…אם אין קמח

אם אין קמח אין תורה אם אין תורה אין קמח
If there is no sustenance [literally flour], there is no Torah.
If there is no Torah, there is no flour.
Pirkei Avot 3:21

Rashi comments on this perek by noting that one cannot always be studying Torah – if one does not eat, then one can’t learn. At first glance, one might assume that this means that there are times when you should take yourself away from Torah… ahh, but of course, that’s not the case. Those rabbis were tricky fellows. In short, what the rabbis are getting at is that there are multiple paths to Torah. Or for those who believe that there is a singular path of Torah living, the rabbis are noting that each person who travels it is unique. No two people walk down the same physical road at the same pace, on the same path, or with the same stride. It would be foolish to think the same of the path of Torah. Thus, the time you spend feeding yourself and taking care of your personal needs is part of paving the road of Torah. Without food, it would be a pretty bumpy ride.

To be sure, just before the above quoted line, it is written “Where there is no Torah, there will be no good conduct; where there is no good conduct, there will be no Torah.” The Hebrew for “good conduct” is derech… literally “path,” or “way.”

Now you are likely asking yourself why Jesse has suddenly delved into a drash on Pirkei Avot and Rashi. Especially after a blogging absence that Mark Swick would label “a shanda!” The answer, folks, is quite simple, and can be summed up in one word. A word which, in fact, is perhaps the single word which can be used to describe our current socio-cultural-political zeitgeist.

Facebook

That’s right. Facebook. Rashi, Pirkei Avot, and Facebook are now having a party together. And I’m sure that somewhere in the Facebook universe there’s an invite that hasn’t been sent to me.

This evening, through the marvellous wonder of the mini-feed, I happened to notice that a person (who shall remain anonymous) had listed their religion as “Torah Jew.” Having long ago withdrawn the limits of what one could list their religion as, we’ve seen many things filled into that magical space on people’s profiles. From the oft pervasive secularism of the theatre crowd to my own listing as “Frum Reform,” I do believe that the customizable space is a great benefit. I’d be the last person to suggest that you can pigeon-hole something as expansive as religious beliefs into a small box on Facebook.

But this notion of Torah Jew – a phrase I’ve heard repeated many times before – suddenly troubles me. If there are Torah Jews, it naturally implies that there are Jews who don’t get to have the distinction of Torah be a part of their Jewish identity. Are some Jews more observant of the Torah’s laws? Most certainly yes. Are some Jews more involved in daily Torah study? Of course. But does answering yes to these questions make such people any less entitled to the Torah? Has the Torah withdrawn itself from them? Is the Torah entirely absent from their lives? Can it be said that there is any Jew that is devoid of Torah? I challenge you to answer yes to these questions. No human has the right to deny Torah from another. By titling oneself a Torah Jew, it intrinsically – and arrogantly so – serves to snub those who aren’t classified as such. It is yet another elitist tool of certain members of the Ortho-aristocracy. And worse, it is a silent and subversive tool.

The Torah teaches that Moses was not allowed into Eretz Yisrael because – similar to much of (but by no means all of) the current generation of Orthodox Jews – he did not speak gently to the people and tried to impose his authority via arrogance.

To quote an anonymous commentator of some ha’aretz article from while back:

This is the great failure of this generation of Orthodox Jews: instead of leading the wider Jewish people to Torah, they have decided to isolate themselves in arrogance and in judgement…

I challenge the Orthodox Jews to attract Jewish children to the Torah with the same or greater strength that they are attracted to Harry Potter. This should be their mission. Not accusing the non-Frum Jews of their failure.

Worth repeating

Not long after getting out of the army, a friend and I drove down to Eilat to relax for a couple of days. We were sitting in our hotel room after an amazing day of hiking and snorkeling, and there was the news. A suicide bombing. Twenty people were murdered, dozens more injured. It was the “Childrens’ Attack.” I stared helplessly at the TV screen, I prayed for the injured, and I prayed to see an image of the new prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, distraught, upset, denouncing the violence. As the night rolled on, more people died, the army made plans, but Abu Mazen never appeared. My friend and I were shooken up, we couldn’t stay and swim any longer. We packed our bags and headed home.

The next morning, on the drive back, we stopped by an army base where my old unit was stationed. There was a good friend of mine, now an officer. Roi was doing some work on a tank, and he was alone. I climbed up with him, and we sat down to talk. There, on that hulk of steel we cried. We were sorry for ourselves, we were sorry for our country, we were sorry for the victims, we were sorry for the Palestinians, and we were sorry for the world. Niether of us had ever wanted to fight, but we did. We did it because we needed to, because there was a war, because we had a responsibility to keep our friends and our families safe. But, every day, we prayed for peace. We prayed for an end. Every day that we fought in the territories, every day that we caused Palestinian suffering, we understood just how much we shared with them, and how hurtful it was for everyone for this all to go on. The past few weeks had been quiet. Roi’s company was able to leave the front. We thought it was ending, that perhaps things would change, but the night before had shattered everything once again. So, we sat, stared at the sun, and we cried. We were tired.

