Losing My Religion

Text © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2020
Images from the Internet

 

Losing My Religion

The part of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, in which I grew up, 99 percent of the population was either Italian or Jewish. Most of Bensonhurst was Italian, but my little area was more a 50-50 mix. There were two Chinese Families (both of whom owned the local Asian restaurants), two African-American domiciles, a smattering of Irish, and then the rest of us. Our grade-school teachers were all white, nearly all women, and a vast majority Jewish.

We were quite typical for that area’s Jewish Lower Middle Class. That meant on the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we went to the local synagogue, the Yeshiva of Bensonhurst on 78 Street (now a private middle and high school called the Sinai Academy, geared towards the children of Russian Immigrants), and that was pretty much the only time. You needed to buy a ticket per person, and it sold out. It is not a small temple, and had an enormous balcony (where we usually sat).

The Italian kids in our elementary school (PS 128, the same as attended by the Three Stooges in their youth) got Wednesday afternoon off to attend classes for their Communion and general Catholic instruction, while we Jewish kids sat in the classroom, bored because the teacher didn’t want to do lessons to just half the class. In the mid-1960s, however, a small synagogue and shul (Jewish school) run by a Hassidic group opened up on 21 Avenue in a house a block away from the school (now the Congregation Anshei Sfard Khal Faltishen). They started sending the Jewish kids there for religious instructions. My memories of it are vague because I would just zone out. My only remembrance of it was being taught about King David.

During the summer, I would attend a three-week sleepaway camp for a number of years called H.E.S. (Hebrew Education Society), run by the United Jewish Appeal (usually just referred to as the UJA). It was a beautiful location in Harriman State Park along Lake Stahahe, on the side of a mountain called High Peak, which we climbed every year. There was Saturday morning services and a prayer before and after each meal, but otherwise it was a normal summer camp. Evenings were often spent in the rec hall singing Jewish songs (“Zoom Gali, Gali”) and folk protest songs (e.g., Phil Ochs’ “Draft Dodger Rag” and others like the Temptations’ “Ball of Confusion”). I remember one year, the only 45 they had was Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love,” and during a social gathering, we’d play it at 45 to dance, 33-1/3 for slow grinds, and 78 for fast ones; I don’t remember them ever playing the flipside. Most of the time I had fun there, and the religious part was merely a function of the routine to get to the rest. I acquired a new black yarmulke each year, some of which I still own.

Within our household we were “Kosher.” My aunt Elsie (my mother’s sister) was not as keen on this, so when I would go visit her for a couple of weeks during the summer, she’d make me a pile of bacon. We were Kosher in the house because of my dad, Leo. I really don’t believe my mother, Helen, cared one way or another, and she found the whole Koshering process (using salt water to drain the blood out of the meat) tiresome, but she kept it up for him. I still have and employ the big yellow mixing bowl she used but not for that purpose. When we ate outside of the house, including with my father, such as when we ate at the local Chinese restaurant or at a friend’s house, we all ate whatever we wanted.

Like many of my friends back then, our family had five sets of dishes: there was the two daily meat and dairy set, the two in the upper cabinet that were brought down for Passover week only, and then the one under the sink that only saw light when a neighbor made lasagna and shared (thank  you Madeline), or on the very rare occasion when Chinese food was brought into the house. We never did the stereotypical Chinese food on Christmas thing. We also never had a tree, ever.

At the age of 11 or so, I started attending Hebrew School once a week at the Yeshiva of Bensonhurst, to prepare for my Bar Mitzvah. I was a terrible student, as I was slow to learn Hebrew and I honestly couldn’t care about the religious instruction. By the time of my Bar Mitzvah, I could read Hebrew phonetically quite well (a skill I no longer possess), but I still could not translate much. Around my house, my mother and father spoke Yiddish to each other when they did not want my older brother Richie and I to know what they were talking about, and so I never learned it other than a smattering of words or phrases, and that also applied to Hebrew School (I took Italian in Middle School and that was a failure, as well).

Things went along quite smoothly, and I accepted all of this Jewish culture on face value, pretty much, until I was still young, when something very subtle but ground shaking for me occurred. My father took me to the Automobile Show at the Coliseum at Columbus Circle on a lovely Spring day. It was morning when we got there and it was late afternoon when we were leaving. We were both hungry, but I knew we’d have to wait until we got home, because it was Passover, and on Passover you only eat Passover food. But my father bought us both a salted pretzel (with mustard, of course) from a street vendor. Wait, I thought, you can eat regular food on Passover? That was a thing? It took me a long time to process this, but what I realized is that being Kosher was merely arbitrary and was therefore meaningless. Keeping Kosher in the house sort of balanced the outside world eating of whatever as a yin-yang thing of centering, but this was Passover, and until that time we only ate Passover food during that period. It blew my little mind.

