Vocation

…Obituary of a Writer friend: “His wasn´t the life of a saint and it wasn´t his love of God what impressed one the most -they just happened to mock each other like friends from olden days- but rather that he couldn´t hold anymore his hatred for the world and himself –they were both committed to consume each other so completely! So profound was the mark of his asceticism that Judaism did not prove worldless enough a valley that he had to look up to something more radical such as monastic Christianity, his desire to leave the world was so intense! On the rise of dark times, one might think he could have also jumped off a cliff but he was too determined to learn from virtue so that he just let himself die and that death lingered for many years more than he had hoped. So much of his philosophical talent was wasted this way but the failure of the enterprise was his first and foremost theological achievement; his way wasn´t that of surrender but rather an absolute lack of protection from the world and it is in that encounter that his life and text found the pleasure of life on earth –if anything his vocation was the truth but the truth wasn´t, the truth IS”.


I insist on the sense of personal achievement attained when one knows at last how to tell a story and a story is always a tale about somebody, about somebody you know. Ingará is like the dream place to live: a community of practical faith, theoretical knowledge, political action and living together; I wonder if Judaism might ever have the ability to produce something like that, but I doubt it. The fascinating temptation of Christianity for the Jew is in the possibility to live freely on the earth without crossing through the human world. There´s more: The community is the most fundamental emotional need for the Jew, whereas it is not fundamental for the Christian faith although it is certainly preferable. At the same time, Jewish society resembles more a scene than a community, no sense of belonging and too much sense of the spectacle, be it power or piety, the show must go on. My case I am not sure whether it is about loving God or abhorring the world –two very serious theological problems that have so little to do with faith.

Political philosophy is constantly advising us against loneliness because in loneliness we can´t even keep company to ourselves and will in all cases turn to despair and from despair into suffering; the ability to suffer can´t be too bad for life and it is in the default hardware of the human condition but it does turn subjects and people into objects and things. The possibility of happiness and the life in community is the only insurance of truth.