My 40th anniversary

This past Monday night, at Mechon Hadar's 90 @ 190 Open Beit Midrash, I participated in Dr. Anne Lapidus Lerner's discussion of the influence of religious Judaism on the poetry of secular Israeli Yehudah Amichai.  One of the poems that she and we analyzed was an untitled poem about how one who wore a tallit/prayer shawl when young never forgets the tactile experience.  I commented that it's really no wonder why women want to wear a tallit.  "Since I was 24, for the record."  Only later did it register with me that, now that I'm 64, I've been wearing a tallit for 40 years.  Happy Anniversary to Me.

When I first began wearing a tallit, I was the first adult female in my egalitarian synagogue to do so.  (A Bat Mitzvah girl had beaten me to it.)  This was far from a common practice 40 years ago, even in egalitarian synagogues.  Given my dubious record with technology, my decision to start wearing a tallit will probably turn out to be the only time occasion in my life when I was an "early adopter."  :)