Good Apple

by Elizabeth Passarella

  Q: WHAT ABOUT OUT OF THE CITY?

  A: This again? Okay. Here’s where I am supposed to say that I’d be open to whatever God has planned for my life, that if he called me out of the city, I would willingly go. Because I’m stubborn, though, he would have to call very loudly and possibly send locusts. In which case, see you at the nearest bodega.

  TEN

  TO ALL THE JEWS I’VE LOVED

  I HAVE FOUND MYSELF, AS I’VE gotten older, moving toward a higher Jewish density. That sounds a little like I’m stuck in the chewy innards of a bagel. But what I mean is: I started out with a Jewish dad in an otherwise very gentile family, which felt pretty rare. Then, through questionable circumstances that I really shouldn’t mention twice, I found myself working at the Christian Coalition, where you’d also think Jewish people would be rare, but you’d be wrong. Then, I moved to New York, where Jewish people are not at all rare. Christians are. It’s as if I’ve been wading deeper into a warm pool, pulled subconsciously by my Jewish great-grandparents, who lived on the Lower East Side, or by a love of matzo ball soup. I’d say by a love of bagels, but all of my favorite bagel places in New York are confoundedly run by Thai families.

  It’s a good pool though. I love a lot of Jews very much, and many of them have influenced my life at pivotal points, encouraging me down a path, telling me to make a sharp turn, or simply affirming that I was on the right course. My dad, of course, is the most important, but the list is varied, including two kindergarteners, a fictional movie character, and someone who made a brief appearance in the Democratic primaries of 2019. You’ll note there’s no Jesus. I figure, at this point, he’s a given.

  IRVIN

  People often ask me, when they find out I’m a committed Christian, what it was like to grow up with a Jewish dad, in a two-religion household. And I say that it wasn’t a two-religion household. My mother was in charge of our spiritual lives. She took us to church, and my dad never expressed anything but pride and delight at what beautiful, Jesus-loving daughters he had. That was how it went.

  My father was never a devout Jew. The story of his bar mitzvah goes: his parents wanted him to have one, but he didn’t want to go to Hebrew school, so he memorized his part off of a recording until he could mimic the prayers verbatim. I never went to a synagogue with him for normal Saturday services, only a family wedding here and there. It was always arresting, the sight of him in a yarmulke, speaking Hebrew, like he was impersonating a past life. His own mother’s, my grandmother Gigi’s, funeral would have come closest to being a personal, emotional religious Jewish experience the two of us shared, but I didn’t go. I was on a high school youth group trip to Colorado, and my parents didn’t want to upset me by flying me home early, so they waited until I was home to tell me that my grandmother died. “You didn’t miss anything,” my mother said. “Scott had to be a pallbearer, because we didn’t have enough!” Scott was my sister’s then-boyfriend, now-husband. He had just graduated from college and was living with us for the summer to spend more time with my sister, who had just finished her sophomore year. I would have paid good money just to see him carry his girlfriend’s grandmother’s coffin. But I was also sad because I always thought I was Gigi’s favorite, on account of the fact that, during her final years, when she lived with us, I was the one who crushed her medication into her ice cream and fed it to her at night.

  Growing up, my dad would head to his grandmother’s house after school, picking up a pulled pork sandwich from his favorite barbecue joint, Leonard’s, on his way. Mama Richman, my great-grandmother, would allow him the pork, but she made him eat it in the garage. That’s the kind of Jew my dad was. He always told me that his connection to Judaism was through family and community and food (including pork, which, in his mind, was only right to make an exception for, considering he lived in Memphis). It did not cover the convictions of his soul. Convictions of the soul were outsourced to my mother.

