Adam Levin - The Instructions

I have only once spoken to Gurion’s father, Judah, who “defer[s] to Tamar in all matters pertaining to Gurion’s psychological well-being in the scholastic environment and so would appreciate it if [I] just went to [his] wife with [my] nonsense, which is not to say that [my] nonsense is objectively nonsense, as in ‘a verbal phenomenon that fails to convey anything even fractionally meaningful, let alone compelling,’ but rather that to [him], personally, that’s how [my] nonsense comes off, and so why not just always call Tamar and never [him] with [my] nonsense is what [he’s] hoping to get across to [me].”

PRECURSORS AND WARNING SIGNALS

The physical assault against the headmaster of the Solomon Schecter school, which resulted in Gurion’s expulsion from that learning institution, was the first atypically violent behavior to appear on Gurion’s scholastic record. Gurion denies that any major change in his home-life had occurred prior to the assault, and his parents (I hesitate to say “corroborate his denial,” as “corroborate his denial” seems so darned criminal justicey and no one’s on trial , here) affirm his denial’s accuracy. Furthermore, the teachers at Schecter who I’ve interviewed over the telephone have all remarked on the utter dearth of warning signs preliminary to the assault, as have those at Northside Hebrew Day and MLKJH in regard to the acts that earned Gurion expulsion from their respective schools.

Gurion, himself, justifies the three “actions” that led to his expulsions in the following ways.

The Solomon Schechter School of Chicago

Unger [headmaster of Schechter — S.B.] basically called me and my mom and her whole side of the family a worthless lot of Godless n*ggers. So I exploded.

Northside Hebrew Day School

I taught those Israelites [a group of students at Northside Hebrew Day-S.B.] how to make weapons that are legal to carry, legal to fire at non-living things that don’t belong to anybody, and can’t accidentally go off. I was trying to help them protect themselves from people like the ones who attacked my synagogue. It’s not my fault they turned on each other— You wouldn’t blame an arsonist’s parents for teaching him to light a match any more than you’d blame the proverbial fisherman for teaching— Is there any way you’d turn your fan off?… Not cold, bothered by that rubbing sound, though, thank you. What I was saying is that I’m not anyone’s father, not yet, and even if I was their father, if I was the father of all those kids, the crime still wouldn’t be teaching them to build pennyguns; it would be raising them to be the kinds of people who’d use pennyguns on members of their own tribe. All that I, who is their not-father in the first place, did was teach them to build pennyguns. They came to my backyard because they thought they needed protection and I agreed they needed protection, so I did what I thought was right, and I would do it again… Because I still think it was right… With all the scholars who had pennyguns — not to mention all the ones who’ve made pennyguns since Northside kicked me out — there’s been only that one shooting incident. Why doesn’t anyone remark on that?

Martin Luther King Middle School

First of all, I didn’t use the brick [a brick Gurion was discovered holding when the MLK recess supervisor broke up the fight — S.B.] — I only picked it up to defend myself against the bleeding kid’s seven friends who were coming after me. Secondly, the only reason that kid, who, by the way, had about twenty pounds on me, was bleeding was because he called me a “motard” which, if you don’t know, is a combination of “homo” and “retard,” which is bad enough already, and then, after calling me motard, he slapped my head, which leads us to thirdly: if I was someone else, someone who’d have needed a brick to end that kid’s chapter, I’d have been totally justified in using one, anyway.

Although the client’s explanations, however suspiciously eloquent (Gurion’s eloquence will be further explored below, under the rubrics Codeswitching and Diagnosis), have the ring of being sound, the behavior he has engaged in since coming to Aptakisic (again, to be explored below) throws a shadow over them: a shadow of a doubt.

