by David Mamet
“Eishet Chayil”—An excerpt of Proverbs 31, which a husband traditionally sings to his wife on Friday nights, enumerating her virtues.
Eretz Israel—The Land of Israel, historically a phrase employed by Zionists to refer to the Jewish presence in that location, which would eventually become the State of Israel.
Final Solution—The Nazi plan for the extermination of the Jewish people.
golden calf—The statue made by Aaron at the behest of the Israelites, who, uneasy about Moses’ prolonged absence on Mount Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments, insisted that Aaron make a god for them.
Haggadah—The book that contains the text of the seder ritual performed on the first two nights of Passover.
Hashem—Literally, “the Name,” used to refer to God when one does not want to use a more holy name of God.
Kabbalah—The Jewish mystical and esoteric traditions.
Kaddish—An Aramaic prayer praising God’s eternal holiness. Several variations on the Kaddish are recited throughout synagogue services. Best known is the Mourner’s Kaddish, recited by those who have lost a loved one. Kaddish prayers are said only when a minyan (a quorum of ten Jewish adults) is present.
kippah—The Hebrew term for the skullcap worn by Jews to show humility before God; a yarmulke.
Korah—The leader of the great rebellion against his cousins Moses and Aaron, in Numbers 16.
marranos—The hidden Jews of Christian Spain and Portugal who converted to Christianity but continued to live as Jews in secret. These New Christians were sought out and often killed by the Inquisition.
matzah—The unleavened bread eaten at Passover, in commemoration of the Israelites’ hasty departure from Egypt, which occurred too quickly for the bread to rise. Also known as the bread of affliction, it symbolizes the suffering of the Jews in Egypt.
mezuzah—A parchment scroll on which are written several biblical passages, the mezuzah is placed inside a case and attached to the doorposts of rooms in Jewish homes in accordance with the biblical verses in Deuteronomy 6:9 and 11:20.
midrash—A method of exegesis of biblical texts; a legal, exegetical, or homelitical commentary on the Bible; see also drash.
mikvah—Ritual bath. In the time of the Temple in Jerusalem, the mikvah was used widely by priests and all those bringing sacrifices to the Temple. Since the Temple’s destruction in the year 70 C.E., the mikvah continues to be used by women after their menstrual cycles, as well as for conversions, and by pious Jews on Sabbath and holiday eves.
mitzvot—Hebrew for commandments, referring to God’s commandments.
Nineveh—The great city of Assyria to which God sends the prophet Jonah.
Ostjuden—The German term for Jews from Eastern Europe. German Jews, who were more assimilated into the surrounding culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, often looked down on their eastern brethren as less cultured.
payot—The Hebrew word for the long earlocks worn by ultra-Orthodox Jewish men and boys. The Torah forbids taking a blade to shave the four corners of the face, which include the sideburns. While many observant Jewish men will trim their sideburns, the ultra-Orthodox let them grow long.
Pesach—The Passover holiday, commemorating the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, as well as celebrating the coming of spring.
pogrom—A state-sponsored anti-Jewish riot. Originally referred to anti-Jewish violence in Russia in the 1880s and 1890s; it now describes any violence against Jews.
Protocols of the Elders of Zion—An anti-Semitic forgery that purports to reveal the existence of a Jewish conspiracy for world domination. The notation of Jewish domination has its roots in anti-Semitic ideas that have existed since the Middle Ages but gained its greatest expression in the Protocols; first circulated in Russia in the 1890s, it has since been translated and disseminated worldwide.
Rav—Rabbi
responsa—The term for the continually evolving body of Jewish legal decisions developed as responses to questions posed to rabbis.
Rosh Hashanah—The Jewish New Year, the first of the Hebrew month of Tishrei, occurring in September or October. The holiday ushers in the ten days of repentance that culminate in Yom Kippur.
seder—From the Hebrew word for “order,” the seder is the ritual meal on the first two nights of Passover at which the story of the Exodus is retold.
Shabbos—The Sabbath, the Jewish day of rest from Friday sundown to nightfall on Saturday.
shanda fun dem goyim—“A disgrace before the Gentiles.” A Yiddish criticism of Jewish behavior of Jews that might embarrass coreligionists before the wider community.
