Beware not only the ides of March, but the rest of this cursed month as well. Just ask my 17-year-old daughter, Shiran, for whom March 2004 provided a rude awakening. Shiran lives in a small California suburb with enough white-collar Jews and Israelis to foster the illusion that our fellow tribesmen have become a mainstream force in America.
Shiran's disillusionment began the night before Ash Wednesday, when she attended the midnight premiere of "The Passion of the Christ." Editor of her school newspaper, she knew Mel Gibson's movie would be the hot topic on her high school campus, and would require parsing in her upcoming column.
My daughter is no wilting flower and has grown up accompanying me on set visits to horror films in progress. But this one presented an exercise in religious sadism so harrowing that when she came home at 3 a.m. she asked, for the first time since she was tiny, to sleep with us.
But March had more in store for Shiran in matters fundamentalist. The next weekend marked her participation in the America's Homecoming Queen state pageant, in conservative Anaheim. She was competing with 51 other representatives of California high schools, with the winner assured a sizable scholarship to the college of her choice and a shot at the nationals.
Shiran had not been eager to compete. Although the pageant ostensibly stressed scholarship, leadership and communal involvement, ultimately, she complained, she would be judged on how she looked in an evening gown. Ironically, by the end of the weekend, she would have been all too happy for that to have been the criterion.
The first inkling of something seriously amiss came during the Saturday night dinner for contestants and their families. The previous year's queen began by saying Grace "in the name of our savior and Lord, the one true God, Jesus Christ." Her incantation, which most attending greeted by joining their palms in supplication and peering down into their laps, was followed by a half-hour film that chronicled the national winner's appearances last year at various Southern Baptist churches, religious hospitals and football games. During the competition itself, contestants were shown touting their respective states of grace -- achieved, some declared, through abstinence, prayer and bringing God's word to the Christologically challenged.
Ducking out during dessert, a shaken Shiran -- apparently the only Jewish participant -- asked me to inform the judges of her withdrawal, while she set about packing her bag.
The head of the Memphis, Tennessee-headquartered pageant asked Shiran to reconsider. The pageant did not, she insisted, have a religious agenda. The outgoing queen had made her remarks on her own initiative, and the judges apologized for any offense caused. Shiran should feel free to invoke any prayer or express any religious aspiration she deemed appropriate in the event of her own victory. "Yeah, right," she quipped to me in Hebrew. "I'm sure they'll crown me so I can break the news to them that the Lubavitcher Rebbe is the messiah."
Returning to her room, she unpacked again. But she had soured on the proceedings, expressing her displeasure and alienation by shunning makeup. Not helping any were statements from some of the girls who, at rehearsal, told the judges they had been instructed by God to engage in community work or to compete in this pageant, that their personal goals entailed bringing the "light" to others ostensibly dwelling in darkness. One hopeful even named God as her most memorable personal encounter.
Although the weekend proved a wash, Shiran informed us during the drive home that her experience had forced her to reexamine her college choices. She would not attend Brandeis, she said, because the predominance of Jewish students there would not reflect the wider society. And she would think twice before accepting the offer of a small liberal arts college in New Brunswick, because she might well be the only Jewish student there.
Life, Shiran is learning, is no beauty pageant.