Goldberg, PI

Easter is the most brilliantly spooky of Christian holidays. Jesus the Zombie busts out of his grave and struts around for a couple days—some call this theology, I call it the stuff of nightmares. I prefer to think of Jesus as he was at the Sermon on the Mount, all fresh-faced and sweet. The risen dead belong in George A. Romero films, not in scripture.

But if an undead Jesus scares me, Lord help me when the Moshiach comes. Jewish eschatoIn the Flesh: Fresh-faced, pre-zombie Jesuslogy involves what is possibly the weirdest End-of-Days scenario ever cooked up. And it includes lots and lots of undead Jews.

According to the Talmud, once the Moshiach bursts onto the stage like Elvis in Aloha from Hawaii, the corporeal (though badly decomposed) bodies of Jews, housed comfortably in pine boxes, or simply dead on the streets of Boca Raton if we missed the warning signs entirely, will be resurrected. According to the Midrash, the process here involves a few complex, magical steps:

1. Our decomposed bodies will be flushed with the “Dew of Resurrection,” a sort of yeast of rebirth.
2. Our bodies will then reform around a bone in the spine called the luz, which is generally considered to be the coccyx.
3. We make time toward Israel to hook up with our souls.

The first two steps are hard to visualize. Rabbis haven’t traditionally been much help, basically saying that all will be clear once it happens. But the texts are clearer about the whole “making time towards Israel” part, and, sadly, it doesn’t involve a Lincoln Town Car.

The Talmud says resurrected Jews will literally roll their way to Israel through a series of underground tunnels and caves to be reunited with their souls, turning Israel into a frolicking undead playground. The Talmud predicts thaStrong Buy: Messianic Age likely to see steep rise in Dramamine stockt all this rolling will hurt, to say nothing of the nausea.

The only way to avoid the pain of rolling from, say, Palm Springs to Israel, is to be a righteous Jew at the time of death; though even the righteous have to wander through the tunnels and caves, which sounds messy, what with the need to sidestep the rolling (and probably vomiting) un-Orthodox masses. When everyone’s finally in Israel, the Mount of Olives will open up and resurrected Jews will stream out—presumably in search of Dramamine.

If you find all this hard to fathom, you’re not alone. The idea that Israel turns into an eternal dance sequence from the “Thriller” video has scared the hell out of me since I first encountered Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones: “Behold, I will open your grave, O My people, and I will bring you into the land of Israel. And ye shall know that I am the Lord when I have opened your graves and caused you to come up out of your graves, O My people. And I will put My spirit in you and ye shall live, and I will bring you in your own land, and ye shall know that I the Lord have spoken and performed, saith the Lord.”

If you need me, your basic bacon-eating Jew, I’ll be the one cowering in my grave, gripping a shotgun Valley of Dry Bones: The Prophet Ezekiel said the trippiest thingsand blasting away at the flesh-eating zombies.

The belief in resurrection likely goes back to the 4th Century B.C.E., when Jews were influenced by Babylonian concepts of religion. But it is Ezekiel’s vision that thousands of years of Jews have embraced as the definitive statement on the End of Days—though not without some discussion of the actual process, which is how we got this whole idea about rolling, with the Angel Gabriel leading the way.

Perhaps Ezekiel’s vision should be taken metaphorically. Though I’ve always been told we’d roll to Israel after death, what this really must mean is that we’ll metaphorically rise from the grave and metaphorically roll to Israel, right? Right? Right?!?

Well, no.

The Orthodox, at least, are quite literal in their belief that Jews will rise from their caskets and plunge en masse through the center of the Earth towards Israel. It is, according to Orthodox Rabbi Raleigh Resnick of AskMoses.com, one of the 13 principles of our faith.

The state of our bodies, however, is up for discussion. It’s reasonable to assume that if the power exists to resurrect the dead, the same power would exist to make us look decent, lest we live through eternity in differing states of decomposition. As a person who had hair like Robert Smith of The Cure through about 1990, I’d like toPhysical Perfection, circa 1990: Author will be restored to this form when resurrected have a choice regarding how I look. After resurrection, will I look as I do at the time of my death (probably even worse than 1990), or will I be in some perfect state of myself?

