Mishkaneer

Christmasukkah, or The Miraculous Week-Long Burning of Hot Air

Joel Rothschild — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 20:52:00 +0000

Reagan was right after all. Trees truly are responsible for the massive release of gas into the atmosphere. Witness the great SeaTac Christmas tree debacle, which has exploded into a national pissing match over the so-called "War on Christmas." (Oy, such a terrible burden to wield cultural dominance!)

Well, it's my town, so I couldn't resist weighing in (I held out for days, I swear) on the question of Christmas trees and religious vs. secular vs. "cultural" symbolism in the Postmodern Age -- a familiar theme in Jewish community, as we struggle to survive the rise of consumer culture. Local columnist Robert Jamieson wrote an editorial that I didn't like. Here is the letter I wrote in response:

Mr. Jamieson,
I am Jewish, and I happen to enjoy Christmas/Solstice/Festivus/Chanukah/etc. decorations. I agree with you that the Port's move to take down the trees was an unfortunate overreaction, though I think the general litigiousness of our culture is as much to blame as any decision-maker at the Port.
That said, I think it's way too easy -- and a mark of Christian privilege -- for you to say that Christmas trees are an innocuous universal symbol of "peace, hope and cheer" that everyone should just shut up and get behind. I can hear some good old boy in Georgia saying practically the same thing about the Confederate flag: its origins predate Southern slavery and it is meant to symbolize regional history and pride, so detractors are just party-poopers vying for attention.
Christmas Day was still a traditional day of pogroms in Jewish villages long after Emancipation. Unfortunately, the most generous holiday spirit of Christians today cannot erase the baggage of their cultural symbols for minorities who have legitimate reason to feel very differently about them.
We all value living in a diverse and tolerant community. The Jewish community is not protesting the celebration of Christian cultural heritage in public places. Why would you protest members of our community seeking to celebrate our heritage in kind? How would that ruin Christmas?
Respectfully,
Joel Rothschild
Seattle

I wrote the same thing into a local radio program on which a caller had expressed a view matching Jamieson's, and I attached a semantic footnote that, looking at it again, I find interesting and potentially useful:

I think it's way too easy (and a little bigoted) for secular Christians to say that the Christmas tree is a "secular" symbol while the holiday symbols of minority cultures are "religious." Both the Christmas tree and the Menorah are religious symbols. They are also both more than religious symbols: They are cultural symbols as well, and in that capacity the Supreme Court has permitted both to be celebrated in the public sphere.

I have often in years past found myself frustrated by the combative attitude of fellow Jews toward public expressions of the "Christmas spirit." I never said anything before, because I couldn't articulate my objection, other than to say it seems a petty fight to pick relative to the gravity of other concerns. (Perhaps that is just easy for me to say, not being a parent faced with the assimilationist vacuum-suck of glittery lights and heaps of new toys.)

Now I see that my uneasiness is with making a complex issue so black-and-white. How can we say that religious expression is oppressive, therefore it must remain private (tell me if this sounds familiar: "I have nothing against Christian people, but why do they have to do that in public? why are they promoting their sick agenda in my children's schools?"), whereas secular expression is somehow inherently neutral? Does it make sense to protest wreaths and lights in schools, and to not protest the equally Christian (and more powerful) English language?

It seems to me that there is a fine yet crucial line between fighting oppression, which is necessary, and fighting history, which is absurd. To return to SeaTac airport as a case in point, it is worth noting that there are religious articles on display there year-round -- local Native American art and artifacts -- to which no one (as far as I know) has ever objected. They bear annotations, museum-style, which neutralizes any implication that SeaTac airport is affiliated with or endorses the culture they represent.

I am firmly of the "Knowledge Is Power" camp, so I think that ignorance (likewise denial) is the surest mechanism of oppression. What would we accomplish by stripping Christianity's visible signs from our public sphere? Would it be easier or harder then for our children to identify Christian culture and its influence in their world?

The most pernicious sin of Christendom is the belief that its language is as universal as its desires. Therefore, the most subversive answer to Christianity's historical hegemony is to put its language in quotes.

SeaTac without Christmas trees is still the gateway to a community that is, no matter how secular, in largest part culturally Christian. Removing the trees from public spaces won't make them any less visible in all of the private stores and living room windows around the city, nor will it teach our children anything about our history and circumstances. Adding a Menorah (a Chabad Menorah, no less) to a Christmas tree display would at least signal the inclusion of other cultures in the community, but it would also risk further confusing Chanukah with Christmas.

