I'm looking around at the Berman-Marrache wedding in New York City. My
niece Laura Berman is marrying Solly Marrache, orthodox jew from Gibraltar
and our small family is thrilled to be joining Solly's huge one in NYC for
the wedding.
Where? Shearith Israel, the Spanish/Portugese synagogue on 70th Street and
Central Park West - the oldest synagogue in America, founded by jews who
fled the Spanish Inquisition, coming soon after to New York to work in the
mills and in 1654 to found this congregation. Mystic, music, oriental, it's
stepping into an unfamiliar but moving world to attend the Friday night
service.
Barely a minion without the wedding party, who outnumber the regulars at
the synagogue, voices echo from vaulted ceilings of a building whose
interior looks similar to the ancient Bayswater synagogue in London where
great granpa Denekamp was a cantor. Marble columns, wide open center with
raised pulpit for the rabbis who, on the plaques remembering their
predecessors, are called ministers; funny hats remind me of the greek
orthodox priest caps, round, with vertical sides that slope outwards from
the head--a perfect fit for those afro 'do's if anyone here were black and
had big hair. Outside other certificates are strategically displayed,
noting the congregations's more contemporary assistance to rescue efforts
for the Ethiopian Jews and their provision of safe housing for the
homeless. Historic marker comments on classic neo-classic architecture,
less a concern to us Jews than neo-modern genocide.
Sabbath reflections.
On the Palisades parkway I don't stop to photograph the second car fire
I've seen in a month. The driver is waiting with the fire truck, letting
the car burn. He doesn't want it back. The smoke was better last time.
Entering the city, turning left off of the southbound West Side highway I
see another, smaller fire, in a tiny park, and no fire truck - bums, I mean
homeless individuals, one seated on a bench, leaning forward in rapt
attention as his friend gestures wildly and shouts his conversation, lost
in the traffic noise.
On to the old-posh-but-not-pretentious, french hotel Le Parker Meridien
where obvious Anglos greet you at the desk with perfect French accents. Up
to the 12th floor, the view is of rooftops with grass growing in clumps
where birds shat in roof-cracks; it's as if no one is supposed to see those
ugly rooftops but from every high building we can look down on junk left by
maintenance crews who thought no one could ever see.
From Mom's 29th floor, there is a shocking sight, as looking north we peer
down into a lush carpet of green treetops, brilliant in the late afternoon
magic-sun, the Southern end of Central Park - and you can see how
remarkable is this green island amidst towering stone and steel, and tarry
rooftops with idle clumps of grass, busted ladders, scrap lumber, and
pigeonshit.
Laura and Solly are here somewhere, but it's not yet family-time, and I
need to eat or die. I remember Linda and Irv's Hansen-cab honeymoon at this
same park years back, and how Leslie and I took all the "unused" liquor
bottles out of the hotel until Dad had to buy them back from us - as he was
being charged by the shot - about $200. per bottle!
Walk to a coffee shop on 7th Avenue, the Park Cafe, for late lunch, feta
cheese and chopped tomatos in omlet, the service is too fast and the coffee
cup is just too cute, a little one with pink flowers, when I realize the
cleverness of small coffee cups - probably a 50% reduction in their coffee
bill, and I wait the entire meal before catching the waitress for a refill.
But things have improved in New York City - and you get a glass of water
without asking.
I eavesdrop. Woman telling her friend, a guy, not a lover, "... because
he's abusive, he gives her shit, I can tell ... as long as she knows what
her job description is ... he'll type it out for her... I'm trying to make
me a priority right now, I'm gonna boom, I'm going to make all those
meetings, what I need right now is to make me a priority, that'll help me
help you..." I tune my ear back to the feta.
They leave. The next conversation, between two women is exciting and,
pretending to read my Anthony Trollope, I strain to hear: "... so she
showed me the membership card for this health club, you know, not as scuzzy
as a one, maybe it's a five, and I see that it's just a handwritten card
with no photo and no real ID, so .... and I go there and there's this big
room, packed with ..... and they're all sweating and the equipment is
sweaty, and ... I had no business ... so I was nearly blacking out, I was
on the verge of ... I could have puked, I was about to puke, but I didn't
puke ..."
