OyChicago articles

My brother taking a picture of the Contemporary Jewish Museum

My three days in the Bay Area deviated slightly from the Hemispheres magazine recommended itinerary. No dim sum in Chinatown, no inline skating through the Golden Gate Park. I headed west last month for one reason: to connect with my big brother.

The last time I tried to enter his world, I encountered wizards, orcs and half-elves. Turns out, Dungeons and Dragons was not my thing and I quickly retreated to a more familiar landscape which included cherry Blow Pops, gossip and The Love Boat. That was in 1981.



Me with my brother, wishing he was into The Love Boat

These days, he is a freelance photographer who still orbits his own planet. And I am still the little sister with hopelessly mundane interests—and an interest in whatever planet my brother happens to be on.

He has the entire Bay area arts and culture calendar committed to memory. I know next to nothing about art. I don’t like museums. And I especially don’t like art museums.

But this trip, my brother is my tour guide so I follow him.

From the photo exhibition in the basement of City Hall to the Diego Rivera mural at the Art Institute to the observation tower at the de Young Museum, I try to keep up. We crisscross the city by bus, BART, MUNI, and cable car to the Yerba Buena Cultural Center, the Legion of Honor, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Contemporary Jewish Museum, and little galleries in alleys with no names.

Day 1
I glance (barely) at framed things hanging on walls and take a mental inventory of our differences. I have a 9 to 5 job, a hair stylist named Jerli, manners (sorta), a working stove, a credit card, the ability to maneuver around light posts and other inanimate objects, a spouse, two kids and a god-blessed picket fence. My brother has none of the above.

When he slows down to eat pad Thai, I ask about his love life, his job search, his access to laundry facilities and his long-term plans. I get short answers and a few glares.

Day 2
We take a 45-minute bus ride to a palace of fine arts by the ocean. I can barely contain my lack of excitement at the prospect of seeing Women Impressionists, or in my mind, blurry old paintings of French women sitting by the pond wearing big skirts. And true, the art does not move me, but the curator’s words on the wall tell a story, four stories, in fact of four women painters -- Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Eve Gonzales, and Marie Bracquemond -- who were marginalized due to strict social rules and gender discrimination. On a trip when social norms are anything but normal, I take note.



Flocking to Frida at the SFMOMA

We head to the Frida Kahlo exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, it draws lines that rival those at the opening night of Sex in the City. My brother’s SFMOMA membership serves as a fast pass up the back elevator and I am soon sucked into room after room of intense color, intense pain and raw self-expression. It is Frida’s story of polio, politics, stormy love, ethnic influences, infertility, infidelity, physical anguish and emotional despair. Frida was part-Jewish, my brother comments. I watch him take pictures of people taking pictures of Frida’s pictures. The security guard says nothing.

Over fish tacos, I ask my brother if he is happy. Yes, he responds. I ask him what he would do if money were no object. Take pictures, he responds. And there you have it, I can fly home.



Bay area art as viewed through my brother's lens

Day 3
The new Contemporary Jewish Museum opened last June in a converted power station with a dramatic addition that stops everyone in their tracks. I do not know how many people pay the $10 admission to actually walk through the doors, but a hell of a lot of people pause to take a picture of the massive, blue steel cubes balancing on their tips. Architect Daniel Libeskind’s bold, angular design was inspired by the Hebrew letters chet-yud (i.e., chai, l’chaim, to life).



My brother with his trademark curls and overflowing bag

If you’re looking for dusty old Torah scrolls, oodles of silver Judaica, or a Holocaust memorial of some sort, don’t bother stopping at the CJM. Connecting art, people, and ideas is the marketing tag. The museum has no permanent collection. Temporary exhibits are presented in its three galleries, one of which is too cockeyed to even hang art on its walls. This space currently houses an auditory exhibit.

My brother and I agree that our favorite of the three exhibits is “From the New Yorker to Shrek: The Art of William Steig.” I read him one of the Steig quotes out loud: I often ask myself, “What would be an ideal life?” I think an ideal life would be just drawing. Maybe my brother, the photographer who takes pictures but has no working stove, let alone a picket fence, is living his ideal life.

On a bus through the Presidio, I ever-so-astutely observe, “Behind the art, there is an artist. And behind the artist, there is a story. Kinda like writing.” He seems to agree.

