Building Hedges: What the Rabbis Taught Me About Managing ADHD

(Cross-posted to State of Formation)

The [Great Assembly] originated three maxims: "Be not hasty in judgment; Bring up many disciples; and, build a hedge for the Torah."

-Pirkei Avot 1:1

End-of-year report, first grade:

“Rebecca has the ability to be an outstanding student. She has a tremendous amount of knowledge and is eager to learn. Although she has wonderful ideas, she has produced very little work that would give evidence of this. Her inability to attend to the task at hand and to complete her work has caused her great frustration this year.”


By fourth grade, I have learned to perform reasonably well in school. But my work is disorganized, and I’ve picked up the nickname “Hurricane Rebecca,” reflecting the disaster area that is my desk. 


By the time I’ve reached high school, I’ve learned to game the system. Despite my disorganization and last-minute work habits, the work is easy enough for me that I build up an eminently respectable academic record, and manage to graduate in three years.

I enter college with designs on a biology major, but first-year bio and chem classes prove my undoing; the pass-fail option is my salvation. Religious studies is interesting enough to me that I put serious work into it. But I still start papers at 3 am the day they’re due. I worry that someone will discover that I’m not working hard enough, and as I get more seriously into the subject, the stakes get higher. Somehow, I graduate with high honors. I’m sure it’s just a matter of time until I get caught.


In my second year of grad school—last fall—I meet with my advisor for my independent reading. He tells me to shut the door. “This is not graduate-level writing,” he says. “You’re in graduate school, and you need to get serious.” He pauses. “How many hours a day do you work?”


The jig is up. 


I tell him that I’ve suspected for a while that something’s wrong with me, but that I can’t afford to see a therapist regularly right now. 


“Then sell your books and see one. Your brain is your most important tool. If you were a dancer you wouldn’t make excuses about not taking care of your feet.” He continues, “I wouldn’t be telling you this if I didn’t think you were smart enough to do this. It’s clear that you are. But you’ve got to decide to undertake the discipline necessary. What we do in the academy is a discipline. It’s unnatural. You have to train yourself to do it.”


That February, after spending two months not writing the thesis I need to have a draft of by April first, I finally get my butt to a therapist. I get an official diagnosis of inattentive-type ADHD, and begin a course of Adderall.


The first night I take it, I read and annotate two books in three hours. What’s more, I haven’t wasted energy stalling, so I actually enjoy it. By the end of March, I have a complete draft of my thesis. This semester, ten months later, I haven’t pulled a single all-nighter, because my work gets done on schedule. And for the first time, I’m completing work that isn’t required for my classes.

For the vast majority of this improvement, I have to credit drugs and therapy. However, learning Rabbinic texts (a practice I began regularly this summer) has helped me understand the way my brain works-- and the ways to manage that--much better.
After my first academic taste of Talmud [1] as an undergrad, I seem to recall joking about it being “religion with ADHD.” The way the sages seemed to leap from one topic to another, seemingly unrelated one, was comical, albeit uncomfortably familiar to me. Consider Bava Batra 73a, which begins as a commentary on a mishnah concerned with the proper protocol for selling a ship. By the next page, 73b, we have gotten here:

"Rabbah bar Hanah further stated: I saw a frog the size of the fort of Hagronia. (What is the size of the fort of Hagronia? Sixty houses.)"

Yet, if Talmud was religion with ADHD, it was also religion for the clinically anal-retentive, built upon series of rules and practices that were so obscure and finicky as to be absurd—Mishnah Berakhot 7:3, for instance, prescribes a lengthy and specific blessing for a meal with ten thousand guests. But, if ten thousand and one are present, the prescribed blessing is short and generic. The documents themselves are separated into categories within categories—first, general orders, or sedarim, then tractates within the orders, chapters within the tractates, verses within the chapters. And the methods for commenting on texts within the Rabbinic genre are themselves subject to very particular rules.

What seemed a ridiculous contradiction at the time made much more sense to me once I started learning about ADHD. In their 1994 book, Driven to Distraction, psychiatrists Edward M. Hallowell and John J. Ratey write, “Structure makes possible the expression of talent. Without structure, no matter how much talent there may be, there is only chaos…The ADD mind is like spilled mercury, running and beading. Structure is the vessel needed to contain the mercury of the ADD mind, to keep it from being here and there and everywhere all at once.” (Hallowell and Ratey, 1994, 221)

Talmud, and Rabbinic texts in general, might be understood to work the same way. When one interprets a text, whether a mishnah or a verse of Bible, the order of the day is atomization: each verse is a complete unit in and of itself, and any other verse from the canon is fair game to use as an intertext—that is, a text to throw against it, to react with it, and to generate an interpretation—as long as the interpreter can make it work. Which feels a lot like free-associating, and seems like it could easily disintegrate into interpretive chaos.

