Month: August 2021

Reflecting on My Mother’s Yartzeit/מהרהר על יארצייט של אמא שלי

Today is my mother’s Yartzeit, the anniversary of her death according to the Hebrew calendar. It’s been nine years since she passed away, but it’s always a hard day. I still have memories refreshed and renewed every year of that day and the days preceding it. I remember the events leading up to her hospitalization, the time agonizing over whether or not she would ever get any better, and eventually tearing my shirt on learning that she had left this world. It’s a hard time, my mind is only partially occupied with anything I’m doing, the other part of me is nine years in the past and thousands of miles away.

May my mother’s soul ascend today and be bound with it’s Creator

I decided to leave my mental health program early for the day, I couldn’t focus on anything; I just wanted to go home and be alone and watch the few home movies DVDs my dad sent me a while ago. I haven’t had a DVD drive for my computer since I made aliyah, so I bought one so I could finally watch them. I learned so much just from watching them and seeing what my, or our, past was like.

Remembering Her

I asked for the videos to remember everything that time has taken from me when it comes to memories of my mom. It was a few years after she passed away that I forgot what her voice sounded like, and a few more years after that when I lost the ability to recall exactly what she looked like without having to look at photos; and for a long time even looking at the photos just brought too much pain to be worth the remembrance.

My dad’s camera wasn’t that old, but you get the idea

When I lived in Houston, I hardly had any photos of my mom in my apartment, it was too much to bear. Even though years had passed, the trauma of those final days were burned into my memory. For a long time, I could only associate my mother with feelings of loss and regret, the tragedy of her passing consumed all of the pleasant memories I had. Even when I would think about happier times, it would eventually make me realize she wasn’t there anymore. There was nothing more painful than picking up my phone to instinctively make my nighttime call to her only to realize their was no one on the other side.

Watching her through these videos I see so much of my mother, and my father and the rest of my family, that I had forgotten; as well as parts of her I would have never remembered her if not for these videos. Besides finally being able to hear her voice again, I got to see her living life in a way that was long gone by the time my furthest memories go back. I don’t remember much before my parents got divorced; and I think that my parents’ divorce colored a lot of what I remembered, as if the negative aspects pulled themselves together in my mind to dominate whatever hard drive space I have.

Divorce is not fun, and my parents look nothing like these people. Stock photos don’t capture real life sometimes.

I got to see them happy, and happy together, something I can’t remember on my own. I saw my mother’s amazing smile and heard her laugh that laugh that was so infectious. She truly lived life in the moment and to the fullest, and I can see it in how she is constantly smiling.

The other thing that I got to see from the videos was just how much my parents loved me. It’s easy for me to remember the fights and arguments I had with my parents and the ones they had between each other, but it’s difficult to remember those times when they showed unbridled love for their only son. Whether it was my doting on me at my birthday, picking up the mounds of wrapping paper from Christmas gifts, or even just bragging about the interests I had as a child. There was one video of me getting ready to take a bath (glad that wasn’t shown at my wedding), and the sheer joy my mom showed doing something as trivial as bathing me impressed on me just the sheer amount of love she felt towards me. You can see it in her eyes, how I was the most precious thing in her life.

Changing my perspective of today

Over the years, my thoughts on this day and Mother’s Day have changed and grown, reflecting both my growing maturity as well as the distance of time. In the immediate years surrounding her death, I was inconsolable on this day. I had to take the day off, because I couldn’t stop crying no matter what I was doing. The pain was just too real and recent, I dealt with the aftershocks of her passing for a long time. My therapists think that one of my memories of her in the hospital contributed to my post-traumatic stress disorder, and I remember it being the one memory that triggered complete disassociation when I was in a recall session in the hospital. Those were rough years when I couldn’t look at a picture of my mother without bursting into tears.

It took me a long time before I could look at this picture and just feel love instead of sadness.

Slowly, slowly, things have changed. It is still a hard day, but I can cry tears of joy alongside the ones of sorrow. I used to spend all of my time just missing her, wishing she was there by my side when I needed her. I passed by so many life milestones, like getting married and graduating law school, without her in the audience. In grief counseling, they told me that a person imagines their future with certain people in it, and when they pass away, the shock of that altered future shakes us to our very core. Watching those home movies, I imagined a world where instead of playing with me, my mother was playing with a future grandchild (G-d willing). I imagined her being at my thirtieth birthday party, coming to visit me in Israel. I imagined what it would be like to see what her children’s lives had become.

