Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Sunday, August 17, 2014
The American Jewry
“Whether
it be Mark Rothko, or Woody Allen, or Mel Brooks…Baruch Spinoza there’s Jews
everywhere and you sort of use those people as a barometer and think Jews are
these special people. I mean we’re chosen in The Bible, we’re the chosen people
so you think you’re special…Every Jew is an old Jew waiting to get out. It’s
actually something you grow into. I think the old Jew is there when you’re born
and eventually you catch up with it…Every American Jew I went to Hebrew School
with in some form or another.”
-Marc Maron
“Israel isn’t really my country. New York is. I am very
proud to be a Jew, but I am a secular
Jew, like Baruch Spinoza, Albert Einstein, or Sigmund Freud. Indeed, the best
Jews have always been assimilated and free thinking. The bearded Jews you see
at the Wailing Wall, rocking back and forth, cowering before their god, those
are fairly second-rate Jews.”
-Misha
Vainberg (the arrogant Russian-Jewish oligarch in Gary Schteyngart’s Absurdistan)
“My grammy never got me gifts, she was too busy getting
raped by Cossacks.”
-Alvie
Singer (Woody Allen in Annie Hall)
Born in New York in 1987, I was lucky enough to live in a
world where anti-Semitism was something of an afterthought. Four decades
removed from the Holocaust, there was barely a stigma left about being Jewish.
The WASPs who seemed to control the universe, the country clubs and the banking
system were overtaken by the Jewish invention of the hostile takeover. It
seemed like the other minorities had it much worse. Secular Jews were prominent
in the arts, sciences, and the business world; Princeton no longer capped the
amount of Jews they were willing to accept. No one, except for a dying American
aristocracy seemed to mind. Jews became so deeply imbedded in liberal American
politics, it’s a wonder one never got elected president.
I had no
shame about my Jewish heritage. Why would I? The appearance of Jewish
exceptionalism was evident in all the spheres of society. We, as a people, had
perfectly assimilated into the nation and thrived every chance we could. We
were no longer even slaves to Jewish law. Me being the chief example as a
Reform Jew with a Christian mother, who ate pork and lobster every chance I
could. There is however a danger to this assimilation. We forget history and
lead the rallies for our hatred all across the world.
While it
may appear that Jews are the same as everyone else, in spite of the veneer of
equality, anti-Semitism is always hiding in the shadows. We may not wish to be
thought of as Jewish first, but we will always be thought of this way. There’s
a blatant distrust of Jews. While a politically correct society won’t tolerate
the Mel Gibson’s of the world, a huge portion of Christians believe we are
doomed to Hell and even bigger slice of the Arab world want us dead. Jews in
America have it so good, they forget that they are only two generations removed
from the Holocaust and that before and after the war no country on earth,
including the United States, was willing to give us asylum.
In spite of
the inherent distrust of us throughout the entire world, we have survived
diaspora and now of course the rest of the world wants to destroy the one place
where we have any sanctuary. It has become fashionable for young American Jews
to casually bandy about their support of a Palestinian state, because the
foundation of an Israeli State somehow closely resembles Imperialism. We all sympathize with the horrific situation Palestinians must endure, but there is no reasonable solution. It must come from Above.
See these self-hating Jewish professors blame Israel for the conflict. Have I lost my mind? Is it crazy that I find these arguments obscene?
See these self-hating Jewish professors blame Israel for the conflict. Have I lost my mind? Is it crazy that I find these arguments obscene?
After reading through it carefully, I lost my cool and wrote this.
“This is
the most absurd article I have ever read. How can you comment on the
Israel/Palestine conflict without mentioning suicide bombers, or the goal of
Hamas to eliminate all Jews from the planet? Palestinians had to deal with
being human shields (is this not a choice?). You can't reason with an enemy
that doesn't care about the lives of its people. It's always pretty inane to
forget that Jerusalem was desolate before the Zionists came and started hiring
Arabs in the 20s. Also this one made me laugh, "Palestine that was already
in the midst of its own modernization." You know that the territory called
Palestine, which was always a colony and never had any central government was
mostly taken by Jordan. Please let's defend the people who punish homosexuality
with death, give their wives cliterectomies and support the ethnic cleansing of
Jews and Christians throughout the world. I don't understand what the
self-hating Jews aim to accomplish. Do you want Israel to open its borders to
people who will undoubtedly kill them?”
