THE LOVING TOUCH
Last Shabbos we attended Hannah’s Bat Mitzvah. What a beautiful child. Eight years ago, it was love at first sight.
Only one episode of reticence ever stood between us. Hannah was all of five when she rushed onto my lap and cuddled for a hug. Instinct prompted me to return the innocent affection. But the specter of untoward intimacy might, in the wrong eyes, come back to haunt me. So, defying every holy impulse, I removed her from my lap, benignly patted her head and wished her a good Shabbos.
Similar episodes vexed me throughout my ministry. Children would charge the bimah, jump up on me, hug my legs. Maybe it was because of my Santa-esque beard and girth. My joyful response was always bridled by knowing that the loving touch of even a teacher or rabbi can, in the mind of some bloodthirsty congregant, smack of suspicion of pedophilia, not healthy intimacy.
Would only that I have the blood test for discerning between the loving touch and one that portends abuse. This I do know: Woe unto us, because the loving touch confirms a child’s angelic affection. Likewise as adults, a spark of unrequited childhood still begs for touch to soothe, validate, connect, allay loneliness, convey love and even heal.
Nearly any rabbi will tell you that lightly stroking a patient’s forehead or holding his hand during the bedside Mi-She-Berach will bring tears of reassurance even to the eyes of the most calloused, hardhearted business magnate.
Not too long ago, I visited in the ICU an “atheist” dying of meningitis, barely conscious. I squeezed his hand and whispered a prayer. The next morning, his wife called to say that he had had a miraculous turnaround. To what did she attribute it? Not to my prayer, but to my touch. I tried to explain to her the Jewish theology of healing in God’s realm, so as not to impute to my hands any miraculous gifts. But, all she knew was my touch, my touch.
I am likely in this world today, chasing my grandchildren around the house, because of the gift of touch:
I spent a random – but nothing being random – Shabbos in Brooklyn, in 1990. I was to have a brief meeting with the Lubavitcher Rebbe. His skin and beard were immaculate ivory, meticulous, belying any notion that he was in his ninetieth year. He spoke briefly to me in Yiddish. They were soothing, comforting words, prophetic in his discernment that this had been the most depressing, disconnected, isolated year of my life – watching reruns of Rhoda at 2:00 every afternoon and Benny Hill at 3:00.
I could barely attend to the words, because all the while he stroked my hand with his pristine hand. Intimates of the Rebbe told me with astonishment that rare are the instances that he reached forth and stroked a petitioner’s hand. There had to be some special significance.
Fifteen years later, thinking back to Hannah cuddling on my lap, I finally awoke to the import of the event. The Rebbe’s words, however empathic and tender, paled in their significance to his prescient understanding that touch alone conveyed what I needed most: connectedness, a loving father and son reunited, a reassurance of no more abandonment, the healing that re-enlivened my synapses with the message that everything would be for the best. Not the end of, but the beginning of, my restitution to wholeness.
Look and see the unimaginable restoration through the gentle stroking of a hand or a tender hug. So much banishment of isolation and validation of presence, even love. A child receiving them from parents alone leaves no room for the legitimate affection he craves from the other “parents” in his life. He needs and deserves more.
And what of the rest of us for whom the still scared, still lonely, still isolated child within yet cries out? Where is our healing touch?
May 19, 2005
April 11, 2005
TUNA SALAD: THE CHOSEN PEOPLE'S STARKIST LEVIATHAN (4/11/05)
Whenever I read Moses’ immortal words, “Man does not live by bread alone,” I want to add, “That’s right. He also needs a little tuna salad.”
I don’t know what it is with Jews and tuna, but let’s make the critical distinction first off: “tuna” and “tuna fish” share neither genetics nor kindred spirit. The former is ruby-red, velvety and seared rare, so that it is indistinguishable from filet mignon. Beyond rosy-pink, you might as well be gagging on Astroturf. Most of my coreligionists do not display extraordinary passion for ahi au naturel.
Tuna fish, on the other hand, is spineless, tubular and about three inches in diameter, so that it fits perfectly into an inch-high can. Its flesh is ecru, flaky, and stewed in brine. I have heard that lower species – brown, oil-muddled – inhabit some waters, but avoid major centers of Jewish population.
Tuna fish redeems itself from its humble origin only when it is chunked or flaked, combined with greenery and/or eggs, and napped in a savory dressing, ah . . . tuna salad.
American Jews have a love affair with tuna salad. It is my perennial breakfast and midnight snack, even though it is also my wellspring of unrelenting heartburn. I have found no precedent for its virtue in the Bible or Talmud. It was not known to our Eastern European ancestors, and in fact, for the first few years, my grandfather the grocer could barely give the stuff away. And mayonnaise? Feh. What was it? Lard? Kosher? Dairy? Don’t go telling me it’s pareve and traif up my kitchen.
Somehow, though, tuna fish and mayo weathered the tsunami and morphed into the darling of the Jewish kitchen. It became so integral to the American balabosteh’s repertoire that it turned into the subject of bragging rights, family traditions, secret recipes, hypercriticism and regional variations, just as if it were gefilte fish or potato kugel.
My rabbinical interview in Greenville was built around a covered-dish dinner. But, forgetting to coordinate the menu, the table was laden with no less than twenty varieties of tuna salad, the more modest of them laced with celery, onion, bell pepper, pickle relish (feh) and eggs. The more garrulous bore every means of provender: olives, grapes, pecans, pistachios, corn, peas, bleu cheese and feta. Next to each artistic platter – some molded in the shape of turtles or Torah scrolls – stood a proud hausfrau, heaping my plate and smugly winking, “I can’t believe you’re even tasting that cat food Mrs. Schwartz made.”
Tuna salad is our trusty companion through the changes of seasons and the vicissitudes of life: There it is at Shabbos Kiddush. Don’t miss it at Shalashudes. It’s the staple of the nine meatless days before Tisha B’Av. Break your Yom Kippur fast with it. Take it to work on matzo for Pesach. The mainstay of bris, pidyon ha-ben, naming, bar mitzvah, aufruf. Bury the dead and come home to tuna salad.
My ever-pragmatic Linda says that the Jewish obsession with tuna fish is simply a function of convenience. Maybe.
My guess, though, is that the Jewish fascination with tuna fish is a portent of Messianic times. We know so very little of those days, but we have it on Talmudic authority that the righteous will be served a celebratory feast of leviathan, the primordial fish left over from the days of Creation. The problem is that no one knows what leviathan is. No one but me.
So, whether the Messiah turns out to be the Lubavitcher Rebbe, or a Litvak in a frockcoat, or a Conservative rabbi in a three-piece suit, I guarantee you one thing: The main course at that wondrous celebration will come from a can marked StarKist – a little onion, a little celery, a little mayo, hold the relish. Tuna fish . . . our omnipresent foretaste of the world-to-come. Ah, no wonder.
Whenever I read Moses’ immortal words, “Man does not live by bread alone,” I want to add, “That’s right. He also needs a little tuna salad.”
I don’t know what it is with Jews and tuna, but let’s make the critical distinction first off: “tuna” and “tuna fish” share neither genetics nor kindred spirit. The former is ruby-red, velvety and seared rare, so that it is indistinguishable from filet mignon. Beyond rosy-pink, you might as well be gagging on Astroturf. Most of my coreligionists do not display extraordinary passion for ahi au naturel.
Tuna fish, on the other hand, is spineless, tubular and about three inches in diameter, so that it fits perfectly into an inch-high can. Its flesh is ecru, flaky, and stewed in brine. I have heard that lower species – brown, oil-muddled – inhabit some waters, but avoid major centers of Jewish population.
Tuna fish redeems itself from its humble origin only when it is chunked or flaked, combined with greenery and/or eggs, and napped in a savory dressing, ah . . . tuna salad.
American Jews have a love affair with tuna salad. It is my perennial breakfast and midnight snack, even though it is also my wellspring of unrelenting heartburn. I have found no precedent for its virtue in the Bible or Talmud. It was not known to our Eastern European ancestors, and in fact, for the first few years, my grandfather the grocer could barely give the stuff away. And mayonnaise? Feh. What was it? Lard? Kosher? Dairy? Don’t go telling me it’s pareve and traif up my kitchen.
Somehow, though, tuna fish and mayo weathered the tsunami and morphed into the darling of the Jewish kitchen. It became so integral to the American balabosteh’s repertoire that it turned into the subject of bragging rights, family traditions, secret recipes, hypercriticism and regional variations, just as if it were gefilte fish or potato kugel.
My rabbinical interview in Greenville was built around a covered-dish dinner. But, forgetting to coordinate the menu, the table was laden with no less than twenty varieties of tuna salad, the more modest of them laced with celery, onion, bell pepper, pickle relish (feh) and eggs. The more garrulous bore every means of provender: olives, grapes, pecans, pistachios, corn, peas, bleu cheese and feta. Next to each artistic platter – some molded in the shape of turtles or Torah scrolls – stood a proud hausfrau, heaping my plate and smugly winking, “I can’t believe you’re even tasting that cat food Mrs. Schwartz made.”
Tuna salad is our trusty companion through the changes of seasons and the vicissitudes of life: There it is at Shabbos Kiddush. Don’t miss it at Shalashudes. It’s the staple of the nine meatless days before Tisha B’Av. Break your Yom Kippur fast with it. Take it to work on matzo for Pesach. The mainstay of bris, pidyon ha-ben, naming, bar mitzvah, aufruf. Bury the dead and come home to tuna salad.
My ever-pragmatic Linda says that the Jewish obsession with tuna fish is simply a function of convenience. Maybe.
My guess, though, is that the Jewish fascination with tuna fish is a portent of Messianic times. We know so very little of those days, but we have it on Talmudic authority that the righteous will be served a celebratory feast of leviathan, the primordial fish left over from the days of Creation. The problem is that no one knows what leviathan is. No one but me.
So, whether the Messiah turns out to be the Lubavitcher Rebbe, or a Litvak in a frockcoat, or a Conservative rabbi in a three-piece suit, I guarantee you one thing: The main course at that wondrous celebration will come from a can marked StarKist – a little onion, a little celery, a little mayo, hold the relish. Tuna fish . . . our omnipresent foretaste of the world-to-come. Ah, no wonder.
March 22, 2005
A SOCIETY IN LOCKDOWN (3/22/05)
Garrison Keillor noted the irony in his first broadcast from Brooklyn: “Why,” he mused, “am I doing a radio show from a place where every car has a sign in its window that says ‘no radio’?”
For Keillor, it was a joke about the absurd demands of urban security. For a little girl murdered in Florida, the question asked by the most hypercritical among us will be, “Why did a loving family leave a door unlocked and a sleeping child vulnerable?”
For Elizabeth Smart, it was a bedroom window. For Jon Benet, a basement entrance. “No lock stands in the way of a thief,” the Talmud observed. Certainly not in the way of pedophiles and child-murderers. How credulous and negligent, then, must one be not to lock doors and windows . . . and what else? Alarm a home for every contingency? Attack dogs? Tasers? Blow-‘em-away pistols in every cranny? All this and then some. Just listen to talk radio.
It must come as horrific culture shock to the folks in Friendly Village to need to gird themselves against the heretofore unimaginable: intrusion, violation, someone other than a neighbor at the open door, the fear of becoming fodder for Unsolved Mysteries.
Even we boomers who grew up in bigger cities have childhood memories of more secure times. In my Chicago neighborhood, we left our doors unlocked. We considered people who locked them snooty. Kids walked into each other’s homes unannounced. Answering the door would have been a nuisance. Moms watched out for each other’s kids; no one escaped the omnipresent eye; one strike and out for the day or worse.
When did it all change? Perhaps it was when we started living in anonymity, not knowing, and certainly not cherishing, the value of neighbors and neighborhood. It has become a cliché, but it does not diminish the truth: We do not know the people who live to either side of us.
Blaming the origin of our isolation on paranoia would be a confusion of cause and effect. It originated with the raging “self-ism” that replaced the centrality of the neighborhood-ism of the 50’s and the social consciousness of the 60’s. Self-promotion. Self-awareness. Self-actualization. Self-advancement. Self-you-name-it. No room for you in my life. Only self.
Mobility and self-preoccupation have made most friendships ephemeral or rarely attached to the folks next door. Some of us take refuge in our churches and synagogues and affinity groups, but the best of them are momentary safety zones.
We have thus resurrected the ancient notion that, even linguistically, a stranger is synonymous with hostility. Ironically, that has not made us safer, only more vulnerable. We nervously try to secure every breach, only to discover more of them, even more fearful that an aggressor will find another way to prey on our child in the nanosecond that the door is open or that she is picking a dandelion.
So, we surround our children with all the security we can find and with a pervasive sense of paranoia that drives them neurotic. We postpone until an undefined “later” how they will acquire their sense of freedom, with all its challenges and vulnerabilities, away from our protective eyes.
