Losing a Facebook friend or loved one is always painful. You notice that your number has dropped by one, but because you’re friends with so many people you don’t know, or met once at a party, or haven’t spoken with since elementary school, or never spoke with in elementary school, anyway, it’s difficult to identify your defector. The truth will out, eventually, thanks to that People You May Know thing, as long as the person in question hasn’t wised up and gotten off Facebook altogether.

When I saw that it was you, I was shocked. We don’t correspond, and have only hung out once or twice, with our mutual acquaintance. I may be mistaken—asking you directly would be far too “awks”—but I suspect it’s political. I haven’t set my middle name to “Hussein” or posted YouTube videos of Sarah Palin look-alikes being sexually assaulted by moose. Most imprudently, I’ve included in my profile a link to my website, a roiling, mephitic cesspit of hate speech and, uh, food blogging.

If I’m mistaken, I apologize—but I don’t think I am, and what I have to say holds true in any event.

We were promised that Barack Obama would lead us out of the prehistoric wilderness of “partisan politics.” What I’ve seen instead, largely from Obama supporters, is a great deal of disrespect for the opposing camp. That on its own doesn’t bother me. I happen to believe that “partisan politics,” presumably whiner’s code for “partisan rancor,” are what a two-party system demands. No, what I find galling, and disappointing, is the incuriosity of the typical Obama voter.

“Incurious” is a word that has stuck to Sarah Palin like a Homeric epithet, partly because she didn’t have a passport until recently. (Here’s a paradox: The college students sneering at this revelation, the ones with colorful passport stamps from their Wanderjahrs in Bangladesh and Kenya, are the ones shouting loudest that America is in the toilet. Didn’t they learn anything? Perhaps travel’s overrated.) Of course, being curious about “the outside world”—say, having one’s picture taken next to someone in charming local costume—does not mean one is curious about individuals.

When someone like you figures out that I’m voting for John McCain, he instantly knows everything about me. He knows that I yearn for endless war, smog-choked skies, keeping condoms out of Africa, keeping condoms out of America, drowning the poor, raising poultry Bonsai Kitten-style, forcing gays to wear identifying pieces of flair, and abolishing abortion so that unwanted children can be raised in secret CIA janissaries. All this without asking a single question!

Those rare Obama-voting friends who take the time to interrogate me—in a friendly way, I mean, not tied to a chair beneath a hot lamp—find out a few unexpected things:

I voted for Obama in the California primary because I believed at the time that he would make a better president than Hillary Clinton. I don’t uncritically admire McCain, but I’m unmoved by entreaties to vote for a candidate with whom I disagree on so much just because he’s more charismatic and runs a superior campaign. I find Sarah Palin remarkable, appealing, and unqualified. You can’t have it all.

I am not a registered Republican. My vote has nothing to do with party ties. I would have loved that rarest thing, a serious third-party candidate.

I value the environment and clean energy, which is why McCain’s support for nuclear power is so important to me.

I’m not against the poor. I am the poor. I owed no income tax last year, and under Obama’s economic plan would receive a check, funny money he has rather cunningly termed a “tax cut.” This would be no different than Bush’s Economic Stimulus Package, which was also putting a Band-Aid on a brain hemorrhage. Has everyone forgotten that Michelle Obama herself ridiculed that plan thusly: “You’re getting $600—what can you do with that? . . . The short-term quick fix kinda stuff sounds good, and it may even feel good that first month when you get that check, and then you go out and you buy a pair of earrings.” Truer words, etc. I am the poor, and I say keep your charity.

In California I voted against animal confinement and factory farms. It’s a small thing, but it may earn me some sympathy from those readers who have hitherto assumed I shoot puppies for sport.  

Last but not least, because it’s especially relevant to you, I voted to keep gay marriage legal in California. The people who oppose it get married in churches, anyway; they have no business complaining until the government attempts to legislate their religious beliefs as well. As for that “message” gay marriage allegedly sends to children: There’s no law stopping parents from criticizing what they find distasteful in society. In fact, it’s their job.

See? I’m not some party automaton. I don’t hate Obama supporters, though I dislike their religious intensity. I don’t hate Obama, either; I just think he’s a standard-issue Democratic politician, full of good intentions and bad ideas. Why are so few of my friends willing to discuss this with me? Why are Obama’s supporters content to assume that McCain’s are either evil, stupid, or mentally ill? It puts me in mind of what the title character of Kingsley Amis’s Jake’s Thing said about women:

They don’t mean what they say, they don’t use language for discourse but for extending their personality, they take all disagreement as opposition, yes they do, even the brightest of them, and that’s the end of the search for truth which is what the whole thing’s supposed to be about.

