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Home Presentation for Yom Kippur Symposium 5768, September 22, 2007
For me, being Jewish means being different. I knew this at an early age. Like that time at Joske's Fantasy Land downtown, sitting on Santa's lap. He said, “and what do you want for Christmas, little boy?” “Nothing,” I said. “I'm Jewish. We have Hanukkah.”
I grew up at Agudas Achim here in San Antonio, until my family moved to Temple when I was in high school. Some of my earliest Jewish memories are from kindergarten at Agudas. Dunking our challa in grape juice every Friday; our favorite teacher, Mrs. Marblestone; our beloved Cantor Barkan. Mr. Schwartz was our educational director. He was an imposing, stern, formidable type of man, who had all sorts of rules: Don't touch your shoes or your belt during services. If a prayer book falls to the ground, pick it up and kiss it. If the Torah falls to the ground, everyone in the room will have to fast for 30 days. This was particularly frightening when the torah was raised after the reading. It certainly focused our attention on what was going on at the front of the room. Some of Mr. Schwartz's rules didn't make much sense, but some of them did - and they had a profound and lasting effect on me: Don't second-guess a beggar's motives; if you're asked for money, give without questioning the reason. Don't pass a disabled person on the sidewalk; stay slowly behind no matter how long it takes. I still observe those rules today. They are fundamental gestures of respect - reminders that I'm no better than the other person and no more fortunate physically or otherwise. Those rules have real substance. They sustain a guiding principle in my life - and reflect a basic Jewish value. We are all equal in God's eyes.
When I got to grade school, I began to realize how different it was being Jewish. The Lord's Prayer they recited over the loudspeaker every morning was not for me. Their lord was not my lord. We had to get special permission to miss school for the Jewish holidays. Time for extracurricular activities was extremely limited. We went to Hebrew School two afternoons a week, attended services on Saturday morning, and religious school again on Sunday. Being Jewish meant being different, and it wasn't always easy. Friday night football games fell on Shabbat, and if we wanted to go to the game, we had to have Shabbos dinner first.
Mom set the table with china and flowers, lit the candles, said the prayer, and always seemed to add a little something silently to herself. Dad held up the cup and sang the Kiddush. He used a little prayer book with a decorated metal cover. We all said the challa blessing and passed bread around with a shaker of salt. Invariably, someone spilled some wine. And someone, Lenny, Herbie, Patsy or me, started giggling, which set off a chain reaction of uncontrollable laughter.
Agudas Achim had a Boy Scout troop, Troop 9, which was the only Jewish troop in the region. My Uncle Larry Goodman was the scoutmaster. My orthodox friend Nelson Block went to Rodfei, but he joined our troop at Agudas. In 1964, we attended the National Boy Scout Jamboree in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. We cooked our own food for a week, and because the rations were doled out in patrol units of eight scouts each, Nelson asked some of us if we would agree to eat Kosher for a week so he could eat Kosher himself. We agreed, not knowing what we were getting into. Before long, there were complaints. “Why didn't we get banana pudding? These hamburgers are terrible!” There were defections. Nelson got blamed. He had a crisis of faith. I remember he took off walking one day, straight up the mountainside. He came back hours and hours later, calm and serene. I know it was a pivotal moment for him, and it certainly made an impression on me. Being Jewish was different, and not always easy.
Nelson's parents liked to drive down to Laredo for the day to go shopping. They took me along one time, and we had lunch at a hotel there. They ordered salads, I think, but encouraged me to have whatever I wanted, and not to worry about eating meat or keeping Kosher. So I decided to be good and have shrimp. When I told Mom about this, she laughed and gave me the bad news. I had tried anyway. In the last year or so, I've decided to give up pork and shrimp - not keeping Kosher strictly, but maintaining a certain discipline, as a reminder that I'm Jewish, that it's different, and sometimes takes a little effort.
