You need this book: or you might come down with something...Brian Frazer has used his week of Jewcy blogging to expel some common and very current political frustration.  He began with a peek at his book, telling an introspective yet entertaining tale about his brother's wedding.  Then he turned to politics, putting wrinkles on the faces of Biden's botox obsessors, reacted to the second presidential debate, begged the forgiveness of those he has insulted, and devised a painfully amusing plan for preventing another economic meltdown.  Want more of Frazer's frenzy?  Buy his book!

Does your blood pressure surge if the car in front of you turns without signaling? Do your neck veins pulsate when a cashier takes too long to ring you up? Does relaxing seem like it'll have to wait until you're dead? Then your name could very well be Brian Frazer.  On paper, Frazer is the world's healthiest guy. He eats right, exercises regularly, gets plenty of sleep, has never smoked and has missed only one day of flossing in the last five years. But inside he's a swirling vortex of angst, capable of contracting a new malady every month. Once Frazer realized that all his ills were tied to stress, he went on a quixotic quest for calm, venturing into everything from Tai Chi, serotonin blockers and Kabbalah to an unfortunate incident involving pineapple-chicken curry at a Craniosacral therapy session. Never has the road to wellville taken so many unforeseen turns.  Achingly funny, uncomfortably true and always entertaining, Hyperchondriac is just the medicine for anyone who wants to take it down a notch.
A- Entertainment Weekly

Rabbi Arthur Waskow turns 75 this month. In honor of that milestone, we sat down over Skype to talk. I first met Arthur in 2002 when I attended a week-long class on tikkun olam which he was teaching at the old Elat Chayyim retreat center in Accord, New York. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was a terrific introduction to his life and work.

Arthur's made a career of highlighting Judaism's prophetic tradition and its call for social justice. That call transformed him, a staunchly secular civil rights and anti-war activist, into one of the Left's most outspoken rabbis.

Social justice has always been central; his doctoral dissertation focused on the 1919 race riots. In his early political career he co-wrote a bill to create a National Peace Agency, and served as senior staff at the Peace Research Institute (later the Institute for Policy Studies.)

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My fellow American Jews,

I am a member of Rabbis for Obama, along with 550 colleagues from all movements of Judaism. In this sacred season of repentance, I would like to share my reflections on some powerful messages from our tradition and their implications for the fateful choices we face.

Arise from your slumber and rouse yourselves from your lethargy..." (Maimonides)

In hearing the blast of the Shofar, we have an opportunity to wake up to the grave challenges our nation faces, and to forge a path based on our Jewish values of tzedek (justice), hesed (loving-kindness), and shalom (peace).

I believe that Senator Obama offers us a chance to build bridges across the divides of race, religion, class and country of origin. In this moment of economic turmoil and suffering, he calls on us to move beyond self-interest to extend opportunity across our society to "lift up the fallen" through lifelong education, accessible healthcare, and through involvement in community service. He urges us to reinforce the civil rights and liberties upon which our safety, and that of all of the vulnerable people in our society, depends.

I hope we will hear in the call of the Shofar an invitation to this path toward a repaired society and nation, as Senator Obama said in his historic Rosh Hashanah conference call with 900 Orthodox, Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative rabbis, "[this is]... a time to recommit to the serious work of Tikkun Olam, of mending the world."

"For the sin we have committed...in impurity of lips" (Machzor).

Among the sins we will recount in our Yom Kippur confessional prayers is this one: "for the sin we have committed against you in impurity of lips (b'tumat sfataim)."

Far too often, I hear good Jewish people repeating slurs and calumnies without the slightest basis in truth. My 9 year-old son came home from his Jewish day school saying, "Barack Obama hates Israel." (The facts: Senator Obama's Senate voting record is rated 100% on Israel by AIPAC, and he has a long and deep partnership with the Jewish community. He has repeatedly stated that "Israel's security is sacrosanct," and that Iran must absolutely not be allowed to threaten Israel with nuclear weapons). I have heard older Jews say that they "know" that Senator Obama is a Muslim (There's nothing wrong with being a Muslim, but, for the record, Senator Obama is a committed Christian.)

Our tradition teaches us that lashon ha-ra, evil speech, kills three: the one who speaks, the one who listens, and the one about whom the untruths are told. We Jews of all people know the toxic effect of slurs based in racism, ignorance or xenophobia. As we turn in repentance, I hope we will start by refusing to listen to or repeating distorted claims about Senator Obama or any other candidate, and by asking people repeating them to refrain from this disgraceful behavior. No matter how insecure we feel, we must redouble our efforts to make critical decisions on facts, not fear.

"Hope in the Eternal, be strong and God will give your heart courage, hope in the Eternal" (Psalm 27).

The penitential Psalm, which we recite each time we pray during these days of repentance, calls us to ground our existence in hope. In this uncertain time, it is easy to succumb to fear, and to narrow our vision, or even to abandon our most fundamental values.

I hope you will heed Senator Obama's call, not only to hope for, but to realize, the hope for a society of liberty, opportunity, mutual responsibility and justice. With hope grounded in faith, and with a leader of vision and substance, wisdom and humility, our country can live up to its shining promise.

G'mar hatimah tovah, may we all be inscribed a year of sustenance, goodness and peace.

Rabbi Dayle A. Friedman
Vice-Chair, Rabbis for Obama

On the evening of Yom Kippur, in preparation for the 25 hour fast, Jews the world over will offer charity, request forgiveness from friends and family whom they may have wronged, and immerse themselves in the mikveh to be purified. At some point, perhaps post-mikveh and before donning their white garments for the Kol Nidre service, many of them will stick a little something up their tuches.

I discovered this secret several years ago, here on West 90^th Street in the week before Yom Kippur when I was complaining to a neighbor about how not eating or drinking doesn't bother me, but the caffeine withdrawal is brutal. "In Monsey, there's a run on caffeine suppositories the day before Yom Kippur," my in-the-know friend shared with me. I envisioned a hoard of desperate, bearded Jews pounding on a pharmacy door, like heroin addicts begging for a fix.

