FLASH: some use faith to draw others closer, not push them down

     For the decade that I was a member of Shir Hadash Synagogue, the congregation didn’t have a building of its own to call home. So we held services where we could in the northwest suburbs. During High Holy Days, when the faithful would turn out en masse, that meant celebrating Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur at Our Lady of the Brook Catholic Church in Northbrook, a lovely, light-filled space, and the Rev. Thomas Moran would sometimes appear at our services and do a reading.

     At the time, the symbiosis between the synagogue and the church struck me as something merely nice. They welcomed us and we went. But now, with bakers and caterers and wedding photographers across the country raising a cry, trying to claim a newly minted right to refuse to do business with customers who belong to groups of which they don’t approve — gays, primarily, but there’s no reason why that right, once recognized, couldn’t be extended to allow shunning just about anyone based on religious scruple — I wondered if the arrangement is perhaps timely and instructive. 

     I had to ask: Is not offering your church, your sacred space, to Jews far more extreme than anything these laws are designed to address? Here you have a people who don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ. Who don’t merely engage in a forbidden sexual practice, but bear direct hereditary guilt — in the minds of some — for the savior’s death. Is this not a far greater imposition on your faith than baking a wedding cake and sticking two plastic grooms on top? I wondered: Did not Our Lady of the Brook parishioners complain about renting their facilities to Christ Denial Inc.?
     “We had one or two of those,” Moran said.
     And what, I wondered, did you tell them?
     “I just said, ‘Well, Jesus was Jewish. So was Mary, so were the Apostles. None of them were Christians.’ I said that even Pope Benedict is working for closer relationships. Even in Rome. It’s a good interfaith move.”
     Religion is complicated, but its relationship with the greater world can be divided into one of two general camps. There is the we’re-right-(whoever “we” happens to be)-you’re-wrong-but-luckily-you-can-be-killed-or-converted-or-pushed-into-the-shadows camp. Call that the Old Way.
     The Old Way was popular for, oh, 3,000 years, and as an engine of human misery, comes right after disease and war. Yet it holds sway in hearts today, though not in Arizona, not officially, since the governor on Wednesday vetoed the law enshrining discrimination against gays based on Old Way religion. Shunning gays is one thing; shunning 5 percent of the tourist trade is another matter. Talk about an epiphany.
     But similar laws are still pending in Georgia, Kansas, Tennessee and South Dakota.
     Then there is the New Way, the can’t-we-all-get-along camp, the result of recognizing the heartbreak that results from the Old Way, after you realize that even a big religion, even the Roman Catholic Church, or Islam, is not so big that it’s ever going to cover the earth. You might as well tolerate the laughable sects and fringe cults that others call faith, even explore their strange and mistaken notions of theology, because no matter how hard you stamp on them, they’re not going away. You might even find you have things in common. Our Lady of the Brook not only supplies space for Shir Hadash services, but Shir Hadash congregants danced at an Easter Week celebration, and Eitan Weiner-Kaplow, Shir Hadash’s rabbi, co-taught a course about Esther with Peery Duderstadt, Our Lady’s deacon, in a class attended by congregants from both.
     “Everyone got along just fine,” Moran said. “There is such a thing as ‘material cooperation.’ I can supply cookies. I can supply flowers.”
     There is no reason to shun each other.
     “I just spent four days in the Vatican,” Weiner-Kaplow said, explaining that he was with a party of rabbis exploring the seat of Catholicism. “It’s a key principle of a holy and religious life, especially in Reconstructionist Judaism. It’s not about meddling, not about commingling, not about compromising your own tradition at all. It’s about honoring and respecting other faiths and traditions, and seeking commonalities so together we can share our humanity and share living on Earth. We recognize that all faiths and traditions are searching for God in their own unique way. They’re all pathways to living a moral and spiritual and holy life.”
     Is it really so puzzling how that outlook can be winning out over “I’ve decided that my religion commands me not to bake wedding cakes for homosexuals”?

And what does that funny cross we kept saluting mean again?

