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.

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 There are Jews who think that Mosaic law is an outdated and archaic "Mickey Mouse" philosophy living in the same buildings as those who think that Israel the country is a violation of the Divine Will.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?

Questions...

It is a common misconception that the search for Truth is motivated by intellectual pursuits. It is the fiction of many a classroom that the greats of times gone by were towering minds, in full control of their emotions, searching for the objective Truth hidden in Reality.

Those of us who Know, know differently. We live within the painful reality neatly captured by Byron, that

Sorrow is knowledge

 for those that know the most must mourn the deepest

 the Tree of Knowledge is not the Tree of Life.

The “sorrow that is knowledge” is best encapsulated in one word. There is a Portuguese word “saudade” (pronounced sawDADje), translated as “a vague and constant desire for something that does not and possibly cannot exist, mixed with a wistful yearning for its return”. This loneliness is a feeling we all know well; anyone who has caught themselves staring, with a haunted and other-worldly look, at a distant future, or a far-away past, and craving its embrace and arrival, knows this painful and powerful emotion of incompleteness. In simple terms, it is a homesickness for a Home we haven’t been to yet.

So many of us know too well the indescribable feeling of missing something we need to make us Whole, a feeling that the essence of who we are lies beyond this world and above its mechanisms; that imperfect Being escapes our outstretched grasp and eludes us…leaving us all the more incomplete, seeking some sort of Truth that can somehow fill those gaps in our souls. And we all look long and hard for the mystical “Truth” that will make us complete…and promises to get us back Home.

And woe to those who start looking…for Truth is the last thing they find. There are so many hypocrisies, so many lies, so many false imitations of anything True and real in this world. How many hollow people can live at once? There is only One Truth, and so many lies that just come up short. Yet all these lies claim to be that Truth!

Is there a Place for Truth in this world? Somewhere for someone who seeks the Truth to go? The whole world shuns them, mocks them, and pushes them away. Is everyone really happy with the prepackaged imitation that seems to sell so well, concealing truth and Truth alike? Where have all the genuine people in this world gone? Why is being interested in Reality a sign of stupidity, of superficiality, of being a simpleton, of insanity?

How do people claim they found the Truth? Truth is elusive, Truth is slippery, Truth does not mold itself to my wants and desires. Truth is not static – how do you think you can hold it in your hand in the first place…So has anyone actually ever found it at all? Or do we cover up our failure to look, and the laziness to try, with “I found it” advertisement campaigns, shabbatons, missionary work, seminars, TV, and hotlines?

Why don’t people look for the Truth? Is it possible to get out of bed each morning without a reason to? If someone with a beard told you to sell your family into slavery, could you rationalize that as the will of the deity he claims to represent? We listen to everything else they say! What is faith in stupidity made of? And why do people have it in the first place? Is it THAT much easier than finding something worth believing in?

And when we DO find, or stumble across, or get hit in the head with a two-by-four piece of doubt, why is it a clever piece of inspiration can heal all wounds, and answer all questions? How do people buy into solutions that don’t solve the problem at all?

There is a nagging doubt we all feel tugging at the back of our hearts, perhaps there are no solutions at all…the problems are paradoxical, both sides are true; as Simon and Garfunkel sang, “Any way you look at it, you lose” – the futility in life is overwhelmingly obvious to anyone who simply begins to look for the answers…

Why is asking questions considered a warning sign to people? How can genuinely trying to be something be a terrible thing? What kind of society, or world at all, raises its children contrary to their own selves? Is this our collective dream for a better tomorrow, for the future, for the world itself? Did anyone ever stop to figure out if this is what they want?! Or is that, too, beyond the boundaries?

Why IS there a stopping point? Why are there ANY lines in the sand? How can anyone tolerate a boundary and limit to his only chance to Exist, to Experience, to Be? Who can feel empowered, enabled, and worthy enough to place those limits on anyone else? Are they the ones who define the parameters of Reality? Don’t they realize there is only One parameter to Reality?! Or do they think they are that One? So many questions begging to be asked, so many answers that cry out to be discovered. Who can stand in their way? Who feels they have the right and ability to decide what may be asked? Are there people who really think that their lonely reality defines everyone else’s?

