Memorials

“You  must have some good stories, my wife said to the taxi driver who was driving her home, after learning that he had driven a cab for a long time.  This is one of the stories he told her. 

Many years ago on Christmas Day, a Park Avenue doorman hailed his cab.  When the driver stopped, the doorman ushered into the taxi an old man and then handed the old man six packages and six envelopes.  “I want you to give one of these packages and one of these envelopes to each of the first five taxi drivers you see,” said the old man to the driver.  This the driver proceeded to do.  After the fifth package and the fifth envelope had been delivered, the old man said the remaining package and envelope were for the driver.  The driver opened the package where he found a bottle of champagne.  In the envelope was a hundred dollar bill.  “My father was a cabdriver,” said the old man, but I’ve been fortunate, so each Christmas I give these presents as a memorial to him.”

The story made me think of my own father and what if anything I’ve done to commemorate him.  He died almost 35 years ago, and, I must admit, not even once have I said kaddish for him, not during the year following his death, as is customary, and not on its anniversary, which is customary too.  My father had not done so for his father either, as far as I can recall, but in any case in the early years after my father died, I didn’t attend religious services and didn’t know how to say the prayer.  But even if I had observed the obligation to recite the kaddish in his memory, the prayer is for the living, not the dead.

But aren’t all memorials for the living?  The dead do not know what gestures have been made in their memory – the hospital wings, the plaques, the statues, the monuments, the contributions to charities in their names, and so forth.  These memorials help the living give thanks for the lives of their loved ones or, in some cases, assuage guilt for things said or done or not said or not done while the deceased was still alive. 

Not a day goes by that I don’t think of my father, if for no other reason that every time I look in the mirror I see him.  But I often recall things he’s said.  When, for example, a doctor I’m consulting for the first time tells me to come back in three months, I tell him that, according to my father, “come back in three months” are the most beautiful words in the English language.  I often recall his urging me to make a date with my brother’s sister-in-law, who he averred was a very nice girl.  “Leave me alone, Dad” I replied with not a little annoyance.  He knew me better than I knew myself, for two years later we were married, to his great pleasure and my lasting benefit.

I wish I could do something as flamboyant and as much fun as giving away bottles of champagne and hundred dollar bills on the anniversary of his death, but I know that such extravagance would displease him.  So my memorial to him are my memories.  “May their memory serve as a blessing” is often said of the dead.  I’m glad to say that his memory serves that function for me.


2010-2012 Anchises-An Old Man's Journal All Rights Reserved

Bo

In this week’s portion, Parashat Bo, the plague narrative reaches its climax with the last three plagues, all of which, as Aviva Zornberg points out, are plagues of darkness (The Particulars of Rapture, p.165).  The plague of locusts blots out the sun, paralyzing the Egyptians, while the sun still shines on the Israelites; the plague of darkness is palpable, so thick that people who are sitting cannot stand and those who are standing cannot sit; and the plague of the first-born takes place at night, midst terror, horror, and the Egyptians’ wails of agony.  Pharaoh finally relents and not only allows the Israelites to go but pleads with them to do so at once.

The plagues are plagues of darkness, but the parasha itself is dark, for God continues to harden Pharaoh’s heart. God unleashes plague after plague upon the Egyptians – and last plague is particularly horrific - until Pharaoh finally lets the Israelites go.  God demonstrates his greatness not only in upsetting the natural order of things through the plagues he brings down upon the Egyptians, and not only in bewitching the Egyptians to part with their gold and silver, but also by controlling Pharaoh’s heart.  The thrust of the whole Book of Exodus is to demonstrate the power and glory of an omnipotent God and to provide a triumphant narrative of His greatness to be passed down through the generations.

Where, one asks, is the God of Genesis, who was willing to spare Sodom and Gemorrah if ten righteous men could be found there?  There were not ten righteous men in the small towns of Sodom and Gemorrah, but surely there were ten righteous men in the great empire of Egypt. Nonetheless, the God of Exodus kills the innocent along with the guilty, just as we did when bombing Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.  Ruthess and implacable, He adds plague after plague, finally killing every first-born among the Egyptians.      

