Facebook Fatigue

Ruminations on—and off—Facebook

A friend of mine doesn’t “get” Facebook. Doesn’t care for it, and isn’t interested in hearing why he should. But here’s the catch: he still lives in the Hasidic world, and, for better or worse, a Facebook account isn’t yet de rigueur in those circles. Which is, of course, why he doesn’t care for it; Facebook’s utility is almost entirely proportionate to the number of friends you have on it. And when none of your friends “get” it, you’re unlikely to “get” it either.

Truth be told, though, I too have my moments. Back when I first joined – in the dark ages of 2007 – the interface was clean and intuitive, and my Friends list had only a few dozen actual friends – you know, the kind you actually meet up with from time to time, not just old acquaintances who spent a few months with you in Yeshiva a few decades past, or someone who claims to have met you at a party of which you have no recollection. Back then I was happy to have discovered a social networking site for adults, without the garishness of MySpace and more user friendly than Friendster (remember it?). But by now, the avalanche of posts from friends I genuinely care about but not so much that I want to receive their minute-to-minute updates overwhelms my already heavily saddled brain.

Back in the day, before social networking sites became a fad, people had only several close friends that they spoke to every day, friends to whom they bared all, down to their personal hygiene habits and the like. And everyone else was more or less in the weekly-, monthly-, or yearly-update category, such as the people you ran into in shul, at the supermarket, or your local chulent hangout, and whom you asked about their jobs, their kids, and yoitzeh gevein. But Facebook doesn't give you the option of categorizing friends that way. You can opt to either see their posts or hide them; all or nothing.

Then there's the Facebook version of micro-blogging as something of a post-modern, Web 2.0 art form for the masses, in which you post what's on your mind with tantalizing ambiguity, and anyone's interpretation of your status update is as valid as any other's. For instance, a friend updated his status to read, "[Friend] is thought provoked." To which another friend added a comment, "Do tell!!" But he wasn't telling. And we were all left to wonder about all manner of profundity, forced to conjure up the various possibilities of thought-provoked-ness, which, if we were lucky, led to introspection about what we, the thought-provoked's friends, might in turn find thought provoking.

But then ambiguous updates became a fad, and an update such as "[Friend] is searching," prompted responses of "Huh?" or "Searching for what?" to which [Friend] responds: "for new apt. preferably Fort Green or Cobble Hill." No mystique left, no possibility of wondering whether the friend is on a quest for life's ultimate purpose or the possibility of extra-terrestrial intelligence; just the mundane apartment search, which seems to be the perpetual engagement of half your social circle in New York City, the other half looking for new jobs, new romantic encounters, or both, preferably via the same CraigsList post.

Then there are those who can't differentiate between status updates, wall posts, and personal messages -- largely due to Facebook's revamping of the site in recent months, making all those features seem close to indistinguishable. And while it might be amusing when someone's status update says, "Can't this afternoon. Have dentist appt. How about tomorrow?" it becomes a bit annoying when the next series of updates include the not-so-intriguing tidbits on the dentist industry, such as, "Ugh, I hated Schwartz. Last time I went for a root canal I got a tooth abscess that hurt like a mofo! But Lipshutz is great. Also, his ceiling view is better."

And to top it off, my mother is now on Facebook. Who would’ve thunk. (And, of course, you don’t deny your mother’s request to be your friend…) Now every wall post or status update has to, theoretically, pass her scrutiny, and it’s a whole new level of stress added to my life.

~ ~ ~

In reality though, social networking in the Internet age isn’t that different from socializing in real life. There are days when I’m just not in a socializing mood, when I prefer the solitude of my apartment, where I can catch up on my ever-growing reading list, work on that pesky short story whose dénouement seems ever so elusive, and listen to the sounds of children playing soccer on the street below and cars honking and people shouting as they go around their daily business. And when the urge strikes me I can always take my basketball to the corner park and have half a dozen takers for a quick game of pick-up.

But then come days when I need my fix of friends gathered for drinks at a local watering hole, or for some mundane schmoozing over coffee. Or those days when I take it up a notch and need to party hard while hoping that everyone watching has imbibed greater quantities of inhibition-lowering substances than me so that my inebriation-triggered shenanigans don’t turn me into an utter laughing stock – that is, as long as there are no photographic implements to simply delay the embarrassment.

