Return to Article's Issue Main Page | View More Past Issues
January-February, 2004
Volume 11, Number 1
Taking the Fun out of Fundamentalism
By Jaffe Cohen
Rereading “My Life as a Christian,” which would later become a play that I last performed in the previous millennium under the title, The King of Kings and I: The Greatest Story Ever Kvetched, I was haunted by the arguments that I didn’t make.
Times were so different
then, both in 1993,
when I wrote the piece, and in 1973, when the play took place. I had
thought
that my comic premise wasn’t all that controversial: a Jewish boy from
Long
Island, in the process of coming out as gay, takes a spiritual detour,
and
becomes a born-again Christian for a few weeks. This is pretty much
what
happened to me and, from the start, I wanted to avoid any great
political or
theological debates and emphasize the comic gefilte-fish-out-of-water
angle of
the story. My inspiration was the plot-line in the movie Hannah and Her
Sisters
when Woody Allen, a Jewish hypochondriac, decides to become a Catholic
and
starts by going to the supermarket and buying a loaf of white bread and
jar of
mayonnaise. I wanted to make fun of both my youthful
naïveté and the youthful
naïveté of the early 70’s, when it wasn’t all that unusual
for middle-class
kids from Levittown to shave their heads, shout “Hare Krishna,” and
sell
incense in airports.
I soon
realized that I’d bitten off more than my comic mind could chew. By
1993 the
political context had shifted dramatically. As I stated briefly in the
play’s
opening monologue, in 1973 born-again Christians had not yet become
Evangelical
Storm Troopers. The culture wars at that time weren’t as yet being
fought along
religious lines. My enemy was still the military-industrial complex,
while the
Christians I met were for the most part recently cleaned-up hippies
that one
might label progressive in that they wanted a world in which
alternatives to
war were actively pursued. In other words, the word “Christian” wasn’t
always
followed by the word “Right.” I’m not sure when that changed, but by
1993 Pat
Buchanan had long since declared a holy war against homosexuals, and my
core
gay audience expected that I would use my play to repudiate his brand
of
religious fascism.
And I wish I
had. Because since then, things have only gotten much worse. Looking
back from
our post-9/11 perspective, one might easily argue that just as a few
extremists
have hijacked Islam, Christianity has been politicized by those who
would use
it as a weapon with which to bully the rest of the world—starting with
the
American public—in order to keep stealing its money, resources, and
labor. In
other words, an unholy alliance has been formed between the folks with
the big
guns and the folks who believe that God—their God—would write only one
book and
have only one son.
Yes, I wish I
had been a little more ambitious and outraged when I wrote “My Life as
a
Christian.” But who in 1993 could have dreamed that our country would
elect—with a little help from the Supreme Court—a shameless born-again
ideologue who would happily drag us back into the Dark Ages? In terms
of
domestic policy, this president seems to long for a return to the
1890’s, the
Gilded Age in its senile years, before the federal government took on
the
robber barons. In the realm of foreign policy, he seems to prefer the
1190’s,
when Richard the Lion-Hearted was embarking on one of his crusades to
the Holy
Land in a war of Christianity against Islam. (This scenario was nicely
encapsulated in recent speeches by General William Boykin, who sees the
war in
Iraq as a war between the Christian God and Allah—and rather than fire
the guy,
Bush leapt to his defense!)
But I’m not
here to talk about George W. Bush. You can guess where I stand on his
policies.
I’ve already impeached him three times this week on the Internet, and
if I ever
had a child I would name it Howard Dean—even if it were a girl. The
point I’m
trying to make is that my play, I’m afraid, is hopelessly outdated not
just in
terms of audience but also in terms of what I find compelling and what
I no
longer want to promote. For it’s not just the Christianity of the piece
that
makes me squeamish. It’s also the Jewishness. In this play I write
about a
happy ending in which I accept “who I am” and re-enter the fold of what
I now
call Suburban Judaism, a state of mind in which one doesn’t believe
anything
about the Bible and yet one continues to go to the temple on the High
Holy Days
and kiss the book as it’s carried around the room. I’m not sure that’s
such a
good thing anymore. In other words, in 1993 I was still willing to
assume that
the Judaism in which I’d been raised was a force for good in the world.
Now I’m not so sure.
On a planet
as small as ours, can we really afford to have any group assuming that
we’re
the Chosen People? And even if Judaism is not as bad as Islam or
Christianity
in that it doesn’t care to proselytize, it’s still an irrational belief
system
based on some musty old book that’s clearly the last refuge of
homophobes. More
dangerous still, it’s the raison d’être for a political state
that is
essentially racist and increasingly dangerous to both its citizens and
its
neighbors. I knew I’d become radicalized when last year I was invited
to my
niece’s Bat Mitzvah and I found myself not wanting to go. And when I
saw my
niece and her friends doing Israeli folk dances accompanied by bearded
men
singing a cappella because musical instruments weren’t allowed to be
played on
the Sabbath, I felt queasy inside. When did my old hippie brother start
taking
Leviticus seriously? Worst of all, I was probably the only one in the
room
whose blood ran cold as I watched yet another generation being
brainwashed into
a cult no more rational than the one that led those folks to dress in
purple
and wait to be taken home in space ships.
