Church or Chabad?

Last week was good. Friday finished strong. My second block attended a cultural dance performance and promised to teach me the Nay Nay. My third block created brilliant slideshows on the events of the Middle Ages. It was the perfect lesson plan: utilized technology (21^st century citizenship for the win), allowed student choice in which event they wanted to present, involved student interaction as they commented on each others’ videos, and was SIOP-friendly because it allowed my Spanish-speakers to create brilliant slideshows that the whole class could watch because of the beauties of Google translate. Cries of "ewww" filled the classroom as students found pictures of the Black Death. My MTLD visited and got this quote from a student: “I like this class because Ms. W’s really nice, but also weird. I like that.” Thank goodness; I don’t know what I’d do if she didn’t like that I’m weird.

My 4^th block finished their religion posters, spawning such gorgeous statements as “Abraham was a Jewlism.” I guess. We received the suspension list for this week, and 9 of the 25 are my students. It makes me wonder why they’re all suspended…  some I haven’t even met yet.

Today I accompanied a friend to the Park Church, an enormous, historic, mostly African American Baptist church. My Masters class on diversity required having a minority experience, preferably immersing yourself in the culture of your students, so this seemed right on point. And it was; before church started I ran into one of my students from last semester! I was so pleased I got flustered, but she was so proud to introduce me to her mother and siblings that I quickly conquered it.

The Park Church

The church service was utterly and completely different, and yet absolutely the same in essentials. It was powerful. Very interactive. And the MUSIC! Loud and large and beautifully inspiring, with everyone swaying and clapping throughout, myself uncertain of whether I should clap or sway or what but trying to keep my foot-tapping unobtrusive. We high-fived each other throughout the service, hugging and shaking hands and telling each other, “You’ll get through this” as the pastor exhorted us. Two adorable little babies were dedicated and introduced to the church. Weirdest to me were the two movie screens up top on which we could watch the choir and on which they showed movies of Lena Horne doing Civil Rights work and then of a little girl who decided to sell her own paintings so that she could buy supplies for the homeless. It made sense in a church that size, but I kept having the sense that they were breaking their Shabbat with technology. The service was entirely inspiration-focused, and it gave me a heady, breathless feeling. The sermon applied perfectly to anyone going through TFA; about working through storms with faith even when you think you’re walking with G-d and He's abandoned you.

It was when I got home that I ran into trouble. I started to write my paper on my “minority experience” and found that it had been, on the whole, too pleasant. I’d felt too comfortable. Perhaps it was because I went with a friend, perhaps it was because I ran into a student, perhaps it was because everyone at the service was so friendly and the ideas so recognizably fitting. But I experience more discomfort in a regular Shabbat at chabad than I did this morning at church. Here, I was the only white person and the only Jew in a room of several hundred, but the first difference was something I am every day and the second so profound that I couldn’t feel an outsider—I was too far outside to even compare. It’s when I walk into a shul where I don’t recognize the tefillot, where my clothing is analyzed as modest or immodest or amodest, where pro-Israel sentiment is taken to racist extremes, that I shiver and cringe and feel the decided tick of otherness in my brain. I’m not sure what to write in my paper. Perhaps that otherness is a discomfort that comes from almost belonging, not from touring other cultures. Either way, it's a challenge to face. In the words of the pastor this morning: G-d shows His power through the storm.