The frum hippy scene at the tent city, Rothschild Blvd, Tel Aviv

This is the conclusion to Yoram Symons‘ series, The Tent City of Rothschild Boulevard and the Coming Pogrom.  Part I can be found here.

The Other Side of Zionism

While the state-building and normalizing ethos of Zionism has fizzled into ideological atrophy for contemporary Israeli society, across the border, into the Palestinian territories in particular and the Arabic world in general, Zionism is perceived as the single most potent and powerful force in all of  international affairs. Across the borders the glorious victories of 1948 and 1967 are painted in the morbid and terrifying colors of the Nakba – the great tragedy, which causes the Palestinian people to languish in suffering and misery and the Arabic world to wallow without honor or pride.

While the calls for a solution to the Palestinian problem are almost entirely absent from the Rothschild Tent City and the protests it is mobilizing, the rest of the world has bought well and truly into the idea of Zionism that proceeds from the logic of Nakba. While the suburbanites of Ra’anana and Petach Tikva and Kfar Saba experience the suffocating banality of work, mortgage and the six o’clock news, the rest of the world sees them as imperialist conquistadors on a mission of savage occupation. Anti-Semitism, which had descended for a time into the nether regions of political incorrectness, has re-emerged in its new anti-Zionist guise as a legitimate disposition and a potent political force.

Christianity, Islam and the Jewish Problem

For almost two thousand years the peoples of Europe had been educated to hate the Jew, fear the Jew and above all, blame the Jew for the problems in their lives. By the laws of historical cause and effect, this hatred made sense.

The Jews were inextricably and undeniably linked to the Christian religion. The Christian bible was the Jewish bible and the Christian deity was a Jewish man. While the Church had managed to eradicate all of the Pagan cults of antiquity and established a single confession for all the nations of Europe, it could not deny nor eliminate the Jew. The Jew, despite his obvious heresy, was too close to Christ to suffer the same fate as the Pagans. And thus within the monolithic Christian culture the Jew was a conundrum that evaded solution.

After two thousand years of this incongruous and unsettling relationship, the people of Europe finally reacted in the inevitable fashion. The Jews were a problem and they were a problem that demanded a solution. And the solution prosecuted by the peoples of Europe was the mechanized and industrialized manifestation of every passion play, inquisition and pogrom that had gone before it.

In sixty-three years of statehood, the Zionist entity has wedged itself into the same niche within the Arab consciousness. The Nakba is for the Middle-East what the murder of Christ was for Europe; a sin of cosmic proportions that demands a historical solution. Two thousand years of passion plays, inquisitions and pogroms has been telescoped into sixty-three years of Friday morning sermons, Arab-Israeli wars and Gaza incursions.

The Convergence of History

For sixty-three years the hunger to avenge the Nakba has been held in check. Held in check by the symbiotic relationship between Israel’s military superiority and the self-interest of the US dominated International Order. Concurrently, for sixty-three years the subconscious thirst of the Jewish people for cosmic significance has been quenched by the Zionist enterprise and the Jewish need for national manifestation has been fulfilled in the State of Israel.

The world, however, is standing on the precipice. As the British dominated international order crumbled under the weight of the 1929 Crash, so too the current international system dominated by American military strength and global capitalism is beginning to unravel. Nations are defaulting, stockmarkets are crashing, London burns, Greece riots, the Arab countries descend into civil war and the Palestinians are on the verge of declaring statehood.

Zionism, in the incarnation of nation-building, has also reached its denouement. The Herzelian “state like all the others”, a slave to the prerogatives of the free-market economy, is no longer fulfilling the needs of national expression. That these two historical trajectories should converge at the same point in time is no mere coincidence.

If we are to believe that oft repeated maxim, that history is doomed to repeat itself, then the ultimate logical solution to the crime of Nakba, if allowed to manifest, will resemble in intent the final retribution for murdering Christ. If history is destined to repeat itself then the subconscious yearnings of the Israeli people for cosmic significance has not yet reached its full expression.

If, as Jung believed, subconscious desires manifest themselves in reality, then perhaps the yearnings for cosmic significance that lie at the core of the Israeli protests have not reached their true expression in the Tent City of Rothschild Boulevard. But rather, they are the harbinger of a far more radical and terrifying change.

Final Words

Akiva stood on the desolate mound that had once been home to God’s glorious temple. His colleagues wailed and moaned, they tore their clothing in grief and sat with ashes on their heads. Jerusalem was in ruins, the nation destroyed and the people sold into slavery. Yet Akiva smiled and laughed, danced and skipped.

