True Ancestor

How to Stay Married Forever

OK, so as of Saturday I'll have been married 15 years, so I'm not really qualified to lecture on this subject. But that's never stopped me before.

I have other good examples to draw from, though, like me True Ann-Sister, who's been with Jacques for about 35 years, all of it on a roller coaster; and the Aged and Revered Parents, who recently celebrated their 66th wedding anniversary. That's as close to forever as I can imagine, in marital terms.

So here are 15 hints I can give you for staying married, one for each year that I've managed not to screw it up.

1. Marry the right person. You can be forgiven for botching this one (after all, I did, the first time around). But if you do botch it, you might as well skip the next fourteen.
2. Recognize that marriage is the Universe telling you that you're not the center of It (see number 6).
3. Admit that the two of you will occasionally be attracted to others -- but resolve not to act on those attractions, especially if you have kids. A friend recently said to me, "I could never have an affair, because that would be being unfaithful to my kids." Even if you don't have kids, your marriage is part of a constellation of relationships. All those relationships will suffer if you have an affair. 
   
4. Make the happiness of your significant other your first thought and action, and last thought and action, of the day.
5. Go ahead and get mad at the other person, but then retreat until you can regain your perspective and your equanimity.
6. Humility is the essence, and the enduring lesson, of matrimony.
7. Become deeply familiar with your love's sense of humor, and play to it a little, every day.
8. Same thing with their appetites for romance, sensual pleasures and whatever other talents they possess. Do all you can to support your love in what they're good at (and here's hoping they're good at the sensual pleasures part).
9. My mom says "Never go to bed angry." I say, "It's OK to go to bed angry. Just be sure to write down your dreams that night."
10. Never underestimate an angry silence.
11. Make most of your gifts imaginative but inexpensive: you don't want to spoil the other person or blow your budget, and you want the really good and expensive gifts to be especially memorable.
12. At least once a year, play a really good practical joke or spring a surprise adventure on your love. Predictability is one of the slow-working poisons of committed love.
13. Love the ones s/he loves. And if you can't -- fake it.
14. Go away on your own every now and then.
15. Serve your love unswervingly through periods of illness and mourning. Nothing kills a relationship like selfishness in a crisis.

Tomorrow is Independence Day in the States, so, in honor of July 4, here's an extra truism:

• Every day is Interdependence Day.

Feel free to chime in with other bromides. We marrieds will appreciate and use all available help.

Happy 4th. Happy Interdependence Day. Happy weekend. Happy Marriage. Shabbat Shalom. Ciao.

--T.A.

Oh, now I get it: I don't get it.

I just don't get it.

Which means I get it.

Which means I don't get it.

What I don't get is how much bile and invective there is in the blogosphere.

But it's not like I never excoriate anyone, never lose my temper. I do that all the time (just did it again this week). I like to think about and study religion, but I really, really don't get it. I get it less than ever. Not only do I not seem to be able to learn Hebrew, but I don't seem to be able to absorb the lessons of Judaism or retain what I learned from Buddhism. I'm the same cranky, thin-skinned misanthrope I was before I studied any of this stuff.

I don't get how we've wound up with three such seriously flawed presidential candidates. One has little in the way of experience but posesses tremendous vision; one has tremendous experience but little or no vision; one is just someone who puts you in a bad mood, and you can't put your finger on why.

Each one of them represents some aspect of our national persona: the war hero, the cool, ambitious climber, the valiant outsider. These individuals have subjected themselves and their families to the most unending scrutiny, the most horrendous slander, the straight-up danger of running for the presidency, and you just know there's got to be something wrong with each of them.

But our consummate wrongness, our flawed decision-making is already reinstalled in the White House. Do we just have a system that rewards and enshrines thick-skinned mistake-makers?

But this isn't about them. As usual, it's about me.

As Passover nears, I see, more clearly than ever that the story of liberation doesn't make sense on a peoplehood level unless you can make sense of it on a personal level. Through the preparation for and observance of Passover, we're supposedly affirming belief through memory. Of course, you can't remember something you never experienced. Can you...? What, then, are you remembering? And what are you believing in? Are you remembering beyond the horizon of your own lifetime? Or are you engaging in existential self-examination and dogmatic myth-making?

