Submitted For Your Approval.

Source: giphycat

I mentioned in a previous post that I’m auditing a class on Jewish humor and with that comes some homework which I can then recycle into blog posts because, hey, why not? Because I’m only auditing the class and not an actual student the professor handed this paper back with a note that said, “If I were grading this I’d give it a 96.” And that seemed like a pretty good grade, even if she couldn’t dance to it, until I found out the grading scale is from one to a thousand. Well, I guess I should keep on trying.

The House Next Door: Performers & Their Identities

“Suppose nobody in the house took the painting?”

“Go to the house next door.”

“That’s great. Suppose there isn’t any house next door?”

“Well, then of course, we gotta build one.”

-Captain Spaulding (Groucho Marx) and Ravelli (Chico Marx), Animal Crackers 

From vaudeville up through film, radio, and television performers have adopted various identities. In vaudeville, as in earlier theater, there were stock characters who could be expected to behave certain ways. These characters could be played by a variety of actors. Some performers, however, began

developing distinctive characters. Some, such as George Burns and Gracie Allen and The Marx Brothers developed their identities on the stage and carried them over to other media. Others, such as Jack Benny and Fanny Brice, started in vaudeville but developed their characters after they moved to radio, while Gertrude Berg started performing at her father’s Catskills resort and created The Goldbergs for radio. In this paper I’ll examine some of the identities Jewish performers created and suggest both practical and personal reasons behind them.

To begin with, although Jack Benny started his career in vaudeville, he only really began developing the persona that he would become famous for on radio. Other vaudeville performers, as Epstein notes in The Haunted Smile, tried to make the transition from the stage to radio but found it difficult because of the regular need for new jokes:

In vaudeville, a comedian could survive on a single twenty-minute skit. The comedian would go from theater to theater around the country repeating the same routine…Radio was completely different. A skit done once could not be repeated the following week; new material was needed all the time. (Epstein, 56)

Benny adapted quickly, relying on and respecting writers who worked for him, and gradually created the persona of a miserly character who, when held up at gunpoint and told, “Your money or your life!” replies, “I’m thinking it over!” By playing a miserly character Benny, who was Jewish, risked reinforcing stereotypes about Jews, but, in the Depression, a wide audience probably found his concern with money relatable as well as funny. This was also only a character and not a reflection of the real Jack Benny, who was quite generous. When Eddie Cantor was raising money for Israel’s War of Independence Benny sent a blank check with the note, “Eddie, fill this in for whatever amount you need (Epstein, 63).”

Benny was also not locked into a single character. In To Be Or Not To Be he plays Joseph Tura, a vain and jealous actor who helps the Polish resistance by pretending to be a Nazi spy after members of the resistance murder the real spy, Professor Alexander Siletsky. Shut in a room with Siletsky’s corpse, which has been discovered by the Nazis, Tura almost escapes by shaving off the professor’s beard and replacing it with a false one, but his own false beard is then pulled off by a member of his acting troupe also pretending to be a Nazi. This is incredibly multi-layered with Jack Benny the actor abandoning his usual character to play an actor who, in turn, pretends to be a real person.

Benny would add another layer to his performance in the 1959 Merrie Melodies cartoon “The Mouse That Jack Built”, in which he voices a mouse named Jack Benny. The cartoon also includes the regular cast of “The Jack Benny Program”, Ed “Rochester” Anderson, Mary Livingstone, Don Wilson, as well as Mel Blanc, who voiced most of the Warner Brothers cartoons characters as well as playing several characters on “The Jack Benny Program” on both radio and television.

It’s not surprising that most performers weren’t like the people they portrayed, but it is surprising just how different they often were. Fanny Brice, born in 1891, became famous in vaudeville as a singer and comedian, but when she began performing on radio in the 1930s she presented herself as Baby Snooks, a four and a half year-old child character she’d used in sketches on Broadway. In some cases the identities developed by trial and error as performers responded to what audiences wanted. For instance early in their career as a double act George Burns had Gracie play it straight and feed him funny lines, but the audience laughed more at Gracie than him, so “Burns immediately rewrote the act, giving Gracie the funny lines and the daffy persona she became famous for displaying.” (Epstein, 24)

