wildstar@nmtvax.UUCP (10/10/85)
References:
I was just reading the mail in the news service, and I came across this
particular net. I take this to be the computer Jewish Community.
From any who care to answer, I request opinions, flames, etc. about the way
I currently am vis. the religion/culture/etc.
Perhaps I should begin from the beginning....
Suffice it to say that my bloodlines are Jewish on both sides. I was
raised as Conservative from a very young age, as were my siblings. I was
required to attend synagouge, Hebrew school, and to go to the barmitzvah.
However, no dissent on my part was allowed, and I was forced to do these
things no matter if I liked it or not.
Also, in the Hebrew school, we were all showed films from a very
young age concerning exactly the literal ugliness that happened. The
teachers were very militant about traditions, obligations, the Deity,
and it was pounded into our heads again and again not to trust outsiders,
namely Christians, Protestants, Buddists, agnostics, and even Reforms.
We were also strongly advised that all the Arabs wanted to do was destroy
"our race".
Around the same time, I was also watching prime time coverage of
the Vietnam War, getting physically beaten by my father and by "classmates"
in grade school.
In the face of all this, I felt it was not worthwhile being born
Jewish. Even more so, I felt it was not worthwhile being born human either.
And at the same time, I could not feel the presence of a Deity that everyone
was claiming was a vital part of everyone's life.
So exactly the week after I finished the barmitzvah, since there was
no alternative but to stay alive, I decided that I did not deserve to be
a Jew since I was not capable of belief. So from that moment I renounced
my ties to that culture. Also, I felt that what with the cruelty and sheer
evil that humans did to each other, and what with the fact that people I
knew where having thier pleasure and power at my expense, I decided that
I did not want to be a human anymore. So from that moment on I renounced
the human race as well, and became an alien.
At the time, it was the best thing to do, and being alien gave me
a lot better ability to concentrate on important stuff like schoolwork,
and to understand the world from a detached viewpoint, on a higher plane
of ethics than "don't do as I do, do as I say" sort of thing.
I survived for many years in that state, and did well in the areas
I restricted myself to. But in the coming years of college, the very
powers I gained as a non-human were telling me that those powers were a
dead end in the long run. I was becoming depressed since my colleages were
enjoying themselves, dating around, even being religious, wasting time,
and getting very high gpa's where all I did in life was study and do my
duty to my family ( which was fighting, seperating, getting divorced,
slashing wrists ), and keep a moderate gpa.
It took many more years, and many psychologists, to adjust my
personality to a point where a little luxury could be tolerated in my
life. I am at the point now where I have regained about 7/8 of my
humanity back, but there are still the old defenses, weaponry, and
analysis systems that somehow I am not being permitted to release. Perhaps
it is just as well. I can live a little, and even love a little, and
that is all I can really expect.
But I never did become even partly Jewish again. I am afraid that
if I did, I would no longer be able to control my own destiny, and
I would be obligated to look from a very narrow viewpoint of "tradition",
"chosen people", "siege mentality", "holocaust", and all the other things
which have kept the Jews at odds with the rest of the world, and which
have guaranteed that there will never be a peace in the Middle East.
It seems that the Palestinians ( Feleeshteem ) ( Philistines ) ( Canaanites )
and the Jewish lineage even before the religion was adopted, have always
hated, despised, and killed each other for the past one hundred thousand
years. Sort of like the Hatfields and the McCoys.
Besides, I also like lobsters, clams, shrimp, beef Stroganoff, sushi,
sirloin steaks, croissants, and all the other non-kosher things. I tend
to be color blind, race blind, and creed blind. I welcome the diversity
of ideas from all people, I tend to make friends based on my respect for them
as a person.
But sometimes I wonder. It is as if I were a colony starship that left
during WWIII, lost
and adrift 11 years from home ( that is how long it has been since I
cashiered my commission from my bloodline ), crashed on a rocky and
hostile planet, where the crew and passengers lost everything and built
a civilization over many centuries. And one day, an archeological dig
finds the remains of the ship and of lost treaures in the vault. Scrolls,
books, technology so archaic as to be nearly untranslatable. The books
and the technology were salvaged, but the big scroll with silver metal on
the handles and over the cover is yet to this day an unsolved mystery.
Right now the big scroll is located in the planetary government's museum.
(-:)
So, would anyone want to contact and advise a castaway civilization trying
to re-establish contact? I'll read postings on the net as replies.
Sincerely,
Andrew Jonathan Fine. klahr@csd2.UUCP (10/11/85)
Dear Andrew Jonathan Fine...
