Through the synagogue, I heard of a therapy group starting up for children of Holocaust survivors, offered by Jewish Family Services, and decided to enroll. Once a week we met with Yigal, a therapist. My fellow Second Generationers were Gadi, David, and Naomi. Week after week, we revealed to each other ways in which being children of survivors had made us different not only from Gentiles but from other Jews whose parents had not experienced what ours had.
We found amazing similarities to our experiences. The isolation. Distrust of the world. Fear of what people were capable of. A sense of being unable to fully bridge the gap between oneself and the survivors’ memories. Most of all, a haunting sense that somehow we must make up for what they suffered—try harder, live more fiercely, take extraordinary risks or, alternatively, none at all; be as inconspicuous as possible, preserve ourselves against risk, suspended over a chasm between crazy gambits and immobilizing caution.
The four of us began to meet outside of therapy, to socialize. We became a close-knit, quirky family, brothers and sisters bound not by blood but by atrocity.
One day, I received an unexpected call from Danny Shot, editor of an East Coast underground lit mag called Long Shot, which Danny had founded, in part, with money from Allen Ginsberg and in which writers like Charles Bukowski, Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso appeared alongside younger relative unknowns from the emergent Spoken Word scene, like myself.
“Alan, you’re the son of a survivor, aren’t you?” said Danny.
“Yeah. Funny you ask. I’m in this therapy group just now for kids of survivors. The Holocaust is on my mind a lot.”
“Did you know that I’m the son of a survivor?”
“I had no idea, even, that you’re Jewish.”
“Listen. Why don’t you and I co-edit a special Long Shot issue of underground Jewish writers?”
Later we brought in Hershel Silverman, a Beat-era poet, and among us we assembled a definitive compendium of underground Jewish writers and artists that included Ginsberg, Tuli Kupferberg, Wallace Berman, Bob Holman, Adrienne Rich, Jack Micheline, Marge Piercy, and Hal Sirowitz. We titled the issue “It’s the Jews! A Celebration of New Jewish Visions” because when something goes wrong in a society, the first thing Gentiles do is blame it on the Jews. In keeping with our irreverent countercultural stance, our avant-garde pledge to shock, the cover displayed a photo of a completely naked muscle man posing on a beach alongside a fully clothed ultra-Orthodox Chasid.
The simultaneous release parties in New York and San Francisco were massively attended—in San Francisco the club so crowded that in the middle of the performance someone had to climb a ladder to remove ceiling panels to let in more air. Ten underground poets read, including Jack Micheline, Julia Vinograd, Jack Hirschman, and myself. The enthusiasm and size of the audience persuaded me that in America, and perhaps around the world, an audience of young unaffiliated Jews did not feel served by the rigidified institutions of the Jewish community and yet longed for some way to be Jewish in a postmodern world. Perhaps pop culture might serve as that bridge: it now was, after all, the true religion of the US. Green Day and Madonna held far more sway over young Jewish American minds than UJA.
I thought, too, of the Jewish magazine itself. Could anything be more moribund, out of step with today’s world? Commentary, Jewish Frontier, Moment, Present Tense, Lilith—provincial phantoms of an outworn glory, a time when Jewish studies were on the rise in America and Jewish writers like Bellow and Malamud and Roth had staked their claim—successfully—as the new boys on the block.
But that day had come and gone. Most of these writers were now household names. Multiculturalism ruled the roost, and I knew from my experiences in the underground that Jews were not invited to the party. We would have to throw our own.
Consequently, I conceived of a kind of experiment. Had always been interested in Jewish magazines, from the one I published in college, Jewish Arts Quarterly, to those I worked for in Israel, including Shdemot and Spectrum, to my dramatic staging of a live literary magazine at the Israel Museum and my editing of Jewish Frontier and serving as an editor on the Tel Aviv Review.
What if I used the genre of the Jewish magazine to launch the most transgressive, in-your-face Jewish pop cultural publication imaginable—one that celebrated Jewishness for its inherent outsid-erness rather than argue for its centrality, as so many Jewish mags do? What if I pushed the envelope both contentwise and graphics-wise, beyond anything that had ever been done or even conceived of in a Jewish magazine?
