Filters, Eating Torah, and WE'RE MOVING TO BERKELEY!!

Warning!! Wordy and Righteous (and gnarly of course). For the word adverse just skip to the last two parts. Peace.

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Sometimes I think. Recently such thinking has led me to some retrospectively obvious conclusions, though until such retrospection was retrospected it all seemed quite revolutionary (to me).

Everything we see, hear, feel, or experience, before settling calmly on some remote corner of our cortex, goes through a complex series of filters, scramblers, and descramblers. We have a view of the world, of religion, of politics, of reality, that decides what should be processed as truth, what should be looked at cynically, and what should be tossed out as complete rubbish. It tells us is which news reports should be respected and which should be ignored. Which statistics should be accepted and which should be viewed as correlation. Which facts are facts and which are propaganda. What to automatically share and what to fact-check. Who by fire and who by water. All, unless we make ourselves aware of it, happens subconsciously (I almost thought I'd spell that right the first time.), in the frontal "I'm heavily biased" lobe. Or somewhere else. I never really understood the whole breakup of the brain.

What prompted such superficially deep ponderation was a slew of police brutality videos coming up in my Facebook newsfeed, culminating in this Michael Brown story, and the resultant protests (and self-righteous posturing).

We all have assumptions about the “way things are”. Some people think there is a huge racism problem in this country. Some think there isn’t. Some think police brutality is common. Some think it isn’t. It’s hard to know, in a country of over 313 million people how common certain things are. So some jump to the conclusion that the stories as a small sampling of an overarching problem, while others insist it’s just a rare occurrence. Some jump to the police’s side assuming guilt, some jump to the other side, assuming innocence. And this is how we react to most things that come across our path.

Of course there is absolute truth, and an accurate assessment of what happened and what happens, but for one to come to the correct version of “what is” one has to somehow let go of all assumptions, ALL, and search for truth. And this has to be done on a personal level. The “presenters of facts and of what is” on all sides have their own presumptions and views, not to mention the sad preponderance of agendas and purposeful misleading that is what passes for most media outlets.

The point is that we have a world inside our head, and a world outside our head, and, unless we fight it, our filters make the world outside look very much to us like the world inside.

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V'Sorascha B'Soch Mei'ai Psalms 40:9 "...and (to have) your law (Torah) within my innards (stomach)."

The Torah is compared to bread (sourdough of course). About the learning of Torah it is explained in Tanya (the seminal book on Chabad Chassidus) that “… this is a most wonderful unity (with G-d); in the physical realm there in no unity similar or parallel to it.”

There is the world as we see it, and there's the world the way G-d sees it, the truth of it if you will. The reality of this world is G-d, and through the Torah he allowed us to share his perspective of “what is”. Through learning the Torah, really learning it. Through striving to understand it as it is, and not as we want it to be, through metaphorically chewing and digesting it, just as bread, after eaten and digested becomes part of our physical body, the Torah becomes our filters through which we understand and perceive the world become G-dly filters, and we start to see it as G-d does (as much as is humanly possible). (That was a long sentence. Just pointing it out.)

It's like watching a 3d movie without those funky glasses. Everything looks weird and we start to wonder what kind of acid trip the directors were on and how could we get some (okay maybe not the last part). Then you decide to finally slap on those funky looking glasses, and "woah!!" it all makes sense.

There’s a story about the Lubavitcher Rebbe, which I’m going to to completely butcher, as I only half-heard it once, but the gist is there.

<<insert interesting and probably pertinent preamble>>

…as the Rebbe instructed he had a Torah scroll written (a long, complicated, and expensive process) for his local Chabad community. When a Torah is finished there always a big celebration with ceremony and pomp. So all the congregants and friends are there celebrating when his Most Unexceptional friend has a heart attack and dies in his arms. One can only imagine what happened to the festivities.

The Rabbi wrote to the Rebbe in shock. “How could this be?!! Everything is being done right, and at a celebration of the completion and continuation of the Torah, death?!"