But life gets in the way of Life, Falsehood derails Truth, people get in the way of the Divine…and we still sit here, wondering in abject confusion what Truth is to begin with, looking everywhere outside themselves.

Doesn’t anyone want to know? Is there a single on planet Earth ready to understand, eager to discover, anticipating Truth? Is there no one left? Are we hopeless, abandoned, beyond any chance of fixing the mess we’ve made? Are we beyond help?

If there IS one person who chooses Truth, who chooses to Be, chooses to vault above and beyond the choking confines of those lonely prison of his little world, where is his hope? Is one man able to face the whole world? Can one person stand up to six billion people who are convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that he’s the crazy one, that what you see is all there is? How does G-d abandon those who try, who long and desire, who are lovesick for Him? They chose Him, they attempt to cling to His Truth and Oneness, to His exalted Existence. What does He expect? He knows they can’t stand up to the rest of humanity.

How can someone go on feeling rejected by Existence itself? Can someone really keep holding on to those dreams he can’t let go of? How do you stay above and beyond that dirty, twisted, shattered soul that stares you in the face, taunting you with who you are, with your own pitiful insignificance? Forget trying to face humanity – is it possible to face yourself?

But even if it’s not possible; even if the whole world stands opposite the entrance to your prison and pushes you back in, even if you feel you can’t make it down that narrow path – how can you not try? If all the evidence in the universe gives screaming testimony that you're truly alone – how can you not reach out, not stretch out your hand as far as it can go, not try to grasp the Infinite within this world? Does anyone ever know it’s impossible without trying first? And if it isn’t possible, why not try anyways? Is there anything to lose? It’s all we really have…!

Why DO we feel that loneliness? Why is it when one begins to search for Truth he feels such a disconnect from the rest of humanity? Where is the brotherhood, the mutual support, the acceptance and care of fellow Man? Can’t it be possible to find your Truth and remain connected to others? Is it so hard to understand someone else? Why is it so hard, so impossible to assist and be concerned of others? When one starts to follow the bas kol in his own heart which cries “Lech Lecha”, “Go to yourself – and FOR yourself”, he feels an existential loneliness of such horrific magnitude that it almost swallows him Whole. Isn’t it paradoxically saddening that when “finds” himself, he feels as if he is not there?  And when one IS there, no one else is – an existential catch-22, indeed. How I wish you were here…someone, anyone at all – even me.

Why do we feel the need to seek out others? Who cares if you are understood? Does it matter if there IS anyone out there? Will you lose the ability to function if you are alone? Why? If you believe in what you are doing, who cares if anyone else does?

Why IS it “not good for Man to be alone”? Why do we have an almost pathetic and pathological need to share our experiences, to have others see things our way, to expose our innermost thoughts and feelings to other people? We live in a society that blogs and talks its opinions, emotions, feelings, beliefs, views, ideas, hopes, and dreams, spilling secret after secret to waste in front of every pair of eyes in the world. “Reality” TV is a privilege fought over by thousands of contestants, each attempting to turn their already absurd lives into public fodder; for this amazing chance, people reveal themselves for the world’s voyeuristic passions and return to their dreary lives emptier than those who came before them. All for some infinitesimal probability, that perhaps someone out there will understand…and maybe even care, and that is all we want.

How do you conquer that melancholic solitude? Can you step beyond the Wall of your own context to reality in construction to relate to someone else, and more importantly, BE related to? If it’s Truth your after, why do you have to let go of everyone and everything else? It seems as if there can only be one or the other – you cannot find a society of which to be part of when Truth is your goal, just as you seemingly cannot find Truth while part of any societal context. The more one chases one end, the more tension he creates on its opposite pole; we seem to have the same pathological need to be torn in two. In all our lives, is there a bigger dream than being understood, of sharing an actual relationship, in which you can be part of something and be yourself at once? Why can’t we make that dream a reality?

