Pete Hamill - Snow in August

Michael loved the way Father Heaney talked; if Humphrey Bogart were a priest he’d talk about Jesus being bumped off too.

“Besides, Jesus was himself a Jew,” Father Heaney said. And then sighed. “Although you’d never know that, the way the world has turned out.”

He reached into a closet and grabbed his army overcoat, pulled it on, and walked to the door.

“Find someone else to hang out with, kid,” the priest said, and then was gone.

Michael was excited. Father Heaney had confirmed it: the encyclopedia was right. Jesus was a Jew. And if that was true, then everything else in the blue book must be true. About Jews. About other subjects. He glanced through the open door to the altar and saw parishioners assembling for Communion. He went out by the sacristy door into the sanctuary, passing the old ladies with their bowed heads, breathing the air thick with the smell of incense and burning candles. He reached the front door without looking back and then stepped into the street and gulped the clean, cold air of January.

The Romans killed Jesus!

As he moved down the icy hill, he remembered pictures of the Romans doing the deed. Men with iron helmets jabbing spears into the side of the crucified Jesus. And other Romans gambling for his robe. In his mind, they resembled Frankie McCarthy. A bunch of nasty pricks.

When he reached the synagogue, Michael went directly to the side door and knocked hard. He waited a moment, and then the rabbi opened the door. When he saw Michael, his face brightened and he smiled. He was dressed in the same frayed tweed overcoat, the black hat clamped on his head, the horn-rimmed eyeglasses dangling on a string from his neck. Behind him, the vestibule was dark.

“Did you find someone?” Michael said. “You know, to turn on the lights?”

The rabbi smiled. “No,” he said. “A Shabbos goy I didn’t find.”

“A what?”

“A Shabbos goy . Today is Shabbos . In English, the Sabbath.” He opened the door wider. “Come in. Please to come in. Koom arayn, bitte …”

Without being asked, Michael reached to his right and flipped the switch. The ceiling light came on. The rabbi’s blue eyes twinkled, and he closed the door on the snows of Kelly Street. “Thanks you,” he said. Then he started up the three steps on the far side of the vestibule, gesturing for Michael to follow.

“Come in, please,” he said. “Here, is very cold.”

For a moment, the old fear rose in the boy. Maybe now the rabbi will spring the trap. Maybe that’s why he’s smiling. What could be beyond this second door? Why should I trust him? Maybe Father Heaney is wrong, maybe the lies are all true, maybe… Michael hesitated for a moment, fighting down the impulse to back away and run home. And heard Sonny, urging him to be a spy.

“A Shabbos goy I need in here also,” the rabbi said. “To make tea I need a stove and…”

His voice trailed off as he opened the door. Michael took a breath and followed him into a boxy, low-ceilinged room that smelled of pickles. Newspapers lay open on a table in the center of the room, with a red pencil beside them and a thick book that looked like a dictionary. There was a sink against the wall to Michael’s left. Beside it was a gas stove with a chipped oven door. The rabbi gestured at it, making a twisting gesture with his right hand, until Michael turned on a gas jet under a pot of water.

“Is cold,” the rabbi said. “So is better we have now a glass tea. You like tea? Good hot tea on cold day.”

“Okay.”

“Gut.” The word sounded like goot .

“Rabbi?”

“Yes?”

“What was that word you said before?” Michael said. “Sobbis?”

The rabbi pondered this, then brightened. “ Shabbos! The Sabbath, you say. Friday night it starts, and goes all day Saturday. God’s day. The day of rest.”

“And the other word?”

“ Goy ? Is a word… it means a person not a Jew. Like you. Shabbos goy is a person not a Jew who comes on Shabbos to turn on lights or stove or broiler, like that. We can’t do it.”

“How come?”

The rabbi shrugged. “That’s the rules. A Jew like me, he can’t work on Shabbos. Is the rule. Some Jews, nine days a week they work. Me, I’m a Jew that I go by the rules. Turning on a light, work. Turning on a stove, work. A letter, writing it is work. And money you can’t put a hand on. That’s the rules. To honor God.”

Michael thought: This is the dumbest goddamned rule I ever heard of.

“So how come I can do it?” he said.

“You are a goy,” the rabbi said. “A goy, is okay for him to do this. Not a Jew.”

“But it’s the same God, right? I mean, I read in a book that Christians came from the Jews. They worship the same God. So if it’s the same God, why does he have one law for Jews and another law for the goys?”

“ Goyim . More than one, goyim.”

“Why a different rule for… goyim?”

“Good question.”

“But what is the answer?”

The rabbi turned away, to see if the water was boiling.

“This I don’t know,” the rabbi said. “Some questions, we got no answers.”

The rabbi gestured again and Michael turned on the water tap for him, thinking: This is why his hands were dirty last week; he couldn’t turn on the water. The boy tried to imagine a priest, even Father Heaney, admitting that to some questions there were no answers. Impossible. While the rabbi washed his hands, Michael glanced at the newspaper, which had certain words circled in red. Words were also circled in the dictionary. He looked around and saw two more doors. One was thick, with brass handles and an elongated keyhole. The other was smaller, cracked open an inch. And he thought: Maybe the big door opens into the treasure room.

Against the opposite wall, there was a small unmade bed, and a packed bookcase. Wedged into the top shelf was a framed browning photograph of a woman. With an oval face. Hair tied back. Liquid dark eyes. Michael drifted toward the books, glancing again at the woman’s face but trying not to be too interested. He ran his fingertips over the spines of the books and remembered some movie where a detective pushed at a bookcase and it suddenly swiveled, opening into a secret room.

“You like my treasures?” the rabbi said, and Michael’s heart slipped.

“What?”

“My books,” the rabbi said, his own hand touching the books on the second shelf, below the photograph of the dark-haired woman. “Is all I have, but treasure, yes?”

Michael’s heart steadied as he peered more closely at the books. Their titles were in languages he did not know or letters that he did not recognize.

“You like books?” the rabbi asked.

“Yes,” Michael said. “I love books. But — are these books written in Jewish?”

The rabbi pointed at the leather bindings of the thickest books.

“Not Jewish, Hebrew , these here,” he said. And then he touched some smaller books, with worn paper bindings. “These are Yiddish.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Hebrew is, eh, the, eh…” His eyes drifted to the dictionary. “Language of Yisrael.”

The word came out lan-goo-age , the last syllable rhyming with rage . Michael pronounced it correctly for the rabbi, who nodded, his bushy black eyebrows rising in appreciation.

“Eh, language.” He said it correctly. “Good, I need your help. Please tell me when I make mistake. Language, language. Good. Anyway, Hebrew is language of Torah and Talmud—”

“ The language,” Michael said, remembering the endless drills in grammar class. “The the ? It’s called an article,” Michael explained. “A definite article, they call it. The language, the table, the stove.”