FREE ADVICE TO THE UNEMPLOYED: IT'S NOT SO EASY (7/27/04)
Those of you who are close to me have probably surmised that I have had a serious reversal of fortune. I cannot whine, because it is largely due to poorly made choices and atypically rash behavior. I have not been good to the times, so the times have not been good to me.
This is not to say that I am not abundantly blessed: Linda is incredibly supportive and patient. My kids and grandkids are pure gold. Friends, though they have dwindled, are still there for me. My communion with God and sense of higher purpose still sustain me. Moreover, we retain the trappings of an upper-middle-class lifestyle. The amenities are there, and they are not threatened. Yet, the edge of trepidation sometimes creeps in.
Why all this? You may have also surmised that for two years I have basically been unemployed. I have had brief tenure at two jobs and discovered that I do not have the mettle for do-what-you’re-told-sit-down-and-shut-up. I have had the good fortune of serving a congregation for the Holy Days, with appropriate remuneration. I occasionally receive an honorarium for speaking engagements. And, my columns, no matter how well regarded, are easy to get published, so long as I give them away. Friends tell me that I am the world’s worst self-marketer. I cannot disagree.
Seven years ago, having established a respectable position in the corporate world, the rabbinate again drew me to a congregation. Greenville appeared to hold significant potential for Jewish growth and creativity. And it was so. Noteworthy accomplishments. Noteworthy compensation.
It took five years for the situation to go sour. With a new administration, new issues arose. Tell this to any rabbi, and s/he will tell you, “So what else is new?” The same rabbis would likely tell you, though, that these particular issues might well have been cause for resignation.
In retrospect, I have little doubt that the points of contention might have been amicably resolved had the conflict not coincided with an episode of radical bipolarity, unlike which I had never suffered. Thank God, that situation is now well under control. But, in the spring of 2002, the rapid cycles of manic outbursts counterpointed by fits of morbid depression led me to rash, accusatory actions that culminated in my impulsive resignation.
Now, two years later, I still live a scant half-mile from the synagogue, loved by some former congregants, forgiven by others, still the scourge of others. And unemployed. No prognosis for being impoverished, thank God. But, this I have attained: a deeper understanding for the nuances of unemployment and how its complexities are cynically dismissed by the crowd that prates, “Just buck up, tighten your belt and get and job!”
These are some of the intemperate comments regarding the long-term unemployed that I have heard and even occasionally made over the years. While each may contain a kernel of truth, situations are not so simple as they seem to the judgmental outsider:
Get rid of the shiny Volvo and buy a cheaper car. The Volvo is paid for and still gets 28-30 miles per gallon. Move into a smaller house. Have you factored in the cost of moving, financing and what we originally paid for this one, as property values have increased? How dare you take a vacation? Sometime my wife is so frazzled by the redoubled stress, and sometimes it is a treat from her parents.
Write a book. You think I haven’t put forth proposals? Do you know how many agents, editors and publishers have told me, “Your stuff is good, just not good enough”? And then there was the one who offered this crowning compliment: “Your writing is insipid to the core.” If you have to, be prepared to drive a distance for a job. Well, the last job I worked paid $321 a week, of which I spent $53 on gas. Flip burgers if you have to. How long can one’s psyche and morale stay intact before redefining unemployment as punishment for some horrific crime? Move to another city where the job situation is better. It’s not so easy when your wife has a completely engaging, rewarding job here, and all the grandchildren live right down the road.
It’s not so easy. That is precisely the point. I am not whining. I am not going broke. I am not giving up. I will one day have gainful, even meaningful, employment. But, the shibboleths smugly crooned by the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps crowd will do no earthly good. Good can come only from recognizing that for every one shiftless bum, 20 or 30 of us long-term unemployed face obstacles that may be surmountable, but that are complex, daunting and not so easy.
When I was still a baby rabbi, I heard Sol, a particularly uncouth member of our finance committee, chastise a synagogue member whose dues were in arrears:
“Gee, Roy, you drive a nice car, but you still owe us last year’s dues.”
“I do specialized work, and I’ve been unemployed for two years.”
“What kind of specialized work do you do, Roy? Are you a brain surgeon?”
I was upset but remained silent. Now, wiser for the years and the tears, I know what I should have said: It’s not so easy. I doubt that Sol would have heard me.
Would you?
July 27, 2004
July 04, 2004
THE PASSION OF THE BUSH
First off, let me set the ground rules for these observations, lest I be condemned for heretical parallelism:
George W. Bush is not Jesus Christ. Michael Moore is not Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. The vilification of George Bush is not the Passion on the Cross. The disparagement of Michael Moore is not a sign of the impending apocalypse.
One story is sacred, the other mundane, understood?
The Passion and 9/11 may be of two different places, times and sanctified magnitudes, but their recent retellings – one by Gibson, the other by Moore – bear a remarkable symmetry. We might even go so far as to say that thoughtful Christian fundamentalists might now better understand the angst that some non-Christians felt over the anticipated impact of The Passion of the Christ.
Did not many of us assume - erroneously, the fundamentalists repeatedly assured us - that Gibson’s movie would galvanize a new wave of anti-Semitism, aggressive conversionary efforts, even a neo-Crusader zeal? Tables turned now, how can fundamentalist Christian conservatives not interpret the box office success of Moore’s maybe documentary, maybe not, as a further radicalization of the already radicalized Left?
Is Gibson advocating Christian love or anti-Semitism? Is Moore espousing America’s capacity for self-correction or bald-faced anti-Americanism? One cannot walk the razor’s edge with one without calling the other into question.
