I'm washing my hands by a table in the middle of Amsterdam Avenue. I look up as I say the blessing and it's those tall monstrous Manhattan buildings all around, and a flow of yellow cabs and a full moon in the clear dark sky. How much more bizarre can Sukkos get?
Not many people here can afford their own sukkah. They all live in flats you see. This is not like London where you can step out through your back door straight into your sukkah. Here it's a journey every time you want to have a meal: a journey to your synagogue, or the back yard of your building, where you share the space with dozens, if not hundreds, of other people. You then remember that this is exactly what the festival is all about: being on a journey as an individual and also as a community.
The rooftop sukkahs are the best. Up there it doesn't feel claustrophobic any more. But as I sit there on the splendid terrace of a massive penthouse apartment, having the most amazing single malts, I still can't decide whether I will ever like it here. I feel an alien and I'm not sure if that's going to change.
And then I make my own little journey, down south to Silver Spring near Washington, and encounter a very different, cosy and youthful and warm Sukkos-experience and then I travel north of Manhattan, to Riverdale, which does actually sound like an enchanted place as someone pointed out to me, its name being so close to magical Rivendell, and I award my hosts with the 'Sukkah with the best view' prize as their balcony overlooks the Hudson river and its New Jersey banks which look breathtakingly beautiful at this time of the year.
Simchat Torah is a truly festive occasion here. You are obliged to try hard to be happy over the holiday and everybody tries willy-nilly, but here in New York people are actually doing a good job of it! It's particulary interesting if you're a woman. Women are dancing in huge numbers, not the sad sight I'm used to in Europe, and we get a few Torah scrolls, and we get our own all-women hakafot (celebratory rounds) and in the more modern communities we of course get everything - each woman is called up to the Torah, and they may read it for themselves, and they may be elected the Brides of the Torah. And then because we're in America and this is a really free country, we go out into the street - cordoned off by the police - and dance and sing some more and let the whole world know that we're celebrating!
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
There is room for you
We're going to have a prayer group. All women. We need ten. Those who have already signed up go around trying to persuade people to come. I remember with an ironic inner smile how my male friends in Budapest used to play this game of getting-ten-together before every Shabbat. I've never done this before. Never prayed women only. Never thought it was important. Right now I'm just curious. You don't get this on the Continent - I want to see what it's like.
And it's eight o'clock on a Thursday morning and people are slowly arriving one by one, sleepy-eyed but committed. The roles have all been assigned. A leads the service in the front. She's not doing this the first time. In fact, none of them are. I'm the only neofite and they honour me with an aliyah, a chance to be one of the three who are called up to the Torah. I shake with excitement and anxiety. The blessings that I have heard hundreds of times before, but have never actually said out loud. Will I know how to? Will I get it right? They envelop me in a prayer shawl and show me how to hold the handles of the scroll. It is rolled open and I'm bending over a real Torah scroll for the first time in my life, I hear the blessing in my own loud and shaky voice, it flows so naturally, and then the reading, and I see all the words in front of me and they suddenly make so much sense. So this is what being part of a people is all about. Being a link in the chain of tradition. Suddenly the fact that I'm a woman and that women are traditionally not supposed to be doing this do not matter any more. I am everyone who has done this before me, and we are all of us tradition itself. We make it come alive. My colleagues smile encouragingly, shaking my hand, they don't believe it was my first time. Nothing will ever be the same again.
The next week I'm the one who reads the Torah for the others. Again, I'm doing this for the first time in my life. I'm thinking of my teacher. He would be so proud if he could see me. He knew well before me that this was going to happen if I come away to America, this land of opportunities. I practise and practise my small portion till I know it back to front, and I know there's no getting out of this. They all depend on me, we have agreed, I'm in charge of this and it's my responsibility for all of us. I have learnt how to do it and I feel so proud and accomplished. Very scared, too, as I do every time I have to perform publicly, but this is different. I'm needed. And it goes so smoothly, I hold the silver pointing device in my hand, and the letters are so beautiful, and the melody is so beautiful they say, it's minhag Anglia I say, and feel so grateful to the man who taught me. When I was learning with him, I didn't realize what it was that he was giving me, but he knew very well: it was empowerment. Showing me the gate to a richer, more meaningful, more committed Jewish life.
