Being Jewish

If the following piece sounds familiar, it may be, as I first published a version nine years ago. The past few days have been fraught with domestic bric-a-brac (insurance claims, tax forms, scams, medical billing systems, that kind of stuff) which has crowded out many new thoughts. Therefore, this old one. I haven't changed much of it.

"I am a Jew," were the last words uttered by Daniel Pearl as his executioner beheaded him. "I am a Jew." The composure needed to say those words at that instant elevated the man and his courage into that eternal realm where myth lives, and where the hideousness of his slaughter is not what we remember, but his words, "I am a Jew.", his last four words that will go on speaking to us forever. Would I have had the courage to do the same? Would I have it now? What would it feel like to have that blade sawing through your throat knowing you had a nanosecond to say something that mattered? A recent daydream bears witness. I was musing about what I'd die for (not from), and of course my wife and children pretty much pushed out everything else. Would I take a bullet for a local congressman? Hell, no, mostly hell no's when it comes to whatever I would take a bullet for period. Why would I? Then something bored its way through that mass of "Why would I?", and I suddenly found myself asking myself if I'd change my religion to keep from dying. Check this out: I'm tied to a pole against a stone wall facing a firing squad. The man in charge gives me a choice. He's sincere. He really wants me to do the right thing. He doesn't want to kill me. Renounce Judaism. That's all I had to do. He's almost begging me. Convert to mine. And I look at him then at the squad of men only a few yards away, seven rifles pointed at my heart, and I say, "Fire." I surprised myself. I knew it was true.

Wherever I went through this old world I never hid the fact that I was Jewish even though my travels took me to places where Jews were scarce or not at all. I felt like I was an emissary of some sort. "You think you know Jews? Well, amigo, check this one out." I also felt like I'd better get the info out that I was Jewish before somebody made a crack thinking there were no Jews in the vicinity. At the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, South Carolina, my first five minutes into the squad bay I'd be sharing with seventy-five other boots my Drill Instructor called my name out from a clipboard followed by "Get over here!" where he wrapped his fist in my t-shirt and stuck his face smack into mine and said, "You're a Jew. I've never had a Jew in my platoon before. I'll be watchin' you." I can't remember exactly how I felt but it must have been all kinds of terror. "Sir, yes, Sir!" Many weeks later this same DI saved my ass. I had appeared before his hatch with some request only to find another DI with him there from a neighboring platoon who did indeed begin to Jew bait me. Little things. Snipes. But I knew what it was. Finally, he asked me if I knew what the fastest thing in Germany was in World War II? I knew what it was. I'd heard the joke in high school. "I asked you a question, private," said the DI demanding an answer. I knew we had just crossed into a danger zone, but I saw my own DI place a hand on his buddy's arm to stop him. I never had to answer the question. Just in case you're aching to know, "A Jew on a bicycle." Germany. World War II. Get it?

I haven't been to a synagogue in the United States probably in decades, but nearly everywhere I've ever been in this world, if there is a synagogue I find myself  in it. I do not fall down on my knees or scream the holy holy, but I want to see in it and sit in it, hold the prayer book and wonder that one side of the page is in Hebrew, with which I am familiar, but that the other side is in some foreign language. Shalom is the word that binds the two: peace. I learned it had an "Open, Sesame" effect, but you'd have to say it first.

In the Spring of 1973 some miscue found my then wife and I abandoned in Prague. This was years before Prague became the go-to city for hip, young travelers. What it was when we arrived was dismal, gray, and dreary. Even the drizzle seemed dirty. We knew no one but had the name of the hotel written on a scrap of paper. Russian troops were stationed every where we looked, so we made our way to the hotel by showing the scrap of paper to one soldier after another, connecting the dots, so to speak, until we arrived at a tattered hotel that looked like the dilapidated exterior of an eastern European spy set. Its interior reflected its exterior: chipped paint and poorly lit, not exactly a tired traveler's dream. But we had a room! We also had a rude desk clerk who shook his head no English. But we did have a room and climbed upstairs to reach it. The room: Don't think Martha Stewart; don't even think Bates Motel. Think Svetlana Stalin. Decor by. OK. Now what?

