I think there is no accident that the further the idea of "people hood" gets from the western jewish identity, the more assimilation and back turning on it you find.
There has been a subtle, but radical, shift in how Jews see themselves in recent years. We went from a people in exile to a religion in a peopleless land (the US). And religions, they're interchangeable. You can pick em up and drop em as you go.
So people do.
If there is to be any meaningful difference in the future of jewish outreach, it is going to have to begin stressing that point.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Yearning
Yearning is a funny word.
It's the kind of word that makes people nervous. When they hear it in others, and when they feel it themselves.
We live in a society that defines happiness as a state of mind, a SITUATION, and therefore yearning is seen as some kind of strange cognitive dissonance. At most, it is seen as the emotional interpretation of having a lack to fill. As if our emotions are mechanical, or an "if-then" equation.
But somewhere in there, people DO yearn for things. Perhaps not "things" per se, but for authenticity, for love, for selfhood, maybe for the world as a whole.
Of course, the problem with yearning is that it ISN'T mechanical. You cannot easily fill such a lack, or even know how. Perhaps you do not even know WHAT you are yearning for (and that is that saudade word I love so much).
How does one live with yearning? How does one yearn to live?
It's the kind of word that makes people nervous. When they hear it in others, and when they feel it themselves.
We live in a society that defines happiness as a state of mind, a SITUATION, and therefore yearning is seen as some kind of strange cognitive dissonance. At most, it is seen as the emotional interpretation of having a lack to fill. As if our emotions are mechanical, or an "if-then" equation.
But somewhere in there, people DO yearn for things. Perhaps not "things" per se, but for authenticity, for love, for selfhood, maybe for the world as a whole.
Of course, the problem with yearning is that it ISN'T mechanical. You cannot easily fill such a lack, or even know how. Perhaps you do not even know WHAT you are yearning for (and that is that saudade word I love so much).
How does one live with yearning? How does one yearn to live?
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Apocalypse Then?
There is something troubling about the state of modern affairs that bears questioning.
We are living in times where everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) has a vague sense of society as a whole having gone off the rails completely, to the point where there is a conspiracy thing for anything and everything under the sun.
In the United States there is partisan bickering over basic and vitally important things like gun control and heal care. Both sides cynically manipulate their party base, blatantly lie over what they are trying to accomplish, and engorge themselves on riches created by their excesses. We had a shooting in a kindergarten (!), and the immediate response was as predictable as it was pathetic - the NRA blamed the shooter, and the Left blamed the guns. No one spoke about violence in art and culture, mental illness, family issues...but the news began a ridiculously uninformed comparison of Israeli gun laws vs. American ones. There is no discourse, no debate, no openness to discovering solutions to problems. Just talking points, talking heads, and talking stupidity.
We have a new legal system that exempts the lawmakers from the laws they pass on the public, selective laws which exempt bankers who are "too big to fail" and therefore cannot be prosecuted or punished for their rampant and open disregard for the law, and a Congress which is a revolving door from lobbyist to lawmaker and back again.
And we all let it go, holding onto increasingly shrinking little pies in the sky of our little lives, our shrinking wage jobs and engorged mortgaged homes, our gas guzzling and wallet emptying cars and our made in Taiwan baubles. We accept narratives that place the blame of unemployment, shoddy education, merchandise that breaks or wears out ten minutes after you buy it, on ourselves. Our work. Our effort. Not the people who are responsible. All of western society has this tired resignation, an almost serf-like mentality, to the goings on of world power and special interest groups. Little me? What can I do?
There is a small little void in our sense of history - the modern happenings of our day are not seen as history. The wars in Iraq, the election debacle in Florida, even 9/11 - they take place post history in our perceptions, our narratives, our lives. We seem to have a sense that we ALREADY live in the apocalypse, that the story if history has already been told and there is nothing more to add.
Where does this come from? And how does one escape it?
We are living in times where everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) has a vague sense of society as a whole having gone off the rails completely, to the point where there is a conspiracy thing for anything and everything under the sun.
