I’ve shared my Jewish divorce experience here and on a freelance writers forum, www.FreelanceSuccess.com, and received much support and also much dissent. In fact, on the forum and here, I was criticized for criticizing Orthodox Judaism publicly and in mixed (read: Jewish and non-Jewish) company.

I chose to delete two comments to my Getting the Get post rather than allow them to post because, hey, it is my blog and I can do what I want, right? I debated whether to allow them or not for several days and ultimately decided that people can talk about me, criticize me and wag their fingers in my direction all they want but here, my blog, should be a safe haven for my experiences and my words.

But the whole thing brought up a fascinating topic. And that is: should we publicly scrutinize communities to which we belong? Or should we relegate that discourse to the community itself, among others who know the context of every issue?

My opponents’ biggest criticisms of my words were some of the details – make that rationales – for how the rabbis treated me during the get process. And what I have to say about that is this: I’ve been an Orthodox Jew for more than 10 years and I understand the desire to sweep any unpleasant interpretation of the way we live under the rug.

Many Orthodox Jews – and in fact, people in every community just about – rationalize the crazier parts of their rituals and observances to make them palatable. If we didn’t, we couldn’t do them. It’s only a certain kind of person who can say, God told me to, and leave it at that.

I’ve never been a believer of blind faith. And it’s not a Jewish value. In fact, every Jew is obligated to understand and know the parts of Jewish Law that he, or she, is obligated to observe. But not everyone does. More often than not, people turn to rabbis, neighbors, relatives or congregational peers for assurance, explanation, and support for what they must do.

It’s a big no-no in the Orthodox world to speak ill of our ways – at all, but especially in non-observant or, God Forbid, non-Jewish company. But how can a system stand strong – even one that has endured across millennia – without real dissent, in strong voices, clear across the rushing waters of the brook?

My experience was simply that – my experience. All too often, though, it is common – women ignored in favor of men in a more extreme religious milieu, free-thinkers cast aside for willing sheep.

The Sages in Jewish tradition were not sheep. They were free-thinkers. They offered dissent. They spoke out, often amid much criticism and even sometimes excommunication.

That doesn’t mean they were wrong.

One of the posts to my blog suggested that I don’t agree with Orthodoxy and should instead consider Conservative Judaism as a more fitting community for me. The poster, anonymous at that, said that I could then keep kosher and Shabbat but think whatever I want.

Well, dare I say, any Jew can and should think whatever she wants, no matter the denomination she officially associates with. The delineations between ideology in Judaism are philosophical and minute – it is incumbent upon individual people to find the most meaningful way to exist as a Jew, in real time.

It doesn’t matter where I spend Saturday morning or attend Rosh Hashanah services – as long as I find higher knowledge, enlightenment and inspiration in this rich tradition. It’s just between me and God – that’s what it all comes down to.

Traditional Judaism has for a long time dealt with the imperfections of a system made by men, in a certain time and place, influenced by social mores and norms. When it comes to divorce, there are countless chained women out there – agunot, in Hebrew – whose husbands will not give them a get, so they are never free to remarry.

You can imagine how I must have felt when my ex-husband, as designated by the civil courts, was reluctant to move quickly on the Jewish part of the marital dissolution. You can imagine how I must have felt when the rabbis declined to call me back – again and again. You can imagine how I must have felt when the process scurried along only when I threatened to write about it in a public forum.

The power of the pen is crucial for true freedom. I will not lay down my pen. It is my strongest tool.

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They had been here before but not with this view.

Before, it had been a complicated journey fraught with tension and anxiety. Old rivalries flared like gunfire in the night, and the night was always short this far north in the summer.

It was here that she’d tried one last time to make the marriage last. And it was here that they’d celebrated a last anniversary, peppered with as much hope as they could shake onto the table.

This time, he was gone and the air was clear. Clearer than it had ever been. The same cottage was more peaceful, the air more breathable, the children even happier as they ran with their cousins on the wet grass.

On the first day, she took the children sailing on the big lake. It was choppy but sun-glowing and the boat rode the waves with ease. The oldest boy steered the ship, awash in six-year-old lost-tooth smiles.

But when they left the channel and sailed onto the open lake, he lay down on a cushion and closed his eyes. It wasn’t long before the younger children were asleep on their mother.

And she lulled into the motion of the boat, an arm around each child, a serene smile dancing at her mouth.

This type of freedom – of thought, of motion, of adventure-seeking – never happened when he came along. The serenity, the peace – the one feeling she had sought all the months of the tumultuous divorce – was conspicuously absent all the years of the marriage.