Solutions? There is only one way out, and it will be slow, generations in the making: Get rid of the self-ism. Discover your neighbors. Create a neighborhood. Establish friendships. Start doing things for others and with others. Look out for each other’s kids. Read Isaiah 58. Resurrect the virtues of trust and mutual protectiveness.
All that, and pray every day that God watch over our little ones, and that our kids remember to lock up the house and set the alarm before they tuck in the grandchildren for a night of sweet, untarnished dreams.
But let the bitterness still be ours. Every convict I have ever visited in jail has told me that whoever is behind bars is merely a matter of perspective.
Garrison Keillor noted the irony in his first broadcast from Brooklyn: “Why,” he mused, “am I doing a radio show from a place where every car has a sign in its window that says ‘no radio’?”
For Keillor, it was a joke about the absurd demands of urban security. For a little girl murdered in Florida, the question asked by the most hypercritical among us will be, “Why did a loving family leave a door unlocked and a sleeping child vulnerable?”
For Elizabeth Smart, it was a bedroom window. For Jon Benet, a basement entrance. “No lock stands in the way of a thief,” the Talmud observed. Certainly not in the way of pedophiles and child-murderers. How credulous and negligent, then, must one be not to lock doors and windows . . . and what else? Alarm a home for every contingency? Attack dogs? Tasers? Blow-‘em-away pistols in every cranny? All this and then some. Just listen to talk radio.
It must come as horrific culture shock to the folks in Friendly Village to need to gird themselves against the heretofore unimaginable: intrusion, violation, someone other than a neighbor at the open door, the fear of becoming fodder for Unsolved Mysteries.
Even we boomers who grew up in bigger cities have childhood memories of more secure times. In my Chicago neighborhood, we left our doors unlocked. We considered people who locked them snooty. Kids walked into each other’s homes unannounced. Answering the door would have been a nuisance. Moms watched out for each other’s kids; no one escaped the omnipresent eye; one strike and out for the day or worse.
When did it all change? Perhaps it was when we started living in anonymity, not knowing, and certainly not cherishing, the value of neighbors and neighborhood. It has become a cliché, but it does not diminish the truth: We do not know the people who live to either side of us.
Blaming the origin of our isolation on paranoia would be a confusion of cause and effect. It originated with the raging “self-ism” that replaced the centrality of the neighborhood-ism of the 50’s and the social consciousness of the 60’s. Self-promotion. Self-awareness. Self-actualization. Self-advancement. Self-you-name-it. No room for you in my life. Only self.
Mobility and self-preoccupation have made most friendships ephemeral or rarely attached to the folks next door. Some of us take refuge in our churches and synagogues and affinity groups, but the best of them are momentary safety zones.
We have thus resurrected the ancient notion that, even linguistically, a stranger is synonymous with hostility. Ironically, that has not made us safer, only more vulnerable. We nervously try to secure every breach, only to discover more of them, even more fearful that an aggressor will find another way to prey on our child in the nanosecond that the door is open or that she is picking a dandelion.
So, we surround our children with all the security we can find and with a pervasive sense of paranoia that drives them neurotic. We postpone until an undefined “later” how they will acquire their sense of freedom, with all its challenges and vulnerabilities, away from our protective eyes.
Solutions? There is only one way out, and it will be slow, generations in the making: Get rid of the self-ism. Discover your neighbors. Create a neighborhood. Establish friendships. Start doing things for others and with others. Look out for each other’s kids. Read Isaiah 58. Resurrect the virtues of trust and mutual protectiveness.
All that, and pray every day that God watch over our little ones, and that our kids remember to lock up the house and set the alarm before they tuck in the grandchildren for a night of sweet, untarnished dreams.
But let the bitterness still be ours. Every convict I have ever visited in jail has told me that whoever is behind bars is merely a matter of perspective.
March 10, 2005
WHEN WILL GOD FINALLY HUMBLE MARTHA? (3/10/05)
God will have his way with Martha Stewart, or so I’ve been told. Her time in jail simply did not bring her enough public humiliation. We expect God to settle these kinds of scores.
Martha’s incarceration was a masterful PR conspiracy. Someone had to know that the schadenfreude, that prurient exhilaration we little people feel when arrogant bigshots are caught with their pants down, would be negligible. Making an example of her would not apparently prompt much contrition nor would it result in anyone learning to be more humble, not her fans, her toadies and certainly not Martha. The message was simply that her ordeal made Martha more Martha.
Perhaps this is where we wish God would step in: All we ask, God, is that You see to it that the haughty learn a little humility. But, what an arrogant, audacious expectation of God that would be, inferring that we were so un-humble as to instruct God who needed His humbling.
No, Martha does not give the public appearance of contrition. But, what we will never know are the nightmares that may, or may not, haunt her when she is surrounded by darkness, alone in the middle of the night, her head spinning with a cacophony of self-vilifying thoughts. You may say that she will never suffer those moments of humility, because she is too busy planning tomorrow’s financial coup. And you may be right. Only God and Martha know. Just as it should be.
We never know what awaits the seemingly unrepentant and even the repentant, when they are handed over to the demons of a dark, lonely room. I live a remarkably normal, even blessed life by day, thank God, but indiscretions decades old still haunt my sleep.
A number a years ago, I asked a young therapist, “Why am I any different from Jimmy Swaggart?”
His answer was deceptively simple. “Because you asked the question.”
Ten years ago, his answer satisfied me. Now, at best, I will give it a yes-and-no. From all outward appearances, Jimmy Swaggart seems as arrogant as ever. In the short run, he turned his public penitence into a cottage industry, a cash-cow. But, I do not know what happens to his spirit in the still of the night, what thoughts torment his soul when his yes-men and minions and well-greased bureaucracy fold their tents for the day. Only Jimmy knows. And God.
And so may it be of an entire laundry list of seemingly arrogant heavy hitters – from Bill Clinton to his moral counselor Jesse Jackson – who strut their stuff and acknowledge their indiscretions like burps along the road, if at all. We don’t know about the ghoulies and ghosties that haunt and humble them when silence replaces the intoxicating attention they receive by day. All we know is that we don’t get a public show of their humiliation for the sake of satisfying our own salacious viewing pleasure. Only they know. And God.
You’ll say that these egomaniacs don’t give a hoot about indiscretions once their spinmeisters get on top of damage control. Yet, I refuse to believe that they are all such malignant narcissists that somewhere deep inside the shame of wrongful behavior does not bring torment to their souls.
Once we get into the business of souls, that’s God’s turf, not ours. God sees. We don’t. God knows. We don’t. We look at God’s errant children by day and think that they have yet to get their comeuppance. We wish that God would do something to humble them, but what we really wish is that we could be in the audience to see it happen. Little do we realize that only God knows who among us has already been humbled by a taste of hell’s bitterness. Only God knows who has already been served more than his share of humility alone in the fearsome still of the night.
God will have his way with Martha Stewart, or so I’ve been told. Her time in jail simply did not bring her enough public humiliation. We expect God to settle these kinds of scores.
Martha’s incarceration was a masterful PR conspiracy. Someone had to know that the schadenfreude, that prurient exhilaration we little people feel when arrogant bigshots are caught with their pants down, would be negligible. Making an example of her would not apparently prompt much contrition nor would it result in anyone learning to be more humble, not her fans, her toadies and certainly not Martha. The message was simply that her ordeal made Martha more Martha.
Perhaps this is where we wish God would step in: All we ask, God, is that You see to it that the haughty learn a little humility. But, what an arrogant, audacious expectation of God that would be, inferring that we were so un-humble as to instruct God who needed His humbling.
No, Martha does not give the public appearance of contrition. But, what we will never know are the nightmares that may, or may not, haunt her when she is surrounded by darkness, alone in the middle of the night, her head spinning with a cacophony of self-vilifying thoughts. You may say that she will never suffer those moments of humility, because she is too busy planning tomorrow’s financial coup. And you may be right. Only God and Martha know. Just as it should be.
We never know what awaits the seemingly unrepentant and even the repentant, when they are handed over to the demons of a dark, lonely room. I live a remarkably normal, even blessed life by day, thank God, but indiscretions decades old still haunt my sleep.
A number a years ago, I asked a young therapist, “Why am I any different from Jimmy Swaggart?”
His answer was deceptively simple. “Because you asked the question.”
Ten years ago, his answer satisfied me. Now, at best, I will give it a yes-and-no. From all outward appearances, Jimmy Swaggart seems as arrogant as ever. In the short run, he turned his public penitence into a cottage industry, a cash-cow. But, I do not know what happens to his spirit in the still of the night, what thoughts torment his soul when his yes-men and minions and well-greased bureaucracy fold their tents for the day. Only Jimmy knows. And God.
And so may it be of an entire laundry list of seemingly arrogant heavy hitters – from Bill Clinton to his moral counselor Jesse Jackson – who strut their stuff and acknowledge their indiscretions like burps along the road, if at all. We don’t know about the ghoulies and ghosties that haunt and humble them when silence replaces the intoxicating attention they receive by day. All we know is that we don’t get a public show of their humiliation for the sake of satisfying our own salacious viewing pleasure. Only they know. And God.
You’ll say that these egomaniacs don’t give a hoot about indiscretions once their spinmeisters get on top of damage control. Yet, I refuse to believe that they are all such malignant narcissists that somewhere deep inside the shame of wrongful behavior does not bring torment to their souls.
Once we get into the business of souls, that’s God’s turf, not ours. God sees. We don’t. God knows. We don’t. We look at God’s errant children by day and think that they have yet to get their comeuppance. We wish that God would do something to humble them, but what we really wish is that we could be in the audience to see it happen. Little do we realize that only God knows who among us has already been humbled by a taste of hell’s bitterness. Only God knows who has already been served more than his share of humility alone in the fearsome still of the night.
February 27, 2005
THE GREAT GOOSE CONFLAGRATION OF 2005 (2/25/05)
Somewhere, I have a picture of family sitting at a long table in our backyard, waiting as my father cooked hotdogs on a primitive grill – a “feuer-topf” (fire-pot), as my mother called it – that we had purchased at the drugstore. It was simple fare, but memorably surrounded by extraordinary potato salad and garlicky pickles.
What happens, though, when a prodigal son strays too far from the values of his childhood? He moves to suburbia and purchases a twelve-foot grill, supercharged by jet propellant, blasting to 1600 degrees in 2.5 minutes. He is no longer daddy in a faux-toque. He is a nuclear engineer at his control panel.
I am that prodigal son. I have become proficient in grilling steaks, fish, poultry. I have even succeeded at shoving a beer can up a chicken’s derrière and grilling it upright, so it looks like it’s begging for life.
But, when did I stray too far? I have it on Sinaitic authority that it was when I attempted to cross the line between grilling and smoking. I almost paid with my life. It was swift. It was a precognition of Hades. It made me scream for my sainted parents to cradle me in their arms.
My own blast-furnace was equipped with a smoker-box. The allurement was irresistible. I had heard through my culinary meanderings that smoked goose was the apex of charcuterie. Kosher goose is hard to find, but I had one airlifted from Brooklyn. Early the next morning, the hickory chips were well soaked and thick blue-gray smoke filled the chamber. The recalcitrant goose would not stand upright, so I laid him flat. Then I swabbed the victim with a brandied brown-sugar glaze. Two big mistakes.
I had yet to offer my morning prayers, but I was already smug with self-adulating metaphors: I am Moses leading the Israelites toward the pillar of Divine smoke. I am Aaron the High Priest gaining his people’s atonement, presenting a cloud of incense in the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur.
Moments later, I peeked out the window. I beheld the altar engulfed in flames and realized that this was not a replay of God’s fiery approval of Elijah’s offerings on Mount Carmel. Having flaunted basic safety rules, a fire extinguisher was nowhere in sight. I grabbed a towel and beat the fire out from around the poor goose, which by now looked like bowling ball.
But, the orange glow persisted from the bowels of the console that housed 20 gallons of propane, poised to bring an ignominious end to me, the house and . . . the goose. I fell and twisted my back. Linda came in from her workout and ran for the fire extinguisher, which only she knew was in the deepest recesses of the garage. I promised her a week of no manic outbursts for not regaling me in a litany of “Now have you learned your lesson?”
The goose, you ask? I refused to let his death be in vain. So, I scrubbed him with a Teflon pad until he looked like a refugee from a Siberian gulag. I roasted him to a mahogany-brown. To my amazement, the meat was succulent and delightfully smoky.
That night, I thanked my parents in heaven for one more chance to return to the humble virtue of grilling hotdogs on a feuer-topf from the corner drugstore. I promised that I would get rid of my turbo-charged model; maybe try to sell it to some guy from NASA, who already knows what it’s like to be blasted into another galaxy. I assured them that the closest I’d come to smoked-anything would be lox and bagels.