My family moved to Temple at one point, and I spent my Junior and Senior years of High School here. I joined Safty and quickly came to love summer camp, the conclaves and conclavettes, and attending Kutz Camp in New York. I entered the National Sermonette Contest at Kutz, and won first place. My topic was “Its ways are ways of pleasantness and all its paths are peace.” That beautiful phrase still has a special resonance for me. I was glad when we started the lay leadership program here at Temple a few years ago. I enjoy having the opportunity to give a sermonette, or what we now call a d'var torah, every now and then.
College was a sobering experience. I went to Princeton, and suddenly I was a little fish in a big pond. Everyone had been the editor of the school paper, everybody had been the captain of the football team or won first place in some sort of national contest. There was a Hillel on campus, and the bare beginnings of a Jewish Student Union, but at that time, Princeton was still a bastion of the East Coast, Waspy, Good Old Boy network. Sport coats at dinner and compulsory chapel on Sundays had only been abolished a few years before I got there. So being Jewish there was decidedly different, and the perspective helped shape and define my emerging identity. One disillusionment followed another, and various aspects of my former life began to fade away. I gave up doing magic. In high school I had made a small career doing magic shows for children's birthday parties. People still come up to me with memories of those performances. But college put me on a new mission to be true to myself and to others, and fooling people with magic tricks seemed inconsistent with the pursuit of honesty and truth. So I gave it up.
Anyway, after college I worked on a newspaper for a while, and then took a job with an advertising agency in Austin. While there, I came to realize that working in the advertising business was kind of like doing magic. It was basically about changing people's perceptions, convincing them to believe things they might not otherwise believe, and to buy things they might not otherwise buy. I wanted to go into a more honest profession, so I decided to become a lawyer.
About a year after I returned to San Antonio from law school, I met my partner of 25 years, Bob Biasiolli. Like me, he was born and raised in San Antonio, and had strong family values. But he was Catholic and extremely devoted to his faith. We maintained an ecumenical relationship. I went with him to Midnight Mass and Easter Vigil. He came to Temple with me on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. He loved Passover and gefilte fish and matzo ball soup. We enjoyed making comparisons between the Christian Last Supper and the Jewish Seder - exploring the similarities and the differences. We went to Israel together on a Federation Mission, rode the camels and sat in a Bedouin tent with Rabbi Scheinberg, throwing Arab flat bread through the air like flying saucers, and fending off the belly dancers.
Some people didn't even know that Bob wasn't Jewish. We once asked Rabbi Stahl, hypothetically, if it were legal, would he marry us? He said “Yes, of course, but Bob would have to convert.” He didn't preside over “mixed marriages.” Rabbi Block used to say that if Bob converted he would dance around the Temple. That never came to pass. Bob died suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack almost two years ago. He said he wanted to have a Catholic funeral and be buried at the Temple cemetery. The folks at Porter Loring said they'd never heard of such arrangements before and thought there must be some mistake. We assured them there was no mistake. We had mass at Our Lady of Grace and Bob was buried on Austin Highway. Everything went beautifully. It was truly an extraordinary moment.
Since that time, it's been an interesting adventure for me, being single. I've taken up yoga, which has been a great source of peace and calm. Although yoga is not a religion per se, it speaks of the union of mind, body and spirit, teaches non-violence and respect for all beings, and the basic oneness of the universe, concepts which are not inconsistent with my understanding of Judaism.
I have a lot of pent-up travel lust, which I have been feeding lately. Bob and I always liked to find a church or synagogue and attend services in faraway places while on vacation, so I've continued that tradition. Last year I attended Friday night services in Hawaii, prayed in Spanish in Cancun, and recently joined a minyan at a synagogue in Greece that was built in the 1500's. These experiences point out to me not so much the differences from place to place, but the similarities we share with Jews around the world. The Hebrew accents vary and the melodies sound strange, but you can still follow along, saying Baruch-hu and Amen in the right places, and reciting the Kaddish. The basic concepts of love and respect for one God, and love and respect for one another, remain the same.
It is my prayer on this Yom Kippur day, and on every day of our lives, that we each come to know our true identities, to learn and respect how we are different from one another, and how we are the same, and how we are all children of the one true and only God. Amen.
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