Jane emails: “I’m a prospective Jewish convert. I’ve spent the past 4 months or so studying at a Conservative Temple here in Los Angeles. Although I really enjoyed my experience, I want to experience and learn more, however this time about the Orthodox world. As I tried to GOOGLE Orthodox Synagogues in L.A I came across a NEWS clip about you and your site. I was wondering if you know of any Orthodox Synagogues here in LOS ANGELES that are somewhat Liberal and open to letting a non-Jewish but prospective Convert experience services and would be open to discussing Judaism with me?”
All Orthodox shuls would be worth checking out. Bnai David may be a good place to start.
I’m unaware of any changes in the RCC‘s policies on divorce. Most of the complaints I’ve heard about the RCC with divorces is that they are anti-male. Not saying they are.
Anne emails: I am researching about Jewish divorce and was hoping you might have some insight on the subject.
Do you know why the RCC is refusing Gets right now? It seems that a majority of the women applying for a divorce through the RCC are having a difficult time obtaining a Get.
So far, I’ve talked to a few angry women and not a single rabbi. I would love your opinion on that matter.
Does RCC policy still follow basic Get restrictions? Do you think they are taking any special measures to help women who are abused or abandoned?
All of this means that much of today’s sex advice won’t work well for lovers who want to remain paired. It’s based on the dopamine-cranking “novelty-as-aphrodisiac” strategy: trying a new sex toy, watching porn, swapping partners, acting out a kinky fantasy, engaging in daring or painful sex, and so forth. Novelty and fear are certainly arousing. Yet novelty-as-aphrodisiac has drawbacks.
First, once you’ve tried something, it’s not novel anymore. To get the same thrill from it in the future, you may have to ratchet up the stimulation. That is, novelty-as-aphrodisiac is not sustainable. After you’ve pounded your brain with the excess dopamine produced by the obvious options, what do you do?
Second, too much stimulation can actually numb the brain’s pleasure response. So, instead of feeling more contented or more bonded, lovers may feel more dissatisfied than ever in between intense, novelty-induced climaxes. Until you return your brains to normal sensitivity, you may look even duller to each other.
Suggestion: If you wish to sustain your pair bond as a source of contentment, first take a lesson from prairie voles: Do what you can to avoid the overstimulation that impairs bonding. This advice may be especially critical today because tempting novel mates are far more prevalent than they were as our brains evolved. (A kid in high school sees more hotties in the hall between classes than his ancestors saw in a lifetime, not to mention virtual hotties.)
The night before, I’d covered the Sacramento Kings basketball game.
Why was this a big deal?
Well, I moved to PUC from Australia with my parents in May of 1977. Over the next year, I fell in love with America’s three main sports of football, basketball and baseball. I didn’t watch them much on TV (my family didn’t own one) but I read a lot of books about them. I had an intellectual approach that many adults appreciated.
So I got to know America, in part, through sports. I was living on a Seventh-Day Adventist college campus and as such I was largely removed from the real world.
Adventists tend to have little influence. They are healers and retreaters. Their kingdom is not of this world. To become one with the church is to remove yourself from history.
I loved history and wanted to play a big part in it. It was important to me to go down in its books, to be bigger than my father and all my classmates who didn’t accept me.
One of the ways I connected with the world was through sports. I resolved to be great one day. Great in this world. I wasn’t particularly adept at moving socially in Adventism. I never had a real girlfriend. I thought my true home was outside the church, where everything would be much much better.
Thanks to my father’s controversial theology, we were pushed out of the Adventist church in 1980 and into what my father called “the invisible church of Jesus Christ”, which didn’t have much practical community.
In eighth grade, I decided to become a journalist. When I finally got to cover professional sports for KAHI/KHYL radio in the summer and fall of 1985, it was a big deal to me. It was proof that I had made it. I had left the church and I had made it in the big world. And I was sure to get laid.
I went to Candlestick park a couple of times that fall to cover San Francisco 49er football games against the New Orleans Saints and the Dallas Cowboys. I went into the lockerrooms after the contests and interviewed the players. I was big time. I even rubbed shoulders with San Francisco Chronicle sports columnist Lowell Cohn.
Now I drove up to the Muth home and they were inside watching the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl and I got to talk about interviewing Tom Landry to a pretty brunette named Lorie W. She wore white sweats and she seemed to me like an angel.
When you’re new to a place, they’re less likely to know you’re a loser.
Lorie represented possibility to me. She was an opportunity to step outside of my limits and to begin again my search for connection, for living from the inside.
I was feeling pretty crook that week. I’d been sick for the previous couple of days but thought I was getting better.
I stayed with the Muths for five days. I enjoyed lying on their couch and listening to their extensive collection of CDs. The soundtrack from Chariots of Fire (the one movie I enjoy more each time I watch it, five times so far) was my favorite. I loved the hymn Jerusalem.
And did those feet in ancient time.