God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart has troubled commentators almost from the beginning.  Zornberg states the problem as follows: If it was impossible for Pharaoh to repent – obviously a theologically offensive notion – the plague story becomes a narrative of vengeful abuse, of a morally paralyzed victim bombarded by all the armaments of a powerful but immoral deity (The Particulars of Rapture, p. 142).

Several arguments attempt to explain away the problem.  One is that God punished Pharaoh for ordering the Israelite baby boys to be drowned in the Nile. But at the Burning Bush, God told Moses that all those who wanted Moses dead had died, so the pharaoh who ordered the drowning of the baby boys was no longer alive.  But even if that Pharaoh was still alive, why was it necessary to punish the Egyptian people along with their king?  Because, as some have argued, the Egyptians not only participated in oppressing the Israelites but also rejoiced in their suffering.   That argument, however, is unpersuasive.  All the Egyptians?  Even the infants who had the misfortune of being born first? 

Another argument is that by adding plagues, God was giving the Egyptians time to repent.  Indeed, Pharaoh's courtiers eventually urge him to let the Israelites go.  But since all the Egyptian first-born were killed, including those of the courtiers, we must reject that hypothesis.

Still another argument is that God simply allowed Pharaoh to follow his own inclination, so that God’s locking of Pharaoh’s heart is a metaphor for the outcome of Pharaoh’s repeated abuse of power.  Pharaoh himself, in other words, had become habituated to his status as absolute ruler of the world’s richest and most powerful empire, accustomed to being worshiped as a demi-god, so used to having his own way that he was incapable of change.  But this theory is inconsistent with the text, in which God repeatedly tells Moses that he will harden Pharaoh’s heart in order to demonstrate His power.  God says that he will show His power not only to Pharaoh and his courtiers, but also to Moses and the Israelites, so that the story will be handed down from father to son forever.  It seems that the foundation story of the Jewish people is built upon the suffering of another people, an  ancient precursor, some would say, to the establishment of the state of Israel. 

Zornberg cites R. Shmuel bar Nachman's narration of a dialogue between God and Moses when God was dictating the Torah.  When Moses was writing the Torah and was describing the creation work of each day, he reached this verse: “God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” He said, Master of the Universe, why do you give heretics an opening of the mouth? [in other words, an opportunity to discredit the notion of there being only one God.] God answered. Write. And whoever wants

to read wrongly will read wrongly.  Shut up, in other words.

“Let us make man in our image” is sometimes offered as an example of God’s humility, His willingness to consult inferiors, the angels, in the creation of human beings.  But we can also read it as a statement of God’s multiplicity - that He is both the God of Genesis and the God of Exodus, among an incompassable number of manisfestations.  Is it possible then to justify God's hardening of Pharaoh's heart?  Each justification raises new questions.  There is no answer that satisfactorily closes debate.   In my opinion, God’s response to Moses, that whoever wants to read wrongly will read wrongly, is perhaps the best we can do.   The subversive narrative which views God as immoral in the matter of the plagues can never be completely silenced, never completely harmonized with the master triumphant narrative.  The plague narrative, like God, is ultimately inexplicable.

Which reminds me of a story by Shalom Auslander (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/369/poultry-slam-2008?act=5) which I’m taking the liberty to modify somewhat.  An orthodox Jew dies and meets God, who turns out to be a 30-foot tall chicken who speaks perfect English and sits in a golden cage.  The Jew prostrates himself, saying “Hear Oh Israel, the Lord...”  The Lord interrupts him.  “Hero as in hero sandwich?”  It appears that God has never heard of Shabbat or kashrut or the Torah.  "Oh," says the Jew, "if only I could go back and tell my people."  So God sends him back. The Jew goes home in time for Shabbat dinner.  He’s seated at the head of the table.  “God is…” he says, and looks at his children, all washed and in their best clothes, all looking at him expectantly.  “God is…” and he looks at the white tablecloth and the good china, crystal, and sterling set upon it.  “God is…” and he looks at the glow from the Sabbath candles and at little Hanna who has been practicing her favorite Shabbat song.  “God is,” he says finally, “unknowable.”

