Torah Torah Torah

TORA TORA TORA was one of my mother's favorite films. She loved history and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor burned bright in her memory. Her friends from Jamaica Plain enlisted in the Marines, Army, and Navy by the scores. Many of the them failed to return to Boston. Their bodies rest on islands across the Pacific. The 1970 film flopped at the box office. Hippies didn't want to see a war movie, but I went with my mother and father. She cried at the sinking of the Arizona. My father had joined the Army Air Force that next January in 1942 much like many young Americans volunteered for the armed forces after the 9/11 attacks.

"The title TORA TORA TORA was manipulated into TORAH TORAH TORAH for episodes of NYPD BLUE and MAGNUM P.I. This last week the power of the Torah was exalted by a very religious friend from Eastern Parkway. Rondell said proudly, "The Torah is one of the most important school books in Korea. Its truth is taught to many of the young."

"The Torah?" The five books of Moses form the backbone of Hassidic tradition. Christian accept the Pentateuch into their Old Testament and the Muslims regarded the ancient text to be the words of Allah. Korea was on the other side of the world. "What's the Torah have to do with Korea?"

"The Korean ambassador told Israeli TV that Talmud study is a mandatory part of the country’s school curriculum and almost every home in South Korea boasts a Korean version of the Talmud, and mothers commonly teach it to their children, who call it the "Light of Knowledge." He appreciates the value of Jewish knowledge. Koreans love education.

"I know many Koreans are Christian. I had several baptized in my youth." Three to be exact. I had paid the nuns at Our Lady of the Foothills $45 to name the three orphans under missionary care. "They are also prone to Evangelism."

"Evengelism?" Rondell was unfamiliar with Christian subsects.

"Born-Again Christians."

At the mention of these words my co-worker turned her head. Ava is from Brazil. She believes in the God of the Only Faith. Ava prays for my soul, for I am a devout non-believer.

"Yes, they are the ones who back Israel 100%, for without Israel there can be no Apocalypse, which will bring back the Messiah to battle the forces of Satan. Ava, do you have a Torah in your house?"

"Yes, it's called the Book of Light." Ava is a good mother. We are friends. She went back to work on her baby's photos. She has a church event coming this Easter weekend.

"Thanks." I respect her faith. In this country the Constitution guarantees the freedom of religion and from religion. "The Talmud gets around and so does the Koran."

"Not according to the Korean Ambassador. He says no Koreans read it, because it's a book of Islam."

"That may be true." I have traveled through Korea's main airport on my many trips to Thailand. I have seen few Muslims in Inchoen Airport. No Jews either, but then you don't have to like pastrami to be Jewish. Rondell was ecstatic to have stumped me on this issue and I told him, "I'll have to get back to you."

"You do that."

"In the meanwhile have a good sedar."

We hugged as men equal in love of the world and I shouted TORAH TORAH TORAH after him. He pumped his fist in the air. I love Passover. It's a Jewish holiday and I don'tahve to go to work at the diamond exchange tomorrow.

Sometimes even a cruel god gets to be kind.

Nearly ten years ago, the Korea Times reported: “Interestingly, there are at least two different books currently sitting on Korean best-seller shelves that purport to explain the Jewish Talmud. The popularity of these books initially came as a surprise. But Koreans aren’t converting to Judaism. They read those books because Jews have gained a reputation for hard work and success, two things Koreans relate to well.”

Reports of Korean schoolchildren reading the Talmud – or at least stories thereof – have also been known for several years. One American teacher in South Korea related that in 2005, his elementary school students told him that as children, they had all read the Talmud, which they called the "Light of Knowledge."

When asked if they had also read the Koran, they burst into laughter, saying, "Of course not, that’s the Muslim book.”

TORAH TORAH TORAH, but I prefer a good pastrami sandwich from Katz’ Deli.

Throw in a cream soda and I’m in heaven on earth.

Dreams of Egg Creams / BET ON CRAZY by Peter Nolan Smith

Ten years ago the Hassidim were hurrying home from the Diamond District to beat the sunset. The High Holidays had come early this year with Sukkor coinciding with the ancient pagan festival of Mabon, which commemorates the autumnal equinox. Sukkor is not only a bridge across the Indus, but the festival honoring the 40 years during which the Hebrews were lost in the desert. All over Williamsburg sukkah are erected outside the apartment buildings and houses of the Hassidim in memory of those decades wandering without real shelter. Gabriel M left Richie Boy a parcel of ten big diamonds. The biggest was a 6-carat round brilliant.

"I won't be answering my phone." He wouldn't be back on the street for ten days. Sukkor lasted longer than the San Gennaro Feast on Mulberry Street. Gabriel wished us good luck. "Sei gesund."

