[NewJew Net]
what I refer to as the New Jew is
by no means limited to Judaism. It is a global spiritual revolution bigger
than anything humanity has witnessed for 2000 years. We are coming to a
crossroad in human spiritual evolution. If this spiritual revolution does
not spread to every corner of the globe, we will surely destroy ourselves
and our environment completely. And for the first time in our history,
we have the technology to do this. Another modern thinker with a very different
background, Karl Marx, writes that technological revolution prompts social
revolution. Spirituality comes from people. It is significant that the
digital revolution which is now upon will be accompanied by a spiritual
revolution as well. God is Great.
It was while living in Jerusalem,
the city of vision quests, where I was inspired by the life and vitality
of the Israeli people. This was a stark contrast to the deadness I had
witnessed in among the intellectuals, doctors, and lawyers of New York.
In fact, my whole life was spent among Old Jews. I went to a yeshiva in
Milwaukee, WI, whose goal was to discourage college and emulate an obscure
19th century Polish Yeshiva known as Slobadka. I dropped out and became
Son of Waves while living in the land of The Ethiopian Woman, discovered
Dolphin, Double Mirrors, and the spirit of the New Jew. For now, I wont
elaborate about the path I have taken. Not that a personal search for truth
and the lessons learned aren't significant, but all this is elaborated
in my 456 page book, cd rom, and web site. For now, I will focus on what
I perceive as the universal truths these life experiences made me realize.
Nowhere is the spiritual evolution
more apparent to me than in the transition in Judaism from Old to New Jew.
I could talk about the theoretical role of Double Mirrors in groups all
day, but what better way to give my words meaning than by talking about
an actual society which, by means of 4,000 years of human experience has
become a macrocosm of every idea I am speaking of. What better way of understanding
humanity than to first examine the people that represent the overdose of
humanity (i.e.. self reflection)- the Jews.
Universal New Jews
I admit that I might be an idealist.
It is possible that the New Jew no longer exists en-mass in Israel. Certainly
recent events such as the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin wounded
this collective spirit. Perhaps the New Jew only existed for one moment,
in the country's history. But a moment like this never dies. The lesson
that can be learnt by spiritual revolutions like the one in Israel is universal.
New Jews are Buddhist, Catholic, and Ethiopian too. Ultimately, man's perception
of God is a problem greater than any religion. Old and New "Jews"
can also be found hiding in Christianity, Islam, and every other religion.
Moses, Mohammed, Jesus and countless other prophets might have been legitimate
visionaries, but the need of the masses for a Yoda figure- an old wise
man thought to possess the meaning of life- led to so much focus on the
messenger that the message was lost. When all the rhetoric and dead dogma
is put aside, man's vision of the infinite- God/love/truth- exists independent
of organized religion, and is in fact rooted in the inherent double mirrors
of our individual minds. Regardless of how each of us chooses to conduct
and express our spiritual search, its ultimately goal is universal, as
we are all equally trapped in our physical bodies even as we peer out at
a vision of infinity and the spirituality. The debate over how to deal
with this paradox is as old as our oldest historical documents, and will
persist so long as we maintain our elusive vision. (Meanwhile, the chimpanzees
will continue to happily chew their peanuts without being plagued with
such troubles.) We must look past the shadows and follow the example set
by New Jews all over the globe: by creating harmony in our souls, as well
as all around us; by sacrificing for the community: and by becoming one
with not only the world around us and with nature, but with ourselves.
In short, we will escape the cave by revolving our lives around love. If
anyone could become immortal it would be he. . . .
The question "what is Love"
is no different than the question of what is God, Truth or any other word
describing a metaphysical sense of harmony. But the answer lies in our
very need to ask this question in the first place. It is our internal self
dialogue- the self reflection- of the individual that is making this question
a never ending process. As we ponder our existence, and ultimately come
to know ourselves, we serve God. We are his most dependable partners in
conversation, perpetuating a dialogue with Him that only stops when we
forget how to love. While the path will be different for each individual,
and relative to our unique mirror alignments and perceptions, the destination
is absolute. Love is the same experience for us all. It is this infinite
experience that unites us.
I am hopeful that my multimedia project
will provide an experience more powerful than these written words. Ultimately,
however, knowledge comes only from personal experience, and my project
is being created with the assumption that sharing my experiences and my
art with others will allow them to conclude the same truths I have. This
will accomplish far more than the mere intellectualization of this essay.
With God's help I will expose the lies I have seen and add harmony to the
world. (I went to Yeshiva in Milwaukee with 7 crazy Rabbis, dropped out,
graduated from Columbia, home of the Manhattan Project, etc. . . its all
in my book) The light of truth is destined, I believe, to destroy the lies
of the dark side. I will end for now with another quote from Bruce Lee,
which I include to stress that Double Mirrors is just words, and like my
image of Dolphins suggests, truth is ultimately found in the experience
of the individual.
The irony of speaking of the New
Jew in the language of the Old Jew, an intellectual essay, is extreme.
So I'll escape for a moment into a personal experience I have written about
in my journal:
There is a tradition in Judaism that the Jews will be
the light onto the nations. This has come true on a very backward way.
We have ultimately proven to the world the failure of organized religion.
The spirituality of the New Jew comes from a closeness with nature, and
the altruism that comes from placing the group's identity as more important
than the individual's. Sacrifice for the community. It is a relationship
where the interests of the self and the other are synonymous. A collective
memory of suffering and holocaust has caused mass mirror's to align harmoniously
and form a massive source for spirituality. An Israeli soldier during the
Yom Kippur War threw himself on top of a strip of barbed wire blocking
his units advance, and let the rest of the unit run over his back, I read
years ago. This story inspired me- pure altruism, I said, and decided to
move to Israel when I was older. When I was volunteering for the army in
Israel, I was talking to a guy in my tent. He said his father was in the
Yom Kippur War. I asked him what unit. "Golani," he said. I had
done a lot of reading on the war and knew where each division was fighting
(the Old Jew reads about the war while the New Jew fights it) "So
he must have fought for Mt. Hermon," I said. The guy was surprised
that I knew this and went on to tell me his father was in one of the elite
units. One story his father had told him is that he had thrown himself
over barbed wire and let the rest of the unit run over his back. I got
those manic chills. This guy's father was the war hero I had heard about
years ago. I was sure this was God telling me I was home.
©copyright, Dylan Tauber
1995-2023.
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