My Life As A Jew

On seeing The Chosen:  "Oh my God what a beautiful film. I know I saw it in my youth but I couldn't appreciate it then as I do now. Robby Benson does an incredible job here, just miraculous. And keeps up with the old lions, Maximilian Schell and Rod Steiger. Such men!!! As actors, and as the parts they played. Unforgettable. The scene of Rod Steiger as the powerful Rebbe dancing at a wedding gave me chills. (Always makes me think of David dancing before the Ark of the Covenant.)" 

Discipline applied without love is mere punishment and cruelty. And Israel, born with such hope and idealism:  I wonder what the early Zionists would think of today's far right #Israel?  At that time, there was so much horror in the world, so much carnage, but there was also great optimism and faith and good expectations for the future. Now, there is only the darkness without any light. The experiments are failing, or have failed:  the American experiment of democracy and the Israeli experiment of a national homeland. Some Hasidic Jews today support far right wing, fascist leaders both here and in Israel. Inconceivable that descendants of the survivors of the #Shoah would come to see fascist voices as their strength. This is what comes of religious extremism, the very thing the #BaalShemTov was fighting against. Why does every spirit-led movement always seem to break down into carnality and ego defenses? #theEndOfHistory #ww3 #persecution

When I was in Junior High School in Houston, Texas, Congressman Mickey Leland decided to sponsor a student to visit Israel and spend time on a kibbutz. I wanted desperately to go. I interviewed with him but was not selected. Now I no longer want to go there. 

Why did I want to go so desperately to Israel? Years later, in therapy, my therapist told me that Israel could be "Is Real", to wit, that I was like Pinocchio and the Velveteen Rabbit, wanting to turn into something "real"- a little boy, or a rabbit. What I  wanted was to turn into a Jew. I think it goes back to my father. He was born in Hungary between the world wars. Unlike many of his countrymen, he was the opposite of anti-Semitic. He was a Judeophile, a Philosemite. As I grew up,  the Jewish people were held out to me and my siblings as owning the finest human culture possible:  a culture of wisdom and art;  resilience coupled with uncompromising commitment to knowledge; a culture of high accomplishment, the highest; a humanity both tough and gentle, profound yet joyful; full of sorrow and pain yet closest to God (or maybe sorrowful as a result of being close to God). The ultimate human beings. The people who put God on trial! 

My father did not believe in God or religion. I grew up in a militantly secular home. Though there was great culture and learning there, I never really acquired an identity--  not national, nor religious, nor cultural, nor racial. I was to be a citizen of the world, with no affiliation. I embrace this now but as a youth I longed to belong somewhere, and to be anyone other than who I was. What I really wanted was to lose myself into "something bigger."  I think one of the appeals of piety or traditional living is the relief one gets from being an individual; being freed from the necessity to think for oneself and define one's own identity.  Life in my family of origin  was extremely disordered and I suffered a lot of neglect and emotional deprivation so I was like a lost puppy seeking to be adopted. I wanted to belong to a family like the TV Waltons. Goodnight John-Boy! 

I learned about the Holocaust from my parents, and studied the literature and history of the Holocaust almost obsessively, on and off, over all the years of my life (and at one time had amassed quite a nice collection of books on the subject, which, unfortunately, I could not hold onto). Curiously, I found the greatest identification with the children of Holocaust survivors. The way they described their parents manifesting trauma was the way my father also behaved. So on top of the alcoholism, the narcissism, the rejection, the rage, the abuse, was another layer of mystery and distance. I started to invent a myth of my father being a Jew, even though he wasn't. (Recently I have discovered through DNA testing that I have many Jewish relatives- mostly on my father's side but also possible Sephardic ancestry on my mother's side. Her ancestor's surname appeared on the list of family names compiled by the Spanish govt of expelled Jewish families who were now entitled to reclaim Spanish citizenship.) 

Psychologically at that time, this was the drama: an idealized Jewishness as a stand in for my abusive father; desperately wanting belonging, acceptance, and approval, but in myself, there was only uncleanness and defilement,  being shunned and unfit and rejected. I most definitely wanted membership in an exclusive club I could never be admitted to.  I wanted closeness to a Jewish man as a surrogate father, but pious Jewish men do not keep company with or talk to shiksas.  And there was no way, of course, for me to become part of the community. This drama in different phases and manifestations, played out over many years, until I tangled with a far from ideal actual Jewish man, (married),  and understood that Jewish men are, after all, just men. The secular ones at times took advantage of my vulnerability and low self esteem, and the pious ones of course, only looked upon me as a demonic manifestation. 