I checked the 6-carat stone. Black flecks were visible in the table. Big ones. I figured the diamond for an F I2. A classless combination of size, color, and imperfection.

At best $3000 a carat.

Gabriel had doubled on my estimation.

$40,000.

It was too late to give back the stone. Gabriel was lost in the flood of black-coated Hassidim fleeing to Williamsburg, Eastern Parkway, and Munsey. I examined the other diamonds. They were Nishtkefelecht or no big deal. Richie Boy shrugged, "It's Sukkor."

Gabriel had given us stones cheap. Sometimes as much as 40% off the Rappaport List, which governs the wholesale price of diamonds. We were his vault for the holidays. Our safe was 10 inches thick. The exchange was guarded 24/7. Our insurance covered the retail value of our goods. Both my bosses prayed for thieves to rob us blind, except most robberies were inside jobs and none of us were desperate enough to risk breaking 8th Commandment.

The rest of the afternoon passed without a single sale. My clients were out of town. Foot traffic was confined to a few out-of-towners killing time before their Broadway Show. Richie Boy and I discussed my commission on a sale with a NBA basketball star.

"I'll take 12%. Same as the last sale." I should have gotten 25%, but I was happy with $500. It was half the cost of a ticket to Thailand. Almost three months since I last saw my kids.

"I don't know." Richie Boy was being tight. His bills were enormous, but they weren't my problem. "I feel better with 10%."

Richie Boy and I were friends almost thirty years. He would do the right thing in the end and I didn't need the money until then. An older woman entered the exchange. Her head barely cleared the counter. 4-10 in high heels. Her dyed orange hair was coiffed into a soft helmet. She had to be in her 70s.

"I'd like to see the diamond hoops in the window." Her accent was Brooklyn. Flatbush. 1st generation born in America. Same as my mother, although my Nana was from Ireland and not a shetl of the Palantine. Not much of a difference since the murdering King of England was as much as a tyrant as the bloody Tsar. "The pavee ones."

"Sure." I brought in a pair of diamond hoops. 4.50 carat. 18 karat white gold. After a little sales spiel, I gave myself room to haggle and said, "$4400."

"They don't look very white. My husband was a cutter on this street. Believe me, sonny, I know diamonds." The woman commented off-handedly. Her attitude was kindly. A woman her height had little choice other than to be pleasant with strangers.

"That's the lighting in this place." The Israeli landlord had painted the ceiling of the exchange yellow. I cursed him each and every day. This wasn't the first time I had heard someone say that my diamonds weren't white. "These stones are actually G plus."

"Better than G plus." Our broker added as he passed through the dutch door on his way to the bathroom. FK had good ears for a man in his 40s who listened to Zeppelin at 10 on his Ipod.

"I don't know." The woman was not convinced by his single sentence and FK launched into a sales pitch about having learned his trade from the worst diamond dealer on the street. "Sy Sigelsohn."

The mention of this name gained the attention of several of the older members of the exchange. Sy had a store down the street, where he would lock the customers in a booth, until they bought from him. It was called the prison cell.

"I remember him."

"How could you forget?"

"My husband never worked for him. He never paid."

"He must have worked once for him to learn that lesson."

"Once only." The woman was fondling the hoops. She liked them. Like was not love.

Fat Karl and the woman played Jewish geography. He came from Seagate. Her family Flatbush. They had eaten at a deli in the 37 exchange.

"There was a deli there?" I had been on the street 20 years.

"Before your time." Fat Karl and I went back that far. "They had a brisket there that you could plotz for."

My mouth was watering, even though the goyim shouldn't know that 'plotz' means to die for.

"What about egg creams?"

Both Fat Karl and the old woman tsked at the suggestion and drooled over long-gone delicacies from the extinct deli, until the woman's husband entered the exchange. His name was Moses, but we remembered him as Max. He had sold Manny the most beautiful 18K jewelry in the early 80s.

"Back when my father was on the Bowery."

"Lola, you want them, buy them." Max was a man of decision. His wife the opposite. "I have to think about it. See you boys after the holiday."

"Sie gesund."

The door closed and Fat Karl descended to the bathroom. It was time for a going home line. For him. Not me. I was being good. At least during working hours. All this week too.

I wasn't hungry enough to eat a brisket sandwich, but a nice chocolate egg cream. Now that was something.

Jews For The Orange Jesus

After the recent Shabbas I met with my Hassidic and Conservative Jewish friends. All of them had met in prison. For the most part their crime was fraud and I didn't consider them criminals. Ex-cons yes, but not criminals. They were drinking kosher wine and whiskey. I stayed with water, as I was waiting for a liver transplant. The midterm elections were only a week away and to a man they voiced their support for Donald Trump.

"You know his father was KKK?" I asked them.

