"Our Speaker Tonight Is . . ."
Pinsker, Sanford
Sanford Pinsker_ If I were as rich as Rothschild, I'd be richer than Rothschild. You ask how this could be possible? Easy ... I would do a little lecturing on the side. In its original form, one...
...On the other hand, if people sentimentalized Chassidic life, I felt an equal obligation to suggest those aspects which might be totally unacceptable to modern sensibilities...
...But three weeks in a row...
...It took government intervention to stop my lectures on Jewish humor...
...The grant sent the Pinsker family to Brooklyn, to live and study within a Chassidic community...
...Reluctantly, I slashed through my words, cutting out everything but the absolutely essential...
...So I said to myself, 'Hymie, this must be a significant dream.' And then I figured, eight sevens are forty-eight...
...My lecture about living with the Chassidim did not change from synagogue to synagogue, but very often my response to questioners did...
...No more broad, ambitious topics like "American-Jewish Writing: Who Needs It...
...Besides, he no longer needed—or could use—the money...
...Rub an American-Jewish professor and, genie-like, an Old World melamed pops out...
...How could I compress all of Malamud's work into such a short space...
...His books include The Schlemiel as Metaphor and An Essay on the Fiction of Philip Roth...
...For three weeks running, Hymie had the lucky number...
...I bought a hard backed copy of the book and plowed through it in my spare time, making marginal notes and repressing the uneasy feeling that Malamud had no monopoly on idiots...
...Secondly, what business have you telling a joke when you don't know how...
...Occasionally I was introduced as "an expert on the schlemiel," but most of the time my host would announce, more simply: "Our speaker tonight is a schlemiel...
...I no longer worried about some disciple of Ralph Nader rising from the audience to accuse me of "misrepresentation" whenever I was introduced as Dr...
...Suddenly my mother's hand shot into the air, amazing her bosom friends, the rest of the audience and myself...
...The afternoon of the lecture finally arrived...
...Rifkin did the introduction with a flair that guaranteed her continuing role as the synagogue's most dynamic program chairman...
...only the shamash [beadle] remained...
...she did have a question...
...She also had a long list: Her husband was a poor provider, a dreamer, a slob...
...Curiously enough, the higher the lecture fee, the more elaborate the introduction...
...And, needless to say, I accepted...
...One word described her life with him: unhappy...
...Enough, in my case, was enough...
...Word about my interest in Jewish literature got around and soon it was my phone that rang: "Dr...
...Do you have some kind of system...
...It was, as I soon discovered, not easy...
...Isn't he the guy who gets the soup spilled all over him—or is it the other way around...
...It was also tough sledding, exactly the sort of book which people own, display on their coffee table and then consign, unread, to a shelf...
...I was, in fact, Dr...
...Rifkin mounted the platform, she seemed pleased with the lecture, but ever mindful of her official duties: "Dr...
...Even the-prospect of more rubbery chicken and burnt toast could not dampen my spirits...
...It belonged to the eyes that had followed my every gesture, to the chin that had nodded in agreement whenever a crucial point was being emphasized...
...My lecture was, along with the sponge cake, the dessert...
...Occasionally I was an Oneg Shabbat, rather than a sermon...
...focus on the Victorian Age and you wax stuffy...
...On one occasion my mother was in the audience, surrounded by cronies who knew details about my life that had escaped even the most elaborate of introductions: report cards from grade school, high school clubs, collegiate hon-oraries...
...And, best of all, they do not threaten us with their victories...
...The topic, once again, was "Jewish Humor" and everything about it went according to plan—that is, until the question-and-answer period...
...Instead of lecturing, I listened...
...Pinsker and I had a diploma to prove it...
...As I. B. Singer likes to put it, one learns to write between telephone calls...
...But at last I had a text of 15 pages, with a considerably longer discourse lying crumpled in my wastebasket...
...The year, I should add, was 1964...
...But I learned something about the wide gaps between what lecturers want to say and what their audiences want to hear...
...No matter...
...Introductions no longer began with the customary "Our speaker tonight is . . ." followed by my academic credentials...
...When my dissertation was published, I became a professional schlemiel...
