Ive been holding off on posting for a while now, as I have been on a bit of a rollercoaster day to day and figured its best to wait it out and make sense of it after. So its after, but I dont know if it makes any sense....
While I was in the US, I saw a job posting online that looked to be fantastic - the kind of job that would be fun and enjoyable and open doors down the road to all sorts of exciting opportunities. I emailed them my resume, and they said they wanted me to come in for an interview when I returned. This was exciting - so much for the "it takes six to nine months to find a job", I found one in three weeks!
So after we landed and (kind of) settled in, I called. Turns out they're in a moshav a bit past Ranaana, and the HR lady decided it was too far a commute.
I didnt decide that, she did.
But okay, she had a point, I guessed, so I turned my attention to a part time social work posting I had seen. Again, I was invited in for an interview. I was invited to a second interview, and after a short weekend was called back, told I had a job, and someone would call me the next morning to tell me the details, hours, salary, etc.
So its a day and a half later, and.....still waiting. Am I (part time) employed? I dont know :)
Anyway, I finally picked up my check from Nefesh B'Nefesh, and discovered it is a dollar check, drawn from an American bank. In today's Israel, check cashers are not happy with American checks (apparently they arent as easy to cash as they used to be), and they want a high rate (about 4-5%). And if you want to deposit it in your bank, good luck - they take a minimum of 30 days to clear, you get charged a fee (then again, your bank in Israel also charges you for meeting a teller and using the ATM, so no surprises there), and that's if they're no MY bank...
...which, the first time I went, refused to cash my check because they decided darling wifey had to be there too (since it is addressed to both of us).
So I tried again, at a different branch. No problems - there was even an English speaking teller there, who was quite nice.
Then I get a phone call today - they wont cash the check, because my signature on it and my signature on file there dont match. Of course they dont, I signed the check in English and the bank has a signature in Hebrew on file. Okay, fine, they tell me, theyll take it.
Which is great, because the Misrad HaKlita has been withholding our sal klitah since we...well, arrived. See, if you leave the country during your first 6 months here, they freeze your payments until you come in person and ask for them back. Which is ridiculous, because they know when you come and leave thanks to the computer system (its how they knew to turn off your payments in the first place!), but fine, Ill ask for them personally, and nicely, right? No. It seems their appointment system is leftover from the advent of the telephone. Literally. You're supposed to call in, leave a message, and they call you back with an appointment. Except the "call you back" part is a little...unreliable. I have called 12 (?!) times since we landed, and never got a phone call. So I went there yesterday unannounced, to discover the place is empty. But they had appointments that time, you see, so can I come back Wednesday?
So I will head there tomorrow, and hopefully, Ill get September and October's payments, and maybe even November's too.
Sigh. Dont you love a long, winding, torturous narrative that has no real completion? Welcome to life here!
The ongoing saga of our family's Aliyah.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
PSA - An Article of Mine is Published on Jewishideas.org
http://jewishideas.org/articles/text-and-context-reflections-contemporary-orthodoxy
Sunday, October 13, 2013
...and We're Back
So we returned to the US on chol hamoed Sukkot to be by my brother's wedding. In some ways, we never left, and in others, boy - we were never here.
We were only gone a month, but in so many ways, we were gone a lifetime. Which, as anyone who has survived a plane trip with two lil kids can testify, we technically were.
But we are back, and the "Adjusting from Jet Lag Project, Part II" has commenced. 2.5's body clock is on Tokyo time, while 8 month old seems to have settled on Chicago time.
But the wedding was nice, and seeing family was too, and all in all it was bittersweet to see old friends and the life we left behind.
And here we are, with our lift arriving tomorrow (finally!), and the job hunt getting into full swing. Hopefully everything comes together soon...
But we are back, and the "Adjusting from Jet Lag Project, Part II" has commenced. 2.5's body clock is on Tokyo time, while 8 month old seems to have settled on Chicago time.
But the wedding was nice, and seeing family was too, and all in all it was bittersweet to see old friends and the life we left behind.
And here we are, with our lift arriving tomorrow (finally!), and the job hunt getting into full swing. Hopefully everything comes together soon...
Friday, September 13, 2013
Yom Kippur
Lo Hayu Yamim Tovim B'Yisrael K'mo...Yom Kippur.
There is much made of the "Bike Day" phenomenon in Israel. Many feel it is a sad thing, where the richness and beauty of a Day of Cleansing ("atonement" is such a Christian word!) is warped into a "hey, we can ride a bike on the Ayalon backwards!"
Ynet reported a fascinating poll in which something like 3/4 of Israelis reported that they plan to fast this Yom Kippur. Some for some truly weird reasons ("for the challenge of it"), but still, they plan to fast. On one level, the ink spilled lamenting those who do not know is in vain...
But there is something else I want to point out, and to share.
My family took a little trip to Geula, which is a 20 minute bus ride and a journey to another universe. We went to pick up some things friends in the US asked us to bring back for them, and to meet a seminary girl who is a friend of our family.
Walking down Rehov Meah Shearim, we passed a toy store that had stuffed singing Torahs in a bin outside. Daughter 2.5 saw them and announced "I want to hug it!" And she proceeded to squeeze it tight, with an angelic smile on her face, saying "I love the Torah!"
This alone is a moment that all parents would know is a heart melting, eye tearing one. But it got me thinking on two levels...
Firstly, on a simple level, one that is repeated ad nauseum by tourists, seminary girls, and aliyah propagandists alike, it is absolutely gorgeous that this is what is on our streets, what our children are raised to know and love, and what the cultural atmosphere in Israel is like.
But secondly, and more deeply, there is something we all tend to overlook sometimes, and that is that we live WITHIN the Torah's universe (literally - uni, one, verse, saying. Hu amar vayehi...). As adults, we debate about how to keep mitzvot, the "issues" of the day, we question and learn, debate and ignore...and forget. We forget that our worldview itself, the space of our minds, the way in which we process the world (as Creation!), is within Torah. My daughter doesnt know a word of Torah, and happily does not care, but she instinctively recognizes that Torah is who we are, is what we are defined by, and live within.
And Yisrael, as it grows up, does the same. Whether someone lives within the Daled Amos shel Halacha or not in the physical sense/actions, all of Yisrael does in their hearts and minds. They each know that Yom Kippur is the day HaShem lovingly begins again with Yisrael, with Creation, with an imperfect universe that has stumbled and meandered through almost 6000 years trying to find its way, and they each respond in the way they are able. For some, it is to sit back on that day and bask in the love HaShem gives us all, wanting to fix all they've broken in their lives and in the world; they may not know how to connect to this in an Avoda kind of way, nor even fully understand why they feel the mixture of dread and excitement in their hearts on this day, but Yisrael revels in the dichotomous and heart wrenching Existence of Man and begs and longs for the renewal and returning to, and of, the relationship between HaShem and His Lovers, and Love - Yisrael.
There is much made of the "Bike Day" phenomenon in Israel. Many feel it is a sad thing, where the richness and beauty of a Day of Cleansing ("atonement" is such a Christian word!) is warped into a "hey, we can ride a bike on the Ayalon backwards!"
Ynet reported a fascinating poll in which something like 3/4 of Israelis reported that they plan to fast this Yom Kippur. Some for some truly weird reasons ("for the challenge of it"), but still, they plan to fast. On one level, the ink spilled lamenting those who do not know is in vain...
But there is something else I want to point out, and to share.
My family took a little trip to Geula, which is a 20 minute bus ride and a journey to another universe. We went to pick up some things friends in the US asked us to bring back for them, and to meet a seminary girl who is a friend of our family.
Walking down Rehov Meah Shearim, we passed a toy store that had stuffed singing Torahs in a bin outside. Daughter 2.5 saw them and announced "I want to hug it!" And she proceeded to squeeze it tight, with an angelic smile on her face, saying "I love the Torah!"
This alone is a moment that all parents would know is a heart melting, eye tearing one. But it got me thinking on two levels...
Firstly, on a simple level, one that is repeated ad nauseum by tourists, seminary girls, and aliyah propagandists alike, it is absolutely gorgeous that this is what is on our streets, what our children are raised to know and love, and what the cultural atmosphere in Israel is like.
But secondly, and more deeply, there is something we all tend to overlook sometimes, and that is that we live WITHIN the Torah's universe (literally - uni, one, verse, saying. Hu amar vayehi...). As adults, we debate about how to keep mitzvot, the "issues" of the day, we question and learn, debate and ignore...and forget. We forget that our worldview itself, the space of our minds, the way in which we process the world (as Creation!), is within Torah. My daughter doesnt know a word of Torah, and happily does not care, but she instinctively recognizes that Torah is who we are, is what we are defined by, and live within.
And Yisrael, as it grows up, does the same. Whether someone lives within the Daled Amos shel Halacha or not in the physical sense/actions, all of Yisrael does in their hearts and minds. They each know that Yom Kippur is the day HaShem lovingly begins again with Yisrael, with Creation, with an imperfect universe that has stumbled and meandered through almost 6000 years trying to find its way, and they each respond in the way they are able. For some, it is to sit back on that day and bask in the love HaShem gives us all, wanting to fix all they've broken in their lives and in the world; they may not know how to connect to this in an Avoda kind of way, nor even fully understand why they feel the mixture of dread and excitement in their hearts on this day, but Yisrael revels in the dichotomous and heart wrenching Existence of Man and begs and longs for the renewal and returning to, and of, the relationship between HaShem and His Lovers, and Love - Yisrael.
Monday, September 9, 2013
Breathe....(3am)
Sorry for the horrible music references, yet again :) [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8rtJRlLdI8]
There is something poignant about the human subconscious' ability to worm its way into your consciousness at the most inopportune times and set your reptilian brain alight in fear and fright.
There is also something, on an elemental level, about aliyah that forces you to abandon caution (on some level - I am truly NOT advocating coming to Israel on a song and a prayer; coming with savings and a plan is a far better idea, and allows for many more songs and prayers with a roof over your head afterwards) and trust the destiny you claim as ancestral birthright, bought with a bowl of lentils and sealed with a mustard and cold cuts sandwich.
Those two things are a heady brew, one that can leave you sleepless in Jerusalem.
For how does one know that which he believes? In less pedantic and obscure terms, how does one reassure his doubts in his destiny, his self, his abilities to make something work and flourish when that very thing can be against normal odds, if not common sense?
Who in their right mind moves to another country when they dont speak the local language, nor have a job? Where the society runs on who you know, and you dont know anyone? Where your children will one day be strangers in your own land to you, speaking a different language, with incomparably different worries and dreams than you had at their age, to the point you may not understand them at all? Who leaves family, friends, and support networks behind for a dream?
