On Wednesday afternoons, ninety percent of my classmates got out of school early for something called catechism, while I had to attend Hebrew School after regular school got out on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then again on Sunday mornings. And these were in addition to Friday night services that started right after dinner and went till bedtime, and the unendurably long Saturday service that lasted half the day.
With the slow melting of the snow and the first appearance of tulips and Lily of the Valley, the aisles at the Kresge's Five & Dime would fill up with marshmallow peeps and jelly beans and chocolate rabbits. Our friends' families would color and paint hard boiled eggs, and in school we would blow out eggs and dip the fragile shells in glitter. I would proudly take mine home, but after a day or so, it would be thrown in the garbage.
We had Passover with its strange traditions, one of which was searching our house by candlelight for pieces of stale bread that my mother hid. We would put all the bread (and pieces of cookies and crackers that my little sister stashed behind the black and white console TV) into a paper bag. We, and any other kids who were out, gathered in our driveway, and my father would light the bag on fire, thus "purifying" our home for Passover.
Our family traveled to my grandparents' house, a Marquette Park bungalow, for the Seder, the ritual retelling of the Exodus from Egypt. But the Seders were not fun. They were more like school where we waited anxiously to be called upon to recite Hebrew passages. I could never figure out why we couldn't just watch The Ten Commandments and be done with it.
Moreover, whereas we had plagues and the Angel of Death, they had the Easter Bunny.
In high school, we surreptitiously listened to Jesus Christ Superstar which embodied the political dark side of the Passion, and to a lesser degree, Godspell, a decidedly flower-child interpretation of the parables. Both were looked down on by the "official" Church (which only made it all the more sweeter), and doubly so in my case.
By the time I got to college, I was ready to engage in intellectual debate with my peers on God, the meaning of life, religion, politics, death, taxes, and Jesus Christ. I suppose I should point out that most of these discussions were carried out under the influence of various mind altering substances, and the profound revelations that we gleaned by night, didn't hold up so well in the light of day.
Falling in love with the woman who would become my wife opened up a brand new chapter in my spiritual journey. She was a good, church-going, Polish, Catholic girl, and how she ever fell for an agnostic, pot smoking, Jewish rebel, I'll never know. Guidance counselors assured us that such a union was doomed to fail, and I firmly believe that when our marriage was in crisis, it was sheer stubbornness on both our parts to prove them wrong, that kept us together.
Be that as it may, and especially when our sons came along, we were determined to bring them up in the beauty of both religions. They attended the Seder dinner presided over by their grandfather (and where I was still called upon to recite Hebrew passages), and went to church for Easter Mass with my wife's folks the next morning. They went to bar and bas mitzvahs for some cousins and baptisms and communions for others.
I love sitting in church on Easter morning, surrounded by lillies and stained glass aglow with sunshine, delighting in the happy faces of people clothed in lavender and robin's egg blue. Listening to the deeply moving music, and basking in the palpable feeling of goodwill. Awaiting the promise of what's to come.
And not an Easter morn goes by without some little special moment that makes me tip my hat to God. A smile exchanged with a little girl in a pink dress standing backwards on a pew. The way a beam of light shines on the face of the figure on the cross. A particular phrase in a sermon that enlightens.
Being born Jewish, with its proud, stiff-necked heritage, I never seriously considered converting. I did briefly toy with the idea of becoming a snake handler, but we'll leave that one to Sigmund Freud. However, in all earnestness, I did consider joining Jews for Jesus.
Any idea I might have had about them being a loose-knit society of like-minded free-thinkers, who accepted the possibility that Christ was Divine, was quickly dispelled upon researching the group. Quite simply, Jews for Jesus is a religion, as highly structured and strict in its tenets as every other. It would take a lifetime of devotion to absorb all the written material available to a prospective neophyte, and frankly, I had other things to do.
I suppose this is as good a time as any to get a few things off my chest. I grew up in a time and place where it was taught that Jesus was not Jewish, he was Christian. The established doctrine was that Jews put the Lord to death, and were to be shunned, ostracized, and persecuted for it. These prejudices were deeply harbored, by parents and children alike.
I still remember one incident as clearly as if it had happened yesterday. It was 1967 and I was nine years old. Although I didn't understand it, I knew that Israel was at war with the entire Arab nation. One day during class, our teacher, Mrs. McClory, called me out into the hallway and handed me an envelope to give to my parents. Reading the obvious look of concern on my face, she said it was nothing bad, that it was a donation for Israel. We walked back into the room with thirty pairs of eyes watching me holding the envelope. I took my seat and class resumed.
At recess, a bunch of kids surrounded me and wanted to know why I was called out to the hallway. I simply said that the teacher gave me a donation to give to my parents. I went home after school, gave my mom the envelope and thought no more about it.
I was in my room after dinner and I heard the phone ring. A few minutes later, my father threw open the door and started yelling at me, "What did you say at recess?
