On Shavuos, we celebrate the receiving of the Torah by staying up all night studying. We study everything from Talmud to Kabala to the implications of cloning on kosher laws.
This week, Israel rescued four hostages from Hamas, including Noa Argamani. The media swallowed the Hamas official death toll – including exaggerated numbers and counting adult terrorists as “children.” In my neighborhood, Hamas fans gathered on the 181st sidewalk. I dutifully flipped them the bird and said “fuck you rapist” to the old guy holding the Palestinian flag. When I saw a couple of keffiyah wearing assholes walking down the sidewalk after the protest, I called them Nazi shits repeatedly. In another part of the city, the Hamas fans were chanting “Intifada Now”outside a Nova Massacre exhibit, because how dare Jews point out that Hamas “resistance” or “prison break” involved mass murder and rape. Again, the Nazis have tried to silence us and turn the narrative around to make us the villains. In the past, they falsely accused us of baking Christian baby blood into our matzah and running the banking system to justify killing us. Now they accuse us of genocide. They pretend that they can separate Jews from Zionists, because they have token Jews in the same way that every racist has Candace Owens.
When I was a pre-teen, I took Christianity seriously. I thought rightwing Christians weren't true Christians. I couldn't get around the “no way to the Father but through me” line. Logically, it meant that Anne Frank and Gandhi went to Hell, while Nazies went to Heaven. By 9th grade I left Christianity. I thought I'd come back, even as I tried to embrace Scientiology, neo-paganism, etc, etc.
When a potential convert comes to rabbis, the rabbis are supposed to say “What? Are you insane? Why would you want to join us? Don't you read history? Don't you know that Jews are hated? If you become Jewish, you'll be persecuted in the same way.” If the convert says “I only hope I can be worthy,” then the convert is accepted.
In grade school, I admired Hitler as a great man who managed to go from vagrant to leader of a major empire. I didn't like the whole Holocaust thing, but everything else was cool. In high school, I hated Israel as an imperialist power, a bad apology for the Holocaust, the mascot of the worst Christians. By college, I thought that Israel had some good points, but why couldn't they just give back the disputed “occupied” territories already?
In the book of Ruth, Ruth marries into a Jewish family. Her husband dies. Her brother-in-law dies. Her mother-in-law goes back to Israel. Ruth and Orpah, her brother-in-law's wife follow. Naomi tells them to go back to their families. Orpah goes back. Ruth says “your people will be my people. Your G-d will be my G-d.” She is the prototypical convert. No one has to be Jewish. Jews don't believe that non-Jews must convert to get into Heaven. A convert needs to persist.
I was at a 24-hour coffeehouse, buzzing on good pot. A woman that I barely knew started talking about Kabala. It seemed much deeper and more complicated than anything I had heard before. The next day I learned that it was Jewish. As I delved into neo-paganism, kabala kept coming up. When I went to my favorite science fiction convention, an acquaintance asked me to teach her kabala. That was better than being asked if the yarmulke was cosplay.
I wrote a Yiddish speaking werewolf story (I'll let you know when a market buys it) and I leaned heavily on the Talmudic tractate Sota. In the written Torah, Sota is a law where a husband suspects his wife, makes her drink a magic potion and if she committed adultery, she explodes. The tractate talks about the details of the ritual as well as Samson, curses and that poor bastard who died from touching the Ark of the Covenenat. The ending is an elegiac lament for the days when murder and adultery and spitting contests weren't so prevalent. Speaking of Talmud, the Chasidic Jews on anti-Israel posters take their belief from a discussion at the end of Ketuvoth stating that Jews and goyim have an agreement. Jews won't re-establish Israel as long as the goyim don't oppress us too much. Consequently, most of the early 1880s Zionists were atheists. After the Holocaust, most religious Jews decided that the contract is null and void.
Because I was a smartass pagan, my friends urged me to take a college class titled “Bible: Wisdom, Poetry and Apocalyptic.” I did not expect it to be so profound. I learned about poetic tropes in Psalms, political underpinnings of Daniel and the fact that Job is much more than “Trust G-d and you'll get your stuff back.” I enjoyed the erotic poetry of Song of Songs and loved the existentialist drama of Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes). After class, I bought the Jewish Publication Society translation and found my favorite quote: “The men who did not die were stricken with hemorrhoids” (1 Samuel 5:12).
