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).

I have won at Garlic Spaghetti

Crescent Dragonwagon (yes, that's really her name), in her excellent cookbook The Passionate Vegetarian, gives a vegetarian version of Spaghetti Carbonara entitled "The One, the Only, the Greatest Garlic Spaghetti" (p. 864, if you're interested.) And it is awfully, awfully good. I've tried it now several times, and I totally get why she wishes "to have this recipe chipped on [her] tombstone as [her] greatest contribution to human happiness." But I've never gotten it quite right, and I'm a little ashamed to admit why.

See, she tells you:

Don't wuss out on the garlic...or you'll miss out on one of the very best dishes known to woman or man. 

Thing is, she calls for 7 to 8 cloves of raw garlic for a two person serving, and when I tried this the first time I made it, my head damn near flew off.

Subsequent attempts to tone it down a little bit helped only a smidge with the bite, while reducing the depth of flavor. But tonight, I finally got it. The trick, as it turned out, was to use 6 or 7 cloves-- but to saute half of them in butter until they just begin to caramelize around the edges, and use them as you'd use the bacon in traditional (and treyf) Spaghetti Carbonara (I also added some bits of roast, marinated chestnut.) I also added some lemon juice and rosemary to the egg sauce to compensate for the lack of depth from reducing the raw garlic.

The verdict from me & S.? Unanimous orgasm faces upon first bite.

Recipe after the jump. But first, an admonishment of my own-- do not, under any circumstances, try to cut down on the butter, egg, or cheese. As Rachel Maddow said (originally of mojitos), "Yeah, [garlic spaghetti] is not a health food." Trying to turn it into one will make the deity of your choice weep tears of blood.

Also, I have no pictures. We ate it all too quickly. So sorry. Or, you know, not. (Edit: Made it again, and got a picture.)

On Binge Drinking

Recovery Position: So your drunk doesn't pull a Jimi Hendrix. 

Pursuant to my adventure this weekend (short version of the story: S & I assisted a VERY drunk undergrad who had locked herself out of her house)-- some thoughts, in no particular order:

• Should anyone find themselves in a similar situation to the one we were in: if you are even THINKING about calling the rescue squad, CALL THE RESCUE SQUAD. While you are waiting for the rescue squad, here is a guide for how to attend to them.
• Binge-drinking culture is frustrating and upsetting, particularly in its effect on young women.
• I see this culture expressed far more here at [Big State University] where I attend grad school, than I did as an undergrad at [Offbeat Liberal Arts College]. Not that people didn't like intoxication there; they loved it. On the other hand, we had no greek life, pot was probably as popular (if not more so) than alcohol, and if someone was getting trashed, there was a very strong possibility they would be quoting Dostoyevsky in the process. Which is why I occasionally am still shocked.
• I suspect that Dan Savage is largely correct when he says that one thing feeding binge-drinking culture is sexual puritanism: specifically, as long as society frowns on displays of sexual agency (particularly by the female-identified), people will get blackout drunk, have anonymous sex, and then blame the booze.
• Would I have behaved differently if the person who needed assistance had not been a.) female, b.) white, c.) young, or d.) clearly middle class? What is the correct way to balance fighting one's internalized racism, sexism, and classism, while nevertheless maintaining a legitimate concern for one's own safety (the legitimacy of said concern, by the way, extends only as far as male vs. female bodied--much as I may not like it, I'm not exactly Venus Williams, and I'm not sure how much it would be wise to insert myself into a situation with a drunk who was bigger and stronger than I am.)
• Lurid pink drink mixes are a.) representative of a frustrating trend of disguising alcohol as candy and thus encouraging drinking to the point of blackout, b.) specifically targeted at (again) young women, c.) perpetuate rape culture (a term I do not use lightly) by encouraging a breed of sexually uninhibited behavior that is totally divorced from any reasonable notion of agency d.) a barbarous way to treat perfectly good ethanol.
• It is appalling to me that [Big State University] lacks a medical amnesty policy. This is an excellent way to get people killed.
• As countless older, wiser friends have counseled me, there is a smart way to do dumb shit, and then there is a stupid way. I accept that, for most people, only firsthand experience will teach them that drinking to the point of blackout and/or vomiting is not that much fun. This was certainly true for me. However, the handful of times it took for me to learn this, I was in a safe environment with trustworthy people, at least one of whom was relatively sober. I urge anyone who still needs to learn this lesson to do the same.