  He showed up plenty to church though. When I was in ninth grade, I asked to be baptized. I’d only been “dedicated” as an infant, because our church at the time didn’t perform infant baptisms; they wanted you to be able to profess your faith publicly. And that’s exactly what I did—climbed into a tank full of water that was built into the wall of a conference room, told the people gathered how I’d given my life to Jesus, and let my youth pastor dunk me. My dad stood and clapped with everyone else. He’d come to church with us on holidays, could recite the Lord’s Prayer word for word, and knew the lyrics to many hymns. His heart may not have been in it, but he was happily along for the ride. For her part, my mother made the most of our Jewish side of the family. She really threw herself into Old Testament hosting, especially at Passover, learning to make haroseth, the apple and raisin chutney that symbolizes the mortar used by the Israelite slaves in Egypt, and leaving an empty chair at the table for Elijah. She set up the little plate with parsley dipped in saltwater to signify the Israelite’s tears. She made sure my sister and I understood the stories of suffering and bondage of the Israelites in the Old Testament, which, of course, later in my life, made the ultimate rescue by Jesus all the sweeter.

  As much as I would have loved for my dad to believe what we believed, as many times as I resented the fact that it was just the three of us in the pew, Sunday after Sunday, there was an upside, an unintended gift he gave us by being Jewish. In the evangelical church we grew up in, women were not the spiritual leaders. The men were. In a lot of churches, they still are. But in our family, my mother was the leader. She was the teacher, the keeper of the truth, the beacon on the hill that showed us the way. She was the powerful one, in that realm. And that was really something to grow up with. It tipped the balance ever so slightly in our house. While my dad didn’t believe, he respected what we shared, stood in awe of my mother’s strength, and I think there was always a part of him that longed to be in on it. His heart just faced an obstacle that even his great love for his girls couldn’t overcome.

  At some point in my childhood, I must have asked my mother what would happen to my dad when he died, and she must have given me an answer. I doubt she lied and promised me he’d be in heaven, because that woman knows her Bible, and it’s very clear that Jesus is the ticket. I’m sure she was honest but hopeful. I have no idea. I did what many children do, when faced with a difficult concept that’s a little bit scary—like that the dad you adore may not be in heaven when you get there. I constructed a safer, alternative narrative. It has lived in my mind since I was a kid. It’s called the Do-Over.

  The Do-Over is exactly what it sounds like. Another chance, directly after death, for my Jewish loved ones to accept Jesus Christ as their Savior. It’s quick. This isn’t purgatory, where you relitigate your own righteousness or spend a long time working things out. It’s just, bloop, real fast, one more time: Do you believe, yes or no? A nanosecond of clarity. I’m betting on it. There were all kinds of do-overs in the Bible. The entire book of Exodus is just story after story of the Israelites turning their backs on God, telling Moses he’d made a mistake, constructing golden calves. God still gave them the promised land. Every time I ask for forgiveness, and I get it, it’s a do-over. Who says there can’t be one final do-over after death for my favorite Jews? Even the ones I don’t like?

  After people ask me what it was like to have a Jewish dad, they often inquire how my parents ended up together. That’s not my story to tell, although I know my father showed up for their first date driving a convertible he borrowed from the dealership where he worked, and he tucked a headscarf in the glove compartment to protect my mom’s bouffant. He must have known the higher the hair, the closer to God, and he wasn’t getting in the way of that.

  BARRY

  In a city with more than one million Jews, it’s surprising that I am related to only one. At least, that I know of: my father’s first cousin, Barry. Like me, he grew up in Memphis and disappointed his mother by moving to New York and falling in love with it. We are the black sheep of our Southern fa
milies.

  Barry’s mother, Lily, and my father’s mother, Jennie, were sisters. I’m not sure what kind of cousins that makes us. Second? Something once removed? Barry’s father and his only brother both died in their fifties, so with my dad being an only child, the two of them were more like brothers than cousins. Barry moved to New York when he was almost thirty to work in the arts. His first job was at the TKTS booth in Times Square, but he worked his way up, eventually becoming the executive director of a youth symphony. His most impressive accomplishment, though, was—after living for almost twenty years on Avenue B and socking away money—buying the most fabulous apartment I had ever seen in the most fabulous neighborhood I’d ever been in. He still lives there, a perfect one-bedroom in a pre-war, art deco building with a roof deck right on Christopher Street in the heart of Greenwich Village. He has a sunken living room and a chocolate brown velvet sofa and the most perfect galley kitchen where he makes perfect martinis every night. When he would host our family in New York—once over Thanksgiving, when I was in high school, and a few times when I was in college—I would sit on that chocolate brown velvet sofa and think, “Dang. This is the life.”