The real question Passover poses is: What do you need to get liberated from?

Me: I guess it's my thin skin. My concern for whether people like me or not. My lack of certainty. Which gives me a temper. Which begins the cycle all over again. So where do I interrupt the circuit?

I think I begin with the trait of Equanimity. As a good friend reminded me today, it says in Cheshbon ha Nefesh (Accounting of the Soul) by Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Satanov: "Rise above events that are inconsequential - both bad and good - for they are not worth disturbing your equanimity."

Easy for him to say. That's just an old-fashioned way of saying "Don't worry, be happy."

Or maybe it's Humility. If you're worried and uncertain and easily offended, you're probably overestimating your own importance. You can learn this from your sacred texts, but I just started catching on when I saw an episode of South Park last week, in which Kyle spends the better part of an episode trying to show Token that he, Kyle, understands what it feels like to be African American and suffer discrimination. Token gets angrier the more sensitive Kyle tries to be.

At the end of the episode, Kyle has his epiphany, and tells Token: "I get it, Token! I finally get it: I don't get it."

Token smiles and says: "Now ya got it."

Shabbat Shalom.

--T.A.

It's official: I'm a student again

Having received approval from the One True Wife, consulted the oracles, and sat with it for awhile, I formally gave word to the University of Chicago Divinity School that I intend to enter their MA program this coming Fall.

This is a two-year program that will require me to ramp up my knowledge of Hebrew and one other language -- probably French -- and study and read more than I have in the two-plus decades since I was last in school full time. It will also help me figure out if I want to go any further into the study of Jewish text and history.

I can't wait.

When I went to a meeting for prospective students last week, I wound up sitting at lunch with two Baptists from Oklahoma who also are entering the MA program. These were big, corn-fed guys with calloused hands, wearing ties and leather jackets. The Divinity school served a vegan lunch. One of the Oklahomans stared at the food and said: "This ain't lunch. This is what we eat before lunch." They were extremely young and extremely polite. One of them was very excited to meet a Jew.

"Have you been Jewish from birth?," he asked.

I allowed as how I had.

"May I ask you a question?," he said.

Anything, I said.

"Does a Jewish person achieve salvation through works or through Grace?"

I said, "Well, to most Jewish people that question wouldn't even compute, I suspect. I also think I'll answer that question better in a couple of years than I can answer it now. But basically, we don't really believe in salvation, and our idea of Grace is a little different from yours, I suspect. We also have this little thing called Ancestry: if you're born Jewish, you're a Jew no matter what you do. If you convert -- well, that's a little complicated, because the Orthodox don't recognize non-Orthodox conversions. You won't be able to get 10 Jews together who agree on this stuff -- and I don't even think I agree with myself sometimes, so maybe we should leave it at that."

He nodded, but looked puzzled.

It should be a really interesting couple of years.

--T.A.

Major Dickason and Me

My sister Martha, one of my favorite people in the world, always brightens my day, but she improved my mornings, on the occasion of my most recent birthday, by getting me a six-month susbcription to Peet's Coffee -- a different roast every two weeks, delivered to my doorstep.

The most recent caffeinated confection is Major Dickason's Blend, which, according to some coffeeholics, has attained near-cult status and which, according to Peet's web site, is their most popular blend.

Midwestern mornings in February are routinely brutal affairs. This has been an especially gray, snowy and cold winter, so, in my snow-madness, I have taken to greeting Major Dickason by name each morning, in a poor Scottish brogue recalled from my acting days:

"Stand at attention, Major Dickason!," I'll say, stumbling toward the coffee-maker. Or: "Top o' the mornin', Major! Got yer work cut out for ye today!"

Turns out that Key Dickason was a retired Army officer and a regular at Peet's flagship store at the corner of Walnut and Vine streets in Berkeley. At Peet's you can create your own blend; Major Dickason (who was actually a lieutenant) was one of the first, and most successful, to do so, working with founder Alfred Peet to perfect Major Dickason's blend in 1969.

When you search for Dickasons online you run into some pretty creative people, like this bunch, which features both yarmulkes and cowboy hats, and whose artists create some very stirring works, many of them Jewish-themed. They have a bunch of their own web sites, and are somehow connected to this very cool-looking synagogue in Tucson.

