Fly Fishing for Tarpon, Permit and Bonefish

I am very pleased to be able to share this article by my friend Dr. Michael Attas, a practicing cardiologist, ordained Episcopal priest and avid fly fisher:

While I cherish my time on my home waters of the Rockies, I also long for the chance to explore new places with my fly rod and to move into new territories-both physically and spiritually. On a trip to Belize, we searched for the big three for salt water fly fishermen—tarpon, permit and bonefish. Each requires a certain type of equipment, a certain mindset, and a certain set of expectations. Each fish is a glimpse, in its’ own way, into the mystery of creation and its’ ecologic diversity.

The tarpon has the appearance of some prehistoric silver monster from the depths, with majestic mouths and colors. When you hook a tarpon, the run and inevitable leap towards the heavens is guaranteed to stir the heart of even the most experienced fisherman. It is almost a given that the first time a tarpon is caught it is rarely landed, for the experience and physical skills required are just so different for a fly fisherman who lives on trout waters. As a cardiologist, I realize that reeling in a tarpon is like a salt water version of a treadmill stress test—if your heart can stand the runs and jumps it is probably in pretty good shape!!

Tarpon

The leap to the sky of the tarpon demands that the fishermen “bow to the king”— in order to keep the fish hooked we must lower our rod tip with our body and let the line have some slack before it re-enters the water and makes another daunting run. To me, this expression has some wonderfully religious overtones. We must always stand in reverence and humility before the creator of the universe. We cannot demand too much, pull too hard, keep the line to the divine too taught or we run the risk of missing some feedback to the presence of God in our lives.

Our relationship to God is often on based on trust that the link will remain even when we don’t sense its’ presence. It is not about meeting God on our terms, but on His. When we trust that process, we become like the fishermen who finds—much to his surprise—that the king Tarpon is still tugging mightily on his line despite his trusting movement of supplication. When we let go of our need to control God, it is often when God can move into our lives in new and powerful ways. Control is not something that works in our religious lives or our experience with a majestic fish like a tarpon.

For many experienced salt-water anglers, the permit is the Holy Grail of fly fishing. I have known very good fly fishers who have fished for decades to permit and never had even one take their fly. It is utterly maddening—one makes a perfect cast to a clearly feeding fish and the fly is met with total indifference of a mighty flash of escape. I had a very experienced guide tell me that he had cast to hundreds of permit, and then for no clear or discernable reason one time a permit simply decides to take a look at the crab pattern he threw. In our modern times, we like instant gratification and clear user manuals. If that is your mindset when approaching a permit, you almost certainly will be disappointed.

  

Permit

Bonefish are perhaps the most fun fish for most fly fishermen. A five pound bonefish will take a long screaming run, making that delightful sound a good reel makes as it does what it was designed to do. Watching school of beautiful tailing bonefish feeding is like glimpsing a tiny fleet of sailboats—their tails point to the heavens as they grub around the bottom for food. Or a school may move through the skinny waters, causing the classic “nervous water” look.

We cautiously lay a line out with grace and ease; the strike is not heavy often but a brief tug as we strip the line back. But then the magic happens—before you can almost respond with your mind a bonefish has made run of 150 yards and is close to the backing of your line. Luckily, you come to your senses and begin to play him and draw him in. Perhaps one more run and he is spent, and a gentle release into the wilds reminds of why we love this sport.

Bonefish

Each fly fishing trip to a far off destination represents a new beginning for me, for I have to leave my comfort zone. I must become familiar with new flies, new gear, new insects. A month or two before trips I often get out the 10-12 weight rod and hone up my heavy rod casting. I begin to work on the double haul, something we simply don’t have to do in the Rockies. I try to get my muscle memory back in shape, so that I don’t waste a part of a trip having to relearn things that I don’t have to practice often enough.

It seems to me that sometimes my spiritual life often needs a similar sort of jump-start with freshness. A willingness to try new things has led me to sudden spurts of a feeling of connection to God as well as to new waters. They seem to go hand in hand. But it can only happen when I say Yes.

To read a previous post on The Fly Fishing Rabbi by Reverend Mike, Click Here. He also writes a column for the Waco Texas Tribune on health, ethics and religion.

Is God A Person?

