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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Booga-Booga!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HAMANTASCHEN: A PRUNE-PAVED KABBALISTIC SOJOURN (1/26/04)

Judaism is replete with funky little holidays. Probably only the Catholics beat us out. We try to impute some sublime, contemporarily relevant meaning to each one, but the result is usually sheer sophistry.

The funkiest of them all is dippy little Purim, which defies deeper analysis. It celebrates the victory of good guys over bad guys, lifted from Persian mythology overlaid with a whiff of historical significance, in which, naturally, the Jews are the good guys.

The observance of Purim has its benevolent dimension: alms to the poor, an exchange of culinary gifts among the more fortunate – Hershey Kisses and a bottle of grape juice if you are a piker, an ornate fruit basket and a fifth of Glenlivet if you want to impress the boss.

For the kiddies, Purim is a time of noisemaking, costume parades, goodie bags (starting to sound like Jewish Halloween, huh?), silly skits and a one-day reprieve from Hebrew school narcolepsy.

For adults, the down-and-dirty of Purim may also include cross-dressing and drunken stupor. In my yeshiva days, Purim meant license to brutally satirize our rabbis and to give guided “tours” of the labyrinth of tunnels underneath the dorm to girls of dubious repute.

The common denominator of Purim celebration is the omnipresence of the triangular Hamantaschen pastry, named ironically for the Hitlerian antagonist of the Purim story, Haman. The word literally means “Haman’s pocket.” Israelis refer to them as “Haman’s ear,” while American Hebrew school children will tell you that they symbolize Haman’s tri-corner hat. I theorize that the association of Hamantaschen with Haman’s hat derives from medieval Jews projecting upon their archenemy the same three-cornered hat that they were obliged to wear to distinguish themselves from the gentiles. Are Hamantaschen also the inspiration – God cut out my tongue for this – for the Pepperidge Farms popover?

The minority opinion on the Hamantasch’s exterior is that it be of a yeast-based dough, not unlike the consistency of challah, resulting in an oversized, sodden Danish. Majority rules, however, that the shell of the Hamantasch be of a sugar-cookie dough, albeit slightly more resilient. These, when mass-produced, are often hastily pinched together to form a sloppy scalene. My nitpicking grandmother, however, would fuss over each Hamantasch until it was a perfectly domed pyramid that would make Cheops proud.

[An aside about my Grandma Ida: I shared a bedroom with her until I went off to college. In addition to repressing my nascent sexuality, Dr. Freud, she suffered from sleep apnea, so that multiple times each night I was certain that she was stone-cold dead in the bed right next to me. My bipolarity may be due to a neurochemical imbalance, but my basic neuroses derive from inescapable proximity to a cranky old woman whose favorite pejorative was “Feh!”]

In my youth, overwhelming popularity went to only two fillings for Hamantaschen: “mohn” and “lekvar.” Mohn is poppy seed. I abhorred it and still do. That casts no aspersion, though, on mohn devotees. Lekvar is prune butter of the two-fisted variety. It bears the color and consistency of axle grease that had lustily matured for 20,000 miles under the chassis of a ’57 Ford. I love lekvar and curse Dr. Atkins for refusing me even a sniff of the magnificent stuff.

Grandma Ida had a different take on Hamantaschen filling. She would mince raisins and walnuts with the tip of a knife and bind the mixture with a combination of strawberry and pineapple jams. I was crazy about that filling, one of only a handful of positive memories that I have of that thoroughly difficult woman.

The repertoire of fillings has by now expanded beyond mohn and lekvar, to include raspberry, apricot, peach, and just about any other house brand of jam you can find at Safeway or Waldbaums. I imagine that the Juppies of the Upper West Side have broadened the Hamantaschen landscape to include honey-pistachio and cream-cheese-raisin, like that sumptuous strudel at the Carnegie.

The Kabbalistic masters – listen up now, Madonna and Britney – do impute metaphysical significance to biting into a toothsome Hamantasch. They say that, when deeply contemplated, it symbolizes the Divine spirit piercing our corporeal exterior and penetrating our sacred soul.

Ponder that tidbit of esoterica the next time your mouth lovingly embraces a perfectly symmetrical Hamantasch oozing lekvar. After Purim, I may even try finding that mystical truth in a California roll.

TIME FOR JEWISH AND AFRICAN AMERICANS TO REAFFIRM COMMON GROUND (1/6/04)

The yearly commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday evokes a rush of bittersweet recollections and emotions. Among those poignant memories, I as a Jew am fixated on the picture of Dr. King and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel locked arm-in-arm, marching together for social justice and human decency. They shared fully in the nobility of their mission as they shared fully in the jeers, brickbats, and spittle of their detractors. As Dr. King was the “Drum Major for Justice,” Rabbi Heschel was the quintessential Biblical prophet: humble, selfless, and yet indignantly outspoken in the face of evil. He was for us the very symbol of the Jewish commitment to social justice and social conscience.

The memory of Dr. King and Rabbi Heschel locked arm-in-arm brings a modicum of pride for a time when Jewish and African Americans proudly marched together with unity of purpose. My deepest emotion, however, is grief over the mutual distrust that has since placed enormous tensions on the special relationship between African Americans and Jews, but has not, I believe, injured it beyond repair.

Some Jewish organizations deny support to affirmative action and other legitimate initiatives for equity . . . Jesse Jackson’s motives toward the Jews are, at best, suspect, while Minister Louis Farrakhan’s are blatantly anti-Semitic . . . Revisionist historians in both camps rewrite the story of the civil rights struggle to depict African Americans and Jews as motivated solely by opportunism and self-interest . . . So the litany goes.

If we are looking, we will find myriad excuses for the breakdown of black-Jewish relations. Neither side is entirely right, nor is entirely wrong. The crime is that we have come to see each other as “sides,” always demanding a quid pro quo, always vigilant lest the equities go unbalanced, always cynical of the other side’s motives.

I cannot deny that the differences are there and that they are compelling. But I refuse to accept the image of Dr. King and Rabbi Heschel as a fossil of a bygone era. The time has come to reaffirm that the experiences and ideals that bind Jewish and African Americans together are strong and are still stronger than the difference that threaten to pull us apart.

What common ground do African and Jewish Americans share?

We both know the bitterness of oppression and persecution.

Negative forces are not the ultimate glue that cements lasting relationships. But one cannot deny that there must be some natural affinity, some innate empathy and common vocabulary, between two peoples whose histories so closely parallel each other’s: enslavement, exile, displacement, ghettoization, massacres, subversion of family ties, severance from cultural identity, scapegoatism, political, social, educational, and economic disenfranchisement. Moreover, significant segments of both our people still suffer from these horrors. African Americans and Jews share a bitter common knowledge of the ravages of hatred and inhumanity.

Shouting matches of “who’s had it worse” are not merely counterproductive; they demean and trivialize the ravages that both our peoples have sustained. Let us simply acknowledge that there has been more than enough anguish to go around.

Persecution has taught us to be more, not less, humane and compassionate.

A persecuted people may learn one of two lessons from its persecution: callous cynicism (Why shouldn’t others feel the pain I once felt?) or heightened compassion (I must ensure that no one else will ever suffer what I have suffered!). All in all, African Americans and Jews have repeatedly chosen the latter path. The ancient Hebrews were exhorted time and again that the ultimate lesson of their Egyptian bondage was to be kind to the stranger in their midst. The exhortation became a consistent theme of the Prophets, the rabbis, and great Jewish moralists to this day.

Elie Wiesel’s years in Nazi death camps taught him to champion the rights of all who are oppressed. Rabbi Heschel spoke out indignantly for social justice because he knew that the only appropriate response to millennia of Jewish suffering is a redoubled commitment to human decency.

Dr. King, his colleagues, and disciples embraced the same ideal and could speak of the African American struggle for self-determination only in the larger context of justice for all the world’s oppressed. Their message was overwhelmingly universalistic. All told, persecution has left Jews and African Americans with the same indelible message: Pain must be replaced with compassion.

We both believe that we overcome oppression through an amalgam of faith and human initiative.

