With Roots in Heaven : One Woman's Passionate Journey into the Heart of her Faith

by Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, Tirzah Firestone

Filled with profound teachings from spiritual leaders, advice on intermarriage issues, and other practical nuggets of learning, With Roots in Heaven is a work as important as it is controversial, providing courageous insight into the core of religious belief systems.

Genres: Judaism, Religion, Memoir, Jewish, Spirituality, Nonfiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1998

Reviews

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have finally, FINALLY found the book that echoes so many of my sentiments and experiences. Such a valuable book for anyone struggling with their own Judaism!

[Michael Sasson · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredibly instructive spiritual memoir. She is a bridge across generations and wrestles with integrity with modern and timeless philosophical and developmental spiritual questions.

For example, on page 41,
"Throughout Judaism is found the idea that God requires humans in order to become manifest on earth and to complete the act of creation. In the same way, the Self, the individual godliness implanted within each of us, requires the ego to do its bidding. The relationship between the ego and the Self is reciprocal: Without the ego, the godly Self within us cannot manifest on earth. But without the Self to guide and inform our small ego selves, we lose our moorings in life, we feel hollow inside, and our zest for life disappears.
During a crisis, our ego identity is challenged. When one goes through a severe loss, for example the death of a loved one, it is common to find that beliefs and ideas that have gotten us through life thus far no longer match our experience. In our state of devastation, our old map of reality simply doesn’t work anymore. <> Then we are confronted with a choice. We can surrender our old beliefs, allowing our egos to fissure and die a temporary death while guidance from the Self reshapes us into a new, bigger form. This option, which ultimately allows for enormous growth, can feel terrifying in the short term, demanding, demanding of us nothing less than walking in sheer darkness. Or we can try to avoid the humiliation and pain of our ego’s temporary disfiguration and fight the process of change. This requires a white-knuckle approach, a holding on for dear life to what has served as our raft in the vast ocean of life even though it is full of holes."

The first paragraph recaps her elder yet still contemporary theologian and civil rights activist Abraham Joshua Heschel's argument in the book "God in Search of Man" if I remember more or less accurately Rabbi Heschel's argument.

The second paragraph previews at the level of the individual, the argument that Svara founder Rabbi Benay Lappe requires interested students to hear before they can participate in the queer Talmud study Svara proposes as the central spiritual practice of their school. See https://svara.org/crash/

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was very dissatisfied with this book and on the other I was enormously happy and grateful that it was written. Rabbi Firestone's biography is a courageous act and takes some of the first steps illuminating a kind of path we don't have much writing about. Anyone on a similar path has been going it alone until this book. I think her effort is generous and brave and I'm grateful. On the other hand, there were clearly important tensions in her family of origin (her brother committed suicide for example) and in her marriage as well, and in her experience in other faiths. These were written with a shocking void of depth and insight. She perhaps felt protective of the people in her life so didn't dwell or detail these things or shine a light into the heart of any of them. That's just kind and respectful and I respect it in turn. But they were key and pivotal - the most important things. So it ends up a sightless and unaware book about an intense and important subject. She's both writing about deep things and at the same time shutting the reader out. However, I've rated this four stars because I'm not of two minds about it. I'm very glad this book exists and thank the author.

[Roberta Lynne Ruben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you Rabbi Firestone for going through your spiritual journey without giving up on both Judaism and Feminism. Orthodox Judaism has destroyed my desire to pray. I could not see the G-d that was described in the Jewish Prayer books. I believed god was everywhere and everything. Later my reading lead me to believe that G-d is a verb and not a noun. However, being born into a Jewish family has spooked me all of my 76 years. What if I am wrong and the leaders of the Jewish religion are correct? This autobiography has raised my desire to learn about the enlightened Jewish community you worked to create in Boulder Colorado.

[Marcia G. Yerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it while I was taking my first class with her. Excellent.

