Uncategorized – Page 6 – From Under the Fig Tree

Life is with people

joselitOctober 20, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Usually I spend Sunday mornings at my desk, trying to come out from under and prepare for the week that lies ahead. But not this Sunday. This one I spent in the company of the congregants of Anshe Chesed of the Upper West Side as well as that of its rabbi, Jeremy Kalmanofsky; John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary; and John Ruskay, executive vice-president of UJA-Federation of New York, as we took the measure of the fabled Manhattan neighborhood we all call home.

What struck me most as I listened to both colleagues and congregants was the degree to which history -- the ebb and flow of change -- was experienced in entirely personal terms. Grand, sweeping theories about urbanism, critical density or migration paled in comparison with those that placed a premium on the individual and her storehouse of memories.

The eagerness with which stories about growing up on the Upper West Side tumbled forth from the audience was particularly noteworthy. Virtually everyone had something to say -- and couldn’t wait to say it -- offering up both an “observation and a comment” on which kosher butcher on West 100th Street was superior to the other, or on the German refugees who staffed the lingerie counter at the Town Shop, or the frequency of après-school muggings in the dark days of the 1970s or the merits of an eight room apartment on West End Avenue.

As I took in and accumulated one detail after another, I was put in mind of S. An-ski, whose fabled “ethnographic” exhibition to the Russian hinterland in the years prior to World War I yielded a treasure trove of information about Jewish life in that part of the world. How, I wondered, did he and his fellow researchers manage to absorb it all and to come away with a clear-eyed perspective without getting lost in the labyrinth of personal memory?

What also came to mind was the celebrated study of East European Jewish life conducted in the late 1940s at Columbia University by Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead and their team of anthropologists. Drawing unstintingly on oral history interviews, on a series of individual exchanges, to get at the shape and texture of a world that was no more, the project was published in 1952 as Life is with People and would go on to influence the creators of Fiddler on the Roof.

After this morning’s exchange, I’m left even more puzzled by the relationship between memory and history. At what point does the warm glow of reminiscence give way to the harsher glare of scholarship and the idiosyncratic submit to the collective?

Home for the holidays

joselitSeptember 22, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

“There’s more?!” exclaimed a colleague rather incredulously upon learning that I was going to be out of the office for the third time in as many weeks because of the chagim, the Jewish holidays.

Sukkah City Flickr Sunghwan Yoon — Sukkah City. Flickr: Sunghwan Yoon

She didn’t know the half of it.

Though they make a hash of my schedule and mincemeat of my workload, the chagim serve as a much welcome respite -- a cocoon -- from the demands of the workaday world. They also serve as a marvelous opportunity for people-watching and observing the human condition.

Yes, I know the holidays are supposed to be about the pursuit of higher, loftier goals, from addressing one’s shortcomings to communing with a higher authority. And they are. But now and then, a determinedly human detail -- an incongruity -- surfaces, which adds considerably to the occasion.

Here are a few moments that caught my eye and struck my fancy:

*While at services on Yom Kippur, I espied a pair of shorts peeking out from under the folds of a kittel, the long white shroud that many observant folk -- men, mostly -- wear to remind them that their fate hangs in the balance. It is also customary to wear a suit, or, at the very least, a white shirt and a good pair of long pants, underneath one’s kittel as yet another reminder of the solemnity of the day.

By privileging comfort at the expense of formality, the shorts exemplified what the anthropologist Mary Douglas called “matter out of place.” There was something funny about them, too. The sight of them brought me up, well, short, and made me laugh aloud, much to the consternation of my fellow worshippers who were assiduously attending to their prayers.

*On the first day of Succoth, the seats of the synagogue I attended were filled not just with worshippers but with plastic shopping bags from a local food emporium, prompting me to wonder whether en route to synagogue, people had first stopped off at the market. You might easily think so. It turns out, though, that the sturdy plastic shopping bags were a convenient and handy way to transport and safely contain the etrog and lulav used in the course of the Succoth service.

