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What I’ve Been Up To Lately
- mazel tov to @bluenatic and @grandstreet on the birth of their baby girl 2 weeks ago
- RT @JTownCrier: Tropper? Kolko? Margulies? Balkany? Dwek? Rubashkin? NO. Moetzes Gedolei Torah condemn AVI WEISS as more offensive. 2 weeks ago
- Rorschach from Watchmen is the new Freddy Krueger http://bit.ly/7s61Cj 2 weeks ago
- More updates...
picking and choosing
steven i.: i don’t think it’s hard to rally your readers around a liberal political agenda. the question is whether you’ll ensure there’s something jewish to it.
me: i think being a raving liberal madman is incredibly jewish. just admit i have a point.
steven i.: because you’ve co-opted judaism for your political agenda?
me: oh snap! hkbh is #1 in my life. i don’t have my observance all squared away. i don’t have my learning down pat. but i made that the #1 thing in my life.
steven i.: that’s not the point. the point is that you’ve taken judaism and said it’s all about your political agenda.
me: my politics is my torah.
steven i.: but it’s not. and you know that.
me: i never said that it is. i said that i can just as easily and validly take the reading that affirms who i am.
steven i.: it’s absurd to say you get your guidance in politics from torah. you get your guidance in torah from politics.
me: it’s bidirectional.
steven i.: in that you selectively quote various jewish things you think support your political agenda. because you’ve got your latent jewish though that thinks that you need a source for what you say and that so long as you’ve got a source you’re justified in what you say.
me: i think that’s a crass and condescending analysis.
steven i.: for some reason, you don’t have the courage of your political convictions unless you can say it’s jewish, too; that’s probably the part of you that wants to prove that in spite of your life story, you turned out frum.
me: i don’t bring a torah source to substantiate what i have to say. the torah source brings me to say what i say. i read it and it sets me off. and i write about what i’m feeling based on what i’m reading.
steven i.: has there ever been a reading of torah you’ve had that’s changed your political views.
me: torah hasn’t changed my politics much; it’s emboldened them. however it has changed my personal life a lot.
steven i.: yeah, but you don’t go around preaching tefillin. you go around preaching politics.
[...]
steven i.: why do you want to be jewish?
me: because i love god even when i hate him.
[...]
me: if you want to accuse me of anything, accuse me of being, i dunno, selfish, or childish, for deciding i was going to be ahab and god would be my whale. that i wanted to learn torah and know it and understand it and make it a part of who i am.
steven i.: i do. why do you think a yeshiva’s your answer?
me: i don’t think yeshiva’s the answer. i made a deal with god. i had two options in front of me. cuz i was sick of my job and wanted out. i applied for a dorot fellowship and at the same time applied for two jobs. i said god, if i get the grant, i’ll go to israel and study torah
and i got one of the jobs and i got the grant. and i said, i’m gonna go to israel and study torah. a year later i said god, if this next grant doesn’t come through, i’m going to take it to mean you don’t think i’m ready for this and that i need to learn more in yeshiva. and six months later after i hadn’t returned to yeshiva after not getting the grant. i was on an airplane, and the turbulence was awful, and we all thought we were going to die. people were crying and shrieking. and i davened. and i said god, if you get me out of this alive, i promise to study more torah.
steven i.: do you think god gave you the fellowship? that he made you not get the grant? that he adjusted the plane?
me: god gives me the air i breathe right now. he gives me the energy which holds my molecules together. i mean, i’ve seen studies which show that you’re just as likely to get what you pray for as your not. and that we can and do ascribe significance to insignificant things.
steven i.: if you do, why don’t you believe god sent hurricane katrina to punish someone?
me: i don’t say that he didn’t… i say how could we possibly know? and i go back and forth on whether or not i believe there’s a god like that at all. every day. i spend 10 minutes thinking, why do i want to put tefillin on?
steven i.: well, you’re operating on some level of assumed knowledge about god affecting your grant, fellowship and plane.
me: no…i’m actually a buddhist using a jewish symbol system just like my guru told me. except instead of trying to squeeze myself into someone else’s cultural paradigm i’m using my own. because if i were a buddhist i’d say, “everything in the universe happens as it’s meant to and you can’t do anything to fight it, you can only roll with the punches and try to be gracious and accepting of all that comes along.” the jewish approach to that is saying god is good and provides in his time on his terms, and patiently awaiting deliverance.
steven i.: so why are you taking on a jewish vocabulary instead of making your own?