But. There are rules in place, structures to contain the madness. There is an end that must be achieved, an interpretive problem that must be resolved. Often, the impetus for the interpretive chaos in the first place is some problem or irritant in the original text, something that doesn’t fit with another text or with a larger principle. In Between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds, Christine Hayes writes, “[a given mishnah may be] ambiguous in the sense that it contains a gap of information. The gemaras must work to fill that gap.” (Hayes, 1997, 57)

The initial stimulus—a problem to be solved—structures the whole interpretive section, reeling it back in at the end to the original text. The discussion may go far afield, but it always has to bring itself back to the text at hand. Eventually, it must come up with some sort of resolution to the task it has set itself.

The quotation at the top of the page, from Pirkei Avot (“Chapters of the Fathers,” a collection of ethical maxims found in Tractate Avot of the Mishnah)—specifically the line about building a hedge around the Torah— is one that has bedeviled me ever since I was introduced to it.

The traditional interpretation is that one must guard the commandments of the Torah from transgression by strengthening them (so, if the Torah says, “don’t go to thus and such place,” I should not even go within, say, a mile of it) I always read it as an expression par excellence of stiffness, hideboundness, of religious or doctrinal inflexibility.

Now, I see an alternate meaning. Building hedges—building limitations around one’s behavior—is a way of structuring one’s day-to-day life. In setting myself a schedule for the day, in insisting I accomplish a certain number of tasks before I can goof off, in creating small rituals (my cup of tea, my morning crossword, the sweatpants I wear to work) around which I structure those tasks—I am building hedges. By limiting my initial options, I increase the number and variety of things I can accomplish.

ADHD forced me to see the need for that lesson. The Rabbis taught it to me.

---

[1] “Talmud” refers to the collection of Rabbinic legal texts, or “Oral Torah”, which has two parts, Mishnah and Gemara. The Mishnah is a collection of legal traditions from the Tannaitic period (70-200 CE); the Gemara is a collection of commentaries on the Mishnah from the Amoraic period (200-500 CE). There are two Gemaras, the Palestinian Talmud (closed c.a. 400 CE), and the Babylonian Talmud (closed c.a. 500 CE).

Making Comics

(All content in this post, images and otherwise, belong to me. If you wish to reproduce an image you have found here, please ask me first.)

As everyone who knows me in real life knows (because I won't shut up about it!), I'm currently working on my M.A thesis. And as many who know me in real life also know, I'm working on a graphic prologue and epilogue to it.

In the past, I've done comics the old-fashioned way-- pencil, paper, felt-tip pen, correction fluid, and a whole lot of erasers. For short, one or two page graphic essays, this is probably quicker. Anything longer, though, and it becomes quite labor-intensive. Further, the paper-and pen method has very little room for error-- too much correction fluid and it's obvious, too much erasing and you risk tearing the paper, etc. And because I do everything that you're not supposed to do when I draw, I need to work with a medium that lets me screw up several times until I find the line I like. Finally, paper and pen scanned in just doesn't look as professional. There are eraser marks, smudges, built-up bits of white-out, etc.

So, bearing all this in mind, this summer I invested in a Wacom Cintiq 12x graphics tablet and some graphics software (Photoshop Elements and ArtRage Studio Pro). Best. Decision. Ever.

Now that I have something *fairly* close to a completed page of my prologue, I thought I would post the steps I use to get there. Click on an image to embiggen.

1. First, I write a script in M.S word. I organize it by panel and set apart the text that goes in speech bubbles, etc.



2. Next, I draw out a panel sequence in Photoshop, using the line tool.




3. Still in Photoshop, I add the narration text.




4. I then import the Photoshop file into ArtRage. Here, I start thinking about where in each panel the drawings will go, and I add the speech-bubble text.




5. I add a new layer, and do rough sketches of each panel using the pencil tool. I do this in blue so I can see where my sketches were when I draw over them in my final medium (pen, in this case).




