So, I’m torn.

I was watching TV with my roommate tonight (Think we’ve found a new show to obsess over… House is pretty awesome) and the 10 o’clock news comes on with a story about how a town has banned the internet for school age kids and for their parents on pain of expulsion from school. Here the Youth Rights activist in me was all set to be outraged. When the story actually came on, it was Lakewood New Jersey, and a Chassidic community in which this ban was instituted by the local rabbis. The punishment for violation of this ruling (on honor code, at this point) is expulsion from yeshiva.

My first thought was “Oh, well, they’re Chassidim, they’re lost anyway. No use being outraged.” Not the best example of Ahavat Yisrael, I know. But when a community so isolates itself from the rest of the world, becomes so zealous and fanatical, it’s hard not to shudder a bit at the fact that these are the people that much of the world thinks of when they hear the word “Jewish.”

On the other hand, they afford the opportunity for the rest of us to teach, because while they are the most visible, we (that is, the Jews whom the Gentiles know and befriend, who are a part of their world and allow them into theirs) are the more approachable. The Chassidim who walk among, but seemingly aloof from, the rest of us are the ones who raise the questions which my friends then come to ask me about “why do they do this?” and “why do they dress like that?” and “where does this custom come from?” and “how are you different from them? How are you the same?”

Then reality comes rushing back in… they are Jews and thus affect the Jewish world, and by multiplying and isolating and multiplying in an endless cycle, they gain and retain the power of ignorance in numbers. That is scary to me, as a Jew.

Where is the place for Ahavat Yisrael, and where is the place for pragmatism? And what of the children?

It’s not that I find politics uninteresting now. I just find that I don’t have the energy for it. Having resolved some time ago not to discuss politics at work I’ve kind of left the keeping up and the reasearch and the blogtivism (yes, I just made up a word… what of it?) to Jason and have been focusing on my more immediate world.

For this I feel a degree of shame. I was “Beyond The Near: Because Global Is Local!” I was all about caring about everything and everyone because everything affects everything else. I had to know what and why and I had to be able to argue and debate competently. Now I just avoid the subject, favoring personal diplomacy over half-hearted disclaimers. I’m trying to decide now if it’s time to start reading various news media sources again. How many plates should I be trying to spin at once?

I’m being hired as a Bat Mitzvah tutor.

This is exactly the direction I should be going. Easing into the role of teacher in a Jewish context. Getting that experience bit by bit. This will be my first foray into the world of non-impromptu (and paid) teaching. I’m terrified. My Hebrew is nowhere near where it should be. I barely even remember Haftarah trop (the musical notation for the reading of the prophets) since I haven’t read Haftarah since my Bat Mitzvah 11 years ago.

Of coruse, it’s a perfect excuse for me to kick my own ass into really getting my learn on in a big way.

Wish me luck.

I went to a class tonight at my synagogue on kashrut (the dietary laws). The gentleman who is teaching the class, a fellow congregant and lay-leader of the shul, is an excellent teacher and someone I admire greatly. The class is quite interesting and goes into the origins of the laws and possible meanings behind them, what is biblical and what is rabbinic, discussing what kashrut clearly is not (health, ethics, etc.) and methods of kashering, things like that. It’s a lot of fun not only learning from Danny, but also finding out just how much I know already and identifying where lie the gaps in my knowledge, and acquiring the resources necessary to fill them. It also happened to bring me back to the reasons that I want to go to rabbinical school in the end, and graduate school in Jewish Philosophy now.

I’m trying to remember what got in the way, why I stopped writing here. It seems to keep happening. I get busy, I get depressed, and I stop. Trying not to let that keep happening but I don’t know that I’ll ever get over it.

Anyway, I’m going to grad school. I don’t know when exactly, but it will be within a year. I’ve decided that much. I am currently contemplating a shift in employment for the meantime. It’s a tough thing to contemplate considering how much I love the people I work with.

I’m trying to learn new skills like microsoft applications such as Access and Excel which would make me more employable. Also I’d like to finally learn to touch-type. Meanwhile I also have to review high school math for the GRE. And still maintain my standard of excellence in my current job.

And my birthday is on Thursday.

Life is tough.