I feel connected to the same soul root as Reb Gershon [Winkler]. His primary ordaining teacher was Rav Ben Zion Bruk of Jerusalem, a great Master of Mussar, whom I feel connected to both through Rabbi Hillel Goldberg’s transmission of his Torah and through Reb Gershon. At this time, I am working with Reb Gershon on a major work, which we hope will serve as a kind of Spiritual Code of Jewish Law for those who will seek its counsel.
Regarding academia: Virtually everything I have learned has been in the classic auto didactic manner. However, my B.A. is from Edison College (a completely reputable joke of a school, which gives credit for non-academic work). I studied for one semester at Yeshiva University and one semester at Queens College. Neither worked for me. Back then, I wanted to study only what I wanted to study. So, I followed my heart and dropped out. I only received my degree from Edison later on so my mom would be happy. Later in life, I earned a Master’s degree in Jewish Philosophy from Bar Illan University. And still later, I wrote a doctoral dissertation under the direction of Professor Moshe Idel and Professor Norman Solomon at Oxford University. My doctoral dissertation was approved by Oxford University on April 2, 2008.
Having said that, I have little interest in teaching today from the place of a rabbi or a professor. Instead, I want to share from the position of friend. We have plenty of rabbis and no shortage of professors. It seems to me that today we need teachers who can give us an authentic transmission, and at the same time love us as dear and close friends—though always with clear boundaries.
Only recently in my life have I submitted to a teacher. My teacher is a very beautiful and great man who is the lineage holder of a stunning Jewish mystical tradition which was passed down from generation to generation for many hundreds of years. Most of the lineages of this nature were destroyed in the holocaust. His survived.
He is a profound psychologist, teacher, guide, and as his many students will attest, a powerful shamanic figure as well. He is the transmitted lineage successor of a great contemporary Peruvian teacher, recognized formally as a peer by one of South America’s great shamans. He appeared and found me during the time of my heartbreak, and has helped put the pieces of my heart back together. He has encouraged me and instructed me to return to teaching. I will follow his instruction.
He has had, over the years, hundreds of students who are―each in their own way ― receivers of his love and his wisdom. He teaches those who find their way to him. In this sense, he is quite similar to the teacher Don Juan, whom Carlos Castaneda describes in his work.
* When seeing a woman young and attractive, envision her 30 to 40 years down the line. She will be wrinkled, bent over, and missing some teeth.
* A Jew must always envision the day of death as a means to defeat the evil inclination in emergency situations.
Envision this woman tempting you laying dead with white maggot worms crawling out of her mouth,nose and eyes. Maybe carrying some maggots in a sealed jar and placed in your car or work desk will serve as a reminder NOT to sin.
* Envision a woman tempting you as an AIDS carrier. As cute as she looks would you take your chances to get close to her. You would not get close to a cute grizzly bear with big claws and sharp teeth, no matter how cute looking.
* Tactic five is called the TOILET TACTIC. If you are a sewer cleaner,real estate manager,plumber and you are tempted with a female customer or tenant who complains about her stuffed toilet stoppage, asked to see the problem. Don’t just delegate it to a worker. Lift the toilet seat and stick your nose in and take a deep sniff. Always anchor the dirty and smelly toilet to that temptress woman and your desires for her will evaporate.
SAN FRANCISCO — Growing up Jewish in North Dartmouth, Mass., Amy-Jill Levine loved Christianity.
Her neighborhood “was almost entirely Portuguese and Roman Catholic,” Dr. Levine said last Sunday at her book party here during the annual American Academy of Religion conference. “My introduction to Christianity was ethnic Roman Catholicism, and I loved it. I used to practice giving communion to Barbie. Church was like the synagogue: guys in robes speaking languages I didn’t understand. My favorite movie was ‘The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima.’ ”
Christianity might have stayed just a fascination, but for an unfortunate episode in second grade: “When I was 7 years old, one girl said to me on the school bus, ‘You killed our Lord.’ I couldn’t fathom how this religion that was so beautiful was saying such a dreadful thing.”
