My Sabbath Elevator, Part II

Remember this post of mine?

I do. (Vaguely.)

Penned in the heady autumn of 2009-- before I was thirty. Before I was a father. Before I could no longer string together a cogent thought or coherent sentence secondary to the exhaustion that comes with becoming a diaper-changing machine.

I read this old post of mine with a mixture of intrigue, apathy, and amusement. Such vitriol spewed forth from me. Such offensively pulchritudinous platitudes.

Such piss. Such vinegar.

Sometimes I think I've mellowed out, now that I'm thirty-one and the father of two ardent squishies. Other times, though, I think I'm probably just getting warmed up.

I thought, when I read the infuriating "New York Times" article about the bizarre concept of the Shabbat elevator three years ago that I would write my blog, express my rage against my upbringing, my faith, my fellow crazies, and that would be that. The "New York Times" would move on, My Masonic Apron would move on, I would move on, the Jews in their insipid, self-congratulatory perpetually-motioned elevator would move up and down and up and down and up and down and the world would keep spinning on its charming little axis.

Unfortunately, as I thumbed around on my Blackberry's trackball on nytimes.com (shitty mobile edition) I realized that we're not really moving at all. We're quite assuredly standing still, though the elevator numbers of life continue to rise and fall with oh such cunning deception. My weary eyes glazed over the headline and my heart fell:

March 6, 2012

"On Jewish Sabbath, Elevators Do All the Work"

And all I could do was shake my head. And, no, I didn't say, "Oy," but thanks for asking.

We're still talking about this? Really? Part of the reason I stopped blogging hyperactively in the first place was because I felt like I was repeating myself, and here is the "New York Times" writing about this subject matter as if they'd just discovered it? Maybe the "New York Times" should throw in the towel, too.

When I last wrote about the Shabbat elevator, I was angry-- angry about hypocrisy and illogical practices and self-righteousness. Three years later, I feel the same way. I'm angry about the same things, I'm angry that Judaism's absurd inanities are fodder to entertain businesspeople on their iPads on their way to work on the subway. I can't imagine the "New York Times" would allow one of its staff writers to pen an article titled,

"On December 25, WASPs Don Ridiculous Sweaters and Sing Cloying Songs in the Cold"

But it's more than that. I'm not really angry at the Times, though I do kind of think they're beating a dead (Jewish) horse, I'm angry at Jews. Yeah, my peeps.

(Yo.)

We're immigrants. Foreigners. Outsiders. We came to this country in droves prior to the turn of the 20th century, and then again after World War II. My father came with a few of his hooligan, Jewfro'd friends in 1972 to get into textiles, never dreaming that it was perhaps an unwise choice. And I remember the line from "Cool Hand Luke", "What we got here is a failure to communicate."

Maybe what we've got here is a failure to assimilate.

Assimilation is often said and viewed as a poisonous word-- the dilution of culture and pride and faith-- but I posit that a little bit of assimilation is necessary for survival. It's healthy, it's normal, it's... well, okay. When I read about Orthodox Jews requiring special elevators to accommodate the Jewish requirement that you "not make spark nor fire" on the Sabbath, I guess that just makes me feel a little hinky. I mean, when you see a bunch of Jews crowding into one elevator and the rest of the world getting into another one, does that... I don't know... remind you of anything in particular?

WHITES ------------------------ COLOREDS

And ne'er the two shall meet.

Segregation is segregation, whether it's mandated from without or within. I think it would benefit the people who utilize these elevators to think about the message it communicates to the rest of the world-- and "the rest of the world" is something that I don't think Orthodox Jews give much thought to on a regular basis-- and that communique might be "we're special", "we're different", "we're... chosen." And I wonder, chosen for what? Chosen to be ostracized? Chosen to be identified and looked at askew and to be regarded as queer or suspicious or funny or weird? Chosen to be pondered over in America's most significant newspaper as an oddity, as something quaint or strange? I wonder about that. And I wonder, too, how the Orthodox Jewish community would feel if their special elevators were identified by a big yellow star, inscribed with the word "JUDEN".

