Repentance

 Please let me be the first to usher us all into the high holiday season with a thought about repentance. I have come up with an understanding which strengthens me in my yearly quest to improve and I'd like to share it with you.

I was sitting at my computer while eating a sandwich. My wardrobe was pretty much boring. A worn out, dark blue 3 button polo and black khaki pants of an indeterminate cut, waist or size. Athletic fit with a history of husky, I think. The sandwich was a whole wheat roll with some slices of slow roast turkey topped with yellow mustard. Boring, sure, but I was on the move and had to travel light* so turkey and not much else with a cuppa water on the side. It gave me time to sit, stare off into the dust over the Keurig and let my mind drift and at that moment I felt something end up on my leg, as if my sandwich had somehow released something onto me. Jarred back to reality, I looked down to see a glob of mustard. Big glob. Yellow mustard on my pants. These weren't my old knock around black khakis. Now, these were a recent purchase and I manipulated the wear/laundry cycle so that this particular pair could serve as the "day before" pants -- second place over all but no one was going to catch "traditional khaki" and maybe no one ever should.

So I grab the nearest semi clean paper napkin and smear right across it. Some sticks, some doesn't and some even smears, making it worse. So you wipe some more. You try different things. In similar situations, this worked. Maybe, this. And sometimes one DOES. But the next time and the next, it doesn't. You keep trying.

That's teshuva. We want to get back to that perfect "new" pair of black khakis so we try to fix and we do get a good percentage done on the first pass. But sometimes, fixing one thing has consequences that also have to be considered. And maybe we have stop-gap measures or we cover it up but eventually we are going to have to go to a place with more resources and other people who can help. Expand the time frame  -- immediately after something has happened we take care of most. Is that in the first moment or the first year? Daily repentance might get the spot fully clean or it might get an "it isn't perfect but I appreciate the work you did to get it to this point". But we also have special days at fixed intervals, we use the laundry machine or go to the dry cleaner. Different methods, same goal, all reflect effort. In every prayer and with every prayer we show intent, scratching at some corner before it becomes a stain.

And me? I'm not the same guy. I see the stain everywhere. I regret the decision to eat. I curse how distracted I was -- not that there isn't time for that but this wasn't it. And if the next time I wear clothes, I pay a little more attention, then that might not wipe the stain away, but it will show that you know how to keep yourself clean.

So we wipe ourselves clean after every meal with our prayers and the pants stay almost sort of kind of not unlike the black khakis that I love so much that I named them. I chose the name "Mick". If you were expecting anything else, maybe YOU are the problem. Anyhoo, teshuva is a steps-forward-steps-back kind of thing that we're all always doing, and we get so distracted that we forget that we need to keep our eyes open. It is a process not a place; there is no there there; it's all always here. The pants DO get cleaner on the whole and maybe they even get them back to the closest they can get to new, but what matters is that every attempt was a sincere attempt to get them clean. Maybe there's a stain on them, maybe not. Maybe it is one only I see. But I'll never stop trying to make it better.

Maybe I'm not the perfect Jew I was but I try every day to be as Jewish as I can be.

We can get credit for a job well done, or a job done well, or even a job well, "done." Or even just for showing up for work.

*as those of you who know me and my history know, there are other reasons for the beef based confusion which explains my poorest of poor boys but that's a story for another story 

Religious Kindness

 I have been thinking about kindness recently. How can we raise a generation which will have a normalized sense of kindness? For whom thinking of the feelings of another is second nature? I think that Judaism does something like that by teaching certain strange things.

Should we be kind to people? Sure, but halacha doesn’t start or stop there. Consider the laws of shilu’ach hakein (sending away a mother bird when raiding a nest for its eggs) and even oto v’et b’no, the law forbidding slaughtering a mother and child cow on the same day. These are designed to rein in the cruelty element of our nature and recognize how our actions have impact on other things.

