"Rome was a flea market of borrowed gods and conquered peoples, a bargain basement on two floors, earth and heaven."
--a character in Russian fiction
Showing posts with label Tisha b'Av. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tisha b'Av. Show all posts
02 July 2013
30 July 2012
Tisha b'Av
"We are twins," said G-d -- in a Midrash, I think. "I am not older than you. You are not older than me." Meaning: G-d and the Jewish people entered the world at the same time.
One of the twins is hiding.
It is curious that G-dliness is obscured in the world, that we mistake people for what they are not. This is an unnatural state for the world to be in.
Tolkien once identified the conflict in Lord of the Rings as between nature and machinery; that will do for an analogy.
Through most of the year, even the Three Weeks -- which so neatly align with vacation season -- it is hard to shake the impression that life, while not perfect, is about as good as it can be.
And then comes Tisha b'Av, which was yesterday, reminding us that there is infinitely more to it.
Tisha b'Av is the day when everyone sits on the floor and mourns that the world is still in this unnatural state, not as it should be. A kumzitz of the shipwrecked.
Tisha b'Av leads up to Elul, when we take steps to see what we can do about it.
One of the twins is hiding.
It is curious that G-dliness is obscured in the world, that we mistake people for what they are not. This is an unnatural state for the world to be in.
Tolkien once identified the conflict in Lord of the Rings as between nature and machinery; that will do for an analogy.
Through most of the year, even the Three Weeks -- which so neatly align with vacation season -- it is hard to shake the impression that life, while not perfect, is about as good as it can be.
And then comes Tisha b'Av, which was yesterday, reminding us that there is infinitely more to it.
Tisha b'Av is the day when everyone sits on the floor and mourns that the world is still in this unnatural state, not as it should be. A kumzitz of the shipwrecked.
Tisha b'Av leads up to Elul, when we take steps to see what we can do about it.
Ruskin on the Civil War
OK. I found the letter cited above. I am not a scholar of the Civil War, to agree or disagree - I don't have a good enough handle on popular thought in the 1800s - but Ruskin's critique is interesting.
John Ruskin was a 19th century English scholar of art and natural science, of whom I know very little.
Charles Norton writes that in person, Ruskin was a generous soul; but in his letters Ruskin is by turns melancholy and cutting. The best insult in his correspondence is reserved for certain political economists:
...the miserable wretches haven't brains enough to be prologue to an egg and butter.
This is Part II of the post on machlokes. Ruskin saw the same kind of self-deception in the Civil War:
Mornex, 10th February, 1863.
My Dear Norton---
. . . . It is no use talking about your war. . . . The miserablest idiocy of the whole has been your mixing up a fight for dominion. . . with a soi disant fight for liberty. If you want the slaves to go free, let their masters go free first, in God's name. If they don't like to be governed by you, let them govern themselves. Then, treating them as a stranger state, if you like to say, "You shall let that black fellow go, or" ---etc., as a brave boy would fight for another fag at Eton --- do so; but you know perfectly well no fight could be got up on those terms; and that this fight is partly for money, partly for vanity, partly. . . .for wild anarchy and the Devil's cause and crown, everywhere.
I should mention -- since one never knows how literate one's online audience is -- that certain words still in use meant something quite different in Victorian English.
__
It occurred to me when I posted about Chehalis that there is a curious contrast between Civil War reenactments, in which people assume the identities of historical figures to reenact historical events by way of recreation, and Tisha b'Av, which was yesterday, on which people sit down on the floor and weep over the disasters (which are still with us) of some 2000 years ago. Civil War reenactments are fairly impersonal, a day off from one's life as oneself. Jewish holidays are not -- we feel that we were there and still are, no reenactment necessary -- at least, not to the extent of Chehalis.
John Ruskin was a 19th century English scholar of art and natural science, of whom I know very little.
Charles Norton writes that in person, Ruskin was a generous soul; but in his letters Ruskin is by turns melancholy and cutting. The best insult in his correspondence is reserved for certain political economists:
...the miserable wretches haven't brains enough to be prologue to an egg and butter.
This is Part II of the post on machlokes. Ruskin saw the same kind of self-deception in the Civil War:
Mornex, 10th February, 1863.
My Dear Norton---
. . . . It is no use talking about your war. . . . The miserablest idiocy of the whole has been your mixing up a fight for dominion. . . with a soi disant fight for liberty. If you want the slaves to go free, let their masters go free first, in God's name. If they don't like to be governed by you, let them govern themselves. Then, treating them as a stranger state, if you like to say, "You shall let that black fellow go, or" ---etc., as a brave boy would fight for another fag at Eton --- do so; but you know perfectly well no fight could be got up on those terms; and that this fight is partly for money, partly for vanity, partly. . . .for wild anarchy and the Devil's cause and crown, everywhere.