Now imagine SeaTac with Christmas trees in a conspicuously annotated display. People who like Christmas trees would still see their beloved seasonal decor. Others would see an objectified statement of fact: that Christianity is a significant influence within this community, not the One True Faith, but one group's expression of faith, with its debatable aesthetics and historical baggage just like any other's.

If we would invest our zealous iconoclasm in forcing Christian culture to contextualize itself, rather than trying in vain to shame it into silence, we could ultimately do much more to neutralize the means of dominance. Perhaps we could also avoid offering Judaism up as the pawn between secular and religious factions of Christendom.

l'Dor v'Dor

Joel Rothschild — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 16:33:00 +0000

(to Generation and Generation)

I spent last Shabbat in Olympia, in order to attend the downtown Saturday-afternoon tribute to an old teacher of mine who passed away. My hosts, Sherri and Neal, are actively involved with the traditional shul there, which emerged from the original Olympia synagogue as it became less of a big tent for the community and more an institutional party-line expression of Reconstructionist orthodoxy. Over lunch, Sherri and Neal described to me an all-too-familiar story: As the community grows, factions emerge to demand more denominationally narrow synagogue offerings. A traditional faction emerges and eventually splits off to form its own synagogue. Within this newly-liberated traditional faction there immediately appear two sub-factions -- one wanting to reach out to families, and one wanting to establish and protect a nostalgic setting. The synagogue as dynamic (and messy) playpen vs. the synagogue as lovely (and staid) museum piece. Now these factions are duking it out and meanwhile membership has plateaued.

I was visited by two insights from this tragedy. One is that synagogue life is dominated by generational politics. Every generation has certain distinguishing experiences, and consumer culture encourages us to seek, and demand, an environment that validates our own experiences. Consequently, the factions that fight over differing visions of what a synagogue should offer very often represent generational divides.

The second is that most of "Generation X" and nearly all of "Generation Y/Why" are absent from the clash. It is between the Boomers and those who came before them. I suspect that what has happened is that the pre-Boomer generations built an institutional infrastructure, within which the Boomers were raised as children later to reject it as young adults and build their own counter-culture. In the '80s and '90s, the demands of family life convinced the Boomers largely to return home, as it were. Then those old institutions, where the pre-Boomers had been entertaining themselves in relative peace and quiet, were flooded by waves of outsiders with a strong sense of birthright to be part of the inside, but also a couple decades' experience of doing things their own way. Voila! Generational struggle.

Meanwhile, Generation X, whose defining experience arguably is that the Boomers spoiled everything, has no desire to get involved in what looks like a fight between the Boomers and their parents. And Generation Y, having been raised by the Boomers amidst their ambivalence over returning to the old institutional life, doesn't feel half as entitled to -- nor half as interested in -- making that return. Which all begs the question: Where will Generations X and Y go to pursue an organized Jewish community life that suits them, while the synagogues scene is internally dominated by a power struggle between Boomers and pre-Boomers? The most obvious quick answer is, Israel and the Internet, but I think the question deserves deeper consideration.

The story of Sherri's and Neal's synagogue also reminded me of an old insight, from the last time I watched my own synagogue go through these travails. It is that matters of generational politics are actually much more resolvable than we are accustomed to presume. Creative multi-generational solutions are quite attainable. We tend not to attain them because we tend not to look for them in the first place. With the young-adult generations being relatively undetermined at present, with regard to organized Jewish community and what it's good for, yet eager to be challenged to leadership, I see a golden opportunity to propose the challenge of imagining functional multi-generational models.

For instance, if families with chidren would be involved in community functions, whether it be synagogue services or JCC classes or whatever, if only there were childcare or youth programming available at the same venue (this is a common issue of generational contention in synagogues, largely because the Boomers did not demand many accommodations when they first started their families, preferring to try to roll their own on the outside, so the synagogues grew accustomed to not having to deal with the problem so much), then why not challenge the younger Gen Xers and Gen Yers who don't have children yet to find creative and rewarding approaches to generating such accommodations, with the long-term payoff being that these will be in place for them when they do have children? Likewise, why not challenge the younger generations to build educational forums for us to learn from the elders in our communities while they're still with us?

Generational concerns provide potential content for the relatively blank slate of younger generations itching to take ownership of Jewish community. There are plenty of other, more selfish, possibilities; but it seems to me that the decision has not yet been made. There are options still potentially on the table that could spell great promise for our future.

Consumerism In Judaism Revisited

Joel Rothschild — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 01:42:00 +0000

Over at Moshav HaAm, I have begun revisiting the endlessly interesting (to me) subject of Consumerism in Judaism.

