So the real dilemma arises when a people is thrust back into an earlier (some would say more primitive) incarnation of a religion under altered circumstances after an evolutionary leap of necessity has occcured. It’s boiling water hitting dry ice with a healthy shot of nitroglycerine for good measure. The Temple system was designed for a free and sovereign nation. The society under occupation no longer functions as it did as a sovereign nation. The law of the society must conform to the law of the occupiers and as such must contract to try to insulate itself from the incompatible elements such as idolatry, sexual license, different methods of conducting business (which I think a lot of people might not realize for Jews is a religious matter) etc. The old system of The Temple was rigid and designed only to resist and not to withstand the onslaught of Hellenistic culture.

There was a new system taking shape, as I have said, in the first exile: that portable notion of Judaism, the first time it could rightly be called Judaism because a term was for the first time needed to describe the practice of the people of Judah outside the borders of their own land. Such a Judaism could mix into foreign society and remain true to itself because it relied not on a rigid centralized system involving specific sacrifices of material assets and the changing of money which, to complicate matters suddenly was not the money of Israelites but money of pagans with pagan gods imprinted on the face of each coin. Rather it was based on personal and communal codes of conduct, communal memories and communalized ritual where leadership became largely meritocratic rather than dynastic. This developed into the rabbinical tradition which continues to this day.

The problem with Jesus and Christianity in relation to Judaism, as I see it, is not that it was a reformist movement. That was exactly what was needed and what was developing. Jesus and the early Christian movement were an element of the causally catalyzing process of inevitable breakdown which ended in the fall of Jerusalem and the second (current) exile. But the Christians threw away the notion of chosenness. Whether that was Jesus or Paul’s doing is unclear. In the end it tried to sweep away Judaism entirely, sweep away the law, the practice, the nation-of-priests ideal. “God is not an Israelite” says Jesus in Scorcese’s film. And its a great line, and absolutely true. But the fact that God is not an Israelite does not mean that everyone is an Israelite or that no one is. The idea was never supposed to be that only Israel has a right to or a place in The World To Come, in The Kingdom of Heaven, whatever your preferred terminology. The idea was that this nation, Israel, had the burden and the honor of carrying an idea and leading by example. The law of Israel was for Israelites and the rest of humanity, as far as Israel was concerned, got off easy: all they had to do was to be basically good, live according to a code if 7 principles and they were in. We were held to all 613.

In that regard, in a sense, Christianity was Judaism fulfilling its “light unto the nations” role. Christianity brought the basic elements of Jewish ethical law, the 10 commandments (which conveniently enough do encapsulate the 7 noahide laws) to the gentile world. But it also perpetuated the mistaken notion that Israel was therefore obsolete, that Christianity was the replacement, the new Israel. The light that Christianity supposedly brought unto the nations easily turned old pagan tyranny into new Christian self-righteous tyranny and Rome was created all over again.

to be continued…

I rented The Last Temptation of Christ from Netflix. I had never seen it, nor read the book. It got me thinking (again, still, always) about Christianity, especially in relation to Judaism… which usually gets me in trouble of one sort or another.

I was struck particularly by the scenes in The Temple, the parts of The Gospels which I feel are the most condemning of Jewish society. The problem, as I see it, was not with the priestly nor the Temple system inherently. It is an emotionally disturbing thought to picture money changers around a place of worship making profit off of people’s piety. However, my understanding of the role of money in the Temple was that in a time of sacrificially-based worship where the pious would make pilgrimage from all corners of a nation in order to fulfil their religious/societal obligation, the transport of sacrificial animals, grains etc. over large distances sometimes covered entirely by foot, was too cumbersome, and as such a system of exhange was established whereby worshippers could change their sacrificial assets for money near their home, travel with the money to Jerusalem, and then buy a sacrificial animal there.

The real problem comes with the post-pre-exilic period (I have no idea if that’s a real term…) by which I mean the return from the first exile to Jerusalem under Persian, then Roman rule. Exilic Judaism is a very different animal from the Israelite Temple religion. Exilic Judaism is rooted in Scholarship and a more abstract worship in the form of prayer and community- and home-based ritual. This was the tradition in which Jesus (and many others including the Pharisees, though they apparently disagreed on the application of law) found the greater meaning and virtue.

