Every day when we clean our teeth we see in the mirror a glimpse of the polished skull to which worms will eventually reduce us. For most of us, though, this memento mori remains unnoticed, and any fears of mortality we may have are sublimated through alternative outlets: not so Noah Scalin.

 

In Skulls , Scalin describes how every day for a full year he posted a new skull crafted from new material, or in a new way, online (arranged pennies, stapled leaves, carved watermelons). For centuries representations of skulls in painting (Holbein’s The Ambassadors, 1533), literature (alas, poor Yorick), and sculpture (most recently in Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God, 2007) have reminded us, as the Book of Common Prayer’s Burial Service intones, that “in the midst of life we are in death.” But for a year online, and through more than 365 skulls (readers sent in theirs too), Scalin showed that death can be far from deadly.

 

 

 

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Mexican director Alejandro Springall describes My Mexican Shivah as a film "about existence" and "acquiring the tools to continue living and re-organizing the family after a loss." While it does deal with such serious themes, don't let the gravity fool you: My Mexican Shivah is as funny as it is thoughtful, and as sexy as it is poignant. Set in a Jewish neighborhood in Mexico City, the seriocomic drama tells the story of a Mexican Jewish family dealing with the sudden loss of their "beloved pater familias", Moishe. The film, which debuted at the New York Jewish Film Festival, opens on Friday, August 29 at New York's Quad Cinema (13 street b/5th and 6th ave), and can be seen on Video On Demand from your local cable provider beginning August 29, 2008.

I loved everything about this film: The characters were very real and well acted, the story was complex but relatable, and the whole thing was visually engaging. I especially appreciated the way that shivah rituals were portrayed without presenting them or the characters involved in them as clichés--often the case with religious themes in film. Tell me about how you accomplished this. Making this film was a very personal journey, in the sense that for the first time I relied and deeply trusted my intuition, making a big effort in rejecting everything that felt too rational, too stylish or that drifted away from naturalism. Being profoundly interested in human nature, I also rejected any scene or performance where emotions felt deduced because when emotions truly irrupt then you believe the characters and get engaged in their personal disasters and successes.

This film is about existence, about acquiring the tools to continue living and re-organizing the family after a loss. I wanted the audience to live a shivah and family kvetching, because it is in the bosom of the family where we learn how to feel and also where we can take the masks off and be exactly who we are. Nobody knows us better than our own families, and sitting shivah for seven days is a perfect setup to develop a whole range of emotions, the dark and the bright side of everyone.

Each character, major and minor, had a life of their own, and the arcs of each would continue developing even as the ends credits start to roll. To achieve this, the only tools I had were the actors, and even though it was not mandatory that they were Jewish, I was very keen in looking for Jewish actors to interpret the Jewish characters in the film, so I cast a mixture of professional and non professional actors, and rehearsed with them for 6 weeks because I didn't want to keep on developing characters on the set, I wanted all the actors to come in with their characters already in the skin, incarnated. I only had little time to shoot this movie, and I needed all the time to create a life that was plausible, and get it on film.

It was a bit frustrating for the DP, Art Director, Costume Designer, etc., because I always told them that this film only relied on the actors and therefore their expertise had to be blended in a way that it didn't call the attention or distract the obsessions and pulsations of the characters. Contrary to most films that want to show great production values--a Grand Guignol--we worked the other way around, where less is more, and the more simple the scenes looked, the deeper and complex the different readings.

The two "divine accountants" who attend the shivah--offering commentary as they attempt to calculate whether an angel of light or darkness will accompany Moishe's soul on its journey--remind me of a Greek chorus. Meanwhile, the Chevreman reminds me of a Shakespearian fool. Tell me about the inspiration behind these and the other symbols you used. The two fascinating old Hassids are a metaphor of tradition. As you can see, our family in the film is not religious or observant, but tradition is always present. Galia, the beautiful young woman in the film, rejects religion. She is a modern woman, she doesn't believe that a sacred world exists anymore, but eventually she is the only one who can see the "divine accountants" and realizes the wisdom behind rituals.

I love rituals, especially Jewish rituals, because even though they remit us to an archaic world where time has frozen, it is still very clear how efficient and effective they are. The film is full of subtle details, and I know that you cannot get them all on the first viewing, because even though the film looks very simple, it is very baroque, and a lot of things are in subtext or happening behind the scenes. There are details like Moishe's book about his town, Vielun, which I chose because it was the first town bombarded the first day of WWII, and it was like a little memorial to the Shoah.

Finally, all of our characters are living an extraordinary moment except for the Chevreman, whose job is to organize shivahs, so that character is different because that is his ordinary world.

At one point, when the Catholic housekeeper is preparing a platter of hors d'oeuvres, she unknowingly puts meat and cheese on the same plate. Esther, Moishe's bereaved daughter, throws the plate of food in the garbage, angrily explaining that it's a sin to mix milk and meat. The housekeeper's retort is that it's also a sin to waste food, to which Esther replies, "I guess everything ends up being a sin." It's a striking, disquieting moment, and it lingered with me. What are we to take from this statement? To me that moment raises a theological question, in the sense that there are so many rules and contradictions that it is practically impossible to comply with them and please G-d. Another moment like that is when Rubinstein will not be part of the minyan and therefore prayer cannot be said, and the Chevreman asks the men in the room: What's worse, add a gentile to complete the minyan, pray with nine, or not pray at all?

Some of the characters are very concerned about the impact their shivah will have on Moishe's soul, but ultimately it's their own souls that they're confronting and wrestling with. It's almost as though Moishe's death offers an opportunity of renaissance for those he's left behind. Absolutely, the film is about the living and the impact the life of the deceased had on them and their personal structures. Also, the shivah is a perfect setting to cry for everything you've lost inside you, what is dying about you. There's a quote from a very good Mexican Jewish painter that I wrote on a large billboard and had on the set for everyone to see every day: "As time passes, we’re more our dead than our living. Something dies in us when our beloved pass away, that’s true; but it’s also true that they start living inside us in a way they never did in life. Maybe it’s because we can’t avoid them in their absence in the way we could when they were present." - Eduardo Cohen

Did you learn anything about shivah rituals through the making of this movie that you hadn't known before? Oh, yes, I had rabbinical counsel all the time. This movie is also about the wisdom of sitting shivah and its purifying effect, and even though I've been in many shivahs, I am no expert, so I did my homework and learned every aspect and precept.

I told the entire team that we are doing the Barry Lyndon of shivahs and that we had to follow everything by the book. On the set I had a huge library next to my chair that included Maimonides, the Shulchan Aruch, etc. The tough side was to choose the minimum information needed to provide the audience so they could follow the story and the ritual. Also, I made the film for all audiences and had to be as universal as possible knowing that according to their backgrounds, audiences would get different things and understand humor in different ways. For example, if you are a Mexican Jew from Ashkenazi origin, you would get certain subtleties, if you are a Mexican Jew, you'd get other things, if you're Mexican, some other things, if you're Jewish but not Mexican some other things, if you're not Jewish nor Mexican you still had to understand, laugh and enjoy this dramatic comedy...