"That was his father," answered, Yonni, the youngest Hassid, a young man with a lovely voice.

"And his followers are Nazis?"

"That's them, not him," answered our host, who called me the last of the Shabbas Goys. "Trump supports Israel and anyone who supports Israel gets out vote."

"Even though he might be a Nazi?" I was the only goy any of them knew.

"No one is perfect," replied Danny, who had served a six year bid in a federal prison.

"So now I understand that some German Jews voted for Hitler, thinking the Fuhrer might not be so bad."

"They couldn't vote for Hitler. They lost the right," protested by friend Joel, who had turned religious in prison.

"The Jews didn't lose the right to vote until 1935 and if you're voting for Trump, then some German Jews voted for Hitler."

"It doesn't matter as long as he supports Israel."

None of them has the right to vote due to their felon status.

Back in the 1960s almost 90% of American Jews voted for the Democrats.

Now almost 40% cast their ballot for the Orange Jesus.

They returned to their drinking and I realized that my one vote counted for more than any of them. Coming from the South Shore that meant vote early and vote often.

Especially against the Orange Jesus.

At least I know where he's heading.

No More Mr. Nice Guy

The short-time bars of Soi 6 and go-go bars of Walking Street are not the only tourist attractions of Pattaya. Farangs and Thais travel down from Bangkok to lounge on the beach, dine at the thousands of restaurants, shop at street markets, and take in the sights.

Several years ago Louis Tussaud’s Waxworks promoted its pseudo-museum with a new billboard on Sukhumvit. Farangs couldn’t read the words in Thai, however the giant photo of Adolf Hitler sieg heiling said a million words to foreign travelers on the busy highway.

The ad campaign was aimed at Thais, since the wordage was in the native tongue of Siam.

“Hitler is not dead.”

German and Israeli embassies complained to authorities and the Louis Tussaud’s Waxworks manager apologized for this cultural faux pas.

“We think he is an important historical figure, but in a horrible way. We apologise for causing any offense which was not at all intended. We did not realise it would make people so angry.”

Thais were unperturbed by the mistake.

‘Man kill farang. Not kill Thai. What problem?” One of my Thai friends said over the telephone. Thais aren’t too concerned with anything happening outside their borders or the present. Neither are my fellow Americans. “If he bad. Why no one kill him?”

Indeed Hitler has been rumored to have escape the Berlin bunker. George Steiner wrote THE LAST PORTAGE OF AH about an Israeli intelligence squad finding the Nazi leader in the jungles of Brazil. Several films have centered their plots of the lost empire of the Third Reich. Adolf would be a very old man if he was alive. In fact he’d be the oldest person alive on this planet.

“120 years old.” An overweight Hassidic diamond broker told this joke the other day. “Things are bad on this planet. troubles so bad that people want a strong leader. someone finds Hitler alive in Brazil. 120 years old but still mentally capable. The world leaders struggle to persuade Hitler to take over the world. He refuses time and time again, until he agrees.

“Okay, okay, I’ll do it, but this time no Mr. Nice Guy.”

Yes, Pattaya, Adolf still lives in the minds of many.

Good thing he can’t collect on his royalties.

AH 1889-1945?-2009? and beyond

THE WRITING OF HISTORY by Peter Nolan Smith

The dead never come back to life and I know that since I've almost died on several occasions from motorcycle accidents, beatings, and chemical misjudgments, although none of these near-fatal incidents must not have been too serious, because my soul was never enveloped by the tunnel of light.

When I returned to the USA from Thailand in 2008, my friends and family recited the list of the missing. Few of the deceased were close, however I was deeply saddened by the demise of Howie Hermann. The owner of our diamond exchange was a 15 year-old at heart.

Each Monday evening we met at the 2nd Avenue Deli for a sandwich and then drove over to the 20th Street shooting range. His other friends pulled off a few rounds on their personal weapons, but Howie would bring special guns for me.

22 Sportsmans.

Lugers.

Colt 45s.

Whatever I wanted, because I liked shooting a pistol and Howie liked having someone with whom he could shoot for an hour. He was as good as they get and his death was even more traumatic, since his loving son Josh had preceded him into the cosmos. I counted my blessings to have known them both, especially since Howard was a man of peace.

"Everyone in the world is the same."

Howard treated everyone like they were family and I was glad to have him call me a friend.

Over the next weeks I noticed a few more faces missing from 47th Street and I asked for Lenny the Bum.

No one had seen him for months and finally someone said that he had passed away in 2007.

"He's a Trombenik." Manny my boss hated Lenny.

The Yiddish expression was new to me, but I divined its meaning, since Manny had worked from the time that he was old enough to wear long pants and Lenny begged for his living.

