Under My Skin

Excerpt from my journal:

I'm here on the plane to Israel, about to formally declare myself an Israeli, and it just hasn't sunk in yet. Something makes me wonder whether it will in any reasonable amount of time, if ever. Perhaps I am going to wake up suddenly in the middle of the night, months from now, and say, "wow, I'm here in Israel. I'm an Israeli citizen living in Israel." Or maybe I won't come to the realization abruptly at all; maybe through a series of little pinpricks of experience it will slowly enter my mind or crawl under my skin, the way that cold air seeps through the cracks into old houses in the winter, or like a worn hammock will gradually sap your consciousness from you, until you find yourself dreaming with no clear idea how you got there, but perfectly content to live in the dream for as long as you are permitted.

Leaving On A Jet Plane

Days until departure: 1
No time for too much writing tonight. The time has come to stop counting the lasts (my last visit to NYC before aliyah, my last Shabbos before aliyah, my last time driving before aliyah...)

and time to work on firsts.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Days until departure: 2

I'll have a better sense of it when I've been in Israel for a few weeks, but between my observations when I was there in January and otehr anecdotal evidence, I feel that there was a large number of dati leumi Israelis who have been disillusioned by the Gaza pullout last year. As well they should, because they felt very much betrayed by a government of a country to which they previously felt a deep-rooted loyalty. The widespread wearing of the orange bracelets with the after-the-fact message "לא נשכח ולא נסלח" ("we will not forget and we will not forgive") points to a terrible feeling of despair and anger. And don't get me wrong; to the degree I can understand their hurt, I see where they're coming from, and to the degree that I cannot, I am definitely willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

The question that remains is where this leaves their philosophy, which by some accounts, is in a shambles. Some believed that such a thing simple could not happen, and when it inexplicably did, all Messianic possibilities for (or even religious significance of) the state disappeared. Granted, this may lead to total disillusionment for some, and thereby an abandonment of Religious Zionism altogether. However, I can't help but wonder whether it will lead to a shift away from the philosophies of 'Greater Israel' preached by many of the popular religious leaders, and towards a more moderate (but still dedicated) philosophy, such as one of those preached by R' Aharon Lichtenstein or R' Yehuda Amital.

I recall visiting relatives who found out that I went to R' Aharon's yeshiva, and immediately dismissed him as a smolani, a leftist. R' Aharon himself has admitted to being in the peculiar position of being perceived as too Zionist for the American community and not Zionist enough for the Israeli community. This is, of course, unfortunate, as he articulates a clear and firm religious Zionist doctrine, one that can even accept a disengagement when necessary. As for R' Amital, his (former) association with the left-of-center Meimad party seems to taint him in the eyes of many, even though he also presents a compelling and unique point of view that can withstand an event such as the Gaza pullout. (For an interesting analysis of R' Amital's though - whose accuracy I neither vouch for nor deny - look here.)

I happen to know about these two rabbis because I was in their yeshiva. However, I am sure that there are other prominent rabbis who can lead the way in teaching a new model for popular Religious Zionism, some of whom I know of but cannot comment on enough to say much (R' Yoel Bin-Nun comes to mind), but one thing seems clear: a new philospohy of Religious Zionism must develop if the State of Israel is to retain some of its most dedicated citizens, and if those citizens are to retain their faith - and their hope for a future where we can say "לא נשכח, ונלך הלאה בכל זאת" ("we will not forget, and we will go on nevertheless.")

Too Much

Days until departure: 3

This is too much. Just too much. I mean, I've always wanted to be part of something momentous and grand, but it seems that I've gotten my wish in spades. Not only am I making aliyah, and making it during a war that's turned about 14% of the citizens into refugees and a huge number of reservists into active soldiers. Through a recent article on Arutz Sheva, I also have discovered this about my flight:

On Wednesday, August 16th – the one year anniversary of the forced eviction of the Jews of Gaza – three simultaneous flights will arrive....the planes will depart from Canada, America and England – all arriving simultaneously in the Holy Land.

The August 16, 2006 influx will constitute the largest number of Jews in history making Aliyah to Israel from Western countries in a single day....
- Arutz Sheva, Aug 09, 2006, by Ezra HaLevi (emphasis added)

I don't know. Maybe it's self-centered or something, and I never thought I'd say this, but it's just too symbolic - being part of such a historic event (and anniversary) and not really knowing what I did to deserve it, not knowing how to deal with it, and not knowing whether I can live up to the demands implicit in it. I mean, Should I see myself as part of the salvation of the country, however small a part, or is that too grandiose? And if I don't see myself that way, is it somehow an abandonment of responsibilities inherent in my place in all of this? These are definitely not questions I can answer now, but you can be sure that they are important ones for me to think about in the coming days. I suspect that, like most of the important questions in life, they have no sure answers, but thinking about the questions can have a more profound effect than answering them ever would.