Paint Me Tears of Shofar

Joel Rothschild — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 17:22:00 +0000

In preparation for, G!d willing, many a Yom Kipur to come, I'm going to lay out a pallette of ideas here. Over time I'd like to use it for the synthesis of a comprehensive, integrated, and precise accounting of the Days of Awe ritual program. Please comment on where this collection of thoughts leads you, and gmar chatimah tovah!

Rosh HaShanah is known literally as either a day of "remembrance" (zikaron) or a day of "crying" (truah). What is to be remembered? How is it related to crying, and crying of what sort?

The Hebrew truah -- which describes the stoccato, sobbing shofar blowing pattern associated with the individual who is "torn" (Rosh Hashanah 16b) -- seems to derive from the fascinating shoresh (Hebrew root) reysh-ayin, which signifies both "evil" and "fellowship." (See also Leviticus 19:18: "love your fellow" / "love your evil...") This shoresh makes another significant appearance in the Machzor in the closing refrain of the Unetane Tokef: "Return, prayer, and righteous-giving will elide the evil (of the) decree." The "evil" is roa (reysh-ayin).

See also these threads re: truah and/or roa:
Danya Ruttenberg: The Unetane Tokef and Collective Responsibility
Linda Hirschhorn: The Shofar Calls

The Torah and Haftarah readings for Rosh HaShanah all involve crying of various sorts. (The differences between these various sorts and situations of crying are surely significant.) The apparent exception is the second-day R"H Torah reading of the Akeydah, where the crying is found in two midrashim: (1) Rashi on Genesis 27:1 ascribes Yitchak's blindness to tears of angels shed into his eyes upon the altar -- in other words, the Akeydah is significant precisely because Yitzchak doesn't cry; and (2) Leviticus Rabba on Genesis 23:1-2 describes Sarah's death at learning of the Akeydah by way of "six cries, corresponding to the six blasts of the shofar." (How do we get six shofar blasts here?)

(See also R' Gafni's Tears on the Holy Days and Tears, if you can bear teaching from this teacher.)

The Talmud associates Rosh HaShanah's shofar-blowing ritual specifically with the weeping of Sisera's mother. Sisera's mother, and our crying-ritual "remembrance" of her, is striking in a number of ways: She is anonymous, newly bereft of her identity's sole point of reference, Sisera. She is our (the Jews', the Universal Other's) perfect Other, the nameless mother of our harshest enemy. She is a tragic victim of war, of that enmity itself, and of our triumph -- staged conflict having submersed her individual human identity in that of a camp, and then our triumph having obliterated that camp in addition to taking her very own son. She is also, not incidentally, the progenitor of the "teachers of Jerusalem's youth" (Gittin 57b).

More on Sisera's mother and shofar:
R' Melanie Aron: Sounds of the Shofar
Ohr Somayach: Blast It!
R' Alex Israel: Shofar – Facing Uncertainty

I have long suspected that we tend not to comprehend adequately the basic tenent of Jewish faith that G!d rewards and punishes. It seems it is most often used as a foil for our human desire to reward and punish each other. Read not, "it is G!d who rewards and punishes," but rather, "G!d rewards and punishes, so I can too." Such facile theological thinking has produced innumerable callous declarations -- by Jews, Christians, and Muslims -- amounting to, "my homophobia justifies the destruction by Hurricane Katrina," and the like, which really is just me using G!d as a semantic proxy for the punishment of my supposed enemies. I find it more intellectually honest, and humble, to presume that one can't possibly imagine the justification for any suffering, violence, or death. Possibly even, as Marshall Rosenberg might argue, the very idea of reward and punishment, at least insofar as we can comprehend it, is simpleminded and morally corrosive. Better probably to say that, if I'm tempted to think of something as being or warranting a reward or punishment, then I'm referring to something in G!d's domain, which I don't fully understand, so it isn't really my business. I should instead content myself to know that, in this comprehensively holistic Creation, every action or expression has consequences both foreseeable and unforeseeable. Really, that ought to be enough.

What I'm arguing for is a cosmology of something like Karma, and I do so because I think it opens the possiblity for a deep reading of High Holy Days ritual in terms simultaneously of individual and of collective narrative. In particular, there is something we have to remember (we're supposed to spend Elul on this) about our threads of relationship into the world, and then there is a kind of spiritual release, drawn upon that remembrance, whose effectiveness somehow determines the fate of life in the year to come. Simplistically, this could mean that, if I remain enslaved to my grudges and my enmity, then there may be violent consequences in the world this year, that could alternately be transformed if I instead embrace the tears that unify the experiences of my mother Sarah, my enemy's mother Sisera, and me.

