Hidden Treasure

I found this blog by acccident, digging for something totally unrelated.

Hide Me
by psychedelic pisces at Cerulean Ciphers

I'm like a tightly closed bud of a flower,
hidden layer by layer of wonderful surprises.

I'm beautiful, I'm brilliant, I'm funny and witty, I'm fragile and sweet, I'm vindictive and loyal, I'm sensitive, I'm a complete enigma. And I'm hidden. Hidden from you and everyone else.

Find me... like I found you - unpolished, rough diamond beneath a pile of fool's gold.

Discover me... like I discovered you - slowly and with great enjoyment
as i watched you shine.

Cherish the moment you uncover me like a child
who eagerly opens his present on christmas morning.

I am hidden so you can find me.
Find me soon for I am buried beneath all pretty baubles and trinkets.
Hopefully, you are not blinded by all the glitter and sparkle for
I am plain and dull.

When you find me at last, do not lose sight of me.
I am hard and edgy from the hiding. If you treasure me, polish me with care until at
last I shine like a tear from your eye.

And I will be yours forever.

A Taste of Tel Aviv

Israeli Indiana

This is the only photograph I've seen of myself lately that I like. It was taken recently by one of my 11th graders somewhere out there in the Negev. It's what I'd like to think I am; a kind of Israeli Indiana Jones.

Who am I fooling? Probably noone, save yours truly. I'm just a eccentric English teacher. Now, how interesting could that be? Not nearly as dramatic as an archeologist like the real Indiana.

אביתר בנאי | לילה כיום יאיר | שיר הנושא מתוך האלבום

Night Will Shine Like Day
Aviatar Banai

Foam

Take me to the seashore,
The waves caress the sand.
Walk me nowhere with you,
In foam where sea meets land.

Footprints melt and mingle,
Dissolve beneath the waves.
And all there is is now,
Sea, foam, me, you, your face.

If our path disappears,
And you sift through my hand,
Then foam lasts forever,
Like our walk on the sand.

Footprints have been covered
By snow and by the waves.
The years have washed away,
And so we keep the days.

I am from the ocean,
And you are from the land,
Meet me on the seashore,
In the foam, on the sand.

Education

Last fall I wrote Funny Words about how I had knocked myself out getting my degree in Jewish Studies. Actually, getting the degree was pretty easy; getting it with a few funny words added on was what almost killed me. I was writing to two people. To a former friend that had decided late in life to do what I had done, not to further her profession or for pleasure, but for "self validation" and "peer recognition". Poor reasons, I pointed out from experience. She cut me off crude and final – she knows it all and wants some paper to prove it, and if I can't cheer her on, I was dead weight she didn't need. True.

The other person I was writing to was myself. There were two things I could do to move forward with that degree of mine; go and get my MA - research. Or put it in practice. I wasn't about to imprison myself in musty libraries and submit to moldy minds, so that left practika. But this time, I swore to myself, no trying to excel or shine. Just do it and get it over with.

It wasn't an issue of being qualified; just this little matter of being certified. Half way through now, and there hasn't been much I haven't at least heard about. Jewish Studies is a wide field. But I did learn a few things since then.

For one, the one thing I'm certain of is that I don't want to be certified. Knowing it is one thing, trying to spin it is another. The logical thing to do would have been to quit, and to try and get my tuition money back. But then it occurred to me that I have an opportunity here to see for myself the entire country of Israel in the space of a little over a year. Virtually every little corner, from several different angles. Even in a small country, that's no small thing.

The classroom experience is also unique. That's because most of it isn't in a classroom. Days in the field start early in the morning and end late, and if I nod off here and there it's middle age, not sensory deprivation. Our teachers are almost to a man leaders in their fields. They speak in the first person. I found. I discovered. And if what they show us isn't from personal experience, they are on a first name basis with those who are. A generation from now, academia's best will be someone who read the books that our instructors wrote.

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Fringe benefits beyond the curricula share the bench with me. A know-it-all carrot farmer, a wealth of (often inaccurate) information. Two hot lesbians in heat have almost convinced me that what you need to really turn a woman on is to be a woman. The corrupt army retiree starting his second career – heaven help his future clients. A hippie in denial. A Torah observant moshavnik that thinks Jesus is fascinating. I could go on and on. I'm sitting on a gold mine of character types.

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But more than the subject matter or observing my peers, I've discovered a new side of myself. One that couldn't care less; one that makes its own rules and doesn't play ball with the establishment. I complete assignments, bring them to class and then let them stay in my bag when asked to turn them in.

The climax was midterms. I decided not to take them, but was told that I can't continue unless I take the exam.
"Okay, I have to take the test, but I don't have to pass, do I."
"True", I was told.

So halfway through the exam, suddenly I had enough.