Bewildered, his tear-stricken colleagues inquired: “Akiva, have you gone mad? A fox walks where the Holy of Holies once stood, yet you giggle like a child.”

“Friends,” began the Sage, “truly this is a terrible sight to behold. Yet all of it, the pain and the suffering, the anguish and despair, were all foretold by the Prophets of yore.”

“So,” they demanded indignantly, “what of it? Is it our lot to rejoice that the prophecies of destruction have come to pass in fulfillment of His Word?”

“My friends,” continued Akiva, “We have witnessed the fulfillment of the prophecies of destruction. Yet this can only mean one thing. We are on the cusp of witnessing the prophecies of redemption. Just as this miserable desolation has come to pass precisely as it was foretold, so too, the prophecies of joy and salvation will soon inevitably come to be.”

The sages stood in confusion. Could this be correct? Could the end of everything they had held sacred and dear be the precursor to something even greater? It seemed impossible. And then they realized. The force that guided all of history had guided them to this very spot, just as had been foretold. And this same force, that had guided all of their actions, would soon lead them to uplands of tomorrow. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the people would soon manifest in an even greater way. Soon they would fulfill their true destiny.

“Akiva” declared the group as one, “you have comforted us. Akiva you have comforted us.”
Yoram Symons is the Executive Director of Ark. His blog can be found here.

Searching for meaning in the tent city, Tel Aviv. Image: Spiegel Online

By Yoram Symons

Turn on the news.  It is becoming obvious that the world is literally falling apart. Governments are defaulting, stockmarkets are tumbling, London burns, Greece riots, the Arabic nations are descending into civil wars, the Palestinians are on the verge of declaring statehood and in Israel for the first time in a generation the entire country finds itself united in the singular purpose of change.

Why is all of this happening now?

Karmic Forces

There is a core principle in Judaic cosmology known as middah k’neged middah. In essence this principle is a schema for understanding the relationship between human action and cosmic reaction. It loosely translates as “measure for measure”, and in its most superficial context means that God both punishes and rewards the actions of human beings in accordance with the substance and quality of those actions.

A similar principle is found in Indian cosmology and is known as karma. Loosely rendered, karma states that the Cosmos will return our actions to us in kind. If we give to others, the Cosmos will give to us, if we take from others, the Cosmos will take from us. We even find an analogue to this principle in Newton’s Third Law of motion – to every action there is an opposite and equal reaction.

The notion of a cosmic system of justice linked to human activity is prevalent through all the cosmologies of the world. And most of us comprehend the basic principle of cause and effect as it relates to our lives. We accept that if we smoke cigarettes we increase our chances of cancer, and if we put together an outstanding resume we increase our likelihood of obtaining employment.

Yet cause and effect in the moral realm is less readily understood. While many of us pay lip-service to the concept of karma, none of us write a hundred-dollar cheque to our favourite charity expecting to find a hundred-dollar bill lying on the ground on our way to work. Few of us have experienced, nor expect to experience, the mechanics of cosmic justice operating in so direct a fashion.

The Subconscious Cause of Material Effect

Freud taught that the conscious activities of a human being were a thin veneer veiling the far more potent and powerful desires of the subconscious mind. Freud’s disciple Jung expanded upon this principle, believing that the subconscious state was not only responsible for conscious emotions, but manifest within material existence as well.

Jung’s principle affords us a new way to understand middah k’negged middah. A separate and impersonal God does not arbitrarily mete out punishments for our crimes and rewards for our services. Rather, reality manifests around us in accordance with our true desires. When we are able to alter one of our subconscious desires, material reality will literally shift around us to accommodate the new state of being. Wealth and poverty, health and sickness, war and peace, are all externalized manifestations of our own subconscious longings.

The Agonies of Materialism

Jung’s investigations into the inner workings of the human psyche were originally motivated by his work as a clinical psychologist. From his surgery in Switzerland, an advanced, prosperous and wealthy nation, he treated patient after patient for various forms and manifestations of a single disease – depression. Why were these people depressed, he wondered? They were relatively wealthy and relatively healthy. They had few genuine tragedies in their lives that required psychiatric healing. Yet patient after patient presented symptoms of this crippling malaise.

Jung’s quest for an answer eventually took him to the Pueblo tribe of Arizona. There the tribal elders informed him that each morning they go to the desert and perform a ritual to make the sun rise. The elders were adamant that should they fail to perform this ritual the sun would fail to rise over their lands. They further warned that when their people would finally become extinct and there would be no one left to perform the ritual, the sun would soon cease to rise for the entire human race.

