Luke Ford | No sacred cows.

I Never Did It With Cathy Seipp

Posted on March 22, 2007 by Luke Ford

Therefore I assume that the moral structure of the universe won’t be shattered if I only say kaddish for her during mincha/ma’ariv every day and skip shacharit. Cathy was never a morning person. She would not want me to get up while it was still dark and cold to trudge through the snow to shul to mutter some words in Aramaic in her memory.

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Cathy Seipp Was 49

Posted on March 21, 2007 by Luke Ford

Cathy Seipp died of lung cancer at Ceders-Sinai Wednesday, March 21, 2007. I assembled most of this profile of her in early 2003.

It was only after Cathy told me in October of 2002 that she had incurable lung cancer that we did our first interview and became close. Cathy called me her Boswell. Family and friends and doctors didn’t expect her to make it to 2007.

After I got the call from Maia Wednesday afternoon, I looked away from my computer and turned up the Carpenters and thought about Cathy. Then, just as I started to cry, I got a phone call and had to return to work. Work is good.

Luke and Cathy on Luke’s 40th Birthday May 28, 2006 Luke and Cathy in the summer of 2004 with Matt Welch in the background Luke and Cathy (photo by Emmanuelle Richard) Cathy, Luke, Cheryl at my 40th birthday party Cathy, Luke, Cheryl Cathy, Luke, Cheryl

Over lunch in 2003, after talking about my broken relationship, I said to Cathy, "You’ve spoiled me for other women." "You don’t know how true that is," replied Cathy. "I’m not kidding." Cathy never liked any of my girlfriends. Emmanuelle Richard emails:

Hey Luke: Thank God for all your research and this lengthy profile of Cathy. Glad you too met. You made her laugh so much with your antics, and by being you — a funny guy. It’s sad, and the end was awful, but the Catholic in me believes in life after death — there’s no way such a soul can disappear forever. Especially after all this hard work at becoming Cathy Seipp! Even on her deathbed, she kicked ass and defied predictions.

Matt Welch emails:

Dear Team Cathy, After setting at least three world records for stubborn refusal to adhere to any medical predictions whatsoever, Cathy’s no longer with us. She died at around 2:05 pm, Greg Crister at her side, after a day in which she was basically sleeping peacefully. A big crew is at the hospital with him — Harvey, Maia, Emmanuelle, Debbie, I’m sure others. Harvey’s busy making arrangements, and I’ll send word when I hear something concrete, but I think he’s trying to set up a funeral for Friday. I’ll state the obvious in saying that it’s probably best not to blizzard everyone with phone calls right now. We will see later what Harvey & Maia want to do this evening, and what support they need. You all should know — especially the ones who might not be in L.A. at the moment, or who haven’t seen her in a while — that Cathy took enormous comfort (and I’m sure not a small amount of wicked pleasure), in the incredible outpouring of support from all of you, and the thousands of complete strangers who sent best wishes her way. If she deserves all the credit in the world for creating this community of unlike-minded weirdos around her, I think the community should know that they really helped in a pinch. There will be much more of that help needed in the days and weeks ahead, and I’ll send word when I know anything about where it can be applied. …There will be a public funeral at Friday, 10 am, at Mt. Sinai Hollywood Hills, 5950 Forest Lawn Drive, Los Angeles, 90068. It will be followed by a private reception. Cathy has also asked for people to make donations to the Humane Society.

Jill Stewart emails: "As we friends and family say goodbye to our dear Cathy today, I noticed that it’s the first day of spring. She was all about the zest for life and facing it all with verve. So it seems she is making a statement, even now." Nick Gillespie, Editor of Reason magazine, emails: "Cathy was an immense inspiration as a journalist and, more importantly, as a community-builder. Please send condolences from all the Reason crew, who will miss her greatly." Kate Coe emails: "Cathy Seipp is at Technorati #2 and take it from me, nothing would make her happier than being # 1. For a writer who disected pop culture while beings passionate about it, this would be a true memorial. Every little link helps. If she’s # 2, the terrorists win." Cathy was competitive and she carefully monitored her traffic and the number of links she received as measured by technorati.com. She regularly Googled her name to see what people were saying about her. That’s how she met Matt Welch. She noticed he’d mentioned her on LAExaminer.com.

