The War to End All Wars Started on a Battlefield in Cortlandt (New York Times)

 

WESTCHESTER OPINION; THE WAR TO END ALL WARS STARTED ON A BATTLEFIELD IN CORTLANDT

Rabbi Joshua Hammerman, NYT May 19, 1985

“ACCURST be he that first invented war,'' was the sentiment penned by Christopher Marlowe in 1590, and Western civilization has been paying lip service to it ever since. In the 1960's war was declared unhealthy for children and other living things, and that slogan was seen adorning posters nationwide. Yet, when one goes beyond the slogans and dreams of the pacifistic few, are we not truly a nation that prefers to march to the beat of a different and more warlike drummer? Who among us would sacrifice an opportunity to see ''Star Wars'' for a special showing of ''Brother Sun Sister Moon''? Our heroes are Clint Eastwood, John Wayne and Bernard Goetz, our national motto is ''Make My Day,'' and weaponry is our grossest national product.

Are we doomed or is war merely popular for the moment because Americans haven't been involved in one for a decade? Ten years is about the amount of time it takes for collective guilt to melt away into nostalgia. If war's current popularity is temporary, can it be arrested before we go too far and ignite a new skirmish, simply because the Duke would have wanted it that way? Somewhere we must draw the line.

The war to end all wars has begun, and it is being fought at this moment in the State Courts and in Albany. It all started in the little town of Cortlandt, situated in the northwest corner of Westchester County.

There, the shot heard round the world was fired not by a soldier, but by a county judge, and his salvo, in the form or a preliminary injunction, silenced the guns of a Queens entrepreneur, who wanted to turn part of Cortlandt into a battlefield for mock war games.  Capture the Flag Inc. purchased a 200-acre wooded tract near a drive-in-theater and planned to begin operations on March 30. In the games, teams of 25 to 30 people (at $30 a person for women and $35 for men) try to steal the other teams' flags under simulated combat conditions.

I used to play ''Capture the Flag'' at camp, and I usually enjoyed it. It is an exciting game of action and strategy, and if Steve Marco, the company's president, intended to sponsor healthy, recreational games of Capture the Flag, I would have no objections. But I wouldn't pay money for it either.

No one would, and Marco knows it. It would be like paying for the opportunity to play Hide and Seek. So Mr. Marco added a few features to his game to make it seem more ''realistic.'' For one thing, he added guns. For another, he put bullets in those guns -not lethal bullets, but dye-filled pellets which, when they strike a player, brand him ''dead'' for the duration of the game. Furthermore, the guns make noise, and the residents of the neighborhood were understandably concerned about the potential noise pollution, in the truest sense of the term: the corruption of the environment. It is not easy to live amid the sounds of war, even if it's only a game.

I commend the town of Cortlandt for taking action against Mr. Marco, and I commend George Pataki, the Republican State Assemblyman, for introducing legislation in Albany that would give local municipalities power to ban war games without having to go to court.

But what scares me is that such legalities are necessary because, without them, not only would war games be initiated, they would thrive. Mr. Marco has hit upon a gold mine. 

What type of society are we that we must constantly prove manhood on the battlefield? ''Violence breeds violence,'' wrote the medieval Jewish poet Ibn Gabirol, echoing a tradition that has, for millennia, attempted to minimize the glory of war. The Jewish sages of ancient times did not even allow weapons to be worn on the Sabbath, although technically it could have been allowed. Why? ''Because they are shameful,'' they said. Golda Meir once said, ''A leader who doesn't stutter before sending his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader.'' Don't we wish that our Presidents of the Vietnam era had done just a bit more stuttering before sending over the troops. War is not glory. It is a nation's shame, mankind's menace.

At Passover seders, Jews spill ten drops of wine when reciting the litany of the Ten Plagues. Why? So as to temper their joy over the victory achieved against the Egyptians. One sage, Rabbi Judah, even contracted the list of plagues into an acrostic, desiring not to hear about them in detail. Let us not dwell on the misery of others. War means misery.

Mr. Marco feels this is all much ado about nothing. He says, ''I think they're afraid that when they see what we're doing it will bring out the little boy in them and make them want to participate.''

