ההודאה בחג ההודיה

פלא בעיני: אם יש בכדי חג ההודיה לעורר לבבות יהודי אמריקה שומרי התורה והמצוות למנות את ברכותם אשר השפיע עליהם הא"ל ברוב טובו, וכל עצמו של החג נתייסד על הגיעם של הפוריטנים לחוף ההארץ החדש בשלום, והודאתם לא"ל על כך, אינו ק"ו שבחג שנתייסד על הגיענו לארץ ישראל בשלום והקימתינו בה ממשל יהודי שנודה א"לוהינו על שהנחיל לאבותינו ארץ חמדה, טובה, ורחבה, ברית ותורה חיים ומזון?! וכי אינו מן הראוי ביום ההוא לפחות להלל אל"לוהינו בהלל גמור, ולקחת לקח טוב מדוגמת חג ההודיה למנות את ברכותינו ביום שגמל לנו הא"ל כאלה וכאלה טובות וחסדים (דהיינו חג העצמאות)? ח

ראיו לציין גם: וכי חג שכזה יש בכוחה לזרוק צל על חג יותר ראוי? הלא המתיישבים הראשונים האלו נתקלו בקשיי התאקלמות רבים, והם לא הצליחו לפרנס את ישובם אם לא שהאינדיאנים באו לעזרתם. ומה עשו האמריקאים להודות לבעלי טובתם? השמידו את זכרם מעל פני האדמה. בעיני, התנהגות שכזאת מסמלת כפוי טובה ולא הודיה. ח

A Queer Dilemma

I once had a discussion over at Chana's blog with a lady named Megan about homosexuality in the perspective of Jewish law and objective truth. It was in response to a post about how people with homosexual natures in the Jewish community are at a dilemma in regards to what to do with themselves and their futures. I've recently come to recall some of my ideas on the subject and I still feel some of basically still hold true. So this is not necessarily to follow-up on the discussion I was having there, but rather to restate my ideas.

My first argument is legal: although the legal systems of democracies are created to be objectively just and applicable to people of all creeds and religions, there are still a great many laws which are absurd. It seems to me that the laws are just an extension of the Western norms, which themselves are greatly influenced by the norms of Greece and Rome. Yet were the ethics of the Greeks and the Romans objectively just? They would discard newborns that were seen as "unfit". Are the laws here in America just? Less than a century ago eugenics was popular, and the severe mistreatment of African-Americans and discrimination against Jews was part of the law.

They say that it's unjust to even suggest that homosexuality might not be the best thing in the world, yet there are other sexual practices that are not "objectively" evil that are greatly discouraged. For example the cohabitation between an adult and a consenting minor is illegal. For an eighteen year old boy to cohabitate with a seventeen year old girl is illegal yet cohabitation between two of the same sex is beyond reproach? There is even a case of a seventeen year old male being arrested for viewing pornographic images of seventeen year old females. Yet pornographic images of eighteen year old females is fine. Yet prostitution is basically fine as well.

They defend their opinions by saying that homosexuality is natural in some people and therefore can't be discriminated against. Well, the desire to be intimate with minors, children, close relatives and even animals is quite natural to some people as well. If the law is objective who's to say those should not be deemed legal in the ideal state? If it's some sort of sexual or emotional repression we fear, than we should fear the sexual repression of the child molester as well (I saw Little Children recently).

Rather the law in Western lands simply follows the Western tradition, in which homosexuality is not quite as frowned upon as the other practices mentioned. Yet they complain when Muslims suggest homosexuality should be illegal, even though the Oriental tradition condemns homosexuals. We must conclude then, that just as with the Mission, the Western world, rather than trying to spread "Christianity", was trying to spread "Western culture", so too with the wish of the Western Europeans and their descendants throughout the globe to spread "Democracy"; it is not objective law they wish to disseminate, but rather their own view of things.

Another argument I mentioned there that I feel still stands is the idea that it is within our ability to change our sexual natures to an extent, perhaps even from homosexuality to heterosexuality. My very mention of such an idea brought me sharp criticism from the other commentators, as if they're the worlds experts on people's sexual natures. There is practically no scientific evidence saying it's impossible for people to become attracted to people of the same or other gender.In fact there is much evidence suggesting it is possible.