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

"This event was one of my first ego deaths. Although I tried to stay stalwart and look on the positive side, my world--built upon the fragile structure of my mentors--had collapsed...Now four of my elders had ceased, in one way or another, to be guides upon the way: Danny was dead, Shulamith had gone into a territory too militant to follow, and the most beloved of all, Laya and Tom, had defected. The strength and clarity I had projected upon them had shattered, and it was upon me to find those qualities within" (p. 49-50).

"So obstinately did I cling to the life of transcendence that I could not yet see the danger I was headed for...I had welcomed a teaching that trained me to distrust myself, to relate to my feelings as negative mind-states that pulled down the spirit and were meant to be jumped over as quickly as possible....I had indeed returned to the familiar psychological ground of my childhood; only the packaging was different" (p. 105).

"In the absence of a loving heart, any form of spirituality can turn into tyranny. The true test, after all, is not transcendence but love...Does the path I am on help me to connect with others or does it separate me?... Am I being trained to listen to the voice of truth within, or am I being told what the unquestioned truth is from without?" (p. 125).

"I was utterly unaware of my own potential at the time, and I had not begun to envision myself as a person with any authority of my own. Instead...I projected my spiritual authority onto any man who fit my picture of wholeness" (p. 129).

"But in the end, I was not after simplicity; I wanted a spiritual adventure. I did not know it then, but in my quest for a mate, I needed the unfamiliar, not the common, the dark side of the moon rather than charted territory. My own likeness would not do; I was unconsciously seeking someone who was my opposite, to help bring out in me more of who I was" (p. 153).

"It was not a question of bypassing agony. I was already in agony to realize that my choices were not resolvable. It was an issue of survival. Would I be able to survive the consequences of my choices? For now they were only rejecting Frederick, but one wrong move--marriage--would lead to their rejection of me! Could I bear being cut off? Or would I, like my sister, break under the pressure of ostracism and return to the fold?" (p. 180).

"Intermarriage happened all the time, didn't it? I would be fine; I would be liberated; we would live a fine life together...Often I would wake up trembling, feeling all alone in the dark, without the personal fortitude to forge ahead into uncharted territory. Once again I felt that I was on a stormy sea at night in a pilotless sailboat, not knowing if I would make it back to dry land" (p. 188).

"'Tradition is a deposit we made in the last incarnation so we wouldn't have to learn from scratch in this one,' Reb Zalman had said. 'We don't want to throw it away, God forbid, but not everything can be adopted whole as it is'" (p. 218).

"One of the greatest tests on the spiritual path is to open oneself genuinely to new learning without losing one's own power to a teacher or teaching in the process. But failing in this regard and losing one's self is not only a normal phase in spiritual development, it is at times necessary for our growth. This process is called spiritual transference, when we literally transfer onto our human teacher or guru the superhuman qualities of God. When a transference is broken by losing one's teacher--to death, betrayal, or disillusionment--it can be extremely painful and humiliating for the student, not unlike the pain of a broken romantic relationship. So much energy and hope have been invested in the relationship that its breaking is like the shattering of a precious vessel. But if we can stay true to ourselves and our experience of loss, we have the possibility of recollecting ourselves and growing more intimate with ourselves. Out of our disillusionment, we are thrown back on our own resources. Ultimately, the experience can be used to help us detach from the external provider of guidance and begin to listen to our own innermost voice, which brings us one step closer to inheriting our spiritual power. It becomes clearer through one of these shattering experiences that the only guidance we can truly count on is on the inside. The voice of the Self--which is both us and far bigger than us--is ready to guide us as soon as we have ears to hear it" (p. 256-257).

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

A couple years ago, my fiance gave me a copy of With Roots in Heaven, Rabbi Tirzah Firestone's faith memoir, for Christmas. Although I didn't have time to read it immediately, I was fascinated by the premise: Rabbi Firestone, a middle-aged Jewish woman who has been disowned by her family for leaving Orthodoxy, is asked to give a lecture on mother-daughter relationships in Judaic tradition. To her surprise, the audience response to her personal story of disownment is overwhelming. As a result, Firestone decides that it's time to share the story of her spiritual search, marriage with a Christian minister, and ordination as a rabbi in the Jewish Renewal movement with a larger audience by writing her memoir. And I'm so glad that she did!

