Ms. Dog say Bork Bork

I'd like to tell you about the dogs. I probably have already mentioned them but I want to make sure that all the johnny-come-latelies can get up to speed. So, our dog-story so far: I have a dog. Have, while he is mine (h/t Bill S.) an angry little doggo named Sparky. He is called by many names -- Sparkles, Sparkster, Spark-o, Sparks, Thor (by my brother, but that makes sense because he calls his daughter Natasha), but his name is Sparky. He is the last angry dog until the next angry dog. He is a prolific writer (2 books, with 2 or 3 in the works, and a blog) and a dog of unquestioned brilliance and cute-osity. He has a friend named Princess. She is is nice, if you like bundles of slobbery tongues, and has the brains of a swarm of drunk pebbles. They spend a lot of time together (but the relationship is purely gin-tonic). They were over this afternoon, and the rain started coming down.

Let's talk weather. Sparky is OK with weather. If it rains, it snows or glooms, Sparky just sits there, knowing that as long as he can maintain his bladder, he will be staying inside, away from the elements and molecules that make up weather. Princess is a little different. She is afraid of stuff. She is fast as a dingo, vicious as a dingo and dumb as a dingo, but she is really afraid of thunder. At the first dip in barometric pressure she starts to shake like a milkshake held by a Parkinson's patient. Not my best image, but you get what I'm saying. She shakes. Her human puts a special thunder shirt on her (not one supporting a professional team...one with weights built in that is supposed to give her the reassuring pressure which tells her that if the thunder comes, she will now be too slow to escape it so she might as well just siddown and die) and she runs up the stairs where, she figures, thunder won't think to look for her.

The thunder started and Princess ran. I decided that inclement weather was the best time to start making a chicken omelet. Like there's a bad time to start making a chicken omelet -- amirite? Boo-ya.

As an inducement to stop being stupid, I told the dogs that I would be handling uneaten chicken, their favorite kind. As I began prepping, Sparky wandered in and I rewarded him with pieces of leftover fowl. I continued cooking, using up my store of secret ingredients: oil and a pan. As I shredded chicken, I called out, "Hey Princess, I have chicken."

Now this is where things get difficult for me.

She did not appear. I called again, "Princess! Chicken." Sparky looked at me as if to remind me that he was RIGHT THERE and why was I not giving him chicken instead of inviting his sworn enemy when it comes to chicken eating. I gave him a piece so that he would stop staring at me, then I raised my voice, "Dammit Princess, I have chicken! What are you waiting for?" Nothing. So I started muttering.

Please know, muttering and I have a long and colorful history. I mutter all the time. I'm the grand mutter of muttering. I started muttering to myself how this dumb dog wasn't coming down to get chicken while I'm here cooking my chicken fingers to the boneless. I realized that, at that moment, I had gotten angry at a dog because said dog (and I did, indeed, say "dog") did not come down when I called her name and explained why she should come down. Again. I got angry at a dog, a dog whom I have already characterized as not as intelligent as another dog, for not understanding my logic which I so cogently explained in words. I believe that this bespeaks some very strange transformation in my mental processes, and not a good one.

Princess ultimately showed up, lured by the smell of cooking chicken and the cessation of thunder and my wrath abated. My senseless, stupid wrath aimed at a dog who did not live up to my human expectations. I'm not sure what to make of this, or what lesson to glean. Alls I know is that of the two of us, me and Princess, one of us gets to wear a cool thunder shirt and the other has to do the cooking.

Hello, girls

I know what I am planning to do and I know that I will fail.

I want to write a heartwarming piece of drivel aimed at my niece who will be getting married next week. But every time I start to write, I come up with things that are so mired in the feelings I want to present to my own children that I end up with something which masquerades as an uncle's good wishes to a niece but is in truth, a dad's mush to his kids. So instead of fighting, I concede to the powers of the muse who pushes me into this and I embrace it.

Riks -- and I call you that for the same reason that I call your older sister Shasha -- because it is still the name that I am most comfortable with, so deal with it...my own kids wish I called them something akin to their actual names. Riks, you have always been a bundle of joy. You have always amazed me with skills and talents that make me want to kill you and eat your brain so I could have that talent. I saw that on TV so it must be true. Your smile is infectious, but in a good way and you are, as we in academia like to to say, a good egg. I want to tell you about what your life should be by explaining to you one of my major fears.

I have always worried that my children were sad. I still worry that. What I wish for people is happiness and I try to bring that to them. When my kids were little(r) I used to wake them up with a song. Not one that I sang, God forbid, remember, I wanted to bring them happiness. I would get a song like Morning has Broken or Morning from Peer Gynt or something like that and slowly increase the volume. I would give them a kiss and help them stretch a big stretch to start the day with a smile. I wanted them to know that they are waking up into a world in which someone appreciates them for just being who they are. I wanted them to wake up with a smile because in this nasty and brutish world they should know that they are loved. I wanted them to know that someone was thinking of them when they were asleep and will continue to keep them in mind while they are awake not because of anything in particular but just because. That's what love is. The love of a dad for a kid, and the love of a spouse for a spouse -- unconditional and irrevocable. Like a good wine.

I'm not sure it is like a good wine, but I have always wanted to say that. "Like a good wine." There. Scratched that itch but good.

And we're back.

