Genres Mélange: Humor, Word Play, Personae, Sonnets, Fiction, Memoirs, Interpretation

By Edward R. Levenson

Genres Mlange: Humor, Word Play, Personae, Sonnets, Fiction, Memoirs, Interpretation contains writings in the seven different categories, five of which (apart from wordplay and personae) are definitely genres.

Personae is unique; with Word Play, the author may be starting a trend.

Each category contains respective elements of the other six. This work, a sequel to Edwards Humor and More, features the new genres of sonnets and fiction. Interpretation ranges from the scripture to Talmud to Shakespeare to Reva Spiro Luxenberg Levenson.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543453294

Edward R. Levenson

Edward/Eddie grew up in Roxbury and Brighton in “Boston Proper” (that is, within Boston’s city limits), Massachusetts. After graduating from Boston Latin School, he received undergraduate degrees in Jewish Education and Classics (Greek and Latin Literature) and graduate degrees in Ancient and Jewish History, Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, and Educational Administration. He taught Hebrew Language and Jewish History in college and Hebrew Scriptures in graduate school before he retracked into teaching Latin and Social Studies in high school. He relocated in 2015 from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Delray Beach, Florida, where he has been fulfilled, in retirement, in a second career as a writer. In these last five years he has published three anthologies and four multi-genres books. His Personae of Ed: Literary, Psychological, and Spiritual is in the works. A newlywed of four years to prolific writer Reva Spiro Luxenberg, he has edited eight of her books. He is a proud member and officer of our Kings Point Creative Writers Club and Kings Point Writers Club Supplementary, considering them models for emulation.

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by Edward R. Levenson.

Library of Congress Control Number:      2017914904

ISBN:                        Hardcover                    978-1-5434-5327-0

                                   Softcover                      978-1-5434-5328-7

                                   eBook                           978-1-5434-5329-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 10/20/2017

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CONTENTS

Introduction and Acknowledgments

Part One—Humor

Anecdotal Miscellany

A to Z—Humor (Mostly)

Grave Questions to Bassanio in the Grave*

My Bookcase Dream

Reva’s Catalogues, 2017

Parking Spots in Front of the House

Interview with Our Tortoise Mordy (Part One)

Interview with Our Tortoise Mordy (Part Two)

WEIRD in a World That’s Not

Part Two—Word Play

Sound, Meaning, Spelling

It’s Time for Me to Start Wearing My Hearing Aid, II

Pool Conversation

Letitia

Scrabble Strategy

Hebrew Dots, and More

Epistolary Communications (Fiction)

This Book—a Sonnet

Part Three—Personae

Relationship Dyads

Re-estimation of the Role of Ishmael in the First Hebrew Family—Updated

Part Four—Sonnets

A Sónnet Crówn—A Týro’s Fírst Attémpt

Endnotes

Part Five—Fiction

Sidney

A Newborn with Two Brains

Love Boat

Cleveland—Miami Round Trip

A Gunman in Publix

An Unmarked Package—Major Irritation

Three Nasty People

Trial by Fire: Joe’s First Four Months in the District

Part Six—Memoirs

Two Kipnises

Transitions and Conflicts—1953 to 1956, and Afterwards

Finding J.H. Finley, Jr.— then Finding Elliot Dorff and Krikor Maksoudian

I Was a Catholic Educator—Addendum

Experiences in Camping

Inclusive Identity

The Weddings of Reva Luxenberg and Ed Levenson

Becoming a Writer—Surviving and Transcending

Part Seven—Interpretation

Passover/Easter: How Did They Differ—And Now?

Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar and the Exiled Judeans

Makkot 23b-24

The Discussion in Sanhedrin About HaOlam HaBa

Thoughts on "Ashrei"

Endnotes

The Merchant of Venice

A Correction About Rosario Morales’ Identity

Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh (I Am That I Am)

Placing Jewish Women into the Intersectionality of Race, Class, and Gender—the Example of Reva Spiro Luxenberg

Endnotes

Introduction and Acknowledgments

Genres Mélange: Humor, Word Play, Personae, Sonnets, Fiction, Memoirs, Interpretation adds the categories of Sonnets and Fiction—Word Play and Personae cannot really, strictly speaking, be called genres, but the others can—to the ones in my first book Edward’s Humor and More (EHAM). Elements of one category are often reflected in the other six.

My cover design features the three primary and the three secondary colors of light refracted through a prism. The white unrefracted light symbolizes my combined Personae. The refracted primary and secondary colors symbolize, in turn, Humor, Word Play, Sonnets, Fiction, Memoirs, and Interpretation.

