This year I’ve been thinking about being Jewish during Christmas time more than the last few years, so I thought I would share a bit.

It’s something that is impossible not to think about, but I try to ignore it mostly. It isn’t extraordinarily pleasant, and not something I like to dwell on, anyway.

I would call myself completely atheist, but in a Northwestern United States New-Chaos-Animism sort of way, or at the very least, not the sort of atheist who feels the need to paint his lack of belief on the side of buses. Except of course, in the marxist-anarchist “no gods no masters” sort of way, which is a statement that makes me smile, except that I’m still not painting it on the side of anything.

All of which is to say, I’m not Jewish in the sense of my religion, so I wouldn’t like to step into the role of speaking “as a Jew”–whatever that means. At the same time, I am decidedly Jewish in the sense of culture, because the complicated atheist/anamist/anarchist syncretism I practice in every day life does have a certain historical precedent.

The joke I use to explain what this means, told by one of my grad school professors in NYC, who was also a practicing psychoanalyst (and this context matters, of course), goes like this.

A secular Jewish couple on the Upper West Side decides to send their son to a Catholic school, because it is the best school that is close to where they live. So the son goes to school, comes home, and the father asks him, “what did you learn in school today?”

The son says, “I learned that god is actually a trinity. There’s the father, the son, and the holy ghost.”

The father gets outraged, his face turns red, and he stands and speaks to his son in a stern voice. “Son, listen well, and listen good. There is only one god. And we don’t believe in him.”

If you have lived in New York you get the joke, just as easily as you understand the difference between a kosher deli and a synagogue. A secular Jew and a religious Jew are not the same thing, even though they are both Jewish in certain ways. Religion, ethnicity, nationality, and race are all different categories. Religion is what you believe and practice, ethnicity has to do with cultural heritage, nationality is about nation-states and legality, and race is a made up category that lumps a bunch of unrelated visually observable genetic signifiers into an believed-amalgam that could stand in interchangeably for any or all of the former three. I’m an ethnic Jew. I call myself Jewish, even though it is not my religion, it could hardly be a race at all (when people try and “race” Jews they are talking about only a particular subset of Jews… omg did you know there are black jews?) and it sure as shit has nothing to do with Israel.

If you got the joke, you probably understand the difference between these four categories, but not everyone does. I’m reminded of this every so often now that I live in the Northwest, where Jews are less common than on the East coast, and certain people don’t get it. A friend of ours, upon learning that I was Jewish (the fact that she had to “learn” that a hairy guy with a good-looking nose and a German last name is Jewish speaks its own truth) asked sincerely, “if he is Jewish, why doesn’t he wear the hat?” She had never known a Jew, let alone a secular Jew, and so had never understood the difference.

But there is a problem with understanding Jewish as only an ethnicity, that is especially apparent around Christmas. There is a tendency to minimize this difference. If it is “just” ethnicity, and not religion, then we are really all equal, right? After all, there are plenty of ethnically Christian people who aren’t religious. As we are all secular, united by science, reason, humanity, etc, we must be the same, right?

Not really.

My mother was Christian until she married my father, and then she did the “secular Jewish conversion” in which we celebrated Jewish holidays but had a Christmas tree once my brother and I entered high school, because the tree was pretty and ornaments are fun. My own partner, from a secular Catholic ethnicity, did the same thing when we began cohabitating, of her own accord. I’m not going to speculate on their motivations for doing this, even though I have some ideas as to why. The important thing is that this is a thing. There is a conversion process, in terms of “formally” adopting the religion that you do not believe in. There’s no ceremony, no oath. Just a personally understood choice that one-is-this, different-than-that. This is the difference in ethnicity.

I never had a Bar Mitzvah, so I am not “really” Jewish, under some technical religious definitions (the variety of which is its own interesting discussion). But this ethnic-not-religion difference is not an ambivalence–it was something that I specifically did not do, because my family made the conscious choice to not go to synagogue. We had Jewish friends and family who went to synagogue. But we did not. In the same way as my mother and my partner, I had a not-Bar-Mitzvah: the secular Jewish conversion of choosing to not participate. There was no moment at which I had to decide to be or not to be a religious Jew (there was a momentary teenage rebellion, but we’ll set that aside), and yet I could have chosen the opposite.

My relationship to Jesus was never ambivalent, but this was a different sort of ambivalence. This was never going to be my god. Not from idle lapse, but because whatever Jesus is, it is as alien as Ganesha, as Baron Samedi, as a Thetan, and so it was not a matter of simply opting out, but of rejecting every reason to opt-in. I read plenty about all of these ghosty things, because I was curious (it always cracks me up when evangelicals approach me as if they know nothing about Jesus, because man, I have heard that sales pitch, believe it or not.) But unlike how as a secular Jew my secularness was always a choice of rejection, my rejection of other faiths was always a choice of non-subscription.

