Community Views

Did Hillel
Lift Weights?

The Civil War:
Has It Really Ended?

RABBI DAVID WOLPE SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

PHL JACOBS EDITOR

A

few years ago when I en-
tered my 30s, I decided it
was finally time to start
exercising. The decision
was miles from the doing since
my primary goal was to fmd a
place where I wouldn't be rec-
ognized.
I grant you that this may not
seem to be such a formidable
chore. After all, I live in Los An-
geles, city of millions, all of whom
are looking to spot Barbra
Streisand or Luke Perry, not a
sweat-soaked rabbi. But it's not

to three issues:
1) What to wear. True, I do
wear jeans on occasion, and I
have been know to even venture
out in shorts. But generally,
folks take their rabbis natty, at
least, and sometimes even for-
mal. How many people really
want to see their rabbi in cut-
offs and a faded T-shirt, pulling,
pushing, huffing and puffing,
with the same expression on his
face of one of those guys who
pulls locomotives with his teeth?
Rabbis should dress like rabbis,

about. And dress nicely.
I finally found a small, out-of-
the-way gym where I could
work out. I even had the in-
evitable thrill in this city of see-
ing some "stars" work out in the
same gym.
Yet, every now and then I'm
spotted: Someone enters the
gym and exclaims "Rabbi
Wolpe! What are you doing
here?" If lack of breath did not
make it hard for me to speak
while exercising, I would have
some choice words, such as "Oh,

Our Close Up
this issue on the
Civil War hits
very close to
home.
Thirty years
before the Civil
War became the
darling of the film
industry, before
the 54th Massachussetts was de-
picted in Glory, and the little-
known novel Killer Angels
became Ted Turner's Gettysburg,
our family was steeped in the
memory of this conflict.
My parents were Civil War
addicts. My father managed a
furniture store, and got one week
off a year as paid vacation. While
my friends were spending their
free time going to the beach and
Florida, we were driving hun-
dreds of miles in our Dodge Dart
to places with names like Get-
tysburg, Antietam, Appomattox,
Fredericksburg and Harper's
Ferry. Our family albums show
photos of children leading imag-

till

Staring out at us
was a huge sign.
It read, "Coloreds,
Jews and dogs keep
out, you are not
welcome here."

as simple as it may seem for a
rabbi to slip about incognito, es-
pecially since I had to find a gym
near my house. Where Dive is a
Jewish neighborhood. Very Jew-
ish: The 7-11 advertises "kosher
food products." Odds were high
that as I stood in the local gym
trying to lift some ridiculous met-
al mass that should be anchor-
ing aircraft carriers, a
well-meaning member of the
Jewish community would stroll
by and say "Hey! Rabbi Wolpe!,"
thus leading to embarrassment
— or maybe fracture.
I'm not one of those people
who can entirely forget his sur-
roundings. Or who can ignore
the fact that with each squat
and curl, I grunt like a lower pri-
mate. Plus, there were serious
questions to be addressed if I
was ever to do more exercise
than swaying as I prayed. Even-
tually, I narrowed them down

Rabbi David Wolpe of Los Ange-
les recently wrote Teaching
Your Children About God.

but in the gym you can't.
2) Reputation. Not all pos-
tures in the gym are dignified.
Bodies are coiled and posteriors
are presented with alarming fre-
quency. This is advantageous
for those who go to gyms in
search of relationships, but it's
a distinct disadvantage to the
average rabbi.
3) Theology. Bismarck once
said that politics is like sausage:
One should not really see how
either one is made. I think fit-
ness is much the same. People
like to see rabbis be fit, but in
my experience, seeing a rabbi
running or on a stairmaster or
lifting weights is disconcerting.
There's a sense that a rabbi
should be doing something more
exalted than taking 7,000 con-
secutive steps — and going
nowhere.
These considerations might
have stopped me, but I remem-
bered my mother's wise advice:
The rabbinate is a sedentary
profession. All that sitting is not
healthy. Be sure to get out and