It is no idle coincidence that the great black and Jewish spokespeople for social justice have almost invariably been great masters of faith and spiritual calling. African Americans and Jews, more than any other groups, share in the understanding that faith and determination are totally interrelated, not mutually exclusive.

Neither Jews nor African Americans have ever embraced a theology of waiting helplessly until God miraculously redeemed us from our woes. Yet, neither group has ever maintained that the transition from oppression to freedom could be accomplished solely by human devices. Divine guidance and providence are equally crucial elements of the equation. Despite our overt religious differences, Jewish and African Americans share a deep and abiding common belief that God and humankind must work together in full partnership if the world is to be set on a more righteous course.

True equality comes through educational, political, and economic empowerment.

Jewish and African Americans have learned that real self-determination and prosperity do not come as a benevolent gift of the societal mainstream that then also determines precisely how prosperous and assertive “outsiders” may and may not become. True equality, we now know, comes from entering the mainstream through processes that make African Americans and Jews total participants in shaping social destiny and in the production and distribution of the American pie.

Jewish Americans in the first half of the 20th century and African Americans in the second half have both rightfully concluded that their energies must be directed to attaining the educational tools, political influence, and economic vitality that bring real empowerment, not continued dependency and subservience.

Family and heritage are central to our destiny.

No two peoples place more emphasis on the family as the wellspring from which the health of all our other endeavors must emanate. Our detractors have always known that the surest way to demoralize us was to subvert our family unity. More importantly, African Americans and Jews both recognize that the integrity of our families is the single most important factor in determining whether we as a people will flourish or deteriorate. We are thus both determined to keep our family bonds strong.

We also recognize that our respective heritages are the primary source of our moral guidance, personal identity, and sense of dignity and self-respect. Jewish and African Americans have largely rejected the notion that we must renounce our heritage in order to conform to the social mainstream. To the contrary, we have come to realize that our heritage is the most humanizing and ennobling force at our disposal.



The cynic would say that we could just as easily identify five or ten points on which African and Jewish Americans are at absolute odds. I harbor no illusions: Any number of important issues are certainly pulling African Americans and Jews in opposite directions. And, I admit that the situation of African and Jewish Americans are somewhat asymmetrical in that Jews are presently counted among society’s “haves,” while African Americans are still largely numbered among the “have nots.”

Nonetheless, if we review the values, experiences, ideals, aspirations, and modus operandi that African Americans and Jews do have in common, we realize that there are profound and substantive principles that go directly to the very soul of these two peoples. They form an undergirding of shared purpose and destiny far more enduring than the superficial, transitory grievances and flash points that cause tempers to flare and tug us to opposing corners.

We could reestablish a tremendously potent force for human decency and social justice were African and Jewish Americans to focus on the important, deep-seated values and ideals that we hold mutually dear. We would recognize that the call for black-Jewish reunion is not a contrivance, but the natural, logical conclusion to which those shared values and ideals irresistibly lead.

The first attempts at rapprochement should be low-key and modest. Some cities, Atlanta most noteworthy among them, have established coalitions of African and Jewish Americans for precisely this purpose. African Americans and Jews must put aside the “waxy buildup” of years of neglecting, even sabotaging, that compelling relationship, and find our ground for dialogue and renewed purpose.

The picture of Dr. King and Rabbi Heschel arm-in-arm is so compelling because I know implicitly that they deeply trusted the nobility of each other’s motives. They understood, perhaps without speaking a word, that the experiences, values, and ideals that African Americans and Jews share compel us to strive together for a world that is truly fair and free and just.

I reminisce bittersweetly over that magnificent image and all that it symbolized. And I aspire to a time when, in memory of those two righteous men and for the sake of all the struggles that yet lie ahead, we will find the renewed conviction to march forward together, arm-in-arm again, as it should be.

SUNDAY AFTERNOON, WOOKY WITH THE FLU (1/4/04)

What else to do on a Sunday afternoon when you are languishing with “the real flu” than to tell you about the first time I got roaring drunk, age 15. O what a special time that was . . .

In the mid-‘60s, it was a simple dichotomy: If you were a Camp Ramah kid, and you had just finished your junior year, and your parents could afford it, you were trundled off to the much trumpeted Ramah Seminar in Israel.

The rest of us defaulted to the Ramah Seminar stateside at a clammy used-to-be Christian orphanage in Nyack. This was the option intended for us down-and-outers: a morning of fairly serious classes, an hour or so of semi-enforced study each evening, the rest of the day completely unstructured, laissez faire, with “advisors” (never to be called “counselors”) who attempted, with near-futility, to "advise" us in the direction of productive activities. This was the summer of 1965. The good news was that it was kind of like living on a commune. The bad news was that there were neither free drugs nor free sex, or at least so we thought.

That final evening of Seminar took and filtered the customary unstructuredness through the mind and palette of Jackson Pollock. Guys and girls who were savvy enough to pair up snuck off to get laid. When I think back, that was most of them. I had a terrible crush on a girl named Sheila, two years older, who knew how to play the puppy love and raging hormones of a naïve 15-year-old off against each other. She teased me and was friendly, even coquettish, by day, but that night she was making it with Eli, an Israeli “advisor.”

So the few pathetic remnants, I the youngest among them, decided that we would drink away our farewell. What were the libations? Someone had secreted away two six-packs of off-brand malt liquor and a fifth of Four Roses, no ice, one bottle of ginger ale. My three companions were a little savvier, so they got happy. I, having had no experience, got roaring, puking drunk. We cut that rotgut with ginger ale until it ran out, then with lukewarm water.

And the audience went wild. I remember little of the acute drunkenness, save pitching-and-rolling side-to-side in my bunk chanting the entire weekday Amidah (page-after-page of petitional prayers) impeccably by heart.

That was clearly my most glorious moment. For, shortly thereafter, the skids ensued. I need not become graphic, but to this day I am sure that my gullet had chucked up way more than I had chucked down.

The Prosecuting Angel was swift and ruthless in meting out his judgment:

As dawn broke, and I could no longer recite the morning Amidah with such acuity, we were to be bused from Nyack to Jewish Theological Seminary in Upper Manhattan, to go our separate ways. That meant that – rotten-sick-to-my-stomach, wall-to-wall Astroturf lining my mouth, the Anvil Chorus clanging in my head – I was to wait patiently for four hours at the Seminary, take a subway, bags in tow, to Grand Central Station, and board the otherwise trendy and quite romantic Twentieth Century Limited for the 19-hour shuffle-off-to-Chicago, where I was to be greeted by my doting parents. And, as a sidebar, my noodgey traveling companion, Barry, kept reminding me that I had promised him all summer that before we got to Grand Central, I would join him for a hot pastrami sandwich at the late Lou G. Siegel’s.

I remember mercifully little of the actual trip. I do recollect renting a pillow for a buck and sleeping off the drunk. This, by the way, has never stopped me from boasting to my kids, by cracky, how I had once traveled on the legendary Twentieth Century Limited.

If not the trip, what reminiscences do I retain?

Well, I do remember that while drying out on my bunk on the morning after, the Head Advisor lectured me ad (already) nauseum about what a shameful disappointment I had become for everyone who had heretofore so respected me. Amazing . . . now that the summer was over, he finally gave me advice.

I also remember only too well feebly knocking on door after door of the Seminary’s Rabbinical School dormitory rooms, begging student after student to let me use his sink long enough to brush my moss-green teeth . . . and repeatedly being told without a scintilla of compassion in English, Yiddish, Hebrew, Aramaic, Ugaritic, to “get lost.” Only now, 39 years later, does the cloud of my disdain for the Conservative rabbinate, class of 1965, lift, as I make my peace knowing that they were merely pawns in the master-plan of the Prosecuting Angel.

I also remember greeting my parents, keeping a smile plastered to my face, begging off on a/nother pastrami-sandwich lunch at Golda’s on Devon Avenue, complaining to them of this awful “sinus headache,” for which only two Bufferin would do. May they rest in peace, they went to their graves none the wiser, and if they bump in to that Prosecuting Angel, I have good vibes that my secret remains safe with him.

