Kagan's Superfecta: And Other Stories

by Allen Hoffman

  The rabbi spoke quietly but with a powerful narrative force.

  “In the beginning, man was in the Garden of Eden; he had no need of fire. Food was plentiful; every tree had fruit. The climate was perfect. And it was never dark because the sun, the moon, and the stars were brighter than they are now. Man had no fire because he had no need for it. But man sinned.”

  The rabbi paused, then repeated slowly, “Man sinned.”

  He continued speaking normally, “Man sinned and he had to be punished, Man sinned on Friday before the Sabbath and in punishment God wanted to dim the luminaries, but out of respect for the Sabbath, He did not do so. Throughout the Sabbath, the luminaries shone and there was no darkness, but when the sun set, ending the Sabbath, all were dimmed to one forty-ninth of their former brilliance.

  “Adam feared the darkness caused by his sin. ‘Night will overwhelm me!’ he cried and he even feared that the serpent would bite him. God, in His mercy, gave him two stones and granted him divine inspiration. When fire burst forth, lighting the darkness, Adam spontaneously recited the blessing, ‘King of the Universe Who creates lights of fire.’

  “We recite the same blessing over fire at havdalah every Saturday night because that was when fire was created. Adam kindled fire and survived the darkness of the night. The next morning, on the Eighth Day, the sun rose, dimmed, but once again daylight followed. We, too, have passed through a night of terror. And our night was made darker by fire. The tall chimneys’ flames darkened the day unto death as they preyed upon the flesh of Israel.

  “Night’s terror is not easily forgotten. Every sunset reminded Adam of his fear. For many of us, every flame recalls our own dark night in which six million loved ones perished. Adam knew his sin. We do not know ours. We sinned, of course, but we do not know what we did to deserve what we received.”

  Tears had formed in the rabbi’s eyes and they began slowly to descend onto his pale cheeks.

  “But, Rabbi, that might apply to Adam and to me because we sinned,” Hymie began.

  “No,” the rabbi said, “yours was not so bad, Hymie.”

  “It was a criminal act, Rabbi,” Hymie insisted.

  “The world is very cunning. It devises different ways to drive us mad.”

  “But, Rabbi, what did those people do to deserve such a fate?”

  “God knows,” the rabbi said softly.

  “Do you believe that?” Hymie asked, revealing his deep hurt.

  The rabbi gagged as the tears fell onto the hard bread before him.

  “You must believe that!” he commanded.

  “Why me?” Hymie asked.

  “Because if one hand is burned and cannot eat, the other must feed the body,” the rabbi explained.

  Hymie chewed on his stale bread and thought for a moment.

  “But you’re a rabbi,” Hymie protested.

  The rabbi averted his eyes from Hymie for a moment and then brought them back to focus directly on him.

  “Then listen to me,” the rabbi pleaded. “I am a refugee. Don’t ask what I do believe and what I don’t believe. I don’t know that myself. I study the Talmud, Hymie. You know why a man would run away from uniforms and eat stale bread — or why a man who loved fire would be afraid to touch a match.”

  The rabbi paused. “Or why the genius of Warsaw would be afraid to touch a volume of the Talmud.”

  Hymie knew. Oh, how he knew, and when he saw the rabbi’s fingers rise from the table and move toward the Talmud, he cried out.

  “No, don’t! Not because of me!”

  “I must because of you,” the rabbi said with a firmness that had not been present in his voice.

  Why? Hymie asked with his eyes.

  “The body of Israel must be nourished,” the rabbi explained.

  The rabbi thumbed through the large folio pages — love in his touch, sorrow in his eyes — until he found what he wanted. He began to chant, first in the original Aramaic, then in translation for Hymie. It began as a somber, funereal mourning chant.

  “There are six kinds of fire. There is a fire that eats but doesn’t drink: this is our common fire. There is a fire that drinks but doesn’t eat: this is the fever of the sick. There is a fire that eats and drinks: this is the fire of Elijah the Prophet that consumed sacrifices and water. There is a fire that eats wet and dry: this is the fire that the priests had on the altar in the Holy Temple.”

  The rabbi’s chant had become increasingly less mournful until it was on the verge of joy.