And after that come days again when I prefer just to spend time alone in a quiet coffee shop with free wi-fi, where the strange faces around me allow just the right balance of solitude and stimuli for the creativity and concentration I might need at that particular moment.

Technology has changed our world in many ways. But for the most part, it has just given us tools to fill old needs in new and different ways. Human communication may have started with grunts, gestures, and the occasional clubbing over the head. Then speech came along and improved our ability to communicate (and perhaps also minimized some of the head-clubbing), but that didn’t change the inherent human need for communication. Neither did the ultimate invention of the telephone, the telegraph, the fax machine, email, and, now, txting and tweeting.

So too with socializing. Hunter-gatherer societies may have socialized by communal feasting over the sacrifice of an ox to some god-forsaken deity or spirit, or by gathering around for a tribal dance while ululating and shouting abracadabras in some strangely exuberant manner. And we can presume that in the process, the men shared stories of machismo and bravado (“dude, I swear to Kmukamtch, that beast had four heads, and horns as long as Atea’s penis, and my spear squared it straight in the jugular,”) and the women swapped recipes (“crushed lizard innards go great as grasshopper seasoning.”) Underneath it all, it was an expression of our innate need to gather around with friends and swap stories, jokes, and tidbits of our lives.

The need hasn’t changed, except we’ve moved on to doing it in synagogues, mikvahs, bars, clubs, coffee shops, a friends’ night out, and other such functions. And on Facebook. And just like some of us get socializing-overload on occasion and need some alone time, we sometimes tune out of Facebook and the chit-chatty, everyone’s-a-comic flow of status updates and the comments that follow. But it doesn't take long and we're back, checking statuses and links of cute baby videos and animal pranks, and posting on our friends' walls just to show that we're still alive. And the cycle continues.

And as of this posting, I am in semi-socializing mode. So for any of you who are interested, yours truly has a Facebook account specifically for HR readers. If you’re so inclined, and happen to be in a virtual-socializing mood too, feel free to "friend" me and I'll be glad to make your acquaintance: http://www.facebook.com/hasidic.

Der Tzimmes: Kislev 22, 5770

"Serious news as a sweet side dish"

Weekly News in Brief

Local Hasidic Rabbi Fails to Perform Miracle

Mrs. Ruchi Schnitzler, 21, of the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, left the Fastover Rebbe’s house on Sunday, December 6, still very much not pregnant.

“It just didn’t take,” a tall Hasid standing in the doorway mumbled, his gaze downward in the direction of Mrs. Schnitzler’s fast disappearing seamed stocking. The Hasid looked forlornly toward the discarded pregnancy test on the floor inches away and coughed.

Mrs. Schnitzler and her husband, Yiddy Schnitzler, 22, had been trying for years to conceive without success. They were told the Fastover was known to work miracles.

“His father did it all the time,” the tall Hasid said.

Mrs. Schnitzler, reached at her home for comment, sounded a surprisingly ebullient tone. “No, I’m not pregnant. But you know what, it was worth it. Just being in the Rebbe’s presence is, you know, very satisfying.” Her voice trailed off dreamily. “He’s just so, I don’t know, that flowing white beard, and, you know, the silver topped cane. You know what I mean?”

Bar Mitzvah Boy's Speech Rudely Interrupted

Pinchas Yehuda Rosenbaum had been working on his Bar Mitzvah speech for weeks, but when the time came to recite it in front of the crowd of family and well-wishers the boy’s friends pulled a fast one. Only moments into the speech, they cheerfully started singing at their table, pretending to be oblivious to their friend’s moment in the spotlight.

Rosenbaum’s great aunt, Ms. Lillian Ehrenthal from Woodmere, was outraged. “I knew Hasidim were rude. But this— this is just something else.” She shook her head and wiped a tear, the elegant aqua-green kerchief loosely thrown over her long blonde hair for the occasion threatening to fall from its precarious perch.

The young Rosenbaum, however, showed his maturity and sportsman-like behavior when he smiled to each of his friends as they came up to shake his hand.

“Oh, they do that all the time,” Aron Rosenbaum, the Bar Mitzvah boy’s father, said, clearly agitated with the young rascals’ behavior.

According to an unnamed source, Hasidic custom will now require all Bar Mitzvah speeches to be interrupted with song so as not to embarrass the young Rosenbaum. When asked how he felt about the new tradition caused at his Bar Mitzvah, Pinchas Yehudah pretended to look confused. After a moment he said modestly, “It’s no big deal. We start new customs all the time.”

