2007

One of my readers recently sent me the You Tube video "Chinese Food on Christmas" (embedded below), complaining that although he'd received it from several Jewish friends, he found it to be anti-Semitic and figured that it must have been made by a self-hating Jew. He wanted to know what I thought. Besides the main theme of the video - the "tradition" of Jews eating Chinese food and going to the movies on Christmas (and then complaining that there's nothing else to do) - the video shows a number of arguably anti-Semitic images, such as a Jewish guy picking a penny up off the street, and a group of Jewish friends sneaking food into a movie theater. But as I explained to the reader, even though the Jews in the video are portrayed as being cheap, I personally didn't find it offensive; on the contrary, I think this was done out of Jewish pride and self-confidence, in order to reclaim the attacks that anti-Semites make. Basically, we'll make fun of ourselves before they do. And I get the humor: Growing up unobservant, I too ate Chinese food and went to the movies on Christmas and joked about it with my friends. But despite the joking, I actually found the video to be a little sad. That's because it reminded me that the average American Jew doesn't know enough to feel anything particularly deep or meaningful regarding his Judaism. Some Jews feel pride related to taking back stereotypes from anti-Semites; others take pride in Jewish culture, language, and food. My mom tried to instill Jewish pride in us kids by always mentioning the contributions that Jews have made to the world in areas like science, medicine, and the arts. And while there's nothing wrong with feeling Jewishly proud for any of these reasons, these reasons alone are rather superficial. If more Jews only got the chance to experience our rich, beautiful traditions, wisdom, and way of life for themselves, they would gain a tremendous sense of meaning and purpose, and experience a deeper, more transcendent Jewish pride than they had ever known. And no one would be left whining about how boring it is to be a Jew on Christmas because we'd all be plenty busy just being Jewish.

You know how like in sci-fi movies, people in the future are always wearing mylar? Well, I was just wondering when that's going to happen to us. Like when will we trade in our Levis for mylar? Because I'm pretty sure we're in the future. Yes, I know that we're technically in the present, but, you've got to admit, it's a pretty futuristic present. True, there still aren't flying cars, but there are cars that know how to park themselves. And Andy Warhol said that in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes - that's pretty much how it is now too. And I just saw this new device advertised on Facebook, called Live Scribe, which is a pen that records what you're hearing as you write it, but the futuristic part is that if you want to know what was being said at a particular time that you jotted down your notes, you just tap your pen on that section of notes, and the pen plays back the audio you're looking for. The paper itself, is somehow a computer, and if this is not a sign that we're in the future, I don't know what is. So other then my liking to talk about cool gadgets, what's the point of mentioning all this? I guess I'm wondering how a planet of people that's made so many breakthroughs in so many areas, could still have so many people missing the answer to the most basic of all questions: what are we doing here in the first place? In the past, one could argue that your average person was too busy working a field, trying to get food and stay warm to have any time to ask such lofty questions. But nowadays, in the Western world at least, most of us don't have to worry about our daily survival. Technology has given us the luxury of more time, but we seem to fill that extra time with more technology. Who can fit philosophical discourse into their schedule when they've got 1000 hours worth of songs to listen to on their I-pod, e-mails to answer and You Tube videos to watch? Even taxi cabs in New York City are now equipped with televisions. If the noise and the distractions never stop, when will there be time to consider the questions that matter most? While it's true that humanity has made unbelievable advances, especially in recent times, we must not lose sight of the fact that if we aren't able to answer the simplest of life's questions, none of the rest of it matters too much.

If you're reading this blog right now, you've either got some extra time on your hands, or you don't, but you're trying to avoid whatever it is you're supposed to be doing. You know who you are. Whatever your reason is for being here, if I could encourage you to dedicate an additional five minutes of your free or procrastination time to watching the video below, this post will be a lot more meaningful. (Note: the video will only make sense if you watch it until the end, but it's worth it.)

The video is called "Paint Jam" and has been viewed on You Tube over ten million times, mostly because the artist Dan Dunn has mad art skills, but maybe also because it conveys a deeper message. In the video, Dunn dances around as he paints a larger than life canvas with seemingly meaningless lines, splotches and squiggles. Although at first, I thought he was painting a dragon, the image quickly became as nonsensical as a Jackson Pollack.

The guy takes his time as he's doing this, the music switches, changing moods, speeds, and painting techniques. I actually got a little bored waiting for the pay off. And then about four and a half minutes into the video, he flips the canvas around and suddenly all those seemingly meaningless splotches and squiggles make total sense.

As I watched this, I realized that this canvas was a actually reflection of our lives. There are many times in life when we don't understand why certain events or situations happen. They seem unfair, pointless, not leading up to the goals we envision for ourselves. But we have to recognize that just as Dunn's painting was incomprehensible and his different paint strokes seemingly unrelated, in the end, given enough time and the right perspective it all made sense. In our lives, too, a Paint Jammer is at work.

What's the most basic thing you'd want to have with you if you jumped out of a plane? A parachute, of course. But according to this New York Times video I just saw, parachutes are so 2007.  Apparently a man named Jeb Corliss is hoping to be the first person ever to jump out of a helicopter without a parachute and survive. How you ask? Wearing something called a wing suit which looks like a cross between a monk, a flying squirrel, and Batman.

