Uncategorized – Page 9 – From Under the Fig Tree

Rally round

joselitDecember 9, 2012November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Anniversaries are useful devices. Celebratory occasions, they’re also moments of introspection and stock-taking. Whether marking a domestic event or a public one, anniversaries clear the air.

This past week, the American Jewish community observed the 25th anniversary of the Rally for Soviet Jewry, which, on a wintry Sunday in December 1987, drew hundreds of thousands of American Jews of all ages to the Mall in support of human rights. A triumph of the spirit -- and of logistics -- the rally was hailed at the time and since as a turning point in American Jewish history.

DC Mall — D.C. Mall. Credit: vladeb/Flickr

Little wonder, then, that much has been made of it: Reminiscences, feature articles and online exhibitions about the rally and the Soviet Jewry movement more generally have burst forth just about everywhere. Writing in The Washington Post, for instance, Gal Beckerman focused on the rally’s rare show of internal Jewish unity, noting how, on December 6th, 1987, the “forces from the left and right came together.” On that day, one’s “Jewish identity as a member of a tribe and as a conscientious member of the human race were not in tension.”

Meanwhile, the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington has assembled a “Memory Wall,” in which rally participants shared their experiences. They, too, gave voice to an overpowering sense of unity. Some movingly recalled how DC’s Metro system seemed to be filled entirely with people bound for the rally; others remembered how, despite the intense cold, they felt warmed at the prospect of being a part of the Jewish people.

Not everyone, though, came away from the rally or, for that matter, its anniversary celebration, feeling “hopeful and empowered,” as one participant put it. Writing in The Forward, Rabbi Avi Weiss put a damper on the proceedings. “Today I write to set the record straight,” he related, pointing out that, behind the scenes, the rally actually reflected considerable internal discord rather than harmony. Where was the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, wondered Rabbi Weiss? Where was Shlomo Carlebach, whose Am Yisrael Chai was the rallying-cry of the Soviet Jewry movement at the grass roots?

Either way, whatever perspective you bring to bear on the 1987 rally, its anniversary can’t help but put you in mind of the importance of American Jewry’s commitment to activism.

Gift-giving

joselitDecember 2, 2012November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Casting about for the perfect Hanukkah gift? Today, most of us don’t think twice about showering our children with presents when the Festival of the Maccabees bears down upon us. On the contrary. If we didn’t give a gift or two or three, we’d feel as if we were shortchanging the holiday, let alone our offspring.

But that wasn’t always the case. American Jewish parents of an earlier generation had to be encouraged to associate the ancient holiday with the modern practice of gift-giving. “If ever lavishness in gifts is appropriate, it is on Hanukkah,” trilled the authors of What Every Jewish Woman Should Know, a compendium of helpful household hints that debuted in the 1940s.

Back then, American Jews were trying on Hanukkah for size, assessing just how far holiday celebrations could go in postwar America. Some turned to food, churning out bite-sized Maccabees made out of tuna fish, then well on its way to becoming a staple of the American Jewish diet. Others looked to holiday décor, coming up with brightly colored, Papier-mâché decorations to festoon home & hearth. And still others took up song, composing warmhearted ditties to the dreidel.

Many of those songs, along with Christmas melodies written or sung by American Jews, have been recently assembled and freshly repackaged by the Idelsohn Society in a light-hearted and amusing compilation called ‘Twas the Night Before Hanukkah. Listening to the CD will put you in the right holiday mood.

But then, since I had the good fortune to contribute an essay to the liner notes that accompany these musical offerings, I’m hardly an unbiased observer. Even so, take it from me: ‘Twas the Night Before Hanukkah will make a terrific Hanukkah gift.

Swept away

joselitNovember 25, 2012November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Ever since I first read John Kasson’s Amusing the Million, a vividly drawn historical account of Coney Island’s singular appeal as an urban “dreamland,” I’ve had a soft spot for that Brooklyn neighborhood, whose streets are called ‘Surf,’ and ‘Mermaid,’ and ‘Neptune.’ In this, I’m not alone. So, too, did Woody Allen, I.B. Singer, Molly Picon and Ric Burns.

