The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green

by Joshua Braff

  “I see,” says the woman. “But I thought kosher Jews weren’t permitted to eat nonkosher meat.”

  “Nice meeting you,” my father says, lifting his tray of food. “Shalom to you and the people you love.”

  “What a kind Jewish man you are.”

  He nods with a grin then turns to the cashier. “Can I get some more ketchups?”

  During the week of Passover we always go to restaurants. My father waits with bated breath for the waiter to ask if we’d like any bread. No, no we would not like any bread. We are Jews and it’s the week of Passover and Jews stay clear of yeast of any kind during the week of Passover. So please bring us some matzo. You do have matzo, don’t you? And please look for the largest box of matzo you can find. Not the tiny, normal-size box but something that will take up most of the table, perhaps knock some of these less useful items over like water glasses and silverware. And when the waiter brings the box out, my father places it in the middle of the table as a billboard for all to see. FOR THOSE OF YOU STARING AT THIS ENORMOUS BOX OF SPECIAL “BREAD” LET ME EXPLAIN. WE ARE JEWS AND AS JEWS WE DO NOT EAT BREAD ON THE WEEK OF PASSOVER AND WE NEVER, EVER EAT MEAT WITH CHEESE.

  I sit across from him in a booth at the Burger King as his focus shifts to meat. Our table is clown-nose red with yellow trim. There’s a sun-wrinkled poster of two jousting unicorns in a thin gold frame to our right. Someone left a stack of napkins pinned to the table with mustard. My father smears the mess away onto a booster chair to his side. “Pigs.”

  “Dad?”

  “Do not talk,” he says, tearing a ketchup packet with his teeth. “You hear me? I don’t want to hear any of it. I just want to eat my lunch. In a week we’re moving away and leaving this . . . horrendous event behind and . . . I won’t have to see or talk to any of these people again. You’ll go to public school and you’ll attend Hebrew school at the temple afterward. That’s it! Not a soul will know that you ripped Rabbi Mizrahe’s tzitzit in two and we’ll just move on with our lives. Pass me the napkins.”

  “Hebrew school?” I say.

  “Yes. It’s through the synagogue. Three days a week. I paid the tuition yesterday.”

  “What time will I get home?”

  “You’ll be home for dinner. You are not, I repeat not, to give me a hard time about this.”

  “But that’s not—”

  “What? I can’t wait to hear this. That’s not, what?”

  “That’s not what other kids do in public school.”

  “Too bad. You’re going.”

  “Eric, Brian Cohen. All the kids from temple. They all go to public school and don’t have to go to Hebrew school after.”

  “So what’s your point? You want to be like everyone else? You’re a Jew who’s learning about his history, his people. And you’ll continue to learn about them whether you like it or not. The struggles, the triumphs, the sacrifices.” My father lifts his Whopper with both hands and takes a bite.

  “But you said we were done with Hebrew school.”

  “Yeshiva. You’re done with yeshiva. Your mother begged me to get you out and you’re out.”

  “Three days a week?” I ask. “Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday.”

  “Sunday?”

  “Zip it!”

  I snag the yarmulke off my head and squeeze it, my face lowered.

  “Sulking now,” he says, leaning over the table. “One day I’ll be dead and you can live your own life. Is that what you want?”

  “No . . .”

  “Understand something, right this second. Look up at me. When my father died,” he says, and lifts his index finger. He takes about nine gulps of Coke from the straw. I watch his Adam’s apple churn beneath his beard. He lowers the cup and lifts the burger. “I was twenty-one years old. Did you know that?”

  I nod.

  “Words.”

  “Yes.”

  “I was in Michigan, at school. And my mother called to tell me that he was very sick.” He takes another bite. He chews. And chews. “But he was already dead.” The index finger. The sip. “She lied to protect me,” he says through a hurried swallow.

  “She lied?”

  “To protect me.”

  “From what?”

  “From . . . worrying about him. She was trying to . . . ease me in . . . but the point of the story is this. I wasn’t involved in Judaism at all before my father died. He didn’t—”

  “You didn’t go to Hebrew school?”

