Exile and the Prophetic: Einstein on (my) beach

This post is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.

The news over the last weeks.  Reminders of the world now.  South African miners shot dead by the police of the (un)Apartheid South African government.  Not to worry, apologies all around.  Tribal folks in the north of India leaving by the droves.  Bulk text messages warning them of eviction and worse.  China in Africa, saturating the news cycle with their intrepid state reporting.  Looks like Africa is in for another round of imperial ”assistance.”

And poor Julian Assange, granted asylum by Ecuador, holed up in London, with the Brits threatening to get around diplomatic immunity. The Ecuadorian embassy announces defiantly that they’re not a British colony.  I wonder who will win this round.

The news cycle is still on the Russian rock group, Pussy Riot. Several members of the group will be serving prison sentences.  Others are on the lam. All for defying – on a Russian Orthodox Church stage – the President/Dictator of Russia. 

The Middle East seems condemned to a continuous cycle of violence and atrocity.  The government of Syria is just another bad apple ready to fall. Where, oh where, will the Syrian President/Dictator flee to?

On the Democratic convention platform wire – “Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel.”  So AIPAC did write the platform after all.

Nonetheless, if you’ve traveled to Jerusalem lately you know the score.  It’s a highly contested city.  Always has been.  The victors one day are the defeated the next day.

Provocative Zen.  Reading John Cage’s biography, Zen style, I am coming to the conclusion that John Cage was a Zen provocateur.

Take in this scene. In 1974, on the day that Richard Nixon resigned the Presidency, Cage gave a debut performance of part four of his musical composition, Empty Words.  The venue was Naropa, the Zen learning center in Colorado.  Though the crowd was boisterous, assuming there might be a celebratory sing-a-long because of Cage’s reputation and Nixon’s resignation, Cage assumed the opposite.  Engaged in a Buddhist environment, Cage thought a disciplined work about silence would get a sympathetic hearing.  He was wrong. 

Let me set the scene.  Cage sat a table on a makeshift dais, his back to the audience.  The projection screen was in front of him.  Cage then presented segments of Thoreau’s journals through a mixture of vowels and consonants, punctuated by extended by times of silence.  It wasn’t easy to make sense of what Cage was reading and the silences were long.   After a few moments, it was clear that the crowd wasn’t getting into Cage’s performance.  Or they were, but in a wholly unanticipated way. 

As Cage’s biographer, Kay Larson describes it, some in the audience began to let loose with “deafening shrieks, bird whistles, catcalls, and screams.  Some twanged guitar strings or played their flutes, or threw things onto the dais.”  A few stormed the stage, danced and sang.  Cage remained in place, displaying an intense concentration on his performance, as if nothing was happening around him. 

When his musical piece was over, Cage turned and faced the audience.  To the question of whether he expected a hostile reaction and perhaps courted it, Cage responded:  “I know it.  I know what limb I’m out on.  I’ve known it all my life, you don’t have to tell me that.”  It seems like he was throwing it back to the audience: “Do you know what limb you’re out on?”  Later, Cage wrote about the incident.  Cage recalled that the Bodhidarma, when he came from India to bring Buddhism to China, sat facing a wall for ten years: “So thinking along those lines, I sat in Boulder with my back to the audience.  Well, after twenty minutes, an uproar began in the audience, and it was so intense, and violent, that the thought entered my mind that the whole activity was not only useless, but that it was destructive.  I was destroying something for them, and they were destroying something for me.” 

Ever get that feeling when you’re traveling Jewish in the Golden Age of Constantinian Judaism?  The audience of whatever stripe expects to hear what they want to hear and if you, figuratively, turn your back to the audience, you get what John Cage received in the heart of Buddhist America.  If you don’t say want is expected, which means no thought allowed, or push whose ever envelop a little too much, you’ll find yourself out the door on your ear.

Our Rabbis, did you ever think of delivering your Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur sermons turned away from the congregation?  Did you ever think of sitting cross-legged on the bima facing the Ark of the Covenant for ten years?  (Since you might even be bringing the prophetic to the congregation like the Bodhidarma brought Buddhism to China, this might make them curious.  It might also convince them that you’re serious about the prophetic.)

Sure, your contract won’t be renewed and you might be hauled off by the police and taken to jail, handcuffed.  Before that you might be jeered with deafening shrieks, bird whistles, catcalls, and screams.  Some might throw their bulletins at you or storm the stage.  With Cage, you might think it was all useless and destructive.  You might destroy something for the congregation.  The congregation might destroy something for you.  Like what it means to be a Rabbi and a Jew?

Call it Jewish Theatre of the Empowered. Advertised for the upcoming High holiday season:

Flash Mob

Dance Around the Ark

Those interested meet at the synagogue on 4th Street, 8:15 for High Holiday services.  Do not wear your synagogue best.  Proceed to the Ark of the Covenant, gather around it and, using mime, begin building an Apartheid Wall.  As some continue to build the Wall, others should start flying around the Ark making the sounds of helicopter gunships on the prowl.  In a friendly way, send a delegation to encourage the (startled) Rabbi to join the dance around the ark.  To make it clear you might want to sing those words to the old rock’n roll favorite, “Rock Around the Clock”.  See if the Rabbimime a bull horn and call the congregation to denounce all injustice, including injustice done to Palestinians.  After five minutes exit the synagogue peacefully.  Gather in the parking lot where a festive organic meal will be served.

Even on Yom Kippur?  Leave it to the (un)schooled Jewish activists to forget the fast.  Or, like the Feast of Fools in Medieval times, should everything political and religious be turned upside down?  Showing the utmost disrespect for the respectable because the respectable has become criminal?

Not to worry, you establishment types.  After the High Holidays Flash Mob all will return as it was.  After all, there’s a reason for (un)prophetic order.  How else can the community survive its own indigenous?

The pull of the indigenous. As the Days of Awe come ever closer.

Speaking of which, if Dancing Around the Ark is too much, another option might be the revived performance of “Einstein on the Beach,” the opera. It’s returning to the Brooklyn Academy of Music just a couple of days before Rosh Hashanah.  There doesn’t seem to be much about Einstein in the opera.  More or less the opera plays on Einstein’s iconic status. The audience fills in the universe Einstein ponders.  But since we know Einstein was an internationalist, more or less a pacifist and if a Zionist, a homeland type, then we can fill in his Jewishness in the synagogue setting.

Filling in Einstein’s (Jewish) universe. Some possibilities.

Einstein in Synagogue – on Rosh Hashanah.

Photo Op. Caption: “Einstein dancing around the Ark of the Covenant.”

Einstein in Synagogue – on Yom Kippur.

Photo Op. Caption: “Einstein standing in front of the Ark of the Covenant.

Einstein at the pulpit. Getting ready to deliver his sermon. Priceless.

Einstein walking on my beach. Einstein’s universe. Passing the mezuzah on the beach.