It’s that simple, sleepy mystery that Shuli adored. He found it a joy to be lost there, except maybe when trying to locate a specific computer in that crazy jumble of a place. Shuli comforts himself with his proximity. A house of study can’t be that hard to find at the edge of a single junction.
Standing more or less where he’d been the night before, Shuli holds out his map. He doubles back a bit toward center city, aligning himself with the intersection of the two roads Gavriel had drawn, the boy’s red “X” marking where the building lies.
Shuli walks up and down the busier of the two streets first. A row of connected houses runs along the thoroughfare, their modest entrances opening directly onto the sidewalk. There’s no yeshiva to be seen on either side and, on that stretch, not even a storefront to be found.
At the corner where he began, Shuli turns onto the other street, following it toward the shuk. Nothing there remotely fits the bill. And with a dull ache starting up in his stomach and a goodly throb to his head, Shuli crosses over to explore the one remaining arm of the map’s axis, entering the Bukharian ghetto, where the neighborhood ends. A few paces in, Shuli spies an archway set between buildings and takes the passage running through.
On its far side, in place of a courtyard, is a vertiginous flight of stone steps. Tottering down to a landing framed by two high walls, Shuli looks out over the crowded mix of new construction and tumbledown houses split by an alley that ran parallel to the main street he’d first checked. It was a messy little block, made messier by the web of wires and cables running from the buildings in every direction, as if, were Shuli’s hands big enough, he could make the whole block dance like a marionette.
At the bottom of the staircase, a pair of trash cans already sour in the morning heat. Just beyond them is a woman in a bright headscarf, fully ignoring Shuli. She’s busy with a collection of laundry racks propped in the middle of the alley. They aren’t hung with laundry, but covered with parchment paper, atop which she sets out circles of eggplant, transferring them from a washtub resting on her hip.
One of the racks is already full-up with slices of eggplant, heavily salted and sweating out their bitterness in the sun. By the size of the operation, the woman either has two dozen kids or owns a restaurant nearby.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” Shuli says, polite, in his Brooklyn-accented Hebrew.
Acknowledging him, the woman takes up the long tail of her headscarf and wipes at her face.
“What is it?” she answers in English, as every Israeli who hears his accent does.
“I’m looking for a yeshiva,” Shuli tells her.
At that, she laughs and laughs.
“You want to find a yeshiva in Jerusalem?” she says. “Throw a stone. Pick a door. You can’t go wrong here.”
“Well, oddly, for me it’s already not been so easy. I’m looking for a specific one. In this neighborhood.”
“As I said,” and she offers up the whole of the city with a glance.
The woman rests the plastic bin on an empty rack and again wipes her face, this time dabbing between her eyes at the faint dip of hair where her eyebrows meet.
Seeing that Shuli is less than satisfied with her answer, she says, “I wasn’t kidding. Go check with the tax authority. Half these places are registered as study halls, and the rest as synagogues. There is a puddle behind the next house over that receives a hundred thousand shekels a year. A stipend from the city for a ritual bath you couldn’t wash a foot in.” She then looks Shuli up and down. “You’re not with the tax authority, are you?”
“No,” he says. “A tourist. I’m just looking for a yeshiva that I know, for sure, is nearby. Either up there, or here on the bottom.”
“If you were sure, you wouldn’t be asking directions.”
“My mistake,” Shuli says. “But I really think it could be on this block.”
The woman seems to take a shine to his contrition or his politeness, or maybe his soft American way of being. She says, “Why didn’t you say ‘on the block’ at the start? If you want a real yeshiva, we’ve got only one. It’s by the other staircase,” and she points to the far end, where Shuli now sees a second staircase mirroring the one he came down. “There’s a house in front. Back behind is a small hall where the young men learn.”
* * *
—
It’s as the woman described. Behind a shack of a house stands a plain, one-room yeshiva that looks as if the neighborhood had gone up around it. He steadies himself against the doorframe, unable to believe he might actually be here.
