As I went through my undergraduate and graduate school years, I cobbled together several different part-time jobs. One of my favourites was teaching Jewish music at weekend religious schools. This time of year, Tu b’Shevat (aka the New Year of Trees), songs were part of the lesson plan. Often, the kids I taught were just learning Hebrew for the first time, so I taught in English, too. One of my all-time hits was “The Garden Song,” which started with “Inch by inch, row by row, I’m gonna make this garden grow. All it takes is a rake and a hoe and a piece of fertile ground.” My second chart-topper was “Inchworm, inchworm, measuring the marigolds, won’t you stop and try to see how beautiful they are?”
Now, as I write this, I feel transported to a warm, sunny day in my garden, which is good, because it was -30°C with the windchill when I walked my dog in Winnipeg this morning! It’s good to be in touch with both the long-term hopes and dreams of summer and the realities of where we are. Holding that paradox, of both frostbite weather and sunny heat at once, is a great metaphor for where many of us are these days.
As a dual U.S.-Canadian citizen, I’ve been in knots over the unrest “down south” and the U.S. presidential transition. As well, I’m worried about the pandemic and about how poorly vaccine roll out has gone so far in Manitoba, and in Canada overall. I’m both thrilled to hear that all my children’s grandparents have gotten their first vaccine shot in the States, and also so sad to know that our local “adopted” Manitoba grandparents, both over 80, have no idea when they’ll get theirs.
Many people who have been sick with COVID-19 have struggled with challenging effects afterwards, including significant mental health issues. The anxiety and mortality struggles are pretty serious concerns for many of us, even if we haven’t gotten sick. One way my household has succeeded in coping is in burrowing in at home – into learning, good books, art and other DIY projects, building Lego and cooking. Everyone here, from age 9 and up, has kept busy with work and learning. We try to keep positive things in mind as much as we can.
I’ve been thinking about all of this, as I’ve considered what my plans are for the next days, months and even the year. In early January, I celebrated a birthday and the one-year anniversary of starting to study Daf Yomi, a page of Talmud a day. I am proud of finding the time to do this, however brief and poor my attention span may be sometimes. While I struggled with finding good (quick) resources for study, I found an Instagram page, posted by a rabbi, which seemed to summarize each page of study.
Hurray! I thought, I can review this in a glance while I help my kids with remote school lessons. Of course, anything that is in my Instagram feed has to then be kid-safe. Imagine my surprise when my account dumped two Daf Yomi posts with very scary images at me. One showed a person with a plastic bag over her head, struggling to breathe. The other showed someone’s hands, coated and dripping with blood.
Normally, I would simply unfollow this kind of thing without comment. However, these posts about Talmud were written by a rabbi, so I messaged her. “Hey!” I said, “I am so pleased to be doing Daf Yomi. I followed your posts, but I have to unfollow. These images on Tractate Pesachim 57 & 59 are too graphic. I don’t want my kids to see them.”
I got a response that left me, well, reminded that rabbis are just people, and that some of them may miss the mark at times. It was a “sorry to offend” kind of message. She indicated that she was a visual learner, that these posts were meant for those over 18 and that, to her, these seemed essential as an artist/interpreter, and she was guessing others felt the same. While she congratulated me on taking on Talmud study, I was also “othered,” as she, an artist, felt that dedicated followers would prefer this gory imagery in their social media feed.
I was disappointed. Although I am way past age 18, I am choosing, over and over, to focus on what I can gain positively from the talmudic text, even during a hard time. The talmudic rabbis, in parsing what had happened in Temple sacrifice, were trying to understand ritual events that had occurred a long time before. It was a disruptive period in history. Things weren’t stable. In fact, they weren’t actually doing sacrifices or actively harming people who didn’t observe properly. They were ironing out Jewish law for centuries to come, by confronting the past and figuring out the future through discussion, debate and study.
They did this by examining one small thing at a time. Much like the “Inchworm” song, Jewish rabbinic tradition teaches us to examine what is in front of us and to find solutions to challenges. I am distraught when I have to “hold” overwhelming images of rioting in the U.S. Capitol, the pandemic illness and deaths, and even a gory Instagram feed in my mind. Instead, I’m choosing a different path. It’s one that focuses on the next kids’ snack and meal, the next dog walk, and the next time I pick up the warm handknit mitts from the radiator as I face a cold morning outside. Inch by inch, row by row, we will get to sunny days in the garden ahead.
Sometimes, we do best when we embrace the ritual of “one thing at a time.” It’s one wintertime walk and, even, to knit each stitch as it presents itself on the needle to make more mittens. We’ve got a lot on our plate these days. Even so, we must eat only one bite at a time. It’s a metaphor and a paradox that the talmudic rabbis knew well. It might be a cliché but, for us, it also works.
Joanne Seiffhas written regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.
Catalina Beraducci plays Noemí Goldberg in the Topic film Noemí Gold. (photo from Topic)
For his first feature film, writer and director Dan Rubenstein has done well. Noemí Gold, which is currently streaming exclusively on Topic, is a quietly engaging story that touches upon serious issues, though never delves into them. While the story is somewhat scattered and doesn’t always make sense, the acting is strong and the glimpse into Argentine culture interesting.
