These And These Are The Words of the Living God

I owe thanks to Anonymous, G, and R' Gil Student for recommending that I read The Dynamics of Dispute: The Makings of Machlokess in Talmudic Times by Rabbi Zvi Lampel. The book has proved invaluable to me.

CORRECTION: Contrary to what I had thought, in fact the book IS in print, in a brand new edition! It is available from Judaica Press, or should be available in your local Sefarim store.

There is one particular chapter that I think should be xeroxed and handed out to every single Jewish teacher in every elementary school, high school or other place of learning. This is the chapter on the meaning of "Eilu V'Eilu," namely the adage that "These and These Are The Words of the Living God." It is Chapter 11. Having had this fight as recently as last year with a teacher I otherwise highly esteem, this chapter beautifully answered my questions as to the ways in which this adage can be understood, and the correct (and incorrect) application thereof.

Lampel includes a review section which reviews the differing opinions of leading figures as to how to understand the meaning of "These and These." I have reproduced it below, although one really ought and must read the entire chapter to understand how these viewpoints are formulated (he carefully provides both the Hebrew text and English translation in order to demonstrate how these points of view are derived).

Review

The following is a brief summary of the explanations we have quoted for the meaning of "These and those are the words of the Living God."

Rav Yisroel Salanter: All valid attempts to reconstruct what Hashem told Moses are subsumed under the title of "Torah," including the opinions that are ultimately nullified as halacha.

The Yahm Shel Shlomo: Since a Sage's conclusions conform to sound logic, they are as valid and holy as the explicit words of Hashem. The kabballistic teaching that all souls were present at Mount Sinai and each perceived the Torah through one of forty-nine conduits supports this position.

Ritva (Eurvin 13a) and Tosefos Shantz (Aid'yos 1:5) cite another kabballistic teaching that Moses was shown forty-nine arguments to each side of an issue (totaling ninety-eight arguments to each issue) and was told that the decision was entrusted to the future Sages. We have suggested that we may here apply Rashi's understanding (Menachos 29b) that this happened prior to Moses' receiving the Torah. Thus, "These and those" positions conform to human logic and even the Will of Hashem before He prescribed the limitations and parameters of halacha.

Rashi according to our first understanding: Perceptions are subjective. Trust the perception of present reality determined by your authority, though another's perception may be different, because it is a true "reality."

Rashi according to our second understanding: The situations the Sages are ruling on are not really identical, and all authorities would agree on how to rule in any given time. Disputes across generations are only apparently disputes.

The Ohr Gedaliahu: There is a single unifying formula which really produces opposite results in different circumstances.

Drashos HaRan: Each opinion is potentially the official halacha, and the decided halacha is the one we must obey- whether it is true or false- because chances are that the decisions do conform to the "original intent" and the benefits we accrue by obeying the Sages outweigh and counteract the risk of harm.

Tosefos: Regarding opposite reports of past occurrences, there are elements even of Absolute Truth to each side of a machlokess, though one is dominant and the others recessive (the Maharal of Prague's concept of "They were all given by one Shepherd"). Whereas one version reports a tradition describing the actual event, the other reports a tradition of a strongly considered action.

Maharal of Prague: Two statuses are actually equally present. Neither one is recessive, neither one is dominant. This was true only of some machlokos, the first of which were those of Bes Shammai and Bes Hillel.

Rashi according to our third understanding: All the criteria and considerations introduced by disputing Sages play a role in determining absolute truth, although in each individual situation the aplicability of these factors changes, thereby changing the situation's status in terms of absolute truth. (However, such unstable and subtle considerations are too complex and cumbersome to be allowed in practical halachic decision-making, and opposite reports about the proper halacha and the proper criteria for determining it cannot both be correct.)

Conclusion

This review of how our classical commentators understood the adage "Eilu v'Eilu Divrei Elokim Chayim Heim, These and those are the words of the Living God," showed that there are different ways in which it could be understood. But we can state unequivically that according to all, neither Hashem when He originally established the halacha nor Moses when he transmitted it, stated more than one halacha for a given case. So far as the halacha l'maaseh, the practical law that we should follow is concerned, two or more opposing Sages cannot both be stating what their teacher, or teacher's teacher, or Moses or Hashem originally said.

If Hashem told Moses that the law is one way, someone saying otherwise simply does not conform to that law. In this aspect, we cannot say that he is "right." "These and those" does not mean that. Nor does it mean that two Sages disagreeing over the meaning of another Sage's statements are both conforming to his actual intention. If their opinions are mutually exclusive, then that just cannot be. And we cannot imagine that two students could be both correct if they disagree over what their teacher's very words were. The opposite statements could not have issued verbally from their teacher's mouth at the same time. In all such cases, someone must be mistaken.

~The Dynamics of Dispute, Chapter 11, pages 224-226

God's Plan

How strange to discover the way I've always felt in a book published in 1970. Our world and its creation, our scientific advances and everything about us in the end are for naught, quite like Ecclesiastes declares. We'll be brought to completion, the Messiah will come, and then a new world will dawn, with its new inhabitants, mission, and its own quest for the Messiah. And so it will happen, time and time again, for eternity.

~

"After what I heard in that courtroom," Abe said, "after learning what people can be made to do to people and after the holocaust seeing it still go on and on, I feel that we are wrecking our world beyond our ability to save ourselves. We have polluted our planet, and the creatures who live on it. I swear to God, and we have destroyed each other. I think we've run out of time, and space, and I think it's not a case of if it is going to happen, it's only a matter of when. And from the way we're behaving, I think God is getting very impatient."

"Oh, God is patient enough," Thomas Bannister said. "You see, we mortals are so pompous that we have deluded ourselves into believing that in all of eternity, and all of the vast universe, that we are the only ones who have undergone the human experience. I've always believed that it's happened here before, on this very earth."

"Here....how...?"

"Well, in God's scheme what is a few billion years, here and there. Perhaps there have come and gone a dozen human civilizations in the past billion years that we know nothing about. And after this civilization we are living in destroys itself, it will all start up again in a few hundred million years when the planet has all its messes cleaned up. Then, finally, one of those civilizations, say five billion years from now, will last for eternity because people will treat each other the way they ought to."

~QB VII by Leon Uris, 424-425

Squalor

There is an entire world we do not know and understand, and that is the world that exists in filth, in slime, in dust, in dirt, in squalor.

Squalor. The very meaning of the word is forbidden. We don't even show it in the movies. Carnage, yes, blood, yes, but artfully spattered blood, decorative and symbolic. A smudge across an iconic soldier's face. A carefully timed defiant yell. Where the life, the humanity, the slime, the dirt, the sewage, the feces, the filth, the vomit; where is everything that truly depicts life, in its darkest and ugliest moments?

In our appreciation of beauty, we must not forget the shocking ugliness that can be our lot. We don't understand people who live in shadows, in slime, in dirt; we have an obsessive desire for cleanliness. Even the Metro system here in New York, even the subway stops and the MTA for the most part, is clean in that way. One does not slog through swamps of filth, sleep in grimy clothes, not shower for weeks. One does not learn what it is like to feel like less than a human being...unless, of course, one is in the army or homeless. But there is an entire facet of life we don't understand and won't understand; it's the kind of thing that may appear to resonate, for a moment, in the luminescence of words as they sparkle on a page, but it will never truly resonate until we face our fear of...not the painful, but merely the grotesque, the disgusting, the leper with his oozing sores, suppurating and pus-filled, the drunkard lying in his vomit. The colorful scenes of life we have tried to hide away in our desire to provide a cleanliness that manages to sterilize our world. To be clean is no crime; to try to sterilize life is. Because life is sometimes lived best in these raw, ugly moments, with the blood and pus and dirt and scum and slime.

We are privileged here in America and most of us will never even know how privileged because we'll never venture somewhere that doesn't have a shower, running water, and other methods to retain cleanliness. That's not a sin; it's merely a fact. What it means is that a whole aspect of the human experience has been closed off from us, that we simply do not understand squalor. Ugly, disgusting, filthy, loathesome, suppurating squalor...and yet, that too is part of life. And as we fail to understand that, we also fail to understand other natural functions, such as the mother giving birth; that too becomes covered in our queasy layer of detachment and desire for sterilization, to know as little as possible about the body, its functions, its crevices and nooks and crannies, its glistening layers of tissue, its beautiful construction.

There is beauty even in squalor, even if it be the too-cloying scent of a rotting fruit on its way to decay which simultaneously attracts as well as repels. And certainly, certainly in every natural life function there is a great and terrible beauty, human fluids or feces or other secretions notwithstanding.

Would if we had a world that understood natural functions and did not feel pressed to hide them away....hiding away the slaughter of an animal, the flies feasting on its dead body, subsequent decay...smells we cannot bear because we are no longer used to them, having replaced them with the polluted scent of smoke and artificial spray...it's not that everyone should walk around painted in blood, with dirt on one's hand and nose, but there should be an appreciation for the natural and the way the world works, even if, due to our weak dispositions, we have chosen to hide that ugliness far away.