 .

2010-2012 Anchises-an Old Man's Journal All Rights Reserved

The Moving Garden

A week or so ago, my wife and I visited the Brooklyn Museum.  Near the entrance was a forty-five –foot-long granite table with a curving channel running down the middle.  Appearing to grow out of the channel were 100 freshly cut roses.  Upon inspection, you could see that each rose sat in its own water-filled glass inside the channel.  Visitors were invited to take a flower when leaving the museum on condition that they make a detour to their next destination and give the flower to a stranger.  The next day, the flowers taken the day before are replaced, thus continuing the cycle.  Lee Mingwei, a Taiwanese-American artist based in New York, created this participatory installation, “The Moving Garden.”

Intrigued, my wife and I each took a flower.  A young couple, who evidently had not yet read the invitation to participate in the installation, looked scandalized at the sight of this respectable elderly couple who, in their view, had brazenly stolen two flowers.   Undeterred, we walked out of the museum, holding our roses aloft.  Instead of turning to the left on Eastern Parkway, we turned to the right and then left onto Washington Avenue. 

I determined to give my rose to the first woman I saw.  She proved to be a young African American who was walking quickly, seemingly engrossed in her own thoughts.  “Excuse me,” I said, interrupting her cogitations, “may I give this to you?” as I held out the rose towards her.  Her face broke into a delighted smile.  “Thank you,” she said, clearly pleased, as she took the rose.  Seeing her delight delighted me. 

Turning into Lincoln Place, my wife and I saw an adolescent, also an African American, who was propelling himself along the sidewalk on an aluminum scooter.  He won’t be able to take a rose, we thought, since he needs both hands for his scooter, but then he stopped at the entrance to a building.  Just before he reached the door, my wife said “this is a present from the Museum.”  He seemed more bewildered than pleased by my wife’s gift, but he accepted it with a thank you. 

As we continued on our way, I wondered what I could do to repeat my experience with that young woman, an interaction that made me feel so good.  I could add a rose every Friday morning, when I buy flowers in honor of the coming Shabbat, and then give away the rose.  But part of the pleasure of my interaction with the young woman was participating in a communal activity, and that component would be absent.  Still, it's worth thinking about how I could perform other "random acts of kindness" in the future, acts which are likely to give me much pleasure at little cost.

As a footnote to this adventure, let me add that the museum invites those who have taken and given away a flower to record their experiences using Twitter, Flickr, or Instagr.am.  Apparently the museum is unaware that there are antediluvian visitors like me who do not know how to use these devices.


2010-2012 Anchises - An Old Man's Journal All Rights Reserved

Mr. J.

They say that men, for the rest of their lives, dress the way they did in college.  That may or may not be true, but as for me,  I'm wearing the descendants of the gray flannels, blue blazers, and buttoned-down shirts that clothed me when I was an undergraduate.  So two years ago, at about this time of year, when I spotted one of the haberdasheries on Madison Avenue  that specialize in that style, I remembered I needed a sports jacket.  I walked in and was greeted by Mr. J.

Mr. J. was an old man beautifully dressed in a three-piece suit whose expert tailoring could not disguise the fact, that, like me, he had lost, to a bent back, several inches in height . When I told him that I would like a tweed sports jacket, he  ushered me to the rack of jackets containing my size. Alas, it was the end of the season, so the selection was limited, and none of the jackets I tried on appealed to me.

“Why don’t you consider a made-to-measure jacket?” Mr. J. inquired, leading me over to a large desk at the front of the store.  “Yeah, sure,” I said to myself, “but what the hell, it won’t hurt to look.”  How little I knew myself.  I sat down at the desk, and  examined one after another swatch of fabric, none of which excited me enough to make me willing to pay for a bespoke garment.  And then I saw it, a sumptuous, blue Harris tweed, and I fell in love.  “Well, why not?” I asked myself.  “You only live once."

