The last Passover I went to was last year in Tucson at a local Jewish Center. The food was the standard fare for the night, but it was dreadfully prepared. Jane, my companion, took a dislike to the food and I could not blame her. . . (She loves brisket and sour tomato.) How do you explain matzoh smeared with schmaltz, that cholestrol-driven thickener rendered from fat or gefilte fish which is bland but takes on flavor with white or red horseradish, the white more terrifying to the palate? As a child I would have some Manischewitz wine, a heavy brew, that for some reason made the pulse joints on my arms weary and weighty. We were secular Jews so that the seder lasted not very long for the aromas of the food made us hungry and we wanted the words to end and the eating to begin. I will spend this week eating bread, noshing on a matzoh now and then in remembrance. I cling to some mild traditions, although I am not kosher, some gentiles thinking most Jews are kosher. And I recall how in the neighborhood the Jewish delicatessens and Jewish bakeries closed for the week, driving some gentiles to distraction. It was a hard week to do without bread, for both Christians and Jews. When I was growing up in the Fifties I even experienced resentment because in September and October the Jewish New Year falls as well as Yom Kippur. Of course, summer really ends on 21 September and by that time we were back in school. We had glorious weather and were mildy castigated for that, out of jealousy. Can I help it if some meshuge monk decided to celebrate Jesus’ birthday in the middle of winter? We celebrate, like the American Indian, according to the lunar calendar, not solar. It has its perks.
My son lives in Chicago, my daughter in Queens, and other than my sister here in Tucson, there is no family. I have Jane and hopefully one day we will have a very good passover — who knows? I do miss the Jewish environment I had in new York City, the kibitzing, kvetching, brilliance, the well-expressed riposte, the good-natured joshing, the occasional Yiddishism which in effect, is Jewish rap, argot used to keep the gentile world out, a linguisitic defense mechanism. I am very Jewish in my conditioned values. I am well aware of the gravitational pull my people and history have on me as well as the defects of that conditioning, the limitations of it. Deeply moved by our travail these past 20 centuries, I recall about a year ago in Spain, still in a post-Franco malaise, how I entered the Jewish quarter of Cordoba and having walked its winding and serpentine “streets,” I could sense how Jews sped through these paths in terror, in persecution. Memory is very vital to a Jew. In the States “lets put that behind us” is the empty cultural conditioner, the product of a culture with a short history.
I associate to being given two pamphlets by a pair of Jehovah Witnesses who stopped by my home yesterday, friendly, one carrying a bible in his hand, the other with a small briefcase –what is it with the briefcases? We entered into mild talk and I took the pamphlets without commentary because I have a mouthful I could give, but why do that? What is apparent, at least to me, is that anyone who proselytizes cannot be certain of what he is proselytizing? If you have to sell your religion to me, then you must be uncertain about it yourself. Jews, as you well know, do not spread a gospel of any kind, but we are still being evangelized, Pope Benedict still keeping a prayer that Jews have protested about which views us as in need of saving. Insufferable! Let us face it: other than the Jewish words embedded in our language, our comedians, the shared Jewish humor across the nation, jews in the arts and humanities, Christians know very little about Jews and, as for me, I like it that way. I don’t want it both ways. To complain and at the same time resent the lack of interest. But I know enough about Christian theology — consubstantiation and transubstantion, et al –to keep my guard up. Every minority must keep its guard up.
The brouhaha Bill Maher has created because of his remarks about Catholicism and the church has caused considerable dismay. I was taken, naive as I am, by the thrust at the jugular, with references to the “Nazi Pope,” the church as “cult’ and so on. I believe that the latest is that he may apologize for some of his remarks. Be that as it may, a priest was commenting on the Hannity and Colmes show about Maher and he opined that if this had been said about Muslims or Jews, there would be an uproar. And there it was again. The all powerful Jews who would have Maher’s heart and balls in their hands if he had gored their ox. And he went on to comment that the church was a lumbering presence, or words to that effect, and that it is an easy mark. Really! I harrumph.
if you read Constantine’s Sword by James Carroll, a former priest, occasional writer for The New Yorker, you will get the real scoop on what Christianity has done. I will reserve my compassion for Mr. Maher in this instance.
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