Parents

When first we come into the world, we do not see them as separate from us. Indeed, the only reason they exist is because we do. Their functionality is entirely dependant upon ours. Our god and goddess, Mother and Father, grant us everything we need- safety, security, love, food, someone to hold us close when we are scared and to comfort us when the night comes creeping in. Indeed, some of us believe they truly are immortal. I myself believed that parents never got sick. I had never seen my mother sick, and the first time I did, evidenced by the tissues floating around her bed and the used box of Kleenex beside her, I will never forget the horror and doubt that assailed me. Could that be she? Could it be her? And terrified, I did not know what to do. My fear knew no bounds. If Mommy could get sick, then the world had shattered. And this was not something that only happened when I was younger, 10 or so, but any time my parents suddenly became human, less than entirely capable, crying out in pain. For one who expected her parents to act as caregivers, I did not understand their ability to exist outside myself, to feel pain that was not mine, to have lives I did not know about, a past I did not understand.

There comes that moment for all of us, that break with the reality we thought we knew as we walk into one which is murkier, darker. With our parents, it is perhaps the strongest, that moment in which we suddenly step outside ourselves and realize these are people, too, people who have been shaped and who have had the forces of the world act upon them, people as weak and strong and fickle and stubborn as I, who have been hurt in much the same manner. Yet they chose, did they not, to get married anyway, and to bring me into the world, and so it becomes my duty and desire to learn as much as I can about them in my desire to understand, to delve into a world ever becoming clearer, to begin to know who they are beneath that surface- who these people whom I can almost see might be.

And it is on that journey of discovery, of understanding who one's parents are and how their past has affected them, changed them, molded them, that you also come to understand yourself. Learning about them leads to a sense of compassion, sensitivity, that you did not have before during all your fights and angry outbursts, when all you could see was the controlling figure and the one being controlled, the person protesting against your being fresh when you had no idea what they were referring to, the authorizer and authenticator. Suddenly you see a little boy behind the man's eyes, the little girl behind the woman's, and a wave of sadness and nausea overtake you and quietly, you learn to act better, or differently at least, because you are seeing the people, finally, the ones who do not quite let you know them all the way, for there must always be boundaries in a relationship like yours, but who nevertheless allow you glimpses, so that you catch what is remarkable and hide it away.

Far be it from you to ever remark upon it! Your parents will forever remain a source of contention, disgrace, and alternatively pride, but you will not give them the satisfaction of knowing it. The way you talk about them when they are not present is rarely the way you talk to them face-to-face; your anger or fury overtakes you then, at that times when you are fighting, and you say vile things, hurtful things, and later you are ashamed but won't take it back so as to save face. When you don't understand your parents, you tend to be less careful of them, and less able to see them truly. You don't understand what's making your mother act this way, or why your father won't permit you to do this simple thing that everyone else's parents allow them to do. You don't understand and you find it hurtful, and so you retaliate- because you haven't looked deep enough.

For everything there is a reason. One doesn't necessarily always know the reason; it's difficult to find, difficult to search out. But there's a reason people are the way they are, and that reason can be as divergent as drugs or genes or compassion or the lack thereof or growing up during hard times. Now, that reason may lead to different people. There's no book that explains that better than Stephen Chbosky's the perks of being a wallflower, where he says:

"But it's like when my doctor told me the story of these two brothers whose dad was a bad alcoholic. One brother grew up to be a successful carpenter who never drank. The other brother ended up being a drinker as bad as his dad was. When they asked the first brother why he didn't drink, he said that after he saw what it did to his father, he could never bring himself to even try it. When they asked the other brother, he said that he guessed he learned how to drink on his father's knee. So, I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if we don't have the power to choose where we came from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them."

~the perks of being a wallflower, 211

Now, some people have the luck to be able to do that, and some people don't. But people don't just sprout up out of the ground fully-formed and act as they do without there being some kind of reason behind it, whether it's the wiring in their brains or the way they were trained up to be. The point is, once you understand the reason behind why they act the way they do, it's a lot easier to be tender towards them, because now you're on the same page. And you're no longer facing a controlling adult, but rather someone who was beaten up and bruised and hurt badly by this world, just like you're being hurt by it, and came up with some solutions and some answers and some ways to take on the world because of it. And maybe those weren't the right ways, but those were the ways he figured out, and the ones he's teaching you, and you're going to have to figure out one day whether those ways work for you, and decide to walk his path or a different one...so long as you're tender about it.

It's the ones you love best that you hurt the most, for "each man kills the thing he loves," as Wilde said. That's possibly the saddest passage of the whole poem; it resonates often in my mind.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.

Who do we hurt more than those whom we trust to forgive us for it? One wouldn't upset a potential employer at a job interview, or someone you'd just met, because that wouldn't be logical. But one's parents? One's family or friends? It's easy to hurt them, because they'll take you back anyway. And sometimes it's worth it to wonder- do I know them? Do I know this man I'm yelling at; do I understand this woman? Do I really know them? Do I know what their hopes and dreams were, whether they were able to fulfill them and what they had to give up in order to have me and take care of me? If you stop a minute and get to know these people, you'll generally feel a much stronger element of respect for them, because you'll learn about the sacrifices they made, the things they lost, the dreams that were shattered. A human's not human unless he's lost something he loved- everyone loses something. It changes as we grow. We can lose our sense of comfort, of home, objects that we cherish, people, lovers. But we all lose something, and that very loss changes us remarkably and forever. What did your parents lose? What made them the way they are?

One is not meant to be friends with one's parents. That's disrespecting the bond and the relationship that exists between you and them. There is a certain respect that is owed them, a certain sense of authority that is always theirs. But it is worth it to take the time to look into their eyes- hard eyes, sad eyes, sweet eyes, whatever kind of eyes they have- and try to listen, to really see them, to attempt to understand them. You'll never feel a blow like the blow you have that night, after you've finished, after you've finally understood, taken in and understood, what it is they've done for you and because of you. The medical school they weren't able to attend, the man your mother didn't marry, the things that broke her heart or the dreams that her friend was able to fulfill while she stood by, always the onlooker. Everyone has a story and it's a different story. They're not all the same, but everyone has their personal sadness, their personal grief, the things that made them who they are, with the ideas they advance, the way they go about marking out your life. And though you may not agree with them and hell, they may even be completely wrong, it follows that they are generally trying the best they can.

So...would you say you know your parents? Do you want to? Have you ever thought about what made them the way they are, which authors influenced them, which musicians they admired, the politics they followed, the people they would have accompanied to the ends of the earth? Who or what did they love most, and what did they want most? Were they privileged and lucky enough to get it? If not, how did the lack of it change them, making them who they are today?

There are all kinds of parents, and just like us, they don't always get everything right. But we owe it to them to take the time to try to listen and to try to act tenderly towards them- tenderly towards these people who may not have had all the same chances we've had, who may not enjoy existing in a fake world with its shallow pretenses, who may have grown up to be the people they've hated, who may still be looking for a way out, not seeing one. And next time we begin to mouth off at them, maybe we'll founder and be a little quieter, knowing what we do, and where they come from, and who they are when they're not showing off in front of their friends, or otherwise parading around, who they are in their secret moments, as their real self, when they too are sad or unhappy or wondering or confused, but can't show it for your sake- because they've got to do their best by you. It's hard to know one's parents, because they won't show you everything; it'd probably be too much for you, for one thing, and for another, they too are entitled to their own secrets- but when one does know them, even a little bit, the way you look at them will never be the same.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

I hate "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." I hate it because it could have been good, and instead it was so terribly bad.

In a brilliant essay, Isaac Bashevis Singer scathingly remarks, "As a child, I was glad that I was told the same stories my father and grandfathers heard. The children of my time didn't read stories about little ducklings which fell into kettles of soup and emerged as clay frogs. We preferred the stories of Adam and Eve, the Flood, the people who built the Tower of Babel, the divine adventures of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph. We were never taught to rely completely on any authority. We tried to find motivation and consistency in God's laws and His commandments. A lot of the evil taking place today, I often feel, is the result of the rotten stuff this modern generation read in its school days."

As he so beautifully explains in his essay, stories are built on logic. Events could have happened in the way that you have described. Even when it comes to magic or the supernatural, there are certain laws one must play by. Demons have chicken feet and cannot hide them. There are certain curses one cannot perform. There is an element of the forbidden for every element of the magical. In short, there is a sense of give-and-take, of structure. Since everything could have happened, it becomes believable.

In the case of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," believability is not the problem. I have no problem suspending my belief when it comes to the fact that a man could have been born old. My problem has to do with everything else that transpired. This baby just happened to have been dropped off at an old-age home so that his childhood as an old man would be perfectly natural? His father just happened to meet him when he came home from his tugboat spree, recognized him and took him out for drinks? His father conveniently dies relatively young so that Benjamin can inherit his button factory and never really have to work? Are you kidding me? And most of all- where is the response of the press?

If somewhere were truly to have been born old, it would make all the papers. The newspapers would react. There would be a scandal. Scientists and doctors would kidnap the boy and pickle him, prodding him with needles and medicines. Everyone would want to try to figure out how this had occurred- a genetic mutation? Something else? The movie was smart in that at the very least it tried to provide an answer to the nice black woman who decided to take care of Benjamin; she believed in her preacher and the preacher blessed the boy. But is the filmgoer really supposed to believe that everybody else who lived at that point in time said nothing about this peculiar man who grew younger instead of older? Nobody breathed a word? Nobody tried to exploit him?

