Underground Heights

Pride, Prejudice, and Carpe Diem!

2008-02-07T16:39:00.000-05:00

Last night I became possibly the last person on earth to watch the movie Dead Poet’s Society, and unlike my unduly cynical movie buddy, thought it was just great. The timing also could not have been more perfect, as I have just begun teaching Jane Austen’s classic tale of restrained, civilized affection- Pride and Prejudice.

DP Society starts off with one of those famous movie moments- gathered around some sepia pictures of long dead alumnae of an elite boys high school, a group of students are encouraged to make the little time they have on earth mean something. "Carpe Diem" their teacher whispers, make every moment matter. And throughout the move, Mr. Keatings (Robin Williams) enjoins his students to shirk conventionality, eschew conformity, and “suck the marrow out of life” without a fear of consequences. It’s a powerful message - tempered, to be sure, by a sobering tragedy - but all in all, a convincing testament to the beauty and power of throwing away inhibition and really “living.”

Yet its remarkable how, from a different vantage point, that powerful message can morph into something flimsy and imprudent. Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine of Pride and Prejudice is, of course, a vital, exciting character. Everyone she encounters is struck by her independence of spirit, whether they approve of it or not, and modern readers often point to Lizzie (or really Jane Austen) as a kind of proto-feminist, living the life she wants to live despite societal pressures pointing her elsewhere. These readings are often misdirected however, as Pride and Prejudice really isn’t about saying “to hell with convention, I’m going to be myself!” If anything, P&P is probably one of the most compelling arguments in favor of subdued domestic conformity I’ve encountered. Nowhere does Elizabeth even entertain the possibility that happiness can be found anywhere but in a prudent and satisfying marriage. The only character that would have been at home in the Dead Poets Society is Lydia Bennet, Lizzie’s youngest sister who throws a way any shot she would have at happiness by running away with a dashing but awful fellow named Mr. Wickham. This difference is not only a consequence of P& P emerging from a different time-period. The poets invoked and championed in Dead Poets Society are Romantic poets, living at the exact same time Jane Austen was penning her works. This was, in certain literary circles, an era of unbridled passion, of rejecting inhibition, of beating ones chest and screaming to an unknowable, transcendent God.

But Jane Austen begged to differ. She said, whoa there, calm down folks, passion is great, but unwise if it doesn’t have the appropriate social sanction. We have to live in this world, we have to make peace with its conventions, and frankly, maybe there is even wisdom behind its conventions. Maybe if everyone in society tells you to find a husband, support your family, have good manners etc…then they’re on to something. Pride and Prejudice thus points toward a model of doing those things without losing your soul. It’s a charming, rich and complex book, and in being so, makes the point that even a relatively conventional life can be a charming, rich and complex thing.

It’s an important point I think, because in DP Society when Robin Williams shouts out, “Make your lives EXTRAORDINARY” he sending a very confusing message. What on earth does that mean, really? Broken down to its component parts, what really is the difference between an ordinary and an extraordinary life? (Please answer- it’s a real question). I mean, you want to find something you do well, interact with people, make a little money, leave something for the kinder. What else is there, on a basic building block level? Yes, of course we can all point to people who made a significant dent in the world, but sometimes that’s an accident right? Right place, right time, or they had all the opportunities presented to them. In other words, while its clear that from the outside that an extraordinary life is quite distinguishable from an ordinary one, when you are in the process of living can you really tell the difference?

What Pride and Prejudice reminds us, I think, is that even the most mundane of country villages can have vibrant, multivalent experiences contained within. Elizabeth Bennet did NOTHING, she made fun of silly people around her, married a rich guy, and went off to live in his mansion. But she thought and she felt and she loved, so the book works, it feels exciting. Is it possible that the young men of the DP Society would be satisfied with that level of extraordinary living? I highly doubt it. And a part of me, the part of me that swoons over music and poetry, looks askance upon it as well. But conversely, the notion of “Carpe Diem,” of “seizing the day” as viable alternative to everyday living, is pretty vague. I wouldn’t give up on it entirely, but I think, as a concept, it needs a little more tweaking to really feel significant.

On Settling

2008-02-05T18:25:00.000-05:00

Every once in a while you read something that you know is going to haunt you, regardless of its quality, or even whether or not its right. I think this article in The Atlantic is that kind of piece. I emailed it to a friend who said she was sorry she read it before having dinner, it made her stomach hurt so much she couldn't eat. I'd be curious to hear what people think.

Vampire Weekend in the Heights

2008-02-05T02:50:00.000-05:00

Much buzzed about new band, Vampire Weekend, sing "I saw Joanna down in the subway, she took an apartment in Washington Heights" in their song APunk. Check it out on their
MySpace page.

Not important news, really, but I thought it was worth sharing.

Putting an End to the Culture Wars, One Blog Post at a Time

2008-01-30T17:09:00.001-05:00

Walk into any English department and you'll probably be able to distinguish two distinct groups. One quick way to determine them would be to shout out “Who is the greatest writer in the English language?” Whoever answers the question with a cool William Shakespeare, or even John Milton, is in the first group; whoever responds by disputing the racist, sexist, hegemonist biases of such question, is in the second group. It is the difference between upholding the sanctity of the Western canon, and seriously doubting it; the difference between being comfortable with pronunciations of “greatness” or preferring a more relative, culturally sensitive model. Both groups have shaped and conditioned the way I view literature and culture, to the point where choosing one has always felt impossible.

Well, to be more precise, what’s usually happened has looked more like a game of ping-pong. Sick and tired of one approach, I’ve sought refuge in the other, only to return back once again. In an apathetic high school context, I rallied to defend the “greats” of the Western canon, looking to classic books as a source of all kinds of values. I devoured trashy stuff as well, but I genuinely looked up to my teachers’ notions of the classics and had seemingly infinite patience for plugging away at endless Victorian novels that I now use to balance my bed-frame.

Remaining in traditional Orthodox environments for a bit too long however, this lofty notion of “the classics” began to sour, particularly as I saw Rabbis and YU professors championing a superficial engagement with a smattering of these texts as the height of “Torah U Madda.” In college I also began this infatuation with postmodernism, a one-woman crusade to abolish all mention of universalisms and absolutes within the halls of Stern College. Needless to say, my relativism crusade was not very successful and I decided I would leave Stern in favor of more secular environments where I could simply “be” my relativist, postmodern self. Then I, uh, actually entered those environments, and realized that the postmodernism that existed in my head had very little to do with the culture wars that surrounded me.

Coming from an environment where I felt beleaguered by other people’s notions of what was valuable, I left grad school feeling much more beleaguered by the notion that nothing was valuable at all. Where as in Stern all I wanted was to, like, get lost in the nuances of the world, in Columbia English classes I actually felt lost, in a bad way. I kind of got what contemporary literary studies were all about, but I didn’t get why they mattered. When professors would come into class complaining about the university’s constant humanities budget cuts I would secretly smile- serves you right for spending all this time talking about the performative, intertextual, Barthesian, Lacanian, qualities of who knows what, and not being a nice person to boot. My love for literature never wavered, if anything it grew stronger, but I found myself regressing to a kind of primitive, plain-talking, parochialism- this is a great book, I loved it, period. In a way, I was back to where I started out as a teenage reader, but it was different this time because I didn’t actually think I was right.

My adventures in higher-level literary criticism reinforced for me how many of our conceptions of greatness are culturally conditioned and narrow. Again and again, I realized that if we want to get a fuller picture of any given works we need to broaden our tools of cultural understanding to include all kinds of things-gender, class, economics etc…. But I also realized that I don’t always need to get a fuller picture. I like constructing hierarchies, I like looking for personal meaning, and I like believing in great literature. When I read things written by Harold Bloom or Allan Bloom I think “come on, are they actually being serious?” But I know very well that if I wrote a book I would sound a lot more like them than I would Edward Said or Judith Butler. It’s a strange kind of place to be in I guess. To want to write critical works full of principles and values and personal meaning without really wanting to read them. But I feel like the alternatives, on both ends of the “culture war,” are a lot stranger.

The Great UG Heights Political Debate

2008-01-24T03:08:00.000-05:00

It’s been ages, I don’t know if anyone even reads this anymore but I’m going to post regardless. A few things have been stirring in my mind relating to the brouhaha surrounding the presidential primaries, and the arduous task of moving my lazy self to register.

In general, I’ve always tried to avoid conversations about politics. I hate saying that because I feel like it is a very “gosh I just leave that kind of talk to the men,” kind of statement, but its true, and partially for wimpy reasons. I really don’t like arguing, and especially in an area where it never feels like anyone is ever going to change his or her opinions even an iota from where they are. Yet when arguing isn’t involved, it can be even worse. Last year I realized that the two communities I was a part of, the liberal Jewish academic circles of Columbia and the UWS, and my staunchly conservative Orthodox hometown of Monsey, NY, were quite possibly the most boring political places in the world. Everyone agreed, the only dissent in Morningside Heights was on the extent to which offensive right-wing groups should be protested against (the protest itself an absolute given,) the only disagreement in Monsey was about whether the Arabs are literally the children of Amalek, or a brand-new form of evil.

For an English teacher these conversations are anathema. They encourage staid and uncreative thinking; they let students who should be challenged off the hook by providing them with catchphrases and party lines upon which they can pin their alliances. I have had great conversations about books and movies with people of all political stripes, and I promise you would not be able to tell which party they side with based on their appreciation for Emily Dickinson. It just sometimes seems like political divisions as we know them were some kind of royal accident. Somewhere in history people decided, probably at that time for good reasons, to divide into groups. Since then people have trying to cram their own values and beliefs into these pre-defined structures with the result being ugly and boring. Whereas every few years, the literary establishment is overturned by a new lens through which it can approach its material, the American two-party system has basically remained intact since the 1800’s (obviously with shifts in ideologies and whatnot, but modern parties do find their correlates in these earlier parties, someone tell me if I’m wrong). Anytime you have to choose one of two sides there must be some kind of simplification at hand, right? Perhaps my objection is that life is way more complex than politics. By focusing on who to vote for, why our party is the best, and why our opponents are idiots, we close ourselves off to all sorts of nuanced ways to view the world.

However politics are not just politics, they also involve ideas, primarily the big ideas of Liberalism and Conservatism, and ideas do have currency for me, even in my artsy, ephemeral, apolitical universe. So what are the ideas? Or how about, what is one idea- since I really don’t know enough about the topic to do an overview.

The way I’ve seen it since being swept away by Ayn Rand in high school, and then subsequently harrowed by legions of liberal college professors, is that American party divisions boil down to a question of whether the government going to vigorously pursue what’s best for its people, or let them decide for themselves. The first I guess is about “goodness,” the second is “freedom.” Liberalism, has a tremendous ability to be corrupted, it can be arrogant, it can wreak terrible havoc like Communism, at times it seems like an impossible project. At the same time, it can be a beautiful one. Liberals seize hold of dreams of eradicating poverty and pain, of really improving the world. Conservatives may have the same dreams, but they are not going to aggressively pursue them. There’s something scary about the laissez-faire, in the long run things will be better if we just stay out of the way approach. Historically, it may in fact have been better, but to not go help a crying, screaming baby, even if you know that’s its best for it to just keep on crying, can do bad things to your spirit if you are not careful.

So that, I think, in all its English-major ignorance, is one interesting plane on which we could discuss politics. HONESTY about what each ideology brings to the table and what it doesn’t. At best, Conservatism can keep a kind of delusional but noble Liberalism from getting out of line. At best, Liberalism can remind Conservatives that things in the world still suck, and if we are not going to rally our governments to respond to them, we should certainly respond to them on individual levels as much as we can. Of course there are tons of other factors to take into the equation of understanding American party divisions, and at the end of the day you need to vote so partisanship is in a way where any political conversation is ultimately headed, but still. I still think there’s a way we can recognize the absurdity of the political debates that surround us, and push towards a model where people aren’t so touchy about encountering an idea that is actually different. When you vote you need to choose sides, but you never really have to choose sides.

The Center Cannot Hold!

2007-10-21T23:25:00.000-04:00

Once again, to my combined pleasure and discomfort (mostly pleasure), Monsey is in the news again, this time as the setting for Shalom Auslander’s new memoir, “Foreskin’s Lament.” Though foreskins have never really been my "thing," a recent statement by Auslander felt eerily familiar:

“The people who raised me will say I am not religious. They are mistaken. I am painfully, cripplingly, incurably, miserably religious”

None of the articles I’ve read that quote this line explain what he means by “religious,” I’m not sure I understand what he means by “religious.” But I think it relates to a larger problem I’ve been having lately with the whole religion/literature/what to do with my life odyssey and I’ll try to explain why.

I learned a couple of things when I was in English literature graduate school, but this above all: after the 1890’s, maybe before, religion and good literature stopped operating hand in hand. "Good literature" is of course, a category that’s up for debate, as is, once again “religion,” but I think we can come up with some ballpark categories. For one: Literature and its scholarship will fling you in all kinds of directions, providing new language and concepts to refine our sense of the world and our place in it. The possibilities are endless in this kind of centrifuge, as are the conclusions you will draw. Religion on the other hand, while certainly less simple than the Dawkinses and Hitchenses of the world would maintain, is ultimately a centripetal force- drawing its adherents in to some kind of unnamed center, ordering reality and subjugating it to one or maybe a handful of things. Though the results are invariably messier than intended, the force is generally, I think, about streamlining, reigning things in. Every discipline has affinities to this aspect of religion, but when God is completely, utterly, divorced from the picture, the results end up looking really different. I.e. you actually have difference! So even though the NY Times will seem chock-full of these Jewish interest pieces as it has been for the past week, it will also have as many or more articles about Iraq, the Red Sox, Google, the environment, the DOW, gourmet olives, birth control, and Latvia. It’s true that it often does seem like the Times does have a kind of messianic impulse toward articles with Jewish content, but for a good portion of its readers, I would imagine, the Judaism stuff does not suck them in and dominate their attention the way it does for people raised Orthodox. It’s interesting, like lots of stuff is interesting, and that’s really it.
So what to do if you are not one of those regular readers? Or more specifically, if you are not one of those readers but have a sinking feeling that they are right. That in this crazy mixed up world (yes I say that way too much) there is no one thing that can really justify the streamlining of our thoughts and actions. Or, as Yeats said it:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

Of course, Yeats goes on to talk about some beast slouching toward Bethlehem, indicating that even he is ok unifying all of reality into one bizarre religious figure, but his point still stands. The center cannot hold, and yet, it continues to grab, tackle and drag me in. So what to do?

A few possible solutions:
1) Revive some kind of organic Jewish commonwealth.
Almost everyone agrees that the Bible is a good piece of literature, even though it is religious, and that is because it is lots of other things as well. When God is a stable and unquestioned part of your environment, other things can pursued without awkward dissonance. Its not an issue of center versus periphery, it is the food we eat, the air that we breathe. This of course, may not be the most realistic of options, historic attempts at realizing it have bordered on the insane, but it can be actualized in a more diluted fashion in the form of a:

2) Move to Israel.
I don’t think that religion equals God, religion is all kinds of things, and for me, for the most part, it’s a language; a way of communicating meaning and values etc... Living in Israel certainly does not equal believing in God, but it does get you closer to that language, if only because of the biblical roots of its own. The whole good literature versus religious literature divide doesn’t really make sense in Israel, religion is in the food, the air, the kool-aid etc… Yehuda Amichai is very different than Rav Kook, but when you thing about him versus John Ashbury or William Carlos Williams start to multiply and multiply until they are not even worth talking about. Actually… is that true? Whatever, despite strong religious/secular frictions in Israel, I see more potential for a kind of healthy cultural continuity happening there than here.

3) But we are here, and they are there. Thus, luckily, there is always that third path: simply addressing the topic itself ad nauseum. This has been the path of Shalom Auslander, Noah Feldman, and other notables, and it can be pursued in one of either two frameworks: a) Talking about secular stuff to religious people, and b) talking about religious stuff to secular people.

I think I basically do the first one in most avenues of my life. This is satisfying because the movement OUT from a defined center can feel very similar to the movement IN to a defined center. The work of centralizing things is done for me by my students, so I don’t have to feel intellectually dishonest, and I can constantly bring things back to Judaism, which I would do anyway, but without the fear of being pigeonholed. But this path is also problematic because it limits your impact. To only talk to Orthodox Jews for the rest of my life? Yikes. Yet the other path, bringing Judaism to the Nations of the World, does not seem much more appetizing. I hope Shalom Auslander can write the great American novel one day- but for now, brachos bees and Yeshiva of Spring Valley seem to be the stuff of his artistic engagement. Half of his writing will always be translation, and until we revive that religious theocracy thing, we’re all bound to have to do the same.

4) I should mention that there’s always that final, somewhat terrifying solution: Stop whining and get a real job. This prospect makes me more uncomfortable than all the religious/secular dichotomies in the world combined, and will consequently not be discussed any further.

So the tension still stands, and I think that’s why someone would say he is “painfully, cripplingly, incurably, miserably religious.” It’s crippling because you keep coming back to it, it keeps you from fully throwing yourself into all the various frontiers that modernity has to offer. But its always nice to have something to come back to.
On that note, its good to be back!

Summer Break

2007-06-27T09:17:00.000-04:00

Sorry its been a while since we've updated. Travelling does strange things to my brain, the world feels too big to summarize in a blog post, and now that I'm back I have all these other things to catch up with. So I am officially taking a holiday from blogging for a little bit (though I am always happy to ramble on in person). Hope to be back on track soon.

The Body Issue

2007-05-29T03:58:00.001-04:00

In a previous post I wrote about how much a sunny day can do to whittle away angst and bad spirits. This, it occurs to me, is not always the case. In fact, there is a way in which warm weather can produce a whole new set of anxieties, and they usually have to do with bodies. That is, there is some point every year, as temperatures start to rise, when the masses of people around me in New York City stop being people and start being bodies- long, short, dark, light, thin, heavy, smooth, wrinkled bodies. Walking down the street becomes this giant flesh fest (the kind our tznius literature warned us about) and I can’t help but be absorbed by it. Joining a gym this year has added to the onslaught, and I am constantly in awe of the rich variety of bodies and faces that can be contained within one species (let alone one locker room).

At the same time, mixed up with this sense of awe is the inevitable feeling of inadequacy, as the surplus of exposed body surface makes me measure my own in comparison, and find myself falling short. Of course these concerns pale in contrast to the kinds of things that should be concerning me like pain and poverty and global stuff. But we live in our bodies, and whether we admit it or not, most of us are mildly obsessed by them. My gym is filled with hordes of highly educated, affluent people, sweating and exhausting themselves for hours a week entirely for the purpose of having nice abs. And I don't even care about them, I care about my people (highly educated, not so affluent...) the majority of whom also spend loads of time and energy choosing food and clothing and that will make them as thin as possible. I care because it upsets everything we’ve been taught to think matters in life- namely kindness, sensitivity, intelligence, social consciousness and the like. Weight has nothing to do with these things, and yet it matters, and I’m still at a loss for a way to synthesize that knowledge into the general way I think about people.

For example: Boy meets girl. Boy thinks girl is sweet, smart, interesting. Girl thinks the same. They make each other laugh like neither has laughed in ages, and they both get the sense that if something serious came up, they would be equally on the same page. But girl is rather heavy and this puts boy off. He ends up asking out inferior woman he is attracted to. Girl feels like crap. I could construe this scenario a million other ways (and someone, somewhere is upset that I have used “girl” instead of “woman”), but the point is a familiar one. Looks matter in the cruelest ways. You (all of you) will not end up with the best person for you. You will end up with the best person to whom you are attracted, and who is attracted to you in turn (along with all the other necessary demands).

Perhaps the most convenient way to think about this would be to get away from the archaic mind-body distinction. We are our bodies, hot people have hot personalities, likewise for plain people, looks condition the way you grow up and the way you think about yourself. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and reflects a million other amorpheous attributes (like vibe and attitude) that run much deeper. I’ve heard this line of thought plenty of times before, and much of it rings true. But how can we say, in this age of crash diets, cosmetic surgery, and TV makeovers, that your appearance is at all a stable part of your persona. And even if it is, it can still hurt.

I know because I see it all around me. See it with friends who cannot get a second date no matter how well the first one went. See it with genuinely great guys who would never consider dating me because I am a head taller than them (to be fair, I am not completely guiltless in this regard). See it with people who will always be noticed and paid attention to at parties, and people who simply will not. Hopefully everyone will find their special someone, and I wouldn’t say that successful relationships are even remotely dependent on objective attractiveness. But some are. Bodies are our greatest tools, but they can also trap us, limit our possibilities for love and connection. The gym bunnies at Equinox are probably a little too conscious of this, but they are more honest than we are at our Shavuot Torah learning retreats (which, by the way, was super fun!). The liberal Jewish philosophy I’ve been most exposed to regarding this matter has been-if you ignore it, it will go away. To a certain extent, this is true. If you are given literally no room to obsess about your body out loud, then you will feel ashamed to make certain choices based on that, maybe even feel compelled to give someone a shot who you’d rather not. But in order for this to actually work, we’d have to stay away from movies and television as well, not to mention sweltering New York City streets. Until then, we will continue to occupy this weird space where bodies matter more than they should and we talk about it less than we should. We will make the decision of who we want to spend the rest of our lives with, in part, because of a few inches here or there, or some other genetic coincidence that could have gone a million different ways; and we will go on thinking that what really matters is kindness and sensitivity etc… What other option is there?

"Enough"

2007-05-07T14:39:00.000-04:00

Dedicated to Z.E.

Every Spring I am struck by the realization that as real, as painful, as disturbing as the burdens that weigh down on our lives may be, a sunny day can do a great deal to make things seem different. People smile more, they let down their guards, and sitting outside doing absolutely nothing seems like a worthwhile goal in of itself. It feels like “enough,” if that makes sense. Like God gave us this world in order to enjoy it- period. I go indoors when I need to work on my papers. Only in air-conditioning and artificial light can I feel like my investigation of the liturgical use of puns in the poetry of George Herbert is a worthwhile endeavor.

I would like to write a paper that could compete with the sunny day. One that could make people reading it feel- this, this is enough- this is what it’s all about. Next best thing would be feeling that myself, with someone, with something, in a sustained way. I don’t think you can do both by the way. You can’t feel blissful satisfaction and also transmit it to others (except by example, I guess). Why? Because of politics, the difficulty of writing, getting your word out, needing to stay in the library, get a job, kiss-up to important people, repeat, explain, translate etc…Good teachers see it as craft, something that needs to be painstakingly prepared for- bad teachers see it as a higher calling that they need only transmit through their enthusiasm. The person who writes well about the sunny day will never be the same person who enjoys it fully. The person who writes beautifully and pointedly about love or religion will never, please tell me if you disagree here, be fully sustained by either. How can you really explain something to someone else unless you are on the outside, a little bit? Why should you need to explain it, if you have it, anyway?

All of this creates this strange cycle wherein the people who act as the mediators of "higher meaning" in the modern world, English professors, clergy, whoever, can only do a successful job if they are very much in touch with all the not so meaningful things necessary to get their word out there. They need to stand outside their message to a certain degree. The people who are actually content don’t care to write about it, why suffer through all the politics when the sun is shining outside and desk jobs pay so much better anyway. But those content people use a vocabulary they have learned from all the stressed out, annoying, academics; they attribute their deep satisfaction to adherence to religions perpetuated by things like advertising, fundraising, lobbying etc... So strange. This cycle is probably a lot more complicated then I am making it out to be. But good blogging by laypeople is probably the only way to put an end to it. That I’m pretty sure about…

What on Earth?

2007-05-07T09:43:00.000-04:00

"They Tried To Kill Us. They Failed. Let's Eat!"
by Yidcore

Good or god-awful?

Guest Panel Discussion on Jewish Identity

2007-04-30T01:09:00.000-04:00

Ok I'm tired of hearing my own voice on this blog, so we are going to try something new. Below is a guest post by Shmuel, a longtime friend of UH, and superstar law student, and in comments are some really great responses that probe the issue further. Please add to the conversation if you can!

Hi All,
An unsettling incident took place today, and I’d like to hear your reaction. I was in the student lounge, studying for finals with Sam, a fellow 2L in the law school. Sam has always told me about his Jewish identity. He is from a small Southern city, where his family has lived for about two hundred years. They still have a Sefer Torah that their great…grandparents hid from Union soldiers during the Civil War. The family now affiliates with the Reform movement. Sam is religiously literate and completely identifies as a Jew.

We began chatting about how we need to get married within the next year (i.e. by the end of law school) as once work began. there would be no time to date. Sam mentioned that New York Jews do not consider a Jew from the South an authentic Jew (an interesting point), nor for that matter, do Orthodox Jews consider him a Jew. I asked why not? Sam replied that his mother is not Jewish. I asked him how he knew that this affected his Jewish status. Sam explained that during his bar mitzvah trip to Israel, while at the Kotel, a chassid approached him. The chassid asked Sam if he wanted to put on tfillin. Sam agreed. He then asked Sam if he was Jewish. Sam told him that he was. The chassid next asked Sam if both parents were Jewish, When Sam answered no - his mother was not Jewish - the chassid immediately walked away.

Sam's story deeply disturbs me. Sam bears all of the burdens of being Jewish, (among them, identifying with a small persecuted minority – which is perhaps not a big deal in New York, but is certainly a formidable challenge in the Deep South. Sam has told me that while growing up, every few months he would need to explain to someone why he did not accept the Lord Jesus Christ as his Savior. ) . He participates in Jewish practice and culture (he went to his first Purim shpiel this year). Yet we do not consider him a Jew. Someone who has a Jewish mother however, we do consider a Jew, even were he to change his name to Smith and celebrate Christmas. The arbitrary criteria we employ to determine Jewishness seems deeply unfair, indeed almost unethical. I told Sam that the archetype of conversion in the Bible is Ruth, and that her conversion consisted of publicly identifying with the Jewish people - am'ech ami. It is true that the Orthodox halakha has additional criteria when considering the question of who is a Jew. Yet fundamentally, it seems that the public identification with the plight of the Jewish people is all that really matters.

At this point, two issues need to be addressed:
1. How does one respond to Sam? Do you tell him that it is true, he is a gentile? How do you explain / justify the halakha to him?
2. How do we justify the halakha to ourselves? One can answer that being Jewish is simply a formal legal status, that is devoid of any meaning. But if we consider being Jewish to be something more meaningful, why make it contingent upon descent from the mother? How do you exclude someone from the Jewish people (although he is more involved than most Jews) simply because the wrong parent wasn't Jewish?

Shmuel sent his question out in an email before allowing me to post it on the blog. Below is a sampling of the back and forth.
More Thoughts?

Observer Article

2007-04-25T18:16:00.001-04:00

Its not on the web, but the writer was kind enough to send it to me as a Word document.

More to the Heights Than Meets the Eye
By Batsheva Lipschitz

What comes to mind when you think of Washington Heights?

For most people the answer is Yeshiva University (YU). Yet, former Stern College for Women (SCW) alumna Sarah Rindner (SCW '06) thinks there's more to "the Heights" than that. After living there for the past six months, Rindner now associates the community with a much broader group of people.

In the spring of 2006, Rindner co-created a blog about what she calls the "young, interesting, artistic, religiously concerned people who live in the Washington Heights area who do not really affiliate with any of the institutions there." The title of her blog, Underground Heights (UH), originally named by UH co-founder Elyakim Deutsch (YC '05), is meant to be ironic and to create awareness about communities in the Heights, other than the YU community. "Their presence goes somewhat unnoticed," observed Rindner. "The idea behind 'Underground Heights,' would be to bring some of those 'underground' elements out to the surface, and see what kind of community could emerge."

Rindner is proud to say that some of the same goals that inspired the blog have manifested themselves with the creation of a progressive new minyan (prayer group), Migdal Or. What differentiates Migdal Or from most other Orthodox minyanim is that a woman leads part of the Friday night services. Rindner compares Migdal Or to Congregation Darchei Noam in New York City , and Shira Chadasha in Jerusalem, Israel.

In a posting titled "Balcony Blues," Rindner expressed her feelings about synagogue mechitzas (physical partitions between males and females) and the separate role that women play in synagogue in general. When she attended Kehillat Hadar, a mechitza-free minyan on the Upper West Side of Manhattan , the open-minded Rindner said that instead of viewing tefilla (prayer) as a spectator-sport, she felt a sense of belonging. Her comment sparked further conversation on the topic, with many women admitting they felt the same way. This was perhaps the first time people of the Heights community discussed this issue publicly.

"I've never seen another blog that is both geographically, [and] community centered as ours is," commented Rindner, "as well as concerned with inner thoughts and struggles to the extent that we are. Because of that, it's kind of hard to categorize what UH is all about. Is it about community? Religious truth? Finding meaning in life? Finding love? Having fun with friends? I think for many of us, those things do work together, and the question is whether they can work together successfully in a public forum."

For the most part, UH, with a total of about 13,000 hits, has been successful in many ways. The creator of the blog asserts that UH has affected her personal relationships. She recalls that she found her roommate of half a year on the blog site. She also enjoys when people approach her about things they've read on the blog. But, Rindner explained, "perhaps even more meaningful has been the depth it's added to relationships I already have. Some of the most interesting conversations sparked by the blog have taken place over e-mail and in person long afterwards."

The former Monsey resident states that she usually checks UH about twice daily and looks forward to reading new comments. However, there are occasionally comments posted that Rindner does not appreciate. Some of the undesirable posts are those written by people who log on under fictitious names to comment in response to Migdal Or. According to Rindner, they say obnoxious things that they wouldn't dare say in public.

Despite these rude remarks, Rachel Berger, one of three roommates to host the first Migdal Or minyan a few weeks ago, credits UH with building "a sense of community here in Washington Heights for an artsy, thoughtful bunch of post YU grads."
Rindner states that she and Deutsch started UH "because [they] thought it would be fun to start a community blog." UH describes itself on the web as "an ironically named blog about some relatively interesting people in and around Washington Heights , and, to be fair, well beyond that area."