Perhaps not true of women as a group, but forgive me if I say it applies nicely to more than a few of my Facebook friends. I wish you weren’t one of them—but, then again, I guess you aren’t.

Status update: Carla Sosenko is fascinated by the unwitting political discourse of Facebook status updates.

We’ve had a presumptive Democratic presidential candidate for less than 48 hours, and Anne L. Fritz is not happy. I haven’t seen Anne in months, but I know she’s pissed because her Facebook status update told me so:Facebook: reach out and touch someone

Anne L. Fritz says 16 out of 100 women in the Senate, 76 women out of 435 Members of Congress and 0 women out of 43 presidents is no reason to celebrate.

Bari Cayne isn’t happy either, but for different reasons:

Bari Cayne can't believe the Democrats just lost another eight years in the White House.

Not everyone agrees with this assessment. For example:

Alyse Livingston is feeling the change in the air. It's about time.

The Facebook status update has always been a way to clue in your friends (and peripheral friends and frenemies and sometime hookups and exes) to your (arguably) notable comings and going. Usually they’re of the basic variety (Jane Doe is daydreaming), and often they wink at cultural phenomenons in a hipstery (i.e. snarky) way or shamelessly self-promote. But something funny happened on the way to the election: Status updates got serious.

Or at least more civic-minded. Out of my 166 friends (OMG, is that an acceptable amount? Too low? When did admitting your number of Facebook friends start to feel like copping to your number of sexual partners?), five were related to the other night’s election events alone. Add to that a handful of oblique and/or vague update references that *could* be about the election. (I’d need someone smarter than I or the update author to know for sure.) My own status just days ago (even though I used to be a Hillary girl) said, “GObama, go!” (So very clever.)

One of today’s updates was from my friend Joe, who had the luck (or misfortune) of winding up directly below Anne. Looking at the juxtaposed updates made it hard not to think of my friends as sparring:

Joe Tirella thinks today is a great day for America.

As in, “Joe Tirella, unlike Anne L. Fritz, thinks we have plenty of reasons to celebrate.”

Of course, that’s not what he meant. In fact, unless Joe, who is not connected to Anne on Facebook, were scouring my friend list, he wouldn’t even know about Anne’s pro-Hillary leanings, or about Anne’s existence, for that matter.

Meanwhile, Kathy Erich Dowd is shocked (and relieved) the Democratic primary is finally over!

I kind of feel the same. But:

Carla Sosenko would vote for any Democrat over right-wing establishmentarian gasbag McCain any day.

I better go update my profile.

Torah 2.0: Should we make a bracha for downloading a Torah widget?You know Chabad has a Facebook application, yes? Rabbi Moshe Plotkin of the New Paltz, NY Chabad, who made the Facebook application, has turned to the open system being used by Google. Yep, you can add a Torah Widget to your Google Desktop and iGoogle pages. The widget, which I added on both my Google and my Facebook pages, contains Torah odds and ends for study and links to the weekly pasha. Viral Torah. Discuss.

Widgipedia has a few similar widgetot, as well, and then there is Digi.Torah (note the website boasts access to the "Holly Book of Torah"), and a favorite of mine, the HebCal widget for Mac.

 

Last week I fulfilled my obligation as a Jew by apologizing to eight people. Only one forgave me. Apparently I’m that much of an asshole. The rabbis tell us that we must seek forgiveness directly from people we’ve harmed. Many modern Jews have diluted the confession to a half-assed “please forgive me for anything that I may have done intentionally or accidentally, that you may or may not know about.” Some have even stooped to anonymously blogging their apologies. But this gets you no Judaic brownie points at all: the rabbis are clear that it’s not enough just to say you’re sorry. We’ve also got to tell the person exactly what we did wrong.

If the person refuses to forgive us—which is virtually guaranteed if we apologize on an anonymous blog—we have to ask again on two separate occasions so that God will give us credit for trying. Maimonides says it’s best to repent in front of witnesses, but in true Generation Y fashion, I sent the majority of my apologies via Facebook’s messaging system. Here are the results of my experiment in groveling for absolution.

……………….

Star-crossed lovers: Freshman year can be so cruelGirl Whom I Dated Freshman Year of College: She lived on my dormitory floor. We hooked up after I convinced her to cheat on her boyfriend back home. (She turned her photographs of him facedown after we messed around the first time; this actually almost made me feel like an asshole.) I comforted her on 9/11. But she wouldn’t have sex with me after a couple weeks of dating, not even in the wake of the first terrorist attack on American soil—not even the oral variety—so I dumped her.