More on Tears and Rosh HaShanah:
Dr. Elie Wiesel: Let Us Collect the Tears
Shifra Hendrie: Rosh HaShanah: From Tears to Transformation

Conscious Community: The Goal of Our Association

Joel Rothschild — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 18:07:00 +0000

My chavruta Andrew and I are learning R’ Kalonymus Kalman Shapira (the Piaseczner Rebbe)’s sefer Conscious Community: A Guide to Inner Work b’iyun (the slow way), and the paradoxical title itself suggests a deep radical notion: that there is a kind of community that must be built upon the inner work of its constituents—and/or, there is a way of being in community that derives from grounded individual consciousness. This idea bears directly upon much that I have to say about the implosion of R’ Mordechai Gafni, and the consequent shockwaves in various communities. But I will write about all of that B”H some other time. First, some notes from Andrew’s and my first look at the first section . . .

The Goal of Our Association

Our goal is exactly the same as the hope and aspiration of every single Jew: we wish to serve our G!d, the G!d of Abraham, the G!d of Isaac, and the G!d of Jacob. Our goal is to be thoroughly devoted to G!d with our entire being, so that every capacity of our bodies and every spark of our souls is connected with the holiness of G!d, which permeates us and surrounds us.

Our Merciful Father has already stirred our hearts and implanted within us a desire to serve Him. We sense that we cannot be completely dominated by the mundane forces of creation. These dynamics are also G!d’s power, but when we are subject to them, we are distant from Him. We do not perceive the divine intent nor sense the illuminating beauty of His presence.

Our goal is exactly the same as the hope and aspiration of every single Jew. Is R’ Shapira about to define the essential Jewish experience?

We wish to serve our G!d, the G!d of Abraham, the G!d of Isaac, and the G!d of Jacob. This language recalls the first blessing of the Amidah prayer. It also emphasizes the (cross-cultural) multiplicity of aspects/forms of G!d that can be served, and the necessity of recognizing them all collectively as the One object of our worship.

Our goal is to be thoroughly devoted to G!d with our entire being, so that every capacity of our bodies and every spark of our souls is connected with the holiness of G!d, which permeates us and surrounds us. R’ Shapira does not describe un-thorough devotion, though perhaps hints at its existence. It is obvious that there are multiple capacities of the body, but there are likewise multiple sparks of the neshamah, the soul. “Soul sparks” are a technical convention of Lurianic cosmology that seem to operate in radiating layers: that is, there are sparks within sparks. The “spark” of the human soul wraps around a “spark” of Divinity, and is in turn wrapped within the individual body, whose capacities (somewhat less obviously) may be implied by R’ Shapira’s symmetrical language also to nest, or radiate, like Russian dolls. What would a map of nested/radiating capacities of the body look like?

Permeates us and surrounds us. The same holiness is always readily available within (the epiphany of a hermit) and without (the epiphany of a visitor to Niagara Falls). However, neither immanence nor immersion necessarily implies connection.

Our goal is to be thoroughly devoted, which is defined as a state of connectedness between Holiness and the various valences of soul-spark and body-capacity. This connectedness is clearly not a function of proximity—being permeated and surrounded, we are always proximate to holiness—therefore we understand that, in keeping with the sefer’s title, connectedness is a function of consciousness.

Our Merciful Father. Giving the individual an inherent yearning for Divine connection is identified as rachmanut, an expression of G!d’s Mercy. How is this principally merciful, per se?

Has already stirred our hearts and implanted within us a desire to serve Him. Our hearts are stirred: We are driven to do, make, experience. We have a desire to serve Him: Moreover, we want our doing, making, and experiencing to effect greater value beyond the individual moment, enterprise, or ego.

We sense that we cannot be completely dominated by the mundane forces of creation. What makes certain forces of creation “mundane?” Hammering nails is mundane. Building a home for a family is holy. The two may be the identical action; the difference is intention. Cynicism—to intend my effort or expression as being no more than what it plainly is to me in my immediate self-interest, or, in other words, to ignore or deny the possibility of participating in this moment in the cause of a greater good—can be called the yetzer hara, evil inclination, or, better here, the mundane inclination. Cynicism does and will have its way with us, maybe even quite frequently, yet we sense that we cannot be completely dominated. We sense that to fully avoid serving a greater good is either impossible (when the cynic sees that his selfish action had an unintended positive consequence for others) or untenable (when the cynic feels angst at his unthinkable loneliness in the world).

