Powerless

Recently, despite parent protests, community complaints, student complaints and general disapproval, Chicago shut down 50-ish schools. Robbing --mostly non-white, already poor--our future of their education. Not that American education is great, and I believe 100% that it is INTENTIONALLY failing. It's much easier to control the people this way.

I stopped protesting things a while ago. The energy is great, you feel righteous and you get to make signs, but I've never seen it work. I've seen it be very counterproductive. I've found that interacting with people made more of a difference.

We've passed through Memorial Day and Veterans day and all their militaristic, patriotic bullshit. It's institutional slaughter fueled by lies. I read an article about how the generations to which I belong will be defined by Iraq and Afghanistan. And while choosing to join the military during a war in a foreign land is traumatic, it is nothing but a symptom. And also nothing but a cheap treatment for a symptom. At the beginning of  these wars we had a bunch of angry, under educated and hopeless--mostly men-- who were very discontent with life in America.

Then we gave them something aggressive to do that would fix everything. They were PROTECTING FREEDOM. By giving up their own? By taking away others'? Now we have a population of broken young people, back here. And a group of broken people over there. And a group, a very small one, of VERY rich and successful and self-satisfied OLDER, MOSTLY WHITE and MALE people here. Who are still protecting LIFE and MARRIAGE. By taking those things away from people.

But I can no more blame my American troops for being indoctrinated into believing that what they are doing or did is right. No more than I can blame a young talib--whose country was ravaged by foreign interference and to whom groups like Al Qaeda or Hammas, give a sense of purpose, security and very often FOOD AND MONEY AND MEDICAL AID; those men are fighting for what they've been indoctrinated to believe is righteous.

And when both sides meet in the Killing Fields and they do not understand why the other can't just understand that THEY are the just one. And we sit back and wonder why any of them can't just see and understand that they've both been deceived and killing each other will solve and do nothing. If only we could get all these young men and women of all races, beliefs and backgrounds to stop killing each other for the lies that a few people in power told them.

Then maybe we would have more energy for breaking through those lies and taking away that false, tainted power and making all of us less vulnerable: to poverty, to indoctrination, to lies, to killing, to ignorance.

BUT HOW?

Ex. Gay or straight marriage isn't the problem. BELIEVING that the civil government has the power, the right, to dictate our households' economic, medical, housing, and familial RIGHTS---there's a problem.

Ex. Drug use isn't the problem. The poverty, racism, hopelessness that leads to drug use IS. The money wasted incarcerating people with a sickness, is a problem. And funny story, when those FELONS get out and can't get a job because they have a record, and can't vote because they're felons, they end up just as hopeless and likely to use and end up back in jail.
ALSO, IF WE WERE TO ASSUME THAT AFTER SOMEONE GETS OUT OF PRISON, AND ARE SUPPOSEDLY REFORMED, WHY CAN'T THEY VOTE? WHY CAN'T THEY BE HUMAN AGAIN?

Nothing is isolated. These problems are caused by poor education; poor access to nutrition; poor access to meaningful employment, that is jobs that pay enough and treat you like a human; and all of these causes and symptoms are encouraged by INSTITUTIONALIZED AND SYSTEMATIC: RACISM, SEXISM, CLASSISM. 

Celebrate that gay marriage while that young black man can't get to school safely, and if he does, won't get a good education. Enjoy pulling out of Afghanistan even though we have years and decades of repercussions in our troops, in our foreign relations, in our economy. Enjoy that sale which is fueled by underpaid workers, both in your store and who have made whatever it is you're buying.

There are layers. It's like Inception.

Yom Yerushalaim

I am very glad that in 1967, Israel handed the smack-down to the region that was grouping up against it. I'm so grateful that they won. Almost as grateful as I am that they were willing to give up things like Sinai and some water for peace.

Jerusalem is a BIG city. And like any big city it's complicated. Last night in my final Ulpan (Hebrew) class, we learned a song for Jerusalem Unification Day. Most of it was nice stuff about the Holy city being holy, but there was also a lot of possessive stuff and one line about it being the capital. While I believe that the Old City and most of Jerusalem are doing well under Israeli control, I wonder how an East Jerusalemite, Palestinian, would feel about that. How anyone in the UN would feel about that line. Frankly, I like that legally, Tel Aviv is the capital. I would MUCH prefer a secular city as the capital of Israel than one filled with tension and over-zealous people.

I have no solution. Jerusalem is complicated. It's an archaeological gold mine (or landmine field?), it's a big city with neighborhoods that bleeds into other cities, with ethnicities and histories. I can't think of anyway to heal it or to extradite it that would be pleasant. This isn't 1989 Berlin; we're not ending Stazi control; we're bordering on turf wars and oppression.

I'm not sure that Yom Yerushalaim is a day for celebration as much as it is a day for open-minded contemplation.  

