Der Tzimmes: Av 16, 5769

Serious news as a sweet side dish


Weekly News in Brief


Horrified Customer Finds Crustacean Leg in Tap Water, Threatens to Bring Mother-in-Law

An emergency team of rabbis was deployed today to check surrounding water sources, amidst growing concern that a crustacean found in a plastic cup of tap water was not killed in accordance with Jewish law. The leg was found at a kosher burger joint on Coney Island Avenue in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Proprietor Zalman Shlezinger claimed the offending specimen was planted by agents of the falafel joint next door. Local residents are in shock. Shlezinger is cooperating with investigators.

Orthodox World Alarmed at Growth of Bing Search Engine; Shocking Discovery of Criminal Ring

A panel of rabbis and community leaders convened on strategies to combat the software giant's latest product, fearful it will allow Orthodox users one-click acces to insidious material. The search engine came to the panel's awareness when a number of them came across the "i bing, u bing" stickers pasted across New York City and proceeded to ask their congregants whether it would be appropriate to establish a weekly "bing night" for senior citizens. When told it's not a variant of the popular bingo game the inquiring rabbis were crestfallen, but then lightened up at the prospect of a conference on the topic.

The rabbis were then informed of another product named Google, which performs a similar function to that of Bing, but the rabbis decided not to include Google in the discussions since it does not seem to be growing as quickly. "Bing has the potential of becoming a household name," Rabbi Cheskel Markowitz, the conference organizer, said in a brief phone interview with Der Tzimmes. "Google, nah, that's not so catchy."

Technology expert Moshe Gelb demonstrated to the panel how entering simple keywords in the Bing search box, such as "foot fetish" or "bdsm," brings instantaneous lists of material that rabbis are fearful will cause Bittul Torah. Gelb also noted that some items in the list are clickable, and when followed allow one to see full-color photographs of men and women engaged in what one rabbi described as "various dangerous acts." According to Rabbi Yonah Zelig, a panel participant, viewers saw a naked man handcuffed and tied to a bed with a naked woman tugging his shmeiser. "We think we may have stumbled on an international ring of criminal activity in the process." Zelig told reporters, "We have reported our findings to the authorities, and we're hopeful that the unfortunate man will soon be found and freed."

Well Known Sect in Crown Heights Seeks to Become Less Known

A well-known community of Hasidic Jews has had it with being well-known, and are launching a public campaign to make themselves less known. Members of the community, who call themselves "Lubavitchers," believe their spiritual leader, Menachem Schneerson, to be the long-awaited Jewish Messiah. Schneerson, believed to have died in 1993, is said by his followers to still be alive. When asked, though, few followers were aware of any recent sightings. This has led other Hasidic groups to questions Lubavitchers' sanity, and Lubavitchers, quite understandably, are seeking to get out of the limelight.

Shloime Weingarten, a Karlin Hasid and fish-store owner in Borough Park, said, "Oh, them? Yeah. Nuts, huh?" Asked whether he believes them to be real Hasidim, Weingarten scoffed and shouted, "Next!" as he slammed his club on a live carp.

"You think we're more nuts than, say, Pupa, or Spink, or Slonim, or Boyan--?" asked Yossi Kizelnik, a Lubavitcher, clearly agitated to be dismissed by a fisherman. "Of course not. They're just unheard of, so who cares?" It is still unclear whether those groups really exist. Kizelnik, 21, plans to take part in a new campaign of standing on street corners and not asking people if they're Jewish. "Really," Kizelnik said, "you know, when you think about it, it's maybe not the best idea. I'm not sure who came up with it... Um. You should probably speak to the Public Relations department."

Publisher: I. C. Mayerin

An Anthropological Disaster

(Note: I wrote this piece in January of 2005, but never posted it. I don't remember why I didn't; perhaps I wasn't ready to come out of my self-imposed hibernation. And while I now feel somewhat differently about these issues, it's still a relevant topic of discussion. Perhaps I'll write more on the subject in the future.)

One of the great concerns in the aftermath of the recent tsunami in Southeast Asia was that some of the most primitive tribes living on remote islands in the Indian Ocean may have been wiped out or are in danger of extinction. These people have been living there for thousands of years and some now number as little as 50 or 100 members.

“They are endangered people and it would be an anthropological disaster if they have suffered heavy loss of life, because they are the missing link with an early civilization,” the BBC quoted an official of the Anthropological Survey of India.

Imagine the relief when helicopter pilots attempting to assess the situation and drop supplies to possible survivors reported they were being shot at with bows and arrows. Apparently there were survivors among these primitive people, and we can go on hoping they remain primitive for eternity — or at least that seems to be the hope of some people.

It’s not hard to imagine that anthropologists and experts on primitive societies would be greatly saddened if these inhabitants suddenly became aware of the great gulf between them and the civilized world and decided they want to join us. Enough of the shamans and the tribal dances and the superstitions. They’ve had it with having to compete with the wildlife for the limited resources on their islands, and the leaky, grass-roof huts, and the kids running around naked. But wouldn’t it be a shame, those who study these people would say, if the allure of world-class medicine, or chic evening-wear, or at least a house with running water would prove too great, and these people with their primitiveness would become extinct?

It may sound ridiculous to some, but those experts might have a point, and it’s one that I can actually relate to, albeit with ambivalence. Raised as a Chasid in the sheltered environment of our insular communities, having only become exposed later in life to a more expansive worldview, I often look around at the Chasidic community in which I live and in which I raise my children, and lament the extent to which they cling to what can only be considered—dare I say it—primitive ideas.

A large poster in the foyer of the shul I regularly attend caught my attention recently. The letters were large and bold, and they screamed about the latest subversive elements threatening our youth. No, they weren’t decrying rebellious teens experimenting with drugs, or kids having unprotected sex, or partying till the morning hours on school nights. The threats were Palm Pilots and colored-screen cell phones. “There hasn’t been such a destructive force since the day of creation,” the poster warned. “Parents: keep an eye on your sons and daughters lest these innocent-looking devices lead them off the straight path of our ancestors.”

