Sunday, July 22nd, 2001

Lori Michaels Update

Ex-Vivid girl Lori Michaels writes: Hey Luke, So you've got 20 hours extra each week now. Cool, now maybe you'll have time to get me behind that curtain like you always promise. hehe I was reading your last few posts from the week and saw the stuff about those whore houses out there in Vegas. I just want your readers to know they don't have to waste their money in those places. Ol' May has a trailer behind the strip club at highway xx and xx here in Kansas. Kind of hate to say the name and routes here in public. She only charges $40 for the girls to give you a blowjob and someone told me it is $80 for everything. It's been around for over 30 years now and I hear tell from the old farmers around here that there are several others, but I don't know there wareabouts.

Now who would you rather be with? Some porn chick or an unfeathered 18 year old country girl from Kansas. I thought it was bull s--- until I was going to Topeka one day with someone who told me about it. I told them they were full of it, and on the way back they turned off and pulled into old Mays. They knocked at the door and May greeted us. He told her that he was telling me about her trailer and that I didn't believe them. She looked at me and said "Honey, if you want to make some good money just let me know. I'll bet that someone like you could make $100 a day working for me" There were two girls sitting across from her on the couch, and she was counting out their earnings for the day. Yep, a girl could get rich back here in Kansas working at Ol' Mays. Oh, and those two girls did look 18 and were drop dead knockouts. I sure know where I would go if I was a man and wanted to get laid. Straight to old Mays at highway xx and xx behind the strip club. Just drive thru the gates on the east end of May's house and knock on the trailer door just behind the house.

You have a good one. I'm going to bed right after I email this Tom Dashel ( His first name might be Dick, can't remember ) and tell him what a dumb asshole I think he is. Damn near as stupid as Gore. No, no one could be that stupid, but damn close. Oh yea, enjoy that tax refund and remember "You can buy a new muffler and exhaust pipe with it But, if you drive an old chevy like me, then you can buy a new muffler, a new exhaust pipe, a new water hose, a water pump, a new radiator, and a new starter with your tax refund. See, I went to the auto store to see what my $300 would by. I didn't watch this asshole on TV tell me what it would buy. See, that's how you get f---ed. Listen to a democrate and you get f---ed. Think for yourself and you get your money's worth. If you want, I'll send you the phone number for ORileys Auto Parts here in Kansas so those California liberals can call and get the right prices.

The Shady Business Of Porn

Director David Aaron Clark writes on RAME for the first time in five months: "The S.F. Valley porn industry is 99 percent thieves and snake-oil salesmen -- from the most supposedly hoity-toity companies who don't care what kind of crap they package to the bottom-feeders who rip-off performers, directors, producers and the public. To say that vice industries attract such folk doesn't even excuse it -- I don't think I've met a drug dealer in my lifetime as mercilessly dishonest and manipulative as your average porn magnate."

Whoriental Sex Academy 2

Critic Roger Pipe writes on RAME: So, what's the key to a great porn sequel? All right, stop laughing. Let's assume for a minute that there is such a thing as a good porn sequel. I know, it's like asking what color a unicorn's eyes might have been. First, you need to find a great adult script writers. All right, you're doing it again. Let's just assume for a minute that there is such a thing as a decent porn script writer and that he isn't the guy writing this review. Cutting through all the bull s---, I say all you need for a successful porn sequel is to remember what you did right the first time. Beyond Alex Ladd's brilliant hiring practices, he did many things well with the first Whoriental Sex Academy. First, he cast some great looking Asian babes. Then he made sure that the sex was well shot. (Something he does extremely well.) Finally, he threw in one of porn's surest things, short plaid skirts. If he does the same thing with this one, there is no reason to expect anything less than another arousing romp around the hottest sorority on campus.

David Aaron Clark writes: Ah, watch it, chum. Even knowing you haven't seen any of my recent writer/director work, I assume you've seen M. Raven's UNDERWORLD & BEAST -- I know the latter was too outre for you sex-wise, but that's your cup of conservatism. Check out UPHORIA, Armstrong's next big feature for Wicked, penned by the guy writing this response, as well. Sure, 99 percent of adult scripts are crap, but then I've heard such said about internet porn reviewers, too. And that's not a fair generalization, either.

Roger Pipe responds: David.... I haven't seen your recent work because whatever company is releasing it isn't sending it my way... That said, I have seen Underword and the Beast and many other good porn scripts. I enjoyed them, though sexually.......not enough heat, too much 'style.' In case you missed it......the comment was a slam was on the writer of THIS movie.....who is, again in case you missed it...ME!!!!! f---, I can't even make fun of myself without people getting up in arms...what has this world come to.