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Novelist Tamar Yellin

Posted on March 21, 2007 by Luke Ford

Tamar’s published two books: The Genizah at the House of Sheper and Kafka in Bronteland and Other Stories.

I interviewed her this week via email.

* When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

A writer. I began writing stories at the age of six or seven.

* What did your parents want from you?

Perfection.

* What crowd did you hang out with in high school?

I was pretty much a loner. I didn’t enjoy institutional life.

* What type of characters do you prefer to write?

I seem to have a thing about elderly men. I’m not sure why that is, I just relate to them.

* What do you love and hate about being Jewish in the UK? I was there 18 months ago and being Jewish in London seems very different from my LA Jewish experience.

I don’t know what it’s like to be Jewish in London. I’ve lived in the north of England most of my life. North-of-England Jewishness is very local and particular. Try reading Howard Jacobson. In my case, there was a sense of Israeliness which added to the mix.

There are pluses and minuses to being Jewish in Britain. On the one hand, we’re positioned at the crossroads between Europe and America. We share in the British tradition of being open to influences from both directions. On the other, we’re different without being considered exotic. In a sense, to be British and Jewish is to be a sort of ghost. We exist in a limbo-land between America and the Holocaust. As a writer, I find that a rather interesting place to be.

* What do you most want your readers to experience when they read you?

The elation of a good read.

* What are your strengths and weaknesses as a writer?

I’m always in control. On the other hand, I’m always in control.

* What in Judaism and Jewish life inspires you and what depresses you?

I love the eclecticism of Jewish culture. The humour, beauty, sadness and intelligence of Judaic tradition fascinates and inspires me. I’m depressed by the bigotry and clubbishness of those who believe themselves more truly Jewish than others.

* How much do you socialize with other writers and how important is that to you?

I used to be very isolated as a writer. Since the internet, that’s changed. I’ve met a number of wonderful writers from as far afield as Florida, New York and Belgrade who are now my friends and our mutual support and encouragement have been invaluable. I’ve been a member of an online writing community called Storyville for the past seven years. I think, though, that I’m always essentially alone with my work. That hermetic solitude is very important to me. I’m pretty secretive about my work-in-progress and rarely share it until it’s at a late stage of development.

* Does literature make people better? If so, how?

I’ve definitely felt that reading, say, Tolstoy or Primo Levi or Milan Kundera has made me a better person. It’s taught me things I didn’t know, enabled me to empathise, uplifted me spiritually and made me think more deeply. If it’s done that for me, it can do the same for other people.

* In what ways are your perceptions of life keener than other people’s?

I’ve often wondered whether novelists and poets have a keener perception of life. I don’t think they do, necessarily; I think what they have is the ability to express those perceptions in words and so crystallise them for others.

* How has devoting so much time to writing affected your life?

David Grossman once put it into words for me: he said, “A writer can’t live a normal life.” I was grateful when he said that; it gave me sanction.

* How has publishing your two books affected your life? I feel like a public writer now instead of a private one. Before, my readership was only a theory; now it’s an actuality. That’s wonderful, but I need to protect my privacy and my solitude.

* How has marriage/motherhood affected your writing? My husband has been endlessly supportive of my writing. He’s provided the stable emotional and financial base from which to write.

* Your husband and your writing? Does he read it in advance? Is he allowed to critique it?

My husband is an accountant! He doesn’t read my books, he does my tax returns. Actually, he’s a much more accomplished critiquer of literature than he thinks he is.

* What is it like for you as a Jew to be so immersed in English aka christian literature?

