As Things Currently Are..

Just watched one of the most depressing news editions I’ve encountered lately. I guess none of this is new, but it’s overwhelming every time. The event was the Youth Zionist Congress in Kfar Saba. The content was sad.

“What is Zionism?” the reporter asks bluntly. “Zionism is us” a teenager girl answers assertively. Another says: “Zionism is making sure we are here to stay, in this land, and not letting .. err.. other people, divide it..”, the reporter adds: “you know some people might disagree with you definition..” and the teenager replies “could be..”. “If anyone is confused as to what exactly is Zionism, he can come to us, we’ll teach him from A to Z” says the representative of the Druze Zionist Organization (Sounds like an oxymoron to me..). “Can a Muslim be a Zionist?”, “I don’t really know…” says another Druze activist.

Blind patriotism. Everywhere. I’m not even talking about questioning oneself about identity and values. I don’t want to be pretentious. But seeing what the common teenager is thinking, from a close look, I know they can’t even justify what they’re saying. They attribute this supreme, invincible moral righteousness to themselves and to the Jews (Israelis, Jews, Zionists… of course they’re all synonyms for that matter) which leads them to believe Israel is not only the center of the Middle East (and the most developed, most cultural and most ‘Western’), but the center of the whole world. No further justifications are needed for anything except the Holocaust and the blood-thirsty Arabs.

I wish people started noticing things are a bit more complex than what they take them to be. That they face reality and understand what is going on around them. I’m trying, I think others around here should too.

Politics

Actually, not politics per se. I’d like to recall a statement (I credit it to Urmila, though she’s probably not the primary source)- “Everything is political”. I’d like to make a follow-up statement: “Photography is political”.

Taking photographs of glazing mountain tops and stunning sunsets is fabulous. But it is not in any manner passive. Every act of photography is active. Wrong- Every operating camera is active, political. The presence of the camera itself is enough to invoke reaction, emotional and ideological. Because the importance of visual imagery has risen, unlike the descending verbal communication, we are all aware of our visual representation. Images convey ideas, emotions and statements.

Besides the its being in-itself, the camera is also the mediator. A biased one. It is the photographer who observes, not the camera. What we see off the camera lens is maybe genuine, maybe (MAYBE) objective, but it is definitely not reflected in the photos we take (“click”, if you’re in India). It is our subjective image, not the one far away in the mountains, that we carry with us. You may go as far as to say that we photograph an experience, not a still image. We capture a moment, a certain concept, and not a multitude of objects. Every photo has a purpose, even it’s meant to be a private, personal artifact, and not a public one. It serves a purpose and thereafter follows its design. Its form.

:)

*This may be considered as a response to an individual with a speech impediment.

Am I Losing Touch?

It’s frightening how easy it is to fall back in place. Like I’ve never left. I feel right in place, so comfortable and secure. Or at least I did for a couple of days.

Euphoria is a tricky business. As soon as it’s realized, it slips right through. It cannot be grasped. Mainly, I feel, because it’s not reflexive. You don’t experience euphoria because of some great personal realization. It’s never internal, always external. That is why it’s so swift. As soon as you become conscience of it, it’s gone.

I’m still comfortable, yes. But not euphoric anymore. Because the first, genuine, lax, happiness was substituted in a much more tense, uneasy kind of time. Maybe lingering. It’s like I’m only able to live between a shift to another. Between the margins. Past and future. That as well is why euphoria is only seen in retrospective.

I feel remote. Unattached. As in daze, hovering over and above. It’s a bitter recognition, knowing that soon I’ll be coming back to myself, but only for a few more months. Then I’ll have to be trapped, enclosed, locked in myself again. Will I be able to keep touch?

One and not the other.

This project week we travelled down the south of India, to Tamil-Nadu and Kerala, and went as southern as I've ever been anywhere in the world, to the tip of India. After being accustomed to travelling via train and bus for quite some time now, and generally getting used to Indian modes of transportation and attitude, I think I realized something rather discouraging about myself. I get really pissed with Indians, excuse my generalization. Here, up straight, I said it. They annoy me. They infuriate me with their annoying attitude sometimes.

