The Mission from God

It was a Saturday afternoon. We sat by the river, not far from Oneida Lake, enjoying Larry’s hospitality, enjoying the ribs and salt potatoes, enjoying a beverage or two, but most of all, enjoying the fellowship of friends from forty years ago. Just sitting around, bringing each other up to date, and of course, reliving the stories that we’d already told a couple hundred times before.

Suddenly, the summons came. G-Man, Dr. Fay, and I jumped into the doctor’s rented SUV, turned on his GPS gizmo, which he had brought all the way from Washington, apparently so he wouldn’t get lost in the wilds of upstate New York, and found our way from the back woods to the Interstate. There was no time to lose. Along the way, the phone rang, and G-Man answered: “I can’t talk. We’re on a mission from God.” Really, it was that important.

The Interstate then led us directly to downtown Syracuse, and there’s only one place to go in downtown Syracuse, especially when you’re on a mission from God. And that was directly to Kitty Hoyne’s, to drink good Irish whisky. You see, the night before, as we stood at the bar at TC, now called Saratoga something-or-other, Dr. Fay asked for Irish whisky, and one thing led to another, but we couldn’t find anything besides Jameison. Not that there’s anything wrong with Jameison, just that it’s not quite Red Breast, or Connemara. So notwithstanding all the good food, or the scenic location, or the beautiful weekend weather, or even the fellowship of old friends, a visit to Kitty’s, another pilgrimage of sorts, was called for.

Good thing too. Because that night at the Palace theatre in Eastwood, there was no whisky behind the bar. It didn’t matter though, as we had executed the afternoon’s mission quite to perfection.

More Questions for Heschel

In response to my earlier postings about Abraham and the Akeidah, Danny quoted from one of Heschel’s most famous works, God in Search of Man. So, in the hopes of better understanding what a modern, well-respected Judaic scholar would say about my recent musings, I took a look at this volume. In particular, I wanted to see what exactly Heschel says about the Bible. As you will recall, my departure point for all these musings was the fact that, regardless of what did or did not occur some four thousand years ago, what we know is that we have a text with various characters and events described within.

Here’s some of what Heschel says about the text: “If God is alive, then the Bible is His Voice.” (245, the cites being the pages in my 1976 First Paperback Edition) So far so good. Hard to argue with that. But here’s the more troublesome argument: “To deny the divine origin of the Bible is to brand the entire history of … Judaism … a colossal lie.” (247) And again, “The Bible has either originated in a lie or in an act of God. If the Bible is a deception, then the devil is almighty and there is no hope of ever attaining truth….” (247) I just don’t see how that follows.

First of all, I don’t understand why there are only two possibilities: either the Bible is the word of God, or it’s a lie. Why can’t the Bible be true at the same time that it was written by man (or as Bloom theorizes, by a woman)? And what does it mean anyway to say that these things in the Bible are ‘true’? The Bible purports to answer a host of questions which are, more the most part, essentially unanswerable. Why are we here? Where did we (meaning all of us, the earth, the stars, man, woman, child) come from? What is this thing we call consciousness that lets us read the Bible, talk to each other about Abraham, and just think about these topics? Now if one of us has an answer to any one of those questions, what could it possibly mean to say that the answer is ‘true’? Really, we have no idea what’s true or false in most of these realms.

Let’s look again at Shakespeare. Shakespeare addresses many of these unanswerable questions in his plays. And because Shakespeare sees the farthest, or the deepest, of any writer who has looked into these questions, we think of Shakespeare’s plays as true, not because the events in the plays happened in the manner described, but because the plays do the best job of describing the human condition, together with all its limitations. But can we say that Hamlet or Lear is true or false? What does that mean? Shakespeare’s Lear is a fictional character; he’s a creation from the mind of a writer. But King Lear is true, in the sense that it describes humanity, and our place in the universe, as well as any other description that we have, setting aside the religious texts, such as the Bible, for the moment.

Now I assume that there was a time, and a place, when some writer, or probably more than one writer, sat down to compose the Tanach. When that happened, I also assume the writer had some source of inspiration. Why isn’t it possible that the writer was divinely inspired but that the words of the Bible are not literal? For example, how literal did Heschel believe the creation story to be? Did he believe that everything was created in six ‘days’, in the specific order referenced? Or was this a poetic or philosophical representation of someone’s understanding of creation?

I’m not a person of faith in the sense that Heschel describes. I don’t believe that the Torah was given to Moses, word for word, letter for letter, on Sinai. I am however, willing to believe that something happened on Sinai, and that someone later wrote about that event, and that the description of what happened can be true, but not literal. And I guess I need to know why Heschel thinks that understanding is a colossal lie.