And finally, there was that first triumphal march down the majestic length of Devon Avenue on my way to synagogue. You have to remember Chicago’s mores well to keep in mind that taverns pretty much lined every block of Devon Avenue on one side of the street or the other, and each of those taverns belched forth the most acrid stench of beer, malt liquor and, uh . . . Four Roses. The visceral stimuli conveyed by that aroma turned my triumphal march into a cross-the-street-and-back-again zigzag, second only in slapstick to Peter Falk’s command to Alan Arkin, “Serpentine!” in that unforgettably hysterical scene in the original In-Laws. My pathetic weekly serpentine of penance down Devon continued until I went away to college.

You want me to say, “those were the days”? OK, those were the days. Frankly, I don’t think about them too much anymore. But, on a Sunday afternoon, feeling wooky with the flu, I really don’t have a much better place for my mind and spirit to be.

I’m glad that you stopped by.

KOSHER WINE: A DISTILLATE OF JUDAISM’S COMING OUT PARTY (1/2/04)

Folks in these parts who tire of my liberal pinko bluster tend to call me a “whiner,” but I do not claim to be an oenophile. In a much earlier life, I had a friend who boasted about being an oenophile. But, all I remember of his predilection toward wine was his poster of Bordeaux and once dining with him at the Atlanta Hilton when he loudly dismissed a bottle of Chateau Whatchamacallit with, “I wouldn’t serve that swill to pigs!” as I slid under the table. Then again, he wore black socks and oxfords with his Bermuda shorts. Sic semper Mogen Davidius.

Once upon a time, I would occasionally enjoy a bottle of fine wine. But, would you call yourself an oenophile if you still had to point to the wine list and grunt at the sommelier, “that one”? Besides, I blew out my pancreas a couple of years ago, as I nearly died. Thus, at the tender age of 54, the best I get is to savor the memory of a good Cabernet with a good meal and good friends, or at least not being called a “whiner.”

Looping elliptically in-and-out of Jewish orthodoxy has also taken its toll on my pretensions of oenophilia. Talk to an orthodox – or even right-leaning conservative – Jew and s/he will tell you that wine, too, must be kosher. And you think, even ask, “Where’s the cheeseburger? Where’s the pork?”

Fact is that if you want to be “strictly strictly,” as my former secretary put it, wine must pass through the hands only of orthodox Jews, from juicing the grapes to double-sealing the bottles (or heating the wine to 165-190°, I know, picky-picky). This all has to do with wine’s potential for idolatrous libation or promoting unnecessary conviviality between Jews and their gentile neighbors. We are all well aware of the conviviality sparked by a shared bottle of Manischewitz: crusades, inquisitions, ghettos, pogroms, ah, blood libels, yes, especially blood libels . . . but hey, I am just reporting the news.

All this to say that my theological bipolarity has rapidly cycled me through repetitive phases of Chateauneuf du Pape and Pouilly-Fuse counterpointed by bouts with Schapiro’s Extra-Heavy and Kedem Bananarama.

I know what you of a more upscale kosher palate would say: “That is all yesterday’s news.” You would be right, I guess. Every Upper West Side Metrodox (thanks to my friend Binyomin Cohen for that term) and Jewish gastro-journalist celebrates that one can now procure kosher dry wine with a cork (!) in the bottle, as though it were, pardon the mixed metaphor, the Second Coming.

It is true. It is true. Chateau de Fesles Bonnezeaux, Chateau Fonbadet Pauillac, Chateau Giscours Margaux, Chateau Leoville Poyferre Saint Julien ($134.99), Chateau Patris Filius (Isn’t that two-thirds of the Holy Trinity?). All kosher. All to be swirled and swizzled at equally trendy-dox kosher establishments: sushi at Estihana, faux-filet at Le Marais, primavera at Va Bene.

Not only do they come bearing corks and un-sugar-encrusted bottlenecks, but tales of international awards, too. Another friend, an honest-to-goodness, no-oxfords-with-Bermudas oenophile avers that most of this is hyperbolic hokum. And, I have to wonder what toll this cooking to 165-190° that so many kosher wines go through does to a their basic integrity . . . as if I could tell.

I will stop being such a crab. I, too, am damned proud that observant Jews have access to, and have developed a palate for, the subtleties of a finer wine’s bouquet and finish, as much as for the extravagance of its price. It is indeed a prism through which we may view the coming of age of American Jewry. We could not say that as recently as my own young adulthood; it has been just that recent, thus just that paradigmatic. Then one day in 1973, I stumbled on a bottle of Yago Sangria certified kosher by the Chief Rabbi of some Iberian shtetl. It was not a fine wine, but a “different” wine, and I knew that the cultural mainstream was winking at me like Lady Marmalade. And it just got better and better.

Being part of that schizoid bridge-generation, I do, however, owe a love song – part serenade, part lament – to those goopy, syrupy wines that were so long synonymous with kosher, so long the butt of Borscht Belt tummlers’ jokes. I tell you, they have taken a bum rap, because when the final chapter is written, they were us, and we were just fine with them.

Those were the wines that had an indelible influence on my earliest infancy. Dr. Freud helped me regress to the age of eight days, when the mohel administered my pre-circumcision anesthesia, gauze soaked not in Bonny Doon, but in Schapiro’s Extra-Heavy Malaga. Primal nursing instinct and Chateau Schapiro soothed my castration trauma then, and I have owed it a debt of gratitude ever since.

Maybe we Jews were simply prescient about soon-to-become-toney full-bodied dessert wines. We, however, were so delighted by our sweet Malaga, Concord, Tokay and Muscat that they were never secreted away for dinner’s end. No, they were pre-prandial and post-prandial. They sanctified the Holy Days and consecrated the marriage vows. They were sipped at the Seder to coax down the bolus of matzo stuck at the back of your throat and chugalugged on an empty stomach at Yom Kippur’s end.

Fond memories of childhood include eating brisket and kishke (stuffed derma) at Siegel’s, under the Lake Street El tracks in Chicago, and Mr. Siegel furtively bringing over shot glasses of Mogen David to the men of the party, a lagniappe to his “preferred” customers. I likewise remember my own rite of passage, the evening that I joined my folks at Siegel’s, and Mr. Siegel included me among the “preferred.” What then, if not Mogen David, would be the proper wine to accompany kishke glistening with schmaltz? Garrison Keillor could write a better coming-of-age story, but no one could have felt it more sweetly consummated than I did over that nectar we now deride as “cough syrup.”

“Are you sure it was Mogen David?” you ask me. Nah. I will get complaints about this from the true get-yourself-a-life aficionados, but basically they were all interchangeable: Manischewitz, Kedem, Lipschutz, Mogen David, Schapiro’s, and a myriad other local and regional offerings. Each had a little edge of its own identity, to be sure. Manischewitz was first with the fruity, soda-poppy varieties – peach, strawberry, mango – quite a buzz, and cheap, too. The old Mogen David label had that loopy little picture of the Seder table, prompting the winos of bygone days to ask for “Morgan Davis, you know, the one with the guys playing poker on the label.”

The warmest spot in my heart, though, is left for Schapiro’s. There was an honest, proud wine, no apologies, no secrets. You want sweet or extra-sweet? They boldly led with their “so thick you can almost cut it with a knife” tag-line. Norman to this day boasts that Schapiro’s is “aged for over six months” as though it were a century-old Balsamico di Modena.

The taproot of its integrity, though, is in the musty, musky subterranean labyrinth, the cellars of Schapiro’s, a full square block right underneath the schmootz of the Lower East Side. Yes, the operation has moved Upstate, but on a Sunday, you can still meet one of the Schapiro’s at the ancestral entrance on Essex Street, enjoy a free tasting tour, and walk, and inhale, the catacombs for yourself. Amazing, is it not, that as everything gentrifies, even as the Lower East Side gentrifies, the taproot keeps bearing its luscious fruit?

Now, our Jewish palates are more finely attuned. Our noses are better sensitized to inhale the bouquet. We know, and own, the right crystal for each Bordeaux and Merlot. We debate how “chilled” chilled should be, with Talmudic acuity. We Jews have arrived, and remarkably, our yarmulkes are still clipped to our heads. We are deservedly proud, as we have lived to witness “synthesis” become reality.