Woody Allen, for his part, set a hilarious scene in Annie Hall in the shadow of a Coney Island rollercoaster, while some of I.B. Singer’s literary imaginings took shape against the area’s penchant for spectacle, both natural and man-made. Molly Picon, in turn, sang buoyantly in Yiddish of one of Coney Island’s most celebrated amenities: the hot dog. Ric Burns trained his sights on the off-kilter, dreamy quality of one of America’s most famous playgrounds, especially in its electrifying late 19th and early 20th century incarnation, giving rise to his very first documentary, Coney Island.

More recently, the Coney Island History Project was established in 2004 to collect and preserve the stories of people who not only visited Coney Island on occasion but also called it home. Appropriately enough, it set up a portable recording booth on the boardwalk to capture these memories.

Little by little, the Coney Island History Project began to collect stuff, too -- maps, photographs, steeplechase horses and the memorabilia of bath houses where swimsuits could be rented for the day. Before long it created a museum all its own, first under the Cyclone rollercoaster and then, about a year ago, relocating to a space under the entrance to Deno’s Wonder Wheel Amusement Park. Where else?!

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, the museum suffered considerable water damage, imperiling its well-being. Although its oral history collections are safe and sound, available online and at Brooklyn College’s Special Collections and Archives, some of the museum’s artifacts have been lost or damaged; the space housing these vernacular treasures has been adversely affected as well.

Still, the Coney Island History Project soldiers on, assembling the latest round of stories, ca. 2012, from the land of Mermaid and Surf Avenues.

Talking turkey

joselitNovember 18, 2012November 16, 2017Leave a comment

You know that Thanksgiving is just around the bend when Fairway on the Upper West Side of Manhattan starts to pile heaps of plastic bags of cranberries on one of its outdoor stands. That, and the twinkle of little blue lights on the trees that line Wisconsin Avenue in the Washington neighborhood of Chevy Chase, gaily announce the advent of the holiday season.

cornucopia — Cornucopia. Flickr/carmyarmyofme

In the wake of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy, plump cranberries and little blue lights are a most welcome sight, a comforting reminder of the inexorability of the calendar and the warming prospect of holiday fun and joy.

Another source of comfort, all the more pertinent this year, is Gershom Mendes Seixas’s A Religious Discourse: Thanksgiving Day Sermon, a reproduction of which was recently offered for sale by Dan Wyman Books. (“A very important document, and increasingly difficult to find.”)

Delivered at a special Thanksgiving Day service held on November 26, 1789 at Congregation Shearith Israel in New York by the self-styled “Minister to the Jewish Congregation in this City,” and, like so many important sermons of its time, subsequently published in the form of a pamphlet, Seixas’s address encouraged its listeners to be good citizens, to support the Constitution, “to live as Jews ought to do in brotherhood and amity, to seek peace and pursue it.”

I had first encountered Seixas’s stirring words many years ago, probably when studying for my oral comprehensives. But in the years since, I had forgotten all about them until I came across the announcement of the pamphlet’s sale, prompting me to renew my acquaintance with the text.

Although the language of, and context for, Seixas’s sermon is that of the 18th century, the sentiments it expresses are well worth contemplating. Placed against the uncertainties, both meteorological and political, of our time, they continue to ring true this Thanksgiving, November 22, 2012.

Revisionism

joselitNovember 11, 2012November 16, 2017Leave a comment

All I could think of us as I made my way through the description in Friday’s New York Times of the opening of the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow was what would Anatoly Shcharansky say?

His protracted struggle for freedom, vividly depicted in Gal Beckerman’s evocative book, When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone, was so at odds with the ways in which the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center depicted the history of the Soviet Union’s Jewish inhabitants, that it sent me into a tailspin.

