The Wicked Son Read online

  There are, of course, analgesics. They include consumption, envy, grievance, hatred, as we, in each case, compare ourselves to those who surround us, who we understand to be our adversaries; as we compare ourselves to our neighbors, fellow contestants in a zero-sum endeavor. As we compare ourselves to them, or, indeed, to our notions of them. For in this absence of community, which of us knows what, or, in fact, who, our neighbors are?

  In trading status, the pursuit of status, wealth, and power, for community, we sign on for the burdens of repression. For the lusted-after preferment is revealed the morning after as nothing. The new car is a problematic hunk of junk as soon as we drive it off the lot; we even know the phrase—Drive it around the block and it loses half its value. The new watch keeps no better time than the old watch, and we wonder why we bought it.

  If, however, these pursuits are understood as worthless, whatever are we to do? So we repress our knowledge of these objects and of the worthlessness of their pursuit, and much of the rancor we feel toward our neighbors, our business associates, hides fear that they (as well as we) might be aware of our loneliness and longing.

  We make demands on no one, and no one makes demands on us. Our business dealings are savage in their lack of courtesy, and we console ourselves that it is the way of the world.

  Note that we not only applaud but also envy the firefighters and their families at a funeral; the sailing team, exhausted to death at the end of a race; the egghead scientists at a convention, in the next booth, getting drunk and gossiping about the universe.

  Our own enclave, the Jews, exists, in truth, in learning, containing wisdom, solace, tradition, and mutual support. In our connection to the Divine, and to the endlessly fascinating mysteries of our own nature, and that of our fellow acolytes, our race and religion persist, suffused by the ideal, the truth, and our history. It is a gift from God—what greater joy than to support it, to devote ourselves to it, and to enjoy it? For it is written that just as it is forbidden to partake of the forbidden, it is forbidden not to partake of the permitted.

  The Jew is not only made and instructed but also commanded to live in the world and to enjoy those things God has permitted him—among the chiefest joys: that of belonging.

  * * *

  Apikoros

  Epicureanism broke out widely in the 1960s, where we, in America, saw a dissolution of the traditional bonds of religion. Young Jews, most notably, discovered that traditional religion, that is, fealty to or observance of one’s faith, limited individuals’ “freedom.” Was there not, we reasoned then, good in all religions and something to be learned from them all? Would it not make more sense, we told each other, to discard the old and create our own observances?

  Many recall, and many can still, sadly, witness the couple who write their own wedding ceremony, an essential feature of Epicureanism.

  What, one may ask, is the problem with this?

  Here is the answer: traditionally, a couple getting married were, wisely, compelled to vow to do not only those things they wished to do but also those things the tribe, in its wisdom, had concluded, over time, best augured well for the health and continuation of the marriage.

  It is all very well and faux poetic for the young to swear to “respect each other’s space” and so forth, but these vows were and are soon abrogated—they were understood, after the glow of courtship had worn off—as subjective (which they are—what, finally, does it mean to “respect another’s space”? It means nothing, and signifies nothing other than the writer’s intoxication with his own state). Did not these vows, probatively, bear the ultimate stamp of subjectivity? Of course they did. They were composed by the utterer and, so, must be liable to his revision.

  These epicurean vows carried neither the weight of tradition and reason, nor the compulsive power of poetry.

  “Consecrated to me according to the laws of Moses and the Traditions of the Jewish People,” a thousands-year-old formula, a beautiful formula, must awaken more awe in the pretender to the marriage state than writers-group, journal-keeping gibberish.

  The Jewish families reasoned “Should not a rational person celebrate both Christmas and Chanukah?” found and find that reason is an inferior bond to tradition and that, in failing to transmit the tradition of their people as paramount, they were teaching their children that it was inferior.

  The apikorsim seemed to think that all traditions were beautiful except their own. Chanukah became an adjunct of Christmas, like the deserving poor person asked to Thanksgiving and “treated just like everyone else.” Passover became a pretext for discussion of geopolitics in which, shamefully, the State of Israel could be castigated for supposed crimes against “the deserving poor.” Jews became Buddhists, Wiccans, cultists of all stripes. Why particularly the Jews? Because they were deracinated.

  As with the compulsive dater, the newly freed Jew understood the cause of his anomie not to be his autoemancipation but his choice of object. The serial monogamist says, “I owe it to myself to find the perfect mate, as, finally, does the young person whose time I am wasting. If I discover that, after some investigation, she is not completely right for me, would it not be an act of grace to free her, so that she may look elsewhere?”

  Such is the reasoning of the apikoros, seeking out community, wisdom, and solace piecemeal—much of it purchased—from a congeries of spiritual and semispiritual, and merchants of hokum. Japanese drum beating, “self-help” groups and cults, etc., offer to the fallen-away Jew the possibility of repletion.

  What pleasures do these? Nothing, per se. The problem is with the Jew himself. For, as with serial dating, his problem is not the discovery of the “perfect one” his problem is that he is addicted to the pleasures of the search.

  What pleasures do these pillar-to-post investigations offer? They mask pain and guilt—the pain of abandonment and the guilt of desertion.