Pray For The Great Domonique Simone

Mike Mudd writes on RAME: I've heard Dominique is having a lot of personal problems as of late. Too many problems for one person to handle. I hope and pray she can pull herself through these problems and her friends in the industry don't abandone her. Hopefully she can once again reclaim her well earned title as the Greatest Black Adult Actress of all time. Dominique, our thoughts and prayers are with you. ;-) HANG IN THERE

Larry Mantle's AirTalk

Chupatinha writes on RAME: On Larry Mantle's Air Talk (KPCC 89.3 FM in LA, possibly distributed nationally), there was a frank, inteligent, adult discussion of the mainstreaming of Porn, the Bush Administration's positions and legal assaults on the industry (including a frank discussion of Seymore's fisting case) and the lawyer from the Free Speech coalition was able to say the following:

"Yes there is a decay in society today, illustrated by the fact that if I put a gun to a woman's head and blow her away on film it gets an 'R' rating and people will take their kids to see the movie but if I put my penis in her face and ejaculate there this is considered obscene. I find that situation obscene"

and

"You want evidence of the mainstreaming of Porn? Twenty years ago if you went and asked a bunch of college kids who their favorite porn star was they would either laugh and snicker or run away but now you would get an argument over the merits of Jenna Jameson (who regualarly appears on mainstream television entertainment shows) and Asia Carrera and not just from the males" at which point the moderator interjected "and they would even have favorite titles and scenes, yes?"

They also interviewed the French journalist [Emmanuelle Richard] who is questioning the sales figures for the industry who seemed to have a bit of a bias (although I believe her basic facts). All in all, the most balanced, non-histronic discussion of the subject I've ever heard on mainline media.

J.R. Carrington - Beware!

From BigDoggie.net: Last Night I got a surprise message in my Voice Mail from Adult Starlet JR. Carrington woes cell/pager number starts with a "7" and the last number ends in a "0", telling me that she was available for Private Shows that evening in my hometown. I returned her called earlier this morning but she did not answered so I left her a voice mail.

The next thing I get is a disturbing; harassing and annoying call were her bully hubby threatens to hurt and kill me. Boy did he got my Marine Corps face gear going when he attempted and thought he had scared me. Guys beware, her maniac husband is still traveling with her and any of you may be in for a surprise. I am positive JR and the person that provided her my number which was also wrong since I did not give them permission even if there wasn't any bad intentions to give out my personal information to a provider but boy can any of you imagine being in the middle of a Private Show and some crazy animal barges in?????

On another note, ZouLou unless you are her husband you are a really lucky fellow to have gotten the treatment you said she did to you that others haven't such as the BBBJ, Tea served and spilled twice within an hour and all the rest of the stuff.

Stripperfan writes on BigDoggie.net: I couldn't agree more. JR is certainly not a GFE. Don't be surprised Seth if you get another phone call from JR's husband. He reads this message board and gets furious if negative things are posted about her.

Why Doesn't Patrick Riley Answer Me?

Mick Cherokee writes on RAME: ive asked him a question twice and still no response.the question was Was ron jeremy in a movie called pina colada?

Porn critic Pat Riley replies: Just how much were you paying for me to do this research? Nothing? I thought not. Do you work for nothing?

Since I regard Ron as a fat ugly pig and a blot on humanity similar to Yassir Arafat who he resembles I have no personal interest in finding out if Ron was ever in a movie called Pina Colada. A brief look at the database shows no movie of that name. It's probably either: 1) a compilation 2) a rename of an existing movie Or, you have the name of the movie wrong.

Luke F-rd - The Biggest, Swingingest Dick in Shul

Chaim Amalek writes: I always wanted to be famous in shul [synagogue], especially as the "bad boy." Of course, that is not easy if one is jewish, as most of us are either bankers or doctors or dentists or lawyers or accountants - not the stuff of which menace is made. But YOU, YOU are a celebrity porno-journalist, with goyishe genes for good looks to boot! Now that you are (in)famous in your community, are the really hot young jewish chicks (humor me and pretend that they exist) dripping with lust to get the chance to mother/tame you? What was it like today in shul, as the Holy Ark was opened, exposing the torah for all to see - were the eyes of They who Bleed on Luke instead of Torah? Have women been slipping their phone numbers to you on small pieces of parchment?

What is it like being Luke F-rd these days? You know we who write you live for this, as we live through you and ONLY through you.

