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vanherndon · 4 years ago

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Your Investment in Christ: How Invested Are You?

This is the sermon that I wrote and preached on October 4, 2020.

Your Investment in Christ: How Invested Are You?

Introduction:

Welcome to the Dover church of Christ. It is good to see you all.

If you turn on the tv or look on social media then you will find an immense buffet of issues to provoke the emotions, causes to pick up the banner of and march in support of, either metaphorically or in actuality.

We are constantly bombarded with worldly topics that compete for our attention and for our effort.

So today, I would like to raise the question, when it comes to your investment in Christ, how invested are you?

For those of you familiar with my chosen vocation outside the church, rest assured that this sermon is not alluding to that vocation nor is it an advertisement.

The idea of investment lends itself well to our topic today because there are certain similarities that an investment metaphor can easily explain or guide our understanding. Indeed, the Bible itself uses the idea of investment in exploring the practice of our faith.

There are two applications that I am attempting to make with our discussion today. If you have yet to become a Christian, then it is my goal concerning you to provide you with scriptural ideas to consider in your decision to become a Christian. Make no mistake, it is not my intent to arm you with an excuse so as you can continue in your path of being a sinner alien to the body of Christ, for the Bible says in Acts 17:30 "Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent,...” My goal for you today is to make sure that when you do come to the decision to obey the Gospel of Christ that you have at the very least began a proper examination of the cost that is attributed to being a disciple of Christ, and in so doing, when hard times come, your chances of stumbling or faltering in the faith are as small as possible because we have helped you set the proper expectations.

If you are here today and you are a member of the Body of Christ, then I hope that our discussion will provoke you to examine yourself and determine how you measure up to the Word of God. Even the finest sailors of times of old had to turn to the sky and measure their position in relation to the stars and if found off course, make the appropriate adjustments. The wind and the current of the sea affected the direction of their journey requiring frequent examination of their course. The same holds true for us in our faith as Christians. The winds and currents of the world are constantly working against us and we need frequent examination and possibly course correction. I have heard it said and have repeated it before in front of you that “Sin is a slippery slope.” Therefore, we should always be diligent in where we place our next step.

Count the cost:

The first example of examining our investment in Christ that we shall look at is found in Luke 14:25-34 where we read...

Now great multitudes went with Him. And He turned and said to them, "If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. "And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. "For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has [enough] to finish [it]-- "lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see [it] begin to mock him, "saying, 'This man began to build and was not able to finish.' "Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? "Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace. "So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple. "Salt [is] good; but if the salt has lost its flavor, how shall it be seasoned?

We find here that Jesus is traveling towards Jerusalem and he is being followed by a large group of people. This group of people had developed the notion that Jesus was here on Earth to establish an earthly kingdom, an idea still promoted by some to this day. They expected to benefit from this earthly kingdom with no change on their part, specifically no inward change of life. Jesus then offers correction to their thinking. He tells them to consider the cost of being His disciple and gives examples of what they can expect.

Let us first look at where our Lord asks the question, “For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost” and also when he asks, “Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?”

Much like with investments of a financial nature, the investment in Christ requires you to sit and examine what must you give up in order to have more in the future. There is what is called an opportunity cost. What must I sacrifice in order to have this other? We will explore the opportunity costs that a Christian can expect in our next point in greater detail in our next point. For our purposes considering this point, there are things that we must give up today in our service to the Lord so that we can prosper in the future, naturally, I speak of Heaven. Farming is, in a sense, an investment. Time, money, and effort are put into growing a crop. It is a labor of love, culminating in the harvest.

It is the same for Christians in that the Word is planted within us. We grow and we help others grow. We tend our own soil as well as cultivate the word in others.

Let us now look at some of the Costs of being a disciple of Christ.

Deny yourself

Luke 14:27 in our text, that we have looked at, says, “And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.” Further in Matthew 16:24-26 we read...

[Mat 16:24-26 NKJV] Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. "For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. "For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?

Finally, a third verse that I want to examine when we discuss what the cost of being a follower of Christ is Matthew 6:33 where we read "But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”

To be a true follower of Christ, we must deny ourselves as Matthew 16:24 instructs and we must take up and bear our cross as Matthew 16:24 and Luke 14:27 both say. We must also put God and his righteousness first in our lives as we are taught in Matthew 6:33.

In our original scripture in Luke 14:26, we read where the Lord says that to be a disciple of Christ, we must “hate” his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.

What is being taught here? What does it mean to hate? The Bible uses the word hate often to mean that we must love something less. So the lesson being taught here is that we are to place the Lord above our earthly father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even our own lives. This is in agreement with Matthew 6:33 where we are to seek FIRST the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

There are those that do not believe in the Bible. There are those that have been pulled astray from the Word or prevented from a true and accurate understanding of God’s Word. These people may even be people that we care for dearly and are close to. My favorite and maybe too often quoted verse says you shall love your neighbor as yourself, but not before it first tells us to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.

We are to put God first. We are to love those around us, but God always takes precedent. Situations may arise where those close to us question what God has said, but we must never falter or fail to say what God says. We must rightly divide the word as the Bible instructs and we must be ready to give a defense. Understand, we are called to obey the Gospel of Christ and to teach others the same. We are then called to win souls. We are not called to win arguments. Galatians 5:22-24 reads, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. And those [who are] Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”

To summarize that point, Love those around us, but by all means, love God more, give him the higher position which he is entitled to, and when disagreements arise, diligent practice the qualities that God’s Word calls the Fruits of The Spirit is needed.

To be a child of God will cost time and effort to learn the Truth

Proverbs 23:23 tells us to Buy the truth, and do not sell [it], [Also] wisdom and instruction and understanding.

Romans 1:16 reads “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.”

James 1:21 says ”Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.

In Acts 17:11-12 we find “These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily [to find out] whether these things were so. Therefore many of them believed, and also not a few of the Greeks, prominent women as well as men.”

Finally, in John 8:32 we are given the verse that inspired our Set Free program "And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

All of these passages refer to the need to study and know the word of God.

When I am concerned about my health, I consult a doctor or other medical professional. I do not want a doctor that didn't take his or her study seriously. There is an old joke that asks “What do you call a person that graduated last in the medical school class?” The answer is “doctor.” There was a time that I chuckled at that joke but as I grow older and find myself needing the service of a Doctor more frequently, I find less and less humor in that particular joke.

When you have a legal matter, you consult a lawyer. You want a lawyer that knows the law. A lawyer that does not know the law is good for a laugh on occasion as long as he or she is not your lawyer. A lawyer who is lacking in study is certainly a bane of a judge's existence.

If we can look at these two earthly examples of professionals in whom we place our trust and desire that they are of the utmost competence. Why then do we neglect to grow ourselves as the only professional that is responsible for understanding God’s will and how to live in a manner according to that will. The only person responsible for you realizing an eternal home in Heaven with our Father is you. You expect a well-trained doctor or lawyer, but how many do not place the same expectations on themselves concerning their salvation? It costs time and effort to learn God’s word.

To be a Christian, one must repent. In Luke 13:3 we find, "I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.” What does it mean to repent?

Let us again consider Matthew 16:24-26

We must give up the pleasure of sin. Sin is man’s greatest problem in that they separate us from God. The problem is further compounded in that sin can be attractive, fun, enjoyable, at least in the short-term. As we have read, we must give up our carnal desires, we must focus on that which is spiritual. We must, as the text says, take up our cross and follow Christ. What does it mean to take up our cross? The cross was the horrific execution tool in crucifixion. To take up your cross means that you must be willing to suffer and even die for the cause of Christ. We have tremendous liberties that we enjoy here in this great country. We are able to enjoy the freedom to worship openly, which is not the case for all Christians.

I want to stop here and relate a video that I saw the other day. It was of a preacher on stage talking about his experiences as a missionary in China. I am sure that you are at least somewhat familiar with how communist states like China have exhibited various levels of hostility towards the Christian faith.

The speaker begins explaining that he was in China to teach twenty-two Christian leaders from the Hunan Province. These twenty-two people rode a bus for thirteen hours to get to the hotel or apartment where classes were being held. Upon arrival, they had to enter the building and take the elevator two by two so as not to draw suspicion or interest as a large group.

When they arrive at the room, there is not enough seating for twenty-two people so most sit on the floor. Since such opportunities are limited, instruction and teaching start at eight AM and continues to five PM to make the most of the time they have and they did this for three days on this occasion.

The instructor that is relaying this story asks his students, “What happens if we are caught?” They reply that he would be deported within twenty-four hours and they would go to prison for three years. He then asked them, “how many of you here had been to prison?” Out of the twenty-two present, eighteen raised their hands.