Manny Being Manny

This week Manny Ramirez knocked in his 1600th career RBI. As of this moment, that puts him 28th on the all-time list of RBI producers. By the end of the season, he might be as high as 25th. Barring an injury, Manny will top one hyndred RBIs for the tenth consecutive season, and for the twelfth time in the past thirteen years.

What’s interesting, however, is not merely the number of RBIs, but the rate of production. Manny has just over 7000 career at-bats. Among the all-time RBI leaders, those players above him on the list, no one has fewer career at bats. Only a couple guys have under 8000.

So this observation led me to fiddle around with the numbers, and I discovered that, in the history of the game, there are very few players who produced RBIs at a quicker pace than Manny. For the record, he’s generated an RBI every 4.38 at-bats. Among the career leaders, only a handful of players have topped that. Perhaps you’ve heard of some of these names – Ruth, Gehrig, Foxx, Williams. (Maybe it’s an AL East thing.) Further down the list are McGuire and the great Hank Greenberg. And extrapolating out, if Manny continues to play for another five years (after all, he’s only thirty-five, and look at Bonds in his forties), he can end up challenging Aaron for the all-time career record. At least until A-Rod passes everyone. Only thing is, he’ll have to cut the dreads sometime before then.

In any event, while the pennant race is heating up, I’m taking a moment to recognize Manny for being Manny. Go Manny.

H'ar Odem

I stopped in a little liquor store in Ra’anana, while Susan and Franny were shopping, and asked the owner what winery I should visit in the Golan. He said all the wineries were good to visit. “No,” I told him. “If you could go to a single winery, if you had the ability to pick a single winery to visit, which one would you go to?” He suggested H’ar Odem.

A couple days later we were traveling through the north, and after stopping at Tel Dan, to see the mighty Dan River, where one of Israel’s precious water supplies flows with the force of Allens Creek, and then the Banias waterfall, we drove up into the Golan. I had told our driver Ya’akov, the same one who had pointed out the Scotch Hotel in Tiberias, that we’d like to visit a Golan winery. He brought a web page with him, listing perhaps eight or ten wineries, and as I glanced at the page, I made out the name in Hebrew -- H’ar Odem. The road map told us that the winery was only a few miles from where we were, right along our anticipated route. So after only a few minutes we arrived at the H’ar Odem winery, just outside the Druze village of Buqata.

After we entered, and the young owner introduced himself, Susan proudly told him we were from the Finger Lakes area, where there are lots of wineries. I told Susan that he doesn’t care about the Finger Lakes; let’s check out the wines. But to my amazement, not only did the owner know about the Finger Lakes, but his Cabernet had won a gold medal in April 2007, at some Finger Lakes wine competition. Properly chastised, I learned that the guy even had an uncle in the Rochester area, although he had never traveled here personally. We ended up buying several bottles that we gave to Fran and Gidon and their kids. On Shabbat we drank the medal winning cabernet, along with a nice oakey chardonnay, and a sweet cherry wine for dessert. I can’t explain how happy I was to have found this tiny winery, and its wonderful wines, high in the Golan, after having been told it was the one place we should visit if we had the chance.

Later that day, we visited 077, the site of a momentous tank battle in the Yom Kippur war. Facing incredible odds, a small number of Israeli tanks turned back a force of 600 Syrian tanks, preventing the Syrians from advancing down into the Kinneret, while inflicting devastating losses on the Syrians. 077 is a memorial site for the Israelis who perished in that battle, and is named for the victorious Israeli tank battalion. From that site you can look down into Syria, past the town of Kuneitra, and toward Damascus, only 60 kilometers away.

From 077 it’s easy to identify the border, not because of the fence, nor because of any battlements or barriers. In fact, the border with Syria has been Israel’s quietest border in the years since 1973. The border is distinct because on the Israeli side, the land is green; all through the Golan, the land is cultivated. Crops, orchards, vineyards. As we drove from H’ar Odem to 077, I often noticed the H’ar Odem sign in many of the vineyards, probably indicating what kind of grape was being grown in each place. In contrast, across the border in Syria, the land is brown and arid. That’s true all along the northern border. Even when the land isn’t under cultivation, on the Israeli side the hills are green; trees have been planted. Across the border, an occasional grove of olive trees, otherwise, barren ground.

