Part 1: History
If I'm going to tell the story of my spiritual beliefs, I need to tell the stories of my ancestors, as well. My grandfather,
Harry Posmantier, and his wife, Ruth, both were lucky and brave enough to survive the Holocaust, despite both being Polish Jews in Poland at the time. They survived because they were useful--he was a plumber and handyman around the camps. She was a nurse.
They survived and moved to America and eventually had a son, David.
Then, fourteen years later, they had an oops!, my mother, Beth.
Now, my mother was never a very good "obey and do as your told" Jewish daughter. She got kicked out of Hebrew School at age 8 for
asking too many questions. This is why, when she was searching for houses of worship for my brother and I before my Bat Mitzvah, she looked for Reform synagogues that welcomed questions.
My father was always a bit...off...when it came to religion. He was raised in Texas, and grew up as the boy playing with toads in the back of the sanctuary. As he grew older, he became and art student, and hung out with many of the (his words) "folks who believed in things other than the whitebeard upstairs". For my mother's sake, though, after he married her, he converted to Judiasm and celebrated Bar Mitzvah at the age of 24, under Rabbi Shimon Goldstein. Rabbi Goldstein told my father that his job was "to raise kids who're better Jews than you are." While he was studying for Bar Mitzvah, my dad would hum Torah prayers over me as a lullaby. And I plan to do the same to my kids--the melody is so soothing. But Dad, he came to call himself a "paganistic Rasta-Jew".
So, here I am, growing up in this house, with a mother who allows questions, and a father who's a Jew with a wide-open mind. The only thing my parents had issues with was that my father didn't like Tarot cards due to personal past experiences, and once I showed interest in them, I was to close my door while doing readings, and when not reading, I had to keep them in a box behind closed doors.
My mother sent me to both a nature camp and a Jewish summer camp as a child, the latter to help me prepare for Bat Mitzvah. It helped me learn prayers and rituals, and things that I couldn't give up under any circumstance. But by the time I was 13, I was already reading Ravenwolf, and noticing the distinct ritual significance of prayers like
Shalom Aleichem (the Allen Soberman version of the audio's better, but I wanted the translation) and seeing song circles for Shabbat as a tool for raising power.
I've grown, over the years. I'm 20 now, a Seaman Apprentice in the US Navy, which is wrought with rituals of its own. Wearing a cover (hat) at all times outdoors, respecting the quarterdeck (entryway) of a ship or a building as ceremonial space. Frocking ceremonies. But it's hard for a Jewitch to find her way, when she can't exactly be sure the Jewish chaplain'd understand her viewpoint.
So, here I am.
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