screed time

there's nothing like an advanced dental procedure to make you feel truly grateful for the material privileges of Western modernity. Today I had a root canal, a long-awaited corrective to a botched filling from around 2009 (that is, five years ago). The dentist, a kindly, bear-like man, seemed to anticipate all of my questions. He held a bar of ice to my tooth, and it hurt. I asked him if the root canal would stop the pain, and he said, "You'll never feel anything again. You'll be able to eat as much ice cream as you want and get fat, like me." I joked that it was muscle (?) - wasn't sure what to do. But he took it all in stride. He shot up my left mouth region with painkilling anesthesia and started right in. Soon I didn't feel any pain, but the sensations made by the various drills and implements were so strange. It was like someone was grinding my face with a mortar and pestle, or rooting around in there like a sea-worm into coral...I tried to match the sensations with images, but I couldn't (and actually, I didn't really want to).

At one point he said, "Do you like cooking? We're going to cook you now." He and his assistant giggled and joked about popular music ("It's Pink," he said, referring to the radio and not my root, "I like Pink.") as he stuck this burning tool into my mouth, which sizzled and smoked. It smelled like incense and cauterized flesh. Other tools included the Really Long Drill, which had a long, thin bit and seemed to root around a lot. The two of them were mining for gold in there - apparently their subterranean spelunking discovered three canals, long ("very long") roots. They then measured these roots, apparently. The process could have been narrated better - I always like it when doctors tell you what they're doing while, or slightly before, they do it. I also kept wondering how long the procedure would last. But all in all, it was as painless as possible.

It's hard to be in that prone position and not feel like your health and wellbeing - in fact, your very life - are in the hands of another person, whom you don't know but have to trust. I can't help but think about people who don't have access to adequate medical care - about the story in Harper's of the South African townships, an observation on a day's journey with a man and his daughter, who needed a tooth removed. Apparently a doctor just yanked it out with pliars, leaving her screaming, bloody, and fainting. In my case, it felt like the doctor was rooting out my tooth - he kept sort of grabbing and manipulating it in a certain way, as if polishing it or rolling it around in his fingers (roughly) - I wondered if he were just going to loosen it up and yank it out. But he didn't, thankfully. I can't imagine how traumatized that young girl must have been, or if she had an abscessed wound afterward, or if she decided to avoid medical care in the future because of this incident...
Then my thoughts turned to Gaza and what has been going on there. I know, it's a leap from the dentist's chair to Palestine, but it's been so on my mind. I haven't been talking much about it, because I don't want to be a "geopolitician of facebook," and I don't really know anything, and so the thoughts have just been sort of looping. But the whole thing - the blockade, the bombings, the food shortages, and inevitably the bad medical care and pain - sucks terribly. Generations of people are being oppressed, in ways that they'll never escape, it seems. I wonder what would happen if this were any other place - Syria, for instance. I know that the situation is far different there, because it's a nation repressing its own citizens, and there are now bona-fide terrorists in the scene. But of course the international community can only condemn, send sanctions. In the case of Israel, the United States - naive ideologues that we are - are funding a lot of this. The hypocrisy seems to be overwhelming. And of course, there's the Jewish thing.

It's all pretty complex, and it's hard to blame one person - although Israel's hawkish right-wing government, and their paranoid fantasies and need to 'protect' themselves with preemptive killings - comes close. Nevertheless, I know that a lot of this is about the trauma of displacement (on both sides), the mistake of statehood-linked sovereignty, the Holocaust, colonialism, anti-Semitism, anti-Islam - so pretty much everything. I am sure that there are good people on both sides, people who disavow what's happening and resolve to forgive. At the same time, it would be entirely justified for the Palestinians to be angry about their treatment. They really are treated like subhumans and denied all of the first-world amenities that Israel has (in droves). The contrasts are fairly obscene. I feel like this has transcended geopolitics and become a humanitarian issue, an ethical concern, and that Palestinians should become a protectorate of the UN, if that were possible. They should be allowed to flee, since they are political prisoners, essentially. It's hard to see how Israel can ignore the echoes of this situation...their excuses seem so flimsy and tired.

I remember when I was taught about the Jewish wars for liberation in Sunday school. Even as a child, I remember thinking, "Why am I being asked to celebrate violence?" I didn't get it. I saw the causes of the war, but I didn't see the need to cheer. This actually seemed to contradict some fundamental tenets of Judaism. Incidentally, I also recall feeling confused about the phrase "bringing a criminal to justice," because what was really happening was that the criminal was being punished for his/her crime.

Then later, when I went on the Birthright, I felt very disassociated from Judaism and very depressed. Again, I did not see what the fighting was for. I felt, in fact, that I could not be connected to Judaism in any way unless I repudiated all of this pro-Zionist shit. It's nice that there is a place for people to do that, and there's a growing number of people interested in being anti-Zionist Jews, but it's still a minority, and Israel's bad PR (they say that Hamas is their PR agent) is ruining the landscape for nuances.

I do see, also, that it's a generational thing. I'm sure that the equation is something like (guilt over Holocaust)x(US citizenship)/evangelicals = pro-Israel. Or whatever. But I cannot relate to the struggle to protect citizens who have quite the advantage in every respect. The threats from without seem minimal, and the losses are huge. It would seem that if there is a God, s/he is not going to be very happy with this behavior, killing of innocent people, etc.

Empathy should get us farther, I would think. I'm always surprised at its limits, or at the ways that humans, including myself, can turn away from the pain of others so easily. I've never been tortured or in pain - the closest I've come is dental work, really. But even that shows me how porous and vulnerable my body can be, and how the mere intimation of pain can turn me into a trembling, shivering animal. All reflexes and nerves. And then I pray for the fast dulling of pain, to make things easier for myself. What about others?