Between Gods: A Memoir (10 page)

“How so?” Debra asks.

“We are never condemned,” the rabbi answers. “For example, if my daughter is naughty, I tell her that her
yetzer harah
got the better of her. And send her to her room until her
yetzer tov
is ready to come out.”

Giggles from my classmates.

“But really,” the rabbi says, unsmiling. “Think of what this means. There’s always the chance to redeem ourselves.
Always
.”

I approach Degan in the kitchen, where he is dipping strips of marinated tofu in a bowl of nutritional yeast.

“I wanted to tell you. I had drinks. With a man.”

“That writer? Whose book you read?”

“How did you know?”

He shrugs. “I’m not stupid.”

He jiggles the bowl of yeast to distribute it evenly. “What’s his name again? Eli Bloom?”

“Bloomberg.”

I fiddle with Granny’s ring, spinning it on my finger. “I just wanted to say …”

I pause. What
did
I want to say?

“Never mind. Forget it.”

“Are you sure?”

There’s a challenge in his voice, a crimped edge of fear running around his studied calm. I recognize the fused desire to both know and not know. I remind myself there’s nothing for him
to
know. And check myself. Is there? There isn’t. “I’m sure,” I say. “Yes. Don’t worry.”

Degan looks up and holds my eye. “Okay,” he says evenly. “I won’t.”

The alarm goes off and Degan stumbles out of bed; he has four clients to see before the first in a series of seminars on diversity he has organized. A homeless man is coming to speak about his experience with the federal health care system. The students, I know, will be blown away. Degan is doing something concrete with his life, something practical.
Tikkun olam
—“repairing the world.” Whereas I sit at my desk every day, mired in self-focus and indulgence.

On the first morning of Hanukkah, I email Eli. “Chag Sameach,” I write, pleased that I know the salutation. But as soon as I press
Send, I realize my mistake: the Jewish day begins at sunset. Hanukkah doesn’t start until this evening.

Eli doesn’t reply.

I get up from my desk and wander around the apartment. I stand in the kitchen and look out the window at the schoolyard behind us. It’s only December, but already the running track lies buried under two feet of snow. A man in a fluorescent green vest, some kind of city worker, huddles in the lee of a portable, trying to light a cigarette. Shielding it with his cupped palm, flicking the lighter again and again.

I’m overcome with dread at the thought of Hanukkah. I have a little bag of chocolate coins and four wooden dreidels that I bought in anticipation of the season. They are in a plastic bag under the sink. I have no idea what to do with them.

When Degan arrives home, though, he wishes me “Chag Sameach.” I tell him about my despair, that I don’t know how to celebrate the holiday. He’s been cold since my revelation a few evenings ago, but still he comes to the rescue. “We’ll figure it out,” he says. “It can’t be that hard.”

We Google “Hanukkah” and read about the Maccabees’ battle to practise their faith; about the miracle of oil enough for only one day lasting for eight days in a row.

A miracle. That’d be good.

We Google “The Blessing for Hanukkah” and listen to a bright-voiced woman who sounds like Barbie recite the words. After several listenings, we are able to sing along with her. We light the first candle. It is a mitzvah to publicize the miracle, to place the menorah in the front window for everyone to see. But something in me freezes as Degan pulls back the drapes. I swallow and swallow. My palms are damp.

“Are you okay?” Degan asks. He puts an arm around my shoulder. “No one is going to hurt you.”

I swallow. “I know,” I say, my voice wobbly.

“Here,” he says. “Look. We’ll put the menorah a few inches back from the window. People will see the light, but not what it is.”

But in the face of this compromise, I change my mind. “No,” I say. “Let’s put it right up front. Where it belongs.”

We step back. It looks beautiful.

After the small pond of St. John’s, big-city Toronto affords every possibility, every food you could ever want to eat, every class you might consider taking. On Wednesday evening, I go to the weekly contact improvisation jam. The practice is a kind of improvisational modern dance involving touch. You let your body follow its impulses, using the other dancers’ bodies as support. There is no talk involved: someone sidles up, leans a shoulder into your back, and soon you are entirely entangled, a physical manifestation of the psychic encounter. I dance with a man whose name I don’t know. I guess that he’s Jewish by his looks.