I'm blessing the equipment,"
"I'm checking the mezuzahs,"
"Pm studying Rashi." Instead, I
smile and try to look sage as I
hoist tonnage onto my back and
sink slowly to the floor.
I'd like to say that, in the
gym, I enter into an endorphin-
induced trance during which I
contemplate theological ques-
tions or seek to unravel some
knotty talmudic problem. The
truth is my mind goes blank, ex-
cept for an occasional stabbing
pain that reminds me that I was
designed by God for less taxing
tasks.
Nonetheless, I am mindful
that Hillel, upon meeting some
of his students while walking to
the bathhouse, told them he was
on his way to perform a great
mitzvah since caring for our
bodies is a tribute to God, who
gave them to us.
Hillel's sage advice comforts
me, although I confess that as I
stand in the gym and sweat and
groan, I can't imagine that great
figure of faith bench-pressing.

inary charges at Bull Run and
posing in front of silent cannon
at Petersburg.
When I was 5, we stayed in
cabins near the Round Tops on
the actual Gettsysburg battle-
field. I was so frightened by a
huge statue of some general that
I cried throughout the night. My
father told me I was spooked by
the ghosts of Pickett's Charge.
There were dark nights when
my dad and I walked from the
Civil War era-Hilltop Hotel into
the small town of Harper's Fer-
ry. He wanted to trace the path
of John Brown's insurrection all
the way to the burned-out arse-
nal taken over by a U.S. colonel
named Robert E. Lee. We would
end up the next day in Charles
Town, W. Va., at the spot where
John Brown was hanged.
Multiple trips, to places from
various marches and military
campaigns culled from writings
and diaries studied by my father,
filled my childhood. Every once
in a while, we'd find a metal frag-
ment or the remnants of some-
thing we were sure was from a
Union or Confederate outpost.
We even had a friend, a gro-
cery-store clerk, who, with the
permission of farmers in south-
ern Maryland and Virginia,
spent his weekends digging for

artifacts. His basement was
without pool tables and storage;
instead, there were medical kits,
weapons, ammunition, uniforms
and belt buckles.
But none of this meant any-
thing Jewishly to our family.
There was never any fatherly
lecture about how Jews also
fought and died, or a monument
here or there to the Jews. The
closest came when we went to
a Reform temple near Fort
Sumter, S.C.
Then one day we pulled into
a small swimming area in Vir-
ginia. We were on our way to
Warrenton, in Fauquier Coun-
ty. This was an area of hard
marches and skirmishes, not a
long drive from Manassas where
the Battle of Bull Run was
fought. Dad had fire in his eyes
when he walked on land he con-
sidered hallowed. But what he
and his family saw one afternoon
brought not fire, but anger and
fear.
The swimming area was rec-
ommended to us by another Civ-
il War enthusiast. To get there,
we followed a tree-lined road off
the main highway. We didn't
have an air conditioner in our
car, so swimming at small, road-
side motels and community pools
was typically our treat for the
day.
There, staring out at us on
this road, was a huge sign that
clearly laid down the rules of
pool participation. It read, "Col-
oreds, Jews and dogs keep out,
you are not welcome here."
It was if the march of the
Army of the Potomac had been
forced to halt and then retreat.
The fun, the little kid in my fa-
ther, was bayoneted. Speechless,
he turned our car around and
drove us into Warrenton. But
wherever we went that day, it
seemed we saw Confederate
flags, some of them with sayings
on them like "Never," meaning
never surrender, and "Well nev-
er forget."
Years later, my dad told me it
was the first time he'd ever felt
different and scared. He re-
counted how the next day he
loaded us up in the car and head-
ed back north.
This happened one more time.
During a visit to Appomattox
Courthouse, the site of the Con-
federate surrender, we stopped
at a small restaurant. Sitting
down, we were being watched by
four men at the counter. There
was nothing unobvious about it.
When we finished and went out
to the parking lot, one of them
came out and told us to get "our
Yankee asses" out of there.
It's good to see the interest
people now have in the Civil
War. As Ruth Littmann's article
CIVIL WAR page 12

FEBRUAR Y

Editor's Notebook

