Jewsic

Firstly, I’d like to apologize to everyone who was expecting a post last week. For those of you who didn’t know, the holiday of Shavuot fell out last week from Tuesday night to Thursday night. Due to the cooking and preparation involved in simply getting ready for the holiday, nevermind the fact that I couldn’t write anything for the stretch of the three nights and two days that made up the actual holiday itself, lest I be smote by god, an executive decision was made that Arbitribe would go on official holiday vacation for the week. And so I schlepped up to Washington Heights to spend chag by The Ginger Man and S, and good times were had by all. However, that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t thinking about what to write the whole time, and so without further ado, this:

We are in a very interesting time of year right about now, musically. The 4-6 week stretch coming right around late May/early June is a unique period for an avid music fan, and it is also quite important. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that it is not technically significant on its own; it’s only noticeable because it is the one time on the musical calendar that has nothing special about it, kind of in the way darkness is noticeable only in that it’s an absence of light so you can’t see anything. It’s the time when bands embarking on early summer tours have had the albums they’ll be touring behind out for a month already and when bands embarking on late summer tours won’t be releasing their albums for another few weeks. As such, a musical vacuum of sorts is created. To fill the void, we music nerds generally pick this time to revisit some old favorites that don’t get nearly enough airtime anymore due to all the new stuff that’s been released.

During the 2011 version of my annual perusal of my musical back-catalog, I happened upon two bands that fall into the same category, Israeli Bible Prog Metal. Orphaned Land and Amaseffer are both comprised of Israelis, and they write prog metal concept albums about biblical stories. It’s pretty awesome to be able to start a long night drive home from Jersey with an 11 ½ minute epic about the 10 plagues followed by a 3-song musical interpretation of the Mabool clocking in at just under 20 minutes. Around the time that happened (Saturday night, three weeks ago, just in case you were wondering), I decided my next post would be about music, specifically music and how it relates to Judaism. Conveniently enough, Orphaned Land and Amaseffer (that’s an Americanization of Am Haseffer i.e. people of the book, by the way) offer a wonderful segue into the topic I would like to discuss in that vein.

To begin (because the last three paragraphs weren’t a beginning, duh), I’d like to relate a story that ticked me off, cuz hey, why not get right to the rant? It was about 5 years ago that I was first getting into types of metal other than the loud screamy kind (thanks for the prog, Sim), and during that time is when I first discovered Orphaned Land. There was a song I heard that I really liked and wanted to play for a former friend who had given up a lot of non-Jewish music over the course of the previous few years, citing a modified “you are what you eat” philosophy as his reasoning. While I respect and understand that, I figured that a song by a Jewish Israeli band about the biblical flood should have been alright. One day while we were driving around, I started the song, mentioning that it was a Jewish band but not exactly typical. He was really digging the song, but then something snapped during the first chorus, at which point he shut the song off and told me he didn’t want to hear any more of it. I asked why and he told me it wasn’t Jewish music and he didn’t want to expose himself to it. I asked what wasn’t Jewish about it, and he told me it wasn’t in Hebrew.

Am I the only one who has a problem with that? I mean on principle; it’s not like I was pissed because I didn’t get to finish my song. Let’s look at the facts here: We have Orphaned Land, a Jewish Israeli prog-metal band, and a guy who was a fervent metal fan in a previous lifetime but has since sworn off non-Jewish music. What I have trouble understanding is how a song by Israeli Jews about the biblical flood “isn’t Jewish” just because it isn’t in Hebrew. Hebrew doesn’t automatically mean a song is Jewish. Anyone ever heard of Synergia? Or better yet, Subliminal?

I get that this is just a minority opinion of one guy who I don’t even speak to anymore because he’s gotten so holier-than-thou that he thinks I’m a bad influence, sinner that I am, but I’ve encountered similar situations that all come back to the same core issue: Jews…um…errrrr…I gotta be honest I don’t even have a clue what the driving force behind this one is, it just comes back to more of questions. Why is it that when my friend wants to walk down the aisle at his wedding to the theme from Jurassic Park, a gorgeous orchestral piece, he gets shot down by his mother? Why is it that one of the songs sung in my other friend’s shul on Shabbat is actually a modified version of a Christian church hymn, but when he gets up to lead the davening he gets shouted down for trying to introduce the Skywalker Theme from Star Wars? Why is it that when yet another friend introduces a song to the Shabbat table and everyone digs it, it’s not allowed to be sung again once someone discovers it’s track 8 on an Orphaned Land album, ignoring the fact that it is actually a traditional Sefardi pizmon that’s been sung by Jews for centuries?

