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?
"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?
This is lovely, Abigail, and funny - you've always made me laugh! I spent a couple of years studying to have an adult Bat Mitzvah, much to BOTH my parents' horror. Then the Rabbi Jesus kept showing up in dreams and walking around with me. I most definitely did NOT want to convert, but He kept showing up in the darndest places, and, after a while, I just gave up and got baptized. My mom is delighted and my dad - I don't know - he's such a devout atheist, despite his translating the New Testament and many other sacred texts, that I think my believing in God at all is a sign of my - what shall I call it - unfit mind? :-)
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