THE HEALING POWER OF CHICKEN AND PASTA

Please, please, this is not a living obituary. Inflicting such morbidity would be wrong for me and for you, much more so for Lenora, who might also read this column.

I got the call a scant six weeks ago. Lenora, a friend, congregant and fellow educator from my Charlotte days was riddled with cancer. It exploded all at once. By the time it was detected, it had invaded lungs, liver and bones. Desperate chemo has not worked.

We still cannot find within ourselves the clinical objectivity to spit out the word “terminal,” but we already choke on words like “incurable” and “dire.”

Part of our denial is just plain denial. A good measure of the denial, though, is the good nature, glibness, even silliness, that still emit from this woman who knows the eventuality and whose body is overtaken by disease. I mean, Lenora is a once chubby, moon-faced woman who reveled in dressing up like a huge M&M or a French maid to underscore some facet of living a life guided by mitzvot.

As I say, though, this is not a living eulogy.

Please, then, afford me the cathartic self-indulgence of reflecting on my own struggles with this moment in her life that are such a jumble of the bitter and the sweet.

For a decade, I had not been a good friend to Lenora. I had not even seen her in six years. No, we had had no falling out, simply the loopiness of life’s paths that bring two people together, then lead them on their separate ways. Hence, my responding to her crisis certainly was tinged with, if not consumed by, the guilt of now coming too late with too little. Ironic, but as hard as it is to account for “Where were you in the bad times?” it is sometimes even harder to answer to “Where were you in the good times?”

Yet, we can dispel guilt. The avenues of confession, contrition, new resolve, absolution, forgiveness, remain open. Helplessness, though, is a terminal condition. We stand by as the life of a lovely, decent person slips away before our eyes, and we flail our arms in desperation and curse our futility in making it better. No matter how much peace we ultimately make with the resolve that “we did our best,” the pall of helplessness remains forever.

The ministry of our presence is all that we have left. Perhaps this is the most sublime gift of all. Our presence cannot cure Lenora, but it can help to heal her, and heal us, as well. Every moment of our unconditional presence affirms that she will not face her fears alone.

Yet, even in offering our presence we remain unsettled. The thought that “I don’t know what to do, but I gotta do something,” eats away at us. The feeling is so pervasive that we laugh at sitcom scenarios when, facing whatever the crisis, someone is bound to say, “I’ll go put up some coffee.”

Personally, when I do not know what to do, I cook. So, yesterday, I cooked frenetically, as if I had taken half a bottle of dexies – chicken marsala, pappardelle, field greens with balsamic dressing and candied pecans, garlic bread, peach compote . . . I even found a long lost bottle of not-too-bad Israeli port. Then I schlepped it up to Lenora and Bob’s in Charlotte. She had conserved her strength to set a beautiful table in the dining room of their modest home. Schlemiel and schlimazel that we are, the power went out, but it fortuitously came back on in just enough time to warm the warm and chill the cold.

Soon, elbow-to-elbow, friends came and surrounded the table. We blessed the bread. Ate with gusto. Drank wine with abandon. Toasted each other. Joked and laughed. Caught up on old times. No sense of teary bon voyage.

And, Lenora kept pace with us all the way. She promised to take me to a new restaurant that she knew I would love, and there was not a touch of bitter irony or squirmy denial in her voice as she extended the invitation. There was no discussion of Divine justice or theodicy or God’s presence, for in our ministry of presence was the most manifest sense of God’s presence. Yes, we affirmed, God is best sought and found in breaking bread in the midst of human fellowship.

How long will the afterglow last? Call me a Pollyanna, but I believe it will endure until the next dinner, and the next dinner, and the next dinner, cooked by loving friends who “didn’t know what else to do” and served to a circle of the beloved who know to celebrate the eternity of the soul more by instinct than by theology.

As I finally drove off, I cried. Yet, the tears were as much of the sweet as they were of the bitter. For, ten years of indifference had somehow melted away. In its place, a modicum of comfort settled in as I realized that the simplicity of chicken and pasta and the presence of friends may not cure my friend Lenora, but it may help her – and us – to be healed.

THE TRAUMA OF TAKING AWAY THE KEYS

Katie is looking her most intently journalistic as she questions a representative of AARP about problems with older drivers, in the aftermath of that elderly man killing ten folks as he plowed his car into a crowded market.

“How does the family deal with the most painful issue, not allowing father or mother to drive anymore?” Katie asks.

The AARP-person acknowledges the trauma. As Katie nods her polite, tentative professional nod, the woman dryly suggests that this might be better accomplished by asking “someone more detached and objective, like a therapist, doctor or family clergyman” to break the news.

People who have not yet faced that daunting prospect might actually think that is a good idea, if not an easy out. Children of aging parents, like my kids, who know the eventuality they are facing, might still think it is a decent alternative, but may feel a creeping edge of skepticism, as the advice grates against a higher filial instinct.

And then there are the people who have themselves been obliged to take away the keys, face the trauma, recognize its necessity, yet still struggle with the guilt.

I am one such person.

My dad’s descent into senile dementia came in jagged steps, not a smooth slope. Tragically ironic, but one could chronicle those jagged steps by the evidence he left in their wake: He would work daily on his stamp collection, until one day he simply stopped, catalogues lying open, tweezers, stamps, hinges, all left in place from the day before. Likewise, his photography, his crosswords, his newspapers and magazines, his inability to answer the phone, pay the bills or even click the TV remote.

I, who was obliged to move back home to care for him and my mom, died a thousand deaths while clearing a small space for myself in the den. I asked his permission and removed some of his long-abandoned photographic equipment. But, his confusion still beckoned him to repeatedly demand, “Where are you taking that?” I would explain it to him ad infinitum, but nothing satisfied him nor assuaged my guilt.

All this, of course, came in tandem with taking away his car keys. The car went to my son, but each day my dad would ask, “Where is the car? We have to go shopping!” I would repeat as compassionately as I could, “Joey has it. I’ll do the shopping.” Each exchange stabbed me in the ribcage and forced a little more life out of my collapsing lungs.

All of us who have been there grieve and torture ourselves 10,000 times, not over the rationality of protecting our parent and the public, but over the irrational feeling that we are doing some evil by denigrating a parent’s independence and ability to make responsible decisions. The torment we feel is about being the reluctant catalyst for a journey on the road from which there is no return. The pain is about losing any last pretensions of our own fleeting youth. The trauma is about a little part of us dying, and dying again, with each bit of mortality that we acknowledge in our mom or dad. The heartache is about the futility of yearning for the momma and poppa who enveloped us in their all-protective arms when they and we were young. The grief is about being orphaned while our parents are still clinging to life.

Yet, I believe that any one of us who has faced the trauma would tell you that s/he would not have done it any other way. We would not plead or even infer our martyrdom. We would tell you, however, that we did not abrogate our responsibility to our parents’ safety and wellbeing – that we for a moment sublimated our own grief to face the pain it sometimes takes to care for those who have given us life. We would tell you that, for all the self-recrimination, the thought of some indifferent surrogate letting us off the hook would be even more grievous.

We would tell you that deluding ones self into believing that s/he has “gotten off the hook” is likely to eventually bring even greater intrapsychic torment than facing the responsibility to ones parents personally and forthrightly. My guess is that, despite the AARP’s assertion, any honorable therapist, doctor or clergyman would tell you the same, not be co-opted into absolving a child of a painful mission that s/he alone must accomplish. Finally, we would tell you that the pain we withstood, and that torments us even now, was still the highest articulation of our love.

I pray that my own children will remember the responsibility that I awkwardly took, and the grief that I suffered, in acknowledging that my dad’s vitality had dimmed and that it would return no more. So may it be with your kids. Perhaps they will realize that the fullness of life is messy and not without its price, and that it cannot be sanitized by a gloved surrogate-for-rent and hermetically sealed in a zip-lock bag.

Let them at least know while we are still of sound mind that they have our blessing to take away our keys, literally and figuratively, when we can no longer safely drive our own lives. Let them at least know that the love we show them now might eventually counterbalance the trepidation and guilt that might confront them later. Let them at least know that we love them and know that they love us.

Somehow, I believe that if we give them the message, they will get the message.

“ONE DAY, WITH GOD’S HELP”

Rabbi Juzint was crazy.

This was common knowledge to a generation of students who tolerated a year in his Talmud class at the Chicago Jewish Academy. Pudgy. Balding. Vaguely effeminate. We mocked his swishy walk and his unmanly affectations. We mimicked his high-pitched lilt and the perennial confusion of "s" and "sh" that pervaded his thick Lithuanian Yiddish accent.

We felt ourselves well justified. He would teach us the Talmudic text in an undertone, barely audible, chanting the Aramaic in the singsong of the Eastern European shtetl. There would be an interminable moment of silence. Then, uncontrollable frenetic laughter. Or worse, he would fix his stare, clench his teeth and explode in a burst of unfocused rage. And then, with neither acknowledgment nor apology, he would return to interpreting the intricacies of the day's sacred text.

Rabbi Juzint was crazy.

His students regularly fell in and out of his grace, first engulfed by his love, then accused of betrayal or some imagined affront, then with similar caprice, restored to his favor. Talk was that he regularly co-opted the younger, more impressionable students to squeal on the older boys for infractions of religious behavior or getting too chummy with the girls. And we all knew that if he patted you on the back, the act of endearment was a ruse to check if you were wearing your arba kanfos, the fringed ritual undergarment mandated by Numbers 15.

Rabbi Juzint was crazy.

We recognized the numbers that the Nazis had tattooed on his arm. We heard hush-hush murmuring about how they had somehow diabolically maimed him for life. On rare occasions, perhaps too rare, he would speak to us of the tender years of adolescence that he spent in hell: of concentration camps, and forced labor, and starvation, and disease, and beatings, and the stench of death that was an ever-present, all-pervasive daily reality. How the great rabbinical masters of the yeshiva of Slobodka had been murdered at the final utterance of their plaintive Shema. How mother and father and God-knows-how-many brothers and sisters met their end in gas chambers and crematoria.

And of them all, either as a fortuitous gift or the most cruel and haunting injustice, only one, young Meir Juzint, survived. A witness. A tormented soul. Orphaned. Alone. Struggling forever, not so much to make sense of it all, but simply to find a moment's respite between outbursts of giddy laughter and unbridled rage. And we, his rambunctious, over-indulged sophomoric charges, were all too quick to see lunacy, but only too slow to hear the immeasurable pain.

