My grandfather, of blessed memory, would constantly urge me to take advantage of my time, not to waste it. “The time goes,” he said, “and it never comes back.” In all fairness, this is what I remember him saying. I can’t recall when he started saying it, and I don’t remember all the things he said; but this stuck with me. And it was very meaningful coming from him. His was an image of someone involved in one thing or another; reciting his Tehillim, typing on his typewriter, changing light bulbs, bookkeeping, etc. It was noteworthy even to observe the way he would ‘watch’ television. If there was a football game on- inexplicably, my grandfather was something of a Michigan Wolverines fan- he would pause when passing the screen, but he would never sit down.
Despite the abundant evidence in his personal example, I always found it convenient to interpret his advice in the most general way. A teenager and young adult can appreciate only so much of what his aging grandfather means. As much as I admired, revered, and appreciated him- I heard his words with the prejudice that he was speaking as a retiree and with an urgency that simply didn’t apply to me. Don’t waste years, he was saying. Of course, in retrospect, I presume he meant more.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The powerful and sobering thought struck me as I was engrossed in wasting time and feeling quite guilty about doing so. What if Gd were to tell me that He will shorten my life so long as I continue to dawdle? If He would take an hour, half an hour, five minutes or less for every hour, etc., that I spent aimlessly surfing the Internet or doing any of a number of other meaningless, useless, or even destructive tasks, would I continue?
I must have considered it quite a forceful notion, because I stopped straightaway. I don’t have any good reason to presume that Gd governs His world in such a manner, and, presumably, divine justice is much more complicated than that. But the mere possibility was compelling enough. Surely extra moments of my life were far more valuable than, well, the pursuit of nothing.
What was so terrible in the concern that I could lose five minutes? If my best hope for five minutes of my own time was that they would be wasted, that they could not be profoundly meaningful in the best of circumstances, then losing five minutes would not be a big deal. I never like to have anything taken away from me, even more so when it comes to moments of my life. I would like to think- I have to think- that those five minutes are invaluable.
There’s a postscript to my little epiphany story. Before I could get up, it really hit me. What if Gd wouldn’t take away portions of my life, because he didn’t need to? In a very real sense, I was already taking the time off my life all by myself. By investing my time in emptiness, I was already actively engaged in shortening my life.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Friday, September 4, 2009
An Apology to Ms. Spears
Dear Ms. Spears,
You don’t know me and have never heard of me. I am as certain as I can be that we will never meet. And, to be honest, I don’t even know your music.
All that said, you might wonder why I am writing you a letter. The shameful truth is, I owe you an apology. You would never know it, but I have played my own small part in wronging you and doing you everlasting damage.
Before you get the wrong idea, I guess I should explain myself. I think I am older than you are. When I first heard of you, I believe you were 15 or so, and I was already out of high school. Some people I knew owned your music. I knew that your songs were being played all over the radio, although I wasn’t listening to those stations. And though I wasn’t a concert go-er or an MTV watcher, I learned by osmosis that you were causing a great stir with your dancing and parading on video and on stage. While it was of no particular interest to me personally, the public eye celebrated you as something of a mini-goddess. They adored you and doted on you, followed you around and made you into a star.
But it wasn’t out of respect or true admiration that the world took notice. Unfortunately, it was out of exploitation. You were not noticed; you were ogled. The media objectified you and took advantage of you, all the while pretending you were older, more mature, and in control.
In time, the fascination petered out, leaving you out in the cold. The adulation to which you had grown so accustomed no longer came naturally, and you had nothing to show for it. At some point, I became conscious of headlines in mainstream media outlets, outlining a wide variety of your personal and legal troubles. I distinctly remembered that you had been blond, and then all of sudden you were a brunette. It’s very nice to be a brunette, of course; but you didn’t seem a very happy one.
I must not and cannot judge you; I can’t presume to understand the whole picture. But it is hard to avoid the conclusion that you underwent a crisis. Here was the adoring world, following you with great interest, and then it was gone. And the only tool you had at your disposal to reclaim that attention was your physicality, your body. You learned that your mind was not valued and that your personality was not interesting; in short, you learned that the media thought that you were worthless.
And nobody came to help you.
