Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Straight to Hell

Research has taken me to some unsual places: a gay cruising park in Jerusalem, an institute for physics research in Berlin, a Cantonese class in Chinatown, a Communist bookstore off Fifth Avenue. But last weekend was a first: a research trip to hell.

First, a little background. I'm starting a new novel that features a number of evangelical Christians as main characters. The past couple of weeks I've done some digging to learn more about evangelical communities and what makes them tick. My great worry with this book is that I'll only portray these people satirically or superficially, because I know so little about them, and I'd really like to get at a deeper, more human rendering.

To that end, I've been doing some reading on the evangelical movement and keeping my eye out for anything related to it in the media. Then last week, an article on "Hell Houses" happened to catch my eye.

Halloween is not a very popular holiday among evangelicals (nor among religious Jews either) because of its pagan origins (though the Christmas tree has pagan origins too) and its association with witches and the like. As an alternative to staged haunted houses for Halloween, churches have begun organizing "hell houses," which feature the potrayal of various sins. On your tour of a hell house, you're likely to encounter a suicide or two (big no-no), a date rape, some drugs, STD's, a gay wedding, and most certainly, a very bloody abortion.

To set up your own hell house, the best way to go about it is to pay $300 for a hell house kit from Pastor Keenan Roberts. His handy manual will give you tips on everything from sound effects, staging, dialogue, to how to simulate an aborted child using meat products. For an extra $45 bucks a pop, you can purchase DVDs of various scenes that particularly interest you.

I was wondering how I would ever get to see one of these houses, when I learned that there was one available right here in this den of sin where I live. A local theater company, Les Freres Corbusier, has decided to stage an authentic haunted house in Dumbo. They've paid their $300, assembled the house according to official kit instructions, and stuck to the original text as provided by the good pastor. There was no choice for me. I had to go to hell.

My tour of hell house began with greetings from a devil dressed in makeup that resembled one of the bad guys from Star Wars. Mr. Devil took us to our first tableau, a rave at which a young woman takes a drug and passes out on the floor, at which point, a man yells, "She's out! Let's rape her!" (Why is it that tasteful art and evangelical Christianity are such unlikely bedfellows?) Other sins included a spectacularly bloody abortion scene, with the red stuff spurting from the womb of a hapless cheerleader. Tools included a rather nasty looking pair of forceps and a vacuum cleaner with a large hose. We also entered a womb where an actor sucking her thumb and cooing, "Gurgle, gurgle" was plucked from the scene by two giant wooden beams covered in aluminum foil. One of my favorite parts was the hallway of sinners, which included a Muslim terrorist, a pothead, and (incongruously) an effete man in a tuxedo warbling show tunes to his heart's content.

In case you were worried, at the end of the tour, we were all saved from Satan by an angel who took us to a white room where Jesus himself offered us salvation. (My friend who came with me was more interested in Jesus's chest hair.) Then we were led to a Christian hoedown, with folk music, powdered donuts, and watery punch.

Perhaps the scariest thing of all about Hell House is that Pastor Roberts claims it has a 33% success rate in converting people to the faith.

Monday, October 02, 2006

Thoughts on Yom Kippur

Yom Kippur may just be the most literary of Jewish holidays. Yes, there's Simchat Torah, a celebration dedicated the five books of Moses, but most of the Simchat Torah festivities are marked by drinking, singing, and dancing rather than an exploration of the words on the page. (If you ever want to see Orthodox boys gone wild, visit a synagogue on the eve of Simchat Torah.)

Yom Kippur, by contrast, is a day dedicated to the brain, and especially to words. It's a day to remove yourself from everyday concerns like eating or drinking or working or getting dressed up in your fanciest clothes (which is why you'll see Jews in suits with tennis shoes). And it's a day to reflect on stories of atonement and loss. The Yom Kippur service is filled with stories of martyrdom from the days of the first rabbis down to the Holocaust and the founding of Israel. It's also filled with stories of the high priests purifying their bodies and minds to atone for the sins of their people.

One of the creepiest of these stories is that of Aaron, the first high priest, brother of Moses, (yes, my namesake), whose two sons died on the spot for daring to enter the holiest part of the temple without God's permission. The Torah dispenses with them in half a sentence.

I'm also fascinated by an explanation I once heard for why the story of how the high priests used to prepare for Yom Kippur is filled with such drama. During the late years of the Second Temple, the post of High Priest was sold to the highest bidder, often to men who were far from holy and sometimes completely ignorant of religious practice. And yet on Yom Kippur this so-called High Priest had to learn how represent the entire community of Hebrews to God and to carry out the rituals without one mistake.

One of my favorite parts of the service is a recounting of a prophecy by Isaiah, in which he talks about people who went through the rituals of fasting and mourning but without reflecting on the meaning behind those rituals. "Is this the kind of fast that God wants?" Isaiah demands. (I'm paraphrasing here.)

These three stories illustrate how difficult faith was and is. There's a tendency among religious fanatics to think nostalgically of the good old days from the Bible, and to see our own time as one of horrific iniquity. They wish we could behave more like the characters of the Bible, in a time when questions of gay marriage or legalizing abortion didn't exist.

Yes, those were the good old days all right, when upstanding men like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob engaged in polygamy, kept slaves, cheated, lied, and swindled. In our time, we believe that each person should have a free choice about the kind of sexual relationship he or she wants to have, as long as that choice doesn't interfere with someone else's choice. But, no, it was far better in the old days, when women were bartered like cattle.

At the same time, we shouldn't indulge ourselves in the illusion that we are entirely more enlightened than we used to be. Isaiah's harangue about people who go through the motions of faith still rings true to us today for a reason. Sure, it's easy to point out the flaws of any number of characters from the Bible. But how many of us have the courage Abraham had, to abandon his homeland, his family, and the beliefs he'd been brought up with, in order to follow his ideals?

I don't have that kind of courage, and lately, I don't have that kind of faith, either. This morning, as I sat in synagogue, and read responsively, and stood, and sat, and even reflected, I found my attention drifting out the windows, at boats gliding across the river, and the miracle of a helicopter swooping down on Manhattan. And just outside of the large room where we prayed and wept as our stomachs rumbled, three construction workers stretched themselves out in the sun and enjoyed their lunch.