Jung understood that this insight explained the general malaise of the West. The materialist conception of the Universe that forms the underlying presupposition of contemporary popular cosmology had reduced the significance of human activity to nil. In a Universe that spanned billions of light years, where the Earth was an infinitesimal mote of dust in a colossal cosmic sandstorm, individual human experience was totally and utterly worthless.

While the conscious mind in the Western world busied itself with chasing the dreams of material prosperity, the subconscious self languished in a prison of spiritual agony. Human beings actually needed to believe that their actions made the sun rise. For a human being to be happy, his life had to be imbued with cosmic purpose.

The End of Zionism and the Tent City of Rothschild Boulevard

When the early Zionists began building the yishuv they were all seized with a cosmic sense of purpose. The Jewish People, who had lain dormant and slumbering for two thousand years, was finally reawakening to national purpose. When Ben-Gurion declared independence the State of Israel was gripped with a sense that they were witnessing the visions of the Prophets manifest in reality. The dry bones lived again; the voices of happiness and joy were heard in the hills of Judah once more. When the second generation of Israelis captured Jerusalem messianic fervor gripped the air and when they prevented the collapse of the State in 1973 they were imbued with the feeling that the sounds of their actions were echoing in the halls of eternity.

But then Zionism reached its apogee. Its stated goal of establishing a normalized state had been achieved. Herzl’s dream of a nation like all other nations had been attained. From that point on Israeli society would increasingly come to be dominated by the themes of Western culture; themes that have not altered significantly since Jung.  That is, a general and enveloping feeling of impotence and irrelevance. This impotence cannot be solved by the transitory achievements of capitalism or the mass-media reality-television fuelled dream of achieving celebrity. As Israel continues to realize the mandate of Herzelian Zionism it slides deeper and deeper into a pit of existential despair.

For the contemporary Israeli, who has been raised on the stories of 1948 and 1967, there is nothing left to achieve. The glory belongs to their parents and their grandparents and all that is left to do is simply live the lifestyle. The Sisyphean struggle for prosperity within the capitalist paradigm is a poor consolation prize next to the historical purpose that was the pay-cheque of generations past. They toil but do not receive a reward.

Then came the Tent City of Rothschild Boulevard.

What initially began as a small student protest over the increased cost of housing has metamorphosed into a pan-Israeli movement demanding social justice at all levels. The Tent City is makeshift and simple, yet it buzzes with an excitement that cannot be found in any Herzeliyah Penthouse or Caulfield Mansion. Musicians play and artists paint and young people sit and debate the merits of the welfare state over the free-enterprise system. The dwellings are crude and basic but the reward of this struggle is the dynamic and exhilarating sense of participating in history.

While the conscious minds of Israel’s protesters demand affordable housing, an improved medical system and a host of other welfare-state related issues, the collective subconscious demands the protests themselves; a feeling of national unity, a feeling of collective purpose and a feeling that Israel’s most glorious days lie in the future and not in the past. How goodly are thy tents O Jacob!

Yoram Symons is the Executive Director of Ark. His blog can be found here.

I’d given up my addiction to halacha years before, and like every addiction, the best way to give up is to go cold turkey. I hadn’t opened a gemorah, seen the inside of a shule, or shopped at a Glicks in years. But well, desperate times call for desperate measures and my cousin was pretty desperate. He and his friends were sorry refugees of the bloody implosion of Kew Shule. The community in whose bosom they had suckled since childhood had been snatched from their thirsty lips and this violent weaning had ripped a void in their souls that craved instant healing.

Without a rabbi, without a premises and without anyone who could daven mussaf, this forlorn band of bankers, stockbrokers and property developers were in acute need of ecclesiastical assistance. They were more than willing to overlook my one or two religious failings in return for providing the most basic of devotional activities I had learnt in my youth. I was to read from the Torah, daven from the amud and generally help run the goings-on of a Shabbat morning service. Normally I would have scoffed at such an offer but as it happened, I was desperate too. Not for a shule. Why would I be desperate for a long, monotonous wail-fest conducted in an ancient language by men in funny costumes where women are treated like second class citizens starting at 9:30 on a Saturday morning? No sireee. I was desperate for cash. See back in those days I was but a poor, starving screenwriter, and I while I sat vigilantly by the phone waiting for Hollywood to call, I was chronically short of funds. Shule-less this mob may have been, but cashless they were not.