Hell! That's not real life; that's completely impossible! You want to tell a story; you've got to explain why none of those people said anything. Now, if they remarked on it and they weren't believed because they were old and senile, that'd be one thing. But nobody tells the press, not one of the men on the tugboat who notice this old man growing younger say a word? Nobody sells him out? The circus doesn't kidnap him; there's no freak show going on? And when he goes from five years old to a little baby- are we to believe that nobody notices, or is it again that somehow, strangely, no one lets out a peep?

This is aside from the completely implausible idea of an old man working on a tugboat, and far more importantly, for a drunken captain to get up 0n a Sunday morning just to take an old man and his young companion, a little girl, out for a spin. That would never happen. So let's establish some ground rules: There has to be some sort of structure to a movie, some way of having it make sense, rules by which it works.

I'll tell you what would have been a good movie. We have an example of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" where people react with the appropriate shock and horror, including the media; he's big for a while, people call him a freak, a demon, a Satan-like monster, and then it dies down because he goes away and people think he's dead, or something to that effect. Or where the old people at least try to tell somebody even if they aren't believed, or he has himself tested by a doctor to try to figure out why he's different from anyone. But nobody just lives their life calmly and peacefully, with none of their neighbors ever interfering, when they are that different. To suggest that is to completely suspend human nature and human character- and that is not something you can ask your movie audience to tolerate.

The movies are a labaratory for the soul. It's where we can place ourselves in the body of the man or woman onscreen and think about their choices; do we agree with them, do we disagree? But there have to be rules. There cannot be an endless series of coincidences, happenstances, overly convenient situations; the director can't have it both ways. Either I completely suspend my belief in anything, and all the laws governing everything break loose- in which case pigs start to fly as well- or, if it's my normal human world with my normal human people, events must progress in normal human fashion, with all the logical repercussions. This film was done poorly; it was a mix of logic and complete and utter non-logic, and did not respect the viewer for that very reason.

This is aside from the fact that the scenes with the daughter reading to the mother and finding out about her father in this way, fraught with tension because of the imminent arrival with Hurricane Katrina, were unsatisfying and unnecessary. As was the daughter's complete lack of reaction (why the hell isn't she more unwilling to accept this diary as being truthful?) And we never receive an explanation as to why the mother put off telling the daughter for so long, and while the daughter advances that she hopes her mother isn't disappointed with her, we don't find out what the daughter has done, or hasn't done, which makes her mother likely to be disappointed with her. The end of the movie is completely inconclusive, in that the daughter runs out of the room in order to try to find out what is going on, the mother dies, and everything blacks out.

This movie should win absolutely no awards at the Oscars; it was a good idea, poorly executed, poorly written, and ridiculously developed. It had the potential to be something great, something that could really resonate with people where we could feel for the pain of this old man trapped in a young person's body, something along the lines of "The Elephant Man" or "The Phantom of the Opera," where people are given talents they can't express due to their physical form. Instead, it was a flop, a complete, utter, and total, utterly pointless, flop...and it was the worst kind of flop because of what it could have been if only the screenplay had been written by a half-competent screenwriter.

The Script

The particular difficulty in recognizing to what extent our wishes—and our thoughts and feelings as well—are not really our own but put into us from the outside, is closely linked up with the problem of authority and freedom. In the course of modern history the authority of the Church has been replaced by that of the State, that of the State by that of the conscience, and in our era, the latter has been replaced by the anonymous authority of common sense and public opinion as instruments of conformity. Because we have freed ourselves of the older overt forms of authority, we do not see that we have become the prey of a new kind of authority. We have become automatons who live under the illusion of being self-willing individuals. This illusion helps the individual to remain unaware of his insecurity, but this is all the help such an illusion can give. Basically the self of the individual is weakened, so that he feels powerless and extremely insecure. He lives in a world to which he has lost genuine relatedness and in which everybody and everything has become instrumentalized, where he has become part of the machine that his hands have built. He thinks, feels, and wills what he believes he is supposed to think, feel and will; in this very process he loses his self upon which all genuine security of a free individual must be built.

~Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm

*

We believe that we live in the land of opportunity, that we have the ability to act, react, think and assess in accordance to our will. This is not so. In fact, everyone has been handed a script, or rather, their choice of scripts. They have the ability to act in a way that will determine what their neighbors think of them, and they can choose the script depending on who their neighbors are. We often refer to this script by names such as "box" or something to that effect; we believe that everyone can be fit to categories, boxes or the like, and in part, that is due to the fact that we have these scripts to choose from, almost as though we were actors in a Hollywood movie, and each of us has the ability to portray a particular character.

The only catch? The Script exists in order to characterize us for the sake of itself. If one is a Liberal, he must be liberal for the sake of being liberal. Controversial for the sake of being controversial. Traditional for the sake of being traditional. And there is a core thread or theme that must be maintained if you want to correctly follow the script. The qualifications to being a liberal include acting in a bleeding-heart fashion toward people who want to kill you (aka civilians in Gaza who support Hamas), acting nicely toward LGBT folks, saving the environment and so forth. What happens if someone doesn't give a damn about the environment but does care about LGBT folks? They will gravitate toward the group who holds the script with which they have most in common, and for fear of being abandoned by the core group, will attempt to learn how to care about the other issues they ought to care about, and may even feel guilt for not caring about.

People follow scripts because of the way they want to be perceived. They aren't strong enough to think through the issues and come up with an individual opinion upon each issue. Therefore, they decide to follow the script, whether it be the "Liberal" script, the "Conservative" script, the "Modox" script. Anyone who truly dares to think for a moment will realize that every issue ought to be analyzed and decided upon in its own merit, not taken as part of a conglomerate in order to characterize someone as following a certain script. And yet, that is not the case.

Take the "Modox" affiliation. Can you imagine something more arbitrary? Modern Orthodoxy, in the way it is practiced (and not in its philosophical form) is mostly based on the fact that people decided to throw several issues together, tie it with a bow, and create a script. These issues have to do with believing that a boy and girl can talk to each other without immediately wanting to have sex with one another, one is a religious Zionist and supports the state of Israel, and one learns secular studies. Why are these tenets the script criteria? As I wrote once, "Why choose these factors by which to define oneself? Shall I create a title for myself because I keep yoshon (not eating any new grain before the Omer offering on the 16th of Nisan), do not support the current State of Israel, and eat kitniyos [legumes] on Pesach?" Why not take those factors, tie them together in a pretty bow, and create a new script? Give it a pretty new name, and create a whole section of people who subscribe to it?

What happens if one supports certain tenets of one script, but not those of the other? Issues ought to have nothing to do with one another; each issue ought to be analyzed on its own merit. If I analyze the issue of platonic relationships and decide they don't exist, thus forbidding males and females contact with the opposite sex, but simultaneously believe that one should learn secular studies, what in the world does that make me? Alas! I have dared to break the rules of the script; I've got some of the lines from the "Modox" script and some of the lines from the "Haredi" script; I'm terrifying! And yet, this oughtn't to be the case, where people are trying to create a common theme or bond between issues which in fact have nothing to do with one another.

And so, for someone to be liberal for the sake of being liberal, for the fact that someone supports saving the environment to have to reflect on that person's stance on the LGBT community or Palestinian civilians- is completely preposterous. I say, there ought to be no such thing as liberal, no such thing as conservative! There is only liberal and conservative with regard to each separate issue, each one having been analyzed separately, and a person having reached his conclusion about that topic separately.

What people should do, what they should be taught to do, is to analyze every issue with the information they have at hand, the opportunities and background that they have, and to reach a conclusion based on that. They should be taught that they should be willing to retract their opinions when new information presents itself, or when they realize something they have not realized before. They should be taught there is no shame in that. They should be taught, in other words, to be honest- to analyze each issue separately, without connecting one's thoughts and feelings about one situation to their point of view on a completely different event- and to do what they think is right. One can only do what he thinks is right if he takes the trouble to find out what that is without resorting to a pre-written script, even if these scripts do have nifty labels such as "Liberal," "Conservative," or the like. He has to think through an issue, reach a conclusion, and act on that conclusion. And if new information presents itself, he must think through that as well, and he may very well reach a different conclusion. But he does these things because he believes they are the right thing to do, not in order to conform to a label or keep to a script which in truth is stifling, individuality-suppressing, and entirely ridiculous. Much stupidity comes from these people who are clearly advancing opinions they don't understand simply because they have been taught they are part of the "script" in terms of the life they would like to live. Forget everything, forget being politically correct, forget who you have to please or whose good opinion you would have to have, and focus on the facts, focus on the issue at hand, focus on this goddamned problem without resorting to your pre-written script and its stupid solutions to every situation...and maybe you will surprise yourself. Maybe you will realize that you can support the environment and kill terrorists simultaneously, or alternatively, not support gay marriage and nevertheless buy clothing that was not made in sweatshops. People should not be able to be summed up by scripts. They should do what they think is right, and that may place them in many categories....conservative, traditional, radical, liberal, and so forth, so that they can never be accurately fit to a box at all....depending on the issue at hand.

