The Orchard

by David Hopen

  Rabbi Bloom looked around the table before agreeing. “Go ahead, Mr. Stark.”

  “You told us to keep in mind whether Sidgwick helps our cause,” Evan said slowly, “which is to say: does he lessen our religious doubts, our dissatisfaction with Orthodox Judaism and, by consequence, our personal unhappiness.”

  Rabbi Bloom twirled a spoon through black coffee. “So I did.”

  “Considering the energy in the room”—he gestured toward Oliver, whose head was buried in the fold of his right elbow—“I propose we move past reviewing Sidgwick’s arguments and actually address this question.”

  “Very well,” Rabbi Bloom said. “Maybe we’re somewhat bogged down by the mechanics.”

  “I didn’t make it past the first ten pages,” Oliver said without lifting his head. “I’m man enough to admit it.”

  “Yeah, and I didn’t even understand the SparkNotes,” Noah said.

  “For those of us who aren’t up to speed,” Evan said impatiently, “here’s how Sidgwick leaves things. Of the three methods of morality—”

  “—intuitionism, the idea that I can figure out moral rules on my own,” Amir cut in, reciting eagerly from his outline. “Egoism, pursuing whatever makes me happy. And then utilitarianism: happiness for the greatest good.”

  Evan rolled his eyes. “Of those three, intuitionism and utilitarianism can coexist, whereas egoism and utilitarianism cannot.”

  “At least so far as he can prove,” Rabbi Bloom corrected.

  Evan straightened in his seat. “Well, that’s the thing. He suspects egoism and utilitarianism can be squared. He just can’t demonstrate how.”

  “So what good does that do in academic terms?” Amir asked. “If it can’t hold up to analytic philosophy, it isn’t rational.”

  Noah rubbed his eyes. “Well, you can’t demonstrate God exists, right? And you still trudge along to minyan each morning.”

  “That’s completely different,” Amir said. “That’s not logic, that’s taking a leap of—”

  “Shut up a second, will you?” Evan said.

  Amir, predictably, turned hazardously red. “So he’s running this class now? Does he always think he’s running this class?”

  Rabbi Bloom, looking very much like Evan, raised a hand. “Let’s allow Mr. Stark to make his point,” he said. “But cordially, please.”

  Evan looked as if he didn’t even register Amir’s reaction. “How do we reconcile self-interest and morality? We can’t. Not without God. God, Sidgwick shows us, makes it work. God shifts the paradigm.”

  “Yeah, well, I still don’t see it,” Noah said.

  Evan frowned. “Think about it. If we’re bound by reward and punishment, then self-interest reorients to something beyond the immediate world.”

  “Sacrificing what you want in the pursuit of something quote-unquote moral is still in your best interest,” I said, nodding along, “because you’ll be rewarded for it in the World to Come.”

  “Exactly,” Evan said. “So essentially, if God exists, doing what you want can still be considered moral. Really, almost anything can be made moral through access to God.”

  A pause as we absorbed this. I watched Rabbi Bloom’s face darken.

  “First of all,” Amir said hotly, “let’s note that you were the one denying God’s existence pretty recently.”

  “That’s completely false,” Evan said. “If that’s what you came out with, then the whole thing went over your head.”

  “Nothing’s over my head.”

  Rabbi Bloom cleared his throat. “Gentlemen, please. Arrive at the point.”

  “Whatever. Secondly, what he’s saying is cheating,” Amir said. “You can’t just resort to the supernatural, basically, so that things can make sense. That’s not how pure logic works. Even Sidgwick says so!”

  Evan leaned backward in his chair. “But Sidgwick didn’t attend a yeshiva high school,” he said. “He didn’t wear tzitzit, he didn’t pray three times a day, he didn’t play Amish on weekends. Our whole lives are built on the premise that we believe in something outside of pure logic, so why wouldn’t we use that same reasoning when it counts most?”

  Rabbi Bloom pushed away his coffee, as if losing his appetite. “What’s the upshot here, Mr. Stark?”

