'Ascending to Descend: A cry against our modern reality from a Jewish perspective.'

 

I want to begin this speech by defining a few terms.  During my trek through the last 3 years these have been very fond words to me and I fear far too few know their meaning.  The words are Ethos and Pathos.  Ethos is the religious, defined, static side of a culture.  Pathos is the secular, dynamic, and constantly changing side of a culture.  In a manner of speaking they reflect one another.

 

A Culture can be seen as the synthesis between these two concepts.  A nation may have any number of possible ethos', yet usually the dominant religion controls the pathos.  America, for instance, contains almost every religious ethos imaginable, and the Christians pathos.  I believe Theodore Hertzl's goal was to create a nation that would embody a Jewish Ethos but would be defined by having Jewish Pathos.

 

These terms are important to me because through my teenage years I struggled, as I feel most teens in America do today, with finding an identity with which to model myself.  But I didn't have the luxury of most, I didn't see my father as a suitable role model since I witnessed him struggling with the same issues as I.  So I sought out a unique identity, independent of my family.  But this proved to be even more difficult when I turned my efforts toward my people.  For I am a Jewish convert, I was not born among you.  The Kabalah says that every convert at one time had a Jewish soul and left the flock for a while only to return and rectify it's relationship with the Lord; but I did not know this until my journey for an identity was reaching it's end.

 

During the years surrounding my entry into the Jewish people, I felt highly unwelcome and often suspect for one reason or another.  These feelings caused me to reject the notion of simply identifying myself as a Jew.  Later, when I found better words to describe myself I concocted a different explanation:  I found the Jewish Pathos appealing in that it has out-survived all surrounding cultures, but I found describing who I am as a Jew as unsettling because I was really unsure of what that meant.

 

In seeking an identity I turned to the arena that I seemed best equipped in at the time.  I chose to identify myself as an Academic, and in this, for a while, I found the best possible way for me to proceed in my development as a person.

 

As an aspiring academic I proceeded to sift through Philosophical discourses on the state of the modern world and specifically I strove to find reasons as to why America is in the state she finds herself these days. I sought to understand why, at least in my humble opinion, our great experiment has failed.  I began by examining the enlightenment thinkers, whose ideals had such a profound impact upon the birth of this nation, and later traced back their thought to Plato and Aristotle.  Here, I found what I was searching for, a way of understanding the roots of America and a rationalization for what's taking place here.  I reached the conclusion that America is the modern Rome, and that she is dominated by Aristotelian thought, and as a pure academic, I was of the Platonic school.  As I contemplated this, I became very, very weary of our future, even though many things soon became clear to me, and I found many of the answers I was seeking to begin with.

 

I discovered that the America Pathos is, indeed, probably one of the weaker ones in the world.  And this drove me to want to be emerged in a different Pathos, the oldest and maybe strongest one, that of the Jews.  It is important to note here that at this point I looked upon Judaism in much the same way that I imagine many American Jews do: as a great system of morality.  I looked at Judaism and I admired it for it's undying spirit and it's survival instinct, I saw no underlying relationship with the Yahweh God as important or relevant in any way, whether or not it did exist.

 

 

 

I just want to say to some of my friends, acquaintances and family here that if you ever wondered what I was always off thinking about, this has been a pretty good explanation; And now I proceed to the point of this discourse. 

 

For reasons only related on the surface to Academia and college, I went to Israel to live for the last 9 months or so.  I went with high idealism, ambition, and optimism.  I return to you saddened and very very scared.

 

And what am I afraid of?  I'm not afraid or the conflict with the Palestinians.  I'm not afraid of the situations on the Lebanese border. I'm not afraid of Syria, or the extreme ground we have lost in the so called peace process.  I'm not even afraid when I get a message on my computer from an Egyptian extremist threatening my life and my people, or the fact that no matter how much we prove ourselves the U.N. they will probably never put Israel on the security council for only slightly veiled anti-Semitic reasons.  No, I'm not afraid of the conflict with the Islamic peoples in the Middle East, and I'm not afraid of the internal problems amongst the numerous factions in Israeli parliament.  I'm not even completely afraid of the fact that the Kineret is about dry, though it is very distressing.  No, Ladies and Gentlemen, yeladim v'yaladot, ami, fellow Jews,  I am afraid of the cynicism, pessimism, and lack of idealism that I see infesting all aspects of Israeli life.  And in particular and I utterly terrified by it's effect on the Israeli youth of my age.

 

The Jewish congregation that I was welcomed into in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma was a highly Zionist group.  As a child studying in Solomon Schechter those ideals we're very strongly projected onto me, mind you, before I was even technically Jewish.  When I went to Israel to live and saw, and heard of Post-Zionist and the degradation of the Jewish Pathos, it honestly broke my heart.  I ask myself, why must a culture who has survived even the worst degradation that mankind can pass through, a few generations later decide that it has had enough, pack up ship, and leave the homeland that for 2,000 years it has been struggling to regain?  How can that be?  What has caused this?  Well, my easiest answer would be a term coined by the Red Hot Chili Peppers: Californication. 

 

Oh, and that's right, the same force that makes Atheists and skeptics of the secular Israeli youth has an even stronger effect here.  Why is that?  Because that force is being emitted from this nation specifically, and we are powerless to stop it.