And who knows if we'll make it.
I think many failed olim fail because they keep one foot in either world, looking at the lights at both ends of the tunnel...the words in the song are prophetic in that regard - trying to leave the way you came in will only have you make all your mistakes again, in reverse order, as you return to where you were.
This is a fantastic teshuva metaphor as well, by the way.
So here is to diving headfirst, to "absorption" (I think the Hebrew term is so hilariously accurate, in that Israeli blunt way), to making it to the other end of the tunnel. And to breathing...and maybe, even, perhaps, sleeping.
There is something poignant about the human subconscious' ability to worm its way into your consciousness at the most inopportune times and set your reptilian brain alight in fear and fright.
There is also something, on an elemental level, about aliyah that forces you to abandon caution (on some level - I am truly NOT advocating coming to Israel on a song and a prayer; coming with savings and a plan is a far better idea, and allows for many more songs and prayers with a roof over your head afterwards) and trust the destiny you claim as ancestral birthright, bought with a bowl of lentils and sealed with a mustard and cold cuts sandwich.
Those two things are a heady brew, one that can leave you sleepless in Jerusalem.
For how does one know that which he believes? In less pedantic and obscure terms, how does one reassure his doubts in his destiny, his self, his abilities to make something work and flourish when that very thing can be against normal odds, if not common sense?
Who in their right mind moves to another country when they dont speak the local language, nor have a job? Where the society runs on who you know, and you dont know anyone? Where your children will one day be strangers in your own land to you, speaking a different language, with incomparably different worries and dreams than you had at their age, to the point you may not understand them at all? Who leaves family, friends, and support networks behind for a dream?
And who knows if we'll make it.
I think many failed olim fail because they keep one foot in either world, looking at the lights at both ends of the tunnel...the words in the song are prophetic in that regard - trying to leave the way you came in will only have you make all your mistakes again, in reverse order, as you return to where you were.
This is a fantastic teshuva metaphor as well, by the way.
So here is to diving headfirst, to "absorption" (I think the Hebrew term is so hilariously accurate, in that Israeli blunt way), to making it to the other end of the tunnel. And to breathing...and maybe, even, perhaps, sleeping.
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
Rosh HaShana Musings
There is something that feels arbitrary about Rosh HaShana, as if it intrudes into our minds during the last days of summer.
Especially for me this year, as the momentous occasion of our aliyah has superseded a good portion of my consciousness of time this past year. Much effort and time has been spent on this move; it is not an exaggeration to say it has been a year long process. It isnt over yet, either.
But while the changing from one year to another may feel arbitrary in some aspects, in others it feels concrete, almost as if it imposes itself on daily life; the furtive cry of "Ura yisheinim mishinat'chem" in the shofar blasts its way past the hevlei hazman we get lost in, asserting a measure of reality over the pitiful self contained bubbles we tend to mistake as being real.
Here is to wishing for health, wealth, love, wisdom, knowledge, peace, and growth in all things, for all of Yisrael. And most of all, here is a fervent and heartfelt wish that we all know and renew our commitment to HaShem and the relationship we have with Him.
Especially for me this year, as the momentous occasion of our aliyah has superseded a good portion of my consciousness of time this past year. Much effort and time has been spent on this move; it is not an exaggeration to say it has been a year long process. It isnt over yet, either.
But while the changing from one year to another may feel arbitrary in some aspects, in others it feels concrete, almost as if it imposes itself on daily life; the furtive cry of "Ura yisheinim mishinat'chem" in the shofar blasts its way past the hevlei hazman we get lost in, asserting a measure of reality over the pitiful self contained bubbles we tend to mistake as being real.
Here is to wishing for health, wealth, love, wisdom, knowledge, peace, and growth in all things, for all of Yisrael. And most of all, here is a fervent and heartfelt wish that we all know and renew our commitment to HaShem and the relationship we have with Him.
You saw my pain washed out in the rain
Broken glass, saw the blood run from my veins
But You saw no fault, no cracks in my heart
And You knelt beside my hope torn apart
But the ghosts that we knew will flicker from view
We'll live a long life
So give me hope in the darkness that I will see the light
'Cause oh that gave me such a fright
But I will hold as long as You like
Just promise me we'll be alright
So lead me back, turn south from that place
And close my eyes to my recent disgrace
'Cause You know my call
And we'll share my all
And our children come and they will hear me roar
So give me hope in the darkness that I will see the light
'Cause oh that gave me such a fright
But I will hold as long as You like
Just promise me we'll be alright
But hold me still, bury my heart on the coals
And hold me still, bury my heart next to Yours
So give me hope in the darkness that I will see the light
'Cause oh that gave me such a fright
But I will hold on with all of my might
Just promise me we'll be alright
But the ghosts that we knew made us black and all blue
But we'll live a long life
And the ghosts that we knew will flicker from view
And we'll live a long life
Broken glass, saw the blood run from my veins
But You saw no fault, no cracks in my heart
And You knelt beside my hope torn apart
But the ghosts that we knew will flicker from view
We'll live a long life
So give me hope in the darkness that I will see the light
'Cause oh that gave me such a fright
But I will hold as long as You like
Just promise me we'll be alright
So lead me back, turn south from that place
And close my eyes to my recent disgrace
'Cause You know my call
And we'll share my all
And our children come and they will hear me roar
So give me hope in the darkness that I will see the light
'Cause oh that gave me such a fright
But I will hold as long as You like
Just promise me we'll be alright
But hold me still, bury my heart on the coals
And hold me still, bury my heart next to Yours
So give me hope in the darkness that I will see the light
'Cause oh that gave me such a fright
But I will hold on with all of my might
Just promise me we'll be alright
But the ghosts that we knew made us black and all blue
But we'll live a long life
And the ghosts that we knew will flicker from view
And we'll live a long life
("Ghosts that We Knew", Mumford and Sons)
Here is to leaving those ghosts behind, to being lead back from that place, to being able to throw them off a cliff come Yom Kippur; here is to that long life, which all of Yisrael continues to hold on to with all our might. May we all hear HaShem tell us "my child, my beautiful child, I Promise all will be alright."
Of course, preparing (however belatedly) for Rosh HaShana in a Place that is under the watchful and longing Gaze of HaShem [eretz asher tamid einei elokecha ba] is extremely different than elsewhere. It feels different, viscerally so; there is an undercurrent of renewal and of Love in the air that one can almost taste if they look for it. Living in the gaze of your Lover's Eyes is so different than a long distance relationship, after all. <Sorry for another Mumford and Sons reference here, but their music has a wonderful element of Teshuva in it. It is self aware, it is conscious, and it is reflective.>
Well, love was kind for a time
Now just aches and it makes me blind
This mirror holds my eyes too bright
I can't see the others in my life
Were we too young? Our heads too strong?
To bear the weight of these lover's eyes.
'Cause I feel numb, beneath your tongue
Beneath the curse of these lover's eyes.
But do not ask the price I paid,
I must live with my quiet rage,
Tame the ghosts in my head,
That run wild and wish me dead.
Should you shake my ash to the wind
Lord, forget all of my sins
Oh, let me die where I lie
Neath the curse of my lover's eyes.
'Cause there's no drink or drug I've tried
To rid the curse of these lover's eyes
And I feel numb, beneath your tongue
Your strength just makes me feel less strong
But do not ask the price I paid,
I must live with my quiet rage,
Tame the ghosts in my head,
That run wild and wish me dead.
Should you shake my ash to the wind
Lord, forget all of my sins
Or let me die where I lie
Neath the curse of my lover's eyes.
And I'll walk slow, I'll walk slow
Take my hand, help me on my way.
And I'll walk slow, I'll walk slow
Take my hand, I'll be on my way.
And I'll walk slow, I'll walk slow
Take my hand, help me on my way.
And I'll walk slow, I'll walk slow
Take my hand, I'll be on my way.
("Lover's Eyes", Mumford and Sons)
We do walk slow, it has been over two thousand years and we have not yet fully found our way. And there has been much pain in learning and discovering ourselves and our mission - the price paid has been steep! But we continue to walk, continue to follow in Avraham Avinu's footsteps; Yisrael is they who are "hit'halech lifanai v'heyei tamim".
It is my dream that I, my family, our loved ones, and all of Klal Yisrael, have another year of walking, of learning, of discovering, of growing, of loving, and of Living.
Shana Tova from Jerusalem.
Thursday, August 29, 2013
A Tekes and a Snapshot of Israel
My dear brother in law was sworn into his battalion today. He is part of Nahal, and as such, swears in at the Kotel Plaza. Since, as darling wife, his parents live in the US, we went along to be there for him on this momentous occasion in his life.
We arrived late, as we had to meet up with grandmother in law at the Tachana Merkazit and then sit on the 1 bus as it meandered through black and white Jerusalem on its way to the Kotel, where it ran smack into traffic and took 25 minutes to make it from the road around the Old City to Sha'ar Ha'ashpot. By the time we made it, the soldiers were in their "chet" formation (doorway shaped, for those non-Hebrew speakers), the music was playing, and the formation was surrounded (mobbed may be a more accurate term) by family and onlookers. We settled in a few feet behind the throng.
Many people spoke. I wish I knew who, but the emcee spoke too fast for me to make out the individual words. I assume most were commanders, generals, and the like.
Different speakers said different things, but one stood out, to me. He ended his speech to the soldiers with a blessing - he repeated Birkat Kohanim, and Hamalach. His voice was full of emotion; understanding that not all the assembled boys in green are necessarily going to make it home in one piece, and hearing the plaintive plea "yivarechicha HaShem viyishmirecha...ya'er haShem panav eilecha vichuneka...yisa haShem panav eilecha viyasem lecha shalom. Hamalach Hagoel oti mikol ra, yivarech et ha'ne'arim viyikarei bahem sh'mi, u'v'shem avotai Avraham v'Yitzchak...." my eyes teared a little. A secular army, yet so connected, in a visceral way, to the underpinnings of the Jewish enterprise of yore. It is one long story, one in which we all have our part...
Another speaker told the assembled soldiers that they are going to be given two weapons tonight. One was their rifle, and the other, their Tanach. The Tanach, he told them, is where they will learn the history of the Jews, their army, and the incredible prophecy of Yeshaya that has come true, where we have returned to our Land, proud and free. This is why we are here, why sometimes we must fight, and what we are fighting for.
