There is often overlap between these four. A murder may violate all four at once. Although depending on who you kill that murder may only violate two or three of the systems.

Addressing a law to the wrong system may also get you in trouble. A smile and polite word may not help much when trying to negotiate a rogue state to give up its nuclear program but no one wants armed gunmen making sure that people don’t cut in line at the hamburger place. Soft power of social etiquette law is probably enough for that.

The most common error these days seems to be misunderstanding of the type of legal system most appropriate for a given situation.

My religious conviction need not be the same as the best ideas for a secular legal system. Conversely my secular legal system should not be the sole criteria I use for my faith or even the social etiquette rules of my community.

Things do get dicey when one system’s obligations are in clear violation of another system’s prohibitions. I have no clear answer about what to do when that happens other than to say that it’s worth noting and navigating carefully. Ask your rabbi, lawyer, pals, and doctor.

I’ve worked in the Hebrew Memorial funeral chapel for the last fifty two years and I thought I’d seen it all. It’s just the nature of the work that you get to see a lot of stuff happening. Mostly I do body pickups and removals but I also say tehillim and help out in the chapel when they need it. It might not seem it but it’s a fantastic job. Even a kohen gadol on his way to do the yom kippur service has to help bury a corpse who isn’t being cared for. Can you imagine the mitzvas I have? Can you believe they pay me for such a thing?

Usually, I do a hospital or a nursing home pickup. Occasionally I have to go out to the airport to pickup someone who died on holiday or someone who lives out of town but still owns a plot here. That isn’t too often. Usually it’s the other way around and someone is being shipped off to Israel. I wish they had made aliya while they were alive. Not even for Zionist reasons. It’s just doing it this way involves a lot of paperwork on our end. 

I can tell you which rabbi I would have always wanted to take care of me after my one hundred and twenty years. Rabbi K’s awesome. When that man does a funeral. He is so in his element. He has this beautiful baritone voice that is so deep and leathery he can give bestow dignity on a rodeo clown killed by a Whoopee cushion. He’s also great with the family. He gives them a fantastic sense of what comes first and then what comes next.

When a relative dies, people often get this big adrenaline surge. They feel like they got to do something to make the pain go away. But there is nothing to do. After the loss all you have is empty quiet time. A good rabbi who can lead you through that is worth his weight in gold. 

Rabbi K’s eulogies are amazing, honest to God. If there were funeral Olympics Rabbi K would be scoring a gold medal in the eulogy competition year after year. He could make the benches in the chapel cry. He could make folks weep for losing Jack the Ripper. The amazing thing is that he usually hardly even knows the people he’s burying.

  Sure, there are a few tricks he uses. I’ve noticed them over the years. Every female eulogy has some mention of the food she was known for. The timbre in his voice and the rising pitch of the kel molai rachamim are unique gifts he possesses. Some of the finer points of the eulogy require what I know is hard work. Rabbi K’s a king at noticing names and life details. It isn’t “missed by his granddaughter” it’s “Little Brittany will always miss the way Grandpa Harvey pretended to catch her nose.”

On occasion when no one else is in town I have had to give a eulogy. I tried my best but there was no way I could do it like Rabbi K. He’s the master.

I was happy when he was the guy on duty for the double murder suicide. You know the story. The crazy husband didn’t want to get dumped so he shot his wife, kid, and self. Three caskets side by side and two families going berserk with anger and grief was a tough one. Rabbi K somehow defused the whole thing into tears. For a while we even thought of selling the video of the event, I kid you not.  

There were a few times over the years I was sure that Rabbi K would lose it. The time the deceased man’s Asian mistress showed up and insisted on being addressed as his wife. The man’s real wife insisted it was a mistake but the dead guy’s buddies knew the Asian girl. Ouch! He picked a bad time in his life to check out. There was the time the deceased person’s kids got into a fist fight over the inheritance in the waiting room. The time an internal organ exploded halfway through the service and the coffin started dripping blood. The time the pallbearers dropped the coffin and the corpse fell out. The infamous occasion when a smashed drunk nephew loudly called the dead man a molester and proceeded to urinate (in full view of the horrified crowd, I might add) on the coffin as it was being lowered into the ground. Somehow, with charm and grace Rabbi K pulled everyone through those painful moments. The man was a wizard.

Who wasn’t saddened to learn that Rabbi K had gone to the big synagogue in the sky? A prince of a person I’m sure he has earned a valuable chunk of everlasting heaven. Our only issue was that no one was quite sure who would say the eulogy for him. Whoever would say anything would do a lousy job by contrast we were sure of it.

But good old Rabbi K had figured on that. He insisted that no eulogies be said. He asked for nothing but stone silence. What seemed like a thousand people gathered on a cold Thursday morning to the chapel to hear absolutely nothing. It was kind of jarring at first. No one was quite sure how you could tell when the silence was supposed to end but somehow it was over. Afterward, everyone could swear they heard Rabbi K talking in their brain. Giving himself a eulogy, his rich deep tone of voice and soothing words. 

I think about Rabbi K every now and again and his quiet eulogy. He knew something that the rest of us miss. That if you are really quiet you can hear things that the rest of the world misses out on. It’s like the way you can’t hear the crickets chirping during the day because the sound of traffic blocks it out. But if you are really quiet you can hear the voices talking in your brain.

Lately when I go out to the cemetery I recognize most of the names on the stones. If they were all to come back to life it’d be a party I’d love to go to. I’m waiting for that day. For now I just like to linger around there by myself sometimes and listen to their muffled voices talking in my brain. I can hear them I tell you. I can hear them to talking to me in my brain. Doesn’t that sound crazy? Well it isn’t. You’re just too busy to hear the voices. It isn’t quiet enough for you. That’s all. Drop by the chapel some time and you’ll see what I mean though. It’s quiet enough to hear all the voices.

 The Purim holiday that Betzalel recalled from his yeshiva days was good times and a lot of fun. This sucked. Sitting in traffic along the main boulevard with two whiney little girls in the back seat was not Purim, even if the kids were wearing glitter and makeup and called themselves butterfly princesses. It took a bit of yelling but they eventually did shut up. But then he felt like garbage for having yelled at them.

Each kid had a list of friends that needed their shalach manos. They were only six and seven years old how could they possibly have lists of friends? Who could they possibly know already that warranted Betzalel spending four hours driving to every corner of the city to make these deliveries? Betzalel was twenty nine and only had four shalach monos deliveries; Richie his best friend, the Melbergs family who hosted him almost every Shabbos since the divorce, his Great Aunt Sylvia, and his boss, Mr Zimmerfeld.  That was it. 

How could his kids possibly have needed to give candy to so many folks? In the car, out of the car, are they home? Should we leave it on their doorstep? My glitter is coming off! I spilled nail polish on the back seat! It was madness.

The kids made the shalach manos that they would give to their mother extra nice. They were going to have the seuda with her. The kids were excited but that was to be expected. His therapist said that little girls needed to be look up to a mother. Even if the woman was the devil, Betzalel thought. He knew enough not to say anything bad about her in front of the kids. Holding himself back from speaking badly about her was only one of many sacrifices he had made for his kids. That’s what kids do. They force you to make sacrifices.

They were all hyper about showing their mother their costumes, if that’s what you could call the makeup gobs and pink/purple glittery messes they were wearing. They knew she would ooh and aah and get all excited with them. Betzalel wasn’t so sure if Sondra really was that feeble minded that she actually gave a damn about the stupid fairy costumes or if she just put on the show to make him seem extra cold to the kids. It was just like Sondra to be warm to the kids out of spite, to make him seem extra cold.

Sondra opened the door wearing a Cinderella outfit. A wicked witch outfit would have been more appropriate, Betzalel considered to himself in quiet amusement. He wondered how much of the child support money she spent on renting the costume. She probably didn’t even bother to hear the megilla reading, the irreligious skank.

She did look good in the costume. She always looked good. It was why he had married her. Betzalel was amazed at his own stupidity in marrying a woman just because she was pretty. It was like choosing a heart surgeon because he played the trumpet well or letting flowers in a vase do your taxes. Giving your life over to a complete stranger to destroy you merely because you like the shape of the curve of their waist is probably one of the dumbest things guys consistently do. 

Of course Sondra gave nice warm happy kisses to the kids. Of course Gila opened her big fat yap to tell Mommy that Abba screamed at her. Gila said nothing about the four hours of driving around town to give free candy to her stupid kindergarten friends, only that Abba screamed at her. What did he expect from the kid? She takes after her mom in being an ingrate.

Sondra spoke to Betzalel with the weariness, bitterness, and hardness in her voice that he was used to hearing from her. She made plans for when he would pick them up like he was no more than the Fedex guy. She was taking the kids to the shul community seuda and he could pick them up from there at 9 pm. She closed the door behind him and for all she could care he could go to hell for the next four hours. That’s just the way it was.

With four hours to kill Betzalel weighed his options. He had declined the Melberg’s invitation. Why be a spectator in their naches? He wanted to have the seuda at home in his apartment by himself. Whatever. The chicken cutlet sandwich he ate and can of nonalcoholic beer he drank in the car while he was driving was seuda enough for him. 

He drove carefully toward the downtown and found a bar open early. There was no one in the place except for the bartender who was busy setting up tables. He told Betzalel that they were having a Purim/St Patrick’s Day party later in the evening but that he was welcome to help himself a drink or two in the meanwhile. Betzalel knew he couldn’t drink more than that anyway since he had to get the kids and he would be driving. Betzalel drank a gin tonic and took out his textbook on commercial real estate assessment and read a bit about income and expense analysis. He stopped reading and thought about Mordechai and Haman, the good guy and the bad guy of the Purim story. He drank again and wondered if there was any objective difference between the two of them. 

6. THE FRIER- Parshat Vayikra

It was the mitzvah Boaz knew in his bones. His father, his mother, his grandparents, his 3 brothers, 4 sisters, and every single person in the moshav said it all the time. Don’t be a Frier.

A Frier is a sucker, a person who believes, a sheep who does whatever they tell him to do. A frier is a person who gets into the line because they tell him to get into line and then walks right into the gas chamber holding his soap and the ticket to retrieve his clothing. A frier is a fool, a loser, a man who is not strong. This was not Boaz. He was no frier.

In his younger years Boaz played maktot on the beach in Ashdod. He was strong with big shoulders. He played music and danced with the pretty girls, late into the warm Mediterranean night. Boaz and his best friends from the tanks, fought and won Israel’s wars. They were powerful, tough, and disrespectful. They didn’t even bother to line up or salute like normal soldiers. That was for the losing armies of the friers. 

It was true that in Boaz`s time Israel almost lost the Yom Kippur War but that was because someone in army head office went soft in the head and let everyone go home for Yom Kippur. Boaz and his crew were not out praying and held the north. They fought like lions not victims. When his best friend Ronnie was killed it was as a soldier, not as a prayer mumbling frier.  

When Boaz got a little older he understood that some things in life were a little more complicated. The right jobs with the right money went to the people from the right kibbutzim and army units. Protektzia meant the same guys from the head office who almost lost the war wanted Boaz to become a frier and take a lousy job. Boaz knew he couldn`t win against them but he didn’t have to accept it. Boaz decided to leave Israel to make yerida.

 He still loved Israel and he would go back in a second to fight for her if there was a war. Anyway he was going to make a million dollars in New York. Then he would be able to move back to Israel and be a big shot. He had seen the fat white American Jews visiting the beach in Tel Aviv. They put cream on the nose and cried about everything like little girls. Yet the dollar bills came out of the holes in their skin. Boaz thought to himself that if these people were able to be rich, a smart tough guy like himself should have no trouble. But that also became not to be so simple.

The hard times, as an immigrant in the tri state lasted for longer than he had expected or even imagined. The security guard job he landed wasn’t all bad but it was hardly the reason for his yerida. He married a Reform Jewish girl named Harriet and had a son. He named the boy Ronnie after his best friend. He divorced. He lived in Brooklyn and then in New Jersey. The Jersey shore was not nearly as nice as Tel Aviv’s beach and Boaz worked long hours watching the scrap metal yard. He began to feel like a frier again but he couldn’t tell who it was doing it to him. He knew he was supposed to do something, fight someone, but he was not sure who or what. He was angry a lot. Years passed.

