Two posts in February. The shame! But here I am, and I'm catching everything up. Remember, I was going to tell you about my encounters with famous Jews.
One of them was with Wallace Shawn. If you don't know who he is, it's only because you don't know the name. He's most famous from being the little bald guy in The Princess Bride who says "Inconceivable." Now do you know who I mean? He's also known to those who have seen My Dinner with Andre He's the one who is not Andre). He's also the voice of Rex in all the Toy Story films, but I haven't seen those.
What very few know people tend to know about is that Wallace Shawn is primarily a playwright. Wikipedia says: "Shawn has pursued a parallel career as a playwright whose work is often dark, politically charged and controversial." Which it basically is. You may know Aunt Dan and Lemon, or The Designated Mourner (also made into a film). He's a spectacular writer - one of those writers who make very clear statements about truths that are brilliant yet obvious. When he says things, you think, my God, that's exactly right and really, I've known it my whole life but was never able to quite consciously access it. That sort of brilliant.
I first met him at a Star Trek convention, his attendance there due to the fact that he played the Ferrengi Quark on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He supports himself mainly via acting in character roles; this finances his playwriting activities. This was his first convention and you could see it was a strange, marvelous world to him. He has the ability to see the world in an innocent, child-like way. I met him because I had paid to get a professional photo, and unlike other actors posing for pictures, who had a sense of this activity as a business, not to be impaired by slowing anything down, "Wally" wanted to fully experience the event. He was willing to talk to everyone - all of whom were there in their Star Trek love capacity; I was there mostly due to the plays, which I told him.
"I'm so happy to meet you, " I said as I headed towards him. "The world's greatest living playwright." He looked pleased and shocked. "But I'm undercover," he chuckled. "No one knows about that here." There was a little more chit chat and that was that, but his presence was powerful and the episode stuck with me. When I found out he was over in Berkeley to present an evening of spoken word - he read from some his favorite authors, some of his own work (from a new book of essays, called Essays), and talked a little. He answered questions. He restated questions - as speakers will do when the audience doesn't have a mic, it's the professional thing to do - but his restatements were so clear, so penetrating, so insightful. He said them in ways the questioner hadn't even imagined but which were dead on the money. Wallace Shawn hits the mark.
I was excited to see him again, and my partner J (who also loved Wally but had never met him) and I bought a few books and waited to get them signed. When I came up to talk to him, I said, "Actually, we've met before, at a Star Trek convention; I think I surprised you then by mentioning your playwriting."
He chuckled (he has a famous, absolutely wonderful laugh) and said, "And now you're surprising me here by mentioning Star Trek." We both spent a split second being aware of the grey-haired therapist- and lawyer-heavy Bay Area intellectual crowd, who have no idea of anything Star Trek, and enjoying our little moment of shared impromptu community. He wrote "Great to see you again," when he signed my book. Clever and satisfying. That's Wally.
I had a different type of experience when I went to see Josh Kornbluth's "Big Fat Jewish Learning," which is basically this unusual format, not performance but....something. Josh is a monologist, and very interesting, smart, funny (like Wally, but closer to my own generation so a bit less intellectually rigorous), and he's studying for his bar mitzvah (which he never had, at the proper age). Because he tends to process things through performing them, he decided to invite the general public to his preparatory lessons. I went to the first one, which set the format: greets & welcome, the rabbi gives us some context for the text we're studying, then small group discussion (Josh circulates, listening, joining in), then we group and Josh summarizes and processes what he heard and learned and thought about.
Now, I am not Jewish, even though I would like to be (have been born Jewish; it's the hereditary aspect I crave, not the religious one, per se), but I like talking to Jews. I know a little bit of Jewish religious references, from friends, my own spiritual reading and Woody Allen movies, but this text was unfamiliar to me, and, I thought, very difficult. The rabbi also mentioned it, several times, as very difficult, so it wasn't just me. It came from the Book of Hosea and contained, among other things, this passage:
"I espouse you to me forever. I espouse you to me in righteousness, justice, lovingkindness, and mercy. I espouse you to me in faithfulness--and you shall know God."
