Ted Roberts

Send more than love by mail

Have you ever seen a grandfather advertising for work? “Experienced grandfather seeks skilled or semi-skilled position, any shift that doesn’t interfere with afternoon nap.” Nope, haven’t seen any ads. And I know why: we are already busy as a bee in the clover patch serving as the family anchor.

Most of us are convinced that our grown children are still too young and far too immature to be real parents and thus must need our help. My advice is to concentrate on the smaller dependents; they’re still malleable. And the younger the better: the little ones are far more impressed by a grandparent’s ministrations than, say, a 13-year-old.

My grandkids live out of town, so I take advantage of every form of communications I can get my hands on. Even in this age of email, that quaint invention, the telephone, still works – except with the littlest ones, who haven’t mastered the art of holding onto the receiver without dropping it.

I’ve written about this before, but it’s worth saying again – the United States Post Office gets my vote because, for 49 cents, you can send a large number of words and, for not much more, you can include other accessories and get them all delivered by a uniformed employee of the U.S. government (kids love uniforms). You can’t send a stick of gum attached to an email. A wise grandfather, besides sage counsel and family gossip, will include a baseball card, a newspaper clipping, bubblegum, or even a candy bar. I don’t think of it as a bribe, rather as a way to lure the young mind into the civilized joy of correspondence.

Legend tells us that Socrates kept a big jar of black olives on his desk to reward precocious students. So, I too use wiles of all kinds to encourage younger kin to rip open envelopes from me with frantic enthusiasm. The result I’m looking for is, “Wonder what he sent this time? Maybe if I write back today, he’ll send another Hershey bar.”

On second thought, while chocolate bars are nice and flat for mailing, they have their disadvantages in summer, so unless you’re mailing from Nome to Anchorage, you might want to skip that idea. But I do try to always include something that is amusing, edible or ethically fortifying. My grandkids usually award the family Pulitzer Prize to the clippings I call “Pet Heroes” – the collie who pulled little Jimmy out of the river, the cocker spaniel whose barking woke up a family in time to escape their burning home, the rescue dog who finds the missing child. If it’s true that the gabbling geese saved Rome, then I bet there was a grandfather’s letter reporting it to the kids in Venice.

Today’s kids are fascinated by this old-world form of communication. It doesn’t interrupt their TV dependency, and often yields candy or money. And it doesn’t take a great writer to be a fabulous correspondent; in fact, the letter can be pretty drab, like, “Dear Malcolm, How are you? I am fine. Grandma says hello too. The End.” (Kids seem to like formal endings.)

How to outwit the smart kid who just goes straight for the cartoon or the baseball card? I include coupons. Here’s a sample post-epistle phone conversation: “Malcolm, did you like the candy?” “Yes, I like candy.” “Great. You know, I had another one here, but you didn’t send me back the coupon and a letter, so I had to feed it to the cat.” (Whispered aside: “Mom, where’s the coupon?”)

I once had a 4-year-old granddaughter – well, I still have her, but she’s 8 now. She loved insects. You wouldn’t believe how well crickets, grasshoppers and locusts travel in the mail. My best letter, she told me later, was accompanied by a thin, flat frog mashed into two dimensions by a truck. He shipped well.

Ted Roberts is a freelance writer and humorist living in Huntsville, Ala. His website is wonderwordworks.com.

Willow and her brother

When the breeze from the forest fanned her branches, Willow could almost hear the gossip of the blue jays and the news of her old friends. (photo by Rob Hanson via Wikimedia Commons)

On Tu b’Shevat, when we look down at Mother Earth, instead of up, to find the Creator of All, the rabbis like to tell the story of Willow.

Once, many Tu b’Shevats ago, a young tree named Willow grew in the forest. The wind that cooled the forest in the summer and carried the gossip of the blue jays had brought her seed to this shady spot in the forest.

It was not the best location, since it was next to a much older oak tree, who towered over Willow like a big brother. He was so high and leafy and strong that most of the birds chose him as a nesting place; Willow only had a couple of caterpillars, who lived in one of her leaves. But, what bothered her most was that this jolly green giant blocked most of her sky.

“If I had three wishes like you get in fairy tales, I’d wish for an open spot on the meadow, an open spot on the meadow, an open spot on the meadow,” murmured Willow when the wind blew through her leaves. This little tree didn’t want any big brother blocking her sun and rain.

All summer long, Willow twisted and bent to find the sun. Trees need sun like we need love, or they dry up and die. But that tall oak decorated with birds’ nests blocked the direct rays. Only pale yellow fingers of light touched Willow. And, when fall came and most of the trees began their six months of rest, Willow slept poorly because huge acorns rained down on her from the heavy limbs of the oak. Like hail they fell. Each one could rip off a leaf. After this hailstorm of acorns, she dozed. But not for long, for soon a blizzard of leaves from the giant Oak overwhelmed her. They piled up on the forest floor almost taller than her. She could barely breathe.