"Better he should be in Gan Eden without a penny to his name." Manny wasn't very religious, but his hard edge bestowed him with a belief of suffering in the after-life for bums like Lenny.

I'm a humanist. My heaven and hell exists in the now, but I was surprised to see Lenny back amongst the living in 2009 and he was angry at my listing him among the deceased on mangozeen.com.

I was surprised that he read my writing.

"I'm a big fan, but could you bring me back to life?" he pleaded with a whining tenor.

"Like Lazarus and you won't smell as bad." Lenny looked in better shape than when I departed the States in 2001, although his balding head was sporting an ugly growth and his weight had to be over 250.

"I don't wash too much, but I have some place to live. I have to take care of my sister. If it was just me, I'd still be living on the street. I like the fresh air." His clothing was clean and his breath was shy of the old bouquet of cheap brandy. "I stopped drinking too much. Now a little too much, but not often."

Lenny asked about my kids in Thailand and I gave him another dollar. He knew his audience.

Over the past years we have discussed politics, Israel, heaven, Obama, Iraq, and my trips to Thailand. His stock advice made me a few dollars last year and I hold my sand about the personal stories that he tells me about his life.

This week Lenny and I have been engaged in a debate about Egypt and the threat to Israel from the change of regime.

"Lenny, this is not about democracy. This is about revolution and the rich versus the poor. Democracy has failed the Egyptians. It has failed the Iraqis and it has failed in America."

"Maybe, but the Muslim Brotherhood is going to kill all the Jews."

"Lenny, you're too smart than to believe that propaganda."

"Have you ever read the Koran?"

"No." I haven't read that book or the Talmud or Thomas Mann's THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN or James Joyce's ULYSEES and millions of other books.

"You know that Mohammad married an eight year-old?"

"Alyessa." The Mother of Islam was young. Some people say that the prophet bedded her at ten. Others at 15. I could only counter with the truth, because the truth of history is understanding that nothing is true. "Abraham was 86 when he bedded Hagar and he threw her and his son into the desert. So don't get high and mighty about the old times."

My boss Manny rapped on the window.

He had no time for my discussions with Lenny. Every second with the Jewish beggar was one lost to his business and I re-entered the diamond exchange.

Later that evening I passed Lenny on my way to the bank. Angie had to buy school books and Fenway needed some medicine and Fluke and Noi were asking their mother was sweets.

Lenny stopped me in front of the 20 Exchange.

"Damian, you know the Arabs hate us. Mohammad killed all the Jews of Medina."

"Because they backed the idolaters of Mecca." I had been surprised to read how deeply the Jews of Arabia had figured into the rise and fall of Islam.

"Islam comes from the Bible."

"And the Bible comes from the ancient religions. It's all bullshit to me and the Christians and Jews and Muslims kill each other for their beliefs. There is only one good and one evil." I was tired and had lose my track, but then asked, "How many Palestinians were on the plans of 9/11. How many at Dachau? Answer me that."

"The grand Mufti of Jerusalem had 10,000 SS troops at his command." Lenny shouted in the cold winter air and I made a note to check this riposte once I got home to Fort Greene.

Lenny might have been crazy, but he was no fool and I read online about how the Grand Mufti fled Palestine to Nazi Germany, where he encouraged Bosnian Muslims to wage jihad against the Serbs and Jews of Yugoslavia. The 1943 Hanzar SS Division were ruthless during the savage civil war during the Nazi occupation, horrifying their German overlords, but I could find nothing about Palestinians working for the Nazis.

Only the Grand Mufti who worked both sides of the fence between the Axis and Allies to restrict Jewish migration to Palestine.

"Lenny, let me ask you a question." I confronted Lenny the next afternoon.

People on the street had heard about our discussion and stood close to hear what the Sheygutz and the Trombenik had to say about Nazis in Palestine.

We spoke for several seconds. I told him my findings.

"They still hate us." He was talking about the Palestinians.

"As would anyone who stole their lands." I was Irish and my antipathy for the English was buried by knowing too many good people from Britain, even if they thought the Irish were the first niggers. "You know Howard had nothing against anyone."

"Howard was a good man. He didn't let me into the exchange, but he was generous." Lenny sniffed back a tear.

"He was good people, same as you, same as me, same as everyone, fi you give them a chance.

I had to get home and gave him a dollar. It was not a bribe and he said, "Thanks for bringing me back to life."

"It's an easy miracle with a live person."

"I love you, Damian."

"And I love you."

Omnes vincit amor.

But anyone coming back from the dead knows that 'love conquers all'.

Mixed Marriage

There is nothing in the Torah against Hassidim marrying other ethnicities, but I can't think of a single case of them marrying outside their religion. There's always a first time, because in the end love is blind. PHOTO by James Velaise