If we were art, the curator might write: Two out of sync siblings bond, to the best of their ability. And off we go to the next exhibit, so this culturally-deprived jackass can learn another thing or two about art and maybe, if she’s lucky, a little about her brother.

Mark Bazer will have you laughing in his column featured in next week’s issue of Oy!

Mark Bazer is a syndicated humor columnist for Tribune Media Services and his column—which covers everything from current events to what to talk about with your hair stylist—appears every other Thursday in RedEye and on ChicagoTribune.com. He is also the host of The Interview Show, a live talk show that runs the first Friday of every month at The Hideout and features guests like Bibla Golic, the “Maria Sharapova of Table Tennis” and Doug Sohn, President of Hot Doug’s Encased Meat Emporium, along with artists, musicians and authors. His next show, Friday Sept. 5, will feature Savoy jazz saxophonist Frank Catalano, hip hop poet Kevin Coval and Steve Gadlin, creative director of Blewt! Productions' "Impress These Apes!"

So whether you love reading his column in the RedEye, find Christina Aguilera empowering or just want to have a good laugh, Mark Bazer is a Jew You Should Know.

1. What did you want to be when you grew up?
The American boy cliche: a professional baseball player. But the difference is I wanted to be the bullpen catcher. Many of the perks of being in the Major Leagues but considerably less pressure.

2. What do you love about what you do today?
The deadlines. Really. I like being able to be done with something -- and having to be done with it -- and then go onto the next thing.

3. What are you reading?
"Then We Came to the End" by Joshua Ferris. It's a novel about an advertising agency in Chicago. It's really funny. It's the kind of novel where, during the days you're reading it, you start almost thinking in the mode of the novel, if that makes any sense.

4. What's your favorite place to eat in Chicago?
Sultan's Market in Wicker Park. My wife and I used to live across the street, and it was my first falafel experience. Now, I am inevitably disappointed by any other falafel I have. And I should also probably mention Manny's.

5. If money and logistical reality played no part, what would you invent?
Something that people can use to easily get from one place to another with such ease, comfort and style that it would literally change the world. I'd call it a Segway.

6. Would you rather have the ability to fly or the ability to be invisible?
Fly. I feel like if you were invisible, people would be bumping into you all the time.

7. If I scrolled through your iPod, what guilty pleasure song would I find?
Christina Aguilera. But is that guilty? She's really good. And she empowers me.

8. What's your favorite Jewish thing to do in Chicago-in other words, how do you Jew?
Having the occasional Shabbat dinner with my in-laws, my wife and my 3-year-old son at my in-laws' downtown apartment. I like watching my 3-year-old try to sing along. Maybe he'd actually learn the words if we didn't do it so occasionally.

Look for one of Mark’s columns in the Living Jewishly section of next week’s issue of Oy!

Heather's dad Joe beams with pride at her graduation

My father's last memory of his father Aaron was in 1937, dad was five. Aaron's car was parked and running outside of the house. In the front seat was my grandfather's new bride, Bessie. My father came running outside of the house to the car. Aaron crouched down to my father, gave him a five dollar bill and said, "Sonny, someday you'll understand." Aaron drove away and my father never saw or heard from him again.

My father, Joseph Hyman Zagrabelsky, didn't understand then and never will.

In 1917 my father's parents emigrated from Odessa, Ukraine to the U.S. miraculously escaping the pogroms of 1919. Aaron, my grandfather, was an Orthodox Rabbi and his wife, Bluma, a homemaker. Dad was the youngest of five. Early in their lives as Americans, the family made a tour of sorts of U.S. synagogues. Apparently, Aaron liked his lady congregants a little too much and was forced to leave several temples. No matter though, the family just moved from one state to another, starting in Maryland and ending up in Los Angeles where Aaron eventually found a suitable young lady to leave his family for.

His father’s departure was a traumatic event that loomed large in Joe's life. At 19 he hitchhiked from LA to New York to pursue his dream of acting. On the way he stopped in Memphis where he knew his father to be living. He looked him up and made a call. Bessie answered the phone and informed Joe that his father had died three months earlier of a heart attack and couldn't he please send some money for a head stone.

But dad made it. He landed in New York where he worked as an actor for many years, even understudying the lead role Come Blow Your Horn on Broadway. Eventually, in the late 1960s, he met Paul Sills, founder of Compass Players and Second City, moved to Chicago and joined his improvisation group.