The purpose of fasting is to enable us to focus on our prayers and thereby to come closer to God, without the distraction of thinking about food. It tends not to work out that way, in my experience. This same friend's wife confided that while she can pray with her whole heart in synagogue on the morning of Yom Kippur, come afternoon she is obsessed with food and so she sits at the kitchen table, reads cookbooks, and fantasizes about crème brulee. Jewish porn.

It's hard to transcend the pounding headache and slip into an altered spiritual state if you're pre-occupied with food or coffee. So if that caffeine suppository offers you a path to God, I say hallelujah. The end justifies the means.

Though my husband grew up in an Orthodox home, he never heard about going the rectal route! He jokingly considered asking his brother, a rabbi, whether this backdoor loophole is recognized in the rabbinical world as being kosher, but he knew that his brother didn't like to encourage those kinds of "frivolous" questions. "All I know," my husband said, "is that a lot of matches were made on Yom Kippur afternoon."

This was a revelation to me. "Really? Why?"

He shrugged. "I guess these guys are starving and some girl says she's got a nice brisket at home and a pie and he's in a weakened state..."

This was clearly more about my husband's fantasy of what would entice him in the long, dark, lonely hours of repentance. The fact that this conversation took place over dinner in a restaurant, (no home-cooked meal), was not lost on me.

But it was a curious idea--that on Yom Kippur, when you have bad breath and are cranky and can't wear lipstick and you smell (no bathing or anointing the body, which means no deodorant or make up - in my case, that ain't ever happenin'!)--you will attract a mate. Yet, a little research corroborated that my yeshiva-educated husband was correct. In the Mishnah, Rabbi Shimon ben Galmiel wrote that in the times of the Temple: "There were no festivals in Israel like... Yom Kippur, for on them the young women of Israel went out in borrowed white dresses...and danced in the vineyards. And what did they say? `Young man, lift up your eyes and see what you choose for yourself.'"

While the men may have been viewing the women with visions of brisket dancing in their heads, my guess would be the women were looking at the men and seeing spirituality. Whether either of them could in reality offer tender roast beef or whisper sweet-nothings in Aramaic was beside the point. It was Yom Kippur, and if it was possible to start anew with God, you could consider starting anew with another human being. It's that kind of hope that keeps Jewish matchmaking sites like http://www.sawyouatsinai.org in business.

Like everyone else on my block and in the greater, observant Jewish world, I'm not averse to seeking out ways to alleviate the effects of the fast (before the fast begins, have a teaspoon of honey; drink Pedialyte with juice...) However, I've noticed that there's a pointed lack of discussion between people on what is supposed to be at the center of the day - our relationship with God. I truly think my neighbors would flip out if I stopped them to confide that I worry if God heard my prayers, or if I inquired if they'd felt God's presence as much as I had in synagogue. Better, I should speak of suppositories than of my personal soul-searching.

On Yom Kippur, the presumed duality between the body and the soul seems even more pronounced. Our preoccupation with our hunger and our bludgeoning headache only serves to re-enforce how very earth-bound we are, and as a result the two feel to be at odds with one another. Perhaps the idea that the physical and the spiritual are not in conflict but are part of the whole is the lesson that can be learned from the custom of the young women dancing and chasing the men on afternoons many millennium ago in the old country. On what other day are our physical and spiritual selves so on display and available, and our awareness of our own and others' quite so heightened?

May Yom Kippur be a time of spiritual beginnings, in your partnership with God and with others. I wish you an easy fast, whatever route you take.

"Lift up your eyes, and see what you choose for yourself."

If I had a brisket for every time I have heard “I’m interested in spirituality, not religion”, I’d be … um, The Brisket King, I guess. 

I never ate brisket growing up. I ate coq au vin, or greasy tinned British steak-and-kidney pie, raclette aux pommes de terre nouvelles, or roast beef; and for a time when I was young, toward the end of each pay period, ketchup sandwiches. Sometimes we went to a ‘kosher-style’ restaurant to eat ‘kosher-style’ chopped liver and smoked meat. This was partly nostalgia, partly well-meaning ethnic tourism. My mother, born in Belgium, escaped with her family to London in 1940, where she was raised in an assimilated (though nominally Orthodox) family.

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It wouldn't have been intentional, but I almost ruined my brother's wedding last week.  I had no idea when he asked me to be his best man that I would have any responsibilities other than making a speech before dinner.  Had I known that I'd have to stand with him at the Chuppa, I would've had to decline the best-manship. 

As I stood in front of all the wedding guests alongside my brother, I became very light-headed. The room started to spin and my heart began to palpitate so I gripped the wooden Chuppa poles with my hands for support.  Seconds later, I fainted.  As my wife, Nancy, my sister and several others rushed to my aid with water, juices and handkerchiefs to wipe my brow, everyone assumed it had to do with low-blood sugar or the heat.  Only Nancy knew it had nothing to do with either.  It was my aversion to religion that had caused yet another meltdown. 

It all started shortly after my Bar Mitzvah, in 1977.  Two months after I had officially become a man, my Long Island rabbi ditched Judaism to become an Episcopalian minister in Rhode Island.  Ever since then I have freaked out when being exposed to organized religion.  It's not limited to Judaism, either.  When I go to a Catholic wedding I need to sit in the back row, so I can periodically take breaks from the sermon.  When I was in Bangkok, I was unable to last more than three minutes in a Buddhist Temple, despite not understanding one word of Thai.  Even weeks before my own wedding, when Nancy and I first met the rabbi in his office, I needed to leave the room to get into the fetal position on the cold bathroom floor. Thankfully, at our actual wedding I was able to stay upright, but only because I'd instructed Nancy to keep pinching my finger as we held hands, so I could concentrate on physical pain rather than emotional pain while simultaneously counting the pinches.  

