The Lies They Tell

by Tuvia Tenenbom

  I drive past breathtaking red mountains, and then, right outside Moab, I enter the Arches National Park. Here’s how the National Park Service describes the place, which it calls “a red rock wonderland”:

  Discover a landscape of contrasting colors, landforms and textures unlike any other in the world…hundreds of soaring pinnacles, massive fins and giant balanced rocks. This red rock wonderland will amaze you with its formations, refresh you with its trails and inspire you with its sunsets.

  What can I say? This is one of the few times that I’ve caught a government agency telling it like it is.

  The Arches National Park is uplifting at almost every step. Driving and walking through it, one gets the impression that this country is a very ancient country. And indeed, it took untold number of years for these formations to take shape.

  As I pass by them, they strike me as ancient archeological sites. Here, for example, is a “structure” that seems to be either a castle or a fortress, built well before the dinosaurs roamed the earth.

  Some of the sandstone formations remind me of Middle Eastern landscapes. But this is not the Middle East. This is America. One hell of a gorgeous country, exceedingly rich in natural beauty. I have no more words. Get your ass up here to see it with your own eyes.

  I keep on driving in this land of America, until I reach Dead Horse Point.

  What a marvelous display of nature, this time in totally different form, captures my gaze! Here are huge chunks of earth in various shapes, not like fortresses but more like immense pieces of earth playing poker with each other.

  Dazzling! It looks as if the earth opened, ages in the past, and its parts have shifted in all directions over the intervening centuries.

  It may as well be called Mount Change.

  • • •

  The Hawaii professor is taking a day off tomorrow. It’s Yom Kippur. What should I do on Yom Kippur? I have been to Mormon services in a ward, a Quaker meeting, and to Christian services; isn’t it time I go to a Jewish service?

  A person I hardly know (I only met her once before) invites me to come to Aspen, Colorado, a neighboring state to Utah. She’s Jewish and she knows where the Jews are having their services.

  Let’s go to Colorado, Versa!

  Gate Seventeen

  If you were born on Easter Sunday, you can resurrect the dead

  THE LANDSCAPES THAT I LEAVE BEHIND ME RESEMBLED ANCIENT architectural genius; the landscapes here, as I drive in Colorado, resemble paintings made by a master. As I arrive in Aspen it is just before the start of Yom Kippur, which begins after sundown.

  Aspen’s Jews are some of the most successful of American Jews, living in one of America’s most desired locations: Aspen, the destination of the rich and famous. Naturally, I go to the largest Jewish congregation in Aspen, where the services on this day take place at the five-hundred-seat Harris Concert Hall, a place far nicer-looking than Chief Dull Knife College.

  Well, these are Jews, not Indians.

  And what Jews! Most of them are about the same age as Jesus would be, had he not been hung on a cross and were still alive. Young Jews are not here. Not that they are afraid to be outside after sunset; Aspen, Colorado is not Englewood, Illinois. Aspen is exactly 180 degrees from Englewood. But young Jews, what shocking news, are not interested in anything Jewish. They are off melting in a pot somewhere, in some hot American bakery.

  Honestly, now that I’m here attending the service, I see you can’t blame the young Jews. The service, in a word, sucks. The rabbi delivers a sermon about another rabbi who survived the death camps during the Holocaust, followed by a music selection that most likely originated in a concentration camp. And then, as if that were not enough, the rabbi thanks Germany for helping the Syrian refugees and for housing some of them in former concentration camps (which Germany is obviously doing).

  All in all, this is a perfect funeral service for America’s Judaism. I watch this service, which contains very few Jewish motifs, and wonder why these old people bothered to come here. There’s very little of anything “Jewish” to this service. Like the Indians, very few here know their ancestors’ language, in this case Hebrew, and the whole thing is so melted down that there is nothing to see and very little to hear. It’s all empty of any meaning.

  There is a comparable “melting” phenomenon between the German Americans and these Jews, with one difference: the Germans completed the melting cycle ages ago, and most of them no longer bother to be Germanic. The Jews are still in the process of eliminating their culture, but soon they will get there.

