LOOK AT THE SUBSTANCE OF PUBLIC RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION, NOT ITS IDIOM
Almighty. Heavenly Father. Rock of Ages. Master of the Universe. King of kings . . .
All of these are names of God. Right? Well, yes and no. Yes, they evoke various attributes of God. Yes, they are verbal connectors to God. But no, none of these names God’s infinite, inscrutable essence, which – try though we may – is beyond human finitude, beyond the confines of language. These are all idioms for God, the best that our finite beings can do to try to grasp the infinite.
The observation is not originally mine, but that of Moses Maimonides, the preeminent medieval Jewish theologian. It is echoed by countless theologians of every stripe of every religious persuasion.
Yet, the issue is not purely theological. It addresses the sociology and legal climate of the here-and-now:
Once upon a time, I was, as a Jew and civil libertarian, patently offended by public prayer invoked in the name of Jesus or some other sectarian deity. I would voice my protest to the invocator, the city/county council, the newspaper, in harmony with the ACLU and the rest of the alphabet soup of defenders of church-state separation.
My epiphany, however, came about 20 years ago as I participated in a citywide ecumenical service during Dr. King Week in Atlanta. Behind me, the magnificent choir of Big Bethel AME church rocked the floor and rafters with an unimaginably spirited gospel – the refrain, “Jesus! Jesus!” louder and louder with each verse. As always, I was quick to protest, and caught the ear of Dr. Joseph Roberts, a personal friend and Dr. King’s successor at Ebenezer Baptist Church.
Joe patiently explained to me, “You will never understand the African American religious experience until you recognize that singing out in Jesus’s name is a time- and culturally-venerated idiom that has, since slave days, connected us to the Divine.”
“A venerate idiom” is what got to me. All of us who claim to be people of faith, I realized, use idioms ordained by theology or culture in our valiant attempt to connect with the Infinite One. The Christian invokes Jesus. The traditional Jew wears a skullcap. A Muslim bows to Mecca. The Catholic sees it in the bread-and-wine’s transubstantiation.
I daresay that even the now unduly controversial Ten Commandments are also an idiom – however supremely sacred for most of us – for the essence of humankind’s highest moral and creative aspirations. For those of us of religious faith, the Commandments elevate “recommended behavior” to imperatives. But, cannot even the atheist think of “the Lord your God” as an idiom for the sum of the universe’s moral and creative forces? Cannot even the atheist interpret “no other gods before Me” as a prohibition against self-adulation or glorifying the trivial or absurd? And, can the Sabbath not be understood as an idiom for a hedge against lethal workaholism?
These prayerful and consecrated idioms, however, should never be confused with the substance of prayer and consecration. Each faith may venerate its idiom as the most potent path toward God. The Christian praying in Jesus’s name is certainly testament to that. But, the rest of us ought not be offended by a particular idiom, even when it is invoked in public places. If anything, we should celebrate it as a benchmark of the diversity with which people of faith may freely commune with God, or not, in the blessedly free country in which we live.
I am, thus, no longer offended by a prayer offered in Jesus’s name or the public visage of the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments. Likewise, I have never been criticized by even the most fundamentalist members of a county or city council for delivering an invocation while wearing my skullcap, and hope I never am. If anything, I would like to assume that they respect me for my convictions, not merely tolerate me, in the same way that I respect theirs – despite our theological disagreements.
It seems to me that we get ourselves in an awful tizzy about the idiom of public prayer but pay woefully little attention to its substance. I get far more rankled by the content of many of the prayers I hear than I do by the name in which the prayer is invoked.
Might we come to some consensus as to what comprises a worthy public prayer? Is the damnation of our enemies the ultimate objective of prayer, or is it the hope for mutual understanding and an end of strife? Should public prayer be a vehicle for social or political editorializing, or should we pray that all our leaders be guided by wisdom and good counsel? If we cannot come to consensus on any other yardstick, the substance of public prayer should at least remain focused on the Prophet’s plea for justice, mercy and humility and the virtues expressed in the Lord’s Prayer. Thus, even if the idiom bespeaks a particular faith, the essence of the prayer will be inclusive of all people of goodwill. That should more than suffice.
Perhaps you have heard the long joke about pastors discussing how they distribute the proceeds of their Sunday collections. I cannot remember all of it, but the punchline has one of the pastors saying, “I throw it all up in the air, and whatever God wants, He can keep!”
I guess that is how it ought to be with public prayer and the variety of idioms we use to connect the finite to the Infinite: Keep lifting it heavenward. Let God decide what is worthy and what is not. So much for nitpicking each phrase for perfect theological and political correctness, or let the lawsuits roll. I will cherish and defend the idiom in which you pray if you do the same for mine. God can certainly survive whatever indignity we toss His way, and probably wishes that we, too, would lighten up.
