CULINARY SELF-DEFENSE

One more day and our new in-laws will descend on our modest home. Linda’s son is getting married.

I get the sense that these are not our kind of people. They live in a 7,000 square foot house, fronting on a huge lawn and backing up on a scenic lake. We front onto utility poles and back up to a drainage canal.

They demanded that their daughter have a $2,500 wedding band, while Linda and I bought ours at a discount jeweler. Geoffrey is still suspect because he sells carpet, while the bride’s brother is a physician. Their idea of a good time is golf and tennis, while ours is eating, sitting around the table and gossiping.

Fortunately, I have my own means of escape: the kitchen. Someone whispered in their ear that I am a gourmand. The claim is dubious, but I will try to keep up the ruse until they return to Valhalla. Without a tennis court in sight, I will ply them on smoked turkey with pecan dressing, home-cured gravlax with dill sauce, glazed apples and sultanas, bourbon-soused chicken and the like.

I have no doubt that my family will be well sated, perhaps even to the point of loosening belts and unbuttoning at the waist. As for the in-laws, I see them all picking at the same turkey wing, politely departing the table and attempting a brisk walk down Main Street, which will be abandoned, as all the stores will be locked up for Christmas weekend.

Deprived of exercise, they will return to their hotel room, where the only show on television will be the Vienna Boys Choir chirping “Stille Nacht.” They will then sheepishly return to our home, where they will catch us gossiping . . . about them.

But, I have an image of saving the day, because they will have arrived just in time for a round of perfect Stolichnaya martinis. The room becomes hazy. Tongues become loosened. Finally, the mother of the bride falls into a bowl of chocolate mousse.

Stille Nacht. Heil'ge Nacht. Somehow, I don’t think that mother will be playing too much tennis tomorrow.

UPPER MIDDLE CLASS CHARITABLE AUSTERITY

The background noise of my life, MSNBC, recently caught me with an interview of a rabbi and minister about the negative impact on local charities of the more focused giving in the aftermath of Katrina.

Neither minister was particularly impassioned about the question. The one clergyman suggested that work more arduously motivate the majority of Americans who give no charity whatsoever. That solution recalls the observation of the Rabbi of Lubavitch that “If we waited to understand the process of digestion before we ate, we would all surely die.

The other pastor was more candid, if not particularly magnanimous. The disaster, he said, was so immense that needs of other charities would just have to wait a year.

Both my colleagues were wrong.

I can think of at least ten solutions to the dilemma of how one can meet the needs of horrific tragedy while addressing local demands that are no less horrific: homelessness, hunger, family violence . . .

This is a suggestion that will take nary a pinch out of us denizens of the upper middle class. We know it because we personally use it:

Let all forms of broader “standard” charity – United Way, church/synagogue and the like – come directly from the checkbook, a chunk of salary and savings that is the bedrock of annual giving.

When special needs like Katrina pull our larger dollars elsewhere, let smaller at-home giving come from “upper middle class austerity.” First: At the end of each day, put all your pocket change into a charity box. Whatever faith you practice, before the Sabbath, do that and all the dollar bills in your wallet, too.

Food is a terrible thief of here-and-there dollars: Store brands and generics are almost invariably as good as high-ticket names. More poultry and less beef. More fruits and veggies, and for God’s sake, not just in salads. A few sliced apples, some brown sugar, a shot of cheap Marsala, a fistful of raisins, glaze in a skillet. The best side dish and dessert. $7.50 in better restaurants. And speaking of restaurants, don’t stop going, just cut back.

Whirl together mayo, anchovies, garlic, Worcestershire and mustard, serve on romaine . . . the sanctified Caesar salad. And the simple and frugal delight of homemade soup will always win out over top-of-the-line “homemade” Progresso.

Do you know how relatively inexpensive salmon and tilapia are? I can find the best of each at $3.99 a pound. Dress them up with a dusting of ground buckwheat or a blob of homemade tartar sauce. And by the way, despite our grandmothers’ whining, gefilte fish (or call it “Scandinavian fish-balls, whatever) is a no-brainer, and guess what? You can make it with salmon, and it doesn’t come out icky pink.

Gastronomists refer to this as “cuisine of necessity.” We call it “all that our grandmothers could get out of a chicken (eggs, schmaltz, soup and finally the main course), some matzo meal and a couple of root vegetables, and still eat like royalty on Sabbath and Holy Days.”

My doppelganger, Rabbi Ribeye, is delighted to share all his recipes that conform to the motto, “If it isn’t easy, we don’t make it!” – coq au vin, paella, demi-sec chutney, onion marmalade, chicken Marsala – all incredibly cheap and easy.

I’ve stopped taking most of my shirts to the cleaners. I’ve learned to iron. What a concept. We’ve forced ourselves to stop impulse buying. Kids need to learn a qualified “no” to their goofy extravagances. Not a “no” to everything, what the “no” is about, and that you, too, are saying “no’s” for yourselves.

Finally, the key is a little simple accounting. Keep a tally of what you’ve saved by an occasional coq au vin for four at $12, versus the same at $32 a person prepared by Chef D’Jean deMoutarde. Then, the “what you saved” goes directly to at-home charities that might have otherwise been pinched by Katrina.

None of this timid proposal forces a descent into lower class living. For most of us, it compels barely scraping the edge of the upper middle class.

Nobody asked me, but that’s how I see it. Write a check and help relieve the suffering of Katrina. Make your own salad dressing and help wipe out hunger at home.

ZIP-ZAP, CHUNKS AND SLABS

What does one remember after forty years away from yeshiva? Esoteric Talmudic passages? Not all of us. Some of us remember cartoonish characters like our cook, Jones Flournoy, who enabled the likes of me never to grow too old or too serious.

Jones was about 60 years old. He knew absolutely nothing about cooking, but the boys loved to play baseball with him. He was a magnificent pitcher, a star in the Negro League in the days that American baseball was still segregated.

Whenever you’d ask Jones about the day’s menu, he’d have one answer: “Zip-Zap.” I have never found a foodstuff in any language called “Zip-Zap,” so I assume that it meant, “I don’t know, so leave me alone.”

Breakfast zip-zap was inevitably hardboiled eggs and dark rye bread. Zip-zap at lunch meant tuna fish and dark rye bread. Shabbos dinner was zip-zap elevated to haute cuisine: dry, roasted chicken, moistened by bowls of ketchup and mayonnaise that accompanied it.

On other nights of the week, zip-zap’s identity took on two alternating forms of beef. I could never coordinate them with legitimate cuts of meat, because Jones simply referred to them as “chunks” and “slabs.” Naturally, they were accompanied by dark rye bread.

The student body was served its chunks or slabs at the dinner hour of 6:00 PM. We who attended university each evening in downtown Chicago did not return to yeshiva until 10:00. You know, of course, what was waiting: chunks or slabs wedged between slices of dark rye bread, wrapped in a plastic bag and left to ferment under the kitchen lights. How more of us did not die from botulism is part of the DaVinci Code.

Later in life, I did not partake in zip-zap, chunks or slabs. But, the tradition has not died. Whenever I prepare my kids’ supper, their first question is “What kind of zip-zap are we having?” When I tell them that it will be beef, they instantly respond, “Chunks or slabs?” Ach, I think, they may not be great rabbinical scholars, but at least a little of the best of yeshiva has rubbed off on them.

KOSHER WATER

Not too long ago, a yokel purchased a piece of property not far from where I live. But this was a most fortunate man. Under his barren land lay the largest pure water spring in the state. He had become a rich man nearly overnight. He bottled the water for consumers and food producers, and it was so pure that with proper sterilization it was sold all over the country to hospitals and research institutions.

One day the yokel sought me out. He was frantic. His salesman has tried to sell water to a company that produced kosher soups. He was told that his water would not be acceptable unless it was under rabbinical supervision.

The poor yokel could not appreciate the absurdity of the question, because he had not the slightest idea about kashrut. Assuming that he was a Bible-believing Christian, I referred him to the relevant passages in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, which he knew by heart. “But it doesn’t say anything about water!” he observed.

What could I tell him? That some rabbinical organization was trying to extort money from the suppliers of the water that went into the soup? So, standing in this facility that was producing absolutely sterile water for nuclear reactors, I made up some doubletalk about how they needed assurance that the water was “really pure.”

“Well, Rabbi,” he asked the obvious question, “can’t you tell them that it’s really pure?”

Another dilemma. I tried to explain to the befuddled yokel that he needed one of those rabbis with the beards and black hats and long black coats. He finally understood when I explained that I was like an Episcopalian and they were like Baptists.

I lost touch with the yokel, but I assume that his water is now kosher to orthodox standards, before it becomes polluted by the chicken and noodles.

The whole episode reminds me of the day in school that we looked at a drop of water through a microscope. We saw all kinds of one-cell creatures swimming around, and as I remember, none of them had fins and scales. Understandably, from that day forward, my beverage of choice has been Warsteiner.

FINALLY THE FIRST AT SOMETHING

Rabbis are insufferable braggarts. I may thus opine because I am one of them. Other than a handful of the most humble and righteous, one not need wait to ask rabbis where we have most recently spoken or when our last article appeared.

We particularly like boasting about being “the first,” as if this conferred some mystical authority: the first rabbi to shake the Pope’s hand when he was still an Archbishop, the first rabbi to meet Israel’s new assistant undersecretary of agriculture in charge of bananas, the first rabbi to sample pareve cheese.

Until this September, I had been “the first” at absolutely nothing. September brought us to Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina. It is a lovely place, the prototype of American lebensraum. There I lost my virginity and finally attainted my rabbinical first-hood. How, you ask?

Beyond this esteemed periodical, I write culinary quips for an internet food magazine. They had invited all their writers and editors to a traditional “pig pickin’” to celebrate our success. This feast, as you might surmise, is not a Champagne-and-caviar affair. It is 100 ravenous connoisseurs picking smoky, fatty flesh off a pig that had been roasted for hours by a chef ironically named Cohen.

