Saturday, July 16, 2022

Flashback 1997: "And all these years I thought I was Jewish"

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson
     Our regular Saturday correspondent, Caren Jeskey, is taking the day off. In her place, I offer this chestnut from the vault.
     I'm running it because a Hasidic rabbi in Maryland whom I knew when he was a teen at a Chicago religious school got in touch with me this week, searching for a particular column I'd written years ago regarding his Lubavitch sect. Was it this one? No. That one? No. He wanted, he explained, the one that sparked my friendship with Rabbi Daniel Moscowitz, the late head of the movement in the midwest. 
     Ah, that one! The one Moscowitz contacted the paper to complain about. I hesitated. It's a bit ... strident — I was much younger. But what the heck, he wants to see it, so here it is.

     What's the matter, guys — Talmud study getting boring?
     That's the only explanation I can think of for the salvo of words that a group of Orthodox Jewish leaders decided to fire off at the more watered-down branches of the faith.
     Monday, the Union of Orthodox Rabbis declared that the Reform and Conservative branches of Judaism — more than 80 percent of Jews in the United States — "are not Judaism at all."
     Geez, why didn't you announce that last week? Then I could have dyed eggs and eaten chocolate bunnies over Easter, instead of missing all the fun.
     The rabbis' statement, ironically, reminded me of those groups periodically announcing the Holocaust didn't happen. My response to them is always: "Great! Now I can look up all those relatives who I thought had died in Poland."
     Heck, the rabbis should have announced this years ago. Judaism is a great religion, but in a Christian society, Jews also miss out. If I, raised in Reform Judaism, wasn't really Jewish, than I could have trimmed Christmas trees, dated cheerleaders, gone fly-fishing and all that other stuff I imagined gentiles did.
     Seriously, this sort of high-handed nonsense is not exactly surprising. Just as blacks snipe at each other based on the darkness of their skin, and Hispanics differentiate between their various nations of origin, so Jews denigrate each other for their various approaches to the religion.
     I knew already, for instance, that Hasidic Jews didn't consider me Jewish. But it seemed like a benign judgment — they were always trolling around in those vans, encouraging us lower forms of Semitic life to put on the ritual prayer boxes and get a taste of Orthodoxy. They wanted to be friends.
     But this week's pronouncement had the slap of a trademark lawyer's warning letter. "We understand that you're using our `Jewish' logo without permission — please cease and desist immediately."
     They can be like that. An Orthodox Jew once stopped by my house to pick up a pushke. A pushke is a little coin box where you deposit pocket change for charity — Orthodox groups use them a lot. And stupid, not-really-Jewish us, we had been packing our change into these pushkes and then phoning up our moral betters and asking them to come collect their money.
      Well, this Orthodox guy shows up at my house: big beard, fedora, long coat. He walks in, takes a look around, and his face freezes in a mask of disgust that I remember to this day. I guess we didn't have enough portraits of Rebbe Schneerson. He did, however, find the graciousness to accept the money.
     To tell you the truth, the entire episode reminds me of a woman I once worked with. She was a snippish, unfriendly person, nasty from Day One.
     I did something to offend her, and she fired off a nasty e-mail of reprimand. I read her criticisms, thought a moment, and then sent this reply:
     "Your criticism of me would have carried more weight if you had ever been nice to me in the first place."
     I think that goes for the Union of Rabbis, too.
            —Originally published in the Sun-Times, April 2, 1997




18 comments:

  1. "I guess we didn't have enough portraits of Rebbe Schneerson."

    I was one in the home of a Lubavitch family. I was amazed at the number of photos of that old man, they were everywhere, even on calendars! It was similar to a Catholic family that had a huge number of Padre Pio photos everywhere.
    People are really nuts when they're religious.
    Which is why I'm a sane atheist!

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  2. I’m not really keeping track but I think Caren’s streak of consecutive weeks has broken at about the same number of Joe Dimaggio’s hitting streak… 56.
    As a non-believing Jew (as I think many of us are), I never felt any sort of kinship to the Orthodox and others of their ilk. They are as different to me as any of the Christian or Muslim or other religions.

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    1. Well beyond that. She started in April, 2020. More than 100. I'd say she's earned a break.

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    2. Seems the interwebs have failed us! I sent Neil a post Friday morn and again last night and still not sure what happened…

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  3. If you look into it, Clark St., I think you'll find that committed atheists can be just as wacky and judgmental as the most devoted Jews and Christians.

    john

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    1. That's why I tend to say I'm an agnostic who never believed in God for a second and has a hard time believing anyone can believe something so patently ludicrous. I'm not an atheist because they're zealots too.

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    2. Yet you're an admirer of Dante, who was zealous enough to bar his mentor Virgil from heaven, which I could never do, but I'm a piss poor storyteller, whereas Dante as well as some biblical authors told magnificent stories, all ludicrous to some degree or other.

      john

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    3. My feelings about religion are nicely expressed by Thomas Hardy's lovely poem about the rural legend that the Oxen kneel at Christmas Eve. "So fair a fancy few would weave in these years..." Yet if someone invited me, I would go: "...hoping it would be so."
      Your old column is a really good read.
      Tom

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  4. Which branch of Judaism is comprised of folks "who never believed in God for a second"? (Would it be the largest, if it were organized, as it seems to claim 3 of the 4 persons on this thread, as well as millions of others?) I just find it noteworthy how you write columns like this which presuppose that you're a representative of "the more watered-down branches of the faith," but you're happy to indicate that you're primarily Jewish by heritage and have never been a believer of any kind.