With the ink barely dry on the handshake, they asked me to come along to their first board meeting. Oh goody, I thought, what a privilege. But I figured I had better put in an appearance, and surely a shule board meeting couldn’t be that boring? Could it? I listened to them drone on about the database systems and book-keepers and secretaries and how they should word their press release to the Jewish News, and then just as I was finally dozing off one of them turned to me and asked: “Is there anything you could do to make shule more… interesting?”

Oh Jesus, thought I. It’s taken them this long to figure out why Kew shule failed? Indeed why all the shules in Melbourne are failing? The masses haven’t stopped coming to shule because the database didn’t work or the secretary was incompetent. Shule is failing in Melbourne for one reason and one reason only – it’s dead boring.

“Oh definitely. There’s heaps of things we could do to make shule less sucky. I mean, more interesting.”  And suddenly I was the centre of attention.

“Oh, like what?” I hadn’t been prepared for that.

“Oh just a few minor innovations here and there. Just leave it to me.” I had gotten past that hurdle but Shabbat morning would not be so easy.

So I tried to reason it out. Shules are failing because the product they offer sucks. But why? Well, the first thing that popped in my head was that no one understands what the hell is going on. OK, so what if I just stopped the service every couple of minutes to explain stuff. But there’s so much service to explain. It goes for almost three hours. Well, what’s the most interesting part of the service? It had to be the Torah reading itself. The Torah was, after all, the famous work of literature in history. It had been an inspiration for Shakespeare, Milton, and Star Wars. If you couldn’t even make the Torah interesting then what hope did we have?

So I began delivering what I called micro-drashas. Instead of one long boring speech, I’d give four or five mini-speeches interspersed through the Torah reading to try and bring the stories to life. At first they were a little hesitant, but after explaining that Leah had soft eyes and Rachel was kind of a hottie they were hooked. By the end of the year these life-long shule tragics had an appreciation of the entire narrative and legal structure of Torah, they understood the ethos behind all of the chagim and they had covered the most important writings of the Prophets. And it dawned on me – a year’s worth of shule was a curriculum.

And so we finally get to the point. There seems to be a groundswell  in Melbourne right now to make Jewish education free. So here’s an idea. Built into the shule service is a curriculum as comprehensive as any offered by a school, yeshiva or youth-group. And unlike the schools, the shule has two advantages, it continues after Year 12 and turning up is free.

But an “interesting service” is really only half the battle. I may have been religious as a kid, hell everyone in Mizrachi was religious, but none of us came to shule to daven. We came to meet chicks. That’s why any kid does anything really. Gets a tattoo, joins a gym, starts a revolution, it’s all just a way to meet chicks. So if there was any way to get crowds of kids into a shule on Shabbat morning, you had to make it a meet-market, and then simultaneously provide free, stimulating and compelling Jewish education.  Then we might be onto a winner.

There are three mainstream Jewish schools in Melbourne, Scopus, Bialik and King David. They go into an alliance with five shules that cover the spectrum of both ideologies and geographic locations, lets say Caulfield Shule, TBI, Central, Nitzan and of course my own beloved Ark. Kids at the schools get a choice, they can either go to the Jewish studies classes offered at school, or they could get a free-period and commit to coming to one of the nominated shules on Shabbat. Because if there is one thing kids like almost as much as chicks, it’s getting to wag school. Suddenly you will have literally hundreds of kids rocking up to shule on Shabbat morning. Spread through the right Facebook groups all the kids who go to non-Jewish schools will also get wise to the party and start coming down.

You then set up a mini think-tank of educators, in conjunction with UJEB, the informal-ed departments at the schools, even the youth movements and ACJS could get in on it, to develop a general curriculum and style for the educational aspect of the service, and then put the unusually high number of young, dynamic and compelling Jewish educators in Melbourne to the task of running these services. The rabbis of each shule would be able to get in on the action as well. And then if you combined the whole concept with Glee-style youth choirs and a kick-ass Kiddush, the vision starts to take shape.

Now I know what you are all thinking. It just wouldn’t work. The schools would see it as an affront to their own curricula, the shules wouldn’t be able to coordinate the logistics, the necessary donors would attach too many caveats and the whole thing would descend into turf wars, ideological impasses and general squabbling. But here’s the truth. This community, despite its so-called vibrancy, has entered a process of decline. And even though some of the 150-odd Jewish Organisations in Melbourne are experiencing some individual success, if we want our grandchildren’s grandchildren to be raised in a vibrantly Jewish Melbourne, then every organization will have to be mochel on some its pride and find synergies with other organizations.