That encounter with the dark side of her friends’ religion sent Dr. Levine on a quest, one that took her to graduate school in New Testament studies and eventually to Vanderbilt University, where she has taught since 1994. Dr. Levine is still a committed Jew — she attends an Orthodox synagogue in Nashville — but she is a leading New Testament scholar.
And she is not alone. The book she has just edited with a Brandeis University professor, Marc Zvi Brettler, “The Jewish Annotated New Testament” (Oxford University Press), is an unusual scholarly experiment: an edition of the Christian holy book edited entirely by Jews. The volume includes notes and explanatory essays by 50 leading Jewish scholars, including Susannah Heschel, a historian and the daughter of the theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel; the Talmudist Daniel Boyarin; and Shaye J. D. Cohen, who teaches ancient Judaism at Harvard.
Amy-Jill Levine is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studies, and Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School and College of Arts and Science in Nashville, TN; she is also Affiliated Professor, Centre for the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations, Cambridge UK. Holding the B.A. from Smith College, and the M.A. and Ph.D. from Duke University, she has honorary doctorates from the University of Richmond, the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, the University of South Carolina-Upstate, Drury University, and Christian Theological Seminary. Her recent books include The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (HarperOne), The Meaning of the Bible: What the Jewish Scriptures and the Christian Old Testament Can Teach Us, co-authored with Douglas Knight (HarperOne), the edited Historical Jesus in Context (Princeton), and the fourteen-volume edited Feminist Companions to the New Testament and Early Christian Writings (Continuum). With Marc Brettler she also edited the Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford). A self-described Yankee Jewish feminist, Professor Levine is a member of Congregation Sherith Israel, an Orthodox Synagogue, although she is often quite unorthodox.
I did the following interview with Amy Jill-Levine via email:
* What is it in Christianity and the New Testament that enthralls you?
AJL: I am interested in the intersection between what we today would see as Jewish and Christian histories and theologies, in what Jews and Christians share in common, in where we differ, and in why.
* Have you ever considered conversion to Christianity?
AJL: I have never considered conversion; to the contrary, I find my own Judaism completely fulfilling.
* How are you as a committed member of another religion frequently
persecuted and maligned by Christianity able to study Christianity/New
Testament objectively? Considering the way the Gospels/Martin Luther
et al cook up deadly lies about Jews without which the Holocaust would
not have been possible, why don’t you have an agenda to debunk
Christianity and to make it look horrible?
AJL: All texts are open to interpretation, and any text can be interpreted in harmful ways. For example, those who look to the book of Joshua to promote ethnic cleansing or to various parts of the canons of both Church and Synagogue to promote slavery or the subjugation of women are using the texts to create harm. If we can locate how and why harmful interpretations develop and then demonstrate that alternative readings are more historically accurate, theologically warranted, and ethically compelling, then we provide the means by which to prevent the sins of the past from being repeated.
* What happens to you emotionally when Christians try to make you
Christian? I presume such people don’t make your skin crawl. If so,
why not?
AJL: Most Christians who seek to bring Jews (or anyone else) into belief in Jesus as Messiah do so out of love, not hate, and I respect their motivations. If one has what one believes to be good news, one should share it. Moreover, the Gospels proclaim that followers of Jesus should evangelize (see Matthew 28.19), and again, I respect Christians who are attempting to be faithful to what their Scripture teaches. My concern is not evangelism per se, but harmful evangelism; I am however concerned about Evangelism that promotes fear rather than love, since it deforms the gospel message. To state, “believe in Jesus or you’ll go to hell” creates the image of a G-d as a bully rather than as a loving Father.
* One of your new books is: “The Meaning of the Bible: What the Jewish Scriptures and the Christian Old Testament Can Teach Us (Harper)” So what happens when you study scripture and you disagree with what scripture is apparently teaching? Could you give an example of this conflict. I’m thinking about homosexuality, for instance. The Torah is clear that anal sex between men is an abomination. I believe that you are quite liberal in such matters. So what do you do? Do you regard the authors of the text as homophobic and leave it at that?