Further clarifications from those in the know were that these devices now have the ability to connect to the Internet. Yes, the force that has destroyed hundreds of homes and led thousands astray. Along with the ability to now watch movies on DVD, it is the reason for which computers are now banned from Chasidic homes and offices except for strict necessity. The argument goes that the exposure to popular culture gained through the Internet is so great that it is causing visible harm to the integrity of the Chasidic community and lifestyle. The easy access to objectionable material or encounters with members of the opposite sex—strictly forbidden in real life but readily available in chat rooms and message boards—scares the establishment leadership to frizzers.

But one suspects that there is an additional fear of a much greater threat: the exposure to knowledge heretofore unavailable to Chasidim. Anecdotal evidence suggests the threat is real. In recent years, I’ve come across an astounding number of Chasidim who are exploring and discovering a wealth of ideas through their computers. With their newfound awareness of advances in science and liberal ideas, many are beginning to raise questions they never dared ask, including those relating to the fundamentals of Judaism. Many find it difficult to part with the teachings so ingrained in their minds from the first days their preschool teachers taught them Torah Tziva Lanu, but find themselves in a quandary, suddenly realizing a mountain of questions beside a great void of answers. Without the framework to deal with such faith crises in a sophisticated manner, some of these young men and women are discarding their faith, if not outwardly then within their minds and hearts and whatever they can get away with behind closed doors.

I’ve often imagined an idealized world of Chasidim. One that incorporates the Hirschian teachings of combining Torah with Derech Eretz, or the later formulations of Torah U’Madda — Torah study with the study of science and other worldly knowledge and culture — alongside the fervor and devoutness of the Chasidic spirit. I saw a world in which Chasidim allow an appreciation of knowledge that is not necessarily of or from the Torah. And one would think that Chasidism, which emphasizes the service of God in all areas of life, even the mundane, would be particularly suited for such a philosophy.

I’ve imagined a world in which the tremendous spirit of devotion to God’s service is combined with compassion for all of mankind. A Chasidic world in which the concept of being a "Light unto the Nations" isn’t viewed with disdain as an idea promoted by insecure liberal Jews afraid of what the goyim will think. A community that embraces the Other, and is able to shed its prejudices that have become layered over centuries.

And now it seemed possible.

The Internet, I realized, can serve as a place for people to discover new approaches in Judaism, and realize there are streams of Judaism that offer authentic alternatives. New ideas can be learned, and old taboos shattered.

But then I realized the cost: it would be an anthropological disaster. The insular neighborhoods of Williamsburg, Monsey, Kiryas Joel, and New Square are more than just a photojournalist’s paradise. They represent a very real link to a world almost completely gone. A newfound awareness of the world will inevitably erode the innocence, the purity of heart and mind found in these communities. The close-knit family structures, the warmth and generosity, the very real joy for a neighbor’s good fortune and the searing empathy with another’s sorrow will be easily lost when its members become jaded by overexposure to everything the world has to offer.

While having often ridiculed the extreme separation between the sexes, or the seeming ridiculousness of modern-day Rabbis giving themselves the authority of a non- existent Sanhedrin to enact new and contrived laws of modesty for women, I don’t wish for this lifestyle’s extinction. While once I hoped that Chasidim would some day embrace secular education and worldly knowledge for its own sake, I can’t really see it as the salvation I imagined it to be.

That doesn’t mean I no longer hope for the idealized world I described. The primitive tribes in the remote Indian islands would most certainly benefit from the knowledge and civilized living of modern society, but it would be to our great loss if the unique culture of a people were lost forever. Chasidim are not a primitive tribe in the Asian wilderness; for one thing, we embrace the benefits of science and technology as long as it doesn’t challenge our lifestyle. But we do stick to ideas better suited to the Eastern European shtetls of centuries ago, and in that respect we’re primitive. Still, we have a unique culture with much to admire, and even though there is much I find disagreeable, I hate to think of it being lost forever.

On Writing

At the age of fourteen I started to work on my first novel. A rather ambitious project, the imagined life story of a progenitor I’d idolized, it lasted all of three college-ruled loose leaf sheets, written in crude cursive script—an attempt to write as I imagined real writers do. It remained hidden behind the last page of my Talmud tractate Gittin—my budding novel being a convenient distraction from the intricate laws of transmitting a divorce writ by proxy—until I realized I’d best wait a few years. I’d chosen to write in English as I imagined my novel a work of sophisticated literature; Yiddish just wouldn’t cut it for that. But I soon realized that my after-school basic English instruction left me short on the necessary skills.

Between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two I kept a journal, written in a rather pretentious babble of rabbinic Hebrew, complete with grammatical errors and inconsistencies and overused clichés of biblical and Talmudic wordplay, in which I rambled about the meaning of life, attempted a chiddush or two on hot-button matters of interest, and tried my hand at original contributions to Jewish thought. Suffice to say should someone read those journals now, I’d scurry for the nearest hole and fast.

I then turned to some serious writing in mama-lushen—incidentally, my most successful writing endeavor to date, professionally speaking. A few pious thoughts, a handful of parables heavy with didactic overstatement, a biography of a well-loved family patriarch, and some ghost writing for someone kind enough to find my talents worthy. A number of these were published in various fora under a variety of playful pseudonyms.

Writing remains, even now, my most natural form of communication. I’d rather email than talk on the phone, rather have an online debate than a real-life one, rather write and edit random Wikipedia articles than share random bits of trivia at cocktail parties. So when I started blogging and found a welcome audience it dawned on me—along with a lot of encouragement from my mother—that I might actually have what it takes to join the ranks of professional writers.

It hasn’t come easy, to say the least—which isn’t to say that it’s come at all, really. There’s been a lot of staring at blank computer screens and lots of slamming down my laptop cover in disgust.