  He shakes his head and takes a bite, chewing quickly so he can speak.

  “Nobody made you go?”

  “I would have liked Hebrew school.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The point is this,” he says, swallowing the rest. “At my father’s funeral I met some men who invited me to join them in prayer, to join their minyan. And it was then I learned of an absolutely incredible man named Abraham. I hope to God you’ve heard of Abraham. Have you?” He takes a bite, awaiting my answer.

  “I think so. Yes. Abraham, yes.”

  “You think so. He’s the goddamn father of the Hebrew people. A crucial character in the history of the Jews.”

  “I know him, I know him. He’s friends with Moses, right?”

  My father stares at me for a moment. “Just listen. Can you do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Super. Abraham lived to be 175 years old. And came from the Sumerian town of Ur in Iraq.”

  “He was 175?”

  “Yes. He was an incredible—”

  “How come no one lives that long now?”

  “Well . . . he’s Abraham and he had a very special relationship with God and if you let me tell you—”

  “How old was your father when he died?”

  “He was fifty.”

  “That’s young.”

  My father shuts his eyes and lets his head dangle from his neck. “Abraham had a son named Isaac with his wife, Sarah. And what God asked Abraham to do was to sacrifice this son, okay? To sacrifice him in the name of God.”

  “Like a sacrifice fly?”

  “Jacob!” he yells, his jaw jetting forward. “Listen to me! I’m teaching you something important.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You asked me why I’m sticking you in a Hebrew school and I’m telling you. Now listen.”

  “Sorry.”

  “This is exactly why your grades are an embarrassment. You don’t think,” he says tapping his head, “up here. Can I continue now?”

  I nod.

  He slaps the table with his palm and his glasses slide down his nose.

  “Yes,” I say. “Yes.”

  “God damn it,” he says, shaking his head. He takes a bite and chews. “Gob ast Abraham—” He sips. I watch his Adam’s apple. “God asked him . . . to take his son to Moriah and offer him as a burnt offering. He was going to sacrifice his son to prove to God how much he . . . honored God.”

  I slowly raise my hand.

  “What are you doing?”

  I bring my hand down. “Is a sacrifice when—?”

  “A sacrifice is when someone gives up something they love for the good of something else.”

  “He was going to give up his son?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where would his son go?”

  “Nowhere. He’d be dead.”

  “He would?”

  “Yes. Abraham felt that if God told him to . . . sacrifice his son, then he’d be proving to God that he was there for him . . . okay? Loyal.”

  I begin to raise my hand again.

  “Just ask.”

  “Why . . . um . . . would he kill his son for God?”

  “Because. God is the Almighty.”

  “But why would God want Isaac to be dead?”

  “He doesn’t. He just wants Abraham to prove his loyalty. So, the point is that Abraham is one of my favorite characters in Judaism because he shows his loyalty to God in the most intense and powerful way possible. He was willing to slay his beloved son in the nam
e of his ruler, his God. Do you understand the power, the immensity of this decision of Abraham’s?”

  I nod.

  “Good. Slide me some more napkins.”

  I hand them to him.

  “So, we, as Jews, make certain sacrifices as well. We don’t eat cheeseburgers, we don’t eat pig products, we fast on Yom Kippur, we avoid bread on the week of Passover, we cover our heads in synagogue, we—”

  “Can’t play with guns.”

  “That’s not because of Judaism.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “No. It’s because of death. War.” My father takes a last bite of his hamburger and drains his Coke.

  “So, how did Isaac get killed?”

  “He doesn’t. Four years of that pit. I want you to read this when we get home. Tonight! God sees that Abraham would have killed his son, so he stops him from doing it. Abraham passes the test. He passes. He wins. Let’s get out of here,” he says sliding out of the booth with his tray.

  I follow my father to the door. Outside the Burger King it begins to rain again. We jog to our parking spot and I wait for him to unlock the car.

  “Dad?”

  “What?” he says, and looks over at me.

