request

Can we, um, not got to war with Iran? Please?

on disaster

Some of you may be wondering why I never blogged anything on the Tsnunami disaster, but I did blog on the piguah (bombing) at the Gaza border. t Okay, you probably weren’t wondering, but I’d been thinking about it.

The first part of the answer is that–well, as Rabbi Mickey Rosen said in a drash at Yakar Dec. 31st (and this is absolutely a paraphrase, not an exact quote, I don’t remember the exact wording), “there are two kinds of numbness around a disaster. The first is the numbness wherein you can’t comprehend the numbers of people who have been affected by a disaster, the enormity is just so overwhelming that your mind can’t take it all in. The second kind is a narcissistic numbness, wherein you’re so caught up in your own little life that you can’t get out of it to connect to the people who are hurting and the suffering that’s happening. I (he said) am trying to move from the second category to the first.”

Around the same time I was trying to do the same thing. I probably still am, frankly, though there have been moments when I’ve been in category one. And there’s been a lot written about the disaster in the media and the blogosphere, I wasn’t sure that I had (have) any great hiddush (new thought) to add to what’s already out there. But yeah, I’m thinking about it.

As for the piguah, well, obviously as that’s closer to home it’s easier to let in through my tough little skin. So that’s part of it. Another part is that I have this deal with some friends and family that whenever anything explodes on this patch of land, I’ll blog here when I hear about it so that they can check as soon as they hear about it, to know that I’m OK. So in a way, those posts are a secret code, as well as being a genuine expression of sorrow.

That is all. Time for school.

I *heart* Movie Day

This morning I wandered over to my Talmud teacher. Between the warmish weather we had today and the burnoutish feeling that one has a couple of weeks before finals (especially when one’s assignment for the day is to slog through an academic article in Hebrew), I was feeling a little cheeky.

“David, I know we’re like, adults in a serious program and all, but does that mean we never get to have Movie Day?”

I was just expecting a snarky response back. Instead, he said,
“Yeah, OK. Find something connected to avodah zarah (idolotry, our topic this semester) and we’ll pick a day next week to do it.”

Huh? Really. He said that as long as it was of the relevant Greco-Roman era (so, sadly, no teen-witch movies), it was fair game. We could do it as the last class, have some bagels and kick back. Right on.

So far the candidates that have been suggested for viewing are:

Troy
Jesus Christ Superstar*
The Passion of the Christ*
Sparticus
The Life of Brian*
History of the World Part I
Clash of the Titans
Ben Hur
Gladiator
Caligula**

and maybe one or two more, don’t remember. I think Troy is in the lead right now–I was very big on JC Superstar, lots of other people expressed interest in the Passion (which, you might imagine, is not what I’m personally terribly into–nor of course Gladiator), as much because it’s important for us baby rabbis to have seen it as because it’s in poorly pronounced Aramaic. (I’ve seen a few excerpts, it’s really awful on the pronunciation tip.) Instructor thought the Passion might be a leetle on the heavy side for an end-of-semester party. So we’ll see. If anyone out there has any other brilliant suggestions, please, let me know.

Of course, some people are saying that given the choice between an extra day of in-class review or a movie, they pick the former (though given a choice between another class of these academic articles or a movie, they pick the latter, DUH.) So whether or not it actually happens is TBD, but it’s excellent reinforcement for me re: being more cheeky more often. Bring on the cheek! Heck, bring on JC Superstar!!!!

(My classmates just don’t understand the power of profound kitch. Philistines. I may have to go rent the thing sometime soon just for my own enjoyment, dangit.)

*No, no, this isn’t to imply that Christians are being conflated with the pagany stuff in our gemara. The Rabbinic era Christian/Jewish thing is wayyy more complicated than that. But there are Romans in both movies.

**Suggested and then rejected by the instructor on the grounds that it is, really, soft porn.

Ode to the Shabbos Nap: An Intentionally Bad Poem

[ED. NOTE: I TOOK DOWN THE ORIGINAL ODE BECAUSE IT WAS SO BAD THAT IT WASN’T EVEN FUNNY AS A PARODY. AND THE ONLY THING WORSE THAN BAD POETRY IS BAD LONG POETRY. INSTEAD, HERE’S A HAIKU (ALSO PRETTY BAD, BUT AT LEAST SHORT.)]