One day I put the finishing touches on a short story I’d been working on for weeks. “Interesting,” one friend said politely after reading it. “Hmm,” said another, “I wonder if you can’t, like, spice up the ending a bit. Also, the middle can use some fleshing out. And… you know, maybe work on the beginning, too, while you’re at it.”

I rewrote and rewrote, and then showed it again. “Promising,” said one friend. The other friend gave a frown, along with the excuse that she’s “not really good at critique.”

Well, what do friends really know? I submitted my story to a few literary magazines. One editor was kind enough to include a handwritten note on how the piece might be improved. The rest were just standard form rejection letters.

I decided to try my hand at a novel. The first two chapters were a hit. “Brilliant,” said one friend. “Don’t spend another minute on anything else,” said another. “It’s pure genius.”

For the next three months I sat looking at the computer screen but couldn’t write another word. I had to meet brilliance with brilliance, and it just wasn’t coming. The problem, I realized at some point, was that I introduced great characters, full of patois and humor, with many shades of complexity, sympathetic villains and abhorrent saints. But when it came to writing about what they actually did, I couldn’t think of much. Ok, I said to myself, I need to work on the plot. A nerdy Jewish guy talking to his shrink about his masturbatory shiksa-fantasies may have worked for Philip Roth, but I needed an actual story. So I bought a few books on the subject, borrowed a few more from the library, and tried coming up with a page-turning chain of events. Not as easy as I thought. Holding out for a more fortuitous moment of creative inspiration, I laid my budding novel into my hard drive’s equivalent of a dusty corner of a bottom drawer.

I turned to creative non-fiction and inspirational writing. Over the years I’d gotten a few requests from online journals to re-publish one or another of my old blog posts. Well, I figured, perhaps I can get space in a real, print periodical. A friend put in a word for me at a local Jewish weekly, whose editor was a friend of his. They were intrigued, the editor wrote me, but had no space for additional columnists. They’d keep my name on file.

Still I looked for opportunities, and when a request came from a progressive Jewish periodical devoted to big liberal ideas and heavy on spirituality I grabbed it. My piece was to be a short commentary on a biblical passage. I wrote stirring words about our goals in life and our obligations to mankind and the universe within which we live.

I submitted the piece with some ambivalence, and when I read the piece on the printed page I felt disgusted with myself. I wrote what I thought the readership (and the editor) wanted, but not what I felt compelled to say, what I really believed in. I realized I had a hard time writing for someone else, on a specific topic with specific guidelines and an editor to please.

Which is why, after all this time, when I really, really need to write, I still turn to my blog. Unpolished, unedited, a limited yet reliable readership—one I’m genuinely grateful for—and the freedom to ramble however and whenever I please. It’s not glamorous, there’s no money in it (not that there’s much in print publishing), and no professional recognition that comes with “being published,” something that looks nice in a query letter when pitching a piece, something that says this is a writer recognized by other professional writers and editors. But when the writer’s bug crawls up inside your brain and you’re itching and scratching to put pen to paper, you just take what you can get. And blogging, if nothing else, beats Wikipedia writing.

Religion as Fairytale

A friend and I were traveling around the south last October, and we found ourselves in Nashville, Tennessee on the first day of Rosh Hashanah. When I told my travel buddy I’d like to visit the Chabad house and do some Rosh Hashanah davening, he thought I was joking. I assured him I wasn’t. I wanted to hear the Shofar blowing too, I told him. He laughed at me but came along, and while he kept himself occupied with a book, I took a machzor and went through the entire davening, from Birchos Hashachar to Aleinu – or at least those parts that came with a distinct holiday chant, the parts I was really nostalgic for. My friend was amused; he even tried to raise the stakes: he threatened to tell all our friends – hardened apikorsim, to a man – that I actually davened. Knock yourself out, I told him.

The next day we were in Louisville, Kentucky, and my urge for Yom Tov davening hadn’t dissipated. We repeated the spiel, my companion somewhat reluctantly obliging me, although I had a sneaky suspicion that some part of him found it enjoyable too.

On Sukkos, another friend and I were traveling around Spain, ending up in Barcelona on the first day of Yom Tov. It’s Sukkos, I thought to myself, and doggone it, I was gonna find me a lulav and esrog to wave. A Sukkah, too, just to spend a few minutes in for a quick Leisheiv Basukkah, would be nice. Chabad, of course, is everywhere. And the lavish kiddush in the sukkah a few blocks away from the shul was an added bonus. Aside from the discomfort of having forgotten my yarmulke (the sukkah didn’t have a basket of them like at the shul) and having to wear the rabbi’s oversized one that he removed from beneath his three-pinch hat, it was a very pleasant experience.

And over the past months I’ve taken with some degree of regularity to attend Friday night services at various synagogues, some of them Orthodox, others decidedly not so. And my friends all show the same signs of bewilderment. What value, pray tell, do I see in religious services, they want to know.



Ahavat olam beit yisrael amkha ahavta, the congregation sang last Friday night to a familiar Carlebach melody, joyous and evocative. The power of song is in its ability to take you beyond the cerebral, to a state you can only feel but cannot adequately describe. The tune evoked a feeling of melancholy. On the one hand it expressed a yearning for the unique and wonderful union that binds our nation to the divine. At the same time, there’s the inescapable awareness of such a notion being the mere creative fantasy of long-bearded men in ancient Palestine.

You have loved your nation, the house of Israel, an eternal love. You taught us Torah and commandments, laws and statutes. Therefore, Lord, our God, when we lay down and when we rise we will converse in your laws, and rejoice in the words of the study of your Torah and your commandments forever and ever. For they are our lives, and the length of our days, and in them we shall discourse day and night. Remove not your love from us, forever and ever.

So stirring and so beautiful. And such bullshit.

Bullshit because it reflects the most primitive human understandings of our world and its underlying forces and the urge to engage with it through hokus pokus. But it also represents humanity’s craving for the grandiose fairytale of a cosmic romance, and therefore beautiful as only a fairytale can be, especially when we, our collective selves, are its main protagonists.