August 26, 2003
August 21, 2003
THE PAINLESS, EVERYDAY-NESS OF GIVING CHARITY
I would call this a personal mission, but that would be far too grandiose. Nor is the idea original, but a lingering childhood memory, still alive in a few scattered places. Perhaps my only contribution would be to the idea’s broader revival.
I remember that as a kid, one could not do business in a bakery or butcher shop along our neighborhood’s main shopping drag, Devon Avenue, without seeing a charity box next to the cash register. It was designated to a particular cause – leukemia, heart disease, a parochial school, an orphanage – and the idea was to drop some of the change from your transaction into what we called the pushke, a corruption of the Polish word for “box.”
Oh, you were rarely badgered. You could get away without feeding the pushke, and only occasionally would the storekeeper look at you cockeyed if you did not. But, the opportunity was there – tangible, immediate, unavoidable – a reminder that charity is, or at least should be, an everyday exercise. And, the neatest part about it was that you could do a good deed that was relatively painless.
You still see a pushke here and there. It is most usually at a convenient store along the interstate, and most usually collecting for a local person who needs an operation or expensive medical treatment. Some supermarkets and pharmacies do it around Christmastime. When you see that pushke, do you take a moment to drop some change into it?
We here in Greenville see ourselves as a most charitable community. I simply recommend that we broaden the opportunity for our citizens to feed the pushke wherever we do cash business and expand the scope to include worthy ongoing causes – healthcare, homelessness, education, church missions, the elderly – whatever the proprietor sees as his/her signature cause.
Every time that I get back a handful of change from a shopping venture, I ask the storekeeper to put a charity box labeled for a favorite cause near the cash register, right next to the “take a penny, leave a penny” ashtray. Chain it to the counter if you must, to prevent it being snatched and diverted to the wrong “charity.” After a month or two, count it up and give it to your chosen charity. Painless. Honorable. Helpful. Gracious.
To date, I have convinced only my cleaners, a devout Christian couple from Korea, to put in a pushke for their church’s missions. No, the results as yet have not been stunning, but they have started.
My appeal to the storekeepers of the Upstate, particularly those who run small businesses, is to simply do it. No frills. No feasibility studies. No contingency plans. No fanfare. Just pick a favorite cause and do it.
My appeal to the shoppers of the Upstate is to drop in a few coins each time you get back a fistful of change and know that beside your regular avenues of major contributions – church, United Way, whatever – you are doing a little bit of transcendent good each day painlessly. And, you will also know that the sum total of your contributions and that of others will have ultimate results that will be absolutely stunning. You could do even more by joining the “mission” and encouraging storekeepers to make the opportunity available to their patrons. The goodness will go well beyond the sheer dollars raised, because a community’s basic wellbeing is reflected most in its routine, random acts of benevolence.
While we are on the subject of the pushke, how many of you have a pushke at home? What a wonderful place to put your small change at the end of the day. What a wonderful lesson for the kids, that the family’s commitment to charity has an everyday-ness about it. What a wonderful sense that real charity means not giving ‘til it hurts, but ‘til it feels good.
We Jews customarily feed our pushkes just as week ends and the Sabbath candles are lit. Thus, the last act of the workaday week and the first act of the holy Sabbath is an act of giving, not taking. Just recently, looking through a Christian magazine in the doctor’s waiting room, I read an appeal for Christians to do the same – to end the week and start the Sabbath with everyone putting a few pennies in the charity box, regardless of the more substantial contribution we put in the plate on Sunday morning.
Huge magnanimous gifts are always in order, and without them, our hospitals, schools and houses of worship would simply not get built. If you can do that, then God bless you. But, whether you can or you cannot, let it not substitute for the unobtrusive, painless, anyone-can-do-it, act of putting a few pennies in the pushke wherever you shop and wherever you call your home.
I would call this a personal mission, but that would be far too grandiose. Nor is the idea original, but a lingering childhood memory, still alive in a few scattered places. Perhaps my only contribution would be to the idea’s broader revival.
I remember that as a kid, one could not do business in a bakery or butcher shop along our neighborhood’s main shopping drag, Devon Avenue, without seeing a charity box next to the cash register. It was designated to a particular cause – leukemia, heart disease, a parochial school, an orphanage – and the idea was to drop some of the change from your transaction into what we called the pushke, a corruption of the Polish word for “box.”
Oh, you were rarely badgered. You could get away without feeding the pushke, and only occasionally would the storekeeper look at you cockeyed if you did not. But, the opportunity was there – tangible, immediate, unavoidable – a reminder that charity is, or at least should be, an everyday exercise. And, the neatest part about it was that you could do a good deed that was relatively painless.
You still see a pushke here and there. It is most usually at a convenient store along the interstate, and most usually collecting for a local person who needs an operation or expensive medical treatment. Some supermarkets and pharmacies do it around Christmastime. When you see that pushke, do you take a moment to drop some change into it?