I retained enough religious compunction to resist the perfumed pork that beckoned me. Besides, the poor pig was surrounded by an array of accompaniments upon which I declared a kashrut amnesty: “Hush Puppies,” fried cornmeal balls, vaguely reminiscent of Shabbos knoedel and Chanukah latkes, coleslaw, kartoffelsalate and plenty of German beer.

One iconoclast had just published a treatise on 50 ways to make deviled eggs. She served only 12 varieties, each very good, enticing us to read about the other 38 in her magnum opus.

I have no doubt that many a rabbi has indulged in pork. But this I guarantee: I am the first who has ever been the honored guest at a pig pickin’. It took only 56 years, but finally I am “the first” at something.

Now, get out of my way! I smell lobster boiling! Ah, another chance to be the first!

YOU NEVER KNOW

I make no apologies for my devotion to Chasidism, particularly to the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, its tireless outreach and nonjudgmental welcome to Jews of all callings and backgrounds. Moreover, it asks nothing in return.

Do I agree with every point of the movement’s theology and lifestyle? No, but enough to make me an adherent. In fact, we often joke about how a rabbi so seemingly atypical, in a decidedly un-Chabad town like Greenville, is so devoted to the work of Chabad. Hence my title, “Closet Lubavitcher”!

Their most recent, now deceased, Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, is understood by all Lubavitchers as irreplaceable. Do they consider him a miracle-worker? Perhaps, or at least a great cosmic influence. Is he the Messiah? This is the subject of tremendous controversy, even condemnation, in the secular media and other Jewish movements. Let’s simply say that many Lubavitchers openly declare him the Messiah, while for others the idea hovers as a distinct possibility.

Two years before his death, the Rebbe became my “savior.” In a scant 30 seconds, he stroked my arm and offered me guidance at the most dismal time of my life. Those few words, I now realize now, marked the beginning of my emotional and spiritual restoration and intervened in my imminent suicide.

That was then. Now, let me tell you about my recent transcendent, or spooky, experience – depending how you look at it – with the Rebbe:

A few months ago, I spent a week in New York working on a project. By serendipity, my driver to the airport was a young Lubavitcher. At the sight of my yarmulke, he asked whether I had ever visited the Ohel (Rebbe’s tomb)? I told him that I had not, but if we had time, I would certainly like to pay my respects. Knowing that people flock to the Ohel to ask for the Rebbe’s intercession, and remembering his life-saving advice for me 13 years earlier, it was the least I could do.

Arriving at the Ohel, my driver recommended that I write a “pan,” an acronym for “pidyon nefesh,” a “redemption of the soul,” to place on the Rebbe’s tomb. What could it hurt, I thought. So, I prayed for universal peace and for the safety of my family.

Then, I asked for something out of the ordinary: Three years earlier, I had departed my congregation in Greenville under acrimonious, some would say crazy, circumstances. Many congregants were left angry and estranged. Little by little, some had forgiven me, and our relationships had slowly resumed. For others, the anger still burned.

But, the Goldberg’s (name changed), with whom we were particularly close and whose friendship we especially cherished, stopped talking to us and refused all pleas of forgiveness – would not even answer calls, notes, emails, coming to the door or responding to mediators.

So, I prayed on my pan that there would be reconciliation with congregants who were still estranged and particularly for forgiveness from the Goldberg’s. I dropped the shredded pan, as is the custom, on the Rebbe’s tomb and noted that it was 6:00, time to leave for the airport. Shortly thereafter, I called Linda to tell her that the plane was departing on time.

“You’ll never guess who called,” Linda announced. “The Goldberg’s.”

Astonished, I asked her if there had been any particular reason.

“No. An incredible surprise. They just wanted to say hello.”

“And do you remember about what time they called?”

“It must have been around 6:05.”

Please understand my purpose. My personal feelings aside, relating this wonder-story is not to convince anyone to believe in miracles, nor to believe that the Rebbe is the Messiah, nor that I was at all worthy of Divine intercession.

I have only one purpose: It is to tell people smug or doubting that we never know. We expect, and we never know. We are so often thwarted. Life wearies us, and we never know. The sun may yet shine from the abyss. To the arrogant and smug who claim to know, this epitaph: You never know. If you did, you might not bother to show up.

A serendipitous ride to the Ohel? I think not.

NEUROTIC SALAMI

Please believe me when I tell you that kosher salami contributes to child abuse.

In the American-Jewish world of the 1950’s, sending ones child to nursery was a sign of dishonor. It inferred that daddy did not earn enough to allow mother to stay home and raise the toddlers, for she, too, was obliged to bring home a paycheck. The Wilson’s were not wealthy, but my parents scrimped to have my early years at home.

At nursery, youngsters were fed bland lunches and treats like jelly sandwiches, cookies and milk. At home, Jewish children were fed a nourishing fodder-trough of leftovers: brisket, meatloaf, casserole, sausage and beans . . . unintended early training for obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

My personal favorite at age four was salami with mustard on chewy rye. You must know that back then, no self-respecting American-Jewish household ate soft, neonatal salami. Rather, it was hung in the kitchen until it was wrinkled and chewy enough to loosen three molars.

Salami or not, from time to time, my mother would ignore me as lunch hour approached, talking on the phone to a childhood friend. I would whine for my lunch, which brought an ominous glare.

Once – and only once – after whining repeatedly, I reached up for the alluring salami and bit a huge chunk out of it. At this, my mother whacked me across the kitchen, bouncing me off the wall and forcing the purloined salami from my mouth. All the while, she kept up her conversation, never changing her tone of voice.

At the end of her conversation, she reminded me that she rarely hit me, but that this occasion – “playing with food,” she called it – deserved special treatment and clobbered me twice again.

51 years later, as we sat at my mother’s deathbed, we reminisced about incidents from childhood and laughed. She had remarkably clear memory for a woman who would die just days later. But guess what? She had nary a recollection of the punishment she meted out for her only child’s craving for a chunk of salami. Three whacks may have turned me neurotic, but at least my manners have gotten significantly better.

NO, I CAN'T DO THE SPLIT

Being a student in yeshiva was my first exposure to the personalities of young men from various regions of the States. New Yorkers were pushy. Californians had a more casual attitude. Kids from Boston were a little snobby.

Then there were the boys from the South. The southern United States had seceded from the Union over the inferiority and enslavement of blacks. The South lost, but many pundits would say that 150 years later they are still fighting the war.

Some bigotry still rears its ugly head, but more is focused on a deprecatory attitude toward “servants” – janitors, automobile attendants, ticket takers, waitresses – no “please” nor “thank you,” just, “Hurry up! Who do you think you are?”

Once upon a time, going to an ice cream parlor with Alan, a yeshiva bochur from the Deep South, was particularly embarrassing. The sweet young waitress approached our table. Alan ordered “a banana split . . . with no banana.” The waitress looked at him. “We don’t have that on the menu,” she said quizzically.

“Nonetheless,” Alan said, as though speaking to a recalcitrant kindergartener, “certainly the kitchen can make one up especially for me.” Again, a completely befuddled look from the waitress.

I tried to clarify the situation. “Just bring the man this banana split,” as I pointed to the menu, “and take off the banana.”

Alan of the South glared of me and chided, “I am perfectly capable of explaining to the servant precisely what I want, without your interference.”

Finally, I pretended to go to the bathroom, caught the waitress’s eye, handed her five dollars and asked her to bring out the “banana split without the banana,” just as I had explained to her.

The five dollars made up for Alan’s refusal to leave her a tip because “it would teach her not to be so uppity toward the upper class.”

I only pray that in his life to come Alan of the South would make the mistake of ordering “kirschtort . . . with no cherries” from a muscular waiter named Bruno.

THAT "RED STUFF"

Our little ones always tell us the truth. My three-year-old granddaughter, Sophie, upon learning to read the word “fat,” proudly announced, “My zayde is fat!”

So far, my grandson, Sim, has been slightly more merciful. At the tender age of two, he had already told his friends that his zayde was “a good cooker.” I asked him what he liked best.
“That red stuff.”

What “red stuff” does he mean? Maybe it’s ketchup. “No, silly!” he says to his dumbkopf zayde. “You know, the ‘red stuff’ I put on everything!”

Finally, it strikes me. Sim already has a sophisticated palate. The “red stuff” is my fig conserve, a mélange of gritty-seeded figs, acerbic lemon zest and aromatic bay, reduced in a high-proof peach liqueur. It is intended as a sauce for halibut I make, which friends tell me “tastes just like lobster.”

I planned to try it out at Shabbat dinner, so I asked Sim if he wanted to taste some fish with “zayde’s special sauce.” The fish got only brief acknowledgement, but he licked the sauce off it until it looked like a science-fiction prop. Then came the chicken and more dipping in the sauce. Potato kugel dipped in sauce. Challah dipped in sauce. Cookies dipped in sauce. Then, finally, eschewing any semblance of manners, dipping his fingers and licking them clean.

The next Tuesday, Sim called and requested more sauce. “Do you want to share it with your friends?” I ask. “No, just for me!”

My mind is instantly drawn to theology: How different would the world be if the serpent had urged Eve to share the apple with Adam, and Eve said, “No, just for me!” A moment later, I am drawn back to simple economics: $20 each week for the four boxes of figs that it takes to produce a cup of the conserve. That’s over $1,000 a year spent on “red stuff” for Shabbat dinner. The zayde in me says, “Nothing is too good for your grandchildren.” But, the ogre in me responds, “$1,000 a year? Let him learn to eat his kugel with ketchup!”

WHAT DOES KATRINA (DIS)PROVE ABOUT HOMO HOMINI LUPUS? (9/14/05)

Homo homini lupus. “Man is a beast to his fellow man.”

The damning aphorism is associated with John Hobbes. Not a pleasant thought and certainly rooted a long litany of horrors: Crusades, Holocaust, enslavement of African Americans, Killing Fields of Cambodia, Saddam’s genocide.

Sometimes the lines of distinction become obscured through protest, civil disobedience, or military intervention. But sometimes, most vexing and conscience-shaking, are the instances in which heretofore civil people descend into bestiality when the values of decency are either stripped away or challenged to the nth degree by uncontrollable, immeasurable disaster.

