To Clarify

I feel the need to clarify a post I recently posted. So I’m going to post a few things that come to my head in an email conversation I had. First I have no plans on being a resident of Israel. I love this country with all my soul, but as the old saying goes it would be so much better without all those damn Israeli's.

I don't want to live in a small box and I know living in Jerusalem especially the Old City is just that a very little box. While I find my religion fascinating, exhilarating and at times extremely troubling and difficult being a religious extremist is not in my plans. It’s become plainly obvious to me that I'm quite ignorant about what Judaism really is although I certainly know a lot more now then I did before. I have many, many issues with it, its conservatism; it’s restrictiveness on not only ones actions but thoughts as well. After all the tenth commandment is don't covet your neighbor’s property as if god thinks he can govern our thoughts as well as our actions. All that being said and problems aside that doesn't mean it’s not true and I'm sorry if that statement is troubling, it should be because its sure given me a lot of trouble over the last two plus years. Because if it is true, and I might as well just say it if this isn't true then nothing is. Then lets just face facts there are really only two options out there which is either nothing is true or one thing is. Subjective reality is after all a most unsatisfying and illogical world view after all, we all know that there is right and wrong. It’s my impression that as a society we've become disconnected from what’s real, for all our physical achievements we have lost touch with reality, with the mystical with the mysterious.

Maybe there really is no right and wrong maybe god doesn't exist. I'll never know for sure all I can do right now is learn and be as skeptical as possible. Believing in the divine nature of reality as I'm well aware sounds fantastic and I’ll just say it a bit crazy but that doesn't make it wrong or right for that matter either. Maybe I have lost my mind don't think I've never thought about that or for that matter don’t think about it daily. And yet here I am still in Jerusalem, still learning. I still can't read Hebrew well enough but I am getting better, I still don’t know the basic laws of living as a Jew well enough although I am making progress. I went to a wedding last night and I was talking with a newer guy who was remarking about the joy and the festiveness of the wedding he was in total awe and he said so. I could help but laugh because a wedding in this world means something; it means that both of their lives are going to be changed drastically from this moment on. Something that I don't feel is the case in the secular world. And I can't help but see that and think about that how life in this world has so much more inherent meaning wrapped around it.

I think about my brother-in-law being in Israel and wrapping tefillin everyday he was here and I wonder why he would do that if this was all just made up. What compelled him to do that if they're just some silly little black boxes with leather straps? It simply doesn't make sense and it’s in those subtitles that I can get lost. This is not easy for me, every time I talk with my mom and my sister I hear how badly they want me to come home in their voices even when they don't say it explicitly which they do often.

I know if I desire to I can be a religious Jew and still a 'productive' member of society, Jacob after all had 12 sons and they all received a different blessing one to learn all day, others to fish and plant the land, others to trade and support the ones who learn, etc. Judaism has always stressed a diverse and dynamic society. And I'm just trying to find my place in it.