I don't think I've ever actually seen images--even fictitious--of the rituals of rechitsa and tahara (bathing and purifying a corpse before burial). Tell me about the cracked egg. The head of the Chevra Kaddisha is a good friend and I asked him to allow to me be present in several taharas so I could learn the entire process and be faithful to the ritual on the screen. I helped wash 3 bodies, and that's where I learned that the egg has a very mystical symbolism. It is used because on the one hand, the egg is round and represents the cycle of life, but on the other hand, egg is one the substances that lasts longer throughout centuries, so covering the body with egg will allow the egg to get impregnated with the cells of the body and when the Messiah comes, he'll be able to identify you when the dead rise. There are many other things that are done and I didn't show, such as the tweeds you put next to the hands of the corpse to symbolize "crutches" you'll need when you rise from the dead.

Which angels do you think will accompany your soul when you die? I think the battle will last forever, but I certainly think that the only one who can judge a person's life without mistake is G-d, that's why I was careful at the end not judge Moishe's life, because each viewer creates a different Moishe in their heads and hearts according to their own set of values.

Where and when will Jewcy readers be able to see My Mexican Shivah? My Mexican Shivah opens on Friday, August 29 at the Quad Cinema in New York (13 street b/5th and 6th ave), and also can be seen on Video On Demand from your local cable provider starting August 29, 2008.

What's next for you? I am preparing a romantic black comedy set in Mexico City to be shot in the winter. I'm also finishing a script in English--a story for kids where the hero is an 8-year-old girl who saves the constellations and the Zodiac signs from a witch who's stealing them.

Undead Preemie: didn't surviveIn a story that will likely be featured in pro-life literature for years to come, a baby that had been pronounced dead began breathing and showing vital signs hours later in Nahariya, Israel. A baby breathing hours after being pronounced dead—it’s a pro-life activist’s wet dream.

The baby’s mother was five months pregnant when tests showed that there was intrauterine bleeding, and that her fetus had no pulse. Doctors then initiated what’s being called a “second trimester termination procedure” the baby was delivered and pronounced dead. The baby was then sent to a cryogenics lab where she was put in a refrigerator, and five hours later, when the baby’s father asked to see it, doctors found that the baby showed signs of spontaneously breathing. She was rushed to the neonatal intensive care unit, but unfortunately she wasn’t able to survive for even 24 hours. Presumably this time, when doctors pronounced the baby dead they checked a little more thoroughly.

Here in America, pro-lifers are being forced to make a tough decision in the upcoming Presidential election, and pparently neither candidate has convinced hardliners that he’s the best choice.

...and on the books' pages - not a single letter.

--Borges, "In Praise of Darkness"

 

for Margarita Meklina

 

א

They said of old Isaac that he didn't go blind, but one day simply stopped opening his eyes. Many believed that Isaac's lids were sealed by angels - with beeswax and honey. To amuse us, Isaac would enumerate the people in the room and describe them - one after another - but would sometimes err, adding those who weren‘t even there. His trade was healing with the laying on of hands, and giving counsel.

ב

In the synagogue, during communal prayer, his voice would break from our voices, and we - one after another - would fall silent, looking on in astonishment as his prayer ascended. When the service would end, the rabbi would bring forth a cup, so that Isaac could drink his fill, and then accompany him home, propping him up by the elbow.

ג

In Isaac's home there were many books, and when we would ask how it is he read them, Isaac would answer that he smells every page, and sees what is written just as clearly as if he were reading it with his eyes. When one of us doubted him, Isaac offered to pick a book, open it to any page, and place it into his hands. He smelled the page and read aloud:

ד

... and so it is that in the holy days the Creator appears to gaze at all the dishes shattered by Him, and he comes to us, and sees that there's nothing to be joyful about, and weeps for us, and returns to the Heavens, so as to destroy the world.

ה

Hearing this, we began to weep, for we considered the book's words a dire omen, but Isaac said: "Do not weep, for He appears to us not only in the holy days, but everyday; and every time we are given a chance to convince Him that the world is good, and then He returns to the Heavens, joyous of what he has created."

ו

But we wept more than before: "Isaac, your days are numbered. You will die soon, and who shall then convince Him that the world is good? Who will take up our salvation day after day, caring for us, loving us, and taking pity, as you do?"

ז

Isaac replied to this: "You shall have other advocates and defenders before Him. But if you do not grow wiser and raise up your spirits, you will grieve and suffer one way or another." We beseeched him: "Speak to us of this," and he opened the book to another page, smelled it, and read aloud:

ח

...my silence created a High Temple, Bina, and a Low Temple, Malkhut. People say: "The word is gold, but twice as dear is the silence." "The word is gold" means that I uttered it and regretted it. Twice as dear is the silence, my silence, because two worlds were created by this silence, Bina and Malkhut. Because, had I not remained silent, I could not have grasped the unity of both worlds."

ט

Then we asked him: "So how is it that your intercession takes place in silence?" Isaac replied: "A prayer is good, but a dance is better than a prayer. I prance with you and so I converse in the Temple." We recalled that we were often amused at him, seeing the blind man prancing, and were shamed by this, and left him.

י

The next day Isaac died and we again gathered in his home to determine who would now answer before the Lord. Since then we gather daily after evening prayers. The world still stands and the stars do not go out - does this mean that someone has taken the task onto himself, but did not wish to announce it to us? We speak, we argue, we ask, we read and write things down. Alas, this is all we can do.

 

Dmitry Deitch was born in Donetsk in 1969, and has lived in Israel since 1995. His short prose has appeared in the anthology Very Short Texts, various collections of new prose edited by Max Fray, including Prozak, 78, The Best Short Stories of 2005, The Best Short Stories of 2006, The Best Short Stories of 2007, and in the Russian-language journals Semicolon and Solar Plexus (Israel), and Air (Moscow). His books include Incomprehensible August (Donetsk, 1995), Griffith's Advantage (Moscow, 2007), and Tales for Martha (Moscow, 2008). In 2005, he won the international literary contest Dvarim.

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Gone: but not forgottenI'd been planning to post about Havdalah for this week's Light My Fire, but a good family friend passed away at the beginning of the week, and I found myself wondering what to do. When do you visit? What do you say? What do you bring? Judaism has a lot to say about what to do when someone dies. Last year, Tamar Fox offered some very helpful rules for making a respectful shivah call. More recently, Paulina Borsook blogged about her personal experience with the Jewish traditions around death and dying, which she calls "simply the best." Here are a few of the rules that will help you find your way, and below are a handful basic guidelines to help you help a mourner.

• Unless you are family or very close friends, it's traditional to wait three days before making a shivah call.

• You're there to offer support, and your presence alone may be enough. Don't feel obligated to wax poetic about the deceased, or to lighten the mood. Let the mourner take the lead in the conversation, listen if they need to speak, and remember that it's acceptable to just be quiet. I tend to give an Angel Catcher--a journal of loss and remembrance--to those who I believe may benefit from it in the long run.

• If there are memories, feelings, or extended thoughts you want to share, consider writing a note. This will allow the mourner to read and process it in their own time and on their own terms.

• Though cooking and cleaning the house are the two forms of work Jewish mourners are permitted to do, and while it isn't required to provide food, preparing and arranging food for a mourner can be a welcome assistance. Think practically about what to bring: What's healthiest? Most sustaining? What will last the longest? Remember, this is not a time for frivolity or pleasure.
  

