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At one

Last Thursday was Yom Kippur, so Dad & I made our return to the Chabad Jewish Enrichment Center in Chestnut Ridge, NY for Yizkor, the prayer for one’s departed parents (and other family members). I wrote all about the JEC last year, so go check out the details and get back here.

Last year on Yom Kippur, I was on antibiotics that were causing me to have paranoid delusions, so I skipped the ritual fasting (no food, no fluid, no nothing for 25 hours). In relatively better health this year, I decided to give it a go. I hadn’t reckoned on how much I increased my dependence on coffee in recent months; Dad came by to pick me up around 10 a.m., and I was already thrumming and out of it. And I had another 9+ hours to go.

Fortunately, Dad made the drive “entertaining” by

  1. talking about cooking shows and food most of the time (his diabetes precludes him from fasting),
  2. talking about how good “that one white player” on the U.S. Olympic basketball team was, until I realized he was referring to Jason Kidd,
  3. employing a GPS unit that was so faulty I named it “SPG,” which led to
  4. getting so lost that I had to bust out my iPhone to figure out where we were and how to get to the JEC.

When we arrived, we stayed in the back of the rec-room/shul. There were 25-30 men present. The rabbi saw us and walked back to greet us in kittel and Crocs (no leather footwear on Yom Kippur), while the chazzan was conducting a prayer. He remembered us from last year and even recalled Dad’s father’s Hebrew name. I’m sure he has to have a good memory for the once-a-year Jews like us.

After shaking my hand and wishing me a good new year, he said, “I’m glad you’re here! We need you to open the ark and bring the Torahs out!”

The lack of caffeine and my blood-sugar wackiness were taking a toll on me. Addled and thick-tongued, I said, “Uh, um, I don’t have to do a blessing, right?”

“No! We just need your muscles!”

“. . . In that case, you might be better off asking me to read Aramaic,” I said, following him up the narrow aisle to the pulpit/reading table.

He directed me to open the fireproof safe on the wall, remove the first Torah and hand it to the chazzan. I took each velvet-covered scroll out carefully, avoiding any contact with the ark/safe as though I was playing Operation. The chazzan, in white socks and flip-flops, carried his Torah into the congregation. I followed him through the shul. Each congregant touched the Torah cover with the corner of his tallis or his prayerbook, then touched that corner to his lips.

We finished our circuit, crossing the partition so the women and children could also receive the Torahs’ blessing, and the chazzan put his on the reading table, while I was instructed to sit down in the front row and hold the second one. The top handles of this Torah were covered by decorative ornaments (rimonim) that had little silver bells dangling from them. I kept trying to find a sitting position that was comfortable, respectful, and didn’t cause constant jingling noises, in ascending order of importance.

While I kept the noise down, congregants were called up to perform aliyah, the blessing over the Torah. Dad was the second or third one called up, and performed admirably. I even began to feel a little of The Resonance, watching my dad recite the blessing. Holding the other Torah against me, I thought about atonement, and what we were supposed to be doing that day. I feel like I’ve already atoned for most of the wrongs I’ve committed against people in my life, but that’s not what this day is about. This is about atoning toward God, and I don’t know how to do that.

Following (I think) six aliyah over the first Torah, and then another over the second Torah, it was time for the Torah reading, followed by a sermon from the rabbi. Now, the JEC’s high holiday schedule indicated that Yizkor was supposed to be at 11:45 a.m., but it was around half-past-noon when the rabbi was wrapping up his sermon. I don’t think this so much an instance of Jewish Mean Time as it was a matter of making sure that less observant congregants didn’t pray and dash.

The sermon consisted of the rabbi telling a story of the Baal Shem Tov telling a story, and in a reverie I wondered if the layers would keep growing, with each storyteller launching into another story of a storyteller, all carrying the theme of Jews’ obligations to each other and God. The rabbi, feeling less postmodern than I was, elected to keep it relatively simple, although his story did rely heavily on the prospect of reincarnation and explicitly mentioned Purgatory as an afterlife destination. His message: live up to the Torah, because you may be in this world in order to “get it right this time.”

