All-or-Nothing Judaism

I know I haven't posted in a while. Things have been crazy here in Katrina-land, what with finishing my dissertation (yes, I am now Dr. Katrina), becoming more involved in wedding planning, and preparing to move to where TF lives.

One thing I have been doing since Pesach is reading a new (for me) category of blogs: OTD blogs. OTD is a TLA (three-letter acronym) for "off the derech (path)," an adjective referring to frum, i.e., Orthodox (and sometimes ultra-Orthodox) Jews who decide they don't want to be Orthodox anymore and actually act on it. Young people, especially those in their early twenties, are most represented on the OTD blogs I have seen. I am not saying that these blogs represent a statistically significant sample of anything, but it makes sense that frum people in their late teens and early twenties would be the most likely to leave the community. By then, some of their peers are already getting married, and once one is married and has children, it is harder to leave.

I have noticed a few traits that seem common among OTD'ers with blogs. These are not meant to be exhaustive, and of course they do not apply to everyone:

-- a feeling, from an early age according to the OTD'er, that something was not right or did not "fit"
-- a skeptical personality (not surprising, I suppose)
-- feelings of isolation, arising from the above two traits, because he or she thinks that he or she is alone in his/her feelings
-- parents who are either Ba'alei Teshuvah (BTs, Jews who became more Orthodox when adults, rather than being raised as such) or who went from Orthodox to ultra-Orthodox/Chareidi
-- difficulty with academics, especially Gemara (this especially applies to guys)

The above four, other than the BT thing, are probably causing you all to say "duh," but it is the fifth that really threw me for a loop:

-- rather than going from being ultra-Orthodox/Charedi to modern Orthodox, or from modern Orthodox to Conservative (the latter being exemplified by Tikkun Olam of Dov Bear fame), many of the OTD'ers totally abandon Judaism as a religion. They stop wearing yarmulkes or skirts, stop keeping kosher, stop praying, stop believing in God, and even marry non-Jews. I know it's strange to put the "even" before the marrying non-Jews and not before the agnosticism/atheism, but the intermarriage thing surprised me the most. (And don't get me started on the ex-Bais-Yaakov-girl from Brooklyn who converted to Catholicism; Catholic women, you see, can be faithful servants of God and still shake hands with men. No such option exists in Judaism, of course).

To be honest, the whole situation makes me very sad.

I think that it makes me sad at least in part because I spend so much time banging my head against the wall (metaphorically) trying to figure out how to reconcile Judaism and modernity. I can't figure out why they don't try. Those who go OTD after being Chareidi sometimes try modern Orthodoxy for a while, but then they quit.

Why?

This is the crux of my post.

Many of the bloggers were raised in a type of Chareidi Judaism that was so narrow, chumra-filled, and distrustful of the outside world that they only see two alternatives: continuing in that lifestyle or eating ham. That is all-or-nothing Judaism folks.

It is so unnecessary. Why are Jewish children being raised to think that eating chalav stam rather than chalav Yisrael (or a mainstream hechsher rather than a Chareidi hechsher)is like eating pork? Why are they being raised to believe that all non-Jews and non-frum Jews are evil? Why are they being taught that believing in evolution is tantamount to atheism? Why are young men told that learning Gemara full-time is the only acceptable way of life?

This is a recipe for disaster. The OTD bloggers write things like, "When I turned on a light on Shabbat and did not get immediately punished by God, I realized this whole Judaism thing was a farce." Or, "Once I started to question biblical chronology (e.g. of a 6,00-year-old world), I just lost my faith." Or, "I couldn't get up the courage to go to college until I left frumkeit altogether."

What a waste. In the community in which I live, there are educated Jews who observe Shabbat, keep kosher, and have advanced secular educations. Yes, many of the women wear pants and don't cover their hair, but that hardly seems like the worst outcome, given the above. We are people who want to observe mitzvot, marry Jews and build Jewish families, and study Torah. It sickens me to think that Chareidi rabbis would rather run the risk of their children eating pork with their non-Jewish spouses than expose them to the type of community where Jewish culture and modernity exist (albeit somewhat uneasily) side-by-side. I know that they do not think of things in those terms, but their actions are leading down this path.

