Naked Came the Stranger by Penelope Ashe, Mike McGrady Page B

stolen a march on them again.
    The controversy spread throughout Long Island, with the community
about evenly divided. A Newsday poll revealed that the
division was among those who thought the rabbi was a charlatan (5 per
cent), those who thought he was sincere (5 per cent), those who
thought Jonah and the Wails were sincere (20 per cent) and the rest
who had not yet formed an opinion. In the face of criticism, Rabbi
Turnbull stoutly maintained that Judaism was an organic faith which
must adapt or die, "I am improvising on the keyboard of faith," he
told Gillian, or rather, the microphone. At that moment Gillian
decided, if the rabbi planned to champion reform, she would fight the
battle of tradition.
    Rabbi Turnbull noted that music had been malleable and
contemporary in Jewish culture from the time of King David's harp; as
evidence he named such composers as Arabanels in Spain and others
such as Mendelssohn and Halévy. Gillian countered by observing
that no one on the list composed ritual music. Rabbi Turnbull
recalled that even the pious Hasidic rabbis had composed a march of
welcome when Napoleon entered Galicia.
    "Yes," Gillian said, "but surely you will recall that they
scrupulously refrained from using that march in their liturgy. And
certainly you're not going to compare the Hasids to… Jonah and
the Wails?"
    The rabbi turned red around the neck but went on ignoring Gillian.
He pointed out that, if the tradition were literally adhered to, the
great commentaries on the Bible, the Mishnah and Gmorrah, would never
have been written, and the Jews would still be mired in pre-Herodian
ritual. What were the commentaries, he asked, but a restatement of
the Bible in contemporary terms? He likened the Bible to a Rorschach
ink blot and the commentaries to the thought associations of
generations of rabbis.
    "Careful, rabbi," Gillian said.
    "And what is the Reform movement," he continued, "but a
restatement of Judaism in contemporary terms? And, consequently, in
the direct tradition of the great rabbis. Like your own earlier
Christian Reformation, it is an attempt to breathe new life into an
ancient faith.
    And if we are to rephrase the religious idiom, would it not be a
breach of faith to stop short at the music?" Gillian had majored in
Far-Eastern Religion at Bard College – that was before she left
school and lived off-campus with Charlie, a blind jazz pianist
– and she was not so easily put off.
    William turned away and sighed. He knew what was going to happen.
Whenever a male guest showed a flourish of intellectual vigor,
Gillian would first attempt to match erudition – this through
an instinctive ability to marshal the right quote, cite the
differential case and, at times, invent the properly unnerving
statistic. And if she didn't win in this manner, she would resort to
banter, ruse and twittering. Then, if the guest genuinely knew what
he was talking about, Gillian would ever so deftly suggest that he
was a wee bit pompous, lacked humor, took himself more seriously than
was absolutely warranted. And, in extreme cases, when the guest was
preparing to lash back, Gillian would simply cut him down with a
fusillade of charm. Which would it be this time?
    "But isn't it true," she began the assault, "that medieval rabbis
had interpreted the Law within the traditions of ritual – which
you are clearly not doing? And isn't that ritual which you are
forsaking essential to judaism, not necessarily for its own sake as
you imply, but because it reaffirms the holiness of each human
act?"
    "My dear lady…."
    "Just let me finish, rabbi," she interrupted him. "As for the
analogy between Jewish and Christian reformations, I'm more than a
little surprised that you would overlook such a basic matter as
intent. The original spirit of the Protestant Reformation was to
purify, to return to the past, whereas the Jewish Reform sought to
streamline and move toward the future. And finally, it will seem
strange to some of our listeners that a