The Jewolic (2 page)

3

The Pontiff of Yontif

I figured that there were enough religions in the world and I should be able to sort it out and pick one or none, if that’s the direction I so chose. But if I did select one whilst in my formative years, it certainly would be one that had no requirements or obligations on my part, especially back-to-back school.

I oft accompanied Gram to Temple on Friday nights, where they would serve grape juice in fake wine glasses and some nice flaky cake thing. I ate cake as Gram proudly introduced me to her friends as she measured me for a Bar Mitzvah suit.

“Gut Yontif,” each said, as they greeted me, while measuring my height relative to the prior week. For the first three weeks I stealthily slouched
to render a shorter than actual appearance. On subsequent weeks, I stood on my toes and created a mitzvah as to how much I had grown. At home we used the traditional pencil markings on the doorway to measure height. Occasionally, when the mood struck, I erased my younger brother’s mark and raised it, ever so slightly, to convince him that he was shrinking. Alas, I digress.

“Gut Yontif,” I mumbled
through some flaky cake thing in my mouth, later learning that it meant
happy holiday
. I even went inside and listened to the Rabbi, which allowed me sufficient time to think about Eileen Silverman, a comely lass who sat behind me in the third grade. Gram kept inviting me to Temple on holidays and an occasional Friday night and, as long as they had the flaky cake thing, I’d tag along, slowly succumbing to the temptations of her recruiting drive. With the lure of the flaky cake thing and their plethora of Yontifs, it became immediately clear that the Jews had a flawless understanding of marketing. This would weigh heavily in my future deliberations.

In the interest of equal time, I accompanied Nonna, my
paternal grandmother of the Catholic kind, to Church one Sunday. I remembered that it was Easter Sunday because it fell two days after Good Friday, which most Jews considered the most sacred of holidays because of the unearned day off. I had even started a petition in my class to make Holy Thursday an official holiday as well. It didn’t pass but I had become very popular, particularly amongst Jews who got Good Friday off and now stood the possibility of harvesting Holy Thursday into a four-day obligation-free weekend. If it were my religion, I would require everyone to show an I.D. card with their religion on it before I would allow them to take days off. After suffering all those years in the deserts of Brighton Beach without sun block, no one is getting a free ride.

Allow me to interject that when I refer to Catholics, I am actually referencing all Christianity. In my small world, there was just Jewish and Catholic, so I ascribed all
things to one camp or the other. That included Santa Claus, who I have come to realize was not just Catholic but belonging to Christians everywhere. By the time I learned that there were more than two religions my brain had locked. It was binary, like politics, which I understood barely a smidgeon; you were either a Democrat or a Republican, whatever they were.

One was either Jewish or Catholic; I had not even considered that one could be neither; an atheist, because when you accept God’s existence as a fact, cast in stone, your thinking does not go beyond that belief. It was as if someone had told you that the color blue was actually not blue, but red, an incredulously abominable and scoffable notion. Blue is blue, red is red; God is God, end of story
.

Nevertheless
, I think the Catholics blew it when they put Easter on a Sunday and thereby lost even the remote possibility of a day off. Many Catholics argued that they did make up for the dedicated Easter Sunday with Good Friday, so it’s a wash. But Palm Sunday, a week before Easter Sunday cancelled out Good Friday; so the Catholics were down at least one spring day off at the very beginning of the season. Seemed like a case of bad planning. If I were running the Catholic Human Resources department, I would have made Easter a floater like Christmas and had five chances out of seven to get a day off. Better yet, I would have made Easter a Friday, ensuring a day off, with Good Thursday, Holy Wednesday, Joyful Tuesday and Pleasant Monday immediately preceding. Nice.

That said;
the Catholics still had the trump card with Christmas, the Super Bowl of holidays. The Jews tried to one-up Christmas by loading up with eight days of Chanukah, but even eight presents, usually comprised of a wallet, a shiny pen, a matching pencil, a hanky set, a dradle, another dradle and two new one dollar bills, could not compare with the anticipation of Santa Claus coming down the chimney and dropping off a transistor radio or train set or new bike. No one ever got a new bike on Chanukah, no one, ever. And, yes, they attempted other gift holidays like hiding the matzo on Passover; yet even that campaign did not work as it required too much effort and there was never a bike hidden with the matzo.