Sorry, though. I also pine for the other days. We were not so smug, nor so self-satisfied, nor so damned sure of ourselves. But, one thing was for sure: When someone raised a thimbleful of Mogen David at Siegel’s and bellowed “L’chayim!” we all knew what to answer . . . and we meant it.

CALLING ALL FAT GUYS WITH WHITE BEARDS! (12/27/03)

May I have the final say on the local controversy about having to pay for pictures of little Anjou and Bartlett sitting on Santa’s lap?

When you go to the mall, you should expect commercialism, just like when you go to the mafia, you should expect loan sharking. Oh, sure, a Toys for Tots barrel here and a bell-ringer with kettle there. But the mall is otherwise driven by filthy lucre, plain and simple, even when it comes to taking a picture with Santa, so get over it.

That being said, I still believe that regardless of where you get little Pete or Moss’s Santa-picture taken, you should pay for it. And you should pay for it in the truest holiday spirit.

This I propose as the only win-win solution to the Santa-picture dilemma:

The Upstate is blessed with lots of fat guys with white beards. I am a perfect example. I bet you that the vast majority of us are benevolent folks who would love dressing up as Santa. I bet you that we would love to have kiddies sit on our laps while parents snapped pictures to their hearts’ content, especially if it were for a good cause. We could suggest a minimum contribution of a buck or whatever per child, but no coercion or shakedown. The proceeds could go to worthy causes like eradicating homelessness and childhood diseases.

As a counterpoint to corpulent, out-of-breath Santas, we could get skinny (“well toned”) women from the Life Center to play Santa’s Helpers and reindeer. And each child would receive a sugar-free candy cane, so there would be no ranting from the dentists and the Juvenile Diabetes Association.

“But where?” you ask. As far as I am concerned, I can set my Santa-throne up on my driveway, and you can come right up with your kids and cameras. But, if the Grinch from the County or City shows up complaining about a zoning infraction, we might be able to do it at County Square or City Hall Plaza, or in front of the statue of Shoeless Joe, or send a couple of souvenir pictures back from Plaza Bergamo to show them how kindly a town we are. Or, maybe a couple of nice business folks would let us use their parking lots or stores. Or maybe some of the churches/synagogues/masjids/ashrams. Hard to believe that location would be an issue. And we could accomplish it around town in a couple of weekends in November-December.

If you start planning ahead, renting a pricey Santa costume should be a non-issue. After three years of my playing Santa for homeless kids in Anderson, a thoughtful friend took advantage of an after-Christmas sale at Target and bought me my very own Santa outfit for twenty bucks.

Clean-shaven right now? You have over eleven months to cultivate those whiskers, or OK, you can even fake it with the beard that comes with the costume. Not sufficiently pudgy? No prob. The Colonel awaits, despite all the Madison Avenue hype about how healthy KFC is for you. And for the handful of us of the kosher persuasion, there is always chopped liver, oozing schmaltz (rendered chicken fat), and let the cardiologist be damned. It’s all for a good cause.

We will not, won’t we, feel sorry for the malls. Not so long as Game Boy, Play Station, Barbie and Hokey Pokey Elmo still captivate the childish imagination and the adult pocketbook.

Hey, folks, this is not all in fun. If you think I am kidding, try me. I am serious. I may not be a Christian, but I believe as much as anyone in the holiday spirit. Money has its place in the scheme of how the spirit is actualized, and so do those wonderful memory-photos of little Persimmon and Loquat on Santa’s lap. We can merge both of those to do tremendous good for we who are blessed and for those who need our blessing. And meanwhile, we can decide for ourselves where commercialism ends and where the true radiance of the holiday season begins.

So, all you fat guys with white beards and all the rest of Santa’s little helpers, belly up to the throne. Send me an email or give me a call. I have yet to figure out the first bit of the logistics, but I do know that we may have chanced on a great way to convert greed into an answer to need.

JOE, MY YARMULKE AND ME

With the South Carolina primaries just a few weeks away, Joe and Hadassah Lieberman have been campaigning extensively in my hometown of Greenville. Joe might actually do quite well here. Fundamentalism still holds sway and its bipolarity toward Jews has us vacillating between The Damned and The Chosen People.

I have attended a couple of Lieberman events. They have been small affairs, largely attended by African Americans and liberal white folks, and not too many Jews. The get-togethers were the anticipated press-the-flesh-parrot-a-stump-speech-and-get-outa-Dodge stuff, consummated over onion dip. As a local minor-league curmudgeon, my attendance gained passing mention in the morning newspaper and even a brief, albeit unaired, interview with CNN.

An officious busybody, quick with her camera, however, demanded a photo op for the local weekly, with Joe and me – orthodox Jewish candidate and yarmulke-adorned rabbi – smiling broadly at each other, arm in arm. Instinctively, I chafed, and despite her insistence, I refused, because of the visual statement it would make. Intuition told me that Joe felt the same and was grateful that I bore the brunt of her ire. The uncomfortable encounter took less than 15 seconds but it spoke volumes about lingering suspicions of Jewish marginalization even as Jews seem to have taken up residence in the American political mainstream.

Forty years ago, my parents, otherwise proud Jews, taught me to feel self-conscious about wearing my yarmulke in public. Charles Silberman wrote that in his family, the code word for such behavior was “not nice.” Thirty-three years ago, I was bodily ejected by US Marshals from the infamous Chicago Seven trial because I refused to remove my yarmulke in the courtroom. As I was dragged away, Abbie Hoffman shouted at coreligionist Judge Julius Hoffman, “It’s a shondeh far die goyim (disgrace for the gentiles)! They’re taking a yeshiva bochur (student) away!”

Twenty-five years ago, I witnessed a young man wearing a yarmulke delivering Harvard’s valedictory address (in the traditional Latin). A short time later, I sermonized (in English), yarmulke on head, from the pulpit of Atlanta’s august St. Philip’s Cathedral. Not long ago, Donald Trump supposedly walked into one of his accounting departments and complained, “I don’t see enough yarmulkes in here!” Now, with The Donald’s approval, I feel no self-consciousness whatsoever.

Joe has no obligation to act any more overtly Jewish than he already does. He has already taken the posture of observant Judaism well beyond where even we who believe in the limitless opportunities of America would have dreamed possible. Joe need not wear a yarmulke – literally and figuratively – to establish his Jewish credentials. He has done enough. More might even be “not nice.”

The question for Joe and his supporters is whether he should be seen surrounded by yarmulkes, that is, too closely associated with Jewish leaders, people and causes. Would we ask the same of Kerry, Dean or Bush? Certainly not. Their credibility would rise on the premise, not fall. For Joe, the question at best gives birth to ambivalence.

Pundits and politicos have not openly suspected Joe of “dual loyalty,” the way they did of JFK and the Vatican. Perhaps today’s campaign slime has not gotten so grimy as we had thought. Then again, we really do not know what xenophobia is murmured among confidants or contemplated behind the polling-booth curtain. The best we can say is that despite our sense of welcome to the political mainstream, many Jews are concerned – consciously or unconsciously – that a critical mass of gentiles is still suspicious that a Jewish plot is poised to dominate the American agenda.

The more that Joe is visibly associated with fellow Jews and Jewish leadership, the more the image of conspiracy looms ominous and obscures his essential message. I could not help but pick it up from between the lines of how he and Hadassah campaigned in this arcane little corner of Americana. Sadly, I felt precisely the same.

So, do not call me paranoid, but do call me ambivalent, and certainly do consider indicting me for unjustified self-importance. I like Joe, and I support him. But, I do not think that his campaign benefits from media ops of yarmulke-adorned rabbis fawning over him. He already has enough stigmata to overcome, whether folks talk about them above a whisper or not.

Joe’s presidential bid is compelling evidence that even observant Jews have arrived at the American political mainstream. Arrived, yes. But, we will only really start feeling at home when who-is-seen-wearing-a-yarmulke-next-to-whom loses its inference of a national Jewish cabal.

MONOGAMY AS THE CRITERION FOR CIVIL MARRIAGE (12/7/03)

The moment that various judiciaries struck down anti-sodomy laws and sanctioned same-sex marriage, the talking heads started bombarding us with alarmist prattle about opening the door to legalized polygamy, incest, pedophilia and the rest of the litany of sexual horrors.