After he finished, those of us who haven’t lost our parents went outside, while the others stayed in for Yizkor. The rabbi was lucky enough to be among our number, so we shot the breeze in the backyard. He asked me, “So what do you do when you’re not praying and studying Torah?”

I filled him in on my day job. He asked for details about the nature of business magazine publishing, how we’re adapting to the internet, and why he only sees me once a year. “Because I’m not a very good Jew,” I told him. I thought about some of the others I’d seen that morning in shul, who were even less educated in Judaism than I am, but were still there to pray.

“But you’re here today!”

“I guess I’m a half-decent son.”

“That’s a start!”

We walked over to the main group of people, and the rabbi’s wife told the story about how she once passed out in the middle of Yom Kippur in an overcrowded shul. It turned out she was pregnant with their first child. Someone pointed out that it’s good to keep smelling salts on hand during the day. The rabbi said that they usually do, but he couldn’t find any this year. I mentioned how disappointed I was that there was no snuff circulating the services this year. He laughed and told me to come back next year, and maybe they’ll have some.

Once the prayer was complete, we returned to the shul. The rabbi collected the names of all the dead from the congregants, so he could lead a prayer for them. When that was done, we noticed that others were getting up and heading outside, so we took our cue to leave. The rabbi caught us and took my arm, saying, “No! We need you to put the Torahs back in the ark! It’ll only be another five minutes!”

As he led me back up the aisle, one of the congregants said, “That’s ‘five minutes’ in Jewish time!”

I told Dad that he could wait in the car, figuring that he might be light-headed from sugar-crash and would need to snack on the banana that he brought along, but he stayed. And so we prayed further, and I lifted the first Torah from the reading table. About to place it in the ark, I said to the rabbi, “It’s a 40-day fast if I drop this, right?”

“Right! So don’t drop it. You don’t want that much atonement!”

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Monday Morning Montaigne: Of four-in-one specials

I’m going to cover four shorter essays this week, because it’s my party.

* * *

Our first essay, Of giving the lie (pp. 611-615), actually continues the conversation from Of presumption, to my gratification (see last week’s post to get an idea of how overwhelming that essay is). Montaigne begins it by discussing the nature of his Essays and the purpose in writing a book of himself, despite his lack of “achievement”. After all, it’s natural for people to want to read the words of great men, but why would the public be interested in the essays of a minor noble who retired from public life at the age of 38? He offers a few defenses for his book, essays for his essays, as it were. First, it’s not for everybody:

This is for a nook in a library, and to amuse a neighbor, a relative, a friend, who may take pleasure in associating and conversing with me again in this image. Others have taken courage to speak of themselves because they found the subject worthy and rich; I, on the contrary, because I have found mine so barren and so meager that no suspicion of ostentation can fall upon my plan.

Maybe it’s for posterity (but probably not):

What a satisfaction it would be to me to hear someone tell me . . . of the habits, the face, the expression, the favorite remarks, and the fortunes of my ancestors. . . .

However, if my descendants have other tastes, I shall have ample means for revenge: for they could not possibly have less concern about me than I shall have about them by that time.

Okay, maybe I’m writing these essays for myself:

And if no one reads me, have I wasted my time, entertaining myself for so many idle hours with such useful and agreeable thoughts? In modeling this figure upon myself, I have had to fashion and compose myself so often to bring myself out, that the model itself has to some extent grown firm and taken shape. Painting myself for others, I have painted my inward self with colors clearer than my original ones. I have no more made my book than my book has made me.

Hmm: “It’s meant as a quiet(ish) conversation; it’d be nice if people could refer to it in future to get some idea of who I am/was; the act of writing it has helped me define myself.” Those sure sound like the top three reasons I write Virtual Memories. If only he added, “I’m looking for a three-book deal and a movie option.”

Anyway, M. lets these defenses of his self-writing lead into the topic of lying. “But whom shall we believe when he talks about himself, in so corrupt an age [. . .]? Since mutual understanding is brought about solely by way of words, he who breaks his word betrays human society.”

