Twice this week, people have told me that Jews and Arabs both came from Chaldea and therefore share a bloodline.
I say big deal. What matters is values not blood nor pagan origins, but the consequence of what was produced. The Bible takes pagan rites and stories and gives them a profound moral spin.
By contrast, the Seventh-Day Adventist church is an exercise in irrelevance. It is obsessed with sexual sin and theological beliefs and health rituals. If all SDAs disappeared from the world tomorrow, it would not be more affected than if all Sri Lankans or all Vietnamese disappeared tomorrow.
Nice people, many of them, but not influential as a culture.
By contrast, throughout history, and in the world today, the Jews are uniquely influential.
At a party last night, a beautiful woman with big fake breasts asked me what Judaism has to say about what happens when we die.
I told her that while Judaism has always affirmed a belief in the Afterlife, it’s primary focus is on this life. Jews focus on this life. That’s why they get so passionate about what happens in the here and now. That’s part of the reason why Jews are so successful. They’re not waiting around for the much much better world to come. They are not concerned with other people’s theological beliefs. Unlike conservative Christians, they are not obsessed with sexual purity above all other moral questions.
R. Eli Shulman (YU rosh yeshiva): Whats Wrong With Giving Women Semicha: link (audio)
In Dispute Over Using ‘Rabba,’ Supporters Find Reason for Optimism: link
JLan posts: R’ Pruzansky in his “Rise of Orthopraxy” article sets up a straw-man in order to force a false dichotomy. He creates an “Orthopraxy” which is insincere, acting for societal reasons rather than out of belief, applying to the left and right equally, as contrasted with “Orthodoxy” which involves sincerity of belief and commitment to the divine.
The problem is that his dichotomy is inaccurate because it presumes an insincerity on the part of the Orthoprax individual, who either doesn’t think about God or doesn’t believe in God. But there’s plenty of room to suggest that certain traditionally Orthodox ideas are incorrect while maintaining a divine (if not Sinaitic and/or singular) origin for the Torah and the Mitzvot and encouraging sincere worship and practice. Certainly R’ Pruzansky’s article would seem to write out Prof. Marc Shapiro, not to mention someone like James Kugel.
If we can posit the possibility that R’ Hirsch’s approach and R’ Hildesheimer’s approach both influenced the development of Modern Orthodoxy, it would seem to me that R’ Pruzansky tries to eliminate the possibility of the latter’s approach, emphasizing spirituality over reason and forbidding broad-based questioning rather than permitting inquiry and discussion. I’m not sure where that leaves us, but Torah without reason makes us unreasonable.
Guest posts: The real horror of Rabbi Pruzansky’s article is that while he ends with an appeal to cultivating passion, commitment, belief, etc. the piece overall seems to be raising the specter that there exist some kind of vast network of secret heretics lurking among us. It’s nice that he stops short of recommending an Inquisition. Others have already pointed out the utter straw man he raises, wherein he connects unscrupulous businessmen, with Orthodox feminists. What the hell? And all these are the same as people who swim on shabbos, who are the same as people who have more of an Ibn Ezra like approach to parshanut, or who honestly feel more influenced by Eliezer Berkowitz on halacha than the Chazon Ish? And what’s with his interpetation of the Yerushalmi directly opposite of its meaning? Who is playing exegetical games to arrive at whatever meaning is convenient. In any event, the irony of a Chait guy invoking the Zohar? Priceless.
The back and forth of the rabbinic organizations in their language and their delicate politicking is making me very tired. The RCA in its first public statement implicitly supported the Maharat title in order to make Rabbi Weiss and his supporters happy. In their second set of statements they backtrack a bit to make the Agudah and their constituents who learn towards Agudah happy. I wish there could be a Modern Orthodox rabbinic organization that clearly stood for something and was not afraid to say it.
Monica’s “Martinis and Melodrama” cocktail party is called for 7:30 p.m.
I walk up to her door and knock at 7:30 p.m.
I’m the first guest.
Her dog Eliot Epstein barks furiously. Last time I was here, he bit me.
Monica says the right things about putting him in her car for the party but of course she does nothing of the sort and we’re treated to his annoying yaps for the rest of the evening.
I head straight for her dining table and start heaping my plate with tabuli and pasta and humus. I haven’t eaten this well since LimmudLA.
Soon Monica’s two graphic designers show up and the three girls talk about martinis for 30 minutes.
I’m going out of my mind. Boring! I hate alcohol. I hate trivial conversation. I want something meaty to sink my fangs into.
Thank God, four grad students show up (Monica knows two of them from a retreat for nerds at Cornell) and I have the privilege of engaging the short tubby one in passionate conversation about his research — race and food in the South.
“What exactly?” I ask.
