I'LL GO BALD FOR A GOOD CAUSE

I don't like going bald. In fact, good genes have given me bragging rights to not losing much hair whatsoever. In my sixties, I still have a full head of salt-and-pepper and a full ("too full," Linda would say) beard that is still tinged with the cayenne color of younger days.

So, the choice to voluntarily go bald and beardless is daunting to my vanity. Likewise is the thought of having a head that most closely resembles an oversized honeydew for the four or so months it takes my hair to grow back to fashionable length.

Why, then, tempt fate? The answer is empathy, solidarity. I look at a kid suffering from cancer, and I realize that his or her baldness is not some vain option. It is a price paid in tender years to be spared from a most sinister disease. Dare we even use the word "cured"? With the help of the Almighty and gifted, committed researchers and clinicians, cure is now a daily reality, not an elusive riddle.

I shave my head in unity with those kids for whom a head of hair is a deferred luxury. I shave my head as a conversation piece anytime a person asks a fool such as I why I have made myself look even more foolish. I shave my head because it is precious little I can do to draw complacent people not to avert their eyes, but to look with an open heart upon that suffering little kid.

But, I shave most of all to make money - lots of it. Along with 150+ other Greenvilleans, we will shave ourselves silly, because we find sponsors among benevolent people who know that our baldness is a trigger, a symbol, of deepest compassion for children who have already suffered too much.

We coalesce under the banner of "St. Baldrick's Day," part of an international effort which has raised more than $150 million in the last eleven years, including close to $250,000 right here in the Upstate in the last four. This year we will celebrate St. Baldrick's Day on Sunday, March 18, 1:00-4:00 PM, Downtown next to Larkin's on the River, part of the Peace Center complex. It will truly be a celebration, too. Activities for the kids, shock jocks to keep the party moving, food courtesy of Larkin's. And, of course, six barber chairs to accommodate the 150+ shavees, 15-20% of whom, by the way, are women!

How do you become involved? Become a shavee, of course. Assemble a team. Volunteer. Hold a fundraiser. Sponsor shavees. Don't give until it hurts; give until it feels good! You'll find all the information at www.stbaldricks.org or by calling 864-271-3715.

Shaving my head and beard does a trip on my vanity, I confess. But the price is negligible or less, compared to those precious little kids who lose their hair as the price of their cure. Join me, please, in balding-out for an honorable cause, or generously supporting someone who is.

TEACH US TO NUMBER OUR DAYS . . .

Elsie, Linda's mother, has just died. She had been under hospice care in a nursing home. We knew that the chemo and radiation had lost their efficacy, and that her comfort, "palliation" they call it, was our only priority until death had its way. Her mind had been sharp until the very last, recognizing people, saying "Hi!" and even laughing at an occasional joke. The last days of her life were tragic for the onlookers, but for Elsie they were relatively free of pain, even comforting, surrounded by the ones she loved most.

But, it is not so for everyone in the nursing home. The Alzheimer's unit faces Elsie's corridor. Day after day, the people most severely stricken by the disease are wheeled into the commons area in front of the nurses station. A majority of them stare vacantly into the ether. In a way, they are better off than those who scream or babble or wriggle to get out of their chairs -- still contending with the struggle between wholeness and vacuousness, or so it seems. Every once in a while, a devoted child or spouse comes by to visit a loved one. Most of them speak toward their mom or dad about "normal" everyday things, hoping against hope for a sign of recognition, looking for some awareness in the eyes of their beloved.

A "survivor's disease." That's what they call Alzheimer's. The victim is seemingly impervious, while those nearest and dearest suffer the grief brought about by memories of more vital days -- Dad as Dad. Mom as Mom. This is how we suffered for four years with my father, once upon a time an army colonel, a forensic scientist, a man of letters, relegated to diapers and spoon-feeding by my mother or me. How could a decent man be dealt such injustice?? How could such a devoted wife be put to suffering so much grief?? If any theologian proposes a one-size-fits-all answer to the questions, run in the opposite direction. The ways of God may be inscrutable, but sometimes they are just downright cruel.

Call me narcissistic, but having passed midlife, I do not so much think instinctively of the grief I might suffer at the illness of others. Instead, I have found myself increasingly contemplating how my own possible appointment with Alzheimer's might look. After all, my father and two grandfathers were senile by age 70, just a scant eight years away. I fear my lapses of memory, my inability to find the right word in conversation, the foolish gaffes I commit in doing some trivial task.

I look into their vacant stare and wonder whether that will be my fate a decade from now, their contorted posture in their wheelchairs, their incapacity to recall their children's names, or worse, not even recognize their progeny. I look at them, and I see myself in however many years from now, sapped of my vitality and purported wit, relegated to my own wheelchair and bib at mealtime.

I know what you will tell me: Cherish my days and use them wisely, you would admonish me. Show love and share wisdom before it is too late. Try not to contemplate eventualities over which you have no control. Look positively toward the future. And, of course, you would be right. And, of course, I will do my best. But, none of that diminishes the disquieting feeling that when I behold a person numbed by Alzheimer's, I am looking into a mirror of my own soul.

If there is any escape from that soul-shaking image, it must be in my determination to make today all-meaningful, living honorably, as if there were no more tomorrows to achieve a decent life. So begged the Psalmist, "O Lord, teach us to number our days that we might attain a heart of wisdom." That alone, I am sure, enables us to transcend the fear of senility or of death, itself.

GIVE ELDERS A CHANCE TO SHARE THEIR STORIES AND WISDOM

Max Karelitz just celebrated his 101^st birthday. He is quite a character, still extremely sharp, glib, and articulate. Until a couple of years ago he lived on his own and now resides in an assisted-living facility, requiring amazingly little assistance. He is beyond computer literate, and his emails are always masterpieces.

He is a wellspring of memories, growing up as part of the only Jewish family in Fountain Inn. He regales you with stories of the end of WWI, when the teacher sent all the kids home to get spoons and pans to bang as they marched down Main Street in a triumphal procession.

Then he tells you of his years as the only Jewish student at Clemson, when it was a bona fide military academy, drilling with rifles six days a week in the blazing sun. He recounts with relish the details of his army career as a colonel in WWII, the highlight of which was presiding over the surrender of a Japanese battalion at the War’s end.

He boasts about his children, all of whom are older than I, and talks about the good years in the little town of Fountain Inn, where the Karelitz’s were respected merchants and civic leaders, and where they experienced no anti-Semitism whatsoever. The Jewish life of his childhood was pretty much confined to the tutelage of his mother and attending synagogue in Greenville on holy days and other special occasions.

That’s just the slightest nibble at the rich century that Max has spent brightening the world. I know so many of the stories by dint of conversations that we’ve had over the last 13 years. Then it dawned on me that the children of the community knew little of Max and his fabulous stories. What to do?

I ventured to ask Max if he’d be receptive to being interviewed by my Sunday school teenagers. He was delighted. The kids and I outlined the questions and arranged for a volunteer videographer to film and edit the interview. Need I tell you that the experience was outstanding? The kids soaked up the information and stories, and asked more impromptu questions than were outlined on the script. They were at first astonished, then absorbed, by Max’s elaborate answers. Max, for his part, laughed with them and couldn’t wait for more.

I asked the class what changed and what stayed the same over a century’s time. They agreed that things on the surface had changed, but human nature and values pretty much remained constant. Interesting. They now await the opportunity to screen the interview for the adults and other kids in the congregation. Perhaps others outside Beth Israel would like to view it. Perhaps it can be archived in the History Museum or one of the universities. Clemson? (By the way, Max is on his third Clemson class ring!)

How much more could they and we learn from our elders? How much, indeed?

There are a number of oral-history projects with community seniors in process in the Upstate. I don’t know how many are conducted by young people in their formative years. My guess is that there are relatively few. I’m no curriculum “maven,” but let me recommend that faith communities, regardless of denomination or size, put their kids to the delightful, rewarding task of interviewing their elders. Then let them show the interviews to their congregations and beyond.

The symbiosis, you’ll excuse the cliché, is win-win: Elders being dignified by contributing their insights and wisdom, which we too often deem irrelevant, if only by omission. Kids being enriched and prodded to maturity by the sharing of ideals and values. Adults being engaged in affirming that generations either side of their own have their irreplaceable worth. Generations of a community being united by visions of tomorrow built on the enlightenment of yesterday.