You know, just to make them easier to find.

The Voice of God

Every year in September, my wife gets a hankering for some of that good ol' fashioned religion. It's no accident that Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur fall in September. It's the Jewish New Year, a time for spiritual renewal, repentance, and reflection.

But I'm not so into it.

It's no secret. I'm, at best, uncomfortable with the idea, and the practice, of religion. I don't like going to synagogue, where I am torn between reading Hebrew phonetically on the right page to prove that I can read it, because I learned how to when I was twelve but cannot translate it, or reading the English on the left page and feeling like a tool who doesn't know the tongue of his father, and his People.

And then I see people bowing and turning to the left and to the right and holding their hands up at very specific places and I feel like the scab actor who showed up four weeks into the run of the musical going, "When was I supposed to learn this choreography?"

Because, apparently, I never did.

I think it's wonderful that religion brings comfort to people, but I doubt I'm going to die with the Shema on my lips, like you're apparently supposed to if you're, you know, Jewish. Knowing me as I do, I'll probably die after saying something incredibly stupid like, "I've got this strange craving for marble rye right about now."

In the old books, God used to talk to people all the time, but He's never said anything to me. I guess that's a good thing because, these days, when God talks to you, they lock you up in a psychiatric hospital, like the one in which I work. Of course, sometimes they lock you up when God refuses to talk to you.

One of my patients, (we'll call her "R"), has acute psychosis, or so they say. She's waiting for God to talk to her, but He's not talking, and, although it sounds strange to say it, I kind of wish He would.

I met R on Thursday. She was sitting on her little bed in her little room with her legs crossed, looking at the wall, or nothing at all, really. I asked her if I could sit down and have a chat with her.

"Of course," she said.

R is approximately fifty years old. She has long, brown hair, parted straight down the middle, with streaks of gray running through it. Her face is smooth, unlined, and pleasant looking. Unlike most of the patients I meet, R has all her teeth, and they are far straighter than mine. She wears a colorful, striped sweater and beige capris. She does not look-- or smell-- like the typical psych patient, if such an animal exists.

R and I talked for a while. She expressed that she was feeling anxious because she saw on the news that a huge rain was coming and she was afraid that she would be discharged from the hospital.

"I'm homeless, you see," she said to me.

I was taken aback for a moment, and then I remembered overhearing a nurse and a psychiatrist talking about R earlier in the week. She gets admitted all the time-- a "frequent flyer"-- and she is indeed homeless, but she needn't be. See, she has approximately $500,000 in a trust account, or a savings account, or a checking account-- the result of a behest or a trust or a settlement or award, I don't know the particulars. But R refuses to withdraw any of the money until she hears God's voice directing her to do just that.

And God's not talking to R these days.

So she's homeless. And she won't qualify for medical assitance or any government subsidy because, well, as homeless people go, and even as landed gentry go, R's pretty well-to-do. On paper, that is. When we talked, I feigned ignorance and asked her about her financial situation. She minimized and was vague.

"Well," she said, "I have some money in an account, but I don't... have access to it. It's complicated."

The understatement of the year, I thought to myself.

The hospital has tried everything. They've brought in financial advisors to try to convince R to take out some of the money, even just to rent a modest studio apartment for herself. She won't do it. They brought in a priest with whom she had a good rapport to implore her, as God's messenger, to withdraw some of the money. She wouldn't hear of it.

Fortunately, R and I hit it off during our fifteen minute chat. Smiling at me, R said gently,

"Do you mind if I ask you a question?"

"No," I answered.

"Are you studying to be a psychiatrist or a psychologist?"

I smiled at her.

"No," I said, "I'm thirty-- a bit old to be starting that sort of thing."

"Well, I'm sorry to hear that," R said, smoothing out a wrinkle on her pants. "You have such a kind, thoughtful way of speaking to me-- you really know how to communicate beautifully, and I just know you would make a wonderful therapist. I feel very comfortable talking to you. Thank you for treating me with such dignity."