In the book of Genesis we read that human beings are created in the divine image. Does this famous verse then imply that God is a person with a human-like form? Does God have a body?

The traditional God of Judaism or what I call “The God of Hebrew school,” is a king who has a gray white beard and sits up on a throne up in heaven. This is Avinu Malkeinu, “Our Father, Our King” who watches over us on the High Holidays to see if we will repent of our sins.

The Bible seems to suggest that God has a body. We know that God can talk. God used words to create the world. God spoke to people in the Bible including Abraham and Moses. If God has a voice, it stands to reason that God would have a mouth, as God’s voice has to come from somewhere. When we finish reading from the Torah scroll on Friday nights, we lift it high in the air and sing: Vezot HaTorah, “This is the Torah that Moses wrote down and placed before the Israelites, from the mouth of God.”

If God has a mouth, it also stands to reason that God has a face. At the end of each Friday night Shabbat service, I bless the congregation. I ask all to rise and I raise my hands in the air. Looking over the whole sanctuary, I recite the words of the Priestly Blessing, which comes from the Bible: May God bless you and Keep you. May God’s light shine upon you and be gracious to you. May God lift up God’s face towards you and Grant you Peace. The Priestly Blessing says that God has a face, panim in Hebrew, or punum in Yiddish. Even though some prayer books like to translate panim as “God’s Countenance” the clear and obvious meaning of the Hebrew is that God has a face.

For some people, the idea that God has a face is comforting. A congregant once told me that for him, it is easier to have a relationship with God if God has a body. The more human-like that God is, the closer we can feel to God.

Yet, for many people, the God on the throne with the long white beard is difficult to accept. Modechai Kaplan, a 20th Century Jewish philosopher, was a true innovator. His daughter Judith, became the first Bat Mitzvah in Jewish history in 1922. Kaplan founded the first JCC, Jewish community Center and he created a fourth movement of American Judaism, Reconstructionist Judaism.

Kaplan’s innovative nature also drove him to offer new ideas about God. He believed that God is not a person, a king on a throne. Rather, for Kaplan, God is a force, power, spirit or energy. Think Star Wars: May the Force Be With You. For Kaplan, God is a force for good, an energy that brings goodness into the world.

Kaplan believed that prayer is not about God; it is about us. When we pray, we take a moment to escape the difficulties of the world and reflect on our lives. Prayer then is not so much about asking God to grant our requests, for how can you ask a force or energy for something? Rather prayer is about finding spiritual strength and shalom peace.

When I teach adult education classes about God, I discuss both the traditional God of Judaism, the king on the throne, and Mordechai Kaplan’s ideas about God as a force for good in the universe. Sometimes I ask people to vote on which view of God they find more compelling. Usually it is split, with some preferring the traditional male king and others liking the idea of God as a force or power. Personally, I find myself more drawn to Kaplan’s idea of God as a force for good as it makes more sense to me in the modern and scientific world in which we live.

The primary message I try to convey when teaching about God is that there is a diversity of beliefs about the Divine in Judaism and that we all do not have to believe the same thing. Ultimately, we benefit from exploring many Jewish views of God and seeking beliefs that help to sustain us spiritually in our own lives.

Is God Male or Female?

The traditional God of Judaism or what I call “The God of Hebrew school,” is male. In religious school we all learned that God has a gray white beard and sits on a throne up in heaven. This is Avinu Malkeinu, “Our Father, Our King” who watches over us on the High Holidays to see if we will repent of our sins.

We know that God is male because the Torah tells us so. The very first verse of Genesis reads: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Hebrew is a gendered language, like Spanish and French, which means that verbs in Hebrew have separate male and female forms. In the first verse of Genesis, the form of the word “created,” bara, indicates that God is a male.

Even though God is male, God creates both man and woman. Modern scholars have determined that the Torah contains two stories of the creation of human beings. The one most of us are familiar with appears in Genesis chapter 2, in which God forms Adam out of the clay of the earth puts him to sleep, takes a rib from his side, and forms Eve from it. In this version, God creates both man and woman, but the woman is seen as inferior to the man as she came from him.

Genesis chapter 1 also contains a story about the creation of human beings that is more egalitarian. The Torah says: “And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:27) It seems that God created both male and female at the same time, indicating the equality of both genders. The rabbis even wrote a midrash, a legendary interpretation of the Torah, which states that God first created a hermaphrodite, a being that was both male and female, and only later split it into the two genders we have today.