How ironic, as I look back 40 years later with an understanding that accompanies what Wordsworth calls the "years that bring the philosophic mind." I read afresh the brokenhearted lament of poems he inscribed in a thin Hebrew treatise and nod my head wistfully at the title he chose, "The Consolation of Meir." I close my eyes and hear again his plaintive Old World chant as, burdened with grief, he prayed the penitential prayers for our infantile souls and for the souls of so many babies thrown alive into satanic fires:

Account not to us the sin,
Which we committed in our folly.
We beseech you, speedily heal the afflicted babes,
The blessing of your fruitful vineyard.

And then I think, for the first time in years, about the words he wrote to my parents on my ninth grade report card, "One day, with God's help, he will become a great scholar."

And we mocked and we mimicked him, the way that teenagers typically mock and mimic. And we thought he was crazy. And the remorse that I feel 40 years later is surmounted only by the bittersweet knowledge that only years and tears can bring, that somehow his encounter with us had not been entirely in vain.

For, if we have learned to have more than a modicum of compassion, it must in some way be bound up in the ability we have cultivated to listen to the cry of the tortured soul and the sound of the breaking heart. It is to know that we have heard more than the empty nattering of one whom we would otherwise cast aside as just another crazy.

And I hear, I pray not too late, pain, power and pathos that I had never heard before. And I think to myself that maybe one day, with God's help, even I might grow up to be a great scholar.

INTO THE CIRCLE

My mentor and friend Reb Leib Groner caught up with me recently at his granddaughter’s wedding. Broad smile across his face, he nonetheless chided me, “I haven’t seen much of your writing lately.”

So, I countered with a wisenheimer retort. “Maybe you haven’t been looking in the right places.”

Besting me with his quick wit and an advantage of at least 50 I.Q. points, he shot back, “Maybe that’s because you haven’t been writing about the right things!”

You might not know who Reb Leib Groner is. For forty years, he was the private secretary, personal aide and intimate confidant of the Grand Rabbi of Lubavitch (“Lubavitcher Rebbe”), spiritual leader of the world’s most influential Chasidic community and Jewish outreach program. To know of Reb Leib’s worldly wisdom is to realize that he must speed-read the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and 17 other periodicals each day, in addition to his daily devotion to intense prayer, communal needs, and the study of Torah, mysticism and Chasidic philosophy.

I came to know Reb Leib through his son, Yossi, the Lubavitch emissary to the Carolinas, a man (nearly) as gifted as his father and mother. He is my Jewish exemplar, teacher, confessor, and one of a scant handful of compassionate people who stood by me and validated my humanity during the hardest times in my life.

I have spent numerous Sabbaths and Holy Days enjoying the hospitality of Rabbi Yossi and his brilliant, quick-witted wife, Rebbetzin Mariashi. I have watched intently as their ten children have grown to adolescence and adulthood, and prayerfully as their son, please God, surmounted a nearly devastating leukemia and bone marrow transplant.

I have spent relatively little personal time with Reb Leib. I catch myself as I write these words, because on the clock the time has been relatively meager, but all the encounters have been intensely personal: two Sabbaths in his home, a moment’s greeting at two weddings and a bar mitzvah, and that is about it.

Reb Leib is also one of that handful that gave me validation during hard times. Do not think for a moment, however, that the validation was all warm fuzzies. He is an expert practitioner of tough love. With insight and consultation with the Rebbe – which in itself touched me for the magnitude of his concern – he chided and cajoled me to take challenging steps that became the turning point for my personal and professional restoration.

My veneration for Reb Leib and his son has an additional dimension. They are intensely orthodox Jews, black hats, caftans, untrimmed beards, all the accoutrements. I, on the other hand, am fallen-away orthodox, still greatly respectful of its pious way of life and still closely aligned with its theology, but no longer strictly observant of all of its nuances and demands. Father and son are well aware of that. Yet, their warmth is genuine, their acceptance is unjudgmental and unconditional, their welcome is enthusiastic, never a proselytizing word toward their way of life, just to be an honorable person and to conduct my dealings with integrity.

These emotions rushed forth fresh and new just a day ago at Rabbi Yossi’s daughter’s wedding. I pop my head into the pre-ceremony reception, and with a flick of Rabbis Groner-junior-and-senior’s hands, I am beckoned to a seat at the head table. An hour later, I am standing on the sidelines watching the exuberant Chasidic dancing, and in a moment, Reb Leib is yanking me by the arm, pulling me into the dizzying circle, tightly gripping my hand as this man twenty years my senior nearly lifts me off my feet in response to the tumultuous music.

The meaning of that yank is unmistakable: “Not words, but passion draws you to our circle. No one is a wallflower when we rejoice.”

As I realize that Reb Leib is tugging at me, not at one of the attending dignitaries or Chasidic rabbis or well-heeled donors, the yank takes on one more meaning: The circle is especially intended for the least among us – the tattered, the torn, the fallen away, the otherwise rejected and dejected. It does not cost a penny, just the hopefulness that rejoicing and exuberance can restore ones soul.

And, I further realize that never once through all my dalliances in the various “liberal” denominations of Judaism have I ever been so eagerly invited into the circle. It then comes to me more clearly than ever that the saintly Rebbe and Reb Leib, Rabbi Yossi, their Rebbetzins, their colleagues and disciples, may well be “orthoprax” – unwaveringly meticulous in their traditional practices – but not by any means “orthodox.” For they are the least narrow, most worldly and unconditionally inclusive in the basic doctrine of their faith: “The circle has room for everyone. Let me pull you into the circle and galvanize the strength you never knew was yours. The music is joyous, and the exuberant dance is itself the gift of life.”

Reb Leib, thank you for giving me life by drawing me into your circle. Your charge has been fulfilled: I know that at least for once I have written about the right thing.

SO MUCH FOR THE CHARM OF SMALL-TOWN AMERICANA

Chances are that ninety-eight percent of this readership has not spent much time in the rural South. The Interstate system and its network of pit stops have made poking around Main Street Mayberry all but irrelevant. Hence, for most of us the image of the charm of small-town Americana remains rhapsodically intact.

Well, my life requires meandering in the rural South Carolina Upstate within a fifty-mile radius of Greenville, a relative metropolis. Thus, my observations, however tinged with romanticism, are of a more clinical, critical nature. The most critical among them regards the unsettling nature of rural poverty and homelessness.

Anyone who thinks that homelessness is an exclusively urban, inner-city phenomenon needs to look again. Small-town homelessness is particularly insidious in that – despite the protestations of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly – the resources through which homeless people might transition to independent living are so scarce -- resource like safe, affordable housing, job training, essential medical and social services, employment at a living wage, and most importantly, transportation for homeless people to access the empowering resources.

Sadly, the fifty-mile radius around Greenville is merely emblematic of a national reality that should give even us urban folks cause for concern. This is what you would likely see if you wandered down Main Street of small-town America:

You would notice that “the other side of the tracks” is not simply a euphemism, but a reality that is defined not so much by race as by lack of economic and social empowerment.

Perhaps this is due to my own prejudices, but you would also see that on the more prosperous side of the tracks, there are any number of comfortable, if not affluent, houses of worship. The old tall-steeple churches are meticulously groomed and classically Andy-and-Opie small-town charming. The newer churches are large and imposing, although usually paeans to high-tech functionality more than aesthetics.

More noteworthy, however, is that so many of these congregations have little if any interaction with the festering reality of homelessness in their communities. Yes, perhaps a congregation here and there does. Perhaps through financial contributions at arm’s length. Perhaps an eagerness to address poverty through missions to Jamaica, Haiti and third-world countries. But, woefully little hands-on toward the other side of their charming town’s tracks.

We all remember the long-venerated virtue of small-town Americana. It is so highly regarded that it has by now been mythologized. Friendly Village. Centerville. Mayberry RFD. Now, despite its dogmatic defenders, it is merely a dewy reminiscence. Once upon a time, rural congregations were singularly committed to “taking care of their own.” "Their own” was understood as broad enough to include the poor, the orphan, the widow, the stranger, the handicapped, the alcoholic, the homeless, and most generally, folks in crisis by dint of illness, death, crime, natural disaster, or any reversal of fortune.

The small-town church was the motivator and clearinghouse of compassion, benevolence, and “love thy neighbor as thyself.” This was the epicenter of “share your bread with the hungry, bring the poor into your house, clothe the naked, and not hide from a fellow being.” The words are not mine or those of a contemporary do-gooder, but of the ultimate ol' time do-gooder, God. (Isaiah 58)

Rural congregations, motivated by the spirit of the Divine, could revive their honorable tradition and do all this and more to address the blight of homelessness, rather than avert their eyes from the squalor on the other side of the tracks: What about job training? What about classes in life-skills? What about helping someone navigate the head-spinning bureaucracy and paperwork that comes with assuming responsibility for ones self and family? What about local employment? What about a few local doctors, dentists, and lawyers helping folks with essential medical and social needs? What about some folks offering guarantees to utilities and phone companies for the exorbitant deposits required for moving from homelessness to a new home? What about providing transportation from where poor folks live to the remote places they need to be – clinics, hospitals, social service agencies, jobs?

You should realize by now that the issue is not for rural America alone. Once upon a time, urban churches and synagogues had an equally broad definition of “their own” and addressed their needs accordingly. Now we in the cities have many, but never enough, social service agencies, clinics, soup kitchens, and suicide intervention hotlines. But, we have largely lost the notion that the bottom-line “looking out for our own” squarely belongs with our houses of God. Politics and economics may fail us, but the Divine imperative will forever endure.

Small-town Americana may have lost much of its graciousness to pernicious indifference. Our big cities are no better. Wherever we live, there is always “the other side of the tracks.” Whether we consider its residents as “our own” remains to be seen. But, of this we must be sure: No entity can accomplish the task more capably and devotedly than the places where the good news of Isaiah and Jesus are regularly preached and should be practiced. A house of God is no house of God unless it is also a house of humanity.

A HOLE-Y HERESY

One cannot turn on the TV these days even for the most legitimate reasons without being taunted by the sacrilege: ham-on-bagels.

Ham-on-bagels . . . Heresy. Blasphemy. Desecration.

The bagel is the quintessence of the Jewish Experience: crusty exterior, soft at heart, hard-boiled, half-baked, growing stale if it stays in one place too long.

Some would say, apocryphally, that the name “bagel” is related to the Aramaic word for “to hasten,” as in “to hasten the coming of the Messiah.” The Messiah may tarry, but a bagel lovingly slathered with chive-flecked cream cheese and enshrouded in two (OK, three) slices of velvety lox, is for a moment the long awaited return to the Garden of Eden.

Let me say a word or two about lox: Lox is not “smoked salmon.” I have no scientific data to substantiate this. But “smoked salmon” is eaten on toast points with creamery butter and chopped egg whites by people named Miffy and Trent. Lox is down-and-dirty two-fisted food, consumed by people named Marv and Sylvia, washed down by a Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray or semi-viscous black coffee.

