Kesher Talk

So exactly how contentious is the Jewish community. Sooooo contentious....

We had Shabbat dinner at our shul this Friday night. The food was interesting -- first rice, perhaps crunchier than is conventional, then nothing for a very long time. Then some more rice, even crunchier, but we were very hungry by then. Then, about the time we were licking our plates and picking the rice from our teeth, salmon, long dead and cooked for approximately a year and a half, apparently the whole meal. Then, surprisingly, chicken, wrapped around something that once had been green. Spinach, maybe? Then, astonishingly, hard little pellets of ground lamb, chewy, not bad. Given the progression, I was half expecting something like lightly grilled elephant chunks, but it ended there.

The audience was not exactly usual for the setting; slightly older, slightly more formally dressed, slightly less familiar looking.

Then the talk, about Israel, about looking within ourselves and the Jewish community for some of the reasons for the problems there. That is the orthodoxy we expect. Then, as surprisingly as the chicken, came shouted rebutals, loud arguments, passionate denials.

The shift among some liberals has been subtle but is starting to be noticable; what's being lost, it seems, is the feeling that things can get better, even as the rhetoric generally stresses how we could still live in the best of all possible worlds if only we could just all get along. (Internal turmoil seems to predispose people to cliches.) It's hard to give that up -- I know, I struggled against it myself -- and so it's fascinating to hear those strains battle themselves in one person's talk.

There is of course a sense in which this is all masturbatory anyway -- it's not as if what's said in a shul basement can affect someone determined to strap on a Semtex belt -- but the shift, and the fact that at last orthodoxies are open for debate, is a very good thing.

Today, for something entirely different -- the marathon. We watched from the 23rd mile as runners pounded toward us. My indefatigable brother-in-law shouted encouragement to them, using their names whenever they showed up on their shirts: Lookin good, Linda. Lookin good, Ray. Almost there, Sally. Lookin good, Wolfang. He was almost always lying. They almost never looked good. They were drenched with sweat, many were limping, most looked ready to keel over. I just stood there. Much as I'd love to I can't yell at strangers, even encouragingly, and there is no way I can possibly drop a final g. It wouldn't come out of my mouth.

Then my sister waltzed up. She did look good. Perky, in fact. Intensely blue-eyed, thin, energetic, happy, happily sweaty, she said hello, then ran on to complete her seventh New York City marathon. Just for that fraction of a second, I almost got it. Go, Lynn!

posted by Joanne @ 11/02/2003 08:18:45 PM