Ben Avuyah

Wow

2010-07-12T14:27:00.000-07:00

I have not used this blog in so long I had forgotten my password.... I can't believe it still works, testing.... testing... 1,2,3

Chametz Umatzah

2009-04-13T19:26:00.000-07:00

“SHMULEY……Do you have any idea”, said my mother in a voice at the edge of tears, “how embarrassing it will be for me to sit next to Rebetzin Freundlich in Shul….”

“Mom…”, I tried to interrupt, but who can interrupt a force of nature?

“…What? Having just been called in to meet with her husband, the mashgiach, about MY son the troublemaker” ?

Shame bloomed in deep red blotches I could feel warming into rosy petals on my cheeks.

I involuntarily lowered my head as if lead weights were attached to my chin, and stared at the perfection of the lavishly set table where I sat. Glancing at the floor I traced the toe of my black penny loafer on the crisp cornrow lines the carpet cleaner had left as a sign of his fine work.

“It will be the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room, if we don’t talk about MY son…and of course all of our relatives will be sitting right next to us, so now the whole family has to know…”

“It wasn’t even my fault….”, I struggled to mount some type of a defense for myself.

“‘Not his fault’ he says”, quipped my mother in immediate parody, speaking more to the foodstuffs that crowded the kitchen counter between us, than to me.

“Should we think”, she asked the lettuce, “that its some how…uh…”, she waved her hand with the butchers knife about, as if somehow exploring the realm of possibility with it’s sharp edge, “out of your control to show up on time for minyan…or to make some kind of a effort in your chavrusahs…hmmm?…is that it?”

Thwack !

The blade fell cutting deeply into the Yom Tov brisket that seemed to be paying a heavy price for my sins.

My Sins….

I was not a great fit for the yeshiva mold. Where the hanhalla saw nareshkiet, I saw fun. When the menahal looked for serious effort, too many times I was found to be still sleeping in bed. When hasmadah was valued, my particular brand of zitsfliesch usually involved a fiction novel.

My poor mother shook her head back in forth and spoke quietly to her self for a moment, her head bizarrely mimicking the lids on the simmering pots that surrounded her; each kettle top lilting to and fro, letting out an angry hiss of steam when they just couldn’t take it any more.

What a strange mix of emotions I felt.

The smells of Yom Tov brought with them such a sense of celebration. The fresh earthy aroma of charoset, as if each ingredient had just been pulled from the ground. The deep hughes of the meats, the thin, oily, hint of their flavor on the air enough to make my mouth water. The astrigent tickle of the marror on my nose, daring me to try even a nibble at my own expense. It was a combination that linked every Pesach in my life together in one happy melded ideal of joyous family festivities….and now to have ruined it. To have transformed this moment into something which would always carry the stain I had spilled upon it.

“I’m sorry”, I said, “I’ll try harder….I’ll do better.”

My mother paused from her preperations to look at me and her eyes softened. I could read my mother pretty well, and if there was a dial that could measure her mood it just dropped a notch or two from danger levels.

“Not to lessen the blame on you”, she clarified, the direction of the blade in her hand confirming my guilt, “but lets face it…your father is not exactly what we would call a good example in this area…”

“Oy…”, she turned her head so as to speak in strict confidence to the potted plant in our living room, “but that’s another story.”

As my mother stewed in harmony with her pots, my Zaidy made his way through the doorway to the dinning room, listing as always, like a building with poor foundation. His sense of balance leading him to lean this way or that on a constant basis, as if gravity just felt like pulling him in another direction than everyone else, leaving him to appear as if he were always stumbling sideways up a hill.

“Gut Morgin”, said my Zaidy, and in his traditional routine, “Epis… a bissel coffee….mit creme”

He shuffled into the dinning room and it must of taken a moment or two before my shape registered as being distinct from the chair I sat in, through the coke bottle glasses that were eternally glued to the end of his nose.

He turned to my mother holding up a finger of discovery, “Shmulik g’kimen tzrik, frum da Yeshiver.”

“Yes Papa”, said my mother wiping tears from her face.

Marror or misbehavior?

“Hi Zaidy”, I said, embarrassed to be caught in the act of making my mother cry. He waved a hello by holding an open palm in the air. He held up a finger of caution to my mother, “coffee…”

“It will have to wait, Papa”, said my mother loudly as she returned to the cutting board, “it’s erev pesach and we all have work…”

“Voooos”, said Zaidy louder than a passing tractor trailor.

“It’s almost Pesach”, my mother screamed like she needed to be heard from behind the engine of a 747 during take off; seeing this my Zaidy adjusted his hearing aid, the screatch of which made my mother and I wince, covering our ears in momentary pain.

“Your coffee will have to wait, Papa.”, screamed my mother close to the natural limitation of her lungs and voicebox.

Zaidy nodded, happy to have gotten his point across, “Yuh”, he confirmed “mit creme.”

My mother’s lower lip shook momentarily with a twitch of futility. How could the world have conspired against her in this way ?

I watched my mother pause from her work as my Zaidy shoveled over the impecably arranged silverwear in front of him to make room to read his sefer at the table. She had a look of impossible contradiction on her face, as the unstoppable preparations for Pesach ran headlong into the imovable habits of my grandfather.

Then the cleaver rose and fell, frustrations succesfuly transfered to a pickle that knew not how to beg for mercy.

The front door swung hard on it’s hinges; thrown open with a reckless disregard that could only mark the entrance of my Father. He burst through it so engulfed by the number of boxes he held, that it seemed the entire cluster of white cardboard containers was being magically moved by a black hat and a pair of shoes.

“I got the shemurah matzois”, he exclaimed, attempting to carefully place thirty boxes on the floor simultaneously.
“No…no…I got it”, he said,waving off help and trying to talk louder than the sound of cracking matzo, “I got it.”

“At the last minute before Pesach of course…”, said my Mother full of scorn.

“Wha…What last minute”, said my father fumbling to find his watch as more matzo boxes landed a little too hard on the floor.
Thankfully for their marriage, my father had innate immunity to my mothers criticism.
Tatee looked genuinely confused at my mother’s concern when he found his watch; “plenty of time”, he said correcting her mistake and breaking into his carefree smile, “we’ve got plenty of time”.

My mother was shaking her head, abandoned as she was, all alone in a world of responsibilities and deadlines.

He saw me.

“Hey Shmuley’s home”, he exclaimed, “Ehhh !!! Back for Bein Hazmanim, of course, come here.”
I always got a big bone crushing hug from my father, it was as much a custom as gefilte fish.

“Oh. That’s the welcome he gets after the meeting we had to have with the mashgiach last night”, said my mother, “he’s hanging on by the skin of his teeth over there.”

“What… don’t worry about that…”, said my father.

“What do you mean, ‘don’t worry’”, said my mother with some pretty impressive tone.

Red.

I wanted to warm my father, whose imagination fell short of conjuring mom-o-meter levels.
We are in the Red.

“Ehhh ?”, said my father with a big grin, a gapping smile that let us know how far ahead of the curve he was, “take a look at this”, he said pointing to the boxes.

There was the look of incredulity on my mothers face, and the early suspicion, that in addition to a renegade son, her collapsing life would be complicated by a mentally decompensating husband.

“Our son is about to be thrown out of Yeshiva….and you want me to look…at a bunch of broken matzo ?”

Redline.

I wanted to tell to my clueless father.

Redline.

She’s gonna blow.

“Wha… ?”, said my Tatee, “there’s no broken….no broken…No…in the other box! The other box!”

He found his way to the middle of the boxes and pulled one from the pile.

It must of been good, cause my Tatee held that box high, like inside was the cure for cancer, solution to world poverty, and the recipe for a better potato kugel all wraped in one.

My mother placed her hands on her hips letting him know that it better be.

For my part I was divided, half curiosity half dread. My “problem” was going to be solved by something inside a white cardboard box?

I didn’t have to wait long as we all gathered round to peer into the innards of the white container of mysteries untold. Even Zaidy managed to ascertain that something was happening, and listing at a forty five degree angle and trudging as if close to the summit of Everest, he came to join us as we gathered around it.

My Father pulled off the cover, and yanked it out of the box oblivious of the directions and styraphoam packing peanuts that fell all over the floor.

“My carpet”, wheezed my mother, as if the pain was too great to allow her to do anything other than gasp her last words, “…my carpet.”

“Relax”, said my Father, “well get to that in a minute… Here… Take a look at this.”

Perched in his hands was a silver cylinder roughly resembling the size and shape of a hot water urn, with a few buttons and switches protruding from the side.

“What is it”, asked my Mother skeptically, refusing to part in any way from her specific knowledge that my father had never solved a problem until now.

But I already knew.

I felt sick.

I wanted to run away. To bolt for it before it was too late, but there was no where to go. Even had I had safe haven to which to flee, my legs were numbly stuck to the floor, and I began to gawk at my own upcoming traffic wreck in much the same way I did a five car freeway pile up.

“Just watch”, said my father, flicking the main switch. The whole thing hummed for a moment in my Fathers big hands, and then like magic before our eyes floated gently from my father’s palms, like a bouy bouncing happily on tranquil seas.
“Ahh”, said my father as the shiny new acquisition left his grasp.

“But… it… can’t be”, said my mother.

“Never say never”, said my father sauvely, with a wink; momentarily mistaking himself for someone who said things like that.
“But we can’t afford this”, said my mother, postponing the longing she felt to own the shiny object that bobed playfully in front of our eyes as if suspended by invisible strings.

“It’s returned once, but good as new, Shlomo at the office knows somebody who knows somebody…so…here it is.”
For the first time, a ray of hope appeared over my mothers face. I watched her features thaw as heartfelt warmth loosened and relaxed every line on her brow and cheeks that had been frozen so tensley in place, as if she had been in a dark cave for years, and now, here, she had finally caught a glimpse of blue sky and sun.

“Tatee”, I said to my father, eager to rescue myself before things got out of hand, “get rid of this thing. I know two kids in yeshiva who have it, they don’t even want to go home anymore.”

My father was gripping my shoulder.

“It’s not just for you…its for all of us. I think your mother could tell you.”

He paused to look at her around the floating cylinder, where she smiled back at him, “we could all use a little kick in tuchus around here, myself included…now I think this will be good for us.”

And so there we stood… assembled around the hovering new addition to our house, it’s polished surface returned the mirror images of our faces, distorted into fun house charicatures with oversized forheads and tiny chins.

“Calibrating”, said the floating metal cylinder, so suddenly it shocked us.

“It’s calibrating”, my mother informed us in case we had not heard.

“Calibrating”, it repeated in it’s hollow metalic tone.

“Boruch Hashem”, said my mother, unable to find words of her own, distracted by the unusual feeling of…joy.

“Boreech Hashem”, said my Zaidy, almost as happy as mother as he reached out to the floating cylinder with his shaking, aged, hand; holding a ceramic mug that clattered against the bottom of the new gadget, “vere da coffee come out from ?”, he asked expectantly as he twisted a dial.

“No Papa.”, said my Father, moving him aside, “there’s no coffee from this.”

“No” ? , said Zaidy, with a deep look of suspicion and mistrust on his face.

“Sit at the table Pop, sit down with your sefer…”

“What did he touch”, asked my mother, who was overly cautious around anything with more than an on/off switch.

“Nothing, I.. I think it’s the frumkeit meter…sheesh he twisted it all the way up to “lakewood”, hold on a second”, my father said twiddling with the dials, “It’s no big deal…. I’ve got it…..I’ve got it right here…”, he trailed off in frustration as the knob came free in his hand. He twiddled it in his thick fingers for a moment.

“Is it broken?”, asked my mother, panic striken.

My father shrugged his shoulders, “No, actually it’s better than ever”, he sommoned a reassuring smile, “ lakewood eh? Just what the doctor ordered.”

“Calibration complete…” said a hollow tone from the gaget’s middle, “and Mazel Tov on your acquisition of The Automated Mechanical Mashgichus Co-ordinator… from Smartscroll. Please visit your local store to find out more about our other Smartscroll products.”

“I can’t believe it”, said my mother in near tears, her hands on the sides of her face, “our very own Mechano-Mosh.”

“And they are 20% faster than the Religi-Bot series from last year”, beamed my father statistacally, basking in the unusual situation of recieving compliments from my mother.

I think we all jumped back a step as the front panel slid open on the cylinder, disappearing into the dark interior of the canister.

“What was that”, asked my mother holding one arm stifly by her side and massaging it as if it were a sickly child with her other hand, “What’s it doing….. Herschel, I think it’s empty inside.”

“Empty”, said my Father incredulously, peering ever closer to the opening of the device, “Oh, believe me, I’ll take it back to the store faster than you can say melavah malkah…”

“Ahh!!!”, said my father jumping back as static and frizz erupted inside the metal cylinders hollow interior.

“I knew it wouldn’t work”, said my mother returning to her more natural pose of assured despair, “I…I just knew.”

“Thank goodness”, I said from the heart, feeling my tense innards loosen and my shoulders relax, the bullet succesfully dodged. I turned to my parents, “we don’t need it, I’m telling you we don’t.”

As a dreaded last resort my father was going through the styraphoam peanuts looking for the directions, “wait a second”, he said, his voice strained as he stooped over, his fingers combing through the squeaking ‘s’ shapes, “wait just a second.”

“Herschel”, said my mother, a little bit of fear and excitement creeping back in her voice, “Herschel, I think it’s doing some…..I see something….It’s a face, oy I can’t believe, it’s mamesh a face”!

I knew my mother was just imagining it, but the more I looked the more I did see something that looked like a shape in the hollow interior of the contraption. I blinked my eyes and pushed my glasses back up to be sure. Yes. It was a face, growing distinct from the static. I could make it out now, the ghoulish feeling of a new presence rising with my certainty.

Where before there was just the background noise of black and white dots, now came the crease of an eyelid running into a thick fleshy nose, pinched only where thick glasses squated territorilly mid-proboscis. The skin, a pale shade of white, never having seen the sun. The whole of him, eerily familiar yet unrecognizable, his head tilted with eyes closed as if in an unplanned midday nap.

“It’s creeping me out, turn it off”, I said, with a little involuntary shake.

“Is it sleeping”, asked my mother cautiously, “does it…he… sleep” ?

My Father slowly arose from his rumageing crouch to stand face to face with our visitor and wrinkled his brow in concentration, “I don’t know…”

“Ahhhhhhhhh!!!!!”

We all jumped back in fear as the eyes snapped open and blinked to attention.

I was the first to recognize our guest and blurted out my terror reflexively, “It’s Reb Lieb…It’s his head….It’s Reb Lieb, it’s…it’s my mashgiach’s head…”

“Gut in himmel”, said my father in shock, “Shmulik’s right….it’s Lieb Fruendlich’s head.”

My mothers two hands flited about like birds, trying to do more jobs than she had fingers for, “Reb Lieb”, she said adjusting her shietel, buttoning her collar, and tugging her apron into place simultaneously, “in our house…it’s so unexpected…”

“Ta”, I said staring at Reb Lieb’s unblinking eyes and expressionless face. How could I make my father understand that I couldn’t have the floating presence of my mashgiach watching over me in my house. How could I convey the dizzying, tightening, bewildering turmoil in my soul as the comfort of home rolled too easily into the tension of a principals office.
“Ta”, I said, “I don’t want that thing staring at me all over Pesach.”

“Staring? That’s all he’s doing is staring”, said my Father as surprise gave way to early frustration. He tapped on top of the Mechano-mosh cylinder, making it bob up and down, and waved his hand in front of Reb Lieb’s unblinking eyes, “Hello…any one home in there.”

“Where did I put the directions”, said my father turning to me, “maybe there is some kind of activation key, like, ‘gut morgin’ or, ‘gut yom toff’…”

As my Tatee pratled on I watched the soft doughy skin on Reb Lieb’s face. So life like, so impeccably real. The hologram captured every last detail, the unruly tufts of beard hair, fresh from habitual chewing, the hat pulled low, just shaddowing the top of his glasses frame, it’s rim sprinkled with a believable amount of dandruff flake. His dark eyes staring past me as if in deep concentration…

“Or it could be a numerical code…”, said Tatee finally fishing the directions out, “613”, he shouted in Reb Lieb’s ear, pausing for a moment to look for response, “Hey…Mister….”, he said rapping on top of the canister with his knuckles, “…I said…. 613!”.

“Why won’t it do anything”, asked my mother, still clutching her apron about her body.

“Why is it MY mashgiach”, I said, too afraid to take my eyes of it.

“It says bipherish right here”, said Tatee, flipping through the manual as he squinted at it, “That’s our model number, It’s the Freundlich 3000.”

“So why won’t it start”, asked my mother.

I think it heard. It must of heard. Because even as the words left my mother’s mouth, Reb Lieb’s eyes rolled slowly, white over black, to find me.

“AHHHHHHHHHH”, I screamed.

“Hello Shmuley”, said Reb Lieb, in Reb Lieb’s voice.

“Holy Moly”, said my father jumping back as startled as I was, “that nearly scared the farfel straight out of me.”

“It’s his digestion”, my mother explained to Reb Lieb’s head, hoping to reclaim a little of our families first impression, “it’s not what it used to be.”

Reb Lieb’s eyes rolled from me to my mother, “Rebetzin”, he said breaking into a toothy smile, “thank you for having me as a guest in your home.”

My mother was fanning herself with the hand not fidling with her apron, “he called me Rebetzin”, she told my father.
“Reb Lieb”, beamed my father, moving closer to the floating head of my mashgiach.

“Reb Herschel”, said my decapitated Rebbi, “It’s good to be here.”

“It’s our pleasure to have you here, I can’t tell you how much we need your help”, said Tatee placing his hand jovially on the top of mechano-mosh’s lid.

“Errr… Rev Herschel.”

“Yes”

“It’s probably best”, said Reb Lieb’s head, glancing at my father’s arm, “to treat me in the same way as you would treat a sifrei kadosh, or better yet, a sefer torah.”

“I am so sorry, my good Reb Lieb”, said my father removing his hand and waving it as if it had just been on a stove.
“No no no…it’s fine… it’s fine”, said Reb Lieb’s head in good nature, nodding up and down inside his can, “but just think of it this way…in my memory banks, I contain every word of torah ever written….period. And my entire personality chip is modeled after a godol bitorah and a torah true yid.”

“It’s amazing”, said my mother, “it’s just amazing.”

“I can’t shake the sense that I’m talking with Reb Lieb”, said my father shaking his head, “it’s uncanny, just uncanny…to be just a head..Hey….Hey….Reb Lieb”, said my father smiling too wide, a sure indication of impending grade school humor….
“Did someone else buy the Freundlich 1500…” he said, having difficulty talking through his mirth as he marched in place in demonstration of what a disembodied pair of legs might look like, “to walk the kids to shul…”

“Herschel”, scolded my mother.

“The 750…” he said too caught up to stop, solitarily amused, and glancing at me as potential co-conspiritor, he made quick circles with a lone hand, “you know, Shmuley…to help with the dishes…”

I donated a thin sympathy smile.

“Enough”, said my mother.

“Rav Herschel”, said my mashgiach.
“I’m so…”

“Like a sefer…”

“I’m so sorry”

“No no no, it’s fine, it’s fine, but think of me like a sefer torah….farshtiest !!”

“I got it”, said my father, “don’t worry…. I get it now.”

“You know”, said Reb Lieb’s head conversationally, bobbing unaturally to it’s own magnetic wave, “you can ask me shailos, I am a qaulified posek for a twenty four hour period until human verification is performed.”

“Now that’s going to be a time saver”, said my father snaping his fingers and sobering up, “not having to wait to see the Rabbi to find out the halachah…this is paying for itself already.”

“Oh I’m already hard at work making your life easier”, said the mechano-mosh, “I’ve remotely reset all alarm clocks in the house to have everyone up and ready an hour before shachris.”

“It’s just wonderful”, said my mother.

My father was scratching his head.

“Awww”, I said.

“Shmuley”, said my mother harshly.

“I have restructured your bank accounts so that your shul dues are paid through to the year 2052, as well as automatically detucting ma’aser from your direct deposit.”

“Hey…now…”, said my father looking a bit pale.

“Rav Herschel, try and understand”, said mechano-mosh, shaking his head back and forth in his canister, “I’m not Reb Lieb who sits across from you in shul…I’m a synthetic personality…and fully adherent to the laws of robotics with the 2034 religious exemption module.”

My father now looked a bit pale and a bit confused.

“Herschel, Herschel…I cannot cause, or through inaction allow you to come to… spiritual harm”, said Reb Lieb lovingly, “that means…it means your neshamah is in my hands now…”

“It’s like having a safety net, where you can’t fall”, said my mother in translation.

My father looked only partially convinced.

“Rev Herschel, your hishtadlus was to get me in your house, the rest….the rest I take care of for you. Ha’Ba Li’Taher….Misayin Oisoh…”

My father slowly started to nod his head in agreement.

“Nu” said Reb Lieb so authentically that I was forced to imagine his hands waving in small circles with thumbs up at his side, “let’s avoid bitul z’man, we’ve got alot of work to do here…”

My mother had her hands pressed together, “It’s a fresh start…just in time for Pesach…”

My Father was looking over at her and smiling, “Just in time”, he repeated with a wink.

Seeing my parents gel into such a solidified edifice of converging opinion made the acrid aspirin taste in my mouth all the more bitter.

How could they do this to me ? This wasn’t Bein Hazmanim…it was Mussar Seder concentrated times ten to be adhered to 24/7….I would break…I would snap…

Turning on my heel, I ran to my room, fleeing the scene in an escape that led me a full three feet down the hall and quick left into the small spot I called my own. I heard my parents calling after me but I paid it no attention.

“Shmuley”, said my father.

“Where does he think he’s going ?”, said my mother.

“It’s all right”, said Reb Lieb’s voice in quiet wisdom fading in and out of my ability to hear it, “Let me….I’ll…..teaching……”
I kicked the door shut with the back of my foot, loud enough to make a decent slam.
Wasn’t it bad enough to be a known underachiever every day in Yeshiva ? Did the feeling have to follow me home in a stainless steel jar?

I flopped into bed and shifted my glasses to my forehead, rubbing my eyes because I was tired…not because I might cry. I opened them and viewed my room through the comfortable blur of nearsighted focus, the sharp edges of life dulled and melded into meaningless soft color. From the doorway I saw movement, and I squinched my forehead droping my glasses back into place.

“Hey”, I said, more out of shock than out of the need to comunicate anything in particular.

It was Reb Lieb…his head, that is to say, gliding effortlessly through the opening door…his eyes found me and he smiled so genuinely, with so much caring.

How did he……?

“Shmuel”, he said moving towards me and shaking his head back and forth in a way that created the uncanny illusion of him swimming through the air by some unnamed neck stroke.

“You can’t”, I said almost breathlessly feeling the last delicate dew drops of privacy dehydrate into vapor, “I mean… don’t you have to knock…”

“I’m not a person”, said Reb Lieb, all brilliant smiles, “that you could be embarrassed from…come on…let’s talk.”

“No”, I blurted angrily, “this is my room…”

“Shmuley….be reasonable…we’ll talk it through.”

“I don’t want to talk with you…”

My mother appeared at the door followed by my father.

“Shmuley”, said my mother, “you said you would try harder…you told me you would do better…why not start now…”

I saw no way to make it through the day with my Mashgiach’s head following me around like an unwanted puppy, but the look in my mother’s eye told me I had already promised her something and I had to keep her faith.

“OK…fine…I don’t even know what this Robot wants anyway…”

“Watch your mouth”, warned my father, sternly, nodding in solidarity in Reb Lieb’s direction, “this is the err…”

“Embodiment”, said my mother coaxing the sentance from his lips.

“Yes”, said my father, “the embodiment of a sefer torah, and we’ll treat it…him…that way.

“Shmuley”, said Reb Lieb’s head, floating to a level at which we were eye to eye as I sat at my bed.

He wasn’t exactly solid. If I looked hard enough through the dark eyes I could make out the inner back end of the canister, the serial number, and the warranty sticker. And he flickered, the light sources that created his hologram dimming and lightening, like an artificial pulse. But as I talked with him, watching the chubby cheeks flex and stretch over his wide mouth, his eyes flicker and wayne with sincerity, I had to admit I was drawn into the illusion.

This was Reb Lieb, or at least as close as it could be to him without the rest of his body.

“Shmuley”, he said with pride, floating just a few inches from my face, “you’ve taken the first brave step to a brighter future…all on your own…but you have to seal it…with a positive action !”

“He’s talking in riddles” I complained to my parents, “I don’t even understand…”

“Shmuley”, said Reb Lieb floating so close I could smell the metal and plastic of his housing, staring deeply at me with those piercing eyes, “I have scanned your room and found one fiction novel of a Goyishe nature that could be detrimental to such a developing mind, as your own.”

“Awwww”, I said to the mechano-mosh, “this stinks, don’t I get any privacy.”

“Now we are getting somewhere”, applauded my mother, clasping her hands together at my doorway.

“It’s clean up time, Shmuley”, said my father apologetically, “we are all going to have to run a tighter ship from here on in.”
I couldn’t believe this.

It was like mutiny. My mother, father, and this flying tin can all ganging up on me.

“Shmuley”, said the mechano-mosh in a deeper, sweeter tone like molasses, “Yiras Shemayim, is about making your own judgments about your relationship with the aibishter, you are going to have to come to terms on your own about what it means to be mevatal your zman with narishkiet. When you begin to think about it, you will know what to do with that book. A small part of your growth as a Ben Torah will hinge on this realization.”

“Fine.”

“No really….think about it…”, said Reb Lieb with a friendly wink.

“I will.”

“It’s…He’s… so reasonable”, said my mother.

“It davkah has a real personality to it”, said my father, eager for another chance to brag, as they both watched from my doorway, “it’s no coincidence he’s the best selling model.”

Reb Lieb winked once at my parents.

I hated them all for a moment.

“Did you think about it?”

“No…I mean I’m thinking…”, I said.

“You should seriously consider it in T minus 5 seconds.”

“Huh?”

“A good time to come to a conclusion would be approximatley T minus 4 seconds.”

“This is crazy…”, I said, “this flying toaster is threatening me.”

“Don’t be a michutziv”, said my father quickly.

“Is it so crazy to get results ?” asked my mother.

“Gashmius destruction comencing in T minus 3 seconds…”

“Shmuley”, said my father, “I think you better get your book.”

“Fine”, I yelled, “you see what you did”, I said, as I walked over to my bookbag, unzipped it and chucked my latest Asimov into the trash hard enough to make a bang, “now I have no place to be myself, my whole life is a commercial for better yeshiva living.”

“Shmuley, your over reacting,“ said my mother, “give it a chance and you’ll see how you start to feel better…”

“No, Mom, I’m not going to feel better..”

“Please….let me handle this…”, said the Mechano-mosh, “I have over three thousand collected mussar shmusen and parables from the Rabbinic lights of our generation and the past.”

“Awwww”, I said.

“Once in a small town in lithuania”, said Reb LIeb’s holographic head in apparent deep thought, “there was a young man, who wanted nothing more that to meet the prince…”

“This is a bunch of cr…”, I started.

“Shmuley, you better start listening”, scolded my mother, “this is going to be the way it is untill you shape up.”

“…As it turned out”, Reb Lieb continued oblivious to my interruptions, “the prince wanted nothing more than to be a regular..”

“Tatee, can’t you do something, this is ridiculous.”, I pleaded.

“…One day at the market, the king sent the prince and the young man…”, continued Reb Lieb, unwilling to be derailed.

“Shmuley, come on, wise up kid-o, listen to your mother, you can’t go on this way forever…I know how hard it is for you, but the only path is the path up, you gotta find a way through your problems…trust me there is a light at the end of the tunnel…”

“…The prince and the young lad were both amazed to find the treasure right beneath their feet…”, continued Reb Lieb, his holographic head looking both surprised and elated at the stories end.

“This isn’t facing my problems”, I told my father trying to talk louder than the mechano-mosh in a rare moment of father son honesty, “this is ignoring the idea than problems can exist…this is pretending one right way is the only way for everyone.”

“…And so we see…”, said Reb Lieb, his simulated brow furrowing at the lesson at hand, “that sometimes, the greatest treasures are the treasures right in front of our eyes, that we did not see… before we tried to look…in the right way… using the glasses of torah and maasim tovim…”

“Shut up you crazy robot, get out of my face”, I exploded.

“Shmuley”, said my father sternly, “haven’t you been listening….you have to treat Reb Lieb’s…uhh… head… here, with the same kovod you would give a Rabbi, it holds the collected works of kol hatorah kulah, you want that kind of avierah on your hands….come on.”

A red light began flashing on the side panel of the mechano-mosh, and Reb Lieb pouted and began to look around from side to side in confusion.

“Oh great, you michutziv”, shouted my mother, “now you broke it …him… with your nivel peh.”

“No I didn’t”, I said, uncertain if such a thing could happen.

“Alert”, said the Robot Lieb, in a voice that sounded much more mechanical, his eyes now dreamy and distant.

“This would be coming out of your allowance”, scolded my father, “if you had one.”

“Alert”, said the mechano-mosh, “four hours untill pesach, commencing emergency bedikah”, and with that he floated up and away forcing my parents to part like the red sea as his canister passed between them on it’s way to the kitchen.

“Huh ?”, said my father.

“But the house is already spotless for Pesach, I’ve been scrubbing for weeks”, complained my mother, with a look of shock on her face that such a detail could ever be doubted, as she hurried to behind the mechano-mosh, my father and I quick on her heels.

As he reached the counter, Reb Lieb looked as if he had eaten something he needed to cough up.

“System overide….Initiating chametz deep scan…”

“Uhhhh…I don’t like the sound of that”, said my father, “maybe we should all go wait in the den.”
My mother shook her head, stranded in some foreign land between the welcome relief of our new family member and a new…growing… outrage.

Though my father had surrendered his ma’aser and morning snooze, and my Asimov now rest in the garbage bin, there was one member of the family who awaited correction, and my Father and I turned in trepidation towards my mother.

I almost wanted to warn Reb Lieb…didn’t he have a chip for qauntification of impending danger?

“Den ?? Oh…I’m not leaving my kitchen”, my mother informed us, Reb Lieb, and the world in general; with her arms folded in front of her in a sudden change of aliegence, “There is not so much as one crumb of chametz in MY house”, she said.

“Do you have any idea”, said my mother to Reb Lieb’s head, with the telltale quiver of deep emotion on her voice, “how hard….HARD…I worked to get this place spotless….how many meals, yes meals, I’ve eaten on my outdooor front steps, how many moldy crevases I’ve cleaned with a toothbrush, how many appliances, too heavy for a workman to lift, I’ve crawled behind and cleaned goo you wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole…” she trailed off near to tears…but not a drop spilled. It was more anger than sorrow, more fierce opposition than apologetic.

“Chametz…” said Reb Lieb looking sharply over my mother’s shoulder and furrowing his brow, “…detected.”

They faced each other then, for just a moment. Like two windblown gunslingers of the old west, except instead of swift fingers tracing the handle of a classic colt, my mother’s practiced hands found their way to the wooden charoset spoon. She grasped it then in preparation, her eyes never leaving Reb Lieb’s, while they squinted down to angry slits in challenge.

But Reb Lieb showed no signs of swerving in this game of chicken and from the bottom of the mechano-mosh extended a soft redly glowing orb, not more than a marble for size, but bright enough to hurt my eyes.

“Initiating….Bedikah”, said Reb Lieb’s head, his holographic gaze locked on my mother.

“You stay out”, said my mother sharply, “not one foot…er…head in this kitchen”, she snapped, “you hear that” !!

“Chavah, chavah”, pleaded my Tatee with outstretched hands ready to remind my mother about what it meant to have a sefer torah in the house, until he was silenced by the death stare my mother shot at him.

“Rebetzin”, pleaded Reb Lieb’s head, “I know how hard you worked…boruch ha…”

“No you don’t”, said my mother, “NO YOU DON’T”

“The miracle”, said Reb Lieb, “Is how much chametz you DID clean…”

“Don’t you cross this line”, threatened my mother drawing an imaginary boundary in the air with her wooden spoon as Reb Lieb floated forward, “Not one more inch…”

“You can’t expect yourself”, said Reb Lieb in his most soothing tone as he trespassed into kitchen air space, “to catch every pico-gram of chametz with human eyes…”

“Back”, threatened my mother winding the spoon up at shoulder length like she might be aiming to swat a fastball to the fences, “you stay back now”.

“But I can help you”, continued Reb Lieb’s head, drifting Lazily over the counter, “I couldn’t…. NOT…. help you, If you were Chas Vesholom oiver on Bal Yeraeh…”

“STAY BACK”

“….or Bal Yimatzeh, on my watch”, Reb Lieb was shaking his head in regret and sadness even has he contemplated this possibility, “better to just get rid of some risidual shmootz than chance an issur dioiriesah !!!”

Reb Lieb focused an aiming beam in the deep chasm between the refirgerator and inbuilt kitchen cabinetry.

“Don’t you dare…”, said my mother with a crazed look in her eyes, as they darted about searching, perhaps, for any one else in the room foolish enough to take her on in her own kitchen, “DON’T YOU DARE !!!!”

“One quick bedikah”, said Reb Lieb as if he were preparing my mother for her flu shot, “and we are all through…”

It happened quickly then, almost too quickly for me to process.

I think my mother swung first, she must have swung first, becuase when she hit the mechano-mosh with the charoset spoon not only did the loud “gong” sound drown out his yell: “OY- my head !”; but he also misfired the laser, probably because the force of the blow spun him halfway across the kitchen.

The laser…well, that laser didn’t hit any chametz at all, and missed it’s mark by at least a foot landing not in the dark crevase next to the fridge but insidie the open refrigerator door, where upon meeting a uniformly tinfoiled interior, it bounced back out, straight into the tinfoiled cabinets on the otherside of the room.

“Bizoinggggg!!!”

Which was when my wide eyed Tatee must have yelled:

“Duck !!”

Which I did.

Although, he must of yelled it before doing so himself, and that laser rebound from tinfoiled cabinetry to tinfoiled counter took his hat right of his head in transit.

“Son of a…”, said Tatee grabbing to keep his Yarlmulke on his head as his knees involuntarily ducked for him.

“Bizzzooouuuuu!!!!”, screamed the deflected laser as it scitered off of the kitchen coutner tinfoil ripping through the air into the dinning room where it ricoched next off of Eliyahu’s Kos not ten inches from my Zaidy’s face, who magically remianed oblivious to anything but his book.

“Mmmm”, said Zaidy to his sefer, stroking his beard and turning the page, “dos is a chidush ???”

“Bzzzaaapp”, It must of hit the bottom of the Silver Kiddush cup, I didn’t see it, cowardly hugging the floor as I was, but it must have hit the rounded bottom and deflected down, because the frying, sizzling, chametz-intended, fizzle that it created occured dead center in one of the freshly cleaned corn rows of our white living room carpet, a small puff of smoke grandly introducing the giant burn stain on the frazzled carpet fibers.

Everythig was quite for a few seconds then and …. I don’t know….

I’m thirteen and quite aware, but I’m not an expert in human emotions, I don’t have any degrees or even a high school education. I barely even know what the Yeshiva told me I’m supposed to know; which is: who’s fault is everything when a Shor falls into a Bor.

But as I watched my mother I knew something.

I knew I was watching something breaking. I don’t know what people have in their heads, or what keeps it together, but I saw a snap, two things pulling apart that won’t be put back together.

I guess she just stared at that carpet for moment, letting the dark spot on the fabric imprint itself on her brain in some deeply primitive way, tatooing itself, perhaps to her very soul.

“My carpet…” said my mother with barely an expression on her face, “my..my perfect, white, carpet.”

“Oy”, said Reb Lieb, finally managing to stop from spinning in a circle, “It will be a Nes if I don’t need some maintenance…”

“You”, said my mother, finally managing to tear her eyes off the carpet to look at Reb Lieb.

“Enough”, said Reb Lieb firmly, “Sofo shel dovor, you have twelve picograms of chametz in two locations, and seven microscopic bugs on your romaine lettuce…we can make a big deal about it….”

“You”, said my mother with blank eyes as if she were talking to us from some far away place, “did this….”

“Or”, said Reb Lieb, “we can tidy it up…”

Not the response anyone had perhaps expected, “Aggghhhhh”, said my mother, leaving go the conventions of speech and reason for something more basic and raising the spoon in a fashion that would have made virile viking warriors run for the hills, “Aggghhhh”

“This isn’t in my programing”, said Reb Lieb’s head nervously as he dodged a spoon swipe that would have crushed him like a wad of aluminum foil, “perhaps a story from the Dubno Maggid would help…”

“YOU”, screamed my mother as she jumped to place one sturdy hit on his canister as he floated at top speed to the relative safety of the high kitchen ceiling.

“STOP”, I yelled, surprised to hear myself speaking. It must have shocked everyone, because Reb Lieb paused from attempting to Zap the bugs off of our vegetables, and my mother loosened her whitened knuckles from their grip on our heavy salt shaker, that she had cocked like a catepult to bean Reb Lieb in his…well…head.

“Stop”, I said more quietly.

“Rebbi”, I said to Reb Lieb, “you CAN’T create rules that are impossible for people to follow…it’s…it’s tirchah di’tziburah….it’s not what hashem could have ever meant for…a halachah that’s impossible for the kihillah to complete….you can’t create a standard that no one can follow….”

“You see”, said Reb Lieb to my parents from the safety of high altitude, “look how much better Shmuley’s remembering from his chavrusahs, and I’ve barely been here an hour…it’s Gevaldig !’

“He has a point”, said my father finally caustiously rising up, from where he had hidden in a crouch behind the counter, with his hat in his hand, “that’s a nice little shtickle toirah…”
He had more to add, but accurately determining my mothers body language allowed him to duck back behind the counter before the salt shaker was launched at him.

But I had more Asimov in mind than I did lessons from the shulchan Aruch.

“But you HAVE to clean the bugs and clean the chametz”, I informed Reb Lieb, “because you can’t allow us to be over an issur.”
“That’s true too”, said Reb Lieb nodding his head, even as he warily eyed my mother, “My central programing would not even allow me to turn on circuit number one in my CPU if I didn’t protect you from issur. “

He looked thoughtful for a moment, “Perhaps the answer is that when two pesukim contradict each other…you need a third to be machriah beyneyhem..”

“But you CAN’T ask us to clean microscopic bugs and dirt”, I said more loudly now, ignoring him, “because you can’t create a religion that humans can’t follow…”

“I’m sure there is a sugyah that deals with this”, said Reb Lieb shaking his head in confusion, “I’ll reference my memory banks.”

“But you HAVE to clean the chametz”, I screamed, “because you can’t allow us to be oiver an issur dioriesah.”

“I have a terrible sinus pressure”, complained Reb Lieb as he began to drift slowly down from the level of the ceiling fan, “like my hat is too tight on my head.”

“But you CAN’T intend for us to clean up microscopic chametz and bugs”, I said loud enough to feel the scrape of the words on my throat, “because you CAN’T create a religion that humans cannot follow.”

“I’m sure….a…parable…could explain…”, said Reb Lieb, as he drifted listlessly over to our dinning room table.

“But you HAVE to clean up…”

“Enough…”, said Reb Lieb’s head looking ill, “DLL error 7 78 1…Oyyy.”

And like that… he was gone.

His canister…empty.

Vacated of his presence the empty contraption dropped the last few feet from where it floated and landed with a thud on the dining room table, cracking it’s delicate innards, and sending out a thick stream of black oily goo, like a well pressurized water fountain, that covered half of the gleaming silverware on the table, with a wondrous new speckled pattern of motor oil. A little bit even landed in my grandfather’s cup.

“My silverware…my table…” mourned my mother, awaking from insane anger into a fresh emotion of sadness beyond condolence.

My Zaidy, finally distracted from his sefer, anxiously peered at the black sludge in his mug, and catching my mothers eyes as she surveyed her paradise lost, he voiced his dissapointment.

“Mit creme”, he stated simply, banging his fist on the table in wonderment as to why his simple request could be so difficult to fulfill, “dos is schvartz coffee… ich viest nisht….coffee….mit a bissel creme.”

The last straw landing on her back my mother simply fell to her knees.

And she cried.

It was hard to understand her through the tears, but my Father and I listened.

We listened very closely.

“Is it too much to ask….just to have a time to be together with my family…”, she said, and now she was smiling a sad smile, “MY brothers and sisters…their children…to be together.”

“And to have just that little time together…I have to work my fingers to the bone ?”

She was shaking her head, “For what ?” she looked over at the empty container of the Mechano-Mosh, “…for him ? Floating around and barking orders…Look at the mess he’s made”, she said looking around at the destruction her Erev Yom Tov had become.

My Father looked uneasy and unsure as to what the answer to such a question could be. It almost seemed to broad for him to get his arms around. He clenched and unclenched his large fists as if he needed to wring the life out of something but couldn’t pin down exactly what it might be.

“It’s….” said my father, “It’s…that Robot…that crazy Robot…”

My mother began to nod in agreement, “We were fine until that crazy Robot tried to come into our lives and control everything…”

My father grabbed the remnants of Reb Lieb’s holographic transport container off our table and slammed it harshly into the garbage.

“A piece of junk”, he yelled more loudly than I was used to hearing, and hunched over the trash and almost out of breath I saw him start to piece things together.

“Where’s the siechel”, he said shaking his head over the remains of our new technology, “How did I get it into my kup, that a tin can, with no soul, could guide a yid with a neshamah; what’s even the haavah aminah that something that can only compile and catalouge rules into more rules and spit them out….could guide a mishpachah…my mishpachah”.