Whatever, I guess it’s just another question about Jewish closed-mindedness that I’ll never understand, and yes, I’m well aware that there are obviously going to be exceptions to that rule (as anyone who knows my dad can tell you), but I can only speak from my own experiences. Maybe can someone enlighten me? I just don’t get it. This isn't me being angry and stuff, just confused. To me, as you have already read, music is about how it moves you and moves through you. If a song is going to move you, why does the source matter?

Song of the Day: Wave of Babies - Animals As Leaders

An American Jew in Europe

New York, at times the center of the modern universe, seems to have a unique disconnect from the rest of the world, as if crossing the Brooklyn Bridge or the Midtown Tunnel changes the laws of science, or more topically, Halacha.

Since my very Hungarian family and I travel to our old Motherland an average of once a year to visit relatives and get reacquainted, I have front row seats to watch the disconnect. Most of the time it consists of my sister and I joking about how our spoiled American butts can’t handle European toilet paper (but this is okay, because we present-day Americans aren’t the most pampered people history has seen). 

The more fascinating, and sometimes deeply frustrating, version of the disconnect, though, is this strange Halachic language barrier between New York Jews and their foreign brethren.

You see, there is one system of Halacha, but many social standards based on it. These vary in practice and strictness depending on where you come from. Take, for example, Shomer Negiyah. I certainly see the reasoning behind keeping repressed and twitchy pubescent boys and girls from touching, whether or not I agree with it in every situation.  The kicker is that while we Relig-Jews in New York have been trained obsessively in this rule, we don’t realize that it is by no means standard globally, even among the Orthodox.

In Hungary, for example, even our most observant friends aren’t Shomer. I grew up getting polite cheek-kiss greetings from a family friend who wears a black hat. And sure, New York versus Europe is clearly a case of "Potato, Po-tah-to" (with a rolled ‘r’ or two), but it isn’t the difference that bothers me. Sometimes those who were brought up with the rule are not prepared to deal with those who weren't. My problem comes when the emphasis on keeping the rules (or our inability to deal with those who don’t) gets in the way of us acting like human beings, when it causes us to degrade and embarrass people on the other end.

A friend of mine who arrived “fresh off the boat,” so to speak, a few years ago (who grew up and remains Orthodox) told me about the first time he was introduced to a few religious, good, American, college girls.

Yes. They actually ran away.

What these tactless and clearly confused girls failed to realize is that they’d effectively tainted his view of American Jewry for a long time to come. Before I’d heard this story, I’d been surprised at what I saw as my friend’s unnecessarily careful way of tiptoeing around every movement and word when meeting new people. Nobody likes to be judged and made a fool, especially not the new guy. The girls were lucky he’s secure enough in his faith not to let their behavior turn him off from it. 

But the New York/Europe detachment stretches far beyond the borders of social standards, into the realm of serious, unarguable Halacha: Kashrut.

We New Yorkers may complain that more things aren’t available Kosher, or when Starbucks arbitrarily changes its drink base to apparently include slugs, but the truth is that we are incredibly lucky to even have those little OU and OK symbols to guide us, to have our pick of good (if insanely expensive) restaurants at our disposal. Most countries don’t have a system of Kashrut certification at all, or if they do, it is used on only a fraction of food items, due to lack of either demand or cooperation from food factory owners.

These countries handle Kashrut by their own methods. In Hungary, Kashrut “certification” goes by word of mouth. True, Budapest boasts three (really good) Kosher restaurants, an un-freaking-believable Kosher Café, and two or three grocery stores/butcher shops, but the selection of staple items are severely limited. And that’s in the biggest city in a country with one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe. Forget the little towns in countries like Luxembourg.

If you want to keep kosher in Budapest (and few Hungarians do), you’re going to have to cough up an arm and a leg for a package of salami, and travel to the former Ghetto to pick it up. There’s simply no way to only eat certified-kosher products.  Many European countries work the same way, if they have any Kosher restaurants at all. Going back to Europe means I get to live this interesting sort of double-life, relying on unofficial lists and friends’ recommendations instead of a convenient label for two or three weeks a year. It also means I get to see many variations on this discussion once I get back:

What truly cracks me up is when those products which are available Kosher in Europe and Israel, which are made in one factory and distributed globally, are denied in only one place, and that’s the one with the largest Jewish population in the world: the USA. The perfect example of such an item is the old favorite: Bailey’s Irish Cream Liquor.

