Voyeurism

In a world as ours, you get easily sick. Sometimes I can understand - but not fully agree - with the idea of keeping your children far away of the media, unless they are not able to do the selection of the information by themselves. Anyway, it is not always easy to create your nest of normality unde the bombardment of bad news about special people.

For me, this week, the top example of voyeurism was the snowslide of articles about Hasidism and sexuality. The news were there for a long time, but I discovered them in a long row. Praised, explained and rejected, the authors are entering into the merry-go-round of talking over and over again about private life, customs and bedrooms. Most probably, the stars of the yellow media grew up and it was nothing else to talk about in the press? We talk about the "sexual habits" of groups as Satmar and Gur, to a relatively uneducated audience. No, we are not Amish or Mormons (a post about them and us, after Shabbat, promise) and not sexual deviants. For your information, the anti-Semitic rhetorics contain various references to so-called sexual "irregularities". Probably Deborah Feldman (whose book I will read one day, but not now) is not aware about this.

I also can understand that an academic is keen to share the results of her research to a wider audience, but I would prefer to address first my scholars and not the wide media. Academic work is hard work, and you need appreciation for your results, but why not thinking twice about the consequences of such discourses in a media avid of sensationalism.

I think that among both secular and religous Jews, there are happy people and sad people, people happy with them lot or people struggling against their yetzer hara. Each of us is different, and this is a blessing. Some of us are poor, the others rich. It is always important to accept everything happening to you with humility and integrity. You can use your words for cursing or explaining the world, adding value or expressing your self-hate for not understanding why we are living.

Shabbat Shalom!

A Bit of Herring, a Pinch of Salt, and a Morsel of Bread

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The dubner maged once heard a scholar get up on the bime, the platform of the synagogue, and deliver a learned discourse, citing Biblical verses, Talmudic and rabbinic commentaries, and who knows what else. In the course of his talk, he managed to heap scorn upon the folk preached who had spoken before him.

When the learned man was done, the dubner maged said to him "Let me tell you a parable that may prove useful".

In a certain town there once lived a great merchant, very clever man. A very, very clever man. He observed that there were many rich and powerful people in his town, so he opened a jewelry store and had many customers. But some while later, he moved to a smaller town whose inhabitants, sad to say, were poor and threadbare.

Seeing that, the clever merchant opened a store - no, not a store, a little shop, in which he sold herring, salt, kerosene, and other ordinary things. And with the same hands that once handled diamonds, he now served up herrings and kerosene. And just as the merchand had been satisfied with the jewelry store, so now he was pleased with the poor little shop. No - he was actually more pleased with it; everything he did delighted him.

Thins went on like this until one day a friend from the larger town came to visit him and said "I don't understand. How is it fitting for a man who once sold diamonds and gems to be selling herring and salt and other such stuff?"

The good and the clever merchand replies, "I am sorry to say that you don't get the point. Let me tell you something: The people who live in the large city are rich. They own many jewels and they are great connoisseurs of jewelry. But in this little town, the poor are poor. They work with their hands and struggle to make ends meet. They don't need diamonds, nor do they understand them. Indeed, what they need...yes! - they need a bit of herring, a pinch of salt, and a morsel of bread".

from Yiddish Folktales, ed. by Beatrice Silverman Weinreich, Translated by Leonard Wolf, 1988, YIVO, pp.8-9