The issue of God’s gender appears most clearly in the siddur, the Jewish prayer book. The standard Jewish prayer begins with the words Barukh Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melekh HaOlam, Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe. All of the verbs here all male, and God is referred to as King.

With the emergence of feminism in the 70s, Reform Jews began to question why God is always male in our prayers. Many suggestions were offered as to how to deal with God’s male gender. Some people said that we should translate the Hebrew words differently in English to remove gender all together.

In the 1970s, a new Reform Jewish prayer book was published that translates Barukh Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melekh HaOlam as “Praised be the Lord our God, Ruler of the universe.” Another way I have seen this done was in a prayer book written by Rabbi Larry Kushner’s Congregation in Boston. They translate Barukh Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melekh HaOlam as “Holy One of Blessing, Your Presence Fills Creation.”

In confirmation classes that I have taught over the years, I noticed that my students often referred to God as male even though many of my students are women! One year I pointed this out to them and said that if they believed that God is man, then they should continue to call God “He.” But if they do not, they should try something else.

I personally believe that God understands both men and women but is beyond gender.  I view God not so much as a king on a throne, but rather a force or power or essence in the universe.

Ultimately, words are powerful, and the words we use for God are even more so. As Reform Jews we decide our own beliefs about God, whether we see God as a male, a female or non-gendered. And once we make this informed choice about what we believe, I suggest that we choose our words for God deliberately.

The Beginning of Fly Fishing Season

Although we are already into June, it still feels to me that the fly fishing season has just begun. It was not too long ago that I took my gear out of the basement for the first time in months and smelled the scent of the river rising from my vest and waders. It is a distinctive smell, a scent of water and plants and nature, one that never fully leaves your gear during the off-season.

It is said that smell is one of the five senses that is very connected to memory. We remember a place in our mind’s eye, or recall a song from the distant past. Yet it is a smell from our past that can instantly bring us back to that distant place. It may well be that moment of smelling the river on your fly fishing gear begins the fly fishing season in earnest.

There is much to do to prepare for the first trip out to the stream. Fly rods, reels and fly lines are taken out and examined. Waders are checked for leaks and repaired. Tippets and leaders are counted. Flies are surveyed. A list is made of necessities to be purchased for the upcoming year. Accounting for all of your fishing gear after a long winter is a time honored tradition of fly fishing.

Judaism also teaches that we are to perform a yearly accounting, not of fly fishing gear, but rather of our souls. Just as fly fishers inspect their gear at the beginning of the season, Jews perform a soul-searching at the beginning of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. In Hebrew, this process of soul-searching is called chesbon nefesh, which literally means an accounting of the soul.

We are to reflect on our deeds in the year that is ending, both good and bad. We are to examine all aspects of our lives, professional and personal. Focusing on our shortfalls, we are to search for areas of improvement in the year to come. Surveying fly fishing gear helps us prepare for the fishing season and ensure that we have everything we need for a trip to the stream. Chesbon Nefesh, Jewish soul-searching, helps Jews to prepare for the year to come and to begin the process of repentance and repair.

Another time honored tradition at the beginning of the fly fishing season is the first trip to the fly shop. I love all fly fishing stores, the big chains and the small independent stores. There is something special about visiting the local shop that somehow stays in business year after year, with every square inch of shelf-space covered in leaders and tippet spools and the drawers filled with an endless array of dry flies, nymphs and streamers. At the independent fly fishing store you sit and talk to the owner, ask about business (usually hearing in response “we’re getting by,”) and gather info on the local streams.

Let’s admit the truth: the fly fishing store is like a toy store for adults. As children, we all remember trips to the local toy store and the shelves filled with baseball cards, action figures and brightly colored games and puzzles. Standing before an open drawer filled with countless flies, we recapture some of that same joy and excitement. We examine each fly, thinking that perhaps this red/gray Adams will bring that large brown trout to the surface, or a brown copper John nymph will prove irresistible in the fast currents.

Fly fishing is fun, an activity we do when we are not at work or taking care of other responsibilities in our lives. Stocking up on flies, surveying your gear and catching the scent of the river, these are all traditions of the Spring and the beginning of another glorious year of wading into the stream and casting a fly.