The Israeli Tikkun Blog

Escape from the Secular Prison

2012-02-14T10:29:00.013+02:00

More than ten years ago my wife and I were walking in the German Colony in Jerusalem on a Sabbath eve, or perhaps early Saturday evening. Anyway the streets were very quiet, and there were very few passers-by, and the city was still shrouded in holiness, when from somewhere on the left came a sudden, enormous outburst of chanting. It was too far away to see where it came from, but close enough to be heard clearly. My heart leaped as I recognized the sound of Jews praying together enthusiastically. I told my wife: "I wish I could go and join them", and she replied simply, "Well why don't you?" I admitted to her that I simply couldn't - I had been raised in a decent, upright, secular-Zionist home that instilled in me the belief that religious Jews were the devil incarnated.
At the time there was simply no way that I could go into a synagogue and pray. The inner psychological barriers were far too intense, and besides, what did I know from praying and synagogues? The way I was raised, I had no idea about such Jewish traditions, and I was far more likely to burn a synagogue than pray in it. To illustrate the level of ignorance and loathing of Judaism I had come from, there was a joke we used to tell about a German Jew who would protest: "Of course I'm Jewish! After all, I don't eat bacon in synagogue on Yom Kippur!"

Miraculously, I had somehow been able to free myself from this secular indoctrination to the point that I was capable of feeling that I was missing something important for my soul - my Jewish heritage. Unfortunately, I was still unable to reach out and grasp it, I could only stare at it longingly - and in great fear and apprehension - from afar.

Previously on this blog I documented my unsuccessful journey towards Judaism in a series of posts stretching through November, December, and January of 2006/7. I started off with a pretty terrifying dream that illustrates the degree to which my Jewish heritage and lack thereof was, quite literally, haunting me. You can read the post here. Another post, "Purging this secular Jew" provides a very detailed picture of my secular background and how I came to realize, very slowly, that I was Jewish, and it also overviews my initial, unsuccessful attempts to become familiar with my heritage. "My First Official Judaism Lesson" describes a meeting with a Habadnik, and my attempt to read the book "How to be a Jew", which resulted in a terrifying nightmare. I stopped reading the book immediately (as it happens, just last week I resumed reading it. As of now, I am not having any nightmares!) This post describes My Second Judaism Lesson, held in an obscure yeshiva for Baalei Tshuva, after my Habadnik disappeared, and this post describes my second (and last) time there. This post documents an unfruitful visit to Machon Meir. The last post in this series describes an uneventful Visit To The Local Synagogue. The blog posts end after that and indeed, about five years ago I stopped trying to reclaim my Jewish heritage and went off to deal with other more urgent issues, such as paying the rent... Several people followed my journey at the time and gave me some very good advice, especially West Bank Mama and Mother in Israel. I wish to take this opportunity to thank both of them and invite them to read on...their efforts were not in vain. Which brings me to the point: why am I bothering you with all this?

I am doing so because last week, I went into a synagogue and prayed Mincha and Arvit like a real, grown-up, honest-to-goodness Jew would. Even though I had never been to this synagogue, and the prayer leader had an awful, barely understandable Yiddish accent, I still managed to understand and keep track, more or less, of what was going on. The important thing was that I stepped into the synagogue without fear or apprehension, in the clear feeling that I belonged there, that the Jewish heritage is mine also, and that I have the right (perhaps even the obligation) to partake in it, and that I even know how to!
I was not ashamed to enter the synagogue and pray, I was not ashamed to be with other religious Jews (in this case - actual Hasidim!), and I had no sense of betrayal. In fact, not only did I not feel bad about myself - I felt great. I felt liberated, and I was walking on air the whole evening and several days after. Oddly enough, it turns out that a secular education, which prides itself on nurturing freedom, can also be a prison - if it religiously forbids faith and religious tradition (and yes, hating religion can be a religion unto itself).

But the path to freedom is never easy and neither was mine. Like I said, I had given up on ever reclaiming my heritage. For several years I made no further attempts in this area of my life. In fact I was so busy trying to move from Jerusalem to the North (and back again - don't ask) that I admit I almost completely - but not entirely - forgot about the Jewish hole in my soul. But as they say, men make plans, and God laughs hysterically. I'm guessing He took great pleasure in planning this one out and I hope you enjoy the story as well:

How the Housing Crisis Helped Me Repair the Jewish Hole in My Soul
So we were back in Jerusalem after going completely out of our comfort zone into unfamiliar territory. We had moved around the country in the worst time possible, just at the onset of the housing crisis. As a result, we lived in pretty shitty houses, with pretty shitty landlords, who did as little as possible to maintain their property, while extorting as much as possible from their tenants. We still had a particularly rapacious one breathing down our necks, and only three months in which to find an apartment in Jerusalem that would both satisfy our needs, personal as well as professional, and still be within our means. As anyone who has had to search for an apartment in Jerusalem (or anywhere else in the country, I suppose), this was asking quite a lot. We had also vowed never again to take an apartment that we did not want, just because there was no other choice. "Ein Briera" was out (and for those not fluent in Hebrew, Ein Breira is not a name of a refreshing spring in the Judean Desert. If anything, it is the gateway to hell). If needed, I was willing to live in the streets and not sign a diabolical contract or rent an awful apartment. In this grim, determined mood we set out to look for an apartment.

In over two and a half months I think we saw about 25 apartments, none of which were even remotely close to satisfying our needs and all of which looked terrible and cost a lot more than was reasonable. Along the way we met many openly greedy and inconsiderate landlords, who unashamedly showed us their expensive, neglected property. It was a very dismaying and harrowing time, and we had barely two weeks left! There was the one apartment, which we had seen a month before. My wife liked it but the room that was supposed to be my study was very small - I had been dreaming of a much larger study, not a much smaller one. The other rooms were also smaller than we needed, so we moved on - I was sure that we could find something better - we simply had to!

And then we finally saw an apartment that was suitable - at least it was large enough, really spacious, and also the rent was affordable for us and it even looked ok, at least some of it. The big problem was that it was on a very noisy street, but what choice did we have? In two months and a half this was the first and only apartment that had enough room for our stuff. We talked to the landlord who looked OK, but when my wife began to get into the specifics he seemed to back off and hesitate. The problem became clear when he sent us the contract - it was an eight page monstrosity that mainly stated that we have no rights whatsoever, and the landlord has no obligations. I thought that if you need 8 pages of legal jargon to rent an apartment, perhaps you would be better off finding someone else more trustworthy to deal with. The landlord was unwilling to budge, so we had to sign the contract or find something else - and we had only ten days! But we just couldn't sign it - the contract was truly frightening.

Out of all the apartments we had seen there was only one that my wife liked (I hadn't liked any), so in a gesture of defeat I suggested we call up the apartment again and see if it was still for rent - a whole month had passed so it was improbable, but still, it was worth a try. I said that I would measure all the stuff in my room and then we'll check the study in the new apartment to see if it really was that small. Somehow the apartment was still for rent and we made an appointment. Previously we had met with the husband, a very gentle, mild-mannered person. My wife had been very impressed with the way he let us be, while quietly playing with his child (I was too busy being disappointed to notice). This time we met with his wife who seemed nice too. Both were religious, the husband had a kippah and the wife a shavis. I measured the study and it was actually pretty good - the important stuff would fit. We discussed the price with the wife and then agreed to meet at their place in the evening to close the deal. It looked like we were close to finishing this terrible ordeal, but we wouldn't know until the contract was signed.

We met at their parents house (they were religious too). It turned out that they (our couple) had bought the apartment but were living with the parents until they could pay off some of the mortgage - which was our rent. So, as we had felt, this was not the standard landlord trying to pillage the tenants, but just ordinary people trying to get along. The parents were very nice and the whole atmosphere was pleasant. We talked a bit and felt each other out. Everybody read the contract - it was a very standard one, and then we signed it and that was that - simple, easy and uncomplicated, just like signing a lease should be! We called the movers and quickly packed our stuff. We did not talk much to our religious landlords until about two months after that - we had finished moving in and putting the final touches on our home for the next few years. Some things that had to be fixed had been taken care of by the landlords, and now we were inviting them to see the place, to finalize some things, and to get to know them better - they really seemed like a very nice couple.

After being floored by the way we had set up the apartment (my wife is very talented in this regard) we sat down to talk and then we learned that the wife had a small business of her own and that the husband, David, was a bonafide "Avrech", a yeshiva student who spent all day at the "Kollel" studying Torah, or as Haaretz, the Israeli tabloid of record, calls such people: "a blood-sucking parasite". This specific "parasite" seemed pleasant enough. He smiled at me and invited me to the kollel to study with him. I said that I just might do that, remembering that I still hadn't finished my Jewish journey, and wondering if another opportunity had just presented itself. David said that I can come anytime. I warned him that I really might do so, but he did not back down. It took another month until I got around to it but we finally met at the kollel. He gave me a kippah and we went to the synagogue, where it was quiet. He asked what I wanted to learn and I said "everything", which was true.

So we started with an overview of Judaism, beginning with the Torah and moving on to the Mishanh until modern times. It was the first time that I really understood how Judaism unfolded, and terms like "Tanaaim" and "Rishonim" and "Halacha" that had been wandering around in my brain lacking any context and meaning (well, except for negative ones), finally came together. I was very happy, relieved, and excited when we stepped out of the kollel at the end of our first meeting. It was just before the holiday season and one of the other avrechim cried out to me "Why don't you come with us to Uman?" I replied that I had already traveled much further than that (spiritually, of course) just to reach this kollel...and I then explained to David my blackround regarding Judaism (no, that's not a spelling mistake. I may have invented a new word. If so, you can use it freely). He listened attentively and seemed very empathic.

Unfortunately the holidays were upon us and the kollel was on vacation and it took almost another two months until we met again. In our second meeting I told him that in light of what I learned the last time we met, I would like to study the mitzvot one by one (there is a book that lists them all, he had told me), learn how to perform them, their meanings and reasons, that I also wanted to learn the Torah itself with him, and also to learn the daily life of a normal, practicing Jew. He said that learning the mitzvot individually would not make much sense and that it would be better to just go through the Jewish day, and that is what we did - and have been doing - once a week ever since. David taught me arvit and then mincha and the morning blessings. He bought me a siddur and wrote a very beautiful, loving dedication in it - my father never got me a siddur so this was my very first one. He also got me a kippah, a black felt one, like his. My wife says that I would look better in a more colorful kippah, and if anyone would have told me that in any stage of my life I would be kippa-shopping with my wife, I would have assured that person that he was certifiably insane...

I demanded and received detailed explanations about everything, every word in the prayers, all the reasons and meanings - everything was explained in depth without fail. Sometimes David was at a loss with one of my questions and had to check with other books or his colleagues and I appreciated that - he was secure enough to admit that he did not know everything and open enough to appreciate that an outsider like me could bring an entirely new perspective to what for him was, perhaps, overly familiar. He taught me how to pray, what is customary to do and when - it really surprised me how complex this was, since one must pay attention both to one's individual prayer but also to the general pace in which the prayer leader and the rest of the congregation is praying at. It is an interesting balance between individual and group. David has ordered me a tefillin, at a reasonable price (I had no idea religious paraphernalia could be so expensive!) which I am still waiting for. In a few days we meet again and we will begin to learn about the Sabbath and I am very excited for that. We are also studying the Torah.

This is a funny thing - about five years ago I bought the Daat Mikra set of books (the Torah only), thinking that I would read it and with the help of the exegesis I would understand the text. For some reason, bible Hebrew had always defeated me, and it did so this time too. As much as I read the Torah I simply could not understand what was written in it. I am far from stupid, so it was clear to me that this was another case of an emotional barrier blocking me from connecting to the Jewish texts. But after a few meetings with David, the mists cleared, and now I can read the Torah easily and fluently. Questions still come up and I discuss them with my mentor, David, but I can really read the Torah easily and independently. The Torah is now mine, and for me this is a magnificent achievement. Soon we will finish reading the Book of Genesis and this will be the first time in my life that I have read it. It is a terrible thing for parents to hide or forbid such a treasure from their children.

I already mentioned that I even prayed independently, in a nearby Habad synagogue (I have a feeling that in Jerusalem you are never that far away from a synagogue. I am only now beginning to notice how many there are!). I am looking forward to having a real Sabbath, to learning the morning prayers and the use of tefillin and tallith. Every time I meet with David, every time I pray in a synagogue, I feel relieved, as if some more of the terrible shadow that has been dogging me all my life is gradually being swept away. I palpably feel that I am exorcising the ghosts of my grandfather, the orthodox Rabbi, and his rebellious son, who completely rejected Judaism. I feel that it is my duty to reconcile the two by finding a middle path, between tradition and modernity. I do not know yet where this will end and how far I will get into the tradition. I find it hard to believe that I will ever become a real orthodox Jew; many things are still very difficult for me. For instance, there are so many prayers and blessings throughout the day, that being an observant Jew is like having a whole other job. They weren't kidding when they called it "Avodat HaShem"...and currently, I cannot see where I am going to fit this new job into my very tight schedule. Also, although I am looking forward to going to the Sabbath service, I am not looking forward to losing 3 hours of sleep on the only day of rest I have. And there are many other things that bother me. The thing is that I do not know yet how much of this resistance is due to my antagonist upbringing and how much of this is because I really should not become so observant. These are things that I will have to continue to sort out. But if I do end up being the exact same thing that I was brought up to hate the most, this would prove once again an important psychological truth: It is indeed a thin line between love and hate.

However, where I end up is not important. What's important is that whenever I get to where I need to be, I have vowed to go to my father's grave and say Kaddish. I already did this when he died, but I had no idea what I was saying or why. Now I actually know what the words mean and I will say them and I will lay to rest both of my ancestors' souls, and I myself will be able to finally live my life (and sleep!) in peace, at least in this respect.
I have also vowed never to trash the avrechim again nor hate them. How can I, after I have received so much from this system? I still do not like it, and I think that Judaism, the Jewish people, and the State of Israel would all be better served if religion would get out of politics completely, but I refuse to hate anymore. Whenever I think of avrechim, and kollelim, and religious Jews on the dole, I will think of David, who came out of nowhere, and with his modesty, and kindness, and infinite patience, and utterly non-judgmental attitude became my gateway to Judaism and thus helped me rescue a crucial part of my soul. I could never have done it without him, and for that I will be eternally grateful.

Finally, what are the odds of such a thing happening? I mean what were the odds that I would find an apartment that suited our needs and was affordable, and that also had decent, honest landlords, one of whom just happened to be an avrech with whom I would have an instant rapport and who would help me reclaim my Jewish heritage, a task I had already given up on years ago? I told David that if I knew beforehand that I would have to find such a combination of circumstances I would never have even begun to try, because I would have known that such a thing was completely impossible. But I am thinking that perhaps I am not a very good judge of what is and is not possible, and I realize now that such judgments are perhaps best left in the hands of those who actually perform such miracles, namely: G-d.

The Spiritual Aspect of Freelancing

2007-10-10T14:54:00.000+02:00

One of the less discussed aspects of freelancing is the spiritual side of this kind of life, but for me this aspect was dominant from the start. I was surprised to find that from a spiritual point of view the difference between a salaried lifestyle and a freelancing one was vast, and the jump to freelancing, which I made recently, a lot more difficult because of it.
As a child I grew up in a "salaried" family. Both my parents worked in large, governmental bureaucracies and both had tenure. This kind of position was held to be the ideal job offering steady pay, a respectable position in society and most importantly – security in an unpredictable world. So it will not surprise you to hear that for most of my life I had been working as a salaried worker in the city or else living in a kibbutz where salaries, of course, were unheard of at the time.
A salaried worker, at least here in Israel, is in many respects like being a child. Your union takes care of negotiations so the salary is fixed without any effort on your part. Benefits, pension plans and saving plans are also already taken care of by the employer, by agreement with the union. Many workers do not even know that they have such things, and I am continually surprised to get in my mail all kinds of announcements, updating me on the status of pension plans I had no idea I was part of. Taxes are deducted directly from your salary so the salaried worker also does not have to deal with the IRS. Vacation and days off are set too, and many times arranged and even paid for by the employer. Sick leave is taken care of. In many instances, the salaried worker just has to appear at work on a consistent basis and everything else will be taken care of. You can be fired but usually the union will make sure that the terms are favorable and in any case you are entitled to unemployment pay for several months. In short – there is a lot to be said for this kind of job, although the mileage may vary depending on the country you live in and your field of work.
The main point is that there exist a spiritual relationship between the salaried worker and his or her employer: dependence. The worker expects the job and the salary to be there for him every day, for years on end. He comes to see it as his birthright: "I deserve this job and this salary and these conditions" is a major underlying assumption in a salaried workers life. I submit that this is also one of the major reasons why workers, even when suffering like in the TV show The Office, dare not venture out of the familiar and quit their jobs.

Yes, it is not easy to find another job. But the bigger obstacle in leaving the salaried life and striking out on your own is overcoming the mental atrophy that is characteristic to the salaried life.
As a freelancer you must exercise muscles that have not been in use for years or perhaps forever. As a freelancer, for the first time, everything is on you. There is no one to blame but you. You yourself are responsible for everything. That is a drastic reversal.
Being independent means that you are not beholden to anyone. You do not have to toe the party line (which, in Israel, is a significant part of the salaried workers life. See: academia, the legal system and so on) and you are free to think for yourself and form your own opinions without peer pressure coupled with economic pressure. Come to think of it, I remember reading that one of the reasons British PM Margaret Thatcher insisted on a huge program that let people buy the governmental houses they were living in at the time (seventies and eighties) was on the assumption that they would become more independent minded and therefore more inclined to favor the conservative party. Conversely, the enormous public sector in Israel, established by the Jewish communists who built this country, has always been extremely dominant and the only one fighting it, for some of the same reasons as Thatcher, has been consistently reviled by almost every public figure in Israel. I'm talking about Bibi Netanyahu of course.

But back to freelancing. The most difficult part in freelancing is getting the client, especially in the beginning. Sometimes your money is running out and so is your time. You know you can do the job but you are not getting any. What's wrong? Is anything wrong? Is the world out to get you?
I find that freelancing is like fishing – you find a body of water – where your clients are- and throw out as many hooks as possible with various baits. Some days the catch is great and sometimes you come back home with nothing. More often than not, in the beginning, the fish will not bite. It takes a lot of faith in yourself and the world – or God – to go through this period.
I admit that sometimes I yearn for a steady job: going to the same office everyday, living securely in the knowledge that at the end of the month I will get a paycheck for the exact same amount I did last month. But then I remind myself how much more satisfying it is to live like an animal – to survive by your own instincts and wits and abilities, to set your own prices, to work with the people you choose to work with and do the jobs you want to do. In a sense, as a freelancer, you interview every new client to see if he "fits". And you can always fire him. Of course, the reverse is true also, but that's what makes freelancing so exciting – it's unpredictable.
In freelancing, everyday can bring a new surprise. For better or for worse. Sometimes you'll get a shiny new project, and sometimes an existing client will call and say:
"Sorry, I have to cancel" (sometimes without the "sorry"). Living in such an uncertain world takes a lot of faith. To me, it is like trying to keep your balance constantly while the world throws at you endless distractions, the biggest of which are, of course – your fears.
As a salaried worker, your fears are taken care of. In fact I would say that being a salaried worker is mostly the result of fear (which, by the way, I completely understand and sympathize with).
As a freelancer you have chosen to face that fear – the fear of the unknown - on a daily basis. This takes a lot of guts, and self-confidence and, I think a lot of faith.

Which reminds of this fable that sums it all up very nicely: The Dog and the Wolf by Aesop:
(I do not know where this version is from. It is much more elaborate than the usual ones. I remember translating it from English to Hebrew many years ago, but I forget the source. For this post, I translated it back.)

"A starved, bony wolf happened one night to meet a fat, satiated dog. After greeting each other the wolf said:
"Hey, what's up? How is it that you look so good? No doubt you are feeding well, while here I am, running around day and night trying to make ends meet, barely keeping myself from starving."
"Well, if you want to look like I do, just do what I do," said the dog.
"Really," said the wolf, "what does that mean?"
"All you have to do is protect the master's house at night, and keep away the robbers," said the dog.
"With pleasure," said the wolf, "seeing that I am in such a bad way right now. Life in the wild, in the cold and rain are very tiring. Methinks a warm roof, and a full stomach are not a bad substitution!"
"Certainly not," said the dog. "Come with me."
As the two companions were walking along the wolf noticed a strange mark on the dog's neck. Being of an inquisitive nature he couldn't help but ask what was the meaning of it."
"Hmmm, nothing," said the dog.
"Yes, but…"
"It's nothing, maybe you mean the collar that is attached to my chain," said the dog.
"A chain," the wolf cried out in surprise. "You mean you aren't allowed to roam where and when you please?"
"Well, not exactly," said the dog. "You see, they think I am quite a frightening creature so they tie me up during the day, but I assure you, at night I am as free as a bird, and besides, the master feeds me from his own plate, and his servants give me leftovers, and everybody loves me and…wait, where are you going, what's wrong?"
"Well, good night to you," said the wolf. "You can eat all the delicacies you wish, but I prefer a stale loaf of bread and my freedom over the pamperings of royalty and a chain."