Then, if it isn’t too optimistic, let’s share those interviews with each other, as integral to building what Dr. King referred to as the “Beloved Community.” I want to know the reality of what it was like growing up African American in the Upstate, or for that matter Indian, Catholic, Baptist, or Baha’i. I don’t need to hear only the stories of “great” people, but people who are made great by our simply paying attention to their unique histories and visions.

If there are similar projects going on out there, please let me know about them. If you aren’t making a record of your elders, what are you waiting for? Literally, what are you waiting for? Too much to lose, so much to gain.

AN AGING-OUT LIBERAL’S PAEAN TO TODAY’S PROTESTORS

On the eve of my 62^nd birthday, I have attained another rite of passage into senior-hood. Wednesday, I’ll go into St. Francis to go under the scalpel – actually the laser – to have my prostate reshaped so that nature might more easily take its course.

I don’t fear the transitory pain or the possible aftereffects as much as the symbolism of being just one more once-upon-a-time hippie who now intrepidly clings to the liberalism of his youth. Now, watching a new generation of protestors march for social and economic justice – just as I did decades ago to protest inequality and an unjust war – makes the serendipity all the more ironic.

We are no surer of the purpose and motivations of today’s protestors than our parents’ generation thought of us. But, unlike so many Middle Americans of four-plus decades ago, I am prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt. This, I believe, is the perspective that only an aging-out unrepentant liberal can provide.

Yes, we were naïve back then, too, easily co-opted by the shenanigans of Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, and largely incapable of perceiving the myriad shades of gray in a world that we insisted was stark black-and-white. And sometimes we were downright stupid.
Time has made us less naive. Experience has made us less gullible. Our own need to be understood has made us more understanding. And even our stupidity seems to be abating. However, I am not so much struck by the changes as I am by the ideals and impulses that time and experience have not changed. I think to myself, maybe just a little too smugly, that beyond my shiny new car and a couple of pinstripe suits, there is a lot about 41 years ago for which I do not feel a particular urge to repent. I pray that it will be the same for our kids.
We have, many of us 60’s liberals, turned our bleeding-heart inclinations toward feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, and defending victims of racism and homophobia. We are the ones who are still committed to building bridges between black and white, Jew and Christian, Israeli and Arab, powerful and powerless. We are the ones who still wonder aloud whether it is better for Nazis and Klansmen to march in the open or to be shoved underground. We are the ones who still wonder aloud whether putting even the most hardened criminal to death has any redemptive value, and whether the reality of poverty at our doorstep is any less “real” than the “reality” of “reality TV.”
We are the ones who still have a healthy skepticism of authority and institutions and power and bureaucracy and political manipulation. We are the ones who are sometimes confused and frustrated by our children’s wavy ideals and quizzical causes. Yet, we, unlike our own parents, we are not so abhorring and judgmental of our children’s music, clothing, antics, and vague glimmers of individualism . . . memories of my Dad, who got up and summarily changed channels three notes into the Beatles’ first appearance on Ed Sullivan.
For however stupid we might have been, I still believe that the world is better off for the presence of unrepentant liberals on their collision course with senior citizenship. And so, for the first time in the longest time I cue up my “Sergeant Pepper” album into the player. “I read the news today, oh boy, about a lucky man who made the grade . . . “
Maybe and maybe not.
“Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m 64?”
I think: I am a whole helluva lot closer to 64 than I am to those heady, deliciously naive days of 1970. I live vicariously through images of young protestors whom I watch on the news. Then, I review my pre-op instructions and pop a Flomax, just a bit more sure of all that has changed and all that must somehow, some way, endure.

SAMANTHA

When it was over, they stuck Samantha in the back of my now-grown daughter's closet. Even at 40, it was an ignominious end for a beloved companion. There she laid, floppy ears askew, along with the other castoffs – objects too meaningful to throw away, but too far beyond utilitarian purpose to be more than clutter.

It wasn’t always that way with Samantha. She was the one who greeted our newborn Chanie in her crib when she arrived from the hospital. She was the play-toy of a thousand toddler-fantasies. She was the object of endless childhood cuddling, an accomplice to hours of blissful thumb-sucking. She was a calming bedtime companion.

Forty years ago, Samantha the Dog was plump and soft, plush, bright pink species of stuffed animal, fluffy tail and luxuriant eyelashes. The years of loving wear and tear have not been kind to her, her fur now threadbare and gray, eyes sans lashes, giving her a slumbering look – bedraggled, one would call her.

How could I be such a sop to weep when I first saw her jammed away in the back of the closet? Need it be analyzed? Maybe it just made me feel old. Nah. I already know only too well that I am on a collision course with old age. After all, I am “Zayde” to 9.5 grandchildren

Then maybe this is it: It reminds me of innocent times, nearly a half-century ago, sweet innocence not yet tinged by deceit and cynicism. The innocence of your firstborn holding your finger with a chubby hand or sucking her thumb with Samantha in tow. Guileless youth, when potentials seemed limitless and as yet unsullied by disappointment and failure.

The innocence of my own youth seems to have been, not a lifetime ago, but just the day before yesterday. Now, ragged Samantha is tangible evidence that my adult daughter has also left the innocence of youth to become a successful physician and mother of three.

Chanie will be 40 soon. I thank God I have lived to witness the milestone. I gloat over her academic and professional successes, her idyllic marriage, her beautiful children. But don’t think for a moment that I wouldn’t turn back the clock and regain the innocence that the years and tears and fears have stripped away.

We would play Ring around the Rosie, and all fall down to hugging and laughing and tickling. I would make up the funniest bedtime stories and giggle along with her, Samantha by her side. I would simply be there for her, a real presence in her life, untainted by the abandonment of divorce, the terror of extracting myself from her life by dint of foolish and selfish mistakes. I would do all that and more, if I could only recapture the days of her innocence and mine.

Burying Samantha in the nether reaches of a closet was a rite of passage for all of us, I guess. It likely elicits far less sentiment and gravitas for Chanie at 40 than it does for me at 61. I warn her, though:

One day you, too, will, please God, be 61. You, too, will watch your own children move beyond their childish innocence. You will, please God, beam with pride at what they have gone on to become, as I do of you and Joey and Ben. But you, too, will long – no, ache – for those salad days, and each moment of joy will be tinged by an edge of wistfulness. You will encounter a bit of their childhood flotsam, as I encountered Samantha, and shed a tear, recollecting the innocent times that cannot, despite our pining, be replicated.

Then, remember what Paul Simon wrote:

Time it was and what a time it was,
A time of innocence,
A time of confidences,
Long ago it must be,
I have a photograph,
Preserve your memories,
They’re all that’s left you...

Happy birthday, my sweet baby.

It Could Happen Anywhere

“It could happen anywhere.”

. . . but not in Borough Park. The horrific murder of a little Chasidic boy walking home from day camp brutally burst another myth of urban security: A hyper-insular, self-scrutinizing, self-protective, ultra-orthodox Jewish community should be ipso-facto immune from the ravages of the otherwise mean streets of Brooklyn, NY. Yes, even in Borough Park, so famously provincial, detached, and safe, that it is called “Boruch” Park by wags, the “Blessed” Park. Over the past four-plus decades, I have often strolled the same streets of Borough Park, shopped for books and ritual supplies, eaten kosher pizza and falafel, and remained fascinated, even a tad envious, of its arcane ambiance.

The thought that a responsible Chasidic mama would let her child walk home alone in broad daylight should not infer neglect . . . not in Borough Park. Now, we are rocked by the trauma that it could indeed happen anywhere, and even Chasidic parents need take heed.

But what about the rest of us, living daily with the perils of an ever-increasing hostile environment? Little boys and girls murdered in Florida or South Carolina or the tougher environs elsewhere in Brooklyn, the question asked by the most hypercritical among us will be, “Why does a loving family leave a child vulnerable?”

Sometime a drive-by shooting. A pervert on the prowl. A cracked-open bedroom window. A playground or a bus stop. “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 must a parent be not to lock doors and windows and escort an innocent child down a seemingly safe street, and whatever else it takes?

