A young couple, of a conservative Jewish persuasion are anticipating getting married. Their parents, however insist they get married like "Grandpa and Gradma - the right way", so they go to an Orthodox rabbi for instruction.
After the instruction, the young man addresses the rabbi: ‘Well, Rabbi, I know that in our sect, after the ceremony when there is music and dancing, it is customary for the men to dance with the men, and the women to dance with the women. But this, after all, the 21st century — a new, enlightened age — and I would like your permission to be able to dance with my wife.”
The rabbi responds: “No, no, no! It is immodest for the man to dance with a woman.”
Now the young man is concerned about what IS allowed after marriage. So he asks the rabbi, hesitantly, “Well, I suppose that after marriage is it okay have sex?”
The rabbi quickly responds “Of course! It is a mitzvah (a blessing). To have children.”
The young man asks “Any position?”
“You’re inferring that there is more than one? But never mind, it is between you and your wife.”
The young man asks: “Woman on top?”
The rabbi, with eyes widened, says: “This is an education for me; but, yes, it is between you and your wife!”
The young man, feeling emboldened, asks: “And can we do it in an airplane, in flight, in the lavatory, in order to join the “mile high club”?”
The rabbi answers: “I am learning so much from this, but, yes, it is between you and your wife. But make sure to close the door of the lavatory!”
Then the young man asks: “And can we do it standing up?”
“NO!” says the rabbi, “you may NOT doing it standing up!”
“Why not?” says the young man.
“Because it could lead to dancing!”
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
The "What Does It Mean To Be A Jew", Revisited Yet Again
We seem to almost be a movement that has folded in on itself. For thousands of years, the shining light to the world was the jewish people. Justice, personal rights, regard for the less fortunate, universal education, protection of human life, land rights...these are all jewish, Torah values. And we, by lasting long enough to be finally listened to by the world, gifted these now universal rights to man.
The problem is, we don't know where to go next.
Religious Judaism has been flipped around to be a non-moving movement. It has developed a bunker mentality.
Conservative, reform, and further left factions of Judaism have abandoned the mechanisms of jewish innovation and identity, and are paying a ludicrous price in attrition to intermarriage as well as sheer apathy.
The level of understanding in Torah has plummeted - we do not have a vision of Torah, or IN Torah, to take part in modern development. And as such, we have been relegated to the sidelines in world debate. Even in our own country, the religious parties exist to maintain a status quo of pre-war yeshiva learning with state subsidy, instead of getting involved in the national directional debates (economy, "peace", army, etc.). And while yearning for religious practice increases in israel, as students are brought to Me'arat haMachpela to visit their grandparents, the religious sector continues to alienate those feelings with its bunkered insistence on black and white all or nothing laws and rules, religious and otherwise. As such, in israel and in the United States, the religious sectors act as some sort of analogue for Torah concepts, preserving them for future generations while simultaneously alienating the current one.
At its core, the question of what it means to be jewish has never been answered. To the religious, it is a religion. To the average Israeli, it is a cultural/historical legacy. To the average non-religious American, it is a belief system, an archaic and outdated moral code, and little else.
And those who stand for Torah MUST learn to engage the public, to engage reality, and to evolve and adapt Torah and themselves in a way that will not leave Torah an Amish-like museum curiosity. Already tours come through Me'ah Shearim - Boro Park is not far behind.
In summary, we either live on the cutting edge intersection if person, Torah, and G-d/Reality, or we are nothing more than a museum piece. At best.
The problem is, we don't know where to go next.
Religious Judaism has been flipped around to be a non-moving movement. It has developed a bunker mentality.
Conservative, reform, and further left factions of Judaism have abandoned the mechanisms of jewish innovation and identity, and are paying a ludicrous price in attrition to intermarriage as well as sheer apathy.
The level of understanding in Torah has plummeted - we do not have a vision of Torah, or IN Torah, to take part in modern development. And as such, we have been relegated to the sidelines in world debate. Even in our own country, the religious parties exist to maintain a status quo of pre-war yeshiva learning with state subsidy, instead of getting involved in the national directional debates (economy, "peace", army, etc.). And while yearning for religious practice increases in israel, as students are brought to Me'arat haMachpela to visit their grandparents, the religious sector continues to alienate those feelings with its bunkered insistence on black and white all or nothing laws and rules, religious and otherwise. As such, in israel and in the United States, the religious sectors act as some sort of analogue for Torah concepts, preserving them for future generations while simultaneously alienating the current one.
At its core, the question of what it means to be jewish has never been answered. To the religious, it is a religion. To the average Israeli, it is a cultural/historical legacy. To the average non-religious American, it is a belief system, an archaic and outdated moral code, and little else.
And those who stand for Torah MUST learn to engage the public, to engage reality, and to evolve and adapt Torah and themselves in a way that will not leave Torah an Amish-like museum curiosity. Already tours come through Me'ah Shearim - Boro Park is not far behind.
In summary, we either live on the cutting edge intersection if person, Torah, and G-d/Reality, or we are nothing more than a museum piece. At best.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Jewish Identity
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.
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.
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
|
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