Why am I apologizing for all this? I don’t run any media outlets, I never did an internet search for you or your name, and I can’t recall ever even clicking on a headline about you. But I cannot and will not deny that I too have played my own small role in the media’s mechanism for destroying women and destroying you. I held a hotmail email account, when they were running distasteful and empty banner ads aside my email. I read news and sports websites that regularly ran offensive articles and ads. And these images and ideas caught my attention. Wittingly or unwittingly, I learned your name and those of many other women like you, who are championed and supposedly exalted for all the wrong reasons. In these ways, I fed into a system which programmatically, if subtly, sends the message that a woman’s worth lies primarily in her sexuality. Clearly then, I helped to steal your youth and irreparably damage your life.
Obviously, these lifestyle choices have hurt countless others as well. Some have doubtlessly idolized you and wanted to follow in your footsteps, with idyllic notions of grandeur and without awareness of the consequences. As an aside, I think we could safely assume that the very same values influenced your own initial decision to plunge into this media world in the first place. And sometimes, we fail to acknowledge the toll that this objectification takes on men as well. The subjects of all this desire, men marginalize their own sensibilities and values in the most dehumanizing and depraved way. Men make themselves into animals.
But I have come to apologize to you. Your life should be more meaningful, is far more meaningful, than the world has publicly conceded. And I contributed to the distorted view that reduced you to a two-dimensional image. For this, I am truly remorseful, and I beg your forgiveness.
Wishing you better,
Yonatan Kohn
You don’t know me and have never heard of me. I am as certain as I can be that we will never meet. And, to be honest, I don’t even know your music.
All that said, you might wonder why I am writing you a letter. The shameful truth is, I owe you an apology. You would never know it, but I have played my own small part in wronging you and doing you everlasting damage.
Before you get the wrong idea, I guess I should explain myself. I think I am older than you are. When I first heard of you, I believe you were 15 or so, and I was already out of high school. Some people I knew owned your music. I knew that your songs were being played all over the radio, although I wasn’t listening to those stations. And though I wasn’t a concert go-er or an MTV watcher, I learned by osmosis that you were causing a great stir with your dancing and parading on video and on stage. While it was of no particular interest to me personally, the public eye celebrated you as something of a mini-goddess. They adored you and doted on you, followed you around and made you into a star.
But it wasn’t out of respect or true admiration that the world took notice. Unfortunately, it was out of exploitation. You were not noticed; you were ogled. The media objectified you and took advantage of you, all the while pretending you were older, more mature, and in control.
In time, the fascination petered out, leaving you out in the cold. The adulation to which you had grown so accustomed no longer came naturally, and you had nothing to show for it. At some point, I became conscious of headlines in mainstream media outlets, outlining a wide variety of your personal and legal troubles. I distinctly remembered that you had been blond, and then all of sudden you were a brunette. It’s very nice to be a brunette, of course; but you didn’t seem a very happy one.
I must not and cannot judge you; I can’t presume to understand the whole picture. But it is hard to avoid the conclusion that you underwent a crisis. Here was the adoring world, following you with great interest, and then it was gone. And the only tool you had at your disposal to reclaim that attention was your physicality, your body. You learned that your mind was not valued and that your personality was not interesting; in short, you learned that the media thought that you were worthless.
And nobody came to help you.
Why am I apologizing for all this? I don’t run any media outlets, I never did an internet search for you or your name, and I can’t recall ever even clicking on a headline about you. But I cannot and will not deny that I too have played my own small role in the media’s mechanism for destroying women and destroying you. I held a hotmail email account, when they were running distasteful and empty banner ads aside my email. I read news and sports websites that regularly ran offensive articles and ads. And these images and ideas caught my attention. Wittingly or unwittingly, I learned your name and those of many other women like you, who are championed and supposedly exalted for all the wrong reasons. In these ways, I fed into a system which programmatically, if subtly, sends the message that a woman’s worth lies primarily in her sexuality. Clearly then, I helped to steal your youth and irreparably damage your life.
Obviously, these lifestyle choices have hurt countless others as well. Some have doubtlessly idolized you and wanted to follow in your footsteps, with idyllic notions of grandeur and without awareness of the consequences. As an aside, I think we could safely assume that the very same values influenced your own initial decision to plunge into this media world in the first place. And sometimes, we fail to acknowledge the toll that this objectification takes on men as well. The subjects of all this desire, men marginalize their own sensibilities and values in the most dehumanizing and depraved way. Men make themselves into animals.