The Marx Brothers also developed their identities over time on stage; according to Groucho, “I believe all comedians arrive by trial and error.” (Marx, 73) Encouraged to perform by their mother Minnie the brothers went through a series of acts, including The Four Nightingales, a singing act comprised of Groucho, Gummo, and Chico, and Harpo. Harpo couldn’t sing, but Minnie told him, “Keep your mouth open and no one will know the difference!” (Marx, 68) While performing on the college circuit they began adding physical comedy to their musical act:

On the second chorus I would start to dance. In the middle of it Chico would jump up, grab me, and we would whirl around the stage together while Harpo would hop up on the piano stool and continue the playing. Near the finish of the song, I would give Chico a hefty shove. This would knock Harpo off the  piano stool. Chico would then resume playing and I would finish the song, with Harpo stretched out on the floor simulating unconsciousness. (Marx, 121)

Groucho adds that they didn’t know how successful they would become but, with this beginning, “We were now a unit. We were The Marx Brothers.” They began developing characters in a skit called “Fun In Hi Skule”. Harpo in particular decided to stop speaking after a reviewer said, “He takes off on an Irish immigrant most amusingly in pantomime. Unfortunately, the effect is spoiled when he speaks.” (Epstein, 43) The characters were fully formed in their Broadway show I’ll Say She Is!—Groucho, the sharp-tongued wit and often the leader, Chico, the Italian immigrant, and Harpo, the mute cherubic clown. At the suggestion of Alexander Woollcott, who highly praised their performances they dropped their real names and began using the nicknames they’d been given in a poker game with a monologist named Art Fisher. (Epstein, 44) They would keep these characters throughout their film career and in television appearances.

While Gertrude Berg was a wife and mother her success and fame as actor, writer, and producer far exceeded the experiences of her fictional wife and mother of the Goldberg family, which formed the basis of  The Goldbergs, “a show that was a cross between a situation comedy and a soap opera” (Epstein, 72). While the Goldbergs, first on radio from 1929-1946 and from 1949-1956 on television, dealt with various problems, including anti-Semitism, the show would be beset by very real problems, from difficulties with sponsorship and critics to the resignation of co-star Philip Loeb who was blacklisted as a suspected communist. Loeb left the show in 1952 and committed suicide in 1955. As Epstein says, though, what ultimately doomed the show was “its overt ethnicity” at a time of strong anti-Semitism and an entertainment industry that was moving “away from ethnicity and toward bland, nondescript situation comedies about middle-class WASP families.” (Epstein, 146)

Now I’d like to shift away from comedians and performers to writers and the identities they create, not only for characters in fiction but for themselves as well. While S.J. Perelman wrote works such as “Waiting For Sanity”, a parody of Waiting For Lefty by Clifford Odets and was a co-writer of the Marx Brothers films Monkey Business and Horse Feathers as well as other films, he also wrote a number of short seemingly autobiographical pieces he called “feuilletons”. Most were standalone, although his 1947 collection Acres And Pains follows his efforts to become a “gentleman farmer”, overseeing a property in rural Pennsylvania and becoming exasperated at the cost and difficulty of country life. It’s the opening feuilleton of his final book, The Last Laugh, though, that should make readers ask whether Perelman’s writings are as autobiographical as they seem. The title, “And Then the Whining Schoolboy with his Satchel”, is from Shakespeare’s As You Like It and focuses on a meeting between fifteen year-old Perelman and his teacher, Miss Cronjager. There is a great deal packed into this story. He describes Miss Cronjager as having “honey-colored hair and a figure evocative of the coryphées portrayed in cigarette pictures.” Perhaps wanting to impress his teacher his “autobiographical” essay draws on multiple literary works from Captains Courageous and Treasure Island to the works of H. Rider Haggard and Sax Rohmer. This allows him to present himself to his teacher as a much more interesting and adventurous person while also signaling to us, the readers, how well-read he was. There is also a concern with money. He only has enough for the ride home but Miss Cronjager is late and it’s too cold for him to stay outside. Assuming she’ll pick up the tab since it was her invitation he goes into the café and orders food, starting with “a portion of jelly roll and a coffee float”. When Miss Cronjager still hasn’t arrived half an hour later he orders “a butterscotch ice cream soda and a slice of angel cake topped with hazelnuts and chocolate sauce.” When his teacher finally arrives she apologizes for being late and insists he order something.

