I'm a-sittin' on my la-la at my in-laws', fighting off sleep 'cause I still feel I've got some things to say. So here I come. Heh.
The computer here keeps giving me a big yellow warning bar every time my blog comes up - my website could be a scam. Proceed with caution. My father-in-law says it's something that has only begun popping up in the past couple of weeks. If anybody else is seeing it when my blog is up, let me know. I keep telling myself it could be worse - it could be the warning on the little guy's Razor scooter: CAUTION-This product moves when used. Uhhh, yeah, it most certainly does move. Thanks for the heads-up.
My emailbox keeps filling up, and if it ain't the NOLA blogpocheh doing it (concerning this - and Maitri had better watch it, 'cause her site is also a yellow bannered possible scam - ha!), it's my Queens synagogue's listservers constantly discussing the situation of Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama. Going back through all the emails gets kind of head-spinningly exhausting after a while, because, in the end, the argument amounts to: Would you split with your pastor for political gain or not? From a personal standpoint, most people agree that their spiritual leader(s) don't always say things that they themselves agree with, and that there is more than just a minister's/priest's/pastor's/rabbi's personality, charisma, je ne sais quois, what have you, that keeps them going to their local house of worship. It seems quite ironic that, in this country, and at this supposedly enlightened time in our history, we can pat ourselves on the back about that separation of church and state thing, and yet a presidential candidate is still gonna sink or swim by his affiliation (or, now, a lack thereof) with a certain church and a certain pastor.
One listserver said something along the lines of, "Hey, Meir Kahane once came to speak at my school! Does that mean I'm ineligible for public office?"
I link to the site built around the words and deeds of the late, former head of the Jewish Defense League hesitantly, because this is a rabbi who ran around with a motto: "every Jew a .22" - advocating that the Jewish people engage in offensive rather than defensive armed struggle against all its enemies. If he had not died in 1990 by the gun violence he preached, he would surely be running around today telling everybody he'd told them another Holocaust was coming on American soil this time, but nooooo, nobody wanted to believe him. Some of his twisted legacy is still with us today, and none of this is to say that his ideas were anything new in Jewish history...what was different was their time and place. It takes loads of chutzpah to get in front of folks in their comfy homes on Long Island and tell them they need to immigrate to Israel immediately because their lives are threatened by the goyim. It also takes loads of bullheadedness to refuse to see that, for the people you are working on converting to your views, there might actually be something worth fighting for right in their own front yards that can't be found in the Holy Land.
Preachers like Kahane and Jeremiah Wright are there to get us thinking about our world differently. Their words may have much more fervor than truth to them, but it gets you wondering about how insane the world might be if it sees you as somebody who is less worthy of basic human rights than someone else who is Christian and/or white. Something ain't right about that, folks. What's so wrong about somebody pointing that out and unsettling you about it?
But I keep forgetting. We don't want to be disturbed. We just want to live and let live. Too many people want to kill others for being different as it is. Why stand out? It'll just mean that we've maneuvered ourselves into the center of a giant bullseye. Too much of a hassle, too much at stake for that to happen.
Which is why, in the end, the candidate who conforms the most will be rewarded. The mainstream media will crown said candidate with empty accolades and pithy projections of "what hath the American people wrought, and ain't it grand?" well before Election Day comes around, and the majority of folks in this country will follow it all like lemmings over a cliff.
I myself am highly unsure about all the presidential front-runners, and would love to toss 'em back into the sea. But eventually I will make a decision, like everyone else here....and I will hope against all hope that my vote doesn't get lost in a sea of mass conformity.
After all, in the end, our front yards are at stake.
3 comments:
Yes, I cannot wrap my mind around all this "fire" over Obama's pastor. The church you go to is so much more than that. And, sometimes people say things we disagree with, we may drift away for a while. And then, Hillary saying he "wouldn't be" her pastor, makes me laugh - who's going to believe she is devoted to any church? I don't care. She just seems so fake to me.
The fact that we are still having this same debate, almost 60 years after Kennedy was elected "despite" being Catholic, amazes me.
I really like this, Leigh. Well said!!!
I'm working on a blog post about ways my own U.U. minister (and beloved mentor when it comes to social justice work) has been controversial, but I wanted to share two examples with you, the cliffnotes versions.
Years ago, he was editor of U.U. World magazine. He published an editorial in which he questioned the conventional wisdom that suicide is sinful and "a coward's way out." He posited that perhaps, for some souls, this life has become so unbearable that suicide is a reasonable option! Perhaps, he said, for some people suicide is not cowardly at all, but rather a brave move to end that which can no longer be endured.
OHMYGOD! The firestorm!
Thousands of letters to the editor. People cancelling subscriptions. The publication demanded the right to review any of his future editorials before they went to press, which, to him, was censorship, so he quit over the whole thing.
So there. My beloved preacher and mentor says suicide might be a reasonable option for some (of course, he wanted to help anyone who was in that much pain, obviously, but his point was that it might not make sense to say suicide is always spiritually wrong).
One more.
In the '60s, the African-American membership (small though it was, and is) was becoming highly organized. At the yearly planning session of our denomination, they asked for special African-American outreach programs, said their needs were neglected within the larger church, and requested $4 million from the general fund for their work. Most whites were outraged by this. They thought the church - as it was - represented ALL members, and they saw the demand for $4 million to see to the needs of "some" members rather than all members as undemocratic, and they perceived some sort of blackmail (because some members of the African-American committee were threatening to leave the church).
The fight almost split the church in half. It was very emotional and very, very ugly.
And my minister and mentor, David Parke, who has since written about this episode in many histories of our denomination and who calls it "the finest hour of my life" was one of the few white people to serve on that African-American outreach committee. He said that if blacks felt they weren't being heard, then, by definition, the church had a problem. He worked his butt off negotiating votes to establish a permanent committee on relations with African-American members - and to get the $4 million for their outreach programs.
Most white members were furious with the result of that vote, and the whole episode was a source of bitterness for at least a decade.
So, I guess I can't run for office either. I too have a controversial preacher! The opposition can say my preacher thinks suicide is okee-dokee and that he favors preferential treatment for blacks!
Ah, well, I dreaded having to give speeches anyway!
I know you were voted Excellent once already, but your love of my homeland makes me come back again and again.
Stop by to pick up your reward.
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