Katrina presented such a quagmire of protracted, intolerable disasters. It vindicated Hobbes’s observation almost to the point of victory – but, thanks be unto God – not entirely. A man expropriating food from a supermarket to provide simple sustenance for his family. Bestiality? Waiting for more civilized distribution committees to be formed while children languish and die? I think not. Be that bestiality, then call me a beast.

Likewise, saving ones family before another’s. Bestiality? Could we accept that as the punchline of a sermon delivered by the most pious man of the cloth? Doubtful. Not sharing when sharing might mean death for everyone? A tough call. But, is the instinct for human survival necessarily an ipso facto sign of bestiality?

No, the real issue of homo homini lupus is about looting and sniping.

How easy and foolish it would be to say that the problem here is racism or classism or some kind of negative nurturing that happens before a child is old enough to defend against it. The common denominator of all these simpleminded explanations is that they are pernicious baloney.

This we do know: Bold, instantaneous, righteously indignant outcries “Stop this at once!” from spokespeople of morality – particularly clergy – were relatively tepid, few and far between. The outcries were unexpected as well, because we have heard so many otherwise articulate clergypeople consistently hammer home that salvation is entirely detached from honorable deeds.

Likewise, as the victims are stacked up liked cordwood, snipers are arrested, decent people are acknowledged and heroes are rewarded, we will discover only one transcendent truth: We will find a statistically equal distribution of beast and angel – black and white, privileged and underprivileged, Christian and Jew, churchgoers and atheists . . . ah yes, and open-minded and bigots.

Finally, upbringing will matter more than any other factor, but it won’t simply be at momma’s breast. It will be comprehensive. It will include the kind of neighborhood, even block, about which Dr. King spoke, where every mother was understood to be the guarantor, disciplinarian and tattletale of every other mother’s son and daughter. It will include schools that are not afraid of teaching values, despite the canards warning of a cabal of secular humanism. It will include churches and synagogues that preach as core doctrine that heaven derives from good deeds.

We would hope that sooner, rather than later, we will ponder the what-if’s God or whatever natural force spins another Katrina our way: levees, pumps, evacuation routes, integrity of construction, emergency shelter and provisions. What about homo homini lupus? Will it become part of the agenda when we think about how to save lives when disasters kick us in the gut? Will Hobbes win the battle that evil can never be erased from human nature? Or, will taking potshots at firefighters and cops one day become just an ugly memory, because we have finally figured out ways to nurture our kids and not tolerate even the first time they act like a little beast?

Hobbes and I, I’m sorry to say, are still cynical. Please, please, prove us wrong.

REAL MEN DON'T SHOP AND COOK

After my second divorce, I moved to Atlanta to care for my parents. Each day meant trips to doctors, therapists, shopping and preparing three healthy meals. All this proved a mixed blessing for a somewhat eligible bachelor. Each woman I dated, of course, had her idiosyncrasies. Naturally, I had none.

Every time we went out to dinner, for example, Cindy’s son would call with an alleged emergency and demand that she come home. Carol’s son would always need me to help him with his homework. Laurie was a Maoist who would argue ideology even as we dined in the most bourgeoisie restaurants. Two things that my girlfriends did have in common, though: They appreciated that I was devoted to my parents and that I was a good cook.

But, then there was Rachel, a concert pianist. I attended a recital, and much to my folly, she cast her net to trap me. We dated pleasantly for about four months. She was, as you might expect, quite a prima donna, but I enjoyed her artistic ways and her kids.

Then, things started to go sour. On our next date came the moment of truth. She wanted, she said, “a real man,” not one who occupied his days “shopping and cooking.” She said that she had purchased an expensive Ermenegildo Zegna tie to reward me when I morphed into a “real man.”

I told her that I would take the matter under advisement. The only use that I had for her Zegna tie was to wrap it tightly around her neck. Finally, with my wits about me, I asked for another date. “Bring the tie,” I told her. “I’ve become a real man.”

I presented myself at her house carrying a bag. We proceeded to the kitchen table, as I announced, “No more shopping and cooking! I am now a real man!” I produced a loaf of bread and jars of peanut butter and jelly. “Now may I have my tie?”

Shortly thereafter, Linda came into my life. Now she shops and I cook, or vice versa. As for Rachel, I hope she finds her “real man,” and that he likes Zegna ties and she likes lots of peanut butter and jelly.

A YOUNG REBBETZIN REFLECTS ON TEFILLIN
Most Unusual Impressions . . .

“Sensual.”

“Intimate.”

One almost wishes that English owned words that conveyed those emotions in a more sanctified manner. But, as the Biblical pesukim and passages from Chazal and Chasidus punctuated our conversation, one can have no doubt that our discussion of Tefillin was on the most sacred level.

Rebbetzin Miriam is still in her twenties and on shlichus with her husband Rabbi Mendel (names changed). She sat with me for two hours to respond to my questions on Tefillin from the perspective of a knowledgeable, devout Chasidah for whom the performance of the mitzvah is vicarious.

Born into a Lubavitcher family, experiencing Tefillin in childhood was a natural function of growing up in a religious home. Her first active encounter with the mitzvah came in pre-adolescence, when her father injured himself, and she was obliged to wrap the Tefillin around his arm. Yes, it was a privilege, she remembers. But, more than that, she said, the tactile sensation awoke and elevated her senses as only an intimacy with G-d could.

The awareness, however latent, became one and inseparable from Miriam’s spiritual growth. That growth naturally advanced as she studied the Biblical, Rabbinic and Chasidic insights into the mitzvah’s transcendent power.

Did this make her envious, even angry, that she had been denied that profound experience? “No,” she states emphatically. “Tefillin is part of ‘their’ path to intimacy with G-d. ‘We’ have our own.” More about that later.

Did her transformation to wife and mother affect her perception of Tefillin? Here again, her responses were unexpected as she describes her feelings in intimate, sensual terms:

“The first time that I saw Mendel in his Tefillin, we were still engaged. He came by after davenen to run an errand, and I could see the marks that the straps had left on his arm. Without thinking twice, I said to myself, ‘Now I know that my groom is not a boy or just one of the guys, but a real man.’.”

Somehow, the act of donning Tefillin had instinctively affirmed that her groom had truly attained manhood, that he brought with him the qualities, maturity and spiritual groundedness to raise a family that would be healthy in all imaginable ways. (By the way, after seven years they seem to be succeeding beautifully!)

Coming full-circle, the Rebbetzin makes sure that I get the point: “Mendel contributes to the family through the man’s path. I contribute through the woman’s path. We are guided by the essentially different ways that man and woman attain intimacy with G-d and each other.”

This begs the question of Tefillin taking holiness to the point of spiritual overload. I ask her, “If The Rebbe is the ultimate symbol of holiness, then what sense of super-spirituality does one achieve by beholding The Rebbe adorned in his Tefillin?”

Here the Rebbetzin’s response is entirely unexpected and provocative. She says that she can barely force herself to look at pictures of The Rebbe wrapped in his Tefillin. In fact, she routinely skips over those pictures when they are in a book that she is reading.

“Why?” I ask.

“I don’t really know how to put it into words, but I feel almost like I’m intruding on a moment that’s too intimate, when The Rebbe communes with G-d that closely. It’s like peeking in on him in the most personal of times, like violating his privacy.”
“It’s strange, I know,” she continues without being asked, “but I feel the same kind of vicarious sensuality when Mendel helps a man leig Tefillin for the first time. That moment is the most intimate connection that a man can have with a mitzvah, a holy time that his bare skin comes into the closest contact with a manifestation of G-d’s power.

“This is not a simple matter of slapping some leather on a person’s arm. This is the most sensory encounter than a man can have with God, and my husband is the catalyst for it. It makes me proud, but I also realize that it forever bonds Mendel to him, mentor to disciple, in this first, most intimate, metaphysical meeting.”

Now, I am intrigued even more by her lack of envy at being an observer, not a participant, in the mitzvah of Tefillin. Again, Miriam emphasizes that it is not an issue of depravation. To the contrary, Tefillin and the other time-bound mitzvot are “man’s way.” Women’s mitzvot are “woman’s way.”

“What do you mean by ‘way’?”

“The ‘way’ to gain intimacy with G-d. G-d’s mitzvot fill the empty places in the soul. Man has desperately empty places when it comes to the holiness of time and the sanctity of tactile things. For example, man sees a field of wheat and instinctively thinks of how many bushels it will produce, not its beauty. Thus, man’s intimacy with G-d can come only through focusing on commandments that attune him to the sacredness of time and beauty of the tactile world. So much of this is embodied in mitzvos like Tefillin.

“Woman, on the other hand, is profoundly aware of the sanctity of time and beauty of the tactile world, much of which comes through the miracles of her physical cycles and childbirth and rearing. She beholds nature and instinctively perceives its majesty, not how much you can get for that dozen roses. She sees a man in Tefillin and perceives communion with G-d, not merely a collection of laws. She alone is G-d’s partner in declaring when the mundane, workaday world ends and when the taste of the World to Come, Shabbos, begins. This is the ‘woman’s way’ of gaining intimacy with God.”

“Sensual.”

“Intimate.”

Not exactly words that we contemplate when we consider the mitzvah of Tefillin. But, maybe it’s time to add a few new words to the lexicon we use to describe the richness of mitzvot. Better yet, let’s not think of “adding” the words, but simply “rediscovering” them, for there can be no doubt that the nearness of Tefillin binds more than leather to skin. How much more intimacy and sensuality, in their holiest sense, can they bring into our lives?

As we concluded our conversation, Rebbetzin Miriam looked as though she had said nothing particularly profound. As for me, a man, I was transformed forever. Not bad, Rebbetzin. Not bad at all.

WWJA? – WHOM WOULD JESUS ASSASSINATE (8/29/05)

Considering that Pat Robertson’s apology for his malevolent words was significantly less enthusiastic than his call for Hugo Chavez’s assassination, I wonder if I might still find an aftermarket that would attract his hardest-core devotees.