Primitive understandings of the world in terms of gods and other supernatural forces are largely what shaped and informed both what we might call the externalities and internalities of religions. The externalities are the religions' precise forms, their organized structures, and the practices and rituals that are performed within the mundane routine of everyday life. They lie in the adherence to laws and values, either strictly parameterized, such as the Jewish Halacha or Muslim Sharia, or in a general ethos, such as what we might call Judeo-Christian morals, or, in less overtly religious terms, conservative values.

The internalities, too, have been shaped by primitive notions of cosmic order. Those are the dogmas and doctrinal teachings, the ideas that underlie the tenacity to a religious order. It’s these dogmas, of course, that are now found so intolerable by many, who abhor its pernicious and malevolent ability to incite otherwise rational humans to irrational, even outright cruel, behavior.

But the internalities of religion are comprised also of another dimension, its innermost soul, so to speak, and that is the human urge for heightened mental and emotional states. It is that urge that is perhaps most recognized in the faith of many contemporary individuals, those who feel uncomfortable with dogma, ill at ease with the unbending fealty to organized religion that characterizes traditional fundamentalism but are drawn instead to the soaring religious spirit and the loftiness of its ideals. It's this spirit that informs the quiet and still reflections on our place in the world, our connection to the idea of the divine, and our relationship to our fellow humans.

Abraham Maslow, the famous psychologist of the “hierarchy of needs” theory, writes about what he calls “peak experiences” in man’s intimate encounter with his or her idea of the cosmic order. In his essay “Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences” Maslow urges a paradigm shift from the religion vs. science dichotomy. Humans have, from time immemorial, tried to reach deep into their psyches to attain what felt like elevated states of consciousness along with feelings of ecstasy and euphoria. Maslow isn’t suggesting there’s something “real” – as in, an actual encounter with a paranormal realm – in these transcendent states. Rather that these are simply other states of mental awareness – not entirely unlike our dreamlike states – that humans crave, in which the brain provides us with a deeply pleasurable experience.

Maslow describes these peak experiences as being, for the most part, the domain of the “lonely prophets,” the deeply introspective mystics who are given to an intuitive grasp of big ideas that cannot be easily conveyed with the spoken word. The “naturalists,” on the other hand, those who shy away from ideas that are undefinable in quantitative, measurable terms, ideas that cannot be proven or disproven with empirical evidence or even conventional logic, will be less given to such phenomena, either because they are constitutionally incapable of such experiences, or because, given the intangible nature of these experiences, these individuals won’t be receptive to them when encountered, and will aim instead to dismiss such experiences as being too mystical, emotional, and non-rational.

Of course, most of us aren’t pure mystics or pure naturalists, but fall somewhere along a spectrum. But whatever our constitutional makeup, Maslow’s essay on the nature of these experiences can help us understand these phenomena in such a way that doesn’t bind us to its supposed, non-rational implications, allowing us to embrace the experiences as essential parts of our humanity without succumbing to the delusion that we are experiencing a bona-fide awareness of the paranormal.

Maslow has also given us, perhaps unintentionally, an entirely new paradigm: “peak experiences” divorced from religion or even anathema to it. We no longer need to associate intense mental consciousness with religion any more than we would do so for a stirring musical performance. In fact, we might now contend that it’s entirely possible for “peak experiences” to be adopted in the service of humanism, atheism, or any other overtly secular philosophy.



The Friday night services had been over for a few hours, and still the tune sung to Ahavat Olam along with its message reverberated in my mind. The reflectiveness in which I was engaged could hardly be called religious in any conventional sense. But it was a decidedly religious-like experience in that it provided an intuition of a grand idea, greater than the actual event, beyond the sermonizing foci of renewed moral commitments, and far, far beyond the actual words sung, spoken, or chanted.

Paradoxically, that feeling also had a component of crushing despair, of the inescapable recognition that our lives are truly, in any objective sense, so devastatingly meaningless. An enchanting fairytale is sweet, but the farther removed our reality is from the fairytale, coupled with the intensity of our engrossment in that fairytale, the more bitterly we simultaneously face our reality, contrasting it to what we wish it was but alas, it isn’t. But this despair came from within a song, which made it not so much depressing as sad, more inspiring than incapacitating, giving way to hope within hopelessness, driving one towards an active determination to find meaning, as arbitrary and subjective as it may be, within the limiting parameters of our profound ignorance.

The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre writes of our existentialist dilemma as being one of profound despair at finding moral guidance and perceiving life's ultimate purpose from outside of our subjective phenomenological selves. We are “condemned to be free,” he famously wrote; whether we like it or not, we have no place to turn to for a method on how to live a meaningful and purposeful life. It is therefore entirely up to us to make of our lives what we wish it to be. What a melancholy thought!

In similar fashion, the song of ourselves as God’s beloved people can only serve as a reminder of what we really are not, and the joyous tune turns into one of ironic sadness at our true lonesomeness in this universe, without providence or guidance, without any force greater than ourselves to actually care one way or another, without anything we do ever being of real consequence. The universe, in its nonchalant indifference, will continue to adhere to its laws, forever and beyond, whether we choose to kill and plunder or devote our lives to altruistic saintliness. We can choose to destroy each other in one great apocalyptic nuclear war, or preserve the destinies of our and every other species forever. We can destroy the rainforests, bring about catastrophic climate change, blow up the entire planet – even our entire solar system or galaxy, and even beyond – to smithereens, but the laws of nature will go on, if not as we know them then in some other form equally natural, equally indifferent, equally inconsequential. However we choose, no choice can be said to be truly better than any other. Facing no consequence, we are indeed truly free, a sad and desperate freedom.

Blessed are you, O Lord, who loves his nation of Israel. Hear O Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is One. And we all live happily ever after.

A New Crusade

Lazy, Good-for-Nothing Husbands. Flashes of random brilliance.