All week I crave you,
sleepy joy! But, that night, wide
awake. There’s no cure

For the nap/awake
cycle. Stumble through Sunday,
longing starts anew.

another bombing

not good.

Baruch dayan haemet.

aaaahhhhhhhh

So, when I was getting ready to come here for the year, I bought a lot of stuff off of a couple of students from my program who were here the year before me–bedding, extension cords, lamps, and other misc. junk that you don’t want to lug from the States. I also bought an electric blanket–”best thing for those cold Jerusalem nights,” I was told, and up ’till now that has been true.

Well, this morning I woke up coughing. At first I thought this was because I’ve been trying not to get a cold, but then after a groggy minute I realized that I was coughing because there was smoke in my room. And not just that, but that my bed was burning, That’s right. Burning. Like, on fire.

It seems that my electric blanket had somehow lit on fire in the middle of the night and managed to sear a hole the size of a large dinner plate in my matress and a much larger hole in my comforter. The electric blanket itself was all smoking and burnt-up. This is some scary stuff: fires are not good. Electricity and electric wires mixed with fire are really not good. Fires, on your side of the bed, millimeters from where you’re sleeping in the bed where you’re sleeping at that moment–overwhelmingly not good.

I’m exceedingly lucky. I could have been really, really hurt, and I could have died. As it is, I was unharmed while sleeping (this all the more curious because, as regular readers of this blog know, I’m a very light sleeper) and only scalded the crap out of a couple of fingers as I was attempting to figure out how to put the fire out.

Here’s a picture of the damage:

The room smells like burnt stuff and there are lots of chunks of black charred stuff all over the place. The mattress is still sopping wet from the fact that I poured water all over to put out the fire.

I’m a little freaked. Not full-on freaked; for some reason, all these bizarre things have been happening to me (my wallet being stolen was only one) lately, but my spirits and my mood are generally pretty good. I might be more freaked out later–that woudn’t be surprising. Right now it just seems like it’s messing up my day (I’m going to flip the matress but have to go buy new bedding, eg) and I have these blistered, painful fingers now. But in the scheme of things, I could be so much worse, and I’m dang dang lucky that I’m not. I just want all the weirdness to cease. I’ll put up with this, but no more surprises around the corner! Dangit!

Ow. No more typing. Sorry to everyone to whom I owe email.

Current soundtrack: Midnight Oil, of course.

job listing of the day

[Congregation X] in [location Y] is currently seeking Rabbinic and Cantorial students to conduct Friday night services on the last Friday night of each month.

Accomadations will be provided along with enumeration. Should the student require Shomer Shabbos accomodations, that is available as well.

Traditional services are conducted from our prepared sidurim.

For consideration please call: [Number]

—

They’re going to provde not only accomodations, but also they’re going to make a list for the student rabbi! I wonder if it’s going to be a different list each week–list of ways the student rabbi is great, list of the 613 mitzvot according to perush Rambam, list of reasons why spellcheck on MS Word doesn’t always check your mistakes…..

(I think the word they’re looking for is “remuneration”, aka ca$h moneee).

martyrdom and Mishnah

So, today was another tiyul day. My school is being really good to us on that front, really trying to help us take advantage of being here. This was the trip North to go chase after Tanaaitic history. (The Tanaaim are the guys, more or less, that the Mishnah is quoting. The Mishnah is Judaism’s oral legal tradition, the foundation-piece for the Talmud and all subsequent Jewish law, and was written down ca. 200C.E.).

Our first stop was Ceasaria, which was the Roman capital of this chunk of land when they were ruling things. To get us pumped for the era, our guide played a scene from that Russell Crowe movie Gladiator, which was totally amusing at first and then just started to feel… well, disgusting and bloody. I’ve never been one for violent movies, and even more so over the years, I can’t quite fathom the point. We derive entertainment from watching a simulated version of people hurting other people? This is fun because why?

Then we got to Ceasaria. It’s a cool place to walk around–pretty seaside town with lots of old stuff.