I was innocently minding my own business, taking my daily stroll by the sea-
shore, when the tides brought me a dark and musty bottle with your message
enscribed within it. With trembling fingers, I swiftly broke the seal of the
bottle, and pulled out the yellowed and crumbling missive. My heart was
pounding as I held up the letter to the fading light of the rapidly departing
sunset. My throat had become dry, a sweat had broken forth across my brow. I
was paralyzed by hope, mentally gyrating in expectation, wordlessly mouthing
what I had not dared myself even think these past twenty years: Are the Ten
Tribes truly still alive? Is it possible that they are coming back?
Sorry for going off the deep end, but your posting, so Kafka-esque in both
substance and style (it especially brought "The Metamorphosis" to mind),
somehow brought out the melodramatic in me. By your own description, you
certainly have gone through many emotionally and intellectually battering
situations and experiences. An unhappy home, suffering in the world, an
authoritarian and rigid religious education mainly consisting of do's and
don'ts, all seem to have helped drive you into the spaceship that you are now
gradually getting out of. You wonder whether you should re-establish
contact with the Judaism you abandoned. Is it worth giving up any of the
tolerance and egalitarianism that are now your ideals?
Perhaps I am stating the obvious, or just bouncing back some of what you might
have had in mind when composing your essay, but here goes:
1. Your decision to abandon ship, or take off, while understandable
emotionally, does not necessarily make any sense from a rational point of
view. Judaism, as the belief and life system par excellance (it is more than
a "religion", a catechism, an emotional high or meditative calm, it is a
society, a peoplehood, and an entire way of life), neither promises nor
guarantees any quick fixes. There are many philosophers to discuss the causes,
nature, and reasons for suffering, but on a very simple level, Judaism tells
how to cope with the life you enter, and maximize its meaningfullness. People
can rise above the problems they are burdened with, and be the richer for the
experience. I know that sounds trite, but it doesn't make it less true.
Which leads me to...
2. You metaphorically say that you realize that Judaism is part of your
fabric, a "family heirloom" you are considering retrieving from the scrap
heap. Don't you think you should have the heirloom fully appraised, not just
cursorily evaluated, before trying to decide whether to accept or reject it?
If Judaism is a system that has literally held millenia of your ancestors
the world over through pogroms, autos de fe', and gas chambers, isn't it
worth figuring out for what they chose to "fight, rather than switch", as the
old Tareyton cigarette commercials said? If you were the victim of a shoddy
Jewish education, you owe it to yourself to improve upon it. Explore, ask
questions, seek explanations from different sources, and try to see what
sounds legitimate and what makes sense. Above all, because Judaism is not
just an intellectual abstraction, try to learn about Judaism experientially!
I have no idea where you are located in good old USA, but you can certainly
look for, and if you ask you'll get recommendations for, a variety of books,
schools, synagogues, and organizations to increase your J.I.Q. (Jewish
Intelligence Quotient). But all those alone will lack the vitality of
spending time with people who believe in living Jewishly, whatever that means,
and seeing what it's like.
3. You say you don't want to give up your sushi, pork, variety of races,
creeds, and colors, etc. Well, taking last things first, no level of
involvement with Judaism I know of mandates your strict isolation from "all
those heathen out there." You don't have to abandon any respect, friendship,
and admiration for all that is good and worthwhile "out there." That sounds
like a cop-out to me. Is it possible that your priorities and values may
change? That's another question entirely (or as a teacher of mine once said,
"that's a horse from another garage"). Back to your pork and sushi: If all
Judaism amounted to was a pork-and-sushi boycott, I'd understand your
objection. But what are you saying? That you don't want to find out any more
about Judaism because there are parts of it you couldn't hack? This too sounds
cop-out-ish. "None is better than some" never made much sense to me. Or do
you mean that you're afraid of finding out more about Judaism because it will
impose some discipline on me, and even if there is sense to the discipline, I
don't want it? That doesn't strike me as a very reasonable argument, either.
As that famous non-Jew Socrates once said, "An unexamined life is not worth
living." No, that caricature of Judaism you presented as not allowing you
to think for yourself and be nothing but a robot does not exist, but if the
discipline makes sense to you, why recoil at the thought of it? Do you recoil
at the discipline imposed on highway drivers not to drive in opposing direct-
ions in the same lane?