When Ronnie started dating Christian girls from school it made Boaz worry. Ronnie told Boaz that as an immigrant Boaz couldn’t understand. “Perhaps he’s right,” Boaz considered. Ronnie asked Boaz to give him money for the dates and like a frier Boaz gave him the money. Losing to his own son made him feel weak, but what could he do?  

Of course he wanted the best for Ronnie but in his dreams he did not imagine having Christian grandchildren. Boaz may not have been religious but still…at least Boaz knew a little bit. Boaz knew the chagim. It wasn’t Ronnie’s fault. Ronnie knew nothing. Dillon and Bjorn, the Christian grandchildren knew even less. They only knew that Boaz was the grumpy Israeli grandpa.

In Israel, they took care of Jewishness, even a too much if you asked Boaz.  But Jewishness did not happen in New Jersey unless someone paid dollars and even then it was not a very good quality Yehadut. American rabbis didn’t even know proper Ivrit. When Boaz got the news that his father back in Israel had died, an American rabbi told him that shiva was three days. The word itself means seven , Boaz sneered.  Like everyone else in America the rabbis were trying to sell something.

The only place that reminded Boaz of Israel was a yeshiva not to far from where he lived. He stumbled on the place while on a job for a friend. He didn’t really like the datiim there but it was a familiar dislike and for Boaz in America, seeing familiar faces had become more important than liking those faces. Besides, someone in there told Boaz that he did a big mitzvah by fighting for Israel and that they also loved Israel. In truth, even the anti-Zionist chareidim that said they hated Israel were a welcome sight for Boaz`s galut weary soul.  Anti-Israel chareidim were as Israeli as falalel.

One of the rabbis at the yeshiva gave Boaz a job, to be the security guard for the yamim noraim. That year the aging Boaz read the tefilot for the first time in his life.  Not that he was religious but some of the Hebrew poetry of the tefilot had been so beautifully written they warmed and softened some of the toughness inside him.

They say Boaz slowed down the terrorist who shot him that Yom Kippur. He should have kept his eye on the door instead of in the siddur. At his funeral that rabbi said Boaz died “al kiddush hashem” that he died a hero.  It was very nice but I doubt Boaz would have agreed. In his opinion anyone who could be shot in such a way, nose in a religious book, must be a prayer mumbling frier. 

Perhaps everyone ends up a frier in some way or another.  We only get to choose who it is we let take advantage of us. Perhaps this is the only choice we really do have in this life. 

Judy pedaled extra hard during Friday’s spin class. Tonight would be Shabbos. It was unavoidable. She was terrified of Shabbos. She could not easily explain what exactly it was that freaked her out about the day of rest. She just knew that she hated it. It scared her.

Her Shabbos phobia wasn’t like her other phobias. She could avoid dogs, cats, and other small furry creatures. She was able to live for the last twenty five years without traveling on an airplane. Perhaps giving up driving was inconvenient and taking the public bus everywhere was indeed a bit of a hassle but it wasn’t so bad. It was manageable. She knew where every public bathroom was along the bus route from her house to work, to the supermarket, and to the exercise club. Thankfully she never had to get off the bus mid-ride to use them but it was good knowing where they were just in case.

She knew that compared to her parents she had nothing to be afraid of. They had been through the Holocaust in the concentration camps. She had nothing to worry about that was even close to as bad as that? Considering this didn’t make her less scared but it did make her feel guilty for being such a nervous Nellie.

 Judy ate every Shabbat meal at home with her parents. She never ate out on Friday night even if someone would invite her which they never did. She could only imagine what would happen if she was at someone else’s house at Friday night and she developed a stomach ache and needed to use the washroom. Imagine the shame of it. 

Her parents would understand if Judy left the table suddenly to go to her room and practice square breathing. They understood her. They were safe people. But even they couldn’t stop Shabbos from arriving. What was so bad about Friday night was how completely unavoidable it was. It took all week but then it invariably just plowed right into her like a traffic accident in slow motion. 

Lately, the Shabbos phobia was beginning to spread to the weekdays. Things that had to do with Shabbos were affecting her as well. Last Tuesday as she sat with the other bookkeepers on lunch break one of the girls mentioned a chala cover that her cousin brought the family from Israel. Judy started to shake. Just a silly thing like the word “chala cover” pulled the trigger. It would be terrible if she felt like she couldn’t go out on lunch break with the other bookkeepers.

When her therapist pushed her to talk about Shabbos she would describe the way she could feel the cold hands of God surround her as it got dark on Friday evening. She said that she could see the prohibitions sprouting up around her like mushrooms. Her knitting needles were daggers and her television set was a bomb. God was ready to smite her for Sabbath violation at a moment’s notice.

Shabbat was his day. It was the time when the master of the universe displayed the majesty of his control over our fates. As she saw the Jews hurry to synagogue she imagined them all getting on the trains bound for Aushwitz. She wished she could have hidden at the gym on Shabbos but she knew she couldn’t. God would find her there too and he’d be really mad. But it would be a good hiding spot.

All the non Jews in the gym knew nothing about Shabbos and its terrors. They all seemed gorgeous and free, confident and fun. Judy didn’t even feel bad about wearing shorts and a short sleeve shirt in the gym. Modesty laws be damned. This was the gym. While she was on her bike she was in control. No one could tell her what to do.

No one could blame Judy for immediately hating the frum woman who showed up at the gym. The woman seemed to know what she was doing but she exercised in a skirt and a shaitel. Was her presence scary or infuriating? It was not immediately clear but it was bad news, very bad news, to Judy.

Didn’t God have enough places he controlled? Why was he coming into the gym? The woman seemed friendly. Shaitel woman smiled and chatted with the beautiful and strong people but that just made her worse. Judy wished she could make her leave but she knew that there was nothing anyone could do about it. To Judy’s complete surprise, the woman walked over to speak to her.

“Hi, aren’t you Judy?” the shaitel lady asked chirpily. “I think my mother is friends with your mother. My name is Bruchie, Bruchie Fleishenfeld.” Judy waited for the woman to critically eye her shorts and short sleeves but it never came. All Judy saw was a genuine open smile.

“Oh, hi, yeah,” Judy responded cautiously. “Listen, I don’t mean to…this might not be the right place…listen, better I should tell you then you hear it from someone else but I wouldn’t work out in that whole get up.” She said motioning in disgust to Bruchie Fleishenfeld’s clothing. “It might get caught in the machines” Judy clarified.

There was a second of awkward silence as Bruchie’s smile melted ever so slighly. Why did this woman have to show up in her stupid frummie outfit and make trouble? She saw Bruchie dabbed her forehead with the hand towel, smile again, and shrug. “Oh well, what can I do?” Bruchie giggled, “Could you imagine my skirt getting caught in the elliptical machine? That would be hilarious. Ha! One of the muscle guys would have to pry me loose…Anyway, thanks for the warning, I guess we’ll all have to have a bit of bitachon.” As she walked away Bruchie added “remember to tell your mother that you met Mrs. Fleishenfeld’s daughter at the gym.”

Judy was furious. Bitachon? How could some people be such simpletons, such weak minded fools? Judy glanced up at the clock. It would only be six more hours till Shabbos arrived. Judy closed her eyes and pedaled harder than she ever pedaled in her life. Sweat poured off of her as she tried with all her efforts to get away from shaitel lady, the ever encroaching Almighty God and his terrifying Shabbos. But the bike remained stationary.

Morty and Zehava were proud upstanding members of the frum community. Way up the social ladder to a level of dignity that was the envy of so many other families. No one really knows the tzuris of another and Morty struggled with alcohol addiction.

Most folks knew that he was a man that enjoyed a kiddush or two on Shabbos.  Every Simchas Torah and Purim he was the guy with the bottle, saying L’chayim to everyone, egging people on to take a drink, but so what. Most people figured it was just shtick. Zehava knew otherwise. When they were first married, after the first few times he got drunk, Morty told her that he was just kidding around. He told her that he was exaggerating but it soon became apparent just how much he loved the bottle.

She knew that when he joked about drinking he was not joking. There was no such thing as a joke. A joke was just the truth with a lampshade on its head. She knew that he was an alcoholic because she knew he loved her and would do anything for her, except stop drinking. She sensed that even when Morty was not drinking he was thinking about drinking. She wasn’t sure what to do but she knew not to tell anyone.

After his first arrest for DWI he secretly attended an AA meeting but he was not really into it. He hit the bottle once again only a few days later. Zehava found him passed out at his best friend David’s bachelor pad. The next morning, she told him that she wanted a divorce unless the nonsense stopped. He returned to the AA meetings and got a big sticker that said “One day at a time” for his home office. He stopped drinking for six weeks. 

It started again with a slip and then another slip and then purposeful a plan to drink behind Zehava’s back. Soon enough he made it a regular thing. Once every other week, on Thursday between noon and 9 pm, he’d hole up for the afternoon at David’s apartment.  “To have a charvusa with Jack Daniels,” he told David. He told Zehava that he was unavailable during those hours and he refused to discuss the matter further. Zehava knew what was going on but she decided it most prudent to just leave the matter alone. No person or marriage was perfect. 

Morty tried to be considerate about his drinking keeping it as a Thursday thing but after a few months it wasn’t easy confining it. Whenever he felt a desire coming on that was too difficult to manage he would clear his appointment book and notify Zehava that he might have to work late. She still didn’t say a word.

Zehava was grateful that at the very minimum Morty had David looking out for him. David had been Morty’s friend since high school and Zehava knew that the scandalous secret was safe with him. David was a real mentch and a good friend and that is never easy to come by.

David was the first person Zehava called when Morty didn’t come home at all one Thursday night.  She was terrified to hear from David that he never arrived that Thursday afternoon. “The chavrusos” seemed to have moved to a new location.

Together with David she searched and searched all that that Erev Shabbos and even into Shabbos itself. The secret of Morty’s alcoholism would have been discovered by the whole community had they not discovered him passed out on the front steps of the shul at about 2 am Shabbos night. 

When Morty finally regained consciousness in the family bathtub that Shabbos morning Zehava and David were extremely relieved. David gently asked the pale faced Morty where he had been. The sad but truthful answer they heard was that Morty could not remember anything past Thursday morning. It terrified everyone.

It was time for intense rehab. They told anyone who asked that Morty was visiting his parents in Florida for the next six weeks. Rehab seemed to have worked. When Morty returned home he really seemed liked a changed person. He kept is alcoholism quiet in consideration of his (future) children’s future shidduch prospects, however, he no longer denied to himself or Zehava the terrible fact that he had and would always have a lifelong struggle with a self destructive disease. 

That Purim he angrily stared at all the inebriated yeshiva boys carrying on in the shul. Morty couldn’t believe what his stone cold sober eyes were seeing. He told David that he couldn’t believe that the rabbis would allow such a thing to take place.

“It isn’t the mitzva dancing. It’s the Satan dancing here on Purim. Don’t people realize how destructive this is” he fumed. “If those rabbis were really in touch with what was really going on I’m sure they would declare all alcohol treif.” 

David was quiet for a moment, and continued watching the dancing. 

“I’m not sure that simply being forbidden helps much if you really have an overwhelming desire for something” David said slowly, deliberately, and without taking his beady eyes off the dancing yeshiva boys. 

Aaron quietly hummed “Lose Yourself,” the song by Eminem. Not a likely song given the sanctity of the time and the place, but it was stuck in his head. Sitting high up atop the congregation, on a fold up chair next to the synagogue president’s throne, Aaron stared out at the five hundred congregants of the prestigious Gates of Torah synagogue. They were there to pray, chat, and watch him try out for the position of rabbi. The golden light that shone through the yellow stained glass bathed him in holiness.

If you had one shot, or one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted

One moment. Would you capture it or just let it slip?

Aaron knew he had no business even being in the running for a rabbi position. He knew he was a bit of a scumbag and hardly even that religious. Even scumbags, however, have to make a living and Aaron thought that the pulpit was a really good gig if he could get it. It would pay lots of money. His wife, Elly, would also love it. She always wanted to be a Rebbetzin.

 Aaron had been to Hebrew school and he knew how to announce the page numbers of the siddur. Getting his rabbinic ordination was easier than getting his real estate agent’s license. He got the whole thing taken care of online.

