Not only do you fast at Yom Kippur, you pay for the privilege

     Five years ago, at the height of the recession and feeling a pinch ourselves, it seemed apt to write about the economic jolt that Yom Kippur can deliver to the faithful. What sets this column apart is the extraordinarily tone deaf, tetchy and charmless response by the executive director at the Free Synagogue in Evanston, which I've appended below. 

     Chicago doesn't have a proper Jewish deli. Some will grumble at that statement, will point to Manny's on Roosevelt Road. But Manny's serves cafeteria-style, so it doesn't count -- cafeteria-style deli is like take-out French: the food could be wonderful, but the format undercuts it.

     I'm also biased against Manny's because I was first taken there years ago by Dr. Robert Stein, the Cook County medical examiner, for lunch after a long morning spent watching him perform autopsies. That tends to put off your appetite for a place, forever.

     Upscale delis like The Bagel certainly try, and their food is fine, I guess. But they're too clean. You want a deli to have a certain dingy, loud, shut-up-and-eat quality, not to be a bland plastic place. You want your waitress at a Jewish deli to be some harried Eastern European woman in her mid-50s with flabby, flapping biceps and a look of sour forbearance etched into her face, not a perky part-time aerobics instructor brightly suggesting you try the Chinese chopped salad.

     Of course, now that I ask myself what, indeed, I consider a real Jewish deli, I realize I'm thinking of Corky & Lenny's, in Cleveland, with jars of sour pickles on the tables and big baskets of fresh bread and chocolate phosphates slopping down the glass as they're slapped down before you. Of course, were I to go there now, I'm sure I'd find it doesn't compare to itself in memory either.

     Not that Chicago is without Jewish culinary institutions. There is, for instance, Romanian Kosher Sausage on Clark Street—everyone simply calls it "Romanian." The odd thing about Romanian is: Though I never think about it when it's not in sight—I never say to my wife, "Hey, let's drive to Romanian!"—I don't believe I've ever passed by without stopping in. 
     Because you can't get this stuff just anywhere—the best kosher pastrami, salami, garlic hot dogs, chicken, kishke—all of which we piled into a basket after Romanian's irresistible pull forced us off Touhy last week and inside. How can you not? People journey there from Indiana, from Wisconsin. They place enormous orders and drag them back to Jewish communities stranded in Iowa. The guy in front of me bought $445.58 worth of meat to take back to Michigan.

     "We get people from St. Louis," said the clerk.

     A bold sign in Romanian orders: "Get your Rosh Hashanah and Sukkoth fresh meat order in your freezer now!! DO NOT WAIT UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE. AVOID HIGHER PRICES AND SHORTAGES."

     I admire the severity of that -- given the perils facing Jews, you really have to drive home a threat to catch our attention. This is a time of heightened alertness, because it's now September, the High Holidays loom, and they inspire a certain frantic, musical chairs angst -- the song stops Sept. 18 for Rosh Hashanah, and if you didn't plan ahead, you have no brisket. A week later, the needle is lifted for Yom Kippur, and if you weren't careful, you have nowhere to stand and beat your chest.

     Even the most casual, ham and cheese Jews like to visit a synagogue on Yom Kippur. The way to guarantee a seat is to join a congregation -- some don't let non-members in. But only 40 percent of America's ebbing Jewish population belongs to a temple, and the 60 percent who don't belong sometimes have to scramble.

     For synagogues, the High Holidays present a dilemma. On one hand, you've got all these twice-a-year Jews traipsing through -- what better time to put out the Welcome mat, wrap your prayer shawl lovingly around their shoulders and draw these strangers back toward the comforts of faith?

     On the other, the synagogue needs a new roof, you've got customers eager for what you're selling, and what better way to fill the empty coffers than to charge admission?

     On the Chicago Board of Rabbis Web site list (at juf.org), High Holidays ticket prices range as high as $500; Evanston's Beth Emet The Free Synagogue charges $400 -- ironic, given the name.

     Many synagogues will waive fees for students and the indigent. With the economy still in the toilet, others are scrapping tickets altogether.

Makom Shalom, a renewal synagogue in the South Loop, doesn't sell tickets and instead asks for donations.

     "People are under tremendous economic pressure," says Chava Bahle, rabbi at Makom Shalom. "The pay-to-pray model is not appealing."