Enough of the ruins are still extant that you can get a sense of the town-like feel, and there are signs indicating where, say, the vomitorium was (in case you need one, I guess). They have a classical Roman theater that used to be perfect (you know, say something in a whisper on the stage and you can hear it from the furthest seat) but it seems that people doing reconstruction work messed up the acoustics some. Now bands like Jethro Tull come to play there, adding further proof to the fact that this is quite possibly the weirdest country ever. That was all fun and good. Then we got to the next part of the ruins. More seats, looking down on a wide open space.

A didactic label indicated that this was once the site of chariot races. So for the first few moments I was excited about the place (Dude! Chariot races! etc.)

But then through the guide’s explanations (the guide, overall, was great) it became clear that this was only for charioteering later–earlier, and for a long time, this was in fact where the gladiator battles took place. Then he talked a bit about what that meant; I knew most of this, but it was good to put all the information together. This was the place where a lot of people–Christians, slaves, political prisoners, etc–were forced into bloody situations with carnivorious animals, Roman soldiers or each other, and killed in gruesome ways. For the entertainment of those in the stadium–fun to watch people hurt each other, suffer, and die painful deaths. At some point the demand for fresh blood was so great that the Romans were going to war just to have some capitves to thrust in the ring. Part of the entertainment was straight old-fahioned executions. And, of course, lots and lots of Jews were martyred there, too. Probably this is where the famous 10 martyrdoms in the Yom Kippur service took place. (Today we took a look at the story of R. Akiva’s flesh being torn with hot combs and R. Yishmael being scalped alive. For those of you who don’t know the other stories, they’re all at least as horrible.) Thousands and thousands of people were murdered in the space where we were standing. And as the guide talked, I noticed that I was feeling it.

Some places are charged with certain energy. At the kotel, the Wailing Wall, there’s a certain strong powerful force in the space. It’s right up close at the wall, and when I went up to the Dome of the Rock when I was here 5 years ago (pre-Intifada) it felt a little bit like walking through water, the air was so thick with… well, this juice, this juju, whatever you wanna call it. And whether that’s because the place has an intrinsic power, I can’t say, but it’s certainly the case that 3000 years of people directing a certain kind of intention (kavvanah) and energy there and offering sacrifices there and praying there and doing all of one’s holiest rituals there and, you know, Jews davvening in that direction 3 times a day (etc.)–it leaves something there, in the space. Of course it’s powerful.

And standing on the space where thousands of people were murdered, for their beliefs (sometimes) and for other people’s entertainment (all the time)–well, that space has a charge too. All that suffering and pain, how could it not? So unlike the Wall juju, this stuff had a distinctly negative, strong, tameh (impure) vibe. It was really affecting me. I felt like I could feel all of the people who were in pain and died there.

This being not an entirely pleasant feeling, I would have been fine with moving along. And regardless, it doesn’t feel entirely respectful to me to be standing around casually chatting on a space where so many people died, though as my friend Nelly pointed out, it could be a sort of a tikkun (healing) for the place that we were standing there learning Torah. Still. We stood there too long, and lingered too long, and then finally it was time to move on to the next thing and I was so moved and haunted by just being there that I just had to stand there for a moment longer, take it all in. Finally, I said the El Male Rachamim (the prayer for the souls of those who have died) because it was the only thing I could think to do–to ask God to take care of those who already paid their lives where I was standing.

Then I had to go wash my hands in the Mediterranean, which is one way to get rid of the gook that was clinging to me. That helped some.

Ceasaria after that seemed characterized, for me, as a place really, really without a heart.

We then, from Cesaria, went to Beit Sharim, which is understood to be (historically and archeologically speaking) where R. Yehuda HaNasi, the redactor of the Mishnah that we use, was buried.


Rebbi, as we call him, was a pretty major guy. Going to see his grave was, frankly, neat. And not surprisingly the place didn’t reek of stink the way it did where the murders happened. I mean, I’ve felt very very strong juju in the room with people who are near death or dying, and I sometimes feel it to a lesser extent in graveyards too, but…. well, it’s not always of that strongly negative tameh feeling like I was feeling so so so strongly at the gladiator field. Different kinds of juice, depending on what’s going on.

