Daughters!

Tradition!    If you think of me as overly sentimental because I can’t even read Wikipedia’s synopsis of Fiddler On The Roof without tearing up, that’s O.K. In the decades since I first saw Tevye, Golde, and their daughters, my relationship to them and to the musical has deepened.

Those years have etched their lessons; I’ve witnessed tragic anti-Semitism in its modern forms. So, too, the joy I’ve shared with my wonderful daughters ties me to Tevye and his. Indeed, every song from Fiddler attaches its melody to my emotional history. Not only that, but I’ve found that selling schmattas has often been just as humbling as wearing the yoke of a dairy cart.

Even now, as I write this, I think of “Sunrise, Sunset” and swallow hard. No longer do I govern my children; they fend for themselves. My reality and its norms are no longer theirs.

And that is as it should be. Although I feel as if I’ve known that for a long while, the true test of my knowing came when both established residence in Jerusalem. To them, Israel is like the big back yard I once enjoyed. It’s become as much a home to them as my small city is to me. My generational influence has been eclipsed.

“Sunrise, Sunset” beckons. As I dry my eyes, I applaud them, their intelligence, their achievement, their love of life, their radiant humanity. Me, from my American Anatevka, couldn’t be more proud.

Perhaps that’s a sign I’ve slowed a step or two. More and more, they explain to me what they’re doing and why out of kindness; their explanations shine light on the shadow I’m becoming.

And that’s O.K. My shield and my influence were meant to be temporary; they were meant to paint over the coating I applied to the canvas of their lives. And they have.

In no time, my older daughter will be a nurse, my younger a Rabbi. They are fulfilling dreams of their making. I sing “Sunrise, Sunset”; near its end, a peace sweeps over me.

Of course, like Tevye, my eyes are watchful, mindful of perils they still might not see. “Buy gas masks,” I implore my older daughter and her husband. “Stockpile food,” I suggest. They’ve let me know, in light of Iranian threats, they’ve done both.

To my younger, an outspoken reformer with a uniquely balanced perspective, I recently wrote to ask that she let me know she wasn’t one of the ten women arrested at the Kotel, the Western Wall in Jerusalem. I’d read about the group of women who were protesting for equal rights to pray where and how they wanted at the ancient Temple wall.

Praying as men did there was officially forbidden to them. Although I strongly support my daughter’s right to express herself in prayer, I had hoped she hadn’t been imprisoned for doing so.

That was my concern. From here in America, it followed my earlier one about her hiking in the Negev when IDF planes flew overhead en route to the skirmish in Gaza. For her, I want safety so that she can mix prayer and protest with the joy she brings to life.

When she responded, I was relieved, but saddened too. She was not one of the ten women arrested, but her prayer shawl, my Dad’s tallis I had given her before she left for Jerusalem, had been confiscated! Both to her and to me, Dad’s tallis is a treasure.

So many times, it had transferred his kiss to our Torah.

Fortunately, it was returned eventually. In the meantime, my daughter, along with the other Women of the Wall, waited outside the police station for their comrades to be freed. Hours later, they were.

Eloquently, my daughter described her feelings about limitations imposed on women, traditional limitations that have hardened into what passes as halakha or law. She wrote:

… They told us that the Wall is a place where they follow Jewish law (as if we had no idea what Jewish law was). We told them that there is no halakha about women wearing tallitot (this is true… a tallis is custom, not law), but they ignored us.  When they took Pop-Pop’s tallis, I cried…

Breathing deeply, I tried to return to the sounds of “Sunrise, Sunset” without success. My daughter’s stirring words had blocked the melody:

… We prayed, we were interrupted several times by police, but we kept praying, and it was so holy and beautiful. The men who came along in support (including Adam and several Israeli Paratroopers who had liberated the Wall in 1967) stood behind us or near us on the men’s side…

Every semester, I mention to my classes that, for almost twenty years of Jordanian control of the Western Wall, Jews were not allowed to pray at that Jewish holy site. And now my daughter is asking for women to be allowed there. It’s a battle she may wage for a while; the Tevye in me knows that. At least, she’s not alone. She writes:

… The Israel-loving idealist in me was crushed, watching the paratroopers who had liberated the Kotel shake their heads and say that this sort of sectarian control was not what they fought for.

In closing, she sent two websites for me to view. I’ll share them along with my hope that change that must come will and that our most loving prayers will soon connect all of us fiddlers on the roof.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/jerusalem-police-detain-10-women-at-western-wall-after-largest-monthly-gathering-yet.premium-1.502748

http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/police-arrest-10-women-of-the-wall-as-liberating-paratroopers-watch/2013/02/11/

                                                                     B. Koplen 2/12/13

                                               

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in the beginning...

