A REVOLUTION FROM MEAN-GUY CULTURE TO GOOD-GUY CULTURE (11/5/04)

Pick up a copy of the December Reader’s Digest. You’ll see a picture of me dressed as Santa Claus. It will be next to a column that I wrote after 9/11 about playing Santa for a bunch of homeless kids.

Please do not interpret this announcement as self-promotion. When it is all over, Andy Warhol will still owe me another 14 minutes. The momentary spotlight really has little to do with kindness to a bunch of homeless kids. Sure, there is the oddity of a rabbi playing Santa. But beyond that, plenty of fat guys would be delighted to dress up as St. Nick to bring joy to a homeless kid. Wouldn’t you?

Thanks to a cranky English prof long ago, I was able to commit my emotions to writing articulately enough to catch the Reader’s Digest’s eye. I was noticed not because of a good deed that is replicated by thousands of people who are far more giving than I. I was noticed because I am a better-than-average writer.

What of those more deserving thousands?

They would likely tell you that they neither want nor need recognition. They might even tell you that to receive recognition would cloud the altruism of their kindness. God bless them for that. But, the rest of us who forever teeter on the brink of good-guy vs. mean-guy desperately need models of everyday people who have made statements with their lives on the goodness of being good guys.

This is a watershed – some would say, a bottomed out – moment for the American temperament. It is pregnant with the opportunity to transform America from a mean-guy culture to a good-guy culture. Anyone with an ounce of decency, liberal or conservative, should be shuddering from deepest election-induced trauma. Apparently, no political campaign anywhere in the country focused unambiguously on issues. No longer sufficient to impute simple impropriety to an opponent, the only acceptable tactic in local to national races was to completely dismember and demonize an opponent until s/he was perceived not merely as an unfit candidate, but the evil-incarnate bogeyman.

Clearly, we were simply viewing a microcosm of our thoroughly mean-spirited, mean-guy-over-good-guy culture, in which the voice of kindness and temperance is drowned out by bellicose trash-talk and the actions that accompany it.

How do we bring the transformation to life? Some pollyannas still believe that if you tinker with the medium, you can change the message. Why can’t the media emphasize good-guy news and talk? We very well know why. It’s the same reason that we read the National Enquirer and slow down to gawk at an accident site. “If it bleeds, it leads,” is still the guiding principle of journalism. Murder trumps Christmas parties for homeless kids.

Then what’s left? Parents and pulpit.

Kids need be encouraged not only to do good things. They must also hear about people around them who are good guys – what kind things they are doing, what sort of help the family might offer them. Point them out in church or synagogue. Take the kids over to meet them at the restaurant. Show them that there are good guys all around them to whom we simply pay too little attention.

If one of the talking-head shows is on the tube and Ann Coulter or Al Franken is on a rant, let your kid know that these are mean guys, not because of their political orientations, but because the are disrespectful, demeaning and crude. And maybe one day if Tim Russert is on, point him out as one of the good guys, because – agree or disagree – he is always respectful and moderate.

And what should we say about the pulpit? Promote good causes? Of course. Point out and celebrate the good guys? Naturally. But, O how I wish I could rewrite all the sermons I now realize accomplished no good because they reeked of gratuitous venom. How I wish I could ghostwrite a few sermons for rabbis and pastors who desecrate the attention of their flock with ugly diatribes that typically address issues no more substantive than rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

I don’t know exactly what I’d say, but this I do know: Before he was anything else, Jesus was a good guy, and he profoundly influenced others to be good guys. The words and the deeds are right there in the Holy Book. The sermons virtually write themselves. And I likewise know that for my rabbinical colleagues, I would make them write a hundred times on the chalkboard before each sermon prep, “Its ways are ways of pleasantness and all its paths are peace.”

Whatever text or tactic they choose, the consistent message from parent and pulpit must be that good guys, not mean guys, are the most valued contributors to our society and the future of a sane, decent world. Their voice and deeds must be heard above all the trash and ugliness that has most recently made this culture so lowdown mean-spirited.

When you’re done, please remember to recycle your Reader’s Digest. In the end it will become just so much more paper-mache. In the end, fame – major and minor – is fleeting. But, in the end, goodness endures. Good deeds endure. The legacy created by good guys endures. You need not be a child of the 60’s to join the revolution. All you needs is a sense of urgency and a large appetite for doing little daily acts of kindness.

ON FIRST SEEING VAN GOGH'S IRISES (10/21/04)

I stood before Van Gogh’s Irises for the first time, and I wept. I had never before wept at a work of art. Not the Mona Lisa. Not the Pieta. Not umpteen Rembrandts and Renoirs. I had been awestruck and inspired, but I had never wept.

My obsession with the Irises is not new. Our home is full of lots of original artwork and beloved family pictures, but the only art poster that I own is of the Irises. Then there are my Irises mug, screen saver, mouse pad and coffee canister. Would I ever abide by such kitsch were it for any other work of art?

What did his tortured soul convey to his canvas as he captured a patch of flowers in the asylum’s walled garden? Giddy elation? Darkest melancholy? Hanging there with no fanfare flanked by two Renoirs, my widening eyes fixed magnetically on it, alone for ten minutes in a world that was entirely of him and my Irises. Let there be no mistaking: The Irises were mine. Not the Getty Museum's. Not the public’s. Mine.

“Look at the brushstrokes.” “Look at how vivid the colors are.”

But I stood sufficiently back that I could see neither brushstrokes nor manufactured colors. I saw through his eyes only a world circumscribed by the walls of the asylum at Saint Remy, less than a year before he took his own life.

What made his Irises my Irises? Why this obsession? In the meditative moments as I wistfully moved on, I wondered whether it was that they did not capture beauty as absolute, but as fragile, volatile, a labyrinth beckoning equally to heaven and hell.

Was he capturing crystalline springtime in a moment of manic whimsy? Or had it been a memorial to fleeting beauty and the inevitable withering of things ephemeral? Was he clutching at a bouquet of hope as his tormented spirit slipped further from his grasp? Was it an epitaph that he wished to be spoken only according to his will? Or even perhaps an encrypted suicide note? I dared to fantasize that the single white iris standing so erect by the side of the drooping blue one somehow bespoke his resolve to cast off the despondency of this world and ascend in purity heavenward.

And one more wonderment about the Irises that he painted at the same time that he was cutting off his ear and planning his suicide: What if they had been able level him off with the good meds like the ones I take, so that neither mania nor depression would go “that far out of control”? Would his palette have stayed so magical and bright? Would his eyes yet behold and his canvases yet express so vividly the dizzying roller-coaster of flighty elation and dank depression? Would he have become just another life of the party or a painter of insipidly “pretty” pictures?

What would have been the price on his living another ten years? Would his genius have been incarcerated in another unrelenting asylum, in which wrinkle-free normalcy is the therapeutic goal?

I make no apologies for overanalyzing a frail man’s take on a bunch of flowers. When irises adorn my own table and garden, they venture to cheer me through my own fits of despondency. Do we not, each of us, have our own asylum window and patch of irises growing immediately outside? Have we not, each of us, seen them through the eyes of profound elation and deepest despair? As we attain the “years that bring the philosophic mind,” do we see beauty not as absolute but as a complex, volatile paradox? God knows, I do.

I will likely never see my Irises again. I will probably not have much more reason to go to LA. But, in larger part, I simply want to remember that in my 54th year I saw my Irises and I wept and that nothing ever will replicate that blessed jumble of darkest melancholy and sweetest joy.

SIMCHAS TORAH, COLLEGE KIDS AND CUISINE OF NECESSITY (10/11/04)

You and I are up to our earmuffs with self-pitying stories of my departure from the rabbinate and ensuing Jewish isolation, so enough already.

Nonetheless, at certain junctures of the year the aloneness is too much to bear. Simchas Torah converts isolation into deafening emptiness. Self-pity gives way to self-recrimination and tales of tzaddikim who danced in Siberian gulags become not inspiration, but an indictment of my own vapidity of faith.

No dancing with Torahs this year, but an engaging way to celebrate the Holy Day did stop at my doorstep. It was one of those delightful instances that leaves us hanging between “Taste and see that the Lord is good,” and “What a long, strange trip it’s been.”

I received a call from a prof who is teaching a course on the meaning of food in the religious experience. She wanted me to speak to her class on the significance of food in the Jewish tradition. The date: Simchas Torah. She did not pull my name out of the Yellow Pages. She had been reading my columns on Jewish cuisine, “Rabbi Ribeye,” that appear in the Internet magazine, eGullet.

I told the prof that I could not travel her because of Yom Tov, but that I had a better idea. The class and I could prepare a “sacramental” dinner at my home that replicated the Holy Day fare that my grandparents brought from the Old Country.

“Are you sure?”

“Sure? Hey, I’m Rabbi Ribeye!”

But, what to do to make the dinner “sacramental”? Recite Kiddush and the Motzi to be sure. A festively set table, of course. To draw parallels for these Christian girls to the Last Supper, a necessity.

Then, an epiphany: The real sacramental nature of our grandparents’ Sabbath and Yom Tov table was that their struggles, poverty and eking out daily bread never stopped them from setting a majestic feast to celebrate God’s bounty. The same meager ingredients, sans pork, that the impoverished peasants cooked were all that our bubbehs had in their modest pantry. Yet, we never ate “peasant food.” Our table was sacramental because, to lift a Talmudic phrase, “there was blessing to be found in our bread.”

In culinary terms, this is sometimes called “celebrating cuisine of necessity,” that is, elegant menus built from inexpensive, readily available ingredients. That, I decided, would be the lesson in the sacramental nature of Jewish food that I would convey to nine young women who would likely never have to struggle with poverty.

Stop and think, I asked them, what were the ingredients available to poor folks in Eastern Europe: potatoes, carrots, beets, onions, celery, cucumbers, flour, sugar, dried spices, honey, vinegar, certain varieties of fish, dried fruit like prunes and raisins. And then there was all-powerful chicken: eggs, schmaltz (just like lard!), bones for soup, succulent meat for the main course.

I made most of the dishes ahead of time, pointing out that many of the foods required slow cooking and pickling. But they put the finishing touches in the chicken soup with me, made the matzo balls, and prepared a tzimmes that would be ready in time to take it home.