The title role is played by Catalina Beraducci, who is perfect for the part. Noemí Goldberg, 27, has accidentally become pregnant from a tryst with an egotistical artist of questionable talent and character. She is an unassuming person, recently graduating with her master’s in architecture, though she doesn’t appear to have a job. When she seeks a doctor who can perform an abortion – which was an illegal procedure in Argentina until just last month – she has some trouble raising the money she’ll need to go to Uruguay to get one.
Noemí has a couple close friends – eccentric roommate Rosa and party-girl Sol – both of whom help in small but important ways. Also in Noemí’s court is her grandmother, though we find out later in the movie that their relationship has had its complications. Lastly, while all this is going on, Noemí’s cousin, David, comes to visit from Los Angeles, where his family moved when he was 7, for tragic reasons we eventually find out.
David and Noemí were once close, but, for most of the movie, their interactions are strained. David works for an energy drink company and his job is, literally, to post photos on Instagram of himself enjoying the drink in various places and while doing various activities. (He is the only one in the film who has a job, it seems.) Social media plays a prominent role in the narrative as a whole – and, hopefully, younger viewers will take it not only as a representation of themselves in film but as a critique of how much time they dedicate to promoting the fun they are ostensibly having versus actually having fun.
Women’s rights, religion (via a discussion with and seduction attempt of two young Mormon missionaries), what constitutes art (one amusing scene features an objectively poor dancer filming her own performance using a camera on a selfie stick, while being cheered and applauded by an adoring audience), the importance of forgiveness, the challenges of being a good friend, the imperfection but necessity of family, and many other topics run through Noemí Gold. There are no pronouncements and the laidback pace could fool one into thinking there is not much of substance in the film, but they’d be wrong.
Actor and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen delivered the keynote address last month at an Anti-Defamation League conference. His words quickly went viral because he pinpointed fears and challenges shared by millions about the power of social media. He hit many nails on the head.
“Democracy, which depends on shared truths, is in retreat, and autocracy, which depends on shared lies, is on the march,” he said. “Hate crimes are surging, as are murderous attacks on religious and ethnic minorities. All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history.”
He was referring to social media like Facebook and Twitter and platforms like YouTube and Google, whose algorithms, he said, “deliberately amplify the type of content that keeps users engaged – stories that appeal to our baser instincts and that trigger outrage and fear.”
Had Facebook existed in the 1930s, he went on, it would have run 30-second ads for Hitler’s “solution” to the “Jewish problem.”
Baron Cohen acknowledged that social media companies have taken some steps to reduce hate and conspiracies on their platforms, “but these steps have been mostly superficial.”
“These are the richest companies in the world, and they have the best engineers in the world,” he said. “They could fix these problems if they wanted to.” The companies could do more to police the messages being circulated on their sites, he suggested.
He’s correct about the problems. But the first problem with his solution is that he is asking a couple of corporations to judge billions of interactions, making them not only powerful media conglomerates, which they already are, but also the world’s most prolific censors and arbiters of expression. Of course, by abdication, they are already erring on the side of hate speech, but is the alternative preferable? If we think Facebook chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg has too much power now, do we really want to make him the planet’s censor-in-chief?
Yes, the platforms benefit from and, therefore, promote, the most extreme viewpoints. But, even if we could, would forcing those voices off the platforms make the world a safer place? There are already countless alternative spaces for people whose extremism has been pushed off the mainstream sites. Just because we can’t hear them doesn’t mean they’ve gone away.
Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian philosopher who declared “the medium is the message” died four years before Zuckerberg was born. He could have predicted that social media would change the way we interact and communicate. But has it fundamentally changed who we are? Or has it merely allowed our true selves fuller voice? Perhaps a little of both. Facebook, Twitter and the others are not agnostic forces; they influence us as we engage with them. But, in the end, they are mere computer platforms, human-created applications that have taken on outsized force in our lives. And all the input is human-created. Since the dawn of the industrial age, we have imagined our own inventions taking over and controling us, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to 2001: A Space Odyssey’s Hal to Zuckerberg’s Facebook.
In all these cases, fictional or not, the truth is that the power remains in human hands. This is no less true today. We could, if the political will existed, shut down these platforms or apply restraints along the lines Baron Cohen suggests. But this would be to miss the larger point.
We live in a world filled with too much bigotry, chauvinism, hatred and violence. This is the problem. Dr. Martin Luther King said: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” And there are plenty of sites on social media that advance mutual understanding and love over hate. Are their messages as likely to go viral? Probably not. But that, ultimately, is determined by billions of individual human choices. A small but illuminating counterrevolution seems to be happening right now with a renaissance of the ideas of Mister (Fred) Rogers and his message of simple kindness. While much of the world seems alight in hatred and intolerance, a countermovement has always existed to advance love and inclusiveness. This needs to be nurtured in any and every way possible.