Later on, the whole question of 'what is a Jew', became the question of, what is Israel and can Israel even exist? I had been caught up in the idealism of early Zionism, (socialist origins and kibbutz life), but that didn't last long. My years at UT Austin were during the beginning of mainstream left-wing sympathy with the Palestinian cause and everyone was wearing the kaffiyeh. I was a rather politicized youth and eventually read about Israel's use of torture and other reports on abuses of human rights by Israel, and very early on became disillusioned with the nation-state project. I am anti-nationalistic, always was, and always shall be. As a Judeophile I wanted very much to believe that Israel could be a good, secular, democratic, multicultural state, but as a budding leftist I had to give up on those hopes. (Although I have to admit, Israel could have done better if it were not founded geographically amongst political, cultural, and religious enemies.)  Nothing good comes out of nationalism or religious extremism. It was German nationalism and endemic anti-Semitism in the first place which led to the persecutions which spurred Zionism in Europe and the drive for a Jewish State. This is the political angle. Then, there is the theological angle...

I was very naive in certain ways and did not understand or anticipate the existence of left-wing Zionists. To my understanding, Israel was founded on Western democratic ideals with a decided socialist leaning. Jewish nationalism didn't fit. A Jewish theocracy was the last thing on my mind.  Many years after I attended university, I was married and living in a rural community when I started going to the local library to use the computer. I joined a left-wing political blog site. I wrote and published a blog entitled "I Dream of Bibi" in which I related a dream I had about Israel, about Bibi Netanyahu, and a mysterious woman who could symbolize many things.  I related personal stories illustrating how I had always idealized the Jewish people and how I ultimately came out of that idealization and understood finally that Israelis were not residents of an Eastern European shtetl transplanted to a Middle Eastern desert, that they could be materialistic, cruel, militant, arrogant, and racist, just like everyone else. Well, some presumably left-wing Jews on that site harassed me so hatefully over this and other blogs that I gave up writing there. I was accused of hating Jews. I was accused of fetishizing Jews. I was accused of being comfortable only with "weak" models of Jewishness and couldn't tolerate "strong" and successful models of Jewishness. Nothing could be further from the truth. I had a different, more humanistic definition of strength and success.  I had always admired the Jewish spiritual and humanist values that I found in depictions of that long ago shtetl life. But literature isn't always reality. I can understand the attack better now, having been burned often in the fires of the Twitter woke mob, but at the time I was astounded. I was a "PC" virgin! I found, like many others, that it was impossible to form respectful, legitimate criticisms of the State of Israel without being abused and harassed and accused of anti-semitism. I also found out defenders of Israel could use any excuse to cover its sins: if you cite Torah to criticize Israel's treatment of aliens, or the burning of olive trees by settlers, then they said, it is a secular state. But if you criticize the government for various failures on political grounds, then you are attacking Jewishness and Judaism. Nobody criticizing Israel could get away with it, no matter how legitimate the criticism. 

Let me back up and offer some context:  I had experienced a religious conversion to Yeshua some years prior. (I had long ago given up on the possibility of actual Judaic practice as soon as I learned about keeping kosher, something I rejected out of hand as wholly unrealistic for me as a single woman without access to a Jewish community.)  As a convert (from secularism to Catholicism), I was exposed to some literature written by a Jewish man who had, along with his wife and many children and the remnants of a failed hippie commune experiment, entered the Catholic Church. His name was Mark Drogin and his ministry was called The Remnant of Israel. He in a way became a mentor during my early conversion period. It was the first time I really started understanding that Judaism and Christianity are not two separate religions but the same religion in two phases. Mark was among those who called themselves "completed" Jews, for they were Jews who had found the Messiah, the Moshiach.  Among the literature I was being exposed to was a conversion account by a Jewish neurologist, Karl Stern, (The Pillar of Fire), who survived the Holocaust and escaped to Canada. He was one of the first Jews I ever heard point out the folly of Jewish nationalism. He predicted, correctly, as it turns out, that a Jewish State founded on nationalism would inevitably commit abuses. In other words, Israel would be guilty of the phenomenon of the victim becoming a perpetrator, all in the name of self-defense.

