From The Vault Of Art Shay: Gabi's Bat Mitzvah
By Art Shay in News on Oct 17, 2012 7:00PM
(Legendary Chicago-based photographer Art Shay has taken photos of kings, queens, celebrities and the common man in a 60-year career. This week, Art shows his ability to turn a pun while speaking about religion.)
“Why is this night different than all other nights?” My grandfather used to ask in Hebrew on one of the year's many religious holidays. My uncle Abe and my father, Herman, were both atheists who taught me if there were a God, why would He tolerate man's sickness, specifically polio, which haunted parents by crippling their children? And why would He with all His power, countenance, unemployment and poverty and early death amongst good people.
FDR would arise and bring dignity to being poor like us, bring about Social Security, attempt to stop hunger and foraging in the streets for edible or salable garbage.
The religious and God-lorn would stay on their economic knees until the Depression ended with the War, and then came modern times and our discontents. There are few puns in the Scripture so, as one of our North Shore Pun Club members—me—put it imperiously (as Shakespeare did): "Came the cold weather and Costco brought us the winter of our discount tents."
Scripture abounds with sayings and puns, some traversing several languages. “Like:” The wise (why's in Aramaic, meaning “something else”) who enter into an argument with fools find neither anger nor humor can resolve the matter."And:" The needy and broken and sick pretend that their plight is the will of God, and everyone prays along, tsk tsking sympathetically."
According to the pretty lady rabbi at Highland Park’s B’nai Torah synagogue at services the night earlier: “The apple Eve lusted after and took from the serpent was not evil, as popularly believed— it was knowledge, wouldn’t you know?
So, in her sermon on her bat mitzvah day, Gabi Shay described the version of how knowledge came into the world through woman.
So there.
If you can't wait until this time every Wednesday to get your Art Shay fix, please check out the photographer's blog, which is updated regularly. Art Shay's book, Chicago's Nelson Algren, is also available at Amazon.