We need to realize that the true constituency of Mt Scopus is not the fee-paying parents of that school, and the true constituency of Caulfield Shule is not the seat-holding membership. The constituency of every Jewish organization in Melbourne is the entire community of Melbourne. The organizations are not individuals, but nodes of an inter-generational knowledge transmission network. The success of that network is not determined by how well a Year 12 class scores on their VCE or how many punters a shule brings in on Kol Nidrei. The network is successful when it creates a new generation of Jews who are themselves motivated to create a new generation of Jews. And to achieve that, every organization is critical and every organization needs to work together.

It is an eternal truth of the Jewish experience that kol yisrael areivim ze la ze. It is not fee-paying parents areivim ze la zeh, or seat holding shule members areivim ze la ze. It is kol Yisrael and kol Yisrael only. In every historical instance where that fails to be practiced disaster quickly follows. Rabbis, Principals, Presidents and Donors – you need to wise the hell up. Synergising the activities of the different organizations needs to become the cornerstone of all strategic planning. We either all make a stand together, or we all go down together. That’s the way it always has been and the way it always will be.

That’s what it means to be Jewish.

Ad kaan. (Until here)

Yoram Symons is the Executive Director of Ark. His blog can be found here.

By Yoram Symons

Recently an article appeared in the Jerusalem Post that detailed how the Bnei Brith’s Anti Defamation Commission had prepared a thorough report accusing two self proclaimed online news sources of being anti-Semitic in their representation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

While I do not necessarily dispute the conclusions of the ADC’s report, I have grave reservations about the ADC pursuing these accusations in a public way.

I hold these reservations for the following reasons:

While we are members of the Jewish community and have the right to act in our own perceived self-interest, we are also citizens of the broader Australian community. As such, our actions as an ethnic-religious minority will be perceived by the broader community within this context.

In a liberal democracy people have the right to express views that we may find unpleasant or even unconscionable. Yet it is the right of the community to be able to both express and consume any opinions that they want, provided they do not cross clearly demarcated boundaries.

And while the boundary of anti-Semitism masquerading as anti-Zionism may be clearly demarcated within the Jewish consciousness, and arguably under the Racial Vilification laws it can be defined in a legal context as well, it has no such clear demarcation within the popular consciousness as do issues like arson or terrorism.

No matter what we do, the population at large will never fully share our fear or disgust at negative representations of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Attempts by Jewish organisations to silence voices they find unpleasant or unconscionable has two effects, both extremely negative for our community.

1. It reinforces the notion that an entrenched Jewish establishment has a need to utilise legal mechanisms to silence voices that it disagrees with.
2. It provides oxygen to the perpetrators.

There are timely and newsworthy events that communal organisations should be at the forefront of combating. There is also valuable work that community organisations do in exposing not only the biases, but the ulterior motivations of certain high–profile figures. However, this does not mean that it is in our interest to go about creating news stories where none existed in the first place.

The clearest case in point for this was the community’s handling of Antony Loewenstein. By reacting so vocally and so vociferously to his opinions and to his book, we aided and abetted the creation of a mountain from what could have remained a molehill. The community’s incessant demonisation of Loewenstein only served to give him even greater legitimacy in the eyes of his supporters, and the volume of our campaign against him brought many more into his camp.

As a community we cannot afford to create another Loewenstein.

The internet sites in question are not news services on the scale of a major publication like The Age or the Australian, rather they are niche services that cater to niche readerships, presumably with strong left-wing biases to begin with.

Should the community actively pursue this issue and find it hurled into the public discourse, we run the risk of placing them front and centre of a media furore that will only serve to broaden their readership and begin to legitimise their platform in the eyes of many Australians for whom free speech is a fundamental value.

Before we go about creating a new Loewenstein, we as a community need to seriously rethink our approach to dealing with anti-Semitic media, and to do it in a way that will not effect the creation of even larger enemies.

Most of us were raised to believe that you were a Jew because your mother was Jewish. That Jewish descent passes through the woman. And no doubt we have all heard the various reasons that rabbis and others have given for this over the years. My personal favourite is the one that says women are more spiritually advanced than men and hence the Jewish spiritual DNA can only be passed through them. I mean, obviously spiritual DNA can only be passed through women, why would we have ever thought otherwise?

