Schmoozleschnu thought he had a killer argument: which was more complicated, a tomato or a pair of eyeglasses? A tomato, of course. And yet we believe that eyeglasses are designed and a tomato is not? (Read that sentence making your voice go way up, like a high school student in the 1950s playing Shylock.) Our busty dancing Charles Darwin pointed out that a tomato and eyeglasses were different and then laid on the origin of the species for Schmoozleschnu in a loud club. Maybe she used some visual aids and pulled aside her G-string as she explained how we got from primordial ooze to poontang in a billion years. She covered geology and disputed the young earth and Noah’s ark, and he left with a happy ending and a better understanding about how happy endings had come into existence.
Pussy in a strip club led Schmoozleschnu to the big D’s and H’s—Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, and Harris—and then to supper with me and SweetiePie in Brooklyn. Sauly was totally American; Moishe was on his way but still able to pass for religious around his family; and Schmoozleschnu was still looking full Yama Yama Jew. I like to think that the term “Yama Yama Jew” is poetic enough that I don’t have to explain, but I will. I went to Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey the Greatest Show on Earth Clown College in Florida. I was the last picked and the youngest the year I went. I took classes in trapeze, wire walking, and prop building. It was a very extensive program, six days a week, and on the seventh day I had remedial makeup. I wasn’t good. I learned to do a double backflip on the trampoline and to walk across a tight-wire. I learned that I really, really sucked at physical comedy. I came into college as a great juggler, and I left as a great juggler, but I never got to be even a passable clown. That’s right, I failed as a fucking clown.
We were taught in makeup class, and in makeup makeup class, that you should never put any red or black makeup on your upper lip—the whole exaggerated mouth is painted on the lower lip and chin. If you put any mouthlike makeup above your mouth, it obscures your facial expressions instead of magnifying them, and when you open your mouth it’s just a slightly bigger hole in the middle of a red blotch. If the makeup is only painted below the upper lip, then all your expressions are exaggerated, and on people other than me it’s funny. Clown makeup that’s put on both the upper and lower lip gives a look that professional clowns call a “busted asshole.” Once you’ve heard the term “busted asshole” for that kind of mouth makeup, well, it’ll add some Human Centipede images to your nightmare idea of bad clowns.
The other big indicator of a sucky clown is a Yama Yama suit. A real clown has a costume that in some way signals a specific character. The clothes also have to give the performer the ability to move, tumble, juggle, run, and fall down. The costume should amplify body movement like the makeup amplifies facial expressions. Yama Yama suits are those one-piece zip-up-the-front baggy suits with bright colors, like Zippy the Pinhead wears. Yama Yama suits obscure body movement like a busted asshole obscures facial expressions. Now that you know, you’ll spot lots of Yama Yama suits and busted assholes on bad clowns.
I was once talking to another clown college alumnus about getting a good deal on a video recorder at Forty-seventh Street Photo in New York City. He said, “Is that the place with the Yama Yama Jews?” It’s the perfect term.
Schmoozleschnu was full Yama Yama because that was his job. Because his English was so good, and because he could work on Friday nights and all day Saturday, he was in showbiz. He was a professional Yama Yama Jew. If you’re watching an NYC show that has a Hasidic Jew in the background, that extra is probably my new friend Schmoozleschnu. He’s also a TV and movie consultant on all kinds of wacky Jewish sects. He makes sure they get it right, and they can talk to him in English and on Saturdays.
The last time I asked anyone if they were Jewish was many years ago at MIT. I don’t remember why, but I asked a genius geek who was showing us around the Media Lab, the same genius geek who joined us for AB’s atheist communion, if he was Jewish. He responded, “No, I’m an atheist.” His dad, as a young child, had fought and escaped from the Nazis, but that didn’t make his family Jewish. He didn’t see it as a racial or cultural question but a theological question. He didn’t care what Hitler would have considered him; he was an atheist. He was no more a Jew than I was a Christian. That answer was important to me. It was that moment when I understood George Clinton suggesting one nation under a motherfucking groove. It was an inspiration.
I don’t understand atheists who claim to also be Jewish. I’ve wanted to do a Bullshit! episode on cultural Jews and tribalism, but there’s no way Showtime would consider letting us do that. They’re afraid that cultural Jews would be better at letter-writing than friends of Motherfucking Teresa, and they’re probably right about that. I hear hard-core atheists claim that they are Jewish because their moms were Jewish. That’s not a genetic rule, that’s a religious rule, and if you’re not religious, you don’t follow religious rules. There were rules in the South for what makes someone “colored,” how many drops of Negro blood it took. There is no scientific taxonomy for different races; there are no genetic markers. It’s very hard for me to tell what religion my mother-in-law is; I guess she’d call herself spiritual. I believe my wife’s grandmother, whom I adore, might call herself atheist. My wife was certainly raised atheist, and yet there are some people who would think our children should be considered Jewish because someone in the maternal lineage said that. Nope. They are atheist and their culture is Vegas—and even that’s too much tribalism for me. Family matters. I love my mom and dad, and my sister and nephews and children. I identify with them. But I don’t see how being identified with people you’ve never met because of “race” is anything but racism, pure and simple. Being proud of yourself, your beliefs, your taste, your accomplishments, and your immediate family and friends seems sensible and right. Being proud of some imaginary group you were born into seems insane and wrong. It’s collectivism at its worst, and collectivism at its worst is racism. I went back to Newfoundland to see where my grandfather grew up, but I’m not a Newfoundland-American, I’m Penn Jillette, son of Sam and Valda, husband of Emily, father of Moxie and Zolten. Penn Jillette, an asshole who didn’t even do well in Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey the Greatest Show on Earth Clown College.