Image by Rama. Used under a Creative Commons Share Alike 2.0 license.

"Body Parts Not Reached By Penetration of its Main Shaft"

Via Jewschool : Kosher Sex Toys, the frum set's answer to Babeland!

I'm pretty much in agreement with Chanel's read on the whole thing, especially her concluding point:

In spite of all the stuff to find infuriating about KosherSexToys.net- the need for a spell checker, the lack of clinical language, the emphasis on heterosexual marriage-it’s pretty great that this exists. It’s an important move towards more sex positive Jewish relationships and communities.

However. What I want to know is, how the hell do they get away with claiming that a pocket rocket, for fuck's sake, is "the quietest most compact and technologically advanced personal stimulator in the world today"?

Cider Bread

I've been meaning for the longest time to do some recipe posts here, and when I tried a new bread recipe this weekend, I finally had the time and presence of mind to take some pictures.

Crust Porn.

So beer bread, apparently, is a thing. I've read that a few tablespoons of beer will enhance any bread's flavor, and I've seen breads wherein most or all of the liquid is replaced with beer such that the beer flavor is prominent. It always seemed like a cool idea.

However, I hate beer. I saw no reason, therefore, why I couldn't do the same thing with hard cider. We'd recently found a tasty line of craft ciders at The Great Guilty Pleasure (that is, Whole Foods), and they make one with molasses and Irish stout yeasts that seemed like it would assert itself well in a wheaty sourdough.

Crispin "Lansolowne"

I used Thom Leonard's Kalamata Olive Bread (sans olives), from Maggie Glezer's Artisan Baking Across America as my base recipe with regard to proportions of flour vs. starter vs. liquid, but I altered the composition pretty significantly. Incidentally, if you want to get started with sourdoughs, I can't recommend the above book enough. In addition to giving fantastically detailed directions, and recommending a solid rather than liquid sourdough (more reliable and lower maintenance for those of us who actually have a life), the book itself is just gorgeous.

Oh, the Clergyperson and the Scientist Should Be Friends: one social role of religion.

Note: The following is my own speculation, and I have not grounded my assertions in data unless noted otherwise. Read accordingly.

I suspect that a faith in the existence of a force in the universe that cares about you in some personal way--a moral force, a just force, a loving and caring force--is, for many, a basic psychological need. I also suspect that this need is one major catalyst--and continued motivation--for the human phenomenon of religion. Furthermore, as the sciences learn ever more about the nature and origins of the universe, I think that this motivation may be the "last one standing." And, humans being what they are, I doubt that it will ever be toppled.

I also think it is fairly clear that that force, whatever it is, is not nature-- at least, not in the purely physical sense of the word. For every anecdote purporting to demonstrate the innately compassionate character of natural systems, there is one to demonstrate the ruthless and brutal character of the same. Altruism and cooperation may be natural, but so are rape and murder; Jane Goodall may have shown the world the chimps Mel and Spindle, but she also showed them Passion.* Nor can we say that the physical and mental development of any given species demonstrates any particular regard for the survival and happiness of particular individuals. The mortality statistics regarding human childbirth before the development of modern obstetrics, for instance, should put to rest the notion that nature gives a flying fuck about whether a given person survives the very experience that is supposed to bring them into the world.** Natural systems "care" whether a design works well enough to maintain a population at or above replacement rate. Any subsequent casualties are merely collateral damage.

BUT. The above conclusion isn't necessarily easy to come to unless you have some kind of basic familiarity with the natural sciences (and specific cases within them), and a functional (if simple) understanding of how evolution works. Given the current condition of science education (at least within the US), that is a pretty big "if" for most people.

Now. Imagine you are an average person with this psychological need. Then, imagine that you have been functionally convinced, for whatever reason, of the non-existence of God (in whatever form) and/or the destructiveness/irrationality/foolishness of religious institutions. So, religion (in the sense that it is a vehicle for some sort of faith in some sort of God) is out as a way to satisfy your need for a sense of being loved on a cosmic level. Where do you go? Even the most basic understanding of world history will tell you that systems of government, for instance, can't be trusted on a deep level, nor be expected to care for you to the degree that will fulfill your need.