Shema—An affirmation of faith in the one God, the Shema is one of the core prayers of the Jewish liturgy. It begins with Deuteronomy 6:4, Hear o Israel, the Lord Our God, the Lord is one, and continues through verse 9 and with passages from Deuteronomy 11 and Numbers 15.
Shoah—The Holocaust.
shteibl—A little synagogue, sometimes in someone’s home.
shtetl—the Yiddish term for a small town or city, the term often connotes either a sense of parochialism or of nostalgia.
shul—Synagogue.
Shulkhan Arukh—Literally, “the set table,” this law code completed in 1555 by Rabbi Joseph Caro, and amended shortly thereafter by Rabbi Moses Isserles, remains the authoritative code of law for observant Jews.
spies—In the book of Numbers, Moses sends twelve spies, one from each tribe, into the Land of Israel to see what challenges lie before them in conquering the land. Ten of the twelve spies report that the land is unconquerable, leading the Israelites to protest again their having left Egypt.
tallis—The shawl worn by adult Jews in prayer. The tallis is a four-cornered garment, with tassels tied on each corner, as per the commandment in Numbers 15 to tie fringes on the corners of the Jews’ garments as a reminder of God’s commandments.
Talmud—The Talmud, from the Hebrew word for “to learn,” is the collected rabbinic teachings from the first through the fifth centuries. The Talmud comprises the Mishnah, the rabbinic teachings codified in the year 220 by Rabbi Judah the Prince, and the Gemara, the further rabbinic interpretations of the Mishnah, from the third through the fifth centuries. Rabbinic academies in Babylonia and in Israel each developed their own Talmud; the Babylonian is generally considered authoritative. The central text of Jewish Law, the Talmud is usually printed accompanied by later commentaries.
teshuva—Repentance.
Tevye—The main character of the musical Fiddler on the Roof, based on “Tevye the Dairyman” by the great Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem.
Torah—The Five Books of Moses, comprising the first section of the Hebrew Bible. Also used more generally to refer to Jewish learning and Jewish texts.
trope—The musical cantillation used for the chanting of biblical texts.
Tu Bi’Shvat—The fifteenth day of the Hebrew month of Shvat (roughly corresponding to February), honored as the New Year of Trees.
yetzer hara—The evil impulse, the traditional Hebrew term for one’s inclination to engage in bad behavior.
Yiddish—The primary spoken and written language of the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe during most of the last millennium. Written in Hebrew letters, the language probably developed around the eleventh century in German-speaking lands, fusing medieval German syntax and language with Hebrew and Aramaic terms. As Yiddish-speaking Jews migrated throughout Europe, local dialects developed that incorporated a wealth of words borrowed from Russian, French, Polish, and other languages.
yirat shamayim—Fear of Heaven, the proper awe-filled attitude in which a Jew should live his life.
Yom Kippur—The Day of Atonement. The holiest day of the Jewish year, it is the culmination of the ten days of repentance that begin on Rosh Hashanah. It is marked by abstinence from food, drink, bathing, and sexual activity, in order to spend the day in prayer, introspection, and repentance.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Mamet
is a Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright. He is the author of Glengarry Glen Ross, The Cryptogram, and Boston Marriage, among other plays. He has also published three novels and many screenplays, children’s books, and essay collections. His work on Jewish subjects includes The Old Religion, a novel about the lynching of Leo Frank; Bar Mitzvah and Passover, two books for children; Five Cities of Refuge, a Torah commentary written with Rabbi Lawrence Kushner; and the film Homicide, which he wrote and directed.
FOOTNOTES
*1 See also Victorian literature of the northwest frontier and its persistence, curiously, in the latest novel by John Le Carré, Absolute Friends.
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*2 The Santa Claus myth is a straightforward account of child sacrifice. It must, however, be read in the mirror. Children can be good or bad. They put their stockings out, and, in the middle of the night, a man comes into their home with a bag. If the child has been bad, the man puts the child in a sack and takes him away. All that is left of him is his stocking, hung on the foot of the bed. If this interpretation seems far fetched, please consider the parents’ anxiety about the myth’s “falsity.” Christian parents may agonize over “when shall we tell the children” (that Santa is not real) and may, year by year, conclude, “There’s time for that when they’re older. Let them enjoy their innocence (their ignorance) a little longer.” It is no great reach to see, here, the anguish of a family in antiquity, knowing the tribe will choose, at the winter solstice, some child to be sacrificed and to see the parents wish to extend the child’s period of exemption from terror for as long as possible.