But I have come to apologize to you. Your life should be more meaningful, is far more meaningful, than the world has publicly conceded. And I contributed to the distorted view that reduced you to a two-dimensional image. For this, I am truly remorseful, and I beg your forgiveness.
Wishing you better,
Yonatan Kohn
Thursday, August 27, 2009
What makes us "big"
If you were to ask my children (you have to figure out just how to put it to them), they would tell you that there are two classes of children, babies and big boys and girls. I readily admit that we, as parents, assume a great deal of responsibility for this taxonomy, but the children seem to have made a whole worldview from this subtle distinction. To their minds, big kids are trusted, worthy of respect, wise, and, most importantly, privileged. The elite “big kids” may use special (read: fragile) utensils, stay up late, and eat larger portions of sugary food and drink. By contrast, babies cannot be trusted with special utensils, books, or toys; are not entitled to retain personal property; and are free to be dragged around and handled as though they were stuffed animals.
Mind you, my “big kids” are four years old and three years old, respectively. In their advanced age, they are practically ready for retirement.
By what criteria does one graduate from babyhood to bigkidness? Obviously, there are several factors which reflect the child’s status. To list a few, there is where the child sleeps, in a crib or a bed. Then there is whether one is able to eat solids (i.e. as opposed to nursing), and whether that is with hands and bottles, or forks, spoons, and cups. And one of the biggest telltale signs, no doubt, is being toilet-trained. One simply cannot claim bigkidness in diapers. He would be laughed right out of the nursery.
Kids take their statuses very seriously and very personally. My four year-old girl and my three year-old boy have come to a compromise on how exactly he is to be categorized. He is kzat gadol and kzat beinoni, partly big and partly average. Very proud of his rank, several times a day he can be heard telling us or confirming with us that this is indeed accurate. Of course, his sister sees it as her right and civic duty to continually remind him that she is older than he is, even if they are the same physical size. In any case, I have observed that this consciousness is not only in our family. Imagine the rancor and upheaval that resulted when one particularly insolent child taunted other kids (some of them older than he) from the comfort of his bedroom window, “Atem ketantonim! (You are tiny!)”
Naturally, I realized that the obsession would serve me as a great educational weapon, er- tool. The standard criteria notwithstanding, I have begun to suggest to my children that there is an even greater and truer definition of bigkidness. “A big boy/girl,” I assert, “knows how to listen.” Obviously, I don’t have a source for my position other than my own intuition. But it sure makes for a very useful tool in my arsenal of parental guidance; the child’s ‘rank’ becomes a function of his or her ability to cooperate. And although my principle is not necessarily authoritative and objective, it is quite reasonable. Isn’t the ability to “listen” a function of self-discipline and self control? If bigkidness is a function of maturity, emotional maturity seems as fair a scale as physical maturity.
Now, in the irony of familial politics, my “big” status does nothing for my credibility as an interpreter of bigkidness. My children, thus far anyway, seem thoroughly unimpressed with my definition. Indeed, the upshot of my position is that my one-year old (in diapers, mind you), often much more eager to follow instructions than his siblings, is somehow “bigger” than they are.
So I have had to revisit my approach. Do I really believe that the youngest and most dependent of my children is the most mature? Unlikely. Far-fetched. Inconceivable.
The truth is that, obviously, the older children also know how to listen. In fact, their occasional refusal to listen is reflective of their maturity. After learning how to listen, they learned how to assert themselves and how to disobey. In other words, they are big enough to listen, but they are also big enough to ignore.
And still, I am sure that I was right. The one-year old is big because he knows how to listen. The older children are even bigger because they do not. But to achieve even greater bigkidness, they will have to demonstrate more consistently that they choose to listen. To listen when there is no choice is not all that great a feat. But to listen when there is a choice can be quite a difficult task.