Why are all our relationships attempts to merge with others? We spend our lives looking for someone who matches us perfectly, who will seamlessly join with us in a tangled faceless union, who we can melt into and absorb. What of keeping your own selfhood, allowing someone the space and respect to do the same, and integrating those selves in a relationship that at once keeps you together and holds you apart? How is it people can think that marriage is an absorbent relationship? Do you want to marry a roll of paper towels? Or a partner, a eizer k’negdo in the literal and true sense of the title?

The same is true of friendship, on a lesser scale. When someone turns to you, do you fully accept them? Open your arms, draw them close, make them a part of your life and you a part of theirs? Do you build a relationship, or simply use them for your social needs? Are the rules and dogma of religion, etiquette, manners, and social standing more important to you than people? Are you looking for brotherhood? Or a world of mutually beneficial associations? After all, we can only look out for “number one!” Even he who said with all his youthful heart “Et achai anochi mevakeish” was deemed to be to’eh bakol.

Why are people afraid of opening themselves up for others? What other reason can there be for people locking away memories, forgetting their own pasts that help them reach their present, mutely watching others suffer the same travails and catastrophes that they once endured, and being more interested in his own arbitrary values than any semblance of connection with the rest of the world? Has Man progressed at all since he was first asked “Ayekah?” We hid then, we hide now too; only now we hide from the eyes of others…and ourselves.

Does anyone really think they can hide from themselves? Why does anyone try? Even if it is possible, what do you gain? Do you feel better about yourself when you know it isn’t true? Does fooling others justify fooling yourself? Can pretending something isn’t there really hide it? It doesn’t work too well for the ostritch.

How do people manage to block out entire segments of Reality? Why is it people only wake up and notice danger and decay when it invades their lives, weapons poised and finger twitching on the trigger? By then it is too late, and the tide sweeps them off their footing and into a tidal wave of broken dreams and contexts to a Reality that just didn’t fit the cute little walls you made for it. People react to new perils the same way every time – let’s ban cell phones, text messaging, the internet, singles events, and why not burn a few seforim that don’t fit the narrow fundamentalist views we deem harmless and placid enough for the masses. If we don’t allow it, it doesn’t exist! Only we keep finding out the hard way that DOES, and it has consequences, and those consequences are now too powerful for anyone to begin to understand. Whole generations are swept away by currents that could have been directed toward noble goals and used to carry them to heights never reached, if only those powerful forces were understood.

Why doesn’t anyone attempt to live life moving forward? People seem to WANT to be swept along; most people look for inspiration in times of need, seek a reassuring hand to show them things are still the same. What happened to good old fashioned philosophy, striving to deal with the reality at hand with a plan towards the future? Does anyone plan where they want to end up in life? Or does everyone turn around when they reach 50 and wonder, “How did I get here?!” Does anyone care where it is they get to? Is anyone trying to get anywhere at all?

How is it that no one stops to investigate the direction of Life as a whole? We are a nation waiting for a Redemption, and believing (if not actually knowing) that life is incomplete until it comes – but we take it for granted, without any sort of thought as to what will bring it. Does anyone know what it is, or what it will bring, or how to bring it, or if they want it at all? No, but our 4 year olds can sing “We want Moshiach now” REALLY well. That’s the important part, no? Please, someone explain in a semi-logical and lucid way, how you can have faith in the arrival of a complete fix-all that will magically make everything right. You know, there was once someone who came along and said that – his name was Jesus. Does no one learn the lessons of history?!

Why are people obsessed with going back into history? How is it no one stops to consider why the old paradigm no longer works, and tries to force it onto a reality that is quite another shape? Everyone is obsessed with the past, trying to fit the present into its terms and mechanisms. An American bochur is American, so why hold him to European standards? Maybe the past is all we know, but the present is all we have! Is the present so frightening that we would rather be somewhere else?