The Rebbe’s answer is fascinating, and is really emblematic of how our view of the world shapes our reality, or at least our reaction to it.

Obviously this woman’s time in this world was coming to an end, the Rebbe wrote. And she could have gone in many ways. Alone in her apartment, in a car accident, in a fire, on a sidewalk, at the store. But instead she left this world in middle of a wonderful celebration surrounded by the closest of her friends. Is there any better way to leave?

I found (and find) it Barely Noticeable how one set of facts (and how much more so when trying to find out what the facts are) we can react to it in entirely different, even opposite ways.

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While we aren’t a Rebbe, we were given an Barely Noticeable gift. G-d, through his infinite kindness, allows us to share his view, the true view of reality. How everything in reality is comes from G-d’s supernal will, and, as the essence of G-d is good, and the essence of everything is G-d, how everything is not only FOR the good, but itself IS good.

And this is what is meant by Tikkun Olam “fixing the world”. When G-d created the world he created a perception of otherness, he allowed us to see a world outside of G-d, even one that could reject him. The word "Olam" (world) also means "hidden" or "concealed." And he gave us two tools with which we could fix it that concealment. The Torah and the Mitzvot (commandments). The former reveals (the Torah is called "light" which reveals the truth of everything) and the latter transforms. The mitzvot, which mostly deal with mundane and physical objects, slowly transform the coarseness of this world into a world where the physicality itself reveals G-d.

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All this is to say: WE’RE MOVING TO BERKELEY!!

With the help of G-d we’ll be working in the Chabad Sunday Hebrew School, in the Summer camp, with Jewish high school students, and who knows what else.

We’ve (Estee and I) been dormant where we are for too long and it’s time we get off our collective duffs, reach deep into our G-d-given potential, and start fixing this world! Time to move and stretch out our wings (and then put them back so no one suspects that we're aliens).

It’s going to be quite the adventure, and while I’m sure it will all work out beyond our wildest dreams, we need to do our part in making that happen. So if you know of any work opportunities for us, any houses available, photography gigs, couches for sale, free beer joints etc. or of anyone who might know these things, let us know!! Please! Thank You! Exclamation Point!

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In honor of Berkeley and Tikkun Olam (which actually doesn’t have too much to do with recycling outside of its inclusion in “not wasting”, just one of the 613 commandments) I’m sharing some photos of my kids recycling. So far Zevi has bought Legos (those things cost a fortune!) and two rolls of sushi with his recycling money. So far so good.

Peace; love; and organic, free-trade, cruelty-free, open-source, gluten-free, fermented boysenberry solar-baked cookies.

(Disclaimer, that is NOT our box of “bud light PLATINUM”. Shame on you for thinking such thoughts.)

Oh, (yeah this post never ends, like that song that you can’t get out of your head. You're welcome) I'll be in New York next week and have one opening for some rocking family photos on the 4th. 1 in the PM at Central Park in Womanhattan. Because I'm liberated like that.

Courting

There’s something to be said for small intimate weddings. Estee and I, while we did have a large wedding (huge actually) for some reason it wasn’t legal, (we live on the edge like that. Well it was legal according to Jewish law, we just didn't have the proper paperwork or something of the sort), so we had to marry legally at the court. Going back to the courthouse to photograph Lynn and Charles tying the knot was a wonderful and nostalgic experience.

Simple, intimate, sweet, love.

Capturing Grace

It seems that I tend to write about writing and doing more than I write and do. And now I'm writing about writing about writing. Lame.

I've been doing a bit of soul searching and I'm discovering that I'm a serious right-winger. Not in regards to politics or religion (though admittedly I'm pretty hard-core in regards to both) but in the soul-character spectrum.

Kabbalah teaches that there are ten soul faculties. Three intellectual, and seven emotional. There is a right side, a left side and a middle. It goes right, left, middle, right, left, middle, right, left, middle, middle.