 

The Jewish people have survived endless trials, and I don't have to list them off to you again, I'm sure you know the list well enough by heart at this point.  But the fact of the matter is, as Herman Wouk said in his book The Will To Live On a nation does not perceiver when it is doing well, it can only struggle to survive if there is a struggle involved.  (Get exact quote).  Well, I ask you honestly: What are we struggling against?  Where is our struggle?

 

It seems that just like in Hellenistic times the Jewish people now have things so well in the American Diaspora that the need to be fervent Jews is week and the need to assimilate into a popular and often successful and comfortable culture is quite strong.  WE ARE MELTING AWAY, ladies and gentlemen, and it feels good.  I thought before that this was only the case in America, but lo and behold through the forces of the Internet, the modern Academy, and cable television, we are melting away even on our home turf in Israel, and the struggle that is taking place over there, back home, at this moment for some reason unlike any other time in history is actually leading to the flight of Jews.  My people, where has our strength gone?  Where lies our conviction and dedication to our collective identity?  What is leading to the departure of the youth, and MY GOD, who is going to replace them?  Because they aren't coming back, and if they were secular in Israel, who is to say they will walk with God once they've left the land? 

 

 

I want to emphasize that, in case you all forgot, the land, or to be precise: OUR LAND.  If you are a Jew, if you identify with the Jewish people, then you have a stake in Israel, you have a connection with Eretz Canaan because OUR ancestor Abraham made a covenant with OUR God.  And I sometimes wonder if you and I are keeping our end of the bargain anymore.

 

I understand a lot of people these days, and sadly even often the Rabbi of a congregation, may hold the view that Judaism is simply a way of life.  Judaism, my brothers and sisters, is a covenant our souls made with the One God a long time ago.  If you do not agree with this, then I fail to see the point of your identification with your ancestors, with your fellow Jews, and with Israel.  I honestly do.  I once thought the same thing in this manner, but for reasons purely beyond words in Eretz Yisrael I began feeling a connection with our God that I cannot describe and will not let go of again.

 

Now, just to tone it down a moment I want to go into explanation of how I got from being an Academic to being a Jew: Doing the history, being emerged in the Pathos and feeling the Flow of it, but mainly, small observations.  The Academy is an institution these days that is split into roughly two major area's the Liberal Arts and the Sciences.  Cool.  Well, the way it seems to me to work is that the Scientists discover some fact about our observable, empirical universe and the Liberal Artists interpret that fact from a human perspective.  Cool.  Oh, wait one problem: There are an infinite number of facts to consider in the universe, and moreover, every time someone gets one of there questions answered they can think to ask at least two more and therefore the number of facts that the Academy will ask and answer about the world is endless.  Some may say: So, let it be this way until eternity, maybe we will eventually put it all together, maybe the journey will be fun.  For the Goyyim I say: Go for it, you couldn't do a more noble thing.  To the Jews who choose this route over intensive study of there own culture I say: Shame on you.  Because if you bother to get really deeply into it, if you go way back, if you really get into the Heart of Judaism you will find that it probably has the roadmap you need for your life and the answers we need as a community not only to survive but actually, if for a moment we weren't threatened by an outside force, to THRIVE.  But with the Academy, and the Aristotelian mode of thought in domination of the world, that just isn't the popular thing to do right now.  In wasn't in Greece or Rome either.  But you know what?  Greece and Rome didn't hold out, we have.

 

I'll tell you something else, and this is going to come as a shock to those of you really interested.  Plato, the founder of the idea of the Academy almost undoubtedly drew a vast number of his idea's from the Hebrew people to begin with.  Isn't that interesting?  Furthermore his views we're quite compatible with that of the Jews I'd say, it wasn't until a certain pupil of his, Aristotle, distilled what he had to say into a formal way that this changed.  And then what happened?  Our friend Aristotle went and tutored a little kid named Alex for a while.  Alex later became known as Alexander the Great and conquered several lands, including Judea, and the end to that story I believe you might know as the basis of Chanukah.

 

Now Chanukah and what happened there might not seem too enthralling to you, especially considering you might view it as a way for us to keep our children from wanting to be Christians at  a certain time of the year, but I, not 2 weeks ago, was walking around in the ruins of the Maccabee base, and I found it very pertinent as that area of Israel is exactly where I personally would like to live one day, and that connection to the past creates a personal bond between me and my creator that seems to me to be a bit of a convincing insurance policy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, here I'd like to ask those of you that do, kinda at least a little bit, see Chanukah as a way to keep the kids interested, why do you think it is that your kids would not be interested?  What is it about Christianity that seems like it might be more appealing to a child than Judaism?  We're you ever interested in another religion over you own, and if so, why is that?  I certainly was, I got really into Taoism for a while, and still respect it a lot.  These are legitimate feelings and I don't ask these questions lightly (no pun intended Peter), but I believe that if you we're to study a little deeper, prod a little harder, and spend a bit little more time digging into it all, you might find a well of knowledge beyond your own thirst.  This, my people, is the only way I can see to save Judaism, by bringing back to the forefront why it is that we are still Jews, where our identity truly lies, why that is desirable, and what it is that our culture has to offer that is above and beyond all others, because honestly, I think there is a whole lot we've forgotten about...

 

Brethren, what I'm asking you is to remember who you are!

 

Shabbat Shalom.