A Tribute

My wife’s uncle’s marriage yielded two sons and a stepson, so his stepson was my wife’s step-cousin, if you will. I met him 30 years ago during my first sabbatical at UCLA. At fifty, he was still unmarried, his business having required constant traveling overseas, particularly to Asia. But by that time, he decided that he had enough money. He sold the enterprise he built up and devoted himself to art and literature.

He had recently built a house for himself in the Pacific Palisades hills, with terrific views of the valley below. The house was hidden from the street by a high wooden wall, concealing a structure as perfect as any I’ve ever seen. The house was, like him, elegant and handsome, with the kind of simplicity that only a lot of money can buy.

He took good care of himself. Haunted by his father’s early death from heart failure, he ran five miles a day, until his joints complained forcibly enough to make him find other exercise. He gardened. He listened to music from his vast collection of recordings. He studied French and read French literature. He read histories. He knew what was going on in politics and the arts. He sparkled. Conversation with him was unfailingly stimulating on a wide range of topics, in fact on any topic at all.

A few years after we met him, he married a widow, beautiful, gracious, charming, and intelligent, his match in every respect. It was a pleasure to see them together, for they seemed superbly suited to one another. They engaged in some of the same passions, including an annual visit to Paris.

His brother has just called us to tell us of his death. He was my age. Yes, he was old, but he could have enjoyed life had more years been granted to him. The news of his death was upsetting. He had been for me a beau ideal, admired not only for his taste, elegance, and savoir faire, but also for his character, which was pleasant, considerate, and kind. He was not only a gentleman. He was a mensch. To all who knew him, his death is a loss, and of course for his brother, his stepchildren, and especially his widow the loss is enormous.

They say that when you save a life, you save an entire world. But it’s also true that when you lose a friend, you lose an entire world. May he rest in peace.

2010-2011 Anchises: an Old Man's Journal All rights reserved

Pants and the Man

The other day. while waiting for the pedestrian light to change on busy Adams Street, near its intersection with Willoughby and Fulton Streets, I saw a young African American man start to cross the street against the light. His pants were held to his body midway between his knees and his waist, revealing a considerable expanse of his printed boxer shorts. As the ongoing traffic approached him he increased his speed, and I held my breath wondering if his pants, which seemed to be falling down, would at last embrace his ankles. They did not. But when he gained the safety of the other side of the street, he stopped and hitched up his pants to their original position, with his belt below his hipbone.

What message did this young man want to convey by the way he wore his pants? That he’s cool? That he doesn’t give a damn for bourgeois convention? He was light skinned, and perhaps his way of dressing was saying, in effect, to other young African American males, “I'm Black like you.” But it’s likely he never thought about it at all but dresses that way simply because his friends do, which is as good a reason as any.

Why after all do I wear chinos, blue button down shirts, and navy blue blazers? Because that’s the way my friends dressed more than 60 years ago and I never saw any reason to change. Come to think of it, my instructors dressed that way too. My way of dressing isn't intrinsically better than that of the young man crossing Adams Street, just as Standard English is not intrinsically better than Black Vernacular English. But of course the general public judges them differently.

If so, why does that young man and the many others one sees on New York's streets dress like that? They probably do for the same reason that, despite their schooling's having been conducted in standard English, and despite the hours they've spent each day watching mainstream television, they find it difficult to speak Standard English for five minutes during a job interview. Just as their language is a marker of group identity and loyalty, so is their style of dress, just as my way of speaking and dressing are markers class identity. The group membership claimed by the young man on Adams Street is not that of African Americans in general but that of young, male, inner city African Americans. Older African American men don't dress that way. The young man on Adams Street will probably dress differently when he grows older. Before that, though, if he ever goes to a job interview, I hope he will first pull up his pants.

