behind the curtain...

I hope there is never a "Hurricane Sherri"...I mean many of you reading this may have already had your name associated with horrible storms...days of destruction and endless news coverage...but it could always be worse...imagine dealing with a name like David Berkowitz or Charles Manson...you get it...and this is really not the focus of the blog...but anyone over 50 reading this knows what focus is like for those this age, especially early morning...and it is always early morning because we don't sleep...and this morning...facing a New Year...days of awe,...thankfully, once again...my mind is all over the place...but today there was this image...a memory of me as a young girl in the 60's...Brooklyn...watching my father praying with other men from our neighborhood...upstairs...behind a curtain...removed...at a distance...both beautiful and perplexing...religion has reluctantly, and not always successfully, reflected strides women have made in society...for those following ancient paths, not bending to be inclusive...religion is as it was...a higher calling...women just hearing it through a filter written by men...in the early 70's...when embarking on a path to becoming a bat mitzvah...I stopped...a response in two parts...one, to wanting my faith invisible as a response to cruel anti-Semitism from children parroting what they probably heard at dinner tables...and two, deciding that for all my studying and effort...would I be viewed as equal to my brother, or any young man, as I approached the bimah?..it was the emotional logic of an eleven year old...it was a conclusion in rapidly changing, and confusing times...I have long since reconciled those feelings...perhaps with a sigh of regret when I watched my daughter become a bat mitzvah...but the pact I made with my G-d, years ago, does not permit judgement of the "what if's" but only love of what I try to do with my heart each year...and so, when I peel back that curtain this year...my silent wish will always be for the sweetness of that honey dripping in my tea...on this Rosh Hashanah, 5778