RACIO-ETHNIC BACKGROUND

Gurion identifies himself as “Israelite,” a term he prefers to “Jewish,” and all but ignores the fact of his African lineage. He provided me with an explanation re: his rejection of “African-American” as an appropriate descriptor of his background and, although I would typically summarize such an explanation rather than set it down word-for-word (you can hear it on side 2 of tape A, from indiv session 2 of 3), I believe that it is important, in this particular case, to remain faithful to the audio-recording, ********as it will serve to further illustrate the precocious linguistic abilities that will be discussed later in this assessment, under the rubric of Codeswitching.

GURION: African-American is a misnomer, and an irrelevant one when it comes to me… A misnomer because it refers to very general geographical origins that have little if anything to do with the identity of the people who claim the misnomer — their identity is not based in having African ancestors any more than a Polish-American’s is based in having European ancestors… I guess maybe Rwandan-American or Nigerian-American could potentially be more worthwhile descriptors of someone’s ethnicity, though not much more worthwhile, come to think of it — those countries haven’t been around that long and weren’t established as nations by anyone all too indigenous. A tribal identification would make the most sense… Like if people called themselves Tutsi-Americans or Hutu-Americans . Anything less is just… I don’t think you’re hearing me, Sandy. What I’m saying is that you wouldn’t imagine Tutsis doing too much identifying with Hutus, even though they’re all from the same continent, which is Africa, which makes them all African … Because they genocide on each other for kicks is why not… I guess that’s a pretty way to think about it, but even if you’re right, African-American ’s mostly just a fancy way to say dark-skinned, and who cares what color anyone is? I mean a lot of people care, but those people won’t usually admit it — that’s why they like to say African-American … I agree we should set it aside, but not for later; we should just set it aside… Irrelevant when it comes to me because even though my mother’s parents were born in Ethiopia, they were taken to Israel on this special program in 1955 when my grandfather was eighteen and my grandmother twenty and… Of course voluntarily! The idea was that the Israelites of Ethiopia — the Beta Israel — whose status as their brothers some lighter-skinned Israelites denied (and a few still deny), were behind the times religiously — they’d been isolated from most of the scripture and commentary that was written after the Torah — and the idea of the 1955 program was to take a small group of the most intelligent younger Beta Israel to the land of Israel in order to educate them in the relatively newer ways of our people, and that these Beta Israel would then return to Ethiopia and teach their Beta Israel countrymen the new ways they’d learned. So my grandfather and grandmother, who had never met prior to the journey, fell in love on the airplane over, and, once they arrived in Israel, they married and decided to stay there… Because the reason they decided to stay there was that, first of all, it was Israel, which was promised to them by God, and secondly, they knew that in Israel they wouldn’t be subject to the rapes and lynchings and hut-burnings they’d been suffering at the hands of the Canaanite Ethiopians, whose skin was the same color as theirs and whose country went by the same name… So here’s another way to put it, then: That my grandparents came from the continent of Africa and had dark skin is only relevant to me insofar as certain unenlightened Ashkenazis make a big deal out of it, which is a great reason to get explosive — the big deal that gets made out of their skin color — but it is not nearly a good enough reason to call myself African-American … I am an Israelite because all my people are in the line of Israel, who was Jacob, who wrestled an angel and won, and I am a foreigner among all others, nearly all of whose ancestors tried to wipe mine out… Yes, I believe literally wrestled an angel… Sure there’s metaphorical value — very rich metaphorical value — but why would that deplete its literal value?… Listen, I was born to be who I am and I know who that is better than you do, which… Just check whatever box you want to check and record my name without the patrinomic, then… ben-Judah… It’s not my middle name… I said it’s fine… I said don’t worry about the ben-Judah… Maybe a little frustrated, yes… Forget it… Stop… Forget it… It doesn’t matter…I said whatever you want to put is fine… I’ll never know your dumont language as well as you do, anyway, social worker… Flat and imperceptive like Margaret Dumont… The greatest straightman in the history of the world… Yes. She was a woman… Because straightwoman or straightperson would mean heterosexual… No, in fact it has nothing to do with my thoughts about the term African-American .