Actually, he is right. There is a little boy in all of us, and that boy loves adventure. But what of the mature adult that little boy is supposed to grow up to become? We seem too preoccupied with catering to the whims of that little boy. Do we no longer acknowledge adulthood as a desirable goal of the maturation process?

And what of these people: John Bowen Jr., Frank B. Sanders, Bobby G. Fields, and the 58,019 other Americans who gave their lives in vain in Vietnam? What about the millions who left behind grieving families in other, more justifiable wars? What about them, Mr. Marco? Does Capture the Flag Inc. not kick dirt onto their graves by trivializing the calamity and unspeakable horror that is war?

And why, Mr. Marco, do you stop at guns and pellets? Why not update your venture by adding car bombs, suicide drivers and maybe even a nuclear warhead or two to your arsenals? Wouldn't these make Capture the Flag more exciting and therefore more lucrative? This is not the little boy speaking, Mr. Marco. This is the enraged adult

We must all be enraged adults, pursuing to the end the only battle worth fighting for, the war to end all wars, the battle to eliminate every vestige of war and violence from our culture and from the face of the earth.

So go ahead, Mr. Marco. Make my day. Get out of town before sundown and take John Wayne's posse with you.

If public outcry succeeds at keeping Cortlandt a Demilitarized Zone, maybe there is hope for the rest of the world.

Rabbi Joshua J. Hammerman of the First Hebrew Congregation of Peekskill lives in Cortlandt.

Rev. Joshua J. Hammerman of the First Hebrew Congregation of Peekskill lives in Cortlandt

The Peter Panning of America (New York Times)

New York Times -- 1988 

 Perhaps THE defining characteristic of the baby boomer is his inexhaustible attachment to his own childhood. Our need to return seems insatiable. Adults rush home from their jobs and flock to films like "Back to the Future" and "Big," where little boys court their mothers and the aging process is magically reversed. 

 Just recently I have rediscovered another genre of film that has added a new dimension to my own retrospections: the home movie. Home movies of the '50s and '60s, left in dusty basements for many years, are now gaining a technological resuscitation through the magic of the V.C.R. I excavated mine, transferred them to videotape, turned on the television, and images that would take a psychiatrist years to draw out of dim memory were suddenly flashing before me like today's news: "Hammerman born; film at 11." 

 I see a baby being carried from the obstetrics ward, apparently asleep. How small and frail he looks, how barely alive. Minutes pass before I realize that the infant was - is - me. George Santayana wrote, "The fact of having been born is a bad augury for immortality," and now I see why, for I am gazing through the looking glass at a time when my existence was a novelty to my parents and the world. 

 The next instant reveals my father tossing burgers at the grill; he smiles, unaware that a heart attack will cut short his life at age 60. I view this bucolic family scene as would Emily in Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," yearning to return to the fray and rewrite the script. "Don't eat that, Dad! Stay away from the cholesterol! Talk to me! Let's toss the ball. Let's make the most of what time we have left." I wish to freeze-frame the moment forever, but that is beyond even the capacities of my V.C.R. 

The next moment I see my mother - no, my grandmother - also now dead, and she holds me up to the camera. An older version of me stands alongside. Having learned how to decipher the genetic code of this film, I know that the man must be my uncle. As for the baby - me - I squirm uncomfortably in my grandmother's arms. Funny, in all the photo albums I'm smiling. Movies are far more subtle, more frightening, than any stills. 

My mother appears, as young then as my wife is now. She speaks to the baby. I although I hear none of the dialogue in these silent flicks, it is clear that in her mind I am only a child. Could any legitimate baby boomer not be left wondering how much that relationship has changed? 

 I see the sacred places of my youth, places to which I thought I'd never return: the snowman on my front lawn, the piano in the living room, the swing set in my backyard. The resurrected people, relatives and friends, stare into the camera. And I, the captivated viewer, newly mindful of how precious and fleeting life is, wonder if that is what they are trying to tell me. 

