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

‘Born a Crime’ speaks to now

     Keeping up with popular culture is exhausting and impossible. Why bother even trying? The new hit movie or song, the latest viral TikTok. There’s so much of it; most can be easily missed.
     But when somebody I know recommends something, I pay attention. What’s the point of talking otherwise? When a young man in his 20s — a Chicago teacher — urged me to read Trevor Noah’s book, “Born a Crime,” I immediately sought it out on Audible.
     The fact that it had been a No. 1 bestseller when it came out in 2016 was news to me. I knew exactly one thing about Noah: he replaced Jon Stewart on his TV show, which I never watch. Occasionally a quip of Noah’s might pop up on Twitter.
     Noah was born in South Africa. A good book introduces you not only to people — Noah, his parents, his friends — but to a place. “Born a Crime” — literally true in Noah’s case, born of an illegal union of his Black mother and Swiss father — does exactly that. We see South Africa with its 11 official languages, its oppressive Apartheid system where officials are sticking pencils in people’s hair and if the pencil stays in place, you’re Black, and you can’t live in certain areas. Chinese people are officially Black, but Japanese are officially white.
     The book contains one of the funniest set pieces I’ve ever read. Because of inadequate education — it isn’t just Texas — a Black South African family will sometimes name their baby “Hitler” in honor of the powerful guy in the distant past who caused so much trouble for other Europeans. I won’t go into detail, so as not to spoil it when you read the book, which you absolutely should. Let’s just say the episode involves Hitler and a dance party.
     But that isn’t why I’m writing this. I’m writing this because the book speaks to our moment.
     Noah is hustling pirated CDs in the street, living on the margins of crime. He buys a stolen camera.

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"Together is Timeless"

     A writer trusts his gut. She listens to her in-the-moment instinct. Use this word but not that one. Jump at that topic while avoiding another. You need a sense of what fits, what doesn't, what's right, what wrong.
     So I'm sitting in the car on Wabash Avenue, just north of Cermak Road, waiting for my younger son to come down so we can go to dinner in Chinatown. And I look across the street and see this billboard for Fannie May candies. And think, "Bleh." Then take a picture to document the marvel, to make sure I'm not hallucinating. To check that this isn't some errant, one-off billboard test.
     It isn't. A big branding campaign, launched last Christmas.
     "Together is Timeless."
     Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me I'm overreacting by even remarking upon its meh-ness. I'm not their target audience. To me, Fannie May candy is barely worth eating, like Hershey's milk chocolate. A palpable substitute for actual candy if nothing better is at hand. A form of pica, only using confectionary instead of plaster of paris.
     I tried to think of how to illustrate its wrongness, and the first phrase I thought of is Sartre's "Hell is other people." The problem must be the word "timeless." It's not an adjective that evokes anything, especially not chocolate. The slogan is close in meaning to "Together is an Eternity," which doesn't sound like a situation you want to enter willingly. "Timeless" is such a tired bit of boosterism. "This heirloom plate from the Franklin Mint will become a timeless treasure your family will cherish for generations..."

     I wondered what Fannie May, based in Chicago, thought it was doing, and am glad that Candy & Snack Today did the heavy lifting for me, reaching out to Ferraro Group's Fannie May Confection Brands Inc.
     “Together Is Timeless showcases how Fannie May takes classic ingredients like caramel, pecans, grahams, marshmallows and chocolate, and brings them together to create something greater than the sum of their parts. Just like the memories that are made while celebrating with loved ones,” Kari Fisch, senior brand manager at Fannie May told the publication. “We are very excited to unveil our new campaign and look forward to becoming a staple of family celebrations nationwide for decades to come.”
     They pay people for that. (And what's a "graham"? Perhaps the word you use when you can't call an ingredient a "graham cracker" for legal reasons. Did you ever in your life say, "I'd like a graham"? Me neither). 

     We are in such a blizzard of communication, a 24-hour wordstorm as big as the Crab Nebula. So if you are going to coin a phrase, buy billboards, you jolly well...