Lox may be either salty or “Nova.” Growing up in Chicago, we knew not the Nova species. The first time I asked my mother about Nova lox, she told me it tasted “spoiled.” I have since move on, grown more cosmopolitan, and dabbled a bit in Nova, but never without the image of my mother’s consternation haunting the recesses of my middle-aged psyche.

The furthest a bagel should be allowed to stray from lox is to a delicate layer of strawberry or raspberry preserves on top of the cream cheese. So long, that is, as we understand it as only a moment’s diversion from the earthy reality of bawdy lox and authoritative slices of Bermuda onion.

And what are those pink and blue things that some trendy “shoppes” try to pass off as bagels? Feh. Horse fodder. Do not get me started.

Some entrepreneurs have had a modicum of success in marketing a “pizza bagel.” Purists may one day come to accept the pizza bagel, this half-breed child of two robust, passionate cultures. It may, indeed, more quickly bridge the gap between Rome and Jerusalem than a Papal visit to Miami Beach. Mario Puzo and Philip Roth are collaborating on a position paper.

But ham-on-bagel is heresy tantamount to erecting a statue of Zeus Olympus in the Holy of Holies. The Faithful have fought and died for less.

Brothers and sisters, what will be next? Matzo balls bound with fatback? Chopped liver garnished with mayo? Knishes masquerading as dim sum?

Lord have mercy on us all . . .

So, let Mickey D. revel in his illicit porcine pleasures, but, hey, gimme back my bagels!

DON'T LECTURE ME ABOUT COCKTAIL PARTIES!

So there I sit, captive in my car, navigating the construction on 385, when this mellifluous nitwit comes on "All Things Considered" preaching about contemporary cocktail rituals. He pronounces the age of sushi and sashimi dead and extols the return to "authentic, traditional cocktail fare": finger sandwiches and canapes.

Literally and figuratively . . . baloney!

I hate to pull rank, but don't ever lecture a Member of Our Tribe about "authentic, traditional" hors d'oeuvres. I come from the chosen people who invented the cocktail hour while the Mayflower crowd was still chowing down on kidneys and haggis.

We Jews invented the cocktail hour. All right, all right, so we didn't call it "cocktail hour." It didn't precede the annual debutante ball in Kishinev or the opening of opera season in Bialystok. Nevertheless, come with me to a traditional chasseneh (wedding), Bar Mitzvah, or better yet, a bris - yes, a circumcision, Dr. Freud - and I will show you cocktail goodies that will forever confirm the suspicion that the best of your goyishe finger sandwiches are Spam-putty on surgical cotton.

Hors d'oeuvres, meaning, "set apart from the main work," best describes Jewish cocktail eats: The magnitude of the ensuing meal is irrelevant. Bring on another platter of knishes. Presbyterians may speak of "finger sandwiches" and "munchies." The undernourished English language lamentably has no equivalent for "up-to-the-elbows sandwich" and "bloaties."

Alas, outsiders do not commonly know Jewish cuisine for its extensive palette of cocktail foods. We hide the best for ourselves. Indulge me, as I now wax rhapsodic over my three favorites:

THE KNISH - The knish is sodden dough enveloping leaden filling. The egotistical knish never lets you forget its presence. It leaves its calling card, an indelible grease stain, wherever it momentarily rests its oily head. The filling may be oniony beef, oniony potato or oniony buckwheat. Its closest Episcopalian cousin is the potato puff. The knish is the potato thud.

CHOPPED LIVER - I caught grief when I recently made sport of folks who bind their chopped liver with mayo. Go ahead, if you must. We won't. Ever. Never. It's just too close to Miracle Whip. For the same aggregate of arterial goo, why not commune with authentic Jewish nirvana?

Nap your chopped liver in schmaltz, onion-flecked chicken fat, liquid heartburn. Grind in some gribenes, crispy shards of greasy chicken skin. When no one is looking, eat some straight from the bowl. Sam Levenson called it "Jewish Popcorn." Gribenes are solely responsible for my 200-pound girth and terminal acne at the tender age of 13. Do not mention chopped liver in the same paragraph as . . .

. . . pâté. Pâté contains hostile adulterants like cognac and mace. If you were a calf or chicken, would you want your liver's final repose to be cognac and mace, or real-people stuff like schmaltz and gribenes? I rest my case.

HERRING - When the final chapter of history is written, scholars will prove that Jewish explorers introduced herring to the Swedes. As a rotund pre-teen, I loved herring: au naturel ("schmaltz"), pickled, chopped, fried, baked. My dad would kid about chocolate-dipped.

The family herring ritual would start at 6:15 with an insistent rap on our back door. My grandfather, a retired grocer, would trek to Municipal Market before dawn and bestow my mother with a "surprise" gift of a tub of herring. At age four, I was delighted by such affection. I could never understand my mother's rancor. So what if the herring had to be prepared NOW or start to stink like, well, old fish? So what if it meant canceling a day's worth of her plans? So what if the world had to mark time in deference to herring?

That evening, the air still pungent with the volatile fumes of pickling brine, the Wilson's celebrated herring-fest. Guests were never invited. We still had our dignity, however tarnished by a day spent knee deep in fins and scales. True, some of my co-religionists consider herring beneath their dignity. Then again, some of my coreligionists consider the Jackie Mason tasteful. Yet, show me a bris without herring, and I'll show you a Son of Israel destined for the analyst's couch.

What of the cocktails at an "authentic, traditional" Jewish cocktail hour? Entirely secondary. Nearly irrelevant. Just bring on the chopped liver. Wine means thick, syrupy, grapy goo in which a knife could stand perpendicularly until it decomposes. All liquor -- scotch, bourbon, Canadian -- is interchangeable, generically known as "schnapps" and drunk straight from a shot-glass. It wasn't until I spent some time amidst proper company that I learned that the Upper Middle Class uses a shot-glass for measuring, not drinking. So much for Jews and hoity-toity cocktails.

But, as far as eats are concerned, don't ever prate at me about "authentic, traditional" cocktail fare. I'll match you knish for canapé any time. And, when you've come to see the error in your ways, talk to me for a moment about your tomato aspic and calamari. Feh. C'monna my house. I'll show you better.

AN EPIGRAM ON THE DEATH OF A FEELING

The classical philosophers incessantly debated whether the order of the universe is innately natural or whether our minds create relationships to delude ourselves into believing that chaos is inherently orderly.

Whatever, our last week was quintessentially chaotic. On a moment’s notice, we were flying to eastern Pennsylvania for the funeral of our niece, who succumbed to bulimia at the age of 19. Her body was so depleted of electrolytes that the impulses that regulate heart and brain simply ceased. She and her parents had taken every therapeutic step to intervene in her disease. It was not meant to be.

Perhaps it was serendipity, or perhaps it was just more raging chaos, but I mindlessly flipped through the channels on the eve of her funeral. In the nanosecond that it took to jump from C-SPAN to SpongeBob, my attention was riveted by the image of a young grunge, fingers deep down his throat, inducing himself to vomit into a fishbowl. Once, twice, then with what seemed to be a gallon of water, he puked up a goldfish to the hoots and cheering of a gaggle of associate grunges. Then he held the fishbowl victoriously aloft, just as I remember Bobby Hull jubilantly hoisting the Stanley Cup skyward during the glory days of my beloved Blackhawks.

Here I watch some moron gain a moment’s celebrity with a gleeful upchuck, just as we poise ourselves to bury a gracious young woman who struggled with her adolescence, her relationships, the angst-laden lyrics that she sensitively composed, her prominence as a recording artist, the demons and insecurities that haunted her, despite her outward air self-assuredness and confidence.

I guess that I had never imagined self-induced vomiting as an art form and that its public display would sell enough commercials to make it a media event. Crude enough to offend public sensibilities, or so I had hoped, and crude beyond tolerance when your niece has just died of bulimia.

Change the channel, you say. No, this is not about boycotting advertisers, or making a ruckus on O’Reilly, or calling out the morality police, or even changing the channel. This is about self-imposed discretion. This is about how even people who push the envelope of outrageousness need know that the pain inflicted by putting a laugh-track to tragedy demands self-restraint. This is about having the decency to say, even in the freest of societies, “I know that I could go there, but my conscience will not allow it.” This is about how the final line of demarcation between human and beast is in the self-motivated human ability to say “no,” particularly to the allure of a prurient impulse.

So, go make fun of the outrageous, of human foibles, of bombastic politicians, of hypocrites who demand our adulation while betraying our trust. But, vomiting is not funny. Self-induced vomiting is really not funny. There is a market, I am sure, for comic routines about the Holocaust, dead babies, amputees, lynchings, starving African children, the mentally and physically impaired (“RE-tards”), AIDS victims, anorexics, and a plethora of other human tragedies. Howard Stern knows that he can gain ratings by verbally jerking around a mentally-handicapped guest. Someone who calls herself Chrissy (Conant) Caviar purports, as an artistic statement, to market her ova to childless couples as one would Beluga, and the New York critics rave at her beyond-the-fringe contribution to an exhibition simply entitled “Family.”

Howard, and Chrissy, and goldfish-vomiting reality TV, and comedians who make hay of dead-baby jokes have every right to go there. But, their inability to stop of their own accord only bespeaks their cruelty and the receptiveness – or at least numbness – to cruelty of the audiences that make them pop icons.

Nietzsche was a pretty gloomy guy, so perhaps he is not the most credible authority on comedy. Nonetheless, he observed, “A joke is the epigram on the death of a feeling.” We laugh at a man who slips on a banana peel and only later, if at all, do we inquire if he broke his neck. Ask someone who has been there about the comedic quality of watching a baby die, or losing a brother to AIDS, or knowing that ones mother was gassed by the Nazis, or nursing a handicapped child . . . or losing a niece, a daughter, a sister, to bulimia. No wishes the same on you. Just a little empathy. A little common sense. A little self-control.

FEEDING THE APPETITE FOR SCHADENFREUDE

A recent edition of an online Jewish periodical poked fun at a prominent rabbi who was caught propositioning an illicit sexual act (not pedophilia) in a public place. Good for a cheap laugh. Good for self-proliferating email distribution and a yuk around the dinner table. Good for feeding the public’s insatiable appetite for schadenfreude – taking delight in another’s undoing.

Perhaps in this open and unrelenting society, comedy was in order. Winding up as a one-liner in a Leno monologue or a Letterman Top Ten list has become part of the ritual of public purgatory, if not a bullet on the 15-minute pop chart.

