There was a beautiful article in my hometown newspaper about mikvah. The article discussed the beauty of freeing oneself from the impurities of life, and how the mikvah wasn't being used by just religious married women, but women of all types - Jew, non-Jew, married, unmarried, lesbian, whatever.
While I am gratified that the popular culture has now decided to peek into religious Jewish life, I am also upset and saddened that it is with complete disregard and disrespect for our religion. Aren't the people who are doing this the same people who can tell you the complete history of the Dalai Lama, the reason behind each different facet of Islam, and how holy and complete the Hindu traditions are? Aren't these the same people who would make a national outcry at the idea that you didn't remove your shoes to enter a Shinto Temple? How can these bastions of PC and "spiritualism" come tramping into Jewish life like an ill-mannered, muddy dog might enter a white living room, dragging off this or that priceless gift from G-d to gnaw on at their leisure in the alley out back? What is it about Jewish traditions that draw the eye, but not the heart or the mind?
Perhaps, it is the same reason Arabs can steal the lives of young Jewish men and women, gunning them down in the streets or blowing them up, and these same people want us to surrender more land, more people, more traditions, more blood. Perhaps, it is the same reason people show up to minyan to mourn their dead, but they don't bother to live a Jewish life. So, why not go ahead and give Gaza to the Arabs, the Tomb of David to the Catholics, Kaballah to Madonna and our mikvahs to anyone who might want to swim a few spiritual laps? Who cares, right? I mean, our own people don't seem to care, so why should anyone else?
Take it all! Iran wants to wipe us from the map, George Bush wants to give up half of Jerusalem and Hevron, and Europe wants us to throw ourselves into the sea and give everything to the Arabs, so why don't we just do it? Why this slow painful process of flaying our flesh from the bones of Judaism when we could just destroy ourselves quickly and easily? We would be a martyr either way. And isn't that the only way that most Jews see themselves anyway - martyrs to the dead and artifacts of the past, rather than living, breathing, religious people with a future?
If we saw ourselves with a future, as more than a Holocaust memorial or the recollection people who escaped Egypt, maybe our Torah would be as revered as a Buddhist prayer wheel or a Celtic rune. Maybe if Jews actually cared, our people would already know Kaballah so well that Madonna wouldn't have to teach it to them. Maybe if our married women went to mikvah every month, then the attendant would have to politely deny entry to others because the schedule would be completely full. Maybe if we cared enough about our sons and daughters and our land, we would fill every square acre of available land in Israel, and fight to take the rest of our rightful heritage from strangers, instead of giving it away.
But we don't.
Look, right now, I'm writing from America. I'm not there. I'm as bad as every other Jew - you tell me every time I write how bad I am. I know. And what is it that you, who are writing to me, have not done? It isn't just me, after all. If so, it would be easy to fix. Each of us, every day, must work for the living future. Now is the time, at the start of the year, to make ourselves live again.
While I am gratified that the popular culture has now decided to peek into religious Jewish life, I am also upset and saddened that it is with complete disregard and disrespect for our religion. Aren't the people who are doing this the same people who can tell you the complete history of the Dalai Lama, the reason behind each different facet of Islam, and how holy and complete the Hindu traditions are? Aren't these the same people who would make a national outcry at the idea that you didn't remove your shoes to enter a Shinto Temple? How can these bastions of PC and "spiritualism" come tramping into Jewish life like an ill-mannered, muddy dog might enter a white living room, dragging off this or that priceless gift from G-d to gnaw on at their leisure in the alley out back? What is it about Jewish traditions that draw the eye, but not the heart or the mind?
Perhaps, it is the same reason Arabs can steal the lives of young Jewish men and women, gunning them down in the streets or blowing them up, and these same people want us to surrender more land, more people, more traditions, more blood. Perhaps, it is the same reason people show up to minyan to mourn their dead, but they don't bother to live a Jewish life. So, why not go ahead and give Gaza to the Arabs, the Tomb of David to the Catholics, Kaballah to Madonna and our mikvahs to anyone who might want to swim a few spiritual laps? Who cares, right? I mean, our own people don't seem to care, so why should anyone else?
Take it all! Iran wants to wipe us from the map, George Bush wants to give up half of Jerusalem and Hevron, and Europe wants us to throw ourselves into the sea and give everything to the Arabs, so why don't we just do it? Why this slow painful process of flaying our flesh from the bones of Judaism when we could just destroy ourselves quickly and easily? We would be a martyr either way. And isn't that the only way that most Jews see themselves anyway - martyrs to the dead and artifacts of the past, rather than living, breathing, religious people with a future?
If we saw ourselves with a future, as more than a Holocaust memorial or the recollection people who escaped Egypt, maybe our Torah would be as revered as a Buddhist prayer wheel or a Celtic rune. Maybe if Jews actually cared, our people would already know Kaballah so well that Madonna wouldn't have to teach it to them. Maybe if our married women went to mikvah every month, then the attendant would have to politely deny entry to others because the schedule would be completely full. Maybe if we cared enough about our sons and daughters and our land, we would fill every square acre of available land in Israel, and fight to take the rest of our rightful heritage from strangers, instead of giving it away.
But we don't.
Look, right now, I'm writing from America. I'm not there. I'm as bad as every other Jew - you tell me every time I write how bad I am. I know. And what is it that you, who are writing to me, have not done? It isn't just me, after all. If so, it would be easy to fix. Each of us, every day, must work for the living future. Now is the time, at the start of the year, to make ourselves live again.