Chaim G. writes:
Followed the link to Rabbi Pinky Shmeklestein. Was revolted.
BOTH We Jews also have a trinity. Yisrael, v'Oraysa V'Kudhs brikh hu khad hu ="Israel, the Torah and G-D are one". Hence loving Jews and loving the Torah are two sides of the same coin. One who loves Rabbi Pinky Shmeklestein despises Torah. As you are indeed a Philo-Semite I beg you case and desist your "uncovering the nakedness" of Rabbi Shmeklestein at once!
[This was his reaction to Dovbear's posting 'Better Know a Blogger' about this blog, in which it became apparent that there was a connection between myself and Rabbi Pinky Schmecklestein. See here: http://dovbear.blogspot.com/2007/04/better-know-blogger_27.html]
Tayere Chaim,
I can understand your reaction. And I don't expect you to 'get' it. Not everyone does.
Think of the Yeshiva Chipass Emes phenomenon as part of a broad-perspective approach to the Judaic world. A different way of learning, a way of focusing on the texts and the traditions without breaking one's head over the rocks. Or even, merely a way of tumbling the material around in one's head.
Your initial reaction was against the absurdity and irreverence (oh, and also probably the potty humour). But your reaction was immediate, and intense, and reflected a life-time of conditioning. Which explains precisely what you are and where you are coming from.
[And aren't you still the same person you were before your exposure to YCE?]
Not everyone has your background or comes from that environment, and some, even of impeccable Jewish origins, have not come anywhere near Yiddishkeit or studying the material their whole lives. And there are also those who have fled.
Yeshiva Chipass Emess brings the material up - that people react, however they react, is good. They're reacting. They're looking at material that you, me, Rabbi Pinky Schmeckelstein, and many other people, all consider worth time and effort. And they're relating to it.
It is up to them how they choose to approach the material afterward. In its own way, it's a test. If they don't explore any further, that is their lookout.
We don't all look at it the same way, but we're all looking at it, and making it our own.
[If anyone took the Schmeckelsteinian interpretation as the straight deal, one could be absolutely certain that they had no sense of humour, lacked a functioning brain, and would be eternally incapable of dealing with any other interpretation also.
At the Yeshiva we have fortunately not met anyone like that - other than the occasional putz trying to cope with a terminal case of shverre Yushkaism. Most literalists have such blinkers that they cannot see the Yeshiva.]
One can laugh at something while nevertheless remaining passionately committed to it. Sometimes the contrast is what throws it into sharpest relief, often stepping back gives one a better perspective.
It is not only possible to see things from different angles, it is essential. Taking only one approach to a subject yields only a mono-dimensional familiarity. A flatness, a lack of depth and perspective.
And as a friend put it, "someone who cannot laugh at religion probably shouldn't have religion".
A war metaphor: There is a blindfolded man on a battlefield - he cannot see the attack, where it is coming from, or the danger he himself is in. But once the blindfold is removed......
A shabbes metaphor: A man spends hours happily studying on shabbes, his neighbor simply eats tsholnt, belches, and has a good long nap. When they meet and compare what the other is doing, they're baffled at how the other one spends the day. But each tries the other's approach a few times, and while they don't change their habits, what they have experienced gives them a new appreciation for shabbes, and for each other.
A language metaphor: After many years of learning proper text-book French, the brilliant student visited Paris. And realized that he should have also read French newspapers, magazines and cheap novels, because while he understood every word that was said to him, he had no clue what they were actually saying.
A food metaphor: Chrain and charoses - different in taste, in association, in way of approaching the memory of Egypt. Is a seder without both complete? Now extend that idea to everything else on the peysach table. No single element makes the seder, but all of them together make it whole.
There are different ways of experiencing. Whether they are valid, well, that depends on the individual.
Four men entered paradise. Ben Azzai died, Ben Zoma lost his mind.....
And the point of that tale is that Elisha Ben Abuya was already a lost case before he saw paradise, while Akiva, because of what he already was, "entered in peace and left in peace".
What they were determined how they would react.
I'm certain that people are capable of digesting the Schmeckelsteinian point of view without indigestion. That they can enter in peace and leave in peace. In fact, I'm convinced the better the person, the better they will be after experiencing the Schmeckelsteinian point of view.
On a final, and somewhat absurdist note, at a party a long time ago, a friend who could not eat cake rubbed it on her face instead - thus experiencing it to the fullest despite her inability to eat it.
Her perception of cake was not the same as everyone else's, but it was just as valid.
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LOVELY metaphors!
Might I add another (absurd) one?
My cat and my son share an interest in certain small round toys that roll and jingle. They interact with the toy in different ways, they cannot possibly communicate effectively about what they are doing, but they both benefit from their interactions with it. And neither of them changes the toy itself. :D
That isn't an absurd metaphor. It works perfectly. Very appropriate.
Or, how about this:
A jackdaw picks up a glittering bead and takes it back to his nest. All he knows at first is that it sparkles. That is what caught his eye.
But each day he notices more things about it. Until at last every facet of that bead, and even the different hues shifting beneath the translucent surface as they catch the light, is as familiar to him as his own feathers or the tree in which he lives.
One day, the bead is missing. And as he looks for it, he becomes aware of how everywhere he looks there are things that remind him of it, or have the same characteristics. And wherever he is, is something that brings him that same pleasure. He knows the bead, but he no longer misses the bead.
wow.
Don't expect me to get it. When can see again, when my fury induced blindness has passed maybe I'll comment again.
when my fury induced blindness has passed maybe I'll comment again.
Two things, tayere Chaim.
One: even if you don't get it, do net let it get to you. Enter whole, and leave whole. Do not get angry.
Two: I hope you will comment again. Despite, or davka because, we don't see eye to eye, your input is crucial to the discourse. It is easy to like those with whom one agrees; it is more worthwhile to find the likeability of someone with whom one disagrees.
Keep in mind that if one reaches the point whereby one knows what the other would say even without their speaking, one has expanded one's own mind. This is easy to do with people who think like oneself, hard to do with people who are entirely different - but more worthwhile an attempt to make.
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