“Wherefore art thou, Romeo?”

My youngest is studying “Romeo and Juliet” in high school, and came to me the other day with a question regarding the story line, which had me pondering: Why is it the most taught and performed Shakespearian play?

Written early in his career, it’s certainly not one of his best. In fact, no less of an authority on English life than the great diarist Samuel Pepys, who was present at the play’s opening, commented: “it is the play of itself the worst that ever I heard in my life, and the worst acted that ever I saw these people do.” With the obvious exception of Romeo’s friend Mercutio the characters are fairly two-dimensional (The poet John Dryden famously said that Shakespeare had to kill Mercutio in the third act, to prevent being killed by him) without much development. We don’t know the innermost thoughts of the protagonists, but for what is required to advance the plot. Unlike his great tragedies (Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello) in which he pretty much created The Human Character in literature (Harold Bloom argues that with the personas of Hamlet and Falstaff Shakespeare invented Humanity), “Romeo and Juliet” leaves the audience with nothing more than the experience of watching (or reading) a decent play. Yet it remains the most-staged of all his works, inspiring dozens of operas, movies, ballets, songs, interpretations and downright spin-offs world-wide. I have no doubt that when one combines commercial, collegiate and high-school dramatic productions, there must have been at least 100,000 individual stagings of the play since it was first performed. Why is that so?

I think that the answer is threefold: pace, plot, and puns. The play itself unfolds over a timespan of less than one week, which keeps the storyline humming with conflict and tension, but at the end of the day (or week…) it’s mostly about the plot. There was little originality in the basic framework: Boy meets girl, their desire to be together denied, boy dies, girl follows suit. This theme exists in plays and stories of yore, dating back to ancient Greece, as well as in more modern plays which Shakespeare was certainly familiar with (proving that Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Andy Warhol and others were in great company as they too appropriated ideas from everybody in sight). However, what Shakespeare does that is so wonderful here is that he politicizes the story, providing an intriguing context to the plot, and positioning politics as the sworn enemy of love (In Hollywood pitch parlance, it’s “Hatfields & McCoys” meets “Love Story”). By doing so he devises a role for the most important participant in the play, the audience. We become one with the lovers (as much as one wants to turn into a sixteen year-old boy courting a thirteen year-old girl), and now it’s us vs. them, and we are wishing for the couple’s succor and reunification, which ultimately happens, but sadly in the famous tragic manner which concludes the play. The puns (over 150 of them!) provide the critical comic relief which helps us sit through the whole thing, glued to our seats, and manifest even in terrible events (Best example: Mercutio’s dying words “ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man”). It is through this perfect blending of context, time, and language this theatrical tour de force is achieved.

And so, as long as our civilization endures, every single evening around the world, in any given number of languages, cultures and locations, a curtain will rise, an audience will hush, and an actor will step forward and proclaim:

“Two households, both alike in dignity
(In fair Verona, where we lay our scene),
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life,
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.
The fearful passage of their death-marked love
And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
Which, but their children’s end, naught could remove,
Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage—
The which, if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.”

Hall of Shame

A “Hall of Fame” gains its stature not from the experts and elitists who vote the members in, but from those who grace its hallowed halls. I remain perplexed by and angry with the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame which, year in and year out, has not yet seen fit to induct two of the most prominent rockers of our time: Dick Dale, the King of the Surf Guitar, and the late Warren Zevon, the master of the hardboiled, dark, macabre songwriting.

Dale, of “Miserlou” fame (think “Pulp Fiction”), invented a musical genre, Surf Rock, that inspired thousands of Californian kids to pick up an electric guitar, and influenced dozens of bands, from the Ventures to the Beach Boys. Dick helped Leo Fender invent guitar reverb, and blew out numerous amps along the way. Currently in his seventies, despite multiple bouts with cancer, Dale is still touring and mesmerizing his fans (known affectionately as “Dickheads”) with his astonishing guitar technique, playing his beloved “Beast”, the flipped-over left-handed Fender Stratocaster (with 60 gauge strings!)