me: because it’s one that’s accessible to me. and it’s one i relate to and one that i value.
steven i.: and why do you think your jewish vocabulary that’s been selectively compiled to represent your buddhism is anything that anyone else should consider authentic or true to tradition?
me : man fuck you selectively compiled!
steven i.: of course it’s selectively compiled.
me: i’m breaking my teeth on gemara trying to soak everything up that i can. i’m not trying to ignore anything inconvenient. i’m trying to accept it and deal with it.
steven i.: well, what about the basic consequences implied by the shema that you put on your body and speak through your mouth everyday? a god of reward and punishment?
me: your fields will be full or empty. if torah is part of your life, your fields, ie., your fields inside you, your harvest, will be rich. if it’s not, your fields will be empty. it’s a metaphor for spiritual fulfillment. reward and punishment is in the eye of the beholder. if you understand blissful torah, your fields will be full. you will always be gracious and accepting and thankful to god nomatter what the circumstances. and therefore you will always feel rich and fulfilled. if you don’t have blissful torah, and you think god’s punishing you, you will feel empty and punished.
steven i.: yeah, but the jews who read that when it was written had fields. and they had a real concern about whether the crops would fail.
me: lucky me, i descend from a rabbinic tradition which happily abstracts torah and makes it metaphor. funny how chassidus is the one thing i love learning the most. who said i was trying to be a biblical jew? if i were a biblical jew i wouldn’t call myself a jew. jews are from babylon. but the idea of zion, the prophetic ideal, the zeal for social justice and redemption that the rabbis do share with their forbears. isaiah saying: you call that a fast? pay your frigging workers!
steven i.: but they don’t have your ideas of it. judaism was always fiercely capitalist.
me: fiercely capitalist with goyim. fiercely socialist with jews.
steven i.: no, that’s not true. it always had outcasts.
me: kehillah taxes? tzedakah? shemita? ahavas yisrael as a primary value? v’ahavta l’rekha k’mokha the klal gadol of torah? name me torah principles which say be a shrewd businessman.
steven i.: dude, if america were operating on the same principles as the jews did throughout history the disparity among rich and poor would be incredibly larger.
me: that’s why i embrace the haskalah too. marxkilim. i find ever so much in judaism i relate to, from all different channels.
steven i.: isn’t that the very epitomy of selection?
me: or the epitome of embrace.
steven i.: if you can make the haskalah and hasidim agree in your mind, you’re doing at best a small part of both.
me: um…rav kook did it, simcha bunim m’przysucha did it, rebbe nachman did it, the lubavitcher rebbe did it. they respected secular yiddin and reached out to them. simcha bunim would send his chasidim to play cards with secular jews at the yiddish theatre so that the chasidim could be exposed to the modern world. that’s what ahavas yisrael means. i learned a hadith the other day from an mf doom record, something like, hate the evil done against the lord but never hate he who does evil. or as we say push with one hand, pull with the other.
steven i.: or as christians say, hate the sin, love the sinner.
me: yeah i forgot you were planning to become a jesuit.
steven i.: i love to bring up christianity with jews. the visceral response rarely disappoints.
“me: fiercely capitalist with goyim. fiercely socialist with jews.”
does mobius hate goys? does he see himself different than goys? better? superior? are goys cattle to be expolited while jews are to be supported? discuss.
Interesting discussion. However, as much as I sympathisize with Mobius and would like to wholeheartedly agree that Torah really leads in a radical political direction, I’m afraid it doesn’t. Quite the contrary, unfortunately (perhaps tragically). I say this not because one can’t make clever arguments showing that Torah “really” teaches anti-militarism/imperia lism, racial justice, radical ecolgy, etc; one can cf. Waskow, Lerner, Heschel, Zalman, Daniel Boyarin, Leibowitz etc. The problem, for me is the following: if Torah Judaism “really” taught an emancipatory politics, one would see this reflected in those who really live and breathe the stuff yomam va’layla i.e the people referred to as haredim and, to a lesser extent, the “modern Orthodox” people. But all one sees in these circles, of course, is nothing but ugliness – racism, extreme nationalism, war-mongering, etc. And these get worse the more “frum” one gets.
The proof of whether Torah Judaism – or any ideology – “really” teaches liberation has to be in how these teachings affect its’ followers. The usual response to this is – Judaism and religious Jews have been distorted by centuries of pogroms, Holocausts, enforced isolation, restriction from the outside world, etc. Thus, the Judaism of the haredim and the m/o is not the “real thing” – and if we work hard enough, we can create(recover?) the “real thing” – a genuinely emancipatory politics based on Torah Hudaism.