Quite a regal menu: cured lox, pickled cucumber and beet salads, matzo ball soup, roast chicken with veggies, sweet-potato tzimmes, apple-raisin compote and Linda’s challah and honey cake. We served everything buffet style, because I was not sure that the “sheineh shikselach,” as my mother would have called them, would be too turned on by the odd-and-curious fare. I especially gave them a preemptory pass on the pickled beets.

What a mistake. They finished everything, including the beets – everyone from the frumpy, studious kid to the well-tanned homecoming queen. And, no question that they were going to take back the tzimmes they’d made. None of them had ever tasted that kind of roast chicken, but all of them wanted to have it again. And they cleaned up afterward without being asked!

And, we sat at the Yom Tov table and talked, well beyond their departure time. We spoke about everything: the Holocaust, what it was like to be a rabbi, how it was to live in the South, had I ever experienced anti-Semitism, why wasn’t I a Christian, how and why my grandparents came to the States, what going to school was like for them, what their plans were, how they had come to question the faith with which they had been raised, how they had become more open-minded.

Then they asked the ultimate question: What do Jewish people do when they sit at the Sabbath or Holy Day table? To their great amazement I told them, “The topics may be different, but we basically do the same thing that we’ve done this evening: have a lovely meal usually made out of cuisine of necessity whether we can afford better or not, talk, enjoy each other’s company, catch up with each other, discuss things that our daily busyness doesn’t allow us, not feel the constraints of time, feel at one with ourselves and each other.”

“Funny,” I said. “We may not talk a lot about God. But let there be no mistaking. The presence of God is right there at the table with us.”

How different Southern-bred young women can be from our bubbes and zaydes who arrived impoverished on these shores. Yet, somehow I believe that those “sheineh shikselach” may still be working through the delicious Jewish paradox that even the lowliest pickled beets can attain the stature of sacrament.

A DING LETTER TO MS. O’HANNA (10/8/04)

Dear Ms. O’Hanna:

The review of your credentials for teacher certification finds them most impressive. This is particularly noteworthy, given that you have been home schooled in a foreign country, one that is embroiled in ongoing strife. Your determination despite tremendous obstacles is well noted.

You are multilingual, which would be a tremendous asset in our foundering school system, where budgetary cutbacks would make you a special multitasking asset. At the same time, you appear to have an incredibly broad grasp of history, world events, philosophy, theology, and of all things, crafts – woodworking, isn’t it? (Have you ever thought of coaching girls’ volleyball?) Again, the prospect of multitasking makes you a most attractive candidate for our strapped school system.

God knows your wonderful track record in mentoring the most dangerously at-risk children has not gone unnoticed. And, your gentle, calm demeanor is unusual among teachers in today’s emotionally-charged classroom.

The teacher certification committee has duly noted your request for days off to celebrate the Jewish holy days, and we assure you that we would make all the accommodations within our capacity. We are especially touched by your eagerness to compensate for your time off by mentoring and serving extra after-school and cafeteria duty. You will find that our state has a proud, progressive record of tolerance for minorities and are grateful for their contributions to our local prosperity.

Regrettably, however, one critical issue supersedes all the qualities you might bring to our educational system. You likely know what it is: the out-of-wedlock pregnancy. The statement that that makes to young people about ones basic moral fiber transcends all the other healthy lessons an otherwise gifted teacher like you might provide. The fact that you avow a long-term monogamous commitment with, even a betrothal to, your fiancé Joseph, only underscores the false justification of premarital relations.

You might be exonerated by the rumor that you were violated by a Roman soldier, but this would require exhaustive, definitive documentation. Your situation is further exacerbated by other more specious rumors, namely that you have been impregnated by God and that you bear the Messiah in your womb.

If you have anything – actively or even passively – to do with dissemination of these horrific assertions, then you have not only blasphemed that which is most sacred. You have been playing with the fires of the occult, which indeed disqualifies you from ever tainting the minds of our vulnerable young students.

Ms. O’Hanna – May I call you Mary? – You certainly understand that impressive credentials are no substitute for basic moral fiber. In such matters, no benefit of the doubt can be justified. We are a state that prides itself on the highest family values. After all, what would Jesus do?

Most respectfully,

James DeMint
Chairman, Teacher Certification

THE "MICKEY MENDEL" SYNDROME (9/27/04)

Years before the mellifluous Cat Stevens morphed into the nefarious Yusef Islam, the Jewish community claimed the Moon Shadow as one of our own, perpetuating the self-aggrandizing rumor that his name was really Steven Katz.

If you’ve ever been around our tribe, you know that name-twisting and mangling to claim celebrities as fellow Jews is an Olympic-class sport. This was particularly true among first-generation American bubbehs and zaydes, for whom “making it” in Columbus’s land hit its apex when a coreligionist attained Hollywood or Major League stature.

Who didn’t watch Ed Solomon on Sunday night? When Ricky Layne’s dummy Velvel would call out “Mr. Solomon!” in his best Ellis Island accent, we would roar. But I swear that even as I kid, I could see the Irish-Catholic Mr. Sullivan wince.

Likewise Arthur Gottfried and his Talent Scouts. And broadcasting from Miami Beach, yet. Then we found out that he was an anti-Semite. Nu? We still intrepidly trod his boulevard for the sake of a good corned beef sandwich.

Ah, Jewish by association? Well, Eddie Cantor was Jewish. So too Al Jolson, a cantor’s son. Then George M. Cohen must have been Jewish, too, right? After all, he sang of being a “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” the Jewish immigrant’s fondest dream.

Edward Goldenberg Robinson and John Garfield/Garfinkle were movie heavies of the Hebrew persuasion. So the third of the tough guy trilogy, James Cagney, must have been Jewish, too. After all, who would have taken seriously a thug named Jacob Caplan?

Lauren Bacall was really Betty Persky, and we somehow forgave her dalliance with that smoldering sheigetz Bogey. But what about Anne Bancroft? Aren’t folks always confusing her with Bacall? And isn’t she married to the quintessentially Jewish Mel Brooks?

We knew that Danny Kaye was Jewish by some article of blind faith, but his comedy was pretty mayonnaisy. Sid Caesar was nowhere nearly so self-conscious, encrypting Yiddishisms here and there, winking the secret code to his Jewish viewers. So too, by the way, the Marx Brothers, Three Stooges and Max Fleischer’s Popeye.

Steve Allen – Abrams, we postulated – pulled the same schtick. He must have been Jewish, too, no? Nah, but seven of his eight writers were, and four bore the ultimate credential: born in Brooklyn.

Which brings us to sports heroes. Here my mom reigned supreme. When the White Sox won the pennant in 1959, she was sure that the latecomer hero, Ted Kluszewski, had to be Jewish, until my dad reminded her that the Jews stole names like that from the Poles, not vice versa.

Actually, in that World Series, extraordinary Jewish advantage went to the Dodgers: the legendary Sandy Koufax and the sibling pitcher-catcher team, Larry and Norm Sherry. Big Klu hit three homeruns against the Dodgers, but the Sox were humiliated four games to two.

Which brings us to the most exalted Jewish ballplayer of all times, Mickey Mendel. A generation of immigrant Jews from the Lower East Side to the Bronx beamed with Yiddishe nachas over their Triple Crown Bar Mitzvah bochur. So famous . . . and he didn’t even Americanize his name. What other vistas could Jews attain in this Golden Land?

And so, one day a kid in the Bronx sits glued to the radio, listening to the Yankees on their way to another victory. His European grandfather walks through the room.

“Zayde! Zayde!” the boy bursts, “The Yankees are ahead 4-2 and Mickey Mantle is up to bat!”

“Mendel?” Zayde contemplates for a moment and then in Old World Yiddish muses, “Is that good or bad for the Jews?”

Fortunately, the lingering rumors were wrong. When morning had broken, Yusef Islam was not Steven Katz after all. Thanks be to the Lord. Otherwise, the question of the ages would again have come to bite us on the behind: “Is that good or bad for the Jews?”

CAN A NON-CHRISTIAN BE A "GOOD CHRISTIAN"?

I first heard the expression nearly forty years ago as I was thumbing a ride down Touhy Avenue on my way back to Yeshiva. I was fortunate to be picked up by a seminarian who engaged me in genial discussion about our vocational plans. Thick into rush hour, he gave a gap to someone who was changing lanes. The fellow behind him, though, wasted no time in honking and flipping him the bird.

“Just being a good Christian,” the seminarian mumbled. I remember liking the sound of that phrase, not resenting it. I do not recall considering whether I would have said, “Just being a good Jew” under the same circumstances. And so it remained until I moved south and discovered that “good Jew” was used by some gentiles to mean an honest Jewish businessman, in contrast to most Jewish merchants, presumed to be cheats.

The designation of “good Jew” attained its apex in my current residence of Greenville, SC, as businessman and Holocaust survivor Max Heller rose to the position of the city’s most respected mayor. Ironically, Max’s being a “good Jew” was not good enough to be elected to Congress in the late 1970’s due to an overtly anti-Semitic campaign largely fomented by Christian conservatives.

All this brings us to the present. We have just weathered a mean-spirited election in which the candidates disagreed on everything. Yet, both men marketed themselves as “good Christians” in mailings, campaign events, letters to the editor, everywhere you looked.

On the flip side, South Carolina’s Senate candidate, Inez Tenenbaum, has a “typically Jewish” surname and a husband openly involved in Jewish causes. Significant, then, that her ads underscore that her parents were church elders. Let there be no mistaking; Inez is another “good Christian.” Being a “good Christian,” is apparently not merely a credential, but a prerequisite.

Max Heller was a good Jew, but he never campaigned as a “good Jew.” Joe Lieberman certainly was a “good Jew.” Yet, he and his handlers were hypersensitive about his not appearing “too Jewish.” Can you imagine building a campaign around being a “good Jew” the way that President Bush reaps the harvest of being known a “good Christian”?

What makes being known as a “good Jew” such a liability while the designation of “good Christian” so facilely gains one entry to credibility and trust? After all, to denigrate Jewish values is to deny Jesus’s most profound teachings – The Golden Rule, The Lord’s Prayer, The Beatitudes. Whenever I see a “What Would Jesus Do?” bracelet, I say to myself, “Jesus would act like a good Jew.” Period.