To this I finally heard my mother respond, “Sometimes a piece of sable is also nice.” Then and only then did I know that once again everything was right with the world. The Prodigal Son had returned.
Somewhere, I have a picture of family sitting at a long table in our backyard, waiting as my father cooked hotdogs on a primitive grill – a “feuer-topf” (fire-pot), as my mother called it – that we had purchased at the drugstore. It was simple fare, but memorably surrounded by extraordinary potato salad and garlicky pickles.
What happens, though, when a prodigal son strays too far from the values of his childhood? He moves to suburbia and purchases a twelve-foot grill, supercharged by jet propellant, blasting to 1600 degrees in 2.5 minutes. He is no longer daddy in a faux-toque. He is a nuclear engineer at his control panel.
I am that prodigal son. I have become proficient in grilling steaks, fish, poultry. I have even succeeded at shoving a beer can up a chicken’s derrière and grilling it upright, so it looks like it’s begging for life.
But, when did I stray too far? I have it on Sinaitic authority that it was when I attempted to cross the line between grilling and smoking. I almost paid with my life. It was swift. It was a precognition of Hades. It made me scream for my sainted parents to cradle me in their arms.
My own blast-furnace was equipped with a smoker-box. The allurement was irresistible. I had heard through my culinary meanderings that smoked goose was the apex of charcuterie. Kosher goose is hard to find, but I had one airlifted from Brooklyn. Early the next morning, the hickory chips were well soaked and thick blue-gray smoke filled the chamber. The recalcitrant goose would not stand upright, so I laid him flat. Then I swabbed the victim with a brandied brown-sugar glaze. Two big mistakes.
I had yet to offer my morning prayers, but I was already smug with self-adulating metaphors: I am Moses leading the Israelites toward the pillar of Divine smoke. I am Aaron the High Priest gaining his people’s atonement, presenting a cloud of incense in the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur.
Moments later, I peeked out the window. I beheld the altar engulfed in flames and realized that this was not a replay of God’s fiery approval of Elijah’s offerings on Mount Carmel. Having flaunted basic safety rules, a fire extinguisher was nowhere in sight. I grabbed a towel and beat the fire out from around the poor goose, which by now looked like bowling ball.
But, the orange glow persisted from the bowels of the console that housed 20 gallons of propane, poised to bring an ignominious end to me, the house and . . . the goose. I fell and twisted my back. Linda came in from her workout and ran for the fire extinguisher, which only she knew was in the deepest recesses of the garage. I promised her a week of no manic outbursts for not regaling me in a litany of “Now have you learned your lesson?”
The goose, you ask? I refused to let his death be in vain. So, I scrubbed him with a Teflon pad until he looked like a refugee from a Siberian gulag. I roasted him to a mahogany-brown. To my amazement, the meat was succulent and delightfully smoky.
That night, I thanked my parents in heaven for one more chance to return to the humble virtue of grilling hotdogs on a feuer-topf from the corner drugstore. I promised that I would get rid of my turbo-charged model; maybe try to sell it to some guy from NASA, who already knows what it’s like to be blasted into another galaxy. I assured them that the closest I’d come to smoked-anything would be lox and bagels.
To this I finally heard my mother respond, “Sometimes a piece of sable is also nice.” Then and only then did I know that once again everything was right with the world. The Prodigal Son had returned.
February 15, 2005
THE TWO-HEAVEN DOCTRINE (2/15/05)
As usual, I was wedged between the preacher and the Imam in front of a World Religions class. We were doing our best to make our religions intelligible to a bunch of somnolent juniors and seniors. The kids perked up only at “Who goes to heaven?” The minister averred that only Christians do. The Imam was equally sure that only Muslims do. The only thing of which both were certain is that Jews don’t. I mustered the courage to say that Jews believe that all righteous people go to heaven. Surprisingly, a ripple of applause fluttered through the class.
Among mainstream Christians, I have never been taunted for my unsaved-ness, neither from the pulpit, nor from personal friends nor colleagues. But when I channel-surf on Sunday mornings, I hear my damnation flow forth from Fundamentalist pulpits like a mighty stream. Some Fundamentalists, knowing that I am a rabbi, have the inquisitiveness to raise the issue face-to-face. Though I understand their motives, I honor their integrity and explain where Judaism stands on the issue of heaven. My intent, I tell them, is not to delegitimize Christianity, but to establish the validity of my own faith.
My patience is short-circuited, though, by the countless times that I have had a Fundamentalist close an encounter with “I’ll miss you in heaven.” Most recently, I was blessed by this lament from a man who had just told me that Dr. King was a “womanizin’ comm-o-nist.” Atypical for me, I had the wit to respond, “Frankly, Chuck, I’ve already seen enough of you down here on earth!”
In my momentary rage, I impulsively always want to jump into a theological spitting match. Here’s what I ache to say:
“Maybe its you Fundamentalists who have this idea of heaven all wrong. Maybe heaven isn’t a place where doctrine trumps deed. Maybe we’ve been dupes to empower you to define heaven and become its gatekeepers. Maybe the measure of who gets through the pearly gates has to do with the content of ones character, not ones beliefs. Maybe you’re the ones not going to heaven unless you have lived righteous lives, no matter what you believe.”
Then I calm down. No one, I say to myself, is out to delegitimize Fundamentalism. Instead, I have arrived at a theological proposition that is not nearly so rancorous but just as radical:
I have come to believe that there are two heavens. The Fundamentalist heaven is a parochial place (or “state”) defined by faith in a set of doctrines, central to which is the redemptive power of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The broader heaven is the realm of souls who have lived righteous lives on earth. Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi made the assertion even more succinctly: The righteous person is one whose inclination to do good triumphs over his impulse to do evil. For most of us, certainly for me, the struggle is exhausting and unending. Will I go to heaven? Every day, every hour, is a new test. Does it require faith? Certainly. Faith in God’s word that good is to be found in acting on God’s mandate. Faith that God desires our upward climb, not our perfection.
Hence, the question is not “Are you going to heaven?” but “To which heaven are you going?” I do have my prejudices. God knows that there are many saintly men and women that the two heavens would share. But, too many souls I yearn to encounter are excluded from Fundamentalist heaven because of their doctrinal shortcomings. If I should merit going to heaven, some of the sages that I would never meet in Fundamentalist heaven would include Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Bahullah, Dr. King, Maimonides, Aristotle and Pope John XXIII. I’d also like to meet some of the saints who came before the “Big Split,” the ones who Fundamentalist preachers never seem to invoke, like Nicholas of Mitra, Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, Ignatius Loyola.
Knowing that I might encounter the guy who said that Dr. King was a “womanizin’ comm-o-nist” and the preachers who reassured me that I was going to hell, let me concisely state the two-heaven doctrine: You have your heaven, and we have ours. We are satisfied to be in ours. If you are satisfied to be in yours, God bless you. I am willing to take my chances and never feel that any other justification is due.
As usual, I was wedged between the preacher and the Imam in front of a World Religions class. We were doing our best to make our religions intelligible to a bunch of somnolent juniors and seniors. The kids perked up only at “Who goes to heaven?” The minister averred that only Christians do. The Imam was equally sure that only Muslims do. The only thing of which both were certain is that Jews don’t. I mustered the courage to say that Jews believe that all righteous people go to heaven. Surprisingly, a ripple of applause fluttered through the class.
Among mainstream Christians, I have never been taunted for my unsaved-ness, neither from the pulpit, nor from personal friends nor colleagues. But when I channel-surf on Sunday mornings, I hear my damnation flow forth from Fundamentalist pulpits like a mighty stream. Some Fundamentalists, knowing that I am a rabbi, have the inquisitiveness to raise the issue face-to-face. Though I understand their motives, I honor their integrity and explain where Judaism stands on the issue of heaven. My intent, I tell them, is not to delegitimize Christianity, but to establish the validity of my own faith.
My patience is short-circuited, though, by the countless times that I have had a Fundamentalist close an encounter with “I’ll miss you in heaven.” Most recently, I was blessed by this lament from a man who had just told me that Dr. King was a “womanizin’ comm-o-nist.” Atypical for me, I had the wit to respond, “Frankly, Chuck, I’ve already seen enough of you down here on earth!”
In my momentary rage, I impulsively always want to jump into a theological spitting match. Here’s what I ache to say:
“Maybe its you Fundamentalists who have this idea of heaven all wrong. Maybe heaven isn’t a place where doctrine trumps deed. Maybe we’ve been dupes to empower you to define heaven and become its gatekeepers. Maybe the measure of who gets through the pearly gates has to do with the content of ones character, not ones beliefs. Maybe you’re the ones not going to heaven unless you have lived righteous lives, no matter what you believe.”
Then I calm down. No one, I say to myself, is out to delegitimize Fundamentalism. Instead, I have arrived at a theological proposition that is not nearly so rancorous but just as radical:
I have come to believe that there are two heavens. The Fundamentalist heaven is a parochial place (or “state”) defined by faith in a set of doctrines, central to which is the redemptive power of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The broader heaven is the realm of souls who have lived righteous lives on earth. Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi made the assertion even more succinctly: The righteous person is one whose inclination to do good triumphs over his impulse to do evil. For most of us, certainly for me, the struggle is exhausting and unending. Will I go to heaven? Every day, every hour, is a new test. Does it require faith? Certainly. Faith in God’s word that good is to be found in acting on God’s mandate. Faith that God desires our upward climb, not our perfection.
Hence, the question is not “Are you going to heaven?” but “To which heaven are you going?” I do have my prejudices. God knows that there are many saintly men and women that the two heavens would share. But, too many souls I yearn to encounter are excluded from Fundamentalist heaven because of their doctrinal shortcomings. If I should merit going to heaven, some of the sages that I would never meet in Fundamentalist heaven would include Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Bahullah, Dr. King, Maimonides, Aristotle and Pope John XXIII. I’d also like to meet some of the saints who came before the “Big Split,” the ones who Fundamentalist preachers never seem to invoke, like Nicholas of Mitra, Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, Ignatius Loyola.
Knowing that I might encounter the guy who said that Dr. King was a “womanizin’ comm-o-nist” and the preachers who reassured me that I was going to hell, let me concisely state the two-heaven doctrine: You have your heaven, and we have ours. We are satisfied to be in ours. If you are satisfied to be in yours, God bless you. I am willing to take my chances and never feel that any other justification is due.
February 02, 2005
A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR THE TABLE
Food can be a tempestuous mistress. I always treat my paramour with unconditional love. She tempts me, rouses my senses, then deceives me and leaves me to languish on Hades’ threshold.
The macabre dance begins innocently, even joyously. She beckons me to an orgy. Now, no one in orgiastic flagrante delicto calls it an “orgy.” In my vernacular, the euphemism for a food orgy is “for the table.” It usually convenes at New York’s quintessential Jewish dining establishment, the Second Avenue Deli, surrounded by family and friends. They love the food. I am enthralled. I look at the long list of appetizers and want them all. Do they want to share some, I ask? No, they’ve ordered quite enough already.
Then I make my treacherous offer: “How about if I order some ‘for the table’?” Laughter. They know that the question is purely rhetorical. Moments later, arrayed in front of me are plates and bowls of the most delectable and toxic chopped liver, kishke in gravy, kasha varnishkes, chicken fricassee, farfel, gefilte fish, tzimmes, matzo ball and mushroom-barley soups, accompanied by a stack of rye bread and a pot of emerald-green pickles.
“Please join me!” I beckon them. Joey and Ben may take a forkful, but they know that my offering is gratuitous. None of this preprandial fare “for the table” deters me from the main event, a sandwich as high as Haman’s gallows of corned beef, pastrami and chopped liver . . . and an order of French fries.
By dinner’s end, everyone else is ready for a stroll around Rockefeller Center. I am ready to hang from Haman’s gallows. But after the acute gastritis subsides, oh, the memories. And does it stop me from ordering “for the table” on our next soiree? You guess.
But once it almost did. I had eaten myself stuporous so many times that the Malach Ha-Moves did not pass over on the night of the Seder. Surrounded by the entire family, I collapsed from pancreatitis, which brings excruciating pain. More critically it can impair a variety of other organs, the damage from which I suffer to this day. Had I not received immediate heroic treatment, Chad Gadya would have ended one verse too soon.
When I awoke, still groggy from my narcotic cocktail, my mother, Linda, three kids, two step-kids, and two kids-in-law were surrounding my bed. My mother wept. I was feeble, but I still had a little of my wit: “How did they let all of you into ICU?” Pause. “Ah, I get it. This must be what they call the deathbed scene.” At this, the nurse administered another knockout punch.
Weeks later, I asked my mother if after that episode everyone was upset. “Oh no,” she said. “When we got home, it was time for lunch. So we pulled everything milchig out of the refrigerator and ate like it was going out of style. Joey said that you would have loved it, because you would have had so much food in front of you that we brought out exclusively ‘for the table’!”
