by David Hopen
“I should speak to someone,” I said, “about transferring into the regular minyan.”
“I wouldn’t worry. Once the school realizes what they’ve done they’ll toss you in with the uninfected in no time. They’ll love you here, the rabbis.”
Affectionately dubbed Minyan X, the minyan, which met in the science laboratory on the second floor, was every bit the travesty I feared. There were fifteen members, including Donny, the behemoth who splintered Oliver’s beer-pong table, and the rangy, pug-nosed Argentinean from Niman’s party (“Gabriel,” he said warmly, shaking my hand). Oliver and Evan hadn’t yet arrived; according to Noah, they routinely skipped davening to go for breakfast at some local, patently nonkosher diner. At the front of the room sat the supervising rabbi, playing Tetris absentmindedly on his cellphone.
“Rabbi,” Noah called, steering me over, “this is Drew Eden, the new guy.”
I shook his hand, restraining my desire to correct my name.
“Rabbi Schwartz,” he said kindly, quickly pausing his game. He was short, middle-aged, gaunt.
“He’s got like nine or ten kids,” Noah whispered as we walked away, “hence the reason the poor guy always looks exhausted.”
In Torah Temimah, kindergartners were taught to always daven with respect—or, at the very least, to remain quiet during prayer, lest they experience a rebbe’s wrath. (Relics of Europe, our rabbis employed shouting as well as occasional ruler whippings; Rabbi Herenstein, in fourth grade, once flung Mordechai’s digital watch, his beloved Chanukah gift, out of the window as a punishment. “Time flies,” he had said with an unrepentant shrug.) By high school, we were so serious about davening that, much like the Levites racing up the Temple ramp, we’d jostle to reach the bimah first so as to win the honor of leading prayer. This minyan, on the other hand, would have had Rabbi Herenstein in tears. Electronic music blasted from portable speakers. Loud conversations began at Pesukei Dezimra and amplified steadily until we reached Alenu. Donny dribbled a basketball, others engaged in frantic attempts to finish summer reading, hardly anyone wore both the arm and the head components of his tefillin, settling instead for one. I took a desk in the back and, self-consciously, wrapped my tefillin, feeling heavy glances from around the room, as if I were violating a sacred code. Rabbi Schwartz looked up from his phone and realized I was waiting to begin; he turned beet-red, clearing his throat timidly. “Um, fellows, let’s get going now, if you don’t mind.”
Our service was drastically redacted. Apparently the full version of morning prayers was overly burdensome, and so the school agreed to keep the entire affair to fifteen minutes maximum. Afterward, to fulfill the “explanatory” component of the minyan, Rabbi Schwartz spoke reluctantly about why it was important to pray, though hardly anyone listened. (“Prayer is an expression of gratitude,” he said, ignoring the game of Texas Hold’em being held in the back of the room, “one that provides us with an opportunity to commune privately with the Master of the Universe.”) When he finished, I asked quietly to switch into the regular minyan.
* * *
THAT DAY WAS A BLUR. Talmud was a double period with Rabbi Schwartz, who tried his best to pitch us on the wonder of Tractate Berachot. “Blessings,” he droned, “are acknowledgments that we accept God as Creator of the Universe. But they also serve a second purpose. How, you ask?” No one asked. He cleared his throat. “By teaching us reflexive gratitude, to enjoy spiritually directed pleasure.” In Tanach, Rabbi Feldman opened by discussing the Ramban’s willingness to underscore the patriarchs’ flaws (“for our key to becoming righteous people,” he lectured in his wonderful South African accent, “is to understand that even the best among us are only human and therefore eminently relatable”). Hebrew, taught by Morah Adar, a seventy-year-old Israeli with unnaturally deep-dyed blond hair, was a particularly dull fifty minutes. (“Everyone, say beit sefer,” she commanded in her thick accent. Oliver, beginning his fourth year of elementary Hebrew, replied with some dirty Hebrew word.)
She noticed my bewilderment. “Atah chadash?”
I waited as my brain translated slowly: Are you new? “Kain.”
“Eich haivereit shelach?”
“Er, mah?”
“Eich—haivereit—shelach?”
“It means how’s your Hebrew?” someone behind me snapped. “Jesus!”