Half the world is massacring each
other, but the only nation that gets criticized is Israel. For this reason, there
is no doubt in my mind that being anti-Zionism and being anti-Semitic are one
and the same. As a left-leaning, formerly secular Jew, it is confounding that
my closest allies on this issue are Howard Stern, Sarah Palin and
televangelists, but I don’t know what to tell you. Do we really think it is a
coincidence that Judaism has survived for 5,000 years in spite of the fact that
throughout our entire history the nations of the world almost unilaterally
wanted us dead? The Creator is calling us to unite above our egos. While the
American Jew lives in comfort now, it is not a markedly different state from 19th
century Germany or 15th century Spain. When the Jews forget they are
The Chosen People (not just leaders in the nations of the world) and refuse to
unite, they are depriving the world of the singular truth of the universe that
there is none else besides Him. Without recognition of our common problem, we will
never awaken the Creator through our connection and the world will continue to
suffer.
I know this is blatant self-promotion, but if you are interested in Kabbalah, I just published a book about my experiences studying Kabbalah and the world in the state of crisis.
Sunday, August 10, 2014
The End of Empty Pleasures
After beginning to work on a book for a Kabbalah group, a force compelled me to stop drinking and taking drugs. Below is an excerpt from my book, recalling the spark that led to the change.
Back in New York, I had never felt so alone. I was angry at the
world, a world that had failed to recognize my greatness. My inability to cope
with discomfort led me to self-medicate to the point of assured
self-destruction. My genetic programming and some poor choices brought on by my
environment had made me an alcoholic and prescription drug addict. Nothing was
following the neat path I believed my life would follow. New York intellectuals
didn’t crown me as a genius, although I was not able to push for it the way
some of my peers at Bard were able to. The film projects I was working on were
hitting and getting stuck in roadblocks, and I was angry when my work on a book
that was about to be published left only a small impression on the final
outcome of the book, though a lot of the content I had reworked is contained in
the pages you’re leafing through.
My ego was going through gigantic changes that I had no way of
measuring. I was studying Kabbalah, but only from the peripheries, watching
half a lesson here and there without a group to support what I was coming to
understand. I never considered shifting my point of view enough to become a
committed member of a study group. The effort it required didn’t make sense to
me.
I only persevered through
life because I knew that my work was good and I knew the screenwriting project
I was working on had something to offer the world if it would ever get made,
though that was a large if, and even if it did fulfill my criteria of a worthy
film, I was still unsure if that was inherently valuable, though my ego
definitely wanted that sort of validation. Also, even if the film was made and
it was successful, it would only have a small impact on the world. I wasn’t
aware at the time that the internal changes I was going through would be invaluable
to my spiritual growth. I wasn’t yet willing to admit that the discernments I
made were of any spiritual importance.
I was playing a game as I wrote, half-heartedly method acting for
the sake of my ego. Sitting in an apartment, after downing bottles of liquor
consistently for days, it occurred to me that even though I was in some ways
moving forward with my life, it was all based on a lie I was telling myself. I
was putting the best of myself forward by clouding my clarity in substances. It
was the only means I knew that could clear the cobwebs. Then it was suddenly
clear something needed to change. I felt like death daily. My work was
sustained by prescription drugs, and these drugs, which were propelling me to
push through, also gave me panic attacks on a near, nightly basis.
After living on my own for a couple of years, I was unemployed and
had to move back home for a little while. Then I was kicked out of my father’s
house, after being let go of an easy job as a barista, making me unable to pay
my rent. I was then forced into living in my mother’s apartment in the East
Village. She was seldom there since she lived in Long Island; I was having a
grand time in the moments I wasn’t paranoid or too hung over to do anything but
watch television with my head stuffed into a pillow.