  “There is a fire that quenches fire: this is the fire of the angel Gabriel that he used to save Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah from the fiery furnace. And there is the fire,” the rabbi chanted triumphantly, “that consumes fire: this is the fire of the Shechinah, the Divine Presence.”

  The rabbi looked at Hymie and asked him in direct, nonmelodic tones, “Hymie, did you love them all?”

  “No,” said Hymie shaking his head.

  “Which one betrayed you?” the rabbi demanded.

  “Only the first, common fire,” said Hymie tortured by memories as he mentioned the thing he once loved.

  “Still,” the rabbi said, “there are other types of fire that have not betrayed you.”

  Hymie chewed on his bread.

  “Rabbi, I am only a man of common fire,” Hymie stated.

  “Yes, now you are, but if you have been burned by it, don’t you think it is time you learned to work with another kind?”

  “You don’t understand,” Hymie protested. “I’m a plain arsonist. I’m Hymie the Torch.”

  “No, you’re not,” the rabbi answered.

  Yes, thought Hymie. I’m not even that anymore.

  Hymie was confused.

  “Rabbi, you don’t believe this. Why should I?”

  “Because we are facing the same question, Hymie.”

  “What question?”

  “The question is who we shall become. I am trying to become a rabbi,” the rabbi said with his strangely quivering dark eyes staring at the man who had been his only American.

  Hymie turned away to avoid the gaze for he saw in those eyes the vulnerability of the heart and the will to live. Hymie remembered hearing his grandfather say that it is better to throw oneself into a fiery furnace than to shame someone publicly. He shuddered in horror at the image. Hymie impulsively licked at the dry bread. He felt a surge of love for this weird, vulnerable former genius and wished that he could put him in his own pocket and protect him from the things that pained him so. Hymie reached across the table, lifted the rabbi’s hands off the Talmud, and rested his own on the strange block print instead.

  “You are my rabbi,” Hymie said.

  Rabbi Myers blinked and experienced a surge of hope for the body of Israel whose survival was a divine promise. Rabbi Myers smiled at Hymie.

  Hymie squeezed the rabbi’s hands and said, “We are in this together, aren’t we?”

  The rabbi nodded.

  “Hymie, it is Monday night; if one does not perform havdalah immediately after the Sabbath, it may be said until Tuesday morning. I am going to make havdalah for you and then you are going to recite it for me.”

  He looked at Hymie. Hymie didn’t know what had happened but he did know that they had come too far to do otherwise.

  The rabbi went to a closet and returned with a wine bottle, a silver cup, a spice box, and a braided candle. He handed Hymie the candle with a box of matches. Hymie lit the candle and the rabbi began to chant. Hymie was overcome. He heard the rabbi and he saw the flame, but he was dwelling in sadness and in destiny. He saw himself and the rabbi both standing in a dark cave with no chance of returning to Eden and with no choice other than to wait out the long, dark night.

  The rabbi finished. He drank from the cup and took a candle from Hymie. He extinguished the flame in the wine-dampened saucer.

  “It’s your turn, Hymie, to recite havdalah for me.”

  Hymie reached for the wine cup, but the rabbi stopped him.

  “No,
Hymie, not here. We must get our coats.”

  THE Dairy Maid waitress didn’t know what to make of it, especially the one with the beard, but the two men were eating vanilla ice cream and rocking slowly back and forth as if their counter stools weren’t bolted to the floor. What was strangest of all — they had brought their own thick chunks of toast. Toast and ice cream — what kind of meal was that? But Hymie knew and he ate even though he wasn’t hungry because he knew that it was still several hours until the sun rose on the Eighth Day.

  Balancing Acts

  I RETURNED to Jerusalem and it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t easy because time is different here. Time may move as quickly as it does in other places, but it doesn’t relinquish its past as it advances. Other cities may be eternal, but only Jerusalem’s eternity is an active part of its present. No visitor is a stranger in Jerusalem. With the past so near, his roots are apparent. When I came as a tourist, I, too, felt at home, and an awareness stirred that this, indeed, should be my home because not to be in Jerusalem is to surrender part of yourself. I am an American and we never surrender! So with my family and my paints I came to live in Jerusalem.