Lying (and lying about lying) inverts our values, M. contends, by demonstrating contempt for God and fear of men. We — the French of his time, who treated lying like a virtue — take more offense about being accused of lying than of any other sin. He touches on the subject only briefly, but promises to return to the topic sometime to cover “the varied etiquette of giving the lie, and our laws of honor in that matter, and the changes they have undergone.”

So the alleged topic of this essay is undertreated, in favor of M.’s discussion of his own aims and purposes. I didn’t mind that particularly, but the discussion on lying did contain a brief aside that left me hoping for more. In a comment about “certain nations of the new Indies,” M. mentions the “monstrous and unheard-of case” of their conquest, the desolation of which “has extended even to the entire abolition of the names and former knowledge of the places.” Even though he’s discussing their use of blood sacrifice, he’s clearly coming down heavily on the the practice of genocide in the New World. I sure hope he gets back to this topic, even if it’s only in brief allusions like this one.

* * *

The next essay, Of freedom of conscience (pp. 615-619), discusses the damaging effects of hyperorthodoxy. M. contends that, among those who were on the “right” side in France’s civil war, there were many “whom passion drives outside the bounds of reason.” Further, he argues, early Christians who destroyed pagan library “did more harm to letters than all the bonfires of the barbarians.”

The center of the essay is the life of Emperor Julian, the Apostate. M. characterizes Julian as a great man who “[i]n the matter of religion . . . was bad throughout,” and doubts the story that Julian returned to the faith in his dying breath. M. describes him as a harsh enemy of Christianity, “but not a cruel one.”

M.’s question is this: Why do some regimes allow freedom of conscience? Julian permitted this to create general dissension “in the hope that this complete freedom would augment the schisms and factions that divided them and would kepe the people from uniting.” However, the kings of M.’s time used it to reduce dissension; by permitting freedom of religion, they give the people one less thing to fight over.

I prefer to think, for the reputation of our kings’ piety, that having been unable to do what they would, they have pretended to will what they could.

* * *

In We taste nothing pure (pp 619-623), M. explores the way all our sensations alloy to their opposite. He brings up le petit mort in a way that makes me doubt that he enjoyed sex:

Our utmost sensual pleasure has an air of groaning and lament about it. Wouldn’t you say that it is dying of anguish? Indeed, when we forge a picture of it at its highest point, we deck it with sickly and painful epithets and qualities: languor, softness, weakness, faintness, morbidezza: a great testimony to their consanguinity and consubstantiality.

Despite that, M. takes his essay in an interesting direction when he gets away from the alloys of abstractions and explores one of my favorite topics: how we can be too smart for our own good:

[One’s] penetrating clarity has too much subtlety and curiosity in it. These must be weighted and blunted to make them more obedient to example and practice, and thickened and obscured to relate them to this shadowy and earthy life. Therefore common and less high-strung minds are found to be more fit and more successful for conducting affairs. And the lofty and exquisite ideas of philosophy are found to be inept in practice. . . You get lost considering so many contrasting aspects and diverse shapes. . . .

He who seeks and embraces all the circumstances and consequences impedes his choice. An average intelligence conducts equally well, and suffices to carry out, things of great or little weight.

Which puts me in mind of That Damned Hegel Quote, and the smart guy’s tendency to overthink and miss out on life.

* * *

Against do-nothingness (pp. 622-626) turned out to be a lot less interesting than its title led me to hope. It basically says that, if you’re a king, you should accompany your soldiers in war. Kind of a letdown, even if its key example was the death of “Moulay Moloch, king of Fez.”

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What It Is: 10/13/08

What I’m reading: Samaritan, by Richard Price. Because I miss The Wire.

What I’m listening to: Body of Song by Bob Mould and Angel Milk by Telepopmusik.

What I’m watching: 30 Rock, season 1, LSU/Florida (ugh), and a bunch of close NFL games.

What I’m drinking: Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. I’m still on my one-drink-a-week routine, weirdly enough. Which means I haven’t had a G&T in more than 2 weeks.

