Mishkaneering Defined

After two years as a self-proclaimed "Mishkaneer," I think it's time to explain the name. Simply put, a Mishkaneer in my meaning is an engineer of the Mishkan. In Torah narrative, the Mishkan is the portable proto-Temple that the progeny of Israel carries through the wilderness, to provide a place for G!d's in-dwelling presence, the Shekhinah. In more conceptual terms, Mishkan (which literally means "from dwelling" and shares the same Semitic etymological root as "Shekhinah") is the window Jews open to Temple conciousness by way of dwelling with Holy One-ness wherever in the Diaspora we happen to be.

The notion of engineering the Mishkan, Mishkaneering, is actually an awkward mess of two languages, English and Hebrew, with very different biases. (Just like my, and many Anglo-Jews', entire existence is a mess of those two respective worldviews!) In Hebrew sensibility, the Mishkan engineers us as much as we engineer it, and this symbiotic dynamism is inherent to its Mishkan-ness.

The point is that Mishkan/Mishkaneering is a kind of process: The medium whose message is to dwell. And to dwell on dwelling.

If You Build It

Last Shabbat I finally visited the one shul in town I'd never seen before, Seattle's Emanuel Congregation. Ironically, it's also the synagogue in town that I've always found the most interesting in its configuration. Emanuel is one of the original two shuls that split off from the mainline Orthodox establishment when it moved to the suburbs. While American Orthodoxy has swung to the right, the other split-off (and dear to my heart) Capital Hill Minyan has stayed put about as much as possible, and Emanuel has inched slightly to the left. Today, Emanuel identifies itself as "Modern Orthodox," and its lay-led ArtScroll-sidur non-egalitarian-but-women-give-divrey-Torah service style is in line with that designation as it is applied elsewhere. What is peculiar is the seating arrangement, which is essentially the Boston Synagogue's layout of three sections -- men's, women's, mixed -- with the addition of two mechitzot to keep each section halakhically separate for prayer.

Emanuel is a snug, warm, heimish shul with a lovely sanctuary in its own cute building in a diverse neighborhood with many synagogues. It also has no young members.

The synagogue president talked to me at the kiddush about their little congregation and its future. I was amazed and heartened to hear him say, "We're an old congregation. We hope some young folks will come in here and make it their own. It will change to adapt to their needs, in ways we can't foresee. It has to." I was a member of a similarly progressive-yet-traditional shul in Vancouver that was tremendously promising and exciting, but ended up tearing itself apart for lack of this willingness to evolve with successive generations.

I also talked with the synagogue president's wife. Emanuel Congregation has no web site, and she is responsible for changing that. "I think we should be on the web. Do you have any ideas about how a web site could encourage younger people to participate?" I had to take care not to laugh out loud. Calmly, I told her that it is literally my job to have such ideas.

Ladies and Gentlemen, what we have here is an opportunity. A synagogue is asking to be reinvented for the future. They own a small prayer space, in a strategic location, that is unusually flexible and accessible. It is not a large complex like most synagogues -- it's more like a shteible -- and there is no "movement" institutional affiliation or even the mandate of a rabbi. It can simply be a place to ... well, congregate! So how can we go about embracing (and stewarding) this space as a unique community resource?

(One model that comes to mind initially is the Sixth and I synagogue in DC.)

In particular, since the question has been put to me, what would make a good web site for such a shul? The question is at once technical and philosophical. I am particularly interested in how the web site could be made interactive, such that the "online congregation" not only encourages involvement in the physical congregation but actually shapes it and its programming.

The Psychology of the Other, re: "Antisemitism"

I have a general case to make -- though not the time to make it adequately now -- that our (Jews') new national priority must be the psychological understanding of our non-Jewish neighbors, hosts, and enemies. I have been thinking about this mainly in connection with the balagan in Lebanon, but I mention it now because of an interesting illustration of the point that came up in conversation last night with my token Muslim sophisticate Kyla.

We were discussing Israel and antisemitism (what else?), and she protested that it is unfair for anti-Israel sentiment, which pervades the Islamic body politic, to be branded antisemitic. Just because Muslims generally hate Israel, a state built on land forcably taken from Muslims, they don't necessarily hate Jews. In fact many (including Kyla, who has described herself as a "Jew-hugger") take umbrage at the suggestion.

This is significant because Kyla's is very likely a representative voice -- we are thank G!d not at a place where a majority of Muslims identify as antisemites or care to be so identified -- and to this self-identified non-antisemite, the essential gist of what antisemitism is and how it operates has been misrepresented. If antisemitism merely meant categorical hatred of Jews, then of course it would be incorrect to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism. Not all Jews want to live in the land of Biblical Israel, full stop.

I don't think it is an excessively subtle point that antisemitism arises first as a double-standard systematically disadvantaging Jewish aspirations against those of non-Jews. That is to say: Most if not all modern states are built on land forcably taken from previous residents; and yet, outside of Anarchist discourse, this moral problematic doesn't raise serious question of whether any state deserves to exist. Except for the state of Israel.

This sort of double-standard, which has many permutations throughout Jewish/non-Jewish relations, is not on its surface hateful. But it does beg the question, why should the Jews' national enterprise be treated differently from others'? The answer inevitably has to do with deeply-ingrained Christian and Islamic culural habits of regarding the Jews as a pariah nation, in addition to good old-fashioned racism.

Furthermore, the double-standard propels at least two hateful dynamics. One is that Jewish culture, justifiably paranoid that it will be judged with disproportionate harshness by others, habitually seeks alliance with the most powerful in order to ensure itself disproportionate protection. Consequently Jews, though we are small players, get caught up in and become culpable for the abuses of power by the largest players. Israel's relationships with the U.S. versus Iran, Russia, and China in the unfolding Lebanon catastrophe illustrates this perfectly.

The other hateful dynamic perpetuates through language, and through that ignorance of the Other's psychology. When we protest a double-standard by saying, "that's antisemitic," what the other hears is, "you hate Jews, you nasty Hilter Jew-hater." This is exactly as effective as Black activists telling non-hateful White Americans that it is racist to oppose affirmative action. The accused is hurt, because she thinks she's been told she's being completely bigoted when in fact she means and is trying to be peaceable and fair. In her frustration, she may think that the accuser is trying to abdicate his responsibility by blaming her of something that is patently untrue. Left unchecked, this confusion can breed actual ethnic hatred.

When the afflicted make no distinction between passive versus active discrimination, potential allies feel thrown into an ugly box with the skinheads and the terrorists, which will lead them at worst to sympathize with those hateful radicals, or at best to despair of the whole conversation.