We here in Greenville see ourselves as a most charitable community. I simply recommend that we broaden the opportunity for our citizens to feed the pushke wherever we do cash business and expand the scope to include worthy ongoing causes – healthcare, homelessness, education, church missions, the elderly – whatever the proprietor sees as his/her signature cause.
Every time that I get back a handful of change from a shopping venture, I ask the storekeeper to put a charity box labeled for a favorite cause near the cash register, right next to the “take a penny, leave a penny” ashtray. Chain it to the counter if you must, to prevent it being snatched and diverted to the wrong “charity.” After a month or two, count it up and give it to your chosen charity. Painless. Honorable. Helpful. Gracious.
To date, I have convinced only my cleaners, a devout Christian couple from Korea, to put in a pushke for their church’s missions. No, the results as yet have not been stunning, but they have started.
My appeal to the storekeepers of the Upstate, particularly those who run small businesses, is to simply do it. No frills. No feasibility studies. No contingency plans. No fanfare. Just pick a favorite cause and do it.
My appeal to the shoppers of the Upstate is to drop in a few coins each time you get back a fistful of change and know that beside your regular avenues of major contributions – church, United Way, whatever – you are doing a little bit of transcendent good each day painlessly. And, you will also know that the sum total of your contributions and that of others will have ultimate results that will be absolutely stunning. You could do even more by joining the “mission” and encouraging storekeepers to make the opportunity available to their patrons. The goodness will go well beyond the sheer dollars raised, because a community’s basic wellbeing is reflected most in its routine, random acts of benevolence.
While we are on the subject of the pushke, how many of you have a pushke at home? What a wonderful place to put your small change at the end of the day. What a wonderful lesson for the kids, that the family’s commitment to charity has an everyday-ness about it. What a wonderful sense that real charity means not giving ‘til it hurts, but ‘til it feels good.
We Jews customarily feed our pushkes just as week ends and the Sabbath candles are lit. Thus, the last act of the workaday week and the first act of the holy Sabbath is an act of giving, not taking. Just recently, looking through a Christian magazine in the doctor’s waiting room, I read an appeal for Christians to do the same – to end the week and start the Sabbath with everyone putting a few pennies in the charity box, regardless of the more substantial contribution we put in the plate on Sunday morning.
Huge magnanimous gifts are always in order, and without them, our hospitals, schools and houses of worship would simply not get built. If you can do that, then God bless you. But, whether you can or you cannot, let it not substitute for the unobtrusive, painless, anyone-can-do-it, act of putting a few pennies in the pushke wherever you shop and wherever you call your home.
August 18, 2003
YOU’RE RIGHT, YOU’RE WRONG, YOU’RE WRONG, YOU’RE RIGHT
To invoke Dr. King’s “I have a dream” would be too melodramatic. To cite a less reputable King’s vacuous plea, “Can’t we all just get along?” would be to trivialize the issue. So, somewhere between Rev. Martin’s and (li-havdil) Rodney’s calls for unity comes my appeal, my dream, for Jewish theists and Jewish humanists to scuttle the invectives and celebrate a common ground from which they both could take a few life-sustaining lessons.
Part of me laments the necessity of stirring the ashes of this centuries-old debate that seems to rear its head anew. Resurrecting the issue while the Jewish world is, as always, in such a mess, is like worrying about rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. We should have figured it out long ago.
Nonetheless, could we please take a moment’s respite from our us-versus-them contentiousness, and instead, reason together? Here are three foundations on which a common ground can be established, so that even the humanists, ethical culturists, and believers in the Divine imperative might pause, offer each other a little more mutual respect and a lot more ahavat Yisrael:
1. Let us acknowledge, even celebrate, that the primary thrust of the mitzvot is not so much the enhancement of the Jewish condition as it is of the human condition. We might even go so far as to say that the well-worn shibboleth of “Jewish identity” does not give Judaism sufficient credit. For, Jewish identity may be a critical virtue, but it is merely a vehicle – perhaps the most potent vehicle for Jews – to attain our highest human identity. One might even call this notion “revealed humanism.” Not an oxymoron.
We have an enormous body of ethical mitzvot that unambiguously confirm this notion. Not surprisingly, the Prophet summarizes “what God requires of you” in humanistic terms – “do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God.”
Moreover, the Rabbinic tradition has even interpreted many of the ritual mitzvot as driven largely by humanistic ideals: Tefillin are in large measure about mustering intellectual, spiritual and physical resources to do the work of God. Inserting Ba-Meh Madlikin into the Shabbat service ensures that latecomers will be escorted safely home, not left to walk the treacherous streets alone. The Seder cannot start without inviting the hungry into our homes. Tzedakah is incorporated into the weekday Shacharit ritual. The Shabbat challot are covered so that we do not “embarrass” them by blessing the wine first. And, who can tell me where the rituals of the Shabbat or Yom Tov table end and where the human fellowship begins? Is Shalashudes, or the Purim Seudah or Simchat Torah simply about rituals?
