Tag: learned

What I wish I’d known before I had to learn it.

To The Victor Goes the Printing Press

IT’S TRUE THAT THE VICTORS write history — but not all victors are dishonest. Ask yourself: Do they learn from, or at least admit, their mistakes? Trying to overcome one’s own Bad Self ™, personal or cultural, is a good sign that the necessary self-correctives are being observed. If not, dissent is not only patriotic: it’s a sacred duty.

Writing News: The Interview

HAVING LITERALLY AND FIGURATIVELY “DONE this in my sleep(1)” on occasion as ahem an award-winning reporter for the Sonoma Index-Tribune and Sonoma Sun (and freelancer for the Novato Advance, Petaluma Argus-Courier and The Bohemian) and being somewhat-to-greatly rankled by what passes for “news” these days outside of local outlets and the Daily Show, methinks it urgent to spread some of the skills needed to excel in The Game. Let’s start with the Interview. Continue reading “Writing News: The Interview”

Reb Cat’s Torah

FOR LOVE OF A CAT, one can become accustomed to gifts of mole and rat or parts thereof (and the subsequent carryings-out of their limp little forms).

Live baby birds are harder. Especially when they peep from inside the plastic bag you’ve automatically scooped them into. Best then to cradle them treeward in a makeshift nest and offer them to their parents, or to God. (Not that there’s much difference to a baby bird.)

This also works as metaphor; for when the cat leaps in the window, we’d better be prepared to cope, forgive, and paddle away from the moment as fast as the clock will let us. It’s not that cats intend to be cruel — for all I know, he was saying, “Look what I found! Heal it!” It’s just how they’re wired to see and respond to the world; in the same fashion (but along different lines) as ourselves.

The question is, “How far do you love?” And is there more than one answer?

Why I’m Not A Rabbi

IF YOU DIDN’T KNOW THAT I was once studying to become a rabbi, then you probably haven’t talked to me much during the last 10 years.

As detailed elsewhere, I returned to Judaism in 1997 after a whirlwind tour of the spiritual hinterlands and shortly afterward decided to go to rabbinic school. I was so in love with Torah learning, and so appalled by my childhood religious education, that I wanted to right a generationally shared wrong by teaching Torah to spiritual eclectics like myself.

Accordingly, in 2000 I became one of Reform Judaism’s Para-Rabbinic Fellows (and have since conducted several dozen services, including a handful of B’nei Mitzvah ceremonies). In 2001, I quit newspapering to start working toward the seminaries’ requisite bachelor’s degree.

Which brings us to the first of three reasons why I’m no longer studying to become a rabbi: seminarIES. Unlike the glorious ethnotheolegalism of our forebears, Judaism today (at least in the USA) is sorted into fragments according to how closely one adheres to Torah practice. That’s a big problem for someone who’s more in love with Torah than with the sorting process (and who doesn’t make an extracontextual distinction between “Torah” and “practice”), and doubly so that a rabbi sometimes must speak as a denominational representative.

But the fact is, I don’t like denominations. I like the people involved (though that’s true of most people I meet), but I don’t like that Orthodoxy often emphasizes the ritual over the ethical, or that Conservatism can’t seem to define itself as other than “not Orthodox.” I really don’t like that Reform unilaterally changed the rules of Jewish identity, or that Renewal replaces the Jewish intellectual tradition with tambourines and navel-gazing (more on this later), or that Reconstructionism (and other non-O denominations) is apparently driving away men through feminization of liturgy and the overall service “vibe.” And what I really, really, really, really, REALLY don’t like about denominations is the inherent smugness thereof and consequent sniping at “those other guys.”

My second reason for not becoming a rabbi: I’m too cranky, and rabbis shouldn’t be cranky. (We had an angry rabbi round these parts a few years back. I saw firsthand what that did to the congregation, and to him, before he mercifully removed himself.) I discovered my inner crankypants when my best friend died in late 2002. My life fell apart, and it took a couple years of therapy and medication to learn that one cannot easily balance a variety of vital social roles on something as tenuous as unresolved emotional issues. It seems to me a rabbi needs to exemplify solidity, or at least possess it, before helping other people find theirs.

