So, I’m not alone.

At that moment in the Japanese restaurant, I faced a dilemma that I have faced literally hundreds of times, before and since, in my 42 years on this fair planet: Divulge the truth—or let the comment slide by. Usually, I play along—simply because it’s the path of least resistance and least awkwardness. On a blind date, though, I thought open disclosure was the more honorable route.

I live a great deal of my life in fear of certain people finding out the truth about me. I do a lot of smiling and nodding when people say things that they don’t realize apply to me. It’s a hard game, weighing the consequences of divulging to whoever is the company present, shattering their assumptions, and quite likely, their positive feelings toward me… deciding who I can and cannot trust.

I hear them, well, practically everywhere…at Starbucks, at job interviews, and while picking up my son at Congregation Micah, Nashville’s open-minded reform synagogue. I hear them in the hallways of Vanderbilt University (where I teach part-time), around the copy machines at the Nashville Scene (the alternative newspaper which employs me) and in the carpool line at the University School of Nashville, (the progressive private school which my older child attends).

It is inescapable. It’s everywhere I go. It is the default position for everyone with whom I interact. And I have to say, it makes life pretty hard and pretty uncomfortable.

I’m not in exactly the same boat as this fellow of course, because I reject the sorts of labels that people tend to like to apply to other people and to themselves. I don’t know what to call myself so I generally don’t. This fellow uses the dreaded word that I don’t dare to touch…

Republican.

I don’t use the word because it is not who I am. But what I am is pro-war, pro-military, pro-free market economics. I’m a capitalist anti-socialist Zionist. I consider myself to be a true liberal because I support active defense of true liberal values against forces of tyranny and fascism. I also believe in honest journalism and reasoned debate. What does any of this say about me? Well, many would have you believe that it means that I am brainwashed, unthinking, amoral, unethical, bloodthirsty, ignorant, and racist. What really gets me is that people can one minute be going on and on about how I am one of the most intelligent and aware people that they have ever met, and the second they catch wind of my politics, they immediately jump to “How could you believe something so ridiculous and stupid?” rather than, going by their previous, supposedly objective assessment of my intelligence and awareness, thinking that maybe, just maybe, I have good reason to think the way that I do.

Their arguments are predictable. They are well summarized by Loretta J. Williams, director of the Boston-based Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights, a national network involved in anti-oppression training. A self-described “sociologist, educator and activist,” Williams tilts far Left in her political views. Herewith, her reasoning:

The author of this piece attempts to dismantle each of the following points. I think he does it badly. Here’s my go at it:

Unlike women, African-Americans or homosexuals, Republicans have chosen to be Republicans; one cannot be bigoted towards a group that is self-selecting.

In America, people ultimately choose their religion. It is not generally accepted as, shall we say, good and proper, to deride people based on their religious beliefs. Unless they are Scientologists.

Republicans do not stand to be hurt by bigoted activity. Since the derogatory words do not trigger actual harmful behavior towards Republicans (who clearly can look after themselves), there is no bigotry. No harm, no foul.

Try being the only gay person in a room full of vocal homophobes. Even if you’re closeted, you are excluded. You feel fear. You are in a hostile environment.

A personal decision to take strong exception to Republicans as a group can be perceived as a rational and warranted act. Since the policies and actions of the Republican Party are worthy of derision, those who say they intensely dislike Republicans—and what Republicans stand for—are exercising legitimate forms of self-expression.

This is the most compelling point that is put forth… after all, few rational people, myself included, object to a general derision of, say, racial supremacists. It is an ideology that is chosen and which is generally agreed by rational people to be assholish and idiotic and not deserving of consideration.

But the reasons for the level of vitriol lobbed indiscriminately at a perceived half of the political spectrum is neither reasoned nor reasonable. It is based often on misinformation and misunderstandings and misquotes, assertions with no backing, declarations of intentions with no hard evidence, ad hominem personal attacks on character… the best argument a lot of the folks I end up contending with is “Oh, please!” And because everyone agrees, they win.

Not to mention that there is no more correlation between republicans and racial supremacists than there is with democrats and racial supremacists.

In short, the justification for bigoted comments directed at those with whom the educated Left disagrees politically is based on two foundations: 1) We’re a lot smarter than they are; and 2) We’re better people than they are. That logic leads to three inescapable conclusions: We’re right. They’re wrong. QED: All Republicans are assholes.

