Flashback 2009: Fortified by faith in a foreign land

    One way Jews are reacting to rising antisemitism is by manifesting their Jewishness in public more. To show they're not afraid. Not an issue for me. I've never been afraid to write about my religion, and may be the only daily newspaper columnist in the country who regularly explores Judaism (of course, some days it feels like I'm pretty much the only daily newspaper columnist in the country, period, so that might not be saying much). 

     Though even I'm trying to stand a little taller lately — I recently flagged down a pair of cheder boys and put on tefillin in the parking lot of Sunset Foods, which is not my style. Extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures....

     Anyway, I was looking through the vault for Fourth of July columns, and found this.

     While many a sailor finds religion crossing the stormy seas, my faith tends to tap me on the shoulder while I'm safe in foreign ports. When I travel, I find myself visiting synagogues.
     Perhaps "faith" is too strong a term; maybe it is mere curiosity, but I've been to temples from Bridgetown to Vilnius, attended services from Charleston to Taipei. Oddly, I never intend to go, it seems to just happen.
     Last Saturday morning, I was checking the map to go shopping at Harrods and noticed that the Western Marble Arch Synagogue was a few blocks from my hotel. Services were just beginning; Harrods could wait — on went the dark suit, and I walked over, worried about being 45 minutes late.
     "I have to ask you a few questions," said a man — security — standing at the synagogue door. "What is your Hebrew name?"
     "Yitzhak ben Rachkmiel ben Schmuel," I said, and he waved me in. I entered, thinking it was sad that this is necessary, but not too sad — police with machine-guns guarded the synagogue I went to in Rome, and worshippers had to pass through a narrow, L-shaped security airlock designed to thwart bombers.
     Inside, a man held me back until the prayer ended. "Whoever you are," he said, "wherever you are from, welcome."
     The sanctuary was large, rectangular — the traditional set-up — with the ark holding the Torah scrolls at one end and a raised platform where the service is conducted — the bimah — in the middle.
     I almost made a beeline for an empty part of the room — and there were many, the place was sparsely populated. But that seemed to defeat the purpose of coming, so I forced myself to take a seat among the knot of men sitting in the center.
     And it was all men. Women — I counted three — were exiled to the balcony above.
     Marble Arch, whose congregation traces its roots to 1761, comfortably seats 1,000 worshippers. I counted 27 men at prayer. Most were older, their hair gray or white. Maybe three men were under 50.
     Rigorous attention to the services seemed optional. The men occasionally stood up, strolled around, visiting with each other, shaking hands, talking, laughing. At times, it seemed like a tableau from a Rembrandt painting, these older gentlemen in their capacious wool prayer shawls, leaning over pews, whispering to one another.
      More congregants walked over and shook my hand during the first hour at Marble Arch than in my sporadic attendance at various synagogues around Chicago over the past 25 years.
      I was jotting in my notebook until someone stopped me. "We're Orthodox," he said. "It isn't done."
      Just a few notes, I pleaded, to help me remember.
     "God will help you remember," he replied. I put the notebook away.
     All religions are melting under the bright light of modern society, but Judaism is melting quicker, as it was so small to begin with and faces, besides assimilation, the added challenge of enemies periodically trying to kill us.
     There are roughly 13 million Jews in the world today — a sum equal to the population of Zambia. Nowhere near the number in 1939 — 17 million — and since our population growth hovers at zero, we may never get back to where we once were.
     That is the grim view, but one of the benefits of religion is it can cast a positive spin on grim reality. About 10:30 a.m., a small boy in a white yarmulke and linen shirt came charging across the sanctuary, running full speed, fringes flying, exuberant. There was a change in the room; the boy was like a rocket announcing the start of a festival. Suddenly, more people began arriving. It turned out that, at Marble Arch Synagogue, 45 minutes late is early, and by 11 a.m. another 50 people had arrived.
     Howard Richenberg, the "warden" of the synagogue, announced the birth of a granddaughter, Hadar, to the rabbi, Lionel Rosenfeld, and the men on the bimah began an impromptu dance of celebration, holding hands, arms raised high.
     After that, I slipped over to Richenberg to check the new arrival's name, and he wondered if I wished to participate in the service.
     "Would you have objections to saying a prayer for the royal family?" he asked. "You do speak English?"
     I said that yes, I speak English and no, I would have no objection to asking our distracted God to bless the British royal family. A few minutes later, I was gestured to come up.
     "May the supreme king of kings in His mercy preserve the Queen in life, guard her and deliver her from all trouble and sorrow," I read, slightly startled to find myself addressing a congregation in London.
     The men of Marble Arch synagogue seemed to get a kick out of that — a big joke, to get the American to bless the queen. While we in this country have gotten past the whole Revolutionary War unpleasantness, it stings here, apparently.
     "I still have trouble being in the United States on the Fourth of July," one man told me when I returned to my seat.
     The service complete, we repaired to a small social hall — which the group filled nicely — and went at a spread of gefilte fish, herring and other masterworks of our faith.
      I stayed a while, eating, talking, and left much more confident than I had been mid-service. Yes, the demographic slide is a true worry. But when did the Jews not face worries?
          — Originally published in the Sun-Times, October 4, 2009

