Lying in מיטת סדום

ק קט קטג קטגור קטגוריות
נמיין את כולם, נכניס לתיבות
הנה מטתו של סדום
כולנו עומדים סביב לה
כולנו אחוזי מידות, מלומדי אוניברסיטה
איש לשונו על חרצובו מפחד להיות


A long time ago I read a series of midrashim about S'dom, a Rabbinic effort to understand what exactly was their sin. One of them says there was one "guest bed" in s'dom; if the guest was too long, he was trimmed to fit, and if he was too short, he was stretched to fit. The image of the guest bed of S'dom has haunted me ever since. How often do you feel you are being invited to lie in it? How often do you try to invite someone else to have a go?

Getting lost ללכת לאיבוד

אני תמיד הולך לאיבוד במוזיאונים ובספרי שירה
מלים שאינני מבין, חפצים שאינני מזהה, ציורים שאין בהם תמונה
התקמצנתי לשלם על מדריך צמוד או אפילו מוקלט
אלך לי אל חנות המוזיאון או אל סידור התפילה
אקח לי משהו שיש לו תג מחיר, או לפחות מנגינה


I am a bit ambivalent about poetry, that is to some extent what this one is about.
A lot of poetry leaves me unmoved, or at least uncomprehending.
But I still occasionally look through poetry books, or at the literature page in the newspaper.
Sometimes there is one that touches my soul, which seemed similar to my experience in museums, where I am usually overstimulated by too many things to see, and if I don't focus on one or two exhibits, end up with nothing but a headache for my troubles.
I wrote this one getting ready to give a d'var torah, it wrote itself during my long walk to work. The words just came into mind, I did very little editing on it afterwards. I did consider adding another line to rhyme with the one about the guide, since the rest of the poem rhymes, but after consulting with my brother decided it works just fine the way it is.

I Hold These Truths to be Self Evident

When I was about 14 I won a scholarship to a Haredi sleepaway camp. I didn’t actually join a competition; the High School Yeshiva I was studying at gave it to me at the prizes ceremony at the end of the year. I think the deal clincher was their promise of photography classes, I was very much into photography at the time.

The camp took place on the campus of a vocational Yeshiva High School on the other side of town. We slept in the dorms, studied ‘seder’ in the morning, and went on trips in the afternoons. Every ‘knitted kipa’ kid was paired with a slightly older ‘black kipa’ boy for the paired learning sessions. One morning, the conversation with my Hevruta took an unexpected turn. As I found throughout my Yeshiva years, Hevruta study more often than not branches out to any subject but the study material. So, as I recall, we were discussing suits, and then he mentioned his cousin who was in jail somewhere for being caught smuggling drugs.

“What?! Is he religious?”

“Sure”

“But how can he be religious and smuggle drugs?”

“The drugs were for goyim”

“Well, even assuming he could be sure that there were no Jewish clients for the drugs, it’s ok to endanger the lives of goyim?”

My study partner saw nothing wrong with taking advantage of non-Jews, even to the extent of endangering their lives. I was flabbergasted. He suggested we take the question to the older student who was available to ask difficult questions.

“Weeeeellll, maybe for the sake of peace” said the older guy. In other words, as far as he was concerned, according to Halacha you could take advantage of non-Jews even to the extent of taking their lives, with the caveat that you shouldn’t do it so as not to cause trouble, so as not to give non-Jews an excuse to war against us.

In my later studies I found that technically, he may have been correct; there are specific halachic discussions that seem to say exactly what he claimed. These are the texts that modern Jews sweat over, either re-interpret or repudiate. But for these people, the clash with what was for me, self-evident moral imperatives, was non-existent. There was no conflict, no cognitive dissonance.

I hold some truths to be self evident; Murder is Wrong, Exploitation is Wrong, Discrimination based on arbitrary attributes is wrong. Maybe they aren’t self evident to everyone, but they are to me. I cannot live with a religion that contravenes these principles. I don’t think Judaism does, as I understand it and live it. I don’t think my Father’s Judaism did, or my Mother’s, or my Maternal Great Grandfather’s. I think that this approach, this literalism with no independent moral judgement, is not what Judaism always was. I might be wrong, but that is what I believe. So, as far as I am concerned, I am continuing my Minhag Avot (and Imahot). There is no discontinuity on the essential tradition of my Jewish life: Shabbat, Kashrut, Prayer, Community, Justice.

Limitation or Liberation

I started an exchange with Square Peg and decided it was time to move my responses here, since they were getting a bit long for the comment box, and also somewhat tangential to her questions.

