I fear I am wasting my life in a grand delusion, that writing is a refuge for the lonely, that my desires to feel superior interfere with my desires to connect.
I fear I am not the greatest writer of my generation, but certainly I am in the top ten, maybe number five?
David Clark writes: "The crying shame is that the fourth one just gave you a token for the Starbuck’s men’s room from behind the counter."
Don’t you want to come with me?
"It’s not my thing," she said. "I’m into serious learning. It sounds superficial. It’s just the sort of Jewish thing I am not into. Sorry. Do you dream I am going to become Orthodox? I am never going to be Orthodox. It’s ugly and smelly and anti-intellectual."
Do you feel like there’s nothing Jewish you can learn from me?
"I went to a serious yeshiva. We studied all the translations. Even some incredibly obscure ones."
You mean commentaries?
"Yeah."
Her heart is a walled city. She will not share in my enthusiasms. She will not join me at LimmudLA. She won’t make sweet love to me in our hotel room. She won’t meet me in the jacuzzi. She won’t daven with me, just the two of us.
She won’t join me at LimmudLA.
I park far away. Don’t want anyone to see my rust. Can’t carry more shame today.
Is that Ruth drinking a beer?
LimmudLA has changed!
Whoa, not Ruth.
The Ruth-lookalike passes me talking Italian.
My friend has a beautiful new home. I see cakes and cookies and soda and tea. Must not indulge.
Mustn’t grumble.
"Luke Ford? From the website?"
Yes.
I write "Levi" on my name tag.
"I’m the only one who admits to reading him," booms my friend. "All the rabbis read him but they won’t admit it. He’s too dirty. Too controversial. Too self-absorbed.
"I used to hate it when you wrote about yourself but I’ve grown to like it. It’s so honest."
"You’re from Sydney? Why did you ever leave?"
I was eleven years old. I thought about getting my own place but decided to join my parents in the Napa Valley.
I want to be president.
"Why did God give us such a strong sex urge and then punish us for using it?"
Why did God give us such a strong homicidal urge and then punish us for using it?
Why did God give us such a strong drinking urge and then punish us for abusing it?
Why did God give us such a strong urge to eat sugar and then punish us for abusing it?
We must control ourselves. We must not live like animals. Torah shows us a better way.
Batter my heart for you
Your force to break, blow, burn and make me new
"How do you know that God commands you to abstain from pre-marital sex?" asks the secular Jewess.
You don’t. It’s a leap of faith, not just in the written Torah but in the Oral Torah, in the whole Jewish tradition.
I’ve come to believe that pre-marital sex is a mistake.
Why?
It leads to heartbreak.
Two twenty minute learning sessions. That’s just a fondle. I want the full act of love. None of this tasting stuff.
Rabbi Daniel Bouskila can’t make it to talk on S.Y. Agnon. His father died.
I go to the first class.
"Welcome to my bedroom," says the speaker.
"I’m not a Talmudic guy. I really don’t like the Talmud."
He gives us the Rabbi Eliezer impure oven story.
"One of the greatest things about America is the freedom to mock people. But Judaism frowns on that."
In part. In theory. What about when Rav Eleazar Schach says that Chabad is the religion closest to Judaism? When the Ibn Ezra says Rashi doesn’t give one rational explanation in a thousand?
Judaism overflows with mockery. Not just rabbis mocking other rabbis, but the prayers of Judaism are filled with contempt for other spiritual paths. Look at Aleinu. "For they bow to vanity and emptiness and pray to a god which helps not."
When the rabbis in Judaism command us not to mock they mean "Don’t mock us! Enshrine us in our power. Don’t mock your fellow Orthodox Jew who follows the commandments and does what we say."
He was teaching the Bathsheva story to 15-year olds. "What should Batsheva do when she’s first called in to the King and her husband is away at war?"
"She should give him a blowjob," says one lad.
I walk alone to the top of Bolton, to Beverly Drive, and watch downtown Los Angeles shimmer below me.
The air is neither warm nor cold.
This world is neither with me nor against me. It is but raw material in my hands.
I can make anything of myself. I can be great.
I can be alone for the rest of my life.
Maybe I should learn to share?
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot againe,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me
