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I finished wrapping the tefillin prayer gear strap around my hand when a velvet bag across the table in synagogue caught my eye. Most tallis bags are richly embroidered with floral motifs and metallic gold or silver lettering identifying the bag with the owner's name. My neighbor's bag was unusual. The lettering was bright orange.
Nostalgia overcame decorum and I said, "Day-Glo, huh?"
He stared at me blankly.
"Day-Glo?"
"You know...fluorescent paint..."
He just shrugged. My cultural references might as well have been in a foreign language. And the communication gap had nothing to do with taste in embroidery or psychedelic art.
I tried to bridge the culture chasm with a lame smile, "Oh well, I'm a child of the '60s."
"I'm in my 50s."
Mercifully, the first Kaddish recital ended our conversation at that point and brought us back to the morning prayers.
But, as I walked home, I waxed nostalgic and thought about what must be the most overchronicled generation of all time. A generation that continues to celebrate itself, like an aging rock star. "Baby Boomers" --- the generation that idolized Youth, has finally gone from social change to social media...to social security.
IT ALL STARTED WHEN I WAS A BOY
The '60s actually started in the '50s. No, that has nothing to do with my being math challenged. The counterculture of the '60s took root in the postwar baby boom.
The Beat Generation of the '50s was not so much a social movement as a bohemian literary movement. Even beat era music -- cool jazz -- only appealed to an elite. But the ripples of rebellion soon surged into a tidal wave when Elvis Presley wiggled his way onto TV screens across America. Adults wondered what would become of their gyrating children. Parents and kids were all shook up.
The early 1960s took the revolution wider and deeper. Charismatic leaders and folksinger icons stormed the postwar bourgeois Bastille, demanding equality, freedom, peace, love and music . . . and fun. Idealistic kids turned off by their elders' materialism found meaning in civil rights and peace marches.
Others turned inward. Spiritual fun seekers made the pilgrimage to San Francisco . . . with flowers in their hair. More serious seekers trekked East. From Ashrams to Zen, they experimented with varieties of religious experience. And that's not all they experimented with. Thousands were soon following the doctor's advice -- Dr. Timothy Leary -- turning on, tuning in and dropping out.
On one thing all agreed --- The Movement was a glorification of Youth. In what might be the most foolhardy slogan of all time, they proclaimed "Don't trust anyone over 30!"
Could it be mere coincidence that Peter Pan hit the stage in 1953? Did that set the stage for believing we might never get older? In 1968 Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test chronicled the acid-fueled cross-country quest of Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters in "Further" --- the psychedelic Day-Glo painted bus. That same year, the historian Theodore Roszak wrote: The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition.
Four decades later, in 2009, Roszak would write a sequel: The Making of an Elder Culture: Reflections on the Future of America's Most Audacious Generation.
Perhaps more reckless than audacious.
SPIRITUAL SALAD BAR
So what happened?
Many pundits have written about the differences between the '60s generation and Gen-X. I'm not convinced. True, much of the old fire and passion is gone. As the economy boomed -- then busted -- the Affluent Society sagged and collapsed. Many slipped down the ladder of Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs" from "Self Actualization" (Morality) to "Safety" (Personal and Financial Security).
But I don't see much new in the New Age. Spirituality has simply been co-opted and commercialized. Wade Clark Roof, author of Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion said the "religion section (in bookstores) is no longer there; it has been replaced by an expanded, diversified space --- beginning with angels and running through the Bible, gurus, prophecy, Buddhism, Catholicism, magic, paganism, Mary, Pentecostalism, ecospirituality, feminist theology and spirituality, and esoterica right on down to Zoroastrianism."
What we have today is a spiritual sushi salad bar. Just fill your tray and pay at the cashier.
THE FLOOD, THE DESERT AND THE MESSIAH
Fueling all of these movements is an ephemeral energy source called "Youth."
But Youth is more than an age bracket. Rabbi Zadok HaKohen Rabinowitz of Lublin (1823-1900) enjoys a unique position in Chassidic literature. His incisive and cogent writing on Kabbalistic concepts have made his works popular even outside the Chassidic world. His major work, Tzidkas HaTzaddik, offers flashes of insight and clarity into arcane mystical concepts.