“What is the difference between one kind of aberrant behavior and another?” they ask. Before cooler heads can offer a cogent difference – as if it would matter – they launch into the absurd reductio ad absurdum argument that legitimizing one form of “aberrant” behavior would set a legal precedent for sanctioning all other sexual aberrations.

The State typically sinks into a conundrum whenever it tries to legislate private morality. Regulation of private morality has best been left the province of religion, and even then, it can leave messy paradoxes. Traditional Judaism, for example, does not allow marriage between a divorcee and a descendent of Aaron the High Priest. Yet, rabbis will routinely remove the obstacle by granting the equivalent of an annulment to the divorcee. Likewise, the Catholic Church frequently sanctions annulment in the case of remarriage, to the point that it is no longer the exception so much as it is the de facto rule. And, what of some Fundamentalist denominations that will not sanctify the marriage of a couple that has cohabited, but will grant “retroactive virginity” to people who pledge renewed chastity?

The State, however, does have every responsibility to regulate aberrant behavior to protect the public interest. Sexual relations with a non-consenting adult or a minor defy the public interest, as does any act of aggression. Incest, likewise, is typically forcible behavior, and even when it is not, it invariably does irreparable intrapsychic damage and subverts the generational integrity of the family. To people of religious commitment, these are sins, but to the State they are issues of defending personal and familial propriety.

Is homosexuality aberrant behavior? Let that determination, too, be the province of religion and religious pluralism. The State’s interest must focus not on the issue of sexual perversity but on protecting, even advancing, the civil institution of monogamy. Monogamy at its best ensures mutual responsibility, fidelity, interdependency, relational stability, lasting commitment. In short, monogamy is about virtues that build abiding, trusting relationships and the values that make for strong communities, nationhood and social order. Infidelity, domestic violence, promiscuousness, abandonment, tear those values asunder.

The State, thus, has every rightful investment in conferring its approval on faithfully monogamous relationships through the civil – not religious – institution of marriage. It likewise has every rightful investment is ending marriage through civil divorce when trust or fidelity is broken.

Religious values may or may not validate homosexual marriages. But, the interest of the State is advanced as much by a monogamously committed homosexual relationship as it is by a similarly committed heterosexual one. The State, hence, should not be in the business of simply tolerating homosexual monogamy. It should place its approval upon it by welcoming faithful homosexual couples to all the benefits – and responsibilities – that marriage confers.

The same, of course, cannot be said of polygamy. Few and far between are the instances that private cohabitation with multiple partners is treated as a criminal offense. Yet, it does not deserve the civic stature of marriage, because it thwarts the virtues that monogamy supports, which ought be the sole point of distinction between a discretionary relationship and a marital bond.

The legitimate forum for arguing the morality of homosexual marriage is the pulpit and seminary. The minister, priest, rabbi or imam must retain the final say over conferring the religious rite of marriage on a homosexual couple. The State, though, must be equally obliged to protect those relationships that promote the commonweal. When all is said and done, a faithfully committed, monogamous homosexual marriage has the capacity to ensure societal integrity on an even footing with a heterosexual one. Let the State define the public interest and stay assiduously away from defining private morality.

THESE ARE A FEW OF MY LEAST FAVORITE THINGS (10/31/02)

My forever-broadening girth stands in self-conscious testimony to my intemperate lust for cuisine. How I wish I could attribute it to a congenital glandular foul-up or even to some unresolved toilet-training trauma. The truth is that I am crazy about food, period. Cajun. Chinese. Japanese. Vietnamese. Viennese. Mediterranean. Teutonic. Slavonic. Thai. Korean. And do not forget the infamously Southern meat-and-three. Yes, yes, I have thus indulged (twice!) at Greenville’s celebrated Tommy’s Country Ham House . . . but I did not inhale.

Moreover, why should I deny that good, zaftig, Eastern European Jewish cuisine, redolent of mother-love, 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 shimmering brisket and well-marbled flanken, and the corps of K-rations: kishke, kugel, knishes, kasha, knobbelwurst and knaidlach. A shot of generic schnapps, a sip or two of syrupy Manischewitz, tea from a glass, Tagamet, a cushy chair with matching ottoman, and a moratorium on all meaningful conversation until the coma has had time to abate.

Yes, Virginia, in case you were wondering, there are, amid the passion and the glory, 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 – If ever there were onomatopoeia, pitscha has richly earned its name. Garlic Jell-O. 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. Creepy. I have spent 14 years in anger management because my doting Aunt Leah would tie me to a kitchen chair and force-feed me pitscha at the tender age of two. You think I am making this up, huh? Serve me pitscha and you may as well be administering a spoonful of Ipecac. 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 – AKA coq-au-pitscha. 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, may they rest in peace, hunched over the kitchen sink sucking the last morsels out of a batch of fisselach. Even then, you will note, they were beneath the status of table food. Now that we buy kosher chickens pre-processed and frozen, the Jewish homemaker no longer has ready access to fisselach. My mother lamented their departure the way those two old cronies in the balcony on The Muppets Show bemoaned the demise of the nickel cigar.

RETACH-MIT-SCHMALTZ – Who but the children of Israel would think of making an appetizer of grated black radish bound with rendered chicken fat? Sometimes a bit of sweet carrot is grated in, as if to atone for the noxious vapors of the radish. Spread that on lavash, OK? Retach-mit-schmaltz has no redeeming quality: taste, aroma, texture, concept, heartburn, ech. Once upon a time, I was served retach-mit-schmaltz at the Sabbath table of a Chassidic Rebbe. My faith shaken, I contemplated entering a monastery, only to be snatched from the jaws of celibacy by the Rebbetzin’s peasant-proud potato kugel.

LUNG-UND-LEBBER – My Uncle Joe, may he rest in peace, 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 bubbeh would for an evening reel him in with a steaming bowl of lung-und-lebber. It is, I regret to inform you, 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.

Five decades have passed, and my disposition has not changed. At my bubbeh’s urging, Joe would also devour plates full of another disreputable organ called “miltz.” Pancreas? Tripe? Thymus glands? It was spongy and disgusting, so let a pathologist make a positive identification. 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 Israelitish soul and palate to you – what turns me on and what turns me off. You did not ask, but just in case a dinner party were in the offing, you ought at least know the difference among the good, the bad and the ugly. 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, tomato aspic, and sweetbreads. 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, scuttle the reservations at the Four Seasons. Whisper sweet words of brisket and potato kugel in my ear, and I will show you a fully-clothed orgasm that approaches Vesuvius. C’monna my house and I will – as the Talmud gloats -- serve you a foretaste of the World-to-Come. Paris and Nikki, ya gotta trust me on this one.

XENOFOODIA (11/23/03)

I'm telling you now: If one day they find me dead from an overdose of rare roast beef, have my mother posthumously arrested for contributory negligence.

Growing up in a kosher home is hardly a life of self-denial. Just check out my girth. Jews have always found ways to partake lavishly of the bounty that the Good Lord permitted them, and let the pork chops be damned. Yet, kosher has its rules and its stringencies, a resounding “No!” to the decadent life of the Whopper, the Surf' ‘n Turf, the Egg McMuffin.

Now try overlaying the demanding minutiae of kosher regulations with a second system of taboos. They are ordained neither by Talmud nor Torah but an otherwise rational mother who suffers the ravages of Xenofoodia, the phobic abhorrence of strange and untried gentile foodstuffs.

"Spoiled" was my mother's code word for the array of foods that induced Xenofoodia. Only later did I discover that "spoiled" was a euphemism for "goyish," a mild pejorative meaning "of the gentile persuasion." "Spoiled" was my mother's resolution of the dilemma of raising a child in an environment free from prejudice, yet inculcating him with a resistance to odd and alluring temptations.

Foods designated as spoiled included any meat not pot roasted to the consistency of wet hemp, any steak not immolated to the texture of vulcanized rubber, fried chicken, fried onion rings, fried anything, cream-filled anything, any gravy thickened with flour, cream-of-anything soup (except when used to bind the omnipresent tuna casserole), any foodstuff prefixed with the appellation "barbecued" or "Southern style." All spoiled.

