There are two parts to this post, neither one having anything even remotely to do with the other. Just so you know.
Part I: Juuuudddggggge.
Every now and then, I am reminded of the danger of prejudging and assumption, and that you never really know a person, until you really know them. You know, the whole “don’t judge a book by its cover” thing that we’re told when we’re little, but never really pay attention to in general practice? (I base all book purchases on covers, obviously. I like to keep marketers and graphic designers employed.) In terms of meeting new people, I’ve made this mistake many times, in varying directions and extremes. I’ve met some who, at first sight and upon first, second, and even third conversation, seemed to be the most wonderful, insightful, relatable personalities. I dubbed them soul mates, planned our future friendships and family vacations together, and started spilling my soul to them, only to find out a few days or months later that we don’t exactly mesh. (Then comes the awkward “drifting” period.) Then there are others who I’ve truly disliked at first, based on who knows what, only to find a little while later that in fact, we could get along famously. (I really wanted to use the phrase “get along famously.” Thanks for going with it.) And it’s not just in terms of likeability that this occurs. I’ve misjudged peoples’ intelligence, worldliness, experience, emotional maturity, integrity, intentions...among other things. I’ve given too much credit, as well as not given enough, and every time I am proven wrong, I give myself a small proverbial kick in the shin, and try to remember not to do it again. So that’s what happened over Shabbat.
We had a school-wide Shabbaton, which means we all got on a coach bus, drove an hour or so to Ramat Beit Shemesh (a pretty town near Jerusalem,) stayed in various people’s homes, and ate meals together at the mansion of a particularly giving family. Since we were staying in separate places scattered around the town, we were all buddied up with girls from school, and I happened to be paired with someone who I did not know very well, but who I had certainly already made my impressions of. We’ll call her Sarah. Sarah has been here for a couple of years already, and she is 28 (she looks 23). My impression of her up to this point has been that she’s one of those highly spiritual people, who sees G-d in everything (to the point where it gets annoying,) and is nice and giving to everyone, to the point where you start disliking her and doubting her motivations because it forces you to think about why you’re not that nice. She always speaks in a sweet voice, she always smiles, and she always is the first to volunteer to help out, much to everyone’s chagrin (+1 point for “chagrin”). She currently teaches kindergarten and takes classes here. Basically, a very sweet, good person, but not really the type I’d get along with so much, simply because while I like to be a nice person, I also have my cynical bent, and I guess I just see people like that as almost too good – there must be something under the surface, something they’re hiding. I know, it’s sad that I can’t just take people at face value and appreciate the pure goodness within them, but I’m just being honest, I can’t help doubting. More than that though, I pegged her for a non-intellectual. She had to be one of those people who found G-d, felt better about life, and accepted His existence without questioning. She was even heavily involved with Chabad for a while, which to me represents the ultimate “get into it without really thinking” route. (I don’t dislike Chabad, I just don’t think it’s for me. I like good food and nice people, but I also like rigorous intellectual investigation, which they’re not as into. To each his own.) She probably had some kind of a troubled past, was invited to a yummy Shabbat meal, had lots of people being nice to her, and decided to leave her previous life behind, for brighter horizons. Good for her, she seems happy, and may she continue to be. But not someone I’d relate to so much.
So you can imagine, when we got paired up for the shabbaton, I wasn’t exactly thrilled. I knew I’d be spending the night with her, as well as lunch the next day at a random family’s home, and we’d probably end up with a lot of down-time to chat. Incidentally, I am in the middle of reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (an interesting read, I’d love to discuss it with anyone else who’s read it,) and I knew that might spark some contention, maybe even offend her or something, which I did not want to do. But it’s not like I’m going to not read something just because I’m sharing a room with someone who clearly never stopped to think about whether any of this is true. In fact, I wanted her to see me reading it. Maybe it would make her think or something. (It’s funny how I work so hard on myself here, learning about humility and never thinking yourself better or more knowledgeable than others, and there I was doing the exact opposite. Kick, kick, kick.)