 No wonder my contemporaries and I obsess about our wonder years, the first generation possessing the power to act on that obsession. We are inexhaustibly attached to childhood precisely because we've never had to leave it. We can go home again, thanks to the unwitting collaboration of amateur and professional film makers. 

In the "Back to the Future" series, Steven Spielberg created the town in which we all could have lived; in "Big," Tom Hanks masterfully recreated the child we all could have been. And our trusty home movie fills in all the gaps. We can thrill at our own first step, laugh at our messier feedings and stare in wonder at our birth -- as our own children watch alongside. 

 The home movie and Hollywood film share one inherent weakness: the reel always runs out. Just when the film has resurrected a father's living glance, filling for an instant an aching vacuum in a grown-up child's soul, the scene shifts cruelly to the Grand Canyon or Disneyland, and we must fast-forward past twenty minutes of Mickey Mouse, only to discover in our fright that Mickey Mouse is where it ends. The screen goes blank, the child-that-was fades to black, and we are instantly propelled back to adulthood again. 

That is, until the next showing.

The Forbidden Oreo® (New York Times Magazaine)

The New York Times Magazine (1998)

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The news came racing across the Internet with apocalyptic urgency. My rabbinical chat group was abuzz with incredible tidings. Could it finally be true? No, we don't have a Jewish president yet, but something almost equally astounding has transpired, a telltale sign that Jews have finally made it. After eighty-five years in the gentile larder, Oreos have gone Kosher.

With the possible exception of Santa Claus and the Big Mac, the self-proclaimed "King of Cookies" has long been the most infamous forbidden fruit from which observant Jewish children have kept their distance. As our mouths watered at the mere mention of this unsupervised delicacy, we assuaged our deprived taste buds with inferior sawdust-textured hybrids and swallowed our yearning for Oreo mix-ins at the ice cream parlor. Some kids dreamed of catching a Mickey Mantle foul pop; I fantasized about unscrewing an Oreo and licking the middle.

I called Nabisco to confirm the good news, and it got even better. Not only are Oreos now Kosher, but so are Ritz Bits, Honeymaid Grahams and many other products. In truth, these edibles could have passed muster a decade ago, when an increasingly health-conscious Nabisco began replacing animal fat with vegetable shortening in its products.

I should be thrilled at this news. If the cookie-moguls are finding it cost-effective to answer to a Higher authority, that's because more people are opting to bring God into the kitchen. And it's not just Jews. Kosher food is increasingly popular among Moslems (who have similar dietary laws), vegetarians, and undoubtedly many who wonder how U.S. government inspectors could have let so many tainted burgers make it to the freezers of Burger King last summer.

Domestic sales of products targeted to the Kosher consumer now exceed $3 billion annually, having achieved double-digit increases for each of the past five years. The Orthodox Union alone claims 250,000 products under its supervision. Kosher companies are being gobbled up as fast as their food. The corporation that owns Armour Bacon, Conagra, now also owns Hebrew National; Shofar salamis are peddled by Sara Lee, and Manischewitz is owned by Kohlberg and Co., whose president came from, of all places, RJR Nabisco.

Eating these days is an act of faith -- and fear. We can't understand most of what s on the label, but when we see a Kosher symbol, many naively assume that a pious old religious guy personally inspects and gives God's blessing to each item. While that myth is overblown and Kosher products might not always be healthier, Jewish dietary laws promote the type of self control that often leads to healthier living. They are based on a value system that sanctifies life, limits the pain of animals and views the body as a temple; all of which places these ancient principles in confluence with the current zeitgeist and has made the Kosher symbol into this generation's Good Housekeeping seal.

But now that Kosher is "in" and Oreos are O.K., I'm not sure I want them to be. Not that I want my children to suffer, but I know that in some perverse manner my Oreo envy kept me safely at the outer edges of middle America, shielding me from total absorption into the vanilla masses.

More than anything else, the Jewish contribution to American culture has been through communicating the experience of marginality, of having survived Otherness. Oreo denial was, for me, a direct extension of Egyptian slavery -- it made me uncomfortable enough to feel different and different enough to feel proud.

