Senseless

Yesterday evening a man walked into a Yeshiva and started shooting innocent boys who were learning Torah. You can find details here or here. At times like this we are all asking ourselves why? Why did this have to happen? Unfortunately there are no easy answers and when your facing the reality of living in a place where this is just the reality of life it’s not easy. Everyone around Aish is talking today about security in our building about ways that this could be prevented. Everyone around Aish today is mourning for the young boys who were killed one of which was the son of a Rabbi who teaches a few classes here at Aish. This one hits very close to home, you would like to think that we’re safe, you would like to think that there’s a good reason for this, but there isn’t. Nothing justifies this kind of violence; nothing explains it away or makes it any easier to deal with. I wrote a few days ago about the situation in Gaza and how fortunate I felt to be getting a more personal account of it. How it’s amazing getting to see world opinion from the inside looking out. I’ll be curious to see what world opinion is of this, if the world even takes notice. Never mind. I don’t feel fortunate to have a first hand account of this, I’ve talked to Israelis, one of whom lost a friend in the shooting last night and all their reactions were the same, this is just how it is in Israel, this is the price you pay for living here. It’s terrible that a people could have that kind of attitude that they’re so intimately involved that they just see it as business as usual. I wish I never had the chance to experience this, I wish I didn’t have to talk with my family, trying to justify why I’m living here, why its still so important for me to be here, why I love this land so much, despite what happening, despite the risks, I do now and will always love Israel, for everything that it is and most importantly what I know it could be. So I’m okay, everyone here is okay; we’re just not you know okay. Eretz Israel, shalom, a peaceful and restful Shabbat to all.

It's a beautiful world

I know Aish HaTorah isn't the right place for me, I've known this in many ways since the moment I got here. I'm not knocking it as an institution the four plus months I've spent here have given me a wonderful background for which I'm extremely grateful. I've also met and had a chance to connect with a great number of amazing people and Rabbi's. But I feel more and more each day that I've out grown this place. And so I'm in the process of re-evaluating my options because I'm not done learning, there is after all so much to learn. I don't know where I'm going to do it just that I'm going to continue. So in the next two to three months I'll be moving on, I'll either come home and find a place in New York or find another place here in Israel where I can continue to grow both as a human being and a Jew. It's all very exciting, and I thought you'd like to share in my excitement.

Also after a month of relative silence I'm back in action! It's a beautiful day the sun is shining and I think I'll go enjoy it. I went to a wedding last and have another one to go to tonight, I love getting to share in all the joy, its a beautiful thing. Eretz Israel!

The Conventional Wisdom is Wrong

This is a wonderful op-ed from The Jerusalem Post. Check it out.

Also check out this Article from the J-Post, it focuses on the complete failure of the Israeli government to protect its citizens and here's another one from Haaretz. I've also been appalled(but not altogether surprised) by the reporting that consistently goes on about the situation here in Israel and the medias complete failure to report it in any kind of objective manner. Living in Israel gives you a feel and perspective for the situation here that I wouldn't trade for the world, if this is all I got from my time being here I'd still be thrilled. Enjoy.

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.

Sincerity

For the answer, one should turn (as always) to the teachings of Marx. "The secret of success in life is sincerity," Groucho once famously observed. "If you can fake that, you've got it made."

My dad sent me this quote via email, its from the great Marx brothers and if you've never seen a movie from them, well then I just feel sorry for you. Enjoy, Eretz Israel

I can't go back, can I??

I’m really screwed up, I’m not sure how this happened, but one day I woke up and realized I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. Why am I an Israel? What am I trying to accomplish? I don’t know. I was talking with my friend Ben last night about the difficulties involved in becoming a more observant Jew and he said to me something simple. It’s his opinion and he’s probably totally right that if I just go home now I’ll always have these spiritual questions nagging at me. If I just try to forget all about this then I’ll always feel a void. And if I become religious I’ll always feel like I’m alienating my family. That by becoming religious I feel like I’ll be separating my family from my life and I just can’t deal with that. And you know what I think he’s right and that’s where I am right now. I can’t deal with becoming religious because I know that it will separate me from my family, that it will create this great divide between us that will be impossible to cross. I’m so blessed that I have a family who I’m so close with that I feel such anguish about making any little decision about my life that could separate my family from myself. And yet it just makes the decisions I make here that much harder. I really hate being here sometimes. I wish that I could forget all about religious Judaism and just go back to my old life, as one Rabbi says around here “All you guys get to this point in your learning and you’re all the same because you realize I can’t go back now, can I? And it scares the heck out of you. I hate it, I hate that I have to make decisions that I know will make me different and apart from my family because I feel obliged to find the truth and seek it out and live it. I really hate being here and yet I know I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing.

24 in 2

I’m going to be twenty four in two weeks and I think I’ve mentioned this to everyone here about twenty four times an hour for the last month. It’s funny because I never know how a birthday is going to hit me. Some years I barely realize its my birthday until the day before, others I think about nonstop months before. This one has definitely fallen into the later category. Its funny how these things happen, but it seems only natural that this year I’d be freaking out about my birthday, after all did I mention I’m going to be twenty four, that means I’m officially in my mid-twenties I’ve been out of college for about two years now and I’m currently unemployed and in Israel trying to figure out what life actually means to me as opposed to living in New York or some other place, working, making money and advancing in some company somewhere so I could hope possibly one day to find a nice girl, move to the suburbs, have a couple of kids and never think about what I’m actually doing. I’m being inane of course but still the question remains. And I’m not going to pretend that it’s not in my brain nagging at me, when am I going to go back to the real world and get my life going? Time is such a crazy thing when your young it seems totally unlimited and that old saying youth is wasted on the young becomes more and more true each year. Now that I’m where I am, doing what I’m doing time is all I think about. And it drives me insane sometimes because it doesn’t even exist and yet there are few things that are more persistent. And so time marches along moment by moment, day by day. Did I mention I’m going to be twenty four in two weeks??