Luke replies: I'm afraid that there's a major misconception that Conservative shuls overflow with the hottest looking young women, who liberated from rigors of Orthodoxy, overflow with lovingkindness towards porn journalists. Alas, this is not true. I haven't heard from anyone yet who saw the Jerusalem Report piece. Not an email, not a mention, not in shul, not outside.

As for my remaining options within Jewish life. I realize that it comes down to tolerance vs rigor. All the places remaining in Los Angeles Jewish life that welcome me stress tolerance more than rigor of standards. But all the places that I respect the most, and most want to belong to, stress rigor of standards more than tolerance, and hence can't accept me. Almost all the people that I admire the most believe in rigor more than tolerance.

After shul today, I got into a vigorous discussion with two of the leading thinkers in Los Angeles non-orthodox Judaism on the historicity of the Torah. Are the stories in the Pentateuch, like the Exodus, historically accurate?

From my perspective, such a question is properly a question of historical research and not of faith. That God plays a role in Jewish history is a proper question of faith. That approximately three million Jews left Egypt in the Exodus about 3200 years ago is properly a question for historical research.

Whatever the research shows, however, the Torah is not moved. It is not affected as the moral document, as the shaper of Jewish religiosity.

I remember putatively orthodox Bible scholar James Kugel (from Bar Ilan and Harvard) telling a Modern Orthodox crowd that the challenges of Biblical scholarship about the traditional Mosaic authorship can't be easily dismissed, as many Orthodox claim. And that Orthodox Jews would be best of simply ignoring Bible scholarship. It's easier to live with one's head in the sand.

I approach my religion unwilling to give up either reality aka rationality and science and historical scholarship, or my religion and its chief ideals and practices.

I understand that most people are unable to hold on to both of these ideals. Those unwilling to give up reason will inevitably compromise their Judaism and move away from Jewish identity. Those who are unwilling to question their Judaism, will inevitably move towards irrelevance to modernity, like many Orthodox Jews and other highly religious people. That's why there are so few Orthodox Jews who are journalists, Bible scholars or professors in the humanities and social sciences.

Christianity adapts far better to modernity than either Judaism or Islam.

Chaim Amalek writes: Well, is there ANY branch of Judaism that contains significant numbers of sexually desireable and available women? Perhaps this is the Allmighty's way of imposing a genetic mechitza where a physical one does not exist. Even so, doesn't it feel better to be able to live as an intellectually honest jew who can challenge the "oral law" without fear of excommunication?

Luke replies: In many ways it feels better to be intellectually honest. Just why is it that the intellectually honest can't produce as thriving a community as the Orthodox?

Putative Marc writes: luke, why aren't you hanging out with emmanuelle richard and her husband matt welch? (who also has his own site, mattwelch.com) they seem to be best buds with another fella, ken layne (kenlayne.com) and all three seem to be quite mired in this online journalism business ... yet, i betcha you earn more dough in the dot-com game than all of them combined, not to mention all the notoriety of being Luke F-rd. it doesn't seem to matter, though, because based on emmanuelle's website they all seem to enjoy the beach, bar-B-Q's, etc. if i were you, i'd seek this bunch out for friendship in lieu of your recent shul expulsion (and the apparent lack of co-operation from teresa strasser or amy sohn ...).

Chaim Amalek writes: AGREED! And best of all, hot chicks tend to hang out with each other, so I am certain that she could set you up with a nice girl.

The World Of Goddess

Goddess writes on her site: I think it's one thing to view porn sites because you want to, but that annoying pop-up box on Tod-Hunter.Com cheeses me off. You're offered the option of viewing the site if you're legal age or the option of leaving the site. Regardless of which option you pick, you get a pop-up screen advertising porn sites. I think that totally sucks. I don't for one minute believe that kids accidentally stumble onto porn sites, but let's just say they did. If they are trying to leave the site, is it fair to subject them to offerings of even more porn sites? Get with it AVN, this is a lousy thing to do and it needs to be changed.

Goddess writes Luke: You have over 7000 hits a day to your site and yet it's always the same handful of people that post to your page? Interesting. I guess we're the "chosen ones" aka "the gluttons for punishment."

I'm having a *tremendously* difficult time coming up with a name for your mom's interview. After all, I want it to be "respectful." So far all I've come up with is, "Hey, Look! It's That PORNO GUY'S Goyim Mom!!" How 'bout doing me a favor and asking that handful of people who post to your site to help me out here...

Kathy Willets Update

Kathy Willets writes: Luke, first off I will be visiting Frisco on 7-23 to 7-26 through BODYMIRACLE , looking forward to meeting new friends, and some old ones as well. I will also be on COURT TV on 7-22 8-11PM. " The Secret History of the Other Hollywood". On 7-28, I will be in booth 900 at the Lifestyles Convention, this booth is for VIACREME, great product for those women who have a hard time climaxing, which is definitely not me! Now for the interview you want to do, e-mail with the day and time, sometime after the first of August, so I can continue to have faith in you.