Call me a sourpuss, but let me give this pants-down scene a different perspective: Despite the rabbi’s willful misdeed, this situation was a tragedy, not a Seinfeld sketch. A once-respected leader capitulated to misbegotten lust. Who knows the demons at work in his soul? Who knows the conflicts that tormented his conscience? All we do really know is that he is already suffering all the grief he deserved and then some. He is likely to have forfeited his job, his marriage, his esteem, his clerical authority, his ability to walk down the street without facing murmured scorn or derision.

And yes, perhaps he deserves all that. But, after society has meted out its explicit and implicit punishments, who will be there to give a modicum of solace and encouragement to a hurting, isolated, failed man who gave in to impulses that bespeak tortured unwholeness, not criminality? Who will comfort him, show him some understanding, restore his sense of self-worth?

It will not be a psychotherapist at $200 a session. It will, and must, be a person of exceptional compassion, tolerance and insight. Perhaps someone who has himself been humbled by scandal or impropriety, who knows the internal conflicts and lurking demons, a “wounded healer,” who has gained a great ability in comprehend others' troubles thanks to the awareness of his own pain.

Having mercy on a person who has suffered undeservedly is, sadly, a rare quality in our contentious, calloused society. Having mercy, or even understanding, to one who had done wrong and deserved punishment is even more exceptional. Yet, anyone who has been there knows that everyone needs someone by his side, someone who may loathe the sin yet acknowledge the humanity of the sinner.

“Everyone needs someone,” you say? Even Hitler and child murderers and cold-blooded killers? To that I have no rational answer, but I do have an existential one that I learned from Elie Weisel. I was privileged to have coffee with Weisel at the time that Ivan (“The Terrible”) Demjanjuk was on trial. Knowing his staunch opposition to capital punishment, I asked Weisel if his opposition extended to Demjanjuk, et al. “No,” he said. “That’s different.” He did not elaborate, and there was a note of finality to his voice. It said, “This should not require further explanation.”

I guess that there is a point of malignant depravity that moves beyond any claim to compassion or even human validation. And I guess that we must rely on some higher instinct with which we are blessed to know where to draw the line. This, however, I do know: Soliciting an illicit sexual act with an otherwise consenting adult is not mass murder. Likewise 99.9 percent of the sins that feed schadenfreude-hungry audiences a steady diet of scandal, titillating innuendo, lush gossip, comedic scripts and unjustified intimations of our own moral superiority.

OK, OK, so we got a good yuk out of a rabbi pathetically getting caught with his pants down. Next week another deserving candidate will be slimed. But, who among us will see tragedy in another’s downfall? Who among us will be there to wipe their tears and ease their burden?

If the public has a right to the comedic dimension of human downfall and moral frailty, then let them know well enough to also see tragedy as tragedy. For, imputing only comedy to a person’s undoing is the greatest tragedy of all.

“WHATEVER-NESS” MAY BE THE WORST FORM OF ABUSE

When you think about it, a “high-end outlet mall” is an oxymoron, or at least it attracts a clientele that defies categorization. Probably it is best for us to simply marvel, “What a country!” Newly arrived immigrants, compulsive bargain hunters and folks blue of collar or red of neck can purchase deeply discounted Armani suits and Gucci handbags, then stop right next door for a slurpy, Cinnabon and a gag gift at Spencer’s.

Moreover, attire is no indicator of class distinction. My own wardrobe on that Sunday, just north of Atlanta, is a grubby tee shirt and tattered jeans, while shoppers presumably of lesser socioeconomics are still dressed in their going-to-church finery.

I guess that the abuse I witnessed is also immune from class distinction.

As Linda continues her perusal of Neiman’s discount haute couture, I retreat to the food court for a Coke and mid-afternoon crash. Now, you and I have witnessed many a frustrated parent give a rambunctious child a yank or a scolding in a crowded mall. Maybe we are jaded, but we would hardly consider that abuse. One would hope, on the other hand, that even in our largely indifferent culture, someone(s) would come to defend a child being beaten senseless by his/her mother. Yet, I beheld an episode of equally heinous abuse while onlookers, including my own now guilt-ridden self, did nothing but keep to ourselves.

An older and younger woman (mother and daughter?) are arguing at 120 decibels. Cursing, in each other’s face, poking, shoving, screaming accusations and threats. As the battle rages one’s cell phone rings, they pause briefly, the younger woman answers, and then whoever is on the other end of the line is drawn into the battle, too. An ugly, ugly scene.

And, through it all, a little blond-haired girl, no more than seven, stands by helplessly. Oh, she begs her mother to stop. Then a moment of bewilderedness crosses her face, perhaps shame, as well. Then she tugs at her mother for attention. Finally she resigns to that half-blasé, half-frustrated look that says, “Whatever.” Clearly, she has seen it all before. And again. And again.

Meanwhile, I sit there like a sociologist, a detached observer, not a participant. Time and again, I almost step forward to intervene. What stops me? Perhaps an edge of fear that the rancor would be redirected toward me, or that I would exacerbate the situation, or turn a “scene” into a major conflagration. I cannot deny, however, that the larger measure of my reluctance is a product of the venerated ethos of not butting into other people’s business, looking on with slack-jawed indifference, not violating the privity of intra-family squabbles.

Before my ambivalence dissipates, the incident is over. The younger throws a package at the older, screams a final epithet, yanks her daughter and is on her way. The incident is over. The problem remains. It has festered in my head ever since. Someone should have intervened. I should have intervened. Not for the sake of the two foul-mouthed cat-fighting adults, but for the defenseless, once-innocent little child who had seen more than enough and had presumably seen it all before. She had had the inalienable right to an innocent childhood ripped from her, replaced by a model of base, violent adulthood, forced into a pitiful role reversal as parent to two miscreant children. And no one seemed to give a rip, much less from the womb that once swaddled her.

Had I gotten their ear, what would I have said? I would have told them to stop it for the sake of the child. I would have told them that they are searing indelible impressions in her delicate soul. I would have told them that their child deserves an unfettered childhood, or at least one not stamped out by people who are charged to nurture and protect her. I would have told them to look at her pathetic helplessness, the hollow eyes, as vacant as the eyes of a child starving in Ethiopia. I would have told them that whatever justifiable anger the two of them shared, the real harm was to their once pure, innocent child.

And, they would have probably told me to f*** off.

But, I should have told them anyway. We should have told them. For, if nothing rubbed off on them, perhaps for a critical nanosecond something would have rubbed off on that innocent little girl. Maybe she would unconsciously absorb that there is a different way, that some grownups protect children even at their own peril, that adults are to be their child’s safe haven, not their downfall, that kindness and gentleness might teach her not to replicate this horrific abuse toward her own children.

Her struggle with them to stop devastated me. Likewise her embarrassment and her frustration. But, I will beyond all never forget that resigned look of “Whatever” that crossed her face, as she bowed to a reality beyond her power to change. And I, as you, should tearfully confess that while the abusive language and posturing came from her kin, her benign expression of “Whatever” is simply a reflection of our own indifferent “whatever-ness,” the most heinous abuse of all.

GOOD MORNING, BAGHDAD-NAM

I derive no pleasure from these words, and certainly no gratification from a smug I-told-ya-so. I for one staunchly supported the war in Iraq. I was certain that weapons of mass destruction were in plain view, deployable without trepidation at a moment’s notice, trained on the free world. I knew as an article of faith that Saddam’s demise would be met by the jubilation by the Iraqi hoi polloi, setting it irretrievably on the road to democracy.

I cannot yet say that any of that is patently untrue, but neither is it the slam-dunk that Bush, Powell, et al, would have had us believe. The most strident among us would say that the party line on Iraq was intended to dupe us for whatever hidden agenda the military-industrial complex had in mind. The more circumspect among us, and herein I include myself, would be more tentative, now surmising that we were subjected to hyperbole and overstatement of the imminence of the threat and the democracy-craving spirit of the Iraqi people.

As the war transitions from a raging infection to a low-grade case of fibromyalgia, we who are children of the 60’s cannot help but feel a stomach-souring wave of déjà vu as we consider the ambiguities and hyperbole that sustained the war in Vietnam well beyond its dubious justification. Back then, the overarching concern, we were told, was not weapons of mass destruction, but the “domino theory,” that somehow stanching the rot of communism in Southeast Asia would prevent it from one day infecting Boise.
The theory, of course, was not entirely lacking in merit, but was certainly outrageously overblown and demonized, as we are now coming to surmise about Saddam’s vaunted arsenal. Likewise, the anticipated thwarting of the domino effect in Vietnam did little to stabilize Southeast Asia, certainly no more than Saddam’s defeat will bring stability to the volatile Middle East.

A generation ago, we were told that the plight of South Vietnam was an external evil perpetrated by Ho Chi Minh and his Soviet handlers on an oppressed, democracy-hungry populace. Yes, the populace was oppressed, but much of the defiance, we came to understand, stemmed from the core of that populace, and the regime we supported was so evil and corrupt that it made Ho Chi Minh look like a poster boy for brotherhood week.

Did the people of South Vietnam have a cultural and political context to understand democracy, much less appreciate and eagerly embrace it? Does the everyday Iraqi, much less its leaders-in-waiting, have any more context for craving democracy? Is it mere coincidence that the only true democracy in the Middle East, Israel, was founded and populated primarily by democracy-driven European transplants? Does “natural law” ensure that the unfettered human spirit anywhere in the world would instinctively be drawn to democracy?

Whether democracy is an eventuality in Iraq remains to be seen, but we were taken for suckers once we came to believe that the oppressed Iraqis would instantly celebrate democracy. No, Iraqi soldiers demand their back pay from the people they were commanded to vanquish. Folks want their water, and they want it now, likewise the other amenities that now, in retrospect, seemed so accessible in Saddam’s times. We take them for ingrates, but the psyche must be understood in terms of its origin in dependency, not self-determination. It is well to remember that another group of Middle Easterners, the Israelites, also reminisced and clamored about the good ol’ days of Egyptian enslavement just days after Moses introduced them to the insecurities of the wilderness. Not to worry, God will lead you forward. Right. And now, introducing the pantheon of Bush, Powell and Tommy Franks.

There will come to be a point, I sadly predict, when those pesky snipers in the Iraqi countryside will stop looking like frustrated Saddam holdouts and more and more like the Viet Cong. And, we will be told to be patient, that we are expecting too much too soon, that “victory is close at hand.” Perhaps we will be told that we will gradually replace American intrigue with “Baghdadization,” pitting Iraqis against each other, just as Robert McNamara tried to snooker us into believing in “Vietnamization” (pronounced “Veetnimization”) as a euphemism for defeat. Then, I fear, after years of futility, we will depart not with a bang but a whimper, once again crowing “proud to be an American” to the tune of “Taps” over the graves of 52,000 Americans who died senselessly prosecuting a war that we could not win, for reasons that even the decades could not help us to understand.