It must be horrific culture shock to the folks in Friendly Village to need to gird themselves against the heretofore unimaginable: intrusion, molestation, 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 secular anonymity, not knowing, and certainly not cherishing, the value of neighbors and neighborhood. For the “rest of us,” unlike the Chasidim of Borough Park, isolation has not improved solidarity, only denied it. 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.

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 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, ever 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. In a word, act more Chasidic.

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

A FEW OF MY LEAST FAVORITE THINGS

I hear tell that a local church's food bank received an unsolicited carload of packaged kosher items – gefilte fish, matzo meal, chicken soup mix, and the like. The only problem is that the poor folks who habituate the bank will not eat the stuff.

So, the cry went out to the local Jewish community to take it off their hands, the assumption being that the mostly upper-middle-class Jews of Greenville will know how to get rid of the stuff. Anyone want four cases of Manischewitz’s Sweet Old Vienna Style gefilte fish?

Is it that the poor among us have more discerning tastes than we do? Is it that the oddity of the kosher foods makes it suspect of being weird?

I can speak only for myself . . .

My forever-broadening girth stands in testimony to my lust for cuisine. I am crazy about food, period. Cajun. Chinese. Japanese. Vietnamese. Mediterranean. Teutonic. Slavonic. Thai. Korean. And do not forget the wondrous meat-and-three. Yes, yes, I have thus indulged at Greenville’s celebrated Tommy’s Country Ham House . . . but I did not inhale.

Moreover, why should I deny that Eastern European Jewish cuisine is closest to my heart? If you wish to invite me for dinner and make a faithful friend for life, just trot out the chopped liver, the golden soup, the potato kugel, the shimmering brisket and well-marbled flanken. A sip of syrupy Mogen David, Tagamet, a cushy chair, and a moratorium on meaningful conversation until the coma has had time to abate.

But, in deference to the patrons of the food bank in question, there are, a few Jewish foods so nasty that even I will not touch them. Should you really care about me, you will absolutely eschew the following:

Pitscha – Garlic Jell-O. Pitscha is the ooey-gooey remains of boiled calf's foot, enhanced with shreds of meat and copious fresh garlic. Occasionally layered with winking eyes of sliced hardboiled egg. Brown. Granular. Quivery. I have spent 14 years in analysis because my doting Aunt Leah would tie me to a chair and force-feed me pitscha at the tender age of two. Pitscha is also known in our family as "fuss-noga," a German-Russian hybrid name that translates “foot-foot.” And no, a blob of untamed horseradish will not redeem it.

Fisselach – Fisselach are the viscous remains of chicken feet that have been boiled to a fare-thee-well to fortify the chicken soup. My earliest childhood recollections involve the sight of my mother and Aunt Minnie hunched over the kitchen sink sucking the last morsels out of a batch of fisselach. Now that we buy kosher chickens pre-processed and frozen, the homemaker no longer has ready access to fisselach. My mother lamented their departure the way those two old cronies bemoan the demise of the nickel cigar.

Lung-und-Lebber – My Uncle Joe was the world's most lovable miscreant. Time and again he would stray from the family fold. And time and again he would resurface, his face aglow with a sheepishly irresistible grin. Then my grandmother would reel him in with a steaming bowl of lung-und-lebber. It is just what it sounds like – a stew of beef lung and liver. Uncle Joe would bathe in the tureen, but even as a toddler, I instinctively refused even to enter the dining room. I can only imagine that in heaven above my bubbeh is still dishing up lung-und-lebber and miltz to her beloved Yossele. As for me, I would rather be stoking Ming the Merciless’s uranium inferno.

So there. I have now bared my soul and palate to you – what turns me on and what turns me off. And lest I be indicted for this being an exercise in Jewish self-hate, let me remind you that I also cringe at the thought of sea cucumber, squid-ink ravioli, and kidney pie. I have never been forced to a showdown between pitscha and livermush, but somehow I think I would still give my Aunt Leah the benefit of the doubt.

So, whisper sweet words of brisket and potato kugel in my ear, and I will show you a sensory explosion that approaches Vesuvius. C’monna my house and I will – as the Talmud gloats – serve you a foretaste of the World-to-Come. But, for the sake of civility, even I will spare you the Old Vienna from the can.

BIN LADEN’S DEATH CALLS FOR “PASSIONATE AMBIVALENCE”

Is being “passionately ambivalent” an oxymoron? I hope not, because I would implore us to feel precisely that over Bin Laden’s death. My appeal is not so much to the sense of logic as to a gutty passion deep within the soul.

Ambivalent about what? Not over the death of a man who personified inhuman bloodlust, any more than I would be over the death of a Hitler or Stalin. But, yes, ambivalent over rejoicing too raucously and brazenly at the fall of a mortal enemy.

Part of me does want to wrap up in the Stars and Stripes, honk the horn of my (American-built, I have been assured) Honda, and mindlessly hoot, “U-S-A! U-S-A! After all, should there not be some urge, less than prurient, over rejoicing at the downfall of one’s foes? You may count me in as one who would revel at Ground Zero, the White House fence, or even Greenville’s Plaza Bergamo.

But, then you would have to count me out just as assuredly. Maturity, particularly spiritual maturity would, I hope, kick in, admonishing that the downfall of one’s enemy, even when it is deserved, should be an occasion for thoughtful circumspection. Maturity should give birth to the sobering consideration that the blood of even the most evil man on our hands dare not desensitize us to the intrinsic presence of God in every human being. War is bad. Somewhere, a mother weeps. Somewhere a babe is orphaned. Killing to spare more souls from being killed may be a necessity, but let us never forget that it is a necessary evil. It dare not become the occasion for wanton merrymaking.

Before someone starts dancing around with the Bible all wrapped up in the flag, let me thump my own Bible and remind him/her of the magnificent pronouncement in Proverbs 24, Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when he stumbles, do not let your heart rejoice, or the LORD will see and disapprove and turn his wrath away from him. That’s pretty direct and unambiguous.

With Passover just concluded, Jews – who have arguably been among the most vilified of people – have had their own such annual reminder at our Seder. Drops of wine are symbolically poured from the “Cup of Salvation,” signifying that salvation cannot be brought to full fruition so long as blood – even the blood of one’s enemy – is spilled in its pursuit. And, even the Ministering Angels are upbraided for undue rejoicing, according to Rabbinic Passover lore. As the Angels sang their Hallelujahs and Hosannas while the Egyptian charioteers were overpowered by the Red Sea, God Himself stifled their jubilation and bellowed angrily, “The work of My hands is drowning in the Sea. How dare you sing Me songs of praise??” Accordingly, we chant only half the otherwise appropriate Psalms during the latter days of the Festival. Celebrate we do. Rejoice we do. But with neither a full cup nor a full mouth.

Just perhaps this is the cue for how to respond to the death of Bin Laden or the other tyrants whose venom engulfs the world. His respectful burial at sea, over which a Muslim chaplain presided, may have been such for a number of pragmatic geopolitical considerations. But, I would like to believe that it is also a sign that someone’s moral compass was pointing in the right direction. Let us hope that it bespeaks the collective conscience of America in these trouble-fraught times.

I’m raring to burst forth with “I’m proud to be an American!” with all the bluster that Lee Greenwood can muster. But, then let’s cool our jets and consider with good conscience what we might lose of our own souls by gloating too loudly when our enemy stumbles. Solomon was, indeed, the wisest of all men.

IF AMERICA IS A “CHRISTIAN NATION,” WHERE DO I FIT IN?

I hope that I need not spend too much time justifying that I am a good American: I vote. I pay my bills and taxes. I attend my house of worship. I watch the news and read the paper. I do my best to give back to the community. I pledge allegiance to the flag. My dad was a WWII veteran, a colonel. His portrait in full dress uniform proudly hangs over my desk. I’ve been largely aligned with liberal causes, but consider myself an independent thinker, having grown more conservative as I enter my seventh decade.

As I say, I’m a pretty darned good American.

Why, then, does my stomach go wavy every time some politico or talking-head refers to America as a “Christian nation”? Why do I get the willies even more when “Christian nation” becomes a rallying cry to stir up the crowd for a particular social or political agenda, almost invariably conservative? Would someone out there who believes that this is a “Christian nation” please tell me where I, the Jew, fit in?