  And until they are totally melted, some Americans will continue to be obsessed with them.

  Especially the media. The American news magazine Salon, for example, published an article today in which it accuses the Israeli army of “cowardly brutality,” claiming that an Israeli soldier squashed a Palestinian kid, and then it goes on to compare Israel to Nazi Germany in all but name.

  At this particular date in history, when every day thousands of Arabs are murdered, violated, lose their homes and are abused by other Arabs in the ever-turbulent Middle East, it is interesting to read this story of one Arab kid supposedly suffering at the hands of one Jew. Ten, twenty years ago an article like this would have been published in a KKK magazine.

  The times they are a-changin’, as the Bob Dylan song goes.

  • • •

  The next day, I go to see nature. Luckily, nature is the one entity in America that is not forced into a melting pot to evaporate. I drive in the direction of the Maroon Bells, two peaks in the Elk Mountains, which are about a dozen miles from the city of Aspen.

  The ride up into the mountainous area facing the Maroon Bells is nature in its most masterful display of color: green, red, yellow, brown, maroon, turquoise, gold, white, gray and pink – and this is just a short list of the colors on display here. Below the Bells is a multicolored body of water: glitzy green, blue, brown, silver and variations of all of them. I’ve never seen anything like it.

  Ahead of me I see salt-like layers of snow on top of the Maroon Bells, so called because of the mountains’ color and shape. The Bells are surrounded by a magical landscape of colors and shapes.

  When the wind rustles the golden leaves of the aspen trees, which are abundant here, the effect is a dazzling display of glitter. These aspen trees have very thin leaves, and the softest of winds is enough for them to quake. The effect of shimmering gold is a real beauty that you won’t see even in paradise. This sight is marijuana for the soul. Bring your asses right here, young Jews, and see how beautiful it is when you don’t melt.

  • • •

  Unlike me, who’s giving up on the Jews here, Pope Francis is not giving up on his Christians. He is in the USA and he is preaching, as loud as anybody will hear him. What is he preaching about? You guessed it: climate change. I have no opinion about climate change, as I’ve said, but if the pope preaches it I know that I must doubt it even more.

  I drive on, in the direction of Denver, and choose the scenic roads. The drive in the mountains, totally surrounded by yellow and gold trees, is one of the greatest pleasures one could have while alive and driving. It’s a dreamy ride, and again I am taken by the beauty of this land.

  I stop on the road, near a motel by the name of Topaz Lodge, where I see four people sitting on chairs, busily inhaling nicotine into their system. They feast on a huge pizza pie that, they tell me, they got three traffic lights down the road for $8.99.

  A steal.

  They introduce themselves to me as “mountain movers.” The mountain up the road, mostly made of rock, is being dynamited in order to build a new highway. Their job is to haul the falling rocks out of the way. “We are moving earth from a mountain to a quarry,” they tell me, quite proud of their achievements.

  “If an intellectual was assigned to do our job,” they tell me, “he wouldn’t last a single day.” Not even one of them believes in “climate change.” To be more exact: they all believe that the climat
e always changes. This very place, they explain to me, used to be all ice “a million years ago.”

  In addition, all are staunch supporters of Israel.

  Jerome, one of the four, tells me that President Obama should go back to where he was born. Where is that?

  “Africa or Indonesia, but certainly not Hawaii.”

  There are a few million people in this land who strongly believe that Obama was not born in the USA and is not a real American. They can’t prove it, but lack of proof has never stopped anybody, be they mountain movers or Berkeley intellectuals.

  • • •

  Morning comes and I go to Moe’s Broadway Bagel in Denver. I get a cheese-and-egg bagel, sit at the table on the sidewalk and read the news.

  The Speaker of the House, John A. Boehner, announced yesterday that he would resign his post by the end of next month. Reason? The Republican Party is bitterly divided between its moderates and its super-conservative Tea Party, and he is tired of the infighting.