• Be sensitive to the amount of time you spend with a mourner. It's important to visit and let them know they are not alone, but it's also important not to overstay your welcome. Trust your instincts: If you think it's time to go, it probably is.
  

• In some communities, mourners walk around the block to indicate the conclusion of the shivah week. Whether you join them for this ritual or not, remember that their mourning continues. Unless they've lost a parent, the entire mourning period is 30 days. If they've lost a parent, the mourning period is one year.

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Most people my age would take a trip to a village ruled by fortunetellers for its ironic value, but when I pulled up to the spiritualist community of Lily Dale, New York, I genuinely believed I would reach the ghost of my father. After all, I had in the past.

My father died when I was 20. We held the funeral service in the same Roman Catholic Church where he had been an altar boy. All three of his wives—two Jewish and named Linda, one Catholic and named Ginny—and all six of his children sat in the front row. As the rest of our dad’s family stuck out their tongues for communion and made the sign of the cross, my Jewish brothers Paul and Daniel and I stayed in our seats. The priest talked about how we’d be reunited with my dad in heaven, and I wondered whether this applied to us as Jews. If someone had told me that forsaking my Jewish beliefs meant I’d see my father again, no doubt I’d have done it.

Song of faith: The single of "Only the Good Die Young" Here was my basic understanding of the two faiths present in my family: one focused on what happened when you were alive, and one on what happened after you were dead. So once someone close to me was dead, I shifted from a Jewish to a Christian point of view. The night before my father was buried I prayed to God to be reunited with him, and I fell asleep fantasizing about blasting Billy Joel’s “Only The Good Die Young,” his favorite song, from a boom box outside his funeral. I hummed it under my breath during the service, clutching the crucifix the priest had given me in one fist and the hand of my six-year-old brother in the other. Losing my father convinced me that Christianity was like magic life insurance: Believe and there was no death.

Once I started thinking about the afterlife, I began to notice all the opportunities society offers to connect with the dead, from the five-dollar fortuneteller living next door to me in a basement apartment in the West Village to the young man in pancake makeup who came on TV every afternoon with the promise of “crossing over.” Because my father’s religion was all about saints and spirits and holy ghosts, it was easy for me to believe in his spirit. Suddenly I found profundity in things that had once seemed invisible or ridiculous to me before his death.

I'm not the only one willing to pay for a conduit to the Great Beyond. Around the country, an entire movement has been summoned up to service the needs of bereaved relatives desperate for one last chance to commune with the dead. TV psychic John Edward (watch him here) has managed to cash in on the trend twice, starring in shows on the SciFi Channel and Lifetime. Even science is getting into the game: University of Arizona psychology professor Gary Schwartz has published The Afterlife Experiments, in which he scrutinizes published, peer-reviewed studies of mediums to figure whether they pass muster with the scientific method. They do indeed, he says.

Ten years after my father’s death, I decided it was time to see whether he was still with me. I wanted to hear from him, but even more, I wanted confirmation that he was hearing me every time I spoke to him silently, with my eyes closed. And consulting a spiritualist medium didn’t feel like a compromise to my Jewish identity. It was my Jewish mother who’d long ago given me faith in after-death communication.

Just after my father died, on a trip to England, my mom met with a man named Mr. Molinari, a medium at the Hogwarts-esque London College of Psychic Studies (LCPS). At dinner the next day she insisted I visit him as well.

Medium not-so-rare: Once you start looking for them, psychics are everywhere I protested. I was about to be 21 and what had happened seemed so unreal to me—my healthy, 54-year-old father rendered paralyzed and speechless, then dead, of a spontaneous brain hemorrhage—that I had to work constantly to convince myself of the reality of it. If I was ever to "get over it," I couldn't allow myself to believe contact was possible.

A waiter appeared at our table with a silver platter of marzipan fruits. I had always hated the chalky paperweights—simulacra of more delicious things. My mother reached for a "grape," then offered the tray to me.

"Yuck!" I said, "I hate marzipan."

"Fine by me," she said, in a singsong voice, "But Daddy loved it."

"OK," I said, gesturing up to heaven, "Daddy, if you like marzipan, tell me tomorrow."

At LCPS the next day, Mr. Molinari gestured for me to follow him into a musky room on the third floor. "Different mediums work different ways,” he said. “I see things. I am going to close my eyes, and I want you to do the same. Then concentrate on nothing. Just be here and give me a minute. Then I'll tell you what I see."

He had a soft British accent and he didn't seem at all the type of person to be involved with the dead. If I saw him on the street, I probably would've taken him for a small business owner—the kind of man who runs the family sweet shop. I closed my eyes and put my hot palms on my knees, thinking, Please God let this be real.

First, Mr. Molinari saw a woman. He thought it was my grandmother, and she said my apartment needed plants. Disappointing. Then another woman, this one all in black. With her was, according to Mr. Molinari, “Your father.”

Chills. I was a reasonably young girl—anyone would assume both my parents were still living. And my mother had promised she'd told Mr. Molinari nothing. She'd made my appointment over the phone, giving the receptionist just my first name, so as not to give anything away. I stayed silent, waiting for more. He said some cheesy things, the sort of things a person would think a grieving child would need to hear—be strong, follow your heart, your father will always be with you—but then there was a surprise.

"One more thing before you go," said Mr. Molinari, "And I must admit, this has me confused. Your father is holding out a tray of those little fruits Italians make out of almond paste, and he says, "This is not just for proof, but also to remind you to treat yourself once in a while.’ Do you understand what that means?"

Afterlifeville, USA: The gates of Lily Dale Wow, right?

This story has served me many times in the past eleven years, most recently to justify my trip to Lily Dale. Founded in the mid-1800s, this town of small, ramshackle, pastel-colored Victorians—more summer camp than gothic hideaway—about an hour southwest of Buffalo, in Chautauqua County, not far from Lake Erie, is the home of the spiritualist movement. While its members consider themselves a congregation, they are much more focused on connecting with the dead than with God.

Driving there with my friend Betony, who also doesn’t not believe in ghosts, I was sick with anticipation. I had reserved a reading via email and immediately regretted it because, as all my friends said, “She can just Google you then!” But I didn’t care if my medium had access to facts about me—if she said something authentic, I would recognize it.

We rang my medium’s doorbell, but no one stirred. Inside the screen door was a little podium covered in pamphlets with the medium’s headshot and posters listing her upcoming talks, as if she were a life coach rather than a conduit for the dead. I motioned to one of the more ridiculous posters and whispered, “Maybe it’s best if I miss this appointment!”

Just as we were skulking out the screen door, we heard a frantic voice coming from inside. “Just a second! I hear you!” A plump, sixtyish lady with thinning white hair and the face of the fairy godmother in Disney’s Cinderella emerged from the house, radiating heat.

“I was answering some emails because I assumed you had cancelled. You’re late. Which one of you is Rebecca? Come on in. You,” she said, motioning to Betony in an oddly accusatory fashion, “can sit outside here, or you can go over to the Crystal Cove and do some shopping.” She said “Crystal Cove” with the same anticipatory tone one might use for “Barneys Warehouse Sale.”