6. Drawing time! I start by going over my sketches in black pen and correcting flaws in my line. This usually involves a lot of scribbling, erasing, and redrawing-- one reason I'm so grateful for how forgiving the tablet is! Then I begin shading. In this case, I'm continuing to use felt pen for this and doing the shading in greyscale. I've always loved comics, a la Edward Gorey, that use lots of tiny, precise cross-hatching to shade, but at this point I have neither the technique nor the patience to do that for more than about two panels.




7. Sometimes I will add a watercolor wash for background shading or more dimension. Then, once I'm satisfied with what I have, I'll remove the blue pencil layer. Ta-da! Actually, this page isn't quite done-- the bottom panel, as you can see, needs some more work. But for now I will leave it alone and move on to the next page!




And that's how a comic is made. By me, that is.

Do Religion Scholars Solve Problems?

The following is a recent email exchange between me and S.'s dad. I had sent him the intro to my thesis after he inquired about its accessibility to the educated layperson. I asked him specifically to comment on its readability, and any other general reactions he might have. He sent this response:

I just read the introduction. It sounds very interesting, but left me wondering (since I know nothing of your field) - given that there are no facts in the scientific sense of the word around religion, is this in a sense a Talmudic argument where you quote the sources and draw your conclusions? This isn't a criticism, but a real question - in my field, a purely opinion piece, even well cited, isn't a thesis if it doesn't provide a new method for solving a problem (or even explaining a problem), but I guess a solution isn't part of your field?

This question was an unanticipated result of having someone outside my field read my work. Within our own disciplines--and even our broader fields, as I think this is true of the humanities in general--we tend to assume that, while a layperson may need jargon defined and may lack the grounding to understand more complex arguments, the basic gist of "just what it is that we do in religious studies/philosophy/etc." ought to be fairly self-evident.

I sent the following response:

As you correctly note, in my field there aren't necessarily discrete "problems" and "solutions" in the same clear-cut sense that there are in yours-- though there are facts about the texts we examine: one cannot accurately say, for example, that the shema is a duotheistic creed. And it is true that in some sense my field is purely composed of opinion pieces, though we attempt to make them consistent and logically plausible.

Nevertheless, I think that many of us in religious studies are concerned with real world problems-- how, for instance, ought a member of x tradition act in y situation? How can a Christian and a Muslim engage in a peaceful and mutually respectful dialogue that does not glibly elide real particularities of tradition and differences of belief? Or, as I think the base problem my thesis attempts to engage may be reduced to: how can a religious legal system which mainly bases itself upon received tradition engage constructively and justly with modern scientific knowledge, such that it may best serve those who subscribe to it?

I want to interject here to clarify that the question "What is it that religious studies does" is something of a misnomer, because there are multiple subdisciplines of religious studies. Someone who is mainly a text (e.g, Hebrew Bible) scholar is going to be asking completely different questions and have a mostly different toolbox in terms of secondary literature, languages, historical knowledge, etc., than someone who is mainly a theologian, though the questions and toolkit one scholar brings to the table will often be of great help to the work of the other.

Even in the less "applied" parts of religious studies, there are problems and solutions: one biblical verse, say, poses an interpretive problem that throws off the interpretation of its larger text. Is there a way to understand it, whether by translation or historical context or what have you, that it makes more sense in context, or is the reader to conclude that her interpretation of the larger text is mistaken? Alternately, is she to conlcude that the verse does not belong in this text at all and was inserted by a later redactor who found the message of the larger text problematic? And what are the implications of all these possible solutions for those who believe in this text-- or for those who study the time of the text's origin, or the history of the tradition?

Ultimately, if one buys the arguments of various epistemologists, all disciplines basically involve the action of the mind (reason) upon input of some sort (data)-- whether that be sense (empirical) data, received tradtion, revelation, or internally generated data. This is as true of the sciences as it is of the humanities. The difference between the two is that, since the sciences work with sense data which can be independently verified and in which variables can be controlled and isolated, these disciplines can work with a greater degree of certainty and specificity. In Kantian terms, the sciences deal with judgments of experience-- that is, anyone, given the same tools and conditions, will experience an object in the same way and such that they will come to the same conclusion.