On a more serious note, however, the idea of matrilineal descent has major ramifications for many Jewish people. In an era where more and more Jewish boys and girls are meeting people from outside of their culture, maintaining the racial and ethnic purity of the people has never been harder. And it is especially hard on the Rabbinate to try and enforce their notion of spiritual purity with very few punitive measures available to them.

But lets examine for a moment the origin of this matrilineal descent concept. Within the 4-cubit-wide confines of rabbinic logic, the source of all Jewish laws and customs is the Torah, as interpreted by the Rabbis of the Mishnaic period (i.e 200BC-200AD). And sure enough, the Mishna is quite clear on the matter. Kiddushin 3:12 states that to be considered Jewish one must be the child of a Jewish mother or a righteous convert. For the rabbi it is simple – case closed.

But for those of us who for whatever reason see it fit to doubt the reasoning of pre-industrial scholastic logicians who were part of a nationalist populist political movement arguably responsible for the two most catastrophic wars in Jewish history up until the Holocaust, well, we have to search beyond the Mishna and its peculiar methodology of Biblical interpretation.

A straight reading of the Torah leaves one with a fairly overwhelming impression that in Biblical and pre-Biblical times, all notions of tribal descent were passed through the father. There are numerous characters in the Bible, for example Judah’s sons, Ephraim, Menashe and the children of Moses who all had non-Jewish mothers and were all considered Jewish. The rabbis conveniently explain that all of their mothers converted to Judaism but as with most rabbinic statements, they bear little relation to any literal reading of the text and require the application  of the arcane science of drash to force those meanings out.

In addition to this is the overwhelming number of references to the father’s tribe being the most important, to all descent occurring through the patrilineal line, the generation lists that only mention fathers and the constant reference to the Gods of Forefathers, implying that tribe and religion are the domain of the male.

And this makes perfect sense. We know that the Biblical and pre-Biblical society was highly patriarchal, both for the Israelites and the Hebrews and for most people around the world at that time. If a Jewish man married a non-Jewish woman what was happening in effect was that the man was taking her into his tribe, she would be absorbed in to the new people, and thus her previous identity and her previous gods would be irrelevant.

What is equally clear to all historians of this matter is that at some point this changed and matrilineal descent took over as normative practice. There are a number of arguments put forward, each with greater or lesser degrees of evidence to back them.

There is the idea that it originated with Ezra, when he forced Jewish men to banish their non-Jewish wives. There is another idea that it was instituted after the Bar Kochba revolt as a leniency to the children of women raped by the Romans, so that an entire generation of children would not be lost to Judaism. There is a further idea that in contrast to paternal descent, maternal descent is certain and provable.

But the truth and historicity of any of these reasons is not the real point. The real point is that according to the best evidence that historians can bring up:

1. Once upon a time Jews believed in patrilineal descent
2. At a later period they changed to matrilineal descent
3. No one has ever really understood exactly why this change took place

Despite the overwhelming historical evidence pointing to a tradition of patrilineal descent, the Halacha is steadfast in its exclusive acceptance of matrilineal descent.  As far as Halacha is concerned, if the Mishnaic sages interpreted a biblical verse in a certain way – then come hell or high water their interpretation will stand until the end of time.

What is important for us is the following: Why as a community do we allow ourselves to be bound by the interpretation and tradition of the Halacha? Why do we allow questions of such fundamental importance like “Who is a Jew?” to be arbitrated by a system that borders on the superstitious?

Being Jewish is not a superstition – it is a very real and powerful experience that transcends the narrow and stringent practices of Halacha. Most of us feel very comfortable being Jewish without keeping any real Halacha at all. The question of whether one can be Jewish without keeping the Halacha was answered long ago. The question now is slightly different:

Can a community claim to be Jewish without relying on the Halacha for definitions of its own Jewishness?

Even though most of us feel entirely Jewish as individuals without the need for any formal Halacha in our lives – we have left the ultimate Jewish character of the community entirely in the hands of the Halachists.

The Halachic system performed a great service to the Jewish people. Arguably it guaranteed the survival of the Jewish people for 2000 years without a homeland or a sovereign state of our own. Yet the great epoch of the Halacha is at an end. We may not be living in the era of redemption, but neither are we living in the Exile proper.

As a community we need to rethink our relationship to the Halacha. Instead of accepting it as a ruler and master, we should adopt it for what it actually is – a frame of reference. The word Torah etymologically derives from the word “hora’ah” or guidance. In the language of our most ancient forefathers the word Torah did not mean law but guidance.

