The Zeitgeist

No More Mother’s Day for Me:

I Remember Mom

    

Mom circa 1954 (left) and in 2007 (right)

To paraphrase the Soup Nazi character on Seinfeld, “No Mother’s Day for you!” That’s because on Tuesday afternoon April 29^th my mother passed away. And that was kind of a good thing because her suffering is now at an end.

During the past two years of her life Mom faded out in a fog of dementia exacerbated by a series of mini-strokes which robbed her of her memory, much of her personality and her ability to live life in any kind of vital way. My mother was the personification of vitality, so to have had that taken away was a cruel punishment.

“Who are you? I’m Alice. Where do you live?”

“Mom, I’m your son Howard, I live two blocks away.”

“You do?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“You look a lot like my son Lewis. How is that? It’s uncanny.”

Call it Alzheimer’s or dementia, the effects are pretty much the same and this exit from the superhighway of life is becoming increasingly clogged with millions of Americans who overcame so much else in their lives but who ultimately are unable to defeat this insidious mind stealer.

My email is clogged with spam from florists, jewelers, chocolatiers and restaurateurs all reminding me that this Sunday is Mother’s Day. Special offers besiege me all over the web as well but, alas, there is nowhere for flowers to go, no one to wear anything, no one to enjoy sweets and no one to fete at a special meal. The poobahs of online marketing didn’t get the memo about my mother, yet these missives are in my face everywhere I look. It doesn’t have a calming effect.

Alice Steinfeld (who would become Alice Barbanel) was born on August 30, 1934 at Long Beach Memorial Hospital on Long Island, New York to the exceedingly bright boulevardier attorney Lewis Steinfeld and his young, pretty and gregarious wife Lee. They were summering at Lee’s parents’ house headed-up by the larger than life “Big Harry” Schwartz who made a fortune manufacturing distillation equipment for bootleggers during prohibition.

Mom saw her first movie in 1939 at the Laurel Theater in Long Beach. It was The Wizard of Oz and the gleaming and glistening Emerald City would make a lifetime impression on her. In one form or another, my Mom spent her whole life trying to get back to Oz or to Wonderland. Everything she did was about making life wonderful, wondrous, beautiful and memorable.

She created beauty as a fashion designer in the 50s and 60s, as an accomplished artist in oils and watercolors into the 90s and in all the many kind things she did in a second career as a social worker. Mom was a very pretty woman but was not vain or materialistic, never snobby, never uttering an unkind word about anyone, not a gossip, always soft-spoken and generous to a fault with her heart to her immediate and extended family and monetarily to charity.

She was infused with a joy of life and constantly sought out ways to make others happy. Your birthday was cause for celebration on a magnitude of the Royal Family. In some ways she was like Julie the Cruise Director on The Love Boat, always planning fun activities for everyone. I have so many thousands of happy memories that it will take years to recall them all.

Mom loved me unconditionally and believed in me. She was the last woman on this Earth who loved me that way. There were others like my late Grandmother and an aunt, but they too are gone now. That leaves an enormous hole in my heart that I don’t know how will ever be refilled as I’m unfortunately single again these days and didn’t have children.

Whenever I was confronted by a setback or disappointment, Mom had a way in just a few minutes to make everything seem OK. She had unflagging optimism even for herself in the face of several bouts of serious cancer throughout her life. She beat that disease sometimes by sheer force of will and never complained, was never dour and didn’t let it impede her life.

At the end she was battling with eye problems, serious weight loss from a lack of eating, pulmonary fibrosis as a consequence of chemotherapy, the loss of her ability to take care of her personal needs and for the last few days a rampaging pneumonia. Thanks to my Dad’s devotion, she was able to live the last year of her life in her own home, sleep in her own bed, wear her own clothes and be surrounded by her children and grandchildren. She was embraced with the kind of love she gave everyone else and as her soul departed this world, I felt a piece of me leave with her.

