Wednesday, November 26, 2008

The Rat Race

In case you were wondering about the title of my last post “the way of walking” that particular title is the best possible definition I found for halacha or the Oral law. It’s a somewhat subtle reference to people finding their own way in this world regardless of where it takes them. It has its on flaws which I accept but is none the less an important idea to me.

Today I want to talk about the rat race its never more apparent then during the commute to work. Let me lay it out for you. Every morning I wake up before the sunrises, I shower, pray, eat and drive to the train station. At the train station I wait it line with all the other people on their way into the city, we all file orderly onto the train and I sit down and promptly fall asleep. Upon arrival into New York everyone files orderly off the train, up the stairs and to the subway. I wait quietly listening to music or reading a book, the train comes and we all pile on. I get off and walk to work. That’s the summary of my commute. It is never more apparent to me then in that time of the ultimate futility of my actions I do feel like a rat running through a maze for a piece of cheese. But you know what? That’s okay, that’s life and we all do what we have to do in order to make it in this world and right now a long and tiring commute is part of the equation.

It can be a weird experience you see many of the same people every single day, those people who are operating on the same schedule as you. For instance I see this one girl almost everyday. I’ve seen her enough times that I could describe her in detail, the black peat coat and the pink scarf she wears everyday, the two bags she is always carrying. I even know that she has a cup of coffee everyday. And yet I’ve never spoken to her, never acknowledged her existence. It’s strange I want to say hello sometimes just because I feel like I should, after all I feel like I know her she is a familiar face in my life and who knows maybe we could be friends.

Not to that I care not that it really affects my daily life but still it’s something I think about all those people we pass everyday. Everyone has a story, and I hardly know any of them I see this girl everyday we’ve stood next to each other on the subway in the morning at least ten or fifteen times in the last month. It just strikes me as strange I know this may sound slightly stalker-ish but this interaction between us got me thinking this morning about all of our own untold stories. Once again be safe, eat some delicious turkey, watch some football, whatever tickles you’re fancy and have a great turkey day.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

The way of walking

I’ve officially been home for three months; it’s totally unbelievable that it’s been that long already. So much has happened; so much has changed that I can hardly keep track of it all. I’ve been working for almost a month, I’ve been commuting into the city, I’ve started looking for a new apartment, I’ve been testing boundaries, I’ve been questioning past assumptions. I have in short grown an unbelievable amount. I was thinking about what I’ve done since I graduated college and about what my friends have done and I was thinking about how we’ve all begun to make real decisions about our lives. Some of us have focused on our careers; some have gone back to school choosing to make a large investment into their future careers or looking to open new doorways in a given field. Others like me have taken the first few post college years for personal development; have chosen to focus a little more inwardly. I believe all paths are valid and all have had their own pluses and minuses.

Post College life should after all be for many the first opportunity we’ve had to really blaze our own trail. I mean for me it was the first time when there was no ‘logical’ next step, no simply given next thing to pursue. When you grow up you go to elementary school, then middle, the high school. After that most of us do the college thing, in college most people are just trying to get out, four necessary years of your life to just get over with and move on from there. But after college what now? I mean you’ve just spent the last twenty two or so years of your life trying to grow up. Wanting to be able to make your own decisions to set your own priorities and now that you’ve got that little piece of paper you can at long last! But that excitement quickly wears off as the reality hits you and many are left scared and confused. This is a natural thing, after I graduated I spent that first summer doing odd jobs, making a little money and generally doing my best to avoid making any real decisions. I regret nothing, I needed sometime to sort myself out and after I had it I took off in a direction what direction? I didn’t even matter it was somewhere and for me at the time that was enough. As it turned out I got caught up learning about Judaism and needed some time to explore that and I had and continue to have that opportunity. It was and is important to me to find something that gives my life context. It is an important thing before one starts to live, to live fully and ecstatically and I don’t think one can do that until they find that, maybe I’m wrong I’m willing to consider it. But I don’t think I am, it’s becoming more and more obvious to me now, now that I’m back where I was before.

When I left New York the first time I left not because I was unhappy but because I had an itch to scratch. Because I needed to see what this whole thing meant to me, because I was unsure why I was doing what I was doing and that scared me. I needed clarity and at least on this one point I have definitely got it. I now know why I’m working, why I’m going where I am (even if I’m not entirely sure where that is) and I know I wouldn’t have gotten that if I hadn’t left. Mark Twain said “when I was eighteen I thought my father a fool, after a few years I was surprised to find out how much the man had learned.” Which is just kind of a clever way of says sometimes a little age and experience can go a long way. His father after all had gotten no wiser, he himself had, he had grown up and he could now see the wisdom of his father that he had previously been unable to. I feel that way about my maniac mitzvah.