In the United States there is partisan bickering over basic and vitally important things like gun control and heal care. Both sides cynically manipulate their party base, blatantly lie over what they are trying to accomplish, and engorge themselves on riches created by their excesses. We had a shooting in a kindergarten (!), and the immediate response was as predictable as it was pathetic - the NRA blamed the shooter, and the Left blamed the guns. No one spoke about violence in art and culture, mental illness, family issues...but the news began a ridiculously uninformed comparison of Israeli gun laws vs. American ones. There is no discourse, no debate, no openness to discovering solutions to problems. Just talking points, talking heads, and talking stupidity.
We have a new legal system that exempts the lawmakers from the laws they pass on the public, selective laws which exempt bankers who are "too big to fail" and therefore cannot be prosecuted or punished for their rampant and open disregard for the law, and a Congress which is a revolving door from lobbyist to lawmaker and back again.
And we all let it go, holding onto increasingly shrinking little pies in the sky of our little lives, our shrinking wage jobs and engorged mortgaged homes, our gas guzzling and wallet emptying cars and our made in Taiwan baubles. We accept narratives that place the blame of unemployment, shoddy education, merchandise that breaks or wears out ten minutes after you buy it, on ourselves. Our work. Our effort. Not the people who are responsible. All of western society has this tired resignation, an almost serf-like mentality, to the goings on of world power and special interest groups. Little me? What can I do?
There is a small little void in our sense of history - the modern happenings of our day are not seen as history. The wars in Iraq, the election debacle in Florida, even 9/11 - they take place post history in our perceptions, our narratives, our lives. We seem to have a sense that we ALREADY live in the apocalypse, that the story if history has already been told and there is nothing more to add.
Where does this come from? And how does one escape it?
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Journeys in Cement Shoes
"though the Truth may vary, this
ship will carry our
bodies safe to shore"
- Of Monsters and Men, Little Talks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ-kXZsUa_w
Every so often, poets can capture a truth in their verse that regular speech cannot convey.
We are trained/raised/wired to believe that Truth is fixed, unchanging, defined.
Then we grow up and discover fluidity in the place of cemented realities, movement in place of fixed facts, perhaps a universe of dance instead of standing still. We begin to discover the terrifyingly free openness to the world, to ourselves, to Existence. And it is horrific in its scope - we can be anything, we ARE nothing, and we often do not know which is which.
Yet, within a quiet still sound behind it all, we are sometimes able to detect a direction to the madness, a method to the random drunken dance of life. We come to appreciate the vehicle Torah provides, instead of the boundaries we thought it was - instead of a pair of cement shoes ensuring our remaining stuck in our misguided lives, it is a sail that allows us to ride the waves of Life and Time itself. We come to realize it is our saving grace, instead of our doom - it keeps us on the Path (Halacha) to the shores of tranquil Love, or relationship between Infinite and little plain old me.
And in our awakening of Love, we can sing in recognition and appreciation for the very ship that we ride from finitude to Eternity....and so, while Truth may vary, it remains the ship we can ride Home.
ship will carry our
bodies safe to shore"
- Of Monsters and Men, Little Talks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ-kXZsUa_w
Every so often, poets can capture a truth in their verse that regular speech cannot convey.
We are trained/raised/wired to believe that Truth is fixed, unchanging, defined.
Then we grow up and discover fluidity in the place of cemented realities, movement in place of fixed facts, perhaps a universe of dance instead of standing still. We begin to discover the terrifyingly free openness to the world, to ourselves, to Existence. And it is horrific in its scope - we can be anything, we ARE nothing, and we often do not know which is which.
Yet, within a quiet still sound behind it all, we are sometimes able to detect a direction to the madness, a method to the random drunken dance of life. We come to appreciate the vehicle Torah provides, instead of the boundaries we thought it was - instead of a pair of cement shoes ensuring our remaining stuck in our misguided lives, it is a sail that allows us to ride the waves of Life and Time itself. We come to realize it is our saving grace, instead of our doom - it keeps us on the Path (Halacha) to the shores of tranquil Love, or relationship between Infinite and little plain old me.
And in our awakening of Love, we can sing in recognition and appreciation for the very ship that we ride from finitude to Eternity....and so, while Truth may vary, it remains the ship we can ride Home.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Off the Rails Redux: Truth and Love, and Tisha B'Av
There is a dichotomy between Truth and Love that flies beneath the surface of most people's awareness.
