It has reached my attention that some of you think I might be a little curmudgeonly in disposition, and even a little dyspeptic in judgment.
I cannot deny that, with the passing of the years along with much of my hair and most of teeth, I may have got somewhat stuck in my ways. Another way of putting it is that my “lived experience”, as the kids call it, has confirmed my prejudices. This is a consolation of ageing.
As for dyspepsia, nothing is more Jewish.
Dyspepsia is God’s way of telling us that we remain true to the teachings and dietary habits of our forefathers.
In Isaiah 21:3, a “grievous vision” of human folly ruins the prophet’s digestion: “Therefore are my loins filled with pain: pangs have taken hold of me, as the pangs of a woman that travaileth.”
As we all know, too much food and drink ruins your sleep. Isaiah wakes dry-mouthed in the night: “My heart panted, fearfulness affrighted me: the night of my pleasure hath he turned into fear unto me.”
If any of you know of an older reference to indigestion in any sacred text, do write in. If it has a recipe for a cure, include that.
In April 2023, the St. Louis Jewish Light reported that the condition known as “Jewish stomach” is not just in the mind. Researchers identified eight genetic variations unique to Ashkenazi Jews that can cause inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
This is no joke. IBD includes serious and potentially fatal conditions such as Crohn’s disease and colitis. They should not be confused with Inflammatory Bowel Syndrome (IBS), which, when correctly timed, can be a source of merriment to all the family. Ashkenazi Jews are “two to four times” more likely to develop IBD. The statistical variation may depend on who does the cooking.
Lactose intolerance is a notorious Ashkenazi affliction. But it is only one of the things of which I am intolerant. Like I said, it is an occupational hazard that the exercise of my judgment leads to gut reactions and dyspepsia.
It could be worse and it yet may well be. Anthony Burgess once described the symptoms of the writing life as “tobacco addiction, an over-reliance on caffeine and Dexedrine, piles, dyspepsia, chronic anxiety, sexual impotence”.
I was surprised to learn that while Arthur Eichengrün, the inventor of aspirin, was Jewish, the inventor of Tums, the chalky reflux treatments that I carry in my tallit bag, was not.
In 1928, the pharmacist James Harvey Howe Sr., reasoning that his wife’s digestive troubles were caused by excess acid, devised an “antiacid” of sweetened calcium carbonate. Two years later, he and his pharmacist uncle A.H. Lewis founded Tums.
Tums was sold to Revlon and now belongs to GlaxoSmithKline, but Tums are still manufactured in the original factory – in St Louis, Missouri.
As the St. Louis Jewish Light shows, the local Jews remain unusually sensitive to matters gastric. High-profile Semitic St Louisans include the chef and food writer Claire Saffitz, and Danny Meyer, founder of New York’s excellent Union Square Café (watch the gazpacho, it repeats).
The Jewish presence in St. Louis dates to at least 1807, when the Philadelphia-born merchant Joseph Philipson opened the city’s first store.
The Philipsons were the only Jews in St Louis for a few years, so their digestions were probably untroubled. But in 1837, a mostly German Jewish community established the United Hebrew Congregation. As the first synagogue west of the Mississippi, its kiddush was a bridgehead for stomach ache.
The big Russian Jewish immigration reached St Louis in James Harvey Howe Sr.’s youth. Let’s face it, they and their children were probably the first market for Tums.
The Tums story is, like many unexamined aspects of American life, an everyday example of interfaith harmony. As I have taken my Tums and am feeling temperate, I feel we should accentuate the positive.
On which note, we should fully masticate and digest the news that Amy-Jill Levine was elected in July as the first Jewish president of the Catholic Biblical Association of America.
As a child, Levine told her parents she wanted to be the Pope when she grew up, because she could “eat lots of spaghetti” and help the Jews. She became a prominent scholar of early Jewish-Christian relations.
In 2019, Levine, who is a member of Congregation Sherith Israel, an Orthodox synagogue in Nashville, became the first Jewish scholar to lecture at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome.
Levine told the Jerusalem Post that she will use her presidency to spread “better knowledge of Jewish beliefs and practices in the 1st century CE and better understanding of Jewish-Catholic relations”.
“Drink no longer water, but take a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities,” Paul counsels in 1 Timothy 5:23. Timothy became the patron saint of stomach troubles for writing that one down.
Paul was originally Saul. The Talmud (Baba Batra 58b) places wine “at the head of all healing”, the invention of Tums being some way off in those days.
The issue of Paul’s sources and influences is critical to the Jewish origins of Christianity. This is just the sort of question that Amy-Jill Levine and the Catholic Biblical Association should chew over. After lunch, of course.
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