This journal would not be complete if I didn't sum up my feelings on various aspects that I found particularly meaningful, or exciting, or upsetting. One cannot go through this experience without acquiring an opinion or two. Be warned, I probably won't be censoring myself here.
I'll start with something positive. I made a number of friends on this trip, and I would be remiss if I did not say individually how much they all mean to me.
Gill is one of the smartest and most entertaining people I have ever met. He is overwhelmingly friendly with everyone, no matter how much they piss him off (and believe me, some of them did piss him off), and that is not an easy skill to master. I admire the hell out of him. Back in the days of yore, he was my brother's friend, and now I am proud to say that he is my friend.
Josh is an all-around friendly guy with a curious ease with women I find enviable. He was the oldest person on the trip but he never had any trouble getting along with the youngest.
Marie, as I said way back at the beginning of this journal, is nuts, and damned proud of it. She is so at home in her own skin that I can't imagine she would change anything about herself even if she could. I enjoyed thoroughly our discussion on all topics, even the ones I pretended not to want to hear about. I would jump at the chance to spend more time with her.
Leah (I'm not providing the phonetic notation this time) is perhaps the person with whom I felt the strongest connection, despite the fact that I share virtually no personality traits with her. She is wild where I am reserved. She is talkative where I am silent. She is evil where I am . . . well, okay, maybe we share some traits. In any case, I cherish the time we spent together. I absolutely adore her and I wish she didn't live so far away. Crazy Canadian distances.
Esther is, well, Esther. She's friendly and open, and she has the patience to endure my bluntness and rudeness, which is an admirable quality.
Shira is both beautiful and funny, and she gave me my nickname. I know I keep mentioning it, but it really meant a lot to me.
If I haven't mentioned you here, I apologize. You may be assured that I love you (well, most of you), but we would be here 'till doomsday if I listed everyone.
I don't care for Zionism. I'm sure you got that already. Nevertheless, I wish to make it quite clear that I think Zionism is just about the stupidest thing anyone has ever tried to push on me. Let me explain why.
I was born in Canada. The Greater Toronto Area, to be more precise. So were my parents. I have lived here for all 22 years and 11 months of my life, and I can't imagine living anywhere else. This is my home. This is where my friends and family are. This is where I plan to grow old and die, because it really is my favourite place in the whole world.
But apparently that's unacceptable. Because my ancestors practiced a certain Abrahamic religion (and it's important to realize that there's more than one), my homeland is apparently somewhere I've been for about 0.0012% of my life. Apparently that's where my people are, even though I've never spoken more than a few words to any of them. Apparently that's where my history is, despite the fact that my roots actually lie in various places around Europe. Apparently that's where I ought to live, even though I hate it there.
Sure, the weather's fine, and there's certainly an abundance of natural beauty there. But every place on Earth has its own beauty, and as for our lovely Canadian weather, I live with it and on some level I even enjoy it, because it's mine. My problem with Israel is the culture, which is really the whole of the issue. No one says Jews should live in Israel just to enjoy the geological formations or that mockery they call "winter".
Israeli culture has an abundance of three things I hate: guns, cigarettes, and cell phones. Interestingly enough, all three of those things are related to a culture of upheaval and violence. The guns are obvious enough. The cigarettes are to calm the jangled nerves of people who are required to kill for a living for a significant portion of their young life. The cell phones are to hear news of which family member has been killed in the latest terrorist attack. I want no part of a country where your whole life revolves around death.
The trip organizers tried to play down the whole violence thing, and to be fair it certainly doesn't happen on a daily basis, at least not that anyone is aware of. Nevertheless, it does happen. Why would I move to a country where people do in fact have to kill and be killed on a semi-regular basis, when I already live in a country that is enemy to no one, where bombings and wars are practically unheard of?
They kept saying that the Israelis are my people. Like I said in the body of the journal, when I look at them I don't see myself. I see people to whom I have no particular connection, and it just plain creeps me out that they think I am one of them. I do not say they're not good people; I merely say that they're not my people.
Which brings me to the most controversial part of this conclusion.