I should mention -- since one never knows how literate one's online audience is -- that certain words still in use meant something quite different in Victorian English.
__
It occurred to me when I posted about Chehalis that there is a curious contrast between Civil War reenactments, in which people assume the identities of historical figures to reenact historical events by way of recreation, and Tisha b'Av, which was yesterday, on which people sit down on the floor and weep over the disasters (which are still with us) of some 2000 years ago. Civil War reenactments are fairly impersonal, a day off from one's life as oneself. Jewish holidays are not -- we feel that we were there and still are, no reenactment necessary -- at least, not to the extent of Chehalis.
25 June 2012
Back to the Wilderness!
We might be moving.
We don't know.
We might live in this apartment, where my daughter was born, for another year... or we might be overseas, with our books slowly following by ship like so many jolly right-to-left tars, by the end of the month.
I pick up the ironing pile and realize: it is futile to finish this. In another week it could all be balled up in a suitcase.
Or it might not.
I go to the grocery store and wonder: is it worth buying that much honey? We might not have time to use it.
Or we might.
I continue to recopy my address book, with all its little notes: S likes chocolate, Y likes popcorn, bring a story for the children, 11:00 is the middle of the evening, call us for anything, she won't bite your head off, and wonder: am I ever going to need these addresses, numbers, and notes again? Am I ever going to see any of these people again?
Should I be packing? Or not?
"How are you not short-circuiting?" my friend asked.
I think it's because we have no control over the situation. We don't have to make a decision. So there's really nothing I can do but daven and daydream about the possibilities.
"It's like a Choose Your Own Adventure book!" observed my neighbor.
"Right," I said, "but we don't get to choose!"
It's kind of exhilarating, actually.
It's Exile, but no one ever said we weren't still in Exile.
I am reminded of a dark joke I once heard from Rabbi B.
"You know why so many Jews are violinists, right?"
"No, why?"
"Because it's hard to run with a piano on your back."
We are running, but not from Russia to Poland.
We have it so easy.
I feel like... like we are going into Galus on the Atchison-Topeka & Santa Fe.
We don't know.
We might live in this apartment, where my daughter was born, for another year... or we might be overseas, with our books slowly following by ship like so many jolly right-to-left tars, by the end of the month.
I pick up the ironing pile and realize: it is futile to finish this. In another week it could all be balled up in a suitcase.
Or it might not.
I go to the grocery store and wonder: is it worth buying that much honey? We might not have time to use it.
Or we might.
I continue to recopy my address book, with all its little notes: S likes chocolate, Y likes popcorn, bring a story for the children, 11:00 is the middle of the evening, call us for anything, she won't bite your head off, and wonder: am I ever going to need these addresses, numbers, and notes again? Am I ever going to see any of these people again?
Should I be packing? Or not?
"How are you not short-circuiting?" my friend asked.
I think it's because we have no control over the situation. We don't have to make a decision. So there's really nothing I can do but daven and daydream about the possibilities.
"It's like a Choose Your Own Adventure book!" observed my neighbor.
"Right," I said, "but we don't get to choose!"
It's kind of exhilarating, actually.
It's Exile, but no one ever said we weren't still in Exile.
I am reminded of a dark joke I once heard from Rabbi B.
"You know why so many Jews are violinists, right?"
"No, why?"
"Because it's hard to run with a piano on your back."
We are running, but not from Russia to Poland.
We have it so easy.
I feel like... like we are going into Galus on the Atchison-Topeka & Santa Fe.
29 May 2012
Exalted Days
I think it is Rav Hutner who says that these days, the days between Shavuos and the 17th of Tammuz, are special days: the days of luchos rishonos.
...the days of the first tablets, which we received from Sinai.
Aye, we know the end of the story, how they had to be smashed.
But not yet.
...the days of the first tablets, which we received from Sinai.
Aye, we know the end of the story, how they had to be smashed.
But not yet.
01 April 2012
Kenneth Grahame on Cleaning for Pesach
Every Spring when I face the prospect of cleaning this apartment for Passover, the opening of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows comes to mind:
...but once we crack out the pails of suds and set to work, I take exception to Mole.
The first step to Springtime liberation is to finish the whitewashing -- not only to begin, but also to finish, and then we can toss the buckets in the air, yell Hang Whitewashing! and run out of Egypt. I have been thinking this over, and I believe spring-cleaning is a universal instinct, not to hamper us from getting out into the Spring, but as an integral part of how we participate in it. Spring has got to reach into every corner of this house; it is not enough to fling the brush on the floor and leave it.
Rebbe Nachman miBreslov says to take the troubling feeling of not having quite finished preparing for Pesach and turn it into a yearning for the Divine -- that this, too, is an integral part of Pesach -- nun bau dein Tempel schiere!
So, no fair quitting in the middle of whitewashing.