A couple of years after that, there was another change, again involving Passover: when the holiday came, my mother would climb up and take the Passover dishes down from the upper kitchen cabinet, and put the daily dishes in their place. Of course, living in an apartment in Brooklyn meant cockroaches were a natural part of our environment, so my mother would have to wash all the Passover dishes, and eight days later, when she switched them back, she’d have to wash all the daily dishes. At some point she had enough. “Leo,” she said, “I’m not doing this anymore. Enough!” This led to a multi-day fight that ended with my mother – all five-feet of her – standing her ground and saying, “Fine, you want it done, you do it!” And he did. That was the last year we switched dishes. In fact, they got rid of the entire two sets (leaving the one under the sink) and bought glass dishes at were used for – shock – both meat and dairy. Again, it all felt random and pointless.

Chai ("Living" or "18")

The day of my Bar Mitzvah, May 18, 1968, was the last day I set foot into the Yeshiva of Bensonhurst (YoB) until my mother passed away in 1981. You are supposed to attend synagogue every day for a year to say the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead, when a close relative dies. The funeral itself was at a synagogue on Long Island near where she was buried, so I attended the YoB after the week of sitting Shiva. This also turned into a negative experience for me. The people attending the regular service (who were unknown to us) were dressed to the nines, showing off their new clothes in direct competition with each other. I found that crass (“Sadie! $125 at Bergmans!,” shouted across the aisles). Also, as Wikipedia explains, “In gematria (a form of Jewish numerology), the number 18 stands for ‘life,’ because the Hebrew letter that spell chai, meaning ‘living,’ adds up to 18.” So when you contribute, you donate in “chais”; for example saying “I donate two chai” means $36, “three chais” is $54, and so forth. The competition with the people there was fierce, like an auction, on how many “chai” they were going to give. The final one stood up and shouted, “I donate 12 chai! Anonymously!!” It was such a turnoff and I felt ashamed just to be there. I never went back.

At PS 128, we Jewish kids were often picked on by the bigger Christian kids. It was even worse when we got to middle school, the recently opened PS 281, which was rechristened Joseph B. Cavallaro Junior High the year after. I was even called a “Jew Bastard” by one of the Italian kids in my class (my response was, “at least I don’t bow down to one,” which got me a good solid punch to the jaw). While it was 50-50 at PS 128, here we were far outnumbered by various non-Jewish groups and races. I was running scared all the time through middle school and at Lafayette High School, which a local news outlet referred to as “The School from Hell.” No argument from me.

In 1993, thanks to my Masters’ program in Media Ecology, I had the chance to take a class on communication methodologies in Tel Aviv for a week, led by social critic and philosopher Neil Postman. I found Tel Aviv proper quite uninteresting, and often referred to it as “Miami Beach with guns,” as it seemed most males walked around with rifles around their shoulders even on casual walks, in case there was a terrorist attack (SCUD missiles had landed recently not far from where we were staying). It was very modern and very tense, with lots of glass and steel. I felt more at ease outside the city, in places like Jaffa (to which we walked a few times) and the one day we had the opportunity to spend in Jerusalem on a bus trip.

While in Jerusalem, we went to the Wailing Wall and went through the security checks as everyone did, both Jews and Arabs, and learned where not to tread. At the Wall, we were told that men had to go to the left, women to the right, and they were not allowed to mix (this is still true today). I put a request on a piece of paper, and put it into the Wall, but it felt as hollow as going to a tarot card reader at a fair, or a soothsayer with a crystal ball. I also wandered into the Cave, and found many a man praying fervently (no women allowed in such a holy place), davening and shaking back and forth. All of this misogyny and exclusion was slowly eating away at the religious part of me.

As I said in an earlier blog, at the burial of the mother of a good friend, I started talking to the rabbi-for-hire who would do the ceremony. At some point, he asked me, what was my sect, and I told him somewhere between reform and conservative (probably more to the latter in those confused days). He grimaced and snarled, “No such thing, you’re either Orthodox or you’re not really a Jew.” I turned from the hole in the ground to face him, stuck my finger in his face, and said, “Whether you believe that or not, we would have both been in the same gas chamber, so don't you dare tell me I'm not a Jew.”

Jews have always been viewed as “Other” by the larger majority Christian and Muslim world, and have been persecuted for it. This is my connection to being a Jew. Whether I believe in the religion or not, it is part of my literal genetics, and I am willing to accept that. As for the religion, I refer to myself as either an agnostic, or secular Jew. We go to friends on Passover and have them over for Purim suppers. At night I say thanks as acknowledging what has happened to me during the day as a sign of appreciation of the events that have occurred (e.g., “thank you for me just catching the bus…”).

While, again, I didn’t really quite have the words for it and it would take me decades to figure it out, I realized that I was proud of my heritage but my religion meant little to me. My paternal grandparents had been kicked out of Hungary in 1910, and my maternal grandparents were forced from Prussia around the same time. I felt and feel no connection to these sites, so my being a Jew became part of my identity in a sense of culture, rather than religion. I’m proud to be a Jew. I love Israel and believe it has a right to exist (though I’m not always a fan of its government) as a homeland for the Jews (and others), as I have experienced transgenerational separateness from the land in which my family came.

