well, if Darcy is gevurah…

Going to see Pride and Prejudice when one is more or less in the middle of preparations for a Kabbalah test lends itself to some very strange dreams. Cute movie, though.

In other news, the great Kabbalah scholar Daniel Matt was in town this weekend, scholar-in-residencing at a local shul. I went to the Friday night talk, and it was OK–very lucid, but pretty basic. During the Q and A I got him to say that “The Zohar is a projection. There’s definitely a lot of projection in there.” He is a Kabbalist, of course, so he then had to spend a bunch of time talking about why it was important and useful and such nonetheless. But I was satisfied. I appreciate the Hasidic move of internalizing and psychologizing Kabbalah; this stuff is a very useful metaphor, in in the right context. It’s just when people claim that, say, these ornate metaphysics of the soul after death, or the shocking and I think heretical notion that God is a two-gendered being trying to unite and copulate* are absolute reflections of external reality that I get a bit twitchy.

And now, time for a day. Onward.

*Anthropomorphism, anyone? And such a problem to monotheism! I hold by Rambam–it’s a much better idea to talk about what God is not than to find yourself in such theologically treacherous waters.

A Few Bits of Jewish Metaphysical Randomness

Since I’m living la vida Kabbalah these days:

*And no, I didn’t hold by halakha poskened from the Zohar even before I heard that, thanks.

Soul Train

I’m preparing some stuff on the doctrine of the soul in Kabbalah right now. The thing that astounds me about these boys is how intricate they’re willing to get. I tend to be of the type that gets more suspicious about a meatphysical concept the more complicated it is. Leaving aside even the question of is God 10 and how do we know which 10 God would be, exactly? and the usual bevvy of other questions that should be thrown at anyone playing with Neoplatonism…. Just sticking to the soul, how exactly could someone (one of the authors of the Zohar) be comfortable asserting that the soul has various parts and that when one dies, it gets split up and each part goes to a different destination (to hang out by the grave, to study Torah in Gan Eden, to melt into the Divine unity), and that we have those addresses? Or that (Luria) each soul has a root that comes from Cain, Abel, Shem, Ham or Yafet, and if you do the right voodoo and then lie at the grave of the right person, you can access the soul-chunk at the grave and hyperlink yourself to another piece of the soul, which is hanging out with God? It’s a lot of chutzpah to be running truth claims like that.

It’s not that there’s nothing a person could say about God, or the mystical encounter with said Deity, or what some of this stuff is or how it works. I’m all for mysticism, and all for mystical expeeriences of God and the belief that some things are damn hard to communicate without sounding like a loon, but, you know. Some things are also unknowable.

As an oft-quoted Zen story tells it:

“Master,” begins a student, “what happens when we die?”
“I don’t know,” the teacher replied.
“I thought you were a Zen master,” the student said.
“Maybe. But I’m not a dead one.”

I think part of doing responsible theology is knowing when to say, “I dunno.”

more fun in the spiritual marketplace

Well, whatever you believe, now you can get a T-shirt declaring your love for it.

Some bizarre part of me is strangely drawn to this one. Yeah, I dunno.

But obviously the best one to be worn with a wink is this one. It’s almost too easy.

Okay, back to work now. Really.

Too Angry To Title This Properly

I tend not to post much about current events on this blog because I generally feel as though I’ve got nothing new or interesting to add to the conversation. That’s not bad self-image, it’s more a reflection on a) the fact that I only stay moderately informed about anything, hardly enough to have time to analyze anything and b) there are a lot of smart people out there saying lots of things already. And yet, sometimes the news is so disturbing that I feel compelled to–well, react publicly, I suppose, more for my own attempts to make sense of it as anything.

This whole business about Cheney seeking an exemption for the CIA on torture? Are you kidding me? Are people actually saying these things out loud, and in public? Don’t we all miss the days when the U.S. was embarrassed to admit that they did that? What is the extent of our moral and spiritual degredation that we not only do these things, but we admit them so casually, as though nothing were wrong? That we don’t see exactly how far we have fallen? There aren’t words, really.

I’m reading a lot lately about the fall of the First Temple and the events leading up to it, including a lot from the prophets. You can see a progression, as things get worse politically (and morally), how the prophets’ words get harsher and more severe, more concretely portending disaster. Amos was relatively early in the game, more or less 150-200 years before the Temple fell. In Amos 2, we find this:

6. Thus says the Lord; For three transgressions of Israel I will turn away his punishment, but for the fourth I will not turn away its punishment; because they sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes;
7. They pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor, and turn aside the way of the humble; and a man and his father will go in to the same girl, to profane my holy name;
8. And they lay themselves down by every altar upon clothes taken in pledge, and they drink the wine of the condemned in the house of their god.