What the critics would respond to this is that some males were simply born with more estrogen in their bodies, and are therefore wholly female from a chemical standpoint. They suggest that there were homosexuals in every era and in every society; that it's quite natural and that it can't be helped. Still, I feel that the truly effeminate men and emasculate women are the minority in today's homo/bi-sexual community. The majority can be heterosexual had the need arose. For example in the European Dark Ages there is not much of a record of homosexual activity. I cannot recount the history of populations with little-to-no homosexual populations, but suffice it to say in the right environment more people are born with heterosexual inclinations. It seems to me that in very affluent societies that can mimic the wealth of the ancient Egyptian, Greek or Roman societies, for example today's Western societies (for example the one we live within here in the coastal United States) more effeminate males and emasculate females are born.

Instead, therefore, of having endless sympathy with the struggles of homosexuals who wish to live religious lives, we are better off attempting to discover what causes homosexuality and trying to change people's innate natures (since it does, in fact, seem to be very possible).

Correct? Incorrect?

ס"ט

My New Blog

Well, I’ve finally started a new blog again, entitled “הציוני האחרון”. I start way too many blogs, I know. I’ve actually  been meaning to start it for a while but I kept procrastinating. Tonight I haven't got much to o so I’m starting it up. If anyone has any Israel-related posts they might want to contribute, feel free to join.

זו אגדה

One of my favorite types of books to read, friends, is the type of book that is so obscure most people (of the cultured class) would be surprised to hear that such a book existed. A set of books I've been reading recently that's met that standard more than some others is the diaries of Theodor Herzl. I've read Der Judenstaat in the past (which, in yeshiva in Jerusalem, was also pretty obscure), but it's far more eye-opening to see the day-to-day entries of the "Visionary of the State" in the late nineteenth century. What strikes me as humorous about Herzl's speeches and writings, or for that matter any of the Western European Zionists of his day, was how well they had the entire endeavor planned out, and how very absurd most of those ideas seem today (though the truth is some of his predictions about the future state are shockingly accurate...but perhaps only because the founders wished to shape things in Herzl's vision).

For example Herzl envisioned a state where the majority of the first immigrants at the time of the state's founding would be from the West, coming out of their own volition in a very organized manner. In reality most of the founding generation came from the East, most of them only as refugees of pogroms or the war, and there would be a great number brought in from the Orient, which he seemed not to have considered.

The best thing about Herzl's ignorance about the future though, is that he sort of knew deep down inside that there could be no state if world politics stayed as they were. The Ottomans swore they would never relinquish the holy sites of Palestine to the Jews, the Pope was thoroughly uninterested in Herzl and even the European leaders weren't so excited about the prospect. It is perhaps for this reason that in the end of his life he gave precedence to the idea that there be a Jewish state than to the idea that it be situated in the historical land of Israel, where Jewish pioneers had been arriving until then. He would never have foreseen that soon after his death the Ottoman Empire would collapse and the Arab lands partitioned by the Western powers. On the other hand he could never have foreseen that the Jews would not leave Europe unless forced out, and that even after a holocaust the nations of the world would still be extremely iffy about allowing a Jewish state.

This last point has always been disturbing to me though; here Herzl thought he had his game made, it was a win-win situation; the Europeans don't want the Jews and the Jews ultimately want to return to Palestine. He thought all it would take was a stroll over to the Kaiser and another over to the sultan and viola; the Jewish question solved. Yet after chatting with some the German Dukes, they say "who said we want to lose our Jews? What will be with the economy?", and three decades later they decimated the Jews but still refused to grant them a homeland. If you don't like them this is your opportunity to be rid of them! To me it seems like a great paradox. A love-hate relationship. They can't live with us and they can't live without us. Even today the Jewish population in the holy land is constantly harassed by their neighbors and by the media, and yet many of them are the very same people who criticize the Jewish population in their own countries (David Duke being an extreme example of someone who doesn't want Jews in America, yet is pro-Palestinian when it comes to Judea, Samaria and Gaza).

Anyway, the entire set makes for an interesting read. Lots of great lines there. I could practically write a running commentary on the thing.

[Shlomo Avineri article on the diaries]

Lomo and Time

[The title, obviously being based on the philosophical work Being and Time, for all you non-Heideggernicks out there]

For various reasons I've recently come to reexamine my relationship with temporal movement and the effect or lack of effect that it has on my existence. I'm sorry to say that my relationship with punctuality hasn't always been the closest, which has actually, strangely enough, made me more punctual at times. For example someone I knew once asked me why I was so 'unusually' punctual. The answer, obviously, was that because I naturally wasn't, I had more of an agenda to prove I was...