Food can be a tempestuous mistress. I always treat my paramour with unconditional love. She tempts me, rouses my senses, then deceives me and leaves me to languish on Hades’ threshold.
The macabre dance begins innocently, even joyously. She beckons me to an orgy. Now, no one in orgiastic flagrante delicto calls it an “orgy.” In my vernacular, the euphemism for a food orgy is “for the table.” It usually convenes at New York’s quintessential Jewish dining establishment, the Second Avenue Deli, surrounded by family and friends. They love the food. I am enthralled. I look at the long list of appetizers and want them all. Do they want to share some, I ask? No, they’ve ordered quite enough already.
Then I make my treacherous offer: “How about if I order some ‘for the table’?” Laughter. They know that the question is purely rhetorical. Moments later, arrayed in front of me are plates and bowls of the most delectable and toxic chopped liver, kishke in gravy, kasha varnishkes, chicken fricassee, farfel, gefilte fish, tzimmes, matzo ball and mushroom-barley soups, accompanied by a stack of rye bread and a pot of emerald-green pickles.
“Please join me!” I beckon them. Joey and Ben may take a forkful, but they know that my offering is gratuitous. None of this preprandial fare “for the table” deters me from the main event, a sandwich as high as Haman’s gallows of corned beef, pastrami and chopped liver . . . and an order of French fries.
By dinner’s end, everyone else is ready for a stroll around Rockefeller Center. I am ready to hang from Haman’s gallows. But after the acute gastritis subsides, oh, the memories. And does it stop me from ordering “for the table” on our next soiree? You guess.
But once it almost did. I had eaten myself stuporous so many times that the Malach Ha-Moves did not pass over on the night of the Seder. Surrounded by the entire family, I collapsed from pancreatitis, which brings excruciating pain. More critically it can impair a variety of other organs, the damage from which I suffer to this day. Had I not received immediate heroic treatment, Chad Gadya would have ended one verse too soon.
When I awoke, still groggy from my narcotic cocktail, my mother, Linda, three kids, two step-kids, and two kids-in-law were surrounding my bed. My mother wept. I was feeble, but I still had a little of my wit: “How did they let all of you into ICU?” Pause. “Ah, I get it. This must be what they call the deathbed scene.” At this, the nurse administered another knockout punch.
Weeks later, I asked my mother if after that episode everyone was upset. “Oh no,” she said. “When we got home, it was time for lunch. So we pulled everything milchig out of the refrigerator and ate like it was going out of style. Joey said that you would have loved it, because you would have had so much food in front of you that we brought out exclusively ‘for the table’!”
January 27, 2005
"CHOOSE LIFE": AN APT RALLYING CRY FOR WHICH SIDE OF THE DEBATE?
The formidable anti-abortion forces here in South Carolina recently suffered a considerable setback of symbolism. The Supreme Court let stand a Federal Appellate Court ruling that the motto “Choose Life” could not be inscribed on license plates, primarily because it offered no counterpoint motto for the pro-choice advocates. Knowing the religio-political climate of South Carolina, the anti-abortion folks having their way is only a matter of time.
All this provokes a question that should have been raised with the appearance of the first placard: Whose motto is “Choose Life” anyways?
“Choose Life,” despite its association with anti-abortion advocates, may be an even more apt guidepost for we who are circumspectly pro-choice. Both sides of the debate would do well to consider the meaning of “Choose Life” in its original Biblical context. It is the signature of an exhortation in Deuteronomy 30 that crystallizes the doctrine of free will:
Our existence is a showdown of choices, good versus evil, life versus death. God’s word must guide our path. But, each individual at a moral crossroads must assess all motives, ramifications and alternatives, then choose and accept the consequences. One should be prejudiced to choices that support life, for example, not to terminate a pregnancy for capricious reasons or without thoughtful guidance from trusted clergy, mentors and family members. One must, however, understand “life” in its Biblical sense as that which brings ultimate blessing, not suffering and degradation.
That is the classical Jewish exegesis of “Choose Life,” the one, by the way, that Jesus likely heard from his rabbinic teachers.
Venerated religious traditions, Judaism and many Protestant denominations among them, maintain that a fetus is not a living being (at most “potential life”) at the moment of conception. Thus, in a pluralistic society, “Choose Life” is a mandate for the individual with proper guidance – not the pastor, legislature or Supreme Court – to decide and live with the implications.
Our role as community – particularly the religious community – must be to aid in making enlightened, God-worthy choices. It is not impose our will and strip the individual of what many bona fide ethical traditions understand as her Biblically-ordained right to choose.
“Choose Life” is an apt rallying cry. Would those who proclaim it only truly understand it.
The formidable anti-abortion forces here in South Carolina recently suffered a considerable setback of symbolism. The Supreme Court let stand a Federal Appellate Court ruling that the motto “Choose Life” could not be inscribed on license plates, primarily because it offered no counterpoint motto for the pro-choice advocates. Knowing the religio-political climate of South Carolina, the anti-abortion folks having their way is only a matter of time.
All this provokes a question that should have been raised with the appearance of the first placard: Whose motto is “Choose Life” anyways?
“Choose Life,” despite its association with anti-abortion advocates, may be an even more apt guidepost for we who are circumspectly pro-choice. Both sides of the debate would do well to consider the meaning of “Choose Life” in its original Biblical context. It is the signature of an exhortation in Deuteronomy 30 that crystallizes the doctrine of free will:
Our existence is a showdown of choices, good versus evil, life versus death. God’s word must guide our path. But, each individual at a moral crossroads must assess all motives, ramifications and alternatives, then choose and accept the consequences. One should be prejudiced to choices that support life, for example, not to terminate a pregnancy for capricious reasons or without thoughtful guidance from trusted clergy, mentors and family members. One must, however, understand “life” in its Biblical sense as that which brings ultimate blessing, not suffering and degradation.
That is the classical Jewish exegesis of “Choose Life,” the one, by the way, that Jesus likely heard from his rabbinic teachers.
Venerated religious traditions, Judaism and many Protestant denominations among them, maintain that a fetus is not a living being (at most “potential life”) at the moment of conception. Thus, in a pluralistic society, “Choose Life” is a mandate for the individual with proper guidance – not the pastor, legislature or Supreme Court – to decide and live with the implications.
Our role as community – particularly the religious community – must be to aid in making enlightened, God-worthy choices. It is not impose our will and strip the individual of what many bona fide ethical traditions understand as her Biblically-ordained right to choose.
“Choose Life” is an apt rallying cry. Would those who proclaim it only truly understand it.
January 24, 2005
THE GEFILTE FISH CABAL
Our grandmothers lorded their superiority over us by declaring that we could never master the complexities of gefilte fish, as though they alone held the secrets of the Holy Grail. It wasn’t so much that Grandma refused to share her “a little this, a little that” recipe. She simply put me off with a look that said, “Why bother? It’s too hard. You’d never get it anyways.”
Even as my culinary forays became more adventurous and I dabbled in the intricacies of pate, ceviche and paella, her posthumous “hands off” admonition chilled my desire for experimentation. The nonpareil ivory, sweet-savory gefilte fish at the venerable Second Avenue Deli, however, enticed me into taking my chances with the impossible. But, which fish to use? I reminded myself of a furor that nearly tore out family apart:
Grandma, with whom I shared a bedroom until I left for college, had lived in Chicago since 1906. She had produced boatloads of gefilte fish, all of which was snow-white, because of the pristine fish of the Great Lakes. One day in 1966, Father announced that the family was moving to San Francisco. As reality set in, Grandma agreed to survey the offerings at Fisherman’s Wharf. She sniffed and put on her most dour face: “It isn’t white like Chicago fish. Feh, it looks like it came from the ocean.” Nonetheless, she reluctantly acquiesced to making one pot of gefilte fish, which was as delicious as always. She, however, invoked every Yiddish anathema she knew and swore to never again make “that ugly brown fish” for the rest of her life.
Despite Grandma’s curses and damnations, I ventured into the murkiest of waters and attempted to make gefilte fish with salmon, the least expensive kosher fish available around here. “Pink gefilte fish?” I hear you saying. Wrong. By some mystical alchemy, when simmered to perfection, salmon-based gefilte fish turns, OK, not snowy white, but an entirely tolerable shade of ecru. Go figure.
I opt for gefilte fish that is on the sweetish side, something else for which Grandma would disown me. Livaks simply don’t. It would infer that I was a Galitzianer sympathizer, and we all know about them . . .
So you see, now I have gained entrée into the secret society and debunked the myth that that only our bubbehs had the intuition to make edible gefilte fish. The feat has gained me a modicum of recognition not only within the family, but also even among a few respected chefs, who have sampled my wares under the alias of quenelles des saumons. One young chef from the bayous of Louisiana, where a Yiddishe ponim is rarely seen, however, instantly exclaimed, “Hey, you can’t fool me! That’s gefilte fish! Where’s the horseradish?”
This did not deter the other chefs from asking for my recipe. But now that I had been initiated into the Gefilte Fish Cabal, you may be sure of what I answered them: “Why bother? It’s too hard. You’d never get it anyways. Now go back to your bouillabaisse, and leave gefilte fish to God’s Elect!”
Our grandmothers lorded their superiority over us by declaring that we could never master the complexities of gefilte fish, as though they alone held the secrets of the Holy Grail. It wasn’t so much that Grandma refused to share her “a little this, a little that” recipe. She simply put me off with a look that said, “Why bother? It’s too hard. You’d never get it anyways.”
Even as my culinary forays became more adventurous and I dabbled in the intricacies of pate, ceviche and paella, her posthumous “hands off” admonition chilled my desire for experimentation. The nonpareil ivory, sweet-savory gefilte fish at the venerable Second Avenue Deli, however, enticed me into taking my chances with the impossible. But, which fish to use? I reminded myself of a furor that nearly tore out family apart:
Grandma, with whom I shared a bedroom until I left for college, had lived in Chicago since 1906. She had produced boatloads of gefilte fish, all of which was snow-white, because of the pristine fish of the Great Lakes. One day in 1966, Father announced that the family was moving to San Francisco. As reality set in, Grandma agreed to survey the offerings at Fisherman’s Wharf. She sniffed and put on her most dour face: “It isn’t white like Chicago fish. Feh, it looks like it came from the ocean.” Nonetheless, she reluctantly acquiesced to making one pot of gefilte fish, which was as delicious as always. She, however, invoked every Yiddish anathema she knew and swore to never again make “that ugly brown fish” for the rest of her life.
Despite Grandma’s curses and damnations, I ventured into the murkiest of waters and attempted to make gefilte fish with salmon, the least expensive kosher fish available around here. “Pink gefilte fish?” I hear you saying. Wrong. By some mystical alchemy, when simmered to perfection, salmon-based gefilte fish turns, OK, not snowy white, but an entirely tolerable shade of ecru. Go figure.
I opt for gefilte fish that is on the sweetish side, something else for which Grandma would disown me. Livaks simply don’t. It would infer that I was a Galitzianer sympathizer, and we all know about them . . .
So you see, now I have gained entrée into the secret society and debunked the myth that that only our bubbehs had the intuition to make edible gefilte fish. The feat has gained me a modicum of recognition not only within the family, but also even among a few respected chefs, who have sampled my wares under the alias of quenelles des saumons. One young chef from the bayous of Louisiana, where a Yiddishe ponim is rarely seen, however, instantly exclaimed, “Hey, you can’t fool me! That’s gefilte fish! Where’s the horseradish?”
This did not deter the other chefs from asking for my recipe. But now that I had been initiated into the Gefilte Fish Cabal, you may be sure of what I answered them: “Why bother? It’s too hard. You’d never get it anyways. Now go back to your bouillabaisse, and leave gefilte fish to God’s Elect!”
January 19, 2005
THE "GOOD CHURCHGOING KIDS" OF ABU GHRAIB (1/19/05)
Regardless of the kind of force one believes is justified by the exigencies of war, we should still agree on two self-evident conclusions regarding the soldiers who guarded the prisoners at Abu Ghraib:
First, the perverse acts ordered by the guards of their captives were intolerable to any code of military conduct. Second, the sadistic delight to which graphic photos attest betrays any sense of military honor and moral high road for which American values stand.
To the nation’s credit, justice is being done. Whether it will reach high enough in the official chain of command is doubtful. But, culpability has another chain of command: Upbringing. Reports float about that superiors deliberately placed guards in Abu Ghraib who were credulous, poorly schooled, undiscerning. Whether or not they were selected by the “dumb hillbilly” stereotype, this we know: They were certainly compliant, eager to get in their whacks, and not too smart.
We should be careful, though, before we blame a generally corrupt society for the sins at Abu Ghraib. The guards did not come from big, brassy cities, but from insular little communities where moral influences are well confined – parents, teachers, preachers.
