"Abe Lincoln would not have done it."

     


     The general ignorance of the American people cannot be overstated, and should come as no surprise.
     And yet, sometimes, particular instances do gall.
     For instance, Bill O'Reilly, the TV host and author of best-selling clip job histories, noted on Fox Tuesday that Barack Obama had gone on a humor program with Zach Galifianakis called "Between Two Ferns" on the comedy website Funny or Die. The president was encouraging young people to sign up for health insurance. O'Reilly said he found the appearance "a little bit desperate," perhaps "demeaning" and something that Abraham Lincoln would never do.
     "But the president of the United States?" O'Reilly scoffed. "All I can tell you is Abe Lincoln would not have done it. There comes a point when serious times call for serious action.”
    Despite all the ill-informed bile that has flowed for years like a mighty river from Bill O'Reilly's mouth, we in the fact-based world have to stand back and marvel, if not gape, in shock, almost awe. Really? Lincoln? The 16th president? The man O'Reilly wrote a book about? The president who, if he was known for one thing, was famous as a clown and a story-teller who "in serious times" would tell jokes under almost any circumstance.
     "In the midst of ... death-giving news," observed Count Adam Gurowski, a Polish born writer who lived in Washington, D.C. during the Civil War, "Mr. Lincoln has always a story to tell. This is known ... by all who approach him. Months ago I was in Mr. Lincoln's presence when he received a telegram announcing the crossing of the Mississippi by Gen. Pope at New Madrid. Scarcely had Mr. Lincoln finished the reading of the dispatch when he cracked ... two not very washed stories."
     Not just jokes, but "not very washed stories," aka, dirty jokes. 
     Two basic default misperceptions about the past among those with scant knowledge of it are 1) that people were all chaste prudes back then. And 2) that they had no sense of humor, as if the real Lincoln were the stiff portrait on the $5 bill, or the serene face on Mount Rushmore. O'Reilly no doubt invoked Lincoln's name because, to him, Lincoln represents all that is grave, serious and Biblical about America.
     Lincoln loved puns, introducing himself and his stout wife as "the long and the short of it." He might not have really told job seekers that they had as much chance of getting a federal appointment "as you have of sleeping with my wife," but several contemporaries claimed he did. No event was too solemn, such as on April 30, 1863, which Lincoln had officially proclaimed as "a national day of prayer, fasting and humiliation" for the proud but shattered country to humble itself before the offended Almighty God and beg for forgiveness, seeking relief from the divine punishment of the Civil War. 
     "Gentlemen, this is a fast day," he observed to his staff,  "and I am pleased to observe that you are working as fast as you can."
      Just as Obama's humor draws the hoots of his relentless ideological enemies, so Lincoln's jests provoked the scorn of their equivalents at the time. "A low-bred obscene clown," sniffed the Atlanta Intelligencer which, like O'Reilly, spoke to an audience in self-destructive open rebellion.  

Cartoon criticizing Lincoln, who replies to Columbia demanding her sons
slain in the Civil War with "That reminds me of a story." The New York
World had published a false report that he joked surveying the carnage
 on the battlefield at Antietam.

     The tales are endless, and while some are certainly false or exaggerated, enough come from eyewitnesses, diarists, reporters and Lincoln himself that we know that here was a man who liked to jest. O'Reilly saying what he did would be like his saying that Obama's playing basketball is something former Senator Bill Bradley is too dignified to ever do. 
    As with Obama, Lincoln's jests were twofold—he enjoyed telling them, and they served a purpose. This was true throughout Lincoln's life, even as a young man, when he worked as an attorney.
    Once, at the summation of a trial he was arguing, Lincoln referred to the punch line of a popular joke.
     "They have their facts right," he said, "but are drawing the wrong conclusion."1
     The full joke went like this: a farm boy runs to his father and says, "Pa, pa, the hired hand and sis are in the hay loft! She's a liftin' up her dress up and he's a pullin' down his pants and affixin' to  pee all over the hay." 
     The farmer put his hand on the agitated boy's shoulder and replied, "Son, you've got the facts right but you're drawing the wrong conclusion." 
      O'Reilly is worse than the naive farm boy. He both has his facts wrong and is drawing the wrong conclusion. But then, he's built a career out of doing that, spinning folly from error for an audience of  belligerent  yokels who lap it up. Too late for him to change now. 

