I spoke to Reb Shmuel, our rosh yeshiva, about some of the thoughts I had yesterday, about being troubled that the attack at the Yeshiva didn’t hit me more immediately, that I was as blinded by our differences as I was and that my own mind was revealed to me as being as bad at this klal yisrael thing as those by whom I feel excluded.

Reb Shmuel told me a few things.

First of all, the people in this Yeshiva, specifically this institution, were Jew loving people. What he meant is that, while we as (small l) liberal or (big C) Conservative Jews feel and often are excluded by the Orthodox in various ways, while we feel that we are not included in their vision of Judaism and often we aren’t, these people specifically did include people like us in their vision of klal yisrael. These are not the people who I think of when I think of “The Orthodox who hate us” as I inevitably do.

Second… Reb shmuel studied in that Yeshiva, for two years, when he was a teenager. The same age as the boys who were killed.

He asked me if it had been just 8 random Israelis standing at a bus stop of various backgrounds and ethnicities, would I feel differently? I thought a minute and said I probably would… because I stand at Israeli bus stops. And if it were in America? I thought and said “It would depend on where.”

Thinking about it… I thought back to katrina and to the tsunami… the disasters of the past several years, the things that have upset people, the big events that people have cried over, that have deeply touched even the unaffected. I have hardly felt touched by any of these events. The last time I viscerally felt a disaster was September 11th 2001. And I remember feeling guilty that I felt it so strongly, having personally lost no one I knew. And I remember that my initial reaction was not even to the people, it was to the building… I couldn’t see the people until I could see the building. I had to visualize the building and then visualize the people in the building… and I felt it specifically when the first building fell. Because the people left in the second building saw the first building fall. And there was no way they didn’t know what was going to happen next.

The first problem is the number. After 3000 people dying in one day in my hometown, about two blocks from my high school, 8 feels like nothing.

That needs to change.

I keep reading biographies. I’m reading everything I can about these boys, finding them, feeling them, feeling who they were and how they were like me. One of them, it is reported, was seen alone in the beit midrash studying until 1 am Wednesday night. I can relate to that. He was buried with the Masechet he was studying when he was murdered, which was soaked in his blood. Masechet Nedarim. I haven’t studied it. I am studying masechet Shabbat.

One of the boys, Avraham David Moses, is the son of a friend of Rabbi Diamond, one of the directors of our program, and of Shaiya, one of my favorite teachers. Avraham David’s mother came to study for a year in Israel in the early ’90s and decided to stay. She studied at Pardes, where I have many friends. This morning Rabbi Diamond said to us, “Imagine your vision of a crazy right wing settler and everything that goes along with that in your mind. Avraham David’s mother and family are just about the exact opposite of that.”

We dedicated a special learning session this morning to the memory of the boys who were murdered. Rabbi Diamond taught us a psalm that had been said at Avraham David’s funeral.

One of my initial thoughts was that, like I’ve had wakeup calls to start thinking again about theology, about philosophy, about halachic theory, this is my wakeup call to start reading the news again… to integrate some of real life back into my consciousness. I’ve been in my study bubble long enough. I have to become an integrated person again. I’m not diving back into analysis at this point, I just need to know what’s going on.

But right now, this is not about that. This is not about politics or analysis or about religious fanaticism or extremism. This is about me and my relation to my fellow Jews, and to my fellow human beings. This right now is an exploration of my emotional reactions, to gauge where my humanity needs adjustment.

***
I just remembered I was wrong… the last time I felt viscerally connected was not September 11th, but the Lebanon war.

Wednesday we went on a field trip to a museum on the border between East and West Jerusalem, formerly the border between Israel and Jordan. It is called Museum on the Seam in English, מוזיאון על התפר in Hebrew. It calls itself a socio-political art museum. We haven’t had a whole lot of discussion about how we all felt about it. It’s kind of difficult to describe on the whole, but the current exhibition is called Bare Life. From the website:

Bare Life is the third in a series of exhibitions on themes of human rights that we are presenting at the Museum. This exhibition aims to touch upon the increasingly unraveling seam between deviant states and normative states, and to point resolutely at the place where the temporary emergency situation turns into a legitimized ongoing situation that in the end leads to a paranoia of suspicion and to the use of violence to re-establish public order.