Rabbinical Blessings, Omer Breads and Tikkun Olam: Butter Yo' Shit

So I just read this OU article about some stuff (just read it, don't make me explain things). I've been missing good stories lately from my Chabad and OU posts but then this cropped up. Please imagine at the end it implying all children, boys and girls, instead of just really penis-centric, Frum, patriarchal bullshit only boys.

http://www.ou.org/torah/article/rabbi_weinrebs_parsha_column_emor1#.UYPhq7XCaSo

It very much shares the message of incorporation-station. It also made me tear up a little, but I think the wave of Niddah is coming.

That and something about the omer filled my brain and seemed connected somehow. Just the day to day. There are lots of reasons for the counting of the omer. Plagues, Rabbi's, and Pilgrimages. I think probably it's way simpler than that. Pray extra hard and maybe our bread harvest won't get fucked. JEWS LOVE BREAD. Of course the switching of the crops to bread is an intense time. And Why Lag B'omer? Because you CAN'T BE THAT SERIOUS FOR FIFTY DAYS STRAIGHT. That being made clear, the omer is this extensive period. It's not a holiday or even a holiweek that we can do and put behind us. It's something that happens continually. As should tikkun olam and being holier (progressive not comparative).

But then I found this alread written but not posted. I'm just a schmuck sometimes.

Day to Day: Tikkun Olam

As a disgustingly Reform Jew, there are many things my movement is doing that I like: Gender Equality, Guitars at services, Generally being liberal. I also really like how we've linked the concept of Tikkun Olam into social action. Spreading it way farther than charity or within our communities but really trying to make the world a better place.

However, something happens when you give something a cool name and a category and its own page on your website: you set it aside from your life. Usually, in Judaism when we set something aside we make it holy...or at least holier: The Sabbath Day, Our Diets, Israel, Judaism see, potentially holy things. But I believe that there is something inherently wrong, sinful even, about earmarking Tikkun Olam or social action.

Bettering the world should not be an outlook, it should be a synthesis. Everything I do should be motivated as a Jew...or at least that's my goal. And Judaism has a goal: to better. Everything should be constantly improved. Ethics, diets, environment, life.

We have gotten Tikkun Olam to the same place that we got the Bar/Bat Mitzvah, possibly even by including it in that zero-sum game. I'm not sure exactly how to cultivate the life-long learning, the life-long commitment to making the world better, but I know that removing them from other activities isn't the way. There shouldn't be a box or an activity that I check and say, “done” to. There should be a fire in me burning away the bad and fertilizing the better. I should not only go to a park clean up, but should pick up that bag I pass on the sidewalk. I should not only sort my recyclables, or buy things that are recycled but should try to not use unnecessary things in the first place. I should keep learning Hebrew even after I have chanted my portion on the day because I should keep interacting with Judaism and Hebrew enriches those interactions.

Pirkei Avot tells us that while we are not responsible for finishing the task, neither are we at liberty to desist from it. That's comforting because no matter how much trash I pick up, someone is going to miss the bin and keep walking. The concern that we need to be wary of now is that these compartmentalized, semi-goals ARE GOOD, because they motivate us, but they aren't complete in that they give us an opportunity to turn down the flame without the appropriate means of sustaining or rekindling it. Breaks are fine. Accomplishments should be rewarded. But we are never done. Unless some sort of 100% messiah comes and gives us the all clear, we should probably be more incorporative of Tikkun Olam not just as a branch of the tree of our individual lives, but as the wood-fiber that makes up the tree. Focusing on behaviors not actions. Changing eating habits instead of one quick diet. Whether at a personal, group or institutional level (though all of the above would be nice: the results will be slower, but in the long run more profitable.  

The Extrapolation of Evil

So as I fight daily, hourly, yearly and constantly with the 2,000+ year old tomes that are our holy books and perhaps the inspiration of others' holy books, I continue to be convinced that religion does not shape us we shape it. And moreover that the point is that we shape it and how we do so.

I complain about, Christians specifically, cherry-picking from the Bible (whatever bible means to you). I complain about translations and wholistic* portions and stories and context and I will continue. I will kvetch until G-d proper eliminates Torah et al. from existence to stop me.

That being said, it's a big chunk of varied writings we've got here and we can do whatever we want with them. So some people pull out slavery, racism, misogyny, and close mindedness. Some of us pull out some Girl Power (for example, when G-d and Moses give land to women), doing good, engaging G-d and community.

Every time I either read about how anyone who violates the Sabbath shall be 'cut off from the community' and/or ''die/be put to death'' I think that it is not for us to kick them out or kill them. When I don't get to Shabbat, I feel cut off and distant. I feel dead. That sin is it's own punishment. If you don't engage Judaism OF COURSE you get cut off! If you don't feed your soul OF COURSE you die!

This rabbi extrapolated how we can use religion to be bad.

http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/50494/p/salsa/web/common/public/content?content_item_KEY=12742

One of the things I respect most about Islam is that (they wake up at 5am to pray, seriously) under the premise of everything coming from Allah, the things that we think are bad come from Allah as well.