I am not Jewish. That's an insight I just came to recently. Perhaps if I were actually Jewish I would feel some connection to other Jews and maybe then I would regard them as my people and the country they inhabit as my homeland. But I feel no such connection beyond what I feel to all other human beings. That might make me a Humanist--I've never actually bothered to look up what that means.
Judaism is a religion, right? As I'm sure you've noticed by now, I am not a fan of religion. I don't pray, because I don't believe anyone is listening. That's right, no God. I don't believe in any afterlife, and I'm cool with that because I have no particular fear of death other than a basic, animal survival instinct which we all have. I don't particularly care what the Torah or the Hallachah (the oral tradition) have to say about moral behaviour, because I learned that behaviour long ago from my parents. Morality is not exclusive to religion. So if I don't practice any of the elements of Judaism, why should I consider myself Jewish?
Some would argue that I'm Jewish because I'm the son of Jewish parents, but that comes dangerously close to Hitler's definition in Mein Kampf. Namely, that Judaism is a race, not a religion. At the bone marrow drive the organizer mentioned that people who are from the same genetic background tend to be more likely to have matching marrow types, and she vaguely implied that all Jews share a genetic background. I'm not buying it. You would have to trace my family tree back very far indeed to link me to other Jews. There is no Jewish race. The concept of race in general is not even taken seriously anymore in modern anthropology.
The middle ground is that it is an ethnicity. I don't have my anthropology textbook with me, so I'll give the dictionary definition of ethnic: of or relating to large groups of people classed according to common racial, national, tribal, religious, linguistic, or cultural origin or background. I just said there's no basis for the concept of a Jewish race. I know of no ancestors whose nation housed a significant enough percentage of the world's Jewish population to have been considered the Jewish homeland. Tribal? That doesn't even apply. I already said I have no connection with the religion. I speak neither Hebrew nor Yiddish, and neither do my parents to any great extent. On the final point, cultural background, I feel no more similar culturally to my Jewish friends than I do to my non-Jewish ones, all of whom are simply Canadians like me.
So tell me, why should I be considered a Jew? My parents may be Jewish, but I am certainly not. Like Gill said (and I've pointed this out at least once before), 95% of Jewish identity is saying, "I am Jewish." I believe I have adequately discredited the remaining 5%. Whoever the Jews are, they are not my people.
Now here is a very serious issue, so I've decided it merits its own section. My mother feels very strongly that I should find a "nice Jewish girl" to marry so I can have little Jewlings and carry on the Jewish race. Except that there is no such thing.
The reason she often cites is that it's so hard for people to stay together these days, so anything I have in common with the woman I marry, such as Jewishness, would help our relationship. The thing she fails to realize is that I don't actually have that in common with anyone. Sure, I have incidental anecdotes of my Jewish upbringing, but that is hardly the basis for a serious relationship. I don't feel any real connection with other Jews, so I can't use that as the basis for anything.
On the other hand, I feel very strongly about my total lack of religion. And I know for a fact that there are others who feel as I do on that issue. I feel a deep kinship with such people, so doesn't it make more sense for me to seek out and marry a "nice atheist girl", one with whom I share a deep philosophical view on the world, rather than someone who happens to have been raised in a similar family to mine? I certainly think so.
I am tired of putting up with all the pressure to marry Jewish and have Jewish kids. I don't care if Judaism dies out from the world as a direct result of my actions. No one has ever convinced me that it deserves to be kept on life support. I plan to carve out a new grand identity for myself, and if my descendents decide that I was full of shit and make up their own identities, then my goal will have been accomplished. I don't require ancestors to provide my identity for me, nor do I wish to provide an identity for my descendents. Every person is and should be different.
So, anyone know any good single atheist bars?
Is it too recursive to have a conclusion to one's conclusion? Will the universe explode? I hope not, because I would hate to have written this whole thing for nothing.
I must thank you, dear reader, for getting this far. This journal has taken over my whole life, so what you've read is the outpouring of my soul. I hope that now that it's done, I can finally get some rest, not to mention concentrate on my mounting pile of schoolwork. And on that note, shalom!