  For the apikoros, finally, finally, knows himself to be a Jew. How do we know? Because of the ritual pronouncements: “My parents are Jewish, but I do not consider myself a Jew” “I am a Jew but not a practicing Jew” “Although I am a Jew, I disapprove of this Sharon.”

  This is not the healthy speech of a person who changed religions; it is a confession. (It is only logical that, just as some non-Jews opt into Judaism as offering a covenant more suited to them, some Jews opt out. But those who do, in search of a true holy covenant, are unlikely, indeed, first to proclaim, and second to feel, the need to defend their choice.)

  The apikoros is not proceeding toward, but running from, something; he identifies the menace as Judaism—a religion and a tradition, increasingly, he does not understand. But he is not running from Judaism (what does he know of it, and, more important, what, in it, is threatening?). He is running from his feelings of shame and guilt. And he will, of course, never outpace them.

  Where is the hope for this conflicted person?

  It is in observance.

  Here again habit, as all religions know, comes to the aid of the afflicted. The apikoros must accept a situation in which he cannot choose—for it is choice, this illusion of freedom that has disturbed him.

  The good actor, the good director, understands that the lines must be said exactly as written. Why? Because this removes, from the actor, the possibility and so the necessity of improvisation.

  What does this mean?

  Speech awakens emotion in the actor. The mere uttering of the written words will involve the actor in the scene.

  The actor, involved in the scene, does not have the self-consciousness to differentiate between a dislike for the written words because they are inept and a dislike for them because they awaken in him feelings he would rather keep hidden.

  The only way to maintain the feeling of this self-control is by a self-removal from the scene, by the adoption of a role as judge rather than participant. It is literally impossible for the actor to alter the lines to suit and to be involved in the progress of the written scene. One may maintain the illusion of
superiority to the scene but only at the cost of woodenness.

  The observant actor reasons thusly: since I cannot differentiate between a dislike of the line as written and a dislike of the emotions it creates, I will say the line as written and let the chips fall where they may.

  This is the beginning of wisdom in this actor. He comes to realize that the well-written play does not need his help, and the badly written play cannot profit greater from his help than to enjoy his unjudgmental dedication to the text.

  Note that the actor was not forced to do the play; he accepted the commission of his own free will and was free to decline. The congregant, the worshipper, similarly, has not been forced to accept the rite (marriage, Communion, brit milah, holiday observance), but, having done so, would be wise, which is to say rewarded, to devote himself to the rite per se.

  In so doing, he or she will be surprised, as is the actor, finding worth and beauty where none could be suspected. He will be surprised to find himself blessed by the removal of that worthless burden he has, once wishfully, named to himself as “my free will.”

  * * *

  The Children of Kings and Queens

  We know that our happiest memories are of submersion in the group. The group may be a happy family, coworkers on a political campaign, the sewing circle, the Army platoon, the scout troop—those times we recognize, in retrospect, we were free of self-consciousness, and the habit of invidious comparison, when those around us were not opponents (real or potential) but brothers and sisters. Indeed, for many in the West, these immersions in the group are the model and sole experience of that happy family that, in its nuclear form, has proved to them hypothetical.

  What great joy in setting down that tediously constructed, useless armor we call personality. The demanding maintenance of this false, protective self, we must see, if we do the math, has no commensurate benefit. For that we do not need each other, that we do not long for security, that we do not love rootedness and commonality—is a lie. The resistance is the neurosis: it is our terror of loneliness that inspires us to construct the wall. But this wall does not protect us from loneliness but from a consciousness of our fear of it. The loneliness persists, supplanted in the conscious mind by anxiety.

  What do we fear? That our protection should fail, and we find ourselves faced with the fact of our unbearable longing. This unnamed anxiety inspires us to fill our time. We compulsively attend classes, we “improve” ourselves, we travel, we play sports, we e-mail, we chatter endlessly, and we complain. We inflict upon our children endless activities with the inchoate sense that this franticness will somehow make them happy.

  A little observation shows that it makes the children unhappy—schlepping them from this lesson to that, from this managed birthday celebration to that tutorial. All this is nothing other or better than an early indoctrination in a life of anxiety. The lesson we suggest they learn is that the human being is completely perfectible, if only there were enough hours in the day to permit him to take an infinite number of classes.

  Self-help, a schedule of fitness, meditation, yoga, sports, college tutoring, and, in fact, college itself are attempts to fill that which we feel is an endless void. What is the void? Ourselves.

  Jewish self-loathing and Jewish anti-Semitism are the theoretical aspect of an empty modern life. The mind finds phobia preferable to free-floating anxiety, so it creates or accepts the idea of an enemy. No, one thinks, “(a) I am so lonely. My desire to belong is so great that were I to face it, and find it unslakable, I would die. I will insulate myself against that desire; (b) I will construct a firewall of confected beliefs and practices, e.g., people are fine on their own, they do not require community but self-protection. The desire to belong is a fiction of the weak. I am strong, and will make myself stronger, through various mental and physical techniques of self-perfection.”

  The maintenance of this false self, however, is constant, and draining, thus “(c) I feel a dread, and sense of unease, for as I, as I have determined, am perfectible, and, on the road to complete self-sufficiency, the cause of this unease must be an Other.” A historically handy choice is the Jew.

