Introduction That was the birth of sin. Not doing it, but KNOWING about it. Before the apple, [Adam and Eve] had shut their eyes and their minds had gone dark. Now, they peeped and pried and imagined. They watched themselves. —D. H. Lawrence 1 Society is a tissue of illusions and every organized society a sort of collective dream. —Paul Valéry 2 Coming from a good Bronx Jewish family in the early 1970s means that between the ages of 8 and 12 I went to Hebrew school in preparation for my Bar Mitzvah on my 13th birthday. We were not a particularly religious family—we were more “cultural” Jews (we enjoyed a good bagel, had a Seder every Passover, but also ate ham) than religious Jews (I had friends whose mothers “kept kosher” if we had pizza at their house, it had to be on paper plates so as to not contaminate the kosher dishes). Nonetheless, my father prayed every morning, silently and alone while he got ready for work, wearing his tallit (prayer shawl) and yarmulke (skull cap) as he silently thanked God and asked for another day. The early 1970s were a period of steady decline in the Jewish commu- nity in the Bronx as a result, I attended Hebrew school where it was convenient—and this so happened to be the orthodox synagogue three blocks from our apartment on the Grand Concourse. We were not Ortho- dox Jews at all at best, we were Conservative. But going to Congregation Beth Shraga would allow me to go to public school during the day and then easily walk to Hebrew School every day at 4:00 P.M.
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