Here's a draft of my new screenplay about a (fictional) 2007 meeting of the most passionate activists engaged in the decades-long struggle to "Free Palestine!"
The suprise I missed about what is happening in Hebron is sobering to these sorts of spectator wranglings. Maybe something unexpected and hopeful is occuring.In the story we have let to us Hebron is where the first burial recorded occurs. And the first sale of land. Sarah, dead of the heart break of imagining a G-d who demands human sacrifice, and the sight of her lover accepting such, is buried there they say. Ishmael and Isaac meet there over Abraham's body. And Jacob and Esau over Isaac. May the body count cease and the meetings increase and spread out from there with these Sheikhs and this mayor. What do I know? It could be so.
The Jew Train mind experiment you describe is very foreign to me. One train. One track. A linear story. But I see, hear, and scent all of this as an entanglement within a plenum. Even the text is palimpsest of borrowings upon redactions, traditions of traditions to change traditions until it hits this a certain point in time and then tries to forget everyone besides the victors of the race to the printers. The heart of Jew-ing to me is re-membering both forward and back. If I am forced to imagine a single direction it isn't a train as much as a ride on the wings of Benjamin's Angel, back to progress, blown out of Eden and watching the ground of ruin expand behind Her as She is pushed on.
In any case, I of course reject completely what I think I here in your experiment that to follow after the ruins and remnants of the Rabbi Yeshua is to leave off being a Jew. Its a popular take among our people. And a supersessionist idea if you ask me. But then again I am a Jew who likes calf and trees in the high places. At many stages Jews have been written out of entanglement. At least since Josiah some would say it has been the national sport. And Christendom's work in that same gym? Blech....But I realize that is another tangent altogether.
In any case you have clarified enough for me to see plenty of common ground, more than enough to feed the herd of friendship. I feel more like being quiet on here about the whole subject and just listening for word at that cave mouth in Hebron.
I missed that news from Hebron. Just looked it up. Fascinating. I wonder if Rabbi Froman is watching this from the great beyond, and smiling. … And yes, Ishmael & Isaac, Jacob & Esau — those provide a far better foundation for a lasting peace (I think) than Oslo or Camp David or whatever emerges after Gaza.
Re: “imagining a G*d who demands human sacrifice, and the sight of her lover accepting such” — that’s one of the most gut-wrenching passages in scripture. But isn’t there a reading of this story that goes this way: *** Human sacrifice was extremely common back in the day. All the cool kids were doing it. Your god had no street cred unless the blood of the innocent was served up as an offering. And since we’re supposed to see continuity with the past as part of the Jewish narrative, all the way back to Eden, what better way to approach Abram than to say: ‘Yes, I’ve called you on a life-changing mission, but this isn’t a complete break from the past, as you can see with my demand for the sacrifice of your son.’” ***
The most important part of this story is that G*d makes the big break: “Hey! New plan! Put down the knife! We’re not gonna do the human sacrifice thing anymore.” … The important part isn’t what G*d says, it’s what He does: brings an end to child sacrifice. (The Jesus story feels like a bit of a step back on this policy, but that’s for another day.)
Re: “one train, one track” — I can understand why you respond this way. But I’m afraid in trying to make my point, I oversimplified. I don’t see the Story as one train, one track. More like a hundred trains on a hundred tracks, all with the same point of origin and all with the same destination. In between, different trains stop at different stations. I didn’t intend to render the image of one large locomotive barreling down only one track.
Re: “In any case, I of course reject completely what I think I here in your experiment that to follow after the ruins and remnants of the Rabbi Yeshua is to leave off being a Jew.” This sounds a lot like Messianic Judaism, which is not for me. To continue my (lame) metaphor from above... >> if the Jews were riding the Jew Trains for a thousand years, “Rabbi Yeshua” introduces an entirely different metaphor: “All the trains have finally arrived at their destination. There is nowhere else to go. Time to disembark, grab your bags, and follow Me.” To which I would say: “Rabbi Yeshua, where are you going? Where will we be heading if we get off the train to follow you?” To which RY might reply: “You no longer need to be ‘heading’ anywhere. I am the final destination, the end of the Story, the period at the end of the Abrahamic sentence.” >> I understand why someone who was NOT on the Jew Train would follow that itinerant preacher. But I would have stayed on the train. And many of our ancestors did — all the way to Buchenwald — and then we picked ourselves up and kept going, until 75 years ago, when we arrived home once again. I see why some people jump off the Sinai Network and start walking from Calvary, but I’m thankful beyond words that some of our ancestors stayed in their seats.
Re: “It's a popular take among our people. And a supersessionist idea if you ask me.” Here we certainly disagree. To decline to follow RY isn’t supersessionist, it’s additive. We are called to stay on the train that departed from Sinai Station. But if you choose to jump off and walk with RY, feel free. … To suggest that there’s only one way to arrive at our destination is a singularity that animates all supersessionist faiths, and I don’t think normative Judaism makes such a claim. At minimum, there's the Noahide idea; Maimonides is more expansive, seeing Christianity as a way to prepare the world for a monotheism that might one day usher in a messianic age. But any faith that approaches the Jew Train and says: “The ride ends here, people. Get off.” — that, to me, is supersessionism, which pops up in history over and over again.