...Even Yiddish writers die eventually and it would be better, much better, if he worked on his writing...
...There are times when scholarship is best served by silence...
...Here is the key," he said, "when you finish the sermon will you please to lock up the shul...
...I made a mental note to drop the word "symbol" from all my literature classes, winced at the word "religiosity" and stood, at last, before the reading desk...
...If I had had doubts about my dissertation as a graduate student, I had genuine second thoughts about it as an Assistant Professor...
...In the weeks that followed my mirror became an expert on Malamud's fiction and, all in all, the image pleased me...
...As promised, earning the Ph.D...
...Can I have hands, please...
...Yiddish has been, as he puts it, a "good vitamin," a way of maintaining his remarkable vitality...
...Pinsker, but, better yet, I had been promoted to a Professor of English at the University which still thought of me as a Teaching Assistant of Freshman Composition...
...the first man yelled...
...One elderly gentleman listened to my psycho-cultural analysis until he could stand it no longer...
...Literary critics are, very often, what they write about...
...Every answer made her beam, as if to say "See, I told you he was a smart cookie...
...It smacked of my childhood in a small Western Pennsylvania town, a place where Chanukah was "translated" as the Jewish Christmas, Pesach as the Jewish Easter...
...This is a man who should cut out lecturing...
...But, this time, I would not fix on one set of eyes and talk over everybody's head...
...Audiences always asked the same questions...
...Still, I could not help thinking: Genung already, slow down...
...Behind the astonished praises lay some very thinly veiled accusations...
...In the end, he decides to tell you the story himself, but in a much better version than yours...
...When you tell a joke to a German he laughs only once—when you tell it to him...
...Run over the allotted time and I would not be invited back...
...After all, his books sell, go into paperback editions, win prizes...
...We would be quite a team, I thought confidently...
...Passing me on the sofa, he bent over and said softly: "Maybe they're calling me about a lecture...
...In my case the offers came even earlier, when I was a graduate student who taught a little Sunday school on the side...
...Second, even if they did ask you to explain the joke, they wouldn't understand it because they have no sense of humor...
...The tension was broken...
...Granted, the old maxim which declares that nothing is duller than a joke explained might apply to psycho-cultural analyses of Jewish humor, but I suspect even more people are bored by learned discussions of the glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome...
...But I also had a dissertation topic which no program chairman could resist...
...Apparently, the device worked...
...I placed myself behind the podium, scanned the two dozen faces, acknowledged their trusting applause and began...
...Beth El programs (or, at least, this one) lasted something like forty-five minutes—a half hour of "talk," followed by fifteen minutes for questions...
...I merely accepted...
...When congregants dawdled too long at the goody table, the rabbi would shoo them to their seats: "Take extras on your plate, but please sit down...
...Sometimes a rabbi would tell me later (and in confidence) that I was too "positive" about Chas-sidic life, sometimes that I was too "negative...
...The sermonless sermon would adjourn to the social hall as if the evening were a movable feast...
...I did not bother to explain that my Ph.D...
...I pointed...
...Even my uncle (who tended to use the words writer and bum interchangeably) would have to admit that Singer probably makes a "comfortable living...
...At last I was ready to draft the lecture itself...
...Eight sevens are fifty-six, not forty-eight...
...Yes and no," Hymie replied...
...There was even a chance to answer that sticky question which had plagued me since my first lecture about Bernard Malamud: Chassidic daughters always marry Jewish boys...
...How long would he live anyhow...
...I loved it...
...a schlemiel): When a schlimmazel's bread-and-butter accidently falls on the floor, it always lands butter-side-down...
...It took three nights, four nights, a week...
...Its title: "The Schlemiel as Metaphor: Studies in the Yiddish and American-Jewish Novel...
...If Charlie Brown had helped to make the schlemiel a popular subject, writers like Chaim Potok did much the same thing for the Chassid...
...It was a Literary Guild Selection, a bestseller, a "natural...
...As it turned out, I didn't...
...Besides, everyone—including myself—was laughing too hard for pedantry...
...At last it was time for that part of the ritual known as Refreshments...
...Finally I came up with the following example which suggests a clear distinction between one afflicted with chronic bad luck (i.e...