I fell back on the kids' automatic response, "Nothing!"
"Who did you tell about this envelope!?" was the next question.
"Just a few kids," I replied lamely.
"Don't you know better than to keep your mouth shut? The teacher could lose her job! Well, you just better write a letter apologizing to your teacher."
He walked out, closing the door behind him. Barely stifling back the tears, I sat down at my desk and started writing what I thought, namely that the teacher should not have involved a nine year old child; that she should not have called me out into the hall in front of the whole class; that she never told me it was some big, damn secret; and that I did not believe she'd lose her job, but maybe experience some of the bigotry that I did every day on the playground. Of course, this was all in the words of a little boy who felt wrongly accused.
I finished and signed my name, walked out of my room and handed the paper to my father. He took one look at it and went berserk. "You call this an apology!? You get right back in there and write a proper letter!" Oh, I thought, you don't want to hear what I think, you just want to hear what you want to hear. I sat back down, wrote out a bunch of insincere words, and learned a very valuable lesson.
I have always asserted that Jesus was a populist rabbi who roamed the land preaching to all who cared to listen. His message, that God resided in the heart, not in empty gestures, was a spit in the eye of the powers that be. Rome couldn't have cared less about this wandering rabbi, or about the discomfort of certain factions in the Sanhedrin. In fact, an advocate of peace was much more to the Roman Governor's liking than the proponents of violence who populated Jerusalem's streets. But Judea was a subjugated country, and such civil rights as freedom of speech and freedom of assembly were very harshly restricted.
It must also be remembered that Judea of 2000 years ago was awash in crippling poverty, ignorance, and disease. Leprosy was a very real scourge, and those who contracted the highly communicable affliction were forced into a remote valley of stone and caves to live out their miserable lives.
The Roman occupation used hideous tortures to maintain their rule. Scourging with iron-barbed cat-o'-nine-tails, and beatings with heavy chains; sewing a victim into a sack with a wild animal and tossing them into a river; lacing up a man's urethra and force-feeding him wine; and, as a form of torture and capital punishment - crucifixion.
Death from crucifying could take from hours to days depending on method, the victim's health, and the weather. Possible causes of death came from cardiac rupture, heart failure, hypovolemic shock (loss of blood), pulmonary embolism, sepsis from wounds, and dehydration. When the whole body weight was supported by the stretched arms, the typical cause of death was asphyxiation.
Corrupt officials used networks of informers and betrayers to ruthlessly crush rebellion, which fomented continually. Messiahs rose and fell according to the whims of the mob who cried out for the Deliverer. Into this seething cauldron of brutality and despair walked the son of a carpenter who taught that the meek shall inherit the earth.
I believe in miracles. Life is a miracle. The existence of the universe is a miracle. The indomitable spirit of the human soul is a miracle. And the fact that science can provide empirical explanations for these miracles, in no way lessens their impact or significance.
In a time when established medical practices did more harm than good, Jesus was a healer. In the so-called missing years between his teaching in the Great Synagogue as a child and his baptism by John, did Jesus visit the Orient, and in so doing, learn of healing arts unknown in the Mideast? Did he bring a man, who for all intents and purposes, appeared dead, back to consciousness? Was he able to survive his ordeal on the cross and through the power of his will heal himself so as to arise and appear before his disciples? Or were his powers truly of Divine origin?
In answer to those questions, I must now use the F word - Faith.
In one of my all time favorite movies, Miracle On 34th Street, John Payne says to Maureen O'Hara, "Faith is believing when common sense tells you not to. Don't you see? It's kindness and joy and love and all the other intangibles. Someday you're going to find that your way of facing this realistic world just doesn't work. And when you do, don't overlook those lovely intangibles. You'll discover those are the only things that are worthwhile."
American novelist and religious satirist, Peter De Vries said, "It takes a lot more faith to live this life without faith than with it."
I'm a doubting Thomas. I want to believe. I want to take that leap into thin air. But I need to touch the Risen body. I cannot get beyond the rationalization that we are biological entities. That the soul is a product of electro-chemical processes in the brain. That we come from nothing and return to nothing. That all of human history - art, war, love, greed - are all acts of denial in the face of this unassailable truth. That religion is born out of the desperation of fear.
I do not want this to be true. I want to believe that when we die, our consciousness lives on and we are reunited with loved ones, including pets, in everlasting peace, free from the physical, emotional and spiritual pain of life on earth.
And whether I believe in it or not, if there is a Heaven, I believe that I am ready to stand in judgement before its Ruler.
To me, Easter and Passover have always been inextricably linked. The heart of the Christian religion is the Resurrection of Christ, and the heart of the Jewish religion is the Exodus from Egypt. It is no coincidence that both holidays are celebrated in the springtime because both stories speak of rebirth.