A PAINFULLY CLOUDY END TO A RADIANT MINISTRY

I just returned from Chicago, a sentimental journey, childhood friends whom I had not seen in 40 years. Oh, Devon Avenue is now the bastard child of Calcutta, Zagreb and Kiev, but even that is OK. The prune Danish (“sweet rolls,” if you are a true Chicagoan) are still the best, so who cares if you say “spasibo” instead of “thank you”?

The context of the visit was the retirement at age 90 of the beloved cantor of my youth. To this day, I call him “my cantor,” despite not having heard him chant a service since 1965. The title is reserved for a mentor, a father figure, beyond the years and miles that have separated us. His voice still rings melodic whenever I call, still flecked with the Norwegian accent that echoes his childhood in Trondheim. He is still eager to send me a tape of a melody for Li-David Mizmor or a new rendition of Adon Olam that he composed to the clip-clop of his treadmill.

I had the honor of paying tribute to him at his “last” Sabbath service in the cantorate, but the quotation marks bespeak only an official vocational transition. For the myriad who consider him “my cantor,” the lush melodies and self-effacing kindness will never cease.

So, I paid tribute with reminiscences:

How he struggled each week to teach us bratty kids songs for Sabbath and holy days. How he awakened my interest in Judaism by challenging me to read from the Torah, after five years of my being uniformly treated like an idiot by a cavalcade of religious-school teachers. How he compassionately broke the news to me of my beloved aunt’s sudden death. How I helplessly watched his daughter, my childhood playmate, succumb to cancer at age 38. How he retained his commitment to the integrity of his craft, the ancient authenticity of synagogue melody. How he never profaned the liturgy’s majesty with pop-cantorial renditions of Adon Olam to Rock Around the Clock, despite its cheap-and-easy road to being “cool.” How, through it all, he was and is a decent, humble person, a loving husband, a wonderful friend, a passionate fisherman. (Do I hear the icy waters of Norway calling?)

His rendition of the service that last Sabbath morning was magnificent – his voice still strong, resonant, never wavering, a special sincerity to his shaping of the prayers: “Redeem us, O Lord of Hosts, take pleasure in our worship, our choruses of praise . . .”

Yet, the occasion was clouded. For, at age 90, his retirement was still largely unanticipated and premature. A new rabbi with “different” ideas had taken the leadership of the congregation. Authenticity was great, but it had to be compromised for modernity’s sake. No, he did not want the cantor to conduct the Yom Kippur service, maybe chant just one or two prayers. He called the cantor “thin-skinned.” Then, one day during the Holy Season, the rabbi told him that, while the cantor-in-waiting was conducting the service, his singing with the congregation was “too loud.”

It was time to retire. Whether or not the cantor can stand it, the ignominy and irony of his departure stab me in the heart. At absolute least, basic decency if not crass realism should say, “How much longer will a 90-year-old be around anyways? What would it hurt to honor him and his vocation while they are still with us? Is the sanctity of the pulpit better found in up-tempo melodies at the expense of shaming an old man? And, what of the classic musical motifs of the synagogue? As the Golden Age of the Cantorate wanes, should we not venerate a beloved art form just a little longer?

But, the canard of “singing too loud” goes way beyond all that. To be demeaned for feebleness or forgetfulness is cruel enough. But, “singing too loud”? Criminal. Anyone who cannot understand sans explanation is as stone-cold as he who spoke the indignity. A man’s most finely tuned instrument, dedicated to sacred service, is marginalized to an annoyance.

No one should ever be told that s/he is “singing too loud,” even when the voice quivers, or the hands tremble, or the words do not come as easy as they used to. We stifle our children’s singing because it is disruptive. We stifle our elders’ singing because we see it as just another type of “acting out.” And in between, we rarely lift our voices in song, because it is embarrassing or because we are numbed to the prospect of voice-lifting joy. Yet, “singing too loud” might be the only shred of soulfulness left to ensure our sanity.

So, Cantor, you can come to my place and sing as loud as you want as long as you want. I promise to deliver to you a circle of forever-friends for whom “too loud” is an oxymoron. And, you will never hear those scornful words again. It is the least I can do for a man who inspired me, too, to lift my voice in celebration.

THE TROUBLE-FRAUGHT QUEST FOR GENETIC PERFECTION

Chalk it up to sweeps week, but you still have to wonder about the convergence of a docudrama about Hitler with multi-segment features on Oprah, Today and a bunch of their competitors on sperm and egg donors and the recipients and their children.

The deeper bioethics of donor confidentiality, paternity, maternity, gamete possession in case of divorce and the disposal/protection of unused fertilized ova, make my head spin. So, too, the what-and-when to tell the child thereby conceived. (I heard one talking head assert that a toddler should be told, “Mommy and Daddy had a ‘helper’ to give birth to you.”) To the contrary, as a delighted father and grandfather by means of natural conception, I celebrate sperm and egg donation as a way of bringing the ultimate joy of birth and parenthood to an otherwise infertile couple.

But . . . should we not acknowledge at least an ounce of equivocation?

I guess that the ounce of equivocation dawned on me in a highly personal way: I would not be anyone’s candidate for sperm donation – overweight, diabetic, two coronary stents and a pacemaker, rotten ears and eyes, a predisposition to bipolarity, a witches’ brew of daily meds and certainly no Robert Redford. Not that I am a blithering moron, but still nobody’s candidate for sperm donation.

Then I saw those eager parents paging through glamour-shots of one Adonis or Rapunzel after another. This one is a PhD. That one is a ballerina. She is a little on the shy side. He has a great sense of humor. Twenty-twenty vision, uncorrected.
Naturally straight teeth. Cheerleader. Gymnast. Harvard grad. President of her class. I laughed and cried at the dilemma of the straight-from-the-bottle blond prospective mom, dithering about whether the donor should be naturally blond or a brunette. I recollected how friends and I used to joke about the cruel trick that nature would some day play on the hook-nosed daughters of mothers whose noses were cute-as-a-button through the gift of rhinoplasty.

Then, there is the matter of lineage. Does he come from a “good” family? What do we know about her ancestry? Any recessive ethnicity we ought to consider? Does his Anglo name belie a lineage that dates back to some unpronounceable Slavonic mishmash surname ending in “czyk”? (In case you were wondering, Wilson was Wiludzanski four generations ago.)

Hence, this is the ounce of equivocation: Do parents not have a right to stack the deck for having a beautiful, intelligent, articulate child by selecting sperm and eggs that are genetically superior? Yet, what defines superiority? Better yet, who defines superiority? Moreover, what and who define inferiority? And, in relegating all of this to genetics, are we not implicitly trivializing, even marginalizing, the heretofore passionate debate as to whether ones essential demeanor derives from nature or nurture?

My health is a mess, and much of it is primarily genetic, so God bless those parents who would not choose me. But, I am also a Jew, a full-blooded Pole, a child of immigrants, a relative of communists, an object of persecution, unwantedness and genocide. Would undesirability also be a function of my lineage? And, what of somebody of jumbled ethnicity? When does s/he become a “mongrel”? Or, what of someone whose face is not perfectly symmetrical? Or, somebody whose uncle is homosexual?

We are fools if we deem these concerns alarmist hyperbole. Oprah, Katie, et al, have yet to feature prospective parents who do not instantly gravitate to images of physical, emotional and intellectual perfection. No one yet has said, “I do not care what s/he looks like, because beauty and charm come from within, and they will primarily be a function of how we nurture our child.”

How much of all this is culturally encoded? We tisk-tisk the American pop culture’s preoccupation with ephemeral good looks, sexuality and booboisee (with credit to H.L. Mencken). Yet, we would still predictably choose the skanky voluptuousness of Britney over the intellect of Jean Kirkpatrick, the Golden Boy media-friendly visage of John Edwards over the crankiness of Bella Abzug. Joe Lieberman might make a terrific candidate, but can we imagine anyone choosing his genes over Leonardo DiCaprio’s? Do we want a kid who looks, or acts, like Mother Theresa?

So, again and again, let us deem a blessing the opportunity of an otherwise infertile couple to have the joy of parenthood through a surrogate’s eggs or sperm. But, let it also be a challenge to our ultimate values and to that which we ordain as a society’s concepts of superiority and inferiority. It is well to remember that Hitler’s definition of racial superiority did not take a nation by storm, but by slowly creeping into its roots. Yet, his machinations would have never prevailed if his followers had not already been predisposed toward creating a “perfect” race rather than valuing decency, wisdom and compassion as the highest qualities to which humanity can aspire.

MONKEY BUSINESS AND INFINITUDE

So, this British scientist sets a bunch of monkeys in front of a bunch of keyboards for a bunch of hours to (dis)prove the notion that, given enough time, they could produce a Shakespearian play. Instead, sure enough, they produced gibberish. See, I told you so. Case closed.

Call me naïve, but I always thought that that assertion was an attempt to illustrate the mystery of infinity, not about composing a sequel to Hamlet. I bet that if you turned loose a bazillion monkeys at a bazillion keyboards for a bazillion years, they still could not crank out Othello, because even a “bazillion” is dwarfed by the enormity of infinity. As, from the mouth of babes, my little Sunday school student told me, “Infinity just goes on and on and on and on . . .”

So, what did the Brit discover? Perhaps that people who cannot savor allegory and allusion will just never get it. The epitaph next to the 1966 yearbook photo of a hyper-literalist high school chum read, “Speak to him of Jacob’s Ladder and he would ask you the number of rungs.” Perhaps the Brit’s unintended discovery was that people who are enslaved to finitude will never come to perceive the infinite.

Or, maybe this is the point: None of us, however wise, however “big picture,” will ever completely comprehend the infinite. This is a humbling notion. Its incomprehensibility can be comprehended only through utter humility – which may be the reason that we who are tinged with arrogance will never fully comprehend it.

Theologians old and new collide with it as they contort themselves into spiritual pretzels trying to “define” eternity and God’s infinitude. Ironically, Harold Kushner sold millions of copies of Why Bad Things Happen to Good People to the narcissistic Me Generation by building it around the premise that we are mistaken if we think that God is infinite, or at least omnipotent and omniscient.

Astronomers curse their surrender to the endlessness of the universe, even as they push the edges of understanding ever outward. Molecular biologists pick apart fragments of the DNA double helix only to find that they will never fully comprehend the creative zap that converts inert chemicals into living organism.

Megalomaniacs as Saddam and Stalin slew millions in a vain, but bloody, attempt to prove their infinite wisdom and power.