AJL: One of the definitions of what it means to be “Israel” is to “wrestle with G-d.” Thus, I will wrestle with the text. Such wrestling is already part of the Jewish tradition. For example, regarding the “eye for an eye” statements, we Jews conclude first that the point is not to engage in maiming but to avoid the escalation of violence, and second, that as the rabbis tell us (m. Baba Kamma), injury must be redressed through compensation for medical expenses, loss of work, injury, and so on. For those who consider Scripture to be a guide for life, then to stop at the words of the text is insufficient. We must also determine why the words are said and what the text is trying to teach us; we must see how the teaching relates to our own experience, to the teachings of our tradition, to the touchstones of love of neighbor or concern for life. If we simply stop at the words of the Bible, we are committing bibliolatry: we are worshiping the Bible rather than that to which it points. More, we are restricting divine teaching to the text, as if G-d has had no communication with us over the past several millennia.
* What is the need for a Jewish Annotated New Testament? Isn’t this
like a Jewish Annotated Protocols of Zion?
AJL: The Jewish Annotated New Testament (JANT) is a necessary resource for Jews and Christians and anyone interested in preventing anti-Jewish teaching, in showing Jews and Christians today what we have in common and where we disagree, and in promoting a better informed view of the histories and theologies of Synagogue and Church. For Jews, JANT provides a guide to Second Temple Jewish society in all its vibrant diversity, a guide for understanding Christian history for if we Jews want our Christian neighbors to understand our histories and traditions, we should show them the same courtesy; and a resource of combatting anti-Jewish teaching and preaching. For Christians, JANT provides additional insight into the Scripture of the Church, recovers how those who first heard the words of Jesus and Paul would have understood their meaning, and corrects anti-Jewish stereotypes.
F.M. Alexander started his first training course for teachers in 1930 to replace the student income he lost to the Great Depression.
His first graduate was Marj Barstow who returned to the United States to teach.
There are many schools of Alexander Technique but I divide them principally into the Patrick MacDonald school and everyone else.
Many Alexander teachers want a unified Alexander world where the different camps support each other. I want Alexander disunity. I like the different camps challenging each other. I just want it done fairly and accurately (an area where I have often failed).
For instance, if somebody said, “Don’t study Alexander with Luke Ford because he smokes,” I believe that attack is unfair and inaccurate. I don’t smoke. Never have. I just took a photo with an unlit cigarette in my mouth and posted it on top of my site because it amuses me.
However, if somebody said, “Don’t study Alexander with Luke Ford because he writes needlessly provocative things on his blog and on Facebook,” then I think that is a totally fair and accurate critique.
So I’m all for the different camps fighting fair.
I’m also for full and honest reporting on the Technique and its history, warts and all, even if it does not always make us look good. I find critical anthropologist Jeroen Staring, for instance, interesting, even though he seems to loathe F.M. Alexander. Jeroen argues that F.M. stole everything important in his work, and that the Technique as fatally stained with F.M.’s racism. Even if Staring is wrong, I love his challenge to my profession.
I think I get a dopamine rush from provoking people and I’m just hooked on provocation. I have a weakness for rebels.
I enjoy it when different Alexander teachers criticize each other (as long as they strive for fairness and accuracy). I like a good fight. I find it invigorating. And the Technique’s history of internecine warfare strikes me as terribly amusing.
Why does this personal stuff matter? Because much of the historical enmity between the varying camps of the Technique — largely diminished now — probably originated in the romances above.
Compared to F.M.’s other students, Patrick MacDonald developed the most distinctive style, perhaps in reaction to his own back problems. Patrick’s way has lots of games and fancy moves like “the swinger!” It strikes me as a very masculine technique while other approaches are more nurturing.
Most Alexander teachers — by a ratio of two-to-one — are women and I suspect that most of the people who take lessons are women. In my view, women tend to get the Technique more quickly than men (though there are hundreds of individual exceptions and you’re going to have a hard time finding better Alexander teachers than John Nichols and Michael Frederick).