I don't think anyone on the actual historical trains being jumped on here found that their ideas about Yeshua, plus or minus, were tickets out of Buchenwald. I reject messianic Judaism as I do most forms of Christianity as I find them for various reasons but I do find Jews like Etty Hillesum with stuff closer to home for me. They went to the same fates as the ones you imagine as more Jew than those Jews.
Your take sacrificial atonement regrading Yitzak and Calvary-ish theories of G-d needing blood to erase sin is well taken but not among the better theologies regarding the crucifixion. There are a fair few others that keep to the trajectory of both your story of Abram's G-d and the kabbalistic ideas like Tzim Tzum and other interrogations of power. Alan, with respect, you are only one here claiming Yeshua also got off the train. If there are so many trains out of SInai and Sinai is only one of the ways leaving Ur, (there are whole books of the Hebrew texts that seem to know little of Moses, Job for example), how do you know where exactly Yeshua is having lunch? I didn't and would never say that to decline to "follow Yeshua" is supersessionist or even that interesting to me as any kind of litmus test of Judaisms. I said imagining that all forms of suggesting Yeshua as Messiah or Messianic necessarily implies assent to a one train, one time to get off business is, I think, an error. I get that it is a disgusting habit of theology in much of Christendom. I just don't get the trust you show to their read of the mind of the Jew Jesus. If anything the stories about the guy underline he disappoints most every one who thinks they know what is up. He is not a tame Rabbi. But that is just me barking.
I am asherah over Jeremiah, I lean toward the ruminant shapes of G-d, Arendt over Scholem Benjamin over the Rambam and Moses, my Siddur is hand written from imagination after digging through the ruins of what was. I don't think there was any conquest of Canaan and truthfully I think I like Saul much better than David. I was literally expelled from Hebrew school twice. Mandelstam, Hillesum, Weil, Celan, Illich...all my favorite Yids are either conversos or apostate. A bad apple from the beginning. And I think its both bread and body, wine and blood. Some days one, some days another, some days all of the above.
But all this is admittedly inconsistent and haphazard. My only defense is I am doing the work and study to write a work (mostly for me) to come clear. This is not that. But your kind to talk back and forth with me as if there was something worth hearing. Maybe one day I can offer you something worth really discussing.
Real quick....No to fire burning Israel. My metaphor was an opening within a story burning itself ( in this case Islam) down to allow something old/new to come forth. Each to their own fire in their own field. I have some crazy stuff to attend to here but I could let that misunderstanding stay even for a minute. I am with you on that sort of prophet-ing about.
I think one measure that a story has taken ill is that it is no longer alive in the jaw, no longer in motion and symbiosis with fire around which it is told. Eventually it can die without a biome and become a citation in an ideology.
So I think there is story and there is story. And rarely the two meet because they are about very different loves and desires in the world.
So when I here the Ones, friend or stranger. speaking from their 'story' do I believe them? Good question.
I believe them when they speak of what they will do, who they hold as people and who they own as thing. I arm myself accordingly. I do not wish to become a thing. But neither do I wish to be part of a people of a story sickened to an ideology. But, to get to what you are fairly pointing do directly, I don't believe that this sick speech is Islam. And since I believe, maybe foolishly, that all humans carry receptors that long for living, moving stories I hold hope that even here something can come home.
I believe (some do not) that Ibn Arabi is also Islam.
"My heart becomes capable of all forms
For gazelles a pasture, and for monks a convent
I follow the religion of Love,
whichever path its caravans take
for love is my religion and faith."
Another name for a story gone down into stone is an idol. Islam might one day become a fire against this type of idol.
So I believe them on some things and arm accordingly and I don't believe them on others and watch the horizon for tellers of the living story, the cure for the dead and always specific to its own viral ancestry.
I hear you one the size of Israel.But you, who defend the living story of Judaism, know that this story doesn't recognize the scale of that map. Worlds, our stories teach, are upheld sometimes by a handful of the Just. How Jerusalem goes, it says, goes the cosmos. If our people do not turn back from this terror unto isolation and removal maybe they will finally convince one or two of the Lamed Vav to put their down their hands, to no longer uphold, but to destroy.
Celan dared to right after 67, despite past closing in, Say that Jerusalem is.
So many on here would have us believe that there is no way to that city without this murder now unfolding through the techniques of modern war, the kneeling of Daniel before the real Baal of this day. I hear you on everything you are saying...I think I do anyway. And do not pin you to that kneel. I think I see where you leave them but I don't always think your posts make that break as clear as I wish.
In the end of course, I don't really know Israel. Or Israelis. Or Palestinians.What we know of the actual genetic makeup of both sides and what we know of how ancient "Israel" actually came to be peopled (and I don't think Joshua had much to do with it) should make those terms at least questionable. But I do know a few loved ones who happen to have Arab ancestry long on that land enough to say that without their descendants Jerusalem isn't.