It follows from the argument, of course, that the listening is not as critical as the choosing. And if so, I should acknowledge that even the choice not to listen is as great as the choice to listen, so long as it is a choice. Perhaps it is indeed so. But who can tell the difference? When someone isn’t listening, can one really be sure that it’s a choice more than an impulse? When I act with harshness, is it my conscious decision, or is it unchecked rage? When I circumvent the rules, it might be because that’s what I believe to be right. But when I violate my own principles, even over a matter of impatience; anger; selfishness; laziness; or the like, that’s quite something else. And it is certainly not being “big”.
Mind you, my “big kids” are four years old and three years old, respectively. In their advanced age, they are practically ready for retirement.
By what criteria does one graduate from babyhood to bigkidness? Obviously, there are several factors which reflect the child’s status. To list a few, there is where the child sleeps, in a crib or a bed. Then there is whether one is able to eat solids (i.e. as opposed to nursing), and whether that is with hands and bottles, or forks, spoons, and cups. And one of the biggest telltale signs, no doubt, is being toilet-trained. One simply cannot claim bigkidness in diapers. He would be laughed right out of the nursery.
Kids take their statuses very seriously and very personally. My four year-old girl and my three year-old boy have come to a compromise on how exactly he is to be categorized. He is kzat gadol and kzat beinoni, partly big and partly average. Very proud of his rank, several times a day he can be heard telling us or confirming with us that this is indeed accurate. Of course, his sister sees it as her right and civic duty to continually remind him that she is older than he is, even if they are the same physical size. In any case, I have observed that this consciousness is not only in our family. Imagine the rancor and upheaval that resulted when one particularly insolent child taunted other kids (some of them older than he) from the comfort of his bedroom window, “Atem ketantonim! (You are tiny!)”
Naturally, I realized that the obsession would serve me as a great educational weapon, er- tool. The standard criteria notwithstanding, I have begun to suggest to my children that there is an even greater and truer definition of bigkidness. “A big boy/girl,” I assert, “knows how to listen.” Obviously, I don’t have a source for my position other than my own intuition. But it sure makes for a very useful tool in my arsenal of parental guidance; the child’s ‘rank’ becomes a function of his or her ability to cooperate. And although my principle is not necessarily authoritative and objective, it is quite reasonable. Isn’t the ability to “listen” a function of self-discipline and self control? If bigkidness is a function of maturity, emotional maturity seems as fair a scale as physical maturity.
Now, in the irony of familial politics, my “big” status does nothing for my credibility as an interpreter of bigkidness. My children, thus far anyway, seem thoroughly unimpressed with my definition. Indeed, the upshot of my position is that my one-year old (in diapers, mind you), often much more eager to follow instructions than his siblings, is somehow “bigger” than they are.
So I have had to revisit my approach. Do I really believe that the youngest and most dependent of my children is the most mature? Unlikely. Far-fetched. Inconceivable.
The truth is that, obviously, the older children also know how to listen. In fact, their occasional refusal to listen is reflective of their maturity. After learning how to listen, they learned how to assert themselves and how to disobey. In other words, they are big enough to listen, but they are also big enough to ignore.
And still, I am sure that I was right. The one-year old is big because he knows how to listen. The older children are even bigger because they do not. But to achieve even greater bigkidness, they will have to demonstrate more consistently that they choose to listen. To listen when there is no choice is not all that great a feat. But to listen when there is a choice can be quite a difficult task.
It follows from the argument, of course, that the listening is not as critical as the choosing. And if so, I should acknowledge that even the choice not to listen is as great as the choice to listen, so long as it is a choice. Perhaps it is indeed so. But who can tell the difference? When someone isn’t listening, can one really be sure that it’s a choice more than an impulse? When I act with harshness, is it my conscious decision, or is it unchecked rage? When I circumvent the rules, it might be because that’s what I believe to be right. But when I violate my own principles, even over a matter of impatience; anger; selfishness; laziness; or the like, that’s quite something else. And it is certainly not being “big”.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Pulling the Strings of Israeli Policy
Let us be straight and honest for just a moment. It is profoundly presumptuous for Mr. Obama, Ms. Clinton, and other United States officials of varying ranks to tell the world just how Israel must behave, to tell Israel how it must behave. Frankly, we did not ask for their opinions.