Bailey’s is “not recommended” as Kosher by the Orthodox Authorities in the United States. It is, however, used in such delicious food items as Ben & Jerry’s Dublin Mudslide ice-cream and Bailey's-Flavored Haagen Dazs, which bear Kashrut certification. It is also certified Kosher in places such as England, Australia, and Israel. The mysterious case of Bailey’s has confused me for years, and I’ve heard every answer from “it’s actually perfectly alright” to “there’s a separate bottling plant in the US which is not Halachically acceptable.”  I’ve asked around and researched online, discovering along the way that yes, there is just one recipe and one bottling plant, and yes, the stuff I get in Budapest is fine. But it’s not fine here. I truly don’t get how this works.

Anyone who has known me for about five minutes knows of my interest in the varying standards of social and Halachic law across the globe. I enjoy my chance to see both worlds. I adore the Hungarian Kosher Café and love my time in Budapest (which I highly recommend as a beautiful and culturally rich travel option). I often complain about how closed-minded and cliquey New York Jews are.

But of course, there’s a reason my parents left the place, the same reason all of my European friends left their hometowns, and it isn’t because they were bored. This summer, I finally got to see it firsthand.

Things in Hungary (and Europe in general) are not great for Jews right now. With the economy the way it is and with an ultra-right wing party in parliament, it’s becoming increasingly acceptable to be a full-blown xenophobe, Gypsy-hater, and anti-Semite. I’ve been told about graffiti in France and rocks through windows in Greece. I know my parents’ stories of hiding their religion during communism and of their escape to the US. I remember when my sister got called “a dirty Jew.”  But a week ago (finally, it seems), I got to see it myself.

My parents took me to the south of Hungary, to a beautiful little city where cobblestones line the streets and porcelain fountains make the town square interesting. We had an awesome time touring, and at the end of the day, we sat down in the town square for a snack, and my father realized he had to daven Mincha.

He walked to the edge of the square and stood behind a tree, as any davener might do in public, and started to pray while my mom and I dug into the sandwiches we’d brought from our Budapest apartment.

As we ate, we began to notice the huge, apparently steroid-popping guys sitting near us, joking amongst themselves. I thought amusingly about how one of them bore an uncanny resemblance to a character from my neighbor’s old Street Fighter 2 video game (the other one looked like a fat hobo). But the farther along we got in our sandwiches, the more my mom, and then I, began to hear what they were laughing about.

  

Eventually, my dad finished praying and joined us. And the Street-Fighter guys got louder.

That was about as far as they got before my mom said “That’s it!” and told my dad (who hadn’t heard or noticed anything) that she needed to find a bathroom in a building across town NOW. She ushered us out of the town square before telling my dad what happened. He shrugged and said, “We’re here. What do you expect?”

The truth is, I love going to Hungary anyway, and this little incident wouldn’t keep me from it. After all, I’ve been travelling back and forth since I was born, and this is the first time I ever got “Jewed” (in Europe, anyway). But at that moment, I couldn’t help my sudden longing for New York, for my friends, for Kosher-Certified pizza, even for speeches on sleeve length technicalities to roll my eyes at.  

We New York kids, who grew up in the States, who have never been beaten up for wearing a kippah, who have clicked our tongues at the awful anti-Semitic things they do somewhere else… we are so lucky that we can complain about Bailey’s lack of a label. As we sped-walked away from the town square, all I could think was man, am I spoiled. Am I lucky to live where I do, when I do. Well, that and Steroid Man, someone really ought to kick your butt. 

Existential Crises and Gravitational Pulls

A good friend of mine (henceforth known as L) is partially failing out of the sort of prestigious, snobby, Ivy-league university that would never have accepted me after I royally screwed up the SATs. This kid had direction and a plan and one hell of a future, not to mention a perfect SAT score. That was then. Now I’m standing on the sidelines, watching in horror as everything she worked for comes to a screeching halt.

She marvels at how easy it is so very easy to mess up your life. One flick of the wrist to a card at the bottom of the pyramid and the entire structure comes a-flyin’ down. Although she consciously realizes that what’s happening is her own doing, she continues to sabotage her future because of that cheerful and marvelous touch of logic: I’m going to fail anyways! Why bother studying?

What are you doing?! I text back. Self-fulfilling prophecies everywhere rear their ugly heads. When did this downward spiral start?

As is the custom of many yeshiva students, L spent a year studying abroad in Israel after high school. For many people, the year in Israel is one of exponential growth in maturity and Jewish pride. It is when some of us find the path they will follow for life. But others, like L, become overwhelmed by its power of spirit. This was L’s first time in the Holy Land and it ultimately caused her to reevaluate her life and priorities, in both positive and negative ways. With a new, burning desire to make aliyah, L decided she wants to move to Israel right after college.

No, she absolutely needs to move to Israel.

This revelation has caused L to call her entire existence and ultimate reason for living into question. With past goals left by the wayside and a foggy future, there is now a psychological boulder of sorts in L’s way, rendering her incapable of moving forward. She can’t seem to push the boulder out of her path.