     Enough. Anyone who gets it understood at first glance, and if they haven't, they never will.
     I'd be reluctant to jump on somebody's brain child — I'm tempted to go into LinkedIn and find someone claiming "Together is Timeless" on their resume — except that not caring is how these things are flung at the public in the first place. Nobody is going to cry into their pillow over this.
     I try not to criticize a headline without coming up with a better one and that holds true for commercial catchphrases. A superior slogan can be concocted in the time it takes me to type the words. "Together is Timeless." Hmmm... Drop the "Timeless" as pejorative, keep "Together" as something that sounds halfway appealing. Remembering this is candy. How about "Sweeter Together?" Maybe they tried that and "sweet" didn't test well: implies calories. "Savor Together," with an echo of "Safer Together" which is on everybody's mind nowadays. Or "Choose Together" since Fannie May are famous for their big assortments where you pick the ones you can best stomach. No, abortion rights killed off the concept of choice, at least for timorous marketers. 

     I'd stick with my first idea, "Sweeter Together." It's candy. It's supposed to be a little sweet or, in the case of Fannie May, way too sweet. If you're going to take Vienna, take Vienna. If you're a candy company, be sweet, or "Together is Sweetness."

‘Today is not the last day’

     “Come right in,” says Edith Renfrow Smith, opening the door to her modest single-room apartment on North Sheridan Road. “Have a seat. How have you been?”
     Curious about her. I tell her if turning 107 was a big deal, then turning 108 is also worth notice.
     “One hundred and seven will be gone in three days,” she says.
     Readers might recall meeting Smith last year: the first Black person to graduate from Grinnell College, class of 1937, a woman who met both Amelia Earhart and Muhammad Ali. Who knew jazz great Herbie Hancock as a baby. Whose grandparents were born in slavery.
     She was born July 14, 1914, two weeks before World War I broke out.
     “How was the past year?” I ask.
     “Fine,” she says.
     It was an eventful year. Smith got new hearing aids. “These are much better.” She moved from Bethany Retirement Community, where she lived for 11 years, to Brookdale.
     Why move? It’s complicated.
     “Thorek hospital bought Bethany,” she begins. “They didn’t really want it. They wanted the parking lot. That’s what they wanted.”
     The sale, Smith believes, led to a decline in the food and most everything else.

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Would you like a lovely pen?

Therese Schmidt at Atlas Stationers.

     Cities are serendipity. Working at home might be easier and more convenient. But who ever drops in? Going downtown, you have all those people gathered together, and one thing leads to another.

     I was meeting a city official for lunch at The Dearborn Monday. No need to drive into the heart of the Loop, however. I had time, so parked on Franklin. After I got out of the car, I realized I was around the corner from Atlas Stationers, 227 W. Lake, and decided to stroll over and check up on my favorite office supply store. Just walking in that direction was educational: I looked for Whimsical Candy, figuring I'd pop in to support the cause by picking up a Raspberry Truffle Crisp. But they are gone, no doubt a victim of the pandemic. 

    But Atlas Stationers, which has a strong online presence, endures in its cast iron columned flagship.

     "Maybe Therese will be in," I thought, of Therese Schmidt, who owns the place with her husband Don, whose grandfather founded it in 1939. Not with much hope — people aren't downtown the way they once were. But the moment. I walked into the store, she came out of the back room, as if on cue.

    We had a lot to catch up on. Her Tennessee Treeing Dog, a 90-pounder named Captain James Tiberius Kirk, had blasted after a squirrel he saw through a window and smashed into her head while she sat on the sofa, setting off a series of medical troubles.
     "I almost kicked the bucket," she said.
     Therese underwent brain surgery, a craniotomy at Condell. Two sections of her skull were replaced by plates. She showed me a photo of her 35 staples.
     "They did a number on my head," she said. "I looked like the Bride of Frankenstein. I didn't run for six weeks."
     For her, that was an earthquake. Readers with long memories might remember that Therese is a dedicated runner, whom I accompanied once as she raced her deliveries around Loop office buildings. She doesn't deliver office supplies by racing a cart along Lower Wacker Drive anymore — not enough workers downtown — though she does wear shorts every day, thank to a vow she'll keep "until the Bears win the Super Bowl again."
     We also talked fountain pens. At the front of the store, Atlas features a wide array of fine  pens. I apologized: I tried to dangle them in front of the boys, as potential college graduation gifts, but neither bit. 