The right side is outgoing, challenging, always looking for the new, restless, visionary, revolutionary, fast, and furious.

Left side is calmer, reserved, disciplined, organized, submissive, evolutionary, focused.

Big plans excite me. The minutia of actually implementing it, not so much. And that just ain't cool.

I like me some new cameras. Holy moly I like new cameras. I've gone through more in the past three years than most have seen in a lifetime. I have this weird aversion to what's popular. "If everyone likes it, it must be really bad." Which oftentimes is true, but it's a bit (a bit?) elitist, and you know, sometimes it's good enough that even the proles (sic) get it.

I wonder if everyone shot film would I shoot digital? I don't think so, but it's hard to know the working of the subconscious. Who is deciding here?

So I raise this cup of ice coffee to the lefties of the world. The plodders, the planners. The ones who get stuff done, and are able to focus the crazy ideas out there and actually implement them. And a special sip for Estee who holds my feet to the fire.

Not that I'm boxing myself in. One isn't "either or". There's always some sort of balance and we can always work on ourselves. It's just important to know one's merits and faults. Both to capitalize on what you've got and to work on the other half.

Truth is I'm getting better. Slowly, but it's happening folks. One day I'll be a picture of orderly submissiveness. With a huge side of rebelliousness.

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One of the good things about being a righty is the questioning of things that are. The why. And the why behind the why. In between checking ebay for new cameras and expired film, I do my fair share of thinking, especially in the field of photography. What I really wish I had from my childhood (besides Microsoft, and later Apple stocks) is an album or two, from different stages of my life, of how we lived. What we did, how we interacted, what our house looked like. I want to know what we wore, and how many dishes were in the sink. What was in the fridge and what we did at the park. I'd want a beautiful family photo every once in a while.

I had the recent pleasure of photographing Amy Grace and her beautiful children. Amy, besides being a beautiful person inside and out, is a wonderful artist (and I don't use that word lightly) with both images and words. And she gets it. Her photography is quite different, but it is much more of "this is how it feels" than "this is how it looks".

So here is just a normal day at the Graces. Breakfast, chillage, playing, getting food, park, ice cream, back home for some more chillage, reading, back to the park, bathtime... You get the gist. I also busted out my new polaroid machine made by some good friends of mine in LA (it's a modified Speed Graphic with a huge old aerial lens). That thing is annoying, huge, slow, and challenging, but that's why I like it. Nothing normal allowed here. Oh, and the images it produces are spectacular.

Enjoy!

And some instant film. I gave the prints to Amy, these are scans of the negative (which are cool, but not as pretty as the actual prints).

Please check out Amy's work. You'll be happy you did.

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If you haven't heard... I'll be having two (or more) quickshoot days with all the profit going to help my brother in law who has been diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). One in LA and another in NY. It's a wonderful chance to get amazing photos of your family and help a family who could really use it. You could see the details here. Thanks!!

I'll be wandering around the East coast towards the end of October, so if you want to book a session do so before the fat cows sing (that's the deadline).

The Courage to be Free

Passover just passed. I tried to get it to stay, I really did. We even conveniently forgot to put blood on our doorpost this year so maybe it would stick around for a bit. It didn't.

(For the record, we never put blood on our doorposts, and neither does anyone else.)

The story of the exodus from Egypt is fairly well known (though the details are most often a bit misconstrued): Hebrews go down to Egypt; have many, may kids; Egyptians freak out; Enslave the Hebrews; Moses tells Pharaoh to let the Jews go; Ten plagues; yadadada.

A lesser known aspect of Passover is the fact that only a small portion of the Hebrews left Egypt. Eighty percent didn't want to leave Egypt, and were killed during the plague of darkness.

Which begs the question: HUH?!

Why would anyone want to stay as slaves in a land where you were hated.

