I recently gave a speech in front of my classmates about being Jewish, becoming Jewish, realizing how Jewish I am, at a tiny college in the desert.
Moses is “uncircumcised of lips.” Maybe there’s too much skin flapping about, obstructing his mouth? Don’t think about it too hard. He’s also regular uncircumcised, which is going to present a problem. Good thing his wife Zipporah is a quick thinker: when God attacks Moses at an inn on the road to Egypt, she swiftly circumcises their son—not many people’s first impulse in a fight—and touches the bloody foreskin to Moses’ “feet,” a euphemism for the genitals, so that Moses is circumcised by osmosis or something. (Just the sort of thing one always suspects goes on in a Motel 6!)
As you can see from this episode in Exodus, one of the most important religious texts for Jews, the Jews are a peculiar people, in all senses of the word. Bachyir in Hebrew usually gets translated as “chosen,” thanks to the incorrigibly British King James Version. But a better translation of bachyir is “peculiar.”
Like most questions in life, the Jewish Question can be answered by stand-up. Lenny Bruce had this great bit about the difference between Jews and goys. For you goys out there, goy is the Yiddish word for non-Jewish. According to Lenny, pumpernickel is Jewish. Fruit salad is Jewish. Ray Charles is very Jewish. Kool-Aid is goyish. Instant potatoes and baton twirling are goyish. The army is goyish. The Navy is goyish. The Marine Corps is goyish. The Air Force is Jewish. “If you live in New York or any other big city, you are Jewish. It doesn’t matter even if you’re Catholic; if you live in New York, you’re Jewish. If you live in Butte, Montana, you’re going to be goyish even if you’re Jewish.”
Lenny Bruce dislodges Jewishness from being a Jew. Jewishness is a sensibility. It’s the feeling of being peculiar.
So what constitutes this peculiarity? What is Lenny Bruce talking about when he calls something Jewish? Being peculiar is being resistant to convenience and conformity. It is the knowledge that to approach with certainty assures the failure to reach the goal. In this way being a Jew is the same as being a good reader. Observation, inspection, tackling and probing—Heschel’s nouns. Being a good reader, like being Jewish, begins with the cultivation of a feeling for the unfamiliar, unparalleled, incredible. Insight comes about only after much perplexity and embarrassment. Heschel, again. According to one teacher, one must not presume to know where the center of the matter is; you do not charge brazenly up to it, but sidle around the corners. One must approach from a territory whose approaches require approaching.
After giving that speech I figured I should probably try harder to get more ritually Jewish. I wanted to do a proper job of Passover. So this weekend I had my first real Passover seder. By “real” I mean I was aware of what was going on and I participated in it in a meaningful way.
It wasn’t like the seders of my youth where, invited over to a family friend’s house, I’d mostly be concentrated on observing the social dynamics between divorced parents while loud playrooms called on my attention and I longed to be at the grown-up table with the Manischewitz.
This one was different, and beautiful, and I’ll probably never be at another one like it.
My friend painstakingly put together his own haggadah—a charming assemblage of rabbinical commentary, the usual prayers and questions, and comments we ourselves had made while reading the Torah together. We cobbled together a seder plate with some ranch peculiarities (the “roasted bone” was a sun-bleached cow vertebra). Then we basically had a seminar on the haggadah. It took us about four hours to get our fill of exegesis.
The next night we were supposed to meet to discuss the next few parsha of the Book of Exodus, but we were all understandably a little Exodus-ed out.
So we read the Song of Solomon, which you’re supposed to read over Passover anyway. A quick session, we agreed, not the usual postprandial hours-long discussion.
But it’s the Song of Solomon! Who were we kidding. We clocked out at a very respectable three-and-a-half hours.
