Joshua Cohen - Witz

UNAF Must Register By Date Of Anniversary By Order Of The Mayor , is what they say, if you’re interested or scared.

Minding His feet and the papers flying about them like miniature lost tablecloths, or napkins, unsated souls, the ghosts of uninvited guests, B steps from the sidewalk and into the street, directly into the bleating progress of a flock of sheep crossing against the signal who knew still even worked: wool over His eyes, they’re herding way above the posted limit; their shepherd’s laughing kindly, then through his teeth whistles them together, his happy tune to harmonize with the bells that tinkle from their collars; he nods at B as he passes from the rear, then waggles behind him his staff in gentle remonstrance. B makes it out of their way only to sputter gutterside, stuck with all manner of those papers gathered, wet, stands dumbly as the sheep schlep on, grazing at sidewalks’ planters and wrecked meridians, the trafficislands unlit, no passing vehicles to worry either, as they disappear Uptown and toward the tunnel then through it out to Joysey and its fields. He sets out to follow them Himself, a last straggler from the sewer to the middle of the road. Exactly which He isn’t sure, the stickler. As most of the streetsigns have been removed, their names moneychanged to protect the not so innocent, new signs not yet nailed and hammered down…bureaucracy’s overtaking everything, with offices closed or slow to respond, addressed so far out in the Bronx who can ever get to them by day. B raises His head to the poletops freshly flagged, then steps a foot down into a pail brimming full with paste.

Schm…

uck ,

Schm…

endrick ,

Schmo schlemiel schlub schmegegge…these two posterboychicks call them, they’re yelling at Him hobbling, brandishing their rollers in His face while calling Him these other names, their tongues too young to know from: Mutteringmamzer, Nogoodnik, who knows what worse, me, I couldn’t say…trying new epithets on for fit of mouth, a spit. B steadies again, hauls His foot out from the paste, pries Himself away from their pursuit, fast but fat and older — Uptown, He thinks, and sopping; apparently, the direction the two posterboychicks had just worked down from:

All Males Must Maintain Yarmulke Upon Penalty Of Law,

All Females Must Maintain Hat Kerchief Or Wig Upon Penalty Of Law …

Welcome to the ghetto. Here, a world frozen not as much in time as in time past, amid the mud, down in the dreck. Now, all will know what to expect and, too, what is expected of them. Upon Penalty of Law not further specified, though, as a minyan of elderly uniformed officers, Unaffiliated Patrol, an allvolunteer, geriatrically vigilante Downtown unit of Metro Gestapo, stumble their beats, using nightsticks as crutches; their Law reigns supreme…over the old cemetery down at Chacham Square, the smichas of seminaries north, up past the mikvehs, the shuls and shtibls, yeshivas and, nu, you want the guidebook’s spiel: the Ed Alliance (197 E. Broadway), the Hanky Street Settlement and the Amalgamated Dwellings, the Yarmulkowsky Bank Building (TK admission price), the Klutzker Brotherly Aid Association (open Mon. & Wed. 9–5), which you might remember from, hymn…stores discount and department, the factory outlet tours for matzah and wine, with not even them leavening such ferment: Closed Saturday, Convenient to All Public Transportation, 72 years in the business, with beds and bedding and rentals, jewelry, umbrellas and gloves one flight up, free alterations on premises, the dramatic look in fine footwear, bootery to the most discriminating of four continents, to name just a few …up to the foot laid bare of the Williamsburg Bridge — B making His way west and Uptown in an attempt at losing His chase, He’s speechless, obviously, with mouth agape, stump hanging, but with His head held high to more notices, papered, stapled, glued, these up on lampposts, pasted over the display windows, slopped to scroll across doors:

UNAF Must Remain At Home Saturday — Friday Sundown To Sunup Upon Penalty Of Law ,

Electricity And Gas Will Be Made Unavailable On The Sabbath Sundown Friday — Sundown Saturday ,

Happy Birthday, Reb Israelien — the conversion is complete.