What Rufus is up to: Attempted rape at the paws of a savoy down at the local farmers’ market on Saturday. Oh, the shame! He also got to take a short hike to Ramapo Lake, and stopped in at the Garden State Barkway to get his nails clipped, so on balance it was an okay weekend for him.

Where I’m going: Nowhere this week. I really oughtta get into NYC sometime.

What I’m happy about: My mom’s busted wrist healed well enough for her to go on her hiking trip to Utah this week. And that official VM pal Paul Di Filippo had his new book launch with comics legend Jim Woodring out in Seattle!

What I’m sad about: Only three weeks left in the presidential campaign! No!

What I’m pondering: Why this exists.

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Crisis of Infinite Mixed Metaphors

From this morning’s NYPost:

The seismic jolt sent through global stock markets yesterday has ratcheted up the pressure on Fed chief Ben Bernanke, New York Federal Reserve Bank President Tim Geithner and SEC chief Chris Cox – three pivotal players who had hoped for a period of post-rescue bill calm in order to surgically attack the time bombs still ticking on their watches.

Pulling the trigger first was Bernanke . . .

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I’m shorting Amalgamated Lint

Is it just me, or does this “Get out of the stock market!” rant by Jim Cramer sound even wackier than Gomez Addams’ call to his broker: “Sell! Sell! — what? everyone’s selling? Then buy, man! Buy!”

Update: Good to see that the NYPost’s financial columnist John Crudele — whose work I really appreciate — agrees with me! Plus, when I saw that the stock market made an inexplicable last-hour bounce yesterday, my first thought, pace Crudele, was, “Looks like the PPT jumped in!”

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Monday Morning Montaigne: Of presumption

Of presumption runs 30 pages (pp. 581-610 in my edition) in my Complete Works of Montaigne and, like other great essays in the book, its title gives no indication of what’s ahead. The essay begins with a description of a “kind of vainglory”: esteeming oneself too much and not esteeming others enough. It ends with a justification of the entire project of the Essays. I think.

Much of the essay consists of M.’s litany of his own faults and shortcomings; while some of them are quite funny (he knows less than zero about his own estate and “if you give me all the equipment of a kitchen, I shall starve”), his attacks on his own writing lead him into a trap he set in the second paragraph of this essay: trying so hard to avoid vainglory that one demonstrates low self-esteem: “If he is Caesar, let him boldly judge himself the greatest captain in the world.”

But setting aside his self-deprecation, I think this essay may provide some illumination into what the Essays are actually about. That is, they cover a wide range of topics, and M. has been pretty explicit that their true subject matter is really M. himself. In this one, he writes:

The world always looks straight ahead; as for me, I turn my gaze inward, I fix it there and keep it busy. Everyone looks in front of him; as for me, I look inside of me; I have no business but with myself; I continually observe myself, I take stock of myself, I taste myself. Others always go elsewhere, if they stop to think about it; they always go forward; “No man tried to descend into himself;” [Persius] as for me, I roll about in myself.

But the question of why he wrote and who he’s trying to reach is what interests me.

I tend to look for importance in seemingly tangential remarks, which is probably why I tend to speak in full paragraphs and try to keep silent rather than blurting out a response when I’m under pressure. Of presumption appears to be littered with signals amidst the “noise” of describing presumption. Enmeshed in M.’s condemnations of his flightiness, shortness, hairiness, poor Latin and “corrupted” French, poor memory, dull storytelling, lack of physicality, “harsh and disdainful” language, ignorance of the quotidian, lack of deliberation, etc., are brief passages that tell us, “I know I roll about in myself, but it’s all worth it.”

The first clue comes quite early in the essay (p. 582). M. mentions that great figures — placed in that position by Fortune and not some innate greatness, of course — demonstrate their character through public actions. But what about everyone else?