Pro-Israel Manhattan Rally on January 6!

The achdus demonstrated at this rally should be a zechus for Chanoch Shmuel HaKohen ben Shoshana Zipora, the chayal for whom I am praying/ learning, and for all the rest of our brave soldiers.

*

Hundreds of people, perhaps even thousands, congregated at 2nd and 42nd today to demonstrate their unequivocal support for the State of Israel. Joined by members of the band Blue Fringe, who performed live, singing their songs "City of Gold" and one where the refrain was Lo Le'fached, various dignitaries and officials, and passionate speakers, we all stood outside in the freezing cold and supported our country. The rally concluded with the song "Od Yavo Shalom" by Blue Fringe, which you can see below:

After the rally, Chabad members (who are amazing!) took people aside and inquired as to whether they would be interested in putting on tefillin.


Here's a snippet of what was said by one of the speakers:

A Love Letter To Israel

I saw the film "Waltz With Bashir" this past Friday. It is a film about the Lebanon War, and more specifically, about the massacres at Sabra and Shatila. Although some might see it as a social commentary about the futility of war, what it meant to me had more to do with the human journey along the path that brings us to war. The film helped me in that it stripped away the glory and the glamour from war; it showed me, in full color, that beyond honor and dishonor there is the boy, scared and frightened, shooting at anything that moves in an effort to keep himself alive. This is a boy who does not always know whether what he is doing is right, but follows his orders. This is a boy who waltzes with gunfire, living a reality that no one should have to live, in a world lit by the bright lights of falling flares, with the darkness that compels attack. And I imagined what it would be if I were that boy, scared and frightened, who deals with the different images that surround me by trying not to take them in, trying to push them away and walk through the world as though it were a film. I imagined the terror I would feel, pursued for no reason, running without cause, the things I might do and would later regret doing, and the terrible guilt I would feel. And so, peculiarly, it was this film, with its comic-book drawings and its intensely beautiful soundtrack that brought home to me the reality that war is neither glamorous nor filled with glory; it is simply what is, a dark reality that no one desires. That there are mistakes made in war, that not everything happens as it should. There are young, frightened people on both sides, and they cannot always act with the measured attention they should.

It was that more than anything that made this film valuable to me. It was the fact that it felt real, as though everything had been stripped away and I could suddenly see- beyond the propaganda and beyond the beauty- the terrible darkness, both external and internal, that is caused by the war that ravages our land. And what it does to a person, the nothingness or cruelty with which it fills him, so that he might survive. In a way more real than ever before, I felt this film, felt the fear and the anguish of the soldiers described therein.

After my cousin, myself and the friends that had accompanied him walked out of the theater, we were thinking about that war in relation to this one, the Chanukah War in Gaza. We imagined the kinds of things people would say, or for that matter, are already saying, about Israel and wondered what impact this film would have on their perception. But what mattered to me, the message that I took from this film, which demonstrates the deep regret and shame an Israeli soldier feels about the massacres at Sabra and Shatila during the Lebanon War- which were not even committed by Israelis, but rather by Christian Phalangalists- was that of the respect that Israel feels towards human life. I find it powerful and beautiful that an Israeli filmmaker creates a film demonstrating the guilt a soldier feels for the death of civilians, of women and children, that even suggests Israel should have ensured this not happen. I think that what this film so beautifully, powerfully, evocatively does is demonstrate the truth of the Gemara which describes the Jewish nation as one that possesses the quality of rachamim, mercy (Yevamos 79a.) So much mercy does the Jewish people have that the Jewish filmmaker, Ari Folman, felt overwhelmed by it and decided to make a film lamenting the death of innocents, for which he felt indirectly responsible.

I once wrote that I did not feel that I was a true Zionist, and I supported that by citing the Rav's definition of a person who was indeed true. But I think now this was a lie. Because love is an emotion that one feels for anything to which one is indisputably connected; it is not chosen consciously; it simply is. And I feel a strong love toward Israel and her soldiers, Israel and her stiff-necked people who live amidst the bombs and Qassams and the 15-second "Tzeva Adom" alert, running to their houses as rockets fall amidst them. Does it matter who they are? Does it matter if it's the soldier entering the Gaza Strip with the desire to disposess Hamas of the land it ought not to be allowed to govern, the Chareidi man learning in yeshiva, the bright seminary student who is on tiyul? It does not matter; they are all members of my people and I love them all. But more than that, I love my land, the land that God gave to me and to all the Jews, the land which He told us He would show to us, the land of our heart. We may deny it all we wish, but in the end, we are inextricably connected to the land, for when the land is in danger, or when her people are in danger, we are bound up with her, pray for her, desire God to have mercy upon her and her people.

How beloved are the Jews! These beautiful Jews who lament the killings of innocents and make films about that, the Israelis who do their utmost to avoid killing civilians or children, who are hated by a world who denies them the opportunity to defend themselves. Strong Israelis, and strong nation of Israel, to defend yourself when no one permits you the ability to do so! Surrounded by a hostile world, you are a single flame who attempts to shout into the madness, "Open your eyes! Look at what they are doing! And yet you desire us not to attack?" And yet your cries go unheeded; no one wishes to heed you. It is easier for everyone to tell you to use words and diplomacy, to forget the rockets they fire upon you, to sit back and wait to die, like sheep to the slaughter. But you are not sheep to the slaughter, o' nation who has been forced to military might. You are strong, you are prepared, you are God's children, and you answer to no one but Him. God Himself has given you permission to kill those who wish to kill you, and that is what you are doing. Who could dare to raise their voice against you?

My Israel, golden and green and beloved, land of milk and honey, of impossible colors that can be seen only in the eye of the imagination! I did not know how much I loved you until I felt you threatened; I did not know how much I cared for you until I saw what others wish you to do. They would like you to lie down before them, so that they can destroy you and your people. I have never been one to believe that to be an anti-Zionist makes one an anti-Semite and I will still not believe it; there are those who hold by the shita of the Satmar Rav who are not Zionists in the traditional sense, and yet they do not hate the Jews. But it is certain that one who is not a Jew and who is also not a Zionist quite often hates the Jew, the one they have described as an occupier, the son of a monkey or an ape. This is me you are describing, me as well! We are the same; we are one people, and if you hate them, and determine that they are killers, monkeys, apes and the like, you say the same of me. In this we are of one body, one people, one nation, one breath. When you kill us in Israel, you are killing us in America, in Britain, in Russia, in France, in Austria, in every place around the world that holds a Jew.

How can I do anything when I read about my beloved people entering danger, a place which is hostile to their physical bodies, in that there are bombs and bullets flying everywhere, and a world that is hostile to their very right to defend themselves? What can I say to these soldiers who are so weary, who simply want the end, want not to be frightened or hated anymore, want simply to return to their lives and progress in a world not overrun by war? And who am I to speak, who has the benefit of college and a country that is mostly at peace, or at least, where I am not directly affected by the wars being waged? I have no right to speak; I, who have lost no one, who have suffered nothing, who does not live with the daily terror of rocket attacks, with the fear of being cast out of my home, whose life progresses with many joys and much happiness and who does not run to join you in your existence amidst the gold and green lush land...

Does the average Israeli hate the American who lives so peacefully at home? I would not blame him if he did, yet each person feels differently. Some may despise the peaceful nature of our existence, believing us not to be true brethren in every facet of the world. Yet others may be glad that we propogate a nation that does not know the terror and fear that encompasses the one that is currently under attack in its true land. There are many ways one could react to me, an American who feels a great and searing love for a land I did not know I loved. I knew that Israel was mine, in that in truth it is my birthplace and my destiny, but I did not know what I felt for it until now.

Can you imagine a world in which Hamas succeeded in its goal? A world in which Hamas blew Israel off the map, destroying the country completely? We would continue on, but what a blow, what a blow that would be! As Jews, we would continue; God has sworn we will never be completely wiped out. But a people without a land once more, and what is more, without the land that is our destiny, that is as connected to us as our very blood...I cannot imagine such a reality. If it were to come, we would take it stoically; we would go on and we would continue, for it is our duty to continue no matter what darkness claims us. But my very blood protests against the idea that this could ever happen, because the land is ours and it resonates in our very blood. The land calls to us, a siren song that we can never truly escape...we can deny it for a time, but it is never truly gone. We push it off, we feel that we have escaped it, but in the end, if we allow ourselves to be touched, there is no denying that in this land of ancient history, the land that God created for us and that has been our creation, the land that we built up and that has been built for us, is the only place in the world where we will feel wholly complete.

It is not only Israel that I love, but her people, every one of them, the taxi-drivers with their politics and staunch opinions, the women begging for coins at the wall, the American tourists, the ancient and revered scholars, the Chareidim who openly invite everyone for meals when they themselves do not have enough to eat, the culture and even its modernization and Americanization. I may not admire, nor may I strive to be like, the brash, loud, rude, and overly in-your-face stereotype, but I respect it for what it is, a part of the land that I love, and that I want to see defended, remaining holy and strong.