And what of our daily encounters with folks who lord over us their intimations of omniscience or omnipotence? Intimations, I say, because they rarely surface as open claims, but as manipulativeness, self-righteousness, holier-than-thou-ness, and the list of “more . . . than you”: more smart, more wealthy, more influential, more important, more successful, even, damn it, more spiritual, more moral (attention, Bill Bennett) and more humble.

It read like the script of a sitcom: Linda and I recently found ourselves sharing dinner with new acquaintances, a doctor and his wife, who spent the evening prating about his $20,000 Rolex, $1,200 bottles of wine, humidor of finest cigars and how many billable patients he sees each day. All this, of course, was aimed toward Linda, who directs a program for the homeless, and yours truly, who is still among the chronically unemployed. Thus, I recalled the observation of Mark Twain’s contemporary, Josh Billings: “When I see a man of shallow understanding extravagantly clothed, I feel sorry – for the clothes.”

Bitter? Nah, not me. But it certainly offered a too-sad-to-be-funny caricature of the ways that the human incapacity to attain infinite power or wherewithal still do not deter so many people from trying.

This “incomprehensibility of infinity” thing is not merely theoretical. It is manifest daily in the frustration, angst and insecurity-cloaked-as-arrogance of pulpit-thumping demagogues, manipulative competitors, condescending professors and bosses, know-it-all talking heads and smugly self-righteous of folks who think that they have slam-dunked the claim to salvation. And, do not forget braggadocious dinner partners.

So, a finite number of monkeys at a finite number of keyboards cannot attain infinity or even The Tempest. Then again, a gaggle of people with graduate degrees could likely not accomplish the same. This should be no great revelation. The only difference is that the monkeys likely acquiesced to the reality. After all, it is like my momma always said: “When a man acts like a monkey, it is no big deal. But, when a monkey starts acting like a man, now that is a big deal!”

Then again, maybe if that Brit had upgraded to Windows XP . . .

MORAL WEAKNESS AMONG CLERGY DESERVES THOUGHTFUL EXAMINATION

Let us acknowledge that the vast majority of men and women who minister to congregations are honorable, morally-centered people. Nevertheless, let us also acknowledge that a disproportionate number of morally unwhole people seem to find their way into ministry. As recent traumatizing events in the national Jewish community shake us, we realize that the phenomenon is certainly not exclusive to the Catholic priesthood, despite the intensity of recent media focus. It is endemic.

Some clergy deserve the opportunity to heal their unwholeness. Others are simply not fit for ministry. And, others should sit, if not rot, in jail.

I would still like to believe that no one enters ministry with malevolent intent. Why, then, does the clergy attract so many morally unstable people? A good portion of the answer lays in unmodulated narcissism stemming from conflicts in ones vulnerable youth. The very drive that attracts morally whole people to dedicate their lives to interpreting God’s presence to a community is just one fatal millimeter away from an agenda to dominate, manipulate, and seek morally corrupt ways to slake an insatiable thirst for approval.

Moral impropriety is not the only way that untempered narcissism can misdirect ones ministry. Can we even start to count the number of nauseatingly egomaniacal, manipulative clergy who occupy some of our most prestigious pulpits with impunity, even adulation, simply because they have not been caught with their pants down or their hand in the till?

Enough armchair psychoanalysis. What kinds of early proactive interventions can seminaries, denominations, mentors, make either to heal a seminarian’s predisposition to moral unwholeness, or to dissuade a badly conflicted seminarian from a life in ministry? My own years among seminarians and clergy, and my own weaknesses and self-doubts, teach me that one need not be incredibly prescient to recognize the early manifestations of a psyche that is unsuited for ministry or vulnerable to its unhealthy allurements.

Counselors, teachers, mentors, even classmates, can usually see it from a mile away. Yet, they routinely blind themselves to the disquieting truth, or fail to build into their modus operandi opportunities for intervention and healing, or confuse a student’s intellectual prowess or articulateness for the qualities that make a morally whole clergyperson.

Nearly forty years ago, my classmates and I, and certainly our yeshiva’s instructors, recognized and openly discussed the intellectual genius, but radically psychotic disposition (“a nutcase”), of a fellow seminarian. Yet, he was duly ordained, recruited to work with vulnerable youth, rising to the top of the pop-chart. And now, his name disgraces national headlines for countless allegations of abuse, and all we can say is that “we knew it all along.” Shame on him, but immeasurably more shame on us.

For him, the die was obviously already cast. Yet, for so many other seminarians and neophyte clergy, timely intervention, mentoring, and an atmosphere that encourages self-scrutiny, can modulate unbridled narcissism and redirect it to a ministry of compassion, advocacy, and moral rectitude.

Finally, let no one say that the demands of ministry “made” a minister morally unwhole. Perhaps they can take someone predisposed to moral weakness over the edge, in the same way that a trauma can take a person who is predisposed to depression into a sustained clinical depression. Congregants can, and must, though, be vigilant about foisting unconscionable expectations on their minister, guarding their tongues from hypercriticism, and warmly validating – if not celebrating – their minister’s basic humanity. For, even the best of us is vulnerable to ego bruises and callous treatment. But, let the demands of ministry not be an acceptable excuse for moral failure.

A minister who morally betrays his flock, particularly its children, is contemptible. That should not cloud the abject tragedy of a talented life gone wrong. After punishment has been meted out, the time has come not for self-righteousness and schadenfreude, but for understanding and circumspection.

REGAINING A SENSE OF THE SACRED

Fully clothed pornography.

I had assumed that the phrase was an oxymoron. That is, until my eye was stabbed by a promo pic of skank-della-tutti-skanks Madonna writhing and clad in a bloodied tank top and tefillin – phylacteries, the leather-strapped ritual objects worn in Jewish worship, per Deuteronomy 6:8. Tefillin are sacred to devout Jews. Christians should also know of them, as Jesus himself venerated them and criticized hypocrites who donned them with false intention (see Matthew 23:5).

Revulsion? Of course I felt revulsion. But, another emotion unexpectedly overtook me: empathy. The tawdry defamation of a sacred Jewish symbol understandably disgusts me. On the other hand, I had never before fully empathized with my Christian brethren in their hypersensitivity when their sacred symbols were defamed in the name of over-the-edge artistic expression – a crucifix soaking in urine, the Virgin Mary etched in elephant dung, a bikini clad Our Lady of Guadalupe.

As an intrepid liberal, I have long been steeped in the notion of limitless artistic free expression, even when it is outrageous, and particularly when it espouses an unpopular political or social cause. Desecration of Christian symbols in the name of cultural commentary, I thought, was an expression of artistic freedom that Christians would have to learn to tolerate, however odious it might be.

At best, I felt sympathy for their protestations. Whether my apology is accepted or not, I remorsefully confess that I should have known better decades ago. Now, I pray not too late, I feel full-blown empathy. There is fully clothed pornography that shares a deserved place in hell along with images of unclad people engaged in sexual perversity. It is the desecration of venerated objects and images that have been consecrated by time, history and higher ideals. I am not a Christian, but the Cross and depictions of Jesus and the Saints have, all things considered, come to epitomize the ennoblement of the human spirit and ethos. I hope that honorable Christians would say the same of sacred Jewish symbols.

Moreover, the American legacy is also rightfully sanctified by images that speak to our higher values: Our flag, all things considered, is a sanctified emblem. So too, the images of our founding fathers and mothers. Computer-enhanced visages of Abraham Lincoln peddling car insurance and Mount Rushmore hyping Presidents Day sales are not merely crass commercialism. Call me cranky or humorless, but they defame symbols that convey national honor and decency.

Outlaw the offensive images? Certainly not. Defend the right of free expression, even when it is outrageous and disgusting? Of course. But, defend the right to consequence-free freedom of expression? Nothing in the Judeo-Christian or American tradition grants that assurance. Purveyors of repulsive, defamatory images – even in the name of artistic freedom – should suffer the full consequences of their intolerable behavior. Years ago, a young rabbi bitterly complained to me about the criticism to which he was subjected after delivering a controversial sermon. Did he not have freedom of the pulpit, he asked. He indeed had freedom of the pulpit, I told him, but not freedom of the pulpit with impunity.

So, let us denounce, decry, moralize and rail in righteous indignation about those “artists” who promote fully clothed pornography, up to and including the tawdry, tefillin-clad Madonna. Let us not call for a “boycott,” but how about a “sustained withdrawal of enthusiasm”? Disgusting behavior need not be illegal in order for it to be intolerable. Dignity and good taste may be voluntary, but those who do not volunteer need to know that they have lost their claim to the artistic or intellectual high ground.

You will excuse the cliché, but making such a hoo-hah out of Madonna wrapped in phylacteries is not making a mountain out of a molehill. Neither is a urine-soaked crucifix or even stitching an American flag to the fanny of ones pants as a symbol of contempt. They all point to benign tolerance for the desecration of countless icons that time and ideals have rightfully consecrated. And, in their desecration, we are witnessing the far more heinous desecration of our own capacity for discerning between the sacred and the profane, between the honorable and that which eats away at the core of our humanity.

DIGNITY IS AS DIGNITY LOOKS . . . MAYBE

I must be getting old, because I find myself crankily placing more and more stock in the way people choose to make up, dress and comport themselves as a window to their ultimate credibility.

This came to mind immediately as I watched the press conference of that Raelian priestess a couple of months ago, announcing the first successful incident of human cloning. Certainly, a preponderance of evidence, omissive and comissive, instantly brings her credibility into question. Yet, in my curmudgeonry, I could not help but think that her case was that much less compelling simply because she had made herself up to look like an aged-out Parisian street-walker, a page out of the sketchbook of Toulouse Lautrec.

Do not lecture me, please. I know only too well every biblical and rabbinic adage about inner grace, the folly of ephemeral beauty, judging wine-by-its-bottle . . . Forgive me, though, if I am showing my wrinkles by giving the benefit of scientific and humanitarian doubt to the dignified visages of Jonas Salk, Albert Schweitzer, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Sir Winston Churchill, and even the popularly mythologized images of Gregor Mendel, St. Francis of Assisi, and Moses Maimonides. Bella Abzug’s hats might have been outrageous, but her appearance was impeccable. Likewise Gloria Steinem, Geraldine Ferraro, Barbara Jordan, and the other notables who led women to their rightful position of societal equality. Dare we deny that their outward demeanor invites us to place credence in their inner wisdom?

Our faith may loudly tout the virtues of inward reverence over outward ostentation. Yet, the fondest recollection of my most saintly mentors is of their aura – immaculate appearance, simplicity of dress, meticulous cleanliness and a carriage that bespoke dignity without the specter of arrogance. Was it their inner sanctity manifesting itself outwardly? Or, was it their effort to honor God through their appearance that beckoned us to be touched by the inspiration within them?