That's all-or-nothing Judaism, folks. To borrow a word from the Chareidim, feh.

Quit Your Whining

One of my least favorite parts of Pesach* is liberal Jews whining about the parts of the Haggadah that they do not consider politically correct. When I say "liberal Jews," I am not speaking about political preferences, though there is some overlap, but rather about denominations. A liberal Jew, as I am using it, is a non-Orthodox Jew. Not all liberal Jews whine about this sort of thing. I am Conservadox, and I consider myself a liberal Jew, because sometimes I care about modernity more than halakhah (Jewish law), primarily on occasions when I deem a particular piece of halakhah stupid (DO NOT TRY THIS halakhic parsing AT HOME).
But I don't whine about the Haggadah, for a few reasons:

1. I know the context(s) in which it was written, i.e. a little before 1960. A friend who studies this kind of thing tells me that Shfoch Chamatchah (Pour out Your Wrath), one of the favorite targets of the Haggadah whiners, was added to the seder in the Middle Ages. If you were dodging Crusaders and blood libel accusations, how P.C. would you have been? And don't get me started on the Ten Plagues. If you think they weren't fair, don't come to the seder.
2. I'm not naive enough to think that everyone would like Jews if only we would be nice to them. Maybe in the ealry '90's, there was a brief period when I thought that. But I was 12. What was everyone else's excuse?
3. Unlike the people who go to one of the shuls around here, not to mention TF's minyan, I don't sit around all day trying to find the parts of the Torah and liturgy that "embarrass" me.

That may just beg the question of why people bother to get embarrassed at traditional Jewish liturgy, even if they are Conservative and would retch after five minutes of a Reform service, where, for better or worse, people try to deal with liturgical problems by changing the liturgy, not by complaining. I think it's because they don't understand the liturgy. This is understandable, especially in the case of the Hagaddah. We get two nights per year with no rabbi and one of the hardest texts in Judaism? Who thought that up? But if you don't understand, just say "I don't understand" instead of "I'm embarrassed." You're allowed to be human. Even if you have a Ph.D.

*no, it's not the eating matzah, the constipation, the cleaning, OR the three days without a hot shower, but thanks for playing.

Navel-Gazing Crap*

*how a favorite professor of mine once referred to superfluous personal reflection

What I learned about myself this week (and last week, if you really want to be technical):

--I should NOT drink more than half a beer at a sitting

--My interest in blogging has clearly faded. I even missed my own first blogoversary!

--It is no fun sending the perfect passive-aggressive e-mail to my advisor anymore (too easy and kind of eats away at the soul; how has my advisor been doing it to me for so long?)

--I am really bothered by Washington politicians wearing green ties on St. Patrick's Day unless: 1) they are from New York or Illinois; and/or 2) they are actually Irish. Can't we even get our pandering up to date, people? The Irish don't vote as a block anymore.

--It would be a good idea for me to try to take it a day at a time right now. Thinking two years ahead is helpful for dissertation organizing and writing and less helpful when times are busy,stressful, and uncertain

--Talking to someone about things that are bothering me is helpful, even if it is BFF, and everyone assumes I am telling her everything anyway (I'm not, but every little bit helps)

--Conservative Judaism pisses me off (ok, that's not new, but did you see the Voices of theUnited Synagogue's Pesach issue, which focused primarily on homosexuality and Conservative Judaism? It was wrong on so many levels. If you're gay or pro-Jewish-commitment-ceremony-and/or ordination, you could say, "So now you're just going to pretend that the movement has not spent all but the last year or so officially discriminating against gays?" And if you're anti, you could say, "Why didn't you provide a platform for people who did not agree with the teshuvot [responsa] on homosexuality to share their side of the story?")