I fear that
one of the casualties of 9/11 has been my sense of humor on the subject
of
organized religion, particularly the Abrahamic faiths that are
currently
blowing each other up in what we oddly refer to as the Holy Land. Now,
I must
be fair. One can be a Muslim without being a terrorist. One can be
Jewish
without supporting the current Israeli government. And one can even be
a
Christian without being a Republican. In my heart of hearts I’d love to
see our
current crop of religious traditions being used to promote nothing but
peace
and love—but I’m not counting on it. In the meantime, I’ll continue
worshipping
the Goddess while walking my dogs on the beach, being kind to my
neighbors, and
supporting any progressive candidate who genuinely believes in the
separation
of church and state.
— Provincetown, November 2003
FROM — Spring, 1994
My Life as a Christian
IN 1973 I saw Jesus. I know what you’re
thinking. You live
in Manhattan. Sooner or later you bump into everyone. And that’s true.
The
other day I did see Cardinal O’Connor buying a knish in front of the
Plaza
Hotel, but that didn’t change my life. When I saw Jesus, I was shocked!
I mean,
we both were shocked. God knows what he was expecting, but look at me.
I’m not
Pat Boone. But I did see him just like I’m looking at you—and it wasn’t
in New
York. It was in Berkeley, California, and when I saw Jesus, I did what
you’re
supposed to do when you see Jesus. I became a Christian. I became a
Christian.
Everything
was so different back then. I had dropped out of college and was
hitchhiking
out West. I wasn’t really out of the closet yet, and this was before
Pentecostals became evangelical Storm Troopers. No, Christians were
more
like—they were like my neighbors. You see, I grew up in a Catholic
neighborhood, and my life as a Christian really began when I was nine
years
old, the first time I saw a picture of Him.
Jaffe turns the Ansel Adams photograph around and there’s an eight-by-ten picture of Jesus, with halo and all loving eyes pointed heavenward on the other side.
And I remember being absolutely stunned that this half-man, half-god would just be hanging on the wall between a pair of bunk beds. First of all, to a Jewish kid, the idea of God even having a picture is totally against our creed. The one thing they drummed into our heads in Hebrew school was that God didn’t look like anything. I mean, God was so remote that you couldn’t even write his name. It was always spelled G-D. Like God didn’t know we were talking about him? He’d have to be the dumbest schmuck on The Wheel of Fortune: “I’d like to buy a vowel, please.”
The only picture I’d ever seen of G-D was a cartoon on the cover of some children’s Bible that I’d inherited from my cousin Stuart.
Jaffe opens a kitchen cabinet to reveal a colored illustration of Jehovah.
And God was like this very old man and he
was sitting
astride the Creation wearing this striped bathrobe—which I thought was
a little
informal for the King of the Universe. But then again, this was before
he
created daytime, so if you’re sitting in the dark, why bother to get
dressed?
Anyway, the
day I saw this picture of Jesus I was with my new next-door neighbor
Debbie
McDermott. We had just moved from Brooklyn, the homeland of my people,
and into
what was then called a suburban “development,” which looked like a
cross
between an actual neighborhood and a low-security prison. Now the
neighborhood
back in Brooklyn was mostly Jewish, but on Long Island our neighbors
were
mostly Irish and Italian. There was only one other Jewish family on the
block,
the Litvaks, and when I asked my mother why we moved there she said
that she
thought that, once the Jews moved in, the goyim would move out. I think
she
overestimated our ability to create a ghetto.
I’ll never
forget that first December when the neighbors started wrapping their
houses
with lights and setting up garish dioramas. It was like I’d died and
gone to
Las Vegas. The next year all the other kids gave each other Christmas
cards and
I’d get cards that said, “Seasons Greetings.” Seasons greetings. Like I
was
getting a card because it was winter? Then my father tried to build up
Chanukah
into this major league holiday: It’s based on a miracle. They took oil
that was
supposed to last one day and they made it last eight. I remember
thinking, “Mom
performs that same miracle with pot roast.”
For the first
time, I began to notice how all our holidays seemed somewhat beside the
point.
Like Sukkos, the Jewish harvest festival. When was the last time you
met a
Jewish farmer? Jews—we don’t even celebrate our holidays—we observe
them:
“There goes Tisha B’Av. There goes Tu B’Shvat.” The Catholic holidays
seemed
much more exotic. They had all these great saints. And they had
pictures of
them all over the house. Prayer cards, statues, and paintings. We Jews
don’t
have saints. You know why? We don’t like to dust. Like I said before,
we have
one God, and he’s invisible. You don’t have to keep wiping him off.
