Seraphic Secret

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September 30, 2005

Deep Contrast

For Shabbos, I'd like you all to read my friend Rabbi Berel Wein's illuminating article Saturday Night Live. Here he contrasts two rallies: a so-called peace rally in Jerusalem, with by the usual suspects, Jews entirely estranged from Judaism and from the very land they inhabit.

And in deep contrast, selichos, Lamentations, in shul, synagogue. A portrait of Jews who are immersed in Judaism, in a "call to a deeper self." As always, Rabbi Wein gets it just right.

May you all have a lovely and meaningful Shabbos.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:25 AM | Comments (6)

September 29, 2005

The Arab Heart of Darkness

In yesterday's Wall street Journal the great Arab scholar Fouad Ajami dissects the thundering silence in the Arab world as one act of terror after another takes place in Iraq. The lack of values in the Arab world is stunning. But I, a Jew didn't say it, read on and weep for civilization and the "pitiliness in the Arab world."

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 02:46 PM | Comments (2)

September 28, 2005

Required Reading

Many thanks to Jake Novak for bringing Letter to a Palestinian Neighbor, by Yossi Klein Halevi to my attention. I have to admit that I'm a bit stunned that Halevi had to go through this whole "spiritual journey" to come to what to me are kind of obvious conclusions about the Palestinians. Anybody with a shred of sense just has to look at Palestinian society and they will quickly realize that here is a culture that is more interested in destroying Israel than building a functional state.

My good friend and mystery novelist, Rochelle Krich, has just informed me that her wonderful book Grave Endings, has been released in paperback. Rochelle is one of the few Orthodox novelists out there. She writes superlative mysteries and her prose just dazzles.

I'd also like to recommend Looking for Alaska by John Green. This lovely book has been published as a Young Adult novel--and it should never have been. It's too raw, way too sexualized for children. And it's a perfect example of why Karen and I have founded Seraphic Press. The major publishers seem intent on depriving children of their innocence. But this book should be read--by adults. It is profoundly moving.

As for the so-called "anti-war protestors" in Washington. I beg of you to read Christopher Hitchen's article on their true and infamous nature. Some of these protestors are naive old hippies, but many are Jew haters and rabidly anti-American, more and more these two hatreds march in lock step.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:30 AM | Comments (19)

September 27, 2005

Interviewed, Sort Of

I've had a cold the past few days and then yesterday I got hit with category five migraine. Not a good time to have an hour long radio interview, but I made a promise to the Mike Rosen Show in Denver and I just sat down at my desk and kind of toughed my way through it.

I have to admit that I don't really remember very much. I wasn't under any medication, just intense pain, which has a tendency to mask everything else. I do remember being very careful with what I was saying. The focus of the interview was, naturally, my article, Help, I'm a Hollywood Republican.

Anyway, by the time the hour was up, I was drenched in sweat, trembling uncontrollably, and I just crawled into bed and blanked out. The whole thing seems like a dream. I hope I didn't say anything really stupid.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 09:20 AM | Comments (8)

September 23, 2005

New Album

The other day, after hours and hours of writing, I stepped into the house for a break. There was a knock at the door and hermit that I am I peeked through the wooden slats. Who can that be in the middle of the afternoon? I worried.

I breathed a sigh of relief and opened the front door.

"Here," said Sharon Katz, Eitan's mother, "Here's Eitan's new album. The second song is dedicated to Ariel's memory."

L'maancha is another beautful Eitan Katz CD and I recommend it to all Seraphic Secret readers.

Have a lovely and meaningful Shabbos.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:48 AM | Comments (9)

September 21, 2005

Seraphic Nanny

"Why is it raining!?"

Yesterday morning, as I was getting ready to drive Offspring #3 to school, she looked out the window and demanded an answer to her question. Actually, she wasn't really asking a question, she was just letting me know that she was annoyed with the weather. Afterall, this is California and it is just not supposed to rain in September.

Nevertheless, I am a parent and when one of my children asks a question I feel duty bound to answer. It's my job to impart knowledge, wisdom, truth.

