In a few hours I will be heading off to Budapest to co-lead the Erev Ros Hásáná service at Szim Salom. We have the unconventional tradition of reading Torah at the evening service, since we don’t hold a morning service for Rosh Hashanah (for Yom Kippur we do, but not this year, since we will be observing the holiday together with several congregations). So tonight I will also be leyning Genesis 21:1-21), a beloved and perplexing passage. (In another post I have explained, in very basic terms, what leyning is.) The High Holiday cantillation trop (melodic system) is especially beautiful, so this is one of the highlights for me.

The year is new for me in more ways than I can enumerate. I have so much happening this fall and so much to attend to in general. But my dear friend Joyce posted a quote the other day that set off some thoughts, so I will respond to it here.

“Forgiveness is not a matter of exonerating people who have hurt you. They may not deserve exoneration. Forgiveness means cleansing your soul of the bitterness of ‘what might have been,’ ‘what should have been,’ and ‘what didn’t have to happen.’ Someone has defined forgiveness as ‘giving up all hope of having had a better past.’ What’s past is past and there is little to be gained by dwelling on it. There are perhaps no sadder people then the men and women who have a grievance against the world because of something that happened years ago and have let that memory sour their view of life ever since.”

—Rabbi Harold S. Kushner

We often have it backwards. When we think we are waiting for forgiveness (or at least reconciliation, or acceptance, or kindness) from someone else, it is often we who are not forgiving them, not letting them take their own direction. In other words, forgiveness is primarily on us, not on the other people, and in some ways it’s also for us, not for them. Rabbi Kushner also points out, wisely, that forgiveness is not the same as exoneration. In some cases, you do not have to arrive at an acceptance of what they did. Still, you can go on with your life without having their actions hover over you forever.

I would add that in life we are given some people who understand us (up to a point), and others who do not, just as we understand some of the people in our lives, and others not. Being misunderstood and mistaken feels rotten, but it is simply going to happen. No one is understood by everyone, and no one understands anyone perfectly. Still, understanding of a certain kind does come.

I think again of Genesis 21:1-21. When Sarah tells Abraham to send Hagar away, Abraham does not understand at first; the request upsets him deeply. But God tells Abraham to listen to her, because there is a larger plan. “‘Let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because of thy bondwoman; in all that Sarah saith unto thee, hearken unto her voice; for in Isaac shall seed be called to thee.”

This is strange to the modern ear, because the modern mind would be likely to judge Sarah for her jealousy (even though we’d be at least as jealous and upset in her shoes). It might not even be jealousy as much as a sense of disorder. Casting Hagar and her child out seems cruel, especially since it was Sarah who first suggested that Hagar bear Abraham a child. But in the world of this text, the cruel act will allow Isaac to be the head of a great people, and Ishmael too. Staying together in the same home, they would not accomplish this.

As remote as the story and text are from our time, they have truth today too. The losses in our lives seem harsh, but they also make it possible for us to create new things. I think back on times when I have been “cast out” by someone—not kicked out of a house, but told, essentially, “we need to go our own ways.” At the time, I was dismayed. But the wonderful things that followed could not have happened if we had not made such a break. That does not mean everyone has to break with everyone; it is much better, when possible, to uphold relationships over time, letting them deepen, and to tackle problems that arise. But some breaks (not necesarily romantic, but also in friendships, associations, etc.) open up a world.

That is all, because I have a lot to do before heading off to the train station. Happy New Year!

I made a few edits and additions to this piece after posting it.

For a long time I had been looking forward to tonight’s Platon Karataev concert (opening for Vad Fruttik) in Budapest Park. I had planned to go just for Platon, then head over to Pontoon to hear Henri Gonzo if there was time. But when I started trying to figure out how to do it, things got more complicated, since I am leading a Szim Salom service tomorrow morning in Budapest. First I thought I’d go to the concerts, come back to Szolnok, then go to Budapest again in the morning. Then it seemed to make more sense to stay overnight at a hotel. I found something affordable and made a reservation. But then I realized that to pull this off, I’d have to rush to the train station after school, take the train to Budapest, check into the hotel, make my way out to Budapest Park (barely in time for the show), attend the Platon concert, zip out in a cab to Pontoon, listen to Henri Gonzo, go back to the hotel, wake up the next morning, go to Bálint Ház to lead the service, and return to Szolnok around 5 p.m. on Saturday. The more tired I got over the course of the week, the less this prospect appealed to me. I then returned to the idea of going to Budapest twice, but that seemed even more hectic; in the meantime, my body had started clamoring for a quiet evening. So I decided to stay home from the concerts, get a good night’s sleep, and go to Budapest tomorrow morning.