I spread a map of the city out on the bed, and there, in the midst of the old city, not far away from where we sat, was a cluster of buildings colored gold, right down the street, a cluster of gold buildings!. Let's go. It was Friday evening nearing sundown, a little chilly, but we were in the streets over which millions of feet for thousands of years had gone before us, and the adventure was on. Kafka walked here. I imagined the Kaballah being argued by a gaggle of men with ear locks on these narrow stone streets. Two Jews. Three opinions. Right? We passed the cathedral in the main square from which berserk parishioners during long ago Easters, goaded by homicidal priests, went from church to storm through the Jewish quarter doing as much damage as they could to people like me. Why didn't I just turn around? Why was I drawn further into this part of the city? If I had to escape where would I go? But that was silly. Why would I have to escape? It was 1973.

We passed a nondescript building where shabbiness had settled like a threadbare shawl around an old lady's sagging shoulders. The guide notes said it was a 13th century synagogue. A man stood out front, well dressed in top coat and hat. "Shalom," I said, and he said, "Shalom" right back. His next sentence asked in English, "Are you an American?" Whoa! Well, it turned out  the reason he knew English so well was because he had two sons who worked for American Airlines in the States. Friday evening services were about to begin. Shabbos. Sabbath. Would I like to join them? It was an Orthodox shul, but they were only able to heat the women's section, so that's where the services were held. Men crowded around the bema, a raised kind of podium in the middle of the room which held the Torah, the holy book. The few women in attendance worshiped on the rim. When it came to that place in the service where the Torah was read I was actually called to make an aliya, a going up. I was being asked to read the Torah portion for that evening. How ironic I thought! Me who used to cut Hebrew school to play the pinball machines in Knocko's pool hall. Barochu adonai homvorach...I could do this thing, and when the service was over, after the Sabbath candles were lit, after the spice box was passed around and the wine sipped, after I had read the words of five thousand years I felt so honored I wanted to give something back larger than what had been given me, but I've never been able to figure out what that could have been.

I didn't want that evening in Prague to end, and so a lot of chatting, questions, declaratives, one or two imperatives, and a lot of translating went on for awhile in the women's section. At some point the man who originally invited us in brought over a young man, 21,22, who spoke sixteen or seventeen languages and had worked as a government guide until his sister escaped to Israel, and he was made to work as a baggage handler in the airport. A member of the Jewish underground, he volunteered to give us a tour of the city completely off the government's books. Everywhere we went people discussed politics at a variety of decibel levels, none a whisper. It reminded me of my uncles back in Baltimore after the seder in the living room hollering at each other about Adelai  Stevenson's abilities even though they all basically agreed he had them. Eisenhower? Don't talk to me about Eisenhower. Five stars. Big deal.

The last night we were in Prague we invited our guide for dinner at the hotel with two young Spanish women we'd befriended who were touring from Franco's Spain. Our guide spoke Spanish, Italian, English and other languages which sounded like three forks caught in a garbage disposal. The Spaniards spoke Italian and Spanish. I spoke English and really stupid Italian. My wife's was much better. A whole lot of translating going on there as well. The topic was freedom. Can you imagine? Freedom. Here, in Eastern Europe, with a communist Jew under an authoritarian government, two conservative catholic women from Franco's Spain who did not fret over their own authoritarian regime ("Everyone has health care"), and two Americans who had come of political age in the sixties, still inspired by the Weavers but having missed Woodstock. The food made Spam look good, but the conversation was a three ring circus of opinions and counter opinions, thought clusters countered by thought clusters, epiphanies, moments of disbelief or wonder. All of us were enjoying life at that moment. Even our Czech guide seemed happy. Me? I was mesmerized. If I had not said, "Shalom", an experience more astonishing than any dream I could have conjured would never have been.

Shalom.