More headlines:

• Gefilte Fish Now Available to Kosher Consumers
• Moses Claims 600,00 Testified; Atheists Demand Recount
• Area Hasid Very Satisfied with Cream Red Concord: Yells "This is the shit!" After Six Glasses

Adventures in Hipsterland

Hasidic Jews are keen on last names. They’ve got a thing for it, you might say. Gives them their bearings. It’s a scary world out there, and, apparently, knowing a person’s last name makes life a little more navigable. I’ll strike up a conversation with a Hasid on the subway, or at the airport, or at some clandestine renegade-Hasid event, and as soon as he knows I’m a former Hasid, he’ll ask, “What’s your last name?”

First names aren’t really important. I might extend a hand and say, “I’m Yankel, nice to meet you.”

“Yankel what?” inevitably follows.

“Perlmutter,” I’ll say. Or, “Yakobovitch.” Or, “Friedlander.” Nothing remotely similar to my real name. “Yes, we’re distant relatives,” I’ll say in response to whether I’m related to his neighbor, or his fellow shul-goer, or his classmate from Yeshiva who bore that exact surname. “But we don’t really know each other. See each other at family weddings, that kind of thing. What’s yours?”

He’ll give me his last name without bothering with the first. Or he’ll add it as an afterthought. “Kohn. Shmiel Kohn.”

Each time my family and I moved to a new home we’d get a steady stream of neighbors knocking at our door. “Hi, welcome to the neighborhood. What’s your name? Katz? Which Katz is that? Oh, the ones from 48th Street? Who are your in-laws? Oh, Yakov Shloime, sure, I used to do business with his brother Mordche. Is he still in real estate? He did well, back in the day. Now, not so much, I hear. Yakov Shloime doing well these days?”

They’d stop short at asking how much I earn, my mortgage payment amounts, and how deep I am in credit card debt. That's reserved for the second conversation—if they didn’t first get it from others who’d already inquired, although that route—unreliable as it is—isn't nearly as satisfying. “Oh, and here’s a little something,” they’d say, and hand me a piping hot potato kugel, or freshly baked cookies. And they’d be off before I can thank them. Sometimes they’d share something about themselves, sometimes they'd just assume I already knew, probably from the first neighbor who stopped by and gave me the rundown on each family on the block, their names, where they grew up, and the Hasidic sect they belonged to. And then they’d scurry off to their minivans with the brood of kids waiting inside—that is, if the brood didn’t tag along to the doorstep to size up potential peers of their age-group.

When I moved out of my Hasidic neighborhood into an apartment in one of the hipster Brooklyn hoods, among those we used to call artisten, things were different.

On moving day, as I finished unloading the last items from my U-Haul truck and sat on the stoop for a quick cigarette break, three neighbors from my building stepped out, fully outfitted in hackneyed hipster-wear: tight jeans, plaid shirts, bed-head hairdo, and one guitar-case. I smiled and introduced myself. “Hi, I’m H. Just moved in. Nice to meet you.”

Limp handshakes all around, and names mumbled with grudging politeness. One of them introduced himself as “Brian,” easing my trouble at deciphering his ambiguous chromosomal makeup—a problem that would present itself often enough, with the increasing local prevalence of an androgynous fashion ethos. My neighbors took off speedily. They must’ve been late to some underground party, or some musical performance that sounded like a broken chain saw mixed with the sounds of people being massacred and loving it. Real edgy stuff.

You gotta love the misanthropic indifference, I thought to myself as I headed up to my new digs and began unpacking. How refreshing. Who needs friggin' kugel?

Two months passed, and the neighbors had yet to make another appearance. Haloween eve came around, and a friend and I were leaving for a party when one of the neighbors passed in the hallway wearing an assortment of odd garments in a variety of colors. “Are you a hamburger?” my friend asked. “Yes!” the neighbor turned to us excitedly. “You realized! That is so cool!” And she was out the door without another word.

A few more weeks passed and still only very polite and reticent pleasantries were exchanged, on those rare occasions my neighbors would appear out of their ghost-like existence. But for the most part the hipsters couldn’t seem to care less about their new neighbor in 2C.