A couple of people have talked to me about liking or not liking the museum, liking or not liking the art, liking or not liking the message. I found myself unable or unwilling to express or admit to, even to myself, a solid opinion on the content. I was very aware, as I wandered though the exhibits, of an analytical aloofness that completely overtook me. I found myself not judging the art or its message, but merely decoding, dissecting, pulling out from each image the message that the artist and/or curator seemed to be putting forth and… doing nothing with it. I thought a great deal about the manipulative nature of art, and the resultant roles of responsibility of the artist and viewer. Art by its nature, tends to elicit emotional reactions in people. It is visceral. Political art seeks to bypass reason and go for the jugular, to reach the opinionated part of the mind without the messiness of the critical faculties getting in the way, slowing it up, blocking it out. I hate when people use the word “powerful” with regards to most things, but especially with art. In certain contexts at least, the “power” to which people refer is a combination of the artist’s skill at manipulation of the audience and the audience’s ability or willingness to be manipulated. It is the meeting place of the speaker’s strength and the receiver’s weakness.

There are times when I do not mind, or when I even like to be manipulated. There are certain media, certain contexts, in which I want a feeling to be elicited from me. But I resent it when it is overt, and moreso when it seeks to persuade in a context which should be subject to critical examination rather than emotional reactionism.

Whoo… first week of classes over. Dear Lord I’m surprised I even remember my name after this week!

The day before yesterday was, as most of you probably are aware, the 4th of July, A.K.A. U.S. Independence Day. Being in Israel I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Well, it turned out to be quite an interesting and eventful day.

First point of interest… I got a package! And not at the apartment where I’m staying, oh no… I got a package at The Yeshiva! After tefillah I was hunting for coffee for the old beit midrash and Rabbi Lebeau intercepted me. “Oh, did you get your package?” he asked.

“Package? I got a package?”

“Yes, you got a package! Hang on…”

He disappeared briefly into a room and emerged with… that’s right… a package. And it was from none other than Ms. Jen Taylor Friedman, A.K.A. Hatam Soferet. The package was an “Instant Yeshiva Bochur Kit.”

Yes, that is a miniature Vilna Shas. You might even think it was made for a… a…

Oh come on, you know the answer.

Anyway, THANKS SO MUCH JEN! You made my day, like, for realz.

In ulpan, our instructor told us about a CD shop on Rechov Shammai off Ben Yehuda. Rebecca (one of my classmates) and I decided to go find it.

And find it we did. On the way back, two interesting things happened. One, we ran into Cantor Simon. This was the third time I had run into him on the street since he gave a presentation at the Fuchsberg Center on the great chazzanim on the golden age. I decided that this time I had to take a picture.

The next interesting this was that we came across a group of folks sitting on the midrachov playing Apples to Apples. Just sitting there. In the middle of the road.

We followed the sign’s instructions.

This guy knows two of my friends. I’m telling you, Jewish geography is scary.

The guy with the parasol, Dovid, told us that there was going to be a barbecue in Independence Park across from the consulate and that we should come. So after we took our leave of the A – A group we got some food (cause we were hungry and couldn’t either of us wait for 8 o’ clock barbecuage) and headed over at a leisurely pace to supersol to pick up a 6 of Heineken. By the time we got to the park Dovid was already there with a couple of other folks from the A – A group and some others setting up disposable grills.

Ok, so I had a hot dog. I bit into it. And… it was… well… it was…

The hot dog was fluffy. I ate a fluffy hot dog. I tried to get a picture of it but I couldn’t get it to come out right in the dark. I mean, it was like a sponge.

It was tasty, don’t get me wrong. I think it was a chicken dog. But… dude… fluffy hot dog.

Dovid and I talked most of the night. Turns out we like a lot of the same music and we stood and recited the Penguin Sketch from Monty Python together. Someone else. I found someone else who recites the penguin sketch word for word. No one was listening or watching us, it was purely for our own amusement. After a bit we got into a friendly argument about whether or not it was problematic for women to wear tzitziot while niddah. He said it was problematic and I said that it wasn’t… and neither of us could back up our claims, so we just left it. (I have subsequently asked one of my ravs and am satisfied with his answer and with my ability to make the point better in the future.) At some point we could hear fireworks but we couldn’t see them. Someone broke into The Star Spangled Banner. When everyone finished with “And the home of the brave” I launched into the other two stanzas.

I got strange looks.

It was a lot of fun. I still smell like smoke.

And yes, I am proud to be an American. I will never apologize for that.

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.

