The crazy thing is, I never wanted to be a “Jewish blogger,” or a political one for that matter. I have never been a single issue kind of girl, and I fear a “niche” as much as other, smarter, more marketing- savvy people often seek it.

I started writing that last blog post merely as a Facebook status. Blogging was not on my To Do list that day, as I had a copywriting deadline. But seeing as the history of the Jews is rather long, and maybe I was a little agitated once I wrote the first sentence, it became what it became. These are visceral times, where I guess passion, and only passion, is what makes its way into people’s consciousness.

And by the way: I am SO relieved that the written word still has power, even in the Age of Video. Every web-related conference I’ve been to in the last two years has indicated that I am rolling Paleolithic by not integrating video. (I prefer to see it as “classic”…) But anyway, I love words, and for at least this week, I’ve been vindicated.

I think the stunning, instant, viral response (views of the post are well into the 6 digits and my inbox is fuller than Carrie Bradshaw’s closet) has much less to do with the quality of the rant and more to do with global mood. It strikes me very plainly that political correctness on one hand, and a real sense of baseless shame among Westerners, especially Jews, on the other, has created a space where righteousness (He hit me first!!!), truth (…After she took my toy, spit, and called me an idiot!…), justice (…Now nobody gets a treat since you can’t get along), and kindness (…but maybe both of you want to sit with me and hug for a bit since it seems you need to remember you are siblings) are frequently confused with one another. Could the average reader (not you, of course) have easily defined the difference without the parentheses?

Of course, they are not the same at all, and the consequences of this conceptual tangle are potentially disastrous for a society. Unweaving these notions from each other and clarifying each on its own is a good project for writers, or for parents, since the political and (highly politicized) academic establishments seem to have largely forgotten how, and the mainstream media is the worst offender of all. Viva les Blogs!

Luckily, however, I learned this week how – despite all of the chasms news outlets attempts to dig, in order to fill the spaces between people with a story – humanity is essentially dying to connect. The success of the social web lies in the human need to hear and be heard, see and be seen, learn and teach…lurk and be stalked. (I wanted to see if you were still paying attention.) (Also, you know who you are.) Facebook, especially, floored me in its global reach, and in its contagion quotient.

That some of us feel that others of us are occupying too much space here or there; essentially wrong in everything we stand for; or absolutely fabulous and can do no wrong, is not as important as the fact that WE CARE TO TELL EACH OTHER ALL THESE THINGS. If nobody wanted to share – criticism, recipes, life stories, opinions, medical information, news as it happens, or details of our intimate lives – the internet would have shriveled up and died along with Ask Jeeves. (Yes. I am THAT old.)

At its core, the internet is an altruistic institution. People volunteer hours and days and years of their time posting things – like how to install memory in an HP mini or how to change a filter on a Mr. Coffee or play Sweet Child of Mine using tabs – without any agenda other than to help the next guy. Do not underestimate the power this gives us as a human race, and the wonderful thing it says about our species.

I am deeply encouraged by the fact that people today from the four corners of the earth can find each other online. I welcome all my new readers and virtual friends, and am thrilled to have you here. You are my birthday gift!! (Today!)

Just 15 years ago, most of us would never have met. I am hopeful that the open, empathic, and multi-cultural space inside our little screens provides us with the inspiration to reach out in real life, too.

Watch out for the non-connectors. They are the ones I am worried about.