The data those of us in religious studies work with mainly involves what Kant would call judgments of perception-- the experience of the object will be different from person to person. We deal with the vagarities of belief and emotion; of experiences that cannot be objectively verified; with moral questions that, because the belief in a supernatural other is involved, cannot be put in purely utilitarian terms. So clearly, we can't work in terms of "problem x requires solution y, due to factors l, m, and n." This doesn't mean, however, that we don't think in terms of problems and solutions-- we simply accept (if we are intellectually honest and respectful of other people; seeing them, warts and all, as equal human subjects) that many times these solutions will be messy and imperfect (not that science doesn't deal with messy and imperfect, but this is our baseline!)

I think that ultimately what a scholar of religion does is to process in some way the data of human belief. Neurologists and psychologists approach it from a scientific perspective as a physical phenomenon. We apporach it from a non-scientific perspective as a cultural and often (though not always-- I have known my fair share of atheist and agnostic religion majors!) as a divine or supernatural phenomenon. For us this data includes sacred texts, sacred art, food, ritual practices, ritual objects, personal testimonies, etc.

As far as solving problems is concerned, I suspect most people accept that religion is a major factor in a number of human problems, if for no other reason than it is an integral part of human life. The argument can be made, of course, that the solution is to remove religion from human life. This is a legitimate contention, but one which I think betrays a shallow understanding of history and culture, not to mention causality; furthermore, I think that for better or for worse religion will not disappear from human society any time soon. A more pragmatic approach, and one that I think the best religion scholars take, is to understand how religion functions in society. If we do that, it will be far easier and more effective to work within diverse religious traditions to ameliorate problems that are directly related to them.

And, for that matter, problems that aren't. Decades out, the American Civil Rights movement remains one of the most powerful testimonies to the ability of a religious movement to create positive social change. (My friend Kelly has done academic work related to this.) Understanding just how religion worked in such a context may prove an invaluable blueprint toward solving other issues-- issues of justice and freedom-- that cut across all divisions of culture, ethnicity, and belief.

My entirely personal, non-academic opinion regarding the live sex demonstration at Northwestern

Presumably many of you by now have heard of the event linked below, in which a professor at Northwestern held a live sex demonstration at an optional, after-class lecture and discussion that was tied to a human sexuality course:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chibrknews-northwestern-to-pay-for-live-sex-toy-demonstration-20110302,0,3942305.story

Since I seem to spend all my time these days writing about sex and ethics, I feel as though I ought to weigh in on the subject, for the benefit of the approximately 1 percent of people I know who actually read my (very infrequent) blog posts. Therefore, keeping in mind the appropriate disclaimers --I am neither a professor, nor an administrator, nor a lawyer, I wasn't there and therefore cannot verify the particulars of the event, etc., etc.-- there are conditions under which I would not condemn, and perhaps even encourage, a sex demonstration in an educational context.

These conditions are as follows:

1. All involved parties must be fully informed in advance that they will be witnessing sex acts.

2. The event must be optional-- there can be no coercion involved.

3. Pursuant to the above conditions, all involved parties must explicitly consent to being involved in (whether as witnesses or active participants) the acts in question. This presupposes that all involved parties are of legal age, etc. to be able to consent.

4. Due to the power dynamics involved, students may only participate as witnesses.

5. The demonstration must be directly and demonstrably related to the course material.

Based on the (limited) reading I have done about the specific event in question (and bearing in mind again that I wasn't there), it seems as though all of these conditions were met, though really any demonstration should have been planned in advance rather than added on the spot. Nevertheless, once it was clear the demonstration would take place, it appears that the audience was warned several times as to the graphic nature of the demonstration and given ample opportunity to leave the room. (I do think, however, that the lectures ought to have asked the class specifically whether the proposed demonstration was okay with them.) Since the lecture was tied to a class on human sexuality-- which, according to the course description quoted in the above article, "[treats] human sexuality as a subject for scientific inquiry" (presumably therefore including observation...)-- it was clearly relevant to the course material. Furthermore, "the...demonstrators led an hour-long discussion after their shocking act." [1] Obviously this wasn't performed for the sole purpose of titillation-- the students found the demonstration thought-provoking at the very least.

Obviously I have not touched on-- nor am I qualified to speak to-- the legal issues involved here, or the probably massive headache this has caused for the school's administration due to these legal issues. However, speaking strictly from my own ethical perspective, I don't think it was necessarily wrong. Was it, practically speaking, a dumb thing to do? Most likely. But no one was victimized, no one was hurt, and a bunch of college students (who, as Dan Savage points out, "[have] access to, and [have] accessed worse, via Northwestern's online network." [2]) actually got to have an intelligent, non-judgmental discussion about sex after seeing a sex act. To quote Savage again, "every kid on campus watching fucksawandworse porn should be so lucky as to have that exposure followed immediately by a discussion lead by one of the country's preeminent sex researchers."