I came from an era that denied in the extreme the virtue of outward appearance, as if it were somehow a bar to inner qualities. I too espoused that doctrine. Those of us who aspired to the clergy were especially vulnerable to the notion that we could bring religion to the masses by un-stuffing the shirts that had turned our parents’ churches and synagogues so sonorous.

I now gag with embarrassment at the thought of how second-naturedly I came to my office in jeans and work shirt, yesterday’s unshaved stubble still on my face. It became a running joke that the only time I wore a suit was “to speak to Christians or perform a funeral.” Some joke. I guess that even then I knew unconsciously that at demanding times, authority required a demeanor conferred by ones carriage and appearance.

Did my “just-call-me-your-pal” attitude win many souls for the faith? I can honestly say that it did not help. This was likely because of my own ambivalence as to whether acting like one of the kids garnered more influence with them than being benevolently parental . . . whether playing poker with “the boys” made me a more accessible religious exemplar than by striving for scholarship, piety and moral rectitude. Does the clergyman fulfill his highest destiny when he exudes the aura of “Rabbi Skippy,” as my friend Michael indelicately puts it, or when he aspires to stand in the footprints of Moses, Isaiah or Jesus?

Words spoken to me by my most beloved teacher still burn in my ears. There I stood in the A&P parking lot a few months out of yeshiva, dressed and coiffed much like the young suburbanites whose congregation I led. He took one wistful look at me and whispered in my ear, “You need not become like them in order to influence them.”

Alas, it took my foray into the corporate world to convince me that a white shirt, dark suit, conservative tie and well-shined shoes conveyed the sense of dignity that I needed to influence critical people with the gravitas of my message.

When I reentered the ministry, nearing my 50th birthday, I came back as a full-fledged “suit,” even when well-meaning congregants encouraged me to dress down. Did it help? Did it hinder? I know that my relationship with the children was built well more on parental than buddy-buddy credibility. I know that I was far more conscious about deporting myself as a person of the cloth, not as just another good-time-Charlie. And, I know that in moments of failure – when I spoke or acted foolishly, arrogantly, or rashly – the sin was made all the more grievous by the inconsistency between my outward trappings and the egregious lack of dignity underneath them.

Do not remind me of the obvious: Priestly vestments, prayer shawls, academic robes, have all been used to snooker credulous people into placing their faith in cruel, manipulative, self-serving people. Yet, as I grow more circumspect, I am compelled to believe that the propriety of ones appearance can confer a sense of dignity that makes our ears eager to hear thoughtful, well considered observation, not phantasmagoric tales of impregnation by little green men.

Or maybe I am just getting old and cranky . . .

UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES, WAS UTOPIAN IDEALISM SUCH A CRIME?

This is a message that I sent to the voters of Greenville County, where I reside. (I refuse to call it “home.”) The county has justifiably become known as “the meanest county in America” in part for its refusal to declare Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday a holiday. (Ironically, in a recent poll, the electorate preferred Confederate Memorial Day to Dr. King’s birthday by 22%!) Dr. King’s detractors again trotted out the well worn, thoroughly discredited, canard that “communist sympathizers” guided Dr. King. I now share my message with a larger readership, in part to vent my (our?) ire over the repeated use by anti-Semites of “communist sympathizer” as a thinly veiled euphemism for “Jew.”

When is an apology not an apology? Perhaps when some otherwise unforgivable act is seen in the larger context of time and situation. Murder can become justifiable homicide. Sitting in at a segregated lunch counter was virtuous as a precedent-setting act of civil disobedience. Abortion may be forgiven to save a mother from imminent death. Furthermore, when one enjoys a Bavarian beer, as Hitler did, it does not infer collusion with his forces of evil.

So, in the context of time and situation, is Dr. Martin Luther King’s “collusion” with Americans who identified with utopian idealism and even perhaps socialist/communist causes. I can attest to this with a reminiscence that is up-close-and-personal. The generalizations that we might infer from it deserve a consideration that upholds Dr. King’s legacy without writing a revisionist history of it.

My cousins Martin and Shirley were social utopians at a time when social utopianism was a damnable offense to Senator McCarthy and his sympathizers. Martin was a talented young physician who chose to live in the Chicago slums, where he practiced poverty medicine. The wages of Martin and Shirley’s “sin” were to be called before McCarthy’s witch hunt road show and threatened and excoriated for their socialist/communist sympathies. Despite McCarthyism, or perhaps because of it, my family was extremely proud of Martin and attributed his sudden death from a heart attack at age 34 to the stress brought on by the torment of his accusers.

Did Martin and Shirley have socialist/communist affiliations? Indeed they did. They were social utopians who saw their alternatives in context of the prevalent American mood as stark black-and-white: Either associate with other social utopians or capitulate to the radical conservatism of McCarthy, et al – xenophobia, racism, contempt for the underclass. Did they want the violent overthrow of the US government and/or Soviet world domination? Not on your life. They saw their hope as Jews in people like David Ben-Gurion and the Israeli kibbutz system. As Americans, they saw their vision of social change in people like Adlai Stevenson, JFK and yes, Dr. Martin Luther King.

Was Martin and Shirley’s affiliation wrong? In retrospect, perhaps yes. We can now see that a true democracy, based on American values of fundamental freedom and self-determination, is a more prudent and successful alternative to socialism/communism or regressive McCarthyism. Was their affiliation understandable, even forgivable? I would argue that it was.

The same could be said of many idealistic Jews of that era. They could not sever the connection between McCarthyism and barefoot anti-Semitism. They came from a long heritage of social justice preached by Isaiah, Amos, Joel and Micah. They were well attuned to the social utopianism born of persecution by Eastern European tyrants.

Moreover, socially utopian Jews were understandably drawn to the nascent civil rights movement. Whom more than Eastern European Jews had suffered from denial of civil rights? Whom, save for African Americans, had suffered more social and economic discrimination than American Jews?

The Jews brought another vital dimension to the civil rights movement, for many American Jews had already “made it” financially and professionally and yet had retained their commitment to social justice. They were in a unique position to provide legal, financial and organizational wherewithal that complimented the African American determination to cast off inequality and injustice. We were, simply put, two minorities helping each other attain the full blessings of the American heritage.

Kivie Kaplan, Al Vorspan, Rabbi Dr. Abraham Joshua Heschel, Rabbi Dr. Mark Tanenbaum, were integral to the civil rights movement and close confidants of Dr. King. But – and this is critical – their connection to Dr. King was not politically driven by socialism/communism. It was the product of a shared commitment to the type of social utopianism articulated in Dr. King’s magnificent “I Have a Dream” speech. If we deem Dr. King guilty by association, we are condemning some of the most visionary luminaries of the 20th century.

Even the much-vilified Stanley Levison must be viewed in this light. Levison was indeed an advisor to Dr. King. However, Dr. King’s FBI files themselves attest to Dr. King’s disassociation from Levison when he learned of his secret communist ties, particularly as Levison shifted his focus from domestic civil rights to the issue of Vietnam.

Was Martin and Shirley’s utopian idealism “wrong”? Certainly not. Misguided? That can be determined only by 20-20 hindsight. Was Dr. King’s dream “wrong”? Good Lord, I hope not. Is it at all sullied by the people who offered their guidance and goodwill? That, too, is unimaginable – as unimaginable as all conservatives being discredited by men who also called themselves “conservative,” like David Duke and Imperial Wizard Robert Shelton.

You see, the Psalmist said it 3,000 years ago: “From all my teachers have I gained understanding.” The ability to sift the good teachings from the chaff marks the difference between the wise man and the dupe. Dr. King and his fellow idealists were certainly among the former.

SICK? WHO’S SICK?

I guess this is a sort of national survey directed at synagogue members:

How many of your synagogues limit your rabbi’s pastoral ministry (particularly visiting the sick and/or officiating at funerals) only to affiliates of your own congregation?

That is the way things are in my arcane corner of the world, and I just do not get it. So, if that is some kind of national norm for synagogues, please let me know. Perhaps I will modify my view, and perhaps I will not.

Here in the South Carolina Upstate the policy has led to an incredible irony. Despite my departure from the rabbinate last August, I am the only rabbi along the I-85 corridor (from Georgia on the south to North Carolina on the north) who ministers to hospitalized and hospice-bound Jewish folks who are not affiliated with a local synagogue. I am not paid to do so, nor do I ask no accolades for myself. It is simply what my momma taught me to do.

A couple of congregations in the Upstate do not have rabbis. One synagogue has had a long-standing policy of not allowing its rabbi to serve non-affiliates. During my last months with the congregation, I too met with increasing criticism for extending services to non-members – and I hope you understand that I never solicited a fee and that unsolicited honoraria I received were given over to charitable purposes.

Please, let us get two things straight:

FIRST, I believe that all Jews should belong to synagogues. About 75 percent of us do not. I further believe that membership should confer privileges that are not available to non-members. What might some of those be? Perhaps reduced fees for religious school tuition, activities, classes, events and/or use of the facilities for special occasions, special synagogue honors, like maftir and distinguished aliyot, services of the rabbi for discretionary lifecycle events, like weddings and briss’n. You get the idea.

Be that as it may, family and personal crises, illness and death are not discretionary. They cut us to the quick. They traumatize us. They shred our emotions and often our dignity. They beg our empathy and compassion. Castigate folks for not belonging to a synagogue in calmer times, as you wish. Appeal to them to join the synagogue after the crisis has abated, as you wish. But, illness and death are rotten times to draw a line in the sand and penalize them for their non-affiliation.

OK, they were wrong not to join. You have made your point. However, now they are in pain, in crisis, in extremis, and how can anyone who claims that we are rachamanim b’nai rachamanim –merciful descendents of merciful forbearers – be so cold as to not reach out with compassion? “Sorry, you do not belong,” just will not, or at least should not, cut it.

SECOND, perhaps the problem is of our own making. We came to America and saw how Christian pastors ministered to their congregations, and we turned our rabbis from scholar-teachers to priests. Why has visiting the sick, eulogizing the deceased, comforting the mourners, become the exclusive province of the rabbi? Ask any vital congregation, and they will surely tell you that a key factor to their vitality is a laity that is fully engaged in reaching out to the ill and bereaved. Ask any truly vital congregation, and you may be sure that their compassionate outreach does not draw lines between members and non-affiliates.

Yet, our mindset has compounded the difficulty. We have made the pastoral presence of the rabbi qualitatively “different.” Deny it and teach against it though we may, the aura of having a rabbi at a critical, emotion-wrought hour, does confer a sanctity to the moment that is undeniably therapeutic and beyond the province of even the most devoted layperson.