Betony scurried off and I entered the inner sanctum, which was a heavily calicoed room punctuated by a loud yet ineffective air conditioner. My medium, shiny with sweat, opened the reading with a prayer and asked in a snobbish, world-weary tone whether I wanted to connect with any loved ones. “Of course,” I answered, sounding more hostile than I meant to. “Why else would I be here?”

“Well, I also provide general advice and guidance,” she said, clearly a bit insulted I hadn’t grasped her role as a New-Age shrink.

Getting into the spirit of things: A ghostly urbanite I wish I could say this bumpy beginning was in no way indicative of the amazing insights revealed by my medium as she became a conduit for my father. I wish I could tell you she’d given me news direct from Daddy: he had heard everything I said to him in ICU, he loved my New York apartment, he’d left me a fortune in a Swiss bank account and here was the number.

But our reading, which was five minutes shorter than I had paid for ($60 bucks), consisted of my medium telling me my maternal grandmother was in the room (Rosie is not dead, thank God) along with my brain-injured brother (he’s not dead either!). Then she asked me about my ghostwriting projects in New York and bragged about her own, insisting we compare rates. Finally, she asked me who my agent was.

I left the reading livid. Betony could tell immediately by my expression that my medium had been a sham, but I think we were both surprised by how emotional I was. It was clear I’d really believed I would hear from my dad.

On our second day at Lily Dale, we stopped at a yard sale in front of a church. Among the piles of trinkets, LP’s, old toys and dresses was a solitary 1980’s-album-cover button: a young Billy Joel, leaning against a brick wall. Betony pressed it into my palm and said, “Your dad sent this to you.”

After all the little moments like this—the time I got lost in a part of Queens I’d never been to, only to end up at the cemetery where my dad is interred, the time I put a dollar in a slot machine I knew he’d love, and hit the jackpot—why did I need to pay someone to connect with my father when it was so clear I was already connecting with him myself? Commodifying something this ethereal was vaguely pathetic.

I still believe there is some life beyond this one—I just finally see through the people who claimed to be the gatekeepers to it. I’ll admit that I’m mystified by the persistence of my belief amidst such convincing proof to the contrary. But believing in a dead loved one is just faith, and what is faith if not the refusal to buy what everyone else is selling?

* * *

ALSO IN JEWCY:

Professors Out to Prove the Paranormal
YouTube's Top Psychics
Five Skeptic Blogs for Unbelievers

Rebecca Diliberto has previously covered beloved-but-irrational phenomenons in her stint blogging The Secret. She's previously written about being the child of intermarriage in "The Play-It-Down Jew."

The Ultimate Cold Cut: Spiced Ham (The Real Stuff, not SPAM)My late father had been raised in an orthodox house, but his favorite foods, which he could make on his own without my mother's help were:

1. A BLT.
2. A grilled cheese sandwich with bacon a tomato.
3. A spiced ham sandwich (not SPAM!) with raw onions on white bread.
4. A kosher hot dog grilled on wax paper with cold sauerkraut (has to be cold).
5. Bananas and sour cream. Really.

3 out of 5, clearly not kosher. 2 just weird. So how come I felt guilty when I first was given a bagel with cream cheese and bacon by a friend? Because the friend was Christian. That's why.

On the car ride today back from my cousin's funeral, stuck on the LIE, we had the following discussion about kosher, my father and pork, and what to put on pastrami:

My sister: I once decorated this bar mitzvah party at the W Hotel in Union Square. The theme was "Sushi." They had these giant cakes made to look like pieces of raw fish on rice.

Me: Doesn't sound very kosher.

My sister: I think they only had cakes that looked like sushi. No actual sushi.

Me (considering this): Come to think of it, where did Dad get his love of pork products?

Uncle H: Not at our mother's house, that's for sure.

My sister: He did really love his pork products.

Uncle H: You know, your father was the first person to make me a BLT. I'd never seen such a thing.

Aunt G (known for her love of lobster): And where did he make it?

Uncle H: At my mother's house.

All of us: While she was a alive?

Uncle H: No, after she had passed away. Although, if she'd been alive, I'm sure seeing your father making a BLT would have killed her.

Me: And he had the nerve to criticizes me for putting mayo on pastrami.

Uncle H: Oh, I wouldn't have put up with that either.

So does anyone else put mayonnaise on pastrami? Bacon on their cream cheese? What is going to become of us? And lastly, can you believe that there's a website for a kosher seasoning to make everything taste like bacon? Really.

 

I’m supposed to be promoting my book, Typo: The Last American Typesetter or How I Made and Lost $4 Million. That’s what I’ve been doing for months, trying to squeeze a few more sales out of YouTube, my website, and random appearances.

In a Providence, RI hospice, a cat named Oscar has been predicting deaths. When Oscar curls up next to a gravely ill patient, it means the person has four hours to live. So far he's been right 25 times.

Usually, this is the kind of story you hear from someone's friend's mom's friend's cousin's piano teacher, who happens to be named Snopes.com, but Oscar's been profiled in the New England Journal of Medicine and the AP. The story's really haunting, so we had to make an appropriately solemn graphic to go with it:

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Sophomore year in high school, everything began to shift for me.

It was the last hey-day of any illusions I had of being a basketball player, let’s just get that out there.

I was the starting point guard on a pretty good high school JV team that won its division on defense, good passing, and the skill of a relentless shooting guard who came from some hard knocks in the City of Milwaukee–”a transfer student”, which was the district’s special term for someone who was black.

He endured a family murder that season and kept on playing through it; I would double up in stomach pain in the locker room before games and fret about the players from the far west side of town German schools that chanted anti-Jewish slogans at us when we played them. I think my bourgeois angst amused him. After games we went to McDonalds, laughed at each other’s bullshit, and tried bravado on for size with an Earth, Wind and Fire soundtrack.

Could it be more Seventies? Most certainly not.

The shift in my own life took place on the court in slow motion and in the bus after games and in the classroom in real time. I saw life begin to pass before my eyes. Dreams of success gave way to life’s realities, to people’s lives, and while both resisting the change toward a deeper reality and regretting its inevitable swing back in my face like the older, wiser branch of a maple tree, I understood that I wouldn’t be a ballplayer. I always tell students, “I didn’t start reading books in earnest til I was 16.” This revelation allows me to share my own journey as well as the word “earnest.” So be it. I’m from Wisconsin. Get used to it.

There were first the Existentialists, then the Romantics. The Russians. And then, as the Eighties emerged (God, I hated the Eighties), there was Every book about Every thing that was Wrong with the World.

And in the third year of the Eighties, like the rhythmic punch line of a joke: Nineteen (one) Eighty (two) Three!!! (three) my dad’s heart gave out (BAM!) and everything changed.

My dream to succeed in Sports gave way to my dream to succeed in Politics which yielded to my life in Religion.

I had to say Kaddish for a dead father. And so my fate was sealed. He wasn’t killed like the Shooter’s. He just gave out, a failure of will and the tragic fragility of God’s genetic randomness.

Kaddish somehow recognized it all; and that’s how I kept the flame alive.