If Facebook were a country, its “population” would be larger than China’s. Bad example when we are discussing issues of free speech and the accountability of the powerful, perhaps, but illuminating – because an entity of that size and impact should be accountable. As a corporate body, it has few fetters other than governmental controls, which are problematic themselves. Concerned citizens (and platform users) should demand of these companies the safeguards we expect. We are the consumers, after all, and we should not ignore that power.
But neither should we abstain from taking responsibility ourselves. Social media influences us, yes. But, to an exponentially greater degree, it is merely a reflection of who we are. It is less distorted than the funhouse mirror we like to imagine it being. If what we see when we look at social media is a depiction of the world we find repugnant, it is not so much social media that needs to change, it is us.
Almost half of Adeena Karasick’s latest volume of poetry, Checking In (Talonbooks, 2018), is comprised of whimsical Facebook status updates, most of which have deeper meaning on second and third thought. Together, they speak, as the book’s description notes, “to our seemingly insatiable desire for information, while acknowledging how fraught that information can be.”
“It was a totally compulsive exercise over four years, where literally everything I read or watched or where I went or what I heard was fodder for the text,” Karasick told the Independent about the faux updates’ origins. “And, I must admit, I threw away as many lines as I kept.
“Sometimes, it was just that I couldn’t get a song out of my head and then would just riff on it,” she said, giving as examples, “Ulysses is listening to Siren Song on Spotify”; “Gustave Klimt is listening to KISS”; and “Salvador Dali is doing the Time Warp. Again.”
Sometimes, she said, it was linguistically driven, such as, “E & G are saying F off” and “Bold italics are refusing to move into an upright position.” Or, “it was just pure, silly fun” to create updates like “William Wordsworth is wandering lonely on iCloud,” “Edvard Munch is watching Scream 3,” “Google is mapping the territory” and “Narcissus is using his selfie stick.”
“It was so obsessive,” said Karasick, “that even now that the book’s been published, my brain is so wired to creating those one-liners, I walk around the streets reading every sign and riff on them: ‘Thin Lizzy is watching her carbs,’ ‘Fatwa is doing a cleanse,’ ‘The Pre-Pesach Jew is clearing her cookies,’ ‘The Long, Long Sleeper is Woke.’”
Karasick’s sense of play is evident throughout Checking In. Even when describing heartbreak, confusion and other emotionally charged states, the joy she derives from words, from language and from constructing layers of meaning, is obvious.
“I think I’ve always had a really dark sense of humour,” she said, “and there’s something about taking that which is frightening or deeply disturbing and disempowering it – by not so much making fun of it, but ironically or parodically making it strange, decontextualizing it, hyberbolically defamiliarizing it.
“A lot of my work takes hard-hitting political issues, whether that be the Holocaust in Genrecide (Talonbooks, 1994) and superimposing it with the policing and massacring of language, or dealing with 9/11 in The House That Hijack Built (Talonbooks, 2004).… ‘There was a Big Building that Swallowed a Plane … How Insane to Swallow a Plane….’ A sense of jouissance (pleasure, play) really permeates all that I do. There’s nothing more exhilarating for me than playing inside language, finding unexpected liaisons, connections, sound clusters. It’s a type of erotics of the text that is for me very jewy; that jouissance, a jewy essence: all diasporic, nomadic, exilic, ex-static.
“I see this ‘play’ as operating with an ‘assimilationist’ brand of Jewish humour,” she explained, “not of bombastic neurosis, but one that threatens to unleash chaos, creates unsocialized anarchy, embodies unpredictability – impassioned, engaged, shticky, outrageous and earnest all at the same time – in a post-Woody Allen/Jon Stewart/ Sarah Silverman/Sandra Bernhardish kind of way. And, sometimes, it’s audacious, subversive, provocative and, in the true definition of ‘irony,’ explodes ontologically and cuts into the fabric of things; the smooth functioning of the quiet comfortability or the ‘homeyness’ of our world. That is the role of art.”
Adeena Karasick’s newest collection of poetry is Checking In. (photo by Safia Karasick Southey/talonbooks.com)
And one cannot separate Karasick’s art from her Jewish heritage – it’s “part of my DNA,” she said – and from her study of Jewish texts. With a PhD in kabbalah and deconstruction, it is not surprising that, in speaking about the concept of play, she pointed to 13th-century kabbalistic mystic Avraham Abulafia’s Science of the Combination of Letters, in which, she said, “we are instructed to play inside the language, using ancient practices of recombinatoric alchemy, gematriatic (numerological) substitution, combination, and, through lettristic ‘skips’ and ‘jumps’ slippage, meaning is infinitely re-circulated.