And it's eight o'clock on a Thursday morning and people are slowly arriving one by one, sleepy-eyed but committed. The roles have all been assigned. A leads the service in the front. She's not doing this the first time. In fact, none of them are. I'm the only neofite and they honour me with an aliyah, a chance to be one of the three who are called up to the Torah. I shake with excitement and anxiety. The blessings that I have heard hundreds of times before, but have never actually said out loud. Will I know how to? Will I get it right? They envelop me in a prayer shawl and show me how to hold the handles of the scroll. It is rolled open and I'm bending over a real Torah scroll for the first time in my life, I hear the blessing in my own loud and shaky voice, it flows so naturally, and then the reading, and I see all the words in front of me and they suddenly make so much sense. So this is what being part of a people is all about. Being a link in the chain of tradition. Suddenly the fact that I'm a woman and that women are traditionally not supposed to be doing this do not matter any more. I am everyone who has done this before me, and we are all of us tradition itself. We make it come alive. My colleagues smile encouragingly, shaking my hand, they don't believe it was my first time. Nothing will ever be the same again.
The next week I'm the one who reads the Torah for the others. Again, I'm doing this for the first time in my life. I'm thinking of my teacher. He would be so proud if he could see me. He knew well before me that this was going to happen if I come away to America, this land of opportunities. I practise and practise my small portion till I know it back to front, and I know there's no getting out of this. They all depend on me, we have agreed, I'm in charge of this and it's my responsibility for all of us. I have learnt how to do it and I feel so proud and accomplished. Very scared, too, as I do every time I have to perform publicly, but this is different. I'm needed. And it goes so smoothly, I hold the silver pointing device in my hand, and the letters are so beautiful, and the melody is so beautiful they say, it's minhag Anglia I say, and feel so grateful to the man who taught me. When I was learning with him, I didn't realize what it was that he was giving me, but he knew very well: it was empowerment. Showing me the gate to a richer, more meaningful, more committed Jewish life.
My last crazy year
I'm riding in a rented car with four women I've never met before. We're going to be school mates. But before school even starts, we're going out team-building in some forest somewhere in Connecticut. I'm looking through the window as we whizz across Manhattan, past the George Washington bridge, on this lovely sunny late summer morning. And I think to myself, a couple of days ago I was living in Golders Green, London, and now I'm a full-time student of Jewish text in this vast country so distant and so unknown to me. What am I doing here? Am I totally crazy? Well, I have been before and it seems to be happening again but I suddenly get a feeling that maybe it's happening for the last time. That when this year is over I will just want to be normal. Grow an anchor and let it bind me to a place, a person, even a profession perhaps... and for a minute I think yes, I've grown out of loving crazy things. That things will be very different after this. But then the day moves on, and we swing on ropes and hug each other balancing across beams twenty feet high up in the air and we bond and create unforgettable memories and then I think, this is just fine, the anchor will come when the time is ripe anyway.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
The Elevator
I think I know now what Frank Sinatra meant when he sang that he wanted to wake up in the city that never sleeps. He meant this place was never quiet. There's constant noise: airplanes, helicopters, cars honking (don't do it, says the sign, there's a $350 fine!) and hundreds and hundreds of air-conditioners create a buzz that's with you all the time. I crave silence. And have found one quiet place. The elevator. In these Manhattan apartment buildings, the elevator is a very special place. An institution. First of all, you've got a man living in there. He operates it. You never press buttons - unless you're a child fortunate enough to be buddies with him and then he lets you climb onto his tall chair and reach up to press the 'door close' button. Some people know the elevator men by name and have a friendly chat with them and some never speak to them.
The elevator man knows a lot about you and the building. After a few days, he remembered which floor I lived on. Which is great on Shabbat when all I have to do is get in the lift and say no more. No doubtful situation about me asking him to do the job. Still I get guilty and have a sense that my presence is a command in itself and maybe I should just walk up to the twelth floor...
The elevator man takes deliveries for you and delivers them to your door. He also takes bunches of keys from wives whose husbands have left without keys. He also comes to fix things in your flat, say when the toilet gets blocked and the downstairs neighbour starts complaining about a dripping ceiling.
But sometimes the elevator doesn't work. Then you get into an even more special elevator which is much much bigger and is probably meant for moving furniture. It doesn't even have a door so as you're flying up you can see all the floors rushing by. A bit scary, but it's a great system. I've never once had to walk up the stairs so far.
The elevator man knows a lot about you and the building. After a few days, he remembered which floor I lived on. Which is great on Shabbat when all I have to do is get in the lift and say no more. No doubtful situation about me asking him to do the job. Still I get guilty and have a sense that my presence is a command in itself and maybe I should just walk up to the twelth floor...