“It could never work”, agreed my mother standing back up, “even on the surface it doesn’t make sense…”

My father was grinding a fist into an open palm and his teeth were clenched, “What was I thinking that this flying chulent pot could tell us what to do ??? It’s…It’s not even thinking about what it’s saying…”

“Of course not”, said my mother, “How could it without a brain…it’s just a head.”

“It just follows..”, My father struggled on, “some kind of a …”

“Algorithim”, I said.

“No”, said my father.

“Formula”, said my Mother.

“Not that”, said my Father, “you know….mamesh as if you just drop in a number…”

“A variable”, said my Mother.

“A function”, I suggested.

“No, no”, said my Father trying to get around an idea that was to big for him, “how do you describe a chochmah that…that follows the rules but can’t see itself at work…can’t look at itself from across the room…can put the numbers together all the while unable to grasp the end result….”

My Father truly looked in deep frustration at not being unable to express what was so clearly tying his psyche in knot. The idea that his life was enforcably governed by an archaic matrix of barely logical connectors, was so close to the tip of his tongue, and yet so unspeakable.

“It was a stupid….Robot.” Said my mother offering what was her take on the final summary of events.

“That’s it…you got it….that’s it”, said my father first holding up a finger and then pounding his fist into his hand. He accentuating each word by giving the garbage a hefty kick, “It was a stupid…stupid….Robot.”

We stood there for a moment then…unbound and unsure. Almost as if we had unraveled our life enough, sifted deep enough through the dust to be at some long forgotten and deeply buried fork in the road. The next steps forward seemed so unclear…

“Oy Herschel”, said my mother breaking the silence, “look….look at my house, my kitchen, my carpet…ruined…ruined…”
I tried to think of something to say to comfort my poor mother, all her hard work now in shambles around her, but it was my grandfather who found his way over to her doing his best to speak in english.

“I help to clean up”, he offered stooping to the floor, his stiff arthritic fingers doing their best to coax a few styraphoam S’s back into the mechano mosh’s box, “See dat…”

“Yeah, me too”, I chipped in grabbing a big handful and dumping them back into the container.

My fathers anger turned quickly into a well harnessed energy and he truly beamed, “we’ll have this place cleaned up in no time…”

My mother actually began to look a little relieved…and looked around at us with eyes that wanted to believe it could be so. And for a moment we felt so much like a family.

“I tell you”, said my Zaidy, “You don’t need dat”, he said pointing at the fallen hologram in the garbage.
“In de alt country…we don’t have it…”

He pointed at my father and mother in turn, his small watery eyes moving back and forth between them, “You…unt you….you in the charge…no ??”

“Pop”, said my father, “you’re so right, Pop”

“A lifetime of Toirah study”, said my mother, “that’s where wisdom comes from…”

“It’s really true”, said my father, looking at his father with admiration.

I suppose we could have healed then…

Probably could have taken a path with our families needs at the center, who knows, maybe my parents would have been a little kinder to themselves, and a little happier.

But my Zaidy, oh Zaidy…he had one more piece of wisdom to offer.

“Also, da coffee dat ting makes”, said Zaidy shaking his head, “Feh ! Don’t drink it …terrible…not good for nothing….”

“Papa”, said my mother in confusion, “you didn’t drink…..”

“Pop”, said my father, “Oy…Pop.”

“Should we call the Doctor”, I asked.

“Call the hospital….Who knows what was in there”, screamed my mother, until a second, more dire realization hit her.

“Herschel”, she said quitely, perhaps trying to control her dawning terror by keeping it as close to a secret as possible.

“Herschel…that stuff is everywhere…my silverware…my table….what’s…what’s in it ????”

“No”, said my Tatee, immediately sensing what was pushing my mother to the edge of unrecoverable panic, “It’s not a shialah at all…it’s not even Rauy liachilas kele…..”

He trailed off as he watched my grandfather try to wipe the oil out of his mustache.

“Terrible”, Zaidy confirmed.

And as quickly as we had come together…we unraveled.

My mother had balled her hands in to fists next to her face, “My family will be here in an hour and my house is ruined and full of chametz !!!!”

My father was burning through the instruction manual, “It would say”, he stuttered, “it would have to say…”

“Forget that !” screamed my mother, “Get Rav Hahnemann on the phone, he’ll know…”

“I got it”, said my Father lurching to grab the telephone of the wall and hit the speed dial, “I got it right here….”

“YOU don’t have anything”, screamed my mother as the panic flooded her like ice waters numbing the body and mind.

My father was already yelling into the phone, “I don’t care if he went to the Mikvah, fish him out, we’ve got an emergency situation here..”

“It’s under control”, my Father pleaded with my mother as he cradled the home phone on his shoulder and dialed on his cell phone with the free hand, “Yes”, he said loudly in to his cell, “Information? Yes! Yes, I need an emergency carpet cleaning…EMERGENCY!!!”

My mother was shaking her head.

“No”, said my father loudly into the first reciever, “Of course, I don’t wan’t Rav Hahnemann to clean my carpet….listen….listen….I have a very important shailah about some motor oil that is all over our house, and my Father drank it…he drank it, do you hear, he mamesh drank the motor oil…so the shailah…”

My father had the confused look of hearing two seperate conversations at once, and he yelled back on his cell, “No! Yes! No! I don’t need an Emergency room, you heard my right the first time, Carpet cleaning… Emergency carpet….”

He paused for a moment holding both mouthpieces away from his beard, and giving my mother a nod of confidence, “Taken care of…we are set…totally set, it’s fixed… right now”, he said with a tone that implied that all would be resolved with enough time to read the paper and maybe play a round of gin rummy.

“Oy”, said my mother, as the suffocating world closed in around her, “We are not going to make it in time for Pesach…we are not going to make it…there is no way we are going to make it….”

I looked back and forth between my parents as the self imposed madness took hold.

My mother locked eyes with me.

“And don’t for one second think this gets you off the hook”, she seethed.

“Awwwwwwwww”, I said.

Swifer

2009-01-25T15:32:00.000-08:00

Wow.

Will you just take a look at the dust that has gathered on this unused blog? I’m letting half years and full years slip through my fingers, without so much as paying heed to my former love.

It’s been a while since I’ve read the blogs as well. I just stopped by XGH...still going strong there.

I can’t help but notice the tragic irony. He keeps threatening to quit, but can’t ever seem to stop....I keep threatening to write, but never end up getting around to it.

In part it is for the good. Better job, better research, better salary....less time. But I have to say I do feel something missing.

I started this blog because I had a bone to pick with religious dogma...that score I settled some time ago. But what I discovered in the process, quite serendipitously, was a joy for writing, and despite better satisfaction in the arena of professional accomplishment, I still feel like a piece is missing.

In any case, just stopped by to sweep off this dust, and see if I still remembered my password....who knows when inspiration may coincide with the rarity of a few minutes of spare time.

Back?

2008-07-06T19:51:00.001-07:00

Well, it appears I have not written anything on this blog for at least six months, probably nothing of substance for much longer than that...for shame, for shame.

A portion of my excuse for what appears to be late homework, I shall blame on my almost two year old daughter, whom, in addition to saying “hot” “ball” “car” and “colors” in the most adorable fashion; also recants the dreaded “no” to almost anything she is presented with. She, on a regular basis, runs rampant in her huggies, rounding our house with blistering speed, creating our private version of the indy 500 pediatric style, during which our walls become smartly streaked with smears of chocolate, egg, crayon and .....“unidentified substances”; whose ever-present nature, despite my frequent hand wiping interventions, has led me to believe they must actually be secreted from her fingertips.

Sure, being no better than the next man, I was of the mind to sink in to a sulking semi-defeat of sorts; and try to find a comfortable perch from which to watch my dwelling reduced to some barbaric, pre-civilized afghani hut, thatched with whatever was in todays baby gerber can; but the circumstances of my life are unforgiving.

I am moving, and doing so in one of the worst markets to date. My house must be pristine, host to whichever buyer’s realtor might call on a whim and say, “We’d like to come at three...is that OK for you”?

“Sure”, I might say, glancing over my shoulder at a living room most resembling a stretch of land over which a tidal wave had just receded. Left in the awful wake the scattered flotsam and jet-sum of my little tsunami...a veritable stew of half eaten crackers, broken crayons, scattered books, and a generous sampling of this weeks “ages 18 months and above” toys from the consignment stores.

At those quiet, dark, moments of the night when I am of a mind to jot down my latest science fiction theme ideas, I will often envision the barnacle that has settled over my living room floor, as a protoplasm, as pre-life...thriving, seething, vibrating, growing...within it the vaguest glimmering of sentient intelligence....did something move there in the corner?

But in the more practical moments there is only the reality of the frenzied cleanup, the stress, the time crunch, and the hurried evacuation of a dwelling narrowly turned from a toddlers romper room to home and garden extraordinaire.

So it is no surprise that my wife and I have colonized the local Targets, Whole Foods, and Publics stores, where, when called upon to abandon our home at a moments notice, we unleash our little rapscallion upon the unsuspecting gentility of the public marketplace.

I do confess, I think my little girl believes Target to be the larger room of her day care, with far better amenities.

I tell you this to explain why I spent most of the weekend shuttling between Barnes and Nobles and Whole Foods, while two families spent most of their weekends looking at my house.

I love bookstores and once my daughter was happily engaging her powers of destruction in the children’s section, I took the rare chance to flit around through the isles engaged in one of my all time favorite pastimes, perusing for books.

I did stumble past Hitchen’s God is not great, but hesitated before picking it up.

I have not been very motivated by the religion vs secular war recently. I feel that after so many years on the blogosphere I have heard, and probably argued every argument there is to be had, most of them over and over again. I have made my peace with my own opinions and my place in judaism and turned my attentions to other endeavors.

But old habits die hard.

So I picked it up and thumbed through the first ten to twelve pages. I’ve never been a huge fan of his, I think his pomposity undercuts his argument. And the book was no surprise. Sharp prose, a little too reckless with his blade for my taste, but the essence of his arguments where familiar to me, I’d probably paraphrased some arguments in blogosphere debate over the years... I hadn’t expected to find much new, and hadn’t by the time I observed a shadow making a slow ark through my peripheral vision.

CRASH.

“She’s throwing toys”, complained my wife, as I crammed Hitchen’s amidst the Tween fiction section, sure to shock the pants off some poor kid looking for Harry Potter.

During the short “time out”, and hasty exit from the bookstore that followed, I wondered aloud to my wife if we were on a department store most wanted list, our grim faced photos part of a portfolio of those blacklisted for disturbing the peace.

On the bright side, the next encampment of our sojourn through the wilderness was a nifty little Whole Foods in my neighborhood that has free WIFI, and since I had Hitchens on the mind, I did a little surfing through You Tube to watch some of his debates, whilst dispatching my evil little apprentice with her mother to name fruits, and possibly throw fruits, in the produce section.

Of the two or three video’s I perused, I noticed two of the questions for Hitchens were identical. One was a video debate with Al Sharpton, in which I believe Sharpton leads with this question, and seems to act as if this is the true clincher for the demise of atheism. The identical question was chosen by Chris Mathews in his interview with Hitchens as a selected viewer question.

The question is a familiar one and goes something like, “How could you ever sentence a man to death, or inflict a heavy penalty, when you don’t believe there is a higher power and absolute wrong and right.”

Hitchen’s didn’t get flustered by the question but I don’t think he got the answer out very well either. I do think this is the question that most often confuses atheists or agnostics and they generally make attempts at justifying their reasoning regarding organic, innate morality and why it has value of it’s own.

I’m not interesting in spending a great deal of time on what I feel the answer to that question is. I think, to put it simply it is fair to admit that human criminal ethics and the morality of crime and punishment is complex, has areas of uncertainty, and that we don’t have a truly objective yardstick, though if reason can be relied upon for objective conclusions and can be at least in part applied to the human traits of equity, empathy, and equality there is reason to believe that logic may contribute to some bare standard from which to work, which I believe is the foundation of the secular rule of law that in fact we all abide by, and rely on daily for the administration of justice.

But I think where Hitchens started to go, but was never really allowed to arrive due to the unfortunate sound bite nature of the debates, was the utter absurdity of the question, coming from a religious believer.

Restated with it’s assumptions hanging on the outside the query reads as follows: I religious believer in x, who believe/know via the mechanism of faith that there is absolute good and evil, and who believes/knows via the mechanism of faith that I am privy to knowledge about absolute good and evil and how to judge them from my earthly vantage point...would like to know what right you, who admit to no definite possibility of absolute evil and good, and admit that your mechanism for moral judgment may be subjective, have in making important decisions regarding moral punishment decisions regarding others.

I believe what Hitchens began to say but did not really get to follow through on, was to point out that religious belief, that is to say the mechanism of religious belief, i.e. faith, results in a unanimous opinion of absolute good and evil, but a heterogeneity regarding the details, so stunning as to produce one set of believers who know the premeditated murder of, lets say those in the world trade center, was absolute evil, and another group who knows with certainty that it is absolute good. I believe this observation encourages the believer who is willing to make some type of leap towards honesty, to admit that his claim of certainty should be dimmed to a level of something lower than absolute, given the fact that everyone who uses his mechanism of faith comes up with conflicting directives. An honest person should likely concede at this point, that though he believes he is right, he will concede to back away from the terminology of absolute good and evil given the difficulties apparent in using faith to determine them accurately. Thus there may be absolute good and evil, but we can’t get there. And without this absolute certainty the question loses all it’s teeth and needs to be rewritten as, “How dare you make life and death judgements with your subjective morality, only I with my absolute knowledge of right and wrong should be meddling with that, though I admit that when I step back from my particular beliefs there appears to be the possibility that I am dead wrong.”

Doesn’t even make much sense.

Luckily for them, most religious people are not reasonable and are happy to tidy up their viewpoint with something like, “people who don’t believe in my religion are wrong, and there error doesn’t detract from my 100% certainty that I have accurate knowledge of absolute right and wrong.”

At this point the typical atheist tactic is to point out the fact that almost everyone believes in the religion they were born into, and that the odds of one’s certainty being based on fact or judgment rather than bias in light of this observation are all but laughable.

But this typically does not sway a believers focus either...sure they will reply...but mine could still be the right one !!!

Of course, for a reasonable person, who chose to insist this, he would probably be expected to either relinquish some degree of certainty or some degree of intellectual honesty...you can’t hang on to both with landing into a big pile of the absurd.

I don’t want to beat the question and answer to death, either you see it’s flaw by now or it probably will not become apparent to you in the near future. But what amused me was what the question really boils down to it when you think about it. It is an attempt to accost the atheist for being intellectually honest.

A dishonest atheist, or one who were as comfortable with the murky logics of religious consumption, as a truly religious devotee is; should simply answer this question by saying: I know/believe that my estimates of right and wrong create and represent absolute right and wrong, and there need not be any higher being to define them.

I think this answer would be roughly on par with regard to unsupported assumptions, and liberties in “how we know what we claim to know”, as is the religious viewpoint. It as actually the willingness of an Atheist or agnostic not to rely on such shoddy mechanisms that gives the opening for religious attack.

I’m not really looking for a debate on this topic, I’m merely sharing something that interests me about the religious psyche. I think to most rational people the flaws of this attack strategy are extremely apparent, it almost makes one cringe to watch Sharpton and others throw this stone out of their glass house. It makes me wonder if there is not at least some degree of egomaniacal and infantile behavior requisite to hold this position in light of it’s flaws mentioned above; a little bit of the grey matter that sits with it’s fingers in it’s ears screaming, “but I’m right, but I’m right”, so as to drown out all else.

But to lead with this question on national television as your thundering might, to see your own position as some powerful castle of steel rather than the thin plexiglass that barely supports your weight, implies an unearned hubris of ideology powerful enough to dull the eyes, seductive enough to plug the ears, and dangerous enough to dim the wit, to which only the faithful can rightfully lay claim.

Nice to be back on the Blogosphere again, it feels good to type.

Well, I think I hear clean up in Isle seven.....that’s my cue....

I hope there is a Shop-Right nearby !

Tick Tock

2007-12-30T20:39:00.000-08:00

Wow, I was just looking over my blog, and I realized it has been a year and a half since I last wrote a, "memoir of a yeshiva misfit."

To be remedied shortly......

Oh...almost forgot....happy new year everyone :-)

Young Love

2007-11-04T23:20:00.000-08:00

“Shhh…” Cane’s already deepening voice urged through the silent darkness that surrounded them as they waited tensely.

The grain shed in which they hid measured no more than a few feet on each side, and lined as it was with leather and peat, it gave off an odor as foul as if it were some ancient wounded beast, decaying mightily over a hundred years, ever refusing to die.

“I cannot abide it anymore”, complained Eros nasally, with her fingers firmly pinching her nose shut, “I can taste it…” she spit dryly into a corner that still housed a few kernels of last year’s grain.

“Come now…she is upon it…Look”!

Eros forgot her complaining and crowded next to Cane at a thin tear in the leather where the beams of light pierced the darkness of the tanned walling like a brilliant blade.
The two of them kneeled in silence, their faces pressed to the aged hides to see the world outside; watching and waiting.

Outside the small hovel that hid them in its womb, stretched the low flatlands of Eros’ family. Acre upon acre of sown wheat and spelt now harvested and collected; winnowed chaff from seed, and brought for storage for the cold months ahead.

It would have been an uninterrupted view of soft rolling hills colored hayseed yellow and green, stretching to the horizon like a gentle ocean of earth slopping downwards towards them, had it not been for the intrusion of Eros’ family’s hut, that crested the waves of land, like an orphaned bit of wood and thatch, floating at sea.

A lonely figure occupied the space between the dwellings and the shed, toiling bitterly in the late day chill to place the last of the grain in the low cool earth under slats of wood ,leather, and tar; sustenance for the long winter ahead. In the absence of human company the woman’s face had taken its natural state; a scowl of distaste worn across the sharp features of an angular nose and jaw, an eternal bitterness that sought to crawl out of every pore of her body.

Even as Eros viewed her older sister in the field she felt the welts and bruises over her back and legs from the beating she had received this morning, and the image of her elder sibling became distorted, despite the thin, crisp, December air, as the first large tear rolled down her cheek.

Cane’s hand was on her shoulder.

“Watch now”, he whispered, as Eros’ sister opened one of the last few bags of grain, and there sitting as planted: Cane’s pet frog. A sagaciously large specimen of toad, shinning, oozing, and bewarted as fit it’s breed, and now, poor devil, startled by the light, he leapt in fear… high into the winter air.

“AAAgghhh”, screamed Eros’ sister, her distaste for both crawling things and slimy things, compounded now, by this miserable creature.

The scare would have been payment enough for Eros, who felt a smile spreading across her face, as her sisters hands pulled close to her cheeks, framing her face in horror. Even had the laws of gravity not been auspiciously aligned that day, her sister’s initial fright would have sufficed.

But as fate would have it the frog’s trajectory sent it wobbling, webbed flipper feet over bulging eyed head, in its short but highly arced flight, directly into the soft landing pad provided by the ample bosom that her sister kept on perpetual display.

“Uuughh”

The second scream that filled the air was more languid, and carried lower notes of disgust and contamination as she tried to pluck the thing from forbidden pastures while all its animal instincts called for it to burrow inward toward darkness and safety.

Cane and Eros burst into laughter a little too loud for the short distance of their hiding place, and it was but a moment before her sister’s hawkish eyes came to rest upon the shed in the backfield that seemed to have overcome it’s inanimacy to mock her from afar.

“EROS”!

“EROS…I can hear you…you little wench”, cried her sister, discarding the frog with a toss to the wind and grasping in her hand the heavy wood winnower that had so often left its mark on Eros’ thin skin.

Cane’s hand was tight on her shoulder now, and although there was barely light in their confines she could feel Cane looking at her.

“Fly”, he said, and so did they both, bursting from the darkness of the shed into the cool brightness of the day.

Cane’s twelve winters gave him longer legs and greater strength than Eros’ eleven, and as he pulled ahead of her he reached back a hand, grasping hers and gasping, “run…or we will both feel a beating tonight.”

Their feet beat down quickly upon the hard earth path, as they ran the semicircle around the yard to the front of Eros’ family tent. From there it would be empty fields and pastures as far as their little legs could take them.

Eros stole a glimpse of her sister cutting across the yard towards them swinging the heavy implement in her hand, lips pursed in anticipation. She quickened her pace and felt a sense of relief as they rounded the corner of the hut towards freedom.

“Head west”, Cane breathed heavily as they ran, turning his head to her, “towards the highlands… we will be safe enough…”

His last words were cut short as the wind was knocked out of him. He had run headlong into the thigh of an impossibly large man, who stood as stone in his path.

Eros herself stopped short of the monolith of woolen cloth and knotted muscle that she immediately recognized as her father. And the hot blood that pulsed so quickly in her veins turned cool with fear, a moments dream of freedom turned quickly on its heel to defeat.

Her father grasped Cane by the arm and flung him a like a sack of loose meal into the nearby brush where he landed heavily.

Her father moved quickly before the situation even fully registered in Eros’ mind, and he gripped her wrist in his meaty hand in the wink of an eye, squeezing the bones of her arm together like a steel press. Off in the distance her sister’s cries of rebuke carried mutedly to the front of the house.

Eros dropped to her knees in pain as her father bent her to submission. Had not Cane been face down in the weeds he might have noticed the look on the man’s thickly bearded face went beyond discipline; there was a blood thirsty craving for violence…and there was lust. Since Eros’ body had begun to change into that of a woman there had been too much unusual attention from her father, a man known to take his pleasures when and wherever he saw fit.
His voice was deep as he spoke, “You will hold still for your sisters training today…she is to make an obedient woman of you before the spring comes…”

There was probably more to this speech, but all Eros noticed was that her father was suddenly off balance.

It was Cane!

He had thrown his full weight to the back of her father’s knees, diving for the tackle head first. The hand that gripped Eros involuntarily shot back and into the air as her father tried to steady himself from falling.

“Run”!

Eros did. She broke into a sprint before the word left Cane’s mouth.

Cane himself scrambled to his feet and jolted close at her heels, they ran until the air hurt their throats and chests, till their feet ached, and their bodies were sore.

When they reached the edge of the Western wooded land, at the end of Farm country, Cane collapsed at the roots of the first great Oak, stretching himself to his full length to better allow his lungs to take their full share of air. Eros fell next to him. Her ears were frozen to the touch and her nose was running. Her breaths came in involuntary spasms, as if her lungs needed a new home outside her small chest.

“I cannot go back”, said Eros in between gulps of air, realizing now that her childhood had reached the end of its days.

Cane had recovered somewhat from the run, yet whatever color had returned to his face was again drained away, as if he were more afraid now than when he had dove headlong at her father’s feet.

“Come with me”, he blurted nervously, “…we will make a new life for ourselves, I will bring you into my family..”, he stated, trying to stick to the well established phrases of courtship, yet realizing he had blundered onto the sore spot of his existence…his family.

In place of words he put his hand gently over the mark Eros’ father’s hand had left on her arm, waiting for her reply.

Eros felt herself melt under Cane’s warm stare, and felt the irrational urge to adjust the one piece sack that made up her garb so that it covered the right places. She had loved Cane since she had remembered feeling love, and out of breath as she was she nodded her rosy cheeked head once with a smile to say she felt the same.

Hand in hand they resumed their walk, now cutting through the wooded land.

“My father may come looking for me”, she said to Cane whose attentions were consumed by divining the proper route to his families estate.

He turned to her, “I will hide you”, he said smiling, “don’t worry, you will be safe…I swear it.”

“Ah”, said Cane smiling as they passed a large red Acacia with many knots on its trunk, “here we are”, and as they rounded the great sapling the castle of Cane’s family came into view, larger than any tree or rock that surrounded it. There were none like it in all the land.

Eros hesitated for a moment as she saw, for it returned to her the many Rumors about Cane’s family, and the illness that possessed them. Eros looked over her shoulder back towards her own family but dusk had already fallen and a layer of dark clouds gathered at the horizon behind them, as if providing the sign that the way back was forever closed. She looked back at Cane, who saw the confusion in her eyes…

A bolt of lightning split the air at some distance behind them lighting the sky and thundering it’s mighty roar making them both jump…and then laugh, as if that little bit of pure fear was necessary to put their petty anxieties in proper perspective.

“Come…let’s get you to shelter, it will be harsh weather by the look of it tonight…follow me.”

Cane led her by the hand along a circuitous route that purposefully missed the fires and camping sites of his family in front of their castle, and instead took her on a wooded trail that crept along the side of the building to reach its entrance.

As they walked along the perimeter of the great dwelling Eros allowed her hand to gently trace across its side, her fingertips thrilling along the alternating wood slats and the sticky gloss that held it together. When the terrain was plain, and empty of rock and twig, she would take her eyes from the path in front of her, and allow them to stare up along the side of the monolith until its highest dimensions passed the leaves of the tallest tree beside it.

Cane was watching her absorb it all and he smiled as he led her to the great open door at its front. He momentarily turned a piercing gaze towards the tents of his family, and once again certain they were unobserved, he took her hand and brought her inside.

Eros’ eyes filled with such sights as she entered, visions she had never imagined, so that her mind did not remark on them as much as try and take it all in.

They entered into a long hall, such an enormous enclosed structure of wood Eros had never seen. Along its length ran a table, and the walls were adorned with pots, pans, jugs, and cooking utensils. There was an earthenware pit for flame and coal, and every few breadths was a door, each leading off to the unknown.

At once Eros’ mind was full of questions for Cane, “Why do you dwell in the tents outside if you have created this cave out of wood”?

But Cane was not listening, as his eye had caught movement out by the encampment.

“Quickly now”, he said, “let’s get you properly out of sight”, and in saying so, led her out one of the doors of the great hall up creaking wooden steps, the likes of which were previously unseen to Eros, and at their zenith another door, opening in to darkness and the scent of hay.

Eros stepped hesitantly into the darkness, and as her eyes adjusted she stopped, sensing the large forms in front of her. She took a step back to the safety of the doorway.

“Do not be afraid”, said Cane as he stepped forward boldly, laying a comforting hand on one of the great beasts.

“This is Thunder”, he said of the horse whose main his hand caressed, “and this is Flame. They are tamed by the hand of man, and they will not hurt you.”

Eros’ curiosity overcame her fear more quickly than she would have imagined, she had seen carvings of these marvelous animals before but to actually see them…
As she joined Cane her hand rose up to the mare’s mighty side and she could feel the gentle power of it.

Cane left her side and arranged the hay in the corner into a make shift mat, “rest a while over here, I will bring you food from the tents when the coast is clear, you need not worry of your father finding you in here”, he said, his hand tapping on the thick wooden infrastructure that surrounded them.

Even as Cane left, Eros found her utter exhaustion more compelling than the foreign beasts that shared a dwelling with her. She curled on the hay with her eyelids already seeking to shut, barely having the strength to wonder what sort of illness made a family live outside placing their beasts within…as sleep turned her fears to the softer stuff of dreams.

Cane, having seen to Eros’ safety, headed quickly for the encampment knowing he was late, well past the time to sup. And as he exited the enclosure he saw his father walking toward him, tall and thin with his great bow worn as always across his back.

Even before they reached each other the reprimand began, “Foolish child”, scolded his father, “what colossal waste of time has bidden you to delay your whole family.”
Cane knew better than to argue with his father so he lowered his head in submission, “I am sorry father.”
“Canaan”, said his father using his full name to relate the seriousness of his error, “you are almost a man, it is time for you to leave the games of youth and accept the mantle of adulthood…”
Cane raised his eyes and looked straight at his father, “I will”, he said, finally knowing that he meant it.

Cane’s father nodded and put a hand on his shoulder in reconciliation. Behind his father the rest of his family made its way up the hill, lead by the patriarch, whose long grey beard and ashen white robes distinguished him from the rest. His progress was slow and aided by a large staff, yet none of the younger members moved ahead or aside of him.

As Cane’s grandfather reached them he looked only at the ground, as if the weight of the world had been resting on him heavily and he had been bent by it in turn.

The elder placed a hand on Cane’s father’s shoulder much as his father had done to him a moment ago.
“Is you family gathered to you”, he asked gravely.
“Yes”, answered Cane’s father.

With this, the aged man allowed himself to look at the horizon where the clouds had turned deep black, occasionally illuminated by the glow of lightening within them. Even as he watched the air filled with a mist. Sharp stinging droplets that burned as they hit ones face.
The rain brought panic with it to those who gathered round, save for the elder, whose face only showed a sadness.

“It begins”, he said to Cane’s father, and then shouting so that everyone in the group could hear him, “It begins”!
Now the elder was more animated, and he strove with lively steps up the ramp to the enclosure.
“Cham”, he said calling Cane’s father by his given name, “take Canaan, stand at the entrance here”, he pointed with his staff to a position a few feet removed from the porthole.
“Yafes”, he yelled now, the whole ordeal beginning to resemble military efficiency, “grab that rope at you feet”.
“Shem”, he shouted, “the other mooring line…get it…now the both of you….pull…pull with all your hearts.”

As they stood in the great hall and pulled the ropes attached to the furthermost edges of the ramp to the enclosure, it ripped free from the grass and roots that held it to the earth all this time and creaking a deep groan of discontent it lifted into the air.
Shem’s wife’s brother was still upon it as it lifted and he strode inwards with several other members of the extended family.

“Back!” yelled Noah rapping his staff against the doorway, “this is not your journey.”
As their brother in law hesitated at the gateway, Shem protested even as he hoisted,”Father”, he yelled, “have but an ounce more mercy…”
Noah the patriarch turned now to Cane’s father, “Cham, the bow…”

Cham started at his father aghast, looking between the great patriarch and the face of his brother in law with whom he had just shared bread.

Cham was an expert archer with eyes as sharp as a hawk and steady hands that knew neither delay nor mistake in their movements. As a child he had mesmerized crowds by plucking an apple from a volunteers hand at twenty paces, and anyone who had joined him on a hunt knew that the moment the arrow was notched the doe was all but felled.

“Forgive me”, Cham said tersely to his brother in law as he loosened the strap to his long bow allowing it to hang at the ready of his swift arms.
The sight of that terrible black bow was enough to clear the ramp, and uncles and relatives shook their heads and stepped back to the ground.
Shem looked at Cham as if he had just placed poison in his soup.

“PULL”, shouted Cane’s grandfather at the top of his lungs, for the rain had changed character now and stung them like pellets at high speed, making them feel as they had just braved a hive full of bees with no honey to speak of.

Even within the enclosure the rain flew at them from all directions, rattling the pots and pans off the walls, shattering earthenware into pieces on the floor, even the sturdy wooden chairs at the table fell from the force of the winds.

Outside the family remnants crouched to the ground or pressed themselves to the ark with their hands covering their heads, limiting their exposure to the onslaught.

As the great door passed its fulcrum it began to rise more easily, and Noah stepped forward to grasp the lowest plank and help its ascent. He pressed his face close to it, and his great beard flowed un-tethered at the mercy of the winds, his robe billowing around him like a sail at sea.
“Pull”, he whispered in the effort to bring the giant gate forward, and as the wind got under it, it came all at once, smashing into the doorway with enough force to shake every piece of moss, dirt, and loose twig from between the slats of wood that had served as a ramp until now, showering the participants below with a hail of debris and grit for their hair and clothing.

Noah sunk back from the wall, feeling for the floor below him with his hands before he sat on it, he put a hand on his forehead and breathed a sigh of relief.
He stood now, after having his moments rest, and motioned to Yafes. “Take the last of the tar and the pitch that you brought with you”, he said wearily,” it must be tight to water before the hour is out.”

He turned then to the womenfolk, “be of some use…clean up this mess.”

He looked back at the door as it had made a strange noise, and then shook his head. Yafes stood in shock with his feet glued to floor.

“Pitch, man, pitch”, yelled Noah, “gather your senses, my child…”

The door separated from the doorway an inch or two at the very top, allowing some rain to spill in with a small cascade not unlike a waterfall, and then it opened further letting water coat the inner doorway deepening the color of the dry wood like a layer of dark blood.
“They are opening it from the outside”, said Cham, the first to solve the mystery.

Noah looked frantic for a moment with his eyes bulging he stared at his gathered sons.
“Cham” he commanded, “grab Yafes’ line and pull…Shem...pull…Yafes, you fool, seal it before we all drown in this wooden coffin.”

Noah himself ran to the long wall behind them and grabbed the bracing board from its hooks, surprising everyone with the ability to lift the thing mightily off of the wall and carry it across the room to the door.

Inertia and physics were on the side of the ark dwellers and the force Shem and Cham placed on the ropes slowly brought the door back into place…but not before they heard the cries of the rest of their family.

“For pity’s sake...” cried an uncle.

“Do not leave us to die…” cried the womenfolk.

For a moment the tide was reversed and the door opened more than it had originally as Shem’s brother in law managed to slide his thick arm in the side of the door.
“My child”, he yelled, “take my child, he knows no sin, he…”, but his plea ended as he withdrew his arm in pain and the great door closed once again.

Noah dropped the large bracing wood into the hooks on the door, locking the ark from the inside.

Yafes still stood as if bewildered by the world in general, a stance that was not all that uncommon for him.

“Useless beggar”, Noah muttered in condescension as he plucked the bucket of pitch from his eldest son’s hand.

“Help me” he said to Shem and Cham as water started to seep through the bottom of the doorway, “quickly now, get it sealed.”

Cane watched his father and uncle work diligently turning the great hall to a structure impregnable to water.

Noah seemed vexed at the raw execution of the whole ordeal, possibly having imagined it happening in a manner that was more free of human emotion.

They stood there silently, the raw power of the rains punishing the wooden exterior, and filling the ark with an odd resonance that did more than jar the ears, but tickled ones tongue and irritated ones nose, as if the vibration was jostling every bit of the sensory apparatus.

Cham turned to his father when the foul black goo had been spread over every crack.
“It is done.”

Noah righted one of the overturned chairs of the long table and let his weight sink into it. He rested a weary head in the palm of his hand with an elbow on the table, and used his free hand to search through the folds of his clothes for his pipe. A trace of fear momentarily crossed his face as he conjured that it had been left in the camp, but then his fingers felt its familiar form; and he pulled it from his robes eagerly lighting it from a nearby lantern.

“Careful with that”, said Yafes, eyeing him from across the long table, “we dwell now in a tinderbox awaiting its first strike.”

Noah looked sharply at Yafes from across the table through the tendrils of smoke that lazily rose from his pipe and nostrils. He had to speak loudly to be heard above the drone of the rains.

“Careful…yes”, he said to Yafes, “that is what you are… aren’t you..Why did you not pitch the door as I asked you to.”

“Because”, said Yafes, “I didn’t know if it was right.”

Noah turned away from Yafes who only ever caused him perpetual confusion.

He looked over the tiny remnants of his immediate family, the women hard at work cleaning the damage from the winds and water, Yafes as always perplexed with his latest conundrum, and Shem and Cham, standing ready to do his bidding, with nothing to distract them from the calls to mercy from outside the door.

Noah especially noticed the fear in little Canaan who stood so close now to his father’s side.

He clamped his pipe between his teeth and motioned them inwards from the door with his hands. His patriarchal instincts telling him it was time to gather them for a talk.

“Children, children”, he said calling them to the table, “you too Canaan, you are almost a man now.”

They took seats around the great wooden table that spanned the room each struggling to focus on Noah rather than the ruckus from the world outside.

Noah sat at the head of the table, grasping his staff in his right hand as his left tended his pipe, which he brought to his lips now, in consideration of the careful words that were needed to settle his family. The family he had not been able to bring close enough to God to truly understand their purpose.

“What we hear now”, he said through the plume of smoke that exited his lips with each spoken word, “are the sounds of an ending so horrible, only humanities evil to itself could have brought it, for God has no such ill will to man.”

The smoke filled the room, plugged as it was to the outside with tar and pitch, turning their living quarters into some mist filled morning too close to the moors. Noah spoke with great care, enunciating each word so that it’s critical importance was conveyed by both its meaning and the deep lines of concentration on his forehead.

Noah motioned his lit pipe to the door, “hearing the end…makes it difficult to realize that ends are necessary for new beginnings”, and he pointed now with the back of his pipe’s mouthpiece to each man at the table, “ you assembled here, are that new beginning, your seed…to sow the new worlds only fruit.”

Cane alternated between horror and confusion, “then you mean this storm..This flood…will cover all the earth under its waters.”?

The elder patriarch nodded his head solemnly.

Yafes was shaking his head, “It is wrong…it is a boast of evil from within a heart of our creator that should be filled with good, with mercy even …as mother to child.”
Noah had lost patience with Yafes years ago, as his eldest could not seem to heed the simplest of lessons.

“The great thinker then, has not familiarized himself with justice? With reward? With punishment?”, scolded Noah, “would you have a murderer walk free, a rapist carry on with his daily errands…have you not looked around you and seen humanity fallen to its knees in despair”?
Noah ground his teeth into the stem of his pipe as his anger flowed toward Yafes, and his eldest son fell silent under his critique.

Yafes as always was slow to answer, pondering every question as if he were chewing over a particularly stringy bit of meat, treasuring the flavor and texture of each bite.
“He intervenes now”, said Yafes slowly, “after remaining hidden through endless atrocity, and then punishes the guilty with the innocent crushing the both under one mighty hand?”

Yafes was shaking his head, “this is not justice…killing the worlds innocent children cannot be justice.”

As was often the case, Cham, Shem, and Canaan would sit and watch these debates with little interest, and their tired eyes shifted from one end of the table to the other as Noah and Yafes sparred at a sport that they could at best consider themselves to be captive spectators of.

Noah shook his head slowly at Yafes’ simple thoughts, as he eased his pipe in and out of his mouth, “Spoken by a man, with a man’s justice in mind”, he replied, “It is often that God takes a child back to heaven, and then as now we trust his judgment in having done what was needed. We do not trust in the hands of man that which we trust in the hands of God. He takes us all in the end, young and old, and makes the evils of our lives right and fair in a place beyond the bounds of our knowledge.…”

“Like David”, said young Cane, interjecting into the conversation, feeling his chance to participate had arrived.

“David?”, said Noah quizzically, straining memory to find a face that fit the name.
The look of earnestness on young Canaan’s face made Noah feel that it was all the more important that he remember.

“You’ve become confused, my father”, said Yafes, carrying on his conversation despite Canaan’s interruption, “for the justice of God there is room, but he does not have rights to destroy or cause suffering to the innocent on a whim simply because he has created us, or because he will treat us to just rewards in the life that takes place after…nor does the Lord believe himself so entitled…though the natural world may bring with it pain, the Lord himself wishes mercy on every child.”

Noah was ignoring Yafes’ prattling by now, and concentrating on Cane, “David..” he wondered again out loud while blowing another plume of smoke into the air.

“…and the Grindstone”, Cane prompted his grandfather.

“Oh”, said Noah, with the rush of the tragedy returning to him, “Of course”, David had been a childhood friend of Cane’s who, upon the fruition of one youthful afternoons play, had happened near a loose millstone that fell with the weight of a hundred men upon him crushing him from the waist down. Cane had waited with him there, and comforted him through the course of the night until death finally delivered him from pain.

“Yes, child”, said Noah, remembering the long talk they had had after the incident. “God has a special place for the innocents who suffer such tragedy..”

“And he would have helped if he could”, prompted Cane longing to hear his Grandfather proclaim the words of a benevolent God, as he had that night, in a voice louder than the deafening rains, “he would have lifted that stone if he could.”

Noah spread his hands wide to give Cane an idea of the measures they were speaking of, “God”, he said, “is a being of mercy and benevolence that are boundless…boundless. His good will..His intolerance of pain and suffering are as great as his might and his knowledge..Immeasurable. They are so large we cannot imagine the container that they might fill, and yet they overflow its sides.”

Noah silenced Yafes’ opening mouth with a finger in the air, “Yet the Lord has made a world with natural consequences, that has given man the free will to choose how he will live, for it is for this purpose alone that the universe exists, and for this purpose alone that God will contain his power and mercy behind a wall, lest man descend into a state of slavery, where he sees only God ;and choice diminishes to a mere word that proceeds what he knows he must do.”

Canaan seemed satisfied with Noah’s answer and began to feel a little better about the being that seemed to be in control of his family’s destiny.

“And is that, yet, not my point”, said Yafes ignoring the stern warning Noah had given him to silence, “If the small act of God lifting the millstone off David would have been so great a blow to natural order and free will so as to prohibit him from quenching his thirst for mercy…is it not clear, that here, at the end of all things, God in this great act, has revealed himself and shattered natural order and free will to kindling wood in the process” ?

“He who is bidden to silence, speaks, but talks not sense”, scolded Noah.

“Then listen carefully”, said Yafes, “that I may unfold it for you…if the Lord’s unlimited mercy is bound by the prudence of an undisturbed natural order and the maintenance of free will, then now…of all times we should witness it unbound from its constant harness, as a force beyond any forces ever encountered. Here..now..where the Lord reveals himself and destroys nature and free will, let us witness him as he is. Let us see him as we imagine him in our prayers and our hearts. Let us behold an act of kindness for the innocents equaling the act of destruction for the sinners, an act of mercy to the young and blameless more potent than even the waters that crush the guilty.”

“You speak riddles, as always”, Noah complained, “But it is not because you have fathomed the depths of knowledge, it is because you are trapped in your own misunderstanding of it. Indeed, it is with God’s mercy itself that he purges the world of evil and renews it for man.”

“What do you ask”, Noah continued in exasperation, “shall the lord make a rock he cannot lift, shall he turn a triangle into a circle for your amusement, shall he split the waters to spare the innocent and punish the guilty…”

“Why not” ?

“Because the Lord does not bend nature..”