>> I believe them when they speak of what they will do, who they hold as people and who they own as thing. I arm myself accordingly. I do not wish to become a thing. But neither do I wish to be part of a people of a story sickened to an ideology. <<
Yes, I’m with you on this. My sense is the Jews are your people, that you throw in with them, until they have power. We were noble, moral, good when we were getting our heads bashed in. We had the moral high ground. But that eventually gets old. You tire of having so little control over your destiny. And so you reach for power to protect yourself. The question is: How do you handle that power?
A friend of mine said to me after October 7: "Israel should not strike back. They have the moral high ground and the entire world is behind them." In other words: People embrace dead Jews, but not Jews who fight back. Hamas might slaughter 1200 Jews, but world support is contingent on accepting that crucifixion. And last time I checked, that's not how our story goes.
I regularly do the following mind experiment: I’m Abraham’s best friend in high school, and I decide to follow him and his family into the wilderness in search of a better, more meaningful life. But something weird happens: Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, Isaac and Ishmael and the whole cast of characters live and die — but I don’t age and I never die. I’m alive and still with the Tribe when Jacob/Israel pops up (we’re in the same 8th grade class)… later I’m a slave with the Tribe in Egypt…. I follow Moses across the Sea to Sinai… I wander… I’m shoulder to shoulder with Joshua and Caleb as we enter the Land… and so on into history.
Question: When, if ever, should I abandon ship? When do I get off the Jew Train and say, “This is far enough. This has become a collection of idol worshippers, so I’m out.” When would you? Do you follow the Tribe to Babylon? Do you return to Jerusalem? When Jesus shows up, I imagine you’re right there for his weekly sermons… but after he dies, where do you go? Do you follow Paul into the Roman Empire to preach the gospel? What happens when Constantine acquires the Brand? Still on board? … What about when Muhammed shows up? Do you ride with him? Or head back to church? Or join back up with the Jews? … So on and so forth up to the present day. When, if ever, do you quit the story you began with Abraham, way back in the day? And if you do quit, where do you go? Do you try to start something new from scratch? Or do you just withdraw and say it’s hopeless, there is no fix to what ails us.
I’ve played this game many times in my head, and I usually land where I am right now — working with the material my parents handed to me, and trying to do the best I can with it. Someone needs to be a Jew, so why not me?
>> But, to get to what you are fairly pointing do directly, I don't believe that this sick speech is Islam. <<
I can’t describe and fairly characterize “Islam.” It’s too big and complicated for that. But it’s not tough to grasp what a certain subset of that club is aiming for. That subset — the guys in my “screenplay” — may have hijacked the faith, but again, they have guns and kill people. The question is what you do to protect yourself against them.
>> Another name for a story gone down into stone is an idol. Islam might one day become a fire against this type of idol. <<
Now you’re sounding like the sort of prophet who predicts that G*d will send “a wind from the East” to destroy Israel and teach it a lesson about idolatry. I’ve never cared for those prophets, mostly because they can imagine the carnage but not what comes after. Let's imagine that “Islam becomes a fire against this type of idol” — and Islam burns Israel to the ground. Then what? That’s a dead end, literally and narratively.
>> So I believe them on some things and arm accordingly… <<
“Arm accordingly?” Meaning what? … You and I have the immense luxury of distance. You in New England, me in Maryland. We wake up in a world that’s not yet on fire (but getting closer every day). Israelis and Palestinians inhabit a very different world, and “arm accordingly.”
>> How Jerusalem goes, it says, goes the cosmos. If our people do not turn back from this terror unto isolation and removal maybe they will finally convince one or two of the Lamed Vav to put their down their hands, to no longer uphold, but to destroy. <<
Yes, turn back from this terror. But it’s fair to say that another terror hovers in the distance, waiting to consume us. The Jews didn’t return after 2,000 years to get crucified again. And as Sam Harris has pointed out many times: If Hamas, Hezbollah, and the mullahs laid down their arms, the war would end; but if Israel laid down its arms, it would vanish.
>> I think I see where you leave them but I don't always think your posts make that break as clear as I wish. <<
Fair enough. I’ll try to remember that. I don’t believe Israel can shoot its way to safety, at least in the long term. The only path, or one of the few, that seems like a sustainable one was mapped out by Rabbi Menachem Froman. He understood the root of the conflict.
I see "arm accordingly" is a poor metaphor with real shooting running about elsewhere. I gotta leave off right now but I could see this turning into a useful back and forth. I like how you always grab the tail of the loose tiger in my language when I post from the hip. Tonight I will be home and will try to respond. On a keyboard. These tiny phone letters....
The Warren book certainly was a sensation, and I remember all the activity around it. Although I've never read it, I do believe he was asking the right question: "What on earth am I here for?" It's a question that will be with us as long as we are human.
I can see a real life scenario of this having taken place. Scary as f*ck, but totally believable. This is where I wonder if Calvin and his total depravity theory was spot on.