I read your message as announcing ET's return home. If my secret decoder has
not led me askew, welcome back. Browse as you please, take your time, and if
you've got specific questions, would appreciate specific suggestions or
trees to bark up, or even if you'd like to know where we've stored those old
toys you played with as a kid, just give a yell.
Sincerely...Pinchus Klahr {allegra, ihnp4} cmcl2!csd2!klahr
P.S. A man stayed in his house as a flood engulfed his town. Two men in a
rowboat came to his house and offered to take him to safety. "No thank you",
the man said, "G-d will help me". As the waters rose, the man retreated to
the second story of his house. Now, two men in a motorboat came by and offered
to rescue him. Again, the man declined, saying, "No thank you, G-d will
help me." As the waters rose still higher, the man retreated again to the
rooftop of his house. A helicopter came by, and someone inside it threw down
a rope, urging the man to grab it and be pulled up into the helicopter. Once
more, the man declined and said, "No thank you, G-d will help me." Whereupon
a mighty voice called out to the man, "You idiot! This is G-d speaking. I
sent you a rowboat, a motorboat, and now a helicopter. What more do you want
me to do?". tim@k.cs.cmu.edu.ARPA (Tim Maroney) (10/13/85)
Do you really think highway regulations are comparable to pork taboos?
If so, please explain the connection in more detail.
-=-
Tim Maroney, CMU Center for Art and Technology
Tim.Maroney@k.cs.cmu.edu uucp: {seismo,decwrl,etc.}!k.cs.cmu.edu!tim
CompuServe: 74176,1360 My name is Jones. I'm one of the Jones boys.barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Lee Gold) (10/15/85)
Hello there, O alien/lost sheep Nice to hear from you. Maybe I should follow your approach and start out with where I'm coming from. I was raised as a Reform Jew in Los Angeles, as were my parents. My Jewish education didn't include any Hebrew but lots of history and a fair amount of theology/learning standard prayers. We didn't touch on the Holocaust until the senior year (when we were 14). We'd spent the previous year on Comparative Religion, which included studying the Christian Bible and learning where it went wrong. We did have to attend synagogue and sign in a certain number of times (I think it was 30) during the senior year in order to graduate religious school. Dissent was allowed as much at religious school as elsewhere. I remember once telling our rabbi I didn't like his saying during the course of the service, "And now we rise for the watchword of our faith, the Shema." It seemed all too much like a commercial. He smiled and said wistfully, "But you see, not everybody in the congregation went to religious school, and some of them don't know it's our watchword. I feel I have to tell them." I forget what I as a 13-year-old had to say to that, but I do remember the discussion went on for some time. Our religious school teachers were fairly persuasive but I don't remember any spellbinders. And of course in a Reform temple, there weren't many you'd call militant traditionalists. We were taught that Jews had chosen to accept the obligations and traditions of our religion--and had therefore wound up with a wonderful faith, one that coudl be believed in the modern age of science without having to compartmentalize one's mind into matters of science which were subject to common sense--and matters of faith that weren't. We were taught that non-Jews had their own religions which were good enough for them (at least provided they followed the Noachic laws) but not good enough for us. We were certainly not taught any paranoia about non-Jews in America, though we did learn that they had behaved very cruelly over the years to our ancestors. The Syrian persecution, the Roman persecution, the Inquisition, the Holocaust were all part of the same picture--showing how ignorance, fear, and propaganda could turn human beings into cruel mobs. I spent my last few years of religious school watching coverage of the Korean War, not the Viet Nam War. My parent sometimes spanked me but never beat me. My father was an atheist who called himself Jewish in order not to give any ground to Anti-semites. My mother celebrated Passover and attended services on the High Holidays. I was a rebel nonconformist who wanted to have more Judaism in my life. I married a man who fell in the same category and we've been very happy ever since. Now down to the text of your letter. Judaism does not say you have to feel the presence of God. It doesn't even put all that much emphasis on believing in God. Having your good deeds exceed your faith is preferble to the reverse. It's a truism that Judaism is not an Orthodoxy (right-faith) but an Orthopraxy (right-conduct). Judaism prides itself of having lots of mitzvot (commandments) which sanctify us (as in the standard prayer beginning). It also stresses that the Law3 was given to live by, not die by, and that all but a few of these command- ments MUST be broken to save human life--and sanity. I'm glad you've come back a fair ways to regaining joy in life and trustd in other human beings. You might indeed want to give Judaism a try again. If you really feel that giving up shrimp sushi would be impossible, then by all means give Reform Judaism a try. Strogonoff can be made with fake sour cream which is fine unless you're on a low cholesterol diet. And you're not on that if you're eating lobster and shrimp. There's certainly nothing tref about the various fish sushi with yellowtail, smoked salmon, tuna, etc.