was likely a little boy had parents who were not religious at all. Yes, they were Jewish. That’s very typical in NYC. Now their neighbors the Smiths (not the band; just shh and read) who were orthodox (very unlikely the band is composed of orthodox Jews; you gotta trust me sometimes) took him (~) to the Schul. I think they figured it was time to give him (~) a dose of what being Jewish was about from the religious POV. Which is also a very fine show on PBS.

So they took the little boyishe child to Schul and they dumped him on a seat among a bunch of bearded smelly old strange men who were mumbling in some unknown language. It could’ve been English cause it was so well mumbled, but there were no familiar words mumbled at all. It sounded like buzzing to the kid. They were all saying the same thing at different speeds at different times one from the other. You could have gotten a headache it was such a drone!

So what was going on? The kid had no clue. Maybe the Smiths had left him there and the buzzing would go on for days and he would starve. Or it would end and he would be left with bearded men who did not speak a word of English. He would never, ever find his way back home or see his Mom and Dad, or eat. Or, they were foreigners and when they stopped buzzing they would kidnap him. The thing was he was frightened. He probably was too young for all this. But what do I know? It kind of makes sense to be afraid of people who are so different and only speak mad bee.

Anyhoo, at one point the men all got up, and they bowed. This caught the kid’s attention. Probably cause it was the first thing they did together, which is good news when you’re in a room full of bearded foreign bee-men. And, Synchronization! But then, they gathered themselves, and put their energy into a ball and tried to send it to something above them. Now this was fantastic. They were connecting with something bigger, up there. The child could see and feel this, and boy was he impressed. There was something really Big up there and a connection! Something above grownups! Above his parents even! This was huge. You coulda pushed the kid over with a light puff of air: pu.

Then they wrap it up and the Smiths come back to the kid, and the kid goes home; Hooray! And the kid is all excited. But the parents don’t care for any of it; they don’t buy it, they don’t want to know nothing. So the kid grows up wanting to connect in the worst way, but at first it’s gotta be outside of Jewish cause the parents are big stiffs in that department. And then later in life, he converts to She! Why yes, many hints. The child was, in fact, a girl. No, shmeckels are not the final determinant of your gender. Cause no one told us. Math: err = human!

So I hope you learned from our little fable. You want G’d to find you, you gotta be you. And you gotta love who you love. Of course! G’d said it was good, all creation! Here: And it was good. See? Nope, those guys go too far. B’tselem Elohim. We were created in G’ds image. I know! Especially my profile…see? You too! We all do.

Laurie Wolfe is a writer, performer, poet and healer. She’s appeared in Bilicious Boston, Body Verse and Off Limits (both part of the Boundless Series at Fenway Health) and Light Up The Night, a fundraiser for the Mass Transgender Political Coalition.She also does speaking gigs on trans and/or bi themes.

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