     Take a look at the young man in this picture. You might recognize him: Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook. But ignore his celebrity, if you can, and just examine his face, his features. What do you think? An ordinary-looking fellow, correct? Not handsome, particularly, not ugly either. Slightly receding hairline, perhaps, largish jaw. Now notice his nose. A fairly nondescript nose. Not one that would command attention. A little triangular, perhaps. Maybe a little pointed, if you were asked to comment upon it. But certainly not the first thing you'd notice. And his lips? If anything, a little thin.

     Now look at this caricature below of Zuckerberg that appeared Friday in Süddeutsche Zeitung, one of the largest newspaper in Germany. Setting aside, for the moment, the fact the Zuckerberg is portrayed as an octopus. The caption reads, in German, "Krake-Zuckerberg," or "Zuckerberg Octopus."  Notice anything particularly exaggerated in the drawing? His nose, certainly. And his thick, fleshy lips.

     Did I mention that Zuckerberg is Jewish? He is.

     In one of his tentacles, he holds the logo for WhatsApp, the messaging company Facebook just bought for $16 billion. You'd think that WhatsApp was some beloved bit of German culture — BMW, perhaps — and not a five-year-old California tech start-up that most of the world never heard of before Facebook bought it.

     Nor is the octopus image random.

     “The nefarious Jew/octopus was a caricature deployed by Nazis. That was used pretty much as a staple by the Nazis in terms of their hateful campaign against the Jews in the 1930s," Dean Rabbi Abraham Cooper, an associate the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told the news site Algemeiner. "[An] exaggerated Jewish nose removes any question if this was unconscious anti-Semitism.”

    Unconscious? The artist, Burkhard Mohr, told the Jerusalem Post that he was "shocked" anyone could view his cartoon as anti-semitic.

    “Anti-Semitism and racism are ideologies which are totally foreign to me,” he said. ‘It is the last thing I would do, to defame people because of their nationality, religious view or origin.’

     That "totally foreign" is more chilling than the drawing itself. If we take him at his word, and there's no reason not to, it's a sobering reminder why people should learn about the past, in all its frequent ugliness. Then maybe these ideologies wouldn't be quite so foreign, and not quite so easy to fall into, consciously or unconsciously.
    "Those who cannot remember the past," as George Santayana wrote, "are condemned to repeat it." Luckily the world is here to remind the Germans about their — and our — horrific past, because they don't seem to remember it, and we'll be damned if we're going to let them start repeating it.

You're not really wearing that wetsuit, are you?

     Kudos to the mayor, not only for doing the Polar Plunge on Sunday, assuming he follows through, but for enticing new “Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon to join him. And give Rahm extra credit for gulling Chicago Public Schools children into thinking he was making some kind of sacrifice when he made a bet, vowing if they read 2 million books he’d jump in the chilly lake.

     This is the same Rahm Emanuel who’s the triathlete, right? Who regularly jumps into the lake of his own volition, for fun? Then swims a half mile while he’s there. OK, maybe not in this cold. But it isn’t like he’ll be in the lake for long, and if he wears that wet suit he’s been brandishing, he’ll be neither cold nor wet, really.

     That’s like me making a bet where, if I lose, I have to go to the opera.

     Having done the Polar Plunge, six years ago (in a suit and necktie, by the way, as Fallon says he will do — in comedy, there is nothing new under the sun), I can tell you that the discomfort of the thing, as with most daunting tasks, is all in the contemplation. Ohhh, the lake is chilly. Ohhh, I’ll get wet. Ohhh, what did I get myself into?