In spite of my apparent handicap, I got a lot done. I wrote two
screenplays, was killing it in school, did a two-month editing job on a book in
just two weeks, partied almost every night and acted like a rude maniac most of
the time. In a state of disarray, one night, missing my phone and my wallet, I
showed up at the doorstep of one of my closest friends. At Georgia’s beautiful
West Village apartment, I was crying about my newly ex-girlfriend and trying to
sleep with the girl I had bothered at five in the morning. I repeat, I was
killing it. Having gone from a neurotic to a powerhouse writer in drug-induced
states of mania, I felt invincible. Still, every morning when I woke up, I felt
like I needed to be hospitalized.
One night, I miraculously felt the desire to get better from this
corporeal impediment, after having accumulating a bottle a day, 40-100mg a day
Adderall habit (an absolutely absurd number; a man named Stephen Elliot, who I
incidentally met a few times during this period, wrote a memoir about his
struggles with Adderall doing 10mg/day). My friend Dave was over at my house,
and I said, “I need to get sober. Will you go to an AA meeting with me?” I went
that night, and I felt the familiar stench of the room—it was my third time
trying to do this—and my recovery began. I began to get sober through
Alcoholics Anonymous, because I felt completely out of touch with my emotional
state. I allowed myself to feel the emptiness in my life for the first time in
a long time, and I had opened my heart enough to consider G-d. In order to get
sober, I had to look at myself from the outside and compromise my self-centered
view of existence. I was a self-torturing being in the center of the universe,
and I had to recognize I was only a small part of the universe and that most
people didn’t care about me enough to warrant my paranoia about them. It sounds
so easy to let go of your belief in your control over the universe, but as you may
know, lost in the grips of narcissism, the possibility never presents itself.
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
First Few Pages of The Egotist
How The Light Finds Us
The study of Kabbalah is not for everyone. It is for the
seekers who aren’t satisfied with the life they lead. They sense that the world
has more to offer—a deeper truth lurking in the shadows, waiting to be
uncovered. These are the people endowed with a point in the heart, a yearning
that builds a vessel (kli) that allows them to tap into the spiritual world.
Only the Creator can decide if this
wisdom is meant for you. We are all different. Maybe your desire to comprehend
the meaning of life isn’t developed enough to seek spiritual wisdom. Maybe you
have sought wisdom from other sources and found they weren’t for you, or that
they may have ceased to answer your questions. A desire to know more could be
pulling at your heart. If you are seeking to find meaning in your life, you are
blessed with an important opportunity to correct your nature through the
ancient wisdom of Kabbalah to find unending happiness, or at the very least,
unending purpose.
This is not a story about a man
making his mark on the world in any easily recognizable way. The changes I made
in my behavior and the events that shaped these changes were incidental to the
story. What happened to me was a full-scale internal change that came to me by
making mistakes over and over again, so I could develop more colored and
precise wisdom.
I now know the feeling of love as
something deeper than romantic love. It is the feeling of the force of the
universe clutching at your feet, offering a glimpse of the Creator.
The Creator (G-d) is the force of
bestowal through reception. You will learn that by going against your nature to
take, you will reconnect to your purest self. Kabbalah forces you to look
deeply at yourself and correct your nature to receive the love the Creator
wishes to offer every being on this planet.
From Below Upwards
For some time many of our greatest minds have submitted
themselves to the notion that the world is a terrible place that only seems to
get worse. Let’s observe Woody Allen’s attempt at describing the state of the
world through the lens of realism. “I don’t feel that I’m pessimistic. That’s
something I get called: pessimistic, nihilistic, cynical…I don’t see it that
way. I just have a realistic attitude, and the hard facts are so brutal and
terrifying that each person has his own way of rationalizing that it’s not so
bad. But it is so bad. And the trick is to acknowledge that, and still get
through.”[i] We are aware that the
world is unwell, that suffering is all around us. Some are better than others
at disguising that fact, because our brain does not see the point of looking at
the world objectively. Since human beings are incapable of objectivity,
everything is viewed through an emotional lens.