  Barry is about as Jewish as my father, which is to say he is persnickety about bagels and worships at the temple of Carnegie Hall. He is a promiscuous lover of music and theater; he has seen everything, and even when I think I’ve scooped him on a new play or Broadway show that everyone is raving about, he’ll not only inform me that he’s seen it but that he “didn’t think it was all that great.” One Easter-Passover weekend, when my parents were visiting, I made gefilte fish from scratch just to try to impress him.

  He is devoted to me, his family, though, saving me from rice and beans countless times in my early years in New York by taking me out to dinner and leaving tickets at will-calls all over the city for everything from chamber music to jazz concerts. Most importantly, he didn’t think I was crazy when I said New York City felt like home, like I was always meant to live here. “Well, of course you were,” he’d say. When I’d wonder if my career was going anywhere or if it was worth being a small fish in a big pond, he’d affirm me. In some ways, I think I’m affirming him, too—a member of a family that can feel foreign at times, coming around to his city, his side, falling in love with the place he’d been advertising so relentlessly for years, with no converts.

  I don’t see Barry as much as I used to. He is retired and single and travels constantly. “Greetings from the Queen Mary II!” read his emails, with a picture of him drinking a cocktail in a tuxedo. “Photos from the synagogue in Szeged, Hungary,” reads another from 2018. Last week, he came over for breakfast, a week before he was set to leave for a month-long trip through Alaska and then Hawaii. He sat down on my chocolate brown velvet sofa (it is, indeed, perfect, and I will never own anything else) and made small talk with my kids, something he is remarkably good at for a man with no children or grandchildren of his own.

  “What are you drawing, James?” he asked.

  “I don’t know yet. It’s just a sprout of hair right now,” said James.

  “Like Alfalfa?”

  “Huh?”

  “Alfalfa. From the Little Rascals.”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  Barry took James’s paper and pencil, scribbled for a few minutes, and turned James’s spout of hair into a little boy with freckles, a collared shirt, and a bow tie. Alfalfa. James was agape. I might as well have invited Gandalf to breakfast.

  Before he left, I told him about this book and asked if it was okay for me to write about him. He was effusive in his excitement and sent me an email a few hours later to say, again, how “terribly proud” he was of me. He even said my children were beautiful and well-behaved. For reference, my mother’s first words after I announced my book deal were, “Oh, no.” But that’s the thing about second cousins once removed. Their love can be simpler than that of a parent. They can cheer you on without the anxiety of having to deal with the fallout should your dream crash and burn. We need both of those loves in our lives.

  A few hours after the email, I got a text. “I’d like to take the kids to the Met when I’m back,” Barry wrote. “I have two exhibitions in particular I feel they would enjoy.” Then he told me that the bagels and nova I served at breakfast were good. That’s high praise I will take.

  IKE AND LEAH

  These are two of my son’s best friends, at least they are at the time I’m writing this. Seven-year-olds are finicky. Even if they drop each other like hot potatoes by third grade, I’ll owe these kids a debt for getting James to show up for kindergarten every day.

  Does that sound dramatic? Couldn’t I, his mother, get him to show up for school? Well, yes, but I have a soft spot for my middle child’s particular gentleness of spirit—opposites attract, they say—and had it not been for Ike and Leah, James and I might have whiled away the early days of his educational career wrapped in a duvet, watching cooking shows and intermittently napping. It helps to understand two things. One, New York City public schools don’t ease you in with a “Meet the Teacher!” night or a visit from said teacher to your home, a myth I’ve heard about in some fancier private schools. You show up on day one to loud hallways, crowded stairwells, huge classrooms, and no idea when lunch is. Don’t get me wrong, I love public school, and neither of my school-age kids has ever shown up to find a talking Pterodactyl instead of a teacher and thought, “Man, would’ve been nice to meet her in advance.” But it’s still a lot to process on the first day. Two, James is a homebody who frequently complains if we go out to dinner at a loud restaurant where he can’t draw in complete silence. He is the kind of kid who said, when I asked if he wanted to learn how to ride a bike, “No. I want to grow up and be a useless man who doesn’t know how to ride a bike.” Although he was used to this school, having dropped off and picked up his older sister for two years, I was worried it would be a harrowing adjustment.

