What I Believe: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

(1)  Sequels should not be numbered.  They should have new names. Examples:

• Star Wars 2 = The Empire Strikes Back
• Raiders 2 = Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
• Johnny Mnemonic 2 = The Matrix.

(2)  On second thought, no, they should be numbered.

(3)  I wrote before* about the ways in which our opinions can become more extreme as a response to real or perceived opposition.  This is why, in my opinion (and speaking of Jews [we will be]), most of the Jews I knew growing up in New York City could barely even have been said to be religious (I remember once when growing up hearing a peer state unequivocally that he believed in God, and I was practically floored), whereas whenever I meet Jews from Texas (e.g.), they spell God with a dash instead of an O and can't believe I don't know what a "minyan" is: it's because in New York you've got more Jews than you've got in Israel (is that the statistic?), so it's hard to feel marginalized and therefore unlikely that a feeling of marginalization or oppression will drive you to freak out about being Jewish.

     More specifically, I wrote about how I've been trying to fight that and to let myself have opinions rather than arguments.  So, as I said earlier, I realized when my grandfather died that, well, I don't believe in any kind of afterworld.  This is something I used to get all up in arms about because of the fact that some crazy huge percentage of  the population not only does believe in an afterworld but is inclined to think you're going to its overheated basement if you don't...but when I try to think about what I believe rather than what other people believe, it's really quite clear: I am quite confident that my grandfather is neither sitting on a cloud nor roasting in a lake of fire, just as much as I'm sure that he isn't haunting the ballroom of the Essex House (or Sex House, as he once claimed the broken sign had read), where he and my grandmother went on their honeymoon.

     One of my very least popular beliefs, and one that, as a direct consequence of its unpopularity, has often taken rather extreme, exaggerated, and provocative forms, has to do with Israel.  I get nervous even typing out the word.  American Jews are very very sensitive about Israel, very sensitive indeed.  As late as the year 2000, I recall that if I ever mentioned anything to a Jewish friend about not being so fond of Israel, the response was not horror or outrage but actual incomprehension, as if I had said, "I like hot dogs don't like hot dogs," or something similarly nonsensical.  Until the Second Intifada, which began that fall, my Jewish friends seemed literally not to believe me when I voiced any criticism of Israel**—it didn't even get to the point of a disagreement.  After the Second Intifada, when the national debate become much louder and more public (if not particularly balanced), they started to believe me.  And man, did they not like it.

     Point being simply that here, more than arguably anywhere else in my intellectual life, was a topic that really did bring down a shitstorm of controversy.  Not only that, but a certain kind of American Jew is extremely quick to call "anti-Semitism" in response to any criticism of Israel (so quick that it's not a logical progression, just an equivalence: anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism, full stop)—even, it turns out, when the criticism comes from a Jew.  So my feelings about Israel guaranteed not just disagreement but anger, and name-calling.  It is only the smallest exaggeration to say that I might as well have been denying the Holocaust.

     So, because I do not believe that Israel is Judaism, and because I felt (and sometimes was) under attack for my beliefs and believed (sometimes correctly) that the response to my beliefs was ignorant and bigoted and hateful and, in the case of theoretical liberals with theoretically humanistic values and a theoretical belief in human rights, even hypocritical—because of these things, my belief grew steely plated armor and became an aggressive, violent, militaristic version of itself.***  And so I found myself taking positions that went just a little too far—sometimes a lot too far—and getting into fights, and getting angrier and angrier and more and more defensive, until I was drawing equivalencies between Israel and Nazi Germany and saying that I didn't wish any physical harm to the people living there but thought that Israel ought to be wiped right off of the map.

     Hmm.  Yes.

     So.  What do I believe?  (Let me say straight off, for the record, that I do not believe that Israel should be wiped right off of the map.  And, yeah, I'm going to be really magnanimous here and say also that Israel's a lot better than Hitler's Deutschland.  Just to be clear.)

     HOWEVER:

     I understand that Judaism and indeed monotheism itself have always had two main versions—or strands, or articulations—right from the start:

1. You know how we all worship different gods?  Well, there's actually only one, and he's the king of the whole universe, the god not just of us Jews but also of all the people in the world—including you!  So we might have thought we were worshiping different, competing gods, but actually we're all worshiping different versions of the one big god of all mankind.
2. Our god is the only real god.  Your god is bullshit.

My understanding of Judaism was always based on the first of those two attitudes, Judaism as an essentially humanistic tradition.  The Judaism I grew up with was one that was opposed to all forms of tyranny and oppression, and the Jews I grew up believing in were people who, having been scattered across the planet and pretty badly oppressed in a lot of places by a lot of people, knew better than anyone that oppression is evil.  At my family's seder (my one quasireligious event of the year), Passover is about the Biblical story of a successful slave revolt, which is a metaphor for freedom and liberty from all kinds of authoritarian evil.

     To be fair, I must acknowledge that my idea of Judaism and monotheism is no more valid than the other.  I believe it's ethically far superior, but I don't believe that it's any older or in that sense realer than the other: my guess is that both have existed from the beginning.  (In fact, knowing human beings,**** I might even guess that the fuck-you version came first.)  But I think it's as valid as the other.

     The same situation is true of America: right from the beginning, America was about freedom from tyranny, and it was also about the absolute moral superiority of Americans to all other peoples in the world; both of these attitudes were there right from the start, and they aren't compatible, but they sure are American.  And in both cases, I know where I stand.  I think American nationalism is a terrible thing.  In fact, I think all forms of nationalism are terrible.

     That goes for Jewish nationalism as well.

     So what do I believe about Israel?  The anger and extremism are symptoms of the argument, not the belief.  The belief is that Israel has no more claim to the essence of Judaism than any Jewish sect or shtetl (or schlemiel)—certainly no more than New York City, the capital of the Diaspora.  I find Israel embarrassing because it represents a kind of Judaism that is often in direct opposition to what, to me, is the essence of Judaism.  Some Jews are thrilled to see Jews in tanks and Jews holding machine guns and Jews winning wars.  This Jew is not thrilled.  This Jew sees Jews lining up to emulate their historical oppressors.  But I'm getting argumentative again.  What I believe about Israel is that it is not equal to or synonymous with Judaism.  And if I try to imagine a cultural vacuum in which nobody else had any opinions about it, and it wasn't treated as Judaism incarnate, well, then I suppose in the end my feelings reduce down to something just south of indifference.

     God says to Moses, "Moses, I don't want you cooking a calf in its mother's milk."  Moses says, "So we should keep meat and dairy separate?"  And God says, "No, I just don't want you cooking calves in their mothers' milk—it's cruel and nasty and I don't want you doing it."  And Moses says, "We should have separate plates and silverware?"  And God says, "What?  No, Moses, listen to me: calf, mother's milk, it's messed up, don't do it, that's all."  And Moses says, "If we get them mixed up, should we, like, burn the plates and silverware?  Bury 'em?"  And God says, "Moses, do whatever the fuck you want."

* Here and here.

** They may have thought I was making some kind of a strangely tasteless joke...which to be fair is not entirely beneath me (see above, arguably).

*** Huh...reminds me of a people and a nation...I can't think which ones...I'm sure it'll come to me.

**** Knowing all chordates, really.