The heavy set shul president leaned over and whispered to him. “Listen rabbi, good luck up there. I got to let you know that you got tough competition. Last week’s candidate was pretty good. He had them all laughing. I heard the guys talking and we might go with that guy. Such a relief compared to that sourpuss egghead Fefferkorn we just got rid of. Anyway, I can’t give you much advice, but good luck.” His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy

There's vomit on his sweater already, mom's spaghetti He's nervous, but on the surface he looks calm and ready

“Thank you sir” Aaron responded cautiously. Was his response part of the test? Should he submissively suck up more or should he arrogantly tell the fat man to keep his comments to himself? Which seemed more rabbinic? There was no answer except to say as little as possible and let the words of his sermon speak for themselves. 

“I like you, though, you remind me a bit of my kid brother, Shmulik,” the president rambled on. “Shmulik also has a shpitz beard, just like yours, and you both do your hair the same way. You seem like you might be a fun guy to work with. I might vote for you.”

“Thanks” Aaron responded cautiously.

After they put away the Torah the president lumbered to the podium and told everyone to be seated. He read Aaron’s introduction, the script that Aaron's mother in law had written last week. Aaron nervously fiddled with his cue cards. The sermon cards were his lifeline. The congregation rose in respect as Aaron approached the pulpit. What he wrote down, the whole crowd goes so loud He opens his mouth, but the words won't come out

He stood at the pulpit and started to speak only glancing briefly at the notes. The whole shebang was already clearly all laid out in his mind. The opening joke transitions into the question on the parsha. Stop and redirect with the interesting story that sets up the framework for the answer. Gently poke a hole in the question and allow the answer to spill out and then blossom into the emotional point meant to resonate in the hearts of the listeners. Pull it back, pull it back, and the gentle dismount of a blessing. The wish that we learn the lessons of the Dvar Torah and in that way merit the Messianic arrival and that would be the wrap.

Aaron worked hard as he sermonized. Like a gymnast swinging on the rings. The opening joke was the one about a shul on Mars. It was a risky opening given what he had heard about the shul’s recent history. The question from the Rashi on the Torah portion of Braisheet was also tricky because he knew he would lose some folks with the Hebrew. Still, the Hebrew was needed so he can show them, the machers,that he had the type of Hebrew pronunciation he knew they liked. 

He glanced up to the ladies balcony at his girl. She would be a better Rebbitzen than he would be a rabbi. She had the Rebbitzen smile perfectly painted on her face all weekend. He could see the terror in her eyes as he performed. Some of the women next to her were kind of hot though. Maybe…Enough about them, he had to focus.

Lose yourself in the music, the moment You own it, you better never let it go You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow This opportunity comes once in a lifetime

But then somewhere after the answer and before the emotional blossoming part, a crusty old guy, in a bar mitzvah talis and powder blue suit, sitting in the third row, let out a loud “yoiyk” sound. It was a sound somewhere between a burp and a yawn. Those who hang out with the elderly know what it sounds like and maybe it was Aaron’s inexperience that the noise threw him off. 

Aaron lost his words and his train of thought and then as he tried rummaging through the cards to find the right spot he let out a nervous giggle. He straightened out the wobbly moment quickly and tried to do his best with it to finish up but he knew that he had failed.

He's choking, how everybody's joking now The clock's run out, time's up over!

He stumbled back to his seat.

 “You did good kid” said the grinning synagogue president. But Aaron assumed the man was just being nice. People said that the rabbinate was a tough business and not as easy as it looked. They told him about the pressures. Aaron scolded himself for believing he could actually be the rabbi of a big congregation in a big city. It would be back to selling real estate, or storm windows, or stock futures, or God forbid teaching Hebrew school, he considered glumly.

He couldn't believe his ears when he received a phone call from the president congratulating him on getting the job. “It was a close call between you and the funny guy” the president confided openly. “It came down to one vote and that was me and I voted for you. Like I told you, I like you. You look a bit like my kid brother Shmulik.”

And thus Aaron was hired to do a very mediocre job in serving as spiritual leader of the synagogue. He smiled nicely, didn’t offend, and people bought High Holyday tickets but the poor guy knew beans about Jewish customs, culture, history or synagogue practice. He also got a bit of a reputation for leering at the women. He lasted in the job for about four years. To quote the shul president “With all due respect, I can’t recall why we hired that ignorant jackass in the first place.” Aaron’s mother in law did know enough, however, to make sure he got a good lawyer to draw up the contract. The shul had to buy him out for about a half a million dollars. Rabbi Yisrael Fefferkorn, the shul’s previous rabbi, became physically ill when he heard that financial figure. Rabbi Yisrael’s going away gift was a silver tray. 

Solly still felt like he was walking in a dream, even six years after making aliya. Through the busy downtown streets, from his apartment in Rechavia, through magical Jaffa gate, down the twisty road of something the map called Armenia. Solly floated to the big open parking in the Jewish section. It is where the beautiful children with backpacks to go learn the holy Torah and the peppy Israeli merchants hock their tourist wares. 

Solly was one of the thousands if not millions who visited the most special spot on earth. Solly felt privileged that he could walk there from his apartment, most tourists travelled in monster buses. They spoke the seventy different languages and they all seemed gobsmacked. Apparently people from the Amazon rainforest, the darkest Ukrainian coal mine, and the busiest Manhattan tower all have dreams of Jerusalem.

Solly would linger a bit in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. Everyone in the Jewish Quarter seemed like they were eighteen years old. Some had guns, some had tie dye T shirts, and some had copies of Talmud. Quite a few had all three. 

He liked to watch these kids as they sat around and talked about issues important to kids, about trips they would take, plans they would make, and lives they would live. It reminded Solly of his old college campus only without the nasty indecent atmosphere. It was all holy. Solly believed he could taste the holiness in the pizza and fruit juice.

Down the stairs from the Jewish Quarter and then down more stairs until Solly caught a glimpse of it, the full panoramic view of perfection on earth.

The Kotel, the Temple Mount, the Mount of Olives, the City of David, the Shiloach, the desert in the background and the techailet blue heavens where God resided. Any one aspect of the place, its history or its future, would be considered a major feature in any other land. So much of his brain stimulated all at once, so harmoniously. The sight of it all never failed to overwhelm the deeply religious Solly.

With lightness in his feet he bounced down the golden stone stairs, past the security check, and into the open plaza and the religious wonderland.  Brides in billowy dresses and grooms in starched hair posed for photos, awkward bar mitzvah boys were picked up on chairs as their families threw candies, soldiers tried on cardboard kippot and the men in black bustled about looking like they knew exactly what they were doing and where they were going.

Solly took his chair and placed it at the spot the farthest on the left facing the wall, in the corner, it was the spot closest to the Holy of Holies. He tilted his chair on a left angle. Praying directly toward the wall was the mark of an amateur. Those in the know understand that you are praying in the direction of the Holy of Holies, a place on the Temple Mount behind the wall.

Then Solly saw something, actually someone, that made him do a double take. He saw Dr. Akiva Kohen. 

Solly`s brother Marvin had sent Solly all the articles from back home about Dr. Akiva Kohen. The stories of child abuse at the shelter where Dr. Kohen worked as a psychiatrist were bad enough. But then, before the police could arrest him, Dr. Kohen looted 2.7 million dollars from the organization cleared out his own bank account and fled the country along with a sixteen year old who was in his care. Everyone nodded knowingly when Dr. Kohen`s own son committed suicide a short time after the story broke. Everyone gave generously when they took up a collection for the Doctor`s wife who had been forced to live as a shame filled penniless aguna for the past four years.   

The rest of the stories were just rumors. Who could really know if he was hiding in a Thailand red light district? Who could really know if he was involved with a Colombian drug cartel or if he was working as an interrogator for the Chinese government? The known facts of the story were bad enough.

Solly walked cautiously over to where Dr. Kohen stood. The doctor seemed to be part of a group of Asian tourists. Everyone in the group wore the same type of baseball hat and the same T shirt that had the words “Fun Lovin’ and Roamin’ the Globe” written on it. There was more stuff written on the shirts but it was written in Chinese, or was it Thai?

Dr. Kohen no longer had a beard and his hair looked like it had been dyed black. But Solly had a keen eye for recognizing people. It was definitely him. When he would retell the story later Solly could never explain why he did not shout or call a cop or do something constructive. Solly said that it was one of his greatest regrets that he did nothing more than simply stand and stare at the villain.

As the “Fun Lovin’ and Roamin the Globe” tour group moved on, each hat wearing member took a turn inserting a note into the wall. Dr. Kohen went last. Solly watched surreptitiously and moved in quick as soon as the doctor left with the rest of the group. With trembling fingers he picked the doctor’s note out of the wall unfolded it and read:

“Dear God, 

Life was okay with you but it’s been fantastic without you. Let everyone else wail at the wailing wall. I’m gonna do what I want . Akiva”  

The blasphemous words leapt off the crumpled paper and bit Solly in the neshama. How could Dr Kohen have written such a note?  Where was the man’s punishment? Where was the fairness of it all? Solly put the note back into the wall and as he walked away he imagined that the note burst into flames, setting all the rest of the papers, and the wall itself on fire.

The walk back up the stairs away from the Kotel plaza seemed much more difficult than the sprint down toward it. The steps were made of very hard cold stone. From one of the alleyways of the old city Solly heard the lowing of a dove. It was a sad sound. It was then that Solly considered that just beyond the wall, the Holy Temple had indeed been burned to the ground and that we live in a very, very, imperfect world. It wouldn’t the first time a Fun Lovin’ Roamin’ had lit the Temple on fire and it wouldn’t be the last. We live in a very, very, imperfect world.

I visited Uncle Noach last Friday at The Hebrew Home for the Aged (recently renamed Seniorcare Lifestyle Retirement Residences). As he sat in his wheelchair in front of the home, soaking in the sunshine, he seemed as curmudgeonly as ever. “Watch what you say” he whispered to me cautiously as soon as I arrived. “Hitler has come to America...and there she is.” He pointed his boney finger at his nurse in damning accusation. The sweet Philippina woman rolled her eyes.

“Would someone tell that shiksa to keep her hands to herself” he clarified bitterly.” It’s enough my body is tortured by the poisonous whitefish salad she feeds me I don’t need my neshama to be destroyed by her unwanted advances.” She blushed and uncomfortably rolled her eyes again.

And then the rant began about the home. “Now that we are on the subject about my neshama why do people assume that elderly Jews no longer care about keeping kosher? If anything it’s the opposite. Gehenim and Gan eden are only weeks away for a lot of us here.”

“It’s a kosher style home” I corrected.

“What the heck does that mean? Is it kosher or not? Do pregnant “style” women have babies? How exactly did they stylize kosher?  Did they shove a matza ball in the chazzer’s mouth before they serve it?”

Just then the home recreational director came outside to round up the residents for the Shabbat services. “Come on Noah” coaxed the nurse “it’ll be so nice that your great nephew can join you for the services.” Uncle Noach just smiled painfully as he was wheeled him into the home. I guessed that the smile meant he had more hostile comments than could come out of his mouth at one time.

My parents hadn’t planned on sending Uncle Noach to a home but things just kind of evolved that way. After his wife died and he could no longer care for himself the home was the only option. Keeping him with us was out of the question. Even if his personality was less abrasive, his physical needs were just too much for our family to handle. The home was the only option, and the kosher style Hebrew home was the only Jewish option. 

“Nonsense” Uncle Noach responded to the family’s reasoned explanation for the turn of events.” The real reason is because I’m only an uncle and not a parent.”

The first few weeks he kept on running away. After a while he learned that staying in the home was his best option. The staff tried really hard. They put Noach in a room with Ernest. Ernest came from the same area of Poland as Uncle Noach. Ernest was also a widower and an important person in the nursing home. He was the president of the Residents Council, the committee with the august powers of deciding which type of kosher style foods would be served to the meals and to determine the songs sung at the religious services.

According to Uncle Noach, Ernest was a symbol of all that was wrong with the Jewish people. They lasted as roommates for three days. They were separated after Ernest attacked Uncle Noach with a metal bar. Due to the incident, Ernest was demoted to vice president. Uncle Noach refused to take part in any form of nursing home government. He said it was stupid. 

The residents where wheeled into a semicircle and Esther, a sweet faced heavy set volunteer, began to lead the group in song. Her opening number was “Shabbat Shalom, Hey.” Next to her was a metal cart with Shabbat candles, Dixie cups with grape juice, and a chala cut into cubes. “Shabbas a la carte,” Uncle Noach muttered cynically.