...Or, put another way, the only thing worse than a sermon is an extemporaneous "mini-sermon...
...One set of eyes seemed particularly interested in my notion of Malamud's ironic vision, his mode of undercutting affirmation by comic technique and, like all speakers, experienced and novice alike, I focused on her and read the paper as if the auditorium were a living room...
...I was not only Dr...
...When you tell a joke to a Jew—before you've had a chance to finish, he interrupts you impatiently...
...But, once started, I worked harder than any of his obsessive, Actionized rabbis...
...With jokes I was strictly a novice, a "kid...
...changed my life...
...Eight sevens, all dancing...
...I fielded the surprise as best I could, fearing the worst: "I see my mother would like to ask a question and, by all rights, the honor should be hers...
...Afa," answered Hymie, "so you be the mathematician...
...Not that there was anything inherently subversive about Jewish humor or anything particularly radical about my lectures...
...He had a memoir to finish, another novel in the works...
...It echoed much louder than my obligatory feeling of mild annoyance...
...No doubt the nature of modern life helped my cause...
...I relived my year spent among the Lubavitcher Chas-sidim as if I were Margaret Mead returning from New Guinea...
...For this they made me a Ph.D., much less a Professor...
...no longer the professor, I became, once again, the student...
...I felt the full force of this power during a recent visit with I. B. Singer, the Yiddish storyteller who has become a popular lecturer at synagogues and college campuses...
...Two indicators of having "made it" seemed more reliable...
...No, she had been paying attention...
...He seemed to have lost all sense of proportion...
...My question, Dr...
...When my hosts began the usual "Our speaker tonight is . . ." they wanted to make it very clear that people were getting their money's worth...
...But, this time, my platform was the bimah, my podium, the reading desk, my host, the local rabbi...
...Rifkin's job...
...I prepared my lecture with the careful diligence of a Ph.D...
...at last...
...At lunch one of the men said, "Hymie, how come you're the lucky one three weeks in a row...
...No, I was a symbol, this time of a tremendous rekindling of interest in Judaism, in religiosity itself...
...Talk about linguistic roots and audiences yawn...
...Sensitive flops were everywhere—from Charlie Chaplin's "little tramp" to the Charlie Brown of Peanuts fame, from Leopold Bloom of James Joyce's Ulysses to nearly any character in Joseph Heller's Catch-22...
...His fellow-workers couldn't figure out how Hymie did it...
...In short, I became a success by talking about comic failures...
...The novel, Saul Bellow's Herzog...
...I am the program chairman at Beth El and I was wondering if you might be able to speak to us next...
...In synagogue after synagogue, it went like this: When you tell a joke to a Frenchman he laughs three times: once when you tell it to him, the second time when you explain it, and the third time when he understands it—for Frenchmen love to laugh...
...I teach classes as well, but, then again, I am no I. B. Singer...
...Pinsker, do the Herzogs ever get back together...
...She had clearly earned the right to the first inquiry...
...Once bitten by the lecture bug—which is to say, once asked—it is impossible not to scratch...
...No . . . this time I would be the helpful teacher rather than the heady scholar...
...Rabbi Silverberg suggested that I get in touch with you...
...Once started, he positively soared, listing one good reason after another...
...I have a brother-in-law...
...Pinsker's book is on sale at Gim-bel's, Joseph Home's and Kaufman's...
...I only hope she doesn't ask me why I didn't become a real doctor...
...Whatever second thoughts came to mind as my dissertation made its way into hard covers were rather modest compared to the impromptu revisions I encountered at lectures...
...In recent years other subjects were added to my list of "possible lectures": American-Jewish Poetry, Stand-Up Comedians, The Lower East Side...
...Thank you all very much," I replied, with a cooling warmth that suggested this sort of thing happened all the time...
...The preacher, however, was too much engrossed in his sermon to take any notice of the depleted condition of his audience...
...Every question brought stern wrinkles to my mother's brow, as if the interrogator was trying to sabotage a beautiful evening, to trip up her pride-and-joy, to embarrass us both...
...In short, he kvetched...