Later, she would reflect for a brief moment on their wedding day but only for a moment. It was when she had stood on the dance floor, hands clasped in front of her fluffy white satin dress, watching him perform with his college friends. He was 30 and she was his wife and he sang into the microphone like it was a show he’d been waiting for all his life.

She stood there, not sure what to do, bopping to the music, a smile pasted on her face. Looking out at the sea of people, she saw women in their long sleeves in August, some wearing hats to cover their hair like religious women do. This was the world she’d chosen, and he was her first mate.

She knew then what she knew on Lake Michigan – that patience would’ve gotten her farther, that there is no way to rush the natural course of the elements. That, given time, she’d get where she needed to go, and be happy to arrive.

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Six rabbis in black suits sit around a table in the basement of a musty synagogue. The women sit across from them. Folding chairs come down from the tabletop. The rabbis don’t meet their eyes.

The head rabbi, shuckling forward and backward in his chair, opens a blue folder in front of the woman getting divorced. “Page 14,” he says.

She scans the words. It’s written like a script. There are words for “rabbi” and words for “wife.” She is the wife. Was the wife. Her civil divorce was official two months ago.

“Are you wearing any rings?” he asks.

She shows her bare hands.

He goes through the litany of things she must do. Respond to questions. Say certain Hebrew names. Listen to the mumbling of six rabbis reciting the archaic language of her Jewish divorce again and again and again.

He leads the men through the motions. He folds the get, a big piece of beige paper with thick, large black Hebrew writing. He has read it to her and translated it. She trusts that he was accurate.

He folds it in half, folds it in thirds, folds it again, then tucks one end into the other end. His fat hands struggle with the tucking. It takes several minutes and the room is silent. Her heart has been pounding since she walked through the door. She pulls at the jean jacket she is wearing, so no skin shows in front of the rabbis.

Finally, the paper is tucked into itself. The rabbi gives it to another rabbi, the one her ex-husband designated to represent him. She is told to stand. She is told to cup her hands a certain way. She is told not to grab the paper until it comes to its own rest in her cupped hands. Her heart thumps madly.

The rabbi puts the folded paper in her hands. She doesn’t move. When it seems to have settled, she folds her hands like the rabbi said. But he is not satisfied. Do it again, he says. She wants to scream at him to go fuck himself but she doesn’t. She doesn’t say a word. She folds her hands again over the paper. He makes her do it one more time until he is satisfied.

Then he tells her to lift her hands over her head. Then she must tuck the paper under her left arm. Then she must walk to the door. Then she must return to the table and put the stupid piece of paper on the tabletop. Then they must read it again, all six men, all mumbling, all standing a mass of black beards so their faces blur into one.

She glances at her friend several times. Her friend’s tiny diamond nose ring glints under the fluorescent lights. They smile at each other nervously.

When they finish reading, the rabbi pronounces her Jewish divorce official. He cuts the paper in six lines with a pocket knife and promises to keep it safe in the files of the board of rabbis. The board of rabbis who refused to return her calls two months earlier because she was the woman trying to wrest free of her marriage. The board of rabbis who responded when her ex-husband finally called.

But no matter now. It’s done. She is free to marry whomever she wants. Except she cannot remarry for 92 days. And she cannot marry a cohen, a high priest, because she is a divorcee.

But she should have only simchas, he says. And she should raise her children to be good yiddin, he says. When he says she should find only happiness, she bites her tongue because there are tears in her eyes.

After he says he’ll mail her a copy of the divorce decree, she and her friend scurry up the stale steps and out into the sunshine. She is hot in her jean jacket so she takes it off. Her bare arms drink in the sun.

“I’m so glad I was with you,” her friend says.

“I’m free,” she replies.

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A distant roll of thunder did not dissuade them. They bumped along the rutted road, past the white-boxed beehives, through mud kicking up at the tractor’s wheels and alongside the low raspberry plants, where people bent in crouches, freeing soft furry berries from the sharp tack of the bush.

Far along at the back of the grove, they rolled to a stop. The older children climbed down. The mother stepped off, reached for the baby at the top of the steps. He went to her in the way that children have of fully trusting the most familiar person. Like water’s easy flow down a forest ravine, coursing from source to source.

The tractor rolled away, completing its circle. The people ambled between rows of bushes tall enough to muffle sound from the next row.

Each child swayed a white plastic bucket. The grass underfoot was wet. “Pick the blue ones,” the mother told the baby. “Not the green ones.” The baby reached for a low branch, slid a just-picked blueberry into his mouth. None dropped into his bucket.

In the distance, more thunder grumbled its call. Another mother looked at the gray sky. She listened for another tractor but the road was still. “We could walk back,” one of the older boys suggested.