Yes, sometimes I read the Bible for the butt jokes.
Minneapolis is an antisemitic city in an antisemitic state. The first day I wore a yarmulke, I heard “Heil Hitler” and looked up to see a hippie on a bike twisting around to give me a Nazi salute. He risked fatal injury in order to ruin my day. Throughout high school and college, I'd meet Minnesota Jews who hated being Jewish. They'd introduce themselves with antisemitic jokes (“What's the Jewish dilemma? Pork chops. Half price.”) or they'd bitch about Judaism being the source of racism, homophobia, imperialism, etc. I have an ex-friend Tamir who was so angry about being Jewish that he's a big Roger Waters fan. The last time we talked online, he was a big Tulsi Gabbard fanboy. He routinely accuses Israel of genocide, but when Tulsi Gabbard was sucking up to Putin and praising Al-Assad for committing genocide in Syria, he was cool with it.
I started going to Hillel because I wanted to convert. The first time I went to Shabbos services, I marveled at being part of a tradition that went back centuries. These days, I usually show up late to Shabbos and miss all the davening. I attended a Talmud class concentrating on the donkey rental discussions in Bava Metzia. The first time I went to a Reform synagogue I was disappointed. With the robes and the organ, I felt like I was in a Lutheran church that forgot to mention Jesus. When the Conservative rabbi left Hillel, a Reconstructionist rabbi took over. I didn't like that rabbi. Happily, an Orthodox rabbi was teaching the parsha. I eventually got over my misgivings over Orthodox Judaism and started going to a shul in St. Louis Park.
I didn't instantly love Orthodox Judaism. A big part of non-Orthodox movements is the way that they define themselves against the Orthodox. However, I did love the meals. I slowly became shomer shabbos. I realized that I didn't want to convert with rabbis from a movement that declared that driving on Shabbos was fine.
Then I stopped going to shul. I was feeling out of place. My girlfriend had broken up with me and I missed her. So I spent Saturday afternoons eating with her at the local vegetarian restaurant. We eventually got back together. For a few more months. I started to miss Shabbos. On Shavuos I went back and I stayed up all night studying. I loved it. I kind of loved studying all night in college and with Shavuos, there's no test in the morning.
There's more. There's always more. I hate Carlebach music and the Chicago Rabbinical Council. In the latter case, they put my conversion on indefinite hold because they didn't want to convert anyone. I couldn't even complain about it, because everyone just spouted the usual “conversion isn't supposed to be easy” line, unaware of just how vulnerable converts feel waiting indefinitely for a mikvah that will never happen. As a male convert, I had to deal with creepy dudes obsessed with the conversion bris (just a drop of blood actually), sometimes talking about it while looking down and giggling. I finally moved to New York and started over.
Gaza should have been a paradise but Hamas decided to spend all the infrastructure money on weapons. In 1972, the PLO murdered Israeli athletes at the Olympics. In 2000, Intifada II saw Israelis being murdered on a weekly basis. Besides the Holocaust, Jews around the world were also murdered in pogroms – Russia, Libya, Iraq, etc. In the 1930s, the Arabs murdered Jewish settler with the tacit approval of the British mandate. The mufti of Jerusalem loved Hitler. In 1948, Israel was more than willing to support a two state solution but then every Arab nation tried to invade. Their failure to commit another Holocaust led to mass expulsions. They still dare to whine about it. Not every Arab left Israel. Some stayed and became citizens. One sixth of Israel's population are non-Jewish Arabs. You won't hear about them from the Nazis holding encampments in UCLA or Columbia. They don't fit their narrative.
In every generation, they rise up to kill us.
Tonight I will again study Torah. I will stay up as long as I can. I might eat cheescake. I will turn off my phone and pretend that the rest of the world celebrates the Torah as well.
Your people will be my people. Your G-d will be my G-d. I can only hope to be worthy.
Because I love the Bible as literature, I edited and published a Bible horror anthology called King David and the Spiders from Mars
Just in case, you’re curious and want to do some Shavuos studying, here’s Tractate Sota