Tefillin

I have felt a lot of pressure from religious groups through my life. When I was a first-year undergraduate at Kingsborough Community College in 1974, I was targeted by the Jews for Jesus for me to “gabba gabba one of us” join their cult. At Queens College in the late 1970s, we were inundated by a sect of Hassidism that would grab men (again, can’t touch women because they might be having their “filthy” periods) and make them do their tefillin prayers in a van (again from Wikipedia, tefillin, “or phylacteries, is a set of small black leather boxes containing scrolls inscribed with verses from the Torah”). During the summer of 1977, when I worked at the Baskin-Robbins on Seventh Avenue South (a block south of the Stonewall in the West Village), there was a constant flow of young faces asking me if I had “accepted Jesus as my personal savior” (I’m sure they were there trying to “save the gays”). Over the years, there have also been subway preachers who ignored the “Jesus is Love” route and went straight for the “You’re going to Hell” line of religiosity. I often challenged them. I came to see the anti-science of religion in the late 1980s when my apartment was visited by a couple of Jehovah Witnesses. They handed me a little blue book “disproving” evolution using this argument: a computer’s molecules are simple, and a monkey’s molecules are complex. If a monkey can turn those complex molecules into an even more complex human, why can’t a simple calculator turn into a supercomputer? I laughed in their faces, and said, “A calculator doesn’t reproduce so there is no margin for mutation” (never mind that evolution takes millions of years, and calculators have only been around for a few dozen at that point). They were baffled by this, and tried to change the subject.

Now I am comfortable disassociating myself from religious beliefs. Recently, an online Orthodox Rabbi said I should be reading the Torah with the commentaries from beginning to end, and with an open mind. My reply was, “That is the exact wording used by Christians (about the New Testament) and Muslims (the Koran) who try to tell someone why they should believe their god without proof.”

When it is time for me to pass on from this world, I am comfortable knowing that, well, that’s it, it is over. I joke about my mother and father sitting at a bar in heaven with their friends Ralph (and eventually Audrey), waiting for us to join them. It’s a lovely thought, and to me the imagery is sublime, but I believe the reality is when the brain no longer functions, the person is at a permanent rest.

So use your time wisely, and I wish you all the best of health, a long and fruitful life, and when I go, I am content to know I won’t think about anything.

MARC H. ELLIS Lecture: Does Judaism Equal Israel?

Text and photos by Robert Barry Francos
Book cover image and video from Internet

Earlier in the week, I was told about a coming evening lecture at the university, which was to feature historical theologian Marc H. Ellis discussing Israel.

On November 19, 2009, in the afternoon of the presentation, while I was on the phone with my good pal, Alan Abramowitz (who is historically knowledgeable about Israel and its neighbors), I looked up Ellis on the Internet. There I saw that he has numerous books and articles about the Holocaust, Israel, and Christians (he teaches at Baylor in Waco, TX, a heart of Born Again fundamentalism), but mostly it was pretty clear that he was an apologist for Israel, and in favor of a two-state solution. At that point I knew that (a) he would be interesting, (b) I would disagree with him, and (c) I would need to keep my temper wholly in check.

This is not exactly a town full of Jews (there are two synagogues for a population of 250,000), and during a march against George Bush recently, there was someone with a scarf covering his face carrying a sign which read, “Bush is a Zionist Patsi” [sic]. The overfull room reflected many more of Muslim faith than of Jews, and I certainly knew which side they were on. That is the problem with the Middle East, as it is hard to be centralist; it’s usually either “them or us,” depending on your stance.

Let me start out by stating clearly, Marc Ellis is an excellent speaker. Scheduled to go on for 45 minutes to be followed by 30 minutes of questions, he talked for well over an hour and was never boring, was often charming and humorous, and especially self-deprecating in a culturally European Jewish way. He is someone you would meet at a dinner party and probably enjoy spending time with. In mild mocking tones, he said that traveling around the world was difficult with Bush Jr. being president, but now it’s easier with Obama (he admits he loves Obama, but doesn’t believe he will do anything to solve the Middle East issues), especially in Canada with the prime minster, Stephen Harper, being “right of Bush.”

Ellis started by positing that he is proud to be a Jew, but does not like how Israel is (re)acting. He brought up what he called the “prophetic,” meaning that it was Jewish culture, specifically the Exodus story with Moses bringing down the commandments, which is the basis of the entire Jewish-Christian-Muslim culture. As he spoke, a PowerPoint presentation flashed overhead, initially including the covers of some of his tomes, which seemed a bit disingenuous to me (but I feel that way about any author who lectures and pushes more than the present book, Judaism Does Not Equal Israel: The Rebirth of the Jewish Prophetic).