The expertise, efficiency, and professionalism of the Xlibris staff has heightened my motivation to write—geometrically.

The love of my life, Reva Spiro Luxenberg Levenson—also a writer—is my constant inspiration.

Family members Rob, Loudell, Josh, Jenny, Sophie, Cal, Judah, Aliza, Benjamin, Allen, and Sarah—and friends Jack Cohen and Ann Fern—have provided most valuable support.

My son Judah has been a muse for me (I didn’t say has been amused by me—but that, too, is a blessing).

My daughter Aliza has encouraged my weirdness in a world that’s not (cf. my review of Jennifer Romolini’s book in Humor).

Discussions in the weekly Talmud classes at Temple Anshei Shalom—chaired by Rabbi Raphael Miller and taught by Rabbis Howard Hoffman and Alan Cohen—were vital preparation for my analyses of tractates Makkot (23b) and Sanhedrin (91-93).

I wrote several pieces in the book, originally, in four different writing groups: the Critique Group of the Delray Beach Writers’ Colony, the Creative Writing Workshop of the Wiseman Community Center in Delray Beach, the Writers’ Group of Kings Point, and Florida Atlantic University’s Summer 2017 Creative Writing Course. Heartfelt thanks go to all the members of the four writing groups. My deepest appreciation for mentoring in the period of March to August 2017 goes to Faye Menczer Ascher of the Kings Point Writing Group and teachers Natalie Rowland and Nick Becher of the Florida Atlantic University Summer Course.

Part One—Humor

Anecdotal Miscellany

I have set this piece as the introduction to my Humor section both because the A in Anecdotal makes it first alphabetically and because the mini-addenda in it in relation to my Edward’s Humor and More (EHAM) make it a fitting transition from the first book to this one. For the convenience of my esteemed critics I am numbering the items. The miscellany includes humorous Errata.

1) Anyone who believes that my critics—one in particular—are all esteemed is delusional.

2) In EHAM, I dressed my eighteen personae in diaphanous cloaks of different colors. But the cloaks of both Dr. Levenson (page 54) and Eduardito (page 63) were golden. I did this intentionally just to test whether my readers were paying attention. Sad to say, since I haven’t gotten feedback about the matter, I conclude that nobody was. In fact, I am apprehensive now whether many readers even got as far as page 63.

3) In this piece, I want to mention an idea associated with comic Trevor Noah: seriously funny. I find it bizarre that the boy bound up for slaughter in Genesis 22 was named "Yits 45589.png aq (Isaac), which in the Hebrew imperfect tense for continuing action means he is laughing. It is doubly bizarre that Yits 45592.png aq is my Hebrew name. Perhaps the humor is best understood as deep irony. I discuss Genesis 22 in my Personae" section, in which I update my EHAM study of the First Hebrew Family. I have appreciated discussing seriously funny with Rabbi Sylvan Kamens of Boynton Beach, Florida, an expert on scriptural humor.

4) This is an addendum about the name Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, which I discovered after Genres Mélange had gone to press and am able to slip in here. It’s from an article in a blog On the Main Line entitled Why Was Shylock Named Shylock? Several theories are offered, including one published by Maurice Brodzky in Melbourne in 1896:

"I have a theory regarding the name of Shylock. My particular philological fancy is a passage in the very familiar Pirqei Avos [5:10]. The rabbi is enumerating three classes of men [actually, four] and tells us his opinion of their respective characters. There is the man who says ‘sheli sheli v’shelokh shelokh,’ (mine is mine and yours is yours), the man who stands on the letter of the law. It is not unlikely that Shakespeare came across in his reading some Latin translation of the Pirqei Avos, and, on making inquiries of some learned Jew, the particular passage was rendered for him from the Latin into the original Hebrew. Being struck by the recurrence of the word ‘shelokh,’ in connection with sayings descriptive of the characteristics of Jewish businessmen, the dramatist accepted ‘shelokh’—which to an Englishman, who is unable to manage the guttural, became ‘Shylock’—as the generic term for an ordinary Jew, who is neither a ‘hasid’ (a saint) nor a ‘rasha’ (an evildoer), but whose standard of commercial dealings is a strict adherence to the law of ‘meum et tuum’ (what’s mine and what’s yours [Latin])."