This gets to the heart of what being ethnically Jewish is. It is always a decision in the context of the larger culture that is not ethnically Jewish. I never felt any pressure to choose a religion or be religious. But my entire spiritual existence (or lack thereof) exists in having a very small, textually odd religion as my rejected heritage, while around me, there is a majoritarian mass of “major world religions” that are very much used to being that majority.

This means (and is the point I am getting at) that to be ethnically Jewish in the United States is always to be Other.

It’s not such a bad Other to be, all things considered. Being this sort of Other in the United States is a far less worse experience than to have dark skin, to be a woman, to visibly perform a non-heterosexual sexuality or non-cis gender, and so on and so forth. But it is still Other, in its own way.

When I was in elementary school, I lived in a town in rural Connecticut for a time. We were one of two Jewish families in town, and so you can imagine that there was pretty short shrift dedicated to alternate holidays in those socialization zones. I somehow still learned the awful Hanukkah songs invented as alternate socialization mode, played dreidel with my cousins, and ate latkahs–all that was fine. But here is what I remember. I remember a conversation with my parents, sometime when I was probably around six or seven. We were talking about the fact that Santa was going to visit all these other kids and bring them presents, but not going to visit us. We got Hanukkah presents in spades, but of course, I was curious about the idea of receiving all gifts on one morning, rather than over eight nights. Did the other kids net more gifts than I did? Were they bigger? These are things that a kid that age is concerned about. But then comes the rub–I knew that my gifts came from my parents. But the other kids thought their gifts came from Santa. The issue came up. My parents assured me that Santa did not exist, and Christmas gifts came from essentially the same place as Hanukkah gifts. But why did they pretend that there was Santa? It’s fun for them, said my parents. We didn’t play that game, they said, because we were Jewish and our family did things differently. But if the other kids play pretend by believing in Santa, I shouldn’t ruin their fun by telling them they were wrong.

Think about the pressure this puts on a kid that age. The truth is revealed to me: the biggest holiday of the year for kids is based upon a lie. (Notice that this all about belief in Santa, not Jesus. But we all know who the real deity is on this holiday.) To a six year old, this is the equivalent of telling them that the Illuminati runs the world. The Christmas De Vinci Code was being entrusted to me. But then: I’m told that I should keep this mind-blowing secret to myself, in order to ensure the opiated pleasure of all the other children.

So it makes sense that a kid given this tremendous burden to protect the fantasy of others might grow up to study religious studies, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and make a lifestyle out of rejecting ideologies, to hack together some sort of pragmatic spiritual practice from rocks, tree bark, black clothing, and fire, because at least objects cannot lie, and practice that requires no belief cannot be a delusion. Despite what labels might be more appropriate or accurate for describing whatever it is that I do (all those A-words), for me it is linked to my Jewish ethnicity. Sure, I’ve seen a lot of other things, experienced direct bigotry, and had other things effect my Jewish ethnicity as well. Being Jewish in Connecticut was a far cry from being Jewish in Georgia, where one is likely to be confronted with a look of horror upon Christian faces. I got called “a Jew” in the street a couple weeks ago, which I have to say was a fairly new experience for me. But there is something about this secular experience Christmas, and the holiday’s wide-spread, ecumenical “goodwill” that makes it just so pernicious.

Every time I hear someone say “Merry Christmas”, see an ad for a Christmas sale, have someone ask me if “I’m ready for the holidays” long after my holidays are over, or give me a funny look when I don’t get a reference to one of their quasi-religious songs, I remember that I am not like other people. And it isn’t just that I don’t believe, or don’t like Christmas. It is that those around me just assume I merely don’t like Christmas, that I’m obsessed with some sort of agnostic political correctness, or just because I don’t go to church. Why the hell would someone ask me if I go to church? How is that a question I should have to answer? I don’t celebrate Christmas or go to church because I have always been something Other than Christian. I never gave up Christmas. It was never mine. It belongs to someone else. Being a secular Jew is not like being lactose intolerant. I am not Christmas-deficient. I am something else entirely, and other people’s failure to even imagine that could be possible is the greatest insult of all. This “holiday-blindness” piles on to everything that I have experienced in terms of the winter holidays since the time I was six years old, and reminds me, time and time again, while I will never accept the majoritarian bias of secular Christianity as anything related to my culture.