His essential argument is that the Jews of Europe, who migrated to the Middle East after World War II, basically used the Holocaust as a tool and justification for taking over the land, and treated its inhabitants poorly. Ellis used images of the walls built in Israel and especially the West Bank, and compared them to the walls built around the Warsaw Ghetto. What he left out mostly was why both these walls were built, and the difference between the motivations. The Warsaw wall was built to keep the Jews in for extermination purposes, whereas the walls in the West Bank are to keep the threat of violence to the Israeli citizens out. Ellis referred to “a few crude missiles” lobbed over to Israel so the wall is an overreaction, but in fact it is thousands of missiles every month that fly into Israel. As I’ve stated before, if Hamilton, Ontario, started lobbing bombs into Buffalo, NY, within a week the US would be attacking and sealing off Hamilton. Meanwhile, Israel is told by everyone else to just say, “Oh, well.”

He also discussed the “Nakba” (Arabic word for catastrophe) which is the “Palestinian” word for their being kicked out of Israel at its formation in 1948 by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). This is a misnomer, however, and what Ellis did not address at all that “Nakba” is a word created as a tool for something that pretty much never happened on a large scale. What actually occurred was when Israel was formed, the leaders of the neighboring Arab states declared that if any Arabs stayed in the territory after Israel was created, then when the neighboring Arabs destroyed “the Zionist entity,” then they would be tortured and killed as collaborators, so most Arabs left their homes of out fear from other Arab states. When these “refugees” moved out and to what was to be safe havens in their threatening neighbors, they were ostracized and placed instead into miserable ghettos and mistreated worse than anything done by the Israelis. No one has been crueler to the “Palestinians” than their own brother states. This is never addressed by apologists.

Ellis declares that he is in favor of a “two-state” system, with the West Bank and a large part of Jerusalem becoming a home-land for the “Palestinians.” However, what he does not mention is that when the British left Palestine, the UN split Palestine into two parts, a tiny percentage to the west went to become Israel, and the rest became an Arab State of Palestine, which became annexed by Jordan shortly later. But when the Arab people who were living in the territory to become Israel were forced to leave by other Arab states under threat of death and thereby losing their land that way, that is what became known as Nakba.

As for Jerusalem being bi-owned, this will not solve the problem of the Wailing Wall and the adjacent building, a holy Muslim site. After the Six Day War in 1968, as is stated in Wikipedia, “Jews could visit the Old City of Jerusalem and pray at the Western Wall to which they had been denied access by the Jordanians (in contravention of the 1949 Armistice agreement). In Hebron, Jews gained access to the Cave of the Patriarchs (the second most holy site in Judaism) for the first time since the 14th Century (previously Jews were only allowed to pray at the entrance).[67] A third Jewish holy site, Rachel's Tomb, in Bethlehem, also became accessible.” Since the Israeli’s took over Jerusalem, all can come to the holy sites, with the only restrictions being that a visitor must go through a check point similar to going to, say, the Statue of Liberty or the Arch of St. Louis.

Ellis claims he is glad Israel exists, but is also in favor of arming the “Palestinians” so they can fight for themselves. Che? He states that there is a “second Diaspora,” where 2 million Jewish Israelis have fled, he claims out of guilt of how the “Palestinians” are treated. That may be accurate for some, and in fact I’m sure it is, but for most Israelis in New York I have known it was for two basic reasons: first, they can make money here (like most immigrants from anywhere), and they are tired of living in fear of daily threats and bombings.

The largest question I had about what he did not talk about was why Israel has its policies, such as building walls. But he went around that by stating his talk is about Israel, “not about the Palestinians.” So he is only talking one sided, which is hardly impartial.

What would I like? I’d like to see the Arabs recognize Israel and declare (and follow through) that they will stop attacking. If that happened, I bet within a couple of years trade between all parties would start and both would benefit, then the walls would come down, and a second Palestinian statehood would probably emerge. Most of the world just wants Israel to give and give, and not get anything, especially safety, in return. While I certainly do not necessarily agree with all of Israel’s policies about the “Palestinians,” on the other hand I understand the reaction to them. Sure it is sometimes harsh, but it is a country that was built by the survivors of the Holocaust, was attacked by all its neighbors within 24 hours of its creation, and is still under constant threats (too often one hears some Middle East head of state claim that they want to eliminate Israel).

On the part of Israel, and here is the part I actually agree with Ellis, I can imagine it becoming a secular state rather than a “Jewish State,” where everyone was equal, but be put into the charter that is especially safe for Jews and aboriginal Arabs. Theocracy as rule just does not work, as is evident in many countries in the Middle East, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia. That’s why the US has a separation of church and state (though there are those in the US who would both argue against the separation, and believe it should be a “Christian State,” and others that fight for it, such as the much-bashed ACLU).

At the beginning of the Question and Answer period, the moderator (who is a Jewish professor from another university), clearly stated she would take charge and there would be no statements allowed, only questions, and they must be respectful. In other words, one must agree. Ellis denigrated Bush, but seems to follow his questioning policies. All the questions I heard (I left after about 30 minutes of this section) clearly showed that most of the audience was behind Ellis, though one woman asked why he showed slides of walls but not of the blown up and burned bodies of babies from the suicide bombers, to which he dodged the answer to a query that I found very relevant.