Ah, there is the issue of heaven. Good Christians go to heaven. Good Jews and gentiles suffer eternal damnation. Our two vituperative, mean-spirited county council candidates go to heaven. Max Heller and Joe Lieberman, save and unlikely conversion, go to hell. Does Dr. King, whom I assumed was a good Christian, go to heaven, since so many “good Christians” treat him like the bogeyman? Dr. Bob Jones calls the Pope the antichrist. Does the Pope go to heaven? What does the College of Cardinals have to say about Dr. Bob’s afterlife expectations?

Jews believe that good Jews go to heaven – maybe a different heaven – and that heaven is an inclusive, not an exclusive, place. We believe that God is friendly and has lots of room for good people. Good Christians are welcome there, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, maybe even some good atheists. We will let God figure that out. Define “good”? It probably has something to do with The Golden Rule. At least that is what Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Jesus taught.

If I earn my way into Jewish heaven, I am totally psyched on the idea of spending eternity learning at the feet of Mother Theresa, Dr. King, Baha'u'llah, the Dali Lama, Moses Maimonides and oodles of people who are condemned to hell by “good Christians.” On the other hand, I get a little queasy every time I contemplate spending eternity in the company of televangelists, Bible-thumpers and politicos who promise that I will be with them if only I see things their way.

Whenever I hear a candidate being marketed as a “good Christian,” my blood does not boil. It runs a little cold. Then I stop and wonder whether folks who are simply “good people” could ever pass the us-versus-them loyalty test that would gain them entry into civic leadership, if not heaven. If Christians and Jews want to establish themselves as “good,” perhaps it could be by working together to build that magnificent “City upon a Hill” and by putting away their infantile “my club’s better than your club” games.

MY NOCTURNAL ADMISSION: MIDNIGHT AT THE SOFT-SERVE OASIS

Regardless of prudent Midwesterner misgivings and lingering 60’s-radical snobbery, I discovered that I really am cut out for life at sea. Having never ventured beyond a Wendella river tour of the Chicago cityscape, the image of Thurston Howell III bobbing aimlessly on the Caribbean was daunting. And then, it was so goddamned bourgeoisie . . . not that I don’t drive a Volvo, wear a bowtie and have a quintessentially bourgeoisie closet full of custom tailored suits.

But, the in-laws, God bless ‘em, loaded up the entire family on the Zuiderdam, and a captain whose name sounded dangerously close to Claus von Bulow (we diabetics kept our distance from the bridge) set sail from Ft. Lauderdale southward. No streamers. No popping corks. No Isaac, Gopher, Doc. I would have sacrificed two bottles of duty-free island rum to swap out our cruise director, former Australian soap star, Dane Butcher, for the perky Julie.

This kind of cruising could be my thing. I discovered that I do not get seasick. It conformed to my highest shipboard aspiration: to spend a week at sea that best replicated seven days on dry land. If I didn’t look out the window, I would have never known. Linda splurged on a piece of bling-bling, and I matched her dollar for dollar with Internet connectivity, a friggin’ $55 an hour.

Better yet, besides not sinking, this was not the Titanic or my vision of the Queen Mary II or even my expectation of any cruise ship whatsoever. The Zuiderdam was strictly middle class, maybe even poking its toe over the line to lower middle class. And I say, God bless them for it. Families together from small towns in Nebraska, Ohio, Montana, and they were having fun, clean fun, no schmootz. No, not hot games of “Guess the Martyred Apostle.” Plenty of bikinis and liquor and a casino. But also round-the-clock bingo, and pools, and a day camp, and art auctions resplendent with borax, and servers cued to entertain the kiddies, and 24-hour-a-day kiosks dispensing abundant, mediocre pizza, hotdogs and soft-serve.

Not to mention ingratiatingly cheesy entertainment each night: an Elton John impersonator, juggler, magician, resident song-and-dance troupe regaled in sequined 70’s costumes and a disco version of “Here Comes the Sun,” even a washed-up Borscht Belt comedian whom none of the goyim seemed to get.

Two-and-a-half days into the cruise, after I shook off my pretentiousness, I realized that we fit right in. For, when all is said and done, the Ribeye family is not to the manor born, but just like the rest of the hoi polloi, Bud Light, not Dom Perignon, Bialystok, not Newport.

I am assiduously trying to stay away from a snooty nitpick of the Zuiderdam’s food, lest I betray my newly reclaimed membership among the unwashed masses. Had everyone not pumped me up on the grandiosity of cruise cuisine, I would have felt no disappointment in the Zuiderdam’s less-than-elegant set-‘em-up-move-‘em-out three squares a day.

As it was, the folks at Holland America know their audience, match their menus to their tastes, and even show genuine flair here and there: One evening, an appetizer of pate de foie gras, a mini-blob of sevruga, a non-traditional presentation of escargot. A dessert tray each night featuring a quite acceptable international variety of cheeses. Otherwise, though, Applebee’s . . . but for a largely Applebee’s crowd.

But, the midnight buffet extravaganza turned out to be a myth. No buffets. No midnights. No extravaganzas. The food was doled out by stingy servers in niggardly portions. On this everyone agreed, not merely us Henry VIII wannabes. The good news was that one could go back and ask for more, limited only by ones self-consciousness and that Dutch smirk that silently announced, “You again, fatso?” Indeed, my initial serving of sevruga was a teeny eighth of a teaspoon. But, with the complicity of our Indonesian waiter, who insisted on being called “Mister P,” I finished an aggregate of a quarter-pound. Likewise, when four scrawny grapes arrived with my cheese tray, P repaired to the kitchen and produced a cluster that would have made the Israelites drool.

Given even the most understanding soul, though, some of the culinary gaffes were still inexcusable: The cellophane-wrapped saltines accompanying the cheese tray. The stale Wonder Bread, crust still in situ, pretending to be toast points for the caviar. The hillock of grayish-pink scrapings and shards that appeared on my plate when I ordered the gravlax appetizer. The salmon and tuna sushi-hubs that were cooked . . . well done.

And then, the iced tea: Forgive me. I have lived in the South more than half my life, and I love a tall glass of freshly brewed, spine-chilling iced tea. Those damned tulip-pickers did not take the time to brew their tea, but used that same chemical pish that shut down Lake Erie. I must have looked like some kind of a jerk seated in the Lido Dining Room with cups of genuine tea steeping and ice-filled glasses waiting for me to pour over the steaming tea that would carry me back to ol’ Virginny.

Clear-cut cases of culinary anti-Semitism, or minor indignities that a suffering people must simply learn to bear? I will let you decide: Every morning, one had access to lox and bagels. I emphasize, “access.” Why? Because the lox was port. The bagels were starboard, and you had to ask one of the windmill-spinners to go in the back to toast it for you, which was always greeted with a shrug of imposition. The cream cheese was fore. The onions were aft. Hmmmf . . . Jews.

And you want a corned beef sandwich? Abe Lebewohl, God rest his saintly soul, spins in his Second Avenue grave. I don’t even know where to find “rump corned beef,” but that’s all they carry in the Zuiderdam’s draconian commissary. Rye bread? “We do not know this kind of bread.” You ask for a thick sandwich? Four slices instead of two. Hold the mayo? Uh, too late. Tomatoes? Forget it. Just make me a tuna.

Now, being RABBI Ribeye and a confirmed Metrokosher on vacation, I will leave to your imagination how many of the non-kosher foodstuffs were personal indulgences and how many were vicarious assessments of my dinner partners. Suffice it to say that “What happens on the Zuiderdam stays . . . “ Living in two worlds, I do not know how much more content I would be on a strictly kosher cruise, swapping a midnight bacchanalian of faux shrimp and salmon roe for the dulcet sounds of Schlock Rock and midday lectures on “The Maimonidean Censorship Controversy and its Implications for Upper West Side Mating Patterns.”

Ah, the Ribeyes are at last back on terra firma, no longer spooked by the sight of lifeboats just outside our cabin window. Inspiration at sea? I have finally perfected my kosher-chicken-liver-faux-pate-de-foie-gras. Now, on to convincing Linda to taste it and my snooty clients on Augusta Road to believe that it ain’t just chopped liver.

"SEE THE GIRL WITH THE RED THREAD ON . . . "

Friends know that, for reasons yet to be determined, I have always had a greater following among gentiles than among Jews. That has become doubly true now that I am bereft of congregation. The email does keep coming in, and it is a telling window into the curiosities that non-Jewish folks have about Jewish beliefs and practices, particularly the ones that rise to the level of media attention. The following exchange might be an interesting case in point, pique some interest and even answer a few questions . . .

Dear Rabbi Wilson:

I've just read that Target is selling Kabbalah Red String for $25.99 (plus tax and shipping). Yes, I know that this centuries-old spiritual tool is believed to protect against the evil eye, a negative energy source. In fact, when the first grandson of my Jewish friends was born, his parents painted a red string on his bedroom wall. Is this just a new fad or something that Jews and even gentiles should consider a worthwhile dressing for the wrist? I'd appreciate your thoughts on this topic, as I have always found your comments very interesting.

Dear Charlene:

Two issues are at the center of the controversy over this fad (?) superstition (?) venerated mystical practice (?):

FIRST, the efficacy of amulets is a hotly debated topic throughout classical Judaism. The opinions fall roughly into three categories:

1. Trust in amulets is an aberration of venerated Jewish belief that is harmful to the integrity of Judaism. True, a hypercritical view may also see the tefillin (phylacteries, see Deuteronomy 6:8) as "amulets," but they, and they alone, are mandated by the Divine Writ.

2. Trust in amulets is an aberration of venerated Jewish belief, but it is a relatively harmless folk practice. Amulets may help simple people draw closer to the faith if they have trouble connecting up to Judaism in more sublime intellectual and spiritual ways.

3. Amulets are invested with real powers of healing and mystical/spiritual elevation. Depending on whom you ask, this has or has not been part of mainstream Jewish belief. From my standpoint, it’s a real stretch to impute inert objects with Divine power in the name of Judaism. The practice has often led Judaism to some really weird and even disastrous places.

SECOND, The vast majority of my colleagues and I would passionately maintain that the "pop Kabbalah" as studied and practiced by the Hollywood crowd, has only the vaguest whiff of genuine Kabbalah about it. Understanding authentic Kabbalah requires a thoroughgoing grasp of Torah, Talmud, Midrash and other Rabbinic sources – equivalent of trying to understand calculus before mastering ones times tables. (Hence, I have always resisted teaching classes on the substance of Kabbalah and have focused only on teaching "what Kabbalah is about," – and, believe me, that is not out of false humility!).