After creating what was essentially a new form of the old religion, a portable Judaism which didn’t rely on location-specific active sacrifice but rather on the recollection thereof and the maintenance of peoplehood, loyalty to God and adherence to a law set, the Israelite people were suddenly returned to their land and encouraged to rebuild their temple, which creates a set of problems which end up dividing and nearly destroying the people.

to be continued…

Well, I’ve found my friend Noah’s blog at last. Not that it was hidden from me, rather that I kept forgetting to look him up. I think I like it. Not suprising considering the fact that I like and respect Noah a great deal. I have to say I’m a little bit jealous of the eloquence and prolificacy of his writing… but then again he is about 10 years older than I am, better educated and a registered Republican, whereas I am an early 20-something with a useless degree from a state college floundering through life trying to figure out who and what the hell I am.

We shall see what will become of me. Meantime, read Noah. He’s cool.

The Chicago Tribune reviews President Bush’s nine justifications for the war in Iraq and holds them against the current facts on the ground. The verdict? Some exaggeration and some intelligence errors maybe (and by maybe I mean maybe) but certainly no lies. And, in my opinion, what amounts to valid justification.

What I think of the Bush administration domestically aside (and honestly, not determined) I still think that it was and continues to be right.

When I was in junior high school I had a social studies teacher who tried to teach us to support unions. And because that was what I was taught, I grew up believing unquestioningly that unions were a good thing, that unions were always right, that unions were always about protecting the little guy.

The MTA workers, whose salaries average 50k with minimal education, who have full heath coverage, full pension at 55, and drive in circles for a living, are not the little guy.

The little guy is the hourly worker who takes the subway every morning to a retail job where they are on their feet for 9 hours taking shit from people and smiling through it for 25K if they’re lucky. The little guy can’t afford a taxi and can’t even dream of a car. The little guy works in Manhattan but lives way out in Brooklyn Queens or The Bronx because they can’t afford to live closer to their job. The little guy could concievably walk to work if they had four hours in which to do it and didn’t then have to be on their feet all day.

They want respect. MTA workers are some of the nastiest people around. Ask them a question and they huff at you and roll their eyes like you’re asking them to move the earth for you. I was riding the bus once with a friend of mine who is in an electric wheelchair, and it took her a little longer than the bus driver liked for her to maneuver her scooter into position to get off the bus… the driver yelled at her that she was making him late, grabbed the handlebars of her scooter and twisted it, catching her arm between the bar and the chair, and continuing to yell at her as she yelped in pain.

When MTA workers are expected to provide customer service, to stay awake at their posts, and to treat their customers respectfully… then they still wouldn’t deserve the kinds of things they’re demanding.

I ventured out of my apartment today despite my sore back to buy some kosher chicken thighs from the Shop Rite on Ave I. Not the best thing for my back, but it alleviated some of the cabin fever I’ve been experiencing and I also ended up with quite a tasty meal and confidence that I can indeed make cholent.

The Coney Island-bound F was skipping several stops today including Ave I, Bay Parkway and Ave P, and proceeding straight on to Kings Highway. The conductor announced that there was no Coney Island-bound service to these stations and for these stations one would have to transfer at Kings Highway for the Manhattan-bound train for the bypassed stops.

I was reading a book and when I looked up the train was pulling into a station, and a woman looking very distressed was asking another woman, in broken English with a thick slavic accent, what she was to do. The other woman tried to explain briefly and then walked away. The poor woman stepped out onto the platform and looked around, clearly still bewildered.

I walked up to her and she said to me “Excuse me… Avenue P… Wait here?”
“No,” I said, looking her in the eye and pointing to the opposite platform. “We go to the other side.”
“Avenue P? Not here?”
“No, the other side. Come, I’ll show you. I go to Avenue I.” I began to lead her to the exit where one transfers to the opposite platform and she suddenly stopped, looking more distressed than before.”
“Other side? Is Manhattan!”
I smiled and pointing north said “Yes, back toward Manhattan, Avenue P, and Avenue I.” She suddenly seemed to understand and followed me, looking very relieved. We got to the other platform and I said “And here we wait.”
“Thank you, thank you. Thank you very much,” she said to me. I replied, as I do, “no problem” and leaned against a beam to continue my book.
We got on the train and ended up next to each other.
“Cold,” she said “here is cold.”
“Yes, it’s a cold day,” I agreed.
“In Manhattan, no, here cold.”
“You think so? You think it’s warmer in Manhattan?”
She shrugged. “A little. Warmer yes.” She pointed out the window to the low apartment buildings and houses of Brooklyn. “Is no buildings.”
“Ah, yes…” I said. “The buildings… they block the wind.”
And there was a pause. It could have ended there.
“Are you from Russia?” I asked.
“Eh? No… Ukraine.”
“Ah, Ukraine… I don’t speak Ukrainian.”
“You speak Russian?”
“No, no… I wish I did!”
“Ah… I speak Russian… Ukraine, Russia, now…” she put her hands close together “neighbor.”
“Yes, very close. How long have you lived in America?”
“Four year.”
“Four years? Very nice. You have family here?”
“No… my grandson, he come… four weeks… no four months… school in emmm… computers. He visit summer, and then, he go home.”
“How old?”
“How old? Twenty-One!”

