On Reaching Three Scores and Ten

I reached a biblical milestone of life today, three score years and ten. Seventy. 

Did you ever wonder how we developed the idea that 70 was a full lifetime? Here’s one explanation, as drilled into me during my formative years attending a Jewish day school. 

Genesis V states Adam died when he was 930 years old. He was, according to Jewish exegesis known as midrash,  supposed to live a full 1,000 years. Here’s what the sages say happened:

God previewed to Adam all of his future descendants. Adam was saddened to see one baby die almost at birth. In a gesture of compassion Adam donated 70 of his years to that newborn, leaving his own lifetime at 930. 

Turns out that newborn’s fate was to grow up to be King David, who lived to be 70. A perfect fit. 

But David was a wily fellow. You don’t get to be a king— 40 years as monarch, seven in Hebron, 33 in Jerusalem— without some street smarts. He knew the lore about his lifespan. He wanted more. So, according to the rabbis, David devised a plan to thwart the Angel of Death. He reasoned that as long as he was studying Torah death could not overtake him. He studied day and night. 

Not to be denied from fulfilling his mission the Angel of Death had his own tricks. He caused David to be distracted from learning by simulating a voice calling him. When David got up from his desk the Angel of Death tripped him into a fatal fall. 

I am not making this fairy tale up. This is what they taught early elementary school students at Yeshiva Rambam in mid-1950s Brooklyn. 

As I write this a thought just entered my mind. Could this fable about a fatal fall be the reason elderly people fear falling, why a fall often precedes the end of life for so many seniors?  How serendipitous that Jane Brody, the health columnist of The New York Times, recently wrote about ways to minimize falls. Her article noted that in this country an elderly person dies as a result of a fall every 19 minutes (https://nyti.ms/2NsluE9). 

Half a lifetime ago, on the morning of my 35th birthday, I woke up with a sharp pain in my hip. A pain of unknown origin. I had not recently bumped it. I had not strained it playing ball or exercising. It just hurt. A message from within that my structure was finite. 

The pain lasted perhaps ten minutes. Maybe less. Never returned. As I have never angsted over advancing age I did not ascribe the pain to anything more than coincidence. 

I would be fooling no one if I said I didn’t think of my mortality. I don’t contemplate achievements I might leave unfulfilled. Rather, I project out years—how old would I be when each grandchild celebrates their bar or bat mitzvah. How old until they graduate college, get their first job, marry. Will I live to be a great grandfather?  

Lest you come away from this truth-telling wondering about my frailty, in mind and/or body, please worry not. I am for the most part sound in both respects (even if some family members and friends complain I am a hypochondriac). 

Blogging assumes some obligation to reveal inner thoughts, so I let you in on my political leanings, some family history and days to come. Nothing more. No birthday surprise today. Till next time … 

Just Wondering About Radio Ads and Noah

Here are some things that stop me cold in my tracks:

I wonder why an organization devoted to round-the-clock news, WCBS Newsradio 880, airs commercials that are creepy at the least and blatantly false and misleading in the extreme. I’m referring to all the radio spots about health claims (how’s your testosterone level?) and debt relief (what’s the size of your credit card balance?) and any number of other questionable ads. Don’t they vet the claims? You’d think the standards of an all-news radio station would be higher than simple talk radio which allows shills to promote gold and silver as hedges against post-apocalyptic  times.

I’m also curious as to whom exactly these ads are targeted at and how they match up to WCBS Newsradio 880’s actual audience. I’d have thought the radio station’s listeners were above average in education and income. Yet these ads seem to appeal to the lowest common denominator. 

Treading Water: Pictures of Russell Crowe dressed as Noah in the new Darren Aronofsky film Noah startled me when I saw him wearing pants and fingerless leather work gloves. But a little research on the Web revealed that gloves go back at least to ancient Egypt (here’s a graf from gloves.com.ua: 

“History has a lot of facts of using the gloves in ancient times. They were popular and served as a protection of the hands in Old Egypt. The Pharaohs wore them as s symbol of their high position and women wore them to protect the beauty of their hands (they rub their hands with honey and fragrant oils and put on thin silk gloves). In those times the gloves were made as small pockets without holes for fingers. Then they were made only with one thumb (as today's mittens). Egyptian women used these mittens to protect hands while eating or working.”)