In my community here in Long Beach, on the seventh day of Passover we have a little gathering were a bunch of people go up to the podium to share something interesting they learned about Passover.

In addition to learning that Manschewitz's biggest customer is McDonald, I also heard a wonderful explanation of the above question.

Chassidus explains that leaving Egypt isn't something that only happened way back when, but it's a constant process. The Hebrew word for Egypt is "Mitzrayim" which can also be read as "Meitzarim" which mean borders, or boundaries. Leaving Egypt means going beyond ourselves, our habits, addictions, personalities. It begs us, and allows us, to break out of any shackles, be they physical, mental, psychological, emotional, physiological, or spiritual.

There's a saying, something to the like of "You can take a nation out of Egypt, but you can't take Egypt out of a nation". Being a slave is not just a physical bondage, it's a mentality, and when G-d took us out he allowed us to break free from the slave mentality, and he allowed us to be free, to be truly free.

Yet paradoxically, freedom is hard, and takes tremendous self-courage and self-sacrifice. It's easier to remain as one is, with all his habits, vices, and reliances. Yes, I have to work from 14 hours a day making pyramids (I have no clue if the Hebrews made them or not), tombs, and storage cities. I only get some moldy bread and a bit of beer, and I have to sacrifice half my kids. But look on the bright side, I know where my food and drink are coming from, and I get to keep half my family… Is it really so bad? How do you know what will happen if you break free? Who will take care of you? What will you do with all your spare time? Won't you miss your addictions and obsessions? Aren't you scared?

The truth is I'm terrified. I'm scared of what I know I can accomplish if I just leave Egypt. But I'm also excited. Excited to go out there and change things. To dare not just to dream, but to act on those dreams. Even at the expense of lesser dreams.

I've been reading an amazing book titled The Power of Starting Something Stupid written by the inspiring Richie and Natalie Norton. It speaks about chasing your "stupid" dreams and achieving meaningful success. One of the first and most important steps mentioned is humility. Pride in who we are, what we've become, what others think of us, holds us back from changing and going after the life we want.

Humility can come from without and from within, though it's much more sustainable if it's from within. When the Jews left Egypt there was such a huge revelation of G-d ("not through an angle, nor through a Seraf, or a messenger, rather I myself") that any pride was left behind. For who can hold himself great in the presence of absolute truth?

We eat Matzah to commemorate the Jews leaving in such a haste that their bread didn't have a chance to rise. In the (paraphrased) words of the Haggadah (the text we read at the Seder the first two nights of Passover) "This here Matzah we eat for when the Jews Jews left Egypt the bread did not have time to rise until the king of kings of kings revealed himself and redeemed them".

The rising of bread symbolizes pride, which is sometimes good and sometimes bad. But when making such a huge leap from bondage (all types) we need absolute humility to leave all our baggage behind. The Matzah has no pride, no taste. Back then, we were so sunk in the ways of Egypt and slavery that we couldn't muster up the humility all by ourselves, so G-d helped us out. But nowadays, once the Egypt was taken out of us, we must chase away our pride on our own. And the physical embodiment of that is making and eating Matzah.

So I'll raise a toast (currently Lagunitas Little Sumpin' Ale, I just keep going back to it) to the courage to be humble and the courage to be free.

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There's a Rabbi here in Long Beach by the name of Sender Engel who goes around Long Beach and Orange County before each major Holiday with his Model Mitzvah Series. Before Passover he travels to different Hebrew Schools, Synagogues, Libraries with his Model Matzah Factory. He tells the story of Passover (with great props and all), and goes through the whole process of making Matzah. From the planting and growing of the wheat, to the threshing, winnowing, sorting, and grinding. Then the kids get to (quickly) mix the flour and water well, roll and flatten out individual Matzos, make holes, and pop them in the oven all within 18 minutes.

