Why All Mishkaneers Should Be Amateurs

B"H

Before I go offline for Shabbos, I just want to whip out a cheer for all the Baaley T'shuvah -- whether you were born frum or not. :) I've been thinking a lot lately about a pattern that runs parallel between the Academy, the Arts, and Orthodoxy: the systemic denigration of amateurism and, therefore, of amateurs. A question I often get, with respect to my eclectic education, is "But what do you want to be?" I started wondering why my favorite answer is, "A professional amateur." So I went back to the etymology of the word, "amateur." It means, in essence, one who loves. Or, more to the point, one who does, or commits to something, out of love for it. It makes perfect sense, then: I want to be someone who acts and invests out of love, for my community, for Torah, for haShem. And I want to make home with a family and a community of others who do the same.

I heard said recently, by an unorthodox orthodox rabbi, that the gradual eclipse, in modern times, of various traditions of arranged marriage by marriage-for-love (see: Fiddler On the Roof) might actually represent an elevation, or a maturation, of the notion of marriage itself. It's not just selfishness or the latter-day rise of individualism and Ego; it's actually a sign that we're knitting the cosmos tighter and stepping that much closer to Moshiach. So if, as I tell my students, the bar or bat mitzvah simchah is really an arranged wedding, between the bar/bat mitzvah and Torah, then the "t'shuvah" in baal/at t'shuvah is an elective marriage of the same partners, for love. Where it is distinguished from lust -- no small feat, I know (and how many religious Jews have we seen come to Torah in lust? so many...) -- such love may actually be the realization of G!d's will. Therefore, submitting to true love, which is a major cultural struggle for religious Judaism in our time, could be one significant dimension of submission to the ultimate arranged marriage: that which is arranged by haShem.

If we can, B"H, bring our centuries' accretions of skill at maintaining and sanctifying arranged marriage, to the ascendent prospect of marriage-for-love (t'shuvah), then perhaps we can build a Mishkan entirely of Baaley T'shuvah.

If this is so, then the time has come for an evolutionary step in the definition of "Baal/at T'shuvah" itself -- away from the current Johnny-come-lately, someone who was a bad Jew and is now scrubbed up and with the program (so they're okay for padding shul membership or doing kiruv but we still don't want them dating our kids), and toward the more expansive holy ameteur, the Jew born secular, Reform, frum, or Christian, who has let go his parents' idols, electively stepped out of the narrows (mitzrayim), and accepted in his heart the perspective to know Torah from the outside, to know Torah from the inside, and to love its Words in utter dedication (laasoq b'divrey Torah). I think this should be a basic tenant of Mishkaneering itself, that it must be performed by a community of Baaley T'shuvah, so defined. And so may we be blessed, and bless ourselves, to tempt Shekhinah by taking whatever we've got as individuals, no matter our backgrounds, and invest it in the building of a Mishkan as it is right there in Sh'mot, the tent raised by a community of holy amateurs.

Shabbat shalom!

Coveting Tzitzis

B"H

On the first snow of the season, today, I'm feeling naive. Why? Because I like to brush my teeth before Shacharit, and I like to catch up on the day's blogs a bit while I brush my teeth. (This is part of my half-ass idolatrous worship of the god named Efficiency.) Nothing from mishpachah today, so I was reading from the lovely Apikorsus, who has apparently also taken a morbid fascination in the blogs of disaffected frummies. So it was that I found myself pretty absorbed in the (not exactly disaffected, and not exactly frum) writings of this young iconoclast (and her actually disaffected frum friend), and when I realized that I would damage my teeth if I kept it up, my first embarrassment was not at having delayed the Shema with this reading, but at not having bentsched Birkat haTorah first.

I could go on and on, and I will try not to, about how Scripturally rich the Jewish "blogosphere" is for any modern exegete -- a.k.a. Maggid -- who cares to notice, because here you can find every personality from all of Torah, alive and electric at this moment and continuously (re-)textualizing the experience, which is the flesh of Torah itself. In this sense, and here's a kiss for my Maggidic friends, I wonder whether the Beyt haMiqdash may emerge, in some part, through globally-linked hypertext animated by Self-narrative -- a.k.a. blogging. (These guys have a similar theory, though their take seems maybe over-nerdly.) What do you say?

Meanwhile, here I am still working on my Mishkan, because Mishkan comes first, and I am reminded of how compelling the personalities of my brothers and sisters can be. Perhaps even moreso when I can only relate to them as text. But it seems self-evident to me that, while the Beyt haMiqdash may be hypertextual, the Mishkan is necessarily geographic. And, as I was harshly reminded by Aviel's and my 10 hours spent driving yesterday from Vancouver south to my home turf around the Puget Sound, past so many of my teachers and compatriots and unfinished plans, and then straight back to Vancouver again (in time to beat the snow) -- and also as my friend Kyla, one of said compatriots, is so fond of saying:

Geography is a bitch.