But life is not always so clear-cut and there is a lot of gray area between "wolf" and "dog". Many free-lancers use a combination of the two, hoping to get the best of both worlds. This is a very good tactic, especially for beginners.
Also, being a wolf can be a lonely business while some people just need the warmth and security of human company. Freedom does have it's costs and ultimately the question is: are you willing to pay the price? Is it worth it for you?

The Political Failure of Religious-Zionism in Israel - An Explanation

2007-09-20T13:20:00.000+02:00

Summary: This post will try to understand the consistent, abysmal political failure of right wing religious Israelis (Religious-Zionists) using the basic concepts of a simple but effective psychological theory called Transactional Analysis.
This post will address the following questions:

In what way is the Religious –Zionist sector subservient to secular Jewry in Israel. Can this be changed? How?
What is the role of Religious-Zionism in Israeli Society?
Why does the Religious Right in America have political power that matches their numbers while in Israel it continually fails?
Why and in what ways are Israeli Orthodox Jews so different from their Anglo-Saxon counterparts and why does this matter?
Why does any of this matter to a secular Israeli like me?
What will happen if the Religious-Zionist sector does not change? What are its options?

Obviously the subject is complex so this will not be short but it should be interesting and perhaps useful if you are interested in the future of Israel and the Jewish people.
The post is divided into frequent headers so you can scroll down to the parts that interest you.

Background - Anecdotes From RZ Life

Previously I promised that after explaining the basic terms and ideas of Transactional Analysis with the help of a few clips from Seinfeld, I would use this theory to discuss and hopefully clarify several of the bigger issues that our society faces.
This is my first attempt to do so (If you do not know T.A. you can catch up in this wiki or get the drift of things as you read). This post was inspired by a Moshe Feiglin article on the Jewish Leadership Blog. Feiglin ran just a few weeks ago in the Likud primaries and garnered a quarter of the vote. Moshe is an original fellow who has some very interesting observations to make about his fellow Religious-Zionists. He starts by relating an anecdote from the elections:

As the polls closed Tuesday night in Haifa, the poll chairwoman eyed the two official observers suspiciously. "You're pulling my leg, aren't you?" she half stated, half asked.
How could it be? The Feiglin representative is an obviously non-observant, veteran Likud woman, while the Bibi representative is obviously a Religious Zionist, who has spent the entire night in dread that Feiglin will get more than 30% of the vote! What is going on here?

In this post, Feiglin tries to explain why his fellow Religious-Zionists continually fail to implement their own beliefs and policies and he reaches this conclusion:

The Left has designed our national symbols and culture. And as long as we are culturally captive to the Left, we will necessarily reach the Left's conclusions…Why doesn't the belief based public stand up on its own two feet? …The answer is that Religious Zionism draws its legitimacy from secular Zionism.

Fieglin concludes by stating that only when Religious-Zionists take upon themselves to lead Israel as opposed to following will they be able to implement their policies.

I agree with Feiglin's observations but that is all they are – observations. In my mind it is possible and even necessary to ask: Why are the Religious-Zionists willing to be culturally subservient to the secular left? How did this situation come about and why does it continue? For that matter, why is Feiglin's wake up call rejected , sometimes violently, by so many of them?
There is a reason for this and I believe that with the help of Transactional Analysis we can understand the problem correctly and perhaps even solve it – if that is at all possible.

I will begin with another anecdote, this time from the 2005 Jerusalem Conference (site is in Hebrew). The conference was established (or should I say "cloned") by the right wing Israeli National News network as an alternative to the prestigious and influential Herzelyia Conference where the secular Ashkenazi leaders of the country gather each year to determine the future of Israel. The Jerusalem Conference is a pale imitation, sparsely attended by the public. An inordinate number of the participants are prominent left-wing secular spokesmen like Dan Margalit ( I imagine this is done in order to receive some coverage from the Israeli media, surely not because these people are underexposed….).
In any case, two years ago the conference happened to occur just before the disengagement from Gaza and discussions were heated and also very depressing. Two things struck me then.

First was the question: "Should the soldiers of the Religious Zionist sector obey the order and help to ruin the homes and lives of their brethren?"
One after the other prominent RZ leaders said, "Without the army we have nothing" and that disobeying orders will be disastrous. This came after a two hour discussion in which it became obvious that there is no way that Israel would be better off after the disengagement. Most prominent was the voice of General (ret.) Yaakov Amidror who urged the young people to conform. What was worse was that his words were greeted enthusiastically by the small Religious-Zionist crowd. When I heard the applause I knew that nothing would save Gush Katif.
The only one to display any kind of human feeling, common sense and faith was a secular person. This was Col. (ret.) Moshe Leshem, a secular Jew who stood up and said: "I don't have a Kippah but I believe in God and I believe that the Disengagement is an act of ethnic cleansing and should be fiercely resisted." Leshem of course called upon the soldiers to refuse the illegal orders. Leshem spoke with force and confidence and belief – and his words were greeted largely with silence by the Religious Zionists.

The second interesting event was what I learned when Motti Shecklar, CEO of The Second Authority for Radio and Television, stepped up to discuss the relationship between the media and the RZ. He said that when the Second Authority was being established he traveled all over the country begging his people, the Religious Zionists, to get their foot in the door, to apply for jobs there and also to start training their children as media professionals. Motti said that everywhere he went the answer was that they preferred their children to do something useful and lucrative like being a lawyer or doctor. Media was looked down upon. Today, the same people complain that radical, secular, left-wing moonbats have "taken over" Israeli media. But they didn't takeover - they created it and made it viable.
Motii went on to establish Maale, the first RZ "School of Television, Film and the Arts" but that may be too little and too late – it has only 20-30 graduates a year according to Motti, compared to thousands of secular graduates.

Religious-Zionism – Depending upon Secular Creativity and the Secular Social Center

These stories demonstrate recurring themes:

1. Religious Zionists following in the footsteps of secular Jews, imitating them, sometimes lagging behind by decades.
2. Religious Zionists rejecting a new idea in favor of the familiar old ways while secular Jews embrace the unknown and pave the way to the future, leading the way for everybody else.

One last anecdote which illustrates how dependent the RZ are upon the creativity and originality of secular Jews, even in the face of their own destruction, this time from an old post on this blog, also concerning the disengagement:

I recall walking in downtown Jerusalem a year ago, a week or two before the Disengagement. I saw a middle-aged National-Religious woman all dressed up in the official Gush-Katif colors (orange ribbon around the hat, orange bracelet, orange ribbon tied to her purse, orange shirt, orange cap) walking up to a newsstand and buying a copy of Yediot Ahronot. This paper happens to be not only the largest in the country but also the worst in terms of anti-religious and anti-Zionist sentiment (tied with Haaretz). In fact even now, in the midst of a war with Hizballah that has already cost many lives – Yediot has yet to match the degree of animosity and pure, unadulterated hatred it directed towards the settlers at that time with its current, slightly adulating coverage of Hizballah today.
Anyway, I was shocked. After she bought the paper I just had to ask her what the hell does she think she’s doing? I told her that she just donated a dollar to the cause of evicting her people from the Gaza Strip. She shame-facedly admitted it but said, in justification – “ I just wanted to be in the know”.

And that is the root of the problem. Because to know what's going on you have to be connected to the heart of things and this heart, the center of our society is - as Fegilin correctly points out - in the hands of secular people and everything and everyone else in Israel revolves around this center.
So Feiglin is right: the Religious Zionists are subservient to this center. Of course they are not alone in this servitude but they are alone in trying to directly challenge this center.
Most Israelis are quite content with having this center in secular hands and living around it or in it. Haredi society seems just as content living completely outside of it and they tend to erupt only when they feel that their self-imposed boundaries are being overrun. But the RZ seem to want it both ways – to let others create and sustain the cultural center and at the same time they want to look down upon it with disdain and contempt while receiving recognition and admiration for their own endeavors from the very same people they despise! They enjoy the secular papers and music and TV shows and yet decry and sometimes even violently oppose the political results of this culture. It is this two-sided attitude that is so baffling.
But now we can begin to answer the real question: why is this so? What is this center and why is it so powerful? Why did secular Jews establish it and not RZ Jews? And most importantly, why don't Religious Zionists establish their own center to rival it? Why are secular Jews always the first, with the RZ a distant second? How can this be changed?

Creativity in Israel: Secular Compared to RZ

I think this situation can be explained by one basic psychological difference which sets secular people apart from religious people. This difference is in the attitude towards the Free Child (explained here with the help of a few clips from I Dream of Jeannie).

According to Transactional Analysis the human psyche is comprised of four states of mind:
The Adult, which is oriented towards reality, processing information and making decisions dispassionately, like a computer.
The Parent, which makes the laws and rules that govern our behavior, emotions and thoughts and is oriented towards the complete fulfillment of these rules at all times. This is the invisible mental prison in which we live our lives.
The Child, which contains all our emotions and feelings. Three different states can be recognized in the child:
The Adaptive Child – this part does its best to adapt to the demands of the Parent.
The Rebellious Child - this part does its best to reject the demands of the Parent.
The Free Child - this part does not care at all about the demands of the Parent. It is centered around the needs of the moment, whatever they may be. It is spontaneous and carefree and endlessly curious, living in the moment just like a kitten. But unlike other animals the Free Child can also be creative. Emotions and senses and intuition are the realm of the Free Child.

The Attitude Towards Creativity in RZ Society
Generally speaking, in most cases the attitude of religious people in Israel towards the Free Child is that of the Parent towards any child that is breaking the rules and threatening to overthrow the established order of things. This is an orthodox view in which everything new is bad, the best days were in the past and things can only get worse. It is a defensive, frightened attitude towards life itself. This is not especially surprising considering that for the past two hundred years and more, orthodox Jewry, especially in Europe and in Israel, has been under constant, sometimes violent attack, on the part of "The New" – the new secular way of life, new freedoms and new ideas, not to mention the new, extremely secular state of Israel. Under these conditions education tends to be dull and stifling and defensive. Children are encouraged to conform and their gaze is turned inwards and backwards – to the glory of the past. This is a most unfavorable atmosphere for innovation and creativity but it is a time-tested Jewish defense: when danger is abroad, circle the wagons and cling tightly to the familiar tradition.

The Attitude Towards Creativity in Secular Society
On the other hand, secular Jews in Israel tend to the opposite – they favor the new. They are curious and inventive and bold and brash, sometimes stupidly and brazenly so. They are not tied to the past, in fact they are taught to hate it and disengage from it. In many cases they are taught to despise and disengage from the community. This leaves them free to experiment in every way possible – there are no limits to what can be done, for better and for worse. They do not care who they are hurting, because they do not share anything in common with the rest of society.
Of course these are generalizations. Living in Israel, it seems to me that the majority of the population stands somewhere in the middle between the two extremes and in fact – only a small part of secular society is actively engaged in a creative endeavor. But that is more than enough, and far, far more than can be said of Religious- Zionists who, it seems, need a Rabbi's permission before they are allowed to think of something new, much less act upon that thought.

The Creators Can Dictate the Rules
From its inception Zionism was a secular endeavor. Apparently it took a completely secular, assimilated Jew to have the nerve to think of something completely old, in a radically new way. This is the essence of creativity – taking the existing materials and combining them or viewing them in new ways. The representatives of the Parent at the time – the orthodox community - rejected this new idea. But some did not and they formed the Religious-Zionist movement in a valiant effort to combine the new Zionism with the old orthodox Judaism. Many of the ideas and certainly the spiritual authority of this movement in Israel may be attributed to Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook the first Chief Rabbi in Israel and a very original thinker, perhaps the first and last free thinking Religious Zionist in Israel, until Moshe Feiglin popped up a few years ago.
The secular Zionists broke away from their traditional parents, like good Rebellious Children, and made their way to Israel where they proceeded to create the infrastructure of the future state which their spiritual heirs control to this day.
And therein lies a second lesson for Religious-Zionists – if you want to control something you had better create it. In social life, it is far easier to invent something then to take it over (although to be sure, Feiglin seems to disagree, which is why he joined the Likud instead of doing something new and different - and better) .

Why the Religious Right in America Succeeds

This is the secret of the success of the religious right in America. Consider this: numerically, right-wing Christians number about a quarter of U.S. population – about the same porportion as orthodox Jews in Israel, and yet their influence is enormous while orthodox Israelis have to fight every year anew for very basic elements of life such as an education budget!
I think the reason is this: in cultural terms, right-wing Christians are the descendants of the founders of America. The accepted form of public debate which they set two centuries ago are much more suitable to a rational argument than it is to the disinformation campaigns conducted by the Left.
In terms of transactional analysis American culture has had from the very beginning a strong orientation towards the Adult – towards facts, reality, effectiveness and utility. This is the "matter- of- fact" and common-sense attitude that pervades much of American society. This is a society that is so used to considering facts and distinguishing between fact and opinion and fiction that to this day, despite the concerted efforts of the Left, if you have a good, truthful argument for something – you still have a good chance to win. If you build a better mousetrap – it will sell and you will be successful. The best the left can do in America is to confuse the issues and feed the public misinformation, but with the development of new technologies and the diffusion of news delivery this effect is not as great as it once was.

The Founders of Israel – The Patronage System

In Israel it is almost the opposite. The founders came from a society and political culture that favored patronage. The relationship between the government and the population is the relationship between the Parent and the Adaptive Child. Reality is not a necessary part of the equation. Argument is useless. All you have to do is abide by the rules, do what you are told and hopefully you will be taken care of. Graft and protectionism are a way of life in this system. If you build a better mousetrap, well so what? First, get a license from the government. Second – get another one and another one, each time from a different ministry. Finally you begin to sell your great mousetrap only to find out that a different company with a far inferior mousetrap has a monopoly (brought and paid for, of course...). It undersells you and after a year you go out of business.

Although it is true that this system has been attacked ferociously from many sides and it has suffered many defeats in the past thirty years (dating from the fall of the Labor Party in the 1977 elections), the framework and most importantly the frame of mind for many Israelis has not yet changed. In many areas we are still satisfied with doing what we are told. For instance, ask military historian Dr. Uri Millstein (Hebrew link) – he is an expert on the lack of rationality- of the Adult - in the Israeli Army, or Bibi Netanyahu who did his best to fight this all-embracing nanny state, as Finance Minister.

Creativity in Israel Today

The attacks on the Eastern-European political culture have had one positive effect – they have spurred a renewed wave of creativity in Israeli society which has been led, as usual, and in spectacular fashion, by the secular sector. So it is that for the majority of the people in Israel secular Zionism has proven its vitality over and over again. It has proven itself when it began to establish Israel years before the Holocaust and it seems correct to this day - it has created an extremely free, vibrant, rich society in the midst of an intense struggle for national survival. No other group has done as much or offered a better vision to the people of Israel to this day. Will this change?
Perhaps the depravity and negligence of the current secular leadership will be its downfall as Feiglin predicts but I personally do not see it happening. The orthodox vision has been available all this time and while it has grown in popularity orthodox society is still not close to numerically rivaling mainstream Israeli society and the settler vision is not attracting many new supporters – their numbers have remained pretty constant throughout the past 10-20 years.
What is the problem? I will repeat again – the Free Child.

There is an old Chinese story that explains it well:

A beggar receives two dimes. With the first he buys a loaf of bread, with the second a lily.
"Why did you waste half of your money on a lily?" he was asked.
" The bread is to sustain me, and the lily I bought so I will have a reason to live!" answered the beggar.

Creativity and the Future of Israeli Society

And that is the point – without the Free Child, without the full gamut of emotions and senses, without the ability to at least potentially experience life at its fullest – what is the point? Without this, life is dull and routine, like watching TV in black and white when the neighbor has color television. This why Orthodox Jews, RZ as well as some Haredim, read secular newspapers and watch secular television and hear secular music – because it is fun.
Until the Israeli public loses its taste for fun, secular culture will prevail, unless someone provides a better alternative – perhaps one that achieves a better balance between the need to survive and the need to have a reason to survive. Because secular culture is definitely not perfect and in many ways its imbalance is becoming evermore pronounced, even dangerous. Therefore it is possible, maybe even necessary, for a new player to come in and offer a different cultural option. The question is: can the religious right – can Religious –Zionism do this? Can it finally lead the way and thus have its way? Can it lead instead of following?

Religious-Zionism and Creativity – The Dilemma

Religious Zionists face a unique problem: how to be creative, without ruining the existing order? How can one be assured that the newly created will not destroy the way of life that has been diligently preserved for thousands of years?
From its inception Religious-Zionism was intended to achieve a healthy balance between the old and the new – between the Parent and the Free Child. This is why RZ has been very careful in adopting the new, always following in the footsteps of secular Zionism. It joined the institutions created by the first Zionists and assimilated into them. Its party, the Mafdal, participated in the same political practices of political patronage and corruption as the Labor Party did, using its power and influence to funnel funds (and new olim) to its own people just like Labor did and especially into its own education system. Later these funds went where the people went – into the recaptured territories of Judea, Samaria and Gaza.
The first settlements were established while struggling against the government (or at least part of it to be exact) reminding the new settlers of the struggles of the secular Zionists against the British Mandate. They saw themselves as a logical and necessary continuation of the secular settlement that began a century earlier.
RZ prides itself in these settlements which are a copy of the previous secular settlements and also on its contribution to the Army's elite. Like the Kibbutznikim before them, RZ sons and daughters now comprise a very large proportion of the Army elite, much higher than their part in the population. The only difference is this: when the kibbutzim sent their sons to the Army, their party ruled the country. Today, the RZ sons are sacrificing themselves for an ideology that is openly trying to ruin their own community. The RZ education system is another source of pride and perhaps rightly so – but at the same time secular Jews built an education system that is open to everyone. Perhaps it is not as good but it is certainly not something to be sneezed at and you can guess by yourself which education system is appreciated more by the general public, especially when even RZ parents do not have an easy time getting their children in.

What Has Been Created By Religious-Zionism?
It seems that, to date, the RZ creations have been copies and variations on previous secular themes adapted to the needs of the RZ community. When I try to think of something new that the RZ community has created for the benefit of Israeli society I come up blank. Perhaps this is because I do not know it well enough. I know of new trends in RZ society such as a new openness towards woman studying Torah but this is again a careful adoption of Feminist ideas into orthodox society.
Actually, I can think of three new things: The aforementioned "Maale School of Television, Film and the Arts", Jewish Leadership and the "Hilltop Youth".

1 - Maale makes a specific point of making quality visual art while avoiding any contradiction with Jewish law. A committee which includes a Rabbi reviews all scripts in order to ensure their propriety. This is an interesting way to give the Free Child a safe place without threatening the Parent. But is it effective? Will Maale writers and filmmakers break new ground? Can such a trapped creativity invent something so new, so interesting that it will rival their secular counterparts? That remains to be seen. Still, if nothing else, their award-winning films are testament to the fact that such a combination is indeed possible. It is an open question if this combination can also be attractive and influential enough to change the tide.

2 - Jewish Leadership has a well-known and colorful history so I will not repeat it here. But as far as RZ society is concerned one point is clear – Feiglin himself and his new ideas are viewed as completely contradictory to what constitutes traditional Religious-Zionism and he has been under constant attack not only from secular elites which is to be expected, but also from what should have been his own home base. Once again, when RZ society is confronted with a new idea it attacks.
This case is significant in my view because Feiglin's ideas arrive at a time in which RZ has witnessed more than one devastating defeat. One would expect that a society on its heels would at least be willing to consider something new, some new idea or new way to stop the breathless, hopeless retreat and perhaps even go on the attack. Feiglin offers just such a way that by no means contradicts Jewish Law. That it is not even considered tells me all I need to know about the sickness of Religious-Zionist society in Israel - a society of Adaptive Children and their Parents.

3 - The Hilltop Youth , on the other hand, do not seem ready to adopt to anyone's demands except themselves. They seem to be Rebellious Children, rebelling against their parent's placid, accepting ways, renewing the settler tradition, which is the old secular tradition of Homa u migdal. If this is indeed the case then this is nothing new. Anyway, the reaction of mainstream RZ society is the same – rejection, reprimands, and threats. At least that is the story if you hear it from Avi Ran. Again, it fits the pattern: something new is created and then it can either be brought under control or else it is immediately attacked and rejected.

The Connection Between God, Creativity, Obedience and Belief

The RZ track record with creativity seems to me to be very poor. The main reason is that there is a built-in contradiction between keeping the old ways and encouraging creativity, between the Parent and the Free Child – they cannot co-exist.
This is because the essence of creativity is its unexpected nature. Creation is always an ongoing experiment with results that are yet to be determined. Creativity by its very nature is uncertain. In a way, it is absolutely necessary for creative people to have some kind of belief in God because without it, the uncertain aspects of creation will gnaw at them constantly and sometimes even ruin them.
So, at least theoretically speaking, one would expect that believers would be among the most creative people around! For a believer is not afraid of creation, of the unexpected, of life itself – because he knows that the world is in God's hands and everything is for the best even if we cannot understand it. I would go even further and state that a believer realizes that it is our duty, as men created in the image of God, to emulate him and be creative. In fact, if there is one reason for our being created I think that it is in order to continue God's work – and be creative human beings.
But if this is a believing attitude towards creation, how can we explain the RZ approach, and the orthodox view of creativity in general?
As far as I can tell it is a question of confusing belief in God with obedience to the Parent.
This means that children in RZ society, as in every other society, obey their parents as best they can in order to survive. For RZ children, belief in God and Jewish god-given law is "inherited" so to speak, not discovered or achieved. In other words - their belief in God stems from obedience to their parents who insisted upon this belief with all its attendant behaviors and opinions. But obedience is not the same as actually believing.