Well-intentioned Christians wear the WWJD (“What Would Jesus Do?”) insignia almost everywhere. Pastor Robertson, with mass media at his disposal, now raises an even more vexing question for his adherents’ wrists and keychains: WWJA? “Whom Would Jesus Assassinate?”

The question at its essence is not comic relief. Does everyone who speaks in the name of God really speak in the name of God? Or, is the name of God a benign rubber stamp to validate maniacal agendas already plotted and set in motion by men bereft of God-consciousness?

Islamists randomly murder innocents without batting an eyelash, because Allah told them to. Hitler announced “Gott bei uns!” (“God is with us!”) as though he and the Almighty had chatted about it over a stein of lager. Rabbi Kahane was certain that God wanted him to cart the Palestinians off to the desert. Without imputing the same motives to them, President Bush and his inner circle have nonetheless been just a tad too loose at framing the mess in Iraq in the rhetoric of a Holy War.

I plead ignorance to the finer points of the Christian Testament. But, this I do know: The answer to “Whom Would Jesus Assassinate?” is “absolutely no one.”
Jesus preached peaceful resolution of conflicts. He abhorred anger, murder and political intrigue. He was forgiving to a fault. Hypocrisy took Jesus to the outer limits of tolerance, but after a few strident words or a parable spoken in love, chastisement could never be confused with vengeance. The Pharisees and Priests – whoever, in fact or fiction, they might have been – used every cruelty to anger him, but he would never capitulate. The only time that he really lost it was with the moneychangers in the Temple courts . . . hmmm . . . Jewish merchants trying to gouge Jewish customers.

Whatever one can say about Christianity, no one in his wildest imagination can conceive of Jesus as a hit-man or shadowy operative. Remember that it took three centuries for Constantine to figure out that if you hold a cross horizontally, it looks a lot like a sword.

Whom Would Jesus Assassinate? Not a soul. That would be an issue between the sinner and God the Father, not Pat, God’s snotty kid. What Would Jesus Do? He probably would be enraged. That business in the Temple courts was a tea party compared to intimating that political assassination comes with his and God’s blessings.

Men who have set themselves up as God’s camera-hungry spokespeople not only raise abstract theological problems. They play with the minds of the most credulous among us, the ones who blindly accept dogma and imprecations, and retain allegiance to preacher and preachments despite their obvious ill-will. Hence, a Robertson or Falwell who speaks with God’s authority is well more to be feared than the mule train of “Christian conservative” talk show hosts.

Did you actually hear, as I did, Pat sentence Chavez to death by an assassin’s bullet? He sat there preening in the intimation of Divine authority that intoxicates media-ordained men of God, but did not once mention God’s name. It reminded me of a sermon about Israel that I delivered early in my career. At the end, a congregant chastised me: “If I wanted a current events update, I would go read the Jerusalem Post. When I come to synagogue, I want to hear what God has to say.”

Did the question “WWJA?” ever cross his conscience before Pat invoked assassination in the name of his Christian ministry? Rabbis and imams may substitute the names of their own saints in the equation. You kind of wonder where it will all end, but I sure hope it isn’t before I dump off 10,000 bracelets in my basement. Hmmm . . . perhaps an ad campaign for Walla Walla Juicy Apples?

WEARING TEFILLIN: "YOU MUST BE CRAZY!"

I spend most of my time in the secular world. I’ve read the classics, my columns are internationally syndicated, and I consult with Fortune 500 corporations.

Hoo-hah.

I consider my greatest distinction that every day upon arising I wrap a pair of leather boxes containing sacred texts – one upon my upper arm, one at my hairline – and offer a half-hour or so of prayers.

Praying in its own may seem irrational for one whose day is absorbed in the mundane. But the boxes, known as Tefillin, seem beyond absurdity, the stuff of which Hollywood faux-Kabbalah is made. In a word, to the cynic or even hyper-intellectual secularist, Tefillin appear to be just so much hocus-pocus.

Many Jews, even the worldliest ones, see the distinction between human and beast in the human capacity to understand wisdom as an amalgam of the intellect, spirit, and motivation to action. Donning Tefillin is not simply a “prayer aid” or symbol of times gone by. To the contrary, it is a first-thing-in-the-morning underpinning of the rest of my day, one that will make it purposeful and directed toward creativity, not to aiding and abetting the world’s destructive forces.

DONNING TEFILLIN STIMULATES THE INTELLECT: The Biblical passages they contain are in themselves rich textual source material. But, the entire act poses an inescapable confrontation with the world’s most intellectually vexing questions: How does finite man grasp infinity? How did the world come into being? Is Creation random or purposeful? Will the world end? If so, how?

DONNING TEFILLIN STIMULATES SPIRITUALITY: This seems like a no-brainer. But, as my cardiologist used to day, “The case is not so easy.” How does the small and tangible connect us to the infinite and incorporeal? And yet, in some nearly incomprehensible, mystical manner, it’s true. The essence of our faith is the myriad ways that the finite and the Infinite intertwine. Each Divinely-mandated commandment that we perform is, in fact, preceded by the celebratory words, “I am doing this mitzvah for the sake of uniting the infinite Holy One with His finite manifestation on earth.

Spiritually, the Tefillin are a nexus of the Jewish past, present, and future. They are imploded mystically with the Exodus, the revelation at Mount Sinai, and all the pain and glory until the End of Days in which all of the world’s tumult will be reconciled in the coming of Messiah.

DONNING TEFILLIN IS A CALL TO ACTION: In their boxes and winding, it is as though they convey an energy that strengthens the weaker of our arms. They bend our longest finger in servitude of our hands to G-d. They dwell opposite our heart, the seat of our passion. They rest before our brain, the epicenter of our intellect. They knit together the nexus of head and spine, the very spot where thoughts and passions are converted to deed.

Donning Tefillin should not prompt the question, “Are you crazy?” Nor is it a prayer aid like worry beads. It is a Divinely-mandated rehearsal each morning for what the unity of intellect, spirit, and motivation will look like when they are at one with the Divine during the coming day.

I wish I could say that I attain that oneness every day that I wrap my arm and forehead in my Tefillin. Sometimes, I confess, it is more of a mechanical exercise. It’s good to keep in shape, regardless.

This, I do know: On the days that I do don my Tefillin with meaning and thoughtfulness, the time I spend at my work, with my family, with my study of Torah, with my recreation, with my G-d, with my friends, is all the more delicious. G-d is not a landlord who comes around to collect the rent but an intimate friend, and life doesn’t get any better.

A PLEA FOR KASHRUT IN THE HINTERLANDS

In 1990, I moved back to Atlanta to care for my parents. I did my best to eke out a living by writing. Nothing creative, just advertising, technical articles, collection letters.

A successful businessman from rural Toccoa utilized my services. He had the intelligence of a one-eyed donkey. My writing made him look so good that he invited me to work for him.

Toccoa was inhabited by yokels who were largely illiterate and had few aspirations. Their idea of a good time was to get drunk and get into fights. They had never seen a Jewish face in Toccoa until I arrived. My boss was so proud that he told everyone I was a rabbi.

I don’t know what people said behind my back, but they seemed to respect me. I got along quite well with the employees of my own company, because I was the only halfway intelligent, compassionate one to whom they could talk. They were adherents of fundamentalist Christianity, and knew nothing about Judaism. The gap would have been disturbing had it not been so comical:

One day, the girls were having an argument about some point of religion. As I walked in, they were jubilant. “Ask Marc,” one said. “After all, he’s a Jesuit!”

The operations manager, a college graduate, once announced that he had recently had “Marc’s people’s soup.” Ah, it must have been matzo ball, I thought. He continued, “I believe it’s called pasta fazool!”

Then came the party celebrating my engagement to Linda, a covered-dish dinner. I informed the host that we ate no meat, poultry, nor shellfish. We figured that we would unobtrusively eat the side dishes.

The message obviously did not get through. The entrée was pork roast. The salad was topped with bacon. The pasta was mixed with shrimp. The beans were cooked in fatback. The pie was mincemeat.

Linda and I must have seemed terribly rude.

They presented us their gift, a collection of $25. Ashamed, we offered our thanks and left shortly thereafter. As soon as we were out of range, I announced to Linda, “Let’s hold off our hunger just a little while. Now we have just enough money to buy a kosher pizza when we get back to Atlanta.”

SOMETIME SENTIMENT TRUMPS KASHRUT

Ever since I declared myself an amateur chef, I have spent most of my culinary life trying to make forbidden food conform to the rules of kashrut, and I have been relatively successful:

Properly cured duck’s breast is a wonderful substitute for pork prosciutto. A glazed veal roast is a remarkable substitute for ham. Seared ahi tuna loin is indistinguishable from the finest filet. Carefully poached and chilled halibut make a delicious ersatz crabmeat cocktail, when surrounded by a piquant tomato sauce. Kosher Polish sausage is a great replacement for highly seasoned pork andouille in a Cajun gumbo or jambalaya.

But, when all is said and done, the American-Jewish appetite is not about converting the illicit to the permissible. To the contrary, it is about the dubious, but almost universally touted, notion of “kosher-style.” Just what is kosher-style? If I wanted to be cynical, I would say that its practitioners may as well be eating liverwurst and muenster on Christmas stollen.

Alas, on this topic I am not cynical, for despite its legalistic hypocrisies, kosher-style food touches a warm spot in my heart. For the American Jew of Eastern European descent, kosher-style is equivalent to the food that grandmother prepared in the tenements of immigrant neighborhoods, now minus the strictures of kashrut: brisket, kugel, garlicky pickles, stuffed derma, corned beef, chopped liver, matzo ball soup and so on.

Kosher-style beef and poultry, however, are not slaughtered to kosher standards and are typically purchased from the neighborhood supermarket. The seasonings, though, are straight from grandma’s kitchen. Meat and dairy products may be cooked or served side by side, but the combination will be corned beef and cheese, never ham and cheese. The same for sour-cream napped potato salad and coleslaw accompanying spicy kosher-style hotdogs, but never porky bratwurst. Chicken soup and matzo ball may make a perfect appetizer for lox and cream cheese on a bagel.

