and everybody hates the jews

The biggest words I ever learned as a kid I learned from Tom Lehrer. Starting around 6th grade I think. Have no idea where I heard his songs — it's not like he was on the radio or anything. But when I discovered that I liked his lyrics a whole lot better than anything emerging in rock-n-roll, (and that my favorite songs on the radio were things like 'Runnin' Bear' and 'Woverton Mountain' and Marty Robbins ballads, I knew too, that I just wasn't a regular kid.

Here's some of the vocab I first became aware of through his songs:

virility — clearly had something to do with something I would never have (or care about).

fertility — the opposite of virility.

sterility — A great word! These words just all sounded so terrific together.

futility — this was the only word in the batch that I was already familiar with.

liability — = kids, apparently.

senility — which rhymed with 'lose your ability' as I recall.

elements — all of them. And that's pretty much the last I ever heard of them.

cyanide — this was the only one I ended up learning a lot about, later. Apricot pits, for example, have enough cyanide in them that they've long been used for camel birth control (a pit being inserted into the cervix to block and kill off the swimmers...).

solicit — which still sounds pretty dumb.

masochism — which still sounds pretty familiar.

tango — which still sounds pretty incomprehensible.

plagiarize — little did I know that of all his terms, this is the one I'd become the most familiar with.

genuflect — turned out to be davvening.

transubstantiation — still very unclear.

vatican — right. I had never heard of the Vatican.


You get the idea...

But the main thing that I got from Tom Lehrer was that refrain that he punched up that echoed in my brain from the first time that I heard it until now:

— and-everybody-hates-the-jews —

And what do you do with that? It just hit to the core, and I didn't understand it, and yet the evidence seemed in that he was right... And then there was the Six Day War, and Occupied Territory, and not returning that territory, and Lebanon, and Syria, and Gaza (at the moment) — and the policies of the State of Israel being equated with just plain being Jewish. I mean, even apart from the Holocaust and Inquisition that I'd been raised on.

And Tom Lehrer had said it out loud, clear, concise and simple.

And recently, there was a Facebook stream I was following, that came to exactly the same point: Kill all the Jews, and everything will be just fine after that. Blunt and clear.

Not, "I disagree with Israeli occupation..."

Not, "We must build a Palestinian State..."

No, just "Kill the Jews."

On Facebook.

And what do you do with that? It just hit to the core (again), and I don't understand it (again). And yet it appears to be one of those 'eternal truths' that I was raised with, raised to expect, raised to prepare for (somehow). But Tom Lehrer didn't provide a template for what to do about it, did he?

I picture my dad playing Anu anu ha-Palmach on the record player and us marching around the dining room table, a little army of two.

And what do you do with that?

Go upstairs and sing along with Tom Lehrer. National Brotherhood Week. But the bloody song always ends the same.

glossary, as requested (with apologies)

In no particular order, maybe this will help:

shikse — (aka shiksa) — term of endearment (or not) for women of the non-Jewish persuasion. the most important sub-category is, of course, the shikse-goddess.

shul — synagogue, small or large, in which members of the tribe congregate for ritual acts and moments of imposed solidarity.

shabbes — the hours of the week between sundown Friday and sundown Saturday devoted to rest, repose, debate and very good sex. It's a sin to grade papers on shabbes.

sin — (khet) — something we decide is wrong, unless we want to do it. Unless calling it a 'sin' makes it more fun to do...

rebbe — (to be distinguished from rabbi) — a wise rabbi we consider as our teacher and treat with reverence, which everyone else we know thinks is misplaced.

yenta — a matchmaker, who generally speaking, can't keep her mouth shut and can't stop minding other people's business. Not to be confused with Yentl, the title of a Sholem Aleichem story made into a dreadful soppy movie with too much singing.

Reconstructionist — the rational branch of Judaism, devoted to reason and, for the most part, understanding the physical circumstances under which we live.

bireishit — Genesis of the Hebrew Bible. Usually translated as, "in the beginning..." bireishit could also be rendered as "in her head..." which in one fell blow makes us have to reconsider all the text that follows.

god forbid — (aka g-d forbid) — a colloquialism I consider hysterical, at least when I use it, given that I'm a righteous and devout atheist.

Hebrew School — an after school rite of passage devoted to indoctrination into the secrets of the tribe, its sacred language, and its obsessive devotion to territorial claims tracing back to g-d's land grant to the tribal patriarch, Abraham.

akeda — the ritual almost-sacrifice of Abraham's son, whom the Bible names by name as Yitzhak (Isaac, Abraham's younger son), and which the Qur'an assumes (thus, no need to name him), could only be Abraham's elder son, Ismail (Ishmael), given that the rest of the passage makes no sense at all otherwise.

Did I miss anything, or will that do for now?

