Jerusalem Syndrome - Marc Maron [1]
The other reason I believe I’m special is mystical. I was born on Kol Nidre, the eve of Yom Kippur. It is the holiest night in the Jewish religion. It was 8:10 P.M., September 27, 1963. A somber mood rippled through the Judaic collective unconscious. Jews around the world were repenting for their sins in shame, guilt, and fear. They were all asking God to write their names into the book of life for one more year as I slid out of my mother, covered in blood and crying in a Jersey City hospital. What does it mean? I don’t know, but Jesus was born on Christmas—what are the odds? And if there is any core to my faith at all it is in that there are no coincidences. [There is no word in Hebrew for “coincidence.”] Nothing happens in God’s world by chance.
My father-in-law, Marty, wanted to be a rabbi but instead became a psychiatrist, thus cutting out the middleman, God. I asked him if he had heard of Jerusalem Syndrome and told him the symptoms. He said he had never come across it but it sounded to him like a decompensating borderline personality disorder, paranoid schizophrenia with delusions of grandeur or mania, which is what I like to call the fun side of bipolarity. He was, all and all, very clinical.
Maybe if he had become a rabbi it would’ve been a longer conversation, had over a stack of sacred texts revolving around how God manifests himself in this world and how all Jews that follow the rules want and expect to experience revelation. The Hasidim believe that all behaviors of people and all events, good or bad, are manifestations of God on Earth. They are put before us so we may engage our free will and make a choice between life or death, good and evil, God or self. This illustrates one of the primary differences between Jews and Christians. In the Christian texts the wages of sin is death. In the Jewish texts the wages of sin are negotiable. There are those of us who don’t follow the rules.
I’m not a religious person. I was born in New Jersey. I was raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My parents were of the first generation of Jews to move as far away from their parents as possible for reasons other than fleeing a country. They just had to get away. When people ask me what I am, I tell them, “I’m a Jew but I’m not a Jew.”
2
BEFORE we left New Jersey we lived in Pompton Lakes with my grandparents, Jack and Goldy. My father was never around because he was busy finishing medical school and my mother was never around because she was busy trying to finish becoming herself—a project she is still working on. She was twenty-two when she had me. For my formative years my soul and being were in the care of my Grandma Goldy.
She was a tall woman with a charming smile that could disarm anyone in seconds. She talked to everyone everywhere about everything in her life that made her proud, which was usually me. When Grandma looked down at me and smiled, it was one of the only times I really understood what it felt like to be loved. Godly Goldy was the keeper of an eternal stash of melon balls, boiled chicken, and soup. To me this was the holy trinity. One of the only objects of hers I took after her death was her melon baller. I use it in the summer as a device to go back in time.
My Grandpa Jack was an average-size man with a protruding round belly, thinning white hair and a strange bump on his forehead. He looked like a Jewish Buddha. He was always curious about how things worked and he could seemingly fix just about anything, if he could find a screwdriver and his glasses. Finding Jack’s glasses was a frequent activity and one of the rituals that bonded my grandparents. Jack’s disposition wavered among engaged, irritated, and amused. He had a nasal giggle that could stop time because time wanted to let Jack laugh. When Jack smiled, everything within a fifty-foot radius of him smiled. When Jack yelled, the same things ran for cover. He was a powerful man.
During the day Jack sold televisions, air conditioners, washers, dryers, and dishwashers