  As the enlightened Jew is debarred from identifying himself as “Other,” he performs another agile mental feat and directs his anger against “the Jews.” But he is not free to fully identify the Jews as others unless he can purge “the Jew in himself.”

  As with any surgery, there is a certain amount of brutality involved. The pain of self-mutilation, however, may (and must) itself be understood as the result of causes external; the pain must be attributed to the group that one is betraying: “The Jew, the Jews, the Jews.”

  To you, the wicked son, does it seem logical that the creators, receivers, interpreters and protectors of the Bible for millennia, somehow had it wrong?—that the rabbis, mystics, and prophets who lived to give living sense to immemorial memory were somehow deluded? That Christianity, and Islam, deriving their brief and their wisdom from the Abrahamic text, are in debt to the Jews for nothing? And I ask you if, in your knowledge of the world, it is unheard of for a too-heavy sense of obligation to foment, in the debtor, a sense of injury?

  Perhaps that is the position in which you find yourself.

  Does your prized individuality make you content? Does your proclamation of your love of “freedom” free you from your fragmented, commercial attempts to find fulfillment?

  Perhaps, as with the inability to find a perfect mate, it is not the parade of prospects but your premises that are incorrect. Perhaps the absence of the perfect Other is another manifestation of the sense of loss manifested in Jewish self-loathing. And perhaps rather than decrying the disappointing nature of the Other, one might investigate the sense of loss itself.

  Having determined that one’s premises are suspect, might one not, as an exercise, adopt their inverse, to see if that should prove more supportable? Let us suppose, then, that (1) we are not alone; (2) community is good; (3) all human beings long for it; (4) this longing is neither shameful nor foolish; (5) it may be removed by devotion to that very group to which one is, by ties historical, racial, or, indeed, of inclination, entitled to membership; (6) the Jews are a noble race and religion, dedicated for nearly six thousand recorded years, to ethical behavior, study, and the desire to understand that unknowable, unnamable mystery that is indicated by the word “god.”

  Children, and especially unhappy children, fantasize that the adults with whom they live are not their real parents, that their real parents are noble kings and queens who will one day come for them. This fantasy does not cease with childhood, it strengthens. We defend ourselves against the longing this fantasy represents, and turn against that which would, or might, weaken our defense.

  The depth of the wicked son’s rancor is the depth of his longing. And, curiously, the childhood fantasy, which we as adults so vehemently disclaim, is true.

  We are the children of kings and queens, a holy nation and a kingdom of priests. We are the children of a mystery that has not abandoned us and that has come for us; it is both described and contained in the Torah.

  GLOSSARY

  * * *

  afikomen—The final piece of matzah eaten at the Passover seder, the afikomen is broken from a whole piece of matzah early in the seder and put aside for later use. Because the seder cannot be completed until the afikomen is consumed, it has become traditional for children to take the afikomen from the adult leading the seder and ransom it for a gift.

  Akedah—The story of the binding of Isaac, which appears in Genesis 22.

  apikoros—A heretic, one who is learned in Judaism but rejects it. The term evolved from the name of the Greek philosopher Epicurus.

  Aramaic—A Semitic language, related to Hebrew and Arabic, which flourished in the Mesopotamian world in different forms from approximately 700 B.C.E. to the middle of the first millennium and is still spoken by small groups in Lebanon, Turkey, and Kurdistan. The language of the Talmud and other important Jewish texts, Aramai
c was the lingua franca of the Jews in Greek and Roman times, and was used for rabbinic writings as late as the thirteenth century C.E.

  Ashkenazi—Originally referred to Jews from Germany; eventually generalized to all Jews from Central and Eastern Europe.

  ba’al teshuva—The Hebrew term for a Jew who has returned, i.e., become fully observant.

  bar/bat mitzvah—A Jewish child becomes a bar or bat mitzvah, an adult member of the Jewish community who is able to fully participate in synagogue services and all other religious rituals, at the age of thirteen for boys and twelve for girls. The bar or bat mitzvah is usually celebrated by the youth being called to the Torah at synagogue services, followed by a party for friends and family.

  blood libel—The anti-Jewish slander, first appearing in Norwich, England, in 1144, that Jews kill Christian children and use their blood for ritual purposes, especially on Passover. This slander occasionally still surfaces and has been the pretext for anti-Jewish violence over the centuries, leading to much death and destruction.

  borscht belt—The string of Catskills summer resorts where Jews vacationed during much of the twentieth century.

  bris—Short for bris milah, covenant of circumcision—the circumcision of eight-day-old Jewish boys as a sign of their entrance into the covenant of the Jewish people.

  Chelm—A city in Poland, southeast of Lublin, which had a Jewish presence dating back perhaps as early as the twelfth century. Chelm appears often in Jewish folklore as a city populated by fools.

  Chumash—From the Hebrew word for “five” the Torah, also known as the Five Books of Moses or the Pentateuch, are often referred to as the Chumash.

  diaspora—The Jewish communities outside the Land of Israel. drash—A nonliteral commentary on a biblical verse.