Walk upon England’s mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land
I was an atheist at the time but yearned to believe in something. This Jerusalem, this city on a hill shining a light for the world, sounded grand. It sounded like PUC, my paradise lost.
I felt like Lorie was my Jerusalem. She was my chosen one. She stirred me. She seemed like the ideal wife. I heard that many of the guys at Monterey Bay Academy wanted to marry her.
That Super Bowl Sunday, Lorie gave me her phone number. We decided to go to a movie that week.
On Wednesday evening, I picked up Lorie from the PUC girls dorm and drove to St. Helena where we saw The Jewel of the Nile.
When we came out of the movie, we saw that I had left the lights on in my car. Luckily, it still started. As I drove up the hill, the car reeked of gasoline every time I turned a tight corner.
Reluctant to spend money, I drove for many months with this leaky gas tank until finally getting it fixed.
Anyway, those five days at PUC were the bright spot of my next few few months, or perhaps my life. That cold flu thing that bothered me at PUC turned into full-blown mono and held me in its shackles until summer.
Only I would get the kissing disease without having done any kissing.
Two years later, I felt like I came down with a relapse of mono. Only this time it was known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and it never left.
Lorie ended up becoming a psychologist and she married a Jewish psychiatrist and they have kids together.
In the 25 years since Super Bowl XX, I’ve repeatedly fallen in love with women who remind me of her. I’m absolutely defenseless against demure wholesome and brilliant brunettes.
At Sierra College in June 1988. Four months into my CFS.
Posted inAdventist, Personal, PUC|Comments Off on And did the Countenance Divine, Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
I’ve lived a life of separate worlds. I had friends at school and friends at work and friends from childhood, but I never introduced them. Instead, I lived many lives. It was easier that way. I could do what I wanted.
Now, perhaps for the first time ever, all of my life is complimentary. I can be at work with Alexander Technique and run into Orthodox Jews and have no feelings of panic. I can go to yoga and see people from all of my lives and it’s cool.
I feel like my Alexander Technique teacher training, my psycho-therapy, my 12-step work, my weekly writing group, my friends, my blogging, my reading, I feel like they are all working together. I’m excited to see what will happen.
PS. Much of the credit goes to Facebook. I have one primary profile and have friends from all parts of my life on there.
I had a girlfriend at UCLA in 1989. Because of my CFS, we’d lie in bed a lot and listen to Dennis Prager’s radio show on Saturday and Sunday nights.
Dennis said that men were more oriented to macro-issues such as politics while women were more interested in micro-topics such as personal relationships.
My girl was 4’10 and I told her that she had a micro-brain.
She complained that I didn’t take her seriously.
After a few months, I broke up with her. I thought I could do better.
She was fluent in five languages and she was the one who graduated from UCLA and got married and had a kid. The last time we emailed, about five years ago, she called me an old man.
My father taught in the college’s Religion department but he was being shipped with my mother to Washington D.C. to prepare a defense of his heretical views. (Read the Wikipedia entry.)
I thought I was condemned to move too and I didn’t like that. I felt that every time I started to get halfway close to people, we had to move. I moved all around in my first four years while my mother Gwen was dying of bone cancer and I had various care-givers.
Then my father remarried and we all moved to England for 18 months so dad could do a Ph.D. at Manchester University. We returned to Avondale College in Australia in 1972. I was six.
My dad followed Ellen G. White‘s teachings about holding kids out of school for as long as possible. I finally started my formal education in second grade at age eight. I think this late start severely cost me in developing social skills.
In May 1977, when I was eleven, we moved to the Seventh-Day Adventist Pacific Union College in the Napa Valley. I liked it there and I didn’t want to leave.
I think it was in December of 1979 that my classmate Andy Muth invited me to his home for Sabbath lunch. It was the first time a classmate had invited me over on the Sabbath. Andy didn’t want to. His mother made him. He was scared of my big mouth. I was a verbally aggressive kid. I enjoyed cutting people down.
I was very excited by the invite. It sucks when you’re not popular and you have to spend most of your life on your own.
Andy’s home had a whole different emotional temperature than mine. You have to understand that my father is a great man. He has two PhDs and he’s a gifted evangelist. He can mesmerize a crowd. Thousands of people believe that he’s changed their life.
So dad’s a double-threat. He can write academic books and he can speak to the common man about the great issues of life.
Dad didn’t just live his principles on the pulpit. He embodied them each day. I never saw him lose his temper and act out of control. He’s very controlled. Dedicated. He feels a mission to show people Christ crucified.
Dad didn’t mess around with his life. He didn’t waste it playing games or pursuing hobbies. He was a good father. He’d play Monopoly with me when I was a kid and kick a ball around for exercise.
My home was often cold. Literally. Dad believed in the virtues of fresh air, even in winter. He’d wrap up in blankets and leave the windows open and encouraged us to follow his example. If I’d shut the windows, he’d later come around and open them. In such a battle, the one who opens windows always wins. It’s easier to let warm air out than to keep it in.