Andrew had a powerful insight: The pain of angst at one’s cynicism can drive one reactively into more and more cynical behavior; but with greater emptiness (mundaneness) in one’s life will come a more acute yearning for the experience of something greater, meaningful. Unmediated, this is a vicious circle. I was immediately reminded that this past winter R’ Mordechai wrote and distributed an impassioned treatise on yearning, his thesis being that no matter what worldly object one sees to one’s yearning, it is all deep down a universal yearning for connection to the Holy One. When he wrote and sent this, it seemed to me to come out of the blue, but now I know in retrospect that he wrote it at the time when his daily life had reached an unimaginably extreme clamor of cynical sexual behavior.

These dynamics are also G!d’s power. Refer again to the cynic whose selfish deed has unintended positive consequences. This raises the question of free will vs. determinism. R’ Shapira suggests that, even in the grip of the evil (mundane) inclination, we remain instruments—if involuntarily and unwittingly—of G!d’s Will. How then are we in partnership with G!d, having personal responsibility for our actions? How are we more than dumb cogs in the machine, who can be conscious or unconscious, happy or sad, but with no significant consequence one way or the other? I posited one solution: G!d’s Will is ultimately immutable, but we can make it easier or harder to get there. I may do something destructive that has constructive side-effects, but now the destruction I caused must be redressed. Perhaps I could have effected the same construction without the destruction. In other words, G!d’s Will ultimately is for there to be harmony. We can seek dissonance and end up being pushed from/by dissonance into harmony. Or we can just seek harmony. In the former case, we may get to harmony on an individual basis, but the dissonance will reverberate around. Therefore, a collective—a spiritual ecosystem, so to speak—can only get in synch with G!d’s Will together as a whole body, if the individual constituents intend this purpose. (Hence “Conscious Community.”)

But when we are subject to them, we are distanced from Him. We do not perceive the divine intent nor sense the illuminating beauty of His presence. We are not distanced of actual proximity, but of the realization, the consciousness, of connection. R’ Shapira is describing the psychology of alienation from, or insensitivity to, holiness. In relief he is describing how one can feel the holy embrace-and-infusion, by realizing the fact of one’s participation in a greater value. R’ Shapira then defines the basis of aesthetics as the sensation of perceiving G!d’s presence in the world around us.

So far the text only distinguishes value on the basis of individual perception. This reminded me of a song lyric by Jill Sobule:

I have a friend who swears she saw Jesus
Hovering above her lonely bed
She said it changed her life forever
“Whatever works,” I said
I sit a home, changing channels
It’s so hard to concentrate
I laugh at her, but I’m pretty sure
She’s having a better day

(from “Somewhere In New Mexico”)

My question is: If the way to know synchronicity with G!d’s Will is to feel it, then what happens if you feel connected while what you’re doing is totally wrong? Is that even possible? (It certainly would seem that people do it all the time.) Perhaps the answer lies in R’ Shapira’s earlier emphasis that we must pursue connection on all levels, suggesting that there are simplistic vs. holistic states of holy consciousness, the latter being defined as the more “thorough devotion” that is our goal. We look forward to the text breaking down and analyzing the phenomenology of different soul-spark and body-capacity valences, that we may learn a discipline of distinguishing not just cynicism from connection, but also true connection from false connection, or holistic connection from narrow connection.

Notes continue with subsequent post...

Conscious Community: The Goal of Our Association, II

Joel Rothschild — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 00:21:00 +0000

Continuation of Andrew's a my Conscious Community chavruta notes:

... We do not perceive the divine intent nor sense the illuminating beauty of His presence. Our minds become closed and our hearts blocked. We seek instead to be on the level described in Torah: "You are chidren of G!d" (Deuteronomy 14:1). Whenever we do G!d's work, whether we study, pray, or perform any of the mitzvot, we wish to feel that we are always growing closer to Him.

When a child cannot see his father, he misses him terribly, and he is overjoyed to see him again. When we serve G!d, we want to feel just like that: our soul yearns for G!d day and night, and now she rushes out and up to dissolve in His holy embrace.

Our minds become closed and our hearts blocked. This sentence seems to parallel the previous: our minds being closed is associated with lack of perception of the divine intent, and our hearts being blocked is associated with not sensing the beauty of His presence. The mind-function is perceptive and understanding, and the heart-function is feeling and aesthetic.