On the surface, especially given the preponderance of anecdotes pushing a vision of it as fundamentally gentle and compassionate, nature seems like a pretty good option. For some reason, (probably cultural, given that the dominant Western religious narratives have been pretty allergic to pantheisms) personifying nature and ascribing benevolent intent to it doesn't initially appear to smack of theism. And since you're locating these qualities within an entity that for all functional intents and purposes can conclusively be demonstrated to exist, I suspect it can pass the initial "sniff test" among those who want to see themselves as rational or science-minded in some way.

Unfortunately--at least from a purely physicalist perspective-- it's also wrong, and wrong premises can lead to wrong conclusions. All too often, I suspect (I have no data to rest this point on, though I'd be interested to know if psychological or sociological data can back my hypothesis up), basing your understanding of how nature works on the premise that nature as such gives a damn about you makes you easy prey for all manner of pseudoscience.

Let's go back to the obstetrics example. If you believe, for instance, that nature cares about you, and that therefore nature "designed" you (as a cis-woman) with a physique perfectly suited to giving birth, you might be likely to eschew hospital birth and obstetric care in favor of homebirth, either unattended or attended by a lay midwife. And you might really believe that this is the safest option. Unfortunately, you'd be wrong. CDC data consistently indicates that homebirth with a lay midwife carries three times the risk of death to the infant  as hospital birth attended by a certified nurse midwife, and double that of a hospital birth attended by an OB (the discrepancy between CNM and OB rates is attributable to the fact that OBs see far more high-risk patients that do CNMs.) The linked source, by the way, provides in turn a link to the CDC data, so you can look at the numbers yourself.

So scratching this particular itch with nature as such isn't only inaccurate, it's potentially dangerous. It's also extremely damaging as a whole to the public understanding of science. Which is why I'd like to propose that in some forms, religion may be helpful to science as a whole. If a religious institution doesn't make foundational claims about the nature of the universe such that it puts itself in conflict with the sciences, but rather provides a social space in which a person can believe that there is some kind of a moral order to the universe, generated by a cosmic force that loves them and cares for them, I think that that institution is answering a critical social (and for many people, psychological) need.

This isn't to say that religious belief makes a person immune to pseudoscience or to attributing a compassionate persona to nature-- far from it. I would suggest, however, that if a religious institution functions as I think it ought to-- not as a generator of foundationalist claims, but as a space for fellowship, for openness to this force its participants believe in, and as a moral and spiritual impetus for just, reasoned, and compassionate action (e.g, the American Civil Rights movement)-- then it is capable of functioning for many people as a bulwark against just those sorts of errors.

* Spindle was an adolescent chimpanzee in the Gombe Stream chimp community who "adopted" Mel, an unrelated orphan chimp for several months. Passion, on the other hand, was a high-ranking female in the same community who went on an extended spree of killing and eating the infants of other females for no apparent reason (e.g, food was abundant, the other females hadn't demonstrated any aggression toward her, etc.) Goodall, Through a Window: My Thirty Years With the Chimpanzees of Gombe. Mariner Books, 1990.
** The specious claims of the Natural Childbirth movement notwithstanding.

The Value of Discomfort: Why I won't make peace with my Torah portion

I have begun to compose my d'var Torah, or drasha (an interpretation, often delivered orally, of the weekly Torah portion) for my Bat Mitzvah. My portion, not coincidentally, includes what are perhaps two of the most controversial passages in the Hebrew Bible: Leviticus 18:22--"you will not lie with a male as the lyings of a woman, it is an abomination"-- and Leviticus 20:13--"If a man lies with a male as the lyings of a woman, the two have done an abominable thing; they will surely be put to death, their blood is upon them." (translations mine)

I note in my drasha that in my research, I have encountered many mitigating interpretations of these texts, some more rigorous and thoughtful than others. However, on an academic and a religious level, at the end of the day I find all of them some kind of unsatisfying. And despite all these interpretations, on a personal level, the verses still hurt.

Both the personal hurt and the intellectual dissatisfaction are compounded by the fact that, as a lived, practiced Scripture with social and spiritual impact, their lived history is part of their being. A new interpretation, whether religiously or historically grounded, cannot remove that baggage. To say, for example, "these verses can be interpreted in terms of sexual violence" (c.f, for instance, Rabbi Steven Greenberg) or "these verses came into being in a context which could not conceive of a loving same-sex relationship" (c.f. Rabbi Bradley Artson)*-- these are good readings, some of the best, and accurate and useful as they go-- but they do nothing to address the history of the verses, and their consequences, historical and current, for pretty much any queer inhabitant of the West (and recently, the 2/3 world-- witness, for example, Uganda.) Nor can they erase the fact that when I stand before the Torah in April, I will be chanting words-- understood, if only then, in that ritual space, as God's words--that at once condemn me (as a queer person) and make me invisible (as a queer woman).