We did celebrate Passover. T
hat is, we went to my Uncle Irving and Aunt Selma’s apartment on Ocean Parkway because they had all those free Maxwell House Seder books. I lip-synched the entire service. I managed to score the matzo gift four years running by wrapping a matzo in a cloth napkin and producing my bogus matzo before anyone else found the real one. Uncle Irving outed me when I actually found the matzo before he had hid it. He demanded that I return the six dollars I had received for my prior victories but, aware that he wouldn’t mess with another religious pursuit, I told him that I had faithfully deposited it in my Christmas Club and planned to donate it to a Catholic boys club in his name. He didn’t push it.

Anyway, I was in C
hurch with Nonna and was awed by its size and beauty with its large intimidating columns. The heavenly light seeped through the intricate stained glass windows and swept across the audience like Twentieth Century Fox searchlights. I was looking forward to the show when the hymns began somewhere in the distance and the priest started speaking in Latin like the Exorcist. Nausea swept my body and I thought I was going to throw up on my Thom McCann shoes. Truthfully, and with all due respect, the Catholic Church scared the shit out of me. I still get queasy when I hear Latin.

Few decisions in life have such a profound bearing on one’s life
as choosing a religion. Clearly, the Jews had a much better understanding of proper holiday deployment, Christmas notwithstanding, but they blew it with the Hebrew School thing.

Nevertheless, I concluded that, if I had to pick a religion, the Jews had a slight
edge; but I was not quite ready to flip. After all, how often does one get to select his or her religion? This decision should not be done in haste. Most of the pressure to make a decision has originated from within, except, of course from Gram, who had assumed that the aforementioned picking was a mere formality as I was already committed by virtue of the
rule
.

In addition, I rationalized, h
aving one religion could be burdensome; yet, two may be beneficial. Using my multi denominational hybrid status to my advantage, I straddled religions as one would a potato latka, belonging to both, yet observing neither. Half lox, half pasta, I was bi-holy — a religious switch hitter.

So I embraced both but skewed Jewish because of the plethora of holidays, reducing my school year from one hundred and eighty days to a mere one hundred and fifty eight; a r
eduction of over twelve percent. I displayed my calculations to my math teacher for extra credit, who said that no matter how much extra credit I got, I still needed to take the tests, which happen to be given on Fridays, my pre-Sabbath day off. I muttered something about religious persecution and took the test that I aced on spite.

I managed to take off at least two holidays a month, regardless of denomination, once even pulling off the much-revered back-to-back Ash Wednesday and Purim combo. This was such a rare feat that I was elected class president and unofficial
Pontiff of the Yontif
; it was the perfect job for me: a position of esteem and no duties or requirements. I made business cards out of small rectangles of oaktag:

Glebe
Sixth Grade Class President,

PS 222
Brooklyn, 29, N.Y.

Occasionally, an errant teacher would challenge my observance:

“Glebe, please tell the class the meaning of Berrabat Tov Day.”

“Berrabat Tov Day,” I stood before the class and summoned all my reverence. I couldn’t very well tell them that it was a holiday I created to celebrate the confluence of Yogi Berra Appreciation Day and Bat Day — they should know that already. I scanned the class in the manner the rabbi did when I occasioned to Temple with Gram. I then prolonged an intermezzo to buy time and run through every Hebrew word that I ever heard my Gram utter, eliminating schmuck, putz and pissoff. One of the drawbacks of being brought up in a
Jewolic
house is the lack of Hebrew jargon but, to the untrained ear, Hebrew sounds much like gargling or nasal congestion.

I picked up a social studies book on Bolivia that lay very secularly on Teach’s desk and raised it over my head. For inspiration, I summoned images from the bible and I pictured Moses as he threw
the tablet at Edward G. Robinson. Then I congealed a wad of phlegm in my throat as I respectfully lowered my eyes and solemnly spoke in a harsh whisper:  “Baruch.”