Sure, you say, other things…like cows and birds? Well, if we codify concern over the feelings of animals, then we will become used to considering how our actions might cause pain to other people. Even the notion of shechting (and tza’ar ba’alei Chayim on the whole) is about reducing strain and pain for the animal. Why should we care? Kill the animal and be done with it, right? Somethings gotta get et. But then I think back to The Frisco Kid in which the inimitable Gene Wilder says, while chasing a chicken (and I paraphrase) “I don’t want to hurt you, I just want to eat you.” This would be the exact moment when kindness should not matter – when I want to use a resource that God provided, I still have to recognize its inherent soul and feelings and I have to be kind even while do what could easily become a cruel exercise of power.

But Judaism takes it a step further. On Friday nights, when we set the shabbat table, we put the challah on the table first and then we cover it before pouring the wine. Ask any 2^nd grader why, and he or she will probably mention some notion of “so that, when we make the blessing over the wine first, the bread won’t be shamed – placed first but eaten second.” I learned that when I was little and, admittedly, I never looked it up to see if there is a source but as I grew older, I realized that the story is weird. Does my challah have feelings? And not just the basic perception of pain when I cut it, but an embarrassment at a perceived slight or social faux pas!

But if we teach children this lesson before they have the sensibility to look at it and say “wait, what?” then we will accustom them to considering, even in their intentional and proper acts with supposedly inanimate objects, that there is a power we have, a power to hurt even when we don’t want to. We teach care and care leads to kindness. We need to say thank you to automatic doors. We need to avoid knocking over the traffic cone. We need to see that we share our space with “things” and our responsibility to be civil includes these things – not because they need it, but because we need to engrain positive habits into our every moment. Kindness must be intertwined into our being.

That said, I have also been wondering about a potential tension between two halachic mandates.

We have the idea of “danl’chaf z’chut” – to judge favorably and assume the best, not worst in people or situations. Don’t jump to negative conclusions.

We also have the idea of “lo teetein michshol” don’t place a stumbling block before a blind person (don’t create an unfair challenge or a temptation which might lead someone else to doing something wrong or being unable to do something right).

Don’t they contradict? If I judge everyone favorably, then I will suspect no one a priori as being, for example a thief. But if I put all of the jewelry away before my guest arrives then I have decided that I’m worried she or he will be tempted to steal (which is not judging anyone favorably) so I remove the valuables so as to avoid creating a stumbling block which might entice people to sin.

So which is it? Do I think people are potential thieves or do I believe that people are good and won’t steal?

I’m sure that there are subtleties regarding the implementation of these broad rules and granular discussions about when each one applies and how, but the underlying thinking still lends itself to the question, do we think that the nature of mankind is inherently prone to fail (thus we don’t tempt) or prone to succeed (as we judge all people favorably). Are we being kinder by removing temptation or by assuming that people are good?

This does lead to the old medrashic concern about how kindness is not always expressed as niceness (one who is kind to the cruel will end up being cruel the kind). How do we teach that kindness is not in opposition to justice and not always synonymous with mercy?

No title for this one as I don't know what it is about

 for a long time the internet was the ultimate playground with its own social hierarchy and rules. And in it, way back when binary still had only 1, the nerd could be king. The one who was ostracized for playing with technology was unexpectedly ahead of a major curve so he becomes the expert and the role model for his 15 minutes. And in the online communities, the lone gun who can come in and settle a flame war with a single, silver tongued post, the guy so smooth when he sets a trap and shows the other guy is wrong - the virtual beat down. Knowledge rules and this is the nerd's home field. Trivia matters and finding stuff in the early, unsorted cloud was the skill native to growing up with a friend who is a librarian.

Search engines and GUIs tried to level the playing field. Once even the jerks have access to the compendium of all human knowledge that is the interwingle, even jerks can find-a-fact. But the finding isn't easy and the nerds still hold an advantage -- experience in negotiating search terms and communicating with the computer, a most trusted friend. As is always the case, the expert could still reign by knowing things on the assumption that not every analog memory has been digitized somewhere so that knowing defies www. But if something had to be found, it was the webizen who knew how to read the map.

Now AI makes us fake experts not in knowing, but in finding. Instead of pretending we found the facts when wikipedia found the facts, and then writing the paper we are now feeding the teacher's prompt into an AI interface and having the AI spit out the response. We pretend we even made an effort when in truth we didn't. In the earlier case, you walk away without the content knowledge needed to craft the paper. In the later case you walk away with no skill acquisition on any level.