If we saw the Halacha as a guide to our ancient traditions, rather than hard and fast law, we would be in a better position to fashion a Jewish experience that is congruent and consistent with the way we actually live our lives.

Both Michael Jackson and the Lubavitcher Rebbe died on the 3^rd of Tammuz.  This much is fact. The rest of this piece is entirely speculation.

The first I heard of Michael Jackson’s death was when a lapsed Lubavitcher called me.  In a daze, an almost hallucinogenic tone to his voice was asking me: what was the significance that Michael had died on the 3^rd of Tammuz, the exact same date that the Rebbe had passed from the world. He had been shaken, almost to his core it seemed. For while he is indeed a lapsed Lubavitcher, the memories of childhood can never fade and the phenomenon that was the Rebbe’s final mortal days left an indelible mark upon his soul.

I was never a huge Michael Jackson fan. I liked his music but I would never have thought of myself as a genuine fan, a devotee. And the same goes for the Rebbe. Not having been raised Lubavitch, observing the hysterical euphoria of the movement in the early nineties had a sense of watching something unreal and distant. It was not something that I was a part of, merely a spectator to.

Yet the deaths of both Michael and the Rebbe shook me somehow. For the past few days I have been trying to make sense of this emotion. Watching Michael’s video clips and interviews via YouTube, listening to his songs played over on the radio and reading bits and pieces about his life, gleaned from the Wikipedia and the fan-sites and the overwhelming number of blogs. Yet through it all my question remained – why am I upset over the death of Michael Jackson?

Michael Jackson’s death was a tragedy. There he was, so incredibly and almost inhumanly talented, yet at the same time so obviously and inconsolably sad. After watching countless YouTube clips and listening to endless playbacks, I began to have the sense that every time Michael spoke, in that soft, almost feminine voice, he was staring out from behind a mask.

Michael spent his lifetime wearing a mask. At first the mask was the same as all performers wear – the outlandish and flamboyant costumes of his Jackson 5 days. But by the time he released Thriller he was wearing a new kind of mask, a mask that had been sculpted into his very skin. And this mask proved too addictive. It never hid him quite enough, so he had it changed and enhanced and altered until by the end of his life he had taken to wearing a veil – the ultimate, most unsubtle and most obvious mask of all.

The Rebbe also wore a mask. In his final days he would appear before his followers from a balcony. While the crowd sang itself into a frenzy of yechi’s they would see only a veil. Then at the crescendoing moment the veil would be lifted and behind it was the Rebbe. For a few brief moments the Chassidim would bask in the glory of their master and then almost as quickly the veil was drawn tight and the Rebbe disappeared.

Chassidus teaches us that we all wear masks. We all hide our true selves behind layers and layers of a constructed personality.  The human is unable to deal with other humans face to face. Only from the safety of our personas can we engage with the world. Chassidus teaches that it is not only the Michael Jacksons who wear masks. We all do. And for the same reason. To escape the glare.

There was something messianic in Michael Jackson’s tone. From when his decision to cease being merely a popstar and enter the realms of philanthropy and activism, there became an almost palpable sense that he believed, through the power of music, that he could heal the world. Perhaps when so many individuals use you as a canvas on which to project their hopes and dreams, you begin to absorb it and then radiate those hopes and dreams back into the world.

The Rebbe taught that in every generation there is a messiah. Perhaps this means that the messiah isn’t just a single person, but an energy that is present in the world at any given moment, that finds individuals and coalesces around them. Perhaps messiah is the word for our collective longing for something better, something transcendent.  But it is a longing that we are too ashamed to openly declare, so we stand back and allow others to absorb our longings and let them declare them for us.

Celebrities embody that longing. They become focal points for masses of emotional energy. Whether their celebrity is won through incomparable talent or simply succeeding in a prime time cooking game show, celebrity always functions in the same manner, differing only in degree. While on the stage, in the glare of spotlight, the celebrity openly declares their ambition and desire – their longing. While under the spotlight they take off their mask. We need celebrities and leaders and messiahs. We need to see someone to take off their mask, because we cannot take off our own.

The Lubavitchers of Melbourne publish a newsletter called The Lamplighter. The symbolism is that the one who lights the lamps on the street takes a single candle and from it can light many others. I am told that the Rebbe saw his mission on earth like that, helping others to light their own candles. The tragedy of the Rebbe and indeed of all leaders is that we get so absorbed in the light reflecting from them, we fail to realize that the source of their light is from the light that is within us.

