I thought I was done. Guess what?

I saw this on my Google page.

“An investigation that refuses to look at contradictory evidence can hardly be considered credible,” said Marc Garlasco, senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch.

“The IDF’s partisan approach highlights the need for an independent, international investigation.”

Israel has ruled out an international probe.

The army has said shelling of the area, in response to rocket fire into the Jewish state, had ended before the beach blast. Retrieved shrapnel samples also ruled out the possibility of a direct Israeli artillery barrage, it said.

As I mentioned before, I’m inclined to believe at least the sincerity of the Israeli claims that it was not their rockets that day that hit the civilians on the beach. A false denial would serve no one, considering Israel’s history of owning up to and apologizing for her botches, and also considering the fact that no one believes Israelis anyway, except when they admit guilt. Israel is condemned regardless, so if the Israeli military believed that the civilian deaths were, in fact, a result of the shelling, what is the point in denying it?

But what really interested me was the assertion that “Israel has ruled out an international probe.” Because last I heard

An Israeli foreign ministry official said no request had been received from the UN to conduct an inquiry, but said Israel would co-operate if one were received. “We have nothing to hide,” he said.

So which is it? Who can we turn to to give us accurate news? Not that I look to Al-Jazeera for impartial reporting any day, but I’d like it if someone would just provide some factual information, at the very least about who said what and when. Is that really so hard to do?

Ultimately though, I mean, realistically, lets be honest about this:

Who gives a fuck?

Something terrible happened. Innocents died on a beach from an explosion. The explosion may have been caused by a number of things, including a shell from Israeli artillary. Israel shells Gaza. Israel shells Gaza because Gaza fires rockets at Israel. Is Gaza condemned for this? Yes, from many sides. But no one is “outraged” anymore by what the Palestinians do to and in Israel. No one is outraged because they’ve been doing it for so long and everyone is used to it. They come to expect it of the Palestinians. They’ve been so tenacious in their campaign of guerrilla warfare that the international community has grown so bored with the Palestinians that when they attack Israel is as though nothing has happened. Just another day, nothing special, nothing worth noting.

In such a climate, what ends up happening is that Israel’s retaliation looks out of the blue. Do the Palestinians concern themselves with whether or not they kill civilians? No, every Israeli death is a victory for them, and the world clucks their tongues and says “gee, that’s awful.” If Israel retaliates and kills militants, it’s looked at with ambivalence by the international community and outrage by Arabs. If Israel retaliates and unintentionally kills civilians, the world is outraged… and Hamas celebrates the outrage.

The persistence of Palestinian hostilities does not mean that they are right. The fact that they are willing to fight until Israel is detroyed does not mean that Israel should be destroyed so that the fighting will stop. Sometimes I really feel that this is what people think and, I can’t help it, it makes me very very angry.

I just finished watching the live webcast of the Taglit-birthright israel Mega Event at Latrun. I’d forgotten just how exciting and inspiring the Mega Event experience is. What happens is that during each cycle of trips, an event is held where all birthright israel participants in Israel at the time come together in a hall or stadium and there are speeches and performances and dancing and singing. It’s an amazing experience. The most amazing part for me of the Mega Event that I attended in January of 2002 when I went on my Taglit-birthright israel trip was the experience of seeing young Jews amassed together… thousands of people my own age… from all over the world. From Russia, Austrailia, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Canada, all waving their respective countries’ flags, chanting their football cheers in their own languages and accents, showing their national pride… but at the same time waving the kachol v’lavan, the blue and white, singing together in Hebrew, showing another national pride, another national identity, a kinship that transcended our residential homes and linked us together. All of us are Jews. All of us are family. All of us are Israel.

I turned off the simulcast with tears in my eyes. I want to go back, I thought. I want to be there and feel that kinship, that sense of home. I understood once more the feeling that floods my heart everyday when I come to work and realize all over again that I’m here working with other Jews for the sake of other Jews to connect them to their birthright… which is not just about israel, it’s about national identity. It’s about unity. It’s about that kinship. It’s mishpocha, family. Every Jew has a right to that feeling of belonging. Even growing up in the alternate Jewish capital, Brooklyn NY, I never felt that before. Not in Hebrew school, not in shul, not at camp. It takes a trip to Israel. It takes seeing thousands of your kinsfolk of all different backgrounds, skin tones, languages, all sharing that common thread of peoplehood, knowing that we all came from the same place and finally, finally, here we are together again. It’s like standing again at Sinai.

Hitting the “home” icon on my browser I came to my customized Google front page. My eyes were assaulted by articles declaring Israel Missile Strike Kills 11 Palestinians, Injures 30 and Israel Denies Its Forces Killed Palestinian Family on Beach and similar reports variously mentioning and not mentioning Israel’s denial of responsibility.

And I am angry.

It’s hard to put this anger effectively into words. I’m angry at news agencies who willfully leave out details in order to make one side look good and one side look bad, though I know that this is an inevidability and that almost everyone (if not everyone) does it. I’m angry at the hypocrisy of the various Palestinian Authorities and “leaders” who dance and sing and praise God when they kill Jewish civilians and bewail the atrocity of every accidental civilian death brought down upon them by Israelis targeting the elements that target them. I’m angry that while the Palestinian groups all jump at the opportunity to claim responsibility for attacks in Israel, Israel investigates its own botches, and while her leaders may place the responsibility on the shoulders of the Palestinian leadership, they still express sorrow and do not celebrate innocent deaths.

Neither, though, does Israel routinely deny such botches. If Israel is responsible for the deaths of innocent civilians, the leadership generally owns up to it. This denial is atypical and as such, I’m more inclined to believe Israel than the Palestinians who can’t even keep their own house in order.