That which is True is simply what is. That which is Loved is what can be, what should be, what ought to be, and what Becomes.
You can be prisoner to Truth. You cannot be tied down by Love.
Truth hurts, it cuts, it demands. Love heals, it surrounds, it gives and restores.
Judaism is built on Love which comes from Truth. Any elementary reading of the Rambam which describes how to come to Ahava and Yirah shows this. Our marriages are built on the same idea (we look for a True match, and then attempt to build a relationship on it), our religious laws are engineered to accomplish this experientially (we ascertain if something is defined as how we define Truth, and then through it experience the Love between Man and Gd), and our concept of the ontological realities of the world are built on such a concept being the bedrock of Existence itself (the dirah b'tachtona jazz, in its many manifestations across Jewish thought).
The problem arises when the delicate balance between the two is upset. Much as explored in the "Off the Rails" post, it is easy to get lost along the way and break free from the moors and underpinnings of a system. If Truth is a bedrock for Love, and Love-within-Truth is a bedrock for living life, then current "Yiddishkeit" is what happens when they are no longer in sync.
Tisha B'Av is a moed, a meeting point in Time between Man and G-d. It is a meeting about failures, about getting lost, about the sad Truth that Lovers can fall out (and the underlying happy Truth that they are still lovers and always will be). As the old joke says, only Jews can make a holiday about sadness, and this is exactly what we do - we sit on the ground and mourn for the meandering path we have wandered claiming to look for Truth while ignoring Love, or the madcap fruitless search for Love while steeped in Falsehood. It is a stark day in its bleakness and its acknowledgement that where we are is commentary enough of our lives. Yes, if there is no Beit HaMikdash today, it is us who have destroyed it; whether destroyed by our insistence on glatt kosher and exclusionary religious practices, or our complete revulsion for religion in the first place, whether our goal is to Jewish Americans or Israeli citizens of the world, whether we are guilty of ignoring G-d because we know better or because we dont care in the first place, it is not there, and we are here. Truth is Truth.
For those who listen closely, you can almost make out G-d's plaintive, whispering lament, "THIS is what you thought I wanted??? My Child, my Children...come back."
There is a song I believe to be the ultimate modern piyut in its simple stating the situation we find ourselves in, the confusion of being torn in two that Life can very much be. It is, perhaps, the most succinct prayer we can ever offer in explanation of who and what we are.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrvMH0hQClQ
That which is True is simply what is. That which is Loved is what can be, what should be, what ought to be, and what Becomes.
You can be prisoner to Truth. You cannot be tied down by Love.
Truth hurts, it cuts, it demands. Love heals, it surrounds, it gives and restores.
Judaism is built on Love which comes from Truth. Any elementary reading of the Rambam which describes how to come to Ahava and Yirah shows this. Our marriages are built on the same idea (we look for a True match, and then attempt to build a relationship on it), our religious laws are engineered to accomplish this experientially (we ascertain if something is defined as how we define Truth, and then through it experience the Love between Man and Gd), and our concept of the ontological realities of the world are built on such a concept being the bedrock of Existence itself (the dirah b'tachtona jazz, in its many manifestations across Jewish thought).
The problem arises when the delicate balance between the two is upset. Much as explored in the "Off the Rails" post, it is easy to get lost along the way and break free from the moors and underpinnings of a system. If Truth is a bedrock for Love, and Love-within-Truth is a bedrock for living life, then current "Yiddishkeit" is what happens when they are no longer in sync.
Tisha B'Av is a moed, a meeting point in Time between Man and G-d. It is a meeting about failures, about getting lost, about the sad Truth that Lovers can fall out (and the underlying happy Truth that they are still lovers and always will be). As the old joke says, only Jews can make a holiday about sadness, and this is exactly what we do - we sit on the ground and mourn for the meandering path we have wandered claiming to look for Truth while ignoring Love, or the madcap fruitless search for Love while steeped in Falsehood. It is a stark day in its bleakness and its acknowledgement that where we are is commentary enough of our lives. Yes, if there is no Beit HaMikdash today, it is us who have destroyed it; whether destroyed by our insistence on glatt kosher and exclusionary religious practices, or our complete revulsion for religion in the first place, whether our goal is to Jewish Americans or Israeli citizens of the world, whether we are guilty of ignoring G-d because we know better or because we dont care in the first place, it is not there, and we are here. Truth is Truth.