Now a resident of the Upper West Side, Rindner falls into the "well beyond that area" category. She asserts that it's worthwhile to run the UH blog and also finds it a constructive way to keep in touch with friends. "It's really exciting to think what kind of ripple effect even a teeny dip into the public sphere can have," she observed.

Stern College Observer- April 2007

Undies in the News

2007-04-20T10:25:00.000-04:00

I heard there was a great article, all about Underground Heights, by Batsheva Lipschitz in the most recent Stern Observer. I haven't gotten a chance to see it yet, but if you're near a distribution site, I encourage yout to check it out, and if possible, pick me up a copy!

In other news...

Also, I think that Spring is here. Shabbat Shalom.

The Lost

2007-04-17T03:01:00.000-04:00

Just now, in my late-night procrastination rounds, I clicked on the NYT website only to be horrifed by news that everyone else has probably known about all day. How do you process something like that? 32 lives just over, with no forewarning, no illness, no reason, not even a bad reason . Strange to say all this only a day after Yom HaShoah, one would think we have the tools for processing these kinds of statistics, far more dismal ones in fact. But we don’t, sustained meditation on these losses is impossible. Even properly thinking about one lost person is impossible. There’s all this clutter, like on the Times homes page- advertisements, Sports, an article in “Praise of Plants.” 32 worlds have ended, but that’s not even close to enough to fill a newspaper. It makes me wonder what the point of all this commemoration is in the first place. I mean, I do it all the time, I am obsessed with the Holocaust, and even more consumed by recent experiences of loss. But the futility of it all upsets me sometime, as I forgot, get distracted, inevitably do a lousy job confronting absence.

How do we think about the dead? As they were when they were living? Well then they are ghosts, they aren’t dead, they are just memories of living people you will never be able to see again. What about their physical deterioration? That gets you closer I think, we’re able to think about pain, dying moments are a huge part of literature I imagine for that reason. It’s a bridge from life to death, a way to get closer to thinking about death. But actually cognizing it is really hard. Newspapers have their inadequate methods, but mine aren’t so much better. Ghosts and memories or descriptions of pain and suffering, that’s all I have. And even when I think about those things, I invariably end up more concerned with my immediate surroundings, with the ripple effects of absence. I guess that would a third way of thinking about death, the toll it takes on the living. But am I being silly for thinking that those three ways are still missing something- that we in our selfish, isolated bubbles of being alive can’t really care about anything outside of us. We’re programmed to go on, even if it’s really not fair that some people don’t get to.

More Suggestions for Keeping Pesach Interesting

2007-04-04T23:28:00.000-04:00

1) ASK QUESTIONS. The Haggadah has it right, but the story of Yetziat Mitzrayim will only get you so far. People, on the other hand, never cease to intrigue, especially older people, and random questions to relatives about their pasts (bungalow colonies, Satmar sleepaway camp, Poland, sheitels, dating, you name it) has given me some of the richest, most delicious info. Don’t pass on these opportunities to hear people’s stories, everyone loves sharing them and there will inevitably be a time when you’ll wish you knew more but you’ll no longer have the opportunity to ask. Ask.

2) DON’T FIGHT, EVER. This may not be applicable to some people reading, but I will confess that there was once a time when I thought conversations with anyone were most interesting when we located a point of disagreement. I am DIFFERENT from my family in this way, I DISAGREE with you in this respect— I, I, I. The truth is, everyone comes from different places, and points of disagreement are almost always, I would even say always, predicated upon vastly different sets of circumstances that led each party in those different directions. Choosing any single issue on which to disagree is arbitrary, understanding the world of thoughts and experiences that led that that person to think the way she does is fascinating. Also, I know what I think, what fun is it to vociferously assert it when I could be getting insight into someone else’s weird, complex world. And really changing someone else's outlook is hard, perhaps one of the hardest things one can do, better to just sit back and analyze the various ways people approach things.

3) Take advantage of the attention of people who care about you. There are very few situations in life where the people around you are truly, genuinely, concerned about your best interests. Family gatherings are one of them, and yet, they are usually too annoying for us (or at least me) to be able to appreciate that fact. But take advantage of what you can, ask your relatives for advice in whatever interpersonal affair has been concerning you as of late-boys, friends, colleagues, teachers whatever. Their advice may not be extraordinarily helpful, but I think it is always so fun to hear people’s take on you and your life, and they will feel so flattered for being consulted, and you never know what new aspect of the situation will be illuminated.

4) Play with kids. This is definitely not applicable to everyone, but certain people, inhabiting certain urban, collegiate, everyone is above age 20 worlds, sometimes forget how amazing the process of early cognition can be. When learning is not this tedious re-processing of the same overprocessed jargon but a really exciting journey of discovery and making connections, where there really is new stuff to know, and wildly appealing things to do. Also if you can convince them to give you the chills…perfection! I still think I like spending time with adults more, but kids are absolutely, positively indispensable, and I can’t wait to have like 15 of my own.

Ok, I think that was the preachiest thing I’ve ever written, but I really mean this advice, it’s come from the very depths of my (albeit limited) experience. Of course I imagine some people were just BORN knowing this stuff, and look forward to every family holiday with mature and even-tempered pleasure. And for them I will be happy to insert some angst and provocation next time around. But for now, I hope everyone really enjoys their holidays, and makes the most of a point in time that can never be returned to.

Passover Reading

2007-03-28T15:54:00.000-04:00

Below is a frantic e-mail I sent out to a bunch of people from my gmail drop-down box, and also excerpts of some their responses (I had to excise the person-specific and borderline inappropriate stuff, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate it all the same). If anyone is uncomfortable with the instant fame and celebrity being quoted on this blog will bring you, PLEASE let me know, I will initialize you immediately. On a side note, is it tacky to use personal e-mail threads as blog fodder? Things have just been so hectic lately, and the books selections are so good... Also, it will be fun if people add on/disagree in comments.

“Help! I just realized Pesach is coming and all I have to read is a book on post-liberal theology and a draft of my MA thesis. If people can recommend a book or two they've absolutely LOVED and not want to put down, not only because its "important to have read," then I would be greatly appreciative. I'm eagerly anticipating your selections, and I hope you all have a super-duper Passover.
Best,
Sarah”

Michal S.:

1. the story of jane: the legendary underground feminist abortion movement
2. currently reading a book called "real boys" by a dr. pollack which
I am really enjoying.

oh, and add
1. "reproducing Jews: a cultural account of fertility treatment in
Israel" to the list by susan martha kahn
2. Sacrificed for Honor: Italian Infant Abandonment and the Politics
of Reproductive Control
by David I. Kertzer

Both are also AWESOME reads.

Zvi Halpern:
White Noise, by Don Delillo. The Island of the Day Before, by Umberto
Eco. The Brothers Ashkenazi, by I.J. Singer.

Tamar Warburg:
These are kind of random, but -- I liked: The Kite Runner, The Things They Carried (you may have read this in school -- it's very compelling, human side of Vietnam), Blindness by Jose Saramago (disturbing; I'm still not totally sure what to think). I just read Exodus for the first time, and if you haven't read it then you absolutely must. I heard that A Fine Balance is incredible.

ALG:
The Glass Lake, by Maeve Binchy. Totally not "important to have read," but I really enjoyed it. I read all 750 pages over the course of one Shabbat, and definitely couldn't put it down. It won't do much for you if you don't like these kinds of family sagas, though. I've read and enjoyed Maeve Binchy's other books as well. See it and other books I've read recently here: http://abacaximamao.blogspot.com/2007/03/on-and-off-my-bookshelf.html

Also, I recently finished The Bastard on the Couch: 27 Men Try Really Hard to Explain Their Feelings About Love, Loss, Fatherhood, and Freedom , edited by Daniel Jones, which I enjoyed tremendously. It was a different perspective on gender and gender roles than I am usually exposed to through reading women's writing.

Ann Peters (my guru):
1 CLOUD ATLAS by David Mitchell
2 THE GREAT FIRE by Shirley Hazzard
3 Kawabata — Japanese novelist. Try THE SOUND OF THE MOUNTAIN to get a feel for him.
4 POSSESSION by A.S. Byatt
5 BERLIN STORIES by Christopher Isherwood
6 BOOK AND THE BROTHERHOOD by Iris Murdoch
7 SPRING SNOW by Mishima
8 MARTIN DRESSLER by Steven Milhauser
9 FATHER AND SON by Edmund Gosse
10 FLAUBERT’S PARROT by Julian Barnes
11 HOPE AGAINST HOPE by Nadeshda Mandelstam
12 INTELLECTUAL MEMOIRS by Mary McCarthy
13 THE PROFESSOR’S HOUSE by Willa Cather
14 SIX NOTES FOR THE NEXT MILLENIUM by Italo Calvino
15 NEVER LET ME GO by Kazuo Ishiguro
16 RUNNING IN THE FAMILY by Michael Ondatjee
17 THE MASTER BUTCHER’S SINGING CLUB by Louise Erdrich
18 LIAR’S CLUB by Mary Karr
19 AMERICAN PASTORAL by Philip Roth
20 CONCRETE by Thomas Bernhard
…
In our Fact and Fiction class, we’re reading Daniel Mendelsohn’s THE LOST over break. Join us!
…
Oh and read Nabakov’s autobiography for a taste of truly wonderful writing.

Bella Tendler:
You already know which book I want you to read!

[Ed. note: I believe she means The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco]

Estie Wolfe:
Diary of a Country Priest. I cant remember the authors name. I told you
before, but I don’t know if you read it in the end.

[Georges Bernanos]

Harvey Rosenberg:
I'm assuming you've read Metamorphosis - but if you haven't, you
must! It's amazing! I also loved loved loved The Trail by kafka.
The Hunger Artist is a short story by kafka which i also recommend -
ask Berman.

hmm... Harry Potters are good - are you into that sort of thing?

and then there is Wuthering Heights or the Age of Innocence -
perhaps labeled "girly" by some - both compelling stories I thought.

Ethan Frome also.
so, do you have any recommendations for me?

Ari Gordon:
Cat's Cradle, Siddhartha, anything by Etgar Keret

Shelley Rindner (my other guru):
Veil of Roses by Laura Fitzgerald

Moshe Fruchter:
I recommend Mishehu Larutz Ito by David Grossman

Miriam C:
I loved The Glass Castle

Tziona Katz
"On Beauty" was good
Reading "Nickel and Dimed" now which is also really good
Someone just told me "Sunflower in the Fan" is good---haven’t read it though so I couldn’t tell you

Noah Greenfield:
Some books that come to mind:
The Yeshiva by Chaim Grade
Yoshe Kalb by I.B. Singer's brother (can't remember his name now)
The Family Mashber by Der Nister
The Body of Faith by Michael Wyschogrod
Carnal Israel by Daniel Boyarin
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy

Talia Rosenberg:
I just read Empire Falls and it was great.

Michael Stein:
You probably read this already but it is one of my personal favorites - Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. It is a little short though - you will need a few more suggestions.

Liz Muschel:
19 Minutes Jodi Picoult

Moshe Halpern:
My favorite book is called "A Complicated Kindness" by Miriam Toews.
If you like it, then you should also read "Swing Low: A Life" by the same
person. You shouldn't read Swing Low first.

Shira Stanleigh:
I know I'm not objective, but I really liked my Fiance's book (Survival of
the Sickest).

[ http://www.amazon.com/Survival-Sickest-Medical-Maverick-Discovers/dp/0060889659/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-0482302-9419130?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1174946498&sr=8-1]

Me:
I read “The Namesake” by Jhumpa Lahiri over Shabbos and loved it. It touched on a lot of issues that I think a lot about, like cultural difference and the ability to be with people who have extremely different backgrounds from you. It’s also beautifully written and easy and enjoyable to read.
I also recently read Robert Wuthnow’s “After Heaven: Spirituality in America since the 1950’s” and thought it was excellent. It’s a true eye-opener for anyone interested in religion, or Americans, and also extremely well written and fun to read.
And I’ve said stuff about this before but I am obsessed with “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” by Jean-Dominique Bauby. It’s a really short and painfully beautiful memoir, this definitely falls into the books you won’t be able to put down category.

Lital Levin:
Anil's Ghost, Michael Ondaatje;
Buddenbrooks, Thomas Mann;
The Remains of the Day, Ishiguro

Is what comes to mind right now. All of them make for an absolutely breathless reading. I couldn't put them down.

David Wise:
The Agony and the Ecstasy, Irving Stone (really enjoying this, literary biography of Michelangelo).
Biography of Louis Pasteur, Patrice Debre (interesting work from perspective of history of science).
Poems from the Diwan, Gabriel Levin (secular poetry of Yehuda Halevi- lots of fun, although more enjoyable in Hebrew).
House of God, Samuel Shem (satire of medical culture- I found it hilarious- you might find it incredibly disturbing).

Rachel Berger:
Oh wait! I remember three:

Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble and Coming of Age in the Bronx, by Adrian Nichole LeBlanc, will knock you down and never let you up again.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman is a spectacular look at Hmong refugees and the clashes between culture that seem impentrable. Also an interestign bit of history in their, for those of us that kind of glossed over American history.

Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory by Nancy Choderow. Need I say more?

None of these are fiction, which is why I didn’t count them.
But they are good.

Shira Stanleigh:
The truth is, there is someone else worth reading, though this does fall
external to my duties as Sharon's shameless promotions manager: anything by
Krishnamurti, but an especially good place to start is "Life Ahead: on
learning and the search for meaning"

He is painfully meditative and challenges every strata of your
self-understanding...fun!!

Rachel W.:
I could suggest other things, but as it looks like you've already
gotten the gamut of liberal, Western (and Far-Eastern), contemporary
or post-modern, (pseudo*)-intellectual pickings, here is what I will
add to the lot (and I'm not kidding about these):

What the Angel Taught You: Seven Keys to Life Fulfillment, by R. Noah
Weinberg and Yaakov Salomon
Passionate Judaism: An Inspirational Guide for a Happy and Fulfilling
Life, by R. Moshe Meir Weiss

These are "light" reading, yet potentially life-changing texts,
depending on how they are perceived and received.

Also interesting, and not yet mentioned:

Blink, by Malcom Gladwell
The Eleventh Hour: A Curious Mystery, by Graeme Base
A Constant Reminder, by Isaac Charchat

Some extra-Traditional mussar:

How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie
The Screwtape Letters, by C. S. Lewis

Some seasonal fiction:

Of Human Bondage, by Somerset Maugham
The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck

And some perennial favorites:

The Lonely Man of Faith, by R. Joseph B. Soloveichik
This Side of Paradise, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser
Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier

Highly recommended to me, though I cannot speak from experience (yet):

John Adams, by David McCullough

P.S. If none of all these suggestions appeal, you can just fall back
on the Tanakh or the N.Y. Times Magazine- both always an excellent
read, although, of course, I am NOT equating the two, and feel
irreverant even mentioning them in the same breath.

*I'm sorry- I don't mean to be insulting or supercilious by using this
term; I just can't resist when I see a list of so many liberal,
Western (and Far-Eastern), contemporary or post-modern thinkers and
writers untempered by the Torah's voice...

Shmuel Kadosh:
I would suggest :

1. The Measure of our Days - Jerome Groopman : A very thoughtful reflection on the medical profession / illness
2. Girl Meets God - Lauren Winner: About a convert to Orthodoxy who returns to her Catholic past. A little disturbing, but well written
3. The Varieties of Religious Experiences - William James: A little bit disturbing, and a little old, but a very, very, thoughtful discussion.

If you are interested in reading some Jewish studies , i would highly recommend:
1. Torah min ha-shamayim bi'aspaklaria shel ha'dorot - A.J. Heschel, translated as "Heavenly Torah as Refracted Through the Generations (Gordon Tucker, trans. ) . It is not in fact, about Torah min hashamayim, but rather a systematic survey of the philosophy of r' akiva and r' yishmael - it is monumental in scope and well written. He shows that the rabbis were not as silly as we think, but had consistent, comprehensive theologies.
2. In Potiphar's House - James Kugel : Kugel takes some classic midrashim about Yosef , and shows how they evolved from traditions found in the N. Testament and Apocrypha. He also discusses the textual clues that led chazal to create a particular midrash. It is interesting b/c it shows the thought and creativity that the Rabbis put into the midrashic enterprise.

Elyakim Deutsch:
One idea is that maybe you should read this book: http://www.toptenbooks.net/ -- and then it will tell you which other books to read and you can work from there...
Other than that, I'll have to think about it... See my Facebook profile for some suggestions -- Nabokov, Chabon, Aimee Bender, George Saunders -- these are all cool writers. Also a breeze and very-well-written book capturing Middle American housewifeyness - both very fun and very sad somehow at the same time - is Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell, which I liked so much more than I thought I would. I'm liking Murakami a lot, and I feel like you'd enjoy Grace Paley, whom I haven’t read enough of. Maybe you could read Jernigan by David Gates and tell me how it was -- I've been meaning to get to that. And I hear David Grossman is good Israeli stuff. And there's this "Moby Dick" book I keep hearing about to. Let me know if you get to the bottom of all that.
If you want to read a short story that will totally destroy you, read "People Like That are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk" by Lorrie Moore (found in the collection Birds of America) [based to some degree on true stuff in her life, which is very much the point].
Again, this is not my list - this is my rambling to procrastinate from doing work. If I was making a real list, it would be organized and grammatical and informative and wise. Oh, and I just remembered - the readings for the National Book Critics Circle Award nominees were basically all great - so for a new great book of any genre, check out the list of nominees here: http://www.bookcritics.org/?go=finalists -- theres also a link to their blog there, which goes thru detailed descriptions of each book as well.
…
Oh, one more thing: As far as your NYC/tourguiding interests go, I think "Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan" by Phillip Lopate would be perfect. (A description: "In this loose circumnavigation, first up the West Side from the Battery to Washington Heights and then up the East Side from South Street Seaport to Highbridge Park, [Lopate] takes the reader up close on an information-packed journey—dipping, as the particular location suggests, into memoir, history, current events, marine biology, city planning, literature, architecture, interviews, biography, films, ecology and more.")
…
P.S. Coming out in May, keep your eye out for Chabon's latest, which as I understand it will be a post-Holocaust alternate reality involving a Jewish noir detective story... in Alaska. More about that here: http://www.amazon.com/Yiddish-Policemens-Union-Novel/dp/0007149824/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-5475487-7316153?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1175054538&sr=1-1

Sam Spinner:
Well, like I said, I find the Haggadah an appropriate enough choice for
Pesach.

Happy Reading and Chag Sameach

Laughter versus Sincerity

2007-03-20T13:47:00.000-04:00

Last night at Kavvanah , we looked at a sugya in Brachot 20a that talks about Kavod Habriot and Kiddush Hashem. The Gemarah asks why we don’t experience miracles now the way our ancestors did, and it answers that it was because of the self-sacrifices they made for God. What kind of sacrifices? Well R.Ada was once walking in the shuk and he saw a women sitting wearing a karbalta (some kind of gaudy or inappropriate garment) and thought she was Jewish so he tore it right off of her. Then it was revealed the women wasn’t Jewish so R’ Ada had to pay 400 zuz. 400 zuz-what a sacrifice in the name of Hashem!

Now such a passage can elicit two responses, well actually three. The first, the conservative approach, is to say, well yeah, she should not have been wearing a karbalta. Of course he needed to respond with force. The only unfortunate thing is that we wouldn’t have the strength of will to do that today. The second, the liberal approach, would respond with righteous indignation. What kind of Rabbi could strip a garment off of a woman in public? She is the one who has been martyred not him! How can we praise this misogynist for his act of Kiddush Hashem?! The third approach, lets call it the aesthetic approach, may not really care one way or another, but will notice something subtle that gradually grows obvious- this passage is meant to be funny! Nowhere else in the Gemarah does it mention that there is anything wrong with wearing a karbalta, there is a tone of sexual jocularity surrounding the whole episode, and it ends with a sing-song like couplet. The Talmud can be funny sometimes, and the question is, what does that do to its meaning? Are we meant to disregard that passage’s import because it doesn’t take itself entirely seriously. Certainly it is leading off of a serious discussion and is about to lead into one. But is there a way that you can be serious and funny at the same time?

Someone smart, I forgot who, once told me that laughter is the absence of sincerity. Meaning, you can have things that go back and forth between being funny and being serious, but the moment of laughter is one in which you lose your sense of moral order, of caring about the person you’re laughing at, and wrapping things up in a meaningful whole. This does not mean your values are lost for good-but you can’t have both humor and sincerity at the same time. Earlier this year I attended a comedy show run by a Jewish and Arab comedian called “Stand Up For Peace,” partly in order to test this “laughter is the absence of sincerity” hypothesis. Presumably, this show was about a beautiful, higher mission- peace- but it was also supposed to be extremely funny. I was intrigued. Yet I soon found that the only thing peaceful about their jokes was the context in which they were said- by two highly Americanized comedians, one Arab and one Jewish, on stage together. They’re comedians, they make fun of people, but instead of making fun of each other they made fun of President Bush and the bigots at airport security. In retrospect, it was an event that promoted peace, but the humor itself was not peaceful- most of the jokes were made at the expense of someone, it was just someone who both the Arab and Jew agreed was fair game. But I wonder if it could have been any other way.

It’s something I struggle with in my own writing. I think people can tell that I am overly serious about many things, but as Zack has astutely noticed, this does not preclude extreme silliness. Zack’s blog, by the way, is an excellent example of how you can be a nice sincere person and also very very funny, and not in the “Family Circus” kind of way. Personally, I’m not sure if it’s a kind of defense mechanism I developed earlier one, not taking yourself too seriously prevents a kind of vulnerability that can let you get hurt. But whatever it is, by now its become a part of me. I’ve been told that I laugh kind of nervously every time I try to issue criticism or tell someone they have upset me. Almost whenever I utter a stream of words that gets to a certain point of sincerity find myself diffusing it somehow. And I don’t think that’s necessarily a problem, it makes things fun to write, and it allows space for people to read or listen no matter what kind of day they are having. And I’m really not that funny so it can't be too great a threat. But I don’t see how constantly deflecting from my actual points can’t weaken them in some way, and then the question is whether I care enough to actually change

Certainly there is precedent in literature for balancing humor and seriousness. T.S. Eliot and James Joyce, two deep, profound authors concerned with big life issues like the nature of religion and reality, are also hysterically, laugh-out-loud funny at times. I don’t think Eliot has ever written a poem that does not include some kind of bitter, funny, jab at something or other, and he will even puncture some of his deepest, most sustained reflections on the meaning of life with a joke that will totally turn things around. But here’s the thing, with Eliot and I think Joyce as well, humor does function to dissolve meaning, because they do believe that words do not suffice to capture what is really there. A joke reminds us of the absurdity and futility of our pursuit of capturing meaning in language, and that realization is meaningful of itself.

Bur I don’t think the Gemarah is doing that when it is using humor, and I don’t think I am doing that either. I do believe that there are meaningful things that can be said, but I also really like to laugh, it relieves stress, and according to Women’s World magazine it also burns calories! If language is by nature somewhat therapeutic, it helps us organize reality and experience in order to make it more manageable, it makes sense that we would also want it to be as fun and pleasurable as possible. It means we are drawing on all the resources we have to make communication more satisfying and varied. What is there to lose? The truth is there is plenty to lose- a sense of responsibility, obedience, power- but whatever. More needs to be said about harmonizing humor and sincerity, even just in the Talmudic world, but I think I’ve said enough for now.

T and Time

2007-03-19T00:52:00.000-04:00

I was strangely moved by Reverend T’s last post. Time moves so fast. Adina L. likes to make home videos and she was just showing me one she made last year in Boston, and watching it felt a little sad. Not because I miss Boston all that much (although I kind of do) but watching myself at an age and a point in life that can never ever be reclaimed or returned to is just a little bit painful. There’s a loss, I think, however minor it is. It’s a loss that I never felt during adolescence. Watching baby videos didn’t sway me at all back then; I couldn’t WAIT for the future. Now I wish more than anything that time would slow down. For the first time in my life I can think about things that I seriously wish I had done differently, thankfully not much, but still, there is a closing of possibilities that happens and is just going to continue to happen. That sucks.

Conversely, some things are a lot easier than they were last year. Certain kinds of pains numb over time. But I guess there’s a loss there too. I think I’m somewhat smarter now than I was when I was in college, less easily intimidated. The other day I gave a model lesson to 30 eleventh graders and it didn’t feel ridiculous. I’ve learned stuff over the last couple of years, I know a lot more now than I did when I was in eleventh grade. So in that sense I suppose the passing of time has served me well. New ways of thinking about things have been opened to me that I once had no idea existed, and that will continue to happen, I think, and that’s something to look forward to. But my body will age no matter what. My one grey hair from two summers ago now has a clone. Although, on the bright side, there are 60-year olds in my Cardio-Sculpt class who are more fit than I am (I mean, everyone there is more fit than I am), so perhaps we are not hurtling toward decrepitude as quickly as I fear.

Something I have surprisingly not cared too much about is the fact that every other minute someone I know gets engaged or married. I mean, I care in the sense that I am often very happy for them, but so much of what they are experiencing is wrapped up in the particular person they are in love with, and if I don’t feel that way about anyone right now, then it just doesn’t feel like an opportunity I am missing. It feels, for example, about as distant as hearing about someone who got into medical school. Yes, it would be nice to have a prestigious life-path laid out for me, but I haven’t taken any pre-med classes, I don’t want to be a doctor, so any kind of envy is only in the most abstract kind of way. Also I recognize that these feelings change as you get older. One part that I am a little jealous of is getting to have your own apartment filled with nice, new stuff. But I think I can deal with that (and our new apt is starting to look very nice anyway-please come by!)

So I started off this post agonizing over the passing of time and ended up realizing that things aren’t so bad. Losing the self that is forever preserved in a home video can be a little painful, but realizing how much you’ve grown since then is exciting. And sensitivity and wisdom grow exponentially- we are only going to get better. But even if that is enough to tide me over for now, I wonder what I will think 50, 60 years from now. How do people manage the prospect of old age? How do you think about time when it’s really closing in on you? Does nostalgia help? Satisfaction with what you’ve accomplished? Nachas from the kinder? Belief in a world to come? Simply being tired of being here on this earth? Or is it “Inner Peace”? These are big questions- insights from grandparents would be welcome.

P.S. Shmuel and Toby think I should resign from the blog now that I have moved to the UWS. I think I would miss it very much, but if readers agree then, sniff sniff, I will have no choice but to comply. Let me know.

A Return to Boston: One Year Later

2007-03-18T03:14:00.000-04:00

Well it was last March when I made my first post, and it seems like a good time to check back in and review what has happened over the year. I still believe that SMS is better than NES, though I don't play either. Dan Savage's weekly Shut- I still read, though I'm not as impressed. Here's an idea -Once the novelty wears off you won’t be as impressed, But sometimes this means you have already incorporated the ideas into your consciousness. Aaron and Shira got married. They were the reason for my return to Harvard and Beacon. The light still beeps. Elyakim and Shani, Shlomo and Tamar also got married. Shayna is engaged. I've gone on a handful of worthless dates. Person A told Person B a secret. Person C, who is four people removed from person A heard the secret and told it to person B. Is Person B still obligated to keep the secret? I don't know but Mazel Tov to Person A, and Person D for that matter - and a shout out to Harvey's first principle. I don't read this blog anymore. I would love to hear your comments as to why you do (especially those people who never comment or post).

I'm more impressed by this Guy

then this guy.
Yet I work for the latter. I think I'm ok with that. Brother Etan is engaged. His future mother-in-law has found this blog by googling his name. Since my first post Sarah has moved to and left the heights. I've turned 25. Why do people have such strong opinions of whether my friends wants to have a Minyan in their apartment? You want to go then go. Rather pray at Mount Sinai - enjoy. Prefer to watch tv at home - I don’t care and why should anyone else? I wish them luck as they try to imbue their lives with spirituality.

New Heights Minyan Info

2007-03-07T23:13:00.000-05:00

Hello from the Underground...

Just wanted to let everyone know about a new Minyan taking place in Washington Heights. It'll be fun and warm so I hope that everyone and all of their friends can make it.

Here's the official Minyan Information:

Welcome to MigdalOr - the Lighthouse. We are a new minyan in Washington Heights that is a reflection of the growing progressive Orthodox spirit in our community.

Our mission is to create a warm, participatory environment dedicated to enhancing kavanah (devotion) and forward mindedness in tefillah (prayer), while working within the context of halakhah (Jewish law). Building upon this paradigm, our goal is to foster a spirit of social action within the larger context of Washington Heights. We challenge members to take an active role in their religious expression. This includes, but is not limited to, more participation by all members of the community.

We will be meeting Friday nights on a bimonthly basis. Services will include Minchah, Kabbalat Shabbat, and Maariv.

Our first meeting will take place on March 16th at 6:45 pm in 263 Bennett Ave. apt. 4F in the Fort Tryon Apartments Complex (the apartment of Rachel Berger, Rachel Scheier, and Shayna Gould). Prayer sheets will be available, and we will conclude with a small Kiddush.

Okay, that's the official info... I hope everyone is able to join us - I am really looking forward to this great excuse to see you all that weekend :)

If you want more info (or the same info) or have any questions, feel free to email us (Rachel Berger, Karen Shulman, and myself - Shani Simkovich) at MigdalOr.Minyan@gmail.com or visit us at our MySpace page.

Thanks, guys!

New Exhibit

2007-02-28T16:47:00.000-05:00

There’s really no need to go to the MET or the MOMA for the 900th time when you are in the mood for a museum, I'm continuously surprised by how many good, creative and almost unheard of cultural spaces the city has to offer. Latest discovery is El Museo del Barrio (on 5th Ave and 104th st.), this Latino cultural museum that is having an amazing new exhibit from now through June called “Los Desaparecidos,”or “The Disappeared.” Basically, in the last 40 years a number of totalitarian regimes in Argentina and other Latin-American countries went berserk and decided to kidnap, torture, shoot, push out of planes, and drown, literally thousands of their countries’ intellectuals and political dissenters (close to 30,000 in Argentina alone). The vast amount of people missing came to be known as the “disappeared,” and they left trembling and traumatized populations in their wake. It’s strange because having grown up in the shadow of the Holocaust, it’s hard for me to believe that so many educated, wealthy, free people could remain silent about a huge crime committed against them relatively recently. But thats begun to change, and thus a number of artists got together to collaborate on this traveling exhibit that vigorously tries to develop some kind of meaningful cultural idiom or language for remembrance. I think it’s really worth seeing, not only to feel educated or ethical, but because its so cool to see art in action-actively sensitizing people and helping them see and feel things they wouldn’t or couldn't have felt before.