The kosher-style delicatessen has become a venerated American phenomenon. It has institutionalized the notion that kosher is first and foremost a matter of Jewish sentiment, not legalism. Ironically, among the most prized item on the kosher-style menu is the Reuben sandwich: layers of corned beef, sauerkraut, Russian dressing on rye bread and topped with melted Swiss cheese, an ultimately non-kosher concoction, yet somehow intertwined with Jewish heartstrings.

Yet, Jewish sentiment seems to have no limits: A friend accompanied his companion to a renowned kosher-style restaurant in Miami Beach during Passover. After a bowl of chicken soup, the companion meticulously ordered a Reuben sandwich . . . on matzo! Before my friend could ask, his companion explained, “I promised my mother on her deathbed that I would eat only matzo on Passover.”

WHY I LIKE MY STEAK THICK AND RARE . . . I THINK

When I was a kid, we of the Jewish underclass spent our summer vacations relegated to tiny bungalows known in Yiddish as “koch alenehs,” literally “cook alones,” because, unlike going to a bona fide resort, you bought your own groceries and prepared your own meals. The sparseness of the Wilson’s koch aleneh was at least counterbalanced by the grandeur of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Lake Superior.

What was the cuisine is our koch aleneh, you ask? In my childhood, our kashrut standards were at a bare minimum, if at all. We bought our staples, including meat, from the local grocer. Fish, though, was a special treat, freshly caught from Lake Superior and much of it smoked that day right on the rickety dock at Front Street.

Treating the family by occasionally going out to a restaurant was problematic, exacerbated by my crabby grandmother who brought her cloud of disdain to even the most joyous occasions. Ironically, she was not a religious woman. In fact, she purportedly “escaped” to America to liberate herself from her father’s orthodoxy and did not even light Shabbos candles.

Something, though, made her phobic about food served in restaurants. Her universal complaint, asserted with the certainty that the sun rises in the east, was that dining establishments added sage to all their recipes, lending them a noxious taste and aroma . . . despite her having never seen, much less tasted, the herb. Restaurant meat was likewise suspect because, to give it “goyische” flavor, it was wrapped in “chelev,” a term that she herself did not know referred to the Biblically-prohibited suet surrounding the kidneys and other organs.

Aside from her inability to throw a baseball, the fit that she pitched every time someone suggested that we treat ourselves to dinner was so unbearable that my peace-loving parents invariably acquiesced. She had no intention of dining in a restaurant that served sage and chelev, and to spare us the fate, she would sabotage our plans to go, too.

I was a robust, loving kid, so her imprecations meant little to me. I met them with whining and even an occasional tantrum. One year, I apparently caused so much grief that my parents gave in to taking us to Rutherford’s, a memory-filled steakhouse where they dined on their honeymoon.

Upon entering, the air was already redolent with impending disaster. No, my grandmother would not eat the salad, because “it had sage in it.” After much cajoling from my father, she reluctantly ordered a steak “very, very well-done” and completely trimmed of any fat. When the steak arrived, it was deemed “too bloody” and was sent back for a second immolation. This time the steak returned bucked at the edges and charred, but she refused to eat it because it had obviously been “basted in chelev.”

At this, my father rose from the table, meticulously rearranged his silverware and folded his napkin, announcing that we were headed back to the koch aleneh. Imagine the irony as my grandmother unapologetically threw open the refrigerator door, dressed her salad in ketchup and picked flakes of flesh away from a bony whitefish.

All I remember, Dr. Freud, was being yanked away from my first serious encounter with a bloody rare sirloin steak and a baked potato oozing fresh butter. I wonder whether this pre-adolescent trauma lurks deeply my brain as I still quest obsessively after a perfectly rare, thick steak accompanied by baked potato dripping in, OK, pareve margarine. And what of my herb garden overgrown with sage? And what of my schmaltz surrounding my chopped liver?

As for my grandmother, she lived on crankily to the age of 95. Apparently, she would not surrender herself to the Angel of Death until he promised her that in Heaven no one would ever hoodwink her into eating sage or chelev.

NAKED BRINE

Once upon a time, I made a valiant attempt at reading William Burrough’s incomprehensible book, Naked Lunch. All I recall is that it had nothing to do with being naked or eating lunch.

Now, if you want a saga of naked breakfast that even the most simplistic mind can understand, you need to read my pathetic story:

Growing up a Litvak, the heresy of eating sweet and sour together was akin to a sandwich of liverwurst and cheese. Sweet-and-sour, we were taught, was the province of “Polnische Juden,” who were of lesser couth than we Lithuanians.

To signify that I am now divorced from culinary prejudice, I soak any foodstuff in a sweet-sour brine of sugar and vinegar or any other ingredients that meld sweet with piquant: cucumbers, cabbage, beets, peppers, tongue, herring, salmon, you name it.

Pickling vegetables and fish do not smell like roses. Linda, who does, insists that I relegate my pickling to the garage, where their fumes mingle with the others. To obtain the full effect of the brine, they must be turned daily.

Now I will tell you the embarrassing truth. I prefer to walk around the house naked. I make the bed, clean up yesterday’s newspapers, make the coffee and visit the garage to stir my pickling brine. I typically perform my naked stirring dance while Linda is out exercising.

One morning, I was busily turning my herring. Linda would not be home for another 15 minutes. A dreadful miscalculation. Just as I stood full-frontal in my naked, corpulent glory, the garage door rumbled open for all the neighbors to behold.

What would you do? I grabbed the ladle and scrambled up the steps. I tripped, all 260 pounds of me, and fell forward, dripping pickling juices.

The aftermath? A huge hematoma on my head, a bloody nose, scraped arms, 20 visits to the chiropractor, sciatica. And of course, Linda bursting with schadenfreude, “Didn’t I tell you to get dressed?”

The worse admonition, though, boomed down from God: “Who told thou that thou wast naked?” He bellowed. “Why don’t you keep a dispenser of fig leaves next to the door? All this and you dare call yourself a Litvak?”

A COVENANT OF PEACE OVER LAPIS LAZULI

I am a sucker for lapis lazuli. Perhaps that’s because my simplistic taste in colors draws me to Crayola-crayon blue. Perhaps it’s that I fell in love with its alliterative name the first time I read it in the book of Exodus. Regardless, I own about 15 pairs of lapis cufflinks, most purchased off eBay during a manic episode.

I otherwise wear no jewelry save my wedding band. One day, I got it into my head that I’d like to own a simple ring with lapis inlay. I searched where? On the internet, of course, and found precisely the style from a jeweler whom I had good reason to believe was reputable. The ring arrived, a perfect fit to all aesthetic expectations.

One day, though, I gave the ring a knock, and a big chunk of the lapis fell out. The jeweler would simply not make good on it. I took the ring to a reputable lapidary. Could he replace the lapis? He took one look and announced, “Why? All you have now is high-quality blue polymer.” End of story.

You and I will never forget the day that radical Muslim terrorists bombed the London underground. That very day, Linda and I were strolling the “Rodeo Drive of Toronto.” What do we behold but a jeweler who specializes in . . . lapis. There before our very eyes was a clone of my ring.

I ask the proprietor if it is Afghani lapis. Yes, he says, the finest quality.
We warm to each other. With trepidation, I ask him his nationality.

“Do you promise not to hold it against me?”

I shake my head.

In a hush, he tells me that he is Afghani.

He asks me my nationality. I know that he has already figured out that I am American, that he is looking for something else. I ask if he promises not to hold it against me. He, too, nods his head.

“I am Jewish. You must be Muslim.”

We shake hands. “Well,” I say, “I guess we’ve signed our own peace treaty.”

He agrees, calls his wife and daughter from the back and introduces them.
Now I tell him of my interest in the ring. I tell him the story of its counterpart, the lapis-cum-polymer one from the internet.

“Sir,” he says. “Do you like this ring? If you do, I will cast another one in your size. I will have to charge you $30 for the additional gold. I will send it to you. Please take it to any lapidary you wish. If you want to keep it, send me a check. If for any reason you do not want it, simply send it back to me.”

“You trust me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because you speak like an honest man.”

Let’s not be naïve. This momentary exchange between Muslim and Jew may not portend of a world free from cataclysm and strife. If nothing else, though, it was a stirring reminder that God has made a good way for us, a word or two here, an island of trust there, a serendipitous counterpoint to mangled bodies beneath metropolitan London.

Then I think of the Oriental proverb: “When a butterfly flutters its wings on one side of the world, its power can be felt on the other side.” I dare to wonder whether my lapis merchant and I might be a couple of those butterflies.

How the fluttering works its way to the other side of the world, God only knows. Maybe the child was impressed by the beneficence of his father. Maybe his father explained his beneficence to him. Maybe I will regale my own children in this story of extraordinary trust. Maybe the waves of influence will ripple outward. All I do know is that war may end through physical domination, but peace is of the metaphysical world, a world in which miracles may be consummated even over an inert chunk of lapis lazuli.

KNOBBY KNISHES AND CARCINOGENIC "ENDS"

Mrs. Friedman has likely gone on to her heavenly reward, but her influence lingers in my perennial struggle with obesity and bittersweet memories four decades old. Ominous numbers tattoed to her forearm, she sent two sons through medical school, wore a God-awful sheitel and spoke mangled English through a goulashy Hugarian drawl. Hence, the name of her well-garlicked establishment, Hungarian Kosher Sausage Company, situated in once glorious Albany Park on Chicago’s northside.

“Hungarian” was never to be confused with the grossly mediocre Romanian Kosher Sausage Company, which cranked out provender without passion from a retrofitted supermarket in a neighborhood that bore nary a whiff of Yiddishkeit.

One phrase that Mrs. Friedman’s Hungarian accent could not obfuscate was “my boys.” To be one of her boys inferred special considerations: a look-who’s-here greeting, hyper-fatty deli rejects squirreled away just for us, and a spate of other minor indulgences. She still made us pay full price for “real” food, but then again, I cannot remember even once purchasing so much as a quarter-pound of real pastrami over her counter.