At the time I was unsure about my chosen path i.e. living in New York, becoming more religious, working, etc. Now that I’m home I feel confident in doing more or less exactly what I was doing before my paranoia about it is much more subdued it hasn’t gone but it tempered by a wisdom I didn’t possess a year ago. I now feel much more confident in my pursuits; much more grounded by them, funny how life can happen like that. Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving Weekend everyone. Shalom Alechem.

Friday, November 21, 2008

The Final Frontier

I’ve been dealing recently with the idea of duality. In other words how to deal with opposing forces / ideas. This is not such a simple thing and it is not the first time I’ve struggled with it. I find that inevitably in my most trying time’s spirituality this is the idea that I come back to. An example I identify myself with my body when I look in the mirror and see my face that’s me, that’s my identity. And that body that I am directs me in certain ways, its greats hungry and I feed it, I lusts and wants and desires and I deal with those feelings, its falls in love with every pretty girl its sees on the subway, etc. On the other hand I live by a set of codes and of ethics. I will do this, I won’t do that. I know that I should be identifying myself by what I know is true, that I should strive to identify myself and my actions with what I know to be reality, what I know to be true. Buts its not always such an easy thing.

Lately I have been having a very hard time with this. My mind and by consequence my body as well are stuck in the lower places. I’m having trouble shaping and channeling my desires. I think that a lot of this has to do with being in what I consider stasis. I’m working, I’m commuting four hours a day, and my day consists of little besides my work routine. So I find that my mind to gets stuck in a cycle. It’s a form of atrophy and its feels like a slow suicide. That’s a huge exaggeration but that’s how its feels and often that’s all that matters. The reality and the perceived reality blend together and become in disguisable; it is that duality thing I have been talking about.

So what’s the solution to all of this? While I am not totally sure I know it could be eased by allowing myself to move on. To find a new space to make a new place for myself is the key. I am a very place oriented person; I crave space of my own. A place where I get to make the rules where I get to define the reality and place that is truly my own. It’s finny that I can be aware of that and yet still get stuck into the traps that living without that create for me. So strange, so very, very strange that it has to be like this…

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Born Again

This article about our president elect Barack Obama (am I the only one who finds it amazing that his name is derived from the Hebrew baruch i.e. blessing, just a thought). Was sent to me from my friend Jeremy. I have referenced our conversations numberious times in this blog and can safely say he has had as much of an influence on what I write. More often he has helped me refine and polish my ideas on this blog. He is an avid reader which makes me feel good and a wonderful sounding board. He has caught up on ideas I've written and demanded clarity when I was being vague. Heres the money quote:

FALSANI:So you got yourself born again?

OBAMA:Yeah, although I don't, I retain from my childhood and my experiences growing up a suspicion of dogma. And I'm not somebody who is always comfortable with language that implies I've got a monopoly on the truth, or that my faith is automatically transferable to
others.I'm a big believer in tolerance. I think that religion at it's best comes with a big dose of doubt. I'm suspicious of too much certainty in the pursuit of understanding just because I think people are limited in their understanding. I think that, particularly as somebody who's now in the public realm and is a student of what brings people together and what drives them apart, there's an enormous amount of damage done around the world in the name of religion and certainty.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Inner Worlds

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about Aish and what I consider the Aish mentality and I’ve decided something; Aish is most definitely a cult. This may not surprise some people but the bottom line is it is without exception. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing in fact as far as most cults go Torah Judaism would be one of the better ones to fall into. At its core it preaches ethical living, and tolerance. Unfortunately that is just not what comes out of it in general and that is a very big issue. For better and for worse being absolutely convinced that you have a strangle hold on the truth can be a very dangerous thing. In some ways it’s a very good thing, I find that the people whom I admire are outstanding individuals their lives are tempered by the understanding that they are doing exactly what they were put on this earth to do. They move with a sense of purpose, vision and confidence. I admire that greatly. But I have yet to be convinced.