The lack of a solid goal has left her floundering. Studying for exams is impossible for L because it would mean accepting that tomorrow will indeed arrive; studying would be the preparation for that future. L cannot see where she is going (and doesn’t have any explicit desire to get there), so she has no motivation to deal with where she is now.

This is just one example of how powerful Israel can be. The gravitational pull of the land to the soul can herald a reason for being and working, or cause a once solid human being to have an existential crisis. I can only hope that L pulls herself together so she can face tomorrow, hazy as it may be, with confidence and preparation. Even though the details are indistinct and muddled, I hope that Israel itself as a general goal will be enough for L to focus on for the present.

This is by no means a criticism of Israel, or of the year spent there after high school. Like I said, it is where many find who they are and gain the confidence to pursue their goals. The problem comes where young students mistake their year in Israel for life in the Holy Land in general. They don’t realize that during this year, they’re in school, with a schedule prepared for them. Their parents are paying for their meals and living expenses. A safe, established institution is taking them on trips to some of the most amazing places in the country, if not the world. But the future, no matter where you live, is not like that. Life on your own is hard, whether you’re in the US or in Israel. The spiritual awesomeness and feeling of being where you belong is incredible and mentally sustaining, but it will not pay your bills. I can only hope that L remembers this fact sooner than later.

As for me, it is entire possible that I will be privileged to spend a solid month in the Holy Land come winter. Because no matter the choices that some of us do (or don’t) make, the country really is that fabulous. Let’s blow this popsicle stand!

Ink

My last post was about Jews and cheeseburgers. This one is about Jews and tattoos. If it seems like Jews doing things they're not really supposed to do is a new theme of mine... well, sort of, but not really. At all.

Why? Because cheeseburgers don't prove anything, except a disregard for kashrut or maybe waist size or, far worse, a lack of the culinary creativity needed to make them taste good without any udder ingredients. Stigadish.*

This is entirely different from Jews who wear a חי where people can see it - not on a necklace, but on their skin. That magen David necklace can come off when you're wandering a hostile eastern European country. My kippah can make appearances only if and when I want it to.

It takes guts to give up the option of religious anonymity. Sure, you can keep your sleeves rolled down, but you're marked, voluntarily, for life. I'm not talking about the rebels who get yeshiva logos tattooed on their arms to spite the establishment, or the generation of Israeli girls with butterflies on their shoulder blades. I'm talking about the Jews who are confident enough in their identity not to hide it -- the 'tough' Jews we admire, maybe with a tinge of jealousy, even while we're not so sure we approve of the way they show it.

Because in the end, I think these tattooed Jews represent the pride that we so desperately need to have in our own culture, our own people. They want you to know who they are, and they couldn't care less whether you like it or not. It's active, in-your-face Judaism in a much more permanent and public way than going to synagogue or keeping kosher.

Personally, I already have one permanent mark identifying me as a Jew, and I'm content to stick with it. But I can finally answer the question my grandmother asks when people do to their bodies anything she wouldn't do to hers: Why would they do that?!

I still can't explain pierced tongues to her. But permanent, inked-in Judaism? I get that. And I like it.

* "Stigadish" is Hebrew for exactly what it sounds like.

Bridge Out Ahead

I’ve noticed that the introductions to my posts tend to get a little long. Sometimes, a new post writes itself out of an intro and I need to wait another whole month before I can post on what I was originally going to write about. This is not a bad thing though; it helps me get in my writing zone, our readers enjoy it, and it helps set the stage for whatever I plan on posting about. However, with this post it would be a while before the topic I happen to be riffing on this month becomes apparent. Therefore, let’s get that bit out of the way right now.

Today is an angry day. Today I am mad. Today I will rip the Yeshiva grade school system apart.

There you go, that’s what it’s gonna be. Now let’s discuss why this particular issue is drawing my ire on this particular day.

As many of you know, I am in the midst of a period in college life that is known by many names but I choose to call “Finals Insanity.” It’s around this time that we collegians crawl into our holes and don’t come out until we’re free for the semester. It’s around this time that all other things of import fall to the wayside. It is around this time that we begin to wonder WHY IN THE BLUE HELL AM I TAKING CHEMISTRY?!?!?!?!

Chemistry: my most hated school subject. Wasn’t good at it in high school and I’m still not good at in college. So I wonder, as my chem final approaches, WHY IN THE BLUE HELL AM I TAKING CHEMISTRY?!?!?!?! Oh, because I need two lab sciences to satisfy my natural sciences requirement. Bio? That was science number one. Physics? Yeah right. Earth Science? See physics. So I’m left with chemistry. However, it occurs to me that, as a psychology major, I’m never going to look at chemistry again in my life after Monday’s final. And so I still ask:

WHY IN THE BLUE HELL AM I TAKING CHEMISTRY?!?!?!?!