What bad luck, thought Willow. “If only my seed had landed in that open spot over by the brook,” she mused, “I could have all the sun I wanted and only the sweet rain, not acorns with pointy ends, would fall upon my leaves and roots.”

Willow didn’t know how lucky she was to have a big sheltering friend. Young trees who tried to grow in open places were often washed into the brook by the rainstorms. And, when it didn’t rain, the sun burned them up and turned them into dead, dry sticks. And, without a big tree to shield you from the wind, one wild blast and you could lose every leaf you own.

As Willow continued to doze the fall away, she was awakened suddenly one day from her favourite dream in which lightning toppled the big oak, bird nests and all, and left a big, blue, empty space in the sky. She heard voices – happy, laughing voices of children.

Before Willow was fully awake, these children, with the help of a sharp shovel, had pried her roots from the earth and dumped her in a wagon. What an experience. Lying on her side, her roots all exposed. The movement made her dizzy. Soon, she was well out of the forest – even past the brook.

Eventually, the wagon stopped and the children put her back into the earth. Her new home was their backyard.

She was the only tree in the yard. The sun and the rain and the stars were all hers. At night, she could look up and see every star in the sky twinkle down on her. Better yet, during the day, no leafy branches blocked her sun. “This is living,” thought Willow, smiling up at the warmth. “If only I had a few bird nests, life would be perfect.”

But soon she began to miss the big oak – the sun was awful hot. And, when the clouds came to block it, that meant rain would follow. A little rain tasted good, but sometimes the rain turned the backyard into a swamp that suffocated her roots. She was scared. It was no fun being the only tree in the yard, thought Willow.

It was lonesome, too. There was nobody to talk to except the telephone pole on the street. And he just made a shrill noise in the wind. What could a dead telephone pole say to a young tree? But, when the breeze from the forest fanned her branches, she could almost hear the gossip of the blue jays and the news of her old friends.

As the years passed, something happened that the other young trees in the forest had whispered about. Willow grew seeds, and the willing wind soon carried them away and one of them happily arrived at the very spot where Willow had lived – beneath the giant oak.

The oak kept the sun from burning the new willow up. He gently filtered the rain and never let the wind pull at the little sister that grew under the shelter of his limbs. Big brothers aren’t all bad.

Ted Roberts is a freelance writer and humorist living in Huntsville, Ala. His website is wonderwordworks.com.

A technical love affair

I knew the printer wasn’t working when no typed pages flew out of its up-front opening where typed pages are supposed to fly out. Great! I spend a week feeding it $18 cartridges of yellow, magenta and black, and now that its appetite had been sated, no output. And, by the way, what marketing genius conceived of the scam where the color “black” demands yellow and magenta. It makes as much sense as filling your car with gas but the car won’t go unless you also buy a six pack of beer and two bags of potato chips.

Clearly, I needed a new printer. This clever machine announced its death in a dialect that even I understood. After some 10 years of service, it had gone to that junkyard in the sky where you could print black without magenta or yellow.

I needed a new printer. Even worse, I would have to properly introduce the printer to the computer. I’m a scribbler not an engineer. But then relief, as I thought of my great-grandchild in kindergarten. He was already 6 – he knew all about ’puters, as he called them. No, not a good idea – better my third-grade grandchild – much more experienced.

That thought cost me a quart of strawberry ripple ice cream, and alarm at his mature and loud vocabulary as failure followed failure. Then inspiration lightened the room as I thought of an engineering friend who loved key lime pie. My wife, who didn’t know a printer from a nuclear reactor either, had just made a key lime pie! What followed was the shortest marketing phone conversation on record.

“Henry, come on over and help me share a key lime pie.”

He came. Ate three pounds of key lime pie. We finished. The pie was as dead as the printer. Henry, though, full of pie, was – as I planned – in a jovial mood. I showed him around our house. And, somehow, we ended in the computer room.

“Hey Ted, the wire between the computer and printer isn’t connected.” (My third grader never noticed that! Public schools today are atrocious.) At this point, I hung my head and confessed the whole key lime pie inducement scheme. Nonetheless, my friend – what a friend! – jumped in the driver’s seat. He pushed buttons, tied wires, cursed, sweated. He condemned every printer you could imagine, as my chaste computer wouldn’t mate with the printer.

I didn’t get the whole picture but it had something to with it being a new printer and the ’puter having an old operating system. Such snobbery. It was age discrimination. That lousy printer should end up in court for rejecting the advances of my senior computer.