I'm not saying that "no skill on any level" is necessarily bad, but I'd like a representative from the next generation(s) to defend it so I can hear the argument.

Reading right to wrong

 Here's some confusion to chew on. I will have to take a test to measure my proficiency in Hebrew. Fact is, I am very proficient in Hebrew as long as it is translated into English.

Part of any preparation is a review of the structure of a test. Here are some random snippets I have learned while researching the exam (all are quotes from websites and AI summaries but I added color):

"The YAEL test is approximately one and a half hours long and consists of three sections: the first three sections contain multiple-choice questions, and the fourth section is a writing task..."

It is a 3-part exam, each part allocated 20 minutes."

"The computerized YAELnet exam consists of two or three scored multiple-choice parts. Each part contains 22 questions and you are allotted 20 minutes to complete each one. Each question features four answer options."

"Grading the two multiple-choice sections used for scoring (out of three total sections)"

I have yet to figure out the Hebrew because I'm still wrestling with the English.

A Thought Question

 Here is some information about a hypothetical country that has these rules regarding religion.

"_____'s status as the state religion intertwines it directly with the political and legal systems through several key mechanisms:

The senior religious figures hold automatic, unelected seats in the government allowing them to vote on, debate, and amend all national legislation.

The ruling leader serves as the supreme religious figure and must be a ________ connected to the religious establishment, swearing an oath to maintain it.

Government Appointments: The Prime Minister advises the religious leader on the appointment of religious roles, giving the secular government an official role in religious leadership.

The religion's governing body, can pass measures that become national law, but these require formal approval from the secular branches of government "

Opinions about this intertwining? Is this some form of apartheid?

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Can anyone name the country? Mr. Mayor, I'm looking at you. 

The Zoomies

 We are living in an age of unfettered access to the entire compendium of human knowledge. If it is known, we can know it. And this is the problem because if it can't be known, we can also know it.

When knowledge is excised from context it becomes trivia or fiction. Or both.. Lost forests will end up with dead trees.

Context is the ultimate gatekeeper and we're lucky for it. Our brains slurp that up, establishing and testing patterns, strengthening some connections, weakening others. That web of silken thoughts helps hold us together.

But if that fourth Indiana Jones movie taught us anything, it is that without a filter or twelve, the overload of unsorted mass media input laughs at any attempt of a reasonable sense ratio. We are drinking from a fire hose and expecting to emerge somehow better off for the experience. You can't suddenly know the universal everything without your head exploding. Facts.

Judgement, we hope, grows as the temple waxes (h/t Billy S.), but it does so in steps. You can't go from knowing nothing to having any reasonable level of understanding in an instant and you don't have any way to contextualize each of the voices for its agenda so you can't assess validity. You can't go from 0 to 100 in an instant.

So we have instant experts with intellects built on sand and the more we know, the less we can know what is right or wrong.

If you go from 0-60 too quickly, you'll break your own neck. Or so I've heard.

Let's Be Friends

I am approaching my Heinz birthday and I don't have many friends. I don't think that that is unusual -- I have never been especially social or sociable so I never had many to begin with but as I age and forge my path, I find that making friends just doesn't fit in. I was wondering why that was and here is what I have figured out.

When I was young I was relatively simple. My tastes were not yet established and I had fewer experiences and preferences as I was still developing and learning about myself. I was, you could say, like the cockpit of a glider.

There are a few basic controls and a simple readout that lets the pilot know when things are basically level. I grew up with those so they made sense. I could find my happiness with relatively little effort.

I was a piper cub

Meeting someone who is similarly simple then allows two of us to take a flight using both of our simple controls -- like a two person glider

As we grow together and learn about ourselves and the world, new controls are added. We learn them together and add in each one slowly -- there is a process of increase.

Years go by and we don't notice that another button, another routine, another measure is added in because the growth is incremental. By the time we are both in a fancier cockpit, we are familiar with each other and every device.

But then, imagine starting fresh with someone, anyone, in your mid 50's. You introduce yourself to someone and say "come on in!"

"Interesting," the other person says, looking at all there is to learn about me. And then that person introduces him or herself to me and says, "Have a seat!"

To quote Gary Gulman, "Yeah, no."