When I was in my first year of graduate school, Jonathan Z. Smith, the eminent historian of religions, was invited to give a guest lecture to one of my first year MA classes at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. J.Z. Smith makes quite an impression, with a wild beard and wilder hair. He walks with a cane and fills the room with his presence. He was in my classroom that day to lecture about
the importance of place in ritual. The blurb from his book To Take Place (which I read that year) says "Smith stresses the importance of place--in particular, constructed ritual environments--to a proper understanding of the ways in which 'empty' actions become rituals."
I don't remember much of his lecture, from that day, but I do remember an anecdote he told. A scholar of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, Professor Smith told us about the time he visited that building with his wife. He described the ancient rooms as chaotic: dark and loud with polyglot prayers of penitent pilgrims and thick with the smell of incense and humanity. His anxiety at the scene was clear even in that Chicago classroom many years and thousands of miles away. He told his wife that must not be the place--it couldn't be the place. She found a monk to confirm--they were, in fact, standing in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the very place about which Smith had studied and written. "Let's go," he said to his wife (I paraphrase my recollection of the story), "this isn't
my Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I prefer the clean, perfect model on my desk."
I can remember feeling a sort of self-righteous pity for Professor Smith on that day. A sense that he was so deeply afraid of the mess that is life that he must be choosing not to live.
The Kid's naming ceremony last weekend brought back memories of Professor Smith's story from all those years ago. A student of Jewish ritual, I worked hard developing a ceremony that would honor my grandmother and David's grandfather for whom The Kid is named while at the same time recognizing the importance of children in Jewish literature and symbolically representing all of my deepest wishes for her future. I wrote a ceremony that really was lovely. Then I shared it with the rabbi who would be leading it. Rabbi rearranged and made suggestions. She reworked and encouraged me to cut. She edited it into a ceremony that really was lovely.
Then we actually performed it.
The Kid was impeccably behaved throughout the first half of services. She was all smiles and coos. David bought her a tiny yarmulke with strings to tie around her chin. She giggled when we tied it on, tickling her chin as we did so.
First she got annoyed with the strings, batting at them with her hand. A few moments before it was her turn to be the center of attention, she got really annoyed, and made sure everyone knew it. David took her out of the chapel to change her diaper and give her a quick bite to eat. When it was time for her to go up on the bima, she wasn't back yet. When she got back, she was supposed to be passed from grandparent to grandparent to receive blessings from each of them. She wasn't crazy about all that passing.
Still, she received a blessing from each of her six grandparents, and the ceremony really was lovely. I missed the midrash I'd originally planned to read to the assembled, but no one else did. I regretted the fact that though The Kid touched the handle of the Torah, no one ever said the words "as you touched the Torah today, so may the Torah touch your life," but no one else seemed to notice. And as I fell asleep that night, I thought of J.Z. Smith and his Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
I
thought about his sterile model sitting on his desk. I imagined it made of a bright white material to showcase the angles of the architecture--a complete contrast to the stone church, gritty with 2000 years of desperation and faith, gratitude and hope--and I felt a new sympathy for Professor Smith. My bright white sterile ceremony that is sitting on my desk is just words on paper. And yet.
The Kid's naming was lovely. She was adorable and beautiful in her fancy dress. The ceremony was dense with meaning and with love. I wouldn't change it. Unlike Professor Smith, I don't prefer the sterile, ideal--in it, The Kid is just words on paper, not my living, breathing, crying, smiling, eating, cooing baby girl. Still, I'm glad I am able to visit the scale model on my desk--even if no one else ever sees it.
Yesterday, I turned 37. Today, we found out the tumor in my dad's head has grown.
