Robert: “They called me in to a meeting with Human Resources on Monday. The union rep stood by and let them cream me. She didn’t open her mouth in my defense one bit. They started accusing me of being a liar and a traitor to the company.
“At the end of the meeting, they said they’d let me know the determination.
“Not a good day. I thought I’d give you an update about what is going on so you could make another post on your blog.
“I’m preparing myself for the worst. I’m applying for public assistance, for food stamps and stuff. I don’t have a lot of money. These people put me in a bad light because I did the right thing. The Orthodox Union is letting me hang out there to dry. They’re willing to lie, to say that everything is OK, just to cover their asses.
“I’m contacting more media people. Hopefully they will get this out there very soon. I contacted a couple of people today. They said they were very interested, it was just a matter of timing.
“I’m not going down without a fight. Everyone should know that Montefiore Hospital has big problems and nobody should eat there.
“I offered to take a lie detector test when I was there on Monday. If you don’t believe me, put me on the machine at your expense and we’ll see who’s lying. Their reply? No comment. No offer. Nothing.
“What does that tell you?”
Robert’s wife is talking in the background about his case.
Luke: “What is your lawyer planning?”
Robert: “He’s already planning to sue the Orthodox Union. He filed a complaint [with the New York Human Rights Commission] Monday against the hospital for suspending me. He’ll wait till they terminate me before suing, so we’ll have good grounds. If they pull me back in, he won’t sue.
“The union didn’t come to my defense and say that my supervisor (Barry Kwiatkovsky, the assistant director of the nutrition department in my Weiler division, the one that is supposed to be kosher) has been harassing me. It’s a personal vendetta because I was disabled and I was outspoken on kosher.
“The union knows what is going on. That lady helped me out before but she didn’t do a thing Monday. It wasn’t right. I’m probably going to contact the National Labor Relations board.
“The union is mad that I called them garbage. Do you know why I called them garbage? I didn’t mean the lady representing me. I meant that they don’t help people who are being harassed.
“I know I did the right thing because now people are going to know. On Friday night, after they had suspended me, I went to the synagogue and had the president make an announcement that I was terminated for kosher issues. Everybody in the community knows that there’s a problem.
“I’m getting the word out. Soon everybody in America will have problems with the Orthodox Union for doing this to me.”
I emailed the Orthodox Union and Montefiore Hospital when this story broke. I have not received a reply.
Robert: “Think about it. If there are problems in this place, what about other places? I kept complaining to them that there were problems for years. Every time I made a complaint, I was harassed, retaliated against, written up.”
Robert’s wife repeatedly punctuates his points in the background.
Robert: “They didn’t expect me to go to the media. They were shocked. Now they’ve got media people calling them up all day long. There’s one lady with a major newspaper in New York was calling them up all day today. She called the Orthodox Union. She called the union. Maybe they’ll get a little nervous and back off on me and let me back in. I hope. I’m going to give them a run for their money.
“I’ve got to apply for food stamps Monday. They think that this is a joke. I’ll take advantage of whatever social programs are available. I don’t care. My wife and I will go in there. We’ve done it before. We’re not ashamed. I applied for unemployment insurance the other day.
“I’m under suspension pending final determination of firing. That means I can’t get any money coming in. I’ll only have health benefits for another month.
“They really did me a big injustice because I did the right thing. Knowing there’s a problem. You know those other mashgiachim who wrote on the blog. They’re afraid to speak up. I don’t care anymore. There’s a limit to what I can take. I’m going to spill my guts to everybody. I’ve got big newspapers in New York who are going to be writing the story soon. They’re just finishing up the report.
“A friend of mine the other night felt so bad for me, he sent me over $180 worth of food, enough to last us two weeks. Chickens and cold cuts and coleslaw and knishes.
“The problem is that the mainstream Orthodox Judaism is afraid to go against the Orthodox Union. They think they can do no wrong. Look at all the stuff that goes on, child molesting in yeshivas, and nobody ever says anything. It’s terrible. Even if I never work in this industry again, I’m going to have everybody think twice before they buy an Orthodox Union certified product.”
His wife screams in the background: “Ninety five percent is OU.”
Robert: “Some products are two or triple certified. They have deals with other companies.”
