Cynthia Samuels

GOD, VIDEO GAMES AND THE END OF THE WORLD

Today on AlterNet – a wonderful aggregator of things political, there appeared the rather remarkable tale behind production of the video game Left Behind. Based on the phenomenally best-selling series of books set during the arrival of the End Times and the Rapture, it sounds like it’s pretty violent for a religious game.

I guess though that the entire story of the End Times is pretty grim. I remember thinking that back when I first heard of these books. It was around 7 years ago, when the first one came out. I wandered back to the galley on a cross country flight and found the flight attendant transfixed, deeply involved in the story. We spoke of it for some time; it meant a great deal to her.

I have always found apocalyptic stories riveting. Maybe it’s growing up in the "duck and cover" era but the idea of the world ending in fire seemed so plausible in those times* I was deeply affected by it, I think. If you had to go under your desk in 2nd or 3rd grade and put your crossed hands over your neck, you’d be scared too.

In addition to our air raid drills, there were books and movies like Alas, Babylon, On the Beach, and dozens of other nuclear disaster tales. They were full of small, horrible moments. I was pretty young but I remember, from Alas Babylon, mobs storming drugstores and looting them for medicine. Even now it is probably the image of nuclear war that sits most viscerally in my mind. My father had high blood pressure – and was lost without his hearing aid – and I remember fearing that a war would take away his medication and the hearing aid batteries that connected him to us.

The bombs always came from countries back then. Now of course all it takes is a suitcase and some under-funded port security to empower someone bent on destruction. It probably is no accident that the Left Behind books are so popular — there’s so much uncertainty and so much that’s frightening. Which brings us back to the game. Somehow it seems less acceptable to insert violence into a religious game, but as I become accustomed to the weekly reading of Torah portions I realize the bloody violence in the Bible itself. Even God was not immune – his anger was swift and deadly. The understanding of that somehow seems, at least partially, to justify the violence of apocalyptic literature.

So. No conclusions — just a riff for a Wednesday night. And the thought that if violence emerges so often in sacred works it’s an acknowledgment of those things in our natures that challenge us most… to keep our own rage, envy and hatred from popping out and contributing to chaos — in real life, on the pages of a book, or on an XBOX 360.

Stress (whining again — sorry)

Here we go again! Both boys are coming on Saturday, my brother-in-law and his family will be here UNTIL Saturday, we’d like the kids to meet our friends in this new neighborhood, I have tons of work, no presents for anyone yet, and between Rick and me we maybe sleep a combination of 8 hours a night. Not a good combination.

I’m not sure what’s doing it either. I think I have to find a way to chill and remember what’s important — which is for everyone to have a good time and for me not to stress too much about cooking, etc. But between our kosher life, the dearth of decent ways to eat out here and the cost of taking everyone out all the time we do need to eat more meals at home than we used to. So I need to plan. AND still do work. AND see friends before the Big Week begins.

AND do my share of the household maintenance, crooked contractor lawsuit documentation and other pleasures. (That photo on the left is the unsupported tile floor being taken up to be COMPLETELY redone including the addition of the necessary but OMITTED subfloor. Oh you have no idea……)

Even so I’m so excited to have the boys here in our "new" house — and the rest just has to settle down. Kitchen floors and extra people and unpredictability are gifts, not curses. I know that.

After all, the boys and Amy will be here, we’re all pretty healthy and still love each other. That’s a good holiday present right there….

EDUCATION R US

This was a business day – no fooling around. I spent much of it reading education blogs for a client. I’m a real education junkie but often forget just how many wonderful, caring teachers there are out there. Wander around the blog world of educators and you find humor, commitment, talent and creativity. I admit that being the parent of kids with learning disabilities and the daughter and sister of teachers predisposes me to my admiration and interest but when you read these posts you really can’t resist.

I worry though about our schools. From what I’ve read we’re way behind China and India — among other countries — in the education of engineers and computer/math/science kids — and artsy and verbal as I am, I know those skills will be the ones we need to keep our country, and our economy, competitive. Yet all the hollering about the future of education is pretty empty. We give the No Child Left Behind tests, and I must admit that there are schools that really do need basic standards. But it’s critical thinking, inquiry and problem-solving, that will keep our country strong – and that’s suffering to fund the tests as a one-size-fits-all solution. In addition, funding for gifted kids is almost non-existent these days, so their talents aren’t being leveraged for our futures either.

If you want a real look at education today though go visit Mocha Momma — she tells it every day and with great style and compassion. Give her a try.