Please tell me that this is not all about disbelief in the American Jew’s record of patriotism. Only the nuttiest of nuts would maintain that a Jewish cabal is disloyal to flag and nation. No, we have fought America’s battles and served key roles in the commonweal. I suspect no one of consequence questioning Jewish loyalty.

Is it that the Christian and Jewish visions of America are that far askew? Don’t we still believe in the Judeo-Christian ethic, which the hyphen unites, not divides? Can we not hear the echo of Isaiah’s conscience in Jesus’ Beatitudes or the piety of the Chasidic masters in Jesus’ parables?

Do we honestly believe that the Founding Fathers envisioned America as a place of exclusive Christian dominion? The documents that articulate our nation’s principles make that manifestly clear. Do those who wave the flag for a “Christian America” consciously want to disenfranchise us from the American mainstream? Is it that we are not full-fledged residents, but guests at the doorstep of someone else’s country, upon whose benevolence we rely for our welcome? Is this the inference behind the rallying cry of a Palin, Huckabee, Bachmann, the Tea Partiers, et al?

I raise these concerns as questions, not assumptions, not to be coy, but because the Jew’s claim to full partnership in the American mainstream should be above reproach. The burden of proof thus shifts to anyone who asserts that America is a “Christian” nation. Tell us what you mean by “Christian America”? Tell us if and how we fit into your vision and loyalty to our nation’s founding principles. Do we have reason to feel insecure if America were to embrace your attitude of exclusion? Is that your price tag on implementing a conservative social and political agenda? If you say that we are just being hypersensitive, then so be it. Our history of disenfranchisement and worse justifies our hypersensitivity. America has blessed us . . . so far. To be excluded, even by inference, must perforce set off alarms. I’m sure you understand.

Many of our Christian friends deserve this caveat: If I were to believe that all Christians espoused the “Christian America” doctrine, I would have nothing more to discuss. But, I encounter devout Christians every day who believe in the absolute fellowship of Christian and Jew, without equivocation. They live by the virtue of inclusivity, a vision of America that affords not merely citizenship but an equal voice to all its diverse citizenry. They chafe at the idea that the American vision grants supremacy to a particular faith. I cherish their friendship and want to believe that they represent real Christianity.

If, on the other hand, you have been quick to rattle off the shibboleth that America is a “Christian nation,” please think twice and twice again. Is that what you really mean? What does that imply about your Jewish neighbors, not to mention other minority faith communities? Is it just a function of insensitivity? That can be easily remedied. If, though, it is really at the core of your vision of America, perhaps you ought to be more attentive to the call to “liberty and justice for all,” and less to the voices that whip up the crowd with their pious blather.

“IT HURTS. DO WHATEVER YOU CAN.”
My friend Lenny is a big, burly guy. On a good day you would guess that he was one of the Soprano’s. His Brooklyn accent and shrewd, quick wit served him perfectly as he spent his life in the “shmatteh” trade – a clothing buyer for a premier chain of department stores. And tough, too, the way you have to be in a business that exemplifies cut-throat. His upbringing also earned him the scars that make a man either tough or a Woody Allen nebbish, solve a problem or get crushed under its wheels.

All pretenses of Lenny’s gruff burliness were shredded in 2006, when his beloved Judy succumbed to ALS. It is an illness so insidious and indescribable that the most we can do is refer to it in the shadow of its most noteworthy victim, Lou Gehrig’s Disease. The short of it, according to the ALS Association, is that “the progressive degeneration of the motor neurons eventually leads to their death. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed, then die.”

At Holiday time in 2005, Lenny noticed that Judy became winded and struggled up a simple staircase. No, it was really no cause for alarm. But, in short order, Judy’s leg dropped and her breathing became increasingly labored. Impossible to ignore, Judy and Lenny jumped onto the frustrating merry-go-round that so many ALS victims describe, an endless tail-chasing exercise of eight doctors, countless tests, some desperately painful, repeated misdiagnoses and therapies, surgeries, and treatments that proved to be of no avail. By April, Lenny had already to take her to the bathroom, dress her, and feed her. The diagnosis of ALS was finally made. By August, she was bedridden, gagging on her own saliva, virtually immobile. Shortly thereafter, she was placed on a ventilator, never again to breathe on her own, until at her order the breathing tube was removed. She surrendered, finding her eternal peace, just a year after she first stumbled climbing the steps.

According to my count, it has taken me just 150 words to summarize the horrific track of a terrifying disease, each minute of which hangs as an eternity. Were I to write an encyclopedia, I could bring no more comfort to Lenny or thousands like him who watch helplessly as their beloved succumb to ALS. For, there is yet no cure, not even sufficient palliative care, for a syndrome that is so painfully debilitating and inevitably fatal.

Research and faith hold all the cards. Aggressive research is being conducted, the most hopeful being in the realm of stem-cell and gene therapy. How many years and dollars will it take to cure or even allay ALS? Only God knows.

Keeping faith, though, is even trickier – faith in spite of the damning evidence that could so easily stifle faith . . . Faith in the wisdom of researchers who labor selflessly to search out cures and healing. Faith in the benevolence of everyday men and women, who give their voice, time, and wherewithal to promote awareness and research. Faith in each other for the empathy we can share with victims and their loved ones, which says in actions even louder than words, “We are here. We will not abandon you. We will stay by your side and use whatever power we have to share your pain and heartbreak.” Faith, above all, in God, who makes no promise of life without the ravages of disease, but who has invested us with minds and hearts to search out cures and healings, if we would only use them wisely and compassionately.

I once asked Lenny, were he more articulate with his pen, what he would say to his readers. “I don’t even know,” he replied with an edge of resignation atypical for a guy who has made his living speaking forthrightly. “Tell them it hurts,” he said almost as an afterthought. “Tell them to put themselves in my place, or in Judy’s place. Tell them that it’s almost too much to bear. Tell them to do whatever they can.”

Now you’ve heard from Lenny in words more articulate than my own. Don’t let your own silence become deafening. It hurts. Do whatever you can.

CLERGY IS THE KEY TO RENEWED CIVILITY

Perhaps it’s the deterioration of my short-term memory that clears more space for crystal-clear recollection of 50-year-old brain fluff . . . and sometimes matters of greater gravitas.

Take, for example, the sermon that the rabbi delivered on the subzero Sabbath of my Bar Mitzvah in 1962. That day, he preached on the “Coat of Many Colors” episode that nearly culminated in Joseph’s murder at the hands of his own brothers. He underscored that hatred is self-perpetuating and that it so often begins – and ends – with the inability to speak to each other with “civility,” a word he introduced to my vocabulary that day.

Maybe it’s because, as a kid, I was the bullied one. Maybe it’s because my Jewish friends and I were routinely beaten up by the kids at St. Margaret Mary’s on our way to Hebrew school, to the jeers of “Kike!” and “Christ Killer!” Maybe it’s being a child of the ‘60s. Maybe it’s because of images of civil rights demonstrators being fire-hosed, bloodied, and murdered. Maybe it’s because we bore witness to the image of the vital JFK, the symbol of our own nascent vitality, with a bullet to his brain. Whatever the reasons, the lessons of incivility and its results have always occupied an important space in my conscience, especially when I myself have acted uncivilly.

Where and when did our newest wave of incivility start? Rush? Sarah? Bill Maher, Michael Moore? No, incivility is a society-wide breakdown in which altruism is considered naïve and foolish, and basic kindness retreats in the face of xenophobia and me-first-ism.

How do we return society to the civility of more honorable times?

The fact that a preacher, a person of God, brought the lesson home to me deserves special regard. As one who has also worn the mantle of clergy, I daresay that we of the cloth bear more than our share of blame for not stemming the insidious tide of incivility. Deny it or not, no one on earth is more charged to be a role model of civility than clergy. We, after all, are responding to a “calling,” not a “job option.” We are the ones schooled in sacred texts, encountering the Golden Rule and great exhortations to “do justly, love mercy, walk humbly.” We are groomed to interpret those words and virtues through our preaching and teaching. We must acknowledge the power of motivating our constituents through sermon, prayer, pedagogy, and most certainly by example.