The rest of the family wasn’t faring quite as well. Dad’s oldest brother Bernie had become a bonafide hermit, relocating to New Hampshire from LA, and eventually kidnapping my sick grandmother. His brother Nathaniel had committed suicide. His sister Diana was living in Nevada with her gentile husband and his brother closest in age, Hershey, became a Jew for Jesus, married and had a mess o' babies. Can you imagine?? Performing must have been, among other things, a welcome respite and distraction from his painful past.

Eventually, my dad met and married my mother, Hope, a granddaughter of Norwegian immigrants, whom he met in one of Viola Spolin's famous improvisation classes. They raised my older brother and I, baptizing us at the local Presbyterian church. Every Sunday, we dutifully went to Sunday School. My father would drop us off and say, "Tell Jesus I said hello. Ask him, can't I get into heaven by association?" We loved that one. But as time went on, I found that I did have to ask my father's question in earnest to those who taught me Christian doctrine. Would my dad go to hell? I posed this question to any poor schmo with a divinity degree. Some said it was up to God's discretion, but most said yes. I was disturbed by this. It took many years of interrogating clergy of all stripes before I settled on, no.



Heather and her dad, a couple of hams

I've always felt a kinship with my father. Perhaps it's because I have his dark hair and sallow skin, or maybe it's just the typical father-daughter bond. Whatever it is, I feel Jewish and have since I was a child. Currently, I am in the midst of the conversion process, a topic of conversation that I have found does not bring out the best in people. Some say, "Why does it matter? Why do you want religion?" My mother is nonplussed, my orthodox friends will never consider me a real Jew, and my father says, "Why do you want to be a Jew? People are always trying to kill us!" It's not that I want to be Jewish, or wish I was Jewish. I simply feel that I am and want to make it official. More than that, my desire to do so is not so much a measured cognitive process as it is a biological urge, like the urge to have children or go to sleep.

After twenty-four years together, my parents called it quits. Dad was single for a while, renting a small apartment and living in typical bachelor squalor. Some years later he married a nice Catholic lady named Jean. Hers, I thought, is a deep but personal faith; one I can tolerate, admire even. They quickly moved to a quiet neighborhood in Northwest Indiana to be near Jean's family. Later, I came to find out that many of Jean's family members are Evangelical Christians. Oy.

Now, I am not familiar with all of Indiana, or with all evangelicals, but where my dad lives they actually believe that Obama is a Muslim, and they’d have a problem with it if he was. They must have been salivating as his car pulled up, seeing the passenger as someone who desperately needed saving. Eventually Dad and Jean moved in with Jean's son's family, wonderful people who happen to display their faith in a way I find nauseating. But how could I complain? They love my dad and take wonderful care of him. Sure, when I told them my husband was going into environmental law they told me that environmentalists love trees more than people, but so what, right?

Dad will turn seventy-six this month. Who can blame him for wanting some measure of spirituality in his life? A tried and true hypochondriac—he once called to inform me that he had a new condition, and drove home the severity of the situation with the dramatic pause he had perfected on stage: “Heather,” he said, “I have conjunctivitis.” Yes, my dad had pink eye. And yes, he pulled through. I do kid him for his constant assumption that death is imminent, but getting older and seeing friends die must really reinforce his fears. It makes sense that he might want to chat with his maker.

Knowing Jean’s family’s evangelical bent, I guess I should have seen it coming. But when my dad called announcing that he was to be baptized, I was dumbfounded. Actually, devastated is more like it. Did I mention the baptism was to take place one day before a scheduled surgery? Dad thinks he'll die during routine teeth cleanings! The man was covering his bases. I sobbed. And sobbed. I tried everything. I made an impromptu visit to Indiana, speeding down the Dan Ryan toward the Skyway begging him to rethink his decision. I even took him to see a rabbi in Munster.

The rabbi respectfully inquired into his line of thinking. My dad replied that he now lives with Christians and added, "When in Rome..." Oh well. "What? It's just some water on my head," he barked in a perfect New York Jew accent. "I'm a Jew, Jesus was a Jew, period." When I asked if he believed that Jesus died for his sins and will come back to judge the living and the dead—payback for years of Sunday school I guess—he replied, "What the hell are you talking about?" Sigh...I had to laugh even through my tears. At least the trip wasn't a total loss. It was beautiful to see my father lay tefillin for the first time in more than fifty-five years. He still knew the Hebrew by heart.