The argument sounds reasonable enough. The US funnels untold billions upon billions of dollars into Israel. They sell (or give) Israel weapons, fighter planes, and heaps of other destructive technology. The US profoundly jeopardizes its own international alliances and popularity with its ongoing loyalty to Israel, defending Israel for the most unpopular maneuvers and strategies in the stickiest of situations. Much of the world hatred and resentment of the US, where that is the dominant sentiment, couches itself in the claim that the US is too protective of Israel. On the global scene, the US has unquestionably been the greatest friend to the modern state of Israel since its founding.
But on what authority does the US dictate to Israel how to manage its land, where it may build, and where it is bidden to dismantle communities, neighborhoods, or even single buildings? As the argument goes, leaving aside the speculative issue of motivation, the US is concerned for the rights of the Palestinian people to live their own lives in their own land. After all, these people have been living in this land for untold centuries. What’s more, the same United Nations partition plan that paved the way for Israel’s statehood also called for a Palestinian state at its side. Israel’s population of territories not held before 1967 threaten and compromise the autonomy of these people. That’s the claim. But in this regard, the United States’ assumed moral authority is actually quite absurd.
To put things in perspective, consider someone ordering the US to liquidate San Antonio, Santa Fe, or Phoenix. After all, the Southwest was won in what was widely considered an offensive expansionist war, the territory seized from those who had lived there for centuries or millennia before the Caucasian Europeans overran them. Actually, the Southwest is just the tip of the iceberg. The entire continental US was forged in this manner. Millions of Native Americans were unceremoniously forced from their lands and homes; programmatically assimilated and slaughtered; and essentially erased; all in the name of Manifest Destiny. Put simply, the US was built on the cemetery of the once rich culture of the Native American peoples, insultingly ruined and reduced to the fate of casinos and reservations. And this was perpetrated by Europeans who, three hundred years earlier, didn't even know that North America existed! But no one would take seriously a motion to shut down Cleveland or return Boston.
And yet, with all the bitter irony and hypocrisy in the US purporting to be the international arbiter of morality, there is a much more fundamental issue at play. The right of the Jewish people to live in Israel does not originally emanate from UN resolutions or US support. This right comes from the divine covenant recorded in Jewish tradition.
The claim to divine right, however, is not a free pass. When Abraham was first settling himself in the land (Genesis 13), Tradition asserts that he kept his animals muzzled as he passed through fields that he did not own. Although the land was promised to his descendants, it was not yet his. Grazing on others’ properties was nothing short of theft. Generations later, the people of Israel sent spies into Canaan and listened to their pessimistic appraisal of their chances in the land. When they squandered their chance to enter straightaway, a band of determined Israelites attempted their own conquest (Numbers 14). But without divine guidance and protection, they were doomed.
What is this divine right? The land is provisionally delivered into the hands of the people with the understanding that they will honor its sacred trust. It is meant to be a bastion of divine worship and a haven of divine justice. “You must observe my statutes and laws and do not perform any of these abominations, the citizen and the foreigner among you. For all these abominations, the people of the land before you performed, and the land was defiled. And the land shall not purge you for your having defiled it, as it defiled the nation that was before you” (Leviticus 18:26-28). “Do not corrupt the land in which you live, for the blood will corrupt the land...” (Numbers 35:33).
As uncomfortable and unfamiliar as it may be to acknowledge it, Israel’s subsistence, prosperity, and enormous relative success over 61 years are pure functions of divine gift. The stability and security of the Jewish people in the State of Israel depends on providential guidance, without which, no amount of US support will make a bit of difference.
Ultimately, our domestic policy, our foreign policy, and our defense policy will benefit greatly from a simple realization. Israel does not belong to the US; it is not a colony. But the land does not belong to us either, insofar as allowing us to rule it by our own whims and inclinations. The land belongs to the Creator, and He has entrusted us to sanctify it.
The argument sounds reasonable enough. The US funnels untold billions upon billions of dollars into Israel. They sell (or give) Israel weapons, fighter planes, and heaps of other destructive technology. The US profoundly jeopardizes its own international alliances and popularity with its ongoing loyalty to Israel, defending Israel for the most unpopular maneuvers and strategies in the stickiest of situations. Much of the world hatred and resentment of the US, where that is the dominant sentiment, couches itself in the claim that the US is too protective of Israel. On the global scene, the US has unquestionably been the greatest friend to the modern state of Israel since its founding.
