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Showing posts from 2012

Jealousy's Funeral

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I'm staring at the coffin, plain, wood, filled, when she walks into the sanctuary. I can feel her as her heels pad softly against the flat brown carpet. The weight of the air shifts. Particles gather around me, closing my throat. All I can smell is my wife on her clothes. It's as if their pheromones mixed together just to taunt me. My body heaves forward. I try in vain to blow out stale fearful air, but her presence suffocates me. The word lover whispers in my ear from some unknown voice as I tightly close my eyes. I'm sure the congregation thinks I'm holding back tears for her. I am. I'm not. I don't know. I've never felt jealous in my whole life. I've never understood the nights my wife would cry in our bed or on the floor because she felt I was keeping some dark secret. For her, jealousy lived just under the surface, a constant threat to our marriage. Her crying pissed me off so much; I fantasized about hitting her, just to shut her up. Every time I

Resurrecting Levine

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This story was part of a writing challenge proposed by my American Jewish Lit professor in grad school. After reading Bernard Malamud's short story  from 1955, "The Angel Levine," about a Jewish black angel who saves an old Jewish tailor in order to get his wings.  The story looks deeply at Jewish identity, posing the question: what makes a Jew?  In turn, my professor asked, "where did this angel come from? What was his life when he was alive? Was he born Jewish?" Resurrecting Levine I grew up during the Harlem Renaissance, the son of an entrepreneur who made his money opening speakeasies in Jungle alley. Jazz musicians, homosexuals, bohemians, and upper class whites flocked to his establishments.  In 1926, when I was four-years-old, we moved to a Hamilton Heights brownstone. At the time (although much has changed) Hamilton heights was a desirable neighborhood for affluent whites, and my father’s success with his speakeasies sprinkled throughout Harlem

Hanging

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For years, I taught Elie Wiesel's Holocaust memoir, Night , in my community college classroom. Night  is the story of Elie and his father's life inside the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps during the Holocaust. It is spare, heart-wrenching, and honest. He tells the tale of a people moved from humanity to degradation and the unraveling of relationships caused by such inhumanity. Many times, broken relationships were that of fathers and sons, but they were also broken relationships with G-d. Elie struggles to hold onto his relationship with his own father while, at the same time, despairs over the violent breakdown of his relationship with G-d. While teaching, my students and I found ourselves stopping at the same passage: A young boy is arrested and hanged by the Nazis for not giving up his superior who was planning a revolt. The entire camp stood helplessly by as they watched this young boy die slowly. While death surrounds them everyday, the boy's death b

The Great Rabbi Speaks

The other night, I was putting the Great Rabbi to bed. He's a bit fearful of the dark, so I've put a rooster nightlight in his room. As he was climbing under the covers, he said that he wanted to talk about the Guardian rooster. So, I told him to tell me about it:  The rooster guides me through the dark shadows of the wicked. " Huh?" I thought. Did he really just say that. So, I asked him if he wanted me to write down what he had to say about his Animal Guardians. He asked me to share it on my blog. So, here it is word for word. It is unedited. I did not change any words. I did not write any of it. All I did was transcribe his words: My Dear Animal Guardian By The Great Rabbi The Rooster guides me through the dark shadows of the wicked. The Lion guards me from the medieval The mighty Whale will guide me through my dreams And my destiny. And the Dog will guide me through the cities, the states the countries the continents And t