Not to worry, however. As in most fairytales – though this story is the absolute truth – we somehow found a happy ending. My friend, his forehead wet with frustration, mentioned that he saw another printer in my bedroom.

“Yeah, it’s an old one,” I said. “Somebody gave it to me.”

The word “old” rang in the room like a bell. His eyes lit up like he’d just drained a fifth of champagne.

“Go get it!” he screamed.

Sure enough, the old printer loved that old operating system. The two devices mated in front of our eyes. In fact, together they made this love story.

Ted Roberts is a freelance writer and humorist living in Huntsville, Ala. His website is wonderwordworks.com.

For the love of G-d and man

Our Bible, according to my estimation, tells us repetitively to love G-d. How can we comply with this mandate? I love my wife, kids, a few highly select friends who owe me money, even the cat. And I love lamb chops with garlic and lemon. But my Creator and Judge? There’s an inter-dimensional enigma here. An emotional warp. How can it be?

photo - James Henry Leigh Hunt by Samuel Laurence (1817–1884) — James Henry Leigh Hunt by Samuel Laurence (1817–1884). *(photo from National Portrait Gallery NPG 2508 via Wikimedia Commons)*

Strangely, Leigh Hunt, an English poet who probably never met a Jew, answered the question with a Jewish slant. He was a Londoner who lived 2,000 miles west of Chassidism’s headquarters in Poland. He was an aristocratic Englishman who, unlike his Polish contemporaries, wore a frock coat and did his best work on the Sabbath. He was a good Episcopalian, but somehow saw the world through Jewish eyes. The poet, in an inspired mood, wrote a work of 18 short lines, singing the same love-thy-neighbor theme that’s in our prayer book. Unintentionally, it is a very Jewish poem: an angel alights in the room of Abou Ben Adhem, an exemplary soul who:

“… saw within the moonlight in his room
making it rich like a lily in bloom.
An angel writing in a book of gold
the names of those who love the Lord.”

Abou Ben Adhem, in a flash, sits up in his bed only half-awake, but alert enough to know that his visitor is not his cousin from Cincinnati. Am I in your golden book, he wants to know. (“Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold.”) The angel sadly shakes his head.

But the man with a heart for humanity is not disheartened. “Well,” he says, “put me down as one who loves his fellow man.”

The angel notes the words of Abou Ben Adhem and disappears. Next night, he’s back in the dim bedroom “with a great wakening light” and his fateful list of those who love the Lord. “And lo, Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.”

Loving your fellow man is like loving G-d, an insight initially proclaimed by our Tanach.

I’ve heard it said that the hardest part of being a good Jew is loving your fellow man. Now I didn’t originate that – it’s probably in the Talmud or maybe in the Tanach from some bitter prophet like Jeremiah. But, sadly, it’s true. Didn’t G-d Himself tell us we’re a stiff-necked people? Easy-going, sweet, lovable people don’t cure polio, don’t split the atom and don’t win Nobel prizes. They’re too busy displaying their love. There’s some furnace running in the core of great people that keeps them from election as most popular kid in school or fraternity/sorority presidency. You wouldn’t have enjoyed a beer and a bowl of pretzels with Einstein. Your Uncle Louie was probably much better at small talk.

In all the English vocabulary, the hardest word to define is love. It has no synonym, only antonyms. It thinly communicates when it describes our relationship with our fellow creatures, even the four-legged ones. But it miserably fails to describe our feeling to our Creator, even though I count the mandate more than 150 times in the Tanach.

In nature, love flows down, not up. A river originating in a mountain peak flows down to water the animal and plant life at its base. I’m convinced that parents, especially mothers, love their children more than kids love their parents. Survival of the species demands it. Our limited human understanding comes closest to defining divine love by loving our fellow human creatures. And, while we’re talking about love and G-d and man and English poets, let me remind you of Alexander Pope, another famous English Bard. He’s clearly on my side: “The proper study of mankind is man,” he says. “Presume not G-d to scan,” which to my understanding says the Creator lies beyond our telescopes.

What is love? We understand friendship. We know all about lust. We understand why your heart glows when your wife makes kreplach in chicken soup, your favorite. And even closer to your emotional warmth is the sensation of holding in your arms your newborn child. But words fail when we try to cozy up to the Lord. There is awe, respect and reverence, but love?

I’ve never met anyone who loved G-d and could explain that exotic emotion. It cannot be expressed any more than a fish expresses his love for water, his medium. Maybe the prophets and Leigh Hunt were on to something. Love thy fellow man. That, itself, is an awesome challenge. But may be the only road to the celestial palace.

Ted Roberts is a freelance writer and humorist living in Huntsville, Ala. His website is wonderwordworks.com.