The important thing to remember is that truth is like the word “objective,” as it doesn’t truly exist in a pure form. There is always bias, as Harold Innis pointed out. My truth is not necessarily “your” truth. Language philosopher Alfred Korzypski declared his Law of Non-Identification as, "Whatever I say a thing is, it is not."

This event was sponsored by the Dean’s Office of Arts & Sciences, Religion and Culture of Arts & Sciences, Sociology of Arts & Sciences, St. Thomas Moore College, the Fellowship for Reconciliation and Peace (FRAP), Independent Jewish Voices, and Near East Cultural and Educational Foundation.

Information on Ellis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_H._Ellis
Baylor University site on Ellis: http://www.baylor.edu/jewish_studies/index.php?id=33813
Some online articles: http://www.baylor.edu/jewish_studies/index.php?id=34842

A very similar lecture, given five days earlier, in Toronto:

Religious Tolerance Needed This Season

Text © Robert Barry Francos
Photos from the Internet

In this season of good cheer, as the religious and secular supposedly come together, we are all drowned in ads to spend-spend-spend till our daddies take our T-Birds away.What I find astounding – and always have – is how the “orthodox” religious, no matter what the faith, keep insisting that it is their holiday and belongs to no one else but themselves. This is shown in people who demand that public displays of decorations must say Christmas rather than Holiday. Supposedly, this is a country of religious freedom and tolerance, but it seems that is only true as long as the religion and tolerance lines up the same as the “religious” person looking at it.

In my life, some of the most close-minded and evil-spirited people I have ever met have used religion as an excuse for their behavior. Below are some cases in point:

Many years ago while working in a corporate in-house print shop, I was a Phototypesetter. If you don’t know what a phototypesetter is, it really is a moot point because the position doesn’t exist anymore with present technology. When I was there during the 1980s, the shop was in Building 5 of the World Trade Center, and eventually moved to the sub-sub-sub basement (below the garages) of one of the Towers, just before I left.

In the area adjacent to mine was the layout tables, and one of the artists was a follower of Oral Roberts named Angela, who was in her early 20s. She prayed before she ate, she said “Thank you Jesus” often, and considered herself devout. Meanwhile, she tried to get anyone she did not like fired, and manipulated as many people as she could. She unabashedly told me she was justified in whatever she did because Jesus wanted her to be successful. I thought she was an attractive woman when I started there, but she became more ugly to me every day as I got to know her. Punk was devil’s music to her; her favorite was the “Born Again” BJ Thomas. I once called him lame, and she refused to talk to me for a while, and my boss said she complained to him about everything I did after that, trying to get rid of me. But my boss knew who she was, and I was good at what I did, and it did not have any repercussions on me.

Inside the darkroom, Angela had an Oral Roberts calendar. I was in there with a temp one day getting some chemicals for my processor, and we saw the calendar had an image of a hand floating in the sky and the message read, “I seek the Lord in the quiet places of my heart.” We starting improvising to the Bobby Fuller Four song, “Killing Jews and the Muslim / I sought the Lord and the Lord won / I sought the Lord and the / Lord won!” She walked in while we were doing this and started screaming at us. She tried real hard to make my life even more difficult after that. Note that we were not making fun of Christianity, but of the particular narrow thinking of who published the calendar, much as many of us protested the appearance of the JDL’s leader Meir Kahane when he appeared at Queens College for similar reasons.

She was not the only religious zealot in the printshop bunch; also she was not the most abrasive, by far. Another person working there was a huge man named Al who was a deacon in his church (he looked a lot like Cleveland on Family Guy, right down to the moustache). He used his size to bully many of the people there, but I refused to budge, all 120 lbs of me. To show you just how “devout” he was, he did some work there on the side for his church (service pamphlets and the like) and when he asked me to typeset them for him, I offered to do it for nothing because it was for his church. Later I found out that not only was he taking money for it from the church, he told them that I was also asking for money, and he kept that as well. From his church, I remind you.

One day, this religious man turned to me and said, “I hear your mother is good in bed.” And then he waited for me to react. Thing is, I had an uncle who was often instigating and obnoxious, and I did not like him at all. One day, I realized a formula for people like him: When someone says "A" expecting a reaction of "B," instead say "7." In other words, say something they totally don’t expect, and throw them off. I got along with my uncle after that. In the case of Al, what I very calmly said as the “7”: “Yeah, that’s what your daughter was telling me last night while I drilled her brains out.”

Al turned bright red and said, “I oughta kill you for that!” After he insults my mother, yet. I said back, “You won’t touch me.” Looking sharply at me, he said, making and unclenching his fists, “Why not?” I responded, “First of all, you know you can beat me up.” He gloated, “Yeah!” Continuing, I said, “Secondly, I know you can beat me up.” He looked confused at this point. I concluded with, “And most importantly, you know that I know you can beat me up.” He sighed and walked away.

There were other times he would try to rile me, but never succeeded. I was quick back then. One day this righteous man (as he considered himself) said to me, “I got me 10 inches. Bet you Jews don’t know nothin’ about 10 inches.” Not even turning around, I said, “That’s very true. I don’t know any Jew that small.” He stormed off and I kept working.

