The Origins of Mitio

The Origins of Mitio

WARNING: The Following Material Contains EXPLICIT Jewish Words and Ideas, Please be Advised.

“Mitio” is the name I have gone by since the first next of Sukkoth 5769. It’s a bit of a long story, as you would expect from a story that involves a name change.


Deepening my connection with Judaism


Ultimately it all started when I went to Ukraine and I became interested in Judaism, but it was my trip to Israel, in June of 2007, which left a deep desire to have more then just an intellectual/philosophical connection to Judaism. There I encountered people who had such fresh, radical, and inspiring understandings of God and the teachings. Spiritually speaking it was two discussions that had a lasting impacted on me, which motivated me to look for something more than words and ideas. The first was a discussion on Shabbat, the second was a discussion on Heschel and “Radical Amazement”.

The Shabbat discussion occurred on Shabbat as I was walking from King David’s to the Kotel (the Western Wall) with Pesach, one of the most incredible, compassionate, outgoing, spiritually active people I met so far. My opinion was that in our world there is so much suffering and injustice that there was no point in taking a “rest” when there was so much work to be done. Pesach commended me for my dedication to social justice, but said that way of living isn’t sustainable; after awhile you will burnout. He further went on by explain that Shabbat was not a “day off” but a day to physically and spiritually “recharge” (only in ADAMAH did I learn the importance of Shabbat as a physical rest). I’m not sure if this is the traditional understanding on why we should observe Shabbat, but viewing it this way gave a once alien holiday deep personal meaning.

The Heschel discussion was lead by a man name Michael on the banks of the Jordan River. In this he explained the Jewish understanding of nature and connected it to Heschel’s concept of “Radical Amazement”. From this discussion I realized that my Judaism was incomplete because there was no appreciation for what God has blessed the world with; in a sense I had become desensitized to the beauty of life and only wanted to acknowledge the negative. I decided that I needed rediscover the magnificence of life, and I want to do this as a Jew.

So it is ironic that when I went to teach in Japan, and begin what I believed my life in Japan that I focused almost exclusively on learning about Judaism, honoring Shabbat, and realizing the blessings in my own life. So I spent a good amount of time in Japan giving myself the Jewish education that I never had—of course I also explored Japan too!


Question of Identity and a History Lesson


Another important thing to know is even since I was a child, identity has always been important to me. I think you know”Rothstein” is my last name, but when I was born it was “Leide” (which comes from “to suffer” in German, and it comes from Germany). When I was ten I decided that because I had no association with my father I should not have his name; his family had no connection with me, so why should I have one with them? So I decided to go by my mother’s maiden name.

What is ironic is that it is partially because of the significant amount of time in college researching about Koreans in Japan and their politics of identity that would cause me to eventually look at my own identity. It bothered me that for the majority of Koreans, that is the ones who want to become citizens of Japan, they have to remove the distinct aspects of their culture and heritage and replacing them with a fully Japanese identity. Eventually this view of assimilation eventually caused me to exam the history of the Jewish community in America and how it handled preserving its past while living in the present day.

For so many Jews who came from Europe, especially Eastern Europe, in the early 20th century America truly was the land of freedom and opportunity (comparatively speaking). The shtetl life that is glorified in “Fiddler on the Roof” might have had a supportive, tight-knit community, but it was oppressive for anyone who wanted to break with tradition. The Jews couldn’t leave the shtetl because either the law prevented them or it was too dangerous; they were stuck. Sure there was anti-Semitism in America, but at lest there weren’t pogroms. And so for most of the Jews living on the Lower-Eastside of Manhattan, they for the first time chose what in Judaism they would observe. This would be, one of the many, “beauties” that what America gave the Jews, and the most radical break in Jewish tradition, the freedom to choose.

Jews involved themselves in every bit of America as we could at the time, and over time, like many minorities, we chose to shed the “strange” aspects of our culture to fit in. It was rational to assimilate to a certain degree, but I feel that for many Jews who came to America near and after the turn of the twentieth century went too far. Now that our neighbor weren’t trying to kill us, and over time we were admitted in to the Ivy Leagues, we wanted to be more like our neighbors—who, as we move into the 1950’s, were usually not Jewish. For the first time Jews lived in neighborhoods and went to school with non-Jews, in the Old World this could have never happened. We did as we liked, without fear of the shtetl finding out, and, like many minorities who are able to live in a country without discrimination, we bought into American culture.

