The Jew Spot

Bible Raps' Matt Bar Writes in:

In America we have one outlaw: the Aristocrat. And much has been gained by the dissolution of this class. Class it no longer something you are born into, lock in step, stock and trade. Rather, in America, class is that which is to be revealed; always a potential. And we strive to see each man clothed not in his family crest but rather in the garbs of his spirit's potential. In doing so, we judge our fellow man as closely to his eternal soul, as opposed to the vicissitudes of circumstance, as is mortally possible.

Is this not the great Moral gift that America offers the world: The liberality and institutional framework to revere all men by their spirit's eternal potential and not to condemn him by the poison of his circumstance. Is this not the light with a thousand points that Reagan pointed us to? Is it not the gift of an elastic future that we attest to, when we say with Obama, “Yes We Can!”
Indeed, much was gained when America was born in her Revolution against the Aristocrats and their King. In turn, however, it must be asked, what was lost? Such a question was necessarily out of character for the burgeoning America as they were the crude surgeons of rebellion and therefore could not afford to be sensitive to the healthy human flesh mixed with the rotted arteries and diseased organs dripping like ink, the color of blood, from their bayonet-scalpels. Would you have the serenity, enjoyed by merit of righteous cause, cringe? On Revolution's battlefield, there is no victory without peace of mind.

And so America aged into adolescence and reflexively abandoned slavery. Not because “freedom” is the Philosopher's “natural right,” but rather, because the spirit that guided our revolution flexed its muscle again, tearing its antiquated, barbaric garb to shreds. It's always been the case: the best of nations strive to see their spirits naked. From the Civil Rights era to today, piece by piece, we clothe ourselves in the wardrobe of our sacred Constitution with its angel wings and boxing gloves. Until the concept of 'Aristocrat' is gutted and 'slave, serf,' 'peasant,' 'minor' lose all meaning without their aristocratic juxtaposition. At long last, 'Aristocrat' will be but a vocabulary word to be studied in our European History books and the word 'minor' will be but a shred of statistical data.

And so the Liberals, being Americans to the core, empty the dichotomoy of minor vs. noble while the Conservatives clamor to protect the integrity of that very core by upholding some essential American character to be nourished and fenced. They patriotically defend the backbone of our revolution, while, paradoxically, eliciting our nation's instinctual paranoia struck by the identification of an elite class. This is the tension of American Liberal Democracy. Like the tension at an awkward dinner party.

“Good evening,” the Conservative Nephew of the Aristocrat says over cheeseburgers and fries.
“I have the authority to say 'this is how to be American,'” (Indeed, the aristocrats duty to his people was to guide its character, its customs, its ethics, its values, its underpinnings and pinings).

The Liberal Sociopath retorts, “But allowing any and all characters to be, unadulerated, so long as they don't harm others, is what America is.”

And so the dinner squable of American social politics commences on Fox, MSNBC, Eminem albums, Rush Limbaugh, blogs, tweets, coffee shops, barber shops, street corners and Universities. That is the way I see it. I believe most political theorists and practicioners have good intentions. The arena of politics makes strange animals and often ugly beasts of intentions. In light of this juvenile analysis of American politics I have the good fortune to not have to engage in such rankled discourse with my Jewish community. This is not our nation's paradox.
Judaism bypasses this tension by organically and formally institutionalizing an aristocratic class: and they are the educators. Is not our family crest after all the Torah which translates into 'Instruction'? And do not those who instruct carry its image on their sleeve? And is there still not a certain honor and distinction, a nod of our hat and bow of our head, to the educator when crossing her path, whether or not she acknowledges us?

Now I say this not to self-aggrandize. For I am not a Jewish educator. Shedding all modesty, all I could still say is, “Not yet, at least.” I am an American poet with a Jewish soul. My forefathers are Bob Dylan, Shel Silverstein and Nas. And through them I have absorbed their heroes, Woody Guthrie, Walt Whitman, Malcom X. To put it bluntly, yet nebulously, my American words are attracted to the Jewish tradition as it fills them with my soul. The little I know of educating is a mimicking, an aping of how my father once taught me how to play sports while growing up in Iowa City, Iowa.

And from Iowa City I went on a Birthright trip where friendships made took me to the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York where didactic and deconstructive syllabi ricocheted me to the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerasulem. With Pardes's Torah and the Presentense Institute's guidance The Bible Rapper was reared.

As an immature and cocky visionary, as all young visionaries are, I fancied Jewish Education in America as bereft of spirit; a game of shells with pea-sized victories. But as I toured and traveled from Hebrew School to Day School, college to camp, conference to University, I discovered, to my esteem's suprise: The American Jewish Educator. From the coast of California at camp Ramah Ojai where a lecture of 'Radical Amazement' was given upon mountains with flowers that bloomed like invitations, beneath a healthy sun reminscent of Jerusalem. To the Midwest where the 'wind hits heavy on the borderline' and one Bobby Zimmerman's name was etched on a bedpost at Herzl Camp in Wisconsin's north country. To Limmud Southwest, where confederate Jews taught the slave songs of Israelites in Egypt and sang them to Georgia's uninhibited stars. To the well-mannered society of Bostonian Jews at Lexington, Day School where preparation is on point and the decimal is a decibel for the spirit. Indeed, the Jewish spirit, I discovered, is in good hands. Powerful hands. Caring hands. Their task is most difficult, and from a Jewish perspective, most crucial, and thank Hashem we have these educators: our aristocrats.

Awards, grants and Donations for excellence in Jewish education are our community's contemporary form of sacrifice, of time and resources, the most precious, and therefore, the only worthy sacrifice to Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. In doing so, the Jewish community reveres and elevates the class of “Jewish educator,” from Torah-instructor, to keepers of how to be. Complete with an ethics, an ethos, a tradition, a history, a theology, a book: Torah.