As for trousers, they seem to have sown up (I know it should have read “shown up” but I couldn’t resist the pun) about the time horses were domesticated enough to be ridden. According to a 2009 Reuters article (http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/03/05/us-horses-history-idUSTRE5246HI20090305), “Horses were first domesticated on the plains of northern Kazakhstan some 5,500 years ago -- 1,000 years earlier than thought -- by people who rode them and drank their milk.” 

If Bible believers are to be believed, our world is just 5,774 years old, giving Noah plenty of time to fashion himself a pair of tight fitting pants instead of trampsing about in a bulky robe.  

I’ve commented before that I’m disappointed how few books I’ve read in retirement, but one I did read was David Maine’s The Preservationist, recently re-released under a new title, The Flood. It’s a psychological exegesis of the Noah story as explained through the eyes of the arkman himself and his family. It’s like The Red Tent, imaginative story-telling to fill in the blanks the Bible chose not to include, what Jewish scholars refer to as midrash. 

Interestingly, Maine names one of Noah’s unnamed-in-the-Bible daughters-in-law Ilya. She is Cham’s wife. Aronofsky casts Emma Watson as Ila, Shem’s wife. 

One of my favorite examples of midrash on Noah comes from an early routine of Bill Cosby. He imagines Noah arguing every time God proscribes another task. Finally, in exasperation over his recalcitrant subject, God convinces Noah to stop complaining by asking, “Noah, how long can you tread water?”  

Three Letters: Speaking of the Almighty, has anybody else noticed that with the departure of Tim Tebow and the signing of Michael Vick, the NY Jets’ quarterback controversy has gone from g-o-d to d-o-g? 

Tales of Men from the Bible, WWII, the Election

It has taken me longer than I would have wanted, or care to admit, but I finally completed reading The Preservationist by David Maine at a most opportune time. The book is an imaginative re-creation of the story of the Noah and the flood, coincidentally the portion of the Torah read this past Saturday in synagogues throughout the world.  

The Preservationist is not a great book; it’s part of a genre, like The Red Tent, known as midrash that transforms Jewish Bible stories into extended prose, in this case beyond the 125 verses dedicated to Noah in the Old Testament. It allows the writer and reader to delve into the personalities of the family saved on the ark, of Noah, his wife, their three sons and their wives. It creates back stories for all of them, humanizes them, and gives only the faintest hint of what must have gone through their minds when the waters abated and they were left devoid of any other humans. They might not have had to worry about marauders or any others bent on the injustices that caused God to wipe out the rest of humanity, but they were all alone. Not even God talked to Noah anymore after He set the rainbow as a sign there would be no more all inclusive and destructive floods. 

Here’s how Noah’s wife interprets God’s silence: “The test doesn’t end when the flood does. It’s only the start. Without Yahweh whispering in your ear you’re no more nor less than anybody else. No special assurance that you’re blessed or that God gives a rat’s ass what happens to you ... Now you’re just like the rest of us.”

According to the Bible, Noah lived another 350 years as an ordinary man. 

George McGovern considered himself a prototypical American. “I’m what a normal, healthy, ideal American should be like,” the former South Dakota U.S. senator and 1972 Democratic presidential candidate told The NY Times in 2005, seven years before his death Sunday at age 90. “May dad was a Methodist minister, I went off to war (World War II). I have been married to the same woman forever. I’m what a normal, healthy, ideal American should be like.”

Which got me to thinking that we have entered an era when most of our political leaders never experienced the horrors of war. Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Joe Biden, Paul Ryan—none of them fired a weapon at an enemy combatant or was targeted by one. Not that it takes combat experience to lead a nation into battle, but it does seem that the strongest voices for peace, from Eisenhower to JFK to McGovern to John Kerry, were tempered by their time at war. 

Speaking of temper, what jumped out at me from watching the three presidential debates, and some of the Republican primary debates, is that Mitt Romney is petulant and does not have a high opinion of those who would question his judgment, whether it be Obama, Rick Perry, or the debate moderator. Time and again Romney displayed a haughtiness that transcended acceptable behavior. To be fair, I didn’t find Biden’s cheesy smiles too endearing during his debate with Ryan, either. 

I thought Obama did better than Romney in the last two debates, but Romney’s rapid salesman’s litany of negative commentary on the performance of the current administration no doubt scored points with those who favored his positions and, regrettably, with those who valued image over substance. When rehearsed, Romney has the gift of gab. He’s much smoother than the plodding, thoughtful Obama. 

The election will boil down to substance or sizzle.