Today I love a warm home. I keep things in my apartment a few degrees warmer than most people like. It’s my over-reaction to my childhood.
I hated being cold. I constantly dreamed I’d be adopted by a warm family, yet, whenever I thought through the specifics, I always concluded that the benefits of my own home outweighed the disadvantages. I loved having a dad who was a big shot and who was accomplishing great things in the world and knew great people and knew how to unlock books and explain important matters to thousands of people.
My father lived by the dicta that great people discuss ideas, not people. Our table talk was about philosophy, history and my father’s theological battles. Ordinary matters, such as girls, were forbidden (not explicitly, just by my father’s stern example, which my stepmother generally fell in with).
My parents did their best by me. They gave me far more than they had growing up. They loved me and they disciplined me and they gave me guidance about how to lead a good life. They connected me with God and with a religious community. I have no complaints. The things they forbade in the home and that I later came to enjoy, well, my enjoyment was all the sweeter for having once been denied.
So there I was in the Muth home after church that Sabbath afternoon. It was my first time there even though I’d known the family since I arrived in America the summer of 1977.
The first thing that struck me was the absence of tension. The two parents and their two kids were constantly kidding each other. These were fundamentally happy people. They weren’t constantly striving to be great. They weren’t weighed down by intellectual disputes. They didn’t regard the outside world as an enemy.
I loved the temperature in the Muth home. It was warm. It was emotionally warm. It was physically warm. It was a warm happy place.
It was probably a cold winter’s day outside but inside was warm and welcoming.
My dad was dedicated to the health message of the Seventh-Day Adventist church. For my own good, I wasn’t allowed to drink with my meals. No water. No juice. And certainly no soda.
Due to its high fat content, peanut butter was severely limited. Just a thin spread was all I was allowed.
On this day, however, that all changed. I could drink all the juice I wanted. I could eat all the peanut butter I wanted. I could eat and drink anything I wanted.
Religion does’t have to deform a family. It doesn’t have to end all pleasure in life. It doesn’t have to cut you off from those around you. It can be an aid to a good life.
You probably don’t understand my upbringing. Religion was a terribly swift sword. My parents basically lost contact with their families when they converted to Seventh-Day Adventism in their teens and took on this weird life.
I grew up not knowing what a niece or a nephew were. I didn’t know what constituted a cousin. I was really shaky about uncle and aunt. I had almost no contact with my relatives and those few times I did, it was very awkward. They were secular and my family was religious and we seemed to have nothing in common.
I didn’t understand home and family as happy places. I was more familiar with them as battle stations. They were instruments for regrouping before renewing one’s righteous assault on the wickedness of the world.
The Muth family, however, was completely different. They made me feel happy, a most unfamiliar feeling.
Until I met the Muth family, I felt like I was on the outside of life looking in. I was lost in fantasies of grandeur. I was terribly lonely and unhappy.
Once I was in with the Muths, I got to live life from the inside. I knew that no matter what happened, there would always be a place for me.
Living life from the inside means you’re connected to other people and that what you do matters. You affect people. You matter. You have a role in the play and a place at the table.
Mrs. Muth said she wanted me to be able to finish eighth grade with my class and that if I needed to, I could stay with their family.
I’ve been the recipient of much kindness in my life but I don’t think anything ever touched me as deeply as this. I was dreading the move to D.C. I didn’t want to leave my classmates before graduation. More than that, I wanted to be part of a normal loving family.
I didn’t get to stay with the Muths through June of 1980 when there was no escaping a trip back east. My family had arranged for me to stay somewhere else. Still, I got to be friends with Andy and spend a lot of time at his home over the next five years.
These were the happiest times of my life. Though my family moved 2.5 hours drive away in the fall of 1980 to Auburn, I kept coming back to PUC whenever I could to stay with the Muths.
I was a completely different person away from my parents. In my dad’s shadow, I was a skeleton of a human being. He was the lead actor and I was just an extra. Away from my parents, I was the lead in my own movie.
I always felt giddy when I was on my way to PUC and I always felt sad when I left. In my teenage perspective, one place was warm and full of community. The other place was remote and lonely. In one place I belonged and in the other place I was just serving time. One place was happy and one place was sad. One home was tense and one home rang laughter. One home constantly had people over and one home didn’t.
Running across the Golden Gate bridge in 1978 on my way to completing the San Francisco marathon in four-and-a-half hours.
June 1980. My eighth grade graduation. I remember hugging some of my classmates afterwards and saying, “Can you believe we made it?”
The night of my eighth grade graduation. I sit in the front row, wearing green socks, and staring off the left. The blonde on my left, Jeanie Clark, was the only girl whoever called me at my parent’s home. She was my almost girlfriend. We wrestled in the PUC pool during the summers of 1978 and 1979. The looker brunette behind me, Denise Bernard, was the object of my romantic desire from about 1977-1984. I haven’t seen her since June of 1984.
Outside one of my father’s meetings in Monterey in the summer of 1981.
"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)
