Zombies at the
Bar Mitzvah
Michael Homler
Copyright 2011 by Michael Homler
Smashwords edition
Cover by Rob Grom
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LAST WORDS YOU NEVER WANT TO HEAR
“Oh my god, he ate the rabbi!”
Okay, wait. Let’s be clear.
Mom screamed that in all caps.
OH MY GOD, HE ATE THE RABBI!!
Mom so often screamed at me for tracking mud around the house. She screamed at Karen (my kid sister) for chewing her hair. She even liked to scream at Dad for simply, well, being Dad. But this time she was screaming in holy terror. And for good reason. The whole family was with her, including Grandpa and one member not of the family. We were huddled in the basement of the synagogue frightened for our lives.
We never could have imagined this day. Or the transformative power that it would bring. This was supposed to be a normal Bar Mitzvah.
Actually… my Bar Mitzvah.
Let’s take a moment. Breathe in, breath out.
A moment.
In.
Out.
I need to fill you in on how we got here…
SOME TIME NOT LONG AGO WHEN PUBERTY WAS FIRST BEGINNING TO MAKE MY CROTCH ITCH
When you turn thirteen there are certain things that you want: Money, your face to clear up, extra time to play video games, lots of comic books, maybe a glimpse of the girls locker room, and oh yeah, no school.
I was looking forward to all of this like any other kid.
But on my twelfth birthday my parents made sure to remind me I wasn’t like every other kid. My family was Jewish.
Being Jewish meant a certain obligation to my religious heritage and a following up on tradition passed down through generations.
So while other kids my age got to look forward to their faces potentially clearing up (well, maybe not this), the extra time to play video games and read comic books, and oh yeah, leave school when school was over—I did not.
In Judaism it was believed that when a boy turns thirteen he is suddenly able to accept the responsibilities of an adult. He is able to adhere to the commandments. So while my friends went home after school, I went to secondary school for extra innings.
And you can bet your sweet petunias I was not okay with it. I never stopped arguing with Mom about it.
Mom would pick me up in her Mercedes after all school, and so would begin the dismal ten minute journey to B’nai Israel Hebrew school. She, who could barely see over the steering wheel, would speed through lights to ensure that I would not be late. And I never was.
“Why do I have to do this again?”
“Because you are turning thirteen.”
“But I’m still a kid.”
“Not according to Judaism. We’re so proud of you.”
“Why can’t I be normal like everyone else?”
“Are you a meathead?”
“No, but I’d like to be. I’d be a crackhead if it meant I could get out of this!”
“Don’t shout!” she yelled.
She let me out, rolled down the window.
“I’ve decided. You are grounded.”
“For what?”
“To help you study Torah.”
She gave a flutter wave of her fingers and then drove off squinting over the steering wheel.
LIFE LESSONS WITH THE SNOOZERWHATSIT CANTOR STEIN
Bouncing through the halls of the synagogue, backpack sagging from my shoulder, I’d try hard to locate a positive attitude, but the cracked linoleum floors, as old and spotted white as the man I was about to see, would dizzy my eyes like needless special effects. Cantor Stein’s office was at the end of the hall, just past my esteemed Hebrew School teacher Sandy Green’s classroom. Cantor Stein often reeked of gefelte fish.
A typical day in his office went like this.
“Please, Marc. Have a seat. Let’s get started.”
“I don’t feel well.”
“Here, I have some aspirin.”
He’d take the aspirin out of his drawer, show it to me, and then say, “You know what, I need some,” and then pop some into his mouth, and chase it down with cold coffee. I’d never get any.
“Teaching punks like you gives me a headache.”
Then he’d point to my prayer book indicating that I was to get started. Opening my prayer book, I’d get started. Singing, sweet and high pitched like a eunuch, loyalty to one’s ancestors came at a price, I gave him an earful.
Cantor Stein would snap at me every fourth line or so, and then, shaking his head, when the hour was up, send me out the door. He’d tell Mom I needed to practice more and play less.
LIFE WOULD NOT BE COMPLETE WITHOUT INTRODUCING YOU TO MY LAME SISTER
Karen had a room down the hall from me, a pink room. Or the Pink Room. She had a pink carpet walls, bed sheets with pink animals resting on top. Even her door was pink. I couldn’t stand it. Often we fought growing up, but we got along as best as any sister and brother would. We played games together, drew, painted, and played some football (even if the ball had to be pink for her liking). All in all though she was still pretty lame.
When I had friends over I had to lock her in her room so she wouldn’t bother us. and when I wanted to watch sports and she wanted to watch some girlie show I used to have to sit on her to get control of the remote and make her watch what I wanted to watch. There’s also the little incident of her dolls. As a general rule I don’t like dolls so my sister would come bother me when I was reading my comics by standing around asking me what I was doing, “I’m reading,” and combing her dolls’s hair, I’d have to take them away from her and give them a haircut.