    Suck it up, men.
    The Polar Plunge is basically a daylong lakeside party, the clever combining of doing good and boozy blowout that makes for successful charity events. As the former charities, foundations and private social services reporter for this paper, I always view such parties as a philosophical quandary: Are fun elements added to charity events to make them more popular and successful? Or are charity elements grafted onto fetes and beach bashes in order to shave a bit of the End of Rome frivolity off them?
     Rich swells like to gather for balls but eventually felt guilty, so they invented the dodge of tossing a bit of the glitter at the needy. Or am I being Debbie Downer? I'm not really one of those grim scolds who say, "You know, you could skip the five-course dinner at the Peninsula and the 20-minute set by Chaka Khan and just send all the money to charity..." That misses the point. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. People are complex, and passing the hat for Special Olympics wouldn't be one-tenth as successful as goading folks into jumping in the lake.
     Believe me, hounding helps. I did the Polar Plunge not because I'm a nice guy, God knows, but because I got tired of being bugged by Michael Sheehan to do it, and it was easier to jump into Lake Michigan than to keep saying no. Being hectored into doing something, Jimmy, or doing it because you lost a bet, Rahm, doesn't make you a hero.
     The person whom I really admire for doing the plunge is my elder son, who was 12 at the time, a pale, 75-pound chess fanatic with long blond hair, as tough as an orchid, who accompanied me to the Polar Plunge to watch, or so I thought.
     But as I went splashing in and fell face-first into the 33-degree water, he followed me, spontaneously. No fanfare, no premeditation, no press hoopla. And he never spoke about it again. So remember, the plunge is fun and it's cool, literally, but it's no big deal. The point of the thing is to raise money for Special Olympics, which is a big deal. Good for the mayor and the TV host for drawing attention to the plunge and Special Olympics, but a gentle reminder to keep the attention on the plunge and Special Olympics, and not lavish it all on the two big egos dampening themselves for a good cause.
     One more thought: None of this mincing up to your knees, squealing and cringing, and then running back as if you had done something. Total immersion, boys. Think optics, Rahm. If you do it in that wet suit, it'll be Michael Dukakis driving the tank all over again. The Jack Higgins editorial cartoon will haunt you to your grave: He'll add a face mask and snorkel and Bears blanket. No wet suit. If you're going to jump in the lake, especially after all this buildup and hand-wringing and self-glory, then really jump in the lake. A child could do it.

Post Office Redux: Return to Sender

    One thing I've learned in my job is there is almost no connection between columns I'm excited about, columns I've worked hard on, and columns that interest readers. 
     Monday's column, for instance, on waiting at the post office, was purely a matter of timing — I needed to write something, and had just experienced the long wait at the post office. It was what I think of as "a duck in a bucket" -- an easy target, sitting at my feet, softly quacking, waiting to be blasted. You can't miss.
     I was almost embarrassed to write it. Had you asked me to gauge reader reaction ahead of time, I'd have guessed, perhaps a bit of chiding, for plucking such low hanging fruit. 
     Wrong. Dozens of emails. Gratitude. Amazement. Delight. At least 50. Everyone had a story or a thought to share, such as this, from Dennis Quinn:

I walked into the Tinley Park post office a few months ago and there was no queue and a clerk behind the counter. She was the only clerk on duty. She was doing what seemed to be some sort of administrative work. She looked up, saw me and immediately put the next window sign in front of herself. There wasn't any one else there! It was truly a WTF moment. After a few minutes, she removed the sign and said "Next please." Pure hell. 

    Several mentioned poor command of the English language, or rudeness, including clerks who were rude with their mouths full of food.  Much indifference. Several readers relayed stories of post offices running out of stamps.  Jack Costello wrote: 

     It reminded me of my experience 10 days before Christmas. I went to the Elmhurst Post Office and waited about 20 minutes to get international stamps. When my turn came, the gal told me they were out of international stamps. I phoned Villa Park USPS and they also were out of international stamps. It seems no one knew there would be a rush before Christmas. I phoned Melrose Park USPS on Lake Street and YES, they had the stamps.
     I quickly got over to Melrose Park and got the stamps. I couldn't help but notice there were 3 employees working the counter and I was the only customer.
     In Elmhurst, there are rarely more than 2 employees working the windows and the lines are usually back to the entrance. I often see employees chatting in the back while customers wait 20 minutes or more.
     There is obviously no coordination of manpower needs or product inventory between nearby branch offices. As I told the Elmhurst gal, "No wonder you people are going broke" 

     A few readers came to the defense of the post office. Thomas Evans wrote:

