Years ago — on a lark — I took the role as the rabbi in a community production of "Fiddler on the Roof." I didn't have time to grow a beard, so my friend Richard Felt fashioned a phony one and stuck it to my face with a goo called "spirit gum."
As I went about my role on stage — blessing marriages, blessing sewing machines, leaving prayers here and there — I realized that the rabbi in the town of Anatevka was spreading his own style of "spirit gum" — a glue that kept the tiny community stuck together. In a sense, the musical got it wrong. It wasn't "tradition" that bound the people as one; it was the bonding that only comes through a spiritual source.
They were all joined at the heart by heavenly "spirit gum."
The Kabbalah, the Jewish holy book beloved by movie stars (and probably that old rabbi), says life is a process of mending, blending and spiritual bonding. In "Fiddler," I realized that was true.
Such thoughts surfaced again last week as I followed the Library of Congress symposium on Joseph Smith. In my lifetime, I've watched Joseph Smith's name go from ridicule to respect, from rebuke to reverence. It's been an amazing transformation. Secular scholars today marvel at Joseph's accomplishments. Harold Bloom, America's intellectual in residence, speaks of his charismatic personality. Non-LDS scholars at the symposium spoke of his genius and revolutionary thinking. Robert V. Remini of the University of Illinois called him "strange and different."
It was enlightening to listen to them all.
Yet, it seemed to me, only the LDS scholars could actually sensed the "spirit gum" — at least the LDS version of it.
What bonded the early LDS Saints and drove many to their deaths in the desert wasn't Joseph's charisma or genius or thinking. What kept them attached to him was the glue of divinity, of spirit — a solder sturdier than steel.
I remembered a religious conference where a secular scholar claimed that God was merely a "theological construction." An old minister responded. "Perhaps, but I can't imagine Christian martyrs singing in the flames for a 'theological construction.' "
"The living God," wrote Arthur Vogel, "is related to abstract thinking as fire is related to paper."
So it was with Joseph Smith 200 years ago. So it is in Washington, D.C., in 2005.
Years ago I spoke with Truman Madsen about such things. He seemed to feel that when secular souls examine religion they often get everything but the essence. Like coroners performing an autopsy, they see it all except the "elan vital" — the vital force inside of it.
Thankfully, there were people at the Joseph Smith symposium to tap that LDS elan. Like the old rabbi in "Fiddler," they supplied the "spirit gum." They showed that even a dry-eyed, scholarly symposium can be a conduit for the spirit.
In "Fiddler," Motel the Tailor finally gets his new sewing machine and asks the old rabbi over to give it a blessing. "Rabbi," he says, "is there a blessing for a sewing machine?"
The old man smiles and nods. "Yes," he says. "There is a blessing for everything."
For men and women like the rabbi, blessings and prayers — "spirit gum" — are what keep the world from flying apart.
E-mail: jerjohn@desnews.com