To the extent that they renege on that calling, they have become part of the problem. To the extent that they accept the calling, they can become a pivotal force for returning civility to the various paths of daily life.

So, what are you, preacher, preaching about civility from your pulpit, to a congregation that would cherish words that elevate, inform, comfort, stimulate? Even something so simple as remembering to say “please” and “thank you,” can present a profound sermon-worthy message. Are your words carefully measured and delivered with a civil voice and vocabulary? Or, are they mean-spirited and tainted with ill-will?

What sort of model of civility are you, preacher? Are you the moral exemplar your flock and community crave? Do you live out the calling through ways of pleasantness and paths of peace?

What sort of expectations do you have, preacher, of the civility of your flock? Will you tolerate contentiousness from those who conduct the comings-and-goings of your community? Will you require that religious education be punctuated by lessons of civility?

What are your demands of civility in public discourse, preacher, particularly in the arena of politics? Are you benignly acquiescent, to hate speech and xenophobia? Or can you speak out in civil, but holy, indignation when politicians and commentators become ugly and exploitive?

In a word, preacher, how will you make your influence felt to return us to times of civility? Dare I go so far as to propose a coalition of “Clergy for Civility,” to draw on the shared strength of our calling to discuss and implement ways that our communities will be home for all who want to be fair and kind?

Amazing, isn’t it, how some things stick in your head even five decades later. I will forever bear a debt of gratitude to my Rabbi for dedicating my Bar Mitzvah Sabbath to the mandate for civility. Would that our pulpits and preachers all be so wise and blessed . . . and civil.

PROPHECY GONE STALE

Four-and-a-half years have passed, but only now can I begin to talk about it:

Shortly after my departure from the congregation in Greenville, I was recruited to conduct the High Holy Day services for a once sizable, now foundering, synagogue in central Pennsylvania. That in itself is not unusual. Congregations that cannot afford the salary of a fulltime rabbi will often turn to a “freelancer” to lead the worship for major holidays, when attendance is as large and demanding as, say, Christmas Eve and Easter.

Having already conducted High Holy Day services for nearly three decades, I had few opening-night jitters or flop-sweats as my term as fill-in rabbi began. And my new congregation apparently concurred. The fit seemed only too good. They showered Linda and me with hospitality, invited us into their homes, accommodated us as family.

There was talk – much of it self-initiated, I confess – about bringing me up occasionally during the year for special events: retreats, study weekends, holiday celebrations. Maybe, some of us postulated, we could even establish an ongoing relationship of my spending two weeks a month in Pennsylvania to address the more routine pastoral, civic, and institutional needs of the congregation. Perhaps we might even be able to prod the congregation into a renaissance. But, nothing ever came of that, and the idea likely rubbed some of the more reticent members the wrong way.

The seeming love affair continued for three Holy Day seasons. On the fourth, things apparently started to chafe. The president called between Rosh Hashanah – the New Year – and Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement – to politely and softly admonish me that my sermons were getting “stale,” and that some congregants were demanding ones of greater relevance.

Clichés come to mind, but greatest among them is that my bubble burst. I was not taken so much by the chutzpa as by the astonishment that for the first time in 30+ years in ministry, my sermons were deemed not too controversial, but not sufficiently relevant – my anger not piqued so much as my ego flat-deflated.

I was still sure that the sermon I has prepared for the austere fast of Yom Kippur would score high on the relevance scale. It was, dramatically, or so I thought, taken from the majestic Isaiah 58, a prophecy raining condemnation on those who fast meaninglessly and gabble empty prayers while not attending to the homeless, the hungry, the oppressed.

Would this be my swansong? Apparently. In the aftermath, the congregation was polite, but remote. A few months went by, and a terse call from the president told me that my services would not be needed for the next High Holy Days. They had “hired someone nearer by to attend more closely to their needs,” but they would not have had me back as their Holy Day rabbi, “regardless.” End of conversation. End of relationship.

Why he had to be so cruel as to tell me that my services would not be required “regardless,” I will never know. Telling the truth unnecessarily can become brutality, especially to the fragile ego of someone whose profession should have taught him to be tougher.

Is that why it hurts still so many years later? Or is it the disillusionment and humiliation that we would assume only babes-in-ministry, not hardened professionals in it for the long-haul, should suffer? Is it the inescapable truth that when one conjures up the compelling words of a Prophet of Israel he will ruffle the conscience of the complacent, not necessarily enough to change them, but enough to get them pie-eyed angry at the messenger? Is it that when one asks for “relevance,” he should be careful for what he wishes? Or is it that “relevance” itself has become an empty cliché for things that engage us momentarily like a baby attracted to a shiny bauble, only to be bored a nanosecond later? Have I, wizened by the years and fears and disappointments, become strong enough to read and hear the message, but no longer tough enough to deliver it?

Now, I will spend the rest of my life listening to someone else’s sermons, wondering, longingly, if the thunder of the prophet was too much to hearken, or if the staleness of his messenger just rendered the message irrelevant.

NOTE FROM MY SON BEN ON JEWISH VEGETARIANISM . . .

Interestingly enough, Rav Kook promoted vegetarianism. He even wrote an essay titled "A Vision of Vegetarianism and Peace". I have read that he stated that we still have the chiuv to eat meat on Shabbos on the account of "ain simchas ele be'basar", but ate the minimum to fulfill his obligation. I have even read that he is of the opinion that all of our korbanos in the time of the Moshiach will be vegetation, rather than animals.

Here are 2 links that have differing explanations of his views: the first is from a guy named Richard Schwartz who is of the opinion that Rav Kook promoted vegetarianism actively for our time. Marty Lockshin vehemently denies this was Rav Kook's opinion. This is the link: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/ravkook_veg.html.

The second article is from Rav Shlomo Aviner. He was probably the closest talmid of Rav Zvi Yehudah Kook. He maintains that Rav Kook only meant what he wrote about vegetarianism as a future, Messianic idea. As people living in an "imperfect world", vegetarianism isn't a necessary concept. The link to this is: http://www.ravaviner.com/2009/02/maran-ha-rav-kook-and-vegetarianism.html.

CALLING ALL VEGANS TO SHABBOS DINNER AT MY TABLE

Every Shabbat, I sing with gusto about luxuriating in “duck and quail,” “fatted stuffed chicken,” “meat and fish and other delights.” For all the mitzvot that I take at their figurative value, this is one that I take literally, with impeccable gravitas.

Yes, yes, I know all about Jonathan Safran Foers and his vegan protestations. They will eventually, I predict, go the way of all pop-culture, along with the Rubik’s cube and pet rock. Yes, I foresee a day when moderation will hold sway in the culinary world, and gluttony will never be confused with an occasional well-marbled steak.

The path to moderation will likely never satisfy those humanitarian souls who deem the fleishig route a one-way ticket to hell. I have no desire to convince them to the contrary, except to say that I am certain that many a great spiritual master and humanitarian succumbed to eating a hamburger without being sentenced to perdition. The Rambam a vegan? Akiva? Samson Raphael Hirsch (although he wrote to the contrary, that hypocrite!)? I have it on good authority that even the saintly Lubavitcher Rebbe ate meat at his meager repasts. I would not go so far to call vegans “The Hezbollah of Food,” ala Anthony Bourdin, just perhaps slightly misguided in their protestations about us meat-eaters.

My purpose is to reassure that we carnivores have not gone off the track by slaughtering, butchering, koshering, and proudly serving a delectably juicy brisket at our Shabbat table – while keeping our humanity intact.

Look, I wouldn’t lie to you. I’d be hard pressed to find any noteworthy rabbinical authority who says that slaughtering animals for human consumption is some kind of ultimate virtue. If anything, it is a necessary vice until “the time” comes when humanity attains its moral perfection. That noble Divine experiment was thwarted ten generations after creation at the time of Noah, when license to eat meat was introduced to the human diet. I dare say that our state of moral perfection hasn’t gotten much better since.