What then? The roundtrip from Yeshiva to Mrs. Friedman’s domain was 16 miles through Chicago’s ooze-along traffic. But, the lunches at Yeshiva were infamous. So, two, three times a week we commandeered Mike Myers’s car for a lusty Mittagessen of sodden meat knishes and “ends.”

The knishes were misshapen, underbaked rejects with an enticingly gooey filling of ground corned beef, onions and garlic, bound with egg and tallow. They were so greasy that one dare not lay them on a talllis or a page of Chumash for fear of permanent desecration.

Ah, “ends.” Have you figured out what they are? A week’s worth of the fattiest, gnarliest chunks of leftover corned beef, pastrami, roast beef, bologna, salami – all rejected from sale to respectable customers and secreted away under the counter, because they were “ends.” These were so patently unhealthy that even Mrs. Friedman sternly warned me in all my rotundity to stay away from them.

On occasional Sundays, Mrs. Friedman would slather fatty flanken with a rub of paprika and garlic, then smoke them to an unctuous veneer. If you didn’t wash your hands meticulously, your steering wheel got so greasy that odds of getting home without an accident were all but nil.

Were misfit knishes and ends ever takeout food? No, never. Not that Hungarian had an al fresco courtyard shaded by gay umbrellas. We dined at vinyl-topped stools surrounding a wheezing freezer that vaguely resembled a coffin, a portent perhaps of the years that saturated fat stole from our lives. A bottle of Plochman’s “real Chicago-style” mustard passed among us as we squeezed and schmeered knishes and “ends” on butcher paper. Did we ever bring back orders for Yeshiva boys left behind? Go get your own. Couldn’t find a ride to get you there? Mike Myers’s Chevy Nova held five. Otherwise, toughies.

Ultimately, the Albany Park neighborhood went bad, and Hungarian moved uptown. “Ends” disappeared, as did the coffin and stools. Likewise malformed knishes, as only perfectly shaped ones were now spat out by some hi-tech robot. Too many customers to afford a special greeting; take a number and wait like everyone else. They were selling weird foods like fried chicken and barbecue beef. Go ahead, why don’t you? Replace the Statue of Liberty with J Lo carved in halvah.

I wonder if any of her other “boys” of the ‘60s remember cockeyed knishes and carcinogenic “ends” or whether, despite two stents, I am the last one standing. If only I could find the rest of the survivors, I know that we would reminisce richly of forty years gone by and wistfully toast each other on the departure of our youth, Mike Myers’s Chevy Nova, the coffin, knobby knishes, “ends,” Mrs. Friedman, and all the rest . . . over heart-healthy carrot sticks dipped in yoghurt.

FRIES OR NO FRIES? WAR OR NO WAR?

My heart is not one of my healthier assets. Hence my recent 50-pound weight loss on my way to 70. Every time my cardiologist suggests throwing a new pill or procedure at me, I faithfully tell him to go ahead. At that point, he puts on his best Dr. Freud accent and tells me, “It’s not so simple, Wilson. You present a complex situation.”

I make a beeline for simplistic, unequivocal answers. He prudently weighs and ponders alternatives. He thus is more protective of my life than I am.

Ah, for every one of life’s decisions to be simplistic. Onions on that burger? Yes or no. Supersize those fries? Yes or no. Diet Coke or regular? Yes or no. A tad of health consciousness may play a marginal role, but the switch is basically on-or-off.

What about life’s larger and more ultimate questions? Funny, but we used to call these types of questions “ponderous,” in the sense that they were heavy, bulky, and inferring that they demanded careful contemplation and meticulous weighing of consequences and alternatives. To ponder is the precise antithesis of snap judgments and unequivocal decisions.

Pondering is not a natural human inclination. It begets frustration, impatience, the demand to assess alternatives, to find the path to compromise, to accept the legitimacy of other positions, even to acknowledge ones errors.

Rigidity in ones positions, the refusal to engage in pondering, seem to be the inherent human condition, or at least the well-condition response of our generation. Perhaps we should attribute it to the pervasive fries-or-no-fries simplemindedness of what Mencken called our “booboise.” Perhaps at the other end of the spectrum, we should attribute it to conservative fundamentalism’s theological-cum-political demand of one-dimensional determinism: Saved or damned. Heaven or hell. Pro-life or murderer. Us or them. Friend or foe. Cocky, know-it-all liberals have smugly responded with their own brand of equal-but-opposite self-righteousness, creating their own obstinate fundamentalism as insidious as that of the right.

Pervasive stupidity, intransigence of theo-socio-politics or whatever, rigid absolutism has not merely stifled lively academic debate. It has threatened our basic ethical stability, boding more of a totalitarianism dictated by the last one standing than the equilibrium determined by well-pondered decision-making and compromise.

Terri Schiavo, dead or alive? Ponder or picket? The legacy of Bill Clinton, demonic or visionary? Or will time be its ultimate judge? So too for both the Bush’s. Selecting Supreme Court justices? Inalterable political battle-lines or thoughtful debate of relative merits? Life begins at conception? Life begins at birth? Acknowledge that both positions stem from venerated ethical tradition? Or bomb abortion clinics? Attacking Iraq good? Attacking Iraq bad? I have my strong inclinations, but am I sure?

Let no one mistake the virtue of pondering for moral ambiguity. We will come to decisions. Not everyone will like them. They will have their critics, even vitriolic ones. But they will be thoughtful and debated. They will not be determined by camera-mugging, shrill talking-heads, intimidation and the politics of intransigency.
What have we gained by the dictatorship of the loudest? What have we lost by muffling and discrediting the prudent, compassionate voices that speak respectfully to each other and coalesce to contemplate the ultimate issues of our destiny?

The professor who went on to be my mentor in bioethics gently but summarily dismissed my vaunted knowledge of medical ethics. “You know all the rights-and-wrongs and switches to flip,” he admonished me, “but you have yet to fully understand what we are to ponder when we ponder.”

Now his admonition comes back full circle, as I think of pacemakers, ablations, stents and meds with which Dr. Rubenstein nurtures my cranky heart. “It’s not so simple, Wilson. You present a complex situation.”

Knowing what to ponder when we ponder, or even pondering at all, before we send our young men and women off to war, or abort a fetus, or withdraw a feeding tube, or let a man with an IQ of 80 “fry” in an electric chair – all of it is “not so simple,” despite the picketers and cameras right outside the door.

"BECAUSE THE REBBE SAID"

Few contemporary religious leaders, certainly few contemporary Jewish religious leaders, have stimulated so much curiosity - and ambivalence - as the Rebbe of Lubavitch.

The religious and secular media have been fascinated by the devotion of his adherents and his disproportionate political influence at home and in Israel, not to mention the trumpeting of his messianic stature by his most ardent followers. When was the last time the death of a rabbi was the lead story on both channels of CNN?

He was a most unusual man: a quiet, self-effacing heir to an impeccable Hasidic pedigree. A maritime engineer educated at the Sorbonne. The master of a dozen languages. The childless father of a half-million disciples.

My own relationship with the Rebbe has been an elliptical orbit: sometimes nearer, sometimes farther, but somehow always magnetically drawn to the focal point. I will forever remain unapologetically prejudiced toward the Rebbe, not so much for his global influence as for my personal encounter with him less than three years before his passing.

I became momentarily privy to the Rebbe's inner circle through my friendship with Rabbi Yossi Groner, the Lubavitch emissary to North Carolina, son of Rabbi Leib Groner, the Rebbe's secretary.

My encounter with the Rebbe came just months after the demise of my second marriage and the disgraced undoing of my rabbinical career had plunged me into a black hole of depression and despondency.

Accompanied by Rabbis Groner junior and senior, my meeting with the Rebbe lasted a scant half-minute.

"Sometimes," the Rebbe counseled me in Yiddish, "a devoted layperson can do incalculably more good than a rabbi.

"You should teach something, perhaps Talmud, even if it is to one or two people in your living room.

"They say," the Rebbe went on, "that you were once a student of Reb Aharon Soloveichik," invoking the name of the yeshiva teacher with whom I had had an acrimonious parting of the ways two decades earlier. How he knew, I do not know.
"I am making a gift to charity in the hope that you make peace with him."

However inspired I might have been at the moment, a year passed, and I did not take action on the Rebbe's counsel. It was, all told, a dismal, dark year, full of sickness and grief and self-recrimination. Traveling to New York, I again found myself a guest at the Groners' Sabbath table.

"Have you been teaching?” Rabbi Groner prodded.

"Er, uh, it hasn't been feasible. The situation . . . “ I squirmed.

"The Rebbe said," he admonished.

"But...”

"No but’s. The Rebbe said!"

How could I do this? Where? When? I had not a clue. But the Rebbe said.

Confused and disconcerted, at Sabbath's end I retrieved the messages from my answering machine. As G-d is my witness, there was the voice of a long-forgotten colleague, a rabbi in suburban Atlanta: "Marc, I've been thinking all Sabbath long. It's a pity you're back in town and not teaching. Would you consider teaching a class, say in Talmud, for my congregation?"

Let the cynics snicker. These are days of miracles and wonders. I mark the first moment of my gradual restoration to sanity and self-respect from that wondrous Sabbath in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. And I will forever attribute the first step of that restoration to one man who, with unfathomable intuition and faith in humanity, made a selfless, precise therapeutic intervention in my spirit, and demanded neither my soul nor my bank book as recompense: Make peace with yourself. Put aside anger. Reconcile with your neighbor.

Was he a "savior"?

Critics who assess the Rebbe's impact in terms of large social, spiritual or political issues are missing the point. The real measure of the man's magnitude is in the thousands of pinpoint, surgical interventions he has made in the souls of his faithful that have redeemed them from despair and regained them their lives.

Let theologians quibble over whether the cumulative effect of such interventions over 40 years ordains one as a "Savior,” with a capital “S.” Even if it is not so, we must freely acknowledge that our presence has been blessed by one whose life was spent as the catalyst for so many countless acts of saving grace. How much more do we dare ask of any human being?