Rabbi Resnick, and Orthodoxy in general, believe that we will return in our prime, at our most vibrant, in a perfect state. This is why Jews do not typically practice cremation. To burn the body would be to desecrate it, which would prevent us from returning to the physical state, never mind the State of Israel.

This prompts a larger question: Won’t space in Israel be a little tight once all of the newly re-minted Jews take their rightful place on the 8,500 square miles of Holy Land? (And let’s not forget the issue of coordinating a few thousand years’ worth of undead Jews all the way to Israel. Last Thanksgiving, for instance, it was nearly impossible to coordinate the 14 living Jews who were coming to my house for a simple meal; I shudder to think what it would be like wrangling the totality of the Jewish dead halfway around the world.)

Fortunately, it seems like the Israel in question isn’t necessarily Israel as we know it. Rabbi Resnick says there are statements in the Midrash and also within Jewish literature which assert that the whole world will have the status of Israel, or that that the boundaries of Israel will expand to accommodate all of the Jewish people. Specifically, the Midrash teaches that in a Time to Come, “Jerusalem will diffuse its sanctity over the whole of the Land of Israel, and the Land of Israel will diffuse its sanctity over the whole world.” Should this come to pass, rolling to Israel should be a significantly less trying ordeal—what without the oceans, mountains, and molten center of the Earth to contend with—though there’s nothing in the literature which makes note of auxiliary Mounts of Olives opening up worldwide.

But as the rabbis say, we’ll know when it happens. I recommend brushing up on your somersaults and investing in some knee and elbow pads; it could be a long journey.

Goldberg, P.I. would like to thank Rabbi Raleigh Resnick and Rabbi Mayer Green. Other sources include To Live and Live Again, by Rabbi Nissan Dovid Dubov, and Holy Mountain: Two Paths to One God by Raphael H. Levine.

Got a Jewish question? Send it to goldbergpi@jewcy.com.

Men the world over are pondering their foreskins with a renewed sense of purpose due to a recently published clinical study in Africa that claims circumcised men are significantly less susceptible to HIV. Those curious about the gritty details of the operation can consult Slate’s Explainer column, which is so full of information that I understand a pop-up book based on the column is already in production. Even if you’d rather not consider the snipping options, though, you have to wonder: How much does it hurt?

Studies indicate that three in 1,000 uncircumcised American men end up going under the knife annually, for aesthetic, religious, and medical reasons. A number of these are Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet bloc; under Communism, hospitals refused to perform circumcisions, and mohels ran the risk of arrest. It’s important to note that while circumcision halves the odds of HIV/AIDS in the African study, that does not equate in the US. The spread of AIDS in Africa is largely through heterosexual sex, whereas in the US the prime vectors are intravenous drug use and anal sex.

Then there’s Abraham. He was 99 years old when he performed a circumcision on himself, presumably without even a topical. One could argue that at 99 there is even less feeling down there than at one week, but these days, Abraham would be encouraged to see a qualified doctor, who would inject a local anesthetic into his penis. That stings a bit, but it prevents pain during the next step, when the foreskin is snipped away. After the anesthetic wears off, however, the area will be sore and tender, often for several weeks. The recovery hurts; the procedure doesn’t.

In Africa, researchers are also looking into the ever popular “bloodless” method of circumcision, which entails the following: Gather up your foreskin in a tight clamp; hold it in place for approximately one week while the bloodless flesh slowly rots off like a co-star in an all-penis remake of Night of the Living Dead. Bloodless? Perhaps. Painless? Uh, fuck no.

The difference for adults and babies is largely one of anesthesia and time. Whether the procedure is done in a hospital or by a mohel, babies get very little in the way of pain relief. In a hospital, they may get a dab of lidocaine, but because of the potential neurological dangers of using anesthesia on newborns, doctors shy away from the pharmacological options. During a brit mila, the mohel gives the baby a small amount of wine, which helps during the procedure, but very little after. Fortunately, for babies, the entire process takes just a few minutes, the healing time is about a week, and they don’t remember any of it.