So there I
was, up in Debbie McDermott’s room. Now Debbie was one of twelve
kids—and you
know how in those really big families, the mother runs out of
chromosomes—so
the last few turn out pale. They have little tiny fingernails. Anyway,
I
noticed these two paintings on the wall. I recognized President
Kennedy, but I
wasn’t completely sure who the other guy was. Maybe he was another
saint. So
Debbie says:
“That’s Jesus. He’s the son of God.”
“Really? Does God have any other kids I don’t know about?”
“That’s his only son. He brought him to Earth and hung him on a cross.”
“And I thought my father was strict!”
“He died on Friday, stayed dead on Saturday and then came back to life on Sunday.”
“Our father
who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” And then Debbie told me how,
when she
died, Jesus would lift her up and take her in his arms. And that was
the first
time I saw Jesus.
So that’s the
difference between us and them. They have magic; they have this
wonderful young
god who’s so sweet and sexy and... Did I mention that Debbie had a
brother?
Debbie’s
brother Bobby was eight months older than she was. Eight months. He was
the
type of kid who would rip earwigs apart just to see which half could
still
crawl away. But for the next two years we always hung out together. It
was like
he needed a witness to his crimes. The night he threw an egg at the
Litvak’s
house I was waiting in the driveway praying that we wouldn’t get
caught. I was
like Albert Speer to his Hitler. But then Bobby went away to junior
high school
and I didn’t see him for a while. He was playing short stop on the
baseball
team.
Something I
could never do. This was a bad time for me. I was ugly. My glasses were
always
taped up and my teeth were like Mah Jong tiles. Even worse, I was
forced to go
to Hebrew school three times a week in a carpool with Joel Litvak. I
would sink
down in the back seat as far as I could go, thinking “I don’t belong
with this
kid. I belong with Bobby! Bobby would never throw an egg at my house.”
One day in
June, Bobby purposely tripped somebody running to third base and they
threw him
off the baseball team. That’s when he would come home early from school
and
mope around his backyard saying things like, “I hate this fuckin’ town.
I’m
gonna move to fuckin’ Wyoming and live in a fuckin’ tent!” Once, when
he saw me
peeking through the bushes, he invited me to go swimming in his
four-foot
pool—and we swam around the sides of his pool until we made a
whirlpool. Then he
gave me a towel to dry myself off and I was just so surprised that
somebody who
talked so dirty would have such clean-smelling laundry.
That night I
asked my mother: “Mom, could I have money to buy a tent? I want to
sleep
outside.”
[...]
So the next night
with Bobby, I pretend to be asleep but I keep one eye open. Bobby’s
playing
with himself. I’m fascinated by the look on his face. I’ve never seen
him
concentrate so hard on anything. And when he sees me looking he puts my
hands
down my pants and we both concentrate together. The next morning, I
press
myself against my friend. This is our home now. Bobby jumps up as from
a
nightmare. His eyes shift back and forth as if someone were attacking
the tent
from the outside—like John Wayne at the Alamo.
“I gotta go,”
he says. “I gotta go to confession.” He’s riding his bike. I’m going
with him.
I climb onto the back of his banana seat and hold onto the sides of his
shirt.
He’s pedaling furiously. We ride about a mile out of the development.
Then we
pull up to the church doors—a perfect replica of Donatello’s Gates of
Heaven
molded out of aluminum—and Bobby jumps off the bicycle and runs up the
steps.
Then he slips inside and I don’t see him for half an hour. He’s in
there
talking with some other guy. Stripping his soul naked.
Across the
street there’s a parochial school with a 20-foot stainless steel cross.
It
looks like an antenna. If the King of the Universe is really an old man
up
there in a striped bathrobe, he could be picking up radio signals. He
could be
reading my mind! I close my eyes and try not to think about Bobby.
The next
thing I know Bobby is grabbing his bicycle. “Bobby!”
Bobby doesn’t
even look at me. He gets on his bicycle and rides away. “Bobby!”
I yell as
loud as I could but I can’t throw my voice far enough to reach him. I
even
throw my voice like a girl. So I start walking home and by the time I
get there
it’s dark and now I hate Bobby McDermott. And I hate that he got to go
inside
the church and dump his sins while I have to carry mine around with me
for the
rest of my life. That day I learned a valuable lesson. Christians pray
to Jesus
while Jews—God help us—we just feel like him.
Now, every
time I drive past St. Martin’s Church, I get an empty feeling in the
pit of my
stomach. It’s strange. I didn’t know that I loved Bobby. I didn’t have
the word
for it. And when you don’t have the word for something it’s easy to
forget. All
I knew was that a big piece of my life was missing and that some day,
something—or somebody—would come along and save me.
Subscribe to GL&R | Return to Article's Issue Main Page | View More Past Issues