Familiar song from long ago

“And the ransomed of the Lord shall return / And come with song unto Zion.” (Isaiah 35:10)

Seville, Spain, summer 1480

“The fire is painful to the flesh, but kind to the soul,” said the man in red velvet robes who sat at the dark mahogany table. Such statements had earned him the title of “the Scourge of G-d.” He sat stiffly at a table that flanked one end of a courtyard fenced with eight-foot-high stucco walls. A heap of faggots surrounding a pile of tree limbs stood at the other end of the courtyard. In the middle of the enclosure, a cluster of people, surrounded by darkly dressed men with swords, shuffled their feet and stared dolefully at the dust that rose with their movement. Destitute of hope, their hearts were as dry as the earth.

One family stood rigidly facing the table where the red-robed figure scanned names from a lengthy scroll.

“It’s your choice, but be quick about it. We’ve got a town full of Jews to process before sundown.”

It was a familiar scene all over Spain. The Inquisition was in full flower, creating martyrs and new Christians. And now it was the turn of the Capouya family. And, that day, Zalman Capouya, father to three whimpering daughters plagued with heat and terror, chose life for his family. “We already have enough martyrs in heaven. We need more Jews on earth so they can grow and multiply as the Lord commanded.” His wife nodded and sobbed softly in relief.

But the life that followed wasn’t so simple. No visible thread of their Jewish identity could be displayed. Like tens of thousands of crypto-Jews, they attended church and disguised within an alien ceremony whatever level of mitzvot obedience they practised. There was always a lifeline – a tether to the ancestral faith: the lighting of candles behind shuttered windows, a Shema before bedtime with the family huddled in a tight group, a favorite song now relegated to the basement instead of the gilded assembly hall of the synagogue. No bread during Passover. There was always something. Slight and hidden, as light as a tallit thread, but a reminder that children wouldn’t forget. Maybe the seeds would sprout in other times, other lands.

New Jersey, U.S., autumn 2016

It was a haunting melody. A tide of suffering, but sweet with hope. It poured out of the open doors of the synagogue like a stream, swollen with the rains of spring. Catherine was a block away, but the song flooded her senses. She’d walked around the synagogue twice as she listened. Last year she’d heard it, too. And on this same holiday the Jews called Rosh Hashanah. Their New Year, someone told her.

But it was not only the beauty of the song that made her circle the synagogue twice in astonishment. This melody – sung by Jews – was her family song. That’s what her parents and grandmother called it: “our family song.” They sang it at Christmas and New Year’s. They sang it at baptisms and funerals. It was an old, old family custom, her grandmother had explained.

But Grandmother couldn’t explain the song’s origins. “All I remember is that my grandmother sang it to me,” she replied irritably after a hail of questions from Catherine. “It’s a family song. Enjoy it and don’t ask so many questions.” But why would Jews sing it, Catherine wondered.

At school the next day, Catherine couldn’t wait to meet her friend Rachael at their locker.

“Rachael, I walked by your synagogue yesterday morning on your holiday. They were singing this gorgeous song.”

“You must have heard us chanting Avinu Malkeinu.”

“Let me go with you next week. Would you mind?”

“No, of course not. It will be chanted again next week on Yom Kippur.”

Catherine did not tell her family the exact truth about the lure of the synagogue, only that she was meeting a friend. And that was true enough. They met a short block from the synagogue and, as they walked, Rachael explained the meaning of the day, the elements of the service. Catherine listened somberly, almost apprehensively. Something larger than she had ever encountered was looming on her horizon.

Once inside, she followed her friend’s instruction and carefully read the English for each prayer. It was all so familiar – like a dream reencountered – a spiritual déjà vu.

The congregation sang – their voices filled the domed assembly hall like the prayers of the lost fill the heart of G-d. Deep in Catherine’s being was an ache she’d never known before. She sang and let a gentle tide carry her home.

Ted Roberts is a freelance writer and humorist living in Huntsville, Ala. His website is wonderwordworks.com.

Value in letter-writing

I used to be a father. I still am, and now I’m a grandfather, too. But it’s a load I can handle because the job description is just about identical. It calls for inspiration – of young minds and young hearts, especially of grandkids who live farther away and, therefore, consider themselves relatively safe from my constant inspirational messages.

Despite TV, video games, tablets and smartphones, and an environment humming with electronic messages, we Jews honor and cherish the printed word. We still are the People of the Book. Give us a pencil (or a pen) and a piece of paper, and we’ll find something to say.

So, I write a lot of letters to my grandkids. For still less than 50 cents – it goes up most years (no competition will do that) – you’re able to send a large number of words written on several pieces of paper. And, for a few more cents, a wise grandfather, besides advice and family gossip, can include a candy bar, a stick of gum, a newspaper clipping or a baseball card to lure the young mind into the civilized joy of correspondence. What teacher ever taught successfully without incentives? It’s a trick I learned years ago from the Cracker Jack people. They marketed candy with cheap, fragile toys. I market family pride.

