Re: klezmer experience

[david lowther <dlowther...>]

Moral justification is a funny thing, depending entirely on perspective.  I
think they might be described as spiritual esthetics.  Consider, if you
will, that the Nazis felt and brazenly claimed moral justification, as does
Arafat.  With respect to moral justification, I think I will discount it
sharply in any discussion of truth.

The Messianics, like all Christians, honestly believe that they are duty
bound to save us as God's lost people.  While that may be arrogant,
presumptuous and tasteless, from their perspective our danger of eternal
damnation is more than adequate moral justification.  Think of the physician
who has a patient refusing life saving medication.

I think I am going to stick with Voltaire on this one:  however obnoxious
their personal beliefs, I must defend their right to live them within the
laws of men.  This is the only protection for my own spiritual freedom.

Whether I approve is another thing.  Proselytization is crass and
deplorable, rather like atonal dissonance.  I avoid both, unless I want a
pointless argument, but I would not damn anybody to the lowest pits of Hell
because they are boneheads OR tone deaf.  To do so would be to sink there
with them.

I have not been exposed to the use of hebrew, ritual garments and music by
christians, but as I said before it fits in the modus operandi.  Their
apostle Paul, hateful and amoral used god salesman that he was, advocated
the co-opting of other religion's icons as a means of conversion.
Saturnalia nd Pan were the examples I gave you, but there is also the
"christmas" tree, and holly wreaths, both stolen from the Celts and Gauls.
Somewhere in the Acts of the Apostles (which immediately follows the gospels
in their Bible) Paul uses an Athenian monolith to "the unknown god" to
convert gullible Greeks.

I agree that it is contemptible, but if we are to condemn all who use faulty
logic, inadequate evidence and blind faith to justify their actions I am
afraid we have to take on both Saddam Hussien and George W. Bush.  There are
far greater evils abroad in the world today than a gaggle of pinheads
worshiping a long dead tradesman.

I had no religious training.  My parents never sent me to shul, because they
believed that all religious instruction was a form of child abuse.  I wish
today more than anything that I was fluent in Yiddische and Hebrew, and knew
more about the faith of my people, but I am not so gullible or ignorant that
I can be taken in by some would be Jimmy Swaggart just because he says "oy!"
and hates Walter O'Malley, and if I was I suggest that would be my own fault
as much as my parents'.

Are we to demand our own spiritual self determination from others, but
refuse it to them?

Now with regard to how one defines a jew:  I suspect we will not agree on
this one.  You seem to believe a jew is only one who believes in and follows
the Mosaic Law and Talmud.  That seems very black and white to me.  Where is
the line crossed?  With the first haircut?  The first cheeseburger?  My
greatgrandmother was hassidic, but my grandmother ate bacon.  Does that make
me goyim?

I am deeply disturbed by the idea that I can be defined as a nonjew because
I am not militantly kosher.  That would be a bigotry equal to that of the
Nuremburg Code, and reminds me of a story told to me by a survivor of a
father and son who would not speak to each other because the son had
renounced his father's strict interpretation of the law.  This was, you
understand, in Bergen-Belsen.

Yes, we are also defined by those around us, and sometimes in ways we do not
like.  That is the way the tsimmies crumble.  I will not say to any jew:
"You are not Jew enough for me."  That would be to proselytize them for my
own beliefs.

So there.

Let us get back to the issue of how we would then address the Messianics.  I
would say that education of a lapsed jew is not proselytation, and reach out
to them.  I would encourage them to familiarize themselves with the culture,
in the hopes that it would bring them home.

I would also (and I have given this a lot of thought the last couple of
days) have refused the gig, and left when I found out I was being used as a
tool of conversion.  I would have made a scene, and let them keep the
shekels.  I do not, however, condemn anybody for acting differently.

So enough, already.  How about those Dodgers?  Are Khevrisa great or what?

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