When Esther finished lighting the Shabbat candles as if on cue Uncle Noach lit up a cigarette. “Why the heck not?” he puffed. ”Just because I’m old doesn’t mean I am senile. It’s not really Shabbat we all know that. It’s only one pm on a Friday afternoon. It’s not even Shabbos in England and they are five hours earlier.“

He grudgingly put out the cigarette when commanded by Kevin, the nurse. Noach cursed him for his efforts.

“Whoever heard of no smoking in a nursing home? We’re all old. Smoking won’t kill us. A visiting eight year old grandson with the stomach flu who coughs on a banister... that will kill us. My lousy cigarette is fine.”  

 Esther made Kiddush and Kevin handed out the grape juice, Esther said hamoitzi and Kevin handed out the chala cubes.

“The wine better be mevushal” Noach whispered too loudly to me. “These amei haaretz never heard of washing for bread?” He asked with weary disgust. “How can anyone expect this fat shiksa and her faygeleh friend to know about Shabbos.” He waved his hand in disgust. “Just like the food, this nursing home only has Shabbos style not the real thing.”

But Esther was a trooper. She did her best to ignore Noach but I could tell he was getting under her skin. “Maybe you guys will enjoy some of the Shabbat songs” she offered chirpily. 

  “No worries about kol isha with a para like that” Noach muttered much too loudly. I guess we were attending religious services because I prayed to God that Esther did not understand what he was saying.

“ Vhy don’t you shattup you religious fanatic” shouted Ernest at Noach from across the room. 

“Why don’t you try hitting me with a metal bar again, you Nazi” shot back Noach.

At the mention of the Nazis Ernest turned beet red. “How dare you tell ME about the Nazis.”

Nurse Kevin shouted them both down and gave a little speech about tolerance and very quickly before anyone could say another word Esther started to lead the group loudly in Yiddish songs.

She started with” Hava Nagila” which seemed to be a crowd pleaser, she moved on to “By Mir Bist Du Shain”and a few of the residents even clapped along to the peppy tune. I began to believe that even Noach was emotionally moved a little bit by the sentimentality of Oyfen Pripitchik. “At the fireplace a little fire burns and in the room it's warm, and the Rabbi teaches little children the aleph-bais.”

He started to get antsy when she began to sing “Zoom Galli Galli.” “Chalutz Leman Avoda, Avoda Leman Hachalutz-Be a pioneer so as to work, work so as to be pioneer” 

“What the heck kind of communist song is that?” he whispered again too loudly.  “Straight from the workman’s paradise of the People’s Republic of Israel.”

No doubt Esther thought she was making things better when she switched songs to “Kum Aher Du Philizoph” but it was a bad choice, a very bad choice. The song was about an old fashioned rabbi scolding an enlightened philosopher. It enraged Noach. He stopped the song dead in its tracks.

“Listen, lady, do you think anything in Yiddish is appreciated by us Jewish people? Let me just say that your religion hating trashy song for your, so called, Friday-Shabbas party is offensive. Deutschland Uber Alles also sounds like Yiddish you large foolish girl.”

After Noach was ejected from the Shabbat services I found myself asking him to explain his bad behavior. I told him that cruelty was also against the Torah. I told him that he was creating a Chillul Hashem by giving observant Jews a bad name by acting so rudely. I told him a lot of things but he only smiled at me.

“I’m not really that religious” he informed me. “I just enjoy making trouble. There isn’t a whole lot else I do have.” He was quiet for a while and then lit up another cigarette and added, “and don`t feel too bad about the guys in there. Hating guys like me might be the only thing they have going as well.”

As I Daf Yomi  my way through Mesechtot Zevachim and Menachot it becomes painfully clear to me that I’m going to need to learn this again a few more times to properly understand it. Aside from the roller coaster of argumentation about the details of very obscure topics, the very basic premise of the books is not clear. To explain what I mean, in Nezikin you root for financial fairness to win, in Moed and Nashim on some level you root for leniencies or at least relatable issues, but in Kodshim there is no right side up that is discernible. The details seem to matter a lot but I’m not sure of the objective.

For example, is a blood sprinkling above rather than below the red line of the altar in some way holier? Why would a person decide to offer a deep fried grain offering instead of a shallow fried offering? Why are holier sacrifices only slaughtered in the northern side of the Temple rather than anywhere?The Talmud scrupulously avoids answering these questions. It prefers sticking with very tight scriptural analysis and hermeneutical principles over using any overarching theme to arrive at a result.

I imagine that kabbalists do offer hints. They might say ( although I haven’t found it written anywhere) that four steps of the sacrificial order correspond to the four basic elements that make up the world. They no doubt explore how the altar is a microcosm of the world and how the heavens relate to the specifics of each detail and they do matter.

But the Talmud itself seems to avoid any contamination of such big picture thinking.

It makes for hard reading but maybe just maybe ( and this is my aha moment)…that is the point. Maybe the way to worship the unknowable God is through a limitation of understanding. The very process of blindly following the labyrinth or rules toward a greater understanding is changing me in the process in the manner that God wants.

Although for now it still feels like the blind man trying to discover the elephant the reward is in the effort. As I try to absorb as many of these idiosyncrasies as I can to make the patterns in trying to understand how God interacts with the world I may think I do get a better picture, but only because in the process the effort is changing me.

When he first took the job, Rebbitzin Shirley had more patience for the congregation than her husband, the rabbi, did. In truth, she couldn’t quite understand a lot of his ranting. She thought that some women on the sisterhood seemed snobby but so many of them were nice.

Most people who came to shul to daven and learn and give charity, she figured. What was the matter with the few nudnik board members who would not give her husband any rest? Why were such people so attracted to lay leadership positions? Like her mama would say, while it’s nice to be important it’s more important to be nice.

Mitch Applebaum seemed like a wonderful man. He worked day and night for the shul. He gave the 18 times 18 donations for the brotherhood every Chanuka. Why was there so much animosity between him and her husband?

Was it because Rabbi Yisrael once corrected the way Mitch’s tfillin sat on top of his nose? Or perhaps he hated him because Rabbi Yisrael once saw him walking out of a nonkosher Chinese restaurant and Mitch saw that he saw. Maybe it was just a personality clash.

Rabbi Yisrael said that the problem was that Mitch thought he was a Torah scholar even though he was actually an ignorant boor. He never said this of course to Mitch’s face. He would never dare. Just behind closed doors, to his wife the words would fly. 

It all went so bad after that horrible, horrible, Purim night when Mitch’s brother in law, Henry, gave a funny drasha and imitated her husband’s mannerisms in the worst way. Henry somehow got his hands on a childhood photo of Rabbi Yisrael looking silly. In the photo little Izzy (the young Rabbi Yisrael) was dressed in cowboy boots, a cowboy hat, and a diaper. He made copies and put them around the shul. The whole kehilla was laughing and even little children were copying Rabbi Yisrael’s mannerism from the picture. They were saying “yippikayai” to him all night long. Rabbi Yisrael came home and locked himself in his study and for the only time in his life that Shirley could remember, she heard her dignified husband cry. 

Everyone at shul told her the next day not to take Henry too seriously. They called Henry a joker. But she couldn’t understand how everyone else sat there quietly and even laughing while this happened with barely a protest.

The worst part of it was the way in which her husband warned her against telling anyone about his tears. He told her that if anyone asked she should say that he was above such nonsense. Tell people that he was doing fantastically well at the job, that everyone loved him that their family were the darlings of a community.

Being a rabbi means lying. Not just with words but metaphorically lying down, on the hands of the crowd -like a casket at an ayatollah’s funeral or a rock star at a concert. If they poke the rabbi a bit it’s to be expected, the only thing worse is if they all decide to walk away, then the rabbi finds himself lying on the ground. Whatever happens, a rabbi has to encourage the crowd to stay and keep him and his family in the air. With wide wild red eyes he shook Rebbitzin Shirley and said, “Do you understand that my livelihood depends on how you react tomorrow?”

The next morning, in shul, Rabbi Yisrael was all smiles. He listened and smiled as the mentally disabled people all came over to tell him about the mock sermon and ask him if he had seen the picture and what “yippikayai” means. He listened as the learned men discussed all the various aspects megilla reading and press him for not being strict enough with decorum. He listened as the synagogue’s caterer questioned him for the true numbers for the synagogue dinner. He was all confidence and positivity. Not a hint of darkness.

Shirley stood in the ladies section. She watched as the little kids had their costume parade. She watched at the dinner seuda as they had their danced around and drank their shots of scotch and sang funny songs. She smiled and told everyone that everything was very nice, wonderful and fine. She listened to Mrs. Fenner talk about her single niece; she nodded and laughed at all the right moments but inside something had snapped.

 She felt a cold cynicism coming over her. She became scared of her own thoughts but strangely in control. She thought of stories her husband had told her one Tisha Bav. She thought about the prophet Zecharia who was stoned to death by an angry crowd whom he had given rebuke to on Yom Kippur. She thought about a famous rabbi from history, the Shaagas Aryeh and his wife eating their Sabbath meal in a dark field on a Friday night. That holy rabbi was thrown out of his home by his angry synagogue president right before Shabbos and everyone was too scared to help him. For a fleeting second she remembered a Christian show she once saw on television where the bearded yoke was put on a tzelem and an angry looking group of baale batim screamed at him. She wondered if the early Jew hating Christian stories were written by bitter Rebbitzins. 

In Shirley’s eyes that night the people in shul didn’t even seem like they were humans, let alone good Jews. Drunken accountants, dermatologists, and income tax lawyers were having a party at the club house they call a synagogue. Her husband was not Moses he was a men’s room attendant and she was his helper. If that was her job in life then so be it, she could act the part. 

Rabbi Yisrael and Rebbitzin Shirley got their coats from the coatroom where they interrupted Mr. Michalowitz’s flirtatious advances on Mrs. Davids. The shame of the moment was painfully awkward to the sinful man and woman but all Rebbitzin Shirley could consider were the board member votes in the rabbis favor that were now lost from those two. The Rabbi and Rebbitzin walked to the parking lot and she got into their car the one parked in the rabbi’s special parking spot. Someone had left a Styrofoam cup, half full of soda, on the trunk of their car. Rebbitzen Shirley thought about the Holocaust and smiled a bit.

Amram did the math in his bald sweaty bearded head. Six synthetic wigs, $34 profit for each would give him 204 bucks. If he could get this lady to commit to another six and pay half now he could even get it up to 306 dollars. He could probably get to Wiggers of Brooklyn by 5:30. They told him they would take a dozen. That would give him 408 and with 306 he’d be up to 714. He’d have to make it to the bank before closing by six, to water his maxed out overdraft before the closing day to cover the internet banking transfer he’d need to do tonight by midnight to the cell phone company for $432.Or they would cut off his line. If they cut off his line, well, that would be bad. He had put the cell phone number on his CV and, well, the phone number on the CV being disconnected did not look good. The job prospects could still email him but still maybe they wouldn’t. He needed a full time teaching job. As a part time tutor and wig salesman he could no longer manage. Even with Yocheved’s job as a medical secretary. It was all so precariously balanced.

The other 280 or so dollars he’d freed up in his overdraft account might help with Shabbos. Yocheved might have ideas for that money as well. He could always count on that. She was making noises about buying an air conditioner. The Brooklyn basement apartment they lived in was as hot as heck. Yocheved said it wasn’t healthy for the baby to be in such a hot apartment. Thank G-d Amram’s car was air conditioned. These days Amram would sometimes drive around just so he didn’t have to go back to the basement. He knew it was a waste of gas but he didn’t care. It was a luxury he splurged on.

Amram wished this wig store was air conditioned. His white shirt was untucked and he was sweating like a madman. The gym bag full of wigs weighed on his shoulder, tugged on his dark wool suit jacket. Devora of Hair Affair lingered over the two dozen hairpieces that lay on her glass counter. It was the reds that she was worried about. Wig ladies always worried about his reds. He tried explaining that 27-27-30 was not an easy color. Red headed women would understand. Devora was less than convinced. She still wanted to know about the 24-14 12’s she had to return because of the faulty clip. She wanted to know why it couldn’t count toward her new purchase. As a customer walked into the store Amram was able to catch a breeze which brought on a flittering memory and with it the swell of emotion he could recognize as a pleasant painful mix of love longing and remorse.