The soldiers then were sworn in, their triplicate cries of "Ani Nishbah" echoing off the walls of the plaza. Then HaTikvah was played, and the crowd and soldiers sang along. I embarrassingly admit I do not know all the words, but when everyone sang "od lo avda tikvateinu..." again I teared; the proverbial man on the street, placing his children on the altar as Avraham did, only in green clothes and a chance he may not come down from that altar free, still sees this in the context of the 2000 years of Exile and the knowledge that we have now returned to our Land, to live as Jews, at last. And following this, as the soldiers received their Tanach and their rifle, they played "Shir Ha'maalot, esah einai..." in its entirety, twice. Each soldier, upon receiving his weapon, heard "Ezri me'im HaShem, oseh shamayim va'aretz". It was beautiful. It truly was.
And, I think, a snapshot of Israel as a whole. For it is far to easy to hide behind newspaper headlines, be they Ha'aretz or the Yated, and snipe at "them". It is easy to think you know how Am Yisrael is supposed to look, pray, act, or be. It is easy to denigrate, to put down, to find fault. But secular or religious, chiloni or dati, man, woman, child, all of Israel (both meanings intended) knows it is their Father in Heaven to Whom they direct their prayers, and in Whose image they walk, and Whose Mission they take part in. They stand as One as such, in knowing that the Nevi'im have spoken Truth, that we follow in their footsteps; that the One G-d is Our G-d, ezreinu me'im HaShem.
The Zohar has a funny sounding drashah it makes on the pasuk of "Mi K'amcha Yisrael goy Echad Ba'Aretz" - it simply sticks in a comma. Mi K'amcha Yisrael, (when? when they are) goy echad Ba'Aretz.
To see this, even if only in caricature form perhaps, is why I cried.
We arrived late, as we had to meet up with grandmother in law at the Tachana Merkazit and then sit on the 1 bus as it meandered through black and white Jerusalem on its way to the Kotel, where it ran smack into traffic and took 25 minutes to make it from the road around the Old City to Sha'ar Ha'ashpot. By the time we made it, the soldiers were in their "chet" formation (doorway shaped, for those non-Hebrew speakers), the music was playing, and the formation was surrounded (mobbed may be a more accurate term) by family and onlookers. We settled in a few feet behind the throng.
Many people spoke. I wish I knew who, but the emcee spoke too fast for me to make out the individual words. I assume most were commanders, generals, and the like.
Different speakers said different things, but one stood out, to me. He ended his speech to the soldiers with a blessing - he repeated Birkat Kohanim, and Hamalach. His voice was full of emotion; understanding that not all the assembled boys in green are necessarily going to make it home in one piece, and hearing the plaintive plea "yivarechicha HaShem viyishmirecha...ya'er haShem panav eilecha vichuneka...yisa haShem panav eilecha viyasem lecha shalom. Hamalach Hagoel oti mikol ra, yivarech et ha'ne'arim viyikarei bahem sh'mi, u'v'shem avotai Avraham v'Yitzchak...." my eyes teared a little. A secular army, yet so connected, in a visceral way, to the underpinnings of the Jewish enterprise of yore. It is one long story, one in which we all have our part...
Another speaker told the assembled soldiers that they are going to be given two weapons tonight. One was their rifle, and the other, their Tanach. The Tanach, he told them, is where they will learn the history of the Jews, their army, and the incredible prophecy of Yeshaya that has come true, where we have returned to our Land, proud and free. This is why we are here, why sometimes we must fight, and what we are fighting for.
The soldiers then were sworn in, their triplicate cries of "Ani Nishbah" echoing off the walls of the plaza. Then HaTikvah was played, and the crowd and soldiers sang along. I embarrassingly admit I do not know all the words, but when everyone sang "od lo avda tikvateinu..." again I teared; the proverbial man on the street, placing his children on the altar as Avraham did, only in green clothes and a chance he may not come down from that altar free, still sees this in the context of the 2000 years of Exile and the knowledge that we have now returned to our Land, to live as Jews, at last. And following this, as the soldiers received their Tanach and their rifle, they played "Shir Ha'maalot, esah einai..." in its entirety, twice. Each soldier, upon receiving his weapon, heard "Ezri me'im HaShem, oseh shamayim va'aretz". It was beautiful. It truly was.
And, I think, a snapshot of Israel as a whole. For it is far to easy to hide behind newspaper headlines, be they Ha'aretz or the Yated, and snipe at "them". It is easy to think you know how Am Yisrael is supposed to look, pray, act, or be. It is easy to denigrate, to put down, to find fault. But secular or religious, chiloni or dati, man, woman, child, all of Israel (both meanings intended) knows it is their Father in Heaven to Whom they direct their prayers, and in Whose image they walk, and Whose Mission they take part in. They stand as One as such, in knowing that the Nevi'im have spoken Truth, that we follow in their footsteps; that the One G-d is Our G-d, ezreinu me'im HaShem.
The Zohar has a funny sounding drashah it makes on the pasuk of "Mi K'amcha Yisrael goy Echad Ba'Aretz" - it simply sticks in a comma. Mi K'amcha Yisrael, (when? when they are) goy echad Ba'Aretz.
To see this, even if only in caricature form perhaps, is why I cried.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Shwarma, Gas Masks, and Normalcy
So darling wife lost her teudat zehut somewhere, and instead of going to open a bank account today, we went to get gas masks.
Let the incongruence of that sentence sink in slowly. (If there is nothing incongruent about that sentence, hello, fellow Israeli.)
It seems the government is handing out gas masks, so we walked to the mall 20 minutes away from our house and voila - we are the proud owners of 4 gas masks, complete with our names written on the box on the side.
Following this, we went to get some shwarma.
Once again, let the incongruence sink in.
While sitting at the table, watching my 2.5 year old daughter figure out if she likes shwarma or not ("I dont like this chicky! I like shwarma!"), it occurred to me that half the other families in the restaurant had the black or orange (adult or child) boxes too. And decided to go for shwarma. And this was normal.
Not normal in the sense of "sure, who's worried of being gassed to death with a massive chemical/biological warfare arsenal when there is food involved?", but normal in the sense of "there will always be those who want to harm the Jewish people, and we will take the necessary precautions, but there is still life to be lived, and that includes 18 shekel shwarma, and we are going to live it Pass the napkins."
And as insane as that may sound to some of you, I think it may be the only way to live. While the awareness of the possibilities of life is crushing, and in Western society we do our best to avoid them, there is something to be said for living life on the edge, in awareness of all that Is, and may not be for much longer. Call it stoic, call it crazy, call it Larry, it is on that razor edge of awareness that one can taste Life, sense it beating in the moment, with its eternity and its fleetingness, all at once. Its a nice place to live.
Elsewhere in the news, for those who are following our saga, we have more or less unpacked everything that we took on the plane, been shopping in the shuk and in our neighborhood stores, explored our environs (there are some GORGEOUS areas near our apartment, and some good shopping too!), and have been slowly stocking the fridge and freezer. The rest of this week should see us replacing darling wife's teudat zehut, opening a bank account, shopping for Rosh HasShana (yes, already), and attending my brother-in-law's swearing in ceremony (Tekes) for his army unit at the Kotel. It will be a packed week...
Let the incongruence of that sentence sink in slowly. (If there is nothing incongruent about that sentence, hello, fellow Israeli.)
It seems the government is handing out gas masks, so we walked to the mall 20 minutes away from our house and voila - we are the proud owners of 4 gas masks, complete with our names written on the box on the side.
Following this, we went to get some shwarma.
Once again, let the incongruence sink in.
While sitting at the table, watching my 2.5 year old daughter figure out if she likes shwarma or not ("I dont like this chicky! I like shwarma!"), it occurred to me that half the other families in the restaurant had the black or orange (adult or child) boxes too. And decided to go for shwarma. And this was normal.
Not normal in the sense of "sure, who's worried of being gassed to death with a massive chemical/biological warfare arsenal when there is food involved?", but normal in the sense of "there will always be those who want to harm the Jewish people, and we will take the necessary precautions, but there is still life to be lived, and that includes 18 shekel shwarma, and we are going to live it Pass the napkins."
And as insane as that may sound to some of you, I think it may be the only way to live. While the awareness of the possibilities of life is crushing, and in Western society we do our best to avoid them, there is something to be said for living life on the edge, in awareness of all that Is, and may not be for much longer. Call it stoic, call it crazy, call it Larry, it is on that razor edge of awareness that one can taste Life, sense it beating in the moment, with its eternity and its fleetingness, all at once. Its a nice place to live.
Elsewhere in the news, for those who are following our saga, we have more or less unpacked everything that we took on the plane, been shopping in the shuk and in our neighborhood stores, explored our environs (there are some GORGEOUS areas near our apartment, and some good shopping too!), and have been slowly stocking the fridge and freezer. The rest of this week should see us replacing darling wife's teudat zehut, opening a bank account, shopping for Rosh HasShana (yes, already), and attending my brother-in-law's swearing in ceremony (Tekes) for his army unit at the Kotel. It will be a packed week...
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Settling In
So we have had our first Shabbat (thank you last minute hosts!), we've unpacked most of the bags we brought on the plane, had a chance to shop a little bit (the Shuk is a wonderful place, Israeli supermarkets are pretty good too, though I have yet to find a Mehadrin butcher...), kinda adjust our body clocks, and our tans are coming in wonderfully.
We have also gotten adept at riding the buses (and that is with a stroller!), jury-rigging yummy meals out of nothing (here's to you, fresh bread everywhere, scrumptious veggies, cheese counters in supermarkets you can eat from!, Hummus, fruit, cereal, yogurt, and lox) walking all over the place (I have walked more in the last 5 days than I have in the last 4 years, I think), and using our rusty but trusty Hebrew.
The kiddies are jet lagged, stir crazy, defiant, overtired, and I think their body clocks have been set for Tokyo, or Mars.
But the cabinets and fridge is full, the drawers and closets too, and we do get to sleep sometime. For this I am grateful :)
We have also gotten adept at riding the buses (and that is with a stroller!), jury-rigging yummy meals out of nothing (here's to you, fresh bread everywhere, scrumptious veggies, cheese counters in supermarkets you can eat from!, Hummus, fruit, cereal, yogurt, and lox) walking all over the place (I have walked more in the last 5 days than I have in the last 4 years, I think), and using our rusty but trusty Hebrew.
The kiddies are jet lagged, stir crazy, defiant, overtired, and I think their body clocks have been set for Tokyo, or Mars.
But the cabinets and fridge is full, the drawers and closets too, and we do get to sleep sometime. For this I am grateful :)
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Landed...
So yesterday our plane landed in Ben Gurion. We are now officially Israelis, though it was quite anticlimactic to be unceremoniously handed my Teudat Zehut and be told "you're now an Israeli" as the guy walked away.