Adults get the painkillers, but they also have to endure a more complex bit of surgery. It used to be that men could have the operation performed under a general anesthesia, allowing them to simply wake up missing their foreskins. Now, however, most adult circumcisions are done as an outpatient procedure via a local anesthesia (which, while supposedly pain-free, sounds terribly unappealing, though, of course, I need a general anesthesia when my dog gets her teeth cleaned). Healing time is typically four to six weeks, during which time the patient must abstain from sex. Erections in general are best avoided; let me tell you, from experience, I endorse this advice wholeheartedly. And, unlike babies, adult patients remember all of it.

Take it from me. While I was circumcised shortly after birth and thus don’t remember the experience, I do have good reason to conclude that circumcision as an adult (or child, or teenager, or frat boy) hurts quite a bit.

The Zipper Incident (circa 1979): On a frigid winter day at Castle Rock Elementary school, I got it in my mind that I’d like to pee behind the tree by the bike racks. After quickly ensuring that neither Renee Sandoval nor Margaret Cashion could see me, I unzipped and let flow a torrent of juice-box-fueled urine. I remember thinking that it was a tremendous relief until I saw über-bully Brian Camp approaching. Surely Brian would tell the girls. Surely I’d be humiliated, not to mention suspended. I shoved all of my machinery back into place and yanked my zipper up, slicing a fair portion of skin off the bottom side of my penis. Pain factor, on a scale of one to ten: ten.

The Friction Incident (circa 1987): Five Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers. A thick pair of Guess? jeans. One 16-year-old girl named Michelle wearing equally thick Guess? jeans and a shirt by Genera that glowed in the dark. Two hours of friction, soundtrack provided by The Cure, lubrication provided by denim. Pain factor (during incident): 0, wine coolers presumably having dulled the sensation. Pain factor (after incident): ten.

The Shaving Incident (circa 1995): Given a pair of electric hair clippers, some men make the decision to look less like themselves and more like porn stars. My own adventure in pubic topiary started swimmingly. Places I hadn’t seen since 1979 were suddenly visible. The air seemed cooler. The sky seemed brighter. I thought about buying a Speedo. And then I cut a chunk of flesh from my penis with the clippers. Pain factor: ten.

What these incidents have in common is that they were done outside of a hospital, largely without anesthesia (save for the wine coolers), and long after I’d actually been circumcised. So while I didn’t have a memory of the original process, my nerve endings likely did, and what they communicated to me was that keeping sharp objects away from my penis should become my life’s work.

I'm glad our most barbaric tribal ritual is finally getting some rational justification beyond "Abraham did it, and you'll do it to your own kid." Just take it slow--and let's get some Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers over to Africa pronto.

Goldberg, P.I. would like to thank Dr. Doug P. Lyle.

Got a Jewish question? Send it to goldbergpi@jewcy.com.

Last week, when the Pulitzer Prize board announced that blog posts are now eligible for the award, blogging officially became as cool as the episode of Life Goes On where Corky lip-synched (and moonwalked to) Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power.” It’s an excruciating but expected cultural cycle: That which engages the creative, the young and the angry, unemployed, underrepresented middle will eventually become the property of The Man, The Oppressor, or at least The Parents.

Since the dawn of the functional Internet, I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time reading (and writing) things online. Like everyone else, I started out a devoted user of AOL. It epitomized who I was, largely because my apartment was filled with coasters made out of AOL disks. The opportunity to talk on the various message boards and chat rooms was just so…cool. Remember? It was cool. LOL! ROFL! LMAO!Best Coaster Ever: This disc contains an onramp to the information superhighway

And then one day, the phone rang. Because no one had caller ID in 1995, I answered. It was my mother.

“How do you get onto the information superhighway?” she asked.

“It’s full,” I said. “They aren’t letting anyone else on.”

Within a month, mom was actively chatting online with a number of men who claimed to be members of MI:6 (the British equivalent of the Secret Service), one of whom was planning to fly over for New Year’s Eve. I’d like to say that this is all an elaborate joke, but it isn’t. My mother believed the men she was chatting with were secret agents. And British. And single.

