This change of season has made me feel out of sorts and I was blowing my nose and sorting fruitlessly through the pages of the Journal for the Torah column Thursday night, November 11. It wasn't there.
I was feeling quite upset when my phone rang. "Hi," said a breathy female voice. "I'm Jenny. Rob Eshman sent me as a constitutionally-protected act of literary satire that could not possibly be understood by an ordinary person as damaging to his reputation or that of the Jewish Journal."
"I understand," I said. "I'll be right out."
She was tall and blonde and naturally curvy. No surgeon's knife had touched her pure porcelain skin.
I brought her inside my hovel. She was wearing a long fur coat until she draped it over my pile of dirty clothes. Now she was dressed in the latest Victoria Secret fashions, including those black fishnet stockings and six-inch high heels I like so much.
"Rob said to give you this," she said, and handed me a note.
I unfolded it and read: "Luke, you have to question why your standard for true Jewish journalism is revelatory personal details. Yossi took you to task for this, correctly so. I'm all for including them when they are relevant, but to only be concerned for those kind of stories means you miss or demean very important communal stories that feature no sex or violence. For every kabbalah center or ecstasy investigative piece, we've done pieces like the recent one on the Federation's $20 million pension shortfall or the JCC's, pieces that affect many lives here but certainly are the opposite of sexy, and that make us no friends among the establishment. I like sex as much as the next guy, but I don't look to my community Jewish paper for a dependable source of titillation."
"Rob wants us to play a game called shmiros halashon (proper speech)," she said.
"But I really don't know Hebrew," I protested. "I just can't believe that Rob, who works for a reputable non-profit, could afford to send you. Are you sure it wasn't Malcolm Hoenlein?"
"Quite sure," she said. "Not Yossi Abramowitz either, though Yossi did give me these latest two issues of Shma for your perusal. Complimentary."
"Ahh, thank you." I took the journals and placed them on my book shelf near my Unlimited Power book by Tony Robbins.
"But Jenny, I'm sorry. I just don't feel myself this evening. I can't find rabbi Yatzoo's commentary on this week's Torah portion in the Journal."
"Rob's gotten rid of that and substituted a column on books that have changed one's life," she said.
I sneezed and blew my nose in one of the partially-used paper towels that dot my hovel.
"I've got a decongestant," said Jenny. She poured some white power on my desk next to my keyboard. "Snort that."
I bent over and inhaled through my nostrils. Immediately I felt better.
"I don't know Hebrew either," said Jenny. "In fact, I'm not even Jewish. My boss Nici doesn't usually get calls like this. I guess Rob's a weird one. But he tells me that you are a very naughty boy and I am supposed to reason with you. Do you take seriously Kant's categorical imperative? Do you always act in a way that if everybody did what you did, the world would be a good place?"
"My Torah commitments prohibit that," I said. "We don't hold with secular philosophy. Particularly not Germans. Nor wops nor shvartzes."
"Rob says that if we didn't feel comfortable with the Hebrew, we could study this English-language book Guard Your Tongue. We were to turn it into a game. One of us would read a commandment about proper speech and the other person has to name the source. If you get it wrong, you have to either drink a glass of Manischevitz or remove an article of clothing."
She produced a couple of bottles and sat down. We opened up the Chafetz Chaim and got down to it. Jenny's knowledge of Jewish text was practically non-existent and within an hour, she was thoroughly sloshed and highly vulnerable.
As I took her in my arms and carried her three feet to the one open spot on my floor, she breathed in my ear, "Rob wants you to be nicer to the Journal on your blogs."
I proceeded to fulfill her wish as she fulfilled mine.
Hollywood screenwriter Michael Tolkin reviews Philip Roth's new novel in the 11/12/04 Jewish Journal:
...George W. Bush is surrounded by a crowd who know that scientific creationism is superstition, but support him anyway. After all, their children get a private education based on science, not the public schools’ program of de-enlightenment. But they have sold their piety and conscience because he cut their taxes, or because they think he’s good for Israel — as though lowered taxes or chimerical support for Israel are worth the catastrophe in Iraq, the catastrophe in our drinking water, the catastrophe in public education or the catastrophe in the national debt. For this last catastrophe, his supporters are happily sacrificing their children and grandchildren by giving them the bill, and leaving them a future for this country that could look like Argentina without much more effort.
Robert J. Avrech writes about a book that changed his life when he was 12-years old: “The King’s Persons” by Joanne Greenberg. (Henry Holt, 1963).
Years ago, I complained that the Journal was not publishing a weekly commentary on the Torah portion. Now I agree with Rob Eshman's decision to replace that (the commentary was rarely illuminating and compelling) with a column on one book that has changed a person's life.