Luke Gets Mail

Palash writes: Dear Mr. Ford: You might think this is crazy, but I think the sexiest porno starlet of all-time was Sue Nero, the busty Jewish brunette from the 1980's. I know she's not 'conventionally attractive' but no porno actress ever turned me on as much as her. Do you have any idea if she's even alive? Her 'work' is what porn should be all about, it was raw and dirty, she often f_cked the scuzziest, ugliest black men you ever saw. Last I heard she had retired in the early 1990's and became a full-time stripper. Any news on her? Does she have a 'fan club' or anything?

Porn star Ruby writes: Luke, Sorry, I get cranky when my face hurts, and that's when I vent, it doesn't happen often. Face pain is the worst pain. Sorry for cunting out on everyone, I shouldn't let those little things get to me. I'm off my pity-potty now!!! Ruby

Frank writes Luke: i hate to sound offensive to you, because i like you as a person and a writer, but the way I see it, you have no choice. Quit doing, or 'covering' porn, and be the religious person that you claim to be, or quit being the religious crusader you think you are, and be the best damn porn columnist around. If you can just choose one, your heart and soul will be much happier. I have already made amends, that I can believe in God and Jesus etc, and make porn and be a happy person, after all, Adam and Eve were but ass naked, weren't they? Your double life is killing you, and you know it. Nobody wants to hear you be a hippocrate Luke.

I wanted to tell you thanks for that article on Jews in Entertainment, growng up in catholic schools I never really knew too much about the Jewish culture, although most of my friends now are Jewish and teach me alot of things. Your article cut right through the BS and I feel like I have learned alot, and a lot of misconceptions of sterotypes have been cleared up. Albeit I hate to see you mix religion and porn, I did want to thank you for that article. A suggestion: Perhaps have a porn version and a religious platform version of your site, would make a lot of people happier and the people who are interested in you religious beliefs, as I am, will read the religious platform side as well.

Rumdar writes Luke: "Your hero didn't say much. I have had longer conversations with you and you are my hero:) I am involved in a wonderful relationship now. A girl named Boo. We have been in love for three days and have exchanged about 6 sentences. She is shy and I don't speak Thai. Don't you think all love affairs should be like ours.? Many times I believe, less is more."

Soh writes: I'm sorry to bother you, but I was wanting to know if there was a certain name for the new genre of porn where the females get spit on, smacked and insulted by the men during sex? I'm writing something and would like to catoragize it in genres.

Brian Kushner writes: Vicodan for a tooth pulling? Yeah right...She's a f---ing VIC ADDICT!!!

Lynne writes: I had an upper molar pulled a few weeks back and was given four days worth of Vicodin (16 tablets). I immediately gave half of them away, took a couple the first evening, took one the third afternoon, proceeded to sleep for twelve hours and gave the rest of them away. Some people have higher pain thresholds than others. Mine happens to be fairly high, courtesy of all the tattooing I've undergone. Men brag about how much pain they can stand. Women think that's an indication of stupidity, unless they're masochists, which many are. Next week I am having a root canal done and will probably be prescribed more Vicodin. I will probably give these away as well, especially since Luke no longer has a radio show and I don't have to keep painkillers in reserve to cope with his musical guests.

Rubee Tuesday writes: In response to Mr. Bowman's thoughtful views of Zupko's works(which i haven't seen) and Jim D's comparing him (facetiously?) to Sarte, it seems like Zupko is attempting to be the Pasolini of porn. I agree with Bowman that movies of this nature can have a negative effect on the viewer if they aren't emotionally equipped to handle the subject matter. But for me the most shocking, profoundly disturbing film I've ever seen was Pier Paulo Pasolini's Salo,(over 25 years old) based on the 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade. This movie had it all! Child rape, torture, defecation, corpophelia, necrophelia, mutilations, and murder. At the time, i failed to grasp the political viewpoint of this film, having a purely visceral response. I thought it was a vile, evil film! It still has a haunting effect on my mind 2 decades later. Pasolini was murdered for making this film! But he was a true artist, and was trying to convey an anti-fascist message. Perhaps if I saw it now, I would understand what he was trying to say. The difference between this film and porn is the sex was simulated and the purpose of the film wasn't to titillate, although it had that effect on the guy I saw it with which sickened me more than the film. The film is available now on dvd if you do a word search on Salo you can find it. I'm not recommending this film, but it is a true art film even though it is intensely difficult to watch.

