B'reshit

Judaism, Wntr, 2002 by Clive Sinclair

ONCE UPON A TIME THE HIGHWAYS OF CALIFORNIA were punctuated with Roadside Attractions, whimsical buildings that turned function into form. Hungry motorists could snap up hot dogs from a construction that resembled what it sold, pedestrians could get their soles replaced within a brobdingnagian boot. Alas, most of these visual puns have been demolished. A rare survivor is the giant camera that still stands upon San Francisco's western cliffs. Hosting neither a photographer nor a foto-mart it is, in fact, the city's last camera obscura.

At the heart of its dark interior sits a parabolic dish, upon which a rotating periscope projects views of the outside. When my eyes adjust to the gloom, I observe that the bowl contains nothing but the vacant ocean. I think immediately of a single word, the first word, b'reshit. "In the beginning... darkness was upon the face of the deep." But the all-seeing eye is not static, and the image changes as the lens turns. Gradually rocks emerge from the ocean, populated by slimy creatures from its depths; gulls and cormorants congregate in the heavens above. Next the mainland is formed. Men and women frolic upon its strand; dogs chase their tails. The lens moves on. Civilization flourishes. Cars fill parking lots. High-rise apartments stretch to the horizon. Then suddenly it is all gone, the land and all that was on it. Nothing remains but the enigmatic waves rolling across the surface of the ocean. I have witnessed the history of the world, from creation to apocalypse, compressed into six minutes (the time it ta kes the periscope to rotate 360 degrees). All for one dollar.

February 23-25, 2001

A similar feat of abbreviation can be experienced presently at A Traveling Jewish Theater on Florida Street (an area of the city recently reclaimed by society). In their new production a marvelous baby squeezes a full life into a mere twenty-four hours. The baby's name is Kazik, and his genealogy is as follows: born out of the head of Anshel Wasserman, celebrated author of adventure stories for children, himself imagined by Momik Neuman, child of dumb-struck survivors from Over There, all being the invention of the Israeli writer, David Grossman. The last named, in town for the world premiere, declares himself delighted with Corey Fischer's dramatization of See Under: Love. Fischer swears it's a coincidence but the actor playing Momik bears an uncanny resemblance to Grossman (or perhaps it is simply that they both have red hair). Anyway, the original must feel he has entered a hall of mirrors, rather than a theater.

The play concentrates upon the theme of the novel: Anshel Wasserman's incarceration and his strange relationship with the camp's commandant, Obersturm bannfuhrer Kurt Neigel (a fan since childhood). Forced to entertain the latter, Wasserman conceives short-lived Kazik, whose life is played out before our eyes. As Kazik's death approaches Neigel begs Wasserman not to kill his protege. Why should I spare a mere figment of my imagination, demands Wasserman, when you showed no mercy towards my own fleshand-blood daughter? The revelation is Wasserman's pyrrhic victory and Neigel's doom.

The novel is not only dramatized, it is also atomized. Two conferences are convened to praise it, one in San Francisco, the other in Santa Cruz, the former being organized by Sheila Baumgarten, the latter by Professors Murray Baumgarten and Peter Kenez. I know the Baumgartens well. In fact they are the godparents of my son, born in Santa Cruz some twenty years ago. At the moment he is at the University of East Anglia, rehearsing the conquest of Peru, for his role as Pizarro in The Royal Hunt of the Sun. David Grossman's boy, of a similar age, is meanwhile in the Negev learning to drive a tank, for possible use in the so-called theater of war.

Grossman is the star of both conferences. He is no actor manque, and yet he commands the stage as easilyashis alter ego in the play. Although not the child of survivors, he was always aware of something unspoken, a sort of national melancholy. Thus it was not until the age of 8 that he first heard the word "happiness." He happened to be on a bus listening to an interview with Artur Rubinstein (all Israeli busses are equipped with radios to ensure the immediate propagation of bad news) when he heard it. Returning home he looked up the neologism in a dictionary and drew a blank. How his audience wishes he could find happiness. See Under: Peace, we think. But we know that even today a happy Israeli is an oxymoron. The best that Grossman can do is try to redefine "love" given the facts. "I wanted a book that would jump like this--" he says, raising his arm. "Don't worry, I am not giving the Sieg Hell salute," he explains (lest any mistake him for a Nazi), "but demonstrating the way a salmon leaps from the water. The salmon became my familiar, a journey dressed in flesh." Grossman was right to be apprehensive; there are many prepared to make the comparison. An anonymous correspondent posted Murray an article defaming a well-known Zionist. At the bottom he (or she) had added a sentence of their own: "And Grossman is nearly as shameful." It is the ignorance that galls- Grossman was sacked as a radio newsreader because of his refusal to use standard euphemisms-as much as the time-honored demonization. If Grossman is a demon, he is one blessed with the gift of intimacy.