Nisan–the Hebrew month we are preparing to enter–is when it all went down back then; and so, just a few days away again, I feel that yahrzeit breathing down my neck like a full-court press and the score is tied and we need a basket and the crowd is screaming and the ball is in my hands and I’m looking for the Shooter, looking for the Shooter, looking for the Shooter. And in real life, his father’s been killed. But he’s smiling, losing his man, getting open, putting up the shot, winning the game. I gotta have more fun, despite it all. Stop taking things so seriously.

And so I learn from another kid who’s in 10th grade but living wisdom beyond his years.

Maybe it’s the March Madness, the pleasure of my two hometown teams in the NCAA’s. Pride–O Vanity of Vanities! But I think of my Shooter tonight as I talk Torah with my current 10th grade class, on the Wednesday before a double Bar Mitzvah with twins who play basketball. And while talking about Torah on Sinai (and the flames and the thunder on the moutain) and the flames (on the swords of the Cherubs) protecting the Garden of Eden and the students are arguing about the Fire of Torah and Free Will and Law and what it all means and they’re not talking about ANYTHING ELSE BUT TORAH and they’re so focused and they’re so proud of themselves and they’re so INTO IT and as their rabbi I’m so proud.

I start daydreaming: I’m in the gym in the basement of our Shul. And I’m alone. And I’m shooting free throws. And they’re going in, one shot at a time. And I know that sound. I’ll always know that sound. You could beat me, blindfold me, throw me down a flight of stairs and I’d know that sound, a rhythm as steady as the Shema Yisrael.

One, two, three, shoot, follow through, in.

The Jewish word for spiritual intention is Kavanah. Direction. As in toes on the line. As in bend your knees. As in follow-through.

One, two, three.

God, Torah, Israel.

One, two, three.

Thank God for Tenth Grade.

There’s an interesting article in the Washington Post about Russian rabbis crusading against cremation, which is apparently the norm in Mother Russia. I always thought cremation was kind of yucky (keeping Grandpa’s ashes on the piano just seems gross to me) but something I never considered is that cremation is way way cheaper than a traditional burial, and lots of Russian Jews are apparently hesitant to spend loads of cash on a dead person. A Chabad rabbi in Moscow says of the Russian Jewish community:

"They say, 'I'm not religious.' I say, 'We'll pay everything,' and I offer them $1,000 over the expenses. Still I can't convince some of them. They see me and they are afraid," he said, touching his yarmulke. "But for those who decide on a Jewish burial, it can be the beginning of a good connection to the community, and we start to see them on Shabbat."

Cremation: is so hot right now
That’s the very end of the article, but to me, it’s the most important part. Because the truth is, for a lot of people the entryway into Judaism comes because of a grieving ritual. Be it sitting shiva, saying kaddish, or becoming a member of a chevra kadisha, I know a lot of people who have become more observant because of a death of a loved one. And of course it makes sense. When we’re feeling most bereft, we reach out for God and a community to help us.

I admire what the Chabad rabbi is doing in Russia, and I certainly agree that a Jewish burial is important, but I also think that with death we have to focus on being a community for the family, on being a support structure. I’m not sure scaring people into a Jewish burial is the best way of conveying that we as a community will be there for each other. On the other hand, halacha explicitly forbids cremation, and says that even if someone asks to be cremated on their deathbed, we have to disobey their wishes.

The main halachic issue with cremation is that it counts as Nivvul HaGuf, mutilation of the body, and as we’ve already learned, it’s really important to us to treat corpses with the utmost respect. Burning them seems, for lack of a better term, incendiary.

But I think the ultimate objection with cremation is that it is a lie. It’s too easy to make yourself feel like grandpa’s not really dead, he’s in an urn on the piano. It lacks the finality of putting someone back into the ground.

Finally, we are told that man was created from the ground, and that he will return to the ground. The process is supposed to be gradual, and natural, neither of which can be said of cremation.

I know that the debate over cremation is a pretty popular one these days, so I just wanted to give some thoughts. For a further look into halacha, check out this site.

My father used to say to my sisters that I was the sensitive one. “Like a deer in the woods who hears a twig snap,” which I guess meant I had a kind of high strung alertness.

I learned this after he died, twenty four years ago. And in my own personal mythology, that alertness is manifested in my “spirituality.”

And so here I sit in a heated car, on a hill just beneath his grave, on a fairly normal, heartlessly gray late afternoon in Milwaukee. I have come here to accuse him, pre-Shabbos, of the sin of anger and dying young, two things I sometimes fear will take control of me as they took control of him. That’s why, as a strategy for survival, I became a rabbi.

I’m just being honest.

Yes: those fears propelled me, practically against my will, into the rabbinate, after his anger and heart shot him from life on a heartlessly gray day in Milwaukee twenty four years ago. That’s 2 x 12 Tribes years ago for you crazy mystics out there.

And so I stand with freezing feet in the snow, heart broken in accusation. I try to heal it by singing him the Kabbalat Shabbat, a rest and comfort against loss. I see his name, etched in stone:

Monas S. Bachman
Father, Brother, Son

I sing to him of Shabbat and my favorite Psalms. It closes the loop from the only Hebrew he taught me—well, not quite Hebrew but the vague shapes of the letters I watched him trace for me when I huddled up against him and a borrowed tallis in synagogue on the rare occasions that he took me with his own father to say Kaddish for the dead ancestors I never knew.

“Thank you father for teaching me that there is a form to our language.
A linguistic structure I filled in at the Universities I attended in Madison and Jerusalem.
It was in those cities that the replacement fathers were found
After you collapsed on your bedroom floor.”

In the Mishnah these new fathers, Avot, are rabbis, and those were the fathers (and one mother) I sought and found over the course of the last twenty-four years.

And slowly, one by one, they all died too.

First there was George Mosse.
And then Irv Saposnik.
And then Arthur Hertzberg.
And now Lisa Goldberg.

Each a teacher. Each a conveyer of wisdom. Each an exemplar of some aspect of the kind of life I wanted for myself, for Rachel, for the kids.

This is the first time that I stood above my father’s grave, with the stark reality of my own mortality staring me in the face. No image on the grave, no Russian icons looking back in my direction. Just a name—BACHMAN—an accusation in its own right saying, “Sentenced to death, eventually.” I say, “You’re gone, Dad. George is gone. Irv is gone. Arthur’s gone. Lisa’s gone. It’s all down to me. It finally happened. It had to, eventually.”

That’s right.

We will all die one day.

And the measure of each of us is how honest we are, how good we are, how generous we are, in the every moment of the every step we take.

And in this prayer, in the cold, with hot tears of anger and sadness overwhelming me in the Milwaukee snow and the background hum of East-West commuters moving down the freeway that abuts the cemetery, I understand another level of my own anger:

That we live and die is so obvious as to dictate, for those who can grasp it, why certain pretensions of power and authority are ultimately absurd. So that’s why you want to change the world! It’s absurd NOT to!

When you’re younger, you’re supposed to buck against the bridle of authority. That’s part of the natural growth process. But what happens to those who keep staring death in the face, whose lives are made up of visiting the sick, of burying the dead, of listening to questions about God and the meaning of life? Are we supposed to put on suits and act the part of Men Who Are Together?

Or do we stare into the grave and discover a greater freedom from it all?

What happens when your teachers die and you’re left standing at the grave, singing songs?

Who teaches me what to do next? Who says, “Keep on fighting, son?”