Snip snip.
When my voice first started to crack, Karen was the first to notice. She poked fun at me for it. I’d be at the table eating dinner and I’d request the ketch-up. Her response, when she passed it was, to make a really squeaky voice, and say, “Here you go.” I’d tell her to shut up but this of course would not shut her up. She’d be back again when I was at school hanging out with some of my friends and she’d stick her nose into our business and say something like “Anyone know where I can get a soprano singer, my brother can’t help,” and then she’d snigger off with her friends. So no one knew this better than my sister.
“Wait, till it’s your turn,” I said.
She’d make a face.
I’d naturally stick my hands up my shirt and point my index fingers outwards. Then I’d guffaw and cackle loudly.
Karen also claimed she looked forward to her lessons with Cantor Stein, which were a few years away. She’d take to it more naturally and make Mom and Dad proud. Fine by me.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED
I had Karen’s cloying voice stuck in the back of my head. Each time my voice cracked, I grew self-conscious. When this happened I screwed up my recitation. When that happened Cantor Stein began shouting at me in hysterics. This time he surprised me by also drawing a ruler like King Arthur did Excalibur. He whacked the desk in front of me, causing me to fall backwards from shock. I was able to catch myself before I topped over. But he gave me a good scare. I caught my breadth, thankful I had not fallen. I looked at the clock. It was time to go anyhow. I got up.
As he wriggled a finger around inside his ear, he said, “That’s enough for today. Let’s go outside and find your mother so I can hang on to whatever hearing I have left.” He literally escorted me out, I guess to make sur
e I actually left the building and would not be returning.
Once outside, he went back in and closed the doors to the Hebrew school behind me. He clearly did not want anything more to do with me.
And naturally, Mom was nowhere to be seen. Go figure.
So I stood outside on the sidewalk kicking around the grass. Occasionally I’d find a rock or two and see how far I could throw it. Mom was really late at this point. I tried her on her cell and got no answer. Hmm. Usually on time, if not a few minutes early, she never showed. This was concerning.
HOW WAS I GETTING HOME!
Later Rabbi Meyerwitz came outside to check on me.
“Where’s your mother?”
“If only I knew,” I shrugged.
“I’m closing up,” he said as he departed. “If she doesn’t show within the next five minutes, I’ll give you a ride home.”
Frightening.
He owned a Winnebago.
I did NOT want to ride home in that. I started to pant and have anxiety over what it would be like to be stuck with him in his car. I might end up being asked to go to rabbinical school or something.
But then… everything changed.
A distant hurm hurm roar of engines approached. This was interesting. Different. A phoenix-shaped cavalcade of Harleys bobbed and weaved through the Hebrew School parking lot. They looked like bad news as a few of the riders had bottles of beer in their hands, another some chains and two of them had young women seated behind them (women who had real boobs, too, not the mosquito bites I was used to seeing in school). They were clowning around in the parking lot. Carousing.
Sensing trouble, I quickly hid behind some bushes. I didn’t know what they wanted or why they were here.
Then I heard shouts of “No, please don’t!” coming from somewhere far off and out of my view. I didn’t realize who it was until after I watched a Molotov cocktail soar over my head and crash through a window, a fire instantly igniting.
There were shouts and laugher and hooting and hollering.
And then the gang of motorcyles drove off in a roar.
Rabbi Meyorwitz and his brother David rushed in and out of the synagogue trying to put the fire out. As the two men wrestled the flames, I backed away to see a swastika spray-painted on the ground.
THE TRUTH
There had been vandalism rumors making their way around the Hebrew School. We had been hearing about it for weeks. Now I had just witnessed that it was true. Rumors abound in school that windows were being broken (might explain the random bricks sitting on the floor in class), teachers were being threatened in the parking lot, and graphitti was getting spray painted on to walls. But this, this was the worst of it. The rabbi and his brother had a real problem. And yet they were reluctant to seek help. They believed that if they involved the police or the news it would draw attention and thus create further problems for themselves.
MOM’S REACTION
“Holy becheesus! What the hell happened here?”
“Mom!”
Naturally she arrived to pick me up shortly after the fire broke out in a state of shock. She had been getting her hair done (that was why she was late) and her Fro-ish hairdo amplified the horror on her face. She didn’t ask me if I was alright. I guess it was obvious. She did say, “Wow, bet they’re going to need a donation to pay for this one,” and that, “More importantly, I’m sure they’ll get this cleaned up by the time your Bar Mitzvah arrives.”
It was two weeks away.
They should call it off, cancel it, make up some excuse.
“We can’t have a bar mitzvah under these conditions.” I said, as we drove home.
“What conditions are those?”
“The vandalism… it’s terrible. You can’t risk it.”
