Rose, Rosen, Rosenberg

This morning I met with my good friend Jehudi and his wife, Iris. I don't get to see them that often as they live in Germany, so any opportunity to sit down with them and catch up is welcome.

Jehudi has recently launched an international program called the 'good rose' which entails handing a lovely little rose to someone as a gesture of goodwill, appreciation, peace and love.

Jehudi has given out thousands of these roses (he makes them in the Far East), and is now making them available worldwide at cost to promote world friendship. I am one of his many friends helping out in this worthy project.

During our coffee, he suddenly blurted out "Rose, Rosen, Rosenberg". As it happens, another friend of his, Sam Rosen, is also involved in the 'good rose' project. But what Jehudi didn't know is that this is the second Rose, Rosen, Rosenberg team in my life.

The first was back in grade 1 (Hillel Academy, Ottawa, 1957), when I joined my fellow classmates Dave (David) Rose and Frankie (Frank) Rosen to form an invincible soccer trio. All through grades one and two, whenever the three of us played on the same side, the rival team was doomed. We passed, we shot, we scored! We were seven-year old soccer terrors.

Our success and fame, alas, were short-lived. In the third grade, a new Israeli pupil, Naftali Malamud, joined our class. At recess, he showed us what any eight-year-old Israeli boy can do – play real Soccer! He nimbly outfooted us at every turn and put the Rose-Rosen-Rosenberg trio to terrible shame. Our only recourse was going back to playing Canadian football (we never did teach Naftali the rule…).

Why I live in Israel

I grew up in a small city in Canada (Ottawa) in the 1950s and 1960s. There were only about 5000 Jews in a city of about 250,000. I went to a private Hebrew day school where we spent almost half the day praying and learning religion. When we stepped out of the school onto York Street, other children would taunt us, and on occasion throw stones at us. We were not allowed to sing Christmas caroles, although I recently learned that my younger sister snuck out of the house every December to help the neighbours decorate their tree. We were brought up to be separate.
I subsequently attended an excellent public high school (Hillcrest), where there were only forty or fifty Jewish students among 1,800. Many students had never seen a Jew before, and some had trouble believing that I could be one (or as my next door neighbour once asked me, "How could you be such nice neighbours, yet you killed Jesus?"). My best friend at school once told me that I was not welcome at his home anymore as his parents (of Scottish descent) had discovered that I was Jewish.
Being Jewish in Canada means being different. The moment I landed in Israel, I came to a place where everyone was the same 'different'. I no longer had to attend synagogue in order preserve my Jewish identity. So I could go to synagogue whenever I feel like it (which is rarely). I can keep kosher because I feel like it. Nobody will doubt that I am Jewish if I don't.
My children speak Ivrit from infanthood. To have a whole country of people speaking a resurrected Biblical language that is thousands of years old is a miracle in itself. So is visiting the old city of Jerusalem, the Sea of Galilee, and the Dead Sea.
Don't get me wrong. I love Canada. I just never felt truly at home there.
Here I do.

I see you've gone and changed your name again...

"I see you've gone and changed your name again…"
-Leonard Cohen

Names are difficult to remember. This is not only because we are more interested in having people remember our names than we are in remembering others' names. As one of the heroes of my youth, Dale Carnegie pointed out, a person's name has little to do with the person. When we are born, our parents pick a name they fancy. By the time we can read write and date, we are stuck' with our given names, whether or not we happen to like them.

My parents decided to name me Melvyn. No regular name for their first born son. They couldn't even have gone for Melvin, that would have been mundane. As with East European Jews, my Hebrew name is the name of a deceased family member, in my instance, Elimelech (or "Mailach”) in memory of my paternal grandfather.

By the time I started Hillcrest High School in 1964, my name had shortened to Mel, a considerable improvement, and with some brief intermissions, it is still the name I have used for over forty years.

When I came to Israel in 1969, the folks at the Kibbutz 'christened' me with the more common name of Yossi. It didn't stick. I then tried 'Eli', another common Israeli name, and a short form of Elimelech. But when people called me by my new name, I didn’t turn around. Back to Mel.