I adore English literature, but I will always be in some way outside of it. It’s not the Christianity so much as the anti-Semitism which alienates. It’s like I describe in my story “Mrs Rubin and her Daughter”: the references to Jews “jump at out them like brigands on unexpected pages,” they are “alienated and repatriated in a flash,” they “press on, admiring and despising, and forget the literary mugging until next time.”

As a young writer, adoring the Brontes, I used to dream sometimes of meeting them. But it was very painful to realise that even Emily Bronte was probably an anti-Semite.

I’d especially preclude Shakespeare, though. Who knows what his real intentions were, but the fact that ‘The Merchant of Venice’ is open to such a huge range of interpretations suggests to me that his human sympathy was far ahead of its time. That’s part of what makes him such a genius.

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Cathy Seipp Still Alive

Posted on March 20, 2007 by Luke Ford

Amy Alkon emails: "Cathy is so Cathy…still with us, defying all predictions of the doctors. Harvey went home for an hour, Moxie and I have been holding her hand and talking to her and telling her not to worry about Maia, and how there’s been this tremendous outpouring of love and admiration for her from so many people. Mox and I are going to go back with Maia and have dinner, and Emmanuelle and Matt will probably join us. I’ll stay overnight then bring Maia back in the morning. Moxie is holding her hand right now as I’m typing. Maia said she’s getting some kind of drug so she just feels bliss…we hope so."

Sandra Tsing Loh emails:

Dear Friends of Cathy, I come to you with the whitened Einstein (or Moses in the 10 Commandments) hair from Cedars’ "The Valley of Death" (so called because Harvey, Jerry, and Maia have now heard Last Rites recited in not one but two religions). I now realize that Cathy has hung on so long (her doctors admitted they were, and I quote, "shocked" that Cathy is still alive) as she wanted to f— with the completely-wrong bloggers announcing her early demise! Good work, Cathy! As always, you are ASTOUNDINGLY wily. And I also wish to mention, with wounded 45 year-old vanity, that when I left tonight at 6 p.m. Cathy actually looked BETTER than me (peaceful, relaxed, beautiful, with lovely color). (Albeit that Cathy was resting in the strange what I call Cedars-Sinai "Stanley Kubrick natatorium"–just when we were having that casino-like-what-time-is-it-are-we-all-going-crazy? moment, Cathy was moved to a room that is white, blank, and has the two metaphorical doors, accompanied with the lone electric outlet and ominous metaphorical humming.

Cozy George Burns and Gracie Allens Drive, where are ye? But no matter. . . Truly. . .Cathy looks at peace.) That said, from watching my own mother die, as Cathy’s breathing is shallow (and she turned bluish/ruddy at about 4:50) I think she will be gone in 24 hours if not actually tonight. In the meantime, as wonderful (and her well-chosen!) Rabbi suggested, Cathy will go when she will go.

I have two simple requests. One is that you support Cathy’s immediate family. . . Harvey, Jerry and Maia love Cathy so much, they have been there day in and day out, they have been troopers. . . Listen to them, support them, appreciate them. They have lost someone they loved so much, and they have poured out so much of their souls. They deserve medals. Michelle also come yesterday afternoon–it is hard to lose a sister, particularly when the dynamics were complicated, Michelle hung tough and truly deserves everyone’s support as well. Secondly, now that a core of us have faithfully (and I think heroically, I rate us all an A+!)–completed the Valley of Death phase–the hours upon hours by the monitors, the stroking of the hands, the loving memories emotionally recited, the sudden anguished stabbing declarations of "I love you, Cathy!," the hysterical Terms of Endearment-like chasing down of the nurses in the hallway ("She’s in pain, dammit, pain! WILL ANYONE IN THIS CRAZY WORLD LISTEN?"), etc.. . .