“Yet behold it is broken…”

“Silence the both of you”, cried Shem, staring at the door in fear.

They all turned then, eyeing the entrance to the vessel meant to take them to the world made new, and strained their ears to be able to hear above the din of the rain.
It was a banging noise, weak and difficult to hear above the force of the waters, yet unmistakable, and it emanated a few feet above the top door jam, easily twelve feet from the ground outside.

“Anakim…” whispered Noah, looking at that moment as old as his six hundred years, his beard quivering as he spoke, his greatest fears realized.

“What is it father”, cried Canaan in fright, as he spun out of his chair and moved back towards the wall.

Cham’s face was pale with terror, but his hands steady and sure as he pulled the great bow off his back. His eyes stayed upon the entrance as he spoke to his son.

“The giants of old, my son, from the generation of Enosh they have roamed the earth”, said Cham through terse lips, “behind me, all of you”

“The inhabitants of Bashan”, murmured Shem as he dug through his belongings for his broad sword, pulling it franticly from its scabbard, “twice the size of a grown man, now they look for passage to the new world that will be born from this destruction.”

“Calm yourselves”, said Yafes observing the panic his family had slipped into, “it is all myths and storytelling, there are no giants…”

There was banging again from above the doorpost.

“That was a cubit higher than the last”, said Shem crouching low to place his weight below the sharp edge of his drawn sword, “Og himself may stand behind this door.”

Shem glanced at Cham, “prepare yourself my brother.”

Never removing his gaze from the doorway, Cham notched an arrow drawing the bow string with strong arms till the feathers at the back end of the shaft nearly tickled his eyelashes.
“Come then children of Kayin”, spoke Cham with icy calm, “we await you.”

“Madness all of you”, cried Yafes, grasping a frying pan from off the wall, he stepped boldly to the doorway.

“The fool has finally lost his mind”, cried Noah of Yafes, as his son tapped along the doorway with his frying pan, “will he do battle with the denizens of Bashan, or cook them breakfast,,, his mind is as weakened as his words suggest…back, child, back, stand behind your brother Cham.”

Yafes turned to his family, his investigation completed, “It is simple I assure you”, he stated, “ the water level has risen above the door, and those members of our family who cling to the arks outer dimensions in hope of safety are now well above our heads.”

Yafes taped the frying pan against the door again level to his head and listened to the dull thud, then grasping a plank for leverage and lifting himself into the air with one leg braced to the door, he taped above the post, where only hollowness echoed.

“Come closer”, said Yafes to his brothers, “and you will still hear their cries.”

Shem and Cham declined his offer and put away their weapons with chagrin.

Yafes returned to the table, never the look of perplexity leaving his face.
“My son”, said Noah, relieved not to be facing the terrible foe he had imagined, “there is wisdom in you..why must you remain so confused about the Lord.”

“For the God I pray to is one of unbounded mercy, he cannot be unmerciful any more than he could be less than all powerful and all knowing. When the constraints of free will and natural order are removed, I expect…omnibenevolence…a force of mercy so undeniably a part of the lord that it would be as apparent as the destruction that surrounds us.”

“Spare us your blabbering “, said Shem to Yafes, tiring of philosophical diatribe, and sore at being shown up by his brother. Even the terror of giants held more promise than this.

“But the act of mercy you await is upon you even as you do not see it”, said Noah aiming to lead his eldest back to the path, “God must destroy what has rotted to its foundation before he dares build upon it, the innocent life that may cry in fear outside this door is the necessary evil that accompanies the Goodness of returning humanity to a harmony in which it may finally realize the purpose of it’s very creation.”

“Father, I cannot imagine an all powerful God that suffers from the demons of ‘necessary evils’, for these are the troubles of men and lesser beings who cannot achieve that which they fully desire. If there be but one babe clinging to its mother in this awful tempest, that God cannot…nay, will not help; then all these years, my prayers have been directed to a being I have not fully known until this day.”

Noah smiled at his firstborn, “You have a kind soul in you, Yafes, and it pleases me to see it shine, but you view this miracle from too narrow a perspective, seeing through human eyes, that which is Divine wisdom.”

Noah continued, “above and beyond the concerns of any individual, innocent child to murderous adult, there are the grand concerns of the universe. Purpose child, purpose. What God accomplishes here makes suffering of children dim in perspective of the brightness that will be
achieved by a humanity that can choose its own ends…for the good.”

Yafes raised his hands to symbolize the world outside their enclosure, “this..”, he said, “this is not purpose.”

He let his hands drop to his sides in near exhaustion, “God’s purpose is to create a world where humanity may once again find its soul. What we see outside is not the purpose, but the method chosen by the Lord to accomplish it. He is a being who may choose from any method to accomplish his purposes because he has at his disposal unending power and knowledge. The fact that within this infinity of possibilities he has chosen to crush the babes with the sinners, makes me weary with sadness, for now I must worship a God whom I can only assume does not measure pain and justice by any scale I could ever want to be familiar with… and remain a human who is concerned for the suffering of others.”

“Child, you are so close to the truth, yet you cannot grasp it”, said Noah, almost pleading for Yafes to take the final leap of faith, “ the very fact that God has chosen this method to end the world shows without question that this is the path of maximum mercy, and minimal cruelty to the innocent ,through which his purposes could be accomplished…do you see that now…do you understand it now? It is simple…there is no other way.”

Yafes lowered his head in final resignation, nodding that he had in the end been convinced, yet his brow still remained furrowed.

“Yafes”, said Noah dubiously, “what yet could there be that would still trouble you” ?
“It is another matter, father..”

“Heavens above”, said Shem heatedly, “will you figure it out for yourself then, how long will you impetuously question the Lord who saves us and destroys all else..is this his thanks? Why not get down on your knees and beg his mercy for questioning him when you should be thanking heaven that you still breathe air instead of water.”

“Stay your harsh tongue”, Yafes said to his brother, “I merely puzzle over the ark at this point.”

“Speak, my son”, said Noah, never tiring of being the compassionate teacher.

“ you needn’t ask him”, mumbled Shem almost to himself, “he will continue to babble, bidden or not.”

“ I cannot fathom”, said Yafes, “how the water level could be so high, yet the ark be mired still in the soil, I would of thought once the waters were over the first deck we would..”

As if his words commanded the workings of the world, they felt a sudden emptiness in the pits of their stomachs, a soft rolling nausea followed by the need to grab the object closest to them that offered stability. The pans and vessels that lined the wall, hanging on nails and hooks, leaned first forward, than clashed back against the dry boards of the far wall.

“She moves”, cried Noah, standing with legs spread wide for balance, leaning heavily on his staff. And even as his family one by one crouched for safety or hugged the walls in desperation the ark filled with the frightened calls of the animal world, as countless denizens of the wild awoke in alarm.

“Get up, get up”, Noah urged his family,” we must tend to the animals, the domesticated must be calmed, the wild….must be double checked to be sure they are caged…especially those that could consume a man or child…quickly now.”

“It is too late”, cried Shem, and even as he stood, the ark swiveled on its axis, dropping both he and Cham back to the floor.

“There”, cried Shem pointing to the far hallway and fighting the urge to regurgitate his dinner, “something stirs outside of its cage” !

In the distance, a bare whisper above the rain, rung the sound of creaking steps, and whatever beast might of loosed it’s cage, padded downwards to Noah and his family.

Cham struggled against the vertigo that consumed him to free his bow, fighting his way to one knee he held his weapon horizontally reaching back to his quiver for an arrow.
“Do not kill it”, cried Noah, leaning now for stability against the table, though it slowly slid across the room, “the animal must be returned to its cage…destroy it..and destroy its kind forever!”

“What then”, cried Shem, finding his sword and holding it close, “shall we offer our necks to the lion gratefully..what of our kind, what of our lineage?”

Noah found his feet and his voice all at once, “have faith my child”, he said, “all that happens on this journey is a part of plan that has already been laid out for us.”

The beast tumbled down the last few steps in animal confusion and rolled out the doorway in puff of hay and twigs..it had become trapped in a feed sack from which it’s appendages jutted.
Seeing the small size of it Cham dropped his bow and pounced landing squarely upon it.

“It is just a swine”, yelled Shem in relief.

“Aaagghhh”, yelled the swine under Cham’s heavy grasp.

Even stuck pigs don’t squeal as this one did, and the family gathered about it, on unsteady legs, in curiosity and confusion. As Cham pulled the sackcloth down from the head of the thing, he was shocked to see the face of a little girl.

Noah’s face was inscrutable for a moment, as if the image did not register with him.

“No”, he said simply, as the child observed them in fear, “it is not possible.”

“Eros !”, said Canaan, running to her side, and pulling her from his father’s grasp.

As Noah observed her, his brows pulled low covering his eyes, and dark thoughts brewed and fermented the stuff from which dark deeds take root.

“She is with me”, said Canaan, sensing the dismay in his family.

At last Noah looked at his grandson.

“Child”, he said, “what have you done?”

Canaan opened his mouth to speak but Eros’ small frightened voice fell upon their ears first.
“It’s not his fault”, said Eros as she began to brush the twigs and hay from her hair, returning her countenance to that of humankind, “he has helped me run away from my father and sister who are evil to the very core, it is only through Canaan’s kindness that I am here.”

“I am sorry to disturb you in your wooden cave”, Eros continued addressing herself to the great elder before her, tilting her head all the way up to look at his face, “but I felt the earth move under me ,as if I were falling even though my feet touched ground, and the great beasts beside me near trampled my head.”

Noah saw the little thing shaking with fear, and merciful as he was, spoke to her, looking down on her small figure before him.

“What is your name, little one.”

“Eros”

Noah’s eyes were hidden behind his thick brows where they stayed shadowed for none to see.

“Are you hungry, child” ?

Eros hesitated for a second, wondering if she were overstepping her invitation… or lack thereof.

“Yes”, she said, starvation typically being the better motivation over manners.

“Canaan”, said Noah magnanimously, “take Eros to the table, and see to it that the womenfolk give her what to eat.”

Thrilled with Eros’ quick acceptance by his grandfather, Cane smiled at her, and led her by the hand, both walking on unsteady legs unadjusted to the ebb and flow of the waters that buffeted the ark like a small speck of dust on their surface.

As they carefully lowered themselves into their chairs at the table, bowls were placed in front of them with warm vegetable broth poured from leather flasks so that steam rose invitingly to their nostrils.

The days harried events made it easy to fall quickly into the feast, and it was only between slurps of soup and with a slightly scalded tongue that Cane managed to speak to Eros.
“Are you alright”, he asked, the spoon in his hand poised before his lips.
“Yes”, said Eros, though she was badly frightened, “I think I am…now.”
“”Do not worry”, said Canaan, “tonight I will show you things of amazement of which you have not even dreamed.”
Cane was smiling as he slurped another spoonful, “there are beasts in this dwelling, the likes of which defy the minds ability to understand.”
Eros looked at Cane, eyes wide, “I believe you”, she said, “all around me I can feel their movement, your castle is swayed to its very roots by the force of them.”
Cane was shaking his head, “No, that is another matter, Eros…do you hear the rains that surround us?”

Eros nodded, as their entire conversation took place with raised voice over the basal hum of the pounding waters.
Cane leaned closer to almost whisper it to her in a harsh rasp above the rains, “They cover the earth…dowsing it…cleansing it of human and beast!”

Eros looked confused, “Then everyone…”
“Do not think of them”, whispered Cane, “their time has passed for this earth, it begins again with us!”
He placed a hand over Eros’ and was happy that she smiled in return.

As Canaan and Eros talked and ate, Noah and his sons gathered at the far end of the long hall, their bodies slowly growing accustomed to the see saw motion of travel upon the newly formed ocean that had swallowed the earth whole. Noah leaned heavily on his staff, his body swaying to either side of it like a pendulum as the boat rocked.

Noah spoke in low tones so as not to be overheard by the youngsters.

He was shaking his head, “I cannot piece it together”, he complained, “what is the meaning of this intrusion…it is a conundrum that leads me only in circles back to the start of my thoughts.”

“What is there to think on”, hissed Shem, as he leaned against the wall for support, “her place is under the dark waters that surround us, as commanded by the Lord himself…”

“You do not know the Lords mind”, cautioned Yafes, “it is possible she is meant to be here, an innocent that will be an example of God’s mercy to his creations.”

“Fool”, said Shem to Yafes, “I do know the Lords mind, as revealed to our father and now become truth and fact before our very eyes. Whether by the waters smothering curse or by the edge of the blade…his will be done.”

Shem was fingering the hilt of his broad sword.

“Stay your hand and know this”, said Cham abruptly, “she who sits and dines with my son, is under my protection.”

Shem’s face was red, “Then I hope your arrow reaches far enough to strike the very heavens, for it is God’s wrath that you incur upon all of us.”

“This riddle knows no answer”, Noah said bitterly, “If she was meant for the waters than why hath the lord placed his burden on our backs. Nay…it is not the place of man to destroy man. If the Lord deem it fit he will see to it himself.”

Shem ‘s face had turned from red to the livid purple of rage that is barely contained.

“Aye”, he said, his voice choked with emotion, “Save it was you, father, who took care to close the door, you, who denied entry of my wife’s brother, you, who refused his innocent babe.”

Shem punctuated his reply by pointing the back of his sword at his father menacingly, “do not fain innocence in front of those very eyes that have witnessed your actions.”

“You”, said Shem pointing at Cham, “cleared the way with the threat of an arrow to the heart, and you, old man”, he said tapping Noah on the chest with the large handle of his weapon, “closed the door upon the world, innocent and guilty alike. Even the endless waters of God’s rage cannot wipe the blood off your hands.”

“I did as instructed by the Lord himself”, protested Noah.

“Well then, for the diligent pupil, one task remains”, said Shem.

“He may speak truth”, said Yafes slowly, even as Shem and Noah stared each other down in anger, “though I like not where it leads, we have indeed entered a pact with the lord, and have agreed to be his new humanity, willingly we have joined our hands with his and cooperated in the exclusion of our brothers and sisters, even when closing this great ark door meant their very extinction. We were not asked, not did we proceed to gather the young and free of sin at the outset of this journey… ”

“What we face now may be more painful to our hearts..” said Yafes, “But if this is the singular way that the Lord may return humanity to its purpose…”

He shrugged his shoulders, leaving the last unsaid.

“What tiny god is this”, said Cham angrily, “whose great plans are flummoxed by a women child of nary eleven summers?”

Cham shook his head and fingered his bow, “He would have to be a mouse of a God…I would put him in my pocket and feed him cheese.”

“Bite your tongue”, said Noah harshly.

A bolt of lightning split the air just outside of them jarring even the bold bowman to a start.

Noah spoke again, “do not underestimate the power of one human life”, said the patriarch, “ the name of this child speaks to me of the evil of women, she could be the poisonous seed that destroys humanity for a second time.”

Noah spoke more quietly now, barely audible above the savaging winds outside, “I have seen dim visions of the future, my children, upon those times when the Lord dwells with me.”
“I do not know if they are dreams of what could be or what will be, but I have glimpsed times when but one evil man, may change the course of all men’s thoughts, to the destruction of many.”

“Aye, then”, said Cham, “this God has only one method to train a child from evil to good…the sword? Are you sure he has the great powers then that you always speak of?”

“His power is all around you”, said Noah shaking his head, “do not question it. It is a sad path the lord has asked us to walk to our better future, but such is our destiny.”

“Father”, said Yafes, “Although I understand the Lords purpose, I fear that if we take the life of this young child, we ourselves may become the poison of the new world, each of us a bitter seed that will sow only future generations of murder and fear.”

Noah nodded his head, recognizing the problem.

“It is too late for your concerns, Yafes”, said Shem, “for this poison is already thick in our veins. We have already as best as committed this sin a dozen times today, I did not hear your protest as the door of this vessel closed, when my family begged for mercy; and I have no ears for your belly aching now.”

“It was all of our families”, corrected Cham, “we have all had to make this sacrifice for God’s will.”

Shem locked eyes with Cham before he spoke, “Yes, my brother”, he said, “and it appears you and Canaan will have to make it one more time.”

“Enough”, said Noah, adding finality to the conversation, “this noose around our necks has no easy knot to untie, and yet there is work to do.”

“Shem…Cham…forgive each other your words of spite, and check on the wild beasts that they are caged, use your weapons as a deterrent, wound if you have to, but save the lives of our precious cargo.”

“Yafes”, continued Noah, “you and I will split the lodgings of the domesticated beasts, make sure they are calmed and fed..”

“Tonight”, said Noah, “I will pray to the lord, that he may visit with me and provide a way out of this darkness.”

“But for now”, said Noah, “No harm shall come to this child.”

Canaan watched from the table as the group broke up to accomplish their various tasks, and was quick to pull Eros away from her soup in search of new adventure.
“Come with me”, he ordered, pulling her along by the hand, “horses and hay are the least of this boats miracles, I will show you true wonders.”
So despite the wagging fingers and shaking heads of the womenfolk Canaan and Eros slipped out the nearest doorway leading them up and to the right.

Both Eros and Canaan used their hands against the walls as they ascended the stairs, as it was difficult to climb as one was being tossed like a salad. The doorway that they reached was sealed shut with a smelting of carved wax and filler of woven flaxseed strands, with an overlying pitch gloss, that closed the entrance as if a spider had spun a half melted web over the portal. In its middle was stone of clear crystal which Canaan pressed his face to.

“Look”, he urged, as Eros pressed her nose to the makeshift window.
Inside stretched an opening that made the great hall look as if it were a cramped closet. It was Acres that stretched out before her, she felt she might be looking out over her family farm at dusk, the far wall was at the end of a horizon length of empty space.

“It is impossible”, she said simply.

“It is space”, said Canaan, “that the Lord has bent to make it bigger”, his repetition of Noah’s explanation falling short of the true complexity, but enough to satisfy Eros.

“Then nature is a plaything to him, he breaks it at a whim.”

Canaan nodded.

“Why has he created such a wondrous empty room and placed nothing within?”

“It is not empty”, replied Canaan, the beginnings of a smile starting to peak out from his mischievous face, “look again.”

Eros peered hard through the crystal window, allowing her eyes time to adjust to the darkness. She noticed that the walls and floor were not hard but mossy, with fuzzy borders, and even as she stared off into the distance the frantic legs and abdomen of a beetle the size of her head scampered across the clear glass.

“Aaahhhh”, screamed Eros, giving into the visceral need to pull her face from the window in a motion so abrupt it hurt her neck.

Cane was strategically placed to catch her, laughing at her discontent.

“I hate you” she complained, “and that room is disgusting.”

Cane released his grip on her shoulders reluctantly.

“It is every creeping insect of the world.”

“How can that be?”, she protested indignantly, “it would take a hundred years to collect half of those...crawling..”, she shivered rather than finishing her description.

“My grandfather has been collecting for six hundred years”, said Canaan, “my Uncle Yafes likes to say that several species were already living in his beard… so he had a head start.”

Eros smacked his head while he laughed, “If you don’t stop being disgusting I won’t continue on your tour.”

“Come with me”, said Canaan undiscouraged, and lead her up a level on a spiral stair case that made them both dizzy. At its apex was the ceiling in the form of a trap door, which Cane pushed up with all his strength.
Eros entered the abode above her in such wonder that for a moment her mind knew no words to describe her surroundings, an enormous dome of a room of which she could see neither end, all around her were potted plants, many as large as trees, and upon every branch perched a winged creature.
The color of it literally exploded from every angle, the pink pelicans, the parrots, the finches, the…
Even her heart paused with her mind, as the enormous eagle flew majestically over her head eyeing her as a curiosity that had entered its world.
Humming birds buzzed swiftly past her ear, even as she turned to witness a majestic peacock, strut haughtily up to them.
“I could live here all of my days in happiness”, murmured Eros, as she found her words, but Canaan was already leading her down and away from heaven as he closed the door behind them he smiled at her.

“There is more to see.”

He led her lengthwise through the ark now, walking her swiftly through cramped wooden corridors. Ducking under doorposts that ran low and slanted, until he finally reached one of the arks few bits of metal in the steel bars that made up the entrance to the room in front of them. Even seeing the Iron unmolested by their tempestuous journey, Cane could not shake the tension as he walked towards the door in front of him. Sensing his fear, Eros slipped behind him, only her head peeking out from aside his shoulders.

The Lion that obliged their spontaneous meeting did not need to roar to instill fear, for as it walked slowly to the gate of its cage it towered over Cane, it’s enormous head filling the width of porthole. It’s flat yellow eyes knowing only death, it’s mind bent only on the hunt. It made Cane feel weak just to look at it, and no matter how many times he had stolen his thoughts to bravery his legs felt queer and flat when he approached the lion, as if caught in a dream where one is chased but their feet are too heavy to lift off the ground and run.

Eros was hiding completely behind Cane at this point, and she whispered to the back of his head, “let’s go…let’s go.”

The Lion produced a slow deep murmur from inside his throat a soft grumble that sounded like thick iron chains sliding passed one another, it was almost hypnotic, and Cane stood, mesmerized by the very power of the thing that wished his brutal death in its heart.

Nature’s mercy froze him in place before the great killer, in recognition that before such power there was only submission and acceptance of one’s fate.

The spell was broken by Cham’s bow rattling against the bars, startling both the lion and his son.
“Back!”, he yelled fiercely at the lion, showing no fear, crashing his bow against the bars again, “Back!”

Shem then joined him from the side passage that had brought them to the same location as Eros and Canaan. He walked with a limp, and there was blood on the handle of his broadsword.
Cham grabbed Canaan by the lapel and pushed both his son and Eros back even as he eyed the beast, holding it’s gaze, one hunter to another.

Canaan noticed the blood on his father’s chest even as his father spoke, “Shem”, said Cham, “check the integrity of the bars.”

Cham notched an arrow and took carful aim at the lion over his brother’s shoulder, as Shem pulled harshly on every rung.

“It holds”, he said, warily eyeing the king of the jungle.

Cham turned to his son, “it is not safe for you or Eros to wander now”, he said, “we have just re-caged a cougar on the third deck, and it was no easy task.”

Looking thoughtfully at Eros, Cham continued, “there are beasts here” , he said, shifting his gaze to his brother, “who could easily kill a child like yourself.”

Shem stared back at him with eyes as black as polished onyx.

“Bring Eros to your mothers quarters, she will bed there the night, and close the door after yourself..”

“but father…”

“Do it…and be fast about it.”

Shem spoke to Cham in a voice that was both weary and fearful, “which fate will you choose first, my brother, the gorillas, or the panther, for death may find us at either door.”

Cham wiped the sweat from his brow, and motioned to his brother, “come, we will see which dwellings we happen on first, and meet fate as men.”

As the two men brushed by them Cane and Eros descended the steps back to Cham’s quarters, where Cane dutifully placed Eros under the care of his mother, and she turned to look at him and wave goodnight as she disappeared behind the curtain of beads that hid the world of women.
Cane himself went to his father’s room and rested himself on his father’s bed, a simple mat of straw in the corner of the room.
It was several hours before his father returned and Cane’s eyes had grown heavy from the long day.
“Where there many more animals?”, asked Cane, rousing himself with curiosity.
“No child”, said his father as he sunk to the ground leaning against the post of the doorway balancing his bow across his lap, “there is nothing left here that hunts you.”

Cane felt more secure now, “then come rest, father”, he said rolling over to make more room.

“I will rest myself here tonight”, said his father placing his quiver beside him at the doorway.

“Are we not safe”, said Canaan raising his head to ask the question.

“We are”, said his father uneasily, “Take some rest my son”, he said smiling at his boy, and sleep took Cane quickly.

Morning broke with confusion, as his father shook him from dreams and warmth. “Come quickly”, he said, as Shem waited in the hall.

“Where is it”, asked Cham urgently of Shem.

“ I lost it near the second deck”, he said out of breath, “the wound on my leg has stiffened overnight, and I could not keep it’s pace.”

“Rest yourself”, said Cham, as he pulled a dagger from his belt.

“Canaan”, he called his son, “take this and hold it close to your body, the time to be a man is upon you.”

He turned to face his son as he handed him the blade by its handle.

“Quick jabs at the face, and the nose, and the pads of the paw…never show fear…never show hesitation.”

Cane felt himself begin to tremble involuntarily.

“The Lion?”, he asked

“Chewed through the wood next to the bars”, said his father as Shem nodded.

Even as Cham started out the door Cane hesitated, “but father”, he said, and then became embarrassed to speak in front of his uncle, “I am…”

Cham stood impossibly tall and strong before his son, “do not fear, my boy”, he said, his character built out of confidence itself, “how do you think that mangy beast was put in a cage in the first place.”

Cham winked at Canaan, and Cane followed him down the hallway.

As they left Shem looked after them, and as they turned the corner he walked to the women’s dwelling and pushed back the curtains and beads that gave them privacy.

“The girl”, he commanded simply, and as Eros appeared at the doorway, freshly awoken with her hair askew, he smiled at her, “the great elder wishes to see you…”

As Cane followed his father down the hallway his father spoke back to him, instilling the experience he had gained as a man of the wild.
Cham navigated swiftly through the maze of hallways with his back to the walls and his bow at the ready.
“Canaan, listen carefully, the lion rules the jungle through fear, because he is not as powerful as his name suggests. An elephant may trample him, his pride may turn on him and rip him to shreds…”
“Fear is his most potent weapon”, said Cham, “it is what prevents him from being challenged , and to master him you must shed your fear of him.”
“But he might tear me to bits with one paw”, said Canaan, not realistically envisioning himself losing fear in the near future.

“Child”, said Cham, “a being of true power does not need to rule through fear, the Lion does it because deep down he is a lazy beast, most interested in eating and mating, in truth he does not even hunt, but scavenges from the kill of the lioness. He wants to sleep more than he desires the sting of a good fight, and when you remind him that you know his true nature his power turns to dust.”

Cham bent to the floor and sniffed the ground.

“Do you track him” ?

“No”, said Cham, “I detect no scent at all.”

“Follow me”, said Cham to Cane, “we will track him from his cage.”

Cham bounded up the steps to the lion’s den with his bow poised like some beautiful instrument he might play, the twang of its string the last note for a lullaby of eternal sleep, but he stopped short at the bars of the lions gate where the beast sat eating it’s meal behind the steel of the enclosure.

“But…”, said Cane.

Cham’s head fell forward in shame, and there was anger in his eyes when he lifted it again.

“Father I do not understand…”

“There is not much time…”, said Cham, “and I fear Eros is in danger.”

“But the lion sits behind steel bars?”

Cham looked at his son’s innocent eyes, sad that the evils of the world would visit him so young, “my child, there are more fearsome monsters than lions and tigers, and oft they dress in the skins of men.”

“Where is Eros”, said Canaan in a scared voice, not understanding his father.

Cham thought for a minute and then understood.

“The Aviary.”

Canaan could barely keep up with his father as he raced through the halls.

“I love this room above all else”, said Eros to Shem, as he opened the trap door and the cries of birds filled her ears, “It is a small taste of heaven.”
“Then let it be the first taste of many to come”, said Shem, as he walked toward Noah at the far end of the room, sealing the door behind him.

“Dear child”, said Noah walking forward from a small figure in the distance until they reached him, ”come, there is something I would like for you to see.”
“As you wish”, said Eros, glad to be extending her relationships beyond Cane and his father, even Uncle Yafes was present at the far wall.
Noah escorted her by the hand to a patch of leather that covered a bit of the far wall, and the four of them clustered around it.

“What is it?”, asked Eros of the great elder.
Noah cleared his throat, “it is…the one defect in the wall of the ark… a window through which we will send a winged emissary after the rains, to see if the world is once again safe for human life.”

“It will be exciting then”, said Eros, running he hand over the leather covering to the outside world, her hand feeling the pitter patter of rain against it, “to step forth and rebuild the world anew, I am proud to be amongst your family, and greatly honored that you chose to speak with me, my lord.”

Noah fingered his staff uncomfortably, surprising himself by glancing at Shem for reassurance.
“But, my child, that is just the problem, you see, and there is no potion to make this easier to swallow, but”, Noah grasped his staff as he reached the point of his talk, “you were not meant for the new world, my dear, you are not a part of the future that goes forward, but you are a part of the past that must be left behind…”

Eros turned pale and felt her stomach churn, “but you cannot mean…”

“He does”, ventured Shem, having little patience for ceremony, “so let’s get on with it.”

Eros began to realize she was fighting for her very life, “but how can you be sure”, she argued.

“He can’t” said Yafes, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“We can”, said Noah becoming angry, “God has visited me many times and specified the exact number to be included on this voyage, and has done so again last night”, he let out a sigh, “make no mistake, it is the will of the Lord.”

Yafes shook his head, “it is a test of your morals you old fool, hold fast to what you know is right.”

“How is it a test”, cried Shem, “when every other child sinks low in the waters, their bellies full of silt, as we speak, by the hand of lord himself.”

“Leave your cruel descriptions for another time”, said Noah to Shem, “listen to me child, and pay not head to my sons, there is another life after this one… a better one, and your road towards it lies at the bottom of the dark waters that surround us.”

Noah pulled harshly on the leather trimmings that surrounded the opening in the wood, and they fell, revealing to the assembled a land shattered by the hand of god. Dark and cold, covered by the thick clouds and night air, a rain so potent each drop looked like a fist, and the waters hissed as they were beaten to a boil by the constant bombardment from the heavens above.

“My child”, said Noah, staring at her from behind a long beard, his face buried under it, his eyes rimmed with kindness and understanding, “spare us the sin of sending you over, choose for yourself the destiny you have been appointed by the master of the universe himself.”

Eros looked at the large men that surrounded her, Shem was nodding his head, holding as always the broadsword secured at his hip. Yafes, shook his head, warning her of perils she could only too easily see.

She turned to Noah, “I believe that which you say, for you are a prophet of the Lord no doubt, and I have seen his miracles, he is no simple conjurer of coins and rabbits, but…”

“Yes, my child”, said Noah.

“but…I am afraid”, said Eros finally giving in to tears, as she looked at the world outside, “because I don’t know how to swim.”

“Have mercy, lord, mercy”, prayed Yafes to the God of the angry skies.

“My patience is through”, said Shem to Eros, “little woman, it is not to swim that we send you, but to sink like a stone to the depths of the sea.”

“Shem”, scolded Noah.

“What father, what is it you wish”, cried Shem, “let us fulfill God’s will, lest he turn this craft to lead, and remake Adam from dust as in the beginning.”

“You may not kill this child”, said Yafes.

“Nor will we”, said Shem, “we place her back where the hands of her maker intended her, he may do with her there, as is his wish, as he has done to every other innocent child that walked the earth. You have said yourself, free will and natural order are corrupted by this miraculous event, so god will be free to do with her what he will.”

“EROS!!!”

Cane’s muted cry came from behind the locked trap door.

Shem turned now to Noah.

“This is the last chance to do God’s will, in a moment the great bow of your son will be upon you, and before you can tell him of God’s decree, we may all have been pierced by the sharp end of his arrows.”

The look on Noah’s face was terrible. It was pain and conscience, duty and regret, all at once.

His staff rose to touch Eros’ belly as she stood before the open window.

“Please”, she begged, looking at his eyes, “I am scared.”

“Forgive me…my child”, he said, and with a gentle push, no more than nudge, she fell silently into the darkness below…

“I am sick”, said Yafes, and he slowly crouched to the floor by the window.

The trap door burst open and birds flew in every direction, squawking and showering multicolored feathers in abundance. Had Eros been present she surely would have enjoyed the sight of it.

It was Cham’s strong shoulder that broke the door and he came up first, easing in to a run across the great room, followed by Canaan close at his heels.

Cham opened his mouth to shout inquiry of Eros, but fell silent as he saw Yafes curled at the open window…for in his heart, he already knew…

“Eros”, screamed Canaan in ignorance, “where are you?…what have you done with her?…”

Noah tried to intercept him before he reached the window, but he dodged his grandfather’s arms and leaned his upper body out into Armageddon itself.

“Eros!!”, he screamed searching the black oceans for a sign, as the rains pelted his back.
As lightning kindled a fire in the heavens he thought he caught sight of a bobbing head among the foam caps of the waves, and upon instinct dove to save his beloved.

But the sharp grip of his father was upon his ankle, with hands as strong as steel that has bested cougars and tamed lions.

Even as he let his son struggle till his strength was spent, Cham spoke to Noah, “I will serve you on this journey as I have sworn, but when we reach land, broken will be the bonds of our family, and expect neither mercy nor respect from your son.”

Noah bowed his head in anger, mumbling curses.

Cham pulled Canaan from the window, for his son was limp and sobbing, and carrying him like a babe, he walked away from his assembled family.

Shem patted Noah on the back, “you have done what is right in the eyes of the lord, and walked in his ways… I will always be your son, and you may always call on me.”

As Shem took his leave, Noah turned and lowered the leather covering of the window, closing the episode in his mind as best he could.

He reached a hand out to Yafes and helped him from the floor.

“Are you alright , my son”, he said.

Yafes looked at him with red rimmed eyes.

“Are you, my father?”

“Yes”, said Noah, “for I have done what the lord has asked.”

“You have killed a child.”

“No”, said Noah, “I have returned her to the lord’s wrath, where she belongs.”

“You must find a way out of your doubts”, said Noah to Yafes, “the lord does that which is right.”
“Yes, father”, said Yafes, “I will worship, always, his power, and fear him all my days, and I have come to understand him much……….better than I did before his great miracle.”

“Good, my son”, said Noah rubbing some warmth into Yafes’ back with his hand, “Good.”

For Eros the fall down the side of the Ark was short, and the intense fear she felt was replaced almost instantly by a shocking sensation of cold as she hit the waters. She quickly discovered that swimming was but thrashing about in fear for one’s life, and by instinct alone she made for the side of the Ark, hoping to grasp onto it and re-board. But even as her fingers tried to grip the sides they slipped over its slimy exterior, and the waves quickly washed her away.

For a moment she thought she heard Cane’s voice, and she screamed his name in hopes of what she did not know, perhaps just to be heard…but there was no answer.

The Ark seemed to be propelled by some force greater than the currents, and as each flash of lightening lit the horizon it was further and further away, until it faded from the dot it had become on the horizon.

Alone, Eros felt tears surge once again, and she conjured that she added to her own demise by a few ounces that dribbled down her cheeks into the watery bath where she would end her life. The worst of it was the solitude, for in between the bolts of lightning she was alone in the cold and dark; So black and empty, that she could not tell if her eyes were open or closed. And having never faced death before, the terror of it made her close her eyes and wish even for the hard hand of her sisters discipline, just so that it be in the warm sunlight of her backyard.

Finally her arms grew tired and her fingers and toes numb, and she spoke to the lord, imagining how angry he was at her for having contributed to the world gone wrong, to have punished her to her death.

“I am sorry, my master”, she said, her words forming vapor in the cold air. “And I hope you have a warm place for me in the life that takes place after this one.”

“Though”, she added, as she began having trouble keeping her head above the waves, “if you could find it in your graces to spare me the swallowing of this salty ocean, I would return to you my honest thanks and praise…”

Eros spoke with God for as long as she could, figuring that he must have a spot of compassion for little girls who fell off of Arks.

Eros waited quietly and patiently for an answer, trying not to let terror take her heart as she realized that she could no longer feel her arms and legs and that they could no longer support her. She spoke with God again, but by now was fairly sure that he was occupied with his miracle, and could not listen.

It was a terrible sensation when the final moment came, as her neck craned to keep her nose above water, for she had the certain knowledge that she could not maintain this pose forever, and she knew the salty waters that burned her throat and made her cough would soon fill her body, and she feared the moment she would not be able to gasp for air.

She thought of Canaan and it calmed her that perhaps she would meet him again in another life. She wondered if he would be the same mischievous child, planting frogs and bugs and scaring the devil out of everyone. She hoped he wouldn’t change a bit. She wondered if God had once been in love with humanity, like the love that she had for Cane. A feeling that was young and new, and full of forgiveness, and why he had lost it and turned to anger.

Eros felt sure that even though God had no mercy available for her in this world, that he might be far more giving in the next one, and as her head finally slipped under the waves, she felt nothing but love for God, and faith in his justice.

Honorary member ?

2007-10-09T08:33:00.000-07:00

I read this yesterday, and was amused out how different people become irritated by religious inconsistencies in different ways.

I had read Twain's "little Bessie" before, but this selection http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/twain/letearth.htm apparently published only posthumously is even a bit more biting. He would of made a good addition to any frum skeptics group.

Use it or Lose it

2007-10-08T17:19:00.000-07:00

Sitting around the Yom Tov table with my wife’s family, a casual truce is struck between her hyper-religious Lakewood based cousins, and her hyper-secular Israeli Uncles, via the very same policy the military employs: Don’t ask, don’t tell.

And so there is little chance of anyone prying into the actual details of anyone’s life in an area which religious judgments could be rendered.

And what, pray tell, is an area where religion has not intruded upon, from which table conversation might sprout?

Alas, there are precious few islands of banality about which to chatter, and the silent stretches between requests to pass the brisket become quite maddening, making one feel they are participating in some dour Pre Victorian banquet, save the corsets and wigs.

I therefore found it surprising when one of the Lakewood hosts, led off with what must have been her interpretation of uncontroversial material!

The method, by which, she attained food stamps on a regular basis by never having “married” via US civil documents, but by religious means alone. Thus her status as a single mother of 8, provided for the food on the table.

These details were relayed with vivid instructional prose, as if hoisted from some hidden volume of, “Lakewood governmental fraud for dummies”, to a young maidel of nary eighteen who absorbed them from across the table with unblinking eyes as this miraculous fountain of “how to” opened up in front of her.
Now the concepts of fraud in ultra orthodox communities are tired, and old hat to this here veteran blogosphere we all live in. But it was the contrast that got to me.

That tiptoeing through the potential mousetraps of a family with such diverse and strongly held beliefs, that this girl found this to be the “safe” territory she could fall back on. I think this is revealing of her own mindset in more than one way. And that not only did she not find her actions reprehensible but she projected her tolerance upon every other person there, assuming the reflection of her inner psyche would essentially be identical to the others at the table.

It reminds me of atrophy. Look at a stroke victim, look at paraplegic. The unused limbs shrivel to thin caricatures of their former selves…stick figures, stick limbs.

Is it possible that a neglected moral compass withers, and at long last no longer points in any particular direction? Does relegation of all moral decisions to a cryptic code that must be digested for you by a Rabbi and then communicated via a statement of, “you need to do this”, condemn the minds moral musculature to fade away?

Is this the unbidden side effect of Orthodoxy?

Is this the central theme..the goal of Orthodoxy?

Tzorech Iyun.

Stairway to Heaven?

2007-09-01T16:32:00.000-07:00

With its back to the wall, pinned tight by theodicy and internal inconsistency, snarling ferociously like a trapped animal ready to sink its teeth deep in the fight for its very existence; the oft heard refrain of Orthodoxy is the invocation of the Ethereal Scaffolding.

The invisible structure…the translucent backbone extending from meager earth to the realm of God’s throne itself. The mitzvahs strewn about as a toehold here… a finger hold there. The savvy climber making his way carefully up, finding his path not with lowly vision and touch, but ascending each rung through a belief that his hand grips something stronger than mere material; always having known that his journey into Kingdoms on high was guaranteed by careful application and dutiful observance of the dictates given in the Torah.

And so understanding becomes less important…it becomes unimportant:

Those bothersome brushes between biblical law and what appears to be “right” to human sensibility. The agunos, amalek, Godly wars of pernition, the akedah.

There is no need to belabor these difficulties with puny human morality. God’s instruction are not a moral conundrum, but a series of directives through which humanity can reach true peaks. Thus it behooves us not at all to ponder the frictions between the divine and mundane appreciation of right and wrong.

What a woefully inadequate use of time!!

The smart traveler has already fixed his ropes and begun the ascent while the thinker mires himself in confusion. There is only one way to the top and the clock is ticking.

Those who have started the climb early, never looked down and pined in their hearts only for the summit… may touch it. And at the awesome pinnacle stand only a few, having indeed reached what can only be described as hyper-spirituality through mitzvahs. A state in which they have such heightened sensitivity to the shechina that they exist on a different level than the masses, privy to a true and unspoiled relationship to the divine. Here they can appreciate the momentous effect of every word and action and it’s consequence upon the world. Here they can view their bewildered followers down below and shout encouragement, instruction, and the wisdom of ages.

For those whose arms have weakened in the climb, for those who pitifully embrace the sheer mountainside, stranded below the crevice in the rock they cannot will themselves to reach for, they may stare up. And from the heights of holy knowledge, from the zenith of human accomplishment, rains down understanding and ideology dappled and resplendent with jewels pried from the Heavenly Throne itself.

Occasionally, such a Gem is made available to the masses…

"Is it any wonder if, heaven forbid, soldiers are killed in a war?" Rabbi Yosef said during his weekly Saturday night sermon. "They don't observe the Sabbath, they don't observe [the laws of] the Torah, they don't pray, they don't put on phylacteries every day. Is it any wonder that they're killed? It's no wonder. May the Almighty have mercy on them and bring them back to religion.”

Oh, How it shines!!!

It makes one want to thank the Aibishter for giving us people who have immersed themselves in the Torah and Mitzvahs exclusively so that they can access this higher plain.

And what is it to us if this Justice is as bawdy and primitive as the Dark Ages? What care to us if from such wisdom God’s reflection is cast as simplistically and demonic as a casual dealer in death and control?

If this is the view as seen from unobstructed mountain tops, if this is the image through cloudless skies, what right do we have to complain from within our shroud of darkness and confusion?

