I don’t have any grand themes in mind tonight, so I’m just babble a few words about two disjointed topics. Earlier in the day I wrote these topics down, hoping to derive something meaningful to say about them. Unfortunately, I never found that meaning. But for lack of anything more meaningful, I’ll say something about them anyway.

1.) Jerry Lewis (the entertainer). I could never relate to his slapstick humor. Nor to his one-time buddy Dean Martin (although Mr. Lewis’ routines were a bit more palatable when played against a straight-man like Dino). Nor to the Telethons. I agree with the critics who say that Jerry Lewis degraded people with MD in order to raise funds for them. Whatever good the money that he raised did for people with MD was probably weighed off by the bad that he did for their self-image. The way that Mr. Lewis portrayed them and the public images that he created (MD victims as pathetic cripples) probably prevented some from getting jobs and being active in the world.

Mr. Lewis has had a bumpy life. He grew up in and around Newark, New Jersey (pretty near my part of the world) and flunked out of Irvington High School back in the early 40’s. He tried to commit suicide about 15 years ago. He had a heart attack that almost killed him. He nearly crippled himself in a backflip on stage in Las Vegas. Some guy was stalking him for a few years (can’t imagine what that guy was thinking . . . . ). His son had a pop band that put out a hit single called “Everybody Loves A Clown (So Why Don’t You)”. I guess it wasn’t easy being Jerry Lewis’s child. Mr. Lewis did have his “social concern” years in the 70s, during and after the Vietnam War. But one result of his “blue period” was a strange movie made in 1972 where Mr. Lewis plays a clown in Nazi Germany who dies in a gas chamber with a group of concentration camp children. Not surprisingly, the movie was never released.

Overall, I find Jerry Lewis to be a sad character, probably more in need of pity than the wheelchair children on his annual telethons. His overcharged attempts to make people laugh were clearly a defense mechanism designed to divert attention from his own pitiful condition. Ditto for his attempts to help the crippled. I’m not trying to insult Mr. Lewis. A lot of people did find him funny, and he arguably tried to help the less fortunate. Deep inside he probably did and does have a heart. So I honestly feel sorry for him. Which is exactly what he doesn’t want. Well, sorry Jerry. Consider this a sympathy blogathon for you.

2.) Maimonides. Another Jew (like Jerry). I don’t know too much about the good rabbi from 12th Century Muslim Spain. But I do know he was one of the great ones. He was a bit of a neo-Platonist philosopher in addition to being a theologian and Jewish scholar. His emphasis on the use of reason in seeking God, and his trust in the abilities of the human mind, were clearly good things. He didn’t bind himself within the usual rigors of Jewish Talmudic scholarship; he was willing to try some fresh approaches in the search for holiness and ultimate meaning.

But the blessed rabbi had little time for mysticism. In a way that was good; he didn’t get obsessed by “pop mysticism”, including witchcraft, astrology, mythology and magic. But there is something more to mysticism than that, something ultimately irrational but not anti-rational, something that lies deep within us. I think that THAT is the source where religion and faith ultimately come from. The rational can only get us so far (although it is worth every inch that it takes us). Ultimately, faith is a matter of “the dark night of the soul”, as fellow Spaniard John of the Cross (a Catholic mystic from the 16th Century) realized. Perhaps Maimonides also eventually saw this, as his contemplative reflections on the Songs of Solomon (Song of Songs) might indicate. As someone said, religious faith without intellect and reason is mere superstition, and reason without religious faith is . . . . . well, not good either.