There are times when you have to do that. I know, it’s the very point of Shabbat. For me, Shabbat does not preclude Friday night concerts, train rides to Budapest, or anything like that. But tonight an evening of rest at home seemed not only wise but imperative. The week has been thick with teaching and ALSCW conference preparations. Rosh Hashanah is around the corner. The trip to the U.S. is a month away. So much has gone into it, we are all excited about it, and I want to be rested when it happens.

So not only is it good to stay home tonight, but maybe a little more rest overall is in order. Shabbat Shalom.

How often has someone or other said, “I want to be happy” or “I want you to be happy”? But what if there were no such thing? What if, instead, what we call “being happy” were really a state of awareness of a happiness that is always there? What if all emotions existed eternally (or at least beyond any measurement that we are capable of), inside and outside of us, and, instead of “having” them or “being” them, we simply heard them with varying clarity at different times in our lives? This is not an original idea; I think of Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha listening to the river. I think of Walt Whitman’s “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking.” But it is an idea that perhaps has been forgotten or brushed aside.

It would help explain why people are capable of feeling multiple and contradictory emotions. It’s possible to feel happiness and sadness, anger and forgiveness, fear and calm—and maybe all of these are always there, just fading in and out of prominence in our minds. Yes, we do something with them. We choose whether to entertain them, whether and how to act on them. But in some sense they exist beyond us; they are not ours, though our responses are.

This is a short post, but the thoughts continue. I have a lot happening at once: the wonderful start of the school year, the upcoming trip in October, and even right now, this weekend, a few events in tight succession. So this is all for now.

The subtitle of this post, “Mi lenne, ha örökre itt maradnánk?” (“What would happen if we stayed here forever?”) is a quote from the Galaxisok song “Janó és Dzsó” (“Janó and Joe”) on their album Történetek mások életéből (Stories from Others’ Lives). They played it last night, to our joy. And yes, I had flashes of wondering, what would it like to be here forever? But I was also glad that the Galaxisok concert marked the ending for me, because it was such a good ending.

Before that, I fell in love with Elefánt. I had never heard them before, but I instantly understood what is special about this band, or part of it. There’s much more to understand and love over time. I also understood why people compare them sometimes with Platon Karataev. They are quite different, but I hear an adventure in the music of both, a willingness to go to unknown places. Here they are playing “Én.”

Before Elefánt, I took a walk around the lake for a mundane reason: to find an ATM. I had realized that I needed cash to take the bus back to Pécs after the Galaxisok concert. The walk had its own good, as walks often do.

Before that, I heard Csaknekedkislány (absolutely great, my second time hearing them); a wonderful a cappella group called Napfonat; and, at the ”A tűzhöz közel” stage, a tuneful, rangeful band called Laiho.

During the festival, I saw many ways that different musicians and bands relate to their audience: sometimes overtly, with call-and-response or questions like ”How are you all doing?”, sometimes intuitively and subtly. But the relation was always important: not only with the audience, but with the stage and surroundings.

I have many thoughts about the four days but need to let it all sit and sink in. It is good to be on the train to Budapest-Keleti, where I will transfer to the train to Szolnok. ”What would happen if we stayed here forever?” asks Janó. But what he adds to the question is even better: ““Van borunk és sárgadinnyénk /
és Szokol rádiónk és napfény és egy ismeretlen évtized.” (“We have wine and honeydew melons / and a Szokol radio and sunshine and an unknown decade.”) [Sokol was a Soviet radio brand; the song’s story takes place at the end of the 1970s—DS] And then:

És nevetnek
és aludni mennek,
mert holnap is nap lesz,
és még előttük az egész élet.

(And they laugh
and go to sleep,
because tomorrow will also be a day [or: there will also be sun]
and their whole life is still ahead of them.)

I added to this piece after posting it.

This is one of the questions I have the most difficulty answering, because no matter what I say, I feel like I’m lying. If I have come home from school and am not going back until tomorrow, then, yes, in others’ eyes, I am done for the day. But at home I am involved in a different sort of work, some of it related to school (grading, planning, etc.), some of it not. Writing and translating are work for me insofar as they are not hobbies. I may or may not get paid for them, but I don’t define work in terms of the presence or absence of pay. Work is something I have to do, either because it helps me survive or because it’s part of what I live for.

So, if I say, yes, I’m done with work, I’m lying, because the work day for me has still a long ways to go. But if I say, no, I still have more work, people get confused. I try to get around all of this by saying I have lots of “projects.” But yesterday some friends pointed out to me that this concept of “projects” is very new in Hungary and that I seem unusually project-oriented. I think I call them projects to convey that yes, I have a lot to do, I don’t have gobs of free time. The friends who pointed this out understand that way of living. They have lots of projects too, though they might call them something else (in Hungarian, “program” or “terv”).

In short, my work day is not done; it rarely is! But as for the details, never mind.