He thought about the sweet wind of the Judean Mountains toward evening time and his apartment with Yocheved, his years in kollel a life time of six years ago before the kids and the bills and the move back to New York and the job in his father-in-law’s business. He thought about the fight with his father-in-law that almost destroyed his marriage, the death of his father, the successful fight for the inheritance with his sister, the chance meeting with Mendy, the foolish investment in the wigs and where he was now; standing sweaty with a stain on the belly of his untucked white shirt, waiting for Devora of Hair Affair to decide on which hair piece to buy. 

“I’ll tell you what”, Devora said, “I’ll pay for a full dozen right now but you’re gonna have to give me off a bit on the price.” Amram refused. He knew there were halachic issues with offering discounted prices for immediate payment. Besides, he knew the wig ladies spoke to each other and there was no way he could withstand the type of chaos that would ensue if he started offering separate prices to each. It was a matter of principle. 

“Well then I’m sorry” she responded. “I can only take these six, she said holding out four fifty dollar bills.” 

“That will still be four more dollars” he said trying to sound polite.

Devora said something that sounded like a swear word and rummaged through her pocket book pulling out four dollars in loose change. Amram’s sweaty head became even sweatier. Now he would have to get to Wiggers of Brooklyn there was no choice about it. Amram could feel his cell phone vibrate against his appendix. It was probably Yocheved, or the cell phone company, or a customer with a faulty clip, or a tutoring student.

He scooped up the big bag of wigs and heard an older woman behind him mutter something about the rudeness of religious people. He fumbled with the cell phone as he left the store onto the busy street. Caller ID said it was Yocheved. What in goodness could she want now? Tell him a story about an irate customer? “Not now!” he commanded forcefully into the cell phone, flipping it shut and back into the holster as he danced darted and weaved between the other pedestrians, making his way over to his car.

He could tell there was something wrong by the crowd that had gathered near his vehicle, the broken window, and the Hatzola guys. It took him a little bit longer to remember that he had picked up his son, Moshe, from the babysitter today before he had stopped to see Devora of Hair Affair. The next few thoughts and pictures were just a blur. The baby’s flushed face as it lay lifeless on the stretcher. Visions of screaming and gasping of gawking onlookers and the siren’s wail through the smoggy air. Amram slowly dropped his bag of hair pieces. His cell phone vibrated in his hand; he hardly noticed.

Okay I’d like to call to order the board executive of Gates of Torah synagogue. The date is June 19th 1998. And, uh, I am acting president Leonard Madovsky. Chairman of the Board executive is Bruce Davids. Acting Executive Vice-Secretary and Ex- President is Harold Michalowitz. I’d like to call this meeting officially to order.

Where is Saul?

He had bowling finals tonight; he said he couldn’t miss it.

Hey Lenny, what kind of meeting is this if we don’t have cookies and danishes?

Dave, calm down, do you know that those cookies and danishes are costing the synagogue close to 100 bucks a year? That’s almost a quarter of a membership. Now I’d like to call this meeting to order.

I’d like to sponsor the cookies and danishes for the next board meeting.

Jeez, Harold, are you serious?

Firstly, I wish you would call me by my Hebrew name, Chaim, after all we’re in a shul and secondly yes I am serious, ever since our shul was on Montgomery Street we’ve had lemon danishes at the board meetings and I just think that once you start changing stuff like that I’m not sure where it ends. It’s who we are as a shul.

Is there anything else?

Yes I’d like to sponsor these refreshments in memory of my mother, Esther Yitta bas Rochel Baila Zlatcha.

Does anyone have any objection to that?

I think we should put it to a vote.

The man wants to give us cookies in memory of his mom what could we possibly vote about?

Well, have you considered all the ramifications of accepting non-traditional memorial donations? It might sound trivial but if people are going start sponsoring cookies or herring or the heating bill- things are going to get out of hand. I mean they might not sponsor shalosh seudos anymore for yartzeits. Have we thought about that?

I am glad you brought up shalosh seudos sponsorships; can someone talk to the shammes? The stuff he’s buying is disgusting. You can’t call that herring? It’s disgusting. No one eats it. They just put it back for next week for everyone to look at in disgust. 

It’s true, it’s true. Three weeks ago I sponsored shalosh seudos for my uncle’s ninth yartzeit. I think my dead uncle is in better condition than the shalosh seudos was.  

I’m going to have to call order to this meeting. The board meeting danish matter as well as the shalosh seudos matter will be referred to the synagogue food committee chairman and I’ll have them deal with it as a part of a larger report to be presented on the shul’s food situation.

We can’t.

Why not?

Because the synagogue food committee is Harvey Kerbotkin and he no longer davens in our shul.

Since when?

Since the Rabbi made an issue about his wife being a non-Jew.

Oh!

There was more to the story apparently but Harvey says he won’t step foot in this place again.

I wonder if the Rabbi understood about us eating bad shalosh seudos herring when he took that stand.

We’ll get to the Rabbi issue in a second in the meanwhile we’re just going to need a new food committee chairman.

(Silence)

Don’t look at me. I have too many commitments as it is.

And I’m more of an ideas guy.

I’ll call Marv and see if he’ll do it.

Let’s move on to tonight’s agenda and talk about the rabbi.

Does anyone have any initial thoughts?

With all due respect, I think the Rabbi’s speeches could be a little less dry but a little more serious. A little more easygoing, more jokes but with more dignity.

With all due respect he could have been a little more emotionally expressive at my grandson’s bar mitzvah. He only shook his hand. He practically hugged the Kaminski kid.

With all due respect he was completely out of line the way he slammed the Kiddush club.

Listen, he’s trying his best and I know that a lot of people have only good things to say about him.

We brought him in for the youth, he might not be our style but the youth seem to like him.

My grandson doesn’t seem to think so, he said, and I’ll quote my grandson verbatim, he said “that Rabbi is way too harsh.” 

With all due respect your grandson is hardly a decider of what makes a good Rabbi.

I’m not saying my grandson is a Talmud scholar, I’m only saying that if it’s youth we brought him in for it doesn’t seem to be working at least not with my grandson.

I don’t have any grandchildren so I don’t really care.

What about the Rebbitzen? 

My wife says that she gave a nice class at the sisterhood. 

Yeah, and she’s a good cook too.

Well my wife doesn’t like her. She says that she doesn’t have the Rebbitzen look.

Well I heard stuff that I’d rather not go into. I’m no gossip but I heard stories. I mean don’t quote me on it and it’s nothing anyone can prove and I don’t mean to disparage anyone’s reputation, least of all our Rebbitzen’s, but let’s just leave it at that.

(Silence)

Well, thanks a lot, now you got me thinking indecent things about the Rebbitzen.

What exactly did the Rebbitzen do? I think as board members we have a right to know, it’s our fiduciary responsibility.

Oh for the love of goodness. The whole thing is a dollars and cents thing. Why are we even discussing this, I mean, he’s been with us for three years and all he does is visit sick people, give dull speeches at ceremonies, and announce page numbers. Has he brought in new members? The Fishels, the Kravetzs, the Goldsteins and the Kantors have all left our shul and all that has joined our community are a bunch of people that no one has ever heard of.

With all due respect to our Rabbi, and I happen to think he’s a great guy, but what do we got to lose by looking around and exploring our options.

I said it when we got him. We should get someone with a bigger name. Who’s ever heard of Rabbi Yisrael Fefferkorn?

Whoa whoa, I think we are getting way ahead of ourselves, opening up this can of worms can be time consuming and very expensive, has anyone ever expressed any of these concerns to the Rabbi himself?

(Silence)

Who are you kidding Lenny, we have way too much respect to do something like that.

Well then I think we should refer this matter to the Personnel committee for review and let them deal with it.

Are you sure this isn’t a matter for the ritual committee to deal with?

Okay then make it a joint committee for them to deal with.

Yeah that sounds right, they should deal with it.

Yeah with all due respect.

My name is Yossi and I am in the seventh grade. My father sends me to a yeshivish school. He says it's good for me to be here because kids need to be brain washed first so that they can emotionally value what they reject later in life. I felt bad that he called me a kid; after all, I am almost Bar Mitzvah. He explained to me that he was only referring to my age in a relative sense. One time, when I was talking, he said that I sounded like a moronic twenty year old. What he said he meant was that I discuss things that are far too complex for anyone my age to understand. I still felt bad about it. One day I'll be a brilliant twenty year old.

My father calls himself a Centrist rabbi, not a practicing rabbi but still an ordained rabbi. Sometimes he calls himself Modern Orthodox although he doesn't really like that term. He says that people usually associate it with a type of Halachic leniency that he doesn't in any way endorse. He doesn't like Chassidim or really Yeshivish people. He thinks they are too far away from the center path. He says that the problem with chareidim is that they manipulate the ignorance of the kehilla and encourage blind faith more than promote clear rationality. He says that they are afraid of confronting modernity and that's why they hide in their self-imposed physical and intellectual ghettos. But on the other hand, he gives them credit for being the ones who have been the guardians of the Torah. I could go on and on telling you all the things my father knows. He's a very big Talmid Chacham and I'm very proud that I'm his son. I know more than anything that the Torah he teaches me I can't get anywhere else.

I know if I learn enough Torah somehow I know that I'll be someone great, when I grow up. Actually I'd even say that I have a responsibility to myself and to all the Jews that died in the Holocaust to become someone great. I'm still not too sure what I'll be but I know it'll be something great. My father says he doesn't care what I become as long as I earn an honest and clean living, but I know he's just saying that because it’s what he's supposed to say. Hashem couldn't have made me this special just to work like a goy.

I think when I grow up I'll be a great rabbi. I can even be a great rabbi now if I wanted to be. My father says that I know more about the foundations of Judaism at my age than many of my Rebbeim in Yeshiva know. It's not anyone’s fault of course and I would never say this to anyone in Yeshiva. They just didn't have the exposure to the works of hashkafa that I have had. They are honest people, of course, but just very simplistic. That's what my Dad says anyway.

It would be nice if I became a great Rabbi; although I'm still not sure if I'll have a really long beard or just a simple sophisticated looking goatee. Whatever kind of beard I'll have I imagine I'll be pulling my fingers through it a lot while I'm thinking. I know how to do that really good. You just use your index finger and thumb and start up by the chin and kind of bring it down slowly. Oh yeah, and you have to scrunch up your forehead lines and make your eyebrows all bushy looking. Victor Weinstien is in my class and he's starting to grow a beard. Just a little bit by the mustache and sideburn fuzz.

I remember one time when Victor yelled at my Rebbi. Can you imagine that? He yelled at a Rebbi? He said that the only reason he was being thrown out of class is because the school hates Russians. Victor is a Russian by the way. My Rebbi started turning red and yelling and calling Victor a "chutzpinyak" and Victor had to stay home for three days. 

Not just Russians are Reshoim though, so are Moroccans. Of my older brothers Shimon and Yehuda are okay but Levi is a rosho. Well, he's not really a rosho like a Russian or a Moroccan might be, but for my family he pretty bad. Like, for example, I heard him say a swear word once, and he's always getting into trouble at school, and throwing me on the ground and putting his knees on my arms. My father is always yelling at him. When I was little learning the parsha of Esav and Yaakov in school I asked my father if all brothers had one a tzadik and one rosho. At the time he got angry with me and told me not to say such things about my older brother, but then later I heard him tell over what I said to Mr. Hornwasser between mincha and maariv and they both laughed. So maybe my father also sort of knows that Levi is a rosho.

I don't know what makes people want to be reshoim. I figure that sometimes it has to do with the way you were born. Some of the kids in my class tended to have been born in the wrong way. I know they don't keep kosher because they are always chewing Hubba Bubba; even grape flavoured which is the worst. My father says that God will let them off the hook because they were born that way. Secretly, I sometimes wish I didn’t know so much so I could also be let off the hook.

I have lots of secrets that I think about, stupid things that shouldn't even be thought about. Maybe I'm not so smart even for a twelve year old. I think all kinds of crazy things when I'm alone by myself at night. I don't know how to explain it. It's like a picture feeling of playing a flute in Israel with sheep and a running stream. I'm sure I'm not saying it good but it's like a picture that's so nice that you have to cry when you see it. I think I want to live there forever. I don't know if it makes me good but I just can't imagine Levi or Victor or the Russians in my class or any other rosho ever wanting to be in Israel with a flute by a stream. If Victor were there he'd probably make bad sounds come out from his underarm.  