Come on, my friend. Many of the humans who happen to be Palestinian and are being buried in the rubble don't ride with these jackasses either. Quietly they call them the Old Men. Isn't possible that the activists have reduced complexity to ideology, that Hamas is a murderous cult, that Israel should live, AND the general approach of the Israeli State here is both inexcusable and a disaster for Judaism. I get that you are often with these posts pointing out the hubris and the disconnect of the River to the Sea cheer leading but really almost everything I see written in defense of Israel's actions of late relies on believing that Palestinians are complete Other, that they don't share the same soul and love of life that "we" do, and that every report of horrific civilian casualty is a lie. And not one of those tenets is even close to justifiable by the Torah or by basic human decency. I am missing you main thrust of these? Tell me. I see no side here that can be drawn by flag or passport or DNA that could hold my allegience.
Thanks for your message, and good to read your voice again. I’ve missed you…
Believe it or not, I agree with most everything you wrote. Thousands of innocent people have died. And I agree that what might be good for Israeli security doesn't bode well for Jews in the Diaspora or for Judaism. There seems to be a tradeoff: the safer the Israelis — that is, the more they kill the people who want to kill them — the riskier life becomes for diaspora Jews; and if the Israelis are willing to get crucified by the neighbors, then the safer life is for Diaspora Jews... for a while, anyway. Life seems to frequently revert to the very mean. And as Dara Horn has explained, people love dead Jews. (We've created an entire religion around one!)
Do I believe that Palestinians are the “complete Other”? No, of course not. I think that most of them are trapped between two sets of competing (wait for it)… narratives.
One is the secular story told by the PLO & friends. I'd trace this narrative back to the pan-Arab nationalists like Nasser. Arafat too was in this camp, I think. But years and years of “negotiations” and blowing up pizzerias didn’t move the Arab nationalist needle much, and after September 11, the center of gravity moved to an Islamist reading of the problem… and the solution. I think a strong case can be made that Palestinians in Gaza voted for Hamas because they had grown weary of the ineffectiveness and corruption of Arafat, Abbas, et al. So, they passed the torch to the Islamists, to see if they could get the job done.
You write: “I see no side here that can be drawn by flag or passport or DNA that could hold my allegiance.”
Yes, I get that. The problem it seems is those flags, all flags. What is nationalism if we are all created in the Divine Image? That, I think, is precisely the question that Israel has raised — now, as a nation-state, and for centuries as a wandering people who always refused to completely assimilate into whatever nation or kingdom was then home. We’ve *always* been that nation apart.
Why does Israel draw the ire of millions of people across the world? It’s not the mayhem and death because that happens everywhere. What infuriates people are the seemingly unanswerable questions that arise when you stare at Israel too long. It’s enough to drive us all crazy.
I have a good friend I’ve known for 40 years. We’ve always had a great relationship. But I can feel it beginning to fray whenever we get too close to this subject. Israel, Jews, the church, nationalism, identity -- they touch a nerve in her and in me that runs very deep. It’s a little like doing mushrooms and then staring into a mirror for five hours without a break. It’s unnerving. Scary, even. Better to get rid of the mirror and carry on scrolling through your Insta feed.
Re: my "screenplay" — I’m not demonizing the innocent people who are getting incinerated in this conflict. I’m shining a light on the big thinkers and doers who are telling and living a Story that thus far has colonized the world from Morocco to Indonesia. The nation-state of Israel was, is, and will remain a stick in their eye as long as the nation-state of Israel continues to exist. As for the crazies on the Israeli side? Their ambitions are geographically bounded, limited to an area the size of New Jersey… thank G*d.
All my blathering here on Substack right now focuses on the brilliance of the Islamists’ strategy. They know exactly what they’re doing, and are playing the very long game. I take their famous “we love death the way you love life” line quite seriously, not as the sentiment of the vast majority of Palestinians, but as the worldview of the Palestinians and Islamists with guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and, if they can get ‘em, nukes.
The nation-state of Israel could vanish today, and Hamas & Co. would be right back at it tomorrow morning. How do I know this? Because it’s spelled out in the Story they’re telling themselves, and I believe what they say. Do you?
-----
P.S. Islamist ambitions are also obvious when you look at their theater of operations. Why exactly is the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat fighting in Algeria? What the hell is Jemaah Islamiyah doing in Southeast Asia? This is not an Israel problem or a Jew problem. It's a Muhammad problem.
P.P.S. My post a few weeks ago about Anwar Al-Alawki focused on whether or not the Islamic Story could make room for a Jewish nation-state of any size in the eastern Mediterranean. His answer: No.
Hey Alan.
The suprise I missed about what is happening in Hebron is sobering to these sorts of spectator wranglings. Maybe something unexpected and hopeful is occuring.In the story we have let to us Hebron is where the first burial recorded occurs. And the first sale of land. Sarah, dead of the heart break of imagining a G-d who demands human sacrifice, and the sight of her lover accepting such, is buried there they say. Ishmael and Isaac meet there over Abraham's body. And Jacob and Esau over Isaac. May the body count cease and the meetings increase and spread out from there with these Sheikhs and this mayor. What do I know? It could be so.
