Becoming Orthodox

Many of you know I have become a practicing Jew in a new way.  I don't even want to start getting into labels because the words carry unspoken connotations which bias the perception before anyone has even understood what we're trying to talk about here.  The reason I sat down to write right now is to put out what I consider to be the important reasons for doing this, and why it makes sense for me personally.  I could put it in the form of a challenge-response format but I don't want to come off as didactic or defensive.

First a couple stories.

#1 on being a professional:
Yesterday I ran into an old friend who happens to be Jewish, Israeli, Skokie-raised, and non-religious.  He is working now doing as a real estate equity investor from what I understand, and is happy because he is quote "making bank".  In typical fashion he aggressively challenged my reasons for turning serious about Judaism and for making it so much a part of my life.  One of the explicit questions he raised was, "why are you making it into your entire life ?  what can't it just be a part of your life?"   After I had explained what I had been doing this past year - working 2 jobs part-time, 2 unpaid internships, tutoring on the side, and studying 3 hours a day at a Yeshiva - his question was, "so when are you going to start your real life?"  As in, "why aren't you working full-time", and also, "why aren't you doing something pertinent to your degree.

#2 on the professional world:
Today at one of my internships I had to review candidates' resumés applying for a position with the company I work for, Your Edge for Success.  Looking through dozens of resumés and cover letters, I was very much struck with the feeling that this is indeed what life is all about.  People listing their accolades, accomplishments, skills, and goals, all of it having to do with the work world in all its infinite varieties -- much of it is impressive and the enthusiasm these people genuinely have is amazing.  One cannot help but feel inadequate unless you have something equally official and full-fledged and legitimate to show against the competition.

#3 on having a successful life:
Just read a post by David Brooks in the NYTimes on college graduates and the tendency to go into investment banking, non-profits, high-tech, academia.  You can see it here he is an insightful guy.

#4
One of my best friends has now a full-time job in the IT field with a company that does marketing for pharmaceutical companies.  It's big business and seemingly an awesome place to have a job, if you have to have a 9-to-5 (and this is a highly unconventional and individualistic kid so I'm especially keen on noticing how it goes; he also happens to be one of the people I look up to most so I take his actions legitimately as examples of authentic ways to live one's life.  yeah yeah don't get weepy on me)

He and I have debated passionately on the philosophical and psychological meaning of becoming a "believer".  It seems to him that any system which must completely subsume one's way of thinking is scary and dangerous.  I know plenty of people who would agree with that statement, including most of my closest friends, my father, my mother, and people whom I look up to and respect.

#5
Just now I was lying on the couch and thinking, "why does this make sense to me?"  and then I hit it: I am not a conventional human being.  I am something of a mystic-hippe and also something of a normal guy with some amount of talents and intelligence and the ability to do something in the usual life of one who applies themselves and makes money and hopefully accomplishes something decent along the way.


JUDAISM is the ONLY way I have found to successfully combine BOTH the completely mystical, consciousness-changing, assumption-bending way of life AND the "normal", professional, working-world life of a regular person.


That is basically the bottom line of this post.  I hope it makes sense to you.

Thanks,

Nathan

"The Dictator" Film Review

Sacha Baron Cohen's latest work is as obnoxious, obscene, and offensive as anything else in his now long-evolving canon, even coming close to Borat with its infamous naked-wrestling scene.  Cohen is edgy, subversive, and above all a flat-out genius in the way he sublimates deep ideas from hidden dimensions into and on top of meta-levels in his comedy.  If you watch and read any of his films the way you would the typical Hollywood comedy you would miss most of the point.  One has to watch not so much watch within the film as to see above it to see what he is attempting to do.  This is difficult to explain but makes sense once you see it.

The Dictator follows the fictional fascist king of a tiny Middle Eastern nation called "Wadiya".  King Aladeen has unlimited oil money and a penchant for executing annoying people.  One of the most savage yet funnily honest aspects of the film is its caricature of the Arab state in all its decadence, shallowness, violence, insanity, tastelessness and wealth.  It is not a joke that kingdoms in the Middle East such as Dubai and Saudi Arabia have spent billions in oil money to construct outlandish palaces while squandering resources which could be spent on infrastructure, education, and social benefit for their swaths of rural poor.  Also not lost on Sacha is the irony that in many ways this grotesque fantasy world is like a twisted mirror of the American Dream (see also: Sex in the City 2, American Hustle, Las Vegas "City Center" built by Arab Investors).

Yet what Cohen really manages to pull off with The Dictator is not a satire of the Arab world, but a play on types in our own culture. He does this by bringing the eponymous ruler to Brooklyn, by way of plot swings, where he meets an odd love interest in the form of a young left-leaning vegan sensitive not-shaving activist bohemian chick named "Zoey". Through this Odd Coupling (which obviously takes up the centerpiece of the drama) the film actually pulls off a beautiful thought-experiment in Integral Philosophy, the theory that consciousness has evolved in "memes" which make up outlooks on life and society in accordance with psychological, political, and philosophical principles. Aladeen The Dictator represents the Red Meme, the relatively primitive Tribal/Territorial level of thinking wherein the strong shall rule and the weak bow down and everyone needs authority in order to survive. On the newer level (chronologically in history), the Green Meme or "Liberal" way of thinking, democracy, collectivism, and equality take priority: this is represented by Zoey, who works for a grocery store which employs African refugees and sells organic produce. He is a chauvinist and sexist and homophobe, she, an equality-promoting feminist. He believes in executions, she, the rights of the underserved poor. Integral Theory, originated by Clare Graves and advanced by Ken Wilber, predicts that eventually an ideal consciousness will include all "levels/memes" in a unified holistic way (see). The fact that two opposing types can meet and have a relationship demonstrates how the levels actually interact with each other and yield amazing products.

So that is in a nutshell what I found deep and insightful about this film. Sacha Baron Cohen successfully juxtaposes and connects two unlikely bedfellows and, in the end, the combination of these types against all odds yields a semi-plausible synthesis.

Aladeen, the fascist Arab, and his accidental femme fatale, a pretty young thing living in Brooklyn named Zoey.

 

She teaches him to be nice and he teaches her how to be effective and get things done in a commanding way. (If this sounds offensive to you, you may be in the Green Meme which darling Zoey occupies.) In the end I don't think Cohen quite achieves the ultimate synthesis of a political philosophy (if he could he would be a Nobel-winning world leader) but he comes close. I won't ruin the ending scene but it is actually a symbolic enactment of a shift into an ideal governance system.

Unfortunately, the film is also full of dirty gags typical of his boyish sense of humor. He manages to sneak in outrageous jokes involving: delivering a baby in a grocery store, learning to masturbate for the first time, accidentally seeming like the next 9/11 attackers in a helicopter over new york, pedophilia, rape, the death penalty, torture, abortion, sexism, anti-semitism, homophobia, and probably more I have neglected to mention. I didn't always like his style but I appreciated the strategy of leaving no targets untouched, if just to show that he is not actually against anybody. Like an episode of South Park, you have to realize that no targets are spared and there is a message behind the egregious sarcasm. Amidst all the looping of deadpan irony, in-your-face provocateering, actual on-set improvisation (almost constant from what I understand), and intellectual winking in the most impossible scenarios... the best you can do is laugh along and let him play his game