Of Machers and Mamzers (Yiddish for...well, you'll find out if you read this)

Of Machers and Mamzers (Yiddish for...well, you'll find out if you read this)

 

NOTE: the names were changed for the protection of the persons in this essay, rant, memoir, what have you...and for the protection of myself.

 

There is a home. There are no people in it.

 An office supply company was sold to a larger office supply store that many of us know (but I will not disclose) for $700 million by two brothers, Richard and Harry Schiller; two Jewish philanthropists in the meantime, if you will. Two men, with...time....and money on their heavy, Florida-tanned and melanoma hands. 

 I was asked to join three Israel alumni (for those of you who didn't know, I went to Israel this past winter via the Israel Foundation, it was free. More or less, the Schiller family paid for me to go to Israel. We'll get to that later) to discuss our experiences in Israel, our life before, our future lives, and our lives now. 

 We pulled up the long driveway of the cozy north shore Illinois suburb of Bannockburn, teeming with Jews and wealth and pride. The driveway was laid down with gravel, round, and floral like any mansion you have probably seen in a movie, leading up to opulent and tall wooden doors, followed by the foyer and the sitting room, the backyard of a copious eight acres and waterfalls, a putting green, a swimming pool, and all the bells and whistles. 

 My fellow alum and I shook hands with the Schillers; Harry, Richard, and Julie and immediately they were ready to take our drink orders before we could sit. Water, Coke, Diet Coke, White Wine (are you of age?). I took water thinking it was a safe choice and given that Becky, my accomplice of the evening, leaked my real age, wine was out of the question. Behind the counter stood a Mexican man, dressed like the rest of us in our business casual but I knew after a short while, his business there was something else; he was more or less their butler. I could have cried right then and there, but I knew better.

 After drinks, we walked in a line with professionals, members of the Israel Foundation, sponsors, and a whole slew of Jew, we spiraled down the staircase to do...more sitting, with drink in hand. It was phase one of the conversation but I was too distracted by the bar, the pool table, the indoor pool in addition to the outdoor pool, and the workout room. Julie began to kick us off and would ask Anna, a member of the Israel Foundation or something of the like, from time to time to explain the Israel foundation's purpose (which was odd to me being that they had paid for a trip, but clearly with that much money it must be hard to know where it navigates itself to). Anna would promptly and carefully answer each question with the smile of the hardworking, go-getter Jew, transplanted from Maryland to New York, with big lips and the assimilated big mouth, that we are so classically stereotyped as; New Yorkers, too. Hmm, I wonder what that is all about?

When Anna was done paneling the conversation the next on cue was Sam, a college grad just back from L.A. and ready to divulge. Harry was piqued and asked the million-dollar question. 

 "What do you think of these Orthodox Jews who hate us Secular Jews?"

 No it was not Palestine vs. Israel, yet. But it was second on the list of hot button Jewish questions, where Julie strode in on her white horse and invited us upstairs for dinner.

 Now, when ever I have seen a dining room that has a table that seats twenty I think of either a board room, a mafia get together, the last supper, things of this nature. The last thing that I think is that at this table, with all its decadence and fine china, we are going to eat delivered pizza from Chicago's second most boasted deep dish supplier in the city, Lou Malnati's. Jews are cheap. I know I am a Jew, I know stereotypes are not conducive, but Jews are cheap. However, this family had paid for my trip to Israel so I'll put that aside.

 Needless to say, we slid our tall-backed chairs out from the table across the mahogany floors and sat down to have the discussion we all came for. The questions were fired from all around the table and the Schiller brothers had no problem interjecting their lame jokes. And there I was, the beneficiary of the most amazing gift of my life, sitting next to the folks who gave it to me, and I was sick. I have never understood the wealthy, their poor jokes, their gaudy homes, and their lack of consideration for outsiders such as myself; boy from a small town replete of a notable Jewish population and a working class family, which happens to also be part of a family of significant wealth (mind you those are my dad's cousins, uncles, and his brother). But, I had to be thankful. I had to be respectful. I had to sit there with my napkin on my lap, hands clasped, feet crossed and tense, and smile the biggest smile I could. However, I still had to do it my way.

 When the questions made it around to me I responded truthfully yet mildly tapered. 

"What did you love about the trip? Why did you go?" What they did not ask but most likely wanted to was, why are we paying for this?

"I fell in love with Israel and an Israeli. This is a trip that made a tremendous impact on my life. It made me a world citizen, not just a Jew, but being Jewish came first." They laugh with distinction and insincerity and nod with some understanding.

 World citizen? What is that? They didn't seem to think it had any significance.

"Everyone travels. You have all sorts of cultures in Israel," chimes in Harry while Richard slouches to my right with his hand up to his blood-pressured cheek.

 "Well you see, in America we are conditioned to an institutionalized path like what Sam was talking about earlier. First grade school, then high school, grad school, and so on. We are not told to go travel. In Israel and the rest of Europe, they go to high school then they travel for two years..."

 Harry cuts me off to segue into the next line of business as someone starts in at the other end of the table. I stare off to the tacky artwork that rests behind Richard's seat. It's all flowers and glitter and gold.

 For the next half hour everyone but the four of us alumni got into the conversation of money. I should have seen it coming all the way from Chicago, but my provincial mind was telling me that I was going to a nice quaint suburban home; not the behemoth of the Schillers.

 "So Adelson is matching 20 million to the 10 million you have to raise, but next year he will only give you 10. How are you guys planning to fundraise the money?" some nameless face ponders from across the way. 

Anna fields these questions with a challenge in her face but confidence in her voice. Richard is still slouching but more interested than he is letting on. Harry turns an ear. I know it is time for me to leave. 