     As uncomfortable as the topic is, touching on old slurs about Jews and money, it is also a significant issue in a faith that risks evaporating into the anything-goes polychromatic wasteland of American culture. A lot of American Jews wouldn't enter synagogue if you paid them, so the money question is one that synagogues are grappling with as they try to rally the tribe while there is still a tribe to rally.

     "Almost all congregations these days are really sensitive to economic realities," says Rabbi Michael Balinsky, executive vice president of the Chicago Board of Rabbis. "People have to understand, it costs something to do services -- rabbis have to be paid, rooms have to rented, synagogues have to pay their electric bills and water bills. That's the reality. Everything costs."

     AND YET. . .

     "The last thing we want to do is have people feel they can't come to services," he continues. "We want everyone to be there who wants to be there, and no one is going to be turned away for financial reasons." 
                                                                  —Aug. 31, 2009
HOW TO COMPLAIN

     The scorched-earth rhetoric that passes as political speech infects our daily conversations. People express disagreement by blasting away with both barrels. No one is mildly miffed -- it's always full-blown, quivering outrage.

     But to what end? The reason for complaint should be to get a point across, perhaps even change minds, and here a bit of sugar does wonders. You can insult or you can persuade, but you can't do both.

     Early last week, I ran a column that began by claiming there are no decent Jewish delis in Chicago, then shifted to the topic of synagogues charging for tickets at Yom Kippur. I expected to hear from delis, honked off at being overlooked.

     But the delis were very polite, and two had a point. Kaufman's on Dempster in Skokie sent a puzzled note. I wrote back that I've been patronizing Kaufman's for 25 years but didn't consider them because, in my mind, they're not a deli, but a bagel bakery that sells cold cuts. A fine distinction, perhaps.

     Max & Benny's, the Northbrook institution, also cleared its throat. I overlooked them because they're right under my ample nose. But space is tight, so we'll save them for another day.

     As for the tickets, Chabad, the ultraorthodox group, pointed out, in their characteristic friendly, upbeat fashion, that their services are always free. I've gone to Chabad services, and they are lively, if heavy on the Hebrew.

     In fact, the only real nastiness I got was from Beth Emet The Free Synagogue, aghast that I would make a pun about them.

    Here is the offending line, in its entirety:

     "Evanston's Beth Emet The Free Synagogue charges $400 -- ironic, given the name."

     I won't bore you with the full response from Bekki Harris Kaplan, Beth Emet's executive director, but it includes the words "angered" "obnoxious," "upset," "sarcasm," "character attacks" and "saddened."

     She said she wanted dialogue, so I wrote to her:

     "If you truly want dialogue, two questions: 1) Why is listing the $400 fee OK on the Board of Rabbis Web site, but a 'slam' when I include it in a column on the challenge of both welcoming Jews to synagogue and paying for services? 2) If I wrote, 'I was in the free weight room at the East Bank Club, which is ironic, because it costs $200 a month to use it,' I bet the general manager of the East Bank Club would be smart enough not to send me a starchy note. Why aren't you?"

     Alas, she did not reply, which makes for a very one-sided dialogue. In case she's moved to dialogue now, I'll add a third question: "How can anyone purporting to represent a people so rich in humor, irony, wit and whimsy collapse into a moaning heap of complaint when her own ox is nicked?"

     Postscript: A ticket to Beth Emet now sets you back $500, a 25 percent increase in five years, according to the Board of Rabbis web site. And yes, Ms. Kaplan is still the executive director of the Free Synagogue, no doubt using her charm to draw the faithful through their gates. I never did hear back from her.

Saturday fun activity: Where IS this?

     For the New Year (the Jewish new year, if you're thinking, "New Year? What New Year? It's October") I thought I would add an extra twist to the Where IS this? fun activity. Not only will a photo be tossed up to be puzzled over, but then, when it has finally been guessed, I'll post a bit of follow-up rumination about the place. I'm doing this because it was frustrating to display an interesting place, but not be able to say much about it, so as to not give away the game (not that people were stumped long anyway). 