2010-2011 Anchises-An Old Man's Journal All rights reserved

A Trust Betrayed, a Career Shattered

Three years ago, an anonymous letter to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem accused one of my colleagues of sexual misconduct. Soon three former students complained to the police that he had made indecent proposals to them. The police decided not to recommend prosecution, but a year and a half later, in February of last year, the university suspended him for two years. He appealed the ruling and, having considered his appeal, the university fired him last week. The appeals board found that he had exploited his position to have sex with a student and that he had proposed to other students that they share a room with him when they were abroad.

The university took its time to demonstrate that such conduct is intolerable, but at long last it did make it clear. One wonders how widespread such conduct had been in the past but at any rate one hopes that henceforth instructors who might be tempted to abuse their position will remember the university's uncompromising position in the matter.

When I heard of my colleague’s dismissal, my first reaction was not sympathy for his victims, which they abundantly deserve, but sorrow for him. This is perverse, I know. He preyed on young women over whom he exercised power; he violated their trust. He's as guilty as a priest who molests an altar boy. Even so, I feel sorry for him. I remember him as a tall, hearty, cheerful young man, good looking, smart, and always pleasant to talk to. I liked him very much. It's hard to square this promising young man, as he was when I knew him, with the blighted person that he is today. So I view his sexual misconduct as a tragedy not only for his victims but also for him. People are complex, neither all good nor all bad; who among us has not done something for which we are ashamed? He has many good qualities, but a flaw in his character, however it is to be explained, led to the injury of others and to the ruin of his career. It’s unlikely he’ll be able to work any longer as a university lecturer in Israel and it’s doubtful that he can do so abroad either, since it will be difficult to conceal the reason for his having left his professorship.

"Serves him right," I can hear most of my readers muttering to themselves, "he's lucky not to have gone to jail." And I agree. But since I can hold two contradictory ideas in my head at the same time, I also feel bad for him. I examine my own weaknesses and thank whatever gods may be that they have not led to disgrace, at least not yet.

2010-2011 Anchises-an Old Man's Journal All rights reserved

The Vanity of Human Wishes

Last Monday’s Times carried an article by James Barron entitled: “On the Market, a Building that Sleeps Eight, Forever.” He was referring to a Greek revival building with a “top-quality granite exterior, marble interior, high ceiling,” and a window designed by a famous artist. It is, in short, a mausoleum at the Woodlawn Cemetery. Built for the Methodist bishop Charles Henry Fowler, who died in 1908 and whose remains were transferred to a cemetery in New Jersey in 1956, it was sold to Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, the eminent long-time minister of the Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan.

Dr. Peale never occupied the mausoleum. After his purchase, he lived for another forty years or so, and because by that time his life and that of his wife had become centered in Pauling, New York, they were buried there. . The Peale mausoleum is now for sale at an asking price of $750,000. This doesn’t include the cost of removing the Peale name and putting up your own.

But why would you want to buy a second-hand mausoleum or build a new one for that matter? If you want to display your wealth, there will usually be a grander tomb to eclipse it. The owners of another mausoleum at Woodlawn, for example, are asking $4.1 million for theirs. Besides, how many people will visit the cemetery and view your temple of conspicuous consumption? If you want to glorify yourself, you should consider the grand equestrian statues of Civil War heroes scattered around Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza. Their names, even if noticed, are unrecognized by the passerby. If you want to construct a memorial for the ages, note that the magnificent third century BCE tomb of Mausolus, for whom all grand tombs take their name, now lies in ruins. And if you want to provide a secure resting place for your remains, remember Ozymandias. Better known as Ramesses the Great, his body resides in none of the three grand tombs which housed his body in succession but in a museum in Cairo. There anyone with the price of admission can gawk at it. The mighty are unlikely to despair.

But what of love as your motivation? What if you want to build a tomb not for yourself but for a loved one? The Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, said to have been heartsick at the death of his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal, built a monument to her memory, a structure of such beauty that millions flock to see it. If you can construct a tomb as outstanding as the Taj Majal, a building as lovely as a moonbeam, your love is likely to be seen for centuries, but even the Taj Mahal is likely to perish eventually, long after people have forgotten the names of Mumtaz Mahal and Shah Jahan.

