Intro Post, Part Three

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So, after our visit, we drove back to where I left my car; we went in my friend's car. On Monday, May 20, I took the day off to get stuff done at home in the morning & then drove off to the Israelite Samaritan neighborhood in Holon (one cul-de-sac street that they're starting to outgrow) to meet with an Israelite Samaritan gentleman with whom I have been emailing. I parked opposite one of their synagogues which looks just like one of ours except for the writing in their ancient Hebrew script.

We sat in his living room and spoke for several hours. I mainly asked questions about their beliefs & customs, and he answered. He and his wife are already grandparents (his wife was feeding & then putting to sleep one of their infant grandchildren) but he said about their views on family purity that, speaking from personal experience, that week in which the husband has to do everything gives the husband an insight into his wife's point-of-view and helps an Israelite Samaritan husband appreciate his wife all the more & not take her for granted. When I mentioned our extra five days, he said that in their view that borders on adding to the Torah (which the Torah itself says, more than once, is a big no-no). When I mentioned our view about building a fence around the Torah, he said a fence for what, to keep the Torah in or us out/away? He said that they see the Torah itself as their protective fence that doesn't need another fence. When I asked him if they use umbrellas on Shabbat, he smiled & said, "If it's raining, of course," and added that in their view an umbrella is an umbrella & not a kind of miniature portable tent. They reject the idea of an eruv ("Where is that written?") but will carry infants, prayer books, etc. on Shabbat, but not tools, phones, etc., the difference being, in their view, obvious. They do not fiddle with the calendar so that Yom Kippur, say, does not fall on a Friday or Sunday; if it does, it does & they deal with it. They wait six hours after eating meat before eating dairy, and vice-versa, but do not have separate dishes. Given that people generally eat off glass, china, glazed ceramic, etc. dishes, they simply wash the dishes very well & utterly reject the idea that the meat/dairy essence of the food can somehow be absorbed into the plate or baking dish (which is something else that seems lunatic to me). They also count the Omer from the first Saturday night that falls during Passover and honor the first of [the month of] Nisan as their New Year, not the first of Tishrei, the latter being a holyday for them and the start of the run-up to Yom Kippur, but not Rosh Hashanah. I must say that I find a certain logic and consistency (not to mention simplicity) to their plain-sense-of-the-text-based approach to the Torah (see a few paragraphs above for what I said about Oral Torah). They reject our slaughtering not because of anything wrong with the slaughtering per se but because we do not offer the right foreleg of every animal to a priest/cohen. BTW, their cohanim/priests are to them what our rabbis our to us (they'll cite Deuteronomy 17:9); they never developed a non-priestly spiritual leadership. And on Yom Kippur, everyone fasts, except nursing babies & those under doctor's orders not to. It's not dangerous & their kids get used to it I suppose; a person can get used to pretty much anything.

My host invited me to have lunch with him, home-made (by his wife) seasoned pasta. I saw that the pasta had chicken it. I recalled Hulin 3 and Hulin 4 where Rav Abayye says that we can accept Israelite Samaritan slaughtering provided that a Samaritan ate from the meat himself. My host was eating the same food I was, so I ate, with a clear conscience. (It was good.) I felt, I dunno, empowered by eating the chicken. I have not eaten treif meat since I decided to become frum and abhor the very thought. But to my mind, this was not treif.

My host gave me an Israelite Samaritan calendar, a few copies of their community newsletter & a little notebook for children learning to read their alphabet.

Where am I going with all this, with my newfound fascination with the Israelite Samaritans & their faith? At this stage I'mnot sure. Sometimes the point of a journey is the journey itself and not necessarily one's destination, assuming one ever arrives anywhere. A traveler simply travels and I'm enjoying myself so far. There is a beauty in their unity and a purity and simplicity in their approach to Torah that appeal to me. Now, I don't know how much of this is one doozy of a timhon levav-ish doubt with a good mixture of contrarian-ness and revulsion over our utter disunity thrown in. I mean is being an orthodox Jew merely my default program, and I'm borne along more by spiritual inertia than anything else? What fun, how exciting.

On June 6, I had a bizarre dream. I usually do not remember my dreams but this one was very vivid & I haven't been able to get it out of my head/heart. I dreamed that I was bitten by a snake. I dreamed that I was in our old neighborhood & that a small greenish-yellowish snake bit me on the right thigh.There was local swelling & discoloration. I did not feel systemic symptomns. I was wearing khaki shorts & the swelling & discoloration could not be seen by anyone. I knew it was there, I could feel it, but I had to either hike up the shorts or take them half-off to show anybody. I remember thinking that there was poison in my system but only I knew it was there.

I relate this to my ongoing spiritual confusion & my fascination with the Israelite Samaritans. I know what the snake symbolizes, a la Genesis, temptation, doubt, etc. Why our old neighborhood? Because when my colleague and I drove to Mt. Gerizim the Friday after Shavuot, we left from there. (I left my car there & we went in his car.) The snake's poison = doubt and that only I can feel it, that only I know it's there, the meaning of that is obvious. The doubt in my heart is apparent only to me; nobody else can tell.