Then it was her stop. I said goodbye, and wished her a very good day and she thanked me again and went on her way. I returned to reading Tevye’s Daughters by Sholom Aleichem and felt a little bit like I may have done a good thing.

I seem to have been drawn recently into several conversations regarding the way in which Christmas is celebrated specifically in America and its relationship to religion and secularization etc. These conversations invariably become much more involved than originally intended and stretch into further-reaching and deeper philosophical issues than anticipated.

My maternal grandmother and that whole side of my family is Catholic. We go to Grandma’s for Christmas. But as children it was always made very clear to us that we don’t go to Grandma’s because we are celebrating Christmas. We go because Grandma and our uncles aunts and cousins celebrate Christmas, and they are our family so we go to be there with them and partake in the celebration. But we are not ourselves celebrating Christmas because we are not Christian.

When I explained this to a certain group of people, one of my friends questioned me on whether my not celebrating Christmas was really about me not being Christian, or if it more about my being Jewish. My initial reaction was that my non-observation/celebration of Christmas was a function of my not believing in Christ and nothing more. From where I sit, I would tend to think that were I not Jewish but also not Christian, I would still feel disinclined to celebrate the birth of a savior not my own.

Upon further reflection, however, I realized (or more accurately, remembered) that being Jewish has as much to do with what you do not do as it has to do with what you do. I had initially reacted to what I percieve as a common notion that being Jewish is defined in terms of not being Christian. I felt an urge to refute that notion by asserting that my being Jewish means, among other things, that I do celebrate Chanukka, and is not the primary reason that I don’t celebrate Christmas.

The fact is, though, that it kind of is. Judaism is all about difference and separation. (Jason suggests the term “demarcation” in the place of separation, since separation implies a “stay-out sign” whereas demarcation is merely about categorization, about sample a. and sample b. Personally I think my point lies somewhere between the two concepts.) We are almost obsessed with it. We differentiate and categorize and separate everything in our lives. We see ourselves as different and separate. We see separate not as an indication of superiority, but of difference which is not a bad thing to acknowledge.

I come from a religious family, on both sides. I can understand and respect people being non-religious and those people wanting to take part in celebrating what has become a very secularized holiday season. I will not and would not tell someone who is not Christian that they should not celebrate Christmas. But, philosophically, I think about it this way: if any of the holy days of my religion became such that people around me began to say “Oh, it’s not even really a religious holiday anymore, anyone can observe it anyway they want” I would be deeply offended. That’s how I feel about Christmas. If you’re not in it for the Christ-ness of it, then perhaps you should be celebrating “the season” rarther than “Christmas” which explicitly means “Festival of The Annointed One (i.e. The Messiah).” If you don’t believe in The Christ… well, you know.

When I contemplate Christmas, I think about the Christian faith and the ramifications of what is being celebrated by Christians on the day of Christmas… the birth of the Lord and Savior of humanity. I don’t believe in it, but I feel for those who do. It’s a huge deal and humbling thought, and is a time of great joy and awe for those who believe in Jesus as Christ and Christ as Lord. Other traditions become associated and mixed and that’s fine. Saint Nicholas, for example becoming associated with the Christmas season and as a figure of generosity and the patron saint of Children, along with the legend of the Gifts of the Magii, the resultant tradition of generosity and gift giving etc. is a beautiful thing and fascinating to study.

Since Judaism is such a strong religious and national identity, We are taught from the very beginning that because we are different (not better, but different) and separate from other peoples, and that difference is a good thing and does no harm to anyone, we have our own beliefs and our own times for joy and for awe. We don’t need to adopt the mores rites and customs of others. This doesn’t mean that we live in a vaccuum or that traditions don’t sometimes get mixed along the way. It does mean, however, that we don’t go reaching out for other people’s celebrations, unless they are also our own (for example, American Jews observing American Thanksgiving or American Independence Day).