    So I'm posting a picture of this enigmatic green blob, and then I'll fill in why I selected it after somebody figures out where it is. The winner will receive this pristine copy of the Nov. 5, 2009, edition of the Chicago Sun-Times, marking Barack Obama's first election as president. A True Collector's Item, as they say, it popped up while moving my office to the 10th floor; actually several of them did, and how many does a guy need? I see them selling for twenty bucks on eBay. You can have this one by guessing where this enigmatic green emblem is located. Please remember to place your guesses below, and good luck. Remember, I'll be at synagogue for a while today, so it might be later than usual before I can moderate your guesses. Be nice.

Postscript

     I'm a creature of habit when it comes to restaurants. I know what I like—Gene & Georgetti, Harry Caray's, Petterino's, Star of Siam, Sushi Sai, Prairie Grass—and I want it, again and again. But there is a chink in the armor; occasionally a friend will suggest trying "something new" and my accommodating nature trumps my hidebound habits. 
     So when a fellow journalist, a writer for The Economist, suggested a change of pace, I reached for one of those places I've been curious about. I actually thought I was suggesting the Raw Bistro, at 1901 N. Halsted, but somehow got us to a place called Raw, at 51 W. Hubbard, at the sign of the artichoke, or broccoli, or whatever that green thing is supposed to be. 

      I arrived at the first; punctual to a fault. Inside, I noticed it was more a carry-out store than a restaurant, just five or six stools, a refrigerator case, lots of large jars of

supplements. And everything was really expensive. Four dollars for a cookie. By the time my friend arrived, I was waiting out front, and suggested we try somewhere else. 

     No, she said, she lives nearby and is curious about this place. Okay, I'm game. I bought a kale salad for $12 and a carrot muffin for $6 that felt like a lead shotput. She got some dumplings and a $9 bottle of coconut kefir.
     The kale salad was astoundingly good. "So this is what all that kale madness is about," I thought. The amazing thing is, I ate and ate and ate, sharing with her, and when we were done I still had 3/4 of the salad left. I took it home, shared it with my wife with dinner, and still had plenty for breakfast the next day. And the carrot muffin—it was like eating a scoop of Jupiter: this dense, rich, orangish material. She liked her dumplings and kefir less, but we both agreed the place was worth the $20 apiece it cost for lunch. The clerk at Raw also kept setting out little paper cups with samples: sweet potato chips and pumpkin smoothie, mock tuna and a soy burger with homemade ketchup that definitely called for further investigation.  And considering how long the food they give you lasts, and how good and fresh it is, it's really not that expensive.
     Anyway I thought, in my role as a value-added blogger, I should not only use it as a contest location, but then tell you a little about the place. To be honest, I suspected it was going to taste really good, because Raw is vegan, and no vegan restaurant is going to stay in business long if they can't find a way to make the stuff taste good. I'll go back. 

Divvy Diary: Safety in numbers

     Education is a process, not an act. One of my favorite aspects of writing a column is I get to build off things I've written earlier. Such as finally understanding the seeming paradox that more amateurs without helmets careening on bicycles in city traffic somehow makes the city safer and leads to fewer head injuries.

     A friend is feeling unwell, and I recommended she nurse herself back to health with the rich gingery soup from Ajida, a Japanese grill on Wells Street.

      As she isn’t able to go out, I gallantly offered to convey the miso udon to her, of course hopping on a Divvy to rush the soothing broth to her place in Greektown.

     As there are no Divvy stations immediately around the restaurant, I meant to pick up a cable lock, to secure the bike while I ran inside to collect the carry out. I considered leaving the bike unattended in the street. But I did that once, buying cookies at D’Amato’s Bakery on Grand, and it was a nerve-wracking experience, with one eye on the goodies slowly being placed into a box by the clerk, one eye fixed on the defenseless blue Divvy bike parked in front, poised at any moment to have to bolt out to rescue it.

     Never again. Too stressful. But I didn’t get around to buying the lock, so instead I walked to Ajida, accepted our soup, then hot-footed it to Franklin and Madison to grab a bike west to Halsted.

     Memo to self: buy cable lock.

     In fact, if you have other unsanctioned tricks and unrecommended strategies regarding maximizing the bike share system, let me know and I’ll include them in a future column tentatively titled, “Pimp My Divvy.”

     Yes, I wore my helmet. I’m trying to be more scrupulous about that, a) because it’s safer and b) toting the helmet gives me a cachet of cool, if only in my own mind.

