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Forty, Redux, while looking at a snapshot of my very young self . . .

5/29/2016

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Picture
Forty years ago (forty-one, actually . . .) I turned forty, and it rocked.

We celebrated at a Donald-designed surprise party. My dearest friends were there, the youngest woman in her late thirties, the oldest guy just turned fifty, and each of us in great shape with narrow waists, straight backs and (depending on gender) perky boobs and washboard abs. Our vision sharp as birds of prey, hearing keen as bats, we were sure-footed as the Wallendas and limber as circus rubber men. We hopped in and out of low-slung sports cars with ease. Life was good.

Today, with empathy born of time, I tip my red hat to the young men and women featured on any list titled: The Most Influential People Aged Forty and Under. However old you are, I’ve been there. Which prompts me to say, “Chazak v’ematz." Be strong and of good courage, kids, because with mazel (and in a mere forty winks) you’ll be an octogenarian like me, quite possibly with the attendant cane, walker, ear trumpet, dentures, replaced knees, misplaced keys, chronic nostalgia, liver spots and the inability to get up from a chair without saying Oi.

For those badges of decrepitude, you can thank father Abraham. A midrash teaches that until Abraham, old folks had no distinguishing physical characteristics. Apparently our patriarch grew testy when people who saw him and his son Isaac together could’t tell which one was older, and thus failed to offer him (Abe) the honor and deference due the elderly. Unwilling to leave well enough alone, Abraham begged God to ‘crown’ him with signs of old age and ZAP, wrinkles and gray hair entered, laughing. Abraham’s wife, Sarah, ignored their arrival and remained (according to another midrash) youthful in appearance until the day she died at the age of 127, her skin still soft as a young girl’s and looking like a forty-year old woman.

There’s that number 40 again. The Torah and Talmud seem obsessed with it.
     
     *
Forty days and forty nights of Flood and waiting on Mt Sinai and Goliath bedeviling David before the lad beaned the giant with a stone.
     
     *
Forty years of wandering in the wilderness; of Eli judging; of Saul and Solomon ruling; and of Rabbi Zadok sitting in Jerusalem’s gates, fasting, eating only a few dried figs in his vain attempt to avert the destruction of the Temple.
     
     *
Jacob sent Easu a gift of forty cows.
     
     *
Forty spies searched out the land of Canaan.
     
     *
Forty measures of water fill a mikveh.
     
     *
At age forty, Isaac married Rebekah; Johanan ben Zakkai and Akiba began their rabbinic studies; and a man may plumb the Kabalah, perhaps to validate the Talmudic claim that the fortieth year is the age of understanding when we ascend from one level of discernment to the next higher one. By that reckoning my peers and I stand on the top-most rung, the sharpest pencils in the box, albeit with shaky handwriting.

Sure, I’d gladly reclaim the vigor of my youth. Being old, at times, is a colossal bummer. But according to Jewish text there is an upside. The sages wrote that insight, intellect and emotional strength comes with years. That at the age of eighty we are endowed with special strength. Granted, the sages weren’t spring chickens when they wrote those words and therefore biased and self-serving, but who cares. If special strength comes with eighty, I’ll take it. Advanced years certainly didn’t slow down the characters in the Passover story.
     
     *
Moses was eighty when God sent him to stand before Pharaoh and demand freedom for the Hebrew slaves.
     
     *
Aaron was eighty-three when he stood by his brother’s side and stood up to Pharaoh.
     
     *
Miriam was eighty-seven when she took timbrel in hand and danced with the women at the Red Sea.
   
     *
To lend weight to his argument with Pharoah, Moses was accompanied by the elders - the z’keinim - of Israel, possibly the same seventy elders who journeyed with him up Mt. Sinai and continued to act as wise counselors, advisors, judges and consultants to Moses and the Israelites during their forty year trek through the desert.

So. We’re back where we started, with #40 and its mystical place in Judaic text.

