Called to Controversy (4 page)

*
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur

THREE

To a little child, there's not much difference between a star and a streetlight. My world was so small that, for all I knew, the moon could have been a decoration on the wall of the sky. But as I began to gain a larger view of the universe, my sense of awe over God grew.

—MOISHE ROSEN

A
pril 12, 1945, was not a good day. Moishe felt somewhat numb as he processed the news that Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the thirty-second president of the United States, was dead. He had arrived at cheder as usual and immediately noticed that something was amiss. His teacher, Mr. Lerman, was looking down at his old hardwood desk. He waited until the whole class was seated to look up and then, with great effort, said, “Boys, I have something terrible to tell you. . . .” He paused, struggling to compose himself, but his voice was still choked with emotion as he announced, “President Roosevelt died today. He was the best friend the Jews ever had! All of you who know how to say
kaddish
[A prayer recited in daily synagogue services and also by those mourning the recent death of a close relative.] can join with me now.” He began to sing the ancient Aramaic chant: “Yisgadal, v'yiskadash, sh'may rabboh . . .”

Later that evening, Moishe and his family huddled by the radio. They were torn between grief over the president and fear of what his death might mean for the country, for the war, and for the whole free world.

“Hitler can't hold out much longer,” Ben said in a low voice.

But what about the Japanese?
Moishe thought.
They got one of our destroyers today
.

Meanwhile, the radio commentator was reminding sorrow-stricken Americans of Roosevelt's achievements. And then came the voice of the dead president, repeating those famous words from his first inaugural address: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” The president was sixty-three years old when he died.

Fifty years older than me,
Moishe thought.
I'm never going to be that old.
*

Sixty-three years meant sixty-three birthdays. Moishe wondered if any of FDR's birthdays had been real clinkers. He wasn't sure which year was supposed to be special for the
goyim
(Gentiles). For Jewish boys, it was definitely the thirteenth year. That was the big birthday, the one that meant he could be bar mitzvah,
*
no longer a boy but a man.

Moishe would always remember
his
thirteenth birthday and how it would forever be associated with the passing of a United States president. It was a sad and dreary day; the entire country was in mourning and celebration of any kind would feel strange and unseemly.

Still, now that he was 13, he was to be bar mitzvah—and so the following Thursday he went to a small neighborhood synagogue to perform the proper rituals.

“How come I don't get to do it on Saturday, like the other guys?” Moishe had asked when his father first broached the subject.

“You do it on Saturday and the whole shul
**
is there. Everyone expects a big party after.”

“Yeah,” Moishe nodded. “I know.” He didn't mention that he'd worked hard at learning the Hebrew and wanted to celebrate his accomplishment, or that a nice reception afterwards would show that his dad was proud of him.

“You want a big party?” Ben frowned. His son did not usually ask for such things.

“Sure. Why not? It's a big deal, a bar mitzvah, right?”

“You know how much a party like that costs?”

Moishe looked down. He knew his family didn't have a lot of extra money to spread around, but he didn't think they were that poor. Not anymore.

Then a painful thought occurred to him. Maybe his dad wasn't proud of him and didn't want the whole shul to witness his bar mitzvah. Moishe knew that he sang off key. One might think that singing the scriptures to the appropriate minor key melodies would make it easier to remember the Hebrew words, but not for Moishe. Somehow the elusive notes would not stick in his head the way they were supposed to. Singing only seemed to make it harder. Not only that, but he had a bit of a stammer and that was bound to come out if he tried merely speaking the words.

So he sighed in resignation. Maybe doing it on Thursday wasn't such a bad thing after all. He certainly would not be the first bar mitzvah to enter into manhood through the downstairs classroom of the synagogue instead of the upstairs sanctuary.

Every Thursday morning a
minyan
(quorum of ten Jewish men needed for prayer) met at the synagogue to listen to the rabbi teach a Talmud class in Yiddish. On the designated day, father and son arrived at the synagogue and went directly downstairs where they joined twelve to fifteen older men sitting around a large table. Moishe knew many Yiddish words, but unlike his parents, he did not speak the language fluently. Consequently, it was difficult to concentrate on the lesson.

Finally the rabbi finished his remarks, and with no fanfare, the bar mitzvah proceeded. A couple of men placed the Torah scroll on the table, unrolling it to the text for the day. With a
yarmulke
(skullcap) on his head and
tallis
(prayer shawl) around his shoulders, Moishe approached the scroll and began the first blessing as best as he could: “Barachu et Adonai Ha-me-vorach.”

The men around the table sang back to him, as per tradition: “Baruch Adonai ha-me-vorach le-olam va-ed.”

Taking a breath, Moishe continued: “Baruch ata adonai, eloheinu melech ha olam asher bacher banu mi kol ha'amim, v'natan lanu et torato, baruch ata adonai notein ha torah. Amen.”

One man stood beside the boy, holding a
yad
(literally hand). The long-handled silver pointer was a reminder that the Torah is sacred and not to be touched by human hands. Moishe was glad enough for the traditional helper to hold out the long pointer so that he could keep his place in the ocean of Hebrew words before him.