  I returned to live in Jerusalem, and it wasn’t easy, because to live in Jerusalem is to surrender part of yourself. The nearness of generations makes the transient feel permanent and the permanent resident feel transient. All-encompassing Jerusalem. You are in the middle — small, minuscule, and a creation of Jerusalem itself. It is even more complex for you are also, potentially, an essential part of Jerusalem. Surrender is victory! With so much at stake, the tension is dreadful and exhilarating. You can’t go home because you are home. You can only run away — or be driven out — and that is hardly new. That’s how you got where you came from in the first place. How can you make what is permanent temporary? And how can you make what is temporary permanent? You can only tell the old stories, but can you tell them any better? Or in my case, paint what is already perfect? It’s a privilege and a punishment, which is the way it has always been. God had to hold Mount Sinai above the Jews, threatening to crush them with it if they wouldn’t accept the Torah, because everyone knew the score: being the Chosen People is a mixed blessing. With the light of Torah under the shade of the mountain, who could postpone the game because of darkness?

  At first I thought that I was not painting because of all the aggravations and tedious chores of adjustment in the Holy Land. Of these there was no shortage: the plumbing alone would have defied Neptune. The toilet leaked onto the floor, the bathtub leaked onto the neighbors, the pipes refused the washing machine’s pump-driven discharge. And waterworks were once His specialty. He split the Red Sea to bring us into this land! But, after all, I as an American hadn’t been chased by Pharaoh. Would I have surrendered?

  As these problems diminished, I still did not open my paint box or pick up a sketch pad. Earlier, running errands around the city, I had been struck by Jerusalem’s overwhelming beauty. If that didn’t inspire me, what would? Later, however, after I had no errands, I continued to walk the streets. The beauty increased. I saw modest, unadorned hills baring themselves in humility and resignation before higher elements of sun, rain, and wind. I saw the gray stone’s durable hard edges of eroded harshness, still strong and intolerant, surrendering nothing without prolonged, unrelenting struggle. After a rain I felt the passion of ancient earth’s moist hot breath in its cycle of renewal. The rocks remained cool, hard, but infinitesimally less; for each soft drop had made its slight, disintegrating mark.

  How I wanted to capture the colors of fertile barrenness! I stared at the ancient olive trees with their hidden roots, gnarled, flinty trunks (surrender!), delicate, curved crowns of small, stiff oval green leaves (victory!). How I longed to capture their gentle, patient life. I watched the faces at a bus stop, reflecting a thousand places; for even the four corners of the earth have four corners, and these people had been to every corner — and to Jerusalem, too. Yes, I was inspired, but I was overwhelmed. The beauty increased, but I was diminished. My steps were merely the most recent echoes. When I arose, the day seemed too long, and when I retired, the day seemed too short. The minutes had different shapes, the hours had different textures. In Jerusalem I stared at my watch in disbelief and wondered where my day had gone. In answer, it ticked; the game had not begun and we were already in overtime! And what was the contest?

  I began to wish that I was back where time made sense — in America, where the National Football League played an exciting game in four discrete quarters that anchored a comprehensible Sunday afternoon, with announcers to guide me through every play and replay. On Sundays I found myself wondering how the Jets were doing. I began to wish that I was back where things weren’t nearly as complicated nor as beautiful — in Manhattan, where great things were obvious and small things were plain. Where a pigeon was a pigeon. A plain, dirty pigeon on a pebbly, granite-grained sidewalk. No big deal, but if handled right, the stuff of art. Interesting perspective — unsettling, off-angle view from above; good composition — discarded sidewalk refuse; rich subject — the stupid, goggle-eyed bird, weirdly realistic. And eight red toes. What I could do with color and design on those eight toes. Thank heavens, Manhattan is for the birds!

  In Manhattan they were ordinary pigeons — scavengers, hangers-on, Broadway bums who parked on grimy cornices, descending to peck Burger King crumbs off warped, half-destroyed benches, but in Jerusalem they were doves, cherished residents of the Western Wall, sole remnant of the destroyed Holy Temple, God’s House on His Holy Mountain, in His Holy City. The Western Wall — silent, eroded, abused by millennia — but now its gaps, holes, and harsh fractures are sheltering spaces for harbingers of peace, and the long-silent Wall has a live voice dwelling inside.

