'You're going to Brighton?!' The question was often posed as if I was leaving for Siberia. Alternatively: 'That's so brave of you!' or 'Are you ok for food?' as if we had been stranded on a desert island with an occasional ferry sailing past for essential supplies.
Well surprisingly, the distance between Hove and Kosher Kingdom has proved to be less painful than many had expected. And it has helped me observe several things about community life.
About 18 months ago I wrote a blog about why I loved living Manchester and how community life was much more to do with friendliness than outlook but I would like to add another element to that: Need. In small communities everyone is needed so everyone is important. Not for their intelligence or for a function they perform but simply for existing. Everyone is therefore invested in the project of community building and it becomes part of their own personal identity. I could be wrong but I also think this mutual dependence helps people become nicer to each other.
In Brighton, for instance, if one of the regulars doesn't turn up on Mondays and Thursdays we don't get a Minyan. In Hendon if you don't turn up for a year of Mondays and Thursdays it's unlikely that anyone would notice. Maybe it's the difference between living in a big city and not but I find that the idea of community matters much more to me in Brighton than it did in London. In addition, the small University J-Soc is not simply a means for Jews to pretend they can take their drink, it becomes an important part of community life.
Jews like to live in big cities. Bigger is usually seen to be better. 'London? There's a big community there no? A good community.' 'New York? It's practically Jewish!' But cities also tend to be loud, impatient and very expensive. Jerusalem is paradise right? Well, not if you don't like lots of traffic and noise. As subversive as that sounds.
There are actually many advantages of leaving the big city; for one, it allows you to slow down a bit. See nature, and yes, even get in touch with God a bit more - it is much harder to pay Him any mind in the concrete jungle. For another, comfort zones can be very stagnant. Humans like to be creative and strive for an impact in this world.
Instead of fretting over the prospect of living in a place where pre-checked lettuce isn't readily available, perhaps leaving our comfort zones helps us invest much more strongly in our values and identity and develop in new, unforseen ways? In fact, I would recommend travel as a healthy alternative to intensive Kiruv seminars as a means of reconnecting with your identity (bring books with as well). And by travel I don't mean going to Thailand on drunken holidays.
Whilst conventional wisdom sympathised with the Hendon boy forced to leave his mama behind for his wife's degree in Sussex, I was excited about the prospect of leaving North West London. It was a bit like a call to action and a guarantee that I would be valued regardless of what I did or accomplished.
And one last thing: 'Aren't there only old people there?' Yes, but they usually have much more to teach you about life than young people. So come along to the south coast, you might just be pleasantly surprised!
For an Arsenal fan, it's been the same for the last 12 years. The expectation, the anticipation, the inevitable disappointment. The one player left standing alone on the pitch who has carried our hopes for the season, frustrated and helpless. The same advice is thrown about every year: Buy, spend more, build a squad. After a few weeks the hype dies and no-one of significance is added. Back to the youtube videos of Bergkamp and Henry, remembering the good old days at the turn of the century. We never seem to learn.
Maybe we just can't learn from the past? But I refuse to accept this position. The reason I believe we can is that our collective knowledge is not incremental. Whilst in science and medicine, change has been consistently improving (even if for sometimes random reasons), it is mistaken to think this applies to the rest of life. Are we happier, more fulfilled and better people than those who lived 500, 1000 years ago? It doesn't seem so. Not that things are necessarily worse now, that would be equally misleading to suggest, but that it seems that each era has its thing, its area of strength that gets forgotten by subsequent generations.
I often think that when I go into a library. It hits you - there are thousands and thousands of books here, how many have people actually read? How much of their knowledge and insight is lost forever? Has internet access made us wiser or simply lazier?
In studying rabbis who lived around the time of what is known as the 'Renaissance' period, I have encountered the idea of using history and find it fascinating to apply to our own society. Renaissance literature, architecture and paintings were geared around a vision for the betterment of the world based on learning from the knowledge of the ancients, a general optimism about the role of man in the world and his ability to spread values that would improve society. Knowledge wasn't simply for the elites in the academy, it served a broader purpose. One theory went, that by looking and living around things of beauty which promoted good values and ideals, society would become a more peaceful, moral and harmonious place. Paintings of classic Christian figures stopped looking austere and frightening and started looking human and compassionate.
Buildings in Italian cities are brilliantly symmetrical, with arches and courtyards, with many 16th century books written on how architecture should be designed to enable, for example, a mother to shout out a window to her child playing outside so he could hear.
This is just one important lesson we can find in historical annals, the power of both the visual and emotional stimuli to envision a better society. So as an Arsenal fan I look back to Dennis Bergkamp, Robert Pires and the gang and remember the days when beauty and success went hand in hand.
The Jewish world has been enormously affected by the Enlightenment and the triumph of Science and reason in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Even today, many discussions are framed in terms of the rational as opposed to the irrational in religion. But it hasn't really developed a renaissance-like mindset in the same way - there was not a movement comparable to the one in the Christian world (not an unconstested view). It was clearly more difficult when we were a minority with little financial independence but it would be an interesting question as to whether some of the more romantic and idealistic conceptions of the past using visual media could be appropriated by Jewish leaders in their visions of building a more harmonious Jewish society.