One time I tried telling my father about it but then he started looking at me like I was a baby so I stopped. It's a good thing I stopped telling him when I did. There are a lot of secrets I have which I don't tell my father or anyone because I'm saving them. Stuff people will only find out about when I'm great and famous and dead and they write a book about my life as a gedolim story. For example, they’ll write about all the times I prayed so hard when I was in bed at night even though no one could see me. I’m still not sure how they eventually will find out about all this stuff later after I’m dead.

Lots of times I have this dream about becoming a Ba'al T'shuva. I know it sounds crazy but I think about it. Like, I pretend that I’m all full of drugs and crazy and with long hair and then go to the kosel and then become frum and start learning torah and become all spiritual and everything. It has a warm feeling to it. Sometimes I mix and match my dreams and after I become religious I go to the sheep by the river with my flute. It just depends on the night I guess. 

My father doesn't like ba'al tshuvos very much. He says that they already had this world and now they are trying to get the next one too. Not that he thinks it's preferable that they stay not religious but just that when they become frum they become a little bit weird. One time we had a melave malkah in our house and he told over a vort that the reason that tzadikim can't be in the same place in heaven as baalei tshuva is because it smells bad. My mom got really mad at him for saying that because one of the guests was a baal tshuva. My dad said he was sorry. My mom doesn't get mad at my dad too often but when she does he usually lets her win.

My father told me that when I get married I have to respect my wife's wishes and honor her more than anything. I don't really understand why though, I mean, girls don't become tzadikkim or anything. They don't have pictures of gedolim`s wives hanging up in anyone’s succah. Thousands of people don't show up for a godol's wife's funeral. And from what I can tell girls say the stupidest non-Torah things I've ever heard. Still, I don't dare disagree with my father. That would be assur. Maybe when I’m older.  

Actually, I remember that melava malka really clearly. It was the first one my parents let me stay up for. I was excited even though they said that I couldn't eat any of the candy till it was over. Everyone smelled so nice and the living room looked so clean and my parents were so nice and showing me off to everyone. My older brother, Levi, the rosho, said I looked like a puppy standing on hind legs. I pray to Hashem nightly to forgive his wickedness. 

Last night the worst thing in the world happened. I was lying in bed reading a Torah biography by the bathroom light when suddenly I heard Levi yell at my father to shut-up. I knew they were fighting but I never dreamed he would ever say such a thing. I don't think he meant to say it even. Right after he screamed shut up everyone got really quiet. I think even Hashem was surprised that he said it (that is, if Hashem could be surprised). It was scary. Levi ran out of the house and my father ran out after him. I ran downstairs to see if I could help the situation at all. My mother made me go to bed. 

Recently she told me that Levi is going through a difficult age and that I shouldn't think badly about him. Like I said, women aren't really too smart. I mean Shimon is also a teenager and he's okay. I think my mother just doesn't want to admit that she gave birth to an Esav. I would have told her not to feel so bad about it, that Rivka, our ancestor also had a child that was a Rosho and that she shouldn't blame herself, but I didn't think it was appropriate that I be the one to say it. When I'm older and a distinguished Rabbi I can say such things. I can hardly wait.

My father came home a little bit later and told my mother that Levi would be living with another family for a little while. The way she was carrying on disappointed me a bit. I knew she was a woman and all but didn't she know the famous saying from our Sages that “one who has pity on the wicked is actually being cruel to the kind.” I guess she didn't. 

My door was a little bit opened and my father saw that I was awake. He smiled at me and walked into my room and sat on my bed. He looked at me and hugged me. I knew he was comparing me to Levi and I knew that it was really no contest. He told me how hard it is to raise children, that he really was trying his best with all of us and that he loved us all the exact same. He also asked me to call Levi at his friend's house tomorrow and ask that he come back home, to tell him that I missed him. 

I felt honored that my father asked me to do this important task but I told him that I had to refuse him. He said he understood even though I didn't tell him my reason. I could not allow the pity that he had for his son, allow me to bring a wicked evildoer back into our midst. But once again I chose the path of wisdom and did not tell him my reason. 

Then my father looked at me very closely and, I'm telling the truth, with tears in his eyes asked me to always behave. "I understand fully if you want to cause trouble in the future," he said, "but I'm just asking you for the sake of kindness to be good to me and your mother and not cause too much trouble."  The request bothered me a little bit as if it implied that I would one day want to go down the path of wickedness that my brother was racing down. But I knew my father had had a hard night so I promised him my obedience. "You don't have to worry about my neshama, Dad, not mine!"   

Every day Yankel Shmeel showed up at the amusement park to be bored and miserable . “The one thing I ask of Hashem is what I still continue to ask, to dwell in his house all of the days of my life.”(Psalm 27) A cool air conditioned yeshiva, a good study partner, an ample supply of Torah books, an opportunity to prepare for a Talmud lesson-Exploring a new sugya, a jungle, a mess of ideas and seemingly contradictory opinions waiting to be untangled. But that was not the will of the Abishter.  Gods will was that Yankel Shmeel be damned to be bored and miserable all summer long with the immodestly dressed yoshvai kronos at Canada’s Wonderland.

Yankel Shmeel was not the type of person to make a big public tumult because of his personal problems with his indecent thoughts. He just tried his best not to let his eyes wander. He stayed near the Taxi jam and Ghoster-coaster. The overweight smoking gentile mothers over there would usually present few problems of indecent thoughts for him, despite the tank tops and shorts. Besides, there was a nice rest stop where he could sit and look into a Torah book between the times his kids would bug him for something.

Despite all the other reasons to be lenient, Yankel Shmeel simply could not afford to be stringent on this matter. Summer camps for his kids that gave a proper Torah environment were too expensive for his salary. Goodness knows Yankel Shmeel couldn’t have his children sit home and watch television or play video games all day.  They weren’t holding by learning all day. They were children. So Rachel came up with the idea that they buy discount season’s passes and that he take them to Wonderland every afternoon in the summer after he would finish his learning and tutoring. Rachel spent every day working at the dressmaker and anyway Yankel Shmeel had no full time teaching in the summer. Yankel Shmeel knew that a lack of wealth was a part of his decision in life to follow a path of Torah. Yankel Shmeel never considered that the path of Torah led to the Scooby Doo Haunted Mansion every afternoon for two months. But that was the hard math of the matter. Financial difficulties look so different in real life than they do in the stories of Jewish heroes.

Rachel’s idea about the season’s passes was not only her idea. There were other regulars at the Wonderland kids section. The blond muscle guy with the Adidas tank top and whiney boy, the black woman with the polka dotted dress and white special needs child, and the Italian man with the fancy sunglasses and twin girls. Yankel Shmeel considered that they must have had a name for him as well, perhaps the “white dress shirt, black wool pants, baseball hat wearing bearded guy” more likely he figured he was known as “the Jew”.

Yankel Shmeel never spoke to these people and they never spoke to him. What could he say to them? “How can people such as you have such cute children?” Would they tell him a new tosfos?

But then one day at all changed, the boredom and the resentment and the unhappiness. Yankel Shmeel spoke to the others. It was probably due to a shared unusual experience. The ride broke in the middle and someone sort of caught the other person’s eye and said, “boy, this sure is something” or some such comment and then a comment led to another and they even spoke a little about the weather and a third person joined in and then before you know it they were all conversing. Yankel Shmeel could feel himself letting go of the coast and floating out into the middle of the sea of humanity. 

It scared Yankel Shmeel. He knew that anti-Semitism was a religiously legal fact of life but he had never really experienced any first hand. These people seemed nice but Yankel Shmeel was uneasy about it. The next day they struck up the conversation again as a group and then sometimes even as individual conversations. And so it went on for a few weeks. Yankel Shmeel had new friends.

The others seemed to like talking to Yankel Shmeel. He almost never spoke about himself and listened to them talk about themselves. Yankel Shmeel saw each person was a new topic, a new web of Talmudic complexity, a passage of Gemara he had never seen before.  He listened to hairy back Adidas shirt, a man named Carlos talk about his career troubles. Yankel Shmeel had never considered that being sanitation and recycling manager was such an involved business, with politics, opportunity, and complexity. Yankel Shmeel listened to Carol, the black polka dot dress woman talk about her work with the mentally handicapped. She was hoping to make some money to send to her cousins in the Caribbean.  He listened to Dennis talk about the different types of haircuts he gave and all the various customers he had. He appreciated their openness, lack of pretension and honesty. Yankel Shmeel had never actually met a person who had committed adultery before and was astounded by Dennis’s casual admission. It was like he was taking a field trip in learning Tractate Sota.

The more they talked the more Yankel Shmeel involved himself in their world. They seldom asked Yankel Shmeel about himself and his personal life. Maybe his body language was uninviting. He remained quiet whenever Dennis used inappropriate language. He played it cool when Carlos invited him for a barbecue. They also sensed Yaakov freeze whenever another white dress shirt, dark wool pants baseball hat wearing, bearded man walked by. Perhaps they sensed that Yankel Shmeel was embarrassed to be out of his element. They understood that he was merely dipping a bit in the sea of humanity, the coastline very close by.

Yaakov loved their Jewish questions “How come one day in April all the Jews go crazy with their garbage? Why do you guys have such uncomfortable looking clothing? What’s with the guys with the curly Q’s on the side of their head?” Yankel Shmeel’s favorite was Dennis’s haircutting question-“How come four weeks no Jewish haircuts, one day lots of Jewish haircuts, three more weeks only some Jewish haircuts, five weeks regular Jewish haircuts and then three more weeks no Jewish haircuts? Can you talk to the Jewish Pope about changing the rules? You guys are ruining my business.” Yankel Shmeel repeated Dennis’ question to his chavrusa, David, in shul that Shabbos. “David would have liked Dennis. The two of them even had similar mannerisms” Yankel Shmeel considered. It was a shame the two would never meet each other.

Yankel Shmeel’s adventures in Wonderland continued until mid August. Yankel Shmeel had paskened for his family that it was not right to visit Wonderland during the Nine Days. That was when Levi went missing for an afternoon. When he came home he admitted defiantly that he had been to Wonderland. Levi said he didn’t want to miss out on Jennifer and Tracy’s fourteenth birthday party. They were Dennis’s twins. Levi said that he liked Jennifer and that she liked him, that she said he was funny and a good listener. 

Yankel Shmeel had always enjoyed learning a tricky sugya, a new topic of Talmud, one that looked like a jungle and discovering a brave new thinker who could pave a road amidst the mess. This was different. The angel of Esau was hitting him below the belt. There was no easy way out of this one.

Yankel Shmeel drove the minivan back home from school for supper. His van looked terrible, the side mirror was torn off and there was a crack in the windshield. It was covered in the grey dust of winter salt. You know you are a yeshiva rebbi when your suit is shinier than your car.

 The driving was treacherous. Black ice they called it. He prayed in his heart to make it back home in peace- to the house his father in law bought for him in the van his father in law bought for him. He knew he’d have to head out again in a half hour to give tutoring lessons.

Eleven years earlier Yankel Shmeel married Rachel. She was a real good catch. Imagine getting a house, car, and lovely woman to marry all at once. Yankel Shmeel did alright with that deal.

I'm not saying that Rachel got shortchanged either, I mean, Yankel Shmeel was no slouch. He was one of the best guys the yeshiva ever put out, very sincere and a tremendous scholar. Yankel Shmeel also had illustrious ancestry. His great grandfather wrote the Tzemach Boruch, a commentary on Miseches Sofrim. 

The matchmaker said that the two of them seemed like they were bashert from the moment he thought of the match. Yankel Shmeel's rebbi confided that Rachel's father was a bit wealthy. Yankel Shmeel didn't know from such things. Yankel Shmeel knew that the God would give him a livelihood if he was working hard in Torah and miztvos, but he strongly suspected that if the man was wealthy it would help. So Yankel Shmeel and Rachel married, they had a lovely sheva brochos at his brother Avremel and sister-in-law Saraleh's house. Yankel Shmeel’s shver gave him a house, car, gold watch, and a promise of two thousand dollars a month for the next ten years so he could sit and learn without distrction. The ten years support ended last year.  Yankel Shmeel's rebbi told him that he could have gotten fifteen years if Yankel Shmeel came from a more yeshivish home. Yankel Shmeel's parents had a television.

