The Real Charlie

Son of the Commandments

 

I mentioned on Facebook last night that February 9th was the 25th anniversary of my becoming a bar mitzvah - a son of the commandments. A few of my junior high school classmates who were there commented (both remembered the caricaturist at the party, a detail I had actually forgotten). I gave a d'var Torah last week on my bar mitzvah portion from twenty five years ago (Parshat Yitro, for those who care) and got to reread it again in some detail. I know that as portions go I lucked out, seeing as the Ten Commandments are revealed in Yitro, and I surely did better than one friend of mine who was saddled with Parshat Metzorah, the laws of shunning the leper.

One thing that occurred to me looking back at my bar mitzvah, and reflecting on life in general as I complete my 38th year, was the ultimate influence my bar mitzvah had on my career. At the suggestion of my parents, I did not get many bar mitzvah gifts (I can actually remember them all: a copy of Bartlett's Quotations, a calculator, three shares of Polaroid stock and a trip to see the Normandy invasion beaches, the last of those gifts was from my parents). Most of my guests gave donations to the local hospital and my synagogue. For years random kids from school would tell me that they saw my name on a door at the hospital (there was a plaque in the post surgical wing) and I was always sort of proud of that. I suspect that my guests were fairly generous.

I've been a development professional for thirteen years now and it has only just now dawned on me that perhaps this was foreshadowing of my life to come. I am certainly not the most observant Jew around, there is a long list of commandments that I break by accident or design (I am always pleasant to lepers, for example), but the commandment to do tzedakah, to give charity and to thus make the world a better place, that is at the very core of so much of my life. And honestly, I enjoy it so much. So I did start to become the man I am now twenty five years ago. And I suspect that I still have at least another quarter century of work to do to become the son of the commandments that I really should be, and could be.

I will also note for the record, regarding the photo above, that I no longer own a camel hair jacket, but will still happily stand in front of a nice modern painting and lecture all and sundry on all and sundry.

More Madoff

I'm glad I got my blog post up on Madoff earlier, because my beloved Rabbi, Wes Gardenswartz, says it all, and so well, in today's Boston Globe. I recommend a careful reading of his piece to all.

The Four Species

So Sukkot starts tomorrow evening, and this is a Jewish holiday that I have come to love in recent years. Firstly, you get to do construction (and thanks to Abby for making 5769's sukkah building refreshingly free of cursing, crashing wood and abrasions, due to her excellent power drill skills). Second, you decorate by hanging all sorts of stuff from the roof and walls of your sukkah, thus indulging the repressed Christmas tree decorator hiding out inside many Jews. And third, if you choose, you buy the Four Species. The palm branch, myrtle branches, willow branches and etrog that you can shake and gawk at during the holiday. If you have no idea what I'm talking about google "lulav" and all will be revealed.

Now I can order my lulav and etrog from my shul, but that would deprive me of my annual trek to the crowded, hot basement of the Israel Book Shop in Brookline, where young men from Monsey work feverishly to assemble our lulavim, and where one can choose etrogim ranging in price from $45 to over $100. The lulav is basically imported sticks and come "free" with the etrog. This is one of my relatively  few annual encounters with the most Orthodox part of the Jewish community, and it is always an interesting one. The gentlemen are curt but polite as they deal with a guy (me) who is obviously not frum. In recent years I've brought Roxanne with me, and she finds the whole scene fascinating. This world of men in beards black hats haggling in Yiddish, Hebrew and English over lumpy lemons is a world away from her temple nursery school's neat and tidy world of Conservative Judaism.

So as we are leaving the store (purchases: lulav, etrog, two plush lulav and etrog sets and a sheet of lulav stickers) we pass a man in typical "black hat" Orthodox uniform: beard, dark suit, black hat. Roxanne turns to me and says, "Daddy, why do we always see that guy at the Israel Book Shop?" I keep a straight face and explain that we see a lot of guys who look like that here, but they are, in fact, different guys. Someday I may have to take Roxanne to Boro Park, or, God willing, Jerusalem, to prove that more than one guy is running around in a beard and black hat.

I Made It Out of Clay

First of all, thanks to the nice folks over at the The Swellesley Report for the mention on their blog, and welcome to all the visitors from thereabouts. And I meant that you weren't  Universal Hub in  the nicest possible way. And no offense to Universal Hub either. Oh, I'm just going to move on now.

