A Purim piece (redux)

Josh Stein is on a research assignment in Greece. He sends this classic piece for the Purim edition.

I remember my first Purim as a groom. It was the last day of our F. Scot and Zelda period. We were in England on a quick exchange. We’d swapped houses with a professor of British colonial history who needed a place to stay in Rhode Island. It was a marriage made in heaven, much like the one upon which I was embarking.

Our plane landed the day before Purim and being young and in love, my wife and I had celebrated the beginning of the holiday by ourselves, drinking to excess in the traditional manner, falling fast asleep on top of the down mattress we had the pleasure of using for those two weeks. The next morning around midnight (according to my biological clock, though it was 6:00 a.m. English time) we heard a pounding on the front door. We both responded with the same articulate grunts, “Huh, wha’ what’s happening?” More pounding. I got up, not knowing where and when my clothes had come off. More pounding. Whoever it was, he or they were certainly persistent. “I can’t go down to the door like this,” I protested. “Here, wear this,” saith the bride. Hurriedly I put on her pink shorty robe. Inside out. Naturally I could not find the buttons and because of an obvious discrepancy between her sveltness and my rotundity I couldn’t properly close the thing. Stumbling out the door of the bedroom, half blindly (my glasses hadn’t been anywhere near my fumbling fingers when I’d shot bolt upright as the pounding began), I found the stairs, and trooped down, half falling, half stumbling, fully confused, head throbbing, eyes bleary, mouth dry, hair a shambles, eyes bloodshot. After an interminable moment I remembered how to unlock the bolt and I threw the portal open to confront an uncaring world.

The man I blearily saw hadn’t shaved that day, nor the day before, apparently. He wore work cloths that hadn’t been washed since the Blitz. He stared at me incredulously. I stared back at him with wonder—as in “I wonder what this fellow is, and what he wants?” He attempted to resolve the issue by saying, screaming at me, really, “DOOSTBINMIN” which did not do a great deal to clarify anything. “What?” I shouted in reply. “DOOSTBINMIN” he said, still louder. “What?” “ROOBISH!” Well, this was not getting us very far.

By now Penney had gotten dressed and sylphlike glided down the stairs. (She’d just abandoned Zelda and entered her Loretta Young phase). She said to me, calmly. “Josh, he’s the dustbin man and he wants to collect our rubbish.” “Oh,” I said sheepishly, glad once again that I’d married a linguist. “Tha’s right, Guv,” said the now smiling dustbinmin, as he lasciviously eyed my pretty bride and waited for me to collect any household garbage we might have. Sadly the owners had left us a spotless home to move into, so there was none Feeling abashed at the lack I found a slipper half chewed by some kind of animal I’m glad to say we never actually saw. This meager object I placed into a plastic bag and proudly presented to our garbage man, who looked at the meager offerings with ill-disguised disdain. “Tha’ it, Guv?” he asked. “Yup,” I said, sheepishly. “Right-o,” he replied. “Hag Purim Sameach!” and off he went.

My mouth agape I tried calling after him. “How’d you know we were Jewish, that this is Purim?” But the words didn’t come out, and as I saw him toss our trash into the back of the big garbage truck I’d somehow failed to notice until this point, he waved enigmatically and that was the last I saw of him on that morning. “A Jewish dustbinmin?” I mumbled snobbishly.

Only later did I find out what really happened that morning. Our dustbin man was, in fact, the rabbi of the local Reform (they call it “Liberal”) synagogue who was a friend of the house’s owner who had told him that Jews were moving in for a couple of weeks. In the spirit of Purim the rabbi had donned the garb of a garbage man and pulled our legs. After all these years (thirty by last count) we still exchange Purim cards and visit each other when we are in the other’s country. An odd way to begin a life-long friendship, but life is strange with its twists and turns. Just ask Queen Esther.

Boomers in the White House (Or: How I guessed wrong)

Caveat Lector. Reader, beware! In 1980 I confidently predicted that President Carter would narrow defeat Ronald Reagan. In 1992 I was sure that President George H.W. Bush would defeat little known Bill Clinton. In 2000 it was obvious that Al Gore would win over George W. Bush. (On that one I was right, except that…well, you know…) So I’ve given up on predicting presidential contests, even primaries. By the time you read this Obama will probably be the prohibitive favorite, or even the nominal nominee of the Democratic Party (whoops, poor Obama, I’ve just made a prediction!). The rules of the game are that I can’t endorse, and I wouldn’t, but I can comment in the comment section of this paper, and so I will.

Those who voted in the Democratic Primary earlier this month were purportedly given a choice between style (Obama) and substance (Clinton). But as Barbara Fields alluded last week, there might be more than that; we were given a choice between my generation and the next, and for those of us in my age-range we can compare to those in our parents’ generation.

My parents’ generation was represented by Kennedy and Nixon, the one the golden boy of change, the other an exemplar of suspicion and trickery; Ford and Carter are of their generation too, both men of honor, neither up to the job; Reagan was a throwback, the front man for those who wanted ever since its inception to undo the New Deal. Then after H.W. Bush it was my generation’s turn to produce presidents. We gave you Clinton and Bush, both draft evaders, the former a womanizer whose indiscretions cost his party its hold of congress and later the presidency. The latter is a failed example of a puppet king who succeeded in doing his masters’ task, lowering their taxes, and then thought he could assume the mantle of leadership by creating an unnecessary war, and in so doing has alienated 70% of the country.

My generation was the product of the sexual revolution (thanks to Hugh Heffner, et al.) and rock and roll—that most mindless of music which has now further degenerated into the non-music of racial slur, misogamy and gangstas. We were babied by our doting parents who had survived the Great Depression and the Second World War, determined that we should have what they had not, and we appreciated it. But if Clinton and Bush are our representative presidents, we have failed to live up to our enormous potential.

Now another Clinton is running for president. At first she seemed to be the prohibitive favorite, the all but anointed champion of her party, the heir presumptive to her husband’s popularity. She was thought of as inevitable. And she was. Until the voters had their say. First in Iowa, then in South Carolina, then not able to eliminate her rival on Super Tuesday she suffered a string of defeats until the March 4th contests which are before me, but by the time you read these words you will know whether she was able to survive as a viable candidate, or not. Yes, she’s strong on policy, but she’s of my generation, and therefore I think that she’ll lose; I think the American public has had enough of us baby-boomers whose time in office was brief (16 years) but perhaps too long.

Obama on the other hand seems to have surmounted the twin trials of being inexperienced and half African. He is reputed to be a Manchurian Candidate, a crypto Muslim who will betray America and Israel. It’s nonsense, of course, but such are the tactics of conservatives who fear that he will defeat whomsoever the Republicans put up—whether it be the aged war hero or the amusing creationist.

As a people we seem at this writing to be at the tipping point. Should we give one more chance to the old discredited generation, or take a blind leap of faith towards the new? Not to belabor the cliché, but it’s the same question voters were asked to resolve in 1960. Nixon the man of experience, who while the same age as Kennedy, seemed a throwback to the old, or take a chance on the less experienced visionary. Then, narrowly, we looked forward. Today? I think we will again. My generation has failed America in its offerings as president. I think America is looking for new hope in a new generation of mixed blood. I may be wrong. It’s happened before.


A correction: Last week quotation marks were inadvertently omitted, making it appear that I had said that I would like to ban the writings of David Duke, etc. but that we don’t do those things in America. While I agree with the sentiment, the words were not mine; I was quoting a colleague, J. S. Friedman of the College of Wooster in Ohio.