2. Just as humanistic Jews are at peril by stripping Judaism of God, mitzvah-observant Jews run the risk of threatening the luster and texture of Jewish peoplehood, by ignoring, even denigrating, the rich cultural legacy of Judaism. Yes, we are a religion with a mitzvah-driven action plan. But, we are also a repository of literature, theater, music, cuisine, dance, art, language, poetry – some of it not entirely “religious,” but still consummately Jewish, and certainly not a source of shame.
In earlier times, a premier American orthodox institution could build a major fundraising event around a concert by Cantors Rosenblatt and Hershman. No denying that today they would draw a bigger crowd with Schlock Rock and a Dougie’s rib buffet.
Perhaps some of the music of the Yiddish stage is a tad too bawdy for religious sensitivities. Yet, tell me how relatively steeped today’s ba’alei teshuvah and their mentors are in the magnificent compositions of the Cantorial Golden Age or the courts of Moditz, Ger, Bobov, Lubavitch, versus the disco-wannabe Miami Boys Choir or the warbling of Mordechai ben David. And, how many of the same folks are aware that the much-maligned Hava Nagilah is a song composed by the Klausenberger Chasidim? Who has read and tortured his/her soul over (the heretic?) Bialik’s pathos in Ha-Masmid?
Will someone please acknowledge that sucking the cultural legacy from Judaism leaves a stark moonscape of robotic yes-and-no Judaism, just as surely as sucking out God denatures Judaism of its limitless spiritual potentials and sense of driving imperative?
3. Let me suggest that truly ethical humanists believe in “God” more than they may realize. Perhaps it is not the fully refined, intimate vision of God to which we of religious commitment subscribe. But, let us at least concur that the threshold definition of God is the sum (to my belief, infinite) total of all the creative and moral forces at work in the universe. So long as a professing humanist believes in the world’s limitless promise of creativity and moral rectitude – that these are the very essence of the world and humanity at their best – then this too is a kind of belief in the Divine.
I call it “threshold,” because it will not entirely satisfy a believing Jew (or Christian). But, it is light years ahead of folks who believe that the world is condemned to failure, meaninglessness and the law of the jungle. Somehow, I cannot see a humanistic Jew eagerly concurring, “All we are is dust in the wind.”
Please indulge me in my dream, and do not be too quick to condemn me as a luftmensch. The common ground will not be established without everyone trying a little harder, and frankly, sometimes it seems that no one is trying at all. Please do not let this continue to degenerate into a wrong-versus-right disputation. We need save that for Saddam and Yasser. This is about Jews arguing with Jews. So, let it be a lovers’ quarrel, no more. Argue the details if you must, but at least savor all that we do really share. Nu, can’t we all just get along?
To invoke Dr. King’s “I have a dream” would be too melodramatic. To cite a less reputable King’s vacuous plea, “Can’t we all just get along?” would be to trivialize the issue. So, somewhere between Rev. Martin’s and (li-havdil) Rodney’s calls for unity comes my appeal, my dream, for Jewish theists and Jewish humanists to scuttle the invectives and celebrate a common ground from which they both could take a few life-sustaining lessons.
Part of me laments the necessity of stirring the ashes of this centuries-old debate that seems to rear its head anew. Resurrecting the issue while the Jewish world is, as always, in such a mess, is like worrying about rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. We should have figured it out long ago.
Nonetheless, could we please take a moment’s respite from our us-versus-them contentiousness, and instead, reason together? Here are three foundations on which a common ground can be established, so that even the humanists, ethical culturists, and believers in the Divine imperative might pause, offer each other a little more mutual respect and a lot more ahavat Yisrael:
1. Let us acknowledge, even celebrate, that the primary thrust of the mitzvot is not so much the enhancement of the Jewish condition as it is of the human condition. We might even go so far as to say that the well-worn shibboleth of “Jewish identity” does not give Judaism sufficient credit. For, Jewish identity may be a critical virtue, but it is merely a vehicle – perhaps the most potent vehicle for Jews – to attain our highest human identity. One might even call this notion “revealed humanism.” Not an oxymoron.
We have an enormous body of ethical mitzvot that unambiguously confirm this notion. Not surprisingly, the Prophet summarizes “what God requires of you” in humanistic terms – “do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God.”
Moreover, the Rabbinic tradition has even interpreted many of the ritual mitzvot as driven largely by humanistic ideals: Tefillin are in large measure about mustering intellectual, spiritual and physical resources to do the work of God. Inserting Ba-Meh Madlikin into the Shabbat service ensures that latecomers will be escorted safely home, not left to walk the treacherous streets alone. The Seder cannot start without inviting the hungry into our homes. Tzedakah is incorporated into the weekday Shacharit ritual. The Shabbat challot are covered so that we do not “embarrass” them by blessing the wine first. And, who can tell me where the rituals of the Shabbat or Yom Tov table end and where the human fellowship begins? Is Shalashudes, or the Purim Seudah or Simchat Torah simply about rituals?