Moreover, folks looking for a quick fix through Kabbalah are likely to be terribly disappointed or at least bored to tears by authentic Kabbalah, not realizing that 98% of Kabbalah is not mantras, incantations, red strings, amulets and ooga-booga "mysticism," but rarified "metaphysics," and volumes upon volumes of it.

My colleagues and I would further maintain that to look at the curricula of opportunistic folks like the ones who are feeding Madonna, et al, their fix of "pop Kabbalah" are providing them precisely that, a quick fix. There are any number of reputable academics and spiritually-charged individuals who are intense students, scholars and interpreters of Kabbalah, but they in no way resemble the folks who instruct and enrich themselves from mentoring the Hollywood crowd.

As far as the red thread, I personally have always considered it a harmless folk practice. Now I am beginning to have second thoughts. We did not do it with our kids, and thank God, we wound up with three religious kids anyway, a doctor, an MBA and a student at Yeshiva University.

What really offends me about this entire ruckus is that they are selling them at Target and not Dolce & Gabbana. We deserve better.

FREE ADVICE TO THE UNEMPLOYED:  IT'S NOT SO EASY  (7/27/04)

Those of you who are close to me have probably surmised that I have had a serious reversal of fortune.  I cannot whine, because it is largely due to poorly made choices and atypically rash behavior.  I have not been good to the times, so the times have not been good to me.

This is not to say that I am not abundantly blessed:  Linda is incredibly supportive and patient.  My kids and grandkids are pure gold.  Friends, though they have dwindled, are still there for me.  My communion with God and sense of higher purpose still sustain me.  Moreover, we retain the trappings of an upper-middle-class lifestyle.  The amenities are there, and they are not threatened.  Yet, the edge of trepidation sometimes creeps in.

Why all this?  You may have also surmised that for two years I have basically been unemployed.  I have had brief tenure at two jobs and discovered that I do not have the mettle for do-what-you’re-told-sit-down-and-shut-up.  I have had the good fortune of serving a congregation for the Holy Days, with appropriate remuneration.  I occasionally receive an honorarium for speaking engagements.  And, my columns, no matter how well regarded, are easy to get published, so long as I give them away.  Friends tell me that I am the world’s worst self-marketer.  I cannot disagree.

Seven years ago, having established a respectable position in the corporate world, the rabbinate again drew me to a congregation.  Greenville appeared to hold significant potential for Jewish growth and creativity.  And it was so.  Noteworthy accomplishments.  Noteworthy compensation.

It took five years for the situation to go sour.  With a new administration, new issues arose.  Tell this to any rabbi, and s/he will tell you, “So what else is new?”  The same rabbis would likely tell you, though, that these particular issues might well have been cause for resignation. 

In retrospect, I have little doubt that the points of contention might have been amicably resolved had the conflict not coincided with an episode of radical bipolarity, unlike which I had never suffered.  Thank God, that situation is now well under control.  But, in the spring of 2002, the rapid cycles of manic outbursts counterpointed by fits of morbid depression led me to rash, accusatory actions that culminated in my impulsive resignation.

Now, two years later, I still live a scant half-mile from the synagogue, loved by some former congregants, forgiven by others, still the scourge of others.  And unemployed.  No prognosis for being impoverished, thank God.  But, this I have attained:  a deeper understanding for the nuances of unemployment and how its complexities are cynically dismissed by the crowd that prates, “Just buck up, tighten your belt and get and job!”

These are some of the intemperate comments regarding the long-term unemployed that I have heard and even occasionally made over the years.  While each may contain a kernel of truth, situations are not so simple as they seem to the judgmental outsider:

Get rid of the shiny Volvo and buy a cheaper car.  The Volvo is paid for and still gets 28-30 miles per gallon.  Move into a smaller house.  Have you factored in the cost of moving, financing and what we originally paid for this one, as property values have increased?  How dare you take a vacation?  Sometime my wife is so frazzled by the redoubled stress, and sometimes it is a treat from her parents. 
 
Write a book.  You think I haven’t put forth proposals?  Do you know how many agents, editors and publishers have told me, “Your stuff is good, just not good enough”?  And then there was the one who offered this crowning compliment:  “Your writing is insipid to the core.”  If you have to, be prepared to drive a distance for a job.  Well, the last job I worked paid $321 a week, of which I spent $53 on gas.  Flip burgers if you have to.  How long can one’s psyche and morale stay intact before redefining unemployment as punishment for some horrific crime?  Move to another city where the job situation is better.  It’s not so easy when your wife has a completely engaging, rewarding job here, and all the grandchildren live right down the road.
 
It’s not so easy.  That is precisely the point.  I am not whining.  I am not going broke.  I am not giving up.  I will one day have gainful, even meaningful, employment.  But, the shibboleths smugly crooned by the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps crowd will do no earthly good.  Good can come only from recognizing that for every one shiftless bum, 20 or 30 of us long-term unemployed face obstacles that may be surmountable, but that are complex, daunting and not so easy.
 
When I was still a baby rabbi, I heard Sol, a particularly uncouth member of our finance committee, chastise a synagogue member whose dues were in arrears:

“Gee, Roy, you drive a nice car, but you still owe us last year’s dues.”

“I do specialized work, and I’ve been unemployed for two years.”

“What kind of specialized work do you do, Roy?  Are you a brain surgeon?”

I was upset but remained silent.  Now, wiser for the years and the tears, I know what I should have said:  It’s not so easy.  I doubt that Sol would have heard me.

Would you?   
 

THE PASSION OF THE BUSH

First off, let me set the ground rules for these observations, lest I be condemned for heretical parallelism:

George W. Bush is not Jesus Christ. Michael Moore is not Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. The vilification of George Bush is not the Passion on the Cross. The disparagement of Michael Moore is not a sign of the impending apocalypse.

One story is sacred, the other mundane, understood?

The Passion and 9/11 may be of two different places, times and sanctified magnitudes, but their recent retellings – one by Gibson, the other by Moore – bear a remarkable symmetry. We might even go so far as to say that thoughtful Christian fundamentalists might now better understand the angst that some non-Christians felt over the anticipated impact of The Passion of the Christ.

Did not many of us assume - erroneously, the fundamentalists repeatedly assured us - that Gibson’s movie would galvanize a new wave of anti-Semitism, aggressive conversionary efforts, even a neo-Crusader zeal? Tables turned now, how can fundamentalist Christian conservatives not interpret the box office success of Moore’s maybe documentary, maybe not, as a further radicalization of the already radicalized Left?

Is Gibson advocating Christian love or anti-Semitism? Is Moore espousing America’s capacity for self-correction or bald-faced anti-Americanism? One cannot walk the razor’s edge with one without calling the other into question.

Would Gibson have been more dramatically effective in retelling the magnificent story of Jesus’s life, death and redemptive power by letting the Gospels speak for themselves? Would authenticity have enhanced the pathos more than skewing the story to Gibson’s theological and historical bias? Would allegiance to the text, historical sources and the Church’s interpretive tradition told the story more compellingly than playing sloppily with the truth?

Likewise Moore: The truth itself told a compelling, dramatic, condemning story. George W. Bush did plenty that was wrong, even perniciously so. So too the men and women who were at his beck and call. Some of it was inexcusable lack of preparedness in a pre-9/11 world where terrorism was already a palpable reality. Some of it was sloth and stupidity, a country with a vapid pretty-boy at the helm. And some of was certainly greed on behalf of friends on both sides of the world, many of whom were swathed in the garb of Arabian nobility. Does anyone else out there wonder why Saudi Arabia is not a member of the Axis of Evil?

Why, then, did Moore, like Gibson, have to deliberately play fast-and-loose with the truth? Why did he have to proffer falsehood as fact? Why could he not let a story that was already sufficiently damnable simply tell itself?

Herein lies the ultimate symmetry: Gibson is not a spokesman for Biblical authenticity. Nor when all is said and done is he a Christian idealist. Moore is not a credible documentarian. Nor when all is said and done is he an advocate for a better America than George W. Bush has provided us.

Gibson and Moore are sensationalists. They molded and shaped, twisted and turned the truth to garner audiences. I will stop short of saying that they did it for the money. But this I know: They did it for the hoo-hah. They did it for the attention. They did it to make an angry, unjustifiable statement. They did it for self-vindication. And they did it not to feed on the American hoi polloi’s thirst for truth, but for its lust for sensationalism and its sheer gullibility.

The good news for my coreligionist doomsayers is that The Passion of the Christ has had little, perhaps none, of the cataclysmic effect that they had anticipated. The predictable good news for the Right is that they can expect the same from Fahrenheit 9/11. These are movies, folks. The American public is so fickle, thank God, that Gibson’s masterpiece was knocked from first place by Starsky and Hutch and Moore’s magnum opus was dethroned by Spider-Man 2.

THE METROKOSHER UNDERGROUND

Folks say that if I wore a baseball cap and let myself get real grubby, I could be a body-double for Michael Moore. Well, I am about to blow the lid off a cabal that may rival the sensationalism of Fahrenheit 9/11. If you are a strictly by-the-book kosher-observant Jew, I am warning you: You probably want to stop reading this now and shift your attention to one of those kashrut apologia tracts issued by the Orthodox Union.

We owe Mark Simpson a debt of linguistic gratitude for introducing us to the prefix “metro,“ which he loosely used to mean “really not, but maybe really, but then again, maybe really not.” His original context was “metrosexual,” a sexually ambiguous, narcissistic guy who preens just a little too much over the style of his clothing, hair, cuisine, wine, a little “too in touch with his feminine side.”

My dagger-witted friend Binyomin Cohen coined the term “metrodox” to describe the young “kinda orthodox” singles of the Upper West Side. This is the crowd that asks “your place or mine?” after the midnight Service of Penitence and is as likely to do shooters on Thursday night as it is to recite Kiddush on Friday night.