And so, as we get together and pray for the soldiers, for those who are fighting in the country that lives in our hearts, let us thank God for the gift He has given us, the almighty gift of a land which is truly beloved and burns like a flame within us. We must yearn for her all our life, if we do not go- and there are those of us who cannot; our mission is elsewhere, and it cannot be abandoned. Nonetheless is it our land, however, land of history and mystery, of the imagination and the spirit, of the blood and tears that symbolize our people. Israel is our destiny; her people are our brothers, and the bond that draws us together is always stronger than anything which could attempt to sunder us. As our soldiers go to war, and face the hostility of a world that does not understand, alongside the artillery of evil men who desire to murder the very spirit of the Jewish people, we pray together, the love that stirs us fierce within our hearts, and we recall God's original words to Abraham, "וַאֲבָרְכָה, מְבָרְכֶיךָ, וּמְקַלֶּלְךָ, אָאֹר ."

And I will bless them that bless thee, and him that curses thee, will I curse; so promised God to the first Jew to discover the land of Israel, and so it shall be again. May God be with our people in the land that is ours, may He strengthen and guide them in their war, whether it be a war waged through our prayers, our charity, our learning, our arms, our minds, or whatever other weapons we shall put before Him. May God hear our prayers and protect our brethren; may Hamas, the Haman of today, fail in their evil plan. In every generation, they arise to kill us...so God, may You pour out your wrath upon them and may you utterly destroy them; may you kill all who desire to kill us, and destroy all who desire to destroy us. Bless your people and protect them; kill those who desire our death. And protect Your country, Your beloved country, for the sake of Your people and the love we bear toward her, and more, for the sake of Your name, which is blessed and sanctified. May God bless us and redeem us soon, and may we all be restored to Israel in peace. Amen.

Unmasking!

Tis time to unmask, o' those of you who attended my ball... ;-)

In Which Chana Hosts A Masquerade Ball!

The past two years, I have held Masquerade Balls to celebrate my birthday on the blogs.

Masquerade 2006
Masquerade 2007

And it's time for Masquerade 2008...because I am turning 20.



Twenty is a peculiar age. I have enjoyed being a teenager. I recall having visions of what a lady was to be at 20- graceful, beautiful and otherwise dazzling. Alas! How I sadly recall my youthful visions now. But even so, I am sure that 20 shall be interesting times, and I shall have anything but a dull year.

The rules are very simple: You must sign in as an Anonymous commentator (but with clever and entertaining names; it's your chance to be a lord or lady), tell me what your costume is, and explain what gift you have brought for me (it can be anything at all, from the glittering of the sunlight on the lake to the words of an angel). I, of course, have provided a beautifully decorated ballroom, a dining hall filled with the finest delicacies, and spectacular music performed by the most brilliant orchestra in the nation. Tomorrow, you should return and unmask yourselves...although there are always those people who leave the party, never to return.

The Observer: Issue 4!

Well, dear friends, The Observer is out!

What does this issue have in store for you?

Well, other than much ado about Madoff, we have pretty much everything you would like to know about sexuality. Orthodox sexual education i.e. Tzelem? Kallah teachers? Judaism & sexuality in the modern-day world? The students of Yeshiva University giving their take on the matter? You name it; we've got it.

Then there's the results of a survey on the year in Israel phenomenon, just in from the Institute for University-School Partnership, an affiliate of Azrieli.

Then we have Dr. James Kugel visiting Stern, a review of the first TEIQU event, a review of the Yeshiva College production of "Newsies," a review of Stern's "Once Upon A Mattress," a review of a fascinating film entitled "Narrow Bridge" that deals with the topic of sexual abuse in the Orthodox world, and an important question: are you a boiling frog?

Also, what is a woman's place within the framework of halakha, is New York turning solar, and who doesn't want to know how to look pretty and fashionable even during a recession?

There's much more...so check it out!

Burnt Roses

A story

Ash on an old man's sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
Dust in the air suspended
Marks the place where a story ended.

~T.S. Eliot

His hair is silvered and his eyes are green. As he walks through the city, the water slick on the cement, the leavings of a torrential downpour that had taken place slightly earlier, causing many New Yorkers to unfurl their umbrellas and pull out their colorful rain boots, his eyes roam across the stores. He spots Crumbs and licks his lips, remembering the sinful taste of a chocolate cupcake, how he had tongued the whipped cream and lapped it up as though he were a cat, then brushed the back of his hand across his mouth, allowing a few scattered crumbs to fall to the ground. As he trod over them with his shoe, he had felt perfectly content.

He is stately and he walks in a stately manner. Slow, measured steps reveal a man of distinction; he wears a black greatcoat and a grey fedora, a small green and yellow feather tucked into the band. He is distinctive and handsome; men and women pause to look at him as he stands outside Papyrus, musing over the tinseled decorations, there just in time for Christmas. He notes the emphasis on red and green, thinks of the gold and white that he prefers, and passes on, but not before giving the friendly black man at the register a nod of recognition through the window.

His walk through the city is a ritual, a deep, cleansing practice he has begun in order to achieve serenity. He likes the feeling of walking through people, hoping as he does that one of them will know him, perhaps recognize him. What a meeting that would be! He has imagined it many times, the man on the street who would pause as he looked upon him and inquire, doubtfully, “Are you Mr. A—?” at which point he would nod gratefully, with a large, foolish smile pasted on his face. The smile would indicate the relief he would feel, the relief that he matters when it happens that someone at last, at last, knows him. Such recognition would mean that he has not, after all, lost everything, separated himself from everyone who ought to love him.

He lives in a walk-up in Washington Heights, a lone aging gentleman in the midst of Spanish Harlem and Yeshiva University students. He watches them as they go about their days, their beanies stuck closely to their heads with bobby-pins and clips, their ritual fringes flapping in the wind. He has begun to feel a close affection for them, one which was born from afar. He only ever sees them from his window, as he does not dare to actually speak to them. As for the local color, he becomes tired of the loud music which disturbs his sleep, but he does not want to leave. This is the last place for him, the place of all the memories. It is here that he must remain.

Every so often, however, he makes this expedition, coming into the city so that he can roam about, dressed stylishly. He often muses to himself that perhaps today will be an exception to his rule; he will meet somebody, whether it is an interesting young lady with laughing eyes and long brown hair, or a fellow senior citizen, and he will strike up a conversation, perhaps take them to tea- and how companionable that would be! As he pauses outside of a Barnes and Noble, wondering whether he should go inside, he thinks about the way in which he is perceived. He is rarely noticed, rarely seen.

A Salvation’s Army worker jangles outside of the Barnes and Noble, his bell ringing steadily. “Merry Christmas, sir!” the worker cries and he turns, surprised. He offers a rare smile in return, and feels his mood lift; someone has noticed him, even if it is only to ask him to spare a dollar, someone has realized that he exists.

He continues down the sparkling block, noting the chips of mica in the sidewalk, smiling at New York’s excesses. As he wanders he knows how he will conclude his journey; he has done it many times before. At last, having seen his fill, he ducks into a half-hidden nail shop, walking up the three steps and smiling at Kim before saying “Buff and polish, please.”

There is something so intimate in having someone touch your hand, knead the skin, apply lotion, cut your nails…this ritual is one he has created in his loneliness; it comes of his need to connect. He and Trisha have soundlessly connected for the past two years; he comes, requests his buff and polish, has her touch his hand, turn it over, knead it, clean it and otherwise minister to it, and in return for this intimate contact, he need pay her only $7. To him, it seems like a bargain.

He closes his eyes, opening to her touch, which is professional and gentle. The fact that someone alive touches him deliberately makes him glow with pleasure, and a blonde-haired girl who is getting a pedicure and reading Glamour looks up at him, smiling. She must find the sight of him amusing, an aging gentleman extending his hands to have them cleaned and prepared for his next encounter with the world. He smiles at her as well, retaining his dignity; there is no need for her to know what he does, that this is his last connection to a world that abandoned him long ago, that his age has betrayed him, and that he has come here to escape his loneliness by paying for this gentle touch.

Do manicurists know that they are also angels? he wonders. If he had to choose a figure to appear as his angel, it would be Trisha, simple and clean with her dyed brown hair and loose, striped apron, her Vietnamese background and her smile. The kindness she shows him is shocking. While he does not deserve it, he revels in it nonetheless. Each touch of her finger, the firm pressure against his palm, suggest in a way that has meaning that he still has purpose, that there is someone alive who can bear to interact with him.

He closes his eyes as she dabs oil onto his cuticles, then takes clear polish and applies it. It has a strange, biting smell, somewhat acerbic and yet cloying. He inhales it, breathing deeply, then stands up, placing his hands underneath the heater so that his nails dry. He seems composed, ever the gentleman. No one knows of the private sorrows that lie within.

He observes the others carefully, noting the blonde girl, looking at the various scandalous headlines on magazine covers. He smiles in amusement as he recalls one time when the magazines were delivered here; the lady in charge of the establishment, Kim, had taken off the rubber band binding them together, then thrown them here, atop this desk. She had not even bothered to read them. That distaste for the American culture and its shallow vapidity remained with him.