2. Just as humanistic Jews are at peril by stripping Judaism of God, mitzvah-observant Jews run the risk of threatening the luster and texture of Jewish peoplehood, by ignoring, even denigrating, the rich cultural legacy of Judaism. Yes, we are a religion with a mitzvah-driven action plan. But, we are also a repository of literature, theater, music, cuisine, dance, art, language, poetry – some of it not entirely “religious,” but still consummately Jewish, and certainly not a source of shame.
In earlier times, a premier American orthodox institution could build a major fundraising event around a concert by Cantors Rosenblatt and Hershman. No denying that today they would draw a bigger crowd with Schlock Rock and a Dougie’s rib buffet.
Perhaps some of the music of the Yiddish stage is a tad too bawdy for religious sensitivities. Yet, tell me how relatively steeped today’s ba’alei teshuvah and their mentors are in the magnificent compositions of the Cantorial Golden Age or the courts of Moditz, Ger, Bobov, Lubavitch, versus the disco-wannabe Miami Boys Choir or the warbling of Mordechai ben David. And, how many of the same folks are aware that the much-maligned Hava Nagilah is a song composed by the Klausenberger Chasidim? Who has read and tortured his/her soul over (the heretic?) Bialik’s pathos in Ha-Masmid?
Will someone please acknowledge that sucking the cultural legacy from Judaism leaves a stark moonscape of robotic yes-and-no Judaism, just as surely as sucking out God denatures Judaism of its limitless spiritual potentials and sense of driving imperative?
3. Let me suggest that truly ethical humanists believe in “God” more than they may realize. Perhaps it is not the fully refined, intimate vision of God to which we of religious commitment subscribe. But, let us at least concur that the threshold definition of God is the sum (to my belief, infinite) total of all the creative and moral forces at work in the universe. So long as a professing humanist believes in the world’s limitless promise of creativity and moral rectitude – that these are the very essence of the world and humanity at their best – then this too is a kind of belief in the Divine.
I call it “threshold,” because it will not entirely satisfy a believing Jew (or Christian). But, it is light years ahead of folks who believe that the world is condemned to failure, meaninglessness and the law of the jungle. Somehow, I cannot see a humanistic Jew eagerly concurring, “All we are is dust in the wind.”
Please indulge me in my dream, and do not be too quick to condemn me as a luftmensch. The common ground will not be established without everyone trying a little harder, and frankly, sometimes it seems that no one is trying at all. Please do not let this continue to degenerate into a wrong-versus-right disputation. We need save that for Saddam and Yasser. This is about Jews arguing with Jews. So, let it be a lovers’ quarrel, no more. Argue the details if you must, but at least savor all that we do really share. Nu, can’t we all just get along?
August 17, 2003
IT WAS TWENTY YEARS . . . OK, THIRTY-FIVE . . . YEARS AGO TODAY
It was twenty years ago today . . .
Jeez, it was actually thirty-five years ago, as I pause to marvel that I am still lustily singing along with Sergeant Pepper as though it were 1968. My pause is more than momentary, though, as I stop to contemplate my singular un-enthusiasm at the coming year’s political campaigns and conventions. I would call my state-of-mind “cynical,” were I not so listless, wanting to dismiss the candidates as a choice between Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Then I remember that that metaphor was most memorably invoked by the infamous George Colley Wallace . . . ironically, in 1968.
Then my wandering mind juxtaposes my sleepy lack of enthusiasm to a time a full thirty-five years ago when I built an entire summer’s worth of plans around being in Chicago for the momentous Democratic National Convention of 1968. Nothing, no threat of bodily harm nor dire parental sanction, could have kept me and my wildly idealistic companions away.
Thirty-five years have elapsed, and my story is a remarkably unremarkable cliche of the ensuing decades. Impassioned protest. Smug intimations that if the world were left to us we could finally set it right. BA in sociology. Avoiding (dodging) the draft. Vietnam. Marriage. Graduate degree. Children. The compulsion to get ahead and make it. A suburban home and Volvo. Self-doubts. Disillusionment. More self-doubts. Divorce. The gaps that separate me from my children. The sobering acknowledgement of one’s failure, finitude and mortality. Starting over. And over.
Despite all the changes and metamorphoses, there is a small, not entirely rational part of me that will forever be stuck in 1968. I know that I am not alone. Objectively, we can look back at 1968 and clearly see our naiveté and blindness, the glaring fallacies in our grandiose plans for a new social order, the ease with which we were co-opted into obedient lockstep by the Jerry Rubins and Abbie Hoffmans, whose deeper motives were far removed from altruism.