And now it’s finally time for guys like me to ‘fess up in the name of another cadre of metros, an underground of demi-sinners, the “metrokosher.” How many in the cabal? Huge, in my estimation. Most of the metrokosher cabal lives outside Jerusalem-on-the-Hudson, where kosher restaurants – many tolerable and some even pretty damned good – are abundant. Our core transgression is that we have chosen to find our fortune beyond Teaneck. Thus, we are still pretty self-conscious about putting a name to our level of kosher commitment and the perceived hypocrisy of “strict at home and loose at our favorite dining establishments.” So we would stop short of considering this an “outing.”

Many of us metrokosher still travel in, or on the periphery of, the orthodox Jewish world. The most kindly of our by-the-book kashrut-observant coreligionists wistfully tolerate us, or simply ignore our foibles. We are roundly condemned, excoriated by the less tolerant among them, no credit for effort that falls short of perfect, just the denunciation that “You might as well be eating traife.”

And technically they are probably right. So, from an icky-picky legalistic perspective, let me not dwell on the minutiae that we metrokosher do not observe, because they are mindboggling and probably condemn us all to same hell as . . . David Rosengarten and Al Franken.

By its very nature, metrokosher plays fairly fast and loose with the rules. Clearly, we will not eat pork, shellfish, beef and poultry that has not been ritually slaughtered and prepared, and milk and meat in combination. After that, “what we do” and “what we don’t” eat out is pretty much the oxymoronic free-for-all of conscience.

Some metrokosher borderliners stay away from anything in restaurants beyond cold foods like salads. Culinary snobs thumb your noses, but salad bars for these folks can be a welcome metrokosher respite from the daily same-old same-old at home. And, if the cold-only folks push the envelope just a little further and go for sushi, upscale places like Minado (in the New York/New Jersey area, Boston and Atlanta) present an endless variety of ocean-fresh rolls and nigiri and the most beautifully displayed oriental salads.

Speaking of sushi, whoever brought the genre to the USA, should be blessed by an eternity in the radiance of heaven, as my sainted mother would say. A little abstinence from shellfish here and there, and otherwise a metrokosher feast for the eye and palate. And, as Atlanta’s Ludlow Porch used to say, “If you take the leftovers home and warm them up, they taste just like fish!”

Ah, the Sunday brunch, another gift to the metrokosher. The more elaborate the better. Platters of smoked fish more abundant than Zabar’s . . . well, maybe not, but you know what I mean. Whole poached salmon. Permutations of salads that make you marvel at the Embassy Suite chef’s infinite creativity with artichoke hearts. Pastries, don’t get me started. Am I the first one to ask to substitute smoked salmon (not lox) for Canadian bacon on eggs benedict?

And then, fish as the culinary centerpiece of a lovely night out on the town. Now the tour de force of the finest restaurants. Every imaginable variety. Fresh. Meticulously prepared. Simplicity. Clean, delicate flavor, nuances and textures to which neither beef nor poultry could ever attain. The culinary psalm and lyre of the metrokosher. I have been to classical and avant-garde seafood restaurants from coast to coast, and if I could give them six stars, I would. Yet, I would chuck them all for a simple filet of broiled Lake Superior whitefish at the Mother Church of seafood restaurants, the now nostalgically dilapidated Cape Cod Room at Chicago’s Drake Hotel, where I lost my metrokosher virginity some three decades ago.

A final word on fish: If you are a metrokosher carnivore, as I am, and you have had more than your share of finest filet, I issue this challenge. Ask them to sear a tuna loin for you at Prime in Atlanta, and let me know, honestly, if you can tell the difference.

Ethnic cuisine and metrokosher? Remember that most oriental cuisines use meat as a seasoning, not a mainstay. They do otherwise only to satisfy the American flesh-lust. So, simple off-the-menu adaptations of Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Thai should pose no problem. And, regarding Indian, a personal favorite, vegetarian is a Hindu virtue. Italian, too, should be a no-brainer. Cajun is a little tricky, but not impossible.

Take note of something here, if you haven’t already: The more upscale the cuisine, the more likely you are to find metrokosher satisfaction. Aside from a cranky, arrogant chef here and there, finer restaurants are intent on accommodating their patrons, making substitutions, working with you outside the menu, and using market-fresh surprise ingredients. We have even occasionally had wonderful experiences with fine table d’hote establishments by calling a day or two in advance to discuss menu variations. And, we just won’t deal with crabby chefs.

What about metrokosher lower end and fast foods? For those who are so inclined, this is still a tough call. Fish filet and fries at McDonalds? Maybe lard, maybe not. Likewise Long John Silver’s and the rest. Red Lobster, perhaps a better bet. Coming from the South, particularly Greenville, what about the venerated meat-and-three? Again, pretty dicey. I will tell you off the record, though, that the fried flounder at McBee’s is virtually grease free and there are enough varieties of salad that you need not dabble in veggies cooked in mystery meat.

Please indulge me in one more tad of apologia about strictly kosher at home and metrokosher out: Ones home may not be ones castle, but it is the epicenter of the sanctity of family life. It deserves a level of holiness that transcends the foibles that might become our modus operandi out on the streets of the secular city. Hypocrisy? That’s a judgment call that each one of us must make individually and then one day answer up to God.

I resist submitting this commentary to any Jewish periodical or discussing it with my rabbinical colleagues. No matter how many “but’s,” “however’s” and caveats I place upon it, the Cuisinart of self-righteousness would likely grind me into a rustic paté. Somehow, though, in a culinary forum, a few of my metrokosher comrades might step out of the shadows, not for justification or catharsis, but simply for a little of the empathy that comes from an at-ease, “Yeah. Me too.”

So, to you, my partners in the metrokosher cabal: Maybe if we aren’t ready to do kosher strictly by the book, we ought to at least double up on our charity, compassion, kindness, generosity and love of neighbor. Then, we can leave it up to God to figure out how the right and wrong in our lives measure up.

A HEALTHY COMMUNITY BEGINS WITH ITS MAIN STREET (6/20/04)

I know that I am getting old: Aches and pains. Handfuls of pills. Agreeing too much with O’Reilly. Less envy of big city life. More wistfulness of how life used to be in my little town.

Main Street was, hands down, the source of strength that made my little town great. The houses of worship certainly helped make it so. But, everyday commerce really provided the glue. Doing your shopping or taking a stroll was not an antagonistic experience. It was friendly. It was welcoming, kind and honest.

After almost a half-century, let me stroll it with you one more time:

First came Pete’s, “the corner store,” where you could look at comic books, nary a Playboy in sight, a soda fountain for a nickel Coke. Then came Ike, a barber who knew how to give a close crew cut, my dad’s only prerequisite. At Levinson’s, a baker’s dozen for my mom, two cookies for me. Then, Falk the Butcher. If I looked bored as mom put in our order, Mr. Falk handed me a broom and told me to sweep the sawdust. He always had charity boxes on his counter for charities that he supported.

Max of Max’s Hardware was our scout leader. He could pitch a tent in solid granite. Next came Fahey’s Fixit for broken lamps, irons, whatever. In back, Jones – half-glasses on the tip of his nose – could fix anything while regaling us in stories of the Negro League. Finally, Harry Levin’s Clothiers, where I was made to look like a “fine young gentleman” in a scratchy suit that made me fidget when stuck in a pew between my mother and father. Oh, we did have one “modern” supermarket, an IGA that was so cozy that I can still tell you the names of everyone who worked there.

That was the Main Street of my little town. But, let me tell you a couple of other things about where I grew up: My Main Street was Devon Avenue. And my “little town” was Chicago. My Chicago had nothing to do with Marshall Field’s and Michigan Boulevard. Those were trips to the Big City, dress-up occasions that were more than a little intimidating.

I realize that my healthy upbringing did not come from being a “Chicagoan.” It came from having wonderful parents, of course. But, it came even more from a neighborly neighborhood, a main street lined with welcoming businesses, and a community with a strong sense of self-identity.

You may certainly join me in reminiscing if you have seen the place of your formative years morph from a strong, supportive “little town” to an indifferent, even daunting, monolith. Dare we dream that the best days of healthy neighborhoods and welcoming Main Streets may yet lie ahead?
Get real, you say? What kind of earthshaking changes would local the local environment have to make to build the spirit of Main Street, not merely occupy space on it?

For starters, how about businesses becoming more family-friendly? Why will moms and dads drive extra miles to shop at mega-store A rather than mega-store B simply because the former has a supervised play area for their kids? What about incentives for employees to get more involved with their kids and neighborhoods? How about businesses giving incentives for good grades and perfect attendance? I remember that in my first days of college, I stopped for lunch in a little local deli. “Where are you going to school?” the counter guy asked. I told him. “You bring me back straight A’s after your first semester, and anything on the menu is on me!” Well, I did. And he did. In New York City.

I think you get the picture.

It’s way too soon to toss hope of neighborhood renewal on the rerun pile with Andy and Opie. We have seen what happens when a child grow up in an indifferent community. Unless s/he has had the fortune of encountering one or two people who really care, the numbness into which s/he grows will produce more a robot than a truly human being.

If we want our kids to grow up human, first we must take back our Main Street. Make it a safe, friendly, supportive place to spend our comings and goings. Neighborhood energies and resources will soon gravitate toward that nucleus, and as energies coalesce, healthy communities will be reborn.

And then, I’ll treat you to a Coke at Pete’s.

“YOU AND YOUR GODDAMNED SHABBOS CANDLES”

Next door to us, Rose lived with her daughter, son-in-law and grandsons. Rose was the quintessentially grandmotherly-looking hausfrau of the Old World style: rotund and buxom, always swathed in an apron, hair pinned up, sitting quietly, folding the laundry, mending the grandkids’ clothes, her low humming punctuated by an occasional “oy vey.” Atypically for a Jewish grandmother, though, she did not cook or bake, for reasons that at age ten I had yet to surmise.

I saw Grandma Rose almost whenever I played with her grandsons. My mom did not think that they set a good example for me, so she frequently encouraged other friendships. But they lived next door, and we played ball at the same speed, so the issue was moot. Grandma Rose liked me. She would call me over, pinch my cheek, offer me a cookie and then retreat to her corner.

Back in the 50’s, most of the families on Seeley Avenue evolved into three generations under one roof as one grandparent died and the other moved in because of financial constraints, or more usually, because that was simply the way things were. No denying that even in the most loving household would strain trying to accommodate a multigenerational family in two bedrooms, one bath, and maybe an enclosed back porch. And you need not be a sociologist to imagine the complexities of “Old World versus New World” and the stigma of “grandparent as interloper” in such cramped quarters. I shared a bedroom with my grandmother until I went off to college, no doubt creating a casebook full of neuroses.

