Read The Mystics of Mile End Online
Authors: Sigal Samuel
The Mystics of Mile End (36 page)
And yet.
He could not let her leave like this.
There was still so much he needed to say to her.
“
L'chaim!
” the voices sang again.
He cleared his throat. He extended a finger and traced his own mouth. He parted his lips, experimentally. He tried to move his tongueâto push it forward to the teeth, pull it backward to the throat, roll it sideways, evenâbut, in her presence, the muscle was heavy and dry. A wad of sandpaper. A bloodless mass.
He opened his mouthâ
Again his mouth fell shut.
In that moment, he broke down and cried. He cried because of what his muscles remembered. He cried because, by constantly choosing silence over sound, he had accustomed his tongue to a life of stillness. But the tongue, like anything else, was a creature of habit. When you finally needed to convey something truly significant, you would find it frozen, atrophied, paralyzed in the position it knew so wellâthe position you had trained it to assume.
“
L'chaim!
” sang a voice for the third time.
Samara's voice, he realized.
And then he thought: A muscle can always be retrained.
He opened his mouthâ
T
hank you to Lisa Sharkey, Carrie Feron, and Alieza Schvimer, whose editorial savvy and passionate support for this book I am so grateful to have on my side; and to everyone at William Morrow and HarperCollins.
To my agent, Samantha Haywood, who believed in this book from the start and worked tirelessly to find it the perfect home.
To everyone at the University of British Columbia MFA program: Steven Galloway, who was generous with time and advice; Keith Maillard, whose enthusiasm for the book increased my faith in it; Kim Fu, Andrea Bennett, Indrapramit Das, Taylor Brown-Evans, Chelsea Rooney, Krissy Darch, Emily Davidson, Anna Maxymiw, Michelle Turner, Jordan Hall, Bill Radford, Ben Rawluk, Meredith Hambrock, Melissa Sawatsky, Kevin Spenst, Emily Urness, Margret Bollerup, Lauren Forconi, Erika Thorkelson, Michelle Deines, Cara Woodruff, Emily Walker, Kari Lund-Teigen, Cara Cole, and Jill Margo, all of whom offered feedback and encouragement. Special thanks to Michelle Kaeser, whose sustained advice shaped the structure and substance of this book.
To Amanda Perry, my intellectual
chevruta,
who read thousands of manuscript pages and brainstormed countless ideas. She demanded her own paragraph and she deserves it.
To Rhoda Sollazzo, for keeping me company and offering insight at a tricky juncture. To Vahid Bazargan, for inspiration. To Emily Myles, for helping me pin down Lev's voice. To Ali Kaufman, for listening and advising. To Julie Sugar, for attending to the details. To Anne Cohen, for fine-tuning the French and more. To Annie Greene, for reading the book in its zygote stage and flagging her favorite parts.
To Crystal Sikma, whose keen editorial eye, poetic insight, moral support, and generosity kept making this book possible, day after day, year after year.
I am grateful for the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. My research was guided by the writings of Jewish mysticism scholars Daniel Matt, Aryeh Kaplan, and Sanford Drob. The Vladimir Nabokov letter quoted in this book is from the June 13, 2011, issue of the
New Yorker
. The phrase “What we cannot speak of, we must pass over in silence” is from Ludwig Wittgenstein's
Tractatus
. Information about establishing contact with the space station was found on the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) website. The short story “Words I Wish I Had,” which appears in the P.S. section at the back of this book, first appeared in
Prairie Fire
.
Most of all, thank you to my familyâmy father, Michael Samuel; my grandmother, Rachel Meyers; my sister, Simcha Samuel; and my brother-in-law, Erick Provostâwho have always supported me as a writer. You are my greatest cheerleaders. I love you.
The Story Behind
The Mystics of Mile End
Photo by Crystal Sikma
SIGAL SAMUEL
is an award-winning fiction writer, journalist, essayist, and playwright. Currently a writer and editor for the
Forward,
she has also published work in the Daily Beast, the Rumpus, BuzzFeed, and the
Walrus.
Her six plays have been produced in theaters from Vancouver to New York. Originally from Montreal, Sigal now lives and writes in Brooklyn.
The Mystics of Mile End
is her first novel.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at
hc.com
.