Time

Days weeks months will pass and
   I will forget you they say but still I smell black angus steak
       on a Sammy flatbread dripping spicy brown sauce onto one
           hand as I hold the steering wheel with the other
       passing Quiznos driving up
Schunnemunk road

In my closet the scent of your perfume wafts
   teasing me from within two white bags
       named Bebe and Guess your jeans
           summer dress strappy sandals lace-ruffled t-shirts
       instruments of an alternate reality which for that
           brief period I dared to dream
would last

I thought it was lust but you
   insisted it was love I thought girls never said it
       first so I’d be safe from laying in bed
           as I do now nearly hyperventilating at the thought
   of you
   your presence within my imagination
       the cause of my chest
           pounding in yearning agony my throat feeling
       constricted yet threatening to burst
           forth a scream so loud come back to me but
               all I can do is bury my face in my pillow
                   wishing only this was not the bed
we shared

Days weeks months will pass and with time I will forget but how long is time

Is Quiznos better than Subway you didn’t know
   the difference and I enlightened you with la vera cucina dangling
       abomination to tempt your pure and innocent soul to
           sin and sacrilege but my tempting could not make you
       forever exchange your seamed stocking for the bare leg
           you were so proud of or the long-sleeved sweater for
               the black halter top that showed off your
perfect shoulders
 
You were not a poem
   self-conscious and self-referential pretentious
       with arbitrary line breaks the more clever
           to impress your smile
       genuine your heart sweeter than all
           sweet things not an ounce of
              bitch blood your email read still in my inbox for my
sadomasochistic pleasure

How many passions does one get
   in a lifetime have I used one up in vain are they like
       orgasms that grow consecutively weaker until
            the energy is sapped or are they like
        food temporarily satiating until new hunger
           ignites new
desire

In secret we danced
   in golden fields with desert roses dipped
       in Babylonian rivers smooth operators twirled
           from coast to coast with alien Englishmen
       to the cries of
Halelujah

Days weeks months will pass but I can not will not stop believing

The Bridge

[Fiction]

In the summertime we would note how dry the brook was as we crossed the little bridge, and you would remark how little it had been raining that summer. We would count how many weeks in a row it had been dry, and probably kept track better than anyone in the county how long we’d gone without rain.

In the winter the little bridge would be covered with snow, and sometimes sleet and ice. But even more treacherous was the descent down the slope toward the narrow planks. A little tree stood just within reach on which to grab hold if we slipped, which you did once, grabbing hold just in time to keep from tumbling into the shallow but icy cold rushing waters. But usually you made your way down slowly while I held onto the little tree, and once safely on the icy planks you would reach out with your strong hand and steady arm and help me down.

Each Friday night we would hold hands, crossing the little bridge behind the park, constructed of four planks someone had laid across side by side, most likely so they could come to our side on which there was a park and a playground. Sometimes you’d point to the moon, and we’d observe how it shone when full, and how dark everything was when it shrank to a sliver. I’d never noticed how bright the moon can shine, only there without any lights around could you tell. You’d explain how the moon is always really a full circle, but we can only see the part that is lit up by the sun. And when I gazed at it long enough I thought I could make out the full outline very faintly.

Once on our way back, just as we came up the little slope from the bridge, we noticed quick moving shadows in the dark. In fear I clung to you, and you laughed. It was a family of deer, quickly prancing away as they became aware of us, and then I laughed along with you. Later we told the girls excitedly how we came upon the deer behind the park, and they all listened wide-eyed, and Chaya’le said she wants to come to shul too.

Mostly we walked in silence, holding hands. Each Friday night and Shabbos morning, just you and I, week after week, month after month, year after year, crossed the bridge behind the park to the little shtiebel on the other side.

And then you told us you were going to live someplace else. I often came to spend Shabbos with you, and again we would hold hands as we walked to Shul, until I grew older and it felt too childish. But there was no little bridge to cross, with flowing water and croaking frogs in spring and autumn, and a dried out bed in the summer, and treacherous icy slopes in the winter. And no little tree to grab onto in case we slipped. Just a shtiebel next door.

Shoplifting Blues

I had a throbbing headache, hung over from bar hopping around the D.C. area with a friend the night before. Now it was late morning, and I was running late for the drive back to New York. As I stood, luggage in hand, impatiently pressing the elevator button on the sixth floor of the hotel, I realized I didn’t get a souvenir for my kids yet, which I’d been intending to do. I checked my watch. Better make it quick.

I stopped in the hotel gift shop near the lobby and scanned the shelves. I passed on the miniature replicas of the U.S. Capitol, the White House coffee mugs, and the various other overpriced, tacky knickknacks hotel gift shops think visitors would or should purchase. A glossy paperback pictorial caught my eye. It had high quality photos of the major D.C. attractions with rich text descriptions. My little ones would enjoy the photos and my older ones – at least the bookworm daughter of mine – would devour the factoids and information bits.

Foolish me, I hadn’t even glanced at the price: $34.95 for all of thirty two pages. Forget it. I continued to browse the shop, pausing momentarily on one of those round, water-filled, snow-shower thingys with a Washington monument inside, but decided that even children know a useless, tired old tchochke when they see one. I left without purchasing anything.

My car was in the underground garage, and, with both hands occupied shlepping some bag or other, I fumbled for my car keys to open the back door. It was then that I realized I was still holding the glossy pictorial. I felt a momentary zap of horror. I’d never before, to the best of my recollection, shoplifted. I looked around. There was no store clerk running after me. And judging by the lone security guard’s bored demeanor, there were no flashing neon lights above my head screaming, “Shoplifter!” I checked my watch again. It was nearing noon, and I had an event to attend in New York that afternoon. I flung the book into the back of my car with my suitcase, and headed to the Capital Beltway toward the I-95 North.

~ ~ ~

“That’s just wrong, mayte,” a newly-met Australian friend said to me in the courtyard of a hostel in Athens. I gulped down the rest of my Amstel, and took a drag on one of his unfiltered, roll-your-own Marlboros (very popular in Europe, incidentally).