B heads through the night up Broadway, is it, then around the Park with its Temple left as if a basement resurgent: partially finished, which, as it’s been said, is also partially unfinished, being renovated again…up toward what He thinks, they have to be, more open, quieter streets, these avenues widely silent: once upon a time, the richest slice of town, the morsel choicest and chosen, that’s if you had the money and right referrals, today full of poor, filled with pauperings, it’s galling, how destitute, such shammeses to shame, wheedling beadles sidestepping copulating dogs, bloated goats grazing on leaflets, munching notices by lamplight…O these perpetually rushing, stamstammstammering menschs in their mandated yarmulkes held down against the gusts, hurrying, always schurrying, home to their womenfolk, to the luxury apartments and penthouses they’d been assigned or had bought outright on the fiftyyear forgiven mortgage that their women’d just finished redecorating for them and their families (everincreasing, raised roofward toward the gulls, stolen for consumption, cooked then garnished with their rent), in the latest style known to privation: bedclothes hung from fireescapes, disastrous pianos converted to bins of trash having fallings out with windows…these menschs with the faces of entire families themselves, of women and infants — save their hair…for what — wombred and honeyglowing, illuminated from within, the abyssal shine of their ancient eyes, disgusting. Sinking. Perpetually deep in the One True Depth, they traipse through the Broadway snowbanks, their beards and sidelocks flapping, getting tangled with the beards and locks of other menschs just passing in the opposite direction, Uptown for an audience in the court of a rabbi holding an opinion that’s dialectically opposed to an opinion held by the rabbi the others are heading Downtown now to meet; two students coming around the corner, tied up, how they’re tripped to ice…many not yet used to wearing these yarmulkes (but they’re trying, they assure you, they have to), with the thin, governmentissued scraps threatening to fly away at every turn of street and wind, with tassels rustling they stoop to snitch their remnants from the sewers, slap palmfuls soaked and dirty down onto their skulls again, frumiliar — in a ruached rush to make in time the shiur of Rabbi Avraham Ben Shmuelbob Johnson III, shlit”a, the son of Reb Samuel Johnson II, z”l…or else Rav Billybob (Mendy) Mendelssohn’s tisch, or that of the Ramjohn he’s known as, the Ranjim, to glean a pesher from that posek, the son of Baba Wawa, a soothsayer and local benevolent personality, her tongue the hottest ticket in town: dynasties hewn like smoke from wintered air…the Old Traditionalists among us upholding amid all else and the pillars of the universe, the furriest shtremiels, pointy thin spodiks and rounded kolpiks, peaked kashkets, not to forget the littlest kutchmas and shlyapkas stacked six high, in felt and in velvet, rabbit and beaver, and these worn without any discipline, without any notion that what’s worn atop the head once marked the origin if not the allegiance of the head and its body grossly garbed below. Everything done wrongly: newly minted Mogilevichs rubbing shoulders pricking elbows with Mogelescus, makes no sense, knock knees, Newmans friends with Neumanns, Ostrovitch married off to Ostrowicz who knew but nu (and the more unpronounceable or unspellable the name, the higher the price the bride commanded, her family and the shadchan, too), it’s the mouth under all that matters, the bated breaths of these liverlickers adhering, the garlicky followers of Rabbi Onions, who’d been buried to grow famous from a grave, the word rooted up in shrouds from a bulbous beard. How with every scent and clarinety cymbalon song in the world they’re blasting the newest rebbe on the block whoever he is or thinks he is or might be with question after question, all these questions, though, in the end the same…which is the nature of the Depth, the depth of the Depth, hymn, how many feet of fall today, and what’s the forecast for tomorrow, you’re such a big shot ba’al teshuva? America your streets are paved with cold, a black year in your ear, in your mouth, only the dreck fallen, frozenover: horses up to their haunches in potholes heretically unprophesized, whinnying for a bullet between the senseless eyes; oxen ensnared in the hidden stumble — a guttergrating or sewerlid removed as a servingplate, or to provide the pit of an outdoor fire — their shankbones jutting from their flesh, with crows and doves to perch thereupon and cluck sweet liturgy to the clattering of pots beaten attentively with pans…the sounds and the cooking smell, oy, of a vagrant’s ritually poisoned cat.