So, none of us, including the Wilson’s, were in an enviable situation. Grandma Rose, though, awoke each morning to a fresh world of cruelty beyond that which other grandparents knew, which she accepted with neither martyrdom, nor pathos, nor anger, but silent resignation. Her fate destined her to live out her days in the home of mean, boorish, foul-mouthed children and bratty, disrespectful grandchildren.

To this day, I do not believe that she was simply getting what she paid for by raising a rotten daughter and reaping all the pain that ensued. As a simpleminded, poor, Yiddish-speaking immigrant in a strange land, who worked as a mediocre seamstress to put food on the table, Rose did the best that she could.

It was not so much that she herself was a frequent object of their anger. I would hear the daughter, son-in-law, and even the boys, snap at her, “Shut up!” which was cruel enough, as she would shrink to her corner and resume her sewing and humming.

The more pervasive, day-in, day-out, cruelty that surrounded Rose was an inescapable cloud that I could only imagine sucked more life out of her with every breath. The shouting in that household was incessant. The cursing. The threats. The screaming. The slamming doors. The explosions over whether to watch Championship Bowling or Ben Casey. Mother or father chasing one or the other of the kids down the hallway, then beating him with “the strap,” a WWII brass-tipped army belt. And Rose, fully cognizant of all that was transpiring, humming and sewing and an occasional “oy vey.”

Rose, I learned, was quite a good cook. But, she dared not dabble in the kitchen because she was kosher, and the family liked its bacon, pork chops and ham. Rose, meanwhile, would eat her slice of challah, a piece of cheese, perhaps a salad or a can of tuna.

One bit of Rose’s Jewish sentiment, though, went unchallenged. She lit her Sabbath candles every Friday afternoon, in a modest candelabrum, perhaps pewter, that she brought from the Old Country. The sentiment went unchallenged until one winter Friday afternoon. I was over playing with the boys as shrieking erupted from the kitchen. Rose had lit the candles a little too close to a dry cleaning bag. The bag caught fire instantly, ignited a towel and scorched some of the wallpaper. By the time we had run down the hallway, the fire was out. In her hysteria, though, the daughter insisted on calling the fire department to “make sure there wasn’t any fire in the walls.” The hook-and-ladder, of course, made for a terrific show, during which the daughter repeatedly humiliated Rose by telling and retelling the story of her stupid, burdensome mother, with increasing relish.

Back inside now, mother cornered Rose and berated her in front of me and the grandsons: “You and your goddamned Shabbos candles! You and your goddamned kosher! You and your goddamned challah! You and your goddamned Yiddish! I wish all of you would go to hell!”

Grandma Rose retreated to her corner . . . but this time she did not hum.

Do not ask me what happened next. Sometimes, like Eliot said, the world ends not with a bang but a whimper. Oy vey.

LEAVE AWE UNEXPLAINED (6/10/04)

Someplace between sainthood and damnation lies the legacy of Ronald Reagan. I have my own opinions. I am already tired of hearing and talking about them, and I bet you are, too.

Honestly, the only emotional connection that I have had with the President’s death has been in its lone metaphysical moment, one that is likely to get swept aside by all the political blather.

Reagan’s daughter Patti reported that in her final visit, her dad looked up at her for the first time in months with perfectly clear eyes, eyes of recognition, resolve and love. The metaphysics of the moment lay in his eyes having been unresponsive, closed, dimmed for so long, before that moment of absolute clarity that formed the bridge between life and death.

Perhaps you, too, know the metaphysics of that moment. I do. My dad also had descended deeply into Alzheimer’s. He, too, had been bedridden, barely conscious, uncommunicative for months, eyes closed or dimmed, no recognition. His breathing became labored and we knew that death was imminent. Yet he struggled. I tried to communicate:

“Daddy, it’s time for you to let go. Do you understand?”

As expected, no response.

“Daddy, it’s time for you to join Zayde in Gan Eden. Please let go.”

Still no response.

“Daddy, I promise to use all of my energy to make sure that Mommy is safe and healthy and taken care of. Do you understand?”

On the assurance of my mother’s safety, his eyes opened wide. He looked at me for the first time in months, years, with complete clarity. He feebly announced, “Uh-huh.” A moment later, I watched him slip into the next world.

And, indeed, I did take care of my mom. I certainly ask no accolades. Whatever I could give her never could return to her the care and unconditional love she bestowed upon me, even through the hardest of times.

But, then it was her time to go. She knew it, and we knew it. Linda and I were her constant companions in ICU for three days and nights. With each day, as expected, she drew drowsier, less conscious, more detached. So, while she could, we sang all the old Yiddish folk songs and show tunes that we knew. When she couldn’t, I would sing them to her. We retold well-worn savory family meiselach one more time. She asked to recite the Final Confession and Shema Yisrael while she was still conscious enough to do so.

At 10:00 on the third night, the heart monitor’s waves turned loopy, then flat. Again, as with Daddy, her eyes turned metaphysically crystal-clear. And something else: She took her last breath, then “something” not of this world rose from her deathbed. No one can convince me but that I was watching my mother’s pure soul rise from her body and ascend heavenward.

After making rudimentary funeral arrangements, I went home and actually slept quite restfully. My only dream that night gave me even more reason to believe that trying to stuff all of life’s experiences into a little rational box is a bunch of hooey:
In my dream, my mother was asleep, tucked in beautifully, in a room bathed in the most radiant sunshine. I shook her lightly, and she awoke with a delightfully loving smile.

“Mommy,” I said softly, “they told me that you had died.”

“Oh no,” she comforted me, “they can’t do that to me.”

Let Dr. Freud, et al, be damned. And along with them anyone else who maintains that awe is to be analyzed, not simply savored. I do not want anyone to explain to me what I saw and felt, and certainly no one to tell me that only the feebleminded take refuge in granting power to the inexplicable.

This obsession with trying to “understand” everything isn’t always such a great idea. Sometimes you just have to savor things that are beyond comprehension and give faith and credit to the All-Knowing One, who, as we know, don’t make no junk.

THE LANDSMANSCHAFT PICNIC (5/7/04)

Let the culinary get-a-life crowd catfight over the precise moment at which the venerated barbecue morphs into the despised cookout. A sigh of relief, then, for those of us who rose above that cultural fray, whose closest touch-point to “authentic” barbecue was the landsmanschaft picnic.

Landsmanschaft. Some double-dome sociologist probably told you that it meant a “regional affinity group”? Feh. Landsmanschaft . . . it is probably better described than defined: folks who came from the same town in the Old Country, settled in one city or another, where they got together to socialize, play cards and gossip. They also passionately looked out for each other, bailed each other out and financed each other’s debts.

Landsmanschaften, especially through their national organizations, excelled in bringing landsleit out of the Old Country, resettling them and getting them started in the New Land. This often entailed paying on a moment’s notice exorbitant ransom to mafia thugs, anti-Semitic underlords and minor Nazi operatives. Yet, to their immeasurably grief, too many landsleit were left behind to perish. A saintly old rabbi, despite knowing of my grandfather’s socialist leanings, wept when he discovered that I was his grandson, telling me in a hoarse whisper, “He saved many, many lives.”

My mother’s father (Pa) and mother were the muscle behind Chicago’s Grodner (Grodno, Poland, now Belarus) landsmanschaft. By the time I was old enough to be schlepped to the annual Grodner picnic, the ransoming and bitter tears were behind them. The Grodner had aged, gracefully and not, the lingua franca on the occasion was still Yiddish and memories of their youth and starting over in the New Land had evolved into full-blown mythologies.

My grandmother had already died, but Pa lorded over the picnic like a godfather. He had the charisma and grooming of Gotti. No ring-kissing, no mafia hits, but quite a lady’s man, and throughout his marriage he had a tolerant wife of the old school, so you surmise the rest.

He was the quintessential schmoozer: No back-slapping, but an ingratiatingly gentle arm around shoulder. Quick with a handclasp. A robust “Sholom aleichem!” A laugh enhanced at the edges by as asthmatic rasp. Heaping more food on your plate, want it or not. Calling every kid by his Yiddish named, then “Kum aher!” (Come here!), stuffing a dollar bill in each kid’s pocket.

The rest of the Grodner? I remember only a few. They seemed to be randomly divided into last-namers and full-namers: Babitzky – I loved the way his name slipped off my prepubescent tongue. Gold – The only card-carrying Grodner communist, whose bourgeoisie son made millions, nonetheless. Kosdon – The only Grodner to become a lawyer, the Jewish counterpart of Algonquin J. Calhoun of the now infamous Amos ‘n’ Andy show.

Among the full-namers: Tanchum Paul – I thought his name was “Tom-Tom” and, combined with his silver hair and ruddy complexion, I assumed that he was the only Grodner Native American. Leizer Pollack – The only Grodner who took being a Grodner too seriously even at the picnic, to which he wore a fedora.

Ah, the food . . . Let me digress for a moment, for the cuisine at the Grodner picnic was the first sign of enigma: This generation of Jewish immigrants so venerated their Americanization. No matter that the bastard child they created looks so comically mangled in retrospect, having given birth to the Borscht Belt, Yiddish Swing, Miami Beach. It was their best effort to make things work out OK. So then, where was Middle America’s traditional fare at their picnic, the hamburgers, hotdogs, baked beans?

The Grodner cuisine was delectably and exclusively Old Country: off-the-scale garlicky brisket and orange-yellow gravy (at home our brisket was always as bland as wet hemp; garlic came up on my grandmother), roasted “Shabbos” chicken, oven-browned potatoes, Pa’s sour pickles and tomatoes, kasha varnishkes, dense potato kugel (nothing like our scaly-crusted mashed-potatoes home fare). Honestly, I do not remember the sweets, because even in childhood I had already fressed to the point of glazed-over on well-fatted fleish-mit-bulbes (meat-and-potatoes) well before dessert.