And be not bothered, my brethren, by the jarring discordance with the reality, that religious soldiers are killed by the Dozen, for reality is a trifle compared to the divine wisdom: true arbiter of what is real and imagined.

And be not bothered, my brethren, by the Jarring lack of sensitivity to the loved and lost of countless families, for, if the culmination of a lifetime of spiritual grooming through unblinking subservience to torah and mitzvot have resulted in this callousness beyond description, then it must in reality be a kindness beyond compassion that is misunderstood through our dim eyes.

Indeed, do not engage in fruitless and idle speculation as to how a Godol could have, not just a gapeing hole in his soul where compassion should sit screaming, “think of those who have lost members of their families”; but a new malignant growth in its place, so bitter and poisoned , that it allows him to open fresh wounds on those grieving their dead, with an un-furrowed brow and a clear conscience.

And don’t for a moment entertain the thought, harbor the doubt, or commit the averah of kefirah beyond kefirah; to question whether a life of torah and mitzvoth have any impact on the morality or sensitivity of an individual…at all.

Don’t dare be brazen enough, to wonder why becoming a Talmudic mentat capable of delivering memorized Aramaic like so many phone numbers from a telephone book, would ever have anything to do with achieving a sensitive and moral outlook. Because to do so would be an insult to everything the torah true world is about.

Torah, Mitzot, are the impeccable system put in place by Hakodosh Boruch Hu himself as our mechanism for finding him in the thick blackness of a material world.

Don’t think, even in your heart of hearts, whether blatant examples of complete immersion in Torah resulting in nothing more than bias and crude behavior, should lead you to wonder if the Torah and mitzvot are really the tools you have been taught they were, because God can hear even your innermost thoughts and punish you accordingly.

Indeed, from your lowly position and mine, it would appear to be best not to think at all. In the end, who are we to question someone who has spent a lifetime singularly devoted to orthodoxy and God, following every commandment to such stern aplomb, that our compared observance seems shriveled and lifeless by comparison.

No…Let’s best leave it in the hands of those wiser, and closer to the source than we are like Eli Yishai, Shas Chairman and Cabinet minister:

"My rabbi does not err," Yishai told Army Radio. "Everything he says is the word of God."

The Best Shabbos Ever

2007-06-10T17:21:00.000-07:00

Rabbi Beadenstock had become something of an expert on wind currents, and even as he pulled into the closest parking space, his eyes scanned the trees from behind thick glasses: absorbing the nature of every branch bent back against its will, every leaf that fluttered freely against the backdrop of a moody grey sky. He opened the door a crack first in preparation for his exit, and then deftly popped out of the drivers seat in one motion, tilting his head so that the brim of his black Borsalino faced the howling gusts edge on, affording the devilish elements no purchase.

At such times the forced memory of that horrible Shabbos morning came upon him, when a rogue gale had whooshed out of nowhere, whisking his hat off his head for a two block ramble with him in feverish pursuit behind it. His yarmulke had dislodged in tandem, but tacked as it was, with bobby pins, to the long strands of hair he habitually combed over his bare forehead, it had filled with wind like a boisterous sail, proudly spinning about from the point of it’s tether like a well designed weather vein; finally resting, as the air turned calm, like an estranged dreadlock next to his cheek.

He pulled his hat down tighter just as the thought of it made his cheeks a bit rosier than the brisk air alone.

He gazed as sharply to the right as he dared to, without entering untenable hat position, to look back into the car, stopping the motion of his head just shy of eye line, as the brim began to quiver.

“Yossi”, he yelled into damp November wind, not able to see as far as the back seat, “Yossi, get out of the car….”

“I am.”

His son stood off to the left, Yarmulke in hand, short hairs bristling, peyos fluttering, small hands in small pockets, staring at the thicket of winter saplings as if he might never see them again quite the same way.

Yossi’s mind, now as ever, worked with powerful gears moving in large circles, and as his eyes surveyed the trees bending to the forces of the tempest, he saw himself in every creaking branch, every wind torn leaf, every limb bowing against it’s will to forces unseen.

Yossi reflected wryly on how destiny had lead him slowly down a path resplendent with divergent roads, where the simplest whim could have sent him to an untried future. And yet here, at the end of the journey, time had shrunk to mere moments in which to breathe the air, to think his own thoughts.

As the trees danced before him, entrapped by the whims of the passing wind; Yossi tried to plan ahead, to hold onto what really made him himself…unique. He tried to sense… not just the way the dim gloom of the impending storm made him feel at a loss for energy or options…but just ‘how’ it made him feel that way.

He willed himself to trace the emotional path of his thoughts from the moment the light rays hit his eyes, the cold thrilled his skin, the storm winds whipped past his ears; and follow it to every twisted neuron that flickered dutifully in response.

He tried to imagine the schematic of his mind laid out in front of him like some great blueprint of the circuitry of his personality.

Could such an imaginary map be enough to find his way back home?

For a moment a wave of pity hit Rabbi Beadenstock as he watched his prodigious son, and in his distraction he came close to neglecting the fluttering of the back rim of his hat that could have signaled impending dislocation of the whole apparatus. He felt ill to his stomach; he remembered his son’s first smile as a baby revealing nothing but gum, his first words, first steps; and had an almost overwhelming urge to grab him bodily and place him back inside the car, to figure something out, anything….so long as they could drive away.

From behind him, Rabbi Beadenstock heard the groan of shocks and axles, as the Rebetzin stepped out of the passenger seat. And from the “pop” of a door closed too hard, he could picture in his head the car swaying back and forth from the force of it.

Rebetzin Beadenstock was a hold over from the old country, as if the culmination of hundreds of years of European shtetl existence had been successfully distilled, purified from the dross of modern day life, slow steamed and infused meticulously, by master craftsmen, into every fiber of her being.

Built like a Patton tank: short, stout, like a piece of granite that had willed itself into human existence, she stood by the car, hand clutching sheitel to her head, as the ill arranged sandy locks fluttered unnaturally in the wind.

“YOSSI”

It was a piercing shriek that made even the howling gale doubt its virility.

“Yossi”, she paused, gathering breath, “Yossi, put on your Yarmulke… NOW!!”

Yossi had his father’s thin frame, shoulders and hips never straying far from the midline, with limbs like delicate branches budding from their modest trunk. He had sensitive eyes behind thick glasses; but his mentality…that he had inherited from his mother….stubborn. Stubborn, and strong, as if the fibers that formed his will were of steel: woven, bound, and soldered into place so that they could not be moved, mocking the thin reeds and plywood that formed the wills of lesser men.

“No”

His answer was barely audible above the waves of November wind that crashed upon the parking lot like breakers from some unseen ocean, each gust with its bitter seasonal greeting of chill and despair, but his reply fell upon the Rebbetzin’s ears with a force that could be observed in her visceral response to it, she flinched and stepped back as if a cold hand had been plunged into her intestines to twist them into a painful knot.

In these moments, Rabbi Beadenstock often found that the best position for his hat was one that obligated him to stare obliquely away from his collapsing family, and angling his chin upward looking meekly down at the emptiness of the asphalt parking lot, there could be little blame for inaction regarding that which, for all appearances, he could not see or hear, absorbed as he was in the maintenance of the delicate balance of head covering that all but consumed his attentions.

Rebetzin Beadenstock quickly recovered from the force of the rebellion in her son, although it had become commonplace over the past few years, it hurt the same every time.

And so she ushered her men into the building like a well trained sheep dog herding the flock. Waiving her pocketbook underhand in a back and forth motion as if the air currents it produced might somehow waft the two men in the right direction, like they were bits of tattered paper.

“Inside” she said, “Everyone Inside”.

And so they entered the Yeshiva, the Rebbetzin letting her hand drop from her Sheitel, Rabbi Beadonstock abandoning his parody of torticullus, and Yossi filled now with a sense of dread…

What was to become of him?

What would he be?

As they walked into the empty antechamber with its white tile floor and white walls Yossi marveled at how deathly quiet the Yeshiva was over Bein Hazmanim. Without the constant motion of bochurim in every direction, shouting, learning, and making trouble, the simple hallways descended into a sultry depression, as if their very personality had been plied forcefully from them, and in this uneasy silence, Yossi heard every footfall he took with crisp resolution, and imagined himself walking the plank off some ancient ship at sea.

The air of abandonment grew upon them all, that feeling of being somewhere your not supposed to be, of trespassing. They were filled with an uneasy anticipation, waiting on tightly wound nerves for the first horror to be sprung upon them.

And so they all had a little start when Rabbi Shuller popped open his office door halfway and bobbed his head out sideways as if the rest of his body were a spring connected to an oversized jack in the box.

His blank inquisitive stare immediately melted into a well practiced guise of sociability and charm.

“The Beadenstock family, mamesh, always a pleasure to see the whole mishpachah”, he exclaimed while breaking into a grin wide enough to show the gap between his two front teeth, and throwing the door to his office wide open, he beckoned to them, “Come in…come in.”

The smile stayed transfixed to his face as if someone had stapled the outermost corners of his lips to his high cheekbone in an unmerciful display of just how distorted facial musculature may become. It was a political contortion, this welcoming grin, and he wore it to a perfection for so long that just watching him began to make Yossi’s cheeks feel tired. It was only in his eyes, deftly darting between Yossi, his mother, and his father, that one could begin to sense the unease in the man.

“Revv Veadenstock….Revetzin”, he greeted them as they took their seats in front of his desk, and, unwilling as he was to relinquish the full blown grin meant to simulate unquestionable inner euphoria, he instead sacrificed his “B’s”, “M’s”, and “P’s”, to sloppy disposal and replacement in the consonant melting pot, rather than pursing his lips and abandoning his façade of jubilation.

“And Yossi…Yossi, it hasn’t veen too long since I’ve seen you in this office…”, his eyes darted quickly above his frozen smile to each of Yossi’s parents searching for signs of approval or disapproval of his past discipline measures and he was reassured by the blank non-questioning stares of desperation, “but…Nu…that’s why were here…that’s why were here..”

He clapped his hands together sharply and then laid them flat on the table.

“Now, vefore we do…anything…”

Yossi began to actively wish for him to stop smiling.

“…Anything at all, we are going to wake sure we are all on the same phage.”

It was almost getting hard to understand what he was saying. Would it be rude to ask him to stop smiling? It seemed rude to Yossi that Rabbi Shuller could not stop smiling on the worst day of his young life…could he not return the favor? Measure for measure..one rudeness exchanged for another?

“Yossi, what your parents understand, what I understand, what every Yid with a shtickle seichel understands”, Rabbi Shuller had fallen into a comfortable undulating singsong voice as he transmitted the drasha, a personal favorite of his, “what even you in some way are on the edge of understanding, Yossi, if you would let yourself…”

He was staring at Yossi with heartfelt sincerity now, looking deep, like he might have been taught to in some community college session on guidance counseling.

“Is that…we are all part of a chain. Links…in a chain…that stretches straight back…in an unbroken mesorah…”

Yossi was happy to finally give vent to his frustration, “stretches back to Jesus Christ, if you’re a Christian, to Buddha if you’re a …”

“You see”, Rebetzin Beadenstock exploded, her lower lip quivering, “He’s like this all the time…it’s impossible. He won’t learn. Just last Shabbos when Rebetzin’s Goldstein and Unger came over for tea he lectured them for a half hour…”

“That’s nothing” chimed in Rabbi Beadenstock interrupting his wife mid sentance, as he sensed that the flood gates for lodging complaints had now been opened, “during Daf Yomi…”

“…the Zohar was a bunch of made up garbage”, continued the Rebetzin refusing to be derailed from her rant, “that if such a piece of fluff could be inserted into the mesorah it invalidated the whole thing…”

“…he claimed”, said the Rabbi Beadenstock intent on finishing his Daf Yomi tale extravagance, “that Talmudic logic was as relevant as…”

“I was so embarrassed”, said the Rebetzin, the humiliation of the event evident in every dilated capillary on her face, “Rebetzin Unger looked as if she was about to faint when he started in on Moses de Leon as a less charismatic Joseph Smith…”

“…as relevant as crossword puzzles, anagrams, and Soduku…” continued Rabbi Beadonstock wishing to convey the depth of his unhappiness to Rabbi Shuller, “ in front of the entire shiur he said this, with everyone listening to him as if he were about to expand a chidushei torah…” Rabbi Beadenstock was shaking his head and as the tears welled to his eyes, he found himself wishing for a wind current that might allow him to turn away from the shame of his firstborn.

“…As if the tipshim Mormons should be compared to torah true yidden….”, the Rebetzin orated, gaining the moral momentum of plurality, as if every offended fellow rebetzin were sitting at her elbow, nodding in agreement, murmuring in unison the cries of treason and betrayal that filled her head.

On Yossi’s face a thin smile began to spread, a defiant down curved slit through which he drew fresh air for the debate ahead.

The Rebetzin’s voice was quivering now in near perfect unison with her lower lip and jowls, “what do you do with a son who cannot be a part of his people…”

“A Porek Ol, an abandoner of our yichus, what did my wife and I do so wrong to merit this type of busha, this….”

“OK”, said Rabbi Shuller with his hands raised defensively in front of himself as if to ward of an impending physical attack, “OK…”

His smile was still pinned to his face… indefatigable,…inexhaustible.

“Yossi”, he said, “you see what you are doing to your family…”

“Who is doing to my family,” Yossi spat through sharp teeth and lips pulled tight like a viper, “myself? Or a society, a culture that cannot reconcile with reality, and wishes to drown it’s young with the weight of it’s own unwillingness to deal with the problems simple modernity has presented at it’s doorste….”

“Yossi….Reb Yossi….really, what’s it all about, why all this pain, why all this suffering…was it so hard to find a pshat that the mabul was a mashul. Was it so hard to teich up the bomb kashas you think you have on the mesorah, a mesorah, by the way, that is testified to by the best minds the world has ever seen…nu…let’s get real here…your putting your parents through gehemim because of a few misunderstandings and an ego the size of a…”

“It’s not a few problems”, said Yossi, glancing to his parents on either side, “Problems…problems, I could deal with…”

Yossi was looking closely at Rabbi Shuller now, “Don’t you see it”, he asked in exasperation, “the core methodology, the mechanism by which orthodoxy views the world, sees phenomenon, facts, ideas; and attempts to make them fit with it’s inflexible philosophy, is so obviously dishonest and manipulative that it pushes the limits of civil rational discourse.”

He was young for such mighty words, Yossi was young to speak so boldly to the authority that surrounded him. But if Yossi measured a tefach smaller than the other children in ninth grade he outweighed them tenfold in scholarship, and chewed through books with an appetite wild and unchained, his hunger leading him to new shores and dangerous conclusions.

Yossi’s fists were clenched tight as he tried to bring the smallest flicker of illumination into the room, “Of course you could say the mabul is just a story, but when you honestly realize that if one shred of evidence ever pointed in its direction you would insist that it was proof of the torah’s truth without batting an eyelash.”

“Yossi”, said Rabbi Shuller shrugging his shoulders, “that’s an exaggeration…”

But Yossi was in mid thought and not to be interrupted.

“You have immunized your core beliefs from reality by insisting on a whim, any time when they confront fact, that reality was not what they meant to portray, and yet when you happen across any fact that could be interpreted as supporting you jump in, eager to use it as proof…”

Yossi struggled for words, “it’s a charlatans game…it’s a method of thought that could justify any system of belief, Thor, Zeus….it doesn’t matter.”

Rabbi Shuller’s smile had finally begun to fade, and it retreated slowly, as if all the time it had been fixed in position had permanently altered the structure of his face.

He was speaking as he retrieved several papers from his desk drawer.

“Yossi”, he said, shaking his head, “the idea that our great heritage, comes from a root of dishonesty…”, Rabbi Shuller was truly turning pale as the words came out of his mouth, “is so wrong…so backward” he held one hand up with cupped palm and bent fingers as if he were holding a crystal ball in it, suggesting somehow that what he spoke of could be seen by the observant eye if one stared deep enough into the imaginary wizards stone, “don’t you understand…hasn’t it dawned on you…that the torah is truth…the torah is our search and the culmination of mankind’s search for truth.”

“You can’t search for something you’ve already found”, said Yossi without missing a beat, “you can’t pretend to be honestly looking for answers when you function under the preconceived notion that only the answer you already possess is acceptable. “

Yossi strained to clear the cobwebs from in front of his audience, he looked back and forth between his parents and his Rabbi and pleaded for reason, “You cannot claim to be hungrily scowering reality for data about the nature of the world”, his voice barely hid his anger, “only then to insist that reality itself must bend to fit your views when they do not match it.”

Yossi sighed feeling he had portrayed the crux of the problem to a tee, “A search for truth doesn’t insist that pieces that don’t fit it’s ideal can be discarded”, he concluded, “a search for truth doesn’t demand fealty to what is currently believed, it asks only honest investigation and an open mind.”

Rabbi Shuller turned to Yossi’s parents for reassurance as he shook his head in dismay, “ For some people”, he said alternating his gaze between Rabbi and Rebetzin, “ you can’t help them, you put the food in front of them, you put their hand on the food…but they can’t eat.”

“Nu, we didn’t come here to put our own emunah in harms way”, continued Rabbi Shuller in a very business like tone as he passed paper to Yossi’s parents, “these are consents that I will need you to sign…”

Yossi’s blood turned cold and his head felt too light, like it might drift away from his body if he were to relax his neck. He briefly considered how quickly his short legs might take him through the door, outside the yeshiva, running flat out, saving nothing for a return trip but bolting with every bit of force his thin calves could afford him. He imagined himself crossing the parking lot in a near apoplectic fit of raw power, slapping one sole after another on hard asphalt, with his heart throbbing and straining in the confines of his chest, crashing into the dense woods on the other side, never looking back or regretting.

But he did not move.

He sat…in the way that children sit in the company of adults.

Rabbi Shuller was retrieving something else from his desk now that his papers were signed.

“All of us”, he said as he unraveled a cord that was itself attached to an extension cord, “have responsibilities to the rest of Klal Yisroel…there’s no room in the torah for self absorption, we have a constant responsibility for ourselves and each other.”

He found and outlet nearby and plugged in, “I say this not only in regards to his mechanchim, but about his parents as well… you don’t let someone throw away a yiddishe neshama… that neshama is more important than any other aspect of our physical lives.”

Rabbi Beadenstock looked at his boy with mounting sorrow remembering his own bitter sweet encounters of problematic early teenage years…and his own adjustment at the hands of the rabbinate.

“All of us”, continued Rabbi Shuller, “have to make sacrifices to live a life of torah and mitzvois, it’s no easy life, and we all know there are things we have given up to attain the level of kedushah that comes from being a yareh shamayim and a torah true Jew, and it’s no different for our children…they struggle…they struggle…. And as the people who care about them we do our best to help them grow in the right direction to blossom into true ovdai hashem. We couldn’t do anything less and consider ourselves responsible Jews.”

Rabbi Shuller was behind Yossi now and had placed a shiny metallic cap over his head as gently as a soft sheet.

Now panic settled over Yossi and fully griped him in it’s icy fingers. His legs turned cold and his arms felt weak, dead at his sides. His little heart began to race…carelessly skipping beats under the sway of the adrenaline that filled his veins.

“Even…even according to what you say”, said Yossi feeling an imaginary tide run out to sea from around his legs, “wouldn’t it be…be a mistake to ‘make’ someone believe, isn’t it all about…choice.”

Rabbi Shuller looked baffled for a moment, “But we know what the right choice is…we are helping you make it…”, he replied with the confidence of certainty and fastened a thin strap under Yossi’s chin.

Inside Yossi’s mind thoughts lost cohesion and direction. He was filled instead with fragmented emotions, fear as large and looming as he had ever known it, so heavy it pushed the breath out of him, his thin inhalation efforts performed as if an iron weight rested upon his chest. Anger and grief fluttered mightily; flirting, scrimmaging, and retreating all at once against a terrible sense of resignation for what fate had in store for him.

“It is with happiness”, said Rabbi Shuller, “and true sense of simcha and accomplishment, that we bring a wayward soul back into the fold”, Rabbi Shuller ceremoniously flipped the switch on top of the neuralizer with gusto uniting the subject of his drasha with action.

Rebetzin Beadenstock opened her eyes wide…Rabbi Beadenstock turned his head away, momentarily obligated by a sudden urge to rub the spot where his glasses nose pieces had sunk into the skin…Yossi squeezed his eyes shut, gripping the sides of his chair as if he could resist by pure physical contortion.

They hung there enraptured by the expectation for a few seconds before they realized nothing had happened.

“It’s a glitch…a minor glitch”, said Rabbi Shuller, waving one hand in the air, as he toggled the switch a few more times and played with the power settings.

Yossi saw the delay as a ray of hope through the dim tidings of his life.

He stole away a moment of clarity in his mind to find himself, to find his map.

“I will not change”, he said silently in his head, cementing it there, imprinting it with a mental brand.

“I will not change”

Rabbi and Rebetzin exchanged glances, slowly losing confidence as a befuddled Rabbi Shuller rooted for the source of the error, tinkering with a look of annoyance on his face.

“Oh”, the answer and his smile arrived simultaneously, “this outlet only works with the light switch on”, he said completely forgetting he had left all three power gauges dialed to ten.

He beamed at Yossi’s parents as he flipped the switch, knowing in his heart that what he did now was probably more important than all of the torah he had ever learned, for Yossi himself and the learning he did, his children’s learning and all their generations would in a very concrete way be because of his actions.

As the circuit closed the lights in the room flickered, for a second or two converting the menahel’s office into seventies disco-teche, forcing the participants in the room to act out the next few moments in a surreal freeze frame motion.

Rabbi Shuller was the first to realize that a bit of Yossi’s hair had caught on fire and in the strobe lighting his fluid motions were translated to blunt and disjointed mechanical throes, as he swatted out the flames with the palm of his hands. The Beadenstock parents rose from their chairs in confusion and alarm.

“OOhhhh”, said Yossi as Rabbi Shuller cradled his head.

“What’s happening”, cried the Rebbetzin as the world flickered in and out around her and she stepped toward Yossi.

“It’s OK”, cried Rabbi Beadenstock as the ceiling bulbs stopped fluttering, “It’s OK”, he said again loudly, his passion seeming misplaced now that they had been returned to normal lighting.

Even when temporarily abandoned, Rabbi Shuller was never far from regaining his composure. He held a hand aloft, “a totally normal side effect…completely expected…this happens…it’s nothing to get alarmed about.”

He paused for a moment to dab away sweat that had sprung into beads all along his neck and forehead, and then removed the metallic cap from Yossi’s head depositing it like a hot potato on his desk.

The room was filled with an unpleasant aroma of burnt corned beef that stung the nostrils assaulting them with a fragrance not far enough removed from food to summon digestive juices but from too unthinkable a source than to activate anything other than a powerful nausea.

Yossi sat quietly with his hands clenched on the arm rests, his eyes clamped shut.

“Yossi”, demanded the Rebetzin, “Yossi …are you alright?”

Yossi’s eyes fluttered open slowly, and he came to life, like a computer, rebooting through it’s sub-systems and routines.

“We never should have come here”, Rabbi Beadenstock said quietly feeling pangs of regret, “we should have just left him alone….we could have just…”

“What”, said the Rebetzin, “could have just let him become a..a…heretic… is that what we should have done?”

Rabbi Beadenstock had neither air current nor itch with which to distract himself and so his dejected stare off into the corner looked very much like what it was.

Yossi came slowly back to the world and though the room seemed incased in a fog he pushed himself to focus. He blinked once or twice and reminded himself of his plan, his internal check. He ran through his list…and they were there all there, his favorite quotes from Einstein, his “best of” Spinoza list, his near photographic memory was intact keeping every element of learning that made him who he was…

Who he is…

And Yossi dwelled on it. He felt the same. His attitude was no different. His perspective as firm as ever, his knowledge undisturbed, his philosophy, his outlook, as solid as stone bedrock.

And so even as a thick layer of blood spilled readily from his nose spoiling his starched white shirt he smiled in the confidence that he was still here, still himself, unchanged Yossi Beadenstock.

Rabbi Shuller had pushed a handkerchief under his nose and was helping him to the door.

“He’s fine” he declared more to himself than anyone else, “perfectly fine…and not only that but now..” he began to rub Yossi’s back, “you’re going to have nachas from this young gentleman..and imeretz hashem…one day…”

He was smiling, ear to ear, as he waved them off.

And so the Beadenstocks stumbled once more into the cold, the good Rabbi tilting to a forty five degree angle, his hat splicing through the wind like a well manned catamaran through dark blue sea; the Rebetzin securing her shietel with one hand and guiding Yossi with the other as he stumbled drunkenly with a handkerchief at his nose.

Even as they settled in the car Yossi felt that beside the hangoverish post purim seudah aura that seemed to hover around his head, he felt the same, even remembering his thoughts about his life as he looked at the trees through the smudged glass of the backseat passenger window.

“I’m still me…”, he murmured through the handkerchief mentally pinching himself to be sure the experience was real.

“What was that”, asked the Rebetzin loudly from the front of the car.

Yossi felt a thin smile spread across his face as he tinkered internally with his reply.

How should he inform them that he had been dulled by Rabbi Shuller’s parlor tricks not one iota. How should he disappoint them with the news that he could still mentally eviscerate orthodoxy with one
Cerebral hemisphere tied behind his back.

But as he turned to vent the bile of his collected experience he noticed his mother’s face..perhaps really noticed it for the first time…. the worry lines, the creases.

How many of those bore his name?

He looked at her eyes and saw the unabashed hope with which she viewed him.

And it came to him them, more strongly than he could of ever imagined it, empathy unrestrained, a cognition of others woes far beyond any he had felt before.

Everything his mother and father had ever done in their lives was a struggle and a sacrifice, an offering on the altar of the mesorah, a korban to the ideal of a continuing Jewish lineage. And with out his participation, their efforts, the efforts of their forefathers, the culmination of the Jewish trials at the hands of the masses, were not an unbroken chain, but a frayed end.

“He’s changed”, said Yossi father, studying his face from over the back of the driver’s seat, “I can see it already, he’s changed.”

“No I’m not…I’m….” said Yossi, for the first time feeling confused.

“And boruch hashem he’s changed”, said his mother smiling, “perhaps he’ll go to Daf Yomi again this shabbos.”

Yossi was alarmed at the euphoria that came along with the idea of Daf Yomi, the idea of making his father proud perhaps by being mechavin to a tosfos, like he used to do in days gone by.

The pure load of natural opiod that hit his bloodstream at the thought of it was enough to make him sweetly nauseous, and his eyelids drooped as the pleasure became almost more than he could bare.

Rabbi Beadenstock shook his head, a rare movement when not prompted by the elements, and felt deep in his soul that something was missing from his son, something, that despite the trouble it had caused them all, he know began to miss.

Sitting in the back seat Yossi’s bliss was not so mind numbing that on at least a deeper level he realized, nonverbally, that something had supplanted logic and rationale in his life; and this new irresistible force did not need permission from truth or reason.

Even as the car's motor began to hum Yossi found himself plotting methodically on how to win his parents approval, each thought laced with a candied decadence too delicious to describe.

The Rebetzin was beaming, “and perhaps when Rebetzin Unger comes over for tea…you can give a dvar torah from the parsha ?”

Yossi found himself so inexplicably happy that he could not help wriggling in his chair like a five year old who knew he would soon arrive at his birthday party.

As they pulled out from the parking lot Rabbi Beadensock’s hat was pulled low shielding his eyes, and who knows what dark thoughts he entertained, feeling hidden, even from God, under the long brim. Perhaps even all the years of torah learning could not suppress that bitter pang of resentment, like aspirin at the back of his tongue, at the things that had been taken away from him and his son.

Rebetzin Beadenstock was happily listing the things she needed before shabbos aloud so her husband would know where to take them next. So happy the words spilled from her mouth each rushing to get out before the next.

“And gefilte fish..from the Deli…not the supermarket…it’s an embarrassment what they sell there…”

She paused for a moment looking at her husband, so intent on the road, so intent on the preparations for Shabbos, could it be anything other than a true manifestation of God's hand, that her family had turned out so well. And there was her Yossi, sitting in the back seat, so excited at his fresh start at Yidishkeit, he looked like he couldn’t sit still. It was like he was her little child all over again, thrilled by completing his tzivos hashem mishnayos project.

Here they all were, ovdai hashem…servants, happy servants in the Aibishter's plan.

She thought about the comming Shabbos, her family gathered around the white linen table cloth, united in spirit, focused on the holiness of the day. Each of them finding a direct connection to God through his holy Torah. She thought of how surprised Rebetzin Unger would be tommorow at how harmonious their household had become, at how the power of this minor hishtadlus they had made, had born fruit overnight. It was true, she mused to herself, habah litaher misayin oisoh. All it took was the will to make it right and the rest would follow.

How nice was it going to be to have her family around her speaking words of torah just as she had grown up hearing at the shabbos table. How nice was it going to be to have be able to nod in agreement at the wisdom of the sages as a family once again. Wisdom that was unchanged and unchallenged, a true gift from God to his chosen people. She could picture it in her mind. And it was then that she began to understand that this shabbos…this shabbos was going to be the best shabbos ever.

Mendy and the Golem ??

2007-05-14T10:07:00.000-07:00

I've been reading an interesting book called, "the Pope and the Heretic" about cleric, Giordano Bruno, who was defiant towards the church during the Roman Inquisition (and was burnt at the stake for his efforts). During my reading I came across an interesting religious parallel to Judaism.

Here is a bit from Wikipedia about our own lore (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem)

"In Sanhedrin 65b, is the description of Raba creating a golem using the Sefer Yetzirah. He sent the golem to Rav Zeira; Rav Zeira spoke to the golem, but he did not answer. Said Rav Zeira, "I see that you were created by one of our colleagues; return to your dust." "

But there is a similar legend regarding Thomas Aquinas, Albert Magnus, and Roger Bacon !

"They were said to have designed an automaton that could walk and talk and behave like a man, while conducting experiments to find the elixir vitale" (Charles Makey, "the alchemysts" in memoirs of extrodinary popular delusions, by richard bentley (london 1841) pp 105-7).

I guess Aquinas had an upgraded model Golem that could talk as well !

Of course no one's Golem has ever gotten as much billing as the Maharal's, but I thought it was neat that there exists a legend of another group of "sages" that stumbled upon the blueprints for creating life.

The eight who loved me

2007-04-24T17:48:00.000-07:00

Eight people loved me and promised to be mine

Eight people took my hand speaking of the ends of time

Eight there were who stood there first

Eight to wave the banner high

Or was it by finesse, with more than one IP address,

That to this great height I have climbed?

http://www.jibawards.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=7&Itemid=98

Neat !! I'm actually on JIB's this year. Thank you to whoever nominated me, I will try my utmost to honor that by resisting the temptation of voting for myself from each office I work in :-) ... so vote for me, I'm getting my ass kicked by mentablog !!!

Pan Seared Morality

2007-03-25T17:29:00.000-07:00

Since the tides of the blogoshpere seem to have set us all adrift in the murky swamps of morality, moral relativism, and the rational basis for morality, I thought it might be a good time to talk about a movie I saw last night that dealt with some very traditional moral issues in a wonderful way.

For those who have not already seen Pan’s Labyrinth, I will try not to ruin it by divulging too much.

I had toyed with the idea of exploring religious (non-questioning) morality in a story, by separating it from the multiple “believability” problems that plague most religions, through a creative narrative means, but I think this movie does so wonderfully in two separate tales: One that approaches the difficulty in terms of the fascist regime in the Spanish civil War, and a second that does so through the vivid imagination of a young girl, finally uniting the two in a “Akedic” climax.

I'd love to talk about it more, but I don't want to ruin it for anyone.

I’ll say no more…enjoy!!

Pour yourself a tall cold one....of similac!

2007-03-05T19:55:00.000-08:00

In my opinion the winner of the similac contest on XGH is Bal Devarim, with these two comments.

"This thread is seriously disturbing. That some otherwise reasonable people (i.e. not Jacob Stein) seem to admit that had they been sure God commands it they would've done it is especially exasperating. How would that be moral? God, even if he exists, has no dominion on what defines our humanity.Morally, he cannot go around murdering his creations; at least he'll never get me to be his hit man. Hey, He's omnipotent; He wants someone dead, He better do it Himself!"

Taking away someone's life clearly brings no benefit to that person from a human point of view; therefore, it is always wrong for a human to do it, no matter by whom it is commanded. As I said, it is immoral to relinquish our humanity to God, even if He exists.If it is beneficial to kill someone from God's point of view, let HIM do it; for a human to do that job without clearly perceiving the benefit to humanity is always immoral.

I think that is a great start.

Now clearly there is a lot more to say, we need a tighter definition of what morality is !!

I think there are a couple ways in which God may be inapplicable to anything we understand as moral.

Firstly, whatever morality is, if we assume it has any human components in it, then God is in for trouble, we know theological omnipotents like Yahweh often get their skirts caught in the machinery of human emotion (Does God not have emotion? not omnipotent...he cannot expereince love. Does he have ultimate emotion and exist simultaneously depressed to suicidal ideation, and as deliriously extactic as a crack whore??...fine...unknowable, and it would be foolhardy to insist that whatever system he has for doling out punishment and reward would in any way resemble what the human mind percieves as moral or lack thereof.)

Secondly, if we postulate that morality is some sort of fusion of various empathic calculus, then it may not be possible to call a decision morally guided unless the calculus is completed. (Copying God's answer is cheating, in the sense that x decision enters the category of morality via the calculation of it. Hence one may follow an order with the hope that it has an affect that will be judged to be moral, but the task of following that order is not in itself moral.)

Thirdly, are trust issues, is it a test? is it a rule? No way to know. Our God has a track record of pretty horrible tests and rules. What's he looking for this time??? Not knowable. Is he smiling or crying as Abraham raises the knife, is Jacob Stein the desired outcome of Torah? Is David Guttman? No one knows.

Fourth, can there be a higher morality? say aliens who torture babies and then eat them with a wonderful socioeconomic outcome. Is there any standard by which our innate human morality can be succusfuly measured and rebuked except by the very ingredients that create it (empathy sympathy or whatever else they may be) that is to say, if there is a "morality" that is outside our ability to fathom or understand, can it be labeled morality ?

These are just a few thoughts, but I think there is more to be said of the subject. Part of what complicates the discussion are the reflexive postions of religious and skeptical bloggers like myself. I would like to, if it is possible, remove the discussion from such close proximity to religion and place it in more nuetral territory (any one smell a science fiction story on the horizon???).

What really complicates this discussion is lack of a good definition of "morality". That is probably the right place to begin.....

Halachah: Crunchy on the outside Chewy on the inside

2007-02-18T08:24:00.000-08:00

"Well your transcript speaks for itself…."

The look on his face was serious…and tired; dour, in fact, as he flipped through the pages as if he was weighing some celestial dilemma of yore that drained the very vitality of life from his veins.

I scrutinized every line of his aged pale skin from across the table, that pasty mask spread thin over bone, every furrow and trough a potential tell of his inner thoughts.

Had the interview been too boring? Had too many minutes of bland conjecture and review of particulars left us flat?

Should I reverse the formality now, boldly charging into some delightful anecdote starring yon bastion of charisma…yours truly?

Should I corral the fluttering butterflies in my stomach into a stampeding force and break the silence with a witty and impassioned spark of personality?

Had the time arrived to cobble together my doppelganger; that spare personality, hastily assembled of raw ambition and coffee grinds, that I was accustomed to modeling for public consumption on such occasions of need?

Thought materialized into action as my tongue, as dehydrated as shoe leather from the unique fusion of coffee and nervous adrenaline, peeled off my soft palate, from whence it had nestled so cozily, with an audible, multi-punctate, staccato of well adhered Velcro, echoing in my inner ear with the full force of social faux pas it represented. Only to be deftly outdone by my dry lips, which having been pressed shut for some time, opened now, with a bold and melodic "pop", as if I were about to jump from my chair, wave my hands in agitation and assault my interviewer with a rich and hassled monologue of Swahili, replete with every guttural click and whir of the deep rain forest, capped off with the deliverance of a graceful blow dart to the jugular.

But just before my witty rejoinder could rumble out of my dry throat like so many dusty old nails…he spoke.

"You are one the best candidates we've seen this year", he looked happy now, almost relieved, and his pronouncement echoed through my head.

I felt wonderful.

Muscles unclenched, my shoulders loosened and finally fell to a relaxed position, enough saliva was actually liberated for me to lick my lips. That poisonous bile my stomach was churning melted to butter.

By God it had gone well…very well. Those poor suckers waiting for their turn to interview had best grab Danish from the food cart and head for the hills….this was a wrap.

God, I reveled in the moment.

There he sat, chairman of the department, ostensibly the top of his field, surrounded by his myriad of diplomas, symbols of abundant ego allowed to overflow until they occupied every nook and cranny of conceivable wall and shelf space….and he chose me!

Me, to pass along the torch of medical knowledge. Me, to become his heir, his adopted son, to glean from him the wisdom that takes a lifetime to gain.

It was heady, and a sense of warmth and euphoria spread from my innards like warm milk laced with opoid, soothing the frayed nerves with the dulling salve of success, ending in each appendage with a tingle that made me want to giggle like a little girl.

He was crossing the room now with a hand extended…

I gripped it firmly looking him in the eye, my pleasure undisguised, for this was no longer the meeting of one doctor evaluating a potential hire. This was a meeting of peers, of colleagues, who recognized each others accomplishments and worth.

“I had best get going, I have a busy day tomorrow”, he confided to me, his new resident, save for the ceremonial red tape of the paper work, “and I have a few charts to tweak for medical necessity before tomorrows rhinoplasties, gotta get that insurance to kick in.”

Of course he did…that Jag doesn’t buy itself.

Still standing in the middle of the room, I marveled at how quickly our relationship had gelled. How quickly I had moved from a seeker of admission to a trusted confidant.

Trusted with the inner workings of his practice….the slightly questionable inner workings of his practice.

Well, I conjured; he wouldn’t be the first physician to get cosmetic surgery covered for patients who couldn’t ante up, by attaching some element of medical necessity to it…

He was smiling at me from across the room as he packed his papers into his briefcase….or was he studying me?

How quickly that warm tingly feeling was replaced with ice in my veins.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit……

Had my interview really finished….or had it just begun?

“Tweaked for medical necessity”?

The words just crept out.

“Ben, your new at this”, he said as he lifted his briefcase from his desk, “with time you’ll learn how to bend and break rules as you need to…”

He walked across the room and patted me on the shoulder, “Don’t let the insurance company tell you how to practice medicine!”

Damnation!

Foul Damnation!

I had been safe on the shore line, well rescued, well resuscitated, and now….. back into the dark waters?

What was this? What kind of unholy trial was I now participating in?

Didn’t he understand? I knew anatomy, I knew physiology, I filled in multiple choice bubbles with a number two pencil with greater accuracy than the rest of my class. Those were my tests, those were my challenges...

Did he need to know that his new resident would not be a leak to the insurance companies about his questionable practices? Was he prodding me now to get a feel for how at risk he would be with me underfoot?

“Well I agree with you there, we should always put the patient’s health ahead of insurance rulings…”

Or had I misread him? Was he placing a moral conundrum in front of me to see what I was made of?

His eyes were shallow pools of pale blue looking into mine and offering not a clue.

“…but I don’t see how that is related to…uh what you said….before….”

Good will, comradery, fellowship, left the room and took their kindly warmth with them.

There was a clammy cold between us now…

“Excuse me?”

I avoided his gaze and stared at the down turned corners of his mouth; trying to parse it all out.

He could be on the level, honestly discussing the way he “bends” rules with a future resident. It was certainly possible, in which case I had just begun to throw away years of hard work to enter this program.

But did I want to work for someone who was that confident of his shady practices?

On the other hand it could all be a test…

Could I tell truth to power?

Could I challenge the chairman on my own heartfelt moral principles and not waver against the force of his personality?

Some programs wanted yes men, but some wanted strong individual thinkers…

There where no answers to these questions or at least none appeared to me in the uncomfortable silence as he waited for my reply.

“I don’t mean to be rude, or offensive, but just want to point out that adjusting the symptoms or fabricating….”

“You know something”, he said, his voice an octave higher, “I’ve been treating patients for thirty years…I’ve been chairman of this department for ten….where do you get off telling me…
“I’m sorry.”

“…telling me what the right way to take care of patients is.”

“I’m just trying to tell you how I feel about any program that would not be up front about…”

“You know what, Ben….Ben, thank you for interviewing at our institution”, he said his hand motioning me out the open door.

Christ, if it was a test, it was a damned good one; his face was as red as mine.

I walked quickly past his secretary and the assembled interviewees, the shame of failure hastening my pace to a brisk jaunt that took me out of the building into bitter New York cold, then down the steps to the warmth of the subway.

Even all these years later I can still remember the sense of confusion that filled my head as my body swayed to and fro in the unique ballet that the curving tracks of the southbound A compelled every passenger to dance.

Where had I gone wrong?

I ranked the program low on my list, associating it with a sense of personal embarrassment, and matched elsewhere, but over years of meeting with people in my field and rehashing painful memories of residency, I have run into a few who had done their time at that very program.

In fact, I found that it was a somewhat well kept secret among administration and resident alike, that the interview was a moral test, the chairman’s indignant face a well institutionalized act, and the passing answer was unwillingness to capitulate to his will. That was the type of personality he wanted surrounding him.

Indeed.

It makes one think, and when I think… I think of religion.

To those of us still clinging to the left flank of modern orthodoxy, at least outwardly, there exists a series of bizarre responses of the Rabbinate to modernity.