Children in such a society are forged into being Adaptive Children with strong Parents. The Adult is relatively weak because many areas of enquiry are not open to rational discussion. The Free child is curtailed because by its very essence he is the enemy of the Parent (think about the child who sees the naked emperor). So it is most likely that an RZ child will be an Adaptive Child and if he fails at that – a Rebellious Child. It will be very difficult for him to be creative and I would suspect that creative RZ people will come from homes that were comparatively less strict and more open-minded. These kind of homes tend to be more Leftist than the usual RZ and indeed, I have already heard one complaint that the movies being produced at Maale have a definite anti-religious and anti RZ slant.
What this means is that RZ education, at home and later in school, will tend to encourage a very conformist state of mind. This is why the sons of RZ serving in the Army have such trouble disobeying orders. Psychologically they have been trained to obey the Parent, the voice of authority, which in the case of the various expulsions and demolitions happens to be an Army officer. This is why the leaders of the RZ community seem to be at a loss with the new situation. They know how to deal with the familiar. The new confuses them and even paralyzes them. Imagine if the tens of thousands of RZ gathered in Kfar Maimon were let loose? And why did they not free themselves to act? The lack of creativity and freedom in RZ society has come back to bite it in a most cruel and ironic manner.

The Difference Between Anglo-Saxon Jews in Israel and RZ Israeli Jews

Not all orthodox education is the same. RZ children in Israel will likely have a stronger Adult than Haredi children since their range of legitimate, Parent-approved interests is much larger. A notable difference is also to be found in Anglo-Saxon Jews. They are much more apt to think freely and creatively and to treat all the aspects of life in a rational manner. In terms of Transactional Analysis – their Adult is stronger and so is the Free Child. The light air of fear and suffocation that seems to me to pervade much of RZ society does not seem to touch Anglo-Saxon Jews, at least in my experience.
I imagine that not growing up in a nanny state like Israel helps. Perhaps the innate tendency of American society to encourage and reward rationality and also the complete separation of state and religion helps too. Maybe turning religion into something completely personal frees the individual. Or rather, perhaps this separation creates the individual and enables him to forge his own way in this world? Maybe that is how a Nadia Matar is born? Many of Feiglin's supporters (not to mention his wife) are also Anglo-Saxon and they are prominent in the political activities of the Israeli Right, or even when they walk the streets of Jerusalem! (now that guy is a believer!).
In any case it is clear to me that growing up in an American society with its great and historic emphasis upon the individual, affects Anglo-Saxon orthodox Jews in a way that makes them obviously different from the average Israeli orthodox Jew who grows up "within the tribe", with a very strong emphasis on the group and its survival.
In my opinion, the most important thing that Anglo-Saxon Jews bring with them when they make aliyah is not their money, if they even have any, nor their professional education and work experience – it is their attitude of freedom, liberty, and civil rights, the outlook of citizens who expect their government to serve them and not the other way around, what may be called - cultural capital. RZ would do well to learn and emulate them, as indeed it seems they are.(Hebrew link. No English, but it's start…)

Why A Secular Jew Cares About RZ

Growing in a Secular-Zionist home and living in this part of society for most of my life, I have no illusions about our situation. There are many people in the ruling elites who seriously view orthodox Jews as the enemy and a far more dangerous one than Hamas or Iran. People like Yuli Tamir have no compunction about killing Orthodox Jews and in fact that is a major reason why weapons are still being supplied to the Palestinians.
Of course, this kind of internal struggle in Jewish society is nothing new. It has been going on for over two hundred years and Orthodox Jews have been, at times, just as violent and intolerant. But today we actually have a country and this struggle between "enlightened" Jews (as they used to be called) and orthodox Jews is threatening to bring the house down.

I have spent most of this post describing the imbalance of RZ society. But Israeli secular elites are just as imbalanced, just in different ways and areas. As a good secular Israeli child, the issues of faith, belief, God, and Judaism were all taboo. The secular Israeli can go to a mosque or church and can respect the beliefs of anybody – as long as they are not Jewish. Even years later it is still difficult for me to access those parts of my soul, as I once described on this blog.
Where RZ stress the group, secular society emphasizes the individual to the exact same degree of extremity. Family values, marriage, rearing children – they are viewed with concern if not actual horror by the members of the ruling secular elite, while anything the individual does for himself, especially in the realm of art, is considered good and proper no matter what havoc it wreaks upon other individuals or society itself. Self-expression is the master, society its slave.

The Role of Religious-Zionism in Israeli Society

RZ and secular society are almost mirror images of each other and that is why there is so much antagonism between the two. It is a love-hate relationship between two parts of society that are simply incomplete without the other. Secular Jewish society is not viable in Israel without Zionism. Religious-Zionism is not viable without the creativity, the fun and excitement generated by secular society. Each without the other is like a cripple hopping about with only one leg. Together can they stand on two feet and deal with life's challenges in an appropriate and timely manner.
They can also do so alone – if they grow the other leg. In other words if secular society can return to Zionism it will be able to deal with the external and internal threats facing it with relative ease, as it has done many times in the past. If RZ learns to be creative and original it will be able to overcome its problems and defeat its enemies.
Personally, I do not think that secular society can overcome the malady of the ruling elites. There are some healthy, Zionist parts in this elite but they are definitely the weaker and smaller part. Help is needed and that help can only come from the one remaining Zionist sector in Israel – the RZ.
RZ youth still have the energy and enthusiasm needed to carry on the work of their secular predecessors. Joe Settler describes this scene, from August, 2005, a scene which I too have seen at various times:

This evening I had the opportunity to observe the children of Gush Katif (who have just been brutally ripped from their homes) and the children of Israel’s secular elite (who promoted the ripping of these people from their homes).

The Children of Gush Katif gathered in Kikar Safra in Jerusalem and spent the night

* dancing,
* singing their hearts out, and
* simply supporting each other to keep their wonderful spirits high.

In contrast, the Children of the Secular Elite gathered near Ben-Yehuda and spent the night

* dancing,
* puking their guts out,
* supporting each other (as they were too drunk to stand on their own), and
* simply getting high.

It is no surprise to discover that nearly every member of Nezer Hazani served in an elite combat unit, while in contrast, secular hero Aviv Gefen (the draft dodger) and his friends literally dance on a flag of Israel.
If I were a secular Israeli, I too would be terrified of the tremendous uplifting, positive spirit of the Na'ar HaGivaot and want nothing more than to destroy their communities.

We are insurmountable.

Well, I am not terrified – I am glad. And as I have tried to point out and as recent history proves, RZ is definitely surmountable, unless it embraces change.

The Choices Facing RZ Society

RZ society is culturally enslaved to secular society in Israel. This results in one political defeat after another and it may even result in the eventual elimination of Religious-Zionism in Israel. What can be done? Here are some options and their likely results.

1 – Do nothing and continue the current state of affairs
Most likely result – an eventual retreat from most of Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem. RZ will be dragged (by their sons who serve in the Army) kicking and screaming from their homes to caravans all over the country. This will probably be more painful than the retreat from Gaza. RZ will not be able to recover for years if at all. Israel itself may not survive the war that will follow.

2 – Embrace Feiglin, join the Likud, liquidate the Religious-Zionist parties.
Most likely result – The Likud will get a majority of the votes next elections, but its base will be a lot more Hawkish enabling the prime minister (Feiglin?) to implement a Zionist agenda in internal and external affairs. In this scenario, the state will divest itself of all religious affairs, as Feiglin suggests, so that the one major obstacle to the involvement of Orthodox Jews in Israeli government will be removed. Such a move will be devastating to secular Jewry in Israel, in the best way possible - they will have to deal with their identity themselves instead of relying on Orthodox Jews to sustain it for them, while hating them for it.

3 – Fully integrate into Israeli society. This means giving up on all the separatist institutions – no more separate schools, synagogues, or settlements. This means embracing the revolutionary idea that all Jews were created equal by God.
Most likely result – a huge increase in contact between secular and RZ members of society will lead to a wave of both secular Tshuva and RZ desertion. Eventually everything will even out. Jewish identity in the general population will be stronger but orthodoxy will be weaker than before. This intermingling may bring about a new wave of very original, Jewish creativity in Israel, which is severely lacking today.

4 – Meekly surrender. Accept that the secular elites are too powerful to resist at the moment. Try to rescue whatever is possible, retreat and regroup.
Most likely result – depends on what philosophy the survivors of this move will adopt. This may lead to complete disintegration of RZ or to a future renewal which may be inspiring. Some groups will splinter off and continue to resist the secular elites and they will be hunted down and destroyed.
5 - Empower the people. The current secular elites treat the population as if they are children in need of a parent. Everything is the responsibility of the state, while the individual is not only blameless, but worse - helpless. Of course this puts the elites in a position to wield their power and keep it indefinitely.
An alternative elite will do the opposite - do its best to empower the citizens. A great example of this, which deserves an entirely separate post ,is Paamonim. Ten more initiatives like this, offered to all citizens, will work wonders for RZ and the country. Remember - in order to get power from the people - you must give it up and trust them and trust God.

6 - Something else. Religious Zionism starts to get serious about its future and develops a new strategy, or even better, several new, original strategies and tactics to deal with the threats it faces.
Most likely result – Hope, perhaps even victory, eventually.

Gmar Hatima Tova

Jerusalem Joe

The Jewish Agency and Neo-Nazism in Israel

2007-09-11T12:36:00.000+03:00

Probably you have already heard about the Israeli police busting a ring of Neo-Nazis. They were all immigrants from Russia with a very tenuous connection to their Jewish origins.
How did they arrive in Israel? I do not know them personally so I cannot say, but I did happen to witness the state of mind that has brought about this reality:

A few years ago I was working in the Jewish Agency helping to install new software. This entailed individual instruction sessions in which I got to know the Agency and its personnel very well. I was very impressed with the quality and sincerity of the people working there. But some things struck me as odd, if not actually stupid.
For instance, a major concern of the board of governors at the time was how to become cost-efficient. Management tried to think of ways to measure output. In some cases this is very difficult but in the case of the Aliyah Department there was an obvious formula : the more new olim the department brings to Israel, the more successful the department (and its head and staff...) would be considered. So the Aliyah department had a clear goal - bring more olim till the next meeting of the board of governors (when allocations are made). But by then there were not that many Jews left in Russia. The solution was simple:

find more Jews and if needed - manufacture them.
This is possible because according to Israeli law, if you have a Jewish grandparent you are considered Jewish for the purpose of immigrating to Israel, receiving many benefits and also citizenship in a modern, Western country. It's not a bad deal if you are sick of living in a backward, third world shit hole.
So the Jewish Agency's shlichim supposedly encouraged people to find out if they had any Jewish connection. They helped people with this and with the whole process. This way the number of olim remained high and even grew, as the department staff pointed out to me with unabashed pride one day.

But, as I said, I got around and soon enough I saw the other side of the equation. I was having a session with the head of a completely different department in the Jewish Agency who told me an enlightening story: the other day he saw on the street one of his old tormentors from his hometown in Russia. This acquaintance was a violent antisemitic bully at school and he used to torture this Jew who now headed a department in the Jewish Agency. The bully smiled at his old victim and explained proudly how he discovered - with the help of the good people from the Jewish Agency- that he had a Jewish grandmother he never even heard about. They offered money and a new future in a modern country so he came...
This Department Head lamented the policy that enabled this to happen but said that he was powerless to stop it.

So when I heard about Neo-Nazis in Israel I cannot say I was surprised. The Jewish Agency has brought thousands of people to Israel who have no business being here and some of them were, and still are violently antisemitic.

I wonder if this will cause the Jewish Agency to change its aggressive aliyah policy, if it still is in place. Carl from Israel Matzav seems to think the Agency is hopeless. Go there for a good review of the situation. For some history you can read this post on the same subject - but two years old on Simply Appalling.

A Glimpse Into the Israeli Education System

2007-08-18T22:39:00.000+03:00

A few incidents concerning writing and reading skills at various levels seem to illuminate a bigger problem in the education system and for once - it isn't money:

Several years ago, just as I was finishing my studies in the School of Education, a friend of mine, who was an assistant teacher, informed me that the faculty of the School had instituted a new, obligatory course for the freshman class called "ELEMENTARY SKILLS IN ACADEMIC READING & WRITING". Apparently, the students who were arriving at the university were so deficient in these skills that it was deemed necessary to invest in a new program to teach them what previous generations had known before ever arriving to study in the Hebrew University.

By coincidence I was teaching at the same time a similar class intended to prepare high school students for academic life. The skills involved were the same in both cases: how to summarize text, how to headline a block of text, how to recognize what is important in a text and what isn't, what is the difference between fact and speculation and opinion and how to differentiate between them and why this is important, how to write a foreword, a table of contents, a summary and so on. These high school students were seniors in their last year of school and they still did not possess most of these skills, not even at the level needed for high school.
The following year

I got a job at a teachers college and I was fortunate enough to be asked to grade students' seminary papers. These were important enough to be graded by a teacher not familiar with the student. The pay was excellent and I was very proficient in checking them quickly and writing down everything that was wrong or right about the paper. I am sad to say that I quickly noticed that most of the papers would not get a passing grade in any respectable university and some would not pass muster in a high school setting. I remarked upon this to the person responsible for these papers and she agreed that the level of the students' writing is terrible but, she added, " there is nothing we can do about it".
I did not dare suggest that actually teaching the students how to write a paper can and should be considered a worthy endeavor in a teacher's college and would actually constitute a fair return for their tuition. I did not do this first of all because I was happy to do this job. Second, I did not want to antagonize anybody before I quit, which I knew would be at the end of the year because of three - I had already realized how corrupt the system was.
One example will suffice: one day I was called into the principal's office for a talk. The issue was that my students had complained that I was giving them homework. I was asked to stop giving them homework. I was told clearly: "These are our students and they pay the rent. If they are unhappy they will leave and we will go out of business. It is your job to keep them happy."
I cannot not tell you what I said because I didn't say anything. I was shocked into complete silence. Afterwards I was depressed. I did not wish to continue teaching in such a corrupt atmosphere but I didn't want to leave in the middle of the year either. I stuck it out till the end and did not return the following year.
What is clear to me is that if the teachers-to-be do not know how to write a paper then they will not be able to teach the necessary skills to their pupils in elementary and high school. These students will then continue on to academia where the system will try to plug the holes in their education - as a friend told me recently:
Just last week I was back at the university for work with a client when I happened to meet an old friend, a fellow student, who had now become a mid-level administrator in the social sciences. While talking, it came out that they too had to institute a new course in academic reading and writing skills because the level of the students arriving had gotten so bad. He also said that this course was the one that students flunked the most – even more than the statistics course! He did admit that the lecturers, usually the youngest and most inexperienced ones, were too busy to teach properly, especially since the lesson combined their own subject matter with academic skills. Obviously they are more comfortable with their specialty than with teaching the academic skills which some of them, I am afraid, do not possess at a very high level.

I told him that I was both glad and sad to hear this.
I was sad because this reflects upon our culture which is raising an ignorant "educated" class, whose influence is growing and contributing to the dumbing down of public discourse in almost every field. These are people who finish college without the ability to think and articulate themselves clearly and what is worse – they have no idea that such a thing is possible because they had not been exposed to this standard. Very few lecturers retain this ability so the students do not have many good examples to learn from and also they are held to such low expectations that they really do not know any better. This situation is described clearly in the well known critique of the American educational system from the eighties, Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind". It seems to me that the same thing is happening in Israel.

On the other hand, I told my friend, I am glad to hear it because as editor many of these people come to me to help them so, in a way, I make a living off the failures of the system.
That isn't so nice perhaps, but I have a much cleaner conscience than the teachers who remained at the teachers college and continue to betray the trust of their students and the professional academics in the universities who are too busy climbing the steep, slippery slopes of academia to give their students the education they deserve.
Many times we hear that the problem of the education system is money. But none of this has to do with financial resources but rather with moral resources. All that is needed is the moral character to fulfill the teacher's mission: to educate. Do not lie, do not shirk from your duty even when it is unpleasant or when it conflicts with your own personal agenda. Set the proper standards and teach your students up to them – that is educating. Lowering or abolishing the standards to please the students and make it easy on yourself is a betrayal of the trust that exists between teachers and the students who pay to get an education and between the teachers and the tax-paying public who finance the system and expect the teachers to do their job, not pass the problems on to the next level.
It is as if the city garbage men would pick up the garbage from your street and throw it into the streets of another neighborhood. We would never allow it would we? So why should we allow it in the education system? I guess "Teachers" is alive and well in Israel.

My conclusion from this experience has been that morals, not money, is what we lack most in the education system.

I Dream of Jeannie - The Free Child

2007-08-05T09:53:00.000+03:00

I really enjoyed using a Seinfeld episode to demonstrate a psychological theory so I started thinking about a lot more possibilities of combining fun video evidence with what may be, for some, stale theory. In this post I will be using a clip from "I Dream of Jeannie" as an excellent example of a term from Transactional Analysis I explained in the previous, aforementioned Seinfold post - the "Free Child".
"I Dream of Jeannie" is a TV series from the sixties which remains pretty popular to this day. It is about an astronaut who finds himself on a deserted island somewhere in the Pacific. There he finds a bottle with a genie which quickly becomes his very own "Jeannie". She returns with him to civilization and much laughter and hilarity ensue.

Jeannie - The Free Child
Jeannie is sweet, warm-hearted and loving. She is also very emotional, spontaneous and delightfully creative but also extremely difficult to predict and therefore also quite difficult to live with despite being charming and beautiful and all-powerful. Another problem is that despite her love for her master, Major Nelson, she keeps landing him in trouble. There is a good reason for this which will be explained below.
Jeannie obviously possesses all the qualities of a Free Child and that is indeed her dominant mood. One of the main characteristic of the Free Child, which puts him at odds with the rest of society and especially The Parent, is a complete disregard for the value of time. Since the Free Child is always completely immersed in the present, then the basic elements of time, the past and future, are of no consequence to him. Another way to put is this: for the Free Child, past present and future blend into one.
This conflict is demonstrated beautifully in the chapter "Every Day Is Sunday". In this episode Jeannie decides that Major Nelson has been working too much and needs a rest. He protests that he has to go to work and so she just makes everyday Sunday, announcing that it will remain Sunday until he enjoys himself. But Major Nelson is committed to working and, well, see for yourself.

I made two clips using an amazingly simple free software - Solvieg Multimedia AVI Trimmer - all you have to do is put in the start and end times and press a button and voila – you have a clip. I don't think it can get any simpler. Now, if I can find such an easy way to rip my DVDs I will be able to use a lot more material on this blog.
In any case, here are the clips from the second episode of the second season. You are invited to watch them and read the accompanying remarks. Enjoy!

The first clip is from the very beginning of the episode:

In the beginning of this clip we see Jeannie displaying much concern over her master. She sounds caring and also reasonable – it is true that everybody needs some time off to relax. Many episodes start like this, with Jeannie in a Parental or Adult mode. But soon enough the Free Child comes to the fore. Major Nelson says:
"Too bad every day can't be Sunday."
With an impish smile and a gleeful laugh, Jeannie turns this thought into action. Creativity and laughter are sure signs of the Free Child – and it is such a free, infectious laughter, isn't it?
Tony, on the other hand, is in full Adaptive Child mode: he must ignore his bodily and psychic needs and go to work. He has to be on time. He must hurry. "He must", "He has to", "There is no time for…" - these are all Parental dictates that cannot be reasoned with. The use of the words "must" and "have to" precludes any rational conversation.
Throughout the series Tony alternates between issuing these Parental decrees to himself and to his Jeannie and obeying them as an Adaptive Child. Throughout the series Jeannie does her best to bring the Free Child into his life. Tony's Parent resists valiantly but he never does get rid of Jeannie, does he? Perhaps he realizes deep inside that she is exactly what he needs.
Surely Jeannie realizes that what he needs is some fun and she is out to make sure he gets it:

Here we can see the dynamic explained above: Tony admonishes his Jeannie, telling her what to do without explaining why - the Parent talking to the Adaptive Child. But Jeannie is too much of a Free Child to slip into that role. She listens, and ignores him completely.
Tony says, in a most condescending tone (another sure sign that the Parent is speaking) : "There is a time for working and there is a time for tiger hunting."
But Jeannie is only interested in the experience, in having fun: "Did you bag a tiger?" she asks.
But Tony cannot enjoy himself. He knows he is supposed to be at the office. His Parent is killing him: "Things aren't supposed to be this way," it is telling him. "The regular order of things has been disturbed!" it shouts.Tony's Adaptive Child is cringing and he tries to correct things but to no avail - the Free Child is loose! Only when Tony lets his own Free Child loose, will the world return to normal (Well, nearly.The episode does not end on such a happy note. But I won't ruin it for you.)
By the way, how did Tony get back from safari? Throughout the series Jeannie sends him and Roger all over the earth and yet they always manage to get back within minutes. How do they do it? Am I the only one that is bothered by this inconsistency?

Here is one last clip for your enjoyment. Tony tries to explain to Jeannie why she must turn off Sunday and let everybody work.Actually he does an admirable job. But Jeannie does an even better job explaining why her way is better. I find it hard to argue with her! This demonstrates the difference between the Adult, which is extremely utilitarian, and the Free Child which is immersed in the moment.