Is there a book for this?

A leadership training seminar I can take?

Psalm 92, A Song for Shabbat:
It is good to give thanks to the Eternal.
To sing praises to Your Name Most High.
To speak of Your Lovingkindness in the morning.
And Your faithfulness at night.

If I had a harp or a lute I’d go on; but I’m freezing my ass off, so I head back to the car.

To my wife and kids and Shabbat.

Choose Your Guru: This photograph of legendary yogi Sting (by Karin Catt) is being auctioned to benefit Donna Karan's Urban Zen Initiative.I am taking notes on a pad designed and provided by fashion guru Donna Karan. Sitting in her studio on an overstuffed floor pillow, Fiji water and raw walnuts within reach, I am admiring scores of taut, burnished individuals dressed in asymmetric, scapula- and clavicle-bearing organic cotton ensembles. Coldplay and Sinead O’Connor’s plaintive melodies emanate from hidden speakers and Donna Karan’s image is projected on white walls in the massive space.

But I am not at a fashion show.

I am at the Well Being Forum, the first event being put forth by Karan’s Urban Zen Initiative. This project began as a legacy for Stephan Weiss, Karan’s husband, who died of cancer in 2001. Its goal, according to Karan, is to “connect the dots” between eastern and western medicine.

For this conference, Karan has summoned a who’s who list of doctors, yoga practitioners, nutritionists, healers—and their famous acolytes—to address an audience of philanthropists, patients and health professionals. Dean Ornish will talk nutrition, Rodney Yee will do yoga. Mehmet Oz—Oprah’s doctor—will discuss patient care. Michael J. Fox and his doctor will discuss living with Parkinson’s. Lou Reed—yes, that Lou Reed—will teach Tai Chi. His longtime partner, artist Laurie Anderson, will lead a meditation. The model Christy Turlington will serve on a women’s health panel.

Think of it as Vogue’s editorial staff taking over the New England Journal of Medicine.

While the motivations behind the project are undeniably good, the concept of an incredibly wealthy celebrity inviting her friends and their gurus to brainstorm in front of a studio full of people either wealthy or powerful enough to get on the guest list is complicated.

Over the next few days, I am going to attend some panels and report back on them. Some questions I’m already asking myself:

Who has access to “spirituality” in our society? What happens when our health and wellbeing are contingent on our ability to pay for guidance?

How can any movement transcend preaching to its own choir?

What’s behind the creative impulse that arises when a loved one passes away? Is it about trying to resurrect the lost person, or satisfying the living person’s narcissism?

How can a room full of like-minded people avoid getting mired in sanctimonious self-congratulation and challenge each other to move forward?

And, finally, if we believe people are capable of healing themselves, doesn’t that assign a cruel and irrational sense of responsibility to the terminally ill?

Feel free to respond to any of these questions now, or later. And do propose any others you think I should be asking.

To check out the Urban Zen Initiative's website, click here.

We’ve talked a lot about death recently. Laurel told us about egalitarian eulogizing. We learned about kosher organ donation, inheritance and ethical wills. I told you how to act at a Shiva call. But before the eulogy and the reading of the will and the ethical will, and the Shiva, comes the preparation of the body for burial.

The group who wash and prepare bodies for Jewish burials is called the Chevra Kadisha, the Holy Group. They get this auspicious title because performing a favor for someone who is dead is considered the ultimate act of kindness since a dead person can never repay you. For many years, being a part of the Chevra Kadisha was a honor for which you had to be selected. It was a real mark of privilege. These days, though, anyone can volunteer.
A Member of the Chevra Kaddisha: In Sydney, Australia
In general, when a Jewish person dies in a city with a substantial Jewish population, the hospital or funeral home will know to call someone from the Chevra Kadisha, and immediately someone will come to sit with the body, because Jewish bodies are never to be left alone. This is called shmira, guarding. When the body is ready to be prepared for burial, a team of others are assembled. All are the same sex as the deceased, and they follow strict rules having to do with the washing and preparing of the body. Everything is done with an intention of utmost respect for the dead person. The process is bookended by prayers that beseech God and the deceased to forgive any errors that may be committed in the preparation, and a solemn statement of respect and honor.

There are a bunch of wonderful resources online for people interested in the process of tahara, purification of the dead. My favorites are the Velveteen Rabbi’s post Facing Impermanence, Ruchama King Feuerman’s The Last Kindness, and Final Touches by Nancy Kalikow Maxwell. There also a great audio piece by Rebecca Sheir here, and if you’re really interested in starting a Chevra Kaddisha in your own community, you can buy a training DVD.

Here’s why I think Jewcers should form their own chevrai kaddisha: The main component of the purification (tahara in Hebrew) is respect for the person who has died. Sadly, there is a distinct lack of respect in a lot of the relations between various sects and subcultures of Jewish observancy. And while I’m sure that a Haredi woman doing tahara on a girl like me--a girl who lays tefillin, and reads Torah and kisses boys and swears too much—would have a pure and respectful intention, it’s hard to ignore that in life, there would likely have been significant conflict between the two. And so it seems that Haredi women might not be the best choice of chevra kaddisha for a progressive, liberally minded Jewess. And the same problem, of course, applies to men.

Ultimately, performing tahara on a person from your community, a person whose ideology you shared, and whose life you valued, is an incredible way to express your love and respect for that person. So even if the tahara would happen without us in particular, I think it’s important to make sure that our progressive communities, our awesome minyanim, and cool strong synagogues put together our own chevrai kaddisha, so that when our friends and relatives die, we’re not depending on other groups to carry out the wishes of the dead. Just as we gather at the shiva house to express our support to the family, let’s gather at the funeral parlor, and show our respect to the deceased.

For information on how to start a CK, click here.

Ladies Night?: Not quiteOver at Jewess, Rebecca Honig Friedman has posted something you should read:

It’s official. Praising dead people should be an equal opportunity activity, as Israeli Supreme Court judges ruled Monday in response to a case brought against the local burial society in Petah Tikva: “The burial society will not forcibly separate between the sexes in the cemetery, and women too will be able to eulogize.”

Two sisters filed the lawsuit, as reported by Ynet, after they were barred by funeral staff from delivering a eulogy over their sociologist professor father’s grave, told that “in Petah Tikva women do not eulogize,” as dictated by the city’s chief rabbi…

I’m posting this here now NOT because I want to rant about it, but because it’s not an issue I’ve ever considered, and maybe the same is true for you.  Maybe you'll be as surprised and confused as me. Maybe you'll help me think about it.

 I guess I just never considered, in any part of my little brain, that women might be restricted in this manner.  I cannot begin to fathom what this would feel like, to be barred from expressing thoughts and feelings to my community, at a time when I would desperately need such an outlet.   

I  assume, of course, that observant women don’t count in a funeral minyan, and I have heard that they can’t recite the Kaddish.  But I’d have thought that even in the orthodox community, some way would be found to skirt the issue.  A second service for women or something...  Also, I'd have thought the eulogy was more minhag than  mitzvah.  Hence it seems not only cruel but also  unnecessary to exclude women from this tradition… 

Of course, the shocker here is that this is an issue of one religious group effectively monopolizing death in a city.  These women were not orthodox, but were held to a strict standard because their father happened to die in Petah Tikva.  I can't imagine the frustration of having to face this struggle at a time of... struggle and sadness.