As they began their study, the preacher hands out the Bibles that he had which was not enough for everyone and so seven people went without. He instructed them to turn to 2 Peter chapter 1 and as he watched most turn the scripture, he saw one woman hand her Bible to another student. As they continued in their study, he understood why the woman handed her Bible off because she quoted the entire chapter from memory. The preacher was very surprised and delighted and he asked her where she had memorized the Bible, she told him it was in prison and she jokingly said that you had a lot of free time in prison to do so. He then asked, “But don’t they confiscate the Bible?” She confirmed that they did. So he then asked how is it that you have something from which to study?” She told him that visitors would smuggle in scraps of paper with scripture written on it and that they would study from that. “Wouldn’t the paper be confiscated if found?” he then asked.

Absolutely, which is why you memorize it as quickly as you can, because they may be able to take the word from your hand, but they cannot take it from your heart.

At the conclusion of the three days as the preacher was finishing class, he asked them how best can I remember you in my prayers after I return home. They answered by explaining that they would appreciate it if he would pray they would be just like the Americans since they can meet freely.

He told him that he could not do that. Of course, this caused much surprise. He explained to them that they traveled on a less than ideal bus thirteen hours to come to study the word of God, whereas most Americans wouldn’t travel greater than an hour. He continued by saying that they sat through class for eight hours a day for three days straight while most Americans get antsy after forty minutes. The time they spent there was while sitting on a hard floor, while most Americans have padded pews. They sat on the floor for eight hours while having no air conditioning. Most Americans wouldn't have come back for a second or third day.

He concluded by explaining that the average American family has between two and three Bibles and they have dust on them while the Chinese were so hungry for the word of God that they studied pieces of paper and memorized the word. He explained to them that while he certainly had the opportunity to study and worship freely, that in every other manner, he would pray that Americans become like them. Take a moment to consider the cost these people face and the energy and enthusiasm with which they face it.

Consider also that prison is one of the more docile costs a Christian may face compared to other atrocities committed against Christians in other lands. As you are doing so, be thankful that the costs you face to be or become a Christian are not so drastic.

When we repent, we must also give up our ways for God’s ways

[Isa 55:7-9 NKJV] 7 Let the wicked forsake his way, And the unrighteous man his thoughts; Let him return to the LORD, And He will have mercy on him; And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon. 8 "For My thoughts [are] not your thoughts, Nor [are] your ways My ways," says the LORD. 9 "For [as] the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.

Are we more worried about our feelings than our faith?

Are we more concerned with our rights than our righteousness?

If someone was to take a look at your social media posts, would they determine your political affiliation before they ascertain that you are a Christian? Another cost in becoming a Christian is as we have previously discussed, YOU MUST PUT GOD FIRST.

That means that sometimes it will cost you in not winning an argument, it may mean that your feelings get hurt, it can mean that you feel your rights are infringed. GOD COMES FIRST.

If you're worried about your feelings, think about the feelings Christ experienced in the Garden of Gethsemane. The stress he felt to the point of sweating drops of blood. Think about his feelings when he found his disciples sleeping when he had asked them to watch with him. God created man in his own image and every man has a soul that God hopes to see make it to Heaven and you should to. That takes priority over your feelings.

If you are worried about winning arguments, then you are flailing at your duty to win souls, because every person that you can offer you a disagreement, again has a soul that you should want to see spend eternity with God in Heaven.

If you are worried about your rights, think about our Lord’s rights as they falsely accused him the night before he died, offered up false witnesses, and illegally tried him on six different occasions during the night. His rights were forfeit so that ultimately you might know a home with him in Heaven.

We must count the cost, we must deny ourselves and we must do it God’s way.

So in considering the similarities of investments to the practice of our faith, again, we must count the cost, deny ourselves today for tomorrow, and finally, we must stick to the plan.

Biblically speaking, we must remain faithful unto the point of death. We read in Revelation 2:10 "...Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.

We must finish what we started. We first gather the information on what it is going to take and then we continue until completion, which for the Christian is either the day your soul leaves your body in the event of physical death or the day the Lord returns for those still living as such time. Counting the cost sets the proper expectations for denying yourself and arms you with the ability to remain faithful. In our text from Luke 14, speaks of the folly of the unfinished tower in the form of wasted time, money, and effort. Our Lord speaks of the defeat of the King that goes to war without counting the cost.

Understand, it is best for every person to obey the Gospel because there is no other to cure the disease of sin than by accessing the redeeming blood of Christ. Counting the cost is not an excuse to not obey, but a way to help you remain faithful until death. Not counting the cost will make you more likely to become discouraged and fall away. If you fall away, you will be lost until you return home and the longer you are gone the harder the journey to return home, not because of anything God has done, but by the hardening of your heart and the temptations of the world. Not only will you be lost, but you are opening the door of opportunity for the world to speak evil of the faith. Not only have you harmed yourself, but you have damaged the influence of the church to save other souls. We read in 2 Peter 2:11-12 “Beloved, I beg [you] as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul, having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may, by [your] good works which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation.”

Count the cost, Deny yourself, and be faithful unto death. How invested are you? Have you counted the cost, Have you lost sight of the cost? Has something come along that has distracted from following the plan?

There is one cost that I have saved until the end of today. To be a disciple of Christ, you must do whatever is necessary to be buried with Christ in the waters of baptism. When Christ went to John the Baptist to be baptized, he left Galilee and traveled to the Jordan River, a distance of some sixty miles. The Ethiopian Eunuch immediately stopped his journey home to be baptized in Acts chapter 8. We are buried with Christ in baptism and we arise a new creature in Christ having put off the old man of sin. If you have counted the cost but have yet to invest yourself further, I ask you today to take the next step.

If you have obeyed the Gospel of Christ culminating in your baptism, but you have become drawn from the plan as I stated above, Won’t you come home?

Whatever your need, we stand ready to assist as together we stand and sing.

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fatimakarim · 6 years ago

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Suzanne Haneef, Islam: The Path of God, pages 7–24

To ALL OF YOU, MY READERS, WHO ARE SEEKING TO KNOW ABOUT THE FAITH OF ISLAM OR WHO ARE SEARCHING FOR A PATH OF LIFE, I DEDICATE THIS WORK, WITH A PRAYER THAT IT MAY BE USEFUL TO YOU IN YOUR QUEST.

“The little book you’re holding in your hands was written by an American woman who accepted Islam in 1965. However, when I first encountered Islam in the mid-50’s, I knew absolutely nothing about this religion or its followers. In fact, whatever I thought I knew-that Muslims believe in a pagan deity called Allah and that they worship Muhammad-couldn’t have been more incorrect and absurd.

At that time, the Muslim presence in this continent was hardly noticeable and was limited almost entirely to foreigners hailing mainly from the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. American Muslims were extreme rarities, who came into their new faith with very little support from any direction: there were very few Muslim communities and Islamic centers, a small and inadequate supply of literature and information about Islam, and a severely limited number of live role models to learn from. The critical question of how Islam could be applied by people living in the mainstream of American society without sacrificing any of its basic principles or teachings had barely been asked, much less answered.

But during the past three decades, all this has changed dramatically. The Muslim community is now firmly established in this continent; currently there are some 1500 mosques or Islamic centers in the United States, and a large number in Canada as well. Muslims are found everywhere, even in the smallest places. They are making significant contributions not only to the religious and spiritual life of North America but in many other areas as well: politics, business, teaching, technology, research, medicine, and the social sphere.

Islam is generally thought of as an Arab religion. But the fact is that Arabs comprise only one-seventh of the world’s Muslims. Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world, followed by Bangladesh, Pakistan and India. Some twenty or so million Muslims live in the People’s Republic of China, and triple that number in the former Soviet republics. Thus, the Muslim population in North America represents the Muslim world in miniature. While it consists primarily of Arabs and Indo-Pakistanis, there are also significant numbers of North Africans, Iranis, Afghans, Turks, Bosnians and South East Asians. And there is a steadily increasing number of American Muslims.

Still, in spite of this growing Muslim population, and the fact that Islam and Muslims are constantly in the news, many people in America know almost as little about Islam as I did a third of a century ago. We may imagine that we’re getting a lot of information on the subject from the media, but much of what comes to us is actually misinformation, which does nothing but reinforce prejudices and stereotypes.

Even now, at the end of the 1990s, I find myself constantly surprised by the unwillingness of people in the West even to consider Islam as a possible source of correct information. I’ll give you just one example of this. Christians and Jews are deeply interested in biblical history and archeology. But with very few exceptions, they approach these subjects without ever consulting Islamic sources, which would unquestionably provide a wealth of authentic information. And I keep asking myself, When are the people of the West going to realize the treasure that Islam is and avail themselves of what it has to offer?

