Intro Post, Part Four

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About that Mt.-Gerizim-and-not-the-Temple-Mount thing. One of the things that both attracts me to Mt. Gerizim (aside from its incredible beauty, far more pristine than the Temple Mount, you can actually hear yourself think up there) and puts me off about it is that the Israelite Samaritans have it all to themselves. Nobody (i.e. 900 zillion Muslims) is fighting with them over it. They have it all to themselves and can worship God there as they please, whenever they please. In Chinese astrology (I believe that astrology is utter male bovine excrement but it can be fun), I was born in the Year of the Rabbit; I'm a Water Rabbit to be exact. We Rabbits, "dislike fighting and aggression, prefering instead to find solutions through compromise and negotiation." We Rabbits are sensitive, moody and stubborn. Water Rabbits have an even greater, "natural inclination to avoid conflict." Now, am I attracted to Mt. Gerizim (and the Israelite Samaritans in general, see the paragraph above: "We are so rancorously...") because I dislike fighting and aggression, am sensitive, moody and stubborn, and have a natural inclination to avoid conflict? If so, then I think it is my bad impulse that is pulling me there and I do have the venom of doubt in my system. If not, then, well, like I said, I have much yet to study and must follow this journey where it goes, and it is only my bad impulse which is telling me I have venom in my system. That my good impulse could be pushing me to explore Mt. Gerizim (figuratively) was at first kind of scary but is becoming less so.

Last autumn, as we read & re-read the first part of the final regular portion of the Torah on Monday and Thursday morning & Shabbat afternoon in the run-up to Shemini Atzeret / Simchat Torah, we repeated Deuteronomy 33:15 alot. The last two words are givot olam -- timeless/everlasting/eternal hills. As I noted above, when my colleague & I went to Mt. Gerizim back in May, "I crouched down and ran my hands over the almost flat stretch of rock [which the Israelite Samaritans call Givot Olam and which they revere as the site of the altar of the Tabernacle], that was very cool." So every time we read that verse last autumn, I ran my hands over the bare rock which I could almost feel. I remember in the excellent movie "Witness" (with Harrison Ford & Kelly McGillis) how the old Amish grandfather told his young grandson "What you take into your hands, you take into your heart." It's like Mt Gerizim is in my heart. It's as if my hands remember how Givot Olam felt. I don't know how else to explain it but there was a definite presence on Mt. Gerizim. For all its stillness, the spirituality of the place positively crackled. And I keep hearing the words "Worship God on this mountain."

In John 4:20 the Israelite Samaritan woman tells Jesus, "Our fathers worshipped God on this mountain [i.e. Mt Gerizim]..." My Israelite Samaritan friend says that by "Our fathers," she means the ancestors of Israelite Samaritans and Jews. She wouldn't mean the former only because that would be obvious. She means that both Israelite Samaritans and Jews were once one peope that worshipped God on Mt. Gerizim before we Jews broke away to focus on Shilo and then Jerusalem. Much food for thought here (though it's giving me much spiritual indigestion of late).
 
Aside #1: I need all this??!! Like indigestion. Things were a lot easier, I didn't feel such spiritual turmoil back when I was comfortably numb (to quote Pink Floyd). For a while I tried to ignore it in the hope that it would go away. But it didn't.
 
I have ordered this edition of the Israelite Samaritan Torah in English translation (alongside the English of our version), as well as this collection of essays by two Israelite Samaritan High Priests explaining their faith. One little voice (yetzer hara? yetzer hatov?) told me not to order the books and another one  (yetzer hara? yetzer hatov?) said, "Go, do it." They should arrive any day. I can't wait. We live in an entirely religious area. Our friends and neighbors would think I'm a lunatic or a heretic or both if they knew where my mind/heart/neshama is right now. I won't keep the books on our bookshelves (where guests could see them) and I'll have to be careful about reading them on the bus to and from work. My sly, double life. I suppose this borders on the sad & pitiful but I don't see that I have much choice.  