“According to kabbalistic thinking,” she said, “we are commanded to permute and combine the letters; focus on them and their configurations, permutations; combine consonants into a swift motion, which heats up your thinking and increases your joy and desire so much, that you don’t crave food or sleep and all other desires are annihilated. And nothing exists except the letters through which the world is being recreated, through a continual process of constructing and reconstructing borders, orders, laws, mirrors, screens, walls…. And, in accordance with the strictures of Abulafian play, to properly play is to travel inside the words within words, traces, affects, projections, sliding and slipping between the forces and intensities distributed through the texts’ syntactic economy. And this very play speaks both to how everything is infinitely interconnected – reverberant with our social, consumerist, communicative patterns – generating a contiguous infolding of meaning.”
She connected this type of play to “the actual conversation habits of Yiddish.”
“According to etymologist Michael Wex – in his Just Say Nu (Harper: New York, 2007) – Yiddish itself is inscribed in derailment, evasion, avoidance, where the norm is not to be ‘clear’ but to ‘seduce and lead astray,’ to say the reverse of whatever’s been said. For example, as we know, to say, ‘Hi, how are you,’ ‘Shalom aleichem,’ the answer is ‘Aleichem shalom.’ Answers are answered with a question, repetition, reversals, circumlocutions, interruptions, insertions (ptoo, ptoo, ptoo). Compliments are avoided in favour of their opposite. Or, like how you should never say what you mean because naming something (such as cancer, leprosy, pig) could bring it into existence.”
As for her own existence, Karasick said, “All my life, I’ve been fiercely drawn to all that seems enigmatic or paradoxical, and get great pleasure in connecting the unconnectable; drawing from different genres, lexicons or mediums and reveling in ways they inform each other in radical and innovative ways, inviting us to see the world anew.”
While she has spent years teaching philosophic and critical theory, and media and pop culture at various universities, as well as attending lectures on media ecology and ontology, she also watches “a lot of trashy TV,” she said. “I like classical jazz and MTV videos. I read [Louis] Zukofsky, [Slovoj] Zizek and Vogue magazine. And my favourite thing to do is to mash these language systems together into a kind of linguistic tzimmes; each flavour, taste, texture informing the other, expanding the palette.
“It’s especially exciting for me to break down that binary between high and low culture; draw from the music hall and the circus, erotics and spirituality; and play with ways all of this information erupts as a palimpsestic web of both sacred and secular echo-poetic referents.”
Karasick writes “on the road, on buses, trains, subways, boats; in motion,” she said. “I write best amid the bustle of life and, oddly, when I’m really busy is when I’m most inspired. I’m always hunting and gathering, drawing on the world around me. Though, I must say, when drenched in aching nostalgia, frustrated by contemporary politics or steeped in throbbing desire is when the work especially flows.”
Approaching the poetry
“Contour XLV: With Asura,” “Lorem Ipsum” and “In Cold Hollers” are all “homophonic translations, and so they all fall under the same rubric,” said Karasick of three of the poems in Checking In during a brief poetry lesson over the phone.
She explained, “Each of these [works] take the same sounds of an original poem by somebody else and I’ve translated them. I’ve done an avant-garde, post-modern translation by using the same sounds and rhythms of the original poems but changing all the words, so that if one read it simultaneously with the original poem, it would sound like the same poem, but it’s completely different. It’s a way of commenting on the previous piece; it’s translating it, moving through and across different modes.”
“In Cold Hollers” is a translation of Charles Olson’s 1953 poem “In Cold Hell, In Thicket”; “Contour XLV: With Asura” is based on “Canto 45 with Usura,” a poem by Ezra Pound, which Karasick described as a “famously antisemitic, women-hating, Jews and women are pigs kind of poem”; and “Lorem Ipsum,” which is in English, but plays on the sounds of the Latin of Cicero’s “De finibus bonorum et malorum” (“On the Ends of Goods and Evils”). “Lorem ipsum is the standard placeholder text used to demonstrate the graphic elements of a document or visual presentation,” writes Karasick elsewhere. “I am interested in exploring how the notion of ‘place holding’ gets reworked through an impossible relationship both in love and in language.”
As to how to approach a poem that you’ve never read before, Karasick said, “On one level, it depends on how deeply one wants to penetrate the text. The way I like to read is to not worry about what everything means per se, but rather … in reading, I think the most important thing is to feel the text, to go inside and feel its rhythms, its textures…. I work a lot with sound, so I’m really interested how sound itself communicates meaning and so, therefore, a lot of this type of work is about moving with the rhythms and the textures and some of that crazed emotion, how that bleeds through, just through the way that it sounds and feels in your mouth.”
Turning to the poem “Lorem Ipsum,” she said the words mean “pain itself.” She has translated Cicero’s treatise on the theory of ethics into a “passionate love poem” about the “difficulties and grueling angst that one traverses through that. Just like love itself, or pain itself, isn’t something that’s easily definable, so it is with the poem itself, which takes us through this journey of multiple ways that are easily comprehensible and other parts that are strangely defamiliarized and confusing because these very strong emotions are fiercely that…. Just like in life, you come across things that are completely foreign and impenetrable, so, similarly, the poem interweaves through the familiar and the defamiliar, the expected and that which completely takes you into new arenas of wonder and confusion.”