I thanked her and hastily concluded the interview, before the lump in my throat got unprofessionally-sized. I know I can't save R-- I'm no psychiatrist or psychologist, and I'm certainly not the voice of God. But the thought of that woman sleeping out on the streets is keeping me up at night. And I said I wouldn't let that place get under my skin.

I Do in America

The whole gay marriage debate really gets on my nerves.

I'm not particularly affected by one part of it or another, being already married and decidedly un-gay in spite of my affection for Gilbert & Sullivan operettas and sharing my emotions, but the fact that there is a debate at all annoys the hell out of me.

Why?

What is it about our society that makes the masses believe that politicians or bishops should have anything to say about whether or not two people who love each other can get married? Why do we allow these people to speak? Why do we give them microphones and airtime and soundbytes? What's wrong with us?

Why do we still insist on authorizing and permitting bigotry?

That's all it is, really. The suits and the cleric collars can say whatever they want about how they're protecting the sanctity of the institution of marriage, but really it's just about bashing faggots.

Really. It is.

Don't believe me? This is a society where "that's gay" has finally become the universal replacement for "that's retarded." Well, at least they're running neck-and-neck in some areas. We don't like homosexuals. We don't understand it. We think it's, well, gay. We do not like them in our workplace, or in our subway car. We do not like them in our neighborhoods or in our time-shares.

We do not like them here, or there, or anywhere.

Though the days of homosexual panic are a kind-of-distant memory, we're still afraid they're gonna, like, hump us at the copier or something.

Like it or not, though, gay marriage is coming. It's just going to take some time, because there's a lot of foreplay to get through first, which is appalling, but it's true. Look at the end of slavery. Look at giving African-Americans the right to vote. Look at suffrage. Look at the Civil Rights movement. Look at India achieving its independence from England, for Christ's sake. These things all happen, but they take time. Lots and lots of time. But, it's going to happen. I just wish it didn't have to take so long, and I wish we didn't have to live in a country that accepts, allows and cloaks bigotry, prejudice and hatred of certain groups for a self-serving "higher purpose."

Protecting the sanctity of marriage? Please-- which one of the white-haired, buttoned-up conservative politicians beating that drum hasn't drilled his 31-year-old secretary from behind over his desk while his wife was out shaking hands on his behalf on the campaign trail? Go protect the sanctity of your own marriage, motherfucker.

100 years from now, or fewer, people will look back on our society and snicker and sneer at what a joke we were, what a hypocritical, thoroughly unfunny joke we were. Electing a black man president, and disallowing homosexuals to marry each other in every state of the union. Well, it's allowed here, but your marriage is invalid here. Well, you can have partner benefits, but you can't call it marriage. Well, civil union this, well, maybe in Vermont, well...

Well? Fuck that.

Anytime the rights of a few are suppressed, we are all diminished as a people. We in this country have a long history of speaking from both sides of our mouth. We were born bellowing liberty justice for all, but really that of course only mean white, Protestant landowning men. Today, we strut arrogantly like peacocks proclaiming to be one of the most enlightened, progressive, modern societies in the world, but we're still doing the same old tapdance over other peoples' rights as human beings.

Shame on us.

Best Wishes and Love

Like a lot of twentysomethings, I struggle with God. And I don't mean that we arm-wrestle.

It's always been a tenuous alliance, ever since I asked, "Daddy, are we Jewish?" on a family car ride at age 6. My father answered by reaching behind his driver's seat with his clumsy, bear paw of a hand in a vain attempt to control the car whilst simultaneously trying to pull my right leg off.

Of course I knew we were Jewish. In those days, we walked to synagogue, for Christ's sake. What the fuck did I think we were doing-- cardio? I was just trying to stir up the pot, to push my father to the point of explosion. To goad God.

My wife and I had a little picnic dinner out on one of the local college campuses, the one with the duck and turtle pond, and, as we sat there on our blanket, feeling all collegiate again, our post-dinner conversation drifted seamlessly proto-philosophical dimension to another. Just like college conversations do, except without the pot or frisbee-golf.