I’m sometimes asked what attracted me to Islam. To answer this, I must give a bit of personal history.

By the time I first began to hear about Islam, I’d parted company forever with my earlier strong Christian convictions. Not finding answers to the insistent questions I was struggling with (questions which you’ll frequently encounter in this book), I stopped believing in God because the only God I knew about was unbelievable. It was simply impossible for me to come to terms with what I perceived His dealings with humankind to be.

But as time passed, I found a deep aching emptiness within myself where God had previously been. It then became clear to me that Islam offered something I desperately needed: absolute certainty and clearness of direction. As I came to understand the Islamic concept of God and His purposes for mankind, it was one that made complete sense to my mind and that I instinctively recognized as right. Islam’s emphasis on the individual’s relationship with God and its deep spirituality drew me like a magnet. And I knew I had to make it my own.

It’s been a long journey from that state of knowing less than nothing to this point. But it’s been a grand and exciting journey. It’s taken me from inner emptiness, sometimes verging on despair, into the heart of a faith which I’ve found to be like an ocean in its depth and breadth. This journey has allowed me to recapture the spirituality of my childhood, and to taste the flavor and sweetness of Islam as a way of life in some of the Muslim heartlands. Summing it up, it’s been a journey of coming to an understanding of the purpose and meaning of existence and of finding my own personal path to God.

This is a path which I feel so blessed to be a part of that I must share it with others-with you, if you’re willing. I’m offering to be the tour guide on your journey of discovery of a faith which is as dear to life itself to millions of the world’s people. The fact that some of these people may be your neighbors, friends, fellow students, co-workers, grocers, physicians, teachers or even your relatives may make this journey more real and personal for you as you try to look at things through their eyes.

Muslims are no longer “those people over there.” On the contrary, they’re over here and they’re an integral part of our communities. This fact in itself demands from us the willingness to be open-minded and to replace prejudice, speculation and stereotypes with accurate information, which hopefully in turn will lead to tolerance and respect. And in the process we may find out how much Islam and Muslims have to offer us.

My approach to the subject is simple and direct, not scholarly. I’ve emphasized the concepts and high spiritual principles of Islam rather than its rules; this is not a how-to-do book but simply an overview. May God, your Lord and my Lord, the Lord of the universe and every creature in it, bless you and guide you as you read.”

THINKING THINGS OVER

where am I going? This society? The whole human race?” These are questions which many of us today are asking urgently, deeply troubled about what we see happening in our world Our concerns may be quite personal ones, centered around our own particular life situation. They may be general ones, related to the state of things as a whole or both. For this is a strange and difficult time, a time when all the old values and traditions seem to have been cut out from under us without anything clear and definitive having been substituted for them. From every direction and every possible source, we’re being bombarded by the newfangled ideas, values and behaviors of the New Age in which we live.

The New Age is an age with many interesting features. One of these is confusion. Great numbers of us no longer seem to have a clear sense of right and wrong, good and bad. Under the impact of too much personal freedom and the flood of new ideas and values, we’re falling apart, frightened, uncertain, lost. After all, how is it possible to have certainty about anything when even the most basic, time-honored values are being called into question?

In comparison to earlier times, everything around us today seems upside-down and backwards. A great deal of what was previously considered right is now looked upon as outmoded, irrelevant or just plain dumb. At the same time, much of what used to be considered wrong is now accepted as right, normal and okay. Members of the older generation, like myself, still maintain our vision of what things were like in an earlier, simpler, less perplexing period. But when our generation goes, apart from people of strong religious faith, who will be left that still retains a clear vision of a saner, more stable society? That vision will have gone with the winds of change.

This tum-about in basic human values and morals has led to a steady unraveling of civilized standards and behavior, not only in the country but worldwide. Brutality, lust and all manner of other evils flourish around the globe; violence, vice and exploitation seem to have become the new order of the day. And fear hangs over the whole world. Those of us who are even slightly sensitive to the currents and energies around us realize that something is wrong-deeply, awfully wrong. And we carry the collective burden of humanity’s pain and turmoil deep within our hearts.

Day by day the fear and uneasiness increases. Often we sense that we’re at the edge of a terrible and dangerous abyss, surrounded by intense darkness. As the end of this millennium approaches, predictions of a worldwide Armageddon-like catastrophe haunt our minds. And how can it be otherwise when we sense deep within ourselves that things have gone so wrong that such a crisis is due? For each day, new and deeper holes appear in the social and moral fabric of mankind, and it seem obvious that when the holes become more than the fabric itself, it’s past repair.

Why? you may be asking. Why is our society, our world, so terribly disturbed? Why is there so much suffering, misery and evil on earth? Why is everything around us and inside us in such a state of upheaval?

Why are the rates of crime, violence, sexual misbehavior, family breakdown, substance abuse and suicide mounting day by day? Why are there so many problems within my family, among my friends, or in my own life? Why am I so anxious, depressed, stressed-out, uncertain, unable to find any peace of mind?

These are all-important questions. I’ve thrown them out to you, not in order to make you uneasy, but because they’re matters which we urgently need to address. Yet we seem unable (or perhaps unwilling) to put our finger on the cause. Social scientists spend years studying such issues, but even they often fail to understand the primary reason for this troubled state of affairs, much less what can be done about it. Why? One possibility is that in a secular society such as ours, the reason is one that few people want to admit or accept.

Can it be that we’re all suffering because a critical something is missing from our society and world in our time? And is it possible that because of this missing thing, a huge emptiness exists in a great many people’s hearts? Might it be that our attempts to fill this void, although without knowing what it represents, has resulted in our blind race for material solutions, material supports and material satisfactions, without taking into consideration our total human nature and its needs?

Then, we may further ask ourselves, can it be that the race to replace that vital missing element with material goals and goods has warped our spirits and, in turn, our values even more? To take this line of questioning further, is it possible that the drive for material props could be fuelled by an intense spiritual hunger, even starvation, which we try to fill in any way we can?

In my view, the essential thing we’ve lost is religious faith. Together with faith, we’ve also lost the fixed set of values and principles which guided the lives of peoples and civilizations before us, giving them stability, continuity and certainty. The prevailing materialism that’s taken the place of faith has resulted in a misplaced trust in science and technology, which are good servants but bad masters. It’s cheated us and robbed us of a sense of direction, both as individuals and as a society. On a deeper level, it’s also deprived our spirits of the deeper, truer satisfactions they require.

While earlier responsibilities and rights went handin-hand, today freedom rules. This freedom is defined as the right to do what one pleases without accountability as long as it doesn’t “harm” anyone-that is, as long as no criminal or civil codes are violated. But who’s to decide whether a word or an action is harmful to others, or to our own inner selves? Without a strong conscience, firmly grounded in universal principles of right and wrong, it’s easy for us to be cheated by the desires of our egoes, so that whatever we want to do seems all right.

Because of this loss of faith and the moral responsibility which it instills, another catastrophe has occurred: our society’s loss of its clear understanding of the family as a God-ordained institution, to be upheld and supported by every possible means. Sexual enjoyment has become an end in itself, divorced from responsibility. Better methods of”protection” are offered as the solution for the host of problems this attitude has brought upon us, rather than encouraging responsibility for the consequences of our actions.

Our children and their well-being have become the first victims of this loss. Many of us grew up in disrupted families in which we never learned any positive parenting skills. Some of us want to be good parents but are so strapped financially that it’s difficult to be. Others of us have given priority to a better lifestyle or a rewarding career. No matter what the reason, great numbers of our children are growing up without the emotional security, parental love and attention they require to be healthy. And the circle of deprivation continues from one generation to another. As a result, we’ve become increasingly a nation of emotionally crippled, dysfunctional people. Due to no fault of our own, many of us carry hollow spaces inside hearts which should have been filled with love and a sense of well-being from the moment of birth.

Another casualty of our lost sense of responsibility is the moral and spiritual training of our children. From a young age, they’re bombarded by values, morals and examples which conflict sharply with any religious belief, and even with civilized standards. But young people who’ve never been taught morals and values other than material ones have no standards for distinguishing right from wrong or beneficial from harmful. Nor do they have any effective weapons for fighting against their own powerful impulses or the pressures coming from outside.

Science, which many people believe provides answers to all questions, has played a major role in eroding religious belief and traditional values. Many people today question the very existence of God, demanding “proofs,” although strangely enough, we never hear of anyone’s demanding proofs that God does not exist. Others, although believing in His existence, do not grasp His relevance, even to their own personal lives.