What of the reconciliation with my long-ago teacher? I confess that I was not so quick to act on the Rebbe's behest. Until, that is, I heard the news of the Rebbe's passing, when, you may be sure, it was the very first action I took.

After all, "The Rebbe said."

THE LOVING TOUCH

Last Shabbos we attended Hannah’s Bat Mitzvah. What a beautiful child. Eight years ago, it was love at first sight.

Only one episode of reticence ever stood between us. Hannah was all of five when she rushed onto my lap and cuddled for a hug. Instinct prompted me to return the innocent affection. But the specter of untoward intimacy might, in the wrong eyes, come back to haunt me. So, defying every holy impulse, I removed her from my lap, benignly patted her head and wished her a good Shabbos.

Similar episodes vexed me throughout my ministry. Children would charge the bimah, jump up on me, hug my legs. Maybe it was because of my Santa-esque beard and girth. My joyful response was always bridled by knowing that the loving touch of even a teacher or rabbi can, in the mind of some bloodthirsty congregant, smack of suspicion of pedophilia, not healthy intimacy.

Would only that I have the blood test for discerning between the loving touch and one that portends abuse. This I do know: Woe unto us, because the loving touch confirms a child’s angelic affection. Likewise as adults, a spark of unrequited childhood still begs for touch to soothe, validate, connect, allay loneliness, convey love and even heal.

Nearly any rabbi will tell you that lightly stroking a patient’s forehead or holding his hand during the bedside Mi-She-Berach will bring tears of reassurance even to the eyes of the most calloused, hardhearted business magnate.

Not too long ago, I visited in the ICU an “atheist” dying of meningitis, barely conscious. I squeezed his hand and whispered a prayer. The next morning, his wife called to say that he had had a miraculous turnaround. To what did she attribute it? Not to my prayer, but to my touch. I tried to explain to her the Jewish theology of healing in God’s realm, so as not to impute to my hands any miraculous gifts. But, all she knew was my touch, my touch.

I am likely in this world today, chasing my grandchildren around the house, because of the gift of touch:

I spent a random – but nothing being random – Shabbos in Brooklyn, in 1990. I was to have a brief meeting with the Lubavitcher Rebbe. His skin and beard were immaculate ivory, meticulous, belying any notion that he was in his ninetieth year. He spoke briefly to me in Yiddish. They were soothing, comforting words, prophetic in his discernment that this had been the most depressing, disconnected, isolated year of my life – watching reruns of Rhoda at 2:00 every afternoon and Benny Hill at 3:00.

I could barely attend to the words, because all the while he stroked my hand with his pristine hand. Intimates of the Rebbe told me with astonishment that rare are the instances that he reached forth and stroked a petitioner’s hand. There had to be some special significance.

Fifteen years later, thinking back to Hannah cuddling on my lap, I finally awoke to the import of the event. The Rebbe’s words, however empathic and tender, paled in their significance to his prescient understanding that touch alone conveyed what I needed most: connectedness, a loving father and son reunited, a reassurance of no more abandonment, the healing that re-enlivened my synapses with the message that everything would be for the best. Not the end of, but the beginning of, my restitution to wholeness.

Look and see the unimaginable restoration through the gentle stroking of a hand or a tender hug. So much banishment of isolation and validation of presence, even love. A child receiving them from parents alone leaves no room for the legitimate affection he craves from the other “parents” in his life. He needs and deserves more.

And what of the rest of us for whom the still scared, still lonely, still isolated child within yet cries out? Where is our healing touch?

TUNA SALAD: THE CHOSEN PEOPLE'S STARKIST LEVIATHAN (4/11/05)

Whenever I read Moses’ immortal words, “Man does not live by bread alone,” I want to add, “That’s right. He also needs a little tuna salad.”

I don’t know what it is with Jews and tuna, but let’s make the critical distinction first off: “tuna” and “tuna fish” share neither genetics nor kindred spirit. The former is ruby-red, velvety and seared rare, so that it is indistinguishable from filet mignon. Beyond rosy-pink, you might as well be gagging on Astroturf. Most of my coreligionists do not display extraordinary passion for ahi au naturel.

Tuna fish, on the other hand, is spineless, tubular and about three inches in diameter, so that it fits perfectly into an inch-high can. Its flesh is ecru, flaky, and stewed in brine. I have heard that lower species – brown, oil-muddled – inhabit some waters, but avoid major centers of Jewish population.

Tuna fish redeems itself from its humble origin only when it is chunked or flaked, combined with greenery and/or eggs, and napped in a savory dressing, ah . . . tuna salad.

American Jews have a love affair with tuna salad. It is my perennial breakfast and midnight snack, even though it is also my wellspring of unrelenting heartburn. I have found no precedent for its virtue in the Bible or Talmud. It was not known to our Eastern European ancestors, and in fact, for the first few years, my grandfather the grocer could barely give the stuff away. And mayonnaise? Feh. What was it? Lard? Kosher? Dairy? Don’t go telling me it’s pareve and traif up my kitchen.

Somehow, though, tuna fish and mayo weathered the tsunami and morphed into the darling of the Jewish kitchen. It became so integral to the American balabosteh’s repertoire that it turned into the subject of bragging rights, family traditions, secret recipes, hypercriticism and regional variations, just as if it were gefilte fish or potato kugel.

My rabbinical interview in Greenville was built around a covered-dish dinner. But, forgetting to coordinate the menu, the table was laden with no less than twenty varieties of tuna salad, the more modest of them laced with celery, onion, bell pepper, pickle relish (feh) and eggs. The more garrulous bore every means of provender: olives, grapes, pecans, pistachios, corn, peas, bleu cheese and feta. Next to each artistic platter – some molded in the shape of turtles or Torah scrolls – stood a proud hausfrau, heaping my plate and smugly winking, “I can’t believe you’re even tasting that cat food Mrs. Schwartz made.”

Tuna salad is our trusty companion through the changes of seasons and the vicissitudes of life: There it is at Shabbos Kiddush. Don’t miss it at Shalashudes. It’s the staple of the nine meatless days before Tisha B’Av. Break your Yom Kippur fast with it. Take it to work on matzo for Pesach. The mainstay of bris, pidyon ha-ben, naming, bar mitzvah, aufruf. Bury the dead and come home to tuna salad.

My ever-pragmatic Linda says that the Jewish obsession with tuna fish is simply a function of convenience. Maybe.

My guess, though, is that the Jewish fascination with tuna fish is a portent of Messianic times. We know so very little of those days, but we have it on Talmudic authority that the righteous will be served a celebratory feast of leviathan, the primordial fish left over from the days of Creation. The problem is that no one knows what leviathan is. No one but me.

So, whether the Messiah turns out to be the Lubavitcher Rebbe, or a Litvak in a frockcoat, or a Conservative rabbi in a three-piece suit, I guarantee you one thing: The main course at that wondrous celebration will come from a can marked StarKist – a little onion, a little celery, a little mayo, hold the relish. Tuna fish . . . our omnipresent foretaste of the world-to-come. Ah, no wonder.

A SOCIETY IN LOCKDOWN (3/22/05)

Garrison Keillor noted the irony in his first broadcast from Brooklyn: “Why,” he mused, “am I doing a radio show from a place where every car has a sign in its window that says ‘no radio’?”

For Keillor, it was a joke about the absurd demands of urban security. For a little girl murdered in Florida, the question asked by the most hypercritical among us will be, “Why did a loving family leave a door unlocked and a sleeping child vulnerable?”

For Elizabeth Smart, it was a bedroom window. For Jon Benet, a basement entrance. “No lock stands in the way of a thief,” the Talmud observed. Certainly not in the way of pedophiles and child-murderers. How credulous and negligent, then, must one be not to lock doors and windows . . . and what else? Alarm a home for every contingency? Attack dogs? Tasers? Blow-‘em-away pistols in every cranny? All this and then some. Just listen to talk radio.

It must come as horrific culture shock to the folks in Friendly Village to need to gird themselves against the heretofore unimaginable: intrusion, violation, someone other than a neighbor at the open door, the fear of becoming fodder for Unsolved Mysteries.

Even we boomers who grew up in bigger cities have childhood memories of more secure times. In my Chicago neighborhood, we left our doors unlocked. We considered people who locked them snooty. Kids walked into each other’s homes unannounced. Answering the door would have been a nuisance. Moms watched out for each other’s kids; no one escaped the omnipresent eye; one strike and out for the day or worse.

When did it all change? Perhaps it was when we started living in anonymity, not knowing, and certainly not cherishing, the value of neighbors and neighborhood. It has become a cliché, but it does not diminish the truth: We do not know the people who live to either side of us.

Blaming the origin of our isolation on paranoia would be a confusion of cause and effect. It originated with the raging “self-ism” that replaced the centrality of the neighborhood-ism of the 50’s and the social consciousness of the 60’s. Self-promotion. Self-awareness. Self-actualization. Self-advancement. Self-you-name-it. No room for you in my life. Only self.

Mobility and self-preoccupation have made most friendships ephemeral or rarely attached to the folks next door. Some of us take refuge in our churches and synagogues and affinity groups, but the best of them are momentary safety zones.

We have thus resurrected the ancient notion that, even linguistically, a stranger is synonymous with hostility. Ironically, that has not made us safer, only more vulnerable. We nervously try to secure every breach, only to discover more of them, even more fearful that an aggressor will find another way to prey on our child in the nanosecond that the door is open or that she is picking a dandelion.

So, we surround our children with all the security we can find and with a pervasive sense of paranoia that drives them neurotic. We postpone until an undefined “later” how they will acquire their sense of freedom, with all its challenges and vulnerabilities, away from our protective eyes.

Solutions? There is only one way out, and it will be slow, generations in the making: Get rid of the self-ism. Discover your neighbors. Create a neighborhood. Establish friendships. Start doing things for others and with others. Look out for each other’s kids. Read Isaiah 58. Resurrect the virtues of trust and mutual protectiveness.