"You are children of G!d" ... we wish to feel that we are always growing closer to Him. At first this seems like an odd choice of metaphor, because the experience of the child is one of ever-increasing differentiation from his parents. The neshamah's Divine core (see discussion of "sparks" in our notes from last time) could be seen as a kind of hereditary link to the "Father," but that doesn't explain the feeling of always growing closer. The way I understand this metaphor is in the adult experience of coming to appreciate the struggles and striving of one's parents in a mature personal way as one, according to the common (half-)joke, "turns into his/her father/mother." After all, as Andrew pointed out, R' Shapira specifies the time when we feel this "close"ness to G!d as when we are doing His work. There is a particular closeness I feel with my biological parents when I realize that I am doing work that is inherited from their character and narrative. R' Kalman describes an analogous closeness we should aspire to feel with G!d, by way of realizing that we are doing work inherited from the singular character and narrative of the Divine "parent."

When a child cannot see his father, he misses him terribly, and he is overjoyed to see him again. Here is where we may be helped by thinking of the neshamah's inherent Divine core as an inheritence from its cosmological source. The soul, just like the child, yearns to be reunited with its source.

She rushes out and up to dissolve. The dissolving can be understood in terms of the trappings of the soul giving way or becoming transparent such that the G!d-spark of the soul is not distinguished from its Divine source. But what do we make of "out and up" exactly? "Out" of (the illusion of) separation? "Up" to (the realization of) Holy One-ness?

The Difference Between Diaspora and Exile

Joel Rothschild — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 00:15:00 +0000

I hear through the grapevine snatches of a question about the goal of Mishkaneering -- in particular, whether it be an anti-Zionist agenda. This question hits me with perfect timing, thank G!d, because it brings forth a deeper Torah that we could use in a few conversations taking place currently. It also sent me back to my definition of "Mishkaneering" from last week in which, I just realized, I made a critical mistake. I had written of "Mishkan" that the Hebrew literally means "in(to) dwelling." That was incorrect: "Mishkan" literally means "from dwelling."

Does this matter? Well, when has a single letter of Torah ever not meant the whole world? With the "from"-ness of Hebrew mem, "Mishkan" suggests that there is a meeting between Yisraeyl and Shekhinah that arises from the Jews' dwelling together in the wilderness. The process of dwelling is the source of Divine connection, not its product.

This necessarily impacts how we understand the constitution of Temple consciousness itself, because the Temple is built partly out of the Mishkan, and when one is lost the other is lost with it. Torah provides no design for Temple without Mishkan, and no vision of Temple left standing after Mishkan's destruction. Therefore, if the ultimate aspiration of Zionism is the Temple reconstituted, then Zionism is integrally dependent upon the dwelling of Jews in the wilderness.

Also impacted is our understanding of the "wilderness." The Hebrew word "HaMidbar" -- meaning "from the word/thing" or, more to the essence, "from duality" -- signifies both the desert-like isolation and the jungle-like complexity that arises from living in a world of boundaries, distinctions, insides versus outsides, language. "Mishkan" defines the way from that confounded aloneness to realization of Holy One-ness as a way of dwelling in the challenges of duality.

The other Hebrew word, "galut," is conventionally translated as "exile" and carries significant negative connotation. In common usage, galut is the perjorative term for Diaspora Jewry's unfortunate situation outside of the Biblical Holy Land. Its Hebrew root, signifying "exposure," is the same used for Sefer Vayikra (Leviticus)'s prohibited "uncoverings" of family relations, where also it has carried a negative connotation. As that passage in Parshat Acharey (home to the contentious "if a man should lie with a man..." pasuk) becomes ripe for deeper reading, we are approaching the possibility of a more constructive understanding of the spiritual function of nakedness in general.

Without a long tangent into comparitive mysticism, suffice it to say that there is a model for the progressive development of enlightened consciousness whose translation in Lurianic Hebrew is: 1, "haknaah" (submission) to 2, "havdalah" (differentiation) to 3, "hamtakah" (sweetening) -- each valence of consciousness being predicated upon the previous. I am going to guess right now that the spiritual psychology of Diaspora includes the same constituent valences: 1, "Galut" (exposure) to 2, "Midbar" (duality) to 3, "Mishkan" (dwelling). Torah also provides a corresponding geopolitical mapping of the three valences -- 1, Diaspora (guest culture) into 2, Zion (host culture) into 3, Temple ("Nation of Priests"). Because each level is the foundation of the next, this schematic liberates "galut" from necessarily bearing negative connotation.

