Die Warzau wrote:

Ambassador SEYED MOUHAMMAD ALI MOOSAVI, Embassy of Iran, 245 METCALFE ST., OTTAWA ONTARIO.K2P 2K2 CANADA
COUNTRY AREA CODE :001 613
TEL :2354726-2334726
CONSULAR TEL :2334726
FAX :2335712

In Jewish tradition there is a phrase- Tikkun Olan- that means, roughly translated “Perfecting the world.” It’s an ideology of service to the world. The idea, basically, is that the world, if left to its own devices, becomes more imperfect for us to live in. It’s only through our effort that it gets any better for us. And there is a reason why it’s not “making the world perfect”, and that reason is that Perfection is a great and audacious huge million mile tall ideal that only happens in mythology and fairy tales, early philosopher’s brains and theoretical mathematics. Perfection is nonsense to us. “Perfecting” is a process- a process that we can engage in every day.


If you don’t clean your house- it gets dirtier. We don’t clean our houses thinking that one day it’s going to be perfectly clean and we can stop and never clean again. We clean because we know that the dirt won’t stop. We clean because we know that if we stop, the dirt wins. There are places in my house, right now, where the dirt has pretty much won, but that’s beside the point. “Perfecting is a daily effort”, unlike “Perfect”- a lifelong unreachable goal. Tikkun Olan is a process that gives us a tool to deal with the “dirt”. We keep cleaning, sometimes in tiny increments, because that’s what works. We vote- we speak out- we do tiny things. We change people’s minds.

One of the truly kickass things about being a secular humanist atheist is that you get to pick ideas that are sensible and ignore the magnificently stupid ones. Tikkun Olan is a smart idea, not because it’s been handed down by Rabbis since Alan Greenspan was almost a tissue smudge. It’s smart because it works and it makes good empirical, logical sense. Not touching women when they are menstruating, though- not such a good idea. Judaism is full of brilliant and insanely stupid ideas, like every dogmatic package of traditions.

Loving your neighbor, forgiving them and cherishing them, is a smart idea because it makes good solid empirical, logical sense. Not mixing fabrics and refusing to eat shrimp because a poorly written ancient paperbound semitic sheepherding blog tells us not to- probably not so much. Every idea needs to live or die on its own. It’s easy for many people to accept a whole range of ideas in one fell swoop because somebody 2,000 years ago thought they’d all fit nicely together into their reader’s digest pocket buddy. We do ideas a disservice when we fail to look at them critically- good ones and bad ones.


So speaking of bad ideas that have been hanging on for 2,000 years brings me back to why we can’t stop cleaning. The address above, at the beginning of this blog belongs to the Iranian Embassy in Canada. The US currently has no diplomatic relationship with Iran so there is no embassy here. Canada’s our buddy, though, they don’t mind if we call their embassy.

The reason I am asking you to call, however, is that we have to keep cleaning right now and we can’t give in to the feelings that come next. Since 1979, 4,000 gay and lesbian men and women have been executed by the Iranian Government for no other reason than that they violated a stupid, pointless 2,000 year old law that says that homosexuality is wrong.

And the reason I am asking you to call now is that I have names for you. Initials, actually. The Initials are M.A. and A.M. and I am imagining right now that they were my kids. They were 18 and 16 years old and if you translate this you can read all about how they were arrested, tortured for over a year and then hung on Tuesday in front of the world and their families for being gay. These two boys were murdered as part of the ongoing systematic genocide being perpetrated against homosexuals on this planet, a genocide that enjoys the tacit compliance of conservative organizations all over the world.

We fight by changing minds. There is no other real way. I don’t know if you can convince people by killing their children. Do we bomb Iran? Does that clean anything? Do I advocate killing their children because they killed mine? If we don’t change minds than the dirt wins. The dirt that murdered two boys this last Tuesday. The Dirt that draws us closer and closer to that murder every day in this country. The dirt that chokes us.

What’s a stupid letter or a phone call? What does it matter? I don’t know. What does it matter if you clean your house today. I just know what happens when you stop.