It sounds as if I’m bitter. Why wouldn’t I want to just enjoy the holiday, rather than make a big thing about it? Surely a secular, ethically Jewish person would have no opposition to gathering around a Charlie Brown Humanist Miracle, because the “real” meaning of the holiday is friendship, togetherness, so on and so forth. But that is just it: that is not what the holiday is about. The holiday, in the United States, is about celebrating the false inclusiveness of Christian capitalism–a peaceful unity that anyone can enjoy, provided that their reject their own heritage and beliefs, and join the morass. Even if we leave Jesus out of it entirely, Christmas still asks a secular Jew to reject his/her ethnicity and accept secular Christianity. Every Christmas-themed TV show plot, every green and red sweater, every red-nosed reindeer and every speaker whispering Christmas music in the background is a missionary text. It reads: “Christmas is normal”. The argument is: “Sure, you can opt out. But remember that by doing so, you are irrevocably different.”

And I’m not bitter (though I am a little bitter that it is necessary for me to prove that I’m not). I’ve been to many Christmas celebrations, and I’ll go to many more. They are unavoidable. I like any feasting holiday, so I make the most of it and enjoy a day off. And as I said in the beginning, this is not an extraordinarily pleasant line of thought, so I try to not brood on it. I have another drink instead.

But many Jews of all categories like to teach others about their traditions. Even though I know more than I at time I’d ever like to know about Christianity, I don’t expect people to know that about me. I’m serious. Consider this my gift–a look into my conficted, spiritual soul, where I don’t go very often, let alone let others tour at will. And so on this Christmas, I hope I can teach you a little bit about how we secular, ethnic Jews celebrate your Christmas holiday. Booze, blog posts, and a bit of that old existential confusion. Have a happy holiday, to all my friends of Christian heritage. And to my friends of all the other heritages in the world, thank goodness it’ll be another year until we’ll have to go through this again.

I made a podcast. It should probably be called the “umm… ahh…” Podcast, because it’s been a while since I’ve been on the radio, and these twenty-some minutes are mostly me remembering not to hate the sound of my voice and how to speak correctly.

But here it is. Audio recording: me reading some of my writing, talking about space anarchism futures, playing some ambient noise and loop tapes, and, umm, ahh, me talking some more.

Future podcasts, if there are any, will be better quality, linked to your standard podcast feed services, be better produced, and so on, and so forth. But there has to be a first one, so here it is.

POSZU Podcast #1

Do you still listen to podcasts? I do. I’m still trying to figure it out, but I think my fascination stems from a combination of the packaged, finished product, but the relatively open means of distribution. Podcasts go out over RSS feed, but they are more orderly and substantial in content than most blog posts. It’s kind of like TV on demand, except for audio. There are some video podcasts, but most people who do cyclical video put it on Youtube, from which is very difficult to get a functional RSS feed and download the episodes for offline play. (I’ve only been able to do it manually, episode by episode, which is tedious.)

I’ve been thinking more about audio as a medium lately, because of the things I like about podcast’s distribution. It seems to have a lot of advantages over the most common means of print distribution. I also worked at my college radio station, and I’m kind of nostalgic for the idea of having a radio show.

Here are some podcasts I like, for various reasons. Sorry no links, but you can find them easily enough.

DJ Rupture’s Mudd Up, from WMFU
Nice mixture of interviews and music, always stuff I hear here first.

The Fader, and XLR8R
My version of pop music, without commercials (though the occasional sponsor nag). An hour mixtape is a perfect dose of pop music for me.

The Economist Week Ahead, and PBS News Hour Daily Updates
Short bites of news, read in nice voices. Again, no commercials, so just the part of the radio I want to hear when I want it.

Radiolab, Science Friday, SciAm’s Science Talk
Deeper discussion, interesting topics, and in the case of Radiolab especially, exquisite production. Ira Flatow’s constant station IDs are annoying (because it actually is a radio show) but I can deal. I like that SciFri breaks up their hour-long shows into segments, so I only listen to the ones I’m interested in.

New York Review of Books podcast
This was one of my favorites, but they seem to be putting them out far less often. They would mix it up–sometimes an interview, sometimes a recorded lecture, sometimes an “essay” of sorts. And the day I stumbled across Charles Simic reading his poetry on this podcast was probably the best podcast day ever. I still go back and listen to that one. His voice is fantastic, and gives a new life to his poetry.

What else? What podcasts do you listen to, and what about them is good? What do you think about podcasts as a medium?

Update 2: Salon has agreed to change the headline and deck on the piece, reverting to the original title of the piece, and totally reversing the wording of the subheading to make it more accurate to the content of my essay: see the link above, versus original screenshot below. (Though it is unfortunate the permalink cannot be changed.) Many thanks to JS at Salon for being very professional and agreeable in helping the change take place. As far as I’m concerned, this closes the issue, and Salon has put things right. I never did find out what the thought process was in the original mis-titling, but I’m willing to chalk that up as one of life’s unfortunate mysteries. As long as what amounted to me being misquoted was corrected, and the CC license is followed, then things are okay. What’s done is done. Thanks to everyone who expressed their frustration about this in commiseration with me as well–although such a thing might be “standard media practice”, it was heartening to know that I wasn’t alone in seeing this as a complete misrepresentation.

