Greetings. I've thought at length about your site and the dialogues with me and others. I'd like to note that people express only a small portion, if any, of what they think; if someone disagrees with you on fundamental points, it doesn't necessarily mean that they don't consider your perspective, along with other conflicting thoughts and perspectives, in depth (along with their own complex thoughts on the issues at hand). One of my favorite quotes is from Emerson: "He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate."

I'm happy to see you like Emerson. I like him very much. (Thoreau is very good too, and it was immigrant Zionist monster-millionaire Morton Zuckerman who sought to "develop"/trash the Walden Pond area a few years ago).

Unfortunately, in the absolutist dialectical scheme that many Jewish scholars and commentators choose to frame their (Jewish) world, Emerson falls on the side of the "anti-Semite," as do so many of the Western intellectual (and moral) tradition.

Emerson, for example, once wrote this:

"The sufferance which is the badge of the Jews has made him, in these days, the ruler of the rulers of the earth."

[Emerson, Ralph Waldo. The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The Conduct of Life. Fate. Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Boston, and NY, 1888, p. 39]

Now, there you have it: according to the Anti-Defamation League, Emerson championed one of the foremost "anti-Semitic" canards, that Jews "rule the world." (Even back in the mid-1800s!)

Jewish scholar Robert Michael frames Emerson's view about Jews like this:

"[Emerson] saw Judaism, the Jewish idea, as a stumbling block to authentic human liberation. The Jewish God was cruel; the Jewish Law stifling. What was bad about Christianity was its Jewish substance. At the less ideological level, his work is also peppered with anti-Jewish sentiments ... In his journal entry for 3 July 1839, he wrote: 'In the Allston Gallery the Polish Jews are an offense to me; they degrade and animalize.'"

So, alas, such Emerson statements are -- to Jewish convention -- the quintessential statements of an irrational "anti-Semite." It doesn't matter to Jewish insult if there was any truth in what Emerson wrote, really. And, for most Jews, the fact that he is evidenced as an "anti-Semite" taints everything else he had to say.

Emerson also once wrote this: " Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members ... The base doctrine of the majority of voices usurps the place of the doctrine of the soul."

The now antiquated use of "manhood" as reference to humanity aside, this quote has always interested me. It's about individualism, the way that oppressive social convention robs the individual's personal soul quest. Don't you think? Implicitly, it actually has a lot to do with countering classical Judeocentric ethics too. Jewish identity tends to speak from its clan/tribal perspective: the Jewish pack. Emerson echoes the traditional American "rugged individual" ethic, in acute contradistinction to the Jewish communal bond -- the pillar of Jewish identity. The Emersonian individual seeks truth entirely on his/her own. He follows any trail that might nurture him. The traditional Jewish individual seeks truth in his/her dutiful allegiance to historical kinship ties towards preservation of tribal progeny.

Anyone is free to escape the mental bounds of whatever culture and circumstance they were born into - to reconsider all knowledge and questions anew, hopefully from the starting points of reason and compassion.

Well said. And true, I think. I will believe it has applicability to the Jewish community when racist Israel is allowed by world Jewry to sink like a stone into the shameful cesspool of history.

At some point I may find the time and energy to respond outright in greater depth than I have. Since I won't stay awake until midnight, I rang in the new year by phone with a German friend for whom it's 6 hours later. I also rang in the new year with a moving essay by the poet Naomi Shihab Nye, which I will share: http://www.organicanews.com/news/article.cfm?story_id=235
If it seems to have no relevance to the issues, eh well. In my mind it does, and it's a nice essay, regardless. All the best to you and yours. Jody

Of course this article has "relevance to the issues." It's about "strangers" and the potential adventure and contribution of them.

From the positive side, it poses the question of what you and I, for instance, stand to learn from each other, if anything. I too have rose stories, as I suspect you do. I can conjure up favorite words and delight in the ambiguous sound of them. As you might. And I can spin in circles in a Sufi trance with no aim towards anything materially discernible as, perhaps, you may.

From the negative side, when I think of the word "stranger" in the Jewish context, I think of the Torah directive that decrees it permissible to charge interest upon "strangers" (non-Jews) but not upon "brothers" (Jews). [Deuteronomy, 23:20]

My advice to you in this context, I think, if I may be so bold as to give it, is to become yourself a "stranger" amidst strangers. Liberate yourself. Leave your Jewish identity, that ethnocentric anchor -- whatever it is, in the closet with old clothes you have outgrown.

And, when a fellow stranger asks (by, say, your physical features) if you're "Jewish," you can reply that no, you don't think so. That has blown away like a shedded skin in the process of walking down the open road, looking for fellow strangers. You will then be (if I may pull out your origin of this little exchange) truly the "freeman of the whole estate."

Happy new year.