A surefire way to stay awake at servicesI don’t want to be like this.  For years I met with a religion therapist to try to conquer my problems. I even went on Zoloft to combat the anxiety attacks that plagued me in houses of worship.  Both have helped improve my religious stamina, but obviously not enough.

The religion therapist thinks it has something to do with my mother having M.S. for the past thirty plus years and, combined with my rabbi's exodus, I had lost my faith in God.  I'm not sure that's the case.  I think between the aforementioned events and the sad fact that most of my relatives were killed during the Holocaust, the entire concept of God has me confused.  The problem is that it's hard to find the answer when the questions make you pass out.  So for the time being, if you see me at a wedding, I'll be outside pacing during the ceremony, which beats turning white and having a rabbi pat down my sweaty head with his yarmulke and then lying that I have low blood sugar to mask my issues.  But I will be at the reception where I will help myself to some of those tiny zucchini things.

Brian Frazer, author of Hyper-Chondriac, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and he's here all week.  Stay tuned.

A Jewish-American soldier stationed at Fort Benning in Georgia was taken to a local hospital last week after being badly beaten by fellow privates in what his father believes was an act of anti-Semitic violence. The US Army

Pvt. Michael Handman had complained of religious discrimination on the base in past letters home, and had apparently been informed on at least one occasion that he may have been in danger. Two Fort Benning drill sergeants have been reprimanded for religious discrimination toward Handman, having reportedly referred to him as "Juden"—the German word for Jews – and asking him to remove his yarmulke, which Handman was wearing with his uniform.

Handman’s father, Jonathan, says that his son fears future attacks and that he regrets encouraging his son’s enlistment in the armed forces.

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Roth's and Beckerman's books are a world apart.  Yet, the dialogue they developed over the course of the week is proof enough that two authors of divergent religious convictions and very dissimilar genres can be quite compatible.  Weaving in and out of social commentary, the two find common ground in their uniquely awkward identities as writers.  They marry the seemingly incongrous worlds of human sexuality and religious fundamentalism (without a pre-nup!), define the relationship between kink and the Torah, express the need to mouth off from time to time.  And yes, they even contemplate an inexplicable preoccupation with sodomy!  It's a discourse that leaves you begging for more... so indulge and go buy their books!

Marty Beckerman: DumbocracyDumbocracy: In this election year, we hear much about the all-powerful "bases" of each major party. Who are these activists? What drives them? And why are they all equally dangerous to our lives, liberties, and pursuits of happiness? In Dumbocracy, journalist Marty Beckerman spends four years with foot soldiers of the Left and Right-pro-choice and anti-choice, pro-gay rights and anti-gay rights, pro-war and anti-war-and delivers a searing, hilarious indictment of the True Believer mentality.

Matthue Roth: LosersLosers: Jupiter was born in Russia, but he's getting quite an education in America. He sees everything slightly askew - but in a way that's endearing to (most) of his fellow students. A popular girl takes him under her wing. He falls for her. A bully sets him as a target. But Jupiter disarms him in an unexpected way. His best friend ends up hanging with a posse of science geeks. Jupiter feels left out. With dead-on deadpan humor, Matthue Roth makes everything illuminated about American teen life - like Borat as directed by John Hughes.

There is a certain element of schizophrenia to it--biblical verses run through my head even during the sexual encounter--‘I know this is wrong, I'm sorry G-d'-but at a certain point those voices are silenced by the sheer physical pleasure of it.

Single Woman

We tend to think of "queer" as referring to homosexual orientation.  But within the Orthodox Jewish community, the term queer can take on a more subtle meaning.  As an Orthodox individual, any step I take outside of the mandates of halakhah, or Jewish law--whether in the sexual realm or any other realm--makes me queer.

Let me explain:  In general society, which is heteronormative, "queer" is juxtaposed with "straight" in thinking about sexual identity. However, in the Orthodox Jewish community, halakhah defines the norm, or the "straight", and the acts marginalized by halakhah leave a large space open for the queer, including heterosexual individuals.

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Israel is facing an economic crisis of truly epic proportions, but even though its immediate cause is the declining dollar and the crisis now gripping US financial markets, its roots lie in Mea Shearim quarter, not on Wall Street.

Every year, Israeli ultra-Orthodox charities raise almost $1 billion abroad. That money is used to support soup kitchens, food pantries, organizations like ZAKA, and the ultra-Orthodox school system, including yeshivas and kollels. Kollels are yeshivas for married men. And herein lies the problem.

70% of ultra-Orthodox married men choose not to work.  Instead, they study in kollel. They are each given a stipend from the kollel that amounts to about $300 per month. Their families subsist on government welfare benefits, aid from various ultra-Orthodox charities, and whatever else the mothers of seven (or more) children are able to earn in their “spare” time.

This planned unemployment – which often lasts well into a man’s forties – is a tremendous drain on government resources. It is also a tremendous drain on charities which, one way or another, are compelled to support it.

Dirt Poor: in the city of goldExcept for those few lucky kollel students with rich parents or in-laws, these families live in real poverty, packed together in small, aging apartments, worried about their childrens' next meal.

Why would anyone voluntarily do this? Because their rabbis told them to.

For a generation, ultra-Orthodox rabbis have ordered their followers to study at all costs. From the rabbis’ perspective, it is easy to see why.

Kollel students are exempt from army service, which not only keeps them off the battlefield – it keeps them out of the army, where they would surely mix with and befriend non-ultra-Orthodox Jews. This could, in the rabbis’ view, lead to a weakening of faith.

In the same way, because kollel students do not leave their ultra-Orthodox enclaves for work, they do not mix with non-ultra-Orthodox coworkers.

On top of that, at the rabbis’ direction the ultra-Orthodox do not study in universities. This keeps them blissfully ignorant of modern science, philosophy, and history – all things that could easily lead an ultra-Orthodox person to question his faith. It also keeps them away from secular members of the opposite sex.

