With the exception of my best friend, the Lakewood Rav, my favorite poster in Torah Talks over the past two years has been “Garden Fun.”
From her sensitive perceptive remarks and thoughtful little gifts, I could tell she was a woman. Sometimes we chatted privately. She never got sexual with me to my disappointment. Later, she said she was married.
So I kept things on a holy plane. I loved her writing in the chat room and often rhapsodized about how I wanted to marry a woman just like her.
Now I realize that this poster is a male friend of mine on Facebook who I’ve never met. This guy on Facebook often did sensitive kind things for me but I never thought twice about him because I assumed he had a penis.
Now I still want a woman like this poster, but one without a penis.
I was convinced she was a woman because she was always appropriate, she was never arrogant or showing off, she was always thoughtful and wise and considerate. What guy is like that?
I’m so glad she/he never lured me into cybersex.
Now that I’ve outed my favorite poster, the chat room will turn into a barnyard brawl and no decent woman will come within a mile of it.
Mary kept saying, “I love Luke!” Nina Hartley turned to her at one point, wrinkled her face and said, “You do?”
The most heartbreaking part of the movie — and there are many parts that will make an ordinary person cry — is watching Raylene, the ex-Vivid girl, rejoicing with her beautiful family, including young children, describing her struggles to pass the real estate exam, only to find out that she is back doing scenes and has brought her husband with her.
I sat on the panel afterward with Nina Hartley, Amber Lynn, Bill Margold, Crissy Moran, and company and I thought that no matter how much we may disagree, and it seems like Nina Hartley and her husband Ira Levine and I disagree on everything, we’ve been inextricably bonded by our experiences in the roller-coaster of the industry. We each bought a ticket and we each took that ride to dizzying heights and crashing lows. And now we’re old and sagging and not so many people want to **** us anymore.
I got some action from my uncle Ron Jeremy who played “Hava Nagila” on his harmonica and for the Catholic director, Ron played “Amazing Grace.”
I think the dominant motif running through my brain over the past 40 years has been, “F*** you, f*** you, f*** you, f*** you, why don’t you accept me? And why don’t you accept my father?”
All the while, of course, I’ve been behaving in ways that make it impossible for 98% of people to accept me.
I’ve long yearned to belong and at the same time felt equally driven to transgress the boundaries of acceptable behavior.
As I’ve aged, I’ve tried to finesse my outrageous behavior so that I can have the maximum of freedom while maintaining connection with the people most important to me. It’s not worked out so well.
When did I come closest? When I stayed with the Muth family at Pacific Union College for the end of eighth grade and then for the summers before tenth and eleventh grade. Then I was with a normal family who consistently showed me an supra-normal amount of love, tolerance and understanding. It was during these happy times that the savage lion inside of me purred like a kitten.
I’ve often wondered why she didn’t leave me a note to read upon turning 18 or upon getting married or upon some momentous occasion in my life.
If she had written something for me then, I imagine it would’ve gone something like this:
I’m sorry I haven’t been here the last 14 years. I’m sorry you got passed around while I was sick. I’m sorry you didn’t grow up normal.
Despite these problems, I know that you’ve grown up with more love and more direction than most people. You’ve been taught about God and what He expects from you. You may be happy or you may be sad, but your obligations to other people don’t change.
You’re a lot like your father. You find it easy to dedicate yourself to your work. Don’t let the thrill of ideas send you riding rough-shod over those not so ideologically inclined.
Do something beautiful for God.
Your loving mother,
Gwen
JANE EMAILS:
Luke,
It sounds like you are going through a rough time.
Please don’t be hard on yourself and torture yourself.
You are good person, very sharp and you don’t know what’s
waiting for you around the corner
As a mother and woman who was very ill, I am saddened
by your unresolved issues with your own mom.
You need to forgive her for what is, in your eyes, her short coming.
She did her best. I can imagine how painful it was for her to leave
her baby. As I wrote you last year, on her behalf… Mothers don’t
leave their children.
Why didn’t she write a note/ letter in a bottle?
Because it would mean giving up the battle and die. She was
fighting to stay. Now days, its more acceptable and known, at her
time it was not.
But I know she wrote you and still does. Not with paper and pen
but tears, blood and unending love. Why can’t you see it? Open
up your heart, It’s all there.
Thanks for the photos. Its unbelievable how much you look alike.
Yet, your face is so manly. YOU ARE HER MASTERPIECE, the
best thing she has ever produced.