Cultural Genesis Friday morning lectures remain a challenge. Thursday nights I toss and turn. Again and again, I consider new approaches to issues I want my classes to understand. Will my methods work? Are there gaps of reason that might leave new ideas unconnected? Peace finally comes to me when I reconcile myself to accepting that, even if my attempt fails, I’ll learn why it did.

In that sense, my students are critical to the process of education---theirs and mine. On Friday, I wanted to convey the origins of culture(s) and how the development of their component parts serve as microcosmic insights into the design and spread of civilizations. The big challenge was for my students to understand all of that in four minutes. And in that short time, they would be asked to teach themselves.

To do that, I separated them into two groups. Each group was set in a different room. Both groups received the same instructions: they could not use pencils or paper. Nor could they use words!

In four minutes, each group had to find a way to organize themselves to defend against invasion by either an unfriendly group (or tribe) or a savage animal. Also, they were asked to assign role models for each gender.

Twice I checked on each group. The second time, I let them know they only had two minutes remaining.

When they returned to my class, both groups reported that they had developed a method of communicating. Both were similar; one group had one of its members go to the outside of their cave. When that member attempted to enter, he or she was blocked.

The other group also instructed one member to act as an invader. When that person approached the group, he or she was kicked and attacked, driven away.

“Who thought of this?” I asked each group.

A man from each team raised his hand.

“Good,” I said. “Without saying it, you showed your group that leadership was important.”

It seemed that both men beamed. They appeared to like being leaders. I compared

their leadership roles to those of shamans, the visionaries of the first human tribal groups who were able to communicate with or translate the intentions and designs of the spirit world.

Shamans also shaped the personality of the group. Whether peaceful or menacing, the leaders set the standard for the group to follow.

That seemed to make sense; my hope was that they wanted to learn more. To facilitate that, I showed them a 1988 video, Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers, a Mystic Fire documentary prepared for PBS. (That video was the third of five tapes in the series.)

As Campbell explained myths from different groups and societies around the world, he illustrated how all of them sought to comprehend and connect with the unknown,

the spiritual shadow of the concrete world. Although each culture was different, each had the same goal.

When I explained that every culture is learned and that each one is ethnocentric (certain that it knows its approach is best), they were quietly assimilating Campbell’s message.

Indeed, they had felt what it was like to take part in the rudiments of cultural creation. Next week, they’ll learn how to differentiate cultures as they grow from societies and nations into civilizations.

                                                     B. Koplen 2/10/13

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More than a battle of words...

Get it right!   It wasn’t an ordinary hunting trip. Almost over, he listened for his Dad; they’d planned to leave the woods together. He called again but there was no response. Finding his Dad was the only thing on his mind. Knowing it would be dark soon, he knew he had to hurry; he also knew he couldn’t panic.

What happened next has seemed a miracle to him ever since. Indeed, it inspired him to choose his profession. In the silence that replaced sounds his Dad should have made, he looked up, I think, and asked for guidance. His Dad was in a deer blind, one of many, in a tree. Within minutes, he found his Dad, unconscious, but alive. His Dad had fallen; his father’s hunting rifle was by his side.

From that day, he has been a minister. Years later, having completed his degree, he has started his own church. His Mom and Dad were among the first to join.

That heartwarming story is reminiscent of another that could be seen as being equally miraculous. Although it also involves a father and his son, the son, Elian Gonzales, was in mortal danger. Only six, Elian survived when the metal dingy that carried his mother and him, among others, capsized in ten to twelve foot seas en route from Cuba to America’s Florida coast. How Elian survived is told by the fisherman who found him:

QUESTION: What about the rescue, if you could? Tell us about the circumstances, please? What did he look like? Tell us what it seemed like?

CIANCIO: It was rough. We were in rough, rough waters, man. We were in really rough waters. We were fishing. We were out there, and it was just a, you know, one of those days, man, and we came across an inner tube in the water. We went by the inner tube. It looked like a doll was in there. We passed the inner tube. We were fishing for mahi-mahi. I know everybody keeps thinking a dolphin; we were fishing for mahi-mahi, fish you eat. As we went by there, we got -- both lines went off, we got two fish, right under the inner tube. We joked about it. We said what a sick joke. And we thought it was a joke that somebody tied a doll to an inner tube. That's what it looked like. (Elián González and the Cuban crisis: fallout from a big row ... [Feb 21, 2010] The Elián González saga ended abruptly ... from sharks and guide his tyre-raft to safety. ... off Fort Lauderdale saw what they thought ... www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/21/elian-gonzalez-cuba... )

Obvious questions about Elian’s safety beg to be answered. Why would anyone risk such a difficult crossing of more than 90 miles in rough seas in such a meager craft? And why would they take a child? Part of the reason relates to America’s embargo of Cuba, an embargo that continues due to anti-Castro Cuban-American exiles:

… The central column of Cuban politics in Miami has always been the Cuban American National Foundation, in its heyday the most powerful national lobby in Washington DC apart from Israel's. The CANF had nurtured as articles of faith: total embargo against Cuba, as close as was possible to a travel ban, and restrictions on remittances and all financial or commercial transactions. And then, in 1999, the foundation raised the stakes by attempting to keep Elián in Miami – a campaign now bitterly regretted by its president, Francisco "Pepe" Hernández…(Elián González and the Cuban crisis: fallout from a big row ... [Feb 21, 2010] Elián's young mother, Elizabeth Brotons, drowned at sea ... to his father in Cuba.

www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/21/elian-gonzalez-cuba...)