Chiefly, I think, I feel like they always try and trick me. I can't stand when I feel like I'm being deceived, like everyone around me is scamming to fool me and squeeze some profit from my clueless foreignness. I attribute this to the fact I cannot understand the culture and society I'm currently in. The structures and norms of the society I was brought up in are so heavily ingrained in me, cultural relativism just makes me anxious and edgy. Something are so inherently different, that I just cannot imagine assimilation and promptly reject any kind of similarities. For example, the whole atmosphere and treatment of religious sights are so contradictory to my notion of sacredness and holiness, that I find it impossible to take them seriously, in addition to the already somewhat mischievous feeling I get in Hindu temples.

I'm having a hard time with this, with myself. I don't like seeing how sometimes, unconsciously mostly, I tend to assume a more 'superior' statues than the Indians around me. I noticed this when, sitting in a bus for a few good hours, I got irritated by the constant glimpses of people around at us. I was irritated because I felt I was better, and that 'where I come from' this would be rude. I was maybe even flattered in some way by the attention I was given...

I tend to think of this is the dialectic of the West and the East. I just can't get out of my head this perspectivism that prevails in my mind as I travel, as I look at India and Indians. I will go as far as saying that at times I feel like this whole world around me is merely an illusion, a pretence. That people can't actually, truly, live here, and that the West, home, with all that comes with it, is the 'real thing'.

It's rather depressing. And I feel there's nothing I can do about it.

The absence of words

Just a random blabber:

Words and words all around. Spinning and flowing everywhere. Uttered, muttered, blubbered. Words in sentences, by themselves, spoken and written, words as symbols, as means of communication words in this language, words in the other. All the time words and words, one after the other. Spoken harshly and lightly. Fast or slow. Stuttering or not. Constructing and deconstructing. Praising and criticizing. Non-stop verbal rivers. Gushing down our lives. More books and more songs. Speeches and speeches. Monologues, dialogues, whatever-ogs. When there's no one to talk to, talk to yourself. To the trees, the stones.

And then silence.

Confusion. Perplexed expression. So un-natural. Inconvenient. What to do? This stark absence, this nothingness. A bewildered moment. Complete silence. Tension. Frustration. A dead-end. A heavy burden, this silence.
Cannot express, cannot communicate. Must look at oneself now. Ouch.

Who are we talking to?

I tend to examine myself more closely recently, in respect to how I behave and act toward others. The reasons that lead me to this are irrelevant, but the outcome is a tight process of self-observation and reflection that I feel I try to maintain. (Sound a bit arrogant, I think).

One thing I can I noticed about myself as well as about my environment, as that the conversations I have with people tend to be very egocentric and selfish. By that I don’t mean I don’t care about others, and I’m definitely others don’t care for their friends and colleagues, but that the way we talk to one another and our process of thinking (I can only testify for myself) are rather self-centered.

Whenever I converse with someone, and they bring up some experience that they had, be a dream, a funny incident or a tragic occurrence, I primarily compare that to my own domain of experiences. I search for a similar or a contrasting memory of my own, and usually just wait for my companion to end the sentence in order to start talking. I do, however, ask and inquire, but is that out of genuine interest in the other? Hardly so. It is probably (And again, I speak only for myself – that is called irony) because I’m displaying a kind image, knowing that the other person would like me to ask them more and react, because of good manners, or because I’d like to know more so I can think about myself more specifically.

Kundera talks about this in his book “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting”. He describes how we often respond by saying “That’s absolutely the same with me! I….” (or something similar. We tend to take what we were told, process it, agree with it or deny it, and then move back to our own realm. He constructs a character that has an amazing ability to listen to people, which many indeed use. She has this ability only because she totally cancelled her own self. She’s not interested in herself anymore after escaping her home country and the death of her beloved husband. She doesn’t have any archives of memories to go into, because she lost the individual interest in oneself. Maybe the good listeners amongst us are the ones that are not concerned with themselves. Sounds like a good hypothesis, but I think I have more faith in some people I know and trust.