Yankel Shmeel was starving. He walked in the door and smelled the delicious fragrance of the dinner Rachel had cooked for him and the children. They had four children, ken ayneh horo. Shimon was nine and obsessed with school, Levi was seven and still had not spoken a word, five years earlier there was a miscarriage, Yehuda was three and working hard on toilet training, Yossi was one and ate anything he could find. Yossi had the intelligence of a lettuce head. The dinner was fried matza with cottage cheese and cinnamon.

Levi’s speechlessness was a matter of great worry to the family. They had taken him to every doctor but still not a word. Can a child not talk on purpose, of spite, just to drive parents crazy?

Yankel Shmeel took off his galoshes, walked into the dining room and started straitening up a little bit from the mess the kids had made with their toys. Children had toys, nu nu, Yankel Shmeel knew that. There's a passage of Gemara somewhere about whether a certain reptile, which renders sacred items ritually unclean, used by children as a toy once it is dead. The Gemara actually discusses the funeral a child would make for a dead reptile. It bothered Yankel Shmeel that he couldn't remember where that Gemara was. It just showed him that he needed to do more review and spend less time day dreaming about meshugass. Yankel Shmeel knew that that was his biggest problem daydreaming about crazy things.

Yehuda was the first one to greet Yankel Shmeel.  He shrieked "Tatti", ran over, and hugged Yaakov’s knees. Shimon worked on a school project about France for Mrs. Abramowitz's social studies report, Levi silently played with paper dolls, and Yossi chewed on a page from Shimon's report. Shimon noticed the chewed report and screamed. Yankel Shmeel didn't really pay much attention to it all. He couldn't. He limped into the kitchen carrying Yehuda on his leg. Yehuda kept on saying “Tatti” over and over again.

In the kitchen Yankel Shmeel’s eishes chayil, Rachel, was on fire. Not literally, although, when she was in her screechy mood Yankel Shmeel sometimes secretly wished someone would take a match to the woman. Yankel Shmeel wondered odd things. Yankel Shmeel day dreamed. It was his biggest fault. "Yankel Shmeel, listen can you put out the glasses. If you want to make it to the bar mitzvah class you have at 7:30 you’re going to have to help me get the kids into the bath by 7:00 and Shimon still wants you to help him with his project. I had such a tough day today please I usually don't ask you for too much, if you could just do your share and help me out this time... You do your relaxing a little bit later." 

Yankel Shmeel hated when she was like this. He told her many times that he'd love to help out if she told him what to do. She had a tough day? Help her this time? What was she implying? He was about to get upset with her but he didn't. He knew the Chazal about the intellect of women. Rachel was no exception. Actually, she was the rule. So, Yankel Shmeel remained quiet, smiled weakly, and started putting out the glasses.

He wasn't always like this, so understanding. When they were first married Yankel Shmeel was much less helpful and more likely to scream at his wife. One time, Yankel Shmeel even got so upset that he banged his fist down on the dinner table very hard and made the silverware jump. Rachel was so upset at him that she didn't speak to him till the next night. Eventually Yankel Shmeel apologized to her. What could he do if this was the way of his wife? The Talmud says that if she is short bend to listen to her.

Yehuda started pulling at Yankel Shmeel’s leg." Tatti, I have to make on the potty", he shrieked. 

“Yankel Shmeel, take him to the potty”, Rachel called out in a shrill voice. Yankel Shmeel shlepped Yehuda by the hand out of the kitchen through the dining room and living room past Levi who was silently tearing up a paper, past crying Yossi, and past Shimon. Yehuda stepped on the fluorescent pink Bristol board of Shimon’s Project on France for Mrs Abramawitz's geography class. Shimon screamed "hey” but Yankel Shmeel ignored him. Father and son, hand in hand, they ran upstairs to the bathroom. "I have to make" Yehuda repeated.

In the bathroom Yehuda would not sit still on the potty. He relieved himself a bit too early and Yankel Shmeel somehow got a bit of the mess on his blue striped necktie. It was the necktie that his mother had bought him for sheva brochos ten years before. Yehuda sang Birchas Hamazon as he sat on his potty. Morah Simma taught the class the first part of Grace after Meals two weeks ago and it was now Yehuda's favorite song. Each holy word sinfully blended with the foul odor. Yankel Shmeel was religiously as well as esthetically offended.

Yankel Shmeel hollered downstairs to Rachel. He was careful not to scream in anger, remembering that his wife was a sensitive person. She might have taken it the wrong way."Help," he cried flatly, "Yehuda is having an accident." He heard no response except for the background screaming of Yossi. "Rachel!" he persisted, again, not in anger. He marveled at his own cool-headedness.

"I can't come now" she hollered back definitively. Then she added "use the Shabbos diapee- wipes we're out of the good kind." Then she added again "hurry down for supper, you'll be late for your tutoring."

Yankel Shmeel looked down at Yehuda. Yehuda’s face beaming with pride or was it the strain of a bowel movement? "Tatti,..I'm making again… on the toilet...sing hurray for Yehuda." "Hurry for Yehuda" was a song that Yankel Shmeel composed for his son on a better day to encourage Yehuda to make on the potty. It was a remake of the previously popular “Hurray for Shimon.” 

Yankel Shmeel knew that the world existed on the merit of Torah. It was definitely beneath his dignity as a Torah scholar to be involved in what he was doing, but what was his choice? Wearily, he hurried out the song. The Talmid Chacham wearing the feces stained tie around his neck and sang "Hurray for Yehuda" to the happy defecating three year old. The world was a highly imperfect place. 

At the dinner table Yankel Shmeel wore a new tie. He told Rachel about the bathroom experience but he received little sympathy.  She momentarily moved her mouth away from the phone interrupting her talk with her sister to bark at him."You're telling me?!" she spat at him, as she cut up little pieces of fried matza for Yossi, "what do you think I do all day long? Welcome to my life!" Yankel Shmeel was about to explain to her that as a woman this was not as difficult for her as it was for him. He even had proofs from the Talmud and ethical works. He decided against saying anything. She adjusted the phone to continue talking to her sister.

Rachel and her sister seemed to be plotting a shaitel purchase. He knew enough to know not to get involved just yet. He would not get anywhere with such a discussion except to cause his wife to be angry utter words of borderline heresy about shaitels and mitzvos in general. From somewhere in the house came the ignored sound of Yossi crying.

At the dinner table Shimon gave a long presentation about the French in his own nasal-voiced signature style. Apparently Paris was on the Seine River and the cultures of Northern and Southern France was markedly different. Levi silently and intensely busied himself sandwiching a baseball card between two pieces of greasy matza. Yehuda jumped up and down on the living room coffee table reciting Birchas Hamazon one word per jump. The sound of Yossi was merely background noise. Rachel expensively yakked with her sister. Yankel Shmeel finally couldn't take the noise any more. Tutoring started in fifteen minutes. The noise, the house, and the bedlam it was unbearable. A lesser man would have screamed, a wicked man would have punched Shimon in the mouth to stop all the talk about France. But Yankel Shmeel was an ehrlicher yid instead he merely let his mind wander away into a dream. Daydreaming was Yankel Shmeel's biggest fault but it was also his only way to keep sane. 

Yankel Shmeel looked at Levi the only family member who was silent as Levi played with his food and greasy baseball card. Levi’s chubby hands moved the card back and forth on the plate. Levi’s intense brown eyes staring intently at the card in the matza oblivious to the combined noise of Yehuda's bentching and jumping, and Yossi's crying, Shimon the Francophile’s droning, and Rachel’s telephone talking. Yankel Shmeel stared at Levi and knew at that moment that he loved him so much. And then Yankel Shmeel began to daydream.

Levi would travel the world, silently, he would become a famous Talmid scholar and Yankel Shmeel would be his proud father. They would live France in Paris which was apparently on the Seine River. Levi would be deep moody and intense. He would revolutionize the Torah world. Show them the true path of Hashem. Like the way Torah giants do things.  

Levi would buy him a chateau in the wine making countryside of France. It would be a castle from the eleventh century but redone for comfort. Levi would have a yeshiva there in the very castle that Rashi lived in. Students would flock from round the world to sit in the stone beis medrish. Yankel Shmeel and his family would sit outside under the leaves in the sun enjoying a meal with a bottle of wine. All would bow their heads in silence as Yankel Shmeel would give thanks to God almighty in heaven who gave us this land to work and to see the fruits of our labors. “We are Jews and Frenchmen working our land keeping our customs raising our families in an honest and decent fashion, celebrating the joys of God blessing our lives with goodness.” Levi would bring him his grandson. Yankel Shmeel would wipe away a tear and stroke the infant’s cheek. The baby would look like Yankel Shmeel. He would name him Avremel after his dearly departed brother.

Yankel Shmeel would spot his wife. She would be under a tree in the other side of the garden. She’d look beautiful and smile at him, her black eyes would dilate as she’d look at him. She’d wear a sunhat. She’d be calm, content, and as skinny as she would like to be. Yankel Shmeel would finish off the glass of wine and start to clap and sing; “Sisu Visimchu Bisimchas HaTora”. The food and drinks would disappear and Yankel Shmeel would be on the table, his feet dancing. Yankel Shmeel would become a pure soul soaring higher. Soaking in the glorious rays of G-d’s blessed happiness Yankel Shmeel would be at peace.

“Yankel Shmeel, snap out of it, get the formula for the baby!”

Rivka shouted at him. Yankel Shmeel nodded stupidly and hurried into the kitchen to make a bottle. Three scoops leveled out for six ounces. No more or less. He shook and milk squirts flew off the top of the bottle possibly landing on the meat dishes in the sink creating a situation of religious dish danger.

Yankel Shmeel could take it no more. The angry sniping wife, the potty talk, the screaming baby, the droning on and on, the bedlam, he could no longer endure it. “Why aren’t I dancing on a table” he screamed angrily and incoherently.”Will my entire family please shut up!” he thundered. He was mild mannered but still, he could really take no more.

All was silent stunned by his outburst until Levi timidly broke the silence he had lived with for seven years. “No shut up, Abba, we should speak… like you always tell me.”

Yankel Shmeel stared at his wife and son, amazed. Levi had spoken. Thank G-d. “You are so right” he whispered and hugging the little boy. “We should not shut up at all. Noise like this is exactly the way it should be.”

Avi sat in the District Administrator’s office, stared at the desk and avoided eye contact with his boss. Avi was angry but didn’t want to let on. He was being let go as the Associate Director of Outreach for the religious outreach organization. Apparently, he hadn’t met the number criteria needed to maintain a position. The District Administrator tried to be nice about it. He told him that the demands of outreach were not for everyone. He advised him to go out into the business world and “make a million dollars.” 

“If you want to do something for the Jewish people make that million dollars and donate it to us. You’ll be doing more for the Jewish people than you will by working for us,” he was told by the joking District Administrator. He remained quiet and thankful that his wife, Suri, didn’t hear that comment or she would have punched the man in the head.

Avi saw the axe coming. He knew his numbers were not good and he knew how the business worked. Still, he was stunned when the firing happened. He worked hard but yet…He had six people a week every Shabbos but the trouble was that they were more or less the same people. He only had a roster of thirty-five active participants in his programs. He had been at it for two years and by now people like Shmuel, the other Associate Director of Outreach had a list of sixty. Worse yet, Avi hadn’t made anyone religiously observant.

Avi’s people were still Shabbat violators. They would attend his bi-weekly classes, eat Shabbat meals at his home, but there was no black hat to show for in the bunch. Avi had attended Victor’s graduation. The graduation was a tremendous accomplishment considering how close the boy came to dropping out. Victor now planned on attending community college and promised he would only date Jewish girls, but Avi knew there wouldn’t be much more Judaism than that. Avi danced with Levi on Purim, a punk kid from a religious family who had lit his tfillin on fire two months earlier. Perhaps drunkenness on Purim was the biggest mitzvah Levi could hope for? Avi visited Eva and convinced her not to abort her baby but give it away for adoption. Avi considered that a major accomplishment and thought it frightening that a human being was now walking the earth because of his conversation. Avi spent many hours in conversation listening to the kids and parents. He heard marriage troubles and financial troubles. He tried hard to impress upon them the importance of kosher and Shabbat but it always came out awkward. 

The District Administrator had tried to make Avi a successful outreach worker. He set up a meeting between Avi and Shmuel. Shmuel was the star of the organization. He was the two-time winner of the prestigious Rabbi Akiva Award. The District Administrator had suggested to Avi that he learn from Shmuel how it is supposed to be done. “ He has the magic you need” the District Administrator told him, “ He has four kids going to yeshivot in Israel next year and three of his men have started to wear black hats.” 