Anyway, now that this part of the journey is starting to move behind us (I think!) (when a Buddhist monk comes in to do Last Rites, followed by a Hindu, we will officially throw in the towel!), can any of you help with the joyous Irish wake(?) type part of our mourning. . . ? i.e. the part where we mention that Cathy was fabulous and foxy (as is evidenced in many photos), she was funny as hell, she was brilliant, she drove us crazy, etc.? This is a part of her (yet to be scheduled) service you might help with, and the joy and hilarity would be helpful (and appropriate) as some of us are dog-tired and a little wilted. And need a shower, at the very least (that would be me). (For content suggestions, please contact Debbie Gendel or Maia.) Because of course, my friends, you ARE the Wind Beneath. . . ! Etc. Even in the ICU, Cathy has been ridiculously over-achieving. (So much so that, after giving her up for dead, they actually THREW UP THEIR HANDS AND MOVED HER TO ANOTHER TOWER.) You would all be proud. Much love to you all, S

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Orthodoxy Vs. Modernity

Posted on March 19, 2007 by Luke Ford

I chat with a Conservative Jewish scholar.

LF: The answer to your essay is that O has no answer. Orthodoxy and modernity are not compatible, there can only be compromises. That is a good and bad things. There is much in modernity worth rejecting (at least for some of us). O is in much better shape than C.

CJ: I think that Orthodoxy’s answer, its best answer anyway, is the selective overcoming of modernity. To harmonize with modernity is to allow modernity to set the rules of the game. To reject modernity in toto is to reject history, which seems to me irresponsible–Hannah Arendt’s pariahdom. To overcome modernity in places, and to make a truce with it in others, seems both responsible and credible to me. My problem with Orthodox (as a merely quasi-Orthodox Jew) is that I think it often rejects modernity in the wrong places and then capitulates to it in the wrong places as well. The moral nobility of Orthodoxy inspires me. The intellectual rigidity of Orthodoxy (at least of what I see often in my shul) repels me. Example: last summer I took up the offer to study gemara with a serious baal tshuvah, a guy with a PhD. When we were learning, I questioned the gemara’s treatment of a non-Jew for a particular purpose. My partner was put off by my question and asked me what I was thinking. I mentioned Kant and the Kantian principle of treating others as ends, not means. He then told me that Kant was “a pygmy” and that we were studying the divine will and such trivial humanistic concerns had no place. I mentioned Isaac Breuer (grandson of Samson Raphael Hirsch), who was a profound student of Kant, and he looked at me with incomprehension and disgust. I did not go back to his home! We can do better than this.

LF: I want to believe what you are saying but I don’t think it works. Biblical Criticism and historical tools demolish the foundations of Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy can not accept HC and such historicism. BC (and any form of scholarship that challenges O’s credentials) can not be countenanced by O. O is strong in sticking by halacah and the notion of a God-given moral code which is demolished by BC. You can either be right (standing with scholarship) or you can be halachic.

The Exodus controversy was illustrative. Scholarship says it did not happen as the Bible describes. Orthodoxy has no response but the 13 principles et al. I saw James Kugel lecture to YICC, a modern Orthodox shul, that it should ignore HC. It would only interfere with their lives.

CJ: That would be a tragic outcome, and I reject a tragic view of life. I think that God wants us to be whole, although wholeness will always escape us. Nonetheless, we must strive for it. I can’t accept “compartmentalization,” as my late friend Charles Liebman called it, as the last word. Jon Levenson, by the way, would not agree with Jim Kugel and I wouldn’t think Levenson less “Orthodox.” So maybe the problem is with the doxa in Orthodoxy. Without falling into the soul deadening roboticism of what Heschel called “religious behaviorism” maybe what we should be about is orthopraxy, praxis rather than doxa. Menachem Kellner’s interesting work on dogma in the Middle Ages leads me in this direction.

I think that Jon Levenson has produced superb studies of biblical themes but he has not written his own biblical theology yet. Had he done so, he might be able to address the problem of how criticism and Torah-faith might hang together.