If all you knew of Russian and Soviet Jewish history was what you read of the museum and of Putin’s rationale for establishing it, you could be forgiven for thinking that Jewish life was, on balance, warmhearted, expansive and positive. Not without its dark moments, especially under the Communists, the Russian Jewish experience, as the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center would have it, was, well, good for the Jews.

That impression was reinforced by the remarks made by Israel’s president, the Belarus-born Shimon Peres, at the museum’s opening ceremonies. “I came here to say thank you. Thank you for a thousand years of hospitality.” My jaw dropped at that one.

I understand that cultural diplomacy and the imperatives of realpolitik often get in the way of the truth. I’m equally mindful of the fact that the creation of the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center has much more to do with contemporary politics than it does with history.

Even so, this latest instance of revisionism goes too far.

Show & tell

joselitNovember 4, 2012November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Like people, museums come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Some, like the Nut Museum in Connecticut, are small and quirky; others, like New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, are mighty and marvelous.

Whatever their ambitions or contents, museums loom large these days, beckoning us with all manner of innovative, interactive exhibitions, imaginative public programming, seductive gift shops and enticing restaurants.

At a time when many of us are more apt to keep company with our digital appurtenances than with one another, the contemporary museum is the latter-day equivalent of the public square or commons. It brings us together -- and out of the house.

Enlarging our vision of the world, museums have also increasingly become the site of communal affirmation, a place where we seek out our identity. No longer just a treat for the eyes, this premier cultural institution, a child of the Enlightenment, is now called on to nourish and sustain our souls.

Behind this recent development lies a great big yarn, one that encompasses politics and money, religion and ethnicity, postmodernism and the digital age.

It’s a story that calls out for a master storyteller -- someone on the order of Edward Rothstein, the critic-at-large of The New York Times. His weekly column on the latest exhibition -- from Prohibition to spiders and from Holocaust museums in Israel to the dioramas of the American Museum of Natural History -- are marvels of economy, insight and wit.

But don’t take my word for it. Mr. Rothstein will be speaking at GW next Tuesday, November 13th, at 7 p.m., in the Jack Morton Auditorium. His lecture is free and open to the public. Come hear for yourselves as he weighs in on “Identity Museums and Their Discontents." A stimulating, thought-provoking evening awaits.

Rupture

joselitNovember 2, 2012November 16, 2017Leave a comment

In his sensitively wrought memoir, Messages from my Father, Calvin Trillin ruefully observed that upbringings have themes. So, too, does the calendar. This past week’s theme had to do with disruption and loss.

The most obvious rupture was wrought by Hurricane Sandy, whose ferocity not only left a trail of immense and, in many instances, unimaginable physical destruction, but also occasioned heroism and compassion.

The other rupture was the one on view at Theatre J’s beautifully rendered and imaginatively executed play, Our Class, which I saw a day ago. Dramatizing the sequence of events that led in the summer of 1941 to one half of the Polish town of Jedwabne turning murderously on the other, the story it told rent the landscape as fiercely as any act of Mother Nature.

Go see Our Class if you can – and make haste. It’s closing any day now. On the other hand, the impact of Hurricane Sandy will be with us a lot longer. Both, though, remind us of the volatility of the human condition and of the small acts of kindness that sustain it.

Good Manners

joselitOctober 21, 2012November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Measuring acculturation isn't easy. Some look to language, others to economic behavior and still others to the maintenance of religious ritual as an index of a group's integration and modernization.

On the strength of a recent story in the New York Times, I recommend that we add etiquette to the list. American Jewish youngsters, it now seems, have no sense of how to behave at synagogue services: they slouch when they ought to stand, text when they ought to sing, talk when they ought to be silent, and on and on goes the roster of faux pas.

Emily Post Blue Book. Source: Amazon.com

Breaches of synagogue etiquette now come so fast and furious that a number of dismayed Jewish educators have gone so far as to organize classes on how to behave while in the sanctuary. They're not alone. The Times reports that in Detroit, dance classes for preteens routinely add a few pointers on "bar and bat mitzvah etiquette" to the curriculum.

