So I am not exactly sure I want this blog of mine to be a “sermony” type of reading experience. It started just as a place to announce my vows and rules, and then became a place to show my family and friends my poems and short stories. Frankly, I liked it like that. However, I have been posting more of my content here lately, to include older philosophical papers and even some of my more thoughtful Facebook posts, as I am concerned about being banned and silenced from social media. So once again, I am going to post a standard, preachy style blog post, this time about this article describing Israeli bureaucracy. I think I’ll cool it for this kind of thing for a while, as I will have a bit of this type of posting sampled.
Anyway, on to the contents of the article. Twelve years without looking at anything. How could Israel be so unjust for so long? It can’t be anything but a venomous, godless spirit of hate empowered by the world’s greatest force of evil: bureaucracy. The ultimate effect is like getting drunk and walking over to the local elementary school naked and asking for a seat on the local Parent Teacher Association. Remember, Israel, ten of your tribes were obliterated.
So after King Solomon, Israel split in two: Israel had ten tribes in the north, Judah had two tribes in the south. All the kings of Israel were godless. Judah would get a godly king once in a while. It would be like two or three godless kings, and a godly one. Two or three more godless kings, and a godly one. This represents the human servant of God. The northern kingdom represents what Kabbalah would call our animal soul. Our flesh according to the Apostle Paul. The part of us that comes from this fallen, loveless world. The part that only loves our friends, only works for our own interests, only thinks of the now. The southern kingdom of Judah represents the spirit of the servant of God, usually being dragged down and subsumed under the flesh by the influence of the world and its spirits. But occasionally, once every few kings, the spirit of God shines through us.
So we see that the servant of God really has nothing to do with God most of the time, except for perhaps occasionally showing the pain of being drowned by his own godlessness. Only once in a while does the servant of God actually express any real divinity.
There is no split kingdom of Israel in the North and Judah in the South now. There is only the State of Israel. But it looks like not much has changed. The nation is still reflecting that old condition which is what I see in the supposed servants of God in my life. Really just like any given self-interested heathen at any given moment.
Kabbalists talk a lot about the principle of the individual element of the world being infinitely and ultimately connected to it, such that our reality kind of acts like a giant Mendelbrot Set. That pattern and property radiate through all things, such that an individual behaving in a godly way influences the nation to behave in a godly way, the universe to behave in a godly way, the animals to behave in a godly way, everything. And an individual behaving in a godless way influences the nation to behave in a godless way, the universe to behave in a godless way, the animals to behave in a godless way, everything. Likewise, the nation behaving in a godly way influences the individual to behave in a godly way, and so on. This extends far beyond the immediately recognizable. Sure, if you buy a man a sandwich he will buy you one when he has the cash. But the kabbalists say that a monk living alone on a mountain in the Urals for forty years praying all day every day can influence a Manhattan taxi cab driver to buy a street bum a sandwich. Not specifically, like through telepathy. And not even specifically through prayer, as if the monk were to pray that taxi drivers start buying bums sandwiches. (Although that happens too) but here it’s the idea that being godly just radiates through everything, everywhere.
The problem with the bureaucrat is that he thinks he doesn’t have anything to do with anything. He is just following his checklist. The grand scheme of things is not his problem. He is not connected to anything. Your problems have nothing to do with him. Or, even worse, the bureaucrat doesn’t even serve the law, but himself. It doesn’t matter if he owes these Palestinians papers or not. The law is just there for him to use, and whether they get their papers is just a matter of how much they beg him, how nice to him they are. Or the worst: it’s just a matter of how much he hates Palestinians. I’m getting to think that to be employed as a bureaucrat every candidate should be required to display mastery of the Tanya.
I am not going to this country because it is so damned great. That doesn’t mean I don’t love it. But it doesn’t mean I have to be impressed, either. I’ve been trained to love the enemy, and to love the stranger, and to love the unworthy. That being the case, sometimes I worry. You have Iranians trying to freaking nuke you. You never know if the Americans are going to give you another dime or another bullet, or what city they are going to put their embassy in, or for how long. And you can’t even pass out residency papers. For twelve years. To kids who forgot to fill out a form by a certain date. Because their dads weren’t nice. Their uncles are in jail. Their cousins land flaming kites all around. And their bosses fire rockets into buildings. And the world hates you for protecting yourself. I know, I know, it isn’t easy being you, Ariel. But that doesn’t mean you leave kids wandering the desert for more than a decade. And you wonder why their cousins are lighting your fields on fire. So, you goddamned bureaucrats. Sometimes it takes an individual to make a nation great.