Each of the styles of Alexander Technique are profoundly affected by the personality of the founder. F.M. Alexander — for good and for ill — has infected many Alexander teachers. They still use his language even though it is off-putting to many people (“inhibition” and “stop and say no” and “don’t try to recreate the feeling, recreate the thinking”, etc).
Followers of the Barlow school or the Carrington school or the Marjorie Barstow school are similarly affected by the foibles of their founders.
What the heck am I talking about?
Well, watch the following interview with Patrick MacDonald and you can see his influence on MacDonald-style teachers today. They just have this assuredness about them.
Patrick took over F.M.’s old consulting rooms in 1956 to start his own teacher training program.
in the third video (these videos look to me like they were recorded around 1990), Patrick says five years should be a good length to learn to teach the Technique, two years longer than what is normal for Alexander teacher training.
Patrick says he’s made many mistakes. “I’ve trained a number of people who turned out to be no bloody good.”
In the fourth video, Patrick says Alexander teachers “could hardly get worse. The first lot who qualified were pretty bloody awful. Some of them have got better since then, myself included I hope. Most teachers starting out now, it rather depends on where they had their training. The training varies so much, it is no longer a unified training.”
How could you make Alexander training more unified? “I don’t know except by killing off all Alexander teachers and starting again.”
Later, Patrick says: “I don’t see any hope for the Technique developing properly from where it is presently.”
“There are too many bad teachers and too much bad training.”
“Alexander himself was very clear in what he wanted done. He wasn’t very good in teaching it. He was not a good teacher. He was a brilliant technician. He was brilliant with his hands but he was not good at getting his ideas into other people’s heads.”
“He was a pioneer and a discoverer but he wasn’t a teacher. That’s one of the reasons the thing has gone so bad since then.”
Patrick says: “There are some psychologists who are sane, but not very many.”
Here’s a 1986 interview with Marjory Barlow:
The MacDonald style of Alexander Technique has been the most difficult for me to get. It’s been the most challenging. Taking that wide stance in front of the chair has struck me as artificial as has the exercise of going up and down almost vertically. I now enjoy learning it as much as any other approach (sometimes more because it is particularly challenging and playful), but it took me years to appreciate it.
So which approach to Alexander Technique is best? I don’t know. I’m not qualified to judge. I believe that I have been most affected by the Frank Ottiwell approach (he learned from everybody and had a non-partisan approach to the Technique), even though I’ve never met the man.
Until recently, none of the major Alexander training schools encouraged scientific investigation of their claims. Controversial historian Jeroen Staring compares early Alexander Technique to a family business with the major teachers taking care to trace their lineage to the founder (F.M. Alexander).
I remember meeting a third-year student from a Patrick MacDonald style teacher training program and he said he was not allowed to take Alexander lessons from any teacher outside of the Patrick MacDonald style of teaching. He confessed he snuck lessons with various forbidden teachers of the Walter Carrington school.
I wonder if this is normal for Patrick MacDonald-style teacher training courses? In Patrick MacDonald’s school in England, it was generally taken for granted that you did not take lessons with other teachers and that if you did, you did not talk about it in front of Patrick.
If you go to Israel, most of the teachers there were educated in the Patrick MacDonald approach to the Technique. The Walter Carrington approach, by contrast, has not made much headway in the Holy Land.
In this conversation with Robert Rickover, veteran Alexander teacher Eileen Troberman says: “A wonderful cellist and student of mine for years, Peter Farrell, was a music professor at a university in Illinois or Indiana. He wanted to learn about the Alexander Technique. He had a sabbatical. He wrote to Patrick MacDonald in England, who was then teaching at 60 Ashley Place, where Alexander had been teaching, and he asked about a teacher in the United States he could study with. Patrick said there weren’t any good teachers in the United States. You should come to England.