    Let me quickly state that, while that may sound obnoxious and presumptuous of me to write, I'm essentially the same kind of Catholic as you are a Jew, minus the hugely significant ethnic component. While I won't be at Mass tomorrow, I find the faith and its varied interpretations and adherents fascinating and can never completely distance myself from my upbringing.

    Upon further review, it occurs to me that I don't really have a point to make about this. D'oh! I guess it's just an observation...

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    1. We’ll never know how many there are of those who believe like some of us here. Not for a second have I denounced my Jewish heritage. I’m proud of it. It is rich with traditions that I still enjoy and is a group with whom I identify, for better or worse.
      I just don’t go for the “fear God” thing nor do I pray. I do believe in trying to be a good person, positive thinking and visualized good results which I suppose is a form of pray. There’s my hypocrisy.

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  5. First off, Neil, thank you for posting the links to not one but three additional past columns in today's edition, providing far more of the usual reading enjoyment.

    Columnist Dave Barry once wrote, "The thing about religion is that everybody else’s always appears stupid." I don't get too obsessed over what another brand of religion wants to do in praise of their own, though there are times when I do just plain wonder. This business with physically attaching prayer boxes to your head, for example. When these folks reach the pearly gates (or their local equivalent), I can imagine someone quietly murmuring to them, "That was a translation error. You were supposed to keep the prayers on your mind, not on your head."

    Similarly, I like hats, and I find those black fedoras to be pretty cool-looking, but as orthodox attire? Seriously? How long have fedoras been around: 100 years or so? Seems like an odd tradition to acquire after hundreds of years without. Maybe orthodox Catholics are all suddenly going to start smoking big cigars as their trademark. Whatever floats your boat.

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    1. On how many blogs could one pose the rhetorical question "How long have fedoras been around?" to a blogmeister and have it be that he wrote a book subtitled "The President, the Fedora, and the History of an American Style." Uh, just this one! : )

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  6. After reading this I had to find out why relgious jews wear a "fedora" they are Borsalino's. Indiana Jones wears one as well as Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. Of course I wondered how this came to be. One theory is that the “Chofetz Chaim,” a treatise on Jewish ethics and laws by the influential Belarussian rabbi Israel Meir Kagan, proclaimed that it’s proper to wear an extra head covering at a time of prayer.

    That text didn’t specify the type of hat, though. The practice of wearing a fancy hat may be traced to the mid-1800s and Nosson Zvi Finkel, an Eastern European Orthodox Jewish teacher who had many poor young men as students, according to Rabbi Menachem Tendler, the head rabbi at U. City Shul in St. Louis.

    “Finkel’s thing was that if the Torah is the manual for the world, you’ve got to be respectable, to be dignified,” said Tendler. “He instituted a uniform and he raised money so every boy in his synagogue would walk around in a suit, a hat and a tie. They would walk around town and people would say, ‘That is a successful person.’ It was an image he created for the yeshiva boys.” https://religionnews.com/2019/04/09/for-orthodox-jewish-men-the-hat-known-as-a-borsalino-is-tops/ Some history and a trailer to a doc about Borsalino,

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    1. They wear Borsalinos because the trend really kicked in in the 1970's among Americans studying in Israel, and Borsalino, in Italy, was the closest supplier of black hats.

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  7. Its not something I think about very often but it seems to me regardless of whether any one individual or group believes in god or doesn't has very little bearing as to whether or not there is a god or gods. If there is or isn't has no bearing upon my spiritual life which has no connection to religion. To see ourselves or our species as top of the food chain, if you will, strikes me as arrogant. Still to each their own. I dont expect anyone to adopt my views. I only hope for tolerance. I believe in a power greater than i. If I'm wrong what difference does it make to you? Now religion is a whole different story. You can miss me with that , thank you very much.

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  8. I'm holding out for a religion that offers the music of black Baptists and white hillbillies, the architecture and social justice conscience of the Catholics, the radical hospitality of Episcopalians, the casual friendliness of Lutherans, and the pastries and Sunday morning obligations of Judaism.

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  9. "You have Lou Bovitch here to see you." That one not only cracks me up, but it also reminds me of my old man's worn-out joke about the two Appalachian rustics.

    The first one asks his neighbor: "Hey, you laid eyes on them folks who done settled down the road a piece? They's Jews!".

    The second one replies: "Yep...Ah know...Hasidim...Hasidim."

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  10. The Union of Orthodox Rabbis, which is a fringe group with a handful of active members at once, was not saying you are not *Jewish*. Under Jewish law, a Jew never stops being a Jew, even if he converts to another religion. They were saying that non-Orthodox Judaism is not *Judaism*, which is a whole other matter. Granted, they were saying it in a ham-handed manner and there was no need for them to say it at all- and there were plenty of reasons, starting with common decency, for them *not* to say it- but that's hardly a controversial position: After all, Reform Judaism claims that *it* is the exemplar of correct Judaism, and Conservative Judaism says the same, and every religion of the world (if not hopelessly watered down) says the same.

    You may encounter the occasional jerk who says (or implies) that you're not Jewish, but that hardly means they have any support for their position in the sources.

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