Nowadays with the advent of the internet, having an uncommon name is a distinct advantage. I am now corresponding with an old high school colleague, Terry Bura, who looked me up over the internet. If you google Mel Rosenberg, you find two characters. One is me. The other is Mel Rosenberg, a fictional mayor in the novels of Anne Roiphe. Not much competition, given that that other Mel Rosenberg doesn't answer e-mails. Since my books and articles are under "Mel Rosenberg", the only time you'll find me under "Melvyn Rosenberg" is on my patents (need real names there).

Terry Bura is not a common name. Neither is Hani Shukrallah. Hani was an Egyptian who studied with us at Hillcrest High School. We had animated debates (an understatement) on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He was extremely eloquent. Still, I was astonished to hear from Terry that Hani went on to become the managing editor of El Aharam. I'm trying to track him down (can anyone help?) hoping that we can establish some rapport now that peace talks are underway.

So if your folks decided to call you John or Peter, and your family name is Smith, chances are that people will have trouble finding you, unless your parents have been prescient enough to call you John332 or Edw@rd.

For me, it all turned out well in the end. After all, smell well doesn't rhyme with Peter, does it? And who was it that said "A Rosenberg by any other name would smell as sweet"?

Lightfoot

Gordon Lightfoot is one of my favorite songwriters. He makes a fellow proud to be a Canadian. Two of my favorite songs are "In the early morning rain" and "Affair on 8th Avenue."
"In the early morning rain" is the classical song of getting stuck, somewhere, anywhere, emotionally or physically (or both). The guy in the song may be somewhat of a broke hobo, but it speaks to us all.
When I was a teenager, flying was extremely expensive. Flying from Canada to continental Europe cost a fortune, because of the IATA monopoly, to get a cheaper fare one had to fly Icelandic Airways to Iceland, and from there with Loftleider (have I spelt that right?) to Luxembourg. Jim Shalom and I did that once, but that's another story.

Within North America, flight was also expensive, but there were discounted standby fares for students. Which meant that you waited until the very last minute, and if the plane wasn't full, they would let the scruffy students aboard. However, if a previous plane had been delayed or cancelled (and with the Canadian weather this happens not infrequently in winter), dozens of adults with full fare would shove you aside and you would end up getting to spend the night at Dorval or some other airport.

"This old airport's got me down, it's no earthly use to me. 'Cause I'm stuck here on the ground, cold and drunk as I can be"

In the summer of 1969, as I mentioned in my previous blog, Jim and I were visiting Camp Galil in Pennsylvania when Don Kelman came down with appendicitis. I was asked to replace him, went back to Ottawa, packed, and travelled to Dorval or Mirabel (can't remember) for a flight to Philadelphia. The guy at US customs asked me if I was flying to the States to work. "I'm going to be a camp counsellor", I told him. "Are you going to make any money?" he asked. "Yes, I proudly said, fifty dollars." "Well then, young man, you can't enter our United States without a work permit," he responded. Oy vey! What a jerk I was. I never boarded that plane.

I'm a sucker for a lot of Lightfoot tunes, but my other favorite is a song about perfume, titled "Affair on 8th Avenue".

The perfume that she wore was from some little store

On the down side of town

But it lingered on long after she'd gone
I remember it well…

Kind of says it all, doesn't it? Odors can stick in our mind for decades, and remind us of otherwise long-forgotten experiences from our distant youth. For me, it's the smell of autumn in the air while, as a young child, I throw the football around with my Father or friends.
What's your best smell memory? Let me know...

