The Eve of Simchas Torah

It was a dark and stormy night. You had a sinking feeling, like the evening was going to drop in to gloom and depression. Your apartment was a wreck, it had been days since you touched a broom. You chastised yourself over this. "What a no goodnik," you said to the bathroom mirror. But in truth you had not been completely idle for two days... you had been talking on the phone to a childhood friend. And there was a Torahmate lesson in there as well, by phone. Esther had finished the first Parshah, ending with Ugum and Chava, otherwise known as Adam and Eve.  "And so God punished the snake, by cutting off his feet so he would have to crawl on his belly. And Ugum he reduced in size. He HAD been a big big man. Huge, but after he committed sin he was only 12 feet tall." You had been stunned by that lesson.  All your life you had never known these odd facts. The snake had feet? God cut them off? You did not mention to Esther what it reminded you of... that awful thing that happened in your neighborhood. But maybe she remembered that too, and ended the conversation. "So next week we'll start going a little quicker, the stories are pretty straight forward now; Abraham and Isaac and Noah and so forth."
After you hung up, you had your late night Hebrew class on the phone. Esther the Hebrew teacher is much crisper than Esther the TorahMate, and she puts up with no questions or nonsense but gets right to work. "Read line five" she said almost immediately. "Ah. AwBa. Bah. Rah Raw."
"Good! Now line six,.."
"I wanted to ask you," you said, "If Hebrew was added to in the 1950's... if a Rabbi invented words in Hebrew for modern words that we use now... did that include the planets or did they already have Hebrew names? For instance, Mercury is Kaspit. or maybe it was Shel Kaspit. Was that a new word or was that an old Hebrew word?"
Esther the Hebrew teacher said she did not know. "This is not a linguistics lesson," she said.
"No," you agreed.
"This is a crash course in Hebrew so you can read the prayers. That's all. You don't even have to understand the words. You just have to be able to read them."
"I see," you said. "I did not know that. I thought it was to teach Hebrew."
"It IS to teach Hebrew. But it's not to understand every little thing. Look at your pamphlet. It is called A CRASH COURSE IN HEBREW. That's what it is." Esther the Hebrew teacher has no time for queries or interesting theories. She does not want to answer questions. She appears to resent you at times. She can often sound like she is ready to explode. This is not unusual, you have noticed. Several other Orthodox women have seemed very put out by your wonder and your wondering. You begin line six.
"Mi Ma Maw Abaw Baw." Then you tell Esther the Hebrew teacher that you are very grateful to her for teaching you and giving you so much of her time. She sounds somewhat molified and urges you to repeat the last line, and to make it sound like a question.
     It was a dark and blustery windy chilly night. It was the eve of Simchas Torah. You say the name of the holiday several times out loud to yourself while making a sandwich. "simchas Torah. Simchas Torah. Toi-rah. Simchas Toy-rah." It sounded like a character from a Beatrix Potter story. Simchas Torah the cat looked up and meowed.
The night was gloomy and you were afraid you would get unahppy if you stayed in your messy apartment. So you put on your jewish appropriate clothing: long skirt, stockings, long sleeved high neck shirt, green rubber rain boots, black long sweater, green long coat. And you drove off in the direction of the Bobovs which come to think of it you had just been reading about... And didn't you just watch a movie on YouTube of the Bobover rebbe? He had been praying and singing and crying. And the responses to it were mixed. Some Youtubers said he was faking it, and others were violently upset by that and wrote that he was a Saint and was NOT faking it. They all had Bobover YouTube names like "BoboHobo" and "RebbeGuy". Anyway, you had liked the crying Bobover Rebbe, only because he was so wonderfully peculiar. He sobbed when he prayed, and his voice caught and he couldn't go on, and then he would wipe his nose and all the black hats around him began to chant in unison. And yet, some of them checked their cell phones right in the middle of all that. It was very peculiar. You thought this was a heartfelt passionate yearning trance. But if one was in the throws of passionate prayer, was it possible to pull out your phone and see if anyone called during your ecstatic absence? Even so, the Bobover Rebbe was astonishing and you were amazed. You decided that maybe you were a Bobov at heart. "Maybe THAT'S what I am," you thought, feeling like Tigger in Winnie The Pooh.
The dark enveloping stormy night enveloped you as you drove down Ditmas and into the area of the flat hatted Hasidic community. The sidewalks were filled with women pushing double strollers and little girls walking beside their mothers in identical clothing. The men are beautiful, you think to yourself. The women are almost hidden in their appearance, and the children are absolutely darling. The little girls do not jump or dance about. But you don't want to feel sad on Simchas Torah so you push that thought out of your mind...the thought that the little girls long to dance and sing and are not allowed to. You pull up next to a Synagogue at a red light. You roll down your windows. Well, you did. You rolled down your windows, and the sound of joyful singing poured in.
So during the dark night, which was windy but not stormy actually, you sat outside a building and listened to the children and the men singing. After a while you saw a police car approaching and you worried they would ask you what you were doing, sitting in your car alone on a dark and windy night. So you drove on, back the way you came... crossing ocean parkway, and you came apon another synagogue and this one had the windows open and you could see the men dancing in their elegant mink hats, with their sons in their arms. You parked infront of a fire hydrant and stood on the seat of your car with the door open and peered in. And you became swallowed in the music and it went on and on, repeating the same lines until you learned it, and sang it softly outside. You stood there mouthing the words. A young woman came out and invited you in. You left your car and followed her to the balcony. You looked down into the great hall of the synagogue and saw all the men dancing and twirling and hugging the Torah scrolls.
"This is Simchas Torah. Do you see what they are doing?"
"Yes, they are dancing with the Torah Scrolls!"
"Yes they are."
"I see daddy...I want to go down..." You try not to hear that little girl leaning over the balcony in her small long black skirt . "I want to go to daddy..."
Don't we all, you said. But only to yourself.
"We are joyful and praise God for giving us the Torah."
"How wonderful!" you said.
"Do you know Hebrew?"
"I'm learning," you said. You told the young woman your name and she smiled.
"I'm Esther," she said, and you shook hands.