The Argentinian case (known as the “The Dirty War” ) is especially eery because in some ways it functions as a disturbing postscript to the Holocaust. After World War II a number of high-ranking Nazi officials escaped to Argentina, some with the help of the U.S., because of their proven experience with fighting communism. A substantial number of Jewish refugees also landed in Argentina, and the Dirty War atrocities were often conducted with Nazi undertones, and directed against the country’s Jews alongside its political reformers. Scary to think that despite all the Holocaust commemoration that began to happen in the 1960’s (with the Eichman trial), concentration camps and torture facilities could be erected in Argentina in the 1970’s, and filled with a good number of Jews, without most of the world blinking an eye. Of course the cases are quite different as well, and looking at these things primarily through a Jewish lens is narrow and problematic, but the vividness and creativity of the exhibit serve as a terrific antidote to the kind of jadedness that repeated exposure to Holocaust memorials can engender. We needn't only construct hierarchies of suffering, different kinds of genocides require us to extend our sympathies in different directions, and there's no limit to it I think. So see the exhibit, and if you like, you can go across the street afterward to this beautiful part of Central Park that is also often overlooked.

Inner Peace and Moving to the West Side

2007-02-22T14:23:00.000-05:00

These should probably be two separate posts but what the heck, strained juxtapositions have never bothered me before, and I can’t decide which one to write first.

I really like the Heights, but last week an opportunity arose for me to move to a new apartment on the Upper West Side, and without putting much thought in to it, I decided to take it. Since then, I’ve had to explain to everyone I’ve spoken to why such an avowed Heights fan like myself would so spontaneously decide to double her rent and cut in half the amount of friends she has around her. My answer has changed depending on my mood, but the other night, when asked the question by one particular friend, I said that honestly living here has not given me the “deep satisfaction,” I have been craving, and I feel like a change will do me well. He looked at me strangely, and I immediately retracted my thoughts and said, “but of course, people are what really give you satisfaction and locations aren’t that important.” He kept on looking at me skeptically, so I asked “then where DOES that deep satisfaction come from?” and he paused and said, “It comes from yourself.” He was right of course, and the question of what inner reserves we have and when and how to draw on them has occupied much of my religious thinking this year, especially since I’ve gotten over my stupid, adolescent disdain for new-agey spirituality and come to appreciate many aspects of what it has to offer.

“Inner peace,” is the catchphrase I often use to refer to this ideal state of emotional equilbrium that does not, I hope, obscure life's complexities . Getting worried, getting upset, dwelling on past insults- these are emotions that I have learned have little to no real value in the world that I live in- and they are also things that I have learned I have the ability to control. I can think myself out of being hurt by someone, I can think myself out of getting annoyed at fellow Jews for their nonsensical theology, I can even think myself out of desperately wanting/needing certain things in my life- like romantic love, or clear goals for the future. I haven’t gotten to any of those points yet, but I CAN, I really do believe that, but what concerns me (concern-another emotion I can think myself out of) is that I won’t. I won’t let myself have “inner peace,” as my spontaneous move to the Upper West Side has demonstrated, because of a little known disease I was diagnosed with recently- its called FOMO- “Fear of Missing Out Syndrome.”

FOMO is something that mostly effects the young and immature, and tends to recede with age, and a certain degree of personal fulfillment. It’s characterized by an incessant fear that you need to be trying harder, regret you have not made the right choice, and cognizance of the numerous opportunities you will be missing out on by doing whatever it is you finally choose to do. It manifests itself in not being able to accept Shabbos meal invitations until the very last minute, ditching your good friends at crowded gatherings in favor of mingling, staying relatively unattached most of the time, and kind of miserable some of the time. FOMO has its upsides, and it can result in wild bouts of creativity, and energy to take risks. “Wanderlust” is a subset of Missing Out Syndrome, and so are some forms of social activism. Only people who hyperactively imagine alternative worlds and possibilities will actually go out and create them. It is also a great way to spur on academic and professional success- stresses and their accompanying endorphins (also symptoms of FOMO) can make us work harder just as they biologically help us escape oncoming prey. Missing Out Syndrome WORKS (at least some of the time), it puts you in situations you would like to be in. It also destroys your inner peace- and subjects you to grueling lows just as it teases you with thrilling highs. So which one is better?

In some ways the question is irrelevant. In many people’s lives stress will eventually give way to serenity- not serenity in the naïve, unsophisticated sense that is sometimes pushed upon us by religious institutions- but the mature kind of peace that comes after a real exploration of what feels wrong and painful and the realization that little can be done in the larger scheme of things. But I think that you can accelerate your path to that kind of serenity, and overshoot other life landmarks in the process. Like preemptively making peace with not being at the top of your profession and therefore not trying, or the accepting the futility of finding the perfect place to live or person to live with, and therefore also, not trying. Big highs are often related to some kind of delusion, so are deep lows. But inner peace, ah, I don’t know, sometimes it just seems kind of boring. Looking forward to having you all at my new place!

Kinderlach

2007-02-16T15:10:00.000-05:00

[Note: Apparently my former title includes a word that is an expletive in several countries, and has implications of sodomy. I really had no idea, but I think we will be safe with this one.]

I haven’t seen the recent movie “Children of Men,” but I have heard the premise: In a world where noone is able to have children, there is no hope, society disintegrates, and all hell breaks loose. On the one hand, this premise really resonates, so many of the things we build towards will only be fully realized in the future, and knowing that there is a future seems to matter to people, whether or not we plan on being reincarnated in it. On the other hand, it’s a difficult idea to wrap your head around, even if it feels intuitively true- why care about the future if you’re not living in it, seriously?

That’s actually not the point of my post, I always have trouble with this segue thing, lets try again: As I get a little bit older, the people I know get a little bit older too, and a couple of them, single woman to be exact, have in the past few years needed to reconcile themselves to the fact that they will probably never have children (with the draconian new adoption laws from China, they will probably never adopt either, but that’s another story.) Unlike in the movie “Children of Men,” hell has not broken loose, and these women have not sunk into the intense despair that our reproductively-obsessed Orthodox society would seem to doom them to. In trying to think about how they console themselves, I had to think about how or why having kids is so important to people to begin with, and I had surprisingly difficult time doing so.

Families rock, but you can be in a family for a very long time before creating your own. You can also do a lot of fun and interesting things without having kids, and those things can include intense, passionate love. People talk about “biological clocks ticking” and so on, but I actually don’t know what that means. Do people have instinctual drives to have sex or have kids-and in an age of birth-control, must we confuse the two? One very real reason I see around me and can relate to deeply is that people want children to give meaning and purpose to their lives. To give them something to live for, when professional ambitions, social networks, religious beliefs, even marriages, fall short. I think this very powerful, but it’s also a tad selfish-no? Not to mention short-sighted. Kids are their own people, and will eventually do their own thing. When thinking about these types of questions the first text I usually turn to is Kohelet (Ecclesiastes)-where the narrator, in his quest for the meaning of life, doesn’t even consider the possibility that is can be found in raising the next generation. He only really mentions children, or the “yeled hasheini asher ya’amod tachtav” (4:15) to demonstrate how useless we all are, our kids will replace us and forget all about us. So it’s really not so crazy, when you think about it, to reconcile yourself to a life without children. And it is crazy, unless you are in an unpopulated country or something, to make an a priori rule why it’s important to do so (although being taken care of when you are old may be a strong argument in favor).

The most reasonable approach I can imagine, sitting alone here in my bedroom on my laptop, is to do what feels right when it feels right. If you are at a stage in life when you feel like you should be producing and raising little bambinos then you should do so, and do it well, but if you miss that stage, or skip it, or avoid it entirely, then that can be ok too. Chaya Mushka Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s wife, never had children- and that makes us all her children. I didn’t mean that as a joke- I really think there are so many models for meaningful lives out there-and we so rarely, in our little bourgeois M.O. snow-globe (I may need a better word), attempt to think about them seriously. Maybe it’s too scary to think about life and family models that diverge too greatly from the paths we have laid out for ourselves- as if really thinking about it will make it happen. I think its silly, understanding how life can be rich and fulfilling without children can only make your appreciation and sense of realism about what children can bring you more sophisticated and more meaningful. It will make dealing with infertility, with kids who have mental disabilities, with children who leave home and never come back, all the more possible. And even if everything does work out as planned, it will turn ignorant pity into real sensitivity, which is always a good thing.

Some Notes on Sadness and Satisfaction

2007-01-28T16:10:00.000-05:00

Has anyone ever read the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby? It was a huge bestseller at some point, and I’d heard about it for a while, but I just read it Friday (its very short) and I still can’t think about anything else. Bauby, the talented editor-in-chief of a major French magazine, suffered a massive stroke in 1995 that left him entirely paralyzed with the exception of a little bit of movement in his left eye- something that is called “locked-in syndrome.” Fully conscious, for a while he was utterly trapped in his body, until someone devised a transcription system where he could blink out letters with his eye and thus compose this memoir. The result is this painful, painful, but achingly beautiful glimpse into this totally paralyzed man’s interior world, his jailcell as he calls it. I can’t overestimate how much I loved this book, but it’s hard for me to articulate why. A few possibilities come to mind and I think they apply to my general inclination towards these kinds of personal narratives of suffering. I mean I haven’t read anything like this before, but more and more, I am drawn to this kind of writing- Sylvia Plath , Anne Sexton, Holocaust writers like Paul Celan , Jean Amery and Primo Levi. But why do I like to read books that are so depressing? Obviously they are not making me depressed in the way that their authors feel, but then is there something wrong with me as a reader finding a kind of satisfaction in their anguish? It is an interesting question, I think, not what induces people to write traumatic narratives (I mean, that is an extremely interesting question, but it is not mine right now), but what compels not-traumatized people to read them.
So first, what do I like about Bauby?
1)The first thing people tend to say about good writing is that they relate. And I guess some of things Bauby talks about have correlatives to things I have experienced- loneliness and isolation, for example- imagining yourself in situations and relationships that can never exist again. Although once again, while I will imagine myself having an impossible relationship with someone who has died, Bauby is in a sense, the person who has died, and he thinks about the impossibility of ever touching or talking to his children again, even as they play right in front of him. The truth is, when it comes to these narratives of enormous physical and emotional suffering, any correlatives I draw to my own experience will be weak at best and self-centered and petty at worst.

2)Then there is the opposite extreme, the element of getting drawn out of yourself into this utterly foreign perspective. As sad as Bauby’s story is, he’s charting unexplored literary territory, and this insight into the unknown is exciting in a way.

3)It’s also really beautiful. The fact that someone in such a state of physical deterioration can narrate something so sublime makes you feel like there is something special, even transcendant, about human consciousness. Even the most downtrodden among us can have this brilliant, lucid, voice. It’s enough to give you faith in some kind of hashgacha, until you remember of course that it was that hashgacha that destroyed Bauby’s life in the first place (and let him die two days after the book was published).

4)But the sadness I think, still outweighs the exciting or redemptive qualities. And this gets me to my final point which is that painful things can be comforting in a way too. There is a line at the end of this poem by Anne Sextonthat we read at a meeting of “Poetry in the Heights” where she makes this observation about pain:

As for the pain and its multiplying teaspoon,
perhaps it is a medicine
that will cure the soul
of its greed for love
next Thursday.

A confrontation with a singular account of suffering can sometimes numb you to other desires that could possibly be a source of heartache. When I think about pain on the scale that Bauby experienced it, my various goals, and their fulfillment, just feel besides the point. There are much bigger things to worry about then the ins and outs of my teeny little social and academic worlds, and this can in some ways make me feel better, or at least calmer, although it undermines my ability to feel phenomenally happy as well. Although, there is an element to his story that makes me want to enjoy life while I can (I guess that would be #5)

Who knows, its probably a combination of all of these things, with different proportions at different times, or maybe the writing is just so good. But it’s interesting I think, why some people are so drawn to these stories of pain and suffering. It can’t just be because we are so saintly and magnanimous, although maybe that motivates people who don’t feel that same visceral pull. So what, if anything, do these sad stories do for us?

Underground Heights: The Musical

2007-01-25T00:02:00.000-05:00

Really its called "In the Heights," and I saw an ad for it in the subway today. Theres some music from it posted on MySpace, its hysterical- like a Latin/Rap infused Rent with excessive references to the 181st street subway elevator and the Domican Republic. It actually sounds kind of awful, but I dont care, I need to see it.

Listening to the songs, and understanding all of the references, made me realize how much of a cultural education Ive been given without even noticing it. Ok, maybe thats an overstatement, theres so much I don't know; but its nice to think that there has been value to living in the Heights besides for the pricetags and the Jewish ppl. That we are not necessarily only trading in the thriving culture of the UWS for a cheaper, heimish alternative. We have our own stuff, like Spanish, trees, loud music, exotic fruit, and the confidence that something flattering will be hollered to us (well some of us) at least once a day.More can be done to embrace the idiosyncracies of this fine town, and we should take advantage of it while we can.

Slipping Through The Cracks

2007-01-21T23:52:00.001-05:00

Hey everyone, its been a while. I was in Ireland for a part of winter break, which was very cool for lots of reasons, among them the fact that I may have underwent the most consecutive time away from Internet (not very long, I’ll admit) that I have in recent memory. In general, I think traveling is good for experimenting with your sense of self as it is transplanted to a new context. Its artificial of course, because wandering around Dublin for a week is definitely not the same thing as living there; but its a powerful project nevertheless- what can I cut myself off from and not mind, what do I miss so much that it makes the trip unbearable. The answers to those questions are rarely what I anticipate. When abroad, Judaism tends to occupy a far greater place in my psyche than I give it credit in New York, but conversely, certain social frustrations recede- for some reason in the face of the vast and complicated world the goal of finding one person to shack up with just seems less pressing. Everything feels less pressing actually, I think it’s because when I go away I am reminded that I am not the center of the world, even more so that I am basically irrelevant (although, to be fair, touring with someone as awesome as Ditty can definitely mitigate this concern).

Interesting that travel can lead to these two binary experiences: On one hand, this major affirmation of self- I, Sarah, can go anywhere, I can conquer Dublin, I can conquer the world! On the other hand, the more places I go, the more people I see who have no idea who I am, know nothing of the kind of world I come from, and could not care less. That latter feeling can even envelop me right here in the Heights, circulating through Mt. Sinai after davening, in those moments in between running into someone you’re friends with. My question I guess is what the best way to go about confronting that is. When I was in elementary school my greatest social fear was being disliked, made fun of etc… Now I do not worry about that so much, just because being mean at this age is just so stupid it’s not worth considering. What’s scarier to me at this point in my life is falling through the cracks, of my school, social network, community etc… It wouldn’t happen in my family, but I’m not with them all the time (maybe because I do need to feel somewhat anonymous at times), and I guess it wouldn’t happen if I started up my own family, but I’m nervous about going down that road for other reasons. It can and does happen in groups of friends, especially when so much value is placed on finding that one and only person so early on. You get a lot more noticed if you are on the radar for someone else, I think…

But all this talk sounds narcissistic. Life is not about being noticed. If I had a choice between going on an amazing all expenses paid world trip right now, or spending time with people who genuinely love me, I would probably go on the trip, even if it meant I would dissolve into every locale I visited. There is more to life than being paid attention to—there is spirituality, inner growth, all kinds of adventures, pleasures etc…And at the end of the day we are ultimately alone anyway. But there is this constant tugging in the direction of connectivity that so rarely gets quenched nowadays, especially as I engage in all this individualistic stuff, and I often wonder where I should be placing my emphasis. This is a pretty personal and vague topic but Id love to hear how other people navigate between these two poles- finding a way to be happy on your own, and trying to not be on your own. I think it’s hard to do both well, but then where should your energies go?

Artistic Merit

2007-01-05T00:17:00.000-05:00

Since Mel Gibson’s vitriolic comments towards the Jews this past summer, there seems to be a new ubiquitous questions asked at social gatherings: do you still go see Mel Gibson’s movies? Now, to be fair, it has become a lot easier to avoid viewing Gibson-related films since the days of Braveheart and Lethal Weapon have morphed into pretentious films that take themselves entirely too seriously, and in ancient languages to boot, but the question warrants a greater inquiry into human nature. Should the art and creative results of people with views we find distasteful at best, and poisonous and vicious at worst, be judged on their own merits, without regard of the artist? This past weekend, where the Gibson conversation came up and was debated at length, I was reminded of a former article by one Menachem Wecker, who penned many a provocative column at the YU Commentator that resulted in raising the ire of Stern girls and conservatives alike. In the article I am referring to, entitled “Hitler’s Muse: Why Good Art Happens to Bad People?” that appeared in the online edition of New Voices, Wecker writes that he showed a painting of Hitler’s to several unwitting YU students who praised the work before being told of the artist. Once discovering the very work they just admired was created by Hitler, their “dispositions changed from pleasure to shock, horror, and embarrassment.”
Can we appreciate the art produced by Hitler, who tried his hand at art before going on to become a tyrannical leader obsessed with exterminating the Jews, despite our (the Jewish people’s) incredibly strong emotions surrounding Hitler? The idea angers many who felt even suggesting the idea was preposterous and sacrilegious. And to be sure, while Mel Gibson is apparently not the chosen nation’s biggest fan, he has certainly not approached a status near that of Hitler’s. Still, the question of whether we can enjoy the creativity of madmen and disassociate ourselves from their creators is one rife with complexities and emotions. I feel no compunction in saying I enjoy Braveheart, not even needing to excuse myself by saying it was in the “pre-Gibson lunacy” era, or pointing out that Gibson immediately apologized after his anti-Semitic outburst and vowed to work on expunging his prejudice. When it comes to the work of more avowed anti-Semites, like literature penned by Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, I feel hesitation is admitting I may like some of their works. And when it comes to the art of Hitler, I cannot even being to imagine how I would explain a liking to his art, without immediately feeling guilty that I would even let the thought enter my head. Can anyone ever truly separate the art from its artist? When does someone become “anti-Semitic” enough that considerations of artistic accomplishments bring instinctive guilt?
P.S. Just wanted to introduce myself- my name is Tova, and I’m a transfer student at Brooklyn College (and a former student at Stern College) majoring in journalism. I am honored that Sarah invited me to contribute to this esteemed blog, and only hope I don’t embarrass myself.

Why Does Law Matter Anyway?

2006-12-26T13:59:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Shira B., I have recently discovered the wonderful world of Conservative movement responsa , first through Rabbi Gordon Tucker’s treatment of homosexuality and Judaism (on the bottom of the second box). What makes his teshuva so exciting is how normal and down to earth it sounds. Its as if a group of us (albeit vastly more knowledgeable) sat down and said: lets create a Halakha that is not contingent upon a million logical fallacies that we barely believe in; what would it look like? The result is both really refreshing and also pretty familiar. He uses a rational, not self-contained vocabulary to refer to many of the practices that we, or at least I personally, have always understood in “non-rational,” insider-ey ways. General legal theory is helpful in this regard—halakha is a legal system, like any other, requiring stability and preservation, but also allowing for innovation, in moderate and circumscribed doses (depending on which legal theory you subscribe to).

Rabbi Tucker makes a distinction between “theological” elements of halakhic decision-making, and “legal systemic” ones. The theological area is where there is bound to be the most inter-denomination disagreement— fundamental questions about the divinity of the Torah, and the status of homosexuality as something that is forbidden by God Himself. For Rabbi Tucker, the answer to the theological challenge is a resounding, “our scholars have taught us the Torah is of human authorship, therefore it is.” But the fact that tradition has developed in a certain way holds weight for Tucker, and for the Conservative movement in general, and great concern for halakhic method and development is seen in all the movement teshuvot I’ve looked at. But it is in this legal systemic sense that I think their position is most precarious. An article as clear and intellectually honest as Rabbi Tucker’s isolates what still remains an inadequately defended principle- the assumption that diaspora Judaism should have a stable legal system in the first place.

My take on this matter is, I will admit, basically a variation on my frummie brother’s philosophy of: without belief in God, what’s the point? But I think there are plenty of people within the Orthodox community, and for sure within the Conservative one, who would say that legal systems have a point. Preserving law is important, adhering to law is important, having a legal framework within which to conduct our lives is important. But why?

In the past Shmuel K. has called me something of an anarchist, he is not wrong. But I wouldn’t consider myself a political libertarian. I don’t mind following rules as long as they make sense, and result in some tangible good. The idea of paying taxes does not rattle me the way it does other people, and if government does not step in to protect the environment and conserve resources, then I don’t know who will. Halakha, by the way, should help protect the environment and conserve resources- I can’t think of a better use for it in today’s world. And imagine if something being produced in a sweatshop was thought to be almost as bad being shatnez, or used in Indian idol-worship- awesome!

Which brings me to my next to final point, which is that that law is not bad, when it is a force of social preservation (when necessary) and improvement (always necessary). Applying legal theory to halakha is weird though because halakha nowadays doesn’t do very much for society. Sometimes it tries to, I remembering learning hilkhot kibbud av v’em with Rabbi Klapper when I was in Boston and feeling like it mattered. But it also felt crazy- how could someone consult halakha when deciding whether or not to place her parent in a nursing home? So many emotions and considerations are wrapped up in a decision like that, so many areas of expertise necessary to produce a well-rounded answer. Centuries of accumulated wisdom (i.e. halakha) may be helpful to take into account here, but I doubt there are very many people who would take it into account even if it went against what was suggested by their instincts, doctors, family members etc…

This does not mean putting thought into sensitive halakhic decision making is a waste of time. For Rabbis Klapper and Tucker, teshuvot are going to be written no matter what, and they would like to devote the maximum resources possible to making those teshuvot as responsive to human needs and grounded within tradition as possible. This I think is very admirable. But I am skeptical that law plays as great a role in our lives as legal theorists, both secular and Jewish, often submit. I think American law is interesting and important to most people because of the social impact it has, not because of the pristine beauty of the legal process. I very rarely hear people (except, oddly enough, for fellow anarchist Toby) debating the issue of gay marriage on the plane of state versus federal sovereignty; what we talk about are the people and the values involved. Similarly, although halakha is definitely a mixed bag of meanings and associations, I am simply waiting to hear of the Jewish homosexual who will come out and say: “I do not think God is opposed to my acting upon my homosexual impulses, nor do I think such actions are inherently wrong, but I have respect in the halakhic process and am going to wait for a teshuva that reflects the legitimacy of my feelings.” Law is not a value in of itself, it just isn’t. Legal fictions and legal maneuvering are most interesting when dealing with issues of marginal, or intra-religious significance -like kashrut, or eruvim, or Indian sheitels. When applied to issues of emotional or global importance however, legality is absurd. And if legality is absurd in some cases then, well, it shouldn’t take a Talmudist to realize that we have some serious questioning to do about the veracity of law the rest of the time.

Halakha, we need to remember here, is not the same thing as Torah. All those people who spend time in yeshiva poring over halakhic texts are not doing it because they think Jewish law is the best way to run society. Maybe they think that, they probably do, but I’m guessing that what motivates the intellectual inquiry there is analogous to what motivates many forms of literary study—the excitement of discovering recurring themes, untangling complex arguments, and entering worlds other than your own. What concerns me is when the excitement and elegance of that historical, conceptual, or philosophical endeavor gets applied to messiness of the all too real world. Even the very best teshuvot, like Rabbi Tucker’s, try to do that on some level, and I’m just not sure I buy into it.

Winter Reading Recommendations

2006-12-17T17:34:00.000-05:00

Some people have asked me for reading recommendations for over winter break, and I thought I would post a list of some of the best contemporary novels I’ve read this year. Just warning you: I like books painful and I like them sad, so except for Saturday and Prep they are basically all depressing, albeit in a very beautiful, very compelling way. Also, even though they are all quite respectable and literary, they are basically page-turners, I do not have so much patience for super experimental fiction in my free time. If anyone wants to add anything to the descriptions, disagree with my assessments, or recommend additional books, please do. I love books!

The God of Small Things - by Arundhati Roy
It’s about India and about love and separation, and its sad and painfully beautiful, just the way I like it. But it’s also funny and ridiculous at times, and the way the story is structured is really creative and often brilliant. I read it last spring and I still think about it often.

Saturday - by Ian McEwan
Basically about clearing a space for personal happiness in an increasingly messed up world, one of the few books about globalization that doesn’t make you feel awful. The lead character is a neurosurgeon, and there are some really cool medical bits that will appeal to those who are so inclined. Very smart and easy to read and is going to become a classic

Disgrace - by J.M. Coetzee
This already has become a classic. It’s kind of about post-apartheid South Africa, academia, and even weirdly about animal rights; it’s such compelling and disturbing reading.

Prep - by Curtis Sittenfeld
This was very fun to read, maybe technically in the chick-lit genre, but really sensitive and deep. It’s about a girl in prep school, and it brought out all these old insecurities in a really cathartic way. It’s also kind of sexy, which I can’t really say about other recent fiction I’ve read.

Never Let Me Go - by Kazuo Ishiguro
I don’t think there’s anyone I haven’t mentioned this book to. I’m sorry for the repetition. It’s ridiculously good, in a physical, visceral way. I remember reading it on the subway and having to put it down and just cry, in public, something I have never done before. I can’t really say what its about because its revealed kind of gradually but please trust me on this one.

We Wish To Inform You That Tommorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda - By Philip Gourevitch
This is not fiction but it’s so incredibly written that I thought it deserved to be on this list. It’s a really complex look at Rwandan genocide, I think the movie Hotel Rwanda was culled from part of it. It’s got these rich and harrowing personal narratives, really smart and not obvious reflection upon them, and a larger sense of moral urgency and purpose. I could go on about it forever.

History of Love - by Nicole Krauss
I have to thank Elyakim for this recommendation, it’s a pretty amazing book. Really moving at times, as well as funny and incredibly crafted. It’s very rare to get into old age in such a real manner, and it also has Jewish stuff and even magical realism. Great.

Year of Magical Thinking-by Joan Didion
Also not fiction, its the writer's memoir of the sudden loss of her husband. Alot of critics loved this book, I loved this book too, but not as deliriously as everyone else. Maybe what threw me off is the almost scientific precision with which she charts the emotions surrounding her grief, but that precision is what makes it such a valuable contribution. The books make you conscious of how much you really need to slow down time and language in order to understand anything, and self-conscious of how rarely we do it when trying to understand ourselves and others.

Wow this has been a good year for reading. There have been disappointments too, Orphan Pamuk among them, which just proves that you should listen to your friends and not the Nobel prize committee when choosing what to read.
So far, for my own winter break I’m hoping to get through this pile of books, but I’d be happy to entertain other recommendations.

Cloud Atlas - by David Mitchell
I already started it and so far it’s fabulous. It jumps all over the place in terms of time-period and genre, and I haven’t quite figured out what its about yet, but its crazy and exciting to read.

What is the What - by Dave Eggers
I’ve never read anything by him I haven’t really liked and I assume this will be no exception. It’s about a refugee from Sudan which is pretty un-ironic material for someone like Eggers, so I am very interested to see what he will do with it. The back-cover has a fawning blurb from Philip Gourevitch (of “We Wish to Inform You” fame ) which makes me even more excited to read it.

Austerlitz - by W.G. Sebald
It was assigned for a class of mine but I didn’t get past the first few pages. It has some really interesting visual stuff, it’s about memory and the Holocaust I think. There are people (including Dave Eggers) who say he’s the best writer of the last 20 years, so I am going to give it a chance even though it’s been slow-going thus far.

White Noise - by Don Dellilo
Like Austerlitz, one of those books all the contemporary fiction people talk about, and I really hope to to love it.

I hope this list was helpful, and please please add it to it in comments (graphic novels are welcome too.) We should do this again in the summer.

The End of Love

2006-12-15T13:16:00.001-05:00

Hey everybody, I’m sorry it’s been so long since an update, I have had to direct all of my thinking and writing towards final papers, but right now I could use a break. In the last meeting of a class of mine we had this inane discussion about modern love- how romance is dead and why. Some students insisted, based on people they know, that “Women DO have enough time for both career and family,” and others said, also based on people they know, that ‘Women DON’T have enough time for both career family.” The conversation was silly but it made me think about some of my own professors, both female and male, who never got married, and I wondered if it was actually only a matter of not having enough time. Of course it could be a million other things as well, and I don’t know if the marriage rate in academia is lower than in other professions, but there was one factor that I have been thinking about lately that I think may be related: specialization.

Specialization is something that happens more and more in the modern world, as the information we have increases so rapidly, and in order to know anything we need to have a million different people knowing different things. This, on the one hand, might bode very well for relationships: conversations can be so interesting and intriguing when two people have different areas of expertise. On the other hand, it is deadly for relationships, because the more specialized in a certain area you become, the harder it is, I think, to communicate with someone who is nowhere near where you are. Not all disciplines are equally problematic in this regard- and I would guess that those that lay a claim on the way we, right now, process reality and view ourselves (literature, psychology, sociology etc...) would be the most fertile for trouble. It also depends, to a great extent, on how seriously you take your work, and how large a part of your life it is. But lets say you are one of those people, who, for example, read books and really incorporate them into the way you view the world and view yourself; how can you really respect someone who doesn’t read books, or maybe does but none of the same kind you’ve read?

I recognize how, in theory, you should respect that person. Once again-knowledge is fragmented, no one person has all the answers etc…At the same time, if you think that what you do really “matters,” in some profound way, then you are setting yourself for a lot of alienation I think. I have this one professor who I look at with utter admiration, she is so on the ball in class and in private- emotionally, intellectually, and professionally- more so than anyone I’ve ever met. But all of her brilliance is so so steeped in the area of her specialty- the 19th century novel- that I simply can’t imagine her being able to take someone seriously who doesn’t have the same kind of vocabulary that she does. And no one could, unless they are at least 10 years into academia, in her field etc…I know people are going to make fun of me for this post, I sound like a parody of myself, but I am so serious about how scary this is to me.