After ensuring that his nails were completely dry, he stood up, wishing everyone a courteous good day. As he left, he heard the blonde girl speaking to Kim, “That man reminds me of my Grandpa.”

A smile lights his face for a moment; if only he were that girl’s grandfather! If only he were anyone who had the right to interact with anyone like her. He shuffles slowly, his shoulders bent under some unimaginable burden, and makes his way to the 1 train, wandering off to his life in the solitary apartment within the graffitied walls of Washington Heights.

~

Tea and toast and pastrami, an invention he has created in his old age. Now that Maria is dead, he has no one to care for him, so he lives on odds and ends, every so often attempting a recipe, but more often than not, creating peculiar sandwiches which satisfy him. He looks through his newspapers, more out of force of habit than because he actually cares about the world around him. He stands up, carefully combs his hair, and changes into pajamas, a matching set in dark green with stripes and lines. He pulls on his thick white socks and places his feet into his orthopedic slippers, walking to the den, where he turns on the news. He has found that the voices lull him to sleep; the quiet bothers him. He sits down on the couch and waits until it is time to drift off.

Memories assail him. He remembers his past. More than that, he remembers his sons, and the lone daughter. Three strapping sons and the one golden girl, with her dark hair and wide, vivid eyes. He remembers Maria, of course, his loyal, faithful wife. But all his memories are overcast with regret. Regret has seeped into the color of the pictures that flash through his mind, turning them to sepia, burnt brown. His son has told him he is past all forgiveness. And at the same time, crying, those traitor tears flowing from his eyes, his son has told him that he still loves him. He loves him but won’t allow him to hurt their family anymore, which is why he is going to cut himself off from him. Those were the words his son used in his anger, in his youthful fury. He had thought those words would wear away. Well, they have not.

The others simply hate him. They remember the fights, they remember the times that Maria would lock herself in the bathroom and cry, silent tears that would escalate into real ones, after she had begged him not to discipline the boys. He never had the strength to tell her, or the words, of what his father had done to him. He was teaching his sons for their own good, and he was teaching them gently by any standard. He did not make them bleed, which ought to make them grateful. He had bled.

He would break them, force them to understand the value of attaining a superior education, of ensuring that they were the best at everything. His sons were slated to be the best athletes, the top scholars, the ones who would succeed at everything. It did not matter if they did not have enough money; when the Abraham clan went for a walk, it should be clear to all that they were the most handsome, successful, educated and scholarly people around. He would burn that into their flesh if they dared to disobey him, would discipline his wife for being weak. She was too merciful; she was too interested in her boys growing up to be kind. It was not kindness that he was after; it was productivity, hard, well-earned productivity, and simultaneously, success.

He was a man who had had nothing and had to earn everything. He had worked his way up, and he had given his children everything they could possibly desire. He would go without a new suit, without a new pair of clothes, for years in order to ensure that his sons and his girl were dressed presentably. His family mattered to him; he was a family man. He put food on the table, paid for their education, and made sure they had a roof over their heads. What more was there for them to demand?

He was a firm man, but to his mind, a fair one. He disciplined only when his rules had been broken. He expected his sons to be the best, and if they did not live up to their side of the bargain, it was their failing and it must be recognized. A dark love, stony and firm, lived inside him. His blood ran in their veins, and he’d be damned before anyone else in the world walked over him. It was only he who had the power to lead, the power to make them follow. He was the breadwinner in the house; it was governed by his rules.

He forbade Maria to work. What kind of a household was it where the woman worked? A man needs to be able to provide for his wife and for his children. If she worked, she would be taking something away from him, something deep and needed, something that made him who he was. She would be undermining him, emasculating him. She only asked once, and after that, she never asked again. He had made quite clear to her what his expectations were.

He ran his house and kept it in tip-top shape; he was a man of honor, a man of his word. He was a man of steel, or perhaps of iron. He believed in numbers, mathematics, in everything that was sensible or logical. He had no respect for pipe dreams, for foolishness, for everything that was not authentic. Authenticity and hard work were the two things that he respected, that, and his very essence: honesty. Anyone who told a lie was immediately banned from his circle of acquaintances. Lies were the devil, the very bane of existence. A liar was not a man.

His sons adapted and they adapted fast. Sam received top grades and was valedictorian in high school, making it into an advanced college program which would allow him to start medical school early. Jonathan followed suit. It was the last one, Rob, who made everything difficult. Rob was a dreamer, with his deep dark eyes and his thoughtful questions about the stars and the sky and the existence of God. Rob and his sister Rose were the difficult ones, and by God if he would not make them strong enough to survive this weak world.

He began that by destroying their fantasies and illusions. Rob had a strange quality about him, a girlish quality, even, this desire to believe in the goodness of people. Well, his father was an accountant and would teach him better. He showed him the lies people told, well-respected people, priests and pastors and rabbis, religious officials from across the spectrum. He taught his boy to know the meaning of honesty and to respect it in people, to realize that it was a rare gift and given only to a few. He taught his boy to recognize what it meant to be a man.

As for Rose, he let her entertain her silly thoughts a while longer, but then he taught her, too, telling her to set out and get a job as a typist, because at least that would keep her from spending too much time with all those foolish friends of hers. She was hurt when he told her that, hurt also when he didn’t care for the frippery and gewgaws she adorned herself with. He told her she looked mighty nice and she told him he hadn’t even stood up to glance at her. He’d stood up then, all right, stood up to tell her that her neckline was too low and there was no way his daughter was going to fraternize with boys in that dress; that would happen over his dead body. And he sent her upstairs to change her clothes, and didn’t notice if she was crying while he did it.

He didn’t notice Rob sneaking out of the house with his backpack, didn’t realize that Rob had taken Rose’s dress and given it back to her, that she had changed in the bathroom before attending the school prom. He found out later, though, when a picture of Rose was published in the school yearbook, and he beat Rob for that, took off his belt and whipped him with the strap, because disobedience was the same thing as a sin in his book.

He had raised his children the only way he knew how, with his love transmitted as a gruff, strong thing, present in the clothes he bought them, the school he sent them to, his expectations for them. They knew he loved them but they hated him, silently, secretly, in ways he could not see. Fear and hatred lived together in Rob’s innocent eyes, in addition to an overwhelming guilt. What was there for him to do? He could hear his mother sobbing in the bathroom and he wanted to keep his father away from her, even though he never laid a hand on her. Maria was the one woman in the world for his father; he would never hurt her. It was his voice that was a killing thing, that angry, harsh voice that managed to shout with a fury that took the flames of hell and gave them shape.

Rob lived within himself, a secret world that he shared with Rose. There was a strong age difference between Rob and Sam and Jonathan, and while they had been close as children, they had grown apart, especially as Rob became interested in religion and pursuing religious studies strongly. While his brothers had attended Hebrew school, they did not have the same natural curiosity that flared within Rob, that made him seek a different kind of education. They were hardened and strong, the kind of men who could face the world with impunity, their tempers high, their eyes never allowing tears to be shed. Rob could not live that way but neither could he live as he was; his father thought him too frail, delicate and thoughtful even now; it would be worse if he understood his son’s aspirations. What Rob desired, more than anything else, was to become a Rabbi, a man in touch with his people, leading them and loving them and guiding them, easing their pain and comforting them when tragedy struck. His soul was bound up with people, and they with him. Fresh and sensitive like the newborn dawn, he remembered the slights that had hurt him, and willed himself to pay attention to others so as to save them from that pain. He began with Rose.

Rose was a delicate child, graced with the beautiful aspects of a flower. Thin and dark in her beauty, her mother ever endeavored to fatten her, feeding her on chicken soup and meat and bread and watching as her daughter did not gain a pound. Rose lived in a fanciful world that provided her with an escape from the violence she saw practiced in her house; she withdrew as well, but farther than Rob had. She lived in a world completely of her own imagination, an while her beauty, simplicity and kindness brought her friends, she would not invite them home, or would make sure to do so only when her father was not around. She was secretly embarrassed of her father’s treatment of her mother, did not want anyone else to bear witness to it. And while her mother had made herself a member of the Women’s Aid Society, and was involved in planning projects to help the poor and otherwise benefit others, it was clear that she too felt a secret sadness, which she hid from her husband.

Rob sensed her secret existence and it worried him, so he made sure to make himself a part of her world, listening to her ideas and thoughts as they presented themselves to her. “I think there is a world beyond this one,” she would often say dreamily, “and I dream of it, and I think there Father will be whipped just like he whips you, and the marks will stay on his back…and you’ll hear him cry, the way that you cry…and you’ll take joy in it!” She was fierce in her hatred, unrelenting in her anger. Her father to her represented the most vile, the most cruel of all men. Her brother was more sympathetic; he had seen his father’s back and the scars; he knew there was a history he did not fully understand. But he listened to his sister nonetheless, and did not interfere; if her words gave her pleasure, than so be it.