Nineteenth Century Southern cookbooks. He explains to me how these books ignored the contributions of the blacks who prepared the food. How this is symptomatic of America which so often fails to give sufficient due to the contributions of blacks, women, and other minorities.
It was such a fascinating discussion. I wish I could’ve pursued it more. But I was stuck the rest of the night talking to a tall blonde shiksa who’d gone to high school with Monica. They were both cheerleaders.
While Monica no longer has her cheerleading outfit, this girl does.
I suppose certain men would find that exciting. Oh, how they’d get a charge out of dating a former cheerleader, but as any regular reader of mine knows, I am all about HaShem and his mitzvos.
So yes, the shiksa was beguiling and beautiful and charming, but the whole time I was stuck talking to her, I wished I was instead in shul conversing with a frizzy-haired, big-nosed, buck-toothed menopausal Jewess.
I suppose in a certain light, going to dinner with this beguiling shiksa would be fun. Sure, the conversation would flow effortlessly. Sure, she’s easy on the eyes. Sure, she’s smart, educated and accomplished. But what does she know of Torah?
I suppose a certain type of man might think, hmm, I’d love to go for a walk on the beach with this girl. I’d love to hold her hand as we skipped in and out of the waves. I’d love to sit on an isolated outcrop with her and make-out. I guess for certain men, the joining of lips with this shiksa goddess would be pleasant, the running of your hands through her long blonde hair would have an appeal, the opening up of her Disneyland resort would be an E-ticket ride worth purchasing, but shoot, from where I sit, I don’t think a few decades of great sex, stimulating conversation, and beautiful children really compares to the reward that come from observing the Torah and mating with your own kind (even when they’re old, wrinkly and overweight).
So the whole time I was smelling this girls’ perfume, getting lost in her blue eyes, enjoying her reparte, listening to David sell her on Judaism, I was yearning for that earlier conversation on racism in 19th Century Southern cookbooks.
I’m an intellectual. I’m a serious intellectual. I’m outraged about the patriarchy and the hegemony of white males and the denial of basic civil rights to gay Americans. I doubt that this woman who was so enchanting has ever picked up a book by Michel Foucault or Emmanuel Levinas.
The shiksa wonders what is wrong with me. There’s something she’s missing.
“Is he a serial killer?” she asks Monica. “He’s good at pulling people in but there’s probably a dead girl in his freezer.”
“He’s actually not good at pulling people in,” says Monica. “He’s better at repelling him. But yeah, he is like a serial killer. The first time we went out, he took me to Lag B’Omer at Chabad, and then to Porn Star Karaoke.”
Judy, a Jew, launches into a discussion about how Jews are smarter and better than non-Jews. “Whatever religion you belong to, we have seniority,” she says. “We’re like old money.”
Sex:
Male
Current City:
New York, NY
Birthday:
February 29, 1944
Hometown:
Upper West Side, New York, NY
Relationship Status:
Single
Interested In:
Women
Looking For:
Dating
Political Views:
I despise most politicians
Religious Views:
Lutherian Torah Judaism
College:
* CUNY City
* This and that
High School:
* Elisabeth Irwin High School ‘62
*
Employer:
None
Position:
unemployed file clerk.
Location:
New York, NY
Description:
I was the man with the cart, moving files to and fro.
Activities:
I am fairly inert these days, a consequence of a lifetime of too many plates of kishka and cookies. I know I weigh more than I should but hope to be back below 350 pounds by year’s end.
Interests:
Zabars, social justice, and mites.
Favorite Music:
Music plays no role in my life.
Favorite TV Shows:
Dragnet, the Milton Berle Show, Felix the Cat
Favorite Movies:
The Searchers, The Jazz Singer, Gone with the Wind
Favorite Books:
Who has time to read?
Favorite Quotations:
Not now.
About Me:
I’m poor, obese, old, and looking for a hot young shiksa to be my lover and pay my rent and bear my children and cook for me. I’m not looking for anyone shallow.
I just found this online: “Dr. Marc Gafni holds his doctorate from Oxford University. He is a rabbi and an iconoclastic teacher of Kabbalah and World Spirituality. He is the director with Ken Wilber, Sally Kempton and Diane Hamilton of the Integral Life Spiritual Center and core founder and faculty member of iEvolve Global Practice Community. He has written seven books, including the national bestseller Soul Prints, and The Mystery of Love, a exploration of the relationship between the sexual, the erotic, and the sacred. Gafni’s teaching is marked by a deep transmission of open heart, love and leading edge provocative wisdom. Gafni’s path of personal evolution, in both the agony and the ecstasy of what he calls “sacred autobiography,” woven together with profound reverence and reading of sacred texts have formed the context for his personal realization. It is from this place of broken-hearted humility, radical joy and sacred audacity that he teaches. Gafni is considered by many to be a visionary voice in the founding of new World Spirituality and one of the great mind/heart teachers of the generation. His life partner is author and teacher Mariana Caplan. Marc has three children.”