  I rest my forehead against the window and squint inside the car. “Would you kill something for God?”

  “What? I couldn’t hear you.”

  I look up at him, covering my head with my coat. “Would you kill something if God told you to?”

  He shakes his head and looks down to turn the key. “No.”

  “What if God said you could live to 175 years old?”

  “No,” he says and opens his door.

  I open mine and get inside next to him. I reach to pull my seat belt on. “What about two hundred years old?”

  “The story is a metaphor.”

  “A met—?”

  “There are more realistic ways of sacrificing than taking another’s life,” he says. “More realistic ways of proving loyalty to God.”

  “Like being kosher?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Like going to Hebrew school?”

  “That’s not a sacrifice. That’s education. Education is a gift.” He starts the car and pulls out onto the street. We ride in silence for a while and my father drapes his hand over the hole in my pants.

  I look down at his long fingers, strumming casually against my knee. “Who tore your slacks?”

  “No one. I fell. I fell today.”

  “At home?”

  “No. No. I fell at school.”

  “Before or after you—?”

  “Before. Way before.”

  He slides his hand off my leg and pulls the car over to the side of the road. He puts it in park and faces me. “Will you wear them again?”

  “No. No way. I won’t. I’m sorry, Dad. I know they’re expensive.”

  “You do. Really? How much, how much you think they cost? Mr. Mathematics, here. Take a guess.”

  I put my hand over the hole. “Fifty.”

  “Fifty, what? Cents?”

  “No . . . Dollars?”

  He leans over my legs with all his weight and puts his index fingers inside the hole. He jerks his arms apart with a grunt and sits up straight. The tear runs the length of my shin but stops at the ankle. I hold the fabric closed with my fingers and turn my shoulder from my father. He sits for a moment, as silent as I, and puts the car back in drive. “Your brother’s bar mitzvah is in less than a week,” he says, pulling onto the road. “Let’s talk about what you’re wearing.”

  Going Public

  Asher and I stand in our new driveway wearing matching Adidas and cuffed Levi’s jeans. In seconds we’ll be off to school, yarmulkeless and apart from one another for the first time in our lives. Piedmont Junior High is down Saber Street and sits along the reservoir by the train tracks in town. Fillmore Elementary is at the top of Bristle, closer to our house, behind Knole Park. My mother kisses our faces a thousand times and writes “I love you” in bubble letters on the top of my lunch bag. Asher crumples it into a ball as soon as we get outside. He sticks my sandwich and banana into my book bag and tells me they murder people for less in public school. My father opens the front door a crack and bends to get the newspaper. “Good luck today, boys.”

  “Okay,” Asher says.

  “Thanks.”

  “D’you get it done, Asher? Hy and Molly?”

  He nods.

  “D’you send it?”

  “On my way. I’ll do it on my way.”

  “It should really go today.”

  “I said I’d do it.”

  “There’s a mailbox just down—”

  “I know, Dad. I’ll do it.”

  “Okay then. Love you guys. Go make me proud. The brothers Green,” he says with a lightly pumped fist, and closes the door.

  Asher grabs a pen from his bag but it’s dead. He furiously tries to shake the life back into it but fires it over the Sinkovitz’s garage when it fails him. I hand him one of mine and he pulls a blank thank-you card from his book bag. He then spins me around to use my back as a desk.

  During the housewarming party Hy Weiner eats an onion bagel with tuna and tells my father he’s not received a thank-you card from Asher. That’s twelve days since the bar mitzvah in which the Weiner mailbox in Livingston has been empty of thanks from Asher Green. My father hunts down my brother at the party. Asher says he wrote the Weiners. My dad says prove it. They check the list:

  Hy and Molly Weiner:

  Cross pen/pencil set + Zero Mostel album entitled Tevye & Friends—Live from the Wailing Wall.