Postscript

     After I wrote the above, I was still looking through materials I had gathered about Abraham Lincoln and humor, and came upon this, written by Lincoln in a letter to Col. John D. Van Buren, dated June 26, 1863:

I believe I have the popular reputation of being a story teller, but I do not deserve the name in its general sense, for it is not the story itself but its purpose, or effect, that interests me. I often avoid a long and useless discussion by others or a laborious explanation on my own part by a short story that illustrates my point of view. So, too, the sharpness of a refusal or the edge of a rebuke may be blunted by an appropriate story, so as to save the wounded feeling and yet serve the purpose. No, I am not simply a story teller, but story telling as an emollient saves me much friction and distress.

     In other words, Lincoln's humor has a point, which of course Obama's does too—in this case, saving American lives by promoting health insurance. When you realize what he was doing—nudging young people toward health care—the appearance becomes more than not "demeaning," but laudable. 

     And you realize, again, how loathsome the opposition of the O'Reillys of the world truly is. Not just ignorant, but disingenuous. They are against not only his method in this instance but in all instances, and not just the purpose behind it, but against whatever his purpose happens to be.  Against literally anything he does. Someday, when the history of attacking Barack Obama is written—and what an interesting book that will be—future historians will marvel how his kneejerk opponents, who decried everything he said or did, somehow managed to maintain the fiction that each new vibration of their pre-determined condemnation was a fresh reaction based on a fair analysis of the latest evidence, and not just the chiming out of their single, set, tuning fork quiver of continual opposition. 

1. From "Abe Lincoln's Legacy of Laughter," Edited by Paul M. Zall (University of Tennessee Press: 2007)

Could you leave your cell phone at home?

     Dealing with the gun aficionados for the past two days reminded me of the time I printed a riddle about motorcycles and heart transplants. It was benign, and in no way suggested, oh-for-instance, that they should all wear helmets so as not to saddle society with their medical bills. No matter. After dealing with thousands of angry motorcyclists, who weren't responding to anything I had written, but just to the commands of their puppeteers, I was ready to never write about the subject again, which I suppose was the point of their swarm-the-zone response. Anyway, thank God I forgot my cell phone Tuesday, or I probably would have spent the day staring out the window, twitching a muscle in my jaw, and writing nothing. As it is, I managed to squeak out this. 
     Moving on -- some 91 percent of Americans have cell phones — among the younger generations, it's even more, 96, 98 percent. (Among those over 65, it's still only 75 percent). Those stats feel permanent, though It'll be interesting to see if there is any pullback, or if toting around a communications device is now a permanent human condition. My guess it is.

     "I have to leave right now,” I told my wife Tuesday morning, shrugging on my Burberry as she stepped out of the kitchen for her kiss as I flew past.

     The clock in the bedroom had said 7:48 a.m., which almost frightened me, because the bedroom clock never says 7:48 a.m., since I always leave at 7:45 a.m. That way I can stroll the easy block to the train station, buy my coffee and the Chicago Sun-Times, then calmly wait for the 7:54. 

     Fast-stepping down the sidewalk, I did my usual inventory. Wallet, check. Money clip, check. Sunglasses, check. . . . 

     No cellphone.

     My first thought was to stop, pirouette, rush home, retrieve the phone. I could still make the 7:54, maybe, though I’d probably have to forgo the coffee and paper. Or I could plant myself at home and write more restrained replies to honked-off gun owners for 15 minutes and catch the 8:17. Or . . . 

     The possibility bloomed, strange and wonderful. I could go to work without my cellphone. I could consciously and deliberately leave it behind. Just posing the question answered it — it was so novel, so strange, I had to give it a try. The commute suddenly assumed a certain carnival, Feast of Fools, inverted quality. I did not go back.

