I see little vitality in the Chasids but politely say instead, “Then you say there is no messianic underlay anymore.”
“Not any more than there are physiological reasons for the dietary laws,” the discussion leader says. “I think we should get off this topic, however. Judaism is of marginal interest to most of us and we try to look at the world more eclectically, bonding together many religions, many ways of life. Not that Judaism isn’t a worthy subject of discussion, of course,” he concludes, perhaps reacting to some felt disapproval, “but we try to take the best from the best and reassemble. Messianism is deleterious since we know in post-technological America that the solution to our problems must lie within ourselves, that we must change the world as we see it and that our lives consist of what is known on this earth and nowhere else.”
He nods somewhat emphatically and the faces turn from me back toward the podium. There are several unescorted girls for whom I feel a certain distant attraction but it would be rankest hypocrisy to stay, my business now concluded, on that basis. I leave the lecture hall quietly and try to get to a neighborhood synagogue for meditation and prayer but neighborhood synagogues are closed and locked (vandalism abounds) on Thursday nights and Williamsburg too far to travel on the dangerous underground.
So I return and explain the situation as best I can and apologize for my lapses and make clear my efforts and he listens quietly, hearing me through to the end patiently as is his wont, smoking a cigarette down to the end and then putting it absently underneath the throne, unextinguished, the faint residue of smoke surrounding like incense. “I don’t know what to say,” I conclude. “There are no easy answers.”
“That is true,” he says. He shrugs. He lights another cigarette. He sits back. After waiting for so long he has cultivated nothing if not patience and his attitude betrays no restlessness. “Still, we have to come to some kind of a decision on this.”
“It’s not my decision,” I say quietly, not in an offensive or disagreeable way but firmly enough so that my position is clear. “I just can’t make that decision; it isn’t my right.”
“I understand,” he says. He sighs, shrugs again, extinguishes his cigarette under his foot and stands heavily, using his hands to wedge himself from the throne. He grunts. He has, after all, been inert for so long. “I might as well,” he says finally. “I’ve been waiting for so long hoping that things would just work themselves out but our Ethical Culture man was quite right, wasn’t he? You have to make your own way.” He ventures a signal and from the haze where they have been waiting for seven thousand years the Ten Priests emerge, whispering.
“I should have accepted that a long time ago,” he says and gestures again. The birds are free now, the Great Snake itself, muttering, wraps in a coil around the heavens and dimly the darkness and the light descend.
Watching this I do not know if I am happy or sad but it is good after so long to see him back at work again, doing what he always did best. The Chasids would be gratified. Teaneck is another story.
HARVEY JACOBS
Dress Rehearsal
In his witty and informative book The Joys of Yiddish (Mc-Graw-Hill, 1968), Leo Rosten describes the words and phrases and linguistic devices of Yiddish as invasionary forces sent “into the hallowed terrain of English.”
Oy vay, if he only knew what a mouthful he said.
You think maybe he knows about “Dress Rehearsal”…?
SAM DERBY FELT OLD, even up there when time was an ice cube. He tried a knee bend and gave it up when his knees cracked like dice. Xarix appeared on the wall screen just as Sam Derby recovered his posture and let out a grunt.
“Are you stable?” Xarix said.
“I’m fine!” Sam said. “How are you?”
“It’s time for the dress rehearsal,” Xarix said. “Will you transport to the Green Theater?”
“You mean the Blue Theater, don’t you?”
“The Green Theater. The children are performing in the Blue Theater.”
“Ah, the kiddies, yes.”
Some kiddies, Sam Derby thought to himself. He once knew a man named Louie who carried pictures of two apes in his wallet. When somebody asked him about his family, he showed the pictures of the young apes and beamed when the somebody told him what a lovely family he had. Up there the apes would look like gods. What they called kiddies wouldn’t serve for bait back home. Sam Derby often wondered about the kind of sex that produced such results. Yuch. Still, they loved their offspring. Chip off the old block, like that. To each his own.
The capsule came to Sam Derby’s door. He got in and pressed the circular button marked The Green Theater. The capsule hummed and moved. It was a nice feeling to be inside, warm, vibrated, moving, and no meter ticking off a dime every few seconds to remind you of time and your own heartbeat.
Sam Derby, a senior citizen, with a First Indulgence classification, had the right to be gently lifted from the capsule and aimed at the door of the Green Theater. Xarix waited for him. As the doors of the Green Theater slid apart, Xarix appeared like a developing photograph.
“So, Professor,” Xarix said, “how do you feel about the approach of Minus Hour.”
“Not Minus Hour,” Sam Derby said. “Zero Hour. You’re the one who should set an example.”
“God yes,” Xarix said. “If one of my students said that, I would have him boiled in… oil?”
“Oil is correct,” Sam Derby said. “Where is everybody?”
“Supply,” Xarix said. “They’ll be here at the drop of a hat.”
“Good. Well said,” Sam Derby said.
“Thank you. I like that expression, at the drop of a hat. I have this vision of hats dropping. It amuses me.”
“You have a nice sense of humor.”
“I think so. Yes. I could have been a schpritzer.”
“Not exactly a hundred percent,” Sam Derby said. “A man who gives a schpritz is a comic. A comic is a schpritzer. Say, ‘I could have been a comic.’ It’s a lot better.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Xarix and Sam Derby went to the podium at the front of the Green Theater.
“What do you want from me today?” Sam Derby said. “I can’t tell them much more.”
“I thought a kind of pep talk was in order. Good luck, go get ’em, half time in the locker room. Do it for the old Prof. You know what I’m after.”
“I’ll do that. When does the next class start?”
“Not for a week. You have yourself a vacation, a well-deserved holiday, Sam.”
“Sam? What happened to Professor?”
“Under the circumstances I felt justified in using the familiar. We’ve worked together twelve solstices.”
“Use what you want,” Sam Derby said. “I wasn’t complaining. In fact, I’m flattered. I was just surprised. I began to feel disposable.”
“Disposable?”
“Like a tissue. I finished my work. The class is graduating, in a manner of speaking. How do I know there’s another class? How do I know you won’t dispose of me?”
“But that’s ridiculous. You’re one of us.”
“It’s nice of you to say so.”
“Tell me,” Xarix said, “are you sorry you came?”
“No,” Sam Derby said. “I must admit, when you first came to get me, I wasn’t so happy.”
“You had a clear choice.”
“Choice? You said I had a choice. But when one of us sees one of you for the first time coming from noplace, not the most beautiful thing in the universe, no insult intended, choice isn’t choice. I was scared out of my rectum.”