Would Gibson have been more dramatically effective in retelling the magnificent story of Jesus’s life, death and redemptive power by letting the Gospels speak for themselves? Would authenticity have enhanced the pathos more than skewing the story to Gibson’s theological and historical bias? Would allegiance to the text, historical sources and the Church’s interpretive tradition told the story more compellingly than playing sloppily with the truth?
Likewise Moore: The truth itself told a compelling, dramatic, condemning story. George W. Bush did plenty that was wrong, even perniciously so. So too the men and women who were at his beck and call. Some of it was inexcusable lack of preparedness in a pre-9/11 world where terrorism was already a palpable reality. Some of it was sloth and stupidity, a country with a vapid pretty-boy at the helm. And some of was certainly greed on behalf of friends on both sides of the world, many of whom were swathed in the garb of Arabian nobility. Does anyone else out there wonder why Saudi Arabia is not a member of the Axis of Evil?
Why, then, did Moore, like Gibson, have to deliberately play fast-and-loose with the truth? Why did he have to proffer falsehood as fact? Why could he not let a story that was already sufficiently damnable simply tell itself?
Herein lies the ultimate symmetry: Gibson is not a spokesman for Biblical authenticity. Nor when all is said and done is he a Christian idealist. Moore is not a credible documentarian. Nor when all is said and done is he an advocate for a better America than George W. Bush has provided us.
Gibson and Moore are sensationalists. They molded and shaped, twisted and turned the truth to garner audiences. I will stop short of saying that they did it for the money. But this I know: They did it for the hoo-hah. They did it for the attention. They did it to make an angry, unjustifiable statement. They did it for self-vindication. And they did it not to feed on the American hoi polloi’s thirst for truth, but for its lust for sensationalism and its sheer gullibility.
The good news for my coreligionist doomsayers is that The Passion of the Christ has had little, perhaps none, of the cataclysmic effect that they had anticipated. The predictable good news for the Right is that they can expect the same from Fahrenheit 9/11. These are movies, folks. The American public is so fickle, thank God, that Gibson’s masterpiece was knocked from first place by Starsky and Hutch and Moore’s magnum opus was dethroned by Spider-Man 2.
First off, let me set the ground rules for these observations, lest I be condemned for heretical parallelism:
George W. Bush is not Jesus Christ. Michael Moore is not Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. The vilification of George Bush is not the Passion on the Cross. The disparagement of Michael Moore is not a sign of the impending apocalypse.
One story is sacred, the other mundane, understood?
The Passion and 9/11 may be of two different places, times and sanctified magnitudes, but their recent retellings – one by Gibson, the other by Moore – bear a remarkable symmetry. We might even go so far as to say that thoughtful Christian fundamentalists might now better understand the angst that some non-Christians felt over the anticipated impact of The Passion of the Christ.
Did not many of us assume - erroneously, the fundamentalists repeatedly assured us - that Gibson’s movie would galvanize a new wave of anti-Semitism, aggressive conversionary efforts, even a neo-Crusader zeal? Tables turned now, how can fundamentalist Christian conservatives not interpret the box office success of Moore’s maybe documentary, maybe not, as a further radicalization of the already radicalized Left?
Is Gibson advocating Christian love or anti-Semitism? Is Moore espousing America’s capacity for self-correction or bald-faced anti-Americanism? One cannot walk the razor’s edge with one without calling the other into question.
Would Gibson have been more dramatically effective in retelling the magnificent story of Jesus’s life, death and redemptive power by letting the Gospels speak for themselves? Would authenticity have enhanced the pathos more than skewing the story to Gibson’s theological and historical bias? Would allegiance to the text, historical sources and the Church’s interpretive tradition told the story more compellingly than playing sloppily with the truth?
Likewise Moore: The truth itself told a compelling, dramatic, condemning story. George W. Bush did plenty that was wrong, even perniciously so. So too the men and women who were at his beck and call. Some of it was inexcusable lack of preparedness in a pre-9/11 world where terrorism was already a palpable reality. Some of it was sloth and stupidity, a country with a vapid pretty-boy at the helm. And some of was certainly greed on behalf of friends on both sides of the world, many of whom were swathed in the garb of Arabian nobility. Does anyone else out there wonder why Saudi Arabia is not a member of the Axis of Evil?
Why, then, did Moore, like Gibson, have to deliberately play fast-and-loose with the truth? Why did he have to proffer falsehood as fact? Why could he not let a story that was already sufficiently damnable simply tell itself?
Herein lies the ultimate symmetry: Gibson is not a spokesman for Biblical authenticity. Nor when all is said and done is he a Christian idealist. Moore is not a credible documentarian. Nor when all is said and done is he an advocate for a better America than George W. Bush has provided us.
Gibson and Moore are sensationalists. They molded and shaped, twisted and turned the truth to garner audiences. I will stop short of saying that they did it for the money. But this I know: They did it for the hoo-hah. They did it for the attention. They did it to make an angry, unjustifiable statement. They did it for self-vindication. And they did it not to feed on the American hoi polloi’s thirst for truth, but for its lust for sensationalism and its sheer gullibility.
The good news for my coreligionist doomsayers is that The Passion of the Christ has had little, perhaps none, of the cataclysmic effect that they had anticipated. The predictable good news for the Right is that they can expect the same from Fahrenheit 9/11. These are movies, folks. The American public is so fickle, thank God, that Gibson’s masterpiece was knocked from first place by Starsky and Hutch and Moore’s magnum opus was dethroned by Spider-Man 2.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)