*Another incongruity. A synagogue in my neighborhood that is usually chock-a-block with black-hatted, extremely Orthodox male worshippers -- a congregation commonly known, in Yiddish, as a shtiebl -- was closed for the holidays. On the face of it, this made absolutely no sense: How could an orthodox synagogue, punctilious in its ritual practice, be closed for Succoth, one of the major festivals of the Jewish calendar?

On further reflection, though, everything fell into place. That the congregation temporarily closed its doors was not a matter of ritual declension as much as it was a matter of heightened religiosity: the need of a succah. Given the difficulties inherent in observing this ritual commandment in an urban setting, the majority of the congregation’s members celebrated the holiday where access to a succah was assured: in Israel or, closer to home, in Monsey, Lakewood, Lawrence, or Boro Park.

Given their diminished ranks, and with it, the looming possibility that those few who remained in the city would not be able to constitute a minyan, a quorum for prayer, the shtiebl did the sensible thing and went dark.

In each and every instance, you have to marvel at the human touch.

Clash of the titans

joselitSeptember 9, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

It so happened this year that Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, coincided with New York’s Fashion Week, prompting some eagle-eyed observers to trumpet the possibility of a showdown between the “shofar and the shows,” a clash between the “Goddess of Fashion” and the God of the patriarchs and matriarchs.

Garment District, New York City. Flickr/Saaleha Bamjee

That didn’t happen, of course. For the most part, those participants who were directly affected by the calendrical conflict made their peace with it. Some stayed away from the runway, others adjusted their schedules and still others clucked their tongues in dismay.

What no one did, near as I can tell, was launch a public protest. What a missed opportunity! Way back in May, when Fashion Week’s schedule was first announced, its sponsors issued the following, rather tepid, statement:

The CFDA greatly respects and understands the importance of this holiday but, given the international calendar of European shows directly after New York, we do not have the option to shift the dates later. We realize that the observance of the holiday will impact some in their ability to attend or present shows -- but we are asking that everyone please work with us to make this situation work as best as possible.

Here’s a situation in which globalization trumps both localism and history -- and no one says ‘boo.’ Once upon a time, the garment industry and with it, the triumph of American ready-to-wear was not only vital to the economic well-being of the Empire City, it was also an industry peopled by Jewish manufacturers, factors, cutters, button-hole makers and union leaders, an industry as sensitive to the rhythms of the Jewish calendar as it was to the vagaries of fashion.

Revolutionizing the way the nation dressed, the garment industry proudly boasted of having transformed the American woman into the “best-dressed average woman in the world,” and her menfolk into men about town. Immigrants were particularly attentive to the magic of ready-to-wear: “Cinderella clothes,” one Jewish immigrant writer called them.

Consigned to the dustbin of history, along with the corsets, stockings, feathers and furbelows of yesteryear, these kinds of sentiments seem to have no place in a world where globalization now rules the roost and age-old religious traditions can be dismissed out of hand as if they were merely an inconvenience or, worse still, just one more commodity.

Chasing the zoom

joselitAugust 21, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Many, many years ago, when I was a graduate student in history at Columbia, aspiring historians like me were inclined to give the university’s computer center a wide berth. It wasn’t just that the place was downright inhospitable: noisy, freezing cold, airless and even a tad scary. It was also a matter of illiteracy. Much as I tried, I simply could not summon up the requisite digital skills.

DEC 10 main frame computer operations at BYU -- Circa 1969 — DEC 10 main frame computer operations at BYU, c. 1969. Flickr/arbyreed

If you had told me way back when that, someday, I would be involved with a project that sought to deploy the latest digital technology in the study and teaching of Jewish history and culture, I would have laughed myself silly.

But lo & behold, there I was earlier this week, back on Morningside Heights to participate in a remarkable initiative, the New Media in Jewish Studies Collaborative, whose objective, among other things, is to energize the discipline of Jewish Studies through the sustained and thoughtful use of the latest digital tools.

