Keren-Aliza

At Shabbat services on Friday, our rabbi introduced to the congregation a new convert. A middle-aged mother of three, she was raised as a Protestant and was a member of an old-line Protestant congregation nearby, but she had long felt hungry for a spiritual home more satisfying to her. After much thought and study on her own, she e-mailed our rabbi, who, after many conversations with her, agreed to accept her for the process of conversion. This she recently completed. The name she was given at birth is Karen. On Shabbat, our rabbi announced her Hebrew name, Keren-Aliza, loosely translated as cornucopia of happiness, appropriate for this smiling woman who had always seemed to me to be so joyful at our Friday evening services.

Judaism is not a proselytizing religion, yet over the years thousands of non-Jews have become Jews, taking upon themselves the yoke of the religion’s obligations and constraints. My family for example, must have had ancestors who originated outside Palestine, as can be seen in childhood pictures of my tow-headed mother and her twin, and in the red hair of my cousin and sister before their heads became gray. Several members of our congregation are converts, which I would not have known had they not told me. Some of these conversions were motivated by marriage to a Jewish spouse, but others, like Keren-Aliza’s, were made independently. Her husband and children, though supporting her conversion, remain Gentiles.

Conversion to Judaism is a radical step. Keren-Aliza not only accepted the ritual requirements of our religion, but she also joined herself to our people. She is now as fully Jewish as anyone born a Jew, equally present metaphorically at Mount Sinai when Moses came down from the mountain.

I asked Keren-Aliza’s 85-year-old father, who attended the last Friday’s services, how he felt about his daughter’s conversion. Raised as a Unitarian and continuing to attend a Unitarian congregation, he told me that everyone must find his or her own way in such matters. He seemed pleased that his daughter had found her way even if it was not his way. Good for him and good for her.

Report Card

My tenth grade report card from Newton High School surfaced just now. Each of my teachers- Mr. Heintzelman (English), Miss Jewett (Latin), Miss Burdon (French), Mr. Ferguson (Social Studies), and Miss Brackett (Math) wrote out my grades on a crisp 4” x 6” blue card. It would be pleasant to report that I earned all A’s but in fact I received B’s in French and Math.

Miss Brackett, my math teacher, was a wiry woman with red hair. She was always clear and patient, and if I didn’t get an A it wasn’t her fault. I remember sitting half-panicked during some of her lessons, since I’ve never had much aptitude for math. She would have been at least as surprised as I was to find me teaching statistics to graduate students.

Miss Burdon, my French teacher, kept me after school one day because I had not only failed to bring a mirror to class to help me round my lips in an approved fashion when pronouncing a certain dipthong, but I had pretended to look in a mirror while rounding my lips. When she looked down at my desk and found no mirror inside my book, she cried out "you deceived me!" But then she never liked me.

I recall Miss Jewett, my second year Latin teacher, as a small, elderly woman (no doubt she was 30 years younger than I am today) who loved Latin and gave her students a love of the language too. It was a pleasure to study in her class. I went on for a third year (Cicero) with her. Had I continued for a fourth year, I could have read Virgil, but I thought it more “practical” to continue with French instead. Indeed, I did learn French well enough, after studying it in college, to get along in France during the summer of my 20^th year, but when I learned Hebrew, my French departed without even saying goodbye. I might have done better to read Virgil. Do high school students study Latin these days?

I remember Mr. Ferguson, my social studies teacher, as bored by the curriculum; but I’m not sure - it might have been another teacher - so I won’t accuse him of being flat and uninspiring. I vaguely remember his wearing suits to class, but this may be an invented memory. We teachers work so hard and what do our students remember about what we try to teach them or about us? I don’t remember a thing from that social studies course, not even the topics, and I remember almost nothing about him. But no doubt some of my students can say the same about my courses and about me.

Mr. Heintzelman, my English teacher, was a recent graduate of Amherst, a tall, dashing, energetic, athletic young man. If anyone can claim the credit of teaching me to write, it was he. Of all my teachers, he made the strongest impression on me and was the one I liked the most. Alas, he died a few years later, leaving behind his wife and two young children.