It is one of the phrases spoken when laying on Tefillin (which are those black straps and small boxes you may see ritually placed and worn by certain Hasidic and other Jewish sects). I found it confusing, and I wasn't alone. I wasn't especially expecting small group discussion, and felt very out of my depth, yet wanted to contribute so I did my best to try and have a few intelligent thoughts. I read and re-read the text and listened closely to the discussion to understand as much as I could. (In fact, I love listening to lectures or discussions that are slightly out of my range; I love straining the old brain a little to see what I can glean from context, inflection, emotional reaction.)
Our group happened to have in it the other rabbi in the room, an older man, very classically rabbi-looking. He partially led our discussion, by default. He asked questions, and he kept shrugging whenever someone offered up an answer. "I don't know..." he said thoughtfully. "What does it mean?" The group became stuck on the phrase, "And [then] you shall know God." (This phrase, incidentally, came up again less than a day later. Hmm....)
"What does that mean?" the rabbi would say. And people were answering, but he kept asked. Finally, I said, "That God is knowable." He turned around and gestured towards me - and please, imagine the rabbi inflection or you don't get the full picture - and said, "That God is knowable....and what does than mean?" And off we went but I felt that he was pleased. I felt like that was the sentence that wanted to out.
But is God knowable? Well, I don't know. But I do know, I've seen a lot of Jewish men speak in person: Wallace Shawn, Josh Kornbluth, Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner, Leonard Cohen, Philip Glass (grandson of Jewish immigrants, I read), Howard Zinn, Billy Crystal, Oliver Stone (dad was Jewish), Peter Coyote, and they have all, universally, immeasurably enriched my life, and made me feel like I am closer to understanding God. Really.
I've seen a lot of non-Jewish speakers too, of course, who have moved me profoundly (Martin Sheen leaps to mind, and Kurt Vonnegut) but I've really gotten something from seeing the speakers listed. They seem brilliant, and when my brain was engaged listening to them - in person, where the speaker's energy is also tangible, an important aspect - I was supremely happy, and felt like I'd not just learned something but grown, as a person.
Also, I find a big Jewish brain in a man incredibly sexy, but that's another thing entirely. Or, maybe it's not, but....well, you get the idea. And now I'm caught up, and we can move on to new things that might occur.
One of them was with Wallace Shawn. If you don't know who he is, it's only because you don't know the name. He's most famous from being the little bald guy in The Princess Bride who says "Inconceivable." Now do you know who I mean? He's also known to those who have seen My Dinner with Andre He's the one who is not Andre). He's also the voice of Rex in all the Toy Story films, but I haven't seen those.
What very few know people tend to know about is that Wallace Shawn is primarily a playwright. Wikipedia says: "Shawn has pursued a parallel career as a playwright whose work is often dark, politically charged and controversial." Which it basically is. You may know Aunt Dan and Lemon, or The Designated Mourner (also made into a film). He's a spectacular writer - one of those writers who make very clear statements about truths that are brilliant yet obvious. When he says things, you think, my God, that's exactly right and really, I've known it my whole life but was never able to quite consciously access it. That sort of brilliant.
I first met him at a Star Trek convention, his attendance there due to the fact that he played the Ferrengi Quark on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He supports himself mainly via acting in character roles; this finances his playwriting activities. This was his first convention and you could see it was a strange, marvelous world to him. He has the ability to see the world in an innocent, child-like way. I met him because I had paid to get a professional photo, and unlike other actors posing for pictures, who had a sense of this activity as a business, not to be impaired by slowing anything down, "Wally" wanted to fully experience the event. He was willing to talk to everyone - all of whom were there in their Star Trek love capacity; I was there mostly due to the plays, which I told him.
"I'm so happy to meet you, " I said as I headed towards him. "The world's greatest living playwright." He looked pleased and shocked. "But I'm undercover," he chuckled. "No one knows about that here." There was a little more chit chat and that was that, but his presence was powerful and the episode stuck with me. When I found out he was over in Berkeley to present an evening of spoken word - he read from some his favorite authors, some of his own work (from a new book of essays, called Essays), and talked a little. He answered questions. He restated questions - as speakers will do when the audience doesn't have a mic, it's the professional thing to do - but his restatements were so clear, so penetrating, so insightful. He said them in ways the questioner hadn't even imagined but which were dead on the money. Wallace Shawn hits the mark.