Finally, one last point. Tony is right - if everybody stopped working, society as we know it would collapse. This may or may not be a good thing. But the point is - the Free child does not think that far. He is so immersed in what is going on now, in himself, in his immediate interests that all other considerations are mostly beyond him. This is why, with all her good intentions and all her love for her master, Jeannie always screws up.
In order to function properly and be effective in the real world, the Free Child must be accompanied and guided by a strong Adult. Jeannie does not possess such an Adult. But - her master, the successful and intelligent astronaut does.

This suggests that their "Tikkun", the reason God (or fate if you wish) brought them together, is to correct their mutual deficiency: Tony will learn from Jeannie to be a Free Child, and Jeannie will learn the Adult from Tony. In time, each will become a whole healthy human being.
Will they manage to do this? I think it would be very difficult for them to solve their problems using the Transactional Analysis theory by itself. It is useful in describing what is going on and communicating with other people about it but the theory lacks an accompanying, effective practice. This has been supplied by the Imago Theory which has been described on this blog several times (see the all Imago posts here).

In any case, I haven't seen the rest of the series yet so I don't know how the relationship develops. But you can buy the whole series here and find out for yourself!

Understanding Seinfeld's "The Opposite" with Transactional Analysis

2007-07-15T10:33:00.000+03:00

In this post I wish to demonstrate the basic terms of Transactional Analysis (T.A.) with the help of one of the best Seinfeld episodes ever.

Why This Is Worth Reading
I have been wanting to write this for a long time, but delayed until I could find a way to explain this theory in a short format. Finally I realized that this is impossible, and I am proceeding with it because the theory is well worth understanding.
There are simply so many things that can be understood and discussed with it. For instance, the following questions can and will be discussed in future posts with the tools of Transactional Analysis:
Creativity - what is it? Why are some people creative and others not. Why do religious people have so much trouble being creative and where would America be without the infinite creativity of Black people?
Religion - what is religious experience? What is the difference between religious people and believers? Why do secular Jews hate orthodox Jews so much?
Criminality - what do criminals and policeman have in common? Why will crime never stop in these conditions?
Capitalism - what is the psychological meaning of capitalism, what does it try to do to us?
Society - why is it so messed up and what can we do about it? Specifically, what is wrong with Israeli society? Is Western society really going down the drown? What is going on?

These are but a few of the fascinating questions that we can deal with intelligently after we learn about this theory.
But to get there we must do some studying first. I used a Seinfeld episode to demonstrate hoping that it will make it easier. Be sure to watch the video, it's priceless.

Seinfeld – The Characters
Seinfeld was a very popular sitcom about Jerry Seinfeld, a comedian, and three of his friends – Elaine, Kramer and George, the hero of this episode.
Jerry Seinfeld is a successful comedian who lives alone. He is clean and neat and seems quite successful. Of the four friends he is the only one that seems to have a job and a steady financial income. He is the steady center, observing and participating in the ups and downs of his friends, while he himself keeps an even keel most of the time.
Elaine – Jerry's charming one time girl friend. She is very emotional and expressive. She lights up the room, has an infectious laugh, and without her the series would be very bland.
Kramer – Jerry's crazy neighbor. Has no job or any discernible income, he jumps from one fantastic endeavor to the next, never completing anything but never getting bored or discouraged either. Completely oblivious of his surroundings and the effects of his actions on other people. He can be at times generous and caring but more often is extremely self-absorbed and unintentionally hurtful.
George – A balding, near-sighted short man . George is extremely insecure, and somehow always manages to do the wrong thing and land himself in absurd situations and worse – out of jobs. George is a complete failure, and his parents never let him forget it. Currently, he has no job, no girl, and absolutely no prospects. In this episode he goes to the sea and comes back with a revelation:

The Opposite
One of the most popular and well-known episodes. If you haven't seen it you can see clips on YouTube, for instance this five-minute clip is a fine one.

And there also is a synapses of the episode here.
After reaching rock bottom, George comes to the conclusion that everything he has ever done in his life has been wrong,

"Every instinct I have, in every aspect of life has been wrong, be it something to wear, something to eat – it's all been wrong."
To which Jerry eventually replies:
"If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right."
And George agrees:
"Yes, I will do the opposite. I used to sit here and do nothing and I would regret it for the rest of the day…"

In the rest of the episode George proceeds to do the exact opposite of what he has always done, netting a girl, a dream job and most importantly, a ton of confidence. Suddenly, George can do no wrong.
This is an amazing turn of events and I believe it is an excellent illustration of some deeper psychological truths. George was on to something and we can all learn from his experience, even if it was fictional – after all, art is but an imitation of life.
But in order to correctly understand ourselves we need a model, a theory to piece together reality in a meaningful way. Transactional analysis is one such theory which will serve us here very well.

Transactional Analysis
Transactional analysis was invented by Eric Berne, a psychologist who became disillusioned with Freudian practice and who thought he could formulate a more accurate and more easily understood psychology (needless to say, he was ostracized by the psychological community). The most popular presentation of his theory was written by his colleague Thomas Harris in the bestselling "I'm O.K you're O.K." and I will mostly be referring to the more simplified theory as presented in that book.

I'm OK You're OK
This book is an attempt to understand our interactions with others and with ourselves. It points out, explains and defines basic psychological phenomenon. Thus it provides a vocabulary that helps us name things, and once we have the words we can communicate with ourselves and others and attempt to understand and eventually change the interactions.
It is simple enough to be understood by most people but still complex enough to be accurate. I read this book many years ago and I have reached the point where the understanding of interactions with other people comes to me almost automatically. I can also understand my own inner dialog and recognize when I am being "possessed" by my Parent, Free Child or other players in our daily drama, although, to be honest, understanding what's happening does not necessarily mean that I can change it at will.
Anyway, it turns out that we are not alone, and we share our inner lives with many other players.
So now, let me introduce the actors, those who try to pull your strings and direct your actions to suit their own needs, even when quite contrary to yours.
T.A. recognizes three basic states of mind: The Parent, The Child and The Adult. All of these are formed by the age of five and are for the most part unconscious.

The Parent : contains all the information we received, and did not receive from the people we were dependent upon as babies and small children. The Parent is the voice of authority, the giver of rules and laws, customs and regulations. The Parent has an ideal picture of an ideal world and we must live up to that ideal, or else we will not survive.
Every state has specific vocabulary and emotional content to go with it.

Common Phrases:
You must (or mustn't), Don't (or Do) do it!, You should (not), always, never, everybody (does it), and most famously "Thou shalt not…"

Emotional Tone: The Parent is always judgmental. The judgment can be positive or negative but the evaluation is always there. The Parent cannot be reasoned with and it does not refer to reality. The Parent Knows and that's it. You either do as it says or suffer it's disapproval, which for the baby is equivalent with being disconnected from the life-giving Parent, in other words – equivalent to death.

Consequences: As adults we follow the Parental injunction feeling that we must, but usually not recognizing the force behind it. More importantly, we do not understand why it is so very difficult to disobey the command and do the opposite.

Example: Your parents. Teachers, policemen and Army officers also have very dominant Parents.

Basic Stance: I'm OK - You're not OK.

The Adult – this is the rational, unemotional player. The Adult receives information, analyzes it dispassionately and files it away or acts upon it. The Adult deals with reality as it is, without any preconceptions and prejudice. The Adult is a data processing computer gathering information from within and without and checking its utility.

Common Phrases: statements of fact. This is true, this is not. This accords with the facts as known to me, this does not. The facts of the case are these…

Emotional Tone – none, of course.

Consequences: A strong Adult means that our activities will be effective since they are closely related to reality. A strong Adult is constantly learning from experience and adjusting accordingly. A weak Adult means a weak connection to reality, and action dominated by the Parent's decrees, or by emotions of The Child.

Example: Famous fictional detectives Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. The Terminator and most other sci-fi robots.

Basic Stance: I'm OK - You're OK

The Child
The Child feels and senses. The Child is made up of the emotional content of our experiences from birth and onward. The child is spontaneous. The Child is curiosity, and love and excitement and creativity and empathy as well as rage and anger and frustration and anguish and sorrow and despair. But most of all, the Child is "Not OK." In other words the basic emotional state of any child growing up in an environment that is trying to mold him, is that of inadequacy, of being unsuitable, wrong and, simply put, "Not OK".

Common Phrases: I want, I need, I feel now and most emotional expressions.

Emotional Tone: "all out", in other words whatever the emotion expressed, The Child is completely engrossed in it, to the exclusion of all else.

Consequences: The Child is a result of adaptive behavior to the original Parent, so consequences vary accordingly: The Child may be Adaptive, Rebellious, or Free.

(note: these distinctions are not from the book but they are extremely useful nonetheless)

The Adaptive Child – adjusts his behavior to the demands of The Parent, seeking approval of the Parent at all times.

Example: Policemen and Army officers have a very strong Adaptive Child which is one reason they enlisted in the first place - to receive orders they can follow and be sure that they are OK. People who work in bureaucracies and of course every child is an example of this too.

Basic Stance: I'm not OK - You're OK.

The Rebellious Child – adjusts his behavior to be in constant opposition to that of the Parent. This type of Child is defined by his anger towards the Parent and anything resembling a Parent such as normative institutions. Action and words are always angry, and most importantly, the rebellion is always short-lived and futile and ultimately uncreative since this Child is always referring to the Parent and rarely to himself where true freedom lies.

Example: Everything Sixties: the Black Panthers, Anti- War demonstrations, doing drugs and free sex and not studying, and also most teenagers regardless of the decade they live in.

Basic Stance: I'm OK - You're Not OK

The Free Child – this child is free from the Parent, and he is free to be curious and happy, to behave spontaneously, to be creative, to feel what he feels and to express it as and however necessary.

Example: Artists. Writers, musicians, painters, dancers. Michael Jackson moonwalking, Jimmy Hendrix playing the guitar, Miles Davis improvising, black kids break dancing on the sidewalk, Dr. J dunking from behind the backboard as well as Bach, and Beethoven and Kandinsky and, well - the list is endless.

Basic Stance:I'm OK - You're OK.

Summary of the actors in our personal drama:
We each possess a Parent, an Adult, and A Child who may exist in three different states. We differ from each other in the contents of each part, and in the interactions between them and it these interactions which determine our personality.

Interactions Between Different Parts

Contamination: Ideally the three parts are kept separate, but that is quite rare. Usually the parts infect each other. Here a few examples:

Adult contaminated by Parent
This means that wherever the Parent dominates, the Adult is unable to receive data from the world and update itself accordingly. For instance a strong parental decree that "Jews are killers" will preclude any information from the world to the contrary. On this specific subject the person is not rational. Politics are rife with this sort of contamination, which is why reasoned political discussion is so rare and why elections are about images which are irrational and not facts and theories which are in the realm of the Adult.

Adult contaminated by Child
This occurs when feelings intrude upon the scene and interfere with the proper functioning of the Adult. Childhood fears can have such an effect. For instance some people are afraid of bugs and can be absolutely terrorized by a beetle that is harmless and can be killed easily besides.

In both kinds of contamination the variations are endless. People who are perfectly rational can become idiots when it concerns certain subjects such as: black people or Jews or Arabs, men or women, math or reading comprehension, engines or cooking, or doing the laundry. Suddenly the Adult is suspended. But that is not the worst case scenario. Sometimes whole parts may actually be excluded from every day life.

(The Child may also be contaminated and so can the Parent creating dozens of possible permutations, too many to discuss here.)

Exclusion: These are extreme cases in which one of the three parts of the personality is completely excluded from life.

Exclusion of the Free Child: in this case the Adaptive Child is completely dominant. Such a person has learned that the consequences of being spontaneous, happy and childish, of not conforming to the Parent, are so terrifying that he has learned to do without. These are the sad, humorless people who work for hours on end, and never take vacations and never laugh or surprise themselves.
Example: Michael Douglas in the movie "The Game". The movie is also a good example of what it really takes to dig yourself out of such a psychological disaster.

Exclusion of the Parent: If the Parent had been too harsh and too hard to take, it may be rejected and divorced from the rest of the personality, creating a person who has no Parent and therefore also no conscience – a profile of a very self-centered person who may also be a dangerous criminal.

Exclusion of the Adult: in some cases the Adult has been impaired to such an extent that it does not exist. This means that the only reality is the internal reality of the Child and it's Parent, creating quite the madman.

The Ideal Personality
Ideally the Adult will examine all the data in the Parent and determine what is true and useful and discard the rest, and then proceed to do the same with the contents of the Child. This will leave us with a very strong Adult accompanied by a Free Child. In this state one can experience reality directly, without the annoying interference of the Parent("This flower is called a daisy. Daisies are nice flowers" etc...) , and also react spontaneously as well as appropriately due to the strong Adult. This state is also known as as being Buddha…

Seinfeld and T.A.
Now we can get down to business. First we will tag the characters and then go on to the episode itself. It is important to remember that there are really almost endless combinations of the various states, and that a person can go through many states sometimes even switching from one to another within minutes. This is clearly seen when a Parent switches to an Adaptive Child and vice-versa. Thus, an officer behaves towards his superior as an Adaptive Child but to his inferiors he acts like a Parent. That said, most people can be characterized by their dominant state, the one that is most typical of them.

Jerry Seinfeld himself is I think a good example of a person with a very strong Adult. He displays very little emotion – even when performing his comic routine. He thinks things through and his actions are usually appropriate to the situation. Of all the characters his life is the steadiest. His basic stance is certainly non-judgmental, one that is I'm OK-You're OK as befits the Adult.

Kramer is a true original. Everything he does is original, including his famous entrances. This is typical of a Free Child. Kramer clearly has absolutely no regard for conventions and laws and he is also completely absorbed in satisfying his own whims. regardless of the price other people pay. I would say that Kramer has a very strong Free Child coupled with a very weak Parent.

Elaine is charming. She smiles and talks a lot and does the things that women are supposed to do when in company. She is emotive but definitely not original. She does a lot of criticizing and scolding and judging in the series, especially with George And Jerry. Elaine has a strong Parent coupled with an Adaptive Child.

George Costanza is clearly doing his best to conform to his Parent. He is inherently Not OK, always out of his element, always criticizing himself. Fortunately for him he is a miserable Adaptive Child and this, eventually, prompts him to change things. I say "fortunately" because any adaptation sacrifices parts of the personality so even a relatively "successful" one is no cause for joy.

What is The Opposite of the Parent?
So, what happened to George? What does it mean for him to do "the opposite?"
For an Adaptive Child doing the opposite can mean one of two things – becoming a Rebellious Child or a Free Child. In this case it is clear to me that George is not rebellious – he completely lacks the anger typical to the rebel - as shown in the video above. In fact George seems to be completely at ease with himself. He is calm and confident and brave and he is successful – all sure signs that he is doing what he is meant to do, meaning that he is acting from within himself – from the Free Child.
When confronted with an opportunity to hit up on a woman, George's first reaction, what he terms his "instinct", is to shy away - this is the Adaptive Child conditioned to be afraid and Not OK. But when challenged by Jerry to do the opposite he declares:

"Yes, I will do the opposite. I used to sit here and do nothing and I would regret it for the rest of the day..."

Living out of time is typical of the Adaptive Child. In fact only the Free Child actually lives in the here and now because to do so one must act spontaneously, one must be present in mind and body. The Adaptive Child is so busy trying to comply with the Parent and wondering if what he is doing is OK, that he barely stops to notice what is going on in the world. The Adaptive Child lives out of step, never acting until it is too late, and living out a life of missed opportunities, regrets and wishful thinking. George does manage to free himself from his horrible Parent (and they really must be seen to be believed - a pair of Toxic Parents if I ever saw one).

Unfortunately, in real life it is very difficult to reach such a point – divorcing the Parent - without considerable effort. Epiphanies may occur but in real life they are not generally sustainable without, again, a lot of conscious effort.
In the final analysis only a thorough examination of the contents of the Child and the Parent can make you free, and this usually occurs only when all other options have been pursued and failed.

Psychology for the Jewish Wedding Season

2007-06-24T22:00:00.000+03:00

The wedding season is upon us and with it a renewed interest in this most fascinating ceremony of Jewish life - marriage.
During the last wedding I attended, the mother of the groom mentioned the well known phrase from Genesis, chapter 2, verse 24: "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh."
This is a most beautiful verse. I've heard it before and it always struck me as profound in some way, but this time it really got me thinking – what does it mean to leave the parents? Has this been addressed in the past? Is the intent merely physical or also spiritual, and if so, in what manner?
If you are interested in food for thought while you're standing around waiting for the ceremony to begin (average delay: 1 hour, Israeli time), as well an idea or two for a wedding present, here's my two bits:

The Halacha Interpretation
Well, I am definitely no Halacha expert, but I do have a copy of the popular Da'at Mikra and from it I learn that Rashi took this verse to mean a physical separation so as to prevent incest. The writers of Da'at Mikra also says that the meaning is physical, intended to reduce the fighting that may occur for instance, between the bride and her mother in law. In any case, they say, this is not actually a mitzvah but rather just the natural order of things. An internet search for this phrase in Hebrew or English yields an astoundingly small number of results, none of which were actually relevant to my question. I would be glad to hear of any other Halacha-acceptable interpretations from my readers but until then, I will try to give my own interpretation which will be, as usual, from the inside:

The Parent As a Psychological Function
It is possible to interpret this verse from a psychological viewpoint if we understand the parent as representing not only a physical presence but also a psychological function. This function has been described by Transaction Analysis:

The Parent:

This is our ingrained voice of authority, absorbed conditioning, learning and attitudes from when we were young. We were conditioned by our real parents, teachers, older people, next door neighbors, aunts and uncles, Father Christmas and Jack Frost. Our Parent is made up of a huge number of hidden and overt recorded playbacks. Typically embodied by phrases and attitudes starting with 'how to', 'under no circumstances', 'always' and 'never forget', 'don't lie, cheat, steal', etc, etc. Our parent is formed by external events and influences upon us as we grow through early childhood. We can change it, but this is easier said than done."

In short the Parent, with a capital "P" is our code of behavior, some of it conscious most of it not. It is behind many of our quick involuntary social reactions, our likes and dislikes and our prejudices. It is everything we received, for better and for worse from the authority figures in our lives, and also-everything we did not receive- meaning any gaps in our information about the world. Such gaps may vary from sexual misinformation to spiritual neglect.
Transactional analysis was invented by Eric Berne, a psychologist who became disillusioned with Freudian practice and thought he could a formulate a more accurate and more easily understood psychology (needless to say, he was ostracized by the psychological community). The most popular presentation of his theory was written by his colleague Thomas Harris in the bestselling "I'm O.K you're O.K."

In any case – we now have our psychological Parent, and we can now rephrase the original verse thus: Therefore shall a man leave his Parent, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh."
If this is true, why is it so important to leave the Parent before marriage? What happens if you don't? Is this the man's duty alone? Should the man leave his Parent and the women retain hers?
The answer to these questions lie, I believe in the second part of the verse, which defines the goal of the marriage: "to be one flesh"

"To Be One Flesh"
This can be taken to mean a simple physical union, creating a newborn child which unites the married couple in "one flesh" as Rashi comments. Da'at Mikra says that they shall treat one another as if they were one flesh, meaning they will complete each other – spiritually - until they feel they are as one.
But if the bible is talking about a psychological union between two people then we must ask how can this be possible? In other words, how can two people retain their unique individuality, and yet, at the same time be as one? I see two possibilities.

The Symbiotic Union
In this marriage the couple unite unconsciously. Most of what they think and feel about each other and themselves remains unknown to them. They react to each intuitively, for better or for worse. They are driven by inner forces, including the Parent, to love or hate each other, to remain committed, or to divorce, to talk about the difficulties, or ignore them, or blame each other in an endless, hopeless cycle of unconscious irresponsibility.
Most marriages assume this state of affairs rather quickly. Sometimes the couple are satisfied with it and remain married for years, but increasingly often, this does not suffice. Marriage holds a great promise of "becoming one flesh" and many more people than ever before are unwilling to settle for less, which is why divorce rates are skyrocketing.
But there is another possibility waiting for every new couple to realize.

The Conscious Marriage
In this marriage the couple make a conscious effort to understand themselves. All the unconscious parts of the psyche are brought to light in a long and painful but exciting and hopeful process.
A major component of this process is checking each and every component of the Parent: every judgmental remark or attitude, whether positive or not must be brought into the light and it's contents examined. For example, the husband may be bothered by the incessant chattering of his wife (which he found delightful before they got married) while his wife may be depressed by her husbands long silences (which she found intriguing and full of promise before they got married). Such feelings and thoughts are brought into the open and examined.
Only when the Parent has been banished from the psyche, can a true spiritual union between two independent individuals become a feasible possibility.
When this happens it will become clear that the partners do indeed compliment each other beautifully. Traits that the man has been missing are possessed by his wife and vice-versa. The husband will understand why he does not talk, and his wife will know why it scares her so much, and they both will learn the opposite – the man will start talking, and love it, and the wife will cherish her new-found ability to enjoy silence, her own and others.
In this manner both become complete, whole individuals. The relationship becomes one of independence not dependence. If a man can cook for himself, iron his shirts, and clean the house he is not dependent on his wife to do so. He can love her for what she is, not for the services he needs to receive from her. When a woman is financially independent, she will be freer to be honest about her feelings towards her husband and decide if she loves him for what he is, or she is sticking around because she was taught that women aren't supposed to work

Conclusion: Married Couples Must Choose Between God or Their Parents
In researching this article I came across what seems to be a well-known commentary:

Rabbi Joshua ben Korha said that man at first was called Adam to indicate his natural constitution--flesh and blood (dam). But when woman was created, the two were referred to as fiery (esh)--living, dynamic beings. God insinuated Himself into the marriage, then added two letters of his own name, Y and H, to the names of man and woman. He inserted the Y into man's name, turning esh (fire) into i-Y-sh (ish, man); and H into woman's name, making i-sha-H (ishah, woman). The Chronicles of Yerahmeel (6:16) comment on this: "If they walk in My ways and observe My commandments, behold My name will abide with them and deliver them from all trouble. But if not, I will take the letters of My name from them, so that they will revert to esh and esh, fire consuming fire." Hence with God as a partner, marriage is a blessing, ish and ishah.

