Celebrity Death Match: 7 Jewish Babies vs. 1 Jewish Mother

Six years ago, I cashed in on years of guilt, anxiety and neurosis to get a free trip to Israel with the Birthright foundation.

There were many great things about this trip, very few of which I chose to emphasize when I wrote a tell-all story for Revolving Floor called, “Eggs, Milk and Honey.”While some people may remember this story as the time I insinuated a number of less than flattering things about Jewish men, others may recall the true point of the story, which was declaring to the Jewish people that I did not intend to bear them seven Jewish babies, even if it would help our race recover from the major hit it took during the Holocaust.

What I never mentioned in this story, due to word count limitations and the fact that I thought it was totally unimportant, was that at the same “Mega-Event” when the president of Birthright asked me to pop out seven bundles of Jewish joy, an organization called “Gift of Life” stood in front of the entrance asking people to give cheek cell samples.

At the time, I was not the healthiest person. I was anemic, got bronchitis frequently and signs of my low-to-no calcium diet were starting to make a timid appearance in my bones. I also hated going to the doctor and I had zero desire to go anywhere near these people.

But they tried very hard. They stopped me a few times and I avoided them, but at some point, they had blocked the exit. “I’m not healthy,” I insisted. “The red cross won’t even take my blood!”

“It’s not for blood,” they insisted. “Bone marrow is different.”

I remember a lot about Israel, but I don’t recall what the rest of my challenges were, or how they won me over. (I’m pretty sure this is the only argument I’ve ever lost in my life, which probably why I blocked it out.)

All I know is that gave my cheek cell sample, and that six years later, last week, I got an email letting me know I was a possible bone marrow donor for a 56-year-old woman with an form of Leukemia.

Scratch that. I’d been getting emails for a few weeks, and they had sent a letter to my mother’s house. I’d been ignoring them. I didn’t want to donate my bone marrow. Nor did I want to be inconvenienced by emails from people I didn’t know, when I barely had time to answer emails from people I did know.

But for whatever reason, this time I read the email closely. A 56-year-old-woman? It wasn’t like I was saving a young person, right?

Then it hit me. Just because my parents can drink me under the table and don’t have wrinkles does not mean that they are not in their late 50s. Imagine if it was my mother and there was some idiot out there like me who actually thought she was too busy to answer emails?

So I got on the phone with the Gift of Life.

I learned all about the two types of bone marrow donation – one is a surgery where they put you under and extract bone marrow from your lower back. The other is a 4-6 hour blood transfusion type thing where they take blood out of one arm and immediately put it back in your other arm.

I heard somethings I didn’t want to hear such as, “might not be able to work out for two days after” and “would have miss two days of work.”

I started to tell her that I couldn’t take any time of work, but bit my tongue. If I had a dollar for everything in my life that I have skipped so I wouldn’t take time off work or skip a workout, I could quit my job, sit home on the couch, and pay someone to do an elliptical trainer while I watched.

In other words, there are many moments in our lives when we are called upon the grow the f**k up, and this was undoubtedly one of mine.

The next step, she told me, was a blood test, to see how good a match I really was.

“Can I take the blood test and then decide when we hear the results?”

“Yes, but you should think about it carefully. The further along you go, the harder it is to say no.”

Only a Jew would so quickly understand the indecisiveness of a fellow Jew. Her compassion and insight struck me hard. (Let me just say, any sales guy who thinks he/she has a hard product to sell needs to call the Gift of Life immediately. These people are geniuses.)

Then she told me she knew I needed time to think about it.She wanted me take the whole weekend and I didn’t have to call her, she would follow up with me next week. As someone who hates to be cornered, rushed or hounded, I was so happy I wanted to give her whatever she needed immediately.

Except for two days of my life, six hours worth of my blood, or any of my bone marrow.

Back at the office, I announced that I was a match for a bone marrow donation.

In unison, one person cried “great” and two moaned, “that sucks!”