I studied the menu carefully, torn between mocha layer cake and a walnut sundae with ladyfingers. Rather than be categorized as a glutton, however, I checked myself and settled for an eight-inch segment of poppy-seed strudel and a vanilla freeze.” (Perlman, 21-22)

He leaves before the bill arrives and attributes the low grade he ultimately receives on his essay to Miss Cronjager’s shock at how much he’s tallied up.

The short story “My Mother Was A Witch” by William Tenn, the pen name of Philip Klass, is also written as autobiography and is about the efforts of the author’s mother, who “had been born a Jewish cockney” who “bagged” his father in London’s East End, to adapt to life in Brooklyn. She is determined to “unlearn her useless English in place of what seemed to be the prevailing tongue of the New World”; that is, Yiddish, which her husband teaches her, but while he holds “science and sweet reason to be the hope of the world” she must deal with the women of the neighborhood who have “at their disposal whole libraries of cantrips.” (Klass, 289) Fortunately she learns quickly, creating a new self who not only teaches her son to deflect unfriendly spells but also sets back the most fearsome witch in the neighborhood, Mrs. Mokkeh, “an experienced heavy, a pro who had trained in the old country under famous champions.” (Klass, 292)

The mother in “My Mother Was A Witch” is different from the performers and writers I’ve discussed previously in that they, for the most part the children of immigrants, had familiar traditions they drew upon, but the mother is an outsider even among other immigrants. What all of them have in common, though, is that they are like the “house next door” discussed by Groucho and Chico in Animal Crackers. They are places conjured up by imagination and so elaborately realized that it doesn’t matter whether they’re real or fictional; they hold, or hide, very real aspects of the individuals who’ve created them. These “houses” are, I think, an expression of the feeling of goles, exile, as described by Michael Wex in Born To Kvetch:

As long as the Messiah is still missing and the Temple remains unbuilt, the whole world is in a sort of metaphysical goles from which it, too, needs to be redeemed. The world might not know it, the gentiles who are lording it over us and each other might never realize it, but anybody with real knowledge already knows that whatever is, is wrong. (Wex, 23)

Even as Jewish performers, both before and after World War II, felt pressured to tone down their Jewishness, the identities they presented the world were a way to be part of the world, to make their mark upon it.  These identities may have been another form of exile, though, an exile from the self, since the faces they presented to the world were not really their own.

With that in mind I’d like to conclude by discussing the short story “The Men Who Murdered Mohammed” by Alfred Bester as a story of the ironic  dissolution of an identity. It follows the scientist Henry Hassel, a professor at “Unknown University”, who finds his wife with another man. Enraged he takes a gun but, rather than shooting his wife and her lover, he builds a time machine and goes back in time and murders her grandparents before they’d married. His intent is to erase his wife’s very existence, but when he returns to the present he finds her still with the same man. He then goes on a temporal killing spree, shooting George Washington, Christopher Columbus, Napoleon, Mohammed, and others. He gives Marie Curie the formula for nuclear fission, resulting in the destruction of Paris. With every atrocity he feels less and less substantial upon his return to the present, but his wife is always there with the same man. He calls the library and is told that, as far as the history books are concerned, nothing has changed. Finally he meets another scientist who also invented a time machine and rampaged through time, only to learn that,

When a man changes the past he only affects his own past—no one else’s. The past is like memory. When you erase a man’s memory, you wipe him out, but you don’t wipe out anybody else’s. You and I have erased our past. The individual worlds of the others go on, but we have ceased to exist. (Bester, 171)

This is a strange twist on John Donne’s “No man is an island”. Hassel’s attempts to destroy his wife’s existence backfire. It’s his own identity that’s erased. Is there a warning in this not to try and alter history, to not draw attention to oneself? Perhaps, although it could also be read as a comment on the elusive nature of identity and how too much scrutiny can undermine it.

Works Cited

Bester, Alfred, Virtual Unrealities: The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester, New York: Vintage Books, 1997

Epstein, Lawrence, The Haunted Smile: The Story of Jewish Comedians in America, New York : Public Affairs, 2001

Marx, Groucho, Groucho And Me, New York : Da Capo Press, 1995

Perelman, S. J., The Last Laugh, New York : Simon & Schuster, 1981

Tenn, William, Immodest Proposals, Framingham, MA : NESFA Press, 2001

Wex, Michael, Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods, New York : St. Martin’s Press

Source: World Coin Gallery.