PINO - Pirate In Name Only

First it's "Rock-a-bye-Baby". Then, pretty soon, way too soon and not really even very pretty, it's "Ol Rockin'  Chair's Got me". Remember that Jimmy Buffet song from way back in the 70's? A Pirate Looks At Forty? Was a time when the mere plink of its first cord conjured an air of nostalgia. "Mother, mother ocean, I can hear your call..." 

"I'm not done yet, but the signs are there,"  says the music. "I've taken a lickin', but I'm still tickin'". There's still a score out there waiting for me!

But, a pirate looks at eighty? Geesus! He damn near sleeps with the fishes! My hands are too gnarled to wield a proper cutlass, laddy. My feet creak like the deck of a dry-docked ship. My eyes reckon with mist. My cheeks have sun spots. My teeth still bite but my gut rebels at what it once found scrumptious. My ears swash buckle. The rocking chair was invented so the elderly could sustain some semblance of ci]rculation even though they sat all day, along with creating a few extra endorphins to keep 'em quiet and in place. "Ol' Rockin' Chair's Got me". I have one in every room. 

If you can look me in the eyes and enumerate the glories of aging without batting a lash you're a better liar than I am.

The Rose Kid

HOW I GOT MY FIRST JOB IN THEATER

Make no mistake about it - not that you would - but I am not Binary (Is that with a capital "B"?). Never felt the call, but you can’t be in theater without knowing gay people - lots of them - so get over it. No big deal. I was used to guys hitting on me but physically not emotionally. Physically, just push them away, but, emotionally? How do you deal with that?

I was new to theater having recently bullshat my way into the position of assistant stage manager at the Cape Cod Melody Tent for the summer season, 1965 - ten weeks; ten musicals. I’d just finished my first year at Yale graduate school in playwriting and dramatic literature, looked around and believed I’d come to a crossroads. What were all those playwrights doing for work now that they've graduated? Writing in places without heat and a toilet down the hall is what I could determine. I could return to my home town to a safe job already waiting for me, or grab the opportunity to lie my way into a summer stock job and plunge ahead into a lifetime of insecurity.I took the plunge.

My roommate had just turned down the job, and I,half in jest,said tell them I'm available. Mind you, I knew nothing.They must've really been hard up because, lo and behold, a call came from NYC: could I possibly meet them for an interview? Sure!

Again, mind you, I knew nothing. How many productions and what was my favorite, was one of the first questions asked. Well, hell, I had never directed or produced anything,let alone acted, but I had sat through a year of directors doing their stuff at Yale so I rattled off Albee and Beckett and Ibsen and, of course, Shaw. My favorite? Uh, well, lemme see, uh, Beckett. OK? Lying through my teeth. I got the job.I was now an assistant stage manager except I had very little notion of what an ASM did. Consequently, midway through the season, long after it had become obvious how incompetent I was, I was nearly fired.How I turned it around I don't know, but I did. It was a tough learn, but it was a true learn, so, by the end of the season, I had a union card and a means of making a living in the theatre, which I’d come to love. And that’s how I met Joe Tremaine aka The Rose Kid.

One of the ten shows packing in that summer was West Side Story which meant two gangs of “gypsies” - the Sharks and the Jets - would descend on our tent for a week’s rehearsal and a week’s run. A gypsy in this sense meant a Broadway dancer of great skill and wild reputation, the theatre’s own visceral herd of show ponies. They moved fluidly from show to show. Hence, “gypsies”, their very daily lives a constant audition for A Chorus Line, which was decades from birth. Joe was one of them although he hadn’t yet begun to manifest his particular visions of empire, at least, not out loud. He would become an impresario - an international force in his field - but that was years in the making. When we first met, Joe was a chorus boy.

One evening I unlatched the door to the ramshackle shed that functioned as my office only to find a red, long stem rose on my clipboard along with an affectionate note signed by someone calling himself the Rose Kid. What it said it said softly and innocently. It was not salacious. It was not predatory. It was sweet and kind, really, simply, a request for friendship. My reaction was cruel and shallow. It was an affection for which I wasn't prepared, nor did I know how to react except to laugh and ridicule and make farce of someone else's feelings. I don't know what I did, but I might well have minced and lisped and otherwise performed some moronic mockery of what I would come to see as a dear dear act of caring and kindness.

