When Life Steamrolls Art

re: my sporadic posting

I am not suffering from writers block. I've got at least six draft ideas, mostly on Havdala themes (surprise surprise!), saved at the moment. In spite of recent Orthopedic issues I'm not even suffering from writer’s cramp. I'd love to be able to announce here and now that the dearth of new posts indicates that I have gotten over my obsessive narcissistic need for attention but... that would be a lie.

The real reason that you've been hearing less from me lately is that real life has been encroaching on my Walter-Mitty-esque virtual life. Day-job, bills, paperwork, Doctors appointments et al are encroaching on my fantasy as a self-styled widely-read and influential pundit pontificating sagely from the august platform of the NY Times Op-Ed Pages. You see I am in the thrall of a mirage in which my blog gets 10,000 hits a day instead of the fewer than 50 on a typical day that my stat-counter honestly, but mercilessly, records.

I'm hoping that like a stock market correction or a pre-Al Gore hot summer, this is only cyclical and that the halcyon days of prolific e-publishing will return again in due course. In the meantime I may have to do a few re-treads.

בא המבדיל והעמידן על אחת
"Those who cannot tolerate Havdala cannot appreciate Qedusha.

Gimme Shelter from the Storm

I really shouldn't complain as the recent Mabul in the tri-state Metropolitan area left my basement dry and unscathed but I'm here today to bellyache about one of the banes of rainy windy weather, the common umbrella.

When the prognosticators of climate predicted that a hard rain was gonna fall, the Divine Rainmaker made good on their promises. Big deal. You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. But for those of us venturing into the great outdoors, or at least from our not-so-great indoors to our cars and vice versa, and eschewing the perversely named ShayneCoat ® except for Shabbos, we had only our umbrellas to turn to for shelter from the storm. If your umbrella is anything like mine then it is a promise maker but not a promise keeper. One רוח מצויה weaker than a four year old blowing out the candles on his birthday cake is sufficient to contort, distort and otherwise bend my parasol to the breaking point. By the time I have untangled it and bent it back into shape it is generally too late as I find myself soggier than hour-old-in-the-milk Cap'n Crunch.

Worse yet, umbrellas combine all the worst attributes of both the קנה and the ארז. While one might think that prostrating themselves like Muslims at prayer during the storm would be a good survival strategy for umbrellas, they manage to break while bending. Like a fragile student whose self-esteem can be shattered for life by one sharp-tongued rebuke, my umbrellas seldom seem to recover from there initial losing confrontation with the breeze. I am not a chiropractor and so I lack the necessary knowledge for umbrella spine realignment. The spines never make it back to their nice, even oval factory settings and invariably end up as crooked as a Ponzi schemer and as asymmetrical as contemporary warfare. Undaunted by my lack of Orthopedic education when I do try to bend the spines back into something approximating their original shape the little joints stitched into the umbrellas fabric invariably lose their grip on the spine, tear away from their moorings in the fabric, or both. Then, once the spines are bent, they can't maintain the tautness required to keep themselves anchored into those little "sockets" at their far ends.

Next these wounded inanimate pretenders-to-portable-shelter-from-the-elements take on near organic characteristics. As disconnected spine panels flail about like a blind and punch-drunk boxer behind on points with each subsequent wind burst the defect seems to spread like an infectious disease from spine to spine. And while all spines unanimously agree that bending out of shape is good form when confronted with any wind above 5 MPH none can agree on the proper angle. In due time the open umbrella ends up with one eighth or one tenth the taut panel coverage that it was supposed to provide. Next to sicken and die are the buttons for opening the contraption and/or the compressibility mechanism of those teeny fold up umbrellas. Offended by the owners overuse in attempting to straighten the bent spines they give up their ghosts and, in a fit of impotent but well-irrigated rage, the unwieldy device is finally relegated by it's erstwhile refugee from the elements to the dust bin of history.

It's been often repeated that while everyone talks about the weather no one ever does anything about it. And while it's true that in terms of weather making השמים שמים לה' ע it seems self-evident that הארץ נתן לבני אדם to do something about dealing with the weather hands that G-d deals us.

It's not that no one has ever built a better umbrella. They have. Still, soggy, amphibious humans have yet to swim a path to these inventors doors in any great numbers as the cost of their cutting-edge, rip-the-whirlwind devices is prohibitive. For low to middle income tadpoles like me when umbrellas break their spines and our hearts the default setting is to just amble over to the 99 cent store and, resigned to their third-world-backwater-like infant mortality rate, plunk down another couple of bucks on another frail and brittle umbrella. They may as well market them as disposable and sell them in six packs like contact lenses. The thing is, gripped by Einstiens definition of insanity, we always expect the next umbrella we purchase to be the last.

