Adam Levin - The Instructions

I said, Tomorrow I want you to bring your gun to school.

She said, “I always bring my gun to school. I love you.” Then she hung up.

Two minutes later I had my new address, and ten after that I’d written the “Sudden Holiday” email. Still, I spent an hour hesitating before I sent it. Not because of what I’d written — I liked what I had written. If it was possible, as Emmanuel had argued, that the messiah needed to be proclaimed the messiah before he could do those things the messiah was supposed to do; and if it was good to declare you were in love prior to the moment just before you died (and I was beginning to think it was more than good; I was beginning to think it was necessary, beginning to suspect it could not be true without the declaration = starting to believe that before you could actually be in love, you needed to say you were in love); if Adonai’s hand could be forced with words, then there was no reason why a holiday, let alone a potential holiday that was acknowledged as such, couldn’t or shouldn’t be announced in advance of the events it might commemorate.

What made me hesitate was the new address. Whether or not I should use it. I already had an address the scholars’ parents hadn’t blocked, and Ben Brodsky was well beyond need of my protection. If anyone did end up figuring out how I originally got hold of that Kalisch email (it wouldn’t be that hard; Ben’s penchant for password-cracking had been notorious), what difference would it make? Yes, a kid who tells on another kid is a dead kid, but not when the kid being told on is, himself, dead. Ben’s death had done to Ben what death always did to dead kids: Ben’s death had all but sainted him. The revelation that he’d hacked Unger’s mailbox — whether Brodsky’s, Emmanuel’s, Rabbi Salt’s, or anyone else’s — wouldn’t sully his memory, but enliven it, fondly reminding the rememberers of the extra-bright sparkle in Ben Brodsky’s eyes they might or might not have actually witnessed, let alone appreciated, while he was alive.

And I wasn’t ashamed that I’d forwarded Kalisch’s email to those listservs, either, much less incapable of describing why I’d done so. In fact, I did describe it. At one point during the course of my hour-long hesitation, I became convinced enough that I should come clean that I wrote half an alternate version of “Sudden Holiday” in which I explained what I’d hoped to gain:

…I forwarded Kalisch’s email because I wanted the elders of Israelite communities outside Chicago to learn of the persecution I was suffering at the hands of our headmasters. I believed that if the elders knew of it, they would stop it. I believed, scholars, that they would stand up for me and convince your parents to embrace our friendship. I believed we would again be allowed to study Torah together.

It was my mistake to expect such help: an honest mistake, but mine nonetheless. The Israelites of Chicago, especially those other headmasters to whom Kalisch originally addressed the email — they were the ones who should have stepped in to help us. To go outside of our community for help, even if only into the wider Israelite community; that is always a mistake. I know that now more than ever.

I stopped writing there, unsure of how to begin the next paragraph. Certainly the scholars would want to know why I took so long to tell them what I’d done, and that would have to be the next thing I addressed. And maybe they would accept what I told them. Maybe they would accept that I had to protect Ben. And maybe they would allow that, although Ben had been dead since July — that although it had been four months since last he’d required my protection — no opportunity or need to let them know I was FIFTEEN23FIRSTSAMUEL@hotmail.com had arisen in the last four months, and maybe they wouldn’t hold against me my silence during those months. Maybe they wouldn’t question any of it. Maybe they would just assume that I had done what was right at the time. Or that I hadn’t done what was wrong. Maybe they would believe that I had done what seemed proper in my eyes, and maybe that what was proper in my eyes, despite its failure, was proper nonetheless. Or maybe not.

But even if they didn’t feel the slightest bit betrayed, and even if they saw that my reasons for forwarding Kalisch’s email were good, they would see that my doing so had been a mistake. How could they avoid seeing that? I said so outright, and there was no way to avoid saying so outright, not without lying. Not without blaming people who weren’t deserving of blame. It really wasn’t the fault of those elders outside the community that they’d failed to step in to help me. People don’t step in to help you, not from outside. That’s just not the way the world works. And overall, that’s probably a good thing. They didn’t know me, those elders. They didn’t know Kalisch or Unger. All they knew was that Kalisch and Unger were headmasters of Israelite schools, were pedigreed, authorized by the Israelites of Chicago to exert certain powers. And maybe they’d heard of my dad, probably they’d heard of my dad, and certainly whatever they’d heard wouldn’t have been good. Why would wise Israelites step in to help a stranger, the son of a reputed self-hating Jew whose own schoolmasters had called him dangerous, had called him detrimental to the Israelites? They wouldn’t. And they shouldn’t be expected to. To insist otherwise might have been convenient for me, but it would have been a lie, and I wasn’t going to start lying to the scholars. So what, then? So I made a mistake back in June. It was a forgivable mistake, and taking as long as I’d taken to admit to it — that was forgivable too. But if I could make one mistake here, I could make another there. And it was easy to understand how they might see it that way, the scholars. They might think, “Gurion made a mistake in June. How do we know he’s not making a mistake in November?” And then they might not do what I wanted them to do.

And I saw it was better they be misled by me than not led by me. Nothing was worth the risk of failing to protect my father.

I could send them an email from FIFTEEN23FIRSTSAMUEL some other time.

Sent: November 16, 2006, 11:51 PM Central-Standard Time

Subject: SUDDEN HOLIDAY

To: 49_17ISAIAH@gmail.com

CC: NEW SCHECHTER LIST, NORTHSIDE HEBREW DAY LIST

Scholars,

If we are just, then tomorrow a new holiday will arise. I believe we are just, and so I am canceling school for all of those Israelites who wish to observe. Services will be held in the field across the street from Aptakisic Junior High School, in the valley between the two hills. Directions to get there from Schechter are attached.

This news comes late, I know. Most of you are in bed already. Most of those in bed won’t check email before school tomorrow. But for those of you who Hashem has chosen to receive this email, I suggest He chose you for a reason. And though I have cancelled school, there is no reason for you to think that showing up early at Hebrew Day or Schechter to wait covertly near the entrance and spread the news to our brothers would be a bad idea. In fact, if we are just, then to do so would be a mitzvah.

Lastly: There may be a toll to pay. As this potential holiday creeps closer, I am less and less certain about what exactly it will celebrate, and I see it would be irresponsible, even criminal, to leave out mention of a toll’s possibility. What’s curious, scholars, or maybe not so curious at all, is that despite not knowing if there will be a toll to pay, I do know what that toll will be, should we have to pay it: a dollar per scholar, delivered in parts. From a distance.