In other words, kollel study combined with an enforced lack of secular knowledge serves as a buffer from modernity, the mortal enemy of ultra-Orthodoxy.

Of course, that's not how the rabbis sell kollel study to their followers. Instead, it's presented as a religious obligation: it is holy, work is not. Work is a last resort, something to be done only if there is no other option left, and then only if the rabbis agree.

For years this system survived because the government partially supported the kollels, supported the kollel families through child allowances and other welfare benefits, and because American Jews donated money.

But the government cut back on those child allowances. And then, the worst happened – the US dollar went into a tailspin.

Dollars are worth about 20% less today than they were a year ago. That  means, all things being equal, these charities have 20% less to spend for the needy.

But all things are not equal.

Because of worldwide economic uncertainty, the amount of dollars coming in has also dropped – how much, no one is yet sure – but Israeli ultra-Orthodox charities report their net incomes are down about 30%.

Israel’s ultra-Orthodox non-profits were already stretched to the breaking point before this economic downturn. Now many are cutting back on services. Soup kitchens are serving smaller portions and even skipping meals. The newly needy are not finding help.

Despite all of this, the rabbis have not changed their call: ultra-Orthodox men are still expected to study full time.

Even if ultra-Orthodox rabbis would tell their followers to go find jobs, few would be employable. These men have spent their lives in a school system that did not teach them science, history, civics, English, modern Hebrew, or even math. They lack the skills necessary for all but the most menial jobs.

And, because so few ultra-Orthodox men now work, that means few create jobs that could be filled by other ultra-Orthodox.

Welfare payments are a major issue fought over by ultra-Orthodox politicians and the beleaguered public servants who try to keep Israel’s budget on an even keel. Entire governments have been held hostage by small ultra-Orthodox political parties demanding increases in these welfare payments. Those small parties’ threats to leave the governing coalition would force new elections.

When Israelis think of welfare, they tend to think of "welfare cheats."  In their minds, these are the ultra-Orthodox, who do not serve in the army, who often do not pay taxes, and who take from the country in so many ways without giving back.

None of this is meant to excuse Israel’s attitude toward its poor who are not poor-by-choice – or, more accurately, poor-by-their-rabbis’-choice. These unfortunate people are expected to subsist on welfare payments so low, many go hungry. It is not at all uncommon to see elderly begging for food on the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Israel also has its homeless, many of whom are not mentally ill or substance abusers – they’re just poor.  The country could go a long way to rectifying this situation by outlawing welfare payments to able-bodied men above the age of twenty-one who choose to study in kollel rather than work or serve in the army. That would free resources that could be used to help the truly needy, and could also be used to ease the ultra-Orthodox transition to work by providing job training and internship programs.

None of these changes would stop ultra-Orthodoxy from itself supporting its true scholars and allowing them to study in kollel for many years – perhaps for their entire lives.

Ultra-Orthodoxy treats its rabbis like popes, infallible and exceedingly wise, with a direct line to the Divine Will. But, like every cataclysmic event to befall the Jewish people in recent memory – the Russian pogroms of the 1880s; the upheavals and slaughters of World War One; and, of course, the Holocaust –  the rabbis did not see it coming. They did not prepare their followers for the day after Wall Street’s collapse any more than they did for  the collapse of the Austrio-Hungarian Empire or the Nazi Holocaust.

After each of those earlier tragedies, large numbers of ultra-Orthodox left the fold. Chances are, some of them were your ancestors.

Will that happen now?

It would, I think, if ultra-Orthodox defectors were given the necessary support to transition from their closed communities to secular society, where a strong back and a willingness to work hard is no longer enough to get by. But without that support, these potential defectors will remain trapped in ultra-Orthodoxy, dependent on ultra-Orthodox charities for subsistence.

That is why you can expect ultra-Orthodox rabbis to fight any attempt to provide widespread job training or secular education for their followers.

It is also why the problem of Israel’s poor-by-choice will not go away any time soon.

From: Matthue Roth
To: Marty Beckerman
Subject:  Chaos and Creation

Marty,

I have the advantage of writing fiction, if we're making it a contest, and the biggest advantage of fiction is that "flaws" don't count. I don't mean flaws in spelling or when characters inexplicably pop up in the middle of scenes -- I'm talking about the emotional rawness and the fundamental awkwardness that authors have, which translates to the perfection of awkwardness and rawness that our characters have.

Case in point: My first novel, Never Mind the Goldbergs, is about a self-assured 17-year-old Orthodox girl who's punk-rock, confident, sassy and in-your-face -- basically, everything that I wanted to be at 17 that I absolutely wasn't. Four years later, I look back at Hava and I'm simultaneously wincing and kvelling. I was never that sure about anything in life -- not my religion, not my music, not even my attitude about myself. And then I started reading the reviews. People said I made her perfectly flawed, that I built up her bubble, and then popped it. The reviews were complimentary, but I was horrified. I was like, She's not egotistical! She's the coolest person I always wanted to fall in love with! It was great. My image of perfection imploded on itself, and apparently I learned how to create a tragic protagonist.

Never Mind the Goldbergs: by Matthue RothMy new novel, Losers, is almost the direct opposite. Jupiter Glazer, the main character, is shy and "gawkward" and insecure. He's Russian, and his English comes out sounding like muddy puddles of glop. In one of the first chapters, this girl teaches him how to flirt by teaching him how to lose his accent, and it's a scene I'm hugely proud of -- not because it's masterful or well-structured or anything, but because, well, Jupiter is so overwhelmingly bad at whatever he does.

