* On Feb. 18, 2013, Dennis Prager said: “In freshmen English, the teacher was one of these progressive teachers, but she was very pretty, so I went to class every time. She said, ‘Students, I want you to look out the window and write what you see.’ I looked out the window and saw an apartment building, that’s all there was, so I knew what would get me an A, if I wrote that I see the vapidness of modern life, the anonymity and atomization through each window, and I got an A, but it was baloney, all I saw was an apartment building.”
* “Without hysterias, the left is bored.” (Dennis Prager)
* Why do I keep joining groups that don’t want me around? Or, more painfully, why do I make myself unwanted once I become comfortable in a group and act naturally? I think it is largely narcissism on my part aka a lack of empathy for others as I try to take over every group I join (acting out of my grandiose sense of self) and fail miserably 90% of the time.
When I try to direct my life and those around me, I fail again and again. I must turn the director’s role over to God and see what happens.
When I pursue what I want, I step on other people’s toes and they get back at me.
* The conversion to Orthodox Judaism process is far more about separating the strong from the weak than it is about finding God. Don’t expect anyone in the process to take your side or to be sympathetic or caring or concerned, any more than you’d get expect affirmative-action immigration officers to be sympathetic to your white ass wanting to become American (and you have a PhD in nuclear physics etc).
* In my experience and that of all of my friends in CA law (even the most left-wing), if you’re white, you’re not likely to get much help from the affirmative action hires in the Superior Court of CA system, but if you’re the right minority, you’ll likely get preferential treatment from the minority clerks.
* As soon as I meet a girl, I get a sense whether or not I can get with her or if she’s out of my league. Any time I think a girl is out of my league, any time I think I’m a loser by comparison with her, I’m sunk. I still freeze up like I did with Cindy in sixth grade, no matter how much she wants me. At age 46, I’m convinced that only a certain quality of girl will go with me, and if she’s above that quality I deem on my level, I’m frozen. What do I mean by quality? Face, body, personality, social status. If people are always breaking up with you, you’re trying to date out of your league. If you’re always doing the break-up, you’re dating below you.
* Life is easier when you just blend in, a reality I keep rebelling against. “The more you blend in, the easier life is, the more you can simply just “be” and just feel like you are part of the larger whole.”
It’s not easy to create art from within Orthodox Judaism, particularly if you are a convert. Standing out in any way, even if it is a good thing, draws attention to all the ways you are different, all the ways you will never be the same. With the hard light of the spotlight on you, you can no longer simply forget that you are different and enjoy that feeling of community anymore. You are foreign and your experiences are foreign and anything that is produced from that foreignness is suspect, first by those around you and, as you learn to be more critical of yourself, by you.
You begin to scrutinize your speech patterns, your dress, you censor what references you make to anything that might hint at the life you had before. You do it so that, more and more, you can blend in and simply be. Anything that is uniquely yours to give must be subdued because it is likely that if it is unique to you, it comes from someplace outside Yiddishkeit and it, like that part of your life, is treif. Deeper and deeper you bury anything unique or unusual beneath layers and layers of sameness until you even begin to forget what was underneath. Under all those layers, that spark of difference finally dies and you march lockstep with your bretheren, having paid the price to simply be, to simply blend in to the long line and not be singled out.
To create art, let alone share it with the Jewish world, goes against that protective instinct. It would be to lay bare all that you are trying so hard to push down and to subdue and to offer it up to all those who might use it to prove how different you are. It takes a brave person to do such a thing…far braver than me.
* The homes I grew up in were freezing cold in winter because of my dad’s love of fresh air. At age five, I fell in love with doing the dishes because I could immerse my hands and arms in hot water and that would warm my whole body. That was always my favorite household chore.
* I love this song!