So I’m a bit of a numismatist, or, as my wife likes to put it, I pay money for money. My focus is mostly foreign coins, mainly because they’re varied and interesting, and I feel they put me in touch with the wider world, with places I’d like to visit but will probably never see. One of my favorite pieces I’ve collected is a mint set of coins for the tiny island nation of Tuvalu. Only five thousand were minted but the population is so small there are more sets in the hands of collectors than there are coins in circulation. In spite of that it’s not a particularly expensive set, which is also part of the appeal of foreign coins—they’re cheap. At flea markets if you find a coin dealer they’ll usually have a box of loose foreign coins priced at four or five for a dollar. Sometimes I’ll pull out a British pound or even a Euro and, being honest, I’ll mention that the coin is worth more than what they’re charging.

“Take a few more,” they’ll say, pushing the box toward me.

Source: Wikipedia

Like a lot of people I cringed when I read a recent story about a guy who stole a collection of rare coins, estimated to be worth at least $33,000, and dumped it into a Coin Star machine. The article says he got “just enough store credit to buy a couple of 12-packs of beer”, and I assume they mean cheap beer and not some fancy microbrewed stuff, a case of which could easily go for $33,000.

Here’s the part that most people probably won’t think about but that really makes the numismatic me cringe: even if those coins are recovered their value has been significantly diminished. When it comes to coin collecting quality matters. Scratches, nicks, abrasions, and even simple wear affect the quality of coins. A friend’s aunt found some gold coins in her attic and took them to a coin dealer. For some reason she was holding them in her hand and rubbing them together when she asked the dealer, “How much are these worth?”

“About five hundred dollars less than they were worth before you did that,” he replied.

Something else I thought about, though, is that I understand the joy of collecting, and I feel bad for the guy who lost the coins—many coins are also historic artifacts, in addition to being tokens of exchange—but if I had the money to invest in a large and expensive collection of rare coins I’d probably spend it on something else instead. You can’t take it with you, as the 1938 Oscar-winning Frank Capra film taught us, although I do a pretty good Lionel Barrymore impression, especially after a few thousand-dollar beers, but that’s another story. If I had the money I’d probably spend it on travel, on creating memories that no one could ever take.

Paisley is sort of my signature. Whenever I’m going to a special event at work or elsewhere I like to wear a paisley shirt. Once when I was going out with some friends they were waiting in their car and I came out wearing a paisley shirt and one of my friends said, “Where does he find those wonderful shirts?” If I remember correctly that particular one was from a secondhand store because a lot of paisley gets thrown away, and I’m okay with that because if paisley isn’t popular then I don’t have to worry about anyone stealing my style. I didn’t even tell my friend my secret, although if he reads this he’ll probably figure it out, but that’s another story.

For my birthday and Christmas, which come close together, my wife bought me a bunch of paisley shirts and she said the store had so many of them she had to limit herself to just the ones she really liked which was good news because it meant I now have several new shirts and possibly bad news is paisley is becoming so popular everyone’s going to start wearing it. And I beg you: please don’t.

Anyway it got me wondering about the pattern’s origins; it turns out paisley has a pretty colorful history. In India the pattern was called boteh, a word meaning “flower”, where it was used in ceremonial robes given as rewards for various favors. In the 18^th century it was imported to Europe, specifically to the town of Paisley, Scotland, hence the name, and the difficulty of producing a paisley pattern prompted the adoption of the Jacquard loom. The town of Paisley became an important manufacturing area and paisley shawls took off in popularity. There were even legal battles over copyrighted paisley patterns although the Persian and Indian weavers who produced many of the designs that Europeans copied never got a cut.

Paisley wearing paisley. Source: IMDB

In the early 20^th century cheap cotton bandanas with paisley prints made their way across the American west, but the pattern fell out of vogue until the psychedelic Sixties. John Lennon had his Rolls Royce painted with paisley designs, a bit of a callback to its regal history, and it’s probably not a coincidence that the antihero of Roger Corman’s A Bucket Of Blood, in a not-so-subtle jab at coffee shop culture, is named Walter Paisley.

And that’s a brief history of the paisley pattern and why it’s one that I’ve picked.

