Today is a catch-up day. My parents have been in Portland this week, so I've been hanging out with them, going to restaurants (eating good food -- Indian, Italian, sea food, coffee, cakes, deserts), driving all over the place (we went up to Canon Beach) and generally enjoying their company.

WARNING: WHAT IS WRITTEN BELOW IS AN EXTREMELY OFFENSIVE BIT OF PERSONAL MUSING ABOUT MY JEWISH HERITAGE. THESE ARE MY THOUGHTS ABOUT MY JUDAISM AT THIS PRESENT MOMENT. I DO NOT (AS IRONIC A THING TO SAY AS IT MIGHT BE) MEAN ANYTHING AGAINST ANY INDIVIDUALS BY WHAT IS WRITTEN BELOW. SINCE JUDAISM IS A VERY TOUCHY SUBJECT FOR MANY PEOPLE, I WOULD ENCOURAGE YOU NOT TO READ WHAT IS BELOW UNLESS YOU ALLOW ME MY OWN THOUGHTS AND ARE WILLING TO EXAMINE THEM WITHOUT DECIDING THAT I OUGHT TO BE STUCK ON THE END OF A SHARP STICK. WHY, ON ANOTHER NOTE, SHOULD I PRESENT THESE OPINIONS ON A PUBLIC WEBSITE AT ALL? BECAUSE THEY ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE AND WOULD BEAR MUCH FRUIT FROM PUBLIC SCRUTINY WHEREAS, CONGEALING IN PRIVATE, THEY MIGHT HARDEN INTO A PERMANENT AND REVOLTING MASS OF PREJUDICE.

I offended my sister. Some of my views about Judaism...and I was mad at her. So I said some things I shouldn't have...I called her a Jew. She called me a traitor. I suppose I am a traitor. There is still a sour taste in my mouth from this past summer, the Orthodox Jews...I hate them. I hate their closed in world, I hate their stupid doctrines, I hate their neat lives and their little community enclosed and bound by tradition in which there is no one room for anyone else nor for the real world. And by extension, I hate all Jews who make being Jewish a special part of their identity -- it's the religion I hate, the religion, the whole rotten idea of a chosen people. It is not necessary in the world today; it is deadly.

There are those who think that one can be Jewish without believing in God. I think that's nonsense -- Judaism was born out of the Hebrew Scriptures and the observation of the "commandments"; the Jewish heritage is membership in an exclusive group of xenophobes who fervently believed they were the chosen people of God and who brought (it is a painful thing for me to say, but I think, in some respects, true) the hatred of others upon them through their own intolerance. As a national policy in the Hellenistic period, the Hebrew religion did not work -- diplomacy was, to the Israelites, an unknown art, and hence their downfall. Since then, the Jewish religion (which is, I think, a reaction to rather than the continuation of the Israelite cult, in the same way that Christianity is a reaction to the Israelite cult) has been remarkably succesful at maintaining a series of widespread (diaspora) communities that have taken little direct part in the world around them and have consequently brought upon themselves, through separation in times when separation was not tolerable, much loss of life.

Of course, there have been and are legacies that I identify with, that I do not abhor. The idea of a messiah, of a teleological end in history, of a final justice and perfection in man -- this is not to be taken lightly. Whereas some peoples of the ancient world saw civilization and life as an inevitable decline from resplendent order into rough chaos, a few Israelite thinkers, the prophets, dared to reverse the course of history and projected sorrow into the past with the burning of the temple, joy into the future. They recreated God in the image of time, and it was time that would reveal to them the face of eternity. The idea of a God perpetually present and absent produced much and beautiful literature, and the peculiar virtue of the Jewish people has been an attachment and devotion to the study of that literature. Even more has been produced -- the Jews are perhaps a people of poets; recasting old traditions in new and ever more beautiful conceptions; Sinai gave way to the Torah, the Torah gave way to Kabbalah, Kabbalah gave way to the mystic doctrines of the Hassids...

But I don't like what I've seen of modern Judaism. We are enslaved to the past. Moses has superceded God, the Holocaust has weighed down on our creative spirit, we are perpetually afraid, and we draw into ourselves. The orthodox memorize their scriptures and set them out in great detail in charts, drawings; there is almost a scientific precision -- but purchased at the cost of wisdom! For them there is some joy in their communities and their timeless rituals, frozen perpetually in place, but what is there for the rest of us? Guilt. We are ashamed of our culture, which is easily reduced to caricatures; we are ashamed of our scriptures, which contain much that seems backward and out of this world; we are ashamed that we are not Christians, or that we are not Americans; or we are ashamed that we are too much Americans, too much Christians. We are outraged that we were persecuted; we are outraged at our ancestors for allowing themselves to be persecuted; we are outraged that the world associates us with wealth; we are outraged that we are so wealthy; and yet all our friends are Jews, and yet all we talk about is Judaism, and yet whenever we comes across the word Jew in a book, even when the words are scarlet with revulsion, we feel a secret delight. We love, we have always loved, the spotlight.

I don't like my legacy. Why is it that the biggest quandary for modern Jews is intermarriage and assimilation? Do they think Judaism will disappear? It is historical fact; it can never disappear; or if it disappears it goes the way of all flesh. And what loss if it does disappear? Do things not become irrelevant? Do they not die? Is it responsible to place oneself against the mainstream for the sake of preserving something that drew its identity from its opposition to the mainstream in the first place? Individuality for the sake of individuality? And I have to say, I am angry at the Jews. I am angry at the Orthodox for sticking out like a sore thumb; I am angry at the cultural Jews for sticking out like a sore thumb; I am angry that everybody knows who we are, because we are Jews. That everybody draws attention to us, because we are Jews. And why are we Jews? Because we said we were Jews! And what if I don't want to be a Jew?

Then I am still a Jew.

Once a Jew, always a Jew. Because the rest of my people desire so fervently to preserve their Judaism and are so ardently in the lime-light, Judaism will continue forever. And as long as it continues, my life is in danger. There have been many of us who have tried to separate ourselves from the mass, heading towards destruction. But it is in vain to struggle against a stampede without being swept away! As long as Judaism continues, then, I try to separate myself from it, deny it, get it out of my system. But for the very reason that I must deny it, I am not free from it. And despite my fervent desire to...to assimilate, to become part of the mainstream, to join in with the rest of the world, that very desire brands me, now and forever, a Jew. And what is a Jew?