Why are people so obsessed with finding somewhere they feel “comfortable”, or some worldview they feel comfortable with?  Comfort? Does it matter if you’re comfortable with something or not? Either it is True or it is not – your level of familiarity and being at ease with it doesn’t affect its validity. Since when did human beings decide existentialities? Why do we try to? Or are we simply ignoring existential realities in favor of how we feel in a moment?

Why is it when someone does try to understand Life, he tries to break it down into digestible pieces? Does anyone think Life CAN be broken down at all? Has anyone begun to understand the complexities and emergent concepts only barely contained within Life, or that there are such things in the first place? Why are we afraid of them? Doesn’t anyone begin to see that PEOPLE themselves are emergent concepts, and the process of emergence is called Life? Yet we spend our time breaking down people as well, trying to define things and set values to them, hoping our imaginary abstractions will somehow translate into concrete terms and rules for living. Is there anyone who realizes that breaking things down is just another way to break them? Is there anybody at all who longs for a Life of totality, completeness, a Whole and All that may be greater than the sum of its parts? Does anybody want to truly Live?

Is there one person with the answers to these questions? One who can truthfully say, “Yes, I tried. I lived for Life, for Existence, for Truth; I reached for Existence itself, I yearned to be Whole”? How does the world live this way? Is ignorance really bliss, so much so that people voluntarily shut their minds and hearts, their very SOULS, for the ignorant and unknowing life?

How long will we sit in lonely little bubbles, content with the illusions and imitations of Life that we’ve made for ourselves? What has to be done to interest people in Reality? What must happen for people to rise up against the hypocrisy and lies, the limitations and borders, the indifference and loneliness that they allow to govern and direct their lives? When will people be interested in a total picture of Reality, instead of a few pieces of it? What has to take place for people to want to care, to struggle, to comprehend the Infinite?

Or are we totally, helplessly, lost? Maybe the world really is too broken to fix, too apathetic to Become, and too lost to try and find, search or look for the Truth. Maybe people are completely content and comfortably numb in their cocoons of illusory meaning and fractured context. So what of the people who do try? What of the people who choose Reality? What of those who feel abandoned and rejected by Existence itself? Is it really G-d Who spurns them? Or is it six billion demigods of falseness that wage the war to uproot, suppress, and destroy Truth and those who seek it?

Don’t you see? If you don’t seek Truth, if you don’t make your Life into something Real, if you won’t Become what you can Be, then you destroy Truth! You leave that Oneness lacking. You are false, and you increase Falsehood in the world. It’s your choice, it’s our choice, and the choice we make affects everyone else. The world truly is One.

            Are you? Why do people insist on splitting themselves into pieces? Is there anything more absurd and bizarre than hearing someone say “My yetzer hara told/made/convinced/tempted me…”? Why do you name a part of you something else? Is this a slight identity crisis, or perhaps schizophrenia? Or maybe we like having multiple personality disorder? What happened to our very Being? Why do we fragment it, split it smaller than the atom? What do the words “part of me” mean, anyways? Do people really think that they are made up of little pieces? How is no one in touch with the Wholeness of who they are?

            How do we “lose ourselves”? No matter how great the will, or how deeply held the conviction and belief, there are times we will completely contradict everything we claim to be and live for. Is there anyone who truly lives by his convictions and beliefs? Is it possible?

            Does it matter if you do? Why is everyone so shocked when someone doesn’t? “How could s/he do such a thing?” – well, how couldn’t they? Who cares? It’s just an empty action, a fleeting moment in the Infinite, another wasted potential in a universe full of opportunities.

Do your actions even matter? Does anyone see the futility in day-to-day life, with meaningless action piled on meaningless action creating a cognitive dissonant world of illusory success? How can people go on to the next day without once doing something that comes from themselves, from who they are, from the Real place we call a soul?  Does functionality matter more than selfhood? Why do we care for the mechanical, functional, “if I shake a palm branch it causes things to happen in the heavens” mentality? What of expressing yourself within the relationship you share with haShem? Who cares what it DOES – what IS it, and what does is make you?

