On Relevance and Faithfulness (Or, Tomato, Potato)

shlomi on April 29, 2018

As I (continue to) procrastinate writing the climax, denouement, and conclusion to my second novel, I’m getting great feedback from specific beta readers. One in particular read Angels just for the Jewish POV and info. Having been raised Orthodox, and gone to yeshiva, I’m no stranger to my religion, but one might be surprised as what can get forgotten over the years. And it’s important that I get this right because I’m realizing that Angels is almost perfectly written to be read by a frum (religious Jewish) audience. There are recurring tropes in how the religious are portrayed (including this movie, the latest involving Orthodox women “trapped” by their religion).

So when she pointed out that she didn’t think the word sheitel [wig] meant what I thought it meant, I was puzzled.

“No,” she said, looking at her iPad notes, “you meant to say tichel [head kerchief], right?”

I engaged in a spontaneous facepalm. And wrote the first of several notes that’ll become part of the next draft of the book.

I might “know the rules,” but not having lived the life, conflating the two into one word, instead of using the two correct words isn’t surprising. And, to a non-Jewish reader, this would fly right over their (presumably uncovered) head. But getting it right, really right, means as much as possible. Like the carpenter who sands and finishes inside corners of pieces even though no one with ever see it. I’ll know it’s the right word, and a religious woman or man reading it will understand and be less likely to snort, think “that idiot doesn’t really know how we live,” and consign it to the misguided Jewish lit pile.

One of my favorite authors wrote a book including scenes in a Temple (which is what non-religious synagogues are sometimes called in America). The names of the rabbis? John, Paul, and Mary. {crickets} Sure, it’s a fantasy novel, and so what if magic was the theme of the scene, but still: why get something basic wrong if you can help it?

Being faithful to the culture respects it, its members or adherents, and, ultimately, respects the reader as well. Because a writer wants to suspend disbelief only as much and for as long as necessary to make the scene work.

To get more info on the wig/kerchief issue, check out Rivki Silver’s blog post on sheitels, and this whimsical but accurate post regarding tichels by Andrea Grinberg in her store’s, The Wrapunzel, blog.

On Perpetrators and Puzzlement

shlomi on January 10, 2018

We’ve all seen a puzzled neighbor or family member interviewed after some horrific killing or act saying “I don’t get it; he was the nicest guy. Never a problem.”

“Yeah,” I’d snort to myself, “I’d have seen something.”

Nah.

I went to a liberal Orthodox Jewish school (an oxymoron today) back in Riverdale. Or, as everyone else called it, The Bronx.

The school was, for me, heaven. Latest (1970s era) gear, brilliant teachers, 3-day camping trips complete with art and science teacher hookups, bus tours of Washington, D.C. Some of the most amazing and brilliant people I now realize I was friends with.

I loved the place so much tht when I had my bar mitzvah I had yarmulkes made with the school’s logo. That place, and some of the amazing people in it (Mrs. Ratner, the secretary, the Doyle family, custodians and cooks extraordinaire, and a few others), kept me tethered to (relative) sanity.

Yes, yes, this story has a point. Where was I? Oh, right: heavenly idyllic place, blah blah blah. I had had a real nemesis there, a fellow student “J” whom I’d been with since kindergarten. We hated each other with the fire of a thousand suns. For good reasons on both sides.

Rabbi (later known as Cantor) Stanley Rosenfeld was the assistant principal, handling the Judaic end of things. He was determined to “make us shake hands.” And, in the end, I think he succeeded. At least, neither of us buried our hatchets in the other’s skull.

He invited “J” and I to spend Shabbat at his house (Friday evening through Saturday night). It was an apartment in South Yonkers, right near the Riverdale border. He was a member of one of the less glitz, more prayer, synagogues.

I only remember two things about that Shabbat: (1) that we hid his clothing and he chased me and “J” around the house in his underwear to get his stuff so we could go to shul for afternoon services. I think it was the first time “J” and I were partners in mischief. And, (2), when he caught me he kept twisting my wrist to get me to tell him where his clothes were. Twisted it until it broke. To my memory he was horrified and apologetic and as solicitous a vice-principal as an 8th grader might expect.

Oh, and he raped boys. The son-of-a-bitch was a serial pedophile, child rapist, assaulting his way through several Jewish schools in the Northeast until he was put away, paroled, and jailed again for breaking parole with yet another assault. And now, according to the JTA, it turns out that someone, someone I probably knew, was raped by him.

 

If someone had interviewed me about him I’d be that gormless, clueless guy, not knowing how close I was to the dragon’s fire.

On Research, and the Need for Brain Bleach

shlomi on July 18, 2017

I’m careful, when doing story research, not to trip up and set DHS, the USSS, or EIEIO on my tail. I recently moved to a private VPN connection because my damn Internet provider isn’t paying me enough to get access to my search history (neither is Google, but I’ve got other ways around that).

I also try not to click on sites that get me, um… to places I hadn’t intended on visiting. So I was surprised, when working on a bit of research on rosaries for a short story (novella? novel?) in my Upline universe. I was trying to see if there were any specific numbers of beads in a rosary. Interesting stuff, for an atheist Jew. What I didn’t expect is exhibit(ionist) A, to the left. Seriously, this site was selling rosaries. Lots of detail about the beads, and prayers, and everything. And then I kept looking (masochism knows no bounds) and found the incredibly apt ad for a rosary belt!