For those who listen closely, you can almost make out G-d's plaintive, whispering lament, "THIS is what you thought I wanted??? My Child, my Children...come back."
There is a song I believe to be the ultimate modern piyut in its simple stating the situation we find ourselves in, the confusion of being torn in two that Life can very much be. It is, perhaps, the most succinct prayer we can ever offer in explanation of who and what we are.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrvMH0hQClQ
| I pursue Your laws, on the one hand On the other, my passion pursues me. Ashamed and embarrassed, I will enter Your gates. And the long nights and the loneliness and the years, And this heart that has not known peace. Until the sea becomes quiet, until the shadows disappear. |
אני רודף אחר חוקיך, מחד
מאידך תשוקתי אותי רודפת בוש ונכלם אבוא בשעריך והלילות הארוכים והבדידות ושנים והלב הזה שלא ידע מרגוע עד שישקוט הים, עד שינוסו הצללים |
| Where shall I go, to where will I turn, when Your eyes gaze upon me? Where shall I flee, how will I not turn away? Between truth and truth, Between law and practice. Between the days of yore and modern times. Between the hidden and the revealed, Between the world to come and this world. |
לאן אלך, אנה אפנה, כשעיניך מביטות בי
איכה אברח, איך לא אפנה בין אמת לאמת בין הלכה למעשה בין הימים ההם לזמן הזה בין הנסתר לנגלה בין העולם הבא לעולם הזה |
| I pursue Your laws, on the other hand my passion burns me Fierce as death, terrible as troops with banners The long nights and the loneliness and the years, And this heart that has not known peace. Until the sea becomes quiet, until the shadows disappear Bring me back! |
רודף אחר חוקיך, מאידך תשוקתי אותי שורפת
עזה כמוות, איומה כנדגלות הלילות הארוכים והבדידות והשנים והלב הזה שלא ידע מרגוע עד שישקוט הים, עד שינוסו הצללים השיבני |
Where shall I go, to where will I turn ... |
לאן אלך, אנה אפנה
|
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
That Galus Show
There is something poignant about television shows.
Growing up, I was enamored with That 70s Show. Okay, I am still enamored with it. It is a masterful story of growing up in the zeitgeist where "I" became the point, where personal choices became the new frontier, where life became a madcap adventure of growth into Selfhood. The contrast is brought out beautifully - to Red, life is about the country, the war, the duties one has a citizen of society...and to the kids, life is about authenticity, love, being who you are (and getting lost along the way to finding it).
The ending of the show, in particular, was extremely powerful. Eric returns and has a moment with Donna in which he admits to carrying her in his heart despite breaking hers. She tells him things are different now, and he silently acknowledges that. And he apologizes, and they embrace.
I loved that ending because the show returns to the narrative that was its underlying theme the entire time - the relationship between Eric and Donna. It turns breakups into temporary sidetracks, endings into hiatuses, and rewraps the entire story into a meta-narrative that subsumes the events that took place within it. And it ends in love - not infatuation, not being lost in something bigger than you are, but a mature meeting of two who become One yet remain two.
That moment, to me, is a wonderful recreation of galut and geula.
We can get lost on the Road to Selfhood, to maturity, to Being. But in the end, the narrative that matters is the one of Yisrael and G-d - and it subsumes the struggles along the way, the meanderings of a people who dont know where to go or what to be, the goodbyes of thousands of souls who thought they walked away. The restoration of the story that mattered most, though lost from the public eye, is the harbinger of a Time when all CAN be One.
May it come soon.
Growing up, I was enamored with That 70s Show. Okay, I am still enamored with it. It is a masterful story of growing up in the zeitgeist where "I" became the point, where personal choices became the new frontier, where life became a madcap adventure of growth into Selfhood. The contrast is brought out beautifully - to Red, life is about the country, the war, the duties one has a citizen of society...and to the kids, life is about authenticity, love, being who you are (and getting lost along the way to finding it).