Words I did not explain: pasties, packing, and secular humanism. Oh, and labia menorah (which will have to wait for a post all its own, maybe—although here, a picture might really be worth a thousand words).

the rebbe and the wise little children

A friend and colleague posted this quote from Arthur Green on his blog and so, of course, I've struggled with it. Which is better than saying, yet again, that it pissed me off:

"We would understand the entire course of evolution from the simplest life forms millions of years ago, to the great complexity of the human brain (still only barely understood) and proceeding onward into the unknown future, to be a meaningful process. There is a One...and that One is Being itself, the constant in the endlessly changing evolutionary parade. Viewed from our end of the process, the search that leads to discovery of that One is our human quest for meaning. But turned around, seen from the perspective of the constantly evolving life energy, evolution can be seen as an ongoing process of revelation or self-manifestation. We discover; it reveals. [...] Our task ... is not to offer counterscientific explanations for the origin of life. Our task is to notice, to pay attention to, the incredible wonder of it all, and to find [the Eternal] in that moment of paying attention." from Arthur Green, Radical Judaism

R was about 14 when she participated in that thoroughly non-Jewish (but keep 'em in the fold) institution known as Confirmation classes. It was another case where she begged me to force her to go, and I refused. Angrily, she signed herself up for the sole reason that maybe just maybe she would regret not having gone in some distant adulthood incarnation. I am happy to report, she has not yet reached that state of mind.

At that time, all the synagogues in the City formed a consortium so that the Jewish teens from all the various congregations could mix it up, study together, and be exposed to other (Jewish) points of view. She and her buddy found themselves, for the first time in their lives, in the clutches of rabid Orthodoxy (excuse the horrid pun). The rebbe expounding in front of them was passionate about Bireishit. Well, okay, so am I. But he was insisting that every word was to be taken literally.

Who did he think he was talking to? My kids' hippy-dippy cousin who found himself in Jerusalem faced with an undeniable Truth he could cling to? No, these were sophisticated secular humanist kids raised to seek and weigh evidence, and to speak their mind if the evidence appears to be lacking.

"Don't you believe in evolution?" wailed R's incredulous buddy in his most obnoxious high-pitched tone. Well, you can imagine the rebbe's response. (He railed against secular education).

I picked up the kids after their session and they were shaking with rage. How could such a wise man be so ignorant? When I heard their raging of course I wanted to complain to their Program Director. No, they insisted. It was important, they argued, that they be exposed to such ignorance. They would not have believed it really existed otherwise.

I remember when I was a kid and we were faced with what we thought was a fascistic pig-headed Hebrew School teacher, so unlike our own rational Reconstructionist rabbi (who gave us the proofs for the existence of God, and told us our homework was to go home and disprove them). No, this dictator demanded obeisance and strict adherence to his teachings. No argument, although we had been trained to argue. One afternoon when we couldn't take it any more, we barricaded him in the school office and all took off to some activity we could freely argue over.

So. Arthur Green. The fallacies. His depiction of evolution is as if it is directional — a very 19th century view of from the simple to the complex. Evolution is not directional. It is not a progression leading 'up' to "the great complexity of the human brain." In fact, it's not about 'us' at all — except in the sense that it is us studying the process.

And then, without a blink of the eye, he baldly states, "There is a One ..." (my italics). As if such a definitive statement makes it so. A statement rooted in the same capital T Truth of any Orthodoxy around the world. A knowing — without evidence — the dreaded F-word: faith. Can you feel me shudder? Ugh.

And takes it further, "and that One is Being itself."

Which doesn't mean anything at all. But I guess it sounds good. To somebody. Maybe to most people. But what on earth does it mean? And maybe it's not meant to mean anything, but to feel right, feel comfortable or comforting, though I'm not sure why this nonsensical statement would or could bring comfort to anyone at all. And how did 'revelation' become a mechanism of evolution? My friend who posted it, should know better than find this comforting. Although perhaps in his struggle to explore Judaism, he posted the quote in order to enter the argument, play with the words, have at Arthur Green in some fun, dynamic way. In which case, I applaud.

My daughter used to write essays with sentences like that. When she was a kid.

"What does that mean?" I would inquire pointedly when she forced me to proof her essays at 1:00 AM.

"I don't know," she'd say. "But we have to write 6 pages (or whatever), and that sounded good." And she'd watch me go ballistic. I had graded way too many of those space-fillers even then to let her get away with that.

"Each word, each sentence, has to mean something!" I would say. It has to serve your point, I'd say. You have to know why it's there. Even if no one else knows why that word or sentence is there, you should know what role it plays in your argument.

She didn't want to be in an argument, really (see the He-Man.Skeletor Debate). Although she was getting much better at it.

My anger with the rebbe and with Arthur Green as well, is not in their statements per se, but in the phrasing of their statements in such a way as to suppress the argument. How dare they shut the door to inquiring minds, whether of children or of men? (And yes, I said men. I don't think either of them are speaking to women at all, but that's another subject).