Ringing liberty out of a cracked bell

 

     You’re familiar with the Liberty Bell, right?
     Big bell with a crack in it. On display in Philadelphia. Long associated with the American Revolution, though there’s no evidence it was rung at any significant event. One of those confused quirks of history, like George Washington’s mythic chopping down a cherry tree.
     Do you know what’s written on the Liberty Bell? I won’t keep you in suspense: “Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the inhabitants thereof.”
     A line from Leviticus 25. A passage that, in some ways, is about farming. Every seventh year is to be a “sabbath” — the land will not be planted, but lie fallow — a smart agricultural practice, essential before advanced fertilizers.
     And every seventh sabbath, 7 x 7, the 50th year would be a “jubilee.”
     What was a jubilee? Big party? Lots of back-patting? Maybe. The Hebrew word for jubilee, yovel, means ram’s horn, or trumpet, the way news was blasted across the desert. A cue taken in English: jubilee is from the Latin jubilo, or “shout of joy.” That’s where we get “jubilation.”
     They weren’t shouting general self-praise, nor self-assigned greatness, but about something real. Something big. The jubilee year was sort of a societal reset, when all debts would be forgiven, slaves freed, seized lands returned. A fresh start for those downtrodden by life. It was about humbling the mighty, not building them up further.
     “Do not take advantage of each other,” Leviticus urges.
     Not quite, I feel comfortable saying, the spirit we find afoot in the land today, during our American quintuple jubilee, the 250th anniversary of a country, “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” No need to spell it out. Either you understood long ago or you never will.

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Evanescent

    Years ago, I went to an impressive production of "The Elephant Man" at the Theatre Building on Belmont Avenue. In a big top setting, with sawdust on the floor. One line particularly moved me, carried on a card by one of the circus girls who came out between acts: "Art is nothing as to nature." 
     That said, art can still enhance nature, whether it is hanging enormous Chihuly glassworks at the Garfield Park Conservatory in 2001, or, as the Chicago Botanic Garden did for its 50th anniversary, inviting artists to create site specific works, such as Patrick Dougherty's Rookery, which was so marvelous, they kept it for a second year.
    This year features giant bubbles or, to be more precise, "Evanescent" by Atelier Sisu, a Sydney-based art and design studio founded by Peruvian sculptor Renzo B. Larriviere and Australian spatial architect Zara Pasfield. It was installed June 6.  
    The rainbow spheres were not created particularly for the Botanic Garden, but have been seen in 22 cities across 12 countries, from Auckland, New Zealand to Toronto, Canada. They fit in nicely. Of course, we go to the garden a lot, and while we say that it is different every time we visit, with the giant orbs, it's really different. Or as the great Irish writer Brendan Behan once said, "A change is as good as a rest."
    The word "evanescent," as you may know, means, according to my OED, "that which quickly vanishes or passes away; having no permanence." In this case, the show is up until Sept. 20. Which will be here quickly enough, as summer fleets too.