"I would like to be your friend," was what the note said, was all it said."I would like to be your friend." It was signed, "The Rose Kid".

I remember Joe being mortified at this revelation and humiliated at the manner in which I revealed it - mincing and lisping and truly demeaning. I remember this tiny female dancer (Was she a Shark or a Jet?) unloading on me as the callous imbecile I was, shaming me in front of the other dancers, confronting my behavior and forcing me to confront it, too.It was the first time I realized a man could actually have a heart. I was suddenly so ashamed of myself and yet surprised (and embarrassed) that I felt such shame because one always made fun of guys like that, didn't one? What'd I do wrong? I was just joking. My cruel and callow prancing about had been rehearsed for years. I was just joking.

But that was then, and now is now, and the irony of it all is that Joe Tremaine and I became lifelong buddies. I don't know how, and I don't know why, however, in the instant our atoms collided, somewhere between his confession and my repudiation, we became friends deep down in the bones.

To this day our connection baffles me, but there it is, strong as ever. Although we rarely see each other - a handful of times in the decades following that season of stock - if I needed something, I believe Joe would be there as if we'd just spoken that morning.I'd make a pot of coffee, and we'd sit there and talk. Where I go Joe goes. He keeps me honest.

Thoughts During Solstice, 2023

Listen. 

That sweet, sweet sound. Remember Wind in the Willows? It's the Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Try to remember. The baby otter safely sleeping, curled up in the lap of dawn as the satyr pipes in the morning sun. 

Dorian Alexander, four years old, is asleep in Jamie's lap. She ruffles his hair like the gentle wind ruffling through dry meadow grass. She hums like the brook beside the house. Her face reflects the peace in his. Her breathing reflects the pace of his. And what I do is what I always do; I watch and I remember. I remember so that when the winds are not so gentle I can still feel them whispering in my ears, nuzzling my cheeks, readying me to outrun the storm.

Montana Days: The Three Silences

Due to a technological glitch, I haven't been able to publish the interview I'd intended. I was twenty-two years old and had just had my first play produced at Morgan. I'll keep working on it. In the meantime, here's a piece about silence in the woods. 

        Maybe it's happened to you. You're out in the woods poking along, enjoying the day, driven by no particular goal when, suddenly,the forest becomes as quiet as an execution. Noise stops. You stop. You listen carefully. You wish your ears were as powerful as those receivers deployed to pick up transmissions from deep space. Silence in the woods is heard only rarely during the cycle of a natural day. Dawn and dusk rather, the hour preceding light and that preceding darkness are two times you can depend upon. These are the hours when the beasts of the day and the beasts of the night take each other's place – some to prowl, some to sleep. One can sense the creatures passing each other through a kind of ceasefire zone as they exchange positions in the forest, so it is nearly, but not absolutely, a silence. There is still movement. Time goes by. 

        The second silence is death. You may never be caught by this silence, yet, in the woods, its presence is undeniable. If you are fortunate, you have watched predators stalk their prey. They carry the possibility of death - death on the way, death to come - and so they carry it with them in silence. Animals desert the area or stay still. This silence has a palpable presence of its own, one that takes sense beyond the other six to detect. It is how a man can feel (though he might never see) an animal watching him.

        Downed prey is death in fact, and this final silence is deeper than any. Suddenly, there is an absence of a life in the forest. The void will be filled eventually, even quickly, but, while it is there, every being in its presence is commanded by it. Neither is this final silence one of peace. There is an edge
to it, an air of uneasiness, a sense of mortality and danger. Peace obtains only when the forest is filled with the commotion of its creatures as they go about their lives. This "noise" is what most people love about the woods, and what they accept as quiet.

Portrait of The Playwright As A Young Man - Morgan State Interview, 1963

Click here to see the video:

https://growingolderbystephenforeman.blogspot.com/2023/06/portrait-of-playwright-as-young-man.html