Genesis

Days until departure: 4

Much has been said of the two different accounts of creation in the beginning of the Bible, but I have yet to see anything in print (and I may very well have simply missed it) that discusses the stiking absence of the concept of Sabbath in the second account. [Note: The kernel of this idea comes from Rabbi Uri Gordon.]

The first account goes through days 1-6, and the seventh, the Sabbath, while the second account focuses on the sixth. However, after that, we'd expect to see what becomes of Adam and Eve on the seventh day, something which we never see. In some sense, we may be considered to still be in the sixth day, waiting for some distant seventh day, some period of rest from this tumultuous daily upheaval that we call life. I think this brings a new light to the idea that man is to be partners with God in the process of creation. If we are still in an extended sixth day of creation, then life as we know it is creation.

This all ties in really nicely with my understanding of Judaism's "helical" view of time, where everything cycles while moving forward, but that's for another day.

Tangibility

Days until departure: 5

As some reading this may know, I'm a fan of the tragically short-lived television series, Firefly. The series was billed as a "sci-fi western," which I haven't find to be the easiest premise to sell, especially to a public used to TV catering to the lowest common denominator. As The New York Times put it, it was "a character-rich sci-fi western comedy-drama with existential underpinnings, a hard sell during a season dominated by 'Joe Millionaire.'" (Also, as the article mentions, the network showed the shows out of order and didn't sell it right...but I digress.) The general idea is that 500 years in the future, as new worlds are settled, a new frontier arises, one that bears some important similarity to the Old West.

In any case, I recently acquired the DVD box set of the series, and rewatched the pilot episode, with the commentary of the creator and the star of the series. Among the things that the creator, Joss Whedon, brought up was a central theme, the idea of regaining the tactile sense in life. You'll see it throughout the series, if you care to watch it, and it's striking just how...earthy the whole thing feels. The elements of the show are very interesting, and I might go into them more another time, but what I want to talk about is something that Whedon hints at in his commentary, but doesn't discuss too much.

I think that these days we're only beginning to grasp how far we've gotten from tangible things. Take money, for instance. Originally, we didn't have money. Everything worked on the barter system. You would trade physical goods for other physical goods. Then, to make things easier, we adopted a crude form of currency, usually by assigning semi-arbitrary value to a sufficiently shiny and rare metal. Think gold or silver. Then, for convenience, we started issuing currency, which had value not in the physical composition of the money, but as a representative of stockpiles of precious metals payable upon request - a sort of IOU. It's true - old U.S. paper currency used to be called "gold or silver certificates," redeemable for their value in gold or silver bullion. That's what Fort Knox was, a huge stockpile of gold to back our currency. Then, this ability to exchange banknotes for precious metals (called "convertibilty") stopped, leading to a system of currency called "fiat." (Read about it all here.) It's gets a bit more complicated than this, but under a fiat system, we basically all just agree to treat government-issued bills as valuable because our government said so, and can enforce that declaration. And now, we have the final step, where everything goes digital. Yes, we still use paper currency, but I imagine the vast majority of money in use today is no more than ones and zeroes in some computer somewhere. Money has become less and less tangible, to the point where it's now just floating out there in the ether of computer memory.

I could point to this same trend in any number of other areas of modern life, and I wonder how much we realize what it does to our psyches when nothing is tangible, so nothing feels real. Personally, I find it terrifying, and I think this fact accounts for the large amount of anxiety felt by your average person plugged into our modern culture.

I want to talk more about this lack of tangibility and this feeling of life not being real, especially its roots in philosophy and the sciences, but I think that will wait until another night.

Push

Days until departure: 6

I'm finding that it's harder than expected to keep to this one-post-a-day rule, and I probably should explain why I'm doing it, a bit better than I did earlier.

