And I wept with my soul with fasting,
And that became unto me a reproach.
—Psalms 69:11
With Cuban music cajoling Rebecca out and keeping my nerve steady, I was encouraged beyond the antechamber into the room of the womb’s unfolding offering.
There were three women in white and my wife, Janet, the man an invited, hesitant stranger. No longer playing his music, his words sealed behind a mask, evolution’s voluptuous force emerged.
Placenta brought to his eyes by the lady doctor, her nurse, our midwife looking at the stranger.
Repulsed and dizzy, this was no longer biology laboratory. I accepted my mortal fate and somewhat confusedly withdrew after thanking God for safe passage.
Soon after, I had my own rite of passage, a terminal degree in philosophy from a university too prestigious to be less than final.
In this way, the world of life and death is created by the mind, in bondage to the mind, we are ruled by the mind; the mind is the master of every situation. The world of suffering is brought about by the deluded mind.
Therefore, all things are primarily controlled and ruled by the mind, and are made up by the mind. As the wheels follow the ox that draws the cart, so suffering follows the mind that surrounds itself with impure thoughts and worldly passions.
—DHARMA; UMMAGGA-SUTTA, DHAMMAPADA
Dancing with Chasids
The narrow, worn wooden floorboards creaked as the widening circle of dancing men revolved, stepping nimbly, their arches stretched in contradiction to the clumsy, old-fashioned, dull black shoes.
“The whole year happy, the whole year happy, the whole year happy for me and you and me,” went the loud refrain.
Dancing within that circle with my son, Russell, sitting atop my shoulders, I came face-to-face with a red-haired, green-eyed young teacher, dancing with his son rocking above, all of us touching the next man’s shoulders. It was the end of the long prayer service for that Sabbath eve, traditionally marked with a circle of dancing and loud singing; the women, on their side of the curtain, joining in their own levity to welcome the “Sabbath Queen.”
Eating and drinking were always a favorite release for me, and I began to gravitate to Chabad House in Berkeley on Friday nights after Rebecca’s birth, telling my nonreligious friends that it was the best place I knew of to eat and drink with my family. Somehow isolated in impersonal restaurants, I felt better eating among Jewish people who seemed only too happy to accept us.
That acceptance, I realized years later, was always tentative and predicated on our “returning” to their Orthodox ways. True, the rabbis and many of their disciples seemed to genuinely love the glint in my eyes, my humor, and my happiness in helping serve the communal festive meal. Our souls were interconnected, but as the years turned without my becoming a convert, still dancing and singing and eating and serving on the occasional Sabbath, a new mood was detected.
Thou shalt eat, but not be satisfied;
And thy sickness shall be in thine inward parts;
And thou shalt conceive, but shalt not bring forth;
—Micah 6:14
Disappointment? Rejection? Condemnation? I slowly lost interest in this too-rigid form of Judaism.
The turning point in my removal occurred when I accidentally took a bottle of vodka 4 to a Passover seder and was publicly admonished, first by the rabbi’s son (a mere boy) and later, in the vestibule, by the red-haired rabbi himself.
Angered, I stormed into the packed dining hall and shouted, “He who insults a fellow man in public, it is as though he has killed him!” (a precept from the Talmud), followed, for emphasis, “I will not be crucified by a traffic cop dressed as a teacher!”
Shocked by my apparent rudeness, the congregants stared in disbelief as I brusquely took the children’s hands and bristled out of there.
Their orthodoxy, Barry later told me, was what had driven him from his orthodox upbringing into the Hillel or “liberal” wing of the Jewish bird. When he had first chosen that path, as a late teenager, the Orthodox tribe’s members had picketed his father’s house, declaring a death in the family!
“That’s why I had my cook prepare some food for us today,” he said with a smile on that Yom Kippur day. “So we can enjoy God, instead of fearing.”
At first, I only watched him eating that delicious eggplant casserole. It had taken me so many years to “come back,” even in part, that I was reluctant to turn away again. This was months after the Passover fiasco, and I was observing with Barry alone, no longer drawn by Chabad.
If a diver is to secure pearls he must descend to the bottom of the sea, braving all dangers of jagged coral and vicious sharks. So, man must face the perils of worldly passion if he is to secure the precious pearl of Enlightenment. He must first be lost among the mountainous crags of egoism and selfishness, before there will awaken in him the desire to find a path that will lead him to Enlightenment.—DHARMA
There are seven marks of an uncultured, and seven of a wise man. The wise man does not speak before him who is greater than he in wisdom; and does not break in upon the speech of his fellow; he is not hasty to answer; he questions according to the subject matter, and answers to the point; he speaks upon the first thing first, and the last last; regarding that which he has not understood he says, I do not understand it; and he acknowledges the truth. The reverse of all this is to be found in an uncultured man.—ANONYMOUS
Jerome’s Story
I want to reiterate, I’m not a particularly religious man. I was raised in an atheistic household. My father was an atheist from Russia and my mother was a kind of very faithful believer—not religious, but she knew God existed. She did things that made me understand that. Tragedy befell the whole family. But the way she dealt with it was one thing; the way my father dealt with it was another. The way I deal with it is yet another. I learned to be a speaker because of my mother’s sadness and tragedy.