The Jew Train mind experiment you describe is very foreign to me. One train. One track. A linear story. But I see, hear, and scent all of this as an entanglement within a plenum. Even the text is palimpsest of borrowings upon redactions, traditions of traditions to change traditions until it hits this a certain point in time and then tries to forget everyone besides the victors of the race to the printers. The heart of Jew-ing to me is re-membering both forward and back. If I am forced to imagine a single direction it isn't a train as much as a ride on the wings of Benjamin's Angel, back to progress, blown out of Eden and watching the ground of ruin expand behind Her as She is pushed on.
In any case, I of course reject completely what I think I here in your experiment that to follow after the ruins and remnants of the Rabbi Yeshua is to leave off being a Jew. Its a popular take among our people. And a supersessionist idea if you ask me. But then again I am a Jew who likes calf and trees in the high places. At many stages Jews have been written out of entanglement. At least since Josiah some would say it has been the national sport. And Christendom's work in that same gym? Blech....But I realize that is another tangent altogether.
In any case you have clarified enough for me to see plenty of common ground, more than enough to feed the herd of friendship. I feel more like being quiet on here about the whole subject and just listening for word at that cave mouth in Hebron.
Hi Andrew,
I missed that news from Hebron. Just looked it up. Fascinating. I wonder if Rabbi Froman is watching this from the great beyond, and smiling. … And yes, Ishmael & Isaac, Jacob & Esau — those provide a far better foundation for a lasting peace (I think) than Oslo or Camp David or whatever emerges after Gaza.
Re: “imagining a G*d who demands human sacrifice, and the sight of her lover accepting such” — that’s one of the most gut-wrenching passages in scripture. But isn’t there a reading of this story that goes this way: *** Human sacrifice was extremely common back in the day. All the cool kids were doing it. Your god had no street cred unless the blood of the innocent was served up as an offering. And since we’re supposed to see continuity with the past as part of the Jewish narrative, all the way back to Eden, what better way to approach Abram than to say: ‘Yes, I’ve called you on a life-changing mission, but this isn’t a complete break from the past, as you can see with my demand for the sacrifice of your son.’” ***
The most important part of this story is that G*d makes the big break: “Hey! New plan! Put down the knife! We’re not gonna do the human sacrifice thing anymore.” … The important part isn’t what G*d says, it’s what He does: brings an end to child sacrifice. (The Jesus story feels like a bit of a step back on this policy, but that’s for another day.)
Re: “one train, one track” — I can understand why you respond this way. But I’m afraid in trying to make my point, I oversimplified. I don’t see the Story as one train, one track. More like a hundred trains on a hundred tracks, all with the same point of origin and all with the same destination. In between, different trains stop at different stations. I didn’t intend to render the image of one large locomotive barreling down only one track.
Re: “In any case, I of course reject completely what I think I here in your experiment that to follow after the ruins and remnants of the Rabbi Yeshua is to leave off being a Jew.” This sounds a lot like Messianic Judaism, which is not for me. To continue my (lame) metaphor from above... >> if the Jews were riding the Jew Trains for a thousand years, “Rabbi Yeshua” introduces an entirely different metaphor: “All the trains have finally arrived at their destination. There is nowhere else to go. Time to disembark, grab your bags, and follow Me.” To which I would say: “Rabbi Yeshua, where are you going? Where will we be heading if we get off the train to follow you?” To which RY might reply: “You no longer need to be ‘heading’ anywhere. I am the final destination, the end of the Story, the period at the end of the Abrahamic sentence.” >> I understand why someone who was NOT on the Jew Train would follow that itinerant preacher. But I would have stayed on the train. And many of our ancestors did — all the way to Buchenwald — and then we picked ourselves up and kept going, until 75 years ago, when we arrived home once again. I see why some people jump off the Sinai Network and start walking from Calvary, but I’m thankful beyond words that some of our ancestors stayed in their seats.
Re: “It's a popular take among our people. And a supersessionist idea if you ask me.” Here we certainly disagree. To decline to follow RY isn’t supersessionist, it’s additive. We are called to stay on the train that departed from Sinai Station. But if you choose to jump off and walk with RY, feel free. … To suggest that there’s only one way to arrive at our destination is a singularity that animates all supersessionist faiths, and I don’t think normative Judaism makes such a claim. At minimum, there's the Noahide idea; Maimonides is more expansive, seeing Christianity as a way to prepare the world for a monotheism that might one day usher in a messianic age. But any faith that approaches the Jew Train and says: “The ride ends here, people. Get off.” — that, to me, is supersessionism, which pops up in history over and over again.
I don't think anyone on the actual historical trains being jumped on here found that their ideas about Yeshua, plus or minus, were tickets out of Buchenwald. I reject messianic Judaism as I do most forms of Christianity as I find them for various reasons but I do find Jews like Etty Hillesum with stuff closer to home for me. They went to the same fates as the ones you imagine as more Jew than those Jews.