But while sitting on the plane I had a thought I want to share. I'm not sure what I make of it myself.
I was going to start off this blog post with "We made aliyah", but since I was typing this on the plane, and I hadnt actually landed yet, I figured I should start by saying "I am making aliyah", in the present tense.
And that is when I realized that aliyah is not just a past or future tense (I made aliyah, I will make aliyah, I will never make aliyah, etc) word. There is a present tense to aliyah.
Aliyah is not an act of relocation. Nor is it a one time momentous occasion of "coming home", "arriving", or "returning". It's a lifetime process. And perhaps the interesting phenomenon that is the choice of nomenclature is pinpoint accurate - it is ascension, in all matters...
Anyway, we are here, been around a bit, and are adjusting nicely. There's a snafu with darling wife's Teudat Zehut, so we need to brave the Misrad HaPnim to get it fixed...which may be an exciting adventure. To put it mildly. Other than that, the jet lagged children having temper tantrums quarter hourly, the parents unable to sleep normally, a slew of new things to get used to, and dearly missing old friends and family, things are great!
More later.
Sunday, August 11, 2013
More Homeless Reflections While Waiting for the Plane - Hasbarah Musings, Revisited
I have noticed that the previous post has a very large amount of views, for my humble little blog. I am slightly bewildered that it is being read so much - feel free to drop a line, y'all!
There is an important subtext to the previous posting, one that begs to be explained. I owe the kernel of the matter to something I read, and much of the ideas expressed here come from different things I have read as well - but as usual, I forgot where I saw them...I will try to track it down and post it in an update or future blog post for those who wish to read the source/s themselves.
Israel has existed on three planes - independent power [think David/Shlomo and the Omride Kingdom, for example], as a secondary power [when reliant on patron states and shaky alliances], and in exile. All three have occurred numerous times, and today's state is no different in its 'Matzav'.
Israel today is an independent power in some respects, and a secondary power beheld to its patrons in others. Yes, TzaHaL is a fantastic army (despite itself, sometimes). Yes, our economy is world-defying. Yes, we are the second most educated people on earth. Yes, yes, yes. We also tread precariously on a tightrope, alone and adrift in world foreign affairs - much as we (sickening sweet and smarmily) proclaimed the "unbreakable alliance" between the USA and Israel, the truth is that the US forges its own Middle East policies, that are not always in line with our own. A look at the US' recent Egypt fiasco, in which they chose to back the Muslim Brotherhood despite 50 million people taking to the streets against them, and then doubled down when the army stepped in, is illustrative of this. The same can be said in Syria, where the US is (tepidly) arming an Al-Qaeda based movement (Jabaat Al Nusra) that is fighting Assad (and Hezbollah). Neither of these moves are in Israel's direct interests (the Muslim Brotherhood was a state sponsor for Hamas - wondered why Morsi was made the guarantor for the rocket firings stopping? Those are his underlings firing them. Same in Syria - it is Al Qaeda that would turn the Golan Heights "hot" again, not Assad). Yet we are reliant on US intervention in the Middle East more than many hotheads care to admit (here's looking at you, crazy rightists who want to dictate terms to the US) - and not for silly things like military aid and block development grants.
The Middle East is THE fracture line in world politics - the 1967 war was where the Russians tried to turn the Cold War hot, for example. There were tens of thousands of Russian "military advisers" armed and in uniform in the Sinai - Israeli SIGINT [signal intelligence] was picking up Russian on the radio waves! There were also Russian planes flying over Dimona before the war started. Russian military hardware is a staple in Arab armies (remember those S-300s that Israel is bombing in Syria right now? Or the MiG that landed in Israel in 1989?), and so is Russian fingerprints on the oil markets (something that Vladimir Putin manipulates in order to keep Russia from collapsing - it is no accident that he is the CEO of Gazprom, and that this was the first real step he took when he assumed power in Russia).
Russian propaganda is also responsible for a fair share of the anti-Semitic vitriol that we see pouring out of the mosques and halls of power (since the two are often quite linked) in Arab countries. The linkage of "Great Satan" to "Little Satan" is by design - what better way is there for the USSR to stir up anti-American sentiment in the Middle East?
(The remaining share, especially the Muslim Brotherhood's dissemination of anti-Semitic propaganda, comes from the Nazis - http://www.matthiaskuentzel.de/contents/the-roots-of-antisemitism-in-the-middle-east-new-debates).
The same is true today, only the Russians have been replaced by Iranian funded terror groups. Hizbollah is a naked Iranian proxy, which was made redundantly obvious by its continued involvement fighting for Assad [himself an Iranian client] in the Syrian Civil War, and other groups (Hamas' funding, for example) have extensive ties to Tehran as well. Israel cannot remove the Iranian threat on its own - Iran lies outside the reach of the IAF (well, there are 25 planes that can reach Natanz, but that is it - the mainstream F-16s and other fighter planes that Israel uses would need to refuel three [!!?!] times to reach Iranian targets; the odds of receiving refueling rights in Jordan and/or Iraq are close to zero). Even if they could, the resulting Shi'ite outrage would be devastating for Israel - think hundreds of suicide bombers (the Shia adore martyrdom; they take their inspiration from Hussein Ali, their founder, who fought a battle guaranteed to end his life at Karbala), throngs of crazed jihadis massing in Lebanon and Syria, and massive planned unrest/"intifadas" in Yehuda v'Shomron. The Jordanian Palestinians could potentially riot as well, spilling the war over another border - King Abdullah has perhaps a tenuous grip on his country right now, as evidenced by the reactions his parliament had when an Israeli newspaper leaked details of his agreements with Israel.
So Israel, besides being caught up in the usual intrigues of the Arab world, is caught between the almost one hundred year old battle between Iran and the US - and it needs the US to protect it. It does. In this arena, we are still a secondary power, and we are still dependent on American wants, desires, and policies.
[Why do you think that, pit'om, Bibi is back "negotiating" with Indyk (himself the architect of the failed "Dual Containment" policy of the Clinton administration regarding Iraq and Iran) and Kerry and Abbas?]
This is the precarious position Israel finds itself in today - stuck reliant on others for its security and safety, in a world where non state actors and rogue governments conspire to annihilate her, as a secondary power in an arena that is increasingly growing crowded. I leave the military and foreign policy machinations to those who know what they are doing - I am not sure it i my place to comment on them.
However, I can, and will, remark on the effects of the Hasbara campaigns on this situation.
It is here that Israel's naive and idealistic Hasbara tends to do her its biggest disservice. Engaging in a protracted battle with the shillers of anti-Israeli screed, on their own turf, where they control the terms and field, is clinically insane - and each successive failure, in which "human rights" and "genocide" are used to smear Israel and the counterargument fails to deflect it, only weakens the support that Israel retains in the places it needs it most in its current situation.
Instead of debating on college campuses, why not identify and invite (ala a birthright style, all expenses paid trip) students who are pro-Israel to come connect with our culture, our narrative, our history? They will be far better advocates than our own, and wherever they go in their lives, they'll take it with them. Instead of taking to the journalists who slant their coverage regardless of what actually happens (hello, BBC and Tom Friedman), why not emulate what Naftali Bennett and Michael Oren did on TV during Operation Defensive Shield? Instead of trying to answer smears, why not simply report on the facts, building a coherent narrative and message, and stay on track? As Karl Rove, and Nixon before him, and LBJ before him [remember the famous nuclear commercial with the little girl?] have shown, you cannot disprove a negative. <This idea, of Hasbara being scatterbrained and lacking coherency/consistency, has been made numerous times before by others, as well.> And lastly, instead of relying on AIPAC, Saban, Adelson et al to fly politicians in to Israel, why not do it ourselves? Create a "task force" that links MKs and policy wonks to Congressmen and women, and give them the royal treatment when they are here. Between the students and the politicians, we can get much, much better results than we do now.
Fight the battles you can win. Engage in a tactical, strategic plan. Execute. Put resources where they are used best. This is a recipe for success.
There is an important subtext to the previous posting, one that begs to be explained. I owe the kernel of the matter to something I read, and much of the ideas expressed here come from different things I have read as well - but as usual, I forgot where I saw them...I will try to track it down and post it in an update or future blog post for those who wish to read the source/s themselves.
Israel has existed on three planes - independent power [think David/Shlomo and the Omride Kingdom, for example], as a secondary power [when reliant on patron states and shaky alliances], and in exile. All three have occurred numerous times, and today's state is no different in its 'Matzav'.
Israel today is an independent power in some respects, and a secondary power beheld to its patrons in others. Yes, TzaHaL is a fantastic army (despite itself, sometimes). Yes, our economy is world-defying. Yes, we are the second most educated people on earth. Yes, yes, yes. We also tread precariously on a tightrope, alone and adrift in world foreign affairs - much as we (sickening sweet and smarmily) proclaimed the "unbreakable alliance" between the USA and Israel, the truth is that the US forges its own Middle East policies, that are not always in line with our own. A look at the US' recent Egypt fiasco, in which they chose to back the Muslim Brotherhood despite 50 million people taking to the streets against them, and then doubled down when the army stepped in, is illustrative of this. The same can be said in Syria, where the US is (tepidly) arming an Al-Qaeda based movement (Jabaat Al Nusra) that is fighting Assad (and Hezbollah). Neither of these moves are in Israel's direct interests (the Muslim Brotherhood was a state sponsor for Hamas - wondered why Morsi was made the guarantor for the rocket firings stopping? Those are his underlings firing them. Same in Syria - it is Al Qaeda that would turn the Golan Heights "hot" again, not Assad). Yet we are reliant on US intervention in the Middle East more than many hotheads care to admit (here's looking at you, crazy rightists who want to dictate terms to the US) - and not for silly things like military aid and block development grants.
The Middle East is THE fracture line in world politics - the 1967 war was where the Russians tried to turn the Cold War hot, for example. There were tens of thousands of Russian "military advisers" armed and in uniform in the Sinai - Israeli SIGINT [signal intelligence] was picking up Russian on the radio waves! There were also Russian planes flying over Dimona before the war started. Russian military hardware is a staple in Arab armies (remember those S-300s that Israel is bombing in Syria right now? Or the MiG that landed in Israel in 1989?), and so is Russian fingerprints on the oil markets (something that Vladimir Putin manipulates in order to keep Russia from collapsing - it is no accident that he is the CEO of Gazprom, and that this was the first real step he took when he assumed power in Russia).
