Realism and Sacredness

January 12, 1900. A 19-year-old Yosef Haim Brenner, freshly disillusioned with religion and with a Yeshiva boy career--and two years before his first novel, In Winter, will launch his meteoric literary career, writes to his soulmate and friend, Uri Nissan Gnessin:

We must sacrifice our soul and decrease the evil in the world, evil of hunger, slavery, dismissal, hypocrisy, and the like. It is essential to understand everything, understand and distance ourselves from mysticism and mirages. It is essential to increase the realism and sacredness in the world. It is essential to mend the Israeli People's life to make it normal. And the terrible agony of my soul is the outcome of my doubts in general: Is there a remedy? Are we going forward?
...
A few days ago I became a plant eater (vegetarian.)

You are writing a historical poem - and that I do not understand. Can we afford to distract ourselves, even for a moment, from the present? Do you know the situation of our youth? Do you realize that we are the last Mohicans? Do you know that our nation id dying? Do you know that the world is sick? Do you know that desperation consumes souls? Do you have eyes?! 

Uri-Nissan!!!

It's been almost nine years since I started blogging at California Correctional Crisis, and in some other places, and I find that my more general opinion pieces need a more inclusive repository. I'm not yet sure whether I'll place the two under the same cyber-roof or continue them as separate ventures. There is plenty of chatter online on every possible subject, and I would not add yet another venue to burden attentions and communications had I found enough material out there that already voices perspectives and ideas that I find valuable.

Taking my cue from Brenner, I seek to illuminate the lights of shadows of life as I see them, without embellishment or false pride. It is impossible not to comment on the decline and peril we experience in both the United States and Israel: the rise of racism and hatred, egoism and consumerism, unvarnished violence and cruelty, and the disappearance of complexity and nuance under a barrage of similar-looking passages.

This is likely the most personal blog I've ever written, and it takes a certain amount of humility, and understanding that I am only one manifestation of life to put these opinions out there. There is no "other."

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