There’s oh so much I don’t understand about the Mysteries of some religions…

Words, Books, Memory

shlomi on May 31, 2017

As a Jewish atheist I enjoy the rituals of my people. While I don’t enjoy laying t’fillin (putting on phylacteries)—although I remember how—I’ve always had a visceral sense memory when seeing or touching the prayer book my dad used.
I have the second one he had in my lifetime. The first, a Shiloh edition daily prayer book, was made of relatively normal linen paper, had almost disintegrated by the time I was ten. It wasn’t really unusual: kiddush with my dad entailed dribbling at least a little wine on the pages, and havdalah, when separating from the Sabbath, adds wax to yet more wine.

My current one, with whatever chromo paper was extant in the 1970s or 1980s, doesn’t shy from absorbing the waxy fats of the Havdalah candle, nor the dribbles of wines wending from horrific Manischewitz to actual red, dry wines.

Seeing, feeling… even smelling these remnants of my former life, my belief life, trigger more than just memory. They bring to the fore, for me, the belief that we can strive to be better than the species. That we can transform the anger, hate, trivial, niggling, negative feelings into something… more. Something that elevates us, as humans, as homo sapiens sapiens, from the troglodyte slaves of hateful religious dogma to individuals of thought, laughter, and action bringing up the level of humanity, instead of sinking what we find to some lowest common religious denominator ensuring that all lose to guilt, anger, and anguish.

Instead of experiencing the transubstantiation of plebeian thought to anger and tempora mores, let’s see if we can’t bring to the fore those flutterings of love from that which brought us happiness, and joy.

Because the alternative is the cataloging of sin, transgression, and propinquity instead of the formless, incalculable, effervescent moment of thought, pulled from the past to the present.

Thanks to Choir! Choir! Choir! for the acoustic background to this piece. Ground Control: we’re still here (although they didn’t do that, they did this).

 

The Anti-Christ is Here (Thank God!)

shlomi on August 11, 2008

Wow. I didn’t know I was rooting for the antichrist. I mean, as a Jew with a sharp tongue, I certainly _hope_ I’m rooting for the other guy. Just not that one. Whatever he stands for. Our people have no connection to ‘The Rapture,’ a construct of 19th century umm, passionate people. I disingenuously paused, because, again, as a Jew, the whole thing is hooey to me. We didn’t have a 1st coming, so the second one makes no sense. We have no hell, only the absence of being part of God. There’s no purgatory. No wacky ‘what SHALL we do with all these unbelievers.’ No fire, no brimstone. [Full disclosure: while Christianity is fully Thanotic (death- and afterlife-focused), Judaism does refer to this life as the ‘prosdor’ (literally: the hallway) and the next life as the room. But we Jews get do-overs in the form of reincarnation, and a chance for our souls to make right what we failed in previous lives.]

The Obama = Nicholae Carpathia idea is hideous. It’s hateful, paranoid, and smacks of all the things for which the KKK was and is reviled. The Nazis used fear of the Jew, the unknown, the other to kill my family. And the hateful, prejudiced, zealots aligned with the McCain campaign are using the exact same tactics now, in 2008.

Debate is great. McCain certainly presents a different set of options to Obama. I welcome discussions of substance, of the priorities, strategies and even tactics of the two candidates in solving our upcoming problems. But bringing religion into this is a wedge designed to scare the Evangelical, the dim-witted, or those that bought the last lie: that Obama is actually a Muslim. Not that that is wrong in any way! (I’d love to see a Muslim President! He’d be just as fair as Kennedy was, as a Catholic, in a majority Protestant country.)

The Golden Compass Can’t Find North

shlomi on December 12, 2007

As a firm disbeliever in anything dogmatic, and one who rarely takes things “on faith,” I initially snorted at the Catholic League’s well-reasoned denouncement of The Golden Compass. (Okay, the trailer, with a sinuous Nicole Kidman and very impressive graphics also more than held my interest.)

I read the first book, then saw the movie. Then read the other two books.

Cinematically, the movie of the first book in the Dark Matter trilogy is badly reminiscent of the Harry Potter movies. If you haven’t read the book, the movie barely skitters across the time alloted, and does not do the book (or the author) justice. It was clear that, aside from any well-publicized crises of angst by the director, that Hollywood definitely bent the book. Almost severed it (that’s an inside phrase, and a spoiler).

The second and third books of the Dark Matter trilogy definitely bear out the worries of those representing dogmatic, doctrinal religion. I can’t see Unitarians griping about it, but hierarchical religions should definitely see this as an attack not only of their system of governance, but on theism itself.

I have more objections to this series, aimed at children, than the Narnia books (to be fair, I’ve only read the first two in the series). In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, one can choose to ignore the Christian references in the book: it’s a lion, pretty vs. ugly is a Hollywood prejudice, who cares how many days the lion lies injured/tortured… It’s not much different from Starman, which is much more the prototypical Christian story than even Narnia. But greatest stories ever told (whether the “original” was fiction or not) are common movie riffs.

In the Dark Matter trilogy, Pullman makes a cogent case against theism. It’s not just calling for deicide (killing of god) — it brings in negative stereotypes like the almost successful pederast priest and the essential evil of those charged with teaching morals. It mocks angels, portraying them as gentle, delicate, homosexual lovers.

There are many reasons to poke fun at religion, to question it, to question one religion over another. But Pullman’s books take the dark matter of theologic dogma to the edge — and then distastefully over it, to the level of ‘discourse’ similar to portraying Islam’s Mohammad with porcine qualities.

My only hope is that Hollywood manages to as effectively neuter the second and third movies as “well” as they did the first, since clearly this first movie was only a portent of things to come, and not a work that stands on its own — unlike even the least of the Harry Potter movies.