Why is it when asked who we are we invariably respond with our profession? Has this confusion between essence and function pierced the consciousness of the entire world? Does anyone believe in an essence at all? Or are we so caught up in a distorted view of reality as a mechanical universe of cause and effect that we simply don’t see the place for essences in it at all? No wonder no one is in touch with their own…

How is it that the entirety of the Torah, the very blueprint of Reality, has been reduced to a causational list of demands? Do people really think their pitiful explanations of Divine Wisdom are the Divine Will? Do they think they understand the Mind of the Creator? Who dares say they know what He Wants the world to Become? Yet everyone thinks they do, and everyone is hellbent on giving Him their strange fire offering in his Holy of Holies, thinking they are truly doing His Will; what G-d Wants, G-d gets…G-d help us all.

 So is it any wonder we find ourselves in the situation we do? Adam HaRishon learned the hard way that man can never be G-d; it is not our place to decide. Destiny is what G-d lays out before us, and it is “what you do along the way that makes you feel so True”; we live a pitifully paradoxical life of Being and Becoming at once, and feeling torn in two…until the Day where all will be One, including ourselves.

What can one do when he feels torn in two? How do you go on living with no context, no area of integration, no interrelating with Self and world? How do you find meaning in an arbitrary world? Where do you focus your energies, invest your potential, give over your passion crying out for expression and growth? Is it possible to find such a place? And what can you do until you do find it? How do you stay true to yourself when your self is floating in a netherworld unconnected to its own Reality?

How does one maintain integrity in our world? Is it possible to remain true to yourself, to actually remain yourself, in a world fueled by rapture and desire to be swallowed up by something else? Everyone is proud of their views, their beliefs, their brilliant insights; everyone shows off their allegiances and loyalties, eagerly explaining the “truth” behind their convictions – and how many are prisoner to those perspectives, being convicted by the very things that they believe in, or by the things they don’t?

How do people buy into things that constrict, squash, and imprison? Why do people have an almost pathological need to restrict themselves in mindless and mindnumbing fashion? The very first mistake everyone makes is confusing their local reality with the whole of Creation – the jokes about Mashiach are very real. To the Litvak he cannot be Sfardi, and the Sfardi would kill him if he showed up as a chosid. The Chosid, of course, would laugh at Mashiach if he were to be modern Orthodox. And the modern Orthodox would never accept a Litvak, those religious crazies. And heaven help us if Mashiach isn’t frum at all…! But all agree – life outside the confines of the little bubbles we make for ourselves is not worth living…funny how we all have so much in common! And funny how we all cannot see ourselves to be the simpleminded prisoners of our own devices, of our own narrowminded and simplistic worldviews, that we are.

Most funny of all will be how everyone will use these questions to “prove” that they are right, they have the truth, and how they have all the answers...how their messianic vision of the Home we forlornly want is the Truth.

Isn’t it funny that when it comes to feeling like you are Home, having the answers isn’t as important as having the questions? 

Values and Validation

“Home” is a concept not easily put into words. It is our refuge, our sanctum, our institution for the whole. It evokes the pictures of the family around the fire, the yelling of playing children in security, and the nurturing environment in which people grow into themselves. It is the place you go back to, that you belong to.

Today’s times have a need for stable homes, in any form, more than any other. Teens at risk, high school pregnancies, disappearing morals, urban blight, the wonderful statistic that one in four American college students possess an STD, the “Jesus of Suburbia” culture, the 4.5% of the total population of the United States having a diagnosable mental illness, the rise of postmodernism and its moral irreverence (and irrelevance), the erosion of what is called “Judeo-Christian values”, the rise in cultural glorification of youthful promiscuous sex and violence…and as the song alludes to, the increasing feelings of victimization in a life that is usually seen as totally unconnected to the perceptions of those living it; they are little islands of consciousness, floating in a vast and tangled sea of confusion and pain. Even Orthodox Judaism, bastion of the ironclad conservatist safety net of being set in the stone of twenty years ago, has begun cracking at the seams from an internal pressure created by its teenagers and the external pressure of the society described.