Why would clergy, of all people, want to go public with their sexual preferences?
I am a humble blogger. I have no responsibilities. But you don’t see me tearing up the blogosphere talking about my sexual orientation. You don’t read long horny blog posts from me discussing what it was like to be a hound dog in Seventh-Adventism, Judaism and the academy.
No, sirree, I believe these matters should be private.
Why would one want to talk to the world about one’s sexual tastes?
This seems particularly inappropriate for clergy. For bloggers and novelists and actors and musicians, fine. But people who are supposed to be moral leaders?
Why would morally serious people want to identify themselves to the world by their taste in sex? So you’re a bloke who likes to bugger other blokes, why preach that from the pulpit?
Everyone I know has particular sexual preferences. Some like to be spanked. Some like it in the context of adultery. Some can’t get excited unless there’s pain. But these people don’t identify themselves to the world by what they like in the bedroom.
So why do so many homosexuals lead with “I’m gay!”
I have some particular sexual identities too but I don’t go introducing myself by them. I don’t go up to women in shul and say, “Hi, I really dig chicks in high-powered office wear.” Instead, I talk about the parsha.
I think we need a public discussion about what it is like to be gay and in the pulpit as much as we need a public discussion about what it is like to love porn and yet be in the pulpit, or to love spanking and yet be in the pulpit.
By participating in this forum, these gay clergy are asking to be identified primarily by the way they use their genitals. If you want people to respect your private sexual choices, then keep them private.
I’m sorry but I’m all cried out over gays who want to go public with their sexual orientation and then make a dramatic play for your compassion.
I have a very definite sexual orientation too, much of it out of the norm, and yet you don’t see me writing op/eds about it.
I just suffer in silence. I wait for marriage and for the blessing of God, Torah and state.
The Jewish Journal writes: “When Denise Eger was in rabbinic school in the mid-1980s, she couldn’t talk about being a lesbian because that might have gotten her thrown out of the seminary.”
Well, big deal. Everybody I know has a sexual orientation, which, if announced in public, would likely result in them getting excluded from some places.
The Jewish Journal: “During his job search, Shapiro applied to 15 congregations that initially expressed interest in him. He told only eight of those synagogues he was gay. He got four offers — all from synagogues he hadn’t told.”
How shocking. Cry me a river, Zachary Shapiro. I am sure that every heterosexual applicant who went public with his sex life would get zero job offers.
These stories are the equivalent of your rubbing your erection on a first date and then getting shocked that she won’t suck on it inside shul.
I don’t cry “heterophobia” because I can’t do this. I just suffer in silence, believing that in the world to come, things will be much much better.
“He was hired as associate rabbi at University Synagogue in Brentwood and, with his senior rabbi’s guidance, found the right time to tell the board he was gay. University Synagogue and now Temple Akiba have been welcoming and supportive, Shapiro said.”
Well, when exactly is the right time to tell your synagogue board about the type of people you prefer to have sex with? Do they really need to know which people you can and cannot f—?
“When Sacks was in school, he had to be extremely cautious about whom he let into his life.”
Everybody has secrets. Almost everybody has sexual secrets. Everybody with a brain has to be cautious about who they let into their lives.
“There was discussion about whether or not to ordain me up until the ceremony,” Sacks said. “With my family out there, people were still taking me aside to say they weren’t sure if they were going to ordain me because they had a feeling I might be gay.”
Oh, nonsense. They weren’t sure they were going to ordain you because you had told enough people that you did things that were explicitly against the Torah you were supposed to uphold as a rabbi. It wasn’t because anyone had a feeling you might be gay.
If you don’t want to live up to the Torah, fine, just don’t be a rabbi. Go have sex with as many men as you want, just stay off the bima and don’t pontificate publicly on Judaic matters. I don’t live up to the Torah in every aspect of my life, but you don’t see me getting up on my blog and preaching about Torah.
“I didn’t feel I should define myself based on other people’s homophobia,” he said.
Oh, sweet Jesus. You’re speaking publicly in a forum of rabbis who identity themselves in large part by their minority sexual orientation. You’re waving the gay flag.
Here’s the headline for the Jewish Journal story: “Gay, Lesbian Rabbis Share Hurdles, Triumphs”
Why is there no forum for rabbis who like it in the ass? Plenty of heterosexual rabbis, male and female, like ass play and penetration, but if they listed that on their job application, I suspect they would receive few job offers from synagogues.