As for me, I’d like my ashes to be scattered over Prospect Park, but that would be littering, unsightly and no doubt illegal. So I suppose my ashes will reside in an urn somewhere, until a descendant empties the receptacle and uses it as a vase for flowers. Until it too is thrown away.

2010-2011 Anchises-an Old Man's Journal All rights reserved

Manners

While waiting for an elevator the other day, I stood aside to let the women waiting with me enter first. They, however, waited for me to enter, with the result that all of us missed the elevator and had to wait for the next one. “We’re all too polite!” one of the women said, with some exasperation. They had waited for me to enter either because I was closer to it or because they considered my advanced age a reason for them to defer to me. In any event, none of them acted as if “ladies first” were a rule of proper etiquette.

But once it was. A man didn’t enter an elevator before a woman did and he removed his hat if he shared the elevator with a woman. There were other rules too: when walking with a woman on a city sidewalk, a man walked on the curbside. He held doors open for women and allowed them to precede him through an entrance. At a restaurant, he held a woman’s chair as she sat down in it, rose when she left the table for the ladies room (now the women's room) and rose again when she returned, and he remained standing until she had seated herself again. He held their coats as they took them off or put them on. He lit their cigarettes.

These rules began to go out of fashion in the late sixties, with the advent of the modern feminist movement, which viewed these behaviors as a means of subjugating women, keeping them in their place. The rules implied that women were too delicate to fend for themselves, that they needed masculine protection, that they should not try to compete in the rough and tumble world of work, that their proper role was at home.

I’m not tempted to light women’s cigarettes these days, because none of the women I know smoke. I seldom stand when a woman rises from a restaurant table, because we are generally with another couple, and the other man, no matter how old, is thoroughly modern in this respect and never stands up for her. But I still tend to stand aside to let women enter elevators and doorways before I do, although I understand that no one will think me a boor if I don’t, and in fact they may think I’m gumming up the works by not moving faster. I sometimes remove my hat when in an elevator with a woman, although if she notices, she probably thinks I'm too warm. I doubt that it occurs to her that I’m trying to be polite. On those occasions when I keep my hat firmly on my head in the presence of a woman, I feel uncomfortable, although I know this is ridiculous.

They say that for the rest of their lives, men dress the way they did in college. The same, perhaps, can be said for manners. I know mine are outmoded, but I find it hard to let them go.

Cities of Refuge

When I told my daughter about the luxurious facilities at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital, she sighed. A palliative care social worker at a small hospital in Brooklyn that serves mainly the poor, she told me that Sloan-Kettering was out of reach of most of her patients. “Why?” I asked her. Not all Medicaid Managed Care plans provide coverage for services at Sloan-Kettering, she told me, and even if they did, and even if co-payments were not a problem for her patients, most of them have never heard of the hospital.

I was surprised by what she said and then I was ashamed at my surprise. Almost all the patients I had seen during my three visits to Sloan-Kettering facilities appeared to be at least middle class. Those sitting in Sloan-Kettering’s waiting rooms, outfitted like boutique hotel lobbies, resembled not at all the mix of passengers one sees in the subway or the variety of pedestrians one encounters on the streets. From what I’ve seen, Sloan-Kettering serves mainly the narrow upper levels of the socioeconomic pyramid. I was ashamed because I hadn’t noticed.

We touched on this tendency to be impervious to the suffering of the poor in our Torah study group last Shabbat, which was led by Shira Koch-Epstein, our associate rabbi at Congregation Beth Elohim. Part of that week’s portion concerned the establishment of cities of refuge, where a person could flee after killing another unintentionally. There the killer would be safe from the blood revenge that the victim's family could otherwise exact.

