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by Lawrence Bush
With only three days left to the first edition of JEWDAYO, I thought it might be of interest for me to try to say something about the experience.
About twenty-five years ago, before the Internet had transformed our mental lives, I was hired by the Society for Humanistic Judaism to create a calendar featuring secular, humanistic, Jewish people and events from history. I did so, drawing on books and more books — but the project was never published.
Rummaging through my always messy office last year, I came upon that manuscript and thought: Hmm, with the Internet available, this should be easy... And so I began researching and sending out JEWDAYO. Originally it was titled JEWDAY, a name that was disliked by a whole lot of people. So I added the O, the Belafonte factor, and everyone settled down...
Turns out that I had only uncovered about three months worth of that original manuscript, and so JEWDAYO has, in general, been researched on the day that it gets sent out. In a nice completing of the circle, however, it’s the International Federation of Secular and Humanistic Jews — an international offshoot of that Society for Humanistic Judaism — that’s going to be publishing JEWDAYO as a book in time for the Jewish new year next September...
Here are some random thoughts about doing JEWDAYO:
• There is always a massacre to report. Jews have been on the receiving end of violence for centuries. While I have tried not to focus too much about the Holocaust, the Inquisition, the Black Death massacres, and all the rest, there hasn’t been a day all year on which I couldn’t have reported on a massacre if I was so inclined. It’s an appalling reality.
• I really am drawn most to what Deutscher called “the non-Jewish Jews,” folks who put their energies less into the Jewish community itself, less into cultivating their own Jewish identities, and more into trying to transform the larger world. Yet I balk at featuring folks who have converted out of the Jewish community or who are truly rejecting of their own Jewish identities. I have my own boundaries about “who is a Jew” and they don’t really include, say, Karl Marx. Except that the world has been inclined to say, “the Jew Karl Marx” and to view Marxism as a Jewish conspiracy, which makes me more inclined to embrace him.
• I’ve written about a bunch of scientists and inventors, but it’s hard to do so because it’s often hard for me to comprehend and transmit their work in 25 words or less. I don’t think I’ve featured a Jewish mathematician all year, because I don’t even understand the significance of their work. I will try to remedy this in the year to come.
• Perhaps the most surprising entry to me was about Senda Berenson, the Smith College professor who invented the rules for women’s basketball (JEWDAYO for Feb. 16). I never would have guessed that a Jewish woman would be on the faculty of Smith back in 1893, or that a Jewish woman would have invented basketball rules. Perhaps the most hilarious entry to me was about Randy California, the guitarist of the band Spirit, whose mother wouldn’t let him tour with Jimi Hendrix (JEWDAYO for Feb. 20)!
• JEWDAYO has cultivated my illusory belief that I can control the ebb and flow of my own life. It’s been a marathon and a test: When I lost electricity for four days last winter, for example, I had to drive all over the place to find an Internet signal. I don’t think I missed a day. But I’m an awful homebody, and JEWDAYO enforces that inclination to be “safe at home” to the nth degree...
• Years ago I realized that I was more eager to be published in MAD magazine than in the New York Review of Books. I have since been published in MAD, and never in the New York Review. JEWDAYO is further proof that I was right about myself — and that I will never even have the time to write a piece for the New York Review of Books, because I’ll be too busy with JEWDAYO.
• I’m a fast but sloppy typist and I apologize for the many, many typos in JEWDAYO. If I weren’t sending it out during the sleepy hours, I’d do better. I also thank the many folks who have sent me historical corrections and elaborations.
• Jews really are a remarkable people, and I don’t mind saying so. Jewish pride doesn’t come so easily to us internationalist, universalist, brotherhood-and-sisterhood-of-all Jewish radicals, and it’s been a pleasure to slurp it up.
