Shabbatshalomagram 3/2/12

Shabbat Shalom, Haverim:

Well, I never got back to you from last week, so today here’s what I said I’d write about then:

We’re off to Dana Farber (yes, yet again to get stuck and sticked this time with a dollop of MRI just for the fun of it) but principally to see how I did on Tuesday’s scans. So, I’ll write when I can, hopefully today before sundown, if not on Sunday with the report. In the meanwhile here are some previews of coming attractions for later:

Six sticks. Two before the tech could get the dye in for the MRI which turned out to be a waste of sticks as apparently while there is some residual brain, there’s no cancer in it. And then at Dana Farber itself another four sticks before my blood could be extracted in sufficient quantities to determine (yet again) that the medicine is not inflicting any damage to vital organs. But we’ve decided to install a power port. Not just a port, mind you but a POWER port. It’s only for the most macho of people, they tell me (and for anyone else who gets frequently poked to take out and/or infuse stuff on a regular basis. We left the house at 9:30, I think and got back home at 5:30. It was some day. But the good news is that I’m alive enough to gripe about it. As to the scans, the report was that there was no change. The medicine is still working. Score one for the good guys.

Jeremy and Amanda are here! Jeremy will be leading morning services in schul tomorrow, so come all you faithful (and Penney and I have made a contribution to the Kiddush fund for the après services luncheon; it’s to celebrate our joint anniversary and [my] birthday on Monday).

But they left yesterday. Their trip was mostly solo voyages to places in Boston and RI while Penney and I were at school. So it was during morning and evening meals when we caught up. Also when I was awake, which was less often than I’d have liked. I’m in the classic “the medicine is killing the disease and me, too” phase of my treatment. I sleep a lot (yesterday after returning from school I napped for a sold three hours—a personal best in nap taking) but on the other hand eat very little as food has lost its flavor. But back to the kids. Jeremy performed the Scharit (morning) part of the service, beautifully and read the haftarah. It was sort of a birthday bash. Mine, our friend Toby’s and a 91 year old woman’s. It was swell. But the best part was having them here.

Lunch last week with Sam, Sarah and her parents—the full report. Pictures at 11:00.

Sadly, no pictures. The visit was fraught with anticipatory jitters. One only gets a single non-renewable shot at meeting the people your child will be associated with as family for as long as they live, and you want to do it right, but not go overboard because that’s doing it wrong. A tightrope metaphor seems appropriate here but I’ll let you work it out. In the end, “not to worry” was the galvanizing principle. When they walked into our house we started to talk as though we’d known each other for years and were continuing a conversation interrupted, not beginning to lay the ground work for future meetings. He’s an infectious disease doc specializing in AIDS research and treatment, teaching at Yale and running a clinic in South Africa to which he flies four times a year. And he’s four years older than I am. Incredible! She’s a retired social worker. Now, retirement at our age is something I can understand. Anyway, all went well. I think I wrote with the news of Sam’s engagement that we’d hit the trifecta in daughters-in-law; three consecutive winners; well, it seems we’ve done it again with the daughter’s-in-laws’ parents. (Anyone willing to tell me if I’ve put the apostrophes in the correct place there?)

I learned and will teach you when to pronounce the word “the” as “thee” and when to pronounce it “thah”. Who knew?

According to a student, and I’ve been checking on her ever since, we pronounce “the” as “thee” when the next word begins with a vowel as in thee ocean and thee apricot. We say “thah” when the next word begins with a consonant as in thah house or thah stairs. As I said last week, who knew?

Friends and strangers have sent me notes after my last column. Surprisingly none have said, “well, thank God for that; the paper will return to sanity.”

These continue to come in, though at a slower pace. I appreciate them all but can’t decide if the ones from friends mean more to me than from total strangers, from people I’ve never met. Both are sincere, but the latter remind me of the impact of those columns, the range of people who read them even if they didn’t agree with all of the views expressed, thought differently but only appreciated the word play. I’m not jumping back into the game; the fatigue and struggles to come up with appropriate ideas while maintaining a full teaching load still exist, but it’s nice to be missed.