My support of Israel is not too popular these days among my peers and it’s easy for anyone opposing to say that I’ve been brainwashed and indoctrinated to be sympathetic to Israel. Frankly, I don’t care. I’ve seen enough to make up my own mind, I’ve had forces pulling me in both directions my whole life. I have no reason to trust the Palestinian leadership or terrorist organizations who claim to speak for the people. I have no reason to sympathize with people who keep such groups in power. I have no reason to sympathize, for that matter, with any of the many Arab countries (and Iran) who boldly state their desires to see Israel destroyed and reclaimed into the vast Muslim empire.

This conflict is not about people and their homes. The refugees are pawns of the Islamist imperialists and while I may sympathize with their individual situations, I will never conceed to a Palestinian “right of return” anymore that I would demand a Jewish “right of return” to Baghdad, Tehran, Ghazni, or any of the other places in the middle east from whence Jews have been forcibly expelled or forced to flee.

Phew. Okay, I’m done.

It’s frustrating to know exactly what you want to do with your life and to not be ready to just go ahead and do it. Sometimes the desire just up and hits me like a Mack truck.

I want to be a rabbi because I want a life of study practice prayer and teaching. I want a life of arguments, of questions and of more questions. I want sweet disagreements and ephiphanic agreements. I want to sit in rooms full of books with a laptop and a notebook and pen and a friend/colleague and to just go at it until we come up with something brilliant or go home exhausted, or both. I want to read all the relevant materials and I want to talk out my ideas with mentors and students, friends and teachers and children. I want to find the applications. I want to implement the solutions. I want to be a part of it. I want to be in the thick of it. I don’t want to be a pajama pundit of Judaism.

I want very much to be a rabbi. Those who are concerned with my wellbeing often tell be that I don’t have to be a rabbi in order to do the things that I describe above. I don’t have to be a rabbi to teach, to study, to practice.

Don’t I, though? Can I do this as an academic? No question. But why should I? Why shouldn’t I seek recognition as a teacher and student of my religion within my religion rather than outside of it? Certain people ask me with incredulity why I would want to be a rabbi. Here, finally, is my answer. Why wouldn’t I? Everything that I want points to the rabbinate. The rabbinate is the Jewish academic body and I want to be a Jewish academic. There are other ways, yes, but why go around when you can go straight?

Well, of course the answer to that is that I can’t go straight because I’m not straight. I want to go to Rabbinical school at JTS. Right now I can’t because I’m gay. JTS has a policy of not admitting into the rabbinical school anyone who is openly homosexual and has not renounced homosexual practice in their lives. The policy is also one of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and as such many go through the school closeted with what may seem to be minimal hassle to an outside observer. Anyone who has been closeted for any period of time however knows what a hassle it is just to not be able to talk openly about your life the way straight people can, to kvell about a boyfriend or girlfriend or even mention them, to have to refer to your boyfriend/girlfriend lover or partner as your “friend” while everyone else goes around arms linked happily with their significant others… just not talking about it is harder than most people have ever imagined.

The next question I am usually asked is why I don’t simply go to HUC or RRC, schools which would be accepting of me as I am? For one thing, JTS is my background. It’s where my mother converted and where I went to Hebrew school to voluntarily and enthusiastically continue my Jewish education after my Bat Mitzvah. It’s where my teachers and mentors are. It’s where the great minds of my movement, the Jewish thinkers most influential in my life, Schechter, Frankel, Heschel, even Kaplan (though he and the movement broke later) all studied and taught. JTS is where the resources reside in which I desire to steep myself. I am theologically and philosophically and by practice a Conservative Jew. I am a child of the Conservative Movement and have no intention of leaving it simply because of my sexual orientation.

This is exactly why I’m so very excited about having recently met and connected with Rabbi Steven Greenberg. I had the good fortune to hear about the Tikkun Leil Shavuot at the JCC through Dor Chadash, a “resource-for-young-Jews” type organization which one of my coworkers told me about. I looked at the schedule and who should be on the list but Rabbi Steven Greenberg, who wrote the book Wrestling with God and Men, a book about reinterpreting the place of homosexuality within traditional Judaism, and my main resource in the writing of my undergraduate thesis. He is someone whom I had long admired both academically and personally. Needless to say, I went to hear his lecture session. He gave a talk on revelation and its reciprocal nature which I thought was positively brilliant. His teaching style is wonderful and his energy is contagious. I knew from the moment he opened his mouth that he was someone I wanted to know.

After the session ended he was cornered by a bunch of people who wanted to talk to him. I hung back the way I tend to do. He was finished with the last person and was about to turn away from me to go. I must have made a motion toward him or something because he turned back to me and said “Hi.” I was caught off guard. I told him that I’d wanted to meet him for a long time, that I wrote my undergrad thesis on gays in the Conservative Movement and that his book was invaluable to me, not just from a research standpoint, but in giving me reason to hope that there is a way to work out this issue without sacrificing legitimacy.

He told me that I could give him a call and we could meet for coffee to talk. I’m excited to have made this connection. I’m glad I waited those few minutes in the crowded hallway to talk to him. The one person whom I feel is sufficiently concerned with halachic legitimacy who is an advocate for us, and who has solutions in mind, and I’ve got him. An academic ally, if you will.

Eight or nine years ago I had a similar experience with Rabbi Neil Gillman in which he, after leading a discussion in my 10th grade theology seminar at Prozdor, asked if I’d like to meet with him on occasion to talk theology. It was Rabbi Gillman who started me down a road of exploration of Jewish thought and inquiry that has ultimately led me to my desire to enter into the rabbinate.

I am convinced that there is a place for me and that it lies within the tradition and not without it.