The Distancing Dance

Folk and friend,
Here's a few words from my dear comrade Dr. Aryeh Cohen. I'm pleased that he has contributed this fine piece to the Urinal Puck. I hope you enjoy it.
-Chaim

------------------------
What is it about Jewish comedians that makes them feel as if they need to throw up all their self loathing Jewish stuff all over their audience?

The other night I saw one of these comedians. She was the poster child for the richuk campaign. You know there are all these organizations that are interested in keiruv, a Hebrew word which means bringing closer and has become a term of art for Jewish evangilizing to Jews. The most sought after person in the Jewish community is the unaffiliated Jew. The Jew who doesn't care about his or her Judaism, the Jew who doesn't belong to a synagogue or has any other Jewish affiliation-hence unaffiliated. This is the person that all Jewish organizations slather over. They literally get hot and bothered just thinking about getting these Jews into their synagogues, boardrooms, living rooms, social justice organizations, temples etc. They sit in a room full of interested and yet, miraculously ignorant Jews talking about how important it is to get those people who don't want to be in that room into that room. The people in the room remain in their blissful Jewish ignorance, yet they all come up with plans to get all the hipsters who couldn't give a damn into the room.

Anyway, the opposite of kiruv is richuk. It is also a Hebrew word which means distancing. It is not yet a term of art. There are no grants that magically appear by telling the foundations that you will leave all these Jews who have chosen not to care about their Jewishness alone. -I am thinking of starting an organization which might just make richuk into a term of art. My working organizational title is "Get the fuck out of my bes medrash." This might be a bit strong. Maybe I should just call it "I'll leave you alone and you don't mess with my religion."

I went to a wedding recently of a family friend. They were both Jewish by birth and both wonderfully unafilliated. Neither of them really cared about Judaism. She had spent her whole life wanting to be "normal". That is wanting to be white bread American. He had spent his whole life not thinking about Judaism for more than two or three minutes.

The wedding was on a Saturday. The officiant was a Unitarian Minister who came with the hotel, and did a great job of making believe that she didn't know anything about religion either. So everything was going along swimmingly-it was eighty degree Arizona in the middle of the winter, what could be bad? They had done an amazing job accomodating my family's observant tendencies-they had ordered kosher food for us and everything.

At the reception, the DJ was playing everything you expect a DJ to play at a wedding‹danceable music from the last three decades. All of a sudden somebody decides its time for the Jewish dance. The bride and groom have to be planted on chairs and hauled above our heads so that we can dance around to some Hava Nagila song. This was supposed to make me happy. Did I miss something here? Was I co-opting your religion? Did I put on a piece of triangular cardboard and prance naked in the freezing cold rooting for some overpaid group of thugs that gets paid more than many countries' GNP? Did I? Then why are you messing with my religion?

So I saw this "comedian" who can be the poster child for the whole richuk movement. In her act she touched on all the aspects of her Jewish identity-loudness, New York accent, the catskills and the Holocaust. If she had just sung Hava Nagila she would have scored a perfect ten. Its not that she wasn't funny. Well, actually, it is also that she wasn't funny. The problem is that she thought she was both funny and edgy. As if five decades of comedians haven't done Longisland jew jokes.

As a follow-up, this vanguard of Jewish vaccuousness also took a courageous stand for the Holocaust. She defended the Holocaust. No, she didn't defend the killing of six million Jews, but she did defend the honor of the Holocaust, or at least took a stand against people making fun of survivors of Auschwitz. Now that was ballsy. I am sure she is also against infanticide and the random shooting of the elderly.

So what is this? What is it that drives people to see these people? How screwed up is it that 99 people get in a room to reaffirm their Jewish identity by announcing their loathing of their Jewish identity? There is a symbiotic psychosis at work here. I make fun of me. You laugh at you. We both make fun of each other. We make believe its hip and edgy because it trashes something we are supposed to care about. But we don't. So, actually, its not.

The Heavens and The Earth - And Ears

Folks,
I'm pleased to post (with the author's permission) a recent D'var Torah by Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson. I hope that it provides you with as much inspiration and food for thought as it does for me, especially for those moments when food's not an option.