Inside are two rows of three tables, with students studying in pairs all along. At the front, a Holy Ark rests curtained against the eastern wall.
The students at the tables look Shuli’s way when he enters. The hum of study stops for an instant, and then, like the sound of crickets in the night, it all picks up again. There is one student standing in the far corner and busy nodding in conversation with a bear of a man who Shuli assumes is the rosh yeshiva. The man has his back to Shuli, and, clapping the boy on the shoulder, he heads out a side door.
Immediately, the standing boy approaches, a welcoming expression on his face. He, like all the others—like Reb Shuli himself—is wearing a white shirt and a black suit, a black hat upon his head. As grown-up as the uniform is, the beard on this boy has barely come in. Even worse than the gossamer beard are the peos hanging impossibly thin at the sides of his ears.
Back when Reb Shuli himself was a teenager in yeshiva, he’d cut his own peos a bit too short for his father’s liking, an early hint of the rebellion to come. His father had pulled him into his study and said, “You know, when the Messiah will arrive to carry us all to Israel, he will reach down and pick the boys up by their peos, and the girls by their braids. With a haircut like that,” he’d told Shuli, dead serious, “you will be left among the Gentiles in galus to share in their judgment.”
Recalling this, Reb Shuli thinks it’s lucky that the boy is already here. The thought puts a smile on Shuli’s face, and the boy, seeing it, smiles back. He shakes Shuli’s hand and asks how he can be of service, and Shuli is amazed at how much easier a yeshivish Hebrew is for him to understand. He answers in Hebrew, telling him that he’s a visitor from America.
The man who’d gone out the side door now returns through the front. He is maybe Shuli’s age, and—carrying his hat now—noticeably bald. What little hair is left surrounding his kippah has already turned white. A formidable, unhealthy-looking belly pushes out against his shirt.
He is indeed the rosh yeshiva, and he is as warm as the student who’d approached. He introduces himself as Rav Reuven Katz, and the student as Gilad. Shuli stutters, then stops, saying nothing. He’s suddenly afraid that this is the man who’s been ignoring his appeals. If kaddish.com is run from this place, Shuli might need a more nuanced approach before identifying himself and admitting that he’s the one who’d been writing, now come around the world to get back what was his.
Reaching for another name, he almost says “Larry,” and then proceeds to blank on every boy he’s ever taught, aside from Gavriel—an option as bad as using his own. What he ends up spitting out is “Shaul,” the formal version of Shuli, and he shakes both men’s hands again firmly as he does so.
Reb Shuli knows he’s already involved in another form of deception, a terrible way to begin. He feels a tinge of cowardice at his action, but he’d come so far, and it was all so delicate. So he says he’s heard wonderful things about them. And, if it’s all right, he’s come to learn Torah for the day.
Rav Katz partners him with Gilad. As soon as they’re seated across from each other with their Gemaras open, Reb Shuli sneaks out his worn and pockmarked picture of Chemi, sliding it from his pocket and into view below the table’s edge. He isn’t trying to match a face, as there’s no one, except Katz, within a dozen years of what would be Chemi’s age. It’s t
he room in which he sits that he’s hoping to link to the image.
Tilting his head, trying to approximate the angle from which the photo was shot, Reb Shuli can see in the ceiling’s dome, and the window’s shape, a definite echo. And, as if the photo was taken at that exact same time of day, a patch of sunshine drops down on one of the tables.
How close he must be to putting things right.
The boy, eager, dives into the day’s learning, and Reb Shuli tucks the photo away. The pairing is a good one. The study goes smoothly, and he and Gilad soon find a delightful synchronicity in the way that they interpret the text, with the boy deferring to his obviously educated guest. Shuli, fully inspired, raises up a thumb and, as if conducting a symphony, waves it about as they progress.
