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Imagine: On Love and Lennon

By Ze’ev Maghen

One man's tirade about universal brotherhood.


I’ll tell you (in the immortal words of Tevya the milkman):… I don’t know.
Because here we stand on the threshold of things that are not really rational: They are emotional (which, however, as we have been striving to argue, is a far more fundamental and powerful human motivation). It is very hard—indeed, well nigh impossible—to logically argue something that belongs not to the realm of logic, but to the kingdom of the heart. Nevertheless, I’ll give it my best shot.
I could start by telling you how much we need you,and how much what you personally decide to do with your life has earth-shattering consequences and ramifications for your whole extended national clan, wherever they sleep and dream, wherever they wake and work, wherever they fight and fall. The Midrash tells this terse tale: There are twelve people in a boat. One guy, he starts drilling a hole under his seat. When everybody gapes at him in dismay and astonishment, he looks up and says: “What’s it to ya? I’m only drilling under my own seat.”
The idea is, of course, that we Jews are all in the same boat, so your particular actions or inactions naturally attract our interest and concern, whether you like it or not—because they are inextricably bound up with our collective prospects and welfare. Make no mistake about it: Whether you are aware of this or not, the future of the Jewish people is as much up to you as it is up to Benjamin Netanyahu. But this is too close to a Jewish guilt trip, and I’m just not into that. A very brilliant Zionist revolutionary by the name of Vladimir Jabotinsky always made it clear to his cohorts and disciples in the movement that if a Jew chooses to opt out of his nation’s ongoing struggle and experience, there certainly is no effective or morally defensible way to force him back in. If he wants to go, let him go—more work for the rest of us.
I could also advance the proposition that you ought to join us with a passion and a fury for the following very simple reason: You are a Jew. You are a Jew, and another Jew (who was once upon a time extremely assimilated)—the heart that was huge enough to imagine the State of Israel and then bring that imagination to fruition, Dr. Theodor Herzl—once declared plainly: “The greatest happiness in life, is to be that which one is.” I couldn’t agree more. And if you are going to be who you are—a Jew—then do it up. Don’t be a “by-default Jew,” a “checkbook Jew,” a “High-Holiday Jew,” a “peripheral Jew” or a “marginal Jew.” Be a “bold, breathless” Jew, be a “wild, wanton” Jew, be an “I’m going to milk this cultural identity thing for everything it’s got” Jew—be a knowledgeable, thirsty, caring, daring, actively involved Jew.
This is not a bad argument, but neither is it without problems. Although I certainly don’t intend anything of the sort—far from it!—it is possible that a certain tinge of traditionalism or conservatism could be read into a thesis which suggests: “Be what you are—because that is what you are.” It could conceivably smack of an attack on human mobility—a concept as dear to me as it is dear (in my humble interpretation) to the Tora itself. Besides, you might easily parry by claiming that “being who you are” at this point in your life entails being a bowler, or a feminist, or a Bostonian, or an American or Canadian, far more than it does being a Jew, which is “what you are” only due to an accident of birth. So this contention doesn’t completely pass muster, either.
What of the oft-repeated apologetic asseveration that the Jewish legal and behavioral system is morally superior to that of any other religion, culture and ideology? I personally happen to believe—after a respectable amount of round-robin investigation—that Judaism as a lifestyle and weltanschauung has a good deal more to recommend itself than many other ready-made systems available to people for the adopting and practicing—but that’s just me. I also happen to think there are a lot of less than palatable provisions to be found in the dos and don’ts of Judaic jurisprudence, and besides: Who says we should conduct every aspect of our existence according to a prefabricated plan purveyed to us by our illustrious predecessors? We were given minds, I would venture, for the purpose of judging and evaluating each and every instance and episode in our lives independently, on a case-by-case basis—not so that we should know how and where to look up the proper response to every single stimulus in a book. So this argument goes down the tubes as well.
Let’s try a different approach. Again, the gnawing question: “Why not choose my bowling buddies, or the people on my block, or the International Society of Vegans, or who knows what other coherent entity as my spiritual center and the object of my primary affections? Why is the Jewish people a better candidate for this exalted position in my thoughts and emotions than these previously named options?”
Let’s hum along with Dr. Winston O’Boogie—Lennon’s favorite nick-name—once again: “Imagine all the people, living for today….” Living for today. Oh, John, my main man, what it is? Did you think about this wish before you made it? Granted, this line suffers a number of possible interpretations, but they all more or less connect to the problem I would like to raise here.
We have already discussed the ugliness and emptiness engendered by the modern Western ailment of exaggerated individualism and complete non-affiliation. The symptoms of this disease are sequestration and isolation from a whole concentrically constructed solar system of potentially enriching relationships on the horizontal—or spatial—plane. In a word, this is the affliction of “living for yourself.”
Well, one thing is for sure: Being Jewish cures this affliction, like no antidote I’ve ever seen. As a Jew, you literally have millions of people all around you, right this very second, throughout the world, with whom you share a secret, with whom you can exchange a knowing glance, at whom you can wink (use your judgment). These people are your people, they feel tied to you, they are pulling for you, they are on your side (travel tip: this does not mean you will not get ripped off by Israeli cab drivers—that’s their way of saying, “I love you”).
I don’t know if this special relationship is a product of the historical and international uniqueness of the Jewish phenomenon—we are neither a “nation” like the French, nor a “religion” like the Christians—or whether it is because as a group, we are not too big (like the population of America) and not too small (like the tenants in your apartment building), but just the right size to elicit that super-family feel, that combination of transcendence and immanence, of greatness and closeness. Or maybe it is just because the rest of humanity has always been so kind to us. I don’t know exactly why there is this powerful electricity constantly coursing and pulsating between Jews the world over—I just know it’s there.
Just before my latest stint in the reserves, I was in New York blading with my brother down the lower West Side promenade hard by the Hudson, and we stopped to rest near the World Trade Center. This guy a few feet away from us was trying to pick up a young lady by aggressively and intimately massaging her dog, and Alex and I switched to Hebrew in order to comment upon his original methodology. As we were talking, this be-suited fellow sitting on the bench opposite—clearly taking a five-minute lunch break from an action-packed morning of corporate raiding—kept staring at us. Finally, he rose, walked over, and stood rather awkwardly dead center in front of our bench. I looked up at him, and he faltered, gestured, fumbled, hesitated, and then just stammered, “Um… uh… Shalom!” I extended my hand and he shook it warmly and smiled. Still flustered, he half-saluted us goodbye, and went back to merging and acquiring.
What he really wanted to say was: “Hey—I’m Jewish, too.” What he really intended by “Um… uh… Shalom,” was: “I embrace you, my brother, member of my tribe from a faraway place. We share something tremendous and indescribable, something ancient and exalted, something wonderful and mysterious. We were soldered together, you and I, by the fires of hell on earth, and our bonds are since unsunderable. I’m glad you are in the world, and it gives me strength and pleasure to see you. Here: Have some genuine affection.” He meant all this, and more. He wanted to momentarily close that circuit and tap into that energy flow.
The modern Western sickness of living solely for oneself, however—for which Jewish identity is such a powerful serum—is usually accompanied by another malady, which Lennon and so many others aspire to infect us all with: Living solely for today. This second disorder—let’s call it “time hermitism,” for lack of a better term (is there a worse term?)—emaciates our psyches by disconnecting us from a vast and fascinating potpourri of mind- and soul-expanding elements on the vertical—or temporal—plane. You can be alone in space, and you can be alone in time.


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