Yes it’s true; they will agree in private, that the modern mind functions via principles of intellectual honesty. That we believe things to degrees, and that degree is determined by the amount of evidence and data available. Yes, they will whisper, in hushed tones, that the level of probability and evidence supporting the particulars of our faith are low, and that one may indeed by more honest to believe very watered down versions of the actuality of our mesorah…

But.

But, you must keep halachah, our system of law must be raised out of objectionable controversies, and quibbling inquiries of its validity. And as long as one believes in Halacha, they may pursue more comfortable beliefs regarding our biblical heritage.

Now, let me be sympathetic, I full well understand that without Halacha modern orthodoxy cannot survive. I grasp the fact that this is a flailing attempt to deflect that final blow to the wind pipe.

But is it honest?

Are the same problems that push us to realize the unlikely nature of our religious traditions also present at the base of our halachic structure?

I think that they are.

After all, Halacha is different from secular legal systems in that at its most base, it believes itself to be a representation of Godly will.

And that’s the problem.

Even the greatest amongst us recognized that although we may perceive God through his actions, we cannot hope to reach an understanding of his motivations, his plans, or the manipulations by which he tests us. (http://www.knowledgeproblems.blogspot.com/)

The difficulty is that halachah is not a self contained legal system. It is an extension of God’s mind, and in that sense it is an outgrowth of theology itself: A murky tar pit with no bottom or sides upon which we insist we have built or rigorously argued a coherent code of law.

Yet the fact remains that upon such an unsteady foundation the only blueprint for construction is doubt.

I highlight but one example above…the idea that a creator being may deliver a code of law to test if its subject can follow it, to test if and when its subjects righteously rebel against it, or any number of reasons in between. Without knowing motivation or plan, there is not much more to say.

With the axiom in hand, the we are not privy to God’s thoughts, it appears equally likely that he would choose to test our ability to follow what he has clearly spelled out, as he would to test our ability to rebel, and “tell truth to power” when we “feel” our rules are not guided by moral dictates acceptable to our human sensibilities. Indeed, I weigh the second option over the first. What can God know about you character other than a willingness to follow rules, in the first scenario; it is the second case that is necessary to evaluate character.

I’m sure my devout brethren will argue, “God would never test us that way”. However, the more certain one is of that assertion, the more useful it is to a creator who really does desire to gauge our traits in terms of self assuredness, moral awareness, and ability to trust our own judgment. In fact, the only way such a creator can evaluate these traits is by artificially manufacturing a situation in which one is reasonably convinced that he challenges the will of the creator, and is strong enough to do so in any case.

I won’t harp on this for too long, as theology is just a merry-go-round of “what if’s” and “maybe’s”. We may all shout at each other until we are blue in the face yet no certainty will present itself.

You may proclaim that the best reshonim with ruach hakodesh said God wouldn’t test us that way, and I may proclaim that it was necessary for him to reliably convince us of this through the rabbinate, so that he could test us that way…let’s leave it there.

Of course, the above scenario is one aspect, one symptom, of a legal system based on unfathomable motivations.

How does one extrapolate, apply, and amend rulings, when we must honestly claim we cannot know what God wished to accomplish with them. In which direction do you make them more stringent? In what way to you provide leniency? Without intent it is just a game.

The point I return to is the integrity of Modern Orthodoxy.

One may admire their retreat from untenable positions of faith with regard to our traditions. We may salute them as they voluntarily back into a corner crying “myth” and “lore” to the tower of babble, and mabul, and avos.

But I believe that the central claim of Modern Orthodoxy: that Halachah can stand untouched by modernity, unsinged by rationality, unscathed by empiricism….is false. It is plauged by all of the external problems of believability that the rest of our religion is exposed to, as well as the inherent internal problems of a legal system derived from that which is, in it's own admission, unfathomable.

Thus, as long as Halachah claims theology as its foundation stone, let it build no higher than it can afford to pick up the pieces.

The good, the bad, and the ugly...

2007-01-03T11:57:00.000-08:00

After two frustrating days of arguing morality over at the old mill (XGH) I feel the need to vent on my own turf.

The subject….Religious Morality.

Now, my own opinion is simple: There is no evidence of supernatural beings who are interested in which candy bars we eat. No evidence equals no belief. Hence I do not believe that our morality is supplied by a supernatural being who watches us to see if we follow his moral rules.

But that is not enough for me.

After being shackled by orthodoxy for most of my life I desire to break it with it's own rules, to choke it with each lugubrious loop of it's own lazy, half thought out theology, and drown each apologetic for it's crimes against human critical thought in the goo from whence it came .

I desire to highlight each internal inconsistency, to wave lit flares in the air warning of every pothole and tar pit of rabbinic claptrap, to kindle blazing neon signs at every transgression of logic and reason.

What is my motivation ?? Is it hate for the believers? assistance for the fledging doubter? or pure malicious vitriol with no reason whatsoever ?? Who knows ?

Will I convince any believer with my observations of a broken mesorah?

It is unlikely, as there is no level of unreason that is too low when it comes to justifying tradition. (see Mabul for examples).

My Thesis is simple.

My Gripe: No orthodox Jew should speak of "Godly morality". There is no such thing. Only obedience.

Come take a look through my eyes.

Our Traditions. They speak of a God so grand he is outside our frame of reference for anything, to describe him by any verb or analogy is an essential blasphemy. We can not know his mind. We cannot know his intent, his purpose, his method, his goals. Indeed our favorite midrash pictures a God sorrowfully shaking his head, as he informs Mosses that the ability to understand the mechanism by which God delivers reward and punishment cannot be shared with a human. Unknowable.

The Medrish and indeed the traditions of orthodoxy are insistent that we don't have simple answers to this question (although you will occasionally hear attempts if you listen to the right people). The conundrum of Theodicy in mainstream orthodox belief remains quarantined through the use of the statement, "God works in mysterious ways".

To me, the natural extension of this logical loophole is: we don't know the method God uses to make judgments regarding reward and punishment. We don't know what his criteria are. We don't know his motivation or plan. All of these are beyond our knowledge.

Shouldn't we hope though, that his criteria and motivations are similar to our own natural feelings of right and wrong? Don't we feel the pain of an innocent wronged, don't we wish justice upon the evil and cruel. Don't we wish to have faith in a God who's final plan for justice smacks of something rehashed from Solomonic wisdom where we all simply nod our heads at the fairness of it all.

Should we ??

Strangely, it appears not. Not through the lens from which orthodoxy insist we gaze at the world. In fact, the use of our innate moral sense often leads people to disagree with precepts from God's bible. Honest people applying basic criteria of empathy often feel the Torah is incorrect. Honest orthodox people. Thus orthodoxy has bolstered the mythos of the unknowable God. Not only do we not know God's wisdom but we don't dare to wish it mirrors our own. Indeed, any time someone calculates pain, cruelty, and benefit and comes up with numbers different than orthodoxy prescribes it is a symptom of the divide between human morality, and the "divine morality".

I tell you nothing new here. Anyone brought up orthodox knows this…..

So what is Innate human morality ?? Isn't it so slippery it can't be quite defined ??

Well difficult to firmly pin down, yes. And many people may disagree on a moral outcome based on the same data, hence it's subjective nature. But I think we can postulate the ingredients that go into making a moral decision. We can agree that pain and suffering are an important consideration. We can concede that equity is a goal though we might argue about the exact method by which to calibrate our machinery for such a sum. We can say that benefits and losses of affected parties and society as a whole are under consideration, and in short we can agree on some very basic areas that will need to be scrutinized in order for humans to make a decision that is considered a moral one.

I would like to suggest, that no such corollary exists in "Godly morality". We have suggested in our traditions that not only do we not know the Godly mechanism of deciding right and wrong, but that they are unknowable to us…we cannot even comprehend them. Furthermore we have suggested that whatever intuitions we have with regard to the subject are as likely to be wrong as right.

It seems reasonable therefore to say, that God makes his decisions regarding reward and punishment, equity and prejudice, by a means other than any means we are familiar with. Something beyond us. We have no more reason to believe he takes the pain of human consciousness than some other variable. In fact, we have less reason to believe he uses any modality we can understand.

Whereas our innate sense of right and wrong derives from a sense of equity, empathy, and fairness, we have no idea what essential ingredients fuel God's judgments and in an approach to honest language usage should not apply terms outside of their meaning.

To the human mind there is no understanding of why God acts as he does, nor is there the ability for us to, according to our traditions. There is no knowledge of underlying principles that would allow us to weigh the equity of his decisions, nor is there the slightest confidence in our own faculties to do so.. Hence we should call our observance what it is. For there are words that more closely fit this phenomenon…..orders. We have no understanding of why he chooses right from wrong but we follow orders because we have come to believe that God has ultimate POWER. We believe the reality we see to have occurred because of his actions, and his actions indicate his power. It is because of his power that we do what he says. We admit we have no knowledge of his motive, his fairness, or the method by which he punishes, and…. get this……it doesn't matter to us !!!

Even those who wish to soothe this open sore by saying, "but we trust he is ultimately doing good…"

But what is good ??? meaningless. In our tradition we mistrust our own sense of it and cannot fathom God's. Indeed any moral terminology is equally devoid of coherence. One would be just as correct to say that we trust that God is good but "good" will in the end only be defined by God, as one would be to say that we trust that god is bad and that "bad" will be defined by God. Meaningless. All moral terminology is without meaning for they are all empty variables we cannot fill.

Orders. You follow orders. They are inexplicable orders to you, and you like it that way. It hurts less when you have to explain the pain of the world. You prefer to shroud God in mystery even if it means you are just following orders from the greatest power you can find. Why?? Did he promise you treasure, everlasting life, and meaning?? You know he did. At least, this is what you believe.

So let's stop slobbering endlessly about ultimate Goodness and morality. Orthodoxy made it's choice and dodges the bullet of Theodicy by hiding under the bed and insisting that God wants to tell us how it's all OK, but we cannot conceive it. Very well. Then let us accept then that we can't understand, and that we follow orders transmitted from power, and never more bandy about terms regarding how "moral" this is.

Out of Order

2006-12-02T20:43:00.000-08:00

New Life

I thought I'd have time to tell, 'bout how you came unto this earth

But getting diapers takes my day, instead of writing of your birth

It was a beautiful story, brought a tear to my cheek

I won't exagerate when I say, I haven't slept this week

More important than my blog, my precious little girl

I even like you when, after eating, you upon my shoulder do hurl

What to do about this blog?, into disrepair it goes

I'll be back one day soon, but till then I'll be counting your little toes

Justice Divine

2006-11-19T03:14:00.000-08:00

The bamboo stick landed fast and hard on Windmeyer’s back, chapping the thin skin, coaxing in it’s wake a row of blisters that sprung to life like blooming roses from his pale flesh.

A Brute of a man, he did not take his punishment willingly, but strained at the lanyards which tethered him to the tabernacle posts, his great muscles causing even these deeply embedded hunks of cedar to momentarily tip their lofty heads to his efforts. They whispered the encouragements of old wood to their captive; squeaking and popping as his full weight pulled against them.

“Aaagggghhh”, he screamed, lost in the writhing dance of his fantasy for escape, now and again glancing bitterly from the leather straps around his wrists to the small crowd of kinsmen who gathered as audience to his undoing. They stood there, garbed in their shredded rags, mesmerized by the sight of one of their own; fallen so low.

Windmeyer’s shoulder length hair hung wet with perspiration about his face, concealing his features in the mask of his wasted energies. His Cro-Magnon physique, thicker and more muscular than any of the assembled host, quivered with fatigue, as he drew new breath and redoubled his efforts, causing each post to groan a fresh tune of wood strained to it’s breaking point.

Behind him, the enforcer raised his implement of coercion high above his head, readying for another blow to the already pockmarked back before him…

But a hush carried in the wind stayed his hand. It came like a premonition on the thin November air, a soft whisper of feet treading lightly, and all eyes of the assembled turned to the corner of the temple where a thick curtain was pushed aside to allow entrance.

In they strode; their dignity evident in their very step, their very posture. Their cloth was finer, their hair more neatly arranged into white flowing beards that spoke simultaneously of wisdom and experience. The crowd parted for them like flowing waters; one filthy, ill fed body tripping over the next in the effort to make way.

The eldest of the ancients, a man bowed by time, marked by sun and wind, hobbled slowly toward to the great figure of the prisoner, who remained, despite his efforts, fastened to the walls; and the elder, clutching at his staff for support, and reaching nearly to the man’s ear, looked Windmeyer over closely and spoke to him directly in a voice that carried only to him.

Windmeyer had in his eyes the look of a caged beast and met the mans gaze without fear, and had the wise man but leaned a bit closer he would likely have felt the teeth of the animal upon him.

His voice was firm, and the age of the man was lain bare by the strain and tenor of the syllables he formed, “You’re name….”, he whispered to Windmeyer, looking deep into his eyes, looking to discern the truth from signs and omens, “it speaks of a relationship to the prophet….It has strength…that could be as strong as winter storms, yet it may be as false as promised rain in the summer lulls…..”

With the matter of destiny thus left open, he turned now to the crowd, not waiting for an answer from his captive, raising his voice and intoning in a singsong manner.

“ We do not know how man kind fell”, he uttered with sadness to the masses.

“How our great ancestors twisted their cities into jagged metal spikes, and broken rocks, poisonous fumes and foul waters….”

“But we have lived through the generations by the word of the Prophet….”

There was a murmur of approval from the crowd.

“Your fathers have lived by the word of the Prophet…”

“THERE IS NO PROPHET, YOU FOOL.”

The words came so loudly from the heaving chest of the captive that they eclipsed the room in their very thunder, shaking the small tent to the dirt mounds of it’s foundation, bringing every eye in the room back upon him. Babes staring from behind the legs of parents, children reaching for reassuring hands as their ears rang from the force of it.

Even brave young Meylight of the Jacobite tribe gripped her father’s elbow at the fearsome sight of the man tied to wood, who now willfully defied the elders. A crime so unholy it threatened the known bounds of comprehension.

“My people…”, said Windmeyer, searching the crowd with hopeful eyes, “My brothers…..I have been past the great boundary, I have journeyed through rock and stone, and passed through the steel of the lost cities….”

Murmurs tore through the crowd….It was forbidden….it was foolhardy…it was a lie, for no man had such courage to prowl in the old cities.

“LISTEN TO ME”, shouted the fearsome Windmeyer in the face of incredulity, “ I have traveled just as I have spoken, and amongst the old cities there are many images…many prophets and signs….omens that point in all directions and yet in no direction…”

“Then it is true”, shouted the elder, recovering from the brazen disobedience of the young upstart, “you have spoken blasphemy even when warned not to, you have transgressed the sacred law.”

Other elders joined in…

“He who questions the law, it is as if he has broken every law, and caused personal injury to everyone.”

“He who causes others to break the laws by putting doubt in their hearts it is as if he has broken the law twice, and is liable for his actions.”

There was more to say, but the head elder silenced them by tapping his staff against the hard earth.

“It is for the blasphemer to see the oracle, so is his fate decided.”

A hush fell over the crowd and even Windmeyer recoiled in fear, for the oracle had been neither seen nor heard in many long seasons, those who had only small children about their feet had never seen it, and even the elders remembered it only dimly, when they themselves were but suckled from the teat.

A nervous looking elder separated himself from the pack and stepped forward to stand by the grand elder’s side. He wore around his neck the red feather and stick necklace of the priesthood. And in his fearful eyes rested the knowledge that his service to God would be judged now, as he called forth the oracle, hoping to be graced by it’s answer.

“Let any man who’s sin is in his heart or in his flesh, leave now, for those who are not pure may not witness the window to the other life, and are not allowed to look upon the holy countenance as it is denied them by law.”

Embarrassed silence followed a few men and their families out of the tent of meeting, Scared that their evil deeds would hang over them and be multiplied manifold by the window to the spirit world; they left in quiet shame.

But most stayed.

Brave little Meylight stayed with her father waiting for the chance to see into the beyond, stories of which had been told to her from the moment she was old enough to understand the words.

The priest observed the remaining minions with satisfaction and some trepidation for the task ahead.

“Then let each man clear his heart of greed. Let each man think only of justice and the world beyond”, said the Priest as he walked ceremoniously over the to the ark of the tabernacle. A roughly hewn closet draped with a red cloth.

As he parted the cloths the congregation fell to it’s knees, humbling themselves in anticipation of the prophets arrival. Even Windmeyer had pulled as far back as his leash would allow.

As the ark opened a collective gasp filled the tent of meeting, for few of them had ever seen the window before, and now it stood before them as black and dull as night, portal to the world beyond.

The priest carefully dusted every part of it with his feather necklace, and picking up the small rectangular box next to it, used the tiny sticks in his necklace to make sure the spools were tightly wound back into the position that would encourage the prophet’s entrance. He carefully checked the third large metal cube ensuring that both the red and black strings were attached tightly.

He whispered the silent prayer of the priesthood in a voice no louder than a babe’s breath.

“What grace I have in my heart, let it come before you….let my deeds be pleasant in thine eyes….let the equity of my actions have a pleasant aroma before you…Let those deeds that have caused harm fall from my shoulders and be as the dust of the earth…”

And with that he slid the small box into the slot beneath the great screen, closing his eyes fiercely; his concentration that fervent, his prayer that deep.

A few seconds of muted whirring passed as they collectively wondered if in their lowly state the prophet would grace them once again.

Had not the time passed when messengers from across the chasm would come to visit the sons of men??

Could a people so far removed from the greatness of their forefathers hope to reclaim some of God’s earthly kindness??

But then it was upon them in full glory, as the window lit brightly, flooding the tabernacle with a soft and warm glow. The masses feared to see it directly for the power was too great, viewing it instead through the spaces of the fingers of hands that covered their faces.

But brave little Meylight had no fear in her heart and stood to her feet to see the spirits unhindered.

And in that moment came the prophet…. his face….perfect and without blemish, his hair…had the shine of gold upon it, the cloth on his skin came from angels looms, the aura of divine confidence in dark eyes that can neither be described nor retold. And reaching form untold nether regions came the voice of heaven, striking the very ears of the humbled supplicants.

“Hhhhuuuuurrrrttttttttttt???????”, asked God’s prophet slowly as the power from the other side become stronger and stronger, summoned by a Priest who’s prayers were now realized in full.

Tears sprung to many of the elder’s eyes, for to see the prophet twice in a lifetime was a blessing.

It was only the grand elder who remembered the service, and led the others in it’s intricacies, “As you would not want to be hurt…do not hurt another” he said in loving responsa, remembering reciting it last in the presence of his father…. now long gone.

“Iinjurred attt workkk????”, asked the lord through his mouthpiece.

Now other elders joined in, “It is worse to injure at work, for is it not through work that man sustains himself ??”

“Hi, I’m David Meyers….”

Introductions exploded from amongst the uneducated masses, eager as they were to meet God's intermediary, and the grand elder had to silence them with a stern look.

Did they not know they were not worthy of individual recognition by the prophet of God?

“And at the law firm of Jacoby and Meyers, we’ll fight for your lump sum settlement…”

Several elders were talking in unison now…

“It is not enough to follow the law, but it must be firm as well, to teach us that severity is a form of ultimate compassion before God”, said a frail elder in holy ecstasy.

“Do not the extra words “lump sum” come to teach us there will be one settlement in this world and one in the world to come…”, said another, lovingly repeating the teachings of the ages in the presence of the prophet.

“Just as Jacoby cannot be seen or heard, so to, the settlement in the world to come cannot be seen in this one.”, crooned a third, anxious to join in the word of God.

And then, in the snap of a finger, it was gone.

The screen black as death.

The message from beyond ripped from out of their grasp.

The loving Prophet slipped once again to the worlds outside of imagination.

The Grand elder, who had been practically holding his breath during the revelation, finally let out a long sigh. The revelation he had seen in his youth had been much longer, and had included many important passages from which they had constructed God’s law. But he consoled himself that even if they had not merited to see the full face of God, had they not been graced with his aura, his favor, the small bit of wisdom that was at the very core of their beliefs ?

As the relieved priest returned the ark to it’s former state the grand elder turned to Windmeyer.

“We are a just people”, he stated, “and now that you have seen the prophet with your own eyes in front of all, recant your evil claims and rejoin us….you will bring to the congregation one cash settlement of personal injury, and one cash settlement of medical malpractice, and with these offerings your soul shall be purified and you will rejoin us as an equal, but never to travel beyond these boundaries again.”

Windmeyer looked pale, for the vision of the prophet was still fresh in his mind, but he was as stubborn in mind as he was strong in body. A force that refused to be bent in spirit or sinew.

“Hark unto me my brothers….”, he said softly and then with conviction, “Hark, for I have seen many windows, and in each there is a prophet, there are prophets that live in…in….small boxes like leaves from a tree…there are prophets upon signs that stretch as high as ten men….”

The grand elder shook his head in dismay and as he walked away he nodded his head to the enforcer who had traded his bamboo for a thick oak with iron tied to the end.

Windmeyer, who was as unfamiliar with defeat as he was with political savvy, continued even louder, “For they are not prophets but men, men as you and I, men who live forever upon great sorcery and magic untold, like pictures writ upon the wall with great cunning.”

As the enforcer lifted his thick mallet from the ground, brave little Meylight stepped quickly from the safety of her father’s side, standing between the great elder and the captive, knowing neither shame nor fear. For she was blessed, and wise beyond her years. Many had been the time she had helped her mother gather berries when the winter was close, always learning from her wisdom, sharing thoughts simple and deep.

“Oh great Elder”, she supplicated with proper humility, raising her hands palm up to show her subservience, understanding even at her tender age the fine middle ground she needed to seek, “ is it not possible that there are many prophets…perhaps with prophecies as great and small as man is great and small??”

The wise elder barely stifled his laugh, for did not all know that the place of womenfolk was the suckling of babes, and here one who had not yet blossomed a bosom would suggest God’s word?

He shared his mirth with the congregation, “she who does not yet coo to her own young would speak such great words”?

A thin laugh ran the course of the room, and Meylight returned with tears and anger to her father’s side. Fists clenched at her sides.

“Her words are greater than that of every man on the council” , shouted the captive loud enough to embarrass everyone.

And with that, a small seed was planted in brave little Meylight's heart.

“You will not see it then…”, asked Windmeyer of the great elder, “you will not see truth even when it is in your grasp…you have but to send me with five brave men and we will bring back more oracles than your tabernacle may hold…”

The great elder shook his head, “He who questions the authority of the law…it is as if he has broken every law…”

There were grunts of agreement from the folk, shouts of treason and heresy. And much talk of justice. Indeed the congregation was united in it’s need for justice. And what justice could be had without law, and what law could be made if not from the prophet. And if one doubted the prophet….well, justice must be served.

He nodded again to the enforcer and Windmeyer, sensing his end, pulled upon his restraints with a will that was stronger than one man alone. It was the strength of a man with a destiny, a dream, a goal. A man at once shown a new truth that demanded to be set free. He wrenched his body into a form so tight sinew strained and cedar groaned.
His scream was one of desperation. One of a will that could not be bounded by the rule of law.
And, shuddering under this final assault, wood as thick as a mans waist cracked with a roar from end to end sending curtains billowing in every direction as it collapsed within the temple.

Yet even as the tabernacle fell so did the enforcer’s ax, cutting deep into flesh and bone, and as the building crumbled to the ground so did the man.

Many were crushed by either crowd or wood on that day, as all attempted to flee the encampment for safety, the panic embraced happily by the congregation in its time of emergency.

So they fled, and Meylight amongst them, pulled firmly away by the strong hands of her father, yet even as they ran from the chaos, she looked not in front of her to plant her stumbling feet more carefully amongst the roots and rocks, but over her shoulder, sharp eyes gazing at the horizon, where thick trees gave way…. to the great unknown that lay beyond.

Shave and a haircut......Shampoo !

2006-11-08T12:19:00.000-08:00

You know how it is in the morning, you drag yourself out of warm blankets, no wait….you crawl back in till the next snooze cycle.

O.K., now you draaaag yourself out of the warm blankets, pad over to the bathroom, try not to look at yourself in the mirror through swollen, crusty, eyes. Hug your arms to your body from the chill, relieve that full bladder, and then into the shower.

Now, because I hate cold winter mornings, I have adjusted all of my morning grooming to take place in the hot shower.

Toothbrush…check.

Toothpaste…check.

Panasonic “wet and dry” with non-fogging mirror and moisturizing gel…yes and yes and yes.

Everything is more pleasurable when you have warm steam rising around you, and the obligatory morning shave is no exception. I like to set a stream of searing water on my back before I lather up to trim the stubblies.

But this morning, my wife has left a package of shick disposable shavers on the ledge, and my hand hesitates as I reach for my tried and true electric.

Can’t I just try it one morning to see what it is like ??

Now anytime I contemplate breaking orthodox dogma, a well trained, yeshiva inclined, portion of my brain, hailing back to the days of my unflinching religious beliefs, when I swallowed anything quoted from appropriate authority whole; begins to set off alarm bells.

"Something bad will happen to me if I do this…something bad will happen to someone I love and I will regret it forever…."

“Bullshit” ! Says rationality… “ancient superstitions one and all, I’ll pay that as much heed as I do black cats and Friday the 13th.”

I picked up the Razor, fermenting in my mind; that it was way to early to make these decisions, but was there really any decision of consequence here ??? Did I in any way believe in consequences or damages that occurred from shaving with a different implement ??

“Something will go wrong during surgery today….your patients will suffer, your cases will go badly…your hands will shake, you’ll have complications,” insists my leftover Yeshiva personality with all the authority of a yenting bubby, this time with even more vigor than when I go for the lights on Shabbos.

I hesitate and look at the two choices, and, I begin to use the fall back of the overly cautious: Intra religional semi rationality. The practice by which one re-enters religious beliefs long left by the wayside, donning them once again for the purpose of redemonstrating their internal inconsistencies.

Now I know what the posuk says…It says don’t touch a blade to your face. Clearly the meaning was that the Jewish nation had a look to it, a style, and that style was a beard !!

But of course when the clean-shaven look became a necessity for business in the forties and fifties, the chachamim looked at this prohibition hyper literally. Ossuring only the touching of the blade to the face.

But this micro screen film…protects me against an issur dioraisah ??

It seems implausible. A loophole a child would use to get out of homework. How many times had I nicked myself with this razor? Wasn’t that the blade touching my face anyway ??

And who was this God whom would readily deal eternal damnation to the bearer of the razor in my left hand, but blessing to the user of the shaver in my right ?? He begins to sound more and more like a cosmic vending machine. He cannot but deliver based on the button pushed. There is no thought or insight just mechanical response to stimuli. But what warrants heaven and hell ? Weren’t both instruments doing the same thing, accomplishing the same goal, using the same method ??

And how would this fit with the Modern orthodox Ideal that viewed sins as a metaphysical tarnish to a soul in a spiritual world, thus obviating the need to ever explain the reasons for anything. Did this mean that in some other world beyond comprehension, babes were crying and women fainting as the blade made it’s first smooth descent down my cheek, and spiritual calamity befell their universe, the very same realm in which my soul dwelled so happily before metal and plastic cooperated to shear those tiny hairs from my face?

Could I make myself believe that this act, even if there was a spiritual world, could possibly be detrimental??

The answer, you see, is in my smooth face….soft as a baby’s bottom some would say !

But the reason I bring this up is not so you can all marvel at my heresy,(but feel free too) or morning routine (immitation is the sincerest form of flattery); it is because, it seems to me that, orthodoxy has nothing to do with morality, but it has supplanted moralism, and desires to stand in it’s place, to drink it’s wine, sit in it’s chair and sleep with it’s woman. Orthodoxy enforces it’s self under very moral terms. One feels bad when disobeying orthodoxy in very much the same way that one feels bad when betraying a friend, cheating, stealing, or acting innaproprietly in other ways.

Judaism may have started off with very moral concerns, but that has all been legislated away now. To my mind morality involves looking at a situation and applying a mix of logic and compassion, with empathy and sympathy being main ingredients. But there are no such requirements for orthodoxy…only following the law as interpreted. That is the only rule. Even when it doesn’t seem to coincide with one’s innate moral sense !!

I remember, even as a devout believer being irritated by the non-humanistic portions of orthodoxy, be it slave, homosexual, or disenfranchised woman….it didn’t seem to be right. But, I was told, because it came from God, it must be right, and I was therefore encouraged and in fact strongly reprimanded by my yeshiva training to interpret and reconstrue my own opinions as devilish implants from the secular world. They had no right to my mind, and my main efforts should be spent expulsing them.

I think this dichotomy exists in the orthodox world in large scale….There is what we innately feel is right, and there is what we “should feel and do”, because that is what God said, and he is right in and objective way that we can never approach.

But it seems to me now that this attitude is even worlds apart from the great leaders that orthodoxy lauds as it’s own.

When society had progressed enough that an “eye for an eye” had become anathema, our greats listened to their hearts and vigorously reinterpreted the text.

Sure some will insist that this was halacha misinai and always meant to be this way, but I think they will be shown false upon insisting that religion never changes…it does… just very slowly, and voicing great nostalgia and regret. We learned to live without a temple…we created a service outside the rules of sacrifice and blood. Some even believe that at the coming of the messiah sacrifice will not be reinstituted, because humanity has changed so much that we no longer recognize this as a just way to connect with God. Surely, this shows that advancing human morality should influence religion, at least according to some of our great ancients.

I think it is time for the serious religious thinkers of our times to treat the serious issues of our times.

1 ) Human morality no longer coincides with Orthodox declarations. We barely recognize the world we are being taught represents something so much higher than our own flimsy moral standards. Most educated moderns cringe at the idea of returning to anyting close to biblical justice, even when it is watered down by the rabbinate. I think our former greats would have sensed the schism that exists. How else did Rabeinu gershom know it was time to stop polygamy. I think our former greats would of acted.

2) Modernity does not require people to believe in anything without support, let alone sky Gods. Modernity has shown a method for attaining data about the world around us that has Predictive power. No other model for attaining data has demonstrated any predictive power….ever. In most cases where the Bible has assertions about the world they are revealed through science to be little more than fables. Are we to believe that God could not create a fable to satisfy a more primitive audience that was also factually correct?…..then let him fall from his throne of omnipotence. Does he place these errors to test us?…then let us agree we cannot know how to serve a trickster God, for where does the trick end and the instructions begin?

Modernity has brought us to a place of intellectual honesty, where we believe things to a degree. That degree is mandated by the level of support and evidence. When something losses evidence and support we believe it to a lesser degree. No honest person can watch the confrontation of Judaism and modernity and not see Orthodoxy slipping down the wrungs of believability. To do so would require a dishonest mandate. Swearing fealty to absolute belief in the face of diminishing evidence may be the pinnacle of faith, but it is the dung heap of reason.

Do I think any Rabbi will look into these problems honestly….no, because the honest conclusions leave religion in the same state as a hope or a dream.

No one bases life and death decisions on diyukim from pisukim that are most likely just ancient fables. Why would you run to the dreamer for a psak, why would his fantasy be more important than what you felt in your heart was right for your loved one.

No one looks for morality out of what is most likely recordings of archaic governance. No one looks back to ancient ideals of slavery and misogyny to draw conclusions in a modern world.

No one except those who are afraid to confront their own systems of beliefs and see it for what it is.

Quick Fisk

2006-10-28T21:11:00.000-07:00

Someone recently brought my attention to the following article, which is entitled “Danger ahead- there are good reasons why God created atheists”, by Rabbi Sacks, so I thought I would print the articles and sum up my response to it. Here it is with a spattering of my thoughts in Bold:

“DO YOU believe,” the disciple asked the rabbi, “that God created everything for a purpose?”
“I do,” replied the rabbi.

“Well,” asked the disciple, “why did God create atheists?”
The rabbi paused before giving an answer, and when he spoke his voice was soft and intense. “Sometimes we who believe, believe too much. We see the cruelty, the suffering, the injustice in the world and we say: ‘This is the will of God.’ We accept what we should not accept. That is when God sends us atheists to remind us that what passes for religion is not always religion. Sometimes what we accept in the name of God is what we should be fighting against in the name of God.”

Here we are going straight into the toilet from the first paragraph. One would be left to believe that Rabbi’s voices get soft and intense when they are about to venture into territory they feel their listener may correctly identify as bunk, and few things smell as bad as when our Rabbinical greats tread around the dreaded issues of Theodicy and suffering. I think it is poor form to bring the all to common refrain: “This is the will of God” as the *mistaken* premise from which atheists will deliver us. After all, religious folks will be left with nothing more than these few words of comfort at the end of the day, with or without the help of well meaning nonbelievers. Furthermore it has rarely been the job of atheists to reform religion. To the contrary, most religious reforms have been forged by coreligionists with a different vision. Not by atheists who do not believe in a God that has provided a rulebook in the first place. But here Sacks lays his false premise, and I will beg to differ.
Atheists do not, “remind us that what passes for religion is not always religion”, No. Atheists remind us that we have no good reasons to believe in the things we claim to know with certainty.

Atheists remind us that intellectual honesty means that belief is proportional to evidence and when no evidence is evident truthfulness demands a default position of uncertainty.

Atheism reminds us that our self proclaimed absolute belief is an unfortunate psychotic break from the sane view of reality that regulates other areas of our life and this egomaniacal fantasy, fueled by unbridled ethnocentrisms, is demonstrably outrageous by any rules of logical engagement.

The Good Rabbi is happy to pretend Atheism is about reforming religion and proceed with his half baked theory from there, but he does not apparently have the stomach to tackle any of the real issues atheism raises for those struggling under the weight of a three thousand year old draconian belief system that deigns to force belief without ever gracing us with a shred of evidence.

Smoke and mirrors.

The first paragraph redefines the “problem” to something Rabbi Sacks has something to say about....'how we make our religion better'. And avoids the real issues of atheism and modernity and the problem he doesn't want to talk about...'why would any reasonable person believe any of this to begin with?'

I think one of the most powerfully disappointing aspects of our religious leadership is the avoidance of the real issues and problems of modernity. Rabbi Sacks continues….

Richard Dawkins is one of the great atheists of our time, and his latest book, The God Delusion, is his angriest. Imagine, he says, a world with no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Indian Partition, no Bosnian massacres, no religious persecution of the Jews, no Northern Ireland troubles, and so on. No religion, therefore no evil in the name of God.
This is good, honest, challenging atheism. I only wish I had as much faith as the learned professor. It would be nice to believe that if you cured people of believing in God, you would thereby have cured them of hate, violence, anger, injustice, cruelty and the urge to control, exploit, dominate and oppress.
Nothing in history suggests such a thing. On the contrary, if people do not commit evil in the name of God they have never been short of other reasons to do so: race, the war of classes, the political system, the march of progress, the Darwinian struggle to survive.
In the perennial battle between our lowest and highest instincts, which is the human condition whether we are atheist or believer, people usually robe their most brutal acts in the mantle of high ideals. In this respect the history of religion, like the history of substitutes for religion, is all too human.

Here he does make a good point. Humans will find reasons to kill each other even if religion becomes extinct.

There is, though, another thought-experiment worth performing. Imagine a world with no Book of Psalms, no Isaiah, no Ten Commandments, none of Michelangelo’s religious art or Bach’s devotional music, no Dante, no Milton, no medieval cathedrals, no prayer. Imagine one with no narrative like the Exodus to give hope to the oppressed and enslaved. And that really is the point.

Another good point, religion has certainly inspired, sometimes for good, sometimes for evil.

It took an even greater atheist, Nietzsche, to see the truth with fearless clarity. He called Judaism and Christianity “the slave revolt in morals”. It was, he believed, the ethic of the underdog, the weak, the vulnerable, the powerless. It generated an entirely new set of virtues: “Pity, the kind and helping hand, the warm heart, patience, industriousness, humility, friendliness.”
Nietzsche was contemptuous of such attitudes. Wherever they prevail, he said, “language exhibits a tendency to bring the words ‘good’ and ‘stupid’ closer to each other”. Only slaves are foolish enough to believe that love and gentleness are ways to live. Masters know a different ethic entirely: “According to master morality it is precisely the ‘good’ who inspire fear and want to inspire it.”
On this Nietzsche agrees with Machiavelli, who said that in politics it is better to be feared than to be loved. And here we arrive at the heart of the matter. Nietzsche’s supreme value was the “will to power”.

This is a classical rabbinical mistake. In Orthodoxy we twist and bend to make unpalatable opinions of ancient Rabbinic authority figures make sense. But there is no such mandate in Atheism. It is simply skepticism about God or Gods. Nietzsche can conclude what he may but he is not as the Rabbi implies, the “greater atheist” that all other atheists humbly follow. There is no reason why atheism precludes compassion and fairness.

Look at Dawkins’s list of crimes committed in the name of God and you will see that they are all cases in which religion has been used to conquer, control or intimidate. They are all expressions of the will to power. This, if anything, is the root of all evil, whether it takes religious or secular forms. That is why the supreme virtue of Judaism and Christianity is humility, the opposite of the will to power.

I agree that religion is not the root of all evil, and while it may be that religion claims that humility is it’s "supreme virtue", the ample number of incidents in which it has been manipulated at the drop of a hat into an implement for bloodshed shows that humility can be hastily replaced by supremacy, ethnocentrism, and the need for conquest.

To seek to impose your will on another, against his or her will, is the first step on the road to dehumanisation. It leads people to kill in the name of the God of life, hate in the name of the God of love, and wage war in the name of the God of peace. If Richard Dawkins has done no more than warn us of this danger, then may he forgive me for saying that he is a fine example of why God creates atheists and why sometimes theirs is a prophetic voice.

His ending suffers from the same problems as his first paragraph, he has not solved the difficulties atheism and modernity pose to orthodoxy. He has only correctly identified the weak point in Dawkins argument: that not all evil comes from religion. But by concluding that this “prophetic voice of atheism” which helps religion.... is Gods work, he avoids every fundamental problem that truly troubles the members of his community. Those whom actually understand the challenge of modernity are going to be left wanting at the end of his article. The whole piece has the slippery feel of politics and yet another succesful escape through the magic of well lubricated prose.

I will be impressed when a Rabbinic figure actually begins to consider the problem from some type of even ground. "Why does God create atheists" assumes much in an argument against atheism- the lack of belief in a God.

I would have been willing to overlook that had he actually dealt with any of the difficulties rational thought posses to religion. But when he chose to ignore any of the more difficult aspects in favor of restructuring the debate into "we can all be shown better ways to be religious by our unwitting atheist freinds who are pupets in God's great game, the rules for which I will be kind enough to explain to all you ignoramuses out there..", well....let's agree to just flush this dvar torah down to it's peers.

XGH

2006-09-02T23:17:00.000-07:00

It’s strange.

Why is it that I am drawn to the discussions that GH/XGH initiates. I mean of course he is an entertaining and lively blogger, but I don’t think it is a stretch to say there is an element of repetition to the discourse. Most have noticed this. Some have commented on the way it resembles a feverish obsession with the subject matter. An itch that demands to be scratched.

I won’t be so bold as to suggest why XGH pursues the frailty of faith and religion, but I will try and analyze why it has such a formative hold on me…and why I preferentially peruse these discussions even though I am, by this point thoroughly familiar with the outcome as well as most of the arguments that will be represented in the thread.

The gripe is almost always the same. It’s what most people realize as they get a better grasp of logic and history outside of Orthodox Judaism. And that is: There are no good reasons to believe in the brand of Orthodox Judaism that we were raised with. Certainly there are appeals to consequences, and the dire situation those of us who lose faith find ourselves in, but when we usher out our preconceived notions, engage the same critical faculties that we use during our work day, and view what is reasonably known…. no religion passes the bar of credibility.

Sure, there are answers to those damaging questions, “the flood could be local”, “days don’t mean days”, “the creation isn’t the literal order”, “logic doesn’t apply in areas where it contradicts the torah”, “history doesn’t apply in areas where it contradicts the torah”, “God magically put animals on different continents after a flood.”

And sure, they could all be true. We can’t show definitively that they are not. But I think most people with a sensitive intellect begin to realize, that with the liberal amount of leeway the above “answers” require to make room for the torah, there doesn’t exist any story, or series of statements that cannot be justified with the same method. And the answer that answers every question really answers none.

And once one comes to this conclusion religion losses it’s lofty footing as absolute truth, and those who extol it as such are revealed as kindly figures who, despite expertise in Jewish legalities, have never pondered the larger issues.

Shouldn’t the Charedi Rabbi from my Yeshiva who laughed at Christians for the Virgin birth be forced to nod his head and admit that this is no sillier than a talking Donkey? Why was this analogy off limits to his thinking?

Shouldn’t the Modern Orthodox Scholar who easily eludes questions by invoking “alternate realities” and the “limits of logic” every time the Torah runs aground against hard fact, shrug his shoulders and admit that such tactics ultimately can be used to justify any system of thought, no matter how badly it is flawed? Where is this honest introspection in a person who claims that truth is his guide?

Can’t everyone take a step back and realize that they are playing tennis without a net, and marvel at how they remain completely convinced of their own victory?

I think it is necessary to understand that the answer is NO for many people. The ability to apply a critical assessment to themselves and their belief system in the same manner they do for the theological imperatives modeled by others, for reasons of ego, consequences, or otherwise, are outside of their abilities.

Indeed, it seems a core component of successful religion is the ability to avoid this type of introspection. In some religions these thoughts themselves are forbidden. And I have noticed on many comment threads that people seem unable to go down this road of contemplation.

Now, for those who have thought about their religion in this light, it begins to occupy a new space in probability, it is reduced from a certainty to one of many unsupported possibilities. Not better or worse than any other unsubstantiated bit of fluff out there. And as stated above, there exists no good reason to believe.