  “The upshot is that God solves the equation. Without God, freeing the ego, the self, the force of your desires, is a dead end—we have to admit ‘an ultimate and fundamental contradiction in our apparent intuitions of what is Reasonable in conduct.’” I flipped to the last pages of the book to find these lines, realizing Evan was quoting verbatim. Rabbi Bloom, judging by the look on his face, was equally impressed. “So in that sense, Sidgwick’s totally right: divinity is what we can use to finally unlock our self-will.”

  “You keep talking about making your own choices and expressing your will and whatever else,” Amir said. “But what does that even mean?”

  “Our most basic human trait,” Evan said. “The fundamental part of being alive. The desire to live, to find meaning, to have power, to do what you think is right.”

  Rabbi Bloom tried cutting in. “Perhaps let’s pause and—”

  “And so what I was saying,” Evan continued, “is that Sidgwick’s insight is all great and important, but he’s still missing something pretty crucial, because he makes the mistake of postponing the fulfillment of self-interest until you’re rewarded in Olam HaBa. What we need to do instead of waiting for the afterlife is achieve fulfillment on earth, in the here and now.”

  More silence. Amir looked horrified, but also as if he didn’t quite know why. Noah and I fidgeted in our seats. Oliver played with his gelled hair.

  “And how do you aim to do that?” Rabbi Bloom asked, after a brief interlude during which he proved incapable of meeting Evan’s eyes.

  “So that brings me to my question.” Evan reached beneath the table for his backpack, pulling out an old, leather-bound book. “You believe in Kabbalah, Rabbi?”

  Noah eyed the book, frowned. “That’s not . . . the Zohar, is it?”

  I’d never so much as opened the Zohar. My father, diligent Torah scholar that he was, forbade me from expending mental energy on Kabbalah when I could otherwise devote myself to the more rigorous and pressing universe of Talmud.

  “Whoa,” Oliver said, cocking his chin. “Aren’t you not supposed to touch that until you’re forty? I thought it’s, like, basically voodoo.”

  “Do I think it’s much more than mystical rubbish?” Rabbi Bloom smiled politely. “No.”

  “But what if I found the morality offered by traditional Judaism to be restraining and unfulfilling?” Evan asked. “What if I thought it ignores your potential as an individual thinker?”

  “In that case,” Rabbi Bloom said, “I’d probably tell you that you don’t understand traditional Judaism.”

  “What’s not to understand? I’ve been living it for eighteen years.”

  “Judaism does not seek to ignore the self, Mr. Stark. It seeks to enrich it.”

  “But I very much disagree,” Evan said. “Because the Judaism you teach here relegates the individual to an afterthought. It cares little about how you feel. It makes you fall in line and sacrifice everything and wait patiently for the next world, where you can finally earn it all back, where all that suffering actually amounts to something. But does it give a shit about the self? Does it have anything to say when you’re alone? When you’re betrayed? When your mother dies?”

  Unidentifiable heaviness flooded Rabbi Bloom’s eyes. “I know how . . . torturous your mother’s ordeal was, Mr. Stark. And so if you decide ultimately to take that personal hell out on God, nobody would deny you that right. Nobody here can stop you from doing that.”

  Evan said nothing, eyes affixed to the Zohar. He rubbed his fingers together.

  “But there are ways to heal,” Rabbi Bloom said. “There are ways to find strength within faith, even when faith is shattered, even when faith reduces, at best, to doubt. Nobody ever ought to
feel overlooked in the service of God.”

  “You don’t get it,” Evan said.

  “What don’t I understand?”

  “I don’t need platitudes. I’ve found my own way.”

  “A way to what?” Noah asked.

  “I’ve been working on it all year. He’s seen me,” Evan said, pointing at me. A pit deepened inside my stomach, thinking of his ramblings in shul on Rosh Hashanah and in the school library, Nietzsche in hand.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Rabbi Bloom said, “and in truth, I almost don’t want to.”

  Evan closed the Zohar. “I strongly believe that achieving fulfillment here on earth hinges on unleashing our capacity to become divine. In short? I think we should channel God to empower ourselves instead of allowing Him to crush us.” I thought, for some reason, of that line from Henry James: Just so what is morality but high intelligence?

  Amir scoffed. “So now you’re, like—what? An esotericist?”