I handed it in incomplete, and and spent the time remaining on a bench by the sea reflecting on my achievement. I don't know if I passed or failed. It may be the first time in my life that I flunked at anything, and boy, it feels good.

Be a flunky or flunk – those are my choices and I've made mine. Validation isn't earned in institutions, and I don't know if my peers recognize me, but more significant, I see them.

I've learned alot about myself this time around.

Now that's what I call an education.

Torn Between Two Women

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Most are at least familiar with the account of Mary queen of Scots' imprisonment and execution at the hands of her cousin Elizabeth I, but a less known tale is that of the relationship that developed between Mary and her host/jailer, George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, and his wife Bess of Hardwick. Philippa Gregory breathes life into this historical footnote in her novel, "The Other Queen".

A sincere man of honor, George accepts Elizabeth's charge to hold Mary as his unwilling guest, but in the style she is accustomed. His wife Bess is less than enthusiastic about the prospect of entertaining royalty.

Two women under one roof – big mistake.

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Bess is a "much married woman". She describes herself as "self-made" and has made a career of bettering herself through strategic marriages and then helping her spouses rob the Catholic Church which is being dismantled by the Protestants that have seized control of England. By marrying husbands above her station and then carefully husbanding the profits, she successively gains leverage to yet better matches in turn. George is her fourth, the crown of her achievements, joining his noble blood with her new money in a blend that mixes well with the cream of Elizabethan society.

Mary has been to the alter more than once herself, but that's where the resemblance to Bess ends. She is the product of careful breeding and carries in her person the keys to power, a "queen three times over" heiress to the thrones of Scotland, England, and France. Raised as a princess, she takes the trappings of royalty for granted and holds court even in captivity, at the expense of her hosts. Bad enough for ol' Bess that has slaved for every penny, but what gnaws deeper is having a woman said to be the most beautiful in Christendom and half her age to boot sharing her "husband the earl's" attentions.

Indeed, George the jailer is captured by his prisoner's charm and torn between Mary and his wife, the lady of the house out ranked by her guest. He's an honorable man, so there's no question of loyalty. On the contrary, he is played by both women. He tries to make Mary feel as welcome as possible under the circumstances, but she returns by exploiting his goodwill to hatch ever new plots to recruit spies and allies to overthrow her rival. And Bess for her part thinks nothing of spying on her husband and the "other queen" for Elizabeth's henchmen.

On the canvas of 16th century England's religious struggles, Gregory has painted a metaphor of those two bridesmaids of Christ; the Catholic Church and that peculiar invention, the Church of England. Catholic Mary has the pedigree and holds court in grandeur. She's beautiful and glamorous, but has the heart of a harlot and seduces men to rebellion and death. Bess is the Anglican. She serves a bastard queen, a self-made religion conceived in lust by Henry VIII and nursed with greed by Elizabeth I, robbing Catholic sacraments and Protestant reformation to cloth herself in legitimacy. She thinks she's fooled everyone, but even her own husband sees a common thief underneath the trappings of nobility.

And George is the Bridegroom. Grieved and deceived by Mary's scheming and Bess' grubbing, he turns his back in sorrow on both. As if to say, in the words of the poet in Elizabeth's court, "A plague on both your houses."
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More Than The Matrix

(With school, tax time and summer, I haven't been able to free my mind and my schedule to blog anything new. Shavuot (Pentecost) is here, and More than the Matrix seems to be in the spirit of the holiday.)


Netanel and I are into The Matrix trilogy. For those who haven't seen or at least heard of it, it's about Neo who is a cyber messiah, mankind's last hope in the face of a race of robots that sustains itself by turning human beings into living batteries. It's a kind of alternate energy nightmare.


Neo has the perfect life. His day job is hacking into the robots' network ("the Matrix") and playing the ultimate computer game on line, beating up bad guys that look like grown ups in business suits. After a hard day of kicking the crap out of adults on line, Neo retires to human kind's secret underground base ("Zion") with his hot babe and they go to this great trance party.

"Mr. Smith", a personified antivirus program inventing by the robots to protect the Matrix from hackers like Neo that has shorted out and is running amuck. Out of control and driven by hatred for humans and robots alike, Smith becomes a menace to one and all.

Morpheus, the prophet that discovered Neo, is convinced that he will save mankind. In the end, Neo martyrs himself for the sake of humankind (and robotkind) in a classic 'good triumphing over evil' battle, and defeats Smith.

Humans and robots, now friends, are all grateful and The Matrix ends with the promise of a brighter tomorrow for everyone.

But what then? Do they have a party? And what about the computer games?

Did the Israelites think their deliverance from Egypt was a cosmic version of The Matrix? There was this big bad villain and God saved them with lots of special effects and pyrotechnics. Did they figure that they were free to pursue their own devices? Because that's what they did.