In fact, the Torah refers to the common hamburger as basar ta’avah – “lustful meat” – as anyone who stands in front of a grill al fresco with a beer in hand knows only too well. As much as I hate to hide behind the skirts of Divine authority, God does instruct that eating meat is a licit pleasure, deriving from a lust that is “kosher,” unlike lusting after a married woman or someone else’s property. A few scholars even maintain that slaughtering and ingesting meat signifies human dominance over the animal world, thus elevating the animal to a higher spiritual level by putting it into the service of man. Don’t get angry at me; I’m just reporting the news. Regardless, so long as man finds lusty gratification in eating meat, God will bless its use to celebrate Shabbat, holy days, and a variety of simchas and celebrations.

Let’s consider, then, that kashrut is the last line of defense between eating meat in the way of a mensch or as a barbarian. The animal must be chosen from a clean variety. The slaughtering itself must be performed swiftly and painlessly by an expert shochet, wielding an impeccably honed knife. The blood must be meticulously removed, so as not to intimate that the animal’s life-flow will be used symbolically to victimize it. For like reasons, we do not cook/eat milk and meat together. Thus, even if slaughter itself has odious connotations, the animal’s preparation for consumption is performed with sensitivity to the gravity of the act.

When I embarked on writing this essay, I knew that I would be hard pressed to justify the absolute virtue of dining on a juicy, rare steak. In the abstract, the vegans are probably right. Well, let the abstract be damned! Let me turn the rest of these ramblings into a confession, no, perhaps a love-song: Count me among those who lust for meat. I have never pondered the inconsistencies between that and my commitment to traditional Judaism, any more than a nearsighted person ponders his myopia. I feel no reason to defend my carnivorous inclinations.

Mr. Foers’ moral imprecations aside, I cannot contemplate the joy of a Shabbat dinner being complete without a steaming bowl of shimmering chicken soup, crowned with a matzo ball. Better yet, crown it with kreplach – a swatch of noodle encasing a tiny treat of hockfleisch, “Jewish wonton,” if a feeble comparison is necessary.

Just as our hearts have been lifted heavenward by ethereal golden broth, we are drawn back to the primal mothering of earthy chopped liver – the most negligible organ of the chicken transformed to nobility when napped in egg, onion, and hearty schmaltz.

Heaven and earth collide as the main course of brisket is presented. I do not mean the so-called “first cut” brisket, completely devoid of fat, that upon cooking morphs into a pile of wet hemp. Feh. Goyische nachas. No, I mean the whole brisket, fatty deckel and all, sliced so that each bite contains some of the fat and the lean, the perfect culinary yin-yang. And let every bite be accompanied by a morsel of potato kugel, again enriched by copious amounts of schmaltz.

Dessert? Why Apfelschalet, of course!

So much for Shabbat dinner. Fast-forward now to lunch. We return home after schule. The savory aroma of cholent greets us as the door – beans, barley, potatoes, garlic, of course, there must be garlic. But without a hunk of well-marbled brisket or flanken to fatten and season the mélange, one no longer has cholent, but a silly pot of baked beans.

My “Rhapsody in Fleisch” could go on endlessly. Suffice to say that “lustful meat” plays a role in celebration, or even perking up an otherwise ordinary day, that no mess of red beans and brown rice could ever replace. Propriety tells me that I should admire my vegan brethren for the moral perfection that they have attained. But why should I lie? I feel sorry for people who cannot throw health and pietistic concerns to the wind every once in a while for the gratification that only a juicy steak or a hot dog slathered in mustard can provide. As for me, I’ll ask God to arbitrate the dispute. I figure that God is already so picky about the things I may not do that I may as well fulfill my lust when God nods His approval.

Mr. Foers, you may find that my taste for meat is depravity personified. I’m willing to take my chances. After all, what would be worse? Spending an eternity in purgatory or a lifetime subsisting on tofu and soy?

A HOUSE OF PEACE AT GROUND ZERO

Let us say for argument’s sake that there is not something outright malevolent in building a mega-mosque at Ground Zero. Yet, no one can escape the truth that it is an act of the most inconceivable chutzpa (gall) on the part of purportedly well-motivated Muslim movers-and-shakers.

Someone had to have whispered in someone’s ear, “Think of how much ill-will we would generate by dropping that edifice down at the foot of the symbol of abject hatred. How much worse would building the mosque sully the reputation of a people already alleged to be intent on ‘taking over the world’? How many people would ‘get it’ that our motives were only the highest? Isn’t resisting that kind of controversy and ill-repute worth our buying some less tragedy-steeped plot of land? Should we not have the wisdom, kindness, and pursuit of peace to move elsewhere?”

The day will likely never come for that mosque to represent anything other than rancor, ill-will, and the antithesis of the Muslim pledge to foster ways of peace. Perception is everything, and the perception will always be twenty-stories of chutzpa, if not outright malevolence.

Were that space next to Ground Zero to remain mosque-less and empty, no higher cause would have been served. If anything, Muslims would be vindicated, because no altruistic goal whatsoever would be realized by a conspicuous gap in Downtown architecture, or worse, filled in by a bodega.
What then? Just a thought, now:

What about a House of Peace, welcoming to all people? I envision it as a calm and serene place, a respite from the shoulder-jogging bustle of the Downtown streets and financial district chicanery and intrigue. No graffiti or rancor. Cool, quiet, fountains, areas that lend themselves to meditation, others to discussion and study, with serene plantings and a grotto. Not a museum, but perhaps niches where in solitude one can listen to the words of the world’s peacemakers. A string-quartet here. A flute recital here. And no Wi-Fi. Serenity. Restfulness. Restoration. Peace.

When you stop to think of it, a house of peace is the only meaningful use of property once so sullied by hate and every antithesis of peace.

“Get real!” you say. And, I would say that you are right. Think of the security, the coordination of programming, the fundraising cocktail parties and extravaganzas, the decisions of what does-and-doesn’t represent the vision of peace, the designs of the fountains and grottos, the letting of contracts for construction . . .

Getting real is precisely the point. It’s inconceivable that we would ever find a critical mass of people – particularly people of influence – to concretize a vision of peace, even if it’s merely a symbolic one, or even to agree to what “peace” would look like. Yet, what we do with that parcel of land at Ground Zero must bring the issue to a head. If not a mosque, what then? If not a symbol of chutzpa and provocation, then what in its place?

There are dreamers and “big-picture” people, and I confess to being both. I know an ideal when I see it, and I know that the only thing worse than having dreams is to have no dreams at all. The events at Ground Zero left many of us cynical and dreamless. We need some good dreams, not ones of revenge and vindication, but of places here and there, if not everywhere, that peace becomes reality for all who dare to dream it. We may never have a House of Peace in Lower Manhattan, but what a lovely dream, if only we held in our hearts and did not capitulate to cynicism. The world may laugh at our dreams, but in a dreamless world, how dare we not dream them?

THE LANDSMANSCHAFT PICNIC

My mother’s parents, Pa and Bubbe, arrived in Chicago fresh off the boat from Grodno, Poland, in 1921. As years went by, they took on American ways, prospered but retained ties to the Old Country and old friends through the Grodno landsmanschaft. The landsmanschaft was a friendship circle of the Jewish people who hailed from the same town in Eastern Europe, its members commonly known as landsleit.

Landsleit would periodically convene to socialize, play cards and gossip. They also looked out for each other and financed each other’s debts. They donated selflessly to ransom other landsleit out of the horrors in Europe and get them started in the New Land, which they cherished. (You’d get a chuckle out of their Yiddish version of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, sung on patriotic occasions.)

To their immeasurably grief, too many relatives and landsleit were left behind to perish in the horrific concentration camps. A saintly old rabbi, despite knowing of my grandfather’s socialist leanings, wept when he discovered that I was his grandson, telling me in a hoarse whisper, “He is blessed. He saved many, many lives.”

The Grondo picnic was the apex of the landsmanschaft’s year. By the time I was old enough to be taken along, the landsleit had aged out. They still spoke Yiddish with each other, and memories of their youth and starting over in the Promised Land had evolved into full-blown wonder-tales.

Pa lorded over the picnic like a godfather. He had the charisma and grooming of Gotti. He was the quintessential glad-hander and big talker: An ingratiatingly arm around shoulder. Quick with a handclasp. A robust “Sholom aleichem!” – “Peace be with you!” A laugh enhanced at the edges by as asthmatic rasp. Heaping more food on your plate, want it or not. Calling over every child by his Yiddish name, then “Kum aher!” (Come here!), stuffing a dollar bill in each kid’s pocket.