Nope. Why? Because if the core of traditional Torah Judaism were truly emancipatory, one would see this reflected SOMEWHERE/SOMEHOW in its’ followers – all of the historical/sociological distortions notwithstanding. And, of course, we see nothing of the sort. The most egregius and awful effects of war, racism, global warming etc. leave virtually ALL Torah Jews totally unaffected – indeed, they actively cheer most of these things. This, not clever textual arguments, is what is ultimately decisive.
By way of contrast, return , for a moment, to those glorious days of yesteryear, the 1960s. There was an anti-war religious peace group called Clergy and Laity concerned. One of its’ founder members was the legendary Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit priest who was, at the time confronting a monolithically anti-communist and war-mongering Catholic Church. After enduring various persecutions, Berrigan was able, amazingly, to turn around the Jesuits and a good chunk of the Church to the support of peace and anti-war causes – because he was able to tap into an underlying anti-war stream in an otherwise reactionary Church. In contrast, Berrigan’s self-confessed mentor and comrade in CALC, R. Abraham Heschel (ztl) was isolated and ignored by virtually all of traditionally religious Jewry(including JTS), AND THIS NEVER CHANGED. Why? – if orthodoxy “really” teaches peace, etc.? Perhaps, tragically, it doesn’t.
So, what to do? There are various options, all of them unattractive. Continue to do Torah and radical politics, keeping them in separate parts of your soul – maintains intellectual integrity, but keeps you feeling fragmented. Drop either the politics(most Baalei Teshuvah) or the religion (ex- Baalei Teshuvah like me). Take the politics, add it to the Torah, and divide by 2, coming up with an unsatifying mush (all non-Orthodox movements, including Jewish Renewal). Or, do what I do – do yoga, meditate, and do Judaism sort of/sometimes. Wish there were a better answer, but I don’t see one.
It continues to boggle my mind that someone can claim on the one hand to be acquainted with Judaism and on the other hand that capitalism is a Jewish virtue. Have they read the Torah, that mandates a nationwide land redistribution every 50 years, and requires regular tithings to the landless classes? Or the Talmud, which intrudes into every aspect of the economy — what you can own, what you can work as, how you can make loans — and repeatedly condemns a consumerist culture? Or the Prophets, who still haven’t stopped castigating the Capitalists from the pages of the Tanach even today. Amos called the rich women of Israel “Bashan cows” for all the “value” of capitalism. True Jewish economics is about the most dignity for the most people, and God doesn’t care about your ta’avah for private property you don’t have to share.
“i don’t bring a torah source to substantiate what i have to say. the torah source brings me to say what i say. i read it and it sets me off. and i write about what i’m feeling based on what i’m reading.”
” torah hasn’t changed my politics much; it’s emboldened them”
Baruch HaShem! Exactly how it should be, exactly what other people don’t understand.
Thank you.
Howie –
I think the problem is you’re assuming the people with the most distinctive religious habits are the most authentically Jewish. But while being scrupulous about kashrut and shabbat and all sorts of made up right-wing social chumrot will make you an “obvious jew”, it won’t make you a “good person”, *especially if that’s all you care about*.
The parts of Judaism that are actually self-improving (as opposed to ego-inflating) are the ones that have been taken up by all sorts of Jewish and non-Jewish cultures through the ages. The stuff we practically invented… tsedaka, human dignity, etc. So because they’re believed in (or at least given lip service to) in most of the world today, they become invisible when we look for “Judaism”.
What’s my point? Don’t look to the reactionary isolationists for Jewish values. They’re not living them.
Howie says, “if the core of traditional Torah Judaism were truly emancipatory, one would see this reflected SOMEWHERE/SOMEHOW in its’ followers”
That’s making a big leap — assuming that the Torah can be inferred from its self-styled followers. Could one deduce from the Haredi lifestyle that they worship a God who hears the cries of slaves? That all men are brothers? And yet, these are mainstream Talmudic decutions from the basic principles of the Torah. The sort of communal groupthink you’re pointing to as a measure of Torah’s value is as far removed from Divine Writ as is, well, unadulterated anarchism.
well… I wonder if there’s a difference between The Torah and the Law that people live their lives by. Certainly halacha is a larger presence in most haredi lives than actual torah is. One could hope to find or argue that Torah is saying something other than the lifestyle that somehow grew in response to it’s demands
Consider:
The missing element in every human ’solution’ is
an accurate definition of the creature.