  The delicate masters of this voice emerge from the Wall and ascend on rhythmic, thrusting wings to circle above the Holy Mountain. Soft, beating wings catching the slanting light, reflecting, shaping, transfiguring the radiant particles streaming from afar onto His Holy Mountain. As they soar, they thrust into the radiance other voices from below. The thick primordial silent voices of the stones of the Wall itself and the earth of the mountain. The joyous wailing melodies of the seed of Abraham, seed of Isaac, seed of Jacob, reciting the psalms of David, purchaser of the holy site. The small fleeting feathered specks wheel and break about in the stream, creating sheltering feather-lined bubbles to convey all the voices and prayers upstream to their Source. Thank heavens, Jerusalem is for the birds!

  All this seen on Friday evenings when Jerusalem welcomed the Sabbath. The light emanated from the stones too. It was no reflection. Only on the Sabbath did it emerge from its stony, silent vaults. All celebrating sanctity and peace.

  Paint that pigeon! How was I to paint any pigeon without painting those doves, stones, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the feathers, the radiant stream of light? The permanent and the temporary, the hard and the soft, the loud and the quiet, the speakers and the speechless, the large and the small, the heavy and the light; the earth, the earthbound and flight-blessed, all chanting in unison to the Indescribable, Eternal Creator, “Why not now? Why not rebuild Your House, Your Holy Temple, now?”

  I couldn’t untie the rope that I had wound protectively around my box of paints. Confused, I wandered as if I were a small tile floating in a great eternal mosaic. I sat on my roof in the Old City’s Jewish Quarter and watched the light change during the various hours of the day. I enjoyed looking across at the Mount of Olives and staring at the gravestones. As my mind was hopping from stone to stone, surprising thoughts intruded: the New York Giants, El Greco, and most surprising of all, my Uncle Maxie. Perplexed, I nevertheless enjoyed the view. It was, after all, Jerusalem — stone-confusing-beautiful. I had a bleacher seat, but what was the game? Uncle Maxie didn’t have a uniform and I didn’t have a scorecard!

  I walked into town and bought a Herald Tribune to find out the results of the Superbowl, a game I understood. I read it avidly, like a letter from a very close friend. The Raiders
finally had won. The Vikings had lost again. That was reassuring; I wasn’t missing much, but I had a sense of loss. I wished that I had seen it. I put down the sports page and looked across at the timeless cemetery. Did I have a season ticket?

  I walked. I met my neighbor. He was pleasant and asked how things were going. Just fine, I replied, wondering what I was doing. I made frequent trips to the post office.

  I answered letters. I talked about the weather, the agonies of Israeli bureaucracy, the kids in new schools. What was I doing? “Not much, but it’s very beautiful here,” I wrote, as if the beauty alone could sustain me when, in fact, with all the loose ends of time, it was strangling me.

  My neighbor’s father died. The funeral was on a Friday afternoon, a most inconvenient time. There is never enough time on Fridays to prepare for the Sabbath. Attending a funeral wouldn’t improve our chances any. Since I had never met the deceased, I thought I would walk in the funeral procession that left from the hospital and then return home without going to the cemetery.

  Another friend and I accompanied my neighbor to the hospital. On the way, I realized from their conversation that my neighbor was not going to the cemetery either but, instead, he planned to go straight home. When I expressed surprise at this, he told me that according to the custom of Jerusalem, children and grandchildren do not go to the cemetery to bury a father. Not wanting to bother or distress him in his grief, I didn’t pursue the subject.

  Later, however, I sought an explanation among the crowd of mourners waiting for the procession to begin. Most people I approached either didn’t know or, if they did, didn’t want to discuss it. Embarrassed, staring at their shoes, they would shift their weight, kicking at the ground the way you might at a wedding if a child asked you what the married couple do after the festivities.

  I persisted. Finally, a neighbor turned away from the crowd and told me under his breath and out of the side of the mouth — not just from embarrassment, but from fear, too — that, according to the mystical teachings of Kabbalah, a man’s seed that goes to waste results in the creation of demons and other impure spirits. If the children, the legitimate seed of the dead man, attend the burial, then all that a man has created, including the spirits and demons, might attend also. The soul rises for final judgment at burial, and these evil creations might damage his case. The children therefore do not attend because it is better to have no witnesses rather than some who would certainly be damaging.