I don’t have to imagine though how she would feel. I know that she would be proud of me, even now in my mental treatment program, and that she would love me all the same. I know that I would stay up until midnight or later just to talk with her, but that I can really do that anytime I want. I can access her love without having to feel the pain and the despair, because her love was stronger than any of that.

My favorite photo of my mom and my family

I’m lucky that my mom got to know my future wife while we’re dating in the last few years of her life. She passed away before the wedding, but she knew that she was the one for me. When my mother was on her deathbed, my future wife (then girlfriend) was studying abroad in China. My wife ended her study abroad early and took the next possible flight to Houston once she found out what had happened. The day my mother died was when my wife saw her in that state for the first time. I was in the hospital room by her side, alone in the room, when my wife came into the room. Suddenly, a doctor called my name and I left my future wife alone with my mother in the hospital room. My wife said to my mother that she was there for me and that she was going to take care of me. My mother was completely not functioning at the time, she was barely clinging to life. Her brain had serious and irreparable brain damage. She was in hospice care, and we were all just waiting. When my wife said those words, my mother took her last few breaths, and my wife came out into the hallway to tell me that she was gone. My mother waited until she knew that someone was there for me when she was gone; that’s how strong her love was.

What lies beyond

I can’t promise myself that one day I won’t feel any pain on this day, and I think that’s all right. My psychiatrist said to me today, it’s ok to be sad, and it’s ok to be in pain; it’s just what we do on these days that matters. My mother wouldn’t have wanted me to just sit and be a wreck over missing her, she would have wanted me to smile and laugh like I did today, albeit with a tear, watching old movies. She would have wanted me to do something to honor her. So, today I donated to the Houston Zoo, a place she and I used to go to a lot and some of my better memories with her were as a kid going to the zoo with my mom, and later with my sister too. If you’d like to support the Houston Zoo, there are several ways (I adopted my favorite animal, the red panda), and you can check out the different ways to donate here. No pressure, just thought I would share.

If I could take anything from today and tell it to you, it’s first off to appreciate the time you have with people; because you never know when it’s going to be gone. However, I always say that, and I think I found something more profound today. Days like these where we remember our lost loved ones don’t have to be dominated by sadness and mourning lives lost and unlived, they can be points of light where we find new meaning in the lives of people we loved. People cannot be boiled down to their ends, it doesn’t do them justice to only remember the sad parts of their lives. Each person has so much beauty in them, and my mother was no different. She lived a life that I try and emulate, to live with the kindness and willingness to help others that she embodied. Our love doesn’t have to end in tragedy, it can go on in our memories. They are always with us, and their support is everlasting. I remember my mother’s life today, not just her death. To do anything else is unthinkable, because she wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. Always loving you mom, and thank you for the gifts you gave me.

The Portrait and the Void/הדיוקן והריקנות

Within an hour she manifests in twain.
By sunset, she is indescribable, uncapturable, unparalleled beauty.
Painted in hues only conceivable by the eyes,
and unable to be imitated by the hands.
All we can do is create facsimiles of her glory, the sun setting along her horizon.
In her, we see the awesomeness of G-d Hands, the boldness of His works,
the ultimate power of Creation.
As the sun’s rays bounce on our skin, we stare off into her distances and see
blues of every palette; our dyes could never begin to reflect this spectrum.
We hear the waves crashing, the tide ebbing and flowing, the power of the sea unbound.
Magnificence in reality, divinity captured in a moment.
The sun’s setting fills our bosoms with awe.

By night, she becomes an entirely different entity.
Gone is light’s warmth, gone is the pomp of the sunset, gone is the majesty.
All that is left is the darkness and the feeling of endless space;
and the sound, the sound and the feeling of the ocean’s endless depth.
You can stare into the void, never seeing the horizon, but feel the strength surrounding you.
It is not magnificent, it is humbling. It is calm in it’s power, but is unending.
This is the place where nightmares come from,
the unknowable mere feet below the surface.
Will something peer back at you from the pale, or will the emptiness
swallow you whole?

The sea is both beautiful and mysterious,
both life-giving and life-taking,
both magnificent and dreadful.
She is our eternal mother, and she always calls out to us through the waves.
We cannot help but stare and hope to see something on her horizon,
but what it brings we shall never know.

