Travel Log #18

September 28, 2009

I have been given a Yom Kippur in Jerusalem. I suppose this can be compared to the Vatican on Easter or Christmas. All roads lead to Jerusalem in the Jewish world, whether we are religious, secular, observant, Zionist, or not. The parallel, of course, is that all roads lead to Rome, so things haven't changed much in quite a few millennia.

Now, I suppose you could say that I am experiencing a dilemma of observance. My religiosity has remained strong, but my observance of tradition has diminished. Traditions have been tainted by humans playing God, or presupposing that they know what God wants (or wanted) and how God wants (or wanted), and I have had enough of that. Each time I find myself attempting to gravitate towards observance again, I am put off. This time, perhaps, more than others.

Over the weekend, I took up an invitation to spend Shabbat with a family in Ashkelon. They are an amazing family, and if the Religious Authority were more along the lines of their philosophy and practice, I would go back to them. This family considers itself religious. For descriptions sake, I would say somewhere between Orthodox and Modern Orthodox. The important thing is that they are liberally minded, fair, and observant, all the same.

After Shabbat, the mother of the family (I will call her B here) took me to the Mikveh. "It is good to go just before Yom Kippur," she told me. "And it will be a wonderful experience for you." I assented. But the world of men lords over the world of women. It keeps us cloistered and blind behind a mechitza and it does not consider us fully fledged human beings. When we got htere, we were told that I could not partake in this experience because "the council of rabbis (across all the ethnic sects) had gotten together," and I quote directly here, "and decided to take away the rights of unmarried women to use the mikveh under any circumstance" for fear that they were only using the mikveh so that they could have "purified" pre-marital sex.

Personally, I have never heard anything so incredibly stupid in my life. Particularly because I'm going to guarantee that those "unmarried women having premarital sex" are not going to give a rat's ass about the mikveh or about being "spiritually pure" while enjoying their "unlawful carnal relations". Not to mention that the men have assumed complete control over the actions of women (unless those women would like to be disowned), have absolved themselves of any guilt in the matter, and whole-heartedly admit that they have gladly and willingly taken away our rights. This also lends to the fact that these people have no inkling of a clue about the world beyond their tiny, self-constructed "religious" ghetto where God becomes the excuse for a body of men to play the oppressive deity.

If you know me, you know I don't consider myself a feminist, but more of a person for equal rights on all plains--as proved on an individual basis. "I love this country," B. says. "Except for the fact that it is completely and utterly ruled by men. And there's nothing anybody can do about it." B. told me that she was so upset about it that when she went to dunk, she realized she had forgotten to say the blessing. I told her it was fine, typical. And then I shut a steel door in myself and closed it to the orthodoxy that has nothing to do with God but with the hypocrisy of humankind.

I spent six hours in a service today, with a sermon about "loving your neighbor as yourself". The rabbi made it explicitly clear that is was my Jewish neighbor and my Jewish neighbor only of which he was speaking. This more than irked me. The entire root of conflict lies in the separation of one group from another and of fabricated assumptions of the Other. Unfortunately, we too often become what we pretend to be, or what we are believed to be, or what we hate because in order to overcome the enemy you must understand him, and to understand him, you must become him. I try not to. But if I were to take this sermon to heart, I would be wont to be rid of ninety-nine percent of my friends and left with the one group of people from which I have continuously been rejected. I have always gravitated towards difference in order to demonstrate that there is at least one thing in common between each and every one of us--no matter our origins: our humanity. For better or for worse (and I think usually for worse, but no matter). I will love my neighbor as myself, more than myself, Jewish or otherwise, whether that neighbor loves me or not.

So much for the loving, unless, of course, the self is hated. Don't get me wrong here. I am by no means a pacifist, but my eyes have been opened long enough to see that the methodologies of violence are not working. Not that I'm certain the methodologies of peace are, either, but people can only take so much. And I would rather be able to live with myself than not, which means at least trying to avoid a corrosive conscience.