One working approach I’ve noticed is simply to get married young, in or right after college, when you can legitimately have wide range of interests, and being smart means writing a good paper for your philosophy class,or article for the school newspaper, or blog post :-), that you can show to your friends. Then when you grow you can kind of grow together (even if it means certain intellectual paths will be stymied based on the inclinations of the person you’re with). Another approach which I also see is to find a common ground-like Judaism or religion- where you can develop a shared vocabulary and then leave your specialties separate. But I don’t care what anyone says (and almost everyone tells me I’m wrong here), if you have a deep interest that you cannot share with your significant other then it is either not so “deep” or they are not so “significant,” at least at certain moments. Maybe that’s fine, and loads of different relationship models have existed throughout history, but its so disheartening to think about- that our futures may demand a choice between being crazy about someone else and what they have to say and having your own set of serious, specialized knowledge. I would like someone to tell me very concretely how I am wrong here, but I am having trouble seeing a way out.

How to Change the World, For Now

2006-11-24T10:03:00.000-05:00

Happy Black Friday everyone! Right now I am in sunny Florida reading books about modern death for a final paper. The blissful weather and the absence of distractions, on top of the absorbing and disturbing material have created this weird desert island reading experience- I feel like these books are everything. I have not had this sense of total immersion for a while now, its really hard in the city, but it’s the best way to learn, I think, if a bit unhealthy for long term. Therefore, if what I am about to say sounds a little strange please blame it on my self-contained environment, and also please point out what I am failing to take into account.

Recently I had a long conversation with a good friend where I belabored the point that I think it’s always important to be as honest possible-he disagreed and said its sometimes more important to protect people’s feelings. I said that its patronizing to think that you know what people can or cannot handle, and that as individuals we have a moral and maybe even religious responsibility to simply state the truth as we see it, but we need to be super-careful and sensitive and say it with love etc…But what I now realize is the problem with that, aside from the potential obnoxiousness of it, is that the “truth as I see it” is never actually the truth- or more specifically, my sense of honesty and authenticity is very very much circumscribed by the pool of appropriate conversation topics available. There are plenty of things you will never hear about on this blog, despite my insistence on it as an “open forum.” Similarly, one of the things I’ve come across in reading up on mourning rituals is a passage from Elaine Showalter’s famous study of hysteria:
“Hysteria is a mimetic disorder, it mimics culturally permissible expressions of distress. And Englishman can legitimately complain of headaches but not that his penis is retracting into his body- a perfectly acceptable symptom in Malaysia and South China. Edward Shorter calls the legitimate symptoms in a given culture at a given time ‘the symptom pool’…A constant cultural negotiation goes on, of course, over both the symptom pool as whole and the legitimacy of its contents.”

Ok, I will now confess something myself. I struggled for a few minutes over whether or not I should put that passage in. Why? Because it uses a certain inappropriate word AND despite my insistence that honesty is essential, that there’s nothing worse than suppression, that taboos are stupid unless they protect people from getting abused, there are certain things I would never ever say in public. And this is exactly the point of the passage, that even when we think we are expressing true pain, true emotions, a true headache, we are still drawing from a socially acceptable, culturally legitimized “symptom pool.” We are being the selves that other people can recognize and handle. This is SO important to realize- the kind of personal editing we do all the time without even noticing. Once in a while I will be in the middle of a polite conversation at a vort or something and this realization will hit me that literally all I am doing is trying to shape my thoughts and experiences so that the face in front of me will respond. Although I tend to only notice when it’s not going so well. I thought the blog would be liberating in this sense, because there is noone before whom I need to reconfigure my thoughts to make them more palatable, but that’s not true because imagined audiences can be just as powerful as actual ones.

This has very interesting implications for studying mourning, an enterprise that is often seen as an expression of authentic, inner emotion. Nobody says (well, except for the some of the books I’m looking at), lets look at the way people express their grief in public not only as a way to get insight into what they are truly feeling, but also to see what they feel socially comfortable saying. What other people allow them to say. Many grieving tropes follow similar patterns, for example: I lost someone-I am sad-but people have been so helpful, but I know he’s in a better place now, but I’ve learned so much in the process…. there’s always a but, there’s always some consolation-always a “look on the bright side” that attempts to make the person listening not feel too bad. But why?

Maybe this is not a popular approach because it belittles human agency-it means that even our most personal and singular emotions are part of a general “emotion pool” that is relatively stable and socially determined. But even if that’s true, which I am beginning to realize in many disheartening ways probably is, I think it’s really worthwhile to investigate those areas where we are able to sense a kind of disconnect (between what we are thinking/feeling and what we can be said,) and really proactively try to correct them. I don’t think the internet is the best place to do it. I personally would not be ready for that. I’m also not sure the best thing to do is to start talking about embarrassing physical ailments in public, the world might not be ready for that. The best thing to do, I think, is for you yourself to be as brave as possible in personal interactions and not let yourself get uncomfortable. Propriety is the ENEMY (unless, once again, it prevents people from hurting others, and there is a really fine line here I’ll admit). You need to be the person you want to have surrounding you, and people will learn from your example. What I am talking about is a lot harder than tolerance by the way, its a constant and sustained evaluation of the legitimacy of our socially decided upon “feelings pool. And I don’t actually know anyone who does it, including myself. But oh what a beautiful world it would be if we tried.

A little bit about the Hold Steady

2006-11-13T11:27:00.000-05:00

So... I bought "Boys and Girls in America," the new album by the band the Hold Steady. I first heard of them when they appeared on the cover of the Village Voice with a headline crowning them the best band in New York. I read the article but didn't run out to get any of their music. Then a few months ago their new album came out, got critically acclaimed and sparked my curousity again, so when I saw it on sale at Newbury Comics last week I decided to give it a shot. I've been listening to the album all week long and its really good rock music. The band get compared most often to Springsteen, and that's not surprising. The music has the same bombastic, sweeping quality as some of Springsteen's early epic songs like Thunder Road or Rosalita. But the other reason the comparison rings true is the lyrics. Craig Finn, the Hold Steady's lead singer, uses songs to tell the same kind of stories that Springsteen did thiry years ago, montages of American kids driving around late at night, looking for action, looking for love.

But there's a key difference between Finn's characters and Springsteen's. Maybe it has to do with the era they're writing in (though I don't really think the mid-70's were such an innocent time), but the characters in Hold Steady songs are more damaged, more apt to hurt themselves or other people. Springstein's characters are "born to run." They're trying to escape and there's a good chance that they actually might get away. The kids in Hold Steady songs like 'Party Pit' or 'Massive Nights' don't really have anywhere to go. I may be forgetting something crucial, but in all of Springsteen's early songs (the ones that are really comparable to the Hold Steady's), I can't recall any mention of drunkenness or drug abuse. In contrast, nearly every song on "Boys and Girl in America" has characters who are "blacked out, cracked out, blotto." It's not music about drug addicts, but the songs are about kids who live dangerously, who "started recreational," but "ended kind of medical."

I like this music but it's not something that I can directly relate to; they're not speaking to my experience. These are songs about the kid in your high school who everyone whispered about what they did on the weekend, who clashed with teachers and other students, who left home for a week to live with creepy sounding older friends. And that wasn't me. I may have known a few people like that (or their yeshiva high school equivalents), but I could only either envy their rebelliousness or be thankful that my family and community offered me more stablility.

Which is why listening to the Hold Steady helped me understand why I love Belle & Sebastian so much. Belle & Sebastian have been my favorite band pretty consistently over the last ten years and in contrasting the characters in their songs with the characters in Hold Steady songs, it makes a lot of sense. In 'Chillout Tent,' Finn sings about a guy whose "friend gave him four but told to only take one/ But he got bored so he took all four," the Belle & Sebastian song 'Photo Jenny's narrator sings, "They've got the drugs I could use but then I don't want any." The character is no less knowledgable about drugs, just a lot more cautious.

Both bands reference Kerouac, but in entirely different ways. The Hold Steady album opens by saying, "I think Sal Paradise was right. Boys and girls in America..." This is Finn as omniscient narrator. The boys and girls he writes about are too busy drinking and fooling around to read "On the Road." In 'Le Pastie De La Bourgeoisie,' the misunderstood teenage heroine dreams of escaping her boring adolesence in the USA as Belle & Sebastian's singer, Stuart Murdoch sings, "Wouldn't you like to get away? Kerouac's beckoning with open arms and open fields of eucalyptis westward bound." It's the books she's reading that fuel her imaginary rebellion. In that same song, Murdoch tells his protagonist "You're too tall, much too tall for a boyfriend." Also singing to a teenage girl, Craig Finn instructs, "If you get tired of your boyfriend's scene, there are always other scenes, there's always other boyfriends."

The characters in Hold Steady songs can get laid, aren't too scared to get high, and are too busy doing both to sit down with a book. In B&S songs, the kids hope for affection, read books and dream of a more glamorous life, sometimes turning their frustration into art (B&S songs have characters who try photography, paint lines, make collages and press engravings). They know what their more rebellious counterparts are up to, but can't bring themselves to get too involved.

I always identified more strongly with Belle & Sebastian characters. And now, with the Hold Steady as a counterpoint, I can explain why a bit more articulately. This got me thinking about the ways we use the music we listen to and the books we read to understand and explain ourselves to the world.

H

Can God Get Frustrated?

2006-11-13T01:56:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone, I've never posted before and I hope this isn't an awkward beginning.

I'm doing some reading for a philosophy class I'm taking in which the author (Robert Merrihew Adams) suggests that God is susceptible to frustration. He's referring to Jesus (the crucifixion as being somewhat of a damper on his future prospects) but it got me thinking about whether there was room for this in a Jewish way of thinking.

When speaking about whether God has, or exhibits, true emotions, the Gemara in Taanis quickly comes to mind in which one amorah, I believe, states that shiluach hakan does not really express God's rachamim because God, in essence, does not have emotions. This idea also fits nicely with the Rambam's principle of negative assertions about God being the only tools we have to describe Him. Another Rambam/Platonic idea that would militate against saying God could experience frustration is that we believe God is perfect - among other things, lacking nothing.

And yet there seem to be a number of cases in which God experiences frustration. Good examples abound the Torah; Gan Eden, the Mabul, leaving Egypt, getting to Israel, trying and failing to build a Temple, the Temple eventually collapsing under the weight of the people's sin, exile. In fact, you might say the Torah is better characterized by the unfulfillment of God's plans than their success. The Torah often tells us, or at least implied, that God gets frustrated with the people - and why not? They're free will frustrates (pun intended) the plans God makes for them and the world.

How seriously do we take the idea of God's frustration? Do we maintain that God does not truly "feel" the emotion of frustration and that it's all some kind of cerebral chess game with humanity? Or do we say God does feel emotion - in which case we would need to figure out how many emotions, exactly, God can feel.

Anyway, if we get beyond Plato, what's wrong with God feeling emotions anyway? How do they make God any less perfect? Why must we say that when the Torah implies a loving relationship between God and the Jewish people, it doesn't really mean it?

Sorry if this is too broad a topic to discuss, but it's on my mind, especially since it gets back to questions of how we ought to relate to God - through our intellect or our emotions, but that will be for another time.

The Balcony Blues

2006-10-17T00:13:00.001-04:00

I still remember the first time when some man in shul told me it was wrong to sit with my father- I must have been ten or so. Since then I’ve gotten use to life on the other side of the curtain, and I would be impossible for me to separate the meaning I find in going to shul, with the associations I have with mechitza- both for better or for worse. For example, prayer for me has always involved a kind of performance element and a personal element. There are the people in black and white who are running the show and the more colorfully dressed people who are watching the show and following along. It sounds bad when I put it like that, but it never actually bothered me. I never wanted to be running the show anyway. I preferred to walk in late, or not go at all, and the thought of being in any way responsible for, or even involved in, an entire community’s relationship to God, was a scary thought. I still hesitate to lead zimun or even say hamotzi for other people sometimes- I think to myself: let someone invoke the name of God who is actually profoundly committed to Him, or something like that. This, I think, has underpinned my hesitation to get involved in the Orthodox egalitarian movement in general; I’ve always felt like it wasn’t my place to insist for a greater role for women in Judaism, because I’ve never been sure I wanted or even deserved that role to begin with.

But then I davened at a no-mechitza minyan for the first time this past Simchat Torah (Kehillat Hadar on the UWS) and I liked it, I really liked it, which got me thinking again about gender and Judaism and why I am such a wuss. So there is a big difference between standing in a room where you are clearly part of the main contingent, and standing next to a partition, even if that partition is low and sheer and exactly in the middle as it is on most college campuses etc…It’s so different, and it totally realigns the experience of prayer for everyone involved, I think. That’s because if you look at a shul nowadays, one of the most defining features, after the bima and the aron is invariably going to be the mechitza. Why is shul different from other types of (Modern Orthodox) gatherings? First and foremost, because we separate the sexes. But the problem with this, aside from ethical or feminist issues (which I’m not sure entirely apply anyway) is the fact that the strength of these associations is totally disproportionate to what we should be thinking about when we think about tefilah. I’m ok with many of the apologetics that defend separate seating, and halakha is halakha, but my gut feeling is that shul was never meant to be set up this way. That’s actually also probably historically true, some of the ad-hoc women’s sections I saw in the old synagogues of Poland and Italy have confirmed this. Now of course those women’s sections are ad-hoc not because there used to be mixed seating but because women rarely went to shul at all, but still, there is something to the organic unity of a single room joined in prayer. Perhaps for many men it’s usually like that anyway, especially when woman are separated by high balconies or not there at all. But for me, the presence of mechitzot heighten and intensify my sense of the "other side" in a way that has for sure undermined my quality of prayer, and maybe even other aspects of my religious identity as well.

Furthermore, my whole attitude that “I do not deserve to take an active role in an Orthodox congregation because I am not pious enough” is stupid too- and it’s a direct result of feeling like a spectator for most of my shulgoing life. I was not beset by this anxiety when I davened at Hadar, I just felt like one of the crowd. Sure they are mostly Conservative in orientation, so I guess that helped quell my feelings of religious inadequacy, but there was something else too. Feeling like you are wanted, like you are needed, does wonders for making you actually want to belong. The more active a participant you are, the less your inner life eats you up inside- and this can be both good and bad. I think feeling like an outsider makes a person more contemplative and reflective, and that can be a good thing. But there is no doubt that, if left up to my own devices, I would contemplate and reflect myself out of tefilah b'tzibbur in general, and maybe that’s not such a good thing. Davening without a mechitza made me feel at home in and at one with the Jewish community in a way I have not felt since I was a little kid, and its just a shame that it can only happen in such a marginal setting. I don’t know if there’s much that can really be done about it, but I think it deserves some thinking about it.

The Secret of Style

2006-10-04T13:31:00.000-04:00

I have been flirting with this idea for a while- debating whether it makes sense- and furthermore whether it’s actually true- and while I’m not sure about either of the two I would like to nevertheless share. “Jane Austen, or The Secret of Style” by D.A. Miller is the weirdest mix of close reading, queer theory, sentimental autobiography, and literary history that I’ve ever come across. What it attempts to capture is why Austen utilized the idea of the omniscient, God-like narrator; or more specifically, why the use of this style reached its pinnacle in Austen’s work, more so than in any other 19th century novelist. Miller claims that an omniscient narrator does something that no other literary mechanism does- it gives us a voice that is both aware of and above our circumstances. You can both inhabit your world and be outside of it- when the pain of social determinants becomes too strong you have a way to escape. Something that you didn’t have before the development of this kind of narrative. Miller’s method of proving this is decidedly sketchy; he shows how much gay men enjoy Jane Austen, and reminds us that Austen herself never got married, something that never happens to any of her heroines. Thus literature is at once an indicator of social trends as well as way to rise above it- reading gives us an “out” for the pain of fitting in in our own lives- a kind of elegant, witty, removed vocabulary that is never vulnerable, never gets hurt. This, argues Miller, is behind the concept of “style” in general- if substance demands a certain kind of vulnerability, of “oneness” with the material you are presenting, then style allows you the option of being removed. This is not a surprise, we all know the edgy, witty person who uses humor to mask his own insecurities, but I guess I never think of that as a particularly good thing. When it comes to homosexuality, or in Austen’s case, spinsterhood, here you have a circumstance that has no acceptable way to find expression in certain societies. So your only resort is style, affectation, distance, or else you are doomed to inconsolable pain. This of course makes me self-conscious that the very fact that I am such a proponent of openness is itself a luxury- it means I feel like there is a place for most (although not all) of my innermost anxiety in the world around me. I don’t enjoy omniscient narrators or Victorian novels, I haven’t enjoyed them since I was in elementary school, and oh dear, now I remember, fitting in felt quite difficult. Does this connection sound compelling to anyone else?

I’ve also thought about it lately in regard to “playing it cool,” something I see much more than I would expect at this stage in life. In most circumstances, I’m not a fan, I think it’s a sign of insecurity, and also not very respectful or nice. But when “playing it cool” is a matter of self-preservation, of a way of situating yourself in a world where you’re not sure you belong, than it becomes so much more intriguing to me. But I forgot to mention, and this important, that part of Miller’s thesis is that playing it cool never really works, that “style” ultimately crumbles, that Austen’s later works see a kind of conflation of narrator and character that continues to embarrass some of her greatest fans. And embarrassment, that’s also a unique result of “style,” its an indicator that it’s not working. Interesting stuff, no? I could go on but I think you get the point. I’d love to hear some hipster rejoinders.

Gmar Tov

2006-10-01T15:20:00.001-04:00

Yom Kippur is getting closer, and to my honest surprise, I am starting to get this nervous worried feeling in my chest- like I am forgetting something or someone important. I have way too many loose ends in my life to tie up, and the kinds of phone calls that would matter most are the ones that I would probably never be able to make, even today. And even though blanket calls for mechila mean very little, maybe even nothing, I would like to issue one anyway, because sometimes I think they are good for the person doing the asking. So here goes: I would like to apologize for any hurt, however minor, I have caused in posting on this blog. I know have touched on a lot of ideas I have not known enough about, quoted many opinions I did not entirely do justice to, and have even sometimes intentionally simplified another perspective in order to further my own. Even a surface browsing of past postings is enough to make me cringe- so many relationships and experiences have been turned into fodder for internet (albeit pseudo-intellectual) voyeurism- and it makes me miss a time when most of what went on between me and my friends stayed right there, between me and them. That said, I think a lot of good has come out of the blog as well, whenever I go to Mount Sinai on Shabbos or another big Jewish gathering I meet people who have read something or other and found it meaningful or at least interesting to think about. Many of the online comments have been so brilliant and thought-provoking that they have made posting worthwhile in of itself. I have made a couple of real friends through blogging, and stayed more in touch with some others, but even so, I also know its taken a toll on my patience for certain kinds of real-life conversations, and I really regret that. So while this blogging thing probably won’t go on forever, right now I feel like it does more good than bad. But nevertheless, I don’t want to let that obscure the bad- for which I ask all of your forgiveness. I hope everyone has a really successful fast and year.

O'zapft is

2006-09-26T23:32:00.000-04:00

The Church reopens its doors this Friday night for a special Oneg in honor of Oktoberfest and in honor of Shabbat Shuva. So Please come to 495 W187th St Apt 3E. Chef Rob will make the sauerbraaten and I will bring the beer. Harvey promises to model his lederhosen. PS. no Nazis allowed.

THE Jewish View on Everything : This has nothing to do with Bagels

2006-09-19T12:31:00.000-04:00

Dear All,

It has certainly been a while since I last posted; a long long while since I thought about anything worth writing about. I suppose being on the road for the last couple of weeks makes me miss the chevra enough to post thoughtless thoughts and wreckless wramblings. So here goes:

"Some Thoughts Upon Spending 10 Exhausting Days with 11 Arab-Israeli-Muslims (equalling 33 identities)"

My own identity is also ambiguous and tenuous these days. The first layer of confusion comes from what I think we may all share as we shed our old conceptions of religion post college and build "more mature" and "more real" versions of practice and belief (whatever that means). However, I am also sorting it all out in the context of my exposure to others' concpetions of divinity, others' political narratives and others' group priorities. I find myself trying to accurately represent "the Jewish view" on EVERYTHING, and at the same time trying to formulate my own Jewish view on some of the very topics I am asked to present decided views on.

Furthermore, after connecting for 10 days with Arab Muslims who because of their strong support for the state of Israel refuse to be called Palestinian (by Jews or Muslims), I spent shabbat in an Orthodox community that condemned in its entirety Islam, Arabs and "the West" including my new friends. I hear from Black communities that I am the White majority that pushed them away after we no longer needed Black partnership and from Jews that Blacks have pushed us away and embraced Palestinians. I hear from Mainline Protestants that I am the powerful Israeli oppressor, and from Evangelical Protestants that I am God's last hope in the Middle East. Muslim partners question why I sit at the table with them only slightly less than the Jews for whom I am building the partnership. Finally, everyone everyone (Jews, Muslims, Blacks, Catholics, Latinos, Protestants and everyone else who has a voice) hates the media.

My conclusions thus far:

a) Everyone is crazy
b) Everyone would rather point fingers blaming out than actually addressing our own problems
c) The media is out to get everybody

I do not need to explore it any further here, but feel free to engage me in conversation when I return to the city. By the by, I do have good answers for the top three questions that I receive from Christians, Muslims and other religionists:

1) What is the difference between the different skullcaps?
2) Why are there so many Jewish organizations and what do they mean?
3) What's that hanging out of your pants?

With Love,

NTFNHT

moblogging = mobetter?

2006-09-18T09:37:00.000-04:00

hey all,

haven't posted since this blog started but it may become a good way of keeping in touch. red wrote all about her touchy feely grad school orientation and i wanted to share about my own orientation experience. firstly, it's been overwhelming. harvard is very different than yu in so many respects that it doesn't even pay to get into it right now. but what is cool and worth knowing about is our orientation activity this past friday. the school i'm at (the graduate school of design) sent us out to moblog. now i don't know if anyone knows what that means, but i certainly didn't. as future architects, landscape architects and (in my case) urban planners, we were told that we ought to experience a bit more of boston than the student oriented parts of cambridge that mostly consists of bars, book stores and coffee houses. So, we were broken up into groups and sent out to some of boston's other neighborhoods, including chinatown, southie, dorchester. my group went to roxbury. we were supposed to take pictures of the places with our mobile phones that would later be compiled on a blog (thus the name moblogging). roxbury is one of the city's african american neighborhoods, and while i have heard from whites that i've met that it's a dangerous, crime-ridden place, it was clear upon visiting that it was a lot more interesting that just a depressed, decaying urban area. there was active street life and a struggle to maintain neighborhood identity in the face of encroaching chain stores (like the walgreens muscling out the local drug store). one of the most interesting images i captured was of a large poster advertising new housing that would "usher in a bright future," with the word "gentrification" spray painted above it. who was building the housing and who was opposing it? which writing on the wall is more troublesome, the sanctioned, legal sign reporting new housing, or the illegal graffiti protesting it? who is the new housing for? a quote i read from mayor bloomberg in last week's times magazine echoes in my mind: "if you don't like gentrification, don't fight crime and don't improve education?" vandalism is definitely a crime and the vandal opposed gentrification. does that make them pro-crime? what does gentrification mean anyway and why is it such a loaded word that it gets used as an accusation against someone building houses (which is potentially a good thing)? so many questions to think about. i haven't figured out how to get the pictures from my phone onto the blog yet, or even where the blog is, but when i do, i'll provide a link. but now i've got to go and start graduate school (classes begin in ten minutes!!).

Why Iyov Makes Sense to Me and Elul Doesn't

2006-09-18T01:14:00.000-04:00

I read the Book of Job tonight, straight through in English for a class at Columbia, and I noticed something very interesting. Well actually first I should say that I am staggered by how sophisticated the whole middle section of the sefer is (the part I’ve always skipped over.) Aspects of many of the conversations we’ve been having on the blog about religion and God can be found in the back and forth between Iyov and his “friends.” I used to think the book was a straight kind of theodicy- Iyov is mad because he was a tzadik and God made him suffer anyway- but in fact, it’s a lot more nuanced. Iyov admits that he’s sometimes sinned but nevertheless, that the way God relates to the world is problematic. He professes that he knows God isn’t listening, and that God won’t change anything, but he declares that nevertheless, despite the knowledge of the futility of his pursuit, “I insist on arguing with God” (13:3). Awesome.

What’s interesting, especially in light of the current time of year, is that when it comes to reward and punishment, the book of Iyov places the burden of responsibility on God. The arguments of Iyov’s friends basically amount to: “Iyov stop blaming God and start looking at yourself.” In other words: Do Teshuva (as we normally understand it). But Iyov says “No, by being ‘frum’ you’re really just being unsympathetic and obnoxious, (ok maybe I am paraphrasing a little) maybe I haven’t been perfect but God acted disproportionately and I am pissed.” And at the end of the sefer, after that whole speech out of the whirlwind, God says that Iyov’s friends were wrong and that they “have not spoken the truth about Me as did My servant Job” (42:7). So in the end Job was right about God- even though God chewed his head off for a couple of chapters to tell him how little he understands.

And when I read that final bit I was reminded of something Curious Calvin (of sidebar fame) had mentioned to me earlier this afternoon. She said that the whole process of selichos and teshuva bothers her because, forgive me (!) if I’m getting this wrong: “I basically try to be a good person most of the time, and when I’m not its usually because there’s some valid reason tugging me in the other direction.” I really relate to this, even if I probably try to be a good person less often than Calvin does. I find it very hard to bang my hand against my chest for all the sins that I’ve done, I feel like it undermines all the growth and good work I’ve tried to engage in. I also feel like it absolves God of all responsibility, something that Iyov refuses to do and is ultimately rewarded for refusing to do. Maybe I sound arrogant, like this is the “pride” I’m supposed to be repenting for on top of all the other stuff- but I really don’t think that overemphasizing our flaws is a good thing. I mean, I think personal growth is really important, but it can only happen with an honest perspective on what we need to be working on (and what we don’t), and frankly, the shopping list of sins in the Yom Kippur liturgy doesn’t really make sense for my lifestyle. I really respect humility, but the Moshe Rabbeinu “I know my strengths and try to use them appropriately” kind of humility, not the “I am the dust of the earth please redeem me” kind- and I think this is part of what Iyov is getting at when he insists on continuing to argue with God. I even kind of like God’s speech out of the whirlwind, I am all for recognizing what we don’t understand, how small we are, how fleeting life is- but to pretend that I as an individual have some major major repenting to do- I don’t know, I guess its never made so much sense to me, and it didn’t make sense to Iyov either.

So where is Iyov in the Yamim Noraim services? Why are we trembling instead of taking a stand? Maybe that strand is there but I’m just unaware of it. Jeremy Bressman very wisely pointed out to me that there are many interpretations of teshuva that have little to do with repentance as we know it. I think he said that Rav Lichtenstein said “teshuva” can also mean returning to God, like building a stronger relationship with him, regardless of where you’ve been before. Jeremy mentioned the example of a Ba’al Teshuva, someone who can’t honestly say he feels bad about not keeping halakha before he knew anything about Judaism. So perhaps we can get ourselves out of this philosophically. But the spirit of the words we say throughout this time of year remains, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. Maybe this is just my pre-emptive excuse for spacing out this Yom Kippur davening, as I have during every one in memory, but I really would like to make something meaningful out of all this. Any suggestions would be superb. Alternative theories of teshuva are welcome too. K’seeva Tova.
(credit for the little writing quip goes to Avi Mermelstein)

Monsey Journal

2006-09-09T23:27:00.000-04:00

Treif chickens being passed off as kosher. I know this is not the usual type of thing I like to post or even care about, but over this past weekend in Monsey noone has been able to talk about anything else. And the truth is I do agree that there are certain elements to the scandal (the impact of which has apparently been enormous) that are worth thinking about. Most of the talk I’ve heard has related to the evilness of the perpetrator, the stupidity of the mashgiach, and the horror of having possibly eaten at the Atrium in any of the past couple of weeks. Fine, whatever, I don’t know- what’s been on mind is how much people I’ve encountered are truly, deeply enraged by this. I know in an earlier post about belief some people criticized me for using the phrase “truly, deeply” to describe faith, or anything, claiming that nobody is ever so sure. But my friend whose father is a doctor just mentioned that dozens of chassidish women have been admitted to the hospital with heart attacks, actual heart-attacks, over the prospect of re-kashering their kitchens, and the general events at hand. And its not only the hard work that bothers people, there are real emotional ramifications to the though of having ingested non-kosher meat, and even more so to the prospect of someone having betrayed his community in this way. The NY times quoted a Rabbi from Monsey as saying: “This is the darkest day in the history of our community since we settled in this area many years ago.”

And I think to myself: do I even care? Yes I believe in honesty and integrity and tradition etc… but does the thought of having put some forbidden element in my body make me sick? If it was a mistake? I’m not going to agonize over whether or not my indifference makes me a bad Jew, I’ve had enough of those deliberations, even though they still sometimes creep up on me. But I am still not sure whether I think the insanely vitriolic reactions I’ve been hearing are overblown or impressive. The reason I would think they are overblown is because, as central as kashrus has always been to my life, people have always mattered way more. It’s hard to get worked up over the treachery of one dishonest kosher butcher when religious Jews are found responsible for more wide-scale exploitation all the time. But at shabbos lunch today, whenever I proffered such considerations I was quickly shushed in order to make room for even more details of the scandal. Which made me think, maybe they are right to shush me, maybe I am witnessing something extraordinary. I think Feurbach/Marx and many others have ingrained in us the notion that religion functions to fulfill particular social functions- and that religious observance can more often than not be chalked up to some kind of unsophisticated need on the part of the masses- authority structure, legitimized oppression, easy answers etc… I don’t entirely believe this, I really don’t, but ever so often when I hear about some story about Rabbinic abuse or not being nice to women, I think “oh, that’s what they use Judaism for- to fulfill their need for power.” But then something like this happens, and people are simply horrified, and sick, not for social reasons, not even for halakhic reasons (I assume people can’t be held halakhically responsible for having eaten the chicken) but over this deep, visceral, connection to some abstract principle. God has little to do with why people are horrified over having eaten non-kosher chicken, because He’s not going to punish people for it, instead, His law has taken on a life of its own. It’s really interesting. Of course I wish people would get as infuriated over sweatshops and sinat chinam, but the fact that they can get infuriated at all is something to be admired, I think. Anyways, I meant to also mention having begun graduate school but who can think about school when a scandal of this proportion has occurred. I hope everyone is coping well.