Maybe we ought to do what the Rebbes and old Chinese women do and use our umbrellas on scorching windless days to shelter us from the out-of-it's-nartik sun. My luck and the shadows my umbrellas cast would leave my head and torso exposed to the rays.

Hope This Isn't Too Strident

Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky expresses his outrage, in muted and respectful tones of course, about the Halakhic Universes subjugation and oppression of women.Click

Here is the passage I find most objectionable with my objections interspersed.

I believe fervently that Orthodoxy has yet to grapple fully or satisfactorily with the dignity of womankind.

I believe fervently that knee-jerk egalitarianism has yet to grapple fully or satisfactorily with the dignity of the Halakhic-process.

We know and understand, like no generation before us has known and understood, that women are men’s intellectual and spiritual equals.

A simple smell test (see below) yields a malodorous stench of hubris reeking from this sentence. Other than on his own bald assertion how does Rabbi Kanefsky "know" that women are mens spiritual equals? Does he understand better than those Poskim who opine that שלא עשני אשה is the correct formulation for the brakha? Does he know that their opinions would be altered by being aware of the existence of female astronauts, neurosurgeons and Secretaries of State? Rav Moshe Feinstein OBM and zuhl zein vait upgesheit Rav Eliayshiv WERE/ARE aware of such females yet seem unperturbed by the current liturgy? Does he "know and understand" better than they do/did?

Did the AriZa"l and Rav Shimon bar Yokhai consider the genders to be completely equal? Does he bring better credentials of knowledge and understanding to the nature of human spirituality than they did? Does Rabbi Kanefsky know and understand that while נשים דעתן קלות and נשים עיניהם צרה באורחים still בינה יתירה נתנה לנשים , סבתא בביתא סימא בביתא and נשים מחבבות את הארץ ? How does he have the audacity to posit equality? Perhaps men are womens spiritual inferiors? Does Rabbi Kanefsky know and understand with any depth or certainly that Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education even got it right from a Halakhic and Torah Theological viewpoint when they declared that separate IS unequal?

Our society has accordingly decided to treat both genders with equal dignity, and has opened all professional, political and communal endeavors to both genders equally.

Whose society is "our society"? If he means the dominant non-Jewish culture why should we be taking any cues from them? Our society also treats same and opposite sex marriages with equal dignity. Should Orthodox Jews follow suit? Should Orthodox Rabbis and Rabbahs perform same-sex-marriages?

I believe that our community however, falls short of this goal in many ways.

Who declared it a goal? Rabbi Kanefsky ? Rabbi Avi Weiss? Who appointed them Manhigei HaDor to formulate and assess goals?

We are, of course, committed to operating within the framework and rules of halacha. But it is not hard to construct a halachik universe in which women’s physical space in shul and intellectual space in day schools and Study Halls are not lesser, but equal.

Constructing such a "halachik universe" is takeh easy, one already exists in the windmills of Rabbi Kanevskys mind. Constructing such a Shul and yeshiva is another story entirely.

It is not hard to imagine a halachik universe in which virtually all positions of leadership are available to all.

So easy that Korakh came up with the idea 3830 years ago. That his imagination did not alter the Halakhic Universe is, no doubt, further proof of the glacial pace of Halakhic change.

And we must create a halachik universe in which the extortion of women by their ex-husbands as the Bet Din stands helplessly by, is simply unfathomable. It’s not halacha’s fault that we are lagging. It’s our fault.

Maybe it's neither our fault nor Halakhas. Maybe it's the Reshoim husbands fault. Hundreds of of years of Halakhic Responsa dealt with Agunah questions based on disappearing husbands or inadequate proof of death. the Agunah-on-account-of-extortive-yet-living-and location-known-husband is of very recent vintage. This argument sounds similar to saying that nuclear families need revamping since some parents are abusive to their kids.

I know of course, that “You have not made me a woman” can be understood in many different ways. But by its plain meaning, and by the simple smell test...

Ah hah. So now Rabbi Kanefsky wants us to not only accept him as a Godol HaDor who sets goals and policies that represent major shifts from tradition but that we should do so based not on his erudition but on his gut feelings...on his olfactory acuity. Sounds like a Messianic Complex to me: וַהֲרִיחוֹ, בְּיִרְאַת יְהוָה; וְלֹא-לְמַרְאֵה עֵינָיו יִשְׁפּוֹט, וְלֹא-לְמִשְׁמַע אָזְנָיו יוֹכִיחַ.

it has the effect today of justifying our lack of progress, and of affirming for us that women do not possess the spiritual dignity than men do.