So Hanukkah starts tomorrow night at sundown. For those of you not so into the whole Jewish thing, Hanukkah is a minor Jewish festival. I don't get the day off, there is no special synagogue service and it just really isn't a big deal. It is no Sukkot, no Shabbat, certainly no Yom Kippur. It has sort of gotten a bit swollen up in this country, in the past hundred or so years, because of, shall we say, certain seasonal issues. My kids, of course, like the gift giving part, which is a very, very American enhancement to the festival. And hey, who doesn't like a holiday with fried potatoes as a ritual food?

My favorite part of the holiday is the element that talks about standing up and being Jewish when that isn't necessarily the mainstream thing to do. So our hanukkiot will be burning bright in my windows for the week, a neighborly, friendly, flickering reply to the beautiful Christmas lights all up and down my street.

So a Happy Hanukkah to all who enjoy it.

The Gates Are Closing

Yesterday was Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. I had an unusually easy fast this year, as did a number of people that I know (must have been the nice weather). I went to services alone, since Roxanne had a bad cold (now I'm suffering from it) and Abby stayed home with her. I brought Stella with me, at her insistence, so she could spend the morning in the 1-2 year old child care room, playing with other babies. Or as she puts it, "babies, room, fun!"

I returned alone for the closing services of Mincha and Neilah as I always do. I enjoyed the usual procession of machers - one of the richest men in the United States sat a few rows away from me,  another oligarch stood in the back as usual because he came too late for a seat, a well known investment manager and I sat together (we are High Holy Day seat neighbors going back a few years now and sing at the same pitch) and admired the adorable children in the row in front of us. And I really love the Neilah (literally "Closing") service. Our shul gets totally packed, everyone is hungry, there is a certain air of desperation and often a sort of cool vibe.

This year our new cantor sang a piyut (liturgical poem) that in past years we had read in English. It is called El Nora Alilah "Awesome Wondrous God." It is an old Sephardic piyut, with a beautiful and stirring tune, and words of what I'd call faithful desperation - we know that we have sinned, we are not sure that You have heard our repentance, but please, please, please, forgive as we know You are wont to do. It woke up the crowd, Neilah flew by, and once more I was on the bimah with about twenty other guys with shofars, surrounded by fifty little kids, watching the glowing torch of the havdalah candle, then blowing our shofars as long and as hard as we can to end the holiday. I hope that my repentance was accepted and that my prayers were answered. If you observed, I hope the same for you.

And today? I worked at our Annual Meeting from 7:45 AM until 1 PM, then spent 3 1/2 hours building my sukkah. Now I'm sniffling with a cold, and Roxanne is out grocery shopping with Abby because she napped and her cold is going away. From the sublime to the ridiculous...

Rosh Hashanah Diversions

Shana tova to all of my fellow children of Israel out there. We had a great dinner on Erev Rosh Hashanah, with Abby's super brisket, a decent honey cake (we have bitterly fought over honey cake in the past, so I left it to Abby this year and she did well, but we have still not crafted the honey cake of our dreams) and extraordinary homemade challah.

As good as these look, they tasted better. I am thankful at the new year for so many things, but especially for my wonderful family, most especially for my little girls and my wife, who is good at so many things, such as baking, and brings so much happiness into my life each and every day.

Services were okay. I had some serious concentration problems on the first day, compounded by some poor shofar blowing and a sermon that was not entirely to my liking -  heavy on the pop culture and internet metaphors, light on the proof texts. My shul is one of several in the Boston area that attracts some very wealthy and well known people. One of the members is Bob Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots. The Pats are in the midst of a bit of a cheating scandal, so the rabbi's references to athletic scandals  have raised some eyebrows at the shul and in the blogosphere. Oops. Today's sermon focused on one of my favorite Torah texts - the Akeidah, the binding of Isaac. Much better, and no one will blog about it except for me.

Again, happy New Year wishes to all for whom it is applicable.

A Member of Something, But Not A Tribe

I have read this article (free registration or a trip to the library required) twice and I am not quite sure what to make of it. Clearly Professor Feldman wants to belong and be loved by his alma mater (an institution that I know well, warts and all, from my years in Boston and my work in the Jewish world around here). He wants its endorsement of him and his choices. He is also very mad, and feels the need to air some dirty laundry. I can assure Professor Feldman that my own very secular private high school had similarly forced discussions of teen sexuality, similar interventions on the part of administration into the outside lives of students, similar suggestions that particular female students dress or act differently. There is something very Freudian about his whole essay -  he wants daddy to love him unconditionally , but he hates daddy and has to hurl insults at him because daddy doesn't love him unconditionally.