Even those Jews who always ate Oreos will now lose out. They have one less whopper of a sin to notch to their defiant belts ("Take that, Rabbi Marcus! And furthermore, we served 'em with shrimp at Joey's Bar Mitzvah!"). The news leaves us utterly confused, much as Adam and Eve would have felt had God suddenly appeared to them years later, saying, "You know that fruit, the one that caused all the trouble? Well, it's O.K. now. Here, unscrew it. Take a lick." Which taboo will be the next to fall? Bestiality? Murder? The Hostess Twinkie?

I can recall my first Twinkie: I was around eight; she was blonde, soft and spongy, sweet and sensational -- it just felt right. Mamie, my matronly Irish baby-sitter, knew little of the tribal taboos imposed on my home. Sure, she kept her ham sandwiches to herself and never fed me milk with meat. But how was she to know that this innocent snack was as verboten as a slab of bacon? It was just a Twinkie, and she offered it to me. So what was I to do? I was hooked. For weeks on end Mamie supplied me with Twinkies. Eventually, both Mamie and the Twinkies disappeared. She never had the chance to get me on to Oreos.

It is almost midnight. I'm sitting at my kitchen table, sampling my first batch of the previously prohibited cookie. Holding it up to the light, I scrutinize this marvelous black medallion with the embossed "OREO" surrounded by a wreath of posies. I feel so normal. So American. I shudder. Has the Jewish condition ever been compatible with normalcy? Can we survive this?

A more formidable dilemma lies before me: to dunk, bite or unscrew? As I hum, "A kid'll eat the middle of an Oreo first...," I begin to twist the top carefully with my left hand, holding the bottom cookie steady with my right.

The top breaks in half.

I eat the broken cookie. It's good, but I crave a Twinkie. The thrill is gone.

The Oreo, enduring symbol of hollowness for African-Americans, reveals the masks Jews wear as well. As noble distinctions continue to crumble and cherished customs gain universal appeal, I am beginning to understand that a faith community cannot live by food taboos alone. True, we are what we eat, but we must be more.

Birth Rite (New York Times Magazine)

The New York Times Magazine, March 13 1994

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As one of their duties, rabbis guide nervous parents through the ritual wounding their son’s genitalia on the eighth day following birth. I know, because as a Conservative rabbi for the past 10 years, I have done exactly that.

I’ve led hundreds of mothers and fathers through their baby boys’ circumcisions, reciting my routine explanations in favor of the ritual. But it was not until last year, after the birth of my son Daniel, that I came to appreciate the deeper meaning behind circumcision. True, I had witnessed hundreds of cuttings, but until that day I had never myself performed one.

As a rabbi and as a parent, I had figured that my second son’s circumcision would be like that of the first. I assumed I would chant a blessing or two, then daub his mouth with wine-soaked gauze. But the mohel (circumciser), with whom I had worked countless times suddenly handed me the knife. He pointed to my squirming Son, whose hands and legs were tied to the board. The foreskin had been pulled up over the glans of the penis and was now protruding through a narrow slit of the small, stainless steel clamp.
"It's all set up," the mohel said. "No way you can go wrong."

"It's the greatest honor a father can have," he added.

He had taken that line right out of my script. But there was one difference: I remind parents that they have the option of delegating to the mohel the performance of that radical affirmation of the covenant between the Jewish people and God.

"All you have to do is cut," he said.

Daniel, who had been crying incessantly throughout, suddenly stopped. Like Isaac centuries before, Daniel waited in silence for his father's knife to drop.

Daniel had spent most of his first week of life blissfully attached to one of the other of my wife Mara's breasts while I played computer games with our 2-year old Ethan. I also attended to the medical insurance, informed relatives of Daniel’s birth, got his Social Security number and shopped for food. In short, I had become Master of the Mundane – until I was handed the knife.

Since the day Abraham circumcised Isaac, the knife has transformed father into sculptor, asserting his responsibility to mold and perfect nature. The knife also turns father into mentor, one willing to inflict pain for the sake of proper moral development.

