Low-Hanging Fruit

Looking back over my archives of the past few months it would seem I have been eating my way through the blogosphere.  By this I mean that I have been fortunate enough to meet many of the people I regularly read for meals in my home or in various Israeli eateries. 

The most recent participants in this ongoing gastronomic shmoozefest were the esteemed Mo Chassid, Ben Chorin and Chayei Sarah, with whom I recently shared a delicious breakfast at Cafe Hillel.  Noa, of Jerusalem Revealed, was also supposed to join us, but an exam (she's a nursing student at Hadassah) kept her away.  :-(

One of the interesting things about this trio of talented writers is that each of them blogs under a nom de plum, maintaining the thinnest imaginable pretense of anonymity.  By this I mean that anyone who reads them regularly and hasn't yet figured out who they are simply isn't paying attention (I know, I know... to each his/her own).  Be that as it may, it was an honor and a pleasure to join them on Jerusalem's trendy Emek Rafa'im street for good food, coffee and conversation. 

As we took our seats in this comfortable eatery (that had been the site of a tragic bombing only a year ago), I looked at my dining companions and silently took stock of my good fortune to associate with such active and disciplined minds. 

The pleasant aroma of freshly-pulled espresso shots competed quietly with the murmur of the morning crowd for my attention.  Meanwhile Stan Gets played Jobim bossa novas quietly from the overhead speakers, and Jerusalem Post Editor-in-Chief David Horovitz sat splayed conspicuously a few tables away... simultaneously crowd-watching and allowing himself to be be seen by the watching crowd.

As I've mentioned before, Ben Chorin (a pseudonym that translates roughly as 'Free Man') is a neighbor of mine... at least physically.  I make this distinction because I don't consider myself Ben's peer in any other respect.  While we may share a love of the Judean hills and a fondness for the combination of bourbon and schmaltz herring, the topics about which he writes make my scribblings seem downright pedestrian by comparison.  Mind you, he's not for everyone... this is not the freshman intro-level course.  But if you are interested in Jewish topics on a rarefied level, you'd be crazy not to blogroll him.

Chayeh Sarah is also someone with whom I would suffer in certain side-by-side comparisons.  While Sarah blogs anonymously, she makes no secret of her training and vocation as a journalist (and even occasionally links to articles with her own byline!).  Here too I gladly stand aside and give credit where credit is due.  I may write a pleasing passage from time-to-time, but Sarah has all the discipline, focus and innate curiosity that I lack... all necessary ingredients in someone who wants to scratch out a living from the fourth estate.

Although I have been following various incarnations of his online writing for almost a year now, MO Chassid's face over the breakfast table was a new one for me.  For those not familiar with him or his oxymoronic pen name, MO Chassid stands for 'Modern-Orthodox Chassid', two groups that most would consider to be mutually exclusive.  However, his writing makes it clear that there is much the Modern Orthodox and Chassidic 'worlds' could (and should) learn from one another, and that one would do well to emulate a subset from the best qualities of these two groups.  When I found out MO was going to be visiting Israel on business, I jumped at the opportunity to meet him in person.

Now that you have a sense of who was sitting at the roundtable (OK, it was square, but the self-important literary reference was irresistible), I should probably share a bit about the topics such able minds discussed during this momentous meeting. 

Prepare to be disappointed.

When relative strangers who respect one-another gather for conversation and sustenance, they rarely set out straight-away to create workable solutions for world hunger or peace in the middle east.  The boring truth is that we talked about family, about the weather, about food, about current events... in short, about pedestrian things.  It was pleasant to sit back and observe occasional flashes of their online personas (MO's compassion, Ben's wit and Sarah's intensity) as these three active minds held forth on various topics and the latest news, but it was deeply satisfying to have them mostly on my turf; talking about the mundane, the street-level observation... the here and now.

Why am I telling you all this?  Could you have gone on living your lives without knowing I enjoyed a mushroom quche with three other bloggers?  Yes, of course.  But I couldn't figure out a better way to tell you that I consider myself rich beyond measure. 

These conversations and personal encounters I've been lucky enough to experience are all low-hanging fruit which most readers and writers in the online world walk past every day.  Anyone who lacks for the growth and insight that comes from meeting better and brighter minds than his/her own simply hasn't opened the door and looked to see who is waiting right outside.  This isn't to say that meeting your blogging heroes is for everyone... but opening one's eyes and learning from them is an education that everyone can afford.

I can't wait for this Shabbat when another online personality will [hopefully] grace chez treppenwitz with her presence ... and unique view of the world.