Although as a society we may give lip-service to belief in God, this is far removed from having certainty that He is in complete control of all things. According to our current thinking, a vague force called “Mother Nature” (or just “Nature”) is responsible for running the natural world in an orderly, predictable fashion. But when something out of the ordinary occurs, something which we look upon as unpreventable, such as a natural disaster, it’s viewed as an “act of God”-as if God were some sort of an intruder in the smooth, orderly running of the universe.

But without firm belief in a Supreme Being who is continuously involved with His creation, we human beings are spiritually and emotionally empty and deprived. We go through life uncentered, unfixed, and a prey to every wind that blows, without clearly-defined beliefs, values or goals by which to chart our path.

If you grew up with a religion and strong faith, you’re one of the lucky ones. Many of us were never exposed to anything of the sort. Others were brought up with a religion but later outgrew it; we still believe in God but don’t subscribe to any particular faith. Some of us may have looked into various religions without finding any clear direction. Others would like to believe but don’t have any idea in who or what, or even where to look. And still others of us may feel that even if we knew what to believe, we’re beyond all hope of salvation.

Whatever your particular case may be, it is critical for you to know that you were created by an absolutely merciful, loving Lord. He created you because He desired you to come into being, and He honored you by breathing into you something of His Divine Spirit.! No matter who you are or what you may have done, that fact alone gives you worth and importance. And He, your Creator, is asking you to connect with Him.

God is always there for you. He never leaves you; there’s no way you can get rid of Him. All you need to do is reach out to Him. If He doesn’t have any place in your life but you would like Him to, initiate the relationship. Call to Him, ask Him for help and guidance, pour out your heart and your needs to Him, tell Him that you love Him. For without being firmly bonded to our Source, we’re hollow, empty creatures, easily crushed and

destroyed by the difficult conditions surrounding us. Without belief in the purposefulness of our lives, we’re likely to be in despair.

At the same time, you need a way, a path to walk upon to Him, a system for guiding your life. But, if you’re not to be misled, it must be a true and correct one.

Islam, the faith of one-fifth of the world’s people, is one among many ways claiming to be the truth. I’m talking about real Islam, of course, not the biased versions you hear about in the media or the Farrakhan variety, but the genuine, pure faith that goes back to Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and the early Muslim community.

Islam, meaning “surrender” or “submission”, is the original religion revealed by God from the beginning of human history. He revealed it through the first man, Adam (peace be upon him), who was also the first prophet. Later, He revealed it through Abraham (peace be upon him), the father of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

“ Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian, but he was a Monotheist, a Muslim. And he was not of the Polytheists.” (Quran 3:67) God says concerning him.

Still later, He revealed it through Moses (peace be upon him), and afterwards, through Jesus Christ (peace be upon him), the miraculous prophet who came to revive and purify it. And He revealed it for the last and final time through the prophet who established Islam as a world religion, Muhammad of Arabia (peace be upon him), the most perfect of all mankind. And this final revelation contains God’s unchangeable guidance for humanity up to the end of this world.

“I hear what you’re saying,” you may be thinking. “But exactly who’s making the claim that Islam is the truth, and why should I believe it any more than in the claims of any other religion?”

Good questions, which you should be asking. Islam’s answer to the first part of your question is, quite simply,

God Himself. This, and much more, is what He has to say about His final revelation:

o mankind, the truth has come to you from your Lord. Therefore, whoever is guided, is guided only/or his own soul, and whoever is in error errs only against it. (Quran 10:108)

That which is revealed to you [Muhammad] by your Lord is the truth.

(Quran 13:1)

Those who have been given knowledge see that what is revealed to you [Muhammad] from your Lord is the truth and leads to the path of the Almighty, the Praised One. (Quran 34:6)

By the Lord of the heavens and the earth, this is indeed the truth, as [much as the fact that] you are able to speak. (Quran 51:23)

But claims to being the truth are not to be taken lightly. In order to test this claim for yourself, please read on. Gather information, sift and weigh it all in your mind, and come to your own conclusion.

If you do conclude that this religion is the truth, then other conclusions follow: that in Islam’s divine Message lies hope for ourselves as individuals and for mankind as a whole-indeed, perhaps the only hope; that nothing other than this faith that can cure the deep, devastating ailments of humanity; and that, without it, there can be no lasting solutions, no safety, and no way out of the life threatening global crisis of our time.

ISLAM’s WORLD VIEW

“I bear witness that there is no deity except God, and I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of God-Ashhadu an la ilaha illa-Llah, wa ashhadu anna Muhammadu Rasool-Allah.”

Muslims repeat this Declaration of Faith over and over again in their daily prayers. But what does this Declaration really mean?

This act of witnessing proclaims that I accept no one as my God except the One, Eternal, Almighty God, who alone is worthy of my worship and service, and that I accept Muhammad ( peace be upon him) as His last and final messenger to mankind. In accepting both, I’m prepared to follow the guidance which God revealed through Muhammad ( peace be upon him) as my way of life and my path to salvation.

When a person is ready to make such a commitment, he or she enters Islam by repeating the Declaration of Faith in front of witnesses. He or she is now formally a Muslim, part of the world-wide community of the millions who live by the teachings of Islam. He or she is also absolved of all sins committed before accepting Islam, as pure as a new-born baby.

1 THE AGE-OLD MESSAGE OF ISLAM

I have already pointed out that Islam is not a new religion. Rather, it is the original religion revealed by God to mankind from the dawn of human history. Thus, the first man, Adam, who was also the first prophet, was a Muslim in the sense of being surrendered to God. And after him came a series of prophets, including those we mentioned previously and many, many others, who were all Muslims or surrendered ones. And every single prophet brought the same divinely-revealed Message from his Lord.

And what is that Message? It is that there is a single, unique Being who is the Lord and Master of all creation. He alone deserves to be worshiped and obeyed, and we, mankind, are accountable to Him for all our actions. We are in this life for a brief, limited period, after which we will return to Him for judgment. We will then enter a life of eternal duration, during which we will either be in permanent happiness or in misery. And the choice of our destiny in that future life is up to us.

2 UNDERSTANDING REALITY

Now, everyone has a certain world view, an understanding of what constitutes Reality, and this view naturally differs greatly from person to person. But what’s really important about our world view is whether it’s a correct one or merely someone’s mind-product — possibly our own.

If it’s correct, well and good. However, if it’s one that we human beings have concocted out of our own or other people’s guesswork or imagination, it’s bound to be wrong. On our own, we simply don’t possess the equipment or capability to grasp what makes up this endlessly complex Reality. And since our principles follow from our world view and our actions follow from our principles, if our world view is wrong, everything we do is almost bound to be wrong as a result.

What we’ve got to figure out is this: Is Reality only what we can see, touch, taste, smell or hear with our bodily senses or grasp by means of our technology, or is there something more? Is there Someone in charge of it all who is Himself the Ultimate Reality, or are there just individual bits and pieces? Is everything in existence simply the result of randomness, coincidence or blind chance? Or, alternatively, did Someone arrange it so that all the bits and pieces are actually parts of a great, meaningful whole, an unbelievably grand, complex cosmic plan?

Then, if there is such a Someone, who and what is He? And-if you really want to take all this to its logical conclusion-isn’t it just possible that finding out about that Someone is the most important thing anyone has to do?

Let’s continue this line of questioning and get more personal. Perhaps we further need to ask: Does my own individual, personal life have any purpose and meaning, or not? Does it really matter what I do, say, think or feel? Am I just some physical being who will one day stop living, like all other living things, so that, suddenly, when the switch is turned from On to Off-fini? Is this life that I’m now in the only life, or was there something before it-and if so, what? And will there be something after it for me, some other state of existence? If not, none of these questions matter. But if there is going to be something after it, the critical question is: What is that future life of mine going to be like?

These are questions that every thinking person must ask because they form a vital part of human consciousness, questions which human beings have sought answers to since the beginning of history. The only problem is, Who has the answers?

3 ARRIVING AT ANSWERS

It’s obvious that finite beings cannot arrive at answers to questions such as these on their own, for such questions are related to Infinity. Therefore, to rely on our limited senses, technology, thought processes or personal understanding for answers is futile and may even be dangerously misleading. For, again, even if some of our answers are right and some are wrong, the end result is bound to be inaccurate.

We are therefore faced with the unescapable conclusion that no one can possibly have all the correct answers except the One who created the whole. Only when the Creator Himself supplies us with the answers are they certain to be correct ones. Otherwise, human attempts to arrive at such answers are bound to be nothing more than guesses, or, at best, bits and pieces of the truth. And in view of our limited equipment, answers arrived at on our own probably have much more likelihood of leading us astray than guiding us aright.