But most of all, the knife turns father into potential murderer. It is no coincidence that only one biblical chapter after Abraham circumcises Isaac, he nearly slaughters him, perhaps with the same knife. One does not have to be a Freudian to know that the birth of a son brings about more than unalloyed joy to the father. There is no greater primal anger than that caused by seeing another male in carnal contact with your wife, in this case the physical intimacy of mother and son. And there is no greater primal envy than that caused by looking down at the person who was brought into the world specifically to be your survivor. In traditional Jewish society a male child was called a "kaddish," the one who would say the memorial prayers when the parent dies. With the birth of a "kaddish," the father hears a whisper that it is now all right to die.

In the face of this anger and jealousy, give the father a knife and ask him to do that? There? And besides, I’m squeamish. The last time I gave blood, I passed out. I shave only with an electric razor. I'm a vegetarian. And finally…well, let’s just say that I am no surgeon. Mara and I ruminate for hours before cutting our baby's fingernails. But with our friends and relatives waiting impatiently, what was I to do when the mohel gave me the knife? I took it in my right hand, forgetting that I bat, throw, eat and probably cut foreskins best lefty, and swallowed hard.

My hand trembled as I began to push the blade across the edge of the clamp through which an inch of my infant's foreskin protruded. But the blade wasn't cutting easily. The seconds felt like hours as my hand swayed back and forth.

The situation called for a hard, sturdy chop. It called for a butcher. In fact, in the Middle Ages the community’s mohel was often the one who slaughtered animals for kosher meat. Looking at my son, I realized success required tunnel vision, to regard the skin as lifeless, distinct from the person attached to it. But I wasn't used to cutting meat, raw or cooked. Was this what it was all about? Unprovoked aggression? Dehumanization of one's own flesh and blood? It was becoming clear that in order to finish the job I would have to rely on a carnivorous side that I didn't think existed, that I feared greatly.

Then Daniel began to cry again.

I suppose that had Abraham fumbled things this badly, even stoic Isaac might have cried. But Daniel let loose a wail that normally was reserved for four in the morning and was always assuaged by a speedy rendezvous with his mother. This time, though, there were just the two of us. I was holding the knife, and he appeared to sense its power.

Then I noticed for the first time his blue eyes looking straight into mine, and it was a look not of fear but of utter dependence and trust. It was the kind of look we Masters of the Mundane aren't used to getting from infants.

I finally understood that the knife transforms the father not to sculptor, mentor, or butcher, but, paradoxically, into a shield. The breast provides, but the knife protects. It channels a father's natural anger and jealousy into one controlled cut. He takes off one small part in order to preserve – and love – the whole.

A rush of guilt and fear went through me. I just wanted to hold Daniel and tell him that never again would he suffer the agony of rampant parental rage. With one burst of empathy and a series of short jagged flicks, the foreskin was gone. The mohel cleaned things up and it was over.

No parent should be denied this experience, even vicariously, of inflicting upon his child a ritualized blow so intense as to make him both shake and recoil, yet so controlled that no damage is really done, to signify that this will be the worst the child will ever know from his parent's hand. For it is from the father's hand that Abraham's knife dangles, every moment of every day.

A Young Rabbi (New York Times Magazine)

New York Times Magazine (1985)

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I am 28 years old and a rabbi. Had I chosen to be a gymnast or tennis player, I would be considered to be past my prime. As a lawyer or computer engineer, I would be reaching the peak of yuppiedom. In my own eyes I fret at how quickly the years pass while I helplessly watch my youthful vigor recede.

And yet, when I walk into my office each morning, I feel like a 17-year-old walking into a bar, fearful that some hulk of a bouncer will appear to check me for ID. I am a child in a profession where life begins at 60.

Being a rabbi at any age inhibits normal social intercourse, being a young rabbi compounds the problem acutely. I am an anomaly in a community where rabbis are expected to have grey beards and the all-knowing countenance of one who is nearing the end of life's tumultuous journeys.