I use wiles of all kinds to encourage my younger kin to rip open their envelopes with frantic enthusiasm. “Wonder what he sent this time? Maybe, if I write back today, he’ll send me another Hershey bar.”

Yes, Hershey bars are great. Nice and flat for mailing, but they have their disadvantages in July, unless you live in Nome and your granddaughter hangs out with her kids in Anchorage.

Kids love letters with or without sweet bonuses. They love their name in big, bold letters on the envelope. They love the ritual of sorting through the mail and throwing the discards on the floor before finding their letter.

And, like I say, I rarely write without including something that is either amusing, edible or ethically fortifying. My favorites are clippings from my local newspaper (human interest stories, we used to call them). So educational! They encourage kids to read and observe the world outside of home and school. If you pick your stories with care, you can package amusement and even morality in your envelopes. For example, I just mailed off to eight grandkids the story of a 65-year-old lady who wrote a confession to her high school principal – she cheated in a high school writing course 47 years ago!

My small audience loved it and marveled at her delayed, but full, confession. They had many questions: “Did she have to take the class over? Did she get a punishment? Did they send her a new report card? I assured them she was not punished and maybe – because of her honesty – they renamed the auditorium in her honor.

But my kids usually award the family Pulitzer Prize to the vignettes I call “Pet Saves Family”: the collie who pulled Jamie out of the river, the cocker spaniel who barked and alerted the family to their smoldering home and, of course, the whole category of dog-finds-missing-child stories. We humans, even after we’ve lost the glow of childhood, still have a soft spot for animal rescue stories. It goes back in history to the gabbling geese who saved Rome. A story probably told in a grandfather’s letter of 300 BCE.

We don’t always need burning homes and swollen rivers. Kids of the right age (say over 3 and under 10) love any animal story. Naturally. They love animals. There’s a kinship there of smallness, innocence, helplessness that we don’t relate to as much when we become older and taller, and more cynical.

Just this month, I mailed out a tearjerker that couldn’t fail to warm the juvenile heart. A two-column report of a three-legged dog – a mutt who had lost a race with a truck and forfeited one of his four limbs – who found a lost child. The sheriff and an army of searchers failed, noted the article, but the dog, with only 75% of its limbs, found the missing child.

The returns from my young readers have been overwhelmingly enthusiastic about this theme. “More!” they cry. They want more. But that’s not so easy. I’m at the mercy of the newspaper industry, which is attracted to war, corruption, crime and disease, rather than the uplifting genre of “pet finds child” or other positive news.

Besides the inspirational value, there’s a selfish payoff to my letter writing campaigns: I like the return mail. And, maybe decades from now, when I’m old and my pen trembles on the paper and my poor old grinders are loose and wobbly, my mail will be full of attentive notes sweetened with easy-to-eat Hershey bars. Bread on the waters, you know.

Ted Roberts is a freelance writer and humorist living in Huntsville, Ala.

Torah, grain … a lady

As a famous Jewish comedian used to kvetch, “I don’t get no respect.” I feel we treat Shavuos similarly. In Temple days, how would you compare the Holy of Holies to a Jerusalem tavern down the street? Silly question, yes? Then why does Shavuos get such minor league attraction?

We got the Torah! The cradle of Western civilization! So, some of us go to shul (compare it to Yom Kippur attendance) and we study, or nap, through the night over an open Chumash. We eat dairy and read the Book of Ruth. No bugles blare and no rabbis make two-hour presentations.

Even books designed to explain Judaism’s beauty give it short shrift: 10 pages to the Jacob/Esau rivalry, a page and a half to this modest holiday. I’m only a scribbler, not a sage, but I don’t get it. Then, there’s the fact that our reception of the Torah is combined with a harvest celebration. What’s the connection? The relationship between barley and Torah seems odd. Maybe one is food for the body, the other for the soul. Are we trying to economize on holidays? Two for the price of one?

And why do we read the Book of Ruth, which is a tract featuring intermarriage – a practice loudly condemned by dozens of statements in the Torah? It seems to be written by someone who favored fraternization with our deadly enemies, the Moabites. Remember that the path to the Promised Land goes through Moab. We fought our way through it. How did this book get chosen? Did they take a vote on Purim after a day of gorging on the grape?

The Book of Ruth is a book in which everyone is gentle, even the Moabites. Everyone is supportive of their fellow characters. If it were a play, this story would run for years on Broadway.