“Peter did look up Marj Barstow. He came to Lincoln, Nebraska, and had lessons with Marj. He mentioned he had a good cello student whose use was bad — Bill Conable.
“He wanted Marj to come up and teach his class. Marj had never taught a group class. She figured out what to do.”
This started Marj’s career teaching group classes. Until this time, Alexander Technique was almost exclusively taught in private one-on-one lessons (though F.M. taught a group class in 1896).
I look at most of my peers as careerists. They sacrifice their own opinions and freedom so that they can get along. They tell their teachers what they want to hear. They play the academic game. They retain the good graces of their superiors and this eases their way up the ladder.
I guess there’s nothing wrong with this. It just doesn’t seem heroic to me.
I hate telling my superiors what they want to hear (when that differs from my own beliefs).
When I was in my mother’s stomach, she had a conviction that I would grow up to do something great for God.
My parents told me this many times when I was a kid. Combined with the books I read and the movies I saw, I developed a view of myself as heroic.
This has probably done me more harm than good, but not by a wide margin. Maybe just 60-40. I have a dangerous tendency to grandiosity which cuts me off from normal human relationships, but also gives me the strength to do the important but unpopular.
So why do I make life difficult for myself? I join groups (yoga, Orthodox Judaism, Alexander Technique, LA Press Club, etc) and then jeopardize my standing by writing inflammatory blog posts.
I feel like I have a destiny and that the world needs to know what I’m thinking.
By contrast, I have advisers who tell me, “Sometimes you have to think strategically.”
Go ahead and Google “Alexander Technique.” Look for scandal. Look for debunkers. You won’t find much. I’m unaware of anyone who’s regretted his Alexander lessons from a certified teacher. I don’t know of anyone who’s gotten hurt from becoming aware of his habits of needless compression. I don’t know of anyone who can make a strong case for a down side to this work (aside from the expense of hiring a teacher).
I’m entering a respected profession. Almost all acting schools and music schools have Alexander teachers on staff. And yet there are only about 4,000 certified Alexander teachers in the world because the training is so rigorous (three years of examining your habits and letting go of the harmful ones).
I hate restrictions on my freedom. I love saying what I think. Yet when I belong to groups, I have to take responsibility for anything I say or do that could reflect poorly upon the group.
So now I’m taking up the teaching of the Alexander Technique. How much does that restrict my freedom? Can I make bawdy jokes on my Facebook account? Can I evaluate objectively the claims of those who criticize the Technique or do I have to go into defense mode?
If people don’t send me referrals, that will hurt my Alexander practice. And I won’t even know it, most of the time, if someone refuses to refer students to me. They might find me too outspoken. Too weird. Too edgy. Who knows.
So am I going to surrender my smart mouth? Am I going to become more conservative in word and deed?
Rabbi Rabbs emails: Here is the link to the article written by the israeli/american married couple. Here is the chart on Biblical marriages. Here is the link to the article about the appellate justice who ruled on the Sholom Rubashkin appeal.
* Rabbi Berel Wein writes: “Yaakov prepares himself for soothing Eisav by gifts and wealth, pointing out to Eisav that it is beneficial to him to have Yaakov around and being productive. He also strengthens himself spiritually in prayer and in appeal to God to deliver him from Eisav. And finally as a last resort he is prepared to fight Eisav with his own weapons, the sword and war.”
* Rabbi Wein writes: “Yaakov successfully disarms Eisav by showering him with gifts and compliments. He does not really have a serious discussion with him about their outstanding differences.”
Sometimes talk is good but often liquor is quicker. I don’t drink. Therefore, my dates usually do not drink either. This makes progress more halting in many instances. Sometimes it is impossible.
* Rabbi Wein writes: “There are now and there have been till now, many attempts to find a middle ground between traditional Judaism and the ideas of modernity and behavior of the modern world. But, the truth be said, no universal successful formula for confronting the modern world has as yet been formulated by the descendants of Yaakov. Meanwhile, the modern world and its ideas are ripping gaping holes in the fabric and population of the Jewish people. Not everyone can and/or should divorce one’s self from the modern world swirling about us. And, again, not everyone can successfully reconcile a Torah life-style and commitment to the realities of the modern world.”