Happy Labor Day

2006-09-04T13:18:00.000-04:00

Nice editorial in today’s NY Times ( “The Summer Next Time” by Tom Lutz.) Articulates why many are so attracted to the academic or artistic lifestyle, not only for reasons of intellectual stimulation or creativity but also because thinking that your time is your own is really important. The author notes that academia comes with the same deadlines and same drudgery that other professions have, but there is this illusion every day when you wake up, you can do whatever you want with your day, even if realistically you won’t, and it is worth all the salary-deficiencies and professional instability for that sense of freedom. He writes: "we academics do have something few others possess in this postindustrial world: control over our own time. All the surveys point to this as the most common factor in job satisfaction. The jobs in which decisions are made and the pace set by machines provide the least satisfaction, while those, like mine, that foster at least the illusion of control provide the most."
This explains why I have hated every single job I have ever held (except for tutoring) and it makes me even more impressed with my comrades who do submit to a 9 to 5 (or 8 to 11) schedule, and the demands of overseers and clients etc…Sometimes I think the worlds we live in are so different that its surprising we are friends in the first place. But I suppose steady income also provides a certain sense of freedom and control, and perhaps it is worth the trade-off. This editorial also inclines me toward Hegelian style philosophies that see all of mankind as striving for freedom, this is not as crazy an idea as I thought it was in college. It also makes me like capitalism, even though I think many people’s lives are objectively worse off for it than they would be in a socialist economy. Maybe there really is something to a sense of freedom, even though there is no such thing as choice, free will, truth, blah blah blah etc…Anyway, I hope everyone enjoys their last day of freedom before all the studying and deadlines kick in- and remember, even if they control your time, they cannot control your mind… Freedom!!!!!!!!!

reoriented

2006-08-31T01:34:00.000-04:00

There are a bunch of undies who are starting graduate at different schools these days, so I thought I would share my experiences at orientation and see what comes of this.

Columbia school of social work has a week long orientation process that is as overblown as the tuition. I’ve sat through 6 name games in 3 days. One of them was “state your name and then describe the way you greet people.” So, “Rachel Berger, ‘Hello!’” At that point I considered the fact that I might need to drop out.

But what I was really dreading was the full day of Cultural Awareness that was planned for today. This is where we reveal our personal cultural, religious, gender, and racial experiences to a group of strangers. I often think that my own religious/cultural makeup is too complicated for even myself to comprehend, and I genuinely am scared of telling people that I am a religious jew (really the religious part) and then I always want to follow up with an explanation of my interaction with the world, my distrust of most types of fundamentalism- even my own, the fact that I am a first generation American and that I want to be a hipster also.

We started with a culture map. We had to draw our cultural experiences. I started with a sneer, but after five seconds I was crayoning away. My own map had two continents, an ocean, a torah and Chassidim in the middle, flying goats, a fiddle, a bridge connecting the two continents, the Israeli flag, the aleph-beis, the alphabet, all these interconnecting circles, and a map key with the word progress in the legend. It looked like a schizophrenics blueprint to faster intercontinental transportation.

I don’t know if my explanation of my culture was helpful to anyone but myself. I certainly don’t think I was lucid enough to really describe where I am coming from, but what was important to me was that this was the first time I have ever done this. Ive never told a group ‘this is who I am.’ No. I am a Muranno. I hide my identity, I blend into the crowd. I am good at this, I do it a lot. I perceive myself as a minority, so i try to adapt to the majority. But I do think that this is a mistake, because I will never be other than what I am, and when I am most truthful about myself is when I am most insightful and achieve the most clarity.

What really struck me was that while my own map had no empty space, other people had blank pages. One woman called herself a “cultural cipher.” She felt little connection to religion, ethnicity, and her Caucasian race had not left her with much to grapple until this point. I was shocked, and then envious. Where as she has nothing but herself to put into the world, I feel like I have 3000 years of culture and history to display and then once I’ve gotten that out there, I can show you where I come in. When you invite me to your party, I bring a lot of crashers.

While all this self revelation left me elated, I am interested to see what this means for the future. I hope that by revealing myself unabashedly, I am instantly comfortable in all situations and that I am a social work goddess. That by telling a classroom how I am a minority within a minority, I can eliminate all of my biases. That is probably not going to happen, and I also know that half of the point was to learn about the experiences of others and I definitely was mainly focused on my own self. yes, yes... i should have been learning about others...but I think that is a good starting point for me.

Has any one else had any experiences they would like to share?

Emergency Middos Alert (Or Why Toby Has Been Right All Along)

2006-08-27T21:43:00.000-04:00

I have a question. I haven’t had a lot of experience in the shidduch-dating world but recently I had a string of experiences that surprised me and made me think. In general, I like to take every interaction I have seriously. Sometimes it doesn’t work because I am simply too busy or absent-minded or maybe weirded out, but ideally, when I meet or talk to another person I want to give the conversation and relationship the best chance I can. This has always served me well in social environments, and up until recently, I saw no reason to act any differently. But then I started dating, and I soon learned that a whole new set of rules applied. In this world- you can meet a person and spend hours and hours getting to know them, what they think about, what they dream about, what makes them tick, and its always, at least for me, been really interesting and enjoyable. But then this crisis moment comes when both of you have to decide if its going to “go anywhere,” and if its not, then you are not supposed to speak to the person again. This really freaks me out, and I console myself by imagining that someday we will have something to do with each other, and all our relationship-building will not have been in vain, but I imagine that most of the time, this will not be the case.

But what scares me even more than the fact that we will probably never talk again is the fact that, more often than not, I sense that the other party does not mind as much as I do. That is, that there are men who will voluntarily choose to go through a third party to say that they’re not interested, or not return a phone call until weeks later, or maybe never at all. And these are people who once seemed very nice, maybe not people I’d be interested in spending all my time with, but seemingly considerate and friendly and emotionally aware. And religious, of course that one kills me the most because if Orthodox Judaism is not making people return phone calls then I’m not really sure what it has to offer mankind, but that’s a different post. Anyways, my big question is whether I am wrong about this whole issue. Whether its possible that not wanting or caring to stay in touch with me is ever not indicative of a major moral deficiency. I suppose there are plenty of people who I don’t find particularly interesting, and I guess it’s quite possible that I am often one of those people to someone else. But once someone really opens up to me, even if its only for a small chunk of time, I invariably remain somewhat concerned with them, even if staying close with them is unrealistic, and that is what makes me wonder what is wrong with everyone else. Perhaps people who date alot have to build up this veneer so their emotions and sanity won’t go spilling in all these different directions, and maybe this is what I should be doing too, but I don’t care. I really can’t believe that finding the right person has to come at the price of slightly dehumanizing everyone else, but I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong. Anyway, I’m going on strike until I find a way to date that does not throw me into moral confusion. If anyone would like to join me we can make signs and t-shirts and have a picket line somewhere- let me know.

More (Unneeded) Reasons Why The Heights Are Cool.

2006-08-21T23:31:00.000-04:00

One of the things I liked most about going to Rome was the feeling that every random building or ruin that I came across had a story. And thanks to a really detailed guidebook (and a really patient traveling companion) I was able to find a lot of them out. I also love this about Israel and I guess anywhere really, that has more than one layer of history. My latest plan is thus to give New York City some of the same kind of attention I’ve given to other places I’ve visited. Today I started with Washington Heights, well last night actually when I couldn’t sleep and found this great website with a ton of information and anecdotes about historic Washington Heights and Inwood. Among other things, I learned about the connection of “Washington” to “Heights,” what Fort Washington was, what basically all the street names refer to, and all about the Bridge, the Cloisters, the Little Red Lighthouse, and various architecturally significant buildings that punctuate the area. SO interesting, I’m not kidding, I liked it so much that I spent much of today visiting these landmarks up close. Now all of these places that I pass every day have taken on added significance (and once I learn a little more I think I want to organize a walking tour-in order to share this joy with others).

History is so cool, and for no good reason. I know there are theories that try to find significance in studying the past, the “Those who forget the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them” kind of thing. But I don’t think that’s true most of the time. Most historical events, like wars and discoveries and natural disasters, are never going to happen again, and have little moral significance to our lives today. Sure we can find analogies if we try- but how many of the Holocaust/Hezbollah comparisons that you hear nowadays actually shed light on anything that you wouldn’t have understood before making the analogy? When I began my trip to Italy I started by trying to turn every little thing I saw into a Dvar Torah for myself- i.e. how significant that the Romans ruled the world and now all that is left of them are ruins and Am Yisroel Chai!!! But after a while that got boring. Whatever message I could create invariably made me tune out some of the nuances of what I was seeing, and after a while I just started to gaze and enjoy. And I know even though the most secular and “objective” histories are bound to come with their own biases and assumptions (a whole field of historiography is based on this premise,) I continue to be intrigued by the fact that people seem care about the past for no immediately useful reason, simply because it “was.”

So what is it? Why does knowing the details of the Battle of Fort Washington make me so giddy? Or knowing that the famous sale of Manhattan for a bunch of beads happened in Inwood Park, just a little north of us. Or how the Frankfurt Am Mainz community landed here, and why its disintegrating, and why YU ended up on the Heights, and how the Dominican presence came about etc…I never used to have these questions, about why details about neighborhoods and places matter, maybe because most of the traveling I did was in Israel, a place where the significance of historical landmarks does not need to be justified or explained. When religion is involved, it’s clear why things matter; but when it comes to knowing odds and ends about people and places, it’s refreshingly obscure. I guess if I tried I could think of some reasons: 1) Even if it’s not a religious connection, we can always find a little but of ourselves in everything we see. 2) Curiosity is this fundamental human instinct, and knowing history answers the impractical but universal question of “Why?” 3) And of course, there is always the desirability of being able to show off that you know stuff (I’ve had this tour-guide fantasy for some years now, and I highly doubt its been “lishma”). Please, add to this list if you can. Also let me know if you are interested in the walking tour idea and if you want to come with me to explore my next destination (I’m thinking Harlem or maybe farther North in the Heights). Good luck to those people who are starting school this week.

[Note: For some reason I am having trouble uploading pictures on my computer. Stay tuned for dazzling images of the historic Heights.]

Ciao Italia

2006-08-14T17:09:00.000-04:00

Sorry we haven’t updated in a while. I’ve been vacationing in Italy and I was hoping some of our other talented writers would pick up the slack while I was away, but (surprisingly) that didn’t happen. But that’s ok, really, I’ve also been in a not wanting to write mode for the past 10 days, which is strange because presumably traveling is supposed to be this amazing opportunity for reflection and self-discovery. And it is really wonderful at times, but the path through Rome, Venice and Florence has been well trodden, and I don’t know what to say about these places that hasn’t been said a million times before. Probably a lot of what I’ve said about other things like religion and relationships has also been said a million times before, but for some reason, that doesn’t bother me as much. It’s just hard when you cultivate what you think is a personal connection with some amazing work of art and finally get to go see it but when you get there find that about 900 other tourists had the same idea. And I guess that’s ok, you can’t have a unique take on everything, and some things are worthwhile seeing even if everyone else is seeing and saying the same things. And most people aren’t saying all that much anyway, I know because I like to listen to people’s conversation when I am in museums. And the non-museum goers, the “experience” seekers, they don’t fare much better I think. I’m probably wrong to generalize, but unless you really spend a sustained amount of time in one place, enough time to really build relationships, get comfortable, knowledgeable, then I don’t know how life-changing a traveling experience can be. But maybe it doesn’t have to be life-changing anyway- maybes its our lofty, religiously dilated, expectations that are the problem. And perhaps if I had a job I would appreciate vacation more in general.

Anyways, I began this post in Italy and now I am continuing it in Monsey and I forgot what I originally meant to say. Something along the lines of: traveling is awesome, but people are what really make life worth living. But now as I look through my pictures I think, hey, I saw some really cool places, why are all of my pictures of these random backpackers that we met? Oh I also meant to offer some sweeping generalizations about Christianity, and visual versus textual religion, based on my ten-day crash course in Catholic history and iconography. But I will save that for another time. Flying on a plane with all the various new security measures (and snipers posted all over the airport) also tunes me into the intensity of current events in a way that makes my religious ramblings feel irrelevant. It’s a scary world we live in. But Italy is really charming and beautiful (if somewhat "expensive!"), and I recommend people make it there sometime.

I also have some thoughts on Tisha B'Av

2006-08-02T20:21:00.000-04:00

Check them out on my other blog, http://shabbostable.blogspot.com...

Have a good fast, everyone.

Some Thoughts for Tisha B'Av

2006-08-02T03:02:00.000-04:00

Tisha B’Av begins tonight, and it may very well be, well actually it’s probably not but sometimes it feels like, my favorite time on the Jewish calendar. Not because of what it commemorates, that would be awful of me to say, but because of what it tries to get us to do, and how remarkable that is.

Rav Soloveitchik starts his essay about Avelut Yeshanah and Avelut Chadashah by saying that Judaism is based on a unique doctrine of “freedom from emotional coercion,” and that what makes Halakha unique is that it sees individual emotions as a starting point, and not the end all and be all of what we are. He claims that individual mourning, Avelut Chadashah, operates from the premise that it is not good, or religious beneficial, to wallow in self-pity and despair. Thus we have elaborate stages that are meant to take us away from emotional coercion toward something greater: God. Hilkhot avelut, according to the Rav, set absolute misery and serving God at odds with each other. For example, in the most intense stage of avelut, aninut, one isn’t even allowed to perform positive mitzvoth.

With this in mind, it’s hard to imagine why any religion would encourage its adherents to transition towards, and not away from, this stage of intense grief and despair. But the three weeks do just that. They try to take us out of our normal, productive, creative routine, and push us toward this awful climax on Tisha B’Av where we sit and remember how much our ancestors suffered and how much God ignored their cries. Kinos are the most moving things. but are they moving us towards God? Not exactly. Granted, getting people to feel anything nowadays is something of an accomplishment, and feeling connected to Jewish history and heritage may encourage commitment and a sense of responsibility to make sure that they did not die in vain. But it’s still crazy, when you think about- to ask people to mourn for tragedy as way of encouraging theological devotion. It’s one thing for a religion to adapt itself in order to accommodate tragedy; quite another for it to actively encourage its adherents to wallow in the chaos of mass suffering. Do we hear about starving mothers eating their children and think “well they deserved it, this was all punishment from God”? For sure not. But then how is it functioning religiously? Why don’t we get angry at God because of it? It’s all so interesting to me. Maybe the Rabbis knew that it is impossible for people to be too miserable over things that did not happen to them, so they did not worry too much about creating potential Job-complexes (along the lines of what C.S. Lewis claimed). But the idea is fantastic nevertheless. Any religion that can sensitize people to a tragedy that happened 2,000 years ago has the ability to create the most sensitive people in the world; people who are hyper sensitive to the suffering that happens all around them as well.

Yet when I hear the way some people talk about the current conflict in Lebanon, I wonder where this sensitivity has gone. I, like almost everyone in my community, am firmly on the side of Israel and tend to have trust in their judgments. Yet nevertheless, I cannot help but feel sick to my stomach when I read in the news about a father whose wife and 5 children were just killed in the airstrike in Qana, his whole world obliterated. It makes me sad and even ill. But how can I balance this with my belief in Israel? With “Exodus” and “Hatikva” and cute chayalim and years of memories that I cherish? If Tisha B’Av is any example, we are fully capable of totally immersing ourselves in the pain of others without detracting from religious sentiment. Megillat Eicha treads the finest line between attention to how God has forsaken us, and turning to God in our despair, and it does so magnificently. I am still looking for that balance between careful attention to what Israel has wrought, and belief in its actions nevertheless. I think it’s somewhat harder to find.

My Very First Mussar Post

2006-07-26T22:26:00.000-04:00

But first, a brief history of my relationship with C.S. Lewis:
1) Read and reread Chronicles of Narnia (his fantasy series) as a kid and think he is awesome
2) Read Screwtape Letters (his Christian mussar sefer) as a seminary student and also think he is awesome
3) Read “A Grief Observed” (his incredibly raw and powerful memoir of the loss of his wife) today and still think he is awesome. [note that "A Grief Observed" raises so many religious questions and doubts that the theologian Lewis published it under a pseudonym]
It’s funny how I really needed to be at different stages in life to appreciate the range of Lewis’s work. The Narnia loving 8-year-old wouldn’t have understood the other stuff, my seminary self would have thought “A Grief Observed” was too sappy and depressing, and now I can’t believe I ever liked the Screwtape Letters as much as I did then, etc… Anyways, Lewis says many amazing things about loss and religion in “A Grief Observed,” but here is a sampling:

“I have always been able to pray for the other dead, and I still do, with some confidence. But when I try to pray for H. [his wife], I halt. Bewilderment and amazement come over me. I have a ghastly sense of unreality, of speaking into a vacuum about a nonentity. The reason for the difference is only too plain. You never know how much you believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it? The same with people. For years I would have said that I had perfect confidence in B.R. Then came the moment when I had to decide whether I would or would not trust him with a really important secret. That threw quite a new light on what I called my 'confidence' in him. I discovered that there was no such thing. Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief. Apparently the faith—I thought it faith—which enables me to pray for the other dead has seemed strong only because I have never really cared, not desperately, whether they existed or not. Yet I thought I did.”

The reason I find this passage so important is because it flips the conventional “there are no atheists in a foxhole” mentality on its head. Lewis wants to believe that he will someday be reunited with his dead wife so badly, that he can’t pretend that he will. The thought that he may be fooling himself with all these Christian conceptions of the afterlife only occurs to him once the answer most desperately matters to him.

I think this is why I am beginning to get so sick and tired of hearing from some of my “frum but intellectually honest” acquaintances. They are "intellectually honest" enough to recognize that a lot of what they believe is just that: belief in what they would like to think is true, and not an absolute certainty that it is true. And that should be a good thing, a respectable position, but honestly, I think it’s really immature. If belief in something is a choice then that thing doesn’t matter to you, not really. If you really need and want something then pretending its there is not good enough- you need to know, or else you will stop kidding yourself. Life is hard enough without having to make up things to worry about- and as Zvi mentioned in earlier comments, the only people who agonize over the unknown are those who have the luxury to do so. Or as Lewis writes, “Come, what do we gain by evasions? We are under the harrow and can’t escape.” I’m not saying that being religious and believing in God is always, or even most of the time, an evasion of reality. There are many fine and wonderful reasons to be religious and be part of a religious community, and if you honestly, truly believe in God and revelation then I completely respect that as well. But if your faith is one of constantly “hoping” for something to be true, even when you suspect that it may not be, then I really just think you need to grow up.
There, I hope that wasn't too harsh.

StarBooks Club

2006-07-21T16:08:00.000-04:00

I’m sorry. I really like puns. This morning I was sitting in the above-said coffee emporium on 181st and Fort Wash and I was approached by a nice man named Jose who noticed that I was reading a book. He explained that he’s a science teacher in the Bronx and just moved to Washington Heights and is disappointed at the lack of intellectual life here. He is therefore starting a book club that will meet at Starbucks once a month and hopefully get thoughtful people who live near each other to start talking to each other. I think this is a great idea, the English-speaking population in the Heights is small enough that building a sense of community along something other than Jewish lines may actually be within the realm of possibility. I’m concerned that Jose will not be able to filter out crazy people from coming too, since at the moment the sole prerequisite for joining seems to be reading a book in Starbucks, but I will let him worry about that. He asked me to spread the word so if any Heights residents are interested let me know (at Underground.Heights@gmail.com) and I will give you updates when I hear them. I hope this works out!

The Current State of Affairs

2006-07-18T00:52:00.000-04:00

One of the ironic things about diaries and blogs and writing in general is that you can only really find the time and wherewithal to write when there isn’t too much going on. Super exciting and eventful lives don’t get immediately recorded in thoughtful, personal ways- but bookish, reflective types can have their every observation go down in history, Similarly, maybe not so similarly but whatever, whenever I hear about real current events that are going on, I find myself hesitant to comment. I am ok taking the neutral little episodes and encounters that make up my life and turning them grand revelations and epiphanies, but then when actual stuff happens—like rockets falling and people dying—I sit quietly and watch the news like everyone else. And the news is full of dumb clichés, it is, always a cliffhanger before the commercials, and newspapers only get printed once a day so they’re not very helpful either. Every political or social comment I can make about the event itself is being said by other people, and pontificating about my own emotional responses to such catastrophes just seems petty, and maybe even wrong.

For example: At Shabbos lunch in Cambridge some of us were discussing what our reactions are when we hear really awful news. I delivered this whole monologue about how there is an element of excitement to even devastating discoveries- and I confessed how on September 11th, I never wanted the day to end. I went on about remembering this intense sense of the future being totally in the air, with no way to predict what was to come. I expected everyone at the table to admit that they had secretly felt the way I did too, this immoral mix of fear and anticipation, but I did not get that response. Instead one of my friends said that I only felt that way because I didn’t know anyone who had been in the towers, she did, and she said that all she wanted to do was curl up in bed and find out the next day that it had all been a bad dream. And she’s right, the only reason I could be so creative about my reactions was because I was so removed from what happened. The closer you get to something really scary, the more similar people start to sound. All the newscasters tonight were saying “stay safe” to their Middle East correspondents, and I thought “couldn’t they think of something else,” but then I also thought, “what else are they supposed to say?” Anna Karenina begins with the line “All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” but I think that when it comes to War and Peace, its kind of the opposite (stupid Tolstoy joke, I’m sorry.) Meaning, while peacetime allows for a huge range emotional nuance and complexity, learning about devastation and destruction narrows that range considerably. What can you say really? “Oh my god” “Those bastards!,” “What will happen next?”

Actually maybe that isn’t true, maybe we haven’t fully developed a full arsenal of ways to respond to tragedy because most people don’t confront it all that often, not enough to really come up with innovative ways to respond. Or maybe there are in fact these universal, visceral reactions to life’s most intense moments. Although more likely, as always, it’s a combination of those things. Wow, this was awfully long for a post that was meant to explain why I have nothing to say about the current conflict. If anyone does in fact feel that they could contribute something please do, I am tired of the news but I am still concerned about Israel and want to think more about this.

My Second Post

2006-07-14T09:42:00.000-04:00

Part two of the epic trilogy.

Here is everything I didn’t cover in my first post.

I love pizza.

But enough about me.

We all know that to understand where you are, you must understand where you have come from. So for all of you who never finished schooling, a brief history of the world.

The world was created with four elements: Earth, Water, Air, and Steinberg.

Fire was created later, when uppity Conservatives from the bible-belt got hot under the collar.

For the first few millenia of civilization, ape-like creatures threw rocks at each other and made cameos in such films as Space Odyssey 2001, and Planet of the Apes 1-4 (the first movie is the only one worth watching, unless you have a thing for monkeys with British accents.)

Around the time of the renaissance, Leonardo Davinci and the other Ninja Turtles invented culture (fat naked women)

Eventually William Shakespeare (who never once in his life took a bath so why should I) began stealing plays from other writers, knocking them over the head, and burying them in the basement.

The timeline of World Literature is as follows

-Philosophy for Dummies (Aristotle, Play-doh)
-Pre Victorian (Shakespeare, God)
-Victorian (Keats, Yeats, Lord Boron)
-Post Victorian (Joseph “Hey, where did everybody go?” Conrad)
-Premodern (Benjamin Franklin, John Hammond, the Quaker Oats guy)
-Modern (Vonnegut, Dave Barry, Dear Abby)
-Postmodern (Raymond Carver, Berenstein Bears, Monster.com)

Eventually, the U.S.A invented the atomic bomb and began dropping it in the desert to see what would happen. Ultimately, government scientists discovered that if they drop the bomb on Japan it would do like ten times as much damage.

So they dropped it twice.

Oh, and Ford invented the Model-T, if I forgot to mention that.

Then, the Russians sent a dog into space. It died. The U.S.A. sent a monkey up. It died. So they went “Hey, looks good! Lets send some guys up!”

Nowadays, we have satellites, and the world-wide-web (which started out as a dating site for teenagers) and paparazzi.

And what will tomorrow bring? Forecasters predict flying cars, talking George Formans, and global warming. And if that won’t get you out of bed every morning, nothing will.

And since the second segment in a trilogy always ends in a cliffhanger:

As Jim slowly opened the pantry door, he realized that the clown had never actually died, only faked a hilarious seizure, and suddenly-

P.S. Throughout this timeline, note that the nations of the world kept on blaming and persecuting the Jews for all the worlds problems, and note that not all of them were really our fault. Sometimes it was the Germans.

Above Ground Heights

2006-07-09T22:55:00.000-04:00

I recently began settling into the actual Heights and I’ve been learning a lot about myself in the process. This is what I’ve learned: I care about things. A lot. This is not to say that people and ideas still aren’t important to me, but moving into ones first “real” apartment really makes you conscious of all the physical necessities that make lofty thinking possible. For the past three days all I could think about was getting my room repainted, installing air-conditioner, transporting my humongous bed (which to my embarrassment took place smack in the middle of Penina and Zach’s l’chaim- Mazal Tov and thank you to P, Z, Mimi, Benji and Ari for helping me with my stuff), and manifold other minutiae. I wish I could focus on what I’m supposed to be reading, but all I can think about is how itchy my new linens are, how bare my walls are, where I can get a good desk. I just want everything to be perfect so I can continue to overlook such trivial details. Oh, but the fact that I cannot think or work without them means that they are not so trivial, really. Think of all the people who do not have the luxury of continuously engaging in self-reflection because they are too busy struggling to put food on the table. I’d like to think that those people are getting an equally valid source of insight from their “life experience,” and that books and deep discussion are not the only sources of truth and meaning in life. And I do think there’s something to that “democracy of wisdom” idea. But books and long discussions with people who care are wonderful, and nourishing, and there are so many people who are deprived of those opportunities for growth and meaning for totally arbitrary reasons. And I am beginning to realize how easily I could be have been one of those people. How if circumstances made it so that I couldn’t afford to go to a private liberal arts college, couldn’t fiddle about with graduate study in English Literature, how much of time would be spent thinking about making ends meet. I know in every society there have been artists and intellectuals who have withstood poverty and horrible life conditions to produce things of value, I even have friends who sometimes remind me of those people, and I respect them tremendously, but I most definitely cannot count myself among them. I am able to consider myself “deep” thanks to air-conditioning, abundant sleeping time, and a credit card. If I did not have those things I would be a different person, with different concerns, and different goals. Now that I realize that will I act any differently towards my academic studies? Probably not. But I don’t think I can really criticize people anymore for not making the most of their time. Who can think about God when there is a weird smell wafting in from the radiator?

It’s interesting to juxtapose the two major cultural stereotypes people use to describe Jews: Jews are rich, and Jews are the “people of the book.” I used to think that those two associations were totally disconnected - Jews who cared about learning were impoverished and ascetic (Vilna Gaon style), and Jews who cared about money and became patrons of learning were Jewish in the cultural or national, rather than textual sense (Zevulun/Baron Rothschild style.) But nowadays it would be hard to consider the classic “Jewish intellectual” as anything but a direct product of their socio-economic bracket. There’s a reason why the Upper West Side has better shiurim than Harlem does, and its not only a result of the brilliance and versatility of Torah (although don’t get me wrong, Torah is brilliant and versatile.) Its possible that Talmud and Jewish values make Jews smart and cunning and they therefore they are able to make money. But it probably also works the other way around. I think a lot of people already know all this (especially you Marxist Lindenbaums) so I’m not really sure why I had to write this post. Oh, I know, in case I run into any of you people in the Heights and you happen to wonder where “deep” Sarah has gone (get it? "above ground" heights?), I can assure you she is on leave until her shades are installed and her shower starts to drain properly. I just hope she comes back soon.

Perfect: Another word to delete from the dictionary

2006-07-04T21:36:00.000-04:00

Has anyone ever seen the movie Gattaca? Shmuel K. has seen it 8 times, as of last night Ari and myself have seen it once, Toby, Harvey, and some other people, until about halfway through. It’s a good movie, beautiful to look at, and it raises some interesting points. Namely, in the “not-so-distant future” we will be able to figure out a lot about a person’s genetic makeup (IQ, physical strength, longevity potential) with any bodily sample, and we will be able to screen our kids before we have them so that they have the best genes possible. One of the points of the movie, I think, is that even genetic screening will only take you so far; there is no gene for “faith” or for being a good person; physical perfection is not everything, there are other ways to measure value and potential. The unstated message is therefore that genetic screening is bad, and we should let people be imperfect because perfection is overrated. But I think it is only talking about a narrow definition of perfection. Early in the movie, when a doctor was convincing two parents to forgo natural birth, in favor of engineered birth, the doctor said something like, “There’s enough imperfection in human beings as it is, we just want to give your child the best shot he can get.” Meaning, it’s not that perfection is overrated, it’s just impossible to be entirely perfect. Thus it’s wrong to penalize the outliers. However, there’s little in the movie to make a philosophical case for why we really shouldn’t try to engineer the most perfect people possible. One issue might be ostracizing the minority who, for whatever reason, don't get there (similar to debates surrounding whether people should be allowed to screen for down-syndrome); but that still wouldn't make anything essentially wrong with making people the best they can possibly be. I guess really the main problem is that the category of “best” is itself up for debate.

I’ve noticed that line of thinking in a lot of areas recently; where resolution comes not from giving up perfection as a goal, but redefining your definition of perfection in the first place. Actually, I think literally every single conversation I have with people about relationships tends to involve one party making peace with the fact that the other party doesn’t live up to everything s/he ever wanted in a mate. They realize that because this guy they like isn’t super-smart, tall, successful, whatever they have always wanted, that those categories are themselves not as important as they once thought they were. If they don’t make that realization, and are just disappointed, then they are in an unhealthy relationship; if they do, then they will probably be ok.