Call it vocational prejudice or a projection of my own pastoral mea culpas, but the preacher holds the position of paramount moral persuasiveness, particularly in such insular communities. Residents revere “that old-time religion,” unquestioning compliance with pronouncements from the pulpit and the mantra, "God said it. I believe it. That settles it." These ensure a pastoral mandate that outflanks that of parents, teachers, even the football coach, because it flows from God’s inerrant word and holds the keys to heaven and hell.
Whether this is good or bad is entirely in the preacher’s hands. He can choose to teach that the Bible’s essence is justice, mercy and humility. Both testaments are replete with role models of compassion and courage of convictions. Jesus had much to say to Christian believers about gratuitous violence and disposition to an enemy, as did the prophets of the Jewish Bible. In an inward community, these messages preached unambiguously by a pastor imputed with Divine authority would immunize kids from growing up to perform the perversities of Abu Ghraib and then gloat over them. God said it. I believe it. That settles it.
I cannot tell you much more about their upbringing, but I can tell you this: If, as friends and family are saying, the Abu Ghraib guards were a bunch of “good, churchgoing kids,” the pulpit betrayed them. Strive though it may, the pulpit will never have the influence to prevent every incident of promiscuity, shoplifting and getting crazy at college. But, it has flunked every test known to humanity if “good churchgoing kids” have not internalized the message that forcing captives at gunpoint to perform fellatio while mugging for the camera makes you a barbarian who has mortally desecrated every word of God’s teaching.
I have a sicker feeling that even if the “kids” were listening, their preachers were not preaching. What, then, filled up those precious minutes on Sunday? My conjecture: Diatribes against people and forces “out there.” Biblical and mental gymnastics. Condemnation of lapses in doctrine, not behavior. Xenophobia. Laundry lists of people going to hell. Denunciations of anything modern. Too much wrath. Not enough compassion. Too much triumphalism. Not enough social justice.
This conjecturing is not hard, but it is painful, because I abused too many opportunities in my own pulpit with the same pastoral breach of trust. I, too, frequently failed to use the Word of God for its only worthy purpose, to steer my flock, particularly its kids, out of disaster, not into it. If I attribute to myself any success, it does not come from parishioners complimenting me on a “great” sermon, but from a congregant who now and then thanks me years later for a bit of moral guidance he drew from my pulpit.
As one trial gives way to the next, we who look for big pictures reach for our scorecards to list the myriad influences that led to the giddy atrocities at Abu Ghraib. As much as I would like to be among them, I know that at the deepest level of moral development, it was their hometown preachers who most betrayed these “good churchgoing kids.” At best, they failed to immunize them against barbarism. At worst, their preaching recast the “enemies” of whom Jesus, et al, understandingly spoke into a bunch of subhuman “towelheads.”
Regardless of the kind of force one believes is justified by the exigencies of war, we should still agree on two self-evident conclusions regarding the soldiers who guarded the prisoners at Abu Ghraib:
First, the perverse acts ordered by the guards of their captives were intolerable to any code of military conduct. Second, the sadistic delight to which graphic photos attest betrays any sense of military honor and moral high road for which American values stand.
To the nation’s credit, justice is being done. Whether it will reach high enough in the official chain of command is doubtful. But, culpability has another chain of command: Upbringing. Reports float about that superiors deliberately placed guards in Abu Ghraib who were credulous, poorly schooled, undiscerning. Whether or not they were selected by the “dumb hillbilly” stereotype, this we know: They were certainly compliant, eager to get in their whacks, and not too smart.
We should be careful, though, before we blame a generally corrupt society for the sins at Abu Ghraib. The guards did not come from big, brassy cities, but from insular little communities where moral influences are well confined – parents, teachers, preachers.
Call it vocational prejudice or a projection of my own pastoral mea culpas, but the preacher holds the position of paramount moral persuasiveness, particularly in such insular communities. Residents revere “that old-time religion,” unquestioning compliance with pronouncements from the pulpit and the mantra, "God said it. I believe it. That settles it." These ensure a pastoral mandate that outflanks that of parents, teachers, even the football coach, because it flows from God’s inerrant word and holds the keys to heaven and hell.
Whether this is good or bad is entirely in the preacher’s hands. He can choose to teach that the Bible’s essence is justice, mercy and humility. Both testaments are replete with role models of compassion and courage of convictions. Jesus had much to say to Christian believers about gratuitous violence and disposition to an enemy, as did the prophets of the Jewish Bible. In an inward community, these messages preached unambiguously by a pastor imputed with Divine authority would immunize kids from growing up to perform the perversities of Abu Ghraib and then gloat over them. God said it. I believe it. That settles it.
I cannot tell you much more about their upbringing, but I can tell you this: If, as friends and family are saying, the Abu Ghraib guards were a bunch of “good, churchgoing kids,” the pulpit betrayed them. Strive though it may, the pulpit will never have the influence to prevent every incident of promiscuity, shoplifting and getting crazy at college. But, it has flunked every test known to humanity if “good churchgoing kids” have not internalized the message that forcing captives at gunpoint to perform fellatio while mugging for the camera makes you a barbarian who has mortally desecrated every word of God’s teaching.
I have a sicker feeling that even if the “kids” were listening, their preachers were not preaching. What, then, filled up those precious minutes on Sunday? My conjecture: Diatribes against people and forces “out there.” Biblical and mental gymnastics. Condemnation of lapses in doctrine, not behavior. Xenophobia. Laundry lists of people going to hell. Denunciations of anything modern. Too much wrath. Not enough compassion. Too much triumphalism. Not enough social justice.
This conjecturing is not hard, but it is painful, because I abused too many opportunities in my own pulpit with the same pastoral breach of trust. I, too, frequently failed to use the Word of God for its only worthy purpose, to steer my flock, particularly its kids, out of disaster, not into it. If I attribute to myself any success, it does not come from parishioners complimenting me on a “great” sermon, but from a congregant who now and then thanks me years later for a bit of moral guidance he drew from my pulpit.
As one trial gives way to the next, we who look for big pictures reach for our scorecards to list the myriad influences that led to the giddy atrocities at Abu Ghraib. As much as I would like to be among them, I know that at the deepest level of moral development, it was their hometown preachers who most betrayed these “good churchgoing kids.” At best, they failed to immunize them against barbarism. At worst, their preaching recast the “enemies” of whom Jesus, et al, understandingly spoke into a bunch of subhuman “towelheads.”
January 12, 2005
MY FRIEND IS IN GAN EDEN, AND I'M FEELING BETTER, MYSELF
Sometimes the necessity of intercity travel gives birth to passion for cuisine less than haute. Drive anywhere in these parts and a highway exit will lead you nowhere if not to Waffle House.
Waffle House is the essence of good-ol’-boy South. No waitress will be hired unless she has less than four teeth. No one has ever slashed my tires for acting like a Yankee, but let there be no doubt: Waffle House is sanctum sanctorum of Billy-Bob-Betty-Sue-big-hair-pickup-truck-molasses-accented-bubba . . . let all others keep silent.
A sure sign you’re a Yankee is to order a waffle at Waffle House. People you can trust order eggs, grits, toast, and ham, bacon or sausage. What kind of cabal, I conjecture, has placed a hechsher on the margarine that accompanies the toast? My invariable choice is an uncomely blob of scrambled eggs and American cheese. With each forkful I dip in a puddle of ketchup, I wonder why my generation thought it needed LSD.
Nearing the end of her life, my mother’s once-robust appetite had dwindled. As her dear friend Ed Krick lingered near death, she stopped eating almost entirely. On our way back to Greenville after the funeral, I begged her to take something. No. Simply not hungry. But I was. So, I pulled off the highway and headed for Waffle House. Mother dawdled over a crust of toast as I embarked on my cheese-and-eggs. The next second, though, I spied her poking her fork at my eggs and taking a tentative taste. “An oysnam!” (Beyond words!) she declared. In a moment, she vacuumed the plate clean. She was aglow. “We must do this again!” she announced. She called over each waitress, kissed her and tipped her $5.
Sated and refreshed, we hit the road again. A few moments later, my tire blew out. Story of my life. I swore and ranted and cursed. Mother, as always, though, knew how to silence me: “Maishe Chayim, my friend Edward is safe in Gan Eden. I fressed for the first time in days. I will not let anything ruin my day. Leiben zol (Long live) Waffle House!”
Sometimes the necessity of intercity travel gives birth to passion for cuisine less than haute. Drive anywhere in these parts and a highway exit will lead you nowhere if not to Waffle House.
Waffle House is the essence of good-ol’-boy South. No waitress will be hired unless she has less than four teeth. No one has ever slashed my tires for acting like a Yankee, but let there be no doubt: Waffle House is sanctum sanctorum of Billy-Bob-Betty-Sue-big-hair-pickup-truck-molasses-accented-bubba . . . let all others keep silent.
A sure sign you’re a Yankee is to order a waffle at Waffle House. People you can trust order eggs, grits, toast, and ham, bacon or sausage. What kind of cabal, I conjecture, has placed a hechsher on the margarine that accompanies the toast? My invariable choice is an uncomely blob of scrambled eggs and American cheese. With each forkful I dip in a puddle of ketchup, I wonder why my generation thought it needed LSD.
Nearing the end of her life, my mother’s once-robust appetite had dwindled. As her dear friend Ed Krick lingered near death, she stopped eating almost entirely. On our way back to Greenville after the funeral, I begged her to take something. No. Simply not hungry. But I was. So, I pulled off the highway and headed for Waffle House. Mother dawdled over a crust of toast as I embarked on my cheese-and-eggs. The next second, though, I spied her poking her fork at my eggs and taking a tentative taste. “An oysnam!” (Beyond words!) she declared. In a moment, she vacuumed the plate clean. She was aglow. “We must do this again!” she announced. She called over each waitress, kissed her and tipped her $5.
Sated and refreshed, we hit the road again. A few moments later, my tire blew out. Story of my life. I swore and ranted and cursed. Mother, as always, though, knew how to silence me: “Maishe Chayim, my friend Edward is safe in Gan Eden. I fressed for the first time in days. I will not let anything ruin my day. Leiben zol (Long live) Waffle House!”
January 06, 2005
AMBER, GLORIA, MATT, OPRAH, HAVE YOU LEFT NO SENSE OF DECENCY? (1/5/05)
How do we get Amber and her like to go back to giving rubdowns, silenced by the shame of their amorality? How do we temper our lust for salacious tales that lionize self-righteous tartlets and their handlers, instead of relegating them to disrepute? What of something so elementary as a sense of decency?
In 1954, Joseph Welch toppled Senator Joseph McCarthy’s reign of terror with just two sentences: "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" Today, that indignation would likely be noted nowhere but the Congressional Record.
I am inclined to give Amber every benefit of the doubt. Perhaps she will grow into a sense of decency. The deck does not seem stacked in that direction: an affair with a married man, two kids out of wedlock, hubba-hubba with a guy she’d met just a couple hours earlier . . . all by her mid-twenties.
The first step in the right direction would have been to stay home and shut up, or at least not to let opportunists convince her and a hungry public that she is a hero. If this were heroism at all, it was strictly the titillating faux-bravado of The Survivor. In the course of bailing out of a relationship grown sick and dangerous, she found the most secure route of escape. We ought also suppose that the police enlightened her that continued silence might implicate her as an accessory after the fact. Within hours, Ms. Allred was by her side, spinning a not-too-smart, but very lucky, young woman into a bona fide hero, postured for all the benefits of celebrity.
And so it has become: Amber, Gloria, Dateline, Matt, Oprah, books, movies, bling-bling, tearful talk of threadbare emotions, pensive questions self-righteously asked and answered. And in the end, all the self-righteousness is about licking a lucrative bone from the brutal murder of a sweet young thing and the baby in her womb.
I offer these self-revelatory words with reticence, but perhaps they will soften the edge of preachiness to my indignation and counsel:
I have done things in my adulthood of which I am deeply ashamed. Perhaps some of you can identify with that. I doubt that any of my foibles would rise/sink to the level of a bestseller or an hour on Oprah. Yet, they harmed my reputation and caused grief that I well deserved. They have, however, left me more circumspect and with a tremendous desire to help, not hinder, people’s lives.
Despite my ability to move on, there will always remain in me the shrapnel of irreparable shame, something that will forever prevent me from thinking of myself in heroic terms, something that will counterbalance my grandiosity with penitent humility. If I ever write a tell-all book, you may be sure that it would be a cautionary tale with a large chunk of proceeds going to charitable causes.
Amber, the moment you took that tumble with Scott, like it or not, celebrity came a-knocking. Opportunistic folks knew you were a cash cow, so they convinced you and the dimwitted public, if not themselves, that you were a hero. The illusion was money in the bank, and life’s all illusion anyways, right?