"Okay, let me try. Um. Did you hear how you said dropped? You swallowed up the O, you rolled the r, and you squish the p and d together at the end. Listen to the way I said it, just from what you remember."
I said it.
"Now try it slower." She said dropped again, in slow motion. I repeated her. She shook her head no. Then she reached over and took my hands in hers.
She lifted them to her face. I could feel my entire body heating up, the knuckles between my fingers stiffening. She placed them gently on her cheeks and throat.
"Feel the way I say it."
"Say it."
"Dropped."
"Draah-ppeht," I echoed her. I felt ludicrous saying it, being made to say that same word again and again. I felt like a domesticated parakeet. I cleared my head: I couldn't second-guess myself now. I felt like I was on the brink of learning some forbidden knowledge, standing on the precipice of this giant mountain that was going to be the rest of my life.
"Once more," Tonya said, smiling at me. "Say it."
"Again?" I asked.
Tonya nodded.
"When I move, you move," she said. My hand tensed into her cheek. She squeezed my fingers, enthusiastically, supportively. Her mouth convulsed, danced through the word like a ballerina in slow motion, vogueing and pirouetting each step in one one-hundredth of normal speed, slowed down beyond the range of any normal household DVD player, moving and reacting to every microsyllable in the word.
I said it again. The moment felt like hours in my head, every part of every sound. My mouth imitated hers. For the merest fraction of a second, my mouth became hers, more vivid than a 3-D movie, more intimate than making out. And it sounded, it felt, absolutely perfect.
"Just like that?" I asked her.
She smiled. "Just like that."

I did it Elmore Leonard-style: wrote fast and took out whatever parts bored me. Is this imperfection as art? Freezing every moment in time, every mistake, cherishing every potential dorky or inappropriate gesture, word, or facial expression, and saying, Well, I meant it at the time.

I prefer to think of it as "Parker Lewis Syndrome." Parker Lewis, if you don't know, was the protagonist of the early-‘90s comedy Parker Lewis Can't Lose, an exquisitely weird show about this kid who wore paisley button-down shirts and made obtuse references to Twin Peaks episodes, but -- for some wildly improbable reason -- was the most popular kid in the town where he lived. It wasn't that he was rich or smart or talented; he didn't even really have a girlfriend. Instead, it was some indefinable combination of wackiness, iconoclasm, and chutzpah that endeared him to each one of the town's stereotypical teen-groups in a different way, from the jocks (who protected him) to the nerds (who helped him hack into the school computer system, although I seem to remember Parker being an expert hacker on his own) to the indy-rockers who played as the backing band when he finally went on a date.

It was being in the right place at the right time; it was the essence of je ne sais quoi, a phrase that we love to throw around and never think about the fact that it has no meaning. Maybe it's Divine intervention; maybe it's that the girl I'm crushing on is fully confessionally drunk the same night that I am. It's dumb luck.

I always wanted to be a Parker Lewis. Instead I ended up being a Jupiter Glazer: bumbling, fumbling, unapologetically trying to be someone I'm not and failing. When Goldbergs came out, people asked if it was autobiographical. Was it autobiographical? Did I want it to be autobiographical? The truth was probably a bit of both. Losers is a whole other side of me: the frank, tearfully honest, and painfully embarrassing side. The part that tumbles out before you have a chance to think about it or analyze at all, and then everyone's staring at you, and all you can really say is: Yeah, I said it.

What do you think of that?

Marty Beckerman, author of Dumbocracy, and Matthue Roth, author of Losers, are blogging together on Jewcy, and they'll be here all week.  Stay tuned.

To: Marty Beckerman
From: Matthue Roth
Subject: From one freak to another

Marty,

You're right. I know I shouldn't admit you're right -- I am, after all, one of those fundamentalist zealots you're talking about -- but the fact is, religion often gives people an excuse for idiocy.

It's not what Jewish Law is supposed to be. Jewish Law is supposed to place the responsibility on the individual -- if you screw up, you're culpable to God. But that's not how it plays out in contemporary religion. Instead, we let rabbis and priests tell us what the books say. When the religious leaders have that power, either through ignorance or a lack of dissent, the power has a tendency to get abused. The attitude is that, as long as you have a rabbi saying something's okay, you're covered. Some of them -- again, not most -- have learned to manipulate the system, and they use their power for no good, or even straight-up evil.

You proposed that there's a link between the degree of someone's fundamentalism and his/her kink. I feel duly obliged to note that, in Judaism, many forms of consensual kink are both acceptable and welcomed (and many others are debatably acceptable).

The greater world likes to divide religious fundamentalists as either incredibly knowledgeable, having the entire Bible memorized, or as totally ignorant, only thinking what, like, Meir Kahane or Pat Robertson or Swami Prabhubada tells them to think.  The reality is more of a bell curve. There are people who don't know very much -- or who are the least fundamental of the fundamentalists -- who are struggling (in prayer, with a job, in life itself) just to keep up.

Then there are the people who are on top of everything. Some of those people are totally comfortable with their station in life. Some of them are even really good at it, and some are obsessed with condescension and moralizing, but you can find others who don't make it a central issue. In a weird way, it's kind of the same phenomenon that happened with cable TV and Internet music: we're decentralized now. You can find a community that shares your own interests, quirks, and even kinks.

But fundamentalism is not merely about sexuality. There are tzaddikim of every faith who run soup kitchens and strive for the betterment of humanity. Their every thought comes back to God, but we never see 99% of these people because they are too damn busy saving others instead of condemning others.

Religious people aren't the only ones who condemn the ills of society; that's actually a big part of your persona, and certainly the approach of many comedians. This morning, getting off the subway, I saw Chris Rock on a fifteen-foot-tall video screen, promoting his new HBO special. I couldn't help but notice that his physical movements and posturing were remarkably similar to yours in the Dumbocracy promo video.

I think it's more than coincidental. You and Rock both possess both a drive and confidence that what you're saying has weight, and, more directly, is both correct and needs to be said, but neither of you is totally sure you're the right guy to say it. I suppose if I were a better person, I'd call it modesty, but I actually think it's closer to awkwardness, as if you're unsure you can handle that responsibility. Rock has learned to cover it up better, but he's had more practice.