Reb Zadok wrote that during the days of Youth, seething passion overwhelms a person, leading to sin. And that is what is called the Transgressions of Youth. This was manifested in the generation of the Flood. "For the inclination of a man is evil from his youth."
This same impulsive passion could be a force for good. This direction was manifested by the generation of the Exodus. "I remember the days of your youth [the young Jewish nation] when you followed Me into the desert, into a barren land."
And, quoting the Zohar, Reb Zadok said that both the generation of the Flood and the generation of the Redemption from Egypt were in fact the very same souls. Both manifested that selfsame characteristic—the impulsiveness of youth. First for evil, then for good.
"And the generation of the Messiah will be the third incarnation for those very same souls. ‘Your youth shall be renewed to like the eagle (Psalms 103:5).' And at that time will come the ultimate tikkun (mending of the world). For the final battle between good and evil will be fought within those very souls. The prime battleground will be internal. The struggle between licentious and idealistic youthful impulses will be a personal upheaval between the good and evil within each person.
And ultimately, Reb Zadok says, idealism will overcome licentiousness and bring the final Redemption.
I can think of no better way to define the nature of the generation that planted its flag at Woodstock. Youth's tidal wave of passion -- from revelry that would make Bacchus blush, to a passionate spiritual quest for Truth -- all surge within the same souls.
In 1969, a Wall St. Journal editorial deplored the depravity of the Woodstock festival:
"The so-called generation gap is not really so much a matter of age as it is a gap between more civilized and less civilized tastes. As such, it may be more serious, both culturally and politically, than it first appeared.
"Starting with the relatively small hippie movement several years ago, the drug-sex-rock-squalor ‘culture' now permeates colleges and high schools. When 300,000 or 400,000 young people, most apparently from middle-class homes, can gather at a single rock festival in New York State, it is plainly a phenomenon of considerable size and significance."
Forty years later in a Woodstock retrospective, the Journal took a surprisingly kinder view --- even recognizing some spirituality:
"The 1969 Woodstock festival wasn't held in Woodstock, N.Y., but in a dairy-farming hamlet 43 miles away with the evocative name of Bethel. On the 40th anniversary of what has clearly become a milestone in American cultural history, there is a surprising resonance between the meanings we take from Woodstock and Bethel as mentioned in the Bible.
Bethel first appears in Genesis as the place in Canaan where Jacob dreams of a stairway to heaven with 'messengers of G od . . . going up and coming down it.' This resonates with the notion of Woodstock as a vision of ideal community, where all may enjoy total freedom because all are committed to peace, love and harmony.
"The second mention is in 1 Kings, where Bethel is one of two sites where the ruler Jeroboam corrupts his people by erecting a shrine to the Golden Calf. To less starry-eyed observers of Woodstock, this reference evokes a nightmare vision of human beings given over to self-indulgence, debauchery and destruction.
"Which is the true picture? ...Woodstock...was neither all dream nor all nightmare. It was both."
Precisely. It was -- and still is -- both dream and nightmare. Can you ask for a clearer sign that the times they are a-changing than the Uncle Sam's Postal Service issuing a 50th anniversary Woodstock commemorative stamp?
And, you guessed it, the stamp is in in Day-Glo colors.
Can the Redemption be far behind?
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Previously:
• Dare to Care
• Lies Big and Small
• Shmooze Control
• Rhino Attack
• Word War 3rd
• Brain Juice
• The Art of the Kibitz
• What Color Is English?
• A Waste of Time
• He whose laugh lasts, laughs blessed
• Seeing the Light
• Unquote
• Save the Jews from the 'Days of Awe'
• Truthgate
• In the Scheme of Things
• Funny, It's Not
• Ready, Aim, Pray!
• Time Whorf
• Fathers Days
• The Elephant in The Kids' Room
• Beware the Ice of March
• The Theory of Negativity
• Truth Ache
• Holy Humor
• CAUTION: Joking Hazard
• Kludge Fixtures
• Canditedium: Just don't call me disinterested
• In Sanity: How Members of the Tribe do craziness
• You gotta like a guy who can 'feel or act' another's feelings in the mind's muscles --- still …
• The World of Words is Changing --- OY! What's a Jew to do?
• Unruly: Dos, Jews, and don'ts
• 'Noodging' Is Sacred
• Manipulated or Convinced?
• Lost in Translation
• Holy Tongue