Look I love Torah its beautiful beyond words, yes it irritates me, yes I struggle with how it fits into my life, yes some days I wish I had never discovered this. But I love it, at some of the worst times in my life, in some of the darkest moments it has been a rock to keep me together. Tethered to it I knew with no doubt that I would make I through okay. I will therefore never discount it. But I will criticize it, I will question it and I will deviate from it when circumstances permit it. Because it is not static it is dynamic and that’s where Aish really gets it wrong. It tries to box Judaism into this little tiny space where there is no room for anything but it. It claims that its brand of Torah is the most authentic, unchanging, and eternal. But it is the Torah itself that is eternal everything else is transient, Torah and Torah alone is the absolute.

This is where in my humble opinion people get really mixed up. It is when people’s minds turn into sponges disgusted as critical thinkers. Because that is exactly what makes Aish and other institutions like it cults, they disguise absorbing knowledge, knowledge where people start with similar assumptions about the world and then build them as critical thinking. But its not that’s assumption building, and when one begins to do that they can lose sight of their abilities to analyze questions critically. They are so caught up with the question or the problem that they never stop to think about the base it is built upon.

The more time I spend away from Aish the more I simultaneously appreciate the way they helped shape my mind and the more I recognize how much they poisoned it by actively discouraging the reading and understanding of philosophical works. Because the Torah is expansive it has spawned many, many great thinkers and not all of they analyzed the Torah itself. Many of them observed life; many of them saw the world in different ways. The Torah by my understanding of Jewish philosophy is life itself the world and everything that is a part of the world is the Torah. If that is the case then I think that we as critical thinkers need to give ourselves the chance to experience the world and find our own Torah within in it.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Hachever sheli Benyamin

Rarely do I sit down to write with a specific topic in mind, this may or may not surprise regular readers. Most of the time I just a get a though in my head, a song lyric, whatever it is and I go from there. Not so today, today I want to write a blurb about a very good friend of mine. This morning we said farewell, for the first time in a long time we will be living on opposite sides of a big ocean. On Sunday he is going back to Israel, back to Jerusalem, back to Aish HaTorah (but not for to long, you promised and I will not let you forget) and I am staying in New York.

Actually I am doing more then staying; I am (trying) to settling down. Putting down roots and establishing myself. I am ready to settle. But my friend Benyamin is not, right now he’s on fire, the Torah is burning inside of him, and in many ways I’m jealous. I in many ways wish I felt the same, but I don’t, I don’t want to spend any more time in yeshiva, the idea of spending all day learning Torah right now doesn’t appeal to me at all. I’m just not in that place, I want to be here, I want to be working; I want to be doing what I’m doing right now. It’s a good feeling knowing that I’m no track. But it also makes me sad, I long to attach myself to the Torah as fiercely as he is doing. I can’t believe that I have that feeling; that alone is proof of the great growth I’ve experienced in the last few years and I’m proud of it. But I don’t want to talk about me I want to talk about me and Ben, Ben and I. When two people engage in discussion, in deep discussion about the nature of things, the Torah says they bring the holy presence into that space and that time. That by coming together and committing to learning and growing they are bringing god directly into the world.

Since that first day at Aish HaTorah; Ben and I have done just that countless times. Most people who we meet, most people that come into our lives are transient, they come and they go, they play their role upon the stage of our lives and they leave just as quickly as they arrived, Shakespeare had it right when had Macbeth say: “Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more” but a very, very small handful of people enter our lives and never leave, they inexplicably become tied to us and us to them. We develop bonds, which grow deep and can not be broken. These are the relationships that ultimately matter and they are the most precious thing in the world.

I feel very blessed to have found one of those friendships in my friend Benyamin he is a rare and special friend. And as he prepares to go off once again to that beautiful and mysterious land we call Israel, I want to give him a blessing to go in peace, to find satisfaction in the activities he chooses to engage in and to always remember he has a home where ever I am. Home is where your heart is and my heart goes with you my friend wherever you go. Shalom Alechem and Bizrat Hashem we will see each other again soon.

Avada Kedavra

Becuase you know I love Harry Potter and Torah:

Avada Kedavra (the killing curse), is the only incantation in the Harry Potter series that's based not on Greek or Latin words but on words from Hebrew and Aramaic. In Hebrew avada means "I will destroy," and kedavra means "as I will speak," so the killing curse in Hebrew means "I will destroy as I will speak," a fitting translation.

Check out this blog for more.