--I've still got it in the last-minute-Purim-costume department

Nihilism and Dissertation Writing

I have eight weeks to finish a draft of my whole dissertation.

For you non-academic types out there, that is the equivalent of having 24 minutes to do your taxes from beginning to end. (Did I mention I am filing for an extension this year?).

It would say that it is overwhelming, but that would be an insult to "overwhelming."

I am faced with an age-old problem that afflicts all dissertation-writers, especially towards the end: To read or to write?

I have written drafts of 4 out of 5 chapters of my dissertation, and I just started drafting the fifth chapter. I also have to write an introduction and conclusion. On the one hand, that is not very much, but on the other, it is massive and life-consuming. I could write the whole thing without reading more than 10 books (reading doesn't really mean reading--it's more like consulting or skimming), and then it would be done, but it would kind of suck. Or I could go to the library and take out the 30 books on the list I spent the morning compiling, consult those, make another list, consult those, and never finish. Obviously, I will do neither. I am leaning towards taking out only the most important books and reading as little as I can until I have a draft of both the fifth chapter and the introduction. Then I will beef up my autobiography.

On another level, though, who cares? I don't know for sure, but it looks increasingly likely that I will not have any kind of academic job next year, unless I can scrounge up some adjuncting. TF and I won't starve (to supplement his income, I can tutor snotty rich kinds in a panoply of snotty subjects), but it's pretty humiliating for me. The job market has crashed, and who knows when it will recover? On one level it's not my fault, but I never hold myself up to those kinds of standards if I can hold myself up to higher ones.

I hear that people who get jobs just finish their dissertations in a rush and worry about them later, since the dissertation is meant to get you a job, not the other way around. But now I see it is really not that different for those who probably won't have jobs. This is especially the case if the job drought has the potential to be long-term. Who will ever read my dissertation if there are no jobs? I may publish some articles, but I won't try to publish a book if I don't make it in academia. So a few people who work on the same abstruse sh*t I do may look at it on an internet dissertation database. I doubt they care whether I have 2 or 4 sources in footnote 17. (Can you tell that I was up for a ritzy postdoc and didn't get it and am now bitter? Then you are very observant).

You also might say, "But, Katrina, this is just a defense mechanism. You are worried about finishing, so you get all nihilistic and convince yourself that how you finish doesn't matter. In doing so, you free yourself from your perfectionism enough to finish, march in the funny hat and robe, get married, move in with TF, make him dinner, have babies, etc." To which I say: "Duh."

But this wasn't what I had imagined for my life.

Score -24,876 for Jewish-Catholic Relations

I can't say it any better than this guy:

http://religionblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2009/01/pope-may-be-close-to-reinstati.html

Thoughts

I have not been blogging too much lately, and neither have many of the bloggers I read. I chalk this up to the overwhelming nature of the Gaza campaign and the difficulty of saying anything cogent about it. Blogging patterns are weird, though, so the drought could just be a fluke. In case anyone is interested in what I think about this and a few other issues, or is just bored by the overall lack of posts and wants a quick read, here are some thoughts:

Operation "Cast Lead": A stupid name, but a justified campaign. Israel can't just be expected to let Hamas fire rockets into its cities. I am worried, though. Even though the Israelis planned this out pretty thoroughly (a lesson learned from the Second Lebanon War), it's not clear what the endgame is. I doubt a satisfactory ceasefire can be reached, since that would require Hamas to abide by it. My guess is that the Israelis will continue until the Obama administration tells them to cut it out. I hope that they can do enough damage in that time seriously to undermine the rocket attacks. Of course, this will be seen as a loss for Israel by the majority of the world. It makes me sick how gleefully The New York Times and others report that, despite the carnage in Gaza, Hamas is still managing to get rockets off. Oh, what a knee-slapper! The Israelis are engaged in ground warfare, which is killing civilians, largely because Hamas is using them as human shields, and Hamas is still managing to terrorize northern Israel. That will show Israel . . . what, exactly?

