ShtetlKettle

My Name is Asher Lev

… every great artist is a man who has freed himself from his family, his nation, his race.  Every man who has shown the world the way to beauty to true culture, has been a rebel, a “universal” without patriotism, without home, who has found his people everywhere.

This is a tradition; it is a religion, Asher Lev.  You are entering a religion called painting.  It has its fanatics and its rebels.  And I will force you to master it.  Do you hear me?  No one will listen to what you have to say unless they are convinced you have mastered it.  Only one who has mastered a tradition has a right to attempt to add to it or to rebel against it.

Certain things are given, and it is for man to use them to bring goodness into the world.  The Master of the Universe gives us glimpses, only glimpses.  It is for us to open our eyes wide.

Had something inarticulate been handed down from generation to generation that came to life in each individual at the time most appropriate to him?

Shabbos Kavannah

“Someone once asked how it is possible to establish a connection between man and the Master of the Universe.  The answer was that man must take the first step.  In order for there to be a connection between man and the Master of the Universe, there must first be an opening, a passageway, even a passageway as small as the eye of a needle.  But man must make the opening by himself; man must take the beginning step…”

הײַנט בײַ נאכט

hint by nacht = today by night = tonight

נעכטן בײַ נאצכט = nechten by nacht = last night

I’m sitting on my computer, paralyzed for something to say about all the thoughts swirling in my head at the moment.

A few things I know:

1) singing “solidarity forever” with the 40 people gathered for last night’s liberation seder was the high point of my pesach to date.

2) I’m going to begin drafting a “detroit dayenu” while I’m in the woods this spring.

3) I can see so much energy in the universe right now.

A few things I’m still trying to figure out:

1) do we need multiple narratives to emphasize the reality that there is no one truth? or is there some way we can agree on a narrative and express it in such a way that it does not impose itself as the truth

2) how is it that Chaim Potok novels seem to provide for so many of my questions? and why has it taken me this long to discover them?

3) when/if I ever feel home, can home last?

The Lemon Tree Book Club

I met with The Lemon Tree book club this sunday. It set the tone for an incredible day— maybe even week and month.

I want to frame this with an article I read that beautifully articulated this:

“We are being asked to perpetuate a narrative of victimhood that evades the central Jewish question of our age: the question of how to ethically wield Jewish power,” he writes. That power, for 45 years now, has been exercised over millions of Palestinians who enjoy none of the rights of citizenship and all the humiliations of an occupied people.” 

In delving in to conversations about zionism and Jewish identity, my peers and I found ourselves discussing nationalism more broadly. We also spoke of zionism (amongst american Jews) as a substitute for thriving Jewish culture/community. “My Judaism feels most alive in Israel,” is a sentiment I’d consider to be quite status quo. Not to say that all American Jews/American zionists don’t have their own sense of Jewish culture and identity apart from Israel, but that the mainstream discourse is one that chooses to locate Jewish identity in Israel.

We talked about how American Jewry is participating in an act of willful ignorance when it comes to knowledge about Israel and Palestine. This seemed an important point because it allowed us to both understand and feel sympathy for the circumstances that culminated in the establishment of the state of Israel, namely desperation and a lack of information, while also holding our contemporaries more accountable for “not knowing.”

Which then raised another interesting point— what is our role as Jews who have information to bring our contemporaries up to speed? We identified two important areas of Jewish work: 1) the political realm, in which Jews raise their voices against injustices perpetrated in the name of protection/preserving our people. 2) the development of vibrant Jewish identities/communities beyond Israel. The trauma of the holocaust is not easily assuaged, and Israel has been the only answer for too long. It’s time for real, radical healing— which must mean rebuilding a sense of American Jewishness that is rich, deep, and place based, and rebuilding a sense of trust in non-Jews.

In the evening, after my book club, I was talking about identity with a Black friend. We were musing on the parallel histories of American Blacks and European Jews. We twisted and turned through the complexities of identity—both in terms of the internal and the external self. Jews experienced a profound othering for centuries because of something others defined for them. Blacks experience a profound othering in America similarly because of something others see, not something necessarily internal. But, we marveled, Jews have so entirely preserved a fierce sense of community, while Blacks have been pitted against one another and internalized a sense of racial and class hierarchy.  Both communities, we decided continue to operate from a place of mistrust towards others.  A mistrust that they’ll be defended and supported by anyone but themselves (and, in the case of Blacks, sometimes even by themselves)

Jewish communal values might be to thank for such universalist threads in Jewish thought as “love thy neighbor as thyself” and “treat strangers with kindness as you were once strangers in the land of egypt.” Yet, nationalism has produced zionism, and a zionism that tolerates difference and honors these Jewish values is the minority opinion (assuming it exists at all).  