     "Kids aren't into pens anymore," I suggested, trying to spread the blame around. She disagreed, claiming that young people are gravitating more toward fountain pens, as an offshoot of tattoo culture. 

     "They want some ink with their ink" she said.
     Ballpoints do well too. One recent customer was Lori Lightfoot, who came in last week and bought six of the store's custom ballpoint pens with designs keyed to the stars in the Chicago flag.
     "That's our exclusive," she said. They've already sold out pens honoring the 1933 Century of Progress and the 1871 Great Chicago Fire, and are now on the third version, an 1893 World's Columbian Exposition pen.
     "People love it," she said.
     I could see why. The pens are made in a limited edition of 500, come in their own numbered tubes, are priced reasonably—$56—make great gifts, and go to support one of Chicago's most distinctive and personable family businesses, one that doesn't rest on its past but keeps charging into the future.
     "You have to change up the game a little bit," Therese said.

   

A little candy might help

     When John Ryan, production manager at Ferrara’s Itasca plant, came home, his kids would sometimes drag their friends over to him for a quick sniff.
     “Come over and smell my dad!” they’d say. “My dad works for a candy company!”
     The ability to impress your children is only one benefit of running a candy factory. Employees — and yes, they’re hiring, like everybody else — get free samples.
     To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to do with my recent visit to Ferrara — in mid-May, not so recent. I’d seen Nerds — little granules of hard candy — being made in big drums, bright yellow, hot pink and cool aqua, then poured into tiny rattling boxes. And Sweetarts, those little squat pastel cylinders, packed into clear wrapped plastic cylinders. Cherry ropes running through a production line as long as a football field.
     Not the sort of inside information the world is eager to consume. I kept waiting for a break in the awful news to slip this sweet interlude into the paper. Isn’t mid-July supposed to be sleepy? The president off on vacation, glimpsed wearing a big Panama hat while patting a bison, on some ranch in Wyoming?
     But no. For nearly two months, one damn thing after another. I woke up Sunday morning and assessed my options. The headline on the Sun-Times was “TOGETHER WE GRIEVE,” with six pages of coverage of the Highland Park July Fourth parade massacre. States scrambling over each other to smother women’s reproductive rights. The Ukraine war still grinding on. Boris Johnson out as British prime minister, after mass resignations in his administration, the kind of selfless move that only adds a new layer of shame to our Republican leaders. Shinzo Abe assassinated in Japan, a nation of 125 million people that had one — one! one! ONE! — murder by gun last year. Maybe I should just write that sentence over and over, 25 times, then call it a day.

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"Stroll in the Park"

     Saturday was a gorgeous summer day in Chicago. And I got lucky, in that a young cousin from Boston was in town with her friend, which prompted me to get off my ass, out of the ol' leafy suburban paradise, and into the city — Lincoln Park Zoo, specifically, after an enjoyable lunch at R.J. Grunt's which is still crowded, still delicious, still fun. 

     While strolling in Lincoln Park we came upon this whimsical sculpture, at the corner of Dickens and Lincoln Park West. By Robbie Barber, it's titled, appropriately enough, "Stroll in the Park." The 58-year-old Texan explains in an artist's statement that the artwork is "an homage to the homemade assemblages that dot the American roadside (dinosaurs, muffler men, cars on poles)," intended to elevate "the mobile home to the level of an American icon, right beside monster trucks and professional wrestling."
     Mission accomplished. While most public art is crap, as I've said before, the whimsy and humor of this instantly appealed, as did the sky blue color, and the careful weathering of the trailer part of the baby carriage. It's here for only a year, thanks to Sculpture in the Parks, a program putting 20 artworks in 20 parks, run by the Chicago Park District, the Evanston Arts Council, and the North River Commission.

      One clever artwork doesn't counterbalance the windstorm of bad publicity that Chicago has been suffering. But it's good to remember that, despite its problems, Chicago is functioning as a city should, between its free zoo, busy lakefront and freshly scattered sculptures. We drove up Lake Shore Drive from North Avenue to Hollywood, then up Sheridan to the Bahai Temple.  Nobody shot at us, the lake sparkled and the whole city seemed to be out in force, enjoying life.

     "Some hellhole," I said.