I’ve had three Dr. Horton moments (long time readers will know what this is; others will be informed) this week in class.

When I was an undergrad John Theodore Horton was my favorite professor. I took him six times and each day was one to look forward to. The stories he would tell, the truths that he’s reveal, all done in the most beautiful and melodious voice. Penny and Bev, you remember, don’t you? And he looked as though he’d lived in those days (I’m currently eight years older than he was when I studied medieval history with him). Joe, you were my favorite grad school professor, no question, but Dr Horton was, well he was Dr Horton and maybe undergrads are more impressionable than jaded graduate students. They don’t happen often but my Dr. Horton moments come when I’m talking, usually in answer to a question, and then I notice a different ambience in the room and that the students have stopped writing and are just listening, their eyes wide, and the sound of a needle hitting the floor would break the mood. And when I finish I ask the student who set me off with her/her inquiry, “Does that answer your question?” invariably the kid doesn’t even remember that they’d asked a question, then they do and say “yes” and the class laughs. It’s best if this happens at the very, very end of the period so that I can dismiss them with that thought in their minds, but as the whole thing is spontaneous, that can’t be established in advance. Thrice it happened last week.

As always I wish you a week filled with love and joy, peace and prosperity, good health and the wonder of discovery. Be strong and resolute, Haverim, and have a Happy Purim.

Again, Shabbat Shalom.

I send you all my love,

Josh

The Curse of the Cure

It’s been many months since Yom Kippur and will be many more until the next, but the compulsion to confess, if not to atone, for I have done nothing wrong, is overwhelming. When friends came to our home to celebrate my 50th birthday I wondered if there would ever again be a similar party. Something was wrong with the mysterious innards within, but I didn’t yet know what. After all, I’d never heard of PSA, a series of letters that soon would be the measure of my existence.

In brief, doctors at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute said that the cancer in my prostate had probably spread beyond the organ itself. They couldn’t see it but with a PSA reading of over 40, statistically they were sure it had. Removing the prostate would therefore do no good. They suggested initial hormonal therapy to be followed up by radiation and then continued hormonal therapy. I agreed. That was eighteen years ago.

The side effects of monthly (then quarterly) injections of Lupron, and thrice daily ingestion of Flutamide capsules were minimal and for the first sixteen years the PSA was safely within the acceptable range. But two years ago, it soared and new medicines were tried and they didn’t work so I agreed to go on a trial of a new drug which also didn’t work and then into hardcore chemotherapy which ultimately failed and now I’m on another trial which seems to be working. (The disease had spread to my bones, from my skull to my toes. Six weeks after taking the new drug, the tumors had apparently vanished.)

But this new medicine, Cabozantinib (XL 184) has its side effects including fatigue, so that I can barely get through my daily activities without a nap that leaves me upon awakening feeling groggy beyond any capacity to work. Which brings me to deadlines. The university where I teach expects me to show up in class and perform wonders. Of course, I do. The editor of this newspaper patiently awaits each new column and is kind enough to give me some leeway. But not only does fatigue plague me, I’m mentally not as acute as I used to be. Ideas don’t come as quickly and sometimes not at all. In the classroom I can fall back on 40 years experience. But as a columnist, I’ve only been doing this for six years. Not having an idea is an occupational hazard for the columnist. Until recently it was easily resolved by poring over newspapers, in my case either the New York Times, occasionally the Providence Journal, the Forward or JTA daily summaries of events. But now I find I have neither the energy nor the sitzfelisch to read anything beyond what I’ve assigned o my students.