So much more to be told some other time, but I assure you of this: no egg tosses or potato sack races. Card games like Kaluki brought over from the Old Country (although, ironically, its origin may be South African or Caribbean). And Pa, voice still honey-sweet despite his asthma, would lead the Grodner in Yiddish songs, happy, melancholy: Teyere Malkeh – Fill again my cup with wine! Hob’n Mir a Nigen’dl – Let us sing a song of childhood! A Sudenu – How shall we host a feast for Messiah? And the doleful Partizaner Lied, in memory of the Partisans who struggled valiantly against the Nazis – Never say there is only death for you!

I have come to a bittersweet conclusion about the absence of Americana from the landsmanschaft picnic and why it was so steeped in the Old Country ways. I found it in a 90-year-old snapshot left behind by my Uncle Abe that he titled “The Last Picnic in the Suwalky Woods.” What wistfulness did their eyes reveal? These were young adults with big-city ways (from a region of 700,000), not Tevye and his shtetl dwellers, living relatively charmed lives in the Old Country, about to disperse to seek their fortune in the New Land, the hope, the fear, the mystery, the ambivalence, the unknowingness, the self-doubt.

Chances are that each Grodner had the same wistful “last picnic,” departed from friends and forest greenery and knew only too well the inferno into which the life and family they left behind had descended. Then, even as the decades wore away at them, once a year at their landsmanschaft picnic they replicated the deliciousness of their long-ago salad days, their customs, rituals, language, cuisine yet intact.

Why I too miss those days I have yet understand. Perhaps it is because the memories are not simply cherished, but consecrated. I guess that, despite its theological implications, even Gold, the card-carrying communist atheist, would have to agree.

AN ANTIDOTE TO THE PASSION? (4/13/04)

Country Yossi and Schlock Rock did not make it to Greenville with their Chol Ha-Moed extravaganzas, so Linda and I took ourselves last Sunday to see The Alamo.

Wilson’s snapshot review: If you are expecting a cinematographic masterpiece, do not go. If you are expecting historical authenticity, do not go. If you are expecting penetrating character studies, do not go. If you are expecting an Oliver Stone style Alamo-as-conspiracy, forgeddaboudit.

If, however, you are craving a booster shot of unapologetic Americana, where the good guys are always swashbuckling and the bad guys always sneer and talk in those phony Frito Bandito accents, you have found the right place. Ol’ Walt himself might as well have risen from the Cryovac to resurrect Davy, Bowie and Travis, save for the fact that in this version the language is a little raunchier, the coonskin cap has just a cameo as part of a spoof, and Davy provides comic relief at his own execution.

However the tale is told, though, we celebrate the Alamo as America’s paradigmatic story of how honor and ideals can be victorious even in the midst of defeat. It may, in fact, be the only instance that America has consecrated a battle that ended in the utter decimation of its heroic men and women.

Many Christians will likely seethe at this analogy. Yet, I see the message of The Alamo as an antidote to Gibson’s putative “masterpiece,” The Passion – two hours of a body being ripped to shreds, with no regard whatsoever for Jesus’s ennobling earthly teachings nor his transcendence of death. These are points that my Fundamentalist Christian colleagues tell me we are to “infer.” With all due respect, these should not be inferred. These should be of the essence especially to Christians, even if Jews and Christians forever disagree as to whether Jesus’s resurrection has sole redemptive power.

The analogy? Who were the residents of the Alamo? A ragtag bunch, motivated by honorable ideals. Their opponents? The meticulously disciplined Mexican army, led by Santa Anna, apparently more bold than Gibson’s Pontius Pilate (and seemingly with no lapdog Jews encouraging him), but as big a coward when the tide turned. Santa Anna’s objective? To put down a gaggle of upstarts who wanted more than they deserved.

Everyone knew the results before the siege began. Most of the fighters were killed outright, but others, among them women and children, were raped and torturously murdered. The battle symbolically concluded as Crockett, beaten, bloody and hogtied, was brought before Santa Anna, who had him skewered with bayonets.

End of story? No. Traumatized and remorseful over their failure to respond, reinvigorated, inspired by the valor of the Alamo’s defenders, Houston and his troops counterattacked and vanquished Santa Anna’s army. Santa Anna himself was captured, and some of Houston’s men demanded his execution. Houston, though, spared his life in return for the land that they held sacred.

The Alamo is one great, simple, straightforward story of how honor and decency can overcome the greatest hatred, evil, death and defeat. If I were you, I would risk a few cuss words to take my kids to see it and then talk some straight talk about the world at its worst and its best and the little, or big, things that they can do to help redeem it:

Some people have good values. Others have none whatsoever. You must find the right ones, and, with God as our Guide, we are here to help you. Some people do not have it easy because of their good values, especially when they stand up for them. Sometimes they may even have to die for them. This is the hardest thing we may ever have to say to you, but one day, you may even have to give your life because of your values. Then we can only pray that someone might become so overwhelmed by the harm that good people have suffered at the hands of the evil ones that s/he will resolve to do something about it. And, when s/he does, we pray that it need not be with WMD’s but with understanding, compassion and positive example – prevent, rather than punish. Remember, Houston could have killed Santa Anna, but that would have proved nothing.

I guess that this kind of blasphemy will score no points with Christians whatsoever, but in my humble opinion, if Gibson were not so gore-obsessed, this is the story that he should have been telling. Then, we Jews and Christians could quibble over whether only Jesus’s transcendence of death had redemptive power or whether that inspiration came through all righteous people who had suffered through the hands of the wicked. But, otherwise the essence would remain the same, and the world’s redemption would be that much closer.

Let’s face it. We Jewish folks are not going to make a blockbuster response to The Passion anytime soon. No need. The Alamo pretty much says it all already. And you don’t need to be a Vatican theologian to figure it out.

TWO HOURS OF PASSIONLESS BODY-BANGING (3/4/04)

I finally saw Mel's flick last night. Here's the quick email take I gave to my kids this morning:

I wish I had something more profound to say about The Passion of the Christ, but the first word that comes to mind is simply "boring."

Putting aside any of the religious significance, the film was just rotten. It reminded me of the typical porno flick (don’t ask) in which they use the most banal, flimsy "plot" to string together one 15-minute passionless body-banging after another. In this case, the real "story" of the Passion – dare I say the scriptural and literary magnificence of the episode – is marginalized, trivialized, into that same flimsy plot simply to justify scene after scene of the most unimaginably sensationalistic gore.

I guess that I am full of sexual analogies this morning, but another one comes to mind: You know how they say that a scantily clad woman is immeasurably more provocative than one who is stark naked? Mel also misses this point. The real magnitude of Jesus's redemptive suffering would have been 1,000 times more powerful and horrific had some of it been left to allusion and imagination, rather than every spurt of blood-cum-salsa splash so literally across the screen.

Most amazing was how so many Christians in the crowd used words like "inspirational, life-transforming, uplifting, masterpiece, magnificent." Mel is the possessor of one sick mind and spirit. That can be seen most clearly in his a priori assumption as to how much one must fixate on the details of gore to be a "real" Christian. And they say that Jews wallow in their own pustulence . . . That may sound flip, but to what extent do believing Christians consider graphically flayed skin and mangled organs, not majestic martyrdom, to be the defining quality of the pivotal event of their faith?

My final bit of fatherly advice to you on this subject: On the chance that this film is authentic, you may as well go read the Gospels. On the chance that it is not authentic, you may as well go rent Ben-Hur.

P.S. Now, I am still not telling you to spend your money, but here are a few of the movie’s more entertaining moments:

1. The absolute zenith of hokeyness in Mel's film -- and there is a ton of it -- is when Mary Magdalene breathlessly returns to tell Mary that the Roman guards have taken Jesus off, and Mary responds with tremendous melodramatic pathos, "Mah nishtanah ha-lailah ha-zeh mi-kol ha-leilot?"

2. Caiaphas, the ersatz High Priest, speaks much better Aramaic than Jesus does.

3. The bulvan who plays Herod is such a stitch that he is worth the price of admission, even though he is on screen for only a minute. I nominate him to play Belushi as Bluto in any remake of Animal House.

MY HUMBLE ORIGIN: NOM DE DOODLE, CIRCA 1968 (2/27/04)

Just like my doppelganger Bart Simpson, I write it on the chalkboard a hundred times each day: “I must get into therapy and deal with my narcissism.” Not yet, I guess. Why should I think that the origin of “Rabbi Ribeye” would matter to anyone? Nonetheless, here goes:

The genesis of “Rabbi Ribeye” is not in its alliterative quality. Nor was it intended to be a nom de plume. It is the product of 36-year-old doodling during another sonorous, narcolepsy-inducing Talmud class during my yeshiva years. The late Rabbi Aaron Soloveichik would lecture us for two to three hours every other day on some arcane point of Jewish law. He was an absolute genius, certainly the magnitude of an Einstein; of this I have no doubt. Like most luminaries, though, his mind worked immeasurably faster than his gift of speech. Consequently, the geniuses in the class gained profound enlightenment, while the rest of us doodled. Had it not been for the exhaustive notes of Shael Siegel, I would today probably be an employable cable guy rather than an unemployed rabbi who fritters away his time cooking and trying to write the great American essay.

As I look back over yellowing notebooks that I have purposelessly archived, I remind myself that some of my doodling is actually a collection of anti-war shibboleths (“Dump the Hump!” – a reference to pro-war candidate Hubert Humphrey) and vain stabs at profundity. I again see that I had boldly inscribed across the top of one page, “God Is the Ultimate Ba’al Shtick (Prankster)!” In later years, I more fully developed this aphorism into a theology that I call “The God of Booga-Booga.” This is the notion that God occasionally manifests Him/Herself as neither merciful nor just, but as a practical joker who pulls some kind of shtick on us when we forget that S/He’s watching, and then winks down from heaven and thunders, “Booga-Booga!”

Examples? Take this classic about the rabbi who travels a hundred miles from the closest Jewish community to quell his lust for suckling pig. He is seated at the restaurant, knife and fork at their ready. With great aplomb, the waiter presents the golden-brown corpus delicti on a silver platter. Just then, a congregant walks through the door, and exclaims, “Rabbi, what are you doing here?” The rabbi, with atypical presence of mind, sputters his response: “What a novel way to serve an apple!”

Booga-Booga!

Or, what about the rabbi, with paramour in tow, who approaches the desk of an out-of-the-way motel for some afternoon delight, only to find that one of his bar mitzvah boys of five years earlier is manning the check-in counter?

Oh, that wacky God, He’s such a Ba’al Shtick! Booga-Booga!