Objectively, we can look back and clearly see that we in our own way were no less self-centered and self-indulgent in 1968 than the aging-out Boomers we have become in 2003.
Objectivity, however, cannot overrule the gut sensation that our exuberant, youthful energies, however misguided and excessive, were at least fixed on ideals of harmony, understanding, justice, equality and on the convictions that we could convert those ideals into reality, if we could just get folks to listen.
But all pretensions of idealism were challenged to their limit that Summer of 1968. Martin was dead. Bobby was dead. Vietnam was a hellish abyss into which were sinking deeper each day. Dick Nixon was poised to reemerge from the shadows of political oblivion. And we marched, and shouted, and screamed, and were met with force that begat counterforce. And the more Insightful among us realized at that moment that even the noblest of ideals do not translate into reality quite so easily, if ever at all.
We know rationally that idealism did not die in the Summer of 1968. But many of us will forever reminisce about what we lost that August, the way we reminisce about the loss of innocence and the passing of our youth. Many of us will forever believe that that summer was the pivotal moment after which is because more and more difficult to convince young people of the middle class than ones sights should be set higher than perpetual partying, climbing the corporate ladder and amassing a repertoire of electronic toys.
That summer in Chicago we talked ourselves into believing that the whole world was watching. Many of us who were there are still, thirty-five years later, having trouble getting accustomed to the idea that much of the world is not so interest in watching anything more substantial than reruns of Friends.
No, things have not been the same since the Summer of 1968. The greater part of me will watch the 2004 convention and campaigns with appropriately mature interest and concern. But, I confess that the little part of me that hovers between exuberant youth and jaded middle age would just as soon put All You Need Is Love on my cool new MP3 player and have someone wake me when it is all over on November 2.
It was twenty years ago today . . .
Jeez, it was actually thirty-five years ago, as I pause to marvel that I am still lustily singing along with Sergeant Pepper as though it were 1968. My pause is more than momentary, though, as I stop to contemplate my singular un-enthusiasm at the coming year’s political campaigns and conventions. I would call my state-of-mind “cynical,” were I not so listless, wanting to dismiss the candidates as a choice between Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Then I remember that that metaphor was most memorably invoked by the infamous George Colley Wallace . . . ironically, in 1968.
Then my wandering mind juxtaposes my sleepy lack of enthusiasm to a time a full thirty-five years ago when I built an entire summer’s worth of plans around being in Chicago for the momentous Democratic National Convention of 1968. Nothing, no threat of bodily harm nor dire parental sanction, could have kept me and my wildly idealistic companions away.
Thirty-five years have elapsed, and my story is a remarkably unremarkable cliche of the ensuing decades. Impassioned protest. Smug intimations that if the world were left to us we could finally set it right. BA in sociology. Avoiding (dodging) the draft. Vietnam. Marriage. Graduate degree. Children. The compulsion to get ahead and make it. A suburban home and Volvo. Self-doubts. Disillusionment. More self-doubts. Divorce. The gaps that separate me from my children. The sobering acknowledgement of one’s failure, finitude and mortality. Starting over. And over.
Despite all the changes and metamorphoses, there is a small, not entirely rational part of me that will forever be stuck in 1968. I know that I am not alone. Objectively, we can look back at 1968 and clearly see our naiveté and blindness, the glaring fallacies in our grandiose plans for a new social order, the ease with which we were co-opted into obedient lockstep by the Jerry Rubins and Abbie Hoffmans, whose deeper motives were far removed from altruism.
Objectively, we can look back and clearly see that we in our own way were no less self-centered and self-indulgent in 1968 than the aging-out Boomers we have become in 2003.
Objectivity, however, cannot overrule the gut sensation that our exuberant, youthful energies, however misguided and excessive, were at least fixed on ideals of harmony, understanding, justice, equality and on the convictions that we could convert those ideals into reality, if we could just get folks to listen.
But all pretensions of idealism were challenged to their limit that Summer of 1968. Martin was dead. Bobby was dead. Vietnam was a hellish abyss into which were sinking deeper each day. Dick Nixon was poised to reemerge from the shadows of political oblivion. And we marched, and shouted, and screamed, and were met with force that begat counterforce. And the more Insightful among us realized at that moment that even the noblest of ideals do not translate into reality quite so easily, if ever at all.
We know rationally that idealism did not die in the Summer of 1968. But many of us will forever reminisce about what we lost that August, the way we reminisce about the loss of innocence and the passing of our youth. Many of us will forever believe that that summer was the pivotal moment after which is because more and more difficult to convince young people of the middle class than ones sights should be set higher than perpetual partying, climbing the corporate ladder and amassing a repertoire of electronic toys.
That summer in Chicago we talked ourselves into believing that the whole world was watching. Many of us who were there are still, thirty-five years later, having trouble getting accustomed to the idea that much of the world is not so interest in watching anything more substantial than reruns of Friends.