Our answer to its crippling effects on that country is a policy that states it’s illegal to enter America or land on its coast without permission. However, our Cuba Adjustment Act stipulates that any Cuban who eludes our Coast Guard and makes it to shore can stay here and will be granted citizenship!

America’s mixed message to Cubans who want to flee Cuba has proved deadly to many who have sought to leave Cuba that way. With regard to Elian, it would prove deadly to his mother and her lover, purported instigator of the deadly crossing, Lázaro Munero. Nobel laureate, Gabriel García Márquez, in an op-ed to the New York Times on March 29, 2000, wrote:

On Friday, when Juan Miguel González went to school to pick up his son Elián for the weekend, he was told that Elizabet Brotons, his ex-wife and the boy's mother, had taken Elián at midday and had not brought him back in the afternoon. In his routine as a divorced father, this seemed normal to Juan Miguel. From the time when he and Elizabet had separated two years earlier, on the most amicable terms, the boy had lived with his father and spent every other day at his mother's house. But Elizabet's door was padlocked over the weekend and on Monday as well, and Juan Miguel began to make inquiries. This was how he learned the bad news that was already becoming common knowledge in the city of Cárdenas: Elián's mother had left with him for Miami, with 12 other people, in an aluminum boat 5 1/2 meters long, with no life preservers and a decrepit motor. 
It was Nov. 22, 1999. "My life ended that day," Juan Miguel said four months later…

…After their divorce, Juan Miguel and Elizabet continued living together with their son in Cárdenas -- where all the protagonists in this drama were born, and where they lived -- until she fell in love with Lázaro Rafael Munero, a neighborhood tough. Juan Miguel subsequently married Nelsy Carmeta and had a son, who is now 6 months old.

Juan Miguel did not have to waste time finding out where Elián was, because in the Caribbean everybody knows everything -- "even before it happens," as one of my informants told me. Everyone knew that the leader of the adventure was Lázaro Munero, who had made at least two clandestine trips to the United States to prepare the way. He had the contacts and nerve to take along not only Elizabet and her son, but also a younger brother, his father, who was over 70, and his mother, who was recovering from a heart attack. Lázaro's partner in the enterprise took his entire family… (Cuba Junky - Cuba Elian Gonzalez Gabriel García Márquez About Elian González: By ... Everyone knew that the leader of the adventure was Lázaro Munero, ...verlaan1.home.xs4all.nl/cuba/article-elian.html -)

Tragic as this is, one must question its relevance almost thirteen years later. In large part, it’s due to my desire to correct a widely published article about Elian by Humberto Fontova:

‪http://frontpagemag.com -Chuck Hagel’s Trust in Fidel Castro Posted By Humberto Fontova On February 4, 2013

… The evidence —  frantically buried by the media-Democratic-Castroite complex — was overwhelming. Mauricio Vicent, a reporter for Madrid newspaper El Pais, wrote that during that first week he’d visited Elian’s hometown of Cardenas and talked with Elian’s father, Juan Miguel, along with other family members and friends. All confirmed that Juan Miguel had always longed for his son Elian to flee to the United State. Shortly after Elian’s rescue, his father had even applied for a U.S. visa.

That version of Elian’s return to his father is at odds with too many reliable sources. One is CNN:

CNN Transcript - Breaking News: Elian Gonzalez is Reunited ...
Breaking News Elian Gonzalez is Reunited With His Father Aired April 22, 2000 - 9:59 a.m. ET THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY ...
transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0004/22/bn.06.html –

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Haunting images capture the moment. Outraged relatives seize the initiative.

O'BRIEN: All right. And, Bill, just a final note here. You spent some time with him [Elian’s father] and you've had an opportunity to size him up face-to-face. Is he a man of genuine intentions in your opinion?

PRESS: In my opinion, he is. I was very impressed with how strong he was, how articulate he was, how passionate he was, and that he really was speaking from the heart. He really was speaking his own intentions, and there was no gun to his head, there was no pressure on what he was saying. As I pointed out, he told me he had many opportunities to flee if he wanted to. He genuinely was happy if he could get his son and go back to Cuba. I do believe he is a man of integrity. I think he's a father who wants to be with his son and now he is.