The elevator man takes deliveries for you and delivers them to your door. He also takes bunches of keys from wives whose husbands have left without keys. He also comes to fix things in your flat, say when the toilet gets blocked and the downstairs neighbour starts complaining about a dripping ceiling.
But sometimes the elevator doesn't work. Then you get into an even more special elevator which is much much bigger and is probably meant for moving furniture. It doesn't even have a door so as you're flying up you can see all the floors rushing by. A bit scary, but it's a great system. I've never once had to walk up the stairs so far.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
week one
The city was an illusion. We all have this when we listen to Frank Sinatra sing New York New York and it feels like the best place to be, where it's all thrills and fireworks or finding our real selves, the best possible us. But in fact, New York is just a place where people live. Just like any other place, with small shops and pubs and buildings tall or not so tall. We have all the legends of course. We have Central Park, we have Friends and Sex and the City and all the rest but at the end of the day, and especially at the end of the day, New York is a not particularly pretty but a pretty friendly place to have a drink. Or have a run. Or I hope one day go to the opera. The city has many faces I'm sure. But right now I'm looking at one face, the Upper west side of it all. And it's surprisingly relaxed and quiet, and the people go in flip-flops and crocs and the women in shul are not Jewish Princesses at all, it's all very easy to blend into. And then you find that you're in a place where you don't actually know anybody. You want to call a friend and there's no one to call.
School is good. It makes my brain work. Just what I wanted. I'm trying to remember to say a blessing for the good fortune I have every minute possible for being able to spend a year doing nothing but learning. It is a blessing. I'm not sure where it's taking me but it must be a good place. We're all women, younger, older, reformer, frummer, but we all love it, and we love discussing it. And some of us put on tefillin in the mornings, and I guess some never pray. I'll have to locate myself somewhere on this map of feminine observance where you can pick and mix your own personal Judaism, where there are no boundaries and no one approving or disapproving. These guys profess self-expression, and they mean it. Do I buy that?
When you're in the beit midrash, you're expected not to be on your own. You have a partner. No individual study. You have to get used to this constant sharing, constant dialogue, neither the struggle nor the achievements are yours alone. You as an individual are no more. You exist in pairs. You have to learn how to learn from the other, whether she be less or more informed than you, whether you are interested in her as a person or not.
Our teacher is great. She's quaint. She has it all and knows exactly where she's taking us. She seems so fragile and yet she's so powerful. And she'll take us through Sanhedrin, through rebellious sons and death penalties and rabbis struggling to create a judicial system that prefers exemption to conviction.
In New York we get hurricanes. I know this sounds very exotic but by the time they arrive they've already lost most of their power and just bring rain. Lots of heavy heavy rain. Umbrellas won't do. You need the whole waterproof equipment, and there's no way you can get a cab when the rain begins to fall. You walk, and you get drenched. It's just water. But it gets you three times on the same day, and you're wet from head to toe, and your phone stops working as it has also got soaked. And the dollar bills in your purse. But it all dries out the next day when it's sunny and warm again.
School is good. It makes my brain work. Just what I wanted. I'm trying to remember to say a blessing for the good fortune I have every minute possible for being able to spend a year doing nothing but learning. It is a blessing. I'm not sure where it's taking me but it must be a good place. We're all women, younger, older, reformer, frummer, but we all love it, and we love discussing it. And some of us put on tefillin in the mornings, and I guess some never pray. I'll have to locate myself somewhere on this map of feminine observance where you can pick and mix your own personal Judaism, where there are no boundaries and no one approving or disapproving. These guys profess self-expression, and they mean it. Do I buy that?
When you're in the beit midrash, you're expected not to be on your own. You have a partner. No individual study. You have to get used to this constant sharing, constant dialogue, neither the struggle nor the achievements are yours alone. You as an individual are no more. You exist in pairs. You have to learn how to learn from the other, whether she be less or more informed than you, whether you are interested in her as a person or not.
Our teacher is great. She's quaint. She has it all and knows exactly where she's taking us. She seems so fragile and yet she's so powerful. And she'll take us through Sanhedrin, through rebellious sons and death penalties and rabbis struggling to create a judicial system that prefers exemption to conviction.
In New York we get hurricanes. I know this sounds very exotic but by the time they arrive they've already lost most of their power and just bring rain. Lots of heavy heavy rain. Umbrellas won't do. You need the whole waterproof equipment, and there's no way you can get a cab when the rain begins to fall. You walk, and you get drenched. It's just water. But it gets you three times on the same day, and you're wet from head to toe, and your phone stops working as it has also got soaked. And the dollar bills in your purse. But it all dries out the next day when it's sunny and warm again.
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