In so many ways you are still a kid, so maybe you couldn’t be expected to have had the smarts, rectitude, resistance, and discretion to choose a wiser path. But this I do know: You never really had a chance. If you had, your book, like mine, should have been a cautionary tale. You might have bared your soul about the irretrievable consequences of adultery, unwed motherhood and first-date promiscuity before you’re 30. The majority of its proceeds should have gone to charity. The keynote should have been, “This is one hell of a way to become a celebrity.” That might have been the surest way to stop the craziness, not stoke its flames.
Amber, maybe you ought to just sit in time-out for a couple of years, like I did, to figure out how to make the next half-century of your life a little more honorable. Gloria, Oprah, the Dateline bunch, and their schadenfreude-hyped minions, let me ask you: At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
Ech, they’ll probably want to call their lawyers before they answer.
How do we get Amber and her like to go back to giving rubdowns, silenced by the shame of their amorality? How do we temper our lust for salacious tales that lionize self-righteous tartlets and their handlers, instead of relegating them to disrepute? What of something so elementary as a sense of decency?
In 1954, Joseph Welch toppled Senator Joseph McCarthy’s reign of terror with just two sentences: "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" Today, that indignation would likely be noted nowhere but the Congressional Record.
I am inclined to give Amber every benefit of the doubt. Perhaps she will grow into a sense of decency. The deck does not seem stacked in that direction: an affair with a married man, two kids out of wedlock, hubba-hubba with a guy she’d met just a couple hours earlier . . . all by her mid-twenties.
The first step in the right direction would have been to stay home and shut up, or at least not to let opportunists convince her and a hungry public that she is a hero. If this were heroism at all, it was strictly the titillating faux-bravado of The Survivor. In the course of bailing out of a relationship grown sick and dangerous, she found the most secure route of escape. We ought also suppose that the police enlightened her that continued silence might implicate her as an accessory after the fact. Within hours, Ms. Allred was by her side, spinning a not-too-smart, but very lucky, young woman into a bona fide hero, postured for all the benefits of celebrity.
And so it has become: Amber, Gloria, Dateline, Matt, Oprah, books, movies, bling-bling, tearful talk of threadbare emotions, pensive questions self-righteously asked and answered. And in the end, all the self-righteousness is about licking a lucrative bone from the brutal murder of a sweet young thing and the baby in her womb.
I offer these self-revelatory words with reticence, but perhaps they will soften the edge of preachiness to my indignation and counsel:
I have done things in my adulthood of which I am deeply ashamed. Perhaps some of you can identify with that. I doubt that any of my foibles would rise/sink to the level of a bestseller or an hour on Oprah. Yet, they harmed my reputation and caused grief that I well deserved. They have, however, left me more circumspect and with a tremendous desire to help, not hinder, people’s lives.
Despite my ability to move on, there will always remain in me the shrapnel of irreparable shame, something that will forever prevent me from thinking of myself in heroic terms, something that will counterbalance my grandiosity with penitent humility. If I ever write a tell-all book, you may be sure that it would be a cautionary tale with a large chunk of proceeds going to charitable causes.
Amber, the moment you took that tumble with Scott, like it or not, celebrity came a-knocking. Opportunistic folks knew you were a cash cow, so they convinced you and the dimwitted public, if not themselves, that you were a hero. The illusion was money in the bank, and life’s all illusion anyways, right?
In so many ways you are still a kid, so maybe you couldn’t be expected to have had the smarts, rectitude, resistance, and discretion to choose a wiser path. But this I do know: You never really had a chance. If you had, your book, like mine, should have been a cautionary tale. You might have bared your soul about the irretrievable consequences of adultery, unwed motherhood and first-date promiscuity before you’re 30. The majority of its proceeds should have gone to charity. The keynote should have been, “This is one hell of a way to become a celebrity.” That might have been the surest way to stop the craziness, not stoke its flames.
Amber, maybe you ought to just sit in time-out for a couple of years, like I did, to figure out how to make the next half-century of your life a little more honorable. Gloria, Oprah, the Dateline bunch, and their schadenfreude-hyped minions, let me ask you: At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
Ech, they’ll probably want to call their lawyers before they answer.
December 29, 2004
"AND HERE I THOUGHT YOU PEOPLE DIDN'T EAT PORK!"
My mother was a saint, but she was a miserable cook. We called her salmon loaf “the unmentionable,” and her turkey crumbled to the touch.
But there were exceptions. She did make a fine breast of veal. It was overcooked like everything else, but its layer of fat ensured that the meat remained juicy and carcinogenic.
As I ventured out on my own culinary odyssey, I discovered that veal breast had many of the same attributes as – forgive me – pork. So why not experiment? I glazed and roasted it until it shimmered. I contemplated the infamy of becoming the rabbi who perfected the elusive “kosher ham.”
One Friday afternoon as I was removing a gleaming veal breast from the oven, my minister friend Randy strolled in unannounced. He spied the roast and bellowed, “Cut me a slice of that, wouldya?” He savored the forkful and exploded, “Hot damn!” the Southern equivalent of “Wunderbar!” Then, “Cut me another slice!” And another. Pointing to the potato stuffing, “How about some of that?” “Hot damn!” After polishing off the roast, Randy raved, “And here I thought you people didn’t eat pork!” My kids wound up with salami sandwiches, but ever since that afternoon, we never call veal breast anything but “Hot Damn!”
As time has gone by, my quasi-porcine veal breast has become much enjoyed and requested by family and friends. Just last weekend I served one fully regaled, in honor of Linda’s mother’s birthday – apricot-brandy glaze, succulent meat stuffed with potatoes, carrots and onions, and a port-wine sauce. I would be hard-pressed to call it the pinnacle of my repertoire, but I do get a kick out of presenting this magnificently scored, glazed and studded glatt-kosher roast as if it were a scene from Good Housekeeping.
One day I may achieve the Cordon Bleu and even snooker them into believing that my veal is “the other white meat.” But, deep inside I will be beholden to a Jewish mother who, forever reminding me that I am a son of Israel, will declare from heaven, “Maishe Chayim, the kelbene brustel and potato kugel were delicious. But port-wine sauce? Feh. Goyishe nachas. And what is this ‘hot damn’ mishugas?”
My mother was a saint, but she was a miserable cook. We called her salmon loaf “the unmentionable,” and her turkey crumbled to the touch.
But there were exceptions. She did make a fine breast of veal. It was overcooked like everything else, but its layer of fat ensured that the meat remained juicy and carcinogenic.
As I ventured out on my own culinary odyssey, I discovered that veal breast had many of the same attributes as – forgive me – pork. So why not experiment? I glazed and roasted it until it shimmered. I contemplated the infamy of becoming the rabbi who perfected the elusive “kosher ham.”
One Friday afternoon as I was removing a gleaming veal breast from the oven, my minister friend Randy strolled in unannounced. He spied the roast and bellowed, “Cut me a slice of that, wouldya?” He savored the forkful and exploded, “Hot damn!” the Southern equivalent of “Wunderbar!” Then, “Cut me another slice!” And another. Pointing to the potato stuffing, “How about some of that?” “Hot damn!” After polishing off the roast, Randy raved, “And here I thought you people didn’t eat pork!” My kids wound up with salami sandwiches, but ever since that afternoon, we never call veal breast anything but “Hot Damn!”
As time has gone by, my quasi-porcine veal breast has become much enjoyed and requested by family and friends. Just last weekend I served one fully regaled, in honor of Linda’s mother’s birthday – apricot-brandy glaze, succulent meat stuffed with potatoes, carrots and onions, and a port-wine sauce. I would be hard-pressed to call it the pinnacle of my repertoire, but I do get a kick out of presenting this magnificently scored, glazed and studded glatt-kosher roast as if it were a scene from Good Housekeeping.
One day I may achieve the Cordon Bleu and even snooker them into believing that my veal is “the other white meat.” But, deep inside I will be beholden to a Jewish mother who, forever reminding me that I am a son of Israel, will declare from heaven, “Maishe Chayim, the kelbene brustel and potato kugel were delicious. But port-wine sauce? Feh. Goyishe nachas. And what is this ‘hot damn’ mishugas?”
December 27, 2004
MANY THANKS FOR A ROTTEN HOLIDAY SEASON
Let me be among the first to extend my thanks to the misanthropes on the Right and the Left and their minions for making this a rotten holiday season. Thanks for hijacking the one time of the year that we could still be unshakably assured of a little solace and peace.
To the Left: You roasted Christmas on an open fire with such a vengeance that you nearly charred it beyond recognition. To the Right: Not once did the angelic cry, “goodwill to men,” interfere with your accusation of a vast anti-Christian cabal. It could not help but make my coreligionists a little queasy about anti-Semitic intimations.
Thank you both.
To the Left: I do not remember the ACLU sponsoring one “Seasons Greetings” float to replace the “Merry Christmas” floats that you so ardently worked to ban from the Holiday parades on Main Street. To the Right: I do not remember El Rushbo once breaking into a few bars of It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year or Angels We Have Heard on High to modulate his attacks on the miscreants who would denigrate the birth of the Prince of Peace.
Thank you both.
Thanks to all you creeps, we have been gifted with the worst-case scenario holiday season.
What about the best-case scenario? Well how about letting the much touted “reason for the season” once and forever bring both sides of idiotic disputes to the contrite realization that we are piddling away our best energies acting like bunch of spoiled babies hiding behind self-righteousness and legal precedent. A pipe dream, you say? You’re probably right. The lasting capacity to transcend the defamation of Christmas, Chanukah and Kwanzaa belongs to those beloved few individuals who can retain their focus so clearly on "the reason" that they are impervious to the humbug. What else is new?
If not the best-case scenario, what might we reasonably expect? Perhaps we should revisit a word that has become foreign to our vocabulary: truce.
Cynics see truce as hypocrisy: temporary peace with an enemy on the assumption that after a respite, the strife will start all over again. Yet, at its best, a truce can plant a seed of the possibility of peace, which invariably begins with enemies recognizing their mutual humanity. If nothing else, a truce during a time of celebration bespeaks a level of civility that distinguishes humanity from animals.
The spontaneous Christmas Eve truce along the Western Front in 1914 has become so legendary that it is the subject of books and doctoral dissertations for its historical significance and psycho- and socio-dynamics. Snoopy and the Red Baron even declared their own personal truce. In three decades as a rabbi, I have seen many nasty divorces bode ill for a wedding or a Bar or Bat Mitzvah. I have always counseled, and often negotiated, a truce between the warring factions. In the instances that the families have complied, the civility and goodwill have been universally celebrated, while those that declared no truce left only disgust.
So here we have Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanzaa, the season, the reason, the possibility of respite, a little joy, a little less crankiness, a little more “let nothing you dismay.” In a word, it is a season ripe for a truce. We cry bitter tears that we know that we cannot speak of even momentary “truce” with al-Qaeda. That and similar traits are precisely what make them savage beasts, beneath humanity, incapable of civility.
But then there is home. We do claim the crown of humanity and civility. Yet, we enjoyed no holiday truce, no respite. Instead, a continued bombardment of ugly, shrill rhetoric on both sides of every issue from people who have the easiest access to the microphone: politicians, Hollywood types, media squawkers. Not one voice Left or Right, not even among the spotlight-grabbing clergy, pleading for a truce, a seasonal restraint from invective and counter-invective.
During the truce, talk radio would probably not garner the same market share. Celebrity preachers would not have O’Reilly’s bully pulpit for the gospel of hate. The ACLU would have to go back to actually defending someone’s civil rights. Popularity and advertising might temporarily decline.
The American audience does have quite an appetite for bloody red meat, eh? But, maybe for a while we can fill up on grandma’s treats, kick back contently and – even knowing that the War of Left and Right will kick up again on January 2 – enjoy at least a few weeks of peace and goodwill. Call it an illusion. I call it a start.
Let me be among the first to extend my thanks to the misanthropes on the Right and the Left and their minions for making this a rotten holiday season. Thanks for hijacking the one time of the year that we could still be unshakably assured of a little solace and peace.
To the Left: You roasted Christmas on an open fire with such a vengeance that you nearly charred it beyond recognition. To the Right: Not once did the angelic cry, “goodwill to men,” interfere with your accusation of a vast anti-Christian cabal. It could not help but make my coreligionists a little queasy about anti-Semitic intimations.
Thank you both.
To the Left: I do not remember the ACLU sponsoring one “Seasons Greetings” float to replace the “Merry Christmas” floats that you so ardently worked to ban from the Holiday parades on Main Street. To the Right: I do not remember El Rushbo once breaking into a few bars of It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year or Angels We Have Heard on High to modulate his attacks on the miscreants who would denigrate the birth of the Prince of Peace.
Thank you both.