It’s everything, this moment. Such a chance Shuli had taken. And here he is on day one, and he’d already found the yeshiva, right where—God bless him—Gavriel said it would be. At this pace—who knows!—he might locate his Chemi by nightfall and get back home with some of the Clinton Hill money in his pocket. He’d return to his wife and his children, a complete and fulfilled man. He’d put his arms around Miri, thanking her for her support, and hand over their rainy-day envelope proudly. He’d stand back and watch her note that it remained thick with cash.
He’d not even miss a Shabbos. And it’s that Shabbos that Shuli pictures from Jerusalem, as if looking down on his family from above. He includes himself in the tableau, a father at one end of the table, a mother across, and a son and daughter, each occupying their point on the compass. And his breath is taken away as he sees below him his own good fortune.
Back in the dining room, with Miri’s eyes resting upon him, Reb Shuli would get up, stepping west, then stepping east, blessing both of his children, pressing his palms to their heads, again laying hands, and uttering the benedictions himself.
Reb Shuli sits with Gilad, learning for hours more. He eats when they eat, and davens with them when it’s time for afternoon prayers. When one of the boys stands up to say Kaddish, Reb Shuli covers his eyes with a hand as if in concentration, hoping his tears might disappear into the fullness of his beard.
XIX
Staring out his hotel window, Reb Shuli reminds himself to get presents for the children and something nice for Miri. It’s past midnight, but Shuli is amped up and still on New York time. He grabs the remote control for the TV and wonders how many years it’s been since he’d held one in his hand.
Shuli fights off the temptation and, unbuttoning his shirt, kicking off his shoes, strips down to his skivvies for what he imagines will be another sleepless night. Triumphant as day one at the yeshiva had been, he doesn’t call Miri to boast, afraid he’ll give himself the evil eye.
He curls up under a stiff hotel blanket. He recites the Shema and sings HaMalach HaGoel, as he has at the children’s bedtimes every night since they were born. He hopes the words will travel, making the journey across the oceans and reaching Royal Hills before the kids conk out. Shuli closes his eyes and pictures the children. Despite himself, he drifts off and sleeps well.
And while sleeping, Shuli dreams.
* * *
—
Reb Shuli’s father appears to him, an occurrence that has become sadly rare. Shuli notes himself noting this in that other realm. He’s also aware that, despite being together in the same kitchen-like room, his father is sort of still dead and sort of alive. They face each other across a counter, and when Shuli looks down he sees it’s piled with food.
It’s a lavish spread, fresh and fragrant, kosher to the highest standards, and somehow stretching on, so that there’s space for every delicacy one might ever want. He and his father must have washed their hands and said the blessings already, because neither pauses before making the move to eat.
But when they reach out so that they might partake of a beautiful, braided challah—its crust an egg-wash gold, fat raisins poking through—they discover that their arms are locked and rigid. Their limbs rise up from their sides as stiff and straight as boards. Apparently God had, in His infinite wisdom, taken their elbows away.
Reb Shuli’s father makes a sort of desperate whoop-whoop sound. It’s the kind of noise that might emit from a man’s mouth if he were both human and bird, all at once. How strange!
In the dream, Reb Shuli chooses to look past that strangeness, focusing instead on the urgency behind his father’s call. He interprets it as a cry of hunger.
While pondering the challenge posed by their new arms, and looking at the feast set before them, Reb Shuli, who alone has the capacity to talk, says, “Yes, yes. Of course!”
He remembers this exact scenario from his father’s teachings. This—what they were experiencing—was like that infinite table from the World to Come. It was another iteration of his father’s Heaven and Hell, conjoined and sharing space.
He knew the two options for how this particular eternity might unspool. If Shuli and his father ended up being both selfish and elbowless, they’d stand there for all time, staring and starving. They’d hold handfuls of food at arm’s length, struggling and failing to feed themselves, while the delectable smells of that otherworldly banquet rose up. Their greediness would commit them to a mouthwatering Hell.
But if they felt kindly and generous, caring, a son for a father and a father for a son, they might—as Reb Shuli does—reach across with ease so the other might eat.