Monday, November 10, 2008

A Better Way

Sometimes a song sums up our mood perfectly, sometimes an Artist expresses our own inner feelings better then we could ever hope to. Over the last few days I’ve been listening to every Ben Harper song I have on my ipod on a loop. The collection I have is scattered 42 songs from 5 albums. Its great music just good solid blues/ rock/ soul/ spiritual music, it’s the kind of music that makes me just want to burst out into song on the Subway. As it is I can barely contain myself, in fact if you see a fellow nodding his head, tapping his feet at 8:30am on the 2 train, well you may just be looking right at me. I love his stuff it’s the kind of music that goes straight to your soul. I love even more that he’s a Jew (His mother is Jewish), he much like his music is multi-cultural, he draws from influences all around the world. His stuff makes me feel so good inside sometimes that I can’t even contain myself. And on this beautiful New York City afternoon I just had to share it with the world. After all so frequently we find ourselves disappointed by all of the things going on in our lives that I think it is important to talk about that which surpasses our expectations. Those things which make us glad just to be wherever we are doing whatever we’re doing. Do you have those things in your life? I certainly hope so because it is those things that make life truly worthwhile and when you find them try to appreciate them, because too often we can’t.


I'm a living sunset
Lightning in my bones
Push me to the edge
But my will is stone

Because I believe in a better way…

Thursday, November 6, 2008

The Nature of Things

You live you learn, apparently. Although I have to say I see very little learning around here. By here I mean anywhere I go, as far as I can tell no one knows what the hell is going on and all they do is do their best to react to the situations put in front of them. Immanuel Kant said “Everything in this world is predictable, everything is logical, everything makes sense except for human life.” I’m paraphrasing in fact Kant maybe not have even said that, I heard a lecture and the Rabbi giving that lecture said that Kant said those things. So I don’t even know if what I am writing was even said or if I’m just making it up. That getting me thinking about the ‘realness’ of our lives perhaps this is appropriate considering I just quoted one of the great philosophers of the last 500 years. And philosophy is the avenue of mad men and lunatics. But really what is real, our ideas or philosophies, important ideas, ideas that we base our lives off of. Ideas that take us in one direction or the other may not even exist. They may only exist because we exist, because we give them form and substance and content. We interpret them and express them and make them real. I don’t want to get off on a rant about this, men far greater then I have spent far more time thinking about and discussing these ideas then me. But it does stick in my craw just a little bit. It agitates me much the same way that you can not ignore that little piece of food stuck between your teeth. I just can’t let go of this idea, and I don’t know why. Maybe its because I’m transitioning at the moment trying to reestablish myself on a familiar place, with my head filled with new ideas about what life is and could be. I don’t know. I wish I did, I do not think that I am alone on that one. To often I get stuck thinking that I’m the only one who is. It’s a lonely and ridiculous feeling. I spoke with a friend the other day who reminded me of this, I don’t even know if he realizes he did or how much it meant to me to for that hour we spoke feel like I had a kindred spirit in this crazy world. He is not the first nor will he be the last to remind me of this. It feels good for even an hour to know that I’m not alone that god willing I will never be alone. Just know what if / when you ever feel that way you to are not alone.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

A New Day

Today is a new day in America and its just starting to hit me. At 10:00pm last night I turned the TV off, once the results for Ohio were in with Florida, Indiana and North Carolina close that was that. McCain had no way to win and we all knew it. I went to bed knowing that America had made its choice and now we have to live with it. It is a weird thing for me personally I’ve matured with W’s presidency, watched a man I didn’t like or agree with about much mess with a country I love. Over those eight years I also became decidedly more conservative, I don’t mean Republican I mean conservative, with a small c.

Winston Churchill said “Any man who is under 30 and not a liberal has no heart, any man who is over 30 and not a conservative has no brains”. And as I have gotten older and moved into my mid-twenties I have become more conservative. I do not agree with Obama about everything. I suspect that over the next four years I will find a lot to disagree with him about. But I do think his election is a great sign that our system still works, that America is not George W Bush and his many failed policies. I’m proud today to be an America as I was yesterday and the day before that.

It really began to hit me today as I was on the train coming into NY, everyone was talking, and everyone had something to say. I now work at a place where the mission is to end poverty and hunger around the world. People are excited, people are energized; people believe that today with Barack Obama in line to take office that they are closer then ever to achieving those goals. People around my office know hope. I am excited to be a part of something like this, I to know hope.