"Do you think some extremely religious people are crazy, or were they crazy before they got hyper-religious?" I asked, her head resting against my sternum.

"Well, I think there's something in the rituals that appeals to a certain type of person who is obsessive," she replied.

"Right," I said, "like wacko Orthodox Jews. Because the people who convert to Orthodox Judaism have a shitload of rituals and rules, not only that govern prayer, but that run their entire lives-- and you can really get obsessed with that bullshit."

Seriously, the laws dictating what you can and can't do (mostly can't) on Shabbat could fill up a goddamn bookcase. And it's very easy to get so bogged down in whether you can dunk your tea bag on Shabbat or whether or not you can eat bagels that were prepared on Shabbat (well, only if they were prepared by the black non-Jew in the kosher kitchen, and, was the water boiled on Shabbat? etc, etc, etc) such that you can totally ignore or at least forget the meaning behind all of these things.

And, of course, what is devout and pious to one person can really be regarded as totally clinical to another person. Of course, it's the sum total of a person's beliefs and behaviors, attitudes and lifestyle that determine if you're religious or crazy. I mean, it's great that you're in synagogue a lot and that you study the good book and that you pray all the time, but, if you do all that and you live in a one room shack covered in filth, don't pay any bills, count your eyebrows and eat hamster food, then I think we might have a problem.

I've always been skeptical of hyper-religiosity, because I worried that it was a veil covering something unpleasant, that it is sometimes used as a mask or a venetian blind. It's sometimes the case, sometimes not. Child molestation, mental illness, birth defects, social ignorance, racism or other prejudice, sometimes hyper-religiosity is just an innocuous-looking cloak to be worn over these most regrettable negatives. "Ah, but he is such a learned man-- studies the Torah night and day!" "Oh, but he goes to mass and confession every week!"

Well.

At 29, I wish that I had a better handle on my views on religion or God. The pragmatist in me knows that the whole thing is made up, that every people on this planet has their own spin on it, their stories and their legends and their books-- their guides to morality and behavior. And I don't resent or make fun of any entity that desires to prescribe morality for human beings, because, really, we need it. We're a scandalous lot, we are. But I know that religion is always going to be manipulated, either from the top or the bottom, by people who want to use it for their own nefarious reasons, and that depresses and upsets me. As a generally pessimistic person, I tend to focus on this darker aspect of religion, and that, I suppose, is my own failing. Fallen from grace.

On Sunday afternoon, my friend Bob, who is 64, came to our house to put the finishing touches of trim around the master closet that he built for me and my wife. We met Bob through my various Gilbert & Sullivan activities. He's a wonderful man, a music educator and a conductor and, thankfully for us, a pretty skilled carpenter. He popped in some nails in some thin pieces of trim with his pneumatic nail gun and, as he was getting into his truck, we shook hands warmly.

"You know," he said to me, "you gave me too much money."

"Maybe you didn't charge enough," I said. I felt guilty. He said he was giving us "The Thespian Rate," and originally quoted us a price of $500-$600. He eventually finished the job, after multiple trips out here, and he said he wanted $500. I gave him more.

"Well," he said, "you're very kind. Oh, and Winnie sends her best." Winnie's Bob's wife, who accompanied him to our house last weekend with bagels and cream cheese for brunch.

"Well, send her our best wishes right back."

"Oh," Bob said, "and I'm heading to Julie's tomorrow to supervise some guys who are putting in $10,000 worth of fencing at her house, and I spoke to her on the phone and told her I was seeing you guys today and she was so excited. She said to please send you her love and all her best."

Julie's another Gilbert & Sullivan friend of ours. My wife and I love that woman to bits.

"Oh, send her our love, too."

"I will," Bob promised.

"Jeez, all these best wishes and love-- it's like God's singin' in our ears today," I remarked.

"Well," Bob smiled and said, "that's what God is, you know." He waved out the window of his truck and drove off.