a kaddish for Caprica

Something was bound to go wrong on the Tzaddik's first Yahrtzeit.

It was a day I had hoped to bring my mother to the cemetery for the first time — for she herself had been too gravely ill to understand at the time that he had actually died. In the next room. In her house. Though when I told her that day, not knowing if she understood, she suddenly awoke out of her brain damage for the very first time. Her mind began to struggle back to life.

But this year too, the Tzaddik's wife was too ill to be brought to his still unmarked grave.

I'd controlled the tears all day just waiting to unleash them at the right time, the right place. And goddamn it, I still wanted to visit my father's grave, despite it getting dark already, despite it being rush hour by the time I was leaving Berkeley. I got lost, of course. Got hung up in a wrong lane, and ended up heading for Marin instead of wherever it was I was supposed to be. And I started falling into this insanity: Does he mind? Is he upset? Disappointed? Did he expect it? Doesn't he deserve better than this? How could I leave him there alone? Again. Still. Unmarked. All I wanted to do was something completely out of character: throw myself on his grassy mound (if I could even find it) and wail.

Impressions of Irene Pappas as Elektra: I wanted to pour libations upon his unmarked grave. I was born for this role.

It was now pitch black outside. The cemetery, even if I could find it, was already closed.

The Tzaddik lay there patiently, behind those enormous iron gates, alone in his allocated spot — gypped again out of his due. But you know how the tzaddikim are. The lamed-vavniks. They're a very patient lot. They're saints. Literally.

I crawled across the bridge. It took hours. Bumper to bumper. It was a Tuesday. I had worked myself into a raving lunatic, at least on the inside. Started focusing on not cracking up the car, instead.

I thought, okay, I'll go home and wallow in Caprica for a while. Not that Caprica would (or could) lift my spirits.

Caprica was killing off good characters left and right. Bummer. Didn't they have something better to do? And the Adamas — except for Sam — were a whiney lot.

Still stuck in traffic here. With time to think about the Caprican/BSG mystery that bothers me the most. The one I think no one else cares about.

Adama.

For Adama, of course, means earth in Hebrew. Earth.

I mean, did they do that on purpose? I mean, they must have, right?

And throughout BSG I expected this to come up. But no, it never did. Adama searching for Earth. A destroyed Adama, finding a destroyed Earth. A renewed Adama finding a renewed Earth. Adama naming Earth 'Earth.'

And nobody saying a word about it.

So, of course I figured it would have to come up in Caprica. But these Adamas were a snivvely, sorry lot. And why wouldn't they be? Their own land had been heavily colonized (in the old sense of the word) and exploited. This is all so terribly biblical...

And stuck in traffic, contemplating BSG puzzles, and Caprican potentials, my mind began to settle a bit.

At home, for some reason Caprica had not recorded.

Had I screwed something up? Where was my fix on this awful day? Eventually, I looked online to see if it had been preempted. Tuesday night Caprica just wasn't as fun as Friday night Caprica (or BSG). But shit! It was gone. Just frakking gone.

Caprica died shooting self in foot.

I mean, think about it. The post-apocalyptic BSG had had rough times, but an awful lot to laugh about as well. And here was pre-terminal hedonistic Caprica with nothing but angst, desperation and turmoil everywhere you turn. The only character having even a smidgen of fun was the PhD candidate in Graystone's lab — so yah, why not just blow him away in a careless random moment of meaninglessness?

Was there nothing better to do than gratuitously blow away good characters just to what? Wonder who's gonna get axed the following week? Poor strategy.

Rh thinks Caprica got cancelled because it was too queer-friendly. Do you think the show lost viewers on moral grounds? I mean the whole panorama was right out of Ibn Khaldun: Permissiveness gives way to its own destruction...

I didn't cry for Caprica — although my tears had been waiting all day for some good excuse to let loose. No, I didn't cry — I got mad instead. All that great potential — wasted!

As far as I'm concerned, I'd have been just fine if they'd taken the whole cast, one by one, and locked them into those robotic Cylon bodies. Yearning for another crack at resurrection.

David Eick and company aren't crying either, 'cause they too have resurrection in mind. Another spin-off of BSG. This one tentatively called, Battlestar Gallactica: Blood and Chrome. This one is to take place when Adama is in his early 20s — around forty years before the fall.

Can I say for the record: blech.

