A FORTY-YEAR OLD TALE OF MY OWN “PROFILING”

At the outset, let me make clear that this is not a missive about “who’s got it worse.” The discrimination that Jews have suffered here at home, however egregious, holds no comparison to that of African Americans, from slavery, to Jim Crow, to racial profiling. As a product of the Jewish upper middle class, though, I cannot resist relating my own experience with “profiling” – at least in an attenuated sense – however like or unlike that of Henry Louis Gates.

Four decades ago, I was one of the protesters who marched through the streets of Chicago during the infamous 1968 Democratic National Convention, albeit that I was pretty clean-cut and respectful, as befitted a yeshiva bochur (orthodox Jewish seminarian). In the convention’s aftermath, I attempted to attend the equally infamous Chicago Seven trial, at which leaders of the protest were tried for everything from disturbing the peace to sedition. The mood was, as one might expect, a frenetic, highly-charged mix of courtroom angst and countercultural buffoonery.

A spectator’s seat was nearly impossible to procure, but I waited my turn and was seated for an afternoon session. I remember dressing neatly; appropriate to the behavior of a yeshiva bochur, down to the yarmulke (skullcap) I always wore back then, a mandatory sign of devotion of the orthodox Jew to the One Above.

Upon being called to order, courtroom-tension as thick as ever, a marshal pointed to my yarmulke and signaled to remove it. I moved to the aisle to explain.

“Take off the beanie.” The marshal was adamant.

“It’s not a ‘beanie.’ It’s . . . “
My explanation was cut ominously short.

“I said, take off that beanie.”

But, giving me no time to either explain or remove it, he wrenched my arm and pulled me out of the courtroom, where a marshal grabbed me under the other arm and dragged me down a hall. At this point, I remember being only too willing to walk under my own strength, but every insistence just ratcheted up the dragging.

“Should we arrest him for ‘disorderly’?” one barked at the other.

“Too much trouble,” the other answered.

With that, they threw me in an elevator and boxed me into a corner. When we got downstairs, they slammed me against a wall and threw me through the door, warning me to “Get your ass out of here, and don’t come back, or you don’t know what hell is.”

The story made a box in next morning’s Sun-Times. I heard that Abbie Hoffman, the clown-prince of the conspirators, shouted out in open court, “It’s a shondeh for the goyim (a shame for the gentiles)! They’re taking a yeshiva bochur away!” for which he was cited for contempt.

That is the kind of tale you tell your grandchildren, worn like an achievement badge or a pair of tix to Woodstock – the day that Zayde got roughed up by the cops. Can you imagine that? Zayde? Truth be told, though, except for an occasional brush with low-grade anti-Semitism, I have lived a charmed life in which the cops have been my friends and no one has demanded that I remove my “beanie.”

But my 40-year-old singular experience with thugs-at-law is also a cautionary tale. It means that estrangement from basic justice and the presumption of innocence, the violation of personal integrity and decency, are an ever-present danger to anyone who dares to be different – much more so by dint of the color of ones skin.

So you see, once upon a time, decades ago, I lost my own presumption of innocence to the profile of a timid, nerdy yeshiva bochur, just trying to explain that my “beanie” defined whom I was. Is it that too much unlike Professor Gates defining himself by the color of his skin as a source of pride, not shame nor suspicion?

INTIMATIONS OF USELESSNESS

Would you indulge me in this opportunity to wallow? I just received my Medicare card and first Social Security check. Maybe you’d wallow, too.

My mind for an eternal moment is lingering over the most irrational thoughts. So, please don’t tell me how much I still have to give to my family and friends and community. I know. Please don’t tell me how many productive years still lie ahead of me, if I would just exercise more often. I know. Please don’t tell me that, with deference to the poetry of Browning’s Rabbi Ben Ezra, “the best is yet to be, the last of life for which the first was made.” I know.

You see, I have read the word as “disabled,” but through the dyslexia of depression, I have perceived the word as “useless.”

“Useless.” In my most lachrymose times, I look at the card and check, and feelings of uselessness overwhelm me. No, I have not been able to find gainful employment for seven years. “Experts” have calculated that I had more to gain by being declared “disabled” – too bipolar to hold down a real job among real people working for a real boss meeting real deadlines.

Were I 60 and retired, people would think me lucky to have days to commune with my keyboard, the dog, and what we’ll make for dinner. How many working stiffs would doubtlessly tell me they’d love to trade places, collect their check, chuck their boss?

But I am 60 and “disabled.” I have seen and even buried those who have faced disability and mortality far younger than I. Yet, now how cannot I feel it so acutely when the disability is mine?

Here’s the real rub: I know that my existence still makes a difference. People are still touched by the things I write. I can still pull together the critical mass of good-hearted, bleeding-hearted, and discontented people to make causes happen. I can still get a yuk out of a Biblically-relevant joke that I crack at my ragtag weekly Bible class.

Yet, it’s the finality that is killing me, boys – now having been declared “disabled” by social convention. No, no, don’t you see that I am perennially 16, a silly teenager still full of puns, double-entendres, goofy voices, and practical jokes. In my mind, I am immortal. Now, I face the reality of being named elderly at age 60.

How much of a man’s worth is bound up in his employability? Worth should come from ones ethereal, spiritual majesty, brother. Tell that to your preacher, not to someone whose nose is rubbed in a Medicare claim each time he visits his doc. “Take a little nap every afternoon,” he says. I need it, he says, for all the meds I’m taking. Then go get the mail and watch the cycle revolve around another letter from the Social Security office, all the while struggling with the thought that I am still far more hippie than Yanni.

I could make a friend, call a friend, but . . . I could go to the lunch for seniors at the synagogue, but . . . So damned much apoplectic self-pity, the weight of depression. Linda knows better, God bless her. The shrink will listen impassively, so long as I can afford the faux-empathy. The meds help me avoid sleeping fitfully until 4:00.

One day, rationality will once again prevail. Promise lies ahead. I know that the best is yet to be. I will again feel it again and even preach it. It’s just that mortality means to accept that a smile can occasionally just mask the fear, and even the feelings of uselessness, announcing that one has already arrived at the “last of life” for which the first was made.

Ah, feeling better already. Excuse me while I go back for another dessert.