Surely in this day and age, it is common knowledge that Jesus went up to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, and that the Last Supper was in fact the Passover Seder. Even the symbolism of the two holidays is intertwined.
The Eucharist received at Mass is taken from the unleavened bread that Jesus bade the Disciples to eat. The roasted lamb shank which appears on the Seder plate recalls the roasted lamb which God instructed the Hebrews to eat on the eve of their departure from Egypt. Jesus is called the Lamb of God. The Seder plate also contains a roasted egg which symbolizes the animal sacrifice that was brought to the Temple in Jerusalem before each Passover. The egg, a symbol of life in all cultures, is an Easter icon.
I know that theologians would vehemently disagree, but I also think that Judaism and Christianity have even more in common. Both religions are awaiting the coming of the Messiah, and whether it's the First or the Second Coming, makes no difference to me. Whether these are in fact the end times according to the Book of Revelations or not, our world is in a pretty bad place, and it sure looks as if things are going to get much worse before they get better.
I don't completely understand this whole Rapture thing, but it seems to me that whisking all the true believers off the planet just when we'd need the strength of people of faith the most is pretty chicken-livered.
I have always asserted that in storytelling, the better the bad guy, the better the good guy. Dramatic tension increases exponentially when good is confronted with overwhelming evil, where the villain holds all the cards and the forces arrayed against the hero are seemingly insurmountable.
Armageddon is the ultimate expression of this concept. I cannot help but think that the Four Horseman are galloping wildly towards us even as we speak. The signs and portents seem to be there. Whether you believe in conspiracy theories or not, it is clear that greed has reached a zenith unparalleled since man first walked upright.
The powers that be seem hell bent on poisoning our planet and poisoning us, so that we will slowly die after being wrung dry.
We have an energy industry that poisons our air with carcinogens and greenhouse gases.
We have a farming industry that poisons our water with runoff from chemical fertilizers.
We have a waste management industry that poisons our oceans with toxic garbage.
We have a pharmaceutical industry that poisons our DNA with molecular degradation.
We have a food industry that poisons our bodies with additives, preservatives, and genetically modified organisms.
We have an educational industry that poisons our minds with propaganda.
We have a financial industry that poisons our hearts with greed.
We have a news industry that poisons our spirits with misinformation and half-truths.
We have a religion industry that poisons our souls with bigotry, hatred, and violence.
We have a government that at least enables, if not coordinates, these atrocities.
I think the ultimate goal of the "One Percent" is to create an "Elysium" here on Earth. Secret technology is always 50 years ahead of public knowledge. I think that the point where humans can virtually live forever is a reality. I think the automation is in place where the "Haves" no longer need the "have nots," not even as slave labor. I believe a barely hidden war is being waged against us.
Is this God's plan? If there is, was, and ever shall be an incomprehensible entity that knows all and sees all, and It does have a plan, then all is futility anyway and we are mere pawns. If It is just sitting back to watch what happens, then the question, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" is answered.
And if there is a conscious God, is there a conscious Devil?
On the other hand, is the multiverse an AI? Scientists have just proven the theory of the Big Bang. But this proof comes with a price tag. The very idea of a Big Bang insinuates that there may have been an infinite number of Big Bangs before the one that we now appear to be existing in. And each one of those Big Bangs may have manifested completely different physical truths. At some point did reality become conscious?
Is there simply Yin and Yang? Is it positive energy and negative energy in a universe that quantum mechanics tells us that everything, including us, is energy?
Is it somethingness versus nothingness? In the final analysis, we may never know, and I have come to the conclusion that it does not matter.
Morality, immorality, and amorality, good and bad, right and wrong, taking the high road, are very subjective matters. The interpretation of these concepts are not black and white, but a different shade of gray for every one of the seven billion of us currently sharing this time and place.
Yet, I do believe that we all have a part to play, that we all have a purpose. We need to stand up and stand together against evil, in whatever form it takes, before it's too late.
I have always liked this passage from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Chapter 2: The Shadow of the Past -
'Ah!' said Gandalf.... 'Always after a defeat and a respite, the Shadow takes another shape and grows again.'
'I wish it need not have happened in my time,' said Frodo.
'So do I,' said Gandalf, 'and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. And already, Frodo, our time is beginning to look black. The Enemy is fast becoming very strong. His plans are far from ripe, I think, but they are ripening. We shall be hard put to it.'
Out of the depths of this despair, my son helped me find my voice again. My gift, my calling, my avocation that I had avoided and rejected and abandoned and lied about for many years.
Essayist, John Ruskin, said, "Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one."
I cannot help but believe that God brought me low for a purpose. A purpose that I am now fulfilling. To give testament to His being in my own way.
I have always believed that all of Christ's teachings, His birth and death, His reason for dwelling among us (in spite of what's been done in His name for the last two millennium), is summed up in just one word - love.
That I can believe in.
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