The 76th Annual Banquet of Yeshivas Ner Israel, Rabbinical College paid tribute to 3 of its Alumni members identified with the leadership of the Baltimore Jewish community.
The world famous founding Rosh HaYeshiva and inimitable Gaon Rabbi Yaakov Yitchok Ruderman zt
I emailed her: “I just spent 40 mins cleaning up, organizing my hovel above my bed to find my hanukkiah. Found it!”
She replied: “So that’s what it takes to get you to clean. A celebration of Jews reveling in the violent bloodshed of another people.”
Yisroel emails: “She (if she exists) is an ignoramus or an anti-Semite, or both. If she was trying to be funny — she’s not; it’s a totally false and harmful libel against Judaism.”
For the past ten weeks, I’ve taken a storytelling workshop by Terrie Silverman of CreativeRites.com. She’s the most inspiring writing teacher I’ve known.
Luke: “When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?”
Terrie: “An actress. When I was five years old, and I saw Mary Poppins, that was it. I wanted to act, be English, and to fly.”
Luke: “Where did you grow up?”
Terrie, an only child: Every hot climate because my mother’s from Brooklyn. She divorced my father when I was an infant. He lived in Miami.
“I was born in Miami. Scottsdale. Chula Vista. And here (since ninth grade).”
Luke: “How encouraged were you to follow your dreams?”
Terrie: “My mother at an early age, I do credit her for introducing me to the arts, although try taking an eight-year old to the Old Globe Theatre to see Julius Caesar, I tried so hard to understand I just went unconscious.
“I took ballet. I was always in plays in school. The biggest thing I learned was that I would see this thing happen to my mother every Sunday night. I didn’t know the word depression but I thought it was connected to Monday morning. I learned you have to work your whole life. You better do something you love. My whole life, I’ve chosen art.”
Luke: “What did your mom do?”
Terrie: “She was a second grade teacher until she got burned out. Then she became a school psychologist, but she always wanted to be a writer.”
Luke: “What did she most want for you?”
Terrie: “To clean my room!
“To be fulfilled. To do what I love.”
“I wish I would’ve gotten guidance. I wish someone would’ve told me that it matters where you go to school. That your grades matter. I didn’t get any guidance. I didn’t get any pressure.”
Luke: “Was there any year of your childhood that was most significant?”
Terrie: “It seems that all my memories, everything that ever happened, a most exciting and tragic time, was when I was 14 and moved here to LA. My father had been ill with cancer. I knew he was going to die and so I was waiting. I was starting ninth grade [at Venice High School]. He died days before ninth grade started.
“I was the new kid in school. I always felt like a martian, being Jewish, having a divorced parent, no brothers and sisters. I though this is going to be make me more weird. Even though I adored my father, I didn’t want to tell anyone. I found that all I had to say when anyone asked about my father was, ‘They’re divorced’ and then no more questions.
“At the same time, I met this great group. And they all loved the Beatles. This was the seventies but they pretended it was the sixties and they’d sing Beatles songs at lunch. I thought, I’m not going to make myself like the Beatles just to fit in. I’d tried to do that the previous summer with Chicago with my summer best friends and I could not make myself like Chicago.
“The girl who ended up being my best friend [Liz]. One day she brought over some Beatle records. She put on the Red Album and my ears opened up and all of a sudden I could hear the bass line and the melody line and that was it. I just fell in love with the Beatles.
“I had this great group. It was the funnest time of my life. The most social time at such a pivotal age. Then Liz and I both loved Allen and then Allen picked Liz. I would always cry about that. Then I’d come home and I had pictures of the Beatles and Paul McCartney all over my room. And I’d tell Paul about Allen.
“I knew that if I could make myself older and go back in time, Paul would love me. As an only child, it was so easy to pretend.
“It was such an exciting time, even though I cried a lot.
“Liz and Allen noticed that I never talked about my father. Allen thought my father was in prison, that he was a convict, that he was in prison for murder.
“On the last day of school, we decided we would tell each other our worst secrets. So we sat on my rainbow comforter in my bedroom. Liz told me that her father dropped acid. Then I told them my father had died.”
“I adored my father. I just wanted to get to know him. I always thought of him as my prince. I could only see him summers. I’d spend all year looking forward to seeing him.”