"It's raining because HaShem is crying."

Offspring #3 pins me with a look that's like: Did Daddy really say that?

It takes me a moment to realize what I have just said; it takes me a moment to remember where this has come from.

Nanny.

My grandmother. My mother's mother: Chana Gittel, Z'L.

There are people in my life who have influenced me so deeply that it's impossible to measure. Nanny is one of these people. She was always there, a solid and sturdy woman who spoke heavily accented English, and whose disciplined and self-assured manner was the keystone of our family.

I remember that Nanny used to teach herself English by reading Charles Dickens out loud.

I remember that Nanny used to make omelettes for me and then cut out smiling faces in the eggs.

I remember that when my parents went away for Shabbos, I always stayed with Nanny and Aunt Pearlie and being with them was heaven for they spoiled me shamelessly.

I remember Nanny telling me that back in Europe she carried a bayonet in order to defend her children.

I remember that whenever I was sick my mother Z'L would call Nanny before calling the doctor.

I remember that Nanny spoke proudly of her years as a teenager in Berlin. She was employed as a seamstress in the French Atelier Department of Kaufhaus auf Westens, the finest department store in Berlin. She may have been the only Jew employed in the store at the time. She proudly said that her department made clothes for the Kaiser's daughters. Nanny did some modeling of the clothes because she and one of the Kaiser's daughters wore the same size. Nanny was very proud of this connection to royalty.

I remember as a child firmly believing that Nanny would never die and when she did I was an adult, married to Karen for six months and still I waited for her to rise from the dead. It took several days for me to realize that she was truly, irrevocably gone. It was a shattering experience. Our family was never the same. It was as if everyone was nudged out of orbit. Nanny was born in 1892. She was niftar in 1978. She witnessed two world wars, saw Europe descend into incomprehensible madness. Nanny also loved America and taught me to appreciate what a wonderful country this is, especially for Jews.

I think about Nanny every single day and sometimes, in the middle of the night, I can still see her sitting in her little apartment, looking out the window, as rain falls on Brooklyn, her chin resting on the head of her cane.
"Nanny, why is it raining?" I ask.
"It is raining," Nanny says, "Because G-d is crying."

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:27 AM | Comments (14)

September 19, 2005

Emmy Night

How did I spend Emmy night? I was watching a DVD of the towering mini-series, Lonesome Dove. It is a great movie and I fear that that we will not see a film like this in a very long time.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 07:49 AM | Comments (9)

September 13, 2005

Migdal David

Life just works out sometimes.

When Karen and I started Seraphic Press we were determined to publish graphic novels. Only problem was, how were we ever going to find a great graphic novelist who would write and illustrate a book appropriate for our audience. Almost every graphic novel out there is just filled with unbelievable profanity, sex, and extremes of violence, what the mainstream media calls "cutting edge material."

And then, about a year ago, for a Shabbos, Karen and I hosted a few boys from the Orthodox community with developmental problems. It was a deeply moving and humbling experience. A few days later, Neil, the brother of one of the boys, wrote to thank me. I wrote back a polite note and as notes flew back and forth I learned that Neil--I promise I am not making this up--was an award winning graphic artist.

An idea sprouted in my mind and I asked Neil if he would be interested in writing a graphic novel for Seraphic Press about his brother and the unique problems an Orthodox family faces when a developmental disability strikes.

Migdal David will not be finished until 2007, but we wanted Seraphic Secret readers to get a preview of this beautiful and touching book. Needless to say, Karen and I are proud to be a part of this great enterprise, a first in Orthodox Jewish publishing. When you navigate to the next page, just click on the thumbnails and the images will get big enough for you to read.