So, we went to the Western Wall a few weeks ago for a friend's son's bar mitzvah and I felt like it was just another place. I contrasted the grandiosity of the Temples that stood there, huge monumental buildings, with the simplicity of a tent (i.e. the Mishkan, according to the Israelite Samaritans) stretched over the bare rock of Givat Olam. (Quoth Thoreau: "Our lives are frittered away by detail; simplify, simplify, simplify.") For me at least, the latter is a much bigger draw; I find the former off-putting. (Who needs the big, grandiose, colossal buildings? God or our us?)

I even wrote a haiku about Givot Olam:

 

Windswept mountaintop
tear-cracked patch of barren rock
long scorned, Heaven's gate
 

Our Israelite Samaritan friend told us on April 23, "We're the ultimate Zionists. We never left the Land of Israel. You went to the four corners of the earth." And I reply in my head ('cause I didn't tell him at the time), "Yeah, but God Himself sent us to the four corners of the earth." And he replies to me in my head, "Yeah, but He didn't tell you to stay there." I can only admire the Israelite Samaritans over the centuries for being willing to endure abject poverty, humiliation and degradation to cling to the Land of Israel. This is Zionism, of the kind that members of, say, the Zionist Organization of America, who limit their "Zionism" to words don't know a thing about.

Back to the tzniut in dress thing. I stand by my remarks above. We have gone way, way overboard in this regard (whether by "pure" halachah per se or by social pressure is, I think, beside the point). As far as tzniut is concerned, there has ben a creeping haredization of the national religious / modern orthodox "camp" here in Israel in dress. Girls at the torani primary school here (boys are in a separate building) will get a note to their parents if any skin is visible between the tops of their socks and the hems of their long skirts or if they wear sandals (even with socks). This is beyond ludicrous!

A while back we went to a bat mitzvah dinner for the daughter of very good friends of ours at the local yeshiva high school. At one point, all the men were asked to go downstairs & outside to the school plaza to daven ma'ariv and becausde the bat mitzvah girl was going to sing. (We could hear her very well where we were.) To suggest, hint or believe that I could have been aroused by a 12-year-old girl's voice is both asinine and insulting (to me as both a Jew and a man). On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, we listened to Yehudit Ravitz & Sarit Hadad singing selichot. Was I aroused? Quoth Joan Rivers, puh-leeze. I really think we have lost our way here.

 

This past Rosh Hashanah, I was looking at the section of the Mishnah on Rosh Hashanah in my machzor. I marvel that the Torah mitzva of Shabbat was overriden by our Sages who allowed witnesses traveling to the Sanhedrin to attest to having seen the new moon to violate Shabbat in so many ways (and tell the dayanim what they already knew!) on the basis of their (our Sages) interpretation of Leviticus 23:2; to my chutzpadik mind, this seems very, very, very weak.

 

I stopped saying Bameh madlikin as part of kabbalat Shabbat because I cannot accept the mishna which says that women die in childbirth becausethey neglect challah, niddah & candle-lighting. Such as we (i.e. flesh-and-blood) can know why God takes a person's life??!! Again, I just cannot accept this simplistic view. Life and faith are never that clear-cut.

 

I also wrote:

Once the fence inspired awe
now I run atop the posts.
I could very well fall
but at least I'm alive.
I can tell because
the fencetop pricks my feet

Others see green grass
but I see weeds;
hallowed ground for them,
hollow ground for me
where my feet grow heavy
on the old familiar paths.
 

A responsible adult?
Ha! What of my family
if I lose my balance
and, tumbling, pull them down?
So I must pretend and fool the world.
If I could only fool myself.
 

I know the world is hollow
but I fear to touch the sky
lest it shatter
and my family be caught in the wreckage.
So on I run, well-balanced,
but at least my feet hurt

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The "fence" I refer to, of course, is the orthodox Jewish concept of "putting a fence around the Torah" to protect it as per the Talmudic dictum "The oral tradition is a protective fence for the Torah." And you will, of course, note the Star Trek reference. (Click here for a rewritten version.)

 

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