"Alone in my living room, I took three steps backward, then three steps forward in preparation for the Shmoneh Esrei, part of the afternoon prayer service. As I began to recite the first blessing, an image came to mind, unbidden: a Renaissance-era depiction of Jesus.…"
Rebecca Klempner writes in Tablet Magazine:
Alone in my living room, I took three steps backward, then three steps forward in preparation for the Shmoneh Esrei, part of the afternoon prayer service. As I began to recite the first blessing, an image came to mind, unbidden: a Renaissance-era depiction of Jesus.
What was this picture doing in my head? I’m an Orthodox Jew. I don’t believe in Jesus—I never have. Why did this picture, of all things, come to mind while I was trying to address G-d?
It wasn’t the first time an image came to my mind during the prayer service. The previous week, I suffered through images of a golden Buddha and Michelangelo’s anthropomorphized G-d touching his forefinger to Adam’s on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Feelings of shame replaced the calm with which I had begun my prayers.
I wish I’d known then what I know now: Those images didn’t represent a spiritual crisis or a personal failing. They were a manifestation of my OCD, a psychological condition that may have a distinctive presentation in Orthodox Jews and one that I’d been struggling with for years, even before I became observant.…
Read it all here.
[Hat Tip: Yochanan Lavie.]