About three weeks later, I dreamed that I was back in the city where I grew up in the US. I had to get to the center of town (I was on foot) and had to go through neighborhoods that I hardly ever went to but I had to go through them because they were on the shortest, the most direct route to the city center. I entered a vacant lot that was strewn with heaps of trash and could see the center of town looming in the distance. But there were various paths through the vacant lot, leading to various exits from it, and I wasn't sure which path to take. I tried one which seemed promising by was startled by the sight of a big snake, with mottled coloration, like a copperhead, moving through the piles of trash. I didn't see its head or its tail, only a section of its middle moving through the trash but I knew exactly what it was. I turned around and took another path that seemed to lead towards downtown...and then woke up when my alarm went off. Downtown represents my destination, where I need to go. The trash-strewn vacant lot is like a maze to be threaded, tho' I'm not sure what the trash represents. Does the snake still symbolize temptation? Is it a pitfall to be avoided or a challenge to be surmounted? Should I have continued on that path? And why did I see only part of the snake (not its head and not its tail)? This snake was much bigger than the one that bit me in my previous dream.

I had another dream, the third in this series, two weeks after that, in July. I dreamed that I was back in my Samaritan friend's home in Holon. It was Saturday, i.e. the Sabbath for both Jews & Israelite Samaritans. The young Israelite Samaritan that we spoke to back on April 23, on Mt. Gerizim, at their Passover offering, was also there. My younger friend welcomed me, like he expected to see me. I asked him how Sabbath morning prayers were (the main Israelite Samaritan Sabbath morning prayer service begins well before dawn); he clapped me on the shoulder and asked me when I would join them.

My Israelite Samaritan friend has invited to personally guide me around Mt. Gerizim. I'd love to take him up on his offer but part of me is kind of afraid to because maybe as an Israelite Samaritan asked Rabbi Ishmael, I should serve God on that mountain. That idea, to serve God on that mountain, i.e. Mt. Gerizim, the Israelite Samaritan's call to Rabbi Yishmael, has been echoing in my head.

I always say that running from temptation is no good because if you run from temptation, it'll just follow you, you have to turn and face it, and stare it down, and tell it to buzz off & show that it has no power over you. Now it is as if God has said, "You think it's that easy? You talk a good game but let's see how you actually play." And, like I said, I don't know whether it's my good impulse or my bad impulse (see above), or both, that's messing with me.

I must admit that I am very attracted to the Israelite Samaritan version of our faith (as I'll put it). As I said, there is a purity & a simplicity about their approach to Torah that appeals to me right now. Even their Mt.-Gerizim-and-not-the-Temple-Mount thing doesn't faze me so much. What does faze me is that I've become so blase about so much of what orthodox Judaism holds dear. That freaks me out a bit. OK, more than a bit.

I've become very jaded and cynical about a whole lot of things.

We Jews are so rancorously divided among ourselves and gratuitous hatred is having such a field day that it is gut-wrenching. The way Judaism is playing out in public life here (and the US) is sickening. No wonder the secular Israelis hate us. I've heard that it says somewhere in the Jerusalem Talmud that in every generation in which the Temple is not rebuilt it is as if in that generation it was destroyed. Well, if that's the case and given that our Sages say that the 2nd Temple was destroyed on account of gratuitous hatred among Jews, then this generation is hopeless & we certainly won't see it rebuilt any time soon.

To go back to something I said above. If, as I've concluded, much of what our sources (Mishna, Talmud and later works) say about them is false & based on prejudice, I'm wondering what else in those same sources is false (& maybe based on prejudice), given that said sources were written by fallible (learned, scholarly, maybe even saintly in some respects, but otherwise imperfect & fallible) human beings?? (I'll go more into the particular things that bug me in future posts.) This

 

There really isn't any dividing line between the Written Word and the Oral Law and Tradition. Because the Written word commands us that we shall do as the transmitters of Oral Law teach us...Our acceptance of Torah, Mitzvot [the commandments/precepts] and Halacha [Jewish law] is based on a complete faith, belief, trust, and confidence in G-d AND in those who teach us what G-d meant and who legislate Rabbinic law. Including the halachic authorities throughout the generations. Including those of our own time.
 

is from a well-known parsha sheet here in Israel. I find that while I do have "a complete faith, belief, trust, and confidence in God", I simply cannot sustain a similar "complete faith, belief, trust, and confidence in...those who teach us what God meant and who legislate Rabbinic law. Including the halachic authorities throughout the generations. Including those of our own time" anymore. This sounds to me an awful lot like the Catholic docrine of Papal infallibility. I cannot believe that God gave me a heart and a brain and now expects me not to use them and instead to just follow the herd like an automaton. I'm finding, as I go along, more and more things that I just cannot swallow (any more).

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