Ah, the food . . . I was, I guess, the typical all-American kid – baseball, rock-and-roll, and picnics of hamburgers and hotdogs. Yet, the Old World cuisine of the Grodno picnic intoxicated me. Ironically, I thought that I had to eat it surreptitiously for fear that a classmate would spy me and report to jeering friends that I ate the same foods that their grandparents did.

Let them be damned! It was delectable, a symphony of robust tastes and textures. The American hamburger is at best a swatch of carpet and its hotdog a link of garden hose. The Grodno picnic was a holy-day al fresco in the Garden of Eden: vampire-banishing garlicky brisket and orange-yellow gravy (at home, our brisket was always bland as wet hemp because garlic upset my cranky grandmother’s stomach), roasted “Sabbath-style” chicken, oven-browned potatoes shimmering in grease like motor oil, Pa’s throat-puckering sour pickles and tomatoes, fermented in crocks in his basement, buckwheat kasha, dense potato kugel (pudding). To be honest, I do not remember the sweets, despite knowing that they were abundant, because I had already lapsed into a coma of well-fatted meat and potatoes long before dessert.

Of this I assure you: Recreation did not mean egg tosses or potato sack races. Instead, there were card games like Kaluki, brought over from the Old Country (although, ironically, its origin may be South African or Caribbean). And Pa, voice still honey-sweet despite his asthma, would lead the landsleit in Yiddish songs, happy, melancholy: Teyere Malkeh – Fill again my cup with wine! Hob’n Mir a Nigen’dl – Let us sing a song of childhood! A Sudenu – How shall we host a feast for Messiah? And the doleful Partizaner Lied, in memory of the Partisans who struggled valiantly against the Nazis – Never say there is only death ahead!

I still think a lot about the landsleit and their magical picnics, now all of them gone to their heavenly reward. I think of their arrival in Columbus’s Golden Land, the hope, the fear, the unknowingness, the self-doubt. Then, even as the decades wore on, once a year the landsleit would gather to replicate the deliciousness of their long-ago salad days, their customs and cuisine yet intact.

Why I too miss those days I have yet understand. Perhaps it is because the memories are not simply cherished, but consecrated. Ach, maybe next Sunday I’ll take the kids to the park and show them a real picnic with brisket and potato kugel. Shall I teach them how to play Kaluki, too?

HELEN THOMAS AND THE QUESTION OF ANTI-SEMITISM

Helen Thomas, just shut up.

The doyenne of the Washington press corps has long been known for her tart tongue. She opens her mouth for better or for worse, and people listen, perhaps not sufficiently to shape public policy, but enough to gain a glint of polarizing attention from the hoi polloi.

A week ago, she broadsided about Israel’s Jews, “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine . . . Tell them to go home to Poland and Germany . . .” Ironically, during the 1930s, the streets of Poland and Germany were covered with graffiti, “Jews, go back to Palestine!”

God knows, here is not the place to reassert the millennia-old claim to Israel as the Jewish homeland, even for those of us who advocate a two-state solution. And God knows, one need only Google “Holocaust” to determine the historic “hospitality” of our Polish and German hosts.

Ultimately, we cannot hold Helen responsible for what she thinks. However, what she says demands accountability. That’s because it gives new legitimacy for every vituperative anti-Semite, from the right and the left, to come creeping out of the woodwork. Her words might not be a rallying cry, but they certainly embolden those who are already pre-disposed to think ill of Jews, Israel, even Judaism.

As an upper-middle-class Jewish kid growing up in the shadows of the Holocaust, I had occasional minor encounters with Helen Thomas style anti-Semitism. A crotchety guidance counselor (back then they were called “adjustment teachers”) announced to our recalcitrant seventh grade class, “You Jewish children are all too high-strung.” Then, the principal would each year preface the holiday pageant with, “Isn’t it a pity that so many of you children don’t have a Christmas holiday?” Armstrong Elementary School was 90% Jewish.

Parents didn’t protest, because, well, that generation of Jewish parents just didn’t protest.

By ninth grade, the stakes turned higher. Now in a high school that was only five percent Jewish, I became whipping boy of a mechanical-drawing teacher, despite my timidity. He accused me of cheating, and of having my father, an expert draftsman, do my homework. (No, he didn’t.) Naïve or just a sap, I had no idea that the teacher was motivated by anti-Semitism. And if my parents thought so, they weren’t saying anything to me.

Spring of 1963, my private hell ensued. Passover came, and I stayed out of school to attend religious services. Such absence, properly verified by parents, rabbi, and guidance counselor, was officially excused. All but to Mr. Hellman. He summarily expelled me from class for not bearing an excused absence and flunked me.

This time my father did, atypically, react. He protested to Hellman, to no avail. The rabbi was called, again to no avail. Four days later, the guidance counselor intervened, and Hellman begrudgingly reinstated me. Naturally, the balance of the year was beyond purgatory – accusations, poor grades, losing homework assignments that I had handed in, capped by a D- grade. And no honor roll that year for an otherwise exemplary student.

But, you know what I remember most? Hellman mumbling at me upon my readmission, “You people are always pulling strings.” Then, as I took my seat, he announced loud enough for the entire class to hear, “Why don’t you go to one of the special schools they have for your people?”

The message was clear: “You don’t belong here. ‘We’ belong here. You belong in a yeshiva, or maybe your home in Poland and Germany. Just not here.”

By and large, the kids laughed. The rest of the year, they jeered about my “special school.” “A joke,” said Nietzsche, “is an epigram on the death of a feeling.”

Hellman may not have fomented anti-Semitism that day for a class of ninth graders. And, I guess that for me it built character. But, he did legitimate anti-Semitism, the same way that Helen Thomas did on the White House lawn. And, legitimacy opens many foreboding doors.

An epilogue: Hellman was promoted to assistant principal. I kid you not. At least Helen shut up, resigned, went home, and probably blamed the Jewish lobby.

HOW A TORAH SHOUT-OUT MIGHT HAVE PROTECTED WALL STREET FROM ITSELF

In my meanderings through the synagogue world, I am always amused by the only instance in which shouting out during the Sabbath service has become a ritual, if not a well-cultivated art form. For the uninitiated, the focal point of the service is the ceremonial reading from a portion of the Torah inscribed in Hebrew on a parchment scroll. Chanting from the scroll is no small feat even for a Hebrew literate; the words appear with neither vowels nor musical notes. The reading requires the uncanny ability to memorize the vocalization and notation of about 120 verses of the weekly text. Think of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” . . . sans vowels and notes.

But a few wisenheimers in the pews always seem to know better. If, for example, the hapless reader should mistake the letter “resh (R)” for a “dalet (D)” – Hebrew lookalikes – the know-it-alls instantly shout out the correction. Lest the mistake go unnoticed, their tone is smug, belligerent and put-upon, perhaps even a little arrogant.

They say that every Jewish custom has a righteous origin, even if it has come to be abused by ensuing generations. “How, then, rabbi, can there merit to the Torah shout-out?”

“Even this,” the rabbis answered: Its origin was in the fear that even the simplest mistake might be incorporated into the text by erroneous usage and change its meaning, unless it was corrected instantly. Belligerence and arrogance obviously came later.

Legitimate or not? For the pious, for whom the Holy Writ is the inerrant word of God, every letter is sacred and must be prized beyond diamonds. Playing fast-and-loose with the words might result in sacrilege, desecration, or worst, in altering some sacred principle of The Law.

I confess that that indecorous little custom has always left me a tad ambivalent. Ambivalent, yes, until a week ago when that a serf Wall Street might have hit the "b" key, as in "billion," instead of the more temperate "m," just one key away. Ask your second grader the difference. The market began its freefall, the Dow plummeted a thousand points, and sell-orders went wild. From a single glitch, the fatalists had their day - or at least their 20 minutes – on Wall Street.

Yes, the error was righted in a matter of minutes. But just think: What if a couple of cranky old traders had instantly shouted out, “It’s ‘M’, you idiot, like in ’million’!” like they do in those arcane little synagogues? You know what would have happened: The miscreant would have hit the backspace and righted the $14,985,000,000-error quicker than I could change "Madam" to "Adam" in my Torah reading.