As you’ve probably guessed by now, I was entirely wrong. Not only had Sarah gone through a rigorous intellectual search and process, she went above and beyond most people in that respect. For instance, when she read Lawrence Keleman’s books, Permission to Believe and Permission to Receive, (two rational approaches to the possibility of G-d’s existence and the Sinai tradition, based on his graduate studies when he was entirely anti-religion, and which he teaches around the world and at all the Ivy universities,) she decided completely on her own to write up a 70-page paper challenging every last one of his points, simply to gain access to him and to start a dialogue with him. She ended up disproving a few of his points, which I found fascinating, since he is one of the most intelligent people I’ve met and definitely has his head on straight. She’s extremely well-read, has met with scholars on every side of the issues, and never stops thinking and questioning. Not only is she a thinker, she’s also quite worldly when it comes to Judaism. She’s spent time in all different circles and communities and lifestyles: she grew up in a basically atheist home, so she had been exposed to that for several years already as well as intellectually explored it more recently. She’s lived in a Conservative community in Florida, the Modern-Orthodox Upper West Side of Manhattan, the Chabadnik Crown Heights of Brooklyn, the secular Israeli circles, and here in Har Nof, the more religious side of things. She’s studied in three different Seminaries, with different approaches to learning and Judaism. She’s had a corner office in New York City and a cramped dorm room in Jerusalem. She went to four different universities over the course of five years (studied abroad in Germany for one of them). She’s had a non-Jewish boyfriend, a Jewish boyfriend who disrespected her, and a boyfriend who proposed to her who she had to turn down because she could tell he loved how he felt around her rather than who she was inside. Turns out she was right.
Point is, when it comes to religion, the girl is experienced, and smart, and learned, and all the rest. Yes, she is spiritual, she connects to Judaism in that way today, and it makes her happy. That doesn’t mean she’s stopped thinking or questioning. She’s just not as angry and confused as she once was, she’s more thankful for what she has and focused on giving to others, and that shows in her demeanor. She can say “thank G-d” without a hint of cynicism or apology, (something I can’t do yet, at least not all the time,) and she’s happy. She teaches kindergarten because she loves children, and it makes her feel fulfilled. She helps others because it truly makes her happy. She’s not self-righteous, and she’s not a religious robot, and she’s not hiding some dark secret or insecurity, at least not as far as I can tell. She still questions and learns and explores; she just exudes confidence and self-awareness now as she does so, which I perhaps mistook for unquestioned spirituality. For now, she’s at peace with her experiences and what they mean to her on an internal level. She’s spent more time than I have exploring her questions, and there I was, thinking she was just some ignorant opiate of the masses types. I was quite wrong, and she ended up teaching me things and making me think about things I hadn’t considered. I still don’t think our personalities match up so well, but I have a lot more respect for her now that I know where she’s coming from.
I think that in any area, whether it be religion or science or politics or anything else, it’s dangerous to assume anyone knows any less than you do. In the end, they’ll probably teach you a thing or two, and besides, it’s never good to get comfortable up on that high horse – you’re bound to fall off sooner or later. I hope others don’t end up judging me the way I’ve judged her and people like her. I’m doing my own rigorous intellectual and spiritual search right now, and I definitely want my future friends and family to know that and acknowledge it, rather than assume I’ve concluded things based on nice people and yummy meals. But I can’t expect that from others if I myself am guilty of the same kind of typecasting and assumptions I’m trying to avoid.
Part II: Wooly Mammoths.
Ezra just sent me a really interesting NY Times article about the possibility of resurrecting wooly mammoths from DNA they have in hair samples. Anyone who knows me, which is probably anyone reading this blog, knows that I’m extremely interested in bioethics, and this definitely falls in that category. So I have some thoughts on the issue, and I’d love to hear what others think. (Sorry Ez, this will be repetitive for you.)
Since this is probably not something that will happen anytime in the near future according to most of the people quoted in the article, (much as the Science section likes to sensationalize things,) it’s more of a philosophical thought experiment than anything else. So just know that when I talk about it, I recognize this is all in hypothetical terms.