1. (…Dammit, I missed the Thanksgiving post. What a bum. Time is not my friend….) Which brings me to this:
2. Do I want to grow old if I will not be sound of mind / functioning with dignity? After some difficult family stuff this month (and occasional mundane confrontations with my own apparent mortality…may not be a vampire after all…damn…), I’m not sure how I feel about letting only God say when I go, even though I hope I have at least half a century before I really have to think about this. (But by then, I may not be able to think…) How wrong is it to write: “If I revert to toddlerhood, please take me back even further” in your will? I know it’s not the religious thing to do. I’m just wondering about what the options are. (Way in advance, as usual.) Which brings me to two very old people who are the very opposite of helpless….
3. Shameless plug #1: Stay tuned to this space for my post on a conversation between this man and my grandma, two nonagenarians with a lot on their minds. When I read Estes’s letter to Obama, (forwarded in an email chain to me and a million other people), it struck me as something my grandmother would have written, and I got an idea… After a few minutes of Google snooping and an e-mail, I found the guys to whom Estes dictated the letter (he’s too old to write with his own hand) and asked them to set up a call with my grandmother. These are two WWII heroes (from the opposite ends of that dreadful war) who are devastated by an America they feel has let them down. I thought they should “meet” to commiserate…and they did…Which brings me to this:
4. This Time Magazine article about the Decade from Hell really got me in the mood for New Years, and toasting to better beginnings. I think back to where I was when we rang in the new millennium – where we all were – and I can’t believe it’s only been ten years. The world looks insanely different. Which brings me to Web 2.0.
5. Seriously, to rephrase the old Twitter question: What are we doing? Some days I am on the computer for 8 long hours, working…I think. Writing, consulting on the right turn of phrase, Facebooking for fun and profit, *networking*, developing new leads, blablablah. …And finally quit way after dark, wondering what exactly I did all day and why. (Sometimes I get paid.) Are we just busy fools in our cyberofficespace? Or are we going somewhere with this? Sometimes I really want to be a farmer planting 140 stalks of corn instead. Which brings me to Dorothy Gale.
6. I just finished reading a great and entertaining memoir by Lisa Fineberg Cook, a self-aware, spoiled, very smart and funny Jewish girl from LA who marries a world-traveling educator / adventurer and spends two years in Japan, completely out of her element. The better to introspect, my dear. The new bride ends up shedding many of her J.A.P.py notions, and learning a thing or two about how being a citizen of the world (and a wife) requires one to step into another’s shoes, regularly. (And that borrowing your best friend’s Manolos doesn’t count in this regard.) I will be writing an entire column on the book, and doing a Q+A with the author, sometime in the next month (Shameless plug #2), but what I want to say now is this: I once had the privilege to edit an excellent partial manuscript for someone whose journey took him in somewhat of the opposite direction…From a Zen, secular life in the US, to a bike tour through Europe and to Lebanon, to meet his wife’s Christian Arab family, and, ultimately, to Israel, where he ended up adopting religious Judaism. (As did she.) The writing was superb and the adventure completely unique, but he could not find a publisher anywhere. I ask anyone who will answer me: Will the Manhattan book establishment not even entertain the possibility that growth can also take one from the assimilated to the culturally particular? Is it a given that to be a “journey” it not only has to end in self-awareness and spiritual expansion, but in adopting something foreign? What if there’s no place like home? Would Dorothy Gale get published in 2009, having seen the other side of the rainbow, and choosing churchy Kansas because that’s where her heart was? Which brings me to Hanukah:
7. Would I have been a Maccabee or a Hellenist? I ask this quite sincerely since I’m pretty sure Mattathias Cohen and Sons were more Judean Hilltop and less Tel Aviv Café…not even suburban Modern Orthodox. While we live (and my kids learn) in an Orthodox environment, Jewish-centered and centric, I can not claim to have taken secular culture out of our house – pretty much the opposite is true. Is it only living in Israel that allows us the luxury of consuming Hollywood and being broadly cultural, and not worrying for a minute about our identity or continuity? I’m thinking probably…yes… in the US I might have been a bit more of a protective / defensive Frumom. (Reason #687 for Aliyah!) I’m also thinking that the Hasmonean Dynasty in the Second Commonwealth didn’t do so well at the end of the day, once they grew cozier with Rome…but that I’m not canceling cable. Which brings me to:
8. Happy Hanukah… (That is the holiday message between programming on my cable channels. Just saying. )