My mother was deeply saddened by what had happened to my brother. She couldn’t fathom what had happened. She’d had a healthy daughter, then a healthy son—me—and then another boy who looked perfectly fine. He had blond hair, blue eyes; he looked perfectly normal. But after a short period of time, they found out he was not normal. He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, and couldn’t speak. He was basically a vegetable, or so they thought.
It wrecked the whole family. My mother cried endlessly. No one else knew that. And what does a little boy do when a mother is crying? He tries to make her happy.
So I would entertain her. I would do stupid things. I became an entertainer for my mother. I’d imitate people. I’d put on faces. I’d make sounds and noises, and I’d wipe the tears away. She’d stop crying. She would smile.
If you read my book Teddy and Me, you may remember the story about my brother, Jerome. I loved him very much. I learned to talk and to entertain because of the tragedy with my brother.
So it affected me in that way. I learned to entertain my mother. And, as you can see, I can go from the maudlin to the enraged in one second. In one second I can turn from a kind of maudlin, sad guy into an enraged bull. It all rages inside my soul, and in that sense I’m very much alive, from top to bottom.
But I also learned how to talk to audiences and animals because of my silent brother. I wrote about this in one of my books. Everyone said, “Don’t talk to him.” He was sitting in a high chair, strapped in. They told me he was blind and deaf and couldn’t speak. And when no one was looking, I would sneak into the kitchen to talk to him.
Let me tell you how primitive medicine was in the 1940s. They told me, the healthy brother, “Don’t talk to your brother. You’ll bother him.” I thought, if he’s deaf, how can I bother him? He can’t hear me. So I would talk to him anyway because I loved him. I just loved him so much. And I would whistle to him because I didn’t think he could understand words. And he would smile when I whistled to him. So I said, wait a minute, if he can understand the whistle, he knows his brother’s he
re.
Then I’d hear the voice: “Michael? Michael, what are you doing in there? Are you bothering Jerome? Come on, get out of there.”
Later, the backward doctors of the day decided that for the sake of the healthy children, he would have to go to a home. I want you to think about the profound impact on the “healthy children,” who felt responsible for sending him to hell.
Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
And the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.
Then shall the lame man leap as a hart,
And the tongue of the dumb shall sing;
—Isaiah 35:5–6
The day came when they had to take him to a state home. It was a horrible place on Staten Island. I can’t remember the name of the home. It was a snake pit that was exposed as horrible years later. Do you think the VA hospitals are bad? They took away this little, helpless, five-year-old boy because the doctors were such quacks in those days.
In those days, where we lived, everyone knew everyone else. I lived in a tenement in the Bronx. I can’t remember if it was six or eight stories. But everybody knew everybody. It was like a Satyajit Ray movie. If you’ve ever watched Indian movies about India, Calcutta, the teeming masses, well, that’s my childhood. Those were the days when you’d see women sitting outside in front of the building in chairs, just like in those old black-and-white movies, watching as the children played in the streets.
In the summer, they’d open the hydrants so the kids could run through the water. That was our swimming pool, the gutter and the water. It felt good to me. I enjoyed it. It was cold—and fresh. And the women would protect you from any potential danger. But there was no potential danger there because nobody sped down the street. There were no guns going off, and perverts were thrown off the top of a building. If there was even a hint of a perv in a neighborhood, the men would find him and they would throw him off a building. So there were no pervs around. The men in my neighborhood didn’t wait for a judge to tell them what they could do. They’d either beat a perv up or threw him off a building. So we had a very safe childhood in that sense.
So everyone knew everyone else. And the day comes. Everyone hears that they’re taking away my brother. Everybody is in the street. There’s crying. And there’s sadness. The whole neighborhood sees this going on. My uncle, a strong man, breaks down and cries like an infant right there in front of everyone. And my little brother is taken away in an ambulance. I don’t even know who took him. Two men in white. That was the beginning of something, and it was also the end of something.
What am I supposed to believe? That God made a mistake? It was just a mistake in the hospital? Somebody made a mistake somewhere and they did this to him? Or it was a neurological defect that created my brother and there was no reason for him?
I believe he was created like that for me. I believe my brother was created that way for me to be as articulate and as impassioned as I am. In that sense, I feel very guilty. I must live for two people. I’ve told you that before. Otherwise, there’s no explanation for me to be alive this long, not with my genetic inheritance and not with the stress level I’ve lived with. I should’ve been dead a long time ago. But the point is that God had a certain fate for me and I think it had to happen, that my brother had to be punished for me to live the way I am. Would you believe that?
And Joseph fell upon his father’s face, and wept upon him, and kissed him.
And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father. And the physicians embalmed Israel.
And forty days were fulfilled for him; for so are fulfilled the days of embalming. And the Egyptians wept for him threescore and ten days.