Karasick similarly takes Pound’s “Canto 45” and, playing with the Yiddish word asura, which means forbidden, and the English word usury, creates a new work that’s both a scathing commentary on Pound’s, as well its own poem, with its own meanings.
About “In Cold Hollers,” Karasick said she used the word “hollers” because it’s “homophonically related to hell, but it’s hollering in, calling back into Charles Olson’s original ’53 piece; and his original title, ‘In Cold Hell, In Thicket,’ refers to the opening of Dante’s ‘Inferno.’ What seems simple, it just has layers and layers and layers of history, literary history, philosophical history, as well.”
The title of Olson’s poem refers particularly to “selva oscura,” she said, “which is the dark wood that Dante wanders into in the middle of his life … so Olson’s poem, which riffs on that, is a similar excursion into a visionary experience, where he struggles to come up with a new understanding … from his own midlife … putting a voice to his own time. It is a personal drama of experience, conflict; it really speaks to the wrenching process of living and loving that, by turns, is grueling and funny and dramatic and trivial. My translation of that is dealing with all of those things and, in a way, it’s like, do you remember that old Gwen Stefani song, ‘I Ain’t No Hollaback Girl’? – I am a hollaback girl. I am hollering back, in cold hollers, to this cold hell, and basically calling into that history of both Dante and Olson, the history of post-modernism, 65 years later.”
In talking about Olson’s work and hers, Karasick said, “I sometimes like thinking of translation as trans-elation because you can never really translate anything because of culture and all the different references – in my piece, in my trans-elation, the attention is focused on a world of connected life, the personal, the political, the poetic as a system of relations. And, lastly … highlighting how the words themselves are imaginative participants; the words themselves are creating and recreating the sense of connecting the personal, the political, the poetic.”
And it’s not just the words, but how they are placed on a page that matters in poetry. So, for example, Karasick’s “In Cold Hollers” not only plays on the sound and meaning of Olson’s poem, but also mirrors its typography. “I wanted to keep it very much as he had it,” she said of where the lines break and other aspects of the formatting.
“The notion of the physicality and the materiality of where the words are placed on the page has just as much meaning as what they are communicating. We’re so often used to looking at the left margin … but I want the phrases to be moving and fluid, and that sense of how the white space between the words is equally as important as the words themselves. We can go back to kabbalah and the black fire on white fire, that the whole page becomes a series of fiery energy.”
I am not normally someone who is especially active on social media. I am not normally someone who curates current events, even though I consume them like undergrads do coffee – habitually, obsessively, out of necessity.
For a long time, my political associations and the extent to which I follow world news have been largely separate from the image I have cultivated for public view. As far as Facebook is concerned, I am represented through dog videos, feel-good intercommunity displays of solidarity, recipes and the occasional satire poking fun at the absurd and horrifying climate we’re living in – but there has been a shift. A shift toward police brutality, transphobia, racism. A shift toward synagogue shootings.
I do not share news stories on such topics because I enjoy doing so. I don’t enjoy reading about things that make my heart heavy, nor offering vulnerabilities to people who do not see me as a person, but rather the embodiment of an idea they disagree with. I do not take pleasure in sharing pain. It is my very nature to shield myself and others from it. Although part of love is letting others learn, and that involves experiencing pain and hurt.
It is easier to stick one’s head in the sand, but it doesn’t make it right. It is important to denounce insidiousness and nefariousness when you see it, especially if it does not directly affect you. It is important to hold space for those who are impacted by the injustices of the world, to hold them up and offer your strength. In doing so, we hope others do the same for us, and perhaps that is the only way we can get through these dark times with any semblance of sanity, of humanity.
I used to make a point of sharing light-hearted, feel-good posts, cognizant of the “bad news,” which is in no short supply. I believe my intention to provide some degree of respite from the political apocalypse we’re currently observing was a good one, but I would wager also misguided. To curate news is one thing, to disengage from it is another.
It became clear to me that, just because I am kept abreast of political happenings, and that I see them all over social media, does not mean others do; a classic cognitive bias that I should have spotted much earlier. This is true of what is happening in Trump’s America, to people of colour, LGBTQ folks, indigenous peoples, immigrants and refugees, Muslim communities. This is true of issues and current events related to antisemitism – I am now startlingly aware just how little people know about it. Not only the frequency of antisemitic incidents in North America and Europe, but, at a much more basic level, what antisemitism is and how to spot it.
For many of my friends, especially those who I’ve met in London, I am the only Jewish person they know. While it shouldn’t significantly impact the way I conduct myself, the weight my actions carry is not lost on me when I am the entire schematic representation of “Jew” for many of the people I come across. There is a pressure to behave in a way that is contrary to the many persistent stereotypes that precede my traditions and my culture. I must be generous to a fault lest I be stingy. I must laugh off antisemitism and micro-aggressions lest I be perceived as a paranoid, uppity Seinfeld type. I must be soft and kind and open, I must not have strong opinions lest I be the overbearing, naggy Jewish woman. I must downplay my love of bagels (they’re so damn good).