I do think cultures should be studied and preserved. I think it’s important that the great ideas of the Jewish people are preserved, but I don’t see why they have to be preserved by people who consider themselves Jews. Spike Lee could do Schindler’s List and Clint Eastwood can do Bird. I don’t think that complexion or lineage should determine what groups you belong to. I have more in common with Richard Feynman, George Clinton, Sun Ra, and Tiny Tim than I do white Christians. I am an atheist whack job; that’s my culture.
Schmoozleschnu was a professional Jewish expert, and his not considering himself Jewish is a big step toward utopia, world peace, and one nation under a motherfucking groove.
At Traif that night, Pie and I heard amazing stories about life as a Hasid. All the men would ritually bathe naked together every morning. They were all taught it’s okay to steal from a gentile. They had an education that covered the minutiae of prayer and very little mathematics or history. Our new friends were sure part of an insane cult, but none of them had left it completely yet, and I don’t blame them. The ideas of the Hasids are scientifically and morally wrong; the fashion, food, and lifestyle are way stupid; but the community and family make me envious.
When I lived in Greenfield, Massachusetts, with my mom and dad, with my sister and her family a couple miles away, I was in a town where most everyone had known me since my birth. I was around people every day who knew me and cared for me—and didn’t agree with me on anything. I watched Tiny Tim and Lawrence Welk on TV with my mom and dad. Dad hated Tiny, I hated Lawrence, and we loved each other.
Now I live in Las Vegas. We have a big fence and gates around our house. I don’t know the name of anyone who lives on our street. My children have four aunts who are still alive and have never seen
all of them in one room at one time. They have a grandfather, and a step-grandmother, and a grandmother, all of whom they love and are loved by, and they see them a few times a year, and never all together. They have a great-grandmother, who is great, and they see her a couple times a year. Day to day, my children are part of a very small family. Technology like Skype allows them to talk to their extended family, but as wonderful as that is, it’s not living near them.
My wife and I disagree about art and poker, but other than that, I’m rarely in a room with someone who loves me and disagrees with me. It’s something I miss in my life. Technology has given us a wonderful world, but it has also spread us out. We have babysitters instead of aunts. Dying more than thirty miles from where you were born is a pretty new thing in human history. There are some emotional family bumps on this road to the future.
The Hasidic Jews have problems, lots of problems, lots of weird crazy shit to fuck people up and make them waste their lives, but they do have family and community in spades.
I know how much I miss my mom, dad, and sister. I know how much I missed them when they were alive and I talked to them every day on the phone—I was still thousands of miles away.
I can’t imagine how difficult it is for these ex-Jews. They are working to love science, and to love the truth, and to be honest, but it’s costing them dearly. Their marriages were arranged, but they still have a great deal of affection for their wives. They love their children. They love their siblings, and they have plenty of them—that’s the way the Hasids keep a growing population. They don’t have a lot of people converting to their fucking psychosis. They love their moms and dads and uncles and aunts and the entire safe community that they’re giving up.
They are giving all that up for the truth. They are heroes, they are astronauts. And I was sitting with them and they were talking about my radio show as we ate food together. Food that everyone they loved for their whole lives thought was evil food.
Schmoozleschnu said that after the stripper taught him science and he read Dawkins and listened to George Carlin and then my radio show (why the fuck am I in that list?), he knew there was no god. He had the moment when there was no doubt in his mind that there was no god. There’s another way to say that: he had reached the moment when there was nothing but doubt in his mind. The moment when he couldn’t accept nonsense on faith.
When he had lost his faith and seen the light of reason peeking through, he asked himself one question: “Who will take care of me?”
Pie and I almost cried when he said that. I haven’t believed in god for so long that I don’t remember ever feeling that god was watching out for me. My family watched out for me. My mom and dad took care of me, and now my wife and friends take care of me. I look in my son’s four-year-old eyes, and I don’t feel alone. He knows something in his heart that can keep me going. But Schmoozleschnu lost god, and all his family and friends were staying behind with his imaginary friend. A silly dream goes away and takes with it your whole real life. He can listen to my radio show, and he can have supper with me, but I’m not going to take care of him. I have my own family and friends.