The classroom offers (or can offer) a place to inquire, debate, and wrestle with ideas. God forbid we hand our students (or our children) definitive inarguable Truths they cannot explore and question on their own.

The last part of Green's quote I can live with. Although his very use of language goes against 'scientific explanations for the origins of life.' The part that does work (for scientists as well as 'believers') is 'the incredible wonder of it all' — and I'm okay too with 'having a moment of paying attention.' But evolution (with apologies to Arthur Green), has nothing to do with revelation.

It's Friday. Good shabbes. Enjoy the contradictions.

the fourth rabbi

When M was little, my dad gave him a book of Bible Stories. I think it changed my son forever.

That night I heard this scream from upstairs, and ran up to see what was wrong. He was tucked in bed with the book in his lap, outraged. He got right to the point:

"How could God want Abraham to sacrifice his son?" my only son and oldest child demanded.

Maybe it was my moment of crisis, not his. I'm not really sure. I taught this stuff, you'd think I'd have an answer for my kid. But no. I realized that any answer I gave him would not be good enough. So, at least for that night, we switched reading materials to something more manageable. A real cop out. I'm not sure what we read instead. I mean, what's the antidote to God demanding one's son be sacrificed — when it's your own son reading this stuff. He wasn't quite old enough for Kafka.

I decided to research the Abraham problem. I started to call the rabbis. And I know this is going to sound like a joke, but this, I swear is true. It just sounds like a joke.

The first rabbi I called was the head rabbi at a conservative congregation in the City.

"I tell them that everyone has to make a sacrifice for God," he answered promptly. Like that was going to satisfy my kid.

Before continuing, I should tell you that there actually was something at stake. My son had been begging to go to Hebrew School. I don't even know where he heard about Hebrew School. I had been insisting I could teach him Hebrew at home — along with Arabic. I figured a nice balance was in order for the next generation. My firstborn just rolled his eyes at me. He wanted the real deal.

One day I was driving home form work and the emergency car phone (remember those?) rang.

"What's wrong?" I asked, "What's the emergency?"

"You haven't signed me up for Hebrew School!" he insisted.

"Is this an emergency?"

"Yes!" he answered.

"Ok, I see you're serious about this. I promise I'll take care of it." And we hung up. I still had 45 minutes more to my commute before we could have a chat about the Hebrew School thing at home. But ten minutes later the phone rings again. I'm not even to Palo Alto yet.

"Did you sign me up yet?" he asked.

So, okay, he was that kind of kid. And I figured that the first rabbi who could come up with an answer that would satisfy my son, would get our business in the Hebrew School department. Well, the first rabbi failed.

The second rabbi I called was the head rabbi at one of the large reform synagogues.

"I teach," he said, "that Abraham made the wrong choice. He should have refused." He paused. "But that doesn't really work with the rest of the parsha," he added. And he stopped. Good start, but I wasn't impressed with the lack of follow up.

The third rabbi I saw in person. He was in town running workshops in Jewish Renewal, and I still think of him as my own mentor. The third rabbi was of course, Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. And when I've had questions, he has shown me that I also have answers. And so, I asked him my son's question about the Akedah, and Abraham bringing Isaac up the mountain for sacrifice. And I trusted that at last I'd have a satisfying answer.

Reb Zalman got a big smile on his face. He always had a wonderful, wise smile.

"Such a blessing," he beamed, "to have a son who asks such questions!"

I waited.

That was it. That was the answer. And of course he was right, but that kind of an answer wasn't going to satisfy my kid. And so, I went back to my dad and complained to him of this. And here's what my dad said:

"You see, in those days all the deities demanded human sacrifice. So it wasn't so odd that Abraham would just comply. Human sacrifice was well within the dominant paradigm of that era. The importance of the story is just the opposite — that here was a god that seemed at first like all the others — just another ethnic god demanding his due. But this god changed all the rules. The Akedah teaches us that human sacrifice stops now. The paradigm shifts, and animal sacrifice will suffice."

I love my dad. I think he's why I'm an anthropologist. And I thought it was an answer that my son would be satisfied with as well — although it meant I still didn't have any place I was willing to send him for his Jewish education. But at least I had an answer.

So that night, at bedtime I went up to give M his grandpa's satisfying midrash on the Akedah and the end of human sacrifice. He nodded, briefly at the answer, not terribly impressed, and looked down. He had the Bible Stories book in hand, and clearly he had continued reading on his own. He was pointing to the page he was on, and said:

"So why does God kill Pharoah's son, then, huh?"

The fourth rabbi was Reconstructionist. He said, "well, God's got a problem, doesn't he? We all do! And we get to think about consequences of our actions..."

My kid signed himself up and sent himself to Hebrew School.

And then he went to Law School.