{"id":3390,"date":"2011-06-13T09:15:05","date_gmt":"2011-06-13T16:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/216.92.17.21\/?p=3390"},"modified":"2011-06-13T09:15:05","modified_gmt":"2011-06-13T16:15:05","slug":"tzaddiks-favorite-boys-speak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/?p=3390","title":{"rendered":"my father’s favorite boys speak up"},"content":{"rendered":"

Did the tzaddik walk into a bar? Did he drink a beer? Did he watch the World Series on that day? So. The answer appears to be (I’ll cut to the chase) \u2014 no, he did not. \u00a0The whole tzaddik walks into a bar<\/a> story that I told, turns out to be almost completely off. \u00a0 Don’t get me wrong \u2014 the event in the car did actually take place. Malkah asked the tzaddik if he’d ever been in a bar… \u00a0It was his answer, they said, that was off.<\/p>\n

This is what happened when I sought out some independent verification from my father’s favorite boys<\/a>. \u00a0And from Mrs Tzaddik as well. And they all concur. The way the tzaddik told it is not at all what happened.<\/p>\n

One of my father’s favorite boys had the whole thing transcribed in his diary. \u00a0He has kept his diaries of the 25 years of adventures with the tzaddik! \u00a0Why hadn’t I done that with my own adventures with my father? \u00a0Of course, he (unlike me) is an historian. It just never occurred to me to take notes until it was too late.<\/p>\n

The story of the-tzaddik-walks-into-a-bar turns out to be much funnier and much more significant than I could have imagined. \u00a0And I do have the real story now, just as I was after. Or \u2014 I have a story corroborated independently by three separate individuals. Which still doesn’t make my father’s story wrong. Maybe their tale was a different story. And how likely is that<\/em>?<\/p>\n

But the favorite boys concur: their revisionist tale is not for broadcast on kaddish in two-part harmony or anywhere else the internet or in print media either. The ‘real’ tale is not for public consumption at all. In other words, it’s a very good story.<\/p>\n

And I’d like to tell it. \u00a0I think it would demonstrate the difference between prescriptivism and descriptivism, for starters.<\/p>\n

How is a tzaddik supposed to behave? And doesn’t that hold for his boys? \u00a0Or: what was the life of the tzaddik like \u2014 particularly with his boys? Both questions are raised, I suppose. I was just never very interested in the first question. It just never occurred to me. But that’s where my father’s favorite boys went with my inquiry.<\/p>\n

There’s something in anthropology called ‘protection of human subjects.’ I know. You’d think it existed in all disciplines, but no, it doesn’t. And protection of human subjects \u00a0trumps any desire of the anthropologist or the public right to know, and certainly it trumps our desire just to hear a good tale. Our code of ethics states that when the telling or transmission of events becomes even a potential<\/em> danger to those involved, or if anyone involved objects<\/em> to the telling \u2014 we simply keep our mouths shut. \u00a0There is, of course, the public interest.<\/p>\n

When I was in grad school I got a graphic illustration of this. \u00a0I was interviewing all 33 professors in the UC Berkeley Department of Anthropology \u00a0to discover \u2014and write about<\/em>\u2014 the culture of our department at the time. I was a first year grad student at the time. Anthropology was in a crisis, and our profs made it clear that there just weren’t going to be the same old jobs out there for us when we got our Ph.D.s. \u00a0So. Then. What did our professors see as the task at hand for us? What did they really value? Must you do fieldwork, let alone fieldwork abroad (which was a major question in those days)? Must you become an academic? What about local languages? Is participant-observation really the best methodological strategy? What advice did these luminaries have for the soon-to-be unemployed next generation?<\/p>\n

One of the professors that I interviewed called me back day after day, pouring out the lore (read: dirt<\/em>) of the department. Hour after hour \u2014 I could not believe how forthcoming he was, how revealing. He made all the relations within the department transparent. He pointed out the significance of alliances and rivalries, (not to mention things I should definitely know nothing about). He mentioned.<\/p>\n

And I took notes. On everything. And he named names.<\/p>\n

After months of these internal tales of the department, I was approaching the deadline for writing up my results. And he knew it. \u00a0When he told me his last juicy tidbit (for it seemed at last he’d come to a close), he had this to say:<\/p>\n

“… and for all that I have told you, I do not give you permission to publish or share any of it. \u00a0It has been for your ears only. \u00a0Now, we’ll see if you are a real anthropologist or not.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And he smiled sweetly. And puffed more cigar smoke in my face.<\/p>\n