Firestone is so bravely honest about her spiritual journey as a young adult that it's both embarrassing and reassuring. Embarrassing because Firestone's frank discussion of her own youthful missteps--which range from run-of-the-mill pride and inflexibility to briefly joining a cult--bring all of the reader's own mistakes and youthful vulnerability to mind. But it's reassuring too, because Firestone weaves her tumultuous young adulthood into the larger story of her life--something I'm not yet old enough to be able to do--showing how her errors were a necessary part of her spiritual and personal growth into an adult.

Firestone's story is grounded in her inability to accept her family's strict Orthodox practice. By observing her older siblings' journeys, Firestone quickly learns that one day she will have to choose between pursuing her own faith journey with integrity and having a relationship with her family. For a while, she manages to keep her experiences with Arica, Est, Buddhist meditation, Hindu and Sufi teachings somewhat hidden from her family--but the jig is up when she falls in love with a Christian minister in her late twenties.

Her "intermarriage" destroys her relationship with her family. But ironically, Firestone's marriage to a devout Christian inspires her to explore her own spiritual roots, prompting her reconnection with Judaism. Only this time, with new resources and communities available to her, she encounters a different understanding of Judaism than the exclusive, inflexible version with which she was raised. By becoming involved with the Jewish Renewal movement, Firestone comes to a new practice of Judaism that empowers women and embraces homosexuality, intermarriage, and complementary spiritual practices from other faith traditions.

But Firestone's struggles are far from over. She faces resistance from Jews and Rabbis who disapprove of her officiating at interfaith marriages, continuing rejection from her parents and siblings, and the complications that arise when she and her husband try to raise a Christian-Jewish child. At the same time, Firestone wrestles with the internalized religious expectations ingrained by her orthodox upbringing. She even makes some of the same mistakes that she made as a young adult, again.

Basically, this book had more of what I had hoped to find in Barbara Brown Taylor's memoir, Leaving Church: a gritty, searingly open, long-term story of being unable to fit in a faith home, and the direction a person might take when she finds herself "camping in the yard" of her faith tradition rather than easily belonging. I loved how so much of Firestone's life was in this book--from her early twenties in 1973, to her mid-forties in 1999, when the book was published. If there were more memoirs in the world like this, maybe things would be a little easier for young people who are piecing it all together for the first time.

I don't agree with every single thing Firestone says in her book, but I really appreciate her writing down her story and sharing it. I think she's done some amazing work in creating inclusive and spirit-filled Jewish practice and community, and she's given me a lot to think about.

If you liked this book, I think you'd probably also like Tracks by Robyn Davidson; Swinging on the Garden Gate by Elizabeth Andrew; Sitting Still by Patricia Hart Clifford; and Standing Alone in Mecca by Asra Nomani.

[Amy Ariel · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5.

Yikes. Okay, so, I’m biased against memoirs that read like the author is using writing therapeutically. I get that life as lived we may not see patterns, but memoir is written in retrospect. As a reader, I do not need to encounter each unhealthy repetition of poor choices as new. Distilled into story, without the benefit of months or years between and only some thin pages, I’m encountering each new experience in condensed time - annoyed that the author hasn’t seemed to discover a pattern yet. And, sure enough, half way into the book we hear that, indeed, she has begun to see a pattern.

In this case, not unlike in The Book of Separation in some ways, the unhealthy pattern of ignoring herself and ceding her power. All. Of. It.

That the cultural appropriation bothered me, well, I can attribute that somewhat to era, I suppose.

And yet, in spite of it all, I think this book could lend itself to a provocative conversation about Judaism, about being a woman within Judaism, about the journey to ourselves, maybe even about Jewish education and communal leadership- although not explicitly.

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book hidden in the Shir Ami library! Tirzah Firestone was raised in a rigid Orthodox household and she ends up ordained as a Renewal rabbi, married to a minister! Quite an amazing autobiography. She went everywhere in search of a faith.

[Julie]

this is the best book. this woman was raised orthodox, completely strays, marries a minister, and eventually becomes a renewal rabbi. really awesome book.