The whole article is about Jewish marriage and very interesting. You can read it here.
What this means is what I have been trying to say all along: every couple has a choice between living with God, or enduring the presence of their Parent. As experience tells us, when the Parent is present in the marriage, there is no place for God. The fires of the unconscious will consume the marriage and devour the initial spark of love.
So, to all the couples getting married this season: I hope that you indeed manage to leave your Parent and I wish you a happily conscious marriage.

Here are some books to get you started on the right foot:

Further Reading For Married Couples
I'm OK--You're OK– an excellent, most useful simplification of the psychology behind our everyday interactions and thoughts.
Toxic In-Laws: Loving Strategies for Protecting Your Marriage – another gem from the author of the incredibly insightful Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life
Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples – The ultimate guidance book for couples who want to save their marriage from the Parent. A step-by-step indispensable self-help book for couples. Useful even before the marriage.
A previous article on God as Self, for those of you who, like Freud, confuse God with the Parent.

Ten Minutes A Day For Tikkun Olam With "The Five Tibetans"

2007-06-11T08:30:00.000+03:00

Repairing the world is an extremely difficult undertaking. After all, so much around us is so messed up that it may be difficult to figure out where to start. As explained previously, the natural starting point for Tikkun Olam is the individual, but even given this, it is not easy to start. Spiritual exercises often seem frightening to the inexperienced and in any case, any attempt to become more conscious of yourself, your motivations, desires and wounds - is bound to be painful and fraught with difficulties. Fortunately there are other, perhaps easier starting points available, one of which I want to discuss here.

Mind and Body
Is the spirit separate from the body? Does it reside in a specific part of the body or completely outside of it? Perhaps the idea of a spirit is false altogether? To this day we don't really know. For starters I will adopt the stance that I once heard renowned philosopher Isiah Leibovitch expound: as long as we don't know for sure, we can assume that the two exist and are somehow connected. If this is true then we can start our Tikkun with our bodies. For some people this may be easier. If there is a connection then whatever we do with our bodies will affect our spirit, and if we repair our bodies in any way, than we are also repairing our spirits. This is the thinking behind yoga and the martial arts, and as a long-time practitioner I, personally, have no doubt that the connection exists and it works both ways – what we do with our bodies affects our soul, and what we do with our soul affects our bodies. I will go even further and say that the one is impossible to complete without the other. You can only get so far with doing physical or spiritual exercises alone.
However, not everybody has the time nor the ability to do martial arts or to practice yoga for hours each day.

Fortunately there is an excellent solution for people who do not have a lot of time but still want to do their best to take care of themselves and be part of the Tikkun Olam Movement (which I have just invented). This solution demands ten minutes of your time each day and it is so effective that it will make you feel better and stronger and more self-confident in no time.

The Five Tibetans
My acupuncturist taught me these exercises but later I saw that there is a book dedicated to them: The Five Tibetans by Christopher S. Kilham. The booklet explains the theory behind the exercises and also explains how to do them, with pictures. You are supposed to do them each day, each exercise for 21 times. That takes about ten minutes and the benefits must be seen to be believed.
In my experience the exercises change the muscle tone and balance it. This means that the muscles gradually tighten up or loosen up, whatever is necessary, and align them in a physically correct manner. The result is that the bulk of the weight of gravity is being carried by the skeleton and not by our muscles, as nature intended. The relief, I can tell you, is simply enormous. With time the whole body learns to work a lot more efficiently and effortlessly and balance improves greatly. In terms of the energy flow, the exercises open up the meridians (energy channels) and enable a stronger and freer flow of energy throughout the whole body. Whichever way you look at it – the results are great. If you are used to yoga than you will easily understand how to do the exercises without any further guidance. For others there may be questions. I would be glad to answer any such questions, and if you are a regular reader of this blog, you are welcome to drop by my house and receive a free demonstration. Otherwise, you must find someone to teach you in your area. I'm sure there is no lack of such people – it just takes 5-10 minutes to teach so it's not a big deal.

Strengthen your body, Steel Your Soul
Taking proper care of our bodies is no less important in my view than taking care of our souls. One of my primary quibbles with traditional Judaism is the criminal neglect of the body – there can be no healthy soul if the body is neglected.
Another reason to strengthen your body is because a weak body has trouble defending itself and therefore is much more liable to be abused by others. In fact, one of the first things abusive parents do, as well as our society as a whole, is to alienate their children from their bodies, the better to control them.
A strong, balanced body is a body that can deal successfully and gracefully with life's ordeals. Your posture will be better, your eyes alert and focused on what is going on around you, here and now. Such a body will raise your level of confidence and energy to the point where you will be able to start dealing with more complex spiritual problems.
With just ten minutes a day, you could be well on your way to doing your part for Tikkun Olam.
So, what are you waiting for?

P.S.
The book has a few more meditation exercises which are explained very well and are pretty easy to do. I think they are also very beneficial. I did not mention them cause they do take a lot more time, but if you are interested in the book you should know that there is more to it than just the five tibetans.

Relationships: The Core Message of Every Interaction

2007-06-02T20:50:00.000+03:00

Relationships are a very important part of our lives. We spend most of our waking hours in relationships with different people - at work, with friends, and most importantly, with our families. And, yet, despite spending so much time with other people, most of us have a very vague idea of what a relationship should look like. We can feel if something is not right in our relationships, but many times we find it difficult to put into words what exactly is wrong , and therefore we often fail to correct them, or to get what we really need. If you feel this way too, then maybe the following passage will help you. A clear and concise definition of a healthy relationship, if I ever saw one:

The Core Message
Regardless of anything else the parent wants to accomplish with his child, there is one purpose that transcends all others. The parent wants to deliver, and have his child hear, this core message: You're okay. You have permission to be who you are, to be fully alive and express your aliveness, and to experience connection with others and to that which is greater than yourself. Everything the conscious parent does in words, through body language, and in action backs up this central message of okayness…This core message lets the child know in many different ways that he is honored and valued as a separate person and that his basic needs will be met. This is the ulterior motive the parent has every time he talks with his child.
(Giving the Love That Heals – A Guide For Parents, p. 105)

This seems to be a very good working definition, and Imago theory makes clear that this applies to everybody, no matter what the age. We all have a need to be affirmed, to feel safe and okay, because that is a basic human need. If we accept this premise than we have an excellent benchmark for all our relationships – with our parents, our lover, and children. Friends and co-workers too. The question we must ask ourselves if we truly care about these people and about ourselves is this: are we getting the feeling that we are okay, just as we are? Are we permitted to be and feel alive in these interactions? And also, we must question our own behavior – are the people we care about receiving such a message of affirmness from us? Do we even want to give them such a message, are we trying to?
Feeling okay in a relationship means , for instance, not feeling afraid. Fear and okayness are two opposites. If you are afraid of your parents, or your spouse then that is a sure sign that the relationship is not healthy, at this point, for either one of you. The same goes for intimidation – we may feel intimated by authority figures, especially at work (many therapists enjoy intimidating their patients too). This is not a healthy place to be, psychologically. Such relationships ruin our self-confidence, and without that we have nothing on which to build upon.
If you are a parent and your child fears you, then you may want to revise the way you interact with your children. Raising a child in fear is probably the worst crime that a man can commit without being punished for it by society. Hopefully one day this will change and we will become aware of the disastrous affects of emotional abuse, but until then it is up to each one of us to take responsibility for our interactions with the people we care for. This is doubly true when it concerns the defenseless children who have no choice but to accept whatever is given them, be it love or abuse.
We can start Repairing the world right now, just by doing this exercise – checking to see if we feel okay in our relationships with others, and if we are giving others that feeling. Just focusing on that can change a lot, but if you wish for a more systematic way to improve your relationships than I recommend, once again, the series of Imago books written by Dr. Hendrix, each one containing a review of the theory along with many exercises that you can do on your own:
For singles: Keeping The Love You Find – A Guide For Singles

For couples: Getting The Love You Want : A Guide For Couples

For parents: Giving The Love That Heals – A Guide For Parents

You can also check out some of my own explanations of the theory here.
Whatever you do - I wish you good luck on your journey. Feedback is welcome, and so are questions and revelations .

Is Your Jewish Mother A Maximizer, and What Can You Do About It?

2007-05-16T08:34:00.000+03:00

Synopsis: The Jewish mother as maximizer in Jewish culture, Imago theory - What is a maximizer, "Tikkun Olam - Now"

Introduction

Read this quote ,please, and ask yourself if the description does not sound hauntingly familiar:

"…since her boundaries are lax, she does not know how to protect her space from her children, nor how to protect theirs. When she cannot get her way with her child, she will manipulate or bribe him and claim that she is doing it in the child's best interest.
When she cannot have her way, she collapses into passivity and depression, coercing her child to take care of her. Her life is unfocused, self-abnegating and martyred. She presents herself as a self-sacrificing person, who meets other's needs before her own, but those who benefit from her generosity end up feeling guilty after she repeatedly points out what she has done for them. The child of a maximizer grows up without being able to clearly separate from her parent and become an independent adult."

Does that ring a bell or what?
How about this:

"…she is so full of unmet needs that she smothers her child with affection as a way of vicariously meeting her own needs. She is full of feelings and fears, often sharing them with her child in the form of warnings about the dangers of the world... She invades every part of her child's life, giving advice it hasn't asked for. She likes her children to keep their doors open so she can hear if they are sleeping well or doing something wrong. She talks incessantly at the dinner table, inquiring into the private lives of her children and interfering with their relationships with their peers. She likes to have lots of people around to increase her security so she encourages her children to have friends over. She feels children have no ability to know what they want and offers them what they haven't asked for and often do not need."

(Source: "Giving The Love That Heals By Harville Hendrix and Helen Hunt, pp. 64-65)

Some Famous Jewish Mothers and Jokes About Them

Reading this passage I was immediately reminded of some famous Jewish mothers (besides my own of course). The first one that came to my mind was Sylvia, the overbearing mother of Fran Fine, the famous Nanny. Other similar mothers include Seinfeld's mother, and, going back a bit, Mrs. Portnoy and the mothers (and women) in Woody Allen movies.
There is also no lack of jokes portraying this character. These are from the "Jewish Mothers" section in the previously mentioned (Passover Joke and Greetings) - "Big Book of Jewish Humor " a collection of jokes in Hebrew, gathered and edited by Prof. Adir Cohen:

"There is a famous Yiddish saying that states: "There comes a time in the life of every man that he must stand up to his mother and tell her that he is a grown up. Usually this happens when he is about 45…"

Isaac Asimov tells about the time he was walking down the street with his mother one wintry day when she said to him: "Isaac, I'm cold – put on your coat"

There are lot more in this vein which I am skipping in the interest of being concise.
There is a funny (but loud) flash presentation on Aish on this subject here.

You can read about "How to Survive a Jewish Mother" and there even is a book about the history of the Jewish mother:

"YOU NEVER CALL! YOU NEVER WRITE! " (sounds like a good book too, but I haven't read it - yet).

The point being that the Jewish mother as possessing many of the attributes of the maximizer seems to me quite ubiquitous. Having established that, we can now discuss what is a maximizer and why this may be important to you as a human being and as a Jew.

What is a Maximizer:
The quote above comes from the book "Giving the Love That Heals – A guide For Parents" by Harville Hendrix and his wife. Dr. Hendrix is the originator of the Imago theory which has been discussed on this site (see label on sidebar for more) including a post with a list of behaviors common to the minimizer and maximizer.
Imago theory assumes that every human is born with the potential and need for becoming a whole human being. Being whole means being connected to all parts of the personality and to the world, and being able to express the different personality aspects appropriately, with the correct force at the correct time. The ability to do this is impaired every time the caretaker (usually the parent) disregards the child as an independent - if still developing -human being, and instead assumes that he (or she ) and the child are one and the same. This kind of relationship is called a symbiotic connection with the child, defined by the parent's assumption: "We are one, and I am the one". Since the parent is "the one" she always knows what is best for her child, and will do anything to coerce her child to comply.
It is important to understand that the maximizer parent is completely unconscious of her behavior, and in fact was raised in exactly the same manner by a maximizer parent of her own. Unless the pattern of parenting is brought out of the dark into the light of consciousness, nothing can change, and the wounds of the parent will be passed on to the child, one generation after the other.

What Does This Say About The Jewish People?
The pattern of behavior described in the quote above is intended, originally, to portray the most extreme behavioral pattern of the maximizer. Most people have only a partial fit with this profile, since most are not so severely wounded. But if it is true that this mother is typical of Jewish history and culture than it follows that we are, as a nation, spiritually wounded in a most extreme manner.
We might as well recognize this fact and start dealing with our wounds directly in our own personal lives, and try to stop hurting the people we love most: our children, our spouses and ourselves.
Instead of blaming other people for our troubles – secular Jews, religious Jews, gentiles, settlers, leftists, Arabs and so on and so forth, we should accept responsibility for our wounds and start healing them. In short the best, most effective way to heal the world, to Repair it, is to start healing yourself.
"Tikkun Now" so to speak.
Actually, if we, as the chosen people wish to be "a light unto others" than I suggest that such a personal Tikkun would be an excellent place to start. It does not in any way conflict with Jewish practice and in fact, in my view, even expresses it perfectly. More importantly it is the most effective way to start the "Tikkun Olam", since it does not depend on other people changing themselves – it only depends on yourself.

Are the Jews the Only Sick Nation?
No indeed. Quoting again from the Big Book of Jewish Humor:

"Author Isaac Asimov tells that he was at a large banquet listening to an Indian tell amusing stories about his mother. After listening a while with great interest he could hold back no longer and asked:
"Tell me, is your mother Jewish?"
To which the Indian answered:
"My friend, all mothers are Jewish!"

Which, if you have been following, merely means that all mothers are maximizers. Obviously, it is not possible that only the Jewish people are sick. The persecutor is no less diseased than the persecuted, just as the wife-beater is no less ill than his wife who submits to the punishment day in and day out. Every relationship needs two partners and both share the responsibility for it's existence and nature, since it serves the needs of both , which are, in this case, the distorted, hurtful needs of wounded people.

Thing I Forgot to Mention:
• A maximizer mother will always, according to the theory, have a minimzer husband. He is no less harmful, in his own quiet, avoiding way, than his wife.
• Men can be maximizers too (An excellent example can be seen in the character of Jerry Peyser , a hysterical, hilarious Jewish father in the romantic comedy "The In-Laws"
• Healing your wounds is an extremely painful process, the worse they are the more painful.

Genesis, Creationism and What Was Really Born 6000 Years Ago

2007-05-10T17:57:00.000+03:00

Synopsis: The birth and development of consciousness , what was created 6000 years ago, resolving the Creationist – Darwinism debate.(Word Count=1299)

Preface
One of the central tenets of Jungian psychology is that we live in two worlds – the outer world where things happen out in the open, where wars occur and what we normally call "history" happens, and the inner world, to which Jung devoted a lifetime of study. This is the world where the Ego, the part of ourselves that we call "me" or "I", experiences a monumental struggle to maintain it's coherency and path of development. However, because the struggle is very difficult, and the forces of the unconscious facing the Ego so powerful and frightening, direct experience of this inner world is rare. Most people must be content with experiencing the inner life in a second-hand manner, through other people or, commonly, through other stories which are created for this purpose and which we call myths. In Jungian theory, myths are a story we tell ourselves so that we can make sense of our experiences in this world. Some myths are private, created by the individual for his own purposes, but some experiences are so universal that the myths created about them appeal to most everyone, throughout the ages. One such myth is the powerful story of Genesis, which continues to fascinate us to this day, In fact, it so meaningful that it is still a central issue in American public life, driving the debate between "Creationism and Darwinism".
This post will try to explain what the Genesis myth is concerned with from a psychological point of view, and how this is still relevant for us today.

What The Genesis Story Can Teach Us About Our Psyche
I will assume that the reader is familiar with the story of Genesis and will proceed to count several defining characteristics of this creation story:

Creation needs light. Without light nothing can be seen nor identified because nothing has form.
Creation is shaping things out of chaos, defining boundaries, separating one thing from another, naming them.
A Supreme being called "God" is The Creator and ruler of everything He creates.
Man has a special relationship with God, as a son to a Father.
In the Beginning man lives an effortless, blissful existence in the Garden of Eden, devoid of self-awareness.
Man discovers self-consciousness, the good life ends and is replaced by a harsh existence of struggle with the world. Self-Consciousness is punished.
The way back to Eden is barred by guards and a vigilant sword.
Immortality is forbidden to man.

The story of Genesis is usually understood to be the story of the creation of the world and man. But in the Jungian view this is the story of the creation of the world as understood and experienced by the Ego and told by itself to itself – and to others sharing the same experience. In other words, this is the story of the birth of self-consciousness – projected upon the outer world. In this story, the Ego answers the universal question – where did "I" come from? Since the question is timeless as well as universal, it comes as no surprise that the answer is still relevant today, and more – that similar answers have been given in other origin myths all over the world throughout history. In such myths, consciousness is always born out of darkness – the unconsciousness - and it is always depicted as light. Self-consciousness is always and everywhere understood to be a dividing, defining, delineating, separating, naming agent. The beginning of human life is always a delightful, effortless existence, and the birth of self-consciousness is described as a painful and shocking experience, one that runs contrary to the natural order of the world. Always the way back to the prior unconscious existence is blocked, and immortality denied to the Ego. Finally, the relationship between God and His creation, man, is actually the relationship between the Ego and the Self. In other words – we really are "created", so to speak, by a higher or at least more complete and knowing "being", since the Self – the totality of the personality - is indeed omniscient, at least in regard to our own personal existence. In this respect it is quite correct to speak of a personal destiny, a calling, and a higher purpose laid down for us, partly hidden, by the Self. The Genesis myth reminds us that human history, personal as well as collective, is first and foremost the tale of our relationship with ourselves, the relationship between the Ego and the Self, between us and God.

When Was The World Really Created?
Interestingly, Jewish tradition holds that the world was created nearly 6000 thousand years ago, in the fourth millennium. Scientific evidence tells us that this is patently false. However, from the psychological viewpoint this date certainly has some merit. If we accept that the story of Genesis is indeed the story of the birth and development of consciousness, then there are many historic dates that can be celebrated as "The Beginning" of self-consciousness. The beginning of the world may relate to the first time man spoke, the first tool made, perhaps the discovery of fire. But Judaism specifically mentions the middle of the fourth millennium as the beginning, and it is there that we must search for a significant event in human history. Interestingly enough, the fourth millennium is commonly agreed to be the beginning of history, in other words this was the first time that writing appears as a complete and coherent system in ancient, nearby Sumeria. I suggest that the ability to record events for posterity is, psychologically, a day of independence for the Ego. It signifies our ability to step out of the natural cycle and create an abstract, alternative world, with a linear time-line as opposed to the natural cyclical one. In this world the Ego can reign supreme, and it is also immortal - since words cannot be erased. Perhaps in the mind of the author of the myth this event was seen as "The Beginning" - the birthday of a new era of human independence and self-sufficiency, after thousands of years of constant struggle with his own inner nature, and the natural outer world.

Understanding the Creationist – Darwinist Debate
Creationism is a belief in a literal interpretation of the Genesis story and the Bible, a belief which cannot possibly be reconciled with the theory of evolution developed by Darwin. Creationists in the United States have been campaigning to give the creationist theory an equal standing with the scientific one, especially in school curriculum. But if we understand the story correctly, then the debate is moot. One side is talking about the origins of the psychical world and its center of experience – the Ego, while the other group is talking about the origins of the physical world. I believe that the passion of the creationists derives not from the bare facts of their argument, which rests on belief, but rather from their intuitive understanding that denying the origin of the Ego, and the special subservient relationship between the Ego and God (the Self), is extremely dangerous to the individual and even to society, as indeed it is. But, so is the opposite: negating the outer world in such a manner as to deny the senses and reason is no less an inflation of the Ego and no less dangerous. In order to live in harmony with ourselves we must recognize the validity of both viewpoints and work to incorporate them in our own lives. We must understand that we live in both worlds – inside ourselves as well as outside.

Next Week: Find Out If The Legendary Jewish Mother Is A Maximizer!