     At the Northbrook station, a strange scene: Fellow commuters stood in place, each gazing at his palm. They were like fronds swaying at the bottom of a pond. My first thought was to snap a picture. My hand was halfway to my pocket when I realized . . . Oh, right. No phone. The mind is an odd thing.

     I threaded my way through the crowd — it’s easy, if you aren’t distracted. It felt like one of those science fiction stories where a guy can stop time and wanders in and out of frozen, statue-like pedestrians. 

     I got my coffee, my copy of the paper. As I paid, the stern Metra announcement muddily warbled, “Your attention please. The next inbound Metra train is now arriving in your station,” followed by the risible warning that frantic commuter bees should not attempt to crawl onto the train before it stops and the doors open. Is that really necessary? 

     Habit is a taskmaster. To sit down on a train is to take out the phone and check who has emailed me over the past 10 minutes. This is going to take some getting used to.

     I read the paper. I read a book. I wondered who was emailing me. 

     At the office, the white cord hanging off my computer was a rebuke. Normally, I’d be charging my phone, hooking it to its essential transfusion of life-giving power.

     I only truly missed it at lunch. I was hurrying to a restaurant I had never been to — Primebar, at 155 N. Wacker. Not only never been to, but never noticed. I was trucking along, almost late. Suddenly, the addresses were in the 120s and I hadn’t seen it? What if it wasn’t there? What if I had read “Wacker” and it was really “Wabash?” They both begin with “Wa.” I’d be late, my business scuttled. Should I bolt blindly to Wabash? Borrow a cellphone? I was off-grid. Fear rose. I doubled back. There it was.

     I was early. Rocked on my heels watching the young execs who had just left their offices and were now checking their cellphones to see what had happened in the minutes they were walking over. 

     Technology is strange. No sooner did medicine slap cigarettes from our hands than cellphones came along to give us something to fidget with. They couldn’t have planned it better. Is our business really that pressing, or do we just like to think it is? My guess: the latter. The messages are never, “Diphtheria detected. Serum low. Harness the dogs and mush hell-bent to Nome.”  

     Here’s a wild thought: Deliberately leave your phone home one day a week. Or if that’s impossible, do it once. Make the decision, accept the consequences. Find out. Though if you can’t, ask yourself: Is what you’re really worried about that you’ll miss something important? Or that you won’t?

     The devices are supposed to help us; they’re not supposed to own us. We’re not their slaves, the meat pedestals that bear them about in triumph. Not yet anyway.

     If it helps, this problem is nothing new. Exactly 160 years ago, Henry David Thoreau wrote, in Walden: “Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at . . . we are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.”

     It’s a shame we couldn’t dedicate a fraction of genius that made these phones into crafting what we convey over them.  