Morah Adar sighed, muttering on about American linguistic deficiencies.
After Hebrew came to a merciful close, Oliver dragged me upstairs to a nondescript classroom on the third floor and had me climb out the window to the balcony, where Evan, Noah and Amir were spread out on foldable beach chairs, eating lunch.
I peeked uneasily at the parking lot below, somewhat suspicious that I was being hazed. “We’re allowed up here?”
“Yeah, Eden, of course,” Evan said. “And they hardly mind when we smoke here, either.”
“We’ll have to get you a chair, Ari,” Noah said. “Gio got these for us.”
I took a spot on the floor, against the railing, and began unwrapping my food.
“First we’ll have to initiate him,” Oliver said through a mouthful of sushi, which he’d arranged to be delivered on his behalf to the front office, apparently despite being warned to stop such practice. “Beware, Eden, the last sucker didn’t survive.”
I looked at Oliver’s sushi and then examined my own modest peanut butter sandwich with some repulsion. “I guess I’ll take my chances.”
“What’s that?” Amir leaned suddenly toward Evan, who had removed a worn, leather-bound book from his backpack. “You didn’t finish Hartman’s summer reading?”
Failing to make eye contact, Evan returned the book to its place and zipped up his bag. “Just some commentary on Nabokov.”
“Wait, really? Can I see that before English?”
Noah laughed.
“Relax yourself,” Evan said without looking up at Amir. “You’d have no interest in this.”
“Oh.” Amir slunk back into his chair. “More philosophy?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I don’t get how you read that shit,” Oliver said, biting open another package of soy sauce. Black liquid squirted out, nearly hitting Amir. “I’d rather hang myself.”
“Watch it!” Amir said, inspecting his shirt for stains. “Have respect for other people for once.”
Noah took a long pull from a Gatorade. He wiped orange liquid from his lips. “Rabbi Bloom still giving you those books, Ev?”
“Here and there.”
“What is it?” I asked.
Evan smiled, holding my gaze. “I don’t think it’s anything you’ve ever read.”
Following lunch was J-Hip, which, true to Noah’s earlier description, was a circus. Mr. Harold—six-six, exceptionally kind, minor wisps of hair still adorning his liver-speckled head—was in his late eighties and rumored to have once been drafted by the Rochester Royals. He’d been teaching variations of the subject for nearly forty years and, as soon became apparent, had absolutely no control over the class. By the Assyrian conquest, all pretense of order dissipated: Noah, the hood of his basketball sweater thrown over his head, was asleep on his desk while his iPhone screened Breaking Bad on low volume; Amir, scribbling notes halfheartedly, played tick-tack-toe with Lily; Evan and Remi flirted loudly in the back, where poor Mr. Harold’s hearing did not extend. I sat stunned for a good deal of the class, heart breaking, though I found myself distracted by Sophia, who was whispering unhappily to Rebecca and glancing in the direction of Evan and Remi.
Geometry was an hour spent staring blankly at illegible graphs sketched by a thickset, awkward-looking man named Dr. Porter. “So not a single person knows the difference between a ray and an angle?” Apparently he’d once worked for the Department of Energy. Here he was blinking at our sullen silence. “Nobody at all?”
Nicole raised her hand. “Aren’t they the same thing?” Her friends giggled.
Oliver, seated directly behind me, kicked at my chair as Ni
cole spoke. I grimaced, hot around the neck. Nicole and I had scarcely spoken since Oliver’s party. I’d expected, at least initially, to address what had happened, yet she was perfectly happy, the one time she saw me, to offer only a curt hello. Confused as to the etiquette of such affairs—could it possibly be standard procedure, I wondered, to engage that intimately, only to pretend nothing ever occurred?—I turned to Noah, who advised that I respect Nicole’s distance and follow her lead.
“Er, not in the least, actually,” Dr. Porter said, bleary-eyed, giving a frail smile, looking as if he might very well burst into tears. “A ray is a line that begins at an endpoint and extends infinitely in that direction, while an angle is two rays with the same origin . . .”
After math, my head still spinning from vertices and parallel planes, I was approached by a stout, properly dressed boy. “Aaron Davis,” he announced, extending his hand. I recognized him as the intensely bumptious kid in my Judaic classes who answered questions with a booming voice and excessive gesticulations. “Wanted to make a point of introducing myself.”