In the years that I’ve been writing I’ve tried to mix current events with historical and literary precedents and perspectives, giving readers a greater mutual understanding of the present and the past, always with a Jewish theme in the forefront; I’ve tried to infuse some columns with my love of science and my devotion to the idea that it’s labor, be it physical or mental, that creates value, an old fashioned idea, I now admit, but I’m an old-fashioned guy. I have expressed my love for Israel and opposition to those who would purposely or inadvertently destroy it. I have tried to write about interesting things in an interesting way, twisting a sentence here, defying grammar there, contorting words so as not to split an infinitive for the pleasure it gave me and might give the reader. You as the reader can decide how successful I was, or was not.

The deadline for this piece has passed. The ability to write on cue has also.

And so, Haverim, readers of this Voice & Herald column since February 2006, I thank you for your attention and bid you l’shalom. If the editor will allow the occasional guest column I may come up with an idea. But I can’t do it on demand anymore.

Thank you Mary Korr for asking me to write this column; thank you Nancy Kirsch for allowing me to continue; and to you readers, whether you’ve loved or loathed what took my fancy over the past six years, I thank you for your attention. If you are interested in seeing the complete opus, it’s contained in my blog

Winter Reflections: Of stars and bugs

As I sit at my desk, a bug flutters by. It and its family share my home, adding little but some small annoyance. They are each about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. Yes, that dot, or maybe smaller. They seem to waft like a slow-motion knuckleball, though still too swift in their gyrations for me to catch them (except when I do) and they are easily killed once entrapped. But I look at these things and wonder, does it have a name (I’m hoping some scientist has dubbed it something like Timwakefieldius minoris). More importantly, does it have a brain? I know it has wings and I assume it has sex organs because spontaneous generation is no longer de rigueur in the scientific world. But how to cram all that and a digestive system and sensory organs into such a small space, and why—yes, yes, I know the story of David asking God why are there spiders, but I’m not David—all elude me.

Then I look up to the sky. It’s glorious in the winter. When there are neither clouds nor moon and the air is crisp I can see to the South the Great Winter Oval, an asterism consisting of first magnitude stars from six different constellations. Starting at what appears to be the top and proceeding clockwise there’s Capella from Auriga (the Charioteer), Aldebaran from Taurus (the Bull), Rigel of Orion (the Hunter), Sirius of the Great Dog, Procyon from the Little Dog and Pollux of the Twins. In the midst of all this, just a bit off center, is Betelgeuse, which forms the right shoulder of Orion. Viewed as in a gallery over my neighbor’s house this elongated circle forms an enormous object d’art. The red giant Betelgeuse throbs, big enough to cover our solar system at least to Mars, and possibly beyond. No Timwakefieldius minoris here. And yet, these glorious points of light are only the local eye-catchers. Our galaxy has about 200 billion stars (estimates vary) and there are probably as many galaxies as stars in our Milky Way. In the autumn, find Andromeda, two lines of stars that seem to come out of the square that is the constellation Pegasus (the flying horse). If you know just where to look, out of the corner of your eye (you can’t see it straight on) is the gauzy blur of the Andromeda Galaxy, a good 2 million light-years away (a light year is approximately five-trillion miles. Now multiply that by 2 million and you’ll agree that it’s not walking distance). It’s the farthest thing you can see with the naked eye.

How big is the universe? It depends on who you ask, but a good guess is that its diameter is just shy of 14 billion light-years from here. All of which makes me think that none of us is much more, and probably considerably less, than a Timwakefieldius minoris in the grand sweep of things.

The psalmist asks:

“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, …what is mankind that you are mindful of us, human beings that you care for us?” and then answers his own question, “You have made us a little lower than the angels and crowned us with glory and honor.” Well, that’s one approach. Shakespeare expressed another: “Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

So, who is closer to the mark, the psalmist or the bard? I know not but as old age creeps upon me, as I look at the tiny bug and at the glorious stars and imagine the unimaginable vastness of the universe beyond, I think … it must be Shakespeare. We come, we go, like the tiny Timwakefieldius minoris unremarkable in the vastness, alone in our teeniest speck of the corner we occupy of outer space. So, petty as we are, it is the petty that consumes us. Locally this is expressed in the anger directed at a young woman who wants to honor the spirit of Rhode Island’s founder and of the US Constitution by fighting to remove a prayer from a public school. To quote Shakespeare one more time, “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

Republicans as Socialists?