Indefatigable and irrepressible, Mr. J. then suggested that I needed made-to-measure flannel trousers to accompany the jacket.  “What’s wrong with off the rack trousers?” I asked him feebly.  “They won’t be like these,” he answered. “They’ll be fully lined,” he continued, showing me one luxurious fabric after another.  “In for a penny, in for a pound,” I told myself and so I found myself being measured for both a jacket and trousers.   Not content with these sales, Mr. J. then sold me suspenders, three bow ties, three silk squares, and a summer hat with a blue and red band.  The cost did not equal the national debt.  It only felt that way.

I returned for a second fitting, at which the location of the button holes as well as other niceties were to be determined.  I stood on a raised platform as the fitter fussed with his measurements.  In the three mirrors that arced around the platform, I looked at my reflection with profound satisfaction.  “Now I want you to come back here even if you only need a handkerchief,” Mr. J. told me when I took final possession of the jacket and trousers.  “Not on your life,” I said to myself, “not if I want to maintain my bank balance.” 

In fact, the jacket’s shoulders were too wide.  They were not the natural shoulders I wanted.  They were the shoulders of a line backer. Why hadn’t I seen it at the second fitting?  I guess the material so dazzled me that I refused to acknowledge what would have been plain to an uninfatuated eye.  As a result, for the past two years I’ve hardly worn that jacket.  “Take it back and ask that it be altered,” advised my sensible wife more than once.  

Finally, the other day, when I was walking up Madison Avenue on my way to an appointment, I ventured into the shop.  Surely Mr. J., who was 80 when he waited on me two years ago, would be retired by now, but no, there he was, still beautifully dressed, if even more stooped than before.  I asked him if I might bring back the jacket to have the shoulders adjusted.  “Of course,” he said, “just come on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, or Thursdays, when my fitter’s here.”  So I will.  But I have a terrible feeling that when I do, I will again succumb to the blandishments of beautiful fabrics and a superb salesman.  Well, nobody's perfect.

2010-2012 Anchises - An Old Man's Journal All Rights Reserved

School is not an Option

“Stop crying.  You have to go to school,” says a woman with a West Indian accent.  They’re standing behind me on a traffic island at the Grand Army Plaza.  “School is not an option,” she continues.  “You have to go to school.”  I’m too polite to turn around and look at them but I can imagine the scene, for I’ve enacted it myself:  my crying daughter telling me that she doesn’t want to go to school and my telling her that she has to. 

That was in 1972, the year we moved to Jerusalem for what we thought would be a two-year stay.  Our daughter was six and a half years old and in the second grade, the only non-Hebrew speaker in her class.  No wonder she didn’t want to go to school.  Engulfed in a foreign language, understanding almost nothing and thus bored when not bewildered, confronted not only with a strange language but also with a strange script, unable to connect with the other children in her class, and taught by a well-regarded veteran teacher who nonetheless treated her as if she were retarded, she must have been miserable.  That this has been the experience of young immigrants throughout the world could not have comforted her. 

With the benefit of hindsight, we now wonder if we should have enrolled her, along with her younger brother, in the first grade, where she could have learned to read Hebrew along with the other children, where her relative maturity might have given her an advantage, and where she would have escaped that terrible teacher,  who, as it turned out, stayed with her class through the fifth grade.  We didn’t place our daughter in the first grade with her brother because we thought it inadvisable to set up the inevitable comparisons that would be made between them. 

My father was visiting us at the time, and I suspect that the reason I was so insistent that our daughter go to school that day was that I didn’t want to displease him.  He would have had little patience with me if as a child I had asked to stay home from school.  But she was my child, not his.  Perhaps we should have let her stay home, although I don't remember if it would have been possible in light of our commitments that day.  Staying home for one day might have given her strength for all the days to come, indeed, had we only known it, for all the years to come.  We should at the least have taken time out to listen to her, whether or not it would have made her late for school or made us late for our appointments.

