The Nature of Connection, Part 1

It's an occupational hazard at this point...I spend a lot of my time wondering about people. I wonder why singles choose to date who they choose to date. I wonder why middle-aged men on the beaches of Tel Aviv think Speedos are a good idea. I wonder about track suits that make that swishy noise when the legs they contain rub together. I wonder how people interpret language and tone and body language and all those other things that are supposedly my bread and butter, but of which I clearly lack a clear grasp. I wonder about activism, and if a drop of water in a huge bucket makes any kind of difference in easing a literal or figurative thirst. I wonder about the line between platonic love, and the other kind. I wonder if what people proclaim is important is really what they feel most connected to in their hearts. I wonder if confidence is ever true, or if it always masks an insecurity. I wonder if men and women are too different for either to every really fully understand the other. I wonder if words joined in sentences have any lasting power. I wonder if I'm every going to be fully stable as a freelancer. I wonder why everyone thinks they deserve to get something for nothing. I wonder if religious spirituality is truly a goal that elevates the human self, or if religious connection emerges from participation in the support structure and within the context and comfort of community.

Years ago, I went to Camp Ramah. As did Jay Michaelson, the founder and editor of Zeek (and an FOM--Friend of Mobius, from Jewschool). And Michaelson's recent World Jewish Digest column, "How We Connect: Surface and Substance in Jewish Continuity," really reached out through the computer screen and grabbed something in my soul, not just because I knew him, but because his writing is--as it always was--smart and beautiful.

Michaelson relates that one of his former campers/students recently thanked Jay for changing his life. This started him thinking about what creates lifechanging Jewish experiences. It's not new marketing for the same "shopworn product," he says:

The difference between the meaningful and the meaningless is the distinction critic Clement Greenberg drew between real art and kitsch: real culture is ever-changing, ever-challenging, and deep. Kitsch is static, reassuring, and shallow. Deep experiences work, whether they are Birthright trips, summer camps (“Camp is one of the only things we’ve done right,” according to one prominent leader in the Conservative movement, who asked not to be identified), education, meaningful political activism, or culture— magazines, music, theater—created not by focus groups but by actual artists. Shallow experiences, on the other hand, rarely connect.

It's the holistic experiences that are the key, Michaelson says. But the problem is that such "deep experiences are often open and somewhat anarchic," he says, and prompt a life-change.

I remember when I first saw experimental musician John Zorn’s Masada trio play at Tonic, a wonderful, run-down venue on the Lower East Side. This was before Lansky Lounge took over Ratner’s, before New York’s East Village was safe. The trio played inflections taken from klezmer, but made new by Zorn’s unorthodox arrangements and juxtapositions. There was something real then, in those delicious minor keys, not unlike the reality of love itself, or the memory of mist rising off a rural lake when I, a lonely 13-year-old, hiked by myself to the outskirts of Camp Ramah and had my first intimations of the infinite. I knew, then as now, that these teachings I’d unwillingly inherited were like tools, able to peel back the layers of artifice and disclose the barest truths of reality itself. And I knew I wanted to share them with others.

I pray for that moment of clarity and divinity, the one in which it is clear to me that what I've inherited is a map to my future self. I often feel like those puzzle boxes that used to infuriate me when I was a kid...worse than the Rubik's Cube, the solution of which always felt pointless. These puzzles, if you could assemble them properly, would reveal a picture, a greater truth. But these puzzles were the ones with one piece missing, and the other pieces all jumbled, leaving it up to the player to move them around in a seemingly random pattern until they slipped into order.

I feel like all the pieces are in me, but I don't know the order. And the less I'm able to assemble them into a semblance of a big picture it occurs to me that maybe I don't have all the pieces yet, and worse, I don't know where to find them, or if I ever will.

And I find myself wondering, again. Do I have all the pieces? Does it matter whether I do or don't? Is my connection to Jewish life situational? Communal? Environmental? And does the nature of my Jewish connection require a revelatory moment of perfect peace and clear understanding?

And if my own quest for spirituality and meaning is still so unstable, am I in any kind of position to be a positive influence on the spiritual searches of others?

To be continued...hopefully.

(Hat tip to Blogs of Zion for the link to Jay's WJD piece)

Comments

[Robbie]

That's why I still find myself going back to work at Ramah (Darom) year after year... This year will be my seventh, I don't see an end - it's really the highlight of what I do.

[Julia Gliner]

Esther - this is one of my favorite posts. The questions you ask are valid and have given me some clarity this evening. So I thank you for that. Keep up the great work. You are truly a fantastic writer.

And if my own quest for spirituality and meaning is still so unstable, am I in any kind of position to be a positive influence on the spiritual searches of others?
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It may make you more qualified. While solving your own problmems, you use your excellent insight and communication skills to also help solve those of others.

[Chutzpah]

To quote one of the greats: You sure ask a lot of questions for a gal from new jersey!

[Josia]

Definitely my favorite post! Keep digging - everything happening in the world right now is precisely designed to make you stop and ask yourself those questions ...

J.

[Jobber]

I think you should spend your free time more constructively. Do you volunteer to tutor disadvantaged kids? Tell us.

[Jobber]

I do not intend to be mean, it is just that this post of yours, it sounds like you are very unhappy, and this saddens me as well, as I think the world of you.

[Coelecanth]

I'm too set in my ways to go finding religion any time soon, but I struggle with most of these issues. It's the curse of being human and aware.

For me the constant "Why? Why? Why?" was tamed somewhat when I came to accept that "I don't know." was a legitimate answer. Not that I don't still strive for answers but when the navel gazing and spiral logic gets out of hand, accepting that I simply don't know helps me put it aside for later. Time, experience and growth can do wonders, so giving yourself that time is essential.

As to "...am I in any kind of position to be a positive influence on the spiritual searches of others?", you most certainly are. Those who struggle see deeper than those who don't and as was said above, you have a gift for communication. Just articulating your efforts is enlightening. You can never know when a thought or phrase will resonate with someone else, even though it seemed meaningless and obvious to you.

Great post E.