Why have I kept my tenth grade report card and not my eleventh and twelfth grade cards? I suspect that the eleventh and twelfth grade reports were even less distinguished. But why have I kept the card at all? It may in fact become a victim of the purge I’m contemplating, but not now, or at least not yet.

2010-2011 Anchises: an Old Man’s Journal All Rights Reserved

A Table and the Trait of Gratitude

Almost 80 years ago, rich cousins gave my wife’s parents, as a wedding present, an antique walnut drop-leaf table. Polishing for the past 175 years or so has given it a deep, glossy patina. When its leaves are raised, it’s about the size of an oval card table. It’s one of our most beloved possessions.

It stood in the front hall of our Jerusalem apartment for 32 years. On it we placed an antique American soup tureen. The pair would not have been out of place in an American home during the first quarter of the 19^th century, although the enormous painting that hung on the wall against which our table stood, a copy of a 16^th century Ethiopian portrait of the Archangel Gabriel, would have been wildly out of place. The table, in addition to being pleasant to look at, was useful, inasmuch as its single drawer served as a repository for miscellaneous items, including a pretty letter opener, tickets to upcoming events, duplicate keys, and the keys of a few neighbors who feared locking themselves out of their apartments.

The table, which had moved from New York to San Diego to Jerusalem, then returned to New York, not to our apartment but to a warehouse in the Bronx, where it hibernated for the last three years. Two days ago, it made yet another move, from the warehouse to our apartment, where it arrived with 98 other cartons – mainly books and files but also paintings, ornaments, four chests of drawers, three chairs, a desk, a hanging sideboard, and two tables.

Of the eleven pieces of furniture, two arrived broken. One leg of a small antique walnut chair broke in the middle. The chair is one of a pair, which I had pictured flanking the antique table in our living room. But the table itself was one of the casualties, with one of its legs detached from its base.

This week and the next, our mussar group is considering the trait of gratitude. Let me count the blessings associated with this shipment. I’m thankful for the arrival for all 99 cartons of the transport and thankful that not more of our possessions were damaged. I’m also thankful that the damage can be repaired and that, in the case of the table, the crack will be hard to see.

When concentrating on the trait of gratitude, we’re advised to see the possibility of a good outcome arising from what at the moment seems bad luck, as when you miss a train that, before it reaches its destination, loses its power and heat and sits for six hours while its passengers freeze and its toilets overflow. Offhand it’s not easy to see what good can come from our detached table leg unless it’s to encourage us to part with some of our possessions. We don’t really need any of the goods that we sent from Jerusalem, including that table. It would have been much harder to say goodbye to them three years ago than it would be now, after we’ve lived perfectly well without them all this time.

In the number of homes we’ve occupied since we married - ten or so - we’ve been a bit like nomads, but unlike nomads we haven’t been traveling light. While our possessions give us pleasure, they are also an encumbrance and a burden. In the case of the broken table and chair, for example, we will have to find a reliable furniture repairer and of course we will have to pay a considerable fee for the work. With respect to all the newly transported possessions, we will have to find places to put them, diminishing our storage space and adding to the cost of insurance and the work of cleaning. Why do we need so many books, for instance, when we live only one block away from the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library and when so much information is freely available on the internet?

But the books, the furniture, and the paintings that we sent from Jerusalem are totems of our history and in some cases exemplars of beauty. Love, whether of persons or objects, has a price. We will repair the broken table and chair, but perhaps doing so will help us decide if the price of loving objects, whether for their beauty or for their reminders of our history, has become too high. This evaluation, whether we decide on "deaccession" or retention, may be the good that results from the breakage.