So much for my stab at funky theology. If we have a chance some time, though, let me tell you about another attempt at homespun mysticism that I call “God Is Not an Asshole.”

But, what about “Rabbi Ribeye”? Be patient, I’m getting there.

Call it prescience, but even in my most formative years, my doodling had already led me to subjects gastronomical. It started out innocently enough – puns of culinary personification, people who in my imagination took on the names of favorite foods: Terry Aqui. V.L. Piccata. Cheri Coque. Biff Steaque. Coco Vann. Chuck N. Soope. G. Phil Tofische. Matt Sobel. Paw Tate O’Kugelle. Chuck and Ella King. Tom A. Topaste. Sam N. Salade. Cary Waysead.

Every class a new pun, a new name or two, a new challenge, a new doodle, a new diversion. But, across from me sat Jay Hirshman. Jay was a diligent student with a terrific work ethic, which struck me as particularly admirable since he was one of only a few classmates who came from real wealth. When my folks moved to the Coast, I spent many weekend as a guest of Jay and his family.

Jay’s mother had died a couple of years earlier, and their home was ruled by a wonderful live-in housekeeper of the old school. She always had a whiskey sour waiting for Jay’s dad just as he walked through the door. I saw this as the quintessence of inestimable luxury. And predictably, Friday evening dinner revolved around rare, succulent . . . ribeye. This, too, was quintessential luxury, at least relative to the meatloaf or “roasted out” (that’s what my mother called it) chicken that graced the Wilson’s Sabbath table.

As I watched Jay that particular day hunched over his Talmudic tome, my idling memory flashed up “ribeye.” A nanosecond later, my mind refocused on those rare occasions that my mother served steak, and how my erudite dad always requested liver. Thinking of the long anticipated encounter of Stanley and Livingstone, I mindlessly doodled in my notebook, “Rabbi Ribeye, meat Dr. Liver!”

So now you know the origin of my 36-year-old culinary nom de plume. I had actually suggested to the editors the pseudonym, “Cardiac A’fressed,” but they demurred on the grounds that nothing on eGullet should infer that food could be unhealthy.

It’s just as well, though. You see, in 1972, the same Jay who introduced me to luxurious ribeye went off to Israel to join the army. A training injury forced him to watch helplessly as most of his platoon was wiped out in the Yom Kippur War. He was never the same. A few years later, he was murdered in a holdup.

Truth be told, Jay always seemed singularly unimpressed by silliness. Be that as it may, I believe that every time “Rabbi Ribeye” brings a smile to someone’s face, it becomes an ounce of recompense for all the smiles that Jay could yet have smiled, had he only been given the chance. And as for me, despite the good humor with which the name is spoken, the edges of sweetness will forever be furrowed by an unavoidable twinge of melancholy over 36-year-old reminiscences of what was and what might have been.

FUNDAMENTALIST CHEERLEADING FOR GIBSON’S PASSION – AN OXYMORON (2/22/04)

For whatever it is worth, I stand by my assertion that Gibson’s Passion will not spark a new wave of anti-Semitism. My argument is not deeply philosophical, simply process of elimination: Anti-Semites will remain anti-Semites. Folks who are not predisposed to anti-Semitism will not be swayed.

I will be viewing the film with a religiously- and racially-diverse audience. A Christian colleague and I will then review it and respond during a Q&A session. Only upon seeing the film will I be able to judge whether the film is inherently anti-Semitic, that is, (a) whether it portrays the Jews in a particularly damnable manner, especially in a manner even more damnable than the Gospels themselves do, and (b) whether it emphasizes the Jews’ collective, eternal guilt for Jesus’s death. Again, though, whether the film is anti-Semitic or whether the film will foment anti-Semitism are two entirely different issues, two entirely different sets of dynamics.

One question, however, keeps burning in my belly. It has not been discussed much, but it goes to the basic spiritual, intellectual and historical honor of the Passion's most passionate advocates. Gibson is a self-admitted radical Catholic. Should it not strike someone as ironic, even a little weird, that the biggest backers to Gibson's movie are not Catholics – who seem at best to be ambivalent about the film – but Fundamentalist Protestants?

Fundamentalist Protestants are in bed with a radical Catholic on matters of Christian doctrine and its proliferation? Anyone who remembers seventh-grade World History should instantly recognize the oxymoron. From Henry VIII and Martin Luther onward, Protestants have not, to put it mildly, gotten along real well with Catholics, and vice versa. After all, why was Bloody Mary called “Bloody”? What of the centuries of carnage up to this very day in Northern Ireland? No one would minimize the Jewish blood that Christians spilled throughout Europe, but I dare say that Catholic-Protestant bloodshed comes in a close second.

The differences between Catholics and Protestants, to be sure, manifested themselves in countless political, geographic, cultural and sociological ways. But, the origin of the disputes in elementary church doctrine are undeniable: the divinely-ordained supremacy of the Pope, the significance of the wafer-and-wine upon consecration, the nature of the sacraments, the priesthood, the liturgy, even the text of the Lord’s Prayer.

More significantly, the Catholic and Protestant approaches to Biblical understanding, interpretation, even translation, substantially diverge. Moreover, the Catholic interpretive tradition has evolved in a relatively orderly fashion, always being subject to the scrutiny of Church doctrine, while the Protestant interpretative tradition ranges from absolute literalism to liberal academic inquiry.

Centuries have passed, and the bulk of Catholics and Protestants have made peace with each other, occasionally uneasy, but peace nonetheless. As one would expect, however, animosity and hostility still drive the attitude of Fundamentalist Protestants toward Catholicism. Go to the websites and see how salacious their hatred of Catholics still is: They are damned. Their doctrines are false. Their worship is idolatry. Their interpretation of the Bible is heretical. The Pope is the antichrist. The Vatican conspires for world domination. Catholic political aspirants will be puppets of Rome. The Jesuits plotted with the Nazis to mastermind the Holocaust. How often have I heard a Fundamentalist preacher refer to “Christians, Catholics and Jews,” inferring that Catholics are not even genuine Christians?

Some time ago, a Fundamentalist institution honored one of the most vituperatively militant anti-Catholics, Rev. Ian Paisley, with a Doctorate of Humanities. The same institution would allow on campus neither Jerry Falwell nor Pat Robertson, whom most of us consider staunch Fundamentalists, because they engaged in dialogue with Catholics. That very institution is now one of the most vociferous cheerleaders for Gibson’s film.

This is precisely the oxymoron: A significant segment, perhaps a majority, of Fundamentalist Protestants think that Catholics are a bunch of hell-bound heretics who subscribe to false doctrine. Likewise, radical Catholics like Gibson have little regard for the integrity and salvation of the Protestants. Yet, somehow in this lunatic world, the most fundamentalist Fundamentalists are actually turning to a fanatical Catholic to teach the world “the Truth” about Jesus and his sanctifying death.

What forked tongue declared this alliance? Let us momentarily put aside emotionalism and the specter of a new wave of anti-Semitism. Does this oxymoron not speak volumes about the basic spiritual, intellectual and historical dishonesty of a brand of Fundamentalism that is capturing the souls of people who might otherwise aspire to a more sublime level of Christian authenticity? What is wrong with this picture?

WHO IS THE "REAL" LOSER BY THE MENSCH STANDARD?

The freaky roller coaster of political favor and disfavor is made all the freakier when we impose on it an appraisal of “real” winners and losers in terms of longer-range prognoses: Which candidates, even in defeat, have craftily postured themselves for 2008 and beyond? Which candidates have irreparably shot themselves in the foot?

We who have attained cranky middle age delude ourselves into believing that once upon a time the criteria of “real” winners and losers were determined by the yardstick of philosophical commitment and statesmanship. Whatever the case, our current measure of the “real” loser is the display of public stupidity: Michael Dukakis playing make-believe tank commander, the zaftig Donna Rice cuddling with Gary Hart on the Good Ship Monkeyshines, and most recently, Howard Dean’s infantile rants and cheerleading. Shall we also include the silly grandstanding of our flight-suit clad president’s loopdloop aircraft-carrier landing?

Thus, by the measure of shoot-yourself-in-the-foot stupidity, the “real” loser of this primary season is Al Gore, as evidenced by his misplaced political spotlight-grab and that goofy smile as he stiffly embraced Howard Dean. How many volumes could be written about the crass, foolish opportunism of a vice-president who almost became our president? How could a man who nearly attained the mantle of international leadership embrace a flash-in-the-pan candidate when anyone with any sense already suspected that Dean’s vaunted popularity was cresting too early to be of lasting value? Which other candidate would now have the most remote desire for Gore’s smarmy endorsement as second best? By the standard of public stupidity, Al Gore has forever discredited himself from any pretensions of prudent, honorable national leadership.

Gore’s status as “real” loser, though, derives even more from a flaw well beyond public stupidity: Al Gore is not a mensch. For the Yiddishly-challenged, a mensch is an honorable person. Even if in choosing to endorse a candidate prematurely, had Gore been a mensch, he would have supported Joe Lieberman. Yes, part of the issue is a betrayal of loyalty, even a breach of trust, to his former running mate, a man he deemed worthy of being a single heartbeat from the presidency.

More grievously, Gore failed as a mensch by his refusal to support the only candidate most consistently identified with integrity by his senatorial colleagues and even the cynical Limbaugh and O’Reilly. A real mensch would have endorsed a real mensch, not a rude, bellicose come-lately who is subject to unpredictable public displays of bipolarity.

Yes, Gore knew as we all did that Lieberman was unelectable. None of that, particularly early in the campaign, should have deterred Gore from the honor and decency befitting a true statesman, not an opportunistic hack. It could have become his singular moment for underscoring integrity as an issue in the campaign that should outshine opportunism and pandering for votes. Then, upon Lieberman’s anticipated withdrawal, Gore’s support of another candidate would likely have had at least some modicum of credibility, not the buffoonery that it now would engender.

One would hope that identifying Al Gore as the “real” loser over the mensch issue might become a cautionary tale, one of prizing integrity not only above stupidity, but above the disreputable machinations that ordain a candidate as “electable.” That is not likely to happen any time soon. Be that as it may, it should not deter anyone from being a mensch and supporting a mensch even if s/he does not place first in the race. Perhaps one day we will realize that it is not the mensch, but the race, that needs fixing.