A hot take on current events

 In a recent tragedy, two Israeli embassy employees were shot after an event in Washington, D.C. Aside from the crazies who justify murder and defend it as a viable expression of resistance to actions of a foreign government, people see the murders as wrong. I see the murders as wrong. So let's not get the wrong idea about what I'm about to explore.

One thing which is being thrown around is the claim that the murders were not just an attack on Israel (seeing the 2 employees as proxies) but that they were anti-Semitic. I have been wrestling with that and I'll explain why:

the attacker targeted Israelis (though even this is unknown and until we know how he chose his targets, we won't know his motivation explicitly; we will just be inferring)

the attacker recited slogans that relate to Israel, Gaza and the mideast. He said and did nothing which invoked religion.

one of the victims was not, according to Jewish law, Jewish. Did the shooter know or care about his religion? Does it matter if the attacker THOUGHT he was Jewish? Or thought that he was Jewish according to Judaism (does killing obvious non-Jews coming out of a synagogue make the attack anti-Semitic?) The victim was only patrilineally Jewish -- who determines religion to find out if the attack was religiously motivated?

the attacker attacked outside of a Jewish museum and after an event that was sponsored by a Jewish group. Was it just that assumption of Jewishness because of context?

I just have questions -- I don't know whether this is a prime example of the difference between pure anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, or where this is an example of how the two are conflated accurately.

Standing alone, together

 There's something about a prayer that's magic (H/T SOB).

Every few years, I like to visit Israel because I like to visit the Kotel, the Western Wall. I use those moments to recharge my spiritual battery. I go up to the wall and I close my eyes. I turn on all my other senses and I try to soak in the experience, planting memories and feelings that I will tap into for the next weeks, months and years when I pray elsewhere. It is sort of like my version of Tintern Abbey. 

There is a tension I have noticed in prayer, but not a bad one -- the role of the individual and of the community. We try to pray with a minyan, a quorum, so that we can unite as a congregation and petition God as a force. But our central prayer, the Amidah (standing) [also called the Shmoneh Esrei though that only really applies to the weekday version, and even then, in the breach] separates us from the collective. We stand silently, We retreat into our own personal cocoon of prayer. The community, abuzz with the sounds of prayer turns silent. And when you close your eyes, or cover yourself with a tallit, or look down into your prayerbook intently, everything else disappears and you are now alone, standing in front of the Creator, using your own voice to plead. I close my eyes and I'm in front of the Kotel again. No matter how crowded the room, when I close my eyes, I'm alone -- just me and the big guy. Brutal honesty and no one else is there. The room is empty.

But then, in the words of my prayers, I notice something. Though I am alone in the presence of God, I pray in the plural. It isn't all about me. I'm still part of the collective even in my most private moments. An entire room of inviduals, silently standing before God, pleading for the group. I love that moment because it ties together so many opposites. This prayer symbolizes, to me, the reconciling of theoretically mutually exclusive concepts which then allows me, the finite, to connect with the infinite.

It is a beautiful feeling to so lose yourself in singular prayer that you forget that you are part of a united force of ten or more, all actually praying together, unaware of each other's existence.