Dwelling takes place in Place. There is no Shekhinah online. (Maybe where the online and the grounded kiss.) More practically, we want to build a good home, and that means we want good neighbors. Everywhere I have lived, thank G!d, there have been very good neighbors; and the Vancouver Shtetl is certainly no exception. But I think the Mishkan of Torah is constructed, by definition, by an iconoclastic community. Do we have an iconoclastic community here, or do we just have a community that contains some individual iconoclasts? I think this question could be fairly asked just about anywhere.

As it is, I am so covetous of the other religious fringeniks, the tzitzis Jews, of their stories and of their momentum, that my first thought when I find one in town is, "you'd better not move away" (that means you, Arwen, and Schachar, and M'eira...), and, even worse, when I find one somewhere Out There, "when will you move to Vancouver?" It's probably manifest as a facial tick or something, but otherwise I am good at keeping this impulse to myself. Because it's selfish. Or could it possibly be something nobler?

Fluffy Kneidle is correct to ridicule the contemporary frum world. Unlike the other atheist-frum or blackhat-bashing bloggers I've read, who mainly are just pissed off that Faith is more complicated than it seemed under the protective cover of their parents' and teachers' dogma (welcome to adulthood, my brothers; we're all here with you), she's actually after the Truth, G!d's and her Own, and she will accept no idol as a substitute, whether it's secular, chareydi, or anyone else's. She writes as an iconoclast, in the tradition of Avraham Avinu -- and also, I should say, my dearest friends. What she ridicules is that which is inherently ridiculous: Jewish social conformity, an oxymoron if ever there were one. (I'm distinguishing between social conformity -- etiquitte, fashion, or "the way it's always been done" -- and G!dwill conformity, mitzvah. I wish more poskim would make the same distinction.)

I remember observing, and growing bored with, this phenomenon at Oberlin College, which is, like Israel, a society of loners and odd-men-out (and, not coincidentally, an awful lot of Jews). There is a very special pathos in the visage of people who haShem made different, weird, chosen trying to build their own little shallowly rigid social structures -- something to conform to, to be made righteously normal by. Jews are especially clumsy idol-builders. It just isn't in our blood, so we end up making a mockery of it regardless of our intentions.

What this means, though, is that Fluffy Kneidle has picked an easy target. Now, that's easy for me to say -- my father isn't baal t'shuvah -- but what I'm getting at is that I am kind of impatient to read her narrative after Lekh Lekha. I'm also greedy for it to happen closer to where I am. Most of Torah comes after we're done smashing our father's idols, and all of the Mishkaneering does. I've spent years on my own Lekh Lekha, and I'm hungry for some building. It seems to be imminent, B"H, hence this blog. Still, I alone am not enough. I need a chevre of Mishkaneers to build with, a critical mass, my own iconoclastic community.

So, to Fluffy Kneidle: You are blessed with the holiest work there is, and everything you need to do it. So just keep doing it, and keep in touch. HaShem will never allow you to become permanently derailed by the ennui and confusion of those around you, so don't you ever feel guilty for surviving it. Also, be careful not to confuse your strength with stubbornness. You know the direction, thank G!d, but the derekh will still be surprising at turns.

And, to all the other iconoclasts as well: if we can Mishkaneer one iconoclastic community, we can Mishkeneer a second; and if a second, then a third. We have to actually assemble ourselves, unite our shards of light at one Place in this wilderness, achieve that transformative critical mass, to unfurl the tent and invite Shekhinah. Only then can the tent be erected in another place (and another, and another).

When are you moving to Vancouver? :)

Please stay tuned here over the coming weeks, as I will be unrolling various preliminary blueprints for Modern Mishkan designs. Please consider how you might be able to participate. And know that you're always welcome at our table here, in the western-most suburb of Yerushalayim!

On Dads, Parts II and I

B"H

An update on me and dad-ness, from Aviel's and my civil wedding ceremony today:

Barukh haShem!

---

Fathers Song

Aba my lonely wolf
Aba my charge of a right man
Aba my lungs are full
For the right all the right can
Aba my wildling gray
Aba my banner for the fight
Aba how can I say
You could better than be right?

I don't see why don't I
You don't see eye-to-eye
You fear you are dying
So do I

Aba my dear old man
Aba my sport in the man's den
Aba my heart can't stand
To see it all again
Aba my cause to shout
Aba my image afrightening
Aba for spitting out
And letting the right be

You don't see why don't I
I don't see eye to eye
We weren't made for dying
We were made to
Lielalie, lalie, yielielie ...

Aba my dear old wolf
Aba my hope in the man's den
Aba my eyes are full
For you to become them
Aba my cause to pray
Aba my promise afrightening
Aba my charge to stay
Forever a wolfling

You don't see why don't I
I don't see eye to eye
We'll just go on dying
Until the day we
Lielalie, lalie, yielielie ...

His father was dying
His father is dying
My father is dying
We'll all go on dying
And dying
Until the day we
Lielalie, lalie, yielielie ...

[I'll post a recording as soon as I am able to get some studio time.]