It really doesn’t make any sense to me that I should suffer through a class that I’m terrible at and wreck my GPA to fulfill some bogus requirement. Now, I understand the idea of taking classes that have nothing to do with your intended field of study; college should be an opportunity to expand your horizons and study things you normally wouldn’t have the opportunity to study, not just a means to an end. I truly believe that. However, I have no interest in chemistry at all and wouldn’t sit through a semester of it if you paid me. In the meantime, I’m sitting here going brain dead over my textbook and BLOODY PAYING for it. Stupid. But, I’m not here to rant about college core requirements or chemistry, although that is my current plight. What my chemistry dilemma has triggered in my brain is something that I’ve dealt with all my life and only recently got myself out of.

I dislike when something fun is turned into an obligation. You all know that, I wrote about it in my second post. Fun is fun and obligation is obligation, and never the two shall meet. Okay sometimes they can meet but I’m not getting into it here, just read the darn post. This particular arbitribe (I swear this will make it into the vernacular one day) is about how that concept fails to translate into Jewish schooling. Fair warning though, I have no solutions to this problem. I’m not here to provide the answers to life, the universe, and everything (42), just to provoke thought and emotion and write about what I know.

If you’ve been through the Yeshiva school system then you know exactly what I’m talking about, and if you’re not a total robot then you understand exactly where I’m coming from and might even feel the same way. As adults we are told that Judaism can be looked at in one of two ways, paraphrased here for your convenience: a) HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY YAY GOD, or b) GODAMNIT I HATE ALL THESE RULES. We are also told that the latter totalitarian view is the lesser of the two, but when channeled properly, can be transformed into the spiritual bliss flavor.

What irks me so greatly is that we pay approximately a gazillion dollars to go to religious private schools simply because they are Jewish schools and yet we are virtually never exposed to what is supposed to be the higher outlook of Judaism. We’re all so busy being concerned about the inhale/exhale spit-back split-second memorizations so we can raise our Chumash grade that we don’t process at all the content of what it is we’re reading. The system is set up in such a way that we are required to focus only on the oppressive nature of schooling, and by extension, Judaism, in order to pass our Judaic classes. There’s rarely any emphasis of the joy and wonder and spiritual qualities of Judaism, if at all. This tends to have catastrophic results.

Allow me to elaborate on a more personal level. I graduated high school without a care or a clue. Over the course of the next two years, I self-destructed. Not really going into the particulars, but let’s just say I was having a more than mild identity crisis. In the end, I decided it all boiled down to my religious observance and faith, or lack thereof. You see, I came out of high school and kind of did whatever I wanted, and my level of Jewish observance slipped greatly. When I recognized that this issue was at the root of my personal disorder, I decided I needed to go back to Israel over the summer and learn about what Judaism really is. My last ditch effort at Judaism.

Long, long, looooong story short, it was amazing, I found a Yeshiva run by the same organization as the summer program, signed on, and spent a grand total of 15 months in blissed out spirituality and happiness. Judaism finally meant something to me; I had discovered the other side of the coin. After two years of wandering around aimlessly, I had found something in my Jewish lifestyle that I could connect to. So life’s great now, but I wonder why I had to wreck two years of my life when the opportunity to tap into the other side of Judaism should have been available to me during 12 years of Yeshiva grade school and two at YU.

As I said before, I have no answers, but I feel it is important to raise the issue. We are so focused on the unimportant things like grades that we fail to see the truth in what we’re doing and how little we’re accomplishing by proceeding as we are. No religious base is set, and when we realize it, we spiral into our own religious identity crises. I liken it to the old Roadrunner cartoons. We watch and laugh as Wile E. Coyote chases Roadrunner off a cliff, keeps running in the air, and only plummets to the ground after stopping and looking down, realizing that he’s standing on nothing. We laugh, but that’s the story of our lives. We race along the road, not stopping to think about what we’re doing or why we’re doing it. Eventually we get to a cliff and the bridge is out, but we keep on going. All of a sudden, we wake up, look down, and realize there’s no foundation and nothing is supporting us. Reality sets in, and all of a sudden we’re dropping like flies, making person-shaped craters in the ground below us.

So how do we fix the problem? Some would say the solution is simply to never look down, but I say differently:

Just fix the damn bridge.

Soundtrack to my Finals Insanity – The entire Alive or Just Breathing album by Killswitch Engage