Beit Sharim is a beautiful little spot up in the green of the Galilee. It seems that Rabban Gamliel

and R. Shimon

are also buried there. Inscriptions on rocks and everything–supercool. When you spend as much time with these guys as I do (and anyone else who learns Rabbinic texts does), there’s a certain kind of special kinship you feel with them. They are, in a way, like friends, or teachers, or colleagues. Unlike Biblical figures, I feel like I have a fuller sense of who they were, how they lived, how they treated their wives, what their quirks and issues and personalities and strengths were, what they did on a Thursday afternoon, etc. Bible commentators can make up some of this stuff re: Moshe or whoever, but it’s not the same, and doesn’t feel nearly as grounded in actual historical reality the way the Rabbis do. (This is not to say that I don’t love studying the Bible! But visiting the site that they say is the grave of, say, Habbakuk, wouldn’t have me geeking this hard.)

Also, I would like to make official my wish to follow in the steps of Rebbi and have a beit midrash above my gravesite. Dang cool.

From there we went to Tzippori, which is where Jewish tradition claims that Rebbi is buried, and where there are more neat 3rd Century happenings. We saw lots of mosaics there, including the beautiful “Mona Lisa of the Galilee,”
which is part of the living room floor of a fancy Roman mansion. They had a lot of stuff going on for Dionysus there.

(Also got to see the mosaic of the Roman mansion’s loo–the tilework spells out “Health” in Greek.)
Davvened mincha in a 4th c. synagogue that a big honkin’ Zodiac in the middle of the beautiful mosaic floor, with what was presumably God as the sun in the center.

(Avodah Zarah, Shmavodah Zarah).

Then we went over to the pagan side of town and saw Amazons

and a centaur holding a sign that said, “I am a useful god,”
and then it was time to go home.

So here’s what gets me. After all this, a few of my classmates ask the guide if we can watch all of Gladiator on the way back. I mean, I get their logic (long day = movie) but… but. It just felt so disrespectful to all the people for whom these deaths were real, for whom the sport of watching people die wasn’t funny, glamorous, or sexy. To do the same thing that the Romans did (watch people get hurt for sport), just one step removed into glossy fantasy. Maybe when it’s more highly mediated one can feel like it’s not really happening and didn’t, to real people (and certainly not to people who were just like us). It’s an easy way to check out of the fact that, where we were just standing, “blood cries out from the ground.” (Gen 4: 10). I don’t care if my lack of interest in this particular film at this particular time makes me appear to others like an uptight prig. I was open as heck, and mimiced violence seemed a lot like… violence.

I hid in the back of the bus with my walkman on, reading a book, until we got back to Jerusalem.

heck, I’ve seen weirder hanging outside my apartment building

Evidently Scottish artist Nathan Coley has made a 20-minute film on everybody’s favorite Holy City disorder. The Scotsman reports on the ‘drome itself:

The syndrome is estimated to affect up to 20 people a year, almost all Christians or Jews. It has provoked heated debates among doctors over what actually turns sufferers’ heads.

Dr Moshe Kalian, the district psychiatrist of Jerusalem, who has diagnosed many cases of Jerusalem syndrome, says: “In our opinion, Jerusalem is a kind of magnet for certain people who develop their ideas before they come and act out their behaviour once they are here.” …Kalian says: “I treated a guy who was stopped by the police who entered the lobby of a hotel and started to grab glasses from people’s faces. He said he wanted them to see the true light. That guy thought of himself as the Messiah, that he was chosen to come to Israel and bring peace to the world.

Still don’t know much about the film, though, which is too bad. Complete article here.

Thanks to Micah for the link.

Check it

I haven’t seen it yet (since I am in the land where Mail Takes Dang Forever To Arrive, and that includes contributor’s copies) but evidently my essay on the various issues that come out of being a chick who wears tzitzit in Jerusalem is now out in the new issue of Bitch Magazine.

I’m curious to know how they finally decided to handle the graphic design of the piece–we had talked about a few possibilities. Anybody seen it?