     Speaking of helmets . . .
     When last we addressed Divvy helmets, in July, the American Journal of Public Health had printed a study claiming that in cities launching ride-share programs, the percentage of head injuries among bicycle-related injuries went up. I used it as the basis for a general plea for more helmet use and called on the city to do more to promote helmets, which of course had no effect.
     This week Andres Salomon, a Seattle bicycle activist, sent me a pair of follow-up letters from the Sept. 11 journal of public health that revisit the issue, pointing out that while the percentage of head injuries has gone up in 10 cities with ride-share programs, totals went down,
     The study “misinterpreted the injury data,” Salomon and his colleagues write. “Although the proportion of injuries that were head injuries increased . . . the authors fail to mention that the total number of head injuries declined by 14.4% in bicycle share cities, compared with a decline of only 3.9% in control cities. . . . The total number of nonhead injuries declined even more sharply — by 37.8% in bike share cities, compared with a 6.2% increase in control cities. . . . The data suggests that bicycle share programs were in fact associated with reduction in bicycle injuries, even though none of the programs provided helmets.”
     The letter suggests that Vancouver, which is delaying its rideshare program until a system of helmet rental can be established, is endangering bicyclists by doing so, while Dallas, which suspended a helmet law to encourage its program, is helping them.
     That seems counterintuitive; how can filling busy city streets with inexperienced, unhelmeted bicyclists, often unused to urban biking, often tourists who might not have ridden a bike in years, somehow cause accidents to go down? What’s happening?
     The letters allude to the “potentially protective effect of bicycle share programs” without speculating what those effects might be. It doesn’t take an academic to understand what’s happened in downtown Chicago. Any frequent cyclist can tell you.
     “It’s a critical mass,” said Diane Dillon, who regularly rides her bike from West Rogers Park to her job at the Newberry Library on Walton. “The critical mass of cyclists has made everyone, drivers as well as pedestrians, more aware of bicyclists and the need to share the road.”
     “The ‘protective effect’ is another way of saying ‘safety in numbers,’ ” Divvy spokesman Elliot Greenberger agreed. “We’ve added thousands of big blue bikes on the street. You bet that means that Chicago is noticing and getting more comfortable with bike riders. With that kind of shift, you typically see motorists, cyclists and pedestrians become more aware.”
     Dillon has noticed motorists are less blithe about weaving into bike lanes, cutting off cyclists or laying on the horn needlessly.
     “When bike lanes were first introduced, drivers routinely violated the space,” she said. “Now they are cutting people off less and driving more respectfully. I get fewer anxious and annoyed honks — they would see a bicyclist and just honk for the sake of honking. Now they’re more respectful.”

Judaism isn't easy, but it has its rewards

     Yom Kippur begins tonight at sundown, and as the only newspaper columnist in the country, I believe, who regularly comments on being Jewish—it's part of my life, and I never got the memo reminding me that I'm supposed to be vaguely embarrassed—I feel as if I should say something.
     Only I took the nation's temperature, Jewish-wise, on Sunday, for Rosh Hashana. And frankly, I feel like I said everything I have to say about Yom Kippur in a pair of columns more than a decade ago. True, few readers are going to read an argument and think, "Heyyyy, didn't he take this tack back in 2003?" But I have my pride. So rather than regurgitate the same old thoughts, I'm going to draw these Yom Kippur chestnuts out of the vault, for your holiday entertainment. 
     This first one is notable because, after it ran, I got a phone call from my rabbi saying, in essence, "How can we help you feel better about your religion?" And I had to tell him that I feel just fine about it—well, a little squeamish that my rabbi is calling me up, giving me grief at the office—but otherwise doing okay, faith-wise. Just a tad unconventional, that's all. 

     It's Yom Kippur time, again. Starting Sunday night, for those keeping score. And since most readers are probably only dimly aware of what Yom Kippur actually is (don't feel bad; I didn't know the Easter story until I saw "Jesus Christ Superstar'' as a teenager), I probably should explain. It's the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, a holiday noted primarily for three things: 1) repentance; 2) fasting and 3) the uncharacteristic flocking, like swallows to Capistrano, of assimilated Jews back to their neglected synagogues.

     Much press attention was given to that third point this year in the wake of a study showing that population growth among Jews in this country has been stagnant for the past decade, mainly due to a 40 percent intermarriage rate.