No, things have not been the same since the Summer of 1968. The greater part of me will watch the 2004 convention and campaigns with appropriately mature interest and concern. But, I confess that the little part of me that hovers between exuberant youth and jaded middle age would just as soon put All You Need Is Love on my cool new MP3 player and have someone wake me when it is all over on November 2.
August 09, 2003
PRECOGNITIONS OF “A LAND SO SWEET AND BEAUTIFUL”
How many of you under-forty Jewish crowd can sing a few bars of Rumania Rumania? A majority of you probably cannot even recall the name Ceausescu or consider an era pre-Holocaust when Jews savored Rumania as “a land so sweet and beautiful.” And, even if you can, can you identify the sanctified Rumanian cuisine of mamaliga, castravete and pătlăgea?
Yeah, and so what?
Well, that is precisely the point. Rumania Rumania is a venerated song of the Yiddish stage, composed by Sholom Secunda, whose Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen became a huge hit for the Andrews Sisters. It was the signature tune of beloved song-and-dance-man Aaron Lebedeff, whom a critic once called “the Jewish Maurice Chevalier.” Rumania Rumania is a lighthearted reminiscence of the salad days in the old country. “It was a place,” Lebedeff pines, “where we had no troubles” and even the simplest foods were delicious. Some of the lyrics are even ingratiatingly bawdy, like, “Rumanians drink wine and eat mamaliga, and whoever kisses his own wife is crazy.”
Nowadays, you rarely find anyone – save a few klezmer aficionados and a dying breed of old timers – who truly appreciates the song’s cultural context and Lebedeff’s intricate Yiddish scat. But, generations come and go, and then something really weird happens that bridges the ages while it completely defies rationality . . .
Simeon Isaac, my three-month-old grandson – whom I call “Shimon’dl,” just as my mom endearingly called my dad – is becoming more and more attentive to music, as infants typically are. A smile will cross his face, maybe even a little calm if he is cranky. So, we sing to him, and he is really starting to get into Baby Mozart, the new generation’s ultimate non-prescription narcotic.
So, one day I start warbling Rumania Rumania, and I do not get a mere smile from the kid, but a chorus of the deepest belly-laughs. His eyes are fixed on me with a knowing look, and the laughs just keep on rolling. A few minutes go by, and I try it again. By now we have an audience, and again, the kid cracks up. Rumania Rumania has now become our signature tune, and I am welcomed by same eyes and belly-laughs each time I sing the arcane, loopy melody. Shimon’dl gives no other song, whatever the language, such a spontaneously hearty ovation.
What is going on here? A developmental psychologist would likely say that the resonance of a particular meter or beat or note-combination sends the baby into fits of laughter. Feh. Let an overly romantic zayde offer an alternative theory:
Dr. Gladys McGarey introduced us to the idea that babies are actually "old souls in new bodies." Mystical? Genetic? You need not be a scientist. We who have birthed children know that our babies are indeed old souls, that precognitions both pristinely innocent and worldly wise dwell deep in an infant’s eyes long before its conscious conditioning begins.
So indulge me more in romantic projection than in clinical observation. You know why baby Shimon’dl rings with laughter whenever I sing Rumania Rumania? Because he has been there before. His old soul knows of a place devoid of tyrants and crematoria where “living was a pleasure,” where a glass of sweet Rumanian wine led to merriment and dancing and good-natured joking about the mishugas of kissing ones own wife. He stood behind the kitchen door as Moshe Chayim and Boruch Shmuel mischievously swiped a piece of the cook’s Shabbos kugel. He found delight in a simple peasant’s meal of mamaliga, castravete and pătlăgea. And now he laughs and laughs whenever he is reminded of times full of sunshine and devoid of angst and worries and WMD’s and egotistical talking heads.
In that innocent ditty he feels himself again swaddled in the innocence of the womb, as he does at his mother’s breast and in his father’s protective arms. The wisdom he radiates declares that truth is found in the utter simplicity of the love of family and friends, a little merriment and frivolity, a savoring together of times now past, a table set with a modest meal, and a sip or two of sweet wine.
Does Shimon’dl really hear all that as he laughs with abandon at a nostalgically goofy song of the Yiddish stage? All right, maybe I have taken a zayde’s fantasy too far. Yet, if in a newborn babe’s innocence we feel our own yearning for innocence, and if in its wise eyes we see a reflection of our own longing for wisdom, and if in his laughter we hear our own hollowness begging to be filled with laughter . . . then maybe we, too, have in utero visited “a land so sweet and beautiful,” and reveled in times well spent, and now pine for one more chance to be enveloped in its glow of all’s-wellness. Perhaps the hope we see reflected in our grandchildren’s laughter and knowing eyes reassures us that age has not dimmed our own hope for tomorrow.