My Apology: “Wow, I was a dick to you freshman year, huh? I can't imagine you remember me too fondly but I've definitely mellowed and I try to treat people a little better, and women with more class, so for what it's worth.... I hope all’s well with you.”

Response to My Apology: No response.

……………….

The old sock-on-the-doorknob method: Essential for roommate harmonyMy Roommate Freshman Year of College: An Orthodox Jew. We had absolutely nothing in common. He never brought girls back to the room because of his religious beliefs and therefore refused to work out a “sock on the door” system, subsequently walking in on me and the girl whom I dumped after 9/11, not like it mattered because we weren’t having sex anyway. In retaliation I masturbated in our room while he tried to do homework, and I once smoked a cigar with the window closed, which triggered his asthma. (The stench seeped into everything: clothes, towels, sheets, toothpaste. He had to sleep on a couch in the student lounge for three nights. I did too, and I don’t have asthma.)

My Apology: “I definitely was a prick to you freshman year and probably could’ve handled the situation with more maturity. I hope that’s all a distant memory for you and that all is well in D.C. or wherever you’re living these days.”

Response to My Apology: No response.

………………

How many apologies?: Maimonides recommends threeGirl Whom I Made Cry in High School: On a class trip to New York sophomore year, a bunch of my friends spent the night in our hotel room talking dirty about chicks. We didn’t know that the girls were eavesdropping on our conversation through the door. At one point I compared two of them thusly: “[Girl #1] should give her tits to [Girl #2] because they’re totally going to waste considering her troll face.” Girl #1 spent the night sobbing in the stairwell. The other chicks forced me to apologize, but frankly she should have apologized to me for spying.

My Apology: “I'm sure you remember a certain incident on our New York trip. Well, I still feel pretty bad about that one, so I hope it didn't cause any long-lasting psychological trauma and you've long since moved on. I hope all is well w/ you and look forward to your response!”

Response to My Apology: No response.

………………

African-American Friend to Whom I Made Offensive Comment: His mother drove us home when we were in junior high since we lived in the same neighborhood. I honestly do not remember saying this—and frankly I have trouble believing it—but apparently at one point I rolled down the car window and screamed, “HELP! I’M BEING KIDNAPPED BY A BLACK FAMILY!” (Hey, at least I have an African-American friend… well, at least I did.)

My Apology: “Holy shit, did I really say that?!?!?!?!”

Response to My Apology: No response.

……………….

Whisker sour: Would you forgive?Girl Whom I Mocked for Having a Mustache: In her words on my Facebook wall, “Last time I remember talking to you I think I was still in junior high and you were making fun of me for having a mustache. It was a pretty good time.”

My Apology: “Wow, I am a dick and I am sorry! How’s it going?”

Response to My Apology: No Response.

………………..

"I'll tell YOU when I've had enough!": Yes, you have to repent for things you don't rememberGuy Whom I Insulted at His Own Party: My girlfriend and I were invited to a house party a year ago. I had never met anyone in attendance but she knew a bunch of people from her classes. I had a bit too much to drink—Tanqueray Rangpur, truly vile shit—and whispered in the host’s ear, “I know you’re a fucking pervert, you sick motherfucker; I can see it in your eyes.” As I was dragged out after a litany of subsequent accusations, I kept screaming, “You’re a fucking pervert; I can tell it, you sick son of a bitch.” My girlfriend covered her face in shame but had a wonderful time the next morning with her favorite game: Do You Remember What You Said Last Night?

My Apology: “I guess that was a pretty bad first impression. Just because you’re a Catholic doesn’t mean that you’re a pervert.”

Response to My Apology: No response.

……………………..

Party fowl: But it led to love!Friend Whom I Cock-Blocked for Love: I met my girlfriend four years ago at my friend Greg’s nineteenth birthday party. He had a crush on her, which I knew—and he had recently lost fifty pounds in an effort to make himself attractive to females—but she and I had amazing chemistry from the beginning and wound up in bed together that night. Anyway, my friend actually cried over it because he really liked her and really trusted me, which was a pretty big mistake on his part.

My Apology: “That was wrong, man. I betrayed you…I betrayed ‘bros before hos.’”

Response to My Apology: “I accept your apology. If you hadn’t taken her, I wouldn’t have met [my long-term girlfriend], so it all worked out for the best. Plus you’ll never forget to wish me a happy birthday.”

………………………

Total landmine: Approach with cautionMy Current Girlfriend: A week ago she suggested that we should have pizza for dinner. “We haven’t exercised once this summer,” I said. “Don’t you think we need to lose some weight?” (She has commented for months that we need to lose weight, but God forbid that I acknowledge the same thing.) “What do you mean WE?!?” she bellowed, proceeding to not speak to me—or acknowledge my existence—for the next four hours, until I walked into the bedroom buck-naked, flexing my biceps and jiggling my flabtastic belly, also known as “the Lovechild.”