Well still, it could be true, some might protest, and wouldn’t they be correct? After all it is familiar, and does seem to have some benefits? And even if there is no evidence doesn’t our amazing history show us some hint of our chosen status?

And of course it could be true.

But the real rub comes when we look at “it”. For once you have reduced religion to it’s appropriate rung of likelihood, the “it’, which in our case is Orthodox Judaism, exudes a foul odor of absolute certainty in it’s convictions, which is not in line with the evidence supporting it.

Indeed, In light of the evidence supporting religion, and in fact the myriad of apologetics necessary just to keep it afloat, it would seem an honest religion in an honest community would issue it’s religious proclamations with a mandatory string of diminutives.

Like:

“If there is a God, and we can’t rightly say, seeing as how we have no way of knowing, and we won’t be so ethnocentric as to claim our revelations are better or more reliable than everyone else’s….but if we could ever take a guess as to what he was thinking, assuming he has a mind that resembles in some manner the human mind, in that it thinks thoughts. And with the conjecture that he is aware/concerned/remotely interested in human existence and or behavior, and considers us something more than an annoying layer of crud that grew on his favorite blue marble in his marble collection, we would like to posit the possibility, that the torah is his divine word, and that he is horrendously infuriated by gay people.”

Of course, no such form of religion exists, probably because it’s hard to get people to judge other people with the recommended dosage of cruelty on such a long strand of maybes. And so religions shrug off an honest appraisal of what they can and can’t know and instead use indoctrination and fear tactics to get compliance with their “certainties”, and do so with enormous success.

Many of us have been “volunteers” and received extensive doses of indoctrination complete with the threat of punishment that comes with going “off the derech”, and can testify to the ability of these tactics to achieve their goals.

Religion has aptly demonstrated that it can get people to believe what is uncertain with unquestioning metaphysical certitude by pulling the right strings. And we should all continue to marvel at how all religions do this, in full sight of their contradictory counterparts.

So why will I be waiting at the next GH post that restates the above?

Well partly because GH is an expert orator, and I can expect humor and bravado along the way. And partly because I like to look across the fence and marvel at the inventive nature in which religion will be defended. Maybe I think someone will start to catch on…to look at themselves the way they used to look at Christians and Muslims, and wonder how they are so sure they are right and those are wrong. Maybe there is a rescue aspect, maybe sometimes I feel like I am extending a hand to people still caught up in the fear and indoctrinated hardship and I can show them a way out. Maybe it’s a bit of revenge against the forces that so casually assumed the right to mold me in an image that they had never really pondered the truth of…or perhaps I like to behold the psychology that allows individual certainty in the face overwhelming doubt.

Finally, I think GH has boiled down the difficulties of religion to it's core. He's dissected layer by layer until arriving at the very beating heart of the mythical beast, and executes it as a daily ritual in front of vast audiences. He's shown people the theological difficulties which when unanswered do not allow you to pass GO. And like myself, stands amazed, at the resiliancy of this belief, that in the minds of many commenters, will not submit to the deathblow it recieves. For, rooted in primitave places of the mind, it is immune to his grandest attacks.

Hell, Maybe I just like to watch the show...

Who knows…. either way, I’ll be there.

Meme a little Meme

2006-08-26T16:13:00.000-07:00

Well, I have been tagged by the Jewish Atheist on a Book Meme so here goes.

The book that changed my life was “Who wrote the bible”, I know its cliché. But what can I do…it’s true. I read it on the way to an interview, and became so engrossed in it I stayed up all night reading. It’s not that I necessarily immediately believed it to be true. In fact I spent a great deal of time afterward attempting to verify the things Freidman said; from attempting to authenticate the writings of Isaac Ibn Yeshush, to looking to the text for correlation to his “two priesthood” hypothesis. In most instances I found the evidence speculative and lacking…but that wasn’t the point. The point is I turned the same critical faculty I used in every day life, for the very first time, towards an analysis of religion. In particular my religion…and the whole thing just fell apart.

I’ve read a bunch of books more than once, my favorite are short story series by Stephen King, including Night Shift, and another that slips my mind at the moment. I have also read several Asimov books more than once, his short story collective, "I robot", is a favorite also.

The book I would like on a desert island would probably be a Shakespeare anthology. I have very poor exposure to his work, but I’ve heard he covered just about every topic. If I had unlimited time to spend on fiction I’d probably give him a whirl, but I be tempted to just tote a whole truckload of physics or astronomy books along, assuming infinite time and coconuts, and try to corner off another discipline.

A book that made me laugh out loud most recently was Shalom Auslander’s "Beware of God", where he describes a hapless modern day prophet ascending on Home depot to accrue the necessities of altar and sacrifice…brilliant.

A book that made me want to cry? Its title is lost to the ages. I read it in grade school, read it as late as I could keep my little eyes opened, ignoring the studying I needed to do for the test the next day. I actually remember making the decision of wanting to read rather than study. Even though my fear of doing badly was strong. The subject matter was that of a boy and a girl falling in love in ancient times, and of the boy rescuing the girl. I can’t remember what made it so sad, but my eyes were brimming over…

The book I wish I had written is “the memoirs of the yeshiva misfit”, who knows….some day….

There are no books I wish had never been written. Suppression of ideas leads nowhere. Humanity only merits escape from bad ideas through maturity and critical thinking.

I am currently reading no books, as I have a stack of medical journals to catch up on that takes precedence.

I mean to read…well it depends on how much caffeine is in my blood…at times I mean to read the library, I’ll flutter around Barnes and Nobles jumping from the details of the enlightenment, to hard core philosophy, to astronomy with a do it yourself telescope kit, to the latest fiction anthology, but then the buzz wears thin, I leave my books in a stack by the coffee shop and go home for dinner.

Before I tag my five I will invent a new category because I am pretty sure rules are meant for people more dogmatic than myself. My knew category is, “what turned you on to fiction.” That is to say what was the first book that made you realize that there was a romance to be had with words, that pages with black ink markings could thrill you and fulfill you as much as any activity you could conjure.

I have so many I hesitate to start for lack of a finish. I remember Harrison Bergeron from a fourth grade reader. It excited me so much I showed it to my family, there was another great sci-fi in there whose title escapes me. In it a man stranded on a foreign planet evolves slowly into that planets indigenous life form. I read the trilogy of, “Swiftly tilting planet”, in grade school along with all of Edgar Rice Boroughs Tarzan and John Carter of Mars series. I read the Sword of Shannara series, the Xanth series, the girl with silver eyes, and much of Asimov’s work in grade school (when I was still allowed to read fiction).

I can’t really remember a first anymore, but one of those lit a spark of appreciation for what “can be”.

Now my five: I tag XGH, Gil Student, Chardal, Orthoprax, and, what the hell, Lakewood yid.

Memoirs of a Yeshiva Misfit Part Four

2006-07-09T12:06:00.000-07:00

Like satin sheets gently draped over your consciousness, it falls upon you, veiling the sharpness of inquiry and calculation, with a gentle motion, rocking you softly to a safer place, where imagination can plant it’s soft feet almost unnoticed. From turning pages it’s whisper arises, carried in the rhythmic cadence of a hundred voices breathing life to the words of the Talmud, accented by the squeaking of chairs and the shuffling of feet. It fills the room with a background hum, a white noise of torah, that closes in on your ears like a soft blanket and furnishes womb and heartbeat, to lull those who are not careful, into the ever present danger of the daydream.

I don’t know where my mind had drifted to on this particular day of beis medrish study, but my empty gaze must of wandered to the chavrusahs immediately diagonal to me, for I returned from my dreams to see Yossi Lefkovitch thumbing his nose at me from across the table in response to the vacant stare that I had settled upon him. He opened his eyes wide and slapped his Gemarah shaking his head at me… “New!”

I shook myself out of it and pulled my attention back to the peeling fake mahogany table in front of me to my own chavrusah. We sat there in pairs of two’s surrounded by the collective knowledge of our Rabbi’s; the walls crammed from top to bottom with bound and rebound ancient texts of learned wisdom. The texts contributed a musty odor, a fundamental dry rot mystique that filled the place with an air that promised ancient secrets.

My Chavrusah was involved in a day dream of his own, balanced on the hind legs of his chair, feet half out of his penny loafers, with soft eyes that looked past me as he spoke. His voice once again faded into my consciousness as I tuned back in to the world around me.

“Kidarcho….” He said distantly, “Shelo Kidarcho….it’s all mutar according the Rambam...all mutar, once your married...but not before.”

“What are you talking about,” I snapped at him, “we’re learning hilchos tzitzis.”

He came out of his reverie just as irritated as I had, his eyes regaining focus on me, his mind remembering how irate he had been to be paired with me at all.

Mordechai was quick to remember the origins of this conversation. In fact Mordechai was quick to remember everything. He was short and stout and he sat across from me wearing his starched white shirt and black woolen pants with a thick pair of glasses that revealed deep red grooves on the sides of his nose whenever he took them off. He sported the proud beginning moustache of puberty and had been aptly dubbed by some as “Mustache Mordy”.

“I was telling you why it’s not worth it to go to college and be michshal bi’ervah and be boel every arusah in the preitzusdika velt”, he stated strongly, finally remembering what had caused him to arrive at such prust subject matter to begin with.

“What? What in the world does that have to do with….”, I truly had not been mentally present to pin down the start of this conversation, but it did sound a lot better than hilchos tzitzis.

But then it started to come back to me, I had heard some of this through my daydream.

It was talk I had heard many times before. The dangers of the outside world, the sexual abandon, the loss of yiras shemayim, the end result: going off the derech….no wonder I had tuned out.

“I’m telling you about the nesayon that’s waiting for you after yeshiva if you don’t figure it out for yourself….”

“Jees, what’s wrong with you, tons of frum people go to college, it’s about getting knowledge and a career, not…”

“In here”, he said caressing the open page of his sepher, “all knowledge is from the torah and chazal…”

It sounded to good to be true…I would have to think about it.

“Once you have the knowledge of chazal under your belt, then, if you have to, you get a career. Not before! The outside world doesn’t have any true information, everything is twisted into a nesayon that can turn your neshama into a yetzer hara”

“That’s why we don’t let the tarfus of the goyim into the yeshiva”, he said squinting meaningfully at me, as I had a history of ownership of such various items as books and radios, “so that bochurim can have some time to formulate a real immunity that isn’t metameh from the goyishe velt. Without that pure knowledge of good from bad, your bound to be turned by the taivos out there.”

It may seem odd for me to have been receiving such personal mussar from a counterpart my own age, but it was relatively standard fare for the most religious kids in yeshiva to begin to take on a semi rabbinic role.

“Everything out there”, said Mustache Mordy, “ is a test, just like God tested Avraham with the akedah. And if you go out there without the proper preparation, there’s no chance for you….”

It’s not that his mussar wasn’t working on me, he was quite convincing, and had probably borrowed the bulk of his speech from his father, but I had other things on my mind at the moment.

“…is that really true… about what the Rambam said..?”, I ventured full of curiosity no end.

“New”, he proclaimed, indicating the discussion was over and it was time to return to the real work at hand. Saying ‘New’ was a way of recognizing out loud that bitul torah was occurring, and with this recognition only one respectable path lay ahead to be followed.

“Say”, he shot at me, remembering his familial heritage and feeling some urgency to change the subject. He scratched his short cropped curly hair careful to keep his hand on top of his worn velvet Yarmulka, “I am waiting for you to say viater. Go!”

I contemplated the small print of the mishnah berurah in front of me, “I just said…. you say”, I attempted feebly, hoping I could ride out the remaining five minutes on Mordechai’s coat tails.

It’s not that I was dumb, to the contrary, it was for the few times I had shown my skills in talmudic logical refinement that the hanhallah had chosen to make me their “project”. That was why I was paired with Mordechai, son of one of the most eminent Rabbi’s of our time. He was supposed to rub off on me, or as I imagined it, Torah, like powdered sugar, couldn’t help sticking to anything that came in contact with it, and I was to be heavily sprinkled.

But learning with Mordechai was difficult in a way I had not experienced before. He outgunned me on every level. The difficult Hebrew wording and abbreviations that I paused to consider, he read as fluently as second grade English. Every halachah was review for him. Every concept for him was a re-visitation to well trod terrain.

And so he would sit with me as I read, exorcising the pain of being appointed the task of: ‘mentorship of the “modernisha”’ by powerfully correcting every mispronunciation with a confidence born of experience, bludgeoning me expertly for every mistake.

He had all the knowledge of Rabbinical law at his disposal, and none of the tools of the educator, save for cruel beration.

I don’t know why anyone would have expected more from him, we were only fifteen.

The sessions, though short, left me with a hollow feel, turning me into almost a shell of myself, my core being having fled for the hills to preserve it’s last shred of dignity, I read the passages in ready acceptance of my dosage of verbal abuse thinly veiled as the necessity of imparting torah knowledge, desperately awaiting the end so that my soul could return to my body.

As such, our chavrusaship had become more and more strained with unhappy feelings accumulating on both ends.

We could not have been more different people. Mordechai, raised on the knee of torah greatness, oblivious to any world outside his own, centered on his own potential and the expectations of accomplishments that he would achieve through learning; was as foreign a human being as I had been exposed to. I had been raised with movies and rock and roll, science, and liberal free thought. It was a personality clash before either one of us even opened our mouths.

“No. I just said”, said Modechai in full possession of the truth, shaking his head back and forth, “Come on, finish up the sugya before mincha, let’s go.”

I attempted to prepare myself mentally for another episode of brow beating as I focused on the thin lines of text, and I turned off my feelings and pride, as my finger found the place on a five letter abbreviation. My mind barely wanted to decipher it, consigned instead to await the impatient answer from across the table.

“Say !” he cried in frustration at being slowed to the pace of his inexperienced counterpart and punctuated his demand with a sharp jab at the near spine of his mishna berurah that translated to the adjacent spine of mine. Neither his sefer nor mine budged and inch, but the force delivered a potent blow to my solar plexus that had been pressed against the books edge in my attempt at concentration.

I awoke then in full form, as cross table chavrusah warfare was an art in which I was well versed.

I met his eyes and in that poignant second we conceded to do battle, letting our combined distaste for each other overflow into the physical realm. I assessed him then, how he sat tilting on the hind legs of his chair, how our sepharim lay now end to end, the proximity of the Rabbinate, all in a flicker of the second hand, casing the angles like a pro.

In a deft move born of hundreds of hours sitting at these tables I swept my foot against the front legs of his chair sending him careening backwards and he grabbed the table, desperate to save himself from falling over. In his panic his left shoe, loosely worn, came off and I viciously kicked it to the side sending it skittering across tiled floor to the next table over, gleefully chancing expulsion for my shot at revenge. Yosi Lefkkovich, to my immediate right, looked up again in agitation and found his intense concentration interrupted for the second time today, this time, by a rogue shoe skittering past his feet.

“Mamzer ben Needah”, Mordy muttered in anger, his faced flushed with humiliation, retaliation burning hot in his blood, and as I mistakenly enjoyed watching his shoe complete it’s journey across the room, he slid the thick side of his mishnah berurah under the thin side of mine , and slapping it upwards caused the cover of my sepher to hit me sharply in the chin.

Don’t ever say they don’t teach physics in yeshiva.

“You little…”, I mouthed as I raised my shoe for a crushing blow to his exposed toes.

“New, how’s the chavrusah going…good?”, asked Rav Goldstien.

I swear he materialized out of no where, I half expected beams of glittering light and that three toned high pitched whistle, to accompany his step out of thin air.

Mordy and I looked at each other, barely able to disguise the fury to which we gave vent but we quickly settled down. He carefully covered his unshod foot with his other shoe.

One little piggy stuck out of a hole in his sock.

Rav Goldstein, as was his nature, was as oblivious to our tussle as he was to the world around him.

”Boruch Hashem”, I said, still breathing heavily but loathe to admit the hanhallah had been wrong to choose me for special grooming.

Rabbi Goldstien looked over at Mordechai, “Eh ?” he said in a manner that communicated the question was being repeated.

“Mamash..”, said Mordy with a faint smile, “making progress…boruch hashem.” I suppose he didn’t want to fail in his specially appointed task either.

“Ehhh!!” Said Rabbi Goldstien in conclusion, with undisguised satisfaction at the chemistry of our bar plugta…apparently, his plan was working perfectly!

Mordy and I were a match made in heaven.

Rabbi Goldstien looked upwards for a moment as if receiving a message from above. He was the type of Rabbi who only appeared to be cognizant half of the time, and even then it was with a special effort.

“Mincha”, he stated.

Either by prophecy or by the fact it had turned two o’clock a clop resounded within the bies meidresh and the frenzied conclusion of seder culminated in a din of rustling and jostling as people relocated to their mokom kavuah’s for davening.

Mordy hobbled back in the act of walking and putting on his shoe simultaneously, “I’m serious”, he said, trying to regain the moral high ground, “no more bittle torah from you.”

“Ashrie yoshvie vaysecha”, I replied firmly, shrugging my shoulders, “ode yehallelucha sella”.

He waved me off with a look beneath contempt.

But I was in no mood for davening and had no prayers to offer God. I slipped easily out of the beis medrish and found my way to my locker in the English building.

Biology was to be my first class and I dug quickly through my notes. There was no textbook of course, that was much too risky. Instead we had photocopied selected chapters for some subjects, but most lessons were simple handwritten stencils, penned by the biology teacher and approved by the principal for general consumption.

I pulled today’s crumpled papers out of my loose-leaf binder and headed early to my biology class. And sitting all alone amongst the jumble of wooden metal hybrid desks in horrible disrepair, I felt more at ease than I had the whole day. I took my moment of solitude to make a quick perusal of the upcoming material.

“Salk and Sabin”, stated the lead paragraph of the handwritten memo, “discover vaccines.”

Wow. It sounded enticing. If only I could have some details….but the mimeograph paper read like a telegraph of disconnected factual blurbs, peppered with spelling errors.

Behind me I heard my biology teacher shuffle in to the room and I turned to watch him enter.

He was a true example of what the Yeshiva’s non advertising, non recruitment policy could achieve when it really put it’s mind to it.

You see, fearful of the legalities of turning down a qualified female applicant, yeshiva-teaching positions were filled through hushed back alley affairs.

Fresh of the boat from some dark corner of India, and sporting the same shirt and pants for three months running, he moved nervously between table and chair, making quickly for the authority of his teachers desk as if it represented home base from a children’s game, rendering him immune to being tagged so long as he kept a finger on it.

He acknowledged my presence, I was his star student, which meant I could answer questions by reading his handouts and parroting back the information.

“whoaaa”, he said to me in a deep guttural tone nodding his head in my direction.

Was that hello ?

I considered carefully as I watched the nervous tick that made his head rotate to the left and then the right after a jittery twitch of his shoulders. He was not much over five feet tall, and as paunchy as an in season Santa Claus, but brown and bald as a cashew nut.

He was a caricature Mr. Potato head, and the image was strong enough to make you want to mentally replace an ear with a thin spindly arm just for kicks.

“Hello”, I said carefully, hoping this had been the tenure of the conversation.

He was nodding his head to me when we jointly heard the tumult of the hordes coming up from mincha. I saw his face change. Even his dark skin blanched from mahogany to elm, and his large brown eyes, nervously darting now…It was fear.

The poor guy was terrified. I didn’t blame him, yeshiva students were notorious for misbehavior that bordered on criminal. Perhaps after five hours of intense study during which misbehavior was spiritually forbidden, English classes represented nothing more than an excuse to vent the enormous teenage energies that had no other outlet.

He was our third biology teacher this year.

In flooded the masses surrounded by a cacophony of hoots and hollers, a rolling din of contained conversations in which I was quickly engulfed. We had all been tightly wrapped for our Shiurim and chazarah seders, where no sign of disrespect or disobedience could be tolerated, and this collective sigh of relief, as that girder belt came loose, was the burden of the English teacher.

Someone was poking me in the back.

“Loser, what are you doing here already.”, he said raising his characteristic monotone above the noise around us.

It was Yakov Brunner, badest of the bad, the kid with a rebellious streak that ran straight through.

He had fair rights as my friend, and we passed a lot of otherwise misery filled time together, but truth be told I was hoping for a little quiet time in which to hear this lecture.

How did they figure out vaccines, how could they have known, did they put a whole virus in you and just hope you didn’t get infected??

I don’t think any of my friends really had this type of hunger about the world around them. I don’t know if they had ever had that spiritual experience of marveling at it all when you finally understood how something worked, how something happened. The high that comes with understanding even just a small piece of your surroundings.

“I was bored of mincha”, I answered blandly hoping to end the conversation so as to have a chance to hear if the teacher had brought any pearls of wisdom with him today.

Mordy overheard me as he walked behind my desk to his own seat.

”Boruch Hashem”, he said, “Bitul torah and missing tefilah betzibor, what’s next”?

“Shut up, Mustache” said Brunner, hoping to start a fight… any little turmoil would suit his causes. I knew, that however much he tormented Mordy now, it would just be held over and delivered upon me with interest during chavrusah time tomorrow. This was the difficulty of learning with the “enemy”, one’s loyalties were always split.

“Yeah mustache”, said Eli Rubenstien, not knowing what we were talking about as he walked in late, but happy enough to add fuel to whichever fire might be raging.

I cringed as he sat next to me.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved these guys, but me, Eli, and Yakov sitting in such close proximity was pretty close to a meteorological phenomenon, and as Eli took his chair, I watched the completion of the Bermuda triangle of misbehavior.

Along the far side of the room another group assembled, the rabbinic notables, the heirs to destinies of yichus and yeshiva careers. The room typically split in this odd segregated pattern. We had no jocks and nerds, so we made our own lines in the sand.

Mordy, now settled amongst his peers, who stared us down in righteous anger, was about to mouth off in reply, but was cut short by the beginning of class.

“YOU”, said our teacher loudly in an almost indecipherable accent while pointing an ambiguously directed finger, “READ.”

This was how class always began, with selected bochurim breaking their teeth over the illegible ditto sheets, reading aloud to the class what the teacher could not.

“YOU…. READ”, he said again, louder this time, with his eyes gaining that nervous look, as if the entire class was about to jump up and unseat him. His finger pointed to some unseen center of the class, and perhaps he hoped that by some miracle someone would take up the challenge without direct coercion.

We sensed his fear, for it spilled from him in waves, we felt them washing over us, carried by some mystical ether.

Brunner started the pot boiling.

“Read what”, he said with just enough agitation in his voice to bump the situation to code red in the teachers mind.

“READ”, said our teacher going into a panicked jitter that made his shoulders and eyelids twitch, as if he were sending off a distress signal in Morse code for immediate medivac.

“Read wha…”, Yakov started to ask even more indignantly.

“Wax..”, the teacher said quietly, “WAXINES….READ.”

A confused buzz spread across the room as the collected bochurim tried to figure out what the hell was going on and I heard individual questions surface from the background noise.

“What’s he talking about” ?

“What’s a waxene” ?

“I don’t know.”

Hearing the room turn from silent attention to mid-whisper debate sent our teacher into full DEFCOM 4 alert status and he began to jitter like a man on his fourteenth cup of Joe.

“WAXINE”, he roared, it was almost a scream by now, as he ventured momentarily backwards, to tentatively place a piece of chalk on the board and write out what he couldn’t pronounce, and then feeling unnerved with his back turned to the hoards, he hastily returned to his desk, having written nothing, to reassert his statement, “READ….WAXINES!!!!” He performed this dance between desk and blackboard, never writing a word, several times, like some gravitational force was pulling him against his will, caught in a helpless orbit between one and the other.

Brunner was whispering in my ear as we watched him circle like a lonely planet between desk and board all the while screaming ‘waxines’.

“This guys blown as gasket..”

But even as I nodded my head in agreement I reread the title of today’s worksheet, “Salk and Sabin vaccinations…”

“Of course”, I thought as I combined his accent with the intended subject material but I couldn’t stifle my laugh in time, and as I heard my own, others joined in gleeful exploitation of someone who was different then us.

Before long the room was in the uproar, and quips came from all sides, “I’m going on wacation”, sniped someone from the back row. “Does this apartment have a wacancy”, shot someone from the side.

Looking around the room at the laughing faces I happened upon Eli, and his smile was noncommittal, his laugh, just enough to join the ruckus. He really had not gotten why this was funny yet. He had never been the sharpest tool in the shed, and he was waiting patiently for it to dawn on him, smiling along all the while, he was as clueless as could be, I had seen that look on his face before.

Perhaps because he had the most serious looking face in the classroom, our, by now irate, Biology teacher descended on him in near madness, with his temple vein throbbing to such excess I could time his pulse from my chair.

“WAXINES…..READ”, he fumed, standing over Eli with his fingers pointed at the sheets. Eli turned a special shade of pale and fumbled with his memos, sensing something bad was going to happen.

I think I may have been the only one who realized that Eli didn’t understand which section to read, I think the knowledge that he was outside the class’ shared joke was mine alone.

And so when he innocently asked, “I can’t find Waxines”, in a timid voice, the class once again burst into laughter, loving the continuation of this joke for one more round.

I saw Eli quietly cringe with shame as he heard the laughter around him, and perhaps Brunner’s nearby guffaws hurt him the deepest. His hands shook and his eyes scanned franticly for the place. What did everyone know that he didn’t?

Our Biology teacher falsely intuited Eli’s role as a class Jester, and decided this was the place to regain authority.

“READ…WAXINES…SALK AND SABIN…NOW”

It was a command. A command expressed so as not to be violated. The class quieted with respect, the balance was restored and our teacher waited with confidence for his bidding to be done.

And so, when Eli turned his tortured red face up to the teacher, and proclaimed with innocence that would make angels sing, “I don’t know what a waxine is”, the class, fooled into premature calm, once again exploded in appreciation. By God this was good Cinema, Eli played an excellent straight man, giving no hint he was setting up for the punch line. Or so it looked to everyone.

Low and behold, this humor was good for another go around.

As liberated cackles filled the air, both Eli and our Biology teacher turned shades of Red and purple. Eli, because he assumed the class was laughing at him, for not understanding what everyone else did, and for having had to so shamefully display his ignorance to the class.

He felt the laughter around him in the most painful manner, as he had frequently been accused of being slow, and a poor learner, and now, as mean mannered chuckling filled the air, Eli felt the inferiority of his intellect was source of the snickering.

After all, everyone seemed to understand and be amused by something he couldn’t fathom. And upon his frail teenage psyche this episode of public humiliation festered and magnified, cutting his fledgling ego deeply.

Of course, our Biology teacher, correctly identified the laughter as directed at him, and incorrectly blamed the sole innocent of the class.

“WALK…….”, he said, in a fiery voice.

“WALK TO PRINCIPAL.”

“But I didn’t do anything…”, Eli chaffed at his expulsion, realizing now that both the class and teacher saw his innocent questions as misbehavior, but he continued to be mystified as to why that was so.

And now with his protestations of innocence the class looked at him anew. All the grinning faces, the down turned sneers. They had been sure he was joking….was he really so stupid that his questions had been real. Surely not, surely he had been playing class clown to entertain them, could he really be that slow? The confused faces of the class looked at him curiously posing the question of his motivations. And their judgment awaited the outcome.

Eli didn’t fathom the details of the situation, but he intuited that he had a choice now.

The moment Eli realized that his self perceived stupidity and the humiliation that came with it could be redeemed, purified, and outright traded in, for social popularity points through acknowledgment of intent of misbehavior; he made his choice to redeem his ego, and with that decision and only at that moment…became the class clown.

By now our biology teacher had returned to the safety of his desk, and from its security he pointed his finger at Eli.

“WALK”

At this Eli stood from his chair and hoisted his pants to somewhere just below his shirt pocket, puffed out his belly, and stooped with freely swinging arms, his face distorted with concentration, and with that, Eli Rubenstien…… disappeared.

He’d always had a knack for movement, dancing at a whim with grace, blazing across a football field. He could control and contort his entire body as if every involuntary muscle was under his steady control. He had often imitated mine and others gates and habits to such eerie precision that it would drive the object of his mimicry to laughter or tears. I don’t know how he achieved it, but it was always something to marvel at.

And so, Eli Rubenstien disappeared, and in his place, mimicked nuance for nuance, gesture for gesture was a smaller to scale replica of our Biology teacher.

Mr. Golinar, our Biology teacher stood mystified for a moment, wondering why he suddenly appeared to be observing himself in near mirror image.

“WAAAALK”, he said deeply, pointing a finger at Eli.

But just as quickly, in fact almost in unison, Eli’s finger came up and he spoke with near perfect deep Guttural tone, “Waaalk”.

Mr. Golinar’s nervous system performed then, the equivalent of two backfires and a stall, as his eyelids flickered and his shoulders hunched and descended, followed by the tick in his neck that made his head look like it was revolving around on a slow motion centrifuge.

Eli mimicked this near seizure episode to exquisite perfection, and once again the class gone lord of the flies filled the air with their adoring laughter.

As predicted earlier by Bruner, Mr. Golinar was close to snapping, we’d seen plenty of teachers snap before, and snap he did. The classroom, the students, the laws of government and society, and the universe, all eclipsed by the primal need to get at Eli Rubenstein.

He bolted around his desk in savage rage, but Eli, a child of physical instinct more than anything else, had the good sense to bolt forward rather than back, placing the length of the desk between him and our teacher, never once leaving the module of mimicry that replicated every fumbling step our teacher took.

“YOU”, said Mr. Golinar, pointing a shaky finger at Eli, and appearing like he could barely see through the red haze in front of his eyes.

“You”, mimicked Eli with a crooked finger, pulling his pants up another notch.

Mr. Golinar lurched around the desk in his futile attempt to grasp Eli Rubenstien by any body part by which he could shake him to death. But Eli just moved as light as a feather in the other direction taunting all the while.

There they frolicked, chasing each other around the desk better than Tom and Jerry ever did. As our Biology teacher paused for breath Eli took another opportunity to immortalize himself in the annals of misbehavior.

“You not teacher”, scolded Eli as they stared at each other from across the desk, “I teacher now”

As the last trace of social glue eroded the classroom exploded and in a cacophony of flying paper and yelling, Eli slipped easily out the Door with our teacher fast on his heals, the rest of us trailing as anxious spectators, hooting and hollering like a bunch of brigands.

But even as the first half of the class exited the room the pandemonium was replaced by a stiff silence, an icy stoppage of celebration that crept back along the chain of boys so that the last to exit the room did so in trepidation, fearful of what lay at the other end of the quiet.

There in the hallway stood our principal, Mr. Bernstien, a fierce disciplinarian of a man, he was six feet and bit, and resembled most of our Rabbis in appearance save for his more closely trimmed beard.

Mr. Golinar stood silent in near asphyxiation with one deadly finger pointing at Rubenstien.

Eli stood in psychological paralysis, caught in his biggest gamble ever, his posture had changed and he stood with his head bowed as if in agreement with the both the timing and propriety of the executioners ax.

But what Mr. Bernstein said next surprised us all.

“Israel is under attack”, he said in a deadly serious tone, “and you will all go directly to the bies medrish immediately.”

“Mr. Golinar”, he said briskly to our teacher, “you are excused for the day…thank you.”

Poor Mr. Golinar, if only he could of found the words, he fumed a few syllables after Mr. Bernstien that sounded something like yelling bloody murder, but Mr. Bernstien was already on his way to the next class.

We all made our way quickly to the beis medrish, with Eli taking the long way around a still befuddled biology teacher.

The look on Eli’s face was as close to what I can imagine Yitzchak looked like after the Akedah.

We were alive with conversation, as none of us kept up with any form of news.

What was going on?

Who was attacking ?

Why were they attacking ?

As we bustled down the stairs I noticed a quiet Moredechai walking beside me. His eyes were red and he looked…

My God, he was crying.

I asked the obvious question, as there had been a lot of commotion in the classroom with Rubenstien running laps around the teacher, “what’s the matter…. did you stub your toe” ?

He looked at me, momentarily furious I had noticed his tears.

And then it came, blurted out syllable by syllable, “My Tatee”, he said choking on the words, “My Tatee is in Israel.”

I’m ashamed to say it, but my first and silent thought was, ‘do people really call their fathers Tatee’, and my second was a mild sense of embarrassment to be next to the kid that was balling like a child, but somewhere under there I had compassion, and as it welled to the surface I took Mordechai by the arm, “C’mon”, I said, and brought him over to Rabbi Brindel, our Menahel’s office.

Even as I reached the open door Rabbi Brindel was on his feet. He was a man I feared tremendously, as he ruled his yeshiva with an iron will and an unbending philosophy of fundamental beliefs.

It was almost difficult for me to voluntarily walk into the lion’s den of his office, so I tried to deliver the information hastily.

“Rebbi, Mordy’s father is…”

“I know”, he said and with two great strides was beside us, he put his arm around Mordy as if father to son, “hashem yisboroch watches over you father”, he said with the complete confidence of the faithful, “don’t worry, he’ll be alright…he’ll be alright.”

Always on the defensive I had never realized how deeply Rabbi Brindel cared for his students, and I hesitated by the doorway almost a moment too long, seeing him in a different light.

As I stepped back from his office I was caught in a stream of humanity headed for the Beis medrish, and I had to push my way to my usual seat were four of five people now stood. The entire yeshiva and high school had compressed themselves and it seemed there was barely room to breath.

The room buzzed with speculation and various news sources, but I couldn’t get a clean fix on anything.

A moment later and Rabbi Brindle entered, striding purposefully to his shtender. He was a large man, hefty and tall, with thick strong arms and large hands. He raised a hand above his head and brought it swiftly down on the flat of his wooden shtender, creating a piercing boom that brought the crowded room to instant silence.

There we hung, suspended in a quiet too pristine to even exhale in.

And then he spoke.

“We”, he said, “do not believe in the government of Israel, or the secular state…”

Silence.

“But right now, Yidden in Eretz Yisroel, need our tefilah, to survive.”

He paused.

“More than bunkers, or Airplanes, or tanks….the kavanah you have right now…will determine the outcome of the war. We dare waste not another second, as our prayers are needed right now…”

Crammed too close to breath, I spent a moment thinking of all my relatives in Israel, all my friends there. Having just seen Mordy in tears only made it feel that much more personal, that much more… my battle.

I had never felt very much in terms of prayer, they were an empty service to me, a fealty to a being I didn’t understand, a set of praises I didn’t really feel; but despite my past, I was momentarily convinced that Rabbi Brindel was correct, and that my hishtadlus at this moment was quintessential to the survival of actual individuals in Eretz Yisroel.

He pointed a finger at the frail chazzan at the bimah and from the silence his thin voice lifted in a song with a tune more wistful than aichah.

“shiur hamalos…mimamakim kirasecha adonoi.”

There was a pregnant pause as he finished the first verse, as if the collective yeshiva was gathering it’s cavanah , a deep spiritual breath that we held for a moment.

And then…

Like thunder from the heavens themselves….

Our response shook the very foundations of the building, windows vibrating in sympathetic resonance, the roar of hundreds of voices, calling out from the depths, forming a plea no God could ignore… I was surprised to recognize my own voice amongst them.

We prayed for our families and the families of others, we prayed for our fellow yiddin, we prayed for their lives with all our strength.

We prayed until late in the night, until exhaustion left only the truly stout in the beis medrish learning. As I returned to my room I noticed my voice was hoarse and raspy, both of my roommates had already collapsed and I rolled quickly into bed ready for sleep.

But before that gentle reprieve could take me I heard my door squeak open.

It was Mordy, and he made his way quickly over to my bed.

His eyes were bloodshot and red rimmed.

His voice was as hoarse as mine, “I want your radio”.

“Shhhhh”, I silenced him looking fearfully at my roommates, both of whom would report my contraband in a heartbeat. Then I looked again at Mordy realizing he fell into the same category.

“Even if I have one, why should I give it to you”, I said as quietly as my rasping voice allowed, and checked again on the sleeping status of my roommates, “you’ll just turn it over to…”

“I won’t”, he said looking me in the eye, “I just need to know what’s going on.”

I slid my radio from the bottom of my tissue box and handed it over to the “other side”.

Mordy looked hopelessly forlorn. His eyes were burdened with worry, he looked lost.

I remembered, how Rabbi Brindel had spoken with him, giving him hope and courage and I tried to follow suit.

“Mordy”, I whispered, “if God can hear anything then he must of heard something tonight.”

Mordichai nodded his head, and seemed to cheer up a bit.

I worked on his smile.

“Remember Rubenstein today”, I whispered, thinking how that seemed like it happened a week ago.

“you not teacher”, I whispered, “I teacher now”

We both laughed a little bit.

“You can take it back to your room”, I said pointing at the radio, “just bring it back when your done”.

Mordy lost his smile and looked at me as if I just asked him to hide a cheeseburger under his pillow.

“I’ll listen to it here.”, he said sitting at my desk.

“Fine”, I sighed, “just don’t wake up my roommates…or get caught…and put it back when your done.”

I watched him for a moment as he operated the dials, needing to hear words from the outside world.

I don’t know how long Mordy stayed awake listening to the news as I fell asleep almost immediately. The next morning my radio was back under the tissues of my tissue box, much as he said it would be.

Of course, Mordy’s father was OK, either due to dud rockets, or ultra powerful prayer. Most in the yeshiva believed that that night’s absolute solidarity during prayer had incurred the positive results.

Funny thing was, from that day on our chavrusa time took a turn in a different direction, with Mordy giving me the most unusual positive encouragement, in place of his normal scathing repertoire. It turned from a daily torture session to something I could quite enjoy.

Silly as it sounds, I guess we made a break in our friendship that night, we found a way to trust each other for a little bit, and it seeped into our chavrusah time in an un quantifiable way that only good feelings can, oiling every rusty joint, polishing every dulled gear.

Turns out, Torah isn’t like powdered sugar, it doesn’t stick of it’s own volition. You need to work on it to own it, not just be around it, and that’s true for any knowledge.

It’s been years since I left yeshiva, and I’ve heard that Mordy made good on fulfilling his family heritage. He went on to become a great and compassionate Rabbi, just like his father, and he teaches in a very prestigious yeshiva.

Well, I’m glad all of his preparations weren’t for nothing. And I imagine he gets plenty of practice with his “dangers of the outside world speech”, and has probably made it twice as convincing as the last time I heard it. I bet sometimes he even has to confiscate items from bochurim who are not acting with their better spiritual health in mind.

I bet he sometimes sits and talks to bochurim about the difficulties of the goyish velt, and, while assuring them it’s for their own good, takes away their radios.

But on these quiet evenings when I reminisce about times past, I can’t help wondering if Mustache ever remembers the one he returned, and the long night he spent listening to it…

What's Eating Gilbert Grape ?

2006-06-30T09:05:00.000-07:00

I don't mean to be repetitive, the Jewish Atheist has already expressed concern with the fact that Gil Student often opens up very interesting debates but then closes them when he feels things are too skeptical. This is not exactly the hallmark of "searching for truth", but Rabbi Student does not partake in the cloak of anonymity under which the rest of us hide, and he is rightly prudent about his reputation within modern orthodoxy, I can't really blame him for that.

That being said I think the ID debate deserves to be looked out from all perspectives. And while many people may be using it simply as an excuse to get God in the classroom, I am interested in why orthodox Jews find ID so palliative…what pain is it relieving?

Firstly, I think some background is useful, as there is a conspicuous absence of claims for God in the production of friction, or chemical reactions, or propulsion. No one felt terribly disturbed when calorimetry predicted rates of heat transfer between the cool and hot container, in everyone's college physics class, without postulating a guiding hand of God, coaxing molecules in this direction or that. Few pulled at their hair in tense desperation when acids and bases where titrated to neutrality in the laboratory with nary a mention of Divine involvment in the negative logarithm of the hydrogen ions.

Why??

Why is naturalism so easily accepted in other areas but not here?

Why in this one science, the science of evolution, must there be room for a force behind the observed, a puppeteer so well hidden his actions mimic naturalism herself.

Should not the consistent believer be horrified equally at the formation of table salt from two such separate compounds as commonplace sodium and chloride, without a designing force, as he is from the gradual development of life as we know it??

I think most religious believers have been comfortable with the following attitude towards the physical sciences: God has created physical laws by which the world abides, and, look though you might, you won't find him in those laws, for he has created a system that functions autonomously.

Why then, can this not be extended by our devout brethren to speciation, and the study of how life diversified?

The answer lies in the realization that this is a world in which science has slowly eroded the ground out from underneath ancient mythologies and religious beliefs. No one wonders any more why an angry Thor chooses on occasion to thunder down from heaven, or why it is that Zeus' horses never tire of carrying the sun on his chariot across the sky. Indeed, the religions that have survived have had to make adjustments in how to "really" view the errant ideas about science and medicine and biology that they contain, and evolution is the end of a several hundred year old game of musical chairs in which, the until now happily "separate magesteria" of religion and science, have attempted to plant their collective posteriors on the only chair left in the Room.

Thus a Torah that makes no claims about aerodynamics and lives happily along side it perhaps supplying the "meaning" that can never be obtained from science, has a much more difficult time playing this familiar and comforting role, in an area which it has purported to give us physically accurate information as well.

So what can ID do to alleviate this uncomfortable crisis? Well it can do nothing to amend the out of order description of development/creation of species in Genesis, for that you will still need an apologetic about what this "really means". But I trust to the apologists to come up with something, and since there are no rules about making apologetics aside from justifying what you want to be ture, I trust it will be accomplished, but this, "answer", whatever it may be, is not the purpose of ID.

So what is the purpose of ID for the frum community?? I think the purpose is to alleviate the tension of having a science in direct contradiction to stated biblical claims, and even if evolution is difficult to squeeze into the Torah, at the very least having room within the theory of evolution for God, is a soothing balm for our biblicaly oriented theists. It tells them that in the within the aggressor itself, lofty science, there is room enough for the guiding hand of God.