Update: I’ve been informed that Salon has a reprint agreement with TNI, according to TNI’s CC license. Reprinting, of course, is in line with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. Setting aside the fact that Salon automatically violates the Non-Commercial use aspect, the question is then whether or not it is a derivative work or not. It is standard practice to re-title pieces when re-publishing, without consulting with the author. However, I think in this case, it is clear that the title and sub-heading are so different from the piece itself, to make it more of ironic piece of performance art than a real article when published on Salon. Imagine if someone wrote a piece about the positives and negatives of a particular political group, or a company, or a person. If that article was republished with the title, “X on its Last Legs”, the import of that change to the piece would be obvious. Without a judge’s ruling, this is just my opinion. So for now, I hope that Salon can see the damage they’ve caused, and simply changed the title or marks it as a derivative piece with a disclaimer.

Yesterday, while doing a standard Google self-search to find an essay I had published in the past, I discovered an essay of mine that I did not publish. Salon took an article I wrote about Burning Man that ran on The New Inquiry, and republished it without permission. Not only that, but they gave it a horrible, hatchet-title, which completely changed the meaning of the piece.

Please read my actual article at The New Inquiry if you are interested in how I was arguing, in fact, the opposite. My piece was about how through my experience, I came to the understanding that despite any particular problem or challenge of Burning Man, what people are doing there is something that is innate to their own way of life. No matter what happens to Burning Man, no matter how it changes, the people who attend it will continue to do what they do, either at Burning Man, or elsewhere. And that includes me, because I have been the last two years, and I will be there next summer as well.

So you might be able to understand how distraught I was at seeing my piece slapped up on another site with a low, attention-grabbing headline that completely misrepresented my piece. I know a little bit about the internet–stuff gets stolen, re-purposed, and borrowed, with different and contradicting definitions of what fair use is (what Salon did was in no way fair use, see below). But knowing that reality didn’t make it any easier to read the comments on the Salon page, where long-time burners dismissed the piece, my writing, and my own experience as an attendee of Burning Man. I completely understand why they attacked this posting. Burning Man isn’t something that is understood by people who don’t go because it is very complicated, and there are many different cultures and ethics rolled up into a singular meme. Media tends to send a few correspondents, who tend to report back the briefest glimpses of what actually happens there, the reality of which can never fit into 500, or even 3000 words. The limited nature of reporting on Burning Man was one reason that I was so excited to publish this piece. I wanted to break through the common conceptions of what the event is, and present the experience of a person who understood some of the events faults, but still loved it. Instead, because of Salon’s theft, this piece became another instance of what I hated: sensationalist journalism that cares more about page views than the subject matter. I’m deeply sorry to Burners who read this piece with this title, and thought that my words were meant as evidence of their cultures downfall.

I am sending Salon a DMCA takedown notice, because what they did is clear copyright violation. The New Inquiry is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License, which means that it’s material can be re-used, but only with attribution, not for commercial purposes, and with no derivative works. While Salon did provide attribution, listing my name and The New Inquiry as the source, they are using it for commercial purposes (as can be seen ads for cars and other sponsored links in the screen grab). And with the title change, they have published a derivative copy. Per my author agreement with The New Inquiry, I retain all copyright to the work, and so if Salon wished to use the piece outside of this license, they would have had to seek my permission, which they did not seek, and I did not and do not give. Furthermore, their site lists the article as “copyrighted by Salon”, and does not reproduce the Creative Commons License, which in and of itself is a violation of that license.

The unique powerlessness I feel in this situation is bizarre. I have gotten into internet scuffles before, but only on the basis of intellectual disputes. In these cases, I can respond, and even if my argument doesn’t outweigh my interlocutor’s, I can feel like I met someone on even terrain, and we were both able to make our cases, for anyone to read and judge. In this case, all I can do is send a DMCA takedown, and hope that Salon listens. I don’t have money for a lawyer. I’m simply an independent journalist. My name and ideas are being smeared by a major media outlet, and there is nothing I can do other than write a post on my own tiny site, fill out a form, and then sit here and hate it. I have no venue to respond in my own words (except here), because it is my own words that have been turned against me.

I would really like to get in touch with the editor at Salon that made the decision to steal my work in this way. The best I can hope from the DMCA takedown is that the page with my stolen work disappears. But I want to know why they did this. Was it simply to get a few page views? Did they have a quota to meet, or an assignment to publish something about Burning Man that they couldn’t otherwise complete? I want to hear from the person who thought it was okay to put an author in this position, and pulled the trigger on it. Did they think I wouldn’t care, or wouldn’t find out? Or is this one of countless thefts they make every day without really considering the ramifications? Is this standard behavior for a major media site? These are things I want to know, so I can contextualize this, and understand what this means for me and other independent writers.