I think that truth holds the key to how so many authentically religious people can also be authentically bloodthirsty. If What Matters has to do with excited mind states, secrets, and special keys to holiness - if it's about the finger that points to the moon, or the nice feeling you get looking at the moon, rather than the moon itself - then of course you're justified in doing whatever you can in the service of It. God, it sure feels like it Matters when you're dancing around the Torah. You can almost think it's about the Torah, rather than about the One toward which the Torah points. That is idolatry.

*

When it's really about the One, you don't see the world as fundamentally divided into Jews and non-Jews, or Muslims and Infidels.

Actually, the Israel/Palestine conflict is, in a way, much simpler than that. Most Israelis just want security; they don't want the territory. Most Palestinians, at least until recently, have said that they would accept a two-state solution. But when Israeli tanks destroy homes, when the Fence cuts through yards, ordinary Palestinians get angry, with no theology necessary. And when Palestinian bombers kill teenagers at the discotheque, ordinary Israelis get angry, and support the use of force, also with no recourse to God.

Once again, the ordinary explanation is more accurate than the one which resorts to theology, symbolism, culture.

*

Janis Joplin has it backwards. "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose," she said. Nothing left to lose - sounds like the time when people become suicide bombers.

Maybe freedom's just another word for nothing left to want. This would not mean giving up on the holy yearning, the passion, the desire to create. But it might mean not becoming so attached to one or another ways in which those passions are fulfilled. This again is the difference between religion and idolatry. Fundamentalism is idolatry, whether it's religious, moral, economic, ethnic.

So maybe Janis is right. The fundamentalist has something to lose: his dogma. Let go of that, and maybe freedom is still possible.

*

Is it Jewishly heretical to face the world unmediated, directly, with eyes open? Does an embrace of quotidian, trivial freedom mean that I have to accept Wal-Mart? It seems like both of these questions are trying to veer away from what's real - one into abstraction, the other toward consumption. The sign of the Holy One is truth.

Most people in the Middle East are sick to death of truth with capital Ts. They want to be left alone in peace, with a measure of dignity. That is a truth beyond letters. In the Messianic Age, we'll realize that the freedom of beauty contests is holy.

[1]       [2]       3 Image: Jay Michaelson

Jay Michaelson is Chief Editor of Zeek. He will be teaching Embodied Judaism this month at the 14th Street Y in Manhattan.

Related articles:

Passion and Violence Jay Michaelson
On the Mel Gibson film and the passions of religion
March, 2004

You are God in Drag Jay Michaelson
Notes from and after retreat
February, 2004

Harvard Death Fugue:
The Exploitation of Bruno Schultz Prof. James Russell
Historical revisionism and the new antisemitism in academia.
January, 2004

Davening with Joe Michael Shurkin
To fear a Jewish president
February, 2004

Four Israeli Intelligence Directors: The Yediot Interview
A translation of the November, 2003, interview by an Israeli tabloid with four former Israeli intelligence directors.
December, 2003

Carrying Light into Dark Times Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
October, 2003

Radical Evil Michael Shurkin
Bernard Henri-Levy on the death of Daniel Pearl
September, 2003

The Sacred and the Profane Douglas Rushkoff and Jay Michaelson
Douglas Rushkoff talks with Zeek about the future of Judaism
July, 2003

Meditation and Sensuality Jay Michaelson
Sex, drugs, and God in all
July, 2003

Zionism and Colonialism Michael Shurkin
Is Zionism Colonialism?
June, 2003

I hear America Bling-blinging Jay Michaelson
Hypercapitalism as Satanism
June, 2003

War and Not-War Dan Friedman
The ambiguities of art and life
March, 2003

If Only It Were All Just Art Michael Shurkin
Anxiety on the National Mall
January, 2003

The Polity Rachel Dobkin
Overheard in Union Square, September 11, 2002
October, 2002

Finding a Place in the Minefield:
American Jews and the Situation Samuel Hayim Brody
Avoiding the obvious Jewish responses to the mideast crisis: a response to Jay Michaelson
June, 2002

On Being a Leftist and a Zionist Jay Michaelson
It's a lonely world when you're both an anti-globalization leftist and a Zionist.
May, 2002

Mystical Nazi Sex Gods Jay Michaelson
What draws protesters to banal holocaust art?
April, 2002