“You are getting a Bar Mitzvah two weeks from today whether you like it or not.”
“Well, I don’t like it.”
“Too bad for you then.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“Two weeks and it will all be over.”
Oh Lordy!
THE DEBATE THAT WOULDN’T END
Dad came home that day, and he was in a mood. Nobody liked to be around Dad when he was in a mood. But what was worse was when Grandpa, who lived with us, was also in a mood. If the two of them were in a mood together, look out! Pigs would fly—in a Jewish household no less!
Dad had a little lock of hair left on top of his head that he liked to flip around when he worried over something. At dinner it was clear that he was worried. We were eating in silence with the news playing in the background. Karen gave me a little kick, signaling me to pay attention. At first I thought she was just calling out to how quiet it was and how we could hear grandpa’s lips smacking, noisily moaning like a beached whale. He chewed with his mouth open too. It was not polite. Mom yelled at us for that, but because he was old and had lost his wife it was somehow okay.
“How was your day, Roger?” asked Mom of Dad.
He gave a sigh that was like a shove.
“That good, huh?” she said rhetorically.
“The company wants me to start working on the processors faster.” He was an engineer for a computer company. “It’s just work work work. We can’t work any faster.”
“Back in my day,” said Grandpa, “we didn’t complain about how much we had to work. We were just happy to have jobs.”
Mom, myself, and sis looked over at him and then abashedly away. That was not what Dad wanted to hear. He was the last person to look over at Grandpa. His face was starting to burn.
“That was forty years ago, Grandpa,” he said. “They have laws now about how people are supposed to work. I like to spend time with my family.”
“You should consider doing something else then, that’s my advice if you want it. What do you need with all these computer gizmos anyway. They’re old the second they’re new, and I can never figure out how to use them.”
“It’s technology.”
“Techno-crapola, if you ask me.”
“I didn’t ask. Let’s change the subject.”
“Sore point huh.”
Oh boy.
I thought Dad was going to get into a heated argument with Grandpa. But it didn’t happen. Instead he changed the subject, and headed down a path that could have meant a heated argument with—you guessed it—me.
“How’s the ol’ Bar Mitzvah practice going?”
I looked at Mom. She nodded.
“It’s coming along,” I said weakly. And then I took my opportunity to try to steer the convo. “Although, Dad, you should be aware that the synagogue is coming under some very hateful attacks.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was vandalized today,”
“That’s not good. Maybe we should postpone.”
“You can’t postpone a Bar Mitzvah,” said Mom. “It’s coming up around his birthday. You want to delay that?”
“No way Jose,” said Grandpa.
“I guess not.”
“Why not?” I said. “It makes perfect sense. I don’t mind delaying the aging process either.”
“I wouldn’t mind that myself, but all the invitations have gone out. People are coming from all over. We can’t be intimidated by bullies. Isn’t that right, Pops?”
“That’s right, we’ve got to take a stand because we’re not the French.” He turned and whispered to me. “Did you get that joke?”
“Yes, I’ve had my history class.”
“Good, I’m glad you are not an idiot,” he whispered. And then he shouted, “You are a Bar Mitzvah boy!” waving his cup of water around and spilling it all over the table. “We are going to celebrate despite that there are vandals, and we are going to hoist you up in a chair and parade you around. And hopefully my back won’t give out and you won’t land on your head.”
He pointed to his head.
“You could end up with an old war wound like this one.”
Grandpa liked to tell people the oddly shaped head of his was
the result of some action he saw in WWII. First of all, he would’ve been a baby and secondly, all of us Resnick’s had this shape in our head. It was hereditary, though Mom has told me she thinks Grandpa was dropped on his head as a child.
I had my suspicions. I hoped I never found out.
“The Bar Mitzvah’s going to be a good time, son. Maybe we can even put out a suggestion box and ask our guests to give you an idea of what to do with your life so that you don’t end up working with electronic junk like me.”
“Oh I like that idea,” said Grandpa and smacked me in the back of the head.
This family was crazy.
I put my head down. I wished that instead of grilled chicken and vegetables I had a giant bowl of soup. If I did, I’d likely be drowning. Matters would only get worse. But like they’re supposed to get easier.
THE GIRL WHO STOPPED ME IN MY TRACKS
There was this girl in school. Her name was Laura Moody. She and I shared the same homeroom together and some of the same classes. She had really lovely hair. Blond. Shoulder length. She was kind of every boy’s dream. Played video games, sports, liked to read. She even had a nice smile.
I wasn’t supposed to like her because it wasn’t good to admit you liked a girl. And I didn’t know if she liked me because whenever she got near me or talked to me, I tried to figure out ways to get away from her.
Once by our lockers she pulled up alongside me and said, “I have no idea how you keep your back so straight with all those books in it.”
Zombies at the Bar Mitzvah: a novella Page 1