Just as soon as that old fuddy-duddy Moses had his back turned and was busy hammering the Ten Commandments out of stone on the mountain, they rigged up a golden calf and had a trance party.

They didn't get it. God didn't free them from the flesh pots of Egypt to set up new ones of their own. Salvation is an opportunity to start a life that means something. God expected more of them. And He expects more of us.

Passover is not only about freedom from slavery, but also about liberating ourselves from the Egypt within. About finding more in life than pleasure and self gratification.

I don't think that Neo gave his life in order that those he left behind could carry on hacking into 'The Matrix' and partying like there's no tomorrow. He died to give them a chance to build a new world; one with meaning. Not a virtual simulation on a computer program, but a real life with substance.


Neo wanted humans to live like he lived, to love like he loved.

Neo expected more of men than The Matrix.

Time Stopped

(I posted 'Time Stopped', Karnit Goldwasser's eulogy to her husband Ehud last summer.
In honor of Ehud and all of our fallen we remember today.)

"July twelfth, two thousand and six, nine and three minutes. Time stopped."

"On the morning of July 12, 2006 at marker 105 on the northern border a journey began for the two of us. You and me. Us, the family and you. All of us, the nation and you. My love, they say that time does what it will, Heals and closes wounds, but does it?"

"For two years I have spoken in the name of two, Eldar and Udi. Regev and Goldwasser. The struggle to bring you home to us was a joint effort from day one. But today, for the first time, I allow myself to speak to you alone. Today I can't conceal, that my mouth and my heart are one. And the heart …. the heart, my love, weeps and pains."

"Forgive me, dearest, if I don't name here all of your wonderful qualities, your character, your inner beauty so rare; that were a light unto my feet and were at my side every step of the way in the struggle to bring you back to us. Please, my love, let this painful and intimate farewell, let me do in my own way, as you would if you could if only you could make yourself heard."

"During your long absence, as time passed on, your face belonged to one and all. Udi, the private person, my Udi, was suddenly our Udi. All of ours."

"July twelfth, two thousand and six, nine and three minutes, and time stopped for you. The morning of July 12, 2006 at marker 105 on the northern border, our journey began. For the two of us, you and me. For us, the family and you. For the nation and you."

"Today our journey is done and come to its end. We, just you and I, are now setting out on the next journey, the journey of my life. You will be part of it, silent but active, hidden but inspiring, concealed from all but before my eyes always. You will always be my second inner voice, forever young, that will be with me for as long as I live."

"July seventh, two thousand and eight, noon; and time has started anew."


(From Karnit Goldwasser's farewell to her husband Ehud, who was returned from Lebanon and buried yesterday.)

Nimrod's Children

"Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth." (Genesis 11:9)

Mexican film director Alejandro González Iñarritu is the movie industry's version of Pablo Picasso, chopping up stories and rearranging them without regard to time or space in a collage as cryptic as one of the Spanish artist's creations. While the method is engaging, unless one is blessed with an unusual memory, you need to see Iñarritu's films twice to really understand what you've seen.

Babel is four stories filmed on three continents in four languages which seem to have little or nothing in common at first - Moroccan goatherds in the Atlas mountains, an American couple on vacation, a Hispanic woman and her young charges at a wedding in Tijuana and a rebellious teenaged deaf/mute in Tokyo. What's the connection? Chance; seemingly insignificant details are the butterfly wings that blow a tempest once their consequences are felt on the other side of the globe.

Images of children in the book of Genesis are interwoven into the plot. The rivalry between Cain and Able, Ishmael abandoned to die in the desert, Lot's seductive daughters; the common denominator being the tragedy of characters driven by emotion and their flawed nature to unpredictable, if rational, consequences.

Babel isn't a film friendly to subtitle illiterate Americans, but one I recommend. Not because of the story(ies), rather so that you see for yourself that such a movie can exist. Save for the few human beings on this planet that are fluent in all four languages - English, Spanish, Japanese and Arabic – Babel would have been incredible and unintelligible only a generation or so ago.

Man has broken down the barriers of distance and language that have separated the human race with the power of the mind. Technology. After four or five millennia, Nimrod's children have once again built a city, a global village, and a tower. Iñarritu's Babel is a sample of the mortar between the bricks.

"And they said, Come, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." (Genesis 11:4)

Abraham's Children

Warning: I wrote a lot of stuff in this post about religious doctrine that’s real cynical, and it's more than likely to piss you off, so you're better off just reading one of my blogs about flowers and poetry.

The Apostle Paul once made an offhand comment in one of his epistles that since Abraham (the world's first convert to Judaism.) became a Jew by faith, so it figures that Christians are also Jews because they're believers. Paul didn't know it, but his friends let people read his mail and he probably never dreamed the fuss he would stir up when his remarks about who's a Jew (and who ain't) got canonized and became Church doctrine. The doctrine depends on which church you go to.

