Foreword: This is a post that will probably be taken very seriously and out-of-context. Please consider that I’m not an anti-semite, nor anti-Israel, nor Judeophobic. I consider this either a psychological issue – or maybe a psychological disorder – or a religious issue. Comments – even trolling comments – are open, as I think that such an obvious and pathetic call for unnecessary attention deserves callous anonymous responses.

This is simply an explanation on a stupid and irrational reaction that has occurred constantly to me for an extended period of time, which I hope to end either now or soon. Please take it as such.
Over the last several months, I have been having an issue with my left leg, one that, strangely, only shows up whenever I read about Israel, people with Jewish ancestry, or Judaism.

When it happens, my left leg begins to tingle, mostly from the knee downward on normal days or from my calf downward in the worst cases. This tingling sensation ranges from a mere buzz to a severely distracting "fire" in my nerves, going from the epidermal surface to a few millimeters underneath; it is hard to contain the sensation when I start to read on the above topics, and it usually begins in my left foot going upward in progressive direction.

The sensation can last for minutes on end until I stop reading on or thinking about the above topic, after which it subsides downward, disappearing from out the tips of my toes. It usually has me scratching on my leg and my feet, although scratching never helps force a subsiding of the buzz (or "burning", if you will).

I’ve had this issue for months now, and I have feared disclosing this to my mother in full until the last hour prior to writing this. Soon after 1:17 am, I was told to go to bed and turn off the monitor of the PC in our den, while the sensation was active and proceeding in my left leg; I had just gotten done writing the Wikipedia article on the Israeli diaspora. As soon as I went to bed, I questioned myself on whether to ask my mother about this constant reaction of the left leg to anything "Jewish".

The lights were off in the bedroom, and then I encountered noises of moving paper from the other side of the room. I turned on the light and saw that a German cockroach had crept into the house and walking through the stacked paper on the other side of the bedroom. I walked as fast as I could to the kitchen to find the Raid ‘Ant & Roach’ spray. Mom woke up to me turning on the lights (she’s not a good sleeper) and asked about what I was doing; I told her that there was a roach in the back that needed killing, but couldn’t find the bug spray. So, instead, I went to the living room, sat on the couch, and disclosed to her my left leg’s reactive impulses and the conditions which "caused" it to react in such a manner.

As I expected, she reacted with a suggestion that I pray to God and ask for help; apparently, with something this uncommon and irrational, what other way could one pursue (apart from a shrink)? Then we went into a lengthy discussion about my fears, my shortcomings, my lack of a spiritual focus.

I told her that I was fearful of the Jewish people for no obvious reason whatsoever; indeed, all the many anti-Semitic writings posted on the Internet concerning the Jews and how supposedly rich and powerful they are have not made an agreeable impression upon me, as I’m already familiar with the fact that there are rich Jews, poor Jews, hippie Jews, religious Jews, religio-nationalist Jews who *really* hate the secular Jews, Jews with .42s, Jews who want freedom from the Matrix, and so on. So they’re about as diverse and divided as the rest of us, IMO.

Then I remembered how I always find myself peeking at the TV when TBN comes on (Mom’s favorite spiritual satisfaction outlet) with a documentary about the "End of Days" and the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem featuring as many End-times literature mavens such as Tim LaHaye and Israeli political celebrities such as Binyamin Netanyahu, and then shaking my head at the absurdity of it all. I mean, the Jewish people being used by the fundamentalist Christians in the West (by encouraging Aliyah and subsequent measures to keep the Jews in Israel and encourage the religious fundamentalists in Israel to press toward the building of the temple) to build the Temple and then permanently establish Judeo-Christian hegemony in the area by default (for the Christians, it means the elimination of the Muslims by the return of Jesus to earth, as it is supposed that the return of all 12 tribes and the building of the temple will be immediately followed by the establishment of Heaven on Earth, the New Jerusalem and the return of the world to the pre-Eden status of relations between humanity and God).

But then I remembered that I had debated this issue of the attempted hastening of the return of Jesus (or at least the attempted rebuilding of the temple) time and time again with my mother at the dinner table, always with the reply "No man knows the day nor the hour, so what they’re doing is wrong". Yet, she watches the shows which immerse themselves in such a topic.

So then Mom, lying on the couch, said to me that maybe my fear of Israel is really a fear of death; that if I die, I won’t have any control over which direction my soul takes for eternity, or at least I won’t know if that – Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, or just wandering around in a graveyard – is my fate as a disembodied human until after my last breath.

Maybe it is. Or maybe it is a fear that I don’t know to which hand my soul will be commended upon the cessation of my physical life.

Honestly, I have no idea.