Jesse writes: TALK IS EROTIC! Adult video producers can make their products much more erotic by getting the women to speak--explicitly and clearly. Don't drown them out with stupid music or make their voices inaudible. The men, on the other hand, don't need to chatter as much as they do now. Get the women to say what they feel, even use the C-word, which seems to be the last taboo word. Most intense would be to have them speak to the viewers, as if they're participating. Think of how much people pay for phone sex, where the talk isn't even explicit and there are no visuals.

Journalist Sheldon Teitelbaum

Sheldon Teitelbaum (sheli@earthlink.net), author of the July 30 Jerusalem Report article on Luke, writes: Thanks for your notes. Like the Brill Report, my policy is to admit errors immediately, apologize if need be and make amends if required. As I believe I told you, my operating philosophy when profiling people is that everyone has a mother. Hence you did not find mention in the Report piece of your having receiving tawdry blowjobs off camera. That said, however, you most certainly said that Nazism was your favorite type of porn -- I have it on tape. Must have been the lentil soup.

Anyway, to Chaimkeh and his compadres, I am not related to Fischel or to the Satmar Rebbe, not even to Benny Teitelbaum of Kol Yisrael. My Dad, like Mordecai, was a St. Urbain St. urchin from Montreal, and I grew up in the wastelands of Ville St. Laurent. I am married 20 years, I have three marvelous children, and when I'm not out wrecking lives I spend my time reading about submarines (put that in your Freudian pipe!). And who would be mealy mouthed enough to put down air-independent diesel engines and accoustic cladding? A bore? Really! But for those who are to damned lazy to run a google search on me, there's an added treat here -- straight from the Montreal Gazette. And if you can't believe the Gazette...

As for Mordecai, he very much was my own inspiration for a career in muckraking, as indeed that of one of my best friends, Scrabble Sam Orbaum of the Jerusalem Report, and I was crushed by his untimely passing. Apropos, my own reminiscence, as yet unpublished, Sam's, and some stuff I did for the LA Times and the Report on this major talent and otherwise cranky sonufabitch who, I don't think, cared if you had a mother -- he didn't speak to his own for 20 years.

By the way, this being tit for tat, ahem, can you or any of your readers tell me, on or off the record, about Cookie Orgad, who will be in the clink for the next 15 years or so for being the country's largest ectasy dealer (according to US Customs). Orgad was overheard in Nick Broomfield's Hollywood Madame documentary about Heidi. Also interested in Yehuda Alszeh (pronounced Alsheihk, if that helps), his erstwhile partner in beeperdom, if not crime.

Impure Wool Gatherings
By a Lifelong Mordecai Richler Fan

By Sheldon Teitelbaum

My first foreign assignment, in 1983, involved a trip back to my home town on behalf of the Jerusalem Post. From Montreal, it was but a two-hour jaunt through Quebec's Eastern Townships to the Lac Memphremagog, summer home of the hero of my youth and inspiration for a life in muckraking.

Having spent the previous evening soaking up the beer and atmosphere at Winnie's, [novelist] Mordecai Richler's favorite Montreal watering hole when not holed up in his London winter digs or his lakeside cottage, I turned up on his doorstep more than fashionably late even for a fellow scribe, still reeling from the previous night's bedspins.

Mordecai (although the grandson of a Hassidic scholar, he was adamant about dropping the "ch" from his moniker) took immediate umbrage when I asked whether he had ever considered living in Israel. The question seemed to infuriate him even more than my discovery, in mid-interview, that my tape recorder had jammed.

Some of his childhood friends from Habonim had settled on a kibbutz, and would figure in a subsequent travelogue called "This Year in Jerusalem," which I would eventually have the temerity to pan. And Richler himself was not immune to the conviction, quite common within that generation of Canadians who came of age just after the Second World War, that life must certainly more authentic elsewhere. But Mordecai preferred exile in Britain to homecoming in the fledgling Jewish homeland, which irked the late Israeli premiere Moshe Sharett no end when Richler took up a writer's residence in Mishkenot Shaananim in Jerusalem during the early '60s.

"This was my time, and this was my place," Mordecai was fond of saying of the post-war period and Montreal Jewish ghetto setting for such classics as "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz," "St. Urbain's Horsemen" and "Joshua Then and Now." It would have been sheer folly, he told me, to abandon it for a country he could never feel truly at home in. What he told Sharett when the latter retorted that only in Israel could a Jewish writer maintain his authenticity, I can only imagine. Suffice it to say that while he wrote mainly about Jews, and made no bones about his Jewishness, he bridled at being categorized as a Jewish writer, not only by Jews but by the French Quebecois press.