Flash forward to religion- I think we are all doomed to have unhealthy relationships with God. God is father, God is lover, God is king. God is whatever and whoever we think is perfect at the time we are imagining Him. So are our conceptions of Olam Habah and Moshiach. And saying a thing like “it was hashgacha pratis” is of course a thinly veiled substitute for “I am happy with what happened” (sorry Mimi). When we are not happy with what happened, God is either not mentioned, or we say that we will soon see the good behind it. It’s easy to say these things about God or religion because we are not going to get convinced otherwise. God is never going to disappoint our notions of His perfection, we can raise the bar to our heart’s delight. I’m not saying that just because we have no correlative to reality doesn’t mean it’s not true. But its funny how, day to day, I learn that the secret to having meaningful interactions with people is to lower my notions of “perfection” down to earth. To try to see value in people as they are, not as I think they should be. If only because I may be, and probably am, mistaken in a lot of my value judgments. When it comes to religion, I don’t see how it’s possible to maintain that kind of humility. Although, note that God doesn’t call things perfect, or beshert, or “meant to be,” he just calls them “good.” And revelation is of course a helpful way to make sure religious speculation stays grounded in some kind of tangible data. But I don’t think that people are religious only because it says so. I think many see it as filling in whatever gaps they see in their own “imperfect” lives. And that would be fine if they had an accurate definition of perfection, but I highly doubt they do. Even a world without sadness or evil wouldn’t be perfect because there couldn’t be goodness. Even basking in the radiant light of Truth (a la Rambam) wouldn’t be perfect because, I think, it would be boring (yes Noah there’s room here to argue.) And until people figure out what perfection really is, something they don’t do properly in the world of Gattaca, and definitely don’t do much more successfully in our own, they can’t use religion to filter out imperfections. I hope that makes sense. Happy 4th of July.

Rilke, ahhh...

2006-06-30T00:14:00.000-04:00

I know blogs are designed for a certain kind of attention span, but whatever, here is a really difficult, but really wonderful poem that I read tonight with Estie Wolf and Adina Goldstein. Thank you guys, I cant believe I’ve never read Rilke before, its ridiculous how good he is. If anyone gets a chance to look it over carefully, insights would be greatly appreciated.

I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone

by Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Annemarie S. Kidder

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone
enough
to truly consecrate the hour.
I am much too small in this world, yet not small
enough
to be to you just object and thing,
dark and smart.
I want my free will and want it accompanying
the path which leads to action;
and want during times that beg questions,
where something is up,
to be among those in the know,
or else be alone.

I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection,
never be blind or too old
to uphold your weighty wavering reflection.
I want to unfold.
Nowhere I wish to stay crooked, bent;
for there I would be dishonest, untrue.
I want my conscience to be
true before you;
want to describe myself like a picture I observed
for a long time, one close up,
like a new word I learned and embraced,
like the everyday jug,
like my mother's face,
like a ship that carried me along
through the deadliest storm.

Source: poets.org

Music, ahhh...

2006-06-25T13:03:00.000-04:00

Sorry it’s been a while since we’ve updated. I’ve been distracted with various lovely and not-so-lovely developments, among them getting ready to move to the above ground Heights (yay!), struggling to learn German (uggghhh) and also luxuriating in what has been the return of music to my life. For reasons which Id rather not elaborate on, I haven’t listened to music for more than a year, and two weeks ago marked the first time I stuck a CD into my car’s disc drive. The effect has been striking. I drive all the time, and a usually tedious experience has been turned into this rich, soothing, escape from the world. Obviously, ones choice of music is key here (May I recommend the album “Give Up” by The Postal Service-thank you Noah), but I cant help but think there is this universally delicious element to music, and Id like to know more about it. I don’t understand music the way I understand other things like literature and philosophy, sometimes I can comment on the lyrics, and I know if a beat makes me want to move a certain way, but that’s about it. A meager introduction to music theory taught me to articulate how a certain sound is novel, or intellectually interesting, but that still doesn’t help me explain my gut reactions. And that’s what I like about music- an attraction that I can’t totally translate into my everyday vocabulary. It means that I don’t understand everything and there’s what to learn. That’s very exciting to me.

But our tradition’s attitude toward music is somewhat confusing. The deeply powerful and spiritual influence of music is all over Tanach (Tehillim, Shir haShirim etc…) and continues to be invoked in tefillah, tisches etc…But Hilchot Aveilut strictly prohibit instrumental music, and the recent Omer and upcoming 3 Weeks seem to promote a conception of music that is tied to frivolousness and not spiritual in nature. The popular distinction between instrumental and non-instrumental music strikes me as arbitrary, a better division is one that I once heard in the name of the Rav- the difference between music that makes you want to dance and music that is art. The former is forbidden during times of personal and national mourning, while the latter, which would presumably include Mozart, Schubert and Radiohead, are permitted. But still, while I don’t know very much about music, I don’t think that distinction does justice to the multiplicity of reactions to music that are out there. What if Shaul haMelech was seized with a "ruach rah" during the three weeks, or when he was mourning for the death of someone he loved (presumably somewhat likely), would it have been inappropriate for him to call in Dovid to play for him? I don’t think the point of mourning is just to be miserable, if it were than there are many more compelling things we could deprive ourselves of aside from music. I can see how dancing is not something you should be engaging in when you are supposed to be thinking about the Beit Hamikdash, its not a reflective, thought-provoking activity, at least not while you are doing it. But there is plenty of music that does encourage a heightened sensitivity to emotions and to complexity, and I have a hard time thinking of that sensitivity as needing to be “assur” at any point on the Jewish calendar. Maybe we just need to update halakhic conceptions of instrumental music to take into account its modern reincarnations (although it seems like Tanach itself has a plurality of ways to view such music). Maybe I myself am failing to take something important into consideration. I really don’t know so much about this topic. Feedback would be super. Take care everybody.

O Croatia, of thy Glorious Beaches and thy Somewhat Less Glorious Militant Serb Rebels I Sing!

2006-06-15T09:51:00.000-04:00

Okay. Okay. Okay.
So it's been a month. The stuff to report keeps building, and soon I'll give up on even trying to post anything at all, so I'm just gonna go stream-of-consiousness here, throwing a handful of gooey nuggets at the wall that is this blog, and we'll see what sticks, what bounces off, and what kind of sticks at first, then begins to crawl down the wall, like some horrible tumbling slug.

Yikes. Maybe stream-of-consciousness isn't such a great idea after all. Oh well, too late. Here goes:

Well, as many of you know, on May 15, Shani and I got on a plane (showing Brokeback Mountain) bound for Croatia.

For clarity: "Shani" is my wife (or as I secretly like to refer to her, The Ol' Ball 'n' Chain -- tee hee!). "Croatia" is a country. Imagine the west-pointing boot of Italy. The back of its calf is bordered by the Adriatic Sea; beyond that sea is Croatia. Thus, it's got a lot of coast going on. (Croatia is about the size of West Virginia, but shaped like a horseshoe. It has 4.5 million residents, of which 2,000 are Jews. I think we met pretty much all the affiliated Jews in he country, which amounts to about six. )
Croatia has had a bit of a checkered past recently (thus the checkered emblem on its flag?) - it's extremely complicated, but from what I can tell there have been roughly a handful of genocides there in the past century. As recently as fifteen years ago, there was a major Homeland War wherein Croatia gained its independence. Most of our friends, if they had heard of Croatia at all, had vaguely heard about this war and assumed it was still going on.
Here are some actual exchanges:
Us: "We will be leaving to Croatia soon."
Them #1: "You'll be leaving to Eurasia?"
Them #2: "Oh, is your program promoting peace or providing aid?"
Them #3: "Darfur, you say?"
The only real remnants of the war we could see were the bullet-ridden buildings we passed as we rode through the countryside on buses, and the occasional offhand remark to "look out for the mines."

Since describing each part of the entire two-week trip will take way too long, I will now provide you with random tidbits and observations from our experience that come to mind to give you a general sense, and perhaps in some later post I might elaborate with further stories.

--Croatia is absolutely beautiful. The sea is a crisp, clear blue. The trees are a deep green. It would be like a sappy Hallmark card if it wasn't all there, right before your eyes.
--Literally 99% of Croatians are white Catholics. Nuns roam the streets. We saw a black person about a week into the trip and it totally threw us off.
--Everyone eats ice cream all the time. Everyone. There'll be leather-clad teenage punks loitering in the street, leering around menacingly, then they'll take a big kindergarten-kid lick from their cone of double chocolate fudge. We saw this.
--The people in Croatia are all trendy and gorgeous, which is surprising since they seem to live off diets of ham and ice cream, and genuinely despise homosexuals.
--Speaking of ham, there is no way of knowing what food in Croatia is kosher, which makes travelling with giant backpacks for two weeks, well, a bitch. Let's just say we ate a lot of American pita.
--Don't see a foreign language film in a foreign language land. We saw Da Vincijev Kod in the theater and soon realized that the Croatian subtitles did not shed much light on the French and Latin dialogue.
--DUBROVNIK, all the way in the southwest of Croatia, is arguably the most beautiful city in Europe (or so they say). You walk around the ancient city walls and the city is all red rooves, and just beyond is the green trees, the blue sea, the yellow sun. Mmmm, colors... They call it the Pearl of the Adriatic. Oddly enough, the oldest existing Sephardi synagogue in Europe is in Dubrovnik (est'd 1652, I believe). But there are maybe 30 Jews in the entire city nowadays. Actually Jews showed up in Croatia (2nd cent. CE, from Rome) well before the Croats did (7th cent.), but that's a whole other story (which I don't really know).
--On the way down to Dubrovnik, strangely enough, you have to pass through BOSNIA ("and Herzogovina") for about two minutes, since they have access to the sea too as part of some treaty or other. So you're on the bus, minding your own business, and then you have to take out your passport for the grumpy, rotund, dark-tanned Bosnian border guard. After you've put away your passport, you have to immediately take it out again for the trim, white, stylish, laid-back Croatian "border guard" who doesn't actually bother to look at your passport because he's too busy thinking about how beautiful his country is, which it seems like everyone in Croatia is always too busy with. Nobody's rushing or angry ever in Croatia. It's a chill scene, man. Anyway, when returning from Dubrovnik, for some reason, we take a pit stop in Bosnia. I bought a Bosnian Coke. I was confused for a minute because their currency is different from the Croatian kuna -- they deal with something called the Convertible Mark, which I first thought was the name of a TV spinoff for the new Disney/Pixar film Cars. I was wrong. So they declared war on my ass. We had to hightail it out of there.
--The Croatian language ("Croatian") is kind of like the Croatian people: surprisingly chilled out. If it could talk it would say, "Whatever. Here are some letters. Vowels. Consonants. Syllables. These things don't concern me. It will work itself out somehow. Have you seen our beaches?" Therefore, the Croatian word for "Croatia" is HRVATSKA. It's pronounced, if you can imagine, as it is spelled. Similarly, the Croatian word for "town square" is TRG. It too is pronounced just as you'd expect. Trg.
--TROGIR is an awesome medieval-ish old town with ancient engraved family crests on almost every building. A Dungeons and Dragons player's dream. (Or so I'd assume. Ahem.) A happy place, where high school students run along the canals, throw flour at each other, and break out into spontaneous song.
--We spent our first Shabbos in Croatia at the summer home of Shani's friend Malvina's family, on the small island of SOLTA, a short trip from Split. It was overgrown and tranquil. You're right there on the water. A great experience. To prepare on Friday, we had to first venture out into Split's huge open-air fruit and vegetable market, a noisy crazy scene, where everything is still dirty from being plucked that morning - and then there's the fish market, with its slippery floors, and tables full of fish, octupi, and giant eels, straight from the water to your mouth. Yum!
--Did I mention the coast? My God, the coast!
--The second shabbos was spent in the capital, ZAGREB, where they've got the only real semblance of a Jewish community in Croatia that we saw. I was basically tenth man. We ate with the Chief Rabbi on Saturday (the first rabbi there since WWII, he arrived there 8 yrs ago, if I remember correctly), and on Fri. night we ate with the young Chabad rabbi (who has to get his Kosher food staples on monthly trips to Budapest) and a bunch of community members -- since the affiliated Jews are such a small group, they have an interesting family dynamic, and the two 30-ish men have a love-hate relationship wherein they insult each other all meal long. Also, clearly anyone who cares about Judaism there suddenly has to be really involved in getting things done, since there's literally no one else to do it for you. For example, the Chief Rabbi was in contact with the Minister of Agriculture about upcoming legislation that would have put the legality of Shechitah at risk in Croatia. (Don't worry, he talked to the President too; everything will be fine.) The whole Judaism-in-Croatia thing is interesting on its own and beyond the scope of this post. Maybe some other time.
--When staying in Zagreb for a few days, we stayed in Shani's other friends' apartment (what's with all these Croatian friends, am I right?), which we later learned was being temporarily leased from the president of Croatia, who will move back there when he's no longer president. Not just his building, it was his actual apartment. To repeat: We slept in the President of Croatia's apartment and we didn't even know it.
--When we finally left Croatia for Israel on May 30, we showed up at Zageb's international airport somehow before it opened. Then we took a flight to Milan, to transfer to an Israel-bound flight. Along the side of the plane for the Zagreb-to-Milan flight, the carrier's name "Air Alps Aviation" was written "Air A!ps Aviation"... If my trip has taught me nothing else, it is this: Do not board a plane that has a huge exclamation point emblazoned on the side. That is a bad sign. Another bad sign: The plane was a propeller plane. It had room for thirty and it had effing propellers, man! I could've sworn that while we were suffering the first few nosedives over the Apennine Mountains, I heard some crop-dusting solution being released. But hey, that might have just been the sudden drop in cabin pressure playing tricks with my ears.

Hope that was educational, and not too excessive. [By the way, we plan on putting up a whole lot more Croatia pics on Snapfish sometime soon. Feel free to email me if you want to be "invited" to view them.]

Well, now we are in Jerusalem till the end of July, attending Pardes, where we enjoy such classes as "Jewish Clothing" and "Torah Yoga." But, that, my friends, is neither here nor there. A different post, another time...

Until then. Ciao.

can i post this?

2006-06-11T23:08:00.000-04:00

My good friend Sarah once described why she would write online, instead of say- calling a friend- and she told me that sometimes, at three am she is up and she is lonely. She lives far away. She thinks but no one is able to be receptive to those thoughts. So she posts them and suddenly she is connected to friends and people who stumble onto her blog and read what she has to say and connect to her and increase the communication and connection and the world becomes smaller.

Living underground in the heights for some time now, I’ve thought about posting, and ive promised to post, and I’ve delayed a post, and now I have to.

I recently broke up with someone I felt very connected to, and now- at three am, I am thinking about what Sarah said. Because I have this raw emotion, and I have the vestiges of connection severed. I am exposed wiring. I am overflowing water, and fuses blown, and misplaced turnoff ramps. I am disappointment personified. And although I wanted my first post to be clever and full of wit and candor, and to dissect some aspect of modern life or modern orthodoxy to dazzle and amaze all of You, Readers, all I have to offer is this shaking, red jelly of an experience, and see if any one connects.

And maybe that isn’t even the point. I don’t want to give You a tell all. Well I do- but more deep than my desire to dish and to bitch is just a need to shout in some open forum. I need to say that I FEEL ABANDONED and to scream that I am HURT. If I gave birth to a breakup, then my body is still sized to house that relationship and all the extra space has to go somewhere.

Why here? Why not send him an email, or better yet, send an email to oblivion, so that I will have no regrets of overstepping the bounds in the future? I know some of you, and you know me, and that both allures and scares me. Now you see me a little more ragged. I love the heights because of the community ive joined networks I hope I’ve helped fashion. But should I shout in shul? Can I really scream at a meal, or movie night? This blog has mostly been an exchange of ideas, can it accommodate this outpouring of emotion?

Poem for the Day

2006-06-11T10:50:00.000-04:00

Here is a public-domain poem to get us through the day. I am curious about a part of it if anyone is interested in helping me out. What do you think of the line, “Ah, love, let us be true to one another!” Is that enough? Is it meant to provide a counterweight for the joy-less, love-less, painful world? If not, then what is it doing? If you do not like this poem, then you may like this (awesome) other one, a Poetry on the Roof™ favorite.

DOVER BEACH
By Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm tonight,
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!

Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Agean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

1867

Community Announcements

2006-06-07T21:41:00.000-04:00

Shifting gears from polygamy, I’d like to wish a hearty Mazal Tov to Underground Heights member Zvi Halpern on his engagement yesterday to Michelle Landy. Zvi is a talented musician and political theorist, and I don’t know much about Michelle, but I imagine she is very talented and thoughtful too.

Oh no, I just sounded like one of those Rebbes who speaks under the chuppah without knowing the bride at all. But I think I’m allowed to do stuff like that because I’m a woman myself. Regardless, sorry Michelle, we will have to remedy that lack of familiarity in the future.

In other news: Farewell to Shlomo Rydzinski who has chosen to take a break from Underground Heights and begin posting on his twin brother’s blog: zeh mah sheyesh . Shlomo you will be greatly missed and I have not given up on one day helping to facilitate the kind of continuous dialogue (dia-blog?) you are looking for.
Oh and finally, here is a transcript of a post I meant to put up a few weeks ago but forgot to. I thought it was smarter then than I do now, but I like the message at the end:

There is an odd monument standing in the Boston Public Gardens that reads: “To Commemorate the discovery that the inhaling of ether causes insensibility to pain; First Proved to the World at Mass General Hospital 1848.” Apparently, this is the world’s only monument to a drug; and what’s interesting is how broadly the significance of that drug is understood. The statue has all these biblical quotations that are meant to recall numbing quality of either, like this one from Revelations: “Neither Shall There Be Any More Pain” (and “neither” of course is a cute word-play on ether). I think it’s interesting how people would take the regular events of their lives, even the discovery of a drug that knocks people out, and imbue them with this massive Biblical resonance. I’m not sure how much they actually felt this discovery would bring them closer to a truly painless existence, or how much this is being appropriated for artistic reasons; but the equation is powerful nonetheless. Apparently this happened a lot in early America, revolutionary rhetoric is filled with references to the Bible and so on. And of course, this was nothing new. Typology is found throughout Jewish history, and continues to be heard in current (conservative) political discourse.

I find this mode of thinking very inspiring when I look at the past, yet when I see people doing similar things today, I don’t feel the same way. I feel turned off by the arrogance of laying claim to a broader, world historical narrative (a la Hegel), and think we should all focus on how “different” we are; how there are no continous strands throughout history, how every new era is a unique hybrid. But let’s be honest, when I look at the past, I do see a kind of continuous march that leads straight up to me. As hard as I try to feel otherwise, I continuously find that nothing really matters except in the way that it relates to moi. Daniella Gruenspecht once said that there is no reason to ever want to become famous or a celebrity, because no matter what, “I will always be the star of the Daniella Show” And everyone is always the star of her own show, even someone who stalks celebrities is still the star of his or her own show; that celebrity is just a contributing factor to his own warped worldview. Moshe, Napoleon, Marx, the big movers and shakers of history, no matter how I swing it, they are all supporting actors in the “Sarah Show.” Just like no matter what, I will never be anything more than a minor cast member in the “Shlomo Show” or the “Zvi Halpern Show” or the “Nutter than a Fruitcake and Happier Too” show. I could go on, but I wrote up these thoughts for a reason. I do not want this blog to be the Sarah Show. Therefore everyone should post. And that’s the moral of my story.

HBO Dvar Torah

2006-06-05T22:23:00.000-04:00

Here is a modified version of a Dvar Torah on polygamy that I gave on Shavuos in Bradley Beach.
My apologies to those who thought it was ridiculous the first time around.

Polygamy has deep roots in the Torah, yet even there, it is usually a cause of strife. And in modern times especially, a man having multiple wives is often an excuse for exploitation and other hurtful behaviors. But is there anything valuable we can extract from the practice of polygamy? The HBO show “Big Love” seems to think so, and it makes a convincing case. One of the premises of “Big Love” is that it takes a lot of love to keep a “big family” going, and even if there are sometimes cracks in the ice, it is worthwhile to try. The setup between the spouses is kind of interesting, its not like all the women are married to this man, you get the sense that they are all 4 married to each other. And practically every show (I’ve watched 5) sets up the same challenge of whether or not the spouses will be able to rally up enough love to overcome a particular conflict.

We tend to operate with a two-person model of relationships, you choose someone to love no matter what (and then you have kids with them) and then in order to keep that relationship healthy and secure, you consciously create distance from other people. We do that with religion, we do that with democracy, we do that with stuff we like in general. The challenge of “Big Love” is to be able to love more than one person, truly, really, and not have it detract from your love for the others. Rather than operate from the idea that we have a fixed potential of what we can give of ourselves, the show suggests that we can always expand that potential, and spread our love in more directions. It’s true that there are limits even to a polygamous household, and the father in “Big Love” seems to show no interest in courting another wife, but he never throws it out as a value. He recognizes his limits in how much love he can give, but he also recognizes them as limits, and not ideal. It’s a nice thought because all families, even monogamous ones, are these ever-expanding entities, and I’m guessing its always a challenge to incorporate new people into the family, children, grandchildren, in-laws, etc…I also think polygamy offers a helpful model for approaching dissenting ideas in general. We can’t honestly try to synthesize every new perspective we encounter into our own lives, it would be impossible and we would never get anything done; but we can still see that as a failure on our own part to try and relate, rather than give it up as a goal in the first place. On this holiday of Matan Torah I would like to remind you that Hashem chose to symbolically marry 600,000 people at Har Sinai, not one. Thank you and Chag Sameach.

A Guide for the Perplexed

2006-05-31T12:50:00.000-04:00

I've started reading Maimonides' Moreh L'Nevuchim recently, intrigued by his claims that he has encoded secret teachings into the general plan of the work. In the introduction, Rambam says that there are several reasons why a careful thinker might contradict himself, and the most interesting reasons are that perhaps he did not mean either statement, but a third, unspoken statement.
When I was in Yeshiva (Gush) someone mentioned to me that some quack professor in Tel Aviv University (I have no idea who) believed that Rambam was an atheist. I was stupefied, and then indignant. Impossible, I said. Impossible that the man who wrote the Mishna Torah, and clearly spent his entire life involved with Torah and the Jewish community, could not believe in God. Many years later, I have learned that this opinion of Rambam is more widely shared than I could have imagined when I was in yeshiva. I've since learned that some atheists really regret the faith they have lost, and feel as though society could not function without religion and faith; they continue to act religious (and perhaps write religious tracts) for the sake of their society, and not themselves. Also, the claim is probably not accurate - Rambam certainly had a very broad conception of God, and probably did not believe in specific Providence as we are taught it in kindergarten (and reject in our 20s)...he may not have believed in Torah MiSinai in the way that Charedim insist upon, but he was likely not an atheist.
I'm only 100 pages in. It just got difficult - all of a sudden, I'm expected to understand Aristotle's Metaphysics and writings On the Soul. I've never read these works. I'm also supposed to know Aristotle's Physics. And I'm stuck wondering whether the problems that Aristotle dealt with have been superceded by modern science (in which case it's useless to study these things), or whether modern science ignores and bypasses the problems Aristotle tried to examine.
In any case, I just wanted to share. So far I haven't even seen Rambam contradict himself, nevermind finding the secret messages. Maybe they're all in chapters 2 and 3. Or maybe I'm just not the type of student he was writing for. Maybe I need to reread everything. If anyone wants a chavrusa in Aristotle, let me know.

The Religious Pluralism Post

2006-05-31T01:45:00.000-04:00

I noticed this list of religions on some other blog , and I cannot believe how low Judaism ranks. Even if you combine our numbers with Zoroastrianism (just kidding!), we still don't make it above Spiritism, or even Juche! The Western sensibility that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are the “Big Three” is apparently a very misleading one. So how do we react? Should we be trying to to explore and understand these various other faiths and the hold they have over people, or can we really continue to talk about “religion” in the abstract based only on our own personal encounter with it? I’m curious because I’ve been thinking about putting English Literature aside and studying world religion for a little bit. There is so much out there, its crazy. And here’s my most pressing question: When’s the right time to put a stop to exposing yourself to new ideas and start doing something productive? Graduation feels arbitrary. I’m looking for a moment when I will be able to think “Ah, now I get it, now I can share it with the world.” Something tells me that moment is not going to come anytime soon, but I’d like to contribute something of value before that. Oh well. Here’s the list:

The World’s Religions

1. Christianity 2.1 billion
2. Islam 1.3 billion
3. Secular/Irreligious/Agnostic/Atheist 1.1 billion
4. Hinduism 900 million
5. Chinese folk religion 394 million
6. Buddhism 376 million, not including Chinese folk Religion (see also Buddhism by country)
7. Primal indigenous 300 million
8. African traditional and diasporic 100 million
9. Sikhism 23 million
10. Juche 19 million
11. Spiritism 15 million
12. Judaism 14 million
13. Bahá'í Faith 7 million
14. Jainism 4.2 million
15. Shinto 4 million (see below)
16. Cao Dai 4 million
17. Tenrikyo 2 million
18. Neo-Paganism 1 million
19. Unitarian Universalism 800,000
20. Rastafari movement 600,000
21. Scientology 500,000
22. Zoroastrianism 180,000 to 250,000

Graduation Blues

2006-05-26T14:22:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was my first time attending a college graduation, and let me tell you, it’s an odd affair. Even for those of us who are accustomed to elaborate ritual programs, with special outfits and specific times to sit and stand (i.e. davening), graduation feels weird. People are talking in English (except for Rabbi Lamm) and are basically championing secular, humanistic values- but they wear flowing robes and medallions and demand the utmost solemnity and respect. It really throws off your sense of decorum as a function of religious consciousness. In shul people either talk or daven, there is little sense of respect for the atmosphere apart from its function- to pray to God. Graduation is an interesting case study in how people can actually engage in actions that feel important but don’t actually “do” anything.

It’s hard to believe that people take it seriously, but I think many do. And the super-packed auditorium is surprising in of itself. I love spending time with my family, but you don’t actually do that at graduation. They sit far away and listen to speeches that have nothing to do with the person they know who is graduating. Actually, the speeches have nothing to do with anyone who is graduating. Half of the program is dedicated to giving honorary degrees to these lovely but totally random people, some of whom have only the remotest correlation to YU other than the fact that they are Jewish. Some of my friends had as many as ten family members who came in from all over, to sit and hear about the former President of University of Pennsylvania, and about a member of the Canadian parliament, take a few pictures, and then go out to Abigaels.

Mmmm Abigaels…While my own family was there, a waiter noticed that I was still wearing my gown and asked me if I had just graduated. I said yes, and instead of offering the expected “congratulations,” he gave me a sympathetic look and said, “Now you have to work. It's hard.” I’m not sure why that touched me so much, probably because it felt sincere while the rest of the ceremony felt, I don’t know, I guess it wasn’t insincere, but it didn’t feel very intellectually honest either. While almost every speaker invoked the shadow of the Holocaust, hardly anyone mentioned current events, and how messed up the world still continues to be. The only reference to 9/11 was in regard to one man’s efforts to stimulate economic progress, the only reference to Darfur was to praise the students for their rally attendance. We were reminded to find “what is sacred in the human, and what is human in the sanctified,” without any recognition of the profound, perhaps impossible task of doing that in a world where religious truth is relative, and often the cause of ugly conflict (that said, I kind of like the quote). No one even alluded to the possibility that Jewish values might in any ever conflict with secular, ethical forms of making the world a better place; come to think of it, I don’t remember the word “conflict” being used once. Everything is great: YU is great, Judaism is great, the world is great, and it will be even greater now that 600 Stern, YC and Sy Syms students are in it. We got little puzzle-cubes as graduation prizes and President Joel told this absurd story about the world as a complicated jigsaw puzzle that we want to “fall into place.” I suppose I don’t have anything against that sentiment per se, but its interesting because I always thought the point of a liberal arts education was make things more complex, not less. But then, at the very apex of our college career, we have to sit and listen to a bunch of non-academic speeches that purport to give us serious life advice all in the span of several minutes or less. It’s all very under-whelming. And granted, maybe if I had actually graduated yesterday instead of this upcoming September I would felt somewhat differently, maybe not like so much of an onlooker. And I guess having concrete plans for next year would have made things a little less painful as well. And maybe I need to just stop complaining. I do feel very fortunate to have received a college education. And I do often look forward to the future and to progress. But hearing those hopeful and positive sentiments expressed in ways that totally ignore the complexity of the world somehow makes me feel worse, and more worried, than more somber fare would. I know, I know, there must be some redeeming element to a traditional college graduation ceremony; but I’m having trouble thinking of one right now.

Hello my Name is... Rydzinski

2006-05-25T14:00:00.000-04:00

so.. My last name is Rydzinski.... and... my last name kinda sucks.

No seriously, it blows. Most people mispronounce it, everybody mispells it. (for the etimology by my brudda, click here)

But, last night...

My name became cool.

The season finale of the "hit" television program LOST, debuted a character (only in name, never seen... yet) called ... RYDZINSKI!!!! (they dont spell it, but clearly pronounce it with every single one of the letters!!! Thats impressive, because sometimes I even miss some).

Ok, so Rydzinski shot himself in the head because he got tired of punching in the mysterious numbers into the mysterious computer. Its dark, whatever. BUTTTT, siiiiiiiiiince LOST has flashbacks in every episode, there's always a chance there will be an actor who actually portrays the elusive Rydzinski!!! We'll have to ALL keep our fingers crossed, and our eyes open!!!

* * * *** * * * *

And in other related news, I redid a drawing for this flier and it can be viewed HERE.

Speaking of Gender...

2006-05-22T00:37:00.000-04:00

I just saw the Da Vinci Code, which was fun. Hopefully I won't wreck the movie for anyone in this post. So - in the Da Vinci Code, it turns out, that Jesus probably had children, and that they probably have a bloodline that (probably) runs all the way down to the present. Along with this fact comes the premise that Jesus was not immortal or the Son of God, so the superhuman effort put into keeping this bloodline alive, with secret societies that double and triple-cross each other, is kind of baffling. In the end, it almost comes across that they're keeping alive Jesus' line because he was the true king on earth, but the movie veers away from that idea (probably because it doesn't make any sense.)