I once asked Mordechai Breuer, the son of Isaac Breuer and a great, Bar Ilan historian, how he reconciled being a historian with being an Orthodox Jew, implying that if he were to follow history across the board he would have to accept HC with the necessary consequences. He told me that “Man does not live by history alone.” I’m not sure that there is a better answer at present.

LF: When, as a journalist, I am writing about somebody who is a friend of mine, or is somebody that I can not write about dispassionately because I have obligations to that person, I try to always state my bias.

When scholars pretend to write dispassionately about things where they truly have no room to follow the truth (thinking about fundamentalists), then I do not respect them.

You are lucky. You can follow the truth wherever it leads. I respect those who lead closeted compartmentalized lives, as I do, but they should not speak out publicly where they privately believe and practice otherwise (generally speaking).

CJ: As to scholars, so many of them nowadays are under the sway of post-modernism that they mock the idea of objectivity or value-neutrality. They seem to have succumbed to the belief that all is politics and will to power, all is about persuasion rather than truth. I find this dismal. Liberals mock ideas such as liberty, and professors mock truth. We are indeed the barbarians that we fear.

Of course, it’s not quite so grim. There are plenty of scholars who still believe that truth is compelling and can be found, at least provisionally. The sciences are not as infected by moral and intellectual defeatism as the humanities. As to the compartmentalized, I have recognized for a long time that those of us who are philosophers–and who are temperamentally ill-suited to tolerate compartmentalization–are a peculiar minority.

There are highly observant men in my shul who have PhD’s in physics and chemistry, and who evidently sustain a pre-Copernican view of the universe in shul. That would drive me crazy, but is a perfectly tolerable way of life for them. Who am I to judge?

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Cathy Seipp’s Last Days

Posted on March 19, 2007 by Luke Ford

Cathy’s daughter Maia posts on CathySeipp.net’s comments section: “Dear commenters…this post was her last. Until I can obtain her password to get in (haven’t heard back from webmaster yet), will use this comments section as a means. My mother, Cathy Seipp, is in the ICU as of Saturday and the doctor bluntly told it to me straight. She is taking a turn for the worse and has…1 to 2 days left. Thank you all for participating in the above discussions. Will keep everyone updated. Please email me at cecile ml dubois at aol dot com.”

Maia IMs me at 4 p.m.: “My mom is soon going to be in a better place.”

Emmanuelle Richard emails: “Sandra just called at a quarter to 6 and said that the doc thought that Cathy was in too much pain and decided to take the oxygen mask off at 4:47 pm. It’s almost a quarter to 6 and she’s still fighting. It’s incredible. From what I understood yesterday, you’re not supposed to survive that long in her condition without the mask but now, it’s a matter of minutes. Sandra is with Maia, and Michelle is there as well as Jerry all around her.”

I only got to know Cathy after she was diagnosed with incurable lung cancer in the summer of 2002.

Here’s the story on how my section on Cathy came about:

I was intimidated by Cathy at first and even though I wanted to interview her for my blog, I held back.

In November of 2002, I ran into Emmanuelle Richard in West Hollywood.

(Over the past year, I had been profiling various journalists for my website lukeford.net.)

“Why don’t you interview Cathy?” Emmanuelle asked.

“I’d love to. Do you think she’d do it?” I said.

“Yes. She wonders why you have not asked her. We were talking about your journalist interviews and she said, ‘Well, I’m at least as interesting as Ross Johnson.’”

I emailed Seipp and asked her for an interview. She then canvassed her friends about whether or not she should do it. Most of her friends advised her against it but she did it anyway.

She was flattered by my attention.

We became the best of friends because we were both endlessly fascinated by Cathy Seipp.

There were two interviews I did not get for my Seipp profile that would help fill out her story — her writer friends Dan Akst and Greg Critser.