Warren Zevon wrote and performed numerous songs in an inimitable style. Some of the epic ones include “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner”, “Lawyers, Guns and Money”, “Poor Pitiful Me” and, of course, his signature song, “Werewolves of London”. One could just listen to the composition, or read the lyrics unaccompanied by any sound, yet instantly recognize it as a Zevon creation. Warren is no longer with us, having died of cancer in 2003. His final year was both graceful and courageous. David Letterman (whom Zevon proclaimed “the best friend my music ever had”) hosted him for an entire hour, during which he shared with Dave and the audience his observation on dying, exhorting us to “enjoy every sandwich”. He also released a farewell album titled “The Wind”, which I defy anyone to listen to and not cry. Several years ago BBC listeners and music experts voted on the “Best first line” in a song. Of all the amazing songs that are out there, what was their pick?

“Saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand,
walking through the streets of Soho in the rain,
he was looking for a place called Lee Ho Fook’s,
going to get a big dish of beef chow mein.”

Dick Dale and Warren Zevon don’t need to be in the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame. The Hall needs them in order to be worthy of its name.

The Happiest Hanukkah

Now that my two oldest children have reached the age of majority, I am overjoyed that I’ll finally be able to tell them: “You’re adults now, so you only get one gift for Hanukkah”.

First Play

Duke University’s legendary basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski has coined the phrase “Next Play”, in which he emphasizes the importance of “what you are about to do” over “what you have just done” and, with four National championships, two Olympic gold medals and two World championships I’m not about to argue with Coach K. However…

I have coined a phrase myself – I call it “First Play” – and here’s the core concept: The very first step that you take in any process is the most important one. While its significance may be hidden at the time, make no mistake: your first action is the one with the greatest impact.

Like many other ideas, this one emanates from sports, which is always a good metaphor for our lives. As my children started to travel to competitive (read: expensive) away-from-home soccer tournaments, we began to learn that the single most important game in all of these events was the first one (as opposed to the championship game, if you ever got there). The first win sets the tone, and creates the margin needed to absorb an unexpected loss or tie. Once you miss the first win opportunity, your team is instantly in a hole, from which it has to start digging itself out of.

So I started to atomize the process. In most highly competitive athletic contests, the difference between winning and losing comes down to a very small number of specific plays. Two years ago, my son’s soccer team was ranked “number one” in North Carolina. We started our season with an “away” game and the team took a goal very early in the first match, which they ended-up losing. No one gave it a second thought. The team regrouped, and put together a strong series of wins, attempting to claim the division championship and be promoted to the region-wide league, a significant achievement. At the last days of the season, several months later, we suddenly realized that we would fall short of that objective by a couple of points. Suddenly, that forgotten first goal of the season ended-up adversely affecting our destiny, in a non-trivial fashion: regional teams play at a very high level of competition, attract top-notch players, and are scouted by college coaches. Alas, not ours… (Happily, the following season the team learned from its experience and won both the division and State Cup).

I had this point re-validated recently when my son’s college team made it to the National Championship tournament: Prior to the tournament they had one loss, followed by an undefeated streak of 19 games. But because of that early season loss they were not seeded as favorably as they could have been at season’s end. In the tournament they tied their first game, and ended-up with an early exit.

I like to think of “First Play” as the initial investment deposit that you make: it may not be the largest one, but given time it is the one that generates the greatest proportional return due to compounding.
You see a lot of that in baseball, a sport with a long season and many games, where a loss in April will cost the team a playoff spot in October. It’s not uncommon to have a dozen single, specific plays over multiple games early in the season (dropped ball, bad swing, blown save, wrong call by an umpire), any one of which may end up having a detrimental impact to the season’s outcome. I have experience the same situations professionally, when simple initial design errors in prototyping lead to insanely costly rework downstream. A great example is the once-common programming language COBOL, which used only two characters to store the value of a given year, as opposed to storing all four digits. Fast-forward to the end of the millennium and recall how this simple oversight created the infamous “Y2K” crisis, costing governments and businesses over $400 billion in remediation costs.