One of the benefits of where I work is that I can audit university classes, which is a very groovy thing because lifelong learning is important. And when I saw there was a class on Jewish humor being offered of course I signed up and didn’t hear anything until last week when I got an email that said, “Class starts today!” So I went and, because I was really just sitting in and not a formal student, I took a desk in the very back and tried to look as unobtrusive as possible and the professor started to take attendance and pointed to me and said, “Hey, you’re the one auditing, right?” Suddenly there was a bright spotlight on me that made me painfully aware that I’m half a century older than everyone else in the class. And after class she told me, “Don’t worry about doing any of the homework,” but I’d already done the first assignment.

The assignment was “Write two pages analyzing a joke.” It was a fun idea, and I was going to go with, “How many Jewish mothers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” but then a friend suggested another joke with a lot more potential. And things got even funnier when the professor said, “This is not a formal assignment. Just tell me a joke, or a bunch of jokes, or about your favorite comedian,” and as you can see what I’d written was already pretty formal.

So anyway this is a long introduction to an assignment that I didn’t need to do and now I’m in so much trouble because I’m pretty sure I can only go downhill from here.

And if you’re wondering how many Jewish mothers it takes to screw in a lightbulb, don’t worry about it, she’ll just sit here quietly in the dark, but it would be nice if you’d call once in a while…

Intersections

Mrs.‭ ‬Cohen and Mrs.‭ ‬Levinson meet on the street.‭ ‬Mrs.‭ ‬Cohen asks,‭ ‬“How’s your son‭?” ‬Mrs.‭ ‬Levinson replies,‭ “‬I have some bad news and some good news.‭ ‬The bad news is he tells me he’s gay.‭ ‬The good news is he’s seeing a nice doctor.‭”