Why Women Are Exempt From Prayer In Judaism – A Jungian Explanation

2007-05-02T16:48:00.000+03:00

Synopsis: Men and women experience the development of the ego differently, Jewish law judged the psychic needs of each gender correctly - but that judgment has become outdated. (Word count = 1135)

Preface
In the previous post we determined that the purpose of prayer is to express and strengthen the connection between the Ego and the Self. As we explained, this must be done because in the process of maturation , a barrier is erected, separating the Ego from the unconscious, and thus from the totality of the personality, the Self. This is a grave loss, since the unconscious is the source of abundant energy, and it is also the only situation where the Ego has known a life without any tension or stress.
But if this is true, than it would seem that men and women have exactly the same need for prayer. If so, why would Jewish law differentiate between the two? If the need to pray is as great as we believe it to be, than Halacha would not need to dictate to men a thrice daily prayer, and, on the other hand, surely it would encourage, or at least allow women to participate equally in the prayers since they have the same need.
In this post I wish to show that there was a valid psychological reasoning behind both the exemption from prayer for women and the opposite, positive injunction for men.

Development of Consciousness in Pre-Modern Man and Women
The ego is born from the unconscious and emerges from it slowly and painfully, to a harsh, stressful world of light and awareness. In this psychic process the ego must fight constantly against falling back into the unconscious and losing it's self-awareness and control. The ego perceives the unconscious in a variety of ways during this process – from an all-encompassing, indifferent sea of plenty, to a benevolent mother of creation, and then, as the separation continues and deepens, as an unreliable ally, and finally as an enemy, a threat to the ego's existence, and an obstacle in the way to it's independence. In the beginning the ego identifies completely with the unconscious, and at the later stages it disassociates itself completely from it's origins.
The important thing to remember here is that the ego is the experiencing agent, and this experience varies with the gender of the ego. In other words the path to consciousness we have just outlined is experienced differently in the male and female.
This is because the human ego invariably sees the unconscious as a female entity. The ego will identify, usually, with the gender of it's body, whether male or female. This means that in the ego's struggle for independence a woman will find herself struggling against a female principle that is to her like a sister or mother, while the male is struggling against something that it perceives to be alien to it – a much simpler accomplishment. This is why men have a much easier time developing their ego, and becoming detached from the unconscious.
For the female this is far more difficult. It is true that the female ego develops – and that a barrier is too built between the female ego and the unconscious just like in the male psyche. However – this barrier is hardly as tall, as strong and as sturdy as the male one. In fact, until recently, it was more like a sieve. In the female, the ego never completely loses touch with the unconscious, the separation is never complete or final. I will go even so far as to say that most women never experience the horrible sense of loss that men do, the enormous gap between their reality and the Self, God.
Since women have not become separated from the unconscious, and the totality has not been completely broken, they have at their disposal the enormous energies of the unconscious, along with the very strong emotional and sensual powers that reside there.

Why The Halacha Was Correct
Since women never separated completely from the unconscious, and they still remain in touch with important parts of the psyche, and live them consciously – there is no need for women to pray – they are in touch with God all the time.
But then, if men need it so badly why force them? My guess is as follows: the biggest danger in the development of the male ego is that it will become detached to such a degree that it forgets completely about the unconscious, and begins to believe that it created itself, and everything it sees. I believe that in an attempt to avoid this tragedy, Judaism wisely commanded men to pray three times a day, each prayer consisting of a considerable stretch of time lest men forget who they are beholden to.

Why The Halacha Is Wrong
First of all, it must be admitted that the efforts to restrain the soaring male ego and get it to acknowledge it's Creator have not been a spectacular success. Many people say the prayers with an out of hand attitude, praying by rote, and completely disengaged emotionally from the meaning of the words. Halacha failed to take into account the degree to which the ego can become disassociated with the physical and emotional reality of the body it resides in.
Second, female consciousness has undergone a drastic change in the past few centuries. Under constant pressure from the dominating patriarchal point of view, women have been forced to adapt and as a result developed their egos to an unprecedented degree. Today one can find many women that are just as disassociated from their bodies and feelings as men are. This means that they too have lost the sense of the Self, and so, they are in just as much need of reconnecting as men once were. Today there are many women who do need to pray in order to express and strengthen the connection between their Ego and their Selves.
In my view, since the sole purpose of religion is to enable us to reconnect to God they should be allowed to do so. Their need should be recognized and catered to, since it is exactly the same psychological need that brought forth the idea of prayer in the first place.
Psychological needs change in time, and religious practices should be adjusted to accommodate them. Personally, I believe that it is the individual's responsibility to decide what are his or her own needs in this respect - we can no longer generalize on the sole basis of gender. The duty of society today is to raise it's members to be sufficiently independent and self aware to understand their own spiritual needs correctly. The rest should be up to them.

Next Week:What We Can Learn From The Story of Genesis about the Creationism debate, our psyche and what really happened 5767 years ago.

Prayer - A Jungian Perspective

2007-04-25T22:51:00.000+03:00

Synopsis: The birth of consciousness and structure of the psyche, The function of prayer, The importance of the religious impulse, Forms of prayer in Western and Eastern culture.

All over the world, from time immemorial, humans have prayed. The objective of the prayer has varied widely: humans have prayed to other humans, to statues of every imaginable shape and form, and finally, to a nameless, shapeless, almighty entity who cannot be known or seen directly. Despite dire predictions to the contrary, prayer has persisted throughout modern and even post-modern times. Prayer is universal and timeless. But what is it? What does prayer do, and how does it work, if it works at all? Is it a mindless relic of times past, as Freud famously posited, or does it have an irreplaceable, meaningful function? Can we explain it in rational, objective terms?
I will try to do so in this post, using the most suitable approach for the purpose - Jungian theory.

The Structure of the Psyche and The Birth of the Ego
One of the most important contributions of Jungian psychology was Jung's model of the human psyche, it's structure and manner of development. Jungian theory posits a completely unconscious mind in the beginning of human life. From this unconscious whole, there develops a self-consciousness. The center of this self-awareness is called the Ego. It is born in a long, drawn out process that is difficult and painful. By the end of this development, the Ego becomes separated from the unconscious, and an invisible wall exists between the two. The wall is there to protect the Ego from the enormous energy that the unconscious still retains, thus enabling us to lead more or less normal, steady lives that are, as far as the ego knows, guided solely by our conscious being.
This would be an ideal situation for humanity if not for one problem – in gaining it's independence, the Ego has also separated itself from the source of psychical energy, from it's original birth place where life was effortless, without tension or strain.
We may liken the Ego to a human being stranded on an island, like Robinson Crusoe. It can survive and perhaps even thrive, but is lonely, and often desolate, because it is disconnected from the whole. The whole in the ego's case would not be society or the group, but the total personality, embodied by the Jungian concept of the Self. This understanding is crucial to our theory of prayer, because in Jungian theory, the life we experience is actually the life experienced by this ego.
This means that we experience life both outside of ourselves, in the physical world, but also inside ourselves – in the psychical world. In our inner world, there still exists a lively, ongoing relationship between the ego and the unconscious (with it's various components – archetypes). Normally, even in a fully functioning adult, the ego will not have the energy available to deal directly with the unconscious. Therefore this relationship, which is vital to our existence, must be experienced secondhand. This is done mainly by projecting it on the outer world.
In other words, according to Jungian theory, our inner relationships are experienced in the outer world, even if we are completely unaware of the fact This is reminiscent of the Buddhist term Maya – the idea that the world is an illusion. Following Jung we can now understand that this does not mean that the world does not exist, just that it is obscured by our own projections upon it. Once we withdraw them, we will see the world as it is.

What is Prayer?
Now we can also understand the phenomenon of prayer - we see it as an inner relationship, being projected and experienced in the outside world. But what relationship is this?
I think this would be the relationship between the ego and the self , the self being the totality of our psyche comprised of the unconscious and conscious parts. This relationship cannot be experienced directly because the ego is not strong enough to experience the seemingly infinite energy of the total personality without any mediation. Yet, a relationship exists. The ego was born from the totality, was separated from it, and yet, is still a part of it.
Unfortunately, for a healthy ego there is no going back, no regression. From this point, that most of us reach early in our lives, there are two main paths forward. One consists of striving to maintain and even strengthen this connection, perhaps even re-establishing it, while the second way is to deny this connection completely, and assume all the powers and majesty of the self, the totality, God - into the ego. The former, the people of faith, intuitively understand the true relationship between them and the world, inside and out, and express it daily by praying to the totality, to God, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the purpose of praying – to express and strengthen the connection between the Ego and the Self. The latter, secular people, lead essentially lonely, desperate, bitter lives, based on a grave psychological mistake.
This is why Jung cherished the religious impulse, understanding that it is a very important and healthy way for us to express and experience the true relationship between our consciousness and the self.

Prayer East and West
If the purpose of prayer is indeed to express and strengthen the connection between the Self and the Ego, then there are many ways in which to achieve this.
Judaism has chosen the path of verbal communication with the Self, and it's daughter religions have followed suit. But the Self is composed mostly of the unconscious which cannot comprehend the word, only the accompanying emotions. This is why formal, unemotional prayers are not very effective. Emotion is the lingua franca of the soul, and only emotion – the correct emotion, expressed correctly - can reach the ears of the Almighty, the Self. Therefore singing is an important means of prayer, as well as dancing.
This is the Western approach to the problem of experiencing the Self. There is also an Eastern way which is slowly entering our culture. The East has developed, in addition to verbal prayer, a rational way to increase the connection, strengthen it and even, eventually, experience it directly. I am speaking of the various forms of yoga and meditation which, if practiced correctly, persistently, and , most importantly, sincerely, strengthen the Ego to such a degree that the wall that separates between it and the unconscious slowly crumbles, and finally, falls away. This, while the Ego remains intact, still able to experience life as a unique, self-conscious identity, but also in the direct, innocent manner of a new born babe. Such a practical technique of prayer has never been developed in the West, and if you are really interested in a religious experience, then I recommend it whole-heartedly, in addition to the Western method. The path to God is a long and treacherous one, and a sincere seeker will use all the methods of prayer available.

Next Week: Why Women Are Exempt From Prayer In Judaism - A Jungian Perspective

The New, Improved Israeli Tikkun Blog

2007-04-25T09:26:00.000+03:00

Following up on the previous post "The New Writing Regime" I am re-opening this blog. I took the opportunity to move to the beta template and redesigned the whole thing, with new aims and new content in mind. I was aiming for a cleaner, more professional look. I added a few ads which I hope will not bother you too much. According to my calculations, if each one of my readers clicks one ad for only ten thousand times each day, by the end of the month I will be able to buy myself a one whole falafel. So, what are you waiting for?
Content will change a bit. I want to write consistently about the Repair of our society, specifically the application of psychological knowledge to a variety of issues. Theories will be mainly Jung, Adler and Imago theory. I aim to write simply and clearly and most importantly - concisely. My first goal is to express ideas in less than a thousand words, which are about half a page in a traditional newspaper. In short, my mission is to be as communicative as possible while writing about complex issues. This means that the personal posts are out as are most of the political posts although I did not write many. If you are deeply interested in me personally you can click the "Personal" label to read all the previous posts.
Which brings me to the issue of labeling. I am relabeling all the old content and it seems that is impossible to do so without Blogger re-publishing the re-labeled post each time. This results in these older posts re-appearing in your feeder. I apologize for the inconvenience, although some people have taken the opportunity to read posts they missed. I'll be re-labeling for the next hour or so and then I'll put up my first post on the new blog. It will be about prayer from a Jungian perspective and it is 1200 words long, 200 over the limit. It's a lot harder to write a short post than I thought it would be! I guess I'll get better at it the more I practice. In any case it is a great experience because it is forcing me to be absolutely clear about my ideas before writing them down, which benefits me and hopefully my readers too.
Finally - I hope you stick around to enjoy the new blog.

Passover Joke and Greetings

2007-04-02T10:18:00.000+03:00

A year or two ago I came across a Hebrew book called "The The Big Book of Jewish Humor " , a collection of jokes gathered and edited by Prof. Adir Cohen. This is a great present for any occasion, although maybe a little expensive. The jokes are arranged by subject alphabetically and it's pretty easy to find things. For instance Passover jokes (who even knew there is such a thing) will be found under "Holidays. Here are a few for your enjoyment, if you are not to tired to enjoy anything...

One Jew asked another: "Why do we ask four questions on Passover, but none on Yom-Kippur and Rosh Ha-Shana?"
His friend answered:"You see, When a Jew sighs, and weeps, and suffers - that raises no questions whatsoever. But when we see a happy Jew, now that raises some questions that must be answered..."

A poor Jew was doing the Seder with his family, and telling the story of the exodus.
One of the sons asks:"Why do we always mention the bricks and mortar and bitterness that the children of Israel suffered in Egypt and eat charoset and Maror , but we say nothing about the great fortune that the children of Israel escaped with when they left Egypt, and don't even eat any tasty morsel to commemorate this?"
Answered the father: " That is because to this day bricks and mortar and bitterness fill our lives, while nothing is left of that great fortune..."

and a last one:
One intermediate Passover day a Jew took his lunch out to the park. He sat down on a bench and began to eat. A blind man sat down next to him. In a friendly gesture the Jews handed over a Matzoh. The blind man took hold of the Matzoh, felt it all over and said: "Who wrote this nonsense?"

That's it for now.
I wish all my readers a very happy passover, and a quick and easy path to freedom - spiritual freedom, which we have yet to achieve.

Visiting The Miserable Relative

2007-01-28T15:04:00.000+02:00

Visiting The Miserable Relative
I was raised on the notion that misery is a bad thing, to be avoided at all costs. I learned that miserable people should be pitied but that is best to keep a safe distance from them, just in case their disease is catching. These sentiments are echoes, I think, of the Calvinist teachings of predestination, which perhaps were passed down unconsciously from my German side.
Any way this is what I learned as I child. I am not saying that I learned this in school or that such sentiments were ever put into words, it’s just that I found them in my mind, together with hundreds of other unconscious or semi-conscious opinions and prejudices about this world. These things are passed from parent to child mostly by the behavior of the parent. In my case the living example was my aunt who was, and still is, considered the miserable one.
Obviously definitions of misery will vary so a clarification is due here: in our family misery is defined first of all as being poor, or at least not having as much money as “everybody else”. This is a relative term, defined mostly by how my mother felt, and as far as I can remember – she always felt poor, no matter how much money she had, and sometimes she had a lot, by any normal standard. The second aspect of misery is being alone, meaning – childless and without a family – friends don’t really count.

My aunt – my mothers’ older sister fits this description perfectly. She has led a pretty tragic life and seems to be wallowing in her misery, incessantly picking at her physical and emotional wounds, never letting anything go, but never actually solving anything and moving on either. Despite this, we have always had a very good relationship. By this I mean that if the rest of the family mocked and shunned her (mostly behind her back, but not always), I never felt comfortable doing so, and when I grew older I found that she was the only person in the family that I can talk to without fearing that everything I say will be stored and filed away to be used against me in some way (looking at you mom). She was also the only one who was not in complete and total denial of what was actually going on in our family, and most importantly she not only has an excellent memory she is more than willing to share her memories and experiences with me. This is crucial since my father never talked about his past, (or about anything else for that matter) and my mother, The Grand Mistress of Denial, utterly refuses to remember anything about her past. So my aunt and I, we have some kind of relationship, and when last week she invited me to come visit her in Tel-Aviv I was quick to oblige.
It was on this visit that I was reminded of something I discovered on my spiritual journey – misery can be a very powerful emotional weapon, and contrary to what my parents taught me – some people actually delight in their misery, and use it to great advantage in the everlasting effort of getting what they need in this world. That is what I want to tell you about.

I haven’t seen my aunt for a long time. She lives in Tel-Aviv, and I never get there, and also I really don’t like to travel, and besides I am very busy and so on. We do talk on the phone, but that’s not the same. I realize that she is getting pretty old - she’s almost eighty and I have been planning to go and see her for the past year or so but somehow I could never bring myself to do it. Every time we talk on the phone I put it off because I hear how vigorous and full of life she sounds so that I know that despite her bitter complaints about her health, I still have a lot of time before she returns to her Maker. But a few weeks ago she asked me when I am coming to visit her and I immediately replied, “ Whenever you ask me to”. That was my spontaneous reply – I really do like her and I know that she would love the company, and her asking me over kind of finally got me off my tuches and onto the bus to Sin City Israel – Tel Aviv.

To be honest, one reason I do not visit my aunt more often is that, although I do like her and we do talk, she is not the most pleasant, easygoing person to be with, and she is at her worst when she is in the safety of her own home. It is a small, two-bedroom apartment, which looks exactly like what you would expect from an elderly, German-born maid, including the incredibly poor taste in decorating (this runs in the family apparently), and the uncompromising cleanliness (which doesn’t). For instance, from the very first time I visited her, my aunt made it very clear that there are RULES in this house. There are things that cannot be touched, and some that can, although they must be used in a very specific way. I can sit in certain chairs and not in others, use this soap and not that one and so on – really not the most pleasant atmosphere. You could attribute this over-controlling behavior to an elderly woman living alone and becoming settled in her ways to such an extent that any variation is most troubling, but this has been going forever, even when she was much younger, and also – if you have people over then there is some price to pay – you must make some room for them.
In any case, if I had a lot of patience in the past for this kind of behavior, and I did not see anything wrong with it, this only means that I had been trained to perfection by her over-controlling sister. But as the years go by and I unravel this training, my expectations have changed – I want to be treated like a human being, and it is becoming clear that while interacting with members of my family, such treatment is impossible. In fact, I’m beginning to believe that this family is wounded to such an extent that every contact with them ends up in a traumatic experience for me, which is exactly what happened in this visit to my aunt.

The Trauma
In psychological literature the word trauma is often used. The Free Dictionary says that trauma is “an emotional wound or shock that creates substantial, lasting damage to the psychological development of a person, often leading to neurosis.”
According to Freudian theory, which I described in an earlier post, any experiences that appear life threatening, and cannot be dealt with straight-forwardly are quickly repressed into the unconscious. This is done for the protection of our fragile personality and self-image. I have met many people who knew these phenomenon, and could explain them at length, and I thought I had a pretty good grasp of them myself, having dealt in detail with my own traumas, but it appears I was mistaken, or at least the actual experience of a trauma in real-time with it’s effects has eluded me – till now.
In this case I had no idea that I was undergoing any kind of unpleasant experience. I sat with my aunt for about four hours, mostly listening to her stories about her childhood in Germany, the iniquities committed upon her by her parents, her (bad) relationships with the rest of the family and so on. I did feel tense, but I did not feel that something was wrong until we said goodbye and I stepped out of the house. The first thought that crossed my mind was that I have no idea what went on there, and that I honestly cannot recall a single word that was said. I wondered what I would tell my wife when I came home. As it turned out I did not have much to say, which really surprised her. A day after this she started to notice that I was acting strangely – compulsive behaviors that had disappeared years ago were suddenly reappearing! (for instance – not reacting to things she said). Three days later, and after several discussions with my wife and myself, I had to admit that I was just not myself, and that apparently the experience was so bad that I had undergone some kind of trauma.
By the time I could admit this, my memory was also starting to come back, and I began to see how this negative experience actually happened. In hindsight it was made possible by a combination of factors,, the chief among them being, in my opinion, the manner in which my aunt used her misery to impose her will upon me.

Using Misery To Control The Environment
Using misery to manipulate the environment is nothing new. In fact one of the triggers for Adlerian theory came from his observation of crippled children and how they deal with their situation. Adler noticed that some people use their disability to spur themselves to ever-greater achievements, while others with the exact same disability, use it in order to manipulate the environment to satisfy their every need, even when they can do so perfectly well by themselves.

The Element of Surprise
What is shocking is to discover that a person that I did not expect it from is manipulating me in such a manner. The element of surprise was crucial here – I am always very wary when dealing with other members of my family, since I know from past experience what I can expect (nothing good), but when dealing with my aunt I am usually a lot more straight forward, and if I withhold things it is only because I know that there are ideas and lifestyles that, with her upbringing, she simply cannot accept, and challenging her with them is foolish as well as cruel.

Using My Pity Against Me
In addition to the element of surprise, to use misery you must be sure that person you are manipulating pities you, feels somehow in debt, or uncomfortable with your situation. Obviously if I don’t care about my aunt at all then she would have no power to wield against me. But I do. Like I said, I really like her and we have had a pretty long and good relationship, especially considering the prevalent low standard for relationships in our family (trading cynical barbs over dinner).
I also pity her. Growing in Germany, to German parents is probably one of the worst possible situations any child can find himself in, and the reality of two estranged parents, who are both emotionally unfit to raise children surely did not help. The resulting childhood wounds apparently determined a pretty miserable life; the worst part probably being that her one and only true love, the only person that ever really cared about her, died only one year into their marriage. My aunt never married again, choosing to remain lonely and alone, with her memories and friends. Of course these friend grew old along with her and now they are mostly dead, so my aunt is lonelier than ever. She is alone and childless, and suffering from various ailments resulting from old age.
Finally, she reminds me a lot of myself – like me she was the black sheep of the family, never able to fit in and do exactly what her parents wanted her to do. Unfortunately for her, she managed to rebel by not doing exactly what they wanted but on the other hand, she never did manage to pave her own way in this world, finally ending up without the security that the first path affords those who follow it, and also without the rewards that choosing the path of freedom and independence grants those who follow it. Her failure is for me, who chose the second path, just one more reason to pity her, and do my best to alleviate her pain.