I also must be a political chameleon, dodging demonization from the left and right for equal and opposite accusations: we are the puppet masters, yet the infiltrators. We are the root of capitalism, yet the root of communism. We are somehow the one percent who controls the world’s wealth, yet we also fund the movement that rallies against it. We are insular elitists, yet permeating globalists. Those of us who look like me have assimilated to whiteness and reap the benefits, yet we will never be “white enough” to those who would see us dead.
Over time, the belief sticks: “I must not behave in any way, shape or form, in any manner that would give credence to the ideas that this is how Jews are, as I represent them to so many.” Yet it’s as exhausting for me to keep up as it is to keep this narrative straight.
I thought that, perhaps if I wanted to be a socially engaged citizen of the world, I could avoid these pitfalls by sharing information about the world as neutrally as I could. I could be the “impartial reporter,” make the news palatable, make it sterile. I could be taken more seriously, sanitized of emotional attachment that would otherwise be paint me as “irrational,” which is the ultimate insult in political and academic discourse. (Undoubtedly rooted in sexism and undoubtedly seen as weak, as it is perceived as feminine.)
But to do this serves no one well. It is inherently more harmful to the people who are affected by the issues being reported. To be “unbiased” in the wake of something that should not be polarizing, yet somehow is, ultimately reflects complicity. It is contrary to my values as a person. It is contrary to my values as a Jew.
This confuses many people, who know I am largely secular and open in my agnosticism. How can I profess myself to be as Jewish as I do, while maintaining such a wide berth from religiosity and theism? By that definition, I’m not “that Jewish.”
I may not believe in a God, but I do believe in my people, and in the traditions that shaped me to be who I am. I am Jewish insofar as my birth and upbringing, in my values and my conduct, in my pursuit of tikkun olam, repairing the world. I am “Jewish enough” to lead services despite my relationship with my faith. I am “Jewish enough” to abstain from pork but not “Jewish enough” to abstain from shellfish or cheeseburgers. I may not be “so Jewish” as to observe Shabbat to the letter, but I am Jewish enough to be gunned down in a synagogue.
My tradition is one of orthopraxy, of deed over creed. We are meant to “pray with our feet” as well as with our words. The Talmud teaches us not to be overwhelmed by the enormity of the world’s grief, but rather to do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now; that we are not obligated to complete the work of repairing the fractures and chasms in our world, but neither are we free to abandon it.
There is the story in the Talmud of a man who came to the great rabbis of the day and told them to teach him Torah while he stood on one foot. He did this to mock them. He first went to Rabbi Shammai, who refused to engage when he recognized the man’s intentions. The man went next to Rabbi Hillel and made the same challenge: teach me your Torah while I stand on one foot. Rabbi Hillel knew this man’s intention as well, but he was patient. He simply said, “What is hateful to you, do not do to others; all the rest is commentary. Go and study this.”
It should be that simple. If only it were that simple. I don’t know if the reason it isn’t is because of psycho-schematic representations in our minds, or nationalism, or capitalism, or groupthink, or whataboutisms, or strawmen, or ego, or that we forget that, when we bleed, we all bleed the same. I don’t know if it’s because we’ve forgotten how to be empathetic, or we’ve stopped doing it because it hurts, or that we feel powerless and that feels worse.
A friend told me recently that they don’t engage with this stuff because they’ve become numb to the horrors of the world. I can understand that, truly. Although I think it is precisely because of the commonplace, routinized nature of these injustices that we must engage because, when we don’t, they become routine, and they become a part of the fabric of our society that we will forget shouldn’t be there in the first place.
We have a saying in Judaism, “tzedek, tzedek, tirdof,” “justice, justice, you shall pursue.” But our understanding of tzedek is different to that of mishpat or din, other Hebrew words referring to justice or law in a strictly legal sense. Tzedek is tempered by compassion, of doing not necessarily what is lawful, but what is the right thing to do. And there is an emphasis on the action, on the doing. This may very well be rooted in some of the many names Jews use to refer to God, and the concept that people are made in God’s image.
In our tradition, there are many different names for God to reflect different aspects of God’s characteristics. Elohim is common, derived from the ancient word for judge. Certainly, people who are unfamiliar with the Torah often criticize the “Old Testament” for barbarism, for a wrathful, vengeful God that falls uncompromisingly into this depiction of an impartial, removed judge who delivers reward or punishment in accordance with the word that was given. I’m not about to unpack that, that’s a whole other essay in itself.
Unquestionably, the most sacred name we have for God is one we don’t even know how to pronounce, and are not supposed to pronounce, that is often anglicized as YHVH. It is derived from the Hebrew word for “to be,” and it is sometimes understood to translate roughly as “the Essence of Being.” This name is said to reflect an intimacy, a mercy, a love that perhaps we don’t even know how to name.
These different names may suggest a God of multiple beings, or even multiple gods, but Judaism is quite strict in its monotheism, and these names are used in scripture deliberately in ways that are context-dependent: Elohim deals justice, YHVH deals in mercy.