  Evan shrugged. “I’m what he made me,” he said, nodding at Rabbi Bloom. “What loss made me.”

  “Yeah, but, again,” Amir said, “this is really sounding like a bunch of Kabbalistic nonsense. Like, are you going to tell us you believe in fairies, too? Goblins, maybe?”

  “I’m obviously not talking about magic and monsters,” Evan said. “I just mean, in a strictly Zoharian sense, that conventional standards require some . . . reexamining, let’s call it. Because nothing’s really evil absolutely, right? I mean, isn’t that what Eden argued in our moral intuitionism debates? And wouldn’t you agree, Rabbi, that anything, alternate realities included, can lead us to truth, even when they first appear off-limits?” Evan looked around the table and smiled. “It’s like what Yeats teaches and Nietzsche teaches and whoever else teaches. What Shir HaShirim teaches: Shkhora ani venavah. I am dark, but beautiful.”

  * * *

  EVAN HAD US MEET HIM at the lake Friday night, after our families finished Shabbat dinner. He wouldn’t tell us why. I hurried through my meal, much to my mother’s displeasure, interrupting my father’s long-winded monologue on Parshat Terumah, which questioned what it means for God—“Ain lo demut haguf, veaino guf”—to seek physical sanctuary and dwell in our midst. I bentched to myself and told my parents I was going to Noah’s for a classmate’s birthday dessert.

  When we arrived, Evan was lying on a bench, joint in mouth. His right hand fidgeted with a strip of scrolled white paper.

  “What is that?” Amir asked, after Oliver promptly snatched Evan’s weed.

  Evan sat up, angling one leg on the bench. “This,” he said, handing me the paper to examine, “is tonight’s main attraction.”

  Cautiously, I unrolled it, straining my eyes in the dark. “It’s blank,” I said, turning it over.

  Evan extracted a pen from his pocket. “Not for long.”

  “I don’t get it,” Noah said. “And my mom made slutty brownies tonight. Did I just give that up for nothing?”

  “Dibs on leftovers,” Oliver said, standing on his tiptoes to put his arm around Noah’s shoulder. “Cynthia outdoes herself with those.”

  “Sorry, dude. Rebecca’s family is over tonight, and her dad doesn’t take prisoners when those brownies are served.”

  “Fuck me.”

  “Um, back to the issue at hand, maybe?” Amir cracked his knuckles impatiently. “What are we doing here?”

  Evan took back his jay and blew large filaments of smoke into Amir’s face. “I’m going to conduct an experiment I’d like you to witness.”

  Amir swiped the air in front of him. “Oh, cool. Are you going to perform some Kabbalah for our entertainment? Walk on water? Maybe pull a rabbit out of your yarmulke?”

  “No, as appealing as that sounds. I’m going to write the name of God on this piece of paper and then cast it into the water.”

  Blank looks. Oliver retched, spitting phlegm into the grass.

  “Think you’re finally starting to lose it, buddy,” Noah said.

  Nervous laughter from Amir. “I mean, you’re kidding, aren’t you? Because I was definitely not serious about the Kabbalah shit.”

  “I don’t think he is,” I said, wondering why it was that I’d felt compelled to decline Kayla’s dessert invitation and instead pay further testament to Evan’s volatility.

  Amir’s laughter subsided. “And why the hell are you going to do that, may I ask?”

  “To see what happens,” Evan said.

  “The full name?” I asked.

  “All seventy-two glorious letters.”

  “My family does tashlich here, you know.” Noah placed his hands in his pockets, swaying slightly. “Maybe this is a bad idea. Maybe it’s, I don’t know, sacrilegious?”

  “Most things we do are sacrilegious.” Evan twirled his pen through his fingertips. “But it’s not like that’s my intention. I’d say tonight I’m more interested in the question of, I don’t know, of worthiness, let’s call it.”

  I unrolled the sleeves of my shirt so that they covered my wrists. “You want to know if you’ll be—what? Punished?”

  “Okay, yeah, the more I think about it, the more I think you should punt on this little activity.” Noah looked at me for support, but I shrugged. “This could curse us.”

  Evan stomped out the joint. “Since when do you believe in curses?”