I had only to share my ideas with my Second Gen friends, Gadi, David, and Naomi, and next I knew I was standing at the head of a conference table in the headquarters of Wells Fargo Bank, for which Gadi worked as a vice president, sharing my vision with some twenty-five young Jewish professionals whom my friends had invited. I spoke of a new kind of mag of pop Jewishness. I called it Davka: Jewish Cultural Revolution. Davka was an Israeli Hebrew slang word meaning, loosely translated, to defiantly do something in spite of being warned not to. If Michael Lerner’s Tikkun is the Osbournes, I said, then Davka will be the Ramones.
The room buzzed with excitement. Within minutes, I had a full-scale editorial staff and board that included businesspersons, professional graphic designers, photographers, even a CPA to keep track of finances. Flush with hope, I contacted Rabbi Stephen Pierce, head of the progressive and influential Reform congregation Temple Emmanuel, told him my idea, and asked if he would help sponsor it. He gave me a check for a thousand dollars and said that I could include his name in the newly formed board of directors.
Ideas exploded in my head. I couldn’t sleep, so I called Allen Ginsberg’s office. He faxed a poem for the first issue, along with permission to include him on the editorial board as well. I contacted J. Hoberman of the Village Voice, Tuli Kupferberg of the Fugs, Bob Holman of the Nuyorican, comedian Josh Kornbluth, Beat poet David Meltzer, novelist Marge Piercy, Street poet Jack Micheline, lesbian feminist juggler Sara Felder, Alicia Ostriker, Hal Sirowitz, Hirsch Silverman, and many, many others, all who contributed to the first issue.
But, as yet, I had no real idea what such a magazine could look like. Naomi knew a designer named Jill Bressler. “Contact her. She’s a genius.”
She was right. The moment I met Jill, we clicked. She was tall, attractive, plainspoken, and brilliant. I explained the magazine’s purpose and produced the thousand-dollar check, which she looked at and laughed.
“Not enough,” she said.
“How much do we need?”
“Another two grand at least.”
“Okay. What else?”
“What’s on the cover? The cover will make or break your first issue.”
“I know. But I’m stumped. Won’t the contents carry us? Ginsberg is in it.”
“The cover image is more important. It’s going to visually signal to a new generation what your Jewish Cultural Revolution looks like.”
“I know you’re right,” I said. “Because when Herzl produced his pamphlet ‘The Jewish State’ he felt that the look of the flag was the most important detail.”
“Right! You need to think of your first cover as the banner that others follow.”
But what could this be? For days, I agonized. Then prayed to my Higher Power: God, here is a chance to be of service to the Jewish world. The community is losing the young. What am I to do? What should I put on the cover?
I knew: once I turned it over to my Higher Power, an answer would come. He never failed me.
And it came. But not from Him. From Her.
That Saturday, Rabbi Frankel had spoken of the Shekinah—the earthly incarnation of God in Jewish theology. My ears pricked up. I’d never heard of this. Later, at the Jewish Community Library, read as much as I could lay hands on about the Shekinah. She was considered by some Chasidim to be a true incarnation of God in female form. I learned also of Lilith, a rebellious female spirit outlawed by God. As the father of a daughter myself, I loved the idea of a rebellious
daughter-spirit causing cosmic mischief. Some of the most interesting, intelligent, and avant-garde writers and artists in America, the ones I most admired, were women, Jews and non-Jews. Sapphire, Irena Klepfisz, Diane di Prima, Brenda Knight, Kathy Acker, Laurie Anderson, Patti Smith, Annie Sprinkle, just to name a few. In fact, the two artists with whom I felt the greatest creative kinship, most admired, were the poet Sylvia Plath and the photographer Diane Arbus.
In many respects, recovery was, by nature, iconoclastic—a smashing of old and rigid ideas to allow for new life-giving perspectives. So, why not try to pray to the Shekinah as the female incarnation of God, make her my Higher Power?