With his unbending, staff-like arms, Shuli takes up fork and knife, cutting bite after bite, and lovingly feeding his hungry, birdlike father. And, feeling nurtured, his father wields his own straightened arms to feed his selfless son.
Oh, how his father’s lessons had paid off, Shuli thinks. And, oh, what a blessing for his father, who’d died before Reb Shuli had returned to the fold. What a gift it must be to see his son before him, bearded and head covered, the impression of the tefillin’s straps still visible on Shuli’s outstretched arm. Shuli can feel, as actual heat, the warmth his father exudes.
It leaves Shuli overcome with an enormous sense of ease. His father, likewise at peace, steps back, properly gorged, his stomach noticeably distended. Shuli stands on tiptoes and braces himself against the counter. He then leans forward, his own stomach grazing the food, so he can unbutton the top button of his father’s pants, as his father had always done after a big meal.
Shuli watches as his father’s chest rises, better able to breathe his un-breath. He wonders how long his father will stay full, and how long they both might be this deliriously happy, which reminds him that there’s something he should probably tell his father if what they’re sharing is to be as pure as it feels.
Shuli squints, wondering if his dead-but-somehow-not-dead father will gaze at him with such pride when he knows about the Kaddish. When he knows about the opportunity Shuli had squandered. When he understands he’d been abandoned the week after he was gone.
Shuli isn’t sure if it’s in reaction to the concern on his face, or if a new bout of hunger has struck, but his father makes that whoop-whoop sound. He does it in a loop turned monstrously shrill. With his pants already drooping, his father toddles to the edge of the counter, his mouth open like a baby bird’s.
Shuli just wants to silence that noise. He knows he can’t cover his ears, so he picks up the dream knife and the dream fork. He hurries to cut a bite, to feed his father, to shut that mouth. And Reb Shuli finds, to his terrible surprise, that he’s lost control of his new arms.
They flail and strike about, knocking plates to the floor, tipping bowls of fruit, slicing at the air.
As is natural in such an instant, especially when unused to the fact that one’s elbows are no longer, Reb Shuli steps instinctively forward, so that he might right some of the plates he’s tipped over, so that he might scoop back some of the fine foods tumbling to the floor.
But with those arms rigid before him and out of control,
he overshoots his mark, his dream turned nightmare. He watches himself looking on helplessly as his arms swing, stabbing at, and slicing up, his sweet, sweet father, whose eyes are now agoggle. Under attack, his father only appears more birdlike, his tongue darting, his squawk getting louder, and his shirt, as if feathered, in tatters. Beneath it, the blood beads along the jagged lines.
* * *
—
In the morning, Reb Shuli washes his face and hands, still shaken from the upset that was his fleeting taste of sleep. He bends his elbows, relishing in their mobility. He then wraps his tefillin and prays, haunted by the dream and the intrusive image of his father’s frightened eyes, the gaping mouth, and that terrible spear of a tongue.
If he’d been at home and hadn’t already forgotten it all upon waking, he’d have convinced himself it meant nothing, at most making a nervous joke to Miri about his trigger-happy subconscious. But Shuli knew very well where he was. And for the dreamer in God’s Holy City, similar visions have held great significance before.
Dressed and sunscreened on what little wasn’t bearded, Shuli heads right for Nachlaot. He passes the corner with the arch, walking on to the next, as yet unexplored. There he finds the second archway that leads to the far stairway, the one closer to the yeshiva’s entrance.
When he reaches the alley, the woman with the headscarf waves to him from the other end. Shuli waves back. The woman waves again, more fiercely, drawing him her way.
She’s once more busy at her laundry racks. Today, it’s not parchment paper and eggplant, but baking trays of toasted sunflower seeds, their shells glistening as she spreads them out in a layer.
“Is that the place you were looking for?” she asks Shuli in English.
He tells her that it is.
“They are nice boys there. Very polite.”
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