Your take sacrificial atonement regrading Yitzak and Calvary-ish theories of G-d needing blood to erase sin is well taken but not among the better theologies regarding the crucifixion. There are a fair few others that keep to the trajectory of both your story of Abram's G-d and the kabbalistic ideas like Tzim Tzum and other interrogations of power. Alan, with respect, you are only one here claiming Yeshua also got off the train. If there are so many trains out of SInai and Sinai is only one of the ways leaving Ur, (there are whole books of the Hebrew texts that seem to know little of Moses, Job for example), how do you know where exactly Yeshua is having lunch? I didn't and would never say that to decline to "follow Yeshua" is supersessionist or even that interesting to me as any kind of litmus test of Judaisms. I said imagining that all forms of suggesting Yeshua as Messiah or Messianic necessarily implies assent to a one train, one time to get off business is, I think, an error. I get that it is a disgusting habit of theology in much of Christendom. I just don't get the trust you show to their read of the mind of the Jew Jesus. If anything the stories about the guy underline he disappoints most every one who thinks they know what is up. He is not a tame Rabbi. But that is just me barking.
I am asherah over Jeremiah, I lean toward the ruminant shapes of G-d, Arendt over Scholem Benjamin over the Rambam and Moses, my Siddur is hand written from imagination after digging through the ruins of what was. I don't think there was any conquest of Canaan and truthfully I think I like Saul much better than David. I was literally expelled from Hebrew school twice. Mandelstam, Hillesum, Weil, Celan, Illich...all my favorite Yids are either conversos or apostate. A bad apple from the beginning. And I think its both bread and body, wine and blood. Some days one, some days another, some days all of the above.
But all this is admittedly inconsistent and haphazard. My only defense is I am doing the work and study to write a work (mostly for me) to come clear. This is not that. But your kind to talk back and forth with me as if there was something worth hearing. Maybe one day I can offer you something worth really discussing.
You always have something worth discussing. Every single time.
I don’t have time for a long reply right now, but I want to share this:
https://open.substack.com/pub/maryfholley/p/christian-evangelism-of-the-jews
Real quick....No to fire burning Israel. My metaphor was an opening within a story burning itself ( in this case Islam) down to allow something old/new to come forth. Each to their own fire in their own field. I have some crazy stuff to attend to here but I could let that misunderstanding stay even for a minute. I am with you on that sort of prophet-ing about.
Hey Alan. I always like talking with you.
I think one measure that a story has taken ill is that it is no longer alive in the jaw, no longer in motion and symbiosis with fire around which it is told. Eventually it can die without a biome and become a citation in an ideology.
So I think there is story and there is story. And rarely the two meet because they are about very different loves and desires in the world.
So when I here the Ones, friend or stranger. speaking from their 'story' do I believe them? Good question.
I believe them when they speak of what they will do, who they hold as people and who they own as thing. I arm myself accordingly. I do not wish to become a thing. But neither do I wish to be part of a people of a story sickened to an ideology. But, to get to what you are fairly pointing do directly, I don't believe that this sick speech is Islam. And since I believe, maybe foolishly, that all humans carry receptors that long for living, moving stories I hold hope that even here something can come home.
I believe (some do not) that Ibn Arabi is also Islam.
"My heart becomes capable of all forms
For gazelles a pasture, and for monks a convent
I follow the religion of Love,
whichever path its caravans take
for love is my religion and faith."
Another name for a story gone down into stone is an idol. Islam might one day become a fire against this type of idol.
So I believe them on some things and arm accordingly and I don't believe them on others and watch the horizon for tellers of the living story, the cure for the dead and always specific to its own viral ancestry.
I hear you one the size of Israel.But you, who defend the living story of Judaism, know that this story doesn't recognize the scale of that map. Worlds, our stories teach, are upheld sometimes by a handful of the Just. How Jerusalem goes, it says, goes the cosmos. If our people do not turn back from this terror unto isolation and removal maybe they will finally convince one or two of the Lamed Vav to put their down their hands, to no longer uphold, but to destroy.
Celan dared to right after 67, despite past closing in, Say that Jerusalem is.
So many on here would have us believe that there is no way to that city without this murder now unfolding through the techniques of modern war, the kneeling of Daniel before the real Baal of this day. I hear you on everything you are saying...I think I do anyway. And do not pin you to that kneel. I think I see where you leave them but I don't always think your posts make that break as clear as I wish.
In the end of course, I don't really know Israel. Or Israelis. Or Palestinians.What we know of the actual genetic makeup of both sides and what we know of how ancient "Israel" actually came to be peopled (and I don't think Joshua had much to do with it) should make those terms at least questionable. But I do know a few loved ones who happen to have Arab ancestry long on that land enough to say that without their descendants Jerusalem isn't.