Shmuel listened carefully to a presentation Avi made about what he had been doing and then Shmuel told Avi the diagnosis. Two word problem, Shmuel summed up- “selection process”. He told Avi that his problem was that he needed to attract “more weak willed winners and less strong willed losers”. 

“It’s economical,” Shmuel said “You can spend two weeks on a jobless, emotionally troubled needy person who will call you four times a day and never become observant. He’ll look like garbage when he’s presented on the podium during our Mitzva Inductee Presentation.” “Besides” Shmuel added pragmatically “you know that no one will ever contribute to the organization. But if you take a sweet mild mannered white bread rich kid looking for something spiritual in life - that’s money in the bank. You push him hard, you push his podiatrist father hard- that’s outreach.” “Don’t be afraid to think big,” he added, “organize a trip of for these kids to Israel or Aspen. Whatever. Just stop wasting your time on the poor and the needy.”

But for some reason Avi had a hard time even imagining what to do. So Shmuel helped him along in the process. He provided Avi with a cold calling a list of hot potentials gathered by the Outreach Organization’s Research team of wealthy irreligious individuals in his community with positive feelings toward Judaism. Shmuel said that the list was gold. He advised Avi to invite everyone on the list to a community barbecue in Avi’s backyard. Avi made the calls and even got some positive response but then Suri insisted on inviting “the regulars” as well. She said that they would be insulted if they heard there was a party they were not invited to. How could Avi say no to her? Of those who attended the barbecue six were newcomers from his cold calling and the others… well? They might have said the group blessing that Avi made everyone say out loud together but Avi suspected many were there for the free dinner, perhaps drug induced hunger.  Some of the newcomers had to leave early. Others stuck around but looked like they were in horrible pain, one ended up selling a life insurance policy to Avi. It was not considered a successful program by the head office.

And so Avi found himself in the District Administrator’s office being let go. He explained to the District Administrator that he wanted to stay in religious outreach, that all he ever wanted to do was help people find the path to G-d. Avi told him that he believed he could make a positive impact on the Jewish people. He spoke with passion and commitment and felt the tears forming in his eyes. How could he face Suri? The District Administrator did have a heart and he was moved. He sat quietly for a moment.  

“Well, I do know of another position for you” he started cautiously “I just read the wanted ad in the Kiruv Klassifieds.  It would require you to move, it’s in a small town in Connecticut. I know that it might be difficult to move to a new place but I think you could be successful there. Small towns have less pressure than the big city. You can work slowly and build relationships the way you like. You have no children so you won’t have to worry about education for your children.” The District Administrator smiled, “actually this could work out beautifully for everyone.” And thus began the journey, and Avi and Suri took all of their belongings, to invite people to their home, to teach people about the Almighty, and they sojourned the land of New Canaan, Connecticut

My Great-uncle Noach, patriarch of the family, hated the Holocaust. Not just the murder of the six million. That he disliked that was obvious enough. The man was a Survivor. What he hated was the Holocaust, the word Holocaust, the stylization of the Holocaust, the museums, the memorials, the testimonials, the videos and the merchandise. He hated, hated, and hated, the Holocaust. He liked to compare it to a rape.

“Would they do this to rape victims?” he’d say. He used to call the Holocaust a rape. “Would you like to build a rape museum? And then a rape memorial and have Rape Remembrance Day. Would they ever ask rape victims to march out in front of everyone to be your guides so you can ask those people questions about the details of their rape? Would you gather around with all your kids while they tell over their touching rape stories?”

He also didn’t like the term Survivor.” What does that mean?” he would ask. “Because I managed not to get gassed I somehow became a club member? I am just a man. Now leave me alone.”

The visits to Auschwitz particularly irked him. “Wow,” he’d exclaim with mock excitement, “ I’ll bet they can all say that this is where we were raped. Won’t that be something? Hey honey, come, let’s take pictures on the exact spot of the rape so that our grandchildren don’t forget that we were rape victims. Maybe we could look at some of the pictures of the raping.”

He used to find the “never again” mantra infuriating. “Like they asked us the first time?” he fumed. He though it was too weak a response. “Why deal with the future so soon. We must still deal with what was. Never Again?! This is our Holocaust response?! Didn’t we somehow skip the angry revenge step?”

One time my piano teacher parked his Volkswagen in our driveway only to return and find four flat tires. My parents blamed some neighborhood kids but everyone in the family knew it was Noach.

Uncle Noach was often very angry. The only time he ever seemed happy was when he was dancing. He was a fantastic dancer. The paucity of Jewish dance was another pet peeve of his. “The Jewish people have thousands of songs, hundreds of tunes, but when it comes to dancing all we can do is shuffle in a circle.” People would invite him to weddings and bar mitzvas just so he could show up with his dance moves. He had a unique style, experts said. No one could imagine an elderly man having those moves. He boasted that he could have gone professional were it not for his insistence on being “shomer negiah”, not touching women. We all suspected that his explosive temper might also have had something to do with his lack of commercial success.

Every once in a while some unsuspecting soul would mention the word Holocaust in front of Noach and we all braced for the fury to follow. “Does it make everyone feel better that we have a word for the murder and rape. Holocaust, shmolocaust, show me my brother Hillel, I miss him, show him to me, I feel bad, here, today, now, is that still the Holocaust?” he would shout.

“What is it you want” my father asked Noach one day after a heated rant.”What can we do? We don’t know what to say or how to say it in a way that doesn’t make you angry.”

It was one of the few times I saw Noach get calm,even thoughtful,on the topic. “You make a good point, Yankel Shmeel,” he said to my Dad. “I don’t think there is a way you can say it without getting me upset.” Then he added slowly, ”I guess what I want is for you to treat me exactly like everyone else, no better and no worse, but then again to still let me get away with occasionally being difficult.” He was not an easy guest.

After that, from then on, whenever the topic of Holocaust came up my mother put on Noach’s favorite cassette, “Holiday Favorites of the Modzitzer Chasidim.” The music just got him going. All the anger and hostility vanished. 

Noach never told us about what happened to him during the war. “You are supposed to flush the toilet” he would say about the topic. We were only left to imagine the worst of it. Any snippets of Noach’s story I had to get from his ever suffering wife Aunt Naomi. She was the one that told us Noach had a wife who died in the war. But even Aunt Naomi didn’t know too much. She met Noach in the Windsheim DP camp after the war and from what she said it was a closed topic. She didn’t want to ask.

 Noach was fanatically worried about the rise of anti-Semitism. He said that it was only a matter of time before they tried to do it again to us. He waxed eloquently on the topic. “Have you ever noticed how no one ever asks what we did to deserve that type of slaughter? How we caused it? No one asks because everyone knows why. They still can’t stand us. The guys at the shmolocaust ceremonies themselves will be the guys who do it next to us. They’ll think up some cockamamie excuse. They’ll say it’s because some kid named Mohamed in Gaza- whatever. They didn’t have a reason last time they won’t have a reason this time. They just hate us and that’s that. They hated us for resisting the Romans, they hated us for not being Christians, they hated us for not being Moslems, they hated us for poisoning the wells, for being capitalists, for being communists, for causing the economic depression, and for having big noses. So this week it’s the Palestinian homeland that has everyone worked up. If we’d moved to Madagascar you’d hear about the plight of the Madagascarian homeland.”

He took us all by surprise at his ninetieth birthday. He said that he felt it was important that he tell us about his wartime experiences before he died. He said that despite his aversion to such kind of talk he thought it was important because of the anti-Semites.  He said and I quote “If we have to dig into the toilet to get stuff to throw at our enemies, well then so be it. Shame on those hooligans making us do this!”

You could have heard a pin drop when he took the microphone that evening. Who knew what horrific story we’d hear? I don’t think anyone was prepared to hear what he had to say. I will quote him word for word. He spoke in a strangely uncharacteristically quiet voice.

“I’m glad you all gathered here to gawk. I just want to say that well…uh…I have lived a life….In 1937 I was offered a job in Montreal. I couldn’t afford to take anyone with me. My wife, God rest her soul told me not to go. She told me not to leave her. But I did anyway. I was never crazy about that woman. But that’s just me. Long story short, not a stinkin’ thing happened to me during the entire Second World War. I worked as a delivery man in Montreal. That’s right. I won a dance competition in Cote St. Luc as they were burning people back home. Anyway, after the war I went back to Europe to look for my family and that was when I met Naomi. When people asked me what I’ve been through all I could do is shrug my shoulders and people assumed the worst. I lived my whole life as a fake so called survivor. So I guess I didn’t survive after all.”

We all sat there stunned and angry. How could Noach do this to us? Was he a fraud? He never lied to us, but still. I didn’t think anyone would ever forgive him until his voice broke and he whispered“I still miss my brother Hillel, though, and doesn’t that count for something?”  

The Jerusalem men’s mikva 1971. Presumably, the place cleanses the bodies and souls of Holy City’s pious as they prepare for the holy Shabbos. It also allows the religious men-folk to escape the madness that grips a household in the frantic hours before the day of rest. It was where my cousin Adam worked for most of his too short life. 

He joked that he got the job by answering an advertisement in the paper that read:” Do you like working in a very religious naked environment?” I doubt the advertisement actually said that. Adam liked to joke around a lot.

He remarked without a hint of darkness that the mikva reminded him of an upbeat gas chamber. I saw his point. “Maybe they designed the gas chambers to look like these types of mikvaos?” he sagely considered. The wide open brick room with two mikvaos on either end, shower taps along the walls, and large cement kiddie pool in the middle of the room was filled to capacity with bathers of every age every Friday afternoon. On the side were wet and dry sauna rooms. If you paid Adam a few extra shekel he would hit you on the back with a bundle of wet leafy branches. What seemed to me the obvious concerns of indecency seemed not to even slightly register on the radar of the locals. The prohibition that seemed to worry most of the holy men in the mikva was how to could converse with each other without discussing any words of Torah.

Adam wasn’t too worried about not discussing Torah. He wasn’t that much of a Torah scholar. The true passion in his life was pranks, practical jokes, and laughter. It was hard to know which of the Adam pranks he had actually performed and which pranks were merely fabrications of his overactive imagination. As far as I could tell Adam did in fact put a Jewish music tape cassette in a muezzin’s loudspeaker and almost caused an international incident. He never publicized the untimely death of Rabbi Seymour Butz although he managed to get dozens of pashkevilim published around Jerusalem declaring pork kosher. The success of creating the gravesite of the famous Unkelous the Convert out of thin air remained one of his proudest accomplishments and it can be verified. Till today, people show up to the shrine to place drippy candles on the previously anonymous boulder in the middle of nowhere.

Perhaps Adam was drawn to the mikva because of the comic potential of the place. The only surprise was that he was able to keep his job for so long. He never did manage to get a shark in the mikva as he wished, but almost everyone laughed when they saw the goldfish in the kiddie pool one Friday. The “Beware of Shark” sign with the smiley face sticker had all of Jerusalem’s Chasidic children talking for the next month.   

Adam solemnly promised me that he never ever created a bomb scare, pulled a prank that compromised anyone’s safety, or even created a prank that made people sad, unhappy, or embarrassed. He was not the one who wrecked havoc in the mikva dressing room by switching the dentures of the elderly and sabotaging their shoes. That was the work of wannabe copycats. He said that there was a fine line between good natured fun and obnoxious behavior. He explained that he was only trying to create some light and laughter in the world and that his Rebbe, the saintly Rabbi Nachman of blessed memory, would have laughed along and approved of all his pranks. 

I miss Adam. No one ever knew about his critical illness until the very end. Happiness and sadness are contagious he always insisted. “Better to be happy for a foolish reason than sad for a good reason,” he quoted. I can still picture Adam in my mind’s eye squeeging the ceramic mikva floor, smiling, laughing, and singing. He insisted that he worked in the Garden of Eden that existed before the sin.  “In this room there is no concept of kovod and nothing to steal. No one can show off their scholarship and no one is even thinking anything indecent. I work in the Garden of Eden.” 

My stories are dedicated to Adam. They are often about angst filled troubled folks whose lives would have no doubt been enriched had they known my cousin. Adam’s soul returned to the other Garden of Eden on the 31st of Tishrai 5731. They decided to bury him next to the fake grave of Unkelos the Convert. I have no doubt that he would have laughed had he heard it