Moishe had not completely memorized his portion, but since he had learned how to read Hebrew, he thought he would recognize any words he did not know by heart. Unfortunately, the Hebrew he'd studied had vowel points, and the Torah scroll had none. This slowed him down considerably. As for the melody, Moishe chanted the Scripture portion in a singsong style that he could only hope sounded something like the appropriate chant.

When he finished, once again he recited the proper blessing. He looked half expectantly at the rabbi, who smiled and nodded, but did not ask him to give a speech. The other men likewise smiled and nodded, but offered no words of encouragement or congratulation. He returned to his seat.

Ben had brought two bottles of whiskey to make it a festive occasion for the
minyan
.
But for Moishe, the bar mitzvah was a big nonevent.

Despite the disappointments over his bar mitzvah, Moishe always viewed his Jewish upbringing as a profound influence that afforded many invaluable life lessons. His early days in the synagogue and cheder taught him a sense of awe for God. Through Judaism, he began to learn about holiness and how some places, and some objects, were to be set apart and handled (or not handled) in a special way. That sense of setting things apart for God even affected how one dressed. Before the high holidays in the fall (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) when possible, his family bought new clothes for the special synagogue services. Likewise, in the spring, if they could afford them, they bought new clothes to wear for Passover.

Although religious objects—the tallis, phylacteries, and holy books—inspired a sense of awe in Moishe, his childhood concept of God was not confined to, or even most often experienced, through religious activities. Usually when he thought of God, it was in the context of a game, in which he regarded God as a companion. As a child, Moishe would jump over tires, trying not to let his foot touch rubber, and think,
I'm doing this for you, God.

Consciously or not, Moishe learned the idea of setting things apart for God from the Jewish religion. Yet he did not develop confidence in the religion—not the way that he saw it practiced in his grandfather's house or even in his own house while his grandfather was still alive. There were so many rules, and the rules did not seem to provide understanding: they imposed fear and a continual anxiety lest they be broken.

Contrast this with Moishe dedicating his childish games to God, imagining that the Almighty would actually enjoy them. The desire to dedicate his efforts to God was probably rooted in religion. But the idea that they could be joyful or fun efforts probably came from an inner sense—more intuitive than religious—that God loved him and could relate to him.

Moishe's growing understanding of the vastness of the universe expanded his idea of God. He could not regard Judaism as the sole custodian of holy knowledge. Nor did he view the religion of Judaism as the final word on Jewish identity.

“Being Jewish always gave me a personal context of being,” Moishe explained. “It told me, in part, who I was so far as the rest of the world was concerned. My sense of Jewishness was not derived from religious practice, though I did my share of rituals. My Jewishness was generated from an inner sense of mystery. I felt a sense of awe at our history.”

Jewish identity was based not only on being part of one community, but also on being separate from another. That separation was often demanded rather forcefully from non-Jewish communities. Moishe recalled the first time he experienced such a demand. He was nine years old and wandered from his neighborhood (they lived at Fifteenth and Federal Boulevard). He said, “I wasn't particularly aware that the Jewish neighborhood only extended as far north as Eighteenth, and even if I had known, I probably still would have gone well past it. Then I turned down one of the side streets, and saw some boys playing in an empty lot.”

The boys were digging a big hole, wide enough for all of them to get into it. Moishe recalled,

Lacking in social graces, I thought if I just stood there they might invite me to join them. And so I came near, and looked at them, and smiled. The boy who was digging with a spade stopped and looked back at me. He said, “You're new around here. Where do you live?” I said, “Fifteen Ten Federal Boulevard.” And another boy said, “That's Jew-Town, isn't it?” Another boy said, “Are you a Jew?” And I answered quite confidently, “Yes,” with the unspoken assumption, “Isn't everybody?”

One boy yelled, ‘We don't want any Jews around here! Go away, you dirty Jew!' Well, anyone who looked at these boys could see that they'd been digging in the mud. And me? I wasn't dirty—at least not until one of them threw a spade full of mud at me. I hurried away, somewhat hurt and very puzzled.”

Once home, he and his mother had a talk about what Moishe called “the Jewish facts of life.” His mother said, '“Don't go out of the neighborhood. You'll just get into trouble. They [meaning non-Jews] are not like us, and they don't like us.” According to Moishe, the rest of the discussion went like this:

“But, Ma, how come they don't like us?” With patience, she explained, “Well, it has to do with their religion. They think that we killed their God.”

I said, “Well, did we?”

She said, “Do you think that anybody could kill God?”

As I thought it through, I realized it was a ridiculous idea. So I knew that we were right, and they were wrong, and we were smart, and they were, well, I didn't know all of them, but those I'd met that day seemed less than smart. After that, if anybody asked me if I were a Jew, I would say in a not especially friendly tone, “Why do you want to know?” And if they didn't have a good reason for asking, I could give them a good reason not to ask in the future.

This type of negative experience, which was to be repeated at various stages and with varying severity, galvanized Moishe's identity as a person who was part of a people who were separate from others. And why would he want to be part of those people who mocked and hated others whom they didn't even know? Yet somehow he knew that the separation went beyond the prejudices of those who would reject him for being Jewish. And he knew that his religion could not explain the separation. He'd learned that there was a difference between “us” and “them,” but though he knew who “we” were, like many others who grew up Jewish, he did not exactly know
what
we were or why we were different.