And I looked up stunned, stood up, shook his hand, and walked out of his office. I remember not looking at him. I remember only looking at the fire merrily blazing in his privileged Edwardian fireplace.<\/p>\n

“No problem,” I stammered, confused as hell, as I walked out his door. \u00a0I had maybe 60 pages of notes just from him alone.<\/p>\n

Of course he was right. And with those words, he gave me by far the best lesson in anthropological fieldwork that I was to get in grad school. \u00a0We couldn’t just go out there and collect whatever we wanted. We couldn’t just write it up. We had to think about consequences.<\/p>\n

Publishing any of what he had told me would have done more harm than good. \u00a0And that turned out to be the case for even what I thought was the much less innocuous material that I’d collected as well.<\/p>\n

But how do we know what might cause harm?<\/p>\n

Anything can be controversial. Anything at all. \u00a0As it was demanded, I never spoke a word of what I’d been handed by my Berkeley prof. Never published even the smallest tidbit. Never told a soul. But I did understand the dynamics of the department a whole lot better. For over 35 years, I’ve kept my mouth shut. I trusted that my informant knew what was best for all concerned.<\/p>\n

And now. I have to trust my father’s favorite boys, I guess, although I think they’re wrong. Not just trust that they and Mrs Tzaddk have told the story exactly as it unfolded. No, not that. Clearly, the real tale reveals so much more about the tzaddik and his favorite boys than my little tale did.<\/p>\n

And I want to tell the tale. And I want to tell it properly.<\/p>\n

What I can<\/em> report, is only that there was no beer. No beer at all. That the tzaddik just did not drink beer. And, there was no bar at all. And it was not the World Series yet either, but the playoffs. And that those parts of the story are the least interesting and least significant. The story is rich, complex, and speaks volumes to the nature of the tzaddik and his disciples. And the world will never have it! <\/em>Major bummer.<\/em><\/p>\n

This sort of thing does actually drive me crazy.<\/p>\n

And then I think, can storytelling itself really do more harm than good? And is this one of those cases? When all I want is\u2014<\/p>\n

I’ve been writing down as many of my memories of my father as I can in the hopes of saving the fragments of the tzaddik’s undocumented life. \u00a0Not the formal man, but the man behind the scenes. \u00a0I want everything. I want it all.<\/em> And people tell me these amazing stories and then will not commit them to writing. Or when they put them in writing, the humanity of it all just plain washes away. The humor disappears. The tale seems less than an anecdote, not even worth the telling. \u00a0It loses its importance, it’s so cleaned up and lacking spontaneity. Or \u2014 it’s too controversial to tell.<\/p>\n

I don’t buy it.<\/p>\n

So. The tzaddik’s favorite boys have started to speak up at last. They promised to write down their own tzaddik tales. To record them for posterity. But not, it appears for the public<\/em>. That is: not, it appears, for you<\/em>. They want the tzaddik to remain seen in his beatific light. While I, on the other hand, I want the truth. Or as many different versions of the truth that I can collect or conjure. Not the cleaned up tales, but the tales with all the warts. \u00a0So much to tell! \u00a0So little that gets told.<\/p>\n

And that’s the way, I guess, it has to be. There’s a line somewhere between the need-to-know and the need-to-tell. And here I’ve been guilty of wanting every tale to be unearthed, dusted off, and given over to the world. It’s what my father taught me: collect<\/em>, research<\/em>, display<\/em>. I’ve wanted my portrait of the tzaddik fleshed out as fully as possible\u2014with many different voices. But my father’s favorite boys are so much more protective of him than I am. They savor and hoard their own tzaddik stories like jewels in a safe deposit vault. And me, I want to follow the tzaddik’s directive.<\/p>\n

I hate prescriptivist stuff. \u00a0The ‘this-is-how-it-should-have-been.’ \u00a0I want what happened. My father’s reputation will not suffer from the truth, it will be embellished. I know he can stand up to it. I know that he’d just chuckle, nod wisely, or scratch his chin. \u00a0He was exactly that non-judgmental. He stood apart and watched it all unfold. \u00a0He was both bold and modest. \u00a0A touch of humanity never made a tzaddik less tzaddik. That would be somebody else’s religion. It sure as hell isn’t mine.<\/p>\n

So. This is me, keeping my mouth shut. At least in this regard. Making my father look like a flipping saint. No. He never walked into a bar, they say. And that’s the portrait they want me to paint.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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