Are they related to Key Dickason . . . ? Well, there's a link to Major Dickason's blend on their "Dickason links" page.

For some reason, I like knowing that there's a connection between my coffee and people who create beautiful works of Jewish art, are committed to spiritually awake and searching synagogues, and who also wear cowboy hats.

Shabbat Shalom.

--T.A.

The Sears Tower, Alan Dershowitz and Martin Buber: Thoughts on a Brief Ascent

Sunday, as I was climbing 2,109 steps -- ascending 1,353 vertical feet in the process, during the world's longest indoor stair-climb -- I had the time, and the motivation, to set my mind elsewhere. These climbs are relentless, endless -- then, suddenly, they're over. They're hard work, they're paralyzing, they're inspirational. They're life in a nutshell.

I wanted to think but I couldn't until I got home. It's hard to think when your lungs are working that hard.

So I came home, had some coffee and lots of water, and set to thinking: why does what we believe, or what wisdom tradition we follow, matter? Why does any of it matter?

I had two weighty tomes to consider: Alan Dershowitz's The Vanishing American Jew: In Search of Jewish Identity for the Next Century, and Martin Buber's Moses: The Revelation and the Covenant. The former purports to set historical context and then make a case for the continuous necessity of the refashioning of Jewish identity, in the same way that any organism constantly refashions itself. The latter looks at the Revelation at Sinai as a historical event of surpassing importance in human history, captured in Biblical text and infused with layers of meaning beyond anything a mortal mind could fashion.

Any human endeavor is just a stair-climb: great heights achieved -- elevator down. Fleeting. Borderline meaningless. Attaining a height opens vast panoramas of understanding that may inspire you -- but how do you share it? How do you pass it on?

Dershowitz's book, which is scarcely a decade old, seems more dated than Buber's, which is four decades older. Dershowitz's concern is a fleeting one, whereas Buber's is transcendent. Dershowitz wants Judaism to survive but it doesn't seem that he can say exactly why. It matters to him, it's been meaningful in human history, even though the theology is inscrutable and the extreme adherents are depriving the larger kehilah of a desire to belong or to grow in their Judaism.

Dershowitz says that anti-Semitism is all but dead, that "it may become in the twenty-first century a faint shadow of what it has been in the past two millennia." His focus for most of the book is on the survival of the moral, ethical and cultural uniqueness of Judaism, and on the dangers of success and comfort to the survival of the Jewish project. It's only toward the end of the book that Dershowitz turns his attention to what made that uniqueness possible.

We must make Jewish education important not only to the survival of Jewish life but also to success in life in general. We must devise curricula that use Jewish sources to provide all students with competitive advantages in their business, professional and personal lives. We must persuade our children that studying Jewish sources will make them not only better Jews, but also better lawyers, doctors, corporate executives, teachers, literary critics, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, and citizens. Best-selling books have been written about how the teachings of Confuscius, Jesus, Machiavelli -- even Ghenghis Khan -- can lead to success. Why not the writings of the Prophets, Maimonides, Rabbi Akiba, Israel Salanter, Joseph Soloveichik, and Ahad Ha'am? Jewish scholarship has always balanced the practical with the theoretical. The traditional rabbi was as much a dispenser of pragmatic business advice as of ritual guidance. The modern rabbi and teacher must bring the Jewish sources alive and make them relevant to the current generation of students.

It is the essence of the Jewish vision that Buber always understood, was ever fascinated by, and bringing Jewish sources alive his singular gift. His brilliant take on the Divne Name ehyeh asher ehyeh goes to the burning essence of that vision.

And it is God Himself who unfolds his name after this fashion. The exclamation was its hidden form; the verb its revelation. And in order to make it clear beyond all possiblity of misapprehension that the direct word ehyeh explains the indirect name, Moses is first instructed, by an exceptionally daring linguistic device, to tell the people "Ehyeh, 'I shall be present', or 'I am present', sends me to you," and immediately afterwards: "YHVH the God of your fathers sends me to you." That Ehyeh is not a name; the God can never be named so; only on this one occasion, in this sole moment of transmitting his work, is Moses allowed and ordered to take the God's self-comprehension in his mouth as a name ...