     No wonder Jews are drifting away, if Yom Kippur is the only holiday they show up for. That's like missing the football game but stopping by for the snarl in the parking lot. I'm not sure what the logic is — maybe fooling God into inscribing them in the book of life for another year ("No, no, I've been here all along Lord, really . . . ").

     If I had to pick just one holiday to go to temple for, I'd pick almost any other; Simcha Torah, for example. There's dancing, and waving flags, and kissing torah scrolls. It's basically a big party for a book, and as a bookish type, I like that.

     But Yom Kippur? First, you're looking at about five hours in the synagogue, what with Kol Nidre Sunday night and services all day Monday. It's actually closer to 10 hours, but between arriving the traditional 45 minutes late and sneaking off in midafternoon, five is more like it. That's a lot of time to pray. I don't want to blaspheme, but if God were as quick as He's supposed to be, then why do we have to keep restating the same praise and contrition, in various ways and languages? You'd think it could be like a pollution emission check — a quick peek into the sooty chambers of our hearts, a few checkmarks on the form, and we're on our way again.

     Not that I don't enjoy the prayers. The tunes are beautiful, the thoughts, lofty. Though I admit getting hung up on the gender equality infecting the lower rungs of Judaism. A central part of religion is nostalgia — you're doing what you did as a kid. But in our synagogue, we can't invoke the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, without including the matriarchs, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah. I'm not against equality — if I were, my wife would kill me with a brick while I slept. But when you whip in the matriarchy, it no longer is the same prayer as when I was a kid, and it jars. Imagine, at the ballpark, if whenever they sang "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," every time they got to "buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks" they added "and apples and celery and healthful snacks" as a nod to smart eating.

     There is also a considerable amount of chest-thumping at Yom Kippur. You stand, and beat your chest, and declare your sins — not specifically. Nobody says, "I goldbricked at work and cheated on my wife and hit my kids." Rather, in the safety of numbers, we thump our fists over our hearts and declare a laundry list of generic sins — "We have harmed others. We have wrought injustice. We have zealously transgressed."

     I like the thumping. But I find myself — and I know this is not the point of the thing, but being a guy one tends to be competitive — keeping score during this solemn litany, thinking "Yup, did that one. Did that one. Didn't do that one. Sorta did that one."

     A final note about Yom Kippur: Perhaps unique among the holidays of the world's faiths, it has almost completely defied our society's steady march toward commercialization. Yom Kippur is devoid of trappings — no decorations, no gifts, almost no cards. Of the thousands of types of greeting cards that Hallmark sells — even they are unsure how many — the company offers exactly one style of Yom Kippur card.

     "Wishing you the peace that comes with forgiveness," it reads. "Hope that comes with new resolve and joy that comes with making new blessings and the dawn of a whole new year."

     That's sweet, actually, though I hope they stop there. It's too easy to imagine the Atonement Line, with all sorts of syrupy "To My Neglected Mother" or "Greetings To My Traduced Friend" cards.

     Perhaps that it is coming. I can also see the beer companies getting involved, the way they shanghaied Halloween from the candy companies. People do throw break-the-fast parties (we tried setting one up with friends, but they insisted on waiting until twilight). Perhaps someday soon we'll have "Slam a Bud at Sundown!" displays in the supermarket (assuming, of course, we beat the gathering demographic doom. Nobody markets to the Shakers).

     My general sense is that Yom Kippur is like jogging — something whose value is greatly enhanced by the wonderful sense of fulfillment that washes over you when you're done. Myself, I'm looking forward to the holiday on deck, Sukkoth — a harvest festival. Not nearly as holy, true, but you get to sit in a booth of corn husks and pine sprigs in your backyard and drink with your friends. Judaism can be a taxing religion, particularly at this time of year, but it is not without its compensations.