The restaurant check came and I threw down my AmEx and they didn’t take AmEx, so I went for my Visa card. Moishe and Schmoozleschnu, with their hats and payot, grabbed the check away from me: “No, no, we’ve got it.” Sauly pointed out it was the only time anyone would ever see two Hasids fighting with a goy to pay the check. That’s sure what it looked like, but there were no Hasids or goyim at that table; that table was becoming one nation under a motherfucking groove.
We said good-bye, and Moishe drove Pie, the filmmaker, and me back to midtown Manhattan. He drove us through the Hasid community where he’d lived his whole life. The community he loved and was trying to leave. He said that if I walked down these streets in the daytime I would be considered as foreign as if I were in a town two hundred clicks out of Beijing. Moishe put a Hasidic singer on the car CD player, and even the scale and the mode of the pop music was foreign to us. Moishe translated that the singer was singing about the joy of the end of the world. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
Moishe had talked to his father about becoming an atheist. Moishe felt his dad loved him but was still secretly hoping Moishe would end up in jail or something, some deep trouble, to vindicate the faith of his father. Moishe said his dad had asked him if he was happier without religion. If he was happier without his family and community. If he was happier as an atheist.
Moishe had explained to his father that what made him happy didn’t matter; what mattered was the truth.
That may be the definition of a hero.
“One Nation Under a Groove”
—George Clinton
Postscript: Since our dinner, Schmoozleschnu has come completely out of the closet. He is doing a lot of consulting work and even writing scripts about the Hasids. He’s now proud of his journey and would like me to give his real name, Luzer Twersky—yup, it’s pronounced “loser.” Maybe we all need to take care of him.
The Bible’s Second Commandment
Thou shalt not make for thyself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate Me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love Me and keep My Commandments.
Maybe the most important part of my philosophy is that most people are good. If you run into a Starbucks and throw your car keys to the first person you see and say, “My wife is having a baby, I have to jump into her car and drive her to the hospital. My Porsche [I wish I knew cars, so I could give a good example of a fancy car, but I drive a Mini Cooper] is double-parked—could you take it, move it, and . . . here’s my cell phone, just call “Mommy” on there and tell us where it’s parked . . .” If you say that to most people (providing you pick them and they don’t pick you) they’re going to do the right thing. Your car and cell phone are going to be safe whether you throw those keys to an atheist, Muslim, Jew, Christian, or Jain.
ONE ATHEIST’S SECOND SUGGESTION
Do not put things or even ideas above other human beings. (Let’s scream at each other about Kindle versus iPad, solar versus nuclear, Republican versus Libertarian, Garth Brooks versus Sun Ra—but when your house is on fire, I’ll be there to help.)
Pastor Shirley, My Mom and Dad, Lesbians, and Jesus Christ
I think it was Thomas Jefferson who said, “And were it left to me to decide whether we should have a Christianity without lesbians or lesbians without a Christianity, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter . . .” My parents certainly felt that way.
My mom was in her mid-eighties when she first declared herself an atheist. She dragged my sister with her into the denial of god. My dad and brother-in-law still called themselves Christians and believed in god until their deaths, but they quit the church along with their wives.
I became an atheist when I was in high school. Our family was very active in the First Congregational Church of Greenfield, Massachusetts, the First Church of the Covered-Dish Supper. My dad led the choir; my mom organized some of the ham suppers and maple sugar eats. She helped with coffee hour after the service and used the leftover coffee to make one of the haggises of New England food, coffee “Jell-O.” These nutty Christian ladies would take an urn of leftover black coffee; put in some Knox gelatin, no sugar, no nothing; pour it into big cake pans; and put it in the fridge to gel up. The next night it was cut into squares and served with dairy topping at some Monday-night potluck as a weird black bitter speed-freak dessert. My sister sang in the choir and did all the bookkeeping for the church, and my brother-in-law was part of the grounds committee and helped keep the building in good repair. The First Congo (as people in Greenfield called it) had been around since 1754, and when my family finally quit the church, we had that whole time covered. We had over a quar
ter of a millennium in combined believer-pack years at that church.
For my part, I was baptized there, and one of my first jobs before my dishwashing career was mowing the church lawn and trimming the church bushes (I mean that literally; we haven’t gotten to lesbianism yet). I went to church every Sunday until high school, when I negotiated a deal where I could sleep in on Sundays, after my Saturday late-night rock and roll monkeying, providing I went to youth group on Sunday evening. We had a liberal pastor when I was growing up, and he encouraged discussions. I decided to read the Bible.
Reading the Bible is the fast track to atheism. Reading the Bible means starting at “In the beginning . . .” and throwing it down with disgust at “. . . the grace of the lord Jesus be with all. Amen.” I’m sure there are lots of religious people who’ve read the Bible from start to finish and kept their faith, but in my self-selected sample, all the people I know who have done that are atheists.
God, No! Page 5