Because I live close by, this past year I’d visit Mom most every day, even if for just a few minutes. When concluding my visit I’d always give her a kiss and tell her “I love you Mom.” And almost until the end she’d kiss me back and from somewhere find the presence of mind to say “I love you too Howard.” And so it is that a mother’s love lives forever in your heart even if there’s no more Mother’s Day in your life.

The Zeitgeist

Play Ball! Play Ball! Instant Replay Makes Its Debut for Baseball’s 2014 Season

(Or to paraphrase Yogi Berra, it will seem like déjà vu all over again).

Galarraga has him out, but umpire Jim Joyce called the runner safe, blowing Galarraga's perfect game

As baseball’s 2014 season gets underway, fans, players, managers and umpires are faced with the specter of the game becoming both faster and slower at one and the same time thanks to the new Instant Replay rules that have been put in effect for the first time this year.

During Spring Training I got to see baseball’s new replay rules live and in person. While attending the Mets-Nationals pre-season game on Sunday, March 23^rd (a delightful 86-degree afternoon at the Mets’ Tradition Field) I witnessed a successful challenge by Washington’s manager on a call at second base. The umpire had ruled the runner “out” but on video review the call was overturned and the runner was deemed “safe.” Because the Nationals’ challenge was correct and successful, they got one more “bonus” challenge and they took advantage of this by challenging a photo-finish called out at first base a couple of innings later. This time, upon going to the video, the umpire’s called “out” was upheld. You never saw a happier home plate umpire. First pumps and everything. You would have thought he’d scored a game-winning run.

As a fan in the stands I found the challenges disconcerting. I wasn’t sure whether I was at a baseball game or a football game. Maybe baseball managers should be given challenge flags like their football counterparts? Aside from having a call overturned (which can be infuriating if you’re on the wrong end of it) the process completely stalled the game for a few minutes which actually seemed like an eternity because of the uncertainty.

Instant Replay is likely to create a new set of exacting accuracy metrics for umpires as the human eye and its connection to the brain and mouth will come under increasing scrutiny. An umpire’s career trajectory may now be influenced by how often they’ve had their calls overturned. This has to effect the game in yet to be seen ways.

A prime example of a routine play to first that was called terribly wrong was the famous “Almost Perfect Game” on June 2, 2010 where the Detroit Tigers’ Armando Galarraga was denied a no-hitter in what should have been the final out of the game when umpire Jim Joyce mistakenly (by his own later admission and by the video evidence) called Jason Donald of the Cleveland Indians safe at first when in fact he was out by at least a full step. (http://scores.espn.go.com/mlb/recap?gameId=300602106). These kinds of blown calls have bolstered the pro-replay advocates.

Baseball is not a game that in the past has lent itself to uncertainty. In fact, one of the heretofore great certitudes of American life has been the finality of the baseball umpire’s call – good, bad or ugly. There used to be a time when life in America was more black and white (television, newspapers, values) – baseball was ensconced within the pantheon of rock solid things you could count on, like mom, apple pie, the almighty dollar, Chevrolet, doctors and lawyers always being right, the ice cream man, the milk man and candy bars for a nickel. America isn’t like that anymore and often for the better.

So now baseball Luddites (like internet Luddites, and there may be a significant overlap in this category) will have to reconcile themselves to a changed landscape in “America’s Pastime.” Just as fans have gotten used to $8 beers and $20 parking at ballparks, Instant Replay is now a part of the old ballgame. Purists will say baseball’s not the same game anymore. But ever since the advent of the designated hitter in the American League and aluminum bats for amateur play, the game’s been very different anyway.

Some of the salient features of the new Instant Replay rules are:

• The replays will be monitored at Major League Baseball’s headquarters in New York by an eight-mean crew of actual umpires who will rotate in and out between stadium work and the video gig. The on-site umpires won’t be making calls based on the video, New York will.

• Only two manager challenges per team per game and the second challenge is only allowed if the manager prevails on his first challenge. If the first challenge takes place during the first six innings and is turned down, no new video reviews will take place until the seventh inning. Questionable home run calls are exempt from this.