“If we get wet, we’ll have a story to tell,” the young mother told her children. And they were comforted by her voice.

Around the kitchen table later, their small hands reached into the bowl for taste-popping berries they had just picked in the quiet orchard. The kitchen was silent. Outside, the rush of the highway traffic a mile away sounded like a fast river the mother remembered from Wyoming.

The taste of summer on their tongues. A forever imprint.

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I don’t think anyone deliberately builds a life until they’re forced to end the way they’ve been living for years. Like after a divorce.

Think about it. When you were a teenager, gunning toward college, career, and relationships, did you really plan it out? Maybe you had an eye toward your profession, graduate school, a city you wanted to move to. Fine. But really, who other than right-wing Orthodox Jews sits down and maps out all the details of their future life so they can find the right partner at 19 and move forward in checking the goals off their list?

I didn’t. For years, all I wanted was to fall in love. I did well enough in school, so I went to the University of Michigan, which I chose because I wanted a college where I could theoretically meet a new person every day and still not know everyone.

I chose my profession – journalism – by default. No interest in law (though my father thought my natural argumentative capabilities perfectly positioned me for it), no stomach for medicine, on the fence about business. I loved to tell stories. I loved to talk to people. I wrote for the Michigan Daily.

But it was my desire for deep relationships that sidelined everything else. Looking back, I wish I had been more concerned with myself and my personal goals and exploration than finding true love.

Because I didn’t find it and then I didn’t land a hot New York Times reporter position or become an overseas correspondent in Hong Kong or take the financial world by storm writing for the Wall Street Journal.

There’s no sense lamenting the past, though. I’m sitting in a pretty good place now. I have three brilliant and sweet children, a nice house with kind neighbors, and a new business that keeps me busy and offers work I love to do.

I eliminated my biggest source of personal stress. That takes strength. And now, I sit beside the open window, the cool morning air on my bare arms and Justin Nozuka’s invigorating voice on my iTunes.

Constructing a life. Where to start? Except I’ve already started, I am in the middle of it, in fact.

It’s like a driving course with tires to maneuver around. I can get an MBA but I won’t be moving to Boston to attend Harvard. Can’t uproot the kids. I can travel – when they are off with their dad or with them in tow.

And what of love? A recently divorced friend says all she needs in the wake of her tumultuous marriage ending is sex and companionship. She’s with a man whose kids she hates.

I don’t know about love. I’m a little burned, to be honest. Every day I hear of another person cheating, another bad relationship, another facade crumbling like dust in the night.

If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that relationships don’t provide anything if you’re not already solid and happy. And if you are, what role do they play?

I’m still looking for the answer to that one.

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In honor of Asher’s sixth birthday, we strolled up and down supermarket aisles, tossing into our cart cans and boxes to donate to Yad Ezra, the local kosher food bank. With my three kids in tow, I shlepped 30 pounds of canned goods into the non-descript building on 11 Mile Road and watched as my wide-eyed kids learned how those without a way to buy food are helped by the donations of generous others. Which, on that day, included us.

I have always loved the concept of tikkun olam, or healing the world, most about Judaism’s values – the idea that we have a responsibility as a people to help others, both within our community and outside of it. And it’s been a priority for me to instill a value of giving in my children.

I read recently about a kosher soup kitchen in New York, Masbia. On opening day three years ago, it served eight people. Today, it’s 160 meals per week.

Poverty, hunger, and handouts are something we Jews keep on the Q-T. I hear more about fundraising efforts for Yad Ezra and Mazon than I do about the individuals who are helped. Perhaps it’s a way to preserve dignity. But I think we’re also deluding ourselves into thinking that misfortune cannot befall us.

Cost of living increases, widespread unemployment, the weakening dollar, astronomical fuel prices are but a few of the reasons many families are having a hard time stretching their dollars for everyday necessities.

In more observant Jewish circles, there are the added costs of day school, keeping kosher, and synagogue membership.

I’ll admit, I have a hard time rationalizing the expense of day school. Perhaps if I loved the curriculum or focus of a particular school, if I believed in it more than any other option, I wouldn’t struggle so much with the idea of paying the bill.

But I believe we are setting ourselves up for failure. It IS possible to be a committed Jew without breaking the bank. In fact, one might even argue it’s a Jewish value to live humbly and generate identity from the home while intermingling in the world at large for the most impact all-around.

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At my bat mitzvah in 1984, Patty towered over the other pubescent girls, at 5’10″ (I think). She wore an Esprit cropped pants and shirt outfit and belted out the lyrics to some Duran Duran song alongside my friend Lydia, who would later be my first post-college roommate in New York.