Interestingly, proponents of this logic seem all too eager to ignore the point that I mentioned at the very beginning… that a lot of the people against whom I come up (or is it “up against whom I come?”) will of their own accord, before I reveal my dark secret, express to me their opinion that I am as intelligent or more intelligent than they are. But that makes no difference. If it did, they might have to do some re-examining of their assumptions, like I did when I first started to realize that I didn’t agree with the political views of my parents or of most of the people around me. I almost can’t blame them… facing the possibility that you might be wrong about certain fundamental beliefs that you have been taught and held since infancy is a very hard and very scary prospect. Easier to attack a challenger than to take on a challenge.

Upshot? I’m tired of it. I’m tired of assumptions and labels, which is a pretty standard liberal line. I’m tired of making the arguments and then having them not refuted but ignored. I’m tired of pointing out the misinformation and still seeing it disseminated as fact. I’m tired of slogans and “Who can shout loudest” competitions, of “everybody scream if you think I’m right” and “Put your fist in the air if you agree” with no thought for the fact that someone might actually dare to have a different thought. What makes me the most tired is that I have no reason to think that this will change any time soon.

This past Shabbat at PSJC, I found myself during kiddush sitting with a lovely group of ladies and one gentleman talking about the week’s parsha. As things were breaking up one of the women began to ask me about myself. I started to talk a little about my synagogue trilemma (that I have three synagogues to which I am connected, and each has a different essential element of what I want in a shul and each has a different serious flaw) and how I love PSJC but I have philosophical and aesthetic objections to the triennial Torah-reading cycle employed there. The woman seemed somewhat taken aback. “Oh,” she said, “so you’re, like, really more Conservative, not Renewal.”

My turn to be a little taken aback, but I tried not to show it. We were in a Conservative shul, after all… why should I be Renewal and not Conservative? “Yeah, I’m Conservative. I’m pretty traditionalist.” Reflecting on that statement, I thought of Flatbush Jewish Center, the shul closest to my home, which is Conservative and non-egalitarian. They certainly do not consider me to be “traditionalist.”

I often find myself confronted with people who have seen one or two aspects of my personality and build from that a gestalt of Gella that may go in almost any direction… but in the Jewish world most often suggests that I fit within a Renewal framework. It is not entirely unreasonable that one would get this impression. I am socially extremely liberal, I have appreciation for eastern philosophy and practice, my theology might be described as “non-traditional,” I advocate for gender and orientation equality and am myself bisexual, I go to the woods, I sing, I read Sufi poetry, I see a chiropractor, I meditate in the morning. Taken together and exclusively, these are all elements that, common wisdom suggests, would point toward a left-leaning non-traditional or neo-traditional Jewish practice that might include introductory meditation, chanting, ecstatic dance, hugging and laying of hands, etc.

But that is not where I fall or where I fit. The Renewal movement is comprised in large part of people who have found the existing streams of Judaism in some way dissatisfying, not enough, moribund, as the wikipedia article on Jewish Renewal puts it. While there have certainly been times in my life when I felt somewhat dissatisfied with my Jewish practice, felt lonely in my philosophical and theological understanding of Judaism, I never felt that the Judaism that I was practicing was in itself lacking in what I felt a need for, what I felt stirring inside me. I stuck with my Movement, and have become an advocate for it.

One need not, I find, go outside of the tradition, or drastically revamp the tradition, in order to find spiritual satisfaction. While there is plenty of wisdom to be gained from studying and even adopting elements of eastern philosophy, I have never found these to be external to Judaism in the first place. In my post on Buddhism and Judaism I talk about how the concept of Buddha is not incompatible with, nor a replacement for, nor really external to the concept of God in Judaism. My understanding of this does not necessitate declaring myself a JuBu. The fact of my understanding of Buddhist philosophy as being at the core of my Jewish philosophy doesn’t qualify my Judaism. It doesn’t instill in my a need to go running and looking for ways to visibly incorporate non-traditional or non-Jewish elements into my religious practice.

My religious practice is pretty traditionalist Conservative. I have no problem with the creation of new rituals where there is a genuine need, such as for baby namings, batot mitzvah, and committment ceremonies. I rarely see a need for radical revamping of liturgy (adding imahot is not a radical departure in my opinion). I can find what I need within the Conservative framework because I know how to look, because I have learned enough about it to know that what I need is already there, whether everyone recognizes it or not. Others have not been as fortunate as I have been in their educational and shul experiences and I can understand the place from which people can feel that they have no recourse except to something self-consciously and unabashedly eclectic and non-traditional. But I also think that The Conservative Movement loses more members than we have to because we don’t know how to look in our own backyard, because new and different names for God are exciting and alluring and seem fresh and juicy compared with the stale old God you think you grew up with.

