ItSeemstoMe

Questions to the World #19-World Peace

Question # 19

How do you think we can achieve peace on Earth andor good will toward humankind?

More Holiday Nostalgia

Elana Centor at Funny Business posted a great comment on my earlier post on a Jew's View of Christmas. Elana, obviously a Bagel Sister, talked about flashbacks of the New Jersey Turnpike whenever she hears the Little Drummer Boy relentlessly on the radio. I too am haunted by memories of the New Jersey Turnpike, whenever I hear that redundant rumpa-bum-bum. y now the little drummer kid is probably 180 years old, but that's another story.

I got stranded by a blizzard, one Christmas Eve, with college buddies trying t make it to Florida for school vacation.  It pelted snow so hard, they closed the road and we spent most of the night drinking coffee in a jammed roadside restaurant.  The Drummer just played over-and-over again.

But Elana's touch into my memory bank touched another chord, one I've been thinking about a lot lately.  Driving to Florida were four kids, two Jewish, one Protestant and one Catholic.  In those days, we kidded each other a lot about each other's religion or lack of it. It was delivered-and received-in good fun back in the early 60s.

It was Like that growing up in New Bedford, Mass., in the 1950s as well. We used to have interfaith dances, at our Jewish Community Center, the Catholic Youth Organization (CYO)annex and the local YMCA. Some of the best times of my youth were spent with buddies and sports team-mates of different religion.  Some of the most exciting moments of my youth were spent with Christian girls in the back seats of those wonderfully large cars of the 1950s, but that too, is another story.

In all of it, there was a lot of kidding  But there was a special shared respect.  We went t each other's homes. I went to Midnight Mass several years in a row on Christmas Eve, after getting into my friend Robert Pacheco's family's spike eggnog.  t was an annual high point. The Catholic kids joked about confession and we joked about our own fire and brimstone Rabbi. We were kids.  We came from homes where both parents worked and the mortgage got paid but no one got ahead. We had more in common with each other than we did with the so called leaders of our religious communities.

But two things happened. We grew up for one, and as we did so, the world around us seemed to have become far less ecumenical and even further less tolerant. A lot us went off to college, nearly all being the first of their families to do so. Those who did not stayed in New Bedford.  They remained good friends with each other but the rest of us moved on and scattered.

I'm still interfaith in my friendships.  I'm still convinced that people of varied races, religions and hues are essentially alike at the core, but unfortunately separated by cultures. Ad cultures everywhere seem to me today more entrenched is staying separated than they were when I was hanging out with the guys outside Finni's Pharmacy on Roche Street in New Bedford, Mass.

I am currently living a better life than I have ever had. But in the sense that the ecumenism's, which so shared the attitudes I have today seems to me to be on the wane, and this time of year, it makes me particularly sad.

But in any case, Elana, thanks for the memory flashback.

A Jew's View of Christmas

This is something I wrote two years back.  I'm kind of proud of this one, so I've decided to post it as an annual tradition. Previously, I've posted it on Christmas Eve, but I know more people are reading blogs this week then they will be on Christmas day. I hope you enjoy it:

"I grew up in the 1950s in New Bedford, Mass., a second-tier East Coast city. Christmas was the biggest day of the year. School was closed. Parents had rare paid days off. There was usually snow on the ground and the abundant churches would chime carols from bell towers all day. Even if you were a Jewish kid and you knew it wasn’t for you, you couldn’t help but share in the excitement. My parents, who were born in Europe at a time when it was unfortunate to be Jewish, were unable to conceal their own ambivalence. Our small family would drive neighborhoods admiring decorations. We once ventured all the way to Boston--a whole hour's drive-- where we saw live reindeer fenced in on Boston Commons beside a large illuminated plastic nativity scene. More than once, my mother cooked a turkey on Christmas day and family would come—but we never, ever admitted that the celebration had a relationship to Christmas. There were no stockings hung by our chimney with care, no bulbous piles of loot, no sweet smell of pine trees in our living room.

Christmas was a source of huge confusion for me as a boy and teenager. Perhaps it still is.