Two things were clear to all of us. The first was that this would be a really painful process, and the second was that I was most certainly going to agree to do it.

Another person overheard the commotion and asked, “What’s going on?”

“RB has to be a bone marrow donor.”

“She has to be?”

“Well….”

“If I want to have a soul,” I interjected. “I have to do it.”

Everyone agreed.

It actually surprised me how many people in all areas of my life affirmed that this was something I had to do. It also surprised me that I agreed with them.

Given how opposed I was to the whole Birthright thing, given how I think that the world is overpopulated and people should stop having babies, given how I totally believe what they said in the Age of Stupid movie and think we’re all going to be dead by 2055, given that I try to take a scientific, objective approach towards life and death, it didn’t even make sense that I’d be so convinced this was the right thing to do.

It’s written on the Gift of Life website that “It is said that saving one life is like saving the entire world.” For me, that doesn’t really resonate. Saving the whole world seems epic, impersonal and unrealistic.

But saving the life of one person transcends all logic, all eat-and-be-eaten-kill-or-be-killed philosophy. I don’t care who this woman is, what she does, how she votes or whether she thinks I’m funny. Saving a life transcends principles; it is a religion of its own.

I walked away from that “Mega-Event” six years ago so mad about those seven Jewish babies that I was determined not to give life to anything, almost out of stubbornness. It reminds me of this Lawrence Peter Berra quote, “In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.”

So, even when the woman from Gift of Life called me at 7am on Monday and I wanted to reject her purely for being so pushy and not giving me as much space as she promised she would, I stood my ground, and signed up for the next step – blood tests.

Who even knows if I’ll make it to Level 2 – as there are many tests left to pass. What I do know is that as I embark on this potentially long process, it will help if I can start thinking of it less as a moral dilemma and more as a video game.

L’Chaim!

Hunting and Gathering: A Strategy for Living

Yesterday at the yoga studio, I was having a conversation with someone about how so often our lives take shape in a non-linear way. Career paths, dreams, and relationships weave in and out, and manifest when we least expect them. In a sense, we emotionally migrate, gleaning as much fulfillment as we can from one situation until we find our way to greener pastures.

So it was a funny coincidence when I got an email from the corporate office asking me to follow up with a member named Brooke Berman. The name seemed extremely familiar and I couldn’t get over the feeling that I’d heard it before. Suddenly, it dawned on me. She had a written a play called Hunting and Gathering which was the first play I had ever read and critiqued as the Artistic Intern in the office of the Artistic Director at the Roundabout Theatre Company.

The play centers around four characters entangled in difficult relationships and hopeless hunts for permanent residence in NYC. Suffice it to say, it was a scary thing for me to read at age 22, living at home with my father and his then girlfriend, wondering if I’d ever be able to have a functional life of my own in The City. Part of what pinched a nerve was the older characters, who hadn’t yet gotten their sh*t together. (Weren’t all my struggles going to magically end when I turned 30?) Another thing weighing on my mind was the youngest character, Bess, who confidently goes after what she wants, in terms of sexuality, habitation and career, without regard for others or concern about how she is going to protect herself.

These were qualities I never thought I could embody, but what’s more, Bess is really good at Big Buck Hunter, a video game you can play in most bars that involves shooting Buck with a toy gun. I’ve never been good at video games. I’ve never liked the idea of shooting animals. I’ve never quite been able to accept, as she does, that world is divided into hunters and the hunted. I couldn’t quite make sense of Bess’s character in my own mind and heart, but I never forgot her.

Hunting and Gathering ended up not being the right show for Roundabout, but for the past four years, every time I go to a bar and see Big Buck Hunter, I explain to people about Berman’s play; how Buck Hunter might be a metaphor for the way we pursue our paths and struggle in our lives. Recently, someone asked, “so why don’t you play it?”

“Oh, I’m not good at video games,” I answered quickly. “Plus, I mean, it’s me. I’m not going to shoot a deer!”