  The differences between the two camps are many. One of the immediate ticking bombs is this: The Tea guys threaten to shut the government down unless they can pass a resolution to defund the women’s health organization Planned Parenthood, which aids women seeking abortions. If they can’t get their wish, they say, they won’t approve the upcoming fiscal budget and the US government will be forced to shut down.

  I face a much a bigger problem than John. My cheese-and-egg bagel is totally lacking salt and pepper and has absolutely no taste. Can nobody in this land learn how to make an egg sandwich, goddamn it?

  I’m on the 16th Street Mall, which is one long pedestrian strip, and I observe the people passing by. Nine out of ten are dressed in the lousiest clothes one could imagine in the worst of nightmares. I get into a conversation with some of them and find out that they are not from here. They have come to Denver for the Great American Beer Festival, which is taking place a few blocks away.

  They also tell me that sixty thousand people attend the festival, which sounds to me like a perfect opportunity to get free beer. I walk there.

  As I enter, I’m given a small glass to use in the various stands of the breweries presented here for beer tastings. “If you break or lose the glass there will be no replacement,” the man who gives me the glass says in earnest. How am I going to keep a glass in my hands for the next ten hours?

  Not to worry. For five bucks I can get a cup-holder necklace, a pocket with strings that go around the neck, and the glass will hang safely below my mouth. I get one. On it there is this line: “X-Communicated Mormon Drinking Team.” Below is some solemn advice: “Finish your beer… There are sober Mormons in Utah.”

  A little politics in a huge beer joint. Nobody around here sells cup holders with “Muslim Drinking Team” on them. Give it to the Mormons.

  I make the rounds, drink here and there, this and that, and try to talk non-Mormon politics with a young man who has been drinking more than his head allows. I say to myself: It would be interesting to hear what a drunk American really thinks on the issues.

  First, I ask him if he’s red or blue. I get nowhere. Even as drunk as this man is, he knows what lines not to cross. “I draw a red line when it comes to politics,” he says to me. Oh God, even drunks are scared to talk politics in the Land of the Free!

  For your information: the beer I like the most here is the Dosvidanya, an oak bourbon barrel-aged beer, 12.5 percent ABV, which has a very rich taste. Simply excellent.

  Cheers!

  • • •

  Moments after I leave the festival I get an email from my good friend, Barack Obama. Subject: “We could meet this fall, Tuvia.”

  He writes:

  Tuvia –

  I remember my first day as a community organizer like it was yesterday. I was handed a long list of neighborhood residents, and for the next three weeks, I went door-to-door to meet with every one of them.

  And so on and on, tales and more tales. I wonder what he’s talking about. Hasn’t the NSA already informed him that the residents of his district will deny every single word he writes?

  Bottom line: what President Obama really wants comes at the bottom of his email – a contribution, anywhere between $15 and $1,000, and if I please would prefer to make it a “monthly recurring contribution,” this would be very, very welcome.

  President Obama can brag all he wants about the blacks and the Spanish of Illinois and how much he cares about them. But even he wouldn’t say that at any point he had taken care of the blacks of Colorado.

  Maybe I should meet them. There’s a black megachurch in Denver, I discover, and it’s called Potter’s House. Come Sunday, I go there.

  The church offers two services in their three-thousand-seat hall, and I come for the second service. A startlingly talented fat lady, aided by an all-black choir, sings: “You have removed my shame. You take me as I am.”

  The congregants, on their feet, sing along. And what singing this is! The lead singer, who fires up the audience a thousand times stronger than any American politician alive, delivers her notes far higher than any American aircraft has ever reached. Every piece of brick, stone and iron in the building shakes at the sound of her voice, and you can almost see angels dancing at her feet. What I witness here is a powerful orgy between man and God. Really.

  Oscar of Chicago: You should come here and join these people!

  These black people have the capacity to shake the skies with their singing, a task no white person has yet accomplished, to the best of my knowledge. Their singing smells of freed souls, their passion is mountains high, and their presence is a display of immense strength.