Trying to soothe your fear with guns

    Yesterday was interesting.
    My column, in brief,  quoted the superintendent of the Chicago police, Garry McCarthy, saying that we don't have to debate the wisdom of concealed carry gun permits. Just sit back and watch the tragedies unfold.
     I agreed with him.
     The column did not call for gun control, did not suggest action. Just the opposite, I recognized the utter inertia that our nation has fallen into, browbeaten by the NRA, the gun industry, and the slice of America that worships firearms. 
    A person can own a gun for many reasons: sport, protection, habit, tradition, fear. I didn't enter into any of that. What I said was that the usefulness of a gun increases with its availability to the owner, which also increases the danger it poses to him. Obviously true.  And nobody really debated that. Furthermore, since crimes are rare—no gun fan seemed capable of acknowledging this either—compared to gun accidents and suicides, for most people the risk of owning a gun outweighs any real benefit. 
     Many people wrote in demanding "facts," and I wrote back regarding suicides. Buying a gun increases the odds that you will kill yourself—the Harvard School of Public health found "a powerful link" between gun ownership and suicide. Those gun owners who shoot someone typically shoot themselves. 
     Faced with this, my correspondents withdrew, hurrying no doubt to gun chat boards to hoot and holler.
     My view is at odds with the Clint Eastwood fantasy. And nothing honks a man off like having his fantasy pointed out, never mind questioned, never mind mocked. It's a lot more fun to imagine yourself getting the drop on the bad guy at the next Sandy Hook than realizing that buying a gun increases the odds of a violent death for yourself and your family.
     Not being a zealot, I can let this go. It's masochistic of me to bring it up for a second day. But I do find the discussion interesting, reading all these comments -- emails, I ignored the comments after my column. Comments after newspaper stories are generally from trolls who would jeer at an 8-year-old with cancer.  
    But reading my email, I realized something. Gun supporters aren't interested in debate. They just want to browbeat and hector anyone who raises the issue. Though give them credit. They have fight in them. Those who support gun control sit looking at their hands, timid, silent. And to be honest, I respect, if that is the right word, the gun supporters more. At least they have the courage of their convictions and act on them, speaking in loud, sneering, utterly-confident voices. Those who think otherwise — the majority, if you believe polls — are too abashed, or indifferent, to speak.  They've given up. 
     Not me obviously. I can point out the flaws in the gun argument. I can also easily and sincerely tick off the value of guns—as beautiful, collectible objects, for target practice, hunting, to provide protection for those few who are truly endangered, and to give comfort and a sense of security—false, but security nonetheless—to the many who are not.  Plus we're stuck with 'em. 
     I've had fun shooting guns on a number of occasions—at several ranges around Chicago. I have gone pheasant hunting in Wisconsin and skeet shooting in Colorado.  I had an FOID card—it expired, eventually, but I've been meaning to renew it—that I got to take my sons shooting in Des Plaines, and would have bought a gun for that purpose had they showed any interest. (I was a pretty good shot, which I credit to years of video shooter games). I find it sad that those who passionately support gun rights, are unable to explore the borders of their belief. They can't look at the other side and find merit. They can't even look at all, and couldn't come up with a positive aspect of gun control, well, if you put a gun to their heads. Not one. 
    Indeed, they seem almost offended, not by what I said so much but by the idea that someone was talking about their predilection, casting doubts about their fantasies. The gun world is so radicalized that respected sportsmen's columnists have been hounded from their jobs just for straying slightly from an absolute, pry-my-gun-from-my-cold-dead-hands extremism.  Good thing I don't work for an outdoors magazine.
     As I read over their fuming, nasty, sarcastic, anti-Semitic taunts that made up this Greek chorus of complaint, seeing the view offered by the soda straw they peer at life through, what stood out was their anger and anxiety. To a man. Which made me wonder: why are they so mad?  They've won. The issue is dead, the day theirs. Guns for everybody, all the time. I never suggested we implement the faintest whisper of gun control, didn't call to ban a single exotic bullet,  because that would be completely impossible in our climate of Congressional cowardice. And  I make it a rule never to advocate the impossible. I merely pointed out that guns are dangerous and the more guns, the more danger, just like the superintendent said. There is no need to argue. All we have to do is wait.
    But that is blasphemy enough. This is, at bottom, a religious issue, if not religious, then certainly a matter of faith. Their faith is not in law, not in God, not in society, but in guns. There is certainly a religious fanaticism to all this. It's a passion, almost sexual in nature. No wonder they don't want anyone drawing attention to it. They are like onanists caught in the act,  blustering through their embarrassment, hurt and humiliation, shouting at the intruder. Go away. So faith and a kind of twisted psycho-sexual fixation. Guns give comfort and security to people who obviously sorely lack both. You can't argue that. Guns are owned by people who feel they need guns. I know gun owners on my block. Lots of guns. Yet we live in the same peaceful place. We've talked about it. Nobody is going to yank that blankie from him. One reader wrote to me that Obama was to blame for the sale of 100 million guns, and I wrote back asking why, given that he has done absolutely nothing to restrict gun sales and no rational person believes he ever will. 
     And the reader said, not realizing how right he is: yes, but they were afraid he might. 
     Which is what this whole thing is about. Guns are comfort for people who are afraid, frightened of a changing world, of menacing minorities, of dangers real and imagined. And to be honest, I recognize that placebo as having a value. It's bad to be scared. Arm yourselves, by all means. I wouldn't dream of stopping you. Though I don't understand why your fear should be the only consideration on this subject, the beginning, middle and end of the debate, not that we're debating.   
     If you are terrified, of life, of your neighbors, of vague menaces, get a gun or, rather, lots of guns, since, like any addiction, one stops being effective, and you need more to get the same calming effect. Not for all gun owners, let me state clearly, not that it will help. Maybe you're a security guard, or like to hunt squirrels. There are uses. But for a lot they're totems, comfort objects, like little metal dollies. Certainly the guys I heard from yesterday seemed to have that going on. Though owning lots of guns doesn't seem to make them feel secure either -- they're still afraid, afraid now that someone will take their guns. Afraid of my analyzing this, of asking questions. Pointing out that, rather than making anyone safer in any way other than the psychological, guns imperil their owners, their families and everybody else. It seems unfair that I can listen to and understand and accept their reasoning but they can neither hear nor grasp nor accept mine, nor even make the effort. Enough. As I said, let's not argue about it. Because the incident that happened in your youth, the fistfight that wed you to guns for life, is not a compelling argument for an armed society, in my view. And you obviously aren't listening to anything I have to say. But thanks for reading.  