The way we define ‘human’ determines our view
of self, others, relationships, institutions, life, and
future. Important? Only the Creator who made us
in His own image is qualified to define us accurately.
Choose wisely…there are results.
Many problems in human experience are the result of
false and inaccurate definitions of humankind premised
in man-made religions and humanistic philosophies.
Each individual human being possesses a unique, highly
developed, and sensitive perception of diversity. Thus
aware, man is endowed with a natural capability for enact-
ing internal mental and external physical selectivity.
Quantitative and qualitative choice-making thus lends
itself as the superior basis of an active intelligence.
Human is earth’s Choicemaker. His title describes
his definitive and typifying characteristic. Recall
that his other features are but vehicles of experi-
ence intent on the development of perceptive
awareness and the following acts of decision and
choice. Note that the products of man cannot define
him for they are the fruit of the discerning choice-
making process and include the cognition of self,
the utility of experience, the development of value-
measuring systems and language, and the accultur-
ation of civilization.
The arts and the sciences of man, as with his habits,
customs, and traditions, are the creative harvest of
his perceptive and selective powers. Creativity, the
creative process, is a choice-making process. His
articles, constructs, and commodities, however
marvelous to behold, deserve neither awe nor idol-
atry, for man, not his contrivance, is earth’s own
highest expression of the creative process.
Human is earth’s Choicemaker. The sublime and
significant act of choosing is, itself, the Archimedean
fulcrum upon which man levers and redirects the
forces of cause and effect to an elected level of qual-
ity and diversity. Further, it orients him toward a
natural environmental opportunity, freedom, and
bestows earth’s title, The Choicemaker, on his
singular and plural brow.
Human is earth’s Choicemaker. Psalm 25:12 He is by
nature and nature’s God a creature of Choice – and of
Criteria. Psalm 119:30,173 His unique and definitive
characteristic is, and of Right ought to be, the natural
foundation of his environments, institutions, and re-
spectful relations to his fellow-man. Thus, he is orien-
ted to a Freedom whose roots are in the Order of the
universe.
Let us proclaim it. Behold!
The Season of Generation-Choicemaker Joel 3:14 KJV
– from The HUMAN PARADIGM
i’m the decider! i decide!
“if the core of traditional Torah Judaism were truly emancipatory, one would see this reflected SOMEWHERE/SOMEHOW in its’ followers – all of the historical/sociological distortions notwithstanding. And, of course, we see nothing of the sort. The most egregius and awful effects of war, racism, global warming etc. leave virtually ALL Torah Jews totally unaffected – indeed, they actively cheer most of these things.”
It is interesting though how often largley secular Jews have embraced empacipatory causes: Glioria Steinem, Emma Goldman, Marx, Rosa Luxemgourg, Betty Friedan, Starhawk—the number of wacky people caring about humanity in inspiring and flawed ways has a much larger number of Jews than one would expect from our part of the general population.The phrase jewish communist conspiracy did not come into being becasue Jews have always embraced the status quo. Interestingly enough, almost none of these people would call themselves religious (except for Starhawk, who is a relgious Pagan). There is more to it, obviously…Jewish commitment to poor and race issues in the US waived once we were able to be middle class to wealthy and white. But the sentiment, if not the actions, (being humans) really does seem to support the underdog. Of course Judaism is not alone in this. Christianity inspires and justifies disparate things as Liberation Theology, supporting the poor, and Crusades, and supporting war. I suppose, all religiously inspired political action picks and chooses from the religion, like all religiously inspired action at all. And often seriously religious, recognizing how inherently problematic mixing the two can become (where what is sacred becomes distorted to jutify what is politically expedient and sometimes what is abhorrent) and opt to stick with an apolitical approach.
Well… there’s levels of what’s called Torah Judaism. There’s the shell around the Torah that the schools have been made out of— which is the details and names and numbers and times. And then there’s the priority inside, which does get brought up sometimes very often, if only to justify the rest.
The House we have built is because we need somewhere to feel safe and the rules for inclusion have to do with that— but what’s taught inside the house may, ironically, be all about leaving the house.
The nice thing about Judaism is that we’re free to do something else with it whenever we want, because there has not been a central dictatorial authority in a while, not one that was taken to seriously, with the exception of Frued and BenGurion, the Chazon Ish or the Satmer Rebbe, all of whom depended on interest to rule.