There are topics I tend not to tackle over here, for the sake of many things, including the privacy of family members—money, sex, religion. Sure, I skirt around them a little bit and sometimes dip a toe into some unchartered waters.

Today I’m jumping in. With both feet.

I guess in the {slightly butchered} words of Walt Whitman, I’m exercising my right to use this space to sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the blog.

You see, the thing is, my soul is feeling rather uninspired lately. Actually, this has been going on for quite some time.

Yes. Today we are talking about religion. 

I guess in the words of Michael Stipe, then, that’s me in the corner, that’s me in the spotlight, losing my religion. 

My family became what you’d probably call Modern Orthodox Jewish when I was fairly young, elementary school, 5th grade, I’m almost certain. What this meant—extremely loosely according to no one but me—was that my family kept a completely kosher home, but sometimes ate cheese pizza at a non-kosher restaurant, my mother didn’t wear pants but also didn’t cover her hair with a hat or a wig, we were completely shomer shabbat, meaning that we kept all of the sabbath laws for 25 hours from Friday night to Saturday night each week.

We moved to a neighborhood that was closer to the Orthodox synagogue—that my parents were founding members of—so we could live within walking distance. We started going to a Modern Orthodox summer camp. Our traditional family was changing. A lot. And that didn’t only mean giving up Saturday morning cartoons.

I won’t lie, though. I absolutely loved it. When you are a kid, you don’t get caught up in the rules and the minutiae of it all. What you get is an instant community. You become instantly connected to people who do the same thing as you do every single week, every single day. There’s tremendous comfort in this. You get a constant flow of dinner and lunch invitations and you get the opportunity to reciprocate. You get 25 uninterrupted hours each week with your hardworking Type A+ parents — they are forced to turn off from work and turn towards you. So many of my favorite memories with my family happened over a Shabbat table, noshing on baked goods, learning to play Hearts, and laughing.

I didn’t think about the hows and whys and the questions.

I just did it. Because I was a kid. Because my parents were doing it. Because my friends were doing it. Because my community was doing it.

Interestingly, it wasn’t until I spent a year in Israel at a yeshiva to become more inspired about my Judaism that I completely and totally lost my inspiration. Instead of learning wonderful things abut this wonderful religion, instead of feeding my faith, I spent a year (when I was 18 years old) learning how to be a proper Orthodox Jewish woman. I learned rules and rules and then more rules. I learned all of the things I would have to do to be a wife and mother. It felt very unnatural, it felt very forced, it brought me nowhere closer to god.

Many of these rules and regulation made no sense to me.

But no one was asking questions about them. They were simply taking pages and pages of notes, learning how to do it. Learning what to do when you dropped milk into your chicken soup and other things that still baffle me to this day.

So I didn’t ask. I just did. And I became a {mostly} proper Orthodox Jewish wife and mother. 

I followed the rules. (Well, most of the them.)

And when I followed more and more rules and spent so much time trying to do them right, I completely lost all of my inspiration and desire to do them. I couldn’t get excited about serving a Shabbat meal to friends and family because I was too worried about making sure my timer on my Sabbath mode oven was set right. (That’s a simple example, but it’s the truth.)

There were moments as a young mama, when I was up nursing a wee one late into the hours of Friday night, crying because I couldn’t stay awake to finish the nursing session without my usual television distraction. (That’s a selfish sounding example, I realize, but it’s the truth.)

Uninspired.

So I just threw up my hands and decided not to do all of the things that made me feel uncomfortable, detached, uninspired. I just couldn’t picture myself raising my children to do things just because my parents did them, just because their parents did them.

And for a while this worked for me.

But it’s not really working any more.

Because here’s the thing.

I desperately want to be inspired again. 

I desperately want my kids to be inspired.

I just don’t know where to start.