Morning and getting ready to work...

Yesterday I simply could not stay awake past about 8 PM.  Which is ridiculous.  On the other hand, I was up around 5:30 this morning and feeling quite nicely ready to go.  It's cooler and quieter in the mornings. This is the third morning I've gone jogging and the second time I've done a loop that I think will be my routine.  It's this (and you can follow along on Google-maps--and even get reasonable pictures): Begin just north of the train station on David Remez and head north til Netiv Hativat Hagolani, head west to the sea, then south along HaHaganah to Napoleon Bonaparte, then turn east.  That's a walking path that skirt the old city, so there's a Crusader wall along the right and a moat/arroyo beside it.  The fact that there are tennis and basketball courts in the moat/arroyo is simply delicious.  Continue until it ends on Weizman, then jog left and continue east on David Pinkas to Yehosafat.  Go north to Hertsel and turn right until it ends at David Remez...The loop 4.4 km or 2.7 miles, not too bad.

Still working on submitting proposals for the book.  I'm getting closer: letters are personalized; proposal is done (and Claude deemed it "excellent," which is high praise indeed!). Today I need to shorten it for the publishers who want shorter versions and get the introductory chapter together.  Then into the mail! Only four days longer than I wanted (which speaks to my lack of real understanding of how long things take).

Been thinking a good deal more about the Women of the Wall, largely as it relates to pluralism.  I've been trying to understand enough about Israel to explain American pluralism, which I'm going to have to do in a few weeks.  So...a couple of things in no particular order.  First, to Israelis (and much of the world), being Jewish is a matter of ethnicity.  In America, not so much.  So I find myself explaining to Americans that it's not just/only/exactly a religion and Americans are bemused.  The reality that I fundamentally view it as a religion, though.  So here, where it really is a nation and people, I miss that religious dimension, which has been ceded to the Orthodox.  One Israeli commented on Facebook that Israel is where you can be 100% Jewish.  By which he meant nationally/ethnically Jewish.  But while the national dimension--history, language, culture, place--all matters, Judaism is ALSO a religion.  And when I can't practice it, I am less Jewish and less of a Jew.  And I can't practice it in Israel--not really.  I can wear a tallit and kippah; I can read Torah, but only if I go to a place set aside for Americans--who are just odd.  The idea that being in Israel makes me less Jewish is simply not comprehended here.  And the idea that this is the only place to be 100% Jewish is very much what I would call a Masada mentality.  I just made that up, but here's what I mean.  Masada is the place that radical Jews took their stand against the Romans.  They ended up committing mass suicide rather than surrendering.  Not a good message, if you ask me.  But in modern times, Masada has been held up as the place where Jews fought, as opposed to the Holocaust, where they went "passively to the slaughter."  In my view, dead is dead.  What you want to pay attention to is who survived and why.  And who survived were the rabbis who created rabbinic Judaism and spread into different lands.  There are disadvantages to being a minority--lots of them--but there are also advantages.  One of which is the old "don't put all your eggs in one basket" philosophy. Israel is a very fragile basket.  Another is that in different places, you get different perspectives on Judaism (or whatever--the general point isn't limited to Jews/Judaism, of course).  So, to switch analogies, you get a rich weave of culture and diversity.  Not a bad thing, I'd say. So how to communicate that to Israelis?  I have no clue...