The significance of this is that sometimes we are left without an opportunity to fully correct a situation. As Bob Dylan so insightfully wrote (in “Mississippi”) “You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way”. Which is why I tell my children that the first “C” they will earn in their first test in their freshman year in college may end up being the one grade affecting their Graduate School acceptances four years later.

As part of my military service in the Israeli Defense Forces I participated in non-commissioned officer training, where our sergeant taught us that once you miss a deadline, you are more apt to miss it again and again. He was absolutely right: Get it done right the first time and you don’t have to play catch-up and erode the quality and significance of subsequent “plays”.

(Adapted from a previously published blog post)

Weeping for thee, Zion

Alan Paton’s epic novel “Cry, the Beloved Country”, which presaged South Africa’s Apartheid laws, was published in 1948, the same year in which they were eventually enacted. This was also the year of Israel’s independence; a new nation, highly idealistic, the veritable post-Holocaust melting pot, a young, vibrant country, financially bankrupt yet morally wealthier than most nations. And indeed, from its founding, until June 5, 1967, Israel was a wonder to behold. The home of a people who had risen from the ashes of Europe and the persecution of Jews residing in Arab nations. Small in territory, yet a world power in agricultural technology, science, humanism, education, the epitome of the prophet Isaiah’s verse about it being “A beacon to the nations”. Israel enjoyed diplomatic relations with both East and West, and was admired by many countries for its passion for democracy and social justice. It is important to note that all of these great achievements were rightly considered to be pure acts of Zionism, reflecting the 19th-century vision of Dr. Theodore Herzl, who envisioned a Jewish Homeland where Jews would be able to flourish, free from old-world oppression, persecution, bigotry and downright violence. It didn’t matter if you planted an orchard, discovered a new medicine, worked in a factory, conducted an archeological dig, taught school or served in the military; all of these activities helped cement the dream of creating a free, democratic Jewish state, as manifested in its Declaration of Independence, drafted primarily by its founder, David Ben-Gurion. Those halcyon days were at once both disarmingly innocent and purposefully epic, a unique nineteen years in which a nation was forged.

Then arrived June, 1967. Israel, concerned over a possible coordinated attack by Egypt and Syria, struck first, and in six short days it almost tripled in size, conquering the Sinai desert and the Gaza strip from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Truth be told, the war was actually decided in the first three hours, when Israel’s vaunted air force destroyed the enemy’s planes on the ground, achieving total air supremacy. From a military perspective the war was universally acclaimed as no less than brilliant. Israel was held in high regard by many countries around the globe, and its army generals became world wide celebrities (Two jokes from the era: President Johnson asks Israel’s legendary one-eyed defense minister Moshe Dayan for his help in Vietnam. Dayan responds: “I can spare you six days”. In another one, LBJ suggests to foreign minister Golda Meir that the US and Israel swap a couple of generals, she replies “fine”. LBJ requests General Rabin and General Bar-Lev, and Golda asks for General Electric and General Motors). Israel had literally overnight transformed from being a small kibbutz in the desert into a regional superpower, with millions of Palestinian residents and refugees under its rule. For the next six years Israel’s economy boomed and its Jewish residents led a cultural and socially euphoric lifestyle, until the other shoe finally dropped in the form of the unanticipated bloody and costly 1973 Yom Kippur war, which rocked Israel’s sense of security to its very core.