Remarkable

As usual after the break of the Sabbath – TV and computer off from sundown to sundown, I’ve found something amazing as I reconnect. My friend Cooper Munroe, who with her partner did more to get resources to New Orleans than most governments — via a BLOG (!!) has posted, on her blog BEEN THERE, Steve Jobs’ graduation speech at Stanford. It’s best if you just see for yourself — just watch it. More tomorrow.

Home and Heartache

Yeah, we’re home – and as usual it’s like walking into an electric fan. We landed, unpacked, did laundry, slept (until 3AM) then Rick went back to the airport for a fund-raising trip to California. I’m working on several major projects and wanting to organize for when the boys come home for the holidays. Grocery lists and activity planning in addition to many hours of business obligations.

Lots on my mind. Today a friend told me about the last conversation she had with her father and I was ambushed by a deluge of memories. It’s tough to come to terms with the loss of a parent. Both of mine have been gone for years and there isn’t a day I don’t think of them — and, often, wish I could ask them something – or tell them something — or just feel their love again. I haven’t felt this way in a long time and it surprised me. I just wasn’t expecting the intensity.

I once sent my dad the lyrics to a Judy Collins song about her father. It’s a wonderful evocation of the love between fathers and daughters and the bitter-sweet realization that one’s life will exceed that of a beloved parent. It’s what they’d wish for us but it’s complicated. Anyway there wasn’t a moment of my life when I doubted the love for and faith in me felt by both my parents.

There were also circumstances in my life that led me, in my memory at least, to be less attentive than I wanted to be. I think it will haunt me forever- times when finances or my own parental responsibilities kept me from visits; times when I let my dad tell me not to come because he didn’t want us to "see him like this." — all those things we all wish we’d done differently. I am beginning to think that this is a real issue for me and one I’ve got to get some clarity about.

This is the second time in the space of the 90 days or so I’ve had this blog that my dad has come up and he’s been gone since 1991. Somehow though I’m more at peace with the loss of him. I can summon memories that make me smile and I know that he had a profound and lovely effect on my sons, which adds to my own fond remembrances of him.

My mother, who died in 1998, haunts me though. I know things in her life frustrated her – and that she would have liked to do more in the world outside the house. My husband told both her and me that I was guilty that my arrival had pulled her out of a promising career but she insisted that that was HER choice and I should get over it. That she loved raising the three of us. I don’t doubt that she loved raising her daughters but I also think she needed more than she was able to get in life as a suburban mom. I don’t know – all I know is that I feel a need to be particularly helpful to elderly women on the street, or the bus, or the synagogue steps. As if I can do for her by doing for them. Agh. I don’t know. I’m going to bed to see if I can beat the last of the jet lag. This is too sad.

DEEP IN A DREAM: THE RED TENT

While I was in Jerusalem I went several times to Pardes Institute, a remarkable school to study the Bible, Talmud and commentaries. My husband and I love to study while we’re visiting places; it all seems so much more real – and sinks in more, too. We were there during the week that the story of the rape of Dinah is read on Shabbat. It’s pretty profound and provocative and a wonderful teacher named Rabbi Reuven Grodner taught the class. We were transfixed: the story of the vengeful brothers and their far from vengeful father Jacob is troubling to anyone – but particularly to women.

I remembered that The Red Tent was written in Dinah’s voice, so I decided to read it. I had tried once before but it seemed too overwrought and almost overwritten then. Now though, I find myself more interested in the stories in the Torah — the universality of Bible stories and all they represent — so I stuck it in my suitcase — and once we’d studied the Genesis story of Dinah I pulled it out.

It’s really quite an experience — almost a fever, like The Virgin Suicides. The sisterhood and love among women, the pain of childbirth, the rivalry and particularly the remarkable power author Anita Diamant provides to each of the main characters — is thrilling.

There’s a kind of Biblical interpretation called a Midrash and those that I, as a beginner, have read, are all pretty male-oriented. This book is one big women’s perspective/Midrash full of love, passion, pain, loss, love, birth, death, misery, joy and poetry. Much of it does NOT appear in the Bible but that’s true of the old Midrashim as well. I can’t stop thinking about the women of this book, their lives and stories. I came to love them and their stories — so very very different from the ones the conventional Bible stories tell.