5) My friend Jack Cohen needs to gain weight. We went out for lunch, and Jack didn’t order dessert. Why not? I have a doctor’s appointment next week, he said. If I gain weight this week, he said, I won’t register as much gain next week. I’ll eat more next week. The greater gain then will please the doctor more.

6) I mentioned in EHAM a second cousin who does not think I am funny. She considers the My Colonoscopy piece, which I think is one of my funniest pieces of all time, disgusting. She also insults my 1994 GMC Jimmy, my pride and joy. I recently had to cancel a restaurant invitation because I was taking a laxative and feared having an accident in the truck. That’s good thinking, she said, Your truck stinks enough as it is.

You know, I replied, "what you just said was funnier than anything I ever said!"

7) My truck does not stink. Twenty-three years old God Bless It, it burns a normal trace of oil for such a venerable vehicle. What has stunk more than any mess-in-the-pants was the useless criticism (alluded to in my first item)—never to be shared—of the company I deride as the pseudonymous Gornishthelfen. Laughables.

A to Z—Humor (Mostly)

A prompt from 642 Things To Write About by The San Francisco Writers’ Grotto:

Write a story in which each sentence will begin with a different letter of the alphabet, beginning with the letter A, and moving sequentially, i.e., B, C, D, and so forth.

A funny story is how I begin.

Beginning with an assertion that the following is funny is reputed to be counter-productive.

Confounding critics is my raison d’ 45351.png tre (reason for being).

Deliver us from evil.

Elephants are not in this room.

Frumpies, beginning with f, was not a funny word for Willy Clark of The Sunshine Boys.

Grumpy describes Clark, played by Walter Matthau, in the respective movie.

Holons signify dyadic pairs in Family Therapy diagrams.

In sooth, we can surmise why Antonio was so sad—in The Merchant of Venice.

Jo, joe, and joey are my nemeses in Scrabble games with Reva.

"Ka," likewise—italicized because it is Ancient Egyptian.

Levenson, as in Sam’s last name (also), is spelled the right way.

Masterpiece-quality is Reva’s Grand Army Plaza.

Never have so many owed so much to so few.

"Omicron (short o) is the opposite of omega (long o") in the Greek alphabet.

Pa, "pe, and pi," are additional Scrabble nemeses of mine.

"Q (without a u) is the correct English transliteration for the Arabic and Hebrew guttural k."

Rs in the middle of words are impossible for Bostonians to pronounce.

Stevia is my newly discovered sweetener.

To be or not to be that is the question.

Ultimate -tion in question is an extra eleventh syllable in the iambic pentameter meter.

Vs (for us) in Latin stone inscriptions were easier to carve.

Ws originally signified Double ‘V’s.

X is the Greek "chi, a hard k sound, as in chaos."

Yesterday seems so far away. (Writing early this morning intervened.)

ZZZZs—time to get some.

Grave Questions to Bassanio in the Grave*

*Just as The Merchant of Venice has been classified as a comedy because it ends, from the audience’s point of view, on an upswing, I consider this poem humorous because I commune with a four-hundred-year dead fictional character in cute rhymes. Of course, Edward’s humor has been a matter of opinion for some time. Clarifications of the poem’s questions are found in the play’s vast critical literature.

Pray tell, Bassanio,

Were you a Marrano?

Was Shylock a secret friend?

Is that how you got him to lend?

Was his Hebrew name ‘Ben Sira’?

Is that where Fields got ‘Shilach’?

Did he flee to Istanbul?

To live as a Jew under Muslim rule?

Were you Catholic through and through?

Not just for outer view?

Had you relatives from Bassano del Grappa?

Musicians who played the piva

Who entertained the highest royalty

And performed in plays of quality?

Were you close with Emilia Lanier?

Was she a lover of Shakespeare?

Why was Antonio depressed?

Was his psyche very up-messed?

Were his passions blighted?

His love for you unrequited?

Baring his breast, he did comply.

Was he all too eager to die?

For you had wanted the lady.

Not for him a Jewish zaide.

Did Shylock really want him killed?

Or just a lesson for his contempt instilled?

For your character we do rave.

Please answer us from the grave.

My Bookcase Dream

April 2017. On the Intermediate Sabbath of Passover Week, the Torah reading (Exodus 33:12—34:26) was about Moses’ ascent of Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments for the second time.

Early in the morning of the Eighth Day of Passover this year I had one of my most remarkable dreams ever. I dreamt that our rabbi—Rabbi Raphael Adler of Temple Anshei Shalom in Delray Beach, Florida—was descending the mountain, not with engraved