If we take individual psychology and extrapolate to the societal level, we see that, just as the origin of all human mental, emotional, and spiritual ills; neuroses, and evil action, is psychological defense mechanisms, so do all wrongs perpetrated between human communities come from the perceived need for self-defense, (often it is the projected fear of a powerful community onto a vulnerable community, in which case the vulnerable community then becomes persecuted by the objectively stronger community, which nevertheless views itself as a 'victim'). It is a universal spiritual principle that only death to self, or rather, the ego false self, and the dismantling of those very defense mechanisms, enables spiritual liberation. Obviously there is legitimate ground for self-defense but this is often used as a pretext to serve imperialistic agendas and aggressions, of which we find copious examples in history. Applying the need for dismantling of defenses on the societal level is somewhat problematic. Transformation of a national conscience is possible, but any decision to sacrifice a defense must of course be made willingly, no less for a nation than a person. Simone Weil, a French Jewish philosopher who lived between the World Wars, spoke of the necessity for every nation to achieve and maintain a moral ground and ethical integrity. She believed that France's defeat by Germany in the Second World War was due not to military weakness but to a moral failing, which stemmed from France's brutal suppression of Algerian independence. 

Hasidic Jews were among those originally against Zionism and, as portrayed in 'The Chosen' (the movie I watched tonight, based on the novel by Chaim Potok), fought bitterly with the Zionists for control over the resources and allegiance of the American Jewish community. The spiritual foundation of any community has to be surrender to the will of G-d (for a religious people). To many Hasidic Jews of the time, clear instructions were given in the Tanakh, of the circumstances under which the Jewish people were permitted by G-d to reclaim the Holy Land and re-gather as a nation. Those instructions held that only with the arrival of the Moshiach could the Jews gather in the promised land of Zion.  Since Jews did not recognize Yeshua as their Messiah, they were still waiting. Jewish tradition did not cite the Holocaust and global persecution as a reason for returning to the Holy Land. But humanly and politically speaking, how could anyone deny Jewish survivors of history's most evil atrocity their right to live as a free and autonomous people in a Jewish State?! No humanist could deny this right. I could not deny this right, despite what the leftist Zionists said. 

This is where it gets really tricky. And it involves a lot of theology I cannot get into here. Suffice it to say, there is a metaphysical or spiritual identity and purpose for the Jewish people historically which is at odds with the natural human and political right they enjoy, to form and live in and defend a Jewish State, as fraught and complex an experiment as that has inevitably proven to be. There is a quote I  mistakenly thought was from Heinrich Heine, but I could not verify this. I learned that an approximate quote appears in the Israel Zangwill novel Children of the Ghetto. The quote, as I heard it many years ago is, "The People of Christ is the Christ of Peoples." This statement expresses the religious identity and mission of Judaism by comparing it to the identity and mission of Yeshua. Or, according to the Kabbalic teaching of the hidden zaddikim:  as the righteous and holy ones suffer for the sins of their community, so does the entire Jewish people suffer in atonement for the sins of humanity, a holy offering to G-d, just as Yeshua suffered and died on the cross as the Passover sacrifice. The blood that was splashed on the lintels of the houses of Jewish slaves in Egypt, preserving the life of first born sons, which is the life of the people, is the same as the blood of Yeshua which was shed to "cover" and mark believers and in a sense exempt them from the inevitability of spiritual death.  The tradition of sacrifice starts with Melchizedek and ends with Yeshua.  If you study, as I did, the Tales of the Hasidim (Martin Buber), you will find some almost exact mirrors to the parables used by Yeshua in teaching his followers, (especially so, the parable of the grain of wheat that must fall to the ground and die in order that it can bear fruit). I have attempted elsewhere in this blog to systematically note some of the parallels between stories of the Hasidim and the parables and teachings of Yeshua. I once attended a Kabbalah class where the teacher described Yeshua as a Rebbe who in his day was a master of the secret Kabbalah teachings. Not to put too fine a point on it, Yeshua is a Jew, and Yeshua is Israel, and Yeshua is Zion. 