Thanks to all you creeps, we have been gifted with the worst-case scenario holiday season.
What about the best-case scenario? Well how about letting the much touted “reason for the season” once and forever bring both sides of idiotic disputes to the contrite realization that we are piddling away our best energies acting like bunch of spoiled babies hiding behind self-righteousness and legal precedent. A pipe dream, you say? You’re probably right. The lasting capacity to transcend the defamation of Christmas, Chanukah and Kwanzaa belongs to those beloved few individuals who can retain their focus so clearly on "the reason" that they are impervious to the humbug. What else is new?
If not the best-case scenario, what might we reasonably expect? Perhaps we should revisit a word that has become foreign to our vocabulary: truce.
Cynics see truce as hypocrisy: temporary peace with an enemy on the assumption that after a respite, the strife will start all over again. Yet, at its best, a truce can plant a seed of the possibility of peace, which invariably begins with enemies recognizing their mutual humanity. If nothing else, a truce during a time of celebration bespeaks a level of civility that distinguishes humanity from animals.
The spontaneous Christmas Eve truce along the Western Front in 1914 has become so legendary that it is the subject of books and doctoral dissertations for its historical significance and psycho- and socio-dynamics. Snoopy and the Red Baron even declared their own personal truce. In three decades as a rabbi, I have seen many nasty divorces bode ill for a wedding or a Bar or Bat Mitzvah. I have always counseled, and often negotiated, a truce between the warring factions. In the instances that the families have complied, the civility and goodwill have been universally celebrated, while those that declared no truce left only disgust.
So here we have Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanzaa, the season, the reason, the possibility of respite, a little joy, a little less crankiness, a little more “let nothing you dismay.” In a word, it is a season ripe for a truce. We cry bitter tears that we know that we cannot speak of even momentary “truce” with al-Qaeda. That and similar traits are precisely what make them savage beasts, beneath humanity, incapable of civility.
But then there is home. We do claim the crown of humanity and civility. Yet, we enjoyed no holiday truce, no respite. Instead, a continued bombardment of ugly, shrill rhetoric on both sides of every issue from people who have the easiest access to the microphone: politicians, Hollywood types, media squawkers. Not one voice Left or Right, not even among the spotlight-grabbing clergy, pleading for a truce, a seasonal restraint from invective and counter-invective.
During the truce, talk radio would probably not garner the same market share. Celebrity preachers would not have O’Reilly’s bully pulpit for the gospel of hate. The ACLU would have to go back to actually defending someone’s civil rights. Popularity and advertising might temporarily decline.
The American audience does have quite an appetite for bloody red meat, eh? But, maybe for a while we can fill up on grandma’s treats, kick back contently and – even knowing that the War of Left and Right will kick up again on January 2 – enjoy at least a few weeks of peace and goodwill. Call it an illusion. I call it a start.
December 22, 2004
AVENGING THE SOUTH'S "GREAT MISFORTUNATE" AT $3.99 A POUND
So what happens when you’re a rabbi whose congregation decides to lynch you at the very moment your bipolarity rages out of control? You throw caution to the wind, quit your job in a huff and join the ranks of the long-term unemployed.
Stuck at home, I decided to test the hypothesis that I have talent in arts culinaires. I have yet to consult Dr. Freud, but my spirit first gravitated to cured salmon, Scandinavia’s prodigal child, gravlax.
My earlier years were laced with “lox,” not “lax”: oily, smoky, salty. Oh, I had seen gravlax in the deli showcase. But it was expensive, and my mother insisted that it was goyish. Now, though, I had the motivation and – forgive me, Mom – freedom, to sample the allurement of gentile debauchery. Besides, salmon is now the cheapest fish around: $3.99 a pound, with trout at $7.99 and sea bass an outrageous $14.99. Add a cup of salt, sugar, dill, a shot of Stoli, and ones pocketbook need not be raped at Zabar’s for $24.99 a pound.
My results? Superior! Firm yet velvety flesh. Lightly sweet, modulated by the vodka. An earthy undertone of dill. Oily, smoky, salty? Do we still live in the tenements? Alas, its position in the Holy Trinity alongside bagel and cream cheese may be forfeit. My mother was right. It’s not lox. Tres goyish.
But, how much gravlax can one man eat? Slowly I started bringing samples to a few appetizing stores and restaurants around town. Unanimous opinion? Delicious. Unlike any other cured item (including ham, I wondered) in the Greenville market. Soon, I became The Gravlax King of the South Carolina Upstate.
Recently, I popped in on a customer and spied a sign above the showcase displaying my tour de force: “Gravlax: Sweeter and Smoother than Yankee Lox!”
Ah, this is the ultimate benefit to being the Gravlax King in the heart of Dixie, where the Civil War is still called “Our Great Misfortune, the War of Northern Aggression,” and lox is neither Scandinavian nor Jewish, simply “Yankee.” What a delicious irony that a Yankee-rabbi-liberal-antiwar-Democrat has apparently liberated the xenophobic South from the oily, smoky, salty scourge of Northern Aggression. The goyim should only know the truth.
Now on to convincing them that chopped liver is really pate de foie gras . . .
So what happens when you’re a rabbi whose congregation decides to lynch you at the very moment your bipolarity rages out of control? You throw caution to the wind, quit your job in a huff and join the ranks of the long-term unemployed.
Stuck at home, I decided to test the hypothesis that I have talent in arts culinaires. I have yet to consult Dr. Freud, but my spirit first gravitated to cured salmon, Scandinavia’s prodigal child, gravlax.
My earlier years were laced with “lox,” not “lax”: oily, smoky, salty. Oh, I had seen gravlax in the deli showcase. But it was expensive, and my mother insisted that it was goyish. Now, though, I had the motivation and – forgive me, Mom – freedom, to sample the allurement of gentile debauchery. Besides, salmon is now the cheapest fish around: $3.99 a pound, with trout at $7.99 and sea bass an outrageous $14.99. Add a cup of salt, sugar, dill, a shot of Stoli, and ones pocketbook need not be raped at Zabar’s for $24.99 a pound.
My results? Superior! Firm yet velvety flesh. Lightly sweet, modulated by the vodka. An earthy undertone of dill. Oily, smoky, salty? Do we still live in the tenements? Alas, its position in the Holy Trinity alongside bagel and cream cheese may be forfeit. My mother was right. It’s not lox. Tres goyish.
But, how much gravlax can one man eat? Slowly I started bringing samples to a few appetizing stores and restaurants around town. Unanimous opinion? Delicious. Unlike any other cured item (including ham, I wondered) in the Greenville market. Soon, I became The Gravlax King of the South Carolina Upstate.
Recently, I popped in on a customer and spied a sign above the showcase displaying my tour de force: “Gravlax: Sweeter and Smoother than Yankee Lox!”
Ah, this is the ultimate benefit to being the Gravlax King in the heart of Dixie, where the Civil War is still called “Our Great Misfortune, the War of Northern Aggression,” and lox is neither Scandinavian nor Jewish, simply “Yankee.” What a delicious irony that a Yankee-rabbi-liberal-antiwar-Democrat has apparently liberated the xenophobic South from the oily, smoky, salty scourge of Northern Aggression. The goyim should only know the truth.
Now on to convincing them that chopped liver is really pate de foie gras . . .
December 14, 2004
TAKE YOUR MITTS OFF THE CRECHE!
Would you please do me a favor? Stop fooling with Baby Jesus in the village square. And while you’re at it, don’t interrupt the kid singing Silent Night in the holiday pageant.
It’s been years since this rabbi objected to public displays of crèches, menorahs and Kwanzaa symbols. I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU and Anti-Defamation League, yet I am increasingly steamed by the absurdly radicalized efforts backed by court orders to strip Christmas of its Christianity in the American heartland.
Angry folks on both sides of the battle line have missed the boat entirely on how they are trying to justify or protest public displays of religious faith. Falwell, O’Reilly and the alphabet-soup of First Amendment advocacy groups are equally to blame for the most egregious error, focusing the vituperative debate on whether or not America is a “Christian country.” That argument leads to the ultimate conclusion that a majority may strong-arm religious preferences into the public sphere by highly questionable grandfather clause (Benjamin Franklin a Christian?) or mob rule.
We do, however, have a different way of looking at the controversy that might actually resolve the acrimony and grief. It would entail rethinking the dual significance of the means by which each faith articulates its cherished beliefs. There can be no doubt, for example, that a devout Christian sees the crèche as a powerful affirmation of faith. It is, per se, a religious symbol. Yet, for others of us – and dare I say even many Christians – it is an element of holiday décor and culture, one that consecrates the season more than a particular religious event. It need not lose its distinctly religious symbolism for a devout Christian, while adding rich holiday ambiance for the rest of us.
Dare I also say that the distinction often made between a public crèche and a public menorah is a nullity? Yes, the menorah is a beloved symbol of Jewish culture, history and celebration, a charming contribution to the seasonal melting pot. But, when faithful Jews kindle it, we affirm that it is “a commandment sanctified our God.” Thus, the public menorah, too, must be appreciated for both its distinctly religious and celebratory seasonal presence.
Kwanzaa is likewise full of beautiful African culture and symbolism. For many African Americans, however, is not merely cultural, but also an affirmation of faith, that pre-dated slavery and that brings African Americans a unique sense of identity. Should Kwanzaa, too, be denied its dual role as articulation of faith and public contributor to the community’s fabric?
Foolish us. We have already dealt with this inanity and simply do not realize it. The public domain is resplendent with Santa Claus, who for us is just that “jolly old elf.” But, you do not have to be a Church theologian to know that St. Nicholas of Myra is also a consecrated religious figure with his own day in the liturgical calendar and patron to 40+ causes. And the beloved Christmas tree, its source in the idolatry of the Druids? Who out there is shouting, “Pagans!”? Ah, you say, mere symbols that have transcended their sanctified origins? Don’t tell that to a Catholic born on December 6 or your local Wiccan.
My liberalism chokes on these words, but political correctness is a once healthy organism that has grown malignant, as it ventures to bleach once vivid colors out of the public square. Why are we sentenced to hearing sonorous etudes instead of the tumultuous Marching to Zion or The Lord is My Light? And why should the God once enrobed in multi-textured majesty be constricted in a straitjacket of papier-mâché? For fear of offending someone, we wind up offending everyone, or at least inspiring no one. Why aren’t the public thoroughfares the best place for reveling in a rainbow of sanctified symbols at a season consecrated even more by shared visions of peace and goodwill as they are by theological particulars?
When all is done, none of this Christmas hubbub is even vaguely about “majority rules.” To the contrary, it is about mutual appreciation as the sine qua non of a healthy public covenant: The forms and symbols of religious expression that are unique to your faith and mine are the very colors that give lustrous character and dimension to our beloved community. They may be “religious” to you and “cultural” to me, and vice versa, but in the spirit of “peace on earth, goodwill to men” and the beauteous bounty of the season, can’t we both just give a little on this one?
Would you please do me a favor? Stop fooling with Baby Jesus in the village square. And while you’re at it, don’t interrupt the kid singing Silent Night in the holiday pageant.
It’s been years since this rabbi objected to public displays of crèches, menorahs and Kwanzaa symbols. I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU and Anti-Defamation League, yet I am increasingly steamed by the absurdly radicalized efforts backed by court orders to strip Christmas of its Christianity in the American heartland.
Angry folks on both sides of the battle line have missed the boat entirely on how they are trying to justify or protest public displays of religious faith. Falwell, O’Reilly and the alphabet-soup of First Amendment advocacy groups are equally to blame for the most egregious error, focusing the vituperative debate on whether or not America is a “Christian country.” That argument leads to the ultimate conclusion that a majority may strong-arm religious preferences into the public sphere by highly questionable grandfather clause (Benjamin Franklin a Christian?) or mob rule.
We do, however, have a different way of looking at the controversy that might actually resolve the acrimony and grief. It would entail rethinking the dual significance of the means by which each faith articulates its cherished beliefs. There can be no doubt, for example, that a devout Christian sees the crèche as a powerful affirmation of faith. It is, per se, a religious symbol. Yet, for others of us – and dare I say even many Christians – it is an element of holiday décor and culture, one that consecrates the season more than a particular religious event. It need not lose its distinctly religious symbolism for a devout Christian, while adding rich holiday ambiance for the rest of us.
Dare I also say that the distinction often made between a public crèche and a public menorah is a nullity? Yes, the menorah is a beloved symbol of Jewish culture, history and celebration, a charming contribution to the seasonal melting pot. But, when faithful Jews kindle it, we affirm that it is “a commandment sanctified our God.” Thus, the public menorah, too, must be appreciated for both its distinctly religious and celebratory seasonal presence.
Kwanzaa is likewise full of beautiful African culture and symbolism. For many African Americans, however, is not merely cultural, but also an affirmation of faith, that pre-dated slavery and that brings African Americans a unique sense of identity. Should Kwanzaa, too, be denied its dual role as articulation of faith and public contributor to the community’s fabric?