O'BRIEN: Bill Press, our host of "CROSSFIRE," who had an opportunity to break bread with Juan Miguel Gonzalez last night by coincidence, thanks for shedding some light on him.

Although I’ve corroborated this with many other sources, the one I absolutely trust is one of Cuba’s most revered news reporters, a man I met in Havana more than a year before Elian landed in America. His family is dear to me. Indeed, in the many years that have passed, we have never lost touch. Although he did not know of Bill Press’ CNN interview with Elian’s father, he sent this message about the reunion of father and son:

…He [Elian’s father] flew to Washington with his new wife, his newly born son, Elian's cousin, a pediatrician, and a teacher. He had freedom of movement, expression and meeting there... He even met Janet Reno and one more high-ranking State Dept. official. Met lawyers, attended court hearings. If he would have liked to stay, he had all the freedom to do it, and with all his family, plus Elian. Another proposal by the Cuban Gvt was that Elian's Miami cousin who had acted or said would act as the legal mother to the boy, could come to Cuba any time to spend time with him. No one can tell whether she did.

For many more reasons than my essay relates, reuniting good fathers with their children must be a priority. There’s a special place in my heart for Moms who help make that happen. Perhaps Fontova should have focused on that instead.

                                           B. Koplen 2/6/13

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something to hope for

A happier ending      I should have seen it coming. Stuck somewhere between seething with anger and shuddering with tears, I stopped my car in a vacant parking lot. I just needed to take deep breaths. I’d just finished listening to the last of Matchstick Men by Eric Garcia as read by Stanley Tucci. At the very end of the fifth and final disc, I knew I, the reader/listener, had been conned.

“Calm down, Barry,” I can hear you telling me, “it was just a book.”

How would I answer you so that you’d know that, for me, the writer had crossed, brutally crossed, what I regarded as a redline.

In short, the book tells the story of two flimflammers who pull one last con. And they seem to get caught. That’s distressing because Roy, the meticulous and careful one, wants to give up his crooked ways for the best of reasons. He wants to do honest work so that he can be a full time father to a child he’d recently found was his.

Much of the second part of the story was about the father-daughter reunion. Roy had suspected he had a child because the girl’s mother had ended her relationship with Roy during her pregnancy. For almost fifteen years, she’d refused to see or talk to Roy because he’d been abusive at the end of their relationship.

When the daughter finds then initiates a relationship with Roy, Roy tells her to say hello to her mother. Roy’s daughter reports that the mother doesn’t ever want to hear about Roy. He accepts that; the daughter spends more and more time with Roy.

After a psychologist tells Roy his OCD is due to his angst about his daughter, Roy understands, opens himself to a loving relationship with her. He wants to go to court to gain custody. For all the right reasons, I was cheering. I knew what it was like to regain the love of a one lost child.

But I was reading my story into that of Matchstick Men. My tears were wasted. According to the text, Roy escapes imprisonment due to an unlikely getaway. Unfortunately, he’s separated from his daughter who is in hiding. He’s told that she’ll get in touch with him.

She doesn’t. Roy does the unthinkable; he goes to see her mother. “We never had a child.” She says something like that to him. “I had an abortion,” she explains.

He wants her to be lying. But she’s not. Roy had been conned in the worst way. After hearing that, as I was parked in my car, I thought I would vomit. Matchstick Men should come with a warning: If you’ve ever lost a child to divorce, this book could be emotionally harmful.

Four days have passed; I’m still thinking of throwing away my copy of Matchstick Men. It’s been sitting by my keyboard like a piece of evidence from a sordid crime. Should I discard it?

I didn’t want to share it. Neither did I want to stare at it any more. Stymied, I went to work; I knew that figuring out a customer’s shirt size would be a sane distraction.

Someone called to me. I turned to see an old friend. He wanted to talk. In private.

We left the sales floor. Although he hadn’t said a word, I thought I knew what he might say.

For years, he and his wife had wanted a child, had decided to adopt. But nothing had happened; they were childless. I sensed he was about to tell about some very good news.

He did. They had been approached about adopting an infant.

“What do you think?” he asked, after giving me the details.

I knew how much it meant to him to be a father. As I shared my thoughts, I fought the tremors that had begun to rumble inside me. Being a father changes a man. Forever. I couldn’t be more grateful for having learned that.

I sensed my friend had learned it too. I thought of Matchstick Men and, as he left, prayed that Roy’s loss would be nothing more than the tasteless fiction it is, that my friend would get to be the incredible father to an infant child in dire need of loving parents.

As I throw the Matchstick CD’s into my trashcan, I’m focused instead on an image of my friend and his wife with that child in their arms, their own.

                                                                B.Koplen 2/2/13

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