Technology gives women upper hand in abortion battle

     Technology is a friend to women. Oh, it helps men, too, with its laser levels and Helix 5 Fishfinders. But society places particular burdens on women, through the constraints of religion and marriage, the treadmill of family obligation. Technology levels the field, a bit, with its way of swinging open the cage door. Advances we think of as benign today, like the bicycle, were revolutionary for women when introduced, allowing them a path out of the house, unchaperoned mobility and a reason to wear pants, all in one fell swoop.
     Particularly medical technology. For centuries, the prospect of pregnancy went arm-in-arm with the harangues of moralists. Until Chicago's own G.D. Searle released Enovid, the first birth control pill, in 1960, and suddenly women could do what they want instead of what they're told. Spoiler alert: they wanted to have sex without worrying about babies.
     There's an entrancing book on the subject, "The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution," by my pal Jonathan Eig. He gives a great early history of the battle to wrest control over women's bodies from pious men, spotlighting Margaret Sanger, who popularized the term "birth control" and opened the first clinic in 1916, later shut down by police, since even a pamphlet describing contraception was considered obscene, and illegal to send through the United States mail.
     We are steadily sliding back toward those days. Moralists have hitched their wagon to would-be totalitarians, with restricting the right of a woman to control her own body — and the "babies" hereby saved — being the central plum used to rationalize depriving everybody, male and female, of all sorts of other basic rights, such as the ability to cast a ballot unhindered.
     Four years ago, the Trump-packed Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that made abortion legal throughout this country. Thirteen states promptly banned it, even in cases of rape or incest. The same religious zealots in a lather because a 12-year-old might check out Judy Blume's "Forever" from the public library would force her to have a baby.
     And what was the result of banning abortion for 40% of American women? The practice is way up, 21% since 2020, because of our old friend, medical technology, in the form of the RU-486, a two-drug regimen that is safe, effective, and can be sent through the mail.
     You would think this failure might humble those hot to impose their religion upon others; which is what banning abortion is, the enforcement of Christian morality through law. But nothing humbles them, and now some on the anti-abortion crowd are considering this exciting next step: charging women who have abortions with murder.
     This hasn't yet been done for two reasons. First, because the whole "killing babies" bit is just a religious construct, like Santa Claus. Rhetoric used because it works so effectively. The tell, the giveaway, is that while doctors can be prosecuted for performing abortions, and friends for driving the women to clinics, the actual murderess herself, putting this supposed crime in motion, is generally left alone.

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Flashback 1999: We need some cartoonists who can draw straight

     The Gay Pride Parade is today. Which is a relief. Normally there is quite a bit of advance hoopla, and this year was so quiet I began to worry the LBGTQ+ crowd had gone to ground, hunkering down to ride out the grim, no-end-in-sight night of rights-shredding oppression inflicted upon the United States by our Republican friends.

     As the above paragraph pretty well sums up my thinking on the topic, rather than grind something out on a beautiful Saturday that really called for a long walk in the Chicago Botanical Garden followed by an even longer nap, I reached into my cupboard of oldies and dug out this. It's interesting for several reasons. First, notice that I never even mention the TV show featuring the out-of-the-closet character, Tinky Winky. That's how famous they were — I'd written about their mesmeric influence on my children the year before. Second, it's satire — I'm writing in the voice of the keyhole peering moralists, trusting my readers to be in on the joke. I wouldn't do that nowadays, when it can be hard to tell whether someone posting an opinion is sharing what they assume will be read as an exaggerated, ludicrous mockery, or just sharing how they actually feel. Anyway, thought you might like this. Happy Pride!

