Can you hear my voice?

Never Done (and still never done): Go to Greenwood Cemetery
Never Done: Go to Aaron Alexander's Yiddish Music series at the Sixth Street Community Synagogue

I have never been into the Greenwood Cemetery. It's always felt so far away. Then I noticed it's really, really close to where I live, and I had a paradigm shift. Does that mean that I live so far away? But I feel like I live so ... central. What is central? What is far? The other day I was walking home from brunch with a friend, when I ran into two other friends. Central! Sometimes it takes me an hour to get home, when it used to take me 20 minutes. Far! (Or just poor MTA service. Same thing as far?) When I used to live in Hoboken, I was a mere 11 minute train ride across the river, or a 7 minute (delightful but expensive) ferry ride away. What Brooklyner can get home from Manhattan in 11 minutes? And yet I definitely lived far away. So far away that only a handful of friends came to visit in the 4 years I lived there (and I will NEVER forget you, thank you so much!) So I decided to go for a run in Greenwood Cemetery. I put on my favorite long-sleeved shirt, got waylaid by my neighbor who pitched me a documentary film project (a cool one about 2nd graders making an opera) and then set out for the graveyard. And guess what? They close the gates to Greenwood Cemetery at 4 PM near where I live, and at 5 PM down on 5th Avenue, and it was already past 5. That made me feel culturally far away. I grew up with a cemetery in the center of town -- you can't close it -- there are no gates. We used to play in it, walk through it, sit on the wall in front of it. It never occurred to me that a cemetery would close for the night. But of course they do that in the city -- for the safety of people, and for the safety of the gravestones. It just hadn't occurred to me. So I ran through the Brooklyn streets instead. (I am really getting in better shape -- I ran pretty easily, and even enjoyed being outside, off the track.)

But what to do when it's already evening, and I haven't planned another thing I've never done? I decided to go to a Tuesday night music series I've been wanting to get to: Aaron Alexander's Yiddish Music Series at the Sixth Street Community Synagogue. This week, Michael Alpert was doing a rare solo show. I've had some mixed feelings about going, and they are good for ethical pondering. I like and respect Aaron without reservation. He's a really wonderful man, and a wonderful musician, and I love that he has started this music series. This is worth saying again. I could not like or respect this guy more, musically, personally, professionally. AND ... the synagogue is orthodox, and follows the laws of Kol Isha (the Jewish law prohibiting a woman from singing in public for men) which means that Aaron is limited in whom he can book into the space. I know that Aaron doesn't agree with Kol Isha, and I also know that he is honoring another promise he made to a friend and colleague by holding his series there. I want to support both Aaron and the performers in the series, and yet I don't support Kol Isha either. It's complicated, right? A really good example of what we do in Mussar practice, to examine ethical questions from all sides, and ask how is it for the other? I decided that my relationship to Aaron and my Yiddish musician friends is stronger than my relationship to the synagogue, or frankly, to my understanding of Jewish law, and that I would go to the performance. I also decided that I would write about it, to raise awareness and engage the community in the conversation.

Now .... it gets even more interesting when you start to explore the issue further. There is another wonderful performance venue that follows the laws of Kol Isha -- and this one also takes public funding for the arts. The Eldridge Street Synagogue. As a national historic landmark, it gets public funding -- and that gets into the territory of religious law and civic law, right? I feel pretty strongly that an institution that accepts public funding should not exclude women's voices. But I also feel strongly that the Eldridge Street Synagogue, which is a functioning orthodox synagogue, has the right to conduct its religious business as it will. Usually, conversations I've had about this stop here, in this deadlock. But isn't Judaism nothing if not creative when it wants to deal with the conflict between religious life and practical daily life? There's got to be a way to ritually create a public performance space that is separate from the space of worship -- so that everyone can live in the space in a way that feels holy, ethical, and whole. Omeyn.