"CHOOSE LIFE": AN APT RALLYING CRY FOR WHICH SIDE OF THE DEBATE?

The formidable anti-abortion forces here in South Carolina recently suffered a considerable setback of symbolism. The Supreme Court let stand a Federal Appellate Court ruling that the motto “Choose Life” could not be inscribed on license plates, primarily because it offered no counterpoint motto for the pro-choice advocates. Knowing the religio-political climate of South Carolina, the anti-abortion folks having their way is only a matter of time.

All this provokes a question that should have been raised with the appearance of the first placard: Whose motto is “Choose Life” anyways?

“Choose Life,” despite its association with anti-abortion advocates, may be an even more apt guidepost for we who are circumspectly pro-choice. Both sides of the debate would do well to consider the meaning of “Choose Life” in its original Biblical context. It is the signature of an exhortation in Deuteronomy 30 that crystallizes the doctrine of free will:

Our existence is a showdown of choices, good versus evil, life versus death. God’s word must guide our path. But, each individual at a moral crossroads must assess all motives, ramifications and alternatives, then choose and accept the consequences. One should be prejudiced to choices that support life, for example, not to terminate a pregnancy for capricious reasons or without thoughtful guidance from trusted clergy, mentors and family members. One must, however, understand “life” in its Biblical sense as that which brings ultimate blessing, not suffering and degradation.

That is the classical Jewish exegesis of “Choose Life,” the one, by the way, that Jesus likely heard from his rabbinic teachers.

Venerated religious traditions, Judaism and many Protestant denominations among them, maintain that a fetus is not a living being (at most “potential life”) at the moment of conception. Thus, in a pluralistic society, “Choose Life” is a mandate for the individual with proper guidance – not the pastor, legislature or Supreme Court – to decide and live with the implications.

Our role as community – particularly the religious community – must be to aid in making enlightened, God-worthy choices. It is not impose our will and strip the individual of what many bona fide ethical traditions understand as her Biblically-ordained right to choose.

“Choose Life” is an apt rallying cry. Would those who proclaim it only truly understand it.

THE GEFILTE FISH CABAL

Our grandmothers lorded their superiority over us by declaring that we could never master the complexities of gefilte fish, as though they alone held the secrets of the Holy Grail. It wasn’t so much that Grandma refused to share her “a little this, a little that” recipe. She simply put me off with a look that said, “Why bother? It’s too hard. You’d never get it anyways.”

Even as my culinary forays became more adventurous and I dabbled in the intricacies of pate, ceviche and paella, her posthumous “hands off” admonition chilled my desire for experimentation. The nonpareil ivory, sweet-savory gefilte fish at the venerable Second Avenue Deli, however, enticed me into taking my chances with the impossible. But, which fish to use? I reminded myself of a furor that nearly tore out family apart:

Grandma, with whom I shared a bedroom until I left for college, had lived in Chicago since 1906. She had produced boatloads of gefilte fish, all of which was snow-white, because of the pristine fish of the Great Lakes. One day in 1966, Father announced that the family was moving to San Francisco. As reality set in, Grandma agreed to survey the offerings at Fisherman’s Wharf. She sniffed and put on her most dour face: “It isn’t white like Chicago fish. Feh, it looks like it came from the ocean.” Nonetheless, she reluctantly acquiesced to making one pot of gefilte fish, which was as delicious as always. She, however, invoked every Yiddish anathema she knew and swore to never again make “that ugly brown fish” for the rest of her life.

Despite Grandma’s curses and damnations, I ventured into the murkiest of waters and attempted to make gefilte fish with salmon, the least expensive kosher fish available around here. “Pink gefilte fish?” I hear you saying. Wrong. By some mystical alchemy, when simmered to perfection, salmon-based gefilte fish turns, OK, not snowy white, but an entirely tolerable shade of ecru. Go figure.

I opt for gefilte fish that is on the sweetish side, something else for which Grandma would disown me. Livaks simply don’t. It would infer that I was a Galitzianer sympathizer, and we all know about them . . .

So you see, now I have gained entrée into the secret society and debunked the myth that that only our bubbehs had the intuition to make edible gefilte fish. The feat has gained me a modicum of recognition not only within the family, but also even among a few respected chefs, who have sampled my wares under the alias of quenelles des saumons. One young chef from the bayous of Louisiana, where a Yiddishe ponim is rarely seen, however, instantly exclaimed, “Hey, you can’t fool me! That’s gefilte fish! Where’s the horseradish?”

This did not deter the other chefs from asking for my recipe. But now that I had been initiated into the Gefilte Fish Cabal, you may be sure of what I answered them: “Why bother? It’s too hard. You’d never get it anyways. Now go back to your bouillabaisse, and leave gefilte fish to God’s Elect!”

