What Color Is Your Life?
Just got home from Shabbos, fed the horse, parked the buggy. I filled in for a Shul rabbi at Shaloshudes, filling in for another next week. It could be a good gig, filling in for vacationing rabbis during August. I am feeling down on the blog at the moment. I am working hard to finish a haiku book soon and am not setting this in stone but I am going to try to not post here again till the book is done and/or available to you. The one way mirror element of blogging gets to me. The stats indicate that I get about a hundred hits a day. I have a hundred questions about what that means. Blogging can be a strong example of communication without connection. I yearn for connection. I am proud of the (poo poo poo) six years of myself that I've put out here. If you read this blog and want to let me know what it has meant to you, I wouldn't stop you. My email's in my profile. My phone number's listed. I'm around. I would prefer knowing who you are. I'm going to share a few recent haiku and one non-haiku, and then it's lehitraot.
Imagine someone
Someone other than yourself
Imagine a life
Teach me how to smile
When I say you, I mean you
Also me, and G-d
True Judaism
Has its text and its subtext
Read regularly
Better a sad peace
Than a war which is merry
Best: a happy piece
I am praying now
As I sit on the 1 train
And I write these words
What color is
your religion?
Mine is purple.
posted by rabbi neil fleischmann @ 11:59 PM
11 Comments:
I like the blog (but you know that already). I think you should keep it going, but just when you feel like it, not look at it as a duty.
An invented life
Even if well-imagined
Contains your life too
You smile with your lips
Show your teeth, but not fiercely
Let your eyes smile too
I like your opinion and think highly of each of these haiku.
Your praise is valued
Like cold rain in high summer
Like sun in winter
Let me try that again:
Kind words are valued
Like cool rain in high summer
Warm sun in winter
Thanks. I think the second one is more polished than the first version, really like the poem.
I love haikus. I think they are my favorite kind of poetry. Your post today reminds me of Martin Buber. I used to incorporate his work---I still do, actually--whenever I teach ANY communication class. His I-Thou philosophy talks to us about communication (or lack thereof) with others, and what it means. Are they just a reflection of us? If I am reflected in the other, is it as an egotistical reflection, or is it that I am seeing the humanity in the other? The human soul thirsts for connection, but the depth of that connection is conditioned by how we open ourselves to others. Or not. Love your blog, by the way, even though I don't always comment.
Thanks Trudy. I enjoy your blog too, it's an articulate and almost tangible portal into a world.
Forgive me for what I'm about to say: I'm not sure that Buber was a model of empathy and good communication in his own life. Nevertheless we can learn a lot from his theory. I very much like the way you phrased the possibility of seeing ourselves in others and using that in either a narcissistic or in a compassionate manner.
My dear friend Rabbi Binyamin Blau told me that he heard Dr. David Pelkovitz say that he was speaking with his father about the reality today of tweeting and texting and skyping (you can say oh my if you want). His father, Rabbi Rephael (I think) Pelkovitz said that these are all examples of communication without connection. I'm glad you apeak to this point in your communication classes.
I appreciate your feedback regarding the blog. If I really do take a break you can always surf back issues - some of my favorites are anything from the summer of '06 or the fall of that year. I spent 6 weeks in Israel then and wrote a lot of haiku from inside the experience. I also really like the pieces about my name Natah (you can search it in the blog) and a piece called With Apologies To Jennifer Bleyer.
G-d Bless. Lehitraot.
Rabbi Neil
oh dear! i think it's the element of interaction that draws people to blogging-- comments, e-mails etc extend the writing experience by so very much! but there are so many anonymous people out there-- i hear you! i'm looking forward to your book! :)
Thanks MM (although you have a moniker, you're not actually anonymous on your blog, but you know that already).
My blogmother (just an expression, she's younger than me)is Esther Kustanowitz. I read an article of hers in the Jewish Week, which linked to her blog. It was my first blog and it had an author with a name and a face. I thought that's how it was done on both sides of the blog. That's how I started and how I stayed. Over the six years I've been doing this I've made close friends and real connections for which I am grateful to G-d. I probably won't break away. And yet.
If I was blogging (is responding to a comment on your own blog considered blogging? I'd share an interesting thought that my dear friend Binny Blau just told me. Rabbi Melvin Granatstein has said time and again that the frum world in being wary of secular culture has made a strange decision. What the frum world by and large has done is not reject culture but reject high culture and embrace low culture. So sad and so true. The image of poor Andy Statman being the ignored opening act at a Miami Experience Chanukah Extravaganza at Nassau Colosseum echoes in my mind. Got to go work on my book (even though I know the market is glutted by books of original haiku by Orthodox rabbis.)
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