  This is not Aspen. The worshipers here are not American Jews. The devotion, sincerity, passion, pride and happiness I see here is unmatched. This black church stands tall in total opposition to the doom and gloom I found in black ’hoods. If only these people knew the strength they possess.

  My luck, there’s a guest speaker. She is a white lady who loves to sing and shout. “Praise the Lord in His house, He will fix your house,” she shouts and proceeds with screaming promises of health and wealth to these people. In case anybody had doubted her capacity to deliver, she adds: “I was born on Easter Sunday and I have resurrection power. Don’t push me, I can dynamite.”

  She is trying hard to act “black,” but totally lacks the spirit that comes so easily to the people in attendance here. After repeated screams and shouts, she offers a prayer to Jesus: “Wash me in your blood.” Why did they invite her?

  The senior pastor of this megachurch is Rev. Dr. E. Christopher Hill, a black pastor. When he is at the podium he is a sheer delight. At times he yells from the podium to individual members of this huge audience.

  “Hey, Sis,” he says to a lady who tells him she’s from Omaha. “Are there blacks in Omaha?” Everybody is laughing. I want to see what this man is made of. And on the morrow I go to visit him privately in his office.

  • • •

  Today the parking lot is almost empty, but there are many guards somewhere around here. I notice them as I enter the church’s property, when they come out of their hidden holes to check who I am. In this church, I guess, they don’t want to meet the same fate as the AME church in Charleston.

  When I enter the building I see a bunch of posters in the lobby announcing a forthcoming trip to Israel. I keep walking.

  “Pastor Chris,” as the reverend is known here, embraces me when I enter his office. He is all smiles, full of energy, and his face is shining. No wonder thousands of people follow him. To start, I share with him my findings so far: America is divided, racism is all over, and those who speak in the name of “diversity” don’t really know blacks. Is this correct? I ask him.

  “Very much so,” he answers without a second’s hesitation.

  I have been to ’hoods and have seen the poverty there, as well as the utter criminality that screams from every corner – the doom and gloom of Black America. But then, here in your church: fun, amazing
ly spiritual, enormous energy – more positive and spiritual than any white church out there. The exact opposite of the ’hood. Could you explain to me these two opposites of Black America? How could people be so down on one side and so up on the other? Are they not the same people?

  “Church for us is an escape. Church is the place where we can be ourselves. I’ve got high officials in the church that are public officials. One of my members has thirty thousand employees. They cry in the church. Here they are free. In our church, this is a place where we don’t have to be white. This is the place where we don’t have to be a minority in America’s melting pot. Historically, all of our liberation movements came out of the church. The church for us is the freest place that we have, because we are not supported or underwritten by the white power structure.”

  Very nice. But what makes black churches so much more spirited than white churches?

  “See, the black preacher, during slavery, he would go to the whites’ church. He would sit in the back, or stay outside the window, hear the sermon and then go back to the slaves and preach the same sermon fifteen thousand times better!”

  How so?

  “Because they [blacks] would hear it differently. The story of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt has a whole other meaning to an African American. Because we have chains in common. Segregation. Living in a ghetto, as we would call it. We are naming it [the ghetto] from something that we have extracted from Jewish experience in Europe. There’re so many similarities between the Old Testament scriptures and our experience that show up in our worship. We are African Americans.”

  This is an explanation of the greatness in black churches. How do you explain the other side of the coin: the ’hood, the gangsters, the high rate of murder in the black community?

  It takes Pastor Chris some time to answer this. Schools in black neighborhoods, he says, “are inferior. In America we build prisons based on third-grade test scores. So, if the test scores in the area are bad we know we need more prisons. The prison system now is being traded on Wall Street, for ‘prison futures.’ We are a commodity. The police, the social worker, the prosecutor, the judge, the clerk – everybody is getting paid off of the institutionalizing of the black people. And so, it’s better for the system for us to be institutionalized than for us to be educated.”