Analyzing any joke requires context,‭ ‬so to start I’ll look at some of the intersections of the Jewish and LGBT communities throughout the‭ ‬20th and early‭ ‬21st centuries.‭ ‬While Jews were the primary target of and bore the brunt of the Holocaust homosexuals were targeted as well.‭ Homophobia and anti-Semitism were also widespread in the United States. ‬In‭ ‬1945‭ the writer, director, and film producer ‬Richard Brooks,‭ ‬who was‭ ‬born Ruben Sax to Russian Jewish parents and served in the Marines in Virginia during the war,‭ ‬published‭ ‬his first novel‭ ‬The Brick Foxhole.‭ ‬The novel is about a young Marine who is murdered when his fellow Marines discover he’s homosexual.‭ ‬The book was adapted in‭ ‬1947‭ ‬as the film‭ ‬Crossfire but because the Hayes Code,‭ ‬which set standards for Hollywood movies,‭ ‬labeled any discussion of homosexuality unacceptable,‭ ‬the plot was changed to be about anti-Semitism with a Jewish murder victim.‭ ‬Crossfire‭ ‬was nominated for best picture at the‭ ‬1948‭ ‬Academy Awards but lost to‭ ‬Gentlemen’s Agreement,‭ ‬which also dealt with anti-Semitism.‭
In‭ ‬1969‭ ‬the Stonewall riots took place,‭ ‬marking the beginning of the modern LGBT-rights movement,‭ ‬and in‭ ‬1973‭ ‬the American Psychological Association removed homosexuality from its list of‭ ‬mental disorders.‭ ‬Yet homosexuality remained explicitly condemned by many Jewish thinkers.‭ ‬Writing in The Journal Of Homosexuality‭ ‬Rabbi Yoel H.‭ ‬Kahn cites two‭ “‬widely read and frequently quoted articles‭”‬¹:‭ ‬a‭ ‬1973‭ ‬responsum by Solomon Freehof published as the lead article of the 1973 CCAR Journal symposium and Norman Lamm’s‭ ‬1974‭ “‬Judaism And The Modern Attitude Toward Homosexuality.‭” ‬However,‭ ‬Kahn later adds,‭ ‬in‭ ‬1973‭ ‬Arthur Green‭ “‬became the first Jewish leader to affirm publicly the desirability and sanctity of homosexual partnerships‭”^‬2.
Another major,‭ ‬and more public,‭ ‬intersection was the‭ ‬1983‭ ‬Broadway premiere of Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy.‭ ‬The play centers on Arnold Beckoff,‭ ‬a Jewish drag queen‭ ‬living and performing in New York.‭ ‬Part of the‭ “‬trilogy‭” ‬is his relationship with his‭ ‬mother.‭ ‬Arnold alternately rejects and clings to his mother.‭ ‬He doesn’t tell her he’s adopted a son with his partner David,‭ ‬or that David is murdered in a‭ ‬neighborhood attack on homosexuals.‭ ‬She is bothered by his homosexuality and feels Arnold is rejecting his religion and by extension her.‭ ‬He tells her,‭ ‬“if you can’t respect me…then you’ve got no business being here.‭”‬³‭ ‬She‭ ‬in turn admits,‭ “‬Some of it was my fault,‭ ‬but not all.‭”‬^4‭
Throughout the‭ ‬1980s and into the‭ ‬1990s the AIDS crisis,‭ ‬dealt with in Tony Kushner’s‭ ‬1993‭ ‬play Angels In America,‭ ‬intensified the struggle for LGBT rights and brought the issue to the mainstream.‭ ‬The Supreme Court’s‭ ‬2003‭ ‬Lawrence v.‭ ‬Texas decision decriminalized homosexuality‭ ‬nationwide in the United States.‭ ‬That same year in Britain‭ ‬Liberal Judaism became the first denomination‭ ‬to offer synagogue blessings‭ ‬to same-sex couples‭; ‬the Reform movement formally endorsed the ceremonies in‭ ‬2011⁵,‭ ‬four years before‭ ‬the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v.‭ ‬Hodges decision‭ ‬provided legal recognition of same-sex marriage in the United States.
The historic context is important but there’s a specifically Jewish context to the joke as well.‭ ‬In What Is A Jewish Joke‭? ‬Henry Eilbirt says the Jewish mother‭ “‬has a multiple image:‭ ‬suffering,‭ ‬overprotecting,‭ ‬displaying motherly pride,‭ ‬nurturing.‭”‬^6‭ ‬Mrs.‭ ‬Levinson hits at least three of these.‭ ‬She suffers because her son is gay and there are unlikely to be any grandchildren,‭ ‬biological anyway,‭ ‬who will call her‭ bubbe‬,‭ ‬and she may be concerned about her son’s safety in a world that is still often hostile to LGBT people.‭ ‬The nurturing aspect is complicated.‭ ‬Jewish mothers are often portrayed as expecting their sons to go into lucrative professions‭; ‬specifically to become doctors,‭ ‬while expecting their daughter to marry a successful man.‭ ‬Wendy Liebman jokes,‭ “‬Is there a doctor in the house‭? ‬My mother wants me to marry you.‭” ‬She also says,‭ “‬My grandmother always said,‭ ‘‬Don’t marry for money…divorce for money.‭’”‬⁷‭ ‬In this the joke reflects an unfortunate and outdated gender stereotype that doctors must also be men.‭ ‬There is also a stereotype that both Jews and LGBT people either have innate talent or a strong drive to succeed.‭ ‬Vladimir Horowitz joked,‭ “‬There are three kinds of pianists:‭ ‬Jewish pianists,‭ ‬homosexual pianists,‭ ‬and bad pianists.‭”^‬8‭ ‬Lawrence Epstein considers the Jewish aspect in greater detail in The Haunted Smile,‭ ‬discussing how Eastern European Jews,‭ ‬shut out from most professions,‭ ‬saw themselves as‭ “‬losers‭” ‬and built up a strong desire to succeed.‭ ‬By the time they emigrated to the United States that‭ “‬psychological reservoir of such needs‭” ‬was‭ “‬unleashed with ferocity when they found a place that welcomed,‭ ‬nourished,‭ ‬and psychologically and financially rewarded that need to succeed.‭”‬^9‭ ‬For LGBT people there is also a perception of success fostered by popular portrayals of‭ “‬White, wealthy women who host talk shows or affluent men doting on their kids‭ ‬–‭ ‬like Mitchell and Cameron from‭ ‘‬Modern Family‭’”‬¹⁰‭ ‬although LGBT people are not necessarily more likely to be financially successful than their straight peers.
However the joke’s upshot is ultimately positive:‭ ‬Mrs.‭ ‬Levinson accepts,‭ ‬or is working toward accepting,‭ ‬her gay son.‭ ‬She finds both bad and good in the fact that he’s gay,‭ ‬and,‭ ‬poignantly,‭ ‬in this telling,‭ ‬it’s a conversation that happens on the street,‭ ‬perhaps near an intersection.