Of course, these kinds of conversations could never go on now, because of rules that have come in (and rightfully so) about workplace tolerance. Al could have been gone after his first of many “Jew” comments (i.e., his "name" for me was Jewboy. He would call across the huge room at full volume, "Hey, Jewboy, phone call for you!"

In another job years later, for a time I worked in a room with a guy from Staten Island. He was really into speed and coke (though being the non-drug person I am, I did not know this). One day at home, high on PCP, he saw the face of Jesus come through the wall and tell him to stop. Days later, his own brother shot him in the face in a botched drug deal. He came close to dying and lost an eye. After that he stopped taking drugs, and found Jesus as a replacement.

He was convinced, he told me, that God wanted him to convert me. And he sure did try. He kept turning to me, and quoting me scripture. But his minister was one of those “In the Old Testament, Jews were impure” kinds of guys (Adam and Moses turned their backs on God by disobeying him, etc.). One day, this guy says to me, “When Daniel was in the fire with Jesus…” I immediately said, “Stop! Daniel was with Jesus? Isn’t the story of Daniel in the Old Testament? If you can show me one place where Jesus is mentioned by name in the Old Testament, I will convert right now.” He said, “Daniel was there with three men, two of whom were named. The third one was unnamed, and that was Jesus.” I closed my hanging-open-in-disbelief mouth and said, “Man, that is some conjecture. So anytime someone is left unnamed, it’s Jesus? Naw, that’s not right. Back to zero.” And I went back to work. He was let go about 3 months later, because while I didn’t say anything to anyone else, other people found his proselytizing intolerance intolerable.

But not all this small-mindedness has to do with Christians I would like to strongly add. Once evening in the 1990s I was taking a car service home from work one late night and had a Palestinian driver. I’d had many pleasant conversations with Palestinians who drove cabs over the years, and mostly we agreed that common sense should rule in the Middle East, and it should not matter what the ideology is, we all three religious pray to the same God. But this driver was different. Ariel Sharon had just been elected Prime Minster of Israel (though had not come into office yet), and this man was ranting on and on about how hateful the Zionists (and he clearly meant this as all Jews, not just Israelis) were, how under Sharon they were going to kill all the Arabs (a common misbelief in that region), and Zionists in America were all part of the plot to control the world. He was screaming towards me, though I have the idea he didn’t know I was a Jew. He said “the Zionists”, not “you Zionists,” so I am assuming not. Actually, I had him drop me off a block from my house because I did not want him to know where I lived. The next day, I called the limousine service and did something I had never done before or after: I made a formal complaint about him, not as a Jew, but as a passenger.

Yes, every group has its share of religious bigots. At the funeral of the mother of a good friend, I was at the gravesite. While they were preparing the way and we were waiting for the casket to be taken out of the hearse, I started talking to the rabbi-for-hire who would do the ceremony. At some point, he asked me, what was my sect, and I told him somewhere between reform and conservative (probably more to the latter in those days…now I consider myself a secular Jew). He grimaced and snarled, “No such thing, you’re either Orthodox or you’re not really a Jew.” I couldn’t believe he was saying this crap at my friend’s mother’s grave. As it was, I was close to her and was mourning as well. I turned from the hole in the ground to face him, stuck my finger in his face, and said, “Whether you believe that or not, we would have both been in the same gas chamber, so don't you dare tell me I'm not a Jew.” Then I walked away because I did not want to say something that would have been more disrespectful in the situation.

If I have any real prejudice left, it would have to be towards fundamentalist thinking like that, whatever the belief or creed.

On the flip side, my mother had an Italian friend nicknamed “Chickie” who died when they were still young women, and my mom remained close to her mother, Rose Dolce; I knew her as “Nana” and she was like a grandmother to me as my other two had died when I was a very young age. She was strongly Roman Catholic and spent her later years creating and mending the local nun’s habits from St. Finbars, in Brooklyn. Earlier in her life, she worked in the garment industry as was fluent in Yiddish, as well as Italian. One of my strongest memories of her was that she loved everyone, and she believed her religion taught acceptance, and that we all prayed to one God, and no matter what the differences we are all God’s children. While I don’t feel any need for any formal religion these days, I learned a lot from her and thank her for her open-mindedness.

1 Peter 3:8-9 "To sum up, all of you be harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kindhearted, and humble in spirit; not returning evil for evil or insult for insult, but giving a blessing instead; for you were called for the very purpose that you might inherit a blessing."

Happy holidays to one and all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxaohwlZY2g

Remembering Neil Postman

Live FFoto © Robert Barry Francos
Other photos from the Internet

The weekend-long symposium Creating the Future: Conscious Time-Binding for a Better Tomorrow, run by the Institute of General Semantics (GS) and the Media Ecology Association (MEA) has just ended as I start to write this, on Sunday evening, November 16.