Everyone talks about how the Israelis will have to give the Golan back to the Syrians, even many Israelis seem to concede this. But as I stood at 077, and looked down into Syria, I didn’t see how this was imaginable. From a strategic perspective, the area is simply too important. And from a practical perspective, in contrast to the years between 48 and 67, when the Syrians regularly shelled the villages and Kibbutzim in the Galilee, the area has been quiet and peaceful for the past forty years. Since the war stopped, the Israelis have left the Syrians to live in peace, although Kuneitra is easily in range of Israeli fortifications on the hilltops. But I guess it’s too much of an affront to Syrian pride to look up into the Golan and see all that greenery -- the fields full of crops, the vines heavy with grapes, the wineries, the forests. Better to return this land to Syria, so that it can revert to its natural state, arid and unproductive. I don’t think so.

My Pilgrimage to the Galilee

People travel from all over the globe to the Kinneret, the Sea of Galilee, in the north of Israel. Many come for religious reasons; others come to vacation, because the Kinneret is so beautiful, especially along the southern end of the Sea. But we came for another reason entirely.

We had spent the day in Tzipori and Tzfat, traveling through the north of Israel. Tzipori is a Roman era town recent excavated, still being excavated, that is remarkable for its beautiful and intricate mosaics, not only in the homes, but also in the shul. Typically Jews don't depict the human form, but the Jews of Tzipori had reached some accommodation with Roman culture, and right there in the shul were mosaics depicting biblical events such as the Akeidah, as well as the Jewish zodiac, something I'd never even heard of before. And despite this seemingly assimilationist philosophy, Tzipori had preserved Judaism in the years after the destruction of the second temple. The Sanhedrin sat there; the Mishnah was compiled there.

Afterward we made the climb to Tzfat, high on a hilltop, miles from anywhere. What made this remote town such a center of Jewish learning in the middle ages? Tiny, unassuming shuls where works like the Kabbalah and the Shulchan Aruch were written. I got the chills just imaging that on the very spot, Madonna had probably walked. I think she and Paris Hilton are leading a group of celebrities on their voyage to Tzfat for the High Holidays.

Anyway, as evening approached, Mike took us to an open-air restaurant on the shores of the Kinneret, Decks, where we dined on an assortment of meats grilled on open fires. Our kind of place. The highlight of the meal was a veal tenderloin, seared on the open fire, and then sliced up, and finished to order at tableside. Our guide, Yaakov, wanted to make sure there was no blood in his veal; it had to be well done. Mike and I ate ours medium rare, perhaps cooked a touch more then we would have in the pit. Besides the veal, we had lamb, chicken, and the ubiquitous kebabs, a blend of ground meat and spices, sometimes served in patties, sometimes on skewers, a stapel of everyone's cuisine around here.

During dinner, as we surveyed the shores of the sea of Galilee, Yaakov pointed out the Scotch Hotel. Danny had told me earlier that there was an inn in Tiberias that served malt whiskies. So after dinner, we wandered over, and had to persuade the young security gal guarding the Inn that we deserved admittance. We had, after all, traveled thousands of miles to drink malt whisky in the Galilee. So she took our names, and addresses, and then guided us personally up the elevator, through some empty lounge, and into the tiny bar of the Scotch Hotel in Tiberias. Needless to say, we were the only patrons there, and I would even guess that we bought the first glass of malt whisky that had been sold that day. Out cute Israeli barmaid had just begun her job that day, and she was being shown the procedure for pouring a whisky, and serving it neat with water on the side.

The selection was good, especially considering the obscure location, but nothing to compare with the choices at Keens or Pints Pub. Still, there were a couple malts which one doesn't find everywhere. I settled on a glass of Mortlach 16, which I'd had only once before, and that was at Maltings, on the cruise ship with the boys. The Mortlach was actually better than I had remembered, but it was the setting, and not the whisky that made this drink so memorable. We had journeyed first across the ocean, and then to the north of Israel, and then on this day we had traveled back to Roman times, and then through the middle ages, and after all that, we ended the day at a new spot, but still a familiar spot, at a bar with a glass of scotch whisky. The next day, when we stopped for lunch in a Druze village in the Golan, Yaakov asked the proprietor if he had any scotch whisky. Yaakov was just being funny, but the Druze restaurant did have a bottle of Johnny Red. So maybe it won't be too long before we're drinking malts in the Golan. But that's a story for another day.

Abraham's Otherness

In Israel, surrounded by history, surrounded by archeology, everyone asks whether there is historical evidence for biblical events. Last night, as we sat around the Shabbat dinner table, someone raised the question if there were historical evidence of the life of King David. The excavations deep below Ir David, the City of David, have found found Hezekiah's tunnel mentioned in Kings II, but is there any specific reference to David himself?