White bread was spoiled. This was a particularly bitter pill for a tot under the daily influence of Howdy Doody, who was sponsored, as you might remember, by Wonder Bread. The taste of white bread did not cross my vestal lips until I was six, when the doctor recommended -- before the days of fiber and oat bran -- that it would be healthier for my grandmother. Obviously. My grandmother lived to a crotchety 93. Her well-intentioned doctor dropped dead of a heart attack at 48.

Near Terre Haute, Indiana, on a trip to Florida at the tender age of nine, my mother somberly introduced me to the Hash-Brown/Grits Line, prototype for the newly erected Berlin Wall. It is a North-South demarcation more taut and inviolate than Mason-Dixon, determined by the lump of regional starch placed gratuitously next to your eggs at Howard Johnson’s. I remember inquiring about the blob of white stuff that graced by breakfast plate. "Spoiled!" my mother pronounced the verdict, and a choir of angels intoned "Amen!"

At 17, I returned from a year of rare-steak debauchery at college in New York. Naive and arrogant, I propose to "treat" the family to a rib roast dinner I will prepare in honor of my first Sabbath home. Rib roast, naturally, is the quintessence of spoiled. My mother reluctantly indulged this caprice, on the premise that it is best that I be humbled and learn first hand the error in my ways.

My grandmother, though, will have no part of it. At the very moment that the roast should be attaining the zenith of its succulent perfection, she, with atypical impulsiveness, decided to pop a potato kugel (pudding) in the oven, irreparably sabotaging my masterpiece. To make the lesson stick, my mother unceremoniously served the roast still cold and quivery in the middle, at Sabbath dinner. It is greeted by a chorus of "Spoiled" and the ultimate Yiddish taunt of disapproval, "Feh!" My mother deftly sliced a salami-in-waiting that is served with the golden-brown potato kugel, met by accolades of "Ah, better!" By the next day, the roast has been mercifully festooned with vegetables and potted to a fare-thee-well . . . the way God intended it to be. Sic semper tyrannis.

The years quickly pass. My kids have been raised in a kosher home, but with remarkably worldly palates, largely liberated from the ravages of Xenofoodia. I, for my part, have gone on dabble in an odd and curious variety of cuisines: Szechwan, Korean, Cajun, Thai.

As generations came full circle, I occasionally found myself cooking up something exotic for the kids and me at my parents' home. I would always prepare my parents alternative foods, since the ones that the kids and I ate were spoiled. My father, may he rest in peace, would from time to time furtively pick a Southern fried drumstick over a roasted one, but approached it as gingerly as had it been booby-trapped.

My mother, however, remained resolute. Confined to a wheelchair, spirits undimmed, she would hermetically double-seal my teriyaki sauce, my sesame oil, my ginger root, my file powder, in baggies and twist-ties before they were quarantined on a special shelf in her cupboard, a safe distance from the foods we know to be ethnically and theologically pure.

They were, after all, spoiled. She was, after all, a Jewish mother. Ever the defender of the faith. May her memory be for a blessing.

A TIME OF INNOCENCE, A TIME OF CONFIDENCES (11/11/97)

How can you remember nothing, and yet remember everything?

I was so small when we would celebrate Hanukkah at my Aunt Leah's that I ought not hold claim to memories whatsoever. An only child, an only grandchild, I was raised in a circle bereft of contemporaries, dependent for family ties on a network of great- aunts and uncles and their children, all of whom were at least old enough to be my babysitters.

I was precocious, and spoiled, too. Aunts and uncles would poke each other to pay attention to some new wisdom that would emit from my three-year-old mouth. They would repeat it over again for fear that its profundity might not be properly savored: "Did you hear what Maisheleh said?" It was precisely the way one would expect immigrants to marvel at the mystery of new life, still in disbelief of having found refuge in Columbus’s bounteous land, still shaken by the holocaust that had so utterly devastated their towns, their families, their memories.

Chicago was sufficiently large and our lives sufficiently upscale that by 1953, our families could head their separate ways in relative obliviousness to each other's comings and goings. Few were the occasions that the Levin family still broke bread at a common table as they had done faithfully on Sabbaths and Holy Days while the patriarch and matriarch, my great-grandparents Maishe Yitzchok and Rochel Levinski, were still alive.

So Hanukkah became the annual catalyst for the Levins to reunite around that common table, as much a roll call for them as a homecoming:

Ellis the Gentle Giant bouncing me to dizzying heights on his shoulders. Penny the Nearly Bohemian, whom my father tastefully dubbed “the educated idiot.” Shirley and Martin and David, the idealistic young communists, undaunted, uncompromised, by McCarthy witch hunts and the Rosenbergs' executions.

Uncle Harry, who made and lost ten fortunes as the Bootleg Horseradish Czar of the Old West Side. Tart-tongued Auntie Levin, who fed my unsuspecting greenhorn grandmother pork chops as a crash course in the American lifestyle. Uncle Izzy, the most endearing schlemiel, self-taught electronics wizard, whose unfailing mantra through more bad times than good was, "Everything'll be all right.” And Uncle Abe, the timid musician who spoke little but entertained me ad infinitum with origami birds that he would fold out of dollar bills with the flourish of Mandrake.

But Hanukkah belonged to Aunt Leah, my grandmother's youngest sister, Uncle Izzy's wife, mother of Mary and Dolly and Penny the Nearly Bohemian and Ellis the Giant. Aunt Leah was a plodding woman of innocent wit and demeanor, more loveable than pathetic, less an adult than an overgrown child. The reason for Aunt Leah's state of perpetual childlike whimsy came yet from the Old Country, never spoken above an ominous whisper, divulged to me as part of my rite of passage to adulthood:

Dina, the oldest Levin sister, was married to the crotchety Uncle Louie, the notorious family scrooge and sire to the only Levin offshoots who could afford to buy clothes at Saks. Uncle Louie once got into trouble with the local Polish authorities and was thrown in jail. The youngest of Dina's sisters, Leah – a child of ten, fair of complexion, pigtailed like a peasant girl – was impelled to go to the jail and sneak a ration of food to Louie.

The guards seized her immediately. They tied her blonde pigtails to a horse and dragged her around the jail courtyard. Traumatized and bewildered, she never fully recovered, part of her psyche forever stunted at the age of ten. She occupied her days cooking heaping platters of simple foods in the Old Country manner and sewing delicate wardrobes for her collection of dolls, with whom she would engage in hushed conversation.

I remember little of the 1953 Hanukkah menu at Aunt Leah's. But I do vividly remember her mile-long dining room table overloaded with unfathomable mounds of Old World delicacies, an immigrant paean to America's bounty. I do remember resisting most of those delicacies, as a child typically resists dishes of odd name and curious texture, which did not stop doting aunts from heaping them compellingly on my plate. I do remember stuffing my already rotund form with Aunt Leah's thick, spongy potato latkes, the quintessential Hanukkah treat. And I do remember, my eyes glazed from gluttony, not comprehending my grandmother's grousing on the ride home that her latkes were superior to Leah's, because they were thin and lacy like the ones Bubbeh Rochel made in Suvalk.

I do remember shining faces of great aunts and uncles and babysitter cousins basking in each other's radiance around that abundant table, progeny of Maishe Yitzchok and Rochel Levinski, transcending for one sacred moment the compulsions that summoned each one to his or her own separate destiny. I do remember, with deference to Paul Simon, that it was a time of innocence, a time of confidences, most truly a Festival of Lights. I do remember that I was enveloped by a nurturing embrace of security and all's-wellness, the stuff of which unrequited mid-life yearnings and tears are made.

For all that I do not remember of Hanukkah at the tender age of three, that which truly endures I do remember, and crave, only too longingly. Wistfully I ponder among the tears, "Preserve your memories . . . they're all that's left you," and I cry a good cry for all that has gone and for all that I know shall, must, somehow forever abide.

THE ANONYMOUS TURKEY (Thanksgiving Day, 2003)

Interesting? Perhaps. Significant? Maybe. Paradigmatic? I dunno. Mountain out of molehill? Probably. Reaction of a knee-jerk liberal? Of course.