For some other (related) reading: 

Here’s a moving commentary here that dips into how a woman might find strength in the simpler aspects of mourning—weeping, cooking, grieving with other women.  
 
And here’s an incredible story of how Yeshiva University waived the gender restrictions on sitting shmira (sitting with the body of the deceased) so that female students could spell Orthodox men on Shabbat, after 9-11. 

And here’s a good short description of basic Jewish burial practices.

And here’s what looks to be a good book on the subject of Jewish women and death rituals.

This is kind of morbid, but I want to give some tips on how to act and react at a Shiva. There are already a number of places online with some good tips, but I’m going to try to boil it down to some essentials.

1. It’s not about you.

This is the most important thing to remember. You’re going to be uncomfortable. It’s an awkward and agonizing experience for the mourners and for people trying to comfort them. Get over yourself. Try to be open and helpful, but shut up and/or leave if you get the urge to talk about yourself or your own loss.
It Will Suck: Do It Anyway

2. Put down the bouquet.

Flowers aren’t Jewish. I have been to a number of shiva houses where nice bouquets sit in the middle of the dining room table, and everyone passing by comments on how tacky they are. I don’t think they’re tacky, but they’re not a part of Jewish mourning. If you feel the need to bring something, see number 3.

3. Bring (appropriate) food.

Often communities coordinate things in order to stock the freezer of the home of the deceased. Bringing food to a shiva is generally a good idea, BUT keep in mind the family’s level of kashrut. If you’re not positive that they’d eat in your house then don’t bring anything. I have seen people throw out tons of food because it wasn’t up to their standards or kashrut. It may seem annoying, to you, but then, it’s not about you.

Sometimes a family will say, “Hey, we can’t take any more food.” If that’s the case, ask if you can bring a meal for them in a few weeks, when things have died down a little. In some cases meals will be coordinated by the community for more than a month after the shiva. Be prepared to wait to make your contribution.

4. You don’t have to wear black, but cover up.

Jews don’t have a color of mourning. Many people do wear black, but it’s way more important to dress respectfully. Do not show cleavage. Do not unbutton the top three buttons so the ladies can see your fine chest hair.

5. Don’t try to lighten things up.

When approaching a mourner you don’t greet them, and they don’t greet you unless they want to. They may want to chat, but if it’s been a busy day, often they don’t want to talk anymore. Don’t babble, don’t make jokes, and don’t try to distract them from their pain. Make yourself available as a listener, and then just sit quietly.

6. Bring Art

If you have any great pictures of the deceased make copies and bring them for the family. Often a display will be set out. Showing the mourners the pictures can be a good way to start a conversation about good times with the deceased. Don’t push it, but offer the pictures as a gateway.

7. Don’t bug them to eat or drink.

That’s Great Aunt Elma’s job. Nagging at shiva is the height of insensitivity.

8. Make a donation.

Most families will have designated a few charities that they’d like to have money sent to in lieu of flowers. If you can afford it, this is a meaningful thing to do.

9. Write a note.

“I’m so sorry for your loss” is fine if you can’t think of anything else to say, but if possible it’s best to share an anecdote about the person who has died. Buy a card, and send it in the mail with a stamp and everything. Families often save these notes, which is why e-mail is not ideal.

10. Make an appearance.

Even if it feels excruciatingly awkward, you should go. Even if you can’t think of anything at all to say, and you don’t even think you’ll get a chance to talk to the family, you should go. Someone will notice that you’re there.

(I once went to the shiva for a son of a rabbi in my community. I went for davening, but didn’t stay for the meal afterwards, and didn’t get to talk to the rabbi or anyone in the family. I didn’t think anyone saw me, but six months later in the middle of a conversation about something else entirely the rabbi told me how much he appreciated seeing me there.) Go, even if it’s only for five minutes.

11. It’s not about you.

Seriously.

Gray day in Milwaukee: A grave in the snowMy father used to say to my sisters that I was the sensitive one. “Like a deer in the woods who hears a twig snap,” which I guess meant I had a kind of high strung alertness.

I learned this after he died, twenty four years ago. And in my own personal mythology, that alertness is manifested in my “spirituality.”

And so here I sit in a heated car, on a hill just beneath his grave, on a fairly normal, heartlessly gray late afternoon in Milwaukee. I have come here to accuse him, pre-Shabbos, of the sin of anger and dying young, two things I sometimes fear will take control of me as they took control of him. That’s why, as a strategy for survival, I became a rabbi.

I’m just being honest.

Yes: those fears propelled me, practically against my will, into the rabbinate, after his anger and heart shot him from life on a heartlessly gray day in Milwaukee twenty four years ago. That’s 2 x 12 Tribes years ago for you crazy mystics out there.

And so I stand with freezing feet in the snow, heart broken in accusation. I try to heal it by singing him the Kabbalat Shabbat, a rest and comfort against loss. I see his name, etched in stone:

Monas S. Bachman
Father, Brother, Son

I sing to him of Shabbat and my favorite Psalms. It closes the loop from the only Hebrew he taught me—well, not quite Hebrew but the vague shapes of the letters I watched him trace for me when I huddled up against him and a borrowed tallis in synagogue on the rare occasions that he took me with his own father to say Kaddish for the dead ancestors I never knew.

“Thank you father for teaching me that there is a form to our language.
A linguistic structure I filled in at the Universities I attended in Madison and Jerusalem.
It was in those cities that the replacement fathers were found
After you collapsed on your bedroom floor.”

In the Mishnah these new fathers, Avot, are rabbis, and those were the fathers (and one mother) I sought and found over the course of the last twenty-four years.

And slowly, one by one, they all died too.

First there was George Mosse.
And then Irv Saposnik.
And then Arthur Hertzberg.
And now Lisa Goldberg.

Each a teacher. Each a conveyer of wisdom. Each an exemplar of some aspect of the kind of life I wanted for myself, for Rachel, for the kids.

This is the first time that I stood above my father’s grave, with the stark reality of my own mortality staring me in the face. No image on the grave, no Russian icons looking back in my direction. Just a name—BACHMAN—an accusation in its own right saying, “Sentenced to death, eventually.” I say, “You’re gone, Dad. George is gone. Irv is gone. Arthur’s gone. Lisa’s gone. It’s all down to me. It finally happened. It had to, eventually.”

That’s right.

We will all die one day.

And the measure of each of us is how honest we are, how good we are, how generous we are, in the every moment of the every step we take.

And in this prayer, in the cold, with hot tears of anger and sadness overwhelming me in the Milwaukee snow and the background hum of East-West commuters moving down the freeway that abuts the cemetery, I understand another level of my own anger:

That we live and die is so obvious as to dictate, for those who can grasp it, why certain pretensions of power and authority are ultimately absurd. So that’s why you want to change the world! It’s absurd NOT to!

When you’re younger, you’re supposed to buck against the bridle of authority. That’s part of the natural growth process. But what happens to those who keep staring death in the face, whose lives are made up of visiting the sick, of burying the dead, of listening to questions about God and the meaning of life? Are we supposed to put on suits and act the part of Men Who Are Together?

Or do we stare into the grave and discover a greater freedom from it all?