During forty years in the wilderness, Moses taught our ancestors the laws of Torah. At the end of those forty years, with their teacher Moses near death, the people were no longer students -- recipients of knowledge -- but teachers themselves, ready to pass down Jewish tradition to the next generation. After forty years the people had evolved from receivers to givers. Their role and responsibilities had changed. And that’s the message, sweet forty-and-unders. It’s your turn at bat. Perhaps the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said it best. “The first forty years of life give us the text. The next thirty supply the commentary.” So here’s the mike. We elders wonder what you’re going to say. Whatever it is, please say it loud. Real loud.

As for me, I’m still ready to mix it up and offer my two cents when it seems appropriate (or appreciated). But for the most part I’ll take my cue from the wisdom of British author Fay Weldon (82) who writes, “When you’re in your eighties there are small triumphs, like getting the heels of your elastic stockings in the right place when you put them on.”

                      Ozzie Nogg    ©2016
                         appeared originally in the Omaha Jewish Press 








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The story of Lev Davidovich, Girsh Yankelovich, Ovsei-Gershon and Yakov Mikhailovich

5/26/2016

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Picture
One October morning
three young men climb a larch tree.

OK. Two climb and one does not.

Why do I think it's October? 
Because the men are dressed in jackets
and vests and trousers 

much too heavy for summer
but not warm enough for winter. 

That’s me. A regular Sherlock Holmes.

And why are they up a tree to begin with?
Hiding from someone, perhaps?
Surely they are too savvy 
(look at the spectacles worn by
the one with his feet on the ground) 

to think that a search party wouldn’t spot them instantly. 

So, no.
Hiding they are most definitely not.


To support my theory, 
consider their body language which speaks
a Yiddish accented 
in-your-face-look-at-me braggadocio,
though their parents would use the word chutzpah 

and find the outfits and the pose a sign
that their sons have forgotten 
their humble shtetl roots and will 
(1.) bring shame upon their families by marrying Catholic girls or 

(2.) turn history on its ear with their shenanigans. 

And let us not forget the photographer-side-kick of the other three. 
His momma and poppa (trust me) moan Oi vey, Oi vey 
over their son’s revolutionary ideas and mutter 
what’s the matter with kids today.
In Russian, of course. 


But back to the picture. 

On this October morning, with potatoes planted, kvas fermenting, 
the samovar aboil, our photographer yells from beneath his black cloth, 
Say syr!  

But the three in the tree don’t say cheese. They don’t smile, either. 
They live in that moment
and in future moments
the four comrades smell burning leaves, 
hear gunfire,
watch Rifkeh and the rabbi escape.

                                                                           Ozzie Nogg © 2016



  


 





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Masterpieces, all . . .

5/15/2016

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​Seven Andy Warhol screen prints of Campbell soup cans 
recently vanished from the walls of a museum in Missouri.
The masterpieces remain
​missing.


Cat burglars run amok.

In galleries across the globe -- 
Amsterdam, Boston, Paris, Rotterdam,
to name a few --
Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas, Gauguin.
Picasso, Van Gogh go
bye bye 

right under guards’ noses.
In each heist the thieves were caught 
but the art is still
​AWOL.

The value of all purloined paintings rivals Warren Buffett’s net worth.
Information leading to their whereabouts or
return
brings a king's ransom.

This is Hide and Go Seek, big time.


​*

We, 
made in the image of God, are masterpieces, too, 
right?
We hang around for a time.
People come in, go out,
look, judge, praise, pan, ignore.

Attention is hard won and fickle.

Only our true-blue steadfast comrade, 
the Thief,
our BFF,
stays at our side year after year until invariably, inevitably,
bored with waiting
the brazen bastard jumps the moat, muzzles the Rottweiler,
disarms sentries, breaches walls to ransack our castles,
snatch small masterpieces, some still not dry; 
grab old masters, beyond restoration

and spirit them away.


Don’t call the cops. 
The Thief is known to me.
My heart visits the kever where his swag lays hidden.
Such beauty, joy, laughter and love 
that no amount of coin can ever
bring back.

This is Finders Keepers Losers Weepers,
big time.



        Ozzie Nogg © 2016
               first appeared in Dive Into Poetry workshop hosted by Jena Swartz and Cigdem Kobu



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