A Family Theme

This morning was the second “Shababa” at the religious school where I teach. It’s a new experiment this year, having “Shabbat school” one weekend every month or so instead of having school on Sunday. So far I’ve enjoyed them; they’re different, but unique and a pleasant experience for the teachers and students alike.

Today I had the honor of giving the d’var Torah, which in Hebrew means “words on the Torah.” It’s comparable to a sermon, except it’s not preaching, it’s teaching. See, Jews don’t proselytize–we perseverate. And with all our perseverative studying, it’s only natural to share it with others (studying the Torah is itself a commandment).

In any case, though short and sweet and written with a younger audience in mind, I thought I may as well share the drash here for anyone who may wish to read it.

Sabbath Delight

Family was this week’s theme. My brother and his family came up the first and we all visited until they left today. And whenever I had free time, I was busy journalling and playing video games. In fact, I’d probably be off playing video games right now if it weren’t Friday.

“If it weren’t Friday?” But–but the weekends are supposed to be for fun! And aren’t video games fun? Well, yes, but you see, that’s not the only thing the weekends are for….

That Which We Cannot Name

Yesterday I ate Christmas dinner. Twice. That itself may have been tiring, but it was the company that was most exhaustive. I’m an introvert; I can’t help but feel weighed down in large crowds.

Even if they are family.

Yet for all the anguish and agony, today I’m thankful for my family. Of course, I’m thankful for my family every day (or at least most days), but today I’m making something special of it.

Family Values are Under Attack

That’s right, folks, you’ve heard it first from me: Family values are under attack. People across the nation are fighting for the right for same-sex couples to wed, to adopt children, to raise families with love and compassion–and our family values are under attack.

You might think I’m on the wrong side of the fence here, but I assure you, you’d be mistaken.

I is for It Gets Better

Back while I still pondering over what H is for, I felt I was for Invincible. I said to myself, being open, being confident, being who you are, makes you invincible, makes you impervious, makes you incredible. I felt of sharing: When I’m afraid, when I don’t think I can go on, I surround myself with positive things–with thoughts of my friends, thoughts of the great people in whose presence I stand, of the glory of God imbuing everything there is with his light and his love, and then I feel invincible and I can go on.

Last week, I began to wonder if I really is for invincible. Instead, I began to think I is for Individual. I felt of sharing: There is no greater bliss than of knowing who you are, all your faults, all your foibles, all your fortes. To understand what goes on inside is to make you impenetrable, insightful, indivisible. To feel, nay, to know what is hidden beneath your exterior, that part of us that we so often wrongly equate the entirely of “I”, is to open doors and possibilities and events that otherwise would remain lost forever. To be an Individual is perhaps among the greatest gift God has ever given us.

Today, although both of these statements stand true and always will–I am Invincible, I am Individual–I know that they are not all I is worth. I is worth a wealth of ideas, a well of inspiration, a river of incentive. I spoke the other night with a wonderful man, a man of whose nature and build I did not think even God could have crafted, and it made realize, in that strange way that unrelated events inspire worlds of difference, in the way that butterflies in Africa incite hurricanes in America, that I is well worth so much more than all of this.

The Canvas

The canvas was blank. Joe Messiah had been at his easel all night long, had barely breathed, hadn’t blinked since midnight, felt his fingers bent like stone vices around his brush and palette. But before him, the canvas was white.

When the morning sun crested the penthouse windows, he inhaled for the first time in hours and, like trying to bend steel with his bare hands, twisted his head toward the windows. Across the splattered once-white tarp, the open tubes of paint scattered about, the unfinished hard wood floor poking up in places, the sky was vermillion and blue.

He imagined a stroke of one hand, three fingers pressed into a color on the other side. A diagonal stripe and a vertical flutter. A curlicue wind, barely visible.

The canvas, however, remained untouched.

I Heart New York

Growing up I was like most little Jewish boys, I suppose: I dreamed of someday having my own family, a good wife, a few children, going to services on all the major holidays, going through the melodies like rote, work in the mornings, love in the mid-morning hours of the night. I had crushes on girls in my class, because they seemed to be images of the perfect future girlfriend and wife that my typical Jewish upbringing had instilled in me.