RJA

Neil Kleid won the Xeric Grant for Ninety Candles, a cartoon graphic novella about life, fatherhood, comic books and death. His graphic novel about the Jewish mafia with Jake Allen, Brownsville, debuts from NBM Publishing in 2006 and 2007 sees the release of Migdal David, his cartoon memoir about developmental disability in an orthodox jewish home from Seraphic Press. He created minicomics and cartoons for anthologies, writes Big Pond, a collaborative column at Scryptic Studios, and recently began work on Ursa Minors!, a comedic mini-series for Slave Labor Graphics. Check out his work at www.rantcomics.com.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 01:47 PM | Comments (26)

September 09, 2005

Permission to Marry Karen

The continuing saga of of Robert's lifelong love affair with Karen.

How I Married Karen — Chapter 25

I know that I have to do this. I know because, well, because I've seen it in the movies. You go into your fiance's father's book-lined study and you say, "Sir, I'm in love with your daughter and I'd like permission to marry her." And Spencer Tracy, wearing a red velvet smoking jacket, reaches over and hugs you and with tears in his eyes saying, "Welcome to the family, son."

And so, I'm over at Karen's house in Bensonhurst and I tell her, "I'm going to speak to your father." Karen looks at me like I'm absolutely insane.

"Speak to my father, about what?"

"I have to ask his permission to marry you?"

Karen says, "Are you sure about this?"

I nod my head, "Absolutely."

Karen rolls her eyes, "Okay, but..."

"But what?"

"But don't blame me if it doesn't go the way you think it should."

Like a moron, I say, "It'll be fine."

You'd think that by now I'd listen to Karen. But I've seen way too many movies. They have distorted my view of reality.

I make my way down to the basement. Remember the basement bathroom? I still wait for someone to mention that the floor is kind of... soggy.

Rabbi Singer is sitting behind his massive oak desk. It is piled high with volumes of Talmud and notebooks filled with notations and comments in Rabbi Singer's beautiful script. He wears a black suit and tie even in the house.

"Rabbi Singer?"

"Yes?"

"May I speak with you?"

"Come in."

I sit.

He stares at me. Karen has his eyes, his penetrating gaze.

"Nu?" His voice is deep, like an oboe.

I take a deep breath. "I love Karen very much. I'd like your permission to marry her."

He lights his cigar. He studies the glowing tip.

"How do you propose to support my daughter?"

"I have a job. I make a living."

"And what are your prospects?"

"I'm going to be a Hollywood screenwriter."

That was a mistake.

Karen's father gives me a dubious look and blows out a thick stream of smoke.

"Karen is very special you know, don't you?" he says

"I know. I know that." Helloooo! I've been in love with your daughter since fourth grade!

"I don't know anything about this Hollywood... I just want Karen to be happy and to have a good life."

"Me too."

I'm so articulate. And I feel about two inches tall. This is not going like that Spencer Tracy movie. Not at all. I should have listened to Karen.

Rabbi Singer nods his head as if listening to some inner voice.

"I trust you will learn?"

"Um, sure."

"Not just movies, Torah."

He smiles. He's making a joke. And I'm drenched in sweat.

"Of course."

"Good, good.."

He comes out from behind his desk and it's going to happen. The Spencer Tracy moment. I'm going to get The Hug. The welcome-to-the- family-gesture. But no, he just sails right past me. Goes to the landing of the stairs and calls up to Karen. No doubt she's sitting in the kitchen worrying about the incredibly dumb things I'm saying to her father.

Karen descends the stairs. Gosh, she is beautiful. I should not stare at her like this in front of her father. It's just not right. I'm practically drooling.

"So?" Says Karen's father

"So." Says Karen.

They speak in a powerful shorthand.

"When do you want to get married?"

Karen says: "August?"

He says: "Why not sooner?"

Karen says: June?"

He pulls out his pocket OU calendar, thumbs through the pages. Karen pulls out her calendar, whips through the pages. I don't have a calendar. I stand there, useless. I think about The Kurosawa Film Festival coming to New York in a few months. Karen and her father discuss wedding dates. I'll finally get to see The Hidden Fortress, the one great Kurosawa film I have never screened.

"Is this day good for you?" he asks.

"It would make it exactly a year after we met, sounds good to me." She says.

"Robert?"

