Unscrolled : 54 Writers and Artists Wrestle With the Torah (9780761178743)

by Bennett, Roger (EDT)

  I left Senatobia and released Otha’s debut record. Reflecting on the picnic, it was titled Everybody Hollerin’ Goat, a tip of the cap to those great goat sandwiches that were the symbol of the picnic.

  The hardest part of being a record man is waiting for the first responses to a newly released disc . . . all the more so with Otha, as I felt a deeply personal responsibility to bring his message and sound to the world. Yet this release was initially received with confused questioning. The Fife and Drum material did not seem like any other blues record. It was hard for critics to classify.

  Then a Rolling Stone review was able to locate its true place as an essential document of America’s folk-music heritage, ultimately hailing the disc as one of the five best blues records of the decade. Slowly, the release became seen as a classic. Martin Scorsese featured it in his PBS-produced miniseries on the blues. Otha’s message had been amplified, working its way into the fabric of America’s musical culture and out into the world.

  Otha passed away in 2003. He had battled pneumonia early that year. Aware that his time was ending, he had spent his days meeting with everyone he knew to say good-bye. I last saw him a few months before his death, when I went down to visit him and Bernice, his daughter and bandmate, who was fighting cancer. As I left her home, I was greeted by the entire Turner family, Otha’s granddaughter Sharde among them, the woman who had elected to carry on the tradition of the Fife blower since she was a small child.

  Up until Otha’s final days he was the patriarch of his family, sitting on top of his world. Indeed, he ultimately died on the same day as Bernice.

  Of Otha’s favorite sayings, one has always stayed with me—a phrase he would always offer to his family and friends when they were faced with a difficult life decision: “Don’t nothing make a fail but a try!” Its meaning was clear to me: Trying to do something is not enough. You simply must do it. Given the obstacles we are faced with in life, the only way to meet them is head-on. Happiness, community, and justice must be pursued with conviction and determination. Expecting them simply to be given to us is like walking through the desert, hoping for an oasis that might never come.

  I have tried to heed Otha’s words and teach them to my children. To remain connected I bought a small house with an old barn down in the promised land of Mississippi not too far away, ironically, from a town named Egypt. The place is meant to be an anchor for my kids so they can connect to the people, the culture, and its way of thinking. And although Otha is no longer with us, the beauty in his recordings will outlive us all, ensuring that his prophetic voice will always be heard.

  “A woman must not put on man’s apparel, nor shall a man wear woman’s clothing; for whoever does these things is abhorrent to the Lord your God.” —Deuteronomy 22:5

  KI TETZEI (“When you go”)

  Deuteronomy 21:10–25:19

  The beautiful captive: in the wake of a military conquest, if an Israelite encounters a beautiful female captive, he is permitted to marry her. The woman must first be brought home, cleaned up, and allowed to spend a month mourning the loss of her own parents. Marriage can then ensue. If the Israelite wishes to dispose of the relationship, the woman must be released outright. She cannot be turned into a slave.

  If a man has two wives, loves only one, yet produces sons with both, the birth order still matters when it comes to inheritance. The man is prohibited from treating the younger as if he were the firstborn just because he loves his mother more. The law of birthright takes precedence.

  A defiant son who will not listen to his parents shall be taken before the town elders in public, disowned, and stoned to death.

  If a guilty man is given the death penalty and impaled on a stake, his corpse should not be left out overnight, as it is an affront to God.

  Animal farm

  Stray animals shall be returned to their owners. If the owner is unknown or lives far away, the animal should be cared for until it is claimed. The same rule applies to any object or possession.

  If an Israelite encounters an animal in distress on the road, aid must be given.

  A woman shall not wear men’s clothing. A man shall not don women’s garb. Cross-dressing is abhorrent in God’s eyes.

  If a traveler chances across a bird’s nest in which a mother tends to chicks or eggs, only the young may be taken.

