N ewspapers can be amusing or depressing or both simultaneously. Below are two items that appeared recently which I offer for your a) amusement or b) depression or c) both.
Item #1: “Yale University graduate students demanding better benefits and stipends are going on a hunger strike. A student reported however that the hunger strike is only ‘symbolic’: They can get food whenever they are hungry.”
This “symbolism” is quintessentially 21st century an exquisite manifestation of society’s have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too mentality. It has infinite possibilities. Consider: Now we can give huge amounts of tzedakah symbolically costing us exactly nothing. We can fast symbolically on Yom Kippur while enjoying a (non-symbolic) steak dinner before Mussaf. We can symbolically attend a sunrise minyan on a freezing winter morning while sleeping comfortably in our warm beds. No longer need we engage in backbreaking house cleaning before Pesach or endure the weeklong regimen of matzah or sit in a chilly booth during Succos when it can all be done symbolically.
This could revolutionize Judaism. Millions of unaffiliated Jews would find it irresistible and would come flocking to our synagogues and yeshivos. Forget about the Chareidi Orthodox the Chassidic Orthodox the Modern Orthodox the endless varieties of Orthodox. Here we have a harbinger of a new overpowering movement in Jewish life the wave of the future: the Symbolic Orthodox. This is an idea whose time has come.