When I gently hold the hand of someone who is critically ill and offer a brief Mi She-Berach or kapitel Tehillim, I see tears streaming down the faces of some of the most emotionally hardened people. When I encourage a hospice patient to feel the difference between “being cured” and “being healed,” sometimes that pinpoint intervention can itself bring healing.

An immigrant from the godless Soviet Union swears to this day that her husband regained consciousness because of the prayer that I offered at his ICU bedside. And, who am I to disagree, so long as we gratefully acknowledge that healing is from God, and that we are mere instruments of His will?

All this is to say that, despite Judaism’s investment in the power of the laity and despite the basic need for Jews to belong to their community, the presence of a rabbi in times of crisis does serve as an irreplaceable source of compassion, validation, and even I daresay, healing.

It seems to me that even the busiest rabbi should “pencil in” to his/her comings-and-goings time to offer prayer, comfort and encouragement to people in crisis, regardless of their affiliation. Likewise, a congregation should proudly encourage and provide latitude for their rabbi to make his/her way through the community bringing light to dark places, wherever they may be.

So, let congregations engage in aggressive marketing campaigns, put out a stellar Kiddush, have a youth, or singles, or seniors, group that is brimming with energy. Add as many members to your roles as you can. Just do not draw a line when a soul cries out for caring and compassion. That should not be seen as a burden, but as a sacred duty and privilege.

. . . unless, of course, I am totally out of touch. Please let me know how it is in your corner of the world.

“THY TENDER MERCIES EXTEND TO A BIRD’S NEST”

Today I had to kill a baby sparrow to put it out of its misery. I cried and cried and have been miserable all day and then some. “Had to” might be too strong a phrase. Perhaps you can help me decide.

We heard odd noises thrashing about in our garage. The thrashing, we found, came from the tiniest of sparrows that had the misfortune of getting its baby-feet stuck to the pad that the exterminator had set out to trap rodents that routinely wander in from the field below.

Squeamish as I usually am about such things, I still tried to delicately free the nestling’s tiny feet from the goo. As you would expect, it was all to no avail without tearing them away from its spindly legs. The little sparrow looked up at me with plaintive eyes, sadly pathetic eyes that, at least to my imagination, begged me for help and hope. But, I could give it none. So, I stood frozen for an eternal moment, and then I killed that baby bird. And, I cried and I cried until I heaved, and then I cried some more.

Dr. Freud and James Joyce alerted us to the significance of stream-of-consciousness, and stream-of-consciousness overtook me. Why does our mind run to the things to which it runs? Rarely, sad to say, do I instinctively jump to Talmudic quotes, but one that I learned long ago captured the moment: “Thy tender mercies extend to a bird’s nest.”

The God of Deuteronomy demands that we take mercy on a momma bird and her nestlings. Celebrating God’s compassion even toward one of the earth’s most common and negligible creatures seems, a fortiori, to be apt praise to the Master of the Universe. Yet, we are warned to be exceedingly careful of invoking such praise, for if we utter it thoughtlessly, we might infer that God extends no similar mercy to His other creatures.

Per my sainted mother, who knew of such things, “God can take care of Himself.” If we are to be the vehicles of God’s mercy, then the problem might well be with us, not God. I came so up-close-and-personal to that helpless little creature, saw the terror in its eyes, felt the shudder of its struggling wings, held its destiny in my vaguely arthritic hands. And, my choices were to let this errant nestling die a long and torturous death or to quickly take its life. I chose the latter.

Perhaps this is the issue: The grief, the tears and the heaves seem directly derivative of being up-close-and-personal. The plaintive eyes of a nestling look up into our eyes begging to be free, and only a psychopath would not well up with the instinctive intention of mercy. An infant cries from pain that it cannot fathom or rationalize, we see the uncomprehended terror in its eyes, and how can we not have mercy, how can we not cry? We look, as I did, into the hollow eyes of our parents as they lie on their deathbed, our helplessness overwhelms us, memories of long forgotten salad-days spent with them well up, our shoulders shudder and we cry disconsolate tears.

Distance, it seems, distances us. Bombs explode on the remote cityscape, justifiably or not, and we watch our screens intently, even gleefully, as a morbid video game plays out in a fantasia of crosshairs, bunkers and puffs of smoke. It is just another round of Mortal Kombat, because we cannot see the eyes, the terrified eyes, impervious that, with each fireball on the horizon, we are watching death. And perhaps we rationalize that the death was well deserved, but we dare not escape the desperate terror that fills even the unseen eyes in the nanosecond before life is laid waste.

This is not a discourse advocating vegetarianism or euthanasia. It is simply a plea to look into the eyes whenever we are inclined to do violence, be it of the fist or the tongue, whenever compassion is poised to be overtaken by callousness, whenever life and death are remanded to our hands. Look into the eyes and see the fear, the helplessness, the terror. Then cry a bitter cry that sometimes life’s choices are only between relative shades of grief, that the ultimate amalgam of God’s compassion and ours is yet merely an iridescent dream. And, let those tears that attest to our capacity for mercy become the most articulate praise we might ever offer.

OF BUTTERFLIES AND HOPPLES

Point and click. Delete. Delete. Delete. Delete. It is far less ceremonious and momentous than ripping pages from a diary, or from one’s life, and burning or trashing them. Why do I need a record of twelve-year-old appointments, anyways? So, pretending to need more “space” in my MS Outlook (hah, with a bazillion-gig hard drive!), I do a little housecleaning before I start my new job next week.

Point and click. Delete. Delete. Delete. And stop. Too easy, I realize, to rip pages from my life, some of them joyous, some of them painful, some of them remorseful, some of them ignominious. Some dates are pivotal. Some are lost to the mundane and trivial. One of the latter particularly catches my eye . . . a trek twelve years ago to New York to visit my then 19-year-old Chanie. It leads me to reminisce about a mandate that my blessed mother, may she rest in piece, insisted I work into my quick trip. I remember that . . .

She “suggested” that I pay a visit to two elderly cousins, Cynthia and Toby, who recently moved to a nursing home. Cynthia and Toby as I remember them, were overstuffed, jovial busybodies whom my Dad indelicately called "The Butterflies." The last time I had seen them was in my freshman year of college. It was on a similar mission from my mother, to pay a visit to my elderly Aunt Ruth, who in her thick Yiddish accent repeatedly offered me fruit with the words, "Markie, have a hopple!"

To say that I was thrilled to trek Uptown to do my mother's bidding would be an overstatement. The irony was, however, that to my own surprise, I was not at all reluctant. Maybe, I thought, it was that the first time I saw Cynthia and Toby, in 1956, they were not much older than I am now. Maybe it was a function of hitting 40. And maybe it was my growing awareness of how profoundly deprived our kids are of a notion of the people, and things, and times, and places, and experiences, that collectively make us, us.

Now again, this time well into middle age with old age looming close ahead, I have come to appreciate that reincarnation is not an irrational religious doctrine. Reincarnation is nothing more than my capacity to see that each one of my cells is encoded with the legacy of a thousand generations that converges for just a fleeting moment in the organism that is I. This sense of reincarnation is the antidote to the poisonous nihilism that flow from the delusion that life is the product of a solitary moment, detached from yesterday and tomorrow and from interdependency with fellow creatures.

Perhaps being an only child made me a more enthusiastic receptor for the delectable morsels of reminiscences that were repeated to me over and again with ever-greater relish by my mother and father and aunt. They were marvelous anecdotes deliciously retold and re-retold until they were inseparably bonded to the fiber of my being.

And so, I have besieged my own kids with wonder-tales of people that now live on in them:

Their great-great-grandfather and my namesake, Reb Maishe Yitzchak Levinski, who chanted meticulously from the Torah every Sabbath and holiday, and who induced my father to read Hebrew by dropping an occasional penny to the table, feigning surprise and swearing that it was the work of an angel from heaven. And Auntie Levin, who distinguished herself in the 1893 Columbian Exposition by eating a banana while standing on her head under water, and who had a trained poodle act in vaudeville, and who fed my unsuspecting grandmother, newly arrived from Europe, pork chops as an unsolicited crash course in the realities of life in America.

And my grandfather, Pa, and his rambunctious, "anti-Semitic" horse, Tootsie, who pulled his milk truck through the icy streets of Chicago. And Grandpa Julius, the misunderstood, whimsical scholar who, for his own mental stimulation, definitively cross-referenced the entire Apocrypha to sources in the New Testament and Talmud. And Cousin Martin, a brilliant, selfless young physician who was hauled before Senator McCarthy's witch hunt for his communist inclinations, and who died tragically of a heart attack at age 34.

And Aunt Minnie, a most successful career woman who could do any New York Times crossword flawlessly in pen. And my Dad, who spent the better part of the Depression as a railway mailman on the legendary City of New Orleans. And Reb Mottel Wiludzanski, the only one of my grandfather's brothers to stay behind in Poland, who perished with his entire family in the Holocaust – Reb Mottel, whose family of nameless faces haunts us in a picture from 1928, the only tangible reminder that they had lived at all.

I remind my kids incessantly that the melodies they lustily sing at the annual family Passover Seder are not documented in any book of liturgical music, but that they are the memorabilia of God-knows-how-many generations of Wiludzanski’s and Levinski’s and Goldsmith’s and Gornitzski’s that are now reincarnated in far-flung and unanticipated places like Greenville and Ann Arbor.

I bring out ancient family pictures even if they are not always enthusiastic about seeing them again, and relate fragments of wonder-tales in a determined effort to make relatives long gone come back to life. I laughingly offer them "a hopple" in memory of Aunt Ruth and “The Butterflies.”

Now, my kids and their spouses grow increasingly fascinated with these forebearer stories, luxuriating in vicarious reminiscences of the family grocery store on the West Side of Chicago. Even at age 6, I remind them, Ben was motivated to learn a self-taught genealogical litany he would repeat to anyone who would listen, declaring proudly that his full Hebrew name was "Binyamin Immanuel, ben Moshe Chayim, ben Shimon, ben Yehudah, ben Yonah, ben Yosef, and Esther Devorah, bat Avraham Yitzchak."

I know by implicit faith that there are worlds more at work here than mere ancestral trivia. For, it is as much a matter of biological fact as it is philosophical conjecture that in deepening its roots, the stock of a tree grows more vital, and the fruit it produces invariably grow more bountiful. This I believe more firmly than ever: The possibility of creating generations that will flourish to their highest calling will increase exponentially as we speak to then of "Butterflies," and "hopples," and savory stories of illustrious and not-so-illustrious ancestors, all of whom will remind them that our lives are more than the spontaneous products of detached moments in time.

What is past, I pray that they will learn, in deference to Shakespeare, is simply prologue.

Oh, a final word: I did indeed visit The Butterflies. Ironically, both of them passed on shortly afterward. Mother, as always, knew best.