I had to talk about this, so I talked about it online. I didn’t imagine that my mother would actually find my posts about her love affairs, but it was a small Internet world in 1995, and one day the phone rang again.

“Do you have any other screennames on AOL?” my mother asked.

“Uh, no,” I lied.

“Well,” she said, “that’s funny because I just ran across some posts on a message board that sounded a lot like you, and the person was talking about someone who sounded a lot like me.” She burst into tears. “It’s not right to talk about your family on the Internet. It’s lashon hara.”

Lashon Hara, commonly known as the “evil tongue,” is some bad juju that is best expressed algebraically: Rachel tells Steve something derogatory—but true—about David while not in David’s presence. Or: R + S – D = lashon hara. That Rachel is telling the truth doesn’t matter. Our rabbinic forefathers looked upon gossip of any kind as akin to, say, the AIDS epidemic—a plague capable of destroying the individual and the community alike.

For a while, the conversation with my mother stayed with me. I didn’t want to speak ill of my family (even when it was true…particularly since it was true…particularly since one of these British super spies ended up coming across the pond for two weeks and only left after my mother discovered him taking photos of her silver.)

But then I started to blog. It was 2004. All the kids were doing it. It felt good. What distinguished blogs from the old message boards and chat rooms was the faux-intimacy of public revelation. Those early LiveJournals and Diarylands took the contents of your basic frilly diary and broadcast them to a rapt audience hungry to chatter idly about anything illicit.

I—and millions and millions of people nothing like me—enjoy that illusion of invaded privacy. We’re nothing if not a voyeuristic society, and the idea of private thoughts exposed has become primary currency among the blogging billions.

Then the phone rang.

“You’ve been saying horrible things about me in your blog,” my mother said. “How could you?”

“It’s my life,” I said, “I’m allowed to talk about it.”

“But you’re not allowed to talk about my life,” she said. “What if your Nana saw these stories?”

Lashon hara is a major sin. In Leviticus, we are told: “You shall not go around as a gossipmonger amidst your people.” The Talmud says that it “kills three: the one who said it, the one who listened, and the one about whom it was said.” And the Tanakh adds that lashon hara, like murder, illicit sex, and theft, is punishable by divinely-inflicted leprosy.

Why is gossip considered so unconscionable? For one thing, gossip never takes into account mitigating circumstances. My mom could have had a great reason for entertaining 007, but my readers would never know about it. More importantly, though, Judaism believes that words can do as much harm as actions. In fact, shit-talking goes beyond the reach of other, more physical actions—like fighting, or even stealing, for instance—because there is no way to control words. Once released, they have their own lives.

The unruliness of words extends to private writing. It may seem natural for a person to write their feelings, frustrations, or anecdotal thoughts about being grounded after cutting sixth period in order to go to Starbucks in a personal journal, but Judaism recognizes that you can’t keep people out of your diary. Writing in a private journal (like a friends-only MySpace or LiveJournal, for instance, or the paper-and-pen version of old) still counts strictly as lashon hara, because you can’t entirely control who reads it. Thinking negative thoughts is one thing, expressing them is where the trouble comes in.Not Actually Child Abuse: Dorothy Hamill and her haircut c. 1977

Plug “I hate my mother” into Google’s Blog Search, and it’s possible to spend the next week reading through nearly five thousand public rants on the subject from the last six months alone. The very act of writing this article is, in fact, lashon hara. Is there any time when lashon hara is acceptable?

According to Jewish law, yes, but only in the service of helping someone who has been victimized in some way. (I’m going to assume that my defense of “was the only boy in the neighborhood with a Dorothy Hamill haircut” is not sufficient here.) Even then, schadenfreude isn’t allowed in the aftermath.

Just when I concluded that maybe I’d change my ways, that maybe my blog would become a clearinghouse for latke recipes and homespun wisdom on prostate maintenance, an email from my mother came cascading in. The subject line? “Check out my blog!!!” I’d give you the address, but I’m afraid that would be lashon hara.

Goldberg, P.I. would like to thank Rabbi Ovadia Goldman and Rabbi Robert B. Barr.

Got a Jewish question? Send it to goldbergpi@jewcy.com.