>> I believe them when they speak of what they will do, who they hold as people and who they own as thing. I arm myself accordingly. I do not wish to become a thing. But neither do I wish to be part of a people of a story sickened to an ideology. <<
Yes, I’m with you on this. My sense is the Jews are your people, that you throw in with them, until they have power. We were noble, moral, good when we were getting our heads bashed in. We had the moral high ground. But that eventually gets old. You tire of having so little control over your destiny. And so you reach for power to protect yourself. The question is: How do you handle that power?
A friend of mine said to me after October 7: "Israel should not strike back. They have the moral high ground and the entire world is behind them." In other words: People embrace dead Jews, but not Jews who fight back. Hamas might slaughter 1200 Jews, but world support is contingent on accepting that crucifixion. And last time I checked, that's not how our story goes.
I regularly do the following mind experiment: I’m Abraham’s best friend in high school, and I decide to follow him and his family into the wilderness in search of a better, more meaningful life. But something weird happens: Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, Isaac and Ishmael and the whole cast of characters live and die — but I don’t age and I never die. I’m alive and still with the Tribe when Jacob/Israel pops up (we’re in the same 8th grade class)… later I’m a slave with the Tribe in Egypt…. I follow Moses across the Sea to Sinai… I wander… I’m shoulder to shoulder with Joshua and Caleb as we enter the Land… and so on into history.
Question: When, if ever, should I abandon ship? When do I get off the Jew Train and say, “This is far enough. This has become a collection of idol worshippers, so I’m out.” When would you? Do you follow the Tribe to Babylon? Do you return to Jerusalem? When Jesus shows up, I imagine you’re right there for his weekly sermons… but after he dies, where do you go? Do you follow Paul into the Roman Empire to preach the gospel? What happens when Constantine acquires the Brand? Still on board? … What about when Muhammed shows up? Do you ride with him? Or head back to church? Or join back up with the Jews? … So on and so forth up to the present day. When, if ever, do you quit the story you began with Abraham, way back in the day? And if you do quit, where do you go? Do you try to start something new from scratch? Or do you just withdraw and say it’s hopeless, there is no fix to what ails us.
I’ve played this game many times in my head, and I usually land where I am right now — working with the material my parents handed to me, and trying to do the best I can with it. Someone needs to be a Jew, so why not me?
>> But, to get to what you are fairly pointing do directly, I don't believe that this sick speech is Islam. <<
I can’t describe and fairly characterize “Islam.” It’s too big and complicated for that. But it’s not tough to grasp what a certain subset of that club is aiming for. That subset — the guys in my “screenplay” — may have hijacked the faith, but again, they have guns and kill people. The question is what you do to protect yourself against them.
>> Another name for a story gone down into stone is an idol. Islam might one day become a fire against this type of idol. <<
Now you’re sounding like the sort of prophet who predicts that G*d will send “a wind from the East” to destroy Israel and teach it a lesson about idolatry. I’ve never cared for those prophets, mostly because they can imagine the carnage but not what comes after. Let's imagine that “Islam becomes a fire against this type of idol” — and Islam burns Israel to the ground. Then what? That’s a dead end, literally and narratively.
>> So I believe them on some things and arm accordingly… <<
“Arm accordingly?” Meaning what? … You and I have the immense luxury of distance. You in New England, me in Maryland. We wake up in a world that’s not yet on fire (but getting closer every day). Israelis and Palestinians inhabit a very different world, and “arm accordingly.”
>> How Jerusalem goes, it says, goes the cosmos. If our people do not turn back from this terror unto isolation and removal maybe they will finally convince one or two of the Lamed Vav to put their down their hands, to no longer uphold, but to destroy. <<
Yes, turn back from this terror. But it’s fair to say that another terror hovers in the distance, waiting to consume us. The Jews didn’t return after 2,000 years to get crucified again. And as Sam Harris has pointed out many times: If Hamas, Hezbollah, and the mullahs laid down their arms, the war would end; but if Israel laid down its arms, it would vanish.
>> I think I see where you leave them but I don't always think your posts make that break as clear as I wish. <<
Fair enough. I’ll try to remember that. I don’t believe Israel can shoot its way to safety, at least in the long term. The only path, or one of the few, that seems like a sustainable one was mapped out by Rabbi Menachem Froman. He understood the root of the conflict.
https://outofbabel.substack.com/p/rabbi-paratrooper-settler-peacemaker
All the best to you, my friend...
A
I see "arm accordingly" is a poor metaphor with real shooting running about elsewhere. I gotta leave off right now but I could see this turning into a useful back and forth. I like how you always grab the tail of the loose tiger in my language when I post from the hip. Tonight I will be home and will try to respond. On a keyboard. These tiny phone letters....
P.S. never read the Warren book. I rolled my eyes when I heard about it. Have you read that thing?
The Warren book certainly was a sensation, and I remember all the activity around it. Although I've never read it, I do believe he was asking the right question: "What on earth am I here for?" It's a question that will be with us as long as we are human.
I can see a real life scenario of this having taken place. Scary as f*ck, but totally believable. This is where I wonder if Calvin and his total depravity theory was spot on.
The Books of Calvin really should become part of the canon. :-)
Nah. Leaves no room for the good.