But on what authority does the US dictate to Israel how to manage its land, where it may build, and where it is bidden to dismantle communities, neighborhoods, or even single buildings? As the argument goes, leaving aside the speculative issue of motivation, the US is concerned for the rights of the Palestinian people to live their own lives in their own land. After all, these people have been living in this land for untold centuries. What’s more, the same United Nations partition plan that paved the way for Israel’s statehood also called for a Palestinian state at its side. Israel’s population of territories not held before 1967 threaten and compromise the autonomy of these people. That’s the claim. But in this regard, the United States’ assumed moral authority is actually quite absurd.
To put things in perspective, consider someone ordering the US to liquidate San Antonio, Santa Fe, or Phoenix. After all, the Southwest was won in what was widely considered an offensive expansionist war, the territory seized from those who had lived there for centuries or millennia before the Caucasian Europeans overran them. Actually, the Southwest is just the tip of the iceberg. The entire continental US was forged in this manner. Millions of Native Americans were unceremoniously forced from their lands and homes; programmatically assimilated and slaughtered; and essentially erased; all in the name of Manifest Destiny. Put simply, the US was built on the cemetery of the once rich culture of the Native American peoples, insultingly ruined and reduced to the fate of casinos and reservations. And this was perpetrated by Europeans who, three hundred years earlier, didn't even know that North America existed! But no one would take seriously a motion to shut down Cleveland or return Boston.
And yet, with all the bitter irony and hypocrisy in the US purporting to be the international arbiter of morality, there is a much more fundamental issue at play. The right of the Jewish people to live in Israel does not originally emanate from UN resolutions or US support. This right comes from the divine covenant recorded in Jewish tradition.
The claim to divine right, however, is not a free pass. When Abraham was first settling himself in the land (Genesis 13), Tradition asserts that he kept his animals muzzled as he passed through fields that he did not own. Although the land was promised to his descendants, it was not yet his. Grazing on others’ properties was nothing short of theft. Generations later, the people of Israel sent spies into Canaan and listened to their pessimistic appraisal of their chances in the land. When they squandered their chance to enter straightaway, a band of determined Israelites attempted their own conquest (Numbers 14). But without divine guidance and protection, they were doomed.
What is this divine right? The land is provisionally delivered into the hands of the people with the understanding that they will honor its sacred trust. It is meant to be a bastion of divine worship and a haven of divine justice. “You must observe my statutes and laws and do not perform any of these abominations, the citizen and the foreigner among you. For all these abominations, the people of the land before you performed, and the land was defiled. And the land shall not purge you for your having defiled it, as it defiled the nation that was before you” (Leviticus 18:26-28). “Do not corrupt the land in which you live, for the blood will corrupt the land...” (Numbers 35:33).
As uncomfortable and unfamiliar as it may be to acknowledge it, Israel’s subsistence, prosperity, and enormous relative success over 61 years are pure functions of divine gift. The stability and security of the Jewish people in the State of Israel depends on providential guidance, without which, no amount of US support will make a bit of difference.
Ultimately, our domestic policy, our foreign policy, and our defense policy will benefit greatly from a simple realization. Israel does not belong to the US; it is not a colony. But the land does not belong to us either, insofar as allowing us to rule it by our own whims and inclinations. The land belongs to the Creator, and He has entrusted us to sanctify it.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Riots in Jerusalem
We have to stop.
Here’s where our deep-seated mistrust and resentment has gotten us, just in the past week. A community cries foul when one of its identifying members is arrested upon suspicion of endangering her toddler son’s life. The strong evidence is dismissed as libelous propaganda, part of a much wider conspiracy to discredit and incriminate the woman’s community.
The community erupts in disruptive protests, destroying public property, crippling traffic, and in a number of instances, causing bodily injury to those representing the government. The government responds by suspending the municipal services tendered to the larger community in those areas that are affected by the violence, citing the danger to municipal employees in their stations and places of work.
The conflict dominates the local news and makes splashes in international news. “Jews attacking Jews in the holy city of Jerusalem.” And that’s all it needs to say, really.
Have we had enough?
The headlines don’t identify which group is the “aggressor” and which is the “victim.” To the world, there is a bloody, messy, fiery image of Jewish infighting. It’s a picture of how we treat our most sacred city, and how we behave within it. Visitors of the world, please do not come and disrespect or defile our city. We would rather do it ourselves.