Islam teaches that God, the Creator, Himself communicates the answers to us. By means of revelation through His chosen representatives, the prophets, God speaks to us about Himself and His creation. He informs us that there is an ultimate Reality which is known only to Himself, its Originator, and that He is the sustainer and center of that Reality.

What we human beings are able to know and understand of this Reality by means of our limited human equipment is actually only the tiniest, most minute portion of it. God refers to this part of His creation that we’re able to know about or experience as the ‘Witnessed’ or visible, in contrast to the ‘Unseen’ or spiritual realm. And He makes it clear that belief in that unseen realm is a pre-requisite to being open to receiving His guidance, His final Message to mankind, the

holy scripture of Islam known as the Qur’an, saying,

ذَٰلِكَ الْكِتَابُ لَا رَيْبَ فِيهِ هُدًى لِّلْمُتَّقِينَ الَّذِينَ يُؤْمِنُونَ بِالْغَيْبِ وَيُقِيمُونَ الصَّلَاةَ وَمِمَّا رَزَقْنَاهُمْ يُنفِقُونَ

This [Qur’anl is the Book in which there is no doubt, a guidance to those who are mindful of God, who believe in the Unseen. (Qur’an 2:2–3)

Anyone with a working mind is aware of the incredible complexity of the physical universe in which we live, as well as of our own selves. But it’s quite probable that the complexity of this material world is as nothing compared to the infinitely greater complexity of the unseen Reality. Its depth and complexity is so immense that even the prophets, who were intimately connected to the spiritual realm, knew only a minute part of it.

It is therefore critical that we take our answers to the questions we’ve asked about Reality and about ourselves from the One who has them, not from any other source. Otherwise, we may never fulfill our appointed destiny and may end up in some limbo which we’re not going to like. It’s our business, our obligation as thinking human beings, to know the answers to these and many more questions which relate to our ultimate destiny.

We will start by taking a look at the basic beliefs of Islam, which are a summary of the unseen realities and our own place within them.

credit: Suzanne Haneef, Islam: The Path of God, pages 7–24. (PDF)

i recommend this book to everyone!

E-book copy http://www.islamicbulletin.org/free_downloads/new_muslim/islam_the_path.pdf

read her first book: What Everyone Should Know About Islam and Muslims by Suzanne Haneef

E-book copy http://www.islamicbulletin.org/free_downloads/new_muslim/what_everyone.pdf

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acrushonesmeralda · 7 years ago

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When I was young, I learned that someday the Mashiach (Messiah) would come and take us all to Israel, so I packed up my Barney suitcase with the essentials (or whatever a 7 year old deems essential) and dragged it with me everywhere for a week, excited for the day we would all go to the homeland. When I was slightly older, just barely double digits, I was told for the first time that I was going to hell for being Jewish. I had grown up insulated in an Orthodox Jewish community. I don’t think I knew what hell is. By high school, I knew more about the Christian afterlife than I did the Jewish (though that’s not hard; Hashem never did say anything about what happens after we die) and I had been told time and time again that I was going to hell for a fact of who I was (and still am). By tenth grade, I had started to wear pants in public, cut my hair boyishly short, left my elbows and knees uncovered - I didn’t dress with tzniut (modesty) in mind anymore. I didn’t look Jewish anymore, and I was harassed less for it, even though I was the only Orthodox Jew in my tiny school. By twelfth grade, I had been to Israel for the first time, and found it wanting. Not because of all the reasons non-Jews seem to have - it was too damned hot for my taste, that’s all. And my Hebrew has never been that good. By college, I finally became exposed to real anti-Semitism in its modern guise of anti-zionism, but I didn’t know it at the time, thinking of anti-zionism as my parents had defined it to me, in the context of Jews speaking to other Jews. I knew enough, though, to convince a history major - a freshman interested in international politics, only just beginning his exposure to what might have eventually evolved into the think veiled anti-Semitism of today - that Jews need a place where we can be sure we won’t be kicked out, a place to belong that cannot be taken from us, no matter where we live now, and I explained to him how hard it is to keep kosher outside of Israel, and why it is so important to me to do it anyways. I’d like to think he still remembers that. I’d like to think he hasn’t fallen back into the trap of anti-zionism as used by non-jews, but there’s no way for me to know. I haven’t seen him in years. By now, I am on the verge of graduation, thousands of dollars in debt and searching for a job, and I am constantly bombarded with non-Jews using anti-zionism - a phrase they stole from us, I feel, from Jews who think we should wait for the Mashiach to come before we settle Israel - as a code for anti-Semitism. I am constantly bombarded with the tactics I read about in memoirs written by Holocaust survivors and seen peppered throughout Jewish history, heard half-hinted at in heavily accented English from elderly Jews who escaped from Poland and the Ukraine before and during and after Hitler’s reign, their minds failing but some memories still sharp, dementia forcing them to relive the painful past as though it were the present again. I never wanted to know this much about Israel and Palestine. I never enjoyed politics, never wanted to learn about it, but now I must become an expert in Israel’s, because that is the only way to defend myself against today’s anti-Semitism, by educating the ignorant in the hopes they are not the sort who prefers to stay ignorant, to wallow in their judenhass (Jew-hate). And Israel is not perfect, far from it - I honestly don’t believe any government can be perfect, but the goyim still expect it of us, because only by achieving the impossible can we have their support, can we kick out the props they use to support their hatred of us. And I hate it, because this isn’t anything new in the pattern of Jewish history, and I am frightened to the point where I feel sick with it, just waiting for the anti-Semitism to target the insular little suburban Jewish community I grew up in, for the vandalism and brutality I know is coming. They won’t find us defenseless - far from it; when the Westboro Baptist Church came to our community and tried to protest outside of our shuls on Shabbat (they only failed because our local government knew better than to allow them license to protest in such places) our men bought guns and trained themselves to use them, started up a volunteer guard rotation outside the shuls on each holiday, and the city has done it’s best to help, with increased police patrols on the appropriate streets every Saturday and holy day, but I am afraid, nonetheless. I don’t want to live in Israel. I hate traveling, hate change, its entirely too hot there, and the mandatory military service is very much not my style, and I doubt my family could afford to move there anyways. Most Jews in America can’t afford to move there. Most of us are stuck here, and while the idea of a place to which we can retreat, of one country where we needn’t fear being banished for our identity, is nice, it is not a practical reality for many of us. Israel may be the homeland, but America is where I was born. America is where I was raised. America is where my friends are, my life is. America is where I want my future to be. I am an American Jew - and please note that American is the modifier here, that Jew is the noun. I am not a Jewish American. I am an American Jew. And I guess that’s where we go wrong, in the eyes of the rest of the world: our countries of birth are the modifiers, not the nouns. Others get to be Muslim Americans, Asian Americans, and so on and so forth. But we are Jews before anything else, and I guess that’s one reason they fear us. That, and all the lies that they have propagated about us, calling us elites to the other oppressed groups and calling us dirty and low to the actual elites. It’s a catch-22; we can’t win. But here, now, in real life, I am nobody so special. I am a 23 year old genderqueer asexual, I am female-bodied, I am a millennial, I am an American, I am possessed of many mental illnesses and disabilities, I am thousands of dollars in student debt, I am struggling to find a job that pays a living wage so I can move out and live on my own, I am frightened that Trump’s Medicare laws will make it impossible for me to afford the medications I need to live - but none of that matters to any of my peers in the aforementioned identities, because I am also a Jew, and am therefore not worthy of empathy or respect. The worst is that I don’t “look Jewish” - whatever that means - and so my peers begin to befriend me and then abandon me when they see the Magen David on my bracelet, or when I refuse an offering of food because it isn’t kosher. And that hurts, and it drives home these facts more than any amount of being told I’m going to hell - the facts that to them, I am not a person, but a principle, something for them to instinctively hate, based on what they heard from neo-nazis on the internet about a country I’ve been to once, years ago, used consciously by said neo-nazis and possibly unconsciously by my peers to excuse their hatred of me and mine, for no other reason, at the core, than that we exist, and our existence offends.

#judaism #jewish #israel #anti-zionism #anti-semitism #i just want to be left alone ok #i don't want to move to israel #it's too fucking sunny #and as a goth i do not want a tan

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kidsviral-blog · 6 years ago

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How Madewell Bought And Sold My Family's History

New Post has been published on https://kidsviral.info/how-madewell-bought-and-sold-my-familys-history/

How Madewell Bought And Sold My Family's History

In 1937, my great-grandfather started a workwear company in New England called Madewell. In 2006, 17 years after the last factory shut down, J.Crew relaunched a women’s clothing company with the same name and logo, based on a 50-year history in which it had no part.