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Which Orthodox Shul Has Valet Parking On Shabbos?

Posted on March 18, 2007 by Luke Ford

Walking out of the Beit Midrash after mincha-ma’ariv Sunday, I passed five valet attendants.

“We should have that on Shabbos,” I joked.

Then I learned that there is an Orthodox shul with valet parking on Shabbos (Orthodox Judaism rules that driving on the Sabbath is a sin) — Nessah of Beverly Hills. It gets about 800 people (mainly Persians) on a Saturday morning.

Joe* (who came by way of Steve Sailer’s blog) emails:

Mr. Ford,
Sefardim, Persians, Mizrachim, call ’em what you like, in L.A. (and Israel as well, I hear) tend to be traditional – they go to shul but may drive to get there or go to sports game afterwards. I live in Westwood and every other shabbos, I would see a Persian guy driving up to Kahal Yosef in a Lexus, tallis bag in hand. But the valet shtick is a whole new level – the shul is recognizing this type of observance as valid.
A funny but slightly-OT note: Rabbi Tendler at YULA (the uncle of the molester) once lamented in his friday morning parsha shiur how he’d be walking past rexford and he’d see people driving to shul. Of course, near everyone knew he was talking about Nessah, and if they didn’t, they soon heard it from others. All the Persian kids got mad at him for saying that, while the Ashkenazim defended him, even the somewhat unreligious ones, for saying the truth.

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University Of Judaism Buys Brandeis-Bardin Institute

Posted on March 17, 2007 by Luke Ford

Expect an announcement this week. BBI was the largest landholder among Jewish organizations outside of Israel, but the place has been consistently mismanaged for more than 20 years, and it has been selling off bits of land to try to stay afloat. Now their financial situation is dire and they are coming under the protection of the financially flush U.J. BBI has the reputation of having the worst board of directors in the Jewish world. Traditionally in Jewish life, board members are big donors, but that was not the case at BBI.

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Two Wongs Don’t Make A White

Posted on March 15, 2007 by Luke Ford

Cathy Seipp calls me "horrible boy." Among the ways I’ve earned this name is my hilarity at some verbal expressions of racism. My home country, for instance, had a "White Australia" policy until I was born, 1966. "Its clarion call had been uttered by Arthur Caldwell, the Minister for Immigration, who, in the course of refusing to allow a Chinese businessman named Mr. Wong to join his legally married and resident spouse in Australia, wittily declared that "Two Wongs don’t make a white." (Things I Didn’t Know by Robert Hughes, pg. 167)

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Jewish Touching

Posted on March 15, 2007 by Luke Ford

Hello, My name is Mark Guterman.¬†¬† I am a Clinical Psychology PhD student working with Orit Avishai of the University of California at Berkeley.¬† We are doing an internet survey of Jews of all denominations.¬†¬†The survey is for both singles and married couples.¬† The survey is online at: http://www.JewishSurveys.org I was wondering if you could allow post a link on your site for our research?¬† I ask you, because your blog draws readers of a type that we may not be able to reach through any other means.¬†¬†Please help us out.¬†¬†We are not making any money on this; we are simply trying to learn more about our community.¬†¬†Your cooperation in this would be greatly appreciated, and you would be doing a service to the Jewish community at large. More info on the survey:

The study looks at issues regarding Negiah (premarital touching) and Niddah / Taharat HaMishpachah (family purity). Niddah and Negiah play an important role in the every day lives of Jewish men and women. The collection of handbooks on this topic grows from year to year, yet we know very little about how Jewish couples, men, and women experience and observe Niddah and Negiah. Anecdotal evidence and our previous research have led us to conclude that many couples and individuals are experiencing difficulties with this aspect of the Halachah. We are inviting the Jewish community at large to participate in this important survey to shed light on these difficulties and explore some ways to address them. Given the intimate nature of these matters, this brief, online survey is totally anonymous, and no identifiable information is collected.

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