My mother has always emphasized that, in order to be "saved", one must have a working relationship with God (the one from the Holy Bible’s many versions, of course). From the teacher who I had from 10th to 12th grade, I was told that God only answers the prayers of the righteous (i.e., those who are "saved", although she did voice in a similar breath that the European Jews were punished by God for not moving to nor establishing themselves in Israel sooner with the Holocaust, which eventually drove them out of Germany).

But I don’t have such a relationship with God. In fact, the only reasons why I pray at all to God (or go to church with her on Sundays) are the following:

• I’m under Mom’s roof
• I don’t know any other path, and most of the ones which I’ve come across in literature seem too archaic or nonpersonal to me.
• I’m afraid of making a total jump, as I’ve been raised to fear and love a "jealous God"
• Continual emphasis that there must be a living reason as to why we’ve continued as a family, or why I’ve continued on with college, through a diverse range of hardships to which others around us have either succumbed or been subjected with heavy scars. It must be a blessing from the Lord.

But I can’t seem to keep this up, this charade of salvation.

To me, God embodies alot of the qualities of humanity that one could care less for. He’s jealous, exclusive, vindictive, spiteful. It is HIS way, the high-way, or no way at all if you simply don’t have the preparation to walk the high-way with both feet padded.

He’s intellectually arrogant, proprietarian, and he’s immune from criticism.

And I’m supposed to have a relationship with him? WTF?

But then I wonder….

why is God so obsessed with Israel, or vice versa? Why is it that Israel, a comparative dot in a map of the Asian continent, is interpreted by not just Jews but also Christians and Muslims (1 billion for both) as something akin to God’s genitals (or "hir" stomach, if God is androgynous)? Why is it that God = Israel is such an item in both Western and Islamic media, besides it being the subject of "Oh Jerusalem, if I forget thee…"?

Is this because, well….God is the God of the Jews and the Jews only?

I mean, the Bible is delivered to Christians everywhere with this fixation of God upon Israel and the Israeli/te/Judean people and their welfare; the whole thing about how "I’ll bless those that bless thee and curse those that curse thee" comes to mind from Sunday sermons. God + Israel are, and have been, tight like this:

OK….bad example.

So then the question becomes this:

Why would I want to fuck with the Jewish people or their properties (as in "Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances, we guard you while you sleep. Do NOT fuck with us.") unless I’m Jewish or want to claim non-Judah Jewish ancestry in order to get Aliyah on the cheap away from the sad sack of a region in which I live?

God…Yahweh….Adonai….Elohim….he’s the god of the Jewish people. He’s the God of Israel.

He’s *their* property (or vice versa), not ours.

Not mine.

Maybe my leg has been reacting to this fact, that the people who fear him the most or are descended from such people attract such vociferous and violent opposition from their surrounding public in the way that they do (I mean, throughout their frickin’ history as a diaspora) because the God that is being appropriated by both Christianity and Islam (which predominate in the areas where the pogroms, the Holocausts and the discriminatory laws are formed against Jewish people…and LGBTs) actually belongs to the Jewish people as a figure of worship.

Maybe we in the West and in the Middle East are so fixated on what is happening, what has happened and what will happen in Israel and the conflicts which that state faces because we’re worshiping and praising a God that is just as fixated more upon Israel…and less upon us who’re not Jewish.

I mean, there must be a reason why India, with a majority-Hindu population, never took to their Jewish minority in the same way that their more Westerly neighbors did; there, the Jews were simply another minority with a distinct way of worship, just like all the others with their own personal or community rites, rituals and dieties. They weren’t especially upheld or demoted as being "different" from the others based upon their ethnoreligious status.

Maybe I should take a similar path, one that fully departs from the Monotheism of the Jewish people, in order to both end my left leg issue, and end my own personal fixation upon the Jewish people.

Maybe there is such a being as your "personal God", one who understands you within a more specific demographic context than a God who has been appropriated from another specific group to appeal to anybody who seeks salvation from damnation.

The Jews have a God already. They already have a path to pursue to the "End of days".

But I’m not Jewish. Their God isn’t my God, and their path is not my path to pursue unless I specifically wanted to become Jewish and go through such a process (which I don’t).

Therefore, why should I follow a group that wants to pursue the same or similar path but co-opt the resident God as their own?

I don’t like the idea. I guess my leg just beat me to that conclusion.

All respect to both, but the Jews can have Him.

I’m looking for a different path at the moment.

(As soon as I started writing this at around 2 AM, I saw the roach on the floor crawling next to the desk. I ran for the spray, but when I came back with it, I saw that he had simply rolled on his back and couldn’t get up; no spray required. It’s two hours afterward, and I think he’s dead…of his own accord…..Wow.

As soon as I saw him like that, rolled on his back with little hope of righting himself, I started writing in earnest.)