As a Jewish kid, we had Chanukah. But the Festival of Lights, as it is called, seemed pale in the shadow of all that Christmas glitter of tinsel and bright blinking bulbs. Christmas was everywhere in the windows of homes and stores, on lawns in parks and even on rooftops. Yes, it was in the schools and no one even thought of objecting at that time.  I still wouldn't.

Each Chanukah, my grandfather, a white-haired kindly old man gave me “gelt,” in the form of a silver dollar. A dollar was big time back then, but how could my grandfather ever compete with the other white-haired guy in the red suit with the elves, the flying sleigh and all his well-disguised doubles in department stores? I liked getting a gift each of the eight days of Chanukah, even if half was only clothing. But while my Christian friends had only a single day, it seemed to be a jackpot. In January. when we went back to Betsy B. Winslow School, I’d hear glee-filled reports of how they had awakened Dec. 25 to the “Big Payoff.” They reported on entire living rooms filled with Schwinn bikes, Lionel Trains, American Flyer wagons and Junior Builder erector sets and all they really had to do was leave out some faith-based milk and cookies one the Eve. Perhaps their reports were filled with the hyperbole of childhood, but I listened with childhoods naivete.

Then there were the miracles. Theirs was the birth of God’s son on a night when animals talked. Ours was that a temple light burned for a long time. Big deal. Our most popular Chanukah song was, “Dreydle, Dreydle, Dreydle,” which has the same melodic merit as “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” Not quite on par with “Silent Night,” “First Noel” or even, for that matter, “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Our Holiday food featured potato latkas, still a personal, cholesterol-soaked favorite, but we had no Mormon Tabernacle Choir, no TV special with Perry Como crooning “Ave Maria.“ We never dashed through the snow, laughing even part of the way.

But Chanukah had one special part for a Jewish kid in that era-- latent machismo. Judah Maccabee had led a successful guerrilla war against the previously undefeated Roman Legions, making himself the central figure in the whole Chanukah tale. Maccabee had kicked some serious Roman butt back when the Romans were the undefeated champs. It made me proud. He was our Rocky, our Joltin' Joe Dimaggio, Jackie Robinson. He wasn't no wimp as Jewish kids were often considered to be in the 50s.

I started remembering all this yesterday, while driving through the sad city of East Palo Alto (EPA). A few years back, EPA had the highest murder rate in the country--outdoing Detroit, New York City and Oakland. They say it’s a lot better now that they’ve brought in a Home Depot, Ikea, Sun Microsystems headquarters. But as I sat at a traffic light watching a packaged goods deal between a dude in a long coat and a kid on a bike, I saw a sign that reminded me about what I envied most about Christmas. It hung in huge, slightly lopsided letters across University Avenue.

It said: “Peace on Earth.” There wasn’t space I guess, for the tagline, which of course is, “Good will toward men.”

Tomorrow will be my 60th Christmas. It was a great many Christmases ago when I first heard the words, and fewer Christmas ago when I came to understand the bigness of the concept and the power of the thought. Peace on Earth is much, much bigger than Maccabee kicking Roman butt. Not too many years ago, I met Paula who is now my wife. She loved Christmas like the kids in TV programs sponsored by Hallmark. She loved the planning, and decorating; the gifting and wrapping and opening and putting ribbons on her head; she loved the cooking and filling the house with unlikely assortments of people who somehow enjoyed each other. Her zeal put me at odds with my own deep and ambiguous feelings about the holiday. I’ve never been able to explain them to her in any way that makes sense and perhaps that’s what I’m trying to do in this particular blog.

There are now two things special about Christmas for me. The first is the big thought, dream or illusion of peace on earth and goodwill between its many inhabitants--Christians Jews, Muslims, Hindus,  atheists and even Republicans. I don’t pray, but I do hope. If you do pray for these issues, I hope they come through and I will be grateful to you.

The second is smaller and more personal. It’s about Paula and how she catches the season’s joy as if it were something contagious. Whatever the germ, I’ve caught it as I find myself looking forward to the planning, and decorating; the gifting, wrapping and opening--albeit without ribbons on my head. Tomorrow our home will filled with unlikely assortments of people and I already know it will work out just fine.

Happy holidays, whichever you choose to observe, and may the New Year bring all of us closer to peace on Earth."