The meaning of the name is usually ascribed to the "Elohist," to whose source this section of the narrative is attributed. But quite apart from the fact that there was no Elohist in this sense and that, as has been said, if we eliminate complements and supplements, we find a uniform and firmly constructed narrative -- such discoveries or conversions are not born at the writing desk. A speech like this ehyeh asher ehyeh does not belong to literature but to the sphere attained by the founders of religion. If it is theology, it is that archaic theology which, in the form of a historical narrative, stands at the threshold of every genuine historical religion ...

At his relatively late period Moses did not establish the religious relationship between Bnei Israel and YHVH. He was not the first to utter that "primal sound" in enthusiastic astonishment. That may have been done by somebody long before who, driven by an irresistible force along a new road, now felt himself to be preceded along that road by "him,"  the invisible one who permitted himself to be seen. But it was Moses who, on this religious relationship, established a covenant between the God and "his people." Nothing of such a kind can be imagined except on the assumption that a relationship which had come down from ancient times has been melted in the fire of some new personal experience. The foundation takes place before the assembled host; the experience is undergone in solitude."

By the time I reached the 103rd floor at about 8:10 Sunday morning, I was sweaty and tired. I had done something arduous and meaningless. I wanted to think again. I came home and, after the coffee and the water, took an Advil and wondered again about what can't be solved and wrote about it here. The Sears Tower and Buber and Dershowitz all came together because they all made me think about what matters and why.

And that was my Sunday.

--T.A.

Housing Wonks vs. Religion Geeks

Most of the past two days were spent in the company of some of the country's most impressive housing policy professionals, who were convened in Washington, DC, by the MacArthur Foundation as part of its initiative to preserve affordable housing.

MacArthur just tripled its investment in work to advocate for more effective affordable housing policy and data dissemination. The foundation's support for leading nonprofit developers and policy organizations is now at $150 million. So the folks at MacArthur's confabs are fascinating. It's a crowd on whose coattails I like to ride from time to time: I need their help understanding the labyrinthine ways of local, state and federal housing law and policy, and the arcana of affordable housing finance. I find these people voluble, friendly, principled, intelligent and genially competitive. They are a little on the frumpy side, but, hey, they work, for the most part, in the nonprofit or public sector. They buy off the sales rack. And they're proud of it.

And as I consider whether to go back to school and immerse myself in a study of the interaction of Judaism and Buddhism in the West, and to surround myself with religion wonks instead of housing policy propeller-heads, I find myself wondering:

Will I be doing myself or anyone else any good?

Are these disparate groups actually composed of the same kinds of people?

Will I have fun researching JuBus instead of stitching together affordable housing acquisition/rehabs?

Will my life have more meaning?

Will I wear better shoes?

--T.A.

Studying like a kid

That's where most of my energy has been going lately: study. Studying Jewish history. Studying Hebrew. Plunging back into some of the brilliant, crystalline Buddhist writings I pored over years ago. Studying the Zohar, and the rudiments of Kabbalistic healing with a rabbi who also has a PhD in Sufism.

And studying for the Graduate Record Exams. At about twice the age at which one would normally submit oneself to that humiliation.

At 47, I unwittingly find myself part of yet another generational trend. First it was New Age necromancy. Then it was Zen. And now, it's trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.

Last fall, I entered this quirky, individualistic rabbinic program about 15 minutes from my office. I went there twice a week for nine months, and began crawling through the curriculum that would have arrived at ordination, at the pace I was going, at about age 60.

I'll study there again this Fall, but after a year in the program, I can just tell I'm not cut out to be a rabbi. I'm too much of a misanthrope. And as exalting as ritual can be, I'm too anarchic (and probably too cerebral, and certainly too slow a learner) to be the one leading people through it. Rabbinical school teaches you text, and I love learning text. It also prepares you mostly for leading a congregation, which to me sounds about as fun as being Moses and leading his rebellious, whiny charges through the Desert for four decades.

I've also been inching my way through a small, distance-learning graduate program in Jewish Studies at Spertus College, which is about to move into its startling new building in downtown Chicago. You can take live classes there, or you can order them on videotape, and submit your final via e-mail when you're done. If you're motivated and possessed of spare time, you can burn through the curriculum pretty quickly -- and learn a little something along the way.