But he does strike a nerve with me on a certain element in Jewish life and thought, that being particularism - the idea that Jews are different and special, as our prayers say "chosen from amongst all people," given " a fate very different from their's," and this eventually and sadly turns, for so many Jews, into a "we are better and they are worse" concept that is often expressed in the form of "member of the tribe" silliness and sometimes takes on the far more ugly tones of Baruch Goldstein and others. Not long ago I actually dropped out of a Jewish adult ed class because I was hearing so much of this petty particularism, shielded behind layers of faux anxiety about an inflated sense of vulnerability to anti-semitism, that I wanted to throttle someone or vomit.

Now I understand and believe that we Jews are different, chosen and special. If I thought that other faiths were better, I guess I'd be looking into converting. But I don't believe that each individual Jews is better than each individual gentile. To believe that, and to say it, is to be clannish, tribal and primitive in an ugly and crude way, a way I associate with, well, anti-semites. I am a member of my temple, and I am a proud member of the Jewish people, but I am a member of no tribe.

Professor Feldman's article was published, not coincidentally I suspect, two days before Tisha B'Av, the day of mourning in Jewish life for the destruction of the temple and for so many other tragedies. It is taught that one of the causes of the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans, and the years of exile that followed, was baseless hatred, especially of fellow Jews. Many observant Jews spend the afternoon of Tisha B'Av studying texts about gossip, snooping and degrading other people. This Tisha B'Av I'll be thinking about Professor Feldman's essay.

Chometz!

Blessed are You, Adonai our God, King of the Universe, Who has sanctified us with Your Mitzvot...

I really do love being Jewish, and I can't conceive of serving God any other way than by doing all that I can to be the best Jew that I can be. But Passover is a real trial. Matzah gets the best of me after about two days, and I really miss my beer. So tonight it was over. A large pizza with green pepper, onion and sausage (very treif, I know) and a 22 ounce bottle of Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye. On all other nights we may eat chometz or matzah, tonight only... CHOMETZ! Roxanne was excited for her pizza and her ginger snaps. All is well.

The Natural World

For various reasons I am getting more and more interested in the natural world. Part of it is an extension of my birding habit, which started about seven or eight years ago. Part of it is my girls, especially Roxanne, and their endless curiosity about everything -  why different trees have different bark, where the bugs are in the winter, what dirt tastes like (hi Stella). At any rate, beyond my own backyard I am a big fan of Mass Audubon and its sanctuaries, especially Drumlin Farm in Lincoln. Some nice birds, some captive raptors and a cool working farm with goats, sheep, cows, tons of chickens, pigs, draft animals etc. We visit frequently. On Saturday morning we saw tiny baby lambs, just born the night before, trying out their little legs and nursing from their mommy. As the parents of young mammals (and, in Abby's case, as a nursing mother) it was quite touching to see. And the chickens were cool too - I just love poultry. As something to watch AND to eat!

One of my current favorite blogs is The Urban Pantheist, run by a Drumlin Farm employee about his work and his adventures with the wild world around us. Last year he documented 365 wild things living in Boston, ranging from birds to plants to mold to rats. This guy is very, very knowledgeable. He also takes a picture every day at 3 PM and posts it, and sometimes it is of his charges at Drumlin Farm -  the turkey vulture, the crow, an elderly turkey, etc. He's on the blog roll now. Check it out.

On an unrelated matter, I am so sick of matzah, and I miss my beer. I'm glad to not be a slave in Egypt, and to have been brought forth to serve my God, but I am just dying for a glass of Houblon Chouffe and a slice of pizza about now.

Happy Passover

We had a great seder last night with our friends Carla Geek of All Trades and David, joined for the first time by Roxanne. She did a super job. She sat in her seat, in her nightgown with a yarmulke on, for the entire 50 minutes of ritual and prayer before dinner and went to bed at her usual time. She even spontaneously joined in for the chorus of "Dayenu." Stella was already in bed but apparently is quite the maztah enthusiast.

A big part of Passover is teaching the story to your children - the Torah specifically commands it to us. It was one of the best seders of my life simply because for the first time, as leader and daddy, I got to teach it to my own child, and she was enthralled by the whole thing.

For those of you celebrating, a good and kosher Pesach. For those of you who are not, um, have a beer for me. God, do I miss my beer during Passover.