Rescue vehicles exploited as Terrorist Tools:

…an Israeli television station aired footage of armed Arab terrorists in southern Gaza using an ambulance owned and operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) — which has received more than $2.5 billion in taxpayer subsidies. Palestinian gunmen used the UN emergency vehicle as getaway transportation after murdering six Israeli soldiers. Senior UNRWA employee Nahed Rashid Ahmed Attalah confessed to using his official UN vehicle to bypass security and smuggle arms, explosives and terrorists to and from attacks. Nidal ‘Abd al-Fataah ‘Abdallah Nizal, a Hamas activist, worked as an UNRWA ambulance driver and admitted he, too, had used an emergency vehicle to transport munitions to terrorists.

It continually amazes me how people can see and hear such reports as these and continue to lay blame and cries of “disproportionate response” at the feet of Israel, how they can still naively believe that what looks like a civilian facility must necessarily be a civilian facility and only a civillian facility, and when all else fails, fall back on the ever-popular “Well, if they really hate Israel that much, then I guess Israel doesn’t belong there.

I mean, really. The mind boggles.

Orin Kerr is right. Along with everyone else, apparently.

Hat tip to Insta

I’m not a blogger. I wish I could be, but I’m not, I’m a journaler. I have a livejournal which I update frequently (no I will not tell you where, silly) with personal stuff, feelings, passions, anxieties… here I try to keep things relevant and within a certain standard of… cleanness. Cleanness in terms of the writing, and in terms of what I’m writing about. No kitty blogging, no talking about crushes on people or camping weekends or irrational anxieties about personal situations or family drama. That is not… pertinent to the world at large.

When things get heated, like with what’s happening in Israel, I know I should be writing here. What I write though tends to be very emotional. Often angry. I want things that I post here to be well thought out. I want things to be logical, to make sense. I need to be prepared for arguments that may ensue as a result. I’m terrified of saying something wrong because if Judaism teaches anything it is that words are something that you cannot take back.

I apologize to those of you who have commented in recent weeks. I have not been paying attention lately, and I’m so accustomed to the spam bot comments that flood my mailbox that I just tuned them out. Your comments are now visible and will be responded to shortly.

And I’ll try to do better here. Again.

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.

This Just In: Howard Dean is an Idiot.

“The Democratic Party platform from 2004 says marriage is between a man and a woman,” Dean said May 10 during a “700 Club” program hosted by conservative Christian leader Pat Robertson on his Christian Broadcasting Network.

Um… really? Actually… no.

“Howard Dean puts his foot in his mouth so often that he should open a pedicure wing in the DNC during his tenure,” Log Cabin Republicans President Patrick Guerriero said Wednesday. “Howard Dean’s positions on LGBT issues have changed more often than the weather in New England, where he’s from.”

Bwahahahahahaha!

(Via the venerable Insta.)

Came across this Washington Post article in Google’s roundup of world news:

Danny Rubenstein, Haaretz’s veteran West Bank correspondent, notes a perhaps unanticipated result of the Bush administration’s campaign for democracy in the Arab world. The Bush policy to starve Hamas financially is tacitly supported by unelected Arab regimes resisting Bush’s calls for democratization.

“In their view, the successful functioning of the Hamas government sends a message of encouragement to opposition groups in their countries, proof that an Islamic government can rule,” Rubenstein says.

Rubenstein doubts that the U.S.-European aid cutoff will persuade Palestinians to abandon Hamas.

“It is clear to everyone now that whatever Fatah, Israel, the Arab states and the entire world do to undermine the Hamas government will not work,” he writes. “The Palestinian public is loyal to it. So it is best to look for a way to live with it.”

Personally, I can’t bring myself to be so pessimistic. Fantastic if Hamas is starved out of its stance… but also fantastic if the Palestinian Authority finally learns to actually run a government, something that the “governing bodies” of the Palestinian territories have never yet learned to do. When “Palestine” proves itself capable of supporting its people, That is when a two-state solution will actually be implemented, whether it be by mutual agreement by two governments, or imposed by Israel, seeing as how the representatives of the Palestinian people has never yet over the decades accepted any two-state solution put forth in good faith by the Israeli government.

A little pessimism creeps in here: when the Palestinians have their own independant state, Palestine will continue to attack Israel. However, any attacks perpetrated against Israel by a sovreign Palestinian state could no longer be framable in a light of a “fight for freedom” but will rather be seen for what it is, and has been all along: an actual war against the Jewish State, and will be treated accordingly.