And How Do You Take Your God?

One of the blessings of being a liberal Jew is that you can take your God any way you like him.

It’s something like your choice of orange juice. God can have no palpable existence, some palpable existence, or loads o’ palpable existence.

And although your particular conception of Yahweh may color how you live your life and what customs and practices are important to you, it doesn’t change the feelings most of us have about being Jewish or a part of the Jewish people.

Only a disappointing movie from Woody Allen can do that.

How do I take my God?

I have personally never subscribed to the view that God is an old man in flowing robes with a long white beard who lives on a mountain.  Jews don’t go to the mountains, especially in Pennsylvania!   God would have a nice condominium down the shore.

But what does the entity paying the condo fees look like? And is he always good for it?

In depicting God, many liberal Jews slightly alter the language of certain prayers so as to not imply that God is male. For example:

"Blessed art thou, o Lord our God, Sovereign of the Universe ….  And I say Sovereign of the Universe instead of King of the Universe in case You, O Lord, turn out to be a Chick …. who createst the fruit of the vine."

The balance of the blessing after the opening is chanted in the traditional manner because  the gender of who's running the universe doesn't really matter, it’s either a good vintage or it isn’t.

Unfortunately injecting gender neutrality into "the Almighty Mix" only makes me think of gender all the more. This raises a number of vexing and profound questions of Biblical scholarship and interpretation such as:

• "So how’s the old broad holding up after all these years anyway?"

• "She seeing anybody?"

• "What if I pray to God and she doesn’t get back to me? I thought we had something!"

Perhaps most importantly, Liberal Judaism allows us to more readily grapple with the central question about the nature of God, Blessed be He or She. Why the heck is God so often depicted as an unvarnished and unmitigated louse whose most favorite hobby is smiting?

The Holy Scriptures says he took out Onan for doing what you and I have all our lives more or less raised to high art.

Don’t give me that innocent look!  God has pictures, if not video.

He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone because a handful of residents were short sheeting beds, and he didn’t even explain what brimstone is or whether he got a good deal on it. Similarly he flooded all of earth but first instructed Noah to build a massive ark, well aware that Jews aren’t handy.

I take it all with a grain of salt, whether you believe the salt came from Lot’s wife or the good folks at Morton's.

Perhaps God’s not bad or ill-tempered, he just doesn’t view it as a full-time job. Or it might be that humans were simply projecting onto Hashem what they themselves were itching to do were they themselves to get promoted to the big job in the sky! Maybe God doesn't need anger management after all.  Just a better press agent.

Ultimately the question we all face is:

Do our teachings, customs, and guilt all come from one transcendent being who is everywhere and anywhere at once (and boy are his arms tired!),  or do they come from the wisdom and traditions of a people who have throughout history been perpetually playing the dual roles of both people and transcendent being, sort of like Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in Some Like it Hot?

 So how do you take your God?

Some palpable? Loads o’palpable? Or no palp at all?  It’s all up to you.

And I believe that’s the way he or she would want it. 

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Not a Member of the Tribe?

     Hashem - Hebrew word used to denote God.
     Onan - if you don't know this one, look it up, dude!  You'll relate.

To Sing or Not to Sing

It has always bothered me that I cannot sing.

Carry a tune? I can’t even lift one.

My semester-by-semester  grades in Vocal Music on my junior high report card read like the provocative bra size of a woman whom if I ever met I would most certainly propose to on the spot!

D .... D .... D .... D

My musical disability, however, has never prevented me from singing.  I sing in the shower, in the car, and occasionally just while walking down the street.

Since I sound something like the late actor John Wayne performing scat selections from the Ella Fitzgerald Songbooks, sometimes when I’m traipsing through Philadelphia warbling Stairway to Heaven, people hustle their children across the street as though I were a drooling degenerate instead of merely a menace to the membranes of the inner ear. 

Sadly my musical infirmity has been passed on to my 16 year old son Brandon, whose vocal stylings sound as if they were specially arranged just for him by John McLaughlin of The McLaughlin Group.   Sometimes even I want to tell him to shut the hell up!

But I know how it is; music is in our very souls!

Too bad it isn’t in our diaphragms.

Recently Brandon and I both took in the hottest show on Broadway, The Book of Mormon. Watching the show, I envisioned myself singing and dancing with the cast and earning a thunderous standing ovation as admiring audience members turned their smiling and winking faces towards one another as if to say

 "Wow! An ungainly overage  Jewish star is born!”

Brandon probably had a similar fantasy,  except it most likely also entailed 16-year-old female members of the audience hurling undergarments at him.  In my fantasy, women in my peer group were heaving intimate objects as well --- in this instance, dentures.

Exiting the show, the two of us couldn’t help but perform a duet of the show's signature song.

"I believe ...." I belted out with the same melodious vocal quality I produce after eating clams at Moe's House of Five Day Old Seafood.

"....  that one day I'll have my own planet!" chimed in Brandon, performing in a manner that would inspire many to want to blast him off to that planet far sooner than he'd intended.

Even in a town as jaded as New York, passersby glared.  A mounted policeman's horse reared in panic, throwing the officer into a Starbucks storefront window and just narrowly missing a Starbucks storefront window!

A group of school children wept.

It was apparent Brandon and I were costing musical theater countless fans with every mega off-key note we sang.

“Bran," I said, “Maybe we ought to cut the singing. People are staring at us and not  for the purpose of lining up the affectionate tossing of undergarments!"

"Why, Dad? We're on Broadway in the coolest city in the world.  It's fun!"  