     Funny column today, but I tend to bridle at P.O. bashing. For the record, the clerks at my local Office are friendly and curteous, and I seldom have to wait more than five minutes.  I suspect the experience may differ in the city.
     My soft spot for the USPS goes back to college days, when I worked as a part time mailman during Christmas vacations. I've never worked harder, and once got fired for exceeding delivery time standards. Also, I think of one of my literary heroes, Anthony Trollope, who managed to write 56 still readable novels working four hours early every morning before reporting to his day job as a high official at Her Majesty's Post Office. He also set up the postal service in Ireland.
     There is a fiction that the USPS is an independent government entity set up to be run like a business, but meddling by its Congressional overseers really makes that impossible.  I expect service at the Merchandise Mart will improve after your column. The power of the press.

     I was pleased by Tom's Trolllope reference. A nice bit of literariness.  Though it was this witty addition, from Charles Berg, that made me think I should post a few:

    As you may be aware, various nations now issue stamps with no inscribed denomination — but are marked as paying the fee for a certain postal service [e.g., a first-class letter] at any future date, regardless of the cost on that later date. Canada calls such issues "Permanent" stamps, which bear a white letter "P" shown against a red stylized maple leaf. While waiting in a long line at my local post office recently, it struck me that the "Forever" notation used by the USPS may be a reflection of the time it takes to get service at a USPS station these days. 

     I should point out that  I did phone the Chicago branch of the postal service before running this. I like to give my columns a news angle, and not just wax comedic, and had a question I thought might mitigate the problems I saw at the Merchandise Mart: I suspected that the post office, with its chronic funding woes, is understaffed. It wouldn't do to mock an organization struggling to survive, doing its best under constraints -- I know what that's like.  So I phoned Mark Reynolds, the Chicago USPS spokesman, whom I've dealt with in the past and is unusually candid and personable, for a government PR functionary. Reynolds said that no, staffing is fine, which sort of makes it worse. He too wrote me on Tuesday, with clarity and sense, and we'll give him the last word, nearly: 

    We had such a lovely chat Friday afternoon, I’m rather surprised you didn’t include any of my information in today’s piece.

     I do wish you’d asked me about “security theater.” That’s not an idle exercise, we are required to ask that question of every piece presented for mailing, for the protection of the general mail stream and the vehicles - including commercial airplanes - that transport it, as well as our customers, employees and facilities.

     Our clerks ask the other questions because customers don’t always know which mailing option and/or additional service is right for what they’re sending. And it never hurts to ask if there’s anything they might need.

     While I understand the frustration with waiting so long to be served, Post Office lobbies are far from Kafka-esque, as indicated by the mobile retail scanners I mentioned in our interview. Even if the wait is longer than we aim for, they’re anything but hellish. And by using the tools at usps.com, customers can pay for postage and arrange a free package pickup 24 hours a day – no waiting required!

    I’d like to take you up on that offer to do a follow-up piece to this. I might even be able to meet you…back at Merchandise Mart.

     I told him I'd be happy to do any kind of follow-up. I also snapped the above photo Wednesday, walking past the Merchandise Mart station.  So much for Tom Evans' theory about the power of the press.

Make the most of every minute: wait at the post office

  Among the theoretical questions people sometimes pose to themselves — if my house were burning down, what would I grab? If I won millions in the lottery, what would I buy? — is the classic, “If I had one day to live, what would I do?”

     People usually say they’d spend their last moments with family or in the embrace of a loved one. Unimaginative. Me, I know exactly where I would rush: to the nearest post office. There, each minute would be long, if not endless, and deeply felt. Plus, when my end finally came, I would be eager to go.

     I had a couple of packages to send this week, and while in my old age I have learned to weigh them, slap on proper postage and just drop them off, thus escaping the eternal limbo of waiting, I had run out of dollar stamps and figured I would slide by the postal service station in the Merchandise Mart.

    Seven people in line. Normally I’d spin around and leave. But I had to get this in the mail. How long could it take? I chose to wait. The lone clerk was helping a customer with the slowness of a deep-sea diver defusing a bomb at the bottom of an ocean of honey.