But this got me thinking - when I was young, I used to think I would be Mashiach. For some reason I thought that if I memorized mishnayot and repeated them all the time (so as not to waste a moment of Torah), I'd end up being Mashiach. I only ended up memorizing about 4, but I repeated them a lot while I was walking to the bus stop.

So, I shouldn't smirk too soon at the Da Vinci Code, and at people who thought that Jesus' heir was the true king of the earth, because I used to also aspire to being the true king of the earth.

But in the Da Vinci Code, there's an even bigger twist, because the true heir of Jesus ends up being a girl. So this got me wondering whether Jewish girls ever think that they're going to be Mashiach too. Because it probably can't happen (or maybe it could, but it wouldn't be Kavod Hatzibbur so it would be asur) but really you never know.

Another Whack at Synthesis

2006-05-22T00:16:00.000-04:00

My Mom forwarded me this essay from today’s NY Times which I think expresses a lot of what I was trying to say in The Gender Post, but much more pointedly. Its called “Changing My Feminist Mind: One Man at a Time” and as you can guess from the title, the author chronicles the gnawing away at her feminist ideals by her actual interactions with men. Basically, she starts out with these grand ideals of equality, falls for a guy who respects her but doesn’t buy into all of those ideals, and then re-evaluates those ideals in light of the fact that she is happy with this man and because she makes the realization that, “Both love and life are rich in contradiction, and who am I to fight it?”

Putting feminism aside for now, I think the author’s general approach is slightly disturbing, but also deeply familiar. She has these beliefs, which she subscribes to for legitimate, well-thought out reasons; but then encounters someone who seems like a good, quality person, who does totally fit into her value system. She responds to the realization that someone can be slightly sexist and not a jerk by questioning everything she’s ever believed about sexism and gender roles to begin with. To a certain extent, I think this is a nice, modest approach to take to interacting with people, but on the other hand, it makes me uncomfortable, mostly because I’ve gone through that process of re-evaluation so many times that its ridiculous. Not only in regard to gender roles, although certainly there, but in general when it comes to encountering religious or academic figures who sweep me away, in some way or another, without actually maintaining beliefs that I agree with. It doesn’t always take much, sometimes its just the way they look at me in the eye when I speak, or a kind of humility they maintain without being stupid, or the way they interact with people in general; any of these things will be enough to trigger this instinct in me that they are impressively at peace with themselves and their lives. I may be wrong a lot of the time, sometimes I encounter such superheroes from the past and I am surprised that I was ever so taken with them; but I continue to encounter these types all the time, and they always give me cause to reflect.

Yet what’s surprising, and most difficult to juggle, is how rarely these various people have very much in common with each other. I will meet a Rabbi from Israel, an agnostic poet, a college career advisor, all whom totally disagree with each other on all of life’s biggest questions, but at the same time, seem to me to be attractively, enviously, inexplicably “whole.” It throws me off constantly- as I get engaged in these conversations with people who utterly enchant me and yet could not care less about half the things that interest me, and even actively believe in a lot of ideas that I find outdated or intellectually dishonest or simply wrong. I don’t think I could boil down the impression of “wholeness” to a formula, and I think it changes all the time, and I could probably also chalk it up to physical factors some of the time, or to other random associations I make. And I guess there’s nothing necessarily wrong with feeling this way about people, if anything it makes life kind of exciting, but there is also all this potential for confusion. And I only have two real options of how to respond. I can try to dissect my attraction to an individual on psychological, sociological, physical grounds- I like person “a” because she is super famous and remembers people’s names, he blushes when he talks about things he cares about, etc…- and then move on to what I don’t agree with, or where we differ. OR I can live life along the lines of what that NY Times author suggests, and let my values, and even my gut instincts fluctuate and change with every new interaction and experience. Something tells me the first option is preferable, but the second one is nice too. Some people subscribe to the second but only up until a certain point. That is, they encounter one special teacher or Rebbe, and let themselves get swept away, but only with that one person, for a good part of their life. I have less respect for that last position than for the first two- if only because it feels a little arbitrary. But that’s based on my own conception of “wholeness,” one that can be found in all sorts of people. Of course its possible that one could have a totally different set of measuring sticks than I do, one that only a handful of people really live up to. And that’s ok too, but the more I think about it, the more I like this “both love and life are rich in contradiction” concept. Stated in one tone of voice it is a frustrating cop-out , but if you say it with a slightly upward lilt it becomes this exciting and affirmative value.

P.S: OSM picture is below as promised. Thanks for a great semester!

Really Bad Math Jokes

2006-05-17T12:50:00.000-04:00

Recently, a certain member of Underground Heights, who is also an actuary, complained that the content of the blog had gotten too serious. This is my revenge.

There was this magnificent mathematical horse. You could teach it arithmetic, which it learned with no difficulty, algebra was a breeze, it could even prove theorems in euclidean geometry, but when you tried to teach it analytic geometry, it would rear back on its hind legs, kick ferociously neigh loudly and make violent head motions in resistance.

The moral of this story is that you can't put Descartes before the horse.

Question: The answer is "9-K", what is the question?
Answer: The question is "Karl do you spell your name with a 'C'?"

Another Version:
Q: The Answer is "9-W", what is the question?
A: The question is “Mr. Vagner do you spell your name with a V?"

Q: What is the value of the contour integral around Western Europe?
A: Zero, all the Poles are in Eastern Europe.

What did one math book say to the other?
Don't bother me I've got my own problems!

Courtesy of Heedful Hobbes (whoever he is) and http://www.sonoma.edu/Math/faculty/falbo/jokes.html

Desperately Seeking a Dvar Torah

2006-05-16T16:05:00.000-04:00

Hello Friends.
Today is Lag B’Omer, a day when we get to celebrate because Hashem ceased from killing R. Akiva’s 24,000 disciples, only to continue killing them tomorrow. The bonfires and the hair-cutting are considered a much needed break, because in general, this is supposed to be a time of mourning. But then, some of us have also been remembering to count Sefirah, presumably because we are excited that God is going to give us the Torah. And Kabbalists have a field trip during this time, jumping from sefirah to sefirah, growing closer to God, its all very exciting. Yet has anyone ever noticed how strange it is that we mingle these completely opposing sentiment during the Omer: excitement for receiving the Torah and grief over the deaths of tens of thousands. I think both are important emotions, but it’s very strange that we conflate them during these days. Our only option, it seems, is to remain detached from the whole process of the Omer; because if we try to make it meaningful, then will have to engage in two completely opposite, mutually exclusive emotions: eager anticipation for what God is about to give us, and real sadness for what He tore away from us. I know there are plenty of cute vorts that try to reconcile the two, but I really do think in order to do justice to either of those emotions, we need to shortchange the other. Am I missing something important, or was this just a poor attempt at double-tasking?

A Few Notes on Why We May Be Able to Chill Out

2006-05-14T14:06:00.000-04:00

From the look of Shlomo’s posts (and drawings), one would think that the world we are living in is this incredibly profound, intellectual/cultural playground of sorts. And the thought of that is very exciting to me. But then occasionally I have these conversations, mostly with Orthodox Jewish women a couple of years older than I am, that put a different spin on things entirely. For example: on Shabbos I spent some time with a couple of such women, all of whom were discussing what for them is a “scary age.” The answers were surprisingly low, like 40 years lower than my own was. They then explained that they meant it in terms of not being married, a fear that I hadn’t really taken into consideration. After Shab we watched this movie “Prime” which was about this 23 year-old guy who falls for a 37 year old woman and their relationship seemed quite nice. In that movie, there was nothing depressing about being 37 and still figuring things out, and while it’s true that looking like Uma Thurman does not hurt, it gave me some perspective on the matter.

Another topic that came up that day was was Chaim Sultan’s ambitious project, the potential integration of YC and Stern. A few people surprisingly expressed opposition, but someone suggested that it might help the “shidduch-crisis.” Liora Kasten who had just returned from doing two weeks of relief work in the Sudan asked, “What exactly is the crisis? People in their twenties aren’t getting married?” Yet another good source of perspective. But then I thought: people are lonely, isn’t that a crisis? But then for much of society that marriage-desperation only really peaks in people's mid to late thirties, as they hear their biological clock ticking; so wouldn’t we be better off if we pushed it off a little bit? Why does everyone have so much “angst” about not being married when they have plenty of child-bearing years ahead of them? Is it that there will be noone left to marry? Is it about sex? If Rabbis knew that allowing pre-marital sex with use of mikva would lower communal rates of depression would they allow it? Although, it probably wouldn’t make so much of a difference anyhow. Because this isn’t only about sex, it’s about communal expectations. It’s about feeling bad for being single for reasons aside from actual loneliness, and we need to get rid of as many of those reasons as possible! Beginning with apartments.
I mentioned to Berger this past Pesach that there is no rational reason why I feel like I need to be married in order to make my kitchen kosher for Pesach, or generally feel like a stable, settled-in human being. She quoted someone else as saying that the reason we fail to settle in properly (i.e. get land lines, vacuum) is because subconsciously we don’t want to make ourselves TOO comfortable in our vagrant, single lifestyles. I’m not sure how true that is.

One way to take the edge off of the “shidduch crisis,” especially for women, would be to make something other than shul-attendance the centerpiece of Jewish communal life. Feeling part of a community is very satisfying, and it helps when you are able to do something other than show your face once or twice a week. Another issue is that the other major Jewish communal activities we take part in, besides for shul, are life-cycle simchot. But those two poles: synagogues and weddings, are not the sum-total of what Judaism is all about. Yet those are the public activities we take part in, and neither of those things is super-meaningful for people who are on their own (its not a coincidence that a renaissance of Jewish learning has taken off in places like the Upper West Side and Katamon, and I think its great).

I once heard the vice president of the OU give this ridiculous speech about homosexuality and Judaism, where he explained how homosexuality is more than forbidden in the Torah, its undermines the very ground upon which Judaism is founded: the family . Now granted, I think family is beautiful and valuable, but since when is that the centermost part of our tradition? There are monastic strands within Judaism, didn’t Moshe have to separate from his wife in order to become close to God? And I’ve heard that R.Avraham ben ha Rambam wrote that men should not get married until they are 40 because it will detract from their learning or whatnot. This “shidduch crisis” has to stop existing as a uniquely Orthodox Jewish problem; if singles in the MO community are feeling worse off than they would be in a university community, or a secular neighborhood, then we are failing miserably. I love Judaism, but if it only works best with families, then I think something is seriously wrong. Families are not the stable, permanent entities we often like to think they are: people pass away, people fall out of love, people are homosexual, people don’t get the chance to fall in love to begin with. These people can’t all be doomed to miserable lives. There must be something more to the picture, right?

Web-Portfolio Evolution

2006-05-14T10:58:00.000-04:00

I once had a day in which I asked everyone I met "what was more suprising: that things change, or that things stayed the same?" my most recent roomate at the time, a biology major, thought it seemed more likey that things would constantly be in flux (homeostasis be damned--entropy is the real deal), and thus it suprised him more that anything would stay the same. Myself, a student of cognitive-behavioral psychology, I was more prone to think about the fixed patterns of human behavior and cognition. Thus, it seemed to me that it would be more suprising to see people change--it seems as if most people generally stay the same in their perspective on the world.

Sometimes, I get a kick out pf playing around with these vague questions, that require much interpretation by the answerer. Other times I think these are less interesting compared to actually trying to make a change.

Websites. I dont know much about them, and its not an easy task for me to update mine (of course, you all know that shlomo rydzinski is artsidoxy.com, right?). But there are plans in the works to update my web-portfolio @ artsidoxy.com. My plan is to make that even more commercial friendly, and post the avantgarde wildness at a new site shloono.deviantart.com. deviantart.com is for art, what myspace is for music. Designed specifcially around sharing artwork, with multiple means of speaking with members of the online community. And its so easy to use. So check out my unfinished sketches and visual metaphysical ramblings, and we will evolve together (until, Im mirtzah shem, B'viat ha'online mashiach, we will all become sparks information, free from the gashmiyut of bodies, unifed as nodes on the holy internet. Amen, tongue in cheek, selah).

Blogs and the Like

2006-05-10T02:20:00.000-04:00

I just saw that Harvard Law School recently had a conference called "Bloggership: How Blogs Are Transforming Legal Scholarship.” Apparently, blogging has been taken up by a whole host of legally minded people, and if anyone has ever tried to read a scholarly journal, in almost any academic discipline, they will understand why. It’s just so hard to say anything new nowadays, and if someone wants to get published they have enter more and more obscure territory. Furthermore, the more serious and specialized your work is, the smaller the group of people is who will actually understand you. On a side note, this makes me very sad, because the precise reason I want to enter academia is because the prospect of doing something interesting that has an impact is more exciting to me than making money; but apparently in order to publish you cannot be interesting because that has probably been done before and you cannot have an impact because noone is going to understand you.

Blogs on the other hand, don’t have any of those drawbacks. You get to reach a nice sized audience and talk about what you want to talk about and get instant feedback which is always fun. But there are other drawbacks: it’s really fleeting, how often do people re-read posts, and frankly, how much thought goes into the posts to begin with. Really “bloggership” should not and will not replace scholarship, but its cool how it occupies a particular niche that did not exist before. In general, all this technological stuff- Aim, text messaging, Facebook- however superficial it might seem to Shmuel Kadosh and others, is doing interesting things to the way we relate to our friends. People like to lament how computers and e-mail are “replacing” live human interaction, and to some extent I think that’s true, but I also like to think of them as expanding or totally altering the range of how we relate to people. For example, blogging may seem like a weird mixture of diary entries, journalism, and live conversations; but it is also something entirely new and unprecedented in human experience. Or to take another example that I was discussing with M.C. tonight: The peculiar social dynamics of text-message flirtation are subtle and utterly unique, they have never before been felt in quite the same way. Technology has given us totally new feelings and emotions we’ve never had before. It’s true its gotten rid of other feelings in the process (like the joy of seeing someone you care about who has just returned from a long, telephone-less, journey), but that’s ok too, we have literature for recalling those emotions.

That’s not to say that certain activities aren’t probably a waste of time. But with my newfound appreciation for human interaction “as it is” rather than trying to fit every emotion into traditional categories, “ as it should be,” I often have trouble figuring out where to draw lines. Relationships are always interesting and worthy of attention, so how do you decide if one is “going nowhere” and one “has potential”? This is a very abstract conversation that I should not be having online. But I think the question needs to be raised; and it relates to blogging and Facebook and Only Simchas because people say those things are wastes of time and I am inclined to agree but they are also interesting social phenomenon that attract my attention. Sometimes certain events pierce through all this muck and demand our attention, establishing a clear hierarchy of importance; and there are also always going to be things I feel really are trivial (like poker, I’m sorry Zvi) but the time I spend fiddling around with Facebook and looking at Google videos is really humbling in how much it shakes up my traditional sense of even mildly meaningful behavior. I don't really have much more to say about that except that it is true and we should all be more open about it.

Not quite my triumphant return

2006-05-08T23:29:00.000-04:00

Okay, this is not quite my triumphant return to the world of blogging. But I did want to announce the return of artsy movie night. The occassion is that Dov Friedman, a Heights resident, has made a four minute short film that I thought would be cool to show in the neighborhood. Since the movies only four minutes long, I figured we should follow this up with a longer, artsy film. My choice, if we get it in time from Netflix, is "Band of Outsiders," a French film from Jean Luc Godard. I've wanted to see it for a while. It's about two small time crooks teaming up with a girl to steal her aunt's money. It also features this incredibly cool dance scene which served as the influence for John Travolta and Uma Thurman's dance scene in "Pulp Fiction."
So come on over to the Berger, Schier & Movsky residence on Wednesday night @ 8 and bask in both the local talent and the cool, subversive French vibes. Sorry for the short notice, but I've been grading 70 ninth grade Shakespeare tests. I'm looking forward to this.

The Gender Post

2006-05-06T23:48:00.000-04:00

I have wanted to post something relating to gender stuff for a while but I have put it off mostly because I don’t really know what I’m talking about, and my tendency to make generalizations for some reason bothers people more when gender is involved. So before I begin this post I will insert the disclaimer that the opinions stated within do not necessarily reflect “truth,” nor do they necessarily even reflect my opinions, but the topic has been on my mind lately so I’d like to give it a whirl.

It all began when Zach Ebin posed an innocuous question to a few people last Friday night: “What would you rather be- the soup or the spoon?” I had no idea what he was talking about, but he said it related to cuddling, and then I kind of understood and I said I would rather be the soup. Then he said semi-disdainfully, “yeah, most girls want to be soup.” The implications of this scared me, so I repeated the question to my friend Atara. She conceded that one might want to be soup sometimes, but she then made a distinction between physical preferences and the social or intellectual dynamics of a relationship; and that when it comes to ideas and conversations, gender differences are silly and dangerous (in other words: “no soup for you!”). We then posed the question to her older brother Shua who very wisely asked if there are croutons involved; he said he still wouldn’t want to take part in such a (soup-spoon) relationship but he could at least respect it if the soup has croutons and you don’t need to add salt to it. Agreed.

But then I started thinking about it, and if even in our enlightened age, most girls quickly respond “soup” when they think about physical intimacy, then how can we so readily distinguish between that and the intellectual dynamics of a relationship. How can one sphere not inform the other and vice-versa? For example, I’ve always been tall, and when I was in elementary school I usually tended to assume a kind of older-kid role, being close with teachers etc… Now this could have been chalked up to other factors too, but it was weird how until about bat-mitzvah age, my close friends were the other three tall girls in my class, all of whom seemed, from my probably mistaken perspective, a little more serious and on the same page as me. The way we look relative to each other is going to, I think, have something of an impact on the way we behave toward, and conceptualize each other. I once read a book review for this book called “The Biology of Beauty”, or something like that, and it proposed that women evolved to having smooth hairless faces so they could resemble babies more and thus stimulate protective instincts in men. In a world before waxing and electrolysis, only the hairless survived. But then you have all these women who act like their husband’s mothers so guess the protective instincts could work both ways…

I remember Bella T. once wondered aloud whether there might have been a time when men and women were entirely equal in terms of strength and proportions, and then some random event occurred that made it more advantageous for the sizes to be imbalanced, and thus male-female power relations as we know them were born; out of some freak accident in history. Just because we see something as “natural” doesn’t make it ideal or even especially healthy; it once served an evolutionary function that it no longer serves; and hence now we are free to make all the distinctions between physical and intellectual disproportion that we want to make. And we really can do a lot to change the way we conceptualize one another- take the elementary school height example; I have friends of all different sizes now, and I don’t notice it in the least bit. My sense is that this could happen with gender too, we could numb our sensitivity to the differences between men and women, if we wanted to. And then those differences would really truly cease to be as prominent, and so on. But I don’t think we want to do that yet, not entirely. And thinking about “why” we wouldn’t want that to happen (or possibly why we would) is interesting to me.

One suggestion I thought about is that maybe difference, however it’s manifested, is beautiful and intriguing to us. So we maximize it between the sexes. But that’s difficult because oftentimes we see aberrations from the norm as unattractive and undesirable. Another possibility has to do with religion, but it really only works for women.Rebecca Goldstein wrote a whole book about this called the "The Mind-Body Poblem". Basically, we like the idea of someone or something with answers, with insight, so we look for it in God and we look for it in relationships. Then growing up means realizing that those answers don’t exist as we would like to imagine they do. But if that’s true then why would men buy into the gender binary? Who would want to give up on the prospect of learning new things or being guided in order to be the one claiming to have answers? Actually never mind, that does kind of make sense. But its still crazy (sorry Rebecca)- I like the “there is beauty in difference” hypothesis a lot better. Any other suggestions?

why do you think it is

2006-05-03T12:36:00.001-04:00

that when looking for a lost pen you feel as though you have lost your mind, even if for only a moment. and then when you find your pen, what is that supposed to feel like?

sure, heck yeah, it's only a pen, you say. but at that specific moment it seemingly has transformed into something else. before and after that very specific moment it’s a familiar pen. You'll likely never know what it had transformed into. Why? The answer is quite simple. Perhaps at that exact moment you were too busy looking for a pen.

Something unrelated, although what isn’t related?

2006-05-03T12:33:00.001-04:00

Okay, I can’t even make my intended post with this as its heading. Instead, may this brief post serve as a post-break, a break-post, a space-break-post, a box of toast, an orange ring, an angel’s wings? an orange rind, an elephant’s behind, perhaps I really have lost my mind.

Me Myself and I-srael

2006-05-01T21:15:00.000-04:00

Tonight begins Yom Hazikaron, and I’m never really sure what the day is supposed to be about. It’s definitely not an Israeli “Memorial Day,” there are no department store sales or vacations. But it’s not quite about mourning either, maybe for families who actually lost someone, and there are a lot of those in Israel; but for the vast majority, paying tribute is not the same thing as mourning. As Ari M. and Avi K. mentioned today after class, for most people, Yom Hazikaron seems to function most poignantly in its relation to the day afterward-Yom Ha’atzmaut. And the fact that the two days are coupled makes it sound like the losses of the first were sacrificed for the sake of the second. But on Yom Ha’atzmaut we celebrate something that happened in 1948, and the day before we commemorate casualties that continue to happen to this day. If anything the order should be flipped, in order to say: yeah we got our state, but look at the continued loss and heartache that demands. But we can see why that wouldn’t serve the goals of nationalism very well; flipping the two days would strip Yom Ha’atzmaut of its Messianic undertones, we would be left off on a note of sobriety and “disillusionment”, rather than carnivals and barbeques.

But on the other hand, the idea that Israel exists does fill me with bliss, even with all the conflicts and compromises it requires. As I wrote about earlier on, I think Israel is our best shot at creating a really healthy, guilt-free, creative Judaism, and I love the Hebrew language and all the vertical/horizontal cultural continuity it allows for. My connection to Israel is probably the one thing, more than all the halakhic stuff, that makes me feel really out of place in a liberal college environment; where the general spectrum of faculty opinion goes from “Israel is an evil occupying force” to “Israel is an ok country that needs to stop engaging in evil occupation.” My own stance is quite off the charts: “Israel is fabulous country that is trying very hard to do the right thing in a situation where there are no right answers,” (although back in Stern it probably put me on the dove-ish end of the spectrum.)

But as much as I adore Israel, it often scares me that the world puts it in such a problematic light. In other words, could all these intelligent people be as wrong as I feel they are? Do I need to be doing more to understand an Arab point of view? Or should I just throw this into the category of yet another one of those not entirely justifiable convictions that I maintain and refrain from deconstructing because it inspires me and because the alternative (Israeli territory should be carved into a squiggly line and relinquish its Jewish character) is too depressing to consider. I guess I have my answer then. So apparently pluralism and tolerance are not objective values for me; making sure that the way of life I respect is perpetuated is more important. And maybe “way of life I respect” is putting it too mildly, once in a while I find myself overcome by this Messianic desire for national unity and peace, and I want it to be on Israeli soil, and I want it to be beautiful and spiritual and awesome. But then I think that I have less in common with a charedi man from Bnei Brak than I do with, as Toby mentioned, the Muslim girl in my English class, and there goes my dream of national unity. And then I think that I’d rather read a poem than think about politics, and that I’d rather read the Bible than walk in its footsteps, and there goes any desire I have to change the world. Because, with all my enthusiasm, I don’t live in Israel, I’m probably not going to even think about living there until I finish my education and have some kind of stable career/life option available, and I don’t really feel guilty about it because no connection I have ever had to the Jewish state has ever trumped my hopes for personal fulfillment. And so I guess for now, I can observe Yom Hazikaron far more honestly than I can celebrate Yom Ha’atzamut.

An Open Letter to Disillusionment, and its extended family members

2006-04-30T18:11:00.000-04:00

Disillusionment. Seems to be the bug going around. Maybe I should have commented on Toby's post and made him feel better... but then I couldnt post this nifty cartoon, I made today at the poetry reading that took place at the bridge shul today. It was a reading celberating the posthumous publication of a collection of peoms by Aaron Bulman, who appears to have been a beloved member of the community. I've met his son Pinny (pictured at right) and he seems to be a great guy also. It was a bittersweet event. In a way this man's legacy has come to fruition since many will be able to read his poems from his collection, on the other hand the man seems to have been torn with angst between torah and poetry, modernity and tradition. Maybe this is just my gloomy intepretation, but his position that torah and the arts can both be jointly embraced seems to be just as contested today as it was back then. Pinny spoke of renaissance in Jewish Arts, but I'm not sure what exactly he is talking about.

I want to look forward and not dwell on the gloom, but recently I was thinking about a conversation I had with YU's President Richard Joel. I asked him a question after he finished speaking at a recent Mt Sinai Jewish Center event. I asked what his administration was doing to promote the arts. He answered me earnestly: "absolutely nothing". Still he seemed to feel regret, and He said If I was interested in talking about this further I should email him. I never did, and Im not sure that I will. I definitely see opportunities for Judausm and the arts available, but I'm not sure if the center for the future of modern orthdoxy is where its at. There will always be art--I'm sure of this. But Im not sure if YU is the place that it should be cultivated. They will continue to skirt the dialogue it proposes, and rehash their own ideas in their own traditional media, the sefarim, the shiurim, and divrie torah. The aesthetics of these forms will feel osmosis from the outside world, but it will not be acknowledged.

Perhaps, this has to do with my desire to find a sub-community of artists when i had resided on the YU campus. Perhaps I should instead view the role of the artist as someone who is standing on the fringe of a given community, brandashing a canvas that has begun its life as a mirror... Meaning, the foundation of the work would be ideas familiar to the community, and the artist's role would be to give them new life, pose new questions.... but I'm not sure that YU will even allow the artist to have this role. Sarah, Toby, Elyakim, Aaron: what do you guys think? should I send an email?

An Open Letter to Shelly Rindner’s Daughter

2006-04-30T09:16:00.000-04:00

Dear Ms. Rindner,
The thoughts expressed in this post are a response to your post entitled “Big Plans” dated Sunday April 23, 2006. In all fairness it belongs as a comment, but the ideas were so brilliant that they merited there own post. (In truth this is not a comment due to its length rather than its brilliance.) Most of these thoughts I’ve expressed to you over the phone, but I felt compelled to write them down anyways. Before I begin I would like to congratulate you on receiving your mom’s permission to live in the Heights. My only regret is that I misled your mother. As you know, I was never mugged on the Upper West Side. Indeed, I was approached by three men, and one of them had a gun. Though they demanded my wallet, I fought them off. That is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me [insert deity here].

In your post you mentioned the angst of your new Muslim friends. In general, I think the similarities between different religious groups is underplayed in our communities. When I was in Ireland I was astonished to find out that when the Irish Catholic were persecuted they were forbidden from speaking Celtic. In order to preserve their culture, many hid in the forests where they were taught Celtic, but when soldiers came by they pretended to be playing games. I think it is worthwhile to realize that the Hanukah story is not a uniquely Jewish story but a universal one. It is the story of how Humans respond to religious persecution. All religions have similar goals. There are certain issues of the Human existence which need to be resolved. From the meaning of life to what takes place after death, people have created religions in order to answer many issues and to decide how best to live their lives. And many people need religion for this reason. It is no wonder so many religions have been created in so many cultures. I mean to restrict myself to the three Abrahamic religions due to my ignorance of others. And while all three try to resolve similar issues they also create similar problems. I once went to an interfaith dialogue between rabbinical students and other clerical students. I remember talking to a Greek Orthodox student, Tom, who was bothered by the many anti-Semitic statements in the New Testament. He wanted to argue that Luke was a human who was influenced by his time and culture. While the text was divinely inspired the human element could not be denied. Tom was able, therefore, to reject those parts of his Holy texts which he found morally offensive. Yet Tom was still angst filled. He wondered where he could draw the line. Once he was rejecting part of the Bible, all of it seemed to loose its value. How could he know which parts of it are divine and which are not. He was imposing his own morals on the religion. Oh Tom, you could fit right in with any modern orthodox community. Come to think of it have you been talking to Rabbi Blau about Amalek or Sarah Rindner about literature? So even our angst is not uniquely Jewish.

At the end of your post, Sarah, you speak about community building. How ironic! When you were concerned about angst I had stopped concerning myself with those things and was more interested in community building. Now that you talk about community, I find your ideas (my ideas) unsatisfying. Can’t you see the tides have changed? With the marriage or engagement of half my friends I feel the focus has shifted from community building to family building. The full ramifications of this paradigm shift is still unknown. I know that religion for me for a long time has been less about personal growth or a connection to the divine but about community. If I am no longer as concerned about community I have no need for synagogue or even Shabbas. So will I no longer associate with Orthodoxy or like every time before will I develop a way for religion to play a new important role in my life. I guess we will have to wait and see. Now I don’t mean to say that community and family building are mutually exclusive. Traditionally, it has been married people who created community. They are the ones who settle down and find a permanent place to live. It is in their interest to build up the synagogue and schools, to build a nicer place for their families. Singles had no place in these communities and had to form their own communities on the Upper West Side or Washington Heights. But it makes less sense to invest in a temporary dwelling. Often people get married and move away. I am not worried about losing my married friends. Often I receive phone calls from my married friends asking to hang out. We both have invested too much in our relationship and car about each other too much to let our relationship slowly fade from lack of contact. In fact, I receive calls from my single friends too. I guess I haven’t been around as much, being busy recently with work and actuary exams. (I hate Lucky Tom). Everyone seems to have been busy with work or relationships and we aren’t hanging out as much as we used to. And I am ok with that as everyone seems to be doing things they are happy with. Though I would love to hear more details about what is going on in my friends’ lives. (Someone should teach Rachel B, Shayna G, and Rachel S how to post. Oh and remind Yakim how to as well.) I guess I am adopting some of Brother Etan’s model towards friendships. Etan has argued that I was misguided by making building friendships the main goal in my life. He argued that you can’t rely on others and you need to have your own goals. Friends are great and necessary but they should be there to encourage you to accomplish your own goals. Now I disagree with Brother Etan and believe that friendships can be a goal of its own. As I said before, we become better people for caring about our friends. But it is also exciting for us all to be focused on our other goals and hopefully we can be supportive even when we have less contact with each other.
Sincerely,
Toby Mintz

what my eyes have been staring at lately

2006-04-24T17:47:00.000-04:00

Hi there!
Item 1:
I think its very important that undies be in the know about the next big thing in graphic literature. His name is Kevin Huizenga. Among his feats so far are creating existential
stories that are not self-deprecating like most graphic story artists (see chris ware, art speigelman). His work almost made it into an issue of time magazine, but got bumped and only appeared on their website.

