Arendt's Blurb on Israeli Marriage Laws

Rabbis Decide Some Israelis Cannot Marry
     
Subsequent Letter to the Editor:
Marriage Laws Protect Israel's Jewish Identity

My brother Dan would shake his head in dismay to see me reading, let alone quoting or referring others to the New York Times. But I was intrigued today by a passage I came across in Hannah Arendt's "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil".
Arendt's book on Adolf Eichmann's trial was one of first books that I began to read and then set aside as I became too impatient to finish before moving on to something else. Since that time, about three years ago, this tendency has grown endemic in my life. I am currently reading about nine books, give or take three or four. The problem with this unfortunate trend is that not only do I complete but a scant few of the books I begin, but I retain very little of the contents even of the ones I do finish.
"Eichmann in Jerusalem" isn't my book - it was lent to me long ago, and it is past time to return it. Somehow I feel that I need to go back and finish those books which I dropped before moving on to new ones. I feel it is unfair to the books, their authors, and myself to leave them with pages earmarked, notes in the margins, but only half read. Plus - I'm tired of saying: "I started that book, but never finished it . . ." So today I picked up Arendt's documentary - and started it over. The passage that led me to the article linked above follows:

. . . Hence the strange boast: "We make no ethnic distinctions [concerning the charges brought against Eichmann]," which sounded less strange in Israel, where rabbinical law rules the personal status of Jewish citizens, with the result that no Jew can marry a non-Jew; marriages concluded abroad are recognized, but the children of mixed marriages are legally bastards (children of Jewish parentage born out of wedlock are legitimate), and if one happens to have a non-Jewish mother he can be neither married nor buried. The outrage in this state of affairs has become more acute since 1953, when a sizable portion of jurisdiction in matters of family law was handed over to the secular courts. Women can now inherit property and in general enjoy equal status with men. Hence it is hardly respect for the faith of the power of the fanatically religious minority that prevents the government of Israel from substituting secular jurisdiction for rabbinical law in matters of marriage and divorce. Israeli citizens, religious and nonreligious, seems agreed upon the desirability of having a law in which prohibits intermarriage, and it is chiefly for this reason - as Israeli officials outside the courtroom were willing to admit - that they are also agreed upon the undesirability of a written constitution in which such a law would embarrassingly have to be spelled out . . . Whatever the reasons, there certainly was something breathtaking in the naiveté with which the prosecution denounced the infamous Nuremburg Laws of 1935, which had prohibited intermarriage and sexual intercourse between Jews and Germans. The better informed among the correspondents were well aware of the irony, but they did not mention it in their reports.

Am going to bed now.

"A wrong attitude toward nature implies, somewhere, a wrong attitude toward God, and the consequence is an inevitable doom."
T.S. Eliot

Pray Without Ceasing

While scouring the world-wide web tonight, I came across this excerpt - Merton is on my list of authors to read.

From Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation:

The requirements of a work to be done can be understood as the will of God. If I am supposed to hoe a garden or make a table, then I will be obeying God if I am true to the task I am performing. To do the work carefully and well, with love and respect for the nature of my task and with due attention to its purpose, is to unite myself to God’s will in my work. In this way I become His instrument. He works through me. When I act as His instrument, my labour cannot become an obstacle to contemplation, even though it may temporarily so occupy my mind that I cannot engage in it while I am actually doing my job. Yet my work itself will purify and pacify my mind and dispose me for contemplation.
Unnatural, frantic, anxious work, work done under pressure of greed or fear or any other inordinate passion, cannot properly speaking be dedicated to God, because God never wills such work directly. He may permit that through no fault of our own we may have to work madly and distractedly, due to our sins, and to the sins of the society in which we live. In that case we must tolerate it and make the best of what we cannot avoid. But let us not be blind to the distinction betwen sound, healthy work and unnatural toil.

I began to understand this truth several months back - but I think it's the kind of thing that one goes on learning to understand forever. I remember asking myself what the heck I was doing here in Winnipeg, pouring coffee and carrying burgers, not learning, not really changing anything, not moving on to the next task in my life, just existing. At some point, though, I realized that there are things that must be done in life: I have to work, so that I can pay my rent and buy groceries; at home I must wash my dishes and laundry, and sweep the floor. And God is not, cannot be excluded from these most mundane and intimate parts of our lives. He provides me with employment, with a home, and must therefore, be assigning me the responsibilties and duties that accompany such privileges. In a way, He has entrusted these tasks to me, and by fulfiling them, I am obeying him no less than if I were to spend an hour on my knees in prayer or serving the homeless at His command.

I was once asked at time of day I set time aside to pray in the Spirit. My answer? While I am occupied with the most commonplace things. Walking to work, walking home, organizing, cleaning, scrubbing, sorting, cooking . . . I want God to be involved in every aspect of my life - not merely the time I set aside and devote to pursuing my relationship with Him and growing stronger in the knowledge of God. Even our Saviour learned a trade - how many times must He have lifted His heart to His Father while painstakingly shaving wood from a table leg. God has created us as beings who must travail to survive - Let us do everything as unto the Lord.

A Thought-Provoking Article

In Praise of Melancholy, by Eric G. Wilson.
This is a tremendously interesting article.
I've been thinking quite a bit during the last few months about happiness vs. joy and contentement, and I've come to the conclusion that happiness is really nothing more than a mood - in a journal entry this week I referred to it as a 'hounding demon'.

Descent of the Muse

The muse has once again descended - and I feel the urge to write, to spill my soul onto paper, or rather onto the screen of my laptop.
Watch for the possibility of posts in the next week. I welcome your suggestions of topics to write on - sometimes the words are there, waiting, but need something to draw them out - need a reason to be birthed.