To
STUDY KABBALAH,
you're supposed to be (a) forty years old, (b) married, and (c) a man. I am none of these things. Luckily, I grew up with a dad who was a professor of Jewish mysticism and was willing to share its secrets with me.
Raised in Montreal's Orthodox Jewish community, I was exposed from a young age to all the most important ancient Jewish texts. Well, almost all of them. The kids in my school studied Torah and Talmud, learned Hebrew and Aramaic. We got quizzed on these subjects just as we got quizzed on Shakespeare and chemistry. In this world, you were supposed to be able to explain (and observe) all of Judaism's 613 commandments. But you weren't supposed to take an interest in the religion's more esoteric branchesâespecially not if you were a girl.
That didn't stop my dad from giving me lessons in mysticism. His after-school classes, which usually took place around the dining room table, began when I was about twelve years old and continued throughout my high school years. Together, we pored over the books my curriculum left out, like the Zohar and Sefer Yetzirah, and “met” famous kabbalists, like Isaac Luria and Abraham Abulafia. We studied a lot of the classical mystical ideas mentioned in
The Mystics of Mile End,
from the account of the divine chariot, to the symbol of the Tree of Life, to the legend of the four rabbis who enter a holy garden with very bad results.
Learning these stories gave me all the thrill of a teenage rebellionâwithout requiring me to actually rebel. Inwardly, I was musing over the Tree of Life; outwardly, I was an overachieving, rule-abiding girl in a regulation-length skirt. It was loads of fun. It also marked me, at least in my head, as an outsider relative to my Orthodox community.
Maybe that's why I've always been drawn to spaces where Orthodoxy bumps up against distinctly non-Orthodox sensibilities. In my hometown, I can't think of any neighborhood that captures that collision more loudly or more charmingly than Mile End.
Home to many of Montreal's oldest immigrant communities, Mile End was the city's main Jewish area until the 1950s, as Mordecai Richler famously showcased in his novels. Walking through the streets today, you're as likely to find a Polish church or an Italian café as you are to stumble upon a Jewish bagel shop or tombstone business. The neighborhood also plays host to two vividly contrasting populations: Hasids and hipsters. (You could say it's like Brooklyn's Williamsburg, but grittier and more French.) With its striking mash-up of Orthodox Jews and artsy, academically oriented youth, it's a ready-made metaphor for the battle between religion and secularity.
In Mile End, the dividing lines between groups are starkâbut also, often, surprisingly porous. The neighborhood is a character in and of itself, and I wanted to treat it that way, to give it all the perceptiveness and magic that any flesh-and-blood protagonist deserves. In a way, I hope, it can be almost like an ideal character: the kind that takes you by the hand and invites you into friendships that aren't necessarily supposed to existâthat are as unlikely, maybe, as an Orthodox teenage girl studying kabbalah with her dad.
Sigal Samuel
Brooklyn, NY
February 2015
Reading Group Discussion Questions
  1.   Why do you think the author set this book in Montreal's Mile End neighborhood? What does the setting add to the story?
  2.   David is depicted as a secular professor. Do you think he is a spiritual person, if not a religious one? How does his relationship with religion change after he is diagnosed with the heart murmur?
  3.   How are Lev and Samara different? How are they alike? Why do they adopt such opposite attitudes toward religion as they grow up?
  4.   Is Samara a sympathetic character? Why or why not? Is it important to your experience of the book that you like her?
  5.   Why do both David and Samara grow obsessed with the Tree of Life? And why is the outcome different for each of them? Can you relate to this sort of obsession?
  6.   When Samara begins to climb the Tree of Life, she chooses to send letters to Alex. Why him?
  7.   Mr. Katz's neighbors see him as deranged. Are there any moments that suggest he may not be so crazy after all? What do you imagine led to his obsession with recreating mystical trees?
  8.   In one of his stories, Mr. Glassman lists words that don't exist but should. What do you think he wishes he could say to his wife, and what does he say after the book ends? What are some experiences that you wish you had words for?
  9.   A Jewish legend quoted in this book tells of four sages who enter a holy garden: one dies, one goes mad, one “cuts down the plantings,” and one comes out intact. Do you see parallels between them and the characters in this novel?
10.   Where do you think Samara and Lev will be in ten years? What will their relationship be like over that decade? Will Jenny still be in their lives? Will Val?