Cradling the Torah

Source: Cathleen Falsani's Sin Boldly: A Field Guide for Grace (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008) 159. Quotations are in italics.

I'm not Jewish, and in that little [synagogue] gathering of a dozen or so people, I think everyone there knew it. Still, when the [Torah] scrolls got to me, the woman next to me, without a moment's hesitation, placed them gently in my arms, like a newborn baby. I've yet to conjure up the words how that moment of inclusion felt.

I can identify with Falsani here, but I can't explain why. There have been times in my life when I have been welcomed in this manner, but I don't remember what those moments specifically were.

Many people love to share who they are with outsiders. I know this because I have attended two Jewish institutions of learning as a non-Jew (or so I am in their eyes; actually, I have Jewish ancestry). When I was at Harvard, I attended an independent Seventh-Day Adventist church that was predominantly Latin American and Caribbean, and the people there always made me feel welcome, although my race is different from theirs. Even when I visited an Ethiopian synagogue in New York, in which the rabbi called America "Babylon" and "Egypt," the people there welcomed me, even though I couldn't tell from the sermon if they liked white people or not.

I don't experience that kind of welcome in all houses of worship, so I probably shouldn't expect it everywhere I go. I know of one woman who visited an orthodox synagogue for a class, and no one talked to her. No one even came to take her money when the collection plate was handed out!

But Falsani is describing more than a welcome. There she was, an outsider in a synagogue. And there was the Jewish woman sitting next to her, who put in her arms one of the most sacred objects of the Jewish religion. That's more than a welcome. I'd call it a welcome plus.

And that sort of incident doesn't sound foreign to me, so I must have experienced it. I just can't identify when.

There's one moment I can think of that comes close, though: On Thanksgiving, my cousin's one year old boy handed me his prized giraffe doll and said to me, "Raaa!," which is his word for "giraffe." He was sharing with me something that was special to him. Stuff like that has happened to me, when people could've easily looked on me as an outsider or a creature from outer space. I can still feel the effects of grace, but it's not always clear to me what the act of grace was.