“Maybe it would be good for you,” suggested the person. “Maybe you actually want to shoot the deer.”

“No. No,” I countered. “The point is just about the play.”

All this was weighing on my mind as I dialed Berman’s number. I figured she wouldn’t answer her phone, but just in case, I silently reminded myself, “talk to her like she’s any other person. Do not mention bucks.” She didn’t pick up, and I left a message. But then she called me back.

In my years of living in New York and working in entertainment, I have learned to keep my cool around famous people. In third grade, when my group got lost on a class trip to Bear Mountain, Woody Allen’s daughter handed me the phone while her dad was still on the line. Did I gush? No. I just said, “This isn’t Dylan anymore. Where’s my mom?”

In 11th grade, when Keith Richards held the door of his cab open so I could get in, all I noticed was the warm dent he put on the seat. In college, when Ivanka Trump glared at me while smoking cigarettes on her way to class, I glared right back. In my early professional life, I talked back to Jason Bateman, shared a love of soy milk in coffee with Debra Messing, helped Joan Collins put in her eye drops and met the guy who played the friend on Doogie Howser without even recognizing him.

So when I got Berman on the phone, I promised myself that I would not say anything stupid. She explained that she had transferred her membership to LA. I said that was great and thank you. And then, before I could stop myself, I said, “Oh my god. I just have to ask, you’re Brooke Berman that wrote Hunting and Gathering, right?”

She confirmed. And I gushed. I explained how it was the first play I’d read at Roundabout, how I thought about her every time I went to a bar, how it was so exciting to talk to her–and then I gasped. “I’m sorry. I’m a huge dork. I don’t mean to be rambling like this.”

But she was incredibly kind. “You’re a not a dork,” she told me. (If only someone had told me that in 6th grade–think of the possibilities!) “I’m always glad to hear that something I wrote made an impression.”

Hearing that word, impression, made me recognize how close the play had been to me for all these years, almost subconsciously. I have never quite understood why, but I’d never been able to forget it. And thankfully, Berman was entirely receptive to the conversation. Unlike Jason Bateman (who asked me me for more coffee explaining that he snorted it like cocaine) she was engaged, available and wholly present, probably partially because she’s a huge yogi, and also because she is truly invested in communicative agency of her work.

She went on to ask about my career trajectory, (aka “just how did you end up working at yoga studio;” a question I get a lot these days.) When she learned that I still do arts criticism, she told me that she has a memoir (No Place Like Home) coming out in June and offered to put me on her press list. Even more fittingly, the memoir will be on the same topic as Hunting and Gathering, so those questions her work provoked four years ago will likely be re-opened, with chances for deeper investigation.

It all fit perfectly with the conversation I’d had earlier about unpredictable living. We can make it work because we hunt and gather; taking impressions and internalizing them. We’ll never know why we remember the things we do, and often it’s the ideas we can least articulate that we most absorb. But for those of us that do stay present, no connection or impression is wasted. Even when we cannot immediately assign a purpose or product, when we pay close attention to our lives and thoughts, we find that a thread is being woven that leads us into the future. Progress is rarely apparent, but always arising.

Before getting off the phone with Berman, she asked me if I ever played the video game. “Oh no,” I told her. “I wouldn’t be good at at it.”

“Not at first, maybe not,” she conceded. “But you can be. Just start playing and keep playing. It’s possible to be really great if you just practice.”

Metaphor or not, it’s pretty sound advice. I can’t wait to see what unfolds in her book, and in my next few months of Hunting and Gathering.

Visit Brooke Berman online here.
Read my essay about wandering through life on Revolving Floor.

I’m a Self-Centered, Antisocial, Thrill-Seeking Hitler Wanna-be

A few months ago I published a piece in the new, start-up arts and culture zine, Revolving Floor about my Birthright trip to Israel, called “Eggs, Milk and Honey,” describing my reaction to the homeland–and the pressure to have seven Jewish babies.