That was nearly five years ago. Since then, wow, things have changed, right? Arafat died, the Red Sox won the World Series, the disengagement hapenned, I went to school, Arik had a stroke, Facebook, the Lebanon war – and we’re still fighting the Palestinians, and terrorism keeps on going. You know what? I am tired.

I am tired of fighting, I am tired of death. Yes, I will go on. I will continue to support Israel, I will continue to fight for peace. I will continue to draw attention to the genuine suffering of the Palestinian people, and I will continue to serve in the reserves, and God forbid – in another war. But, I am tired of all of this i am tired of trying to fight my way through this horrible moral thicket, and I am tired that for every thought of doubt I have, someone is questioning my character. Blaming me for the holocaust, blaming me for the death of Palestinians, blaming me for the death of Jewish citizens, and blaming me for ignoring Torah. All of this is complicated, it is exhausting. My thoughts have grown so jumbled and confused, that the beginnings and ends of conversations and arguments are hidden beneath so many layers of rhetoric.

I am lost, I am confused, and I am tired.
by Josh Frankel

Worth Repeating: To the Westerner who “understands” the terrorist

To the Westerner who “understands” the terrorist:
By Bradley Burston

Spare us the explanations.

Spare us the learned, sociology-drenched justifications.

Spare us the reasons why you “get” Palestinians when they gun Jews down in cold blood.

Spare us the chapter and verse on how the plight of the Palestinians is at the root of Islamic terrorism the world over, and if the Palestinians were to receive full justice, Islamic terrorism would pass from the world.

Spare us.

You may well believe, with the blind faith of the hopeful and the fear-stricken, that when these people are through with the Jews, they won’t come for you.

Think again.

Spare us the post-modernism and the radical chic and the guff.

Open your eyes.

When a gunman walks into a Jewish religious seminary at the main entrance to that part of Jerusalem which has been Jewish since 1948, and which was stolen from no one, pay attention.

When he opens fire on religious students hunched over books in a library, firing and firing until blood soaks holy book bindings and open pages of Talmud and the whole of the floor, pay close attention to the reactions of the self-styled people of faith who run Hamas.

Spare us the conclusion that the only reason Hamas kills Jews, and that its underlying motive for encouraging others to do the same, is to force Israel to agree to a cease-fire.

Spare us the “Israel’s policies are responsible for the bloodshed” and “the seminary is, after all, an ideological bastion and symbol of the religious right” and all the other scholarly, arrogant, condescending and amoral ways of saying “they had it coming to them.”

Spare us the understanding for the motivations of the mass murderer who kills with God on his lips. Spare us the understanding of the words of the Hamas official who says that after all the Israeli killings of Palestinians, the Jerusalem killings are “our only joy.”

Spare us the sight of the thanksgiving prayers for the great victory, prayers that began in Gaza City mosques just after the slaughter of the Jews. Spare us the sight of the sweets being handed out by little children to motorists in passing cars in the Strip, sweets to celebrate the young Jews dead on the floor, the young Jews dead at their desks, the Jews killed for the crime of being Jews in that place of study and worship.

Spare us the righteousness of those who condemned Baruch Goldstein for entering a holy place with an assault rifle and murdering Palestinians, but who can understand why a Palestinian might do the very same thing,

Open your eyes.

Last week, when Israeli forces drove into Gaza, and some 120 Palestinians were killed, many of them were gunmen, but with children making up another sixth of the total, one grieving father spoke with quiet eloquence, saying “Other places in the world, when this happens, there is a great outcry. When this happens here, the world is silent. No one cares.”

He’s right. The world has grown content to let Palestinians die. The reason is not simple callousness. And it is not, as Hamas proclaims to its followers in Gaza, that the Jews control the world media and world finance, and thus Western government as well.

The reason is terrorism.

The world has grown weary of the Islamist’s creed, that only the armed struggle can resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that the only proper resolution is the end of Israel.

Even the Israeli left, which for decades championed the Palestinian with courage and determination, has, in large part, had it with the Palestinians. The reason is terrorism. The reason is murder. The reason is that the rulers of Gaza are people who see an intrinsic value in the killing of Jews for the sake of increasing the number of dead Jews in the world.

The rulers of Gaza cannot bring themselves to accept the concept of sharing the Holy Land with the Jews.

The best that the rulers of Gaza can do, is to bring an end to hope among their own people and ours as well.

They believe that the Jewish state is temporary, and that they Jews will soon abandon it to Islamic rule.

After all this time, you’d think they’d know the Jews a little better.

The Basis of all Theatre

Is Food.

The most important thing for theatre is… food.
Food celebrates life.
Life revolves around food.
And thus, theatre is created out of good food.

This is the philosophy of a new director who I have the pleasure of working with on Hamlet.
I’m sure there will be plenty of more insight coming from him, so stay tuned.

Obama for PM

We, the people of Israel, no less than the people of Palestine, are hostages of our history and of our present leadership. Our extremists – perhaps the only inspirational speakers we have – bludgeon us into feeling that we must resurrect a glorious past which is not only impossible to recreate, but which blocks us from moving on into a livable future.