For a long while I was well on my way to being a destructive jerk-face. Destructive to myself, to society and just unpleasant in general. I know that Judaism met me in the middle somewhere and that we worked together to be better. Something in me ended up pulling out and connecting with good things in this culture, in this book, in these highly strange rules. And the more I pulled out the more Judaism gave me. It's a never-ending expanse of whatever we want it to be. So please reach for the good. Or at least the better.  

* I'm trying to fix language so I spell holistic 'wholistic' since it has to do with the whole and not the hole. 

The Number 4

This Passover is brought to you by the number four. Why do we drink four cups of wine?

Ma nishtana halaylah hazeh mikol halelot? Shebekol halelot anu shotim cos echad. Halaylah haze, halaylah haze arbaah cosim.

How is this night different from all other nights? Usually I don't drink a bottle of wine on a Monday. Because as my lovely girlfriend pointed out, four glasses is a bottle.

The number four comes up a lot in Passover. Four questions, four children, four names of Passover--none of which is chag yayin or wine festival. So why four?

The Open Door Haggadah says because four are the ways that G-d promises us to GTFO Egypt for freedom. He promises to "bring us out," to "deliver us" to "redeem us" and to "take us".

As a people to whom joy=wine, I have to say that the buzz I'll be rocking this Exodus is not too temporally distal from the hangover of my vershnikte I was on Purim.

So WHY drunk? Why so drunk? While not biblically official, Purim is now soaked (literally and figuratively) in a tradition of binge drinking that makes even St. Pat's Day in Chicago look like a lil' bitch. And it's because it's a happy holiday where we not only don't die but we WIN. It's so inconceivable that the rabbis believed we should get to the point where we can't conceive the location of the bathroom to even get close to comprehending it.

Passover is also a joyous holiday. Possibly the second happiest days of the year. It lacks the solemnity of the High Holy Days or the modern pandering of Chanukah.

But think about Passover: We were slaves until G-d tortured our captors, killed their babies and sent us into the desert. And I can't eat bread. Dayeinu.

Dayeinu is this ingenious catchall that in essence, means be grateful for what good you do have because it could suck way more.

We have holidays that aren't happy.

And that might be the real reason that we drink four glasses of wine at Pesach. Not to get Purim shitfaced but to gently ease the bondage of our own minds. To go from sober slavery to an uncertain freedom  and in that uncertainty to say Dayeinu.

Brotherly Love

I didn't stop writing. Well I did, but not for as long as it seems. I really just stopped finishing things I've written. I also stopped editing and just plain posting them but this is good and I didn't have to work on it too hard because it was sitting on my desktop, almost whole.

Philia is the Greek word for a type of fraternal love....they named a while after the Jews may have perfected it.

I love VaYishlach. It's really the most pro-brother passage of anything ever. It starts with a great reconciliation of the two brothers Jacob [Israel] and Esau. And we get to see how worried and scared Jacob is going into it and I can only imagine that Esau was also feeling a cascade of emotions as he crossed the desert. I wonder if Esau was going into it still enraged for having been cheated time and again as a younger man, and maybe the strata of petitioning that Jacob [Israel] sent before him assuaged his anger. Maybe he was over his anger by the time he left. Maybe in a very Karma sort of way, Jacob was paying Esau back what he would have gained had he had his birthright and blessing. Regardless, the meeting is so powerful that the men weep. Then they get back to being manly and separate again to meet later in a more orderly fashion.

On the way we hear of the one daughter in a sea of brothers from a sea of mothers. Dinah seeks female friends in the city and gets raped by the local prince. It's not great, but the prince proclaims his love for her and seeks her father for her hand in marriage. Historically that is the just act in the face of rape. It's the worst rule ever to marry your rapist, but that's what the proper next step would be, Dinah has no say. I'm also going to keep using Dinah's name, ad nauseum, because so few women get named in the bible and it's crap because there are plenty of ladies.

And here is why I truly connect with this passage. Because Dinah's brothers remind me greatly of my own. The brothers hear about his and storm in on the meeting. And proclaim that they'd love to unite families and tribes and regions, if only the locals will adhere to the practice of circumcision. And in the rapist's defense, he apparently loves his victim so much that he agrees and convinces his entire kingdom to take the cut. Two of the 11 brothers find even this insufficient and decide, while the town is recovering from their new commitment, to slaughter all the menfolk. Then the other brothers pillage, because if everyone is dead, we might as well snag their swag. Jacob, who was satisfied with the 'just' arrangement, chastises the brothers.

Their response?

“Should our sister be treated like a whore?”

I get chills at this line every time. Firstly, because word-for-word, it could issue from the mouths of my brothers. And also because in a book and society that was contextually so groundbreaking in it's treatment of women, they challenge this practice, which I'm sure at the time seemed very pro-lady. They said that rape was wrong and women, at least their sister, cannot be sold as a body. Cannot be violated because she is our sister who is literally worth more than a city of penises.

Vengence isn't the best thing to get behind but maybe sometimes the love and emotions fueling it are.