Qohelet and Dessert

On Sukkot, which began last week, it’s customary to read Qohelet (Ecclesiastes). At first glance, the custom is strange, inasmuch as we’re commanded to be happy during this festival, yet few literary works offer so bleak a view of human existence. Qohelet repeatedly stresses the futility of human endeavor and the fickleness of fate. Several times the author tells us it is better never to have been born. The fate of man and beast, king and vassal, wise man and fool is the same – death. “The dead know nothing and they no longer have recompense, for their memory is forgotten. Their love and their hatred as well, their jealousy, too, are already lost, and they no longer have any share forever in all that is done under the sun” (9:5-6). The only reasonable course, the author tells us, is to enjoy what there is to be enjoyed, while one still has a chance to do so – good food and wine, pleasure in one’s work, and the companionship of a person one loves. “There is nothing better for man under the sun than to eat and to drink and to make merry,” (8:15) for these gifts of God are provisional, liable to be removed at any time. (Translations by Robert Alter, The Wisdom Books: Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. New York: W.W.Norton,2010.)

We're commanded to dwell in booths during Sukkot. These are flimsy, temporary structures, roofed with leafy branches which permit you to see the sky through their cover. You are exposed to the elements. Religiously observant Jews eat in them and sometimes sleep in them too, a reminder of our 40-year wandering in the desert, with its temporary, impermanent dwellings, before entering the Promised Land. Perhaps we read Qohelet during Sukkot as another reminder of our vulnerability during that wandering, since Qohelet stresses the fickleness of fate and thus the provisional quality of the good things in our lives.

But perhaps we read Qohelet now, because, after all, we're commanded to be happy during this period, and Qohelet admonishes us over and over again to enjoy ourselves while it's still possible to do so.

A few days before Sukkot began, my wife and I met four friends for dinner at a Park Slope restaurant noted for its good food and wine. The food and service were exemplary. I can’t judge the wine, for I no longer drink alcohol, but one of our party pronounced the Tuscan wine she had ordered as “lovely.” I won’t go so far as to describe our dinner party as “merry,” although we laughed a great deal, but it was convivial, intimate, and stimulating – not surprising in view of the other participants, two psychoanalysts, one clinical psychologist, and one political scientist, all distinguished in their fields and all gifted conversationalists. When it was time to consider dessert, our waiter described the restaurant’s four offerings. It’s common among persons our age to share a single dessert. But that night, the clinical psychologist told the waiter to bring all four. To this astonishing departure from the norm, no one made any objection, and when the desserts arrived, we made short work of them.

Despite the fragility of our health and the knowledge that death can no longer be so far away (let us hope those rich desserts haven't hastened it), we enjoyed an evening of good food, good wine, and the lively conversation of friends. It doesn't get much better than that. The author of Qohelet would have approved.

2010-2011 Anchises-An Old Man's Journal All Rights Reserved

Yom Kippur

Yom Kippur began at sundown last Friday and ended 25 hours later. For the first time in memory, I not only fasted but also attended all the religious services, attending the opening service Friday night and spending all the next day at our synagogue, Beth Elohim, in Park Slope. As a result, at the conclusion of services on Saturday, when God is said to lock the book in which he has written the names of those who will live for the next year, I felt spiritually cleansed.

It was a strange reaction for an atheist, but then religious experience is scarcely rational. Our newly minted cantor, Josh Breitzer, has a clear, sweet, tenor voice that he used to serve the prayer rather than to show off his virtuosity. The congregation sang almost the whole service. The beauty of the melodies reinforced the sense of the text, particularly those portions that require acknowledgement of our sins of commission and omission during the past year. These sins include those committed by the communities to which we belong, for we are partly responsible for them. As each sin was announced, we beat our right hand against our left chest, an act that increased the solemn drama of the occasion, which was enhanced by the grandeur of the main sanctuary, opened for the first time in two years.

At the conclusion of the service, our rabbi, Andy Bachman, told us that even then our thoughts were turning to secular concerns. And of course he was right. Just as I know, after visiting my dental hygienist, that the fresh feeling in my mouth won't last for more than a few hours, when I eat again, I knew that not much time would elapse before the exigencies of everyday life, in collusion with my own weakness, would lead me to act in way discordant with my ethical ideals. Still, the practice of Mussar, taught by Gary Shaffer, a fellow member of our congregation, a practice which encourages us to be conscious of our behavior, to be more fully present to what we’re doing and thinking, may help reduce the number of misdeeds I have to consider on the next Yom Kippur.