“Baruch,” said I once more with passion. I waited. Then, for all the years of suffering without a TV in my bedroom, I uttered one more “Baruch.”

I lay the book down, pulled out a hanky and blew my nose to hasten the subject change. Then I muttered something about the years in the deserts of Fort Lauderdale, and closed my eyes for another long moment. I opened them slowly and declared my new found revelation: “I shall fight no more forever.” 

After another moment of silence, which, I have found, always heightens anticipation and the importance of that which follows, I whispered my closing: “Baruch.”

The class was silently awestruck. Feeling that the sanctity of the moment had given me carte blanche, I made eye contact with every girl on my list of future conquests, idling for an extra long moment on Eileen Silverman, who had blossomed quite adequately through grades three to six. I made a mental note to update my Eileen Silverman records that she had, in fact, acquired nubbins. Her blush told me that my heat ray had worked and, for that one moment, I considered becoming a rabbi.  I then nodded reverentially to the class, thanked Teach for the opportunity and took my seat. I wondered if this were the appropriate time to announce my prolonged absence for the upcoming Glebeocaust.

4

The Jew-lites

We considered ourselves Jew-lites, skirting the outer boundaries of religion. We observed in the most casual sense and attended the familial Seder and Jewish New Year, as required. We belonged, but only because one had to belong to something or one belongs to nothing. We never discussed it, but that’s the way it was. And even through the double weight of the
mother of the Jew rule
through Gram and mom, we still pretty much coasted through the religion thing. Except for Gram, who was kosher not counting her Kent habit, we did not practice Judaism in the house — or out of it for that matter.

But we
easily assimilated as Jews because we lived across the street from a Temple, affording us instant credibility. I showed my respect by refraining from playing stickball against the Temple wall on Saturdays. And, on the High Holy Days I oft donned on a clean shirt and sports jacket and positioned myself outside the Temple as the service ended where I would faithfully greet the exiting attendees of the teenage female persuasion.

Jew-lites or not, we were Jews nevertheless.

In spite of our alleged Jewishness and our proximity to the Temple, my parents, the offspring of both the Jew and non-Jew kind, hosted the biggest Christmas blast in Brooklyn. We had a tree, not one of those plastic trees, but one of the official Christmas trees that you buy in an official Christmas tree lot. Yes, the same kind of tree that Christ bought to celebrate his birthday. We decorated it with approximately twelve thousand lights of the blinking and sparking and bubbling variety, added some tinsel and polished it off with real official plastic spray snow. Beneath the tree stood about five hundred presents — any Jew would be proud of this tree. And then we threw a party, which started Christmas Eve and lasted through Christmas night. And, as a token to all faiths, my mom made sure that every child found a present from Santa and a chocolate dradle under the tree. It was clear to me that she was politicking so the Jews would adopt Christmas as their national holiday as well — a noble and worthy cause.

After some consideration, I began to realize that
mom, having the benefit of the
mother of the Jew
rule and being the
mother of the half-Jew
, was probably trying to blur the lines of religion. After all, she was a Jew married to a Catholic, so she must have straddled the religious lines quite often. Funny, she didn’t seem to mind or care.

On Sunday mornings, she host
ed a traditional Jewish breakfast of our forefathers — bagel, lox (secularly offering both belly lox and nova), pickled herring and whitefish et al. Somewhere around midday, whilst the menfolk watched the traditional football game, she shifted ethnic gears and prepared the most delicate and delicious pasta, pork dinner with the best pasta sauce in Brooklyn. Sunday meals always attracted a plethora of drop-ins and mom just naturally flowed from one to the other without concern. I admired her religious suppleness.

On Christmas, she was Christmassy; on Passover, she was Passovery.
She was a religious chameleon and somehow had conquered the religion conundrum. I wonder if she had the same oscillation as I. My father likewise adapted to the holiday of the moment with great ease. They seemed to straddle the religions without differentiation. My Jew mom was the foremost Christmas hostess and on Passover my Catholic dad donned a yarmulke with rabbinical aplomb. I took note.