When I was a teenager I read an article in the newspaper's weekend magazine, telling the lifestory of a woman who came to Israel sometime early in the 20th century as a young adult. She came from a religious home, but of course the establishment here was explicitly non-religious (and implicitly anti-religious). She went to a teacher's college, and soon she was given an assignment which she would not have time to finish if she didn't work on it on shabbat.

She took her notebook and pencil, walked out to the middle of a big field, made a mark in the notebook and then waited for the lightning to strike out of the blue sky. When it didn't come, from that moment on she no longer had any use for religion.

I was absolutely amazed at this. How could she not realize that she had no need for an external punishment; she was living her punishment to this day! She no longer had a shabbat! She had no excuse not to work and toil seven days a week. I know that I have non-religious colleagues who similarly answer phone calls from customers on shabbat. Poor things.

I was also amazed at the literalism, actually the fundamentalism embedded in her understanding of Judaism. She had been taught that if she desecrated the sabbath, she would be punished, literally ‘from heaven’. When that was taken away, she had no use for Judaism, no inkling that there were benefits there that she was throwing away. I find the Orthodox insistence on the importance of thought crimes such as 'Torah from Heaven' to be similarly dangerous. If their premises can be proved to be wrong or even put in serious doubt, they feel that their whole way of life is as fragile as a house of cards. Why? Don't thousands of years of reading a book make it significant, whether it was taken by dictation from G-d's mouth or not? Isn't an approach to the world that has worked for thousands of years worth a second glance?

Notwithstanding Orthodoxy's claim to primacy, to being "Grandfather Israel", I know that they are fudging history. Orthodoxy was a reaction to Reform, which itself was a reaction to the emancipation. I happen to hate statements like "Judaism is this" or "Judaism is that", but that is subject for another post. Nevertheless, I would hazard to claim that Judaism up to the 19th century was much more inclusive and varied than Orthodoxy is today.

On the scale of rationalism - mysticism, I feel closer to this (especially paragraph 12 onwards), than to the almost Pope-like infallibility the Orthodox like to ascribe to Rabbinical decisions and existing halacha. When it comes to matters of history and belief, I am as skeptical as a scientist, yet when I pray, I am praying to G-d, all doubts aside. This is a contradiction I live with, and I am only slightly consoled by the fact that this contradictory stance has a long history.

So my point is that my understanding of halacha is that it is not disconnected from the community. I believe that G-d gave me a brain to use, and so I do have to strive to rationally understand the benefit of mitzvot, but I cannot throw them away if the community has not already abrogated them (classic example - the wayward son). I am also willing to consider that I may come to a future understanding on the utility and benefit of certain mitzvot. So answering your last question first, yes, benefits, whether immediate or deferred, spiritual or physical, are a definite consideration in keeping specific mitzvot.

The freedom of choice in the Torah is not a true choice "I give before you today Life and Death... choose Life!" -- who wouldn't? The freedom of choice today, where I am familiar with good, moral people who choose not to keep mitzvot, this is a true challenge. I am not even sure I can really understand the meaning of 'commanded' any more, of 'obligated' and 'free of obligation'. The Rabbis in the Babylonian Talmud decided that "one who is obligated and performs a deed is greater than one who is not obligated and performs a deed" (I heard a rumor that the argument was concluded the opposite way in the Yerushalmi, but I never looked it up). As far as I am concerned, when it comes to mitzvot we are all choosing to be obligated, or not, so we are all on the same level of 'one who is not obligated and performs'.

Do you have a specific mitzva in mind that enshrines rigid gender roles? I am not sure that I can elaborate a negative. On the central issue of the 'non-obligation' of women on time bound mitzvot, I think my argument above covers it. On various additions that try to set-in-stone social mores from previous eras, such as "a woman's voice is lewdness" -- well, I don't really have much to add.

Finally, I believe it is as important for my sons as for my daughter to see that rigidity for the sake of rigidity is idolatrous. This is what I believe, and if others believe otherwise, they certainly have the right to raise their children accordingly. I will disagree respectfully.

From Head to Toe ... Or How I Cured Myself

When I was a small child in the US I don’t remember ever wearing sandals. It was either shoes, sneakers or flip flops. Then we moved to Israel, and ‘biblical sandals’ were de-rigueur. I remember my first pair, I thought the ones with a big toe thong were cool, and so I chose them and then suffered horribly for several days with blisters between my big and second toes. Then I moved to the classic Israeli ones, with a wide strap in front, a thinner one in back and round the ankle, and absolutely no padding. The shiny leather top sole was as hard to break in as a sears-roebuck saddle. As you walked around the first couple days, your sweat would pool on the surface and you would slip around and rub blisters on the contact points with the rivets on the back of the buckles.