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*3 This recrudescence may be seen in its virulence at the recurring inability of conflicted Jews to create, participate in, or sit through the Spring ceremony: the Passover seder.
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*4 I am indebted to William F. Friedman and Elizebeth S. Friedman, The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined (Cambridge University Press, 1957).
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*5 Sadly, glaringly, “Skinny,” the chap who instructs Mickey Rooney, is played by Martin Spellman, immediately and undeniably recognizable as a Jew.
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*6 I specify Reform not invidiously, in distinction to Orthodox or Conservative, but only as this constitutes the major range of my experience.
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*7 Cf. determined serial sexual misadventures prior to marriage—each ending in an assertion that true, sustainable intimacy is impossible.
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*8 The butt of numerous jokes told by Jews about archetypally foolish people.
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*9 For, let us note that the State of Israel, a legally constituted entity formed, like many states, by and under United Nations Charter and defended since its inception by the universally acknowledged right of national Arms, is deemed by many supposedly right-thinking individuals, Arab and Western, as a simple vail of those who’d like to appropriate it. The State is, in this view, a prerequisite not different from the Jewish bones of the victims of the Nazis’ ovens.
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*10 Kenneth Levin, The Oslo Syndrome, Delusions of a People Under Siege (Hanover, N.H.: Smith & Krause, 2005).
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*11 E.g., the Jonestown massacre.
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*12 This is why one sees half-naked fans shivering in the subzero weather of the football stadium—autonomically re-creating themselves as ritually purified priests, capable of interceding for the sports team before the sports’ god. They perform a hieratic display of suffering that might not only sway the gods, but banish from the performers the terrible notion of their own worthlessness vis-à-vis the actual combatants.
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*13 Most cosmetic plastic surgery, similarly, while presenting itself as the individual’s attempt to gain or retain membership in a group from which he or she is physically debarred (the young, the beautiful) is, actually, a proclamation of ordeal. The patient, here, undergoes physical alteration not in an attempt to “remain young” but in an attempt to conquer the shame of his or her exclusion. “See,” the facelift testifies, “though I am no longer young, this painful procedure proves that I have not lost my devotion to the group. I am, indeed, willing to be disfigured in respect for what, to me, are its now unobtainable ends.”
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*14 Quoted from The Willie Lynch Letter and the Making of a Slave by Kashif Malik Hassan-el (Chicago, Lushena Books, 1999). I am indebted to Ving Rhames, who brought the Lynch letter to my attention.
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*15 I can nowhere find this phrase expressed by Ben-Gurion and cannot imagine him uttering it.
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*16 Cf. the once, and perhaps still, popular psychoanalytic notion of “homosexual panic.” Here the adolescent (which is to say, not fully formed) male is terrified by the gap between his burgeoning sexuality and his ability to cathect it safely. He feels unequal to the task and alone in his inability. He is not only frightened but also ashamed. His mind, ever handy, searches for a concrete cause preferable to the terror of the unknown. “What,” it reasons, might be the root of this inexplicable shame, which I sense is, somehow, linked to sex?” and the mind grasps (or, perhaps, grasped, in a less-enlightened time) a state conveniently labeled as shameful, “Aha,” thinks the adolescent, “I see. I am, unfortunately, turning into a homosexual.” We will note that this homosexual panic has nothing whatever to do with homosexuality, nor with the sufferer’s actual sexual orientation. It is a neurotic disturbance, borne of ignorance and needless shame and is congruent, mechanically, to Jewish self-loathing.
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*17 A close friend of many years was in the hospital, near death. The priest came by on his daily rounds, inquired after my friend and asked if he would like to take communion that day. My friend said, “Father, I don’t deserve it.”“No one does,” the priest said.
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Copyright © 2006 by David Mamet
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Schocken Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Schocken Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mamet, David.
The wicked son: anti-Semitism, self-hatred, and the Jews / David Mamet.
p. cm.—(Jewish encounters)
1. Jews—Identity. 2. Self-hate (Psychology). 3. Antisemitism. I. Title. II. Series.
DS143.M225 2006
305.892'4—dc22
2006043307
www.schocken.com
eISBN: 978-0-8052-4274-4
v3.0