--unless you're abiding by the Orthodox interpretation of the commandment about not eating meat with blood to mean you can't eat things raw. (Even then, the smoked slamon would be OK.) Maybe someone will enlighten me as to how croissants are non-kosher. Whether or not you're Jewish, you will never be able to control your own destiny outright. You're only one person in a world with billions, and your destiny is influenced by the economy, international politics, and all sorts of things you can't control. There's a lot more to Judaism than the siege mentality of your upbringing. You might want to give the other wings of the religion a look. I imagine you'll eventually find a group that makes you feel comfortable; Judaism has room for lots of variety. Please feel free to reply to me, either on the net or personally. With a letter this long, I'd have sent it as a personal reply but couldn't figure out enough of your address to do so. Good luck. Sincerely, Lee Gold ...ucbvax!ucla-cs!lcc!barry (or use the sdcrdcf address if there's enough of it to be readable)
teitz@aecom.UUCP (Eliyahu Teitz) (10/22/85)
> Now down to the text of your letter. > > Judaism does not say you have to feel the presence of God. It doesn't even > put all that much emphasis on believing in God. Having your good deeds > exceed your faith is preferble to the reverse. It's a truism that Judaism > is not an Orthodoxy (right-faith) but an Orthopraxy (right-conduct). > Just one minute here. The Torah in many places stresses the importance of belief in G-D. Which is the first of the Ten Commandments. Why must we know G-D who took us out of Egypt. Just to say hello? No, one must believe in G-D. Also, Moshe ( Moses ) in Deuteronomy says ( Ch. 8 or 9 I think ) What does G-D want from you? Just to love G-D and go in His ways and do His commandments. For a religion that doesn't stress a belief in G-D, it's doing alot of worthless talking. Unless, of course, there is more to believing in G-D than they taught in religious school. I think so. One other thing. What good are actions if there is no belief in who commanded the actions. If you don't believe in G-D then why bother with Judaism, unless you think it is a moral religion. But then just do good deeds, that has nothing to do with Judaism. Judaism is based on the Torah Anything that goes against the Torah cannot be defined as Judaism. If you don't believe in the Torah then what is you basis for defining Judaism. So belief must go hand in hand with deeds. > Judaism prides itself of having lots of mitzvot (commandments) which sanctify > us (as in the standard prayer beginning). It also stresses that the Law3 > was given to live by, not die by, and that all but a few of these command- > ments MUST be broken to save human life--and sanity. > I like this little editorial comment. By whose definition of sanity do you abide. Does keeping kosher lead one to insanity. The Torah didn't think so. Pick any other mitzvah. None would have been given if they would have led to insanity. The keeping of a mitzva can endanger a life ( eg. not desecrating the Sabbath in a situation where someone has to be rushed to the hospital ). Maybe if someone were going insane and had to be rushed to a hospital for treatment we could desecrate the Sabbath ( I'm sure it has been discussed somewhere already ). However, if you feel that the mitzvot are too much of a burden and that that would lead to insanity, I don't think the comparison to saving a life is valid. Eliyahu Teitz.
barryg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Lee Gold) (10/26/85)
Eliyahu, you apparently didn't read me closely enough. Let me try to make myself clearer.ext of your letter. I said: Judaism does not say you have to feel the presence of God. This does NOT mean the same thing as saying you don't have to believe in God. I can (and do) believe in God without feeling any mystical contact with Him. I also said: It [Judaism] doesn't even put all that much emphasis on believing in God. Having your good deeds exceed your faith is preferble to the reverse. If you like, I'll quote the Pirke Avot on this. Or perhaps you now remember the passage. I NEVER said anything about not believing in Torah. Or that keeping kosher was insane. (In logic, this sort of tactic is called attacking a straw man.) I was discussing the concept of starting to keep SOME of the mitzvot with someone who a) apparently doesn't keep most of them now, and b) has spent many years undergoing psychoanalysis in order to get to the point of being open to human emotions. I also suggested that such a person might find Reform Judaism less demanding than Orthodox Judaism, as a method of putting him back in touch with his traditional faith. May I suggest that if you want to continue this discussion, you start out by asking me what I think, rather than assuming you KNOW what I think and telling me how wrong I am. Given the number of points you misunderstood, either my writing isn't clear enough for you to understand it on the first try--or some other barrier is getting in your way. --Lee Gold