So, what are mamaliga, castravete and pătlăgea? Go look them up in a Rumanian dictionary. Better yet, find an old timer who got out of Rumania with his life, and ask him. Even better yet, give my Shimon’dl a couple of years. I bet he will be able to tell you all about them in impeccable detail.
How many of you under-forty Jewish crowd can sing a few bars of Rumania Rumania? A majority of you probably cannot even recall the name Ceausescu or consider an era pre-Holocaust when Jews savored Rumania as “a land so sweet and beautiful.” And, even if you can, can you identify the sanctified Rumanian cuisine of mamaliga, castravete and pătlăgea?
Yeah, and so what?
Well, that is precisely the point. Rumania Rumania is a venerated song of the Yiddish stage, composed by Sholom Secunda, whose Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen became a huge hit for the Andrews Sisters. It was the signature tune of beloved song-and-dance-man Aaron Lebedeff, whom a critic once called “the Jewish Maurice Chevalier.” Rumania Rumania is a lighthearted reminiscence of the salad days in the old country. “It was a place,” Lebedeff pines, “where we had no troubles” and even the simplest foods were delicious. Some of the lyrics are even ingratiatingly bawdy, like, “Rumanians drink wine and eat mamaliga, and whoever kisses his own wife is crazy.”
Nowadays, you rarely find anyone – save a few klezmer aficionados and a dying breed of old timers – who truly appreciates the song’s cultural context and Lebedeff’s intricate Yiddish scat. But, generations come and go, and then something really weird happens that bridges the ages while it completely defies rationality . . .
Simeon Isaac, my three-month-old grandson – whom I call “Shimon’dl,” just as my mom endearingly called my dad – is becoming more and more attentive to music, as infants typically are. A smile will cross his face, maybe even a little calm if he is cranky. So, we sing to him, and he is really starting to get into Baby Mozart, the new generation’s ultimate non-prescription narcotic.
So, one day I start warbling Rumania Rumania, and I do not get a mere smile from the kid, but a chorus of the deepest belly-laughs. His eyes are fixed on me with a knowing look, and the laughs just keep on rolling. A few minutes go by, and I try it again. By now we have an audience, and again, the kid cracks up. Rumania Rumania has now become our signature tune, and I am welcomed by same eyes and belly-laughs each time I sing the arcane, loopy melody. Shimon’dl gives no other song, whatever the language, such a spontaneously hearty ovation.
What is going on here? A developmental psychologist would likely say that the resonance of a particular meter or beat or note-combination sends the baby into fits of laughter. Feh. Let an overly romantic zayde offer an alternative theory:
Dr. Gladys McGarey introduced us to the idea that babies are actually "old souls in new bodies." Mystical? Genetic? You need not be a scientist. We who have birthed children know that our babies are indeed old souls, that precognitions both pristinely innocent and worldly wise dwell deep in an infant’s eyes long before its conscious conditioning begins.
So indulge me more in romantic projection than in clinical observation. You know why baby Shimon’dl rings with laughter whenever I sing Rumania Rumania? Because he has been there before. His old soul knows of a place devoid of tyrants and crematoria where “living was a pleasure,” where a glass of sweet Rumanian wine led to merriment and dancing and good-natured joking about the mishugas of kissing ones own wife. He stood behind the kitchen door as Moshe Chayim and Boruch Shmuel mischievously swiped a piece of the cook’s Shabbos kugel. He found delight in a simple peasant’s meal of mamaliga, castravete and pătlăgea. And now he laughs and laughs whenever he is reminded of times full of sunshine and devoid of angst and worries and WMD’s and egotistical talking heads.
In that innocent ditty he feels himself again swaddled in the innocence of the womb, as he does at his mother’s breast and in his father’s protective arms. The wisdom he radiates declares that truth is found in the utter simplicity of the love of family and friends, a little merriment and frivolity, a savoring together of times now past, a table set with a modest meal, and a sip or two of sweet wine.
Does Shimon’dl really hear all that as he laughs with abandon at a nostalgically goofy song of the Yiddish stage? All right, maybe I have taken a zayde’s fantasy too far. Yet, if in a newborn babe’s innocence we feel our own yearning for innocence, and if in its wise eyes we see a reflection of our own longing for wisdom, and if in his laughter we hear our own hollowness begging to be filled with laughter . . . then maybe we, too, have in utero visited “a land so sweet and beautiful,” and reveled in times well spent, and now pine for one more chance to be enveloped in its glow of all’s-wellness. Perhaps the hope we see reflected in our grandchildren’s laughter and knowing eyes reassures us that age has not dimmed our own hope for tomorrow.
So, what are mamaliga, castravete and pătlăgea? Go look them up in a Rumanian dictionary. Better yet, find an old timer who got out of Rumania with his life, and ask him. Even better yet, give my Shimon’dl a couple of years. I bet he will be able to tell you all about them in impeccable detail.
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