Then Patty moved to Indiana and we lost touch. Until we reconnected on Facebook a few months ago.

When I posted that my divorce was final in May, she sent me a message, offering her support and the information that she, too, had ended a marriage and eventually found the happiness she wanted and deserved.

Just this week, Patty emailed me on Facebook and asked how I was doing.

The emotions hit me 3 or 4 weeks ago, I wrote back. I don’t miss my ex at all – but it’s the whole death of a dream, the end of the life I thought I had, and the realization that I have to build a new foundation, a new life.

She wrote back early this morning and said she remembers those emotions well. It amazes me that 24 years after I last saw her – and connected on the superficial level that middle-schoolers do – she has become someone I can turn to in a moment of need. Ah the power of social networking. The world is really a much smaller place than I ever could have imagined.

Today’s Detroit Free Press and Detroit News both ran articles about the impending closing of 18 Starbucks coffee shops in the state of Michigan. A few years ago, David Crumm, then the Free Press religion writer and now the director of www.ReadTheSpirit.com, first came to my attention through an article he wrote about Starbucks as the new church.

I don’t remember his wording but he basically analyzed the Starbucks model as one that brings people together from disparate origins and creates the sense of welcome and belonging that one would find in a house of worship.

The reasons for the closings were cited as more competition (Biggby Coffee, Dunkin’ Donuts, and McDonald’s lattes and mochas) and a bad economy in which consumers aren’t shelling out $3 for a cup of joe.

Is there a community element to it, too? Has Starbucks overstayed its welcome? Have we moved on to new ways of connecting?

Or are we brewing our own strong wake-up cups at home now, shooting for self-sufficiency as we stay close to home and don’t waste our precious dollars on the gas it takes to get from one place to the next? 

Oh – and speaking of connections, check out the new Detroit Writers group at ning.com – and join!

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“Oww!”

“What?”

“Dolphin bit me.”

Shaya is in the blue bathtub, pouring water from a plastic pitcher onto his leg.

“Bad dolphin!” he says.

I kneel at the side of the tub, my elbows on the cool ceramic.

“I wish I could remember everything about the way you are right now,” I say.

He pours water and smiles.

“Are you a boy or a girl?” I ask.

“Eli is a girl, Ashi is a boy, and I am a boy,” says my eloquent two-year-old.

“And what is Mommy?”

He smiles, looks up at me with eyes narrowed as if he has a plan.

“Mommy is happy.”

At the kitchen table, Asher and Eliana are playing War.

“You are so not going to win this one!” Eliana.

“A ha!” Asher.

Last night: “Mommy, what is my talent?” I look quizzically at Asher. “Other than art.”

There’s going to be a talent show at art camp next week. He wants to know what to do. This morning, the director tells me the younger grades will do group skits. One is doing the chicken dance. They’re making beaks and furry ears to wear. It’s art camp, after all.

This afternoon: “Mommy, I don’t want to perform in the talent show.”

“That’s ok, you don’t have to,” I reassure him.

After the bath: “I. Am. Not. Going. To Bed.” Shaya.

He trails around the house in pajamas that say I Love Mom on the chest, his light-blue blankie dragging along the stone floor.

I am remembering them this very moment. All the important moments. Their special intonations, their sun-kissed voices, the surprise in their eyes at the sweet drippy juice of a ripe tomato at the farmer’s market.

Tonight we made pizza. All three stood on chairs at the counter, stretched the dough I made this morning on the cookie sheet. Pizza sauce, chopped olives, shredded cheese. Into a 450-degree oven.

I will remember the moments. I have to.

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I was so happy to have the kids back yesterday. They returned around 3, then collapsed on the couch to watch the rest of The Little Mermaid movie they’d started the day before. Shaya had almost fallen asleep in the car, so when I lifted him up, he put his head on my shoulder and fell into a sweet slumber.

I sank into the couch between Asher and Eliana. In some way, I could touch each of my children – a hand on Eliana’s leg, another hand stroking Asher’s thick curls, Shaya’s tender heart beating against mine.

When Asher tumbled out of his father’s car yesterday, he was grumbly. “Nobody played with me at camp today!” he said as he burst into tears and collapsed against my shoulder. I held him to me, swirling my hands on his back and shushing in his ear.

Asher feels so deeply. He is a sensitive child, but a friendly one who, five minutes after we arrive at the park, will be paling around with kids he’s never seen before nor will ever see again. So it’s concerning to me that three days into art camp, he’s come home twice in tears.