I came away from my two day campus visit in the company of web savvy colleagues, dedicated teachers and the imaginative technologists of Columbia’s Center for New Media Teaching & Learning all agog about the possibilities of enriching my teaching and, in turn, the experiences of my students were I to engage more fully -- and strategically -- with the marvels of the digital universe. I also acquired a brand new vocabulary, whose lingo ran the gamut from “multi-modal presentation” and “web-based environment” to “digital assets,” “demo-ing” and “chase the zoom,” a reference to a practice particular to Prezi.

I can’t wait to brandish these new words. More to the point, I look forward with keen anticipation to putting them to good use and, with a battery of technologists by my side, to coming up with ways to enlarge my students’ capacity for wonder. Here’s to revelation, ca. 2013!

Line in the sand

joselitAugust 12, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Summer conjures up notions of ease and freedom, a release from the strictures and tensions of everyday life. You could even say that the allure of summer rests on the erasure of boundaries.

Little wonder, then, that many residents of Southampton, Long Island -- that doyenne of summer resorts -- are up in arms at the prospect in their very own backyard of an eruv, a boundary-setting device that enables observant Jews to reconfigure public space as private space and, as a result, to proceed unimpeded on Shabbat. They've even gone to court to block it.

According to The Southampton Press, which featured the story on its front page, the Southampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals denied the East End Eruv Association a variance that would allow it to proceed any further with its plans to erect an eruv.

The zoning board’s ruling was based on a provision of the town code that prohibits the posting of signs on utility poles. Since an eruv deploys utility poles (though in ways that are visible only to those in the know), its creation and maintenance, strictly speaking, ran counter to the law of the land (or the town). And that’s that.

But, of course, there’s much more to the story. Whether or not to install an eruv in Southampton is not just a legal issue or one of collective aesthetics, but an expression of social norms and values: neighborliness run amuck. The situation has quickly devolved into an ugly contretemps, pitting one set of residents against another. Property values, the First Amendment, and, sad to say, more than a hint or two of anti-Semitism entered the mix.

More disturbingly still, the emergence of a real divide between the Jews who favored an eruv and those who did not also made itself sharply felt. The Jews who fell into the latter camp formed a group called “Jewish People Opposed to the Eruv,” to press their claim that the eruv was a potential affront to the values they held dear. We have a right, they said, “not to be confronted on a daily basis … by the permanent display on multiple public utility poles of a deeply religious and sectarian symbol of a particular religious belief that they do not share, and in some cases find offensive.”

The carefree days of summer, anyone?

Woodworking

joselitJuly 28, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

They didn’t offer a course in woodworking or ‘shop’ at the Yeshivah of Flatbush, where I attended high school, and even if they had, I doubt I would have been the least bit interested.

Francis Cape Utopian Benches — Francis Cape. 'Utopian Benches.' Source: Murray Guy website

Boy, what a missed opportunity! I only just realized how fascinating wood can be as a medium of artistic expression in the wake of a recent visit to the Murray Guy gallery in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. Located in the shadow of the storied High Line and up a flight of very steep stairs, it now hosts a fascinating exhibition, Utopian Benches, by the artist Francis Cape.

Seventeen wooden benches, fashioned out of poplar, take up residence in the gallery’s austere main room, their clean, unfussy lines echoing the tightly wedged, slender planks of the wooden floor on which they rest. There’s no explanatory text panel, no sound, no video -- no hidden aesthetic agenda -- to distract the viewer from the objects on display. What you see is, well, what you see: row upon row of beautifully made benches of varying size, lovingly and subtly detailed.

It turns out, though, that there’s a fascinating back story, a history, to these benches. In constructing them, Mr. Cape took his cue -- quite literally -- from the backless prayer benches built by the Shakers and other American religious communitarian groups of the 19th century. He measured the originals, researched the ways in which they were used, and then constructed his own.

