Culture Klatch

W I N T E R 2 0 1 1 W W W. T I K K U N . O R G T I K K U N 95 WILLIAM MERCER MCLEOD but also grateful that Fate had allowed us to reach the promised database without contractingsomefatalvirus. Unfortunately, we could find no trace there of either my father’s or mother’s parents—no indication, from ship manifestsorclericallogs , that any of mykin had ever debarked at Ellis Island. This raised theuncomfortablepossibilitythatIwasan android, in whom scientists had meticulouslyplantedfalse “memories”ofasecular Jewish childhood along with a totally fictitious ancestry in Eastern Europe. Perhaps thatcouldfinallyexplainthe“otherness”I’d often felt among human beings, as well as mycuriousaffinityforhardwarestores. Or maybe the names had just been spelled differently by the Ellis Island functionaries. In any case, it was getting late—and my son needed answers. Fortunately for Jews like me, there are Mormons. Mormons keepgenealogicalrecordsthewaymyfamily keeps grudges. It was through the Mormon-run Ancestry.com website that I finally tracked down historical records of my forebears. In 1920 in Brooklyn and in 1930 in Allentown, Pennsylvania, census workers had interviewed members of my mother’sandfather’sfamilies,respectively. Unfortunately, these interviews had apparentlybeenquiteboringandperfunctory , as the reproduced forms gave only such basic information as “number in household.” Decades later, during the McCarthyEra,thegovernmentwouldtake a much keener interest in my communistleaning family. (Little did the FBI realize that, with our clan’s tendency toward procrastination and internal bickering, we had zero chance of organizing a successful backyard barbecue, much less a revolution.) Sadly, though, there wasn’t enoughtimebeforemyson’sculturefairfor ustolaunchaFreedomofInformationAct requestforourfamilyfiles. So,asusual,intheabsenceofhardfacts I was forced to fall back on my memories. Andaswesatthereinthedarkkitchen,our faces illuminated only by the computer screen, I was suddenly overtaken by an affecting recollection from my own childhood: sitting with my dad in the old movie theater where he would often take me to see the numerous Japanese movies featuring Zatoichi, the blind masseur and swordsman. My schoolteacher father, thoughnotamasseuroraswordsmanand only very nearsighted, identified strongly with Zatoichi. Both of them were committed to empowering the downtrodden against their corrupt oppressors, whether in nineteenth-century Japan or twentieth-centuryAmerica.Andwhen—as he inevitably did, in every installment— Zatoichi suffered, Dad suffered as well. Watching him weep as, up on the big screen, Zatoichi was dragged along rough terrain by a rope attached to a galloping horse,Ilearnedwhatitmeanttoempathize withothersonthemargins:Ilearnedwhat itmeanttobeaJew. At the time of this writing, my son has not yet received a grade for his culture-fair display. It’s possible that his teacher may have been confused by a Jewish cultural history depicted entirely through the stories and images of a blind Japanese masseur and swordsman. Then again, we live in Berkeley, so maybe she understood. And I bet she enjoyed the tasty kugel that mywifebakedinthemorning.I Josh Kornbluth is a monologuist who lives in Berkeley with his wife and son and their cornsnake , Snakey. His latest solo show is Andy Warhol: Good for the Jews? You can follow his doingsatjoshkornbluth.com. M yson’smiddleschool was having a “culture fair” recently, so he asked me for some guidance. His task was to create a display that described his Jewish heritage. “Whenisitdue?”Iasked. “Tomorrow.” “Whendidyourteacherfirstassignit?” “Oh,acoupleofmonthsago.” This answer filled me with pride. Though I had failed to provide him with a grounding in his Jewish birthright, no one could argue that I had stinted in his training as a procrastinator—a skill that my own parents had painstakingly drilled intomefromanearlyage. “Askyourmother,”Isuggested. “Butshe’sJapanese.” “Yes,butshemakesadeliciouskugel.” But my wife, a non-procrastinator, had alreadycompletedherday’sdutiesandwas soundasleep.Soinstead,mysonsuggested thatwegoonlinetoellisisland.organdlook for records of our ancestors’ arrivals. This got me excited, as I’ve always longed to know more about previous generations of my family. Especially on my father’s side, such information is scarce, since everyone has eternally been at war with everyone else: the only way bloodshed has been avoided in our American diaspora is throughanegotiatedfifty-statesolution. Our journey to ellisisland.org was a perilousone—crammedontoatinylaptop, riding through cyberspace along with thousands of other travelers in search of a homepage. All we had for sustenance was what we could scrounge from the fridge. After what seemed like an eternity (our...