The Nearby Synagogue

Let her tell you how a heart breaks. I can’t answer that. She would know. Meanwhile, I am on the phone talking with my Torah-Mate about Rosh Shashona. I am drying my long hair with a pink towel gently so as not to pull out anymore than what falls out copiously each day. I am trying to become more Jewish in these golden years. Well, people call them Golden years. Actually they are leaden. They are difficult years, but today is not a day to mention these things. Today is the Jewish New Year. It is Rosh Shashona and God is sitting on a throne while the human race parades past as clear and see through as glass.

     It was yesterday that I was on the phone with my telephone Torah helper. "Rosh means head," my friend explained. My friend, although I have never met her, is named Esther. "Because we consider this the brains of the new year. This is when all is decided. This is when you ask for a good year and eat only sweet things so your year will be sweet. Shana means year." 

In the sky, connecting the cell phones and writing notes in the great book, God sends out messages, brain to feet, not pausing to take a drink or chit chat with an angel. 

     I said to my friend Esther who helps me with Jewish study, "But where can I go to hear prayers? I kind of wanted to go to 770 Eastern Parkway, you know a Hasidic on the street said I could, but I don't know..."

      "Better you should go where you can walk. We don't drive on Shabbas or High Holidays," she answered me. "Let me have the woman across the street from me give you a call. She's a Lubavitch and her husband is a Rabbi in a Synagogue near you."

     Today, the day after, it is pouring rain. This could be a sign of displeasure, or it could be just another fall storm like the ones which have been flooding the east coast this year. I am inclined to think it is the former, God’s way of spitting on our transgressions. Sometimes I think it is buckets of tears. But that’s Her department. Today is Rosh Shashona. It started last night at sundown. I had gotten a call from the Lubavitch woman who explained again what Rosh Shashona meant, and how it would start at sundown. I pretended it was all new information to me. "We wear our nicest clothing to the Synagogue, of course," the woman said. Her named was also Esther. "Do you have a Sidder? Do you know what a Shofar is?"

     In 1940 in Lithuania, an entire school of Hasidic scholars decided to try to escape from the Nazi's who were inching closer every day. 900 people left Lithuania together, and trekked by bus and train and by foot across Russia and then by boat to Japan and then to Shanghai. For some reason they were the only Yeshivah in all of Eastern Europe that had the foresight and courage to leave. And every single one of them made it, although part of the group went to Israel and the other part to China. From Shanghai, after the war, they immigrated to the United States. "My mother was one of that group. I was born in Shanghai," the Lubavitch woman said on the phone.

     I walked to the Synagogue from my apartment in high heels. It was a half hour walk and by the time I arrived at the iron gates, one of my toes was bleeding. To be honest, and after all it is Rosh Shashona so I am doubly bound, to be honest I drove halfway and parked my car on Cortelyou Street, but it still took half an hour to walk and my toe was really bleeding from the high heels. Outside the modest building which housed the synagogue, men in yarmulkes and black suits milled around talking. They were not the thin bearded black hatted men I see outside 770. These men looked like working class and they were speaking to one another in Russian. They were older than the jumpy holy Hasidic men that hurried up and down Coney Island Avenue during the week. These men looked as if they could have been in the war, could have survived that war. I stood outside the gates trying to look unconcerned, waiting for a woman to enter so I could follow her. There were two doors, one I knew had to be for women. But I was uncertain which one. What if they both lead to the Rabbi’s office or into a roomful of men? And there was a water fountain with a cup inside the gates... I didn't know if I should wash my hands with the water or if that was only for Shabbas. So I just waited, and the men came in and out one door but no women appeared and so I plunged through the gates and went straight to the unused door only stopping when I was entering, and then I turned slightly. I could see everyone staring at me in my long black skirt and black top which almost covered my collarbone which is required,  and my black stockings and black heels and my long hair hanging down beneath a big pink sun hat. I knew I looked out of place despite trying to dress as they did. I had no kerchief or wig, only a big pink hat to cover my head. 

     Upstairs in the balcony one Orthodox woman sat praying with two children. Dangling from the ceiling hung a giant gaudy but beautiful chandelier in the shape of the Czars Russian palace. Below, I could see the men, some standing, some sitting on benches facing the white brick wall. The rabbi spoke in Russian and the men chanted and responded, sometimes getting so noisy that people shouted out "SHHH!" 