  When you build a new home, a small safety barrier must be built around the roof to ensure people do not fall off.

  Two different kinds of seed must not be sown in the same vineyard. An ox and an ass shall not be made to plow side by side. Wool and cloth should not be spun into the same clothing. All garments shall have tassels dangling from the corners.

  Like a virgin

  If a married man despises his wife and begins to fabricate allegations that she was not a virgin on their wedding night, the girl’s parents shall produce evidence of her virginity for the elders at the town gate. If the elders deem the evidence to be conclusive, the man shall be punished for defaming a virgin in Israel—a flogging and a fine will suffice, and the man loses the right to divorce his wife. Alternatively, if his charges are discovered to be true, the men of the town shall stone the woman to death for fornicating while under her father’s authority.

  If a man commits adultery, both the male and female shall be put to death. If a man rapes a virgin engaged to marry, both shall be stoned to death at the city gates. The man deserves to die because he violated another man’s wife, and the woman shall be punished because she did not cry for help when the act was committed. If the act occurs in the wide-open countryside, only the man shall be punished: Even if the woman cried out, there was no one to hear her. If the raped virgin is not engaged and the man is caught, he must pay her father fifty shekels, then take his victim as his wife and never divorce her. No man shall marry his father’s former wife, as it would be akin to seeing him naked.

  Members only

  No man with crushed testes or a damaged member shall be allowed into the congregation of the Lord. No illegitimate child or one descended from ten generations of illegitimate lineage shall be permitted either. Ammonites and Moabites are not to be admitted on account of their failure to offer food and water to the Israelites upon their liberation from slavery, then hiring Balaam to curse them. The children of Edomites and Egyptians can be admitted in the third generation.

  A smorgasbord of legislation

  If a soldier experiences a nocturnal emission while on military maneuvers, he shall be deemed unclean and forced to leave camp until he has bathed in the evening. The Israelites are to ensure they defecate outside their camp so they remain holy even in the field.

  A slave seeking refuge from his master shall be sheltered without being ill-treated. No Israelite shall be a cult prostitute involved in sacred sexual rituals, nor should a whore be brought into the Temple to fulfill a vow.

  Israelites can charge interest on loans only when dealing with foreigners. Interest shall not be added to loans between members of the community.

  Any vow made shall be fulfilled with speed.

  In a vineyard, any man can pluck grapes off the vine and eat them, but no one can fill up a bag or container. Similarly, in a field, Israelites can pluck another man’s wheat with their hands but are not permitted to use a sickle.

  Love and (re)marriage

  When a man divorces a woman, he cannot take her back if she marries another man. If the second husband also divorces her or dies, she shall be judged to have become defiled.

  A newlywed is exempt from military service for one year. His obligation is to give happiness to his new wife.

  A Smorgasbord of legislation II

  A handmill or millstone should not be taken as security on a loan, as it is akin to taking someone’s livelihood.

  Kidnapping is an offense punishable by death.

  Victims of skin infections shall follow the priest’s instr
uctions with care.

  Debt collectors shall not enter a debtor’s home to reclaim what is owed. They should wait outside. If the debtor remains needy, the loan shall be rolled over. The lender will receive the Lord’s favor.

  A destitute laborer should also be treated fairly and paid promptly or else he will cry out to the Lord and the offender will be considered guilty.

  Parents should not be put to death for their children’s crimes nor children held responsible for their parents’. Only the person responsible for the crime shall be put to death.

  Foreigners and orphans shall be granted their rights. A widow’s possessions shall not be taken in pawn. The Israelites will always remember they were once slaves in Egypt and needed God to redeem them. Any sheaves in the field mistakenly unharvested should be left for the needy to take. The same rule applies in vineyards and in regard to olive crops.

  Guilty men may be lashed up to forty times; any more would be degrading.

  An ox should not be muzzled while being forced to thresh.