Frank Parkinson

It is the early summer of 1959. Ottawa. The crocuses have blossomed.
I have just completed my first year's study of piano with the formidable Sandra Coupal (I am glad to see there is now a prize given in her memor each year). She is a stern, but excellent teacher of classical piano on Daly Street. I am one of her better young first year students, and am elected to play God Save the Queen at the yearly concert. My other piece is Clowns by Kabalevsky. I can still hum the tune.
After months of practice and preparation, the day of the concert arrives. The students are catatonic. Like gymnasts, we stick our hands into powder, to keep the sweat from causing our fingers to slip. I can still remember how nervous I was.
The concerts take place at the cavernous Academic Hall. It seems to me like there were five hundred people in the audience (more like 150 according to my parents). I finish my pieces thankfully, and can lean back and listen to the others. Helen Fields was good. But the best of all was another first year student, who was about sixteen at the time.
His name was Frank Parkinson, and he was awesome. I can't remember the piece he played, but it was daunting for any first year student of any age.
Two years later, another concert at Academic Hall. I can't remember the pieces I played, but I recall Frank's performance like it was yesterday. He played Rhapsody in Blue for two pianos, accompanied by our teacher, Sandra Coupal. It was awesome. Frank blew the audience away. Gershwin was bopping in his grave. It was clear to all of us that Frank was on his way to becoming an international musical
phenomenon.
Where did Frank go from there? I have no idea. He disappeared. The very next day he stopped playing the piano. As it turned out, Frank's dream was to play Gershwin's masterpiece. He did, and that was that.
I have no idea what mountains he has climbed since. But I remember his remarkable tale to this very day.

Passover, Easter, Judaism, Christianity

There is something special about starting one's blog on Passover. Passover is the holiday of starting afresh, the Jewish people leaving Egypt and finding their freedom in the Holy Land. This is essentially what happened to me when I left Canada in 1969. In Canada, your 'Jewishness' is defined by the Jewish community (which synagogue you attend, which Jewish school you attend) and by the non-Jewish community. In a small place like Ottawa in the 1950s and 1960s (about 250,000 people, with only 5,000 Jews) I encountered a lot of antisemitism, including people who had never met a Jew in their entire life. Antisemitism for me included having rocks thrown at you, being beat up, having a friend ask "How could you be Jewish if you're such a nice kid?", and most poignantly, being told by my best friend in high school that I was no longer welcome to visit their house, as his parents found out I was Jewish. There was also the following question asked by a neighbour of ours, whom I had babysat for years as a child: "How come you are such nice people, yet you killed Jesus?". I don't want to get involved in the question of who killed Jesus, as there is another Mel who thinks he knows all the answers to this question. But, other Mel, it was 2000 years ago, nobody I or you know was around at the time.

Back to Passover. Who knows whether the Israelites were in Egypt, whether they wandered around for forty years, and how they received the ten commandments and entered the Promised Land. Is it all that important to 'know' what cannot be known? But like millions of Christians and Jews around the world, I was brought up on these stories and I love them. I don't spend too much time pondering what actually happened. But anyone coming to visit me in Israel can visit the Jordan river, which is not "deep and wide" nor "chilly and cold", but rather a slowly meandering creek. In Canada, it wouldn't even merit a name.

Growing up as a semi-observant Jewish kid in Ottawa, we were not allowed to read the New Testament, learn about Christianity (or evolution), sing Christmas caroles (I once almost got thrown out of class for refusing to sing Christmas songs in Latin). How myopic in retrospect. The older I get, the clearer it becomes that Christianity and Judaism are practically the same religion. People with anti-semitic tendencies should remember that Jesus was a Jew, followed Jewish traditions, and preached among Jews. He never met a Christian his whole life. He celebrated the Jewish New Year, fasted on Yom Kippur, and I suppose he was circumcised according to Jewish traditions. As a boy, he played with Jewish kids.