I stopped dead on Broadway, in the middle of the sidewalk, and stared, not up at the beautiful wrought-iron SoHo buildings, as would befit someone who’d moved to New York in the past month, but at an ordinary sign advertising a small clothing shop. The logo, a casual cursive scrawl with both E’s capitalized, jumped out at me like a beacon from a lighthouse somewhere deep in the back of my brain. That was the logo emblazoned on my baby clothes, the logo my great-grandfather created. It was, I thought, forgotten family history, the factories having shut down shortly after I was born in the ’80s. After a moment I took out my phone and called my mom and asked her what the hell was going on.

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The author sporting Madewell baby denim. Courtesy of the Nosowitz Family.

She’d heard something about this. Madewell was back, somehow, but she wasn’t sure exactly how or why. I wandered inside the store. It was all women’s clothing — expensive women’s clothing. I found a clerk and said, in some jumbled, excited, confused way, that this was my shop, that Madewell was my family’s business. I think she thought I was angling for a discount. After politely and professionally feigning interest while I struggled to explain a history I didn’t even really know, the clerk stopped me. “We don’t sell men’s clothes,” she said.

Over the next four years, I saw Madewell everywhere. Today there are three stores in Manhattan alone, and 77 throughout the country. On bags on the subway, on tags of clothes worn by friends, I am constantly bombarded with totems of my family history.

Asking my family yielded the basics: Madewell as it stands today began in 2004. That’s when Millard “Mickey” Drexler, now the CEO of J.Crew, acquired the logo and the trademark of the company my great-grandfather founded in 1937. Dhani Mau, a senior editor at Fashionista, said, “J.Crew considers it their younger sister brand,” though she said it’s not necessarily for younger sisters. Pressed to pick out a celebrity who might typify the Madewell girl, Mau chose Kate Bosworth and Rachel Bilson. This does not entirely jibe with my mental picture of my tough immigrant great-grandfather selling stiff denim overalls to New England dockworkers.

Still, Madewell will not let you forget the date 1937. The store could originally be found online at madewell1937.com, and the year is prominent on the site and on some of the clothing. The company’s Instagram and Twitter handles are both still @Madewell1937, and its LinkedIn page says, “Madewell was started in 1937 as a workwear company, and we’re always looking to the brand’s roots for inspiration.”

This is, to put it mildly, baloney. Madewell as it stands today has almost nothing at all to do with the company founded by my great-grandfather almost 80 years ago. How many vintage labels out there have similar stories? How many corporations are out there rifling through the defunct brands of America’s past like a bin of used records, looking for something, anything, that will give them that soft Edison-bulb glow of authenticity?

Madewell’s story — my story — leading up to that moment in SoHo began over a century ago, half a world away. It traces the evolution of how Americans shop, and how Americans shop heavily informs how Americans see themselves; we, as a country, are what we buy. Mickey Drexler, in creating J.Crew’s new womenswear stores, shrewdly read the market and realized that stocking nice clothes wouldn’t be enough: He’d have to tell a story along with them. Drexler didn’t have any stories, so he bought ours.

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A view from the Madewell store in NYC’s Soho. Flickr: Ludovic Bertron / Creative Commons (CC BY 2-0) / Via Flickr: 23912576@N05

Julius Kivowitz was born in Russia in 1889 or thereabouts. His name was not Julius Kivowitz at the time — it was Beham.

At the turn of the century, the Russian Empire required that all males, starting at age 20, serve in the army, and Julius seemed to be not very taken with this prospect. The Beham family was fairly well-off and managed to secure a sponsor for Julius in the U.S., in a prosperous Massachusetts port city near Providence called New Bedford. There was only one problem: Any attempt by Julius to leave under his own name would have exposed him as a draft dodger. (Some in my family, including his youngest daughter, referred to him as a “conscientious objector.” Whether he objected to war or merely his own participation in the war isn’t clear.) My cousin Judy told me that Julius invented his new last name by going to a cemetery and picking out the name of someone who, had he lived, would have been about the same age.

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A young Julius Kivowitz seated in the center. Courtesy of Ellen Horvitz

It was a good time for a Jew to leave Europe. By 1906, pogroms — huge, brutal, bloodthirsty, anti-Jewish riots — were commonplace in the Russian Empire. Mobs of Russians burned and sacked entire Jewish towns, murdering men, women, and children, with the implicit permission or even participation of police. Many Jews fled, the newly renamed Julius Kivowitz and his fiancée, Fannie, among them. (It was somewhat scandalous and also a bit romantic that the two fled together before they were married.) He landed at Ellis Island at age 19, stayed in New York for a few years, moved north to Connecticut, and then went further eastward up the Atlantic coast to New Bedford.

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Fannie Kivowitz Courtesy of Ellen Horvitz

When my great-grandfather arrived there some 90 years ago, New Bedford was just beginning the decline from its status as one of the country’s most bustling, wealthiest port cities. New Bedford had been the whaling capital of the world, one of the settings in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. Hundreds of huge, magnificent schooners and clipper ships were built and launched from its port. By 1850, thanks mostly to profits from whale oil, New Bedford was the wealthiest city per capita in the country. But the whale oil industry collapsed, and by the time the wave of immigrants that included my great-grandfather and his young family settled there in the 1920s, the town had pretty much abandoned whaling and turned to fishing and manufacturing.

Julius, like so many of his generation of immigrant Eastern European Jews, was an entrepreneur with no particular passion besides financial success. First he opened a grocery store, earning enough money to, along with a partner from New York, move into textiles. It was a natural move for Julius, as it was for many other Jews, who brought a centuries-long tradition of textile manufacturing with them from Europe. Beginning around the 16th century in Eastern Europe, Russian and Polish Jews began working with wool. By the 1860s, heavily Jewish cities like Lodz and Bialystok were textile-manufacturing centers; more than half of the textile industry in Bialystock was Jewish-owned. This was pretty much stamped out by the 1930s, thanks to decades of violent anti-Semitism perpetrated by independent Poland. But Julius had already fled Eastern Europe and made his home in New Bedford.

In 1936, Julius filed for the Madewell trademark, and in 1937 he opened his first factory. No one seems to know why he picked — or if he himself even did pick — that name. But I don’t think his English was ever all that good, and there’s something very clean and utilitarian about it.

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The Kivowitz kids: (from Left) Barbara, Lillian, Beatrice and Haskell. Courtesy of Ellen Horvitz

There is nobody alive who remembers the earliest chapters of Madewell. The only one of Julius’ children still living is my great-aunt Barbara, the youngest of the Kivowitz brood by nine years. Her husband, Aaron, ran the shipping department of Madewell, but didn’t come on until 1951. Nobody knows much about that mysterious New York partner who oversaw the factory floor but vanished from the company within a few decades. Nobody knows how many workers — “stitchers,” they were called — were employed at first. Nobody, to be frank, seems to know much about Julius. The documents I could find from that era give the date of the company’s founding but not much else; whatever records Madewell kept from its early years are gone. After questioning damn near everybody still alive who ever met him, here are the facts I gathered about my great-grandfather:

1. He spoke mostly a mix of Yiddish, Russian, and English, with a thick accent.

2. He was rarely seen without a cigar.

3. He loved the card game pinochle, and played every week.

4. He didn’t talk much, and I can find exactly no one who can recall him saying a single word about his childhood in Russia.

5. He liked nice things. He built a big house and filled it with expensive appliances and Oriental rugs, which seems to have annoyed his wife Fannie, who did not care much for extravagance.

That’s it.

His employees at the time likely included the dominant immigrant groups of New Bedford: Portuguese speakers largely from the Azores and Cape Verde, French Canadians, and possibly some Jews. The company at the onset was designed smartly and specifically to cater to the substantial working class of the community: It made jeans, dungarees (which differ from jeans in that the threads are pre-dyed before weaving), and bib overalls. These were hardy work clothes, intended for use inside the factories and fisheries of New England.

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Courtesy of the Nosowitz Family

Madewell was a family operation. Julius’ son Haskell and his sons-in-law Aaron and Jerry ran departments (sales, shipping, and manufacturing, respectively) within the company. Various cousins and nephews and nieces and grandchildren worked there during summer vacations from school. Gradually, as Haskell took a larger role in the company, Madewell branched out into other clothes.

