Finding Home in a New Here

“To settle in the landscape means to stop our wandering and say: here!”
-Christian Norberg-Schulz, The concept of dwelling (1985)

Tonight, I am saying goodbye to a two-family house I once called home. Doykeit, a queer Jewish co-op in Chicago, was started in 2016 by half a dozen people who wanted to share time, space, resources, and dreams about what a healed city—and world—might look like. For me, Doykeit was simply where I lived for a little while. It was where I fell in love with Judaism, where I built friendships that still sustain me, and where I rested my head after some of my longest, hardest days. Several years ago, I said my own goodbye to Doykeit when I moved back to New England, and in a few hours, I’ll have taken one plane, one bus, and one train to say goodbye again, because Doykeit is closing its doors after ten years.

Like many other projects that bear the same name, Doykeit endeavored to embody the Yiddish concept of “hereness”—a sociopolitical way of celebrating diaspora. At its core, doykeit invites us to build life exactly where we are, with exactly what we have. It asks us to dream beyond nationalism and the violent stories it tells. It asks us to name the lie that we can only find meaning somewhere else: across a border, back in time, after we become different, more assimilated versions of ourselves. It holds us accountable to the beautiful, painful, transformative work of staying put. And yet, tonight, as current and former Doykeit residents gather to start the process of letting the house become a memory, the irony is impossible to ignore: what happens when the place that taught us to be here is no longer there?

If we consider doykeit in its entirety—not just the name of our wacky house (I assure you it was very wacky), but a spiritual and ethical practice in healing the wounds of exile—the answer is clear: we keep moving. We honor our connection to the home and the people we shared it with, we thank god to have found it in the first place, and we trust that we’ll feel home in a new here, maybe even sooner than we think. It’s a framework that feels exceptionally Jewish to me, because, well, it is. But also because Judaism is prolific in its discussion of beginnings and endings (and structures, for god’s sake). It’s part of our tradition, and thanks to SVARA, I trust our tradition. It sounds like a Hallmark card, but I’m finding comfort in the fact that Doykeit ever began to begin with. That I first found myself there feels like a miracle. I know that focusing on beginnings rather than endings might be a little too glass-half-full for some of y’all, and I totally get that. But if we crack open Jastrow, I think the case for beginnings becomes a little more compelling. 

One of the first definitions of the word  רֵאשִׁית (beginning) reads, “a first gift, the remainder of which is distinguishable.” Here we find that beginnings, by Jastrow’s definition, have to end. Beginnings occur, and what follows must be acknowledged and celebrated as separate. To extend the metaphor a little bit, our lives are distinct from our singular, fleeting, explosively momentary births. I’m picturing gazillions of tiny sparks stretching dizzyingly in every direction, creating comet-like tails of light, streaking across the ancient dome of the night sky. I’m picturing my 28-year-old self hauling boxes into a house of people I didn’t know but would soon come to depend on. A first gift, that’s for sure.

For a lot of people, learning at SVARA can be that first gift. And as long as SVARA has existed, our invitation has never been to arrive to a singular place. Instead, we invite folks into the type of learning that can live everywhere. A practice that can begin and end as many times as it needs to.

This summer, Queer Talmud Camp returns as one invitation among many to begin again, and we invite you to come however you are. Older. Wiser. More at peace. More disabled. More exhausted. Happier. Fatter. More like yourself. With new names, new bodies. With grief, with hope, with excitement, with love. Losing a place like camp—or returning to it knowing it will not be the same—can feel terrifying, but we’re here to hold it together. Alongside camp, we invite you into all different kinds of learning, other rhythms and spaces, other ways to change and be changed by the gifts of our tradition. Daf Shenati. Queer Talmud For Beginners Mind. Chevruta + Shiur. The Oral Talmud. The SVARA Library. SVARA has never been about sticking to a single path, or dwelling in a singular place. It has always been about getting to know our tradition and how much it has to say about the relentlessness of change. Wherever you find yourself this season, however you’re showing up, there is a place for you, here.