  “I don’t know, I guess I—” Noah ran his fingers through his hair, pulling strands down past his neck. “I just feel like some things you don’t do.”

  Removing the cap with his incisors, Evan took his pen and, with careful, ornate handwriting, sketched out seventy-two Hebrew letters in red ink. “I was generous enough to supply extra paper,” he said, patting the pockets of his black jeans, “in case anyone wants to write their own?” Nobody moved, not even Oliver. Noah looked sick.

  “Very well. You’ll live vicariously.”

  Amir retreated a few steps. “And if we don’t want to watch?”

  “Then don’t.” Evan walked toward the water. “Then leave.”

  “Okay, I have to ask,” Oliver said, glasses fogged from smoke. “So, like, what if this works? What’s supposed to happen?”

  “When Moshe did this,” Evan said, “he split the Red Sea.”

  “And retrieved Joseph’s bones from the water,” I said.

  Evan smirked. “Good point, Eden. Forgot that one.”

  “To be totally clear,” Amir said, “you’re actually telling us that this isn’t some weird prank but that you actually intend to, like, perform a freaking miracle?”

  “Well, no promises,” Evan said. “I just want to try my hand. See if I’m . . . spiritually strong enough, I suppose, to receive divine revelation of some sort.”

  Amir nervously itched his beard. “I mean, guys, seriously, come on. How are we—how is this not really fucking weird?”

  “Maybe what it takes to rise above ordinary life,” Evan said softly, “is something shocking and dangerous. You know how rabbis always teach that holiness is associated with separation? Kohenim are holy because they’re separate, the Beis HaMikdash is holy because it’s separate, God is holy because He’s separate? Well, follow that logic: divorce yourself from ordinary life and find yourself moving away from being human and toward something . . . I don’t know, something thrilling and risky and very much divine.”

  Nobody responded. I wasn’t taken aback by the content of this idea, merely the latest in a sequence of increasingly bewildering theories on Evan’s part, but by the fervor with which it was delivered. Somehow I knew—somehow we all knew—that Evan, at last, was veering away from theoretical debates and into the realm of practical belief.

  “You’d have to be pure,” I said, finally. “Only the pure are supposed to use the hidden name.”

  “Let’s pray, in that case, that I am.” Evan kissed the paper and dropped it into the water. Noah turned away; I inched up the bank with Oliver and Amir, watching the white disintegrate under the stars. We stood in silence, long after the pape
r was gone. Finally, Evan cleared his throat and walked away from the water. “So that was anticlimactic.”

  “What’d you expect?” Amir asked. “Prophecy? Bubbles in the water?”

  “I hoped the ground would swallow me whole,” Evan said. “I hoped to meet Korach and the rest of his rebel army.”

  “Maybe you had the wrong name?” Oliver said. “Who knows what God’s secular name is. Or maybe He has a middle name?”

  “We shouldn’t have done this,” Noah said, to no one in particular. He kicked up patches of dirt, darkening his white Nikes.

  “Now what?” Amir asked. “What’d that prove?”

  Evan surveyed the heavens. Night air pressed against us. Dull moonlight shone down in silver glints. I was sweating. “Nothing.”

  “You’re going to need a better experiment,” Amir said, “if you’re trying to prove any of your shit.”

  “You’re absolutely right.” Evan lit a second joint, a lone light in the dark. “I am.”

  * * *

  THERE WAS A DRUG TEST at the end of that week. Mrs. Janice delivered the news, quite happily, over the loudspeakers: tests were school policy, selections random, cooperation compulsory. We were sitting in Mrs. Hartman’s class when we heard this, scribbling a mock AP essay, an analysis of Rimbaud’s “Delirium.” (Je croyais à tous les enchantements.) Davis, seated several rows before Evan, turned in his seat and grinned wickedly. “You’re done,” he mouthed.

  Evan flipped him off.

  Cold sweat broke out on the back of my head. I glanced around: Amir turned green, Noah drummed pen over paper, Kayla gave me a look of urgency. Mrs. Hartman peeked up from grading essays. “Is there a problem?”

  Davis sniggered from the far side of the room.