ZVBM
Bitten by the Snake
by
, 06-17-2013 at 02:14 PM (647 Views)
Hi!
Before I tell you about my dream of snakes let me tell you about me & give a little context
I just turned 50, am happily, wonderfully married (for almost 25 years; thank God, my wife is the greatest blessing in my life; I must've done something really good in a previous time around), and am the proud Papa of two boys, 12 & 16. I like my job (same one for 20 years) and my dogs. I moved to Israel in the mid-1980s & have never even remotely considered leaving Israel. We are modern-orthodox. My family (back in the USA) is not even remotely religious/observant. I was raised de jure Conservative and de facto nothing. I decide to make aliyah & become frum when I was 23, a very sudden, bolt-out-of-Anatevka decision. (I was watching the film version of "Fiddler on the Roof" when I was 22 and completely freaked when Tevye said, at the very beginning, "Because of our traditions, each one of us knows who he is and what God expects him to do." That was a slapshot to the head from 25 feet out. At the time, I had no idea who I was and that God actually wanted me to dosomething. I decided then and there to become orthodox and move to Israel. Don't knock it; if God could talk to Moses from a burning bush, He could certainly toss a hint my way from an old movie.) And here I am.
I've always taken a contrarian delight in bucking the tide. This long pre-dated my decision to become observant, i.e. orthodox, (see above); deciding to become observant was part of it & it is still percolating around now.
I've run into a religious rut.
The next-to-last verse in the Book of Ecclesiastes says: "The end of the matter, all having been said, fear [the original Hebrew means something more like "be in reverent awe of"] God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole person."
I have reverent awe of God & I do my best to keep His commandments but the enthusiasm & the fervor I used to have is long since gone away and I feel like I'm just going through the motions, clutching at forms even as the content is gone. I feel like a hamster on a wheel. I go to synagogue, keep kosher, keep Shabbat [the Sabbath], etc. because I have to and because I don't want not to. Sometimes I think that (since) everybody needs a code to live by & since this one is as good as any and better than most, I might as well stick with it. But is this it?
(Please feel free to Google or Wikipedia any term/place/word below that you might not get. I would have liked to put in links but as a newbie here, that's not allowed.)
The most interesting series of spiritual experiences I've had recently, if you can call them that, one that has started a whole host of confused doubts to percolate in my heart, was that on April 23, me, my wife & two friends drove to Kiryat Luza on Mt. Gerizim in Samaria to watch the Samaritans bring their Passover offering. (Mini-aside: I think "sacrifice" is a horrible mistranslation of the Hebrew word "korban", which actually comes from a root meaning "to approach" or "to draw near to".) I was impressed, very. Since then, I've been doing my homework (I've always loved doing research), reading up on them. While we were up there on Mt. Gerizim, after they lowered the skewered lambs into the fire pits (it's all over YouTube), we spoke with one young Samaritan from Holon (near Tel Aviv) who answered our questions & did his best to explain their beliefs & customs.
On May 17, my colleague/friend from work & I drove to Mt. Gerizim to visit the national park on the summit (the Israel Nature and Parks Authority English site doesn't have a link, the Hebrew site does) and explore Kiryat Luza. We parked right next to the area with the fire pits. I showed my friend the pits & explained how the Samaritans did their Passover offering & then we walked up to the park. We saw some of the Samaritan holy sites: Altar of Isaac, the Eternal Hill/Givot Olam, (see Deuteronomy 33:15, I crouched down and ran my hands over the almost flat stretch of rock, that was very cool; this is my avatar), and where Joshua set up the 12 stones, and took in the astounding view.
On May 20, I took the day off to get stuff done at home in the morning & then drove off to the Samaritan neighborhood in Holon (one cul-de-sac street that they're starting to outgrow) to meet with a Samaritan gentleman with whom I have been emailing. I parked opposite one of their synagogues which looks just like one of ours except for the writing in their ancient Hebrew script. We sat in his living room and spoke for several hours. I mainly asked questions about their beliefs & customs and how they differ from ours, and he answered. My host gave me a Samaritan calendar, a few copies of their community newsletter & a little notebook for children learning to read their alphabet. They've published an English translation of their Torah (side-by-side with an English translation of our text for comparative study); when I can spare the $50-60 or so for a copy from Amazon, I would like to buy it. In the mean time, I'm going to try and teach myself their alphabet so I can read their script (the newsletter is in modern Hebrew, their ancient Hebrew, Arabic & English) and, eventually, hopefully, their Torah in the original. He also invited to be in touch with him for a more personal tour of Mt. Gerizim (or "the mountain" as they call it). That would be cool.