The responses were…heated. Not only did strangers write comments calling me spoiled, anti-Semitic, passive aggressive and a bagel-eater (seriously, white flour? Come on, guys…), but even my own parents didn’t like the essay. I met other people who read the essay and said they were going to send it to their parents, just to piss them off. Clearly, this piece was my attempt to counteract every night in high school that I obeyed my curfew.

This month, I decided to publish what I thought would be a less controversial piece, about the ways that I have been lost throughout my life, literally and metaphorically, and my perhaps unrealistic hope of feeling “found.”

“There is a poem by Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov called “Sail.” The last two lines, roughly translated, are: “Rebellious, it seeks out a storm/As if in storms it could find peace!” In the context of these verses, the problem becomes obvious: it’s not that I like the excitement of being lost. It’s that I like the feeling of being found. I want to climb back in the car with dirty feet, awaiting a bath. My whole life, the drama I’ve created has come with a pavlovian reward: resolution. I viewed everything I had as wrong, but I always had the power to make things right when I was ready.” [Read Full Essay]

The essay seemed, if anything, a bit self-deprecating and maybe unresolved, but I certainly wasn’t expecting the following comment from Claude: “Excellent text, but sad life. Life has a way of interfering with self-centered thrill seekers; it steals their time.”

I know you’re not supposed to care what people say about you on the Web, but that hit kind of raw note.

Then, like most things in my life, it got funny. Some people, including my beloved aunt, raced to my defense on the comment page. Then the commenter, Claude, responding to a suggestion that he shouldn’t conflate my text and my entire life, wrote this: “Should the fact that Althusser killed his wife affect our interpretation of structuralism? Or the nazism of Heidegger tint his writings? Are we what we write? Actor Errol Flynn once wrote a very antisemitic sentence in a private letter. It may be a little part of him, smaller than his love of the sea, but it is there, isn’t it?
And I read this as an antisocial text.”

Murderer. Nazi. Antisocial. (!?) To Claude, I say: I may have some days of inexplicable rage, and I did like the original Robin Hood, but if I were really antisocial, I’d be…I don’t know…probably doing something like finding the online works of writers I’d never met and telling them they were bad people with sad lives…

Taking the Floor

4 years after I wrote 90 pages in my journal about my birthright trip to Israel, a personal essay attempting to condense that experience appeared on the new Web site, Revolving Floor. Revolving Floor (which you should visit all the time, read extensively, comment on compulsively, etc, etc) is a site that gets people with strong opinions writing about a monthly topic and engaging readers in discourse.

My trip to Israel has provided me with many opportunities to engage in discourse over the years. It’s colored the way I think about the political situation there, it’s steered my feelings towards Judaism and it’s lingered in the back of my mind as something that will crop back up in a big way, sometime in my future. But somehow, even though I have some pretty serious opinions about what’s going on, I frequently convey my thoughts in a roundabout, or cheeky way. Maybe it’s because I can’t decide if I’m afraid to anger my family, or deliberately angering my family. Maybe it’s because I can’t decide if largely disliking my association with Judaism is invigorating and liberating, or totally breaks my heart. At the end of the day, I know I don’t believe in God, and I don’t believe in organized religion. But I also know that the world was infinitely–literally infinitely, a safer, warmer, more stable place when I did.

So, given that the topics at end seem pretty damn heavy, I do what I usually do. I adopt a semi-obnoxious tone. I make jokes that may or not be funny. I pretend that I really don’t care, I say semi-hurtful things about other people. It’s not untrue that I try to find the humor in most situations as my number one way of dealing with life + earth – God. But whether that comes through fairly and attractively in my writing is still yet undetermined.

So, that said, check out Eggs, Milk, Honey on Revolving Floor. Comment on the site. Share it with your friends. Make me look like the Social Media Marketing Expert I am. (Attn Potential Employers: YOU WANT TO HIRE ME!)