“Ari Eden,” I said gratefully. Most students were wary of me: either I was with Noah and the others, in which case people maintained careful distance, or I was on my own, in which case I was regarded as an alien.
“We have classes together, I see.” He was dressed too sharply—he wore a tie and navy pin-striped pants—and had on ill-fitting, oversized glasses that slid off the bridge of his nose. “How are you enjoying your first day?”
It was great, I told him.
“Excellent. You seem to be adjusting well. From Norwalk, is it?”
“Pardon?”
“Or was it Waterbury? Somewhere in Connecticut, I know.”
“I’m from Brooklyn.”
“Oh, how quaint.”
“Quaint? I wouldn’t exactly—”
“Well,” he said, straightening his tie. “I must be off to physics. But it was wonderful to meet you, a great privilege. It’s like what Hamilton said, I’m sure you know, about the sacred pleasure of new friendship?”
As he strolled off, hands in pockets, whistling a Civil War tune, Oliver materialized from behind a locker. “Intolerable, right?”
“I don’t know. I thought he was nice.”
“Nice? Davis is a pretentious know-it-all obsessed with historians and Harvard, just like everyone else in his family.”
“Oh. Well, when you put it that way.”
“I’m sure he was plenty nice, though. Probably wants your vote.”
“My vote?”
“For school president. Election season’s starting, and Davis is a natural politician.”
“I see.”
“Evan can’t stand him,” he said matter-of-factly. “Not to mention that Davis and Amir are, like, eternal rivals.”
“Competing for what?”
“Grades, awards, college, maximum dullness, becoming valedictorian. Everything, really.”
“What about Evan?”
“He could be if he wanted. But he doesn’t.”
“Why’s that?”
Oliver shrugged. “Evan doesn’t care.”
Biology featured the most bizarre teacher of the day: Dr. Ursula Flowers. “Yes, yes, an unfortunate name, I’m well aware, take a second to process and kindly move on,” she snapped, scribbling her name with venom on the blackboard. She was silver-haired, muscular; a tattoo of what appeared to be a small, poorly rendered microscope was visible just above the collar of her shirt. “I guess that’s what you get when your Hawaiian parents are good-for-nothing hippies nurturing unhealthy Disney addictions.” On cue, she broke into a coughing fit.
“Are you okay?” someone eventually asked.
“Dandy,” she wheezed, doubled over. She rummaged violently in her desk for tissues. “Get used to this, people,” she instructed between shallow, frantic breaths. “Word to the wise? Never chain-smoke.”
The class was surprisingly small: only seven seniors, the rest of the grade dispersed between AP Physics and AP Environmental Science. How I made it into this class I wasn’t certain. At no point in my application to Kol Neshama had I expressed even a mild interest in biology. I decided I was fine with this, however, the moment I discovered Sophia in the front row.
“Ari,” she said, arching her brows. “What a pleasant surprise.”
I took the seat beside her, a risk that had me temporarily reeling. “Why is it you’re always so surprised to find me anywhere?”
She looked me over, arranged her teeth into something resembling an amused, slightly patronizing smile. “Well, I didn’t take you for a scientist.”
“I’m not,” I said, uncertain whether to feel insulted.
“Premed?”
“Nope.”
“You’re stalking me, is that it?”
“Enough flirting,” Dr. Flowers barked, her coughing fit having subsided.
After a horrid hour of being berated about van der Waals interaction and the non-directionality of ionic bonds came English. Mrs. Hartman—tall, thin, severe, dressed in shades of black—walked in just as the bell chimed and, as the room fell swiftly into silence, carved a single word on the chalkboard in the most luxurious handwriting I’d ever seen: tragedy. “Why, as human beings, do we write and read and study and, at our most atavistic, enjoy representations of suffering?” Her eyes wandered slowly around the room. Amir, after looking about cautiously, offered his hand.
“Mr. Samson?”
“We’re sadists.”
“We’re sadists. How so?”
“Er.” He paused to think, surprised his first answer didn’t suffice. “I’d say we have a natural desire to see others suffer.”