The Guest

Tonight there is rain and I walked home in my rubber boots, humming a little tune. I passed pink formica tables inside the doorway of a take out place. I walked behind two Hasidic boys strolling the streets sharing a cigarette and speaking in what sounded like Russian. But maybe it was Polish. I don't think I have ever heard Polish. Brooklyn is quiet when I get to my neighborhood. Here, the Haitians and Carribean people have gone to sleep, it is just another day for the gentiles. But in the secretive mystical magical world of Jewry, there has been a camp-out all over town.

     Earlier in the evening I walked to Borough Park, passing houses with sheets hung up on their balconies making white tents of four walls. Inside them I could hear children laughing and people talking. Candlelight streamed from every balcony. It is a holiday called Succoth. 

  Have all things changed so suddenly as to reinvent my little existence? Was it the prayers at Yom Kippur, in the Ocean Parkway Russian synagogue, where the chandelier swayed in glittering domes and the men swayed beneath the high balcony from where I peered down, holding Prayers of the Heart in my awkward hands? Or was it the drive through the autumn foliage, on the winding twisting narrow Taconic Parkway, heading to the house of my childhood friend? We sat on the floor of her attic, each with our Madam Alexander Maggie dolls, and looked through the trunks of clothing she had made. My Maggie wore a gold silk suit I had created and my friend dressed her Maggie in a riding outfit complete with tall leather boots all sewn by her with no pattern. Neither of us use patterns, we just cut and pin and tuck and sew until it looks right. My friend always loved horses when we were little and we both had collections of hard plastic ponies and mares and stallions. Now she owns a beautiful bay, with glossy black mane and tail, and black boots on its feet. I stood by the fence as she opened the gate and let out her mare named ShyAnne, talking to her. "This is my guest for the week end. Say hello," she said. The horse snorted.  Then she brought out a homegrown carrot from the pocket of her jacket and showed me how to keep my thumb flat and my palm low so the horse could eat from my hand. ShyAnne took the carrot with her soft lips. Was that when I began to realize the enormous mountain moving aside?
Or was it when I was invited to a dinner on Succoth? Maybe it was then, when the day was still light and the rain had stopped, and I put on my black outfit and my green rain boots and went to Borough Park where the Hasidic and Ultra Orthodox communities live together. The succah was set up just off their back door.  A long table was covered with a white tablecloth and challah bread and wine and candles were already laid out in waiting.  After the blessings and the dipping of the bread in honey, after the kaddish and the candle lighting, after the meal was laid out before us, a gust of wind swept through the bamboo roof and their back door slammed shut. "The doors locked," someone said. "We're locked in!" someone echoed. Everyone laughed. It was true, we were locked in and the door was steel. "Do you know about the Ushpizin?" someone asked me. "It means guest... each night one of the Holy seven comes to the dinner. Tonight it is Abraham."
     It took almost an hour of balancing chairs one on top of another to climb to the roof and lift up the bamboo poles and call into the darkness for assistance before a spanish speaking man on a bicycle agreed to come through the house and release us. When I went home it was after midnight.
     Great soundless piles of rubble are swept aside and the air shimmers. I am trying to learn something. Sometimes I sit with a book in my hands and I can hear the wind from another century blowing through the pages. Sometimes I look up at the blue sky with white clouds and I see a man in a pointed hat creating a woman in the atmosphere. And at night when I lie down to sleep, I feel enveloped and lifted, as if I am being removed from the earthly and the squalor of life, and held up, as a guest, among the heavens.