Russian propaganda is also responsible for a fair share of the anti-Semitic vitriol that we see pouring out of the mosques and halls of power (since the two are often quite linked) in Arab countries. The linkage of "Great Satan" to "Little Satan" is by design - what better way is there for the USSR to stir up anti-American sentiment in the Middle East?
(The remaining share, especially the Muslim Brotherhood's dissemination of anti-Semitic propaganda, comes from the Nazis - http://www.matthiaskuentzel.de/contents/the-roots-of-antisemitism-in-the-middle-east-new-debates).
The same is true today, only the Russians have been replaced by Iranian funded terror groups. Hizbollah is a naked Iranian proxy, which was made redundantly obvious by its continued involvement fighting for Assad [himself an Iranian client] in the Syrian Civil War, and other groups (Hamas' funding, for example) have extensive ties to Tehran as well. Israel cannot remove the Iranian threat on its own - Iran lies outside the reach of the IAF (well, there are 25 planes that can reach Natanz, but that is it - the mainstream F-16s and other fighter planes that Israel uses would need to refuel three [!!?!] times to reach Iranian targets; the odds of receiving refueling rights in Jordan and/or Iraq are close to zero). Even if they could, the resulting Shi'ite outrage would be devastating for Israel - think hundreds of suicide bombers (the Shia adore martyrdom; they take their inspiration from Hussein Ali, their founder, who fought a battle guaranteed to end his life at Karbala), throngs of crazed jihadis massing in Lebanon and Syria, and massive planned unrest/"intifadas" in Yehuda v'Shomron. The Jordanian Palestinians could potentially riot as well, spilling the war over another border - King Abdullah has perhaps a tenuous grip on his country right now, as evidenced by the reactions his parliament had when an Israeli newspaper leaked details of his agreements with Israel.
So Israel, besides being caught up in the usual intrigues of the Arab world, is caught between the almost one hundred year old battle between Iran and the US - and it needs the US to protect it. It does. In this arena, we are still a secondary power, and we are still dependent on American wants, desires, and policies.
[Why do you think that, pit'om, Bibi is back "negotiating" with Indyk (himself the architect of the failed "Dual Containment" policy of the Clinton administration regarding Iraq and Iran) and Kerry and Abbas?]
This is the precarious position Israel finds itself in today - stuck reliant on others for its security and safety, in a world where non state actors and rogue governments conspire to annihilate her, as a secondary power in an arena that is increasingly growing crowded. I leave the military and foreign policy machinations to those who know what they are doing - I am not sure it i my place to comment on them.
However, I can, and will, remark on the effects of the Hasbara campaigns on this situation.
It is here that Israel's naive and idealistic Hasbara tends to do her its biggest disservice. Engaging in a protracted battle with the shillers of anti-Israeli screed, on their own turf, where they control the terms and field, is clinically insane - and each successive failure, in which "human rights" and "genocide" are used to smear Israel and the counterargument fails to deflect it, only weakens the support that Israel retains in the places it needs it most in its current situation.
Instead of debating on college campuses, why not identify and invite (ala a birthright style, all expenses paid trip) students who are pro-Israel to come connect with our culture, our narrative, our history? They will be far better advocates than our own, and wherever they go in their lives, they'll take it with them. Instead of taking to the journalists who slant their coverage regardless of what actually happens (hello, BBC and Tom Friedman), why not emulate what Naftali Bennett and Michael Oren did on TV during Operation Defensive Shield? Instead of trying to answer smears, why not simply report on the facts, building a coherent narrative and message, and stay on track? As Karl Rove, and Nixon before him, and LBJ before him [remember the famous nuclear commercial with the little girl?] have shown, you cannot disprove a negative. <This idea, of Hasbara being scatterbrained and lacking coherency/consistency, has been made numerous times before by others, as well.> And lastly, instead of relying on AIPAC, Saban, Adelson et al to fly politicians in to Israel, why not do it ourselves? Create a "task force" that links MKs and policy wonks to Congressmen and women, and give them the royal treatment when they are here. Between the students and the politicians, we can get much, much better results than we do now.
Fight the battles you can win. Engage in a tactical, strategic plan. Execute. Put resources where they are used best. This is a recipe for success.
Monday, August 5, 2013
Reflections of a Homeless Man Waiting for the Plane
The lull in posting is due to not having a home, or a computer, to use to write. That, and the headless chicken race that was foisted upon us with the Foreign Ministry strike being resolved...
I have come to an interesting conclusion though, after much thought and mental exploration.
We, as Jews, have a need for public acceptance and world regard. It is destructive, it is harmful, and it is slowly eroding Israel's precarious position in the Middle East.
"Hasbarah" is an unnecessary tool, one that tries to fight a war it cannot possibly win, on a battlefield rigged against it, with the weapons of yesterday's public relations trying to change today's opinions.
Those who are anti-Israel are (generally) uneducated, leftist romantics seeking to remake the world in line with their fantasies, who ignore the large segments of reality that dont fit the narratives they've constructed; they do not care for logic, do not care for facts, and do not care for practicalities. They will not change their minds no matter how much you prove them wrong - look at Alice Walker (she of the great alien lizard colonization beliefs), or Sarah Shulman (a gay rights activist [and a professor, despite not having an advanced degree] who thinks Israel's forward treatment of gays is a calculated coverup for its abuses of Palestinians), to name two of many.
No amount of narrative-setting, or data provision, or editorials, or social media advertising is going to accomplish anything. In fact, it alienates those in our camp, while we spend all our energies talking to those who do not listen, and are actively trying to undermine our standing (if not outright trying to dismember our State).
It is far better to make friends, to spend money inviting young leaders to see the facts on the ground, to engage in Israeli society, than it is to attempt communication with those who do not wish to interact, but only to destroy.
If only there was a program, some money, to fly in politicians and policy wonks from around the world to see what tings are like, and allow them to educate themselves. Those who are open to reality will accept it.
And above all, my fellow Yisraelim, stop. Stop wasting your time and energy chasing approval from idiots, from delusional people lost in their own emotional stupidity, from those who want you dead. Develop relationships with those who are open to having them. Build on your strengths. (And to my leftist Yisraelim, its okay to have strengths, and okay to be strong!) Accept some people arent going to like you, protect yourself from their attacks, and work on positively building lasting and meaningful relationships and institutions.
I have come to an interesting conclusion though, after much thought and mental exploration.
We, as Jews, have a need for public acceptance and world regard. It is destructive, it is harmful, and it is slowly eroding Israel's precarious position in the Middle East.
"Hasbarah" is an unnecessary tool, one that tries to fight a war it cannot possibly win, on a battlefield rigged against it, with the weapons of yesterday's public relations trying to change today's opinions.
Those who are anti-Israel are (generally) uneducated, leftist romantics seeking to remake the world in line with their fantasies, who ignore the large segments of reality that dont fit the narratives they've constructed; they do not care for logic, do not care for facts, and do not care for practicalities. They will not change their minds no matter how much you prove them wrong - look at Alice Walker (she of the great alien lizard colonization beliefs), or Sarah Shulman (a gay rights activist [and a professor, despite not having an advanced degree] who thinks Israel's forward treatment of gays is a calculated coverup for its abuses of Palestinians), to name two of many.
No amount of narrative-setting, or data provision, or editorials, or social media advertising is going to accomplish anything. In fact, it alienates those in our camp, while we spend all our energies talking to those who do not listen, and are actively trying to undermine our standing (if not outright trying to dismember our State).
It is far better to make friends, to spend money inviting young leaders to see the facts on the ground, to engage in Israeli society, than it is to attempt communication with those who do not wish to interact, but only to destroy.
If only there was a program, some money, to fly in politicians and policy wonks from around the world to see what tings are like, and allow them to educate themselves. Those who are open to reality will accept it.
And above all, my fellow Yisraelim, stop. Stop wasting your time and energy chasing approval from idiots, from delusional people lost in their own emotional stupidity, from those who want you dead. Develop relationships with those who are open to having them. Build on your strengths. (And to my leftist Yisraelim, its okay to have strengths, and okay to be strong!) Accept some people arent going to like you, protect yourself from their attacks, and work on positively building lasting and meaningful relationships and institutions.
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
We Made It - Almost :)
This has been my longest blogging silence yet...but for good reason.
We finished with the Jewish Agency, and for real this time :)
We finalized a lift, packed, and the shippers come Friday.
We settled our flights back for dear brother's wedding.
Its happening, strike be damned!
Much to write, not much time to do it in, were up against the clock to be ready for the shippers.
Be back soon :)
We finished with the Jewish Agency, and for real this time :)
We finalized a lift, packed, and the shippers come Friday.
We settled our flights back for dear brother's wedding.
Its happening, strike be damned!
Much to write, not much time to do it in, were up against the clock to be ready for the shippers.
Be back soon :)
Monday, July 1, 2013
Updates: The Strike
So we have an apartment in Yerushalayim. Great place, amazing landlord, an unbelievable location...life is good :)
Dear wife got her birth certificate and apostille in the mail.
And the Foreign Ministry went on strike. We now are technically on hold, because we cant get her Israeli passport. While there is still two months until we want to leave, it is nervewracking...
But the paperwork chase is over, and I am thankful for that.
Dear wife got her birth certificate and apostille in the mail.
And the Foreign Ministry went on strike. We now are technically on hold, because we cant get her Israeli passport. While there is still two months until we want to leave, it is nervewracking...
But the paperwork chase is over, and I am thankful for that.
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Bein HaMitzarim: Tefillin, Korbanot, Yahadut, and Yisrael
This is a post I am only sensing as I write - unlike other posts, which are more thought out and fully conceived, this is more along the lines of me feeling my way through the thoughts, concepts, and their meanings to me as I go along. Its connection to our aliyah is perhaps tedious and tangential, but then again, so is much of the grandeur in this life.
This time of year lends itself to melancholy, to feelings of being adrift perhaps misunderstood by most as the "lazy days of summer". Our calendar, and the pulse of time as we experience it through our Moadim with the Divine, encapsulates this feeling of breached boundaries (on personal, national, historical, and existential levels, among others) so neatly ensconced in the Halachot of accepting the trappings of mourning on ourselves. No shaving, haircuts, music, new clothing...and while we entertain ourselves with meaningless debates about what the Beit HaMikdash means, and if perhaps with the establishment of the State of Israel the Moadim of Shiva Asar B'Tammuz and Tisha B'Av themselves are no longer necessary, and what it is we are missing in our lives without a Temple, and so on.