Of course, bridling was what Mordecai did best, a characteristic that, however fruitful from the literary perspective, did little to endear him to his fellow Montrealers, Jewish or French. I have a tape of a 1997 documentary about Richler produced for the CBC biographical series "Life and Times." In one scene, Richler appears as the featured speaker for Room 41 at his high school reunion in 1976. But his classmates from Baron Byng High, who like many Jewish Montrealers deeply resented his subsequent satirical attentions, give him short shrift. Some of them actually boo him off the stage.

I winced when I saw this the first time, and I winced again today when I gave the tape another spin upon learning of his death this week. Poor Mordecai. Interviewed on TV early during his 20-year sojourn, he was asked if he wanted to be accepted in Canada. "No," he said, "but it would be nice to be respected."

"In Canada," he complained, when someone asked him what he did, and he would say, "I'm a writer," they would say, "yes, but what do you do for a living?" In London, in contrast, he said, people recognized that writing could be an honorable craft that demanded a honest day's work."

They also recognized that it is the writer's lot, if not obligation, to upset the apple cart. Growing up -- and for years before I actually encountered his writing -- I gathered from discussions that stormed around me that few were as adept at this as Mordecai Richler. This immediately endeared him to me, and subsequent, memorably difficult encounters with my curmudgeonly fellow-Canadian failed to put me off of my hero worship.

It's not that Richler made writing respectable for those of us who would deign, in some small fashion, to follow his example. The Montreal Jewish community has certainly produced more than its share of literary luminaries, most notably Saul Bellow and Leonard Cohen. But some 50 years after Richler's graduation from Baron Byng, that brand of luminescence is still only dimly appreciated among people better known for their prowess in the needle trade or, for many of their progeny, the professions.

Montreal today is a town where punishing winters, an anemic economy, diminished national status, hardscrabble politics, depleted demographics and the still-living-memory of once pervasive anti-Semitism has made some of my "landsmen" every bit as flinty as New Englanders. Not surprisingly, many there still take a dim view of those of us inclined by nature and disposition to the otherwise ignoble craft of muckraking, especially when we turn our tills to our once common back yards.

As my favorite aunt, one of the smartest women I know, once conveyed to me in a letter, "You have a salty tongue, just like Richler. I am afraid you will find that no one likes to be on the receiving end of the kind of ridicule both of you are capable of. It is not endearing, and to some people, it is very scary."

Yes, it surely is. But as Cohen, another Montrealer who put down roots here in Southern California -- he owns a house in Crenshaw and another in the now-gentrified St. Lawrence Street neighborhood of Montreal -- once told me, "you never beat the rap."

We write about what we know, and what we know is often the stuff of our lives. But even the least talented among us realizes that it simply can't be done properly without an abiding sense of one's own absurdity. If you're going to make a living writing about the foibles of others, you'd best cultivate a keen sense of your own, and a sense of humor about anyone else's. Coming out of a dour, disapproving background and a broken, profoundly unhappy, family, Richler learned how to laugh, and later taught those of us who most needed a few pointers.

Richler's firebrand status, alas, made him the brunt of derision entirely devoid of the humor and outrage that lay at the heart of so much of his work. Many of the people who objected to him either within a Jewish community that felt betrayed or among the Quebecois Separatist elites he ridiculed probably never actually read his books. Had they done so, they might have observed that Richler always wrote least sparingly -- and to greatest comic effect -- about himself.

His last book, an as-yet unpublished memoir of his pool-playing days as a high school senior and prospective lay-about, is called "Snooker." And so we all find ourselves snookered by this latest twist of plot. Mordecai's untimely death deprives us of his nose-tweaking columns in Saturday Night magazine and the National Post, his periodic collections of essays guaranteed to set the tongues in the heads of Quebec's "tongue-trooper" language police wagging helplessly, and most sorrowfully, the wonderfully rich, mordant novels that made his reputation as our very own Dickens.

If life could only imitate art, I suppose I would spare Mordecai the indignity (if he hasn't already done so) of a traditional Montreal funeral, replete with the bleatings of rootless rabbis imported from Brooklyn, the procession from Paperman's Funeral Home to a bleak resting place on the West Island, and a week of smoked meat, white fish, Fairmount bagels, and other nosherai.

In his last novel, a truly magnificent jape called "Barney's Version," a man the memory-challenged protagonist is accused of murdering is inadvertently scooped up from a lake by one of those fire-fighting airplanes we bought from Quebec to quell our own brushfires, and dumped, unceremoniously, atop a mountain. It would be truly something if Richler's buddies from Winnie's and sundry other watering holes in the Townships and Soho could heist one of those planes and scoop him up from his Hearse and dump him on a mountain like some latter-day Ark.

