Everybody is doing it today. Mullahs are telling the Arab “street” what it is – that the Jews and the U.S. (mainly Bush) are the forces of evil in the world – particularly because they have no shame and allow their women to dress half naked. Christians have their prayer breakfasts – even in the White House and other secular buildings of government. And Jews, like our group today in Temple Sinai of North Dade, listened to a presentation by Rabbi Kingsley on Reform Responsa. I embarrassed Carol by trying to question the Rabbi about how Rabbis were ordained before the formal organization were started in the 19th Century, first by Reform and then followed by Orthodox and Conservative seminaries that formalized and sort of froze practices so you could tell the differences among the Jewish streams of belief and practice. He remembered me from our Bible Study Class as I am wont to raise my hand and ask questions before we really get into the subjects for the day and declined to get involved. He had a lot of material on the questions that Rabbis tried to answer. And that brings me to the topic I thought of yesterday when we saw RENT in the Broward Performing Arts Center.
PUPPICKS OR PIPPICKS
RENT is a musical take off on Puccini’s La Boheme that is nothing like the classical opera I grew up with. The music in La Boheme is memorable but the shouting and screeching of RENT was instantly forgettable and hurt my ears. I could not understand the words that were sung but that may have been a function of the sound system compounded by my hearing aids.
Now, for those who do not know, there are cultural differences in pronunciation of certain words that distinguish the different places our Jewish ancestors came from in Europe. The word for “belly button” is pronounced either puppick or pippick depending on how grandma, grandpa or various uncles and aunts spoke about that part of the chicken or that part of the anatomy that is more and more exposed today. Nobody made any mention in the past when a man took off his shirt to go to work and you saw his belly button (puppick). Nowadays, the fashions decree that women wear their pants or short skirts low on their hips and their blouses short enough so that the belly button (pippick) is exposed.
In RENT, there was a lot of such female nudity – not only on stage but among the young women who passed us on their way to their seats in the theater. I am all for honoring the female form for what it is, a thing of beauty. But, somehow, some of the women who showed their umbilicals needn’t have bothered.