What happens when your teachers die and you’re left standing at the grave, singing songs?

Who teaches me what to do next? Who says, “Keep on fighting, son?”

Is there a book for this?

A leadership training seminar I can take?

Psalm 92, A Song for Shabbat:
It is good to give thanks to the Eternal.
To sing praises to Your Name Most High.
To speak of Your Lovingkindness in the morning.
And Your faithfulness at night.

If I had a harp or a lute I’d go on; but I’m freezing my ass off, so I head back to the car.

To my wife and kids and Shabbat.

[Note: This post originally appeared on Rabbi Andy Bachman's blog Brooklyn Jews.]

This is a book column. So I’ll start with the book.

The Quincunx, by Charles Palliser, comprises 788 pages of dense type, black-and-white maps, and family trees. Its dust jacket is glossy black, the letters marbleized gold. The page edges are rough, as though sliced through with a paper knife. That was standard procedure in the 19th century. Here, it’s affectation: The Quincunx was published in 1989.

How They Did It In the 1800s: The QuincunxPublisher’s Weekly describes the story thus: “The protagonist, a young man naive enough to be blind to all clues about his own hidden history (and to the fact that his very existence is troubling to all manner of evildoers) narrates a story of uncommon beauty which not only brings readers face-to-face with dozens of piquantly drawn characters at all levels of 19th-century English society but re-creates with precision the tempestuous weather and gnarly landscape that has been a motif of the English novel since Wuthering Heights.”

It sounds awful. But who knows? Maybe it’s a good read. My friend Rebecca Alm was reading it in 1991, when she stayed with us in Boston. An editor for Swarthmore’s alumni magazine, Rebecca was in town to interview a Harvard professor who had just written a book about cross-dressing. I never saw her crack The Quincunx the entire visit. After she flew home to Philadelphia, I found it on a bedside table.

I met Rebecca in 1987, when we toiled together in the fact-checking department of TV Guide. At age 27 she looked the way I imagine Garrison Keillor’s Minnesotans do: broad of face and frame, placid of demeanor. You could imagine her in a dirndl and clogs churning butter, or sweeping the steps with a whisk broom. When she spoke she always sounded mildly exasperated, though she rarely was. Often I would come into the office with my sweater buttoned wrong (I get distracted), and Rebecca would cluck her tongue and fix me.

A fellow refugee from a graduate English program, Rebecca loved Sherlock Holmes and fat Victorian novels. We fought over how she could stomach Gallsworthy and prefer Our Mutual Friend to Bleak House. She had a perverse fondness for The French Lieutenant’s Woman. The Quincunx, I imagine, was right up her alley.

I talked science fiction with her husband, Brad Snyder. Rebecca and Brad had met at the University of Chicago; they married in 1986. When I first met them their life still had that new-marriage smell. If you talked to Rebecca without Brad present she would matter-of-factly report what he would say if he were there, and Brad would do the same. They loved the ways each other’s minds worked.

That year was a bad one for me, for all the usual reasons. I spent many evenings at their apartment, talking, watching TV, getting in the way while Rebecca tried to cook. Occasionally, when I was too depressed to go home, I spent the night. In the mornings Rebecca would pad around in her flannel robe and oversized slippers, serving strong coffee in ceramic cow mugs and making the day safe to go out in.

In 1989 I married and moved to Boston. But Rebecca and I still spoke often, wrote often. Sometimes she visited, by herself or with Brad. It was on a solo trip that Rebecca left The Quincunx at our house. I never bothered to mail it back.

In 1992, Rebecca and Brad had a daughter, Elizabeth. Her photograph is propped against my desk lamp. In the picture she is two years old, with uneven blond bangs and apple cheeks. She is wearing a Bert and Ernie t-shirt and clutching a stuffed brown dog that looks as though it has survived a lot of clutching. There is no word for the color of her eyes.

Rebecca, Brad and Elizabeth died in a fire on the night of March 20, 1996. The cause was an overloaded electrical outlet. They were living in an apartment in Greenfield, WI. The next week they were going to move to a house—the first house they would have owned. According to the newspaper account, Rebecca’s body was found by the bedroom window. Brad was in Elizabeth’s room, by her bed. The emergency squad took Brad and Elizabeth to one hospital and Rebecca to another. I don’t know why they had to separate them, although they were dead by then so I guess it didn’t matter.

Good Company: Orwell and ParkerBrad’s mother called me after it happened. The next day I phoned the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and told the woman who handled back issues that I was trying to find an obituary of some friends who had died in a fire. The woman said, “Oh, do you mean the family?” For years I kept the issue on the top shelf of my closet, taking it down every few days to reread the story. One day the newspaper disappeared. I assume my husband removed it. Probably that was the right thing to do.

I shelved The Quincunx alphabetically with the rest of my books. It sits between George Orwell and Dorothy Parker—more scintillating company than it deserves. Those uncut pages are wicked dust-catchers, so it is always furred in gray.

Last October I e-mailed my friend Denise, who lives in San Francisco, to tell her I would be in town for a conference. Denise invited me to come along with her to a Day of the Dead party, an annual event in her social circle. She explained that the host—an artist—always erected an elaborate altar on which partygoers were encouraged to place a keepsake of someone they had lost. After the mole and margaritas everyone would gather round the altar, tell the stories behind their offerings, and pay tribute.

So there it was. I would bring The Quincunx with me and leave it in a stranger’s home on the other side of the country. It felt ordained.

At 4 a.m. on the day of my trip I laid the book in my carry-on bag and set off to make a 6 a.m. flight. It was still dark as I approached Logan, and several pylons were strewn around the entrance to the airport exit. I couldn’t figure out whether the road was in use or not, so I drove past and ended up in Charlestown. It took 40 minutes to get back to Logan (darkness, detours, zero sense of direction), and by the time I arrived it was very late.

I hefted the carry-on over my shoulder. It was heavy. The thought of bearing something so heavy from that parking space all the way to California overcame me. I took The Quincunx out of my bag and left it on the passenger seat.

When I got back it was waiting for me.

At peaceAfter reading up on money and Jewish wills this morning, I stumbled on another related subject.  Something I knew absolutely nothing about… the Jewish tradition of leaving behind an ethical will.  Which is a term I’d never even heard before.

There is a lovely Jewish custom, one that is unfortunately not sufficiently known in our time, of writing what is called an ethical will. Parents would write a letter to their children in which they would try to sum up all that they had learned in life, and in which they would try to express what they wanted most for and from their children. They would leave these letters behind because they believed that the wisdom they had acquired was just as much a part of the legacy they wanted to leave their children as were all the material possessions. 

There are several online how-to guides for writing an ethical will.  But  basically, it’s pretty intuitive.  Because you’re just writing a heartfelt letter.  Rooted in the desire to leave something behind you, something to speak for you. Say all the things you forgot to say.

For me, a writer living in this digital age,  it seems especially important.  We DON’T write or receive enough letters today, and we forget how wonderful it to take out a creased piece of paper, and read words we’ve nearly memorized, and cry a little, because the concrete object is a reminder of the person we’ve lost.

Think about how much you’d like to receive an ethical will, and maybe you’ll be inspired to write one.  I can’t help imagining that in the sad cases I mention