Foolish us. We have already dealt with this inanity and simply do not realize it. The public domain is resplendent with Santa Claus, who for us is just that “jolly old elf.” But, you do not have to be a Church theologian to know that St. Nicholas of Myra is also a consecrated religious figure with his own day in the liturgical calendar and patron to 40+ causes. And the beloved Christmas tree, its source in the idolatry of the Druids? Who out there is shouting, “Pagans!”? Ah, you say, mere symbols that have transcended their sanctified origins? Don’t tell that to a Catholic born on December 6 or your local Wiccan.
My liberalism chokes on these words, but political correctness is a once healthy organism that has grown malignant, as it ventures to bleach once vivid colors out of the public square. Why are we sentenced to hearing sonorous etudes instead of the tumultuous Marching to Zion or The Lord is My Light? And why should the God once enrobed in multi-textured majesty be constricted in a straitjacket of papier-mâché? For fear of offending someone, we wind up offending everyone, or at least inspiring no one. Why aren’t the public thoroughfares the best place for reveling in a rainbow of sanctified symbols at a season consecrated even more by shared visions of peace and goodwill as they are by theological particulars?
When all is done, none of this Christmas hubbub is even vaguely about “majority rules.” To the contrary, it is about mutual appreciation as the sine qua non of a healthy public covenant: The forms and symbols of religious expression that are unique to your faith and mine are the very colors that give lustrous character and dimension to our beloved community. They may be “religious” to you and “cultural” to me, and vice versa, but in the spirit of “peace on earth, goodwill to men” and the beauteous bounty of the season, can’t we both just give a little on this one?
December 02, 2004
THE BITTERSWEET TALE OF AN IMPERFECT SANTA
Lately, I’ve been shopping around for fat guys to play Santa. Long story, but I’ll try to make it brief:
Jewish or not, I got a burn in my belly when I discovered that our mall would allow parents to snap a picture of their kid with Santa only if they first paid to have Santa’s helpers take a suite of “formal” pictures.
Imagine, a kid watching Santa fend off parents like paparazzi all for the cause of filthy lucre. So, I got hacked off at the mall.
What to do? I put together a project called “Laps of Love”: Find a few fat guys to play Santa. Me first. Find a central location. Sit Santa on a throne. Invite folks to bring their kids and their cameras. Let Santa’s helpers give the kids candy, trinkets, cookies and cider while the parents snap away. On the way out, have a bucket to accept contributions for homeless families.
No overhead. No bureaucracy. No profits. All goodies donated. Ah, the spirit of giving. Welcome back.
Now, on to find the Santas. Plenty of fat guys in Greenville County, the home of deep-fried everything, cream-gravied everything, and otherwise healthy vegetables cooked with fatback. A newspaper reporter. A construction foreman. An asthmatic evangelist. A cabbie. My shoemaker. All practicing their ho-ho-ho’s and fattening up at Henry’s BBQ (voted best in the country by Playboy, or so I have been told).
Yesterday I popped in on my shoemaker to confirm his appointed hour, and my eyes beheld another perfect Santa – appropriately rotund, full white beard – hanging around the shoemaker’s shop. Shooting the bull with the shoemaker and his wife, laughing that deep, Santa-esque laugh, having a jolly time.
“Another candidate!” I announced.
“I have your friend the shoemaker playing Santa to raise money for homeless kids. You look like you’d do a perfect job, too. What about it?”
To my surprise, his response brought him to the edge of anger as his voice rose:
“I don’t believe in Santa Claus! I won’t do something like that! It’s all bull****! Kids don’t need that stuff! I never needed it!”
“But,” I sputtered, “it’s to help homeless kids.”
“I told you already! I don’t believe in Santa Claus! It’s all bull****!”
The shoemaker and his wife did not press the issue. Ironic, I thought. I apologized for the intrusion and instinctively looked downward, as you probably would. There I beheld the reason for the unbridled wrath. Both his hands were grotesquely mangled and malformed, an image that would likely scare most little children at their mere sight.
No, he could not play Santa. But, I projected, the rage was more than a day in the making, something etched deeply in his psyche. Kids are cruel, and his own childhood was doubtlessly filled with name-calling, rejected, treated like a freak, unable to throw or bat or fish like the other guys, an otherwise strapping young man unable to make it with the girls, little children fleeing in fear of the bogeyman, unfit for ROTC or army service.
One wonders what compassion or rejection in the world of sixty years ago his own parents, siblings, family and teachers showed him. One also wonders whether in some rural fundamentalist church his defects were not preached as signs of damnation to him or his parents. One wonders whether his little sliver of society – male, 1950’s, Southern, rural – could have offered him a chance encounter with someone(s) sufficiently understanding and compassionate to help him transcend the cruelty and make peace with his disfigurement. Who only knows?
This I do know: The joviality of that fat guy shooting the breeze with the shoemaker was real. It was not the mask of denial. It was the signature of trust that was earned through years of kindness and genuineness. He will, though, probably never make peace with people like me who, even unwittingly, challenge his wholeness. Or is it his masculinity? Or is it the long-touted myth of Southern manhood? He could not, would not, simply hold up a hand and say, “It’s better that I not.” Forever embittered, folks like me and my schemes will forever remain “bull****.”
What, then, can we do for an imperfect Santa? Only wish him well, I guess. And that God surround him with people whom he can trust, those who neither pity him nor deny him his wholeness, but simply have him as their friend.
Lately, I’ve been shopping around for fat guys to play Santa. Long story, but I’ll try to make it brief:
Jewish or not, I got a burn in my belly when I discovered that our mall would allow parents to snap a picture of their kid with Santa only if they first paid to have Santa’s helpers take a suite of “formal” pictures.
Imagine, a kid watching Santa fend off parents like paparazzi all for the cause of filthy lucre. So, I got hacked off at the mall.
What to do? I put together a project called “Laps of Love”: Find a few fat guys to play Santa. Me first. Find a central location. Sit Santa on a throne. Invite folks to bring their kids and their cameras. Let Santa’s helpers give the kids candy, trinkets, cookies and cider while the parents snap away. On the way out, have a bucket to accept contributions for homeless families.
No overhead. No bureaucracy. No profits. All goodies donated. Ah, the spirit of giving. Welcome back.
Now, on to find the Santas. Plenty of fat guys in Greenville County, the home of deep-fried everything, cream-gravied everything, and otherwise healthy vegetables cooked with fatback. A newspaper reporter. A construction foreman. An asthmatic evangelist. A cabbie. My shoemaker. All practicing their ho-ho-ho’s and fattening up at Henry’s BBQ (voted best in the country by Playboy, or so I have been told).
Yesterday I popped in on my shoemaker to confirm his appointed hour, and my eyes beheld another perfect Santa – appropriately rotund, full white beard – hanging around the shoemaker’s shop. Shooting the bull with the shoemaker and his wife, laughing that deep, Santa-esque laugh, having a jolly time.
“Another candidate!” I announced.
“I have your friend the shoemaker playing Santa to raise money for homeless kids. You look like you’d do a perfect job, too. What about it?”
To my surprise, his response brought him to the edge of anger as his voice rose:
“I don’t believe in Santa Claus! I won’t do something like that! It’s all bull****! Kids don’t need that stuff! I never needed it!”
“But,” I sputtered, “it’s to help homeless kids.”
“I told you already! I don’t believe in Santa Claus! It’s all bull****!”
The shoemaker and his wife did not press the issue. Ironic, I thought. I apologized for the intrusion and instinctively looked downward, as you probably would. There I beheld the reason for the unbridled wrath. Both his hands were grotesquely mangled and malformed, an image that would likely scare most little children at their mere sight.
No, he could not play Santa. But, I projected, the rage was more than a day in the making, something etched deeply in his psyche. Kids are cruel, and his own childhood was doubtlessly filled with name-calling, rejected, treated like a freak, unable to throw or bat or fish like the other guys, an otherwise strapping young man unable to make it with the girls, little children fleeing in fear of the bogeyman, unfit for ROTC or army service.
One wonders what compassion or rejection in the world of sixty years ago his own parents, siblings, family and teachers showed him. One also wonders whether in some rural fundamentalist church his defects were not preached as signs of damnation to him or his parents. One wonders whether his little sliver of society – male, 1950’s, Southern, rural – could have offered him a chance encounter with someone(s) sufficiently understanding and compassionate to help him transcend the cruelty and make peace with his disfigurement. Who only knows?
This I do know: The joviality of that fat guy shooting the breeze with the shoemaker was real. It was not the mask of denial. It was the signature of trust that was earned through years of kindness and genuineness. He will, though, probably never make peace with people like me who, even unwittingly, challenge his wholeness. Or is it his masculinity? Or is it the long-touted myth of Southern manhood? He could not, would not, simply hold up a hand and say, “It’s better that I not.” Forever embittered, folks like me and my schemes will forever remain “bull****.”
What, then, can we do for an imperfect Santa? Only wish him well, I guess. And that God surround him with people whom he can trust, those who neither pity him nor deny him his wholeness, but simply have him as their friend.
November 24, 2004
WHEN RAGING TESTOSTERONE BLURS THE LINE BETWEEN LICIT AND ILLICIT AGGRESSION (11/24/04)
How could one not concur with condemning the violence at recent collegiate and professional sporting events? It’s well to remember that they are merely current examples of a deplorable longstanding tradition of game-time beat-em-ups, many involving fans in the stands.
Assessing appropriate sanctions is crucial to treating the symptoms of each incident. If, however, the overarching concern left by such episodes is the influence that boorish, violent role models have on our children, the real scrutiny has yet to begin.
Please start by being realistic: The testosterone level on any playing field could float the Titanic. Moreover, sports like football and basketball are by their very nature aggressor-defender games of conquest. They are, or should be, highly disciplined, symbolic warfare. Nothing wrong with that. That's precisely why they’re so exciting.
Let's admit, then, that it’s incredibly hard in the heat of battle to instinctively discern between legitimate warfare and illicit violence, especially when provoked. How does an aggressive forward facilely flip the switch on and off mid-layup?
Thus, all the more reason that raw killer instinct must be transformed by coaches - with the full support of their bosses and popular culture - into a cadre of highly disciplined players whose physical strength becomes completely subservient to mental clarity and an internalized sense of right and wrong, particularly when temptation is the greatest. The lessons must be intense, persistent, attitude-transforming to the point that they become instinctive, not just a "good sportsmanship" pep talk.
That's what collegiate and pro sports should offer kids about their role models: the picture of a disciplined athlete who is groomed to excel as much by self-control as by physical strength, who knows the difference between a game well played and gratuitous violence. Let the kids also know that the same discipline and self-control that make for athletic greatness on the field make for basic decency once the whistle has been blown.
Years ago, my dad was a drill instructor preparing men to go off to war. His most cautionary words, he told me, were, "Work as hard as you can with the men who are scared, but keep your eyes most closely on the guys who are trigger-happy."
How could one not concur with condemning the violence at recent collegiate and professional sporting events? It’s well to remember that they are merely current examples of a deplorable longstanding tradition of game-time beat-em-ups, many involving fans in the stands.
Assessing appropriate sanctions is crucial to treating the symptoms of each incident. If, however, the overarching concern left by such episodes is the influence that boorish, violent role models have on our children, the real scrutiny has yet to begin.
Please start by being realistic: The testosterone level on any playing field could float the Titanic. Moreover, sports like football and basketball are by their very nature aggressor-defender games of conquest. They are, or should be, highly disciplined, symbolic warfare. Nothing wrong with that. That's precisely why they’re so exciting.
Let's admit, then, that it’s incredibly hard in the heat of battle to instinctively discern between legitimate warfare and illicit violence, especially when provoked. How does an aggressive forward facilely flip the switch on and off mid-layup?
Thus, all the more reason that raw killer instinct must be transformed by coaches - with the full support of their bosses and popular culture - into a cadre of highly disciplined players whose physical strength becomes completely subservient to mental clarity and an internalized sense of right and wrong, particularly when temptation is the greatest. The lessons must be intense, persistent, attitude-transforming to the point that they become instinctive, not just a "good sportsmanship" pep talk.
That's what collegiate and pro sports should offer kids about their role models: the picture of a disciplined athlete who is groomed to excel as much by self-control as by physical strength, who knows the difference between a game well played and gratuitous violence. Let the kids also know that the same discipline and self-control that make for athletic greatness on the field make for basic decency once the whistle has been blown.
Years ago, my dad was a drill instructor preparing men to go off to war. His most cautionary words, he told me, were, "Work as hard as you can with the men who are scared, but keep your eyes most closely on the guys who are trigger-happy."
November 05, 2004
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.
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.
October 21, 2004
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.
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.
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