Rebecca Goldstein - 36 Arguments for the Existence of God

“Is that a Samson-and-Delilah thing?”

“No,” said Klapper. “The ceremony of the first haircut is called an upshneering , and it is celebrated when the male child turns three, as one of life’s passages, like the Bar Mitzvah, which is celebrated almost universally among Jews, even the most secular, though its materialistic trappings have made it a parodical spectacle far from its original intent of signaling the Jewish male’s full attainment of selfhood, with all of its attending moral and spiritual responsibilities.”

An interlude of silence followed. Jonas was recalling his own modest Bar Mitzvah on the Lower East Side. His father had deserted them that year. The man had been so insignificant that it had taken Jonas several days to realize what was different in the household and to ask, “Where’s Pop?” Jonas’s Bar Mitzvah had been celebrated with a bottle of schnapps in their shul on Eldridge Street, a plate of his mother’s delectable sponge cake, and some store-bought eier kichel -egg cookies. But Jonas had sung his haftorah faultlessly from memory. His d’var Torah , the traditional Shabbes speech in which moral lessons are drawn from the weekly portion of the Torah, had also been delivered without notes, and, according to his mother and older sisters, grown men had wept.

“According to Yehuda Ickel, the leading secular authority on Kabbala, with whom I have often discussed such matters, the Hasidic custom can be traced back to the sixteenth-century Kabbalists who inhabited the mystical city of Safed, in northern Palestine, or S’fat, as it is called in Hebrew, long one of the spiritual hot zones, receiving a disproportionate radiation of the Elevated Mysteries from the Seminar from On High. The dominant figures were Moses Cordovero, the tireless taxonomizer of Kabbala, and his student Isaac Luria, known also as the Ari, meaning literally ‘the Lion’ and derived from the acronym for ‘Ashkenazi Rabbi Isaac.’ You will also see him referred to as Arizal. Arizal was the most fecund visionary to appear in Jewish mysticism, with all that would emerge from the inspired city of S’fat forever after bearing his imprimatur, though he had written, in his lifetime, but a few poems, and his oral teachings were…”

“What are all those signs?” Roz cut him off.

Nobody answered her. Though Cass was grateful to Roz for choking back her laughter at Professor Klapper’s mistaking her for a Rastafarian-he knew her well enough to know that that was the only explanation for her silence-he hated the casual tone she had adopted toward him. She was treating him as if he were anyone else. She was even addressing him by his first name. Cass could feel Professor Klapper, in the passenger seat in front, bristling. But, remarkably, he kept his temper, which might have been due to the exaggerated respect he seemed to have developed for Cass recently, taking delight in calling him Reb Chaim when they were alone. Or maybe he didn’t want to mess with a Rastafarian.

Professor Klapper had, however, lectured Roz briefly but sternly on their way here on restraining herself in their audience with the Valdener Rebbe.

“Try to make yourself as inconspicuous as you possibly can, young lady. The Hasidim have a refined sensibility regarding the desirable trait of modesty, or tzniyus , in a woman. Recall the Bard’s words regarding the virtuous Cordelia: ‘Her voice was ever soft, gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman.’”

“Don’t you guys see?” Roz was saying now. “Every few feet there are signs nailed onto the trees. Cass, park the car a minute. I want to see what it says.”

“Indeed, do park the vehicle, Mr. Seltzer, and let the young lady alight and investigate to her heart’s content. We shall go straight to the Rebbe. We shall find you soon enough, or you us, of that I am certain.”

Roz climbed out onto the sidewalk, and the Lincoln Continental pulled away. Roz gave way to laughter, and it wasn’t soft, gentle, and low.

A woman walked by pushing a carriage, with two toddlers clinging to her skirt on either side of her; she was trying to maneuver her charges to make as wide a circle as possible around the woman staring at a tree.

“Hello,” Roz said to her, turning with a smile.

“Hello.” She didn’t smile back, but she didn’t turn tail and run either. Compared with the typical first contact with an unknown tribe, this was like being visited by a Welcome Wagon lady giving out free coupons to local businesses.

“I’m new in town, and I’m trying to figure out what these signs mean.”

“Menner seit. Froyen seit . Men’s side, women’s side. Men and women don’t walk on the same side of the street.” She had a slight European intonation, more a suggestion of foreign birth than a genuine accent.

“At least I ended up on the right side,” Roz said, with a small demure smile.

“Yes. There is the menner seit.” She pointed across the street. “Not for you,” she added, just in case there could still be any remaining question.

“Well, thanks. Those are beautiful children you have.”

The woman’s response was to turn her head slightly away from Roz. Was it forbidden to compliment the kids here? The mother was delicate-featured and little more than a girl herself. Roz thought, trying to peer beneath the rigid expression, that she was probably eighteen or nineteen. Her pale, delicate skin was not touched by makeup, and it was hard to believe it ever had been. She was a natural redhead, too, judging by her pale-reddish eyelashes and eyebrows. Her hair was hidden beneath a scarf, tied with less pizzazz than Roz’s.

“I have an appointment with the Rebbe.”

“Yes.” This babe was impossible to impress. She had a teenager’s sullenness mixed with a matron’s severity.

“Could you tell me the best way to get to his office?”

“His office is in his home. If you keep going straight down this street, you’ll see the shul, the synagogue. The shul you won’t be able to miss. Across the street from the shul, there is the Rebbe’s house.”

“Hello, sweetie.” Roz squatted down before the redheaded child nearer her. “And what’s your name?”

The child-Roz couldn’t tell if it was a girl or a boy-spun around and burrowed into its mother’s brown woolen coat. Roz had observed that this was common behavior for children, though not universal. The Onuma children weren’t timid or bashful. They’d march right up to you and start to explore your clothes, your hair, the contents of your pockets, just as their parents did. Roz stood back up.

“Shy, huh?”

“With outsiders.”

“Probably doesn’t get to see them that often?”

“No, we’re lucky that way.”

Roz wandered around for a while. The only people she saw were women hurrying with small children. The menner seit was deserted. It reminded her of an Onuma village when the men were off on a raid to replenish their supply of brides.

She walked down the road that led to the synagogue. Her informant had been right: there was no missing it. It was a huge rectangular white stucco mess of a building, with arches and castellated cornices. Despite the grandiose architectural touches, the sheer bulk of the building gave it the look of one of those giant stores where people wheel out a year’s supply of pet food and toilet paper. It was like a Costco that had found God. All of its windows, including two big ones in the front, were arched in a shape that Roz knew had some sort of religious significance. Oh yeah. Those tablets Moses schlepped down from the mountain.

Roz’s family was the assimilated sort, New York City vintage. For her family, one of the ten commandments might as well have been to eat at a Chinese restaurant on Friday nights. She’d had a college boyfriend, Len Solo, who sometimes used to spend vacations with Roz’s family. Once, Roz’s mother, Alicia, had been talking with Len, and he’d pronounced some Yiddish word wrong-“kibbitz” with the accent on the second syllable, like “the bits”-and Roz’s mother had corrected him, saying, “You sound like a goy.” To which Len had responded, “Alicia, I am a goy!” And Alicia had burst into laughter-Roz had inherited her mother’s laugh- saying, “I don’t know why I’d assumed you were Jewish!” That was where Roz’s family stood when it came to their own tribe. It was a curiosity to them that sophisticated people could continue to care, most especially when it came to dating and marriage.