Five years ago, I spent a year in Yeshiva in Israel, learning Torah practically from morning till night. At the beginning of the year, one rabbi got up and explained that he realized that most of us would not be learning all day like this in our regular daily lives after Yeshiva. It simply wouldn't be the case. That being so, he said, why should we take a year to study so intensively, rather than working on a more "reasonable" schedule? He told us a story:

When he was training in the army, they had gone on a very long hike (we're talking tens of miles, with 60+ pounds of equipment), and upon completing it, he asked his commanding officer why they were doing such a long hike. After all, they weren't likely going to need to hike like that in their actual duty. The officer replied that it wasn't to train them to hike such long distances, as much as to show them that they could do so. So too with learning all day - it was not only to get practice at learning itself, but to prove to ourselves that we could learn all day, go to sleep, and then get up and do it again.

So I'd like to think that (on a smaller scale) my little experiment here is similar. I don't plan on updating every day in the future; I'm trying to prove to myself that I can write this much this fast. I'm not pushing the limits of human endurance or anything, but it's something, I suppose. After this, making sure to post once a week (maybe even once a week in each blog!) should be a piece of cake.

Making ADD work for you?

Days until departure: 7
For those of you who don't know me well enough to know, I've been diagnosed with ADD for something like 10 years now. For the record, from personal experience, it seems to be a real thing, despite the overdiagnosing that may occur. That is, I really feel unusually distracted, more than most people, and these sysmptoms tend to lessen with medication.
In any case, medication or not, I always have some degree of difficulty concentrating, unless the activity is a particularly engrossing one. As such, I'll often jump from channel to channel on the television, or read emails in spurts, or be in the process of reading five books at once. (At present, I'm only in the middle of three books, I think, but I have a few more that I'm adding to the pile.) I can't help but wonder whether this isn't a somewhat positive aspect of this so-called disorder I've been saddled with. You see, I have many varied interests, and I tend to be proud of this fact. I think my ability (or tendency) to jump from idea to idea is part of this whole phenomenon, one that helps me integrate concepts into a larger tapestry of knowledge. (Ok, so that sounded a little pretentious, I think, but I'm too tired right now to tone it down.)

On the other hand, I've found that by jumping from stone to stone, I often don't go deep enough to satisfy to requirements of the material. For this reason, I tend not to have a great grasp on the more complex ideas in philosophy, nor do I have a real appreciation for many famous poets, because both of these disciplines require serious time, effort, and concentration. I guess it's a trade-off of breadth for depth. My main concern here is that sometimes I feel like a phony discussing so many ideas, because I don't always know if I've gone deep enough to grasp them well enough to comment. But my general feeling is that it's better to say what you have to say, and let the world correct you if you're wrong.

Dreamtime

Days until departure: 8
Why is it that we use the same word "dreams" to refer both to our aspirations and the crazy-go-nuts ramblings of our brains during sleep? From the little I know (and correct me if I'm wrong, all you polyglots out there), this oddity holds across different languages, and it doesn't make too much sense at first blush.
I mean, do we truly conflate a person's dream to, say, be head of a major corporation with his dream that he was swimming in a vat of pudding with his grandmother's poodle and his first grade teacher?

Maybe it's because we treat our aspirations as something as unreal as untouchable as our subconscious freestyling. Or maybe we aspire to do things like swim in pudding. Your call.

Geography, Jewish or Otherwise

Days until departure: 9
I'm not sure if it's a solely Jewish phenomenon, but many people, upon meeting each other for the first time, try to make a connection between themselves and the other person, in an n-degrees-of-separation game. I've been guilty of playing this little game on many an occasion. I was thinking, and trying to figure out why people do this. I think partly it's to break the ice, and partly to make conversation. But we all know it's not particularly effective at either task.
Maybe I'm seeing meaning where there is none (a crime I've been known to commit), but I think it's because we, as human beings, are very social creatures. We want to be connected to other people, to be able to point out where we stand in this huge, terrifically tangled web of relationships. "Where do I fit into your life? Well, my family friends the Finkelsteins have a cousin who went to school with your brother. See, we're connected."

On Smell

Days until departure: 10

So one thing that tends to interest me is when pieces of information from two generally unrelated areas of knowledge intersect. I feel like it validates the idea itself, and gives us a brief glimps of how interconnected everything really is.

So here's one example. The sense of smell occupies an interesting place in the realm of human experience. It has been shown that while smells are not better at evoking memories than other senses, they evoke memories more intensely. For instance, if you smelled your grandmother's perfume, you might be able to imagine she's in the room with you. Not so by looking at a picture of her, or hearing a recording. In fact, and I cannot give more details than I can remember from the brief talk I heard, physiologically, the olfactory nerve (the one that conveys smell) has a more direct connection to the brain than the other senses do.