The President, up-close-and-personal, pardoned, as always, the official White House First Turkey. Then, just a couple of days later, there he was, chowing down on some faceless-headless-nameless anonymous turkey with the troops in Iraq.

Is there something about being up-close-and-personal that makes pain or death just that much more difficult to inflict? Is it harder when one looks the potential victim in the eye, establishes a relationship, builds some kind of a commonality of presence? How much easier is it to shoot the enemy when he is remote, depersonalized and demonized into a “Gook,” “Kraut,” “Nip,” “Veet-namese” (Thank you, Robert McNamara.), “Towelhead,” or part of the “Axis of Evil”? And, how much more attractive is it to rant about “niggers,” “Jewboys” and “faggots” in their anonymity than it is to croon the same epithet to their face?

Jailers are consistently warned not to build an empathic relationship with convicts. Recently, I visited a maximum-security prison just 20 miles from my home to minister to three Jewish lifers. That in itself is a story. The prison, though, was in lock-down, because a few days earlier, the chaplain, a truly decent, compassionate guy, was taken hostage . . . and blessedly released unharmed.

Certainly, the executioner must be a detached non-persona . . . and so many of them ultimately suffer residual trauma, anyways. Dylan the Bard articulated it in the early 60’s, in anticipation of an impending nuclear holocaust and a war that we could not win: “The face of the executioner,” he drawled, “is always well hidden.”

Perhaps when the enemy is really evil, fueled with genocidal venom, anonymity is essential to doing the heroic task at hand. Then again – here comes the unrepentant liberal in me – perhaps that theory is a confusion of cause and effect: Dehumanization, perhaps, is the force that gives birth to genocidal agendas. Maybe that is why the only people truly beyond redemption are certifiable psychopaths, sociopaths and malignant narcissists.

The roots of benevolence-up-close-and-cruelty-afar likely derive not from higher human conscience, but from our basic animal nature. Decades ago, Robert Ardrey expounded on this thesis in his The Territorial Imperative. The animal kingdom typically stakes its turf. It is hyper-protective of those who are near and dear and hostile to “outsider” beasts whom they perceive as encroaching on their territory.

Hence, too, human turf-protectiveness, sometimes to the point of irrationality. Hence, too, the rise in crime in tandem with the invention of the automobile, as conscience and fear of social sanction lessen when the victim is of another place and circumstance. Hence, too, the distrust that inheres in no longer knowing ones neighbor or walking the street among faceless strangers.

And, yes, that protectiveness of the up-close-and-personal extends even – for some people, especially – to the animals that surround us. Seasonal children’s farm-tales abound about fattening up the Christmas goose, only to find that it had become so much of the family that it was spared from the chopping block. In these stories, though, the punchline is typically not about substituting an anonymous goose, but by the family eating mashed potatoes and salad for Christmas dinner. (A friend once suggested that Jewish vegetarians should serve “paschal yam” at the Passover Seder!)

And, Garrison Keillor likewise has a wonderfully bittersweet tale about the elders of Lake Wobegon conducting the annual pig-slaughter as a solemn sacrament, not cruel carnage, and training their young sons, as a rite of passage, to carry on the sacred tradition.

I have plenty of gripes with the President, but on this one I will give him a pass. My Thanksgiving turkey, too, is an anonymous bird, slaughtered, plucked, hermetically sealed and frozen, from some unknown place straight to our abundant table. But, in the throes of a distant and nearby war and too many young men and women coming home in body bags, slaughter of any kind might give us pause to consider the inestimable tragedy that anonymity can leave in its wake.

Then again, Hillary went to Afghanistan to spend Thanksgiving with the troops, up-close-and-personal. Eat turkey? Of course. Eat crow? Never. So much for knee-jerk liberalism.

SCHMALTZ AND THE PORNOGRAPHY CONNECTION

Schmaltz, that mystifying alchemy of onion-infused rendered chicken fat, is Jewish pornography. It corrupts ones brain and heart. We hide it from our children at the back of the shelf, where only the adult hand may reach. It tempts us, and if we capitulate even a little, it punctuates our otherwise bland existence with a little randy diversion into vaguely illicit pleasure – the fantasy, not the pursuit, of a voluptuous mistress. Those of my coreligionists who eschew schmaltz do it with the credibility of the quasi-prudes who announce that they peruse Playboy “only for the articles.”

My mother used to render a sublime schmaltz, drawing forth globules of fat and the skin thereunto attached from well-bred chickens. This, too, is a sign of the times, as today’s frozen kosher poultry is largely denuded of its finest fat. It leads me to believe that it disappears into a huge, bootleg schmaltz cauldron in the Catskills or is sucked up in the Ronkonkoma triangle.

Rendering schmaltz typically involves the addition of chopped onions that sizzle and seethe with the liquefying fat until their brown-black shards join gnarled skin-cracklings at the bottom of the shimmering virginal pool. This lowly residue is so highly prized that attains the status of “gribenes,” Church Slavonic for “scraps.”

Gribenes may attain their destiny by lovingly fortifying an otherwise mundane blob of mashed potatoes or by adding a dimension of bawdiness to a too-tame bowl of chopped liver. Or, one may recklessly tempt fate by eating the gribenes au naturel, like popcorn. At 13, my 200-pound heft and terminal acne attested to mother-love run amok in the bowl of gribenes that my mom dotingly placed beside me once or twice a week while I watched American Bandstand. And, of course, the wages of sin are still manifest in the two coronary stents and pacemaker that took up residence in my body by the age of 50.

Schmaltz, thus, has omnipotence second only to the Greek male’s application of a therapeutic schpritz of Windex to all of life’s vicissitudes. Fry an egg or some hamburgers in it. Wondrous. Slather it on a piece of matzo, sprinkle some coarse salt and broil for a moment. Nirvana. Schmaltz enriches mashed potatoes, binds chopped liver, and perfectly melds together the elements of an egg salad unlike any that Mrs. Loopner ever concocted for Todd and Lisa.

Indeed, herein lies an immigrant’s tale of acculturation: Mayonnaise was entirely foreign to first-generation Jewish-American homemakers. Moreover, they refused to believe that its creamy texture could be achieved without the addition of some dairy product, thus making it unfit for home-cooked meals, which were usually meat-based. Likewise, Pa and Bubbe could not give away Crisco or margarine to their customers, because it looked so much like . . . feh . . . lard. Thus, for decades schmaltz was pressed into service for all sorts of culinary processes, until Jewish homemakers either stopped being so meticulous in kosher observance or they started believing (“What do men know?”) the orthodox rabbinate’s reassurance that mayo and vegetable shortening were indeed fit for Jewish consumption.

In the lowest circle of Dante’s Inferno there must be a repertoire of stories about the toxic relationship between gentiles and schmaltz. Archetypical among them is surely a cautionary tale that I witnessed late one night while forcing myself to finish a Brobdingnagian hunk of cheese strudel at the legendary Carnegie Deli. Next to me sat a classically Upper West Side couple and their guest, a businessman from Texas.

Allowing him no choice, they ordered a platter of chopped liver “just for the experience.” Then they requested from the waiter a pot of schmaltz from the back room “to complete the effect.” They heaped spoonfuls of the viscous schmaltz onto the already greasy-shimmery chopped liver, handed a piece of rye bread to Tex and insisted he dig in. They snickered furtively at the unsuspecting rube. But he loved it. And I betcha he loved it again and again and again all night long until he hated it. And if he slept at all, I guarantee that he arose with a Jewish intestinal hangover that only a Bromo could fix. And I betcha that he hightailed his way back to Big D fully aware for the first time that the most dangerous part of the steer is not its long horns.

Everything in moderation, I parrot the cliché. And, in fact, it has been years since I have been so brazen as to render a pot of schmaltz, or enrich my chopped liver with it, or baste my Thanksgiving turkey in it (Try dry sake instead), or nosh on gribenes a-nekkid. But, I still yearn for it, crave it as one craves the love of his youth and the delicious temptations that tried his innocence. I dare not, I say to myself. I cannot. I ought not. And, God give me the strength, I will not.