Ruth, a Moabite, is loyal to her mother-in-law, Naomi. Her first husband, Naomi’s son, has died. Naomi – remember, a Jew – strategizes with Ruth to win the heart of Boaz, also a Jew. A famine stalks the land. Perhaps the agricultural setting explains the use of the holiday as a harvest celebration, but not its connection with the Torah. I consider this every time I think of Shavuos, one of the three special occasions, along with Sukkot and Pesach, when all Israel flocked to the Temple. With the destruction of the Temple, I think we lost the grandeur of Shavuos.

They shouldn’t have named it Shavuos, Hebrew for weeks. Indeed, seven weeks after Pesach comes Shavuos. Like in a Jewish wedding ceremony – seven times the bride (Israel) circles her groom (the Creator), thereby remembering and reenacting our covenant. We rest on the seventh day and, for seven years, the land must lie fallow. Even today, that ancient poetic number still glows with luck – from the sublime to the ridiculous, the seven wins initially for the dice shooter and excites the roar of the winners.

I can see it now. It’s 1000 BCE and the annual meeting of the Israelite holiday commemoration committee. “We need a special day to honor and commemorate that fateful day when God gave us the Torah,” said the chairman. A chorus of agreement rocked the room. Done. Then that guy in the back of every room (yes, he was around even then) shouted, “Yeah, but what about the grain harvest?” Puzzled, the committee men looked at each other in bewilderment. The grain harvest?

The chairman spoke: “Look, we got enough holidays now – nobody’s working. Let’s save a holiday and throw it in with Shavuos. [And they hadn’t even made Tu b’Shevat yet!] After all, the grain harvest lasts seven weeks, and the Holy One gave us Torah seven weeks after we paraded out of Egypt. We’ll make Shavuos celebrate both events, thereby economizing on holidays. Done.”

Shavuos, for all its importance, doesn’t get its due. No big feasting, no dramatic breast-beating, no triumphant chauvinism; only the satisfaction that more than three millennia ago in the darkest of the dark ages we were chosen to receive from the Hand of God a solemn covenant that we would be a light of civilization to the nations of the world.

No matter how many weeks after Pesach it falls, let’s face it: “Weeks” doesn’t do it justice. They should have called it Yom Torah or something like that. If I were a member of the holiday naming committee, I’d have called it Independence Day.

Ted Roberts is a freelance writer and humorist living in Huntsville, Ala.

Elijah in New York City

(photo from PikiWiki Israel)

Her name was Rachel, his was Nathan. And even though separated by two bar stools, they struggled through 20 minutes of awkward conversation before their last names were spoken. Greenberg went with Rachel; Cohen with Nathan.

“Hey, you must be Jewish,” blurted out Nathan, a lonely bachelor whose only other date was Channel 15 on a cold, rainy night in April.

“I bet you’re Jewish, too,”she responded.

Well, things were looking up. Nathan now sat beside her and she responded with a smile at his aggressive move. He’s Jewish, no stranger, she thought.

“What a night for two Jewish buckaroos to be sitting in a western bar in the middle of Manhattan,” said Rachel. “It’s the first night of Passover, you know.”

“Yeah. I’m afraid I’ve neglected ‘my heritage,’ as my father puts it. He lives here in the city – only a few blocks down 57th. My family has a seder every year. They sit around the table – sing childish songs – stuff themselves on a five-course meal and wait for Elijah, the heavenly visitor to drop by. I go to a bar. Usually the one over on 52nd and 8th. This year, my mood took me here. Don’t know why. It’s a heck of a coincidence that I’m sitting next to you.”

“Well, I’m alone in the city. My family is back home in Louisville, Kentucky. Like yours, about now they’re sitting down to a huge meal with a week’s supply of calories and cholesterol. Kosher, but still deadly. And I’m sure they’re singing silly songs, as you put it. Wish I was there.”

“How seriously do they play out the Elijah game? You know the legend. His visit to every Jewish home on seder night. I remember my old man. He’d put down his wine glass, get all serious and open the front door. ‘Hey Pop,’ the 8-year-old who was then me, would shout, ‘If Elijah can pop up at 10 million Jewish homes in a single night, he can get through that wood-paneled front door without your help. A decent burglar can do it in a few minutes. Why not challenge the prophet?’ My old man hated it.”

An old gentleman at the end of the bar looked up with a pained expression.

“I guess so,” remarked Rachel. “Sure I know the Elijah story – our rabbi calls it a midrash – a rabbinic parable – which elevates it a level or two above a legend. It’s one of those unifying articles of faith that every Jew – even the lost ones – enjoys believing. A sweet story, you know. In fact, my rabbi believes that besides visiting many millions of seders on the first night of Pesach, he’s there – on Passover night – wherever two or more Jews are together.”

She had been a little loud. She noticed the old gentleman at the end of the bar had looked up from his drink, a dark purple wine in an ornate silver wine glass. Wonder what they called that drink? Wonder if you got to keep the glass?