When I learned all this (in a guest lecture by Jofish Kaye), I was reminded of my first visit to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. For those of you who have never been there, there is a cattle car that was used to transport Jews to the camps, set up so that you have to walk through it in order to progress through the museum. I was walking, and a teacher nearby leaned down to smell the cattle car. Perplexed, I asked him why he did so. He explained that four of the five senses were used in the first sin of Adam and Eve, tainting all of them, but leaving smell untainted. In Jewish tradition, smell is therefore considered the most "spiritual" or "pure" sense. (For instance, according to the Talmud (Sanhedrin 93b), the Messiah will be able to judge people by smelling them.)

So both scientists and rabbis have declared smell to be a peculiarly powerful sense, more pure in its effect and more evocative in its scope. Interesting collision of information, no?

Investigating Disruption

Days until departure: 11
Months ago, I went to an academic talk about electronic communication, and how it is affected by a long-distance move. That is, do people tend to talk more on the phone and write more emails when their friends and relatives move further away, and vice-versa? A friend pointed out that one of the aims of this sort of study is getting an understanding of how we use electronic communication these days. She said that by studying how these systems act when disrupted (as they are by a big move), we can better understand how they function normally.
I considered this, and realized that this is actually a standard method in many (hard and soft) scientific disciplines. To understand how a "healthy" or "normal" version of a system functions, we study such a system in disruption, and see how it differs from the usual. For instance, if I'm not mistaken, our first insights to the function of the different areas of the brain came from studying brain damage victims, and how their specific injuries corresponded to their altered behavior.

On Mourning

Days until departure: 12
At times, when I'm thinking about some topic, especially when I intend to write something on it, I take notes on my thoughts. Last Tisha B'av, I wrote a bunch of notes on the ideas behind the initial part of the day, before noon. Here's a brief set of thoughts emerging from those notes, before I have to go back to synagogue to finish up the prayers of the day.

According to the Rav, Tisha B'Av is one of the rare times that we express grief to such a degree, that we actually accuse God of creating our tragedy. It's generally an unthinkable concept, more brazen than we usually are. Indeed, the first set of kinot (the "wailing" prayers we say on this day) often juxtapose what God did with what it seems he ought to have done. How dare we? The Rav points out that in the beginning of Tisha B'Av, we are like recently bereaved mourners - not even up to the shiva period that starts after burial, but onenim. An onen is one who has recently lost someone, before the deceased is buried. "His deceased is suspended before him," the saying goes. When it's that recent, that intense, that visceral, well then the normal rules don't apply. An onen is exempt from many of the positive commandments, and also it is acceptable for such a person to be downright angry with God. Healing of the mourner's heart, and of his relationship to an often inscrutable God may take place later, but for now, we let him off the hook.
So in trying to create a feeling of mourning, our sages patterned our customs and liturgy such that we would be like onenim for part of the day. We move on later in the day, but the specter of intense grief haunts us through the rest of the day.

An interesting thought occurred to me a while back. I was reading a book by the renowned psychologist Paul Ekman, called Emotions Revealed. In it, he talks about the concept of an "emotional refractory period." I don't have the book handy to quote from, but if my memory serves, the refractory period is when you experience an emotion so intensely that you are temporarily blinded to any information that would contradict that emotion. It is usually a very brief period, varying with intensity of emotion, but it's qualitatively different from your normal mode of being. Your mind shuts down all access to anything that would lessen the feeling, though I believe it's usually too brief to have any practical ramifications. It's a scary thought, but Ekman really knows his stuff. In any case, I can't help but wonder whether the onen's permit to indict God comes from an acknowledgement that an onen is in the refractory period of his grief, and therefore cannot be held as entirely responsible for his actions. Thus, he is even permitted an action which would otherwise be blasphemy.

Reason

Days until departure: 13
On the application for Nefesh B'Nefesh (the organization helping me move to Israel), it asks you to write a brief essay telling them anything else you want them to know. I didn't really know exactly what to put in that section. I had already written in an earlier section about why I wanted to move to Israel, so writing an essay about that seemed redundant. So I wrote an essay explaining why I thought I deserved to make aliyah. It was a bit of an odd question, and I crammed a lot of really nice ideas into the one page I wrote. But they weren't really well-connected; the whole thing kind of jumped from idea to idea. It wasn't great, but it was good enough. Nevertheless, months later, NBN contacted me to let me know that they want to make a book of essays, and they want to use mine. I was flattered, to say the least, but I reread the original essay, and I thought I could do better. So after putting it off for a week and a half, I finally sat down two nights ago and in less than an hour, I produced something I was proud of, encompassing a lot of ideas from the original, along with stuff that had been percolating for a while. I don't think it's prize-winning writing, but I liked writing it, so I hope you enjoy reading it:

Last September, I was talking to a friend, an oleh who had moved temporarily from Israel to America. We were discussing the recent disengagement from Gaza, and how painful it was. Regardless of whether it should or shouldn’t have happened, no matter how I looked at it, it all just made me sad. My reasons for making Aliyah felt, well, insufficient.