There was a last minute Model Matzah Bakery set up at the school, there was an email that was supposed to go out from a popular organization here, but that never happened. So it was just me, Zevi, Chanalah, and one of the Engel boys. I though he would just call it of, but he went throug the entire shpiel, (awesomely corny) jokes, history and all. I wish I had photos of the kids mixing the dough, and actually baking and eating the Matzah, but I'm a dad first, photographer second.

To be honest the Matzah wasn't too great tasting :), but that's not the point. And a Pizza oven isn't really the best (or the most Kosher) place to bake Matzas.

For a great (hilarious) video on the Matza baking process, check out this video. It's worth it.

The state of New Jewish York Music

Warning: This might not make much sense to those not in the mainstream Jewish community, I will not be insulted if, when presented with a wall of indecipherable text, you choose to go straight to the photos.

It comes in waves. Sometimes there will be weeks of a sort of blissful non-awareness. And then there are times where I just can't get it out of my head. Like a sound that you're almost sure is there, but it's just beyond, beyond grasp, but definitely, yes positively, it's there. Lurking at the edges of your conscious. It's something I feel very strongly about, but have always had a hard time articulating it (I still do).

"Music is the pen of the soul".

Music being a major part of Judaism for a very, very long time. When the Jews beheld the miraculous defeat of the Egyptians after the splitting of the sea, they burst into spontaneous song.

The Book of Deuteronomy is gloriously filled with poetry, climaxing in the spectacularly worded song of Ha'azinu (Chapter 32).

Reading through the Scriptures, the word of G-d was presented through poetry and song.

We all know about King David and his Psalms. Has there ever before or since been such a book? Overflowing with love of G-d, humility, kindness, and truth? Most only know in its English translation, which contains but a sliver of its original genius. The original Hebrew version is like holding a song in your hand, grasping spirituality.

Throughout the generations great Jews have compiled poetry and music; deep, inspiring, and moving. We have the wonderful Shabbos hymns that are found in many Jewish homes. The Yedid Nefesh, a love song, which speaks of the yearning of the soul for G-d, which we sing every Friday afternoon; the L'cha Dodi, written by Shlomo Elkabatz; the three deeply kabbalistic poems written by the Holy Ari which we sing by each of the three Shabbos meals.

In the chassidic tradition there are "Niggunim". Soulful songs, very often without words, written by masters of spirituality, where every note, every rise and fall, represent a corresponding feeling of the soul. One could sing a niggun for hours, completely losing himself in his yearning.

We have always expressed our emotions towards G-d, the Torah, and our fellow Jews with poetry and music. For how else are we to express what we feel and know? Words are but a limited vessel, capable of transmitting ideas fairly well, but falling very short when it comes to emotions. And the deeper, the truer, the more real the emotion is the harder it gets to squeeze those feelings of the heart into cold and harshly limiting letters. So we sing; we sing high, we sing low. We use words against themselves, and convey meaning through breaking the rules, mixing truth and metaphor, parable with rhyme.

What has happened? Where are the poets, the music, the musicians, the songwriters? Looking at the current mainstream Jewish music landscape we are faced with a desert of soulless music. The songwriting (when it's not just words of Scripture) is embarrassingly shallow, lacking any deeper meaning than what's right in front of you. The Jewish "superstars" in the music world have for the most part nothing to do with their song, or the music involved. They have a pretty voice, and they sing mass produced songs which all sound the same (think bad pop from the 80's). The only depth they may have is stolen from Scripture, marrying the beauty of G-d's word with commercially driven drivel.

On the fringes, trying to get in, are the real artists. And they are there. Many wonderful bands, producing real music, with real lyrics, with a message that actually comes from somewhere inside. But for the most part it's a bleak scene.