Nathan, his arms folded loosely across his chest, had fixed his eyes on her as she talked. She’s got some spirit, he reflected. How his father’s eyes would gleam with passion to hear her declarations of faith.

Rachel brushed her hair back from her face. “Sorry, I got a little carried away – didn’t mean to preach to you. Let’s talk about something else.”

“No, no, I understand. That first night of Pesach is magic, my old man used to say. Makes you remember who you are. Every Jew, he used to say, had a progenitor – an ancestor – in his direct line who walked dry shod on the bed of the Red Sea. If he had perished under Egyptian whips or drowned beneath the waves, I, for example, wouldn’t be sitting at this glitzy bar in 21st-century America talking to a young Jewish lady who believes in a resuscitated prophet who makes a million house calls on one spring night.”

“You know what?” she said suddenly. “I’d love to go to a seder tonight. And there’s no lamb shank, charoset, parsley or bitter herb at your place or mine – but there is at your father’s place. Why don’t we surprise him? We’ll be just in time to greet Elijah.”

Nathan blinked, and nodded. With her, he had a chance. So, linking his arm in hers, he set out on the longest journey any man can undertake. A journey home.

And, at the end of the bar, the dignified but poorly dressed patron held up his wine goblet. “There are no coincidences,” he whispered to the goblet. He glanced hurriedly at his watch and left. He had many calls to make.

Ted Roberts is a freelance writer and humorist living in Huntsville, Ala.

A secret Pesach gift awaits

Daffodils herald the springtime – and the approach of Passover. (photo from commons.wikimedia.org)

I had not seen him check into the inn. And I did not see him that night as we travelers exchanged vodka toasts to Pesach – only 10 days away. But here he was this morning, awaiting the same coach that would take me to my daughter’s seder table. I like to get there early and remind her that her papa – who gave her life, in

cooperation with her mama – loves being in her home, made gefilte fish and is more than willing to evaluate her Pesach culinary efforts.

Anyhow, awaiting the carriage, we clustered together – exulting in a glorious spring day under the giant willow that shaded the station showing off her spring-new leaves as though she was competing with her neighbor, an old, mottled-bark sycamore. Aged, but still capable of spring whimsy. She seemed even showier when the newcomer leaned against her and I could swear the light green of her new leaves gleamed even greener by contrast.

The mysterious stranger glanced at me. I checked him out, too. A stern face, whose only laughter was in his eyes. He was dressed like the rest of us, except he had a jonquil in his lapel. We seated ourselves opposite each other in the coach.

He was the first to speak. “How do you do?” he said, “My name, I’m sure you know, is Elijah. And, I’m sure you know, I’m beginning my Passover planning.”

I involuntarily rose from my seat like I was sitting on a hot, pot-bellied stove and banged my head on the top of the coach. Elijah, Grand Master of the Prophetic Fraternity, sitting with an undistinguished shtetle Jew – me!

“Can you imagine,” he said, “I visit every seder from Chicago to Katmandu. Roughly,” he continued, “we’re talking millions of homes. And on the same night. The same night,” he repeated. “And nobody says, ‘Ellie (that’s what my friends upstairs call me), good job! Great job, Ellie.’ They’re all too busy being impressed with that watery miracle. They’ve talked for 3,300 years now about a breeze that allowed you Israelites to wade across the Red Sea. And they think it’s a miracle that the Master caused a bunch of birds to fall out of the sky to feed you guys. I’ve tasted ’em. Oily, tough, need a ton of spices to get ’em down. Big deal! And that manna. Ever tasted it? Like raw oatmeal. And me? The showpiece of Pesach? I’m hustling to a few million seders. And you think I can drop in – say hello and run next door? No way. I gotta have a shot of wine – a few million sips of wine. You wouldn’t believe my headache the next day.”

I listened. Shocked. Even the Prophetic Master, semi-human/ semi-angel, had the ego of our coach driver, who prided himself in making the run to Minsk in under six hours.

But Elijah wasn’t through. “And that’s not all. Unknown to a cold and frigid world, there’s a precious little secret that only the angels know. On Pesach – if the year has been a sweet one wherein mankind has controlled his hybrid heart – I beckon to springtime, which is waiting in the wings of winter for my call. It’s the great gift the Master has bestowed upon me. It’s my dividend, as you say down here, for my Pesach duties. I call, and nature, everywhere, listens. Springs into action. (I never could resist a good pun.) Timing? It depends on those 36 Tzadiks – God’s spies we call them – who roam the world and annually report. Mankind behaving? Following Torah? I beckon – spring does her thing. It all hangs on human behavior. Sometimes the earth is only gilded with a pale reflection of a bountiful spring.”