(A final disclaimer-- it appears that the professor in question has an iffy history with some trans and other sexual minority communities. I honestly don't know enough about the guy to comment one way or the other, but in any case, I'm not writing specifically about him; rather, I'm writing about the ethics of an action he happens to have taken.)

[1]http://www.theawl.com/2011/03/that-northwestern-human-sexuality-class-was-the-best-course-i-ever-took

[2]http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/03/07/joseph-bernstein-does-not-own-a-fucksaw

A Proposition-- eliminating the "Appeal to Nature" fallacy

The fallacy of the "Appeal to Nature" rests in a dualism-- the erroneous notion that humanity is fundamentally separate from nature. This engenders the belief (on which the fallacious appeal depends) that any modification humans make to their environment is prima facie "unnatural"; it also engenders the belief that, as separate from nature, humankind is somehow immune to the consequences of its modifications. To re-introduce humans (and for the theologically inclined, God) into nature (cf., for example, the work of Hans Jonas, or Lovelock and Margulis's Gaia hypothesis) helps us greatly in eliminating this dualism. If we further understand that "nature" is not static, we can deconstruct the fallacy by retaining an inherent value to nature as an (all-inclusive) entity on which we all depend, while simultaneously rendering "unnaturalness" a meaningless category. Rather than judging a phenomenon, action, or concept on whether or not it is "natural", we therefore judge it based on its consequences for the natural system (and/or particular elements thereof) of which we are all part.

Is this tenable?

On the sexualization of pre-teens: A sex-positive, feminist viewpoint

Current Music- I Watched The Temple Fall (The Shondes)

This is partly in response to my cousin (first cousin once-removed, I believe? Or is it second cousin? I always confuse these things) Miryam's post on "Juicy" clothing (which I had to look up, as I'd never heard of it) and the sexualization of pre-teen girls.

A couple of caveats: first, I'm not a parent, and I accept that my views on this issue are lacking the experience and perspective that comes with being one. That said, I WAS a teenage girl fairly recently, which brings with it a different sense of perspective.
Second, as the title of my post indicates, I'm a queer, sex-positive feminist. This means that I come at this issue with certain pre-determined beliefs and assumptions about sexual morality and gender.

Like Miryam, I'm bothered by the implicit message of the "Juicy couture" line of clothing (though it's worth pointing out that this line is HARDLY the worst offender: Feministing highlights some really egregious examples)-- namely, that the body of a pre-teen girl is prime real estate for the advertisement of commercialized sexuality.

My concern, however, has less to do with sexuality per se; rather it has to do with the fact that this kind of clothing is a result, as well as a perpetuator, of a culture that sees female sexuality as object rather than subject and defines the ideal of female sexual attractiveness as passive, submissive, and childlike-- "Lolita-chic", if you will. I also think this culture tells girls that their greatest asset is their nascent sexuality-- in other words, why bother studying when you can marry a nice doctor? And make no mistake-- the vast majority of this marketing is directed at girls-- you may see padded bras sold to six-year-old girls, but I doubt you can find correspondingly padded underpants marketed to boys.

The other side of this coin is that it's female sexuality that's seen as dangerous and as a sign that our collective morality is slouching downward. We criticize the behavior of sexually forward teen girls, and yet our concept of manliness is based in part upon a man's conquests. For a further exploration of these double standards, by the way, I highly recommend Jessica Valenti's informative and entertaining book, "He's a Stud, She's a Slut, and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know"

And I don't believe this culture is a result of being too open about sex; on the contrary, I think NOT talking about it makes it worse. Blaming feminism and sex-positivity for this phenomenon also overlooks the fact that objectifying young women is nothing new; for instance, a quick look through my iTunes library turns up several British folk songs about fair young maidens falling in to bad situations with handsome rakes, rambleaways, and saucy sailor lads; indeed, one, "The Gentleman Soldier", sounds like an 17th-century rendition of "Bitches ain't shit":

It's of a gentleman soldier, as a sentry he did stand
He saluted a fair maiden with a waving of his hand
So boldly then, he kissed her, and passed it off as a joke
He drilled her up in a sentry-box, wrapped up in a soldier's cloak

"Oh, come, my gentleman soldier, now won't you marry me?"
"Alas, my dearest Polly, these things can never be,
"For I have a wife already, and children have I three,
"Two wives are allowed in the army, but one's too many for me!"