I subscribe to the (self-invented) doctrine of "be where you are" - your boundaries of Self, however flimsy and prone to being smashed by external (or perhaps internal) events and stimuli, is your current answer to "Ayekah", and where your interaction with the Universe lies. There is no use trying to artificially move them to something else. Therefore, whatever mitzvot or ideas are in your realm of consciousness, that is where you are - arbitrarily deciding to "concentrate" on another mitzva or idea only succeeds in turning you into an ideologue, a robot performing empty actions, and a hollow self.
(This is not to say I condone not keeping mitzvot you do not "feel", etc. One keeps Halacha as he finds his way along the Path it is meant to be. I am simply saying that where you are is where the magical nexus of Self, G-d, idea, action, meaning and Existence meet, and it is those actions and thoughts that are meaningful within the relationship of Self and G-d/Existence.)
However, entropy is a law in this universe, and all of us know too well the feelings of lethargy and hopelessness for change that this time of year brings, as well as anyone with Existential dreams must face any time they take inventory of their lives. It is hard to leave the path you're on, harder to Know the Path you are trying to walk, and perhaps hardest of all to Walk before Him and Be Whole (Hit'halech lifanai v'heyei Tamim). As Jerry and the Dead once sang,
This time of year lends itself to melancholy, to feelings of being adrift perhaps misunderstood by most as the "lazy days of summer". Our calendar, and the pulse of time as we experience it through our Moadim with the Divine, encapsulates this feeling of breached boundaries (on personal, national, historical, and existential levels, among others) so neatly ensconced in the Halachot of accepting the trappings of mourning on ourselves. No shaving, haircuts, music, new clothing...and while we entertain ourselves with meaningless debates about what the Beit HaMikdash means, and if perhaps with the establishment of the State of Israel the Moadim of Shiva Asar B'Tammuz and Tisha B'Av themselves are no longer necessary, and what it is we are missing in our lives without a Temple, and so on.
I subscribe to the (self-invented) doctrine of "be where you are" - your boundaries of Self, however flimsy and prone to being smashed by external (or perhaps internal) events and stimuli, is your current answer to "Ayekah", and where your interaction with the Universe lies. There is no use trying to artificially move them to something else. Therefore, whatever mitzvot or ideas are in your realm of consciousness, that is where you are - arbitrarily deciding to "concentrate" on another mitzva or idea only succeeds in turning you into an ideologue, a robot performing empty actions, and a hollow self.
(This is not to say I condone not keeping mitzvot you do not "feel", etc. One keeps Halacha as he finds his way along the Path it is meant to be. I am simply saying that where you are is where the magical nexus of Self, G-d, idea, action, meaning and Existence meet, and it is those actions and thoughts that are meaningful within the relationship of Self and G-d/Existence.)
However, entropy is a law in this universe, and all of us know too well the feelings of lethargy and hopelessness for change that this time of year brings, as well as anyone with Existential dreams must face any time they take inventory of their lives. It is hard to leave the path you're on, harder to Know the Path you are trying to walk, and perhaps hardest of all to Walk before Him and Be Whole (Hit'halech lifanai v'heyei Tamim). As Jerry and the Dead once sang,
"There is a road
no simple highway
between the dawn
and the dark of night
and if you go
no one may follow
that path is for
your steps alone"
And it is that Existential loneliness we feel most of all, strongest of all, when trying to find our Way, trying to find ourselves. (It is not an exaggeration to say I have written extensively about this before.)
Switch gears for a moment. The hallmark of the Avoda in the Beit HaMikdash was Korbanot. Today they are seen as antiquated, barbaric, needless slaughter; we live in a world of PETA and animal rights, a world very much formed by a people that used the term "bloody" as a pejorative, a world so determined to surf the surface of things that any reminder of the redness of Life coursing through veins of any living creature, be it human or marsupial, bovine or aquatic, that it immediately attempts to rectify it with "humane" concerns such as painless slaughter for meat production (and EU bans on shechita) or chemical substitutions for animal byproducts or organically raised livestock or whatever the humanist flavor du jour is.
And us, Yisrael, we are told B'Damayich Chayi, we are told Ki haDam hu HaNefesh, we are told of the glory that was the Beit HaMikdash awash in the blood of the Korban Pesach ankle deep. We are commanded not to eat blood, but to cover it - a practice demanding respect for, and awareness of, both blood itself and the soil that we see as its source. We recount the Plague of Blood, the Plague of the firstborn delivered in blood, the blood of the prototypical paschal lamb in Egypt smeared on the doorposts saving us from that plague. On Yom Kippur we read/recount/relive the Avoda of the Kohen Gadol as he catches blood, mixes blood, smears blood...and then throw a lamb off a cliff to meet a bloody end. The Western notions of never spilling blood of any kind for any reason (though look at Western history for how well that has turned out) are NOT Torah in origin, no matter how much apologists and the misinformed call it a "Judeo-Christian value".
What is it about blood that is so central to our practices, to our tradition and understanding of the nexus of human and Divine?
I found my own understanding/answer watching a video out of Syria. Now, I am not a squeamish sort, and perhaps possess the right amount of Cluster B Personality Disorder to be relatively stoic in the face of gore. I have watched many, many videos of torture, beheading, executions, and other gifts to the world by our deluded and subhuman "cousins" (not an inclusive term, simply referring to those of them that are). Yet there was something about this particular video, and my own inner emotional state while watching it, that...enlightened me.
Beheadings, especially those done to inflict maximum pain before death, are of a category of their own when it comes to digesting violence. A small knife hacking away at a person's neck while they are held there, helpless, reduced from free human being to waiting for the release of death while feeling every cut and thrust...it fills one watching with rage on behalf of the victim, and fear that life is so short, so brutal, so fickle, so...final, when it ends.
It was this moment, this realization of carpe diem, mixed with the acknowledgement and awareness of your truly puny mortal self, tinged with a clarion call to ignore the petty and worthless and demand, insist, CHASE realness and reality with every fiber of your being - this was the experiential awareness of one who confessed his fallacies and shortcomings, his being lost in the sands of time, digging for a way out when he should have been walking along the Path, on the head of a living animal and watched it be slaughtered and burned. What a consciousness altering, Self-creating (or re-creating, to be precise) experience! What an existential boundary breaker, a way out of the entropy and into the Path, the Way, the Walking Whole.
That moment of Self-realization (literally - realizing your Self, your Being, your existential essence removed from its cement shoes it had fashioned for itself) is what is meant to be adorned as tefillin each day. The pesukim inside the boxes, themselves made of animal hide and halachically required to be of something edible (which now we can understand somewhat!), revolve around the self-realizing moment when G-d Chose us, individual and nation, removed us from Egypt and slavery and insists Be "where the falling star meets the rising ape"; YOU are Man, Be Mine. Know who you are, and Be One. Tefillin are placed on heart and mind, in the dichotomous nature of emotion and intellect, literally binding those ideas and ideals to the spheres that lose track of it.
And it is this that we are meant to Be, meant to Become, meant to provide the world; this Oneness, this binding (for after all, the Jewish people is G-d's Tefillin) of reality to the day to day, the realization of self and existence, the nexus of man and Divine in the redness and richness of Life, and being aware of it.
Our country, our peoplehood is predicated on this - it is who we are, whether we want to be that or not. The Jew has succeeded in bringing science, reason, balance to the world - the ad hoc explanations of sun gods and divine moods are largely gone from the public mind. Yet the care, the responsibility, and yes, the guilt that is instinctive in a people who know that every action counts, every theory matters, every life an expression of a multiverse of Oneness, and all minutiae needing to be weighed against the Path of progress, of evolution, of Self-realizing Man - that remains to be taught. In some ways, we have begun - an army that aborts objectives for innocents caught in crossfire, an almost pathological need to see every human given a chance to Become themselves, even at our expense(!), a nation that takes its dead so seriously it is prepared to shoot itself in the foot (perhaps literally) to return their blood to the Earth it came from...but there is a long, long way to go, and while it is not politically correct in today's world to speak of this, and it is not fashionable to have a desire for sacrificial rites, the Path ends at a Temple of Prayer for all Mankind, where all can have the opportunity and blessing of breaking the barriers that hold us in our finite, limited, day to day selves instead of Becoming that which we are ALL meant to Be.
May this period of Bein Hamitzarim, between the walls, inside the narrow confines and constrictions of the petty and the meaningless, be the last, and may we reach the plane of Existence where all can see, and want, a Temple that grants us our Selves by teaching us of Life.
Thursday, June 13, 2013
"Your Brothers Go To War, and You Sit Here?"
One of the hot button issues in Israel these days is the national universal draft, being spoken about in the guise of "shivyon b'netel" (equality of burden). Having never been in the army, nor having a clue as to the real ideas fueling both sides (who knows what is in the hearts of men?), I havent said anything about this until now.
Then the Satmar movement staged a rally in Manhattan, and I found myself being quite mad.
(For those of you who follow me on twitter [@tzvizucker], you are well aware of my basic disagreements with the "Torah True Jews" and my attempts to combat their propaganda spreading. But, to me, it was a "milchamto shel torah", a difference in views within the guise of determining the Halacha [literally, the Way or the Path] we are to take. I never doubted their sincerity, nor their bona fides as Bnei Yisrael Saba. Until now...)
Ostensibly, the protest was a way to voice disagreement with the current draft policy of the Israeli government. In reality, Satmar decided to go all in and make the issue the existence of Israel. Their speakers compared Zionists to Amalek, asserting the existence of Israel is itself a rebellion against HaShem. The closing speaker, Rabbi Yaakov Weiss (principal of Satmar yeshiva in Kiryas Yoel) warned: “Hear, O’ Israel. We are close today in a war against the enemies of religion. Today’s protest is not ending tonight. Today’s protest is only the start of an outright war against our enemies, the haters of religion.” (-YWN)
His is a telling statement - the enemy, to this group, are those opposed to religion; not to Jews, but to Judaism. And that is a perversion of the highest order. There are shiv'im panim laTorah, but I am willing to go to battle on the assertion that this is NOT one of them. And I will explain why.
The basic question of "Who is a Jew" is perhaps the most dynamic, well-discussed debate across world history. That we are "the People of The Book" is taken for granted, that we are the seed of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov not as widely held in its literal sense, that we are the Chosen Nation by G-d a matter of raging debate (and indeed rage). This is a question we have not entirely satisfactorily answered for ourselves - are we a people, a nation, a religion, a movement, an "ethnoreligious" tribe? All? None? There is one universal understanding, however, and that is that the identity of a Jew is one that supersedes his ritual observance - whether this assertion in made by Hitler, YS'V, or by Journeys ("...and the pintele Yid will never disappear"), or anyone in between. A Jew is a Jew is a Jew - there are none whose Jewishness is held to be defective, or lacking, or considered inferior.