[Neil Postman at Sacks Lodge, 1991]

After Alfred Korzybski – father of GS – the most referenced name was that of the late social critic and, I’m proud to say my professor, Dr. Neil Postman. In fact, I heard Neil – the father Media Ecology (ME) – mentioned even more than Marshall McLuhan.

When I was about to start my post-graduate studies at New York University towards a Masters in ME, a friend who had graduated with a Communications BA warned me, “He’s more conservative than you may expect.” Actually, I had no expectations; in fact, at the time I had not read any of his works. But this blog is more about the man rather than the works. Anyone can (and should) have a relationship with his books; I’m lucky enough to have had one with the person.

My classes began in September of 1991, thanks to an earned scholarship benefit plan at my place of employment at the time. A month after starting, I attended the ME Department's 35th weekend conference, held at a rustic, cold water retreat called Sacks Lodge, in Saugerties, NY. It was for the department’s Masters and Ph.D. students, alumni, professors, and special guests and speakers only (and their spouses; children were also a common site).

It was there I was first introduced to Neil Postman. Before the opening session on Friday night, he sat of to the side of the small stage in the recreation building, where the lectures and events were held. In his hands were a yellow-page lined legal pad and pen, and a cigarette aflame. He smoked often, since childhood, and his gravely voice and cough confirmed that. He sat there, deep in thought, writing his conference introduction. He always wrote longhand, and always just before the opening remarks. Neil was not a man who spoke off the cuff in a formal public format (except for Q&As).

The talks were funny, sharp, and filled with “fun facts,” such as what countries were represented at the conference, and how many attendees were from each place on the globe. He was charming, with an easy smile and intelligence. Neil looked a bit like television host Gene Rayburn, something he pointed out once in one of these introductions. When in discussions, he was also ready to challenge your beliefs, whether he agreed with you or not. He lived his core belief, that the question was usually more important than the answer (a rabbinical philosophical tradition).

During that first conference, as I didn’t yet know any of the people who would become colleagues, I took (film) pictures of all the lectures, which annoyed many people. If I were to have a Native American name, it would probably be He Who Blinds (though I try to take the pictures during the first minute only, which tends to be introductory comments). After we returned to the city and I had them developed, I turned the photos in to the Department, as I would continue to do each year. They were put on a board and posted in the Department’s office by my advisor / professor / and friend, Janet Sternberg (who was also Postman’s assistant for a while). The second year, I received an “Oh, THAT guy again” look from some. A couple of years later, Neil started introducing me to people by saying, “This is Robert; he’s the Department’s official photographer.” As Neil accepted me, so I was received by the Department. I continued to take the photos at every year's conference until they stopped holding them well after the Millennium. When the Media Ecology Association (MEA) was formed, I continued my duties with them (and still do).

On Saturday nights at these conferences, we had a "Jeopardy"-like game called the Media Ecology Bowl. There were three tables with a buzzer on each, and three chairs at each table. The right hand table was for the Masters students, the middle one for the Ph.D.s, and the left one for the alumni. He would not allow the faculty to play because he did not want to take the chance of the Department embarrassing itself, he would half joke. There were a series of questions which were both academic and common culture-based, and after every few, the participants would change. In theory, the alumni should win, the Ph.D.s come in second, and the Masters last.

One year that I was participating, the Masters students were just on fire. We were way ahead of everyone. One of the questions (which were read by Neil but never written by him) was “Which film had the line, ‘Go ahead, make my day’?” The alums buzzed before us, and said, Dirty Harry. Neil said, “Right.” I immediately said out loud, “Wrong. It was the CHARACTER Dirty Harry who said it, but it wasn’t said in the FILM Dirty Harry; it was in a sequel, Sudden Impact. I argued about it for a while, but I didn’t win, of course. He gave it to them because they were behind. A few questions later, we had to name the location which a certain person was born. We won the buzz. The second of the three names was Mel Gibson, so of course I said New York State (Peekskill). And of course, his card had Australia as the wrong answer. I argued about it, and again, I didn’t win. Either way, we wiped up both the Ph.D.s and the alumni by a large score. Postman was not pleased and it was one of the few times I saw him angry, but kept his humor. The next year, as he read the rules, he looked at me and with a big smile, said, “Anyone who argues with the judges ruling will have his team automatically disqualified.” I didn’t participate anymore, but it actually made it easier for me because not only was the pressure off, but also I could concentrate on taking the photos.

I rarely saw what my friend called Neil’s “conservative” side, but it does occasionally pop up. Once at the conference that was held the October after 9/11, one of the speakers gave a presentation that asked for patience and negotiation, rather than responding with troop action. When she was finished, Neil, who had served in Korea, stood up and asked her, seriously this time, “How many people have to die before it’s okay to respond with troops?” The lunch that followed was definitely filled with conversations about that exchange.