What he calls progress I call regress.
.בא המבדיל והעמידן על אחת
"Those who cannot tolerate Havdala cannot appreciate Qedusha

Why I Want Moshiach NOW!!!

I am fond of Nigunei Nichoach but otherwise am not in any way, shape or form a Lubavitcher Khosid. Still, I want Moshiach NOW...more than ever. There's nothing like the Nine Days to reawaken ones צפיה לישועה = yearning for the salvation.

In honor of these Nine Days I present to all three of you my top Nine list for desiring the Messianic era and the fulfillment of various planks in the Torah Eschatological platform. I will בלי נדר attempt to be honest and forthright and keep them in an order that reflects my own desires as they stand today... if not necessarily what Khaz"l had in mind when they advised us to yearn for the salvation:

9. I long for the empowerment, justification and exaltation of the Nation of Israel that will be the result of the ingathering of the exiles to our natural habitat, our Garden of Eden take-two. I want all negative anti-Jewish stereotypes debunked and relegated to the dust-bin of history. I want Jewish fiscal and spiritual poverty to end. I long to see how ישראל על אדמתם will solve the crises of Shiduchim, Assimilation, Intermarriage,Pedophilia, Financial Chicanery, Ignorance, Right and left Extremism, One-Size-Fits-All Education, Kashrus et al. I yearn to see more Jews than Indians and Chinese combined. I want to see Israel as numerous and as luminous as the stars. I want to see Israel as numerous and as resistant to the waves as the sands of the seashore. I want to see Israel as numerous and as fertile and productive as the dust of the earth .

8. I want Torah Law re-instituted in a one world government. I want whichever Havdolos still pertain in this תורתו של משיח (if any) to be manifestly just, fair and kind. No head-scratching. No sense of inequity borne of inequality. Thus will our anguish and groaning be eliminated once and for all.

7. I long for a liege and a leader who is THE GREAT Philosopher King. A Prince of Peace. A Consoler and Restorer of my soul. A champion of the underdog. A radical revolutionary who turns this world of lies upside down. A Robin-Hood-like figure who brings comfort to the oppressed, insecurity to the secure and discomfort to the comfortable. A ruler who is just, benevolent and has a weltschmerz that bleeds and bleeds until the last of the suffering have been made pain free. A ruler whose heart is my own, and everyone elses as well. A unifier of Israel and of humanity. A pedagogue who teaches the Truth and it's beauty, who ends the era of שקר החן והבל היופי . A Leader who improves all his subjects and is a giver and not a taker. A King whose Reign somehow reflects the Divine King and unifies and integrates all and everyone in G-d's Oneness and Uniqueness. A king who rules over a Kingdom of Heaven. A Governor and Government in Israel that we can glory in instead of one that we must sometimes hide our heads in shame over.

6. I yearn for a world in which the Wise Men of Israel are held in the highest esteem. Not just by our own co-religionists but by consensus of all the nations of the world and their wisest men. כי היא חכמתכם ובינתכם . I yearn for a world in which all of Israel is held in the highest esteem for their wisdom morality and unique Havdala-Qedusha informed G-d relationship. אשר ישמעון, את כל-החוקים האלה, ואמרו רק עם-חכם ונבון, הגוי הגדול הזה. כי מי-גוי גדול, אשר-לו אלוקים קרובים אליו, כה' אלוקינו, בכל-קוראנו אליו. ומי גוי גדול, אשר-לו חוקים ומשפטים צדיקים, ככל התורה הזאת, אשר אנוכי נותן לפניכם היום.

5. I would love to see Jerusalem as the capital of the world not as the flashpoint of geopolitical instability. I'm not satisfied with the current rebuilt ruins of Jerusalem. I want it to have the synergy of all the very best of the aesthetic, spiritual, artistic, architectural, academic, scientific, medical, financial etc. elements of the current world capitals rolled into one... and then some! I want her to reclaim her rightful legacy of 90% of the worlds beauty.

Rebuilt Jerusalem should Bnei Beraq, Lakewood, New York, Rome, Venice, Lourdes, Mecca, Uman, Tokyo, Kathmandu, Tahiti, the Alps, Vale, London, Buenos Aires, Silicone Valley and the Riviera. It should be Wall Street, Fleet Street, Madison Avenue, Saville Row and Main Street. It should be Paris, Peoria and the Farm. It should be THE destination for all people to come to learn , work, play, get healthy, and grow. It should have the tallest buildings, the most brilliant scholars, the vastest Libraries the most exquisite music, art, dance and poetry, the greatest housing the cleanest and swiftest transportation, the tastiest food and drink, the smartest urban planning, the highest technology and the deepest mystery and mystique. The liveliest yet safest streets. In short, it should be the most fitting seat for G-d's Kingdom on earth. It should be a Jewish and world capital that we can all be proud of. It should fulfill בני ציון יגילו במלכם...ובעירם בירתם .