Now this is all a bit academic. The progression becomes tangible only through direct experience. Until recently, this experience was the exclusive possession of mystics who could taste it through focused consciousness-raising discipline. That all changed in 1948. Today Jewish culture broadly possesses direct experience of the possibility of consciousness progression, because we are, with the State of Israel, now functioning as a host culture and not merely a guest culture. Consequently, Diaspora consciousness is itself transformed, because it is now manifestly the foundation of something, i.e. Zion. We are thereby motivated to aspire from Diaspora to Zion, for sure, but also within Diaspora (within our landed dispersion, which is all "Diaspora" really means) we are motivated to aspire from exposure as everybody's Other to a rich and self-secure dwelling in radical chosenness by way of embracing the messy duality of Jewish identity.

We are, therefore, transitioning from the Exilic Diaspora to the Post-Exilic Diaspora (which would be more accurately termed the Super-Exilic Diaspora), and this fact is manifest in the evolution of Jewish institutional life in North America since two generations ago, such that we can identify Exilic Diaspora institutional structures -- synagogues -- as distinct from Post- or Super-Exilic Diaspora institutional models like the chavurah, Hillel, and Federation.

To Be Continued. But please do comment on this work in progress.

Mishkaneering Defined

Joel Rothschild — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 22:36:00 +0000

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

Joel Rothschild — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 16:38:00 +0000

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"

Joel Rothschild — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 16:38:00 +0000

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.

Kabbalat Shabbat Minyan in Gasworks Park

Joel Rothschild — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:41:00 +0000

Yoel Natan to lead musical Kabbalat Shabbat/NewSach minyan this Friday! If you're in Seattle, please join us!

Tisha b'Av and Shadow

Joel Rothschild — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 18:51:00 +0000

I know bupkes about astrology, or about the anagramatic permutations of Hebrew G!dnames developed by early-Modern mystics (and popularly known via Myla Goldberg's Bee Season). But I have friends who know about these things, and who assert that this time we call the Three Weeks is a period when our (the Jews'? everyone's?) vantage in the cosmos runs sort of energetically backwards. It certainly is a challenging time: last year the Gaza disengagement, this year Lebanon and the Federation shooting.

Having our outlook crossed up or flipped around, or otherwise upset, is a hardship; but it is also an opportunity, to be shocked out of stale patterns of thinking into B"H a more complete, truer sense of vision. On Tisha b'Av we ritualize this by laying tefillin, the Jewgear for consciousness-raising, not in the morning but in the afternoon when the sun is on the opposite horizon. For those of us west of Jerusalem, this puts the sun at our backs for the Tefillin-enhanced Amidah of Tisha b'Av.

My first reading of that ritual is: Tisha b'Av is for seeing the shadow, with all of the psychospiritual implications you care to draw from that. I think that's a pretty good encapsulation of the spirit of Tisha b'Av as I know it. But it really only works that way for the Western Diaspora.

Here are my questions, then: Is Tisha b'Av afternoon tefillin a Western Diaspora practice, or does it originate in the Babylonian Exile? If the latter, then who can help me make sense of the practice from an east-of-Jerusalem perspective?

Our fasting should be for heightened vision and the opening of Redemption!

Moshav haAm Online!

Joel Rothschild — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 00:35:00 +0000

Growing the next generation of Jewish community leadership from the grassroots!

http://www.moshavhaam.org/

Jewish leadership | maggidut | intentional community

Tisha b'Av Coda

Joel Rothschild — Mon, 15 Aug 2005 01:20:00 +0000

B"H

As my fast winds into its final hours, a really important thought comes to mind, in addendum to my latest (coherent?) piece on Tisha b'Av: more than any other time in our year, the afternoon of Tisha b'Av is a time dedicated to heightened vision. This is why I have fasted for nearly a day and now put on t'fillin before a setting sun. As the Dalai Lama has said, love is ultimately not a way of feeling but a way of seeing. The same can be said of hate. As we strive now toward the acquisition of pure, hateless vision, with which vision we may then, b'ezrat haShem, break fast and fuel our engines for the building of a better, less Homeless world, it is worth remembering that staggering numbers of people literally can't do this -- can't take on a fast to elevate their vision, and, more to the point, couldn't break a fast to fuel their engines. If you happen to read this in time, try not to break your fast until you have done something toward alleviating needless hunger in our world.

I have more to say about food and tzedakah, but I'll swallow it (which, you see, I find funny at this hour) for now.

Midrashic Community

Joel Rothschild — Fri, 31 Dec 2004 06:36:00 +0000

[formerly titled "Maggidic Community"]

Our learning with R' Mordechai last week ostensibly focused on the mechanics of midrash. R' Marc Gellman's classic Does G!d Have a Big Toe? defines midrash as "stories about stories in the Bible." I always thought this a very elegant way to introduce the concept of Scriptural commentary to children, because most children who have begun to develop narrative writing skills can imagine telling a story about a story (at least so long as their creative tendencies have been encouraged). The move from first perspective to meta-position is suggested in a gentle way. It is intriguing, but accessibly concrete.