Rose took to writing, hiding her thoughts in a notebook, black poems full of references to herself and her family in symbolic form. Rob was the Prince; she was the Burnt Rose, crumbling at the edges, withered and blackened from the fire. She was secretive, but sometimes, crying, would creep into Rob’s room and share her poems with him, after which he would hold her tightly to him and try to comfort her. He did not know why their family life affected her so; after all, their father was a good man even in his cruelty. What he did, he did to help them; he did it to make them stronger. Rob had made peace in his heart, although sometimes even he felt himself flare up angrily, the burning hatred ignited. Yet he had struggled to understand his father, to comprehend the man behind the actions that threatened to destroy his whole family, but most of all Rose and Rob, and he had forced himself to acknowledge the good, the strength the man possessed, his iron will and determination. He was the son of a good man, a misguided, angry man, but a good man nonetheless. That was how he struggled to think of it, in his effort to stop himself from killing the man.

It was his mother’s tears that killed him. He would see her after she had fought with their father, usually in order to try to allow her children some harmless form of entertainment, and the tears would flow alongside the sharp intakes of breath, where she would try to calm herself. Rob would see her then and he would feel useless, as though he was standing by and watching her hurt. And yet, she didn’t leave his father; she wouldn’t; there was something in her that refused to let her. Did she love him? Rob had often wondered. He believed that somewhere inside herself she did, not his mastery of her or the way he used her, but the strength that emanated from him, his protective powers, the fact that in the end, he did provide them with enough money for all their needs, and he was a hard-working, persevering man.

Rose could not bear to watch her mother cry. At those times she locked herself in her room and buried herself under the covers in order to muffle the sound, doing her utmost to block it out, to save herself from hearing it. Rob would come in to comfort her; he would stroke her hand, her hair, make soothing noises and try to take away her pain. Rose had a way of taking all the world’s pain and holding it within herself, in a vast, torturous repository of unhappiness. She was sensitive to everything, to everyone, to the plight of the sparrow and the disappearance of someone’s world. She shed tears, not for herself, but for the tragedy of a world at war, and she felt herself incapable of fixing it.

By this time Rob had set himself up to attend college; he had requested to go for a year in Israel, to a yeshiva, but under no condition would his father permit it. His farher felt he had gone far enough in allowing the boy to attend Yeshiva University as opposed to a prestigious medical school the way his other brothers had done, and he warned Rob that he must major in something practical and find himself a job. Glad to have even this much granted him, Rob set off for the wild world of New York, while Rose entered Northwestern, beginning school a year early.

Rose was majoring in English but told her father she planned to become a nurse, a profession he could approve of even while he looked down on her slightly, seeing as women ought not to work in his view. She found herself within the lyrical verses, reborn amidst the poetry that danced within her. She found herself thrilling to the words, responding to them more than she had to any boy’s touch. What comparison could be made between a boy’s tentative fumbling in the dark and these grand, glorious words which filled her an fulfilled her? She set herself up to become whole, luxuriating in the beauty of a world that consisted entirely of the beautiful thoughts of others.

But the sickness of the world still touched her, infecting her newfound Paradise. Rose was curious about her brother’s life and would write to him often, fascinated by the Talmud he was learning, unwilling to believe him when he stated that he was one of the less advanced students in the grade. He had always excelled at everything he had chosen to do; who could believe her Rob was struggling? She laughed off his troubles with a smile, choosing to believe in his modesty instead. But then she became aware of a troubling undercurrent that ran between Rob and their father; he had been granted a fifth-year scholarship, absolutely free, and he wanted to pursue it, after which he would go onward to rabbinical school. Their father had absolutely vetoed this move, stating that Rob had already spent enough time on his foolish Jewish studies, and that now it was time to move on, to settle down and get himself some sort of job, although of course no job would be as good in his eyes as the one his other sons had achieved- that of doctor.

Rob fought with their father about this decision, trying to use his mother to argue his case, the Rabbis at his school, and finally, Rose. This was ill-thought out on his part, but he had told her his heart and she decided to come home of her own initiative to plead his case, begging her father to have mercy. Her father looked at her and told her he would be damned if his son would grow up to be a preacher who stole money from people in order to finance his expenses, and Rose felt the chill in his eyes. She stood up, took her pocketbook and walked out of the house, back to her dorm. There was a high bridge that had to be crossed to reach her dorm, charming and picturesque, with trees all around, overlooking a stone pathway. Nobody knew what had happened and nobody could ever tell for certain whether she had jumped or been pushed (the thought was that perhaps she had been mugged), but three days later she was found, fallen upon the concrete, and she was dead.

When Rob found out, he went wild with grief. Crazed, he called his father vile names, and his brothers had to restrain him from physically attacking the man. To make everything worse, he heard whispers about the death in his college classes, with people arguing over whether someone who commits suicide can be buried in sanctified ground. When he returned home for the burial, he would not even look at his father; so angry was he. It was not the fact that his father had forbidden him to apply for the rabbinate; he did not believe Rose had killed herself over that one fact. It was all the pain and grief in the world that had gotten to his little sister, that and the fact that it was too much to bear. Her quicksilver poems no longer illuminated her universe; she saw it as a dark, ugly place. He could remember a phone call, a few days earlier, which he saw as being her goodbye to him; she had told him several times that she loved him very much, and he should always know that. Accustomed as he was to her poetic flights of fancy and expansive choices of phrase, he had seen nothing untoward in that call, but now, under the weight of this crushing grief, he felt like he should have known, and that her death was his fault.

He had failed at protecting her, just like he had failed at protecting his mother from the darkness that lay within his father. He had failed and it had cost him the ultimate price, so that his beloved sister, beautiful and wise and sad, had died for it. This undid him more than anything else, so that he cried, and hated his father for not shedding a tear. His father’s grief was a stony thing, just like his love, and it found expression in managing the details more than it did in any public form of expression. Rob hated him more for that than he thought he ever could; it was the darkness in his father that terrified him, because he did not want to be like that in any way.

People had a peculiar way of stating that Rob was like his father, even though he knew himself to be the most distinct from him. They seemed to see in him some of the same perseverance, determination and intelligence; they felt like his entire body betrayed him, in his physical resemblance to the man. Rob hated that, a feeling of terror rushed through him whenever he was told of a different way in which he was like his father, the man he worshipped and despised, the man who had made him who he was and had destroyed him forever. And beneath the feelings of hatred there was a love he could not root out, strong and thorny as it grew, because there was much he did owe his father even as there was much he could not forgive.

Sick and bruised as he was, Rob told his father he wanted nothing more to do with him. His father took that statement with perfect equanimity, but questioned him: Where would he get the money to support himself? He had no job and no way to continue living without his father’s help. In that one comment Rob understood his dependency, and he hated it. Abandoning his dream of pursuing the rabbinate, he threw himself into a search for jobs, looking for anything that would set himself up as separate from this man, so that he would no longer need to rely upon him or turn to him for anything ever again.

And then he met Bella.

~

Bella was like a light in the darkness, throwing off sparks and glittering elusively within his field of vision. Beautiful, accomplished, talented and strong, Bella had come to study at Stern College from Italy, a country that she loved. She was fluent in Italian, the words tripping lightly off her tongue, and her accent was a delicate thing, fascinating Rob, who struggled for a way to capture the essence of her joyful existence and bring it home to him.

It was not that he had never known joy. There had been times where, as a family, he and his siblings and parents had gone to the beach, and when he stood before the ocean he felt a joy and a fury that filed him, something ageless and timeless that granted him strength. He loved the waves lapping at his feet, thought that he would give almost anything to ensure that this feeling never met him. In the shadow of the ocean, he felt like he was invincible, like there was nothing that could vanquish him, nothing in the world. It was with joy that he wrestled with his brothers there, that he raced Rose as they swam in the water, that he covered his siblings with sand. It was his joy made real, even sacred.

But it was not the same as the way Bella knew joy, in her lighthearted, golden fashion. Her hair was rich and auburn, glinting red in the sun; her eyes were flecked with gold and reflected the light that seemed to fill her soul. She was young but she seemed ageless, filled with a wisdom that seemed unquestionable. She knew what the most important things in life were and it was these she strove to accomplish. She wanted to build a loving family; she wanted to bring more beauty to the world. The way in which these things were accomplished meant little to her, so long as it was practical; her desire was to introduce others to the unearned pleasure which had filled her life.

When she first introduced Rob to her family, he was stunned. Stunned because he had never before experienced the easy camaraderie the siblings shared, throwing towels at one another and joking with one another without fear of repercussions or a censoring voice booming out above them all to censor their fun. They were cooking together in the kitchen and he marveled at the girls, all of them older than Bella, who was the youngest, and their skill and expertise. He smiled when he saw the men, handsome and tall and heartbreakers, clearly Italian with their expression and killer eyes. How this house of Italian Jews came to relocate in Queens, he did not know, but he knew that the entire atmosphere was one that was filled with joy and love, and he responded to it and the healing which it caused him.

Rob met Bella while she was in her last year of Stern; he had succeeded in getting a job as a computer programmer at a company in New York. He visited her often and the two of them went wandering through the city, Rob constantly delighting in Bella’s wit and charm. She would make comments about the beauty of the sky, the way that the clouds appeared at that moment, or would graciously stop to converse with a beggar desiring a sweetroll. It was the constant delight of Bella’s unexpected actions that appealed to Rob, that and the fact that her love for life healed him and gave him renewed faith in a world that might be good despite its causing the death of his sister, a world that might exist for him without the gates he had formerly envisioned.