4. I long for Elijah the Prophet . Not just as precursor of the Messianic era (not quite sure why the Messiah needs to be introduced and announced anyway ) but as solver of all insoluble dilemmas. To me these are more than just sugyos in the Gemara that culminate in תיקו but also philosophical conundrums like predestination versus free will, אלו ואלו דברי אלוקים חיים and the questions of the skeptics from the empirical sciences that stymie us believers. Elijah will be the ultimate Frum blogger that will wipe the floor not only with the likes of XGH but with Stephen Hawking et al as well. I pray hard for this on the Days of Awe when I say ופתחון פה למיחלים לך and ועולתה תקפץ פיה . I want the nattering nabobs of Qefira and skepticism silenced once and for all. Case in point; the forces of Gay Pride. Homosexuality used to be "the Love that Dared not speak it's name" now it's "the Love that just can't shut it's Trap". There is so much in our current world that my Havdala sensibilities tell me is the insanity, madness and evil of false equations that steamroll Havdala and Qedusha into monotonous desanctified flatness. When Elijah comes it won't be limited to a gut feeling. Elijah will provide the knowledge and wisdom to win the debates and eliminate ambiguity and ambivalence.

3. I don't know the exact sequence of events (בעת שיעלה לרצון מאת הבורא יתברך שמו) but the Resurrection of the Dead is also a plank in the Torah Eschatological platform. I yearn for this not just because of my personal existential angst and terror of death but for many other reasons as well. Assuming (overly optimistically perhaps) that I will be among those to merit the resurrection, I want to know which of the many bodies my transmigrated soul formerly occupied will it be reunited with in a deathless marriage or if it will be some kind of Frankenstien -like crazy-quilt of all of them. I want to plumb the depths of a light suffusing anatomy that can completely resist the souls departure. I want a new consciousness to grasp that death is dead and that life= eternity and to conceive of existence without evil or impurity. I want to understand how serving G-d will be possible (and what it will mean to be human as something distinct from the Angelic) absent the free will made possible by the existence of the unholy trinity of the Yetzer HaRah-Satan-Angel of Death.

I want to be reunited with my dead parents, relatives friends and Rebbeim whom I loved and who loved me and whom I miss terribly. As a G2 I want to meet , for the first time, the Grandparents, Uncles, Aunts and cousins that Hitler robbed me of. As a dabbler in seforim and very amateur historian I want to meet and thank, for the first time, the great figures in Jewish History whose lives and works inspired me, fired my imagination and turned my preconceived notions on their heads.

2. To solve any and all challenges to Theodicy. I yearn for the day when I can understand why apparent innocents suffer, how transmigration of souls and the dispersal of Israel among the Nations was not throwing good money after bad and how the Holocaust was not only just... but kindness concealed under cover deeper than that provided by any witness protection program. I yearn for a new mind that can wrap itself around these truths. I yearn for the day when the prophecy of "When G-d returns the returnees of Zion we will have been as dreamers (of nightmares)" will be fulfilled.

1. To make sense / success out of my inscrutable / failed life. Somehow I have this deep seated feeling that the atmosphere in the Messianic era will clarify to me both why I failed and that, on some deep and currently unknown level, that I succeeded. Maybe it's that I learned that Prophets had the power to look at a person and tell them what their specific role in life was and that I associate the Messianic era with the return of prophecy. Maybe it's that in some vague Izhbitzian way I hope that just as the "mystery" of Divine "Evil" (unjust punishment, Theodicy) is not merely solved...(see number two) but exposed as a sham, smoke and mirrors wielded by the Yetzer Harah, so much stuff and nonsense, so too will the mystery of Human Evil, of not enough love that equates to too much cruelty, of squandered talent, of blown opportunities, of roads not taken (including and especially my own) be exposed as a mirage.
בא המבדיל והעמידן על אחת
"Those who cannot tolerate Havdala cannot appreciate Qedusha". .
CROSS-POSTED / LINKED HERE

Cursed is the Ground for Thy Sake

click

The auctioneer can make any distinctions he wants between what he is doing and selling AK-47s in Rwanda but all I can say is feh FEH FEHHHHHHHH. This is no business for a nice Jewish Boy.

הרחק מן הכיעור ומן הדומה לו