In Rabbi Koch-Epstein’s handout was a quotation from the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995), who asked if the more fortunate among us don’t live in Cities of Refuge. “Do these murders, committed without the murderers’ volition, occur in other ways than by the axe-head leaving the handle and coming to strike the passer-by?” In our socially unequal society, he asked, don’t the advantages enjoyed by the rich in relation to the poor lead in one way or another to the distress of others and therefore to the anger of the disadvantaged toward the more privileged? If so, then we live in cities of refuge because the protection they offer make us safe from the vengeance of the poor.

Social stratification is virtually universal in human societies. Some members of a society tend to have more of what money and position can obtain - education, health, wealth, opportunity - than do others. One is reminded of the spiritual, All My Trials, “If religion were a thing that money could buy, you know the rich would live and the poor would die.” We’re not going to end stratification, but we can try to reduce the disparities, growing larger by the decade in America, between rich and poor, between those born with every advantage and those born in poverty.

So what are my obligations towards those less fortunate than myself? Transferring from Sloan-Kettering to a hospital serving the poor would help no one, even if I were selfless enough to do so. My responsibility, it seems to me, is first of all to be present to the suffering of others. Only by being conscious of it, awake to it, can I do anything to help. And second of all? What can I do, beyond contributing to programs, either financially or as a volunteer, that improve the circumstances of the disadvantaged? I have no answer at present. But thanks to my conversation with my daughter and the suggestion posed by Levinas in Rabbi Koch-Epstein's handout, I will be more alive to the opportunities that present themselves.

Anxiety

During the last hour or so of sleep a few nights ago, I dreamed that we were in Egypt. I was talking to a travel agent over the phone and at the same time I was urging my son to look at a New Yorker cartoon. The cartoon – wholly a product of my imagination – covered a full page. It pictured a resort with water falling into a pool, at the edge of which sat an elderly man. Falling down along the course of the waterfall was a succession of plump creatures, like walruses or seals. They were piling up around the edge of the pool, alarming the old man, who was on the phone asking his secretary, sitting far away in Vienna, to do something about the ongoing catastrophe.

I don’t remember if my son looked at the cartoon, which in my dream (and only there) I found hilarious. The travel agent to whom I was speaking on the phone told me that he was sending me information about our flights. He said he was embarrassed that he wasn’t yet able to confirm them but that he was sure they would be confirmed before our departure. “That won’t do,” I told him somewhat heatedly, and asked him to find another flight, a flight that could be confirmed immediately. “That would take too much time,” he said. “You’ll have to do it yourself.” The dream ended there.

My conversation with the travel agent suggests that I’m anxious about our December tour of Egypt. I hadn't realized I was anxious, although it’s not unreasonable to feel that way. Consciously, I’ve been worrying mainly about taking a minimum of belongings, packing light, not an easy proposition in view of the large number of absorbent pads, padded underpants, and medications I need to bring along, but that's probably a displacement for worrying about what would happen in the event of a medical emergency.

The cartoon is probably another manifestation of anxiety. It's likely that the creatures' falling represents my own fear of falling and breaking already fragile bones. More to the point, fat walruses and seals dropping down all over the place must be, to say the least, unpleasant, and the man’s calling his secretary to stop the deluge of animals was an exercise in futility. The animals would keep piling up and eventually kill him, just as my proliferating prostate cells may eventually kill me. My hormone treatment, by no means an exercise in futility, will nonetheless eventually fail and other measures will then have to be considered.

So why did I want my son to look at the cartoon? Maybe I felt that somehow he could protect me from disaster, since he’s young and strong, an idealized version of myself, just as the old man sitting at the edge of the pool is a version of myself and idealized to the extent of his having a secretary. For protection from disaster, though, I’ll have to rely on luck, insurance, my wife, and whatever good sense remains to me. Now that I’m conscious of my anxiety, I’ll face it and continue with our plans. I have no intention of changing them.