Shabbat begins in a few minutes so this will be (blessedly?) short. Come to think of it, I’d like to know whether you like my letters at their usual length or would prefer they be shorter. Please tell me in the comments.
For the past year whenever people hear that I’m American they are shocked and insist on telling me that I’m the only American they’ve seen in years. (And when they learn that I’m Jewish — and a Rabbi they tend to freeze for a few seconds wondering whether they're dreaming.)
Well, I just ran across 4 women around 30 years old wearing bonnets - aka Mennonites.
We hit it off immediately.
As I’m currently in Shabbos-prep I didn't have my phone on me so I couldn't video or photograph with them but perhaps we’ll meet again.
Back to Home.
People generally assume that I have a home and that I’m just travelling or perhaps searching for something. But they're wrong. I don't have a home. Same as these unmarried Mennonite women.
I grew up Ultra-Orthodox Jewish but the disallowance of free thought in that community meant that I was an outsider to the tribalist groupthink. I am at home everywhere but there's nowhere that I actually belong.
These American Mennonite women also have no home. Why be shunned and regarded as disgraced losers for being unmarried (in part due to their intellect denying them the certitudes of the faith they religiously follow) when they can travel together to some distant and exotic land?
Sure, Egypt isn't home, but Standard-Issue America isn't either.
When you grow up with certitudes about God, Destiny and Afterlife, you aren't easily impressed by the ephemeral certitudes of devout Americans either, be they that men can be women, that money is synonymous with success or that any of the ever-changing moral certitudes relating to sex or relationships are the final word on the matter.
And of course the communities of their birth aren’t quite home either for freethinkers and freelivers; not among the Mennonites, Chareidim, or any other people.
It seems that most people genuinely have no core independence of thought nor any interest in gaining it. Humanity is literally the most herdish of species and our evolution has rewarded such traits ever since we separated from the pre-Neanderthals into a separate species known as Homo sapiens.
But the same evolutionary gifts we gained in order to build Towers of Babel and, more definitely, the pyramids have kept the capacity for individualism alive as well.
Writing emerged in the interest of book-keeping so that humanity could be better categorized, managed, and enslaved (see: “Is Hollywood Run By Jews”) but it created the possibility of recording human history too, including the history of the praised-as-soon-as-they’re-dead Great Independent Thinkers of the species, who have passed on from generation to generation the possibility of being an individualist even in the face of totalitarian ethical and managerial Systems designed to stamp out the צלם אלוהים (Tzelem Elohim - Essence of God) that the Bible regards as our original, eventual, and best natures.
And now Shabbat, that Great Gift, arrives and I must go.
May you, my fellow sincere individualists and honest thinkers, have a beautifully divine one.
Yadidya