1-Judaism and Homosexuality:‭ ‬The Traditionalist/Progressive Debate by‭ ‬Rabbi Yoel H.‭ ‬Kahn MAHL,‭ ‬The Journal of Homosexuality,‭ ‬pg.48,‭ ‬v.18‭ ‬no.3/4‭ (‬1989‭)

2-Ibid,‭ ‬pg.74

3-Torch Song Trilogy by Harvey Fierstein,‭ ‬pg.153‭ (‬Villard Books,‭ ‬1983‭)

4-Ibid,‭ ‬pg.173

5-‭ ‬Jewish branches embrace rise of same-sex union by‭ ‬Simon Rocker,‭ ‬Times Of London,‭ ‬Jan.17,‭ ‬2015

6-What Is a Jewish Joke?: An Excursion Into Jewish Humor by Henry Eilbirt, pg.116 (Jason Aronson Inc., 1993)

7-You Never Call! You Never Write!: A History of the Jewish Mother by Joyce Antler, pg.440 (Oxford University Press, 2007)

8-Wikipedia

9-The Haunted Smile by Lawrence J. Epstein, pg.303 (Public Affairs, 2002)

10-The truth about gays and money, NBC News, May 31, 2013

So I’m pickled tink to have been tagged for a Christmas post by Bryce Warden of the amazing, hilarious, and sometimes heart-rending Was That My Out Loud Voice? Thank you. This is not my first rodeo, and it’s not my first experience being tagged either, although I am having trouble concentrating what with all the bull riding and calf-roping going on, but that’s another story.
I love being tagged but always violate one rule: I never tag anyone else. Some bloggers I really enjoy have blogs devoted to specific subjects and I don’t want them to feel pressured to go off-topic, and while there are others whose blogs are more general, well, I don’t want them to feel pressured either. If you feel like playing along, though, feel free to jump in! With that bit of housecleaning aside here’s my response.

The Rules
You must thank the person who nominated you.
Link back to the original post (the one on this blog) and use the graphic provided.
Answer the questions given.
Nominate at least 3 people. (or more if your feeling like a nice person)
Give the nominees 10 questions to answer (or use the ones previously given)

Questions

Do you celebrate Christmas?
Yes, although I also enjoy and have celebrated Hanukkah and Solstice.

Which one of Santa’s Reindeer is your favorite?
Donner. Like the party. (I can’t help it, that’s funny to me. Also spooky stories at Christmas are a British tradition, so it kind of fits even though I’m not British.)

Do you like snow?
Yes! Where I live we get, at most, one major snowfall per season, and it causes complete city-wide chaos. It’s hilarious.

Do you have a favorite Christmas tradition?
Every year I make eggs benedict and my wife and I watch movies. A more personal tradition is that I take a little time and read Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory and Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas In Wales back to back. A little laughter, a little sadness, not necessarily in that order.

Least favorite part of Christmas?
Certain memories. I seem to have something in my eye. Let’s move along, shall we?

What is your favorite Christmas memory?
Not exactly Christmas but one year I went out caroling with a group in a small English village. We went to one home that had a pond with approximately three thousand ducks. Every day after lunch I’d walk up to this pond and feed the ducks. Maybe they recognized my voice because as we were singing the ducks came waddling out of the darkness quacking at us. I can’t carry a tune in a bucket so I went and sang with the ducks.

If you could take a paid two-week break for Christmas this year, what would you do, and why?
I’m lucky enough to work at a place that gives me a substantial holiday break, but if I could do anything I’d travel someplace unusual. How do they celebrate Christmas in Montevideo? Let’s find out!

Elf on the Shelf
The Elf is in no position to judge. I have proof:

Source: Imgur

Favorite thing about Christmas when you were a kid?
The anticipation. The decorations. And my mother always made an amazing bunch of sweets: fudge and cookies and candied pecans and kolache.

Do you have a favorite Christmas special?
A Christmas Story. True story: an uncle who rarely smiled and who never laughed was staying with us one Christmas. He sat down and started watching A Christmas Story with me and started chuckling. When Ralphie goes blind from soap poisoning my uncle laughed so hard he fell over. Then during the commercials he got up, glared at me and said, “That’s exactly how it was, too!”