I just wish they had a place where they could publicly share their hurdles and triumphs. Perhaps Lukeford.net could be such a place? Why should gays have all the fun?
Most of the time, I’m the happy-go-lucky moral leader you all love and enjoy.
A moral leader for the whole family!
I strike dramatic poses. I say dramatic things. I get into dramatic conflicts. I write out my dramatic feelings.
Oh, it is all such fun. So grand! So childish.
And then the loss comes rolling in. I’ll be silly on my blog, I’ll be clowning on my live cam, and then I realize that I am 43, never married, no children, tenuated ties to others, little community. And that feeling of loss keeps expanding until it weighs down my heart and I just feel hollow inside.
From page 178: The pattern of startle (which has been studied by high-speed photography) is remarkably regular. It begins with an eye-blink; the head is then thrust forward; the shoulders are raised and the arms stiffened; abdominal muscles shorten; breathing stops and the knees are flexed.
The startle pattern is a model of other slower response patterns: fear, anxiety, fatigue and pain all show postural changes from the norm which are similar to those that are seen in startle. In all of them there is a shortening of neck muscles which displaces the head, and which is usually followed by some kind of flexion response, so that the body is drawn into a slightly smaller space. As in startle these postural responses cannot take place without the prior displacement of the head and the shortening of neck muscles.
So what happens to a blended family when the family doesn’t blend?
It’s hard to imagine people raised in different atmosphere getting married. I think it’s more of a miracle that people stay married than not. Given that people grow up in different countries, different cultures, different religions, different viewpoints, different personalities, and usually in the years 20-30, they choose to marry and vow to commit to one another for the rest of their lives, it’s fascinating.
Those that stay married to the end are quite remarkable given that life brings so many surprises. People grow and change and want different things. They demand different things at different ages. Life throws some hardballs. Yet there are people who survive as a unit after 50 or 60 years. That’s a miracle given our divorce rate of about 60%.
How do blended families work given the odds? Second and third marriages are much more likely to fail. Unless there are children between them, there are a lot of reasons for spouses to walk away when things aren’t working out, when we are disillusioned with our partners, when we are seeking more out of life.
When people come together and have children separately, how do they make a Brady Bunch? The idea of blended families was always a ridiculous notion because I never have seen parents love the others’ child as much as their own. More often than not, I see people in the office where the children are a reason for divorce, or the parent feels second to the others’ children, rather than first.
We are taught family therapy and family dynamics, but the reality is often different from the books. There is often so much pain involved, so many personalities and egos. I wonder what people do to make it work?
In therapy, I teach about communication tools and listening and honesty. But there is also what people take into a marriage and it often includes anger and betrayal and pain, and it gets dragged into the next marriage and the next children.
When people come into my office, I look at their body language. I see where they choose to sit. It’s so revealing to watch how they communicate non-verbally. I’m a big believer in non-verbal communication as a clue to what is going on at an unconscious level that is unable to be discussed, to be brought to the surface, to be understood.
Without a spiritual foundation and a sense of community, without counseling and friends who’ve gone through the same, it’s a wonder to me that anyone can survive round two or three in marriage.
Happiness is defined as “doing well something that interests you.” It can be seen at its clearest in a healthy child at play whose pleasure resides in the satisfaction of making something work. This satisfaction, Alexander says, can be established even more strongly when the mechanism that is made to work is the child’s own. Here he describes vividly the change in facial expression and the look of pleasure that a child shows when he suddenly discovers in a lesson that he can do easily and in a coordinated manner something he has always done awkwardly before, realizing, for example, that he can in this way improve his skill in games. “It’s a happiness,” Alexander said, “which increases with the psycho-physical improvement.” In marked contrast is the unhappiness shown by most adults as they approach middle age and realize that they are not improving in themselves but deteriorating. Success is essential to happiness in everyone. When happiness cannot be obtained in the ordinary way, in the satisfaction of using oneself optimally in the routine of everyday life, a person will begin pursuing specific pleasures. People unfortunately have been taught to make the routine activities of daily life automatic and as far as possible unconscious. This leads to a condition of stagnation and the harmful demand for specific excitements and stimulations, none of which can possibly produce real happiness. Such happiness can only be obtained by restoring to a person his own sensory standard so that he can gradually re-establish a pattern of growth and self-satisfaction that will carry him beyond middle age and into old age. Happiness, then, consists in the sensory satisfaction that comes with an increase of self-knowledge and control. This satisfaction extends to all aspects of living (including, of course, the sexual).
From page 53:
“The upper classes,” A.R. Alexander once said, “are never any help to you. When one of them discovers the Technique, he never tells anybody else about it. He likes to keep it for himself.” It was different with literary people. They liked to share the knowledge of something they had discovered…