Tomorrow I go back to New York for the first time since I moved out here to San Francisco last year.

I am really excited, a bit stressed out about how many things I want to cram into 3 and a half days, and also more than a little nervous about seeing my old love again. What if I don't want to get back on the plane?

I'm not wholly settled here. Maybe I'm not letting myself feel settled. Or maybe I just am not really settled. How can you know the difference?

doug rushkoff's article on the op ed page of the times the other day, judging judaism by the numbers, is causing a wonderful stir.

he writes about the jewish navel gazing obsession with the numbers. are they shrinking? why? intermarriage? nonaffiliation? he feels that this is the wrong thing for us to focusing our collective mind on. judaism, in his view, is based on the radical notion that the world can be improved, and that it is our job to make it so.

the more time i spend in san francisco, the more i'm sure he's right. my executive director ken offered this (overheard at the GA last week):

--------------------------------
One response I heard suggested that there were two kinds of Jews in the world: Holocaust Jews and Exodus Jews.

Holocaust Jews, the person explained, are completely focused on external threats to existence and in turn, circle the wagons to defend, fight back, resist. They are very concerned about the "numbers."

Exodus Jews are focused on our master story of redemption from slavery and the eternal covenent each one of us makes to fight oppression in all forms to all people. They are very focused on tikkun olam, where "olam" is the whole world.

For some reason, there seems to be more of the former in the East and more of the latter in the West.

I'm glad to be in the West.
--------------------------------

isn't that great? it's true. i won't slag on east coasters at all, being an expat (an an unstable one at that!) but i do feel that things have shifted for me, jewishly, since i moved out here. i spend WAY less time in shul praying, and WAY more time volunteering and being political. it's just in the air out here, people are more focused on "doing" judaism. when i go to services, they're hollering at me to sign up for a volunteer project rather than for me to come to this service or that oneg.

aaron made a comment to me a few weeks ago that i'm not spiritual. he says that when i returned to judaism with a vengeance in my early 20s, that it wasn't about spirituality, or religion, but about community. i wasn't sure what he meant at that particular moment, especially since it required a long and theologically complicated discussion of spirits, shamanism, jehovah, etc. but it has been taking root in my mind and it fits in nicely with my sharpening concept of my own judaism, which is increasingly about outwardly directed action.

shabbat shalom, ya'll

okay, this is funny. i just put this thing up this morning and already a friend of mine has seen it and written me. thanks mike! i feel badly that i didn't have anything more posted. so now i have the urge to ramble on for everyone else's benefit.

well this *is* a funny medium. it kind of takes the whole "diary of anne frank" syndrome that i've done plenty of writing about in my journal and makes it real.

what's that? it's the feeling, when you're journaling, that people will be reading your journals after you're dead, so you'd better make them interesting, and well written. and you'd better provide background materials. so stupid. i was self conscious like this even as a kid, writing things like "i had lunch with staci (my best friend) today" - as if i was going to somehow not know who staci was later.

when you're writing for the internet like this, maybe the thinking goes in reverse. maybe my writing will get riddled with paranoid fantasies about who might be reading this and what they'll think. if i write about my job, do i have to worry that people in the office will see it? if i talk about art project ideas, should i worry that people will steal them? and of course, most importantly, if i write about sex enough, will my ex be sorry he let me get away?

yes. probably not. almost definitely not, but we all hope you do it anyway. ;-)

i'm quite conscious, at this moment, that most blogs in the world start off with an entry that looks just like this one. maybe i should start over.

mwa ha ha. i think this is going to be an endless pit of self conscious garbage.

are blogs a cry for help? Ah, another great article.

i decided just now to start a blog, because i'm irritated and wanted to write about it somewhere. i don't keep track of my journal very well because it's so tedious writing anything in longhand, and i don't usually want to turn on my computer by the time i get home. i'm hoping that this will be a way to keep myself writing.

so here's what's irritating me: it seems that i need to do more than just dump a guy these days - i need to dump his mailing list. this morning i got TWO mass distribution emails from exes. as i think about it, i realize that i am on distribution lists for at least 4 ex boyfriends, and that i'm doomed to stay in touch forever with their comings and goings, gigs and vacation plans.

there's probably a deliciously snarky "tech and the city" column in here but i haven't the patience to write it or the persistence to pitch it. that's going to be the theme of this blog - great ideas that i have for articles that i'm too lazy to write and too disenfranchised to get published.