  And then he made three thick-as-thieves friends in kindergarten. I’m focusing on the Jewish two for continuity here, but just know there were three. They were all kooky in equal measure, thrilled by one another’s quirks. James usually left the house with a bandana tied around his neck, like he was heading to a cattle drive, and three in his backpack for his friends. They played make-believe games with characters and names that only the three of them understood. At James’s sixth birthday party, Ike’s mom forgot to drop off his gift. After the party, she texted me to say she’d bring it to school the next day. I told James. He said, “Oh, it’s okay. Ike gave me the best present. A friend-feeling present, in my heart.” They were physically affectionate with each other from the get-go, like they’d been wombmates. If they happened to meet up on the sidewalk outside school, they’d hold hands tightly the entire walk in and upstairs to the classroom.

  A month after school ended, James turned to me and asked if you could fall in love with someone as an adult whom you went to kindergarten with. “I’m asking about Leah,” he said. I said yes. “Perfect,” he said. “Then we’ll be just like your parents. She’ll be Jewish, and I’ll be Christian.”

  There’s a lot of time between now and an interfaith marriage. I may be praying for more do-overs. I think God can handle it. And who knows, maybe Leah can get James to ride a bike.

  MICHAEL BLOOMBERG

  You didn’t see this coming, and that’s understandable. I’m not related to Michael Bloomberg. I’ve never even met him. But he was the mayor of New York City for twelve of the twenty years I’ve lived here, starting shortly after 9/11, which was an intense time. Twelve years, because he strong-armed his way into a third term after introducing a bill that would extend term limits for New York City mayors. A lot of people criticize him for that. Not me. I would have had him be mayor forever. Unless he was going to be president, which is a whole other ball of wax.

  People always say about rich guys who get into politics, “Well, he doesn’t have to pander to special interests, because he’s self-funded.”
Or, “He doesn’t act like a politician, because he’s just a successful businessman.” (These statements were more benign and fun to throw around before 2016.) Michael Bloomberg really did just act like a normal, non-politician person, in my eyes. This was most evident during press conferences about impending severe weather. Bloomberg was at his most suave when assuring New York City residents that he was on top of Snowstorm Bernard or what have you. He told it like it was. He didn’t spout off dumb platitudes. He sounded like he had common sense.

  Not everyone thought so. Some critics think he’s arrogant and dismissive of the press. My husband Michael’s family is full of public-school teachers who compare Bloomberg to the Antichrist on account of his parsimonious dealings with their union, I believe. Whenever Bloomberg’s name comes up at a family dinner, I sigh rhapsodically, while my sister-in-law finds a reason to get something from the kitchen. In contrast, I watched him talk about snowplows and school cancellations long before I had a school-age child. That’s how good he was. Growing up in the South, the lightest fairy dusting of snow meant school was out, and your mom was in line at Kroger buying the last gallon of milk. (I’ve never understood the run on bread and milk. BUY GIN AND COOKIES. Or at least frozen pizzas.) In New York, on the other hand, I have climbed over snowdrifts the size of a baby elephant to walk my kids to school. It’s rare that the streets aren’t plowed well enough for taxis and buses to operate. Still, it’s the weather, and it’s unpredictable, and the mayor takes a lot of heat for either calling off school prematurely or too late. What I love about Bloomberg is that he came into those weather-related news conferences knowing he couldn’t win, and he didn’t try to spin anything or make himself look like a hero. It was no-nonsense. In a news conference in February 2013, the day New York was facing an incoming winter storm, he said, “There is no need to panic, buying gas for your cars; all indications are the gas supply is plentiful, and deliveries will not be disrupted. Tonight, what’s a good idea? Cook a meal, stay home, read a good book, watch a movie, just take it easy.” The subtext was always: We’re not going to run out of gas, dummies. Use your common sense. Be patient. Weather is weather. He was often wearing a smart-casual V-neck sweater.