Happy Easter! We got two unsolicited gifts last week, both left on our doorstep: shmurah matzoh from the local Chabad couple (always appreciated), and these two bags from the local mega-franchising-evangelical-Bible church:
Inside the bags, which were left all over the neighborhood, were plastic eggs with pieces of candy inside—and invitations to various Easter Sunday services, in rented halls around Greater New Haven.
I don’t mind if Christians evangelize me. As a child, I would engage door-knockers in debates. More than once, my parents came home to find their ten- or twelve-year-old son standing with the screen door open, arm propped in the doorway, cockily demanding evidence from the couple standing outside the door that the Book of Mormon was true, or asking just how the Jehovah’s Witnesses knew the end times were coming. (More on that here.) I would have invited them in if my parents had let me. I wish people tried to sell me more stuff at my door, whether religion or Fuller brushes.
And I like the personal touch: we should be leaving more tokens of goodwill (and salvation) on each other’s porches. It seems like last week that I was delivering shelach manot, Purim baskets to Jews, and a few of my favorite Gentile allies. If religious people are the only ones bringing unsolicited gifts to neighbors—well, shame on secular folk.
And yet. And yet. I felt painfully aware that the Jews had brought us unseasoned, unleavened bread, while the Christians brought us Tootsie Rolls. This hardly seems like a fair fight for the souls of my children. And the little tote bags, in a fetching springtime teal, were so damned cute. I confess it was a bit triggering: a reminder of how much better Christmas seemed than Hanukkah, how much better the Charlie Brown Christmas special seemed than … what? Did we even have a Jewish TV special?
I felt painfully aware that the Jews had brought us unseasoned, unleavened bread, while the Christians brought us Tootsie Rolls. This hardly seems like a fair fight for the souls of my children.
Then I exhaled, and reminded myself that my children’s souls cannot be bought with sugary sweets. If they’re ever won over, it will be by the extraordinary poetry of the King James Bible, by the sheer awesomeness of Christmas carols, or by this dude,
who once tried to heal my broken finger at a huge healing revival. Read about him here. And enjoy the rest of your big Jewish matzoh-eating Pesach season.
Pickleball is the Scientology of sports: originated on the West Coast at midcentury, lots of false promises, evangelical practitioners trying to sign you up, interested in your real estate. And soon to be in decline.
Pickleballers swarm public meetings to demand that tennis courts be converted into pickleball courts, or that scarce public funds be deployed to build facilities for this sport—nay, game—that could be gone in five years. Has nobody heard of the Dutch tulip craze? The last real estate bubble? Garbage Pail Kids? Does nobody know a bubble, a fad, a pyramid scheme when they see one? Pickleball, I see your future.
When my beloved public tennis courts were being resurfaced recently, some pickleballers (or aspiring pickleballers—who knows if any of them had actually played, or just been caught up in the moment, like swing dancers ca. 2000
or everyone who has joined a book club) came to the Zoom forum to discuss the plans and insisted that half the tennis courts be turned into pickleball courts; at three pickleball courts per tennis court square-footage, they were actually asking that a majority of the resurfaced new courts be pickleball courts. In the end, one tennis court was turned into three pickleball courts, leaving a ratio of 6 tennis : 3 pickleball (which seems sane).
Has nobody heard of the Dutch tulip craze? The last real estate bubble? Garbage Pail Kids? Does nobody know a bubble, a fad, a pyramid scheme when they see one? Pickleball, I have seen your future.
And, as it happens, I had the loveliest experience of pickleball/tennis amity over my Passover weekend. My chum Higbee and I were playing a set of tennis (please, do not ask the score), on the court next to my friends and neighbors the Pinskys, who were playing some husband/wife tennis, while over on the pickleball courts four women were engaged in a match. Four tennis players, four pickleball players; two tennis courts in use, one pickleball court in use. Their thwacking was not too terrible, my cries of agony every time I hit a ball into the net were, I hope, not too disturbing to them. When my tennis match was over, I snapped a picture of the happy pickleballers, in their habitat.
Everything was in balance. We can coexist. I can be a Thetan.
For those of you who read about about me taking my daughter to shiva, you might enjoy this great bit of reader mail, from Rabbi Eitan Levy:
I would take it a step further. Even if you were the 11th and 12th [Jew there, not the 10th], or you were Orthodox and your daughter didn't count in the minyan, your presence there would have been meaningful and valuable. To sit with the widow, that she knows she has the support of her community, backed up by actual physical presence, is just as important as saying kaddish. Because the halachic background of connecting the kaddish to mourning is a bit sketchy, I tend to think the point of the kaddish is to bring the people together, rather than the other way around.
Always happy to get mail — send it to markoppenheimer@substack.com.