None of this has satisfied me. I've decided to try the impossible, and apply to earn a PhD in Religion and go to school full-time, at a big university not too far from home. I'm intellectually driven, and I want to learn about Buddhism and Judaism. This course of study suits my omnivorous intellectual and spiritual appetites. No one has really studied the Jewish migration toward Eastern traditions, as far as I know: neither its causes nor the numbers of people engaged in that particular spiritual migration. There are only a couple of universities close enough to home where I could actually do this. We're not moving, so I have to get into one of them, and then radically change my day (and my income) if I hope to follow this dream.

If I actually do carry through with this and actually apply, I'll be about twice as old as the average grad student candidate -- a big, black mark against my candidacy. Friends in the academic world have warned that graduate programs measure success largely by how many grads get placed in tenure-track teaching positions. I'm too old for that -- and not interested, besides. The really bad news, though, is that I have to take the Graduate Record Exams. Having to answer multiple-choice questions on the area of shaded rectangles a and b inside overlapping circles c and d has caused me to live the academic version of the Actor's Nightmare. What are they talking about?!! In a practice test, my verbal scores were great -- while, in the quantitative section, most chimpanzees would've done better. I'm due to take the exam a month from yesterday.

I'll still have a job, sort of. I do need to earn my keep, after all. I'll cut back on my hours at work but won't leave it entirely. I'll have a longer commute, a ton of homework, and I'll be surrounded by people half my age with twice my energy. A recipe for either disaster or renewed vigor.

Maybe both.

If I apply and actually do get accepted, I'll be faced with at least five years of incredibly hard work -- right when Gabe is going through high school and the girls are growing up and the One True Wife is wondering about her own future, and as the parents are moving from being old to being really, really old. If I enroll, I'll be studying with people who are contemporaries in terms of years, but whose resumes are as long as Leona Helmsley's shopping list for Trouble.

Accepted or no, I'll have to accept myself. No amount of knowledge, or initials after my name, will keep me from being who I am: omnivore, seeker, dilettante, distracted family man, compulsive mimic and cynic, student and auto-didact.

I should put that on my business card.

--T.A.

--T.A.

Someday, I'll be sorry

Someday, I'll be sorry I ever started this blog.

Somebody will dredge something up that will come back to haunt me. I'll have written a book, or an article, or I'll be teaching a class somewhere, and somebody will Google me, and they'll come up with this blog, and they'll go searching it for contradictory statements, outrageous beliefs, distorted facts, or phrases or ideas they can claim were plagiarized.

They'll look at all the photos of people and they'll sift all the personal information; they'll document all the "humor" and they'll use it to question my judgment, my sanity, my fitness for the position of _________.

Maybe I'll be in a car accident. Maybe I'll tap somebody's fender, and they'll stagger out of their car clutching their back. They'll take my name and insurance information, and they'll go home, get on their computer, and maybe somewhere in the almost 700 posts I've done to date, there rests some kind of info that's damning about my driving, or my judgment, or my eyesight, or God knows what.

I'm trying to figure out if I care. That is -- is it worth it to me to stop saying what I think in order to protect myself from such people?

I'm never going to run for public office, so what am I afraid of?

I'm afraid that there's no such thing as privacy anymore, that's what I'm afraid of. I'm afraid there's no such thing as humor, opinion, a casual remark, or context. It's all out there, framed in a monitor, made visible through pixels, unchanging and seemingly neutral, so that it can in fact be distorted any which way.

Right now, I'm not sorry. But someday, if this blog vanishes, you'll know: I've declared myself a candidate for something, and in so doing, I'll have to erase any hint of sponteneity, irreverence or editorial slant.

If I want to be a somebody, I'll have to become a nobody.

--T.A.

Fifth-graders and sex; men and friendship

The recent, much remarked upon story about fifth-graders having sex in front of their classmates was shocking to everyone in my family -- Gabe especially. It was like his personal nightmare: the sex part, sure, but especially the part about having your butt hanging out in front of your classmates.

What's really shocking is that in the conservative Louisiana parish where this took place, there's no sex ed in the schools. So kids learn what they know from the most lascivious, least reliable sources, like the Internet (thanks a bunch, Al Gore), from movies and music videos.