Today’s feel good stories have one amazing quality to them worth noticing – a brilliant summation in one moment where everything comes together. We are inspired by these stories, taking solace in that perfect moment and its unspoken comfort that perhaps one day we will reach ours...and never think about where it may take us. We watch the poor family get their new house on Extreme Makeover, see their tearful reactions, and never see what happens when they can’t make the tax payments on the house, or simply get conceited and entitled with their newfound wealth/status symbol.

Listening to mental health professionals and community workers (as well as other opinionated blowhards) the fast paced life of the twenty first century has robbed us of our family values, and our lost and confused children are acting out because they need to feel valued and validated, as the family is intended to do.

The need to be validated, to be valued, is nothing new. Self-help books and parenting manuals (and other such tomes of fiction) all stress the need for validation. This, in and of itself, is harmless at worst. It might carry the strange threat of turning people into hollow shells of themselves because they objectify everything about their own self, but that doesn’t really affect people too badly, right?

Living in the age of scientific reason, in which something being “unscientific” means it cannot possibly be true, we seek validation from what is outside of ourselves; this is perfectly acceptable for investigating worldly phenomena, but comes up woefully inadequate for validating our own existence, and its experiences.

The root that “value” and “validation” share comes from the old French valoir, meaning "be worthy," which itself is originally "be strong," from the Latin valere "be strong, be well, be worth, have power, be able". Notice the difference in the shades of the meaning, though. It went from something within you, an enabling force of Selfhood, to something outside of you that you need in order to be that very Self in the first place.

            Anyone who is a student of the Western zeitgeist’s evolution, or was simply alive at the right time, has seen this shift in meaning accelerate in the last fifty years. We live in a society in which people see this need for validation as a fact of life. But....Should it be?

Experience vs. Awareness

On the topic of things not being what they used to be:

A lot of evolution has gone into the Jewish people over the centuries.

In simpler terms, we are not the people we were three hundred years ago. Definitely not the people we were a thousand years ago. And CERTAINLY not the people who lived b'zman beis hamikdash.

Most of us alive today tend to picture Avraham Avinu and Moshe Rabbeinu as Rebbes, if at all. Though Avraham was a Kurd and Moshe a quintessential Egyptian. We assume that a Jew is a Jew, and looks, talks, acts, and lives like a Jew, without any further question as to what, if anything, is a Jew.
(The previous sentence is, in fact, a sentence. Read it again.)
And that is perfectly fine. We wear our Jewish identity without any compulsions, engage in productive lives within that structure provided by that identity, and build communities to encapsulate that identity as well as promulgate it. Understanding is nice, but it is not the same as being there and being it.

But...
There are those who invest in understanding, in context, in a fuller appreciation of what it means to be a Jew. They talk of things like biblical agendas, corrupt priests, rabbinical judaism, mistaken pshatim, Christian influences, and other such things. Because while ignorance is bliss, it is still ignorance.
Of course, on the flip side, understanding things tends to place you outside of them. And these people are almost always outside the community.


So which one do you think is more important - the experience in the moment (albeit perhaps without any understanding of how things got there), or understanding where you stand (but not, technically, being there)?

Based on that, do you think that Halacha is meant to engineer an experiential life, or an understanding one?
And which one of those approaches is more "free" in the sense of the ben chorin that Torah is meant to make you?

Crackers, Laffas, and Going off the Rails

Does anyone think our ancestors, upon leaving Egypt, ate the matzas we pay twenty bucks a pound for?

My brother's friend has a great point about the "zecher l'mikdash k'Hillel" of the Haggadah. We eat a leaf of lettuce (or a bush, if you hold of the Chazon Ish's Shiur) on a cracker with some horseradish. And we proclaim "zecher l'mikdash k'Hillel, kein asu Hillel b'zman sh'beish hamikdash kayam..."
Meanwhile, Hillel was a Sfardi. He didn't eat no darn crackers. There was a beis hamikdash, so there was the korban pesach. So he was eating a shwarma laffa with charif. And we sit here saying zecher l'mikdash k'Hillel. Sheesh.