You can meditate in the morning and then daven shacharit. You can read the Tao Te Ching and understand it as underlying Derech Eretz. You don’t have to skip Musaf or abbreviate the Torah reading to have a spiritually fulfilling experience in shul. What makes Judaism come to life is always, and always has been, study and understanding our tradition… taking the practice as it is and reading it as it fits. That’s why I’m happy as a Conservative Jew. That’s why I don’t have to be renewal. Turn it over and over… Fihi Ma Fihi… everything is in it.

The concept of “blessing” has been on my mind lately. Specifically, the act of blessing… of blessing something or someone. This usage always makes me cringe when used in a Jewish context… “she blessed the candles,” “he blessed the bread,” “I ritually wash my hands and bless them.” This seems to me like a misuse of the term, of the concept.

I was taught at an early age that the concept of a person blessing something or someone is a very Christian, and distinctly un-Jewish concept. We do not, for example, bless the bread when we say the bracha over the eating thereof. Bracha itself is an interesting word, usually translated as blessing, but which I think is in fact much more complex. To my mind, the action of “blessing” carries with it a connotation of somehow changing the properties of the thing blessed. Bestowing some property of “blessedness” upon the object, imbuing it with a “holiness” that was not present before the blessing. We as humans do not have this power. Everything that is holy is so through God’s will. When we recite a bracha we do not make something new or bring about a new reality, we acknowledge something pre-existing.

Let’s talk about HaMotzi for a minute. HaMotzi is what we say before eating bread, or eating a meal that contains bread. The translation is as follows: “Baruch (We’ll come back to that) are You, Adonai, Our God, King of HaOlam (The world, the universe, eternity) that brings forth bread from the earth.”

So, we’re not even saying anything about the bread itself. The bread is not even the subject. Every bracha begins with the formula Baruch Atah Adonai. There is no bracha that says Baruch is this bread, or Baruch is this tree. So what is it that baruch actually means? It is a state of being which applies to God. I’ve read that the word Baruch comes from a root which means bringing down. The word for knee is berech which, of course, we bend to bring ourselves down, usually in honor or humility of or to another, most often to God.

What does this mean for our bracha? I could come up with answers that sound nice and that make some sort of religious or mystical sense, but the answer for now is simply that I don’t know. What I do know, is that whatever we mean by baruch, it is not something bestowed upon the bread. When we say a bracha over bread, it does not change the bread. If it changes anything, it changes us, our perception of the bread. It is an acknowledgment of the fact that bread, and all sustenance, is brought forth by God. If there is any effect it is that we are giving God God’s due for God’s part in sustaining us, and in so doing the bread becomes released to us, and give ourselves leave to get down to the business of being sustained, that is, eating the bread.

The bread itself is not any more special for the bracha we say before eating it. It is not magic blessed bread. It does not become the body of Christ when we eat it. We say the bracha and we release ourselves to eat any bread, not the specific bread that was perhaps touched when the bracha was recited.

This is in stark contrast, to my understanding, to the concept of blessing in Christianity, where someone actually has the authority to bless a person or an object, and make it “holy.” Like water for instance. Take three bottles of evian, bless one of them, mix them up… guess which one’s holy? The water itself becomes “holy water” with special vampire repellent properties not possessed by the other two bottles. In Judaism, to my knowledge, we have no such authority, no equivalent action.

The closest analogue I can think of is when we light candles and say a bracha stating that baruch is God who commanded us to light candles for this specific purpose, and the statement of intention, the statement that these candles are for the purpose of marking this day, be it shabbat or yom tov or Chanukka does then mean something for the reality of those candles while they are lit… and you cannot touch them or interfere with them or substantively benefit from them or blow them out. But still, it is different. The words that we say are a way of setting aside these objects, of saying “God has commanded us to make these specific lights at this specific time, and these are the particular objects that we are using to fulfill this commandment.” Again, it is the action, not the object, that is relevant, and God’s part in bringing about that action that is acknowledged.

This is a very interesting train of thought, and one that I would like to pursue further. I would like very much, in the meantime, to gather the feedback of others, Jewish or otherwise. What is your understanding of what a blessing is, and what the action of blessing means?