Come on, my friend. Many of the humans who happen to be Palestinian and are being buried in the rubble don't ride with these jackasses either. Quietly they call them the Old Men. Isn't possible that the activists have reduced complexity to ideology, that Hamas is a murderous cult, that Israel should live, AND the general approach of the Israeli State here is both inexcusable and a disaster for Judaism. I get that you are often with these posts pointing out the hubris and the disconnect of the River to the Sea cheer leading but really almost everything I see written in defense of Israel's actions of late relies on believing that Palestinians are complete Other, that they don't share the same soul and love of life that "we" do, and that every report of horrific civilian casualty is a lie. And not one of those tenets is even close to justifiable by the Torah or by basic human decency. I am missing you main thrust of these? Tell me. I see no side here that can be drawn by flag or passport or DNA that could hold my allegience.
Herz:
gib dich auch hier zu erkennen
hier, in der Mitte des Marktes.
Ruf's, das Shibboleth, hinaus
in die Fremde de Heimat:
Februar. No Pasaran,
Heart:
make yourself known even here,
in the midst of the market.
Cry out the shibboleth
into your homeland strangeness:
February. No Pasaran.
Celan
Peace to you Alan.
One day in Estremadura.
Andrew
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for your message, and good to read your voice again. I’ve missed you…
Believe it or not, I agree with most everything you wrote. Thousands of innocent people have died. And I agree that what might be good for Israeli security doesn't bode well for Jews in the Diaspora or for Judaism. There seems to be a tradeoff: the safer the Israelis — that is, the more they kill the people who want to kill them — the riskier life becomes for diaspora Jews; and if the Israelis are willing to get crucified by the neighbors, then the safer life is for Diaspora Jews... for a while, anyway. Life seems to frequently revert to the very mean. And as Dara Horn has explained, people love dead Jews. (We've created an entire religion around one!)
Do I believe that Palestinians are the “complete Other”? No, of course not. I think that most of them are trapped between two sets of competing (wait for it)… narratives.
One is the secular story told by the PLO & friends. I'd trace this narrative back to the pan-Arab nationalists like Nasser. Arafat too was in this camp, I think. But years and years of “negotiations” and blowing up pizzerias didn’t move the Arab nationalist needle much, and after September 11, the center of gravity moved to an Islamist reading of the problem… and the solution. I think a strong case can be made that Palestinians in Gaza voted for Hamas because they had grown weary of the ineffectiveness and corruption of Arafat, Abbas, et al. So, they passed the torch to the Islamists, to see if they could get the job done.
You write: “I see no side here that can be drawn by flag or passport or DNA that could hold my allegiance.”
Yes, I get that. The problem it seems is those flags, all flags. What is nationalism if we are all created in the Divine Image? That, I think, is precisely the question that Israel has raised — now, as a nation-state, and for centuries as a wandering people who always refused to completely assimilate into whatever nation or kingdom was then home. We’ve *always* been that nation apart.
Why does Israel draw the ire of millions of people across the world? It’s not the mayhem and death because that happens everywhere. What infuriates people are the seemingly unanswerable questions that arise when you stare at Israel too long. It’s enough to drive us all crazy.
I have a good friend I’ve known for 40 years. We’ve always had a great relationship. But I can feel it beginning to fray whenever we get too close to this subject. Israel, Jews, the church, nationalism, identity -- they touch a nerve in her and in me that runs very deep. It’s a little like doing mushrooms and then staring into a mirror for five hours without a break. It’s unnerving. Scary, even. Better to get rid of the mirror and carry on scrolling through your Insta feed.
Re: my "screenplay" — I’m not demonizing the innocent people who are getting incinerated in this conflict. I’m shining a light on the big thinkers and doers who are telling and living a Story that thus far has colonized the world from Morocco to Indonesia. The nation-state of Israel was, is, and will remain a stick in their eye as long as the nation-state of Israel continues to exist. As for the crazies on the Israeli side? Their ambitions are geographically bounded, limited to an area the size of New Jersey… thank G*d.
All my blathering here on Substack right now focuses on the brilliance of the Islamists’ strategy. They know exactly what they’re doing, and are playing the very long game. I take their famous “we love death the way you love life” line quite seriously, not as the sentiment of the vast majority of Palestinians, but as the worldview of the Palestinians and Islamists with guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and, if they can get ‘em, nukes.
The nation-state of Israel could vanish today, and Hamas & Co. would be right back at it tomorrow morning. How do I know this? Because it’s spelled out in the Story they’re telling themselves, and I believe what they say. Do you?
-----
P.S. Islamist ambitions are also obvious when you look at their theater of operations. Why exactly is the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat fighting in Algeria? What the hell is Jemaah Islamiyah doing in Southeast Asia? This is not an Israel problem or a Jew problem. It's a Muhammad problem.
P.P.S. My post a few weeks ago about Anwar Al-Alawki focused on whether or not the Islamic Story could make room for a Jewish nation-state of any size in the eastern Mediterranean. His answer: No.