He’d been out the previous night on a tip from a fellow hosteller to score some quality weed. But he ended up having a knife pulled on him after he strongly protested the taking of his money without the desired goods being offered up. My Aussie friend had pulled a knife too, but wisely took off before either weapon was put to use. That’s what got us into a conversation about theft, drug-dealing, and “doing the right thing.” At which point I told him of my shoplifting episode.

“Suppose it is wrong,” I said, “what of it?”

His eyes took on a blank look. Then, as if he awoke, “It’s just wrong, mayte. You can’t just steal shit.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Why not?!” he looked at me incredulously. “That’s just fucked up, mayte.”

“That may be so,” I said, “but suppose I have no problem engaging in ‘fucked-up’ behavior, can you give me a reason not to?”

He turned thoughtful. “Let me put it to you this way,” he said. “Didn’t your parents teach you it’s wrong to steal shit?”

“They certainly did,” I said.

“So?” he asked.

“So?” I asked.

“So where do you get the notion that there’s nothin’ wrong with it?”

“I didn’t say there’s nothing wrong with it,” I tried to explain. “I’m just asking why I should care whether it’s wrong or not.”

He took a swig from his beer, paused to look me in the eye, and said, “Mayte, are you smokin’ somethin’ I don’t know about?”

~ ~ ~

“Ok, ok,” my friend Shloime said in his fast-clipped cadences, with his heavy Yerushalmi accent. “You know, but if everyvone tought dat vay, you know, den de whole vorld vould be, you know… nobody vould do good tings… everybody vould steal from oder people and kill oder people. You know? So you need etics and morals to have a good vorld.” He turned his palms up to emphasize the sagacity of his words.

“That’s true,” I said. “Ethics and morals certainly benefit society as a whole. Obviously, we all benefit when all humans are decent and honest.”

“Dat’s exactly right,” Shloime said with eyebrows raised in satisfaction. He was resting his case.

“But suppose,” I said, “that everyone is honest and decent, with one exception.”

He nodded expectantly. “Who?”

“Me. I’ll be the bad guy.”

“Dat’s not possible,” he said quickly.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because if you can say it, den everybody can say it.”

“Not so,” I responded. “What if my name is Saddam Hussein?”

“Vhat if?! Vhat if!! But you’re not. Er, hetech petech.”

“Ok,” I said, “that’s true. But you have to admit that a Saddam Hussein can exist – and one has in fact existed for quite some time.”

“Nu? So?”

“So what argument would you make to Saddam that he should be an all-around good guy? Not to kill his Kurdish citizens, not enrich himself from the oil-for-food program, and just do all those things that nice and decent law-abiding tyrants do.”

“So, vhat? You vant to be a Saddam Chussein? You vant to be a rushe like him?”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” I tried to explain. “I’m just asking for a solid objective line of reasoning one might use with Saddam to explain why his actions, while beneficial to himself, are best avoided. In other words, why should we as human beings not behave like him if given the chance to do so without consequences?”

“I dunno,” he shrugged, apparently growing bored. “It’s a klutz kasha. Everybody knows that Saddam is a bad man and what he does is wrong.”

“Do you think Saddam himself knows that?”

He gave me that dismissive palms forward gesture, as if to say, stop this nonsense. “Saddam doesn’t have to know it. As long as everybody else knows it.”

I wasn’t getting very far. Apparently, my Socratic methods weren’t too well developed. But still I tried.

“Look,” I said, “it’s true, most people know Saddam is a bad man. But suppose you have just one person, say, me – just for argument’s sake, of course – who wants to be a bad guy. Can you make a logical, convincing argument for the objective value of good human behavior other than the avoidance of negative consequences or some other form of social punishment?”

“I dunno,” he said. “But I also dunno vhy you alvays ask dese stupid qvestions. It’s a pushiteh zach, dere’s no chochmas here. You’re just fardraying a kop.”

“As usual,” he added quickly.

So that was that.

~ ~ ~

We were gathered for a lazy Sunday brunch in a friend’s apartment. The topic of the morning was how our values have changed since leaving the world of Orthodoxy. One person mentioned the value of artistic expression. Another brought up physical fitness and competitive sports. A third mentioned commitment to education and higher learning. Until Eli, a shy nineteen-year-old from Kiryas Joel, wearing a backward baseball cap and an AC/DC t-shirt, asked in a barely audible tone, “Values? What values?”

Our host, Nechama, a former Tomer Devorah student, sat with her usual quiet demeanor, legs crossed beneath her on the cushiony armchair, flip-flops overturned on the floor beside her.

“Why do you say that?” she asked Eli.

“What are values, and who decides them?” His voice was not firm, and his eyes drifted downward most of the time, but he seemed resolute with his question. “Can anyone here tell me of a single value that they find possible to convince someone else of?”

“So what are you saying?” Nechama asked. “There are no values?”

“I’m just asking the question,” he said. “I’m not saying there are or there aren’t.”

“So,” I asked him, seizing the opportunity. “Would you shoplift an item off the shelf if you knew you could get away with it?”

“Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn’t. But can you give me a reason not to?”

Sol, raised in Lakewood, was having none of it. In his black hoodie and white sneakers he gave off a ghetto-wannabe vibe. But he considered himself something of a philosopher, too.

“You may not realize it,” Sol said, “but even if you think your actions have no consequence, they have a negative effect on your unconscious.”

Bruce, somewhat older than most of us, thoughtful in a professorial kind of way, attempted a nuanced approach. “You’re asking two different questions,” he said. “One: what would you do? Two: what should you do? The answer to the first is, you’d do whichever makes you feel better, whichever you’re inclined to do at the moment. The answer to the second is obvious, of course. You shouldn’t be taking property that isn’t yours.”

“Why not?” asked Eli, his tone and demeanor softer yet, as if he wasn’t sure he belonged to the conversation at all.