Close to fifty years of occupation have gone by, with constant upheaval, strife, and conflict. One simply cannot condense into this article all of the turbulent events, multiple wars, terrorist attacks, retaliations, peace treaties with two Arab nations, innumerable negotiation conferences, the injustices and evils of the Occupation, mediation efforts by practically all Western countries, the Settlement movement, the withdrawal from Gaza, the emergence of Islamist social and militant organizations, and the loss of Israel’s innocence by the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin at the hands of a Jewish right-wing extremist. To paraphrase the famous comment made by foreign minister Abba Eban originally about the Palestinians, neither party to the conflict has ever missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. All of which brings us to the present day:

2014 estimates are that about 6.1 million Jews live in Israel, and 5.5 million Arabs reside between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and Israel proper. The annual Jewish population growth rate is around 1.7%, while the combined Arab one is approximately 3%. One need not be a statistician or a demographer to realize that in the not-so-distant future the combined Arab population of what is euphemistically referred to as “Greater Israel” will exceed that of the Jewish population. Israel’s current government, led by prime minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu is fairly right-wing and attempting to pass a “Base Law” (which in Israel is somewhat akin to a constitutional amendment) defining Israel as a National Jewish State, effectively relegating non-Jewish citizens to a second-class citizenship, with complete disregard for the Declaration of Independence, which clearly states that Israel is a democracy that guarantees equal rights to all of its citizens, with no bias towards religion, race, or gender. There is one important exception to this declaration, and that is Israel’s unique “Law of Return”, which allows any Jew arriving in Israel to claim citizenship (unless he’s wanted for a crime elsewhere, which is why this tactic did not work for neither notorious gangster and Lucky Luciano associate Meyer Lansky nor TV appliance king Eddie Antar, AKA “Crazy Eddie”). This is the sole legal advantage Jews have over any other religion in Israel, helping define it as the Jewish Homeland.

Interestingly enough, in the country’s history there was not a greater proponent and defender of its parliamentary democracy than the founder of the right-wing Likud party, the man who helped Bibi in his early years in politics, the late prime minister and peacemaker Menachem Begin. For a multitude of reasons, some legitimate (existential threats and terrorist attacks) and some not (sheer racism and inequality) the majority of Israeli Jews have a very dim view of the region’s Arab population, Palestinians and Israeli Arabs alike, bringing us to the crux of the matter:

In order for Israel to remain the Jewish Homeland (and most reasonable people would agree that one is needed) it needs to have both a strong Jewish majority (which exists within the pre-June 5, 1967 borders), and excellent relations with many other countries around the world and the Jews who reside in them. These are axiomatic requirements as the country needs both in order to survive and thrive. Combine the geographies, the demographics, and the historical imperatives, and we are left with only three probable outcomes. In the first, Israel unilaterally annexes the Palestinian territories and gives equal rights to the Palestinian people. Within one election cycle Jews will cease to be a majority in Israel, and the Jewish Homeland will be an artifact of the past, with Jews living under Arab rule. The second possible outcome is that Israel annexes the territories, but does not grant the residents equal rights. This instantly makes Israel an Apartheid country, a proverbial leper ostracized by the rest of the world, cast-out of the international community of nations. Truth be told, but for America and a few Western countries, it’s already almost at that point. The third outcome (and I hope that you can see where I am going with this) is for Israel to rapidly sue for peace with the Palestinians, support the creation of the Palestinian state next to Israel, relinquish the illegal settlements, share Jerusalem, thus saving the Zionist dream and continuing on the amazing Zionist adventure. Yes, there are numerous hurdles, yes, they are Israel’s enemies, yes, the Arab world is geographically vast compared to tiny Israel, and no, none of these things matter, since without the obvious solution of ending the Occupation Israel’s future (and very survival) is doomed.

As this article is written news comes out of Israel that yet another government has fallen (the 33rd in sixty-six years) and all polls indicate that the next government, to be headed by none other than Bibi Netanyahu, will be even more extremist than the current one. Of course, as Israel’s elder statesman and Nobel Peace laureate Shimon Peres said, “Israelis tell the truth in the polls but lie in the ballot” so there still is a slim chance for progress. Until then, I’ll continue to be guided and inspired by the immortal words of the prophet, beautiful in the Hebrew yet rendered ever so poetically in the King James Authorized version: “For Zion’s sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth.”

Peace; Salaam; Shalom.