Catholic Church Doctrine:

The Jews aren't the Jews, the Christians are the Jews, but the Jews don't know that they aren't the Jews.

Protestant Church Doctrine:

The Jews are the Jews, the Christians are the Jews, but the Jews don't know that the Christians are Jews.

There is also 'Replacement Theory' Protestants that have this doctrine:

The Christians are the Jews, the Jews aren't the Jews but the Catholics aren't Jews either.

Naturally the Jews have a religion and they have a doctrine too;

Jewish Doctrine

The Jews are the Jews, the Christians are the Gentiles, but the Gentiles can think what they like.

I'm not sure why everybody wants to be a Jew, but it must be because they all reckon that since Abraham lived a long time ago, sooner or later his heirs (the Jews) will be coming into a lot of money. (That's what I thought when I converted to Judaism, but sadly I was mistaken.)

It's nice that everybody wants to be part of Abraham's family, but you can tell who is family and who's not when the going gets rough, and I don't recall very many Catholics and Protestants lining up with the Jews when they were being carted off to concentration camps by the Nazis. (The Nazis' doctrine was that the Jews are the Jews, the Germans are the Aryans and Aryans think they can get away with murder.) You can't blame Christians for not wanting to join Abraham's children when they're getting slaughtered, but on the other hand it seems to me that you can't turn around and claim to be a part of the family only when its fun and you can get an inheritance.

I've been told I'm a cynic and I'm probably a bit cynical when it comes to religion because religions tend to be pretentious and claim to be things they're not. But unless someone is a religious butthead, I try not to be cynical about people because there is nothing more hurtful than telling someone he's not what he says he is, what he believes he is.

Once someone remarked about me (being a convert and all):
"You're not a Jew. What's so Jewish about you?"
The question was cynical and not inquisitive, and didn't even deserve to be honored with an answer. And such is the nature of religions, especially when they question others.

A few years ago we stayed with my sister-in-law for one of the holidays, and my niece (Or I should say, my wife's niece since I'm only an in-law and only think I'm part of the family.) brought Tuviel and Talia, a brother and sister, with her. Seeing that they are black, at first I assumed they were Ethiopian, and then hearing their American accent, that they were African Americans and therefore not Jewish. It turns out that I thought wrong.

Of course I realized that certainly there are blacks that converted to Judaism; after all I did. But I had never heard of 'Black Jews'. Tuviel and Talia explained that centuries ago Jews had migrated to Africa or had been taken there in captivity by the Romans after they destroyed the Second Temple. Their ancestors had lived there for centuries until at some point they had been stolen into slavery in the United States. They even knew what tribe of Israel they belong to – Levi.

In spite of being white and only a convert to Judaism, I felt an immediate connection with Tuviel and Talia. Within minutes, in spite of not knowing their father, I knew the man that had raised them. Their dignity and bearing reflected values and knowledge as plainly as their faces, and while obviously there could be no blood relation, I felt a kinship I don't get from other Jews, not even from the family I'm married into.

And I think its because we have the same father. The Father. We inherited similar traits of faith and the desire to find and serve Him. I sensed that we share the same spiritual DNA.

Tuviel has since moved back to the US and over the Pesach holiday Talia visited us. She told me that sometimes Israeli Jews question her Jewishness. Not out of curiosity, but cynically, hypocritically. Their questions aren't questions, but a thin mask for bigotry, the intention being to derogate and the way asked insulting her intelligence.

Talia describes it as an inheritance dispute. That European Jews in particular don't want to share Abraham's birthright with Black Jews, who are all the more incensed because they suspect that many of their detractors in fact have non-Jewish pedigrees (Their reasoning behind this accusation is yet another doctrine.).

I'm only a guest, an in-law, at Abraham's table, so I probably should just be quiet and just listen to family discussions. But I don't like to hear Abraham's children fighting and bickering over his inheritance. I would like to sit with a family that wonders who inherited Abraham's big heart. Who has his eyes that saw strangers from afar and who got his legs that jumped up to fix them something to eat? Who has Abraham's hands that dropped everything when he heard Lot was in trouble and helped him out? Who inherited a mind that judges a man not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character? Who has Abraham's faith? Who received his courage to stand up alone against the idol worshipers of his day?

I guess that sounds naïve. Maybe I'm not so cynical.

I think Paul's remarks about Abraham's children were metaphorical, not doctrine. That Abraham's children are faithful and righteous, that the spiteful and narrow-minded aren't really his children and they only think they are.

But then, what do I know. As someone once told me, I'm not really a Jew.

Wild Flowers

Palestinian kids 'boarding' down the slopes of the Kidron valley between the Mount of Olives and the old city walls.

Paula

My Israel

Israel at 61.

I thought I would let her speak for herself.