“Because it affects your unconscious,” said Sol, raising his voice for extra emphasis, seeming frustrated at just how obtuse some people can be.

Bruce waved his palms gently toward Sol, as if urging patience. “You see,” he said to Eli, “you come from a Chasidish background, and therefore you tend to see things in black and white.”

Eli looked up at him, seeming present now, and adjusted his cap from behind.

Bruce continued, “You lost your structure of values when you left the Chasidish world, and since all your values came from God, and now you don’t have God in your life, you think there are no values. But you’re mistaken. There are values without religion. There are universal rights and wrongs.”

“Perhaps,” said Eli, “but I’m asking where they come from, and by what authority they can be insisted upon.”

“By what authority?” asked Bruce impatiently. “By human authority. It’s within all of us to know right from wrong. It’s innate. We’re born with it.”

“Exactly,” said Sol while making animated gestures with his hands. “All your actions go deep inside of you, into your unconscious, you know, the deepest parts of your mind, and it affects the kind of person you are, you know?”

Eli gazed at Bruce intently, remained silent for a moment, then shrugged.

“It affects your unconscious,” muttered Sol. Eli looked at him and nodded.

~ ~ ~

Motty and I agreed, I needed a new TV. But we disagreed on the urgency of the matter. Motty said Abe had a really good one, and he didn’t understand why I didn’t get one like his. Because this one’s cheap, I tried explaining. But the picture quality is crap, he tried explaining in turn. And sometimes the screen goes blank, and you have to bang it to bring it to life. And further, it was too small. He was right. It was no way to watch the game. For the upcoming Super Bowl party we’d go out and buy a smashing new state-of-the-art TV. Or I’d buy the TV, and Motty would help pick it out. And he’d bring the chips and salsa.

Motty liked the 46 inch Flat Panel for $1999. I liked it too, but not enough to shell out for it. I put forth the argument that our viewing pleasure would still be significantly upgraded if we go for the 32 inch for $999. Intense negotiations followed, after which we settled for a 42 inch for $1299, and Motty would supply all the chips and salsa for next season, plus two six-packs for the upcoming party.

The elderly lady cashier at the discount electronics store greeted us with a stern look. I wondered if she knew of something up my sleeve that I didn’t know about. But this day I was as innocent as a chaider boy, on my best behavior. Besides, Motty still went as a chasid – payess, scraggly beard, yellowed talis katan, and all – and while he didn’t care much for chilul hashem, I still didn’t like giving Chasidim a bad name.

Applicable discounts and sales tax duly applied, and the stern lady informed us our total would be $1340.09. I handed her thirteen crisp hundred dollar bills, two twenties, and a dime. She took it all, contemplated it for a moment, then kachinged open the cash drawer. She put away the cash, and then hesitated a moment. Then started flipping some bills out of the drawer, hesitated again for a moment, then put a bunch of bills and a handful of change on the counter.

“Zug nisht gurnisht in leig arein in tash,” Motty said, grasping her error quick as a fox.

I looked at the money, then at the cashier, and frowned. She noticed something was wrong, and contemplated the situation.

“Oh,” she said suddenly with an embarrassed smile. She took back one penny from the change on the counter. “That’s mine,” she said.

“Nu, leig shoin in tash arein in kim shoin,” Motty said under his breath.

I looked at the woman again, waiting to see if she’d grasp her error. She smiled at me, obviously unaware that her error was as yet uncorrected. I checked my wallet again. It was obvious she thought I gave her twenty dollars more than I did. My wallet confirmed that I was correct. I was now certain of it.

“That penny was mine,” I said. “The rest is yours.” I handed her back the bills and the change.

“Oh,” she said. She looked baffled, but took the money, looked at it for a moment, and put it back in the drawer. She didn’t bother asking for an explanation.

“Why’d you give it back? That was almost twenty bucks!” Motty asked as we got out and loaded the TV into my car. “She was totally clueless; what was the point?” He looked genuinely confused.

“Don’t know,” I said as I slammed the back door shut. “Just didn’t feel right keeping it.”

Raising Non-Rebels

Come, let’s hear what you’ve learned, you’d say
your trusty little chumash in hand, the one
you carried to shul in between your tallis folds, into which
you’d become absorbed as the Torah was read, while my friends
and I dirtied our Shabbos suits outside or
pushed one another for a better spot to catch a flying
bag of goodies from the women above.

Shteit in pusik ‘vaydaber hashem el moshe laimoir,’ I’d sing
And you’d lay your hand on my shoulder,
Zugt die heilige Rashi…, you’d chant along with me, swaying
to my rhythm, delighting in my knowledge of the familiar
recitation, listening attentively, gently correcting me
when I mistook, in the tiny lettering of the Rashi script,
a lamed for a tsaddik, an alef for a ches.

But there were signs. Like that Friday night when a car
passed as we walked to shul. That’s a goy,
I said with a six-year-old’s delight in stating the obvious.
Doesn’t have to be, you said, as the car sped by and
I searched in vain for the driver’s shtreimel.
Some people are frei, you said. Frei? I asked. Around here?
Yes, you said. Right around here.

The old brown mishnayos would lie on the white tablecloth
in the afternoon, the binding disintegrating, its hard covers adhering
to the pages with patches of beige duct tape.
Can you explain this quarrel or that? You’d ask. Rabban Gamliel and the sages,
Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua? And perhaps, you’d suggest,
there’s no quarrel at all, but a carefully orchestrated dance,
a give and take, flight and pursuit, the dizzying rhythm of
eilu v’eilu, a song with the words of a living God.

It started with the Internet, I would later be told.
Not true, one of your former friends would tell me,
sidling up to me in shul every now and then, to show
kindness to a lonely boy. It started with books.
He even had some in the dorm. Only later he started a blog.
What’s a blog, I’d ask. And he’d say he
wasn’t sure. Some kind of Internet thing.