“Genesis tells two creation stories,” writes Rabbi Mark Glickman, “in the first, Elohim is the Creator, in the second, the creator is YHVH Elohim. To reconcile the accounts, ancient rabbis argued that God first tried to create the world using only justice, and it didn’t work.”
I’m very much a Darwinist by trade, but the message of this rings true to me. To exact change, to make something sustainable, we must do so with justice that is tempered by compassion.
Now, compassion does not mean, “try to understand neo-Nazis and justify their actions.” What compassion does mean, at least in part, is to show kindness and solidarity to other groups who are being hurt, even when we ourselves are licking our wounds and trying to find our feet. It means to support one another, even when we ourselves have trouble standing. It means speaking up for those whose voices are hoarse and raw from screaming. It means using our visibility to shed light on stories that are sequestered to shadows. It means form a patchwork quilt of community, which, when stitched together and reinforced, is warm, strong and unbreakable.
These are dark times. I say this not with the intent to be dramatic or prosaic, but simply factual. But that doesn’t mean we can’t kick at it until it bleeds something more hopeful. That being said, if we want any chance of making it out alive, we’ve got to get to work.
Sasha Kaye is currently studying in London, England. An alumnus of King David High School and the University of British Columbia, she enrolled at the Royal College of Music in London in performance science after her studies in classical voice performance and psychology at UBC. She was recently awarded a master’s of science with distinction for her research on the use of simulation technology as part of an intervention strategy to manage performance-anxiety symptoms. Now a doctoral student at RCM, Kaye is working to identify areas where elite musicians may require additional support to thrive in life, rather than simply survive.
A concert at Deer Lake Park gets Matty Flader thinking about social media. (photo from deerlakepark.org)
King David High School’s creative writing course, taught by Aron Rosenberg, partnered with the Jewish Independent for their final unit of the school year. Students were challenged to write articles reflecting on their identity as young Vancouverites in the Jewish community. After brainstorming topics, the students agreed to focus an article on technology or print media, and how these things are changing and will continue to transform in the future. Here are some of their thoughts.
Phone-y confidence by Matty Flader
Last night, I went to a concert in Deer Lake Park, an outdoor venue, with my sister. We went to see the Lumineers, a folk band that has become fairly popular since their debut album in 2013. I was rather excited to see the show, as I am a big fan of the band’s music and unique style.
It rained throughout the concert, which was a major annoyance. Getting soaked and standing in the mud for a few hours is not everyone’s ideal evening, but it was worth it for the music. The band was excellent at performing live and it was an amazing show. One thing that almost did ruin my experience, however, was the sea of cellphones raised above people’s heads filming the concert. Almost everyone at some point had their phones out to film the concert to share with their friends over social media.
One thing I think our parents do not understand about our generation is that social media is a competition. We constantly compete by sharing statuses, photos and videos of anything significant we do. The goal is simple acknowledgement or validation from our peers; we want them to be jealous of how amazing our lives are. The most famous of our friends – the one with the most likes and shares – is the most successful among us, though we wouldn’t admit that aloud. Our generation lives in constant fear of being forgotten or ignored, and we use social media as a way to remind our friends of how exciting we are.
It is no longer innate to live in the moment. Now that everything is expected to be documented, we live our best moments through the small screens of our phones. Concerts are just the tip of the iceberg. I have encountered this issue at graduations, parties, hanging out with friends, and even spending time with one’s parents. Although I love modern technology, sometimes I wish I could exist without the ominous anxiety of social media.
Technology today by Eli Friedland
We live in a world where technology is the new alcohol. Rather than face reality, people stare at their screens, lost in the lives of others. Picture perfect images captured for eternity. Model-worthy smiles lighting up the screen. Are they real? That is the question most people fail to ask themselves when they zealously peruse the photos that flood their news feeds.
Eli Friedland is happy to have one day a week to power off. (photo from pexels.com)
We live in a world where, rather than make conversation with those in front of us, we choose to talk to an online persona. We have closed the gap from those distant to us, yet we have distanced the gap from those closest to us. We ride the bus in silence, the only sound, fingers tapping away at screens. We receive validation from ambiguous “likes” and take pride in meaningless comments. We allow the world to pass us by as we scroll through the news in far off lands. We only see the perfect that happens to others, that which is posted online. Tired eyes scroll through vast oceans of pictures that have no end.
Constant alertness and comparisons are our 10 plagues. We need redemption from technology. I cannot bear to imagine a world in which people cannot talk, for technology has robbed us of our voices. I fear this more than anything and I know that G-d gave us a day of rest to prevent this plague from growing too large.
Every Friday at sundown, I power down. I turn my phone off, I put my laptop away and I put all electronics out of sight and out of mind. All week, I long for Friday, when I have a valid excuse to disconnect from technology. Rather than staring anxiously at my smartphone, I make myself smart. I read books, I learn from my family, friends and the rabbi’s lectures. I spend all week learning hacks for my phone but, come the weekend, I learn about people. Instead of awaiting a text or phone call that might never come, I knock on my friends’ doors and we go to the park, we walk, we talk. I play Bananagrams with my parents, I soak up the sun with my brother, I interact with humanity in a way unparalleled when phones are out. On the Jewish day of rest, I receive people’s undivided attention and they receive mine.