* Were Jacob’s sons wrong to wipe out the Shechemites? It’s a horrifying passage. Non-Jews read this passage and think that Jews are bloodthirsty and at least partly responsible for the havoc in the Middle East.
I take from the passage that the only way the brothers could free Dina was by wiping out her captors.
* “When Dinah went out to see the daughters of the land”, did she sin?
* Are there things that women can do that make them more or less likely to be raped? If a woman gets drunk in a frat house, she’s not morally culpable if she’s raped, but she’s responsible for putting herself in a position to be raped.
* “Hamor went out to Jacob and told him that Shechem longed for Dinah, and asked Jacob to give her to him for a wife, and to agree that their two people might intermarry and live and trade together.” A typical story in Jewish history. Let’s intermarry and live together. Not the Jewish destiny.
* How amazing must Dina have been that Shechem and his people were willing to circumcise themselves so everyone could live together in peace. I’ve met a few women in my time that had I not been circumcised, I would’ve consented to the unkindest cut of all. There was this one black girl I knew…
* “Simeon and Levi asked whether they were to allow someone to treat their sister as a prostitute.” This is ethnic pride. Ethnic groups, be they Jews or Latinos or Arabs etc, tend to have a more proprietary attitude towards their women than WASPs, about the only group that does not usually live through its children.
* Where was Jacob in this Dina episode? He seems passive. His sons apparently did not even consult him.
I just got a local call. Not sure who it was from. I thought at first it was a wrong number.
Caller: “Are you ok?”
Luke: “I’m great. This is Luke Ford.”
Caller: “You haven’t written anything for two days and I wanted to check that you are OK. Please write something.”
Click.
A few minutes later, I get an email: “ARE YOU OK??? You did not not write for 2 days and you do’t answer your office phone. I am calling the police in 10 minutes if you dont responed.”
And this:
Sorry for panicking about you. I know you are alone and I got worried when you did not write 2 days. Usually you write everyday. I guess I am becoming a typical Jewish Mother. The reason I did not identify myself was clearly to maintain anonymity. To be frank, I don’t feel like being judged by you. You are less them kind to women over 40. Something to work on….
As to your thoughts this morning:
Yes, the blessing bestowed on you when Mom was pregnant
is a complicated one:
I am a firm believer of woman’s intuition and parental blessings.
The question is how easy is it to be a ‘chosen one’… and how
far do you take it? Allow me some objective feedback:
Yes you are meant to be special and you are doing it everyday
in this blog. Does this make you PEE pure olive oil??? No Luke.
You are not prefect, nor a saint. There is the shadow part (Jung):
The obsessive sex blogger etc…on one hand and the lifestyle of
wanna be rigid monk like, stem from there.
Ease off a bit and just live with no prophecies and/or unrealistic
expectation. You are fine. Stop digging endlessly into yourself.
You are joining the right groups but then isolating yourself by
acting out which causes you to remain lonely. Stop the automatic
recording in your head I Am Special….and act normal. e.g. Don’t
hide in a book during prayer or lectures.
Yes… we know you know how to read.
We know you are an intellectual. We all are. Stop acting weird.
I have psycho-therapy Friday afternoons. This week I think I will talk about how I freak out when my computer is not working or my car is not working or these other technical details that throw me into a panic.
I think the best solution to these problems is money in the bank. That equals peace of mind for me.
In a week, I’ll be a certified Alexander Technique teacher. I wonder how this will change me. I’ll no longer be able to make Facebook posts like this one, which caused me a lot of griefs from those who want me to be a successful teacher: “Luke Ford has installed a privacy screen in his office. Plan to tell students that’s where I keep my hairless Asian boy. “He’s very quiet. He’ll be no bother.””
* Good line in the Showtime program Sleeper Cell: “Now you’re all about being a good Muslim? What religion are you when you’re f***ing me?”
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