I stop eating the feta. I push away the plate. I am saved by the coffee.
"... but I didn't... and I had to get off and sit with my head between my
knees for maybe five minutes, there's this room full of people and no one
is paying any attention, and I might be dying - well maybe someone across
the room but no so I could notice, and there's this woman, I mean right
next to me on another bicycle, and she's just peddling like mad while I'm
sitting there puking, ... and I'm sitting there thinking - well if I goddam
die here it'll be a mess because I'm here under an alias and they'll notify
the wrong next of kin..."
Walking along and in Central Park, to the synagogue:
Roller blades have become real transportation. Mostly men, moving faster
than the cars, beaten only by the messenger bikes, who have higher gears. I
am impressed. The roller blade wheels are totally silent, and here the
pavement is smooth and the skaters seem to glide fast, silently, and
effortless, and I wonder, when they stop, the roller blade'ers, how do they
chain their roller-blades up to the l & ost?
I walk in the edge of the park, and a woman with two kids asks me which way
to Tavern on the Green, and we're at about 72nd Street so, consulting my
handy-dandy Parker Meridien Tourist Map, I point South and her little girl
wants to dash out into the street and I say "hey little girl, you better go
with your momma" and huge eyes burn into me, then she whirls and runs after
her mother and her little brother.
It's muddy and I'm in my black pinstripe suit and shiny shoes so I walk to
the next exit back towards Central Park West, and as I walk through this
vine-covered arbor I think how lovely to find this in such a big city, and
I think what a good place it would be for a mugging, and a woman enters the
arbor from the other end, walking towards me in near darkness, and I see a
furtive shadow flicker off behind and to her right... Suddenly
full-battle-alert, I stare more closely: it's a homeless person, big,
really fat, and he's walked into the bushes and is walking parallel to the
covered pathway, and he's peeing as he walks, just peeing right in front of
himself. Peeing continuously as right straight out in front of himself - no
hands!
I'm out of the park and looking for a bench along the street. There are
newspapers on this one, slept-on, and the pee smell is too strong. I walk
South. And sit where the pee smell is just mild and I wonder if it's
penetrating my clothes and will I smell like pee during servivces and will
anyone notice.
Dogs romp wildly in the park, on and off leashes. Their owners stand and
chat, and laugh at their dogs rolling over one another in the muddy grass.
Outside the park on the sidewalk I am on a not-too-smelly bench and this
guy comes over with his shitsu on a leash. He picks the dog up and stands
it atop the stone wall where the dog can peer into the park. It leans
forward, all four legs rigid, chin jutting out in rapt attention, studying
the dogs running freely on the other side. Just for a moment. Then the man
lifts the dog back down and they walk along the sidewalk towards my bench.
"That's all the park YOU get, doggo." And the dog stops immediately and
pees on the tree at my feet. It was a fat shitsu, too. You gotta love this
New York.
So I'm sitting there, Mr. IBM'er in my black pin stripe suit, tie, vest,
umbrella a neat black cylinder folded on my lap (so it won't rain) and I'm
studying the synagogue's impressive facade and thinking of 351 years of
Sephardic prayers echoing, at peace, never considering that fat is about to
strike a second time.
Three young people walk towards me and this really BIG girl is looking, no,
staring at me on the bench - eye contact like this is unusual except from
the nuts and she's just fat, not nuts, and I'm wondering as they pass and
she looks hard right at my lap and I'm wondering if my fly is open and
maybe I'm peeing right in front of myself, no-hands, and suddenly she
screams "OH MY GOD, HE HAS A GUN !!!!!" and they all turn and look at me
and step backwards as the rest of passers-by scatter immediately.
I lift the umbrella and point it right at her chest and press the release
button. SNAP! and it shoots forward and opens with a whumping sound.
Hysterical laughter. I am pleased to have been found looking so dangerous
on the edge of Central Park West opposite the Separdic Spanish Portugese
Synagogue. You couldn't make this stuff up. I should'a worn my camo.