My Conversion Story/סיפור הגיור שלי

It’s a question I literally get asked by almost everyone I meet

For those of you that don’t know, I converted to Judaism. I know, shocking; Hutchison is such a Jewish-sounding last name (and really easy to spell and pronounce in Hebrew – הוטשיסון). I think being half-Filipino and not looking like your stereotypical Jew has something to do with it ( although I have been called Roma before by some guy at a convenience store, with a kippah and tzitzit on). Even though I’ve written a lot about being Jewish, this guy used to be a good Catholic young man.

This was the first regular photo of a Jewish guy in a stock images site. We don’t all look like this nice-looking man.

People are always trying to place one another, so when they learn that I converted, it’s immediately fascinating to them. Even though honestly it’s something very personal, it’s something I am constantly interrogated about. I used to mind it when people asked the question, but then I just started saying it’s because I’m crazy (that answer is a lot funnier when people know you actually have mental health problems). Really, it’s like asking someone why do they love their spouse, or what do they think is wrong with their children, or have they ever committed a crime. It’s a deeply personal question that I get asked at bars, at cafes, sitting on a bench by a random person next to me, and today in my meeting with my case manager.

I gave him the answer, so I thought, maybe I should actually write it down in case I forget one day.

It all started with a nice Catholic boy…

I grew up in a blended household. No, I don’t mean that I grew up with step-siblings (I did though and they know a lot more about Judaism than your average Gentile); I mean that my mother was a more-spiritual-than-traditional Catholic Filipina and my dad was a white not-very-religious Protestant. I remember my mother always telling me when I was growing up that her and my father had to go in front of a priest and sign some kind of document to get married in the Church that required them to raise any future children in the Catholic faith (went well for sixteen years mom).

“Put this around your kid’s neck or this isn’t official…”

So I grew up Catholic, which can mean a lot of things, so I’ll be specific. We had pictures of Jesus and the Virgin Mary in our house, we went to church every Sunday (my mom always complained that the church by our house was too modern because it had seats instead of pews), we observed Advent (Christian Hanukkah), we didn’t eat meat on Fridays during Lent, and I had my first communion and went to confirmation classes when I was old enough.

In fact, one of my earliest memories takes place in a church, or at least in a church parking lot. This was back when my parents were married, so I was a pretty young kid, and we were attending Christmas Eve mass. I remember the church where we lived at the time had this big golden sculpture that held everything for the sacraments, real awe-inspiring stuff. When we left the service, we went to the parking lot and found that our van had been broken into and the TV and the mobile phone from the console (yes, a mobile phone as in a literal corded phone that was also wireless in the console) had been stolen. We went back to the church to call the police, and I swear to this day that when the priest answered the door, he was wearing basketball shorts and eating Cheeto puffs.

Cheetos aside, I really was a religious kid growing up. I think that part of how easy it was for me to transition to Judaism, and why I never had an angry-angsty-atheist teenager phase, was because I’ve always had a very strong belief in G-d and His presence in my life. I went to Brazil when I was fourteen with my mom to visit family in São Paulo, and when I was there my mom was buying souvenirs from one of those shops that sell things carved from wood. One thing that really sparked my interest, besides the wooden ninja katana, was a rosary. When I got back, I started carrying it with me wherever I went. I learned the extra prayers for it that I didn’t already know. It really bumped up my faith level.

Before tzitzit, I was still literally wearing my religion on me

Losing my religion…or at least changing it

So, at around sixteen I started confirmation classes. They were fine enough, although as a teenager I definitely did not appreciate having to spend extra time in Church when I could have been hanging out with my friends. The priest leading the classes was nice enough from what I remember, and he always answered my questions.

There was just a certain point though where I stopped feeling it; I lost the vibe. Something about all of it just felt unreal and unlike me, even though it was all I had ever known. I started having my first doubts. I researched other religions, just out of curiosity. When I started reading about Judaism, something just clicked. I don’t know if it was the traditions, the peoplehood aspect, the emphasis on actions as opposed to just beliefs, or my own theological doubts about whether or not Jesus was really the Messiah; but something about Judaism just fascinated me.

Now, as an aside, there is this idea in chassidut that a convert is someone who was born with a Jewish soul, but it just happened to get placed in a non-Jewish body. The whole time, this Jewish soul is thirsting for Torah and Judaism, and that’s what eventually leads to conversion. I don’t know if I really believe all of that, but honestly, that’s what it felt like. When I was researching Judaism and reading Jewish texts, something just felt right.