     So Jerry Falwell thinks Tinky Winky is gay.
     Well, of course, he is. Aren't all beloved childhood characters gay? Batman and Robin? What was that about? What was going on with them? "Youthful ward Dick Grayson" indeed. Obviously gay.

Tinky Winky

     Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble? Gay. The Lone Ranger and Tonto? Gay. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Gay, gay, gay, gay.
     I won't even start with Bert and Ernie, on "Sesame Street," whose blatant and undeniable gayness was well-documented five years ago by the Rev. Joseph Chambers, a North Carolina Pentecostal minister who blew the whistle on the pair's unnatural arrangement:
     "They're two grown men sharing a house and a bedroom," he said in his radio telecast. "They share clothes. They eat and cook together. They vacation together and they have effeminate characteristics."
     Heck, using that standard, what comic character isn't gay? Listen to Mickey Mouse speak lately? Obvious. And whom does he pal around with? Goofy. Donald Duck. Not exactly what you would call he-men.
     Don't for a moment be swayed by the surface glibness of the response by the Children's Television Workshop to Chambers' timely and helpful observations about the Sesame Street sodomites: "Bert and Ernie have no sexual orientation. They're cloth puppets."
      Puh-leeze. People such as ourselves, intelligent people who have the sophistication to uncover the vast global United Nations conspiracy to undermine our country and sap it of its vital bodily fluids are not duped easily by such sophistries.
     Granted, Tinky Winky, as Falwell points out, is more over the top than most, with his red patent leather purse, triangular symbol of gay acceptance stuck to his head, and purple color (that actually was new to me Falwell explains that purple is the "gay-pride color." Who knew? I thought it was the rainbow).
     Goodness, if purple helps make Tinky Winky gay, then what about Barney, the Purple Dinosaur? He must be really, really gay. Not only is he purple, but he hangs around kids and his first name is Barney, exactly the same first name as openly gay congressman Barney Frank!!!
     How clear do they have to make it before we are willing to see?
     The more I study the evidence, the more I realize that this conspiracy has been going on for years. I grew up on Bugs Bunny. Now, who was Bugs, really? A single male, without wife or family. A bachelor, prone to witty quips. Sort of an Oscar Wilde type, really. Often wearing women's clothes dressing up like Carmen Miranda with fruit on his head and lipstick to foil Elmer Fudd.
     Elmer Fudd! Good Lord, are we blind? The lisping Fudd (I don't buy that "speech impediment" cover story for an instant) is a living catalog of the personality traits that Southern ministers associate with gayness, so Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd are obviously a feuding gay couple, a veritable "La Cage aux Folles" of the cartoon world. It's amazing any of us grew to maturity with our precious heterosexuality intact.
     Now, I will admit that not every single children's character is gay. Some are merely satanic. How anybody could watch even five minutes of "The Big Comfy Couch" and not be overwhelmed by the images of sex and devil worship is a mystery. You have Loonette, this clown; girl lounging about on her sofa of indolence, talking to a doll, Molly, who acts like a living person. The dead that live. Shades of unnaturalism. In nearly every show Loonette fails to please Molly so obviously her master, so clearly a Beelzebub figure and has to try to soothe her "doll's" inflamed "feelings."

     Because this is a family newspaper, I cannot fully analyze the Major Bedhead character, other than to mention his form-revealing costume and the lubricity of his name. ("Bedhead" "Major Bed Head." It couldn't be any clearer if they named him "Mister Hot Sex on the Sofa Right Now with Satan.")
     What I would like to propose are some new children's shows that are not gay. When you see how easily it could be done, you'll realize how brainwashed we have been:
     MR. NORMAL'S WORKHOUSE: Enjoy processing insurance claims with Joe Normal, who talks sports with his office mates Bill, Pete and Steve. All have families. Children are home, where they belong.
     REV. MIKE DAGGER, MAVERICK MINISTER: Karate kicks and Bible verses fly as Father Dagger manly and unashamed of it teaches his Sunday school class a new lesson each week by pounding the daylights out of drug dealers, liquor salesmen and any other wrongdoers.
     SPOT THE FRIENDLY BALL: Spot avoids the pitfalls of most affectionate children's characters by being a simple beachball. He doesn't talk, doesn't sing, but children love him anyway and learn important lessons, like cooperation, by tossing him around.
     I could easily fly to Los Angeles right now and make big money by selling these ideas to television. But I'm not. Too much is at stake. I'm offering them freely, to whoever wants them, in the hopes of salvaging our beloved way of life before it's too late.
       — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Feb. 14, 1999

Sunlit leaf

    God, these computer systems are maddening.