“An intrinsic pleasure in witnessing suffering?”
Amir eyed Davis lurking. “Yes,” he said uneasily.
“A fair albeit disconcerting theory. Others?” Silence again. “Is Mr. Samson alone in having a voice?”
“Catharsis,” I spoke out, abruptly, just as Davis was winding up. Heads turned in place: the kid from Brooklyn had something to say on the matter of tragic literature.
Mrs. Hartman’s eyes narrowed with interest. “Your name?”
“Ari Eden,” I said, conscious of the stares I was receiving.
“And by catharsis you mean what, Mr. Eden?”
“That it purges us,” I said. “Giving us the chance to release pity and fear.”
“When do we feel pity and fear?”
“Daily,” I said. “Our lives feel smaller than the lives of the Greeks. Less important, less grand. But still we feel sorrow, at least on a smaller scale.”
I was aware of restless shuffling around me, yet didn’t dare turn my head. Amir, I could tell from the corner of my eye, wore a gaping look. Sophia, to my delight, turned curiously in her seat, playing with her bracelet. Evan, directly to my right, watched attentively, nodding. He scribbled madly into his notebook before breaking into a self-satisfied smile.
Mrs. Hartman twirled chalk between her fingers. “Then tragedy to you serves a positive or negative social purpose?”
I thought of the solitary hours I’d spent in the Borough Park Library, absorbed in faraway worlds—whispers, daydreams, things golden and sublime—where form had been given to my loneliness. “Positive.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because it lets us experience what we’ll never see ourselves.”
Silence. People around me seemed impressed—Noah even shot me a furtive celebratory hand gesture—and I allowed myself to feel momentarily proud. Then Sophia raised her hand.
“Ms. Winter?”
“I disagree.”
“With Mr. Eden?”
“Yes.”
“Wonderful.” A solemn smile came to Mrs. Hartman’s lips. “Do elaborate.”
“Tragedy doesn’t save us.” Sophia kept her eyes fixed firmly at the blackboard. “Tragedy doesn’t enlarge our imagination or cast us in a nobler light.”
“What does it do, then, Ms. Winter?”
“It flattens us. It turns us to dust.” She straightened, her gaze returning calmly to Mrs. Hartman. “I thought that was important to note.”
Mrs. Hartman nodded curtly. “Ms. Winter and Mr. Eden raise interesting points that allow us to begin our discussion of what makes up the bulk of the tragic and even epic canon we’ll be studying this year, beginning with the Iliad.” She went on to discuss the basic tenets of tragedy, the differences among the Greek, Shakespearean and modern genres. I listened with intense pleasure, enlivened by the thought that Sophia would approach daringly after class, challenging me with that downcast look, granting me her full attention. When the bell rang, however, Sophia hastened from the room.
* * *
THE REST OF THAT FIRST week flew by uneventfully. Each day I allowed Noah to drive me to school, joined him and the others for lunch on the third-floor balcony, sat near them in classes. I remained unhappily in Minyan X, Rabbi Schwartz shrugging apologetically when I cringed, and endured the sacrilegious rituals of my peers. I did the best I could, claiming the far corner of the room and sitting with my eyes shut, lacing my prayers with the shrill sounds of some DJ named Avicii.
I plunged headfirst into my studies. This was a necessity: to even survive academically, I reasoned, I’d need to become a serious student. I pretended I knew that three angles of a triangle summed to 180 degrees, stared stupidly when Dr. Flowers told us she wouldn’t bother explaining covalent bonds, nodded along to Davis’ recitation of the events leading to the storming of the Bastille. A sizable mound of homework was already piling on: a problem set for math, translations for Hebrew, a quiz in Tanach, an impending biology test. (“If anyone has any hope of taking the AP come May, we’ll need to stay at this pace, and I won’t allow anyone to hold us back,” Dr. Flowers threatened, focusing her glare on me.) Still, I was enjoying the challenge, especially in English. I’d leave readings for the end of the night, after I retreated to bed, falling asleep to strange geometries of lamplight cast against my walls and images of burning Trojan citadels.
* * *
“YOU’RE COMING TO TRYOUTS TOMORROW night, right?” Noah asked at lunch, biting into a thick turkey sandwich.
