Some random reflections on Yossi Klein Halevi's book, At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden.
Overall, it's great.
Yossi writes in the Intro: "I wanted to test whether faith could be a means of healing rather than intensifying the conflicts in this land?"
How banal is that? Of course faith, like anything else, can be a source of healing or conflict.
"Though raised in an Orthodox Jewish home, I abandoned ritual as a teenager, having been shocked out of religious complacency by biblical criticism."
Yet Yossi never mentions Biblical criticism in his first book.
"My eventual decision to return to Jewish observance wasn't inspired by any sudden realization that Judaism was the "true" faith after all, Judaism simply was my language of intimacy with God."
That is not an acceptable approach with Orthodox Judaism. Nobody could convert to OJ through a normative Beit Din with such an approach. It is not an approach that will keep the Jewish people alive. Jews won't stay Jewish simply because Judaism is their "language of intimacy with God."
I love it when all these people who not normative to their faith start writing books on their ecumenical journeys, such as that "Muslim" lesbian who wrote a book on what's wrong with Islam, yet she cannot read the language of the religion, Arabic.
"So when I began my journey into Christian and Muslim communities, I inevitably turned to their mystics, for whom montheism isn't a theology but an experience of oneness."
This is why I'm skeptical of mysticism in general. It withdraws one from this world. Its practicioners are primarily concerned with their own feelings and spiritual highs and salvation, rather than God's demands for their actions to benefit a wider world. Mysticism is an essentially solitary, self-centered and solipsistic pursuit. Unless it is married to a demanding code of behavior, it is never going to make things better in this world.
Yossi consistently misuses the word "disinterest" in the book. It truly means unbiased. He uses it to mean uninterested.
On page 205, Yossi tells a nun: "Can you imagine the reaction when my friends and relatives in the Orthodox community find out I've been going to monasteries?
"Gabriel, I need to learn from your courage."
Give me a break. Yossi spent almost a decade with the JDL. He described it in detail in his memoir. He describes many things he did that the Orthodox community would find heinous. He glorifies in his uniqueness and never misses an opportunity to write about how he's different. So what's another aberrant behavior?
Yossi davens with his tefillin in a church.
The last sentences of the book: "I am suddenly aware of the muezzin, summoning me from the next hill. I get on my knees, press my forehead to the floor, immobile with surrender."