JERUSALEM DIARY – ALMOST THE END

It’s Saturday night – Shabbat in Jerusalem is over. Last night we went to amazing services at the Wall- mobs of men on their side and women on ours praying, singing and dancing. Some of it is really awesome –standing watching a circle of young women in uniform – Israeli soldiers – dancing as they pray. Other women soldiers in uniform praying with their guns over their shoulders. Little girls praying with fierce concentration – other little girls running, laughing, dancing with the women. The men equally intense and in far greater numbers. ALL to welcome the Sabbath and the peace that it brings.

We returned to the hotel for an ENORMOUS dinner and lots of songs. And laughter. There were several large parties in a huge dining room — and many were singing — tables picked up one another’s tunes and serial singing ensued. Lots of kids running around; enormous families celebrating together. I’m so sorry I can’t show you pictures but I can’t use a camera on Shabbat — you just have to use your imagination.

Today we went to services at a school where the gym is used by a congregation on Saturdays. From there we took a long walk, had lunch with our entire group and a crew of our Rabbi’s family – his sister, her husband and four kids and his cousin, her husband and 6 kids. They are lovely, interesting people – two professors, a therapist and an Alzheimer’s Center director. There were lots of others too – 35 in all – and it was a great time with speeches and arguments and laughter.

Yesterday we met for two hours with a particularly sage rabbi with a spectacular reputation that he more than lives up to. It was quite exciting.
His name is Adin Steinsaltz and he has created schools and study centers all over Israel and in other countries. He looks like a sweet rabinical elf and evokes great emotion – it’s difficult to explain why. Like a jazz musician he riffed for two hours and gathered all that he spoke of together into a remarkable synthesis at the end. I’m going to try to write more about it but just want to get this account down since the ridiculous internet arrangements at this hotel have made posting difficult.

We’re just about at the end of this trip – so busy that my posts have of necessity been short — and it’s been a remarkable journey. I’m hoping to write in more detail when I can. Goodnight for now.

Something there is that doesn’t….

We had a lovely day. It began at the Kotel (Wailing Wall) at 7:30. The guys prayed on their side of the Wall and Lea, the rabbi’s daughter, and I prayed on the women’s side. She’s 7 and knows all the prayers cold – helped me as I’m the newbie and still learning. I don’t want to post her picture for kid privacy reasons but here’s what the scene looked like.

The Men’s Side

The Women’s Side

Then we went wandering. Where?

Sign inside Uri’s Pizza – a tiny hole-in-the-wall that our friend took us to to get caramel jelly donuts (don’t ask!)

We also had a lovely dinner – the whole group — and crashed early. Yeah- lots to talk about about the separation of women and men. Later though. G’nite.

PIX

This has been a great day but I may be too tired to tell you about it.

So here are some photos of

A soup kitchen warehouse where volunteers organize food to feed 5000 families and prepare 300 meals a day

Their kitchen

A funny picture of Jack Abramoff

that he isn’t in.

And some pretty flowers on the edge of the wall overlooking Old City excavations.

More tomorrow.

THE WEST WING AND THE MIDDLE EAST

They carry West Wing re-runs in Israel. I’m sitting here on a break between a day of walking through this holy city and dinner watching and crying. Can’t believe it. It’s the one where Mrs. Lanningham dies – a sad one, yes – but as my husband just said to me – “It’s a television show.” He’s right of course – but not exactly.

Since the end of the Clinton administration, the West Wing hour was the only hour I felt like I had a president I could count on. Seeing it here so long after the show ended and Bravo stopped running it was a real ambush moment. Just reminded me how much I grieve for all I’ve thought should be… and how very much I feel we’ve failed. Talking with our Israeli friends about not so hard; their own sense of despair over the state of this country brought it all back. I’ll get over it…

Before my weeping incident it was a lovely day today. Early morning at the Kotel – me and the rabbi’s 7-year-old daughter on the women’s side and all the guys on the men’s. It was sunny and cool and the city glows in the morning. Of course it’s unsettling to pass through metal detectors to pray but once you’re there, it’s quite an experience.

We had a great breakfast back at the hotel, then went walking with our friend Asher. We spent a couple of hours exploring the Mehane Yehuda market – crammed with vegetables and spices; meat, cheese, sneakers and clogs, sweaters, hats, nuts, loose tea, bottled water and almost anything else you’d want to buy. Asher took us from there to his old neighborhood Nachlaot, historic old houses off narrow streets.. strands of flowers hanging off some of the roofs and historic plaques decorating the walls.

So there it is – another day in Israel — the ridiculous, the sublime and the inevitable intrusion of the political longings that even a great adventure can’t stave off forever.