Marty Beckerman, author of Dumbocracy, and Matthue Roth, author of Losers, are blogging together on Jewcy, and they'll be here all week.  Stay tuned.

To: Matthue Roth
From: Marty Beckerman
Subject: Allow me to Freudian slip inside you

Matthue, 

Writers are not exactly well-adjusted people. Posters of Ernest Hemingway and Hunter Thompson used to hang over my desk, but one day I realized with sudden discomfort that two suicides constantly looked down at me as I worked. I've never read anything by David Foster Wallace -- the Internet and Jack Daniel's have ruined me for any book longer than three hundred pages, let alone a thousand -- but he's another writer who bailed on existence.

And yet, even though we're writers, neither one of us will commit suicide anytime soon. We have different reasons for this -- you're an Orthodox Jew who believes that suicide is murder, and I'm an egomaniac who would never selfishly deprive the human race of his boundless and necessary wisdom, roguish good looks, etc. -- but even well-adjusted writers need to analyze ourselves sometimes. We can't afford psychologists to guide us on our reflective journeys, of course, but at least we have each other.

Despite our aversion to self-destruction, we are pretty goddamned fascinating people. (At least I am; what's your name again?) Nobody understands an author quite like another author, and the public deserves to know the motivations and psychologies of its most gifted citizens. Therefore, Matthue (oh yes, that's your name), it's time for us to explore each other, probe each other... I just want to get inside of you and dig.

You are a self-described religious zealot, although quite different than most. You seem non-judgmental, and lacking in palpable sexual neuroses. Call me a snide coastal elitist, but I immediately associate religious extremism with sexual perversion; it seems as if every week another conservative preacher or politician gets in trouble for allegedly being a totally creepy pervert. I would make a list of all the prominent "people of faith" who have recently landed in hot water -- or, as the case may be, lukewarm lubricant -- for their peculiar interpretations of family values, but we only have a few hundred words per day for this discussion, not a few (hundred) thousand.

Sen. Larry Craig: A fine example of religious devotionIt seems like common sense that if you repress and vilify normal human sexuality, it's going to emerge in a warped or self-loathing form. Are ferocious gay-bashers who happen to love peen (Ted Haggard, Larry Craig, etc.) aware of their own hypocrisy, or is it a purely unconscious phenomenon? Are they sucked (get it?) into religious fundamentalism because they fear their true selves, or do they become fascinated by the "forbidden fruit" (get it?) after demonizing the behavior? In other words, which came first: the chicken, the egg or the giant heathen cock, which might or might not refer to the aforementioned chicken?

Am I oversimplifying? Am I wrong to presume a direct link between the degree of a person's religiosity -- especially the condemnatory, "shame on everyone but me" variety -- and the degree of his or her (but probably his) sexual weirdness? You are a passionate believer -- you base your entire life around religion -- and yet you strike me as a shockingly well-adjusted person... I mean, I've visited your house and didn't find a hidden dungeon or anything... so are you the exception or the rule? Or did I simply forget to look underneath the rug?

Full disclosure: I probably have a reputation as a "totally creepy pervert" who loves to say "shame on everyone but me" thanks to my past writings, but A) my girlfriend has completely domesticated me -- I'm less edgy these days than a Gillette Venus Vibrance Soothing Vibrations Razor for Women -- and B) I'm a humorist, not a moralist, and I'm obviously not a cleric or spiritual advisor. God help anyone who asks me for advice about... uh... God.

Marty Beckerman, author of Dumbocracy, and Matthue Roth, author of Losers, are blogging together on Jewcy, and they'll be here all week.  Stay tuned.

Bad Karma on the Kippur was created for Film Racing (www.filmracing.com), a 24-hour film contest where movies have to be written, cast, directed, edited and scored in less than a day!  The assigned theme of the contest was karma, and someone had to water a plant within the body of the short.  While most of the other films in the contest really hit the karma theme nail on the head, Alex Grossman, the writer and director, decided to go for a looser interpretation.  The film was a finalist in the competition, but really took on a life of it's own when someone posted it on YouTube, where it's garnered over 30,000 hits in just a few days.

CONVERSATION: Do you have similar tales of holiday scalping? Does Grossman's depiction ring true? Are synagogues just trying to survive? Is there something culturally perverted in the dynamic between American Jews and their houses of worship?

On Sunday, Jewish law killed a 55-year old American-Israeli man. Rabbi Yossie Raichik died of a lung infection. He was waiting in Israel, where he had lived for almost 30 years, for a transplant to replace his irreversibly damaged lungs. It could have saved his life. It did not because the donor organs that matched him did not arrive.

Raichick headed Chabad’s Children of Chernobyl project. Children of Chernobyl took children from the area around Chernobyl’s exploded nuclear reactor and brought them and their families to Israel for medical treatment. Raichik brought more than 2500 children to Israel during the 22 years since the disaster. He is said to have played a role in airlifting Jewish children out of Iran just after the revolution ushered in what became the Islamic regime.

Raichik’s transplant didn’t come because the donor’s family insisted on consulting with an unnamed leading Israeli ultra-Orthodox rabbinic expert before allowing the transplant. While the rabbi investigated, the woman’s heart failed and the organs – including the lungs that could have saved Raichik – were lost.  Raichik died soon after.

Unlike kidneys and livers, which if necessary can be removed immediately after cardiac death, lungs must be taken while the donor’s heart is still beating.  This means the only way to get lungs for transplant is to take them from patients who are brain stem dead, or from Chinese political prisoners killed by the government for their organs.

Orthodox rabbinic interpreters of Jewish law seem united in their opposition to the Chinese option, as everyone should be. But they are divided on the validity of brain stem death, and it was this divide that killed Yossie Raichick.