As I was speaking to another friend of mine from that same group, I realized and expressed to her that a large part of my distress over the secularization of Christmas has to do with my own religion and my desire not to see it similarly stripped and watered down. Judaism is different from Christianity in some subtle but ultimately fundamental ways. We do not believe that ours is the sole and exclusive path to salvation. We therefore (and for other reasons) do not evangelize. We don’t make it easy to convert and thus have historically had little interest in making Judaism “accessible” to the masses. We would love for you to understand us, but we don’t need you to become one of us.

This is changing in recent times due in large part I think to the panic resultant in the perception of our waning ranks. The reaction among many Jewish leaders has been to make Judaism seem more attractive, mainstream and, lets face it… easy. As much as people talk of “the value of uniqueness” and “being yourself,” people don’t want to be different. Parents don’t want their children to have to deal with stigma. Everyone else has a Christmas tree, why should the same joy be denied to little Daniel? The pressure is on the rabbis therefore to make Judaism seem more normal rather than, as their title suggests, to educate catholic Israel as to why difference is of value, and why Judasim isn’t supposed to be easy.

Coming back to my point: Christianity has certainly overshadowed her parent religion in the sense that she has more adherents, more power, greater sprawl etc. But the faith’s very strength in that area has become its weakness in another. In reaching out to gather in all that this religion touches, in its various efforts to assimilate and diversify, it has in large part succumbed to a fate that I would be devastated to see in my own religion. And frankly, in mainstream Christianity’s path toward the secularization to percieved harmlessness of its rituals and holy days, it becomes all the more threatening to those of us who wish to maintain our understanding of and respect for the faiths of others while retaining our own independent, distinct and meaningful practices. A Meaningless Christmas is no more tempting to my sensibilities than would be a Passover Seder without the story of the Exodus or a Simchat Torah without the actual Torah Reading, and these are things I would never think to offer another… what’s the point of being inclusive if there’s nothing of meaning to be included in?

After researching Saint Nicholas of Myra I was stuck with a desire to tell my young Catholic cousins stories of the life of the saint on Christmas as they open their gifts. I like to educate them about their faith and explain to them the differences between theirs and mine. My vote is indeed to keep the Christ in Christmas and leave the rest of us to our ways.

An odd thing has happened to me over the past few days.

On Sunday I was cleaning up after a gift-wrapping and bow-making demonstration with a couple of coworkers and for some reason I mentioned the Fibonacci series, and a brief conversation about Square One, the kids math show on PBS that I used to watch with my sibs when we were kids, ensued.

The next day, I found a note on my locker from one of my aforementioned coworkers with the Fibonacci series, the symbolic eqation thereof, and pictures of bunnies. That day I was on the registers and while things were slow I started drawing the rectangles diagram on my notepadnotepad. I started wondering about the ratio between each number in the series and its predecessor from looking at the rectagles and trying to figure out how to fold the paper to make the lines come out right… and I found that the numbers oscillate toward a mean. I got all excited and wanted to find some graph paper.

Later that night I looked it up and found that… duh… the numbers oscillate toward the Golden Ratio. Now I was all peeved at myself for not having known, remembered, or figured that. There was a point at which I knew that there was a relationship between the spiral and the “Golden Ratio” but I never understood fully what the Golden Ratio was, or how it related to the spiral, why it was significant where it appeared in nature other than in a nautalus shell…

Now I can’t stop thinking about it. I’ve grasped something that I never properly learned in school or subsequently. I had a flash of that joy of realization that I was always looking for in school and rarely ever found. I want more. I want to go back to it and learn it all. I want to learn calculus. I’ve said this before but now I feel like I might actually be able to do it if there were time.

Jason suggested the other day that I should go for a degree in math. I’d have laughed in his face if his face were here for me to laugh in. The idea seems, on the surface of things, absolutely ludicrous. I did worse in math than in any other subject in any school I ever attended with the exclusion of drafting. Everyone who knows me has heard the story of me in junior high school and the self-paced math program and how in that program I excelled in math for the first time in my life, and began to fail again as soon as I was put back into a traditional classroom environment. I’m not trying to displace blame by reiterating this point… I’m trying to convince myself that I’m not an idiot, that I am capable of studying and learning things that have caused me troubles in the past for a variety of reasons.

Anyway. I’m obsessing a little right now over spirals and pentagrams… but don’t worry, I’m not about to turn into Max Cohen. I’m not of priestly lineage.

Incidentally, I have no recollection of why I failed drafting.