My mom and dad
had effectively straddled and skirted this religion thing. It’s not that they didn’t believe in religion, in fact, they believed in religion so much that they had several of them.

Gram was a different story.
I don’t recall how I told Gram that a Bar Mitzvah was not in the cards because I never did. After not attending Hebrew School because I was busy not going to Hebrew School, it seemed like the logical conclusion. As I approached thirteen, she had dressed up every Saturday just in case she was to be invited to a surprise Bar Mitzvah. By the time I was fifteen, she hung her Bar Mitzvah dress in defeat, hopeful that my parents’ next offspring would be inclined differently. Defeated, she put on her housedress and resumed ironing. I guess I should have told her but I really didn’t want to disappoint her because she was always so good to me and she still had that bequest hanging over my head. Although I envisioned attending the reading of her will and being handed a bill to cover my outstanding warrants.

Every time that I thought that Gram was about to raise the B word, I preempted the dinner table conversation by casually mentioning to Pop that I was seriously considering changing my name to
Esteban, or becoming a lefty or a podiatrist.

“Pop, remember that B+ I told you about last night?”
I poured a little more scotch on his grapefruit.

Pop smiled proudly, anticipating another flurry of good news.

“Well, seems I erred a tad. It was actually a D+. Pass the potatoes and carrots.”

Pop froze mid potato and carrots, Mom’s face fell and Gram nearly choked on her meatloaf, knowing that she could not broach the
Bar Mitzvah subject that night as Pop was still digesting the misplaced B+.

The next night I would undo the diversion.

“Pop, remember that D+ I told you about last night.”

“The one that used to be a B+?”

“Yep. Seems I was mistaken again. It was actually a C+. Pass the spaghetti and ketchup. Thank you.”

He ketchuped me with a smile and an
attaboy
smirk and nod as he poured the extra shot of scotch on his grapefruit.

This turned out to become a pretty good strategy for telling my parents I had gotten a solid C+ in all my subjects from the sixth grade through college.
Consistency is the mark of champions. I even made a bumper sticker for my dad’s Buick:

Proud Parent of a Straight C+ Student

When Gram sensed that I was about to go into my C+ marketing routine she would have a coughing fit that sent her uppers sailing into the meatloaf. I would grab the uppers before they could eat much and tossed them back to her. She would inevitably drop them onto the floor. After a while she became adept at catching them so I added a little spin, sometimes mixing my delivery with a slider or knuckleball mixed with an occasional changeup, which completely destroyed her timing.

As she crawled under the table, I would continue my C+ campaign, trying to drown out her screams from below: “he gets C+ in everything, the kid is lazy. He would be smarter if he went to Hebrew School and was Bar . . ..”
Whereupon I would buy some silence by hovering my sockless big toe menacingly over her uppers.

On other occasions, when I sensed that she was about to broach the
Bar Mitzvah matter I would raise my brow indicating that I would squeal about her smoking in the house. Not that she wasn’t allowed to; I did, my father did, and my siblings probably smoked every time they walked the dog, a ploy I had mentored them on years earlier. She just didn’t want people to know that she smoked — one cigarette a day. Nevertheless, it was the only thing I had on her except for her freeloading, but so was I at the time. If it did come up, I could always fall back on my father’s quasi-Catholicism.

So here I was pseudo-Jew, leaving my adolescence, fully committed to my non-commitment.
Even though I hadn’t really decided, I was still Jew by association, which provided some outstanding features and benefits. Although I did not follow the religion, or even have more than a vague familiarity with the history and tradition beyond what I accumulated from the movies, and did not go to Hebrew School, and wasn’t Bar Mitzvahed, I belonged. I was tagged, labeled and packaged into my proper demographic cubbyhole like a Gen Xer, or a Democrat, or a baby boomer, or a college grad, or a lefty. Even though I was a doubter and didn’t really believe in religion, I was a Jew, perhaps the first agnostic Jew.

Now I had just one other small dilemma, I w
asn’t quite sure about this God thing.