We could use a good man like Barack Obama. We need a man who has an awareness of his own limitations, and a sense of the boundless promise of the nation and its people. We need to be uplifted. We need to heal. We need to be able to triumph over our own habits and preconceptions, our grief and our grievances, our prejudices and our blood grudges.

We need someone who can see the horizon we have long ago stopped seeking. We need to resurrect the most battered of our values, the belief in the power of reconciliation and cooperation, the faith in the sheer existence of possibility.
~ Bradley Burston, Ha’aretz

Commentary coming soon

Money and Gunpowder

There are two people in a debate about what are the most pressing factors concerning a stable society. One of the pair, a military industrialist, is driven by money and might. He believes security, fiscal responsibility, and military might to be the most important pillars upon which a country functions healthily.

The other debater, a Christian man, is driven by his religious values. He believes that getting a liberal arts education, teaching ethics and morals, and supporting the poor are the most important pillars upon which a country functions healthily.

The two men spar words, arguing over what religion exactly entails, how it should influence leaders, how it should influence romantic relationships, and what to do with your religion when you’re in a position of power.

These two people are not Stephen Harper and Jack Layton. Nor are they Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama. They are Andrew Undershaft and Adolphus Cusins.

Who are Andew Undershaft and Adolphus Cusins?

They are characters in George Bernard Shaw’s play Major Barbara. It’s one of the plays I’m working on right now. And it was written in 1905. For those of you who can’t do math, that’s one hundred and three years ago.

It appears that either Shaw was a great prophet – a possibility which I’m not entirely willing to rule out – or there are certain historical/philosophical constants which govern the cosmos. And one of those constants is the divisiveness in opinion as to who is responsible for caring for the constituents of a country. Shaw’s characters might as well have been ripped from this morning’s newspaper headlines. And I’m willing to bet that they will ring as true and imminent a year from now, and then some.

I’m not going to preach as to which of the two I believe is in the right. Or… in the “left” as I would have it. I’m going to share one of the characters’ dialogues, just to shed a little light on the state of the world today. Anybody who thinks we’re at the lowest of lows, living in a time when our governments are riddled with corruption, our leaders incapable of leading, and trillions of dollars being spent on death and destruction should take a look at Shaw.

Things haven’t changed that much:

“There are two things necessary to Salvation… Money and gunpowder. That is the general opinion of our governing classes. The novelty is in hearing any man confess it.”

“Is there any place in your religion for honour, justice, truth, love, mercy, and so forth?”

“Yes: they are the graces and luxuries of a rich, strong, and safe life.”

“Suppose one is forced to choose between them and money or gunpowder?

“Choose money and gunpowder; for without enough of both you cannot afford the others.”

“That is your religion?”

“Yes.”

[Updated] Just a friendly neighbourhood reminder

LOST is back, and in as objective of an opinion as I can possibly get myself to form, it is better than ever.

Really, it was quite stellar this evening. Just a stunning work of art.

No matter how confused, frustrated, or disenchanted (or continually suffering from a mild form of obsession) you might be with this television show, you’ve got to admire the incredible uniqueness of its construction, and the delicate and deft way in which it is artistically produced.

Props to everyone involved.

[UDPDATE] Thanks to (of all places) USA Today, for this enlightening commentary:

Let Lost remind you of how spectacular scripted network programming can be. This is the kind of show broadcast TV depends on to maintain primacy in ratings and ad rates, not cultural irrelevancies like NBC’s already-fading American Gladiators and sad Celebrity Apprentice. We need shows like Lost, and we only get them when great writers combine with big-network budgets and exposure.

Some good Shabbas learning…

“find a way to do what you love to do…. because then, if you find a way to do what you love to do, then it doesn’t really matter if you get paid to do it. then you can have your whole life wrapped around it and work in a coffee shop, you know? and then, if you are lucky, maybe you can make a living at it. and then, if you are lucky, and you work hard, maybe you can make a lot of money doing it.

but if that’s your goal (to become rich), then you really shouldn’t do it as a life. if your goal is money and fame, there are a lot easier ways to do it. go on fear factor, you know? if you want money, if you want music, all you have to do is play.”

Orange isn’t only for Gaza…

When I was ten years old, I had an interesting visit to the doctor. The reason for my trip was not entirely uncommon, but extremely intriguing, and – for a ten year old – possibly embarrassing. You see, I have always had an affinity for carrots, and apparently at this point in my life I was eating more than my body could process properly.

So my skin turned orange.

Yup! Orange. Don’t believe me? Check this guy out. Not a dangerous condition, just an overload of beta-carotene. My friends at school didn’t believe me and thought that I was playing an elaborate trick on them involving paint and possibly markers. But there I was, walking around for a week with orange hands.

Fast forward 14 years. I’m watching the news this morning. And I have just learned that my childhood period of orangeness was not my fault for eating too many carrots. No, the fault lies squarely on another group of people.

The Dutch.

Yup! The Dutch. Apparently carrots are naturally purple, but were harvested and changed to look Orange by the Dutch so they would match the flag of the Dutch Independence movement in the 1700s. Thanks a lot Netherlands! Wish I had known this back in Grade 4.