1605953441000

no good deed-- pt 4

I feel a lot like the second man right now. And yet I don't know if I did what I did because I thought it was the right thing or because I thought it would feel like the right thing. How do you know how much help is as much help as you can give? If you don't give as much as you can, have you done something wrong? How do people feel after they do the "right thing"? Does it matter? And what the heck am I gonna say to this guy tomorrow?

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1605953402000

no good deed-- pt 3

Then I took a class on the History of the Holocaust, and I started thinking about what the diaspora meant for my family, what Americanization has taken away from us. I thought about the hole inside of me that I walk around with as a mixed race person. The lost, sunken feeling of having no place where you really fit in. So I started learning more about Judaism. I took a class in Kaballah. I bought books. I bought a Torah. We watched movies. We baked challah. We lit candles on Friday nights. We got drunk on Purim. We dipped apples in honey on Rosh Hashannah. We fasted on Yom Kippur. And I didn't become a "believer", but I felt better.

I also took on responsibility, and I'm only just now starting to realize what that means-- the full extent of that responsibility. Rabbi Harold Kushner says that being G-d's "chosen people" doesn't mean that Jews are more special or loved than other people. It means that we are responsible, like a first-born child, for the rest of G-d's children. Like a parent, She places Her expectations, her hopes, her dreams onto us. She might love us in a different way from her other children. Not more, just different. So here I am, and I've chosen to acknowledge that I've been chosen. And I hate being responsible.

Here's another passage from Rabbi Kushner, from Chapter 3 of To Life! A Celebration of Jewish Being and Thinking:
"The obligation of tzedaka is usually translated as 'charity' but really means 'doing the right thing'... Charity implies that I give to the poor because I am a generous person. Tzedaka means that I give to the poor, even if I don't feel like giving, because Judaism tells me I should. It tells me that G-d has chosen to make me His intermediary in passing something on...I have no right to keep that portion of my wealth any more than the postman has the right to keep for himself a check addressed to me. If you saw the play or movie Fiddler on the Roof, you may remember an exchange early in the play in which a man gives a beggar a coin. The beggar tells him, 'Last week you gave me more.' The man answers, 'I had a bad week,' to which the beggar responds, 'Just because you had a bad week, why should I suffer?" ... We may have a philosophical difference between Judaism and Christianity here... In that famous passage in the Gospels (Matthew 26:6-13) in which a woman pours expensive oil on Jesus' head and the disciples scold her, saying she could have sold the oil and given the money to the poor, Jesus supports the woman, saying, 'You will always have the poor with you'-- that is, what you don't do for the poor today, you will be able to do for them tomorrow or next week-- 'but you will not always have me.' The words 'the poor you will always have with you' come from the Torah... but they have the exact opposite meaning. 'For the poor shall never cease out of the land; therefore I command you to open your hand to your poor and needy brother.' In other words, because there will always be poor people, society has to find a way of sustaining them without making them depend on your having some money left over after your shopping and vacation."

Then Rabbi Kushner tells a story:
"A man who is down on his luck tells his sad story to two passerby. One is moved to tears, embraces him, and gives him five dollars because that is all he can afford. The second man interrupts him halfway through and gives him fifty dollars just to shut him up. Who has done the better thing?... People... regularly choose the first person because his heart was in his gift. But... by Jewish law, the second man was better because fifty dollars will help the beggar ten times as much as five dollars will, and the purpose of tzedaka is to help the poor, not to give us opportunities to feel virtuous."

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1605953350000

no good deed-- pt 2

We told him some other people slept in the park near by and offered to walk him there while he smoked. In the meantime I would call some shelters and see if any of them were open 24 hours and took emergency cases. If not, we promised to call again and come back in the morning if they did, to give him a ride. We live in a small rural town, and a lot of people experiencing homelessness get stuck here, because they can't afford a bus ticket anywhere else. His pants are much too big for him, dragging on the ground, so he asks us for a belt. I head back to the house to get one. He's a good deal taller than us, so I give him the only one that I know will fit: my favorite black belt, my heart sinking a little. He puts it on wordlessly. After smoking, he curled up on a bench with his blanket, about to fall asleep. We said goodbye and started to part ways.

And that's when he asked me if he could sleep in my car.

I looked at my partner, a silent question in my eyes. I'm half-hoping he will say no. He shrugs and mouths, "It's up to you." He doesn't own the damn car.

I say sure. I lead him to the car. Leave it unlocked, but take the keys with me. Give him a pillow to go with the blanket.

So I'm writing this at 1am, and there's a stranger sleeping in my car, and I feel nervous and sad. My partner and I already knew that we couldn't visit family for Thanksgiving or any of the winter holidays this year, because none of them will get COVID tested and they all live in large counties with high case numbers, but we had planned to have three of our closest friends over, after the whole group has been tested and isolating. I was COVID tested two days ago in preparation, my partner yesterday. We haven't seen anyone else in weeks. I knew I had to text my friend and tell her what I'd done. I promised to get re-tested, to clean the house, assured her that he wasn't sleeping inside, but I knew the truth: I'd exposed myself and my partner to help this man, and they needed to know before deciding to see us in a week.