He stopped, turned his head to stare at the passing parade of dreary woodlands and grey vales and brown meadows. But I could see red and yellow tulips dancing in his eyes.

By the time I reached Minsk and burst into a living room full of expectantly waiting kids and grandkids – over their hugs and kisses, I could see the daffodils blooming through the living room windows. We must have behaved.

Ted Roberts is a freelance writer and humorist living in Huntsville, Ala.

Purim’s got it all

On a cloudless, heavenly morning, well before the Almighty turned the dust of the earth into man, he announced the holy days to the assembled Heavenly Hosts. The angels listened solemnly, especially to Yom Kippur. After a few moments of meditation, they burst into a perfectly sublime harmonious hallelujah. The holy days were fashioned; a string of pearls to decorate creation.

There was Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur for the pious and meditative; Tu b’Shevat for the nature lovers. Simchas Torah for the joyous Chassids; Chanukah for the chauvinists. Passover pleased several groups; the bright-eyed lovers of matzoh balls, and the historically minded.

Yes, all the angels and cherubim and sages yet to be, thundered a mighty “Amen” as the Almighty announced the holiday lineup. All except one, that is. One of the younger angels, his wings still fluffy with down.

“What about the children?” he blurted out. “What about a holiday for the children? It should be a happy day of games and, of course, some special delectable food. And, most of all, noise! It should be the one day in the year when kids may shout to their heart’s content without a giant, adult hand muffling their mouth.”

The Holy One listened with compassionate attention. Then He pronounced, “Yes, I shall invent a happy day just for the children. I shall create an historical situation that seems destined for tragedy, but at the last minute dissolves into deliverance.” (“Just like the Red Sea and the Exodus,” whispered the excited Heavenly Hosts in unison.) “There shall be the essence of evil in the form of a tyrant.” (“Good,” thought the angels, even children must know about evil.) “And the young shall eat triangular cakes and shout as loud as they like at the evil name.” (“If they’re going to be loud and noisy, they may as well holler at evil,” said the Hallelujah Chorus.)

So, on the festival Megillah – the great scroll of the holidays – He who made time itself, inscribed Purim, a holiday for children.

My friend, Herb, a childlike celebrant who’d swap two Passovers and a Chanukah for one Purim, says that if Purim occurred daily, he’d attend shul all year round, as faithfully as the Ner Tamid, the eternal light that shines on the bima. Purim’s got it all, says Herb. “A love story like Ruth, but spiced with suspense. And all the joy of Simchas Torah, with a plot line.”

Herb may be right. Esther is one of the great triumvirates of Jewish heroines. Her two sister heroines are, who else? The militant Yael and Judith. The latter two, you’ll recall, dispatch two of Israel’s enemies to that special Gehenna where Amalekites sing Hatikvah on our holidays. This daring, dynamic duo were simple straight shooters like Annie Oakley. But Esther – ah, there’s a woman of subtlety as well as valor. You won’t find Hadassah ruining her manicure with tent pegs or swords. She’s behind the scenes orchestrating, directing. Totally invisible to her antagonists, she’s the ghostess with the mostest, you might say.

Once Cousin Mordechai alerts her to the peril facing her people, she swings into action. Two lavish banquets – not one, but two – she throws for the king, and Haman of all people. It’s the first Purim Oneg. And, although the Megillah does not spell out the menu, I’m sure Esther laid out a nice kosher spread with plenty of Persian slivovitz and followed by platters of those crisp, little, layered honey cakes.

Esther’s eyes caress the king, those succulent cakes melt in his mouth. They’re eating high on the challah, so to speak.

Haman, the quintessential Amalekite, sits in a corner daydreaming of the gibbet for the Jew, Mordechai. Esther, the supplicant who fantasizes a special Gehenna for Haman, in which he eternally grates potatoes for all the Chanukahs yet to come, pleads with the king for her people, Israel. She gazes tearfully at the king like he’s a titanic honey cake. In the background, we can almost hear a silvery “Taps” – with a klezmer lilt – for Haman the Agegite.

My good friend, Herb, loves to hear this Megillah. As I say, he’s a Purim regular. There he is, every year, with his own grogger, just like the Minyan Club members have their own tallis and tefillin. And he’s carrying one of those neat, silver hip flasks just to make sure he obeys the talmudic injunction to be sufficiently zonked so you can’t tell Haman from Mordechai. Over the whole year – 613 mitzvah opportunities available to him – this is Herb’s finest moment of observance.

Well, I love Purim as much as Herb. On what other holiday can you make obnoxious noises and even talk more than the rabbi without being shushed. I guess, like Herb, I’m a Purim Jew.

Ted Roberts is a freelance writer and humorist living in Huntsville, Ala.