THE Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said, "Bother!" and "O blow!" and also "Hang spring-cleaning!" and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat. Something up above was calling him imperiously, and he made for the steep little tunnel which answered in his case to the gravelled carriage-drive owned by animals whose residences are nearer to the sun and air. So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged, and then he scrooged again and scrabbled and scratched and scraped, working busily with his little paws and muttering to himself, "Up we go! Up we go!" till at last, pop! his snout came out into the sunlight and he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow.
"This is fine!" he said to himself. "This is better than whitewashing!" The sunshine struck hot on his fur, soft breezes caressed his heated brow, and after the seclusion of the cellarage he had lived in so long the carol of happy birds fell on his dulled hearing almost like a shout. Jumping off all his four legs at once, in the joy of living and the delight of spring without its cleaning, he pursued his way across the meadow....
"This is fine!" he said to himself. "This is better than whitewashing!" The sunshine struck hot on his fur, soft breezes caressed his heated brow, and after the seclusion of the cellarage he had lived in so long the carol of happy birds fell on his dulled hearing almost like a shout. Jumping off all his four legs at once, in the joy of living and the delight of spring without its cleaning, he pursued his way across the meadow....
...but once we crack out the pails of suds and set to work, I take exception to Mole.
The first step to Springtime liberation is to finish the whitewashing -- not only to begin, but also to finish, and then we can toss the buckets in the air, yell Hang Whitewashing! and run out of Egypt. I have been thinking this over, and I believe spring-cleaning is a universal instinct, not to hamper us from getting out into the Spring, but as an integral part of how we participate in it. Spring has got to reach into every corner of this house; it is not enough to fling the brush on the floor and leave it.
Rebbe Nachman miBreslov says to take the troubling feeling of not having quite finished preparing for Pesach and turn it into a yearning for the Divine -- that this, too, is an integral part of Pesach -- nun bau dein Tempel schiere!
So, no fair quitting in the middle of whitewashing.
The 1912 Project, Titanic Fascination, Numenor, Murasaki, a Niggun and a Sigh.
One hundred years ago, 1,514 people drowned in the Atlantic, and many others were ruined financially.
In commemoration of this event, 400 dressmakers around the world are sewing themselves new outfits.
Does this strike anyone else as an odd memorial for the dead?
Titanic fascination is a very odd phenomenon, when you stop to think about it. It's not enough to say, "We love the glamour of the era." No -- you love the glamour of the era that sank to the bottom of the Atlantic.
It is glamour, depth, and tragedy all at once - like an opera! The clashier Western version of, the next best thing to, the sweet pain of Númenor (Where now are the Dúnedain, Elessar, Elessar?), or Elvish mourning over the swiftness of time, or the Japanese mono no aware (defined here)- which are subtler.
I have been trying to work out whether there is any similar idea in Judaism - that there is something lovely, lyrical, about entropy, the falling of the leaves, the passing of the generations. Sorrow is obviously not the same thing as depression, but I haven't found that we celebrate it in any way, any more than we celebrate any other characteristic of our relationship with the Eternal, knowing that it will eventually be turned inside-out to reveal joy.
Galus, galus, vie lang bist du...
...
!
The Vintage Pattern Lending Library has recruited 400 volunteer dressmakers to test vintage 1912 patterns. And all we have to do is sew and blog.
Although I doubt that this post is what they had in mind.
Free Edwardian patterns? Really? SIGN ME UP!
Thank you to the VPLL for coordinating the project.
In commemoration of this event, 400 dressmakers around the world are sewing themselves new outfits.
Does this strike anyone else as an odd memorial for the dead?
Titanic fascination is a very odd phenomenon, when you stop to think about it. It's not enough to say, "We love the glamour of the era." No -- you love the glamour of the era that sank to the bottom of the Atlantic.
It is glamour, depth, and tragedy all at once - like an opera! The clashier Western version of, the next best thing to, the sweet pain of Númenor (Where now are the Dúnedain, Elessar, Elessar?), or Elvish mourning over the swiftness of time, or the Japanese mono no aware (defined here)- which are subtler.
I have been trying to work out whether there is any similar idea in Judaism - that there is something lovely, lyrical, about entropy, the falling of the leaves, the passing of the generations. Sorrow is obviously not the same thing as depression, but I haven't found that we celebrate it in any way, any more than we celebrate any other characteristic of our relationship with the Eternal, knowing that it will eventually be turned inside-out to reveal joy.
Galus, galus, vie lang bist du...
...
!
The Vintage Pattern Lending Library has recruited 400 volunteer dressmakers to test vintage 1912 patterns. And all we have to do is sew and blog.
Although I doubt that this post is what they had in mind.
Free Edwardian patterns? Really? SIGN ME UP!
Thank you to the VPLL for coordinating the project.
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