  The unsandaled ones

  In a family where there are two brothers, if one dies leaving a wife and no male heir, the brother is obliged to marry her and ensure a son is produced so that the deceased’s name will not be forgotten. If the brother elects to shun this duty, the bereaved wife must appear before the town elders and inform them. He must confirm his decision. The woman must then perform the ritual of pulling off his sandal, spitting in his face, and declaring that henceforth, the living brother should be known as “the family of an unsandaled one.”

  If two men are fighting and one of the combatant’s wives intercedes by grabbing his opponent’s genitals, her hand shall be cut off.

  Honest weights must be used. Dishonesty will not be tolerated by the Lord.

  Blotting the Amalek

  The Israelites shall never forget how the tribe of the Amalek attacked them from the rear, cutting down the weak and the weary. The Amalek must be blotted out in their entirety.

  Davy Rothbart

  T. J. MAX

  One particularly dead Sunday night, nursing my fourth PBR on a stool at the 8-Ball, I caught sight of my old friend Sam, with whom I’d been close in high school but hadn’t seen in years. We hugged and slammed down a couple of whiskey shots. Then he looked at me somberly and said, “Today was my grandfather’s funeral.”

  I remembered meeting the guy a few times when Sam and I were in high school. His name was Max—a cheery, talkative old-timer who always got after me for wearing a baseball cap indoors. “Better show off your hair while you’ve still got it,” he’d say with a smile. His story, as I’d heard from Sam, was that he’d been a barber in a small town in Poland and during the war had been shipped to Treblinka, his young wife to another camp. He’d survived only because the Nazi soldiers needed someone to cut their hair, and he was apparently damn good at it. His wife, meanwhile, had perished. Later, after the war, he lived in Denmark for a couple of years, and then tracked down a distant cousin who’d found his way to Detroit and followed him there, marrying again, eventually, and raising a family. For decades, he’d helped his cousin manage a small-appliances store and had cut hair for family members and friends from synagogue on a barber’s chair he kept in his garage. In high school, I’d had my hair cut by him twice myself.

  I bought Sam another shot, and he wound from one story about his grandfather to another. Sam had gotten to know the guy pretty well the summer between tenth and eleventh grade, when he’d spent three months working at the appliances store and living with his grandparents in Royal Oak.

  One night, Sam said, after he’d been there for a month, he’d bounded into his grandfather’s bedroom to ask him a question and come upon an eerie, astonishing sight—his grandfather was half naked in the middle of the room, dressed in only a woman’s antique slip and high-heeled shoes, struggling to pull a skinny, frayed dress over his head. “I turned and bolted right outta there,” Sam said. “I was pretty sure he had no idea what I’d seen, which made things less awkward, I guess, while still being somewhat awkward. I mean, it was like I’d caught him in the dressing room at some crappy women’s clothing store at the mall. But I never told anyone what I saw.” Sam paused. “Although, for most of that summer, I used to refer to my grandfather as ‘T. J. Max.’ You remember that?”

  I shook my head. This all felt like a pretty weird story to relate to someone the night of your grandfather’s funeral. On the other hand, we’d both been drinking heavily, and Sam seemed relieved to have run into someone with whom to share stories of Max, especially since I’d actually known him.

  “Well, whatever,” he said. “I didn’t use that nickname long.” At the end of the summer, his grandfather had called him into his room, saying he wanted to talk to him, that he had something to show him. Laid out on the bed, Sam said, were the same old-school women’s underwear, ornate high-heeled shoes, and the worn but pretty dress that he’d seen his grandfather wriggling into a couple of months before.

  I stopped him. “Wait, did you guys bone?” This was my lame ploy to inject levity into a story that seemed, to me, like it was creeping toward some kind of unknowable heartbreak or dark twist that I was afraid to hear about.