  Asher’s right. The Weiners are crossed off. “You’d better rewrite it,” my father says. I already wrote it—So write it again—There’s two hundred upstairs, Dad.—Then you better start now—I’m not gonna do it—What did you say?—I thanked the Weiners—Why would Hy lie?—I have no idea—You’re saying Hy lies—I’m saying I wrote it—I’m saying rewrite it—It’s already sent—But not to them—I wrote this address—Then it would’ve arrived—Fine, okay—They gave you a gift—And I thanked them for that—You’ll write it right now—I’ll write it tomorrow—Am I speaking in French?—It’s too late to mail it—I’ll get you a pen—I have one right here—Write Herman, not Hy—I’ll do it upstairs—What did they give you?—Music and pens. “One day you’ll make a friend as giving and as kind as Hy Weiner, Asher. I don’t think you even know what it means to have friendship like his. I really don’t.”

  Rule Number 5 of the Green House Rules

  Failure to sufficiently acknowledge the generosity of any gift or offering, however unsubstantial it may be deemed, will result in the repossession of the aforementioned offering. Depending on the severity of the child’s apathy, punishments may exceed the retraction of the ignored gift and focus more keenly on the removal of privileges, allowances, expressed desires, and any and all previously acquired generosities. Yours is a family whose blunders—be they failures of youthful indifference, failures of judgment, failures of academia, failures of faith, or other—reflect each of the members of this family. As a result, if one of us must wear the humiliation of another’s error, then the culprit of said error, will need to relearn the repercussions of failure.

  “Hunch your shoulders a little,” Asher says as he writes. “. . . for . . . the . . . gen . . . er . . . ous . . . gift . . . which . . . you . . .”

  “Asher?”

  “Hunch more . . . like, bend. Good.”

  “Are you nervous?” I ask him.

  “. . . am . . . using . . . the . . . act . . . ual . . . pen . . . to . . . write . . . this. Nervous about what?”

  “About today.”

  “What, school? I don’t know.”

  “You are.”

  “It’ll be fine. Sin . . . cere . . . ly.”

  “I think I miss yeshiva. I miss Eliahu.”

  “Are you outta your fuckin’ mind? Miss Eliahu? Don’t even say that around me, okay? The address and we’re out of he
re. Hy . . . and . . . Molly . . . Weiner,” he says with nasally exaggeration. “Livingston, New Jaaazy. Home-udda blintz and the giant schnaaaz. I should write Hy and Molly Penis instead. You think your dear old dad would like that?”

  I laugh.

  “Stop shaking, I got to write the zip.”

  “Hy and Molly Schlong,” I say over my shoulder.

  Asher takes the envelope off my back and we walk out to the sidewalk. “Hy and Molly Love-sausage,” he says.

  “Hy and Molly Stiffy.”

  “Hy and Molly Dork . . . pud, putz, poker, pecker, peenie, twanger . . .”

  We both crack up and Asher drops the letter in the mailbox on the corner.

  “Hy and Molly . . . um . . . bean pole,” I say.

  “Bean pole? That’s not one.”

  “Yes, I think it is.”

  “No.”

  “Hy and Molly Dong,” I try.

  “Better,” he says. Asher stops at the corner of Saber and looks down the hill. “Well, I’m outta here,” he says with a quick salute.

  “Wait,” I say, and step closer to him.

  “What?”

  I turn to see the front of my school through the trees in Knole Park. It’s got red bricks and smokestacks, looks like a crematorium.

  “You’re stepping on my foot, man. Get off me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” he says.

  I turn back to the school. “I don’t think I . . . like this place.”

  “You like it fine.”

  “No.”

  “You like it.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then snap out of it.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Time to get over whatever you’re—”

  “What time do you—?”

  “Half past cow’s ass, all right?” he says and rubs the back of my head with his palm. “First day’s . . . shitty and . . . then it’s just . . . ya know . . .”

  “Just what?”

  “School. Fuckin’ school,” he says, walking away. “See ya later.”

  “Wait.”

  He stops with his back to me and stares up at the clouds. “For what, man?”

  I walk around him and look up at his face. “Let’s not go.”

  Asher brings his chin down from the sky and squints at my hair. “You’re bein’ a puss.”