I don’t know what these things mean, but I do know that I’ve found myself in the same intellectual realm as my college years, only, now I have language for it: nationalism. I want to critique nationalism— and, I think, compare it to community. Are these two structures inherently different? What defines them? Where are their borders/boundaries? Do they make room for difference within or force it to reside externally, always? These questions are delicious.

feminism

It’s been too long since I used the F word.  I almost forgot about it.  oh me oh my.

and on a completely other note:

I’m learning yiddish.  I know how to type some things now.

 מייזל: Mayzl, little mouse, my cat’s name

 איך הייס נארא איך וווין אין דעטרויט: Ich hays bara ich voyn in detroit, I am called Bara, I live in Detroit

איך קומ פון דעטרויט: Ich kumin foon Detroit, I come from Detroit

My Authentic Jewish Self

I have long passed silent, playful, judgement on the people I come across who change their names to be more culturally or spiritually relevant.  In the Jewish community where I learned to farm, this practice was somewhat commonplace- as so many were deeply influenced by their experiences, and emerged hoping to repair the break between their upbringing (or, rather, their parent’s Jewishness) and their own “authentic” Jewish selves. 

I have long remained on the boundaries of these two states of being— I have absolutely chosen to break from much of the Jewish culture in which I was raised, but I have yet to figure out how to fully embrace another Jewishness.  This is in part because I feel I owe it to myself and my history to find a balance between these two realms; as knowing where I come from (my upbringing) is a part of knowing myself that cannot be discarded.  And yet the Jewish self I’m seeking to understand seems often to reside more in a communal narrative I was raised without, and thus, have set about reconstructing for myself.

The tricky business of name-changing, and of rediscovering where we “come from,” thus, is that in retrospect, we are able to pick and choose.  I can assume my hebrew name, Bara (which, strangely enough, means “to choose”), or I can look up Hebrew names on the internet and choose the one that seems to most fit my sense of myself.  I could, but is there any guarantee that I could better capture myself in another name?  And what would I lose if I became Bara?

I think I would loose the opportunity to always be in a state of striving towards wholeness.  

And I would also be creating another break in my lineage.  Though my non-Jewish name creates a schism between myself and my community, changing my name would create a break between my family and myself, my past and my future.  

Ok, ok, enough of this name babble— let me look at this from another angle; that of Jewish Knowledge.

I was raised with relatively little.  I’ve been slowly absorbing Jewish prayers and the hebrew alphabet over the last few years, but I haven’t taken a very proactive role in learning.  Meanwhile, I am startlingly aware of just how much I don’t know. 

I recently finished Chaim Potak’s The Chosen, and was amazed by the role of Talmud in this story.  Oh my god.  The centrality of these characters’ ability to engage critically with these ancient texts is something I actually envy.  Not because I want my life to be more rigid religiously, but because I want to be able to have true access to one of the scripts that has long informed Judaism.  Think of it as a primary source.

I was captivated, recently, by a discussion I attended about Jewish spirituality.  The rabbi teaching was discussing the move in Judaism from Priestly to Rabbinic leadership, and I was astonished to realize that I had never before understood what Rabbinic Judaism was at its inception.  As far as I can understand it, it was an early experiment in public education (of, by, and for Jews). Rabbi’s becoming the educators in an attempt to wrestle Jewish knowledge from the priesthood and place it in the hands of the people.  Sadly (?) much of the mainstream Jewish world is defined by rabbis who play more of a priestly role (the keepers of Jewish knowledge for a less Jewishly literate congregation).  

In The Chosen there is a tension between Jewish knowledge and western knowledge.  In school, it is reconciled through the pursuit of both— one alongside the other.  In the two central individuals, splitting equally between both isn’t so simple.  There is a desire to be full, not to split the day between two selves, two cultures, but to somehow merge the two.  