The building is open now and I've made a mistake, arriving at 6PM as per
the instructions, forgetting that this is a SPANISH and Portugese Synagogue
and that everyone else will be 45 minutes late or more. So I'm inside - the
door is now unlocked, and walk in with my folded umbrella and this guy (not
fat) says "NO UMBRELLAS" and points to a corner behind the door where I can
leave it. I've violated orthodox taboo #1. No umbrellas in the sanctuary.
Quickly I grope for a yarmluke and go to some length to make sure it's
secure on my head before wandering around. There are a few fun minutes
kibbitizing helping debug an electrical problem as half the lights in the
building won't go on. At a display case I read that Cardozo, who was
barmitzvah in this building, carried the day in 1848 when he spoke against
a motion to permit men to sit with the women in the sanctuary. The minutes
of the meeting report that he spoke so eloquently and at such length of the
disadvantages of such admixture that when the final vote was tallied out of
88 attending, only 7 voted in favor of the motion and 2 abstained.
Now there are typed instructions including that men and boys may not bring
books to the women's second floor pews and they may not enter this area at
any time under any circumstances. I stay safe on the first floor, waiting
to make some more creative foul-up of orthodoxia than an idle foray into
the women's loft.
Having built anticipation to a high pitch by wandering everywhere else
first, I move now into the sanctuary. Immediately I am awed. This is a
place to stand in silence, touching directly the age, the piety, the
foreignness of this place. to step through the heavy doors is to stand more
than a hundred years back in time. The brass-capped steps up into the pews
are worn so low that I wonder they're navigable, the floors sag, and there!
In the back row of pews is a double-stack of prayer shawls and I admire
them and their Israeli blue-and-white and I think, "why not, I've always
wanted to wear one of these and what could be more appropriate than in such
an orthodox place, to show my respect..." so I pick one up - Steve will
read this and, knowing it's Friday, will wince before the rest of you. I
look closely to find and touch the spirit of my chosen tallis. It's neck
area is tan with the oil of a thousand pious necks, the corners frayed with
age, and some of its fringe hangs in a loop at one end, needing a sewing
repair. I drape it across my shoulders, and immediately I'm tangled in the
fringe and I cannot find my hands. Embraced in what must have been so
natural an act as to have been thoughtless to previous wearers, I am
embraced. I do not care.
Untangle, sit on the left side, take a prayer book, read sayings of the old
rabbis- which I always love. "If you learn a single sentence from a man, a
word, even just a single letter, you should honor him as your most
respected teacher..." Handling the special knotted cord at one corner of my
shawl I imagine a Jewish rosary prayer.
The sanctuary is empty but for me, yet here, alive, is the vibration of
basso echoes from what must have been packed high-holy days in the past.
The Sabbath, the pause for reflection, recaptured, remembered, and I
forget, for a time, the fat people who have run me from the park and
screamed at my umbrella on the sidewalk. Silent. No longer reflecting, just
feeling the place. I sit.
For a time. People, only men, trickle in, first just one, and he sits on
the other side than I, and I wonder if I'm on the "wrong" side and quickly
I glide, hidden by shadows of the still lights-half-out gloom, to his side
of the chamber. He takes no notice of me in my prayer shawl. I bask in my
propriety and pretend that I belong there. My greasy shawl is too warm but
now in place, it is committed. An omen.
In the back pew I sit and read. More men, and now two women are visible in
the choir loft opposite. And two Greek orthodox priests walk in and climb
the center island pulpit. What? Oh, these must be Sephardic rabbis. One of
them begins to chant, softly, a lilting melody of unintelligible orthodoxy.
Is it Portugese? Hebrew. Could have been Greek.
More people, men, walk in freely, and find seats and join the chanting,
sometimes suddenly leaping to their feet to bend to left, towards the
torah, to the right, and I feint similar moves, like a bad movie, just out
of synch with the sound track, I move a little too late and I hope no one
notices. Or cares. The Ashkenazi Jew moves stiff little jerky moves,
uncertain. Late. The Sephardim leap wildly, emotional, freely, without
self-consciousness. An un-Sabbath moment of gentle envy, and better,
admiration.