THE "GOOD CHURCHGOING KIDS" OF ABU GHRAIB (1/19/05)

Regardless of the kind of force one believes is justified by the exigencies of war, we should still agree on two self-evident conclusions regarding the soldiers who guarded the prisoners at Abu Ghraib:

First, the perverse acts ordered by the guards of their captives were intolerable to any code of military conduct. Second, the sadistic delight to which graphic photos attest betrays any sense of military honor and moral high road for which American values stand.

To the nation’s credit, justice is being done. Whether it will reach high enough in the official chain of command is doubtful. But, culpability has another chain of command: Upbringing. Reports float about that superiors deliberately placed guards in Abu Ghraib who were credulous, poorly schooled, undiscerning. Whether or not they were selected by the “dumb hillbilly” stereotype, this we know: They were certainly compliant, eager to get in their whacks, and not too smart.

We should be careful, though, before we blame a generally corrupt society for the sins at Abu Ghraib. The guards did not come from big, brassy cities, but from insular little communities where moral influences are well confined – parents, teachers, preachers.

Call it vocational prejudice or a projection of my own pastoral mea culpas, but the preacher holds the position of paramount moral persuasiveness, particularly in such insular communities. Residents revere “that old-time religion,” unquestioning compliance with pronouncements from the pulpit and the mantra, "God said it. I believe it. That settles it." These ensure a pastoral mandate that outflanks that of parents, teachers, even the football coach, because it flows from God’s inerrant word and holds the keys to heaven and hell.

Whether this is good or bad is entirely in the preacher’s hands. He can choose to teach that the Bible’s essence is justice, mercy and humility. Both testaments are replete with role models of compassion and courage of convictions. Jesus had much to say to Christian believers about gratuitous violence and disposition to an enemy, as did the prophets of the Jewish Bible. In an inward community, these messages preached unambiguously by a pastor imputed with Divine authority would immunize kids from growing up to perform the perversities of Abu Ghraib and then gloat over them. God said it. I believe it. That settles it.

I cannot tell you much more about their upbringing, but I can tell you this: If, as friends and family are saying, the Abu Ghraib guards were a bunch of “good, churchgoing kids,” the pulpit betrayed them. Strive though it may, the pulpit will never have the influence to prevent every incident of promiscuity, shoplifting and getting crazy at college. But, it has flunked every test known to humanity if “good churchgoing kids” have not internalized the message that forcing captives at gunpoint to perform fellatio while mugging for the camera makes you a barbarian who has mortally desecrated every word of God’s teaching.

I have a sicker feeling that even if the “kids” were listening, their preachers were not preaching. What, then, filled up those precious minutes on Sunday? My conjecture: Diatribes against people and forces “out there.” Biblical and mental gymnastics. Condemnation of lapses in doctrine, not behavior. Xenophobia. Laundry lists of people going to hell. Denunciations of anything modern. Too much wrath. Not enough compassion. Too much triumphalism. Not enough social justice.

This conjecturing is not hard, but it is painful, because I abused too many opportunities in my own pulpit with the same pastoral breach of trust. I, too, frequently failed to use the Word of God for its only worthy purpose, to steer my flock, particularly its kids, out of disaster, not into it. If I attribute to myself any success, it does not come from parishioners complimenting me on a “great” sermon, but from a congregant who now and then thanks me years later for a bit of moral guidance he drew from my pulpit.

As one trial gives way to the next, we who look for big pictures reach for our scorecards to list the myriad influences that led to the giddy atrocities at Abu Ghraib. As much as I would like to be among them, I know that at the deepest level of moral development, it was their hometown preachers who most betrayed these “good churchgoing kids.” At best, they failed to immunize them against barbarism. At worst, their preaching recast the “enemies” of whom Jesus, et al, understandingly spoke into a bunch of subhuman “towelheads.”

MY FRIEND IS IN GAN EDEN, AND I'M FEELING BETTER, MYSELF

Sometimes the necessity of intercity travel gives birth to passion for cuisine less than haute. Drive anywhere in these parts and a highway exit will lead you nowhere if not to Waffle House.

Waffle House is the essence of good-ol’-boy South. No waitress will be hired unless she has less than four teeth. No one has ever slashed my tires for acting like a Yankee, but let there be no doubt: Waffle House is sanctum sanctorum of Billy-Bob-Betty-Sue-big-hair-pickup-truck-molasses-accented-bubba . . . let all others keep silent.