     I took the only prayer book in english off the shelf of books in the balcony and sat down. It was called, "Prayers of the Heart". I remembered the title from a short story by Sholem Aleichem, the guy in it said his mother never let the book out of her hands. The story was set in Warsaw Poland and I kept wishing the family would hurry up and immigrate to America, but they never did. They went on marrying and carrying around Prayers Of the Heart and blessing their bread. I opened up Prayers of the Heart and leafed through. There were morning prayers and afternoon prayers and evening prayers. and different sets for Shabbos and for Yom Kipper and Passover and Succoth and on and on, hundreds of different prayers for different days. I finally found a page for evening prayers on Rosh Shashona. But was sundown the day before considered the actual event? It didn't matter really because the men were all praying in Russian and the Rabbi was speaking in Russian and I had no idea where they were or if I could even pray along. And so I sat with the book and listened, and peeked at the men below and watched the Czars palace glitter and sparkle above the white plain room of the Synagogue. And then there was a stepped up frantic chanting and suddenly they were drawing aside a curtain and unlocking a great box at the end of the room. Inside the box were three huge silver casks and one of these they unlocked and inside was an enormous parchment with writing on it. I realized this was the ark and the parchment scroll was the Torah. I had never seen one before, but I had read a lot about them, especially in literature about the war, and how the scrolls that were damaged had to be given a burial. 

      The crowd of men below me continued to sing and pray and then ceremoniously locked the Torah Scroll back up, and locked the box, and closed the curtain, and someone stood before the men and began repeating a phrase louder and louder. And then a man called out, "500 dollars!" and the man at the front repeated the number in Russian and went on repeating it until another said something, and the first bidder went up to 1500. and then higher. And each time the man went higher in english, the man in front would repeat it in Russian, and there was a flurry and it ended at 5000 dollars. But it remained a mystery to me in the balcony what was being auctioned in the middle of the Rosh Shashona services.

      Let her explain how a heart is broken. Let her do the talking. She would tell you of the losses, and the anguish, and the suffering in the world. She would know because according to the Jews, she suffers right alongside them. She is the Shekkina, Gods divine female side, and she too is in exile. She too is homeless within, and weeps at the wall in Jerusalem. She would know how Rabbi Nachman said all worldly goods are like Fools Gold... the only value is The World to Come. These Russian Jews who escaped and came to America and love Israel and refuse to give up their Jewishness, and who pray in Russian beneath a giant glittering dome of a Russian palace cry out with longing on Rosh Shashona, their long drawn out gasps are as blasts of the rams horn meant to pierce the clamor of so many cries to God. And their God on high sits on a throne of gold in a great fur hat and surveys his people with a severe love, each and every one of them, right down to the last babushka. 