And the drums are going a rap-a-tap-tap
And the fifes they loudly play
Fare thee well, Polly my dear,
I must be on my way.

I also don't think it's a question of secular vs. religious; I find the father-daughter purity balls common on the Christian Right profoundly creepy, for many of the same reasons. The marriage of teenage girls to older men is common among Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints-- and again, the same trope of the prepubescent, submissive woman as the height of attractiveness is at work here. On the other hand, I know of many relatively secular parents (including my own!) who didn't buy such clothing for their daughters, mainly for the reasons I've described.

So I don't like these clothing lines one bit. But I don't necessarily think they exist because our current culture is any more sexualized than any other. I think they exist because our current culture is particularly consumerist, and the makers of this clothing are simply capitalizing on well-established misogynist trends. (Note that this doesn't excuse them one iota!) I don't think the answer is less sexual freedom or sexual frankness. On the contrary, I think the answer is more frank (and age-appropriate) talk about sexuality, within a cultural context that teaches teen girls--and boys-- to respect themselves and others as whole beings.

Who's on First

While mucking around in my files of undergraduate papers today, I found a reflection I'd written for a course I took on Oberlin College's memorial arch (which structure commemorates the Oberlin missionaries killed during the Boxer Rebellion).
I actually ended up hopping between two of the arch's columns, rather than walking through it, as I said I'd do here. But I rather liked what I'd written:

(Rebecca Levi, 2007)

I’m walking through the arch.

I should state up-front that this isn’t at all to discount its deeply problematic nature. And I do, despite all my talk about the complicated nature of the issue and my disdain for symbolic gesture in favor of action, find it problematic. While I believe that the Oberlin Band had none but charitable intentions, I also believe that missionary work is at its core a fundamentally destructive enterprise, and cannot, by its very nature, ever completely free itself from its associations with racism and cultural triumphalism. Additionally, there’s no denying that, well-intentioned as the Oberlin missionaries may have been, that their very presence in the Shanxi Province of China directly rode the coattails of Western Imperialism. And the exclusion of the scores of Chinese people also killed in the Boxer Rebellion—even those directly connected with the Oberlin mission—is inexcusable. The addition of the plaques is too little, too late. In this sense the arch is at worst a paean to cultural Imperialism, and at best a monument to liberal naiveté.

So my decision to walk through the arch is not a dismissal of the concerns raised by King’s (then-college president Henry Churchill King, who commissioned the arch) folly. On the contrary, it is a shouldering of their burden. After all, I am heir and subscriber to that same liberal mindset of the Oberlin Band, that mindset that says that one can go out into the world and make it better for one’s having cared enough to act; that mindset that led to our late, lamented motto: “Think one person can change the world? So do we.” Since 1900, our understanding of just what it is that changes the world for the better has evolved, but the belief that we can and must be the agents of that change, I think, endures. With the desire to change the world must come the willingness to examine all the consequences of (and the motivations behind) the change we wish to effect. When I walk through the arch this May, it will warn me of the price of not fully and objectively examining one’s aims.

And a word about the structure itself. When it was built, and even years after that, it may well have been what I characterized it as earlier, “at worst a paean to cultural Imperialism, and at best a monument to liberal naiveté.” But that was a century ago. Since then the arch has generated years worth of controversy and dialogue. Can the reaction to a symbol change the meaning of that symbol? I believe it can. Ironically, one reason I have decided to walk through it is that so many people have walked around.

Two summers ago I visited Israel for the first time in my life. When I found myself at the Kotel—the Western Wall, the last remnant of the Jerusalem Temple, and the holiest site in Judaism—I realized I didn’t quite know what to make of it.The wall represented the last gasp of the Temple cult, whose demise marked Judaism’s shift from a hierarchal, priestly creed to a religion based on study, knowledge, and disputation—in my opinion, the best thing that ever happened to it. So I wondered why I should be praying at a structure that represented longing for a past that was better left in the recesses of history—where we came from, but where we were surely far beyond.

Then I saw the branches growing out of the cracks in it, and a pigeon sitting far above my head in a little nook. I felt the stones—dented and worn now, not smooth and uniform as they must have been in Herod’s day—and I saw different people praying their own prayers, and I realized that monuments take on new meaning as they experience history and people imbue them with their own interpretations and stories.

I understood, then, that even old stones can change.