Jerusalem Syndrome - Marc Maron [0]
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Welcome to the book
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright Page
This book is for my mother, Toby, who claims she did the best she could, and for my father, Barry, whose selfishness propelled me into the darkness.
WELCOME TO THE BOOK. MARC MARON HAS been brought to you by the following: Eastern Europe, a faulty diaphragm, Dr. and Mrs. Barry Maron, Similac (in 1963 women just didn’t breastfeed), Gerber baby food, Sid and Marty Croft, Mark Twain Elementary School, Congregation B’nai Israel, Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes, Mad magazine, Post Cereals’ Cocoa Pebbles, Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Crest toothpaste, Aquafresh toothpaste, until the novelty wore off and then Crest again, Swanson frozen foods, Highland High School’s Class of ’81, KQEO-AM, the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, and whatever CBS stands for, the Rolling Stones—a division of Rolling Stone Records, a division of Columbia Records, Boston University Classes of ’85 and ’86, City Lights Books, National Lampoon, The Grateful Dead, cotton, poultry, beef—it’s what’s for dinner, pork—I know it’s wrong but come on, bacon?—Anheuser-Busch, Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Co., Glaxo- SmithKline, Parke-Davis, Humboldt County, Mr. Pibb, Jack Daniel’s, several Third World dictatorships’ co-caine, General Electric, Wendy’s, General Dynamics, the Military Industrial Complex, the Museum of Modern Art, Schwinn, Hanes, Wisconsin cheese, Heinz Ketchup, The Comedy Store, Vivid Video, Clarke’s desert boots, Fender guitars, Harvey Altman CPA, the Walt Disney Company, Philip Morris, Coca-Cola, Seagram’s, United Synagogue Youth, 3 Arts Entertainment, the three branches of the United States Government, Nabisco, Rolling Rock beer from Latrobe Brewing Company, Latrobe, Pennsylvania, Time-Warner Inc., Universal Studios—an MCA company, Chess Records, Fed Ex, Sprint, HBO, Datsun, Beatrice, AT&T, Bill Graham Presents, the American Psychiatric Association, and Fruit of the Loom.
1
DURING the summer of 1998 my wife and I took a trip to Israel. I know what you’re thinking: Israel? Is this going to be heavy? I understand. That’s what our friends thought when we told them about our trip. When you tell people you are going to Israel it makes them nervous. It somehow implicates their lack of religion and they want to know why you’re going. They get worried. “Are you going to get Jewy?”
They don’t know what you’re going to be like when you get back. People change. Am I going to walk off the plane davening down the gateway wearing a tallit and a yarmulke with payes bouncing beside my ears? Then they’re going to think, Now it’s weird. We can’t go to their house anymore, certainly not on Saturdays. That pretorn toilet paper thing gives me the creeps.
We didn’t go to Israel to get Jewy. We went because a friend of mine invited us.
It was only after we got back from Israel that I read about Jerusalem Syndrome. This is a psychological condition that occurs in some visitors to the Middle East. They get to Israel and just snap. They think they are a biblical or religious figure like Moses, Jesus, or Muhammad. Some think that they are in a direct communication with God on a one-to-one level. Some think that their being in the Middle East is one of the keys that unlocks the final unfolding, which is what I like to call Armageddon.
In retrospect, I’m pretty sure I had a full-blown case of Jerusalem Syndrome. The catch is, I actually think I had it long before I left. It’s hard for me to tell, because I always felt like I was special.
I was the first child of my parents and the first grandchild for both sets of grandparents. So, needless to say, I was special. For my entire life, until the day she died a few years ago, my Grandma Goldy would pull me aside from the rest of the brood, look me in the eyes, smiling, and say, “Marc-y, you