So, one day I just told my mom that I wanted to stop going to confirmation classes. I told her that I didn’t know if I really believed in all of it, and that I didn’t think it was for me. She was disappointed but supportive, and I’ll always be grateful for her reaction. In general, she took all of my transition to Judaism pretty well, minus the whole not eventually being able to eat in her house thing.

Fast Forward through a lot of cringe stuff

When you come from an area with almost no Jews and want to convert to Judaism, you do a lot of dumb stuff. You do things like eat at your school’s cafeteria (not even kosher-style), while wearing a kippah and tzitzit. You get written about in your school paper because who the hell converts to Judaism in a school of thousands with like less than a dozen Jews? In college, the Chabad house rabbi immediately knows you’re not Jewish because you bike up to him in a kippah and tzitzit and he has no idea who you are beforehand. Eventually, I learned to take that stuff off until I was ready, but man I must have looked like a real idiot.

Not how someone should look while eating a cheeseburger at their college cafeteria

Eventually by my senior year of college, I started taking stuff seriously. I kept Shabbat and kosher, and I usually stayed at a friend’s house who was within walking distance of the Chabad house on Shabbat. The rabbi gave me the code to the building, and I would go before my morning bus driving shift to pray shacharit. After I graduated, I went to a summer yeshiva program in Morristown, New Jersey and really learned about Judaism and how to learn about Judaism. I stayed in the dorms, went to shiurim, attended fabrengens, and I even spent Gimmel Tammuz by the Ohel.

The Rebbe and his teachings have changed my life more than almost anyone else in the world.
Photo Credit: By Mordecai baron; cropped by Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:35, 1 January 2012 (UTC) – scanning photograph taken by Mordecai baron, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17867973

Eventually, I ended up back in Houston and moved to where the Chabad community was. My studying consisted of my continued individual learning as well as from a reading list that my beit din sent me, but it was also important just to live a Jewish life in a Jewish community. Seeing how daily life flowed, keeping a kosher kitchen, going to shul for davening during the week and Shabbat, and eventually dating in a kosher way. What I needed was just time to prove to them and to myself that I could do this, that this demanding lifestyle was for me. On the second of Kislev in the year 5774, I officially became Aryeh Leib ben Avraham, and it’s been a continued adventure ever since.

Yours truly on the big day

The More Important Question (I Think)

So, people ask me all of the time why I converted to Judaism. I’ll admit, it’s different and unique. There’s a lot of converts out there, each with their own individual story, and I could never speak for them, but I can tell my own story. However, I think that the more important question never gets asked.

Why am I still Jewish?

I mean, conversion is permanent, and if I was to fall to the lax side I’d still be Jewish; but I mean why stay observant? After everything I’ve been through, all of the mental health problems, all of the pain and trauma I’ve endured, how can I still remain a believing and practicing Orthodox Jew? How can I believe in a G-d that has let me suffer so much? Now that nearly a decade has passed since my mother passed away, my eyes have been opened up to all of the sadness and suffering around me. I worked closely with trauma victims for years, and I’m still paying the consequences for it. I’ve been hospitalized, days away from killing myself. So how am I still a believer?

I think it all goes back to that simple faith that I have in G-d. Even when I was in the hospital, and I didn’t feel His presence like I once did, I still knew He was there. Prayer eventually saved me in that place, it kept me going through all of the horrors that come along with being in a psych ward. I still believe in the beauty of Judaism, and how it allows us to elevate every physical object in this world to a new spiritual height and imbue our actions with holiness. I still have faith regardless of what has happened to me because I have seen the power of belief and persistence, and the wonderfully amazing things that happen in this world because of G-d’s continued involvement. I love being part of the Jewish people, and being a part of this huge shared history and tradition. I love how I am now helping to build a State for our people, and it feels like I’m living with miracles here.

I love being Jewish, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Sure, sometimes it makes my life a little more difficult, but it’s those tests that make me feel like I’m really trying at something meaningful in life. It would be easy to abandon everything, but I get more out of life now than I ever did before. I get asked the conversion question all the time, and I’ll never get tired of answering it. I’m proud that I chose this, and that I get to live my life with purpose and meaning. I think anyone can find their own way in life, and that’s what I did. It’s one decision I will never regret, and one I will always cherish for the rest of my life. May we all increase in our connection to G-d and one another, even if it means answering personal questions all the time.