“Yes, but when the people here ….”

“Just don’t give a crap, Dad.  Just enjoy!"

Brandon, of course, was right.  He usually is.

I jumped back into I Believe from The Book of Mormon and scatted it as only the late Duke could!

For all The Big Apple to enjoy. 

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An Open Letter to the Non-Millionaires of America

       

                          Senators Gillibrand and Landrieu

If you'd like to talk about them, just call.  
 Because we care! 

We, the members of the Republican Party of the United States of America, truly care about each and every one of you.

Especially when we’re on the back nine.

Because we care, we’re letting you know that shortly we’ll be slashing to ribbons every single wasteful spendthrift social entitlement program in the United States budget, including Medicare, Social Security, and Free Giveaways of Government Surplus Cardboard. There will not even be any ribbons left after we slash them to ribbons because we plan to slash the ribbons to ribbons as well. 

But don’t worry, dear underfunded friends.  You won’t be hurt in the least!  All you need do is become a millionaire before the cuts take effect.

You could:

 1) Have passionate and repeated sex with a member of the Obama Administration or a Democratic member of Congress, then blackmail him or her for millions of dollars. Even without a Clinton, Kennedy, or Edwards around, every Democrat is a seething, slobbering, cesspool of a pervert just waiting to pounce on pure, innocent and unsuspecting Republican women, if only there were any attractive ones.

Note: If you’re a guy and you manage to pull this off with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York or Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu and you’re indiscreet and feel like talking,  please give a call.  A sex tape would be heaven!

2) Start yourself up a business. Design an innovative product no one’s ever thought of before, arrange the necessary financing with the investment banker of your choice (we recommend J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, or Royal Bank of Scotland), and set up a non-union manufacturing plant, preferably in a southern state. Or go off-shore, the costs are even lower!

3) Gamble!  No casinos where you live? Solicit your professional organization such as the American Medical Association (AMA),  the Committee of Unctuous  Lawyers (CUL), or the National Alliance for Nepotism (NAN) to hold its annual convention in Las Vegas or Atlantic City. Or better yet, join the National Rifle Association (NRA) and we’ll get our buds to hold their convention somewhere in a red state that has legalized gambling. Bring lotsa quarters! And bullets!

For more great ideas on earning plenty quicker than you can say Pawlenty, please see Perry Block’s perceptive piece “Idea or I-Dud,”  but forget the suggestion about Republican candidate bobble-head dolls because we’ve already been there, done that. 

Jiggle on, Newt!

And once you’ve become a millionaire, you won’t even have to pay taxes! We’re taking care of that for you too --- because we care.

We, the members of the Republican Party of the United States of America, can’t wait to welcome each and every one of you aboard the Yacht of State of our great country!

Just don’t ever expect us to play golf with you.

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The Book of Orman

Broadway Beat

by Nels Noodleman

It has been called a cross between My Fair Lady, Fiddler on the Roof, and The Sound of Music but without the boring slow spots and album filler songs.

“The greatest musical I have ever seen!” New York Times Broadway critic Bentley Benchley has raved. “I laughed, I cried, I totally revamped the portfolio to my 401 (k) plan!” And the score, including the hit song People First, Then Money, Then Things (But Mostly Me!)*, has the nation’s toes tapping like a flamenco dancer on crack!

The show is The Book of Orman, Broadway’s smash hit reverential tribute to renowned financial advisor, author, motivational speaker, and kill joy television host Susan "Suze" Orman by legendary South Park satirists, Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

This Broadway beat reporter was privileged to catch up with the show’s two creators for a tangy lunch last week at Olive Garden. The duo told me their boundless admiration for Ms. Orman began several years ago when she denied them an on-air request to add several conservative Republican fourth graders to South Park’s regular ensemble of pint-sized protagonists because they failed to “show her the money!”

“Even Cartman loves Suze!” beamed the oft-beaming Mr. Parker. “We skewer just about every half-assed social trend,  ego-maniacal celebrity, and political debacle on the planet,” added Mr. Stone, “but Suze Orman is sacrosanct. And if you don’t agree, you’re a dick!”

The Book of Orman concerns two Mormon missionaries  who set out to bring faith and hope to poor villagers in Uganda terrorized by a vicious war lord who brutally forces them to remain seated during those portions of religious services when they’re supposed to stand and prohibits them from reading silently while I read aloud!

In two and half hours of groundbreaking theater, with a 15 minute intermission for women in the audience to futilely stand in line for the Ladies Room, the missionaries tunefully learn that it isn’t the message itself that’s liberating, it’s that the message be conveyed by an at best marginally attractive but essentially dumpy looking 60-year-old woman  with an irritating manner of speaking and a dopey blonde Dorothy Hamill haircut.

The Book of Orman has won a record setting 37 Tony Awards including Best Musical Score by a Jewish Gay Man, Best Choreography Involving Feet, and Best Actor in a Musical Who Isn’t Nathan Lane.

This reporter was privileged to see The Book of Orman when it opened, and I believe it is the greatest American theatrical experience since Our American Cousin, which I was also privileged to see when it opened. It sets an extremely high bar for the upcoming Side by Side by Stewart, Stephen Sondheim's musical tribute to the infectious and irrepressible spirit and personality of Martha Stewart.

In the words of the great Suze Orman, I’m telling you this is one marvelous show, girlfriend!  If you miss it, you’re a dick!

From your very own  Broadway Buddy,

Mr. Nels Noodleman

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*The actual song from The Book of Mormon  is You and Me (But Mostly Me!)