Last Thursday morning as I lay in bed looking at the rain coming steadily down on the window pane I thought of Mitt. He’s narrowing the gap. Good for him. In Iowa a full 75% of the Republican voters chose someone else but in New Hampshire it was only 63%. By any measure (“A victory is a victory” he said after winning Iowa by eight votes) this is progress. Whether it’s juggernaut progress remains to be seen. South Carolina looms, though observant Jews are excluded. Its primary is being held tomorrow, on Shabbat. But there’s hope for Jewish participation. The obnoxiously wealthy among us can still try to buy their favorites a few delegates.

Sheldon Adelson, one of the multi-zillionaires, has pledged $5,000,000 to help Newt Gingrich’s Super Pac run anti-Romney ads that would make a socialist proud. For nearly half an hour viewers see how Romney’s Bain Capital would buy up ailing companies, strip them of any latent and residual value, and then through a process of financial reverse peristalsis throw the workers onto the street. It’s capitalism at its worst, Republicans (REPUBLICANS, for crying out loud!) are charging. “You have to ask the question, is capitalism really about the ability of a handful of rich people to manipulate the lives of thousands of people and then walk off with the money?” Gingrich asked, ignoring the fact that Adelson is bankrolling him. Griffin Perry, son of Texas Governor Rick Perry, got snide: “Mitt Romney knows how to lead ... Lead people straight out the door with a pink slip.” Père Perry was not shy about entering the verbal jousting contest either. “I am as much of a capitalist and have a record to prove it … by helping create over a million jobs in the state of Texas,” he said in an interview on Fox. “But there’s a real difference between venture capitalism and vulture capitalism, and that’s what we’re talking about here.”

Matt Brooks, the director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, isn’t bothered by the attacks. “At some point it’s fairly obvious that the Obama campaign would have raised this issue anyway,” Brooks said. “I’m not sure they’re happy that it’s been taken away from them and is not on their terms.” Matt, you disingenuous spin doctor, of course Democrats are happy, though thrilled may be a better word. It’s usually the job of the Vice Presidential candidate to smear the opposition. Now Joe Biden, the presumptive candidate, will only have to quote Republicans, giving that much more credibility to the anti-Romney barrage. This piling on Mitt will end only when Romney’s finally nominated in August, but as Saul Ricklin, a local contributor to the New York Times letters section wrote, “I can hardly wait for the coming hilarity of hearing all the Republican candidates now denigrating Mitt Romney start to laud him as what this country needs as a president if and when he wins the nomination.” Me, too, Saul, me too.

Of course Romney has his own Jewish money baggers including Mel Sembler, the Florida shopping center magnate, and Fred Zeidman, a Texas lawyer. And so the money flows. At least these guys aren’t also trying to determine Israeli politics the way Adelson does. He’s a major backer of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pouring money into his coffers as well. Well, I suppose that if I’d made my millions by luring people to Las Vegas so they could lose their money in glitzy, gilded, gaucheness while fondling show girls I’d want to make sure my ideas, obviously sanctified by a Higher Power as I’m so successful, become the laws of the lands.

You’ll note, of course that this Republican brouhaha is about capitalism. Romney of the unbridled kind, Gingrich and Perry who would rein it in. But let’s take a look at the founder of capitalism, Adam Smith (1723-1790). His most famous book is the Wealth of Nations which advocates an unregulated market-driven economy. But Smith wasn’t talking about Bain Capital getting wealthy but of the nation. He was as much a moralist as he was an economist. He believed that labor is what gave things value. A cotton seed is worth nothing, but apply labor and eventually you get a shirt. A Jewish economist of the same era, David Ricardo (1772-1823) took this point and extended it. Only labor gives things value. Are Republicans finally giving credence to this perspective which has been with us since the dawn of capitalism? Probably not. Mitt’s got it sewed up so the Bain Capital model will likely be the United States’ given a Romney victory in November. Ah well, people like labor saving devices. But maybe they don’t like labor destroying financial devices as much. We’ll see.