“My parents never said one bad word about each other.”
Terrie got her BA in Film/TV from Cal-State Northridge and her MFA in Writing from USC.
Luke: “Was there a moment in your life when you realized that your life would be about writing?”
Terrie: “It’s ironic because all through school, I was paralyzed when I tried to write. It made me feel so awful. I’d get stuck. I’d cross out all the ideas I had. So many reports I didn’t turn in. In college, Mary Newton wrote all my college papers. I did the research, we’d do the research together, but I’d get so blocked. Then I’d eat so many donuts I thought I would die and then I didn’t write at all.
“It wasn’t until I sat in on a really brilliant playwriting teacher named Dennis Clontz. He’s had plays produced across the country. I decided one day that I would try the writing assignment he was giving. So I tried. And I wrote a half-baked sketch. Didn’t want to finish it. I was about to crinkle it up and throw it in the trash and he made me read what I had. And then he said, isn’t that interesting? He found something.
“At that moment, I realized all I had to do was try. I didn’t have to be perfect.
“He took me under my wing. He changed my life. He was Annie Sullivan to my Helen Keller. He helped me get out what was in my head. I had no idea I could write.
“Meanwhile, I had a horribly traumatic acting experience. I was in a fascist comedy troupe and they kicked me out, even though they wanted me to keep writing for them. I thought, I’m never going to get on stage again. If I don’t do something creative, I’m gonna die. And that’s when I went to Dennis. He said, we’d love to have you in our playwriting program. Go write a play. I cobbled something together in a week. And all the actors came up to me wanting me to write for them. I was stunned.
“Writing became the focus of my life, without donuts. I ended up going to grad school. I was like the crippled girl getting to work. I got straight As at grad school.”
Our conversation wanders.
Luke: “Did you ever feel like there were parts of life that you wanted to be in but were closed off to you?”
Terrie: “Having unconventional looks, not looking WASPy, or Euro-centric, yeah, I was always really aware of that. Nobody on TV or in movies ever looked like me. Just being conscious of what beauty looks like and not having it look like me. That’s a gender issue.”
Luke: “What movie star do you look like?”
Terrie: “Nobody! You tell me.”
I can’t.
Luke: “How big a deal was that in your teens and twenties?”
Terrie: “It goes way way way earlier than that. Little girls just want to be pretty and then you just see this is how you are supposed to look, pretty. I looked nothing like that. Blonde hair. Small nose. I am the antithesis of what you see on TV.”
Luke: “Was that like ten out of ten big deal for you as a child?”
Terrie: “Yes.”
Luke: “You can’t overstate how big a deal that was for you as a child.”
Terrie: “Yeah. You get pegged really early about whether you are pretty or not. Then you’re really conscious of what the pretty girls have. And yes, now I find out that they had eating disorders or abuse at home, blah, blah, but you don’t know that as a kid. You just look at them and think they have it and everyone loves them.”
Luke: “Where were you in the social pecking order?”
Terrie: “I was not at all popular. It was awful. I auditioned for flag girls or the drill team and I did not get in. In 11th grade, there was this girls society thing and I tried out for that. Didn’t get in. There was the Red Ladies, this Senior thing. It sounds ridiculous. Grease was filmed at my high school. The Red Ladies was this Senior thing. I kept trying.
“With the Red Ladies, they all interviewed you. It was very much like the Inquisition. I was so naive then. When they asked me what their skirts looked like, I told them I really thought looked like cocktail waitress skirts. That was it. One person stuck up for me because it was the truth. I didn’t know you had to couch everything. I was a school photographer one year and I was on the tennis team. I never had a good backhand.
“So, no. I got invited to one party. The one guy who was very sweet who asked me out, one date, once, was gay.
“I wanted to fit in and I also didn’t like all those people.”
Luke: “Did you retreat into a fantasy world?”
Terrie: “Yeah. Senior year, I started watching a lot of soap operas. My father died. It was a sad and horrible time. My whole Beatles group in ninth grade decided to be rebellious and break up. There was nothing.”
Luke: Friends?
Terrie: “A small amount of friends.”
Luke: “Did you think of yourself as a loser?”