Now I'm not against the idea of technological advances. (People sometimes think that Orthodox Jews are like the Amish and shun technology but we only shun on Shabbos. During the rest of the week, most of us love it!) Technology is usually a good thing - it often makes life safer and more pleasant. The wing suit would obviously not fit into the "safer" category, though. There are also exploratory technological advances, like space travel, which although is dangerous and doesn't make life more pleasant, has an inherent Jewish value in that the more we understand the universe we live in, the more we can appreciate the One who made it. The wing suit doesn't accomplish that either.

So what is Corliss's reasoning for wanting to do this? Because, as he explains in the video, "people have never done it before and it's hard in this day and age to do something that's never been done before." Hmmm. Maybe that's what inspired the three-eared artist to get his surgery, but it's a pretty poor answer in my opinion - especially when the stakes are life and death and will require Corliss to raise $2 million to build a runway (and think of all the better ways that that money could be used - like buying eighty $25,000 desserts!)

There used to be a time when doing something first meant inventing the light bulb or finding the cure to polio, but if Corliss is right and most of the important firsts have been done already, then why not be the 98th million person to visit a sick friend or give charity? True, acts like these don't "make history" but they make the world a better place, and that's more than Bat-monk can say he's doing.

The closest I ever come to consuming gold happens around this time of year if I am too eager during my Chanukah gelt partakage and don't quite get the wrapper off in time for my first bite. But apparently, there are now some people who are trying to eat gold on purpose: A restaurant in New Year City has recently started serving a $25,000 dessert made up of 28 rare and exotic cocoas from around the world, whipped cream, black truffle shavings, and 23 karat edible gold.

I don't know about you, but it seems to me that something's not right if you have so much money to spare that you've begun eating it. Yes, it's true, I did grow up watching Scrooge McDuck on Duck Tales swim through his trove of gold coins, wishing it were me, but I was a child and it was a cartoon.

Now Judaism believes that you should enjoy yourself in this world. In fact, it says in the Jerusalem Talmud that if a person refuses to partake of the (kosher) physical pleasures that are offered to him here, he will be held accountable for it when he dies.

But with money as with all materialism, there's an appropriate way to utilize it so that we both enjoy it on a physical level and at the same time elevate it spiritually. For example, according to Jewish thought, it's OK to have a large, beautiful home if you fill it with guests and use the space that you've been blessed with to somehow help others.

Which brings us back to the gold eaters - if the Jewish ideal is to find a way to infuse materialism with spirituality in order to raise it up, then consuming, digesting, and evacuating it most certainly sends it in the wrong direction.

Well, I did it. In honor of the commencement of Chanukah, I ate nothing but latkes and donuts the entire day (plus my daily cup of coffee in the morning) and as gross and that sounds, and come to think of it, as gross as my stomach feels right now - I'm not exaggerating - that's really all I ate today.

So before I double over in pain, I'll leave you with a thought: This morning at my daughter's Chanukah party at school I had my first latke of the year. It was one of the pre-made frozen types and it was pretty decent - especially since it's been a year since I had my last latke.

But then this evening, I made a little Chanukah party with some friends, and there I made latkes from scratch. I peeled over a pound of potatoes, grated and then strained them. Next I took onions and scallions and pureed them, and by the time it was all mixed up with eggs, salt and pepper and ready to fry up, I was completely exhausted.

I placed heaping spoonfuls of latke mixture into the frying pan which took a while to heat up, but as soon as those suckers started to get crispy and brown, and I snagged my first taste, I realized that all the effort had been worth it.

Working hard to achieve greatness is not a new idea. (The Jewish way of saying it is "l'fum tzara agra" - according to the struggle is the reward.) But we live in a world of short cuts. We have no time or patience to cook half the time, so we do frozen dinners or takeout instead. We want quick downloads on our computers, the fastest transportation available, and we can't even watch an online video for more than a few minutes without getting bored.

And this is how people want their Judaism too. Most Jews today practice T.V. dinner Judaism. It's convenient, doesn't take much time or effort, but honestly, it doesn't offer much payback either, in terms of taste or value. The problem, though, is that the majority of Jews in the world have never even experienced the awesomeness of "home-cooked" Judaism. Trying to simply describe it in words would be like trying to explain what a gourmet meal tastes like to someone who's been eating only McDonald's his whole life! If you want to experience a truly delicious, rewarding, spiritually uplifting Judaism yourself, you've got to be willing to paschke a little bit first.

*latkes - fried potato pancakes customarily eaten on Chanukah

**to paschke - to work hard, toil over

**paschkes - things one must work hard or toil over

Blogs are a very interesting writing medium because, in my opinion, they're never actually finished. I don't know if anyone has noticed yet, but I have a habit of re-editing my blogs even after they've been posted. Before the invention of blogs, you couldn't do such a thing. You handed in a paper and that was that. You got your grade and you were done. Once you submitted an article to the New York Times, it was out of your hands, in hard paper form, for millions of people to see, whether you were happy with it or not. (At best you could get a note in the corrections section in the next printing if one of your facts were off, but no chance at re-working the piece.)

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