All this means is that my state of mind when going on this visit was this: I love my aunt, I pity her, I wish her well, and also: she is old, and only God knows if I will have another chance to see her, so I must make the most of this opportunity. I was also afraid of what I would see, and afraid of reacting to her in such a way that would offend her. What I mean is that I haven’t seen her in a while and I did not know to what extent she had deteriorated physically, and I had no idea how that would affect me. All in all I was determined to make my aunt as happy as possible, without having the slightest notion that my naiveté and love could be used against me.

Controlling My Behavior - The Various Ways
I already mentioned that my aunt has always controlled the movements of people who visited her. In the past this never bothered me and I had no problem humoring her, but this time I think that it got a lot worse, and on top of that, I have apparently changed since the last time we met. Be that as it may, I was very curious to try and reconstruct how exactly I was controlled. Here’s what I came up with:
In past years we used to sit in the kitchen, but this time I was shown into the small living room. Instead of the sofa that used to be there, my aunt had put in a new reclining bed. Opposite the bed was the TV in its trolley, and next to it the one empty chair in the room. Obviously I was supposed to sit there. Between us there was a small coffee table with some fresh fruit, dried fruit and nuts, and next to her bed was another chair piled on with newspapers and books. The chair was a little small and cramped for me, but I disregarded this – I just wanted everything to be perfect and my aunt hates it when I make a fuss about such small things. Anyway, I was here for her, not for my comfort.
I sat down and we started talking. It was a little hard for me at first – I was pretty dismayed by the way my aunt looked. I think that for the first time in my life I saw her with her natural hair – she always used to dye it a flaming red – but now it was just a willowy tuft of gray and white. She also did not bother to put in her false teeth, and the constant sight of a toothless mouth, with the gums smacking loudly was disconcerting at first – I’m just not used to it. I think I managed to hide my concern because she didn’t say anything, and fortunately as the discussion developed I started seeing her soul, and the body kind of faded from view.
I don’t think that five minutes had passed and I received my first rebuke “ Why am I not eating anything?” She asked.
I told her that I just ate when I left, and I assured her that I would eat as soon as I am hungry again. I also thanked her for the food. She said that’s ok but from then on she bugged me about the food every five minutes, until I felt I had to eat something, if I want to or not just to make her happy. This is also standard practice for all the woman in the family who believe that “No is not an answer – it’s just the starting point of the negotiation process.” I have seen my grandmother and both her daughters behave this way, and personally, I hate this approach.
So now I was sitting in an uncomfortable chair, eating food I did not want, when suddenly I had to scratch my head. I raised my arm, scratched a bit, and put it back down. Nothing unusual here, but my aunt immediately pounced on me– “Why are you looking at your watch? Are you in a hurry?”
Now I was getting really freaked out. I realized that if she is behaving in such a way then she is really on edge, and probably desperately needs the company. I do not know when was the last time she even had anybody over – I only know for sure that no one from our family visited her (most are abroad anyway) for ages, not even her sister (my mother) who cannot stand her. In hindsight I realize that from that moment onwards I was completely paralyzed. I did not dare to make any move for fear it would be misinterpreted, and I would have to see and feel my aunts’ crazed desperation. I knew I couldn’t stand another look. So I sat still, I did not check my watch (now I really wanted to), I ate dutifully and followed her instructions carefully when I went to the bathroom. In short – I was completely tamed.
I sat there for about four hours. We had a small meal in the middle (cold sandwich), and tea during which i forgot myself and tried to position my chair better. My aunt immediately told me not to move so close to the TV, she's afraid that I'll hit it and it will break and then where would she be without her TV?I moved back, and we talked and talked, or rather – she talked and I listened. I was beyond caring how I felt, I was just plodding on, giving her my complete and undivided attention, which, I think, is the only thing that would satisfy her completely.
Somehow, eventually, I snapped out of it – I felt that soon I would reach the end of my energy and I would fall asleep if I want to or not. I got up and prepared to leave. My aunt did not object. She said how happy I made her, and how this would give her food for thought for a long time. I hugged her and told her how much I love her. She said, “Too bad I’m not your real mother” to which I replied, “ in which case I would probably hate you!” She laughed and we said goodbye, maybe forever.

Triggering Survival Behavior
Upon review there was not that much controlling being done was there? Perhaps you think so, and I don’t blame you. Perhaps a normal healthy person would have reacted completely differently. Maybe you would have left after an hour, or just defied my aunt; maybe fighting with her, or causing her obvious pain and displeasure – but I, who was there, could not do so. I just couldn’t.
I have been hurt in the past as a child in very specific ways, and like every child I adopted certain patterns of behavior in order to survive these attacks. One such mode of attack is commenting on personal things – purposefully invading my personal territory in order to show who’s boss here. Many parents do this and my mother was no exception. She could remark on my bodily odor, or the smell of my breath without having any notion that she is causing me great pain. As a child I learned to hide the hurt, and go deeper inside my shell to get away from these nasty people who claimed they are my parents. I learned that there is no point in reacting to these hurtful remarks because anything I say would be, at best, ignored.
I think that when my aunt remarked on my scratching my head – that hit me right in the same place – a female authority figure, who I did not want to hurt, trying to control me – and that triggered my forgotten survival behavior – I simply disappeared inside me.
Conclusion
Two things are of note here. First of all this explains why family meetings are so traumatic, why family members have so much power over us: patterns of behavior are passed on throughout the family and therefore repeated. We have met some of these patterns before and some of them may have hurt us deeply, and inevitably they do so again – every time we meet our families, someone will eventually rub us the wrong way.
Second, my aunt did not notice that anything was wrong, just as my mother never did. This means that both of them were concerned mostly with getting a certain result which happened to be, in both cases, control over another human being – me.
My conclusion must therefore be that in both cases the people who say they love me, actually mean – “we love you as long as we can use you to satisfy our needs” which is obviously not the usual meaning of the words “I love you”.
If you grew up learning that being loved is being used, then you are in for a pretty bad time in this world, and that is, in the end, what I got from this visit: I felt completely spent and used, as if the life was sucked right out of me, like the bodies of those dried out corpses in “Arachnophobia” (a great movie but not intended for the weak-hearted). What’s worse, I did not realize this until I passed the hurt on to my wife who had to put in some work in order to make me realize what had happened. Forgotten survival behaviors suddenly surfaced out of nowhere, and for two weeks I have been a ghost of myself (which is also why I haven’t blogged).
My final conclusion is this: A toxic family is a toxic family – everyone is poisonous, and any contact with members of such families must be made with due caution, and at your own risk.
Personally, I’d rather do without.

A Visit To The Local Synagogue

2007-01-17T15:37:00.000+02:00

On my Visit To Machon Meir , the Rabbi I met with gave me an excellent piece of advice - he said that I can contact the Rabbi of the local synagogue, and that in most cases he would only be too glad to help me find my way through the the prayers and services.
I took the advice and tried to phone the synagogue offices but nobody ever answered. I was wondering what to do, when The Chabadnik That Got Away - got away again! He called me an hour before we were supposed to meet in order to cancel, due to an emergency. I was very disappointed, especially because I was counting on him to give me my weekly dose of Judaism. So there I found myself on Thursday with no where to go. I finally decided that nothing terrible will happen to me if I go the local synagogue unannounced. I had already been to a minha prayer twice so I had a pretty good idea what to expect, and in any case, I felt that for my own good I should go and stop making such a fuss of it. So I went. I arrived way to early - I remembered four o' clock but the time changes dramatically from day to day which is just another thing I have to learn.

Anyway,that gave me some time to check out the place - and I found that it looked very well cared for. It is a synagogue which can seat about a hundred people, and a few adjacent rooms for lectures and a small library and kitchenette - all done in wood paneling, well-lit and very clean. It was obvious that the community takes very good care of the place. Finally I entered the synagogue itself. I said hello, directed to the one old man who was the only one there but he didn't answer me. Perhaps he didn't hear me? I looked around, and found myself attracted to the book shelves lining the nearby wall. I was searching for a siddur, and finally found a whole shelf full of them. They were marked "Rinat Israel A" and others were "Rinat Israel S". I thought that was weird - if there were two parts, shouldn't they be marked "A" and then "B"? On the other hand something was familiar here...yep, I got it eventually - one for Sephardim and one for Ashkenazim!
I took one out and found that it was very clear, and enabled me to follow the prayer almost perfectly. I still don't understand everything I read, especially not the Aramaic parts, and I hope that I will find somebody to teach me these things.
I decided to use the time left till the prayers begin in order to at least study something on my own. If I recall correctly it is considered proper to read or study torah before the prayer, so I took out Exodus and started reading the current parasha. Meanwhile people were slowly coming in. Most of them were indeed older men, and they seemed to know each other, at least they said hello to one another, but there were also some younger people, and altogether there were maybe twenty people there which I guess is a lot for a prayer in the middle of the day. Eventually the service began, although two of the older guys decided to ignore the proceedings and continued reading some pamphlet. The service was short, and it was followed by a sermon about the parasha, to be followed by the Arvit, and delivered apparently by the Rabbi. Along with a few other people I stayed to hear it. I tried to follow the guy, but he was jumping from one reference to another without any clear connection between them that I could make. He was mumbling and stumbling his way through what seemed to me to be a very badly prepared explanation of...something from the parasha. I don't know, and I did not stay to find out.

All in all I'm happy that I went. I got a good look at the place and the people there, and a good feel of the atmosphere that I can expect. To be honest, I did not like what I felt - it seemed pretty cold and alienated, and it bothered me a little that no one said anything to me, not even a hello. Is that weird or is it standard behavior? I have no idea. I have an image of the synagogue as a spiritual home, so if a stranger comes in wouldn't you want to know who it is? I have no idea where this image comes from, and if it is true or not, so I'll ask my knowledgeable readers - what is the accepted practice in your standard synagogue?

Judaism Zen and Basketball

2007-01-14T20:43:00.000+02:00

Judaism, Zen, and Basketball
Three topics that at first sight probably do not seem to belong together, but it is possible to connect them, and perhaps even interesting - just watch me.

Judaism and Basketball
The connection between Judaism and basketball may be more understandable, seeing as the commissioner of the NBA, David Stern is Jewish, and Jews had no small part in NBA history. You can read about the history of Jews in American basketball in this excellent article from JewishMag, and if you are interested in The State of Jews in the NBA then NBA blog Give Me The Rock will bring you up to date.(For a great general site about Jews in sports visit JewishSports)

Zen and Judaism
A quick google search of "Zen and Judaism" brings up two main references - first a popular humor book "Zen Judaism: For You, a Little Enlightenment by David M. Bader",and another book "Letters To A Buddhist Jew" documenting an exchange of letters between a Rabbi and a Jewish Zen practitioner.The first chapter of the book is available to read at the link.I haven't read either of them so I have no opinion , although the first chapter seems very promising.I also found an interesting article about two Jewish friends who are both Jewish Buddhists. One of them found his way back to Judaism through meditation:

At one point he had to sew an ornamental item for a priestly garment."I absolutely couldn't do it," Lew recalled. "And after awhile I realized there was some resistance. I began to explore that in my meditation and I realized it had something to do with my being Jewish.It is true for me that there was some sense of conflict between my being ordained as a Buddhist with my being Jewish."As he explored the tension in meditation, he found "a level of Jewish background noise," Lew said. But probing deeper, he realized "this kind of buzz was going on at all times."Realizing this Jewish identity "was the beginning of my turning in that direction."

This is very similar to the way I reached Judaism - through Zen Buddhism - although this man went on to become a Rabbi and I don't think that is in my future. In any case, the connection between Judaism and Zen is very intriguing and I intend to explore it in this blog - starting with this post (I'm getting there)

Zen and Basketball
Zen is the art of living, and therefore can be applied to any endeavor, in any field. Still, basketball is not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Zen , unless of course, you have followed the NBA in the past decade and a half. If you did, then you could not help hearing about legendary coach Phil Jackson, who consciously applied his knowledge of Zen on his way to coaching two different teams to an astounding nine NBA titles,( a feat accomplished, by the way, by only one other coach in NBA history,the late, great, Red Auerbach, who, apropos Jews in sports, happened to be Jewish.)
For years I have been fascinated by group dynamics and team sports is a great place to study this subject - enormous pressure coupled with great talent and forceful personalities makes for some very interesting situations. Not all team sports are so dependent on the quality of the group dynamics in order to succeed but apparently in basketball a close knit team is imperative.This is one reason why I started watching basketball, (the other one being Michael Jordan), and Phil's amazing success with the Chicago Bulls, (led by the unearthly talent of said Jordan), where others failed before him, really caught my attention. I also read Jackson's book Sacred Hoops about his time with the Bulls where he explains how he used his knowledge of Zen (and his very good instincts) to shape the group dynamics, and help the players realize their full potential, and it is with this book that I am going to finally complete the connection between Judaism, Zen, and basketball.

Connecting Judaism, Zen, and basketball
The very first thing I learned in my first Judaism lesson was that the essence of the Jew is that he gives thanks all the time to the Creator for everything. Jews are supposed to give thanks to God when they wake up - for waking up, when they go to the bathroom - for the ability to go to the bathroom, for food and water and basically - all of Gods creation, from morning till night.What I understand from this is that for Jews, nothing in this world should be taken for granted - everything is temporary, and exists only at the whim of our Master and Creator.This attitude reminded me of a story I read in Phil Jackson's book Sacred Hoops:

"You see this Goblet?" asked Chaa, holding up a glass "For me, this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on a shelf and the wind knocks it over, or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say "Of course.""When I understand that this glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious."

(for the record, Jackson is quoting from the book Thoughts Without a Thinker, about psychology and Buddhism, which I haven't read, but seems worth it)

Isn't this remarkably similar to the Jewish philosophy underlying the incessant prayers of thanks?Don't both religions clearly recognize the impermanence of this world and how necessary it is for our health - our spiritual health to live in such a state of mind? Doesn't Judaism as well as Zen Buddhism exhort us to adhere not to worldly things, to lean on nothing - not money, or people or ideas even - but the one and only God (or Tao) who cannot be seen, or touched or even named? To me it seems to be so. But if this is true, then what is the difference between the two? Well, there are a lot of differences, but I think there are a few important, basic differences between Zen and Judaism, which can be demonstrated using this example.

The Basic Difference Between Judaism and Zen
The founder of Judaism and his subsequent followers recognized the desired mental and moral state for humanity in general, and specifically the Jewish people. They described this state and the way to get there - by doing the mitzvahs.In this case, the desired mental state is one of continually recognizing the impermanence of the world, and our utter dependence on God's will for every thing that exists.The way to achieve this state is to perform the appropriate prayers and blessings and other mitzvot throughout the day. As I understand it, the various prayers and blessings which give thanks are intended to not let us forget the fact that we are so dependent on the will of our Lord, lest our heads grow too big for our kippot, and we decide that we are self-sufficient. So in this case the mitzvot actually serve as reminders. Human beings are forgetful creatures and therefore need to be reminded - incessantly, all day, every day, for all of their lives. A Jew is not expected to reach a spiritual state in which he no longer needs to be reminded of God all the time. Not so in Zen.

Zen also describes a desired mental state and it has a way to get there.The ideal mental state can be described as one that recognizes, once and for all, with heart, and body and soul, the impermanence of this world, its inherent and constant changing, its basic unreliability.The way to achieve this state is through meditation, mental or physical (as in the martial arts or yoga), and unlike Judaism this state can be attained permanently.
So the first difference is that in Zen you are expected to reach a state of mind that, if attained in Judaism, would render all the incessant reminders/prayers of thanks unnecessary, because you would be mindful of God (or the Tao) all the time.

Freedom of Choice or Use of Force?
The second difference is in the use of external force to achieve this goal.
A Jew born into a Jewish family does not have a choice - he or she must act according to the laws that were given to us by God at Mount Sinai. You must pray because God said so, and if you don't He will disapprove and so will your parents, and teachers and maybe also your friends.Even if you accept this, you may still find yourself forcing yourself to do the appropriate prayers and blessings - if you are lucky. If not, you will get so used to it that they will become a barely noticeable habit.
I have only been to a few prayers sessions in my fledgling journey into Judaism, but I have already noticed that many people are not paying attention to their prayers - some play with their keys, one guy was tossing an orange up and down, another was gesturing to other people who answered him with contortions of the face and hand signals, and in the third synagogue, two people were reading the papers during the prayers. I have a feeling that this is a big problem in Jewish practice - it is repetitive and it can quickly become a habit that hinders spiritual development, instead of advancing it.
Of course this also occurs in Zen practice. There are so many ways in which our minds can fool us that inevitably we will fall into some of them.The difference is that a good Zen teacher will be there to get you out of the rut - in fact the whole system is designed to constantly keep you on your toes mentally, until you reach that state of mind that doesn't need to fall asleep into a habit, a mental state of alertness without undue tension. Can the same be said of Judaism? I do not have enough knowledge to determine this, but it sure doesn't look like it.

But most importantly, the clear state of mind that can be reached through Zen is absolutely impossible to achieve without the voluntary wish of the disciple.The Way is too hard, too frightening and overburdened with difficulties to be achieved without the courage that stems from the exercise of a free will. On the other hand, if I understand correctly, Judaism never allowed it's members to choose, and if Modernism had not descended upon it in a devastating rush, we would still have no choice.What I do not understand is how is this possible? How is spiritual growth possible under such constraining circumstances? Why is it necessary to use force, when every orthodox I have ever met tells me, in words and in behavior, that doing the mitzvot is the best thing possible, the only true road to happiness everlasting?

Conclusion - What, Why and How
Jewish society has traditionally socialized its members into a way of life and faith in God.
Zen is a demanding but practical spiritual discipline that, if it is to be meaningful, must be followed voluntarily by its adherents.
Judaism has an excellent sense of morals, and a set of values and ideals that are worthy of a human culture, but the tools that Judaism has developed over the years - the mitzvot and their continual adaptation, seem to be lacking. The fact is that society, including Jewish society, never seems to be able to realize its lofty ideals.I am wondering if Judaism has the goals, but Zen, perhaps, possesses the Way to achieve them.

Technorati Tags: Zen, Judasim, prayer, praying, sacred hoops, basketball

A Visit To Machon Meir

2007-01-08T19:48:00.000+02:00

Today I paid a visit to Machon Meir, A Zionist Yeshiva which caters mostly to members of the religious-Zionist community,although they accept and seem to encourage secular people too. I say this judging by the incredible amount of slogans in that spirit plastered on the wall in the hallways and in the office where I had my meeting with Rabbi Uri Sharki, who is responsible for the Israeli program in the yeshiva.
I had already met with this particular Rabbi in this particular yeshiva several years ago. I possessed then the idea and wish to study Judaism in some form, but I was simply not ready yet. Rabbi Sharki seemed threatening and overbearing at the time and I quickly ran away from him, from the yeshiva and from the whole idea of studying Judaism - until recently.
But I am getting ahead of myself.

I like to be punctual, and sometimes that means that I arrive too early, especially if I am not sure where exactly the meeting place is supposed to be, and it turns out to be closer and easier to find than I thought. This time my Yekke habits gave me ample time to roam the corridors of Machon Meir and get a first impression. The first thing that hit me was the smell of institutional cooking which permeated every corner of the yeshiva. Personally I am not fond of cooking for the masses - the food never seems to taste as good as it does at home - and to make matters worse they were cooking fish today, and fish, if you do not know, has a very distinct odor which some, including me, find unpleasant, especially when inhaled constantly.
Continuing my stroll, I got the distinct impression that I was back at school - the walls were painted with the same plastic, washable paint, in a standard institutional color, this time a shade of pale, sickly beige.The last time I was at my former school they had painted the walls a pale green, reminiscent of Gollum's skin color. I wonder why do institutions insist on such sickening color schemes - is it on purpose to annoy everybody else? is it a financial consideration?
Anyway, the place had an institutional smell, and an institutional look, and after my meeting with the Rabbi, it turns out - it really is an institution - for better and for worse.

Rabbi Sharki arrived almost on time, and proceeded to give me a very thorough and clear overview of the yeshiva and what it offers: many classes, from morning till night, which fall under two categories of "Emunah" (faith) which he considered imperative for someone with no knowledge of Judaism, and Gmara. The point being that after studying for a certain period of time at this yeshiva the student would have a firm grasp of the basic tenets of Judaism along with the ability to continue studying independently.
Actually, when I write this down it doesn't seem half bad, except that I cannot commit to a full program, and none of this seemed to answer one of my main concerns - the how of being Jewish, the " how to pray(and when) "how to use the tefillin and talith " and so on. The Rabbi suggested a few books concerning halakha and said that if I studied them even for 15 minutes each day, I will soon have a very good working knowledge. To me this seems absurd - obviously I can learn Jewish traditions from a book, but what would be the point in that? Isn't it supposed to be passed from father to son, or at least from one Jew to another? For me this is very important, although to be fair, he did say that if I commit to a larger extent they would also find someone to teach me those things.
But the best thing to come out of this meeting was one piece of advice he gave me - he said that if I went to a synagogue and asked the Rabbi for help in praying and so on then " in any normal synagogue the Rabbi will find somebody to help you". He also pointed out that there are a lot of pensioners in my neighborhood and no doubt some would take much delight in teaching me these things. I will follow this advice and on the way back I already wrote the phone number and prayer times of one of the nearby synagogues.