Terrie: “I wouldn’t use that word, but I would be in that category. Yeah! Because I didn’t get asked out. Just a drag. A third wheel. Just ugly or I didn’t know how to flirt. It was very depressing. Yeah, because I could do high school so much better now.”
Luke: “It sounds like high school was the most unhappy part of your life?”
Terrie: “That’s true. I so didn’t fit in and I couldn’t figure how to. I was a drama drop-out. I had acted through school and then in tenth grade the thespians were so cut-throat. I didn’t know they were mean to everybody and they hazed everybody. I so wanted to impress them and I ended up dropping out after the first semester of drama.”
Luke: “Did you have a teacher who took you under his wing?”
Terrie: “No. I had no champions in high school. There was one teacher who really helped me. It was a composition class in Senior year. She had us read the newspaper and read the editorials. She taught me how to do the five paragraph essay. I got a B but she shook my hand because she knew how hard I worked. And then I got scared again of writing when I entered college.”
Luke: “Did you hate the people who excluded you, who didn’t accept you, or were you just envious?”
Terrie: “I tried to figure it out and I couldn’t figure it out. Yeah, I envied them and I idolized them. I probably also didn’t respect them. They didn’t seem particularly kind or even intelligent. That was also probably just girls being conditioned to play those games.
“Once you get pegged, it was like a sinking ship. To never get asked to the Prom and all your friends are. And I really thought the only way you could go to the Prom was if the person was in love with you. I worked at this clothes shop and this girl was very nice and she felt sorry for me so she offered me her boyfriend. He was going to take me. He was foxy. And I thought, no, that would be cheating. He doesn’t know me and he doesn’t love me. I can’t go with him.”
Luke: “Did you ever overhear people talking about you?”
Terrie: “At the end of ninth grade, Liz and Allen ganged up on me. I once found a drawing from our ninth grade graduation picture. I had big feet. That was when those platform sandals were really in. They drew a picture of me and my toes were hanging over my sandals. I didn’t talk to Allen for a year. Then he came back and apologized.
“I had braces. I kinda had buckteeth. They were really mean. They were supposed to be my best friends. But that’s what best friends are for.”
We change camera angles and trade couches. I have her little dog Julia on my lap.
Luke: “Did your social life pick up in college?”
Terrie: “It couldn’t have gotten any worse. The summer [after] twelfth grade, I worked for the Youth Conservation Corp. That was the funnest job I’ve ever had. It was very social. I finally came out. Finally, the dream happened. There was a guy who I thought was very cute.”
Terrie’s dog won’t stop growling at me so she takes him back.
Terrie: “The way I got to know him and I didn’t plan it, but we always had to go to the bathroom at the same time. We were always waiting at the bathroom. I thought he was really cute. Usually if I think someone’s really cute, I’ll think, he’ll never like me. Well, he liked me.
“Then there was somebody playing my part. There was a girl who always liked him in school and was full of longing and I knew she really liked him and he liked me. That was a time when I came out of my shell. It’s a skill to socialize. That really helped. That was such a fun job.
“In college, yeah, I had friends. I went to more parties. I got a new best friend that same summer [after] 12th grade. We were really close. We were so the same. That makes such a difference. We were at the same place, the same level. Both of us late bloomers. That was really wonderful.
“I did a lot of internships my last year of college and then I started working on a TV show immediately [after] college. It was called “Not Necessarily The News”, a political satire show. I feel like that was where I grew up. I worked with all guys. They teased me to death. I had to learn to get tough and to tease back. I was there six or seven years.”
Luke: “Did you start writing for it?”
Terrie: “No. All the guys I worked with, they started writing. There was no way. All I did was encourage them. I would cheer them on. I couldn’t write. It was way before I knew I’d end up being a writer.”
“I became a researcher. I was a bad production secretary. I started freelancing. I worked on a Beach Boys show.”
“I was a manager at a coffee house and then my hands went down [with carpal tunnel syndrome].”