Professor Ehsan Yarshater

“The encylopedia of erotica” caught my ear recently as I half listened to an NPR program. “What a good idea,” I thought and then idly imagined a kind of Varieties of Sexual Experience in several volumes by an unbuttoned William James. Reality soon intervened, however, when it became clear that the encyclopedia was devoted not to erotica but to Iranica. (http://www.npr.org/2011/09/26/140807176/37-years-and-halfway-through-encyclopaedia-iranica) It aims to present, in English, a definitive and comprehensive view of Iranian history, language, and culture over several thousand years in the Middle East, Central Asia, and India.

More interesting to me than the encyclopedia was its founder and editor, Professor Ehsan Yarshater, the director of Columbia University’s Center for Iranian Studies. He began work on the encyclopedia 38 years ago. Now, with about 6,500 entries by almost 1,500 contributors, it’s only half completed. One of the reasons for the work’s slow progress is its painstaking checking of each entry and Professor Yarshater’s insistence on securing “the best person in the entire world” to write about a given topic. Also, many of the articles require original research. They are not simply summaries of existing knowledge. Professor Yarshater wants to complete this great work but he realizes that he won’t be able to do so within his own lifetime. He has chosen his successors. He is 91.

No stranger to large works, he edited a 40-volume translation of the tenth-century Persian historian al Jibari’s Annals; he’s the founding editor of a series on Persian history and language. And he edited a 20-volume collection of Persian literature. “That was when I realized I was suffering from a kind of disease,” he told the Times in a recent interview. “If something is to be done, I have a feeling that I should start doing it.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/13/books/ehsan-yarshaters-encyclopedia-of-iranian-history.html) Even now, he regularly works 12-hour days. He no longer takes a nap after lunch because there is so much work to be done.

Perhaps my hearing erotica for Iranica wasn’t so far off the mark, inasmuch as Professor Yarshater’s devotion to Iranian language, literature, and history has been and continues to be a passionate labor of love. He’s fortunate in being able to maintain his passion, in continuing to be profoundly engaged in his work, so deep into old age. Few of us are similarly blessed. When passion of that sort flags, there’s no help to be found from Viagra.

Adorable!

The other day, my wife and I met our children and grandchildren for dinner at a midtown restaurant, where we had reserved a table for ten. I had dressed up for the occasion, wearing gray flannel trousers, a pink buttoned-down shirt with a darker pink bow tie, and a dark gray tweed sports coat, in whose breast pocket I had tucked a red silk square. I looked pretty good, I thought, as I approached the maitre d’ and gave him my name. He smiled, adjusted my bow tie, and then said “adorable!”

I like to wear bow ties but I find it hard to keep them straight. This is not an unalloyed disadvantage, however, inasmuch as women like to come up unasked and adjust them for me, an attention I enjoy. But for a strange man to do so is another matter, particularly when accompanied by the pronouncement “adorable!” No doubt he meant well, but I didn’t know whether to feel insulted or amused. Somewhat stunned, I murmured “thank you,” and as we were ushered to our table, I decided that after all it was pretty funny. The maitre d’ didn’t see a stately emeritus professor and family patriarch. He saw someone with the status of a six-year-old. I suppose I should have been grateful that he hadn't chucked me under the chin.

Earlier that day, on our way to the restaurant, we boarded a crowded subway car, where a man offered me his seat. I thanked him but declined his offer, telling him that we were getting off at the next stop. His gesture, reflecting respect for age, was pleasing, whereas the maitre d’s behavior, reflecting condescension, was not.

Perhaps it’s just as well that my amour propre suffers a little puncture now and then. It’s a healthy reminder that not everyone sees me as I like to see myself.

2010-2011 Anchises-an Old Man’s Journal All Rights Reserved