The ending of the show, in particular, was extremely powerful. Eric returns and has a moment with Donna in which he admits to carrying her in his heart despite breaking hers. She tells him things are different now, and he silently acknowledges that. And he apologizes, and they embrace.
I loved that ending because the show returns to the narrative that was its underlying theme the entire time - the relationship between Eric and Donna. It turns breakups into temporary sidetracks, endings into hiatuses, and rewraps the entire story into a meta-narrative that subsumes the events that took place within it. And it ends in love - not infatuation, not being lost in something bigger than you are, but a mature meeting of two who become One yet remain two.
That moment, to me, is a wonderful recreation of galut and geula.
We can get lost on the Road to Selfhood, to maturity, to Being. But in the end, the narrative that matters is the one of Yisrael and G-d - and it subsumes the struggles along the way, the meanderings of a people who dont know where to go or what to be, the goodbyes of thousands of souls who thought they walked away. The restoration of the story that mattered most, though lost from the public eye, is the harbinger of a Time when all CAN be One.
May it come soon.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Israel Trip Introspection (or: Questions, the Interlude)
I had the pleasure and blessing to spend a month's time in Israel. I came with a blank mind - no biases, no preconceived notions, nothing - just being there. I wanted to immerse myself in the Land, to experience it from the point of pure Experience.
The Land is inhabited by a fractured People - complete with those who are not the People at all living among them. There are Jews who think that Mosaic law is an outdated and archaic "Mickey Mouse" philosophy living in the same buildings as those who think that Israel the country is a violation of the Divine Will. African migrants roam the streets, passing the Ethiopians claiming to be from the lost Tribes, who themselves are talking to the Russian immigrants who are grandchildren of Jewish grandfathers and no more. Women soldiers sit on the same buses that the "Burqa women" ride, one holding their gun and the other their children. Taxi drivers gently chide (if not outright verbally assault) tourists to move to Israel, while thousands of Israelis leave for the greener pastures of New York and Florida. Buildings are demolished to placate the Leftist peaceniks who claim the land was once owned by an Arab, while IDF helicopters and artillery pieces flatten Arab buildings in Gaza being used as rocket launching pads. The secular cashiers in the department stores wish people a "shabbat shalom" while some merchants look for the "frier" they can take to the bank.
Some of the inhabitants look to the past, sitting in the shadows of ancient places espousing philosophies and dreams of re-establishing the days of ancient yore. Some look to the future, indifferent to the archaeological sites around them in favor of the high rises and luxury apartments that arrive with more successful start-ups being sold to wealthy American investors. Some think the answers are to be found in the primeval books of wisdom, while others dismiss these books as antiquated and antediluvian remnants of un-Enlightened people.
We drove through Jerusalem, parking our car in the parking lot of the brand new Mamila mall and apartment complex and walking to the Kosel - a trip of about a kilometer, though spanning a few thousand years. We traveled to Teverya (Tiberias) and prayed at the kevarim of the Rambam, Rav Yochanan ben Zakkai, the Shelah, and some other Tannaim and Amoraim, which were around the corner from a shopping center. We visited Ein Gedi, which was a old world manufacturing center of balsam, and today is a beautiful nature reserve where one can walk the ground where Shaul chased David (the famous story of David cutting the corner of Shaul's garment took place in the area). I listened to the haftarah of Shimshon (Parshas Naso) literally bein Tzorah v'Eshtaol, in an air conditioned shul in modern day Ramat Bet Shemesh.
But before all of this, I went to a beach in Ashdod.
Sitting next to us on the beach were three young teenagers, probably playing hooky from school. They were fooling around, smoking, going from the water to tan in the sun and back again. I looked at them and felt this odd sense of revulsion and disdain - this is the goal of G-d's promise to Avraham?? The G-dless and soulless secular Beach Boys dream of sun surf and love? And then, upon arriving back "home" in Ramat Beit Shemesh and seeing the teenagers in the park, hurting from rejection and feeling hopelessly placeless, adrift in a country they do not know what to make of nor fit into, I had the same feeling, and the same incredulity. It was a feeling that was to remain on the outskirts of my mind the entire time I was in the country, whether I was in the Tel Aviv mall, Old City of Jerusalem, suburbs of Haifa, at a yahrtzeit seuda in Beer Sheva, or on the mirpeset of my gracious grandparents in law in Ramat Bet Shemesh, overlooking the broken city of Bet Shemesh and its suburbs.