Yes, I had reasons. I knew them well, and I believed in them, and I believed hard. They’re classic reasons – fulfillment of a national identity, aspirations of personal and religious growth, and a feeling of attachment to a homeland – but they all fell short. They all felt far too idealistic to talk about in the same breath as the messy, complicated reality. I couldn’t bring up these reasons to my friend. So I just asked, “Remind me again why I’m moving to this country?”
"I don't know. I look at the news and I'm reminded of why I left," he replied. I was dumbstruck. I was expecting something uplifting, perhaps a tired sigh as he recalled his first love affair with Israel years ago, or a swell of pride for his time served in the IDF. Not this. I didn’t expect this. I mean, he moved to Israel, didn't he? But he just felt that it was too painful, too difficult to deal with.

Time went on, and in January, I visited Israel. I was reminded of all of my lofty reasons for my upcoming move, but something still gnawed at the corners of my mind. Several people—taxi drivers and potential employers included—asked me why I was moving, especially now, during such a troubled time. I didn't answer them. I couldn't answer them. The words felt wrong coming out of my mouth, because I knew I would sound naïve or childish, listing ideals and high-minded morals. Our generation has been trained to be instinctively skeptical, to look at the world with a cynical eye. Telling these Israelis that I was coming “to be in the Jewish Homeland” or “to fulfill my national destiny” would be almost laughable. So I left Israel, still seeking a clear, rational reason for my upcoming Aliyah, one that I could feel smart and sophisticated explaining at a job interview.

I didn’t find one. Because in the view of the cynic, they’re right to question me. What I’m doing makes no sense. I would, in all likelihood, make more money, be relatively safer, and would still have a viable Jewish community in the United States. But then again, modern-day Israel is a country that simply makes no sense. Despite all the cynicism all around us, deep down, Israel is still swimming against the current and trying to make this crazy experiment called the Jewish State a success. So perhaps it's a good fit – an irrational decision for an unlikely country.

You see, I finally realized that my original reasons were good enough. Maybe we need to tell the modern skeptics that it can be done. We can dream with both feet on the ground, messy reality and all. And what about the pain, the hurt that drove my friend away? I disagree with his view. Making Aliyah is about embracing Israel as a complicated reality, not just as an ideal. If I am to make Israel my home, it isn’t just for the happy times. Situations can be too painful to deal with, but not this one. If your family is rejoicing, you rejoice with it, and if your family is crying, then—especially then—you cry with them. You comfort them. During good times and bad, you always go home, and find an embrace. Sometimes they're mourning at home, and sometimes they're dancing, but you always, always go home. That’s reason enough.

must I write?

Days until departure: 14
I've been thinking a lot. Probably far too much. And I've been reading a bunch.
In the process, I rediscovered the jewel that is Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. As the title of the book suggests, it's just about ordinary, mundane life. As the cover declares:

I have not survived against all odds.
I have not lived to tell.
I have not witnessed the extraordinary.
This is my story.

The style is nice and quirky and it left me with a sense of wonderment that when properly appreciated, ordinary life can be, well, extraordinary.
When I first discovered her book, I actually emailed her to tell her how much I liked it, and to share a random thought that occurred to me. She even wrote back, with a full response, addressing what I wrote. It was whatever you call the opposite of a form letter. (A freeform letter?) It made me happy.

In any case, not too long after finishing that book, I was talking with my friend Josh, and, via an unneccesarily long quote from Rilke, I decided I ought to start writing again. I realized that one of my problems has been that I try to make long, fully polished posts - things that take forever, and which I therefore never start. I think what I said then sums it up:

Anyway, so I decided I have to write more. I have to write stupid things. I have to write incomplete thoughts. I just have to write.

Well, as self-referential (self-fulfilling?) as it is, let's call this a start. If everything goes as planned, I'll have one post a day until I leave for Israel.