What about Abraham? What evidence is there for the existence of the patriarch Abraham? On the plane ride over here, I read Bruce Feiler's Abraham, an enormously unsatisfying book. And I've posted previously how it's now beside the point whether there is evidence of a man named Abraham outside of what we're told in Genesis. The patriarch Abraham who appears in Genesis is the only person we care about. In searching for this ancient man, Feiler talks with, and quotes from a variety of people, scholars, clergy, people he meets traveling through Israel, so that his book contains nuggets of wisdom, often randomly. From quoting enough voices and sources, Feiler stumbles occasionally over the enormous impact Abraham had on Western thought. The problem, though, with Feiler is that instead of really searching for Abraham, he uses Abraham as a mere tool in his personal search for universal peace. As a result, the significance of Abraham's unique contributions becomes watered down to a collection of platitudes. But really, let's never mind Feiler; at least he made me think some more about Abraham.

Right at this moment, surrounded by family and friends in Modi'in, I know that I, as well as my family and friends, are surrounded by hostility in this region of the world. Israel is different from the rest of the middle east, and not just because of religion. It's a democratic state in a region dominated by autocratic regimes. It makes a sincere effort to respect and uphold minority rights. On a recent visit, we went to Ben Gurion University in the Negev, and I was struck by the number of female students in head scarves. Is there some university in the middle east, outside of Israel, where Jewish kids in kippot are a visible minority? Even France can't cope with girls in head scarves. And on a prior visit, I went to the Israeli Supreme Court, and observed an argument before a panel of three judges, one of whom was Arab, and one of whom was a woman. The case involved a Palestinian family seeking compensation from the government for damage to their property. Is there a comparable court anywhere else in the Mideast? I know Israel isn't perfect, and that there are racist beliefs that infect and degrade society. But at least the racism isn't institutionalized, or authorized by the force of law. At least the country's institutions attempt to rectify, and provide redress for inequality and bias. And although Israel was founded as a Jewish state, and remains a Jewish state, it's not a theocracy. As powerful politically as the religious right has become, the Rabbis still don't run the country.

Many Jews are troubled by the concept of the "chosen people". The idea that God selected the Jews, whether to be his messenger, or for some special treatment in his eyes, offends some. But from my perspective, the key here, harking back to Abraham, is not chosenness, but otherness. Abraham, when he's still Abram, is called an Ivri. (Genesis 14:13) That word is the root of the word for Hebrew, and it's apparently derived from the term aver , "the other side". In Abraham's time, his otherness was clearly a virtue - regardless of whether we consider Abraham's theological perspective , rejecting paganism; or his ethical perspective, rejecting human sacrifice; or his sense of justice, rejecting collective guilt.

And it remains the same in today's world, where Israel's otherness is equally a virtue. Everyone wants to be loved, and it would be nice, once in a while, for a few more U.N. states to side with Israel. But really, when you consider the nature and character and conduct of these other states, how important is it to be loved by tyrants? The fact that an open secular society, with gender equality, is anathema to the theocratic regimes in this region should hardly surprise anyone. Abraham's chosenness, and Abraham's otherness served to separate him and his followers from the savage world in which he dwelt. It's no different today.

A Perfect Sendoff

Tomorrow morning, I’m flying to Newark, and from there to Eretz Yisrael, the Holy Land. Tonight, Danny stopped by with cigars, not just any cigars though. He had a Coheba for me. In return I poured him a Bunnahabhain 18. I’ve been posting about the unusual flavor of Bunnahabhain, but Danny noticed the texture more than the flavor. In his opinion, it’s the butteriest whisky, the only malt comparable to Johnny Blue. And like Blue, it has an indescribable spicy character to it, a mysterious flavor deep inside the whisky, impossible to identify with any specificity, yet unmistakable at the same time.

We sat outside, on a hot summer night, enjoying our cigars, drinking malt whisky, talking baseball, trading stories about our kids, and our dads. And Danny envious of my trip to Israel. Not everyone gets the magic of traveling to that land; many people are openly worried about whether it will be safe. I always ask them if they’ll be safe when they go to New York, or DC. Of course, who knows if trouble will breakout. But I just met this lawyer who was in the north of Israel last summer, when Hezbollah began raining missiles down on the Israelis. Would he have any reluctance about returning? I don’t think so.

The last drink I poured tonight was a Rosebank. I asked myself, what’s the one malt I should drink before setting off on a momentous voyage, and there was no other choice. And as the Rosebank sat, waiting for me to enjoy it, the Sox stormed back in the bottom of the seventh inning. Four runs; Papi keying the rally with a double. And even though Okajima gave up a run, a rarity, Papelbon shut down the birds in the ninth, two strikeouts, only 12 pitches. A good omen for my voyage.

Coheba, Bunnahabhain, Rosebank, Danny, Papi, Papelbon, and a one-run victory. What a send-off.