How could they? I asked you once, when
we spoke about those Jews who drive on shabbos, more
indignant than inquisitive.
But all you said was, Mish oif tzi Burich She’umar.
The chazzan was already at Barchu.
But while I davened you sat with your talis over your head
and read from a book that looked like a sefer, but I knew better.

Two homes, you announced to us one day. Two homes?
You said it so cheerfully that all I could offer was
a confused smile, not realizing then that
to my Bar Mitzvah, as I’d stand proud in the garb that
would make me a man, grinning at my classmates as they
interrupted my well-rehearsed speech with song, beside me
would sit a strange man my friends would stare at,
the more knowledgeable ones whispering, it is his father.

Sex as Motivation for Hasidic Rebellion

A running discussion has been going on among bloggers and commentors regarding the proposition that sexual urges are the primary motivating factor for the totality of Hasidic rebellion. Specifically, it has been put forth that the gender imbalance among rebels proves the point, since males seem to outnumber females in the "rebel community." Shtreimel, Renaissance, and The Chief have weighed in. What was supposed to be a short comment on one of the above blogs ended up being a full essay. Which suggested that perhaps it is time for my own blog to be revived.

It seems to me that there's one crucial distinction that has yet to be emphasized properly. Within the phenomenon of individuals rebelling from Hasidic lifestyle and tradition there are two very distinct categories: a) Those who are deeply disturbed by challenges to tradition and end up discarding their faith (be they intellectual, i.e. scientific/philosophical, or intuition-based), which is very much a private/internal matter; b) Those who actually take the drastic step to change their lifestyle. While these two categories might occur in one individual, it is far from a necessity, and these categories often manifest quite distinctly. This has important implications for analyzing motivations.

To elaborate, cateogry a) would include all who cease to believe in the veracity of the Biblical narrative, the binding nature of religious imperatives, and/or the belief in an all-powerful deity. However, many of these choose to remain within the community, and -- crucially -- many continue to live fully observant lives, never knowingly violating the commandments or lifestyle norms. They might simply find the change in lifestyle too difficult, and see the stress of living a double life as too great, or they may simply prefer the comforts of familiarity and routine.

Category b), on the other hand, would include those who split from the community and its rigid lifestyle, for whatever reason -- be they intellectual, emotional/psychological, or restlessness and desire for broader life experience, or even, yes, the desire for more sexual freedom. But -- again, crucially -- many of these might still retain belief in God, and even, in some cases, nominal adherence to traditional practice (i.e. keeping kosher, or observing shabbos to a degree).

When discussing motivations for rebelling, one must therefore describe the actual type of rebellion. It would be absurd to suggest that cessation of belief in God and revealed religion or embracing an atheistic viewpoint is motivated by desires for sexual freedom when the individual in question shows no interest in deviating in practice from Orthodox norms, be they sexual or otherwise. And when observing those who cease living a rigid Orthodox lifestyle in practice, even if we can assume (a huge assumption -- but be that as it may) that it's sexually motivated, one cannot extrapolate from that to so-called "atheists" and other non-believers, since many of these who change lifestyles continue to believe in God and continue to observe various practices to varying degrees.

It becomes obvious then, that a gender differential is completely invalid for making the case one way or another. If males are found to outnumber females in both categories, that would show that males have either a greater inclination or greater possibilities for rebellion, period -- since the first category has nothing to do with repressed sexual urges. Same would be true if males are found to outnumber females in category a) only (non-believers but Orthoprax). And if males are found to outnumber females only in the the second category (deviating in lifestyle and practice but maintaining some belief), that too has no relevance for proving sexual desires as a motivating factor for disbelief, since many of these individuals continue to believe in one way or another -- or (more likely perhaps) lack the inclination and/or the aptitude to engage in the subject of belief or disbelief with the thoughtfulness it requires.

As for an actual theory on gender differences, I believe that both the facts and the reasons are more complex than any one neat theory can explain. Educational, economic, and various other cultural factors must play a role. And it's probably safe to say that gender differentials would also vary by group affiliation. Casual observations and anecdotal evidence would suggest that among the Modern Orthodox the gender differential is much lower than among the ultra-Orthodox -- possibly even non-existent. If true, that would suggest the great educational imbalance of males vs. females among the ultra-Orthodox -- with males receiving superior training in religious studies and females having the edge in secular/practical studies -- to be a very strong factor. It stands to reason that females lacking sufficient grounding in religious studies will tend to fall back on simple faith, and refrain from engaging in intellectual discussions and logical arguments for or against religious belief simply because they feel incapable of either refuting or defending them. This would easily explain the gender differentials in category a).

For category b) we might suggest, as has been pointed out by commentor HT, that there are economic factors to consider, especially for a woman with children. Additional cultural factors probably exist. One might be lack of peer support among females; a higher incidence rate among males would encourage the numbers to go even higher. And of course, for category b) it's certainly valid to say sexual urges play a role. But here we must point out that perhaps it's not as great a role as some would argue. While male testosterone can't be underestimated, neither can we underestimate the powerful desires to experience life "on the outside," with all its questionable and not-so-questionable allures. While females (as a broad generalization) may have less desire for sexual experimentation per se, they might have desires for interacting with the opposite sex more freely, experience the world of nightclubs and parties, or even in some cases the desire to pursue career goals from which an Orthodox lifestyle and/or family pressures would restrict her -- just to name a few examples.

One last parting thought: there seems to be a certain defensiveness among many skeptic bloggers about the accusation that all who leave do so for greater sexual freedom. I think that defensiveness is misplaced. The accusation happens to be, in my opinion, at best a gross oversimplification. But even if one can prove sex to be a primary factor in motivating individuals to leave, skeptics needn't be defensive about it. Sex is a powerful human urge, and the sexual repression found among the Orthodox can rightly be deemed excessive, irrational, and unnatural. As an academic exercise, we may argue how much of a factor it truly is in Orthodox rebellion. But it's not an accusation one should take personally. There's merit in rebelling for sex. Perhaps there's even too little of it.