 I decide to go to the bathroom, my sanctuary on most days.

 The Mexican man whose name I regretfully did not ask, escorted me to the bathroom, as there was no way I could have found it given the size of the home. I desperately wanted to know his story, his name, if he was being paid well; if he lived there, had his home family, if he got to see them and a whole other litany of questions but, I was not there for that, I did not have the time for that and much to my dismay. He graciously opened the door for me, turned the lights on with the elaborate switch, more like a switch board with 10 buttons on it, and told me there was another bathroom I could use on the other end of the house just in case. I thought that might be fun if I got curious but the thing about curiosity in a wealthy man's home, is getting caught. Behind the door I was again, almost moved to tears. Where was the humanity in the home of philanthropists?

In the bathroom were neatly folded and placed paper napkins with roses painted on them. When it came time to wash my hands and would need to dry them, I had to use these instead of a towel. Like I said, Jews are cheap. Like I did not mention, from my own experience of the wealthy on my father's side of the family, they like to take up their environmental causes as if they had always been vested in them and pontificate about the values of being environmental. If the Schillers were anything like my dad's family, then I'm sure they had the same stance. So why not use a fucking towel?

I returned to the dining room and my buddy Mikey needed to use the bathroom. I escorted him this time exchanging a short conversation of how crazy it was that we were in this mansion hearing about the monetary breakdown of the best 10 days of our lives. He grinned and went about his business.

As I walked back Anna was still talking money when Harry stepped in to talk, a constant interrupter much like his brother and sister-in-law. Before Anna let him finish she made important note that she had the floor and was only going to talk for two more minutes and then return the conversation back to us, the alum who blindly followed to this mansion; much like the Jews who were accused of blindly walking into their deaths during the holocaust, only this was the opposite. We were walking into a large, costly home, not to be killed per se, but to certainly put our personalities up on the chopping block and thank those who did not oppress from the get-go, but oppressed a part of me in so many ways.

The conversation finally was re-routed back to us. The other alum spoke to whether the trip was fun and along came a question from Julie's daughter of a first marriage, whose name I also did not catch. 

"Now, I may get fired for asking this but it was brought up at a meeting...did you guys go on this trip to get laid?"

We all laughed because I'm sure we all had relatable answers. Julie blushed but after thinking it over decided she really did want to know. We did not disclose this information.

Harry took hold of the floor again and asked me a question, the first of the hot button Jewish questions. He stared me dead on and said:

"What do you think of a Palestine two-state solution?"

"Well, that's a tough question." Uh, hello? If I knew or anyone knew, don't you think the problem would be solved? I went on to talk about the steps Obama was making to address this situation as if to sound informed (I had only read an article about it yesterday. "I think it would be the greatest social experiment of our time." I thought it was a brilliant answer but Harry paid it no mind. Julie had enough of these big questions and was more or less getting back to the implied question I mentioned earlier, why should we pay for this? 

"So, what was the hook? If you had to get others to go on this trip what would be the one thing that would sell them?"

Again, I started down my whole world citizen spiel. Mikey gave a witty answer, something along the lines of being Sagittarius, and I just sat back thinking, 'where the fuck am I and who are these people?' Unfortunately I knew all too well who they were.

We left the table and walked back into the foyer and sitting room and schmoozed for a while. Some came to thank me, some just smiled and kept walking in their zigzagged paths of seemingly no importance to me. 

I walked over to the window that overlooked the property, admiring all its lushness, admiring the sea of money I was actually looking at, and thinking, 'this will never be me, and if it is, I will never be them.' Of course, money can get the best of us, we all know this. Harry walks up behind me and begins to give me the history of the home, how it was a tear-down and that he lived a few houses away and tore his house down from 4500 sq. ft. and rebuilt it into 13,000 sq. ft., after his kids had left home mind you. 

"Most people do the opposite. But hey, we have no problems with it."

Right. Of course not. You have no problems of major consequence period, or so it seemed.

Harry goes on to tell me about his son, the scholar who wrote a 417-page thesis at BU and then was denied his doctorate when he was told to edit it and refused. He went back 12 years later to make a deal with BU that if he wrote 100 pages on a specific subject they would grant him his doctorate without him having to go back to graduate school. They didn't except his thesis a second time but Harry made sure to tell me that the 100-page thesis is now a textbook art Harvard. Us Jews are a blessed bunch.

My ride, Julie's daughter told me she was leaving and asked if I wanted to stay some more. Oddly enough, I did, for the pure and vein fact that I could write about this event at this present moment. I schmoozed a little more, drifting like I always do from conversation circle to conversation circle when the ultimate tipping point concluded the evening. Julie walked out from Richard's office with four books in her hand titled, Simply Success written by none other than Richard himself. She gave each of them to the alumni and myself. Mikey and Becky were waiting to get them signed and I figured 'what the hell, this man is worth billions and I probably won't even read his book but I will have a story to tell.'

I handed Richard the book and he waited for me to give my name. I said 'Zach' but since he was hard of hearing he thought I said Jack. I didn't feel the need to correct him so he addressed it 'Jack.' Again, I wanted to be able to tell this story. I also thought it would be an easy way to say despite this man's hearing, he could probably give two shits if my name was Kandahar or Bobby.  He wrote:

 Jack,

  Enjoyed hearing about your feelings i.e.: your Israel trip-

  Writing is very hard work. I know.

 

   Richard Schiller

 

Yes Richard, you know a lot about hard work.

 

I exchanged handshakes and smiles, some real, some fake at the door and made my way back to the clean of air the world I know. Becky and I talked most of the ride back about how nice it would be to have Richard as an uncle. To myself I just thought, how nice it is to have a real family and to know what Israel was truly about for me. .