FOLLOWING THE RULES

Let's Have a Party

It was a small apartment, the dining area just big enough for a round table for four. I could reach the counter in the adjoining kitchen and drink the glass of milk that sat there, careful not to spill any or put the glass down on the table. I was a senior in high school in the 1950’s and having dinner with my friend and her parents. In their kosher Jewish home meat and dairy couldn’t share the same space. We Catholics had our own rules, like eating fish on Fridays.

Religion was a mixed bag in those post-war years in New York City as was ethnicity. I was curious about the different rituals and knew that your religion pretty much determined your tribe though there were a fair number of crossovers. Religion trumped nationality though they were usually in tandem. I mostly remember parties: Polish and Italian weddings, Jewish bar mitzvas, Baptist baptisms, Irish dances. Was there racism and discrimination? Probably, but it seemed at the time that everyone had their own stuff, and it wasn’t a big deal. The city was busy growing and people moved: uptown, cross town, new bridges, highways, high rises, suburbs, cross country.

I am trying to find the words for the pain and carnage this time has brought. To keep watching what is happening in the place they call the Holy Land and at the same time remembering the diversity of life in New York and trying to put them together. Did the world not learn its lesson then? The Hamas attack, hostages, bombs, people killed, babies dying. I will not add more words to the hell on earth they have made. And they talk about the rules of war. Adding to the list of reasons they hate each other.

One theory suggests that Jews were more economically successful than other groups because during the Middle Ages they couldn’t own land. This superior status set them up for jealousy and hate that has persisted except it wasn’t true. In the early centuries, most everybody were farmers. At some point a few rabbis decided that it was critical for Jews to be able to read the Torah (probably to keep themselves in business) and made education mandatory even for farmers’ children. Most of the farmers didn’t see any good reason to lose their cheap labor, said “no way” and quit being Jews, probably became Christian, close enough at the time. The Jewish population went from 4.5 million to 1.5 million over those first centuries. But they got an education and chose commerce over farming. No mystery.  Self-interest is a powerful force.

I was religious in spurts, a baby baptized Protestant, then an elementary school Catholic. In public high school I began a long slide to agnosticism, with a short stop at process theology, finally arriving at my current godless atheism and Unitarian Universalism which lets me change what I believe without changing my tribe. No rules, just principles to live by, though we are not always without controversy. That would be a miracle and I don’t believe in them either. I think there are just things we haven’t yet discovered.

We need some mechanism to sort ourselves out, find our tribes so we have groups to play with and work with for reasons that do not include hating the next tribe over or coveting their land. We could get by with a lot fewer rules especially the rules of war. Do these politicians and generals know how inane they sound saying that? Are their gods all gods of war? How do we change to the rules of kindness? Of making sure everyone has enough to eat and is sheltered from the storms. Then we would truly have a Holy Land. And the only rule of war would be not today thanks. I have a party to go to.