Living with Tekhelet/חי בתכלת

Last Shabbat I actually went to the synagogue for morning prayers. I was up, and I couldn’t deny the need within me to connect with G-d in one of His dwellings here in the holy land. I had a dilemma in front of me however, and one that reached deeper than the simple color it embodied.

Some background explanation is needed. In Judaism, it is a positive mitzvah, a commandment, to wear tzitzit, ritual fringes on a piece of clothing. Many religious Jews accomplish this by wearing a four-cornered garment beneath their shirts with the tzitzit attached to them, either showing outside of their clothing or tucked into their pants, depending on their specific tradition.

In addition to tzitzit, there is a separate mitzvah mentioned in the same paragraph in the Torah, the mitzvah of tekhelet, a blue string amongst the other white strings. For centuries, the source of tekhelet was lost, with various scholars debating its source. In recent history, one organization rediscovered the source of tekhelet. Not everyone agrees on the subject, but this post is not the place to go into the debate on it. [Here is a great article on the debate if you’re interested]

I say this because for years following my “falling out” with Chabad, I started wearing tekhelet. I believed that it was real, and it also helped me identify more with the dati leumi/Modern Orthodox world that more readily accepts tekhelet as authentic. However, in the past few months, I reverted back to wearing Chabad tzitzit, without tekhelet. I did it out of a longing to be back in the Chabad velt, and my increasing desire to get back to my roots when I first became Jewish.

As I’ve written about, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about where I fall in the bigger Jewish world here in Israel. Tekhelet, that little bit of blue string, believe it or not, plays a big part of it. I came to Israel wearing tekhelet; it made me feel more connected here. I saw other guys in knit kippot wearing tekhelet and it reaffirmed to me that I was part of their world. I saw it on guys who looked like the me I wanted to be, settling the land and being the pioneers I dreamed about being. That’s the whole reason I’m really here, because I too want to be writing Jewish history instead of just experiencing it.

So, last Shabbat, I took out my old tzitzit and tallit with tekhelet and brought them with me to the synagogue. I didn’t know a single person there. I only understood a few words of the sermon in Hebrew. I had to move several times so that the regulars could have their seats, making me feel even more like an interloper. But, when I saw the blue fringes between my fingers before I recited the Shema, something just felt right. I felt like I had given up all of the battles I was waging within myself about who I was and was just doing what felt like it was right. It felt right to be there. It felt right to be there with my tekhelet (even if I was the only guy there with it). It felt right to feel like I was fulfilling a rediscovered mitzvah in a land renewed.

So, today I bought a new pair of tzitzit with tekhelet. My old pair is too small and worn, but I felt completely different this time buying them when I bought the Chabad pairs. When I was buying the Chabad pairs, I felt like I was buying them out of a sense of obligation, and I even felt a little bit silly since my halachic observance is no where to the level that the average Lubavitcher in Israel is up to. When I was in the checkout today, it just felt right, like I was going back to who I chose to be.

I came into the Chabad world because it’s all I ever really knew, I never really had much of a choice. I fell into it, and I’m grateful for everything it gave me. I still have so much love for the Rebbe and his teachings, I learn Tanya, and I still default in my mind to the chassidic teachings I’ve learned over the years. My view of Jewish life, of Yiddishkeit, is fundamentally Chabad; but I know what I am and where I want to be.

The Chabad life isn’t for me anymore. The people that I really look up to now that I live in Israel aren’t the rabbis who struggled in Russia to preserve Judaism. I still have immense for the Rebbe’s shluchim; but I know that deep down I would trade everything I have now to be one of those first dati leumi settlers setting up religious kibbutzim. I believe in the holiness of the State of Israel, and in the sanctity of building up this land. My heroes built the settlements on the borders, they taught the Torah of Eretz Yisrael, they set up yeshivot in Judea and Samaria after the Six Day War, they were the men and women who combined service to Hashem with labor on the land. That is who I want to be like, even if I live comfortably in a Netanya suburb.

To me tekhelet symbolizes all of this. It symbolizes the idea that something so immensely holy can be found again with hard work and science, and not abandoned to messianic times. It stands for the idea that we can change reality now, that we can change the future now. Tekhelet is a mitzvah that serves to remind Jews not only of the mitzvot, which all white tzitzit do as well, they also serve to remind us to perform those commandments. They remind us that we are a people of action, not simply of remembrance and observance. I want to be a Jewish man of action, I want to change the world for the better with my actions. If that string of blue does it for me, I’m going to cling to it, and everything it stands for.