Kaddish for Amy

Perhaps this sounds a little cold-blooded. Well, better to embrace than to disavow, I say. A few months ago, I was skimming a book with a title like The Big Jewish Book of Who's Who. On the whole, it read like a scholarly version of Adam Sandler's "Chanukah Song," but there were some pointed omissions. When reviewing the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the author dutifully reports that both defendants were Jewish, as were Judge Irving Kaufman and defense counsel Emanuel Hirsch Bloch. He identifies the prosecuting attorney as a Jew, too, but declines to name him. The man's name, everyone should know, was Roy Marcus Cohn, and his career alone could have inspired every lawyer joke in the book. By keeping him anonymous, the author is fulfilling the dread Yiddish curse yemakh shmoy, or, "may his name and memory be erased." He is willing Cohn into non-existence.

Where Winehouse is concerned, any immediate danger of such erasure seems minimal. On Chron.com, Kate Shellnutt eulogizes her as "a good Jewish girl gone bad," quoting her to the effect that she was never happier than when she was when cleaning. Perhaps I am out of bounds in advising full-blooded, practicing Jews how to write their history, but this feels a bit precious. There is more to a troubled artist than a failed balaboosteh. John Lennon was, in fact, a doting father, but as achievements go, Sean ranks nowhere near Sergeant Pepper, or even Rubber Soul. I have read Catholic writers' attempts to re-package the Cadaver Synod as a basically okay idea. They're nice boosterism, but they make the writers authors too uncertain of their Church's greatness to acknowledge its potential for mayhem.

Anyway, Dvora Meyers never said as much, but there's real social utility in immortalizing Amy Winehouse as a new archetype. One of my cousins on the Jewish side of the family makes her living helping chemically dependent Jewish women enter 12-step programs. She has even gathered their stories into a book, Jewish Sisters in Sobriety. Along with the addict's garden-variety denial, many of these women felt blocked by the old saying "Shikker iz a goy," or "a gentile is a drunk." Treating it like a syllogism, they concluded that, not being gentiles, they couldn't possibly be drunks themselves. The words "I think I'm a walking mess like Amy Winehouse" might never be easy for anyone to say, but they can save lives—and make a counselor's heart melt.