Predictably, then, these kids understood the tremendous thrill of the act without for a minute thinking about the consequences. Not just pregnancy, not emotional upheaval, not STDs (among fifth-graders, it's not unheard of), but the ignominy and the lasting, even blooming grief the act would bring.

How do you make kids see sex as more than just a thrill? 

Just do what Gabe's sex education teacher did:

Tired of the constant snickering and giggling during the sex ed sessions, she waited til near the end of class one day -- the class is right before recess -- and said the class wouldn't be dismissed until every single student could say "penis" and "vagina" without cracking up. If even one student so much as snickered during their oration, the whole class would have to start all over again. If they never made it all the way around the class, they'd just have to miss recess.

The way Gabe recounted this made me laugh til my stomach hurt. He did an imitation of how every kid mumbled or butchered the words, while all the other kids held their mouths closed and snorted through their noses. Of course, for a good long while, everyone was laughing so hard they were in tears. Twice, Gabe was the last kid, couldn't help cracking up, and then they had to start all over again. But in the end, they all had to say "penis and vagina" just like other words you have to deal with every day. And in the end, it stopped being so funny, and they achieved their goal and had their recess.

Why do I think this would keep fifth-graders from having sex? Well, it wouldn't necessarily, but it sure would make it seem more mundane, not to mention clinical. Look, penis and vagina are two of the un-sexiest words in the entire English language. Somebody did that on purpose. Not that I'm a big porn aficionado, but I'd be put off forever if I were to read about the act of lovemaking using only the proper clinical terminology.

More important, of course, is the fact that Gabe and his classmates are learning what happens biologically when kids' bodies mature; what's happening to physical, mental and emotional development when puberty hits; how to deal with it; and, of course, what happens when sperm meets egg, and beyond. We talk about this stuff at home. I talk to him about what was happening to my body when I was his age, and slightly older, so he knows what to expect.

It's kind of weird that I'm relating this story on the blog; it seems like the sort of thing that should be told privately to friends. I'm very conscious lately of the fact that I don't have all that many male friends who are in my life on a daily basis. My two really dear old friends from high school I talk to only occasionally -- even though one's right here in the Chicago area. And yet, they remain, in my mind, two of my closest friends; two people to whom I could tell, or say, absolutely anything, and get away with it, and have it treated both with discretion and with healthy derision.

I speak more regularly to my best friend from college, who's in Denver. He and I have a mutual if unspoken agreement that we can complain to each other about anything: it's very therapeutic, and we're both born whiners. We have unofficially opened the first chapter of WAMFA -- Whiny-Ass Motherfu**ers Anonymous -- I'm founder, he's Sergeant-at Arms. All e-mails between us have taken the form of official documents to be read into the WAMFA minutes.

Joseph Epstein's recent book, Friendship: An Expose, says men have a harder time forming deep and lasting friendships, probably because they don't share as much as women tend to.

"Women are also, I believe, less given to fantasy than are men," the author says.

"While many men believe that they had -- even late in life continue to have -- it in them to be great athletes, lovers, and business geniuses, and are often prepared to suggest as much in conversation with other men, women are not as prone to empty bragging or recounting old victories in the sack or on the playing fields of business. Women seem less status-minded, at least in friendships, than do men; they can more easily be comfortable with friends who have much less money or more money than they. Most women are also able to confide in one another without great difficulty. (Men are often made nervous by these confidences, and especially prefer not to dwell on their own inadequacies.) One sociological study showed that men often confide more easily in women than they do in other men."

Women: Is that accurate?

It could be that friendship to men is as icky, as terrifying, as daring as sex is to fifth-graders. It could be that, like Gabe, we men don't relish the thought of our butts hanging out, and yet would sooner act hang them out in front of a group than we would in private.

I can only think of two possible cures: get all my buddies together, and see if we can all go around the circle and say "You are my friend" without cracking up; and if that doesn't work, just welcome them as charter members of WAMFA.

Are you in?

--T.A.

Cell-Phone Narcissus, Installment II

In which I snap photos of myself with my cell phone camera while engaged in the course of everyday life...

--T.A.