How many other disasters could be averted if we dispatched a few crabby nitpickers to undo minor mistakes that could lead to tremendous disaster?

• “No, it says 'abort' the warhead, not 'deploy' it!"

• “No, it's righty-tighty, lefty-loosy, when you turn the dials on the oil well’s control panel!"

• “Ben, hit ‘L’ and get out of the elevator; don’t follow Mrs. Robinson up to her hotel room!”

Sure, there's a grey line where conscience, free will, and personal accountability must kick in, or we’d be far the worse for it. But, dare we dream that all our mistakes could be waylaid by a crabby voice thundering, “’M’ not ‘B’!!

So you see, I have come to appreciate the transcendent meaning of those funky shout-outs. Yes, they come from bellicose old men, but those curmudgeons are the very ones who really still believe that the Holy Writ is the inerrant word of God. Wall Street may play with its billions, but the curmudgeons are the guardians of eternity. Let there be no mistaking: They preserve and protect it. Most of us simply dabble at buying-and-selling it.

N.B. If you'd like to be part of a Torah Shout-Out, call me, and some Sabbath I'll take you on a field trip. Of two things you may be sure: At some point, the reader will make a teeny mistake. And, quicker than I can mispronounce “Zelophehad,” some belligerent voice will shout out its correction. It might not build or destroy your faith forever, but it would still make a helluva term paper for your Comparative Religions class.

MAISHE CHAYIM, WE DARE NOT MAKE FUN

I was bullied.

Pudgy. Clumsy. Momma's boy. I was an easy target for the taunts of bullies who knew that I was more likely to run home crying than to stay and fight. Tough guys have a knack for meting out brutality on kids like me who are the most vulnerable.
I read about Phoebe Prince bullied into suicide, and I read it with an empathy that surmounts even my anger at the bullies. Perhaps . . . I think, it might have been me. Perhaps had I been a teenager, and not a ten-year-old, and there had been Facebook, and I’d been even a bit more vulnerable, and . . . and . . . and . . . Perhaps had it not been for the serendipity of birth – my time, my place, my mother – fate would have been so cruel to me as it was to Phoebe.

You see, one day in fourth grade, the moment arrived for me to test the hypothesis that it being the persecutor was sweeter than being the persecuted: There came Peter, plodding kid who limped. I accosted him in the schoolyard.
"You’re a bowlegged pig with lumbago!” I crooned. How I chose that particular jeer, I will never know.

I stood for an eternal second outside myself, stunned by the discovery of my untapped reservoir of cruelty. I watched Peter crumple. I will never forget the panic that twisted his face. He loped across the yard like a bewildered puppy to his mother's embrace. I chased behind, not knowing how to dispel the enormity of his hurt. I cowered as I surrendered to a mother's wrath.

But his mother simply shook her head and whispered a few words at me in a voice I now recognize as war-weary, "If you only knew how many tears we have cried . . . “
Mortified, I ran the eight blocks home, knowing as only a child that I could gain atonement only by confessing to my mother. She listened impassively as, between sobs, I choked out the story of the pain I had inflicted and my ensuing contrition.
"Maishe Chayim," she said, reverting to the Yiddish with which disappointment and counsel were dispensed, "M'tor nisht oplachen. We dare not make fun."

However many wrongs I commit with my errant life, I will forever be haunted by the image of panic-stricken Peter, his mother's whispered lament and my mother's wisdom. I pledge that I will haunt my kids with them, too. We dare not mock the differences and adversities of others. We dare not rejoice even when our adversaries stumble.

Why?

Because we were not put on earth to hurt. Because if I laugh in the moment of your distress, I have bequeathed to you the right to delight in my misfortunes. Because a society that luxuriates in hardship is on the road to being a society that is systemically heartless. Because a downfall, even when it is deserved, is not an occasion for intimations that we are above reproach.

Thus, we must teach our children even in their earliest years not to make fun of the child who limps or stutters or who can't catch or throw as well as the rest. We must teach them what vicious weapons words can be, how there has never been any act of treachery that did not begin with the abuse of speech.

Our children learn best when we show them that we live by the lessons we teach them: We must not toss off racial epithets. We must not grab a cheap chuckle from the sight of morons wearing tee shirts that extol hate-talk. “Just joking,” will we tell our kids? I think not, for Dr. Nietzsche’s wisdom will prevail: “A joke is the epigram on the death of a feeling.”

And, we must assiduously resist the impulse to gloat self-righteously over of public personages who have been scandalized, even when it is coming to them. For, if their excesses are to leave any ennobling lesson, it will never be found through our own hypocrisy. "M'tor nisht oplachen.” Evil is to be condemned. But, we dare not revel, for then we will have learned nothing.

So, that day I tried out the theory that it might be tastier to deliver the blow than to receive it. Peter, I will never forget the terror that crossed your face. I will never forget your mother's look of anguish, nor my mother's admonition that sealed the memory forever: "Maishe Chayim, we dare not make fun." Please know, Peter, that even if you do not remember, I will never forget and will forever beg your forgiveness.

As for you, Phoebe, now God be with you and rest in peace.

A LETTER TO A SON WHO IS JUST LIKE ME

Dear Ben,

Over the last days of Passover, I had plenty of time to think. It made me want to tell you where I am with my life, the peaks and valleys -- and tell it especially to you, since you are truly my child in your passions and gusto. You and I share a joie de vivre and lust that never tolerates anything halfway. You are not only religious, but Chasidic. When I was in the rabbinate, it wasn't "a job," but 24-7, often, I confess, to the neglect of you kids and mom. We like our steaks big, thick, and rare, our l'chayyims from the best single malt, our beer the most esoteric. Passion, lust, joie de vivre, man.

Thus, you have likely assumed that there is a reason that I spend most of my time rattling around an empty house. Sure, I learn some Talmud each day, do a little organization work, read, write. But, I guess I learned an ethos from Poppa and Opa that without a job, a man will never be complete. "They" say this is called "retirement," but in fact, it is really "an empty house."

The reason I am "retired" is because "they" say that I am disabled. Health, particularly the remnants of the stroke and the atrial fibrillation, have screwed up my equilibrium, prevented real exertion, and require that I rest at least an hour or so every afternoon. No, I do NOT have one foot in the grave. Everything I have is manageable, and I plan with God’s help to live a long life, at least to dance at the baby’s wedding! 99.9% of the time, my attitude is great. But I am missing just enough health to not enable me to work. I also don't do too well with being bossed around.

But, here is the cautionary part of the tale that relates to our profound similarities. My problems likely started out about 20% genetic. Unavoidable. But, 80% came simply from not taking care of myself, going back to my twenties. I can show you a handful of 13 pills I take every morning and night that keep me alive from irreversible damage caused by arterial blockages, arrhythmia (hence, pacemaker), diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke. (BTW, had it not been for an undeserved Divine intervention, I should have been dead from pancreatitis, had to have my heart zapped twice, and would have been deprived of ever seeing any of the grandkiddies.)

A lot of it has had to do with my weight fluctuating so radically -- definitely a function of the lust for food and drink that the two of us share. I have again gone to obese. Now, after a couple of recent health scares, I am back on a roll (bad metaphor), losing 30 pounds with another 20 to go, no goofy diets this time, just counting calories.

I am feeling so much better, clothes fit, can even walk up the hill to synagogue again. I am already so much healthier, even though I will still always have these chronic problems hanging over me, the ones that forced me to "retire" at the ridiculous age of 60.

None of this was intended to alarm or to be a bummer. I just thought you should have a clear perspective on where I am with things. AND because you are so much like me, I don't want you to have to face what I do in my relative youth.

To the contrary, I am a happy guy. I have a wonderful wife. I have a sense of peace with your mother. I have the best kids in the world. My stepkids honor me. And I have more delight than any ten grandparents deserve from my grandchildren. I have respect in my community and am known for being a catalyst for good things. I've made my peace with the synagogue and can even attend and get a little inspiration.

Yes, the health will always be a concern. Mine and yours. I think back on my life, and look forward even more hopefully to yours. I never want you to have to say, "For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: 'It might have been' ... " (Whittier)

Always be the good boy you are. I love you.

Dad