A sure sign you’re a Yankee is to order a waffle at Waffle House. People you can trust order eggs, grits, toast, and ham, bacon or sausage. What kind of cabal, I conjecture, has placed a hechsher on the margarine that accompanies the toast? My invariable choice is an uncomely blob of scrambled eggs and American cheese. With each forkful I dip in a puddle of ketchup, I wonder why my generation thought it needed LSD.

Nearing the end of her life, my mother’s once-robust appetite had dwindled. As her dear friend Ed Krick lingered near death, she stopped eating almost entirely. On our way back to Greenville after the funeral, I begged her to take something. No. Simply not hungry. But I was. So, I pulled off the highway and headed for Waffle House. Mother dawdled over a crust of toast as I embarked on my cheese-and-eggs. The next second, though, I spied her poking her fork at my eggs and taking a tentative taste. “An oysnam!” (Beyond words!) she declared. In a moment, she vacuumed the plate clean. She was aglow. “We must do this again!” she announced. She called over each waitress, kissed her and tipped her $5.

Sated and refreshed, we hit the road again. A few moments later, my tire blew out. Story of my life. I swore and ranted and cursed. Mother, as always, though, knew how to silence me: “Maishe Chayim, my friend Edward is safe in Gan Eden. I fressed for the first time in days. I will not let anything ruin my day. Leiben zol (Long live) Waffle House!”

AMBER, GLORIA, MATT, OPRAH, HAVE YOU LEFT NO SENSE OF DECENCY? (1/5/05)

How do we get Amber and her like to go back to giving rubdowns, silenced by the shame of their amorality? How do we temper our lust for salacious tales that lionize self-righteous tartlets and their handlers, instead of relegating them to disrepute? What of something so elementary as a sense of decency?

In 1954, Joseph Welch toppled Senator Joseph McCarthy’s reign of terror with just two sentences: "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" Today, that indignation would likely be noted nowhere but the Congressional Record.

I am inclined to give Amber every benefit of the doubt. Perhaps she will grow into a sense of decency. The deck does not seem stacked in that direction: an affair with a married man, two kids out of wedlock, hubba-hubba with a guy she’d met just a couple hours earlier . . . all by her mid-twenties.

The first step in the right direction would have been to stay home and shut up, or at least not to let opportunists convince her and a hungry public that she is a hero. If this were heroism at all, it was strictly the titillating faux-bravado of The Survivor. In the course of bailing out of a relationship grown sick and dangerous, she found the most secure route of escape. We ought also suppose that the police enlightened her that continued silence might implicate her as an accessory after the fact. Within hours, Ms. Allred was by her side, spinning a not-too-smart, but very lucky, young woman into a bona fide hero, postured for all the benefits of celebrity.

And so it has become: Amber, Gloria, Dateline, Matt, Oprah, books, movies, bling-bling, tearful talk of threadbare emotions, pensive questions self-righteously asked and answered. And in the end, all the self-righteousness is about licking a lucrative bone from the brutal murder of a sweet young thing and the baby in her womb.

I offer these self-revelatory words with reticence, but perhaps they will soften the edge of preachiness to my indignation and counsel:

I have done things in my adulthood of which I am deeply ashamed. Perhaps some of you can identify with that. I doubt that any of my foibles would rise/sink to the level of a bestseller or an hour on Oprah. Yet, they harmed my reputation and caused grief that I well deserved. They have, however, left me more circumspect and with a tremendous desire to help, not hinder, people’s lives.

Despite my ability to move on, there will always remain in me the shrapnel of irreparable shame, something that will forever prevent me from thinking of myself in heroic terms, something that will counterbalance my grandiosity with penitent humility. If I ever write a tell-all book, you may be sure that it would be a cautionary tale with a large chunk of proceeds going to charitable causes.

Amber, the moment you took that tumble with Scott, like it or not, celebrity came a-knocking. Opportunistic folks knew you were a cash cow, so they convinced you and the dimwitted public, if not themselves, that you were a hero. The illusion was money in the bank, and life’s all illusion anyways, right?

In so many ways you are still a kid, so maybe you couldn’t be expected to have had the smarts, rectitude, resistance, and discretion to choose a wiser path. But this I do know: You never really had a chance. If you had, your book, like mine, should have been a cautionary tale. You might have bared your soul about the irretrievable consequences of adultery, unwed motherhood and first-date promiscuity before you’re 30. The majority of its proceeds should have gone to charity. The keynote should have been, “This is one hell of a way to become a celebrity.” That might have been the surest way to stop the craziness, not stoke its flames.

Amber, maybe you ought to just sit in time-out for a couple of years, like I did, to figure out how to make the next half-century of your life a little more honorable. Gloria, Oprah, the Dateline bunch, and their schadenfreude-hyped minions, let me ask you: At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

Ech, they’ll probably want to call their lawyers before they answer.