"Um, sure." That's not the day The Hidden Fortress is being shown. I have that day memorized.

"Good, it's settled. Karen, tell your mother."

Karen goes upstairs.

I turn follow Karen.

"Robert?" says Rabbi Singer.

I turn back. My future father-in-law steps forward and hugs me.

"Mazal Tov."

"Mazal Tov."

I can't help it, I have tears in my eyes.

My Spencer Tracy moment.

Karen adds: I always told Robert that his fears of being rejected based on "poor prospects" were groundless, in fact, my parents wanted to speed up the whole engagement process, the sooner the wedding the better. Why wait till the end of the summer, all you need is three months to prepare for a wedding. Needless to say, I never knew of the conflict of dates with the film festival until today. Good move, Robert, for not telling me at the time.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:07 AM | Comments (11)

September 07, 2005

Seraphic Replay

The weekend replay schedule for my radio interview is here:

http://www.rightalk.com/weekend_show_replay.php?show_id=73

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 01:35 PM | Comments (1)

September 06, 2005

Seraphic Radio Interview

After my article, Help! I'm a Hollywood Republican, was published in The Jewish Press two weeks ago, I was besieged by dozens of phone calls, hundreds of e-mails and numerous requests for various interviews.

Just a few days ago, I finally finished answering every single letter that was written to me in response to the article. I'm proud that I did not resort to a form letter. My feeling is that if you go to the trouble of writing me an articulate letter, you deserve a personal response.

As far as interviews, well, I decided to keep a low profile. Look, I am not self-destructive. I did not write the article out of some perverse impulse. I wrote it because I am genuinely alarmed at what I see as Hollywood's surrender, if not downright collaboration with the Jihadists -- murderous barbarians who are mortal enemies of civilization.

After carefully studying the website of one potential interviewer, I finally agreed to appear on the Rightalk radio show and discuss my article, being a Republican in Hollywood, the way in which Hollywood liberals refuse to confront the Jihadists, our beloved son Ariel ZT"L, why we started Seraphic Press our Young Adult publishing company, and of course my critically acclaimed novel The Hebrew Kid and the Apache Maiden.

I was incredibly nervous before the interview. Pacing my office like some caged animal, I scolded myself for agreeing to appear. You see, in spite of the blog, in spite of how public Karen and I seem to live our life, we are genuinely shy and intensely private.

Just as I was about to faint into a cowardly puddle, the phone chimed and the interview, well, as all the toothless guests on Jerry Springer say: "It just happened."

Not that I ever watch Jerry Springer.

Anyway, you can link to www.rightalk.com the show replays every hour for the next 24 hours and then again all weekend. The weekend schedule isn't up yet but it will be up soon at: http://rightalk.com/weekend_show_replay.php?show_id=73Let us know what you think.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 02:05 PM | Comments (18)

Seraphic Nose Job(s)

"Rachel (not her real name) looks great doesn't she?"
"Well of course she had her nose done."

It is Shabbos afternoon. Lunch at the Avrech home. Offspring #3 has three friends over for the Shabbos meal, and so counting Karen and OS #3 there are 5 girls and one male -- me.

There are moments in life that are so perfect there is no way they could have been planned.

I sit back and I'm pretty sure that I do not stop smiling for the entire meal. Why? Because as far as the girls are concerned I might as well be invisible. They are so deeply involved in their conversation, the give and take is so rapid, steeped in such teenage shorthand that I have to concentrate hard to extract every level of meaning as the sentences fly past at the speed of light.

I feeel like the anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss among some primitive Brazilian tribe. Except this tribe is Jewish Yeshiva teenagers who wear Juicy, and D&G. Yet a few of them also daven, pray, with the kind of fervor that just breaks your heart, and if you think they're just bratty materialistic girls you are very wrong for all of them have spent the summer performing one amazing charity project of one kind or another.

But the topic at hand is nose jobs.

Me, I thought that Rachel did look different, better. Naive male that I am I just naturally assumed that she outgrew her awkward stage and just, you know, flourished.

A lot I know.