                                             —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Oct. 3, 2003

Tracy Morgan and the Eggshell Skull Rule

     The law gets a bad rap, but has its fascinations.
     For instance, TV comedian Tracy Morgan and five other passengers were in a Mercedes limousine that slowed because of traffic congestion on the New Jersey Turnpike June 7 and was rear-ended by a Walmart truck.  Morgan's friend, James McNair was killed, and Morgan, who starred on NBC's Saturday Night LIve and 30 Rock, was badly injured.
     Before rear-ending the limo, the driver of the Walmart truck, Kevin Roper, made several mistakes: he was traveling at 20 miles per hour over the speed limit, according to the National Transportation Safety Board's investigation. He ignored warning signs. And he had been driving for nearly 14 hours, the federal limit.
     The driver faces several criminal charges, including vehicular homicide and Morgan of course filed a civil suit. 
     A layman might be forgiven for assuming Walmart would just hand Morgan a blank check at this point. But that isn't how it works. The law is a battle. Parties clearly in the wrong—particularly giant corporations in the wrong—must mount a defense, and it should be no surprise that Walmart lawyers are seeking to pin the blame on Morgan, saying his injuries were  "caused, in whole or in part, by plaintiffs' failure to properly wear an appropriate available seat belt restraint device"and so, by not wearing a seatbelt "acted unreasonably and in disregard of (their) own best interests."
     News reports focused on Morgan's incredulous response.
     But I was more interested in what the law says. 
     At first blush, it would seem an 0pen-and-shut case.
     There is a queasily-named principle in law called "The Eggshell Skull Rule" that says, in essence, that a person who does wrong is responsible for any harm done to a person, even if that person is in an unexpectedly precarious state. "A defendant takes a plaintiff as he finds him," is the way it's usually phrased; meaning that you are on the hook for the injuries you inflict, even if they could not be foreseen. Morgan's carelessly being in a vulnerable, seatbeltless position shouldn't matter. Heck, if every evening I bathe in a tub filled with gasoline, and you malicious toss a lit cigarette into my open bathroom window, assuming the tub is filled with water, you are responsible for my horrific burns. That bathing in gasoline is stupid doesn't enter into it (the "eggshell skull" comes from another hypothetical. If I push you down, and your skull shatters because it's an eggshell, I've murdered you. The argument that a person with such a skull shouldn't go around without a helmet doesn't score many points in court).
     Unless it does. Walmart has to offer some defense, and in making the motion pinning the blame on Morgan, it shows that it is not going to roll over and pay whatever staggering, eight-figure settlement the TV star is hoping for. Walmart has deep pockets, and part of any lawsuit such as this is the filing of endless motions and continuances, the displaying of the legal fleet, as it were, to try to instill fear and expense, grind down the other side and reduce their expectations. 
     As with any situation involving law, it gets more complicated than that. Different rules come into play, and it is up to a judge and jury to decide which ones apply. For instance, there is a concept known as comparative fault, which is the new term applied to what was once called "contributory negligence" (in essence,the idea that if you've somehow done something to contribute to your injury, like not worn a seatbelt, you can't collect damages). 
    Only four states adhere to the idea of contributory negligence, and New Jersey isn't one of them. New Jersey does have a rule about comparative fault—the "51 Percent Bar Rule" that says if a plaintiff is more than half at fault in a situation, then he can't collect. 
    Which means that Walmart has to convince a jury that an exhausted, speeding, heedless truck driver is less at fault for Morgan's injuries than the comedian himself is, for not wearing a seatbelt in the back of his limo.
    A tall order. It isn't quite saying that you're at fault for not wearing a bulletproof vest when I shot you, but in the same ballpark. Or at least that's what I would argue, were I Morgan's lawyer (or, more likely, lawyers). 
    But wait. It gets even more complicated. Bathing in gasoline or having an eggshell skull are not crimes. But riding in a car without wearing a seatbelt is.  In 2010, New Jersey passed a law that all passengers, front and back, must wear seatbelts. A Walmart lawyer could argue that Morgan's commission of a crime, minor though it is, reduces the damages he could expect. He is like a burglar who breaks into somebody's house and then drowns in the whirlpool tub. Even if a jury decides that the fault is 10 percent Morgan's, that's 10 percent shaved off the top of a judgment certain to be in the millions. A Hail Mary pass worth trying. 
       Then again, speeding is also a crime, as is vehicular homicide.
       You get the point. It's all moot anyway because Walmart, shying away from the continuing bad publicity involved with its reckless employee injuring a popular entertainer, will no doubt, after showing  the stick of its legal muscle, choose the carrot of  some never-to-be-disclosed settlement. Morgan, tired of the whole ordeal and eager to get on with his life, will no doubt take the money.  Still, it's interesting to think about. At least I hope it is.
        Then again, I'm not a lawyer, and I know many readers of this are. Am I missing something here? 
     