My soul mate in Canada is Chris McCulloch. I will dedicate at least an entire post to this remarkable guy. He changed my life. While on sabbatical at the University of Toronto almost twenty years ago, Chris invited my wife to Easter mass. I wouldn't go , but my wife, having grown up in Israel and free of the teachings of Canadian rabbis, or fear of assimilation, went and enjoyed herself. Chris and I spent a lot of time talking about religion. It turns out that Christians are essentially people who believe the same basic things we Jews do, but have evolved some analogous rituals, observe a similar Sabbath on the next day, and celebrate Easter instead of Passover. Christians think that Jesus is the son of God, and will return someday. That's fine with me. But because I grew up in a Jewish household, I think that he was a rabbi. I don't know anyone in the living world who knows the answer to this one. So the point I'm trying to make is that people should live and let live. If believing in God makes you a better human being, great. If going to church or synagogue makes you a more benevolent person, wonderful. If celebrating Easter or Passover makes you a generous and loving mortal, wonderful. For me, that's what it's all about. By the time every one of us finds out if there really is a supreme being and/or an afterlife, it may be too late. So my recipe for all you Christians and Jews who have very similar beliefs and may or may not know it, is as follows: Live a good life according to the teachings of Jesus and Hillel. Treat thy neighbor well. Do good deeds. And when you die, one of two things will have happened. Either you'll have lived a decent and worthy life, without the angst of having gone against your upbringing, and will be justly rewarded by the Supreme Being, or you'll have to settle with the reward of having had a rewarding life. But to quote that song from Blood, Sweat and Tears, "I'll never know by living, only my dying will tell..."

So I try to be a decent person (not always successfully, I am ready to admit), I go on eating my Passover matzos and shunning leavened bread for a week each year, not knowing whether there is any truth in the Exodus story, but loving it anyway, and reliving it every year, with parents and kids.
Happy holidays, friends.

MVFP (my very first post...)

Dear Friends,
This is my first post, so please be kind. First, I'd like to thank my manager, Alon Amit, for setting it up so quickly. What I hope to do here is discuss various aspects of my personal, scientific and musical life in the hope that it is of some interest or benefit to others.

I was born in Winnipeg and grew up in Ottawa, at a time when there were only six teams in the NHL, and the CFL was much more popular in Canada than American football. I loved going with my Dad to Landsdowne Park, becoming intoxicated with the cigar smoke, and watching the Roughriders clobber the Hamilton Tiger Cats. We used to go for lime-flavoured ice cream at some small dairy right in town, I wish I could remember its name.

I attended Hillcrest High School, the school was just a few years old when we started. For some reason, I declined to study music, and 'majored' in things like woodwork. I was a total disaster in woodwork and still can't hammer a nail into the wall without injuring the wall, the nail or my finger (hammer remains intact, though). I studied with some very talented kids, and wonder whether any went on to have illustrious careers.

I left Ottawa after grade thirteen (does that still exist anywhere?) and came to Israel for one year. That turned into a very long year, and with the exception of a year in Toronto on sabbatical, have lived here practically ever since.

Some seven years ago, during one of my visits abroad to talk about bad breath (what I do for a living, along with smelling people), I met some people from Ottawa at a tiny train station in England (somewhere near Chester, the name will come to me). They told me that Hillcrest had become one of the best high schools in Ontario. In grade nine I did really well on a math competition and received a slide rule (who remembers what that thing is?) from none other than Russ Jackson. Turns out, I had a lucky day, and bombed out in subsequent math competitions. I have really fond memories of a lot of teachers at that school, particularly Ken Crouch (I understand he won the prime minister's award, he deserves it) and E.W. Benoit who turned a bunch of science nerds into lit lovers.

I studied classical piano with Sandra Coupal on Daly Street. I was taking a piano lesson when John F. Kennedy was assasinated. Isn't it funny how you remember exactly where you were on that day, at that hour? Sandra was a great and demanding piano teacher, I learned recently that a prize is awarded in her name each year. Sandra had a fantastic student (I think his name was Frank Parkinson) who began piano at sixteen and was wonderfully talented. Within three years he learned to play "Rhapsody in Blue" and performed with our teacher at the concert she organized every two years at Academic Hall. The very next day, Frank stopped taking lessons. It turned out that he had this dream to play this particular piece, he succeeded, and that was that. This is one of the poignant stories of my youth. Where are you today, Frank? Have you gone back to the piano?

Anyway, this was (at the age of ten) my first exciting exposure to George Gershwin and jazz. Too bad I didn't follow up on it till I was twenty. I guess it was just one of those things.