All that wasn’t so bad. The bad part was that after a few years of walking everywhere in them during the blazing hot Israeli summer, suddenly, just when I was getting used to them, I got this awful feeling as if my toes had grown cantilevers into my foot, and when I stepped forward and bent my toes up it felt like the cantilevers were trying to break out of the bottom of my foot.

My doctor told me I needed ‘support’. Shoes were just too hot for most of the year in the Tel-Aviv area, so I tried out the new ‘magon’ sandals, that at the time were still being sold only in ‘orthopedic’ shoe shops. That helped for a few more years.

Then I went to the army, where the heavy leather boot was terribly narrow just in front of the toes. When I was kneeling down with my toes flexed one day, I gave the final zetz to my poor incipient inflamed nerve. So I continued limping around for a few more years, eventually finding myself confined to wearing nothing but New Balance sneakers with custom orthotics.

I won’t even mention the nightmare encounter with the podiatrist, who when I came to consult about what I could do about my neroma (inflamed nerve between metatarsals), first tried to prescribe systemic steroids, and then when that made me dizzy and sick, gave me a shot of steroids straight in the inflamed nerve. That was one of the most painful things I have ever had done to me.

One fateful day, I read about vivobarefoot shoes in Kevin Kelly’s “Cool Tools”. Their guiding principle was that our feet were designed to be bare. I mean, people walked around barefoot for hundreds of thousands of years before anyone invented shoes. Saying we need ‘support’ is sort of like claiming that our hands can’t function without a glove and brace. And just imagine what would happen to your hands if you always wore protective gloves and a supportive brace round your wrist: your hand would wither and your muscles would atrophy. That is exactly what we do to our feet: by supporting them continually with protective ‘shoe’ braces, we cause them to atrophy and degenerate into needing ever more support and protection.

So I couldn’t buy these shoes in Israel, but I started very gradually easing myself into walking barefoot inside. Five minutes a day, Ten minutes a day, gradually gradually until I could spend hours barefoot. I would get occasional twinges from my neroma, but nothing like it used to be. My foot got stronger, the pads under my toes thickened up.

I did eventually get a pair of Vivos, and they were nice, but my absolute favorites are Crocs. Almost no support, enough cushioning to keep you from hurting your feet on sharps outside, and toe room! Enough toe room to flex and curl your toes as much as you wish. I now think that the most important thing for foot health is to have absolutely no restriction on your toes. Your toes should flex and spread as you walk, the way they were designed to.

I now walk to work almost 90 minutes every morning. My feet don’t hurt before, during, or after my walk. Hallelujah!

To Be or Not To Be... Publicly

A lot of what I have to write about is personal. Some of it very personal. A good deal of it concerns not only myself but others as well. So I have a fear of offending, embarrassing, or exploiting others by writing about them. I am thinking about the best guidelines for deciding what stays on my hard disk and what goes on the blog.

Simply anonymizing the material is not good enough, since the likelihood is that sooner or later someone will figure out who I am (and I didn’t really try to hide it).

“That which is hateful to you…”; I am not sure this is sufficient, since what I don’t find embarrassing others may find very embarrassing.

Review and Approval? I don’t really want to give someone else the power to ok my work.

So, I am still thinking about this. Anyone have any comments?

Why 3 Pages

I recently finished Phillip Pullman's excellent trilogy "His Dark Materials". As is my wont, I then researched further, finding that the first in the series is coming to the big screen in December, and that he has a very nice website. In his FAQ and in several interviews he speaks about the fact that every day he sits down and writes out three pages, longhand, on lined paper with two holes on the side.
I liked that. My love of reading started early; I taught myself to read as a four-year-old in a Montessori Kindergarten, and since then I have fantasized about writing a wonderful book, something that would be as informative or spellbinding as "The Wizard of OZ" or "Heidi" or "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen". I struggled with disgraphia as a child, and that discouraged me somewhat; I also suffered from the 'gifted child's handicap' of most things coming easily, and therefore I simply avoided the rest.

So I decided that it was time for me to stop fantasizing, time for the rubber to meet the road. I touch type now, fast enough to catch most thoughts, and though I think I'll weasel out of an actual 3 pages a day (and none on weekends and holidays...), I think I can commit to writing 'something' every day. I don't promise it will all be published here, but I will try and keep a record of how it is going, and when I think I have something ready to be published I will do it here.