Meanwhile, back in 1991, before our Bowl exchange, the first class I had was the intro class, What is Media Ecology? About mid-way through the year, Postman substituted for the class’s professor, Terence Moran (whose specialties include propaganda and Egyptology) who had to go to a black-tie dinner (Moran came to explain this to us dressed in his tux). The timing was perfect because we had just finished reading Neil’s arguably most popular work, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985). This gave the class the opportunity to ask the author questions directly, and we jumped at the chance. My classmates did not all agree with what he was positing in the book, but he graciously and humorously fielded our multitude of questions, and even doubts. Sometimes he would start his response with “You know, you’re crazy,” while he had a big smile on his face. No one took it personally, because it wasn’t threatening, even though we were beginning students and he was the Department Head.

Years later I was having lunch with Neil at a conference, and reminded him of that day. I told him how I was nervous about saying something stupid/crazy, and that I thought he had handled the occasional derision well. Also, I congratulated him on the publication of a recent book. He told me something that surprised me: as much as he loved getting published, it had its downside (what he might have called a "Faustian Bargain") in that once in the public eye, the author was locked into that idea. Even as the years change and ideas change – perhaps to the point of being in contrast with what was in the book – these old ideas are still ascribed. Neil said, despite the growth of ideas, it was still, "'Postman says that...' rather than 'said'." Because he had written them, he felt duty bound to defend his statements years later.

The summer of 1993, around the time Postman’s Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology book came out, I took a week long summer class abroad in Israel, studying the modern communications systems there (newspapers, radio, television, etc.). It was based in Tel Aviv, and they let me bring my partner, who is also an academic. Postman was leading the class, so we both to know him a bit better. It was an amazing experience, and it was the first time either my partner or I had ever been to Israel. I would have liked to see more of the countryside, especially since with the exception of a one-day excursion to the Knesset and to the old city of Jerusalem, we were Tel Aviv locked. For those who don’t know, Tel Aviv is very similar to Miami Beach, except many adult men walk around with loaded rifles slung over their shoulders…just in case. My partner and I walked along the beach that had recently been shelled by Iraqi SCUD missiles, rowed on a Mediterranean tributary, and saw the market in Yaffa (once its own city, now basically an older suburb of Tel Aviv).

The class stayed (and held many of the lectures) at a hostel, where every breakfast consisted of a hard-boiled egg and potato, or oatmeal. The professors stayed downtown at a major hotel. Once the day got started, it was always interesting. Thanks to Postman’s visibility, we talked to many influential people, such as editors of the two major newspapers (Maariv and the Yedioth Ahronoth), radio news show producers and hosts, and even a high-ranking Minister in the parliament (who posited that the next big war in the area would be about water).

The winter term after we came back from Israel, I took a class on the newly published Technopoly, led by Postman, and ably assisted by Sternberg. I remember that the class actually didn’t impress me much at the time, but through the years, things that Neil was talking about came back, and I have had so many a-ha moments because of it.

On the last day of class, Postman gave a lecture called “How to Live Your Life,” which was both hysterically funny, and extremely pithy. These ways incorporated such things from the wise (e.g., “never work past 8 pm,” “avoid multiple and simultaneous changes in your personal life”) to the bizarre (e.g., “do not become a jogger,” “if you are a man, get married as soon as possible; if you are a woman, you need not be in a hurry,” “Do not go to live in California” – note that Neil, a world traveler, remained New York biased). At the comment to “avoid whenever possible reading anything written after 1900” (actually based on a “nugget” by scholar Christine Nystrom), a woman in the room said, “If you do that, you will discount 90 percent of the printed words of women.” Without missing a beat, Neil said, “Okay, 1920.” Remember, his last book was Building a Bridge to the 18th Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future (1999).

When I heard that Neil was ill in 2002, like many of his other students, colleagues and fans, I was concerned. The last time I saw him was at the Media Ecology Association's 5th Anniversary celebration. He was extremely frail, with an oxygen tube attached to his nose. He was kind and gracious as always, accompanied by his wife, Shelley (who has appeared at many functions since his passing, including this weekend’s symposium). He was genuinely moved by the love in that room for him. A special video that was created for Neil for this occasion is below.

When Neil Postman passed away, I took the day off from work to go to his funeral, on Wednesday, October 8, 2003, held at Parkside Chapel, Forest Hills, Queens, where he lived (he was, however, born and raised in Brooklyn). Many tears and even some sobbing went on that day. But there were also some great stories told, which brought smiles. A highlight was Postman’s son, Andrew, who read an amazing eulogy for him.

While Amusing Ourselves is Neil’s most popular, my favorite is The Disappearance of Childhood (1982), which has the oft-quoted opening line, “Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.” For a Postman “reader” there is a collection of his articles and pieces from his longer works, Conscientious Objections: Stirring Up Trouble About Language, Technology and Education (1992). Unfortunately, his later writings are not included here (hopefully there will be an updated reissue). There is also a good source of some of Postman's work HERE.

Not only will Neil’s legacy live on in his works, but in the hearts of those who knew him. I am grateful to be considered in that extremely long list.

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This is a video that was produced for the Media Ecology Association's 5th Anniversary, which includes footage of Neil Postman.


Yes, that is me at 2:15