...Nervously thumbing through my notes, I remembered the stories the Chas-sidim liked to tell about such preachers...
...And I was convinced...
...They are lovable, even downright bracing...
...Still, when the telephone does ring, I feel something of the same excitement: "Are you Dr...
...For a split second I wondered if she might be angling for Mrs...
...Actually what I do is dream...
...At my lectures, they laughed...
...In all candor, I was terribly flattered which, in hindsight, is probably just what Mrs...
...One was the shock of suddenly becoming a plural, as in sentences like "The Pinskers of the world do what they can to foist dirty writers like Philip Roth onto the American-Jewish community, but...
...I nodded my head in agreement...
...One axiom continued to be true: The longer the introduction, the shorter the talk was expected to be...
...Invariably—or perhaps I should say, ingeniously—the lecture was seen in terms of the Portion for that week...
...Strange cities disoriented him...
...She interrupted herself to begin a round of audience-initiated applause...
...Whatever the differences, American-Jewish lecturers have that much in common with I. B. Singer...
...People became restless and fidgety...
...Mostly, though, I just stewed in my exhausted juices...
...Echoes of Leo Ros-ten's The Joys of Yiddish dogged my lectures like a stuck record...
...Nobody understood a word either I or Moses Herzog had said...
...nonetheless...
...After all, where there is a schlemiel, can a schlimmazel be far behind: Get both comic characters into a single definition and the world will be impressed...
...I am getting too old for lectures," he confided...
...Perhaps it was the chicken...
...Pinsker, I am sure I speak for everyone here when I say that this was a most enjoyable, most informative talk...
...With a schlemiel, it is much the same thing—except that he butters his bread on both sides first...
...I should hasten to add that the "government intervention" came in the form of a very generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities...
...The end of the drashah [explanation of the Portion] was not yet in sight...
...One anecdote about a long-winded maggid (preacher) seemed particularly appropriate: A visiting maggid began to preach one of the longest and most tedious sermons in his repertoire...
...This is true no matter how many layers of worldly sophistication have been added to the original flesh-and-bones, no matter what kind or degree of "professor...
...Unfortunately, they do not, but when last heard from she was at least dating another nice-Jewish-boy...
...The traveling is too hard...
...So why bother with lectures...
...Fierce competition still governs our sense of nine-to-five reality, but we have learned to relax with beautiful losers...
...This will, no doubt, disappoint those with an appetite for official conspiracies, anti-Semitic or otherwise, but so be it...
...I did not have either the heart or the nerve to suggest that his brother-in-law sounded like a luftmentch...
...Sanford Pinsker, an Associate Professor of English at Franklin and Marshall College, has published in Judaism, Jewish Spectator, and Response...
...For example: Last week I had a dream in which eight sevens danced before my eyes...
...We were wondering if you might be able to speak to us at our meeting on April 11...
...Absolutely not, my inner voice kept repeating...
...Concentrate on the eighteenth century and you turn witty...
...We cannot form the word "No...
...And just as dutifully, the audience responded...
...I broached the last subject cautiously and, surprisingly enough, Singer agreed...
...As I sat (sans water glass) on the bimah, the rabbi would twist the ancient text until it had an immediacy, a relevance, a "message" for us all...
...Like program chairmen, rabbis -are experts in the endless introduction...
...Very often my introductions were longer than the talks which followed—this because many organizations wanted the honor of a "first-class intellectual," but not the sort of lecture such a distinguished personage might give...
...Unlike real professors, graduate students must wait for the paperback edition...
...Very little gets lost in the translation...
...I was nervous, but my carefully prepared text and my corduroy sportscoat comforted me...
...I felt queasy in the pit of my stomach...
...And the New Yorker must pay Top Dollar for his stories...
...And he did...
...They sat in a horse-shoed circle, with enough supplies to weather any emergency—a trek into the desert, a lecture, whatever...
...As I scanned the audience—fully aware that no Chassid would speak in a synagogue where men and women were permitted to sit together—the rabbi brought his remarks full-circle...
...he always gave the same answers...
...But, at the same time, the predictable questions and my own all too predictable answers made the deviations memorable...
...As Mrs...
...Bellow...