“For a period of time, I was so scared. I thought, my body doesn’t work. How am I going to support myself? That ended up having an emotional injury. When you can’t rely on your body, it’s horrifying. I did a lot of soul searching. What am I going to do with my life? Then I thought, oh, I’ll do sign language. That looks so creative. That looks fun. Then I found out that people get carpal tunnel from that. Then I thought I’d be a speech pathologist, but it requires too much science. Then I took one of those aptitude tests even though my aunt had to come with me because I could not hold the pen to do it. That led to me thinking about writing programs. I thought, I can’t do it if I am going to go into debt. That’s just going to make my life harder.”
I often have conflicts with people who are my superiors. They’re not just more successful in life (they’re married with children) than me, they’re finer. Kinder. More mentchy. More moral. More Jewish. More knowledgeable of Torah.
It leaves me with a very sick feeling, an insecure feeling, the opposite of feeling you are on the right path.
What shores me up is that I have a clear hierarchy of values. I’m about my writing. I’m committed to Judaism but I’ve chosen not to have a rav. There isn’t any rabbi whose decisions I consider binding on me. I take them into consideration, but in the final analysis, I do what I think is right and what fuels my writing.
I just watched this documentary and felt very sad, so sad that I had to watch an episode of Coupling afterward to laugh and feel good again.
I’ve never read Bukowski because I hear he’s depressing and I want more uplift in my life.
As a teenager, according to this documentary, Bukowski had bad acne. It was so bad that he stood outside his Senior Ball, his face swatched in toilet paper with only slits for his eyes, and his acne was bleeding into the toilet paper, and he was watching his classmates going into the Ball with their dates and he felt very sad.
When Bukowski became a successful writer, he attracted hot chicks. He did a lot of them. He said he once was in bed with six at once.
He felt a little bit ashamed of that.
Bukowski was doing research for his novel “Women“, so he had to sleep with as many women as possible. After that, he settled down with a nice girl and got married. She’s credited with adding ten years to his life.
But during his player days, his publisher recalls coming to his home and Bukowski was not there. But these twins from Holland were waiting for him.
“What do you plan to do when you meet Bukowski?” he asked them.
David: “They (the couple) were just tremendously thankful that they found somebody at the last minute. They wanted a rabbi.”
Luke: “How do the Jews and the non-Jews react to you at these interfaith weddings? Is there a significant difference?”
David: “I wouldn’t say there was a significant difference. Usually the Jews attending interfaith weddings are not Jews who oppose interfaith weddings. Usually, people are very appreciative, very thankful, that I am willing to do interfaith weddings.
“The reactions that I get from non-Jews are very interesting. The non-Jews really really like the Hebrew, even though they can’t understand it. They like the fact that I chant in Hebrew. Some of them like the sound. Some of them like that I ‘speak the language of our Lord.’ I’ve had that phrase said to me several times. Everyone is very appreciative. They always talk about how they’ve never been to a Jewish wedding. ‘This has enabled me to learn about it.’ Everything I do, I explain, so nobody is in the dark.”
Luke: “Do you try to give advice?”
David: “I always give a little bit of a sermon. Every rabbi likes the sound of his own voice. I try to limit it to three or four minutes. I try to say, what can we learn from this couple?
“The background noise that I try to give is this: You’re going to hear from enough people that what you are doing is wrong, but I don’t think it’s wrong. I think it’s great. I think it is wonderful that you are coming together from two different faiths. Here is what I have learned from you and here is what we can learn from you.”
Luke: “Have you run into non-Jews who object to the marrying of a Jew?”
David: “I can’t say that I have run into that.”
Luke: “Have you personally experienced anti-Semitism in the United States?”
David: “I’ve really got to think about that one. Hmm. When I was a kid, once, I heard a comment or something. I haven’t run into it since.”
Luke: “Do you have a hero or mentor in the Jewish tradition who you look to for what you’re doing? I’m thinking about that book, As A Driven Leaf, about Elisha Ben Abuya in the Talmud.”
David: “He’s a very interesting figure.
“When I think about specific heroes, it would be my grandfather, who I am named for, who did a whole lot of interfaith work. He was a rabbi in the deep South, in Columbia, South Carolina, and he did a whole lot in interfaith and in contributing to non-Jews knowing what the Jewish faith was all about. His life work was interfaith.