I don’t think there are answers for how to do this. But I do think the quest for wholeness is a worthy one— a necessary one.  

Leadership

Everyone is (or should be?) talking about leadership.  I had the pleasure of attending two recent conversations about leadership. One was a workshop put on by the Riverfront East Congregational Initiative (RECI), the other, a conversation at The Boggs Center . 

By leadership— don’t be mistaken and assume that means we were talking about charismatic individuals.  No.. this is about leadership, the quality.  Leadership is less about charisma and control, and more about the question “how do we encourage/affirm leadership qualities emerging in ourselves and others”

As always, this kind of thinking requires some internal changes of each of us.  It requires both that we learn to value ourselves enough to courageously offer our leadership qualities to others, and that we are each humble enough to recognize them in others.  It also requires that we let go of our desire to either control/be controlled, and instead learn to operate in the more ambiguous-yet-more-generative realm of diffused leadership.

Leadership has everything to do with empowerment and creativity.  Which is precisely what makes it exciting, and oh so relevant.  Below, I’m sharing the notes I took at our RECI conversation about leadership.  I found this talk to be very helpful.

Helpful to keep in mind, however, are the central tensions in any group’s movement:

1. Purpose/Goals/Tasks
2. Social/Emotional needs

These tensions can sometimes be complimentary, and sometimes be pulling apart. 

Then there are leadership qualities:

1. initiative
2. support for tasks
3. clarifying
4. recognizing and nurturing capacity of others 
5. passion
6. challenging
7. peace-making
8. and the array of other emergent, constructive, qualities in any group

leadership structure

Hierarchies— are what we’re most familiar with.  Most of our groups are organized as hierarchies: Family, Military, Sports, Corporations, Religious Congregations.  The only familiar non-hierarchy in most of our lives tends to be our friend/peer groups.

Equal/Shared/Leadership— we’re far less familiar with.  it thus requires intentional shaping.  The following areas are essential in creating Leader-full organizations

1. CLARITY OF PURPOSE
2. CAPACITY FOR COLLECTIVE REFLECTION ON PURPOSE
3. FLEXIBILITY (structures as key to purpose, not personality)
4. INTENTIONAL

Hierarchies are most effective in allowing for control.

Shared Leadership is most effective in allowing for creativity.  

Voluntourism

This CBC radio interview was recently shared with me.

http://www.cbc.ca/video/news/audioplayer.html?clipid=2111363843

these were some highlights:

FolkShule

Follow these links:

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/gevalt-u-s-college-students-lead-surprise-yiddish-revival-1.402786

And a response to that: http://rokhl.blogspot.com/2011/12/oy-gevalt-yiddish-is-definitely-alive.html

And then ruminate on this (pulled from the second article)

“There is no resurgence, no revival, no renaissance, no renewal, no retrenchment, no bringing back from the dead, no zombie Sholem Aleykhem. Genug. Shoyn. I’ve said it before, more eloquently, in an op-ed I wrote for the Forward last year, The Revival is Over, Let’s Talk Continuity.”

And this:

Yiddish deserves substantial financial support from the Jewish community. 

Jewish language literacy is a life or death matter for the Jewish community and as such both Yiddish and Hebrew should be taught, with the same seriousness and respect, in Jewish day schools.

A Diaspora-based Jewish identity is just as legitimate as a Jewish identity rooted in Zionism or anti-Zionism. 

Yiddish is essential to the lives and educations of millions of Jews around the world because it is their yerushe (inheritance). Without access to Yiddish, Jews of Ashkenazi descent are missing something absolutely vital to their identity as Jews and as global citizens. Ashkenaz, not Israel, holds the coordinates for the recent history of millions of American Jews. To denigrate that history, to reduce it to a fuzzy, abashed footnote, is to diminish our families, our histories and ourselves.

The anti-Yiddish cultural narrative is wide and deep. You can see it at work even in stories (like these latest ones) which purport to celebrate the tenacity of the Yiddish language. Despite the good will no doubt behind them, the cliches they recycle are toxic. The finished product, posted and reposted endlessly, is another drop in the poisonous cultural conversation around Yiddish. 

American Jews (and Ashkenazi Jews around the world) need Yiddish. They need to know who they are and where they came from and they need to learn it at home, not on the street, where the kids are all high on shelilat ha-golah (negation of the diaspora.)