This blog has spent considerable time discussing the idea of communal leadership. And while no one would equate communal leaders to the Michael Jacksons and the Lubavitcher Rebbes of the world, in some ways they serve a similar function. They put themselves out there to do what most people will not.  And while the debate around the selection processes of a leadership body is worthwhile, the underlying reality of leadership – that a few must act in the name of the many – will not change, no matter how selection takes place, from the most clandestine to the most democratic.

If there is anything to learn from the passing of Michael Jackson, it is when we put so much of our hopes and desires into another human being, we diminish our own potential and force them to bear a burden that is too great. When all the individuals of a polity are willing to assume full responsibility for that polity that is when leadership will begin to change.

I am going to begin this post from the following assumption: The JCCV is not democratic nor is it representational.

Pages have already been filled on this blog debating this issue and it is an issue that can be argued back and forth ad infinitum. Whether it is or is not democratic or representational may ultimately come down to various definitions of what precisely constitutes democracy or representation. In my mind resorting to such arguments by definition is simply a way of avoiding genuine and substantive issues.

What is of far more interest to me are the following questions:

1. What exactly should the mandate of communal governance be?
2. Is the JCCV in its current form the best organisation to fulfil such a mandate?
3. Is the JCCV’s constituency satisfied with both what the JCCV does and how it goes about achieving it?

The first question has thus far not been extensively discussed on this blog but  I will put forward the following:

1. Strategic vision for the future of the community and activities to pursue these strategic aims.
2. Coordination of all communal fundraising activities and then disbursement of those funds.
3. Responsibility for the physical security of the community.
4. Advocacy to government on the community’s behalf.
5. Public relations between the community and the broader Australian community.
6. Facilitation of greater interaction and involvement between different parts of the community.
7. Hosting a number of major events every calendar year.
8. Provision of key information to the community.
9. A forum for the settlement of disputes between communal organisations and individuals.

The second question I would answer in the resounding negative. While the JCCV certainly performs some of the functions on my list, and indeed many others as well, its general lack of democracy, its inability to be genuinely representative and the lack of transparency surrounding so many facets of its general operation leave it as a body whose primary interest is the preservation of the status quo, not as a body that can drive positive growth and change.

As for the third question, the only way to arrive at an unequivocal answer would be to conduct a survey of every single Jewish person in Melbourne and ask them directly. As the mountains of anecdotal evidence referred to on this blog maintain, there is an unusually high degree of dissatisfaction with the JCCV and Communal leadership in general.

Thus, I propose the following:

1. Abolish the JCCV in its current form entirely.
2. Establish a new organisation that is not made up of affiliate organisations but one where members of the community can vote directly on matters.
3. Establish a registry of every Jewish person in Melbourne above the age of 18 who wishes to participate. The registry would be stored securely online and operate very much like an online social community. The “Jewishness” of members would have to be verified by some process.
4. This online registry would then become the constituency.
5. The constituency would then vote once every term (lets say every two years) for the executive of the new body.
6. The executive would be constituted of positions that address the aims described above. Hence there would be:

• President /CEO – Strategic direction, ultimate arbiter
• Treasurer/ CFO – Financial matters
• Security Chief
• Advocacy Director
• PR and Communications Director
• Events Coordinator
• Director of Communal Affairs

7.    The Executive would use the online social community to communicate all substantive matters to the community. The community would be able to use the online social community to discuss relevant issues and create pressure groups around certain issues. As the affairs of the online community are easily trackable, verifiable and consistent metrics around communal attitudes can be gauged at all times.

8.    In addition to the online community, the Executive would meet in a public forum once a month where they would hear grievances, suggestions and debate from the community on any number of issues. The agenda of these meetings would be set by the online community by relevance and popularity of issues.

The establishment of such an online space for the community would have a number of significant benefits.

First, it would facilitate genuine democracy within the leadership structure. The actual will of individuals could be implemented as opposed to channelling their will through a number of dubiously representative organisations.

Second, it would bypass the need for surveys or other opinion gauging activities as the online community would be a living and dynamic gauge of communal attitudes at all times.

Third, by formalising avenues of information flow, both from and to the leadership, genuine transparency of the leadership’s actions can be maintained at all times, and the constituency will always have available channels for grievances and the like.

An approach like this, which utilises the internet’s unprecedented ability to enfranchise individuals is certainly the way forward for all governmental structures. Their ultimate implementation is more a question of “when” than one of “if”. There is no reason why the Jewish Community of Melbourne should not be a trailblazer in this regard.