By the early 1960s, Haskell’s strategy to diversify Madewell’s offerings (and to sell to larger department and discount stores) had kicked into high gear, as it began to make children’s and women’s clothes. It’s sort of hard to get a sense of what Madewell really was at the time — my great-grandfather had to be cajoled and sometimes tricked into allowing his company to change, but the company seemed built to adapt pragmatically to each era.

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Keeping Up With the Kivowitzes Courtesy of the Nosowitz Family

The company didn’t have any particular aesthetic. Most of the clothes were contracted, made by any of several other factories and stamped with the Madewell name. Madewell had lots of partners at other factories — one in Georgia, one in Kentucky, among others — that would take care of the design and manufacturing. If Haskell or Jerry or Julius went to a local department store and saw that corduroy-lined denim jackets were selling well, they’d come back to the factory and tell one of the stitchers to make one. If the stitcher wasn’t sure how, they’d buy one of those jackets, tear it apart, and make a pattern out of it, then re-create it. Or if that seemed like too much trouble, they’d call one of their contacts at another factory, say, “Make us a corduroy-lined jacket,” stamp their logo on it, and sell that. Madewell’s logo didn’t necessarily indicate who physically created the garment, but simply who was selling it.

“We didn’t do too much of that designing bullshit,” my great-uncle Aaron told me. Aaron is a warm, tough, stocky man whose crushing handshake hasn’t lessened in strength even as he ages into his eighties. As we talked at his kitchen table, looking out on wild turkeys strutting through his backyard in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, he would occasionally sing what I think is a line from “Memory,” from the musical Cats. “The only stuff we did in-house was the rough stuff,” he said. “Denim, brown duck pants, carpenter stuff.” During Aaron’s tenure, there were only ever around 25 stitchers at Madewell who actually made clothes. I asked Aaron who designed that stuff. “You copy somebody else’s!” he laughed. “Come on, ‘design.’ It was not a fancy place, Dan. No such thing as ‘designing.’”

Aaron bristled when I asked if the Madewell clothes were high quality — “Oh, yes, they were very well made,” he said — but these weren’t exactly pioneering designers crafting original clothing out of a deep passion. They weren’t inventors or artists. They looked at what was selling and made some of that to sell. It was a business, and Madewell did what made sense from a business perspective. J.Crew’s Madewell is grasping to emulate some sepia-hued commitment to quality in the original company, some moral or ethical standard from better, more authentic times. But that’s not what motivated my great-grandfather at all — his motivation was profit, and quality was a means to an end.

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Dan Nosowitz / BuzzFeed

New Bedford is one of the last towns you pass through as you drive eastward out to Cape Cod, which hooks out from the East Coast like a flexed arm. It’s located on the coast of Buzzards Bay, which carves a messy notch into the underside of Massachusetts. It would be uncharitable, but not inaccurate, to say that New Bedford is the armpit of Massachusetts.

Despite a cute, gentrified waterfront area and a few museums, the city is today one of the poorest and most dangerous in the state. Big brick factories, either barely used or totally vacant, are everywhere; the unemployment rate hovers above 10%. In the 1990s, the city attempted to rename the area the “South Coast,” because merely the name of New Bedford signifies decay, depression, and loss.

And still, New Bedford looks like a port city in the way that only New England towns can. Trim three- and four-story houses, mostly in sea-weathered gray, line the streets. Every turn seemingly leads to the water, the smell of which is everywhere. Huge stone levees, looking like the organized results of avalanches, do their best to protect the city from the Atlantic’s wrath, and roads that cut through these levees are equipped with alarmingly heavy-duty iron gates, up to 20 feet high, that can close if water approaches.

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Vintage Madewell jeans at Circa Vintage Dan Nosowitz / BuzzFeed

Circa Vintage Wear on 73 Cove St. is airy and industrial, still chilly in the Massachusetts spring. The medium-size, mostly unmarked brick factory, just beside the ocean, smelled of old fabric and dust and wood shavings, a pleasant perfume that changes subtly as you move through the decades upon decades of vintage clothing and accessories. In one corner, a wall of nothing but circular hatboxes reached to the high ceiling. A twentysomething who would later buy a pair of shiny gold dress shoes examined an entire case of bow ties. Semi-broken old mannequins wearing everything from frilly white gowns to what looked like old high school marching band uniforms stood sentry in aisles of clothes from wildly disparate eras. In the racks, jammed up against what must have been dozens of other stories just as rich and as weird as mine, were a few pieces of original Madewell.

There were heavy-duty jumpsuits, which must have dated from the 1940s or 1950s. There was a denim jacket with a striped, sweater-like lining and a corduroy collar. There was a pair of Dickies-like blue chino work pants. There was a pair of bell-bottoms from the 1970s that could have been made by Levi’s or Wrangler or lots of other big international brands — but the bell-bottoms, the jumpsuits, the jacket, and the work pants all boasted that label, that great logo, that stopped me dead in my tracks in New York years before.

Chris Duval opened Circa in 1986 and has been pretty much its sole employee ever since. Wearing a pale denim jacket and tough denim work pants, Duval is short and slender and speaks with a thick South Coast accent, which is somewhere between Boston and cartoon pirate, and all of his statements sound like they should end with an exclamation point. He told me that he likes to sit down with the people from whom he buys his wares and learn about the history of each piece.

“When this whole thing came about with J.Crew, I was devastated,” he said, in the same tone that a fan of an indie band might have bemoaned signing to a major label in 1995. “When that happened, workwear was just coming back. So I thought, Oh, cool, they’re gonna do a workwear line inspired by Madewell. But it has nothing to do with that! It’s Chinese crap!”

Duval found the way J.Crew touted its connection to the original Madewell especially galling. “You go to the flagship store in New York and there’s a big thing about New Bedford and its heritage, and I’m like, Oh, god, this is so sad!” Duval told me that he liked to put pictures of his original Madewell goods on Instagram and taunt J.Crew about its “Madewell in name only” clothes. “They’re using the original brand to push something that has nothing to do with the original brand,” he said.

I looked more closely at the flannel-lined denim jacket. It was cool, and vintage, and, being that my great-grandfather’s company made it, I’d have a great story behind it. I tried it on and immediately took it off. I looked like I was wearing a costume. I hadn’t realized how reliant my taste in clothes is on modern shapes; I didn’t at all care for the boxy, un-tailored fit of the jacket, the baggy sleeves, or the too-smooth washed denim. The jacket may have been my birthright, but it wasn’t my style.

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Dan Nosowitz / BuzzFeed

By the time I left New Bedford, it was clear that I had a different reaction to the staged authenticity of J.Crew’s Madewell than Chris Duval did. I almost envied his clear-cut offense at the company, but I was surprised to find that I didn’t really share it.

The concept of authenticity in retail is a borderland where academics and marketers commingle. It is a philosophical chew toy that is also the key to fleecing consumers in new, exciting, and highly profitable ways. Jim Gilmore, the co-author (with B. Joseph Pine II) of Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want, knows this better than most. His book doesn’t so much offer tips to marketers as it examines what authenticity means in a retail space, and how customers react to it.

According to Gilmore, the American consumer economy has moved through three distinct stages, from agrarian to industrial to service, to arrive at what he terms in his book the “experience” stage. To sell a product today, a company must also sell a story, a transformation. A new pickle company needing to differentiate itself can’t simply rely on people needing to eat (agrarian), or undercutting the competition on price (industrial) or convenience (service). The way to sell that jar of pickles is to tell consumers about how it’s an old-country recipe from the Romanian hills, using heirloom cucumbers grown upstate and fresh dill from the factory’s rooftop garden, and it was crafted only two miles from here in a facility that used to make No. 3 pencils.

“We define authenticity,” Gilmore told me over the phone, “as purchasing on the basis of conforming to self-image. ‘I like that, I am like that.’” Authenticity is about buying into a product that confirms what you already think, or want to think, about yourself. Of course things like quality and durability are all mixed up in that; the Romanian-Brooklyn pickles are, probably, pretty good, and the fact that the buyer wants to see himself as the type of person who buys cool weird pickles doesn’t negate the fact that the buyer may also recognize that the pickles are better than Claussen’s. In fact, that’s part of it: Self-awareness of the purchase is key to the purchase itself.

In his job as a marketing consultant, Gilmore sometimes takes clients on tours of stores he deems worthy of emulation. He remembers when he first saw Madewell: “It feels like a boutique store while surrounded by boutique stores in SoHo, but it’s not one,” he told me. “The place has got integrity; it all holds together.” He praised the choice of materials and fixtures (“industrial without being too raw,” he said). He also praised the choice to show a select line of clothes, with limited quantities of each. This is, of course, common in boutiques, which are able to produce only in smaller quantities for cost reasons. For Madewell, it’s an aesthetic choice. Madewell has 77 branches in the U.S. at the time of writing, including stores in the two largest malls in the country, the Mall of America in Minnesota and the King of Prussia Mall in suburban Philadelphia. Madewell doesn’t have any trouble stocking its shelves. It’s telling a story about itself, that it’s a small, lovingly curated boutique. This isn’t true at all, but the customers don’t much care. Madewell’s unlikely rebirth, however, began with a man who had no interest in blurring these lines.