It took me many years and training as a therapist to finally
let my Dad go. He died of cancer when I was 2 years old. I kept
speaking with him for many years but also blaming him for abandoning
me. Only after my own illness, I realized that he is REALLY dead. I
needed to have a burial ceremony and let him go. So, I went to the
beach and sent him a flower with a letter attached to it, thanking him
for giving me life and said goodbye. Since then I leave him in peace.
I am not comfortable with the way I treated him by making him a
punching bag for anything wrong In my life. IT WAS NOT HIS FAULT…
He is dead and could not help it! It also freed me of unresolved anger
that kept festering within me and most definitely did not help my heart
condition.
And so, dear friend, I wish you well. It’s not an easy time for you
right now, but there is always tomorrow…
I laughed. I almost cried. I had a ball. Afterward, in the parking lot of the Beverly Center, we talked about work. I wrote on the other Hollywood. She confessed that she also worked for the dark side — something to do with gambling.
I said the National Film Board of Canada was flying me to Montreal for five days in June. She said she had a relation there. He might tell me where I could go for Shabbos. I must promise not to pervert him.
On our second date, a Sunday night, we went to dinner. Coming back to her place, I kissed her on the lips good night and said, “Gut Shabbos.”
I’m not sure where that came from. She laughed. I was embarrassed.
On her birthday, I gave her a copy of the Nicholas Sparks novel, Message in a Bottle. I didn’t know what an execrable writer Sparks was nor had I read any reviews of the book. Just the notion of a message in a bottle spoke to me, I wasn’t sure why.
Articles came out about me in Salon and the Los Angeles Times. I forwarded them to Jane. On our third date, she took me to a screening on the lot. It was a dark thriller (Arlington Road) and I hated it and I felt sad that Jane and I seemed disconnected that evening.
When I called her next, she didn’t call me back for a few days.
Early one Shabbos afternoon, she left me a phone message inviting me to go with her to the Hollywood Bowl that evening.
I was gone all day and didn’t get the message until it was too late. The next day, I went out and bought my first cell phone so I’d never again miss such a call.
Frustrated by our misconnections, I didn’t call her back for two weeks. I wanted to show how sttrong I was.
When we finally talked, the conversation was limp and we never went out again.
Tonight I Google Jane. She married well. She took her husband’s last name. She has children.
When I look at at her on Facebook, I can still hear her laugh.
This morning’s assignment in writing class is to describe the first story you ever heard.
I can’t think of anything. As I go back in my head, back through the mists of time, I remember my mother. She was frail, sick, dying, shielding me from my sister’s blows (I had broken into her perfume collection and mixed it with toothpaste and shoe polish and smeared it all over the bathroom). Mom was the archetype for women I’d love. The major themes for my writing were formed out of my brief fractured attachment to her.
I suck women dry. I never get enough attention. I don’t connect normally with people. Something went awry early on in my life. I’ve grown up to take all I can get in the moment knowing that the breast will soon run dry, that death was just around the corner.
A few year’s ago, I read my mother’s book, a collection of children’s stories on Christian themes. I sought in vain for a message for my life.
Many years ago, I asked my father, or was it my step-mother, no, I don’t think I asked anyone, just thought, why did mom not leave me a letter? A message in a bottle?
Some people in Los Angeles who have already converted to Orthodox Judaism are converting again. This time they’re doing it through the auspices of the Rabbinical Council of California.
Why are they doing another conversion? Because the RCC’s conversion is accepted throughout the Jewish world. Other Orthodox conversions are not universally accepted, particularly in Israel.
I hear the RCC is pretty nice about it. They say, “We believe you’re Jewish, but we understand that some people may not, and so to make your life easier, and to make the lives of your children easier, you may want to convert through us.”
The process will usually take a couple of years. It will include weekly Torah classes and the same rigors of their regular conversion (where 99% of applicants are rejected at some point, including me in my youth).
* Rabbi Berel Wein writes: “It seems that the breaches of the covenant do not occasion immediate and sudden punishment and tragedy. Jewish history has very few incidents of instantaneous punishment or reward. It is always part of a long process of events…”
This is true in our personal lives as well. You can take up Torah and it won’t necessarily have instantaneous results. I’m on a good path that should lead to marriage and children, but there have been no quick results, no massive immediate pay-offs to my hard work.
* Many of the great things that Judaism has done, we’re not aware of because we take them for granted.