Death of print media by Noah Hayes
In Canada, print media’s roots go back to the Halifax Gazette, started in 1752. Since then, print media has reigned as the dominant form of news media all over the world. But it’s no secret that digital streams of information are pushing aside the morning paper. The reality is that your kids will likely wake up in the morning and go on their electronic devices to see the latest happenings, rather than wake up to a freshly printed newspaper, waiting to be read and, eventually, discarded.
As a high school student who values media but rarely in print, I am often confronted with the question of why we don’t really need print media anymore. If you need a plumber, a painter, a lawyer or a car, you’re likely not looking in your newspaper these days. It’s not like word of mouth is a modern concept but, with the internet as a platform to share recommendations and spread ideas, newspaper advertisements are less relevant.
Noah Hayes predicts the demise of print media, as younger people get all their information electronically.
Some may suggest that print ads – and not just in newspapers – can be more effective because they target specific geographic regions or interest groups. For instance, if I know of a wealthier area in the city that has lots of nice cars and is mostly made up of younger people, I can advertise a more expensive car that younger people would be more interested in on a bus stop, or even on the side of a bus that goes through there. In a rougher area of the city, I can advertise an entry-level car because more people might be willing to buy it.
What’s becoming more and more the reality, however, is that the internet can do the same thing, with even greater accuracy and efficiency; data tracking in this day and age is limitless. If you’ve been searching for a new pair of shoes on a website, ads for that website can appear on the next site you’re on, even if it’s totally unrelated to shoes. You’re being tracked on most sites that you go on. It’s 2016 and, even with Edward Snowden’s notoriety, people are still unaware of the trail they create just by going on their computer. And this trail is analyzed for more than just advertising.
What about entertainment? Many read print media to stay up to date or see an interesting piece from their favorite columnist in the morning. These newspapers or magazines now almost always have websites where you can also read your favorite columnists. If you go on Twitter, you can get live updates from your favorite journalist or news source, along with a link to articles they publish. Your dearest sports team probably has a website, along with sites dedicated to covering it, and their beat writer likely has a sturdy online presence, too. If you just want a gob of information to delve into, try going on Reddit or Buzzfeed. Some sites go well beyond the impersonal newspaper and literally let you customize your own homepage to only get info on the things you’re interested in. Want pictures? Check. Want funny pictures? Check. Want funny pictures of cats doing awkward, cute poses? Check.
The biggest reason why people seem to be migrating away from print media towards the internet is cost. Though newspaper and magazine companies can still charge you for reading their websites, most digital media is free. For these companies, why produce a print version if they’re also going to put their content online? Perhaps the sense of familiarity and comfort that comes with print media is its most effective selling point. The digital world hasn’t hit its peak yet because the older generation still values the routine and ritual of the morning paper or magazines.
As morbid as it sounds, the only part of print media that doesn’t seem easily replaceable is the “In Memoriam” section of the newspaper. There are few ways to find out about lost loved ones in the community, or the anniversaries of their passing. However, the community of the internet is much larger than the local communities that find solace in the local newspaper’s “In Memoriam” section and, one day, the internet will provide this service, too.
Digital media is simply too powerful. It’s a tool that can be used in dozens of different ways, an unstoppable machine that will eventually show print media the door, and make sure that door hits its tuchus on the way out.
Print’s ironic future by Leora Schertzer
Every day, more than two million news articles are published online. Millennials subscribe to a fast-paced lifestyle, making the internet a popular platform to read the news mere minutes after the fact. People share news and magazine articles with their friends and followers over Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and beyond. If you were to ask the average young adult where she or he reads about the latest happenings, the answer would most likely be through the shared articles of her or his online peers. Perhaps a more cultured individual would name a specific news source that she or he frequents to maintain a sharp awareness of the world, which would also be online.
Leora Schertzer thinks that print media might become cool again … 40 years from now.
Though the future of print media seems dire, I would argue that not all hope is lost. Many people still prefer paper copies of newspapers, magazines and books. Some claim that a good old physical copy feels more personal and less distracting. With access to literally millions of other articles online, users could feel rushed or anxious, knowing that there are so many more articles to be read. A real newspaper feels like your own and, with one’s options limited to one paper, consumers could feel satisfied with the articles they have read, rather than feeling they have merely grazed the tip of the iceberg of daily news.
Another reason print media may live on is for the sake of esthetic and irony, similarly to vinyl records. People still love their vinyl record collections, even though far more practical and efficient ways of listening to music are out there. Some may hang on to print newspapers and magazines for the novelty, or because they believe the “original way” is the “best way.” For this reason, print media may make a comeback within the next 40 years. Though print media will become more of a niche market in the near future, as it becomes less common or mainstream, it may ironically become more highly regarded – what becomes less viable, becomes more valuable.