Years ago, learning the fine points of etiquette had little to do with the protocols of the synagogue -- who would even have imagined it?! -- and everything to do with the rituals of daily life: how to doff one's hat, talk on the phone and polish off a bowl of soup.

Jewish immigrants, eager to fit in and do right by America, learned the ABCs of proper behavior from Etikete, a text published in Yiddish in 1912. The functional equivalent of Emily Post's Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage, this hefty compendium of dos and donts put the mannerly life within reach.

It's a measure of how far American Jews have come that the great-grandchildren of those who might have consulted Etikete on occasion now need formal lessons in what to do when at shul. Now that's what I'd call 'acculturation!'

Word Play

joselitOctober 12, 2012November 16, 2017Leave a comment

The recent volley of Jewish holidays – so rich in activity – didn’t leave much room for thinking about absence. What with a seemingly non-stop round of marketing, cooking, eating and shul-going, the opportunity to take note – and stock - of something missing all too easily got lost in the festive shuffle.

But now that things have resumed their normal course, it’s hard for me to think of anything else, from the absence of the occasional worshipper who would pop in and out of the sanctuary just in time for yizkor to the disappearance of the synagogue bulletin board.

My Forward column acknowledges and, in its own way, salutes the former. Here, within the compass of my blog, I’d like to give the latter its due.

For years, well before emails and other forms of digital communications colonized the contemporary Jewish world, congregants and passers-by alike would know what was going on within their local synagogue simply by glancing at an exterior bulletin board. Whether bolted to the ground or fixed to an outside wall, this metal-framed object – close kin to a movie marquee – featured such critical tidbits of information as the names of the presiding clergy and the times when services were being held. It also announced a forthcoming bar or bat mitzvah or a special Kiddush.

This information was usually conveyed through a series of white letters against a black ground. Simple as it sounds, it took some doing to make sure that the letters hung straight rather than drooped. But whose doing was it? The synagogue’s all-purpose handyman? Or did the weekly task of arranging the letters in an orderly fashion fall to the shamash or sexton, himself a vanishing breed? I never did manage to find out.

All I know is that in my neighborhood the exterior bulletin board has gone the way of so many other forms of vernacular architecture. True, the corner which it once anchored is now a more open and inviting space. And, yes, the digitization of the weekly schedule is not without its pleasures and conveniences.

Still, I’ll miss this informational device, even though I, like so many others, probably never gave it more than a passing look, much less a second thought. The synagogue bulletin board represents just one more in a long line of objects that once rendered the American synagogue a distinctive presence.

Sound of Music

joselitSeptember 30, 2012November 16, 2017Leave a comment

Much as I welcome the end of the Yom Kippur 25-hour fast, I’m invariably left feeling a bit sad at day’s close by the prospect of having to wait a full year before the evocative sounds of the liturgy are heard once more.

But this year – 5773 by one count, 2012 by another – my sense of loss is offset by the news that the celebrated clarinetist and klezmer musician, Andy Statman, will be visiting GW on October 4th.

Once anathematized by aspiring middle-class American Jews of the mid-20^th century, who derided its pulsating rhythms and exuberant trills as inappropriately déclassé (read East European), klezmer music was seized on by their grandchildren of the 1970s as a vibrant, authentic and musically complex form of Jewish cultural expression.

Since then, the American Jewish community’s embrace of klezmer has become so full-throttled that no public Jewish event is complete without a full complement of klezmorim to pull out all the stops.

The story of that cultural transformation – and transvaluation - still awaits its historian. But one thing is abundantly clear: Andy Statman set it in motion.

This coming Thursday, at 7:30 p.m., at Lisner Auditorium, Statman’s contribution will be recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts at a concert celebrating the many sounds that make up the nation’s musical patrimony, from bluegrass and gospel to klezmer.

…And the beat goes on.