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"It is better to take refuge in Adonai than to trust in human beings; better to take refuge in Adonai than to put one's trust in princes." -Tehilah 118:8-9



Jewish Unity... the Stumblingblock

I'm digging around the blogosphere for something to write about, anything that hasn't been trudged over 5,000 times already, when I find this post, titled Pulse of the People from Blogs of Zion, buried in a conglomeration of Friday's listings on Israeli Bloggers in English:
What is the greatest challenge facing the Jewish People?

A few of the answers:

* "Hatred between different streams of Judaism."
* "The mis-transmission of what Judaism has to offer, because a watered down Judaism is a stagnant Judaism"
* "Apathy"
* "Freedom: Why be Jewish?"
* "Lack of a perceivable and compelling reason to be Jewish"
* "A tendency to get stuck in old habits and a tendency to forget the lesson of the past."
* "Acceptance in the Middle East"
* "Jewish Unity"
* "Self-Esteem"

Notice, that but for one, these are largely internal challenges–and that's representative of the rest of the answers that were not posted. And no one said Iran.
I don't know when it first started, but our self-reflexive trait can be a rather positive one, as long as we demand solutions to the problems we're so willing to expose.

All of these issues plague Jewish people, whether they're religious or secular, no matter what denomination they subscribe to, no matter where they live. What I don't understand-- perhaps because I'm tired of it-- is the idea that being Jewish is a problematic thing. Everyone has drek in their lives, but isn't being Jewish about having answers to clean up the drek? Isn't being Jewish the solution, not the problem? The issues listed above are issues that arise not within the individual, but within the group-- reading the list reminds me of a line from a favorite TV show: "This is what happens to love when people are in love." We're always participating in a struggle, whether it be between our humanity and our holiness, or between ourselves and our G-d, or between our nation and the world at large, that we wind up transmitting that struggle into our relationships with one another. We don't trust our G-d, we don't trust our individual identity (or, consequently, our ability to carry the responsibility of the identity we've been given), we don't trust the world around us-- so, naturally, we begin to view each other with suspicion.

How derranged and destructive is that?

There are so many Jewish people out there--famous, powerful, rich Jewish people--who have made careers out of reaching out to develop relationships with different groups of gentiles. There are Jews reaching out to Christians, Jews reaching out to Arabs, Jews reaching out to palestinians, Jews reaching out to every possible ethnic and religious group in existence in order to establish friendships and alliances. Where are the Jewish people reaching out to their fellow Jews? I'm not famous, or powerful, or rich, but I if I could reach out to anyone in this world, I would reach out to my fellow Jewish people-- for the sake of establishing friendships and alliances among us all, for the good of us all.

So many people argue over what it means to be created in the image of Adonai, that they forget the most dominant aspect of His character: He is One. Sometimes, I think the reason the Shema was commanded by HaShem wasn't just to remind us that He is One, but that we are one in Him. We won't have success until we stop treating each other like drek. Look at it this way: Nobody can get through life successfully when they keep slapping themselves in the face.

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posted by Shoshana @ 8:07 PM

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