Had God told us through the bible that salt was the tears of angels, ID would be called something else and be occurring in basic chemistry, but God told us how he made life and so biology will be the area of focus.

In the end it doesn't seem one gains much from ID. Believers who believe in a God who made an autonomously functioning natural universe don't really need room in evolution for God and design. No matter how flawlessly automatic and stand alone a system is, there is nothing to stop them from adding their unnecessary hypothesis. So who is winning with this theory? Who is receiving the necessary appeasment for their views with the implementation of ID within orthodox society?

I believe it is the religious semi-rationalist. The person who is uncomfortable with an idea that can oppose his idea of a God designed and guided speciation. One who feels that the idea of a developing abundance of life, that can drive itself to higher forms, threatens his vision of God.

I think to this group of people, although God does not need to be evident in what we find in nature, he cannot appear to be overruled by it. A God who preaches the opposite of science and rationale….. is a trickster God, he expects you to deviate from what makes the most sense and is the most reasonable, and side with him despite the evidence. This is an untenable state to many of our coreligionists and so they seek to fight against it. Therefore, the evidence must in some way point to a creator. Defacto, within evolution, there must be room for the view of a guiding hand. I think this is the appeal of ID to many in the orthodox community. And in the end, shouldn't they be correct? If it is very improbable for life to have been guided by natural selection, combined with random mutation, shouldn't there be room for a divine "leg up", boosting naturalism for the hard parts of advancing life. Why can't this be part of evolution? What is the big deal about incorporating this into science???

Well, now that we know who we are talking to, let's understand why ID has no place as a scientific theory, stay tuned for part two……

Time

2006-05-21T00:38:00.000-07:00

Spring’s lust spills through the humid air, having burst forth from tree and thistle, glistening in windless vapor, backlight by a sun whose piercing rays kindle the forest a fiery yellow. I see these flecks of new life floating in the contemplation of creation. The force of life here so powerful, deep in the seeded wood, but even in the midst of this rebirth there is darkness. Some remnant of a small creature is visible in the thick underbrush, her end the awaited sustenance of the greenery around her; mother earth completing her cycle.

So even ripe soil herself cannot relieve this pressure on my chest. For who among us does not plan their lives by weeks and months. Awaiting this next event, or that dreamed of goal, just around the corner. And so we surge forward, always onward as weeks and months blend into years, slipping away, by their smooth nature escaping our notice, never once the darkness contemplated; that dreamless sleep where self evaporates.

And why is it that I find my solace here? Joining a string of words about my mood, like crown over head…Do I slow that hourglass, fearfully stealing away a moment of solitude in which to be alone with the thoughts of my mind? Do I stay the minute hand from reaching the next bold-faced numeral as life’s pace bows humbly to the creeping seconds of my contemplations?

Perhaps it is not the act itself, but in spilling my soul in dots of multicolored ink, a splotch of yellow here, here green and red, I paint a bit of myself, of who I am. This small remnant left behind comforts the fear of black ends and shadows, for this piece of me has the power to live forever.

New Kid on the Block

2006-05-16T17:11:00.000-07:00

Here is an excellent blog, by Big S Skeptic, and all sides of the religious debate should check out this post and think about the method by which they make their arguments. This is an excellent post about going off the derech and the book by that name.

Another must read is this post about the consequences of inflexible Dogma.

And finally a stirring post about what our attitude towards scientific exploration should be that will make you want to go out and attack your existential woes with a Vengance.

Oy, My Mom would be so Proud !

2006-05-14T07:10:00.000-07:00

She would too, if only she knew that I had been listed in the Rabbinical Council of America’s , “Blogs a Rabbi must follow” skeptic listing.

And while I am sure Gil Student just picked a few skeptics out of the grab bag, I bid him a heartfelt thank you, as I am honored to be mentioned, even if the RCA was just a few Rebbis who showed up for the food service. I would be thrilled if even one Rabbi comes here to read this post, and I will try not to waste the opportunity to get at the heart of what I and many others find to be the most troubling aspects of religion, orthodoxy, and faith.

Of course this blog has been evolving for over a year now (cripes ! I’ve missed my own anniversary…I guess I’ll have to take myself out for a romantic dinner.) And a good recap of my emotional and intellectual religious woes can be ascertained as they begin to make me uncomfortable as an observant Jew. Here they are as they progress take on form and solidify , although you should probably note that most of my main points of view have been expressed not on this blog but on the Godol Hador blog, where many debates involving theology have been invoked in the name of free inquiry and resulted in melee of opposing viewpoints over the past year or two.

Indeed, my blog I have mostly devoted to the “Memoirs of the yeshiva misfit”one two and three, a few posts about hair(head and and beard), one stab at Chasidic science fiction, and a bit of miscellaneous complaining about challah and the like.

But I understand that there are thousands of blogs that deal with skepticism, and I probably only have your attention for a few moments. So let me dive right into what I feel are the greatest problems with Orthodox Judaism.

I will only pause to tell you who you are talking to in everything but name. I am currently a practicing member of a Modern Orthodox synagogue. For all outward appearances I am a Modern Orthodox Jew. I might very well be the guy sitting next to you in shul!

Additionally I must add that I am torn about my early experiences in yeshiva, for although I have gone on to intellectually, “go off the derech”. Some of my fondest memories are of my Rebbim in Yeshiva, and I was impressed on many occasions as to the depth of their commitment and caring towards myself and my fellow bochurim. There were Rabbeim in my life who took my spiritual well being very personally, and I will never forget that devotion. I do not write what I write on this blog out of hate for Rabbinical Judaism, I write it out of love of honesty and truth. So please, feel welcome here, I do not hold ill will towards any of you.

In the spirit of brevity I will focus on only one topic this post, but I hope to make it the first of many, if any Rabbi's are actually reading, so let's optimisticaly call it number one !

Number 1: Science. I'd like to lead off up front with a “just say no” policy. I know you guys love to talk baseball and politics, but wen it comes to science just don’t dabble in it; don’t espouse to use it as a proof for either existence of God or other religious foibles. Just admit up front that it is not your field of expertise, and you will leave its interpretation and delivery to those who actually understand it.

There is nothing more damaging to the faith of Modern orthodox individuals, who understand science or work in the fields of medicine/research, and are familiar with statistics and evolutionary/biological science to hear Rabbis talk about science.

When I was in Yeshiva I noted the highly confusing dichotomy the yeshiva-light drew through the heart of science, and even then found it troubling. There were apparently two factions of scientists. One was a set of foul atheist marauders, who, due to their base desires to fornicate like animals, had devised a “theory” that men really are animals. In a yeshiva wide shmooze the bochurim were asked to “think” about how obviously wrong this was, as our Menahel said, “If I throw the pieces of a car off of the empire state building…. will they ever form a car on the way down?”, and that was the sum total of the Yeshiva opinion regarding evolution.

The second group of scientists, the ones who apparently made our telephones ring and our cars run, could be provisionally trusted, so long as they stuck to numbers and shied away from biology, and it was apparently only the cream of the crop of this said group, who through their greatest efforts, and in fact the culmination of Western science as we know it, had arrived at the unmitigated scientific proof of Judaism.....The Bible Codes. This was spoon fed to us at another shmooze in which the proven nature of our heritage was so obvious to the presenting “scientist” (who looked like a local Bal Habos upon whom they had surreptitiously bestowed a lab coat)that the conclusion of orthodox Judaism was nothing more or less than established fact. This fact was portrayed to be either unknown or ignored by the general masses outside the yeshiva world.

The difficulty arises, my dear Rabbis, when such young impressionable minds leave the yeshiva world, and realize that their Rabbi’s viewpoint about the “atheist agenda” suffers from every paranoid hallmark of the conspiracy theorist's.... and then some.

After a first few biology and statistics classes, not only will a former yeshiva student realize that his Rebbi was an unwitting participant in an unbelievably narrow focus of the outside world, viewing it through an ethnocentric lens of prejudice and fear, in which a totally uninvolved biologist, who may only be peripherally aware of orthodoxy, is vividly pictured as "out to get us”. But also, and even more disturbing, that their greatly respected and revered Rebbi’s opinions and arguments for debunking evolution reveal a statistical and biological knowledge that is at a pre-high school level.

Rabosai, let go of this method, it can only be maintained so long as a child is sheltered, and we don’t live in the shtetle any more, so it’s not going to happen. It is a sure recipe for failure.

Think of where you leave your pupil, he has trusted in you, yes... that’s right…trust. Judaism is not a religion of repeat experimentation to validate results. He has trusted in your character to believe the “truths” about life, relationships, and the world at large. When he realizes that at the very least your views on science are unresearched, unfounded, and often flat out wrong….well, what do you expect he will do?

But it gets worse, for your intelligent students will have to start wondering. They will start to wonder how you, their Rebbi, knew that all of the Torah and Mishna and Gemara that they accepted as Gospel from your lips, were true. They will begin to rightfully questions what instruments you have in your “toolkit” for determining reality.

If it has just been frightfully revealed that your methodology for determining the validity of subject matter and logical ventures is so verily flawed, that it has allowed you to make these bizarre judgments about science, we must then wonder if it is universally flawed; and that the eighth grade toolkit with which you attempted to dis-assemble science is one in the same as the erector set buttressing Orthodoxy’s core principles.

Now your pupil is in a bad way, for almost any objective investigation into orthodoxy is going to lead to trouble, but what choice does he have ? Now that my friends, is a subject for another post !!!

(Rabosai, if any of you actually showed up, please feel free to comment, I don't bite (usually :-) )and I am excited to begin, what orthodoxy has been missing since it's very inception, an honest conversation between heretic and believer !)

Daniel's Dilemma

2006-04-08T19:47:00.000-07:00

Bang, Bang, Bang.

The knocks fell like thunder, reverberating around Daniel’s neoprene room with a sonic force that jiggled the sparse collection of knick-knacks on his shelves to and fro.

Daniel stirred from the deep bliss of sleep, that precious abandonment of consciousness, and awakened into the world; sitting up in bed, hair all askew.

Who would call upon him at this ungodly hour, and who, devil take them, would pound on his flimsy eggshell of a door rather than ring the bell?

Ah, but don’t be fooled. Daniel wasn’t fooled as he scratched his head and slid lightly out of his thin cot. He knew full well who might come knocking at his door.

It was a suspension of belief that allowed him to scowl in disregard at an unidentified stranger awakening him from slumber, as he performed the bare minimum of perfunctory morning hygiene.

He walked the full length of his apartment in two short strides, and glanced at his face in a small mirror. It stared back at him a dulcet green, backlight by the sun piercing through a thin atmosphere of cloud and pollution, a lonely beam of which poured through the single window in his cubicle. Dust motes frolicked in this solitary ray, flitting about in their happy randomness, and Daniel could not help feeling he had stepped accidentally into the spotlight on some unseen stage. He washed his face with water from a thin spigot and smoothed back his hair.

He noticed his hands were shaking.

Bang, Bang, Bang.

“Daniel.”

The voice sounded far away from behind his door, but it was unmistakable. And it fell on his hears with some secret pattern, a code to his mind, unlocking the bungled emotions of his upbringing, and allowing them to rumble about, unrestrained.

How long had it been?

Ten years, or more, Daniel figured, as a sense of dread made his stomach feel as if it carried a small satchel of lead in place of last night’s dinner.

He steadied himself by placing his hands on the corners of the sink, feeling almost to weak to stand upright. It all came back to him now….his past, his destiny, the dream of his future. Amazing how he had been able to banish it from his daily thoughts for all these years.

There in his mind the memory had lain untouched, for so long ignored in the depths, that it returned now with a tactile force that actually allowed him to feel the white linen table cloth under his hands, smell the thick aromas of Friday night chicken soup steaming upwards, tickling his nostrils, the salty taste leaving a heated trail from his throat to his stomach. From a place inside, he heard now, the gentle rhythmic melodies, the chants of hope and faith in languages no longer spoken.

He remembered sitting crowded so tight around the table that all consciousness seemed to fuse into one will. And in this amalgam of his childhood, all experience seemed condensed into a blur of late nights of study, of bearded faces huddled too close to his; teaching him the great lessons of life, stressing the importance, the critical nature, the absolute necessity….

“Daniel, Daniel”, sung the disembodied voice from behind the door, as if an old song from better days, “I know you are in there, open the door..”

…. necessities he had let go of some time ago, dreams that no longer held for him any promise.

Daniel took a deep breath…

“Daniel.”

And flipped the switch that allowed his door to slide open.

There he stood, cane poised for another set of shattering assaults on the door.

He had aged since Daniel had seen him last, and the two stood face to face now, a picture of anachronism incarnate; the ancient thrust upon the world that had left it behind.

Daniel noted the lines on the face, the dark furred hat from antiquity, the wispy strands of beard that trailed down the front of the mans pitch-black knee length silk coat. But most of all the sharp blue eyes that pierced the world around them. He met those eyes but could not face them and turned away.

“Daniel”, said the man as he gripped Daniel’s shoulder and hung on as if having recovered an object of immeasurable worth, that he would now and never again have to part with.

Daniel looked into those eyes and saw the love and the hope of long awaited dreams reaching their fruition.

“Rebbi”, he said with a great deal of trepidation in his voice, as if the guilt of his nonobservance could not be kept from the timber in his tone; a telltale heart throbbing to life through his vocal chords.

Rabbi Gold’s cane returned to the floor with a sharp thump as he nodded his head up and down and took in Daniel, his eyes covering every inch of him, perceiving the soul of the man. He had the look of a disapproving father, bitterly sampling what has become of his fallen son. He took his time and allowed the air to clear of his disapproval, and a twinkle returned to his eyes.

“Daniel”, he said, stroking his long beard with his hand, “your time has come!”

Now, Professor Cornelius was a portly man, to put it mildly, and in a day an age where calories where more of a choice than a necessity, one would be hard put to say it was not an affectation, presented purposefully to complete the image of the consummate academician.

He tapped his watch impatiently now as he paced back and forth behind a small podium. It was time to start, well… past time to start, but the rows of chairs in the large lecture hall stared back at him with a painful emptiness.

Of course, there were his sycophants, gathered amongst the front rows, ready to appear breathless with excitement as long as grant monies lay at the end of the rainbow. He had expected them, as one expects a particularly irritating case of colitis.

What was more disturbing than the academic hierarchy at work, was what lurked in the back rows, behind the seats. If Cornelius strained his eyes through the darkness he could see them. Murky figures, lost by time. There, to the left stood one fully clothed in his ceremonial garb, hat pointing to the sky, with a robe so long it dragged on the floor. There were others too, lingering just out of sight, milling about with tension and excitement. They were the last of the zealots, he supposed, the last few vestiges of believers in their ancient crafts. Cornelius had long wondered if any such peoples still lived amongst the masses, and here was his answer.

“Poor Fools”, Cornelius whispered under his breath, but enough of their plight… they had sentenced themselves to grasping for straws where none existed. It was time to begin his presentation. And though his audience might be lacking he nonetheless intended to give a performance that befitted the awesome nature of this day. A day that would be remembered by history even if at present humanity did not have the wherewithal to appreciate it, distracted by a focus that looked away from the past for answers.

He walked up to the podium and cleared his throat. He knew this session would be recorded for posterity and he intended no detail to be left from the show. He would deliver his monologue with the full knowledge that historians, archeologists and scientists the world over would forever view this moment as one of the greatest discoveries in all of history. For it would shed light on the pinnacle moments of organized civilization.

“Ladies and Gentleman, may I have your attention please!”

The elevator careened down the side of the building at dizzying speed encased in its glass tubing. Daniel was used to the vertigo induced as the layers of surrounding buildings whizzed by in an analgesic blur, but his Rebi clutched the railing as a psychological crutch against the illusion of flight.

It dimmed his wit not at all, for he stared at Daniel, stared at him like a mission that must not be failed.

“You have lost your faith”, he said flatly, a statement of fact, as the skyline of buildings spun ever downwards behind him.

Daniel sighed. He had known this would be coming one day, yet he had not truly ever prepared himself for it.

“Rebbi”, said Daniel, pausing to shake his head in dismay, “it’s not that I have lost it…it’s that I never really had it.”

His old teacher’s grizzled brows raised in surprise, “but I have known you from the day you were born, we taught you, we have always taught you…”

There was more than concern on Rabbi Gold’s face, there was personal hurt…betrayal.

“But that’s just it, Rebbi, you instilled in me your ideals, but now I have grown to have my own…”

“No”, said the Rabbi definitively, tilting his head to the side, “they are not your own, they are those of the society around you, the society at large. They are views of convenience, ideals that lead nowhere, but the selfish gratification of personal indulgences.”

Daniel knew his difficult life had never functioned as a source of pleasure, and with this certainty, found courage, and with it a bit of anger, “the views of the modern world are based on logic, Rebbi, rationale. People believe in things when they make sense, not just because some old tradition insists upon it…”

“Our old traditions! Yours and mine.”

Reb Gold’s face was turning red now.

“But that is just ethnocentrism”, Daniel struggled, “why can’t you see it, I know it is your life, but why can’t you understand that belief in any other religion is just as justified based on faith alone. Why can’t you see that people of any faith feel just as you do…”

Reb Gold’s hand was gripping his elbow tightly, his eyes shown with a fierce light, “No. Not the same as us. Not the same. You know this because you feel it. You understand it because it is inside of you. Your yetzer hara leads you astray and uses reason as its tool.”

Daniel shook his head in resigned disagreement, but found no words. If the reasons in his head where the tools of an evil entity what hope lay in intelligent thought, and from what basis could anyone argue with such a corrosive principle.

“Look at me, Daniel”, said his Rebbi, orating from some fiery place within his heart, “You are part of an unbroken chain, a link, a last link, Daniel. You can feel it, can’t you, how else could we be standing here all of these thousands of years after God revealed himself if it wasn’t true. Daniel, you have gained knowledge, but not wisdom. Have the courage to trust what your soul is telling you!”

“But it tells me that I don’t… believe.”

The elevator came to a sudden halt, and Rev Gold silenced Daniel with a motion, and spoke with a look of anguish on his face, “Daniel, you have had a terrible struggle with your faith, as have many, but your struggle is over now.”

“But what are we doing here? This is the twenty third floor, I work here…”

“It’s no coincidence, Daniel”, said his Rebbi, “the days of coincidence are over, a new time is upon us, a better time…come.”

Daniel reluctantly followed his Rebbi down the hall.

“Light”, said Cornelius with gusto, making sure to put in the appropriate pause for effect. “We have studied the stars by their light for thousands of years, perhaps since the dawn of humanity.”

He glanced briefly at his notes and then at the time to make sure he was on track. His dramatic ending wouldn’t work unless he timed it just right.

“But what is it that we see when we look at the stars? Why, it is a history more than anything else. An image of the past preserved in the night sky. The universe as it was untold billions of years ago. For the light that reaches us has had to travel across the vast expanse of space and time. What we see is a snapshot of ancient history.”

Behind Cornelius a large screen lit up depicting the vastness of the cosmos, galaxy upon galaxy swirling into view.

“It is with sadness, and indeed with much humility, that we admit the feebleness of exploration of this great realm of mystery. Mankind has not so much as dipped his toe into this giant ocean before us. Even the nearest star, hopelessly outside our reach.”

Cornelius touched a control on the podium and the seemingly random array of galaxies on the screen changed to a bird’s eye view of the Milky Way.

“But for every battle we have lost in terms of propulsion, we have achieved tremendous advances in our ability to analyze and collect…..Light…. and preserved in this medium, like fossil in sediment, is the information our explorers so ardently seek.”

Cornelius toggled another switch, “Most will likely recognize a familiar genre of picture from the late 20th century…”

A picture of rows of houses came to the screen, it was grainy, with poor resolution, “This of course is a satellite photo,” said Cornelius in explanation, “a picture taken from space, and one of it’s great limitations is piercing the atmosphere, a distorting media to say the least.”

“But as mankind’s interests turned away from what his neighbors were up to, imaging abilities were turned outwards, to the great expanse that surrounds us, and over time our ability to gather light from the black depths of space grew. As did our ability to image the planets in our own solar system. Indeed with enhanced magnification and resolution, we gained the capability to image rock formations on Mars, stunning volcanic activity on mercury…”

Cornelius flipped nonchalantly through the photos, after all, this was just introduction, preamble to the discovery of the millennia.

“Until, one day, a telescopic satellite, orbiting Jupiter, returned this image…”

The screen behind Cornelius flickered with what was perhaps the most well known photograph from space. It’s clarity was poor, but an astute observer would see forms within the grainy emulsion, figures posed unknowingly recording their lives for the sake of future generations. One stood with a hand raised as if shielding sensitive eyes from the sun, another clutched a jar, holding the jug as if it’s precious contents required a tight grip.

Cornelius knew he had his audiences attention know, for this was the true beginning of a special line of understanding, the birth of a field, the origins of a science. Of course everyone in his audience was well schooled in the history of this particular photo, but for the purposes of a complete retrospective, he felt inclined to indulge them with the history of the thing.

“Even very respectable scientists felt they had discovered intelligent extraterrestrial life, given the satellites proximity to Jupiter when this image was recorded,” said Cornelius with a smug down turning of his lip as he indulged in a feeling of superiority to his ancient predecessors.

He got a chuckle from his fellow academics in the front rows as they offered their own condemnation of this well debunked and outdated theory. But from the back rows came silence. The silence that comes from an ingrained philosophy of waiting, of yearning. They were not here to enjoy the trivialities of Cornelius’ monologue. This was something different for the religious occupants of the room, something far more personal, something that would vindicate the painful years of servitude to ideologies vastly a field from their fellow mans.

“Of course,” said Cornelius, turning again to the dim figures etched in the picture “this photo, turned out to be something so unexpected, no one grasped it’s actual meaning, and for many years it circulated through the highest academic circles causing nothing more than empty speculation of the possible inhabitants of Jupiter, and their uncanny resemblance to man, and the impossibility of such a phenomenon. Even the skeptics felt the need to call this, ‘an artifact of the photograph itself’.”

“That was of course, until one institution,” he cleared his throat, “the Catholic Church, no less, realized the truth….a truth that has brought us all here today….”

Daniel had trouble keeping up with Rabbi Gold as he walked briskly down the hallway to the main office of inter solar imaging. His Rebbi exuded excitement, it emanated from him like the ancient glow that had once shown off of the face of Moses. A bit of Gods heavenly brilliance touching the earth.

“Come, Daniel, the time is near, and we have none to waste.”

“Rebbi, I don’t think I can do this, I just don’t have the same outlook on all of this that you do….”

“Oy, Daniel, the Reboino shel oilam has left you with just the tiny strand of faith that is pulling you down this hall, Rachmono Litzlon, I know it is hard for you and it is all you have left,” Rabbi Gold turned to him fiercely and gripped his elbow, “but just have enough emunah, in me, if not in God Almighty, Yisbarach Shemo, to see this one deed through today !”

As Daniel entered the main office, he realized he was being escorted by an untrimmed octogenarian, who likely appeared to everyone else as if wearing some form of bizarre fetishist bath robe, bottomed out by white stockings. The dead, dried out, beaver fur hat on his Rebbi’s head wasn’t helping much either.

The secretary at the front desk, to whom he exchanged a curt nod with, on most mornings, did a quick double take at seeing him propelled in, on his day off, by this unruly mystic.

“Daniel?”, she asked quizzically, wondering if the fall season might have brought in a new fashion of headgear she had somehow missed out on.

“Uh Ginene”, said Daniel, blushing as his ritualistic past smacked headlong into his rationalist present, threatening to derail both ideologies from the track, “this is my….teacher….uh… and we would like to…”

“What we demand”, Rabbi Gold corrected in a loud voice, waving a finger in the air to underline, highlight, and punctuate his arguments as if they floated, suspended in rabbinic ether, a foot and a half in front of his beard, “ is admittance to the great revelation of our times,” he was talking more to Daniel now, “our confirmation of The Aibishters holy Bris with Am Yisroel, our Matan torah…”

To the credit of secretaries everywhere, Ginene, kept a look of practiced disinterest on her face, while dealing with what appeared to be the clinically insane.

“Mat and who? From which department?” she reiterated in a tired tone, as she dutifully pulled up the directory on her console to search for an employee she knew didn’t exist, all the while daydreaming about what was for lunch.

The ruckus attracted Daniel’s direct supervisor who walked over to the front Desk.

“It’s alright, Genine,” said Dr. Savoy, as she approached with easy confidence, “you aren’t the first visitors we have had today.”

She turned to Daniel, “You are looking for Professor Cornelius’ lecture, I imagine.”

Daniel nodded in the affirmative.

Sarah Savoy could only be described as attractive in a petite and orderly way. What one perceived while looking at her was mostly a woman striving to represent herself as a no nonsense scientist of the highest order, and it was no disguise. Dr. Savoy was a scientist first and last, bones to britches, and it was more than just her work, it was her personality, ideology, and politics all rolled into one confluent philosophy of being.

Right now she couldn’t hold back from playful conjecture, “Daniel, we have had quite a few religious figures come to view the data records of satellite MES352, but I had not imagined to find you among them…you never mentioned to me that you were deeply religious.”

“Well I’m not…” said Daniel abruptly, only then glancing over at his Rebbi to confirm the stare that he felt boring into the back of his head, and feeling the full depth of the schism in his mind for the first time, “but I was raised to be…”

Dr. Savoy was raising her eyebrows in surprise to Daniel’s response as Rabbi Gold gripped his cane with enough force to forge diamond from coal.

His lips were terse as he addressed Daniel’s supervisor, “Do you have any idea who are you are talking to? Do you know who this young man is standing before you?”

Cornelius was sure that his entire audience knew the story he was about to tell, and it was not out of pure pomposity that he sought to reiterate it. It was that he felt very strongly that the recording of this lecture would become histories most important document and he wanted it to be complete for the future viewers who’s first introduction to opto-history might be this very didactic.

“Yes,” he said trying to make eye contact with the back row so that they could feel that their part in this story was being brought to the light, “the Catholic Church.”

“You see,” he announced, becoming pensive in his reverie, and leaving his notes behind to pace the length of the floor, “as men of faith, they believed that their could be no life on other planets, they felt that humanity alone was God’s creation, a singularity in an incomprehensibly large universe.”

“It was this faith, and a basic knowledge of Geometric principles that led the Church’s scientists to the truth when no one else even knew where to look. The same faith that nearly rent the church asunder during the crisis of evolution, ultimately acted…well, as a guiding light so to speak.”

The screen behind Cornelius lit up with basic Euclidian Geometry, and Newtonian optics.

“Angle of incidence, angle of refraction, the basic principles of high school geometry and optics and yet the higher echelons of secular science are bent on photons and energy, forgetting their humble roots…you see the Church realized something…”

Cornelius struggled now regretting his departure from his written script. He loved this story, but in his own enjoyment of the tale he worried about reciting it succinctly.

“They realized…that someone viewing the earth from light years away….would be seeing our history, the earth as it was years ago, in fact all scientists of the twenty first century knew this….but the particular brilliance of the Church, was the realization that the past was preserved in light, held hostage there for all who might see..”

Cornelius felt despondent, he wasn’t getting the point across as well as he had hoped, and even thought the nodding faces of his admirers in the front rows encouraged him to move forward, he struggled to add the full explanation.

“You see, they were the first to put the pieces together, the first to understand, that light can be reflected, refracted, bent into a direction, that is determined by how it strikes an object. They intuited that, while most of the light that had shown on earth from our brilliant sun, was reflected back into deep space, forever lost, that some small part of it, really just a hint of the total amount…remained within our solar system….right here.”

“Look here”, said Cornelius, as if annoyed with a student too slow to tolerate, loosing his academic cool in his desire to communicate his point.

The display flickered to life behind him again.

His finger pointed sharply at the screen, indicating with body language just how simple this was going to be…

“Yes, I do know who am speaking with,” Sarah replied, never loosing her perspective as she looked the Rabbi over. She was speaking with someone who had not hashed out the basic elements of standards of evidence, nor the weight of legends and lore versus fact. A cortical suicide case, in her opinion, one who has chosen an elective course of lack of brain function, a self administered frontal lobotomy, as a jilted rejection of the difficult world around him.

“And I do know who this gentleman is right here,” she continued, “ in order if importance he is my employee,” she smiled, “Daniel Dayan, twenty six years old, a bright and promising optical engineer.”

“No”, said Rabbi Gold with a certainty owned only by the faithful, “that is who he was…”

Daniel stared down at the floor, feeling the capillaries open in his face and the heat of his blush as his body temperature rose and sweat begin to collect in the folds of his clothing. He had imagined this scenario many times since his youth, and in his younger days it was a crowning moment of achievement, an instant of unbelievable joy and happiness. But as he had grown older, he began to dread it’s arrival, to hope that it was a bad dream, an exaggerated fairy tale that would never come to fruition, or that if it did materialize, it could be someplace private, a meaningless ceremony for those already initiated. But not here. Not where he worked and would likely need to continue to work…

“You are in the presence of Daniel Dayan", said Rabbi Gold with a mix of pride and euphoria that made his voice quiver, "Eighth generational, and only male descendant, of Rabbi Moshe Dayan, author of the Yashir Moshe, a scroll that tracks his lineage as the eighty fifth generational male descendant of King David himself.”

Rabbi Gold pulled a faded copy of the Yashir Moshe out of his robes and held it aloft as a knight holds his sword in the air as a sign of allegiance. He held it there to offer it as proof to the unforgiving deity of science and rationale.

Rabbi Gold looked at Daniel now as a dream realized, he reached for him, and touched him lightly on the shoulder, caressing a treasure mightier than all riches. There were tears in his eyes, and Daniel saw that he was his teacher’s entire world, that every hope and every dream of the man who had all but raised him rested now on his shoulders.

A tear fell from his Rebbi’s eye, “an unbroken chain, from the malchos beis Dovid, a last true heir to the throne…Bimherah Biyamenu…”

Employees had come out of their cubicles to watch the spectacle unfold and they stood there in bewildered silence as his Rebbi grasped him in a tight hug, joy streaming in tears down his face, “in our days, Daniel", he wishpered with reverance, "Our days.”

Daniel, put his arms around his Rebbi, because he understood that in his own way, no one loved him more than Rabbi Gold. But how could he ever explain to his Rebbi, what he had learned in the secular world, how could he ever reverse the roles of teacher and student and show his Rebbi what a real inquiry into the truth meant.

As Daniel stood there trapped between his two worlds he realized that he could not back down from the destiny Rabbi Gold had in store for him, he could not hurt him in that way anymore than he could carry on in a movement in which he was the main character, all the while sensing it was a charade….

Sarah Savoy remained unmoved by the display of tears and emotion as the embrace ended.

“Well and good,” she said, “Just as long as his majesty here, remembers to hand in his TPS reports on time… come on, I’ll walk you to the lecture hall.”
.

Cornelius was moving too quickly through his slides, and he knew it, but he was caught up in the moment of it, the transmittal of information that would become history itself.

“The Oort cloud,” he exclaimed unable to stop pointing at the beauty of it, “why just look at it…a sphere of asteroids, shiny, smoothly polished silicates, frozen to a fine sheen, surrounding our solar system, encasing it in a veritable eggshell of tiny reflectors.

The slide switched, “The Kuiper Belt…”, and switched again, “the major asteroid belt…all systems of frozen rock, reflecting the earths light back upon us…”

His head snapped sharply from one shoulder to the other as he viewed the room harshly, daring any one not to put two and two together.

“Of course, what the Christian scientists realized was that they had stumbled upon a beam of light collected near Jupiter, a very old beam of light, reflected many times, likely in the main asteroid belt, yet still remaining in our solar system, that held within it a very old image of the earth, and of the earths inhabitants.”

Cornelius was practically foaming at the mouth now as the climax approached.

“Our history, it was found, was floating, around us all this time, preserved in its original form. A treasure trove of archeology, paleontology, sociology at our fingertips yet slowly bleeding away from our solar system as statistically more and more of these ancient rays are lost to deep space rather than reflected back in. The shear ratio of empty space to reflective asteroid demands a process of decay and eventual loss of all information of our past.”

Cornelius finally stopped and took a breath

“It should come as no surprise then, that the original, and enormous financing for the process of this retrieval came from the Christian right, which was at that time...", he paused to scan the back rows, "was a power to be reckoned with."

"Later, in the developmental phase, Jewish philanthropists became involved as well."

"This effort was never grounded in the historical… to the contrary, it was a thinly vieled attempt to validate sources of ancient religious lore.”

“Of course, it was another hundred years before the albedo of the earth, its specific light signature, was narrowed down enough to be appropriately targeted and collected for. And another fifty passed as the atmospheres concentrations of nitrogen, oxygen, and methane; and the change of their ratio’s over the years , and their resulting effects on our light signature, where understood well enough to allow for a search for light that corresponded to a particular era.”

“But in 2207 in the first and only joint venture of the Catholic Church, the Jewish private sector, and NASA, the MES352 inter solar telescope was launched on a mission to collect the history of the ancient near east.”

“ Indeed it was likely as a result of the Jewish contributors belief, that knowledge of the past would spark a new era of worship, that the entire endeavor was eventually dubbed…. the Messiah Project.”

“The Messiah ?” said Sarah Savoy, as they careened further down the building in an internal elevator, “but I just thought you said he was king of the Jews.”

Rabbi Gold looked like he was tired of the incessant questioning, “he is the last of the bloodline of kings, so he is eligible to be the Messiah.”

Now Sarah was an optical engineer par excellance, but she had minored in archaic theology, and was as such overtly fascinated with Rabbi Gold.

“But then how do you know it is him,” she asked astutely, “ It might just as well be his unborn son.”

Rabbi Gold had no scrap of personal charm left to cover his impatience with, “It was told to us by one of our great Rabbi’s with the Ruach Hakodesh, the holy spirit in him, that the time is now. End of story.”

Daniel himself stayed out of the crossfire of the discussion, allowing the conversation to occur about him as if he were an inanimate object being toted to its destiny. He was lost in his own thoughts, working on his own insoluble dilemma. He saw their lips moving but his internal monologue was louder than the world a round him.

Could he find solace in fulfilling the dreams of his childhood? Was there enough “truth” in satisfying the lifelong commitments of those who had loved and believed in him from the begining? Was it not enough that their strange belief system had not been broken after all of these years? Could he provide hope for them of a better future, and a past that could now at least be spoken of as having reached a justified conclusion? Or was that path to be viewed as an undignified charade?

Did his destiny lie in the cold misery of his little cubicle alone in a world where he imagined no greater force than his own feeble efforts to survive, was on his side? A rational existence, complete with the painful knowledge that he was a well-evolved chunk of moss, mobile and animate, with little other function than placing food in his mouth and reproducing. Could embracing the emptiness of cold truth be enough to fuel his existence?

“Holy Spirit”, asked Sarah, “isn’t that a Christian term.”

“Not when we are talking about it, when we talk about Ruach hakodesh, believe me it is very Jewish.”

Sarah felt the Rabbi’s impatience, and like a good engineer looking for the root of a problem she went straight to the power source.

“So why is it that it makes a difference, Rabbi, why are the revelations of one holy Rabbi so true, but not the revelations of the Priests, or Clerics, or Seeks. Is it any thing greater that prejudice and isolationism; sectarianism run amuck. Is there anything more to it then that ?”

“Yes”, said Rabbi Gold not deigning to respond in full to his adversary, “a lot more.”

“Like what”, she pressed on.

“Listen to me”, said the Good Rabbi, “you want my proof I will give it to you.”

He took a deep breath, reinvesting himself in the conversation.

“The person I respect most in my life, was my father, who was also my teacher, who believed with complete belief that he was a direct recipient in an unbroken chain of the mesorah, a teaching that comes down uninterrupted from the time of Moses. Now if he respected his father as much as I respected mine, and had as much reason to respect him as I did, then there is no doubt that the truth is being transmitted down through the generations.”

“That’s your evidence” ?

Rabbi Gold shrugged, “Yes.”

“But surely you must realize that all cultures have myths that were believed and fought for, and died for, by their ancient practitioners, you must realize that not all of these can be true.”

“I know my father, and I know I trust him, what more do I need…it’s called emunah, trust…. faith, if you want. I know as deep in my heart as I want to search, that what I am doing is true, without question and without fear of being wrong.”

“And a Christian who believed for the same reasons ?”

“He would have the right to believe if his father was truthful, but he would be wrong.”

“How? How can you know he is wrong and you are right?”

“Because my tradition involves a mass revelation, his is a story made by one man.”

Sarah smiled, “that doesn’t solve your problem, Rabbi, the nature of a myth is that it is created by a small sect and is later adapted by the whole group. It is never any bigger than the first person to believe it....you are no better off than followers of Christ.”

Rabbi Gold smiled and stroked his beard in confidence, “says you, but I know that the transmission I have received is faithful, know it more than I know any fact in my life. You on the other hand can never really be sure your not a brain in a jar, or, for that matter, someone else’s brain, thinking that it is a brain in a jar, or a third persons brain thinking that it might be thinking of…”

“O.K. Rabbi”, said Sarah cutting him off, “empiricism has it’s pitfalls, but look at the big picture…science has accomplished while religion has fallen into hidden sects; A banished form of thought, how do you explain that…”

“A necessary trial for the faithful, that is about to change forever…”

“And Daniel”, she said, realizing she was contending with a mind that had happily ossified in a circuitous pattern of self justification, “what does he believe?”

Daniel snapped out of his reverie in time to see Rabbi Gold looking irritated, “Why do you bring Daniel into this, he is not your concern.”

“To the contrary, you have my main network specialist convinced he is the Messiah, come Monday mornings meltdown… it’s very much my concern.”

“It’s a trivial matter,” shot back Rabbi Gold.

“Daniel,” she prompted him, “do you believe you are to lead the Jews to redemption, or are you going to be splicing cable for me tomorrow morning? This is hell of a lot shorter notice than two weeks, so what’s it going to be ?

The elevator came to a sudden halt and the doors gently opened.

“You won’t need an answer from him,” said Rabbi Gold, “soon enough you will have all the evidence that you need.”

Sarah shook her head in dismay as they exited the elevator. A few steps away stood the entrance to a lecture hall and they entered one after the other, allowing a few moments for their eyes to adjust to the darkness.

Daniel’s first impression was that he was in a sea of hats, tall hats, short hats, broad hats, hats that put his Rebbi’s shtriemel to shame.

Sarah took in the abundance of clerical practitioners surrounding her with a bit of revultion. She turned to Rabbi Gold, “looks like you are not the only one who believes he is in possession of the sole truth.”

Rabbi Gold placed a finger to his lips requesting silence.

At the front of the room a portly man was in the midst of speaking.

“The culmination of the Messiah project is what brings us here today,” said Cornelius, knowing he needed to finish his talk as his clock read only a few more seconds before data transmission.

“After sixty years of gathering, and analyzing and organizing light, from every reach of our solar system, I am pleased to report that we will now witness, the unfolding of the visual history of the ancient near east in what has culminated in seventy two hours worth of still and joined movie frame photography…”

Cornelius had more to say but he hurriedly left the stage as MES352 reached broadcast range and the screen behind him began to crackle with digital transmission.

“Daniel”, Rabbi Gold whispered in his ear, his face a vision of holy ecstasy, eyes wide with expectation, “what you are about to witness, is the redemption, the second occurrence of unquestionable Godly revelation, the world will see a nation of Jews receiving God’s holy torah, as has been foretold by the Rebbi, and with your presence here we will usher in a new era in which God’s hand is seen by all peoples…”

Sarah was still standing at his side, “what you will see, Daniel, are the customs and civilizations of the ancient near east, and possibly some scary weather and primitive brutality, but that will be all.”

Sarah and Rabbi Gold glared at each other as Daniel, heir apparent to the throne of Judah, raised his eyes to the bright image that dawned upon the screen like a new morning, never having felt so sure that the truth was beyond his reach.

Memoirs of a Yeshiva MIsfit Part Three: The List

2006-01-25T17:09:00.000-08:00

The headlights were blinding, and I stepped back, off the paved road, on to soft earth and grass, waving a hand at the driver.

I was almost sad to get picked up so early. The night had been cool with the scent of spring abounding through the air. Grass, leaves, flowers, all mixed in a soft aroma that made you feel that, somewhere out there, hope, and wonder, and mystery still abounded and had been born anew in the natural cycle of the seasons. Standing out on the street corner, I had felt more alive and vibrant than I had the entire day.

Crickets chirped from the base of a nearby tree, giving my nightly routine the feel of a summer camp outing. I could smell wet earth in the air, so different from the stale air of the Beis Medrish, it touched some primitive chord in my mind, connected me, perhaps, to man’s legacy of tilling the soil, and taking joy in the labor that produced his sustenance.

I took a last deep breath of what smelled like freedom.

The passenger side window rolled down in a display of high technology for the time.

“New”, he asked, “where are you off to?”

“Pine”, I replied, putting my hand on the door, “right where it crosses fifth.”

He nodded in the affirmative, it was more like a shrug of noncommittal; a yeshiva specific gesture that spoke of his lack of interest, but ultimate willingness to comply. It was customary for the older Beis Medrish students to offer a ride to their younger counterparts.

I made myself comfortable in the front seat, carrying only a bag with a toothbrush, toothpaste, and some soap in a small plastic soapbox.

My driver seemed inestimably old to me, he no longer had the thin face and boyish looks that separated the high school students from those who lingered on for interminable years of Beis Medrish after they finished. Where his chin ended there was a roll of fat, and I could see the prickly stubble of a beard poorly shaved. His oily hair was matted off to one direction, which made me suspect he was likely off on a shidduch date tonight. That and the pervasive presence of Aqua Velva gave it away.