All that, and pray every day that God watch over our little ones, and that our kids remember to lock up the house and set the alarm before they tuck in the grandchildren for a night of sweet, untarnished dreams.

But let the bitterness still be ours. Every convict I have ever visited in jail has told me that whoever is behind bars is merely a matter of perspective.

WHEN WILL GOD FINALLY HUMBLE MARTHA? (3/10/05)

God will have his way with Martha Stewart, or so I’ve been told. Her time in jail simply did not bring her enough public humiliation. We expect God to settle these kinds of scores.

Martha’s incarceration was a masterful PR conspiracy. Someone had to know that the schadenfreude, that prurient exhilaration we little people feel when arrogant bigshots are caught with their pants down, would be negligible. Making an example of her would not apparently prompt much contrition nor would it result in anyone learning to be more humble, not her fans, her toadies and certainly not Martha. The message was simply that her ordeal made Martha more Martha.

Perhaps this is where we wish God would step in: All we ask, God, is that You see to it that the haughty learn a little humility. But, what an arrogant, audacious expectation of God that would be, inferring that we were so un-humble as to instruct God who needed His humbling.

No, Martha does not give the public appearance of contrition. But, what we will never know are the nightmares that may, or may not, haunt her when she is surrounded by darkness, alone in the middle of the night, her head spinning with a cacophony of self-vilifying thoughts. You may say that she will never suffer those moments of humility, because she is too busy planning tomorrow’s financial coup. And you may be right. Only God and Martha know. Just as it should be.

We never know what awaits the seemingly unrepentant and even the repentant, when they are handed over to the demons of a dark, lonely room. I live a remarkably normal, even blessed life by day, thank God, but indiscretions decades old still haunt my sleep.

A number a years ago, I asked a young therapist, “Why am I any different from Jimmy Swaggart?”

His answer was deceptively simple. “Because you asked the question.”

Ten years ago, his answer satisfied me. Now, at best, I will give it a yes-and-no. From all outward appearances, Jimmy Swaggart seems as arrogant as ever. In the short run, he turned his public penitence into a cottage industry, a cash-cow. But, I do not know what happens to his spirit in the still of the night, what thoughts torment his soul when his yes-men and minions and well-greased bureaucracy fold their tents for the day. Only Jimmy knows. And God.

And so may it be of an entire laundry list of seemingly arrogant heavy hitters – from Bill Clinton to his moral counselor Jesse Jackson – who strut their stuff and acknowledge their indiscretions like burps along the road, if at all. We don’t know about the ghoulies and ghosties that haunt and humble them when silence replaces the intoxicating attention they receive by day. All we know is that we don’t get a public show of their humiliation for the sake of satisfying our own salacious viewing pleasure. Only they know. And God.

You’ll say that these egomaniacs don’t give a hoot about indiscretions once their spinmeisters get on top of damage control. Yet, I refuse to believe that they are all such malignant narcissists that somewhere deep inside the shame of wrongful behavior does not bring torment to their souls.

Once we get into the business of souls, that’s God’s turf, not ours. God sees. We don’t. God knows. We don’t. We look at God’s errant children by day and think that they have yet to get their comeuppance. We wish that God would do something to humble them, but what we really wish is that we could be in the audience to see it happen. Little do we realize that only God knows who among us has already been humbled by a taste of hell’s bitterness. Only God knows who has already been served more than his share of humility alone in the fearsome still of the night.

THE GREAT GOOSE CONFLAGRATION OF 2005 (2/25/05)

Somewhere, I have a picture of family sitting at a long table in our backyard, waiting as my father cooked hotdogs on a primitive grill – a “feuer-topf” (fire-pot), as my mother called it – that we had purchased at the drugstore. It was simple fare, but memorably surrounded by extraordinary potato salad and garlicky pickles.

What happens, though, when a prodigal son strays too far from the values of his childhood? He moves to suburbia and purchases a twelve-foot grill, supercharged by jet propellant, blasting to 1600 degrees in 2.5 minutes. He is no longer daddy in a faux-toque. He is a nuclear engineer at his control panel.

I am that prodigal son. I have become proficient in grilling steaks, fish, poultry. I have even succeeded at shoving a beer can up a chicken’s derrière and grilling it upright, so it looks like it’s begging for life.

But, when did I stray too far? I have it on Sinaitic authority that it was when I attempted to cross the line between grilling and smoking. I almost paid with my life. It was swift. It was a precognition of Hades. It made me scream for my sainted parents to cradle me in their arms.

My own blast-furnace was equipped with a smoker-box. The allurement was irresistible. I had heard through my culinary meanderings that smoked goose was the apex of charcuterie. Kosher goose is hard to find, but I had one airlifted from Brooklyn. Early the next morning, the hickory chips were well soaked and thick blue-gray smoke filled the chamber. The recalcitrant goose would not stand upright, so I laid him flat. Then I swabbed the victim with a brandied brown-sugar glaze. Two big mistakes.

I had yet to offer my morning prayers, but I was already smug with self-adulating metaphors: I am Moses leading the Israelites toward the pillar of Divine smoke. I am Aaron the High Priest gaining his people’s atonement, presenting a cloud of incense in the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur.

Moments later, I peeked out the window. I beheld the altar engulfed in flames and realized that this was not a replay of God’s fiery approval of Elijah’s offerings on Mount Carmel. Having flaunted basic safety rules, a fire extinguisher was nowhere in sight. I grabbed a towel and beat the fire out from around the poor goose, which by now looked like bowling ball.

But, the orange glow persisted from the bowels of the console that housed 20 gallons of propane, poised to bring an ignominious end to me, the house and . . . the goose. I fell and twisted my back. Linda came in from her workout and ran for the fire extinguisher, which only she knew was in the deepest recesses of the garage. I promised her a week of no manic outbursts for not regaling me in a litany of “Now have you learned your lesson?”

The goose, you ask? I refused to let his death be in vain. So, I scrubbed him with a Teflon pad until he looked like a refugee from a Siberian gulag. I roasted him to a mahogany-brown. To my amazement, the meat was succulent and delightfully smoky.

That night, I thanked my parents in heaven for one more chance to return to the humble virtue of grilling hotdogs on a feuer-topf from the corner drugstore. I promised that I would get rid of my turbo-charged model; maybe try to sell it to some guy from NASA, who already knows what it’s like to be blasted into another galaxy. I assured them that the closest I’d come to smoked-anything would be lox and bagels.

To this I finally heard my mother respond, “Sometimes a piece of sable is also nice.” Then and only then did I know that once again everything was right with the world. The Prodigal Son had returned.

THE TWO-HEAVEN DOCTRINE (2/15/05)

As usual, I was wedged between the preacher and the Imam in front of a World Religions class. We were doing our best to make our religions intelligible to a bunch of somnolent juniors and seniors. The kids perked up only at “Who goes to heaven?” The minister averred that only Christians do. The Imam was equally sure that only Muslims do. The only thing of which both were certain is that Jews don’t. I mustered the courage to say that Jews believe that all righteous people go to heaven. Surprisingly, a ripple of applause fluttered through the class.

Among mainstream Christians, I have never been taunted for my unsaved-ness, neither from the pulpit, nor from personal friends nor colleagues. But when I channel-surf on Sunday mornings, I hear my damnation flow forth from Fundamentalist pulpits like a mighty stream. Some Fundamentalists, knowing that I am a rabbi, have the inquisitiveness to raise the issue face-to-face. Though I understand their motives, I honor their integrity and explain where Judaism stands on the issue of heaven. My intent, I tell them, is not to delegitimize Christianity, but to establish the validity of my own faith.

My patience is short-circuited, though, by the countless times that I have had a Fundamentalist close an encounter with “I’ll miss you in heaven.” Most recently, I was blessed by this lament from a man who had just told me that Dr. King was a “womanizin’ comm-o-nist.” Atypical for me, I had the wit to respond, “Frankly, Chuck, I’ve already seen enough of you down here on earth!”

In my momentary rage, I impulsively always want to jump into a theological spitting match. Here’s what I ache to say:

“Maybe its you Fundamentalists who have this idea of heaven all wrong. Maybe heaven isn’t a place where doctrine trumps deed. Maybe we’ve been dupes to empower you to define heaven and become its gatekeepers. Maybe the measure of who gets through the pearly gates has to do with the content of ones character, not ones beliefs. Maybe you’re the ones not going to heaven unless you have lived righteous lives, no matter what you believe.”

Then I calm down. No one, I say to myself, is out to delegitimize Fundamentalism. Instead, I have arrived at a theological proposition that is not nearly so rancorous but just as radical:

I have come to believe that there are two heavens. The Fundamentalist heaven is a parochial place (or “state”) defined by faith in a set of doctrines, central to which is the redemptive power of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The broader heaven is the realm of souls who have lived righteous lives on earth. Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi made the assertion even more succinctly: The righteous person is one whose inclination to do good triumphs over his impulse to do evil. For most of us, certainly for me, the struggle is exhausting and unending. Will I go to heaven? Every day, every hour, is a new test. Does it require faith? Certainly. Faith in God’s word that good is to be found in acting on God’s mandate. Faith that God desires our upward climb, not our perfection.

Hence, the question is not “Are you going to heaven?” but “To which heaven are you going?” I do have my prejudices. God knows that there are many saintly men and women that the two heavens would share. But, too many souls I yearn to encounter are excluded from Fundamentalist heaven because of their doctrinal shortcomings. If I should merit going to heaven, some of the sages that I would never meet in Fundamentalist heaven would include Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Bahullah, Dr. King, Maimonides, Aristotle and Pope John XXIII. I’d also like to meet some of the saints who came before the “Big Split,” the ones who Fundamentalist preachers never seem to invoke, like Nicholas of Mitra, Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, Ignatius Loyola.

Knowing that I might encounter the guy who said that Dr. King was a “womanizin’ comm-o-nist” and the preachers who reassured me that I was going to hell, let me concisely state the two-heaven doctrine: You have your heaven, and we have ours. We are satisfied to be in ours. If you are satisfied to be in yours, God bless you. I am willing to take my chances and never feel that any other justification is due.