Until recent times. There has been a growing push within the Orthodox/Haredi circles to begin judging Jews by their observance of Halacha (and usually the Halacha of the poskim of the movement doing the judging). There has been a new intellectual insanity that has been taught to a generation of us now, the one of "True Judaism".
Even within this development/phenomenon, there are levels of tolerance and respect for "dissident" viewpoints. Some communities are more open to accepting that there may be other views, other opinions, other possibilities, than others.
And the least among them all is Satmar.
Carried into the United States by Rav Yoyl Teitelbaum, Satmar Chassidus is one of extremes. An eyewitness, holocaust survivor once told me how they were practically Amish - they refused to use electricity or modern technology, claiming the right way to live life was that of their ancestors. (In this sense, Rav Yoyl was a moderate, encouraging them to live as modern humans do, and to this end he started newspapers and encouraged people to go work.) There is no compromise, no room for ambiguity, no ability to tolerate ambivalence in their worldview or attitudes. This is a movement so far off its rails that it no longer has a direction. There are two mirror Rebbes, themselves the children of a Rebbe that most of the community did not accept. Their followers fight each other in the streets over which Rebbe is the "real one" ( http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=19871 ), insisting that was is "right" matters more than anything else; they are willing destroy families, and children, on the altar of "proper Mitzva observance" ( http://www.unpious.com/2013/05/ex-hasidic-mother-loses-custody-of-children/ ) and worse (see all the links regarding Nechamia Weberman further down).
And their singlehanded crusade to end the State of Israel is an example of this attitude in action.
Anyone who has had the painful experience of talking to one of the charlatan "Torah True Jews" quickly learns their intellectual semantic argument that "Zionism is not Judaism". Never mind the obvious stupidity and logical fallacy to such an assertion, as the entire Torah and a good portion of the Siddur talks about our longing to return to Eretz Yisrael, or that our peoplehood is predicated on HaShem's Giving that Land to our forefathers. And forget the insanity of denying the open miracle of the State's creation on the ashes of Churban Europe. This argument is the best ammunition one can give to those trying to kill Jews - it removes the antisemitic label from their actions. "I dont hate Jews, I only hate political Zionism!" I have seen many use this artificial and arbitrary distinction as their excuse for their advocacy that Israel be dismantled, attacked, or destroyed. That they can point to "authentic looking Jews" who claim the Torah is the source of this argument only makes it so much stronger.
That they think the Torah promotes (literal) sin'at chinam, and that actions which promote division and discord within Klal Yisrael are, to them, optimal and desirable, speaks volumes to their warped views of Torah. That they believe they have the right to decide who is considered a "True Jew" and who is not, and flatly ignore and denigrate all those who disagree with their opinions and dogma is a clear indication that is they who have been Poresh Min HaKlal.
(I am particularly referring to their treatment of Rav Shteinman, shlitah, of whom they have referred to as "Shteinman, the editor of the Yated newspaper" - here are a few links:
This worldview that they promote as "Torah" is one that can despise and seek to destroy a victim of abuse, while supporting (financially and emotionally/reputationally) an abuser of such horrific proportions that his victims carry literal and figurative scars years later.
(I refer to the now infamous Weberman case. Here are a few varied links:
This worldview is one that believes the ends justify the means, so much so that they shamelessly propagandize the "true torah view" on the internet, and Twitter, while simultaneously declaring that the Internet is assur (and ignoring their own Rabbonim who continue to insist they not use it), they have an organized intimidation squad to enforce their (draconian) understanding of tzni'ut ( http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new-york-news/weberman-abuse-case-exposes-role-shadowy-modesty-committees ) and they create forged letters from Litvish Gedolim in an effort to convince their followers to attend their anti-Israel rallies and lend the legitimacy of numbers and presence to their agenda.
And it is this worldview that cannot be accepted, cannot be given legitimacy by the Jewish world at large, cannot be shrugged off as a "political disagreement" or some other halfhearted refusal to see things for what they are. A war has been declared, one dedicated to eradicating the Shem Yisrael of all those who have it save themselves; it is a war being waged by de-legitimizing the safety and security of millions of Acheinu Bnei Yisrael in the name of one Sefer of a Daas Yachid's understanding of an agadeta Gemara being the only Truth that should be accepted by all.
I am reminded of the recounting in Sefer Melachim (perek chaf) of Achav's fatal battle, that he goes to war against hopeless odds because Ben Hadad asked for the Sefer Torah he wrote. This is Achav, he who told Eliyahu haNavi he didnt keep ANYTHING in the Torah - and he had already accepted Ben Hadad's demands for his wives, children, and treasury. But when it came to the honor of the Torah, that he NEVER KEPT, he was willing to battle and die. Today's Israel is probably more comparable to Achav's Israel than, lets say, Yoshiyahu's Yehuda. But, like Achav, it does stand for Torah, identifies itself with Torah, and BY the Torah. And is very much part of the Klal of Yisrael.
And when there is a war, waged by those who pretend to be "brothers", trying to destroy the flimsy and nascent Klal we have and have been rebuilding for 70 years, how can you sit there and not join the battle?
Sunday, June 9, 2013
Home is Where the Heart Is
This is not some mushy post about Libi BaMizrach, though it could be. This is the "we found an apartment for us!" post.
S we found an apartment in Baka/Talpiyot (right in between them, in fact). Great deal, furnished apartment, and an amazing property manager who was patient, informative, and willing to work with us.
We have our home at Home, starting August 15. And we couldn't be more excited to move in.
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Complications, of Complications, of Complications
So we figured out a plan that would help us solve our current problems with aliyah, and it got blown up five minutes later.
We are stuck in limbo until the darling wife's paperwork comes through. We also had our temporary housing plan derailed by an illness in the family. To kill both birds with one stone, we thought of taking an extended pilot trip (for two to three months), finding a furnished rental, set up cell phones and bank accounts, and networking for jobs/business opportunities. Then we would return to the States, settle our affairs, and make aliyah from there back to our set up home in Israel. Simple, neat solution.
Then my brother decided to get married (shhhh, its not official yet). Due to interesting and complicated circumstances, his wedding will probably be atthe end of August, and precludes us from going for a long period of time this summer. It also brings our aliyah into direct conflict with the Chagim, something we were trying to avoid.
So now we're back to the drawing board - still need a place to live, and now our anticipated date is ambiguous at best.
This is really, really, really hard.
Monday, May 27, 2013
Values and Validation - Tikkun
I wrote this as part of a book/diatribe/project I was working on long ago...but lately, with my own inner thinking into what it means to live as a Ben Yisrael in Eretz Yisrael, it has come up again. Perhaps it isn't directly related to Aliyah, and perhaps it is; to me, these issues are, in essence, the very core of living within relationship with HaShem.
And
there's nothing wrong with me
This is
how I'm supposed to be
In a land
of make believe
That don't
believe in me
…Home
is where your heart is
But
what a shame
Cause
everyone's heart
Doesn't
beat the same
It's
beating out of time…
I
don't feel any shame
I
won't apologize
When
there ain't nowhere you can go
Running
away from pain
When
you've been victimized
Tales
from another broken home[1]
These
words, sung by one of the many American punk rock bands with a political
message, have, to this author, always held a powerful grip on encapsulating the
effects of Western culture on the psyche.
“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 children playing in security, and the nurturing
environment in which people grow into themselves. It is the place you go back
to, that you belong to.
When
home is where your heart is, as arbitrary as that sounds, and the individuals
comprising that home have no cohesive identity, then there is no belonging –
and the “hearts beating out of time” learn their home is broken, and need to
run away to the refuge of their castles in the air (of which their
psychologists collect the rent).
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 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 which populate the self help shelves in book stores all over
the planet 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 and wind up divorced. Or we see the athlete winning the
gold medal, shedding tears in their accomplishment, but do not see them return
home broken and lost as to what on earth they should do next now that the
moment they have invested the last 4 years in has now passed.
Listening
to mental health professionals and community workers[2] (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 provide the value and validation of the children as the embark on
their quest for self, when it does not, the children look elsewhere – with
disastrous results.
This
may or may not be true.
The
psychological 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 (ridiculously) 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. Were this to be a fact of Western life, that
would be fine. But it has crept into Jewish life in insidious ways, and this
has in turn corrupted our life beyond recognition.[3]
Of course, values are what we
ourselves hold to be important, where as validation is what gives us our worth.
This is because the definition we give to ourselves (our “values”) is what
creates our sense of validation for being so.
In
the West, the objectifying that people do of themselves is conceptual based – I
am a[4] doctor,
a slut, a religious man of faith, or any other such idea. This is who I am, it
is what I think is important, and because it is what I hold dear and
significant I, too, am significant for being this way.
The
problem is when Torah observant Jews, such as many of those today, define
themselves as those who do the XYZ of mitzvos.
Because the definition is action based, the value is doing these things (eating
the properly baked crackers on Passover, only carrying on Saturdays within a
proper string enclosure) – and the validation is their being done. Which has
nothing to do with you at all.
Now,
I bet you those who already have the answers are jumping out of their chairs
they were strapped to after the introduction and screaming “of course it’s
about you doing it – you go to Olam Haba for it!”
And
I will answer you that if that is your motivation, you are no different than
the four year old who needs a cookie to clean their room (or go to the toilet).
It isn’t the cookie that is important, even if it is the reason the four year
old is doing it.[5]
But
if that four year old ritualizes cleaning his room for the sake of the cookie,
he will never come to value a clean room. Nor will he develop feelings of self
worth by having a clean room, because THERE
IS NO SELF – only what needs to be done. And so we have adults who treat
their marriages as rituals (“but honey, I bought you a nice new dress! See, I
love you!” “But you haven’t paid any attention to me at all, you do not share
your dreams, emotions, your experience of Life with me…”)
And this is why the hearts beat out
of time, why there is no Home, and why people are broken. Because we naively
think that the reasons for doing mitzvos
that we learn when we are four years old hold water when we are 16, or 60…and
the consequences of this is the systematic destruction of any way of
self-validation that is predicated on a healthy sense of self, instead of its
negation.
It is here, in that ridiculous, unintended,
vicious, self negating definition of value that Torah Observant Jewry finds
itself. What is important is the prescribed actions and properly prescribing
the proper actions. A self, a “me” with dreams and ambitions, goals and
relationships, fears and loves, is at best extraneous and at worst a problem to
overcome in the pursuit of perfectly prescribed perfect actions.
This world? Why bother? It’s only a
stage – we do our actions and play our parts. Knowledge? What for? It only
takes time away from prescribing perfect actions, and doing them. Worldview?