The Haredi bane

The story is by now familiar enough to make grown men gag in disgust. In Israel, the Haredi, the ultra-Orthodox (as opposed to the merely “Orthodox” who are called Dati) have raised their voices and thrown their excrement. One Dati women dared to sit in the front section of a public bus and was abused by Haredi passengers. Students who attend an all-girls school set up by Dati parents near an Haredi neighborhood in Beit Shemesh have to run a gauntlet to get to class. Little girls are called whores and have had eggs and bags of feces thrown at them. Apparently the sleeve and hem lengths the girls don are not long enough for Haredi standards of modesty even though they cover the arms and legs entirely. Oh, wait; examining a photo, I think I can see the stocking-covered ankles of eight year-old Na'ama Margolis, the little girls whose torment finally made the national and international news. Burkas, anyone?

Two weeks ago when city workers tried to remove signs (illegally erected) mandating the separation of the sexes on city streets (this is so familiar isn’t it—think 1938 after the Kristallnacht) new signs went up in defiance of the law. When police showed up to remove those, about 300 Haredi men threw stones at them and burned trash cans creating a foul stench and polluting the air with smoke as a supplement to their verbal outrage at little girls whose ankles show. Television reporters were attacked when they attempted to film these events.

Not surprisingly Israel’s president, Shimon Peres is on the side of the girls. Urging Israelis to attend a rally on their behalf he said, “Today is a test for the nation, not just for the police. All of us, religious, secular, traditional, must as one man defend the character of the State of Israel against a minority which breaks our national solidarity.” Tzipi Livni, formally foreign minister, currently the head of the Kadima Party which holds the largest number of seats in the Knesset, lent her support to the forces of sanity: “We are struggling over Israel's character not only in Beit Shemesh and not only over the exclusion of women but against all the extremists who have come out of the woodwork to try and impose their worldview on us.” Even right-wingers, religious and secular, oppose what the Haredi in their arrogance, their “my way or the highway” do. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called on the police to act aggressively against violence aimed at women and urged Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to make certain that laws against excluding women from public spaces are enforced. Moshe Abutbul the mayor of Beit Shemesh, himself Haredi, decried the violence against young girls. “Beit Shemesh denounces such behavior,” he said according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Violent men belong behind bars,” he continued. “I urge the Israel Police to act with a firm hand against all the rioters,” adding that reporters should not make assumptions about all Haredi Orthodox Israelis.

The mayor, however, seems not to speak for the Haredi he claims to represent. Shlomo Fuchs, for one, seems not to have gotten the memo. He was arrested for calling a female soldier, Doron Matalon, who dared to sit in the “men’s section” of a public bus a whore and a shiksa. As she is 19 years old and not a mere eight, as is Na'ama Margolis, she at least knows what a whore is. Fuchs was joined in his insults by other Haredi passengers. The same day that Fuchs was indicted, female members of the Knesset's Committee on the Status of Women rode in the front of a bus Haredi demanded be segregated. They were insulted by male passengers who complained that the women were acting in a provocative fashion by sitting with men. The MK’s were accompanied by television crews. When these were spotted by brave Haredi, they opted not to get on the bus.

Our Father in Heaven, Rock and Redeemer of the People of Israel, bless the State of Israel, dawn of our redemption. Shield it with Your love, spread over it the shelter of Your peace. The rabbis of old believed that the Second Temple was destroyed because of senseless hatred. That was Jerusalem of old. We thought we were over that. Welcome to Jerusalem, 5772. According to Othello, Cyprus was for goats and monkeys. Jerusalem? It has Haredi.