...a schlimmazel) and somebody who, in effect, makes his own misfortune (i.e...
...Singer may be a very spry, almost impish, seventy-three, but he is seventy-three-years-old nonetheless...
...It was, moreover, an especial favorite of mine—a book, by turns funny and sad, which said more about American-Jewish life than any novel I had read thus far...
...a witness interrupted, "How can they both be right...
...With that, she sat down, to thunderous applause...
...they would have survived...
...First of all, Germans won't let you explain anything to them because they are so arrogant...
...Address those issues and you cannot go wrong...
...Like the rabbi who is taken aside and directed to make the sermon short, the wedding ceremony quick, I spoke under the gun of a stopwatch...
...One week, two weeks—that was understandable...
...I thought, feeling both "religious" and hypocritical simultaneously...
...You should, please, all buy...
...Now, what is your question...
...When Professor Herzog made an allusion, Pinsker (still the graduate student) would provide a gloss...
...I imagined Malamud tsk-tsking over my shoulder every time I shortened a quotation or lumped several of his books into a single sentence...
...Was it luck or did he have a method of figuring it out...
...All right...
...It had been her fondest wish to, as she put it, "sit quietly" in the back of a classroom and watch me teach...
...I decided to focus on Herzog's Mental letters, choosing some excerpts to read aloud and then explain...
...Visions of the Malamud lecture danced around my head like a Chagall painting...
...His wink haunted the room like a dybbuk...
...First of all, he has heard it before...
...when Herzog was being funny, Pinsker would urge people to laugh...
...Once a rabbi grew impatient and began to flick the lights off and on, in much the way that theater lights do to signal the end of an intermission...
...Everyone laughed...
...It was a year with more dancing and prayer than joke-telling and analysis...
...I will just cry, that's all...
...Even now, with a daughter of my own, I still can't...
...Nu, I thought, "let them be the lecturer...
...With his eyes firmly closed and his large tallis drawn over his head, he had stood for more than two hours on the bimah expounding one passage of the Talmud after another...
...When I balked at the idea, she promised faithfully not to make a sound...
...Rifkin (or Rabbi Silverberg) had counted on...
...Some of the response to my thumbnail sketch of the schlemiel's family tree (his Biblical origins, his Talmudic variations, his Yiddish inflections) was predictable enough...
...Like Hymie, I found the raised eyebrows somewhat disconcerting...
...Both sides of Pinsker's mouth agreed...
...The rabbi thought for a moment and then replied: "You are also right...
...He had a long list: His wife was a dismal cook, a poor housekeeper, a terrible nag...
...My life flashed before me as if I were drowning...
...Teach a course in American-Jewish literature and the Sisterhoods of the world will find you out...
...This is Selma Rifkin...
...Pinsker, is this: How can I get my daughter to date Jewish boys...
...After a suitable time, there was a general exodus...
...Pinsker has graciously consented to answer questions...
...Malamud had already published The Natural (1952), The Assistant (1957), The Magic Barrel (1958) and A New Life (1961)—as well as a recent collection of short stories entitled Idiots First, which I had not read...
...On the other hand, Beth El expected the Genuine Article, the Real Goods, How could I show up, lecture in hand, without a few snappy remarks about Idiots First...
...He did not especially like airplanes...
...I am Sarah Rosen, program chairperson for the Kutztown Hadassah...
...We settled on "Bernard Malamud's Fiction" as a topic, but it was the "Dr...
...Mister," he began, trying hard to disguise his impatience, "I don't know about what you call 'defensive mechanisms' or 'psychological projectors,' but if you really want to know about schlemiels, let me tell you...
...If people were unduly harsh about the Chassidim, I felt an obligation to defend them, to point out that they are not as dirty, as impoverished, as superstitious or as fanatical as non-religious Jews usually imagine...
...Rabbis were especially concerned that I not become too "fancy-pants," which usually translated as "Don't use too many Hebrew words...
...Finally the shamash went up to the thundering orator and whispered in his ear...
...Best of all, I did not hear a single "tsk" from Mr...
...And, once again, there was a memorable question: "Tell me, Dr...
...There was no choice...