He often deals with the themes of science vs. religion, and mystery vs explanation. He characterizes christianity in a multifaceted manner. On his website he has sketches that he did during sermon, but he is not sure if G-d exists. One of his sotires is about a christian evangelist who writes an article about the controversy over what happens after a wicked person dies: does he go to hell or does he cease to exist--its humorous and appreciative at the same time.

next item
Also, Ive been staring at the artwork of art nouvea illustrator Koloman Moser (1868-1918) in a graphic desing textbook. It occurred to me that he was probably Jewish. Check out art nouvea--its deisng elements are often very seren and soulful.

Big Plans

2006-04-23T21:15:00.000-04:00

I have been criticized for a lack of recent blog updates and I apologize. It was due to Pesach and Shabbos and schoolwork, but I know those are not excuses and I need to learn how to prioritize the things that really matter. Now, I would like to throw out a few ideas. Despite the geographical slant of this blog it has grown clear to me in recent months that there are other Jewish communities for whom the name Yeshiva University does not carry the slightest significance. This is significant in that I have noticed that these communities are doing just fine, maybe even better, without being affiliated with the “heart” of Modern Orthodoxy. Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest. On to my second point.

We had a Muslim/Jewish student dinner last Friday night which was fun and tension-free because almost all the Muslims who came were South Asian and ambivalent about Israel and happy to get to have meat (I did not know this but kosher is considered halal to most), and thought zemirot and bentching were the cutest things they had ever seen. Some of the guys at my table were saying how they don’t know Arabic, most Muslims they know don’t, and I expressed surprise that they pray 5 times a day in a language they don’t understand. They agree that it is weird and admitted that they sometimes feel “angst” about this and I shared with them a quote by the Ba’al Shem Tov once told to me by Esti Wolf. The quote is: “the language you grew up with is the language of your soul.” They liked this quote very much, as do I (thank you Esti), although looked at from a different angle it could be quite depressing. The good part is: you don’t have to feel guilty that you are missing out on some important spiritual vocabulary. The sad part is: maybe you are but there is nothing you can do about it.

I have been speaking to several like-minded people lately who have expressed interest in building some kind of commune/Yishuv type thing sometime in the future. This will be an actual above-ground community with families and a school and a house of (Jewish) prayer, playgrounds, horse back-riding etc…It will be united by common emphasis on smart and sensitive thinking, Judaism, arts, science, healing, and having adventures. If this already exists, please let me know and we can piggyback onto those communities. But if not, then I have a few questions: Is this even a remotely realistic goal? Should it be in Israel or America? If in America, which would people prefer- NY/Metropolitan area, or Boston, or somewhere beyond? Will I care more about advancing my own personal career than about making this community happen? Will everyone care more about that? Is it even desirable to build a community united by common values when it means you will naturally be cutting yourself off from a certain diversity of background and opinion? Obviously not all these questions have answers, but upon J.R.’s suggestion (thank you J.R.) I am going to try and put together a list-serve with people who are potentially interested in such a community, and I will keep hounding people with e-mails about it, and other choice information, for many years to come, unless of course, Moshiach arrives. More details to follow.

Cheers!

2006-04-17T18:21:00.000-04:00

Mazal Tov to Undie Administrator/Visual Artist/Engager with the Experience of Orthodox Judaism as it is Actually Lived, Shlomo Rydzinski, on his actual engagement to Tamar Ellman. On behalf of the Underground Heights community, I wish you both the best of luck, and the highest level of happiness that it is possible to sustain.

I hope its ok that I snagged this picture off of Only Simchas. Captions are welcome, but keep it clean guys.

An Open Letter to Sarah's Mother

2006-04-16T20:39:00.000-04:00

Dear Mrs. Rindner,
I hope you are enjoying the Passover Holiday. Let me begin by saying that I in know way intend to meddle in your personal matters. Where Sarah lives next year is none of my business but should be discussed between you and her. Of course, I have personal interest in having such a dear friend living close by, but that is besides the point. My interest lies in Sarah's happiness and your peace of mind. As such, the increase in crime rate in the Heights compared to the Upper West Side is and should be a serious concern of yours. However, I would like to point out that Washington Heights is a large community ranging from 155th street to 205th. I do not believe that the general rates reflect the crime in our secluded Daled Amot, a small Jewish community spanning seven or so blocks. I personally, have been living in the Heights without any incident for five years. Incidentally, the one time I was mugged was when I was attacked by three men with a gun on the Upper West Side. My friend, Rachel Berger, was also mugged when she lived on the upper west side, but now lives serenely in the safety of the Heights. Granted these anecdotes should not be taken as proof. They are isolated incidences. However, I would like to point out that old reputations take a long time to die. As such, the Heights that that you don't want your daughter to live in may not be the same place that you have heard of in your youth. Again, this is none of my business. However, in order for you to make a more informed decision I would like to invite you and your children to spend a shabbos here, in the heights, and see the community and people that I truly love. I hope you will take me up on this offer.
Sincerely,
Toby Mintz

Poem for the moed

2006-04-16T14:38:00.000-04:00

At Sarah's suggestion, I'm digging up a poem I wrote on chol hamoed sukkot of 2004 . The spacing is messed up, but I don't think it much matters. I'm not sure what else there is to say, besides comments welcome and chag sameach. Here it is:

Davar Ha’aved (a p’sak debated)

A passing poem:

Can it be written on the moed?

These days between

allow for preservation

of blank-faced moments just arrived

and antsy moments moving on;

Something that is new

And something that is passing.

New Torah can be written, lest it pass,

because something would be lost

and leave an everlasting nothing

where something should be.

Bubbling buckets newly drawn

from a swirling well of words and thoughts

might pass away into vapors

if not poured out onto a page

But nothing is new

And everything is passing

(if poetry that can,

but need not, be

fades between the holidays

Would anything be lost?

a question

for another day—

the halachically-inclined

don’t cry over spilt poetry)

Thus poetry cannot be written.

But it can be typed

onto a blinking screen;

anything can,

Because it is not writing

Because it passes.

Innocence Lost

2006-04-16T14:15:00.000-04:00

I hope everyone is having a nice Pesach. I’m currently at a hotel in Hauppauge, Long Island with my family, and still undecided whether or not to return to Boston for chol hamoed and second days. I’m leaning towards Boston, because I am neurotic about work, and am eating way too much, and because my first ever conflict between school and Yom Tov is kind of more exciting than it is annoying. But then the next question that will come up will be whether or not I go to class on second days, and I think the answer will be have to be no, thanks to an epiphany I recently had. Here goes: Yom Tov is a construct, it does not exist unless we make it exist. Probably most people who did not grow up in Monsey and go to Stern figured this out long before I did, but even so, it’s amazing what we can do with time. We can make it so that Shabbos feels like this otherworldly presence weighing down on us, or we cannot. We can turn Yom Kippur into this substantively different day on the calendar, or we can just sleep through it.
The other day in the tea-room, my friend’s surgeon uncle was telling us how for him, becoming a doctor meant giving up Shabbos, i.e. if he gets a call about a hip-fracture during Friday night dinner there is no question that he will get in his car to go operate. He seems perfectly happy with his choice, but he said, “a certain innocence is lost.” I asked him if that’s a good or a bad thing, and he shrugged, like it wasn’t a relevant question. Perhaps we could say that innocence is nice, except when it is transplanted to a context where it feels ridiculous, like a hospital. And then the question is whether we can periodically regain our innocence or if we need to look for something more mature. Probably it’s a little bit of both.

Another unrelated but cool thing I came across on Yontif was this quote (by Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki): “Everything is perfect, but there is always room for improvement.” If it were up to me, I’d make that the byline of the “Church of the Postmodern Spirit.”

The Breakdance of Consciousness

2006-04-10T20:45:00.000-04:00

Item NUMBER ONE: so I was painting girlfriend's wall in different boxes. and this is one of them:

hazy looking humans... solid wall... disproportionately large. the people arent fully formed images, hastily sketched or still in construction... saturated colors, vibrancy! of pluralism...

Item NUMBER TWO: Also here's a link to a piece i did for the new magazine PresenTense. My first magazine piece, (and their first issue) so I'm still working kinks out. kinks like typos. soon i will be better. rpomise.

Item NUMBER THREE: You can still see my piece, "Alone in the universe, in my sky-blue Underwear" (first displayed on this very blog--though I will not link to it, in order to encourage all to visit the "real" deal...) in physical matter on display at the Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life @ NYU. Specifically on 10th street between 5th and University Place. The Opening for the group exhibit was on march 30th--thanks to everyone who came down!

And that is all the artsidoxy-news.

Heresy Week

2006-04-07T01:18:00.000-04:00

Wow, it’s been one whirlwind week. First, a friend invited me to go to a lecture by Daniel C Dennett sponsored by the “Harvard Secular Society” (the website is funny, check it out). The speech was about a book called “Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon,” and it presented what I found to be a compelling evolutionary narrative for how religion developed in humans. Basically, all animals have something Dennett calls a “who’s there?!” mechanism, where our instinct when we sense something is to figure out who’s behind it. Tap a puppy, clap your hands etc…, he’ll turn around. It's biologically advantageous to anthropomorphize this cause, because if the sound or feeling is in fact a predator of sorts, we can avoid it. When we don’t know what’s behind something, we suggest causes (elves, fairies, God etc…), and some of those causes stick and get rehearsed and echoed in society. These articles of thought, or “memes,” then take on powerful adaptations, like the ability to crush doubt and re-enforce authority structures, which result in religion as we know it. Don’t find this narrative the least bit compelling? I’ve totally oversimplified it, but what I got out of the talk is that a lot of what we consider the “benefits of religion” like communal comfort, or the sense that the world is more than what we can see or understand, can be very reasonably traced on an evolutionary level. In which case the beauty and pleasure of religion as we experience it can’t be proof alone for God’s revelation; we need naturalistic proofs like the one R.Yehuda ha Levi offers. Or maybe we don’t need proofs at all, maybe we can “believe in belief,” which Dennett says is itself a powerfully clever adaptation that organized religion took on in order to maintain its hold on people who havie trouble really believing in God.
This afternoon the Divinity school offered a roundtable discussion where two anthropologists discussed ideas similar to those of Dennet. One tried to prove that like Chomsky has shown in linguistics, there are universal, sub-conscious, moral decision-making structures, and that surveys have shown virtually no difference between the abstract moral reasoning of atheists and believers. The other guy showed how religion originally emerged as a function of building cooperative societies, which is advantageous for homo-sapiens who have a tendency to protect their own, etc...
These talks were refuted by two Christian theologians who tried to say…you know what, I don’t even remember or care anymore.

Later this evening, in yet another discussion about the biological premises of religion (this time with the Mind-Brain-Behavior club) a friend from Hillel made what I thought was a good point. He said that religious people and atheists, if they want to, can agree on a lot of things, from the Big Bang until now. The big question is what prompted the development of the world in the first place, and that is a question not even scientists can answer. He said, “whatever that is, let’s call that God.” Then the atheist in the group said atheists are ok with not having answers, but theists need to make up possibilities, neither knows. I tried to say that maybe both are complacent and rather than settle with uncertainty (which feels like a cop-out), or fill in the blanks (which may be worse than a cop-out), we should all be “trying.” Trying to figure things out, rather than know one way or another. I wonder how long I can maintain this shaky theology.

Puncturing this week-long trajectory was a nice religious highlight. On Tuesday some people forwarded me this interview that was printed in the Commentator , where R.Lichtenstein briefly responds to an article I wrote in February. I was so struck by how sensitively and kindly he discussed my critique, even while basically disagreeing with it, that I found myself wanting to agree with him more than ever! Many of us tend to be contemptuous of the idea of gedolim, and often justifiably so, but I do think there’s something special about having a specific role model in regard to middos. When it comes to knowledge, I believe we should all be thinking critically and coming to our own conclusions as much possible, but when it comes to treating people with the utmost respect without compromising your own ideals, I find it super-helpful to see how the experts pull it off. Maybe my eagerness to look for role models in this area is only because I have a hard time intuiting how to get that balance right. But perhaps others don’t find this as difficult. Perhaps others find the knowledge part more difficult, in which case I should give the gedolim-followers a break.

Actually, on that note, I think I should give everyone a break! What felt like “heresy week” to me, was for most people a much more concentrated discussion of religion and spirituality than they would ever usually have.
Have a wonderful and meaningful and liberating Passover.

At Least I Can Still be a Lonely Woman of Faith!

2006-04-03T20:59:00.000-04:00

I just finished reading Halakhic Man for a second time, this time for a class in Modern Jewish Thought, and I noticed a couple of interesting things that I missed in my ignorant teenage days.

1) Even in translation, it’s majestically written, with tons of allusions to Tanakh, Talmud, Literature, and Philosophy; really really beautiful and enjoyable to read.

2) As sophisticated as the model of Halakhic Man is; if I met Halakhic Man, I would not want to be friends with him. His emotional range is severely constricted, and he is not supposed to have emotions like “fear,” or even “curiosity,” because he is not supposed to possess a conception of the “unknown.” Everything on earth can be translated to Halakhic categories, therefore nothing should be excessively scary or foreign.

3) Conversely, I would very much want to be friends with Rav Soloveitchik, who describes Halakhic Man with the kind of pristine clarity that can only come from someone who is standing somewhat outside of the framework he is looking at. I don’t care what anyone says, but only someone who knows what fear of chaos and dissolution feels like would describe with such detail how special and unusual it is not to have such a fear.

4) A lot of the things that the Rav admires about Halakha have absolutely nothing to do with the way people treat Halakha in our Jewish community. There is little mention of community/family cohesion, the value of submitting to authority, or universal ethics, in his description of the goals of ideal Jewish observance. If people are not buying into the holistic Halakhic universe that the Rav is projecting, i.e. they don’t feel intellectually/spiritually/emotionally at “one” with the laws they are following, with God's will, then they would appear to be, to a certain extent, missing the boat.

5) The next important question would then have to be: since I would assume that most of us are, to a great extent, missing the Lithuanian/Brisker/Neo-Kantian steamship; then what is motivating our observance of Halakha? Obviously this is a question anyone reading up until this part of the post has thought about; but we need to be doing more to be breaking the hegemony that the Rav’s thought has on our MO community. Not because he isn’t a brilliant and beautiful thinker that everyone should be familiar with, he is! But its striking how little the heroic ideal he is projecting has to do with what people, even really frum people, are saying when they talk about Judaism nowadays.

6) All that said, there were parts of Halakhic Man that resonated very deeply with me, one such part is when he talks about how Halakha allows people to take very scary and painful emotions and objectify them; turn them into something tangible and quantifiable. While this is a somewhat dishonest way of dealing with emotions, it is also a very helpful mechanism when it comes to grieving, and can fulfill a necessary function in society. He writes, “Halakhic man vanquishes even fear of death…by means of the law and Halakhah [such as laws of corpse defilement etc…], and he transforms the phenomenon, which so terrifies him, into an object of man’s observation and cognition. For when death becomes an object of man’s cognition, the fright accompanying death dissipates.” But then when I looked up the footnote following that whole bit I found it referred to none other than Tolstoy! “Tolstoy conquered the fear of death that had seized hold of him through an act of objectification—i.e., transforming death into an object of his artistic creation.” So Rav Soloveitchik articulated the powerful idea that halakha is the best means of coping with trauma with the help of none other than someone who is talking about literature. And that’s what I like to learn in the first place.

7) In conclusion, there is a lot in Halakhic Man that I do not relate to, but there is also a lot that I find powerful and inspiring. But of the part that I do find powerful and inspiring, most of it has analogies in the world of literature and art in general. I am curious to hear what fellow Undies have to say about Halakhic Man, and conceptions of the Halakhic system in general, but I am unsure whether anyone likes to discuss this stuff anymore. I myself vacillate but today I care so I thought I would share.

8) There is no need for an eighth point except that all of the list-posts we have had so far have had eight points and like Halakhic Man I value tradition. Below is a cute picture from Sheva Brachot.

The NEW Church of the Postmodern Spirit

2006-03-29T17:11:00.000-05:00

First of all, let me admit that I have no idea what Toby is referring to when he uses the phrase “Church of the Postmodern Spirit,” I assume it has something to do with chulent and hot tubs and other Thursday night rituals; maybe its not-so ironically named choirboy can tell us about it in the near future. But in the meantime, I hope it’s ok if I appropriate the title to promote a little project that I have recently decided that we, i.e. everyone in the world, should be taking part in.

Now alot of the thoughts we may hear on the blog (primarily from me, I’m sorry about that) relate to a kind of disconnect people are feeling between their own spiritual/intellectual/social inclinations and institutions of meaning that have been handed down to them. For example, the Reverend’s value of being a good and loving friend sometimes conflicts with certain halachot or selfishness or maybe even marriage. Avi’s value of good and realistic writing, or at least of getting a foothold in the TV world, conflicts with taboos on graphic or explicit content. Steinberg’s value of promoting witty and enjoyable discourse conflicts with angst-ridden posters/raisins who want nothing but to air their inner turmoil.

But when we are identifying our goals in conflict with those of others, or simply what we don’t like about the values of others; it’s easy to get overwhelmed, even depressed, by the multiplicity and diversity of meanings out there. Some people have told me that I only find it depressing because I am oh-so-young and in college but when I am wise and age 24 like they are it won’t continue to bother me anymore. And maybe that’s true. But for now, I just learned of a way to make it less depressing, and I thought I would share it with you. I apologize if you all figured this out already and I am the last one.

Credit for this particular method goes to Dr. Brill, who challenged me at Shani and Elyakim’s wedding to, by sunlight of the next day, write up an essay about why I think literature is important. The tight time frame meant that I didn’t have much of a chance to think about contextualizing myself and my perspectives. And the result was this pretty sincere articulation of lots and lots of positive values. Those values include thinking clearly and sensitively about life, tuning ourselves into sadness and suffering, and creating constructs that prevent such attention to chaos from turning into something traumatic or excessively painful.

What I learned was that if you think broadly enough, and don’t worry about inherited values or what you are learning/rejecting from other people, then you can come up with something to believe in. Something that doesn’t dissolve in the face of post-modern sensitivities. It’s very cool, everyone should try it. I’d love to hear what people come up with.

The next step then is organizing a community loosely united by your positive values, and this where the Underground Heights and Church of the Postmodern Spirit can potentially come in handy. Or Dr. Brill’s Kavvanah Center or that American Kibbutz that Yakim is so fond of. Or maybe really building those communities is technically impossible because people will always be subtly different in which case we organize mini-communities like families, but of course those too are limited because dating is annoying and kids grow up and have different values etc…Ok so maybe even this exercise can dissolve into futility. But there are still these MOMENTS, when common ground can be found and felt. And I propose that we look to them instead of dwelling on difference. So right this minute, everyone think of something he or she thinks is universally valuable, it can be anything, even free muffins for all. But then be intellectually honest about it, and allow for the fact that some people may be allergic to wheat or on low-carb diets or simply prefer Wheatabix cereal with soymilk. But don’t give up, instead think broader and broader, until you come up with something you really can believe in, some positive framework that you can’t think outside of. And then organize a community or mini-community of family or friends along similar lines. Good luck!

My Second Post

2006-03-28T00:29:00.000-05:00

This was a contest, right? I'm assuming I win since my captions are so good they change the very nature of the photograph in question.

There was no cheating involved.

All letters to the editor can be sent to the editor. Just leave me out of it.

Feed ME!

2006-03-26T22:37:00.000-05:00

I'm looking for some feedback on this sketch for the comic I'm doing for the back page of this new transdenominational magazine. This is a touchy sociological piece, so I feel like it would be nice to hear how people view the points Im trying to make. feedback anyone?

A few More Congratulations

2006-03-26T01:29:00.000-05:00

Well, Sarah, if we now make shout outs on this blog I got a few more to add. Today is the RIETS Chag Hasmicha and I’d like to say Mazel Tov to a few of the graduates. Brother Etan and Cousin Shannan are now Rabbi Brother Etan and Cousin Rabbi Shannan. I’m no longer the only clergyman in my family. A few other noteworthy musmachim include Ben Skydel (whose both crazy and liberal), Eli Ozaowsky (Brilliant but frum), as well as Jeff Weiss the original Rabbi of the Church of the Postmodern Spirit. By the way, I’m glad to see that David Wise, the Church’s original choir boy, has joined the underground community. I look forward to your post. So now that my friends and family have joined the Rabbinate will my general disdain for Rabbis recede? Hopefully. These are good people who I look up to. Few of them will be abusing their students, I think Additionally, these are my peers. They are not the authoritative figures who I was told to respect and listen to. As equals I can respect their holy work. So go out there, change lives, but remember others will be looking to you as RABBIS. So be extremely careful and err on the side of caution. You don’t know everything; make sure your students know that too. Oh, and good luck…. [Insert quote from Spiderman here…]

A Few Observations

2006-03-21T10:54:00.000-05:00

Its been entirely too long since someone posted, so I thought I would try to hold up the fort. Fort Washington that is! Feel free to skim, skip around, or ignore this altogether and instead wait for Rachel Berger’s grand opening post sometime later this week.

1. In general, most blogs except for ours tend to suck, but here are a few notable exceptions that I recently encountered. The first is Zvi Halpern’s “Divrei Torah not for the Shabbos Table” blog, where he discusses the weekly parsha in a saucy but thoughtful way, and people comment and challenge his views. Sometimes it gets a little wild. I highly recommend it.

Zvi’s roommate Zack, a violinist, has a blog too , and it is eclectic and wise. This week he has an interview with a salami guy.
Also a worthy visit is my friend’s younger brother Asher’s homepage, make sure to turn the sound really high.

2. In 1927, W.B. Yeats said that “only two topics can be of the least interest to a serious and studious mind- sex and the dead.” Discuss.

3. Mazal Tov. Mazal Tov. The first goes out to Aaron Roller and Shira Rosenbaum on their recent chatuna. I saw some pictures of them on Only Simchas and I think they look happy. There is also an homage to Aaron posted on Mimaamakim if anyone is interested.

4. While I was on Only Simchas I noticed that someone named Rivkie Rindner from Flatbush NY just got married to Avinoam Paley, also from Flatbush. Does anyone know either of them? If so, can you find out if we are related or at least get me their contact information. Thank you.

5. Coming up is another exciting wedding and it is that of Shani Simkovich and Elyakim Deutsch. Words. Cannot. Express. Stay tuned for live coverage from the festivities.

6. Speaking of the Coen brothers, I watched “Barton Fink" last Motzei Shabbat and I am overwhelmed by the artifice of it all. Some might say that all art is self-referential, that it is not pointing us to an outside reality as much as to a kind of self-sustaining meaning that an artistic tradition creates and perpetuates. This is sometimes called “post-modernism,” and though the attitude can be found as early as Edgar Allen Poe, it finds its apex in the impossible to decode, densely allusive, movie for movies’ sake flick “Barton Fink.” And yet, there were times when I kind of saw myself in the movie, especially when Barton was going on about writing movies about “REAL PEOPLE! ORDINARY PEOPLE!” I got scared that I sound like that sometimes. But if I do in fact sound like that then the film really is tapping into something tangible and relatable in which case there is nothing wrong if Barton, me, or Mimi Sternberg, want and expect that from movies. So there!

7. Spring is nearly here, even in Boston, and I am finding that warmth and sunshine make me feel physically, viscerally, better about myself. This is very interesting, I think. If I moved to California would I be able to sustain this feeling for longer? Or would I just get used to it, like everything else in life. I’ve heard that suicide rates are higher in cold and rainy climates; isn’t this a thorn in the “Futility of Happiness” hypothesis? Or can another explanation be found? Does anyone know if it is still acceptable to wear black tights to a wedding now that is so springie outside. Let me know.

8. I guess that’s all for now. Looking forward to seeing or hearing from some or many of you soon.

Happy Birthday/Purim whatever

2006-03-14T02:53:00.000-05:00

Here's wishing a very special Underground Heights Happy Birthday to the Reverend himself, the man on the far left.
Best caption will get a prize.

Don’t You Hate It When People Post Without Pictures?

2006-03-09T09:21:00.000-05:00

Now that Purim is coming (hurray!), and the blog has ventured far from angst-ville, I thought I would try and help restore our delicate balance with a seasonally appropriate topic: hatred. If Christmas is an example of a holiday of love, then it may be fair to say that Purim, with gragger-sounding, 10 sons hanging, extra day of killing reasons for celebration, is a holiday of hate. Of course, the hatred we project on Purim is directed towards very very bad people, people whose destruction is directly linked to our survival as a nation. And there are lots of elements to Purim that are about sharing and kindness, like matanot li-evyonim and mishloach manot. Ok, maybe Purim isn’t a fair example. I started thinking about this when I was asked to give a dvar torah this upcoming Shabbat at the Hillel. I planned to talk about Parshat Zachor; to begin by acknowledging a history of moral arguments against the commandment to destroy Amalek, and then show how Tanakh itself is not really pedaling an agenda of hate, how blotting out Amalek is really about promoting ethical behavior and so on. And while I still think that’s true for the most part, I still don’t totally understand why Amalek is singled out so vociferously and unequivocally.

So I guess this question that I have is both a specifically Jewish issue as well as a general ethical one: 1) Does Judaism really promote an autonomous virtue of hatred towards those who deserve it? and 2) Is there any personal, human value to the act of hatred itself? Christians would say no, many mystics too, but I think a lot of Jewish people would say yes (see article by Meir Soloveichik on the subject, also see inter-faith web-master NTFCNHT for more information about religion in America.)

I used to not understand the Christian position at all. If anyone has read Simon Wiesenthal’s “The Sunflower,” they will remember how dumb it seemed to forgive a Nazi officer for his crimes just because he is remorseful. But lately I have been wondering whether there is really any value to maintaining hatred towards anyone or anything, even if they are guilty of something really bad. I definitely don’t we think we should absolve people of their misbehavior, but do we benefit by “hating” them per se? This bleeds into the question of punishment in general. What’s the point of punishment if it is not preventative, rehabilitative, or morally instructive? In a world that operates according to objective moral principles, this is not such a big deal; but in our world, in the “free marketplace of ideas,” what defense can we offer for refusing to relativise and contextualize even the very worst of people and behavior? I am impressed by the consistency of the Christian doctrine of love (in theory at least; in practice it has been horribly inconsistent.) They claim that all human beings are flawed, it is just a matter of degree, and the only thing that can redeem any of them is the mercy of God. It seems that although Judaism places the great majority of people in this forgivable camp, certain actions are placed beyond the pale. And I think that most people, however flexible and po-mo our sense of morality is, still tend to extend definite limits to how far they are willing to contextualize hurtfulness. But do we really need to do that in order to stay decent people? By contextualize I don’t mean absolve people of their horrific behavior or somehow justify it; I just mean not see them as having irrevocably crossed into this sub-human plane of “evil.” I guess the existence of the word “evil” is also part of the problem here. Or maybe its not a problem, maybe its an essential moral compass that Christian theology is profoundly lacking. (As a very wise man once said, “anyone who doesn’t have guilt for an action they do doesn’t think they are doing anything wrong. Simple enough.”) So basically, my question is this: even if hatred/evil don’t really exist as independent objective entities, are they valuable categories for us to maintain (I think love and kindness are). Happy Purim!

P.S. Today’s Harvard Crimson ran this piece about me that I am a little annoyed about. Every quote is construed a little bit differently than how I said it, and the result is this seething, not really true portrayal of my feelings toward Stern. On the bright side, they call me a “Yeshiva Diva”! Here is the article link.

P.P.S. I think it might be fun if people who have digital cameras post up of pictures of themselves and their friends dressed up for Purim. We can even have roving Undie photographers go around the Heights after Megillah reading and post the results. And then we can vote on best costume! What do you think?

My First Post

2006-03-07T21:44:00.000-05:00

I’ll illustrate my post so if anyone wants they can just look at the pictures and pretty much understand what I mean to say. It totally works. Try it.

In college I majored in English Literature. I read a lot of stuff by a lot of people. Sometimes they were dead, sometimes not (it didn’t make much of a difference.) And I never knew if what I was reading was a classic or a piece of garbage unless someone else told me. The only way I know how to judge a piece of writing is by its ‘Cool Factor.’ That’s right, I like freakin’ robots. Sue me.

Heart of Darkness is a classic, in my opinion, because it’s awesome. They go down the river and wacky stuff happens. The story is Huckleberry Finn on battery acid.

(I do not mean to belittle anyone who takes more of a cultured look at literature. I am merely stating my own personal deficiency in understanding the quality of the written word.)

Anyway, people here sure have a lot of angst. As if angst ever helped anyone (maybe Shlomo.)

I think the physical manifestation of Jewish angst looks like a raisin.

Anyway, I consider it a successful day if I haven’t gotten hit by a bus. That’s right, the value of my existence is measured by transit dodging. But that’s just me. And when I want to know how I should feel about religion I open up an Artscroll Gadol story. I find it extremely easy and natural for me, the YU graduate, to relate to the greatest minds of our religious people, especially when I learn about them through dubious stories and fanciful events.

Also, if everyone on this blog stops using big words and ceases the deep, deep musings, I might understand what the heck is going on.

And as for this ‘Jewish guilt’ people are talking about, I honestly have just as much guilt as the next Jewish grandmother has. Anyone who doesn’t have guilt for an action they do doesn’t think they are doing anything wrong. Simple enough.

And in closing, I would like to tell you this really vulgar joke I found in my e-mail spam box. There was this Priest and a Rabbi who walked into a bakery and pulled down their-