So why DO we eat those crackers?
Because people went off the rails. Just in case, if some of the dough might have risen, and we might be oiver on a d'oiraisah of chometz on pesach, maybe we should cook them so thoroughly that there can be no ch'shash of chometz. So now we have crackers.
[Of course, this has since spread to the new thing about eating matza in bags to make sure no crumbs fall on the table, which might be specks of spots in the matza that have yeast still on it, and if then water or other liquids fall on them, they would turn to chometz. I am not going to comment on that, because I think my description is comment enough.]


Perhaps Pesach and its freedom are about being able to make choices and decisions that matter, instead of choosing to further run off the rails and reservation.
Choices, those which shape who we are (as individuals and as a nation), are the ultimate freedom we have. The "ein ben chorin elah mi sh'osek ba'Torah" MEANS being able to make these choices, being able to think and debate amongst different options and opportunities and choose the one that is who you are and who you are becoming. It means nothing is sacred as much as everything is - and the choice itself IS what makes it sacred.
It is this freedom we celebrate, we revisit each year, and we reconnect with every Pesach.
Hopefully, this Pesach will be one that we can all become truly free - free from those who seek to harm us, free from those things that we are slaves to (be they addictions, dependencies, or debts of money or spirit), but most of all - free from ourselves, our ridiculous tendencies to enslave ourselves.

Buy Me a Goose

There is a wonderful anecdote I found in a joke book.

It seems there was this parush (ascetic) who decided that he would bring his newborn son up to be a perfect tzaddik. So immediately after the child's bris, he isolated him in a room, and announced that only his mother would care for him. No other females were to come close to him - not the sister, or cousins, or anyone. When the child turned three and had his first haircut, new rules were made. Henceforth no female, including his mother, would be allowed to enter the child's room. Only his father and a rebbe would enter so as to teach him Torah. This regimen of pure Torah learning was carried on for 15 years. Even for his bar mitzvah, only a select group of ten men were allowed in to see him, to hear his drashah and to wish him mazal tov. When the young man turned 18, it became necessary to look for a shidduch. But before this could be done, he would need to go visit the rav of the town to obtain semichah. There was really no choice - he had to leave his protected premises and go see the rav. So, with a heavy heart, the father accompanied his son to the rav's house. As hashgachah (pratis?) would have it, on the way, they passed a group of pretty young ladies. "Tatte, father, what are those?" the young man asked. "Katchkes [geese]," his father replied, and they continued on their way. A few minutes later, the young man spoke up again, "Tatte?" he asked. "Yes...?" replied his father. 

"Buy me a katchke," said the son.

I take it as a parable for today's chevra. 

We grow up separated from the world, learning Torah in this idyllic, wonderful, separated existence. And then we meet the world, and want to buy katchkes...

The cognitive dissonance most yeshiva bochurim feel upon leaving the warm embrace of yeshiva is perhaps only matched by the rage and helplessness they feel to do anything about it. Some direct the cognitive dissonance towards the outside world, preferring to rant about "eisuv and his nisyoinois that ruin the fabric of yiddishkeit" while others turn it towards the "backwards, religious, crazy people who want to pretend there isn't an internet (or start things like the "Ichud haKehillos L'Maan Tohar HaMachane"). Either way, its an identity crisis that lasts a lifetime.

Perhaps the most striking indictment of Chareidi-ism (should such a thing, in fact, exist) is the fact that once discovering the katchkes, and realizing that all the wonderful holy brilliant self contained books they read don't stand up to reality nor prepare them for real life, instead of trying to cover lost ground and engage in reality, they condemn reality to some sort of mental institution in their minds. Perhaps instead of renting out Citi Field to figure out how to make the internet kosher, or spending $250,000 on a mechitza (one time use) for the Siyum haShas, we ought to ask WHY we are attracted to katchkes, and how we can live a normal, engaged, real life in a world where there are katchkes of all kinds, shapes, sizes, values, and ideals.