Thinking about this gave me the feeling that we are going around uttering our own monologues. This is an absurd image, of course. I don’t truly think we don’t listen. But there’s something about the way we communicate that makes me think of superficial, un-bonding, shallow way of talking. While contemplating this, I bumped into some writing of one named Martin Buber, A Jewish socialist philosopher. Buber argued a case of two different relationships one has with the surrounding world. The I-It (Ich-Es), that is the monologue, the information and the ideas one receives from everything around; And the I-Thou/You (Ich-Du) relationship, the dialogue, a deep connection between the subject and the object. In this relationship Buber finds God.

To man the world is twofold, in accordance with his twofold attitude.

The attitude of man is twofold, in accordance with the twofold nature of the primary words which he speaks.

The one primary word is the combination I-Thou.

The other primary word is the combination I-It;

Hence the I of man is also twofold.
*
Primary words do not signify things, but they intimate relations.

Primary words do not describe something that might exist independently of them, but being spoken they bring about existence.

Primary words are spoken from the being.

The primary word I-Thou can only be spoken with the whole being.

The primary word I-It can never be spoken with the whole being.


When Thou is spoken, the speaker has no thing for his object. For where there is a thing there is another thing. Every It is bounded by others; It exists only through being bounded by others. But when Thou is spoken, there is no thing. Thou has no bounds.

(from the book I and Thou)

Buber goes later to talking about the nature of the two separate relationships. I might not agree with his convention of the Thou being a transcendent entity, but I definitely find his distinction between two kinds of communication appealing. I cannot hold thinking on how all the conversations I have are but monologues, but I also find comfort in knowing that some connections are not as shallow and much more profound.

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No man would listen to you talk if he didn't know it was his turn next. ~E.W. Howe

Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of a witness. ~Margaret Millar

Two monologues do not make a dialogue. ~Jeff Daly

Atonement?

This week was a special week for Jews all around the world. It started last weekend with the celebration of the new year that has just begun, and ended with Yom Kippur, the day of atonement and presumably the most sacred day for the Jewish people.

Here on campus we Jews made an effort to mention them both, the first with a feast and the second with a fast (alliteration, huh). This time of the year back in Israel is the most special, festive and exciting time of the year (to some, I guess). Although we (as secular, modern Jews) do not really abide to the traditional Jewish calendar and tradition anymore, some unique and significant feeling is attached to this time, apart from the massive amount of days-off-school we get so early in the year.

I had a lot of time to think during Yom Kippur, as I wasn’t really doing anything but slobbing around (and being a bit more grumpy than usual – damn, appreciate food consumption). I realized I do not really follow any traditional way of mentioning Yom Kippur. I used electricity, read a book and watched a movie, overslept and generally had a pretty alright time. We even cut down the fast a bit short (and didn’t really stress on correct starting time either) due to practical reasons. In short, I think we concluded that it was more about mentioning the day itself and the idea rather than practicing religion. In fact, I realized I don’t really know much about Judaism as a religion, but more as a tradition and system of values. But wait, I don’t really know much about that either. Most of my knowledge of Jewish characteristics comes from a secularist point of view. Even the mandatory Torah classes back home were more of a literary and thematic analysis of the texts.

So what makes me Jewish? Why do I see myself so predominantly Jewish? Why does Yom Kippur such a special occasion for me?

I don’t really know. I think my Jewish identity has to do a lot more to the Zionist ethos and the land of Israel. That is why I find it hard to empathize with Jews that live in the Diaspora. I don’t see much in common between me and them. Whereas their identity is primarily religious, for they don’t live in a Jewish society and must preserve their identity by some extent of practice, my identity is derived from my surroundings and from the society I was up brought in.

Coming back to Yom Kippur, I find great wisdom in the principle that leads this day. First required is the forgiveness of your fellow human beings. Only after this is granted, the forgiveness of God can be pledged. I tend to ignore the second part of this argument, and focus on the first one, which invokes a caring and respectful social order.

I do observe, however, that this has been turned into a kind of mockery, prevalently by the youngsters. I recall a Yom Kippur in 7th or 8th grade, when one of the boys in my class wrote “I am sorry, for whatever I did to you” on a piece of paper, and ran around showing his brilliancy to as many people as possible. This could have a fairly profound value of regret, if he hadn’t had such lousy motives. This was not an act of reflection, as this concept is meant to provoke, but of pure stupidity.

I wonder how much of the ancient, great and deep wisdom of the Jewish tradition we are still capable to uphold these days.