So Rik, I want you to have a happiness that is so grounded in an unconditional love that you can't shake it. I want you to wake up and know that there are people, and one very special person, who choose to be around you because you are their first and last thought. And many in between. I want you to grab hold of a love not because it replaces another but because it is, on its own, worth grabbing. Wake up to a song, go through your day with a smile and end each evening knowing that you matter to someone more than anything else matters. I hope I didn't fail with my kids. I think back to the mornings when I was a bit more sour than sweet, and they were a bit more human than ideal. I regret the moments I missed bringing them joy and I want you to be more aware so you miss fewer opportunities.

I want you, and my own kids, to feel a safety net, a network, even if only of one person but more likely, of many, that will always be there for you. Put someone else first and be put first. My blessing to you is that I hope you have a joy inside you that you can and want to share and that you have found someone to share it with, someone who wants to share right back with you.

And if you don't want to listen to Cat Stevens, I'll understand, but that song really can make you choke up...which is a problem when you are driving.

You're wrong, but more importantly, you're bad

I received a message from a former student this morning. He is one of the few who actually spends his time thinking about stuff and working through deep concepts so I was flattered that he included me in the loop of thought. He mentioned that he is disheartened by the state of the modern world in certain ways. He wrote, "I hate how judgmental society and especially the Modern Orthodox Jewish community is". That got me thinking, a dangerous eventuality but what's done is done and so I'm thinking. Kaboom. So here is a bit of brain pie from your Crazy Uncle Dan for you to chew over. And over.

I'll start by opining about being judgmental. We all do it. We size up situations and see what fits and what doesn't into the box which is the society we have set for ourselves. "Look at that guy" we say, "he just changed lanes with(out) his blinker...that's horrible." We have judged him. "How about that joker...(not) wearing pants at such a fancy restaurant...what is he thinking?" Judging, again. As we belong to a variety of overlapping communities, cultures and societies, our schema for judging runs a range. From parenting, to diet, to fashion, to sports to religion -- we look at what others do and decide if their expression of self is acceptable in our little world.

We judge because we are insulating ourselves and defining the parameters of comfort in our bubble. We create an in and an out group so we know who belongs and who doesn't. It keeps us safe and helps us decide whom to invite over for dinner and a nice game of Pictionary. It isn't a bad thing all the time but it has fallen out of favor because of where it can lead -- not Pictionary, judging. Should we profile people? Do I cross the street to stay away from some people, or do I pay more attention to certain age groups when they enter my store because my experience has taught me that certain genders or ages are more likely to engage in unsavory activities? Do I have to wait for actions before I can judge even if, by the time the actions take place, the damage could be done? How about people who espouse beliefs -- can I judge them on the whole by their expressed positions in one area? Do I have to accept everyone all the time or am I allowed to say "anyone who hates little dogs is dead to me"? Must I be tolerant or even accepting of all the divergent opinions? One common answer is "this doesn't mean you can judge the person" but maybe I can! If someone's position is pro-rape, I think I'm pretty safe in judging on the whole and not saying "he's just a fine person with a singular point that we disagree on."

When it comes to religion, things get even murkier -- part of judging is the attempt to further a heritage which is the defined society. Religious rules and norms ensure continuance of a community so we judge because we are perpetuating norms which got us this far. If we accept variation, we risk losing our discrete identity, but if we don't we look like ultra-traditionalists who can't face change. Some of us chafe at this restrictiveness and say that we, as a people have changed a bunch over the years so why stop now? But then the fear emerges: if we let a little change, how do we draw the line and decide that the next step is off the cliff? Back in the day (the year 1100, for example, maybe even 1101) changes we very local and moved slowly because communication was sans internet (true!). So if there was a need for a limited change, it took a while to get around and sink in. Now, things are a step faster than instant so we have changes upon changes and the slippery slope surrounds us constantly. Our reaction is to build our walls more solidly and allow even less because we have more potential for drastic shifts. Additionally, built into Orthodox Judaism is the need to judge. We have laws and responsa which establish the limits of behavior and we have to enforce and call people out when they stray. The only way we can continue as a unified group is by walking the walk, talking the talk and correcting those who don't. And while it is attractive to excuse (or at least ignore) private behavior and say that what we don't know doesn't affect what we do know, the current atmosphere is to allow the private to be public without repercussion, forcing the religious person to have an opinion and, yes, judge.

Here are two side analogies. They're free, so go with it.

Some Jewish communities are turned into a particular legal-construct as a "private domain" through the use of an eiruv (a string surrounding the entire community). In the past, because of physical limitations, the status of the integrity of the string could only be checked on a particular schedule, let's say monthly. "Monthly." Well done. If there is no reason to think that, in between checks, it has broken, we rely on what we last knew. But now, with drones and other technology, maybe we could check it more frequently and know definitively more often if it retains its proper structure. We can no longer hide behind "it was ok last week". More technology means more knowledge which means more definite opinions.

We know more and more about food production, and there are more cameras installed so we don't have to trust restaurants -- we can check up on them. And if we find out about problems that maybe were always there, now we have to act on them. For a position paper on a similar situation, read here. Before we knew, we could withhold judging. But once we know, we have to say something.

So we judge. We tell people when they are doing something which we don't approve of and we hope that our society's norms will be refined by the mass acceptance of a particular mode of behavior and the condemning of another. What we disapprove of through something approaching consensus draws our line in the sands of time. The tension between "modern society" and "modern Orthodoxy" pulls us in mutually exclusive directions as it relates to judging.

We have always judged as Jews. But we have chosen to know less and trust more. That era might be over. We know more and can trust less because we can know even more. With greater knowledge comes a greater responsibility to establish those lines or risk losing our defining shape. Do I like judging? Not especially. But is it part of who we are as humans and Jews? Yes. For good and for bad, yes.