Response to My Apology: Orgasm sounds.

………………………

So there you have it: Eight apologies, only one absolution. Maybe Maimonides was right about not using Facebook.

[This article has been edited since publication.]

Yesterday facebook had one of its daily surveys ask “Are you religious?” The majority of the 1000 respondents said no.

You can look over the stats here, and see the breakdown of how many men and women answered, how old the respondents were and so on. (You may have to sign in to facebook to see this info—I’m not sure).
Just Don't Ask: if I'm religious.
I didn’t respond to the question myself (I didn’t even find out about it until a friend emailed me) but it really annoys me. It annoys me first because it’s completely ambiguous. It’s not like it’s easy to pin down what “religious” means, especially when for a lot of people it’s more a state of mind than anything else, and thus fairly difficult to measure. And if it’s about observancy then you have the problem of where exactly you draw the line—in Judaism does it mean attending synagogue/Temple? Keeping Shabbat/Kosher? Marrying a Jew? Who decides?

But beyond that, I don’t like it because it seems like it just feeds into this whole thing of America dividing itself between religious whackjobs and Godless heathens. And the last thing I need is someone else trying to tell me why God can’t possibly exist.

Facebook surveys are hardly comprehensive, scientific or nuanced in any way, and I can’t imagine facebook would have any objections to that statement. Still, I see the survey as indicative of a larger problem: people define themselves by their religious identity in a way that’s no good for anyone.

Being Jewish is a big part of my life, but it’s not now and has never been the way I introduce myself to people. Even in my work here at Jewcy it’s important to me that people see that I do plenty of non-Jewish things, I have non-Jewish friends, and listen to punk music and generally balance the Jewish world with the non-Jewish world in a way that works for me. I just don’t like to see any population divided into bar graphs of religious and not religious.

You know what I just realized? I mostly don’t like it because it reminds me of life in Israel.

If you’re under 30, chances are you have either a facebook profile, a MySpace page, or both. And if you’re on facebook or MySpace, you’ve probably had some of those sick to your stomach moments. Maybe it was when you saw pictures posted of a party you weren’t invited to, or found out from the newsfeed that your ex has got a blond leggy new girlfriend. Or maybe you were moved out of your best friend’s Top Eight. Either you heard something you didn’t really want to know, or you broadcast something you kind of wish you hadn’t. It’s happened to all of us, and it really sucks.

Personally, I have a love/hate relationship with facebook (thus far I’ve kept myself from developing any relatioship with MySpace). On the one hand, I love that it reminds me about birthdays and helps me keep track of which of my friends are where, and what their latest contact information is. I think of it like a rolodex that my friends update for me. BUT I’ve had some seriously upsetting facebook experiences. Turns out there are some people who I really don’t want to find me, and some things I’d really rather not know about my friends.

I hadn’t thought about these issues in a Jewish context, but then at Limmud NY there was a session called ‘What does Judaism have to say about Facebook and MySpace?’ led by Rabbi Joan Glazer Farber. Rabbi Glazer-Farber presented a bunch of texts having to do with lashon hara (gossip) and publicly humiliating people, which are definitely issues that arise on social networking sites. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think these are more prevalent problems with younger users. I keep reading articles about teenagers bullying each other via MySpace and facebook, but the sense I get is that it’s the same kind of stuff we used to do in real life back when I was 14. I’m not saying it’s okay, but I’m not sure it’s any worse than other kinds of bullying.

My experience is that social networking is all about proving yourself. These sites are built on the principle of “If you’ve got it, flaunt it.” I don’t necessarily have a problem with that, but I think most of the time other people don’t really care about whatever you’re flaunting. And when they do? Well, then you’re screwed. Being held to something you posted on facebook at four in the morning? Not fun. Somebody will ask you about it. Somebody could tell your mom about it (that seriously happened to a friend of mine). There’s a pretty huge potential for it to bite you in the ass.

The Shulchan Aruch, (Hoshen Mishpat 154:7) says that it’s prohibited to stand at your window and look into your neighbor’s courtyard, even if your neighbor helped you build the window and knows that you can see onto his property. The implication is that your neighbor might have forfeited his right to privacy, but that still doesn’t make it okay to snoop. And that’s why facebook makes me nervous. It feels too much like snooping sometimes, and even though I know my friends are aware that the stuff they wrote and posted is available to everyone to see, I still think it’s sketchy. I think most of us aren’t aware of how much privacy we actually want until it’s too late.

What about you guys? Is anyone else a little freaked out about all this?