The wedding party of men appear and file into a front pew. They don't know
I'm behind them and only Irwin knows me anyway. I am invisible, safe, smug
in my perfect adaptation to Sephrdic orthodoxy. I do not identify myself to
them as a fellow stranger. My brother-in-law Irwin keeps looking at a sheet
of paper whereon surely are scrawled instructions for his role tomorrow,
and I feel the tension in his back as he rehearses his moves.
The service is in full swing, now, with not even a single recognizable
part. I wait to hear at least a familiar brucah, or at least, for heaven's
sake, the Shma. Nothing. Like Godot, no Shma.
Suddenly I am struck with horror. Real, serious horror, and now I know the
next orthodoxy faux pas I've committed. The rabbis are wearing prayer
shawls - tallis I was taught, or tallit - but not another single soul in
the whole synagogue is so draped. Except the Poughkeepsie jewboy. Jewboy?
No Jew could be so stupid. Do I let it slip to the pewbench?
Desperate for an excuse, I remember Steve Arnold's explanation about
following unfamiliar practices: when you visit a community you are
permitted to follow your own customs. When you join a community you are
expected to follow their practices. Well I'm a visitor. Maybe they'll think
that in Poughkeepsie we wear the tallis on Friday night. And in the back of
my fake-jew-christian-raised mind a little voice reminds me of some cloudy
conversation with Arnold - something about Saturday Mornings?
Now one man among all the worshippers is clearly the most important. He is
wearing the most expensive suit, the slickest homberg, and he walks around
during the service, checking that people have a prayer book, or just
ambling like maybe he's the president.
And he's really quite chubby, you might say a little on the fat side. Omen.
I'm thinking about what this fatness might mean when suddenly, like the
furtive shadow in the park arbor, he disappears. Was I imagining him?
Thrill. A Sepahrdic mystery. In zero time and with no evidence of having
twitched a single muscle, suddenly he's behind me, then next to me, then in
front of me. Three zero-time moves. Soundlessly.
He turns, his breath hot in my face. A hiss "No tallit!" and he is gone.
Gone. Am I hallucinating?
Out of control, from my throat a wild scream erupts, halting the service.
Echoing over 351 years of hebraic prayer I shout at full volume "GOD
FORGIVE ME" as I whip the tallit from my shoulders, fanning it out like a
bull fighter, quickly folding it into a perfect rectangle and replacing it
where it was found.
Shocked faces glare at me from the choir loft and my sister turns beet red.
Down in the front pew Irwin, horrified, pivots along with the rest of them,
whitefaced and grim. From a cannon, Mom, in the women's loft is shot to her
feet, nearly off her feet, she lands teetering, ghost-white, as if to fall
right over into the forbidden men's seating fifteen feet below, and my
sister has to grab her by the waist, pulling her backwards into the loft
once again. In complete shock, the Greeks at the pulpit, I mean the Rabbis,
turn and stare right at me.
The older Rabbi raises his finger, pointing first at me, then in an awsome
booming voice, sharp with rage, ...,
No, that's not at all what happened. Quickly and quietly I fold and replace
the tallit, mouthing "thanks" to my advisor who now lurks in arborshadows
near the ark.
And the service drones on until, a speech halted in mid-sentence, it's
over.
Amen
djf for LB/SM New York NY 11:22PM 5/26/95
Daniel Friedman's Poetry & Short Stories
Daniel Friedman's bio
...
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
...
Ask a Question or Search InspectApedia
Use the search box below to ask a question or to search the InspectApedia.com website.
Ask a Question or Enter Search Terms in the InspectApedia search box just below.
Technical Reviewers & References
Related Topics, found near the top of this page suggest articles closely related to this one.
Books & Articles on Building & Environmental Inspection, Testing, Diagnosis, & Repair
- Our recommended books about building & mechanical systems design, inspection, problem diagnosis, and repair, and about indoor environment and IAQ testing, diagnosis, and cleanup are at the InspectAPedia Bookstore. Also see our Book Reviews - InspectAPedia.
- ...
