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Being Lawrence Bush

At the foot of the stairs inside Larry Bush’s home, two monuments face each other. On one side, a pile of the books he’s written is positioned on top of a shelf. On the opposite wall is a self-made mandala inscribed with the words: “Everyone will die, Everyone will never die.”

“Every time I come down the stairs, I pass through my glory and my death,” Bush said. “It’s a balance I struggle with daily.”

For Bush, a self-described Jewish atheist who has spent much of his career writing within that culture, that conflict may be only the tip of the iceberg. “I’m a red diaper baby who was raised to make fun of religious people. That’s the kind of atheists we were,” he noted. “But since I’ve been working within various religious communities over the past 15 or 20 years, I’ve developed an appreciation for the depth of modern theology, and what Judaism has to offer. That does not mean that I have a belief in God.”

In fact, it was the theology of Reconstructionism, a branch of Judaism emphasizing the culture and traditions which Bush studied in conjunction with editing the movement’s magazine, Reconstructionism Today, that first caused him to ask “Why not?” “It says look, take these values and this discipline and sanctify it, call that God,” Bush explained. “Maybe there is some force that makes redemption possible. I call myself an atheist, because I’m usually on the faithless side. It’s a missing component. It’s how I was raised. But with that, I serve religious movements.”

Bush grew up in Queens and lived in Brooklyn for several years before moving first to Rosendale and then to Accord. “I don’t have any roads named after the family, but I’m a resident,” he smiles. It was while he was still living in the city that he first encountered the relationship between egotism and authorship that he has struggled with throughout his career. A story he submitted to the Village Voice called “Designer Genes” was accepted. The problem was, there was another Larry Bush writing for the publication. “He wrote regularly for them on gay rights issues, and was well known for his work,” Bush recalled. “I was the other Larry Bush.”

After meeting the Voice’s Bush and learning that he had been raised as a Mormon and had first come out as a gay man in response to discrimination issues, Bush began to question what’s in a name. “It was really sobering. It gave me pause about the meaning of a byline,” he notes. In response, he wrote a piece that the Voice published called “To Be or Not to Be Larry Bush.” “It was from the perspective of a name as related to Jewish identity,” Bush says, adding that his own family name had been shortened from Babushkin when family members went into the pharmacy business in the 1920s. “Eventually, I called myself Lawrence Bush as a writer,” Bush added. “And he did too.”

In October, in addition to Reconstructionism Today, Bush will be editing the bi-monthly Jewish Currents “again, after an 18-year hiatus,” he says. He also produces Jews., a literary magazine “of, by, and for Jews” that he considers a labor of love. “We put it out whenever we can,” Bush said, adding that the latest copy, due out around September, is in his computer right now. “One of my goals is to set the Guinness record for the most Jewish magazines published simultaneously.”

The upcoming issue of Jews. will feature the work of Henry Costa, an internationally-renowned photobooth artist (he creates elaborate portraits in photobooths); an excerpt from Rescued Images: Memories of a Childhood in Hiding by Ruth Jacobson, about hiding from the Nazis, which also features her collage work; and “a few very sexy poems.”

There is also Bush’s work with the Shefa Fund, which attempts to steer investment money to under-served communities and which also provides grants in support of Middle East projects. Bush co-wrote a book with the fund’s president, Jeffrey Dekro, entitled Jews, Money and Social Responsibility: Developing a “Torah of Money” for Contemporary Life. For Bush, the Jewish philosophy of donating money provides a balance between socialism and capitalism.

“It’s the notion that you give charity not because you’re good, not because you care, not because you’re spiritual, but because you don’t own the money,” he explained. “It’s like wealth is a collective enterprise. Our country pretends it’s a mark of merit. It is idolatry to think that the individual did something so wonderful on their own that they deserve millions of dollars. In Judaism, there’s Psalm 24, ‘the earth is the Lord’s and all the fruits thereof.’ Well, I look at ‘the Lord’s’ as ‘the collective.’ That doesn’t make me a communist. That doesn’t lead to an abolishment of private ownership.”

Though he tends to identify himself primarily as a writer, Bush is also an artist, using computer graphics to create collages as a way of commenting on many of the conflicts he sees in the world around him. “I work a lot with advertising images, which I then try to subvert in some way,” he explained. Many of the images appear in the various magazines he edits, and he also sends mail art, including a monthly calendar, to the 600 subscribers of Jews. “The contradiction or the problem I face is that working in Jewish life is kind of confining,” Bush admitted.

On the other hand, it’s what he knows. In 1997, Bush published American Torah Toons, 54 illustrated commentaries that are each related both to his life and to a biblical passage. “It really brought it together for me,” he noted. “Ever since then, I’ve been doing more and more.”

But, he acknowledges, if the book sold 1,000 copies “it’s a lot. I’m resigned to a certain marginal life,” he said. “I’ve come to accept that it’s a small and hopefully loving audience.” And, in the long run, perhaps that’s where meaning can be found. “Torah Toons was all about my children, my animals, my little acre and a half,” Bush pointed out. “It was small. For all the lofty ambitions, I lead a small life, and when I pay attention to it, that’s when the art is more authentic.”

For a year’s subscripti on to Jews., send $18 to P.O. Box 111, Accord, NY 12404.

He can be reached via e-mail at babush@ulster.net

—Mala Hoffman