11 Things: etc. etc.

Navigating speech and silence, with a little help from Shtisel

After I wrote these 11s, a dear friend texted me the latest episode of the Identity/Crisis podcast out of the Shalom Hartman Institute. Coincidence? I think not.

“I often push myself to ask, am I writing this article or that Facebook post because I’m trying to express something that needs to be heard or simply because I’m trying to keep up with the noise? Is what I’m trying to say something that needs to be heard or am I simply trying to be heard? I often wish for clarity in those moments that no one can ever really find.”

~ Yehuda Kurtzer, Listening in a World of Noise

1. I’m having a very hard time starting. Sometimes I feel like I haven’t written a thing in months, even though I know this is not the case. I am full to bursting and that’s probably part of the problem. Like there is too much, where to begin, how to decide what to write about, etc. etc.

2. There is an Israeli show we loved a few years ago called Shtisel. It takes place in an Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem called Mea She’arim and follows the trials and tribulations of a young man, Akiva Shtisel. Akiva is a talented painter with a brooding temperament who wants to lead an artist’s life. He lives with his father, Shulem, a crotchety yet lovable rabbi and a widower who needs Akiva to stay stuck so that he won’t leave him, and who thinks art is a waste of time when Akiva should be devoting his life to Torah. 

3. Shulem has a habit of lecturing people, then trailing off at the end by saying, “etc. etc.” with accompanying hand gestures. After watching all three seasons of Shtisel, M.J. and I adopted this habit as a kind of shorthand. It has become part of our insular vocabulary, the kind I imagine many couples develop over time. 

4. During one of their semesters as a non-traditional undergrad at Smith College, M.J. took a course in midrash in the Jewish Studies Department. A simple definition of midrash is that it is an ancient method of interpreting scriptural texts. There are two different approaches to midrash: legal and narrative. The latter is a way of approaching an old story with a new lens. It’s highly imaginative and rife with relevance, allowing us to discover how to apply old stories to contemporary ways of seeing, thinking, living, and relating.

5. During that class, M.J. was delighted to learn that “etc.” shows up in Midrash all the time: “Rabbi So-and-So and Rabbi So-and-So said such and such and such and such about X topic, but Rabbi So-and-So disagreed and said such and such, etc. etc.” It occurs to me that the rabbis of old were themselves full to bursting. There was too much. They captured a lot of it and then added “etc. etc.” to let the person studying fill in the rest. For better or for worse, it’s a never-ending process and practice.

6. Unsurprisingly, even what I’ve written so far landed me on Google for numerous searches. “How many seasons of Shtisel are there?” “What is Michael Aloni [who played Akiva] doing now?” The latter question led to a rabbit hole of articles in The Jewish News, which is apparently “Britain’s Largest Jewish Newspaper,” where I read quotes like, “If you care about democracy, you must fight antisemitism with all your might” from Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt, and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s warning against growing extremism by referring to “Jewish children, fearful to wear their school uniform lest it reveals their identity [and] Muslim women abused in the street for the actions of a terrorist group they have no connection with.” 

7. It is nearly impossible to exist if you are the least bit alive, awake, aware, and distraught about the state of the world without experiencing the realness of losing hours and hours to doom-scrolling and ingesting massive amounts of highly charged input. Sometimes, I don’t think I’m doom-scrolling. I’m reading, I tell myself. But the truth is that while I might be reading, I am also doom-scrolling, with pauses to read as I go. I can’t fathom the amount of detail my brain is attempting, unsuccessfully I might add though it probably goes without saying, to process and metabolize. 

8. This overload short-circuits the brain and frays any remaining attention span. And I have not even spoken of the emotional impact of helplessly witnessing so much suffering in real-time, seeing the entire world turn on Israel, and thus Israelis, and thus Zionism no matter how you define it, and thus, in many cases, Jews, without distinction. 

9. As a Jew… As a Jew… As a Jew… As a Jew…  

10. Jews comprise approximately 0.2% of the world’s population, and that number is split almost evenly between the U.S. and Israel, with a million or so Jews in other countries around the globe. Discussion, debate, argument, interpretation, and endless parsing are the foundation of our religious and cultural traditions. There are multiple Jewish denominations along with millions of Jews who do not consider themselves religious at all. The destruction, death, hunger, loss, and suffering in Gaza leave me staring at a blinking cursor. There are no words. The viciousness of some of the anti-Israeli rhetoric leaves me staring at a blank page. The insanity of the Israeli government leaves me dumbfounded. There are no words. How do I make my way out of silence without simply adding to the noise?

11. Through some of the most vulnerable and honest conversations I’ve ever had, it turns out. That is how I make my way out of silence. Let me be clear: Conversations across differences are not easy; we do not always see eye to eye and choosing relationship over rightness is deep work. But when we choose honesty, listening, and ultimately, the kind of vulnerability where – in Shulem-speak – a Jew can touch into the truth of her heart, something can open. I cried for the first time in a while yesterday, and when I did, I found my voice, if only for a minute.

The voice I found told me this: Many of us are carrying around such a multifaceted crush of emotions, such that it is easy to feel very alone, like you don’t quite belong here, or here, or there. It is in acknowledging the loneliness, no matter the differences, that we might find a moment of common ground. Etc. etc.

“Maybe part of our responsibility as humans, even now that we have all the power of words and the gift of words, especially those of us who are good at words. Maybe the way we now make meaning is to find ways periodically to listen through all the dissonance, to listen to all the pain and the sorrow right now, to listen knowing we will still have to say things and have opinions and believe things, and sometimes even professionally, some of us will have to try to persuade others with our words. 

But maybe in all of that noise, somewhere, a little bit of silence in which we can find the humble word of God.”

~ Yehuda Kurtzer, Listening in a World of Noise