Rabbi Wein writes: “Much of our world has outgrown these forms of idolatry and this is due greatly to the unremitting struggle of Judaism against such practices.”
For most of us, sins such as incest and homo-sex are unthinkable. When people start considering them as normal, society will crash.
* Rabbi Wein writes: “God’s wisdom and judgments are inscrutable and are beyond even elementary comprehension by us mortals. As such we are left wondering as to the tragedies that descended upon the Jewish people and that continue to plague us today. Though there are those amongst us that are prepared to give and accept glib answers to the causes of tragedy, the wise men of Israel warned us against such an approach. Observance of commandments is enormously difficult to fulfill completely and accurately.”
When I meet someone who links bad times in Jewish history to the specific failings of specific Jews (such as that a terror attack on an Israeli town was the result of failing to check mezuzos, or that Reform Judaism caused the Holocaust), I know I’ve met a fool. To speak for God in these instances of extreme Jewish suffering is foolish.
If you want to interpret your own suffering as God’s message to your life, that is beautiful, but if I tell someone in pain, this is because you have not fulfilled such-and-such a mitzva, that’s foolish. It’s not for me reprove someone suffering.
* Rabbi Wein writes: “Though we pray regularly for health and serenity, we must always be cognizant of how precarious situations truly are.”
Judaism is a great recipe for a good life and it is also great preparation for when times turn terrible. On the other hand, meeting hot chicks is great fun but it is not a form of sustenance when your life falls apart. Someone you’ve picked up in a club for a night is not likely to stand by you when you lose your job or your legs or your mommy dearest.
* I don’t think most non-Orthodox Jews understand how little tochachah (reproof) Orthodox Jews give to each other. If you go to shul, you’re not likely to get called on the carpet for your sins. You’re not going to get a going over as to your beliefs. There are no beliefometer operators. Most shuls and most shul rabbis are glad when Jews show up and the amount of reproving they do is small. It’s not the Orthodox way to constantly reprove people for their sins. Orthodox Judaism is not focused on sin in the way that Christians obsess over sin and their sinful human condition.
Where you will get blowback at shul is if you advocate behavior and belief incompatible with Orthodox Judaism or if you are doing things publicly that violate Torah.
* Rabbi Wein writes: “Warning people about what will happen to them centuries later down the road of history rarely affects their current behavior. People do all sorts of things when they are younger that they know will be injurious to their health and even eventually shorten their lifespan.”
Do you know why I did some things risky to my health and to my soul? Because they were exciting (or because I was in thrall to my addictions rather than to God).
*Rabbi Wein writes: “There are two prophecies recorded [in the Bible] regarding the future of the Jewish people. One predicted that a fox would emerge from the ruins of the Temple. The other prediction was that Jewish old men and women would sit in joy and contentment in the streets of Jerusalem and watch children at play.”
When you go to most Orthodox shuls in the world, they are filled with children at play. It’s heartening. I remember when my parents met some Jewish kids for the first time, they said, “They’re very rambunctious, aren’t they?”
The goyish kids I’ve known were generally more restrained and polite than the Jewish ones I’ve known.
* There are many benefits to obeying God’s commandments but that’s not why we observe them. We do it because God said so and God is in a better position than us to know what is best.
Rabbi Wein writes: The opening commandment in this week’s parsha deals with shemitta – the sabbatical year for the Land of Israel when the ground was to be allowed to lie fallow and the farmer abstained from his regular routine of work. The traditional commentators to the Torah emphasized that even though the ground and farmer would benefit in the long run from the year’s inactivity this was not the reason for the commandment.
There are always side benefits from obeying the commandments of the Torah but these are never the reason or the basis for the commandment itself. The underlying lesson of the sabbatical year is its obvious kinship to the weekly Sabbath. Just as every seven days brings with it a holy day of rest, so too does a holy sabbatical year bring with it a rest for the earth itself.
* Torah commandments can be very difficult. Sometimes they can just be an ideal that we can’t reach yet, such as shemitah (Sabbatical year of rest), which Jews have never fully observed. I notice that a lot of people have an all-or-nothing approach. If you can’t fulfill every commandment in every detail then there is no point in keeping anything. I had a secular girlfriend who used this argument to express her contempt for my flawed religiosity. This is stupid.