I guess the problem wasn't so much morality dissonances but that boys just weren't getting their blow-em-up spaceship fix. And I'm sure the costs/benefits analysis concurs. Blowing up shit is literally more bang for the buck.

I still haven't gone back to the cemetery. But it seems to me that each day brings another reason to pour a libation upon a Tzaddik's grave.

When I finally do go, I'm going to tell my dad all about Adama, as he lies there underneath. He'll have a good chuckle about it. And because he can perform miracles, I'm hoping to see the Earth move when I'm there.

If you read of any earthquakes on that day, just know it's the Tzaddik having a little giggle over Adama — and under adama, too.

the tzaddik and the vavlings

A tzaddik walks into a bar, and ...

I really want to start that way, only the Tzaddik didn't pick up the vav in a bar. The tzaddik has only been in a bar once in his life and that was when he was stranded (with a vavling, actually) in the middle of nowhere and the third game of the World Series was just starting and they couldn't make it home.

No, actually the tzaddik was minding his own business, just walking up the garden path, when he saw the lovely vav sleeping on the stone bench under the redwood tree, and surrounded by luscious ferns. What a vision! He walked up to the lad and leaned over him. The tzaddik tugged at his long beard a bit and examined the find. Jeans and a white t-shirt, though I'm not sure the tzaddik knew about 'jeans.' Long bronze curls upon his head. No keppeleh. Dirty bare feet, with a pair of tanakhim sitting carefully placed under the stone bench. The tanakhim put the tzaddik at ease (not just a lost sheep but a lost potential shepherd), and so he shook the boy's shoulder gently.

The vav awoke. Not startled at all, but as if he were maybe inside still his dream.

"Is this paradise?" he asked in English.

For what he saw was a real live tzaddik bending over him, surrounded by filtered light threading its way through the redwoods. The smell of the ferns and the nearby roses heady on his mind.

The tzaddik took the vavling home, of course. Made him to wash. Fed him. Mrs. Tzaddik took to him as well; he was a pretty boy. She would trap him with a cup of tea and hold him hostage with her higher intellect. But the vav had eyes (and ears) for the tzaddik only, and the tzaddik put him to work.

The function of the vav is to uphold the yud. The yud is the head, the king, inspiration, alchemical fire, the learned one. You can often see him wearing a crown upon the page. The vav is the heart and the spine — a connector — upholding the head as best he can. The vav (at his best) stands tall, but he knows his place. Alchemical air, he's got lots of ideas, but he just can't manifest. And here he was trying to do his job (uphold the tzaddik, his yud) but the upper hei maintained her relentless seduction. She was not subtle. He turned away.

This tzaddik was a lamed-vavnik, to tell the truth — one of the 36 concealed ones who roam this earth at any one time in times of trouble. This isn't just my opinion. People have come up to me and whispered it in my ear. Of course the vavlings would be drawn. How could they not? Max Weber would call it something else, of course. Charisma, he would say. That 'uncanny personal power to persuade' — but that sounds so terribly social science.

The tzaddik put the vavling to work. At first it was to paint the fence around the garden. And then it was the stairs themselves. And when the boy's mind had settled, he set him to selling the Encyclopedia Judaica to members of the tribe. With the boy's natural charm and humor, he soon lost most of his hippy curls and tattered clothes and now wore fine button up white linen peasant shirts tucked into better pairs of jeans. The sidelocks he kept.

The vavling began studying Torah and Talmud. He became captivated by the law.

Soon there were other vavlings drawn to the tzaddik, each with his own talent and capacity. They formed a corporation together, and called it Gan Eden. And so, from that small primordial garden, they set out to grow a paradise together.

All the tzaddik ever wanted was to watch the vavlings thrive. His face lit up in their presence. He did not touch them, despite the rumors. No, he merely reveled in their company. And they were loyal to him until the day he was laid to rest. The vavs did not transmute into yuds themselves. Funny, that. They did not become the tzaddik, nor did they internalize him, nor emulate him. No, they merely saw him. They could see the concealed one!

Not once in my life did the tzaddik ever look at me the way that he beheld his vavlings. What he gave to me was something else entirely. And that is the gift the lamed-vavnik brings: to give each what is his due, each his attention, each her protection. I did not need to be awakened like the tzaddik's first vavling in the garden. I was raised to this garden. I am the gardener. I need no awakening.

The vavs, they saw the tzaddik. They saw the lamed-vavnik. The concealed one, blessed be he. But they never saw the man himself. That was left to me.