So the impossibility of Israel and the impossibility of defining what is a Jew, cannot be spoken out loud, EVER:  

*That, a political nation state of Israel is, for metaphysical and spiritual reasons, impossible. It is equally impossible to deny a people their right to autonomous self-government and self-determination. 

*That, the beginning and the end of the world is with the Jewish people, at least in the West. About the East, I don't really know, but I am looking into it. (Searching for a unified field theory of religion). 

*That, the original Jewish Temple DID become transformed into the Catholic Christian church, and in doing so, salvation was extended from the Jews, who are the elders and the first born, to all people. In other words, Yeshua didn't make his Jewish followers into 'Christians', HE MADE NON-JEWISH BELIEVERS INTO JEWS... for salvation is through the Jews. 

*That, the descendants of the survivors of the Holocaust who now form the Israeli government under Bibi Netanyahu, (still, twelve years after I had that dream), and the supporters thereof, have dishonored the memory of those sacrificed ancestors by embracing militarism, authoritarianism, aggression, violation of human rights; adopting torture; succumbing to the temptations of racist nationalism and racial supremacy, in TOTAL violation of  Torah, Jewish humanism, the history of the world's persecution of the Jewish people, and humanity itself. And ultimately, right wing Israel is offending against the very G-d, Hashem, who created and anointed the Jewish people as His emissaries and the ultimate vehicle of holiness in the world. (Just as, I can add, Christian nationalists have also done). 

Although I have longed all my life for a Jewish interlocutor with whom to talk about these matters, it is impossible and will never happen.  Secular Jews would reject the metaphysical aspect, and Hasidim would scoff at any mention of Yeshua (or would not speak with me at all).  And so far I have not found any Messianic Jews to talk with, either. Unfortunately, the few Messianic Jews I have encountered are conservative, something I just cannot understand. Furthermore, I would be roasted alive by the woke mob to suggest that human suffering could even ever have a higher purpose in the order of things, which they take as condoning atrocity. That is how they think. But I don't care about that now.  My life as a Jew, so to speak, metaphorically, begins and ends with Yeshua my Jewish God and Saviour, and He is eternal. I once discussed the Messiah with a Rabbi online and asked him, when the Messiah comes, is he, the Rabbi, going to sit and argue who was right? (Was it Yeshua returning or Another arriving for the first time?)  When the Messiah comes, will it be appropriate to argue over who was right? One of the Hasidic tales poses the same question:  if an Angel of God is standing before you, are you gonna quibble? (I think it is interesting to note that Islamic prophecy also has Issa, that is, Yeshua, returning into the world.)

The logical outcome of these thoughts is that the Apocalypse may be arriving soon, or to put it more accurately "it's the end of the world as we know it." And it will start in the 'Holy Land'. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Running through my life are these bright gold and silver and crimson threads, the tapestry shot through w cobalt blue--  psychological, emotional, literary, historical, philosophical, political, metaphysical, and spiritual, that render practically my entire life in absorption with Judaism, the Jewish people, their culture and history.  Some of my best soul friends are turn of the last century Ashkenazi Jewish writers who wrote in Yiddish.  Even today, with the exception of far right wing Jewish nationalists and the Ultra Orthodox, I am far more attracted to Jews, both secular and pious, than I am to Christians. Watching 'The Chosen' tonight was like coming home. I believe so much in Jewish wisdom and teaching, yet I cannot embrace Jewish piety, for piety almost always seems to lead to inhumanity towards other people and I cannot accept that; I don't view inhumanity as holiness. I also don't believe that piety is equivalent to sanctity. Religion is far too comfortable with fascism. I am appalled at worldwide fascist movements, not just in America and Israel, but many other countries. Israel seems to be fulfilling prophecy on a daily basis, possibly in step with the advancing End of Days. I hope I am not here to witness the end of American democracy, which has already begun, or the total destruction of Israel, which process of self-annihilation has already started, but I am definitely  disillusioned with humanity, and I reject all notions of progress. There are only spiritual answers now, and spiritual solutions. Because this world is done. Amen 🙏

Israel Zangwill 

Theodor Herzl 

Depiction of Yeshua