One day, I stepped outside the local coffee shop—where I’d been sitting among a dozen or so neighborhood denizens, all of them engrossed in whatever their Macs delivered via the café’s WiFi, their deeply-set earphones discouraging any kind of social interaction with fellow java drinkers—and asked a guy smoking alone if he’d sell me a cigarette. He looked up as if interrupted from some intense activity, and finally said in a lazy drawl, “They’re inside.” Was that a yes or a no? Did he want me to get them for him? I couldn’t tell. After a few moments he looked away, as if I wasn’t there.

Perhaps, I thought to myself, my experiences were exceptions to rule. Perhaps I should make it my business to chat up a few more neighborhood residents and I might, much to my surprise, discover their abundant friendliness, and realize their hardened cynicism is only a façade over a very endearing and un-edgy interior. Alas, I’m not the most outgoing of sorts, and, time and energy being at a premium, the opportunity for striking up hard and fast friendships with people who didn’t seem very excited to engage in such hasn’t yet presented itself.

“That’s how it should be,” a closet-rebel friend said to me when I described the neighborhood. “People need to mind their own business.” He still lives among Hasidim and finds their behavior too intrusive. He would relish the privacy I enjoyed, he claimed. No one looking after him, inquiring about his goings and comings, gossiping about his poor shul attendance, and wondering about his overall level of religious observance.

While I, on the other hand, slowly began to wonder if I really appreciated the experience of urban indifference.

Before I left the Hasidic community and lifestyle I was told by many I would never make it “out there,” that the non-Hasidic world is too foreign a place, forbidding and unknown, the cultural gap too wide to bridge. I, too, have told many to be careful making that decision, that a new social network isn’t easy to build, that there are many good reasons to stick to the safety of your local cholent hangout, or your neighborhood Mother’s Gossip Club on every Borough Park or Williamsburg sidewalk at 8:30 AM as you see your brood off in their dippity-doo’ed payess and navy and yellow school uniform.

But I’ve also argued that the bridge isn’t that wide. A friend who’s been living outside the Hasidic community for more than a decade claims—going by his own experiences—that it’s nearly impossible for a former Hasid to fully adapt to the non-Hasidic world, with all the nuances in social norms and cultural trappings. But I’ve argued that it’s more a matter of individual makeup; some people are more adept at adjusting to different lifestyles than others—not to mention that some people might be more psychologically at home in a less personally intrusive environment.

There are certainly strong cultural factors that determine how people interact and the distances they keep between one another, be it regarding physical space, emotional openness, the willingness to chat up strangers, and the tolerance for probing personal questions. Some cultures embrace formality and decorum whereas others find such attitudes uptight. Hasidic Jews might occasionally preface a probing inquiry with the standard of Western social graces: “Mind if I ask a personal question?” But that would, for the most part, be an adoption of a foreign sensibility, not native to Hasidic society. Which is why some of us, even when we’re out of our Hasidic enclaves, find certain attitudes, if more socially refined, a bit stuffy. And it's why we’re still drawn to the ease and familiarity of the communities we’ve left.

“You’re obsessed with Hasidim,” a non-Jewish friend of mine said to me recently. “Most of your friends are former Hasidim. You’re always speaking in Yiddish. And even when you’re not, you’re still speaking about Hasidic Rebbes and their followers, and all the things that go on in the Hasidic world.”

And it’s true, I love all those things. And while I harbor an affinity for many things non-Hasidic, there is something to Hasidic culture that will always hold my affections and shape my thoughts and behavioral patterns. While my friends and I might gather on a Friday night for dinner in a restaurant or drinks at a bar, ushering in the Sabbath in a decidedly non-Hasidic manner, the world of Rebbes, Hasidim, and the respective enclave each of us hails from—as well as the occasional debate on some nuance of the Sabbath laws and how we might be breaking it at that particular time—won’t be far from our minds. And should one of us have had the foresight to score some cholent, kishke, or overnight kugel, we’ll devour it with the relish we could never muster for the world’s most exotic delicacies.

Our likes and dislikes are shaped by our experiences, positive or negative, and those will inevitably come with biases and prejudices, misplaced or not. Like our grandmother’s cooking, which we swear is far superior to that of anyone else’s grandmother, we tend to like that which is familiar. Our world is always observed through the subjective taint of our lens. Which is probably why the non-Hasid might see all Hasidim as intimidating, unfriendly, or stand-offish. And the non-hipster will see all hipsters as pretentious and self-consciously aloof.

Or as one Hasid is said to have asked about his neighbors on the other side of the North/South Williamsburg divide: “Why do they all dress the same?”

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.