And yet.....
There is a certain shadowy sense of the Land wrapping itself around you, a magnetic draw it pulls you in with - for those who are not in tune with their inner worlds, they can mistake it for "only in Israel" stories and a love affair with shwarma; but it is a sense of belonging, of rootedness, of being a part of what is a part of you. For it is still a Land that seduces its Lovers, calling out to them in gentle whispering breezes and caressing them in wisps of visions of a future they know uniquely to be Yisrael's.
After traveling the Land, the question running through my mind was, should today's times be written as a sefer of Tanach, what would it look like?
Then I saw sefer Shoftim, and immediately did a double take. Right down to conquering the land and not driving out the inhabitants, resplendent in the battles and the people just not getting the messages given to them, the problem being summed up as u'bayamim haheim ein melech b'yisrael...it is as true today as it was then. Only today the idols are democracy and liberal philosophy, instead of the Great Fish and the Lord of the Flies (Dagon and Ball Zevuv).
Just as people today question living in Israel, from socio-economic grounds as well as religious ones, I would venture to say that people in those times questioned themselves as well. The confusion and contempt, the disbelief that this is the beginning of something completely different, the very first flowering of a thirteen petaled Rose that has lain dormant for hundreds of years, is not new. We wondered then, as we do now, what it means to be a Jew - we went from the days of Moshe and the clarity he brought, to Yehoshua and his tenacity in defending and promoting the Bris we have with haShem, to....nothing. A leader here and there, but mostly a vacuum in which we stumbled around and wondered what we were supposed to do, and who we were supposed to be. Just as today. The parallels are frightening in their implications...
I had a slight epiphany one night, sipping a beer on that porch in Ramat Beit Shemesh (beer is an epiphany inducing beverage, after all).
All the people in Israel are searching for their version of Heaven, in the place they think is closest to it (as an aside, I think this is wonderful pshat in the Gemara which says that Jerusalem/the Old City is closest to the entrance to Heaven - and Hell...).
For some, heaven is a socialist ideal in this world. For others, it is a "vibrant democracy in the Middle East." For still others, it is a place where you can do many mitzvos like maaser, and orlah, so that they may earn a bigger share in the World to Come. Some think it is a theocracy built on their interpretations of halacha, with bonus points that allow them to claim ownership of their area and forbid those who do not comply to their standards and ideas. [You thought I was talking about Meah Shearim, but that applies to Dati Leumi yishuvim as well, no?]
All of them are trying to build Heaven - here, in this Land.
Contrast that with the religious Heaven you were taught...the one that had no room for Earth, because there was nothing sacred about Zhidikov, Vilna, or even Boro Park.
Why do people think Heaven is more important than Earth? The same theological flaws people point out regarding the second coming are true of saying that the "real game" is being played on a field different than the one the players are in - or in simpler English, saying that your reality is not the one that you live in is psychotic!
Do people not see the Torah never bothers to mention Heaven or Hell? Why do people leave the world behind in their minds for flights of fancy? Each week brings another quote ripped out of context that supports a worldview centered on staying cloistered in a virtual ghetto of our making, with reality walled off and our gaze directed up at the Heaven/Reality weve created for ourselves. We ask ourselves deep questions about the internet and music, about why the vibrancy is gone and the kids no longer care, while the masses slowly slip away to the abyss of the West.
Perhaps this focus on what is beyond this world, on a reality that has not yet arrived, is inbred from thousands of years of persecution, when all we had was a next world...