Pay attention. We do it. This is our collective responsibility. We gain nothing by pointing fingers at a particular community, or at the government conspiracy, for that matter. We are supposed to be one community. We are expected to be one community. We are one community. We are not fighting with foreign entities, with enemies from without. We are fighting with our brothers. We are fighting with ourselves.
The problem is that we don’t mind. The rift of values runs so deep that we have lost interest and motivation in resolving the conflict. But in the meantime, we viciously tear away at the common bonds that necessarily bind us. We neglect, trivialize, and ignore how interdependent our lives are and how much we need each other.
This is actually not a new problem. We’ve been in this situation before. The Talmud describes how just under 2000 years ago, the Jews of Jerusalem were also divided along religious and political lines. And instead of finding a common course and presenting a unified front, the factions cannibalized each other and literally destroyed their own resources if only to strike at the other factions. The end result, of course, was that Jerusalem was defenseless in the face of the belligerent enemy, and the Temple was destroyed. And this, we know, took place in the same season, the same weeks, in which we find ourselves now.
The labels, the deep-seated mistrust, the alienation, the stereotyping, and the apathy have to go. The distinctions that we draw between ourselves are relative and superficial. We adhere to these barriers at our own peril.
We have to stop.
With hostile neighbors busily bolstering their arsenals and issuing their insults and threats, the last thing we need to do is to weaken our own defenses and fight ourselves. To the others, the intermarried American journalist Daniel Pearl is as much a Jew as the Chabad emissary in Mumbai. When the international community sees us as a singular unit with a common fate, why don’t we see the same thing?
Here’s where our deep-seated mistrust and resentment has gotten us, just in the past week. A community cries foul when one of its identifying members is arrested upon suspicion of endangering her toddler son’s life. The strong evidence is dismissed as libelous propaganda, part of a much wider conspiracy to discredit and incriminate the woman’s community.
The community erupts in disruptive protests, destroying public property, crippling traffic, and in a number of instances, causing bodily injury to those representing the government. The government responds by suspending the municipal services tendered to the larger community in those areas that are affected by the violence, citing the danger to municipal employees in their stations and places of work.
The conflict dominates the local news and makes splashes in international news. “Jews attacking Jews in the holy city of Jerusalem.” And that’s all it needs to say, really.
Have we had enough?
The headlines don’t identify which group is the “aggressor” and which is the “victim.” To the world, there is a bloody, messy, fiery image of Jewish infighting. It’s a picture of how we treat our most sacred city, and how we behave within it. Visitors of the world, please do not come and disrespect or defile our city. We would rather do it ourselves.
Pay attention. We do it. This is our collective responsibility. We gain nothing by pointing fingers at a particular community, or at the government conspiracy, for that matter. We are supposed to be one community. We are expected to be one community. We are one community. We are not fighting with foreign entities, with enemies from without. We are fighting with our brothers. We are fighting with ourselves.
The problem is that we don’t mind. The rift of values runs so deep that we have lost interest and motivation in resolving the conflict. But in the meantime, we viciously tear away at the common bonds that necessarily bind us. We neglect, trivialize, and ignore how interdependent our lives are and how much we need each other.
This is actually not a new problem. We’ve been in this situation before. The Talmud describes how just under 2000 years ago, the Jews of Jerusalem were also divided along religious and political lines. And instead of finding a common course and presenting a unified front, the factions cannibalized each other and literally destroyed their own resources if only to strike at the other factions. The end result, of course, was that Jerusalem was defenseless in the face of the belligerent enemy, and the Temple was destroyed. And this, we know, took place in the same season, the same weeks, in which we find ourselves now.
The labels, the deep-seated mistrust, the alienation, the stereotyping, and the apathy have to go. The distinctions that we draw between ourselves are relative and superficial. We adhere to these barriers at our own peril.
We have to stop.
With hostile neighbors busily bolstering their arsenals and issuing their insults and threats, the last thing we need to do is to weaken our own defenses and fight ourselves. To the others, the intermarried American journalist Daniel Pearl is as much a Jew as the Chabad emissary in Mumbai. When the international community sees us as a singular unit with a common fate, why don’t we see the same thing?
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