I was excited to see him again, and my partner J (who also loved Wally but had never met him) and I bought a few books and waited to get them signed. When I came up to talk to him, I said, "Actually, we've met before, at a Star Trek convention; I think I surprised you then by mentioning your playwriting."
He chuckled (he has a famous, absolutely wonderful laugh) and said, "And now you're surprising me here by mentioning Star Trek." We both spent a split second being aware of the grey-haired therapist- and lawyer-heavy Bay Area intellectual crowd, who have no idea of anything Star Trek, and enjoying our little moment of shared impromptu community. He wrote "Great to see you again," when he signed my book. Clever and satisfying. That's Wally.
I had a different type of experience when I went to see Josh Kornbluth's "Big Fat Jewish Learning," which is basically this unusual format, not performance but....something. Josh is a monologist, and very interesting, smart, funny (like Wally, but closer to my own generation so a bit less intellectually rigorous), and he's studying for his bar mitzvah (which he never had, at the proper age). Because he tends to process things through performing them, he decided to invite the general public to his preparatory lessons. I went to the first one, which set the format: greets & welcome, the rabbi gives us some context for the text we're studying, then small group discussion (Josh circulates, listening, joining in), then we group and Josh summarizes and processes what he heard and learned and thought about.
Now, I am not Jewish, even though I would like to be (have been born Jewish; it's the hereditary aspect I crave, not the religious one, per se), but I like talking to Jews. I know a little bit of Jewish religious references, from friends, my own spiritual reading and Woody Allen movies, but this text was unfamiliar to me, and, I thought, very difficult. The rabbi also mentioned it, several times, as very difficult, so it wasn't just me. It came from the Book of Hosea and contained, among other things, this passage:
"I espouse you to me forever. I espouse you to me in righteousness, justice, lovingkindness, and mercy. I espouse you to me in faithfulness--and you shall know God."
It is one of the phrases spoken when laying on Tefillin (which are those black straps and small boxes you may see ritually placed and worn by certain Hasidic and other Jewish sects). I found it confusing, and I wasn't alone. I wasn't especially expecting small group discussion, and felt very out of my depth, yet wanted to contribute so I did my best to try and have a few intelligent thoughts. I read and re-read the text and listened closely to the discussion to understand as much as I could. (In fact, I love listening to lectures or discussions that are slightly out of my range; I love straining the old brain a little to see what I can glean from context, inflection, emotional reaction.)
Our group happened to have in it the other rabbi in the room, an older man, very classically rabbi-looking. He partially led our discussion, by default. He asked questions, and he kept shrugging whenever someone offered up an answer. "I don't know..." he said thoughtfully. "What does it mean?" The group became stuck on the phrase, "And [then] you shall know God." (This phrase, incidentally, came up again less than a day later. Hmm....)
"What does that mean?" the rabbi would say. And people were answering, but he kept asked. Finally, I said, "That God is knowable." He turned around and gestured towards me - and please, imagine the rabbi inflection or you don't get the full picture - and said, "That God is knowable....and what does than mean?" And off we went but I felt that he was pleased. I felt like that was the sentence that wanted to out.
But is God knowable? Well, I don't know. But I do know, I've seen a lot of Jewish men speak in person: Wallace Shawn, Josh Kornbluth, Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner, Leonard Cohen, Philip Glass (grandson of Jewish immigrants, I read), Howard Zinn, Billy Crystal, Oliver Stone (dad was Jewish), Peter Coyote, and they have all, universally, immeasurably enriched my life, and made me feel like I am closer to understanding God. Really.
I've seen a lot of non-Jewish speakers too, of course, who have moved me profoundly (Martin Sheen leaps to mind, and Kurt Vonnegut) but I've really gotten something from seeing the speakers listed. They seem brilliant, and when my brain was engaged listening to them - in person, where the speaker's energy is also tangible, an important aspect - I was supremely happy, and felt like I'd not just learned something but grown, as a person.
Also, I find a big Jewish brain in a man incredibly sexy, but that's another thing entirely. Or, maybe it's not, but....well, you get the idea. And now I'm caught up, and we can move on to new things that might occur.
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