Is this wrong?

Would he guess the same of me?

At the end of the evening, everyone stands around wishing each other a Merry Christmas. My dance partner introduces himself as Michael. “Chag Sameach!” he says.

It is so thrilling to be taken as a Jew. I am paralyzed with gratitude and fear.

He says, “Chag Sameach—right?”

But I can’t quite accept it.

“At least you’ve got the shirt,” he says.

I look down. I’d forgotten what I was wearing. It’s a T-shirt
my childhood friend Jordan, the one who first called me out on the Pick Secret, brought me back from a trip to Israel as a teenager. M
ACCABEE
B
EER
: T
HE
B
EER THE
C
HOSEN
P
EOPLE
C
HOOSE
.

The New Year creeps up like a cat. I drive up to Israel’s, the Judaica store on Eglinton Avenue, to look for a 2008 day planner. I want one that will anchor my daily life in Judaism, but when I see the rack of stationery and calendars, I realize my mistake: the secular New Year starts in January, but the Jewish one starts in the fall, with Rosh Hashana.

I get back in the car and drive to the big-box business store, where I buy a secular calendar. At home, I set about the task of making it Jewish. I write “Shabbat” on every square marked “Friday” and “Rosh Chodesh” on every new moon. I boldly cross out 2008 and replace it with the Jewish year, 5768. Jews are still counting up from zero because their messiah has not yet arrived.

Their
messiah?
Our
messiah?

It is a season of inordinate snow. We shovel all evening in the street lamp’s cone of light, then wake in the morning with aching backs to find the small path we’d cleared gone. The big light of Christmas is everywhere, as Rabbi Glickman has warned, but up on St. Clair, a chalkboard in front of a café advertises jelly doughnuts for Hanukkah. I sit down for a latte and hear a musician telling his friend about his set list. “Klezmer music,” he says. “They want Klezmer music.” And on my way home, I pass two women in Sorrel boots tromping down the snowy sidewalk. “
How
did I not
know
your mother was a survivor?” one demands of the other.

At the gym I run on the treadmill beneath fluorescent lights, sweating and straining and making no geographic
progress, and then I walk the streets for hours, trying to keep my endorphins pumping, to extend the small reprieve my workout has allowed me. The entire population of Toronto treads along Bathurst Street, their faces turned down like shutters against the sleet. Everyone pushing past one another in a big race to the end of the day.

At a time of spiritual crisis, it is best to do nothing. To float. To rest. To ask for guidance. But when I finally make it home and collapse into bed, I find myself unable to pray. I am between Gods, as others are between relationships or careers.

fifteen

I
DREAM THAT
D
EGAN AND
I are taking the JIC; that I am—we are—happily engaged in meaningful learning about Judaism. When I wake up, Degan is lying on his side in his blue plaid pyjamas, head propped up in his palm, looking at me.

“I had the best dream,” I say.

His face lights up. “Oh?”

“Not
that
kind of dream.” I squint, rub my eyes. “I dreamed we were taking the JIC.”

“The what?”

“The class. The Jewish class.”

He sighs. “That’s what a ‘good dream’ means to you now?”

I run my tongue over my teeth.

“Can’t you take it yourself?” he says. “The class?”

“I’ll ask,” I say. But I remember what Rabbi Klein told me, that the partners of all potential converts are required to sign
up, as well. I think of the crowd of baseball caps and their gaggle of fiancées.

“For some reason I can’t stop thinking about it,” I say. “It feels like the next task the world is presenting me.”

From down on the street we hear the
beep, beep
of a snowplow reversing.

Degan rolls onto his back, exhaling heavily. “It’s one night a week?”

I hesitate. “And a few extra weekends.”

I tell him about another couple Rabbi Klein mentioned, Tom and Diane. Diane is Jewish, so their baby is, also. Tom is considering conversion. “He’s wrestling with the big questions, too,” Rabbi Klein told me.

“Why don’t we get in touch?” I ask Degan.

He nods, noncommittal, yet I know the prospect of another man with the same quandary is appealing. But when an email comes back from Tom, he sounds confident that he will convert, like it’s a done deal. “Why don’t we meet up at
kiddush
next Shabbat and talk?” he writes.