Or as my mother Z"L would have said: "She grew into her face."
By the way, does that ever happen?

But here's the thing about this conversation that is so revealing. The girls are not making fun of the girls who have had nose jobs. The opposite. They are relieved. They are genuinely happy for them.

The central feeling is one of simple generosity and it boils down to this: the young women were miserable because their noses were either too big or crooked and now, post-surgery, well now they're so much happier. And it's not as if the nose jobs are all that radical. Each friend they discuss has had surgery that suits them. Every nose job is appropriate, subtle.

There is a whole world of Jewish nose job jokes. You can fill shelves with novels and short stories that have been written on the subject. There is more than a little bit of self-loathing in this culture. Take a look at the work of Philip Roth and writers of his generation. Their work fairly drips with contempt for Jewish women in general, and in particular for Jewish women who dare to try and be more beautiful.

Thank G-d, those days are over. Modern observant girls are confident and sassy and have absolutely no qualms about improving their looks.

I sit at the Shabbos, Sabbath lunch table and watch in amazement as the girls rock with laughter and compare noses.

"Where do you get your nose, are you adopted?"
"You're sooooo lucky, you've got a ski slope nose."
"I've got a little button, I wish it were just a little bigger."
"I want a nose job."
"No, your nose is perfect!"

Karen asks me if maybe she should do something with her nose.
I answer with real honesty.
"You're the most beautiful woman I have ever known. You're nose is perfect."
Karen smiles, starts clearing off the table, but she stops at a mirror and gravely studies her reflection for a few seconds.

No matter what any male says, it is women who are their own harshest critics. And in the end I suspect that women alter their looks more for themselves than for the approving gaze of any man.

Karen adds: When Robert told me he wanted to write about the contempt in post war literature for Jewish women who had nose jobs, I didn't relate to it. Now, after reading his comments I realize there is an element Robert neglected to write about that is totally foreign to the current generation.

Women of the fifties were mocked for wanting to look "less Jewish." It was related to ideas of anti-Semitism, that thank goodness are totally alien to our girls. They simply want to be more beautiful, and are not hiding their Jewishness.

Of course, there are those who will argue that we have adopted the WASP standards of beauty. However, If you raised this point to our teenagers they would look at you in complete bewilderment, having absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 07:33 AM | Comments (30)

September 01, 2005

Tethered

Of all the horrendous scenes from Hurricane Katrina that Karen and I have watched, the single image that has sent us reeling is of a middle aged daughter dragging the corpse of her father on an inflatable mattress; he is tightly, lovingly wrapped in white sheets.

The dutiful daughter, eyes downcast, explains to the newscaster: "Daddy, he wuz on the oxygen in order to breathe, but then the oxygen, it plum ran out, and..." The daughter shrugs and shakes her head in despair. Trembling from either cold or emotion, it's hard to tell which, she moves on with incredible dignity, drags her father away from the pitiless gaze of the camera, a tiny figure in an immense watery landscape that looks, my gosh, like Bangladesh.

For the last year of Ariel's ZT"L life, he was a tethered to oxygen cannisters in one form or another. Severel times a night, Karen and I would take turns, climb out of bed, pad downstairs, slip into Ariel's room and check the level and flow of the oxygen.

"He's still breathing," we'd assure one another and go back to a troubled sleep.

Now, two years after Ariel's death, I still wake in the middle of the night and tell myself that I have to check his oxygen, and then abruptly I realize that no, I don't have to, for he is no longer breathing. And I feel, in the words of a friend who also lost a child "like this dead thing."

Sometimes, I just lie back in bed, hold my breath as long as I can, until my lungs are searing and feel like they are going to explode, but of course they won't and of course I need the oxygen so I gulp air, gulp oxygen, gulp life, and miss Ariel so very much that I have no idea how I'm going to get through another day.

I wonder if that dutiful daughter is still pulling her father's corpse through the water; in a way, I guess she'll always be hauling him along, for we are all carrying someone, aren't we?

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:30 AM | Comments (31)