A few days after my visit to Indiana, Dad landed in the emergency room (he is fine). Jean left me a voice mail saying, should my father die; it's my fault, just so I know. Nice. What could I do? He is my only link to Judaism and without that link, I felt very alone. How can I feel Jewish if he ceases to be a Jew? Can I still convert? I realized that my tears were in large part for myself and what I thought I had lost.

Two weeks after we visited the rabbi, he was baptized. I wasn't there.

How is a Jew whose entire family abandoned Judaism long ago and who lives amongst so many Christians to keep his faith? It would be difficult even for the most observant amongst us. Dad didn't stand a chance.

I think that truth be told, Dad’s baptism mattered more to me than it did to him. I can’t say for sure whether he was covering bases, or agreeing to the ceremony to provide some kind of comfort for the woman he loves. Maybe he doesn’t even see it as getting in the way of his view of his Jewish self, or suddenly at 75, he found Jesus—and I guess it doesn’t matter.

No matter what my dad believes, I am Jewish because of him. Now it’s up to me to figure out how to be the Jew I want to be, that I feel I am.

Josh Rosenberg, a walking canvas of Jewish pride

We’ve all met Jews with tattoos—people of the Hebrew persuasion who see no conflict between their heritage and their body art. But how about Jews who consider their tattoos to be an expression of their Judaism? Meet Josh Rosenberg, a 28-year-old union pipefitter who wears his heart on his sleeve and his religion just underneath it.

Josh’s left wrist is encircled with tattooed Hebrew script that says: “Ben Yisrael”—son of Israel—and his left elbow is ringed by an enormous Star of David, a twin tribute and statement of loyalty to his parents. “I don’t know the ethnicity of my blood parents, but as far as I am concerned, I am my [adoptive] parents’ son—and they are Jewish,” Josh says.  That lineage is intense. His great-aunt, a Holocaust survivor, was among many members of his family who emigrated to Israel after WWII, and her testimony helped convict the notorious Adolph Eichmann of war crimes.

How could the descendent of Holocaust survivors in particular choose to get tattoos? “I think a lot of people these days are embarrassed of being Jewish,” Rosenberg says. “Not too long ago, Jews even had to hide their identity. This is my way of saying I am proud of it.”

Rosenberg’s pride is apparent both coming and going. Just below the nape of his neck is another Jewish tattoo, a colorful lotus flower in full bloom, with a Jewish Star at its heart. “The lotus flower grows in stagnant water,” Rosenberg explains. “Who could believe that something so beautiful grows in something so stagnant, that such beauty grows out of shit?”



Josh’s lotus flower tattoo with a star of David, such beauty growing out of such shit

Speaking of shit—how much does Rosenberg get about his Jewish body art? “I asked my rabbi if it was true that a Jew with tattoos couldn’t be buried in a Jewish cemetery,” Rosenberg says. “He told me: ‘There are 613 laws, and one of them [also] is not to lie, but if every liar couldn’t be buried [in a Jewish cemetery], there would be no one buried there. Live your life.’”

Rosenberg definitely is a man who does just that. The inside of his right forearm is emblazoned with a dramatic image of Miriam the prophet. “The only problem I have ever had with the Old Testament is women aren’t represented,” Rosenberg says. “The only woman who always stood strong was Miriam. She was amazing. She kept the Jewish people together in the desert, where [a well of] water followed her. Without her, there would be nothing.”

Below the tribute to Miriam is a tribute that is more personal: The monogram “MAM” is emblazoned on his right wrist, a permanent memorial to Rosenberg’s beloved friend, Matthew Aaron Morrison, who died two years ago. “I have known Matt since I was 5,” Rosenberg says, speaking at a party marking what would have been Matt’s 28th birthday. “He was my brother, and I lost him. We were inseparable. Now he is dead and I am not.”  The tattoo, he says, is a way of keeping Morrison’s memory with him always.

Rosenberg’s most recent tattoo, inked on his left inside forearm, is less bittersweet,  It is a quote from the Torah that declares: “Any place a man turns his eyes to heaven is the holiest of holies.” “It has a lot of relevance in my life today,” says Josh. “The whole reason to have tattoos as a Jew—the whole irony—is that you don’t need a synagogue or a structure to find God or praise God. There is another way.”

With ink.