• Challenges have to be made by the managers before both the hitter and pitcher are ready to go, whatever that means in terms of actual time. This may lead to some controversies and stalling by batters while managers decide on a doubtful call.

• The same 12 camera angles will be standardized in all 30 MLB ballparks so that the video is the same for all games. Every team will have a video specialist to look at potential challenges and communicate these to the managers in the dugout, but they’ll have to call down there quick before the next batter steps into the box.

• Fans will finally get to see the replays of bad calls and challenges on the big screens in the ballparks (now it’s only been available to TV viewers) which should increase emotions and drama for fans in the stands as perceived bad calls will be repeated several times for all to see again and again.

• In addition to calls on bases, ground rule doubles will now be able to be challenged as well as fan interference, foul calls, trap/catch balls in the outfield, hit-by-pitch calls, touching or missing stepping on a base, ball-strike counts and other minor issues, although I don’t envision managers squandering a precious challenge on little stuff that won’t have a meaningful impact on the possible outcome of a game. 

So, as the umpires used to say and will still probably forever say irrespective of Instant Replay, “play ball!”

The Zeitgeist

Haredim on the Front Lines 

On Wednesday, March 12^th the Knesset forever changed the shape of Israeli society by passing a law which will conscript most Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) young men into the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) starting in 2017.

Heretofore completely exempt from national service, the proposal for this sea change in Israel spurred no end of opposition and protest from Haredi circles. Because Haredi men did not serve in the IDF they also were not allowed to join the general workforce until middle age. This created a huge bubble of Haredi men learning fulltime – the largest number of 24/7 Torah scholars probably ever in the entirety of Jewish history.

The non national service situation also created a culture of pervasive poverty and dependency on the state for basic sustenance that earned the enmity and resentment of the majority of non-Haredi Israelis who had to both foot the bill to subsidize Haredi life and also send their sons and daughters into the IDF to protect the state and everyone in it, Haredim included. Non-Haredi Israelis felt unfairly put-upon in a country that takes much in taxes and asks many for serious national and personal sacrifices.

Some of the more strident charges against military service emanating from the Haredi community were that “the IDF secularizes its conscripts and will strip Torah from our kids,” “the IDF is a completely secular institution” and that “the Zionists wish to destroy our Torah way of life in general.” This visceral revulsion towards serving in the IDF emanates from the 18^th and 19^th Century days in Czarist Russia and Poland where Jewish adolescents were forcibly stripped from their homes and communities for 25 years of military duty and often were never seen or heard from again. That Israel is a Jewish state defending Jews from violent anti-Semites doesn’t begin to dawn on the Haredi consciousness.

The Haredi charges of forced secularization in the IDF completely ignore the near universal participation of National-Religious (Da’ati Leumi) or Religious Zionist boys in the IDF. The National Religious young men (and many young women who do some kind of national service as well) typically are at the forefront of elite IDF units while still wearing their kippot, while still putting on tefilin in the mornings, while still keeping kosher and in many cases while still continuing their Torah studies in the hesder yeshiva program that combines IDF service with yeshiva study. Rather than have their religious beliefs stripped from them by the IDF, many a secular soldier has been inspired and brought closer to Judaism and observance by the example of the Kippa Seruga (knitted kippa) boys. Eighteen years of religious education along with a strong home life have equipped the National Religious soldier to go forth into the world while holding on to his values. Haredim ignore these facts because they don’t consider the National Religious to be authentically Orthodox or Orthodox enough. This is often true in the U.S. as well where the American equivalents of Modern and Centrist Orthodoxy find their legitimacy (and that of many of its rabbis) under passive aggressive assault by U.S. and Israeli Haredi institutions, but that’s the subject of another article.

In defense of their non-service in the IDF (and to a lesser extent, non-participation in the workforce) Haredim have stated that their prayer and Torah study offer supernatural protection to the state that is invaluable and incalculable.