Last night, I tucked each child into bed and lay next to them for a few minutes as their breathing fell into rhythmic waves. They slept soundly the whole night through, even during a ferocious crackling thunderstorm.

This morning, I’ll walk Asher into camp – the last day, I told him, if it’s no better – and see what all of this is about. Loneliness among people is the worst kind of rejection. And he’s only six.

It’s humid outside. The yard smells of damp. It’s as if its been beaten in the night and the grasses, trees, and flowers are surrendering to what is bigger, stronger than them.

In my oven, eggplant sizzled soft this morning already. I sauteed bright yellow summer squash with onion and tomato for a gratin, whipped flour, yeast, water, olive oil and salt in the Cuisinart for pizza dough. Tonight the kids, my grandmother and I are making pizzas from scratch. We’ll gather around the counter, each of us pounding a circle of dough flat, then decorating our pizzas with colorful, tasty toppings. A work of art. Filled with love.

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The bowl of muesli, yogurt and fruit couldn’t have been more beautiful. A pinwheel of banana ovals atop silky white yogurt. Between the layers, almond slices, oat flakes and sunflower seeds salted just slightly. In the center, a pinnacle of apple shavings topped by one perfect raspberry.

It couldn’t have been more beautiful and it was just breakfast, 7 a.m., the sun rising in thick humidity, a lazy orange ball in the sky outside the restaurant window.

“When you eat alone, you still cook for yourself?” Her voice was incredulous. Why would I expend the energy, why would I pour effort into making something delicious and beautiful and more-than-satisfying for just myself?

But aren’t I worth it, I wondered? Last night, I poured a glass of Four Graces pinot from Dundee, Oregon (one bottle that the airport security jerks didn’t steal), tossed pinto beans with anchovies, olive oil, purple scallions from the Ann Arbor Farmers Market, and thick chunks of smooth avocado and spooned some roasted cauliflower florets onto my plate. Robin Thicke sang on CD. I sipped my wine and lingered, alone.

I ate pedestrian foods last night and this morning, but they were colorful to me, nearly poetic. And being alone – sometimes I revel in the silence and the freedom and sometimes I cringe.

Beside my computer, I’ve propped two pictures from my trip to Oregon. One, the view from Dog Mountain: a blue ribbon of the Columbia River cutting between the foothills of Mt. Hood, so many trees rooted in the dirt, softening the landscape.

The other, the overlook at the lighthouse in Newport: the rich blue of the Pacific swirling into white around rocky cutouts, vibrant yellow wildflowers and harsh grasses directly below my perch.

Both soothe me and invigorate me when I am hard at work all day. With an eye toward the future, guided by what didn’t work in the past, I am stringing a necklace of incredible moments.

Isn’t that what it’s all about? Living in the moments until you’ve amassed a veritable collection of happiness that sinks into your skin?

Today I heard a story about a woman who was born to a Jewish mother and adopted by a Jewish couple. The Orthodox rabbis are telling her, without verification from unopenable adoption records, she can’t be considered authentically Jewish.

The woman observes the Sabbath meticulously – doesn’t flip her lights on and off or cook from sundown Friday until sundown Saturday, attends synagogue with enthusiasm.

They’ve told her she must convert their way – or her children will have problems getting married under Jewish Law. One rabbi said he’ll only convert her if she lives separately from her husband for several months – so it’s as if their marriage never existed. Another rabbi would do the conversion – if the woman never wears pants again (skirts are considered more modest in some Orthodox circles).

What about how she lives every day? What about her self- identity and feelings inside? What about the meaning she has crafted from the mundane, the choices she has made, the virtues she follows?

I can’t get too caught up. We all pick the rules and systems we want to follow or fit in with. If she cares enough to go along with their mishegoss (Yiddish for craziness), that’s her choice.

But I’ve had it with fitting in. If my divorce has taught me anything, it’s that at the end of each day, I have only to look at myself in the mirror and decide whether I like what I see. It’s only my voice that echoes in the night.

My moments are mine and mine alone. I may share them with others, but I take them with me when I go on my way and hold them like wildflowers late at night.

At breakfast this morning, my friend said it wasn’t until she stopped sleeping on one side of the bed she’d shared with her lover of 12 years that she fell in love with someone new. She had to flail her arms out and sprawl across the invisible divide between her side and where he used to sleep.

I still curl up with my pillow on the right side of the king-size bed. But it’s only been two months. That’s a drop in the bucket of relationship time. An eye-blink. Not even a full season.

I’ll take the metaphor and live with it. Only by letting go – of a former life, of the belief that if we follow this one more rule set by someone else we will finally fit in – can we truly become who we are meant to be.

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