     But another clerk setting up.
     Ah, reinforcements, I thought, hope dawning. The clerk got her station ready, and slid back a glass partition, just as the other clerk finished her transaction. Her customer turned to flee, and at that moment the working clerk spun 180 degrees and walked away as the new clerk announced to us, "May I help you?" As if there were some postal rule against two clerks working at the same time.  
     "You know," I said to the woman in front of me, "The post office is the one place where tea party dogma about tearing down the government starts to make sense."
     "This is actually a good one," she said in flat voice. "The others are worse. The people here are nice . . ."
     The new clerk suddenly left, so there was nobody behind the counters.
     " . . . when they're here," the woman continued.
     Nobody was just buying a stamp or weighing a letter. They all had complex transactions - certified, insured letters to foreign addresses. They fell to protracted conversations about different stamps, just out of earshot, the clerk holding up one sheet, then another. One woman asked about having something notarized, and the clerk began to explain at length why she couldn't do that.
     As I neared the front, the line slowed. Time itself seemed to slow. Finally, I got to the front. "I want to mail this book."
     Not so fast. First, security theater: Any of my articles liquid, fragile, potentially hazardous such as lithium batteries?
     "It's a book."
     Do I need insurance, tracking, receipt confirmation? A blur of services offered.
     "No, thank you."
     I'm beginning to see the problem here. It isn't just that the system is slow and the staff indifferent — seemingly indifferent; I'm sure postal workers are very nice people who would care if only it weren't against the rules, if only they weren't trapped in some Kafka-esqe machine, forced to repeated litanies of rare perils and unwanted services. The book was finally stamped. I set my second package, a poster tube, on the scale.
     The woman turned and wordlessly walked away again. I could feel the line shift and groan behind me. It was then I realized, given a choice, I would spend my last moments on earth here. In fact, I think I am; some part of me never left the post office. I'm still standing there. The comforting thought is this: At least when I do die and go to hell, what I find there won't come as a surprise. Hell is a post office with, maybe, flames.

If you think you've never failed, you just did

    Before we shake off the trial of Steve Mandell—the ex-cop lowlife convicted of plotting to kidnap and torture a local businessman to extort money from him before murdering him—with a shiver of disgust, like a dog after a bath, we should pause and use the case to remind us what a bad state's attorney Cook County has in Anita Alvarez.

    Compare how the feds took down Mandell with how she botched the NATO 3 trial. Both defendents were accused, basically, of the same thing: planning to do something awful. Neither had actually done anything, yet. First they were very different types of defendants: Mandell was a stone cold killer who had already been on Death Row and was thought to have been responsible for some half a dozen murders. While the NATO 3 were a trio of stoners from Florida who had never done much of anything, good, bad or indifferent. 

    One was methodically preparing to commit a hideous crime. Nobody who listened to the FBI tapes of Mandell gloating over his torture chamber could doubt that he intended to follow through his plan—the jury took just four hours to find him guilty. While the ridiculous evidence scraped up the by Chicago police, capped by the farcical image of their undercover Inspector Clouseau and his sidekick in fake mustaches hanging out at the Heartland Cafe, getting the lowdown from whatever aging hippie stopped by for a cup of bancha tea, was surpassed only by their how-stupid-do-they-think-we-are testimony.  The cops obviously stood by, cheering on the NATO goofs, prodding and guiding them through constructing molotov cocktails that no impartial person could imagine they intended to eventually light and hurl at anyone, never mind a cop. The jury certainly couldn't. 

    The most telling thing, after a jury held its nose and handed her case back to her, after rejecting the most serious charges, was that Alvarez, like bad prosecutors everywhere, doubled down. Doubt never creased her brow. She had learned nothing, she proudly announced, and would charge the NATO 3 again in heartbeat, given the chance.

    "I would bring them again tomorrow with no apologies and no second-guessing," she angrily told reporters. I believe her, and when the next paltry case makes headlines, where Alvarez is diverting scarce public law enforcement funds into her newest dubious prosecution, we'll know she's a woman of her word, unfortunately.