The Jerusalem Talmud, the older brother of the commonly studied and followed Babylonian Talmud, defines death as the complete, irreversible cessation of breathing. This is defined in two ways: 1) No discernible air exhaled or inhaled through the nose, and 2) No respirations discernible by intently studying the navel area (i.e., the diaphragm).

Manuscript versions of the Babylonian Talmud follow this reading, including the versions used by leading medieval scholars like Isaac Alfassi, Nachmanides, Rabbi Asher ben Yechiel, and many others.

But one medieval scholar living in what was then the remote hinterland of Jewish communities had a manuscript with a different reading. Unfortunately for Raichik and many others, that scholar was Rashi, and Rashi wrote what is considered the seminal commentary on the Talmud. When the printing press came into use hundreds of years after Rashi’s death, Rashi’s commentary was printed alongside the main text of the Babylonian Talmud.

Rashi’s version of the Talmud replaced the word “navel” with the word heart, so death was defined by complete cessation of breathing and heartbeat. Printers apparently amended the text of the Talmud to match Rashi’s commentary.

Rashi’s opinion makes most transplants impossible.

For hundreds of years, Jews determined death by placing a feather at the nostrils and intently watching for signs of breathing. If there were none after a few minutes, the person was declared dead.

(This was by no means foolproof. Rarely, faint breathing was missed by the observers. This sometimes led to ‘corpses’ “coming back to life” in their coffins.)

With the advent of modern medical technology came ventilators and cardiac resuscitation devices. Suddenly, stopped hearts could be restarted and lungs too weak to breathe adequately on their own could be assisted.

These and many other advanced medical treatments have allowed very physically compromised people to live, and some eventually to recover.

Eventually, improved medical technology brought the potential for organ transplantation. But along with organ transplantation came a renewed concern about how to determine when a person is really, truly dead.

Medical science uses brain stem death to define death in applicable cases. Brain stem death is like decapitation. Without a living brain stem, a person can never breathe independently. He can never regain consciousness. He can never function in any way, however compromised. And, like decapitation, brain stem death is irreversible.

If a brain-stem-dead patient is removed from his ventilator, his body will make no visible or measurable effort to breathe, and his heart will fail.

Based on this, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein (d. 1986), the leading American ultra-Orthodox rabbi of his era, accepted brain stem death as death, allowing viable organs to be taken from brain-stem-dead patients.

But many Israeli ultra-Orthodox rabbis disagreed. Even with special tests devised to prove lack of both spontaneous breathing and lack of brain function, these rabbis refused to accept brain stem death as death.

Why?

In the words of nonagenarian ultra-Orthodox leader Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv – posted across Jerusalem and published in ultra-Orthodox papers in late March after Israel passed an organ donation bill recognizing brain stem death as death – “[A]s long as the heart is still pumping blood, even in the case of 'brain death,' it is not permitted to remove any organ from the patient.” And, under banner headlines proclaiming, “Thou Shalt Not Murder!,” Elyashiv and his followers called reliance on brain stem death “murder.”

It was those words that apparently caused the donor’s family to delay donation, and it was those words that apparently caused the leading ultra-Orthodox rabbi they asked for advice to himself delay.

Taking Elyashiv’s position to an illogical extreme, it could be argued that a decapitated person with a beating heart and a surgically closed neck wound is fully alive, even though headless. Indeed, two rabbis, Hershel Schachter and J. David Bleich, both associated with Manhattan-based Yeshiva University’s right wing, have done just that. To them, the complete absence of a head does not signify death. Schachter is to Modern Orthodoxy what Elyashiv is to ultra-Orthodoxy – the top guy.

Speaking at an Orthodox medical ethics conference in 2006, Schachter makes significant errors of medical fact, avers that heart and lung transplantation is murder  – even though he acknowledges the donor’s entire brain may be irreversibly dead – and misrepresents the original decision of Israel’s Chief Rabbinate permitting such transplants. In response to a question from a physician, who asks Schachter if he permits Jews to take a donated heart when that heart has come from, in Schachter’s opinion, a “murder,” Schachter answers by saying many rabbis permit taking these organs because the “doctors” will “murder” the patient anyway.

The truth, however, is significantly different. The only organs removed from a donor are organs for which there is a recipient match within the immediate geographic area. If no such match exists, no organs are taken. Schachter and many of the other rabbis who permit taking organs but not donating organs must be aware of this. They simply ignore the truth out of expediency.

It would be one thing if Elyashiv, Schachter, and their followers refrained from accepting donated organs. But they don’t. While forbidding donating organs, Elyashiv and Schachter have said nothing about not taking them. Their followers who need organs take organs, often displacing people on recipient lists who are, themselves, potential donors registered with various organ donation programs, including the Halachic Organ Donation Society.

This, along with the traditional Jewish desire to bury the body intact, has caused a dire shortage of organs in Israel. This shortage is made worse because Israelis cannot get organs from many other countries. Why? Because of the shortage, Israel cannot provide those countries with anything like reciprocity. Israelis are seen as takers of organs but not as givers. If not for the unusual generosity of the United States, Israelis would have few places to turn.

This perception of Jews as organ takers but not givers extends to communities worldwide with large Orthodox communities. This has sparked fears that countries will start banning all Jews, not just Israelis, from receiving donated organs.

Elyashiv and his fellow travelers claim they object to brain stem death because they want to protect the sanctity of life, and this may be the case.  But medical science has advanced exponentially since the Talmud was compiled in the 8th century. Just as Orthodox Jews benefit from those advances, the Jewish law they follow needs to take these advances into account. Just as we do not mix the potions described in the Talmud to cure illness, and we do not follow its diet recommendations to promote health, we should not be basing something as important as death on 1300 year old Talmudic science – or on a 500 year old printer’s error.

Yossie Raichik’s donor died. So did Yossie Raichik. It didn’t have to be that way.