I feel for so many in the Jewish community we have lost our primary identity as Jews to become Americans. I am not ashamed to be American, but I disagree with many within the Jewish communities who have chosen to disconnect from their past—I am a perfect example of an American Jew who’s family came from Eastern Europe and fully assimilated. For many people that I have encountered, it seems, they are only Jewish because their parents are, or because they feel guilty about being something else. For many Jews I’ve met, their Jewish life ended the moment they began Hebrew school (and a Bar Mitzvah was just a way to make a couple of extra Bucks).

I’m not advocating the isolationist mentality harbored by many within the Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) community, but I feel that if we continue down our present path then our heritage will become as foreign to us as Yiddish. My way of fighting against this negative trend is to try to reengage with tradition in my own life, and discover by own torah. It’s not easy, but I try to remember that Jews can live outside the torah, but we shouldn’t forget it, for it has been the pillar of Jewish civilization since the beginning.

With these ideas of assimilation and identity in my head, I found myself wondering about my own identity. What was I a Jewish-American, or an American-Jew? Which was the identity and which was only the context in which informed the identity. Eventually I decided that I am an American-Jew; I could be any nationality but I would never give up my heritage.


The Name


The idea of changing my “name” came up while I was reading a fantasy novel called “A Wizard of Earth-Sea” which is filled with allusions to Taoism (perhaps my favorite non-Jewish philosophy), and such a superb piece of literature. Within the story we learn that how people have two names; one is a name they use with other people while the other is their true name. Aside from all the fantasy stuff, the true name in a sense their essence, or inner power; this idea of a name being the essence or purpose of someone inspired me to look at my own name.

So it was within this mental environment—my greatening association with Judaism and my beliefs about identity and assimilation—that I began to consider changing the name “Steven” to something else. I was given the name “Steven”, but never had any meaning for me other than that’s what other people called me, and so because I was called that I called myself Steven. It was nothing more than a label. My Hebrew name is Leibel, which means little lion in Yiddish, but this name I had little association with either. I started thinking that my name, like everything in life, should have personal meaning. I didn’t want my name to be just another label that people used to refer to me, I wanted it to be my essence, my purpose, the title of my “mission”.

So I began searching through the Tanakh and Jewish history for people who stories resonated with my own life. But one day as I was searching the internet about Tikkun Olam I came across a line from the Mishnah that read, “mip’nei tikkun ha-olam”, or in English, “for the sake of healing/restoring/reconnecting/ repairing the world”, and something about that line just felt so right.

What is tikkun olam? I could start listing all these quotes about what it is or isn’t, everyone has their own understanding, which is usually based on their religious observance and/ or political ideology. To be fair, before I begin stating my own understanding of tikkun olam, the “Jewish community” is an enormously diverse community, and so are the people within the sub-communities therefore it is difficult to generalize what a group believes because the individual adherents might have differing opinions. What it means to be is this:

In our lives there are two worlds that need tikkun, the external, physical, social world and the internal, mental/emotional/spiritual, personal world. tikkun olam is both the repairing of these worlds, and the balancing of the effort we put into each of these worlds. I believe that the Jewish saga Hillel held this true when he taught, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when”?

Tikkun olam has been the central link with my connection to Judaism (I first encountered the idea when I had gone to Ukraine), so it was only right that my true name should involve the concept. By the time I had left Japan I had my name “Mitio”, an acrostic of “mip’nei tikkun ha-olam” (I dropped “ha” because it simply means “the”, and I thought a name ending with “o” sounded better).

I wanted to change my name, but I didn’t know how or when to do it; something as important as a name deserves a proper entrance into the world. I decided to do it while I was in ADAMAH because it is ADAMAH. I originally planned to have a formal ceremony of being called up to read the torah, but at the spur of the moment I decided to do it on the first night of Sukkoth 5769. That night it just felt right: the October night was cool and blessed with a full moon with a halo of light around it, there was a community of politically and spiritually active people around me (we were in a big tent or “sukkah”, and ironically Pesach was there!), and in the tent we were inviting Abraham and Sarah into “join” us, but everyone soon began inviting other important people not with us to join in on the celebrating. It was in this holy atmosphere where I invited “Mitio” into the tent and to the world. I, more or less, said the following after I announced my name:

Who is Mitio? Mitio is the person I both am and am trying to become. By changing my name I have begun to change my identity. Mitio is my attempt to balance the conflicting human extreme virtues of selfishness and selflessness; for I believe that real and lasting change in this world cannot happen until we change ourselves. Or in other words, to heal the world we must heal ourselves, but if we focus too much on our own healing we will never heal the world.

---

---