     There's nothing wrong with making a mistake. Everyone does it. What is loathsome is to make mistakes and then deny they are mistakes, out of ego. Prosecutors have to believe in their cases, true, and you wouldn't want a state's attorney to fold up and surrender every time a jury ruled against them. But you see how prosecutors, again and again, subvert justice by ignoring clear evidence that the defendants they are harrying are in fact innocent.  And Alvarez has already made a name for herself —committing "political suicide" was how it was described at the time—by defending the indefensible, sometimes on national TV.
     If you are curious as to whether you are a  thinking adult, or an incompetent jerk, the easiest way to find out is to take this little test. Ask yourself what mistakes you've made, what things you've done that you are sorry you did and would not do again. If those come easily, if you have a long list, if they present themselves like a class of eager 2nd graders waving stretching their arms into the air and going "Oh! Oh! Oh!" then you're probably okay. If you can parse your missteps with genuine curiosity, and not with the kneejerk defensiveness that causes people to cling to errors and become the ball of shameful buffoonery that Alvarez is, then you're probably a professional and good at what you do. But if you can't admit that you've done anything wrong—and everyone has—then you probably should do some soul searching, although, the ironic thing is, you probably can't. 
      Everyone is fallible—people err and, ironically, the more we deny it, the more we probably dwell in error. Don't be like that. Own your failures. Be open to the idea that you aren't perfect and sometimes do things you shouldn't. Not as a pre-made excuse or a show of false humility. But because you believe it, and you might as well, because it's true, and the alternative is really ugly. You'll notice nobody ever talks about Anita Alvarez running for mayor, or any other office. Bad enough we have to endure her as state's attorney, prosecuting poor women for stealing loaves of bread. She's been on the downward slope for years. Someone should tell her; not that it would do any good.

      

Saturday fun: where is this?

     
    When all of our reading matter is finally stored on electronic devices, we won't need all these books jamming our shelves. Which I suppose might be a good thing, or have its good aspects—from a housekeeping point of view, for instance. Less dusting. 
      That is the brave, you-might-as-well-be-glad-about-what's-going-to-happen-whether-you-like-it-or-not view. Though speaking for myself, I will miss books. A person's library speaks volumes about who they are (sorry, the mindset of yesterday's pun column lingering...)  When I walk into someone's home or, in this case, their office, my eye is immediately drawn to their books. First, because I'm glad they have them — not everybody does — and second because I'm interested in what those books are. Sometimes a person's books indict them—junk fiction, dare-to-win self-help swill, stuff that makes the heart sink. And sometimes books compliment their owners and intrigue guests. As someone who has an entire shelf of books selected purely for their off-beat topics—Snow in America by Bernard Mergen next to to a pair of volumes both titled Ice (one, by Marina Gosnell, subtitled The Nature, the History, and the Uses of an Astonishing Substance, the other, by Karal Ann Marling, Great Moments in the History of Hard, Cold Water) I admired this collection of useful volumes that I noticed Friday when I spent a pleasant 90 minutes visiting ... well, maybe I shouldn't say. Maybe I should be coy, and leave you hanging about exactly where these books are shelved, and make it into a puzzle.  In the office of a beloved institution that has been in operation a long, long time, one located within 15 minutes of my house in Northbrook, one whose director could be expected to own books such as these. 
      Who would have such a collection? The first reader to email me the answer at dailysteinberg@gmail.com, will receive one of my limited edition blog posters as a prize, and I'll share the answer here as soon as someone figures it out. 

    That was fast. A half hour after midnight, Lynne Arons guessed Wagner Farm. The books are in the office of director Todd Price, an eighth generation Iowa farmer who left the family farm to run the 18-acre Glenview institution. I was there Friday researching a Sunday piece that will run in the Sun-Times this spring. Thanks to everyone for playing—a lot of people suspected the Chicago Botanic Garden, as well as places like weatherman Tom Skilling's office or that of WGN farm reporter Orion Samuelson.  Next time I'll try to find something a little harder to figure out. 

Photo atop blog -- Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University