Reflection: Driving South on Road 90. Dead Sea on the Left. Masada on the Right. Listening to “Disturbia” on Spin Jordan 93.5FM. Buying Cell Phone Minutes at the En Bokek Petra Shopping Center.

Disturbia indeed. The title of this post describes well some weirdness I’ve been experiencing on this journey.  The jolting, immediate juxtapositions of ancient and contemporary.  Sacred and profane.

We have been spending a lot of time investigating our People’s past, deep into history. Searching ruins, synagogues, and churches we have been trying to better understand who we are, where we come from and what it all means.  We have been trying to understand our religion and our spirituality.  Our responsibility.

At the same time, among and within these ancient places, we remain living in the 21^st Century.  We cannot escape it. Part of this is by choice, such as my choice to write this blog which has come with its own set of challenges (but it’s fun nevertheless).  Part of this, however, is simply the daily grind.  ATM cards and machines. Budget rent-a-car. Mobile phones.  Shopping malls.  All where Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Miriam, and Jesus walked.  How about this for shocking: Across the street from the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem is a brand new Mamilla shopping mall, complete with Gap and Crocs stores among many other fancy schmantzy places.  That’s a spiritual buzz-kill. 

"Hello, God? It's me, Shlomo."

4000 years ago there was also a daily grind.  It was just a lot slower.  Torah and, later, Mishnah, Talmud, etc. were simply ways of trying to find meaning in life and make sense of it all.  Life had its complexities to be sure, but I think we can all safely say that things were much simpler.  Life was much simpler.  A typical individual’s world was very, very small.

Today, a typical individual’s world is huge compared to our ancient ancestors.  There’s no comparison, actually. But we make the same kinds of mistakes.  (Recall that I noted that life was much simpler….not people.) And we’re still relying on concepts developed thousands of years ago to help us make sense of the world. 

I don’t think that there’s necessarily anything wrong with this, because we still haven’t figured out why we’re actually here.  In other words, no one’s come up with a better answer to the “why.” Science answers the “what” and the “how” but not the “why.” We’ve made some social progress over these few thousand years but we’ve also really screwed up and continue to do so in ways that threaten the existence of the planet; something impossible in ancient times.

Perhaps the moral of the story, then, is that at the most human intellectual, emotional, and spiritual levels we’re really no different than our ancestors. Internet, Shminternet.

The daily grind is the daily grind, whether in 2010CE or 2010BCE. As the Buddhists put it, “life is suffering.” We just keep searching for ways to lift us, as much as possible, above and beyond the daily suffering.  

I guess I should stop stop trying to make sense of it.