  “Yeah, we humped like dogs!” Sam cried, his face gone mad. Then his smile skedaddled and his eyes drooped. “No,” he said. “My grandfather just told me he wanted to explain something to me. He knew I’d seen him in women’s underwear and wanted to explain who these clothes belonged to.” Sam looked me in the eye. “Well, you can guess. They belonged to his first wife. The one who died. The one who was killed. It was her favorite dress, he said. Her favorite pair of shoes. Years and years after she died, I guess, some relative of hers tracked down Max and gave him the clothes and a couple of other trinkets of hers. ‘I love your grandmother more than anything,’ he told me that day, ‘but it doesn’t mean I don’t miss Hedda sometimes. When I’m missing her, I put on her clothes. Maybe it’s just my imagination, but when I’m in her clothes, I feel her close to me, like I can still smell her, can still feel her touch.’”

  “Wow. What did you say?” I asked.

  “What could I say? I just said, ‘Okay, Pops.’ He never mentioned it again. I never brought it up, either. But then, we were going through his stuff yesterday, me and my mom. I was helping her clean out his house, sort through all his stuff, empty out the closets. And I saw the dress. I’m sure it was the dress.”

  At this point, I realized that Wolfie, the bartender, and a few other guys close by whom Sam and I half-knew had been pulled into the story. “So, what’d you do with it?” Wolfie asked.

  “What do you think? I tried that damn thing on!” Sam roared. “When my mom was out of the room!” He laughed too hard, then seized up. “Well, it didn’t fit me. I don’t know, man. Shoot. We just donated it to Goodwill, with all the rest.”

  Wolfie poured one last round of shots and silently passed them around. “These are on me,” he said.

  Sam held up his glass, whiskey spilling over the edge, down his fingers, dripping to the floor. “To T. J. Max,” he said quietly.

  “Cheers,” we said. “To Max.” And we all drank.

  “The Lord will afflict you at the knees and thighs with a severe inflammation from which you shall never recover—from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head.” —Deuteronomy 28:35

  KI TAVO (“When you enter”)

  Deuteronomy 26:1–29:8

  Blessings . . . and curses: Moses continues to prepare the Israelites for his death. He begins by instructing them to dedicate the first fruit of the harvest to God in a place to be revealed once they enter the land. As the priests offer the fruit on the altar, each Israelite is obliged to recite a paragraph retelling the Exodus story and the journey to the promised land.

  Upon setting aside a tenth of their yield as a tithe and giving it to the Levites and the needy, the people are
to announce the fulfillment of the commandment to God.

  The Lord commands the Israelites to follow all the laws. Following the laws will ensure they remain a treasured people resting high above all other nations—a holy people.

  The elders join Moses to reinforce his point. The Israelites are told to coat large stones in plaster and inscribe the Torah on them once they have crossed the Jordan into the land of milk and honey. Moses commands Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin to stand on Mount Gerizim and bless the people. Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali are instructed to stand on Mount Ebal and curse anyone who worships idols. Others who deserve to be cursed include

  those who insult their parents;

  those who shift their neighbors’ border lines;

  those who trick blind people;

  those who subvert the rights of the powerless and needy;

  those who have relations with their father’s wife, a sister, their mother-in-law, or an animal;

  those who kill a countryman without witnesses;

  an official who accepts a bribe during a murder case; and

  those who do not uphold the Torah.

  The rewards for observing God’s laws are repeated: God will set the Israelites high above all other nations. Their wombs, harvest, and herds will be blessed. Enemies will be routed. All other people will fear them. They will be a creditor to many nations but a debtor to none.

  However, if the Israelites fail the Lord . . . well, the consequences are detailed in painstaking fashion. Calamity and panic will ensue. Pestilence will torture them until they are wiped out. Sickness and inflammation will run amok. Drought shall reign, the crops shall fail, and dust storms will devour them. The descriptions of ultimate doom become ever more graphic, gruesome, and imaginative. They end with the few surviving Israelites being sent back to Egypt in galleys, begging to be bought as slaves, yet finding no buyers.