In order to discuss this subject though, we should understand that "time" is such a relative word. The passage of time on a stone, for example, has little effect on it's lifestyle. Yet for human beings time is our being, the passage of time over us is more of our life having gone by; the flowing of our blood, the pumping of our hearts. When you "take" someones time therefore, it's not only their time you're taking, but their very life. For what does a life consist of if not years, and what do years consist of if not days, and days consist of hours. So creating a situation in which someone is forced to be idle for one of those hours is undoubtedly snatching away part of their life.

In the slaughterhouse in Wisconsin which had the good fortune of finding me employed therein, we worked on shifts, and since there was little management, ones only hope of being relieved of his shift was the goodwill of his fellow worker to come on time. During my time there I noticed the ways of an old Uzbeki man who was actually our oldest member: despite his age he was always five to fifteen minutes early to his shift, thus affording great relief to the worker of the previous shift, and gaining nothing in return. Personally, at the time his practice didn't sit well with me, seeing as if he would fill my shift early I would be obliged to do the same for him. Yet the truth is that temporal form of giving is in fact the highest form.

Even if you are tardy to a class or meeting or group of any kind where your presence is expected, if you are absent, that loss is felt by the group (hopefully!) and it mars their experience to a small extent, but even the slightest extent should be of concern. It's written that rabbi "Nachman of Bratslav" (founder of the Breslov Chasidut) was very off-put if there were missing faces from his sacred gatherings.

Thus if one does wish to engage in a more scrupulous form of time management one thing he will have to acquire is a foresight of every possible prevention from arriving at his destination at the proper moment.

Do not think, by the way, that these ideas are alien to our religion. Although punctuality was greatly stressed by the proponents of the "Mussar Movement", even authors who preceded that era wrote much about time management (especially in relation to prayer and study), and we see it written in more modern works such as the "עלי שור" (Wolbe) and "אור לציון" (Aba Shaul).

I'm not verbalizing these dictums for didactic reasons, but as a hope that the repeating of these principles will assist myself and others in their fulfillment.


עבד, ס"ט

"Shabbos Brachos Party"

Another thing I wanted to mention recently was that I, for reasons beyond my control, had to sit in for a "Brachos Party" this past Shabbat. Now, I'm the youngest of my clan, and I don't often see children, so seeing a whole array of toddlers and young children in their own environment is, to me, ...similar to the experience of watching a group of guinea pigs interact with each other. Perhaps it says something about my being "too interested" in the opposite sex or gender relations, but one thing that caught my eye the most was some of the interactions between the boys and the girls. The two specimens I studied most closely were a pair of toddlers (a male Uzbek and a blond female with Swiss features) and a pair of children (both Uzbek-American).

The toddlers concerned me since the girl was only a month older than the boy yet she seemed to run circles around him intellectually (unfortunately, probably a sign of what their future statuses will be in relation to one another in society when they become adults). Though all-in-all, they seemed not to harbor any particular disposition towards each other, in fact they seemed to get on quite well. Not half as well, though, as the two Uzbek-American children (male: 6, female: 4). If I didn't know better I would think they were just a happily married, albeit very small, couple. The way their personalities complimented one another was uncanny, and even when one wronged the other to the point of causing tears, they were not able to, or perhaps did not want to, recall each others wrongs later on.

To me what these children seemed to be doing was enforcing a theory I had already had regarding the spousal compatibility of men and women, namely that any two people have the potential to live side by side in relative harmony. The only reason two people would not do so is because they are both concentrating their vision on unimportant and negligible differences between them, yet they overlook the vast amount of things they have in common with one another. And even if you grouped people with nothing in common (say, a Polish man and Ethiopian woman stranded on a desrted island), chances are they both manage to live in harmony and work for one anthers welfare.

Lostathon Notes

(I wanted to have written this a while ago, but I've been busy...no, not watching TV!)

Diane Winston teaches a "Religion, Media and Holywood" class in USC which "examines how spiritual and ethical issues are addressed in secular forums for mass audiences" (syllabus). I heard of her since she was invited to discuss her work on Speaking of Faith, and I’m generally a fan and follower of the program. Her basic message was that in recent times, and especially in the "post 9/11 era" in America, some television programs have not only greatly improved in quality and production, but are addressing many more moral and ethical issues than they have in the past. The examples she gave were the programs The Wire, House, Lost and Battlestar Galactica. Whereas shows like the original Star Trek had few moral undertones, shows like "Battlestar" send strong messages about moral conflicts that face contemporary society.

