&c

Thoughts and experiences from Passover peregrinations:

1. There needs to be a slow klezmer version of the Doctor Who theme song.

2. Whenever I tell people I am researching doctor-patient communication, the listener always says, "Oh, yeah, that's a big problem" - which is intenresting in itself, that answer. What are people's experiences, and how does this affect their impression of doctors in general? I'm sure that's been looked into, but there's certainly some rich opinion-making going on there.

3. I still can't get Goethe.

4. Today is the anniversary of Hart Crane's death. His last words were not "Goodbye, everyone." He did not speak before jumping.



5. I need the haggadah done by this Israeli comics artist.

I Am Forbidden

In this morning's Publishers Lunch, the following "new deal" is included as a tidbit:

[...] Anouk Markovits's I AM FORBIDDEN, an English-language debut which takes the reader inside the world of the Satmar, the most insular and fundamentalist of Hasidic sects.

Assiduous (just now!) Googling reveals that Markovits is a novelist. No other information is available as we go to press quickly hit the Publish button.

A poem published in the first issue of Happiness Pony

Pomme
Tell you what
I’ll divulge:
off the edge of this paper
there’s a huge
orchard. Apples.
If you don’t eat
them, they’ll
still grow.
If you do,
your belly’s full.
All the same
something’s
sustained.

Yiddish companion poem here.

Shaken up

I was at my local mincha minyan (afternoon prayer group) today. Someone said, "Did you hear there was another earthquake in Japan today?" Said one of the rabbis, "Well, until they let those boys out..."

"Those boys," of course, being some mules in black coats who are currently in jail in Japan. (Other rabbis have spoken in public as obscenely as our local one did.)

Then another coreligionist of mine said, "Well, the Ran says that evil will be done in the place of those that did it."

"For that, thousands of  Japanese had to die?" I said.

I don't understand how people can say these things.

Eau du Dove

My work is going all to pieces: pieces of Sutzkever's "Ode to the Dove," that is. Part 1 appeared in InTranslation, and part 2 in Words Without Borders. Part 3 is now out in qarrtsiluni.

Dr. Social Media, MD: suggestions for practice integration

If social media were integrated into my practice: a wish list.

1. Patients could willingly sign away bits of their confidentiality so they could participate in a conversation with other folks suffering from the same problem. "What did Dr. Berger not tell you about diabetes," they could ask each other, and I - listening in - could improve. (Or get sued, too. Malpractice reform is another discussion.)

2. There are so many issues many of my patients face together, here in Baltimore: poverty, single parenthood, substance abuse, tobacco use, food deserts, obesity, etc. Couldn't we share information and experiences, without the sterility of anonymity?

3. The Perils of Procedures: talk about your history, what tests you underwent that Dr. Berger recommended (or advised against!), and share what happened.

4. Patients could recommend specialists they have seen, medications they have taken...

5. In short, it's like wrongdiagnosis.com or the innumerable disease-discussion boards, but connected to a particular doctor and his/her environment.

A quiet masterpiece set in 1920s Baltimore

It's a book about a steel worker in 1920s Baltimore. In less sure hands it might not have worked out so well. What about this self-published paperback made me, an inconstant and flightly reader, read all the way to the end? I'll let Celeste take it from here.

A poem with the word "fibrillate"

I always thought my medical vocabulary would come in handy somehow...

A poem of mine won a contest in the Forward to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. You can read it here.

Is Medicine Permitted?

In the 14 Adar issue of Simcha Lerner's Machshovos Zoros ("Outside-the-Box Thinking") there is a very interesting essay which I have excerpted below.

Toward a Halakhic Theory of Medicine

The study of medicine is an important and often enjoyable way to learn about humanity and illnesses but it is also morally dubious. Most people enjoy discovering important details about the workings of the human body, complex diseases from different times and places that inform their health and life expectancies. But because learning about the body involves discovering and repeating uncomfortable facts about bodily functions and human desires, we must ask whether Judaism permits it. Are we allowed to publicly discuss unclean biological and physiological acts merely because someone is sick? For example, Rabbi Shtraussfogel, in his work "Fees for Divine Service," points out that if we discuss sexually transmitted infections, we might come to permit mixed dancing. Also, medicine might teach us that homosexuality is not an illness to be cured and genital herpes is a communicable disease. According to Rabbi Shtraussfogel, medicine serves to inspire. "We do not need tales of death, we need stories of miraculous cures." Rabbi Shtraussfogel's son-in-law, Rabbi Zamdkopf, used to say, "If God wanted there to be Jewish doctors,  He wouldn't have made people sick on Shabbos." Indeed, Rabbi Shtraussfogel used to make sure that he would fall ill only in a town that was at least 51% non-Jewish or non-observant.

Robust God-Talk and Wimpy Moral Scruples

In his essay on Jewish identity in Jewish Ideas Daily, Yehuda Mirsky makes the following comment:

the language of "Jewish identity" is at best a pale substitute for the robust God-talk whose place it tries to fill

To be fair, he does conclude that the yearning for Jewish identity is better than nothing. (He doesn't go out of his way to ground his assertions in anything more than anecdote, but I won't go into that here.) What does "robust God-talk" mean, though? This is reminiscent of similar terms, like "maximalist," "heteronomous," and "rigorous," which are thrown around by some to show how Strong and Committed they are. Religious Jews are Robust, while Jews that care about Jewish identity (as if that issue has not preoccupied Jews for thousands of years!) are decaffeinated.