Rabbi Wein writes: “Shemitta has always been a difficult test of faith for the Jewish people. Even in Temple times it appears that the commandment was never fully fulfilled. There are many reasons for this apparent laxity in observance, the most obvious one being the seeming impracticality of its observance.”
* I understand suicide bombers and arsonists. I understand their despair and their desire for importance. They want to create in the wider world the disharmony they feel inside every day.
* Did the Kings game Sunday night provide Rabbi Rabbs some temporary relief from the misery of his existence?
Rabbs, there’s no need to feel down
I said Rabbs, pick yourself off the ground
I said Rabbs, ’cause your in a new town
There’s no need to be unhappy
Rabbs, there’s a place you can go
I said Rabbs, when you’re short on your dough
You can stay there and I’m sure you will find
Many ways to have a good time
Is a Jew allowed to stay at the YMCA? They have everything for young men to enjoy. You can hang out with all the boys.
* How do you run a modern state according to Torah law? How do you run a modern Jewish community in a Gentile nation according to Torah law?
In his sixth lecture on R. Chaim Ozer Grodzinksi for Torah in Motion, history professor Marc B. Shapiro says: According to Rav Nissim of Girona (aka The RaN) says that in our Jewish system, there are two types of governance — Torah law and the law of the king. Take a look at how difficult it is to convict people in Jewish law. You have to have two witnesses. The perpetrator needs to be warned. How do you run a state like this? How do you put people in jail? Every single person in jail would not be in jail by Torah law. First, there’s no jail in Torah law. None of these people were warned before committing their crime.
According to Wikipedia: “Nissim ben Reuven (1320–1376, Hebrew: נסים בן ראובן) of Girona, Catalonia was an influential talmudist and authority on Jewish law. He was one of the last of the great Spanish medieval talmudic scholars. He is also known as the RaN (ר”ן, the Hebrew acronym of his name).”
Marc: The standard view is that the Beit Din has the authority to do whatever they want to do as an emergency measure. There’s a famous case in the Talmud where the rabbis executed someone for riding a horse on Shabbos even though that’s only a rabbinic prohibition. To establish Torah law, the rabbis are allowed to break with Torah law and to do extra-judicial measures. The Beit Din can do what it needs to do. That’s the way Jewish society worked in medieval time. All sorts of punishments were given to people that were forbidden by Torah law.
The RaN said that Torah law and real law (law of the king) operate in different spheres. According to Torah law, you need two witnesses to convict someone but the law of the king can set up any proof it wants. The king sets up a parallel legal system.
You could conclude that Torah law is only meant as some theoretical law. It is clearly impossible to run any sort of society based on Torah law. It’s almost law for a messianic society and not meant for the real world.
The RaN is not talking about emergency measures. He’s talking about a complete parallel legal system. Many people aren’t aware of this. They think that if you don’t have at least two witnesses warning someone, you can never convict. I think this is a disgrace to the Torah because it makes people think that Jewish law can not function in the real world.
If someone has half a brain and they’re in yeshiva and learning all the laws and that’s all they’re told about how a Jewish system will function, they will have to conclude that Jewish law is not suitable for a real society. How can you have a society where you can’t send criminals to jail?
Obviously Jewish law can function in a real society. It has functioned in a real society. If you want to know how Jewish law has functioned in a real society, look at the responsa literature. There you see what Jewish societies did with criminals. They did what they needed to do. Some punishments were quite barbaric. Cutting off noses. Yitzhak Baer discusses this in his book A history of the Jews in Christian Spain. The Tzitz Eliezer has a great teshuva on how Jewish law functioned and how the courts were able to punish people. Simha Assaf has an entire book, Punishments after the close of the Talmud.
Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog naively believed that Israel’s criminal law could be run according to Jewish law.
If I were to go in to most shuls and to talk to people, even learned Torah scholars, and say that Jewish law was not practical and that if we had a state, we’d have to punish people in non-Torah ways, they’d say I’m a heretic. The amount of ignorance on this issue about how Jewish society has functioned and how leading rabbis have said it should function. I don’t know any area where there is such ignorance.
The Los Angeles District Attorney’s office has never been a nice place for Jewish employees (observant Jews are almost always denied employment there). All the Jewish attorneys on the DA’s staff are sharp but they rarely get promoted while bottom-of-the-barrel attorneys get promoted.
Many of the kids in the yeshiva (in the Fairfax-La Brea area) knew about the boy who was regularly raping his younger sisters. Eventually adults found out. The boy is now in juvenile hall.