She did not take away his sadness completely; she would not even if she could, as it was clear that it was important to him to mourn his sister and appreciate her, to love her even after death. But she brought him kindness and playfulness and joy, and in these he reveled, taking in the light that was her natural adornment and fashioning a charm of it, one which he hung about his heart. She offered him her magical eyes, and seeing the world through her point of view, he found himself feeling lighter, no longer weighed down by the darkness that had so consumed him.

Rob knew that he wanted to marry her, but she was not yet sure of him. She led him a merry dance, not intentionally, but not thoughtlessly either, covering him over with her golden light while determining whether she belonged with someone so bruised. But there was a good and a kindness within Rob as well, and she was attracted to it, the gentleness of a man who has made himself gentle, who has tried to tame his wild temper and succeeded for the most part. And so it was that after a time, they got engaged, and the question became to what extent Rob’s father would be involved in their lives.

Bella was more than willing to meet him, but Rob could not stand the sight of him. Bella insisted that this was a courtesy they owed his parents, and with great reluctance, they both went to meet both Maria and his father. The man appeared in his best suit, his silvered hair styled becomingly, and it seemed as though he were truly interested in making amends. Rob looked on him with cold hatred; Bella acted like a butterfly, humming around him and finding cautious areas of laughter that acted as peaceable spots of dialogue. Rob watched, awed, as his father warmed to Bella, smiling up at her with something that looked almost like gratitude. At the last, before they took their leave, his father took her aside for a moment.

“I know he will not want me involved in your life,” he told Bella softly. “But I see that you are good for him and I- thank you.”

He said it with dignity, but the admission must have cost him, and Bella knew how grievously he regretted the way in which he had raised his son when he told her. She answered with her eyes, and as she and Rob walked out the door, she knew this man was not bad, only stubborn, and that it was his stubborn inability to change his mind that had so hurt his son.

Bella and Rob were married, and his parents were in attendance, although Rob spent much of his time with his father-in-law instead. The wedding was beautiful, and Bella made sure that it would be a time Rob remembered happily. In time, Bella gave birth to a beautiful daughter, whom they named Rose. Rob had tears in his eyes when he held her, a miracle given him by a God who had not yet abandoned him. However, he forbade Bella to allow his father any contact with the grandchild. “I will not have him ruining her, too,” he said angrily, and so Rose grew up knowing very little of her father’s family.

While Bella acceded to Rob’s wishes, as Rose grew older she told her more of her grandfather, emphasizing the fact that he was a strong, straight and honest man and that he had tried to live in the best way he knew how. Rose remained under the impression that this man lived somewhere far away, on the other side of the world, for all she knew. Rose’s birth was followed by Benjamin’s and then Nathaniel’s, so that she grew up in a family that loved her, and who followed her orders as though they had been issued by a goddess. The princess of the family, she paraded about happily, even as she excelled at her studies and grew older.

During this time, Bella would come to visit Rob’s father, making stops at his apartment in Washington Heights, where he and Maria had moved in their old age, to bring pictures of the children and share stories of them. She pleaded with Rob to allow her to bring the children themselves, but Rob remained adamant in his inability to forgive, and his desire to cut his children off from the man who had almost orchestrated his own destruction. Maria was a frequent guest at her son’s house, and often babysat for her grandchildren, but Rob would as soon have his father there as a monster. He returned the birthday cards and cheques his father sent, and would take no money from him.

When Maria died, all the grandchildren felt themselves bereft. With their grandmother gone, they took solace in Bella’s parents, the Italian family who loved them dearly. Little known as their other grandfather was, they did not visit him or comfort him; Rob did not want them to have any contact with him. He had not forgiven the man and never would, and so it was that Rose graduated high school and began college without knowing that her grandfather lived close by, and she could easily visit him.

Following in her mother’s footsteps, Rose attended Stern, just as Bella had. After she had adjusted to college life, Bella came to visit her one day, looking at her dorm room and taking her out to dinner. Over dinner, Bella told Rose of her grandfather, and the fact that he lived uptown, in Washington Heights.

“Why have I never seen him?!” Rose exclaimed in horror, feeling herself to be a terrible granddaughter. “He must think I hate him!”

“He does not think that,” Bella stated, looking at her sixteen-year-old daughter. Rose was a lighter version of the first version; while she was not thin with the same dark beauty, her eyes were blue and her hair was light brown. But their features were the same, to the point that sometimes her husband would look at his daughter and tears would creep into the corners of his eyes, for he felt like he saw his sister again.

And it was then that Bella told the tale, of the darkness and the magic that was Rose’s grandfather, of the strength, perseverance and iron love that flooded through him, even as he had effectively almost destroyed her father’s life. Rose was troubled, Bella could see, and as she took in the story she had to adjust it, fit it to her image of the loving grandfather she had always imagined existed somewhere in the world- just not so close by.

“Can I go to him?” she asked, and tears sprang to Bella’s eyes.

“Of course you can,” she answered. “I have come to give you the address.”

~

He awakens in front of the television. Shuffling, he heads to the bathroom, brushes his teeth, then takes out his electric shaver and carefully shaves himself. He takes off his pajamas and steps into the shower, feeling the hot water pound against his withered body, toweling himself off and after putting on pants and an undershirt, then donning a robe, he sets off to make breakfast.

How he misses Maria’s hot cereal! She would always give him oatmeal with cinnamon and sugar and a little milk, but now he contents himself with Fiber One, which he eats with milk. Spooning the cereal into his mouth, he hears a knock at the door. Confused, he wonders who it could be, then shrugs, thinking it must be a neighbor coming by to borrow an egg, or perhaps to ask for the daily paper.

“Coming,” he calls, pulling his robe tighter, then opening the door. A girl stands there, a fresh, breathing, beautiful girl, and she holds three roses in her hand.

He staggers as the color leaves his face. She looks so like his Rose, and yet that Rose is dead. “Who?” he questions, as he struggles to stand his ground.

“Hello, Grandpa,” she says, leaning forward to kiss him on the cheek. “I’ve brought these for you,” she hands him the flowers, and he takes them numbly, barely glancing at their lush red color, his gaze fastened on her.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come before,” she says amiably, cheerfully, “but you see, I didn’t know where you lived, and I didn’t know it was so close by- why, all I had to do was take the shuttle uptown,” and she pauses, then laughs. “Oh, how silly of me, I didn’t introduce myself! I’m Rose, Grandpa; I’m your granddaughter Rose! May I come in?”

Such a silly question. He reaches for her and gathers her into a bear hug, holding her as though he will never let go. “My Rose,” he breathes, and the words are disbelieving, incredulous. “Come in,” he says, and finally he is crying, the tears flowing from his eyes, trickling down his cheeks and onto her hair, her head, which is pillowed against his shoulder.

“Don’t cry, Grandpa,” she says innocently, sweetly, a sixteen-year-old-voice filled with all the love in the world. “I’ve come to stay; I’ll be back again. I want to know you, you see, and all about you, everything I don’t currently understand.”

His tears trickle, salty-sweet down to his lips and he can taste them. He kisses her on the cheek and motions her inside, places the roses in his hand inside a vase and fills the container up with water. He keeps on staring at her as though he can barely believe she is real; he looks at her as though he’ll never let her go.

“Really, Grandpa,” she assures him, “I’ve come to stay.”

“Your father?” he questions, and his voice is filled with pain. More tears come to his eyes as she shakes her head slowly, signaling that the answer is no.

“But I have you,” he says, and the warmth and gladness that fills his voice is immeasurable, impossible.

~

He keeps the roses she offered him on that first, impossible, golden morning, the roses that have become the symbol of her love and by default, the love of her siblings. They each come to visit and eventually Rob learns of it. While he is not happy about it, he understands enough to let them be. His father hopes, secretly, that he will have a chance at reconciliation with Rob one day. Now that he has met his grandchildren, nothing seems impossible.

The roses she offered him that first morning have withered and died, so that even to touch one of them causes them to crumble. He intends to press them between the pages of a book, keeping them there forever, when one of them crumbles between his thumb and forefinger, leaving the ash upon his sleeve.

He licks his finger, touches it to the brittle ash, then places it within his mouth. He is tasting love, he believes. He is tasting a kinder love than he himself possesses, one which surpasses and transcends the stony, thorny devotion that he always believed to be the most pure expression of emotion. In his old age, he has mellowed. In his old age, he has learned how to enter the world of dreams which always belonged to Rose and Rob.

In his old age, he has learned how to regret, and to feel the aching, impossible sorrow that comes of knowing that nothing can be changed.

Perhaps there are more victories to come, more joys that may cause his heart to melt. But he is content in the love of Rose, and the forgiveness of his grandchildren; he feels like a man pardoned, a man given back his soul. He longs to undo his crimes, well-intentioned as they were, and to reunite with his son, whom he still loves. But in the meantime, the ash of rose contents him, the ash of rose, and all that it means.

~

Credits: “Meggie’s Theme” from The Thorn Birds, Pat Conroy’s novels