On a related note. . . Israel's decision not to allow most foreign reporters into Gaza: I have mixed feelings. The Times and others keep running whiny stories about how much they want to go into Gaza, but then if someone gets hurt, that of course will be Israel's fault. (Remember that idiot BBC reporter who got kidnapped by Hamas and was still sympathetic to them? I will charitably diagnose him with Stockholm Syndrome). I don't really understand why reporters want to go into those kinds of war zones. These opinions compete with my (and TF's) conviction that reporters should be able to report on the news, even if it's really unpleasant. What do you guys think?

Valkyrie: I can't believe I have to say this, but movie reviews, both from the popular press and from academic sources, seem to necessitate it: 1) This is not just an ordinary suspense movie! It has a strong polemical message, so stop devoting the entire review to Tom Cruise's acting ability and the effectiveness of the climactic scene; 2) Some professor of German literature referred to Claus von Stauffenberg, the guy Cruise plays, as a "German officer." Give me a break. He was a Nazi. In what army was he an "officer?" Oh, right. The Wehrmacht. He and his co-conspirators did not try to kill the yemach shemo because they were humanitarian Jew-lovers. They did it because they thought he was a bad military commander which, fortunately for the non-genocidal-maniac-world, he was. I can't believe how desperate even educated (and over-educated) people are to find a serious German resistance to Nazism. If this is the best you guys can do . . .

Academic conferences: Don't agree to deliver two completely different papers in three weeks. That's just dumb.

Satmar: Blech. Double blech. I just discovered, through Frum Satire's blogroll, a new blog called Hasidic Feminist. It is the story of a woman who grew up Satmar in Williamsburg, educated herself by sneaking off to the public library, got married at 17, and, at some point, took her kids and ran. It is beautifully written, but the subject-matter is kind of horrifying, I have to warn you.

And, on a lighter note, I am reading a great book called The Northern Clemency. Check it out.

Two, Two, Two Memes in One!

I've been tagged! Yay! This makes me feel like a real part of the J-blogosphere. This may mean that someone occasionally reads my blog.

Anyway, according to Frum Single Female, who tagged me, here is the first meme:

Pick up the nearest book (physically) to you, turn to page 56, and write down the 2nd to 5th sentences.

Lucky for you guys, I am sitting on my bed, so the nearest book is the one I am reading now, David Foster Wallace's The Broom of the System. A blurb says this is metafiction (although I think Foster Wallace himself, may he rest in peace, may have hated that term) at its finest:

"Mr. Lunberg: The Great Ohio Desert.
"Governor: The Great Ohio Desert.
"Mr. Lunberg: Yes.
"Governor: Joe, a super name. I take my hat off to you."

Here is the second meme: "next state 7 facts about [yourself] and then tag others and link [to] them . . . and . . . leave a comment on their blog saying they've been tagged."

I read on another blog that some of the seven facts are supposed to be weird facts and/or details of your neuroses (oh, where do I start?), while others are supposed to be not-so-weird (ok, honestly, where do I start?). Here goes:

1. As you can tell from my punctuation and brackets in this post, I am a grammar freak (what David Foster Wallace called a SNOOT). If you think you are a bigger grammar freak than I, you are incorrect.

2. I schedule my life around the TV show House. Unless I have to be somewhere for grad school (ha!), I insist on watching it when it first airs. My parents, BFF, and TF know not to call me, and if they do by accident, or if someone else calls, I do not answer the phone.

3. My favorite sport to watch is American football.

4. I can recite the American presidents in order, and if you give me the number of a president (e.g., 23), I can tell you the president with a less than 5-second delay (e.g., Benjamin Harrison).

5. I don't like shopping for clothes.

6. My favorite food is chili.

7. I am a shameless punster and deliverer of one-liners.

Most of the people I am thinking of tagging have already been tagged. But I will tag: Knitter of Shiny Things, Miryam (Mama o' the Matrices), Apikorsus, Alg, Shira (On the Fringe), Michelle, and Sunkist Miss .