Beheading wasn't invented by ISIS

     Humans are social animals, traveling like wolves in packs that became families, clans, communities, nations.
     As such, we have a tendency to mimic each other, and generally this is a good thing. Ogg wraps himself in a bearskin, we all wrap ourselves in bearskins, and find that doing so offers protection against the arctic cold. And so civilization advances.
     But sometimes it is not good. News this week told of a fired nursing home employee in Oklahoma who threatened to come back and behead his former coworkers, inspired no doubt by the atrocity that happened days earlier and 20 miles away.
     Is this going to be a trend?
     You could argue it already is. Three times makes a trend in the newspaper business, and so cutting off heads must be in vogue, what with ISIS beheading two freelance journalists and posting the videos, the horror leaping the globe to pop up in Oklahoma, of all places (or maybe that should be, “pop up in Oklahoma, of course” that state having established itself in 1995 with the Murrah Federal Building bombing as a sort of port of entry for foreign terror techniques).
     Not that it’s anything new. Beheading holds a special place of horror in our culture, as cold-blooded murder and desecration of the body paired in one awful act.
     Which is ironic, because when history picks up on decapitation—”caput” is Latin for head, it’s also where “capital” comes from—it was the kinder form of execution, compared to crucifixion, which took longer.
     Those hot to tar Islam with any brush available will leap to cast beheading as a particularly Muslim practice. The Q’uran certainly endorses it at several points, such as verse 8:12: “I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.”
     And history is rife with Islamic beheadings. Legendary Muslim warrior Saladin ordered the beheading of 230 Knights Templar in 1187; Turkish invaders beheading 800 Catholic martyrs in Otranto, Italy in 1480.
     Saudi Arabia still allows beheading and had a surge of such executions in August.
     But in order to consider decapitation an Islamic atrocity, we have to ignore a solid thousand years of other history; England kept its headsmen busy for centuries, even managing to behead its king, Charles I, on Jan. 30, 1649 (a groan went up from the crowd when the ax fell, but onlookers still lined up to dip handkerchiefs in the royal blood, as mementoes, a 17th-century version of the selfie).
     No Muslim nation embraced decapitation with the zeal shown by those arbiters of Western culture, the French, who invented the guillotine and then kept it busy on what is now the Place de la Concorde, using it to kill as many as 40,000 French citizens. Beheadings became entertainment, with programs sold listing the condemned for that day, and Parisians brought their children to watch. The French continued using the guillotine; the last official beheading in France was in 1977. England beheaded a trio of would-be traitors in 1817, though they were hanged before their heads were displayed.
      Nor should we be too smug in the United States. True, legal decapitation was never in vogue here (briefly on the books in Utah, never used). But that doesn't make our history free of the practice.
      In 1623, Myles Standish, of Pilgrim fame, cut off the head of an Indian chief and impaled it on a spike outside his fort, only two years after the first Thanksgiving. "That's the part we typically omit from our Thanksgiving myth," NYU history professor Jonathan Zimmerman dryly notes in his account of the incident.
      Given the number of protracted, botched executions by lethal injection, it could be argued that a swift decapitation is more merciful. No matter. Beheading is seen as repulsive, evoking visceral horror, shocking enough that a nation that had just extracted itself from the bloody quicksand of Iraq would go galumphing back.
      Murder is murder, and the dead are dead. While cutting someone's head off shows far greater zeal on the part of the killer than, say, shooting someone, we should by now be finally adjusting ourselves to the notion that the Middle East is an area where passions run high.
     I hope this doesn't become a true trend, that the news isn't filled with moments-before footage, and heads don't start being impaled on the wrought-iron fence around the White House. Because we've been there before. And the sad thing is, we'd get used to it. Again.
  