All in all it was a good meeting. I am happy to report that contrary to my initial impression, Rabbi Sharki does not have two horns sprouting from his forehead, or even a tail. He seems, actually, just a nice guy doing his job as best he can. The yeshiva itself seems like a nice place, especially the new wing which does not reek of fish and has a much more modern, pleasant look to it. The people there were mostly young, wholesome-looking religious men in their early twenties.The corridors were clean, the Rabbi's office was, thankfully,clean and organized, the kitchenette was clean, the lighting everywhere was excellent, and the whole place seemed to be in good hands. I am sure I would not hesitate to recommend this place to anyone interested in Jewish studies, although, to be honest, I myself would not go there, for two reasons - one, I did not feel any passion, and two, I did not feel anything personal.

In the last yeshiva I went to, the guy I talked to seemed to know exactly what I am going through, and also what I need. He was passionate about his life and his belief, and he seemed genuinely excited for me. Even the second guy I studied with, who foisted the story of his life on me, was passionate (to a fault) about the path he had chosen.

Faith, as I understand it, is first and foremost based on feelings, passionate or otherwise. In Machon Meir I did not get that passion or any other emotion, nor did I feel any thing personal going on between us - I was just another student in an endless line of students, to be treated as well as any other - no complaint from me - but no differently either. That is a standard bureaucratic approach which may be efficient, but it is not personal, nor emotional - as faith should be. The first yeshiva was anarchic, with people screaming and shouting over and into each other, in a dizzying confusion of biblical passages. I found it difficult to be there, but I did not doubt for one second the passion of these people. In Machon Meir a pleasant, scholarly silence reins. I'm sure i would have no trouble concentrating there, but I also see no compelling reason why I should - I'm just not attracted to the place.

So, what now?
I can and probably will talk to the Rabbi of the synagogue near me, as Rabbi Sharki suggested. I haven't yet called the guy from Maayanot Hayeshua, and I also thought about paying a visit to the Chut shel Hessed yeshiva, a breslev institution which seems highly geared towards BT. It is on the other side of town but I have come to realize that the right people and the right yeshiva are worth the time spent getting there.I like the breslev idea, and have even read one of his books. I like the mystic side of Judaism (and life in general),and I want to see for myself what a joyous Jew actually looks like...so I'll pay a visit soon.
Meanwhile, as I am writing this post, I get a call from The Chabadnik That Got Away!!
He said he was sure that I was supposed to call back. Really, who is he kidding? Like I said, I am, among other things, Yekke, and if you followed the link you already know this joke:

"What is the difference between a virgin and a yekke? an old joke asked. The answer was that a yekke remained a yekke."

Still, I am glad he called. I liked the guy, and I liked the atmosphere of the place and the extreme diversity of the people who came to pray there. It was very Israeli, and felt very good to me. So I'll be going back to there too.

I guess one way or the other things will work out.

Technorati Tags: Judaism, BT, Chabad, Machon Meir, Religious-Zionism,

One More Reason To Tune Out Israeli MSM

2007-01-07T17:44:00.000+02:00

Personally, I don't need another reason to tune out the Israeli Mainstream Media, which includes Yediot Ahronot,Maariv,and Haaretz , along with Channels one, two and ten. I am not against entertainment - not at all- and I realize that television can be an endless source of leisure. I just object to turning the news into another area of entertainment (although you might enjoy this hilarious, if somewhat macabre proposal in that direction), and I especially object to presenting the news as objective fact when, in reality, we are being presented with a completely skewed, politically edited version of reality.This happens many times and is well documented by Israel's Media Watch.

In this case, Arutz 7 in Hebrew had an interview a few days ago with Dr. Arieh Bachrach, member of Almagor, an organization of terror victims (with no website as far as I can tell). He says that Israeli MSM is conducting a campaign for the release of Palestinian prisoners in return for the kidnapped Gilad Shalit, knowing full well that such a move is a precursor to peace negotiations. Dr. Bachrach bases this statement on the fact that the MSM has been consistently ignoring any information coming from the people and organizations that object to the prisoner swap, in effect creating a false public opinion climate which seems to be overwhelmingly supportive of the prisoner swap.
He also gave a few examples:

1 -Both channel ten and channel two contacted us for for information " but when they heard what we think, and how forceful and sensible our argument is, they just disappeared"

2 -Channel two covered a protest about the prisoner swap near the prime ministers home - but showed only the protesters who were advocating the wholesale release of Palestinian prisoners, while not showing at all the adjacent protesters who were against the prisoner swap.

Bachrach concludes: " for years it has been impossible to protest against the way the media conducts itself, because they always find excuses why one side could not be represented, and anyway, if an editor wants to stress a certain angle, no kind of ethics will help."

If you do not believe how shamelessly biased the Israeli MSM is, you should listen to a few stories that former Gush Katif Spokesam ,Eran Sternberg has to tell.

Anyway, just though you would like to know which political party you are funding when you buy your paper, or watch the news on Israeli TV.

Technorati Tags: Israeli Media, media bias, gilad shalit

How the West Could Lose

2007-01-07T16:32:00.000+02:00

That is the title of an article available here written by the well-known Middle East expert Dr. Daniel Pipes for the New York Sun. I am not a regular reader of the newspaper, but I received the short essay as a subscriber to Pipes' mailing list. I signed up a year or two ago and have yet to find a better source of information on what is actually going on in the world concerning the war against radical Islam, or as former Israeli Chief of Staff Boogie Yaalon put it, World War Three.I like his fact-fulled, concise ,accurate and brief essays.
If you are interested you can visit his site and sign up there for his articles.

Anyway, I thought his most recent effort was worth bringing to your attention.Pipes argues that although the West is much stronger militarily, it has several "bugs" in it's software, namely:Pacificism,self-hatred, and complacency.
Pipes describes these bugs, together with the opposing Islamist's strengths and concludes that another victory for the West is not an historical necessity, and that the longer it will take for the West to wake up, especially it's elites, the more costly and uncertain victory will be.

Personally, I know quite well that some of these elites, at least in Israel, are so full of despair and self-hatred that they will not stop short of actually destroying the civilization (and country) that brought them up so badly.The question in my mind is: what part of the elite will step in to stop this suicidal elite? Or will a new elite rise?
Will Israeli's be able to voluntarily switch a century old allegiance, from the secular-left elite to a right-wing elite that will be, most likely, religious? Does such an alternative even exist?
As far as I can tell,the answer to both questions seems to be, as of now, no and no.

I'd be happy to hear that I am wrong though.

You can read the whole article here.

Second Time At The BT Yeshiva

2007-01-02T21:25:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I returned to the BT yeshiva where I received my Second Judaism Lesson in order to meet the Rabbi who runs the place, the same one that annoyed me so much when we spoke briefly last week.

In hindsight I found it difficult to understand why he bothered me so much. He actually turned out to be an attentive, accommodating old man (albeit with an office space from hell). He listened carefully, asked a few questions (everybody asks how my wife feels about this - what's up with that?), and declared that seeing as I want to learn the practice of Judaism and the yeshiva is so far away that it would not be practical for me to study there. He said that he would try to find a place closer to my home. After that he paired me up with one of the students there and I got my third Judaism lesson.

This guy insisted that we study Jewish philosophy and faith, even though I told him I am not interested. He said that these subjects are very important, and constitute the foundation of Judaism. But for me, after years of practicing Zen and with an adequate knowledge of psychology, any philosophical system just seems so superficial, no more than an elaborate system of rationalization.

I tried to change the subject a few more times and get back to a more practical theme but that proved to be impossible. I realized that this guy needed to preach to me about his faith and that's that - the best I could do, short of getting up, which would be extremely impolite - is to listen as best as I can and try to learn something from this experience.

So, what did I learn?

The first thing I learned was that washing the hands - Netilat Yadaim - can completely change your life.I mean, at least it changed the life of my teacher. Unfortunately he did not get around to explaining how exactly it changed his life - he just recited the story of his tshuva, or at least part of it. Like any story where the characters have no motivation, no emotional life, and no self-awareness or sense of humor, this one was pretty tedious, especially since the story line itself was not particularly coherent.One good thing did come out of it - when he finished and stopped to take a breath I asked him to show me how to do it.
"Now?" He asked, surprised.
"Yes" I said "Now!"
So for the first time in my life I did Netilat Yadaim, and as far as I was concerned that made the whole trip worth it. He did not agree, though, to explain when this should be done, saying again that it is not important for me to know this at the moment.(on a side note - the kitchenette was as messy as the Rabbi's office,and perhaps dirtier. My skin was crawling!)

We went back to our seats and there I learned that God loves me like a parent loves his son. If you have been reading this blog you know that perhaps, in my case a different argument should be preferred, and I told him so - after all there are parents that abuse their children - is he suggesting that God abuses us in the same way, I queried? No, of course not - he was just saying that this is true because that is what he himself has experienced, and if you guessed that I got to hear about his experiences, then you are beginning to understand the type of guy I had to endure.

Another subject that he raised was "Mesirut Nefesh" or devotion - to what extent am I devoted to learning Judaism, he asked, and added " because you will be tested like I was and everyone else who wants to make Tshuva."
I got to hear how he was tested (in case you are wondering - he passed the test), and also why he was tested: " because only things that you work hard for are appreciated by us, and that is why God makes it such a difficult journey. Only someone who has lifted himself from the gutter to serve God can really appreciate Him and His works" He said.
Now he was really stepping on a live nerve here, and I had to point out that as heroic as crawling out of such a hole may be, what is the point of God putting people in such a disadvantaged position in the first place? It seems so cruel and cold-hearted of Him, and anyway, I assured my teacher, I would have great appreciation of Him even if I did not have to pass through the seven chambers of Hell"
Of course there is no good answer to such a question, or at least if there is one in Jewish philosophy my teacher did not know it (although he would not admit it) and neither do I.
In this case Zen and psychology seem to me much better equipped than religious philosophy.

Anyway,this futile philosophical discussion went on and on. I got a taste of Mesilat Yesharim, the highlight of Jewish moral literature, and a few more subjects not worth mentioning, all of them peppered and accentuated by two means:
1- the phrase "it is written " (although when I asked where it is written, not once could he tell me, and we did not open one source the whole lesson), and

2 - abruptly slamming his hand down on the table every two sentences, just to show that he is not kidding around.I pitied both the flimsy table,and his well-worn hand.

On the bright side, I hardly noticed these violent attacks on our table occurring right beneath my nose, because I was already being overwhelmed by the chaotic racket that the many students in this small room were effortlessly raising . I had to strain constantly to hear my teacher, and when he uttered phrases in Aramaic he completely lost me. I asked if it doesn't bother him, and he said that it used to in the beginning, but that in time he learned how to eliminate all the noise and concentrate on whatever he needs to.I am sure that is possible but I really would prefer not to have to try.

Finally, his studying partner arrived and I was a free man again. I shook hands with him, went straight home, and re-united with my sick bed.

Moving On

Despite the friendly and somewhat anarchic atmosphere in this yeshiva, I have decided that it just doesn't fit - it's too far, too noisy, too messy, and too, well, secular, if that makes sense.

But I am very happy that I went today, despite being a little sick. I feel that every time I enter a yeshiva, or talk to a Rabbi, every time I sit in the company of so many unashamed Jews, or do something so overtly Jewish like putting on a kippah, I feel that I am gaining headway in my struggle to reclaim my Jewish identity.

I also know in my heart that I cannot stop now - I have wrestled this demon to the floor but he is far from dead yet. Only last night I heard him in the middle of the night, telling me that I am crazy, that all this Jewishness is not really me, it is not who I am or who I should be, that I should stop this nonsense. In my heart I know that I have a window of opportunity to finish him off, that this is the time and the place to do it and get it over with, and that everything else in my life will take care of itself while I finish this struggle.

I am determined to clean up this room in my soul called "Judaism" and make it habitable. Only when I see what's really there, and what was just a part of my fears will I be able to actually decide how I want to put this room to use.

So I am going to be relentless. I contacted both Maayanot Hayeshua, recommended by Mom in Israel and Machon Meir, recommended by WestBankMomma. The Rabbi from the yeshiva already said that he will look for some place near me - so at the moment I have three leads. I feel that I am doing as much as I can, and that for now I am allowed to let up and rest a little, before the next round begins.

All I can say now is this:
Here's to slaying dragons and conquering demons!

Technorati Tags: Judaism, BT, tshuva

My Second Judaism Lesson

2006-12-31T17:48:00.000+02:00

After losing my Chabadnik last week,who, by the way, still hasn't called, i did not know what to do. I asked you, my readers, for help, and waited to see what fate will bring.

As it happens, the next day i received a flier in the mail, advertising lectures on Judaism in a nearby synagogue. The topics were extremely philosophical and abstract and as such did not interest me at all, but I thought that if there is a group doing outreach to secular Jews in my neighborhood than maybe they can help me. I contacted them and they said they only give lectures but they did give me the phone of a Rabbi who is head of a BT Yeshiva here in Jerusalem. I called him and we made an appointment to meet on Thursday.I wrote down all the particulars and noted that the neighborhood and the street name were completely unfamiliar to me.I did not know how to get there by bus, so I took a cab which drove through an area of Jerusalem that I had never been in before in my life. I got out on the right street, and whipped out my note to see where exactly i should go - and then i saw that i forgot to write down the number of the house!

That really made me laugh. This obviously was another attempt by my unconscious to sabotage this endeavor. I did write down that it was on the ground floor and I had his name so I thought it would not be too much trouble to find his apartment.But it wasn't so easy - I went up and down the street without finding this Rabbi's name on any of the doors, and, probably because this was in the middle if the day, there were no passers-by to ask. Finally two guys came out of a building and fortunately they knew exactly what i was looking for, and they directed me to his Yeshiva,(which I had already passed twice without noticing it). Of course I was late for our meeting which,it turns out, was supposed to be at the Yeshiva and not his home, so the Rabbi called for someone to give me a start - and this was my second Judaism lesson.

The guy teaching me was a large bear of a man and seemed very nice. Recalling that last time I entered a synagogue without even noticing it, I first asked him if we were in one, and if
I should put a kippah on. He said that this a Beit-Midrash, and that it is customary to put on a kippah but that if I am in any way uncomfortable doing so, then i should not. That approach calmed me down and made me feel that here at last is someone who understands how difficult this is.He offered to make tea and that gave me a chance to sit down and look around.

The first thing I noticed was the enormous din rising from the students. There were about fifty people all talking at once and I marveled that anyone could hear something in such a racket, much less actually learn. I'm also wondering if this is the norm for yeshivot. If so, i guess you would really need enormous powers of concentration to study in such an environment, and if this has been the norm in the Jewish Cheder for generations than that may also explain why Jews have traditionally been so adept at learning.

My teacher came back with a delicious hot cup of tea. We sat opposite each other, and like everybody else we began studying in a Havruta.The first thing that I learned was that the word "Jew" comes from the hebrew root HDY, which means "to give thanks". He said that this is the essence of the Jew "He gives thanks all the time for what God has given him."

This is a beautiful concept and one which I can easily identify with - I believe in God and give thanks all the time for the many gifts that He gives. For instance, I can say " Thanks God for this beautiful snow that You have given us - I knew You could do it if You just put Your mind to it!"Of course, i also complain when I'm feeling neglected or mistreated by Him.
In any case, i give thanks sporadically, but Judaism has a very elaborate and complicated system of giving thanks for almost everything.The various blessing and rituals are written down in a thick book called "Shulchan Aruch".

We began to review the book from the beginning - blessings start from the moment you wake up, continue throughout the whole day until the very moment you go to sleep, and there is also much more than blessings and giving thanks - all the different aspects of life must be connected to God and are therefore ruled by Jewish law. At this point I must have given my teacher a pretty dirty look because he commented that it's not as bad as it looks, and then tried to get into all kinds of complicated explanations about why it is correct and necessary to do these things, including the story about how God himself gave the Jewish people these laws, together with the ten commandments at Mount Sinai. Personally, I do not believe this, but it doesn't matter at all - I told him that as far as I am concerned this is just the tradition that was handed down from my grandfather to my own father, and it just happened that my father decided not to pass it on. I just want to reforge that link - i do not care at the moment how exactly the chain itself was formed.

We studied for an hour and a half and I learned a lot of new and very interesting things, which are probably boring and commonplace for any orthodox person so I will not bother you with them. At the end I felt real dizzy, and I do not know if it was because of the situation, the constant din surrounding us, my excitement or a combination of these things.

I stayed on for the Mincha prayer and still could not make heads or tails of it - I do not understand when it starts and stops and what the pace is. There obviously is a well known code for this prayer because everyone else seems quite at ease, even to the point of doing a million other things while reciting the prayer, which brings me to one big problem that I'm guessing many Jews have: how to avoid turning this way of life into a boring,well-worn routine that is done out of habit, and not truly from the heart, with earnest faith and belief.

The idea itself, of thanking God for everything all of the time is, psychologically, not only correct but also necessary for our mental health - speaking of course from the Jungian standpoint. The problem is how to do so without becoming emotionally numbed by repetition? I wonder if Judaism has dealt with this problem, and if so how ?
As a Zen practitioner I know that answers to this problem exist, and it is "simply" a matter of being here and now, soul and body, in the same place at the same time. unfortunately, this "simple" matter takes an awfully long time to master.

During the Mincha prayer the rabbi came back and tugged me out, which seemed to me very impolite, but what do I know - perhaps this is accepted practice? He just wanted to get my details and make another appointment because he had to rush out again. We went into his office which was undoubtedly the worst mess of an office I have ever seen - and believe, after years in Academia I have seen my share if chaos - but this was really extraordinary. There was not one visible square inch of a desk or a chair in that room and part of the floor was littered with papers too. Everything was piled up in stacks leaning haphazardly against each other with no seeming rhyme or reason. I am a more or less orderly man myself so this bothered me a little.I also did not like giving away details like my address and telephone number, and also the guy himself bothered me no end - his manner and his looks and his touch, when he grabbed my hand and dragged me out of the prayer - it felt bad, and I came to dislike him intensely before I even got to know him.
Of course, by now I realize that this signifies absolutely nothing.It just seems like every time I am confronted with a male authority figure I freak out - I do not know whether to punch the guy out, or submit to this authority and maybe, finally, get taken care of properly.As I have already related, this is a problem ever since my father decided that, on second thought, he didn't really want to be a part of his own family.Tomorrow I am meeting again with this Rabbi, and I hope that I will be able to see him as a human being and finally get rid of these ghosts.

Summary

All in all I enjoyed myself very much.
The atmosphere in this Beit-Midrash was friendly, and it is clear to me from this experience that I need a place that knows how to deal with BT even if I myself do not intend to follow that path till it's conclusion.
Despite the incessant noise I actually did manage to understand nearly everything that my teacher said, and all the while I felt like a kid in a candy store - everything he said was new and interesting, and he answered all my numerous questions without hesitation, rising more than once in order to refer to several different works. It was an intense, mostly unstructured lesson which I hope to repeat many times.
One big problem is that the place is really far away from me, buried in the middle of a chain of orthodox neighborhoods.I don't want to waste so much time getting to and from this yeshiva, and I have to wonder how I will learn all the prayers, and especially the Sabbath rituals if I cannot be there when they happen?
I also do not know who will be teaching me - the Rabbi said that it depends on when I am able to come, and I still have to talk to this Rabbi although I do not know how important our relationship is, since he himself will, I think, not be teaching me at all.

Finally, this was a very intense experience for me.The next day I woke up with a sore throat, which turned into a fever by night. This is not an uncommon occurrence when attempting to heal wounds that have been buried for so long. In any case, today I am back on my feet, and tomorrow morning I am going back to this Yeshiva for another round of shadow boxing with the demons of my past.

A Word of Thanks

I want to thank my commenters for their support and help.I still have not decided if this is the place for me, and I will be following up on every suggestion that you gave me.

Thanks

Joe

Technorati Tags: Judaism, BT, Tshuva,

The Chabadnik That Got Away

2006-12-27T10:39:00.000+02:00

You may recall that just last week I happily announced my My First Official Judaism Lesson.After that first successful meeting, my Chabdnik mentor said that he is very busy on Channukah, but that he will call me after the holiday and then we will continue.
Well, it is already Wednesday and i still haven't heard anything from the guy.This also happened the first time we talked on the phone - he said that he cannot make a date at the moment and that he would call me back. Four days later I called him just to make sure that he hadn't lost my number and to see if he is still interested - turned out he was just busy.So this is already the second time that I am left hanging.
I do not like this at all.I am not comfortable chasing people under any circumstances (the introverts curse), and I am certain that I should not be doing so in this situation.The guy must be at least as interested as I am, or at the very least polite enough to say that he is too busy, or just not into it.

My wife says that, strictly speaking, "after channukah" can mean the whole week and that i should give up on the guy only after that , but I feel very impatient about recovering this part of myself, and very disappointed in this Chabadnik who knows how eager I am, and should know better than to behave this way - it's just a matter of derech eretz, isn't it? I mean, did he go on a Christmas vacation? Is that appropriate for a Chabadnik? (OK, I'm slightly bitter).
In short - this sucks, and I am now looking for an alternative. As I related before, there are not many options on the internet. I know for sure there are many yeshivot in Jerusalem but it seems they do not bother to put up websites, and since I am, obviously, not very well connected with orthodox society, i am at quite a loss at the moment.Should I just randomly wander into a random Yeshiva? Seems impolite to me, but perhaps forcing the issue is what is needed at the moment. I just don't know, so for now -
I am open to all and any suggestions.

Thank you
Joe

Technorati Tags: BT, Tshuva, Judaism, Chabad, habad