I prayed with great trepidation: Shekinah, I don’t know who you are or if I can trust you, but I am proclaiming you to be my God and asking: What shall I put on the cover of Davka?
Nothing.
Closed my eyes, breathed, counting breaths from one to four and back, allowing my thoughts simply to happen without intention.
Shekinah. Show yourself to me.
Out of the recessed darkness behind my closed eyes appeared the tiny silver figure of a female, sleek, slender, perfectly formed, who came backflipping and somersaulting toward me with acrobatic joy and landed on her toes, arms outflung in a posture of girlish exuberance, as though to say: Here I am!
Wordlessly, she commanded me to open my hands, which I did, and she leaped back and forth from one to the other in an adorably playful performance. Then, just like that, she backflipped and somersaulted into the darkness and vanished.
Amazed, I opened my eyes. I knew: I had just met the Shekinah.
That night, before sleep, Lana already dreaming, I lay with eyes only partially closed, gazing out the window at buildings drenched in bluish moonlight. Saw the silvered face of the Shekinah, grown now to immense proportions and floating visibly before my eyes right past my window, ever so slowly, gently, watching, gazing in, meeting my eyes, and then floating on, past, away, out of sight. And again I knew: the Shekinah had left her world to visit mine.
Shekinah, I prayed. What shall I put on the first cover of Davka that will inspire young Jews?
And the next day, as I walked down Hyde Street to the supermarket, it came to me: a naked young woman with piercings and tattoos, discreetly covered by only a tallis and a yarmulke.
I called Jill. “I’ve got our cover.”
She arranged for Marcus Hanshen, a rock-and-roll photog who had worked for Rolling Stone and other prominent national zines, to do the shoot. He found someone, an ideal model, who happened not to be Jewish but in every way fit the exact image I had in mind. It would be interesting, I thought, to keep people wondering whether or not she was Jewish—call into question some of our visual ideas about what constitutes Jewish identity.
When the first issue of Davka appeared it became, literally, a shot heard around the Jewish world. Davka received more mass-media coverage than any American Jewish magazine in history. Good Morning America did a special report about it. It was featured on CBS’s The Osgood File. Appeared in magazines and newspapers as diverse as the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Utne Reader, and USA Today. Numerous Jewish newspapers covered it, while articles about Davka were featured in the Israeli, German, British, and South American press.
Sounding a clarion call for young Jews to rise and take the helm of Jewish culture, we named ourselves: “Generation J.”
Davka only ran to three issues. But each issue carved out some new sector of Jewish pop, such as Queer Yiddishkeit and Jewz in Hip-Hop, Jewish countercultural poetry and iconographies of Jewish kitsch, that other Jewish magazines, like Heeb, continue to mine to this day. Each issue defined a new sphere of Jewish cultural studies. David Mamet and Leonard Nimoy appeared in Davka’s pages. Mamet actually contacted me with a note from Vermont: “Good for you, good for the Jews. How can I help?”
Before the release of the third issue—with Annie Sprinkle, the porn star, as our cover girl Hannuka Queen, replete with Star of David pasties—our business board, who had not brought in a single shekel, complained to our editors that their parents threatened to disown them if Davka didn’t “tone it down.” We refused.
Then the ADL attacked, warning us that we stood to inspire an anti-Semitic backlash. We shrugged and pushed harder.
Finally, a Jewish religious software company called Davka threatened us with a trademark infringement lawsuit, which, in effect, shut us down.
69
GRATIFYING THOUGH DAVKA WAS, STILL, something unfulfilled remained to be done. What could it be? I asked Old Ray what he thought.
“I’ve always been under the impression that your great ambition is not to be a poet or a magazine editor but an author of books. Hmmmm? Yes?”
“What makes you say that?”
“It’s all you talk about.”
I hung my head. “You’re right. It’s what I really want.”
“Well, you have a little problem.”
“Which is—?”
“Most book authors have written actual books before they are considered authors. You, like most alcoholics, want it the other way around.”
“So what, then?”