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Justine Zwiebel / BuzzFeed

“I had always been a big fan of Madewell and was trying to buy or license the name,” David Mullen, a clothing designer who now runs a few shops called Save Khaki, told me over the phone. “I would find the label at vintage stores and I loved the way that it looked, and the name itself, what it represented.” Mullen made trips up to New Bedford to learn more about Madewell, making some of the same stops I made, and for some of the same reasons: What was this company? What did it make and why?

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Save Khaki designer David Mullen Andrew H. Walker / Getty Images for GQ

But Mullen had a larger idea: He wanted to relaunch Madewell. “I wanted to do a modern take on workwear, and I wanted it to be kind of androgynous,” he told me. In his consulting work, he’d become friends with Millard “Mickey” Drexler, and he brought this idea to him. Together, the two began figuring out how to resurrect Madewell from the dead.

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Mickey Drexler Fernando Leon / Getty Images for Martha Stewart

Drexler is a huge name in the retail world; he has been the subject of numerous stories and television segments that harp on his uncanny knack for selling things to Americans. He led Gap through its 1990s boom, taking the company from, as a 2010 New Yorker profile by Nick Paumgarten put it, “a shaggy little jeans chain to a gigantic but fairly nimble purveyor of the stuff everyone wears.” Called by some in the industry “the Merchant Prince,” Drexler was ousted in 2002 during a downturn in Gap’s earnings, and the following year ended up as the chairman and CEO of J.Crew Group Inc. (Madewell declined my request for an interview with Drexler.)

During those few months, he and Mullen tried to work together on Madewell, but it didn’t quite work out. “We kind of made the Madewell thing together, then he put it on hold because he’d just taken the J.Crew job, and that was a pretty big job,” said Mullen. “So I helped him a bit with that and then decided to go off on my own.” Mullen now has no part in Madewell at all, but he says there’s no ill will, and speaks highly of Drexler. “It was more of a timing issue. I was anxious to start something, and it was easier to start something on my own.”

Mullen, according to U.S. Patent and Trademark Office paperwork, paid $125,000 for that logo and trademark, and nothing else, signing the papers on Jan. 31, 2003; the factories had been closed for nearly 15 years at that point, so there wasn’t really much to sell. (For the sake of disclosure, neither I nor anyone in my immediate family received any of that money.) According to Mullen, my great-uncle Haskell’s son Jay Kivowitz set up the sale and kept the earnings, as Haskell died shortly afterward. Jay refused to tell me anything specific about the sale. It’s a sore spot within the family, though certainly he had the legal right to keep it; he was the sole owner of the company at that point.

On April 14, 2004, Mullen transferred the trademark he’d gotten from my family over to Drexler. Curiously, the document shows no money trading hands. Mullen, when pressed, said only, “Mickey’s a very fair guy,” but would not tell me anything further about their agreement besides that he now has no stake whatsoever in Madewell. By then, Drexler was established as the chairman and CEO of J.Crew, and leased the Madewell trademark (as Millard S. Drexler Inc.) to J.Crew Group Inc. for a dollar a year.

Mullen’s current operation, Save Khaki has only three small boutiques, all in New York City, and sells only a few products, very carefully designed and chosen. Mullen gushed when talking about his design process; he tried repeatedly to get access to Madewell’s old factory just to look at whatever detritus was left there since it shut down in the 1980s. “I thought there must be all old kinds of patterns in there, ribbons and buttons and … to me that would be priceless,” he said. Save Khaki’s clothes, too, are all made in the U.S. — some even come from factories in New England, including one in Fall River, the sister town to New Bedford where my mom grew up. The modern Madewell isn’t run in quite the same way — much of the clothing is manufactured overseas, although some of the denim is sourced and produced in the U.S.

“A merchant is someone who figures out how to select, how to smell, how to identify, how to feel, how to time, how to buy, how to sell, and how to hopefully have two plus two equal six,” Drexler told the New Yorker. As presented there, he is a fluid and reactive figure whose personal tastes and interests and philosophies are irrelevant. This is evidenced by his success with both Gap, a company that unapologetically boomed during the prosperous Clinton era with enormous stores full of casual, affordable clothes, and Madewell, which sells, for example, this insane JNCO-looking pair of Rachel Comey-designed pants for $426.

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Madewell denim on display at their NYC Soho store. Flickr: momo & her bffs / Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) / Via Flickr: duoduomollie

Somsack Sikhounmuong, the current head of design for Madewell, is mild-mannered with soft eyes and a trim beard. I asked him what he knew about the original Madewell besides the fact that it made jeans. He told me he knew it was a New England-based workwear company, but that was about it. I asked how, if at all, the J.Crew Madewell connects to the original. He hesitated, stumbled over his words a bit, and said that J.Crew isn’t trying to reproduce the original Madewell’s style, that the connection is more broad.

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Madewell fashion designer Somsack Sikhounmuong Splash News

“There’s a heritage to it, a real appreciation for the past and for real things,” he said. He sees this in its design aesthetic, but only in a thematic, rather than specific, way: “Not too trendy, not too fast fashion.” Trendy, to Sikhounmuong, means “colors are very bright, patterns are really crazy.” Madewell is certainly not that; it runs to jeans, boyish button-down shirts, A-line dresses, that kind of thing. Nothing is neon, hardly anything has visible logos or words or pictures, and where there are patterns, they are classics: stripes or polka dots or plaid. To Sikhounmuong, these elements are outside of trends; they are the standards.

“I don’t want this stuff to be disposable,” he said. “I want this piece to be relevant five years from now, that you can still pull it out of your closet.” Part of that intended timelessness, reflected from the name and logo, appears in the price of the clothing.

A lot of the products and shops that have come out of the capitalist embrace of authenticity and vintage are silly and fake, but the thing is, if you’re really going to ape a cultural movement, you have to go all in. Part of the cultural change that spawned Madewell is that being older and more honest and taking the time and making a better product is, well, better. There is much to be scornful of in this world of Mason-jar salads and twirly mustaches, but a major, and admirable, tenet of this specific modern twist on consumer culture is the idea that it is better to do things the right way. It is better to make fewer things than more things, because you can concentrate on those fewer things. This is why Americans of a certain age and class are more impressed by a pizza place that serves nothing but margherita pizza than by Domino’s, which sells a million combinations of cheese and sauce and bread and meat and will deliver to your door in 30 minutes or less.

This is not exactly what Madewell is doing, of course, but it is certainly what it is attempting to appear to do. Any veneer of authenticity or oldness is necessarily diffused, not specific, but we’re OK with that, in part because we like the aesthetic and in part because the stuff really is pretty high quality.

Most of my interview with Sikhounmuong, which was conducted in a conference room accompanied by two public relations people, was friendly. But eventually I had to ask: Didn’t he think it was, somehow and in some way, wrong to insinuate that Madewell today has any connection to my family’s company? Wasn’t that misleading and just a little bit gross? Sikhounmuong hesitated and looked to the PR person sitting next to him. This wasn’t really his game: He doesn’t craft slogans; he designs clothes. Eventually he said, “I think it’s an aspirational slogan. It says we know this name is a great name and we know this brand is a great brand. That’s what I take from it.”

That’s not what I take from it. What I’ve taken from it is that my family’s company probably gave even less of a shit than Madewell does about quality and design and passion. Its clothes were as high quality as they could afford because it was in their best interest to make clothes people were satisfied with. They manufactured in the U.S. because at the time it was cheaper to do so, and because it was easier. They weren’t noble; companies back then didn’t construct a facade of nobility and purpose. This was a company founded by a Russian immigrant who was probably an identity thief, a company that regularly stole the intellectual property of competitors if it thought it would sell. Both of the companies named Madewell adhere to the way things were done in their respective times. We look at the past through glasses that bring into focus only what we want, and need, to see; they distort everything else.

My great-uncle Aaron didn’t recognize anything on the Madewell website. And I think he would probably look at the exposed brick in a Madewell store and wonder why they didn’t finish putting up the walls. If Julius were alive, I think he’d be very impressed that a company called Madewell posted revenue of over $180 million in the fiscal year 2013. He would care not at all about whether it was authentic, or what the word “authentic” even means.

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