Why, yes, EK. As a matter of fact, I do have thoughts. Actually, I made an earlier attempt at blogging a few days ago which was thwarted by small gnomes who cut the internet connection in a failed attempt at world domination. So I lost all my well-crafted thoughts, and you shall have to deal with half-baked ones instead.
First, a brief aside: I was raised Jewish. But much like my fellow cultural Jews, I hold it at arms length. I claim to know almost nothing about the religion and sometimes refer to Jews as though I am not one, thereby pushing it away. Other times I cling onto it in a desperate attempt to "other" myself, letting other people know that I'm not like "them." I'm unique, I'm not mainstream American because I'm not a Protestant (phew). And I don't make carrot-raisin salad for a side dish. I never enslaved your people because I was busy over there counting my money and practicing my blackface. And frequently, I am the self-effacing Jew. (For a better description, watch any movie made by Woody Allen.) Summary: my opinion does not reflect that of many Jews.
So, while I am certainly not a pro-zionist, I would also not call myself an anti-zionist either. I hesitate to say that the idea of a Jewish state is bad... assuming that a Jewish state refers to our emphasis on social equality and justice, intellectualism, and damn good food. However, poor execution, Israel. Jews have always been marginalized, whether we do it to ourselves or we become society's scapegoat. Historically, we have suffered many systematic oppressions and yet we persevere as a (culturally shifting) group. It is our memory, the Jewish collective consciousness, that holds us together as a people. (Read Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer or see the movie with Elijah Wood.) While some people perceive "Jewish" as an ethnicity, it is only a culture that can pass along memory. To me, the consideration that our diasporic culture could need to reclaim a physical space is incomprehensible. Let the Wailing Wall be a place of pilgrimage, but let it be so for everyone.
However, it would be wrong to deny that, as an historically oppressed peoples, we do not need a safe space. (We should probably question why "space" is inherently unsafe.) To call it a "return/reclaiming of the holy land"? Why even bother. Liberal Jews (probably excluding Israelis) acknowledge that the conquest of Israel/Palestine is an expression of symbolic capital: Jews are expressing their strength, mainly in military and wealth. If Jews are so socially-oriented, how can we let this happen?
Summary: Not pro-zion, but not anti-zion, per se. California is, after all, a state of mind, right?
In other news, I've been stuck in heavy snowfall for the past 4 days. After extensive travels to places far warmer than the Northeast, I vowed that I would never use a snowshovel again. Well, I failed. But the repetetive motion got me thinking about seasons, changing of seasons, and how we connect with the world according to how we experience changing seasons. Animistic religions saw something greater in the prescence or absence of the sun or rain. They connected with it, prayed for it, loved it, feared it...Which led to thoughts on spirituality. Which I dig. Even though I am pretty sure I have yet to find a religion that suits me, I have a connection with something greater (I think). Being outside, being in a place where I can re-connect with the earth, with natural processes, helps me reconnect with myself. Nature is my favorite temple. It's scary and illusive. It's wonderous and massive. It's endless (despite our constant attempts at splitting it up, breaking it down). It's predictable and totally not. It is amazing and awesome. It's what I need, more than any visit to church. And since I'm stranded this week, no church. Just outside time.
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Nature is my favorite temple.
And a fine temple it is!
If I may…"Say: Nature in its essence is the embodiment of My Name, the Maker, the Creator. Its manifestations are diversified by varying causes, and in this diversity there are signs for men of discernment. Nature is God’s Will and is its expression in and through the contingent world. It is a dispensation of Providence ordained by the Ordainer, the All-Wise. Were anyone to affirm that it is the Will of God as manifested in the world of being, no one should question this assertion. It is endowed with a power whose reality men of learning fail to grasp. Indeed a man of insight can perceive naught therein save the effulgent splendour of Our Name, the Creator. Say: This is an existence which knoweth no decay, and Nature itself is lost in bewilderment before its revelations, its compelling evidences and its effulgent glory which have encompassed the universe."
And further, the founder of the Baha'i Faith asked the rulers of countries (recall the politics of the 1800's which lead inexorably to the World Wars of which the centenaries we are coming up on in a few years) to consider their station and the cause of it. He says "Examine Our Cause, inquire into the things that have befallen Us, and decide justly between Us and Our enemies, and be ye of them that act equitably towards their neighbour. If ye stay not the hand of the oppressor, if ye fail to safeguard the rights of the downtrodden, what right have ye then to vaunt yourselves among men? What is it of which ye can rightly boast? Is it on your food and your drink that ye pride yourselves, on the riches ye lay up in your treasuries, on the diversity and the cost of the ornaments with which ye deck yourselves? If true glory were to consist in the possession of such perishable things, then the earth on which ye walk must needs vaunt itself over you, because it supplieth you, and bestoweth upon you, these very things, by the decree of the Almighty. In its bowels are contained, according to what God hath ordained, all that ye possess. From it, as a sign of His mercy, ye derive your riches. Behold then your state, the thing in which ye glory! Would that ye could perceive it!"
Addressing his family he in turn says "A mighty force, a consummate power lieth concealed in the world of being. Fix your gaze upon it and upon its unifying influence, and not upon the differences which appear from it."
The world is indeed a place to dwell upon God; present at the touch, closer then your life's vein, the most manifest of the manifest, and the most hidden of the hidden. Note how things reveal themselves. We see, in a sense of physics, the light that is not absorbed. Things absorb what they are like and reflect what they are least like (the acceptance and rejection of wavelengths of light in tune with the conditions of resonance with the electrons of the substances. It isn't even a question as often supposed in quantum mechanics of witnessing reality objectively since objectivity is impossible - we are part of what is seen. It is a matter that what we witness is not what it is. I have also used the diverse material phenomena as a clue to the difference of dimensions. We like to speak of higher dimension and spirituality but it's very abstract. Natural examples, as metaphors, do much better to bring the matter viscerally. Imagine a dolphin's or bat's sonar. It permeates through some barriers - skin is a film through which they can "see". We are not black or white - but we *are* with various nodules and pulsing organs - or with child, or cancer. They see it. But they don't see stars. Then there are neutrinos - nature's most ghostly particles. They can penetrate a whole light year length of iron before the chance of absorption reaches near certainty (if I recall my MS physics class calculations right.) Passing through the earth is as slight whisper. But neutrinos can be caught enough to observe phenomena because there are so incredibly many of them. Supernovae are 1/1000th visible light and are the brightest lights in the universe. The other 999 parts are neutrinos. So if we could see through neutrinos what would we see? No horizon - no earth below our feet to speak of. And the sky would be speckled with flashes (the supernovae of the universe) and smear of dim lights (the cores of the stars, comparatively slowly releasing neutrinos.) But these ways of seeing are all of the same universe though it seems to take mighty math to reconcile them - mighty math, or human imagination. What are we then?
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