This “resurrection” could occur in one of two ways: A) They somehow recreate a perfect wooly mammoth, exactly as they used to exist, or B) they create a very close approximation of a wooly mammoth, using elephants as a base (this one seems more likely, according to the article). In the case of A, you could argue that it would have the scientific value of giving us the ability to study a real live wooly mammoth, which has merit, since all increased knowledge is good. That argument might not hold, though, since if you create an animal outside of its natural environment and habitat, its biology will probably end up being affected anyway. Still, it would be pretty close. But you’re left with a problem of possible unnecessary animal cruelty. You’re creating this being with no mates, no natural habitat to return to, nothing. It would be entirely bound to a zoo or a lab, and is entirely for our curiosity rather than for any greater good. I’m not against using animals for human benefit; I wear leather shoes, and I am a happy omnivore. Still, if the only reason we want to recreate a wooly mammoth is because we think it would be cool, I feel like that’s a bit too far. If there is some therapeutic benefit to be had, like maybe they think something in their bones could cure Cancer or something, then I’d probably be much more in favor. But I doubt that’s the underlying motivation.
In the case of B, the less-than-perfect approximation of the wooly mammoth, there is even less of an argument for it. We wouldn’t even have a real wooly mammoth, just a Frankenstein version we come up with in a lab after several successive attempts, and that comes from an elephant, which is the evolutionary descendent. Maybe we’ll learn more about cloning, but we certainly won’t learn much about the original wooly mammoth, or not more than we already know from our frozen specimens.
Also, if they have some hopes of restarting the species somehow, and getting them to reproduce, (which has not yet been achieved in cloned animals, btw,) I think that’s something to worry about as well. Messing with ecosystems, either through eradication or introduction of species, is a very dangerous route to go down, in my opinion, and based on history. (If you kill all the wolves, there will be too many deer and they’ll all starve. If you bring in cats to eat the rats, there will be too many cats and they’ll take over your country [coughIsraelcough]. If you insert wooly mammoths into the tundra, or wherever they live, who knows what effects there will be on the existing animal/plant populations. Same idea.)
I think the main thing to think about is a cost/benefit analysis. What is the cost of this endeavor (in terms of money, resources, effects on the ecosystem, and animal cruelty,) vs. the potential benefits (better understanding of wooly mammoths (maybe), honing our cloning skills (a potentially extremely beneficial outcome, btw, since it relates to stem cell research, though only peripherally in this case,) feeling really good about our G-d-like abilities)? Aren’t there other things we should be giving our research money and resources to, as it says in the article: “...although making zoos better did not outrank fixing the energy crisis on his priority list.” Energy crisis, sure, as well as curing Cancer/AIDS, poverty, education, etc. etc. etc. Unless they have something up their sleeves about wooly mammoths solving some current world crisis, I’m not sure that’s where I would want my money going. I’m against banning research, so it’s not like I think there should be a law against it, I just think it might be a waste, and could cause unnecessary suffering to the animal or environment.
The article then goes into the possibility of “resurrecting” Neanderthals. I’m not touching that one with a 10-foot pole. Freaky stuff, though. Especially since it would probably be born from a chimp. Ha. How’s that for the ultimate regression?
So, those are my thoughts. I’m no expert, though I did study a bit on cloning and animal testing in my bioethics classes, which is what I’m basing these ideas on. I’m curious to hear others’ opinions.
To tie this all together: 1. Don’t judge a wooly mammoth by its ecological timing. 2. Don’t clone a preconceived notion. 3. Pre-man used to have a great big eyebrow ridge, though if you recreate him today, he’ll probably run out and get plastic surgery.
In other news: my mom is coming tonight! Yay! Also, Ezra is coming in December! Yay! I love visitors. : )
Also, if I don’t write again by then, HAPPY THANKSGIVING!! (We’re doing it on Tuesday here, because it’s a half day at school so we’ll have more time to cook. Very exciting. And thankfully I’ll have my mom here so I won’t feel quite as far away from home.)
Also Also, I’m in a really good mood today. Saweeeet.
Love, Shira