—Genesis 50:1–3
My Father’s Death
It’s been almost fifty years since my father was found dead in his store. I didn’t know all the circumstances, nor did I care to inquire. At the time, I was living in Honolulu, six thousand miles away, pursuing my own dreams.
Not long ago I got off the telephone with my cousin Sam, who told me for the first time that it was he who had closed my father’s eyes, removed his wedding and other rings, taken the cash out of the safe and bundled it up for my mother, and so on. I didn’t know all the details.
Strange how it came up in the conversation. It was a quiet Saturday afternoon here in California, and I was just thinking about the few relatives I have left on the earth and how my cousin Sam had always been my favorite. I had forgotten that although he had graduated college and was quite brilliant, perhaps smarter than I, he had gone into his father’s store in the antiques market where my father also had a store.
In any case, one word led to another and he said, “Don’t you remember? It was I who found your father.” I said, “No, tell me the circumstances,” which he did.
I said, “How did you know he was dead?”
He said, “He had a little Italian guy working for him in the stand named Tony. It was a busy Sunday, the kind of Sunday you wanted. People were teeming in and out of the market. The streets were full. Everyone was buying. Tony came out; his face looked white and he said, ‘Your uncle. Your uncle.’”
Sam continued, “I went in there, and your father was slumped on the floor.”
I said, “What do you mean, slumped? He was lying down?”
He said, “No, he was sitting down in the back of the store, the little stall in the store, with his back to the wall and his head to the side. I went in, and his face was blue and his lips were blue and his head was to the side. I dashed out to my father in the midst of the busy store, and I said, ‘Dad, Uncle Benny is dead.’ He said, ‘What do you mean? What, are you crazy?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘His face is blue.’”
Sam said, “My father didn’t even want to go in and look. He said, ‘You better go in there and take all the valuables before the cops get there. They’ll clean him out.’ Sam did just that. “I went in and took your father’s rings off, his watch, his wallet. The safe was open. I bundled up whatever cash was in there. It wasn’t a lot—a few thousand dollars, maybe. Put it in an envelope for your mother. Took it out. We called the police. That’s the whole story in a nutshell.”
I told Sam, “Well, live and learn. I had no idea.” I asked him, “Who notified my mother? Who was at home in Queens in the little attached house?”
Sam replied, “I don’t really know, but by the time we got home, your house was full of people. Everybody was there, like your uncle, your aunt, and neighbors. Full. Your mother was on the couch lying down.”
I thought to myself, God, what a different world it was. Everyone was there. In my world, living alone as I do, no one will even know when I die. I have millions of listeners, and I’ll die alone. And here he was, a humble immigrant, surrounded by family and friends. Who was the richer man? The immigrant or the immigrant’s son? I’ll let you, my dear readers, decide.
Thou shalt not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.
—Leviticus 19:18
Rabbi in a Brothel (a Fable)
“Either become a rabbi or open a brothel in Borneo,” I told my wife. “That’s what my choices are.” I had reached the ultimate cul-de-sac in my misbegotten existence. “Staying on this road is decay, disease, and death, straight ahead. I’d rather become a rabbi or open a brothel.”
“I agree with you totally,” she replied. “Both would be closer to God than this.”
“What would you do if I did decide to take off to Borneo or a seminary?”
“I’d move into the rental house, work part-time, and go to grad school somewhere in the area.”
“Well, as the old beatniks used to say, ‘At least my manuscripts and other stuff would all be in one place.’”
Our situation was well beyond retrofit beatnik. We owned two modest houses in Marin County, California, but were renting and living in a third, in a better neighborhood on the water, with a dock. The dock had stood empty for a
lmost a year. We had sold the boat after an accident. A Chinese fortune-teller had predicted it, but we had taken his prescience as you would a fortune cookie.
Basing his predictions on complex ancient Chinese books with geometric charts, Lin Yutang would write out your coming year on a monthly basis, in brief capsules, such as:
Feb.: “Friend or partner with company, house energy weak.”
April: “Working very hard, watch out and avoid conflict with wife.”
The previous year, he had warned me:
Dec.: “Money out for parent’s health.”
East to the seminary in Cleveland or west to a Borneo of dark images in Conradian relief? A rickety bamboo structure on a river. Bar girls. Fans. Flickering reminiscences of Cobra gunships. Of Charlie. If not love, maybe satisfaction born of an atypical end for a boy from the Bronx.
I packed my mental sea bag and drove over the Gate, still sighing at the sight of the sharp cliffs, the bay churning as it fought the incoming sea, the Farallons beyond. I was heading for the union hall to ship out, in my case the booking agent for the Royal Viking Line. I had an open invitation to travel first class on any of their ships, in any port I asked, at any time. My pay? Lectures. Lectures and my rare color slides of the South Pacific Islands taken on my travels since 1968. I’d sailed on each of the company’s beautiful liners many times. I had won the hearts of the old cardiac and cancer crowd while managing to please the Norwegian captains and Swedish and Finnish stewardesses with my insights not into investments but into medicinal botanicals in the islands.
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