23 November 2011, The Shalom Center http://www.theshalomcenter.org (USA)
Rabbi Arthur Waskow
For a joyful, funny, and thankful Thanksgiving "blessing-after-the-meal" (Birkat HaMazon) by Rabbi Shefa Gold, here is one verse and chorus. You can download the whole thing, including the melody, by clicking here:
http://www.rabbishefagold.com/ThanksgivingSong.html
You are the Source of Pleasure
All things precious, everything we treasure,
Friendship, love and pecan pie,
All things delicious till the day I die.
Chorus:
Thank you God for this abundant food,
And for putting us in a grateful mood.
Hodu Ladonai ki tov, ki l’olam, ki l’olam chasdo!
Every year around noon on Thanksgiving, WXPN Radio in Philadelphia plays Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant," about a Thanksgiving dinner in Stockbridge Mass. in 1967; about obtuse cops; and about nonviolent resistance to a brutal war.
And every year, this seemingly non-Jewish set of rituals stirs in me the memory of a moment long ago when my first puzzled, uncertain explorations of the "Jewish thing" took on new power for me. And when I came to understand the power of a yarmulke.
In 1970, I was asked by the Chicago Eight to testify in their defense. They were leaders of the movement to oppose the Vietnam War, and they had been charged by the Nixon Administration and Attorney-General John Mitchell, who turned out to be a criminal himself, with conspiracy to organize riot and destruction during the Chicago Democratic National Convention in 1968 .
I had been an alternate delegate from the District of Columbia to the Convention -- elected originally as part of an anti-war, anti-racist slate to support Robert Kennedy. After he was murdered, we decided to nominate and support the chairperson of our delegation -- Rev. Channing Phillips (alav hashalom), a Black minister in the Martin Luther King mold. Our delegation made him the first Black person ever nominated for President at a major-party convention. The following spring, on the first anniversary of Dr. King's murder, on the third night of Pesach in 1969, his church hosted the first-ever Freedom Seder.
AND -- I had also spoken the first two nights of the Convention to the anti-war demonstrators at Grant Park, at their invitation, while the crowd was being menaced by Chicago police and the National Guard. The police finally did explode in violence on the third night of the Convention.
Although the main official investigation of Chicago described it as a "police riot," the Nixon Administration decided to indict the anti-war leaders. So during the Conspiracy Trial in 1970, Tom Hayden, Abby Hoffman, et al. figured I would be reasonably respectable (as a former delegate) and therefore relatively convincing to the jury and the national public, in testifying that the anti-war folks were not trying to organize violence but instead were the victims of police violence.
As the trial went forward, it became clear that the judge -- Julius Hoffman, a Jew -- was utterly subservient to the prosecution and wildly hostile to the defense. (Some of us thought he had become possessed by the dybbuk of Torquemada, head of the Inquisition. - How else could a Jew behave that way? We tried to exorcise his dybbuk. It didn't work.)
Judge Hoffman browbeat witnesses, ultimately literally gagging and binding Bobby Seale, the only Black defendant, for challenging his rulings -- etc. Dozens of his rulings against the Eight were later cited by the Court of Appeals as major legal errors, requiring reversal of all the convictions the prosecution had achieved in his court.
So when I arrived at the Federal court-house in Chicago, I was very nervous. About the judge, much more than the prosecution or my own testimony.
The witness who was scheduled to testify right before me was Arlo Guthrie. He had sung "Alice's Restaurant" to/ with the crowd at Grant Park, and the defense wanted to show the jury that there was no incitement to violence in it.
So William Kunstler, z'l, the lawyer for the defense, asked Guthrie to sing "Alice's Restaurant" so that the jury could get a direct sense of the event.
But Judge Hoffman stopped him: "You can't sing in my courtroom!!"
"But," said Kunstler, "it's evidence of the intent of the organizers and the crowd!"
For minutes they snarled at each other. Finally, Judge Hoffman: "He can SAY what he told them, but NO SINGING."
And then -- Guthrie couldn't do it. The song, which lasts 25 minutes, he knew by utter heart, having sung it probably more than a thousand times -- but to say it without singing, he couldn't. His memory was keyed to the melody. And maybe Judge Hoffman's rage helped dis-assemble him.
So he came back to the witness room, crushed.
And I'm up next. I start trembling, trying to figure out how I can avoid falling apart.
I decide that if I wear a yarmulke, that will strengthen me to connect with a power Higher/ Other than the United States and Judge Hoffman. (Up to that moment, I had never worn a yarmulke in a non-officially "religious" situation. I had written the Freedom Seder in 1969, but was in 1970 still wrestling with the question of what this weird and powerful "Jewish thing" meant in my life.)
So I tell Kunstler I want to wear a yarmulke, and he says -- "No problem." Somewhere I find a simple black unobtrusive skull-cap, and when I go to be sworn in, I put it on.
For the oath (which I did as an affirmation, as indicated by much of Jewish tradition), no problem.
Then Kunstler asks me the first question for the defense, and the Judge interrupts. "Take off your hat, sir," he says.
Kunstler erupts. -- "This man is an Orthodox Jew, and you want -- etc etc etc." I am moaning to myself, "Please, Bill, one thing I know I'm not is an Orthodox Jew." But how can I undermine the defense attorney? So I keep my mouth shut.
Judge Hoffman also erupts: "That hat shows disrespect for the United States and this Honorable Court!" he shouts.
"Yeah," I think to myself, "that's sort-of true. Disrespect for him, absolutely. For the United States, not disrespect exactly, but much more respect for Something Else. That's the point!"
They keep yelling, and I start watching the prosecutor -- and I realize that he is watching the jury. There is one Jewish juror. What is this juror thinking?
Finally, the prosecutor addresses the judge: "Your Honor, the United States certainly understands and agrees with your concern, but we also feel that in the interests of justice, it might be best simply for the trial to go forward."
And the judge took orders!! He shut up, and the rest of my testimony was quiet and orderly.
It took me another year or so to start wearing some sort of hat all the time --a Tevye cap or a beret or a rainbow kippah or an amazing tall Tibetan hat with earflaps and wool trimming.
And whatever its shape, the hat continues to mean to me that there is a Higher, Deeper Truth in the world than any judge, any Attorney-General, or any Pharaoh.
It's my -- our -- "Alice's Restaurant." Or maybe "Alice's Restaurant" is Arlo's yarmulke.
(……………………….)
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