Unfortunately, a lot of Robust God-Talk is indefensible. "The sole purpose of non-Jews is to serve Jews," said Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef. This talk is certainly  robust, and delivered by someone held by many to be one of God's foremost authorities. Other God-talk, similarly robust, called for Jews not to rent their apartments to Arabs.

I am sure Mirsky finds such robust God-talk repugnant. The question is, then, what robustness means, and why it is better than serious grappling with the difficult matter of Jewish identity. Mirsky contrasts the wimpy omphalocentrism of Jewish identity with "real, durable responsibilities." Which responsibilities, exactly, and what makes them more "real" then our commitments to our own ideals and the communities we inhabit by our choice?

Undefined, rhetoric like this serves only to validate a particular type of Jewish identity to the exclusion of others. Certainly we can do better.

Call me on your cell, sugar

You've probably heard about glucose metabolism and cell phones. This sentence in the abstract got my attention:

[M]etabolism in the region closest to the antenna (orbitofrontal cortex and temporal pole) was significantly higher for on than off conditions (35.7 vs 33.3 μmol/100 g per minute; mean difference, 2.4 [95% confidence interval, 0.67-4.2]; P = .004).

If anyone can tell me what 2.4 μmol glucose/100 g means - is this a lot or a little? - I would feel more informed. For now, though, I will continue to shrug at the marauding cell phones.

Update: In this study, the regional cerebral glucose consumption rate was about 37 μmol/100 g per minute. So 2.4 μmol/100 g per minute is less than a tenth of the normal value (if I understand correctly). Whether a change of less than 10% is significant - again, I'm trying to find the relevant literature.

Historical Update: A friend comments:

The first author [of the glucose and cell-phones paper] is Trotsky's great granddaughter. Maybe she should have tested whether ice picks near the head change glucose metabolism.
Ouch.

The jerky hominem

In his perfectly reasonable essay about the Internet (a topic crying out for an extended treatment in the New Yorker), Adam Gopnik says

But if reading a lot of novels gave you exceptional empathy university English departments should be filled with the most compassionate and generous-minded of souls, and, so far, they are not.

Ideals, philosophies, abstractions always fail - then what? Gopnik's point is clever but not, on further thought, true at all. We don't say that the jerkiness of some English professors proves that the novel doesn't build empathy. We say, "The jerky ones aren't doing it right." Similarly, the abuses of corrupt rabbis, priests, and imams - or the jerkiness of many religious people - serve to convince no one (except perhaps Christopher Hitchens) that religion is untrue by virtue of that fact. The abusers and the religious asshats aren't doing religion right, is what we say.

I often think of the ad hominem argument as one against a particular hominem, but sometimes, it turns out, you can make it against a group. Since all groups have human frailties, you can always point at a group and say, "Look! It contains twits!" Unfortunately for human beings, that proves nothing at all.

What's the word for mustard?

Check out my poem Zeneft - and my reading of it - at the literary journal qarrtsiluni, currently featuring its Translation issue.

In Which Leon Wieseltier, Writer of Long Sentences, Lets Sense Plummet Into Disrepute

"I have watched ideals and traditions that I cherish -- a certain sort of liberalism; a certain sort of philosophy; the speaking of Hebrew; easel painting; the joyful making of books; long sentences; and even the sound of a voice, in personal communications--fall into disrepute. (We all have such a list.)"

Thus Leon Wieseltier in The New Republic (on what should be known, for as long as he occupies the real estate, as the Back Page Without Paragraphs). Do you know what is on my list, Leon? Making sense.

The "speaking of Hebrew" is in disrepute? 

There's a country where they speak Hebrew, Leon. All the time. 

And I'm not sure what you mean by "the sound of a voice, in personal communications," but I spoke to a fair number of people today.

Banal midrash

Are Velveteen Rabbi's "Torah poems" any good? My review gives the answer.

Herring and Coconuts

Two translations of mine are featured in the new issue of the journal Eleven Eleven from the California College of the Arts: one of Dvoyre Fogel's Herring Barrels, the other of Moyshe Nadir's My Pedigree. Let me know what you think!

What have I just started translating?

These sentences are the beginning of a famous Yiddish novel. If you guess what I'm translating, you will win a hearty congratulations and a drink the next time I see you in person.


The city of N is built in three rings. First ring: the very center, the trade market. Second: the great city itself, with the many houses, streets, byways, alleys around the market, where most of the dense habitation is located. Third: suburbs.

What should be translated?

The Yiddish Book Center (that Yiddish Book Center) has a blog post up by David Schlitt where he asks the question, "What Yiddish titles and/or authors would you most like to see translated?" An excellent question, that (and it's no surprise that I left a comment there). Follow the discussion, if you would.

I Have a Hat Today

Yesterday, I spent a fascinating 15 or 20 minutes looking at video of King's famous speech. ("Why is it in black and white?" asked my seven-year-old, and I resisted the temptation to give her the Calvin and Hobbes answer.) Two things I noticed:

1. The white folks were acting stereotypically white, sitting on their hands, pained smiles pasted on their faces, occcasionally nodding.

2. 1963 straddled an important boundary in history - in this case, between massive hat-wearing and widespread hatlessness. I didn't notice whether the white folks or black folks wore more hats, but it seemed to me like the split was about 50-50 total between hatteds and bareheads. 

Expectations

I'm doing about as well as I'd expect.
I'd expect to turn half cartwheels.
I'd tear up the floorboards
to find more floorboards
printed by my pacing.
You expect a letter
but you'll get a palimpsest.