No need to argue over concealed carry permits; just watch

     The purpose of the news media is not to be a hallelujah chorus, not to clap our hands like seals whenever an official does or says something we feel is right. They pay a PR staff to do that.

     What we are supposed to do is find flaws, point out problems, hint toward solutions. That’s our role.

     So not a lot of “Well played, Mr. Mayor!” in this space. Not that there’s much cause for it anyway.    Which is why I want to depart from habit today and tip my hat to Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy, because he said something that is utterly true and will certainly be born out by events.

As the state of Illinois sent out its first 5,000 concealed-carry permits, he noted: “Stand by and watch what happens. The answer to gun violence is not more guns.”

     We don’t get a lot of “stand by and watch what happens” in politics. We are so hot to debate, to argue,  to predict, to shout down the other guy — especially on guns, where arm-everybody proponents have adopted an all-or-nothing, cover-our-ears-and-howl approach that forbids even thinking about the issue — we forget there are facts under all this, a verifiable reality just waiting for us to notice, or, more likely, to not notice.

     What are those facts? Well, some — and I know this will jar the “All libs hate guns and want them confiscated” mindset — support liberal gun rights. There are 300 million guns in this country, and if the vast majority weren’t being handled safely, the carnage would be far worse than it already is.

     To continue reading, click here.

Television's dying and I'm not feeling so hot myself

     The hour that I spent watching "Chicagoland" on CNN Thursday probably equalled my entire time spent watching cable news over the past year. Maybe two. I used to watch more, on the little TV in my office. But they took it away, and brought in a new little flatscreen, and I never figured out how to turn it on. That is bad, I know, the aging pundit who can't work a newfangled device. But the truth is, I never really needed to watch it. There isn't anything I can't pull off the Internet. 
    But occasionally my path crosses with TV. A couple weeks ago, when MSNBC asked me to appear on a morning show and talk about the profile of the mayor I wrote for Esquire. I said sure, though it was cold, and a dozen block stroll to NBC Tower, so I said they would have to send a car. They did. 
     Nestled in the back of a Cadillac, talking with the Bulgarian driver about the death of Lincoln Town Cars, seemed to magnify the importance of being on TV, a little. It may be waning, and they don't pay, but they'll still send a car. Huffington Post won't do that.

Smile.