Some are more honest about the state
of things than others. Allen’s friend and fellow comedian, Larry David,
Seinfeld co-creator and painstaking observer of the minute details of life,
confirms Allen’s take on suffering. He elaborates, “I agree with that…I go
through life feeling sorry for pretty much everybody. I’ll pass a toll, and
I’ll think about the toll collector standing in there for eight or ten hours a
day—how do they do it? How do they get up in the morning and go back? I feel
sorry for everyone.”[ii]
The world has a way of beating us
until we get to a point where we can’t take it anymore. Our egos have risen to
the point where we refuse to help each other. All we do is watch other people
suffer and feel the same emptiness. Whether we have hundreds of millions of
dollars (like Larry David), or we work in the tollbooth, we are disappointed
with what our lives amount to. We want to empathize with each other. We want to
find alternatives to our mutual suffering, but our egos won’t allow it. We can
make little, or even big gestures, to make others feel some solace in the
misery that eats away at strangers and the people we love most, but these
gestures don’t direct us towards anything meaningful or lasting.
Everything outside ourselves that
we look at as fulfilling is merely a distraction that keeps us from looking
deeply within. And when we do address our internal struggles, we toil in our
self-awareness. We believe we are unique individuals and use our self-interest
to destroy each other and the world at large. In fact, the world that we
consider to be reality is an illusion, blinding us to the infinite spiritual
world.
Our lives feel random, disconnected
and meaningless. Material aspirations are either unfulfilling or out of reach.
We lack desire for anything greater than personal fulfillment. And once we are
fed, we only get hungrier. There’s a hole in the pit of our stomachs.
While this hole is impossible to
fill by traditional means, there is a solution to the life-suck keeping you
from getting what you need from life. You are experiencing life as it is and
are ready to uncover the reasons for your lack. You may even sense that the
coincidences that have shaped your life have some meaning you would like to
uncover.
Many of us begin life with high
hopes, but can’t help believing we are somehow being cheated by forces out of
our control. As we get older, we are hardened by these realities of the world.
We learn to temper our expectations when success doesn’t come our way. If and
when we do succeed, the expectation of further success will ultimately be a
disappointment, whether you’re Michael Jordan or Steve Jobs.
This is because once we feel
happiness it quickly dissipates. It is only natural. We are disappointed that
we didn’t receive what we were promised as children sitting in front of a
television set that offered a version of life we did not have the means to
replicate. The big secret is those who seem to have replicated a seemingly
perfect life usually feel exactly the same lack. Everything that hurts us comes
from the Creator, just as everything that gives us joy comes from Him. So,
whatever we perceive as material lack is really a spiritual lack and vice versa
until you attain spirituality.
As painful as it feels to our
senses, this is an opportunity that gives us the desire to find a true purpose.
We know that there is an abundant force that we can’t seem to tap into. There
must be another way. This can’t be the totality of life.
We are compelled to both escape
from and find meaning in the emptiness stirring inside of us. Unfortunately,
without a method to channel these frustrations, we will not find an escape. We
can study philosophy, psychology and religion to fill this hole, but for many
of us this doesn’t work, because it doesn’t reform us in any meaningful way. We
will ultimately mistake faith with ritual and stay blind to the Creator. We
will never perceive Him. Some people escape troubling feelings by obsessing
over sports franchises, and feeding on pornography, drugs, alcohol, television
and movies. Others work until they’re too exhausted to do much else.
While this may quell our loneliness
and suffering from moment to moment, we tire of these escapes from the reality
of our existence. Universities and great minds promise answers to the purpose
of existence through intellectual pursuits. Intellectuals like Christopher
Hitchens will offer, “Art is a reflection of life that gives life
meaning…Philosophy will provide universal truths and reveal knowledge is the
path to wisdom,[iii]” while true wisdom
is the sum of experiences and feelings. Of the few who seriously consider these
matters, we are eventually troubled by their contradictions and errors in
logic. Something is always missing, because there is no such thing as
objectivity.
I, like many of us, felt
intolerable suffering and voraciously tried to cure it. After studying a
smattering of Western philosophy in college, I spent my entire adult life
repelled by the concept of G-d. I didn’t see any purpose in the delusion.
However, I found that rational
thought was as flawed as the spiritual solutions to life’s problems. I was
embarrassed to ascribe myself to any answer to life’s big questions that
couldn’t be explained rationally…
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