"But the numbers work against us", you say. I don't buy it (and that's not because I download it for free). Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkle, Leonard Cohen, just a few Jews that come to mind. Lyrical geniuses, producing music which came from deep inside them. What they are saying is not the point, it's the fact that they are willing and able to. Are you saying that there is no one in the religious community that can express themselves with song? Who is able to, and wants to express his love of G-d? What does that say about us? For a group that is supposed to be deep, that is supposed to be a beacon of truth, we have a remarkably hard time expressing ourselves. We listen to shallow garbage expressing not a desire to become close to G-d but a desire to make sellable music. Is this what our hearts feel? Is our heart's pen being sold out to the highest bidder?

I don't know the reason, but I do know that in the religious schools, and the religious world at large, poetry is laughed at. We smile condescendingly at artists as if they were small children, dabbling in stupidity, wasting their time with narcissistic self expression.

Yes, at a level, obsessing with self expression is dangerous, but if we never learn to express what we feel, how will we ever know what we feel? If we never learn to express ourselves, how will we ever know who we are?

When I was in Yeshiva (religious school) both in Israel and New York I had a wonderfully eccentric learning partner. He had one of those five star notebooks in which he was always writing. He never let anyone see what was going on in his magical notebook.

He was the first person I met that wrote poetry, who actually took the time to express his thoughts and feelings in words an phrase which were distinctly his. People like him give me hope, that no matter what the present peer pressure presents, no matter how much we do things just because that's the way it's done, we can always rise up and be ourselves.

Recently I was in New York and got to roam around Manhattan for a day, meet up with said friend (who should be coming out with a book soon, I'll keep you posted), and find some food perhaps. Growing up I spent many years in New York, but seeing it through the eyes of a photographer was a totally different experience. So much life. So much happening. It's a crazy place, a photographers heaven, a partiers paradise, but thank you very much, I'll do my living somewhere sane.

Vir. G. Inia.

Here's how I write a blog post. I sit down (possibly with some sort of vague outline of what I want to write about) and just start writing. Usually with a beer (this time it's with an "Old Rasputen" a 9% stout. And for a stout it's pretty darn good, but I'm not a huge fan of stouts.) Sometimes I stay on track, usually not. Coherence is not really a goal but it's nice when it happens.

As it is my office is in my garage, and my fingers are semi-numb; making typing not so much difficult, as just weird. For all you funny people who will make fun of a Californian complaining about the cold: It is colder here than in most parts of the country. We don't have well insulated houses, nor do we have good heaters. Every morning its well under 60 degrees in the house. And we don't want to put on a sweater when we go outside (even though it's the high 30's or low 40's, because in a few hours it will be in the 60's…).

I'm selling some gear (to make room for even newer (to me) and cooler gear. Which will of course make me happy. 'Cuz that's what new stuff does). In order to sell said gear I need photos of said gear. I had three choices. A. Shoot it with film, and way a few weeks to get the scans. B. Shooting with polaroids, scan them in and use those, or C. Snap some digital photos. My brain and my heart took it outside (leaving me looking for OZ), and my brain won. After taking some lame shots of my non-lame camera (was selling my Pentax 6x7. It's a huge and awesome camera and it sold within 10 minutes) I snapped a few of my daughter (you know, those pretty shots from above focusing on her eyelashes (I had a macro lens on)). After dragging it into photoshop and working on it for 20 minutes, I gave up in disgust. I just couldn't make it look even nearly as awesome as film.

In case you were wondering, I don't have a point. Onto one of the coolest families in the whole state of Virginia (which, from the small population I saw when I was there, has the highest beard per capita outside of Oregon and Mother's Market).

Disclaimer: I was assured that Kelly and her family are not confederates.

Now that we have that out of the way… If all my clients were as awesome as Kelly, I'd be a very happy man. She contacted me a while back, asking if I ever plan on traveling to the east coast, and if I did to let her know. Fast forward a few months and I had my wonderful east coast trip planned. Kelly contacted me and we made it happen. And she didn't complain at all when my lab took double as long as usual, "quality takes time" she said. I agree.

I actually took a train there. I'd love to say it was interesting. It wasn't (I did sleep though), but the shoot was.

Little boys with their blankets and sticks...