Isn’t
kiddush
the blessing over the wine? Or the prayer for the dead?

Tom emails back, suggesting gently that it is a luncheon after the Saturday service.

I freeze, insecure in the face of his certainty. I don’t reply.

On the third day of Hanukkah, Degan approaches me from behind at my desk. He puts his hands on my shoulders.

“I’m working,” I say.

He backs away, his arms in the air as though he’s in a stickup at a bank. “Okay, okay. I just wanted to tell you I’ll take the class with you.”

I swivel my chair to face him. “Which class?”

“Which class do you think?”

“Really? You’ll take it?” I pause. “For me?”

His brow furrows. “Not for you,” he says. “Well, partially for you. But I’m also interested in it for my own reasons.”

I don’t push my luck by asking what those reasons might be, although I know it is some combination of his desire to support me, and his intellectual curiosity. Degan’s brain is insatiable; he can get interested in anything.

He can also lose interest just as quickly.

“Sign us up,” he says.

“Are you sure?”

“I said I’d take it!”

I recant. “Okay! Great! I’ll call the rabbi.”

On the fifth day of Hanukkah, a bright sunny morning in Tevet, Degan and I go to meet Rabbi Klein. “What do you want me to say to her?” Degan asks as we pull into the synagogue parking lot.

“Just be yourself. You’ll be great.”

Truthfully, though, I’m as nervous as a teenager bringing home a first boyfriend. I feel a desperate desire for everyone to show their best side, to end up, against the odds, liking each other.

In the front foyer of the synagogue is a swarm of mothers dropping their toddlers off at the preschool. They are all Jewish, I think. The children, their parents. And then I feel a strange, undeniable relief. I don’t need to hide.

We climb the spiral staircase under the domed ceiling, past the row of framed portraits of rabbis. It’s been months since I’ve seen the lovely Rabbi Klein. Her dark curls spill over her
shoulders like those of a Greek goddess, or a woman in a Pantene commercial. “Chag Sameach,” she says.

“To you, too,” I say. “This is Degan.”

They smile and shake hands, and we seat ourselves in the two red armchairs across from her. After a bit of small talk, the rabbi turns her attention to Degan. “Tell me about yourself,” she says.

“Sure. Uh, where should I start?”

“Did you grow up in a religious home?”

“Anti-religious, more like it.”

“How so?”

“My mother was raised Catholic, but the brutal, abusive version. She spent my childhood teaching me to avoid religion. Socialism was her god. And charity. So
tzedakah
is very familiar.”

The rabbi gives a nod of acknowledgement at Degan’s correct use of the Hebrew term. He’s been reading up. Or perhaps he already knew the expression. He often surprises me with his breadth of knowledge. He couldn’t fix a toaster to save his life, but he knows the intricacies of the stock exchange, the relationships among all the pre-Socratics, the play-by-play of the Battle of Britain.

“I’ve been a spiritual seeker all my life,” Degan is telling Rabbi Klein. “In my teenage years, I would sneak off to church without telling my mother. I loved it. The community, the quiet reverence. For me, spirituality is a crucial part of our human existence. And church was where I first found that.”

I worry that he is going a little heavy on church, which he hasn’t attended in a decade, but who am I to say? The whole charade is so ironic. We are performing an identity of people with spiritual sides, with aptitudes or readiness for Judaism.
We’re trying to make ourselves appear good enough,
Jewish
enough. According to the Nazis, I would already be Jewish two times over. Debra has emailed me a quote from the book
None Is Too Many
, its title taken from the Canadian government’s immigration policy during the Second World War. Under a Nazi decree in Germany in 1933, anyone with as much as one Jewish grandparent was legally defined as a Jew.

One
.

My family history for the past three generations has been a long performance of Christianity. Now it seems we will have to enact the opposite performance. In order to be accepted, we will have to perform a Jewish identity in much the same way my grandparents performed a Christian one.

Rabbi Klein says to Degan, “Sorry if this seems like a silly question, but I just want to be sure. You want to take the class? The JIC?”

He nods. “I’m up for it.” He touches his glasses where they rest on the bridge of his nose. “Although I’m nervous about how much there is to learn.”