Looking for What is No More

I came to New York 3 years ago intent on having the dreamy, strange experience that I had always heard so much about...the immigrants getting off the boats at Ellis Island, the crowded cozy victorian lower east side, the brilliance in the co operatives in the Bronx, all of it. I snooped around for a close knit Jewish neighborhood, and ended up living in the Shalom Aleikum houses in the Bronx, just a few blocks from Grand Concourse. I moved in with an 80 year old woman who's every other word was "nu?" but she was about the extent of the Jewish neighborhood. The big brick apartment buildings, named after the wonderful novelist who wrote Teyve the Dairyman and other great yiddish stories, now houses mostly the new waves of immigrating people, sadly none of them Jews. There were stories I heard now and then from people in the area, of where the Jews went...New Jersey, Florida, who knows, but the vagueness and unsure-ity was troubling. And so, despite the fact that the great Lithuanian artist Marc Chagall had stayed for a time in the bedroom just below mine, that the great fashion designers who's clothing I loved grew up next door; despite countless other stories of the Bronx jewish community, I decided after a year and a half of living in abandoned jewishness, to leave and find another area to fulfill my desire to experience the New York I had loved in stories. I went to Brooklyn.
Why not live in Riverdale, you say? Why not move to Manhattan upper East side? Well to be honest, I could not afford to live very many places. And so when I moved to Brooklyn, I found a modest studio apartment sandwiched between Kensington and Ditmas Park, on the edges of all sorts of amazing Jewish Communities. After a year of meeting no one, I squeezed in to an online Jewish group and got myself invited to the Catskills for a week end. Hurrah! Now I was on my way, was I not? "So you're going to the Borsht Belt?" my uncle asked on the phone. "Your grandmother used to spend summers in Tannersville I think...I have photographs of her there..." This then was it, the old jewish life, fun fun fun, a bee Gezint. Oh but the intellectual jews moved to florida or new jersey so they say, and I went to the catskills with an ultra orthodox group.
As I drove up route 28, I passed endless religious getaways, including Zen retreats, Baptist camps, Jehovah Witness, Christian, Yoga places, and finally came to the Jewish Condominium village set on lakes and nestled in the mountains. I realized I did not have on my modest clothing I had just purchased so I admit I threw the long black skirt on right in the parking lot, but I don't think anyone saw me. And besides I put it on over my slightly shorter skirt. I put a long black shirt over my teeshirt and added a long open front sweater over the ensemble. I was now ready to meet the group. It was 91 degrees that day and I had remembered to put on long black stockings before I left home, and frankly I was fainting by the time I crawled to the front gate and got my welcome package. The girl there looked at my sandals and I saw a flicker of horror cross her face. "Should I wear sneakers?" I said immediately. "Whatever you are comfortable with," she said, in a dubious tone. "But I don't want to offend anyone," I said, sweating profusely and looking down at my stockinged toes poking out of my sandals. The girl was speaking Hebrew to another girl and did not answer me. I pulled off my sandals and put my sneakers on and when she gave me directions to my room I rushed to it and collapsed in a modern chair by the twins beds. "Oh they don't sleep in the same bed," I said looking at the twin beds one in pink and one with a blue blanket. Well, neither did lots of couples. Anyway what was it to me? I was past the age of concern. The important thing was I was in the Catskills with a group of brilliant jews! I was going to learn Yiddish and Hebrew and study Torah and read Heschel and Abrahmson and all the other wonderful writers of the 19th and 20th centuries. I looked around the apartment, which was rather large and not at all a motel room as I thought it would be. I had a balcony overlooking a man made lake and the ducks rushed right over to me when I stepped out and began honking. If only I did not have to wear winter clothing in 90 degree heat!
For two days I wore my black clothing which was only just warm enough inside the buildings where they kept the temperature like a refridgerator. Although the grounds were beautiful I could not remain out for long before I began fainting from heat. We ate constantly, and washed our hands constantly. I could not keep up with the group. There was breakfast and then midmorning food and then early lunch and then real lunch and then midafternoon food and dinner and then real dinner with endless courses, and then evening food. And during all of this people washed their hands and prayed and then prayed and broke challah and then in the middle of eating the men would suddenly burst into song and one by one they got up and began dancing around the tables where the women sat feeding their numerous children. It took everything in me not to join in, but it is forbidden for women to sing or dance, as it shows a lack of modesty. So I clapped and I ate. I ate potato things and carrot concoctions and cholent and strange wraps filled with cheese and bread bread bread. And every so often when someone thought to include me, I drank grape juice for a prayer. But the very heart of the visit was exactly the praying. When the men gathered behind a partition and prayed it was like an extra terrestrial haunting sound... a humming as of a hive of bees, and then a calling of synchronized vocals. One night they prayed to the moon and I stood watching them in astonishment. It was like being in a movie, actually standing in the set and watching astonishing things and yet having absolutely no part to play and in truth not really being there at all, but only thinking yourself there. I had always wanted to watch the men pray and the Hasidics dance and sing and there I was among them, right there, close enough to touch their black clothing which of course one would never do. Right there and yet invisible. As a woman. As a non orthodox. Perhaps even tref. Who knows what one is labeled when one is not obeying their laws. I felt enormously grateful to have been allowed to see what I saw. And I felt enormously embarrassed for not being entirely correct, for making blunders like taking a photograph on the Sabbath, for not wearing a head scarf, for carrying my purse around.
And I was disappointed too. The books on hand were all in Hebrew and were Torah related. Only one of the group had heard of Elie Wiesell and no one knew of Sholem Aleichem or the Singer brothers. The rabbis spoke of the formost need to respect and obey authority. Even so, it was better than the blah world of living on the periphery. It was better than superficiality and indifference. And the old Borsht belt is gone, along with the grand Victorian hotels and the brilliant intellectual jews who read and discussed everything and created madly and were hilarious and who sang and who gave America the greatness of Eastern European genius.