Capitulation, though, is an ever-present urge. That day may come. When it does and you read my obituary, do not believe what it says about succumbing to aortic stenosis or cerebral embolism. You will know the truth: Schmaltz was my lethal paramour. Thus, you may be certain that just as my pacemaker shorted out and my stents collapsed, I toasted my Jewish heritage, went gently and well greased into that dark night, and died one happy, corpulent guy. Inscribe this on my tombstone: He liked his mayo, but gave his life for his schmaltz.


Visit one of Marc's pet projects, JEWISH CHAPLAINCY OF THE UPSTATE.

MEL GIBSON’S PASSION – NO BIG WHOOP

You know what I think about all the hoohah over Mel Gibson’s movie about Jesus’s trial and execution, The Passion of the Christ? z-z-zzz . . .

Is it anti-Semitic? Is Mel Gibson a well-motivated or ill-intentioned fanatic crackpot? Is his intention and/or mission to tell a revisionist “real truth” about culpability for Jesus’s death and pin it on the Jews? Does he want Christendom to declare a Holy War to avenge the Jews’ guilt?

Does any of this really matter? Nope.

The only question of any relevance is if this potboiler will change anyone’s mind about Jews and their intended destiny. I weigh in on the side of “no one.”

Moderate, open-minded Christians will remain moderate and open-minded. They will continue to accept Jews as friends and Judaism as another legitimate path toward God, like their own. Even if they wish for Jews to embrace Christianity, they will witness through their works, not their browbeating, to win our hearts to their Christian beneficence.

The Catholics? The vast majority of Catholics already think that Gibson is loose-cannon-cum-nutcase, and for nearly four decades, Papal authority itself has declared anti-Semitism taboo. So, if the Knights Templar are going to mount a crusade against the Jews, it better be a quiet one.

Conservative Christians who are faithful to fundamentalist doctrines certainly do not want Jews persecuted or dead. Indeed, to the Fundamentalist, the very redemption of the world depends on the exaltation of the Jew, not his undoing. If there is any rub between Jews and Fundamentalists, it is over the Fundamentalist claim to the exclusivity of salvation and the dynamic tension that inheres in any avowedly loving relationship that revolves around “I love you. You’re perfect. Now change.” But, to this I will attest: Some bellicose Fundamentalists may annoy us, but they do not hate us. And, the wacky perspective of an off-the-deep-end Catholic will certainly not change their minds.

What about the secular humanists? Well, despite the pronouncements of some conservatives, lots of secular humanists are truly warm, compassionate, ethical people. They truly do walk the talk about universal harmony. Yes, the more contentious among them also have their minion. But, they are invariably more wrapped up in keeping the Christmas tree and/or Chanukah menorah off the village square. Somehow, avenging Jesus’s death does not even make it to the agenda.

So, whom does that leave? Hindus? Buddhists? Baha’i? Zoroastrians? Moderate Muslims? Somehow, I am not scared.

Ah, the radical Islamists? Well, if you give a gander at the bilious anti-Semitism, secular and religious, vomited forth each day by the Saudi press and Al-Jazeera, you will immediately realize that anything Gibson has produced looks like a Hadassah convention.

I guess that leaves just the folks who are already anti-Semites. And, since most of them hate the Catholics as much as they hate the Jews, chances are that Mel’s movie will do little more to stoke the fires. We have had to worry about the hardcore anti-Semites all along, and one way or another, we will have to worry about them forever. They come in all shapes and flavors, but lowest on their list of “things we can blame on the Jews” is the death of Jesus.

You may say that I sound sarcastic, even cynical. Nope, I am just jaded. I am a thirty-plus year rabbinic veteran of the maelstrom of Jewish life. In that time, I have heard doomsayers declare countless irreparable breaches in Jewish-Christian relations and anti-Semitic watersheds. (Remember the ruckuses over Jesus Christ Superstar, Passover Plot and Last Temptation of Christ?) Now, I simply nod my head and wearily say, “Here we go again.” Why? Because at the end of the day, the apocalypse had not arrived, and the ominous threats and explosive issues had made little more than a dull thud. Honorable people stayed honorable, scoundrels remained scoundrels, and ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life somehow goes on.

So, go see Gibson’s magnum opus, if you wish. Or, stay home and watch Friends. If you do decide to go, good luck trying to decipher the Aramaic. If you ask me nice, I may be willing to give you a hand.

BEWARE OF THE WHITE-COLLAR REDNECK

How can smart people be so stupid? Every talking head and syndicated pundit is on a tear about Howard Dean and his ill-spoken one-liner about courting the redneck vote. Defend him. Criticize him. In the panoply of last week’s political blather, it was nowhere nearly so idiotic as the President’s vision of Middle Eastern theocracies and monarchies epiphanic embracing of Western-style democracy.

Believe me. I live in the heartland of guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks. And, do not forget Confederate battle flags defiantly unfurled from front-yard flagpoles and vituperatively racist bumper stickers. (I saw it with my own eyes: If I Knew You’d Cause This Much Trouble, I’d Have Picked the Cotton Myself!) These are not nice people. These are folks who are still ranting about secession and slavery and “outside agitators.”

Do they scare me? You bet they do. Does their influence befoul the entire civic-economic-social-cultural-political agenda of places like Greenville? You bet it does. Howard Dean will never get their votes. If nothing else, he is a slick Yankee who went to med school at Yeshiva University and has a Jewish wife and kids.

The rednecks really worthy of fear, though, are those encircled by white collars and Brooks Brothers ties. Their agenda may not be quite so radical and the rhetoric not quite so bellicose, but the underlying ethos is the same as that of their grimier cousins. And worse, their wealth and power enable them to impose the redneck agenda, not merely rail about it.

At its crux, the white-collar redneck agenda is also about segregation and marginalization. The extent to which it enforces racial boundaries, though, derives from the compulsion to divide the America into haves and have-nots. The haves must perpetuate a socially- and economically-bereft underclass on whose backs their comfort and fortunes are built.

I worked for a couple of years as factotum to a prosperous boss, compelling me to be an observer of an affluent community’s power-elite. There, I witnessed first hand the openly discussed machinations of the overclass. The plan always revolved around subjugating the underclass to ensure that a continuous flow of fodder would sustain the prosperity of the overclass's factories, mills, ziggurats and palaces. Have-nots were treated benevolently, but not so benevolently that they could ever transcend their paltry wage and inferior housing and education. And, if the economic winds were to shift, somehow the overclass would find a way to maintain its gracious lifestyle, while the underclass would get laid-off.

I have seen enough of the underclass to know that it is not full of shiftless, drugged-out ignoramuses. If it suffers from any malady, it is hopelessness. Its hopelessness is well justified by the ludicrousness of trying to sustain a family at minimum wage.

It comes from the pre-planned inferiority of educational opportunities and social services. It comes from public transportation systems that get servants to and from their masters’ homes but that are willfully not routed from where poor people live to where they might find better employment. It comes from the bureaucratic labyrinth and its indifferent bureaucrats that homeless people must navigate to gain basic sustenance, much less to transition themselves out of homelessness. It comes from tokenistic urban renewal for the poor, while community after community arises to feed gentrification. It comes from creating an urban facade that keeps poor neighborhoods just out of sight, so that no one proper might see the eyesore and realize that the streets are so narrow that they cannot be reached by fire trucks and EMS.

No, theirs is not the kind of hopelessness that one transcends with a “Golly gee! Time to get off my butt!” Theirs is a hopelessness meticulously choreographed by the overclass largely for its own selfish purposes. For, however threatening a crack dealer or a panhandler might seem, face it, they are nowhere nearly so threatening as a truly empowered underclass.

Hence, the rancor should not be over wooing pickup-truck rednecks. It should be over the courtship of the white-collar rednecks, the ones who really wield the influence.

You see, you battle-flag-wavin’, snuff-dippin’ rednecks need not despair. Your goals are already being well accomplished by the rednecks who can make a difference. They are white-collar guys like George Bush the Younger, who will make sure that his button-down buds prosper through an economic upswing and social programs that are built on the back of the hopeless underclass. The only thing that you pickup-truck rednecks have not yet figured out is that you, too, are just part of the same hopeless underclass. And guess what? President George W. Bush does not care about you any more than does . . . Howard Dean.