Well folks, my summer of traveling just ended with a brief visit to my ancestral home of Omaha, Nebraska.  Despite the fact that I was there for ostensibly professional reasons (I was honored to participate in the fantastic annual Omaha Lit Fest, which is turning into quite a major event) the trip was fraught as usual with the ghosts of the past; despite the disconcerting presence of a new American Apparel, it’s still my hometown, and being there, I couldn’t help but reflect on my childhood and adolescence, and for probably the millionth time, what it was like growing up Jewish in a place where being Jewish is still at least semi-weird.

I’ve written extensively about this (it’s so comfortable to revisit postions we’ve already taken, isn’t it?) and I’m not going to go into my personal experience here; if you’re interested, you can read my book.  But being home reminded me of a strange little news item I caught sight of a couple of weeks ago, and have since meant to call to your attention.

Blumberg Family Jewish Community Services is offering Jewish families as much as $50,000 to relocate to Dothan, Alabama—a town of 58,000 known as the Peanut Capital of the World (although I think a few towns in Georgia might dare to differ).  It's a kind of yiddische Homestead Act set smack in the cradle of Dixie, and the terms are simple: the families stay at least five years, become active in the local synagogue, Temple Emanu-El, and the money never has to be repaid.  

Jews in the South are nothing new, and historically, were in some ways more visible and prominent than their co-religionists in the North.  The oldest continual Jewish community in the United States is in Charleston, South Carolina, where a group Portuguese Jews first settled 300 years ago.  Judah Benjamin, Secretary of State of the short-lived Confederate States of America was a Jew (a fact conveniently forgotten by so many of today’s good ol’ boys who proudly emblazon the Stars and Bars on the sides of their pick-up trucks and semi-automatic weapons); and during my stopover in the Memphis airport on my way back to New York, I counted as many yarmulkes as one might see in, if not New York, than certainly Chicago. 

Today, more Jews than ever—almost 400,000—are making their homes in the South, but they tend to be Northern transplants clustered in urban areas like Atlanta and Birmingham (rather than in the kinds of towns we Yankees are used to viewing in sepia toned movies, accompanied by haunting shots of live oaks draped in Spanish moss and the sound of somebody throatily humming the word “Jesus” over and over again off screen—a sure sign in the language of film that something bad, sinister, and racially tinged is about to happen.)  As a result, small-town synagogues are closing, and once close-knit communities have dissolved.  In the article I read, a woman named Thelma Nomberg, who grew up in nearby Ozark and was the only Jewish student in the region’s public schools in the 1940’s put it simply: “We are dying.”

This is undoubtedly true and painful to the men and women watching their communities wither and disappear, and the Blumberg organization is to be commended for their attempt to recognize and revitalize the history and heritage of the Jewish South.

That said, I can’t help but feel that the city elders of Dothan, who have expressed enthusiasm about the plan, have slightly different motives here.  

As someone who grew up in a rural state (admittedly not Southern, but a population of 58,000 is practically a megalopolis for some parts of Nebraska), I feel I can safely say that the death of small town America is hardly an exclusively Jewish problem.  Jews may have disappeared from small towns, but so have people.  As big-box retailers curtail and eventually murder local businesses, as factories shut down, as opportunities grow ever scarcer, talented and ambitious young people take flight, seeking their fortunes elsewhere, and never come back. 

They call it the brain drain.  Left behind are the elderly and those with few other options. To survive, such towns (and I’m not speaking of Dothan in particular, but depressed areas in general), require new residents with the skills and energy to attract business rather than drive it away, and in some cases, radically remake the fabric of the community. In the Midwest, a new influx of Latino immigrants has helped to correct some of the imbalance, bringing new vitality to stagnant areas, but in the conservative South where xenophobic fervor tends to run high, this option is perhaps seen as less tenable.  

You need a middle class?  Bring in the Jews.  Any student of Jewish history might feel a faint quiver of recognition.

In the twelfth century, when Jews were massacred and eventually expelled from England and France, the Polish prince Boleslaus III had an idea: why not invite them to Poland?  He was struggling to transform his country into a mercantile culture, Jews were educated and good with money and needed a place to live.  At the time, Lithuania, which comprised much of Poland was still officially a pagan state (it would remain so until 1386, when Poland offered its crown to the Lithuanian Grand Duke, and was the last country in Europe to Christianize); there would be no significant religious obstacle from its people.  Rich in resources and underdeveloped, Poland was ready and waiting for the beleaguered and brainy Hebrews.  

Casimir the Great: good for the jewsAs they say in Fiddler on the Roof, it was a perfect match.  Over the next two hundred years, Jews flooded into Poland, almost exclusively forming the middle class—a liaison between the agrarian peasants and the cultured aristocracy.  The odd flare-up of anti-Semitic violence certainly occurred, but compared to the horrors Jews had endured in Crusades-mad Western Europe, these hardly seemed reason for pause.  In 1264, Boleslaus the Pious issued the Statute of Kalisz, which officially granted all Jews the freedom of worship, travel, and most importantly, trade.  Poland became the center of Jewish life in Europe, culminating under the beloved proto-liberal Casimir the Great (1303-1370) who expanded Jewish rights and protection to such an extent that he was known as “Casimir, King of the Serfs and Jews.”  

Unfortunately, if you’ll remember, it went downhill, or we’d all be speaking Polish right now.  

Thus far, Dothan has not proved nearly as attractive to urban Jews as medieval Poland, and unless the approximately seventeen gentiles in Great Neck lose their minds and start a riot against the Silvermans next door, this seems unlikely.  But the Jews who have settled in Dothan seem to find an extremely hospitable place.  As Rabbi Lynne Goldsmith of Temple Emanu-El points out: “The Northeast has a very warped perception of what the South is all about….the South is a wonderful place to be.  The people are warm and friendly.  There’s very little traffic, and best of all, there’s no snow.”

Let’s just hope she’s singing the same tune 500 years from now.