I know that I am not alone. In many fields it is not easy to be young. In the two years since my ordination, I have left many a hospital room wondering whether the patients give their young doctors the same incredulous looks they often give me. A 30-year-old dentist friend tells me of the difficulties of starting a practice -- he wonders whether people will be able to entrust their sacred smiles to one so young. Another friend, a psychologist, labors to establish his professional reputation. I feel for him, as well as for all the young men who strain to reach the next rung on the corporate ladder, only to be quashed by someone older. I feel for those who fritter away a half dozen years of youth at prestigious law firms, only to find that no partnership awaits them.

And yet my own position is particularly awkward. The awkwardness goes beyond the fact that I address doctors and judges by their first names while they call me by my title even when they are four decades my senior. It reaches beyond the fact that I commonly marry couples much older than I or that some of the more grandmotherly types I come across like to pinch my cheek. Wherever I go, age is an issue, for not only am I cursed by being young, I am cursed by looking young. When Ecclesiastes said, "Rejoice O young man, in thy youth" he was not speaking to a convention of young rabbis.

I can understand why many of my many of my rabbinical colleagues and classmates choose to pursue other advanced degrees before entering the pulpit, while others prefer to spend years of tutelage under the wings of established rabbis in suburbia. There are some who, like me, stand alone, unprotected and uneasy; but most are located somewhere out on the prairie, planting Jewish roots in places where most of the natives have never seen a rabbi before. But here I am, in a pulpit just a hop from New York, where people know what a good bagel -- and a good rabbi -- should look like.

If I seem overly energetic to my congregation, the quality is attributed to my age. My rather too apparent self-respect is something, they say, that will diminish "when I know better."

Occasionally I am seen as being manipulated by one congregant or another; I am said to be easy prey because of my lack of experience. At a recent wedding, the father of the bride told me that I look more like a bookie than a rabbi. I made light of the comment (neither job, I said to him, is suitable for a nice Jewish boy), but was sensitive to the anxiety underlying his remark. He was giving his daughter away, and the man who was going to put the stamp of God on the whole enterprise could just as easily be standing next to her -- except that he's much younger.

My congregants ask themselves: How can this rabbi be mature enough to comfort mourners when he hasn't known a lifetime of personal grief? How can he advise parents about their children, when he hasn't yet reared children of his own? How can he counsel troubled couples, when he hasn't been married long enough to experience marital strife? How can he represent us before God when he hasn't ben through our suffering, when he hasn't seen what we've seen? Can a rabbi who is not battle-scarred be truly a rabbi?

These anxieties have eased as the congregation has gotten to know me. But I'm not sure the congregants know that, if anything, I fear the consequence of too much experience. When I perform weddings, i want to sense the exhilaration I felt at my own. When I visit the sick or console the bereaved, I want to approach them, not as a trained professional, but as one who is in some way personally affected by their plight. I prepare for each funeral as if it were my first, for it was at my first that I was best able to share in the sense of raw, unadulterated grief that consumed the family.

It is sad that so many Jewish communities seem to insist that their rabbis shed their youthful innocence as quickly as possible, not understanding that, once that innocence is lost, the childlike sense of wonder and basic human empathy so essential to the job are also left behind. Once the rabbi loses his exuberance, even the most vibrant of communities becomes threatened with a similar stagnation. Perhaps early career burnout would be less of a problem among rabbis -- and other professionals -- if they didn't feel compelled to spend the first half of their careers trying to look older and the second half striving to regain the vitality of lost youth.

Still, my congregation has been very good to me, and I can only be grateful that they had the courage to employ me. They understand that I occasionally like to wear jeans and that I prefer Lionel Ritchie to Benny Goodman. And they are beginning to understand much more.

Many of them perceive that I am a rabbi precisely because I want to break down barriers such as the one I face, stereotypes that poison human relationships. As I see it, I am a spiritual leader simply because I want to refine my own spirit, to stretch myself using the texts of my tradition for guidance, and in doing so, possibly to inspire others to do the same.

If I remain a rabbi long enough, perhaps I will see the stereotypes crumble, and maybe someday there will be no barriers to honest, unprejudiced human contact in my little corner of the world. Perhaps. But by then I will be collecting Social Security, soaking up all the honor that comes with turning grey and casting nervous glances at the young, idealistic whippersnapper of a rabbi skipping up the road.