But now, just perhaps, we HAVE something in this world - the prophecies have come true, in far more Real and True ways than the superficial readings of them would admit. There indeed is the callings and voices of the young, the old, the groom and bride, in the streets of Jerusalem. Yisrael is no longer just a concept expressed in synagogues and dusty books pored over by teenagers and long bearded adults. Now the name Yisrael is a people, a nation, with shopping malls and skyscrapers, schools and a lottery, beaches and restaurants, and more shuls, yeshivos, and interest in what it means to be a Jew than ever before. {Less of a clue, arguably, but more of an interest.}
The Jew as he who lives as the consummate "other", suffering quietly in a corner of a community that is not and never will be his is perhaps outdated...and perhaps, even more true than ever before; one who lives as a ben Yisrael probably feels most alienated, the most "Ivri", the most as an "other" in Israel/Yisrael itself, waiting for Klal Yisrael to shake off the dust, arise, and bloom into the People it can be.
This "otherness" - is it what a Jew is, or merely a product of his inability to figure it out?
And how does one know which Jew to be?
The Land is inhabited by a fractured People - complete with those who are not the People at all living among them. There are Jews who think that Mosaic law is an outdated and archaic "Mickey Mouse" philosophy living in the same buildings as those who think that Israel the country is a violation of the Divine Will. African migrants roam the streets, passing the Ethiopians claiming to be from the lost Tribes, who themselves are talking to the Russian immigrants who are grandchildren of Jewish grandfathers and no more. Women soldiers sit on the same buses that the "Burqa women" ride, one holding their gun and the other their children. Taxi drivers gently chide (if not outright verbally assault) tourists to move to Israel, while thousands of Israelis leave for the greener pastures of New York and Florida. Buildings are demolished to placate the Leftist peaceniks who claim the land was once owned by an Arab, while IDF helicopters and artillery pieces flatten Arab buildings in Gaza being used as rocket launching pads. The secular cashiers in the department stores wish people a "shabbat shalom" while some merchants look for the "frier" they can take to the bank.
Some of the inhabitants look to the past, sitting in the shadows of ancient places espousing philosophies and dreams of re-establishing the days of ancient yore. Some look to the future, indifferent to the archaeological sites around them in favor of the high rises and luxury apartments that arrive with more successful start-ups being sold to wealthy American investors. Some think the answers are to be found in the primeval books of wisdom, while others dismiss these books as antiquated and antediluvian remnants of un-Enlightened people.
We drove through Jerusalem, parking our car in the parking lot of the brand new Mamila mall and apartment complex and walking to the Kosel - a trip of about a kilometer, though spanning a few thousand years. We traveled to Teverya (Tiberias) and prayed at the kevarim of the Rambam, Rav Yochanan ben Zakkai, the Shelah, and some other Tannaim and Amoraim, which were around the corner from a shopping center. We visited Ein Gedi, which was a old world manufacturing center of balsam, and today is a beautiful nature reserve where one can walk the ground where Shaul chased David (the famous story of David cutting the corner of Shaul's garment took place in the area). I listened to the haftarah of Shimshon (Parshas Naso) literally bein Tzorah v'Eshtaol, in an air conditioned shul in modern day Ramat Bet Shemesh.
But before all of this, I went to a beach in Ashdod.
Sitting next to us on the beach were three young teenagers, probably playing hooky from school. They were fooling around, smoking, going from the water to tan in the sun and back again. I looked at them and felt this odd sense of revulsion and disdain - this is the goal of G-d's promise to Avraham?? The G-dless and soulless secular Beach Boys dream of sun surf and love? And then, upon arriving back "home" in Ramat Beit Shemesh and seeing the teenagers in the park, hurting from rejection and feeling hopelessly placeless, adrift in a country they do not know what to make of nor fit into, I had the same feeling, and the same incredulity. It was a feeling that was to remain on the outskirts of my mind the entire time I was in the country, whether I was in the Tel Aviv mall, Old City of Jerusalem, suburbs of Haifa, at a yahrtzeit seuda in Beer Sheva, or on the mirpeset of my gracious grandparents in law in Ramat Bet Shemesh, overlooking the broken city of Bet Shemesh and its suburbs.
And yet.....
There is a certain shadowy sense of the Land wrapping itself around you, a magnetic draw it pulls you in with - for those who are not in tune with their inner worlds, they can mistake it for "only in Israel" stories and a love affair with shwarma; but it is a sense of belonging, of rootedness, of being a part of what is a part of you. For it is still a Land that seduces its Lovers, calling out to them in gentle whispering breezes and caressing them in wisps of visions of a future they know uniquely to be Yisrael's.