As I read them, all these interpretations ask me in some way to make peace with these texts. This is not something I am willing to do, for two reasons.

First, and more specifically, to make peace with this particular text requires me to forgive the history it carries with it. Not only am I not willing to forgive this, but I lack the authority to do so-- that belongs to those who have been hurt by it more gravely than I.

Second, and more broadly, I don't believe in making peace with Scripture in general. I think that on a practical level, this leads to a dangerous complacency. If we've made peace with a troubling Scripture, we're a great deal less likely to deal with its consequences-- and a great deal more likely to pat ourselves on the back amid self-congratulatory, patronizing intonations: "It's so wonderful we're past that, isn't it? Now let's forget it's a part of our history." Such inaction allows us to feel good about ourselves without taking much concrete action.**

On a spiritual level, I think that making peace with Scripture is perhaps not the way Scripture wishes us to interact with it. Passive acceptance is not a fitting way to receive the foundational texts of our tradition, and parts of the Hebrew Bible reflect this. Abraham negotiated with God for the lives of the Sodomites. Jacob wrestled with the messenger of God. Sarah laughed in God's face, and Miriam spoke out against Moses's arbitrary privilege.

This minor list of narratives isn't an attempt to promote a single interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, and it isn't meant to give a simplistic reading of those stories-- all of which have a dark side. God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah anyway, and when Abraham himself was asked to do something abhorrent, he went right along. Sarah and Jacob, for their moments of bravery and integrity, had more than enough douchbaggery on their tallies to balance it out, and Miriam's reward for her integrity was leprosy and shunning. Yet these dark sides, I think, prove my point: Scripture is complex and troubling. It provides no unblemished (human) role models, no uncomplicated morals, and plenty of "What The Hell, Hero?" moments--many in which the hero in question is God. To make peace with it is to do a grave disservice to a wickedly complicated, history-soaked, deeply divine, and profoundly human text.

It's a lot easier to give an interpretation of a text that makes it palatable, than it is to grapple with the implications of belonging to a tradition whose Scripture is so vexing and whose history is so morally ambiguous. But in my opinion, anyone who tells you that religion is supposed to be easy, or even comforting, is full of shit.

If you are a theist, then theism-- inasmuch as it functions in a faith that the universe cares about you in some way, or that something about you is eternal-- yes, that's comforting, because that's fundamentally divine. But religion-- the social, textual, cultural, historical, and moral context into which you place that belief-- religion is a human thing. Religion is HARD. It should force you to take a hard look at the interaction between the better angels of whatever divinity you believe in and the reality of your existence-- and if you're looking at that honestly, you will realize that you will always come up short. You will also realize that as long as you keep working, that that fact is OK. Honest engagement with religion requires you to live with ambiguity and paradox. It should always keep you just a bit off center. It should demand that you think critically about yourself and about it, and it should require that when you see something that isn't right, in it or in yourself, that you speak up and DO something.

Obviously, throughout history, there are countless examples of religion failing to function in that way, and the consequences have often been horrendous. The consequences of the texts in my parsha are but one body of testimony to that fact. That, too, is part of our shared Scripture as practitioners of religion. That, too, we must grapple with. And that is why, as a practitioner who loves my tradition and my Scripture(in the same challenging, frustrating, adversarial way that I love my species, despite semi-regular exclamations to the effect of "I HATE people!")-- I will not make peace with my parsha. I will chant it with respect and awe, with frustration and profound anger and hurt. And I will stand at the bimah and deliver a d'var torah in which I tell those assembled that in no way should they forget, excise, or avoid this text. Instead, they should wrestle it, as Jacob wrestled God's messenger.

And then they should try not to be as much of a douchebag as he was afterwards.

*In no way do I wish to imply that either Greenberg or Artson fail to do the hard work of engaging the texts and their vexation. Both do a masterful job of it. I am simply using interpretations that they use as part of this process as stand-alone examples here.

**I also do not wish to imply that providing a welcoming and inclusive worship space does not count as valuable action, but I would suggest that avoiding these texts without then making concrete changes-- for example, actually making queer worshipers visible and performing queer life-cycle events-- does not actually count as providing such a space.