The gallery prefers to call them “sculptures.” The New York Times describes them as “faith-based furniture.” Students of religion might label them “shared seating,” focusing on their relationship to community and ritual, the leveling of social status and the promotion of equality.

By whatever name (and corresponding perspective), Cape’s benches not only succeed, on their own terms, as art. They’re evocative of history, too, underscoring the ways in which faith, then as now, assumed material form.

That’s what I’d call an ‘object lesson.’

Heat wave

joselitJuly 21, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

In preparation for a series of talks on American Jewish history that I’ll be giving next month, I went digging in the archives to see what I might learn about how earlier generations of American Jews, especially our immigrant forebears, coped with the heat.

Summer day — 'It's Hot!' Flickr/Eric Konon

Like us, they took off for the beach and the mountains, creating new Jewish communities wherever they vacationed. And, like us, they spilled a lot of ink talking about their experiences. Year in and year out, as regular as the tides, articles appeared in the English language and Yiddish press that took the cultural temperature of the Jewish summer resort.

These sociologically-attuned pieces paid attention to what people wore and what they talked about, noting how some young women on holiday “appeared in different garments at least four times a day,” while their male counterparts talked only of “pinochle, Wall Street and the hotel menu.”

In the years prior to World War I, when vacationing was still something of a novelty, comparing notes on what went on in hotels with a Jewish clientele with those establishments that catered to non-Jewish guests was a topic of abiding interest. If you could “inject a bit of reticence, round off the edge of refinement and put on a coating of social veneer,” there wasn’t too much of a difference, concluded one keen-eyed observer of “seaside types.” The Jews, like their gentile counterparts, knew how to have a good time.

While some applauded this development, others expressed disdain, wondering whether Jewish values went out the window come June, July and August. “Summer works its metamorphosis, completely and effectually effacing all that is self-respecting, restraining and elevating in the life of the Jew,” hotly observed Esther Jane Ruskay early in the 20th century, singling out the Jews of Arverne, New York, for their cool disregard of the Sabbath and their avid embrace of the good life.

Ruskay’s article, which she titled “Summer Resort Judaism,” will be one of the texts I look forward to drawing on next month. I suspect that its juicy prose and hard hitting indictment of American Jewry will make for good conversation. But then, my interest in Ruskay’s piece is personal as well: My grandparents, you see, were among those who summered in Arverne.

On your toes

joselitJune 30, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Now and again, I make a point of encouraging my students to venture beyond the precincts of their digital universe and to take in a film, attend a live performance or visit a museum. There’s something about the immediacy of the experience that will lift your spirits, say I to them, promisingly. In response, they nod their heads dutifully, muster a fleeting smile and then, pronto, return to their iPhones and tablets.

Léon Bakst, costume for The Firebird/Wikipedia

They’re not alone. I freely confess that I don’t always follow my own advice, either. When it comes to practicing what I preach, I often fall short and end up reading about rather than actually experiencing the latest ballet, concert or exhibition. In my case, what keeps me away from the cinema, the concert hall and the museum is not so much a matter of being tethered to digital devices as it is a matter of work. I can’t seem to break free of its demands.

But the other day, I did and, leaving my academic responsibilities to fend for themselves for the time being, I took off for the National Gallery and its exhibition, Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, 1909-1929: When Art Danced with Music. Spending several hours in its company left me happy and even exhilarated -- so much so that I can’t stop thinking about it.

With a dazzling panoply of costumes, set designs, paintings, posters, photographs and two immense stage curtains whose impact is nothing less than jaw-dropping -- how, I wondered, did they ever manage to survive the passage of time, let alone the rigors of the stage? -- the exhibition highlighted the immense array of talents critical to the success of the Ballets Russes. Even if you were well steeped in the company’s history, the material on display seemed like a revelation.

You needn’t be a balletomane, an artist or an historian to appreciate, and benefit from, the exhibition. What makes Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes so memorable is the way it quickens the imagination, giving rise to all sorts of expansive thoughts about life’s possibilities.