I know that there are only about 760 or so Samaritans but the cool thing is that there are no Reform Samaritans, no Conservative Samaritans, no orthodox, ultra-orthodox or secular Samaritans, there are just Samaritans, all saying the same prayers, doing the same things, accepting the same spiritual leadership. This is a kind of unity and harmony that we can't even dream about in our wildest fantasies!! We're so f@$%ing rancorously divided among ourselves that it's nauseating; it's like God's words don't count ^ everyone just slangs on each other.
Up until last week, I had been merely wondering where I was going with all this, with my newfound fascination with the Samaritans & their similar-to-ours-yet-different faith. I still don't know. Sometimes the point of a journey is the journey itself and not necessarily one's destination, assuming one ever arrives anywhere. A traveler travels and I'm enjoying myself so far. There is a beauty in their unity and a purity and simplicity in their approach to Torah that appeal to me. Now, I don't know how much of this is one doozy of doubt with a good mixture of revulsion over our utter disunity thrown in. I mean is being an orthodox Jew merely my default program, and I'm borne along more by spiritual inertia than anything else? My, that's certainly fun & exciting (not).
So, I had a really weird dream last week. I usually do not remember my dreams but this one was very vivid & I haven't been able to get it out of my head/heart. I dreamed that I was bitten by a snake. I dreamed that I was in our old neighborhood & that a small greenish-yellowish snake bit me on the right thigh.There was local swelling & discoloration. I did not feel systemic symptomns. I was wearing khaki shorts & the swelling & discoloration could not be seen by anyone. I knew it was there, I could feel it, but I had to either hike up the shorts or take them half-off to show anybody. I remember thinking that there was poison in my system but only I knew it was there.
I relate this to my ongoing spiritual confusion & my fascination with the Samaritans. I know what the snake symbolizes, a la Genesis: temptation, doubt, etc. Why our old neighborhood? Because when my colleague and I drove to Mt. Gerizim that day, we left from there. (I left my car there & we went in his car.) The snake's poison = doubt, and that only I can feel it, that only I know it's there, the meaning of that is obvious. The doubt in my heart is apparent only to me; nobody else can tell.
My Samaritan friend has invited to personally guide me around Mt. Gerizim. I'd love to take him up on his offer but part of me is kind of afraid to because maybe I'll want to stay there (spiritually, figuratively) and serve God on that mountain. That idea, to serve God on that mountain, i.e. Mt. Gerizim, has been echoing in my head.
I always say that running from temptation is no good because if you run from temptation, it'll just follow you, you have to turn and face it, and stare it down, and tell it to f*ck off & show that it has no power over you. It is as if God has said to me, "You think it's that easy ZVBM? You talk a good game but let's see how you actually play." And like I don't know whether it's my good impulse ("yetzer hatov" in Hebrew) or my bad impulse ("yetzer hara", which isn't really bad per se as it is selfish & self-centered), or both, that's messing with me.
And what's really freaking me out about all this is wondering if my Jewish faith is this shallow that it can be so easily rattled? Or is my heart responding to some greater call? Do I have spiritual poison in my system, that I'm being tempted by the Samaritan version of our faith (as I'll put it) or is that my yetzer hara messing with me. I mean it's not like I'm tempted by, say, another faith completely, like Christianity or Islam, God forbid!, I'd sooner die.
Oh, and last night, I dreamed that I was some sort of spy, living in deception behind enemy lines. We live in an almost exclusively religious (i.e. orthodox) neighborhood here that is so square it hurts sometimes. Our friends & neighbors would freak if anyone realized that my interest in the Samaritans was anything other than academic.
Gagghhhh
Any thoughts?
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