The Haredi justification and rationalization of non-participation in national service (prayer and study) may have some validity but for the fact that Haredi synagogues and yeshivot do not pray for the State of Israel or for the IDF. Their siddurim (prayer books) don’t carry the prayers for the State of Israel or the IDF. Moreover a great many Haredi institutions still reject the legitimacy of the very existence of the State of Israel or of any Jewish state before the coming of the Messiah. Sometimes this rejection is quiet and sometimes overt, but there nevertheless.

This hasn’t stopped Haredim from accepting Israeli citizenship, from taking extensive welfare and child subsidy payments or from also accepting financial subsidies for their schools and other institutions from the state. To keep the money flowing and protect their interests, Haredim have political parties that sit in the Knesset, much as the Arabs too have Members of Knesset who disavow loyalty to and the legitimacy of the state. This also arouses the ire of the average Israeli, even more so than with the Arabs because the Haredim, being Jews, are seen as an ungrateful, parasitic fifth-column.

There is an analogy to the willful Haredi blindness to the fact that Israel is the best thing to happen to the Jewish people in more than 2,000 years, that the IDF is probably the most important existential institution the Jewish people have at this time and that G-d’s miracles can be seen daily around every street corner and turn in the road in Israel – that of Balaam and his donkey. In Bamidbar (Numbers) chapter 22 we find the pagan prophet Balaam en route to curse the Jewish people camped in the desert. His faithful donkey keeps veering off the road, slamming into walls and eventually crouching on the ground. Balaam keeps whipping and cursing the donkey until miraculously the donkey talks to Balaam and tells him he’s strayed off the road because G-d’s angel has been blocking the path with a drawn sword in his hand and he’s tried to save his master from this. Only after this incredible experience does Balaam look up and see the angel. The donkey in contemporary times is a metaphor for the masses of the Jewish people who perceive G-d’s miracles and blessings vis-à-vis the State of Israel and the Haredim are Balaam, blind as they travel down the road to G-d’s redemption of the Jewish people.

Back in ancient times and semi-antiquity, the Torah records that the Kohanim (priests) (who were then our most religious class) went out to battle with the army along with the Ark of the Covenant and plenty of trumpets. The Kohanim would bless the soldiers on the eve of battle. The blessing can be found in the Torah. When the Persians allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem from Babylonian exile and rebuild the Temple, Ezra and Nechemia had no Messiah with them. They created the facts on the ground, Zionistically if you will, to rebuild the Jewish state. The Maccabees were fervently religious Kohanim who fought a 30 year military campaign to free Judaea from religious persecution at the hands of the Syrian-Greek empire.

There is no authentic Jewish tradition of not standing together with the entirety of the Jewish people, of not supporting the army, of not recognizing the legitimacy of the state. These are recent inventions as is much of Haredi life itself – separating themselves from the broader Jewish community in contravention of the words of the Rambam (Maimonides). In Hilchos Teshuva 4:2 he discuses how people who separate themselves from the broader public have the door to teshuva (redemption and repentance) shut before them.

Not praying for the welfare of the state (in this case Israel when in Israel) also contravenes the injunction of Rav Chanina in Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) 3:2 where we’re commanded to “pray for the welfare of the government.”

Having Haredi young men enter national service will accomplish two very important things: First, it will slowly start to make Haredim a part of Israeli society so that we’ll be one people again and everyone will share in the responsibilities of citizenship and second, it will expose more secular Israelis to the beauty of religiosity and can only help imbue a greater sense of Jewish traditions and values across all segments of the country.

There’s a long tradition in the U.S. of Quakers and conscientious objectors serving as medics in the armed forces so as to be a part of the great struggle for liberty and freedom even if they were disinclined to fight. There’s nothing wrong with Haredi men serving shoulder to shoulder with their brethren in defense of their homes, wives, children, parents, grandparents and religious institutions. The Iranians, Hamas, Hezbollah and all our other enemies won’t be thwarted by davening (prayer) alone, even though there is a great value to that. There’s an old adage that “there are no atheists in foxholes.” In this case a little foxhole exposure might see Haredi synagogues start praying for the state and the IDF like the rest of the Jewish people now that they’ll finally have some “skin in the game,” i.e., the defense of the country.