Ravi Shankar on US Highway 19

Pandit Ravi Shankar, the famous teacher and performer of the sitar, proclaimed by his disciple George Harrison as being: “The Godfather of World Music”, left us on his pilgrimage to eternity a couple of years ago. Shankar was so respected and revered by all that, as an example, he was the only performer to be paid for participating in the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, AKA “The Summer of Love”. (The same event in which Jimi Hendrix famously torched his guitar). He got $5,000, the other artists did it for free… The Maestro was an enormously interesting individual, led an exciting, long, eventful life, with many of his 92 years with us devoted to educating Westerners on the intricacies of Indian music and culture.

About thirteen years ago, while still living in Florida, my wife informed me that Shankar would be speaking at our local Barnes & Nobles bookstore, situated in a large strip mall on the aforementioned US Highway 19, a road that was a contender several times for the dubious honor of “The ugliest street in America”. Naturally, I had to attend. He was, at the time, touring with his daughter Anoushka, an accomplished composer and sitar player in her own right, and promoting her book (about himself), hence the visit to our local discount bookstore. Scheduled for 7 PM, I walked in the store and was guided to its back, where about thirty chairs were arranged in a circle. No one was left standing. At the appointed time the Maestro walked in and sat down, and suddenly there he was, one of the best known musicians in the world, a man who performed at Woodstock and in Carnegie Hall, a man who taught Indian music to the Beatles and the Stones, a university lecturer, a Knight of the British Empire, sitting amongst us in a circle. The energy and warmth radiating from this incredible human being was palpable, as he began relegating us with stories about his music and his vision for humanity at large. Happily this was prior to the advent of cell-phone based cameras, so he didn’t have to suffer the indignity of selfies with his audience. After twenty minutes or so, he offered to take a few questions. Now, having been in similar settings in the past, I knew that there were only three types of questions: Technical ones, celebrity-gushing ones, and self-serving pseudo-intellectual ones. Indeed, the first question came from a lady who undoubtedly carried her 1971 “Concert for Bangladesh” ticket stubs in her purse: “So what was George Harrison like?” The Maestro, probably quite used to this line of inquiry, provided a polite, warm response, albeit one that, to the chagrin of the questioner, did not involve any inner confidences or gossipy insights. Next was a gentlemen in his forties who wanted to know who built Shankar’s sitars, what materials were used in the production process, and how were they aged, cured, tuned, distilled and whatnot. Ravi patiently provided the information requested, as it seems that the person was possibly planning on opening Clearwater’s first sitar store. Finally came the last question, asked by a kid who just had to have been a music major at our local university. He dumbly asked “Would you say that Jazz influenced your music?” At this point you could tell that Shankar had had enough of this flim-flam, so he provided a kill-shot of a response, which I am recording here for posterity:

“In 1939 I came to New York and met Charlie Parker. Later I gave a Master Class for Dizzie Gillespie and Willie Smith, and in the Sixties I recorded with John Coltrane. So to answer your question yes, I think you can say that I’ve had an influence on Jazz.”

Bravo, Maestro.

Brisket, It’s the Real Thing

As the holiday season beckons, our family and friends start drooling in anticipation of my wife’s famous Southern Jewish Beef Brisket. Admired by many, recipe revealed only to a select few, it is by far the best version of this succulent traditional dish.

Beef Brisket is a time-honored Jewish holiday dish, for multiple reasons: It is one of the largest cuts of kosher meat available, it is lower in cost per pound than most other cuts (which was especially important to impoverished Jews living in Eastern European villages many years ago), and it cooks continuously overnight without the need to ignite a new flame or fire, making it a perfect dish for the big Sabbath meal. So it’s Jewish. But why Southern?

While I’m not permitted to disclose specific details, the inherently tough brisket cut requires a tenderizing agent, which in this secret recipe is none other than that wonderful elixir which personifies the South, the classic tenderizer used for so many years by Atlanta’s cooks and chefs, namely Col. John S. Pemberton’s greatest concoction, Coca-Cola.