Well, we’ve been selling the poor for a pair of shoes for some time now. I suspect we’ve already used up our three chances. Frankly, where we are in the fall of the empire sounds a lot more like the words of Jeremiah, who himself lived through the destruction and died in exile, but I almost can’t bring myself to go there, to face it.

How far gone does a civilization have to be before its collapse is inevitable? And if we made like Nineveh and repented immediately, how much of the damage could we fix? Not all of it. Not probably even most. Which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t turn the hell around from whatever road we’re on. It just means… I don’t know. Frankly, I’m scared. Scared to see how much futher down we’ll sink, and scared to find out what’s at the bottom.

Can I Get an Amen?

My friend Micah Jackson, preacher-man and homeletics scholar, has started podcasting. He’s a clever cat. Go check out what he’s got to say here.

Oh My Hashem

FRUM BOY BAND.

And it seems to be not a gag.

There simply aren’t words.

ETA: Okay, so it looks like the video was done by a few bored bocherim during their vacation period. I love them for it. The band Chevra itself, however, is not a gag, which is kind of even funnier.

huh

Someone just pointed out that Green Day’s “Basket Case” is in fact based on Pachabel’s Canon. I don’t love them, and it’s not like the Canon is the world’s most sophisitcated piece of classical music, but still, that was kind of fun to see.

Books are Fun To Read

My boxes from Jerusalem finally arrived. It only took 5 months. I now have a lot of books in my apartment. A LOT OF BOOKS. I seem to be vascillating between semi-horror at the very evidently bingey nature of quite a few of my purchases (I thought I needed what??!? Why did I think that?!?) and a deep, deep satisfaction with the current state of my library. I love seeing my shas and Midrash Rabbah and Tur and Mishneh Torah all snuggled together. It makes me happy. Even some of the wackier things that I got (the Tur’s Torah commentary, for pete’s sake) will probably prove useful in the long run. Hope so, anyway. Actually, Torah perush is never *that* weird. I will keep repeating this to myself.

New York was OK. it was raining and cold, so I spent most of the week laying low with the creeping green ook, but I did get out on Simchat Torah to see some folk, and managed to spend some other decent time around town. The conference was fun, lots and lots of people that I knew popping up (including a friend from high school who I hadn’t seen in at least 12, maybe more like 15 years). Parts of it were much more generationally divisive than I would have expected or cared for, which was kind of a pity–I thought we had all gotten over the whole B.S. notion that the gap between “Second Wavers” and “Third Wavers” was interesting, notable, or even really grounded in reality. Hasn’t the gap always been, “people who think interesting thoughts” and “those who don’t”? That, as far as I’m aware, has never been classifiable by age–for as many ass-kicking older feminists (or people) there are plenty more 20somethings who can talk and talk and don’t say a damn thing. But there were lots of great people there, too, and I was very happy to be included with the stellar cast of characters who peopled my panel and glad that we kept the conversation on a more productive tip. At some point they’ll put taped sections of the conference online, so y’all can see for yourself.

Now, now it is time for bed. I still have this nasty hacking cough, and the midterms that started the morning I got back are pretty much going to keep going until finals. So goodnight.

Target is the suck

From this week’s Savage Love, Target has joined the ranks of corporations allowing religion to affect its dealings with customers. I’m not happy.

STRAIGHT RIGHTS UPDATE
Two disturbing developments in the battle over straight rights last week: First, we know Target fills its ads with dancing, multiculti hipsters giving off a tolerant, urbanist vibe and runs hipster-heavy ad campaigns positioning Target as a slightly more expensive, more progressive alternative to Wal-Mart. Well, as John Aravosis revealed on Americablog.com last week, the chain allows its pharmacists to refuse to dispense birth control and emergency contraception to female customers if the pharmacist objects on religious grounds. What’s worse, the company claims that its employees have a right to discriminate against its customers provided the discrimination is motivated by an employee’s religious beliefs. Read all about it at Americablog.com and Plannedparenthood.org.

Don’t just sit there, heteros. Defend your rights! Don’t shop at Target; write ‘em and say why you’re going elsewhere. (Go to Target.com and click on “contact us,” then “Target Corporation.”)