It seems that there is a movement building to use the Gellman definition of midrash in a sort of kiruv (religious outreach) for adults: with talented modern writers like Anita Diamant and Aviva Zornberg maintaining an inspirational model, there is now an open invitation for Jews outside the old beyt midrash -- especially well-educated, literate women -- to join in the unfolding of Torah narrative by way of creative engagement. Find the traditional midrashim too arcane, too medieval, too patriarchal? Write your own! This is empowering stuff. It provides a new key to the vaults of Hebrew wisdom, opening the holy discourse to those who don't speak yeshivish. It is a tikkun for our people.

It is also, strictly speaking, not midrash. Gellman's "stories about stories" suggests the midrashic but doesn't adequately define it. A definition requires this rule: True midrash is inherent in the base text. In other words, midrash must be exegetical -- in Jewish terms, maggidic. This distinction, between simple meta-position ("based on a true story") and exegesis ("unwrapped from a true story") is, in my experience, the real crux of the heart-quest we call Art. If I make the basic theological assumption that I am provided access to exactly what Revelation G!d needs in/from/for me, then my creative output can go either one of two ways: it can be a realization of Divinity (realization = Shekhinah?), in which case I further my junior partnership in Creation, or not, in which case I don't.

In my own efforts at creative composition, I can usually intuit which kind of writing I'm pulling off -- whether I am teasing Revelation out by the hairs, or just filling in structural blanks with whatever is on hand (usually ego, or some stylistic fixation of mine or a past teacher's). One process feels different from the other. And the products have distinct flavor, so one can generally tell whether another artist's work "rings true" or not as well.

I don't mean to suggest that there is any clean line between bringing down prophecy and just making stuff up. Art is a famously messy business (it is practically cliche to say so), because it is gritty, deep, and, at its best, truthful. As it happens, the most electric inspiration often takes the artist down a maddeningly crooked path to substance -- and, just as often, G!d sows great truth in ostensibly superficial, even self-absorbed, exercises of "making stuff up." There is an echo of the chesed of Bavel here, which all serious artists must know well: keep regrouping, keep trying, in good faith, eventually something will click.

Whereas R' Mordechai speaks of the inspiration to build a "school for training prophets," I think my inspiration is to build a society for bringing midrash. Ultimately, the canon of midrash does not simply spill from great individual exegetes (Maggidim) -- the Rashis and Rambans, the R' Mordechais -- but from a much broader socio-historical life, consisting of artistic and scholarly engagement, inspiration, experimentation, development, peer review, and the "test of time," largely analogous to what we call the Scientific Community. What would it take to realize a real live Midrashic Community, such as could produce a Rashi or Ramban for our age? And could this be achieved at Point Roberts?

To begin with, we need a religious community in which textual engagement and artistic engagement are equally normative and serious. What sorts of community forums, spaces, habits would promote such engagement (and balance/symbiosis)?

It would also be enormously helpful, maybe even necessary, to have re-established the study of our rich midrashic heritage actually as midrash. As it is, classical midrash study is generally approached as either an exercise in tribal hero-worship or, most commonly, the referencing of a quick answer sheet in the back of the Chumash to the problems contained at the front. What would it be like to regularly spend the time with Rashi on a single posuk, to actually retrace his steps through its language and try to figure out exactly how he made his deduction? Wouldn't this practice inevitably have the effect of training the mind -- the individual's mind and the community's mind -- for exegetical sensitivity?

In an active society of habitual midrashing, the habits and rigors of effective exegesis (maggidut) would have to end up bearing upon Torah in all of its channels, not just the Chumash. Now, this is hardly a novel vision; rabbis have idealized such a consummate Midrashic Community in one form or another in many generations. But it does not seem to be the rabbinate's priority in this generation. Consequently, I see midrashic sensibilities generally better-developed among artists than in the batey midrash of our time.

It is my firm belief that the mutual estrangement of creative society from religious society represents a fatal limitation on both. The most obvious response, in my mind, is to establish the patterns, participants, and place(s) for society that is at once, symbiotically creative and religious. Both R' Mordechai and R' Shagar seem to grasp this basic necessity, though it is unclear to me the extent to which their respective institutions represent full steps or mere inching toward the "real live Midrashic Community" vision, which is after all radically distinct from religious Jewish culture as we know it today. In any case, the express purpose of the Point Roberts religious Jewish artists colony is to realize this vision in one instance, b'ezrat haShem.

Stay tuned.