Philosophy? Perspective? What do you need any of that for? It’s all simple – do
whatever you can while you can for the biggest and best reward in the Next
World.
In short, our vision of the ultimate
human being we are trying to become is a well informed, perfectly efficient
action machine with the worldview of a four year old.[6]
Perhaps the greatest area this has
become true is with learning itself. People spend more time learning today than
ever before, yet asking them WHAT they learned usually yields a parroting of
arcane subjects at best and a puzzled look as they simply say the name of the Masechta or Sefer. Learning has become
an action, something you DO, instead of the acquiring of new information to fit
into a worldview.
Of course, we make allowances and
exceptions for those who (chaval)
want to do things like work. The actions remain paramount, only the focus
changes. Instead of learning being
the action one should focus on, we have others – tzedaka, for example.[7]
But regardless of the prescribed action, it remains the DOING that is
important, and importance granting. People’s growth, their self discovery, their
level of understanding of the world and of He Who is behind it, their depth,
their humanity – it isn’t important.
Small wonder our children are off
seeking validation from pop psychology and faceless strangers on internet
chatrooms (that they are turning to under their covers on shabbos, perhaps).
Its more than family that creates validation, it is Home. And the Bayit that
was supposed to be there to validate and value the world itself is now a golden
onion filled with those who find value in submission and in death, and we
console ourselves with some parable about a flask in the sky that collects
tears[8].
This worldview has serious
historical underpinnings – it did not arise by accident.
Following the Holocaust, people came
to the shores of a strange land (whichever strange land that was – America or
Israel) to rebuild. As most people react in times of horrible loss, they hunker
down defensively and seek to recreate what they had before. In this case it was
the Europe of old, with its simple shtetl
folk and overall educationless masses.
Judaism is a tradition based
movement. Precedent and tradition are the two pillars of all Halachic debate as well as Friday night
conversations. It is no surprise that the ideals of the old world were imported
as the pinnacles of achievement to strive for. The model person would be one
motivated by faith, not reason, and action, not perspective; their identity
would be one set and defined by a marked distance from intellectualism – after
all, wasn’t that the problem with those Reformniks in Berlin who brought the
Holocaust on us in the first place? Oh, no, never. Who needs questions – can
anyone answer where G-d was during the Holocaust? So of what use are questions?
Better to do what G-d told us to do and leave the questions alone.
This idea is said to have appeared
in Europe around the time of the Chasam Sofer, who himself was battling those
Reformers in their infancy. In an effort to combat their growing appeal and
allure to the typical (unlearned) Jew on the street, he created the single most
destructive pun in all of history - “haChadash assur min haTorah”[9].
From this nobly intended idea, a branch of arch-conservatism in Halacha was born. Or so goes the
narrative.
It isn’t true.
Ashkenazi
Jewry had this streak in it from the time of the early Acharonim. It is the tendency of exiled people to absorb influences
from their host cultures (one only needs to look at our calendar; the names for
the months in the Jewish calendar are Babylonian
(!) in origin, and so were pretty much
half the names of the amoraim living
in Bavel[10]).
The predominant influence in the lands of Ashkenaz
was the Church. Looking through the Mussar/machshava seforim written in Europe,
we find themes of needing to be saved from sin (albeit those of our own doing
instead of some original flavor), emphasis on faith as the guiding principle of
worship, a philosophical/ontological worldview based on the soul and a world in
which its actions or beliefs are meaningful that is not perceivable, a break
from science (as the world they were interested in was not the one they were
living in), a religious worldview predicated on the personal (it is YOU and
your being righteous or wicked which counts, as opposed to the Klal), among other examples.
(For those who are going to point to
the split between the Vilna Gaon and the Chassidim and say that innovation in
Jewish life was alive and well, it is fairly argued that both camps were conservatively based. The Chassidic camp quickly
ritualized everything in their way of
life, venerating the simple unlearned faith of the farmer and wagon driver as
the GOAL of Torah life. The stories passed down to each generation focused on a
mystical happiness that could be experienced by those who believed, and denigrated
those who learned but did not live their learning. The Litvish camp, while stressing the need to learn and know, valued a
disconnected knowledge base that was not tied into experience – learn, but keep
it in pilpul which is intellectually
dazzling and completely utterly useless for answering a simple question of what
to do. Both sides refused to engage the world around them, or even each other;
both approaches preached the “hold on tight and do what you need to do” that we
are calling attention to. Their namesakes and descendants still do.)
This cross-evolution is best
referenced by the “Judeo-Christian values” (and there’s that word again) the
western world continues to use as its moral compass. It isn’t just that the
Christian ones are based on the Jewish morals of the Old Testament (though that
is true as well) – they work in tandem, are perceived to be the same thing. It
is no accident that the support for Israel that is still present in the West is
based on ethics, on shared morals, on shared beliefs in the primacy of the “Old Testament G-d”, a Messiah that
will redeem the chosen ones from the Ishmaelite, etc.[11]
This is why Western civilization
exerts such a strong pull on Jews – it isn’t just that we are absorbing modern
culture from them (hence the black hats, suits, and white shirts from the
1950s, for example) – we subconsciously see ourselves as one of their kind. The
typical Ashkenazi looks at himself as
a Westerner – not a Middle Easterner! And eventually, the need to be different
and distinct begins to fade as the need to be echad min ha’amim[12]
takes over. As “enlightened humans”, who are “logical, rational, scientific”
beings, why would it matter if I watch some pornography? Or eat only properly
slaughtered chickens? Or not use my phone on Saturdays?
Why are we different? Why is G-d
setting us apart – to do the proper rituals? What’s the difference. Who wants
to believe in an arbitrary G-d who Desires Burger Delights instead of Big
Macs?? I want to be a person, not an action/ritual machine. A human being.
This, sadly, is what Rav Shimon bar
Yochai was alluding to with his drasha
of “ki adam atem – atem k’ruyim adam[13]”
– what Judaism IS is simply the way to be a human, Adam, the pinnacle of
Creation. We all want to be something real, something valuable. And that is
what it means to be Adam. To be Man, primal Man. Not a belief machine,
not a ritual doer – Man.
And so, in a terrible way, our
children are NOT turning to the outside for validation. They are, in their
eyes, REturning to what is truly valuable, and valued, in the only way they
know how.
Until we understand that, there is
nothing we can do. For them, and for ourselves.
And
so we have a generation where ALL are lost, confused, adrift…off course.
Those
who follow after their hearts and eyes sometimes do not come back to the fold.
Some do. Others die inside, leaving the passion and dreams of their youth
behind in a maze of socially acceptable ways to numb their pain and disbelief.
Some find consolation in highly personal relationships with the Divine, trying
to navigate the slippery precipice of insanity and religious devotion.
And
all suffer from a broken values system, crying out for G-d to validate their
lives, their selves, their souls.
Now,
we all know what you’re going to say next. “Is the rest of the world any
better? Do they, too, not have this problem of a lack of self value in their
lives? Does the rise in teen pregnancies, drug usage, gang participation,
crime, and other markers of social deviancy not speak of this problem being
present, and much worse, in the outside world?”
You
are a hundred percent right.
And
that doesn’t change a thing about what I said. Just because someone else has a
broken arm doesn’t mean yours isn’t broken too, or that broken arms are normal, or right. And if we are to reconnect with
what it truly means to be a ben Yisrael,
a Jew, a Semite, call it Larry if you wish – but if we are to take steps to
reach for Tikkun, then we must
acknowledge what is broken, regardless of how it compares to others.
[1] Green
Day, “Jesus of Suburbia (Tales of Another Broken Home)”, American Idiot. 2004
[2] Of which
I am technically one.
[3] What once set the Jewish people apart from all others
was its Life, its “joie de vivre” for lack of a better way to put it. Jewish
people had a cheekiness, a sense of self, an Existential Chein that both proclaimed that Jews were distinct, yet open to all
possibilities. “We are not you, but we could
be anything…” The youthful abandon of “Lechteich
acharai baMidbar”, mixed with the seriousness and self-definition of “Naaseh v’nishma”, is the perfect
snapshot of the genetic personality of those descended from Yaakov/Yisrael.
Instead, it is seen today to be a need to be removed
from all possibilities, to run away from fundamental science and knowledge, to
build fences to keep the world away; we glorify Heaven at the expense of Earth,
creating castles in the air of minute distinctions between super-kosher and supersuper-kosher so as to say we are better Jews
than the person next door (who nebach
eats that hechsher). We venerate the Gedolim and denigrate ourselves,
questioning whether we have a right to our perceptions on the parsha
or pshat in the Gemara. Who are we, after all? They are
men, and we are donkeys, and donkeys don’t have the right to have pshat in Gemara…
[4] See Reddit’s IAMA section to see this in
action.
[5] Much
like the apocryphal story (attributed to Bertrand Russell, Winston Churchill,
and Groucho Marx among others) about a man who asks a girl if she will sleep
with him for a million dollars. Of course, she says yes. He then offers her two
dollars and she slaps his face, saying, ‘What do you think I am?’ He answers,
‘I know what you are. We are just haggling over the price.’
So there are those who will only put on black boxes if
the price is Heaven (“a million dollars”).
[6] Do what Tatte
tells you for a reward! Never lose sight of this, and ignore everything else.
Now go clean your room. Or say the magical incantation over a glass of water.
It’s all the same, after all.
[7] Insert
denigrating comment about the ba’al habus
from the Rebbe here.
[8] The
famous medrash (which I do not know its source) about how G-d collects all of
our tears and when the flaskis filled, the Messiah will come. Besides the
obvious point that this implies that the L-rd is a sadist, it’s also completely
ridiculous in the context it is placed in.
[9] Taken
from the Halachos of grain harvested
before and after the Omer, the pun
reads to mean “all things new are prohibited by Torah law”.
[10] Abaye,
Rava, Pappa, Huna, Rabbah, Rami, Rafram, Geviha, to name a few.
[11] And
therefore, in an insane reversal of decades of political action, American Jews now vote
Republican, precisely because of these shared values and morals (from when the
Republican Party itself embraced the “Evangelical Right”, in the mid-1980s).
Elections are framed around questions of abortion and gay marriage, even on the
most local level in Jewish communities. What a far cry from the days of Jews
being the most vociferous Democrats of all (though the estranged children of
these people continue to trumpet the liberalism of the Left as their (woefully
wrong) understanding of “tikkun olam”…).
[12]
Paraphrase of Devarim 17:14 and Shmuel 1 8:20, among other places.
[13] …v’heim lo k’ruyim adam”. Yevamos 61a
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