...Wonderful," the new, public-minded reviewer replied, "but if that is the case, what were the problems in Herzog, the stumbling blocks, the things that made it difficult reading...
...The rabbi listened carefully, considered everything that had been said and then pronounced his verdict: "You are right...
...I would sit staring soul-fully into my water glass and hear my accomplishments rehearsed in excruciating detail— every article, every book review, every one-line blurb...
...Fine...
...Saul Bellow was still high-brow stuff, but Jewish humor was another megil-lah altogether...
...He was out of his chair in one quick motion and moving, full-tilt, toward the foyer...
...I began with an imaginary question: Was this a book only egg-heads could understand...
...The rabbi found that he could stand it no longer, and he quietly and unostentatiously walked out...
...There was a large Pesach crowd and he wanted to make a hit...
...Nonetheless, people continued to wonder—sometimes, out loud— how I could write such a book...
...I was not a teacher, a scholar, a part-time lecturer...
...I still vacillate about the assets and liabilities of ultra-Orthodoxy, but one thing, at least, is clear: The discussions were lively...
...In short, I became the substitute sermon, a night off for both the rabbi and his congregation...
...My host made the long-awaited announcement, once again invoking the standard benediction for lectures: "Ladies and gentlemen, there is time for one more question...
...Now it was the manageable turf of a single book, presumably one that the audience had read in advance...
...Then he asked the wife to give her side of the story...
...Pinsker" that I remembered long after the call was over...
...My mother was already on her feet: I just wanted to say this...
...I reread Malamud's most famous short stories, skimmed through the novels to refresh my memory, jotted down observations, developed an overarching thesis...
...Pinsker, the schlemiel...
...I loved it...
...The other was cashing a check made out to Pinsker alone...
...Besides, English words are not a good way of talking about Yiddishkeit...
...We want to begin...
...I could not answer her question...
...Wait a minute...
...My lecture at her synagogue would have to suffice...
...Upraised hands punctured the air, but one was actually waving...
...For nearly fifteen minutes he outlined one hair-brained scheme after another, all financed with his hard-earned money and all ending in empty pockets...
...Yes," I replied, "I am the schlemiel you are looking for...
...When you tell a joke to an Englishman he laughs twice—once when you tell it to hirn and again when you explain it—but Englishmen can never understand a joke because they're too stuffy...
...She rose: "Dr...
...The year was 1964...
...I would smile and let a joke stand in lieu of an explanation: The employees of a large company decided to have a weekly lottery to liven up the drudgery of their routine...
...In its original form, one taught a bit of Hebrew for an extra shekel, but the joke itself is timeless...
...Once again he listened carefully, stroked his beard and then pronounced his verdict: "You are right...
...It ran 35 pages—far too long for a half-hour talk...
...Suddenly the telephone in the hallway began to ring, interrupting Singer in the midst of yet another "good reason...
...After doing a series of book reviews for the local newspaper, I found myself on the creamed chicken circuit...
...either...
...The long-suffering crowd sought relief in the cool air outside...
...Now my lectures could be summed up in a single, very standard, Yiddish anecdote...
...Another said, "Come on, tell us...
...Was I too much the "Alrightnik," too much the sharper...
...Wait just a minute...
...The person who picked the lucky number won the jackpot...
...Or, worse (?), an "expert schlemiel...
...So I picked number forty-eight...
...or "The Jewish Novel from Adam to Abraham Cahan...
...The audience listened politely, although the lecture might as well have been about "Jewish Communal Life on Mars" or "Sanskrit Translations of the Talmud...
...still loomed ahead, unfinished...
...On Shabbos...
...But I drove the uncharitable thought out of my head...
...I could have given a minute-by-minute account of my year with the Chassidim...
...One word described his life with her: miserable...
...The process was as painful as it was time-consuming...
...And then we will adjourn to the social hall for tea and cake...
...And vowed that I would know better next time...
...It reminded me of the rabbi who was asked to settle a divorce case: First the man was asked to recite his grievances...
...But I would agree and then find myself lapsing, almost unconsciously, into Yiddish...
...Out of such anxieties is the canned lecture made...
Vol. 2 • October 1977 • No. 10