I forget when my fantasies became unhinged, when my own personal and still unconscious desires began to take over the cultural ones that had attached to my blood and filled my veins. I recall, walking in the EUC while my sister was at college, thinking I’d have a son someday, my wife having left (in retrospect, I don’t think I ever gave a reason why she would leave; in fact, I don’t know if the leaving part was even her doing, I just recall us having a son, and then the relationship being no more; I was never her husband in my mind, only my son’s father).

My other imaginings were only even more complex. So strange, in retrospect, that I really don’t know how or why it took me so many years to identify what they truly represented. A good example: If I played through this image in my mind, my so-called son would somehow transform into a man my own age, and together we’d raise a family of two or three other children. It took the mask of family units I understood to show me unconsciously what I’d always desired: A family headed with two men, two husbands, a union that was completely foreign in my childhood.

Now that I’m older, some things have changed, yet others stayed the same.

The Julia-Mandelbrot Love Child

First and foremost I am a man of ideas. I have always been a man of ideas and I presume I shall always be a man of ideas. As such, I am of this nature easily inclined to fall in love with an idea, to infatuate myself in concepts and theories, to indulge in the orgasmic philosophies of imagination and the perpetuation of thought itself.

As such, I am also of the nature of put into things more thought than one might deem reasonable for the affair. I consider at length where I’ll spend my money, how I will spend it, and what will remain after it’s spent. I can spend days on end merely considering which movies, which books, which ideas I liked more than the last.

Take history. But two short years ago I was beginning college. I loved the idea of history, that ability to raise one’s eyebrows and make a well-informed comment upon how this has all happened before. Just look back in that year, at that place, at that one moment which parallels this, and you’ll see, very clearly, how we’ve just repeated our mistakes–for better or for worse I’d leave to the audience, but it’s only one such possible encounter with a historian.

Of course, but two short years ago, I was also beginning my first course in history. And I can assure you all, there was no delight in the act for the delight that mirrored the concept. I was bored. I sought answers and insight that did not exist in the text, that did not exist in the mindset of history. Though I still do love the idea of history, and of being historically knowledgeable, the study itself remains elusive, a passion I cannot hope to touch.

As a mathematician, I’m also exceedingly fond of tangents.

The Long-Awaited If Brief Return of Pokemon Wednesday

Or, the Brief If Long-Awaited Return of Pokemon Wednesday

One of my earliest memories is playing the NES in our living room or watching as my siblings made Mario run through worlds and worlds of varying difficulty, envious of how much better they were than I was. I remember, when we lived in upstate New York, getting the hand-me-down NES games from a neighbor and I remember being at friends’ houses and watching them in awe on the Genesis and SNES.

Then I remember my grandparents coming up to North Carolina near my tenth birthday, but before I can get to this, let me take a step back. I remember, in religious school, watching the older children crowding around their Game Boys, playing this awesome new game called Pokemon. It blew my mind away, how fun it looked! And then my best friend got the game and I wanted that game.

But my mother told me no.

My Deepest Dreams (Part Two): To Fly Away

When I wrote Part One, I meant every word of it and there was never any intention of following with a part two. If you can’t tell things have changed since then, if merely by the inference of there now being a distinction between two parts, this may not be the best blog for you to be reading. I mean that humorously, but if you take it seriously, it’s just reinforcement of the statement itself. I shall not sequester your free will, but merely inform you of my opinions.

Mathematicians: Always going off on tangents.

Things have changed, but I still mean every word I said. Things change. Things need improvement, additions, clarification. Articles needs retractions and updates; constitutions need amendments; and today’s need tomorrow’s. Scientists call this evolution. Astrologers, progression. Educators, growth, and the general populace, any other term they wish to imply. Nothing is static except things already in equilibrium. People are never there, try as we might to get there. So we keep going. Things do change. I’ll share with you everything.