010: God, Golden Joinery, & A Mikvah for Your Mouth

I had a great face-to-face with Rabbi Adam Greenwald, my teacher at AJU.

I told him I was going to miss the class on God. It was a discussion primarily, not a lecture, he told me. And we talked about what my thoughts were.

That’s complicated, and it’s one of the things I feel I abandoned, or was hijacked, really, by the religious right in Texas. At least, youthful me let it be.

The good Rabbi remarked that perhaps, God (or lowercase “g” god) can be a part of the mending that I’m experiencing in my life. It/They/He can mean something bigger than me. To some Jews, I gather that means the community and tribe itself.

It reminded me of Kintsugi, the Japanese art of golden joinery. Kintsukuroi is the term I’m more familiar with: “Golden repair.” If you break an object, you mend it with melted gold. The breaks become art and a part of the story of that object.

Judaism and the process of conversion feels like this to me: the go(l)d I’m using to heal the breaks. Do I wish it were quicker? Sure. Maybe this guy can help:

Check out more on Kintsugi:

• More at Lifegate: Precious Scars
• More at Medium