     When I got to NBC Tower, it was pretty deserted, and the same guy who met me at the elevator also patted make-up on my enormous shiny dome and then got my mike clipped on and stuck a bug in my ear then worked the camera. We killed time, waiting for the show in New York, unseen, to get to me. We chatted about the decline of our respective industries. Mine seems to be falling apart faster than his, but it's a horse race, at times neck-and-neck. Good union guy. I felt like two old centurians, swapping tales about camp life back in Gaul. 
     TV used to be damned as this expanse of crap, a "vast wasteland," as Newt Minow famously said in the early 1960s, when it was Masterpiece Theater compared to what it became. Remember? Society fretted so much — what would this endless torrent of TV do to our children? Was watching TV "bad"? "Fifty-seven channels and nothing on," Bruce Springsteen sang. Twenty-two years ago. (God, he was in decline then. Age bites).
     It seems wrong that we should just let our worries go about TV, just drop that elaborate edifice of concern with a shrug and move on to the next. There should be a ceremony of some sort. A towering pyre of old Zeniths and Sylvanias and RCAs set aflame—maybe on barge, going down the Chicago River, at the Fire Festival this October. We shouldn't just abandon that deep, decades-old anxiety and stagger babbling to the next—Snapchat, is THAT bad for our kids?! Maybe someday we'll realize: it was the worry that was bad all along. The kids are always fine. Usually fine.
     Though we've really stopped fretting, haven't we? Worrying about the Internet is so 2003. That's over. Now technology just is. There's always heroin to worry about. 
     My appearance on MSNBC was dumb and brief—the host spent more time talking than listening to what I had to say, and I was reminded that not only has Fox News inflicted itself upon America, but its success inspired other legitimate networks to ape it and become shriller too. So you had Lou Dobbs denouncing immigrants on CNN. And this fellow — who never met Rahm and probably has never been to Chicago and might not be able to find it on a map — yabbering on, putting his snarky air quote marks around the pension crisis in Chicago, like it's something the mayor made up. Another 60 seconds and I might have come out with a, "Hey buddy, shut up. What the fuck's the matter with you?" I could feel the thought forming, ready to rise like a bubble in the back of my mind. Good thing it was over so quickly. I took a paper towel and tried to scrape the make-up off, wondering "Now why did I take an hour out of my day to do this?"
    At least I got a ride.  I went downstairs. The Cadillac was still waiting, to whisk me back to the newspaper, and it occurred to me that nothing MSNBC does ever resonates in my world. Not that what I do is rocking their world either. Still, why go on for two minutes when I could be on for two solid months and a person like myself would never know about it? Going on the program, coast to coast, had no repercussions at all. No high school friends got in touch to say they saw me on TV, the way they did when I appeared on "Oprah" 20 years ago. Mass media is turning into small media. Maybe that's good. We're all artisans now, back to being silversmiths, straddling a bench by the hearth fire, tapping away, making tea pots. Except a tea pot you could sell. We can't grieve over shifting mediums too much -- some scraps remain. There's still radio, despite everything. Records didn't kill radio—heck, CDs and now MP3s didn't even kill records. They're still around, fragments, but still around. I know calligraphers, violists, scribes. Maybe there will be enough wreckage for us older folks to cling to for a few more years, or at least the really determined ones. Or at least me. Or maybe not. 

Saturday fun: where IS this?

     Despite our mania for all things on-line and computerized, we still gather in public spaces, such as this attractive, airy interior courtyard in the ... well, I'm not saying. We'll make this place our Saturday fun contest. Where is this? A few hints — it's in the city, not the suburbs ("enough suburbs," my wife said, with a hint of asperity, last week). You can see that it is newish, but beyond that not a lot of clues. I was meeting an acquaintance at his office to go to lunch, walking up a mirror of the staircase you see across the atrium, and was struck by the cleanness of the lines, the bright blue cube chairs and toffee brown ottomans. The vista looked like an architect's rendering.
     Notice that most of the people here are men? I'm not sure if that helps or is a red herring.
     This time, the winner receives a blog poster, suitable for framing, signed and numbered, one of a dwindling stock, hand set on a letterpress in Nashville, Tennessee. Just put your guess in the comments, and I'll jump in and recognize the winner. Good luck. I haven't stumped you yet, but my hunch is, unless someone has actually been there, I just might this time. 

More than a wise, important rabbi: a good man

     There’s an old Jewish joke that goes like this: A revered rabbi, famous for his goodness and wisdom, dies and ascends to heaven. Such is his reputation that God Himself slides over to welcome the new arrival and ask him what heavenly reward he would like for a life well-lived.