As I've mentioned already, partly through the influence of that program, and partly since I had a previous interest, I decided to watch all the episodes of Lost aired thus far, since Mrs. Winston pointed it out as one of the most thought-provoking of the others mentioned. It took me about three weeks to a month to watch it all. One thing I particularly liked about the show was that (in the first few seasons at least) it dedicated each episode to one character, and showed what their backgrounds, motivations and agendas are. So while each character interacts with the other, no character fully understands the reason the other does things expect themselves...which has always been something that's fascinated me about life; the fact that we're all existing and interacting in the same world, yet what's going on in our minds and what drives each of us can be extremely different from one person to the other.

Another aspect I liked about it was the fact that, while there are "good guys" and "bad guys", the heroes aren't totally heroic and the villains aren't exactly villainous (i.e. the heroes aren't beyond reproach since their self interests play a big role in their decisions, and the villains have their legitimate reasons for doing what seems unjust). All-in-all it's a lot more reminiscent of film than of traditional television.

Yet after completing the fifth season I asked myself, what exactly did I gain from watching this? Unfortunately, I feel that more than make me more thoughtful about life and the world around me, all this show accomplished in creating within me is a curiosity regarding what the nature of the island is, what the smoke monster really is, what the fate of the story's protagonists will be, and why the hell Richard Alpert seems to have been wearing a blue shirt and gray pants since 1954 (which, by the way, is another funny aspect of the show; the fact that many of the characters share names with philosophers and famous thinkers), which, of course, have no bearing on my life.

After watching it for a while I was reminded of the first words of the first song in Jewel's first album, "People living their lives for you on TV, they say they're better than you, and you agree". In other words, watching that sort of thing gives you the impression that your doings are of lesser consequence than theirs, since if they weren't, they would be watching you, not vice-versa. Now, that's true about film and even novels and such, but I would say it's more true about television since the viewer has the time to really get to know the characters, since in most cases he's seeing them every week for years on end.
So, in retrospect, it doesn't seem like this aspect of television has rejected the ideals of sensationalism that were a staple of television production in the past.

Tweetup

I feel silly, friends, that after just recently complaining that my blog has taken on too journal-like a style when I wrote about my attendance at a blogger-oriented event, I am again going to write about my attendance at yet another blogger-oriented event: the "Tweetup" (a word I've found to make a lot more sense written than spoken). Though considering, it's not quite antithetical to record my experiences meeting bloggers here, since it's a blog-related experience (still, I'd rather my blog be filled with more "substance" posts). In fact to me meeting bloggers is not only a social event, it's an experiment of sorts. An experiment attempting to discover what sort of real-life individual ends up writing a blog, and in what way they represent and express themselves different than in reality. You see, if nine out of ten of every Jewish pedestrian strolling down Avenue J in Brooklyn every day was a blog author the need for the experiment wouldn't be so pressing. But as it stands there's only a handful of people who find their ideas important enough that they feel a need to express them online, which is what tells me that these people are unique, and that their words are worth some analysis.

Anyway, I unfortunately came to the place where it was to be held with the intention to leave, since I didn't think I would recognize anyone there, not to mention the event coincided almost exactly with an important exam for my school-career. It was sort of a shame though, since, aside from those I had met in the past, there were many individuals there who I knew about through the Internet but had not yet met. I said hello to Moshe, met Jacob the Jew, and a woman with an unusual idea introduced herself to us. Elke Sudin's blog is actually only a prototype for a book she wishes to create. As someone who's been spending extensive amounts of time in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn for the first time, I found her message interesting; a contrast of similarities between the elegant and urban ('White') European-Americans that reside in Williamsburg and the Chassidim who have long been a trademark of that neighborhood. As someone who's seen the contrast first-hand....well, let's just say such a book would pique the curiosity of many a bookstore-goer.

Another two members of the blogging community who I didn't expect to see were the authors of the Frum Female (who I commend for following my blog!) and Wolfish Musings (who himself has a good fourty follwers) blogs (the latter of whom I was later able to have an extensive discussion with on the train). Both relatively well-known, yet prefer to stay as anonymous as possible. A little latter Mottel arrived with his wife and filled-out the Chabad-blogger niche in the gathering. There were obviously a few Twitter updaters, but since I'm still generally at a loss as to what the purpose of Twitter is, I wasn't able to comprehend their contributions as much as I was those of the bloggers.

All in all it was interesting to see all of them, and Heshy Fried is commendable for being an arbiter of pulling it together (for no apparent financial gain). Perhaps there will be more in the future.. The only down-side was that those social interactions stuck a little too tightly in my head while I was later trying to take my exam...