He pulled the car away from the curb and drove into the night.

“What sugyah are you holding in?”

I replied, and expounded, detailing the details, nitpicking on mipharshim’s nitpicking, splitting ideas that needed to be split, respect ting the boundaries that needed to be adhered to, displaying memory, and interest, and ability; all the while staring out the window at the color, and light, and life outside of the yeshiva world.

It was early spring, and people where outdoors, doing, what was to me, strange goyish activities; walking around seemingly devoid of any purpose, talking loudly, their conversation fading in and out as we passed them by. They were eating outside the traifa restaurants, under their blazing neon signs; dining on plastic tables hastily assembled to take advantage of the fair weather.

I watched them with a mesmerized, detached, and highly prejudicial fascination. Many had been the time I had entertained base and uncensored fantasies about what life might be like if the weight of orthodox belief were somehow lifted off my shoulders. But what did they think? What did they feel, and how did they know what to do, without the permeating code that I lived my life by?

Even as I wondered I continued to recite my lesson by rote.

He nodded along with me, occasionally adding his own insight, as I spilled out the contents of the day’s shiur in halting unplanned sentences. He seemed happy to have the distraction from his impending rendezvous with one of the most painful social interactions ever envisioned.

He pulled up to the corner I had requested, “Kol tuv”, he said and ended our brief meeting. I nodded my head in a, “thank you.”

The house I was staying in was non descript. A paved set of stairs led up to a simple door. And as I trudged up the stairs I wondered if Rabbi Silver and his wife were home yet, or if it would be the babysitter answering the door again.

I pulled open the screen door and rapped lightly on the thin wooden one. In response the dinning room window was pushed open. Blue curtains swayed outward into the night air.

“Well,” I thought to myself, “that would be the babysitter.”

A few seconds later and a young Beis Yakov girl opened the door for me. She was covered with denim and cloth, swathed with it from head to toe, giving the impression of a heavily clad football player. She had a frilly collar to cover her neck from which her head almost seemed to sprout like some overgrown, bizarre, radish from its greens. She balanced a pair of glasses at the end of a bulbous nose. She smiled apologetically, “ I’m sorry, I don’t want to rush you but….I don’t even want a chashash of Yichud.”

“Chas Vesholom,” I said, indicating my cooperation.

It is so very hard, to think back and remember what encounters with the opposite sex were like as teenager. With no sisters, and stuck in my all male dorm, I literally had no experience with the other gender. I might as well have been speaking with a Martian.

Everything she did seemed strange to me, the way she talked and walked, even the way she motioned me to follow her quickly across the living room where a handful of the Rabbi’s children watched me in the silence they afforded my nightly intrusions. I carefully placed my footfalls around the scattered toys and books. A three year old waved playfully at me. I smiled back.

“Please,” she said and waved her hand in the direction of the basement steps indicating how urgent it was that I make it there in haste.

She closed the door , and from behind it, I thought I heard her breathe a sigh of relief as she fastened the eyepiece lock in position.

“Moishe,” she called out to one of the Rabbi’s minion of offspring, “you can close the window now.”

She spoke to me through the closed door, “ I’m sorry, that we have to lock you in, but I spoke to Rabbi Silver about it, and he said it is the best way to avoid a any problem with hilchos Yichud.”

She had locked me downstairs every night she had baby sat, but this was the first time she had felt the need to justify it with an explanation.

I thought I would ease the tension with a little humor, “Don’t worry,” I said as I clicked the pushbutton lock on the inside door handle, “now we are both safe.”

It seemed evenhanded to me, evidence of my lack of experience with the opposite sex.

She gasped, “Oy, mamash a menuval…”

“Why,:” I asked, exasperated with a rule system, supported by everyone I knew and respected, that saw fit to lock me in a basement on a nightly basis, “isn’t that exactly what you are doing to me…”

“No…” she said, and paused perhaps dredging through the hours of Beis Yakov seminary material that dealt with this specific issue, “because the metzius of a man and a woman is different, and … to even suggest.”

She paused, as if it were difficult for her to talk, “ ….that I…” her voice quivered.

“But isn’t that what you suggest….about me?”

It had started as a jest, but here I chaffed accidentally against truth. I knew the laws of Yichud as well as anyone else. Hell, I had studied the sugyot on depth. But, the actuality of it, of being forced into confinement, had begun to make me feel….well….criminal.

She decided to change tack and her voice gained strength from behind the closed door, “You know, they told me you were thrown out of the dormitory, and now I think I understand why.”

Ouch.

That was true.

I had been thrown out of the dormitory, that was why I was here, standing on the third basement step down, in some Rabbi’s house, talking tentatively to a wooden door.

It had been the culmination of being caught at one to many movies, having one to many “goyish” books. I had been called into Rabbi Brindel’s office a month ago and informed that my very presence was not tolerable amongst the other bochurim. My personality had been deemed a poisonous fume that could no longer be allowed to mix with the innocents and pure of heart.

It had been a house cleaning, performed by the Hanhalah.

Senior year was fast approaching, and several bochurim had been deemed unfit to accept the lofty honor of graduating the prestigious yeshiva program. Three of my closest friends had just been expelled after a brief discussion with Rabbi Brindel. I, on the other hand, had one Rabbi who believed in me, and he had used his influence to ascertain this bizarre state of limbo for me: Half in the Yeshiva, half out. A tenuous trial period for the last two months of my junior year.

There, on the steps with the babysitter, I toyed with several delectable retorts including a sardonic comment incredulously questioning, “anyone’s inclination to have Yichud with her,” but decided against a prolonged argument with a girl who would likely complain to Rabbi Silver about me.

I thought of saying I was sorry, to diffuse what was building into a contest of wills, but from within my basement cage, it seemed that compromising in any way with regards to what my ideal of fair was, would be giving up on the last thing that still remained mine: my own thoughts, my own vision of a morality that existed in my heart untouched and uninformed by the laws of the talmud. The Yeshiva world didn’t get to have that. I guarded that deep down in the recesses of my mind.

I thought of just saying good night, but in the end I kept my mouth shut and made my way in to the mildew-scented basement.

The accommodations were sparse. A thin cot lay pushed up in the corner next to a small nightstand. The walls were thin wooden paneling thrown up hastily over rough concrete, which peeked through gaps in the woodwork. A small table and desk stood next to the lone lamp in the room.

I sat down on the bed and kicked off my shoes. I had tactfully mentioned to Rabbi Silver, that there was nothing for me to do when locked in the basement at night. He had responded very enthusiastically about me bringing my seforim over from the Beis Medrish, but that he could not allow any “English” books in his house.

I took of my Yarmulke and put it on the nightstand. I lay down fully clothed on top of the covers and stared at the white tiled ceiling. A small clock on the nightstand ticked out the seconds as time slowed to a near standstill.

It had been a difficult last month for me in yeshiva. With my core group of friends gone, I felt very much alone. Walking through the linoleum lined halls without the usual presence of my loud and boisterous comrades left me with the anesthetized tingle of an amputee.

Rabbi Brindel had made the deal quite clear. I could see his face in my minds eye, stroking his beard in thought as he spoke to me.

“Uhh…Benyamin….Either your going to be…the bochur, that we know you can be with the proper hishtadlus, or you are going to find another path…”

He had outlined the details. No forbidden music or books. Perfect attendance at Seder. Ninety percent or better on all lumudai Kodesh bechinahs. If these conditions were met I would be allowed to return for and complete my senior year.

I lived my life now knowing I was being closely watched by the hanhallah. Scrutinized carefully for any hint of wrongdoing. I had not been thrown out, that was true, but I had maneuvered myself into a corner from which I no longer had any choices.

I let my eyes wander around the room, looking furtively for something to pass the rest of day. I let them rest momentarily on each object in turn. The white tiled ceiling, the peeling and faded wood paneling. The lone chair and desk. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I folded my hands over my stomach, nestled my head a little deeper in the pillow, and waited impatiently for sleep to come and take me away.

The next morning started as usual, with 12 of Rabbi Silver’s kids jumping on my bed, head, and other sensitive areas, to wake me up.

Someone was pulling on my hand, “Wake up, Yeshiva Bochur, wake up.”

They scattered as I got out of bed and within a few minutes I was in the car with Rabbi Silver back to Yeshiva. He was a Rebbi for one of the ninth grade shiurim, who had agreed to accept my dormitory fee and put me up for two months, and he had taken on the habit of conversing with me about my progress, or perhaps it was the only thing we had to talk about.

The conversation was innocuous enough for me to participate and daydream at the same time.

How was shiur going? Was I making the grades? Was I gaining the deeper understanding of yiddishkeit and yashrus that came with torah knowledge?

I nodded to all in the affirmative.

But then he changed the tone.

“You know, Chava, our babysitter, said that you said some unusual things last night…”

“Why, that little tattletale”, I thought. “She had gone and squealed on me”!

This was similar to the overwhelming majority of trouble I had found myself in over the years in yeshiva, in that it generally boiled down to some goody two shoes turning me in, for “my own good.” To me the tattletale was the lowest from of retribution against someone you had a gripe with, it spoke of cowardice and a backhanded view of dealing with problems.

Once, while in ninth grade, I had been temporarily befriended by a young dorm counselor, he had shown interest in me, and my taste for rock music and science fiction. He had told me about his own interest in these things in his “early yeshiva days”. But once he had ascertained my hiding place by gaining my confidence, well the next day, I had been summoned to Rabbi Brindel’s office, to explain myself, with my contraband sitting on his desk.

Rabbi Silver took an occasional sideways glance at me as he drove down the road. He seemed pensive. It didn’t appear had passed judgment one-way or the other yet.

I had to think quickly, this could be bad, I was on a “one strike and your out” contingency.

I thought it over, “not really,” I said, “I think I am just more makpid on some of the dinei yichud than she is. Chas Vesholom if something should happen that I could of prevented by locking the door…this is why we trust in chazal to make gezeros for us, to keep us safe from such problems…not that every one should abide by such a chumrah, but, yet, we have an inyan…be marchik yourself from a devar avairah…”

A brazen lie…but hard to refute.

Of course I had just been taunting her, unhappy with my fate of being locked in the basement. But now, I simply add the appropriate halachic garnish, pepper it with some divrei chazal, and ….Walah ! It sounded almost good enough to be a candidate for one of our after minchah muser shmusen.

Sadly, this is the utility I put most of my Talmudic knowledge towards…keeping myself out of trouble. The principles themselves had lost much of their meaning, they were simply useful tools for bolstering one’s point of view. I was, at this point in my yeshiva career, fully aware that this was the best methodology for dealing with any authority figure.

Rabbi Silver mulled this over for a few moments, bobbing his head to and fro in a circular fashion, as if the majority of his decision-making capacity resided in his neck muscles.

Finally, my reply cleared whatever mechanism he had working in his mullet to distinguish truth from falsehood, and he chewed on his beard with gusto and nodded his head up and down, “boruch hashem,” he said, shrugging his shoulders, “boruch hashem.”

We arrived early for davening, and after I unwound my tefillin I went back to my dormitory room. It was still there much as I had left it. I simply was not allowed to occupy it anymore.

There would be no more annoying morning banter from Yakov and Eli, they had both been summarily dismissed almost a month ago. I used the open time to take a shower and change into a new set of clothes.

A few minutes later and I was readying my self for shuir. I shook off my sadness and I found my seat and placed my Gemara on the desk. I took my spiral bound notebook and flipped to the first empty page, and took the cap off my blue paper mate pen. I readied it for the flurry of note taking that was about to begin. More than anything, this was the reason I believed that the yeshiva world represented a worldly image of what God wanted. And despite all of my inabilities to measure up to the mold, I still believed that, in most ways it was correct; for in the depth of my studies, I glimpsed a flickering image of truth.

Rabbi Shmuelevitz walked in and we all stood as a sign of respect. He took his seat and we were seated. He was a tall man, and very friendly. He had been the one member of the Hanhallah who had insisted that I stay in yeshiva. He thought he saw great potential in me. He looked at me know at the start of the Shuir, almost as if to say, “Now is your time, Benyamin, show them what you can do! Shine! Shine!”

He gazed at me with hope slapping his hand on the desk twice.

Others in the Shuir room picked up on the building enthusiasm. The calm before the storm. In the sea of white shirts, black pants and glasses clad students that surrounded me, I saw the momentum build to a fine pitch. Some began to sway in anticipation, shuckling in their chairs to their own rhythm. Others like me clutched their pens, flexing and unflexing fingers. Forgotten, were my pains of incompatibility with yeshiva life, what was about to occur was something special. A joy that is hard to describe to the uninitiated.

Another slap of his hand and it began.

Like falling water that could not be contained, it spilled from him, like a force of nature, gushing outwards, flowing.

And by God it was fast.

It was the Rashba, and it’s continuity between Sugyos, did it answer the Tosafos, or did it undermine it, leaving it to fall to logical obscurity ? It was the Gra, the Ritva, did they fit the tiny diyuk in the loshon of Rashi? Could they be made to squeeze ?

It was a roller coaster ride, twisting your logic almost back upon itself, only then to reorient you one hundred and eighty degrees.

We hung on for dear life scribbling all the while, hands aching and hearts pounding, totally immersed in an intellectual exercise that dwarfed anything that I have encountered since.

And then I saw it, like a picture in my mind, construed of words and symbols, a gossamer glimmer within the logic, a tiny pinhole through which an idea could be thread.

My heart beat like a jackhammer at the mere thought of raising my hand. I became suddenly conscious of all the students in the class, the force of their thoughts and minds… and their judgment. Here I was the outcast, the misfit, and from the lowest, most base position of tumah, unfit for life with the other bochurim, would I now expound my ideas to the rest of the group?

Nervous sweat began to collect under my arms, as I confirmed my inner desires by raising my hand slowly. I felt the stares of the other bochurim upon me as small hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention.

He held his hand out to me, leaning back in anticipation and nodded, it was his way of saying, “Tell us, Benyamin, Tell us your question.”

I blurted it out through a haze of fear and embarrassment, stuttering at first, but gaining confidence as I looked at his eyes.

He paused for a moment as I finished, an oasis of silence, in the avalanche of thought, as I waited on pins and needles. Was it a simple clarification? Had I missed something that to everyone else had been obvious? Had I just revealed to my class as a whole that I was of a lower grade, a lesser baki, a poorer lamdan?

I don’t know if he put it on as an act, or if it was sincere, but there was surprise, and joy in his face, and yes, there was pride too, that much I’m sure was real.

“Mamash, mechavin,” he said slowly, never letting me out of his sight, “Mamash mechavin to the thoughts of the Rishonim.”

Oh, I basked in it, bathed in it, threw it like abundant coin into the air in celebration; I let his pride shine upon me like hot rays of a summer sun, and my face turned from red to purple to unidentifiable beet.

Jealousy filled the air, like sweat perfume, for it was no ordinary gathering of boys in this small nondescript room. On the right side sat the grand son of the Rosh Yeshiva, arguably one of the Gedolai Hador. And scattered amongst the many velvet yarmulke’s were notables, children of powerful right wing pulpit rabbayim, even Poskim’s children deigned to share this room with me, and now sat bitterly wondering why their minds hadn’t fit the mold of the greats quite as nicely as mine did. For the ability to think like a Rishon, was not something to be taken lightly, it was considered the pinnacle of many years of Yeshiva training.

My joy was half made of sweet earth and dandelions, but half was fire. I allowed my eyes to flutter quickly to each side of me. “You see”, I said fiercely to them in my mind, for we all knew that the power to understand the torah was the ultimate power, “I have strength that is greater than yours!”

Like all things beautiful, my moment of glory was cut short, it’s ending foreshadowed by a knock on the door.

Our small grandmotherly secretary stepped into the room and looked around in a confused fashion, “Benyamin,” she said quizzically, “Rabbi Brindel needs to see you now.”

This brought immediate laughter at my expense, for what is humor if not the contrast between two extremes. From the momentary inhabitor of the Rishonim’s thoughts to a sixteen year old about to be expelled from Yeshiva, my world flipped under me with enough force to make me dizzy. The emotional shock of my public humiliation hit me hard. Everyone knew I was about to be expelled. The room filled with a chorus of “ooohs”, and “oooys”, that Rabbi Shmuelevitz tried to stifle with extended arms.

Some of my classmate’s faces are burned in my memory that way, lips puckered in an O, eyes evincing mock sympathy.

I felt devastated and for just a moment or two I was taken by a powerful illusion in which down literally seemed up and up seemed down. The vertigo was sickening.
Rabbi Shmuelevitz looked at me, hat defying the rules of gravity by staying on his head in his current inverted position, floor reversed with ceiling: He was shaking his head, as if to say, “Why…why did you throw it all away?”

I was so unsteady I had to use my hands to stand up from my desk.

Now, it was not an unusual occurrence for me to summoned by the Menahel in the middle of Shiur. There were a total of three boys named Binyamin in the class, yet no one had any doubts about who was being called for.

I looked around the room at the relieved faces, smirking in delight at my impending demise, their competition thinned by one. But what did my expulsion hold for them personally? Was it troublesome to them that someone so steeped in the outside gashmius, as I was, could learn ? Did it make them wonder if perhaps the outside world did have value? Did it make their tiny world shrink even smaller around them?

But alas, they had been right all along, my feats in the realm of learning were quirks, unforeseen anomalies that didn’t represent greatness. My accomplishments were not knowledge, or understanding, that indicated that someone so non-“Yeshivish” could reach such a level. In fact, quite the opposite, my true character had been understood by the Hanhalah and I would be sent away, no longer entrusted with the holy words of torah. Words meant only for the leaders of men, meant only for those who would face the truth of their existence in this world.

How painful it was for me to believe so strongly in a system in which I so clearly didn’t fit.

As I walked on wooden legs through the door, the last vestiges of happiness fell away, as if an aura confined specifically to that classroom, that I would not be allowed to take with me.

I had taken this short walk down the hall the Menahel’s office many times, usually consumed by frantic composition of excuses and alibis for my latest movie outing. But this time I was truly puzzled. I had broken no rules, read no books, seen no movies. I was as clean as the fresh slate they had given me.

I knocked on the door to Rabbi Brindel’s office, rubbing my head with my other hand as the spinning sensation slowly subsided.

“Uh…come in.”

I paused for a moment at the door as I prepared for battle. I took a deep breath and let it out, and reminded myself to think twice before I spoke, and to be wary of being trapped in my own words. I had lived up to my side of the bargain, and I intended to thrust that fact out into the open as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

Walking in to Rabbi Brindel’s office was a like receiving a second reassurance that I would be leaving a world of ultimate truth.

A wealthy man, his office, much like his house, was devoid of comforts, niceties, or any hint that his money had ever been used for his personal pleasure. He lived his life as he taught his students to live theirs. How could that not be a sign of truth?

He was a big man, with big hands; butchers hands, people would of called them in the old country, and he waved me in with one of those large paws.

“Sit.”

I had logged many hours in this particular chair, most of them spent fighting for my life. And I sat, leaning forward with my hands clenched together in my lap. Forcefully intent upon his every utterance, I vowed not to go down without a fight.

Rabbi Brindel was not in a rush, he finished with a bit a paperwork, and then looked up at me smiling. He had a large round face, with thick glasses. It was a friendly looking face, almost jovial. And with a smile glued to it, he invited me to want to smile as well. It would seem discourteous not to smile along. It was infectious mirth that came across at me first, the kind that assures one they are amongst good friends.

But I was not a beginner at this game. I had been dealt this hand before and new how to play it. Once you cracked and smiled along, you were a child in the presence of your friendly uncle, who’s advice and reproach you would then be forced to sheepishly nod along with. He wanted me to drop my guard, to smile and relax, as if in the company of family, thusly inculcated with a feeling of trust and comradery.

I didn’t cave. I kept on my face a look so stern it could of wilted summer roses. I didn’t look away, or look down, but looked deep into his eyes, “be fearless,” I thought to myself, “show him you have nothing to hide.”

Of course, this is what I told myself, even when I did have something to hide.

He held the smile, hoping that over time it would seep in, but slowly his smile faded into a grin and then tiring of the effort he turned to business.

“Benyamin….every night you leave the yeshiva grounds after curfew…”

“Of course I do,” I blurted out, ignoring my own advice to be cautious, “You threw me out of the dorm, that was your decision not mine.”

I was starting to get a little hot under the collar, was my final expulsion to be based on something I had been instructed to do by the Menahel himself ?

Rabbi Brindel was shaking his hands in the air, waving me off like an airplane that had wandered onto the wrong landing strip.

“No…..No, no…..just listen, Benyamin….just”

“Because I don’t think Rebbi should be allowed to throw me out for following the very thing….”

“Benyamin…stop…OK…just listen.”

“Fine.”
“Every night you leave the yeshiva grounds, uhhh…because we told you to…no?”

“Yes.”

“Good…Good…Ok,” he seemed pleased now, as if he was really getting somewhere, for my part, I could not imagine where he was going with this. Did he want to extend my punishment? Was he going to change the rules?

“Now when you are waiting out there, to get a ride….you…see…other bochurim….No?”

I felt my head wanting to nod in the affirmative, but froze, desperately trying to piece together what was going on. Of course I saw other bochurim, plenty of guys would take an occasional ride out for a run to the local kosher Chinese or burger joints…

And then it hit me. I got chills all up and down my spine.

This wasn’t about me, it wasn’t about me at all.

I sat there immobile, unsure of how to proceed.

He began to look inpatient with me, “Benyamin, when you are waiting for a ride, you see many other bochurim, who also want to get a ride….No?”

His repeat question demanded a reply.

“I’m not sure what Rebbi…”

“No…no, Benyamin, there’s no “not sure”, there is no question, I’m not asking you a question, Uhhh, if you are waiting for a ride, then while you are waiting you see other bochurim..uhh, also waiting.”

“I don’t know.”

“Benyamin.”
“I don’t pay attention to that.”

“Benyamin, we are not going to play a game here, uhh, your days of playing games are finished.”

“I don’t pay attention to things that don’t involve me, I just stand there and wait, and I don’t think about…”

“Uhhh…but it does involve you, benyamin, it involves you very much…Uhh, Kol Yisrael, arevim Zeh La Zeh…Uhh you know this, you have been in yeshiva long enough to know this…”

“But.”

“And if Chas Veshalom, one of these bochurim is doing something, uhh, meeting girls, Uhh going to movies and inappropriate places, uhh that are mamash a sakanah to his yiddishe neshama, Uhh then you have a responsibility to remedy that situation that is al pi torah, the thing you must do. And there is no question…no question, that you have a chiyuv to your fellow bochurim to help them…when they are doing something that could chas vesholom, damage their emunah and their very yidishkiet.”

“But I don’t think that’s the way it works..”

“Benyamin, if Chas Veshalom, one of these bochurim is damaged from these nesayons, and you could have prevented it…Uhh it’s mamash on your shoulders, Uhh you are a man now and these are things that you will carry on your cheshbon for your whole life, Uhh and there is no answer in Shamayim to say, it wasn’t my business, because if you are the one who can make a difference…then it is your business. And your responsibility.”

I was shaking my head back and forth. This was not something I could do. Couldn’t he understand that?

My entire yeshiva career I had been vexed with people feeling the need to reveal anything I did to the powers that be. I hated them, and I hated the entire concept. Informants for the hanhallah, I had always sworn I would not be turned into what I saw as the lowest form of human interaction.

I couldn’t be that, I despised that, and I had to make Rabbi Brindel see that he was asking me to cross a line in the sand that I could never step over.

“But Punishment is Rebbis’ job, not mine.”

“Uhh, our job, Benyamin, this is something we are going to accomplish together. And chas vesholom, punishment, we don’t have punishment. If we have bochur who needs to understand that what he is doing is wrong in order to preserve a yiddishe neshome, than we take the action that is needed to help the bochur learn, that’s all.”

He sensed my deep reluctance, it must have been stamped all over my face.

“Benyamin, this is not an optional request, if you can’t cooperate with this, then I can call your parents and tell them they are having a guest for dinner…” his hand was massaging the base of his telephone, “…..and that guest will be you.”

His face was plain as he stared at me from across the desk, his eyes steady, his forehead wrinkled in concentration. This was his ultimate leverage device, he knew he had me here. He knew I had dreams of life on the other end of my Yeshiva experience, and by dangling my diploma in front of me he touched on my greatest fear.

Just last year, one unsavory bochur had completed his four year stint of high school, only to be told by Rabbi Brindel, “ learn in yeshiva for a few years, we’ll talk about your diploma then.”

The incident was so well known because of the bochur’s unusually scathing yet grammatically respectful reply. Thus, “The Rebbi is an idiot,” had become a part of the yeshiva lore.

The idea of Rabbi Brindel having some type of long range control over my life was horrifying to me, I needed out, I needed Diploma and deliverance as soon as could possibly be achieved.

And so I courted evil, sorely tempted by the dark waters and what they might guarantee me in exchange for my soul. I dipped my toe into the shallow end to check the temperature.

“And if I could help you….I would graduate…just like I am supposed to…”

“Uhh of course, of course,” he spread his arms wide in a gesture of ultimate acceptance.

“Then know that t is in my heart to help as much as I can Rebbi, but I just don’t remember, but if I do remember anyone I will tell you, as soon as I think of them..”

He was becoming frustrated with me now.

“Benyamin”

“Yes”

“Benyamin…how are you doing in shiur.”

“Fine.”

“New, you don’t have to be so modest, Rabbi Shmuelevitz told me you had a ninety two on your last Bechinah.”

“It was one hundred and eight.”

“Mamash Gevaldig”, he said looking at me with pride, perhaps for the first time in my life.

I volunteered more, “and today, I asked a kasha that the reshonim asked, I hadn’t seen it inside…I was mechavin,” why shouldn’t he know of my greatness ?

“That’s why it hurt us so much to see you wasting your potential, Benyamin, with the traifa books…you see we have always known how smart you were…”

“Oh crap”, said a sinking feeling in my stomach.

“Uhh someone smart enough to remember all these machlokisim in the Gemara, can remember the bochurim he sees leaving the campus…”

Played right into his hands.

And now he was grinning, that damned contagious grin.

“It’s different…I don’t know everyone’s names….”

I felt it start, the corner of my lip turned up….I bit the inside of my cheeks. I had to contain composure. But a roguish ‘caught in the act’ smile was breaking out across my face. I stifled it with shear will power.

“Here,” he said grinning like a leprechaun, sensing his approaching victory“ this will remind you of anything you have forgotten.”

And from out of his desk drawer he pulled several sheets of paper.

It was a list of all the bochurim in the high school.

His secretary was outside the door again and motioned for him to follow towards a wealthy looking man with a beard.

“New Benyamin”, he said, “ you have everything you need.” He pressed a ballpoint pen into my fingers, and put one of his large hands on my shoulder, as if to seal the deal.

“We understand each other now, uhh, just, put check marks, and leave this on my desk when you are done.”

And with that he disappeared, likely to sweet talk another donation out of a prospective sugar daddy.

I sat there alone in his office, just me, the list, and my conscience. I felt relatively certain that no one would know that it had been me. But that didn’t resolve a far greater problem.

If I checked even one name, how would I be any better than the people I despised, the people who had ratted me out on numerous occasions, without a second thought. If I participated in this shakedown, I would join the ranks of those who had been turned against their fellow bochur for the sake of self preservation.

But if I didn’t, and this sent real shivers down my spine, I would likely be taking a train ride home within the hour, leaving an indelible black mark of expulsion on my high school record, possibly hindering me from doing what I wanted to achieve with my life. Or, even worse, allowed to carry on, only to be told that I should spend some time in yeshiva before a diploma could be rightfully mine, and thus remain under the thumb of the hanhallah….indefinitely.

The pen I held in my hand was different from my blue paper mate. It was an adult pen, thick and metallic, and it felt heavy in my hand as I contemplated the deed I was about to perform. Slowly I brought it close to the paper, with resolve in my eyes.

A few moments later and I was back in shiur. A hush fell across the room as the realization set in that I had not been sent to pack my bags.

“Benyamin”, pleaded Rabbi Shmuelevitz, “ you missed a tosafos, but you can still catch up for the next one.”

I sat down and opened my Gemara, but couldn’t get my head into the game.

The knock on the door by Rabbi Brindel’s secretary came even a couple minutes before I expected it.

“Benyamin.”

A murmur buzzed through the classroom….Twice in one day? Inquiring minds wanted to know what this was about.

I stood up and took my second walk to the principles office for the day.

Rabbi Brindel stood over his desk vigorously flipping through the list I had left for him.

“Uhh, this is a joke, you think this is a funny joke?”

His tone was very serious, serious enough to imply imminent expulsion.

“No, Rebbi, no joke”, I said as I sat in my mokom kavuah, terrified about the end of my yeshiva career. I had decided to gamble and now it came time to lay down my hand.

It had occurred to me as I had sat staring at the list, that I could cooperate with Rabbi Brindel, and also not tattle tail on anyone…you see, anonymity is maintained at both ends of the spectrum.

“Benyamin, You put a check next to every name..:”

“Yes.”

“Uhhh….Impossible.”

“You have no idea how out of hand the bochurim are.”

“Uhh, that’s loshon hora and we both know that it’s not true. You are mamash being motzai shem ra.”

“Oh, it’s true.”
It took all my strength but I said factually, with conviction.

“You have seen every bochur, breaking ground curfew? No not possible, Uhh there would be no one left in the dormitory.”

“Well they don’t all go at once…”

“Benyamin, enough, you can’t be serious about this..”

“Rebbi, I’m not, I mean, I am, I can’t be a hundred percent.”

“What are you talking about…”

“Rebbi, as I was looking at the list, if I would come across a bochurs name, and I wasn’t sure if a bochur was or wasn’t there, I thought to myself…what if he was, and what if he was chas vesholom going to a movie with pretzus in it….It would mamash be on my shoulders if I made a mistake.”

“No. No, Benyamin, that’s not the way it works.”

“And if we were to lose even one yidishe neshama, due to my lack of remembering, that neshama would be on my slate, for the rest of my life, and there are no excuses for this in shemayim.”

“Benyamin….no.”

“And then, Rebbi, I thought to myself, which bochur wouldn’t benefit from a chizuk of musar from Rebbi, about the dangers of the outside world.”

“Benyamin, punishment only works if you find those people who …”

“Chas Vesholum, punishment, this is about being mechazik emunah of bochurim who need help, this is about saving neshamos, not punishment.”

Rabbi Brindel was having a hard time keeping a look of disgust off of his face. I plodded on, “It’s just like you said, Rebbi, this is our responsibility, and what could be more responsible than giving every single bochur some chizuk in this regard, because Rebbi, at one time or another, I am sure everyone has done something wrong…No?”

He knew I was full of shit but all he could do is look at me as if he had swallowed a particularly rotten grape. He stroked his beard for a time, and then in resignation slowly shook his head back and forth.

“Go back to shiur, Benyamin, Go… go back to Shiur.”

I didn’t need to be told twice. I practically danced out of his office. I felt a sense of pride swelling in my chest. I had challenged power and won. I had faced his manipulations and outmaneuvered him. My step was light and my arms swung freely at my side.

As I stepped back in to shiur my fellow bochurim may have noticed me finally indulging myself in a boyish smile the reached from ear to ear. It must have been contagious because Rabbi Shmuelevitz caught it too.

“Sit down Benyamin”, he said grinning wide enough to show the spaces between his teeth, “sit down. You can still catch up with the rashba, you can still catch up.”

He slapped his hand on the desk, and once again, we were off……

Biased by the Blogosphere

2006-01-18T17:37:00.000-08:00

It’s not that Dawkins did a bad job on the second half of his presentation about religion (thank you Mis-Nagid for finding it) “The Virus of Faith.” Rather, I think that I have become accustomed to so much more.

“Judaism has traditions”, says a nonplused Rabbi Herschel Gluck in response to Dawkins’ jab at Rabbinic six day creation, and then tilting his head to the other side, to indicate the shift of perspective, “Science has it’s traditions”.

Dawkins looks a bit flummoxed, and although I am sure he could have easily pointed out the holes in that comparison, his expression almost says, “Where do I begin here? How do I unravel a mind that is intractably calcified in such a backward position?”

Does it take an expert? That is to say, a specialist, doubly gifted by having the advantage of once being under the sway of such thoughts and then, with the act of breaking away, gaining the talent for seeing the light in all that darkness. Knowing by which strings the faith hangs most tenuously by, and which are most easily severed.

I think Saul Sanjfeld made a bigger dent in RYGB then Dawkins did with our good Rabbi. And in watching Rabbi Gluck offer pat, pre-rehearsed, cookie cutter, nonsensical answers to a basically nodding Dawkins, I couldn’t help wondering how much more finely honed the questions a garden variety J-blog skeptic would of raised, might have been; not to mention some of our resident experts.

I enjoyed the second segment more than the first because he did stick to some basic issues such as the indoctrination of the young with faith, and the inherent lack of morality from the bible. These two issues I think will impress people of mainstream affiliation.

He couldn’t help himself from brushing with the fundamentalists, of course, and in addition to Rabbi Gluck, he spoke with a preacher who indulged his urge for mass replication of the faith virus via something called “hell houses” where images of hell where impressed upon the target audience (twelve year olds) for such sins as abortion and homosexuality. The live plays depiction was graphic, and appreciably scary to a young mind. The fact that this is currently a protected practice in our country is more than a little frightening.

All in all, I enjoyed his presentation, but to me, all his punches seemed pulled. Well done J-bloggers, you have acclimated me to a higher, and more in depth level, of debate. Thank You.

Why, Dawkins, why?

2006-01-16T10:27:00.000-08:00

Here is a short blurb of my views on the first segment of Dawkins’ tirade against religion, “The root of all Evil”, of which the first part was shown last week, and the remainder of which will be shown tonight.

I think in general it was poorly done.

Here is how he missed the mark.

His main point was to show the idea of faith to be a corrupt form of thought pattern; a logical construction that is outdated. However, to prove his point, he concentrated on interviewing extremists. From fundamentalist Islam to Christian televangelists he ran the gamut, but, I imagine that a large majority of religious folks sat there thinking to themselves, “Sure those guys are crazy, but that has nothing to do with us.”

The only instance during which he chose to address believers in the main stream was at Lourdes, were the faithful, and desperate, come for spiritual healing. In this setting, he chose to tastelessly probe the beliefs of some very pitiful people who seemed to be hanging on to this last shred of hope for dear life, and in doing so, he came off as being very crass and insensitive.

I hope for his next program he attempts something that I think would be far more interesting, and leaves the deathly ill and the fundamentalists alone.

I think a conversation with typical members of mainstream faiths, about what makes them faithful, and how they view the rationale of that decision, in comparison to other decision in their life, would be far more revealing.

We will see tonight…

Sometimes I still get Angry

2005-12-18T11:02:00.000-08:00

Here came the tears.

“Will it ever come back”, she asked, with one starting to trickle down her cheek. It was not an easy question to answer but the statistics, the studies, and clinical acumen all pointed in one direction.

“A little bit may return, but it won’t be the way you remember it, not with the same clarity or definition.”

More tears. I handed her a tissue and waited.

She was a well-put together and composed woman of seventy some odd years. And she was handling the news better than most I’ve seen. Her daughter and granddaughter were in the emergency room with her. I was sitting on a small stool across from her bed.

“Is Grandma done now”, chimed the little girl only to be shushed by her mother.

I had just finished conferring with the handful of doctors who had been, like myself, summoned on Saturday afternoon to put their heads together for this unusual ailment. What a horrible situation to have so much combined knowledge, and not an ounce of intervention.

The day had started out normally enough. Chronically late to shul, I had been making the social rounds at Kiddush after davening, catching up on the enclosed events of my insular Jewish community. Updating myself on the friction between this shul and that, weighing in on the Rabbi’s latest speech, and tentatively planning the next basketball league of out of shape, semi-mobile, thirty-something’s who still thought they could run the length of a court.

But then there was that buzz on my right thigh that is my call to arms. I walked to a vacant corner of the shul and spoke over the phone with an Emergency room doctor and, after listening in brief to the details, I told him I would be there shortly. I caught my wife’s eye across the room and pointed to my cell phone…she understood. I brushed past the couple that had invited us for lunch and told them I would be late.

And forty five minutes later here I was at the conclusion of my examination explaining to this lady, let’s call her Mrs. Trudeau, for in truth her name had a French ring to it, that the type of stroke she had just had, was distinguished for having an abysmal recovery rate.

Well I didn’t put in quite those terms, but I didn’t sugar coat it either. I believe that people have the right to truly know what is happening to them. I have always believed it.

“I had thought it was a migraine or something”, she said quietly wiping away tears, “I was just waiting for it to go away, but when I still couldn’t see on Saturday morning I came to the emergency room.”

“Even had we caught it within the first ninety minutes, the success rates of any of our surgical treatments for a central retinal artery obstruction are about as close to zero as they ever get”, I said trying to take the responsibility off her shoulders, “there was nothing you could have done differently that would have prevented this.”

I occasionally have this misfortune, this most humbling of duties, in which I admit on behalf of medicine in general, our impotence, our shortcomings, our fantastic failure at being able to “fix” neural tissue, or any extension of the central nervous system. It makes you wish for a laceration that you can cleanly sew edge to edge, an appendix you can remove in the nick of time, a pneumonia that you can bash over the head with a fourth generation flouroquinolone. But for Christ’s sake give me something I can fix! Not this, not sitting her doing nothing, not supplying tissues from the tissue box. We’ve got to be better than this, we must be better than this…but in the end, we are just not there yet. And it’s frustrating, and hurtful, and it just plain old stinks. Ten years of grueling post college training, and the best therapeutic in my armamentarium is coming out of a scented cardboard box.

Like humanity, the responses patients give to the adversities of life are varied. Yet within the randomness there are patterns.

Would she mount the Judeo-Christian response? Would she tell me how she trusted in God to know better which faculties she needed and which she didn’t. If so I could hold her hand and agree with her, but this had always been a difficult one for me to swallow, even back when I was one of true faith.

Or would her Denial melt into a Despair and Anger at having been so betrayed by her very own flesh?

I didn’t get to find out, she kept a patrician façade throughout our encounter, perhaps saving her true feelings for a more private place and time.

A few words to my colleagues outside her room, we reach consensus on what tests to run, what follow up appointments to make, and a regimen of preventative medicines; and I am back in my car for the drive home.

Now, I will have you know, I have dealt religion its last blow quite some time ago. I have not harbored beliefs of supreme beings, omnipotent rulers of the universe, or Greek goddesses, in the haloed confines of my mind, any more than I have Elvis sightings. Long gone are the days when I actually intellectually believed that someone up there was keeping track of human beings in a little book with a red pen.

But then why am I driving so fast? Why is my hand so heavy on the horn, why are swear words pent up behind my pursed lips, why are my jaws clenched tight enough to make my teeth grind?

Surely some of it is the frustration of being able to do nothing for someone so in need, but there is something else, something deep down.

What if there is a God who is in charge of everything? What if there is an entity of Hashgacha pratis, in which every event on earth is a string pulled from on high by this mighty master? What if every single other person that I know in my life, every authority figure, every one I have ever looked up to, is right and I am wrong?

And doesn’t a small part inside me still think this is true? Isn’t the psychosomatic equivalent of ten-year-old Ben Avuyah still quivering in his boots, submerged in my mind, afraid of the all-powerful God in heaven that smites at a whim. Even having dismissed this concept on the basis of sound rationale that neither I nor anyone else can challenge, isn’t it still at some level part of my very psyche? Have I not been indoctrinated with this concept so thoroughly that it is an unavoidable first assumption even all this time after I have bid it a, not so fond, farewell?

Like a rock in your sandal you can’t get rid of, it just rattles about, chaffing the skin, rubbing it raw.

Who would this guy be any way? This entity everyone else I know believes so completely in. This thing that has never demonstrated omniscience or omnipotence but says you should believe in him anyway, and then goes and puts out your eye, just fucking turns out the lights on you. Yeah, your life wasn’t hard enough, now try it this way!

What should the response be if you feel your supernatural creator just snuffed one of your headlights out for your own betterment? Groveling? Thanking? Begging?

Isn’t it more appropriate to say, “Hey, you piece of shit, I needed that (fill in portion of body)! …Do you mind! …. Asshole!”

Well, what the hell, I know it’s all stupid, because there is clearly no such thing as an omnipotent god of revelation, but what can I do, that outlook is built into me so fundamentally I have to actually work around it to think straight.

I made it home in record time from speeding, drove into my garage so fast I had to hit the breaks hard so as not to end up in my living room, and put the car in park. And here I go, Yarmulke back on, Shabbos coat back on, and off to another meal, where everyone can marvel at the amazing threads that God pulls together to weave the paths of our lives. Why? The proof is that little Moshe Pupick missed his bus, and wouldn’t you know it that was the day of the surprise test he didn’t study for anyway, so bashert! No? Yes! We all marvel.

Everyone but me, that is. I’ll stare down at my plate and hold my tongue, for my thoughts are not acceptable during these conversations. No one can stand to hear them. No one wants to think about them. They are bothersome. They create discord. They create unwanted questions. Questions that have no answers are best not raised, I’ve been told.

Well there’s no one to talk to, just this computer screen to vent my ire on. I don’t know if anyone else experiences what I do, because I am an Atheist, but I guess sometimes I still get angry at God.

Stuck in Suburbia

2005-09-07T19:05:00.000-07:00

My brother sent me this link today of a NASA probe “slingshoting” around earth, and although it was great to view, I felt a little sad that this may be as close to space travel as we get in our lifetimes….

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/ the_...dis_depart.mpeg