But those whom [Fortune] has employed only in a mass, and of whom no one will speak unless they do themselves, may be excused if they have the temerity to speak of themselves to those who have an interest in knowing them, after the example of Lucilius: “He would confide, as unto trusted friends, / His secrets to his notebooks; turn there still, / Not elsewhere, whether faring well or ill. / So that the old man’s whole life lay revealed / As on a votive tablet.” [Horace] That man committed to his paper his actions and thoughts, and portrayed himself there as he felt he was.

Twenty pages later, he notes:

One day at Bar-le-Duc I saw King Francis II presented, in remembrance of Rene, king of Sicily, with a portrait that this king had made of himself. Why is it not permissible in the same way for each man to portray himself with the pen, as he portrayed himself with a pencil?

I don’t want to paint M. as the ur-blogger, but don’t remarks like those seem to presage the “mainstream media vs. citizen bloggers” split? Okay, that’s probably a stretch, but at least he’s right on with his complaints about critics!

And then, for whom do you write? The learned men to whom it falls to pass judgment on books know no other value than that of learning, and admit no other procedure for our minds than that of erudition and art. If you have mistaken one of the Scipios for the other, what is there left for you to say that can be worth while? Anyone who does not know Aristotle, according to them, by the same token does not know himself. Common, ordinary minds do not see the grace and the weight of a lofty and subtle speech. Now, these two types fill the world. The third class into whose hands you come, that of minds regulated and strong in themselves, is so rare that for this very reason it has neither name nor rank among us; it is time half wasted to aspire and strive to please this group.

I think it’s that third class that give us our clue into M.’s project. Near the end of this essay, he rails against education, right after complaining about the mediocrity of contemporary men, their only glory coming through valor on the battlefield. (Shakespeare was only 16 when this essay was completed.)

I gladly return to the subject of the ineptitude of our education. Its goal has been to make us not good or wise, but learned; it has attained this goal. It has not taught us to follow and embrace virtue and wisdom, but has imprinted in us their derivation and etymology. We know how to decline virtue, if we cannot love it. If we do not know what wisdom is by practice and experience, we know it by jargon and by rote. . . [Education] has chosen for instruction not those books that have the soundest and truest opinions, but those that speak the best Greek and Latin; and amid its beautiful words, it has poured into our minds the most inane humors of antiquity.

So is that the goal of the Essays? To demonstrate virtue and wisdom? To reach that elusive third class of people? M.’s self-fascination and self-deprecation would seem to undermine that goal, but as I mentioned last week, the point remains that M. went through the process of writing, and revising his essays, of making them public.

It pus me in mind of the close of Calvino’s Invisible Cities, where Marco Polo tells Kublai Khan:

The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.

Of presumption has a billion more strands I need to take up, but this is all you get for the moment. You’ve been warned: this is an essay I can see myself coming back to repeatedly.

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Pale Fire

Adam Kirsch, my favorite book critic at the now-defunct New York Sun, has landed at Slate. It doesn’t say if he’s going to have a regular spot there, but I hope that’s the case. I also hope he’s given as much range in his assignments as he was at the Sun.

Kirsch’s first post-Sun item is on the idiocy of Horace Engdahl, that Nobel literary judge who recently remarked that American writers are too insular to measure up on the world stage. Sez Kirsch:

As long as America could still be regarded as Europe’s backwater—as long as a poet like T.S. Eliot had to leave America for England in order to become famous enough to win the Nobel—it was easy to give American literature the occasional pat on the head. But now that the situation is reversed, and it is Europe that looks culturally, economically, and politically dependent on the United States, European pride can be assuaged only by pretending that American literature doesn’t exist. When Engdahl declares, “You can’t get away from the fact that Europe still is the center of the literary world,” there is a poignant echo of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard insisting that she is still big, it’s the pictures that got smaller.

Nothing gives the lie to Engdahl’s claim of European superiority more effectively than a glance at the Nobel Prize winners of the last decade or so. Even Austrians and Italians didn’t think Elfriede Jelinek and Dario Fo deserved their prizes; Harold Pinter won the prize about 40 years after his significant work was done. To suggest that these writers are more talented or accomplished than the best Americans of the last 30 years is preposterous.

Read the whole thing.