     The rabbi considers this.

     “Well,” he says. “The journey was long, and I am hungry. So a roll. Yes, a fresh challah roll. That is what I want.”

     The Lord is amazed, and remarks to his angels: “See the pious simplicity of this holy man! He is offered the riches of heaven by God Almighty, and asks only for a roll.”

     The Lord turns back to the rabbi.

     “Truly, rebbe, is there nothing else you would like besides a challah roll?”

     “Well . . . ” says the rabbi, musing, “a little butter would be nice.”

     That isn’t the funniest joke, but it’s sweet. Which is why it comes to mind when I think of Rabbi Daniel Moscowitz, who was regional director of Chabad in Illinois, the Illinois representative of the Lubavitch movement. It wasn’t so much that he was learned — he certainly was — or active, both within his community and as a liaison to the world beyond, promoting his brand of faith in an endless chain of services, events, celebrations, seminars, lunches.
     He was important, a leader. He guided his community, got things done, built a new Lubavitch center in Northbrook. But many rabbis are wise, active and important. That wasn’t why I admired him. It’s that he was a good man, kind, patient, even dealing with weak-tea Jews like me, constantly badgering him with questions that any learned 6-year-old should know. He taught me that you can use faith as a bludgeon, you can beat people up with it. You can use it as a measuring stick, to find how far others fall short. Or you can use it as a beacon and say, “Look, I have this really good thing here. Why don’t you try a nibble? Maybe you’ll like it.”
     Rabbi Moscowitz was a beacon.
     We met 15 years ago under difficult circumstances. I had put a jokey passing reference in my column to Menachem Mendel Schneerson, leader of the Lubavitch movement, who had died a few years earlier but was deeply esteemed. Rabbi Moscowitz called, not so much to complain — what good does that do?— as to discuss, to illuminate. By the time he was done, we were friends in my estimation; maybe he was so skilled at what he did that I was just another media source to be kept in line. But if that was the case, he fooled me.
     When I got the bad news Tuesday — he died unexpectedly, after gall bladder surgery, at 59 — I flashed on all the memories over the past decade and a half that I only have because of him. Sitting at his house at Shabbos, the candles glowing, him quizzing my older son — a bright boy! Among a circle of Hassidic men, our arms interlocked, dancing wildly at the wedding of one of his sons. Sitting with Rabbi Moscowitz in intense conversation at their luncheons after services. When I stopped drinking eight years ago, he phoned — not many friends did, but he did —and in our conversation said that, because of his health, he had to cut back wine too. But what can a person do? We do what we must. We endure.
     Over the years I would call him to ask questions: Why do we display lights at Hanukkah? What does the Jewish calendar represent — 5,700 or so years since what?
     My family attended services at his center, and his sermons were wise, witty, brief.
     When my wife and I were getting ready this week to go to his house to offer our condolences, the question arose: what to bring? You make a shiva call, you bring food. But it wouldn’t do to drag tref into a rabbi’s house.
     “Maybe some tangerines,” my wife said.
     “I don’t think fruit can be unkosher,” I replied. But we puzzled, unsure.
     “I’ll call Rabbi Moscowitz and ask,” I said, and she gasped. I had meant it as a sardonic comment on the void he leaves; he is no longer here to answer questions. She thought I was referring to his son, Rabbi Meir Moscowitz, following in his father’s footsteps.
     The confusion points toward the comfort in this tragedy. For Jews, our heaven is here on earth, our eternity is found in our children. Life and death are twins, we believe, brothers joined at the hip. It is ingratitude to celebrate one and decry the other.
     So we don’t rail at death. We accept it. Our good works live after us. Rabbi Moscowitz had nine children, countless friends and achievements. His memory will radiate onward, a blessing. And yet. Were he here, I’d tell him, “Yes, yes, but it’s still very hard.”
     “Of course it’s hard!” he’d reply, his eyes twinkling. “But what choice have we?”