I want to love my neighbor as myself. But right now, I wish I had been selfish. I don't want to ruin any semblance of family that myself and my partner would've gotten to have for the first time in months to help someone who wasn't even that nice to us. I and really don't want to get sick.

My grandmother likes to say, "No good deed goes unpunished." I'm not writing this to say, that I helped someone and I regretted it and now you should, too. I'm writing this to say that I felt tested tonight, in a Biblical, witchy sense, and I feel like I failed, but I don't exactly know why.

Until a year and a half ago, I never really thought about being Jewish in terms of responsibility. To me, I knew I was part-Jewish the way I knew I was part-Filipino, or Puerto Rican, or Irish. I knew I was Jewish because my mother was Jewish, and she was Jewish because her mother was Jewish, and she is only Jewish because her mother was Jewish. In my family, Judaism was a cultural trait, not a religious one. We celebrated Christmas (albeit with chocolate gelt and dreidels) and occasionally Passover. About once a year, on an unnamed day in winter, my grandmother would make me and my sister hamenstachen, which she told us were called "Hamen's hats" and we would eat them while watching a VHS of the Veggie Tales version of the Book of Esther. Sometimes, during dinner, she would tell us stories from the "Old Testament"-- usually the spookiest or most exciting ones, like Lot's wife turning into a pillar of salt, or the mysterious writing on the wall in Belshazzar's feast-- and that the people in those stories were our great-great-x1000 grandparents. For the most part, being part-Jewish meant simply that my grandmother made a lot of noodle and potato casseroles (the occasional latke if we were lucky), and that we were supposed to like celebrities a little extra if they were Jewish, too.

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1605953127000

no good deed-- pt 1

Today, while my partner and I were walking home from the liquor store, a young black man stopped us and asked if we could buy him a swisher. He told us that he was 28, but that because he was homeless and didn't have ID they wouldn't sell him one. We said sure, took the dollar he handed us, and bought him the swisher. As I give it to him, I wryly asked if he was going to roll a blunt. He said yes, and then he asked us if he we would give him a blanket if he shared his weed with us, telling us that the homeless shelter in town was closed for the next two weeks. Still masked, I replied that we couldn't share any weed because of COVID, but that we'd be happy to give him a blanket, anyway. He followed us back to our apartment, and we made some small talk. I gotta admit, at this point, I was feeling pretty good. Anarchist-type thoughts of practicing mutual aid were all abuzz in my head. Like, look at me, I'm performing direct action!

We stop at our house and he waits on the porch. It's about 45 degrees outside, cold enough that you can see your breath in the air when you exhale. When I step inside our heated apartment, I can feel my ears and cheeks turn pink as heat rushes into me. My stomach twists in knots. I want to let him in, but I'm worried about the pandemic. It's Shabbat, the holy day. I don't know if I believe in a higher power, but I believe in the words: “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Lev.19:34). Well, Avery, I think. Here is a stranger. Keep your mask on. Put your spirituality where your mouth is.

I whisper to my partner if it's okay if we give him some of the dinner we were planning on cooking tonight (potatoes, vegetables, and curry, because we're poor, too) and let him eat it inside to warm up. He nods. I can tell he feels just as bad as me.

Still trying to keep some semblance of distance, I turn on the TV for him and head to our bedroom to fetch a blanket and some other supplies while my partner cooks. Along with a blanket, I put together a backpack of essentials, mostly the emergency supplies that we assembled earlier that year in case we had to evacuate from the wildfires-- face wipes, deodorant, a mini first-aid kit, some soap, a loofah, chapstick.

I hand him the backpack and he doesn't say much, but he's immediately excited about the miniature nail kit and the pair of socks I've included, and asks if he can trim his toenails and change his socks right now. I nod and direct him to the bathroom. He takes off his shoes, and I can see that his socks are dirty and full of holes. He doesn't smell great. My stomach gives another twist. I ask him if he'd like to take a hot shower while we finish cooking. "Yeah, that'd be okay," he says.

I want to say that throughout this exchange, he was 100% grateful, praising us with "G-d bless you"s and filling me with all sorts of warm feelings of charity and whatnot. In reality, it just felt awkward. When he spied the cat litter box (clean) in the bathroom, he asked, "Uh... are you gonna move the litter box?" (I did.) He ate about half of what we made, then asked if we had anything else to eat (I made him two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which he ate, one right after the other, along with a glass of milk). When he finished, he asked for dessert. When I told him we didn't have any, he said, "Are you sure?" When I handed him the backpack (plain black), he said it looked, "Kinda girly." Our small talk from earlier had run out. I felt strange, and eager to get him out of the house so I could clean.

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1605871477000

Watch If You Are Having A Panic Attack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLO4ZEsQtqo

this video saved my ass when I had a bad LSD flashback awhile ago. check it out, the mindset might help you. if it doesn't, at least it will distract you, and by the time it's over, you'll be mostly out of adrenaline anyways.

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