After traveling the Land, the question running through my mind was, should today's times be written as a sefer of Tanach, what would it look like?
Then I saw sefer Shoftim, and immediately did a double take. Right down to conquering the land and not driving out the inhabitants, resplendent in the battles and the people just not getting the messages given to them, the problem being summed up as u'bayamim haheim ein melech b'yisrael...it is as true today as it was then. Only today the idols are democracy and liberal philosophy, instead of the Great Fish and the Lord of the Flies (Dagon and Ball Zevuv).
Just as people today question living in Israel, from socio-economic grounds as well as religious ones, I would venture to say that people in those times questioned themselves as well. The confusion and contempt, the disbelief that this is the beginning of something completely different, the very first flowering of a thirteen petaled Rose that has lain dormant for hundreds of years, is not new. We wondered then, as we do now, what it means to be a Jew - we went from the days of Moshe and the clarity he brought, to Yehoshua and his tenacity in defending and promoting the Bris we have with haShem, to....nothing. A leader here and there, but mostly a vacuum in which we stumbled around and wondered what we were supposed to do, and who we were supposed to be. Just as today. The parallels are frightening in their implications...
I had a slight epiphany one night, sipping a beer on that porch in Ramat Beit Shemesh (beer is an epiphany inducing beverage, after all).
All the people in Israel are searching for their version of Heaven, in the place they think is closest to it (as an aside, I think this is wonderful pshat in the Gemara which says that Jerusalem/the Old City is closest to the entrance to Heaven - and Hell...).
For some, heaven is a socialist ideal in this world. For others, it is a "vibrant democracy in the Middle East." For still others, it is a place where you can do many mitzvos like maaser, and orlah, so that they may earn a bigger share in the World to Come. Some think it is a theocracy built on their interpretations of halacha, with bonus points that allow them to claim ownership of their area and forbid those who do not comply to their standards and ideas. [You thought I was talking about Meah Shearim, but that applies to Dati Leumi yishuvim as well, no?]
All of them are trying to build Heaven - here, in this Land.
Contrast that with the religious Heaven you were taught...the one that had no room for Earth, because there was nothing sacred about Zhidikov, Vilna, or even Boro Park.
Why do people think Heaven is more important than Earth? The same theological flaws people point out regarding the second coming are true of saying that the "real game" is being played on a field different than the one the players are in - or in simpler English, saying that your reality is not the one that you live in is psychotic!
Do people not see the Torah never bothers to mention Heaven or Hell? Why do people leave the world behind in their minds for flights of fancy? Each week brings another quote ripped out of context that supports a worldview centered on staying cloistered in a virtual ghetto of our making, with reality walled off and our gaze directed up at the Heaven/Reality weve created for ourselves. We ask ourselves deep questions about the internet and music, about why the vibrancy is gone and the kids no longer care, while the masses slowly slip away to the abyss of the West.
Perhaps this focus on what is beyond this world, on a reality that has not yet arrived, is inbred from thousands of years of persecution, when all we had was a next world...
But now, just perhaps, we HAVE something in this world - the prophecies have come true, in far more Real and True ways than the superficial readings of them would admit. There indeed is the callings and voices of the young, the old, the groom and bride, in the streets of Jerusalem. Yisrael is no longer just a concept expressed in synagogues and dusty books pored over by teenagers and long bearded adults. Now the name Yisrael is a people, a nation, with shopping malls and skyscrapers, schools and a lottery, beaches and restaurants, and more shuls, yeshivos, and interest in what it means to be a Jew than ever before. {Less of a clue, arguably, but more of an interest.}
The Jew as he who lives as the consummate "other", suffering quietly in a corner of a community that is not and never will be his is perhaps outdated...and perhaps, even more true than ever before; one who lives as a ben Yisrael probably feels most alienated, the most "Ivri", the most as an "other" in Israel/Yisrael itself, waiting for Klal Yisrael to shake off the dust, arise, and bloom into the People it can be.
This "otherness" - is it what a Jew is, or merely a product of his inability to figure it out?
And how does one know which Jew to be?
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