May I also add that even though the title of this blog is not so reverent, my intent is not to defame but rather to raise the sparks. Shana Tovah.

-Chaim

By: Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson
from the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies

Shabbat Parashat Ha'azinu
October 15, 2005 - 12 Tishrei 5766


The Heavens and the Earth--And Ears


Torah Reading: Deuteronomy 32:1-32:52
Haftarah Reading: 11 Samuel 22:1-51


What is the essence of human nature? Are we really creatures of spirit and mind, capable of forming ourselves at will to correspond to the highest conceptions of humanity possible? Or are we, rather, little different than the animals of the field and forest, driven by instinct and whim, incapable of modifying either our behavior or our aspiration?

The question of whether we are little lower than the angels or simply a standing, naked ape has preoccupied poets, philosophers, and sages from the dawn of time. In every age, cogent defenses of both positions volley forth from vociferous advocates, each deaf to the merits of the other's position or to the flaws of their own.

On the one hand, it is remarkable what marvels humans have accomplished. With only the power of our minds, we have erected buildings that stand across the millennia and stretch up to the very skies. We have turned the desert into farmland and found ways to link people separated by thousands of miles through a vast array of communication and transportation, so that flying from Los Angeles to New York City takes less time than driving from Washington, D.C. to Boston. Having conquered a long list of malignant diseases, our scientists seem on the brink of winning the battle against illness, even as our educators perfect methods of conquering illiteracy. We are truly reflections of the divine, able to create worlds through our will and our words.

And yet...

Even as our accomplishments loom so large, our failures assume an even more terrifying posture. Our scientific advances threaten to poison our air, render our water unusable, and leave our land blighted. Even as medicine advances, we grapple with plagues that reminds us of our continuing frailty and our devastating impotence. Despite our tremendous wealth, the illiterate and unemployed, the outcast and the hopeless loom ever larger, making a mockery of our smug self-satisfaction. Women are still underpaid, and subject to assault. Terrorists and floods catch us ill-prepared. Blacks and Latinos are still underemployed, and subject to assault. Gays and lesbians are still despised, and subject to assault. Maybe we really are animals after all.

Jewish tradition rejects this simple dichotomy, a false attempt to force humanity into the role of either paper saint or preprogrammed bug. Both angel and animal, human beings are unique precisely because we have the potential to develop in either direction, often both at once.

Our Torah portion opens with Moses' stirring words, "Give ear, O heavens, let me speak; Let the earth hear the words I utter." The Talmudic and geonic rabbis asked themselves why it was that Moses felt impelled to mention both heaven and earth. Wouldn't one have sufficed as a witness?

In Midrash Devarim Rabbah, several answers all point in the same direction: Rabbi Tanhuma said "Because God will redeem Israel only through the agency of them both." Another explanation posits that "the Torah was given only through the agency of them both." Or that "manna and the quails were given through the agency of them both." Or finally, that "God compared Israel to the stars of heaven and the dust of the earth."

Each of these answers insists that salvation comes only through the combination of heaven and earth, of the mundane and the spiritual, of the ideal and the concrete. Both lofty goal (often unattainable) and repair of the world (often prosaic) are necessary for the redemption of humanity and the establishment of caring community.

Without a goal of complete social justice, our communities and the family of man cannot attain a better world. But without a willingness to look after the little details--the individual homeless, poor, sick, or hungry--the goal will remain elusive and ethereal.

Without a sense of the mitzvot as a goal--seeking to incorporate God's will and a sense of the sacred into our lives--there is little hope of elevating our souls. Yet holiness can only enter our lives when translated into practical behavior--shaping how we eat, study, pray, rest, and how we celebrate.

Our destiny as a people, as the House of Israel in the modern age, integrates that same stubborn balance: A flesh-and-blood people still wrestling with an angel in the night, still insisting that holiness is possible, that righteousness must flow like a mighty stream.

By holding on to our own physical nature, we can hope to elevate the material world into something higher. By retaining our dreams, our vision, and our faith, we provide a direction for otherwise pointless business and dreary years.

All it takes is heaven and earth, and the ability to listen. It hasn't changed since Moses first sang to us his song of love.

Shabbat shalom.