Reason number three concerns the colossal ego needed by a writer versus the intense humility required of a rabbi. Since “humility” isn’t cringing and whinging so much as keeping a sense of perspective, the idea that I am one small, fragile, temporary mind out of billions seems more like common sense than despair. But as a writer, and thus potentially immortal, my ego is so large as to cause airplanes to dip in gravitic homage when they fly over my house. So deep I have to wear a life jacket whenever I’m around me. So high that even I can’t stack an appropriate metaphor against it. As Robert Anton Wilson said, “Most of the characteristics which make for success in writing are precisely those which we are all taught to repress … (like) the firm belief that you are an important person, that you are a lot smarter than most people, and that your ideas are so damned important that everyone should listen to you.” Essential characteristics of writers — religious leaders, not so much. (See above the bit about the angry rabbi.)

I’m not sure I’m smarter than most people — maybe those I used to write about in the police blotter. (Or maybe not.) But my ideas are so damned important that everyone should listen to me (hence this blog, among other things); and something about being the hub of all that attention tells me that it’s better centered on my keyboard than my services.

That said: I have not given up studying Torah, or sharing it with curious folks (Ann & I conduct a Torah study in our living room every Saturday morning that there aren’t synagogue services). I certainly haven’t given up trying to live like (my best understanding of) a Jew. But I have given up the idea of becoming a rabbi; and since I first announced my rabbinic aspirations in a newspaper column nine years ago — and since people still ask me — it seems only fair to publicize their reverse.

Thanks for reading this far. I’ll see you at the book signing!

Another Roadside Definition

FUNNY THING ABOUT DEFINING GOD: Despite the impossibility of the task, it does draw one’s imagination and eloquence (or directness, if you’re lucky). I made a stab at it in https://metaphorager.net/working-definition/, tried to understand my understanding in /four-points-of-contact/ and reflected on how I got there in /judaism-as-art/. But waking from a nice Shabbat nap this afternoon, the thought occurred:

“God is the face of the Universe looking back at us.” Continue reading “Another Roadside Definition”

Letter To A Dead Friend

Dear Sputnik,

James_Sputnik_Gjerde_1962-2002
James Sputnik Gjerde: 1/24/1962 - 12//27/2002
The attached photo of you arrived from a mutual friend two days ago, on what should have been your 48th birthday. I say “should” because it’s a primate conceit that the world be arranged according to our convenience. Were that the case, I’d likely be talking to you now, and about something differently substantial, instead of typing into some corner of the void you’re now a “part” of.

This is your famous, default and well-known “ohc’MON” expression which, although the photo is dated 1990, remained unchanged (though perhaps just a wee bit more crinkled around the eyes and soul) when you died in december of 2002, some seven years and a few lifetimes ago. The email which carried this photo also carried a few words typical of those for whom your death was — is — very difficult. I’ve written about it, and so has Ann — this groundbreaking (in the sense of earth-shattering, in the sense of a whole lot of people suddenly feeling the ground drop out from under us when we heard we’d no longer all sing, hike, complain, dream, contradict, listen, drum, dance, argue, plot, scheme, critique, criticize, comfort and sharpen together ever ever ever again) death of someone who was everyone’s best friend. They say things like “never before or since have I experienced such a profound personal loss,” “a sane freak, and you must understand that the term “freak” is a compliment” and “God, I miss that little sh*t!”

Anyway, you missed a few things — chief among which was that the lightsaber battle we wanted to see since we were 16 was far, FAR cooler than we EVER imagined, although it paled a bit given what’s become the cultural context of SFX in general. But on the other hand, that cultural context has become a lot more coarse than we thought it would back in the summer apartments of 1981 and 2 when we thought wulgarity for wulgarity’s sake was funny doody. Meanwhile: full frontal nudity isn’t yet on the MAJOR networks; the jetpack problem alas remains unsolved; our futuristic disaster scenario seems to be ecological rather than an alien menace (although don’t forget Apophis!); and you won’t believe what you can do with a cellphone nowadays.

In return, we missed you. Still do — me, mostly when I want to bounce an idea, or check a perspective, or gloat. And we will continue to miss you, despite this sudden, beyond-the-grave exhortation for all of us to get over it. You don’t know how tempting it is to lament that you left the party before it was over, raise a glass to absent friends, and collapse in a puddle of elegies — but you’d just flash that grin again, knowing that at some point in the future, we’ll either all meet again or something else as makes no difference.

I remain, Sir, your humble and obdurate Colleague,

BT Elder

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