“You’ve stopped yourself from writing a book all these years. Probably, it’s one of the reasons you drank. Maybe the reason. Could be? You know the kind of drunk we see in every bar who talks about the books he will write someday? Why don’t you avoid that. So you can look yourself in the eye. Wouldn’t that be nice? To actually do it? Go write your book, Alan.”
“About what?”
“Well, your mom was a survivor. You’ve been doing all the Jewish activity. Why don’t you write about that? You talk about it all the time in that therapy group. Write about it. Write about being the son of a survivor.”
As he spoke, I already knew what to call it. Jew Boy.
I had never managed to sustain a narrative longer than a short story, poem, or essay. Reading, could blast through books for hours, but couldn’t write longer than fifteen minutes at a time. Inspired by the example of Rabbi Allen Lew, known as the “Zen rabbi” for his long immersion in zazen meditation practice before attending rabbinical seminary, I started going to the Zen Center. One day, at a Dharma talk, the teacher spoke about meditation’s positive impact on focus. I wondered if Zen might not offer a way. If I could learn to sit staring at a blank wall without moving for thirty to forty minutes at a time, I could sit staring at a blank page until words came.
I obtained a teacher, Paul Haller, a Zen Buddhist born in the slums of Belfast. He helped me with my sitting form and taught me to extend my practice by slow degrees until I could sit without moving, eyes open, focus held, lightly, gently.
Old Ray had me make out a writing schedule. Each day I would attend a 12- step meeting, after which I’d sit at a café table—at the same time, in the same place, often at the same table—for three hours. Either I’d write or sit there bored, staring at the wall. But there would be no leaving before the three hours elapsed. Whether I wrote a sentence or thirty pages, I had to remain.
I kept the pact. During my time, I paced the café. Wanted to scream, pound the walls. Rushed out to make frantic phone calls from a pay telephone. Wandered into nearby shops, the local hardware store, to read hair product labels and browse gardening tools before returning to the café. And then, one day, at the top of a page I wrote “Jew Boy” and made a list of the incidents in my life that seemed somehow to pertain to those words. Picked the first episode off the list that excited memory, and began to write.
Three hours later, I had composed the first draft of a chapter of Jew Boy. It took six months to produce 1,200 pages. While writing especially difficult passages about my abuse as a child, I’d retreat to the rear of a nearby grocery store, where I stood hidden among the canned peas and mayonnaise jars, crying. Then I would wipe my eyes on my sleeve and return to the writing.
I began to see a therapist to help me with the feelings that came up. Had a fear that Jew Boy not only betrayed my mother b
ut made the Jews look bad, would offend survivors. I decided that Jew Boy was best left unpublished, and I told Old Ray this.
“Fine,” he said. “But first make sure to finish it.”
When I had composed the last page, I shut the notebook, gathered up all 1,200 pages, bound them with string, and stored the bundle on a shelf. I had done it, written a book, or at least the first draft of one. I was through.
Old Ray did not agree. “So, what are you going to do with Jew Boy?”
“Do? Nothing. What should I do?”
“You’ve written a book. Don’t you think you should get it published?”
“What for?”
“To be of service. Let others read it.”
I looked at Old Ray. What did he know about it?
“No one will publish that,” I said with absolute certainty, my voice striking a scornful authoritative note. “And I promise you, absolutely no one wants to read about the son of a survivor. They all want to know about the survivors, but not the kids.”
“I disagree,” said Old Ray.
“You never agree with me,” I said.
“Well, I find it hard to agree with your alcoholic thinking. With you playing God and deciding what will and will not be publishable, what people will or will not want to read. We’re not allowed to make up our own minds about it—you’ve decided for all of us. How about getting the book published—which is part of your responsibility as a writer, your job. Huh? Remember? This is not about outcomes. It’s about practicing our principles. It’s about finishing what we start. Yeah?”
“Okay,” I conceded begrudgingly. “So. I type it up. Revise it. Get it into shape…”
“And we’ll take it from there. One step at a time. Let’s leave the publishing decisions to the publishers. And the decisions about what to read to the readers. You just be the writer. Huh? Yeah?”
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