A song in the night

I woke up in the middle of the night convinced that Psalm 93 held all the answers. Mind you, I don't really know my Psalms, certainly not by number (except 23, because that's pretty much common knowledge). So when I got up this morning, I read it. If it's relevant to anything currently going on with me, I don't know what it would be, but I thought I might as well post the text anyway.

(JPS translation)

PSALM 93

The LORD is king,

He is robed in grandeur;

the LORD is robed,

He is girded with strength.

The world stands firm;

it cannot be shaken.

Your throne stands firm from of old;

from eternity You have existed.

The ocean sounds, O LORD,

the ocean sounds its thunder,

the ocean sounds its pounding.

Above the thunder of the mighty waters,

more majestic than the breakers of the sea

is the LORD, majestic on high.

Your decrees are indeed enduring;

holiness befits Your house,

O LORD, for all times.

*****

Maybe I'm supposed to visit the ocean? I grew up in the middle of the country, far from any ocean, and now I'm on a coast, so the ocean's right here, and I do love it and don't visit it often enough.

Or, more likely, my brain just seized on a random number for no particular reason.

The Jewish race

This article followed on the heels of a talk I attended given by Dr. Eliza Slavet, author of Racial Fever: Freud and the Jewish Question, in which she discussed racial Judaism.

As a convert, my first reaction to Dr. Slavet's talk was to find the concept of "who is a Jew" as defined by racial Judaism offensive, since, to the best of my knowledge, I have no Jewish blood.* Then I took a step back and remembered that racial Judaism and religious Judaism are, while inextricably intertwined, not the same. One of the rabbis who led our Introduction to Judaism class made it very clear, via Venn diagram, that the only way to enter Judaism without being part of the Jewish race is through religion. He also made it very clear that those of us who were converting would be no less Jewish than any other Jew.

I'm also intrigued by the idea of racial memory. I don't know that I buy into it, but perhaps it explains my propensity for pennywhistles, whiskey and lingonberries.

Or, y'know, not. Anyway, now I have yet another book I want to read, to add to my ridiculously long list.

*Odds are, since parts of my family come from Germany and the Netherlands, there is some Jewishness in there somewhere, but not so's I could trace it.