The real trick, of course, would be to come up with the right sort of mountain. Just so long as it's not atop Mont Royale, that overblown lava mound that figures in Montreal mythology like some literary Olympus. One cross is quite enough for that mountain -- and for those hapless St. Urbain Street horsemen, pure-wool Quebecois, and assorted Anglo robber barons Mordecai immortalized in his writing -- to bear.

Dr. William Pierce

Chaim Amalek writes Luke: There are several key elements in the parsha shavout [found at Natvan.com] that are worth noting:

1.It introduces a slogan that many can agree with: "The jew are our misfortune". (Many is the gentile girl, her life destroyed through association with jewish porners, who can agree with that statement!)

2.The theme of a balance sheet for tallying up all that the jews have done, good and bad, in order to illustrate that the bad outweighs the good. (But why aren't other groups placed on the National Alliance Excel Spreadsheet?)

3.Characterization of goy bankers as "rich, deracinated capons." A capon is a castrated rooster. When was the last time you came across that word? Has it ever been uttered in a porn video? Luke, has expulsion from Bnai Hollywood turned you into a capon?

4. It is especially important for you to publish this in its entirety this week, as - thanks to your newly increased notoriety - this is the week that many an obnoxious Hollywood Jew sneaks a peak at your web site. IT WOULD BE VERY GOOD FOR THESE VERY JEWS TO FAMILIARIZE THEMSELVES WITH ALL OF THE ARGUMENTS CONTAINED IN THIS WEEK'S PIERCE ESSAY.

Lynne Finds Happiness In Her Identity as a Jew

Lynne (BDWLCL@aol.com) writes: Luke, unlike you, I cannot "choose" to be Jewish.

There seems to be something indelible about the Jewish cultural identity....expressed beautifully many years ago by the black woman waiting next to me in line at J.C. Penney as we took advantage of the post-Christmas Day sale bargains. Making conversation in that long line, I said, "I tell my family that, if they wait until the day after Christmas for their presents, I can get them a lot more stuff." And she replied, "You must be Jewish," which, of course, I am, though at that time I'd not been inside a synagogue for maybe twenty years.

And now, a Jewish widow following a ten-year marrige to a goy atheist, I find myself longing for my people, for the cultural surrounding wherein my desire for an orderly linen closet is not seen as obsessive-compulsive and the longing for lox and bagels is not a food fad but a deep emotional bond with a comfortable Saturday tradition.

Since my re-location to Portland a little over a year ago, I've attended two synagogues, neither of which met my spiritual nor social needs. The first, an architectural showpiece, was so sterile and cold that not only did no one notice the strangers in attendance, but the woman sitting next to me, a newcomer herself, ran out in the middle of the Bat Mitzvah service. The second, though warmer in feeling, with a funny rabbi keeping the service hopping and popping, mostly reminded me that economically I could not compete with this congregation. A couple of cute teenage girls with huge, Bambi eyes wearing miniskirts, their teeth in orthodontic bondage, reminded me of Luke F-rd's impetus for attending shul, and why it must be Orthodox shul, for who could concentrate on holy prayer with such luscious nubile distraction?

Note that I have not labeled these services as Reform, Traditional, Conservative, New Age or Low Salt -- it doesn't matter to me. Like Luke, I am looking for intellectual honesty. Unlike Luke, I am looking for a spiritual home with like-minded people, not a label by which I can judge the depth of religious intent toward rigorous law enforcement. I am not the policewoman of the world -- I am tolerant, of variance, difference and failings. I have no need to live up to someone else's judgemental standards -- I trust that my own, inspired by an informed spirituality, are the right ones for me.

When I attended the Portland Secular Humanist Symposium a month or so ago to hear speaker Michael Shermer, of the Los Angeles-based Skeptic Society, I met Jane Goldhamer of Kol Shalom, the Portland Community for Humanistic Judaism. Humanistic Judaism, according to Kol Shalom's information sheet, has existed as an alternative in Jewish life for over 100 years, though it was not a formally recognized movement until 1963.

In August 1963, eight couples in Birmingham, Michigan, under the leadership of Reform Rabbi Sherwin Wine, organized a traditional Reform congregation dedicated to "creative development." Quoting from Ms. Goldhamer's information, "Little by little, things started changing. Members of the ritual committe began discussing philosophical issues such as the nature of God. Finally they decided on a definition of God as an ideal man--all that a person could become, the notion of a perfect human being. But then the question was, if God is a notion, who is listening when people pray? Gradually the language in the services moved farther away from making any definitive statements about God, or talking to God."