    So Thursday night my Apple iMac asks me, in a little box in the upper right corner of the screen, if I want to download the new version of the Tahoe software. Sure, why not? What do I have to fear, with my smokin' new computer, bought this year? Keep all the fixes and security patches up to date. I hardly thought about it.

    This morning, I wake up, and my photos are gone — oh, they're up in the Cloud, safe. But I want them on my iMac, where they were yesterday, so I can scroll through them at my leisure. Sometimes the iCloud is balky. And who said they could take them? By what right? Is this the future? High tech creeps in the back door and rearranges your pantry?

     You'd think human agency could make it happen — and maybe it can, because I dealt with a variety of robots on Apple support, walking me through useless stuff I'd already gone through.  It drove me crazy that I couldn't make it work. At times, it seemed so close. I didn't spend the day doing it. But I thought about what to do. A lot. I'm a solver, a figure-it-outer, and when things won't solve, it preys on my mind.

     Okay, big deal, so I'll use the Cloud instead of Photo. Shrug and move on. Rub your smarting nose and stride toward the next rake, prongs up in the grass. Half the readers probably won't even know what I'm talking about. But what galls me is Apple never even asked. Click this button and we'll give you a day — and counting — trying to undo the mess we made. 

    Ah well, shouldn't complain. Look at this lovely gingko leaf, backlit by the setting sun. I've passed that tree for a decade, since I planted it, and never saw it lit like that. I handed the leash to my wife, and snapped a single picture — still safe up in the Cloud, those Apple bastards ... 

    A living fossil, the gingko.  Two hundred and twenty seven million years old — predating the dinosaurs — and not one second spent slogging through this balky computer system bullshit. Must be nice.

      

Wellness doesn't just happen — it requires effort

 

     Consider the information you ignore. The pages swiped away in a blink. The emails — for old fogies like us that even use email — hundreds a day, real, fake, urgent, irrelevant, scams, skipped over with hardly a glance. Plus ignored text messages, bulletins, alerts, pings. I’d hesitate to guess how much communication is filtered out, unprocessed: 90%? 99%? 99.9%? It’s amazing anything gets through.
     Meanwhile, random stuff snags your attention. It wasn’t the poetry of the subject line, “Wellness Wednesday: Mental Health and Self-Care Week 7" that hooked my interest. Maybe because I had just gotten an MRI on my torn-up left shoulder. A little wellness might hit the spot. And what is “self-care” anyway? It sounds almost raunchy.
     I opened the message.
     “Self-care is the practice of taking care of your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health,” wrote Chicago Public Media human resources manager Stephanie Sferra Bassill. “While many people view self-care as a form of selfish indulgence, prioritizing yourself is an essential component of overall well-being.”
     Hmm... I thought... let me get this straight: my employer is urging me to set aside this work nonsense, these bothersome interviews, the endless tappity-tap-tap on a keyboard, and just live a fuller, healthier, happier life?
     Well yeah. I can do that.
     Where to begin?
     For some reason I skipped the first, physical health aspect, and went straight for mental and emotional, dialing the number of a friend I’d been meaning to call. Isolation is a modern plague — we think we’re so connected by social media, when we’re really staring at a screen alone. I got his voicemail. A second friend. Also voicemail. A third. Again voicemail. No wonder we’re all so frazzled. A fourth call. Any guesses? Voicemail.
     People really don’t use the telephone anymore.

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