“His mentor was Rabbi Stephen Wise. He cared about what he believed in more than anything else. He sacrificed the building of his temple because he spoke truth to power. In 1918 or something, he visited the steelworkers on strike and gave a sermon in support of them even though he knew that most of his major donors were big business owners and opposed to the steelworkers. On the way to shul, he said to his wife, ‘My temple is going up in smoke today.'”
Luke: “Have you had any interesting encounters with the Orthodox since we spoke 18 months ago?”
David: “No.”
Luke: “Have you gone on a spiritual journey over the past 18 months?”
David: “Not really. I think that one significant life-altering journey is probably enough for a lifetime.”
Luke: Is there any hope for a couple who has contempt for the others religious and political beliefs?
David: “Think about Mary Matalin and James Carville. I always marvel at them. Interfaith is easy. They’ve showed that it is possible.”
Luke: “How would you envision a relationship working between two people with opposite views on religion and political?”
David: “I understand that Matalin-Carville don’t talk much about politics at home. It’s like doctors who don’t come home and discuss their patients. They have other stuff to discuss with their wives. If you have enough going on between you, it doesn’t have to be something that comes up all the time.
“When you’re talking about religion, that does necessitate some lifestyle choices. My brother just got ordained as a Reform rabbi. His wife is Orthodox. They had to make some decisions about how they will live their life. It’s always going to be the non-Orthodox partner who has to compromise more because the Orthodox side from the Orthodox perspective has things that can not be compromised on. People make it work.
“One of the prominent secular left-wing Meretz members of the Israeli parliament is married to an Orthodox man.”
I’m reading a book about mercenaries in Iraq called Big Boy Rules.
On page 83, the author Steve Fainaru writes: “Sometimes Cote would say it didn’t really matter if something happened to him, because he didn’t have a wife, or kids, or anyone he was responsible for.”
I think almost every single man feels this frequently — disposable. It makes your hold on life more tenuous.
“I once offered to give part of my lung to a dying boy,” he told her.
“Why would you do that?” she asked. “That’s serious. Please don’t ever do that.”
“I wanted to prove I was a good person,” he said. “I wanted to repair a broken friendship and to restore myself to my shul. I wanted to save the boy. I knew him.”
“I”ve long wanted to give a kidney,” she said. “Down deep, I feel like I am not a good person, and if I gave a kidney, then I would prove to myself that I was a good person. But my brother the doctor has talked me out of it.”
“Yeah,” he said, “after all the alcohol and drugs you’ve done, the hep C, you want to hold on to your kidney. That’s probably why you are so radical in your politics.
“Can you imagine what it is like to know that you are a good person? Can you imagine the serenity that would come with a virtuous life? Something that neither of us know.”
“Nietzsche wrote about this,” she said. “He asked, who sleeps well at night? Is it the person who is honest in business? He traced it all out and said that that it was thieves and evildoers who sleep best at night.”
As I drive by Skin, I often wonder how crazy would it be to go in? They’re always advertising free admission and free lunch. Now, I certainly couldn’t eat there. I severely doubt it is kosher. Now, I certainly could not go into Skin while a member of Bnai David-Judea or Aish HaTorah or YICC or Beth Jacob, none of these holy shuls, but hell, I’m not a member any of these shuls. I’m not good enough for them. I’m dirty. I certainly couldn’t step in while doing an Orthodox conversion, but hell, that’s in the past now. I’m as free as a bird. I have only my conscience to guide me and my conscience is a frightfully flexible. It’s all the yoga and Alexander Technique I do. Downward Dog and semi-supine and all.
A story in the brand new, sharply designed and overall very intriguing new Jewish web magazine, Tablet, describes the Jewish infatuation with the Alps. The best line, cited at the end, is the famous one from Rav Hirsch:
Samson Raphael Hirsch, the father of modern Orthodoxy, may have best captured this sentiment: “When I shall stand before G-d,” he wrote in the 1880s, “the Eternal One will ask me: Did you see my Alps?”
So, I had no intention of visiting this strip club. It contains sights that a religious man should not see. It breaks down family values. It exploits women. It causes spiritual pollution.
Then I had a thought. What if on Judgment Day, the Eternal One asks me, “Levi, did you see my lapdancers?”
What would I say? I’ve never had a lapdance. I feel like this privation is a slap in the face to God for the beauty he’s created for me to enjoy.
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