"They are the effect and not the cause"

Library exhibit, Vanderbilt University

    The benefit, and drawback, of writing for publication in a newspaper is that you have a finite space. About 800 words, of late. Thats good because it encourages brevity. You make your point in 1000 words, and then cut 20 percent which, when you're done, usually makes the column better, sharper. 
     But it is a detriment as well, in that you can only say so much. For instance, in yesterday's post about Simone de Beauvoir's views on race in the United States, I really could only introduce her, talk about her visit to Harlem which I found so illuminating, then wrap it up. Time to move on. 
    But thankfully, a number of readers stuck their feet in the door before I could close it.  I wanted to stride off to a new topic, but they yanked me back.  Joe Schiele, of Ravenswood, struck the archetypical tone—and truly, each is almost identical ("They don't have to conspire," as Gay Talese once said of the rich, "because they all think alike"): 

Hi Neil,      Great column today!!! You as a white Jew from Northbrook, and me as a white Roman Catholic from Glenview, how about we take our wive's and children on a nice weekend stroll around 49th and State. I hear it's especially nice around midnight :-)     Wish Madame Bouvier(sp?) could join us, but since she's long gone and obviously unaware how much Harlem and the AA (generally) demographic has de-volved in our country, I'm not quite sure what the point of your column was.       I can't leave Mr. Schiele dangling in uncertainty, and Beauvoir addresses this very point, at a length that I could only allude to in the paper.        But here, online, we can let her build her argument to help illuminate Mr. Schiele. And though it will certainly be lost on him, we can still benefit:        "The black problem,' Beauvoir writes, "is first of all a white problem. To understand it, you must start there. It was whites who brought black slaves to America (around four hundred thousand of them in 1802, when the slave trade was legal and nearly as many—illegally—between 1808 and 1860). It was whites who fought each other to decide whether to maintain or abolish slavery. Today, there are thirteen million blacks, but they possess only a tiny portion of the country's economic wealth, and they have almost no political influence. It is whites who assign them their place: their way of life is a secondary reaction to the situation created by the white majority."       Of course she wrote this in 1947, and things have changed. Now there are 40 million African Americans, and a black president, but otherwise what she said about wealth and political power hold true. There has been a struggle for Civil Rights and things are different. But they are not—as Mr. Schiele's comments reflect—really that different, and in some ways they are worse, as it is easy for people such as my complaining readers to dismiss the current situation of African Americans are entirely their fault.        Even though, as Beauvoir continues:      "No one claims that their conditions or opportunities are equal to those of whites..."      Inferior schools, lack of capital, lack of access to jobs, uneven law enforcement, judicial system stacked against them, all of these are shrugged off—how else otherwise could we see a return to voting restrictions? Not quite the cynical poll taxes and "grandfather clauses" which Beauvoir details, but close enough. None of this keeps my readers such as Mr. Schiele from mockingly washing their hands. That too is part of a long tradition.     "But many racists, ignoring the rigors of science, insist on declaring that even if the physiological reasons haven't been established, that fact is that blacks are inferior to whites"—the term Schiele uses is "de-volved"—"You only have to travel through America to be convinced of it. But what does the verb 'to be' mean? Does it define an immutable substance, like oxygen? Or does it describe a moment in a situaton that has evolved, like every human situation? The best answer to this accusation was provided by Jefferson, speaking of white Americans, who had been put down by Old World Europeans for lacking a historical past or any constructive force, for not having produced any outstanding figures in the arts or sciences. "We have not yet had our opportunities," he essentially said. "First let us exist; then we can be asked to prove ourselves."       That in essence is my view of the situation of blacks today. Not enough time has passed since the enormous wrongs visited upon them. The little change we've managed, at enormous effect, makes us fancy that much has changed, and it hasn't.       She goes on, but my newspaper training tells me it is time to draw to a close. You really should read the book. But a final thought, addressing my reader's sneer at crime in black areas—all of which I have spent time in, with no ill effect, doing my job. (And yes, brought my wife and kids, after dark, to no ill effect).      "Their crime rate is a little higher than that of whites in part because they are treated with unequal severity, in part because their poverty allows them neither legal nor illegal defense against the arbitrariness of the police, and in part because they almost all have a wretched standard of living and a social status that makes them view the white legal system as merely a detested constraint," Beauvoir writes. "Finally, if in the big cities so many blacks are found in the lower depths of society, it's because there are so few economic outlets open to them that they're forced to live by their wits. The faults and defects attributed to blacks really are created by the terrible handicaps of segregation and discrimination; they are the effect and not the cause of the white attitude toward black people."      "They are the effect and not the cause of the white attitude toward black people." If that, if the entire final paragraph, is not as true today as it was in 1947 well, then maybe Mr. Schiele or one of his identical soulmates can write a second time and explain to me why it isn't.             Photo atop blog: Vanderbilt Library, Nashville, Tennessee.