By June 1964, "all theistic language had been eliminated from the services. The media had gotten wind of the "atheistic rabbi" and "Godless congregation." Local newspapers, Jewish publications and Time magazine carried articles. The state organization of Masons asked the Birmingham Temple to leave the Masonic Temple in Bloomfield Hills where the congregation had been meeting.

Rabbi Wine was told to recant or leave the Jewish fold. Detroit's Council of Orthodox Rabbis publicly denounced Humanistic Judaism. The reactions of Reform rabbis ranged from incredulous to aghast, but a move to "defrock" Rabbi Wine didn't succeed.

There are only about a hundred people involved in Kol Shalom, which is completely volunteer-run, and which has met and held all activities for the past eight years in the magnificent home of Mike and Jane Goldhamer. I attended Shabbat services there last Friday night.-- coincidentally the last of the quarterly services to be held at the Goldhamer's estate. Kol Shalom activities move to the Mittleman Jewish Community Center come September as a nine-month experiment, first with the children's religious education program, and followed by the October Shabbat service (and hopefully with some High Holiday celebration in between).

The most immediate difference between Kol Shalom and the other Jewish services I'd attended here in Portland was that, as I walked down the stairs to the basement meeting room, I was effusively greeted and welcomed by Mike Goldhamer and several other members. These Jews are one of the friendliest groups of people I've ever met. Unlike Christians, they are not reaching out to proselytize me for assured salvation that they may acquire extra "Brownie points" for themselves, but because there are so few of them that new members are welcome additions. Many of these people are in their sixties or older. Only by attracting new, young members will the organization survive (youth being relative, of course, and I was informed several times that I look much younger than my chronological age. It was so flattering...)

Our service was mostly music and song. Hiney Ma Tov, L'chi Lach, Ufros Aleno, L'kha do dee... We lit candles. I lit one for Bruce, who passed away two years ago July 11. Kol Shalom member Chuck Sheketoff, Executive Director of the Oregon Center for Public Policy, gave a presentation on "Povety, the Safety Net and the Status of Low Income and Working Oregonians." Then Kiddush (the first in which I have ever participated as an adult) and Oneg (I had a chocolate chip cookie) and it was time to leave....

There was no mention of Adonai (God) in the service at all, nor any Torah or law. Our affirmation was to life, to treasuring the goodness in the world and faith in making a better world. "May we carry on and expand our ancient Jewish heritage of justice and compassion which has led to our being here this shabbat evening." For the first time ever I felt the warmth of shared Jewish identity. These were my people, my fellow Jews, wanting to celebrate our rich tradition and heritage, not only for spiritual reasons but as cultural necessity. For, once the rigor of the need to behave according to the Judaic interpretation of God's law has been cast aside, what is left?

In Conservative and Reform congregations, varying degrees of nominal attention is given to Torah, yet there is always a schism between professed belief and actual behavior. At Kol Shalom, members are not Jews because that is the form of their worship of God -- they are Jews because they find in their Jewishness a definition of their outlook on life itself, in every facet. It becomes more important to be a Jew, to cling to other Jews because they are Jews, than it does to judge one another according to how closely they adhere to the prescribed rituals.

As the service progressed, I could not help but think how at Kol Shalom Luke would be welcomed because his desire to be Jewish is so very passionate. Individual attitudes toward the rightness or the wrongness of his profession would be just that -- individual attitudes. He would be a treasure to this congregation. He would be invited to lead discussions in Torah, and to speak at services, and be so loved.

My dearest Luke, you worship the self-discipline you only believe you lack. You are one of the hardest working, most disciplined people I've ever met. You admire others you perceive as having the self-discipline to adhere to the rituals, even though as people they lack the qualities of mercy and compassion which are the temporal evidence of a loving God. I told you on the day we met that through devotion you would lead me to the spiritual, and that through unconditional love I would lead you to self-esteem. Despite your friend Chaim's testosterone-fueled pompous assertion of "rightness" (people who have to shout out their virtues so seldom really have that to which they so unabashedly profess), I would prefer to quietly and modestly suggest that you listen to me, if only for a moment because, when it comes to you, I am very often right.

Chaim Amalek writes: These godless strains of ethnic judaism do not attract any hot chicks. Hence, their long-term viability is suspect. (In New York you can go one step further and join the Ethical Humanist Society, set up for those for whom Humanistic Judaism is too theocratic. Same problem - no hot chicks there, let alone any who will put out for me.)