"School is not an option," said the woman behind me, reminding me of an event that has haunted me for the past 40 years.  If ever I descend into dementia, I hope that this memory at least will be erased.

Fetlocks and Tetrahedrons

The other day my brother-in-law told me that one of my blog posts contains a mistake, namely my assertion that it’s impossible to build a pyramid with a three-sided base.  “No,” he said, “it’s entirely possible.  It’s called a tetrahedron.”  Since a picture is worth a thousand words, including Wikipedia’s definition, “a polyhedron composed of four triangular faces, three of which meet at each vertex,” I’ve included the picture  above.

I can join no less a personage than Samuel Johnson in citing the reason for my mistake.  When a woman asked him why he had defined pastern as “the knee of a horse,” a definition which describes the fetlock, when the pastern is in fact the long portion of the leg immediately below the fetlock, he replied, “ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance.” My ignorance of tetrahedrons was ignorance of the purest kind.

But how can I explain another mistake, one that my daughter pointed out?  I had given an incorrect name to the Israeli New Year’s song, "Hashana Habaa."  It would have been bad enough had I made the mistake only once.  But no, I had repeated it throughout the post.  When I learned of my mistake, I corrected the post, too late, though, for many other readers who had already seen it but were too polite to tell me of this egregious error.   I don’t understand how I made that mistake since I knew the name of the song perfectly well.

So, readers, I regret to say that I'm not perfect.  I hope this does not shock too many of you and that you will continue to read my posts, errors and all.

2010=2012 Anchises-an Old Man’s Journal All Rights Reserved  

A Life's Work

In my last post, I mentioned a grandmother who had successfully raised her children and now considered herself eligible for dentures, although her natural teeth were perfectly serviceable.  According to my dentist’s view of her, she considered her life’s work over.  I wrote about my father, who clung to his life’s work almost to the day he died.  And I said that my own life’s work would not be over as long as I was compos mentis. 

After posting that essay, I began to wonder what I meant by my rather glib use of the term "life’s work." If it’s one’s career, then mine ended twenty years ago, when I took early retirement.  But this is an era not only of frequent job changes but also changes in career.  Lawyers become teachers and teachers become lawyers.  Businessmen leave their executive offices to become cabinet makers.  Tycoons run for office or devote themselves to philanthrophy.  Mathematicians become biologists or philosophers.   Some people change careers when they're fired from a job and find that they need to switch fields in order to find employment.  Others change careers because they’ve become dissatisfied with their work and seek greater fulfillment from it. 

Still others are pushed into a new career by the force of circumstance.  Vaclav Havel was a distinguished playwright before he led the fight for Czech independence and subsequently oversaw the peaceful breakup of his country into Slovakia and the Czech Republic.  Was his life’s work in literature or politics?  Anthony Trollope was a high official in the British Post Office, who introduced the mail box to Britain and negotiated postal treaties with other countries.  He’s remembered of course for his novels and travel books but does that mean we should ignore his career in the post office? 

It seems to me that one’s career offers too narrow a focus in determining a person’s life’s work.  One’s career or careers should be included, of course, but there is more to a person’s life than his or her career.  In speaking of Trollope’s life’s work, for example, I’d include his devotion to fox hunting (most of his novels contain a fox-hunting scene, and he rode to hounds three times a week in season). 

Considering fox hunting as part of Trollope’s life’s work suggests that our life’s work represents our effort to live as fully as possible, maximizing experience, being alive to the wonders of nature and the beauties of art, and contributing to enriching personal relationships.  The money one has made, the papers and books one has written, the innovations one has made – one’s career accomplishments - all contribute to the extent of a life’s fullness but they don’t define it.  It’s worth again quoting the surgeon who said that everyone dies but not everyone lives.  The purpose of life is to live.  Our life’s work is to live it as fully as possible.


2010-2012 Anchises-an Old Man's Journal All Rights Reserved