Aba Ba and Bobov-Ville

In the past week I have stepped up my Jewish studies and am now learning Hebrew over the phone. Ok, in the modern world it is not exactly as it was...One does not go to another persons house and drink tea and learn something together. In the United States of America we do everything by cell. Einstein would be horrified I think to know we call telephones "cells", as if they were part of the great living breathing Adam Kadmon. But as everyone says, cells are safer. A person can get around with their cell and not fear aloneness. My cell is not unlike me; worn out and scratched and sometimes it won't receive at all. Sometimes it goes within itself and refuses to communicate with the world. I understand this. I too am a recluse at times. I too lose the signal and am unable to send out my longing or receive of wisdom. Yet it passes, and the phone rings, and it is my new HebrewMate from Baltimore calling to breathe with me on our cells. "Ahhhh" she says of Aleph, the first letter of the hebrew alphabet, with a small line under it. "Without the line, it is silent," she explains.
     "Why is it used then?" I wonder.
     "For the same reason we have a silent E at the end of many words," she says.
     I am learning Hebrew with an Ashkenazi accent. This was my choice because my illustrious ancestors were from Lithuania before the war. I found it disconcerting at first to be an ashkenazi, as I did not like the last four letters of the word. Infact, I consider them as a silent E and call myself an ashkan. Which in itself has its own poor connotations in english.
     I have learned how to read "my father is coming," which is ironic, as my father has been dead since I was five years old, and yet I still believe at some point he will return.  Aba Ba. Or, as we ashkans like to say, "abaw baw."
     The holy days of Yom Kippur came last week right after I began learning Hebrew by cell. My TorahMate Esther called me before sundown to remind me to try and get to a synagogue, and she had her neighbor call me who also said I must get to a service and even more important I must have a preYom Kippur meal to strengthen myself for the day of fasting. She invited me to her house. I drove over, taking her a book on the Yeshivah that escaped the nazis by traveling to Shanghai and from there to Brooklyn. "Maybe there is a picture of your mother in it," I said, when I sat down at her table. It is always surprising to me to see jews living in empty rooms without books. I grew up with intellectual jews who's houses were overflowing with literature. Bookcases lined every wall, even their kitchens had bookshelves. But the modern world is different. And perhaps religious jews are different now, too. They shun secular books for fear of being assimilated and they don't keep many religious texts in their homes. Of course I can only speak from what I have seen. So forgive me for that, will you?
     It was wondrous just to drive to the Lubavitch womans home and park on her street. Suddenly every dark shape around me was a Hasidic man in elegant hat and black suit with loose trouser legs flapping as they hurried to and fro. They give the feeling of wearing tails, lending an even more formal and elegant aspect to their clothing. In fact, they look everyone of them like grooms hurrying to their wedding. This misconception of tailcoats comes from their tallis flowing around them as they walk. The long fringes dangle and float out and their black long jackets billow out and their tall black hats are so striking in among the dirty sweatshirts and sneakers of the modern world. Inside her house, at the head of her table, sat her Hasidic husband reading his prayer book. The table was empty except for a plate with Challah bread.  Her daughter came in and began laughing when she saw me. "I've been hearing about you!" she said, laughing. "Look at you. Look at you!" and she touched my hat and laughed. "I am trying to dress right," I explained. "You are, I see you are! Look at you!" she repeated. "I am heading over to 770," she went on, "so I won't be able to stay and talk to you." I grabbed her hand.
     "Please can I go with you?" I asked. "I have always wanted to go there...."
    
     Today is the day before the beginning of Succoth. My TorahMate had a giant box mailed to me containing the willow branch and the esrog and so on. These are rather expensive things to be used on Succoth and I worry that I won't know how to perform their magic. Still, I peer in the box and take out the directions which are somewhat complicated. You have to have three rings on one stick and the branches of Lulav,Willow, and Myrtle are intertwined. This sounds easy enough, but as I read on, it says the willows are on the left and the myrtle on the right and the myrtle should be higher and both both should be attached to the lower end of the lulav, and the lulavs backbone should be visible above the tips of the.... at this point I stop reading and close the box. I am afraid to look at the Lulav with a backbone.
Anyway, I am about to drive across Ocean Parkway into Borough Park. I am going to drive down what is known as "the Bobov Promenade".
     The Bobov Hasidim are originally from Poland, and wear a slightly different hat than the Lubavitch Hasidim. The Bobovs hat looks velvet or of beaver, and is shaped more like a panama straw hat. The men dress to the teeth in their below the knee narrow black coats, their shiny long peyas dangling on either side of their bearded faces, and while I drive along 17th street I see many of them appear extremely thin. I spend an hour driving through the streets of the Bobovs, and by the time I figure out how to get back to my own shabby neighborhood, I am sighing and biting my lip. I see myself in my rear view mirror, an old grandmother with lines on her face and big sagging eyes furtively looking out onto a beautiful sea of confident, secretive, mysterious grooms. It is not that I want to be a Bobov woman. I see them too, and they are as disgruntled as the men are joyous. They are as unadorned as the men are adorned. No, what I would really like is to spend one day as one of the males. What secrets do they hear? Do they hearken to the whisperings of the Shekina? Is there some magical reason why they are so beautiful and the women are so concealed? Or is it only as the amazonian male birds of the rainforest, dependent upon their glorious plumage for survival?