I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one who left the National Gallery with a lift in my step.

Bricks & mortar

joselitJune 23, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Late one evening, unable to sleep, I was channel surfing when I happened on a documentary about Hudson River bricks. Lest you think, as I did at first, that the subject would put me to sleep in no time at all, I found myself utterly engrossed – and wide awake.

The documentary, Hudson River Brick Makers, looks at an industry that once animated the Hudson River Valley, gainfully employing thousands of workers, many of them immigrants, and transforming any number of sleepy river towns into lively commercial centers. Who knew?

But that wasn’t the only revelation in store. What made the history of the Hudson River brick industry especially fascinating was that its products were destined for New York City. As it turned out, the rise and fall of the Hudson River Valley was tied up with the literal rise of the Empire City, whose face was lined with bricks. When, as a result of changing tastes and the advent of new technologies, the demand for this building material faded, so, too, did the fortunes of its manufacturers, distributors and everyone else involved in its creation and circulation.

A cautionary tale, to be sure, but one that also opened my eyes to the near ubiquity of brick in my hometown. It’s not that I walk down the streets of Manhattan oblivious to my surroundings. On the contrary. I’ve always prided myself on my ability to zero in on an unusual architectural detail and on my attentiveness to the landscape and those who inhabit it. Ever since I read A Walker in the City, Alfred Kazin’s celebrated paean to the sensory experiences of urban life, I’ve made a point of taking it all in.

Even so, it wasn’t until I watched this documentary that I fully reckoned with the built environment. I now saw things afresh. Everywhere I looked, there was brick: brick on the side streets and broad avenues of my neighborhood, red brick, dun-colored brick, yellow brick, white brick. I had never given much thought to bricks and now they had me in their sights.

My neighborhood goes back a ways, to a time when brick was the building material of choice. When I venture into those neighborhoods whose pace is quickened by development (I’m thinking, for instance, of the High Line area of town), glass-sheathed buildings now tower over the streetscape, putting the older brick buildings and their history in the shade.

It makes me wonder whether future generations will know what it means when they come across references to the fabled yellow brick road.

Mamaloshn

joselitJune 10, 2013November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Remember the lyrics to George and Ira Gershwin’s wonderful 1937 song, “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off?” You know, the ones that go like this:

Matzoh balls — Flickr/Jessica and Lon Binder, FoodMayhem.com

You like potato and I like potahto
You like tomato and I like tomahto
Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto,
Let’s call the whole thing off.

Both celebrating and poking fun at the range of accents and spellings that characterized interwar America, the Gershwins’ droll linguistic perspective came to mind this week amid a flap within the Jewish community about the proper way to invoke the Yiddish word for dumpling, otherwise familiar to many as a ‘kneydl.’ Or is it a ‘knaidel?’

When it became known, courtesy of a smartly written article by Joseph Berger on the front page of the New York Times, that the winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee had rendered the word ‘knaidel,’ those who preferred an alternative orthography weighed in.

Before long, the blogosphere was cluttered with variant spellings -- and much more. In short order, what had begun as a light-hearted, human interest story metamorphosed into impassioned screeds about the integrity of Yiddish, the importance of cultural literacy and the legacy of East European Jewry. No one, it seemed, was prepared to call the whole thing off or, for that matter, to give it a pass.

Nor should they. At a time when Yiddish has become, in Jeffrey Shandler’s words, a “postvernacular language,” whose speakers range from Hasidim in Brooklyn to the Hispanic countermen at appetizing stores such as Russ & Daughters on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and the Dominican doorman at my Upper West Side apartment building who, come Friday afternoon, wishes me a “gut Shabbes,” there’s every reason to think long and hard about its fate.

At once funny and poignant, cause for laughing out loud and for wringing one’s hands in despair, this latest orthographic contretemps reminds us what’s at stake when it comes to the languages we speak and those we don’t.